Join me for an illustrated talk on gardening, getting blood on my hands, and our tangled relationship with nature.
Tuesday, October 27, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge Street, one block north of Bloor
Beeton Auditorium, main floor.
Address & transit info here. Scroll down for a Map link.
Two recent events in Monsanto-land tell it all:
Lobbyist claims Monsanto pesticide safe to drink, bolts when offered a glass. (It’s caught on a gem of a video, embedded in the story). Raw Story, 27 March 2015.
Monsanto demands World Health Organization retract report on Roundup link to cancer. EcoWatch, 26 March 2015.
For a good dose of sanity on GMOs, hunger, and post-oil farming, check out Ann Clark, plant physiologist and farmer, in Bold Scientists. Read an excerpt here.
Meantime, pass this on. And have a nice day.
“We did it! The FCC just voted to stop the slow lane!”
This is good news. It’s amazing news.
“The stakes couldn’t have been higher. With so many websites based in the US, the future of the entire Internet hung in the balance.”
A year ago, the open internet looked doomed. The huge bully corporations that monopolize cable and wireless provision announce plans for a two-speed internet: fast for those who could pay, slow – very slow – for the rest of us.
The Federal Communications Commission, responsible for overseeing such things, is not noted for favouring public over corporate interests. Its current chair, Tom Wheeler, is a venture capitalist and former head lobbyist for both the cable and wireless industries, which worked hard behind closed doors and spent lavishly to ensure their stranglehold on the internet.
Erupting in May 2014, a small resistance grew quickly into a multi-faceted, finely coordinated international public campaign, eventually engaging more than 5 million people in protecting our internet. It worked.
On February 26 the FCC commissioners voted 3 – 2 (close, but good enough) to keep the internet open. The details are here (same story, two variations):
Outraged, the bully corps leapt immediately to sue the government, and right-wingers in the US Congress obediently set about sabotaging the historic ruling. Of course.
But still, for now, we can celebrate. This is a rare victory for open communication, equity and freedom of speech.
In Canada, OpenMedia.ca led the campaign, one of many on their docket. This small but formidable grassroots organization is independent, creative and vital.
For more on what’s at stake, check out Bold Scientists, chapter 6, The Cloud.
(Image: popsugar.com)
Good news: Scotland freezes fracking.
Scotland says: Don’t frack. Photo: the-news-daily.com
Energy Minister Fergus Ewing announced that the moratorium would stand until “a full public consultation on unconventional oil and gas extraction” had been initiated and completed.
A week later, more good news: the Welsh government also voted to block fracking until it is proven safe for the environment and public health. Note: It cannot be proved safe, since it is everything but.
Neither of these initiatives is an outright ban, but in New York state, years of citizen campaigning led to a similar moratorium, and finally last month to a ban.
For a close look at the dirty business of fracking, see Bold Scientists. Scroll down to chapter 10, The unsolved problem.
(* from Canada’s national anthem. No irony intended, I assume).
Just revealed by The Intercept: Canada Casts Global Surveillance Dragnet Over File Downloads
This marks a new low in Canada’s data hoovering as a junior partner in the US-run War on Terror TM.
More detail here, at CBC News.
According to OpenMedia.ca, “The data they’re collecting can identify everything from your sexual orientation, religious and political beliefs, to your medical history. This sensitive information is being shared with the spy agencies of several other countries, without our knowledge or consent.”
If you oppose secretive, ever-expanding, high-cost, out-of-control spying on all of us, say so now.
This week, the Harper regime introduced dangerous new anti-terrorism legislation that will give spy agencies even more powers.
Michael Vonn, Policy Director, BC Civil Liberties Association: “Canada has utterly failed to respond to the urgent need for national security oversight and instead, proposes an unprecedented expansion of powers that will harm innocent Canadians and not increase our public safety.”
Tell the Harper regime: Cease and desist, back off, quit spying on us.
For more on the steady advance of the national security state in Canada, see Bold Scientists. Scroll down to chapter 6, The cloud.
For further details and resources, check out Transparent Lives: Surveillance in Canada.
(Photo: http://www.pxleyes.com)
Michael Riordon 