Environmental Degradation Puts Life on Earth at Risk, say Scientists

theguardian

Humans are ‘eating away at our own life support systems’ at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years, two new research papers say. Story here.

It’s Time to Ban Bee-Killing Pesticides. Please Sign Message Encouraging Ontario, Canada to Press on With Efforts to Restrict Them!

David Suzuki Foundation

On November 25, the Ontario government became the first government in North America to announce a plan for regulations to restrict the use of seeds treated with neonicotinoid pesticides. Story here.

Great Canadian Migrations

PinP; Any similarity this commentator bears to David Attenborough, the famous naturalist of BBC TV fame, is purely intentional!

With Wall Street Holding the Strings, Republican-Controlled U.S. Congress Moves to Deregulate Big Banks

Common Dreams

Just weeks after taking over both houses of Congress, the Republican party is already aggressively moving to weaken legislation aimed at reining in big banks and protecting the public. Story here.

Related: "Is Ottawa Bedding Down With Crooked Bankers?"

Trade Secrets

Monbiot.com

Why will no one answer the obvious, massive questions about TTIP? Story here.

Sound familiar? If not, read this - "Free Trade - Path to Prosperity or Back Road to Corporatism?"

Answering for America’s Madness

by Ann Jones 

TomDispatch

Americans who live abroad — more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) — often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States.  Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world.