EU Lawmakers Call For Action to Protect Bees

(Reuters) - Nov 15'11   European Union lawmakers on Tuesday called for stronger action to protect Europe's bees, saying that the rapid decline in the bee population could PLT bumblebee photo affect the growth of important food crops. Details here.

New Report is First To Quantify Health Impacts From World's Worst Toxic Pollution Problems

Blacksmith Institute - New York - Nov 9'11



Report Identifies Top Pollution Problems and Sources, and Reveals Surprising Finding About Corporations and Pollution. Details here.

CBC Radio Explores the History of the Embattled Canadian Wheat Board (Podcast)

Wheat.  It is the most important cereal grain in the world and, along with fur trapping and the railroad, it made Canada.

We are one of the largest wheat exporters on the planet, about 19 thousand tons a year, more than any other crop. There are some 75,000 farmers across the Prairies who make their livelihood from it. And to sell their wheat, they have depended for generations on the Canadian Wheat Board.

 

The Wheat Board, as we know it today, was established in 1935 to control prices, so as to benefit farmers in the Great Depression.

Now, however, the Wheat Board could be gone by Christmas. The Conservative government has been promising to get rid of it for years, and with its majority in parliament, is making good on that promise.

It's hard to say what it will mean to farmers and the rest of us. If anybody has an idea, it is John Herd Thompson, who has documented the history of the Wheat Board. Winnipeg born-and-bred, he earned his PhD at Queen's University and has taught at McGill, Simon Fraser and the University of Alberta.  For more than two decades, he has been Professor of History at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.  He joins us from a studio there.

Click here, then scroll to the last half of Hour Three.

Dirty air Fosters Precipitation Extremes

By Janet Raloff - Science News Nov 13'11

Changes to clouds encourage drought in dry areas and torrential downpours in moist ones. Details here.

Robert Redford - Thank You, President Obama (Video)

Funny - but True!

Of Banksters, Occupiers and Head-Knockers

What to do with the Occupy camps. How about - let them be! 
by Larry Powell

A peaceful camp

It's hardly surprising. 

The mood of Canada's elites is becoming increasingly ugly as the "Occupy" movement continues to "hang in there" for a lot longer than they likely expected. 

It is, after all, what elites do. They simply cannot tolerate those who challenge the very system that keeps them in power.

Cops are already being ordered to start knocking some heads in some Canadian cities, as well as south of the border.

Neither is it surprising that some news media are misrepresenting what the movement is all about. 

A recent editorial in the Dauphin Herald, for example, dismissed the protesters as "whiners," whose support is dwindling. (In fact, the movement has persisted and spread to many parts of the world.)

The editorial also proclaimed, "It was the squandering of tax dollars (by governments) which originally created the movement!"

Wrong!
 
The newspaper obviously got the Occupiers mixed up with their polar opposites, U.S. "Tea-Partiers," and Republicans, who are unbending in their support of tax cuts for the rich and cuts to health care and other government services which might help ordinary people!

While I have yet to hear a single Occupier defend government "squandering," it was actually the growing gap between the super rich and the rest of us, which motivated them. This is all made worse by the criminal actions of bankers and rich corporations (who still, to this day, run around Scott-free, while countless Occupiers have been jailed for exercising their democratic rights to freedom of speech and assembly!) Meanwhile, those "banksters" and other "upstanding paragons of corporate virtue," like British Petroleum, are given free-reign to exploit our resources and pollute our planet (all, tax-free, of course)!

Many Canadians seem to be under the impression that things are better here than in the 'States - that banks are better regulated, for example. That is true - partly.

But the belief that our big banks have been "soldiering on" without the help of our hard-earned dollars, is also a myth. According to one very capable, investigative columnist, the Harper Government quietly issued those banks a bailout amounting to $75 billion in 2008. Michel Chossudovsky heads the Montreal-based Centre for Research on Globalization. Chossudovsky claims that, taken on a per-capita basis, that is on par with the infamous bailouts the US government made of its own crooked and failed financial institutions a few years ago.  

(Here, our own, "vigilant" corporate media seemed to have missed that story.)

Keep in mind these same banks, all five, invest billions in the Alberta tar sands, helping to destroy our natural world and climate, at the same time.

What is puzzling is how indignant some people are that homeless people are actually moving into the camps. Imagine that! A basic tenet of the "Occupy" movement is that we need a more even distribution of wealth. Why, then would they turn away those who are suffering the most from this imbalance?

I recently had the privilege of visiting the "Occupy Winnipeg" site, twice in October. Yes, there were homeless there, sitting around the bonfire, drinking the industrial-strength coffee,  and sampling the occasional, meagre bit of food. (Which renders as doubly ludicrous, suggestions that they are there "just to have fun.") To me, their presence just proved that the movement is inclusive and hardly prepared to turn away our poorest, who perhaps themselves best exemplify the inequity with which our wealth is distributed.

It should also be noted that, on the first day of "Occupy Winnipeg" there were also working people, environmentalists, representatives of First Nations, the embattled Wheat Board, and so on. 

One union representative there told me he believed Harper was out to crush the labour movement. He cited recent examples of how the government moved to bring ruthless ends to strikes in both the public and private sectors this year. Its back-to-work decrees, in both cases, came down with unprecedented haste. For postal workers, they imposed a lesser settlement than even the employer would have granted! For Air Canada flight attendants, the government locked in entry-level wages which are below the poverty line, while doing nothing to prevent obscene bonuses for corporate executives. 

Was that labour rep wrong? I don't think so.

One of the speakers told the gathering on opening day, Harper had broken an election promise and abruptly ended funding to the Canadian Environmental Network. That has thrown the future of this group into disarray and uncertainty. The Network has been co-ordinating the activities of various Eco-groups across the country and helping governments implement enlightened legislation to safeguard our air, water and soil, for decades. 


Does this strengthen the argument that, under Stephen Harper, Canada's policies are becoming the most hostile toward the environment of any nation in the world? 

Sounds like!

To suggest that this movement has been controlled by whiners and reduced to squatter camps is to do a great disservice to thousands of sincere, caring people, determined to build a better world.

(All photos by PinP.)

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Greg Selinger Strikes a Phoney Blow for Fire Safety - Shuts Down "Occupy Winnipeg!"