Writer Chris Hedges argues that North American culture is dying because it has become transfixed by illusions about literacy, love, wisdom, happiness and democracy. Jim Brown explores Hedges’ ideas about the mechanisms that keep us diverted from confronting the collapse around us.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/11/30/empire-of-illusion/
The federal government’s strict new rules on mercury emissions are a pro-life issue that Christians should embrace to protect unborn children, according to a group of Christian environmentalists. Grand Rapids Press, Michigan.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/12/christian_environmentalists_sa.html (You can also click on the title for this posting)
The drone, shown here on Iranian television, appears to be in very good condition
Bat-winged, high-flying and hard to detect, America’s RQ-170 Sentinel plane is the perfect stealth drone for peering into another country’s secret sites without being caught.
One was used in May to feed back live footage of the US Navy Seal raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.
So probably not the sort of hardware the CIA would ever like to fall into the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps? Oops.
On 4 December, around 140 miles inside Iran from its border with Afghanistan, that is exactly what has happened.
On Thursday afternoon, Iran displayed its captured trophy on TV, apparently perfectly intact and, according to the Iranian media, Russian and Chinese military intelligence officials are taking a keen interest in it.
Opinion is divided on how this hi-tech intelligence-gathering drone fell into “the wrong hands” and, indeed, what it was doing inside Iran.
Built by Lockheed Martin, unveiled at Kandahar Airbase in 2009 and capable of flying at an altitude of up to 50,000ft (15.2km), this Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) carries no missiles, unlike the larger, lethal drones, the Predator and the Reaper, that also fly from bases in Afghanistan.
The US says simply that its Sentinel had a malfunction, but the plane is supposed to have a failsafe back-up system that automatically steers it back to base if contact is lost with its controller.
Sophisticated sensors
The base in this case is Shindand in western Afghanistan, a former Soviet airbase from where US-operated drones are used to monitor the movements of Taliban insurgents and smugglers along the long border with Iran.
The RQ-170 Sentinel drone was built by Lockheed Martin
But speculation is rife that this particular aircraft was flying deep inside Iran to gather intelligence and real-time video footage of Iran’s nuclear sites.
It was carrying an array of sophisticated sensors that will be of great interest to Iran and other countries.
If, as was originally thought, the Sentinel had been shot down then there would have been little to put on display but a pile of twisted wreckage.
Instead, what was on show on Iranian TV was an immaculate gleaming white drone that looked straight off the production line.“Start Quote
In the CIA Directorate of Intelligence at Langley, Virginia, eyes will be rolling skywards as analysts work out the long-term damage to US intelligence”
Which tends to back up the claim by Iran that its forces brought down the drone through electronic warfare, in other words that it electronically hijacked the plane and steered it to the ground.
On Thursday, the Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Brig-Gen Amir Ali Hajizadeh said “through precise electronic monitoring it was known that this plane had the objective of penetrating the country’s skies for espionage purposes.
“After entering the country’s eastern space the plane was caught in an electronic ambush by the armed forces and it was brought down on the land with minimum damage.”
This affair is both a political embarrassment and an intelligence setback for Washington.
It is also unlikely to help those countries like Britain that are trying to obstruct and delay what they suspect is an Iranian nuclear weapons programme – a programme Tehran denies.
Iran has now formally complained about the US intrusion into its airspace and asked for compensation.
In the CIA Directorate of Intelligence at Langley, Virginia, eyes will be rolling skywards as analysts work out the long-term damage to US intelligence.
Not only must they accept that some of their most successful and useful surveillance technology is now in the hands of the very people they were using it on, they will also have to think very carefully before sending anything else into Iranian airspace.
Above all, they must be asking: does Iran really have the capacity to intercept transmissions between our stealth drones and our controllers on the ground?
Related Stories
· Iranians claim to down US drone , MIDDLE EAST
· Iranians ‘shoot down spy drones’ , MIDDLE EAST
· Iran unveils first bomber drone , MIDDLE EAST
This wouldn’t be the same Lockheed Martin of the Canadian Census vs Finley debacle, would it ? Not the same firm that is working to get drones built in Saskatoon ? Deep in Iranian space. What the hell are these people doing there ? . . .
– a reporting of this
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The informed source said on Sunday that the Iranian Army’s electronic warfare unit successfully targeted the US-built RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft after it crossed into Iranian airspace over the border with neighboring Afghanistan.
He added that the US reconnaissance drone has been seized with minimum damage.
The RQ-170 is an unmanned stealth aircraft designed and developed by the Lockheed Martin Company.
The US military and the CIA use the drone to launch missile strikes in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region.
The unnamed Iranian military official added that “due to the clear border violation, the operational and electronic measures taken by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Armed Forces against invading aircraft will not remain limited to Iran’s borders.”
However, NATO forces say operators lost control of a surveillance drone flying over Afghanistan last week that may be the same one Iran says it has downed.
“The UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] to which the Iranians are referring may be a US unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status,” the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.
The statement about the UAV was issued in Kabul on Sunday and released to reporters covering an international conference on Afghanistan in Bonn, Germany.
The incident comes as the United States has beefed up its military presence in and around the Persian Gulf region in recent months in the wake of a popular uprising in Bahrain.
The US Department of Defense says Washington is closely monitoring developments in Bahrain, which hosts the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, where 4,200 US military personnel are based.
MP/HGH/AS/HGL
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Zambia says it would only have considered calls to arrest George Bush if it had come from the ICC.
Last Modified: 04 Dec 2011 21:10
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Zambia has dismissed an international rights group’s call for the arrest on torture charges of former President George Bush, who has been touring Africa to raise awareness about cervical and breast cancer. “On what basis does Amnesty International want us to arrest President Bush?” Zambian state media quoted Chishimba Kambwili, the country’s foreign affairs minister as saying while Bush, his wife and daughters ended their visit to Zambia on Saturday. Kambwili said Zambia would have considered the request only if it had come from the International Criminal Court acting on behalf of international organisations like the United Nations. Earlier in the week, Amnesty International said it had asked Tanzania, Zambia and Ethiopia to arrest Bush for violating international torture laws.
Amnesty International said that under international law the three nations had an obligation to arrest Bush during his tour of the countries from Monday to promote efforts to fight cervical and breast cancers. “Amnesty International recognises the value of raising awareness about cervical and breast cancer in Africa, the stated aim of the visit, but this cannot lessen the damage to the fight against torture caused by allowing someone who has admitted to authorising water-boarding to travel without facing the consequences prescribed by law,” the group said in a statement on Thursday. “All countries to which George W Bush travels have an obligation to bring him to justice for his role in torture,” Matt Pollard, Amnesty’s senior legal adviser, said. ‘Responsible for torture’ “International law requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture; Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfil their obligations and end the impunity George W Bush has so far enjoyed.”
Amnesty made a similar appeal to Canada in October when Bush visited British Columbia for an economic summit. The group claimed Bush authorised the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and “waterboarding” on detainees held in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency between 2002 and 2009. Amnesty’s case relies on the public record, US documents obtained through access to information requests, Bush’s own memoir and a Red Cross report critical of the US’s war on terror policies. Amnesty cites several instances of alleged torture of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, by the US military. The cases include that of Abu Zubaydah – also known as Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husain and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described 9/11 mastermind, both arrested in Pakistan. The two men were waterboarded a total of 266 times from 2002 to 2003, according to the CIA inspector general, cited by Amnesty. |
From Rene re; border jam-up as excuse for border exchanges
Demosthenes
“There are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and preservation of countries; defensive barriers, forts, trenches and the like…
But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all and this applies especially to the dealing of democracies. What is this safeguard?
Skepticism.
This you must preserve, this you must retain. If you can keep this, you need fear no harm.”
Demosthenes (384 BC-322 BC)
Source; oration.
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. . . inch-by-inch, amero-by-amero – ever onward towards the loss of Canada to the North American Union!
Elaine Hughes
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NEWS: Trew says US agents in Canada under new border deal is ‘worrisome’
http://canadians.org/blog/?p=12342
| By Brent Patterson, Tuesday, November 29th, 2011 |
The Toronto Star reports, “Armed U.S. police officers will for the first time be allowed to operate in Canada along with the RCMP as part of far-reaching changes in Canadian-American border operations to be unveiled next week by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama.”
“In contrast to the silence from Canadian negotiators, some U.S. officials have been open about what the new reality at the border will look like in the years ahead. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder revealed last fall that the deal will authorize Canada and the U.S. to designate officers who can take part in police investigations on both sides of the border. …The model for the joint policing program is the Shiprider project, a three-year-old plan under which the RCMP and U.S. Coast Guard join forces and ride in each others’ vessels when patrolling boundary waters. …(Shiprider) requires a Canadian officer to be in charge when the team of mixed U.S. and Canadian police are operating in Canada, and vice-versa on the American side.”
“Stuart Trew, trade campaigner with the Ottawa-based Council of Canadians, said further integration of Canada and U.S. police operations is worrisome at a time when Canadians are still waiting for the establishment of controls recommended (by the Arar Commission) on information-sharing by Canadian police and intelligence agencies. ‘The mechanism for holding the U.S. agents accountable is vague,’ he said of the joint policing project included in the border deal. ‘It’s difficult to know how you would file a complaint, for example, against a U.S. agent and whether there is any accountability in that respect.’”
“Besides security, the agreement expected to be announced in Washington on Dec. 7 will cover a wide range of measures on border infrastructure, harmonized product standards, intelligence-gathering and commercial transport.”
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WATCH: American Officers To Police Canada- NAU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8eq42XN85M
May 30, 2009
On May 27th Peter Van Loan, (former) Minister of Public Safety for Canada, announced that he signed an agreement that will allow Americans to police on Canadian soil and allows Canadians to do the same. He said that “the agreement should not be looked upon as Americans encroaching on Canadian jurisdiction because it is a joint effort between the two countries
They claim this new agreement started as a pilot program where they successfully stopped some illegal shipments of tobbaco and marijuana.. no mention of stopping any terrorists though, just those two pesky plants. As a result of their successfull busts together we can now look forward to,
– Foreign officials policing on Canadian soil
– Harmonized database with the United States
– Integrated Border Security For North America
– RFID & Biometric equipped Drivers licence and passports
– 2 Tier border system using YOUR threat assessment profile
– New Powers to the Ministry of Transportation to gather public information about YOU to build your threat assessment profile
– Integration of this ID framework into the global ID framework headded up by The United Nations ICAO PKI with the private sector developing the software that will run it all. (Global ID Integration)
– Adopting an ID system demanded by WHTI, an American Law developed by Homeland Security and the 9/11 Commission and we all know how accurate the 9/11 commission was- so lets now base our new “agreements” off of their bad data and make the tax payers pay for the whole thing!
If you are Canadian, please research:
– Ontario Bill 85
– Smart Borders Declaration and Action Plan
– WHTI (The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative)
– ICAO PKI Documents (also research CoreStreet LTD as they are developing the software)
– Building A North American Community (CFR document with Canadian participation)
– CCCE (Canadian Council of Chief Executives)
– Canadian/American Border Trade Alliance (CAN/AM BTA)
– The Standing Commission on North American Prosperity
– Power Corporation Of Canada
– North American Calibration Committee (NACC)
– The Northwest Corridor Development Corporation (NCDC)
– Center for North American Studies (CNAS)
– Central North American Trade Corridor
– NAFTZ
– The North American Forum on Integration (NAFI)
We Must All Stand Up Now And Say NO To The North American Union Agenda!
VIDEO: ‘You, Me, and the S.P.P: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule’.
WATCH TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp5HOLvKn2I
What do secrecy, police provocateurs, an assault on democracy and infringements on citizens’ rights have in common? The Security Prosperity Partnership.
‘You, Me, and the S.P.P’ is a feature length documentary which exposes the latest manifestation of a corporatist agenda that is undermining the democratic authority of the citizens of North America. Two processes, the Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the Trade Investment Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) are rapidly eroding and eliminating standards, civil liberties, regulatory systems and institutions put in place over generations through the democratic process. Proponents of the SPP say that it is needed to keep trade flowing. Opponents say, not only will it undermine the democratic authority of citizens, it threatens the sovereignty of the three NAFTA nations through the integration of military, security structures and regulatory regimes.
Here are a few quotes from the film.
“… after the shock of Sept 11 … that crisis was expertly manipulated by our political leaders to push through a range of policies they actually had wanted to push through before Sept 11, but didn’t have the political conditions that made that possible.” – Naomi Klein, Canadian award-winning journalist, author of ‘the Shock Doctrine’
“…if we go along with the Americans on their military, on their human rights, on their Patriot Act, on immigration and refugee policy, on energy, on all kinds of regulations over pesticides or whatever, then they will allow us access to their markets.” – Gordon Laxer, Director, The Parkland Institute, Alberta
“… what the SPP really represents is a parallel government, so that the important decisions are either made outside of parliament and outside of legislatures or they make it impossible for those kinds of decisions to be made in those legislative bodies, so that democracy is slowly being gutted.” – Murray Dobbin, Canadian author, journalist
“…take your mask off brother…. No, no, no, put the rock down man, put the rock down, this is our line! – Dave Coles, President Communications Energy and Paperworkers union.
TO ORDER YOUR COPY of the DVD: http://manlymedia.com/documentaries/trading-democracy-for-corporate-rule or www.youmespp.com
Paul Manly
paul@manlymedia.com
Box 1093 Stn A, Nanaimo BC V9R 6E7
250 729-1254
www.manlymedia.com
www.youmeSPP.com
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WikiLeaks Exposes North American Integration Plot
Written by Alex Newman Monday, 02 May 2011 21:00
As early as January of 2005, high-ranking officials were discussing the best way to sell the idea of North American “integration” to the public and policymakers while getting around national constitutions. The prospect of creating a monetary unit to replace national currencies was a hot topic as well.
Some details of the schemes were exposed in a secret 2005 U.S. embassy cable from Ottawa signed by then-Ambassador Paul Cellucci. The document was released by WikiLeaks on April 28. But so far, it has barely attracted any attention in the United States, Canada, or Mexico beyond a few mentions in some liberty-minded Internet forums.
Numerous topics are discussed in the leaked document — borders, currency, labor, regulation, and more. How to push the integration agenda features particularly prominently.
Under the subject line “Placing a new North American Initiative in its economic policy context,” American diplomatic personnel in Canada said they believed an “incremental” path toward North American integration would probably gain the most support from policymakers. Apparently Canadian economists agreed.
The cable also touts the supposed benefits of merging the three countries and even mentions what elements to “stress” in future “efforts to promote further integration.” It lists what it claims is a summary of the “consensus” among Canadian economists about the issues, too.
MORE:
I posted a comment on the Globe and Mail page in response to Doug Saunders’ article (below). With a few changes here it is:
Doug Saunders’ analysis seems to rest on the premise that the context within which military intervention occurred is the same in all the conflicts. That is a stretch.
Iraq was an American-launched war. Canadian involvement in war is a consequence of losing our sovereignty to the U.S.
It is also the consequence of:
– a very successful propaganda campaign (always necessary for war). (Reference Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine which shows how the militaristic culture becomes the nation’s culture.)
– an information deficit. There is little awareness among Canadians of the degree to which the American military-industrial complex is already well-wormed into our institutions and therefore influential in decision-making. Most do not know there is a program to roll out armoured vehicles in the cities across Canada. Nor about the unmanned drones that are patrolling the Canada-U.S. border, nor that the American police can now work in Canada.
– Money: Canadians generally do not know that Lockheed Martin Corp (American military) has more lobbyists on Parliament Hill than the oil and gas (tar sands) companies.
– You cannot have peaceful relationships, peaceful communities or peace in the world with a violent partner.
– There will be no peace as long as the investments that produce high financial returns are in military corporations.
– There will be no peace until we take control of Government and Universities that have sold out to corporatocracy. Corporatocracy means de-regulation, which means that those at the top suck out the wealth and destroy the environment, creating gross inequalities. Civil unrest arises out of injustice. The corporatocracy will use “unrest” as the justification for military intervention.
– There WILL BE PEACE if we actively support the Occupy movement. It is about taking back what is ours, our identity. Listen to the message: we are going to create a different world. That is what Occupy is about. But the mainstream media will paint it otherwise. More propaganda.
– When our educational institutions (e.g. Dalhousie University, the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technology) are funded by Lockheed Martin we are investing in war.
– The biggest and most successful weapon in the world is non-violent resistance, helping people wherever they may live to empower themselves against exploitation. Do our educational insitutions teach and do research in non-violent resistance / empowerment? What does the Government invest in?
– Ultimately it comes down to us. We are the citizens. These are our institutions. If they are not serving the public interest, it is up to us occupy and protect the public sphere – our world.
NOW, HERE’S DOUG!:
December 3, 2011
By Doug Saunders,
From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Ten years and seven weeks ago, this paper’s front-page headline read, in banner letters, “Canadians head off to war.” That would become the longest, and possibly the most controversial, military combat operation in Canadian history. On Thursday, with the lowering of the Maple Leaf flag at Kandahar Air Force base, it effectively came to an end: For the first time in more than a decade, Canada is not at war.
Enjoy it while it lasts. This may be peace, but it sure doesn’t feel like a period of lasting calm. It might be better to say that we’re between wars.
For, as we saw in Libya this year, we are sure to be asked again to send soldiers to put a stop to a mass atrocity somewhere, or (more likely) to prevent an atrocity that we believe will occur. This is a new, post-Cold War type of military operation, and we still don’t really know how to decide whether to use it or not, whether we’ll end up helping or causing further harm, how to gauge its success, even when to get out.
I spent Friday at a stately home in southern England with senior politicians, diplomats, scholars and military figures from Canada and Britain as they tried to hash out a set of principles for future interventions in troubled countries. The long shadow of Afghanistan’s failure loomed over the day. But so did the comparative sanity, and inarguable brevity, of the NATO war in Libya.
In the 20 years that have passed since the Soviet Union dissolved in December, 1991, we’ve seen foreign militaries intervene in domestic conflicts – as peacekeepers, combat-oriented “peace support” soldiers or outright regime changers – in Namibia, Nicaragua, Angola, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Liberia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, Guatemala, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Liberia, Burundi, the Ivory Coast, and twice in Sudan.
Most of these countries are now better off, more stable and democratic, as a result of the foreign boots. Of course, some of the largest and most expensive examples, notably Iraq and Afghanistan, were failures that made things worse, in Iraq’s case disastrously so. Those are, not coincidentally, the places where outsiders haven’t just lent support to an existing liberation struggle but have started one themselves, and then tried to stick around and build a government and a society.
It’s popular nowadays to say, for understandable reasons, that we should get out of the military-intervention business forever, and stick to blue-helmet United Nations peacekeeping, like we did before 1991. (The Persian Gulf war that year was Canada’s first full-fledged military commitment since Korea in the 1950s.)
I can almost sympathize. But then I remember the horrible years of 1994 and 1995, when more than 500,000 Rwandans were hacked to death in a matter of weeks because peacekeepers weren’t allowed to stop them, and tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and thousands of Serbs and Croats were killed in terrible ways because the blue helmets were obligated to stand by and watch.
The NATO air operation in Bosnia that year marked a turning point, and brought an uneasy but genuine peace. And the one in Kosovo in 1999 marked something new: a NATO campaign to prevent a looming slaughter, and to provoke the ouster of a tyrant. It was too successful: In 2003, its logic would return as caricature in the form of the Iraq war.
The “humanitarian war” became the oxymoron of our age. Canada tried to codify it into international policy with the creation of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine, an obligation to intervene to stop atrocities, which prime minister Jean Chrétien had the misfortune of attempting to sell to world leaders shortly after president George W. Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech. Its principles sounded far too much like the Iraq war’s cobbled-together self-justifications.
The R2P doctrine sprung back to life this year, because it was used to make the legal case for the Libya operation. But I doubt it could ever become a universal code: We’ll never intervene in Zimbabwe or Tibet, because we’d have no support from the surrounding countries and zero chance of success. We decided against intervening in Sudan’s Darfur catastrophe, in part because there was a good chance it would make things worse.
I fear that Libya will be seen as a precedent, rather than an exception. Or that Bosnia will be forgotten, and a “humanitarian corridor” to Syria will become another peacekeeping quagmire. But I also fear that another genocidal massacre will be allowed to pass without comment. War is hell, but it’s not the only one.
Corporate ownership of farmland
” . . allocate a portion of their portfolios to farmland without the need to take on the complex responsibilities of ownership themselves.”
The information below is about Canada (Agcapita).
CBC Radio, The Current, did an interview some months ago on this same topic – – a large pool of money (an American hedge fund managed by a Canadian woman) and the country was Africa. It was pretty insidious how they propagandized African farmers about how much better off they would be if they sold their land but continued to farm it.
And it seemed obvious to me that the new “owners” will be dictating what crops and how they are raised (bioteched and chemicalled). It’s industrialized farming and the number of “employees” won’t be many, not with the big machines they will bring in. I hope there are lots of people to spread the word – the new owners won’t care whether or not local people are employed and can continue to feed themselves.
Oh Lord! what problems are created when there are large amounts of money in one place! Coupled with absentee ownership – – give your money to someone to invest and all you care about is “return on investment”. We will all pay the food and environmental costs associated with this type of unsustainable, impoverishing agriculture.
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Excerpt from website http://www.farmlandinvestmentpartnership.com/
AGCAPITA
Agcapita is Canada’s only RRSP eligible farmland fund. Agcapita believes farmland is a safe investment, that supply is shrinking and that unprecedented demand for “food, feed and fuel” will continue to move crop prices higher over the long-term. Agcapita allows investors to add professionally managed farmland to their portfolios.
Welcome to AGcapita
Agcapita is a farmland investment fund built around the core premise that the world is in a bull market in commodities driven by inflation and a step-change increase in demand and, accordingly, that investments with direct or indirect exposure to commodities in a politically stable environment such as Canada will provide above average returns. We match sound macro-economic thinking with sound operational strategies to generate long-term returns by finding asset classes with:
• Strong macro drivers: favorable supply/demand situation
• Margin of safety: low asset prices or ability to acquire cash flow cheaply
• Tax efficiency: assets that can be held by private flow through vehicles and are eligible for registered plans
Agcapita is structured to allow investors to cost effectively allocate a portion of their portfolios to farmland without the need to take on the complex responsibilities of ownership themselves. Agcapita is Canada’s only RRSP eligible farmland investment fund and our third fund is currently open to investors.
Agcapita Farmland Fund I – closed
Agcapita Farmland Fund II – closed
Agcapita Farmland Fund III – open – Investment Documents
CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLY, SASKATOON, MARCH 30-31, 2012 How are we going to get rid of dental amalgams (mercury)?
NOTE: the event is organized around ONE well-known neuro-toxin, mercury. Neuro-toxins affect the developing brain. Every day, mercury is being placed in the mouths of more people in the form of dental amalgams (50% mercury). Amalgams have been banned in European countries, there has been a 30% decrease in its use in the U.S. while in Canada, the importation of amalgam has increased.
It is as though we are the dumping ground for amalgam, along with African countries – – – the asbestos story in reverse – – dependent upon an uninformed population.
Through public consultations (spring 2011) Environment Canada received plenty of documentation on the science, from scientists themselves. Nonetheless, EC is going to exempt amalgams from the regulations that ban the use of mercury in products imported into Canada.
There are, of course, other poisons that are connected to the creation of developmental problems and disease rates. Mercury may be the worst one; we are tackling it in this Citizens’ Assembly, which is not to say that the question of other toxins will not come up in the discussions.
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PURPOSE OF THE ASSEMBLY: Determine how we are going to stop the use of amalgam (50% mercury) for dental fillings.
“Silver” dental fillings (amalgam) are not silver. They are 50% mercury, silver in colour only. Amalgam is the most commonly-used filling material in Canada.
Mercury from dental amalgams crosses the placental barrier; it is in Mothers’ breast milk. Mercury is related to developmental problems, cognitive functioning, various diseases.
Environment Canada is developing regulations aimed at getting rid of products that contain mercury.
The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT) made a submission to Environment Canada, as part of the public consultation process. The IAOMT submission points out that the single largest exposure to mercury is through dental amalgams.
If the Government exempts amalgams (which it is trying to do), the regulations will have no significant effect in reducing the diseases and developmental problems associated with mercury poisoning.
“Use of dental amalgam is disproportionately high in the poor, and in Canadian First Nations and Inuit populations” because they are usually dependent on socialized dental services which almost exclusively use dental amalgam (as opposed to safer, alternative filling material).
We are moving forward on an “empowerment” basis, a Citizens’ Assembly.
The Vice-President of the IAOMT, Dr. Nestor Shapka and Dr. David Warwick (dentist) have agreed to tell us what they know. That will happen on the evening of Friday March 30, 2012.
YOU NEED EVIDENCE re amalgams? FOR SURE! There is a file collected by persons in an email network. See the blog www.sandrafinley.ca, Heavy metals in vaccinations, Mercury in dental amalgams. Please refer to it, for evidence of the need to stop the use of amalgams. The file contains the science and the experience of many people.
You will find the IAOMT Submission to Environment Canada in the file, dated Nov 27.
I’ve been doing some thinking in relation to:
So, Friday evening – Doctors Shapka and Warwick tell us what they know, followed by Q&A discussion. THEN,
Saturday, March 30: Citizens Assembly
– Hold it as a trial to come up with a solution: how are we going to stop the amalgams? Develop a strategy and implementation plan.
– The Assembly would be video-taped for circulation on-line and in other communities.
– (If this Assembly goes well, it could be the basis for a “next one”.)
IN ADVANCE
– Invite input from citizens, open-ended but also some specific questions.
– Might help to structure the discussion at the Assembly
– Use a facebook page and blog to supply information and encourage people to become informed BEFORE they come.
FRIDAY, MARCH 30
– 6:30 pm people register
– 7:00 pm Presentation by Dr. Nestor Shapka and Dr. David Warwick from the IAOMT, followed by question period.
SATURDAY, MARCH 31
– am: Facilitated discussions in plenary, and in facilitated break-out groups that lead to
– pm: This is how we are going to implement the cessation of amalgam dental fillings
WHO SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE ASSEMBLY ON MERCURY IN DENTAL AMALGAMS?
CONTACT: Sandra Finley, 373-8078.
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EXPLANATION TO NGO – RELEVANCE TO THEM
My understanding of today’s situation: unless we address CAUSE, we are doomed to banging our heads against the wall.
QUESTION: What is at the root of growing income disparities, for example? Or the HIV epidemic? . . .
RESPONSE: We have real and very serious problems with our system of governance. If we do not get the corporate interest and values out of public institutions the problems will only continue to worsen, in spite of the best efforts of all of us, AIDS Saskatoon included.
QUESTION: In our own community, WHERE do “the professionals”, the “influential” people, the ones who should be leading the way, come from? . . .
RESPONSE: it is largely the University. Look in all the Government Departments, look in the City Administration – – – most of these people have graduated from a University.
Go to the root of problems: corporate interest and CORPORATE VALUES at the University need to be addressed if we are going to get a reversal in poverty trend-lines, for example.
The University is the custodian of our knowledge base; many young people attend at an age when they are impressionable and lacking in life experience. Many of them don’t have the skills to challenge what they are being taught and it wouldn’t benefit them to challenge.
Important things that are being taught don’t stand up to scrutiny, which tells me that students are not developing critical thinking skills nor are they empowered in the way that citizens in a democracy need to be. If students can think, AND if they are capable of making JUDGMENTS, then they would not accept sloppy lessons. Learning should EMPOWER people to be active citizens, essential to democracy. The fact that students graduate without ever challenging ideas that don’t stand up to scrutiny tells me that our educational institutions have DIS-empowered them. It is worrisome that we accept this outcome, a passive citizenry especially among the “influential”.
Some other activists and myself got elected to the Senate of the University to assert the public interest. The Senate is supposed to be the voice of the community in the governance of the University. It has been a silent voice until recently. I tell you this because – – perhaps AIDS Saskatoon will be interested in attending the Citizens’ Assembly.
Ultimately our failure to make progress comes back to ourselves, our failure to stand up and speak, to connect with others, to share information and ideas, to work together. The University is pivotal because it produces the “influential” members of our society. “Influential” people have to be held to account. It is the role of Citizens to do that.
There is an important relationship between your work (HIV) and my personal experience with tuberculosis. Perhaps I could explain it over coffee sometime? There are articles about it on my blog, www.sandrafinley.ca – – but sometimes a conversation works better. . . .
The Citizens’ Assembly might seem to be about one thing, mercury poisoning through dental amalgams (“silver” fillings).
QUESTION: How is that relevant to you?
RESPONSE:
Amnesty International on Thursday urged Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia to arrest former US president George W. Bush for violating international torture laws, during his African tour this week.
Bush is touring the countries through to Monday to promote efforts to fight cervical and breast cancers, and Amnesty said the three nations have an obligation to arrest him under international law.
“All countries to which George W. Bush travels have an obligation to bring him to justice for his role in torture,” said Amnesty’s senior legal adviser Matt Pollard.
“International law requires that there be no safe haven for those responsible for torture; Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia must seize this opportunity to fulfil their obligations and end the impunity George W. Bush has so far enjoyed.”
“Amnesty International recognizes the value of raising awareness about cervical and breast cancer in Africa, the stated aim of the visit, but this cannot lessen the damage to the fight against torture caused by allowing someone who has admitted to authorising water-boarding to travel without facing the consequences prescribed by law,” the group said in a statement.
Amnesty made a similar appeal to Canada in October when Bush visited British Columbia for an economic summit.
The group claimed Bush authorised the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and “waterboarding” on detainees held in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency between 2002 and 2009.
Amnesty’s case relies on the public record, US documents obtained through access to information requests, Bush’s own memoir and a Red Cross report critical of the US’s war on terror policies.
Amnesty cites several instances of alleged torture of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, by the US military.
The cases include that of Zayn al Abidin Muhammed Husayn (known as Abu Zubaydah) and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, both arrested in Pakistan. The two men were waterboarded a total of 266 times from 2002 to 2003, according to the CIA inspector general, cited by Amnesty.
