Sandra Finley

2009-12-10 Legal argument, Charter Section 8 Privacy, delivered to the Court. Census Lockheed Martin trial.

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Dec 102009
 

 IN THE

PROVINCIAL COURT

FOR SASKATCHEWAN

JUDICIAL CENTRE OF SASKATOON

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN

RESPONDENT

– and –

SANDRA FINLEY

APPLICANT

WRITTEN REPRESENTATIONS ON BEHALF OF THE

APPLICANT SANDRA FINLEY

(Charter s. 8)

I.  OVERVIEW

1.         This case is about whether the criminalization of a refusal to answer census questions is constitutional. Sandra Finley wants to protect her personal information from being collected by the government, because she considers certain information personal and private, including information sought by the Government of Canada merely for statistical purposes. When she received a census request in 2006, she refused to participate, because the information sought by the census was within a biographical core that she wanted to keep private. Sandra now faces criminal charges for her refusal to participate in the 2006 Census (the “Census”). Sandra has the right to protect her personal information from the government without fear of prosecution – a right that is embodied in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Sandra believes that the criminalization of her refusal is contrary to her right to privacy, as set out in the Charter.

II. BACKGROUND

2.         In or about May 2006, Sandra Finley conscientiously objected to filling in the census response (long form) for a number of reasons, including an objection on the basis that the information sought by the census form was personal information which would reveal a biographical core of personal information about the Applicant which individuals in a free and democratic society would wish to maintain and control from dissemination to the state.

3.         The Census form requested information such as information on age, sex, marital status, family, household and dwelling characteristics, employment and place of work, ethnic origin, income and earnings, citizenship and immigration status, and education. The information sought from the Applicant is personal information that she considers private.

4.         Ms Finley was charged with refusal to complete a Census response pursuant to s. 31 of the Statistics Act.

5.         Ms Finley considered the information requested by the long form census to be a breach of her privacy rights, contrary to s. 8 of the Charter.

6.         The demand made by Statistics Canada was an unreasonable search constituting a violation of Ms Finley’s rights as guaranteed by s. 8 of the Charter.  The only appropriate remedy would be a declaration that s. 31 of the Statistics Act is of no force and effect, or, alternatively, a declaration that s. 31 of the Statistics Act shall be read down so that it does not apply to objections to completing a Canadian census.

III. ISSUES

1.               Ms Finley submits that:

a)     The demand to fill in the Canadian Census was a breach of her rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure pursuant to s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms;

b)     The criminalization of refusal to participate in the census is a breach of her right to privacy as set out in s. 8 of the Charter; and

c)     Section 31 of the Statistics Act should be declared to be of no force and effect, or alternatively, should be read down so as to decriminalize conscientious objection to filling in a census form. 

IV. LAW AND ARGUMENT

2.               It is trite law that the Charter applies to federal legislation, such as the Statistics Act, and that the Charter applies to criminal prosecutions, such as the present situation.

3.               Ms Finley believes that the demand made by the government to fill in the Canadian Census violated her right to privacy under section 8 of the Charter, and submits that s. 31 of the Statistics Act should be struck or read down pursuant to s. 24(1) of the Charter and s. 52 of the Constitution Act.

A. The demand to fill in the Canadian Census was a breach of the Applicant’s rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure pursuant to s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

4.               Section 8 of the Charter includes the right to be free from arbitrary detention, and reads as follows:

8. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Schedule “B” to the Constitution Act, 1982, s. 8

5.               Section 31 of the Statistics Act reads as follows:

False or unlawful information

31. Every person who, without lawful excuse,

(a) refuses or neglects to answer, or wilfully answers falsely, any question requisite for obtaining any information sought in respect of the objects of this Act or pertinent thereto that has been asked of him by any person employed or deemed to be employed under this Act, or

(b) refuses or neglects to furnish any information or to fill in to the best of his knowledge and belief any schedule or form that the person has been required to fill in, and to return the same when and as required of him pursuant to this Act, or knowingly gives false or misleading information or practises any other deception thereunder

is, for every refusal or neglect, or false answer or deception, guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or to both.

1970-71-72, c. 15, s. 29.

6.               An assessment of the constitutionality of a search and seizure, or of a statute authorizing a search or seizure, must focus on its “reasonable” or “unreasonable” impact on the subject of the search or the seizure. The guarantee only protects a reasonable expectation of privacy. A reasonable expectation of privacy is to be determined on the basis of the totality of the circumstances.  If an accused person establishes a reasonable expectation of privacy, the inquiry must then proceed to determine whether the search was conducted in a reasonable manner.

R. v. Edwards, [1996] 1 S.C.R. 126 (SCC)

Hunter v. Southam Inc., [1984] 2 S.C.R. 145 (SCC).

7.               The Supreme Court of Canada has concluded that the values of dignity, integrity and autonomy are paramount in Canadian society, and, therefore, it is fitting that s. 8 of the Charter should seek to protect a “biographical core of personal information which individuals in a free and democratic society would wish to maintain and control from dissemination to the state”.  The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that this would include information which tends to reveal intimate details of the lifestyle and personal choices of the individual.

R. v. Plant, [1993] 3 S.C.R. 281 (SCC)

8.               The test for a reasonable expectation of privacy, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, is whether the information sought would which tends to reveal intimate details of the lifestyle and personal choices of Ms Finley. Ms Finley submits that much, if not all, of the information sought by the Census, would reveal intimate details, lifestyle and personal choices of the Applicant.

9.               Ms Finley’s objection is to the Census’ request for information about age, sex, marital status, family, household and dwelling characteristics, employment and place of work, ethnic origin, income and earnings, citizenship and immigration status, and education, which all fall within the biographical core of information that may tend to reveal intimate details and lifestyle and personal choices of the Applicant. Each of the categories of information sought with respect to the Census can be considered to be within Ms Finley person core of biographical information.

10.            Ms Finley clearly has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information sought by the Census. Accordingly, she submits that the onus shifts to the crown to show that the law and the collection of her personal information are reasonable.

B.        The criminalization of refusal to participate in the census is a breach of the Applicant’s right to privacy as set out in s. 8 of the Charter.

11.            As stated above, s. 8 of the Charter guaranteed the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. Once Ms Finley has established a reasonable expectation of privacy in her personal information, the onus shifts to the Crown to show that the law affecting that reasonable expectation of privacy is reasonable.

12.            Ms Finley would not have a problem with the Census if she had a reasonable opportunity to refuse to participate. By stark contrast, the Statistics Act not only mandates participation – it criminalizes the refusal to participate. This fact cannot be emphasized enough – refusal to disclose information to the state in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy is a criminal offence.

13.            Ms Finley understands that the Census is intended to collect data about Canadians, including statistical information relating to the commercial, industrial, financial, social, economic and general activities and condition of the people. The Applicant has no objection to the Government of Canada endeavouring to collect certain information from its population under the Statistics Act.

Statistics Act, supra, at s. 3.

14.            However, the privacy rights embodied in s. 8 of the Charter must be taken into consideration once the refusal to answer Census questions is criminalized, which is the effect of s. 31 of the Statistics Act.

15.            The onus lies on the Crown to determine whether the search was reasonable. The Crown bears the burden of demonstrating, on the balance of probabilities, that a search was authorized by a reasonable law and carried out in a reasonable manner.

R. v. Buhay, [2003] 1 S.C.R. 631, at para. 32.

16.            Ms Finley’s argument lies in the fact that the search – or the request to fill out the Census – was not authorized by a reasonable law.

17.            Given the privacy interests of Canadians pursuant to the Charter, which include a broad range of information, Ms Finley submits that the Crown cannot meet the onus of showing that the law criminalizing refusal to respond to the Census is reasonable.

18.            We are dealing with a statutory regime, the Statistics Act, which criminalizes certain acts and omissions. Unlike some of the other case law dealing with privacy in the criminal context, we are not dealing with a search as part of an investigation. However, we are not dealing with an administrative search either. The Supreme Court of Canada has differentiated between the types of searches as follows:

Since individuals have different expectations of privacy in different contexts and with regard to different kinds of information and documents, it follows that the standard of review of what is “reasonable” in a given context must be flexible if it is to be realistic and meaningful.  A distinction must be drawn between seizures in the criminal or quasi-criminal context to which the full rigors of the criteria in Hunter v. Southam Inc. will apply, and seizures in the administrative or regulatory context to which a lesser standard may apply, depending upon the legislative scheme under review.  When Dickson C.J. said in Simmons that departures from the Hunter criteria would be rare, he was not applying his mind to searches or seizures in the context of regulatory legislation.  He was addressing as in the cases of Hunter and Simmons themselves searches or seizures in a criminal or quasi-criminal context: 

R. v. McKinlay Transport Ltd., [1990] 1 S.C.R. 627 (SCC)

British Columbia Securities Commission v. Branch, [1995] 2 S.C.R. 3 (SCC).

19.            Even purely administrative provisions in a statutory regime, such as a provision of the Income Tax Act, will not necessarily avoid scrutiny under s. 8 of the Charter.

Baron v. Canada, [1993] 1 S.C.R. 416 (SCC).

20.            In the present case, we are dealing with the privacy of information that is clearly personal information, and the state is only seeking disclosure of that information for statistical purposes. As mentioned above, the simple fact that the state is seeking disclosure is not the issue – the issue is the criminalization of the refusal to provide information. It is the criminalization of the refusal that renders s. 31 of the Statistics Act contrary to s. 8 of the Charter.

21.            The central question that must be answered, at this stage in the analysis, is whether the criminalization of the refusal to provide Census responses to the state for statistical purposes is reasonable. Ms Finley submits that the criminalization is not reasonable – we are not dealing with a taxation scheme here (which has voluntary reporting and primarily administrative penalties). We are not dealing with the regulation of corporations or securities where an individual has to disclose information to obtain registration, or participate in a financial market (which are voluntary, and all have primarily administrative penalties). We are dealing with the collection of a vast amount of information by the state simply for statistical purposes – Ms Finley submits that there is no way that the criminalization of refusal to provide personal information for statistical purposes is reasonable.

22.            Ms. Finley therefore submits that the Crown cannot meet its onus of showing that the criminalization of refusal to reply to the Census is a reasonable law.

C.        Section 31 of the Statistics Act should be declared to be of no force and effect, or alternatively, should be read down so as to decriminalize conscientious objection to filling in a census form.

23.            Section 24(1) of the Charter reads as follows:

24. (1) Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply  to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Schedule “B” to the Constitution Act, 1982, s 24(1)

24.            Section 52(1) of the Constitution Act reads as follows:

52.(1)  The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada, and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.

Constitution Act, s. 52(1)

25.            Section 31 of the Statistics Act is reproduced above.

26.            Pursuant to s. 24(1) of the Charter, this Honourable Court has the power to declare that s. 31 of the Statistics Act is of no force and effect, or to read that section down to the extent that s. 31 of the Statistics Act is inconsistent with the Applicant’s privacy rights as found in s. 8 of the Charter.

27.            The Supreme Court of Canada has commented on the possibility of reading down a provision contained in a piece of legislation as follows:

Depending upon the circumstances, a court may simply strike down, it may strike down and temporarily suspend the declaration of invalidity, or it may resort to the techniques of reading down or reading in.  The flexibility of the language of s. 52 is not a new development in Canadian constitutional law.  The courts have always struck down laws only to the extent of the inconsistency using the doctrine of severance or “reading down”.  Severance is used by the courts so as to interfere with the laws adopted by the legislature as little as possible.  In that way, as much of the legislative purpose as possible may be realized. 

Schachter v. Canada, [1992] 2 S.C.R. 679 (SCC).

28.            Ms. Finley submits that s. 31 of the Statistics Act is inconsistent with s. 8 of the Charter, and should be declared to be of no force and effect.

29.            Ms Finley, and other conscientious objectors to participation in the Census, should have a right to object to providing personal information to the state without the possibility of facing a criminal charge. Simply put, the criminalization of a refusal to provide census information that includes a significant amount of lifestyle and personal information, is inconsistent with the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure set out in s. 8 of the Charter. This criminalization renders s. 31 of the Statistics Act unreasonable in its entirety, and Ms Finley submits that this Honourable Court should declare the section to be of no force and effect.

30.            Ms Finley submits that, in the alternative, s. 31 of the Statistics Act should be read down so as to eliminate its application to people who refuse to provide answers in response to a Canadian Census. Given the broad drafting of s. 52(1) of the Constitution Act, and the comments of the Supreme Court of Canada, the power to read down a statutory provision lies within the power of this Honourable Court.

31.            Ms. Finley submits that her reasonable expectation of privacy, combined with the Crown’s inability to show the criminal provision of the Statistics Act is reasonable, leads to the conclusion that s. 31 of the Statistics Act should be declared to be of no force and effect pursuant to s. 24(1) of the Charter and s. 52 of the Constitution Act.

32.            Alternatively, Ms Finley submits that s. 31 of the Statistics Act should be read down to exclude people who refuse or neglect to participate in the Canadian Census.

V. RELIEF SOUGHT

33.            The Applicant respectfully requests the following relief:

a)     for an Order that the charge against the Applicant, Sandra Finley, pursuant to Section 31 of the Statistics Act be stayed pursuant to Section 24(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

b)     An Order that s. 31 of the Statistics Act be declared of no force and effect pursuant to s. 24(1) of the Charter and s. 52 of the Constitution Act.

c)     Alternatively, and Order that s. 32 should be read down to exclude people who refuse or neglect to participate in the Canadian Census, so as not to impose criminal sanctions based on a refusal to participate in the collection of statistics.

ALL OF WHICH IS RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED.

DATED at the City of Saskatoon, in the Province of Saskatchewan, this ______ day of ______________, 20__.

                                                Sandra Finley

                                                Per:______________________________________

                                                            Sandra Finley

TO:                 

Provincial Court

for Saskatchewan

                        Judicial Centre of Saskatoon

                        Attention:  Janice Kaminski or Cindy Ritchie

AND TO:        The Attorney General for Saskatchewan

                        c/o Barrie Miller – Saskatoon Prosecutions Unit

AND TO:        The Attorney General for Canada

                        c/o Byron Wright

                        Federal Prosecution Service, Saskatoon

2009-12-04 NUKE, Nuclear Waste. Who is the NWMO? Tactics. John Ralston Saul “On Equilibrium”.

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Knowledge Base, Propaganda, Radioactive waste  No Responses »
Dec 042009
 

There is good information in this posting if you have time to scroll through.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is holding public meetings on very short notice.  Please help get people to the meetings.  See items #2 and #3.  Thanks!

UPDATE, thanks to Herman:  Expert panel recommends new isotope reactor   http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/12/03/medical-isotopes-reactor003.html

Good grief!  We need to respond and find out why the much, much less expensive options for producing isotopes weren’t recommended.  Someone needs to answer. It’s our money.

I apologize for this email.  The information is needed; I am not editing it as should be done, no time.

Sandra

– – – – – – – – – –

CONTENTS

(0)  INTRO

(1)  CANADIANS WITH CONNECTIONS TO SOUTH ASIA HAVE A SPECIAL CONNECTION TO THE NUCLEAR AGENDA AND HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL

(2)  IMPORTANT!!  NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION (NWMO) MEETINGS IN SASKATCHEWAN NEXT WEEK (DECEMBER 7-8-9)

(3)  IMPORTANT!! NWMO MEETING METIS NATION IN SASKATOON SATURDAY DECEMBER 5TH, SASKATOON INN

(4)  CAMECO NORTHERN TOUR UNDERWAY, WELL-FUNDED

(5)  WHO IS THE NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION? AND ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFO

(6)  KNOW HOW THE MEETINGS ARE STRUCTURED

(7)  UNDERSTAND THE TACTICS OF BIG-TIME MANIPULATORS

(8)  KNOW WHAT TO ASK

(9)  STEFANIA’S RESPONSE TO “90% OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE CAN BE RECYCLED”

(10)  HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE IN NORTH AMERICA, WHAT IN INDIA?

(11)  THE ROAD BACK TO COMMON SENSE, SHARED KNOWLEDGE

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(0)  INTRO

I cannot find the information:  I think that the decision on the first phase of the high-level radioactive waste disposal plan (ostensibly for Canada but most likely for North America) is December 31st. I think that is why there is a flurry of activity.

It’s clear the decision on where the “willing host community” will be located has been made:

– The NWMO (Nuclear Waste Management Organization) met in Saskatoon last spring.  They wanted a private meeting with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations with no media in attendance.  The FSIN said the meeting is open and there will be representatives from “the other side”.   (INSERT:  later, in 2010 the NWMO gave $1 million to the FSIN.)

– The NWMO came here again in September, this time for closed-to-the-public “stakeholder” meetings.

–  I saw reference to a meeting they held with the Metis Nation in October.

– They’re back again now in December for “public information meetings” and another meeting with the Metis Nation.

– Cameco is simultaneously running like mad around northern Saskatchewan.

If these activities of the industry fail to make clear that a decision on the locating of “the willing host community” has been made, add this in:

– the Government of Saskatchewan’s Uranium Development Partnership Report includes high-level radioactive waste disposal

– the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Centre of Nuclear Studies contains in its mandate “safe storage”, a euphemism for high-level radioactive waste disposal.

Public consultations were a sham.  I guess we have to do something more to reinforce our 84% “no” vote.

We are inundated.  We need to increase our numbers.  Please invite more persons with connections to South Asia into the network. Stephen Harper’s recent nuke sales to India are related and reason.

For item #3 (NWMO meeting), please spread the word: request for Saskatonians to attend the NWMO meeting with the Metis Nation, Saturday Nov 5th, 8:30 am, Saskatoon Inn.

– – – – – – – –  – –

Radio-active waste disposal HERE.

Stephen Harper’s sales of nukes THERE (to India).

If you know the connections and care about other people, you will want to share the nuke information from our network with more Canadians whose origins are in South Asia.  We need to find them.

It will be mutually beneficial.

Item # 11,  THE ROAD BACK TO COMMON SENSE, SHARED KNOWLEDGE  is an aid to understanding the false foundation upon which the NWMO meetings are presented.  There is no context, no memory, no experience, nor ethics factored in.

Decisions on high-level radioactive waste are being made by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.  They are the industry.  Corporations “sell”.  They use advertising which is essentially propaganda.  It is entirely inappropriate to use a corporate sales job on high-level radioactive waste disposal.  Sound decisions need to be made by citizens.  The public should not be misled.

– – – – –

We want a transition to renewable, truly clean, non-destructive energy supplies that are locally owned.  We do not want private large corporate ownership of electricity — this is all headed in that direction as explained in earlier emails.

/Sandra

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(1)  CANADIANS WITH CONNECTIONS TO SOUTH ASIA HAVE A SPECIAL CONNECTION TO THE NUCLEAR AGENDA AND HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE DISPOSAL

High-level radioactive waste is generated by nuclear reactors. Saskatchewan is in line to receive all the ACCUMULATED radioactive waste from North America.

India is in line to receive 25 to 30 new nuclear reactors, thanks to Canadians (Stephen Harper).  We don’t want them here.

We banned asbestos here, or so we thought – turns out we didn’t, really. It didn’t kill the industry:  we merely contributed tax-payer money to exploit and ship to markets in India.

In Saskatchewan and in Alberta, the nuclear agenda is a wrong response to resource depletion.  It is also a corporate response at public expense. It seeks to assert centralized control and to extend large private corporate ownership of energy.

Think hard.  WHO do you know whose heritage lies in South Asia?  Or, google and find some organizations.  Send them this email.  We have some representatives in our network, but not enough.

Stephen Harper is courting ethnic Canadians and their votes.  Following his recent visit to India, “They’re both just fascinating spots,” Harper said. “It really is just overwhelming. So this was just a tremendous opportunity to see and experience the roots of so many Indo-Canadians.”

Stephen Harper, salesman for the nuclear/uranium corporations, has just “signed a memorandum of understanding that will let Canada play a role in India’s planned building of 25 to 30 nuclear reactors. …  India’s reactor demand for uranium may triple in the next 15 years, according to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Cameco Corp.” But note that it’s not a done deal.  It still has to be ratified by Parliament, as I understand.

People living in India should insist that their Government KNOW where the high-level radioactive waste is going, BEFORE these new reactors are built.  The Bangladesh Times says that some of the radioactive waste from current reactors is going into the sea – – see item #10.

We work hard to make things better here at home.  I, as a Canadian can have dignity internationally when we work to get the same things for other countries, as we have for ourselves.

MORE people in South Asia need to have the information we share in the Nuke networks here.  Stephen Harper will have swept the issue of high-level radioactive waste under the carpet.

To stop Saskatchewan (or Ontario or New Brunswick) from becoming a dump site for the fifty years’ of accumulated radioactive waste on the North American continent we need help.  (Quebec has already passed a resolution to stop the importation of high-level radioactive waste into Quebec – smart them! Manitoba did it a long time ago, in 1987.)

Canadians have worked hard with people in India (e.g. Vandana Shiva) to stop corporate ownership of seeds.  Maybe we can work together on this nuke topic, and add more.

In Saskatoon there is a vibrant group of public-spirited people in the East Indian and in other South Asian communities.

(ASIDE:  I am forever grateful.  My number one hero in history is Gandhi.  There’s a sculptured bust of him in downtown Saskatoon at 2nd Ave and 21st Street.  From 2000:

“Some people find it a bit odd that a statue of Mahatma Gandhi should join a group that includes Gordie Howe, Gabriel Dumont and Ray Hnatyshyn.

In the spirit of friendship, and at the request of the Indian community, the Government of India has given a bronze sculpture of Ghandi to all the people of Saskatoon.

Dr. Prakash Sulakhe is the chairman of the Gandhi Statue Committee. “The influence of Gandhi’s philosophy has transcended geographical borders,” he says.”

Back to business:  Yes, the NWMO ran large ads in the main newspapers (page A9 of the Saskatoon Star Phoenix) so they can claim broad public consultation.  One weeks’ notice. One weeks’ notice is abuse-of-process, of course.  But never mind.  It takes more than that to stop us.

Cheers!

Sandra

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(2)  IMPORTANT!!  NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION (NWMO) MEETINGS IN SASKATCHEWAN NEXT WEEK (DECEMBER 7-8-9)

PLEASE help to get as many people as possible to these meetings.  Whether we become a repository for the accumulated high-level radioactive waste from the whole continent depends on it.  There are OTHER WAYS to approach high-level radioactive waste.

PUBLIC MEETINGS – Thanks to Elaine:

(NOTE:  see the links. You can also provide WRITTEN submissions to the NWMO.  I would suggest that you cc these to Brad Wall and Stephen Harper and the President of the University of Saskatchewan, Peter MacKinnon.)

The NWMO is looking for a “willing host community”-  folks who want to live with a high level radioactive waste dump.  Saskatchewan targeted.  This is storage for North America’s nuclear waste.  One-time construction cost:  $24 billion, trucking costs $200 million annually for 30 years of operation.

Costs recovered from public:  electricity bills or from government handouts.  What do you think?

Find out what they are up to.  Share your thoughts on whether the proposed process is appropriate and what changes, if any, need to be made.  They say they want to hear from you.

(From Sandra:  Item # 6, COMMON SENSE  is an aid to understanding the false foundation upon which the NWMO meetings are presented.)

You are invited to information sessions (from 2 – 9 p.m.)

REGINA:  Monday Dec 7th:  Delta Regina

PRINCE ALBERT:  Tuesday Dec 8th:  Art Hauser Centre

SASKATOON:  Dec 9th Delta Bessborough

For maps and additional info see:  http://www.nwmo.ca/events?event

For a copy of the document under discussion copy & paste this web address into your browser:

http://www.nwmo.ca/uploads_managed/MediaFiles/470_InvitationtoReviewaProposedProcessforSelectingaSite.pdf

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(3)  IMPORTANT!! NWMO MEETING METIS NATION IN SASKATOON SATURDAY DECEMBER 5TH, SASKATOON INN, 8:30 am

Thanks to Vi by way of Elaine:    SENT:  Thursday, December 03, 2009 2:15 PM

I am invited to attend a meeting with the Metis Nation in S’toon for Saturday Dec 5th  from 830 am to 2  at the S’toon Inn.  The Invitation reads

Information Session

You are invited to attend NWMO Roundtable as phase two of discussions about the NWMO site selection process. This event will be to follow-up the 1st phase of engagements that occured in October of this year.

MN-S staff will be providing a re-cap of the 1st phase of engagements and opening the floor for a roundtable discussion and opportunity for further questions and feedback.

I just received the  mail yesterday (INSERT:  December 2nd)  — they said to call and comfirm by Nov 20th — I called this morning and am registered to attend — I have a room booked for Friday night and they are paying our accomdations and travel and meals — they are providing lunch and breakfast.

if you can pass this on to others it would be great — I am not sure as to what will happen there it was only people from NWMO last time giving their side and there was no one against — and so it was all onesided — if there was someone there in S’toon who could come and maybe be able to answer some of our questions From the other side it would be great — see NWMO is paying the shot here  –

so of course they would not have any negative comments

anyway  see what could happen

Thanxs Vi

– – – – – –  –

Later:

Hi

I was talking to one of the Metis Guys and he said to ask if there was anyone in t the anti-nuke group who were by any chance metis  – as these are the only people who can  ask questions there  – it would make it easier for me  if there were. Thanxs Vi

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(4)  CAMECO NORTHERN TOUR UNDERWAY, WELL-FUNDED

The CNSC (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) office in Saskatoon has the details.  Or, I can forward an email with jpeg attachments to you.  I don’t have time to find a web link just now.

We are being overrun by meetings organized by the nuclear/uranium industry.

The overwhelming “no” registered by the public consultation process this summer, as reported by Dan Perrins (chair of the public consultation process) clearly means nothing to the Government, the industry and the University’s plans.

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(5)  WHO IS THE NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION?  AND ADDITIONAL SOURCES OF INFO

Thanks to Gordon Edwards:

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is wholly owned by the Canadian nuclear industry. Its Board of Directors consists of appointees from Ontario Power Generation, Hydro-Quebec, and New Brunswick Power — the three utilities that produce almost all of Canada’s high-level radioactive waste (otherwise known as irradiated fuel).

Most of the Board members are executives of these  utilities.

For a critique of the NWMO approach, see  http://www.ccnr.org/follow_path_back.pdf

– – – – – –

Some additional sources of info on the NWMO in case anyone would like:

Sierra Club:  http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/atmosphere-energy/nuclear-free/reactors/high-level-waste.shtml

Nuclear Waste Management Organization:  http://www.nwmo.ca

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(7)  UNDERSTAND THE TACTICS OF BIG-TIME MANIPULATORS

If anyone would like the chronology we just circulated, please ask me.  It shows the connections.  The American energy strategy is a north-south “Canada – U.S. Western Energy Corridor” to move nuclear electricity and tar sands oil (which needs nuclear power for mining, heating and processing).

The industry already has a large, 5-decades’ accumulation of radioactive waste in the U.S.  Barack Obama effectively shut down Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a repository for the waste.

Instead of halting the production of MORE radioactive waste, they have developed a slick sales job.

Understand the tactics. They assert something that is “inevitable” or “the only option”, which is not true.  There ARE other options; it just happens that those options are not attractive to the corporate make-money interest. Their options are hugely at our expense.

They are big-time manipulators:

–  “high-level radioactive waste” is now “used nuclear fuel” or “irradiated fuel” or a “used fuel bundle”.  Challenge them on their euphemisms.  “Spent fuel” is much more radioactive than the original “fuel bundles” which are not radioactive at all, not until after they are used in the reactor!  Refuse to use their sanitized and manipulating language.  An example we have used in the past:  tar sands is tar sands, not “oil sands” as they are now billed.

– the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) comes to us speaking sweetly of how they are not going to use government (our) money.

Yes but, they have basically one product (electricity). And one market – us.  What they don’t get from the Governments (tax-payer and resource revenues) they will get out of our pockets on electricity bills.  Ask the people in Ontario how it works.

–  The NWMO waves MONEY:  “This is a $16 – $24 billion project that will be implemented in phases”.  They also assure the “willing host community” that “operation of the facilities” would continue after construction .. would involve hundreds of workers .. Spending during this phase would be in the order of 200 million dollars each year for a period of 30 or more years.  … Depending on the host economic region, wealth creation in the form of business profits and personal income throughout the host region during the operation phase is expected to be billions of dollars.”

This is clever but again, fails to mention that a corporation has to pay for its costs.  Waste is a cost it has to cover.  In this case it is a mere $16 – $24 billion FOR THE CONSTRUCTION and then $200 million a year for 30 years or more.  ALL THAT MONEY will come from us, one way or another.  And it will mean that there is nothing left for investment in alternative and locally-owned energy.  Don’t kid yourself, Bruce Power, nuclear reactors and privately-owned electricity come along with high-level radioactive waste disposal.  I like Doug’s analogy of the salesman who gets his foot in the door, whatever way he can.

–  reassurances replace common sense.  In earlier emails we worked out how it is really a “ponzi scheme” – a few people make huge profits, but only if they can dupe you.

–  Ask the NWMO where the Americans are going to dispose of their radioactive waste now that Barack Obama has ended Yucca Mountain as an option?

–  the NWMO says it has set aside money to build the deep geological repository for the high-level radioactive waste.  Ask them what percentage of the cost they have set aside.  And how much that fund is worth in the wake of the economic crisis.  Don’t fall for assurances that hold no water.  And a container so small that the excess will soon overflow.

–  the NWMO is going to find a “willing host community”.  Be familiar with the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP)’s plan, ” with leading nations storing all the high-level waste from the entire group”.  Canada is a leading nation and Saskatchewan is the leading place for nuclear/uranium, the “Canadian Centre of Nuclear Studies”.

Feb 27, 2009  “Work on disposing of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain (Nevada) has all but stopped after President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint.  The move remains in line with Obama’s pre-election statements that Yucca Mountain was “not an option.”  America must now set a new course for long-term management of high-level radioactive waste, ….

“Obama’s position on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which would see a community of countries share nuclear power technology with leading nations storing all the high-level waste from the entire group…

“Modern long-term strategies usually involve a step-wise reversible process that starts with an invitation to communities nationwide to express interest.”

(Precisely the process that is being used by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) in Canada.)

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(8)  KNOW WHAT TO ASK

In addition to the suggestions in item #5, Mark offers this:

a.  Plutonium.  The official document does not mention reprocessing of spent fuel taken from the repository after 50-60 years – but we know this to be the intention of the nuclear industry, as it is the only way that they can secure a longterm future for themselves.  We should be clear that we find this unacceptable because of (i) weapons proliferation risk, (ii) added contaminant leakage risks.  I suggest that, rather than calling it reprocessing (let alone recycling, as the industry has begun to do recently), we call it plutonium recovery, because that makes it clearer what it is.

b.   Indigenous rights.  Specifically, an acceptable consultation process does not include bribes and it does not include blackmail.  And the “information” should not come exclusively from the industry – opponents of the proposal should receive sufficient funding to put their case.

c. Transportation risk.  All of the communities through which nuclear waste would be transported should be specifically consulted as to whether they find the risk acceptable.  Again, no bribes, no blackmail, no pro-industry bias.

d.  Why Saskatchewan?  This waste comes from “central” and eastern Canada, mostly from Ontario.  We can see no good reason why it should be given a home by communities in Saskatchewan, which has not benefitted from the electrical generation of which it is a by-product.

e.  Why Canada?  What guarantee is there that waste would not also come from still further afield?

f.  Jurisdiction.  As it is not just the “host community” that would be affected, decisions should be taken at a provincial as well as a local level.

g.  Turn off the tap!  The stuff has got to go somewhere, but first put an end to the production of more of it.

I think anyone going to the NWMO Public Meetings should try to get round to reading Gordon Edwards’ paper on the subject (http://www.ccnr.org/follow_path_back.pdf  ): it explains the process well, and the fact that it’s a few years old doesn’t matter overmuch.

atb

Mark

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(9)  STEFANIA’S RESPONSE TO “90% OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE CAN BE RECYCLED”

From: Stefania  To: Bill

Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009 4:28 pm

I reviewed the video which you so kindly forwarded to me.  However, my scepticism remains intact because their reference to 90% recycling is rather misleading; they are referring to being able to reclaim 90% of the uranium oxide that is left in the spent fuel bundle for re-use in reactors.

However, they skillfully avoided addressing the issue of the fission products which are the real danger in the spent fuel and will continue to present the physical, radiological and toxic risk to any and all living things which they encounter/ expose themselves to for the next 250,000 plus years.

The fission products created in a nuclear reactor by the splitting of the uranium atom are the same fission products created when a nuclear bomb explodes.  The radiological hazards last 10 times as long as the half-life of any radioactive isotope.  Thus, for example plutonium has a half life of 25,000 years and it presents a radiological and toxic risk for 250,000 years.  Other fission products have shorter or longer half lives.

The other item missing from the video is the nature of the wastes remaining from the “recycling” process.  In France they currently “recycle” spent fuel bundles/waste in order to extract plutonium for their nuclear weapons and for the plutonium breeder reactors.

The wastes from this process are in liquid form and in a greater volume than the original spent fuel bundles.  According to various sources the liquid wastes are more difficult to manage than the original spent fuel bundles and they contain the equally dangerous fission products plus acids from the recycling process.  Spills and contamination hazards tend to multiply when the wastes are in liquid form.

The process employed by the US lab is more properly referred to as uranium fuel extraction than recycling.

I will forward the video to Dr. Gordon Edwards in Montreal who is an expert on such matters and ask for his assessment as well.

—– Original Message (to Stefania)  —–

I had mentioned a process that can potentially recycle 90% of nuclear waste. Please see links below

*Video excerpt:*    Please follow link here   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlmp96q9DQI.

*Original bulletin*: Sustainable Nuclear Energy.pdf   (Link no longer valid  http://www.ne.anl.gov/About/open_house/sustainable_nuclear_energy.pdf )

*Organization:*     Argonne National Laboratory  <http://www.anl.gov/  (US Government)

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(10)  HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE IN NORTH AMERICA, WHAT IN INDIA?

“India has 17 functional nuclear reactors and five are near completion.”  Bangladesh Times.

http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2009/10/19/news0150.htm

EXCERPT:  (just the health part)

“In India, health hazards from nuclear power plants have always been swept under the carpet. In 2007, physicist V Pugazhendhi of the Doctors for Safer Environment released a study on the incidence of autoimmune thyroid disease among women in and around Kalpakkam, where the prototype fast reactor is under construction. It showed the disease affected 24 per cent women within a radius of 5 km from the plant. It reduced to 6 per cent within a 40 km radius and to 0.8 per cent in 400 km. . . .

The reprocessing plant at the site segregates the spent fuel into plutonium and uranium, and radioactive waste is diluted for disposal in the sea. A retired nuclear scientist from Kalpakkam, requesting anonymity, said uranium and plutonium, which need to be stored in secure underground repositories, are kept in temporary surface facilities at the site. Health surveys conducted by physicist Surendra Gadekar between 1989 and 1991 at the Rawatbhata nuclear plant in Rajasthan showed high incidence of tumours, miscarriages, still births and congenital diseases. DAE denies radiation from nuclear plants is affecting people’s health.”

From email sent Nov 29:

November 29, 2009.  “Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada signs a nuclear co-operation agreement with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan as way to trade uranium and nuclear technology with India”  . . .  on whose behalf?

(Link no longer valid  http://trak.in/news/india-canada-clinch-nuclear-deal/29084/)

“. . .  The deal is likely to be signed when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh goes to Canada to attend the G20 summit in June next year where he will also hold bilateral talks with the Canadian leader (Stephen Harper) on the sidelines.” . . .

“The minority government will require the support of parliament members from one opposition party in order to pass the agreement.”

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(11)  THE ROAD BACK TO COMMON SENSE, SHARED KNOWLEDGE

I said item #11 ” is an aid to understanding the false foundation upon which the NWMO meetings are presented.  There is no context, no memory, no experience factored in.”

We have a corporate sales job, inappropriate for sound decision-making.

We have to figure out why things are going wrong, in order to transition to something that serves us better.

I don’t know “how not to go wrong”!  But we can figure out SOME of it, at least.  With help from each other and thought-ful people (like John Ralston Saul).

I sometimes talk about using “common sense” but every time I write it, I am uncomfortable because I don’t really know what common sense means, how I can legitimately lay claim to knowing what it is.

A phrase I’ve used much more frequently than “common sense” is “the commons”. It never occurred to me that the two might be related, in spite of coming to the realization that “the commons” includes our knowledge base.

Through working with you in this network I developed a better understanding of “sustainability” and the necessity for “protection of “The Commons””.  It became evident that our knowledge base is a critical part of “The Commons” and it too, has to be protected if we are to transition to a way of life that the planet can support in the long term, for our grand children’s children.

We share and are collectively responsible for The Commons.  You might understand my delight when John Ralston Saul’s 2004 book, “On Equilibrium, Six Qualities of the New Humanism” made the connection between common sense and “the commons”, specifically the knowledge commons.

Ralston Saul’s insights are helpful to our work, to understanding the WHY of our dilemma.

I haven’t time to weave it together just now (it’s more important to get people out to the high-level radioactive waste disposal meetings)!  Some quotes from “On Equilibrium” will have to do for now.

(NOTE:  “Plain text” doesn’t come with italicized print.  I translated italicized words into capitalized letters.)

Page 6:  “talents and characteristics .. The unpredictable way in which these things have been ‘handed out’ to us, the unexpected places in which they appear, produce a remarkable mixture of individuals; one which cuts wildly across all lines of class, geography, race, even education.  This is precisely what creates the richness of any society.  And being able to tap into all of this becomes the great test for a successful citizenry.  That is part of the strength of any more or less democratic and egalitarian civilization.  Because its legitimacy is based in the citizenry, it can give itself access to as great a percentage of these talents as its efforts can manage.

And so the disordered, messy, inefficient world of democracy can release a surprising percentage of society’s genius. A meritocracy, on the other hand, is so busy concentrating on efficiently identifying who is the best and pushing him to the fore that it shuts down its confidence in the rest of us – those of us who are turning our door-handles (INSERT: going outside) and willing to contribute, each in her own way and at her own level. The whole idea of a society of winners – a place known above all for its best – leads with surprising speed to a narrow pyramidal social structure.  And then to division and widespread passivity.  This in turn leads to false populism and mediocrity; to a world obsessed by bread and circuses, Heroes and the need for leadership.”

Page 7 – 8:  ” There could then be no society.  Only a utilitarian contract between specialist groups and a Manichean (INSERT: things are either good or evil) division of the whole, with each side claiming the truth on each particular issue.  What holds them together?  The answer over the last two centuries has been a gradual move towards a civilization of structure and form over one of content and consideration.  The way we come at every question is structural, managerial.

Much of the last two decades has been taken up by precisely this view.  The idea, for example, that we are driven by self-interest is the natural outcome of believing in competing certainties. (INSERT: ideologies)  And so the greedy are simply one version of self-interest, the benevolent another.  Everything is self-interest.  The only difference is what separates our idea of our own interest.  The very idea of society seems to slip away, so that even those who struggle for the greater good – whatever their particular view of it might be – do so free of society and on their own group’s tangential path.  Society, they feel, slows them down in their quest for great solutions to the problems that interest them.

Take a very specific example.  In 1997 the World Trade Organization ruled that the Europeans were wrong to ban American beef raised with hormones because there was no convincing scientific case that the hormones represented a health risk.  Put aside what you might think about hormones and beef.  The central question is elsewhere.

It begins with an absolute certainty:  that social policy in a democracy must be based not on popular will – the legitimacy of the citizenry – but on proof;  in this case scientific proof.  In other words, that our choice must be based on science.  But in fact the science in question is not exactly science because it is limited by an initial question formulated in the context of commercial interest.  In other words, food should be considered first as a commercial object, second a scientific object and only third a matter of social, health, cultural or, indeed of personal choice.

Hormones or no hormones.  Health or sickness, sickness or health.  The question on both sides is commercially constructed.  . . . .  This is curious.  We know that the central question ought to be social.  That is part of our shared knowledge – our common sense.  … “[Human] nature has this principal property: that of being social” …

But a choice without a context is not choice.  How can we be judged on our actions when the options are presented without memory, without an ethical foundation, without the opportunity of imagining a broader uncertainty?

It is as if we believe that power creates all relationships.  …

Page 19.  “What is common sense if not shared knowledge?

It is not understanding.  Many may find this a difficult idea to accept – that we can know something we don’t understand.  Not only can we know it, we can use the knowledge.  We must simply be careful not to slip into superstition.  . . .  Shared knowledge or common sense lies at the core of any successful society.

In fact the importance of our ability to use it (common sense) continues to grow as that of structure and technology grows.  Why?  Because these structures interfere with our ability to use our common sense.  They are linear, interested in control, essentially simplistic.  Common sense is essentially complex, lateral and disinterested.

It demands a very unusual form of intellectual concentration during which the implications or reality are digested.  This is not analytic.  It is tied to our sense of society – our sense that society exists.

Page 20:  (re Australian history):  “Thanks to the farmers’ energies and support, the movement succeeded in 1848.  There is a revealing detail here.  They were obsessed by the need for public education, a very expensive service.  And their obsession was not primarily to train their children to make money.  Their desire was to equip them to participate as citizens in their society.  Self-interest and wealth would follow behind.   . .

Perhaps shared knowledge is the relationship which carries us above self-interest. …

Economic forces must take their appropriate place as dependents of humans; more precisely, as dependent upon human characteristics in order to be shaped appropriately to our circumstances. …

What history tells us is that economics – commercial activity, production, trade – usually falls in importance about halfway down the list of human activities, far off the radar screen of our desire for society.  So the complexity of shared knowledge reminds us that, if one globalization model claims to be the voice of inevitable forces, a dozen other models will appear which don’t.  If humans deal with their superstitions and ideologies in an unpanicked manner, then the sensible not-inevitable models will predominate in the long run.  All of this is tied to common sense as shared knowledge.

Page 23 – 24:  So long as we accept the idea of self-evident and therefore inevitable truths – for example, that we are driven by self-interest or that technology leads society – our passivity will prepare us for ideological manipulation.

(INSERT:  I relate ideology to “black-white”, “my way or the highway”, “there is no other way” which leads to the inevitability, for example of “globalization”.  The body of doctrine, myth of some political idea, along with the procedures for putting it into operation. The ideologue cannot see past the ideology to acknowledge bad outcomes.  There are no alternatives.)

Look at the interpretation of individualism common today:  our successful assertion of our identity is to be measured by our ability to distance ourselves from commitment to society.  There is no denying that it is a tempting idea – that each one of us could fulfil ourselves by walking away from the others.  This tantalizing thought has always been with us one way or another … We need a percentage who stand on the outside.  But if all of us, one by one, walked away, the whole would collapse.  Society does not exist in the abstract.  Our shared knowledge exists as a continuation of citizens and their recognition of the OTHER.  . . .

Page 25 – 26:  “And so this sense is something we hold in common.  It is shared, which does not make it ordinary.  There is no such thing as “plain common sense”. …

Common sense as a quality does not lie in self-evident truths or plain self-evidence or the citizens’ backwoods’ sharp eye seeing through the sophisticate’s double-talk.  These approaches merely undermine the importance of ‘shared knowledge’ as a characteristic of all societies and therefore of healthy, responsible individualism.  …

The very idea of plain common sense has become a crutch for pretensions of self-evidence and inevitability.  (INSERT:  the road to “ideological manipulation”)

The partial answer is that we must try to see common sense in the context of our other qualities.  In those mirrors, it will take on its real shape.  And so there is instinct, which does have an element about it of the common man’s sharp eye.  There is our sweep of memory, which reminds us of what shared knowledge has meant and can mean.  There is reason, which provides a counterweight of conscious analysis.  Imagination, which allows us to give shapes to what we are not certain we know.  Ethics, which can protect us from destructive conclusions. …”

Page 28:  “democracy only exists as a reality inside the nation-state.  That is not an accident.  Democracy is an expression of calm, long-term relationships between people.  It is an expression of shared knowledge.  So if the nation-state is dead or dying, so is democracy.

Page 37:  “.. the voice of the democratically structured common good, instead of evoking real choice and real internal public debate, has slowly fallen into the error of worshipping and defending the smooth inevitable truths of expert public management, as if this were the core of public policy. ”

Page 45:  “Our experience over the last quarter century – for example, in repeated environmental crises – suggests that Vico was right.  Highly professional, indeed experienced understanding has been used repeatedly to justify increasingly destructive behavior.  The tendency is to break reality down into a multitude of factors and then to make decisions on the basis of one or two of these factors at a time, without asking basic questions about the whole.”

(INSERT:  the reaction of the University to the need for wholistic approaches is to laud the “multi-disciplinary approach”. BUT the multi-disciplinary approach in a corporate model still undermines the public interest.  The words become rhetoric or propaganda, nothing more than a sales pitch.)

… “the practical effect of common sense is best described as prudence.  To take care is neither conservative nor radical.  It is a form of consciousness – conscious that we are part of SOMETHING which precedes us and, if we are prudent, will follow in as good or a better state.  We are both reliant upon it and indebted to it.”

Page 46:  “prudence “… is the power to anticipate experience by means of the recollection of what has gone before”.”  (INSERT:  Memory and experience.)

Page 47:  “Insanity is the loss of our sense of the OTHER.”

2009-12 Bayer to pay two American rice farmers $1 million each for losses from Bayer’s GM rice.

 Food, Genetically Modified  No Responses »
Dec 012009
 

COURT AWARD:  BAYER TO PAY TWO AMERICAN RICE FARMERS $1 MILLION EACH FOR LOSSES ARISING OUT BAYER’S GM RICE.  MORE TO COME?

 “In December 2009 Bayer was sentenced to pay about $2 million for losses sustained by two US farmers. The verdict of the federal court in St. Louis is seen as a test run for up to 3000 cases brought by other rice farmers in the US.”

Excerpt from EU urged not to approve Bayer’s GM Rice 

See  the  launching of the law suit.

2009-11-29 NUKE 2. Panel decision – more Govt funding for the industry. Medical isotopes. Hyperion. Small reactors. UDP. University of Saskatchewan.

 Nuclear  No Responses »
Nov 292009
 

(1)  NOVEMBER 30TH DECISION BY EXPERT REVIEW PANEL IS ABOUT GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR THE NUCLEAR/URANIUM INDUSTRY.  IT IS NOT ABOUT “MEDICAL ISOTOPES”.

The decision from the Expert Review Panel (scheduled for Monday November 30, 2009) to determine who will receive our tax dollars is understood IN CONTEXT.  It is not about radioactive isotope production for our health and prosperity.

The Federal Government puts up money for medical isotope production.  In this example, the University jointly with the Government of Saskatchewan (Crown Investments Corporation) applies for the money.

Premier Brad Wall spelt out in March 2008:  (http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=eb5b2b4d-77d3-41d1-b060-18c6c9ca9c44 ;  copied at   http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=6340):

“Premier Brad Wall said Thursday he envisions an ambitious project involving the federal government, SaskPower and one of the uranium companies located in the province that would see Saskatchewan playing a lead role in the research and development of nuclear power.

Speaking to reporters, Wall said he had a lengthy discussion with Stephen Harper when the prime minister was in Saskatchewan this week about a federal investment in the province involving the nuclear industry.

The premier said it’s linked to the Conservative government’s recent budget commitment of $300 million to the federal Crown Corporation Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., in part for its development of the next generation Canadian nuclear reactor.

“What we’ve simply said to the federal government is that if they’re looking to develop a new generation of reactor technology and are prepared to invest in that as a federal government, perhaps there is a P3 (public-private partnership) opportunity here between two levels of government. We have a Crown-owned electrical utility, the federal government and uranium companies that might be interested that are located here,” said Wall.”

It’s a concern for all Canadians because you (we) are the enablers, the funders.  We will be funding more than an “isotope” project and will continue paying in more than one way.  Do you want to do that?  Make a conscious decision because it’s critical to our longterm well-being.

Piece together the information in the public record.  In this radioactive isotopes example we need to understand how things COULD come together, if we don’t connect to broaden our community.  You will see from the CHRONOLOGY in the next posting that the issue is no small matter.

Many thanks to Doug for the analogy of the salesman.   The salesman gets his foot-in-the-door with a “reactor for medical isotopes”.   By the time he leaves we’re signed up for very expensive power production and transmission lines, taking all his decades of accumulated waste from the whole continent, paying his research and development costs.

. . .  man!  He’s the guy who moves in and leaves you thoroughly bankrupt in the end.  And what matter?!  He’s been sucking you dry and padding his bank account all the while.

The evidence in the public record on the nuclear/uranium question is pretty clear.  Here in Saskatchewan it is nothing more than a replay of the hog barns.  Or a replay of Canada selling asbestos to third world countries when we’re spending a fortune pulling it out of buildings here because of its known health hazards.  (Stephen Harper selling reactors and the building blocks for nuclear bombs to India, etc.)

There is betrayal of us by some people at the University and by some officials in Government. .. No!

It is betrayal of ourselves by ourselves.  For  can you tell me one thing that prevents us from reading, from reflecting, from understanding, from talking with each other, from small actions to make it right, as simple as talking and sharing information with other people?

It is our choice to be victimized or not to be victims.  It takes effort, hard work not to play the victim role.

So here we go again with the nuclear industry.

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(2)  FIT THE PIECES TOGETHER.  EQUATIONS.

The “pieces” that create the larger picture of what is happening are in the chronology (see the next posting).   The public record from which “the pieces” are taken follows the chronology, in case you think I’m dreaming.  Space dictates that not everything be included!

I fit the pieces together using equations which is kind of fun.  You can add your own:

If you read the Government’s UDP (Uranium Development Partnership) plan you find a set of operations.

If you read about the University of Saskatchewan’s Canadian Nuclear Studies Centre you find a set of operations.

The UDP plan and the Canadian Nuclear Studies Centre happen to have the same set of operations, expressed as:

UDP PLAN:   Nuclear power production + radioactive waste disposal + exploration and mining    =

CANADIAN NUCLEAR STUDIES CENTRE:   Nuclear power production + radioactive waste disposal + exploration and mining

Which reduces to:

Govt UDP plan   =   U of S Nuclear Studies Centre

All of which, of course, is equal to the Nuclear/uranium corporations’ plans, so we have:

Government = University = Nuclear/uranium Corporate plans

The Government Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) Panel recommended that Saskatchewan develop nuclear power and create a nuclear waste dump.  The Report says:     “the economics of a stand-alone isotope reactor are not attractive”

Equation for this:   radioactive isotopes = zero

a reactor to do research and development that “is synergetic” with the larger nuclear expansion plan “may also be used to produce medical isotopes…to partly offset the cost of developing and operating the reactor.”

It suggests this “could justify further funding from federal authorities.”

(radioactive isotopes = red herring  ??)

The University and the Government of Saskatchewan applied for federal funding under a call for interest by the Federal Government.  This was after Brad Wall and Stephen Harper had a lengthy discussion.

The equation becomes:

Federal Govt = Govt of Sask UDP plan = U of S Nuclear Studies Centre = Nuclear/uranium Corporate plans

The Federal Govt call for interest, as presented, is in the PRODUCTION OF RADIOACTIVE ISOTOPES.

But the application from the University and the Government of Sask is:

“recommending establishing a national nuclear studies centre of excellence at the university. .. will include building a nuclear research reactor for both isotope production and neutron science.”  “Targets 2016 for reactor to be online”

The equation for this would be:

Radio isotopes   IS NOT EQUAL TO  radio isotopes because they really are zero or insignificant.

So, to maintain the equation, subtract radio isotopes from both sides:

Federal Money (minus radio isotopes) = U of S Nuclear Studies Centre  = Radio isotopes +  Nuclear power production + radioactive waste disposal + exploration and mining (minus radio isotopes)  which reduces to:

Federal Money = U of S Nuclear Studies Centre  = Nuclear/uranium Corporate interest.    Let’s just cut the B.S.

The Nuclear/uranium corporations’ plans are being put into operation through the University, with no regard to the emphatic “no” stated through the public consultation process.

We’re paying for it, and in ways that most tax-payers don’t know about.  (See Howard Woodhouse’s “Selling Out,  Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market”, page 165, for the amount of Canadian tax-payers’ money that goes into the corporate coffers through the University.  Corporate donations to the University are paltry in comparison; it is a cheap selling off of the public interest at the University to corporate, privatized profits.)

So the University and the Government of Saskatchewan (through the Crown Investments Corporation – – oh oh!  another whiff of hogs)  applied to get a whack of Federal Government money.  The decision of the Expert Panel that decides the appropriation of the money, is to be known on November 30th.

There are numerous other equations.  They add in the U.S. Department of Energy and their “National Laboratories” with focus on nuclear energy and its soulmate tar sands.

You will see the actualized “integration” (takeover), the “SPP” agenda, in the following information.   As pointed out, it is information from the public record, nothing I have imagined.

In the meantime, the Salesmen for the Industry, Stephen Harper and Brad Wall, are off selling – Harper in India and Wall in Washington as you will see.

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3)  BEFORE GETTING INTO THE DISCUSSION, UNDERSTAND “SMALL REACTORS”

Toshiba (Japan) in conjunction with Westinghouse is developing “small” nuclear reactor technology.

Hyperion is a U.S. corporation that is doing the same thing.  By googling “small reactors” you will see mining companies’ (including uranium and tar sands) interest in “small” nuclear reactors and the progress of the nuclear industry in getting them licensed.  The following article makes clear the need of the oil and gas corporations for small reactors in the tar sands.  “It was really created .. for the tar sands.”

When Brad Wall talks about “small research reactors”, I believe he is talking about “research in small reactors”.  There is a difference.  When the University and the Government (through Crown Investments Corporation) make an application to Stephen Harper (August 2009) for a small reactor that is to be online by 2016, common sense tells me that they can’t develop a small reactor by 2016.  They will be importing and modifying the Hyperion small reactor (see the following news article).

The agreements of both the Governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan with the Idaho National Laboratory (a nuclear laboratory), “the marriage made in heaven”, the inclusion of the Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee in the decision on Canadian Federal Government funding that is due November 30th are important to understanding the bigger picture.  The national laboratories are part of the U.S. Department of Energy.  More on those agreements later.

THE NEWS ARTICLE ON “SMALL REACTORS”:

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/561553

Jan 5, 2009,  EXCERPT:

Hyperion Power Generation Inc. has developed a garden shed-sized nuclear reactor . . .

Hyperion, which calls its reactor as a “nuclear battery,” licensed the technology from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It plans to sell the reactor for about $30 million (U.S.) and says there’s potential to sell 4,000 of them around the world by 2025. . . .

The idea is that oil-sands developers, which rely heavily on electricity and steam to mine and upgrade bitumen, could purchase and operate their own Hyperion nuclear reactors as a way to virtually eliminate their controversial dependence on natural gas – that is, the use of a relatively “clean” fossil fuel as a way to extract and process one of the dirtiest fossil fuels.

“It was really created for the Alberta (INSERT:  and Saskatchewan) tar sands… we have strong interest there,” says Deborah Blackwell, vice-president of licensing and public affairs at Hyperion. “

Okay, knowing about “small reactors” we can move on to the CHRONOLOGY, but after a couple brief reminders.

= = = = = = = = = = == = = = = =

(4) REMEMBER THE KILLING OF THE NORTH, IT IS PART OF THE CONTEXT

The nuclear reactors (whether at the University of Saskatchewan or elsewhere in Alberta) are for tar sands expansion and privatization of electricity.

We pay the big costs:  the acidification (slow death) of northern Saskatchewan from acid rain (sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide from tar sands),  the high power transmission lines that will take a portion of the electricity to lucrative markets in the western U.S. where hydro-electric capability has a 50/50 chance of being gone by 2017 because the water resource in the Colorado River is being depleted without conscience.

They run around the globe exploiting other people’s water supplies, clean air and natural resources.  They leave when the destruction is complete.  That is well documented and also part of the context in which this Federal money for “isotope reactors” falls.

We just happen to be next in line.

To understand what is happening in Canada (the “petro-state” or appropriation of resources) (not bombs as in Iraq) it would be very helpful to re-introduce the word “quisling” into our vocabulary.

= = = = = = = = = = == =  == = = =

(5)  BRUCE POWER’S ROLE SPELLED OUT

This is part of the “how” and knowing the actors.

(From item #7,  “BRAD WALL SAYS HE HAS BIG PLANS FOR NUCLEAR POWER IN SASKATCHEWAN, MARCH 2008”)

“ . . . Cameco spokesman Lyle Krahn said the company is expanding its operations in uranium refining and enrichment.

However, the company’s involvement with nuclear generation is through Bruce Power, a consortium in which it is a partner. Bruce Power uses AECL’s Candu technology for its reactors.

“The premier is certainly supportive of our industry and he’s looking for opportunities,” said Krahn when told of Wall’s comments.

“From our perspective … we would use Bruce Power as the vehicle for investment in nuclear power generation in Canada.”

– – – – – – – —

The next posting contains the CHRONOLOGY.

2009-11-29 NUKE 3. The Chronology IMPORTANT INFORMATION

 Nuclear, Radioactive waste  No Responses »
Nov 292009
 

CHRONOLOGY (CONTEXT) FOR UNDERSTANDING HOW MORE MONEY WILL BE TRANSFERRED FROM THE GOVERNMENT TO THE NUCLEAR/URANIUM INDUSTRY.  THE UNIVERSITY IS THE MIDDLE MAN.

The following chronology is an aid to understanding the November 30th decision of the “Expert Review Panel”.  It creates CONTEXT.

It is just a sampling of evidence from the public record.   Some of you will add your own information to it.

I want to get this chronology out prior to the announcement of the decision of the panel, in case it might be useful.  Please consider forwarding it to media people you might know, as background.

I will send supporting news reports for the chronology later; don’t want to overload you with email today!   /Sandra

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

EXPERT REVIEW PANEL

DECISION ON FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ISOTOPE PRODUCTION AND

UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN’S PROPOSAL FOR A SMALL NUCLEAR REACTOR.

FOR CANADIAN DEMOCRACY AND TAX-PAYERS

PUSH FOR NUCLEAR/URANIUM AGENDA REVEALED BY CHRONOLOGY:

• 1974, India broke the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty by building & testing a nuclear bomb made using Canadian nuclear technology.

• 1976, Eldorado Nuclear planned to build a uranium refinery near Warman, SK. The NDP Government of the day wanted to “add value” to the uranium resource by refining milled yellow-cake into fuel for nuclear reactors.  Citizen opposition coalesced.

•  In 1980, Premier Bill Bennett bowed to public pressure and introduced a seven-year moratorium on uranium mining and exploration in B.C.    The moratorium remains in place.  The moratorium was based on the evidence of the health consequences.  The successful efforts to get the moratorium were largely the work of one doctor, Bob Woollard.

•  In 1981, after 5 years of intense citizen efforts (more than 500 people) Eldorado announced it was withdrawing its bid to build a refinery in Saskatchewan.

•  In 1981 Nova Scotia placed a moratorium on uranium mining.  (See Oct 2009, the N.S. moratorium becomes entrenched in law.)

•  1987, Manitoba passed a law to prohibit high level radioactive waste disposal in its territory.

• November  2007, Saskatchewan Party (conservative) elected.  Nuclear/uranium agenda not in its platform.

• March 2008,  Alberta signs agreement with Idaho National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy’s leading institution for nuclear energy research.  “Marriage made in heaven”.   http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/cityplus/story.html?id=1556f1f1-24a3-4276-945d-1d60a965b153&p=1 (In case this Edmonton Journal link becomes invalid,  the article is posted at   2008-03-29 Alberta with Idaho National Laboratory to study nuclear role in oilsands.)

• March 2008,  Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall in Washington “promoting the province as a secure source of energy, including oil, gas, uranium and, potentially, oilsands”.

• March 28, 2008.  Leader Post reports on Brad Wall’s “big plans” for nuclear power in Saskatchewan, following “lengthy discussion” he had with Stephen Harper.   http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=eb5b2b4d-77d3-41d1-b060-18c6c9ca9c44 (The article is copied at http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=6340 )

• July 04 2008.  “New Brunswick introduces new regulations on uranium mining”

“GOVERNMENT TRIES TO MUTE CALLS FOR A MORATORIUM

The Telegraph-Journal reports, ” In an effort to mute calls for a moratorium on uranium exploration, the government announced in May much tighter regulations that included returning all radioactive materials to drill holes sealed with a clay-like substance called bentonite; testing water wells within 500 metres of a drill site before and after work is done; and keeping liquid waste from drilling operations a safe distance from wetlands. But that failed to quell the public uproar. Recent information sessions with concerned landowners in Fredericton and Moncton turned into boisterous protests, with citizens railing passionately against uranium exploration.”

• Nov 5, 2008  Obama elected President of the U.S.

• Feb 27, 2009  “Work on disposing of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain (Nevada) has all but stopped after President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint.  The move remains in line with Obama’s pre-election statements that Yucca Mountain was “not an option.”  America must now set a new course for long-term management of high-level radioactive waste, ….

“Obama’s position on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which would see a community of countries share nuclear power technology with leading nations storing all the high-level waste from the entire group…

“Modern long-term strategies usually involve a step-wise reversible process that starts with an invitation to communities nationwide to express interest.”

(Precisely the process that is being used by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) in Canada.  Saskatchewan is a targeted site.  The NWMO met in Saskatoon in Sept – see the chronology.  And will be here again in December – see chronology.)

• March 2009, the Government of Saskatchewan Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) Panel chaired by Richard Florizone, Vice-President of the University, recommended that Saskatchewan develop nuclear power, create a nuclear waste dump and a studies centre of excellence at the University of Saskatchewan.  With respect to radioactive isotopes it said:   “the economics of a stand-alone isotope reactor are not attractive”

a reactor to do research and development that “is synergetic” with the larger nuclear expansion plan “may also be used to produce medical isotopes…to partly offset the cost of developing and operating the reactor.”

It suggests this “could justify further funding from federal authorities.”

• March 17, 2009  Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd and Enterprise and Innovation Minister Lyle Stewart signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the government and Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a U.S. Department of Energy institution that is considered that country’s top national laboratory for nuclear energy research.

• April 2009,  “Experts examining Areva’s cash situation just days before its accounts are published show that it is “staring down the barrel of business failure” with a 3 billion Euro bail-out request from the French Government. Overrun costs of its reactor build in Finland have left the project facing a 5.4 billion Euro bill including an invoice to Areva of 2.4 billion Euros in penalties for lateness amounting to over three years. Embarrasingly for Areva, German engineering partner Siemans recently walked away from the project.

• Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, growing public concern about UDP industry-one-sidedness left the Sask Party government with no political alternative but to undertake a “public consultation process”

• May 2009 Public Consultations began.  Dan Perrins conducted the consultations.  2,637 people in total attended thirteen public meetings.  1,275 written submissions and 61 stakeholder groups presented,  2,263 responses in total.

• 84% of the submissions were opposed to nuclear power, in spite of a letter-writing campaign by the nuclear industry and the Chamber of Commerce.

• Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd called it “the broadest and most transparent public debate on uranium development ever undertaken in Saskatchewan”.

• June 15, “Spearheaded by Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer“   “hailed their push to develop a cross-border (Canada – U.S.) Western Energy Corridor that will be the largest on the planet and one that develops both non-renewable (tar sands) and clean-energy (nuclear) options.”

This news report was in the middle of the “public consultations”, on the same day as approximately 800 people turned out to the Saskatoon meeting.  The Travelodge had to extend the meeting room which filled to standing room only.  Some people did not attend because parking was not to be found.

• June 2009, Point le Preau nuclear reactor in New Brunswick – “The $1.4-billion refurbishment of the Point Lepreau nuclear plant has fallen behind schedule. . . That delay will cost NB Power an estimated $70 million to $90 million.  Ottawa gives $200 million in extra funding to AECL.  “This amounts to more subsidies to a nuclear white elephant”.   (Around the time of this news article, James Risdon in New Brunswick started  “Say NO to Nuclear Waste in N.B.! “ – on The Petition Site.”)

• June 19,  Federal Government announces four Expert Review Panel Members and call for expressions of interest in isotope production.

http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/media/newcom/2009/200962-eng.php

Thom Mason, Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, part of the U.S. Department of Energy is a panel member.

http://www.ornl.gov/ornlhome/leadership/mason_bio.shtml

• July 9, 2009  REACTOR PARTNERSHIP REACHED : GOVT, U OF S TO PURSUE MEDICAL ISOTOPE PRODUCTION

(link no longer valid, Star Phoenix.  Did I post a back-up copy? Look.)

•  June 14, 2009.  Canada-U.S. Western Energy Corridor announced.

(link no longer valid, Vancouver Sun.  I think I posted a copy on this blog.  Look.)

“Western premiers and U.S. governors on Sunday hailed their push to develop a cross-border Western Energy Corridor that will be the largest on the planet and one that develops both non-renewable (INSERT: tar sands) and clean-energy (INSERT: nuclear) options. …

Spearheaded by Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer … ”

• July 17, The On Campus News says  “Nuclear studies centre already under development” …  working at various points in the nuclear cycle, … that extends from exploration and mining to power production to safe storage” (radioactive waste disposal).    (Link no longer valid.  Sandra – – find and post the article.)

• July 2009, “First time ever University Presidents  join Government and Corporate leaders, Canada – U.S.”

(Link no longer valid.  Did I post a copy on this blog?    http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-08-2009/0005056956&EDATE=)

“Other highlights:

–   University President’s Roundtable – first time ever University Presidents from both the US and Canada will meet to discuss Innovation and collaboration in the region (15 University Presidents will be in attendance) . .

–   First Energy Horizon Legislative Institute.  30 Legislators from throughout the Region to be certified on Energy Policy by University of Idaho, PNWER, and National Conference of State Legislators.

(INSERT:  I looked this up.  The Idaho National Laboratory, with which Saskatchewan and Alberta have signed deals, is at the University of Idaho.  The “certification” process “educates” legislators on the “energy” question, a la Americano.)

–  Water Policy to focus on water management policies and overview of the Columbia River Treaty . . .

–  Admiral John Grossenbacher, Idaho National Laboratory, will chair a session led by INL on emerging regional interests in nuclear energy, western energy corridor …

–  Building Transmission for the future – Session to address regional transmission projects  (high power transmission lines)

• July 31, 2009 federal deadline for applications for funding related to radioactive isotopes. The Government of Saskatchewan (Brad Wall) Crown Investments Corporation jointly with the University of Saskatchewan applied:

“recommending establishing a national nuclear studies centre of excellence at the university. .. will include building a nuclear research reactor for both isotope production and neutron science.”      “Targets 2016 for reactor to be online”

• July 31, 2009. The deadline for citizens to respond to the Government’s Uranium Development Partnership (UDP) report (public consultation process on the Government’s nuclear/uranium agenda).

• September 15,   Dan Perrins delivered his report on the public consultations to Wall’s government.  The Executive Summary says, “the overwhelming response was that nuclear power generation should not be a choice for Saskatchewan.”

Regarding other recommendations of the UDP Report, Perrins reported  “the majority of responses dealing with the exploration and mining of uranium did not support current or future activities in this area.”

The majority “are largely opposed to any upgrading, including enrichment fuel fabrication and all other forms of upgrading.”.

Many people who expressed support for the production of medical isotopes stipulated it should occur without the use of nuclear fission.”

• October 2009,  String of incidents, several incidents of “exceedances” and spills, prompts investigation at Cameco Port Hope conversion plant.

• October 4, 2009.  “No nukes, go Renewables” parade and rally in Saskatoon draws people from around the province.

• October 14, 2009.  Nova Scotia legislates a moratorium on exploration and mining of uranium. http://www.gov.ns.ca/news/details.asp?id=20091014006

“The province introduced legislation today, Oct. 14, to entrench a uranium ban that had been in effect since 1981.”

• October 2009, Speech from the Throne Government of Saskatchewan contains no mention of the Government’s nuclear/uranium agenda.

• October 2009, Book launch “Selling Out, Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market”, McGill-Queen’s University Press, by Howard Woodhouse, professor of educational foundations and co-director of the University of Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit.

Page 166:  (Bancroft is interim director of the Canadian Light Source Inc (synchrotron) at the University of Saskatchewan) “Bancroft’s emphasis on the CLS’s “strong commitment to industrial users and private/public partnerships, [with] designated Canadian and international mining companies as the top priority for industrial development” was consistent with the facility’s mission.

(Note:  the supporting news reports in the next emails clearly make the connection between the synchrotron at the University of Saskatchewan and the nuclear/uranium agenda.)

P. 165 “Yet the CLS . . . was paid for almost entirely out of public funds from the federal and provincial governments, several universities, and a Saskatchewan Crown corporation.  The capital costs of $173.5 million were split into $140.9 million in cash and $32.6 million in in-kind contributions

(see table). . . .  Moreover this amount does not include the in-kind contribution of the university’s Linear Accelerator, worth almost $33 million …  By far the largest amount of money came from the federal government – – “  etc.

• (?? I don’t know if this should be included) November 4, 2009  Fortune Minerals Metallurgical processing plant near Saskatoon.

(Link no longer valid  http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Refinery+planned+Langham/2181681/story.html)

This is a “maybe” connection. The background is that the nuclear/uranium industry in Canada is facing problems with processing and conversion capacity. It is running into more and more public opposition.  The Port Hope refinery is under assault for effects on health and the release of radioactive spills into Lake Ontario, etc. (other examples).

Regarding the Star Phoenix refinery announcement November 4, it was curious to me that a penny stock company, Fortune Minerals, would truck ore all the way from Yellowknife, N.W.T. to Saskatoon, SK for “metallurgical processing”.

I wonder whether such a processing facility might also be used for uranium?  Given the stated priorities for the University of Saskatchewan’s synchrotron, the Canadian Nuclear Studies Centre at the University and the University’s commitment to work that has commercial application it seems plausible.

It seems to me that the nuclear/uranium corporations (with their Government, University supporters and role in the U.S. corporate energy strategy (the SPP)) are hard-pressed now to be honest and forthright about their intentions.

• Nov 15   Stephen Harper, salesman for the co-dependent nuclear and tar sands industries, in India.   “Canada had suspended nuclear relations with India in 1974 after India used Canadian technology to make its first nuclear bomb.  During his visit here, Harper said a new nuclear co-operation deal between the two countries would be signed soon and he met with key representatives of India’s nuclear energy sector.”  India has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

“The two countries signed a memorandum of understanding this year that will let Canada play a role in India’s planned building of 25 to 30 nuclear reactors. …  India’s reactor demand for uranium may triple in the next 15 years, according to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Cameco Corp. the world’s second-largest producer of uranium.  . . .

Australia, holder of the biggest known uranium reserves, doesn’t allow exports of the nuclear fuel to India because the South Asian country hasn’t signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. ”

• November 29, 2009.  “Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada signs a nuclear co-operation agreement with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan as way to trade uranium and nuclear technology with India”  . . .  on whose behalf?   (Link no longer valid  http://trak.in/news/india-canada-clinch-nuclear-deal/29084/)

• NWMO (Nuclear Waste Management Organization) in Saskatchewan (again!) December 7, 8, 9, looking for a “host community”.

http://www.nwmo.ca/events?event

– – – – – – – – – – –

Note:  I have not included the propaganda efforts by Bruce Power in the North Saskatchewan River corridor where they want to buy options on land for a nuclear reactor, or the polling reported on in the Prince Albert Herald and elsewhere.  The polling questions were designed to manipulate and provide very skewed results.

I have not included efforts by Bruce Power and by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization to target First Nations, Dene and Metis communities for the siting of their operations.

Nor have I mentioned the resistance by motley crews of local groups.  (These efforts by local people to stop a Bruce Power nuclear reactor from being built on the North Saskatchewan River appear to have been successful, so far.)

I have not mentioned the efforts of people in Alberta to stop the billion-dollar high power transmission lines (part of the Canada – U.S. Western Energy Corridor) from proceeding.

Nor a whole lot of other important events!    /Sandra

2009-11-19 H1N1 (or nukes or gmo’s or energy) in the context of “Selling Out”: the larger issue. Immune systems. TB. Constant Gardener.

 Mercury poisoning, dental amalgams. See also Vaccinations., Take back the University, Tuberculosis, Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Nov 192009
 

This email is about infectious disease (H1N1 example) and the pharmaceutical corporations.

You can interchange the phrases:

– “pharmaceutical corporations”

– “nuclear/uranium corporations”

– “the oil and gas corporations”,

– “the arms manufacturers” (Lockheed Martin example at Dalhousie University)

etc.

They are all “on-campus”.  The lessons are the same, regardless of the industry.  This one is a pharmaceutical corporation example.  The issue is larger than H1N1.

CONTENTS

(1) GARY NULL ADDRESSES NEW YORK STATE HEARING, H1N1 VACCINATIONS (YouTube)

(2) IS GARY NULL A “QUACK”?  WHICH DOCTORS ARE TRAINED AND OBEDIENT TO “MEDI”CARE?  WHICH ONES TAKE MONEY, TRIPS AND LARGESSE FOR SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS FROM THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY?

(3) ARTHUR SCHAFER, ETHICIST, ON THE SWINE FLU

(4) MEDICARE DEALS IN DRUGS, NOT IN IMMUNE SYSTEMS

(5)  UPDATE ON NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT COURT CASE AGAINST PFIZER OVER DRUG TRIALS THAT KILLED PEOPLE.

(6)  THE CONSTANT GARDENER.  VIDO (VACCINE INFECTIOUS DISEASES ORGANIZATION) AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN.

(7) “SELLING OUT”, THE OLIVIERI STORY AND THE SYNCHROTRON RELATED TO H1N1

(8)  APOTEX’S GIFT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN. APOTEX, THE COMPANY IN THE OLIVIERI/UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO CASE.

(9)  THE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE THAT STARTED THE PANIC. AND QUESTION: ARE YOUNG PEOPLE SUSCEPTIBLE, OR DOES THE WORST DIET AND LIFE-STYLE (NOT AGE) MAKE IT APPEAR THAT “YOUNG PEOPLE” ARE SUSCEPTIBLE?

(10)  OCT 7TH EMAIL ON H1N1

(11)  RESPONSES FROM YOU TO OCT 7TH EMAIL

A.  FROM ASHLEIGH, CITATIONS TO DISPROVE THE LINK BETWEEN AUTISM AND THIMERASOL

B.  FROM PAUL, UNDERSTANDING THE RISK

C.  FROM DOUG, MANIPULATED RESEARCH

D.  FROM RUTH’S DAUGHTER, THIMERASOL DOESN’T CAUSE AUTISM (WITH CITATIONS)

E.  FROM SHIV, FOREIGN PROTEIN CONSTITUENTS IN VACCINES LEAD TO THE VARIOUS DISEASES, MORE SO THAN THE MERCURY, ALUMINUM

(12) WHAT TO DO RE SWINE FLU

A. A FOOD SYSTEM THAT KILLS, THE ROLE OF “FACTORY FARMS” IN THE EVOLUTION OF SWINE AND BIRD (AVIAN) FLU.  REMEMBER ALL THOSE CHICKENS IN B.C. THAT WERE KILLED?

B. SIMPLE STEPS

C. FROM DENIS HALL, BE PRO-ACTIVE

(13)  AT THE UNIVERSITY: IT’S NOT INNOVATION, IT’S HYPED STATUS QUO.

(14)  “INTRODUCTION” AT THE END.  SUMMARY.

= = = = = = = = = ==  = ==  =

(1) GARY NULL ADDRESSES NEW YORK STATE HEARING, H1N1 VACCINATION (YouTube)

Thanks to Brian:    Gary Null’s testimony before the NYS Assembly Hearing (10-13-2009).

“no holds barred”    This will make you mad.

Part 1.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3XlJB7J5-o&NR=1

Part 2.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch5OuzB9L48

Part 3.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAgWO2yq1k8&NR=1

= = = = = = = = =  == = =  = =

(2) IS GARY NULL A “QUACK”?  WHICH DOCTORS ARE TRAINED AND OBEDIENT TO “MEDI”CARE?  WHICH ONES TAKE MONEY, TRIPS AND LARGESSE FOR SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS, FROM THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY?

The media contain allegations of “quacks”, bogus science, bogeymen, and conspiracy theories in response to questions surrounding the swine flu vaccinations.

I did a quick google on Null. Is he a quack? … His work is controversial.  You’ll have to make up your own mind.

I THINK that I am open-minded, but I know I pay attention to that which reinforces my thinking. Mind you, there is enough evidence in the form of court convictions to know how corrupt the pharmaceutical and chemical corporations are. Erin Brockavitch knows. Same story as the tobacco industry, but worse.

Elizabeth May, federal leader of the Green Party, went to see healthcare officials in B.C. in order to make an informed decision about H1N1. I questioned the outcome:

– Do you view Robert F Kennedy Jr as a credible source of information?  If so, you might want to read his work on swine flu.   It’s in the Oct 7th email.

Robert Kennedy’s report says there is a connection between vaccinations that contain thimerasol and autism.   2009-07-25

BUT! see the input below (item #9) from persons in our network.  It’s possible that it is not the thimerasol but other ingredients or a combination of ingredients in the vaccines, and/or cumulative impacts of numerous vaccinations.

Dr. Shiv Chopra offers:  “Bear in mind that more than mercury, aluminium, and other toxic materials, it is the foreign protein constituents in vaccines that lead to various auto-immune diseases, such as autism and other afflictions.”

I no longer trust research citations. That is a very serious situation for our society.  Corporations are buying the universities and the scientists (not ALL of them) to the point where it’s almost impossible to have confidence in “science”.  “Credentials” offer no guarantee of reliability or trustworthiness.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.  The piper is the pharmaceutical corporations in this example and they are as corrupt as hell – a statement made on very good, numerous, public and documented evidence.

It is no different from the situation today where the oil and gas corporations are paying for “science” and propaganda related to climate change, for no reason other than to ensure profits.

In the health field, in order to trust a research citation you have to go back and see whether the researchers have been funded by the pharmaceutical corporations.  And whether their methodology is sound.  Have they done things as in the Olivieri case where Apotex (drug manufacturer) tried to eliminate the tests that are more likely to reveal problems?  Are there longterm studies? – –  some of the effects are only known in the long term.  Do they have bona fide “control groups”, as is required in sound research (see Doug’s input in #9)?  Are they identifying root causes, or do they identify an association that comes about because the population shares a characteristic that is the underlying cause?  (like weakened immune systems from health-depleting diets.) Is it a case of flat-earthers whose world-view is obsolete but to which they cling, because their power, influence and life’s work is based on the flat-earth belief? They must deny that the earth is round? (Many, many drugs are extremely problematic bandaid solutions; there is another and better world-view.)  Is it a case of, as with the research trials that licensed Roundup, the ingredient (in this example glyphosate) that is identified as the herbicide, is tested in isolation without the other ingredients that make up the marketed product?  (the parallel example with the vaccines would be if you run the tests using the vaccine BEFORE the thimerasol or aluminum or foreign protein constituents, or other ingredients have been added)?

The money of the corporations has so debased research that it is impossible.  Who could possibly go through a list of citations and obtain the information you’d need to verify the science?  So we look for “peer-reviewed”.  It’s better, but not a guarantee.

– Did you ask the health officials about the CONTEXT:  probability of death in comparison to death rates that occur with flu outbreaks naturally and routinely, every year?

I have read that about 4,000 people die every year from the flu, during the flu season.  But don’t rely on my memory!

From the Globe & Mail article by Schafer (item #3 in this email): “The southern hemisphere has just gone through its flu season. In New Zealand, where 18,000 swine flu deaths had been predicted, the actual toll came to 17. Similar data have been reported from Australia and Argentina.”

– Did you see Wendy Mesley’s interview on CBC News, as a consequence of public reaction that news media are hyping H1N1?  She interviewed two doctors, one of whom was a former Chief Public Health Officer for Ontario (if I caught it right).

He addressed the question of the incidence very effectively.   The incidence of death is very small, insignificant in relation to deaths by other causes.  The problem was a 13-year old and his tearful (naturally) Father,  with whom I have heartfelt sympathy, but it is not representative (the news article is in item #7).

This doctor who was interviewed by Mesley is consistent in his statements with Schafer’s information (17 deaths in New Zealand). And it is consistent with Oct 7th email, item (4) PERSPECTIVE ON SWINE FLU, LIKELIHOOD OF DEATH.

– Anna Maria Tremonti (CBC Radio The Current) did an interview, I happened to catch the end of it.  What I heard focused on how our immune systems work, the effects of fear, for example.

(ASIDE:  Not related to the effects of fear on the immune system, we should all try to understand how fear works in us.  The cat pounces on the young bird who ignores fear in favour of the tasty seeds that lie on the ground.

The ones who survived and passed along their genes – whether birds or humans – were the ones whose wariness saved them from being eaten   . . fear is built into our evolved genes.  It’s good; but we should recognize how great a hold it has on us and, except in emergency situations, take time to gather information and think things through. Responding to the death of the 13-year old needs to be done with thought, not when fear is in the driver’s seat.  It is to the advantage of pharmaceutical profits if we stampede.)

– There is Gary Null’s address to the New York State hearing (the vaccination is mandatory for NY healthcare workers).  Unfortunately, Gary Null has some views that are challengeable and so he may lose credibility.

On the other hand, what he said to the New York State Government panel is consistent with the documentation by Robert F Kennedy Jr.   There is complexity, of course, but the information is aligned with the mercury video done by a researcher at the U of Calgary, who I called to confirm legitimacy (Oct 7 email, item #2).

The U of Calgary researcher and his colleagues put out a video that shows what happens to neural pathways in the brain when mercury is introduced. The evidence seems pretty solid to me that the vaccine manufacturers are using ethyl mercury (thimerasol) AND/OR other additives (“adjuvants”)(e.g. foreign protein constituents) for preservative and other effects.  Not surprisingly, there are now news reports about how mercury, in some forms, DOES NOT do harm.

It is a stated tactic of the chemical biotech industry (often owned by the pharmaceutical corporations) to deliberately create confusion….  “Yes, BUT, there is conflicting information.”  Intentionally.

The industry is great at using “science” to create confusion so we don’t know what is and isn’t true.  You can buy science to deal with science you don’t like.  Some of it is bona fide – but which?

Kennedy discloses the shenanigans that went on to cover up the relationship between the mercury in the vaccines (or is it other adjuvants?), increasing numbers of vaccinations given to children, and the increase in autism in particular.  It’s the tobacco industry story, the chemical industry story, the oil and gas corporate story and the pharmaceutical corporations’ multiple and unconscionable transgressions all over again.

I think that if we address “the larger issue” of the pharmaceutical corporations and their role in the Universities and in Government we would not be debating the autism connection.

Gary Null is new to me.  Had I only listened to the youtube videos of his presentation to NY State panel, I would freely distribute them because they are consistent with what I have learned about the pharmaceutical corporations over the years.  Reinforced by Kennedy, by Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine who wrote a book on the lies of the pharma industry, etc. etc. Gary Null addresses the surrounding issues to the H1N1 vaccination, the CONTEXT in which it is set. I would recommend you listen to Null’s presentation.

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(3) ARTHUR SCHAFER, ETHICIST, ON THE SWINE FLU

The Globe & Mail published a letter (October 26) from Arthur Schafer (Ethicist, University of Manitoba).  He addresses the incidence of H1N1 and also “effectiveness”. Note that the newspaper, not Arthur, would have assigned the word “fuss” which isn’t helpful to a public trying to sort out a very serious issue.

The swine flu fuss

Why all the media fuss about swine flu

(Fewer Canadians Interested In Getting H1N1 Shot – front page, Oct. 26)?

Somehow, a comparatively mild disease has attracted overwhelming media coverage. At the same time, a vaccine of questionable efficacy has been portrayed as our best hope for salvation.

The southern hemisphere has just gone through its flu season. In New Zealand, where 18,000 swine flu deaths had been predicted, the actual toll came to 17. Similar data have been reported from Australia and Argentina. The evidence is clear: Swine flu is a bust for doom-mongers. Perhaps this explains why so many Canadians are reluctant to be vaccinated.

Although the pandemic industry claims 90-per-cent effectiveness for the new swine flu vaccine, this does not mean the vaccine prevents flu in 90 per cent of cases. This figure refers to the percentage of people who develop antibodies in their blood after taking the vaccine. Will these people gain significant immunity as a result? There is no good scientific evidence showing this is the case.

Our public health establishment has enjoyed its day in the sun. Big Pharma has trucked fabulous profits to the bank. Perhaps it’s time for our media to turn their attention to more serious problems.

Arthur Schafer, Winnipeg

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From Wikipedia:

Arthur Schafer is a Canadian ethicist specializing in bioethics, philosophy of law, social philosophy and political philosophy. He is director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba.[1][2][3]

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Written by Marjaleena Repo:

There is gullibility of various sorts, including undeserved respect for the “official story” whatever it happens to be on any topic. Mocking those who sometimes perhaps clumsily question the sanctioned version does not contribute to the very necessary public discourse, but has the effect of intimidating and silencing the “differently-thinking.”

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(4) MEDICARE DEALS IN DRUGS, NOT IN IMMUNE SYSTEMS

Aside from decorum, when I die naturally, why can’t my family throw my corpse into a bag and take it to the landfill?  (I will not be attached to my body. The job of my skin and bones will be finished.)

. . .  I stopped checking the mouse trap when I didn’t catch anything.  Then, on return from holidays I checked.  The mouse had become a mass of wiggling larvae.  The mouse was not himself.

We are not ourselves; we are our immune systems.  When our immune systems stop, we become those other things, millions of organisms, that live comfortably inside our nice warm and humid insides. When the immune system says “I’m outta here”, or “this job of keeping all you organisms in check, with little help from my owner is more than I can handle”, those organisms happily multiply.  Some of them are pretty noxious.

You cannot dispose of a corpse that dies naturally simply as you wish; the law prohibits it.  One of the reasons is that without embalming or cremation the corpse becomes a wiggling mass of not-so-nice critters.

Some of us carry H1N1 viruses for a time, under control, or a little out-of-control.  30% of the population is estimated to be carrying tuberculosis organisms.  There are colonies of fungus from spores we inhale.  People will carry the HIV (AIDS) virus all their life and never know because their immune system is in control.

Disease outbreaks can flourish in the wake of natural disasters; lots of dead people means the previously-controlled organisms are free to have a heyday. At least until they get buried or burned up in a funeral pyre.

The problem for us is that it is not in the financial interests of “medi” care to understand anything about the immune system. And yet, we each owe our life to our immune system.

Love, good food, clean water, a warm home, an unpolluted environment, healthy relationships, good schools, opportunities to experience and learn about the world and one’s self, fresh air and exercise, no war, the chance to achieve your potential (the reason for your being) . . . the fear-filled threat of disease would disappear.  We would all be happier and safer with strong immune systems.

Poverty can mean a lack of all those things that strengthen the immune system. And so the diseases and fear will spread. And it threatens us all.  Or it doesn’t . . .  When we help look after others, we look after ourselves.

What exactly is it that we want out of life?  If you had to figure it out for yourself (unaided by advertising to create your “wants”), exactly what do you want?  Do you not want it for other people, too?  Does it not come back to be good for you and your children?  You can help do things that will strengthen the immune systems of other people – – out of SELF interest if you like.

I know how I contracted tuberculosis (see the last item, the “INTRODUCTION”).  And I know that tuberculosis is on the rise. I know that it is going to threaten some of you.

I know it for a number of reasons, just one of which is that the medi-care system relies entirely now on very expensive and nausea-causing drugs to TREAT the disease.  Medi-care currently does almost nothing to screen for and to isolate those who are contagious (which is how/why I breathed in TB organisms).

As long as the pharmaceutical industry is running the show at the universities and in the “medi”care system, the public interest in screening, isolating and removal of cause is lost.  It’s a recipe for more disease outbreaks – exactly what is happening with tuberculosis in Canada today.  (I use that EXAMPLE because I am very familiar with it.  It is my story.)

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(5)  UPDATE ON NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT COURT CASE AGAINST PFIZER OVER DRUG TRIALS THAT KILLED PEOPLE.

It looks as though the Nigerians have largely settled “out of court” for millions of dollars and no surprise, the pharmaceutical corporations deny, deny, deny.  See the article at http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=4415 2009-04-06   $75 million.  Pfizer settles Nigerian drug case out of court  (criminal charges for death of children)

Information on the rush by the pharmaceutical corporations to patent the next cure for tuberculosis, because the organism has evolved in Eastern Europe, in Africa, etc. to be resistant to existing drug protocol, can be found in the listings at  http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=4401 (for people in Guatemala.)

It is a deadly game that is not in the public interest.  And it’s a no-brainer.  The next generation of antibiotics or tuberculosis “cure” or whatever, has to be more toxic than the last round.

Eventually “the cure” is as noxious as the disease organism.  AND it is so expensive that third world countries can’t afford it. Meanwhile the pharmaceutical corporations kill people in third world countries in their eagerness to be the first ones to patent the new “cure” and cash in on the profits.

The current approach to drugs is not “innovative”, as the University communications spin would have us believe; it is a deadly spiral.

My own case and experiment is instructive and was done with the cooperation of two doctors, the then-head of TB Control in Saskatchewan and a naturopathic doctor.

I was in a unique situation to experiment under their guidance: the disease was active in my body (I was very sick), but the TB had not advanced to the state of being contagious.

I did not take the drug treatment because, as I appealed to the head of TB Control:  we have to figure out a way to address these diseases without drugs.  We know absolutely that the organisms evolve to be resistant to the drugs and we know that any new drug has to be more toxic and expensive, therefore unaffordable by all except the rich.

In less time than the 9-month drug treatment, I overcame the TB organism without drugs, by addressing immune system issues.  (NOTE:  my case was unique.  I am not recommending anyone do what I did – – I am saying that it was a valid experiment with positive outcome.)

The new head of TB Control does not want to hear my experience.  There is absolutely no curiosity, no interest in true “innovation” or experimentation if it doesn’t fit the drug mould — even if it is obvious that the drug mould is taking us down a suicidal path.

I googled for an update on the charges brought by the Government of Nigeria against Big Pharma (Pfizer) for the deaths it caused by using human beings as guinea pigs in their attempt to develop the “next generation” of drugs.   We have been following this story that  gave rise to John le Carré’s novel-made-into-a-movie, “The Constant Gardener”.

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(6)  THE CONSTANT GARDENER.  VIDO (VACCINE INFECTIOUS DISEASES ORGANIZATION) AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN.

I advise people to read the real life comments in “The Constant Gardener“. Le Carré says the story in his book is a holiday card version of what the pharmaceutical corporations do in the real world. His books are well researched.

(Another internationally-famous author, Henning Mankell, lives back-and-forth between Sweden and Africa, and has written a book similar to “The Constant Gardener“.  Thanks to Howard for drawing “Kennedy’s Brain” to attention.  I haven’t read it.    http://www.thenewpress.com/index.php?option=com_title&task=view_title&metaproductid=1673 )

I am very curious about what John le Carré  knew, or intuited.  In “The Constant Gardener” part of the search to uncover the truth about the pharmaceutical-company-related deaths in Africa takes place in Canada, at the University of Saskatchewan.  It was pretty shocking to me to be reading about the U of S in “The Constant Gardener”!

(Wikipedia):  The Constant Gardener is a 2001 novel by John le Carré. It tells the story of Justin Quayle, a British diplomat whose activist wife is murdered. Believing that there is more behind the murder, he seeks to uncover the truth behind her death, and finds an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucracy and pharmaceutical money.

John le Carré writes in the book’s afterword, “By comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard.” [1])”

From a blog:  “An important part of Quayle’s quest takes him to Saskatchewan, where he finds one of the drug’s main developers.”

At the time of seeing the movie I was weak and in the early stages of overcoming the TB organisms in my body.  I thought I was going to see a gardening movie of some kind!

I walked out of the theatre thinking I had been on some outer space hallucinatory experience.  The movie was about tuberculosis in a spy-thriller John le Carré setting. It was a disease I had thought had been eradicated from Canada and most of elsewhere – – which I now had.  Part of the action was at the University of Saskatchewan where I had just been for medical attention.  The timing of seeing the movie was all too bizarre and disorienting.

I have always wondered why le Carré  placed part of the action in Saskatchewan?  The only thing I could think was that the U of S is a big centre for biotechnology (developing crops that are resistant to chemical applications) and I knew there are biotech pharmaceuticals at the U of S. That was the only link I could think of.  I thought that John le Carré might have known more?

Later, when I read that the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation was donating a lot of money to help find the cure for the renewed rising threat of tuberculosis in the world, I wanted to tell the Gates:  put your money into finding alternatives.

If my one experiment was successful in combating the disease without potent drugs, then it is POSSIBLE that it can be done.  But as long as the pharmaceutical corporations are involved, the ONLY avenue that will be explored is the drug option.  And it is a wrong-headed approach, obviously.  You might think you are God, but you cannot stop evolution (drug-resistant organisms).

I thought that John le Carré  (his pen name) would have a better chance of talking to and persuading the Gates than me (ha!). Also, I wanted to thank David Cornwell (his real name) for his book. So I found an email address for the publisher.

I requested that the publisher forward my email.  After explanations and thanks, the email requested that Cornwell contact the Gates Foundation:

Bill Gates should read “The Constant Gardener” to understand the lay of the land with the pharmaceutical corporations, their murderous ways, and he might re-consider where he wants to donate his money.

Why not ask?!  It gets it out of my system, and it is supportive of people like Cornwell.  He’s not only a good guy, he is putting his neck on the line.  He needs our support.

I received a reply!

Mon 21/05/2007 5:03 AM

Dear Miss Finley

Your message has found its way to me, John le Carre’s agent.  I shall make sure that he sees it.

Yours sincerely

Bruce Hunter

David Higham Associates

Visit our website at www.davidhigham.co.uk

Monsieur le Carré hasn’t let me know if he communicated on the matter with Mr. Gates!  Oh well, my modus operandi is to “put it out there”.  And then let it go.  I don’t need to know what happened; that’s beyond my control.

That was all I knew, until this last week (Nov 2009). Howard Woodhouse’s book “Selling Out”, in the chapter on the synchrotron at the University of Saskatchewan talks about VIDO.

VIDO = Vaccine Infectious Diseases Organization at the University of Saskatchewan.   http://www.vido.org/

Excerpts:

VIDO is a not-for-profit organization owned by the University of Saskatchewan. A separate Board of Advisors contributes industry expertise and practical guidance. … VIDO continues to be competitive nationally and internationally, with more than 80 awarded U.S. patents.  . . . . .  VIDO is one of four Canadian teams offered funding through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative.

(If you didn’t know that the University of Saskatchewan is a wholly-owned subsidiary of various corporations, or about to become so, you SHOULD know!)

MAYBE John le Carré knew about VIDO, the work being done at the University of Saskatchewan for the pharmaceutical corporations, when he wrote “The Constant Gardener”?  Ramble through the VIDO website – it’s all there.

What University of Saskatchewan professor, Howard Woodhouse, makes clear in his book “Selling Out” and which is there again in the VIDO information is that WE citizens are paying the COSTS for the corporations.

The details and the extent, the amounts of the subsidies, are well documented in “Selling Out”.

It is “socialization of the costs and privatization of the profits” — for what is beneficial to the corporations, not what is necessarily beneficial for citizens.

The cost to students is financially large. There are “cutbacks” and higher tuition fees because the money is sucked up by the research for the pharmaceutical and other corporations. The University Administration hypes it as “Innovation”.

Conflicts-of-interest abound: professors in veterinary medicine who promote factory-size pig barns (origins of swine flu) receive money from that industry. That industry is now going into bankruptcy.  It was heavily subsidized by tax-payers, resisted by many communities.  It forced smaller, more humane and health-giving local meat producers out of production.  It also forced small producers in other countries out-of-business and into dependency upon imported cheap, inferior food from Canada. . . . Our Government and our University working for us in “public-private-partnerships”.

The “innovative” corporate model adopted by the University does not reflect our values. The conflicts-of-interest created by the “partnerships” should not be tolerated.

Old-timers in our network know the story where I challenged a salaried full-time government scientist who works at “Innovation Place” at the University.  Simultaneously he makes “up to ten thousand dollars” per contract he does for the very corporations he is supposed to be regulating. And which he had been doing for 8 years at the time. I received a letter from a lawyer threatening to sue me if I should say such-and-such to Saskatoon City Council about the situation.  (The City had a pesticide bylaw under consideration. There was a serious conflict-of-interest involved.)

The work at the University is NOT “innovative”, as they keep heralding and would have us believe.  The drug approach is the status quo.  The pharmaceutical corporations are corrupt.  And we are the silly ones putting up the money, in more ways than we know.  If more people knew, there would be a revolt. .. I think it’s well under way.

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(7) “SELLING OUT”, THE OLIVIERI STORY AND THE SYNCHROTRON RELATED TO H1N1

If Gary Null’s presentation (item #1) makes you mad, Howard Woodhouse’s case studies in his book “Selling Out, Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market” will add to your anger.

More on that in item “APOTEX’S GIFT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN.  APOTEX, THE COMPANY IN THE OLIVIERI/UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO CASE”.

It is more important to understand the significance of what is happening – which I find alarming.  H1N1 is just another part of the whole.  It’s a larger issue than swine flu.

Universities are critical to the maintenance of the knowledge base of the society.  Effective problem-solving is contingent upon a solid base of information, of “truth” and understanding.

We need “the truth”, an uncontaminated knowledge base if we are to keep learning.  The life of the individual and of the community is about grappling with and learning from problems in succession, one after the other.

If you fail to solve the problems, and to change through what you have learned, if you fail to move forward, you will live in misery.  Guaranteed.  It is true of the individual; it is true of the community.

The CITIZENS of this country understood the value of “the search for truth”, of learning.  They built universities to advance and to share knowledge.

Private ownership of knowledge is a recipe for keeping the population ignorant and poor.  Think of times past when the knowledge base was owned by powerful churches.  Rich clergy and poor peasants.

A theme of mine has been that an economy is based on a resource.  If you can own the resource you profit handsomely.  The Winnipeg “Wheat Kings” attempting to control the trade in wheat which led farmers to band together to defy poverty: outcome, the Canadian Wheat Board. The economy of the Maritimes built on fish. The economy based on oil and gas.

And now we have the “knowledge” or “information” economy.  Like the farmers who recognized “the issue”, we are now engaged in a fight with corporations over control of the universities and the whole system of “education”, our information and knowledge base.

Woodhouse’s book shows how far the pendulum has swung back toward private ownership of the knowledge base. We are the ones footing the bill.

The universities hype the status quo and call it “innovation”.  In the case of medi-care the status quo is increasing numbers of people who come down with disease and developmental problems.

TRUE innovation would, by definition, lead to a reversal in the numbers of people who come down with disease and developmental problems.

Corporations have no interest in removing the many known causes of disease.  Their interest is the status quo. The status quo is guaranteed as long as we accept corporate partnerships with the universities and government.  That is obvious.

More drugs, more vaccinations, more chemicals, more factory food, more factory-produced, genetically-designed crops, swine, bird, cattle, cows and fish, more patents for corporate ownership of life forms, are ALL the status quo.  Corruption of science and of the regulatory system is the status quo – – that has been well documented over the 10 years of the operation of our network.

There is nothing innovative or delightful about the status quo.  It ensures a continuation of the trend line:  increasing numbers of people who come down with disease and developmental problems.

If the university and the medicare system and the Departments of Health were measured by “results” in the levels of healthfulness in the community (the trendlines), they fail.

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(8)  APOTEX’S GIFT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN. APOTEX, THE COMPANY IN THE OLIVIERI/UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO CASE.

The Olivieri case is internationally known.  The company that tried to silence Oivieri by repeated threats to sue her is Apotex.

In spite of that record, the University of Saskatchewan has embraced Apotex as a partner.  If the law worked for corporations as it does for individuals, the U of S would not be able to take money from Apotex because Apotex would be in jail.  One has to ask, what VALUES does the University embrace and role-model for students?

Dr. Nancy Olivieri was doing test trials for a drug manufactured by Apotex.  The results showed a loss of sustained efficacy.  And suggested increased liver fibrosis in her patients (children).  She believed that her patients should be told and did so.

(P. 95, “Selling Out”)  “As soon as Dr. Olivieri took action to inform both her patients and the authorities, Apotex terminated both trials in May 1996 and threatened her with legal action.”

(The use of the “justice system” to intimidate people is a VERY common tactic of the pharmaceutical-chemical-biotech corporations, the same tactic used on Percy Schmeiser (gmo canola), on a small dairy in Vermont that advertised its milk as the product of cows that are not injected with bovine growth hormone, the same as tried on me by the scientist from the Pest Management Regulatory Agency of Health Canada (responsible for the regulation of chemicals, and so on.)

P. 95 “At the same time Apotex began efforts to persuade medical administrators and patients in Toronto, as well as regulatory agencies and the scientific community that L1 was effective and safe and should be in wider use.  Apotex proposed a new treatment for .. patients in which annual liver biopsy, the test that had led to the identification of both of the unexpected risks of L1, would not be an integral part of the safety monitoring …”.

The University of Toronto did not stand behind Dr. Olivieri until they were embarrassed into doing so. “A wide coalition of individuals and groups coalesced” in support of Dr. Olivieri, including respected experts from Harvard and Oxford Universities.  There was media exposure.

Why did the U of Toronto not support its faculty?    “Selling Out“, P. 129:  “Corporate Connections and University Autonomy

Apotex’s $7 million investment of U of T’s Faculty of Pharmacy was considerable; however, if the biomedical centre that had initially been proposed in the early 1990s had materialized, the company’s stake in the medical sciences at the university would have been far greater.  The centre was shelved when the controversy between the company and Dr Olivieri over L1 became public …”

So now, look what’s happening at the University of Saskatchewan.

The University of Saskatchewan welcomes Apotex in spite of its well-known history.  The following is one announcement of the money going from Apotex to the U of S.  It’s not the full story.  You can google to find more examples.

http://announcements.usask.ca/news/archive/2008/09/university_of_s_62.html

September 23, 2008

University of Saskatchewan Pharmacy Education and Research Receives Boost

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – September 23, 2008

2008-09-13-PH&N

Students and faculty in the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Pharmacy gathered today in their pharmacy practice lab to thank Apotex Inc., Canada’s largest pharmaceutical company, for their recent gift to the college.

The $1.5 million donation from Apotex Inc., the largest single gift ever received by the college, will support three areas:

– a state-of-the-art pharmacy practice laboratory, which simulates a real-life pharmacy for undergraduate students, in the new Academic Health Science Centre

– additional research funding for faculty and graduate researchers

– increased graduate student support, providing crucial funding for continued study

“Our faculty members have achieved national and international distinction for their research activities in a variety of areas and we will build on that success by supporting new and innovative research ideas and projects,” said U of S Dean of Pharmacy and Nutrition Dennis Gorecki. “We have established a premiere graduate award to support outstanding students. And we can look to the future, with the completion of the Academic Health Science Centre and the Apotex Pharmacy Professional Practice Centre, to further enhance our undergraduate pharmacy program.”

“Apotex is a great Canadian business success story,” says Jack Kay, President of Apotex Inc. “but it does not stop there – giving back to our communities is just as important. This gift will help reduce the shortage of pharmacists in this country, and support great research and graduate work at the University of Saskatchewan. We are leaders in the support of pharmacy and we have committed over $16 million to all the Faculties of Pharmacy across Canada.”

The newly named Apotex Pharmacy Professional Practice Centre, currently located in the Thorvaldson Building on campus, will relocate to the university’s Academic Health Sciences Centre when it is complete. The Academic Health Sciences Centre will offer leading facilities to enable U of S health experts to teach, conduct research and practise in the community. In addition, the project will expand learning resources for students, healthcare instructors, clinical supervisors and practitioners across the province.

Located in the heart of Saskatoon, the University of Saskatchewan is one of the leading medical doctoral universities in Canada. With 58 degrees, diplomas and certificates in over 100 areas of study, the University is uniquely positioned in the areas of human, animal and plant studies. World-class research facilities, renowned faculty and award winning students make the U of S a leader in post-secondary education.

-30-

For more information, contact:

Lisa Green, Development Officer

College of Pharmacy & Nutrition

University of Saskatchewan

Telephone: (306) 966-5823

Email: lisa.green   AT   usask.ca

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(9)  THE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE THAT STARTED THE PANIC. AND QUESTION: ARE YOUNG PEOPLE SUSCEPTIBLE, OR DOES THE WORST DIET AND LIFE-STYLE (NOT AGE) MAKE IT APPEAR THAT “YOUNG PEOPLE” ARE SUSCEPTIBLE?

Note that the question of CONTEXT in the news coverage of this teen’s unfortunate death is largely (not completely) underplayed. It states “swine flu has now killed close to 100 people across Canada” without saying how many people die every year from “the flu”.

The article waits until the tenth paragraph to provide context: “Most victims – about 90 per cent – had underlying health conditions. “Death is a rare event, and it’s a particularly rare event in young people,” said Dr. Arlene King, …”

The teen who died was “healthy”. … I, seemingly healthy and active, suddenly came down with an active case of tuberculosis (diagnosed before it was contagious) 4 or 5 years ago.  Why did I suddenly get TB?

I recuperated, NOT by taking the drugs for TB, but in part by addressing an underlying cause that goes undetected by normal allopathic (western) medicine.

A naturopathic doctor tested and concluded that my immune system was most likely overloaded by mycotoxins, the product of overgrown fungal colonizations in my body, of which I was completely unaware.

Old-timers in our network may remember mycotoxins from the work on GMO crops.  GMO crops have a higher incidence of the fungus fusarium.  Grain with fusarium is not allowed into the feed chain for humans or for animals because of the deadly mycotoxins they produce.

The remedy for my particular case of TB was to combat the fungal colonizations, take an anti-fungal agent and change my diet:  eat absolutely nothing that will feed fungal growth (sugar); avoid foods that are known to sometimes carry spores; if eating nuts, heat them up first to kill spores. No alcohol because it, like sugar, feeds fungal growth. I used a book of diets to combat candida yeast infections.  Same thing.  I got lots of rest and religiously took sun (vitamin D) every day.  As close to full body exposure as possible.  At first I was so weak I could only walk a block.  But every day I went a little further. It took 6 months to return to full health, which was less than the prescribed time for the drug treatment, 9 months.  The drugs are expensive and have side effects, not the least of which is nausea to the point where people want to stop taking the drugs, and do.  Which aids the development of resistant strains.

NOTE:  I do not advocate that everyone with TB should not take the drugs.  I was in a unique situation:  early detection meant I wasn’t contagious and I had the luxery of time to experiment.  There needs to be more experimentation to determine a “best path” forward.

When the news report says “no underlying health conditions I wonder whether the medical profession knows this for certain?  Allopathic (western) practitioners would have said “no underlying health conditions” in my case.

Also, when it is stated that young people are “at risk” for H1N1 I wonder.  Young adults in our society should be in their prime, the least susceptible to disease.  Is AGE the criterion?  If they happen to be the largest demographic with the worst diet and lifestyle (too much sugar, fast food, processed food, and booze coupled with not enough sleep and too much sedentary time, not enough fresh air and exercise) then it is diet and lifestyle that make them susceptible to H1N1.  Age is coincidental.

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THE NEWSPAPER REPORT  (thanks to Levi)

Sandy I saw your internet research on shots and I just wanted you to read this.

Levi

TORONTO – The swine-flu death of an otherwise healthy hockey-playing teen came without warning and should serve as a lesson to parents to keep a close eye on their ill children, the boy’s grief-stricken father said Tuesday.

Paul Frustaglio said it took barely more than a day for the H1N1 flu virus to kill Evan – his “best friend” – who turned 13 last month, a fatality that public health officials called rare.

“He fell so quickly,” Frustaglio told The Canadian Press. “I was watching him. I was there when he died.”

Evan’s death Monday came on the same day health authorities across Canada began rolling out a vaccination program against H1N1.

The teen would not have been considered a priority for the flu shot because he wasn’t in a high-risk group.

The Grade 8 student began feeling ill over the weekend during a hockey tournament. His symptoms included fever and some vomiting.

His dad took him to a walk-in clinic on Sunday afternoon, where he was seen and sent home with advice to take over-the-counter medication.

The family felt confident it was a simple case of flu that would soon pass. That seemed to be happening. By Monday morning, his fever had broken and he was no longer nauseated. The family thought he was on the mend.

Evan asked to take a bath. Ten minutes later, as his horrified father watched, he suddenly went limp. His father tried CPR as paramedics rushed to the west-end home. “They worked on my son feverishly for over two hours,” Frustaglio said. “His heart wasn’t responding. The disease had taken over his heart.”

The tragedy follows the death Saturday of a 10-year-old eastern Ontario girl from H1N1. Vanetia Warner of Cornwall, Ont., was sick for several days before her condition rapidly deteriorated. She died Saturday in Ottawa. It was not immediately known if she had any underlying medical conditions.

The swine flu has now killed close to 100 people across Canada. Ontario has had close to 30 deaths, six of them children, since April.

Three more deaths in British Columbia over the past week raised that province’s total to 12.

Most victims – about 90 per cent – had underlying health conditions.

“Death is a rare event, and it’s a particularly rare event in young people,” said Dr. Arlene King, Ontario’s medical officer of health.

Why the same strain of virus can cause mild symptoms in one healthy person and be lethal in another is a mystery, although its newness may be a factor.

“We don’t have all of the answers,” King said. “The key thing for all of us is to try to prevent ourselves from getting infected to begin with.”

Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s medical officer of health, said Evan had “mild asthma,” something his father disputed. “Evan didn’t have asthma; he had been prescribed puffers a few years ago when he had a cold,” Frustaglio said.  A spokeswoman for Toronto public health later said the boy did not have asthma and the earlier statement had resulted from some confusion concerning his medical records.

Mary Margaret Crapper said Evan had no underlying health issues that public health was aware of.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty expressed sympathy for the family, calling it a “terrible tragedy.” The province, he said, was doing everything it could to provide a vaccination program as quickly as possible. “I continue to have confidence in our public health officials,” McGuinty said. “They’re making the right decisions, getting the vaccine into the communities as quickly as they can and respecting the order of priorities that they’ve put in place.”

Frustaglio refused to criticize the walk-in clinic, saying he was in too much grief to think about what might have been done differently.

However, he did warn parents against complacency or thinking that patients with swine flu will show symptoms for many days before deteriorating gradually.

“This didn’t even take a day and a half – it hit my son within 10 minutes,” he said. “If any one of your children has any kind of flu-like symptoms, please don’t take your eyes off of them. Make sure you get the medical attention you need and, if at any time, they don’t seem right, especially with their breathing, just get medical attention.”

Evan’s family began taking Tamiflu after his death as a precaution and immediately informed Evan’s teammates of what had happened so they, too, could seek medical attention.

Evan is survived by his brother Will, 10, and his mom, Anne-Marie, who was too distressed to speak about her loss. “I’m really having a hard time with this,” she said.

Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews said the “very sad case” should impress on people the need to get inoculated. “It doesn’t protect just you, it protects all the people around you,” Matthews said.

Evans’ death sparked an outpouring of sympathy and tributes on Facebook and YouTube, with numerous pictures and even a tribute video.

One Facebook writer said she hoped the tragedy would heighten awareness of the dangers of H1N1. “I feel for your loss; my heart aches for your sorrow,” Tracey Parr wrote. “Hope Evan’s passing will heighten the awareness of this flu, and preventative measures needed to be taken.”

Frustaglio called Evan a “wonderful” boy who was “full of spirit.” His son had switched this year to the Hill Academy north of Toronto – a small school with an emphasis on athletics – because “it was all about hockey.”

“My son is gone. He was here just 24 hours ago and now he’s not here. He was 13. He didn’t deserve to die,” he said. “Whenever you hear stories like this in the press, I say to myself, ‘Oh my god, I can never imagine how I could ever live without one of my kids,’ and now I’m asking myself that question.”

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(10)  OCT 7TH EMAIL ON H1N1

For the first email on H1N1, click on:   2009-10-07 I want parents to know this about vaccinations, mercury, Rumsfeld, and money devoid of conscience   (Rumsfeld’s connection to Tamiflu)

The CONTENTS are as follows:

(1)  FOX NEWS OCT 6TH, WHY YOU SHOULD NOT VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN AGAINST THE FLU

(2)  UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY, DEPT OF MEDICINE,  HOW MERCURY CAUSES BRAIN NEURON DEGENERATION

(3)  ROBERT F KENNEDY JR ON LINK BETWEEN VACCINATIONS (THIMERASOL, MERCURY) AND AUTISM.

(4)  PERSPECTIVE ON SWINE FLU, LIKELIHOOD OF DEATH

(5)  DONALD RUMSFIELD’S (BUSH ADMINISTRATION) FINANCIAL LINK TO THE FLU VACCINE

It’s devilish trying to find “the truth”!

An adjuvant is “a pharmacological agent added to a drug to increase or aid its effect.”  It includes preservatives.  Ethyl mercury (trade name thimerasol) is used as a preservative in some vaccines, as are other agents foreign to our body.

If you must get the swine flu vaccination, especially if it is being given to children, I would recommend that you at least ask for a list of the adjuvants in the vaccine.  Know what each of the adjuvants does.

Mercury is a heavy metal.  Heavy metals cause serious deterioration in neural pathways in the brain.  The banning of lead in gasoline and in paint are examples of efforts to prevent brain damage in humans by lowering exposure to heavy metals.  As I understand, mercury is more poisonous to the brain than lead and other heavy metals.

Increasing numbers of vaccinations mean increasing levels of heavy metals in the body, IF ethyl mercury is an adjuvant in the vaccinations.  Mercury is not the only problematic adjuvant, just the best-known.  Robert F Kennedy Jr makes the case for the connection between mercury in vaccinations and increases in autism.  (See #9 below for alternative interpretations.)

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(11) RESPONSES FROM YOU TO OCT 7TH EMAIL

A.  FROM ASHLEIGH, CITATIONS TO DISPROVE THE LINK BETWEEN AUTISM AND THIMERASOL

B.  FROM PAUL, UNDERSTANDING THE RISK

C.  FROM DOUG, MANIPULATED RESEARCH

D.  FROM RUTH’S DAUGHTER, THIMERASOL DOESN’T CAUSE AUTISM (WITH CITATIONS)

E.  FROM SHIV, FOREIGN PROTEIN CONSTITUENTS IN VACCINES LEAD TO THE VARIOUS DISEASES, MORE SO THAN THE MERCURY, ALUMINUM

A.  FROM ASHLEIGH, CITATIONS TO DISPROVE THE LINK BETWEEN AUTISM AND THIMERASOL

With thanks to Ashleigh Mattern:

Hi there,

I received your email at editor  AT   thesheaf.com, but I am writing this letter as a concerned individual, not as the editor of a newspaper.

Please, before you use your reputation and connection to a respectable political party to spread information, make sure that information is correct. Here are some additional links on the topics of vaccination.

From article “Autism prevalence” by Dr. Stephen Novella: “Autism rates continued to rise at a steady rate, essentially killing the hypothesis that thimerosal is a significant contributor to autism.” http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1049

From article “More evidence for vaccine safety” also by Novella: “The BBC reports today of a National Health Service study that shows that autism rates are consistent at about 1% among all age groups. If true, this has profound implications for the now-discredited notion that autism rates are rising and that this rise is linked to vaccines.” http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=940

The following is from “Mercury Rising: Exposing the Vaccine-Autism Myth” on http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-06-20#feature

“A Vast Government Conspiracy?

So what do vaccine opponents make of the evidence against the vaccine-autism hypothesis? Mostly, they assert a vast conspiracy propagated by government and industry. It is proposed that government agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in conjunction with scientists with varying ties to the pharmaceutical industry, have gone to great lengths to suppress evidence supporting a link between vaccines and autism. Indeed, this was the main point of Robert Kennedy Jr.’s Rolling Stone article. Kennedy and others claim that a conspiracy does exist and was formally discussed at a top-secret meeting in Simpsonwood, Georgia in 2000.

One hotly discussed result of this meeting is the purported doctoring of data by Thomas Verstraeten who, according to the vaccine opponents, presented data supporting the autism-vaccine link but later altered the data to support the opposite conclusion because he was, by then, employed by a large pharmaceutical company. Verstraeten has denied such manipulation and the data he reports support the conclusions reached by a number of other independent researchers.15 The problem is that the only evidence of doctored data sets, dubious activity at the Simpsonwood meeting, and assorted cover-ups seems to come from a small number of zealous vaccine opponents who can offer no corroborating evidence to support the hearsay.”

There is also some great information about the swine flu, etc., in the article “Swine Flu Vaccine Fearmongering” here: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-09-23#feature

As you have asked me and the countless other people on your mailing list to consider some new ideas, I urge you to read and consider these links.

Thanks so much for your time,

…. Thanks Ashleigh.

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B.  FROM PAUL, UNDERSTANDING THE RISK

I am an employee of an organization that, in fact, does promote flu vaccination for at risk persons and has done so for many years.  There will be risk involved in virtually everything we do.  It is important, but also difficult, for individuals to try to understand and manage risk.

It is valuable to question most practices including those done in the name of public health.  It is valuable to question the information provided by any organization.  I am involved in issues related to tobacco use and I expect am known for questioning much of what is said and done under the guise of protecting health.  Bill C-32, passed just this week, is a good example of witnessing statements that were, I suggest, inaccurate, even though the basic purpose and general outcome of the Bill may have been positive.

Flu vaccine does contain mercury, and this does mean there is a theoretical possibility of health issues resulting from it.  The goal is certainly to stop the need for additive mercury but as yet this is not the case.  Fewer vaccines now contain this additive.

We can only respond to what we understand at the moment.  The good news, to use that phrase, is that the form of mercury resulting from this intake is excreted very quickly in children in comparison to other forms of the element and methods of intake.  It is also noteworthy that some of the increased costs associated with its removal are real and not a total fabrication of industry.  This is perhaps less important to middle class America but is a concern for children in many countries.

I am not suggesting that increased pressure in Canada to remove this preservative may be disadvantageous but the question remains as to the relative risk associated with the use of the current vaccine.  We would wish that all children have very good diets, are physically active and live in a positive environment (and personally I hope that will exclude nuclear energy as a major power source, for example) but we also appreciate that not to be the case.  For some our immune systems are what they are especially for children.

I think I am not overly naïve about large industry but at the same time I am content to know that rabies protection is available when I do run with the wolves.

Thanks again for all of your information,

Paul Van Loon

paul.vanloon   AT   sk.lung.ca

Health Educator

Lung Association of Saskatchewan

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C.  FROM DOUG, MANIPULATED RESEARCH

Doug’s point is the same one as made in the Olivieri case, where the drug manufacturer “proposed a new treatment .. in which annual liver biopsy, the test that had led to the identification of both of the unexpected risks .. would not be an integral part of the safety monitoring .. “.

He writes:

Yes, very similar story, but make sure not to get fooled into thinking it is only the mercury that is the problem. The immune challenges created by non-mercury vaccines can cause some horrible issues too.

Like most people don’t know that when a safety profile is done for a vaccine, it is NOT compared to a saline placebo (other drugs are compared to placebos for safety tolerance), but is compared to another vaccine with a “known” safety profile. So in essence, there is NEVER a control group receiving placebo.

Sheri Tenpenny , MD is a MD who uses actual CDC (Center for Disease Control) documents and med journal studies to go over a lot of the myths about vaccine “effectiveness” let alone even “safety”. It’s a great DVD for the science that is involved. AND she used to be head ER doctor at a huge Ohio hospital and health region.

http://www.realityzone.com/vaccinescdc.html

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

D.  FROM RUTH’S DAUGHTER, THIMERASOL DOESN’T CAUSE AUTISM (WITH CITATIONS)

Hello Sandra:

I forwarded your information to my daughter, who is National Health Reporter for CBC Radio.  This is her reply; thought you would like to have it.

Best regards,

Ruth

Hi Mom,

I never underestimate the influence of the big dollars of pharma in covering up harms. But the thimerosal/autism link has been definitively de-bunked for some years. You’ll see the statement from the Canadian Pediatric Society below, and I’ve bolded the most easily understood, convincing part of this. But still the “theory” about thimerosal and autism continues, and as a result there have been huge outbreaks of sometimes deadly diseases (including measles) in Europe and North America, because parents have  been frightened off from getting their children vaccinated.  So this should be shared and distributed to people who are still circulating the outdated and erroneous information. Not saying thimerosal isn’t bad, just that it doesn’t cause autism!

Love,

(Your daughter)

THIMEROSAL-CONTAINING VACCINES

Thimerosal, a compound that contains ethyl mercury, has been used as an additive to biological therapies and vaccines because of its effect in preventing bacterial contamination, particularly in opened, multidose vials. In 1997, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Modernization Act called for a review and assessment of the risk of all mercury-containing foods and drugs. This action stimulated the United States Public Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics to issue a joint statement in 1999 (18) calling for the removal of thimerosal from vaccines. This action was undertaken as a precautionary measure; there was no evidence that ethyl mercury was harmful at the doses being administered to infants.

Of note, at that time in Canada, in contrast to the United States, the regularly used infant immunization product (pentavalent DTaPIPVHib vaccine) did not contain thimerosal. Only two infant thimerosal-containing vaccines were used – hepatitis B vaccine and influenza vaccine; the latter was not administered to infants younger than six months of age, the age/size of infant of concern. Hence, any concerns about excessive ethyl mercury exposure in young Canadian infants were without foundation. Since 1999, several studies (19-23) have been conducted to evaluate the safety of thimerosal in vaccines. These studies were reviewed in detail by the IOM (10) in 2001 and 2004 with a focus on autism. The IOM Committee concluded that the evidence favoured rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism, as well as MMR vaccine and autism (10). In the absence of experimental or human evidence that vaccination affects metabolic, developmental, immune, or other physiological or molecular mechanisms that are related causally to development of autism, the IOM concluded that the hypotheses generated to date are theoretical. In a separate critical review (24) of published original data, a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ASD was not shown. Epidemiological studies that supported a link demonstrated significant design flaws that invalidated conclusions of these studies (10,24). Additional data from Canada published since 2004 also showed no association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism (25).

An important factor to consider is what has happened to autism rates since the removal of thimerosal from vaccines. In studies from Canada (25), Denmark (20) and the United States (26) the rates of autism have continued to increase despite removal of thimerosal from vaccines.

Thus, the evidence is in, and the assessment of purported causality is clear. The MMR vaccine and immunization with thimerosal-containing vaccines are not causally associated with, nor are they a cause of, autism or ASD. There is mounting evidence (27) that ASD has a strong genetic component – a very plausible cause for the disorder.

REFERENCES

1.    Collet JP, MacDonald N, Cashman N, Pless R. Monitoring signals for vaccine safety: The assessment of individual adverse event reports by an expert advisory committee. Advisory Committee on Causality Assessment. Bull World Health Organ 2000;78:178-85.

2.    Folb PI, Bernatowska E, Chen R, et al. A global perspective on vaccine safety and public health: The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety. Am J Public Health 2004;94:1926-31.

3.    Canadian Paediatric Society, Infectious Diseases and Immunization Committee [Principal author: J Embree]. Measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and autistic spectrum disorder: A hypothesis only. Paediatr Child Health 2001;6:387-9.

4.    Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, et al. Ileal-lymphoidnodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 1998;351:637-41.

5.    Peltola H, Patja A, Leinikki P, Valle M, Davidkin I, Paunio M. No evidence for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine-associated inflammatory bowel disease or autism in a 14-year prospective study. Lancet 1998;351:1327-8.

6.    Madsen KM. Hviid A, Vestergaard M, et al. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med 2002;347:1477-82.

7.    Dales L, Hammer SJ, Smith NJ. Time trends in autism and in MMR immunization coverage in California. JAMA 2001;285:1183-5.

8.    Kaye JA, del Mar Melero-Montes M, Jick H. Mumps, measles and rubella vaccine and the incidence of autism recorded by general practitioners: A time trend analysis. BMJ 2001;322:460-3.

9.    Taylor B, Miller E, Lingam R, Andrews N, Simmons A, Stowe J. Measles, mumps and rubella vaccination and bowel problems or developmental regression in children with autism: Population study. BMJ 2002;324:393-6.

10.   Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism. Washington DC: National Academy Press, 2004.

11.   Demicheli V, Jefferson T, Rivetti A, Price D. Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2005;(4):CD004407.

12.   Uhlmann V, Martin CM, Sheils O, et al. Potential viral pathogenic mechanism for new variant inflammatory bowel disease. Mol Pathol 2002;55:84-90.

13.   Martin CM, Uhlmann V, Killalea A, Sheils O, O’Leary JJ. Detection of measles virus in children with ileo-colonic lymphoid nodular hyperplasia, enterocolitis and developmental disorder. Mol Psychiatry 2002;7 Suppl 2:S47-8.

14.   Kawashima H, Mori T, Kashiwagi Y, Takekuma K, Hoshika A, Wakefield A. Detection and sequencing of measles virus from peripheral mononuclear cells from patients with inflammatory bowel disease and autism. Dig Dis Sci 2000;45:723-9.

15.   D’Souza Y, Fombonne E, Ward BJ. No evidence of persisting measles virus in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from children with autism spectrum disorder. Pediatrics 2006;118:1664-75. (Erratum in 2006;118:2608).

16.   Singh VK, Jensen RL. Elevated levels of measles antibodies in children with autism. Pediatr Neurol 2003;28:292-4.

17.   Murch SH, Anthony A, Casson DH, et al. Retraction of an interpretation. Lancet 2004;363:750.

18.   Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Thimerosal in vaccines: A joint statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 1999;48:563-5.

19.   Verstraeten T, Davis RL, DeStefano F, et al. Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: A two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases. Pediatrics 2003;112:1039-48. (Erratum in 2004;113:184).

20.   Hviid A, Stellfeld M, Wohlfahrt J, Melbye M. Association between thimerosal-containing vaccine and autism. JAMA 2003;290:1763-6.

21.   Andrews N, Miller E, Grant A, Stowe J, Osborne V, Taylor B. Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: A retrospective cohort study in the United Kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics 2004;114:584-91.

22.   Heron J, Golding J, ALSPAC Study Team. Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: A prospective cohort study in the United Kingdom does not support a causal association.

23.   Madsen KM, Lauritsen MB, Pedersen CB, et al. Thimerosal and the occurrence of autism: Negative ecological evidence from Danish population-based data. Pediatrics 2003;112:604-6.

24.   Parker SK, Schwartz B, Todd J, Pickering LK. Thimerosalcontaining vaccines and autistic spectrum disorder: A critical review of published original data. Pediatrics 2004;114:793-804. Pediatrics. (Erratum in 2005;115:200).

25.   Fombonne E, Zakarian R, Bennett A, Meng L, McLean-Heywood D. Pervasive developmental disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Prevalence and links with immunizations. Pediatrics 2006;118:e139-50.

26.   California Department of Developmental Services. Autism <http://www.dds.ca.gov/Autism/Autism_main.cfm> (Version current at April 17, 2007 ).

27.   The Autism Genome Project Consortium; Szatmari P, Paterson AD, Zwaigenbaum L, et al. Mapping autism risk loci using genetic linkage and chromosomal rearrangements. Nat Genet 2007;39:319-28.

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E.  FROM SHIV, FOREIGN PROTEIN CONSTITUENTS IN VACCINES LEAD TO THE VARIOUS DISEASES (MORE THAN THE MERCURY, ALUMINUM)

Bear in mind that more than mercury, aluminium, and other toxic materials it is the foreign protein constituents in vaccines that lead to various auto-immune diseases, such as autism and other afflictions.

Shiv Chopra, Author,

CORRUPT TO THE CORE: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower

www.shivchopra.com

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(12) WHAT TO DO RE SWINE FLU

A. A FOOD SYSTEM THAT KILLS, THE ROLE OF “FACTORY FARMS” IN THE EVOLUTION OF SWINE AND BIRD (AVIAN) FLU.  REMEMBER ALL THOSE CHICKENS THAT WERE KILLED IN B.C.?

http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=48

Also, a fact sheet at:

http://www.beyondfactoryfarming.org/files/swineflu.pdf

B. SIMPLE STEPS

(attributed to Dr. Vinay Goyal,  MBBS,DRM,DNB (Intensivist and Thyroid specialist), having clinical experience of over 20 years.  He has worked in institutions like Hinduja Hospital, Bombay Hospital, Saifee Hospital, Tata Memorial, etc.  Presently, he is heading our Nuclear Medicine Department and Thyroid clinic at Riddhivinayak Cardiac and Critical Centre, Malad (W).

Also attributed to “Dr. Oz”.

The only portals of entry are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature, it’s almost impossible to avoid coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is.

While-you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications).

2. “Hands-off-the-face” approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless you want to eat or bathe.)

3.*Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine or Hydrogen Peroxide if you don’t trust salt).  *H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/ nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In away, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthyindividual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don’t underestimatethis simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.

4.Similar to 3 above, *clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water, or hydrogen peroxide. *Not everybody may be good atJala Neti or Sutra Neti (very good Yoga asanas to clean nasalcavities), but *blowing the nose softly once a day and swabbing bothnostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effectivein bringing down viral population.*

5.*Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C (Amla and other citrus fruits). *If you have to supplement with VitaminC tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.

6.*Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can. *Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.

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C.  FROM DENIS HALL, BE PRO-ACTIVE

“Remedial Health Care Folks” are physicians, surgeons, dentists, physio therapists, nurses, technicians, hospital administrators, etc. who have vested interests in people being sick.   The health care people make lots of money when people/patients buy into the delusion that they – the remedial health-care people – can fix what people/patients have let go wrong with themselves.   Other than for accidents and inherited disorders, some authorities estimate that at least 80% of patients in our health-care systems have let themselves get sick because they wrongly think the health-care system can remediate their health status.

Each of us must be pro-active and look after ourselves.  Either that or become victims of the health care system full of endless referrals, line ups, hospital stays, and prescriptions like we have no other life and as if the public purse is bottomless.

The current H1N1 flu pandemic scare is an excellent example of the need for each person to be pro-active about their own personal health care.  Each of us needs to make sure that we make our own personal fitness a priority so that when illness, injury, emergency or in this case a pandemic strikes, our body is equipped and prepared to fight.

In this vein of thinking, a priority first step is to immediately institute quality and compulsory daily physical education and health programs in schools, and to have such programs headed by degreed physical education and health-care educators.  Parents and students should be hounding educational leaders including school trustees, administrators and Ministry of Education officials in this regard.

Denis Hall

Retired Teacher/Principal

Director, YAS Sports Schools Inc.

Active Men’s Plus Member, Saskatoon YMCA

(Denis:  thanks.  May I add specifically also that ” health-care educators” need to somehow teach so effectively that young people WANT to change their diets?  Sugar-laden drinks and artificial food weaken the immune system.)

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(13)  AT THE UNIVERSITY: IT’S NOT INNOVATION, IT’S HYPED STATUS QUO.

It is natural that we have different view-points; our experiences are different.

However, finding “the truth” as far as it can be known, is very difficult in a world where corporate interests buy science, administrators and government regulators.  All of whom would deny the charge, I suppose!  Never mind there is ample evidence to support my statement.

I do not have trust in “the authorities” because too many of them are products of a system that has lost its curiosity. People are obedient to the status quo because that is where the money is.  The money is coming from drug lords, the pharmaceutical corporations.

Disease rates are going higher (diabetes, cancer, obesity, autoimmune disease, now tuberculosis (recent reports of TB in First Nations communities in Manitoba), and so on.  “The medicare system” has got to be challenged.  Numbers of people are doing that, Dr. Marcia Angell, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Dr. Shiv Chopra, etc.

If the system takes more and more money but doesn’t deliver results there is something very wrong. An old theme of mine:  the medicare system should be evaluated in terms of health outcomes.  The incidence of diabetes should be going down, not up. The incidence of Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s Disease should be going down. The incidence of cancer (the number of people who get cancer) should be going down, not up – – and it would be, if we took three-quarters of the money out of drug “innovation” and did true innovation to get rid of known carcinogens and teratogens, etc.

“Innovation” is heralded as more drugs or more chemicals or more gmo’s or more industry money in universities and more vaccinations. That is not innovation; it is maintenance of “business as usual”, the status quo.  It is only hyped as innovation.

There is a serious and unacceptable undermining of “science”.  Large corporate interests “buy” science and they buy government regulators.  We have seen example after example.  There are court convictions.

These known-to-be-corrupt corporations buy their way into the universities where they debase the knowledge base.  We come to the point where you don’t know which “science” to trust.

There are very good people doing very good work.  We need to get rid of the bad apples and change the system.  The Governments need to fund the universities; it is not their (our) business to fund the corporations.  We need to be able to trust science.

Values lie at the base of the de-basing.

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(14)  “INTRODUCTION” AT THE END.  SUMMARY.

I can’t thank you enough for the thoughtful input on H1N1 (response to email sent Oct 7th). I hope I have not missed any of it.

It is a challenge to find “the truth”.  I leave it to you to find yours.  I hope this will be helpful to some.

My view-point on H1N1 and healthcare is influenced by my experience with another contagious disease.  I was diagnosed with an active case of tuberculosis 4 or 5 years ago, BUT in an early stage BEFORE it became contagious. I was curious, experimented and learned a lot.

Before my experience with tuberculosis, and after, we have circulated information on various cases of the terrible harm done knowingly by pharmaceutical corporations (Big Pharma).

The laws that create corporations are badly in need of change; they are our laws, we are the responsible parties. The changes will be welcomed by us, and by many in the corporate world.  It is not as though individual employees all like their corporate behavior; it is a way of making a living (not to deny the sometimes role of greed and lack of ethics (courage)!). The system is improperly structured; it does not serve the needs of our society. And so it will be changed.

My statements regarding the pharmaceutical industry are based on a cumulative history that is in the public record.  You cannot divorce their deeds and values from their money.

This email demonstrates that the university-corporate “partnerships” (in general and specifically in medicine and pharmacy in this example) are a wrong-headed approach that citizens need to change.

We are the enablers of the corporate takeover of the universities (if this is a democracy); and we are the funders in ways most of us do not know about.

Citizens are mobilizing to re-assert their set of values on their publicly-owned institutions.  Hallelujah!  There is hope!

/Sandra

2009-11-18 NUKE: Look before you leap. Nuclear / U of S, The Sheaf.

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Nuclear, Take back the University  No Responses »
Nov 182009
 

http://www.thesheaf.com/opinions/2009/11/18/look-before-you-leap/

by on November 18, 2009 in Opinions

MARY JEAN HANDE
Opinions Writer

Many of you have probably heard about the potential development of nuclear power in Saskatchewan.

After an extensive province-wide consultation process this summer, conducted by the Uranium Development Partnership Committee, an overwhelming 84 per cent of Saskatchewan citizens opposed the reactor. Most people opposed the creation of dangerous nuclear waste, the disposal of nuclear waste in our province and the high costs of nuclear power. They expressed interest in developing more renewable forms of energy.
Nuclear Reactor
While it is clear that the vocal majority in Saskatchewan are not in favour of nuclear development, there seem to be mixed feelings about a research reactor or commercial isotope production here on the University of Saskatchewan campus.

A lot of the interest has to do with our government. Brad Wall wants to go full speed ahead with nuclear development despite public opposition and, indeed, despite what the UDP (a committee created by his own government) recommended. He got his foot in the door even before the consultation process was completed. How? By submitting a proposal to the federal government for a research reactor, using the global isotope shortage as an excuse.

The UDP clearly states that the main purpose for a research reactor on campus would be to train personnel for a large-scale, power generating nuclear reactor. The question must then be posed: if the main purpose of building a research reactor is to train people to work at a nuclear power reactor, and yet we don’t want a Canada Deuterium Uranium reactor, why would we build one?

Furthermore, the UDP discourages the construction of a research reactor for isotope production because isotope production cannot generate enough money to justify the construction of the facility.

In other words, it is completely economically inviable.

One could conclude that the U of S would have to pick up the tab.

There are already tongues wagging on campus about the ever-increasing operating budget of the synchrotron and the impact its cost is having on other academic programs. To make things worse, by the time a nuclear facility is up and running for isotope production, the isotope crisis will be over.

If the government and university were really serious about cost effectiveness and timely production of medical isotopes they would be looking at a particle accelerator (such as the one proposed by the Tri-University Meson Facility at the University of British Columbia) instead of a nuclear reactor facility. However, it looks like Brad Wall has been able to cloud the issue by capitalizing on public concern about the medical isotope crisis.

Another reason why people seem to be in favour of a research reactor, as opposed to a Canada Deuterium Uranium reactor, is because they believe that it will attract leading scholars, scientists and professionals and result in a Nuclear Centre of Excellence for Saskatchewan. Although this is very possible, Shannon Dyck, a student in the School of Environment and Sustainability at the U of S and former USSU executive member, warns that marrying scholarly research with industry has a number of implications for post-secondary education.

However, she points out that since the provincial government and the university are so intent on combining the energy sector with post-secondary education, why not focus on transitioning away from non-renewable energy by placing more resources into renewable energy research?

Saskatchewan’s wind and solar energy capabilities remain vastly underdeveloped and pale in comparison to Germany’s renewable energy sector. To date, windmills in Germany provide power and electricity to 10 million homes and employ over 84,000 people in the renewable industry. Saskatchewan, on the other hand, has even more potential for this kind of renewable production, but harnesses a mere fraction of possible wind power.

The U of S has the opportunity to lead this type of research and development. We should capitalize on that.

2009-11-15 Corporatized universities devalue education

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Take back the University  No Responses »
Nov 152009
 

Corporatized universities devalue education

Howard Woodhouse

2009/11/15 04:30:00   The Toronto Star

Governments, corporations and most university administrators regard Canadian universities as “engines of economic growth.” Their function is no longer the search for truth, but to increase global competitiveness.

Critical questions about this new orthodoxy are rarely raised. The goal of education, after all, is the advancement and dissemination of shared knowledge, whereas the goal of the corporate market is the maximization of stockholder value. Unless these opposing value systems are recognized, the distinctive features of education are subjugated to the demands of the market.

Some university presidents have expressed skepticism toward the market model of education. Several years ago, Colin Starnes, then president and vice-chancellor of University of King’s College, argued that underfunding by the federal government over a 20-year period (amounting to 30 per cent on a per student basis) combined with increasing student enrollment (more than 60 per cent) had resulted in “a rising tide” engulfing universities.

Two related currents in this tide particularly concerned Starnes: The pressures and benefits of a vastly increased research agenda had, in turn, created a new environment in which undergraduate education was being “privatized” in the form of a dramatic increase in tuition fees. The distinctive features of openness, accessibility and quality were under threat. The net result was that the Canadian university system was becoming much more like that in the United States.

The pace of privatization has since increased, including further increases in tuition fees. The federal government would now have to invest an additional $4 billion a year in universities just to return to the funding levels of the early 1980s.

The Innovation Agenda was first introduced by the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien in the late 1990s. The panel which designed the initial report comprised CEOs of private banks and corporations in addition to the president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. Not a single faculty member was included on the panel of “experts.” The report defined innovation in exclusively economic terms as the overriding need for universities “to bring new goods and services to market.”

As a result, the federal government required universities to produce research that primarily serves the needs of the market. Matching funds for such research must be found from the provinces and the private sector. Universities and provincial governments have been forced to comply with an Innovation Agenda that undermines the institutional autonomy of universities.

The explicit goal of the Innovation Agenda was to have Canada move to fifth place in the world – from its position as 14th – in research support in order to increase economic productivity. But the agenda has failed to achieve its goal. Canada has not moved into the top five countries in the OECD, our capacity to compete in the global market is much the same as it was, and universities remain chronically underfunded.

A reasoned response would be for university presidents to call for a reassessment of the Innovation Agenda together with a large increase in government funding. But the presidents of the so-called “top five” universities (Toronto, British Columbia, Alberta, McGill and Montreal) have done the opposite.

They want a larger share of existing research money and graduate education for themselves. They believe that other universities should focus on undergraduate education, which is seen as a lesser activity. Indeed, University of Toronto president David Naylor has called for more “differentiation” among universities – just the kind of system which Starnes and others have been decrying.

In order to counteract this trend, faculty, students and the general public must remind governments of their responsibility to fund the entire university system as the only place in society where the critical search for knowledge takes precedence.

Howard Woodhouse is professor of educational foundations and co-director of the University of Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit. His book, Selling Out: Academic Freedom and the Corporate Market, was published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in October.

2009-11-08 George Soros, No alternative to a new world architecture, Japan Times

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?  No Responses »
Nov 082009
 

Twice I set this page up, complete with text.   But when I try to post it to the blog,  it disappears. 

I don’t have time right now to find a different source for the news report.  I found the Japan Times 2009 Soros op-ed by googling ”   No alternative to a new world architecture  “.

2009-11-07 Tuberculosis The Forgotten Disease – Part 6 – Winnipeg Free Press

 Tuberculosis  No Responses »
Nov 072009
 

Winnipeg Free Press – PRINT EDITION

By: Jen Skerritt

7/11/2009

Aside from improving housing, experts say there are a number of things that would help reduce the number of TB cases:

1) Treat people close to home

Experts such as Dr. Michael Gardam say there’s no reason for infectious TB patients to be flown to urban hospitals from remote communities for treatment. Other provinces, Ontario among them, don’t medevac patients — TB experts in Toronto communicate with nursing station staff via phone and email and help manage TB cases from start to finish.

Gardam’s Toronto clinic has used that model to help communities such as Sioux Lookout. He says it works well in alleviating some of the historical fear associated with the disease. Getting patients started with drug treatment as soon as possible is key, he said, and most infectious patients can stay at home and wear a mask instead of being hospitalized.

The only patients hospitalized at his clinic are difficult drug-resistant cases and patients who are under court order to finish treatment.

“It’s not ideal, but it’s better than shipping them to another community,” said Gardam, the director of infection prevention and control at Toronto’s University Health Network, the country’s largest research hospital.

“Why the hell does someone from Sioux Lookout want to come to Toronto?”

2) Encourage more patients with ‘sleeping’ TB to take medication.

While patients with infectious TB can’t refuse medical treatment since they are a risk to the public, patients with sleeping TB aren’t obligated to complete drug therapy. The drug treatment for both phases of the disease takes months to complete and comes with side-effects.

“That is one of the biggest challenges,” said Dr. William Libich, medical officer with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. “Right now, we see contacts that have refused therapy and have gone on to develop TB.”

Doctors don’t know which patients will develop active TB disease. Certain risk factors — HIV and diabetes among them — increase a patient’s likelihood of getting sick from TB. For that reason, researchers are working on a shorter treatment for sleeping TB.

3) Improve TB drugs

Dr. Dick Menzies, director of the respiratory division at the McGill University Health Centre, is testing whether four months of the anti-TB drug rifampin are as effective a treatment for sleeping TB as the drug that must be taken for nine months.

He said shortening the time it takes to complete the medication could help encourage more patients with sleeping TB to take the drugs.

“Even four months (of treatment) isn’t great. It’s a long time,” Menzies said. “It’s hard to get people through a week of antibiotics.”

Because the disease typically manifests itself among marginalized people, Menzies said pharmaceutical companies haven’t taken a keen interest in researching better medications. There is little financial incentive for major drug manufacturers to spend money on research since the vast majority
of the world’s TB patients live in poor, developing countries.

4) Combat racism

University of Saskatchewan TB researcher Paul Hackett said a lot of the problems in First Nations communities, including diseases such as TB and diabetes, are the fallout from decades of failed colonial policies. The problems stem from the federal government forcing First Nations people to abandon their traditions and live on reserves and in residential schools. The repercussions are huge, Hackett said, but he cautioned that government spending is a simple answer to very complicated social problem. He said the province needs to combat racism toward First Nations people if there’s ever going to be a true solution.

Hackett met a man in Cross Lake who spent a lot of time in treatment for TB as a boy after he contracted the disease in a residential school — a traumatic, defining event he suspects many Canadians would tell him “to get over.”

“There’s an undercurrent in the population that says, ‘well, they get free education, free this, free that, they don’t pay taxes and they should stop whining about what happened with the treaties, 100 years or so ago,’ ” he said.

“You’re telling him to get over a defining moment in his life, and yet they wouldn’t say that to other people. They’re very quick to tell people to get over huge issues that aren’t that old.”

jen.skerritt@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 A9

1 Comment

Posted by: morebs

November 7, 2009 at 8:40 AM

While Mr. Hackett says that it is a “complicated social problem” with “huge repercussions,” the solution he offers is “the province needs to combat racism.” Simple enough solution, don’t you think? Maybe something was lost in the translation.

However, the solution is indeed quite simple… its called EQUALITY. How to achieve it might be more problematic and involve more than a provincial government. A logical starting point is in the “legislated racism” of instruments like the Indian Act, the reserve system, etc. But I submit that pressure for reform must come come from ALL quarters. One’s income, lifestyle, ancestry, religion, housing situation, shoe size, etc., etc. … its all irrelevant. A genuine personal belief in equality is what counts. We can’t, and shouldn’t, continue to blame someone else [like “the government” for instance.]  If one needs to blame someone, then blame can lie with all who don’t promote equality!

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