Sandra Finley

2007-07-09 Water there, not here. Water then, not now.

 Water  No Responses »
Jul 092007
 

TO:  Golder & Assoc.  Engineering Co.   re Proposed Highgate Dam, Battlefords, North Sask River

Subject: Last one: High Gate: sent to Golder (7)

Dear Phil,

There needs to be acknowledgement and assessment of the associated increase in chemical (pesticide) load on the river from run-off,  whenever more irrigation is being promoted.

I sent the following email into my network today. It includes a newspaper report from Lloydminster last year. People are getting increasingly nervous about the chemicals we are putting into land, water, air, and food.

(sign off deleted)

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

 

China is slammed for selling poisoned food to us.

2007-07-06 China’s foul waters, Washington Post Foreign Service

Some of it is fish.

Source of the problem:

“The fish are being raised in a country whose waterways are an ongoing environmental problem, tainted by sewage, pesticides, heavy metals and other pollutants.”

How is it that we say “tut, tut” or “stupid, stupid”, or “outrage” to the Chinese, but we don’t see a parallel situation here in our waterways?  It’s “there”, never “here”.

The story of the St Clair River from Sarnia-Windsor ON, and anecdotal information about fish in the North Saskatchewan River, both with petro-chemical industries on their shores, both with

“sewage, pesticides, heavy metals and other pollutants“

tell me what I remind my children: when you criticize someone else, usually it is yourself that you see in them.

Exactly where will edible fish come from?  There are serious questions to be answered.

A person from Lloydminster told me that fishermen catch deformed fish in the North Saskatchewan River. So they won’t eat the fish they catch. From the Lloydminster Meridian Booster 17 Mar 2006:

2006-03-17 Water: Put it in upstream. It’s there downstream. Lloydminster

… the City of Lloydminster released its annual drinking water quality notice to consumers, which revealed trace elements of chemicals like arsenic, Malathion, pesticide 2,4-D and Picloram herbicide. Although the amounts appear to be well below government limits, Lloydminster alderman Duff Stewart holds concerns about the long-term impacts those potentially harmful chemicals could have. 

“When we’re pulling in things like 2,4-D we should be wondering where it’s coming from. Maybe it’s Edmonton, maybe it’s Vermilion,” Stewart said.

“Maybe we have to start looking at a lot of the things we’re ingesting, whether it’s water, our meat or whatever. …”

Do we have programmes to determine whether the anecdotal information about deformed fish in the River have a factual basis? … we spend $370,000.00 to see whether we should build a large dam on the River (the High Gate Dam near North Battleford), when it’s known that large dams are a large boondoggle.

Why shouldn’t indigenous and other people who live in North Battleford be able to feed themselves from the fish in the River? Why should they, like the people in the Arctic, have to eat imported (certainly substandard) food because the local fish are too contaminated to be health-giving?

The situation with the rivers is not good “now”. What will it be like “then”, when our grandchildren need the water? If the imported food is unreliable because the waterways in other countries are polluted or fished out, where will edible fish come from? … “then”.

————-

We have to “get” the connections, to see. If I can put the information from our network together effectively, we can arm more people with the realization that their help is necessary. It is critical that they pass information along, and some of us have to take action.

The expansion of the Tar Sands will exceed the capacity of the Athabasca River to supply the needed water. More refineries will be built on the North Saskatchewan River.

Transfer what we know about regulation of the tar sands insofar as air quality is affected, to water quality. Decide whether we should sit back, content that the Governments are doing their job of protecting the water source.

(For newcomers re air quality.)  I questioned scientists at the Saskatchewan Research Council to understand how it can be that, in today’s world, we are allowing so much sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions from the tar sands that, downwind in northern Saskatchewan, the land is already past critical load limits from acid rain, in some places. The scientist who has monitored the lakes since the early 1980’s when they were perfectly fine, said that today, “The lakes are dying”.

As I understand, the way we allow the destruction is that the regulations apply to individual operations. We don’t regulate based on OUTCOME (the lakes are dying). We don’t consider CUMULATIVE effects.

The officials are satisfied because there are tight regulations, with independent third party corroboration of the integrity of the monitoring equipment. So everything is alright. BUT the lakes and rivers are dying under the current regulations. This isn’t seen as a cause for immediate action to change the regulatory system. It seems to me a no-brainer. We need immediate changes in order to halt what isn’t right or smart.

Effective regulations mean that what was healthy in 1980 would still be healthy today. If not, the Government simply hasn’t done its job.

It is essential that we know the information in the new documentary from the Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Aamjiwnaang sits adjacent to the Suncor refinery (petro-chemical industry) in Sarnia on the St Clair River. We can use the documentary to inform ourselves here in the West. There are a number of other “same story”‘s about the industrial poisoning of rivers and lakes.

Ideally, we would make a collection of them. Does our situation here, today, lead to a different outcome for our river and our health? And if not, why don’t we draw the line now? Stop the destruction now.

Email #2 in this series is the Aamjiwnaang story. In case it’s not enough, or in case it’s “there” in Ontario and not “here” in the West, in case we can’t see our own belly button, a reminder of the story of Dr. John O’Connor with the high cancer rates in a community on Lake Athabasca in Alberta.

Refer to email TARSANDS: Backlash against a whistle-blower Globe & Mail, by Andrew Nikiforuk Sent May 22, 2007.

http://www.light.sasktelwebsite.net/health/May22-07.htm

Email #3 is an effort to get the people behind the High Gate dam proposal to transfer their energies from the dam, to securing a long-term supply of water that gives them health. If indeed there are deformed fish in the River, they should know and be taking corrective action now. There are reasons for escalating rates of some cancers. We have to go outside our communities to work aggressively and hard with other communities.

We are working on the tar sands/nuclear issue. These emails are about a River. It’s about mobilizing people to protect their water source, hopefully BEFORE it’s too late. The unregulated expansion of the tar sands and nuclear agenda in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan is a threat to the River.

The evidence is clear from the Aamjiwnaang that Suncor and the other corporations will not be regulated such that the rivers and lakes continue to give us health. In addition to the water issue, we know that the tar sands development means Canada is contributing an unconscionable amount to green house gas production. We must add more people and organizations to our networks. Those who depend on the River for their water, and understand the threat, are likely allies for the tar sands/nuclear issue.

 

2007-07-06 China’s foul waters, Washington Post Foreign Service

 Water  No Responses »
Jul 062007
 

RELATED TO:   2007-07-09  Water there, not here. Water then, not now.   (the link is good, even if it shows with a line through it.)

 

Farmed in China’s Foul Waters, Imported Fish Treated With Drugs Traditional Medicine, Banned Chemicals Both Used

By Ariana Eunjung Cha

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, July 6, 2007; A01

WUGONG LAKE, China — Perched above the banks of the catfish farm he owns is Zhu Zhiqiu’s secret weapon for breeding healthy fish: the medicine shed.

Inside are iodine bottles, vitamin packets and Chinese herbal concoctions that he claims substitute for antibiotics.

Zhu’s fish farm, in a village on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, sends about 2.7 million catfish fillets each year to the United States through an importer in Virginia. Despite his best efforts — he has dozens of employees clearing trash from the water each day, and the fish are fed sacks of fish meal more expensive than rice — Zhu’s fish sometimes get sick. Then he brings out the drugs.

“It’s standard practice,” he said. “Everyone uses them to keep fish healthy.”

Chinese exporters like him have seized much of the U.S. market, accounting for 22 percent of all imports, because their fish are cheaper to raise.

The fish are being raised, however, in a country whose waterways are an ongoing environmental problem, tainted by sewage, pesticides, heavy metals and other pollutants. The situation is worst in the southern half of the country, where Zhu’s farm is and where industrial runoff accumulates.

Like other fish farmers throughout the world, catfish growers in China turn to a variety of potions. But the extent to which they use traditional Chinese medicine, which cannot be tested for as easily in the Western countries that import fish, is unusual. Zhu claims to use only safe and legal drugs, but it was clear that some of his competitors have not been so scrupulous.

The competitors spike the water with banned substances to keep their farmed fish alive. Batches of seafood traded at the Shanghai fish market this week, for example, carried the tell-tale greenish tinge of malachite green, a disinfectant powder that has been banned in China for five years because it is a suspected carcinogen but is still commonly used.

Illegal substances like malachite green keep showing up in Chinese seafood shipped to the United States, provoking a partial U.S. ban on such shipments last week. It was the latest development in an ongoing global awakening about the risks of Chinese-made products, from toys tainted with lead paint to pet-food ingredients containing a deadly industrial chemical.

Using illegal disinfectants and antibiotics “is a lazy way of raising fish,”

Zhu said. “But it is extremely effective.”

Many of the “Southern-style” catfish fillets on U.S. grocery shelves these days are indeed from the south — of China.

The Chinese government’s own reports express alarm that many rivers in this region are so contaminated with heavy metals from industrial byproducts and pesticides, including DDT, that they are too dangerous to touch, much less raise fish in.

In the city of Wuxi this month, for example, blue green algae, exacerbated by factories dumping waste, infested several nearby lakes that provide drinking water to the point where the government had to shut off the water supply. Outside of Qingdao, pollutants from nearby liquor and leather factories have turned streams a murky gray. And in Nanjing, the river that cuts through the city is full of urban trash such as twisted metal and clothing.

Chinese food producers’ reliance on chemicals, whether as a means to increase prices of their wares by tricking importers or as a way to inexpensively keep food fresh, has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months.

Zhu says that all the quality-control tests of his fish have shown no illegal substances and that the traditional Chinese medicines are safer because they are normally used to treat human illnesses.

Instead of using antibiotics, Zhu regularly gives his fish Gandankang, a Tibetan blend that people take for liver and gall bladder problems. He also sometimes uses a “magic grass pill” made from a root used to treat diarrhea or dysentery and help stop miscarriages in humans. The claim that giving fish traditional Chinese medicine is safe is backed up by China Catfish Institute, a research group affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture.

But Cao Yulin, general manager of the Jiangsu Baolong Group, which exports catfish and uses some herbal medicines in his own fish farms, said that even traditional Chinese medicines can pose a threat. While in general they are safer than other chemicals because there is less residue, he said, some smaller farmers are not well trained and may not prepare the medicines — some of which need to be boiled or mixed — properly.

Tom Sherman, vice president of marketing for Icelandic USA of Newport News, Va., which imports catfish from Zhu’s farm through an exporter, said he was not aware that traditional Chinese medicine was used in raising the fish the company brings to the United States.

“I don’t think that would be approved by the company,” Sherman said.

In May, Alabama and Mississippi, which have their own catfish industries, stopped some grocery store sales of Chinese catfish because some contained low levels of antibiotics. The action came nearly two months before a ban by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Health officials in the United States and China worry that antibiotics could contribute to resistance in humans when ingested over long periods of time, making antibiotics less effective in the event of a serious illness.

From the Chinese perspective, however, that Alabama and Mississippi also have their own catfish-growing industries is not a coincidence. The Chinese government says that the United States’ partial ban was unjustified and that shipments should not be “automatically held and rejected indiscriminately.”

It also accused the United States of having its own seafood quality problems. The strong reaction has triggered worries of a tit-for-tat trade war between the countries.

“There are people in the United States who are propagandizing that Chinese catfish is not safe. The cause of this is that Chinese catfish exports are increasing, and they worry about the competition,” said Wang Liang, secretary general of the China Catfish Institute.

Chinese imports make up about 5 percent of all catfish sold in the United States, but that portion is growing quickly. In 2004, China sent fewer than

100 containers, at 20 tons each. By 2005, 200 containers were sent, and in 2006, 500 were shipped, Wang said. Meanwhile, concerns about pollution’s effect on the farmed fish have mounted.

Even the Chinese government’s own reports are damning, describing how industrial and urban sewage forces farmers to use chemicals to keep the fish alive.

“Environmental change is a major factor” driving fish farmers to use drugs, said Wu Tingting, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences.

“It is related to the dirty water from the factories,” Tingting said. “So they use drugs to try to kill algae, to change the water quality.”

The Chinese catfish industry was born in the late 1980s after government researchers acquired fingerlings of U.S. catfish and began promoting it as a possible export industry. Catfish breeding centers were set up in a half-dozen provinces along the eastern shore. In Jiangxi province where Zhu lives, familiar fisheries were bought out and consolidated to focus on catfish exports back in 2005.

Zhu’s is one of eight fisheries in the area that sells to the Xiajiang Agricultural Industry Development, a processing company that fillets and freezes the fish. It is a high-risk but lucrative industry for the region, with a profit margin that can be as much as 40 percent for farmers and 30 percent for processors.

Liu Tianyuan, factory manager for the processing company, said profit would be even greater, even 20 percent more, if the plants were not so concerned about quality. He said the company spends a lot of money each year training its farmers on how to best use drugs safely and tests each batch of fish for illegal contaminants three times during its seven- to eight-month growing cycle.

Xiajiang sells the fish to Icelandic USA, which breads the fillets and sells them to food-service companies or through its own retail brand as “Southern-Style Biscuit Battered Catfish Fillets” at grocery stores.

In a statement, Icelandic said it supports the FDA restrictions and that it ensures quality by boarding vessels with its seafood, and checking the farms and production facilities. All of its suppliers are “required to test their products for all banned substances by an official certified laboratory,” it said.

Meanwhile, catfish farmers like Zhu remain anxious. He has invested his life savings, about $650,000, in the fishery and is not sure what he would do if his catfish were blocked by the United States. All he can do, he said, is wait and hope the United States will “be fair.”

Zhu should know soon. The ships carrying the next batch of catfish from Wugong are scheduled to arrive in Norfolk on July 18.

Staff researcher Crissie Ding contributed to this report.

2007-06-25 From living hell to living well, Globe & Mail.

 Culture and Ethics, Economy / Political Economy, Sustainability  No Responses »
Jun 252007
 
Great article! Thanks from all to Verda:
From Globe and Mail
June 25, 2007
Bogota’s urban happiness movement From living hell to living well: A radical campaign to return streets from cars to people in Colombia’s largest city is now a model for the world CHARLES MONTGOMERY
On a clear, cloudless afternoon, Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogota, leaves his office early in order to pick up his 10-year-old son from school As usual, he wears his black leather shoes and pinstriped trousers. As usual, he is joined by his two pistol-packing bodyguards. And, as usual, he travels not in the armoured SUV typical of most public figures in Colombia, but on a knobby-tired mountain bike.
Mr. Peñalosa pedals through the streets of Santa Barbara in Bogota’s well-to-do north side. He jumps curbs and potholes, riding one-handed, weaving across the pavement, barking into his cellphone with barely a thought for the city’s notoriously aggressive drivers.
On most days, this would be a radical and perhaps suicidal act. But today is special.
Ever since citizens voted to make it an annual affair in 2000, private cars have been banned entirely from this city of nearly eight million every Feb. 1. On Dia Sin Carro, Car Free Day, the roar of traffic subsides and the toxic haze thins. Buses are jam-packed and taxis hard to come by, but hundreds of thousands of people have followed Mr. Peñalosa’s example and hit the streets under their own steam.
Former Bogota mayor Enrique Penalosa tours his city by bicycle on the Car Free Day he instituted, campaigning for another term. (Juan Velasco for The Globe and Mail)
“This is a learning experiment! We are realizing that we can live without cars!” Mr. Peñalosa bellows as he cruises across the southbound lanes of Avenida 19, pausing on the wide, park-like median. A flock of young women rolls up the median’s bike path, shouting, “Mayor! Mayor!” though it has been six years since Mr. Peñalosa left office (consecutive terms are constitutionally banned in Bogota) and he has only just begun his campaign to regain the mayor’s seat.

Car Free Day is just one of the ways that Mr. Peñalosa helped to transform a city once infamous for narco-terrorism, pollution and chaos into a globally lauded model of livability and urban renewal. His ideas are being adopted in cities across the developing world. They are also being championed by planners and politicians in North America, where Mr. Peñalosa has reinvigorated the debate about public space once championed by Jane Jacobs.

His policies may resemble environmentalism, but they are no such thing. Rather, they were driven by his conversion to hedonics, an economic philosophy whose proponents focus on fostering not economic growth but human happiness.

Proponents of hedonics, or happiness economics, have been gaining influence. London School of Economics professor Richard Layard, who wrote the seminal Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, was an adviser to Tony Blair’s first Labour government. Prof. Layard asserts that, contrary to the guiding principle of a century of economists, income is a poor measure of happiness.
Economic growth in England and the U.S. in the past half-century hasn’t measurably increased life satisfaction.

So what makes societies happy? The past decade has seen an explosion in research aiming to answer that question, and there’s good news for people in places like Bogota: Feelings of well-being are determined as much by status and social connectedness as by income. Richer people are happier than poor people, but societies with wider income gaps are less happy on the whole. People who interact more with friends, family and neighbours are happier than those who don’t.

And what makes people most unhappy? Not work, but commuting to work.

These are the concepts that guided Mr. Peñalosa’s car-bashing campaign.

“There are a few things we can agree on about happiness,” he says. “You need to fulfill your potential as a human being. You need to walk. You need to be with other people. Most of all, you need to not feel inferior. When you talk about these things, designing a city can be a very powerful means to generate happiness.”

In the mid-1990s, Bogota was, citizens recall, un enfierno – a living hell. There were 3,363 murders in 1995 and nearly 1,400 traffic deaths. The city suffered from the cumulative effects of decades of civil war, but also from explosive population growth and a dearth of planning. Wealthy residents fenced off their local public parks. Drivers appropriated sidewalk space to park cars. The air rivalled Mexico City’s for pollution. Workers from the squalid shanties on the city’s south end spent as much as four hours every day commuting to and from Bogota’s wealthy north.

In 1997, a study by the Japanese International Co-operation Agency prescribed a vast network of elevated freeways to ease Bogota’s congestion. Like cities across the Third World, Bogota was looking to North American suburbs as a development model, even though only 20 per cent of people owned cars.

The tide changed with Mr. Peñalosa’s election in 1998.

“A city can be friendly to people or it can be friendly to cars, but it can’t be both,” the new mayor announced. He shelved the highway plans and poured the billions saved into parks, schools, libraries, bike routes and the world’s longest “pedestrian freeway.”

He increased gas taxes and prohibited car owners from driving during rush hour more than three times per week. He also handed over prime space on the city’s main arteries to the Transmilenio, a bus rapid-transit system based on that of Curitiba, Brazil.

Bogotans almost impeached their new mayor. Business owners were outraged. Yet by the end of his three-year term, Mr. Peñalosa was immensely popular and his reforms were being lauded for making Bogota remarkably fairer, more tolerable and more efficient.

Moreover, by shifting the budget away from private cars, Mr. Peñalosa was able to boost school enrolment by 30 per cent, build 1,200 parks, revitalize the core of the city and provide running water to hundreds of thousands of poor.

The shift was all the more radical in that it was not motivated by the populist socialism that has swept much of Latin America. Mr. Peñalosa, the son of a Colombian politician and businessman, studied economics at North Carolina’s Duke University. His first book shouted Capitalism: The Best Option. Yet even as he worked as a business management consultant, and later an economic adviser to the Colombian government, he began having doubts.

“I realized that we in the Third World are not going to catch up to the developed countries for two or three hundred years,” he recalls. “If we defined our success just in terms of income per capita, we would have to accept ourselves as second- or third-rate societies – as a bunch of losers – which is not exactly enticing for our young people. So we are forced to find another measure of success. I think the only real obvious measure of success is happiness.”

HAPPIER TOGETHER

Mr. Peñalosa offers an eager ” Como le va?” – how’s it going – to a pair of dust-caked labourers cruising past on the bike path. He is clearly campaigning: Every commute is a chance to remind Bogotans that their bike routes were his idea, and their parks his doing. But he is also a preacher spreading the word.

“See those guys? Before, cyclists were seen as just a nuisance. They were the poorest of the poor,” he says. “Now, they have respect. So bikeways are important . [because] they show that a citizen on a $30 bike is equally important to someone driving in a $30,000 car.”

This principle of equity led him to hand road space over to public transit and pedestrian areas – a way of making private space public again.

University of British Columbia professor emeritus John Helliwell, who studies economics and human well-being, sees added value in such measures. “When you get data on people’s life satisfaction, and you try and explain the differences, the variables that jump right out at you relate to the trustworthiness of the environment that people are living in. How much can they trust strangers? How well can they trust people in the neighbourhood? How trustworthy are the police? The more positive answers people give on
these questions, the happier they are,” Prof. Helliwell says.

“So what do you need to do to establish these higher levels of trust? It turns out that frequency of positive interaction is the key.”

Public spaces that bring people together in congenial activity produce happier citizens than those – like traffic jams – that spur animosity and aggression, Prof. Helliwell says.

By linking the economics of happiness to urban design, Mr. Peñalosa really does seem to have made Bogotans happier. The murder rate fell by an astounding 40 per cent during his term and has continued to fall ever since. So have the number of traffic deaths. Traffic moves three times faster now during rush hour. And the changes seem to have transformed how people feel.

“The perception of the city has changed,” says Ricardo Montezuma, an urbanist at the National University of Colombia. “Twelve years ago, 80 per cent of us were completely pessimistic about our future. Now, it’s the opposite. Most of us are optimistic,” he says, referring to Gallup polls.

“Why is this important? Because in a big way a city is really just the sum of what people think about it. The city is a subjective thing.”

Bogotans don’t give Mr. Peñalosa all the credit. Every Sunday since the 1970s, Bogota has blocked off its major roads so that citizens can jog, walk or bike in safety. These ciclovia days transform the avenidas into vast, linear parks, where more than two million Bogotans come to play, picnic, do aerobics and eat sweet arepa bread from mobile vendors. A generation has grown up knowing streets can change.

But people have changed too. Mr. Peñalosa’s unorthodox predecessor, Antanus Mockus, is credited with building a new culture of citizenship. The former philosophy professor hired mimes to make fun of bad drivers. He sent actors dressed as monks into the streets to encourage people to think about noise pollution. He gave out thousands of coloured cards – the kind referees use in soccer games – so people could express their disproval of others’ driving.

Mr. Mockus convinced Bogotans it was their duty to take care of each other. Inspired by his anti-corruption campaign and message of citizenship, 63,000 families volunteered to pay 10 per cent more than their assessed property tax. By the end of his term, tax revenues had tripled.

He had prepared Bogotans for Mr. Peñalosa’s infrastructure changes, which required people to make sacrifices for the general good.

The best place to see these ideas translated into urban design is Bogota’s hardscrabble south side, where about 80,000 migrants – mostly refugees from Colombia’s civil war – arrive seeking shelter every year. Few of the streets are paved here, but a pedestrian-only avenue intersects the red brick slums of Ciudad de Cali.

This is where 19-year-old Fabien Gonzales joins the commuting throng just after sunrise en route to his job as a cashier at the Home Center on Bogota’s north end. Mr. Gonzales takes home about $238 a month and, like most of his neighbours, uses feet, bike and bus to get to work.

He cruises down one of Mr. Peñalosa’s ciclorutas on a silver mountain bike, to the Portal de las Americas, a transportation hub linking bike paths and pedestrian roads with the Transmilenio rapid-bus network. The station is surrounded by broad plazas and lawns, where people linger over hot chocolate as the sun creeps up over the Andes.

He locks his bike and pushes onto a northbound express. “Before the Transmilenio,” he says, “I had to leave home two hours before starting work. Now, it takes me 45 minutes.”

The Transmilenio is a distillation of Mr. Peñalosa’s philosophy on well-being. It also happens to turn everything most North Americans think about transit on its head. It functions much like an urban metro, combining stylish stations, fast boarding and express routes. It moves more people than many urban rail-transit systems for a small fraction of the construction cost.

“Many cities talk about building transit. We didn’t want a transit project, but a mobility project. We wanted to move people,” says Angelica Castro Rodriguez, general manager of the public-private alliance that runs the service.

The Transmilenio also reduces Bogota’s carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 250,000 tons a year. It’s the first transport system to be accredited under Kyoto’s Clean Development Plan.

But for Mr. Peñalosa, the key is that it seizes road space from other vehicles. “We are constructing democracy with our bus system. Remember, 80 per cent of Bogotans don’t own cars. For them, every day is car-free day. This busway, unlike a subway, shows that public transport has priority over private interests.”

Every week, Bogota hosts delegations from cities around the world looking for solutions to their growing pains.

“Before Peñalosa, mayors were terrified to take on the issue of auto-dominated public space, for fear that motorists would rebel
politically,” says Walter Hook of New York’s Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

“But he not only challenged auto dependency, he succeeded politically. He’s given other politicians the courage to follow. And other mayors have realized that they can’t build their way out of congestion.”

The ITDP now funds Mr. Peñalosa’s efforts to bring his post-car message around the world. Jakarta, Beijing and Mexico City have handed over road space to bus rapid-transit systems and more are being built in Delhi, Seoul and Johannesburg.

PEDESTRIAN BROADWAY?

Mr. Peñalosa’s solutions may work in the developing world, but is North America ready for his happy revolution?

Consider the advice he gave to planners in Los Angeles last year: Let traffic and congestion become so unbearable that drivers voluntarily abandon their car habits. And when Manhattan held a conference in October asking for a prescription for the gridlocked streets of New York, Mr. Peñalosa cheerily suggested banning cars entirely from Broadway.

“He got a standing ovation,” observed an astounded Deputy Borough President Rose Pierre-Louis. New York is now considering charging drivers to enter Manhattan.

Mr. Peñalosa was also given a hero’s welcome by hundreds of cheering urbanists, planners and politicians at last summer’s World Urban Forum in Vancouver. Stuart Ramsey, a B.C. transportation engineer, suggested it was because the Colombian had gone ahead and done what they had all been talking about for years.

“Bogota has demonstrated that it is possible to make dramatic change to how we move around in our cities in a very short time frame,” Mr. Ramsey said afterward. “It’s simply a matter of choosing to do so.

“We could improve our air quality and dramatically reduce our emissions any time we want. It’s easy to do. All it would take is a can of paint and you’d have dedicated bus lanes. It doesn’t require huge amounts of money. It simply requires a choice.”

The fact that the people who plan and build the world’s urban areas should applaud an attack on private cars suggests that cities may be on the verge of a massive change. Yet Mr. Peñalosa points out that North American cities may face a much bigger challenge than poor cities like Bogota. For one thing, we have already spent billions wrapping ourselves in freeways.

“Transportation is a problem that gets worse the richer societies become,” he says. “The 20th century was a disaster for cities. And the most dynamic economies produced the worst cities of all. I’m talking about the U.S. of course – Atlanta, Phoenix, Miami, cities totally dominated by private cars.”

In Canada, commuters are discovering that the highways that brought us suburbia are no longer getting us to work so quickly. From 1992 to 2005, the average commute time in Canadian cities rose to 63 minutes from 54.

This is bad news for happiness. Recent studies on life satisfaction show that commuting makes people more unhappy than anything else in life. (It is, apparently, the opposite of sex.) Commuting also happens to rob us of time for family and friends.

In a 2004 study of German commuters, psychologists found that the longer people spent getting to work, the lower their general life satisfaction tended to be. The malaise brought on by commuting was not being balanced by work satisfaction or higher income.

If commuting makes us so unhappy, why do North Americans keep buying houses in distant suburbs? Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert suggests that it is because humans are just not very good at predicting what will make us happy.

“When we make predictions about happiness, we typically fail to consider adaptation – the process by which the brain gets used to things,” explains Prof. Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness. “It is much easier to adapt to things that stay constant than to things that change.

“So we adapt quickly to the joy of a larger house in the suburbs because the house is exactly the same size every time we come in the front door. But we find it difficult to adapt to commuting by car because every day is a slightly new form of misery, with different people honking at us, different intersections jammed with accidents, different problems with weather, and so on.”

So the misery of the long commute will almost always trump the happiness of that spacious den, Prof. Gilbert says.

The only major Canadian city where commute times didn’t shoot up in the past decade was freeway-free Vancouver, where the city stopped adding road capacity in 1997 and has been aggressively “traffic-calming” ever since.

Thanks to the city’s decision to develop dense new neighbourhoods near the downtown core, almost two-thirds of journeys made around downtown are done on foot, by bike or on transit. Aside from cutting carbon emissions, this kind of commuting also boosts feelings of connectedness and public trust, according to UBC’s Prof. Helliwell.

In terms of happiness, then, Canada’s big-city mayors are on track when they press the federal government for a national transit strategy. But Bogota suggests the secret may lie not in the megaprojects favoured by ribbon-cutting politicians, but in cheaper options that move more people.

The Toronto Transit Commission wasn’t crazy about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s announcement of an 8.7-kilometre extension of the Spadina subway line, for example, because the same $2-billion could have bought 47 km of light-rail line instead.

Still, Bogotans are not necessarily better than Canadians at predicting what will make them happy. In 1996, when traffic congestion was considered the city’s biggest problem, they voted against auto restrictions. It took courage – and, some say, arrogance – for Mr. Peñalosa to ignore the polls.

By 2001, the measures and the mayor were wildly popular. Citizens voted to ban cars entirely during rush hour by 2015. And if, as polls suggest, they re-elect Mr. Peñalosa this October, the war on cars will escalate.

“We’re lucky in the developing world,” Mr. Peñalosa says as we roll up to his son’s school. “We haven’t had the money to build all those freeways. We are growing quickly, but we still have a chance to build our cities properly, to avoid the mistakes made in North America.”

Children pour out of the school’s iron gates, Mr. Peñalosa’s own son, Martin, among them. The boy carries a helmet and wheels a miniature version of his father’s bike. The two wobble their way along Avenida 19’s cicloruta, veering into the grass on either side of the path.

The median feels like a park, filled with children, suited businessmen, fast-food cashiers, the wealthy and the poor, strolling or rolling home together. On the whole, they do seem quite happy.

The scene reflects the city, a place that is more than the sum of its concrete, more than a set of efficiencies to maximize and so much more than a machine for creating wealth. It is, Mr. Peñalosa says, a means to a way of life.

Charles Montgomery is the author of the Charles Taylor Award-winning book The Last Heathen.

2007-06-10 Blessed Unrest & A Force More Powerful (non-violent resistance)

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Empowerment, Why we flounder or do not flounder  No Responses »
Jun 102007
 

 This book Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken will give you a high that lasts.  Cheaper than anti-depressants and with no side effects.  Call it up from memory anytime you feel yourself being sucked low in pessimism about the future of human society on Earth.  

The Earth has an immune system:  it’s us!  In the millions and from all around the world we are mobilizing. 

CONTENTS:

(1)  FRANKE JAMES IS PART OF “THE MOVEMENT” DESCRIBED IN BLESSED UNREST, ­ How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being & Why No One Saw it Coming

(2)  I WANT TO REGISTER US ON WISER EARTH, THE RELATED WEB-SITE

(3)  NOTE FROM PAUL HAWKEN, AUTHOR OF BLESSED UNREST (& the book NATURAL CAPITAL)

      (3a)  QUOTATION FROM BLESSED UNREST

(4)  REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (to you):  DO YOU KNOW OF, OR CAN YOU FIND A WEB-SITE THAT … ?

(5)  BOILING FROG, ANOTHER CELL IN THE MOVEMENT

      (5a)  BACK TO OUR SENSES:  HOW DO WE FREE OURSELVES FROM THE TRAP OF FEAR?

      (5b)  BICYCLE RIDE TO THE ALBERTA TAR SANDS

(6)  A FORCE MORE POWERFUL

(7)  ALL OUR COWARDICE & SERVILITY

(8)  OILSANDS TRAINING CAMP NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE, EDMONTON JOURNAL, June 4th

———————– 

(1)  FRANKE JAMES IS PART OF “THE MOVEMENT” DESCRIBED IN BLESSED UNREST, ­ How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being & Why No One Saw it Coming  

Our network is part of the movement.

Elaine Hughes with her information service and web-site, “Stop the Hogs” is part of the movement. 

Franke James (Ontario) is an amazing part of it.   http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?p=34   Wow!

—————- 

Hi Franke, 

Blessed Unrest  is the best book I’ve read this year.  Mainly because it provides so much hope along with a realistic statement of the knife’s edge that we’re on.  I needed an injection of that hope.  (Some people know of Paul Hawken from his book “Natural Capital“.)  

After viewing your work, To My Future Grandkids in 2020  http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?p=34 I’ve posted a note to your web-site: 

There’s a book published this year by Paul Hawken, “Blessed Unrest“.   Your work is part of the “unrest”, and a wonderful contribution to the movement that has no name.  Individuals and organizations from around the world are the immune system of the planet, kicked into action by the threat to the survival of the organism (the planet). 

The web-site http://www.wiserearth.org  (Wiser Earth) is being used to create an idea of the magnitude of this immune system.  Thousands of organizations,  tens of thousands of individuals.   There is great hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable environmental odds. 

You are an inspiration to others to become involved, each of us to become another activated cell in the earth’s immune system. 

Re your statement:  I plan to do one on the Tar Sands…   That’s terrific.  I live in Saskatoon and run an activist email network.

Both the governing NDP and the opposition Sask Party (Conservatives) promote tar sands expansion and development of the nuclear industry with glib reassurances regarding the impact on human health and the environment.  In desperation I’ve been driven into politics (!) and am currently leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan.  We hope that informed people here will at least have a place to register their vote (they will if we can line up 58 candidates). 

================ 

(2)  I WANT TO REGISTER US ON WISER EARTH, THE RELATED WEB-SITE 

Sent:  June 6, 2007

 Dear Paul (Hawken), 

I doubt you can know the gift that Blessed Unrest is to me.  You articulate what I “kind of know” but at a pre-verbal level.  The book is extremely well written.  When I can see me confirmed as an organism that is part of this larger body my sometimes faltering hope surges again.  It makes me happy, even joyful.  (I’ve told people that I’ve become an evangelist for Paul Hawken & Blessed Unrest!) 

I was going to register on Wiser Earth.  As an individual isn’t quite right because of the others who are involved with me.  As an organization doesn’t quite fit either because we aren’t really an organization!   How many are we?…  Who knows?  For seven years I’ve encouraged people to set up their own network, to pass information along.  Some participants have gone off and set up a network similar to mine and better (especially when it comes to a web-site!). 

Well it’s serious yet fun, and you meet the best people.  Easy to become fearful when you’re working against the interests of the Monsantos of the world, the pharmaceutical companies and now the petro-chemical and nuclear industries.  But connected we are strong. 

We have the world’s richest deposits of uranium here in Saskatchewan.  And tar sands.  Corporate interests working with our governments are destroying our health and environment.  If they have their way, northern Saskatchewan, a beautiful land of lakes and trees will be a raped wasteland.  Indigenous occupants who rely on the fruits of the land will be driven off to the dysfunctional portion of the native communities in the cities.  Already and just since 1980, soil and water acidity levels in some places are past “critical load limits”.  Expansions are nonetheless to be four and five times on the Alberta side of the border alone.  Nuclear reactors, deep geological depositories to welcome  to Saskatchewan high-level radioactive waste from across the country and probably parts of the U.S…. 

Thank goodness there are many organizations with which we are in the process of building coalitions to stop the madness, the poisoning of our land and water supplies. 

Thanks again for your contribution.  Blessed Unrest is fuel for our persistence.  I will be sending information on your book into the networks, my own and those I feed into.   There are large water, GMO, Food, etc networks in Canada.  I’ll point those I’m familiar with to Wiser Earth.  I believe that you’re right:  there are millions of organizations and people all busily working to bring about a new vision of what life is about. 

Cheers!

 Sandra Finley 

=============== 

(3)  NOTE FROM PAUL HAWKEN, AUTHOR OF BLESSED UNREST 

Dear Sandra 

Thank you so much . Your comments are much appreciated. I just got back from BC last night and hope I can return to Canada again to talk about the book and Wiser. 

I have forwarded this to Peggy Duvette, director of Wiser, who I think can shed some light on your queries and ideas.  

Again, thanks so much 

Paul 

      (3a)        QUOTATION FROM BLESSED UNREST, THANKS TO JANET: 

³Evolution is not about design or will; it is the outcome of constant endeavors made by organisms that want to survive and better themselves. The collective result is intoxicatingly beautiful, rife with oddities, and surpassingly brilliant, yet no agent is in control. Evolution arises from the bottom up ­ so, too, does hope. When fire destroys a forest, the species and plants that were lost will reassert themselves over time. Seeds that have lain dormant for decades and that germinate only when subjected to intense heat will come to life, and bloom in the spring. These plants may have deep taproots that bring up minerals, or broad leaves that create a canopy to help preserve topsoil from sun and rain. The older the forest, the more resilient its capacity to regenerate. Humanity is older than the oldest forest. Its capacity to adapt and restore is vastly underestimated.

Evolution is optimism in action. Being compelled to make more of ourselves is the human lot  Š²  ­   Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest, ­ How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being & Why No One Saw it Coming.

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

(4)  REQUEST FOR INFORMATION:  DO YOU KNOW OF, OR CAN YOU FIND A WEB-SITE THAT … ? 

I suspect there may be a web-site that is devoted to information and a listing of organizations who are working on the tar sands / nuklear power plants. (The latest word is that the nuklear plants will go into northern Alberta, not Saskatchewan.  Decision would be result of polling.  Where is there the least resistance?). 

I have no idea how all this will fall into place, but let me throw out the pieces: 

I came back from Ottawa Conference (Prevent Cancer Now – activists) with more excellent contacts and information.   The health ramifications from petro-chem industry in southern Ontario (Sarnia down to Windsor) are frightening.  Childhood leukemia,  male birth rates down from where they should be at 51% of new births, to 35%.  Tar sands is petro-chemical industry.   New documentary on Sarnia-Windsor aired at Conference and will be very useful information here.  Also, some of the people in the documentary are willing to come here to tell their story.  

I telephoned Wiser Earth.  They have a web-site on which they’re building a data base of organizations from around the world, grouped by area of work. The new book “Blessed Unrest” is about it – this “movement” around the world to correct these things that are killing the planet and us..  It’s really quite exciting.  The web-site is a place to register our own organizations but also a place to find people who are working on the same issues.  

Tar sands, oil shale, uranium mining, nuclear power plants, tritium in the water, depletion of the water resources ….  Sask and Alberta, Ont, Nunavut.  There are many connections.  At the nucluar workshop at the Conference there were people who are very concerned about the proposed new reactors (10 or 15) slated for Ontario.  I proposed that they work with us – Saskatchewan will be supplying more and more fuel, if the Sask Party has its way.   It will help people in Ontario if the provincial election in Saskatchewan can be fought on nuclear and greens pull off a substanatial portion of the vote.  It might help some politicians to get the message.

Help to break the government-business partnerships in which we lose the actual role of government which is to protect “the commons”, that upon which we are dependent for survival. 

You may have heard about the people who have organized a bicycle ride for this summer (see Boiling Frog below) that starts at the border with the U.S. in Alberta and  goes through to Ft McMurray – a protest over what’s happening with the tar sands.  It’ll be great fun!  Get your bicycle out; if you can’t, send some money to Shawn – he needs $500.  You’ll get excellent return on your dollar. 

Is there a web-site that connects all these various efforts?  If not, we can start making those connections ourselves.  Maybe use “Wiser Earth” to do the connecting.  I think we can (have to) make this “The issue” of the upcoming provincial election.  The establsihed parties are all in agreement with expansion of this incredibly destructive activity in the north.  Without regard for the fact that once it’s thoroughly poisoned, it’s a little hard for people to live there, or to eat money.  With no regard for the fact that it is because of the Tar Sands rapacious exploitation that Canada can’t meet Kyoto targets. 

Anything and everything that all the various players do is helpful to us all.  Lots of people have left Saskatchewan but maintain relationships with people here.  Maybe they’ll help.  Some of them have cottages in the north.   Won’t be worth much by the time the acid rain finishes the deadening of the lakes.  (reference Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment Report.  Parts of the north are already past “critical load limits”.) 

Support for the Green Party in the election won’t be built by a large advertising campaign.  (Hah!  we have $2000 in the bank account.)   It’ll be built through networks.  I think people will understand that a good showing in the election for the Greens in Saskatchewan will be another piece of the non-violent resistance that is aimed at creating a changed and new vision for what we want and will have. 

There are a reasonable number of people from Manitoba connected to our work here.  The ties have been strengthened in the last year because of the preliminary feasibility study for the High Gate Dam on the North Sask River near North Battleford.  We try to keep Manitobans informed because of the role of the N Sask River in the (un)health of Lake Wininipeg.   There’s a great group of people who are mobilized along the River from Alberta border to N Battleford over the dam. 

Manitobans will help:  we are beginning to see the threat to the River/Water that comes with more and more of the Tar Sands and nuclear agenda.   The industry poisons the water (newspaper report, Lloydminster, a year ago suggests that, and the new documentary out of Sarnia petrochemical industry provides back-up substantiation.  Also Dr. O’Connor’s report on the health dilemmas of native people in Ft Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca).  The industry also has a rapacious thirst.  It’s depleting.  

When the job is done and the money’s in the pocket they will walk away.  They were never from here.  … We are most peculiar people.  We know from places around the world that local environment and economies will be destroyed after which the beneficiaries walk away.  We just never think it will happen to us.  Wakey, wakey! 

I am amazed by the growing resistance to what is happening in the world.  In London, ON (November) a woman told me that she and some co-workers have organized a little club for viewing documentaries.  An Inconvenient Truth was first on their list. 

While in Ottawa (May) I was told of a group that is meeting in a rural Ontario town at their Library to view some of the same documentaries as the London office workers.

 Last week I joined a small group in Craik, SK.  (see Boiling Frog below)  We’re talking a population of what?  450 people and they have an information initiative underway. 

A big part of it is the availability of good, inexpensive documentaries.   You don’t need a movie theatre to view them. 

Sandra

===================== 

(5)  BOILING FROG, ANOTHER CELL IN THE MOVEMENT 

Thanks to Boiling Frog for this material. 

—– Original Message —–

From: “boilingfrog” <boilingfrog AT boilingfrog.ca>   

Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 11:15 AM

Subject: [b.frog] Food, Peace, Solar Fair, Gold Medals and more… 

EXCERPTS: 

Hi and welcome to another edition of our email digest….

     (5a) BACK TO OUR SENSES:  HOW DO WE FREE OURSELVES FROM THE TRAP OF FEAR?

(Link no longer valid:   http://www.derrickjensen.org/fear01.html )

(INSERT:  (Sandra.  Go to the web-site.  The whole article is well worth the reading time.) 

> (excerpt)

 ‘.In the sixteenth century, Éttiene de la Boétie reminded us that  when the powerful are insatiable, submission is fatal – that the more  we submit ourselves to to the “law and order” of those in power, the more they will demand. He wrote that “the more tyrants pillage, the  more they crave, the more they ruin and destroy; the more one yields  to them, and obeys them, by that much do they become mightier and more formidable, the readier to annihilate and destroy. But if not one thing is yielded to them, if, without any violence they are simply not obeyed, they become naked and undone and as nothing, just as, when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.” 

Sure, we are afraid. There is much to fear. But with a world being  destroyed before our eyes, this belief that we have something to  lose soon becomes an illusion. And the best guide I know to help lead me away from these illusions is my heart. Following my heart has never led me wrong. .’ 

      (5b)  BICYCLE RIDE TO THE ALBERTA TAR SANDS 

Support an upcoming Canadian environmental leader (donation appeal)  boilingfrog note: please help our friend and website  (http://www.boilingfrog.ca) designer, Shawn Khan, reach his  fundraising goal of $500.00 for his participation in a Sierra Club bicycle ride to the Alberta tar sands. We pledge $50 to get it started. you?

There is a bike trip from the US/Alberta Border to the Tar Sands in Alberta.  We are going to go for three weeks to collect stories about  people who have been affected by the tar sands and document the landscape of the environment.  The whole bike trip is going to be from August 15 – Sept 7th, and will be with many great people.

> I am 23 from Toronto and have been into the environment my whole life.  Have a compost that is fully in working condition, and have been a  cyclist for many years.  You should donate to me as I have been hailed as a future leader in the environment world by many organizations  including Forest Ethics, Sierra Club of Canada and many others.

Thanks,

Shawn 

============================ 

(6)  A FORCE MORE POWERFUL  (non-violent resistance) 

Thanks so much to Kelly and Bridget at Boiling Frog for arranging to show this film in Craik.  It is just excellent.  

The story from the Edmonton Journal below about the training for non-violent resistance around the Tar Sands coincidentally appeared at the same time. 

http://www.aforcemorepowerful.org/films/index.php     PBS 

A Force More Powerful, a three-hour documentary series, explores one of the 20th century’s most important but least-understood stories – how nonviolent power overcame oppression and authoritarian rule all over the world.  Narrated by Ben Kingsley, it premiered on PBS in September 2000.

 Bringing Down A Dictator, a one-hour documentary, is the inside story of how Milosevic was brought down – not by smoke and flames, but by a courageous and risky campaign of political defiance and massive civil disobedience.  Narrated by Martin Sheen, it premiered on PBS in March 2002. 

The feature-length documentary, Orange Revolution, captures the songs and spirit of a unique moment in Ukrainian history, when the 2004 stolen election brought citizens together on the streets for 17 days to defend their vote and the future of their country. 

Confronting the Truth, a 75-minute documentary, examines how countries which have experienced massive human rights violations have created truth commissions to air and acknowledge the abuses so that victims can regain their dignity and society can be rebuilt. 

============= 

(7) ALL OUR COWARDICE & SERVILITY 

Old-timers will know of my interest in non-violent resistance.  I have visited the Museum of Non-Violent Resistance at the former “Checkpoint Charlie” on the now-gone Berlin Wall, twice. 

I love the anonymous poem penned by one of the victors.  ALL OUR COWARDICE AND SERVILITY.  

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

(8)  OILSANDS TRAINING CAMP NON-VIOLENT RESISTANCE, EDMONTON JOURNAL, June 4th

(NOTE:  This article refers to Mike Hudema as a former Albertan.  He grew up in Alberta, is a graduate of their Law School.   At the time of this article he was 31 years old and back in Canada.  In the time since this article was written I have had the very good fortune of meeting Mike in person.   If everyone was like Mike we would share a friendly, responsible and wonderful time on Earth.  From wikipedia:  Mike Hudema was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta in 1976 from Ukrainian origin parents and attended Crescent Heights High School.[3] He graduated from the University of Alberta with a bachelor of education, majoring in drama, and a law degree, specializing in labour and environmental law.[4] During his university career, he went on an exchange to southern India, which he credits with awakening him politically. During the exchange, he recalls seeing 20,000 people “getting together to debate the village budget for the next year”, and says that the contrast between that and the models of representative democracy in use in Canada affected him and shaped his views on political involvement”.)

Oilsands growth energizes activists; Environmentalists turn up pressure on ‘unsustainable’ development with training camp in non-violent protest tactics

The Edmonton Journal Monday June 4, 2007 Hanneke Brooymans

EDMONTON – A group of frustrated environmentalists has gathered at a camp on the outskirts of Edmonton to learn eco-activist tactics for use against booming oilsands development.

The five-day clinic is scheduled to begin today at a secluded acreage southwest of the city, where 50 to 75 young people are preparing to mobilize against the oilsands by learning non-violent, direct-action tactics from internationally renowned environmentalists.

“I think the reason why we’re training people in those types of tactics is we’ve tried to work through the regulatory process,” said Mike Hudema, a former Albertan who now directs the Freedom from Oil program for a California group called Global Exchange.

“We’ve seen the majority of Albertans come out to the oilsands consultation process speaking against it. But the (Alberta Energy and Utilities Board) has a history of just rubber-stamping every single project that comes before it.

“We’re now having to resort to more aggressive tactics to try and get this project stopped, because the traditional means society is supposed to have input into this conversation and to actually slow the project are obviously not being listened to.”

Hudema said the majority of the young activists are from Alberta, but there are some from other parts of Canada, including the Northwest Territories. They’ll learn about grassroots organizing, working with community groups, and basic facts on global warming, as well as direct action such as scaling tall structures to hang banners, he said.

Hudema has a long history of activism. He once occupied former deputy prime minister Anne McLellan’s office in protest of Canada’s anti-terrorism legislation. He was also part of the Edible Ballot Society, whose members faced charges for eating their federal election ballots.

Two other trainers for the camp include Mike Roselle, a founder of the group Earth First!, known for climbing into trees and staying aloft to protect them from loggers.

Another trainer, J.R. Roof, used to be the director of the Greenpeace division that sailed around the world challenging whaling ships. The focus of the Edmonton camp is on the oilsands because it’s one of the most environmentally destructive projects in the world, said Hudema.  From a global-warming perspective, it will be the single largest reason why Canada can’t meet its Kyoto commitment, he said. The industry also uses huge amounts of water and will chop down a vast expanse of the boreal forest to lay the groundwork for more oilsands development, he added.

“The biggest fact is that most of this is going to the U.S. And so it’s destroying one-fifth of Alberta all to feed the U.S. oil addiction.” In the months following the training, Hudema predicts, more young people will become active and start asserting their vision for Alberta and what they want done for their future.

The activist camp is part of a larger trend of environmental focus on the oilsands.  The Sierra Legal Defence Fund said last November it will set up an office in Alberta this year in response to rapid oilsands and coalbed methane development. Greenpeace is also hiring a person to work exclusively on oilsands issues. And now World Wildlife Fund Canada is in the process of setting up an office in Edmonton to deal with both the Mackenzie River basin and oilsands issues.

The program director in the fledgling office is Rob Powell, a PhD-level ecologist who has lived in Alberta for 17 years.  For 15 of those years, he worked for the Natural Resources Conservation Board as director of science and technology and as an acting board member who participated in decision-making panels.  In December, he joined WWF Canada. “I just decided I really wanted to work directly in conservation.”  Powell also worked with the AEUB through a shared services relationship with Natural Resources Conservation Board.

“I have attended some of those hearings, and like a lot of people have been disturbed by the fact that everything seems to be approved,” he said.  “I’m not surprised that the tarsands have become a focus, because they are probably a good example, unfortunately at this point, of unsustainable development,” he said.

Powell said his office, which will eventually be staffed with two others, will first concentrate on oilsands water issues, specifically how much water can safely be taken from the Athabasca River before it hurts the fish and human populations that rely on the river.

The World Wildlife Fund’s approach to the oilsands problem will be to bring technical expertise to the table and try to work with people to find solutions to problems. “So you’re not going to see us leaping from towers and pulling stunts as some of the other groups might do, or orchestrating placard protests.”

2007-06-06 How to find out how much of your money (CPP) is invested where. VIDEO: Help “Get the Shell Out” of the Sacred headwaters.

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Culture and Ethics, Energy  No Responses »
Jun 062007
 

The situation in Nigeria (the Ogoni people, Ken Wiwa, the execution of his Father) has been discussed in this network.  It is now transported to Canada by Royal Dutch Shell.  There will be the destruction of the Kleppan area in the interior of B.C..  But it isn’t a done deed yet – –  it doesn’t have to be.  There are enough of us to stop it.

You’ll see in the information below about organized protest against Shell.  “We are approaching 75,000 views on YouTube”.   (April 4, 2012.  196, 089 views)

AFTER THE VIDEO (A suggestion I don’t see below)

Canada Pension Plan invests your money on your behalf.  I looked up CPP investments: I have investments in Royal Dutch Shell, the corporation behind all this.  This is unethical investing.  I don’t want my money in it.  I am protesting to the CPP Investment Board.  It’s easy to do.  (INSERT:  2012 – these directions are probably obsolete.)

HOW DO I KNOW THAT MY CPP MONEY IS INVESTED IN ROYAL DUTCH SHELL?

Go to the CPP Investment Board web site.  http://www.cppib.ca/ At centre left bottom, under “Investment Profile”, click on “Equities”.  On the Equities page, go to the right hand side and click on “Public Equity Holdings”.  On the Public Equity Holdings page, near the bottom, click on  Foreign Equities Complete list of Foreign equity holdings (PDF 87KB)   Scroll down to:   Royal Dutch Shell.

HOW MUCH MONEY DO WE HAVE INVESTED IN ROYAL DUTCH SHELL?   We are invested in 2 classes of their shares.  In total we hold:

  • 6,762 MILLION shares
  • Valued (March 31, 2007) at  $259 million dollars, more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

This company has destroyed the lands of the Ogoni and impoverished them. Their leader was killed.  Shell will destroy the important Kleppan area in the interior of B.C.  The profits will go to investors.

HOW TO CONTACT THE CPP Investment Board:   Under “Contact Us”, on their web site:   We welcome and value your questions and feedback about the CPP Investment Board.  If you’d like to contact the CPP Investment Board you can:   Email: csr@cppib.ca Call: 416-868-4075   Toll Free: 1-866-557-9510   TTY – 416-868-6035   Fax: 416-868-8689   Write: One Queen Street East,  Suite 2600, P.O. Box 101,  Toronto, Ontario M5C 2W5  Canada

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

The Sacred Headwaters is the birthplace of three of BC’s great salmon rivers: the Nass, Skeena, and Stikine. The oil company Royal  Dutch Shell has been aggressively pursuing a program to extract coalbed methane from the area against the wishes of a majority of the local Tahltan people.  Dogwood Initiative, along with several other groups, has responded to a call for help from the Klabona Keepers, an organization of Tahltan elders, to keep Shell out. Dogwood Initiative has worked aggressively to that end, and on Saturday November 10th we need your help to send a different kind of message to Shell executives.

Dear friends,

YouTube Video, British Columbia – Nigeria North?    please take a look and find out what Shell is up to in Northern BC.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2RUhJGbjDM

The Video is really making Shell sit up and listen. We are approaching 75,000 views on YouTube  and would love to push that over 100,000. Please view the video and forward it on to your friends. The more people that see, comment on, rate and favourite this video the more likely we can get Shell to stay out of the Sacred Headwaters.

You can also take more direct action by joining Dogwood Initiative, the Wilderness Committee and the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition for “Shell Saturday.”

This Saturday, Nov 10, 2007, Shell Gas stations across the nation will be targeted by concerned people handing out information to draw attention to  Shell’s lack of respect for indigenous rights in the Sacred Headwaters.

Victoria (Dogwood Initiative)   (. . .locations, times and dates . . .)

For information about other “Shell Saturday” events, visit http://www.skeenawatershed.com/

Learn more on our website

All the best,

Charles

Word-warriors mailing list

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

ELAINE WRITES

Shell Canada [along with many other huge corporations (tax write-offs/politically-correct!)]  is also a major sponsor of Nature Conservancy of Canada.

(Link no longer valid:  http://www.natureconservancy.ca/site/DocServer/Corporate_Ad__Final-2006.pdf?docID=1382)

See correspondence below.  no reply was ever received from Shell Canada.

—————————— Original Message   —-

From: Elaine Hughes

To:  “David Suzuki Foundation” solutions AT  davidsuzuki.org

Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 8:41 AM

Subject:  Shell and Nature Conservancy of Canada

Dr. Suzuki, is it just me who has trouble with this?

Elaine Hughes

—– Original Message —–

From: “Jacqueline Waldorf”  @  natureconservancy.ca

To: Elaine Hughes

Cc: “Sharp, Linda SCAN–” Linda.Sharp@shell.com

Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 8:49 AM

Subject: RE: Shell and Nature Conservancy of Canada

September 13, 2004

Elaine Hughes

Box 23  Archerwill, SK S0E 0B0

Dear Ms. Hughes:

I am writing in response to your email to the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) regarding corporate support of our organization by Shell Canada. I would like to thank you for sharing your views with NCC. It is important to us to know what people are thinking, in order to help address public needs and concerns. I would like to take this opportunity to explain a little more about the way in which we do our business.

NCC accepts donations from any individual or organization that shares our passion for the land. We do not wish to deny anyone the opportunity to support our work and help preserve Canada’s essential biodiversity. We work hand in hand with corporations, community groups, conservation groups, government bodies and concerned individuals like you to devise win-win solutions that benefit the environment.

Our partnership with Shell Canada exists strictly in the context of NCC land conservation work – it is not a general endorsement of this corporation and its overall practices. We are grateful to all our supporters for allowing us to protect precious natural areas for the ultimate benefit of all Canadians, now and in years to come. For example, Shell Canada’s support to NCC has spanned more than 20 years. From coast to coast, Shell has provided NCC with resources to help conserve special properties and endangered ecosystems, including the globally rare alvar habitat on Pelee Island in Ontario, old-growth forests at the MacFarlane Woods Natural Area in Cape Breton, and wetlands such as those found on the St. Lawrence River Island in Québec.

Shell has also made an impressive contribution to the stewardship of NCC sites through the Shell Conservation Internship Program. Now in its third year, the program provides environmental studies students with practical field experience outside of classroom walls. This summer, 16 Shell Conservation Interns from all over Canada were engaged at NCC sites doing such activities as conducting flora and fauna surveys in Nova Scotia, taking photo reference points in Alberta and mapping threatened species in Ontario.

As a non-advocacy group, NCC focuses its energy and resources on preserving ecologically-sensitive areas rather than supporting or discouraging the specific activities or motives of other organizations. We maintain this simple, non-confrontational approach because it works – thanks to our spirit of collaboration, we have preserved more land than any other national conservation organization in the country, protecting over 7,300 square kilometres (1.8 million acres) since 1962.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us again if you have any other questions or concerns, or should you decide to continue supporting NCC projects.

Sincerely,

Jane Lawton

Director, Corporate Marketing and Communications

Nature Conservancy of Canada

—–Original Message—–

From: Elaine Hughes [mailto:tybach  AT  sasktel.net]

Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 8:37 PM

To: Jacqueline Waldorf

Cc: linda.sharp@shell.com

Subject: Shell and Nature Conservancy of Canada

Hello.  I was enjoying your beautiful website until I saw that ShellCanada is involved with your organization.  Is this the same Shell Oil companythat has  destroyed the lives of people and their environment in Nigeria (Ken Wiwa’s homeland) and goodness knows in how many other countries on this planet??

How do you reconcile these two images?

Elaine M. Hughes

(contact info)

2007-06-01 Tuberculosis story improbable ?? Same day, Nigerian Government brings criminal charges against Pfizer.

 Tuberculosis  No Responses »
Jun 012007
 

If you know of a web-site that deals with the frauds of the pharmaceutical companies, please forward this to it.  When I read today’s story (G & M) about the tuberculosis scare it seems concocted.

This TB superbug scare story comes on the same day as media coverage of  criminal charges against Pfizer brought by the Government of Nigeria.

I phoned the G & M and asked for the source of their information for the TB superbug article (2012 – still waiting for a call-back ).

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

CONTENTS

(1)  MY LETTER TO JOHN LE CARRE, AUTHOR OF “THE CONSTANT GARDENER” RE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AND TUBERCULOSIS.

(2)  GLOBE & MAIL, TUBERCULOSIS SUPERBUG

(3)  THE INDEPENDENT, MAY 31, US PHARMACEUTICAL GIANT PFIZER SLAPPED WITH CRIMINAL CHARGES IN NIGERIA OVER NOTORIOUS CLINICAL TRIAL IT CONDUCTED ON CHILDREN  . . .  moved to  http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=4415,  $75 million.  Pfizer settles Nigerian drug case out of court  (criminal charges for death of children)

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

(1)  MY LETTER TO JOHN LE CARRE, AUTHOR OF “THE CONSTANT GARDENER” RE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES AND TUBERCULOSIS.

Response received.
Mon 21/05/2007 5:03 AM

Dear Miss Finley

Your message has found its way to me, John le Carré’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

——————————-

(NOTE:  Cornwell is the real name, the pen name is le Carré.  I did not elaborate on relationships that le Carré knows because he wrote the book.   If you haven’t read the book it is possible that the letter will leave you wondering?!)

Dear Mr. Cornwell,  John le Carré,

I would like to pass information along to you, or through you.

It’s about tuberculosis.
I have first-hand experience with it.
Two years ago while in recovery I swung into a movie theatre, attracted by a title “The Constant Gardener”.

I’ve run an activist email network for seven years.  My nemesis is the transnational pharmaceutical corporations.  They own the chemical companies (as in Bayer owns Aventis) and together they are the biotech companies.  In bed with the Government of Canada and the Government of Saskatchewan and with the University. Especially pernicious here in Saskatchewan where now the Federal Government will help fund the development of biopharmaceuticals, after we fought them down on herbicide-tolerant bio-teched wheat.

You may have an uproarious laugh when you imagine the reaction I had while watching The Constant Gardener.  That there should be such a movie, that I should stumble into it, the timing with my own case of TB, the messages, the relationship to the work I do … it blew me out of normal.

I live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.  A few months ago I passed by a sidewalk table of used books for sale.  “The Constant Gardener”, there again, after two years.  And so I read the book.  Chapter 18.  Justin visits Lara who is living in Saskatchewan.  The university is the University of Saskatchewan (which I attended in my younger years), in Saskatoon where I currently live.

Perhaps you can understand:  I can’t NOT write to you!  There’s too much serendipity!

Bill Gates and other people are throwing millions of dollars into “the next cure” for the resistant strains of tuberculosis.

The path we tread is suicidal.  Drugs, organisms evolve to become resistant, . . .  more potent drugs, organisms evolve to become resistant.  The drugs become so potent that humans can’t withstand the toxic side effects.  We know it from anti-biotics and from World Watch Institute who keep track of the plants, etc that are now resistant to common chemicals (pesticide) applications.

Our heavy reliance on drugs is also poisoning the water supplies through urine.  We don’t have the means to remove all the chemicals and drugs from the water supply.

Here’s what needs to be passed along.  I figure you’ll have a better chance of getting it to people like Bill Gates who are funding TB research than I will!

Because of the conviction that we have to find non-drug responses to organisms like TB, I beat tuberculosis without the use of drugs.  I figured it could be done because I knew that in the 1940’s there were TB sanatoriums here in Saskatchewan that were very successful in the treatment of TB.   My Grandmother-in-law spent two years in a sanitorium as a young woman, recovered from TB and lived well into her eighties.

That is where the funding needs to go:  to non-drug therapies.  They do work.
The focus is on a determination of why the immune system succumbed to the organism.  Strengthen the immune system.  Deal with that and the body has the ability to self-heal.  I, too, am living proof that it works.

Because of the power of the drug companies, we aren’t developing alternatives to drugs.  Third world countries can’t afford the drugs.   The alternatives employ people.

We have to figure out how to get off the spiral we’re on.  It doesn’t stand up to the most elementary scrutiny by common sense.

Thanks for your book.
Knowing how vicious those companies are, I was and am amazed by the courage you displayed in writing the book.
We have to live without fear of the people in these corporations, if we are to overcome them.

Best wishes,

Sandra Finley

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

(2)  GLOBE & MAIL, TUBERCULOSIS SUPERBUG

416-585-5000. I phoned the G & M and asked for the source of their information – am awaiting a call-back.  I just think the article sounds concocted.  And I know the corrupt history of the pharmaceutical companies.  It’s also documented in “The Constant Gardener”.    Is this a concocted story to divert attention from the real story – the Nigerian Government brings criminal charges against Pfizer?   The two news stories happen to be on the same day.  The TB superbug story went wild.  Who heard about the criminal charges against Pfizer over its drug trials for “Trovan” which, as documented at the bottom of http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=4415, was seen as a possibility for the “cure” of tuberculosis, not just meningitis?

SUPERBUG TRAVELLER: CASE TAKES IRONIC TWIST

Patient’s father-in-law studies TB

But expert says his work played no role in man’s infection    JOANNA SMITH

With reports from CP, AP

June 1, 2007

An American tuberculosis patient who flew to Europe and back despite a no-fly order did so to marry the daughter of a microbiologist who specializes in the disease.

“I wasn’t involved in any decisions my son-in-law made regarding his travel,” Robert Cooksey said in a statement issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He says he did not act as a CDC official in any aspect of this case and is certain his son-in-law, identified as personal-injury lawyer Andrew Speaker, 31, from Atlanta, did not contract the disease as a result of his own contact with it.

Mr. Speaker’s adventure has health and border authorities around the world wondering whether existing regulations are enough to handle the threat of superbugs.

A World Health Organization official, meanwhile, hopes Mr. Speaker’s journey will serve as a “wake-up call.”

“Let’s revisit international laws and see how we can improve things,” said Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO’s Stop TB department in Geneva.

Mr. Speaker knew he had tuberculosis when he and Dr. Cooksey’s daughter flew from Atlanta to Paris in mid-May for their wedding and
honeymoon, and did so even after local public health officials said they advised him not to travel.

It was not until the CDC contacted him in Rome a week-and-a-half later – after the couple had already taken four short flights from Paris to Athens, then to the island of Thira, from the island of Mykonos back to Athens and then to Rome – that he learned his form of TB was particularly resistant to antibiotics.

The CDC put him on a no-fly list and told him to go into isolation at an Italian hospital, but by the time the CDC checked back with him, the newlyweds had already flown to Prague to board a transatlantic flight to Montreal.

That transatlantic journey aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 had the Public Health Agency in Canada scrambling to locate 28 passengers who were sitting within two rows of Mr. Speaker.

The PHAC said yesterday it had identified all of those passengers and has given their contact information “to the appropriate public health authorities for follow-up.”

The PHAC said 19 were Canadian residents – 14 from Quebec and five from Ontario. The others are mainly from Europe.

Despite Mr. Speaker having been placed on a no-fly list by the CDC, the PHAC said it was not aware that he had landed in Canada until the day after it happened.

While Canada’s own no-fly list does not come into effect until June 18, Canadian officials have consulted the U.S. list in the past.

“We are obviously not in a position to confirm or deny any particular security measure that our carriers may or may not use,” said Fred Gaspar, vice-president of policy and planning with the Air Transport Association of Canada.

Czech Air found out about the no-fly order from the U.S. Transportation and Security Administration only two hours after the plane had landed in Montreal, spokeswoman Daniela Hupakova told The Canadian Press.

Mr. Speaker and his wife then drove across the border at Champlain, N.Y., a surprisingly simple feat now under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Information put into the system on May 22 would have brought up a notice ordering border patrol agents to isolate and detain Mr. Speaker whenever his passport was swiped, DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said.

Instead, Mr. Speaker was waved through within about two minutes.

The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing on June 6, which Mr. Knocke said will “look at the possibility of human error” as well as Mr. Speaker’s “potential for deceitfulness.”

Another source close to the investigation said U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Ralph Basham will appear before the committee.

“People have to look into regulations and into the application of international agreements and international public health recommendations in such a way that these things are prevented,” Dr. Raviglione of the WHO said.

The WHO has begun circulating an internal memo questioning whether new rules, set to take effect next month to govern these types of situations, would have been enough to stop Mr. Speaker before he put his fellow passengers at risk, he said.

Dr. Raviglione also believes there are gaps in policy that make it difficult for officials to act quickly.

For example, what if the Italian health authorities had tried to detain Mr. Speaker but he insisted on leaving?

“What am I going to do if I don’t know exactly what the legal implications would be?” Dr. Raviglione asked.

—————–

FOR NEWCOMERS, BIT MORE BACKGROUND

From: Sandra Finley

Sent: September 12, 2005 12:47 PM

. . .    Who would think that John le Carré, British spy novelist, author of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”, “The Spy who Came in from the Cold” and other espionage thrillers, would come to our rescue?!

Last evening I attended the movie, “The Constant Gardener”, not knowing its subject matter nor that it is based on le Carré’s 2001 novel — in spite of an email I received in April which is a review and recommendation of the book!  . .

“The Constant Gardener” is a life-and-death struggle and an indictment of the pharmaceutical industry with a neat connection to its chemical flip-side through the gardener’s use of pesticides.

We have circulated news reports of the industry’s infiltration of the Government of the U.S., of its unethical, immoral and corrupt ways, we’ve seen
them at work in Canada, and know of the outrage over their plans to test chemicals on immigrant agricultural workers and their children in Florida. In le Carré’s hands and set in an Africa of teeming life and colour, what we know becomes a story of suspense that is relentless in its message, down to the last scene.

(Note to newcomers: The pharmaceutical companies own the chemical companies. The example in Saskatchewan is the Aventis chemical manufacturing plant in Regina owned by Bayer (as in aspirin). When a pesticide bylaw was attempted in Regina, an Aventis employee made a presentation to City Council saying that Bayer would close down the plant if a pesticide bylaw went through. The pharmaceutical and chemical companies are one and the same.)

In the movie, the pharmaceutical company wants to cash in on the upcoming tuberculosis (TB) epidemic by getting its drug registered first. We are familiar with the ensuing story, a repeat of VIOXX, etc. etc.: if the trials show that the side effects of the drug can kill people, the response is to cover up, bribe and kill your way out of it.

We live in a strange and swirling world. I was temporarily knocked off my pivot when I realized that “The Constant Gardener” is based on a world-wide epidemic of TB: Newcomers in our network do not know that I was diagnosed with tuberculosis on April 1st.  I thought the diagnosis was a mistake; no one gets TB!    OLD-TIMERS do not know that the daughter-in-law of Evelyn from Medicine Hat, also has tuberculosis.

You can see where “The Constant Gardener” is eerily connected to me, because of my experience with TB and work on the pest/pharma/transgenic complex and its influence on Government in Canada.

We have circulated more than enough solid science to know that synthetic chemical pesticides are slowly and stealthily deranging human reproductive and development processes. They are known to be a factor in childhood and adult cancers, Parkinsons disease, asthma, … the list is long.   The companies KNOW what their products do. That, too, is well documented through the successful court cases brought against them and through the documentary “Trade Secrets”.

le Carré’s work and the monstrosity it portrays is fiction to some people.   It is not fiction at all.

The devastation in Louisiana (hurricane) was multiplied because the Government failed to respond to the information and admonitions of people who had studied and therefore could predict outcomes. Levees were ignored, natural defences were eroded, funding was withdrawn.

A failure to enact a phased-in pesticide bylaw, to BEGIN concrete remedial action, is to succumb to the same inertia that leads to the multiplied consequences of hurricanes like Katrina.

The inertia is the consequence of Governments that are the puppets of these transnational corporate interests. le Carré’s book and the movie are a powerful frontal blow to the pharmaceutical industry and by extension to the chemical and transgenic (GMO) complex.  We have high rates of childhood cancers, Parkinsons’ disease, MS, prostate cancer, etc. The Federal Government pulled the funding on the research that was collecting the data on where childhood cancer is occurring (research into the causes of childhood cancer).     . . .   enough said.

2007-05-19 TARSANDS: Backlash against a whistle-blower Globe & Mail, Andrew Nikiforuk

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?, Energy  No Responses »
May 192007
 

“…….hope this does not happen to Sask… incredible irresponsible behaviour on the part of Health Canada…”

– Concerned Citizen, Saskatchewan Canada

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

With the Press Release of May 7, 2007, New Regulations for  Oil Sands and Oil Shale Resources at:

(Link no longer valid)  http://www.gov.sk.ca/news?newsId=1f85d947-e09b-4ad6-b775-43a006ff2831

we now realize the very real possibility that Saskatchewan will be taken down the same trail as northern Alberta.

. . . . . just what we need –  another environmental nightmare for our grandchildren’s grandchildren to learn to live with.

Manitobans should also be very concerned about Saskatchewan’s plans for this “moderate development”.

Elaine Hughes   Archerwill, SK

See also Letter to the Editor, published in Wadena news  May 16, 2007 at:  http://forum.stopthehogs.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=449

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

GLOBE & MAIL, MAY 19th by Andrew Nikiforuk

THE ENVIRONMENT: HEALTH AND SAFETY
Backlash against a whistle-blower

(link is no longer valid)

For years, Dr. John O’Connor has made headlines by continually asking why natives near the oil sands have so much cancer. But that’s not the only reason he’s in such hot water now. Andrew Nikiforuk reports ANDREW NIKIFORUK May 19, 2007.  The Globe and Mail.

FORT CHIPEWYAN, ALTA. — When John O’Connor, a diminutive and soft-spoken Irish-born family physician, began his weekly visits to Fort Chipewyan, a picturesque community on the shores of Lake Athabasca, he never expected that eight years later he would be fighting for his professional life.

Located near Wood Buffalo National Park and once Canada’s richest fur-trading post, Fort Chipewyan looks like an idyllic place. But the elders soon started to tell their new doctor stories of deformed fish and bleeding muskrats and how an unusually high number of local people had been “taken with cancer.”

Dr. O’Connor says he couldn’t help but wonder what was happening in the settlement of 1,000 that sits near the mouth of the Athabasca River about 300 kilometres downstream from the largest capital project in the world: the northern Alberta oil sands. In 2005 alone, half the community’s 14  deaths were due to various cancers.

“Is it genetics, lifestyle, the environment or just bad luck?” he recalls asking himself. “What’s going on? Where could the origin be?” He had practised medicine in Fort McMurray, at the heart of the oil sands, since 1993, and had never seen such problems in the city. “I can’t explain it.”

Since then, his concern for the health of his native patients has led to many sleepless nights as well as an open battle with the Alberta government over the lack of medical resources in the service-challenged Northern Lights Health Region, where 14 family doctors care for 80,000 people. Now, he finds himself the subject of an unusual investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta that could compromise his future. A ruling could come down at any moment, and he feels that he’s in such dire straits that he has decided to pack up and leave the province altogether.

The hunters, trappers, fishermen and oil-sand workers of “Fort Chip” seem flummoxed by what’s happening to their doctor, who works 80 hours a week, but his colleagues feel the case is politically motivated. “This is not about shutting up John; this is about shutting him down,” charges Dr. Michel Sauvé, a respected Fort McMurray internist. “There should be whistle-blowing protection for doctors.”

And that seems to be the root of the problem. As well as asking pointed questions about cancer causes, Dr. O’Connor, the region’s chief of family medicine, has spent much of the past few years criticizing the shortage of medical resources as well as the carnage on the road to Fort McMurray, a stretch so deadly it has become known as Hell’s Highway.

Yet he didn’t start to speak up in earnest about his patients in Fort Chip until 2004, when he diagnosed a middle-aged patient with a very rare bile-duct cancer known as cholangiocarcinoma. He knew it well because his father had died of the same disease in Ireland. “It’s vicious and fast.”

It’s also strongly associated with chemical pollution, including arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, a group of carcinogens discharged by oil-sand mining, which now produces a million barrels of oil a day – half the nation’s gasoline supply – and gives Ottawa more than $6-billion a year in taxes.

Normally, this form of cancer occurs in one in 100,000 people. So, when Dr. O’Connor found another case the following year, as well as clusters of immune-system disorders, in a community of just 1,000 people, he called for an independent study. “Am I seeing a problem, or am I not?” he asked officials.

He wasn’t the first to ask for a study. The fact that uranium mines, now abandoned, pulp mills and the oil sands have flushed chemicals into Lake Athabasca for decades prompted scientists to seek a survey of health in the region in 1999. Three years later, two Fort McMurray doctors asked again for a comprehensive health study on behalf of several first nations.

Finally, in 2004, Alberta’s oil regulator, the Energy and Utility Board, recommended a study. But Alberta Health and Health Canada started working on one only after a CBC reporter asked Dr. O’Connor early last year why there were so many cases of cancer in Fort Chip. The story made The National, and five months later the agencies released a statistical analysis, albeit one that had not undergone a peer review, which kept it from being deemed first-rate research.

The report found that, from 1995 to 2005, the community’s cancer rates “were comparable to the provincial average,” although officials agreed the incidence of bile-duct cancers — by this point, five cases in the North Lights alone — was “provocative.”

Dr. O’Connor challenged the thoroughness of the analysis while people in Fort Chipewyan expressed deep skepticism. In response, Alberta Health accused him of having withheld cancer reports. “Either there is no evidence, or he has decided to ignore the law,” charged provincial spokesman Howard May.

Expressing disbelief at the charge, Dr. O’Connor said: “I haven’t received any requests for information. I don’t know what they are talking about.”

In an independent analysis, well-known Alberta ecologist and statistician Kevin Timoney also found the provincial study to be deeply flawed.

“It’s difficult to find a significant result in a small sample size,” he explained. Because missing just one case would skew the results, “statistics offer a blunt tool for detection of elevated cancer rates” in such a small community.

Mr. Timoney also found widespread evidence of chemical contamination in the Athabasca River. According to data collected by a government and industry group known as the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP), the levels of PAHs in the river’s sediment now resemble those found at highly contaminated sites in the United States.

A RAMP report last year also found that 7.4 per cent of fish from the river had growth abnormalities. “That’s high,” says Mr. Timoney, who is now conducting an extensive water-quality study for the community’s local health board.

Frustrated by government unwillingness to conduct a proper health study, Dr. O’Connor announced in December that he plans to leave Fort McMurray this summer and move to Nova Scotia. Then he caused an even bigger sensation by writing in an emotional letter to Halifax’s Chronicle Herald newspaper that life in Fort McMurray is “intolerable.” He also warned Atlantic Canada workers not to expect to come west and find a family doctor or affordable housing when they get here. “The quality of life,” he said, “is extremely low.”

Because of the letter, Dr. O’Connor admits, “a lot of people in administration thought I was the worst thing that had happened to the town.”

After all, the provincial government was in the middle of a campaign to recruit more health-care workers to a region that it says has “the most severe” gaps in care.

Within weeks, three employees of Health Canada, one from Alberta Health and another from Environment Canada had filed a complaint against Dr. O’Connor with the College of Physicians and Surgeons. According to one source, the bureaucrats have accused him of “irresponsible actions” and “raising undue alarm among the public.” His concerns about contamination, they said, have left the people of Fort Chipewyan “fearful of the places they live in and their traditional foods.”

Asked why government employees would take such a drastic step, a Health Canada spokesperson stated via an e-mail simply that health professionals of all sorts are obliged to report on “professional practice issues.”

However, the timing of the complaint has led Dr. Sauvé and other local doctors and nurses to conclude that the federal and provincial governments wanted to silence an outspoken critic of the area’s industrial growth. The college normally reviews complaints made by patients, Dr. Sauvé explains, and shouldn’t be used as “a state tool for censoring doctors.”

The “fearful” people of Fort Chipewyan, meanwhile, contend that they have voiced concerns about cancer rates and water pollution for years. When the wind is right, they can smell the oil-sands plants, and now carry filtered water into the bush when hunting.

Margaret Simpson, a 60-year-old Dene and Catholic lay priest, says that in 2005 she often buried two people a week. “What is happening here? It drove me nuts,” she says, describing Dr. O’Connor as her friend as well as her physician.

“It’s not fair what’s happening to him. Maybe they are trying to keep him quiet about something they don’t want known.”

Raymond Ladouceur, a 65-year-old commercial fisherman who says he routinely pulls deformed fish from the lake, echoes her sentiment. “These guys who accuse him of agitating the community should apologize. Let O’Connor do his job. He is concerned about life and we support him. The whole community does.”

Five years ago, Mr. Ladouceur says, he sent 200 pounds of pickerel riddled with tumours, bulging eyes, crooked tails and pushed-in faces to Fort McMurray for testing he hoped would determine what has been going wrong.

But provincial officials didn’t pick up the fish, he says, and they were left to rot in a truck.

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning Calgary journalist.  Next month, he will be among the speakers at an Alberta Environmental Network Conference on water in the Athabasca Basin, as will Dr. John O’Connor.

The Powerful Origin of Mother’s Day, 1870. & Jezile, Son of Man

 Peace or Violence  1 Response »
May 142007
 

A uniting force for Mothers, the original Mother’s Day Proclamation  

(First posted 2007-05.  Re-posted  2021-05 and 2026-05)

But start with:
Two Excerpts from Kent Nerburn’s Neither Wolf Nor Dog, sub-title “On Forgotten Roads . . . ”.

See, the men like my grandpa Dan, they are still fighting.  You’re helping them fight.  That’s good.  But it’s our turn now – – Indian women.  The men are tired.  They fought for almost two hundred years.  Now it’s our turn. . . . 

It was taken from them (the men).  Everything.   (Their role is to provide for and protect their families.  That role has been taken.)

. . . But no one paid any attention to us women.  We kept things alive in our hearts and hands.  . . . They ignored us.  We were just women.  . . . But we were always the ones to keep the culture alive.  That was our job as women and as mothers.  It always has been.  . . .  

. . .   When I worked on Red Lake it seemed to me that the Indian women were strong – – stronger than white women in a lot of ways.  But they were strong apart from the men, as mothers, as grandmothers.  . . .   

Which leads into The Mother’s Day Proclamation, the strength of the women behind it.

 

THE ORIGINAL MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION, 1870, BY JULIA WARD HOWE

In the aftermath of the American Civil War (1861-65):

“Arise then, women of this day!  Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears! 

“Say firmly”:  ‘We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies.  Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause.  Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.  We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.  From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says “Disarm! Disarm!” The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.  Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.’

“As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.  Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace. 

“In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” 

By Julia Ward Howe.

(who went on to work internationally (in Africa and elsewhere) at uniting women, implementing the ideals of The Mothers Day Proclamation.)

JEZILE, a film.  Thanks to Phyllis from the Broadway Theatre

The history of Mother’s day is powerful.   Its founders never intended it as a commercial event.

Phyllis writes:

I have attached the Mother’s Day speech from 1870 for you. It is sad, really, that women have been saying the same things for centuries.

The history of Mother’s day is so much more than many of us know – it is much, much more than a Greeting Card and Flower Shop construct.  Please check out online the story of American women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who were early activists and promoters of the celebration of women and women’s work.

There was a marvellous speech written by Julia Ward Howe perhaps best known today for having written the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” when she was an antislavery activist.

The original Proclamation was an impassioned call for peace and disarmament.  In the years following the Civil War her political activism increased, as did her condemnation of war.

“Arise then, women of this day!   . . .    “In the name of womanhood and humanity, . . .   ” 

Now – wasn’t that something? In this movie you are about to see, Son of Man – this mother/son story of Jesus, Mother Mary states those thoughts in her own fashion, surrounded as she is by the devastation that is Africa.

Today, I dedicate this movie to the intense bond between mothers and their children.   I hope you like it as much as I do.    /Phyllis

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

(Sandra speaking)

Phyllis saw the movie “Jezile, Son of Man” at a film festival.  She determined that it had to be seen.  She tracked it down, finally, to a British production company.  Phyllis’ efforts resulted in the film being shown here (Saskatoon, SK) on Mother’s Day.

Jezile: Son of Man

2006 South Africa,    Dir: Mark Dornford-May,   86 min.

English/Xhosa w/EST

(INSERT /S: the film is rich in spite of scant dialogue.  You might, however, want to sit close to the front in order to read the sub-titles.)

Jezile, Son of Man:  “Nominated for Grand Jury Prize Sundance Film Festival. This story of Jesus is set in present-day Africa and says the same sorts of things Jesus said in the Bible, updated only in terms of reference. The film sends an unmistakable message: If Jesus were alive today, he would be singled out as a dangerous political leader, just as he was the first time around. The movie has relatively little spoken dialogue but a great deal of music, that joyous full-throated South African music that combines great technical skill with great heart. Some of the best moments belong to Mary (Pauline Malefane), who sings in celebration after being told she will be the mother of Jesus (Andile Kosi). “One of the most extraordinary and powerful films at Sundance.” — Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com “

XHOSA, from wikipedia:  “Presently approximately 8 million Xhosa people are distributed across the country, and Xhosa is South Africa’s second most common home language, after Zulu, to which Xhosa is closely related. The pre-1994 apartheid system of bantustans denied Xhosas South African citizenship and attempted to confine them to the nominally self-governing “homelands” of Transkei and Ciskei, now both a part of the Eastern Cape Province where most Xhosa remain. Many Xhosa live in Cape Town (iKapa in Xhosa), East London (iMonti), and Port Elizabeth (iBhayi).”

“Testament”

To me, Sandra, there is an interesting parallel between Jezile, Son of Man and the book “Testament” by Canadian author Nino Ricci.  Jezile is set in modern-day Africa.  Testament is set in the Roman Empire during a period of political unrest.  The central character in both stories is a Jesus-like person.

2007-05-09 U.K. protests start over out-sourcing of census work to Lockheed Martin. England, Wales, Northern Ireland.

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
May 092007
 

CONTENTS

(1)  GREENS DEMAND BOYCOTT OF LOCKHEED MARTIN CENSUS TRIAL, May 2007

(2)  CENSUS ALERT (UK) WEB-SITE, June 2008.  (Has information on the 2006 census Lockheed Martin boycott in Canada.)

(3)  LOCKHEED MARTIN SELECTED FOR CONTRACTS ON UK CENSUS,  August 28,  2008

(Note:  the same thing as in Canada,  Lockheed Martin gets work on the census “trial” and then, of course, the census contracts.  Also, I was in contact with some of these people a couple of years ago.)

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(1)  GREENS DEMAND BOYCOTT OF LOCKHEED MARTIN CENSUS TRIAL, May 2007

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/09/census_boycott/

Greens demand boycott of Lockheed Martin census trial

Births, deaths and munitions

By Mark Ballard •  Posted in Public Sector, 9th May 2007 15:52 GMT

The Green Party has called for a boycott of the UK’s 2007 census pilot because it is being run by US weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

Writing in the New Statesman yesterday, Green Party spokeswoman Sian Berry relayed her alarm that Lockheed, “biggest defence contractor in the world; manufacturer of land mines, depleted uranium shells and Trident missiles; provider of freelance interrogators for Guantanamo Bay; and self-proclaimed master of ‘integrated threat information’,” would be running the UK census trial on 13 May.

 

“As an all-round opponent of the arms trade, supporting companies like this with public contracts alarms me,” said Berry in a statement today. “It’s a bad sign of the developing database state, and shows that ID cards could lead to our identities being under the control of some very doubtful corporations.”

She claimed that NASA had already tried to use US census data to create a database of suspect people, but had been stopped by civil liberties campaigners.

“The only responsible and prudent thing to do in this situation is to boycott the test census. Non-participation sends a signal to the government that we want more controls on who processes information about us.”

On the part of Lockheed’s website devoted to its military intelligence business, the firm boasts: “During times of conflict, dominating the information spectrum has become as critical as occupying the land or controlling the air.”

But in a written statement, Lockheed said: “All the information collected is protected by law under the Census [Confidentiality] Act 1991, and all Lockheed Martin and subcontractor personnel have signed individual compliance agreements.

“At no time will the information leave the government facilities operated by the Office for National Statistics. Census forms will be held securely under the terms of the Public Records Act 1958.”

The statement said Lockheed already does work for the Royal Mail, auto-reading hand-written address labels; and it provides air traffic control software. In defence, it manufactures the Royal Navy’s Merlin helicopter.

It did not mention land mines, missiles, or other highlights of the Lockheed Martin catalogue.

Berry wasn’t reassured: “I think it will take a lot more than that to convince people their details will be safe. Not using an American arms company to run the census would be a start.”

The weekend’s trial is a preparation for the full census in 2011. The Office of National Statistics, which runs the census and contracted Lockheed, was not available for comment, but census director Ian Cope said in reply to Berry’s article that the boycott was “short-sighted and irresponsible”. ®

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(2)  CENSUS ALERT (UK) WEB-SITE, June 2008.  (Has information on the 2006 census Lockheed Martin boycott in Canada.)

(Link no longer valid)   http://censusalert.org.uk/

Latest news: our petition closed on 15 June 2008, with no decision yet made on Lockheed Martin’s involvement.

We received a response on 10 July but this gave us no reassurance that data will be kept safe.

(Link no longer valid:  Read the government’s response, and our response to their )response, here

—————————-

The next UK Census will be in 2011. Help us stop it being run by an arms company with close links to the United States government.

Screen Captures  (July 2014 – the domain name fees have not been paid, the site is not active at this time.)

CensusAlert UK 1

 

CensusAlert UK 2

CensusAlert UK 3

What’s the problem?

The process of running the 2011 Census will be contracted out by the Office of National Statistics to a private company.

One of the two contractors in the final round of selection is the arms company Lockheed Martin, 80% of whose business is with the US Department of Defense and other Federal Government agencies.

This might concern you because:

  • The Census rules mean that every household will be legally obliged to provide a wide range of personal information that will be handled by the chosen contractor.
  • Lockheed Martin produces missiles and land mines which are being used in Afghanistan and Iraq and which are illegal in many countries.
  • They also focus on intelligence and surveillance work and boast of their ability to provide ‘integrated threat information’ that combines information from many different sources.
  • New questions in the 2011 Census will include information about income and place of birth, as well as existing questions about languages spoken in the household and many other personal details.
  • This information would be very useful to Lockheed Martin’s intelligence work, and fears that the data might not be safe could lead to many people not filling in their Census forms.

Census Alert is therefore campaigning to stop Lockheed Martin from being given the contract.

The campaign is supported by the Green Party, politicians from Plaid Cymru, Labour and the Scottish National Party, and others opposed to the arms trade and concerned about personal privacy.

We are not opposed to the Census itself. Aggregated, the information collected is important in allocating resources to local authorities and public services.

But personal privacy is important too, and we are concerned that Lockheed Martin’s involvement could undermine public confidence in the process and lead to inaccurate data being collected.      . . . .

(Please go to the website for more information.  There is a page on this UK website:

Canada’s census and Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin were also involved in the 2006 Census in Canada, and a campaign calling for a boycott was organised by Vive le Canada and supported by progressive  …   etc.

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(3)  LOCKHEED MARTIN SELECTED FOR CONTRACTS ON UK CENSUS,  August 28,  2008

(Link no longer valid:  http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/pressreleases/2008/0828_lmuk-2011-census.html)

Lockheed Martin Awarded £150M Contract to Support 2011 Census for England and Wales, and Northern Ireland

London, UK, August 28th, 2008 — Today, Lockheed Martin UK and its industry team were selected by the Office for National Statistics to support the 2011 Census for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  The approximately £150M contract award comes after an extensive competition which required the Lockheed Martin UK-led team to demonstrate its ability to provide secure and accurate data capture and processing support services.

“We are proud to again support the Office for National Statistics in conducting its census,” said Ian Stopps, chief executive of Lockheed Martin UK.  “Together, with our industry team, we are committed to delivering a system that enables the government to efficiently and effectively perform the 2011 Census while ensuring that all information remains secure and confidential”
�
Lockheed Martin, who successfully provided the data capture elements of the 2001 UK Census, as well as previous censuses for Canada and the United States, has created a consortium of UK-based companies with proven experience. Team members are Broadcasting Support Services (bss), Cable & Wireless, Logica (UK) Ltd, Oracle Corporation UK, Polestar Group, Royal Mail, Steria Ltd, and UK Data Capture Ltd.

Working with the ONS and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) authorities, the team will design, install and support an innovative system using state-of-the-art character recognition and colour processing for paper census forms. The system will, for the first time, allow for census questionnaires to be completed via the Internet in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Lockheed Martin UK, a unit of Lockheed Martin Corporation, is a leader in systems integration working on major programmes spanning the aerospace, defence and civil sectors. Lockheed Martin UK works with more than 100 business partners and employs over 1,700 people at a dozen sites across the UK.

Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, Lockheed Martin is a global security company that employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The corporation reported 2007 sales of $41.9 billion.

Media Contact:
UK: Chris Trippick; 02077982888; mobile: 07905356646; chris.trippick@lmco.com

For additional information, visit our websites:
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk
http://www.lockheedmartin.com

2007-04-02 Census – letter from Justice Dept hand-delivered tonight. One last chance.

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Apr 022007
 

They are offering one more chance for me to comply.  I will not be complying. 

From this point forward the stand I have taken is of benefit only if the Government proceeds against me and if there is lots of publicity and participation from the peace activists, in substantial numbers  –  to draw attention to “the unholy alliances” between Government and corporations like Lockheed-Martin, a major player and beneficiary in the American war machine.

No part of the Canadian census had to be out-sourced to Lockheed Martin, one of the most corrupt corporations on the planet. 

I stay in contact with others over the census boycott, people who didn’t fill out a census form.  I’ve sent the following to them. 

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

April 2, 2007 

Census – letter from Justice Dept hand-delivered tonight 

Hi,

I just want to register information, and connect with others. 

Tonight around 7:30 a middle-aged man rang my doorbell.  He said “Hi Sandra” as though he knew me and proffered an envelope.  Was apologetic saying he had to run.  I was struggling to recognize the friendly face.  He was wearing blue jeans and a jacket.  Balding.  Could have been a farmer, drove away in a rather nice, shiny-black, half-ton truck. 

The large envelope he handed me is from “Statistics Canada”.  Not sealed.

Inside is from “Department of Justice Canada”. 

The letter is dated March 19.  (NOTE:  hand-delivered April 2.) 

I have been given “one final opportunity to cooperate and avoid a court appearance.” 

“If you have not returned this questionnaire completed in full by March 31, 2007, your file will be sent to the Crown Attorney’s office for prosecution.” 

This has been hand-delivered to me,  April 2, around 7:30pm. 

I am disregarding the letter. 

I checked Vive le Canada web-site.  There’s nothing new posted in the census support group since my last one in October.  Maybe only a few people are receiving the letters from the Govt to enforce compliance. 

I know a farmer in PEI who didn’t fill in his census.  I’ll try to track him down.  Will also get back in contact with the Quaker group in Halifax who registered their position so well with the Government. 

I suspect that my best defence, if this goes to court, will be to show that I am being singled out.  It seems to me that if they prosecute me, they have to prosecute all the others who didn’t comply. 

Cheers! 

Sandra

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