parl.gc; cadebanp@sen.parl.gc; catessil@sen.parl.gc; cafortis@sen.parl.gc; cafrasej@sen.parl.gc; cahervic@sen.parl.gc; calacomd@sen.parl.gc; calacomd@sen.parl.gc; calacomd@sen.parl.gc; canolinp@sen.parl.gc; carivarm@sen.parl.gc; cajcrivest@sen.parl.gc; caseidmj@sen.parl.gc; cavernej@sen.parl.gc; cawattc@sen.parl.gc.ca
Dear Senators,
The Canadian Bar Association, representing over 37,000 lawyers across the country, has identified 10 reasons why the passage of Bill C-10 will be a mistake and a setback for Canada:
1. Ignoring reality. Decades of research and experience have shown what actually reduces crime: (a) addressing child poverty, (b) providing services for the mentally ill and those afflicted with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, (c) diverting young offenders from the adult justice system, and (d) rehabilitating prisoners, and helping them to reintegrate into society. Bill C-10 ignores these proven facts.
2. Rush job. Instead of receiving a thorough review, Bill C-10 is being rushed through Parliament purely to meet the “100-day passage” promise from the last election. Expert witnesses attempting to comment on more than 150 pages of legislation in committee hearings are cut off mid-sentence after just five minutes.
3. Spin triumphs over substance. The federal government has chosen to take a “marketing” approach to Bill C-10, rather than explaining the facts to Canadians. This campaign misrepresents the bill’s actual content and ensures that its public support is based heavily on inaccuracies.
4. No proper inspection. Contrary to government claims, some parts of Bill C-10 have received no previous study by parliamentary committee. Other sections have been studied before and were changed — but, in Bill C-10, they’re back in their original form.
5. Wasted youth. More young Canadians will spend months in custodial centres before trial, thanks to Bill C-10. Experience has shown that at-risk youth learn or reinforce criminal behaviour in custodial centres; only when diverted to community options are they more likely to be reformed.
6. Punishments eclipse the crime. The slogan for one proposal was Ending House Arrest for Serious and Violent Criminals Act, but Bill C-10 will actually also eliminate conditional sentences for minor and property offenders and instead send those people to jail. Is roughly $100,000 per year to incarcerate someone unnecessarily a good use of taxpayers’ money?
7. Training predators. Bill C-10 would force judges to incarcerate people whose offences and circumstances clearly do not warrant time in custody. Prison officials will have more latitude to disregard prisoners’ human rights, bypassing the least restrictive means to discipline and control inmates. Almost every inmate will re-enter society someday. Do we want them to come out as neighbours, or as predators hardened by their prison experience?
8. Justice system overload. Longer and harsher sentences will increase the strains on a justice system already at the breaking point. Courts and Crown prosecutors’ offices are overwhelmed as is, legal aid plans are at the breaking point, and police forces don’t have the resources to do their jobs properly. Bill C-10 addresses none of these problems and will make them much worse.
9. Victimizing the most vulnerable. With mandatory minimums replacing conditional sentences, people in remote, rural and northern communities will be shipped far from their families to serve time. Canada’s aboriginal people already represent up to 80 per cent of inmates in institutions in the Prairies, a national embarrassment that Bill C-10 will make worse.
10. How much money? With no reliable price tag for its recommendations, there is no way to responsibly decide the bill’s financial implications. What will Canadians sacrifice to pay for these initiatives? Will they be worth the cost?
Please defeat the omnibus Crime Bill. Thank you for your consideration and time,
[etc.]
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
protestsongs.ca
My mother is from Cape Breton Island. Our family has 7 generations who can be said to have lived there, or at least really enjoyed many long holidays there, or even years of aimless wandering in the backwoods up on the hill of Boisdale. I enjoy Cape Breton Celtic music rarely, but I have found protestsongs.ca, and I have realized that there's a whole genre of Cape Breton music that I absolutely CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF!
Friday, November 04, 2011
System change at McGill University
Many of the workers of McGill University are on strike. Secretaries, technicians, cleaning staff, etc., have been walking the picket line for months. McGill University hasn't been accommodating. I suppose it has never been the tradition for McGill to accommodate with magnanimity in such situations.
Winter is coming, the strikers are getting tired, and it seems that their fate will be to return to work, concerns unmet.
McGill University wasn't founded by men who respected the working class. McGill's pretensions and elitism seem preposterous and awful to me, given that it is a colonial Canadian institution, without much in the way of history, relatively speaking, anyway. Its pretensions are where its lack of sympathy comes from, I think.
The Teaching Assistants, including myself, and the Research Associates, may soon be forced to strike. As I understand it, a Research Assistant, who has worked at McGill for 30 years, who holds a PhD, is paid similarly to a newly hired BSc employed in a similar position at any of the other Montreal universities. That's scandalous. However, the truth is I know a few of my colleagues aren't getting paid for their work at all! Do we all at McGill need to be reminded that we all require sufficient pay to make rent & buy food, etc.? It is horribly predictable that our basic needs are often overlooked, here at the home of Canada's most highly paid administrator.
What is happening at McGill is like Occupy Wall Street, on a small scale. The smallness of the scale does not negate the significance of this event. On the contrary, this should be instructive.
What is happening here is the long-prophesied System Change. System Change is an important ingredient of Global Change, which has long been thought to be unavoidable, owing to the intersections and collisions of climatic, social, and economic crises.
I hope you can understand, as I have come to understand, that System Change asks of us all to bring into being new systems, in a way similar to what is happening at McGill. Our new arrangement must be designed to meet the concerns of the people who are parts of it.
The old systems don't work. Our environmental & economic crises are evidence of the old systemic inadequacies. There is no avoiding system change, because our systems have to change in order for them to continue. Some of those old systems will not change, and they will not survive. Systems, such as McGill University, will not continue in the manner that they were before, because the people, who are the bones and muscles of such an institutional body, just can't handle the old way (the unsympathetic & elitist way) of organizing things anymore.
Winter is coming, the strikers are getting tired, and it seems that their fate will be to return to work, concerns unmet.
McGill University wasn't founded by men who respected the working class. McGill's pretensions and elitism seem preposterous and awful to me, given that it is a colonial Canadian institution, without much in the way of history, relatively speaking, anyway. Its pretensions are where its lack of sympathy comes from, I think.
The Teaching Assistants, including myself, and the Research Associates, may soon be forced to strike. As I understand it, a Research Assistant, who has worked at McGill for 30 years, who holds a PhD, is paid similarly to a newly hired BSc employed in a similar position at any of the other Montreal universities. That's scandalous. However, the truth is I know a few of my colleagues aren't getting paid for their work at all! Do we all at McGill need to be reminded that we all require sufficient pay to make rent & buy food, etc.? It is horribly predictable that our basic needs are often overlooked, here at the home of Canada's most highly paid administrator.
What is happening at McGill is like Occupy Wall Street, on a small scale. The smallness of the scale does not negate the significance of this event. On the contrary, this should be instructive.
What is happening here is the long-prophesied System Change. System Change is an important ingredient of Global Change, which has long been thought to be unavoidable, owing to the intersections and collisions of climatic, social, and economic crises.
I hope you can understand, as I have come to understand, that System Change asks of us all to bring into being new systems, in a way similar to what is happening at McGill. Our new arrangement must be designed to meet the concerns of the people who are parts of it.
The old systems don't work. Our environmental & economic crises are evidence of the old systemic inadequacies. There is no avoiding system change, because our systems have to change in order for them to continue. Some of those old systems will not change, and they will not survive. Systems, such as McGill University, will not continue in the manner that they were before, because the people, who are the bones and muscles of such an institutional body, just can't handle the old way (the unsympathetic & elitist way) of organizing things anymore.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Decolonize Montreal
Hello,
I took the McGill Intercampus Shuttle downtown before dawn this morning.
I walked down to Square Victoria. I asked a couple of policemen - who crossed the street with me - how many tents there were at the park. N.B., there were lots and lots of tents, probably more than one hundred. They said "Oh maybe fifty. No. Maybe thirty." Shameless liars.
I recognized a very nice guy from Musquodoboit, who I see at all the protests and Anarchist Bookfairs. We watched the union conference attendees arrive. There was a very large crowd of them, and they made a few speeches in french before going back to their conference. I wouldn't mind talking to that guy all day, but he escaped for soup.
So I talked with the Global News cameraman. Donny wanted to run Global News out of the tent site, because the Global coverage has been unfair. Donny recommends the Mirror's story instead: http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/2011/10/13/cover-the-99-are-coming/
So, that's all for now. I plan to go back soon with lots of sidewalk chalk.
I took the McGill Intercampus Shuttle downtown before dawn this morning.
I walked down to Square Victoria. I asked a couple of policemen - who crossed the street with me - how many tents there were at the park. N.B., there were lots and lots of tents, probably more than one hundred. They said "Oh maybe fifty. No. Maybe thirty." Shameless liars.
I recognized a very nice guy from Musquodoboit, who I see at all the protests and Anarchist Bookfairs. We watched the union conference attendees arrive. There was a very large crowd of them, and they made a few speeches in french before going back to their conference. I wouldn't mind talking to that guy all day, but he escaped for soup.
So I talked with the Global News cameraman. Donny wanted to run Global News out of the tent site, because the Global coverage has been unfair. Donny recommends the Mirror's story instead: http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/2011/10/13/cover-the-99-are-coming/
So, that's all for now. I plan to go back soon with lots of sidewalk chalk.
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Conflict Gypsy
I may want to read every document on http://www.conflictgypsy.com/
I just thought I would share that.
That is all for now ;)
I just thought I would share that.
That is all for now ;)
Monday, September 26, 2011
That Ottawa Action
I guess it is time for me to write my story about what happened in Ottawa today. This story begins with the fact that I promised my Mom that I wouldn't get arrested while doing my Ph. D.
I am a Ph. D. Candidate and a Teaching Assistant at McGill University's Macdonald Campus in Ste Anne de Bellevue. As you will see, it is necessary for me to communicate with clarity to you that being a Ph. D. Candidate accords me no power whatsoever within this institution. It is definitely not a position of prestige. My position is really humble: endless reading, laboratory experiments at any and all hours of the day or night, the pursuit of the interests of my academic committee. My only possessions of any value are my somewhat more than 25 boxes of books, and my netbook.
I am the TA for a class called Knowledge, Ethics & the Environment. As a product of their readings of environmental philosophy, some of the students spontaneously moved to attend the Ottawa Action against the Tar Sands, organized by Greenpeace, the Council of Canadians, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, et al. This class is an ethics class, and I felt like it was my moral duty to accompany the students.
Some of the undergraduates chose to bike all the way from Ste Anne de Bellevue to Ottawa. Some rode in a van. I heard that Concordia was organizing to go, and I figured they would have put in place a crack legal team, and since I do not currently have a bicycle with me here in Quebec, I opted to try to get a seat on their bus. At various times in the past, I have been bailed out of detention by the Concordia Student's Union and others affiliated with their university. So, if I was to be arrested in Ottawa, I trusted Concordian lawyers to be on my side. However, Concordia did not have its own bus, but shared one with Dawson College. So, I traveled to Ottawa on the Dawson College bus, with some members of Concordia's Sustainability Club, and a small crowd of College young people. We all received names and numbers for legal defense, in case of that eventuality.
Greenpeace organizes many actions – every day – all over the world. And it is the law of creative and scientific geniuses, like our friends at Greenpeace, that quantity precludes quality. That is, they must produce a great number of actions in order for a small percent of their work to hit the right note at exactly the right time, to instigate real change. I realize not all actions are perfect. In fact, most actions need not be perfect or even acceptable to anybody, because there are those shining moments when fate and destiny and long hours of organizing produce real, lasting environmental transformation.
We saw a lot of police at the Parliament building, but not an insurmountable force, given our superior numbers. The policemen – and for the most part the women, too - were tall and large. I looked for the usual policemen atop the buildings surrounding the Parliament, and they were there, but I don't suppose they could be snipers. In any case, the police had erected a low fence before the steps approaching the Parliament, and a couple of other fences on the steps and around the Parliament itself. At this point I should be clear about what I believe. I believe that the Parliament is OUR building. I believe it is a public space. I believe it belongs as an edifice to the people of Canada. It is literally ours. I believe sitting on the Parliament lawn is not an offense. I believe that any petty act of vandalism to the Parliament, and even any act of violence that could have occurred there, would necessarily pale in comparison - and pale absolutely in comparison - to the most grave act of vandalism in the world – quite possibly the most grievous act of vandalism and violence in the history of the whole world – which is the clearcutting of the Boreal forest, the open surface extraction of vast quantities of bitumen, and the release of THE CARBON BOMB into our atmosphere, thereby eliminating forever our habitable climate.
In any case, both of those fences could have been scaled by many of the protestors. They could have been dismantled by the crowd. We were so many and so capable that we could have really quite easily penetrated the Parliament's defenses and put our demands directly before the trembling government clerks inside.
I could say the protestors approached the Parliament, but that simply was not the case, owing to the many fences. The best that could be done, under the circumstances of really very peaceful civil disobedience, was for them to cross the first small fence. There, they sat on the lawn, on the other side, uniformly not facing the police. One by one they were “processed.” The protestors were asked to produce ID, they were handcuffed with white plastic ties, which I know to be excruciatingly uncomfortable when worn for many hours, tight. They were taken away. As they were not facing the police, they could not see their self-satisfied and frankly stupid policeman smiles. Those twinkling eyes. Those knowing nods to one another. It was pretty clear that, in the eyes of the Ottawa police, all the protestors were just foolishly idealistic people, merely naughty, but at least fulfilling their quota of necessary arrests for this year. New couples of officers processed each activist, so they each could get a part of the action.
Only one of our chants was provocative. With it, as it occasionally arose, we challenged the police and asked them which side they were on. The police did not get the message. There was no Arab Spring here, no changing of sides on their part, at all.
I started asking the police to not arrest people. Clearly and necessarily loudly I said “Don't arrest this next one! You don't have to! It's not illegal to sit on the Parliament lawn! This space belongs to the people of Canada!” And I was immediately told to be quiet by one of the sitting protestors. She told me I was not being a good ally. This amazed me. She wanted me to let her be arrested, processed, and her life to be reduced to such as ours are in the surveillance state. She wanted me to stand by as “our” police bent the law and arrested her fellow sitters for literally doing nothing.
Furthermore, a Greenpeace crowd control officer intercepted me and also told me to be quiet. They didn't want the situation to escalate. I joked with her that, as a McGill employee, I wasn't used to being told what to do. I really meant that as a little joke. As a Ph. D. student I am always being told what to do. Unfortunately, she took it completely seriously. I let it slide, and that was a mistake because she continued to think I had been serious. I tried to explain to her that nothing could come of this action if we couldn't get the police to stop arresting people. I began to summon my comprehensive academic knowledge on the history of nonviolent direct action, but Tantoo Cardinal also told me to be quiet. They collectively very clearly conveyed to me the message that they didn't want anything to come from this action today. They weren't seriously looking for any change in government policy. As such it was not so much a symbolic action as merely symbolic. It was about people sitting on the lawn getting arrested for no good reason at all. Greenpeace basically hand-delivered more than a hundred arrests to the Ottawa police. God Damn, I hope the gift will be reciprocated!
On the long bus ride home, one of the Dawson College students observed that the only way for environmental change to be effected in Canada would be for the police to decide to take the side of the protestors. “Like they did in Egypt.” He explained. Others tentatively agreed that perhaps an NDP majority would be effective as well.
I am a Ph. D. Candidate and a Teaching Assistant at McGill University's Macdonald Campus in Ste Anne de Bellevue. As you will see, it is necessary for me to communicate with clarity to you that being a Ph. D. Candidate accords me no power whatsoever within this institution. It is definitely not a position of prestige. My position is really humble: endless reading, laboratory experiments at any and all hours of the day or night, the pursuit of the interests of my academic committee. My only possessions of any value are my somewhat more than 25 boxes of books, and my netbook.
I am the TA for a class called Knowledge, Ethics & the Environment. As a product of their readings of environmental philosophy, some of the students spontaneously moved to attend the Ottawa Action against the Tar Sands, organized by Greenpeace, the Council of Canadians, and the Indigenous Environmental Network, et al. This class is an ethics class, and I felt like it was my moral duty to accompany the students.
Some of the undergraduates chose to bike all the way from Ste Anne de Bellevue to Ottawa. Some rode in a van. I heard that Concordia was organizing to go, and I figured they would have put in place a crack legal team, and since I do not currently have a bicycle with me here in Quebec, I opted to try to get a seat on their bus. At various times in the past, I have been bailed out of detention by the Concordia Student's Union and others affiliated with their university. So, if I was to be arrested in Ottawa, I trusted Concordian lawyers to be on my side. However, Concordia did not have its own bus, but shared one with Dawson College. So, I traveled to Ottawa on the Dawson College bus, with some members of Concordia's Sustainability Club, and a small crowd of College young people. We all received names and numbers for legal defense, in case of that eventuality.
Greenpeace organizes many actions – every day – all over the world. And it is the law of creative and scientific geniuses, like our friends at Greenpeace, that quantity precludes quality. That is, they must produce a great number of actions in order for a small percent of their work to hit the right note at exactly the right time, to instigate real change. I realize not all actions are perfect. In fact, most actions need not be perfect or even acceptable to anybody, because there are those shining moments when fate and destiny and long hours of organizing produce real, lasting environmental transformation.
We saw a lot of police at the Parliament building, but not an insurmountable force, given our superior numbers. The policemen – and for the most part the women, too - were tall and large. I looked for the usual policemen atop the buildings surrounding the Parliament, and they were there, but I don't suppose they could be snipers. In any case, the police had erected a low fence before the steps approaching the Parliament, and a couple of other fences on the steps and around the Parliament itself. At this point I should be clear about what I believe. I believe that the Parliament is OUR building. I believe it is a public space. I believe it belongs as an edifice to the people of Canada. It is literally ours. I believe sitting on the Parliament lawn is not an offense. I believe that any petty act of vandalism to the Parliament, and even any act of violence that could have occurred there, would necessarily pale in comparison - and pale absolutely in comparison - to the most grave act of vandalism in the world – quite possibly the most grievous act of vandalism and violence in the history of the whole world – which is the clearcutting of the Boreal forest, the open surface extraction of vast quantities of bitumen, and the release of THE CARBON BOMB into our atmosphere, thereby eliminating forever our habitable climate.
In any case, both of those fences could have been scaled by many of the protestors. They could have been dismantled by the crowd. We were so many and so capable that we could have really quite easily penetrated the Parliament's defenses and put our demands directly before the trembling government clerks inside.
I could say the protestors approached the Parliament, but that simply was not the case, owing to the many fences. The best that could be done, under the circumstances of really very peaceful civil disobedience, was for them to cross the first small fence. There, they sat on the lawn, on the other side, uniformly not facing the police. One by one they were “processed.” The protestors were asked to produce ID, they were handcuffed with white plastic ties, which I know to be excruciatingly uncomfortable when worn for many hours, tight. They were taken away. As they were not facing the police, they could not see their self-satisfied and frankly stupid policeman smiles. Those twinkling eyes. Those knowing nods to one another. It was pretty clear that, in the eyes of the Ottawa police, all the protestors were just foolishly idealistic people, merely naughty, but at least fulfilling their quota of necessary arrests for this year. New couples of officers processed each activist, so they each could get a part of the action.
Only one of our chants was provocative. With it, as it occasionally arose, we challenged the police and asked them which side they were on. The police did not get the message. There was no Arab Spring here, no changing of sides on their part, at all.
I started asking the police to not arrest people. Clearly and necessarily loudly I said “Don't arrest this next one! You don't have to! It's not illegal to sit on the Parliament lawn! This space belongs to the people of Canada!” And I was immediately told to be quiet by one of the sitting protestors. She told me I was not being a good ally. This amazed me. She wanted me to let her be arrested, processed, and her life to be reduced to such as ours are in the surveillance state. She wanted me to stand by as “our” police bent the law and arrested her fellow sitters for literally doing nothing.
Furthermore, a Greenpeace crowd control officer intercepted me and also told me to be quiet. They didn't want the situation to escalate. I joked with her that, as a McGill employee, I wasn't used to being told what to do. I really meant that as a little joke. As a Ph. D. student I am always being told what to do. Unfortunately, she took it completely seriously. I let it slide, and that was a mistake because she continued to think I had been serious. I tried to explain to her that nothing could come of this action if we couldn't get the police to stop arresting people. I began to summon my comprehensive academic knowledge on the history of nonviolent direct action, but Tantoo Cardinal also told me to be quiet. They collectively very clearly conveyed to me the message that they didn't want anything to come from this action today. They weren't seriously looking for any change in government policy. As such it was not so much a symbolic action as merely symbolic. It was about people sitting on the lawn getting arrested for no good reason at all. Greenpeace basically hand-delivered more than a hundred arrests to the Ottawa police. God Damn, I hope the gift will be reciprocated!
On the long bus ride home, one of the Dawson College students observed that the only way for environmental change to be effected in Canada would be for the police to decide to take the side of the protestors. “Like they did in Egypt.” He explained. Others tentatively agreed that perhaps an NDP majority would be effective as well.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
What does it mean, to be an anarchist?
This is a link to a good article about what anarchism is. The author's opinions are similar to my own. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/07/anarchism
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
THE DAMAGING EFFECTS OF ELECTROPOLLUTION
Regulators Ignore Health Impact
as EMF Radiation Invades Canada
by Helke Ferrie
Vitality, April 2011
"The good news is that many of these EMF diseases may be preventable by simple environmental manipulation, if society chooses to pay attention. Unless public outrage intervenes, I am afraid that our ‘diseases of civilization' will get worse. Good science is not enough to force sensible public policy. Only citizens can do that."
Dr. Samuel Milham in Dirty Electricity, 2010
"This device emits electromagnetic radiation, exposure to which may cause brain cancer. Users, especially pregnant women and children, should keep it away from the head and body."
Currently proposed legislation for cell phones: Bill LD 1014, sponsored by Legislator Andrea Boland in Maine, USA.
Ignorance may or may not be bliss, but one thing is certain: it is very profitable. According to Buddhism, all suffering derives from ignorance, and it rarely hurts until it is too late; ignorance keys into the addictive potential in all of us and, thereby, allows somebody to make a huge pile of money on enslavement.
The detrimental health effects of cell phones, WiFi, electromagnetic fields (EMFs), and the microwave-based technology we use daily makes worrying about our kids experimenting with drugs, sexual escapades, alcoholic binges, or a touch of crime insignificant - in comparison to the WiFi-equipped school you send them to, the cell phones you may have bought for them, the hours they spend in front of the TV (forget the content – the TV itself is worse), and the microwave oven from which they often receive their meals. Sex, booze, drugs, and crime are part of the dark side of life's education: one often learns from those mess-ups to go on to make healthy choices. Now consider that this "progressive" and seductive radiation technology has the power to obliterate life, phase out our biological future, and kill the brain.
I am one of those suckers seriously injured by cell phones. Our solar-powered cottage on Manitoulin is far from phone lines; so, for 25 years we used public phones. Last summer, a cell phone tower was erected 1 mile from my study window. Being a social animal, I thought this was fabulous! Over a period of two months I quickly developed indescribable headaches, piercing pains in my right eye, and spontaneous bleeding from my right ear. My ophthalmologist diagnosed two cataracts in my right eye: the hallmark of microwave radiation injury ( age-related cataracts appear in both eyes), as we know from research begun on WW II U.S. Navy personnel injured by radar equipment. In a future Vitality issue I will discuss the successful treatment I am undergoing and how I did not turn into a Luddite.
I am in stellar company: World Health Organization Director General, Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998 – 2003) and convener of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, did not permit any cell phones at WHO's Geneva headquarters because they caused her debilitating headaches. Of course, she had the wrath of the industry descend upon her accordingly. She is currently suffering from cancer.
In 2004, the WHO defined electrohypersensitivity (EHS) as: "… a phenomenon where individuals experience adverse health effects while using or being in the vicinity of devices emanating electric, magnetic, or electromagnetic fields …. a sometimes debilitating problem [occuring] several orders of magnitude under the limits of internationally accepted standards."
In fact, everybody is at risk. Epidemiologist Dr. Sam Milham first studied childhood leukemia clusters in the 1970s that eventually proved beyond any doubt that the risk for this disease is directly related to the presence of powerlines, and subsequently also cell phone towers; those areas of the world that have little or no electricity have almost no incidence of leukemia. In addition to leukemia, evidence now supports that cell phones cause especially brain tumors, cancer of the eye, salivary glands, testicles, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Alzheimer's. This radiation also contributes to the development of autism and ADHD. While several causes are known for all of these conditions, research has confirmed that the use of cell and cordless phones and lap-top computers, speed up their manifestation such that people in their 30's are now beginning to be diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer's. The degranulation process of live brain cells when exposed to cell phone radiation has been experimentally demonstrated. Cancer incidence is also significantly higher within 400 meters of a cell phone tower or transmitter site. Trent University researcher Magda Havas may now have discovered a third type of diabetes caused exclusively by electromagnetic radiation.
The most vulnerable are children, pregnant women, human brains in general, testicles, and ovaries. This was confirmed in 2007 by the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer and in 2010 by a Swedish government study, all showing that cell phone use increases the chances of brain cancer by 40%. Last year, the European Journal of Oncology reported that serious heart and related problems (e.g. arrhythmia, palpitations, heart flutter, racing heart beat, fainting, profuse sweating etc) can occur to pulsed radiation as low as 0.5% of the existing Canadian and US federal guidelines which permit 10 mill micro/Wm2. The truly science-based exposure guidelines demonstrate that nobody should be exposed to more than 1 microW/m2.
When it comes to any type of death industry, the most reliable information comes from the military. On the website www.safeschool.ca you can download a recently declassified US Navy document from1971 which summarizes the more than 2,300 studies on the health effects from microwave radiation known way back then! Of course they knew – microwave technology was already part of the military arsenal intended to inflict bodily harm. It is the Military University in Germany that developed EMF protection standards for civilian building codes. In addition to people, building materials require protection from rapid corrosion caused by radiofrequencies and microwaves. In 2008, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities asked the federal government for an emergency fund of $ 123 billion over 5 years to avoid building collapse.
The financial problems caused by this irresponsible application of radiation-based technology includes agriculture and cows. Plants avoid high EMF levels by not growing as high as they normally would; when the EMF source is removed, they grow normally. As reported by Dr. Milham, when the "dirty electricity" was neutralized by Graham/Stetzer plugs in a U.S. school, "a dairy farmer a quarter of a mile away noticed that his cows each gave an average of ten pounds more milk per day, beginning the day the school received its filters. The cows were responding to dirty electricity being removed from the ground currents." In 2008 the French court ordered a power company to compensate cattle farmers for EMF damage.
A thoroughly depressing fact is that the main reason gorillas in Africa were reduced in numbers by 90% over the past two decades is because their habitat was destroyed by miners for a rare mineral called coltan. This mineral is apparently indispensable to the production of cell phones. The international efforts to save the gorillas is appearing to have some success, but nothing has happened so far, it seems to rescue the miners themselves – they are primarily children even as young as 6 years.
Living creatures are electrical beings able to function only within specific frequencies. Devra Davis observes: "The difference between being alive and being dead is just one thing – the presence of electrical activity in the brain." Thoracic surgeon Dr. William Rae, the co- founder of the American Academy for Environmental Medicine with Linus Pauling and Dr. Thoren Randolph, became originally interested in environmental influences on health when he himself became seriously EMF-sensitive in the 1970's from operating room equipment. His research led him to recognize the deleterious influence of pesticides and many other environmental toxins, all of which cause multi-system damage. The immune system is the primary target which does its job through electrically charged biological substances such as neurotransmitters, hormones, and peptides which transmit faster than the speed of light. It has been known since the 1990's that environmental illness from biological toxins and electrohypersensitivity share the process of a disastrous reduction in the nervous system enzyme cholinesterase. It's sudden depletion cause depression and also suicidal behavior.
All these biological processes have their inherent timing, repair and defensive responses, especially during pregnancy and brain development. Hence, the industry "safety" standards, with which government regulators collaborate, are totally absurd. Devra Davis explains: They are based on the imaginary SAM, the Standard Anthropomorphic Man based on military recruits of 1989: six foot two tall, about 200 lbs, and never exposed to a cell phone. The subsequently constructed safety standards date to 1962 when nobody knew the difference between heat-producing radiation and microwave radiation, and cell phones did not exist.
The Safe School Committee in Collingwood ( www.safeschool.ca) is fighting the WiFi craze that has hit Canadian schools. Even though WiFi is slower than landline-transmitted connections, and even though there is a documented 40% increase in cardiac arrest in children under 13 years directly related to this type of radiation, the Toronto School Board is hell-bent on WiFi for all schools – presumably until no brains are left to zap. So eager are our guardians of education to implement what they call "Vision of Hope" (abysmally black humor unintended), they even exceed the totally inappropriate safety standards set by Health Canada – standards that date from a time when wireless phones were Dick Tracey-type sci-fi watches.
Ken Dryden expressed outrage on March 12 (Globe & Mail) about the lack of mandatory protection from head injuries in hockey, stating: "How could we be so stupid!" Such outrage applies to WiFi in schools even more because even more children – all of them in fact – will be affected. In a 2009 review of the usually irreversible harm EMFs cause, neuroscientists O. Johansson of the Karalinska Institute in Sweden, wrote: "Today no-one would consider having a radio-active wrist watch with glowing digits (as you could in the 1950s), having your children's shoes fitted in a strong X-ray machine (as you could in the 1940s), keeping radium in open trays on your desk (as scientists could in the 1930s), or X-raying each other at your garden party (as physicians did in the 1920s). In retrospect that was just plain madness. However, the persons doing so were not …less intelligent. … knowledge was deficient, as was a competent risk analysis coupled to a parallel analysis of public needs."
What is happening in other jurisdictions? In 2007, Germany initiate a policy of reducing the use of CAT scans because of their demonstrated cancer-causing properties, and because their use increased health care costs (directly and through additional cancer incidence) by 80% in 40 years. It followed logically that last year Germany banned the energy efficient CFLS light bulbs because their carcinogenic radiation exceeds European exposure limits. (I tossed all ours and put old-fashioned incandescent bulbs back; I found that the crushing fatigue I thought was aging mysteriously disappeared!) Many jurisdictions in the US are now framing legislation to deal both with the bulb's unacceptable levels of radiation and the difficulty of their disposal because of the high mercury content threatening the ground water.
The European Union's September 2009 report on EMFs stressed the "serious and irreversible damage to health and environments" from EMF radiation and called on all member states to take precautionary action. Shortly afterwards the possibility of outlawing the use of cell phones for children under 18 was discussed in the EU parliament.
The UK, whose national Department of Health is as industry-friendly and science-challenged as our Health Canada, started to surrender to reality and on March 11 advised its citizens that they should text, rather than put their cell phones to their ears.
Switzerland, Finland, Luxemburg, and Austria supply their schools with the totally radiation-safe fiber-optic technology for their internet and communication needs. Israel has similar legislation in the works. Those countries also set the maximum level of exposure between 5 to 10 microW/cm2. Recall: In Canada we are told 1,000 microW/cm2 is "safe". Guess on which part of the Earth human brains will survive!
Meanwhile, we are also being threatened with "smart meters" which tend to increase electricity costs for people and expose them to massive amounts of radiation. As of February of this year, California allows people to refuse their installation, because a formal investigation showed that these US-made devices never passed all the mandatory regulatory hurdles, are hazardous to health, and can cause fire.
Devra Davis in her superb book "Disconnect" explains how the most serous practical challenge to this industry comes from the world's large insurance companies, such as the Sterling Group of Lloyd's of London. Having nearly been nearly wiped out when the asbestos-related claims became undeniable in the early 1990s, the cell-phone industry was informed they would not be backed when radiation hits the fan, as it must. The trigger for this decision was the UK's 2005 Stewart Commission whose chair, citing worldwide research demonstrating harm to children's brains from cell phones, told the mobile phone industry to "refrain from promoting the use of mobile phones by children". In Canada, liability is certainly worth testing in court, because the 2007 Human Rights Commission report on Environmental Illness specifically included harm from EMF radiation as being real and requiring accommodation.
Hear Magda Havas, Devra Davis and many others at the Total Health Show (April 8,9,10) and learn that, amazingly, it may be possible to be safe and have your toys.
Sources and Resources:
S. Milham MD, Dirty Electricity, iUniverse, 2010, any bookstore or www.sammilham.com
D. L. Davis, Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, Dutton, 2010
M. Havas & C. Rees, Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless Revolution, 2009
L. Blake, Electromagnetic Fields: A Consumer's Guide to the Issues and How to Protect Ourselves, iUniverse (updated 2007 edition)
Best source for relevant information www.magdahavas.com and www.microwavenews.com
To fight cell phone towers being placed near schools, playgrounds, hospitals, etc. research www.whyfry.org and google "cell phone towers + opposition"
NOTE: The products sources listed below I myself have tried and found helpful.
Planetary Association for Clean Energy Inc. Ottawa. Andrew Michrowski provides excellent scientific sources and practical help: paceincnet@gmail.com
Environmental Working Group at www.ewg.org tests cell phones etc for hazards, safety, alternatives, etc where regulatory information is lacking, outdated, or wrong. Check out their recommendations on safer cell phones.
Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a cardiologist of Co-Q10 fame, has excellent information on radiation on his excellent website www.heartmdinstitute.com
To take action against the WiFi plans for all of Toronto's schools go to www.safeschool.ca and meet its organizers at the Total Health Show April 8, 9, 10 at the Metro Convention Center.
To have your home/apartment assessed and made safe, or to build an EMF-safe house, contact www.breathing-easy.net
For Graham/Stetzer filters www.stetzerelectric.com & www.DirtyElectricity.ca and EMFSolutions 1-877-987-5185 or visit their booth at Total Health.
Full Source List for Vitality Website:
This list is in order of the information's appearance in the article itself.
1. The legislation proposed in Maryland could be used in its identical wording in Canada and proposed to Health Canada via our MPs. See www.mainlegislature.org go to "Summary of LD 1014".
2. On cell phone towers the most comprehensive information is in Dr. Sam Milham's book "Dirty Electricity". For success in having proposed cell towers moved to locations away from children, hospitals etc. see Waterloo Chronicle February 15, 2011 article entitled "Transmission interrupted?" and March 9, 2011 "WIND Mobile looking at other tower sites".
3. The EarthCalm website has a good summary article on the research involving EMF harm and possible protection entitled "EarthCalm develops unprecedented EMF protection against phone and WiFi radiation".
4. Google the name Arthur Firstenberg and read his article in The Ecologist volume 34, number 5, June 1, 2004, on the harm cell phone towers do to people and animals.
5. On the dangers to food quality done by using microwave ovens google "microwave ovens + safety".
5. The Wikipedia entry on former WHO Director Gro Harlem Brundtland is pretty informative and useful for the links it provides to her statements and interviews involving harm, from cell phones.
6. Contact Andrew Michrowski of Planetary Association for Clean Energy at paceincnet@gmail.com for his powerpoint presentations and scientific papers. Most useful is his summary of all the literature, world-wide, up to the end of 2010, entitled "Electro-Magnetic Fields: High Level Microtechnology Concerns". It is the source of many items in this article including the degranulation of brain cells, the damage to blood cells, the corrosive effect of microwaves on building materials, etc.
7. On February 23, 2011, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article "Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure and Brain Glucose Metabolism" which is exceedingly tame, until you get into the details which support the worst findings published internationally.
8. The information on microwaves and EMFs affecting the heart is in the European Journal for Oncology, Library Volume 5, October 2010. The lead author of Trent University's Magda Havas. For medical professionals this article is a must and for people with existing heart issues it is perhaps a life saver.
9. On building codes and EMF protection in architectural design, the Military University in Germany etc., go to Robert Steller's website www.breathing-easy.net
10. How EMFs adversely affect animals and plants is discussed and sources ion both the work of Andrew Michrowski (PACE) and in the book by Dr. Sam Milham. There are also a website specific to EMFs involving the issue of damage to trees, other plants and animals: www.popsci.com or con tact nukenet@energyjustice.net
11. The unbelievable nonsense on which the Toronto School Board bases its decision to WiFi all schools, go to www.safeschool.ca from where you can download all of this material.
12. The declassified summary of all adverse health effects of microwave radiation known by 1971 also go to www.safeschool.ca
13. The biological pathways shared by MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) and EMF sensitivity are discussed in detail in the material available by googling Dr. William Rae, the American Academy for Environmental Medicine, and specifically from http://tis-hq.eh.doe.gov/chem-safety which is the web access to the U.S. Department of Energy. The article there is by Lucinda Grant published in 1997 entitled "Microwaves imitate pesticides".
14. EMFs and their harmful effects on the immune system of humans and animals is comprehensively presented in a long articled by O. Johansson of the Karalinska Institute in Sweden published in Pathophysiology in 2009. It can be downloaded from the website of EarthCalm.
15. The various sources for which countries have outlawed or initiated regulatory protection can be found on www.safeschool.ca , by googling Magda Havas, the organization Care, and accessing the January 2011 journal called Environmental Science and Technology, and www.communities.cana.com
16. On Germany curtailing the use of CAT scans see Globe & Mail, April 3, 1009.
17. The European Union's report from the European Environmental Agency of September 15, 2009 can be downloaded by googling them.
18. The advisory given by the UK Department of Health to text instead of put the cell phone to your head was published widely; my source was The Telegraph, March 11, 2011. Go to www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/martin-beckford
19. The report showing that "smart meters" are not safe and were not put through the mandated regulatory hoops was published on February 18, 2011 by Sage Associates of Santa Barbara, CA, U.S.A/. and is entitled: "Addendum: Assessment of Radiofrequency Microwave Radiation Emissions from Silver Spring OWS-NIC514 Model Wireless Electric Meter". Go to www.stopsmartmeters.wordpress.com and/or omahoney@epri.com to get a copy of the report and associated materials.
20. The May 2007 Canadian Human Rights Commission report (2 parts – one on the medical condition, the other on Canada's legal obligations) on MCS/EMF sensitivity and relevant case law etc. can be downloaded by goggling its author Margaret E. Sears or by going to the Human Rights Commission website and searching for "Environmental sensitivities Report 2007".
21. To find a research study on how the EarthCalm protective technology for your home works, go to EarthCalm's website and download it. Title: "Quality of Life Research Testing of EarthCalm Protective System."
Helke Ferrie is a medical science writer who lives in Alton. She runs Kos Publishing Inc., a publisher dedicated to the politics of medicine.
Visit www.kospublishing.com
or reach her at helkeferrie@gmail.com
as EMF Radiation Invades Canada
by Helke Ferrie
Vitality, April 2011
"The good news is that many of these EMF diseases may be preventable by simple environmental manipulation, if society chooses to pay attention. Unless public outrage intervenes, I am afraid that our ‘diseases of civilization' will get worse. Good science is not enough to force sensible public policy. Only citizens can do that."
Dr. Samuel Milham in Dirty Electricity, 2010
"This device emits electromagnetic radiation, exposure to which may cause brain cancer. Users, especially pregnant women and children, should keep it away from the head and body."
Currently proposed legislation for cell phones: Bill LD 1014, sponsored by Legislator Andrea Boland in Maine, USA.
Ignorance may or may not be bliss, but one thing is certain: it is very profitable. According to Buddhism, all suffering derives from ignorance, and it rarely hurts until it is too late; ignorance keys into the addictive potential in all of us and, thereby, allows somebody to make a huge pile of money on enslavement.
The detrimental health effects of cell phones, WiFi, electromagnetic fields (EMFs), and the microwave-based technology we use daily makes worrying about our kids experimenting with drugs, sexual escapades, alcoholic binges, or a touch of crime insignificant - in comparison to the WiFi-equipped school you send them to, the cell phones you may have bought for them, the hours they spend in front of the TV (forget the content – the TV itself is worse), and the microwave oven from which they often receive their meals. Sex, booze, drugs, and crime are part of the dark side of life's education: one often learns from those mess-ups to go on to make healthy choices. Now consider that this "progressive" and seductive radiation technology has the power to obliterate life, phase out our biological future, and kill the brain.
I am one of those suckers seriously injured by cell phones. Our solar-powered cottage on Manitoulin is far from phone lines; so, for 25 years we used public phones. Last summer, a cell phone tower was erected 1 mile from my study window. Being a social animal, I thought this was fabulous! Over a period of two months I quickly developed indescribable headaches, piercing pains in my right eye, and spontaneous bleeding from my right ear. My ophthalmologist diagnosed two cataracts in my right eye: the hallmark of microwave radiation injury ( age-related cataracts appear in both eyes), as we know from research begun on WW II U.S. Navy personnel injured by radar equipment. In a future Vitality issue I will discuss the successful treatment I am undergoing and how I did not turn into a Luddite.
I am in stellar company: World Health Organization Director General, Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998 – 2003) and convener of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987, did not permit any cell phones at WHO's Geneva headquarters because they caused her debilitating headaches. Of course, she had the wrath of the industry descend upon her accordingly. She is currently suffering from cancer.
In 2004, the WHO defined electrohypersensitivity (EHS) as: "… a phenomenon where individuals experience adverse health effects while using or being in the vicinity of devices emanating electric, magnetic, or electromagnetic fields …. a sometimes debilitating problem [occuring] several orders of magnitude under the limits of internationally accepted standards."
In fact, everybody is at risk. Epidemiologist Dr. Sam Milham first studied childhood leukemia clusters in the 1970s that eventually proved beyond any doubt that the risk for this disease is directly related to the presence of powerlines, and subsequently also cell phone towers; those areas of the world that have little or no electricity have almost no incidence of leukemia. In addition to leukemia, evidence now supports that cell phones cause especially brain tumors, cancer of the eye, salivary glands, testicles, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Alzheimer's. This radiation also contributes to the development of autism and ADHD. While several causes are known for all of these conditions, research has confirmed that the use of cell and cordless phones and lap-top computers, speed up their manifestation such that people in their 30's are now beginning to be diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer's. The degranulation process of live brain cells when exposed to cell phone radiation has been experimentally demonstrated. Cancer incidence is also significantly higher within 400 meters of a cell phone tower or transmitter site. Trent University researcher Magda Havas may now have discovered a third type of diabetes caused exclusively by electromagnetic radiation.
The most vulnerable are children, pregnant women, human brains in general, testicles, and ovaries. This was confirmed in 2007 by the World Health Organization and the International Agency for Research on Cancer and in 2010 by a Swedish government study, all showing that cell phone use increases the chances of brain cancer by 40%. Last year, the European Journal of Oncology reported that serious heart and related problems (e.g. arrhythmia, palpitations, heart flutter, racing heart beat, fainting, profuse sweating etc) can occur to pulsed radiation as low as 0.5% of the existing Canadian and US federal guidelines which permit 10 mill micro/Wm2. The truly science-based exposure guidelines demonstrate that nobody should be exposed to more than 1 microW/m2.
When it comes to any type of death industry, the most reliable information comes from the military. On the website www.safeschool.ca you can download a recently declassified US Navy document from1971 which summarizes the more than 2,300 studies on the health effects from microwave radiation known way back then! Of course they knew – microwave technology was already part of the military arsenal intended to inflict bodily harm. It is the Military University in Germany that developed EMF protection standards for civilian building codes. In addition to people, building materials require protection from rapid corrosion caused by radiofrequencies and microwaves. In 2008, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities asked the federal government for an emergency fund of $ 123 billion over 5 years to avoid building collapse.
The financial problems caused by this irresponsible application of radiation-based technology includes agriculture and cows. Plants avoid high EMF levels by not growing as high as they normally would; when the EMF source is removed, they grow normally. As reported by Dr. Milham, when the "dirty electricity" was neutralized by Graham/Stetzer plugs in a U.S. school, "a dairy farmer a quarter of a mile away noticed that his cows each gave an average of ten pounds more milk per day, beginning the day the school received its filters. The cows were responding to dirty electricity being removed from the ground currents." In 2008 the French court ordered a power company to compensate cattle farmers for EMF damage.
A thoroughly depressing fact is that the main reason gorillas in Africa were reduced in numbers by 90% over the past two decades is because their habitat was destroyed by miners for a rare mineral called coltan. This mineral is apparently indispensable to the production of cell phones. The international efforts to save the gorillas is appearing to have some success, but nothing has happened so far, it seems to rescue the miners themselves – they are primarily children even as young as 6 years.
Living creatures are electrical beings able to function only within specific frequencies. Devra Davis observes: "The difference between being alive and being dead is just one thing – the presence of electrical activity in the brain." Thoracic surgeon Dr. William Rae, the co- founder of the American Academy for Environmental Medicine with Linus Pauling and Dr. Thoren Randolph, became originally interested in environmental influences on health when he himself became seriously EMF-sensitive in the 1970's from operating room equipment. His research led him to recognize the deleterious influence of pesticides and many other environmental toxins, all of which cause multi-system damage. The immune system is the primary target which does its job through electrically charged biological substances such as neurotransmitters, hormones, and peptides which transmit faster than the speed of light. It has been known since the 1990's that environmental illness from biological toxins and electrohypersensitivity share the process of a disastrous reduction in the nervous system enzyme cholinesterase. It's sudden depletion cause depression and also suicidal behavior.
All these biological processes have their inherent timing, repair and defensive responses, especially during pregnancy and brain development. Hence, the industry "safety" standards, with which government regulators collaborate, are totally absurd. Devra Davis explains: They are based on the imaginary SAM, the Standard Anthropomorphic Man based on military recruits of 1989: six foot two tall, about 200 lbs, and never exposed to a cell phone. The subsequently constructed safety standards date to 1962 when nobody knew the difference between heat-producing radiation and microwave radiation, and cell phones did not exist.
The Safe School Committee in Collingwood ( www.safeschool.ca) is fighting the WiFi craze that has hit Canadian schools. Even though WiFi is slower than landline-transmitted connections, and even though there is a documented 40% increase in cardiac arrest in children under 13 years directly related to this type of radiation, the Toronto School Board is hell-bent on WiFi for all schools – presumably until no brains are left to zap. So eager are our guardians of education to implement what they call "Vision of Hope" (abysmally black humor unintended), they even exceed the totally inappropriate safety standards set by Health Canada – standards that date from a time when wireless phones were Dick Tracey-type sci-fi watches.
Ken Dryden expressed outrage on March 12 (Globe & Mail) about the lack of mandatory protection from head injuries in hockey, stating: "How could we be so stupid!" Such outrage applies to WiFi in schools even more because even more children – all of them in fact – will be affected. In a 2009 review of the usually irreversible harm EMFs cause, neuroscientists O. Johansson of the Karalinska Institute in Sweden, wrote: "Today no-one would consider having a radio-active wrist watch with glowing digits (as you could in the 1950s), having your children's shoes fitted in a strong X-ray machine (as you could in the 1940s), keeping radium in open trays on your desk (as scientists could in the 1930s), or X-raying each other at your garden party (as physicians did in the 1920s). In retrospect that was just plain madness. However, the persons doing so were not …less intelligent. … knowledge was deficient, as was a competent risk analysis coupled to a parallel analysis of public needs."
What is happening in other jurisdictions? In 2007, Germany initiate a policy of reducing the use of CAT scans because of their demonstrated cancer-causing properties, and because their use increased health care costs (directly and through additional cancer incidence) by 80% in 40 years. It followed logically that last year Germany banned the energy efficient CFLS light bulbs because their carcinogenic radiation exceeds European exposure limits. (I tossed all ours and put old-fashioned incandescent bulbs back; I found that the crushing fatigue I thought was aging mysteriously disappeared!) Many jurisdictions in the US are now framing legislation to deal both with the bulb's unacceptable levels of radiation and the difficulty of their disposal because of the high mercury content threatening the ground water.
The European Union's September 2009 report on EMFs stressed the "serious and irreversible damage to health and environments" from EMF radiation and called on all member states to take precautionary action. Shortly afterwards the possibility of outlawing the use of cell phones for children under 18 was discussed in the EU parliament.
The UK, whose national Department of Health is as industry-friendly and science-challenged as our Health Canada, started to surrender to reality and on March 11 advised its citizens that they should text, rather than put their cell phones to their ears.
Switzerland, Finland, Luxemburg, and Austria supply their schools with the totally radiation-safe fiber-optic technology for their internet and communication needs. Israel has similar legislation in the works. Those countries also set the maximum level of exposure between 5 to 10 microW/cm2. Recall: In Canada we are told 1,000 microW/cm2 is "safe". Guess on which part of the Earth human brains will survive!
Meanwhile, we are also being threatened with "smart meters" which tend to increase electricity costs for people and expose them to massive amounts of radiation. As of February of this year, California allows people to refuse their installation, because a formal investigation showed that these US-made devices never passed all the mandatory regulatory hurdles, are hazardous to health, and can cause fire.
Devra Davis in her superb book "Disconnect" explains how the most serous practical challenge to this industry comes from the world's large insurance companies, such as the Sterling Group of Lloyd's of London. Having nearly been nearly wiped out when the asbestos-related claims became undeniable in the early 1990s, the cell-phone industry was informed they would not be backed when radiation hits the fan, as it must. The trigger for this decision was the UK's 2005 Stewart Commission whose chair, citing worldwide research demonstrating harm to children's brains from cell phones, told the mobile phone industry to "refrain from promoting the use of mobile phones by children". In Canada, liability is certainly worth testing in court, because the 2007 Human Rights Commission report on Environmental Illness specifically included harm from EMF radiation as being real and requiring accommodation.
Hear Magda Havas, Devra Davis and many others at the Total Health Show (April 8,9,10) and learn that, amazingly, it may be possible to be safe and have your toys.
Sources and Resources:
S. Milham MD, Dirty Electricity, iUniverse, 2010, any bookstore or www.sammilham.com
D. L. Davis, Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, Dutton, 2010
M. Havas & C. Rees, Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless Revolution, 2009
L. Blake, Electromagnetic Fields: A Consumer's Guide to the Issues and How to Protect Ourselves, iUniverse (updated 2007 edition)
Best source for relevant information www.magdahavas.com and www.microwavenews.com
To fight cell phone towers being placed near schools, playgrounds, hospitals, etc. research www.whyfry.org and google "cell phone towers + opposition"
NOTE: The products sources listed below I myself have tried and found helpful.
Planetary Association for Clean Energy Inc. Ottawa. Andrew Michrowski provides excellent scientific sources and practical help: paceincnet@gmail.com
Environmental Working Group at www.ewg.org tests cell phones etc for hazards, safety, alternatives, etc where regulatory information is lacking, outdated, or wrong. Check out their recommendations on safer cell phones.
Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a cardiologist of Co-Q10 fame, has excellent information on radiation on his excellent website www.heartmdinstitute.com
To take action against the WiFi plans for all of Toronto's schools go to www.safeschool.ca and meet its organizers at the Total Health Show April 8, 9, 10 at the Metro Convention Center.
To have your home/apartment assessed and made safe, or to build an EMF-safe house, contact www.breathing-easy.net
For Graham/Stetzer filters www.stetzerelectric.com & www.DirtyElectricity.ca and EMFSolutions 1-877-987-5185 or visit their booth at Total Health.
Full Source List for Vitality Website:
This list is in order of the information's appearance in the article itself.
1. The legislation proposed in Maryland could be used in its identical wording in Canada and proposed to Health Canada via our MPs. See www.mainlegislature.org go to "Summary of LD 1014".
2. On cell phone towers the most comprehensive information is in Dr. Sam Milham's book "Dirty Electricity". For success in having proposed cell towers moved to locations away from children, hospitals etc. see Waterloo Chronicle February 15, 2011 article entitled "Transmission interrupted?" and March 9, 2011 "WIND Mobile looking at other tower sites".
3. The EarthCalm website has a good summary article on the research involving EMF harm and possible protection entitled "EarthCalm develops unprecedented EMF protection against phone and WiFi radiation".
4. Google the name Arthur Firstenberg and read his article in The Ecologist volume 34, number 5, June 1, 2004, on the harm cell phone towers do to people and animals.
5. On the dangers to food quality done by using microwave ovens google "microwave ovens + safety".
5. The Wikipedia entry on former WHO Director Gro Harlem Brundtland is pretty informative and useful for the links it provides to her statements and interviews involving harm, from cell phones.
6. Contact Andrew Michrowski of Planetary Association for Clean Energy at paceincnet@gmail.com for his powerpoint presentations and scientific papers. Most useful is his summary of all the literature, world-wide, up to the end of 2010, entitled "Electro-Magnetic Fields: High Level Microtechnology Concerns". It is the source of many items in this article including the degranulation of brain cells, the damage to blood cells, the corrosive effect of microwaves on building materials, etc.
7. On February 23, 2011, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article "Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure and Brain Glucose Metabolism" which is exceedingly tame, until you get into the details which support the worst findings published internationally.
8. The information on microwaves and EMFs affecting the heart is in the European Journal for Oncology, Library Volume 5, October 2010. The lead author of Trent University's Magda Havas. For medical professionals this article is a must and for people with existing heart issues it is perhaps a life saver.
9. On building codes and EMF protection in architectural design, the Military University in Germany etc., go to Robert Steller's website www.breathing-easy.net
10. How EMFs adversely affect animals and plants is discussed and sources ion both the work of Andrew Michrowski (PACE) and in the book by Dr. Sam Milham. There are also a website specific to EMFs involving the issue of damage to trees, other plants and animals: www.popsci.com or con tact nukenet@energyjustice.net
11. The unbelievable nonsense on which the Toronto School Board bases its decision to WiFi all schools, go to www.safeschool.ca from where you can download all of this material.
12. The declassified summary of all adverse health effects of microwave radiation known by 1971 also go to www.safeschool.ca
13. The biological pathways shared by MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity) and EMF sensitivity are discussed in detail in the material available by googling Dr. William Rae, the American Academy for Environmental Medicine, and specifically from http://tis-hq.eh.doe.gov/chem-safety which is the web access to the U.S. Department of Energy. The article there is by Lucinda Grant published in 1997 entitled "Microwaves imitate pesticides".
14. EMFs and their harmful effects on the immune system of humans and animals is comprehensively presented in a long articled by O. Johansson of the Karalinska Institute in Sweden published in Pathophysiology in 2009. It can be downloaded from the website of EarthCalm.
15. The various sources for which countries have outlawed or initiated regulatory protection can be found on www.safeschool.ca , by googling Magda Havas, the organization Care, and accessing the January 2011 journal called Environmental Science and Technology, and www.communities.cana.com
16. On Germany curtailing the use of CAT scans see Globe & Mail, April 3, 1009.
17. The European Union's report from the European Environmental Agency of September 15, 2009 can be downloaded by googling them.
18. The advisory given by the UK Department of Health to text instead of put the cell phone to your head was published widely; my source was The Telegraph, March 11, 2011. Go to www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/martin-beckford
19. The report showing that "smart meters" are not safe and were not put through the mandated regulatory hoops was published on February 18, 2011 by Sage Associates of Santa Barbara, CA, U.S.A/. and is entitled: "Addendum: Assessment of Radiofrequency Microwave Radiation Emissions from Silver Spring OWS-NIC514 Model Wireless Electric Meter". Go to www.stopsmartmeters.wordpress.com and/or omahoney@epri.com to get a copy of the report and associated materials.
20. The May 2007 Canadian Human Rights Commission report (2 parts – one on the medical condition, the other on Canada's legal obligations) on MCS/EMF sensitivity and relevant case law etc. can be downloaded by goggling its author Margaret E. Sears or by going to the Human Rights Commission website and searching for "Environmental sensitivities Report 2007".
21. To find a research study on how the EarthCalm protective technology for your home works, go to EarthCalm's website and download it. Title: "Quality of Life Research Testing of EarthCalm Protective System."
Helke Ferrie is a medical science writer who lives in Alton. She runs Kos Publishing Inc., a publisher dedicated to the politics of medicine.
Visit www.kospublishing.com
or reach her at helkeferrie@gmail.com
Saturday, June 18, 2011
... And furthermore Bill C-4 is inconsistent with Canada's treaty commitments
[I am not the only person in Canada who is disappointed to the very edge of despair by the Conservative Government. The legislation Jason Kenney discusses in this email willfully blocks the escape of desperate people from authoritarian regimes, ecological disasters, and poverty. Is it just me or could the tone of the email message below be described as vicious, and snide?]
Hello friends,
As promised our Conservative Government re-introduced legislation last night to combat human smuggling and prevent human smugglers from abusing Canada’s immigration system. With our strong stable national majority Canadians can trust that important legislation like Bill C-4: Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada’s Immigration System Act will not be blocked by out of touch opposition parties. I am proud to be part of a Government that is delivering on its commitments. Please feel free to let me know what you think.
Sincerely,
Hon. Jason Kenney, PC, MP
Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
[My response:
Dear Jason Kenney,
Thank you for requesting my response. I want to be clear that I am very disappointed by the Conservative Government's lack of compassion for refugees. There are in Canada people painted with every colour from the spectrum of racism, but your Government is representing the interests of those from the most bigoted and ignorant terminus of that spectrum. Bill C-4 flows from the confluence of systemic racist privilege and racist panic. It's poison. In my opinion, this fear, which your Government uses to fuel its progress, is delusional and paranoid.
I must assume that your professed pride is a cynical communications tactic, which - among other things, I imagine - makes you seem ignorant to your opponents. Do you imagine it endears you to the working class? Their underestimation of your cunning likely gives you some political leverage. I do not underestimate your cunning. I know you and your colleagues are brutal and want to govern by leaving people helpless and bludgeoning them into humiliated submission. Bill C-4 is one step toward your goal.
How dare you draw upon us as citizens to enable this legislation? How dare you all do this in our names, on this land, to these people? If this continues, you can expect to find more than the power of my voice, but the power of my whole identity, standing in the way of the engines of your supremacy.
I want Canada to be a welcoming and safe sanctuary for people who flee authoritarian government, ecological crises, and poverty elsewhere. It is not a crime to run for your life!
etc.]
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Maternal and fetal exposure to pesticides associated to genetically modified foods in Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada
Another interesting study to add to the small mountain of evidence that so many people say doesn't exist:
If you can't access that, well, try clicking on the label below my original blog post for other interesting science on the human health effects of genetically engineered crops. Fascinating.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Protect Lake Ainslie
At the request of my mother, I just sent this letter to the Cape Breton Post and the Chronicle Herald:
Dear Editor,
I am a Plant Science Ph.D. Candidate at McGill University, but my family has lived for 7 generations on Cape Breton Island. Although Nova Scotian politicians and environmental regulators likely stand to profit personally by allowing the hydraulic fracturing project near Lake Ainslie, we must encourage them collectively to put an end to the project. There are dangers of which people do not seem to be aware.
Hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. fracking, is a procedure used in the extraction of natural gas and oil. A mixture of water, sand, and chemicals is injected into natural gas wells, or coalbeds, under high pressure. Fracking fluid loss to the surrounding formation through the walls of the fracture, and poroelasticity effects associated with the compression of the formation, establish an advective transport regime within the formation and displace the fluids that are initially distributed within the formation, which is to say that fluid displacement initiated by fracking has the potential to mobilize contaminants - including those contaminants occuring there prior to fracking. This process should not be going on near residences that use wells for drinking water. Fracking contributes to groundwater contamination with methane in some instances and proprietary chemicals, among them methanol, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, hydrochloric acid, and sodium hydroxide. A wide variety of chemicals, the identities of which are not publicly available, are used in fracking fluid, for fluid viscosity, inhibiting corrosion, and limiting bacterial growth. Most of the chemicals known to be involved in this procedure pose a threat to public health.
Companies will probably choose, within an environmental impact statement, methods and procedures that appear to be benign, however they may not actually use the chemicals or methods they popularize. The concerned public must be aware that any research fracking industrialists refer to ought to include the direct monitoring of water wells, and it should not be limited to any one specific type of drilling, and it should address the effects in many substrates.
A large volume of back-flow fluids, on the order of hundreds of thousands of gallons per well, according to the EPA, are brought to the surface during drilling and production. Back-flow fluids are typically stored in on-site pits, which may or may not be lined and in any case will most likely not be covered, depending on what regulations or standards this project chooses to follow. It needs to be said that the standards and enforcement regarding oil and gas waste disposal are not adequate to ensure any kind of proper performance.
Thanks in part to the film GASLAND, by Josh Fox (www.gaslandthemovie.com) fracking is widely known to pollute ground and surface waters. It is known to have adverse effects on water quality and public health. However, it may also trigger earthquakes. This claim is not new and attention to it has been renewed following the earthquakes at Cleburne, Texas - the first in the town's 140-year history. Dr. David Oppenheimer, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, was quoted in the August 2009 "Global Monitor" section in POWER Magazine, affirming that the fracking processes could certainly generate seismic activity.
I hope the people of Cape Breton Island read what I've written here and learn more about fracking themselves. We all have to put an end to the destruction of the island for ephemeral profit.
Respectfully,
(etc.)
Thursday, March 10, 2011
We have a task before us which must be speedily performed.
We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, - of the definite with the indefinite - of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, - we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies - it disappears - we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!
We stand at the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss - we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged into a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius of the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall - this rushing annihilation - for the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination - for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who shuddering upon the edge of the precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.
- from the Imp of the Perverse by Edgar Allan Poe
Monday, February 21, 2011
Voices
The link: http://www.voices-voix.ca
Friday, February 18, 2011
HONDURAN REGIME IMPUNITY WATCH
[via Macho :|] Rights Action, February 18, 2011
"Following the March 2010 round [of "free" trade discussions], Canada concluded that, among the CA4 countries, Honduras offered the best opportunity to conclude a free trade agreement in the short-term," according to information on the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade."
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT TRYING TO SIGN "FREE" TRADE AGREEMENT WITH ILLEGITIMATE, POST-MILITARY COUP REGIME IN HONDURAS
BELOW: An article from Embassy Magazine about how the repressive, undemocratic regime in Honduras offers the "best opportunity" for Canada to sign a bi-lateral "free" trade agreement
Over the past year, Rights Action has distributed numerous articles documenting concerted Canadian government efforts to 'legitimize' the post-military coup regime of Honduras, ignoring well-documented State repression, so as to further Canadian corporate & investor interests (mining, maquiladora sweat shops, tourism, etc) in Honduras.
Most governments of Latin America do not recognize the Honduran regime! - that came to power through the June 28, 2009 military coup that violently ousted the elected government of President Zelaya.
Honduras remains excluded from the Organization of American States! - due to the obviously illegal and brutal military coup.
WHAT TO DO? Rights Action believes Canadians should strongly oppose the position of the Canadian government vis a vis Honduras:
* Because it serves to 'legitimize' the repressive, undemocratic regime of Honduras, and weaken the aspirations of the Honduran people who are courageously struggling for the restoration of democracy and the rule of law and for the re-founding of their State and society, * Because it promotes the "free" trade model of economic development that prioritizes the desires of global corporations and investors at the expense of the real development needs of a majority of Hondurans, and * Because 'legitimizing' the repressive regime of Honduras should be seen as counter to long-term "Canadian" interests rooted in respect for global human and indigenous rights, environmental well-being, democracy and the rule of law.
· Please re-publish this information, citing author and source · To get on/ off RA's listserv: www.rightsaction.org · What to do: see below
FOR MORE INFORMATION, ENGLISH & ESPANOL: Karen Spring, Rights Action, in Tegucigalpa, spring.kj@gmail.com Annie Bird, Washington DC, 202-680-3002, annie@rightsaction.org Grahame Russell, Connecticut, 860-352-2448, info@rightsaction.org
* * * * * * *
HONDURAS: CANADA OFFER REGIME LEGITIMACY THROUGH POTENTIAL BILATERAL TRADE DEAL http://embassymag.ca/page/printpage/honduras-02-16-2011 By Anca Gurzu, Embassy Magazine, Ottawa, February 16, 2011
Canadian and Honduran officials are meeting this week in the Central American capital of Tegucigalpa for a round of free trade talks-and, for the second time, officials from El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua will not be at the table.
For the past 10 years, Canada and the four Central American states had been involved in back-and-forth trade talks marred by slow progress and delays. But Canada and Honduras have now dropped the other countries from negotiations, focusing instead on bilateral talks.
While some of the other countries, notably Nicaragua, has lamented the decision, experts say Canada must work with willing partners - in this case, a post-coup Honduras that is trying to gain more political legitimacy in the hemisphere.
Official negotiations between Canada and the four Central American countries, known colloquially as the CA4, were launched in November 2001 and 10 rounds were held until they officially stalled in February 2004, largely due to disagreements over agricultural products, textiles and labour rights requirements. Another factor has been changes in government in the region.
The CA4, along with the Dominican Republic, inked a deal with the United States in 2005 before meeting with Canadian officials to discuss re-launching talks. Since then, there have been unofficial visits and meetings, and an 11th round was finally held in Ottawa in February 2009, followed by another in March 2010, but no agreement was reached so Canada and Honduras decided to continue alone.
["BEST OPPORTUNITY"] "Following the March 2010 round, Canada concluded that, among the CA4 countries, Honduras offered the best opportunity to conclude a free trade agreement in the short-term," according to information on the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Canadian and Honduran officials met for their first official bilateral trade negotiating round in December in Ottawa, and the meeting in Tegucigalpa this week follows "an ambitious schedule," according to a press release. Honduran Ambassador Sofia Cerrato was out of the country and not available for an interview. However, the move was met with mixed reaction from officials from other CA4 ambassadors.
Canadian officials informed the other three Central American states in November 2010 about plans to pursue bilateral trade talks with Honduras, said a displeased Nicaraguan Ambassador Francisco Obadiah Campbell Hooker in an interview from Washington on Feb. 14. "I don't know whether the move came from Honduras or not, but what we do know is that we were negotiating as a bloc and to our surprise, Canada decided it would sign off, really, with Honduras," he said. "We feel this is negative for the strengthening of the Central American integration process."
But Guatemalan Ambassador Georges de la Roche, the dean of the Central American ambassadors, described the bilateral talks between Canada and Honduras as "nothing unusual." "If a country within multilateral negotiations finds more cohesion or level ground with one country, it's not out of the normal for that country to go ahead with the other country on a bilateral basis," Mr. de la Roche said.
The other three countries are still holding meetings, both as a group and bilaterally, he added. Caitlin Workman, spokesperson at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, also wrote in an email that "Canada's negotiations with Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador are continuing." They have found common ground, while we are still looking for that common ground and we will find it," Mr. de la Roche said of Honduras and Canada.
LOOKING FOR LEGITIMACY Carlo Dade, executive director of the Canadian Foundation of the Americas, said that the understanding in the region is that Nicaragua, which a member of the ALBA bloc, is in fact the reason the talks have stalled. "One key issue with free trade agreements is that you can only dance with someone who wants to dance," Mr. Dade said. "If a country like Honduras steps up and says 'we are serious and we will put resources in this,' then it makes sense to prioritize this country."
Furthermore, in light of the recent political crisis in Honduras, the move is not surprising, Mr. Dade said. "It would be part of an attempt of Honduras to get back on the political map after the situation there," he said. Honduras became the focal point of the ideological battle that has erupted in the hemisphere over the last decade when leftist president Manuel Zelaya, who was threatening to run for an unconstitutional third term, was removed in coup d'état in 2009.
[Rights Action correction: Shame on Anca Gurzu who here repeats, unquestioningly, the often-repeated lie, used to 'legitimize' the brutal military coup, that President Zelaya was trying to run again for the presidency. This was false in 2009, and remains so today. Furthermore, president Zeyala was in his first term in office, which is all the Honduran constitution permits.]
After months of international efforts to bring stability back to the Central American country, the political crisis drew to a close after elections that led to the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo as the new Honduran president in January, bringing a centre-right conservative administration to power. However, several leftist countries have refused to recognize Mr. Lobo's government.
[Rights Action clarification: Anca Gurzu uses and manipulates the word "leftist" in his article to cast dispersion on certain governments. The vast majority of Latin American governments do not recognize the government of Honduras. Honduras has not been re-admitted to the Organization of American States. Moreover, the United Nations, the Organization of American States and most governments of Latin America do not accept the legitimacy of the November 2009 "elections".]
The search for greater political legitimacy is probably Honduras's key driving factor in pursuing bilateral trade talks with Canada, said Philip Oxhorn, director of the Institute for the Study of International Development at McGill University. "Since the coup d'état and the controversial election, Honduras has been isolated by most of Latin America, so they are looking for allies," he said. "They would gain the most from reaching an agreement with Canada, it would grant them more legitimacy from Latin American."
At the same time, Canada is signalling the legitimacy of the Honduran government by holding these talks, said Mr. Oxhorn, who researches Latin American comparative politics. "It's clear that Canada would know that this is how it would be perceived and would understand that's one of the things Honduras would want and would inevitably get," he said. "If Canada wants any kind of free trade agreement with [the CA4], this is the easiest kind for them to negotiate." Like Mr. Dade, Mr. Oxhorn said the most likely partner to "have dragged its feet" in the CA4 trade talks is Nicaragua.
But Ambassador Campbell said Nicaragua is interested in obtaining greater access to the Canadian market, especially through exports of textiles and beef products, and also pointed out Canadian companies are already investing in Nicaragua, especially in the fields of mining and energy.
According to Ms. Workman, bilateral trade with Honduras more than doubled in the last decade. In 2010, Honduras was the second largest recipient of Canadian exports among the Central American Four countries. Exports totalled $40.7 million in 2010.
Canada appears to have the strongest trade ties with Guatemala: exports totalled $90.8 million last year, down from $112 million in 2009, while exports to El Salvador and Nicaragua stood at $36.2 million and $40 million respectively in 2010.
Key Canadian interests in Central America include telecommunications, goods and services, environmental equipment and services, value-added processed foods, automotive goods, and construction equipment, and services, according to the government.
[Rights Action observation: Interestingly Embassy Magazine does not mention extensive Canadian mining interests throughout Central America.]
"A free trade agreement with Honduras will open a new market for Canadian exporters and level the playing field for Canadian businesses against competitors who already have or are seeking preferential access to the Honduran market," Ms. Workman wrote in an email.
Mr. Campbell said he has not heard about any of the other CA4 countries wanting to cancel negotiations. "But I would imagine that everyone is looking at their options and analyzing the implications and consequences taken with respect to Honduras," he said.
[By Anca Gurzu, agurzu@embassymag.ca, http://embassymag.ca/page/printpage/honduras-02-16-2011]
* * *
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS: Please send letters of concern to your own member of parliament, and to other government officials:
Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs 509-S Centre Block, House of Commons, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0A6 cannol@parl.gc.ca
Dean Allison 163 Confederation Building, House of Commons Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6 Tel: 613-995-2772 Allison.D@parl.gc.ca
Carmen DePape (Clerk of the Committee) - Ask Ms. DePape to distribute your letter to all Committee Members: Sixth Floor, 131 Queen St., House of Commons Ottawa ON K1A 0A6 FAAE@parl.gc.ca
INTERNATIONAL TRADE MINISTER Peter Van Loan Room 157, East Block Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0A6 Tel: 613-996-7752 vanloan.p@parl.gc.ca
CANADIAN EMBASSY FOR HONDURAS Canadian Consulate in Honduras PO Box 3552, Tegucigalpa, Honduras Tel: (504) 2232-4551 tglpa@international.gc.ca
Canadian Embassy in Costa Rica (For Business and Commercial Affairs & where Honduran Ambassador is based) Attn: Cameron MacKay (Canadian Ambassador) PO Box: 351-1007, Centro Colón, San José, Costa Rica Tel: (506) 2242-4400 sjcra@international.gc.ca
* * * * * * *
TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS To make a tax-deductible donation for community based organizations in Honduras' pro-democracy movement working to eradicate poverty and exploitation and to re-found their nation-state, make check payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:
UNITED STATES: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887 CANADA: 552 - 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm; or go to: www.rightsaction.org. (Credit card donations can be done anonymously) FOR DONATION OF STOCK: contact info@rightsaction.org. (Stock donations can be done anonymously - have your stockbroker contact info@rightsaction.org)
Rights Action's EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES & MATERIALS
EDUCATIONAL DELEGATIONS TO HONDURAS (MARCH 19-27): "HONDURAN PEOPLE'S PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT, in resistance to the post-military coup regime". CONTACT: Karen Spring (spring.kj@gmail.com)
TO GUATEMALA (APRIL 17-23): "INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE & HUMAN RIGHTS * versus * MINING COMPANIES & IMPUNITY". CONTACT: Grahame Russell (info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448)
TO HONDURAS (MAY 14-22): "HONDURAN PEOPLE'S PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT, in resistance to the post-military coup regime". CONTACT: Karen Spring (spring.kj@gmail.com)
TO HONDURAS (JUNE 28 - JULY 5): The Alliance for Global Justice is organizing a delegation to Honduras. We'll be hosted by the FNRP and led on the ground by Rights Action's Karen Spring. CONTACT: AFGJ@AFGJ.org, 202-544-9355 x1
SPEAKING TOURS IN USA (MARCH-APRIL 2011): "FROM CONQUEST TO COUP - INDIGENOUS & AFRODESCENDENT PEOPLES IN HONDURAS: 519 Years in Resistance to the Conquest, 580 Days (as of January 21, 2011) in Resistance to the Military Coup". Rights Action announces two speaking tours of representatives from Honduran Indigenous and Afro-descendent (Garifuna) organizations - Ofraneh & Copinh. CONTACT: Annie Bird (annie@rightsaction.org, 202-783-1123)
SPEAKERS On an on-going basis, Annie Bird & Grahame Russell (Rights Action co-directors since 1995) are available for speaking engagements in Canada and USA, showing slides and documentaries, and speaking about:
* the pro-democracy, anti-military coup movement in Honduras, and its implications for the Americas, south, central and north * indigenous and community resistance to environmental and health harms and other human rights violations caused by gold and nickel mining (Goldcorp Inc. in Guatemala & Honduras; HudBay Minerals in Guatemala; Pacific Rim in El Salvador), hydro-electric dams (the infamous Chixoy dam in Guatemala; the pending Xalala dam in Guatemala) and other mega-"development" businesses * on-going struggles in Guatemala to achieve justice for the genocide, massacres and disappearances of the 1970s, 80s and 90s * widespread community-based work and struggle for "another world is possible and necessary"
CONTACT: Grahame Russell (info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448); Annie Bird (annie@rightsaction.org, 202-783-1123)
STUFF FOR SALE
FILM: "All That Glitters Is Not Gold" "All That Glitters Isn't Gold" (60 minutes), by Steven Schnoor, documents the stories and resistance of community members residing near and harmed by Goldcorp's "San Martin" open-pit, cyanide-leaching gold mine in Honduras' Siria Valley. CONTACT: info@rightsaction.org
FILM: "THE BUSINESS OF GOLD in Guatemala: Tale of a Conflict Foretold" "The Business of Gold in Guatemala" (50 minutes), by Gregory Lassalle, documents the struggle and resistance of the Mayan-Mam people of San Miguel Ixtahuacan against the Canadian company Goldcorp Inc, and the harms and violations caused by its "Marlin" open-pit, cyanide-leaching mine. CONTACT: info@rightsaction.org
BOOKS: "CODE Z59.5: There Is Only One People Here" & "The Never Ending" "Code Z59.5" (2010) and "The Never Ending" (1993), by Grahame Russell, are self-published books of diary excerpts (comments, facts, quotes, stories, etc.) from the 1990s and 2000s, related to the author's work in Central America, Mexico and North America, in defense of human rights, in promotion of a caring and just global economic development model. CONTACT: Grahame Russell (info@rightsaction.org, 860-352-2448)
BOOKS: "RECOVERING OUR HISTORICAL MEMORY" & "OUR CULTURE IS OUR RESISTANCE" "Recovering Our Historical Memory", a photography-based book by Jonathan Moller, is about Guatemalan populations displaced by the conflict. It is a visual testimony to Guatemalans working for truth, memory & justice, and for reconciliation for the victims of the violence. "Our Culture is Our Resistance", by Jonathan Moller - It is said that the bones of the dead tell no lies. In Guatemala, every clandestine cemetery that is dug up, every bone that is recovered from Mother Earth speaks of the people who were massacred; the bones speak of crimes against humanity, of genocide committed by the Army against the indigenous population. The photographs speak of this and they also show the face of life, hope, redemption, and demands for change. CONTACT: Katy Troyer (katytroyer@gmail.com) or Jonathan Moller (jonas@igc.org)
* * * * * * *
* Please re-publish this information, citing author and source * To get on/ off RA's listserv: www.rightsaction.org * More info: info@rightsaction.org |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)