I updated the sidebar!

Hello.  I just updated this blog's template.  Now the sidebar includes links to many of the groups who are supporting the Unis'tot'en blockade of the Pacific Trails Pipeline!

From graduate and undergraduate students at McGill University's Macdonald campus:

The Unis'tot'en Blockade is a rallying point, or a convergence point.

The Wet'suwet'en are, among the west coast First Nations who have – over and over – been vocal and visible – and they have been heard all over the continent. They resist the destruction of the land and their home. In the past the Native Youth Movement was a good example, like the Mohawk Warriors, of what could be an anti-colonial Warrior ethic. This is very exciting.

Not just pipelines, but Natural Resource Industries threaten forests with clearcutting and threaten unceded First Nations land with hydraulic fracturing, but also open surface mining and other fossil fuel extraction projects. These threats could impact our atmosphere, which, by virtue of its turbulence and fluidity, could extend the threat to further endanger the ancient, established ways of life of all creatures on the land and in the ocean (owing to reprecussions upon ocean currents and pH).

Therefore, the threat to Wet'suwet'en land is, in fact, a threat to us all, not just to the trees, or the coast of BC!

We have to resist these projects! We have no disagreement yet in our assertion that we should resist all projects of the fossil fuel industries. Furthermore, this resistance ought to be globalized.

Here, in Ste Anne de Bellevue, it is cold, it's snowing, and it's Winter. We are not resolved to invite the undergraduate students at Macdonald College to protest outside, under these conditions. Besides, recently, other kinds of actions have shown to be effective to raise awareness, draw the attention of Society, and seemingly effect change.

So, we are going to follow the Unis'tot'en callout, but act in the electronic realm.

We will contact Encana Corporation (@encanacorp), Apache Canada, Enron Oil and Gas Resources (partners of Pacific Trails Pipeline), Royal Bank of Canada (@RBC_Canada), and Jarislowsky Fraser Limited. We will also find contacts for the Enbridge Northern Gateway (@NorthernGateway) and the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, and the Pembina and Spectra projects, etc. We will contact all these groups with the message: "There will be no pipelines on Unis'tot'en lands. These pipelines are harmful to the land and the community. These extractive projects are based on a fundamentally destructive colonial and capitalist model that forces profits ahead of Indigenous self-determination and stewardship, destroys, and exploits the land and ecosystems, and disregards the safety and health of communities including those who have to work the poisonous jobs in these industries."

We will copy these messages to the Unis'tot'en camp, Francis Scarpaleggia (@ScarpaleggiaMP), and west coast politicians, or include their twitter names in our tweets.

We will "like," follow, and join the organizations that endorsed the Unis'tot'en campaign and make them aware of our electronic campaign:
https://unistotencamp.wordpress.com/
http://stoptheflows.tumblr.com/
http://forestaction.wikidot.com/caravan
http://www.fracturedland.com
https://bcblackout.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/pacific-trails-must-fail/
http://www.barrierelakesolidarity.org/
http://oshkimaadziig.org/oshkimaadiziig-unity-camp/
http://www.defendersoftheland.org/grassy_narrows
http://borealforestnetwork.com/
http://www.scienceforpeace.ca
http://www.canadians.org/
www.deepgreenresistance.org
http://www.ienearth.org/ 
http://ijvcanada.org/
https://www.facebook.com/IndigenousReoccupationOfAncestralLands
https://indigenoussolidaritynetwork.wordpress.com/
http://ilps-canada.ca/
https://miningjusticealliance.wordpress.com/ 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/8247699673/?ref=ts&fref=ts 
http://www.nooneisillegal.org/
http://calamites.resist.ca/
http://shitharperdid.ca/
http://prairie.sierraclub.ca/
http://www.streamsofjustice.org/
http://t.grupoapoyo.org/
http://truthfool.tumblr.com/
http://www.turning.ca/store.htm






 

The latest study showing human health effects of GE foods

Séralini, G-E., E. Clair, R. Mesnage, S. Gress, N. Defarge, M. Malatesta, D. Hennequin, J. Spiroux de Vendômois. 2012. Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Food and Chem Toxicol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005

For further insight into this study, and the controversy that inevitably surrounds it, check out

FAQ – From CRIIGEN research Team

E. Ann Clark, September 2012. 5 pages. Discussion of reaction to Seralini's GM corn study such as the use of "red herring arguments".

For more discussion about the human health effects of GE crops, click on the label below...

My Nightmare

I am going to try, such as I am able at this time, to express part of the whole realization that dawned upon me after waking from a dream.  I hope I can communicate this simply and clearly to you, without any undue emotionalism.

I had a strange dream last night. In the dream, I was at home for the Winter Break. The mild December weather, green grass, and leafy trees weren't what was strange about it, though. I was unsettled by the development around my mother's house. My mother's house used to be my great aunt Ruth's house, and it was built and rebuilt near the long, forested peak of the Hill of Boisdale. The house and the whole community of Upper Leitches Creek is surrounded by fens and the so-called "Appalachian Forest," although it is located on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada.

I believe all attempts to certify her family's hectarage to be thwarted by topography. My mother's family would have lived out there on the Upper Leitches Creek Road for seven generations, but in reality, she has sold the house since moving down to Halifax. She sold the house, but kept the land.

In my dream, there was another asphalt road or two cleared from where trees had been, and there were new houses.  They were tacky and pretentious, in contrast to the typical Nova Scotian home, which is a monotone box, with tiny rectangular windows, that lacks pretension intentionally, consciously, and by design.

The steep slope between the new roads was covered with turf. This unsettled me. Even though I was not lucid in this dream - even though I didn't know that I was dreaming - I could feel the wrongness of it all inside. Like worms or being inhabited by demons.

I spoke with two old women in my dream (without any lucidity). I said to them that, although it was so sad that the forest was cut down, it was good that there was a bus to town, for my mother to visit her children, who work in the city. I type these last words with horror, because that isn't how I think about things! I really love the forest dearly. I could say that, more than any other thing, I want it protected.

The real horror of this dream unfolded, however, as I woke up. Although my eyes opened and I sat up in my bed, a mysterious understanding dawned upon me.  The objects of my bedroom surrounding me seemed to be thrust forward, each proof of the nightmarish totality of our "evolutionary trap." I saw a box of Tobasco Sauce on my desk, and it seemed like an artifact of a degenerate, spiteful, and careless industry.  And of course it really was and is.

Development, and what could be called progress, and the establishment in which we live, immerse us spitefully in artificiality that is only the reassembled defiled and dead remains of eliminated landscapes, eliminated homes, and communities of living things that have been erased from existence. This is the nightmare that industrial capitalism makes of our desires for development and career ambitions.

International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) Global Summary for Decision Makers

Today I encountered a link to this: http://www.agassessment.org/docs/Global_SDM_060608_English.htm

I highly recommend you check it out, if you're looking for pro-organic or alternative agriculture arguments based on science.

Protesting austerity measures is dangerous everywhere, even in Sudan

[I have long since ceased to post my Amnesty International letters.  That said, let me immediately contradict myself by posting this appeal for the freedom of another anti-austerity activist.]

Your Excellency,

Magdi Aqasha, leader and spokesperson of the Sharara and member of the Sudanese Conference Party, was arrested on June 24^th, at the scene of a traffic accident, by Sudan's National Security Service. I am only writing to you to request that you exert your power to release Magdi Aqasha immediately and unconditionally. Please ensure Magdi Aqasha is not subjected to torture or other ill-treatment, and ensure that, regularly, he has access to his family and a lawyer of his choice.

The harassment by Sudan's National Security Service of peaceful activists and journalists must stop. Sudan must honour its commitment to freedom of expression as enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which you are a party.

Sincerely & Respectfully,

[etc.]

Bill 78

[I didn't write this, I'm just reposting it.  I agree with it wholeheartedly.]

This is a half-page flyer written about 'special law' and Bill 78, the anti-protest law 
passed by Quebec as part of a crackdown on the student movement. This was made to be 
distributed in Ontario at the 'casseroles,' or pots and pans demonstrations, inspired by 
and in solidarity with the struggle in Quebec.

Reading version available for download at Zine Library.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep 
under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread. Anatole France 

"Violence was the law, and with the cannons in the hands of the whites,

 the law was white." Sunera Thobani 

The social struggle in Quebec, grown out of a student movement against 
tuition, has inspired many. But perhaps the central issue causing people to take the 
streets with pots and pans across the country is Bill 78, known as the 'special law.'
 
It criminalizes demonstrations not approved by police and imposes heavy fines for 
political activity on school campuses. It has been accompanied by a crackdown that has 
seen more mass arrests than the FLQ Crisis of 1970, at last count over 2,500.
 
But the special law is not special. It is a predictable response to a special 
mobilization, a struggle that is unprecedented in its size, popular support and ferocity 
in recent Quebec history. In Ontario, we got a taste of 'special law' in 2010 at the G20 
Summit, where government and police collaborated to create a 'no-go zone' around the 
security fence protecting G20 leaders. Rights were thrown out the window as downtown 
Toronto was transformed into a police state. Middle class white people were especially 
outraged, and will have their day in court now that the threat has temporarily subsided. 
But for people already criminalized under this system, this only represents an 
intensification of an everyday experience of targeted harassment. We see this same process 
happening in long-term ways on a federal level, with sweeping crime bills and specific 
laws aimed at pre-empting dissent, such as the anti-mask law with penalties of up to 10 
years in prison.

[Here I would have written also that whether or not such a law is in place,

the police use force to disperse gatherings that challenge the status quo, in any case.] 

This is about the interests of government and capital, not the evil conspiracies of 
Charest or Harper.

[I would have written "... and the evil conspiracies..."]

If we exceptionalize Bill 78, we ignore the fact that the law is a set of tools and 
weapons governments use to entrench the interests of the powerful, control and regulate 
the general population, and wage war against the ungovernables. The Canadian state is 
founded on the genocidal conquest of indigenous nations and land, and concessions such as 
the Charter are desperate attempts to create legitimacy where there is only a ruthless 
violence underpinning 'Canada'. So we shouldn't be shocked when we see these same rights 
instantly evaporate in a 'crisis'. And in these times of social upheaval and economic 
austerity, we are approaching perpetual crisis.
 
Focusing on a particular law or appealing to rights risks going on the defensive and 
getting drawn into a conversation with our enemies. It paints the movement as powerless 
victims. We should be inspired to action not just by images of police brutality, but also 
by images of masked rebels chasing riot police. Now is the time to build our grassroots 
power, prepare for repression, support those targeted by the state, but most importantly 
to go on the offensive.