The BCNDP Lost the Election Because They Failed to Fight Back or Offer a Viable Alternative

The BCNDP lost because they ran a terrible campaign that didn't offer any real alternative to the Liberals, except that they were not Liberals. Their campaign slogan was “Change for the Better.” But they didn't define what they wanted to change from or what they wanted to change to. The main reason they lost wasn't the Liberals endless negative ads, they'd been running negative ads against the NDP for years without success, it was because, other than policy wonks, nobody had a clear idea what they stood for.

BC New Democrats either forgot or arrogantly ignored the rules of political campaigning, especially in BC. BC has a long history of prize fight campaigns between the capitalist private enterprisers and the more socialist folks. So the NDP knew knew what was coming, but instead of understanding the difference between personal counter attacks and attacks that reminded BCers of the long list of Liberal lies - policy attacks - they, especially Adrian Dix. did nothing to defend itself let alone to fight back. When under attack they, like all of us, had certain choices; beg for mercy, run like hell, fight like hell or stand your ground in a rope-a-dope like defensive posture waiting for the attacker to get tired then springing out to launch a counter-attack, which is what i naively thought Dix was doing.

The BCNDP had plenty of policy targets to attack that could have overcome Christy's smile. For weeks i was sure Dix would bounce off the ropes, Ali style, with a stiff HST lies left jab, followed by a $6.0 million Basi and Virk legal fees paid by government left/right combination, quickly followed by a BC Rail scandal right cross. Then i figured he'd circle and line them up for another multi-punch combination aimed at their vaunted financial prowess - a left to the huge costs for BC Place Roof and the Convention Centre, a right to the privatizing of capital assets [like the BC Ferries, BC Hydro, Crown Forests] to in order to balance the books. Then finish them off with flurry centering on the closing of mental health facilities making so many defenseless folks homeless, the disastrous privatizing hospital cleaning and maintenance, the buying of ferries from Germany [all of which cost BCers good jobs], but no, they just stood there grinning...until they lost...not much grinning now eh.

Long before the election itself the BCNDP made a huge blunder by choosing the already scandal ridden Dix who's faked memo from years ago was such an obvious target for Liberal's attacks. And Dix only made the target more inviting when he got busted for not buying a Skytrain ticket. We all make mistakes and Adrian Dix is by all accounts a good, hard working, dedicated, honest guy as well as an excellent family man, exactly the kinda guy you'd wanna live next door to or invite over for a barbecue, but in the knock-down blood sport of BC politics all that matters is winning and...

The BCNDP ran a terrible campaign. They didn't use the record of scandal and mismanagement, they didn't offer a viable alternative. They were outwitted, outsmarted and outplayed. Now, a few days later, the BCNDP brain trust is blaming the media, the pollsters, the greens, the voters... and everything that moves for their loss...everything except their own incompetence. The party's president Moe Sihota blames the election loss on fear-mongering by the Liberals, complacency by supporters and -- to a lesser extent -- vote-splitting with the B.C. Green party. Yikes...i forget, which stage of facing impending doom is denial?

Christy's Confident Smile Compared to Dix's Lack of Charisma Made BC Voters 'Feel' Comfortable

Christy Clark talks to a truck driver near Campbell River a few days before the election.

As a non-citizen of Canada, and therefore a non-voter, it's only right to keep my published opinions and advice to myself during elections, but as a long time resident of BC and a very interested observer, now that it's over...The folks in BC said nix to Dix for a range of reasons that may appear unrelated but IMO are all cousins. An excellent synopsis of my thoughts and feelings was the subject of one commentor [among hundreds yesterday] at the Tyee. The commentor talked about the insight she'd had when her work team did the Myers-Briggs test.

Basically the Myers-Briggs test is a well regarded personality test that strives to determine an individual's balance balance between two relative values.  One of the measurements is T, thinking, vs. F, feeling. In other words, some of us see the world through our thinking, rational minds, others see the world more through the emotions. Both are valuable...and all of us are a complicated mish-mash of the two. Her insight from this exercise was that [like me] she's a T in a world of F's, and that she'd better pay attention to the needs of the F's if she wanted to play well on any team, including the great big British Columbia team. It seemed to her that political junkies, especially those who consider themselves to be progressive ones - like she and i, are overwhelmingly Ts, Mr. Dix very much included. Ms. Clark was able to pull the F strings - fear, anxiety about change, financial insecurity, etc. while exhibiting a sunny personality. The NDP disastrously underestimated the power of this.

While Dix's body language and style demonstrated a level of arrogance that at least sub-consciously disgusted voters and non-voters alike, Christy's constant photo-op ready smile and quick confident sense of humour - well learned from years of working in the media and government - connected her emotionally to everybody, including those Ts like me who disagree with her politics.

Most folks don't have time like an old retired hermit gardener does to study the details of intricate issues. Most folks are to busy working, trying to raise a family, trying to make ends meet in this tilt-a-whirl culture. Folks may catch the weather to see what they and the kids should wear to work/school tomorrow, they may check the sports scores or the the odd headline on the radio while driving to work or shopping but otherwise not many have the time or energy to do more. BC, like almost everywhere, has become populated by over stretched folks who vote with their feelings both because that's what most people do and because they are so busy they only can think about immediate issues like their wallets.Christy Clark's buoyant personality - always upbeat, positive and optimistic - even as she lambasted the NDP's policies and personalities, combined with Dix's lack of charisma even more than his party's lack of viable alternative vision is why BCers nixed Dix.

Tomorrow The Mud Report will delve into the 'T' side of why the NDP got the shit-kicking it earned, but for me there was one particular 'F' moment that, when it happened, was the 'ah-ha' moment for me. It happened outside Campbell River a few days before the vote. Christy was striding along, casually dressed, smiling and shaking hands, journalists in tow, along side a row of big rigs idling in a lineup. She turned and a very gracefully climbed up the ladder while at the same time pulling herself up on the mirror support bar and talked to the trucker inside. She looked totally natural and confident in her movements, she talked warmly with the trucker, her smile and her confidence with him was, or at least seemed, totally genuine. My heart sank, i felt it too, it was obvious she'd win.

The Only Solution to Environmental Degradation and Social Inequity is Bottom-Up Action

We all have choices. We all can choose to take personal responsibility. We all can take action, here and now, to live simply and happily by wanting less. People all around the world are discovering that less is more and are combating the over-consumption that lies at the heart of all environmental degradation and social inequity.

One excellent example is Ralph da Costa Nunez, a member of New York City's 'Home At Last' group that is dedicated to using a bottom-up, personal commitment solution to homelessness, especially among NTC's children. Each member of the group works to collect food donations and organizes other neighborhood groups to collect and make food donations every month. They collect, clean and repair toys for donation. Cash they themselves donate, or is collected, is used to buy toys, clothes, school supplies, shoes and new children's-sized socks and underwear that they distribute at family shelters. They organize supply drives and fundraisers to provide shelters with the items they need.

Ralph and his group don't blame anyone and don't expect the government to do everything. They know we're all in this together.

So does Barry Saxifrage who's excellent and well researched article last week in the Vancouver Observer titled 'Is jet-setting compatible with a safe climate?' about the embedded energy and environmental costs of air travel also talked about his own commitment to taking personal responsibility by walking the talk. From reading the comments its obvious that many folks agree with Barry and have also learned the joys of the staycation. In it Barry says, "Like with other aspects of the climate crisis, it sure looks like dirty industries won't act morally and politicians won't act in time. That means citizens will need to lead the way from the grassroots up."

Ralph and Barry know that in the end, it's not governments but a bottom-up revolution of everyday folks that's going to provide solutions. They act on their understanding that we feed the monster with our lifestyles and that only bottom up solutions by the that person in the mirror every morning can lead to any real change.

In a perfect world, a world where governments weren't corrupted by corporate monies, perhaps there could be fair and effective regulations enacted. But we don't live there. In this world top down solutions always seem to end up making complicated matters worse. Only bottom up solutions like mindful demand side reductions by individuals can be effective

Last Night the News Hour Talked Openly About BC's Pot Industry, Here's a Few Things They Missed

Last Night the News Hour went on the road to Nelson, B.C. and did a story they called 'Nelson’s smoky little secret: B.C.’s cash crop'. They deserve tons praise for having the courage to talk openly about BC's underground pot industry and its benefits to BC's rural economy. It's not often that a MSM outlet will take the chance of alienating their advertisers by mentioning, let alone talking about the positive aspects and widespread community support for outlaws. Maybe it's because they were in Nelson, the reputed pot capital of Canada, maybe it's the fact that it's far from a secret, but they did it. GOOD ON 'EM

But they missed, or sidestepped, a few important things IMO. One of the most widely read posts The Mud Report has done is titled 'The #1 Reason Why Harper Won't Legalize Pot in Canada', thousands of folks have read it from all around the world. Of course the reason is that Canada's small time mom and pop marijuana industry is powering the rural economies all across Canada, not just in BC. The authorities themselves estimate the value at $7 billion in BC alone, that's a lotta money. And the vast majority of BC pot is grown by small scale growers not organized crime.

The growers earning $200,000 a year that Chris interviewed last night don't really qualify as small scale IMO. Most folks earn far less, more in the $20,000 range. More like a mortgage interest helper or a way one of the parents can stay home to raise the kids. And their bemoaning the competition from a new wave of outlaws made them even less likable, at least to me.

None-the-less, when mom and pop growers spend their loonies it's at local stores, on bills and at the grocery market not the stock market. But whoever grows them every plant takes huge amounts of labour to grow and process. Even the criminal types with the warehouses employ tens if not hundreds of people each somewhere during production. All those people have families and when all those thousands of outlaws spend their money in the local community it creates lottsa other jobs, a lot more than pipelines do. In the end the tax boys get their cut as the dough circulates around the economy so it's no loss to the government in the long run.  Instead folks just get to use it for awhile before taxes soak it all up.

One question that comes up all the time is:
Q.- Wouldn't legalizing pot simply turn it into just another commodity produced and profited from by large corporations, financed by large banks, and taxed to death by governments all of which would result in higher prices, lower quality and exported shareholder profits.
A. - Yes

Someday, like the other outdated 'boogie men' we've been manipulated to fear in the past - gambling, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, etc. - the 'sin' of pot will go up in smoke and the government will use it as another source of revenue. Until then 'we the people' can enjoy our tokes and our green economy secure in the knowledge that whenever it's legalized it'll become just another crappy plastic corporate commodity.

How European Honey Bees are Poisoned, Abused and Treated Like Slaves in the Pursuit of Profits

Digging deeper into the issues surrounding the huge percentage of honey bee deaths this past winter and the worry created over our food supply these past few days has led me to try avoiding comparisons to slavery, to animal abuse, to poisoned illegal farm workers, to Bangladeshi garment workers...but i can't. The scientific studies show that European Honeybees are dying enmasse mostly because they are being poisoned by pesticides but they are also highly susceptible to these toxins because they are weakened by being forced to live on a monoculture diet they aren't co-evolved to eat.

All bees require the type of mixed diet found in a natural setting to remain healthy, not exclusively on one type of pollen/nectar for a week or two, then another, then another. Some honeybees get to stay put and eat a mixed diet from local flowers as they progress naturally through the seasons, but not the vast majority of them. For them its a peach monoculture in Georgia for a couple of weeks, then back onto the truck for a 72hr cross continent drive to a huge almond operation in Northern California, then...on to the next huge corporate owned monculture somewhere on the continent.

The corporations finance the bee's abuse from the banks, both rake in their ill-gotten gains by avoiding the cost of providing safe, secure working conditions. Its always the same story be it in Bangladesh or Baton Rouge. Its hardly a mystery malady when at each stop the honeybees are forced to endure different chemicals and pesticides in their weakened state. These marvelous creatures are abused and poorly paid the same way industrial ag. treats the rest of its farm workers. When they die from the toxins and abuse, their masters, big ag, moan about lost profits then, instead of improving the working conditions, they look frantically everywhere for more slaves when the honeybees die.

The second part of the question is about the danger to our food supply. Digging deeper into this meant looking into how different proportions of our foods are pollinated and by what vectors. The first sentence everywhere is: An estimated one out of every three bites of food comes to us through the work of animal pollinators.

About 50% of the food we eat comes from wind pollinated or self- pollinated crops, primarily barley, corn, oats, rice, rye, sorghums, wheat, sugar beets, sugar cane, potatoes, sweet potatoes and grass hay crops fed to animals. Another 10% comes from crops that may receive some benefit from insect pollination but are largely self-pollinating like beans, cotton, flax, peanuts, peas, and soybeans. Another 10% come from the fruits and veggie plants that are dependent on animal pollination like apples, pears, grapes, peas, lettuces, beets, carrots, sunflowers, onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, cole crops, (broccoli cabbage,kale, etc) cucumbers and melons, etc. The animal products are about 20% and some of it is derived from insect-pollinated legumes such as alfalfa, clover, lespedeza, and trefoil, the rest from wind pollinated hay and corn crops.  Finally about 10% is made up of fats and oils which come from oilseeds–coconuts, cotton, oil palm, olives, peanuts, rape, soybeans, and sunflower. Most of of these plants are dependent upon animal pollination. Which all ends up at somewhere near 1/3 of our food needing animal pollination.

But that's animal pollination and, like yesterday's blog showed, there are lotta other pollinators out there working their magic on our behalf other than honeybees. There are different estimates as to the proportions but none give European Honeybees over a 20% share, most less, of our pollinated dietary foods [33% of our total diet] so maybe 5%-6% of our total dietary intake is honeybee pollinated  Consequently if last winter 1/3 of the enslaved bees died that's a whopping 2% of our diet not harvested and that 2% is mostly luxury food items, like peaches, coffee, almonds, or vanilla. So it appears all the scary headlines about our food supply are just fear based propaganda by big ag and their bankers for the upcoming price 'adjustment' not to improve the bee's lives, but to increase profits from their deaths.

Ending Our Insane Chemical 'War On Weeds' Would Let All the Pollinators Keep Keeping Us Alive

Click Here to hear Professor of Entomology Claudio Gratton's explain the essential role native bees play in our continued survival.

The huge numbers of European Honey Bees that died in all the 'developed' countries this past winter [about 1/3] has been directly tied to industrial agriculture's expanding use of pesticides, especially the neonicotinoids, by studies in both the US and Europe. Europe has already enacted new regulations to protect their pollinators, the US and Canada are, as usual, listening to the pesticide industry lobbyists and refusing to call for a ban.  

Neonicotinoid pesticides have been known for years to be deadly not only to honeybees but to all insect pollinators. There are at least 1000 different species of native bees in North America and 1000's of other species of pollinating insects too. All types of pesticides have been found to harm native and imported bees as well as the others, including fungicides, herbicides, acaricides, rodenticides, and of course the ubiquitous insecticides. Bats are important pollinators too, as are birds, particularly hummingbirds, honeyeaters and sunbirds. Other vertebrates, such as monkeys, lemurs, possums, rodents, lizards and humans have been recorded pollinating some plants as well.

As Cornell entomology professor Bryan Danforth says in explaining the importance of native bees, "The honeybee has hogged the pollination spotlight for centuries, but native bees are now getting their fair share of buzz: They are two to three times better pollinators than honeybees, are more plentiful than previously thought and not as prone to the headline-catching colony collapse disorder that has decimated honeybee populations. An individual visit by a native bee is actually worth far more than an individual visit by a honeybee." Danforth added. "Honeybees are more interested in the nectar. They don't really want the pollen if they can avoid it. The wild, native bees are mostly pollen collectors. They are collecting the pollen to take back to their nests."

Danforth goes on to say, "In the past, the attitude has always been, 'Well, you have the crop, and you have the honeybee, and that's all you really need.' But nobody has ever bothered to ask, well what about all these other bees that are out there? The role of native bees in crop pollination has been largely unappreciated -- until colony collapse disorder created a crisis."

Honeybees are considered valuable because, unlike native species, they can be moved from farm to farm. For example, honeybees are critical in pollinating California almond fields in February when there are no native bees around. The thing that makes the honeybee valuable to agriculture is its ability to quickly pollinate large numbers of flowers over a wide area making it possible to grow mono-cultural crops like canola, or almonds. When you grow large fields or orchards of mono-cultured crops, natural pollinators can only pollinate a small percentage of the flowers in the short period of time that nature allots for this work. These industrial scaled honeybee pollinated crops are often luxury food items, like peaches, coffee, almonds, or vanilla.

An estimated one out of every three bites of food comes to us through the work of animal pollinators [more on that tomorrow], only a small percentage of that is pollinated exclusively by imported European Honeybees. Since native bees are closely tied to their food source, anything that destroys the food source—whether it’s a herbicide, a freeway, a lawnmower or a housing development—destroys the native insects that were dependent upon it.

Corporate/industrial agriculture because of its monoculture dependent pesticide addiction is killing itself by destroying the living soil beneath its feet and also by killing its only source pollination. They'll poison and kill us too if we let them. But if instead we realize the value of our native pollinators, if we stop our insane chemical 'war on weeds', if we silence the lawnmowers and learn to love the native flowering plants and recognize them to be our cousins and the main food source of the native pollinators we depend on, our food gardens will have plenty of native pollinators to keep us alive. If we don't, well we won't have to worry about climate change or our anything else.

The Environment's Real Enemies are Easy to Find, Their Cars Fill the Mall Parking Lots Everywhere

John Atcheson's article today, On 400 PPM, Mass Stupidity, and the Suicidal Language of Climate Lemmings, starts out with a couple of great lines: OK, lemmings don’t commit mass suicide.  But they do reproduce chaotically, and periodically consume their way out of sustainable habitats, and into mass migrations that result in most of their population dying. Sound familiar?

The 400 ppm part of John's title refers to the Keeling Curve's latest measurement of global CO2 concentration which shows that we'll be passing the symbolically significant 400 ppm mark perhaps today or maybe next week, but very soon. Like so many of us, John is somewhere between distressed and depressed on any given day by the apparently suicidal route our consumer culture is hurtling down and the consequences for humanity's survival.

Stephen Leahy's piece, As World Burns... Rich Countries Drag Feet at Climate Talks, expresses the same existential angst from a slightly different, more Canadian, angle. In it he points out that because of Canada's current and proposed export expansions of coal, tar sands crud and natural gas "Canada’s future prosperity will be based on profiting from dumping two billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere". Both are heartfelt well written articles, both speak to the same problem, both argue that our leaders aren't doing enough to fight the evil corporations.

This top down solution is the argument dejour. It started long before Bill McKibben declared the fossil fuel industry to be 'the real enemy' in his widely read and well documented  Rollingstone article, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math. Hard working and dedicated as he is, Bill Mckibben has become a sort of CC pied piper leading an increasing desperate troupe of environmentalists down another blind alley - divestment in fossil fuels. As Christian Parenti, and many others point out, divestment is an admirable and honourable thing to do but it's useless at best because it denies "...the basic economics of the fossil fuel industry, we actually sustain and feed Exxon, Chevron, Shell and the rest not as investors, but as consumers. We give them money when we buy gasoline."

Worse yet the longer the erstwhile environmental community continues to focus on one top down, blind alley solution after another the real real enemy, the enemy who's cars fill the mall parking lots everywhere daily, keep demanding and consuming more needless crap. Instead the real enemy in the mirror every morning - the demand-ers - must be the focus of a bottom up solution. As Jorge Majfud says, "Trying to reduce environmental pollution without reducing consumerism is like combating drug trafficking without reducing the drug addiction."

Why do so many intelligent, well educated people like McKibben, Naomi Klein, James Hansen and others focus on the suppliers of our addictions in drug warrior fashion? Maybe it's because they know that a demand side, bottom up message that focuses on middle class consumer and investor culpability would be angrily denied and dismissed?

Thinking of Divesting in the Carbon Bubble? Here's a Few Ethical Re-Investment Ideas

Hot on the heels of the Carbon Tracker Report came Bill McKibben's Rolling Stone article 'Global Warming's Terrifying New Math' followed by a deluge of articles from every corner of the Climate Change choir explaining why trillions of stock market dollars are at risk because the Carbon Bubble is about to burst and when it does it'll plunge the world into another financial crisis. All of them, be it Naomi Klein, McKibben, Brune, Van Jones, Hansen or others, explain that these stocks aren't just owned by the rich, that they are also broadly owned by everyday folks through their pension funds, mutual funds, bank deposits, RRSPs/401Ks etc. In the end every choir member says the only option folks have is to divest from the fossil fuel industries immediately.

Divesting for ethical reasons isn't a new idea, as far back as 1758, the Quakers prohibited members from participating in the slave trade - buying or selling humans. Most of the early proponents of socially responsible investing were religiously motivated and forbid followers from investing in  “sinful” companies, such as those associated with products such as guns, liquor, and tobacco. More recently divestment in South African companies was a powerful factor in their abandonment of apartheid.

Just for the record, mr. mud has zero investments or pension plans of any kind and has always considered 'Ethical Investments' as an oxymoron. None-the-less i spent a number of hours these last few days researching the wide field of 'Socially Responsible Investing' [SRIs] in order to be able to offer a few [damn few] positive options for folks wanting to divest as the CC choir correctly suggests.

Divesting in fossil fuels is meaningless though, other than as an honorable feel good exercise, if all that happens is that the money from the sale of those investments is simply reinvested in another aspect of the capitalist matrix. Every tentacle of capitalism just feeds or feeds on fossil fuels though usually disguised by wearing a different wig. My first step was to look into how SRI funds operate. There's a great chart here that compares the investment strategy of all the leading SRI funds graphically. It shows that none of them
is really what i'd call ethical, they can't be because they all have maximizing returns - profit - as their goal, that's their job. Capitalism only generates profits by externalizing, avoiding, costs be it by manufacturing goods in third world countries or by using the biosphere as toilet who's cleanup costs will have to be paid by future generations.

Anyway, here's a couple of highly regarded references to start your own research: The Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing from UC Berkley has good ideas and interesting past winners. And the book 'Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution', by Paul Hawken, Amory and Hunter Lovins is the classic on ethical investing

So, if you think that ethical investing isn’t an oxymoron here's a short list of possible options. These 3 below are similar in that they use slightly different methods to provide their investors with the security of owning low-risk farmland while benefiting from the value added by converting it to certified organic farmland. There's Farmland LP, Peak Prosperity and Slow Money started by Paul Newman who said of it, "I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil what he takes out. Recognizing the wisdom of these words, let us begin rebuilding our economy from the ground up."

Another type of option is the type of Municipal Bonds that are sold to raise the capital to build rapid transit systems. There are no easy answers, folks have to do their own research and direct their own investments. None of my options offer outrageous promises of huge riches but they all offer a good night's sleep.

My personal non-investment list includes: Saving money and the biosphere by putting your money into your home through upgrading insulation and more efficient heating systems. Putting it into your kid's education. Buying the stuff for and building a food garden, then building a composter, then building a chicken coop. If that's not possible, invest in local food security, and your own, by joining a local farm food buying coop. Put your money into buying land that has good water and air that can grow healthy organic food, build a home on it, eqip it with off grid power. There's still lottsa good small tracts of land available all over the world, the further you get from a mini-mall the better the prices become.

Living simply is the best advice and investment, the money you don't spend is money earned because the stuff you don't buy doesn't depreciate and the environment doesn't have mitigate the production and transportation wastes generated. Dirt under your fingernails hardwork isn't a sin but debt is. Only by jumping from the nest will you ever fly. Get Ready. Get Set. Jump!

Naomi Klein Exposes the Truth About the Dirty Investments Financing Environmental Groups

This month The Nation is publishing two excellent articles by Naomi Klein about how many of the largest environmental organizations still invest in fossil fuels. In 'Why Aren't Environmental Groups Divesting from Fossil Fuels?' Naomi asks, "Why do some of the largest environmental organizations -  Conservation International, The Environmental Defense Fund, The National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy, The Natural Resources Defense Council, The Ocean Conservancy, The Sierra Club, The Sierra Club Foundation, The Union of Concerned Scientists, The Wildlife Conservation Society, The Wilderness Society, The Woods Hole Research Center, The World Resources Institute and The World Wildlife Fund - still invest in fossil fuels?"

In the second titled 'Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free' she makes it clear that "plenty of green groups have managed to avoid this mess. Greenpeace, 350.org, Friends of the Earth, Rainforest Action Network, and a host of smaller organizations like Oil Change International and the Climate Reality Project don’t have endowments and don’t invest in the stock market. They also either don’t take corporate donations or place such onerous restrictions on them that extractive industries are easily ruled out. Some of these groups own a few fossil fuel stocks, but only so that they can make trouble at shareholder meetings."

It's important to notice the words 'endowments and invest in the stock market' because this is the central issue in Naomi's articles, the focus of her exhaustive research and the way almost all conservation is done in the western world. The organization behind The American Prarie Reserve, an ambitious undertaking to rewild 3.5 million acres of short grass prairie in the greater Missouri Breaks area, as Richard Manning's book 'Rewilding the West' explains and details has the same dilemma. In order to raise the money necessary to buy up and 'rewild' that vast area hundreds of ranchers must be bought out over the coming years. This will cost an estimated $200, 000, 000. The only folks who've got that kinda dough are very rich folks and understandably even the most altruistic of them doesn't give money away without some conditions attached.

This reality leads most organizations into the world of endowments, which as registered charities are tax deductible and who's investments in the stock market create income, also usually tax deductible, that can be used to run the organization without depleting the donated capital [at least in theory]. Naomi's articles join numerous others lately in the wake of the Carbon Tracker Report and Bill McKibben's Rolling Stone article 'Global Warming's Terrifying New Math' in calling for all these environmental organizations to divest their interests in the fossil fuel industry.

Though this solution sounds good in reality it makes a better slogan than an effective tactic. All these endowments, just like the pension plans and all the various types of investment funds, hire fund managers who's job it is to maximize returns. So, as long as the job of the endowment's managers is maximizing returns within whatever moral parameters that organizations applies, divestment in one aspect of the capitalist matrix, fossil fuels, is meaningless if the money is simply moved to another aspect of capitalism, another part of the consumer culture who's demands drive all economic exchange, including those of the fossil fuel industry. Folks need to stop driving to the mall, stop consuming useless plastic crap, just slow down.

Christian Parenti at Huffington Post has noticed the problem too. He said recently, "I am all for dumping carbon stocks, if for no other reason than a sense of decency and honor...but we actually sustain and feed Exxon, Chevron, Shell and the rest not as investors, but as consumers. We give them money when we buy gasoline." There are other choices, like the picture above shows [more on that soon] but for now the reailty is that in this worldwide capitalist matrix top down solutions always seem to end up making complicated matters worse. Only bottom up solutions like mindful demand side reductions by individuals can be effective. As Jorge Majfud says, "Trying to reduce environmental pollution without reducing consumerism is like combating drug trafficking without reducing the drug addiction."

Demand Driven Consumer Capitalism is Also the Driver of the "Environmental Pollution" Matrix

Yesterday's post ended with the Jorge Majfud quote, "Trying to reduce environmental pollution without reducing consumerism is like combating drug trafficking without reducing the drug addiction." It's important to notice that Majfud, a genius IMO, refers to the broad issue of "environmental pollution" not just to climate change.

Somewhere along the way climate change, which is a symptom of the disease of consumer capitalism not the disease itself, usurped the focus of the broader debate. Climate change is a very important node in the green matrix, tentacles leading to and from it interconnect every aspect of broader disease causing all forms of "environmental pollution"..IMO the media, knowing our limitations and its own, played a central role in the narrowing of the debate. Climate change offered so many tantalizing catastrophic predictions to headline, so many celebrities speaking out, so many simplistic graphs to illustrate the 'inconvient truth'. Of course, it's our fault as least as much as theirs - ratings, sales and profits are achieved by supplying that which is demanded in the media as in all capitalist industries.

The example list below from 'Green Living' [which could undoubtedly be edited] is an example of the broad range of nodes in the "environmental pollution" matrix that have been eclipsed somewhat by the climate change and related energy debates. Many issues, like the crisis over our food supply created by annihilation of world's pollinators, a keystone group if there ever was one, now proven to be caused by the use of pesticides and insecticides in industrial agriculture to ensure profitable harvests from petro-chemical fertilized monocultures is certainly more immediate and just as potentially catastrophic.

Every economic exchange, every unintended environmental consequence, is driven by demand. Folks need to stop driving to the mall, stop consuming useless plastic crap, just slow down. Please take a look the list below, maybe research some the topics more broadly, IMO you'll agree that demand driven consumer capitalism is the underlying driver of all."environmental pollution".

1. Contamination of Drinking Water: Contamination of fresh water used for household needs, including pollution of oceans, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, ranks top on the list of environmental concerns for many Americans. More than half of respondents stated they worry about the safety of their drinking water a great deal.

2. Water Pollution: General worry over water pollution and associated environmental issues greatly concerns half of all Americans who participated in the 2008 poll. Related issues include acid rain, ocean dumping, urban runoff, oil spills, ocean acidification, and wastewater.

3. Soil Contamination: Soil erosion, soil conservation, soil salination, and soil contamination by waste, pesticides, and lead worries 50 percent of Americans.

4. Wildlife Conservation: More than 40 percent of Americans expressed concern about wildlife conservation and associated environmental issues, such as endangered species, animal and plant extinction, coral bleaching, introduction of invasive species, poaching, and loss of natural animal habitats resulting in relocation and a break in the food chain.

5. Air pollution: Concerns over air pollution have remained steady over the last decade, with more than 40 percent of Americans worried about indoor and outdoor air quality, carbon emissions, tropospheric ozone, particulate matter, sulfur oxides, volatile organic compounds, radon, refrigerants, and methane emissions.

6. Biological pollutants, including bacteria, viruses, molds, mildew, dander, dust, mites, pollen, ventilation and infection.

7. Carbon footprint and the responsibility of individuals to reduce their effect on the environment, including the use of renewable energy sources (solar power, geothermal heat pumps), recycling, and sustainable living.

8. Climate change and issues related to global warming, such as the greenhouse effect, global dimming, and the gradual rise in sea level.

9. Consumerism and over-consumption and their effect on the planet.

10. Dams and the impact of dams on the environment.

11. Ecosystem destruction and associated environmental concerns, such as aquaculture, estuaries, shellfish protection, landscaping, wetlands, and ecological restoration.

12. Energy conservation issues, including renewable energy for home and business, energy efficiency, and fossil fuel depletion.

13. Fishing and its effect on marine ecosystems, blast fishing, cyanide fishing, bottom trawling, whaling, and over-fishing.

14. Food safety concerns and the effects of hormones, antibiotics, preservatives, toxic contamination, and lack of quality control on health.

15. Genetic engineering, including concerns about genetically modified foods and genetic pollution.

16. Intensive farming, irrigation, overgrazing, monoculture, methane emissions, and the damaging environmental effects of deforestation for farming and cattle.

17. Land degradation and related problems, such as desertification and soil and land pollution.

18. Land use, urban sprawl, lack of free space, and habitat destruction and fragmentation.

19. Logging, deforestation, clear-cutting, destruction of wildlife habitats, and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

20. Mining and its role in global warming, acid mine drainage, and soil and air pollution resulting from toxic emissions and heavy metals.

21. Nanotechnology and the future effects of nanopollution and nanotoxicology.

22. Natural disasters and their impact on all aspects of the environment.

23. Nuclear issues, including the effects of nuclear fallout, nuclear meltdown, radioactive waste, and the population's reliance on nuclear power.

24. Other pollution issues, such as light pollution and noise pollution, and their effects on human health and behavior.

25. Overpopulation concerns, such as continued building and burial.

26. Ozone depletion and damage to the Earth's ozone layer caused by CFC.

27. Resource depletion, the need for newer, cleaner energy sources, and exploitation of natural resources.

28. Sustainable communities and issues such as reducing reliance on fossil fuels, supporting local farmers and merchants, encouraging green practices and building, consideration of native wildlife, and adoption of mass transportation and cleaner methods of commuting.

29. Toxins, including chlorofluorocarbons, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, toxic waste, PCB, DDT, bioaccumulation, endocrine disruptors, asbestos, and poorly implemented hazardous waste management.

30. Waste and associated environmental issues, such as litter, landfills, recycling, incineration, marine debris, E-waste, and contamination of water and soil caused by improper disposal and leaching toxins.

The Only Green Solution to Over-Consumption and Environmental Degradation is Degrowth

One of the most important books about environmentalism is 'Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism' by researcher Ozzie Zehner of UC Berkeley. The book explains some of the 'shady' sides of the clean energy hype and in so doing, dampens the hype around it. This short interview with Ozzie is eye-opening. Another eye opener is the new paper by Dr. Richard York 'Do Alternative Energy Sources Displace Fossil Fuels?' which draws upon 50 years of energy data to reveal that solar and wind power have not offset a single fossil fuel plant. “The common assumption that the expansion of production of alternative energy will suppress fossil-fuel energy production in equal proportion is clearly wrong,” it concludes.

How can this be? Well Andrew Nikiforuk's latest article 'Solar Dreams, Spanish Realities' , explains how. It focuses on Pedro Prieto, a 62-year-old engineer and solar entrepreneur who has worked in Spain's photovoltaic indusrty since the 1970s as part of Spain's famous solar revolution. In it Prieto says, "Solar power in its current big industrial mindset is just another extension of fossil fuels." He Goes on to explain that, "The sun is renewable but photovoltaics are not. Just to make the silicon used to trap the sun's rays on manufactured wafers requires the melting of silica rock at 3,000 Fahrenheit (1,649 Celsius). And the electricity of coal-fired plants or ultrapurified hydrogen obtained from fossil sources provide the heat to do that. It also takes a fantastic amount of oil to make concrete, glass and steel for solar modules." In the end Prieto offers this advice, "We need to deurbanize and localize as much as it is possible, and to return to the countryside, as much as it is possible, and to use more animal draft force."

The closer you look the more you realize there are no 'Green' solutions to the environmental degradation being caused by human over-consumption. As soon as a person researches the science underlying every newly hyped solution they run into the same reality, the promoters and advertisers can easily fool us, but they can't fool physics, they can't hide all the energy embedded in their new gizmo. They can make money with slick slogans, but they can't fool the second law of thermodynamics. The only real solution to over-consumption is consuming less.

The growing De-growth Movement seeks to combat conspicuous consumption, the affluenza of our era, with anti-consumerism by arguing that over-consumption lies at the root of all environmental issues and social inequalities. The Romanian economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen is considered the creator of de-growth. He associated every economic activity with an increase in entropy, whose increase implied the loss of useful resources.

The Want-Less meme, often promoted here on The Mud Report, is very well explored on The Simplicity Institute website who's many excellent articles and info on living simply and happily through wanting less is called “a beacon of hope.” by Richard Heinberg, from the Post-Carbon Institute.

Finally [bet seeing that word cheers y'all up], as Jorge Majfud says, "Trying to reduce environmental pollution without reducing consumerism is like combating drug trafficking without reducing the drug addiction."

Little Free Libraries Help Build Communities By Bringing People Together

Yesterday's article at Common Dreams by Lauren McCauley titled Spreading Community and Love of Books 'Little Free Libraries' Sprout Worldwide turned me onto a whole new bottom up movement that helps build community cohesion and interaction, as Laura says, "In an era of smart-phone-reading, electronic tablets, and 'books on ipod'..." The Free Little Library movement was started by Wisconsin native Todd Bol. Regardless of whether we're young or old, whether we live in giant cities or tiny small towns as Todd says, "“These libraries are always bringing people together”.

Their website is very well laid out with lots of pictures of smiling folks, useful ideas for building your own and instructions on joining this worldwide movement. There also heartwarming stories like the one Bol tells of a woman who put a cookbook into her library, only to find it taken and replaced just hours later with the freshly baked cupcakes. Todd encourages folks to join the network and for a $35 fee receive lots of goodies including a pretty 'Free Little Library' sign with an official registration # and the 'Take a Book. Return a book' motto on it.

The little Pine Tree Rd. community at Black Point south of Powell River, BC where my best friend and i live and go walking a couple times everyday is an ideal spot for this great idea to take hold. We moved here a bit over two years ago and knew no one in the immediate neighborhood but slowly by first making eye contact and waving to people driving past, then stopping to chat for a couple of minutes over the fence or with fellow strollers both Pancho and i have enjoyed watching the little community open up to us. When we first started our walks some folks waved back and smiled, a few stopped to chat, now everyone does.

Last year i started to informally exchange, berries and veggies with one nice lady who loves to bake for her extended family. This year a few of us gardener folks exchanged seeds and herb cuttings. Often during our evening walk we're joined by one or another local out enjoying the bird and the tree frog serenade with their best friends. The dogs, like the people, seldom need leashes as we're all fairly well socialized and there's very little traffic.

Pine Tree Rd. is a wonderful little community and a little library will be an excellent addition. Being a hermit, i might join the network, might not. But what i will do for sure is adopt the idea and start gathering my re-cycled materials this afternoon.

Had a Wonder-Filled Dream While Napping During the Debate Last Night - About BC Independence

Couldn't help it, just kept nodding off during the BC leaders debate last night. Ah, but in that sleep what a wonder-filled dream did come. In it BC was an independent country. All sorts of things had changed for the better, it was like mr. mud had flown 'over the rainbow'. Sorta half woke up a few times during the show but...when i finally started to come to, in that half-light before full awakening, it seemed a shame to forget all the wonderful magical things on the other side so i made a list.

My Independent BC had a big budget surplus yet all the regressive taxes were gone, no PST, no GST, no Carbon Tax. They'd all been replaced by a progressive taxes including a Luxury Tax both in stores and at the borders, a new 'sin' tax legal marijuana, a Robin Hood Tax on every speculative transaction, a Resource Export Tax and new taxes on non-resident real-estate speculators. Plus all the lotto and other gambling money, as always paid mostly by the poor, went into the schools, hospitals, amateur sports and the arts like it was originally supposed to.

This Independent BC also benefited from having the federal share of other taxes re-directed into its accounts and of course all those million$ of dollars in transfer payments were non-existent. My Independent BC also wasn't losing millions in interest every month to the rich banksters because it had established a Bank of BC, then borrowed from it instead so all that interest went right back to BC's taxpayers via their new Proportionally Represented Legislature.

There was no more NAFTA, no more FIPA, no more free trade mandated raw log exports which meant the sawmills were open again. No more federal Temporary Foreign Workers Program meant more jobs and better pay too. No more threats of lawsuits through corporate friendly FIPA type schemes meant all the decisions about pipelines, about waterway protection, about fisheries, about Coast Guard resources, about anti-GMO laws, about all environmental standards were made in BC and informed by its own un-muzzled scientists.

Gone were the cost of useless overpriced jets and new un-necessary prisons., in their place were safe-injection sites and health based solutions to the drug addiction problems usually at the root of so much crime. Gone were the RCMP now replaced by locally born and raised folks who knew and understood the unique character of each different community.

Undoubtedly many folks would/could add alotta other wonder-filled details of their own to this dream. But when fully awake i realized the biggest boon for an Independent BC - NO MORE HARPER.

Leadnow and Idle No More's 'Skills for Solidarity' Education Program - Building Bridges Among Allies

The Guardian article by Martin Lukacs titled 'Indigenous Rights are the Best Defense Against Canada's Resource Rush' is an excellent introduction to First Nations activist Arthur Manuel, a brilliant thinker trained in law, who has devoted himself to fighting Canada's policies toward Indigenous peoples and the all important topics surrounding FN's Constitutional Rights. Canada's First Nations are fighting in the courts and on the ground to protect the water, land and wildlife that sustain us all.

Like the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance folks, the Tar Sands Blockade and others including Bold Nebraska who are on the ground resisting Big Oil stateside Canada's First Nations and environmental activists are on the front lines of a battle that attempts to force the world's largest corporations and the governments they control to put the environment of the many before the profits of the few.

A few days ago, for instance, Harpo's Conservative government along with the ass-kissing Liberals passed a motion to facilitate the adoption of the FIPA trade deal, a deal that if ratified would allow China’s companies to sue Canada if any Canadian government, including the provinces, makes any decision that put our health, jobs and environment before their profits. Worse yet, these suits would be decided by unaccountable arbitrators in secret courts outside our legal system. Green Party leader Elizabeth May commented that now the only legal hope we have of stopping the 31-year corporate rights deal that contains massive environmental, human rights and sovereignty implications is the legal injunction filed by the Hupacasath First Nation in BC.

As the groups at Leadnow and Idle No More explain on their website: "From muzzling scientists and stripping environmental protections to negotiating secretive trade agreements and trampling Indigenous rights, this government is silencing watchdogs and opening the country to devastation for the benefit of a few. Indigenous-led movements have responded by standing up across Canada to defend democracy, Indigenous rights and the land, water and air."

That’s why Leadnow and Idle No More are working together to launch Skills for Solidarity, a free online education program that will teach key lessons about our nations’ histories and ways the rest of us can become a better allies. The 'Skills for Solidarity' program will offer lessons, articles and videos throughout the spring. Hope you'll join me and many others by signing up to learn more from the Skills for Solidarity Educational Program:

Why Saving Seed and Growing Organic Food is a Powerful Weapon Against Corporate Tyranny

For 12,000 years, since the advent of agriculture itself, saving seed and exchanging seed with other growers for biodiversity purposes was the way folks maintained their farms and gardens.. Now this traditional practice has become illegal for the many plant varieties that are patented or otherwise owned by a corporation. The fact that these fictitious beings can and do now legally own and control our access to the stuff and staff of life proves that the laws, the governments who create them, the police and courts who enforce them are owned and operated by and for the corporations, not us.

Back in George Washington's day not only were seeds routinely saved and traded but folks were in a position to stand up to authority, to rebel, to overthrow the royal tyrants, to form a more perfect union. Today the corporate tyrants are far more powerful, their security and police state apparatus make almost all types of physical rebellion instant suicide. Almost all, but the corporations and security state aren't totally invulnerable. Their is one powerful weapon 'we the people' still have that the corporate forces darkness are vulnerable to. We can ignore them!

It's obvious now that real change can't come from the top down as it could it Washington's day. Any meaningful change must come from the bottom up. And nothing is more bottom up than the soil and the food we grow from it. Open pollination, non-hybrid seed, is an important aspect of intentionally ignoring the corporate tyrants Open pollinated seeds grow plants that reproduce through natural means, adapt to local conditions over time, and evolve as reliable performers, particularly in their localities, these are the 'folk' varieties that Washington traded. These are  the seeds of our non-corporate future, the seeds of our revolution.

Looking back at the all the years of bountiful gardens we had and all the wonderful meals we had back when we lived on our little farm just outside Roberts Creek, BC makes me realize what a lucky and wonderful life we've had. Makes me realize that the process was as magical as the product. At times i've wondered if the magic was only in the eye of this sweat-stained beholder. Turns out it isn't, turns out there is a valid objective, measurable, scientific rationale at play not just our subjective feelings about the magic of my present garden's produce or that of gardens past. It's named the Brix scale after its German mathematician and engineer inventor, Adolf Brix, who figured out how to easily measure the nutrient and sugar contents of produce way back in Washington's time.

This is my second year working in the soil of my new hideout's garden a bit further north along BC's left coast in Black Point. This year there's open pollinated bush and pole beans, peas, corn, potatoes and herbs growing out there plus there's the long established raspberries, cherries and hazel nut trees that were already on the property thanks to the past owners. Luckily the 'Mother Nature' garden store in Powell River recently brought in many other open pollinated seed types from 'Aimers', a certified organic farm in Ontario. By next year everything in the garden will be open pollinated.

The single greatest service each of us can provide to our planet, our families and ourselves is to grow our own organic food from non-hybrid seeds. To save our own seed in turn, and in so doing be part of the future solution to the present day destruction being sown by GMO's, agri-business and the bio-technology giants.

Alberta and Ottawa's Dilbit Dummies are Desperate Because of Their Own Mis-Management

The Canadian governments in Alberta and Ottawa appear increasingly more desperate to find a way to transport their vile brew of Tar Sands crud and the toxic chemical diluents necessary to pump the crap through pipelines. Their latest gambit is a feasibility study for a pipeline carrying 500,000 gallons a day north to Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., on the Beaufort Sea.

One reason for their desperation is that they are feeling the noose tighten. It's become clear that BC isn't going to allow either of the proposed dilbit pipelines westward to go forward. To the south the KXL resistance on the ground and in the media is growing more and more effective and other fantasies to expand the existing capacity, like the Enbridge’s Tar Sands Frankenstein, are also meeting stiff opposition. Then there's the competition from the exploding Bakkan Shale...Going east is more promising, sorta. It sounds some of the many jurisdictions between Ft. McMurray and Halifax welcome the crud but many others, like the strong environmental movement in Quebec and Northern Ontario, have yet to be heard from. So the dilbit dummies are looking north.

As Bob Page, director of the Enbridge Centre for Corporate Sustainability at the University of Calgary says, "Moving viscous heavy crude oil requires a heated pipeline and the thermal shadow around that pipeline tends to melt the permafrost." he continued, "Getting around and sometimes under the powerful Mackenzie River — with its massive spring ice scour — would be another major hurdle." An email buddy also informed me that there's other near insurmountable problems like the huge cost of dredging the port in Tuktoyatuk that's surrounded by dangerous rocks. Also, it's more than 1o000 miles from the Bering Strait so during the winter months it would mean ice breakers leading the tankers past the North Slope oil fields of Alaska and it seems if tankers had been a viable option the Americans wouldn't have built the 1000 mile pipeline to Valdez. All of which shows just how desperate the dilbit promoters have become.

But why? Why when the Tar Sands are the world's largest single oil reserve, when the Canada and the rest of the world are going to need energy in the future when oil prices undoubtedly rise and technology will undoubtedly improve, are the dilbit dummies so desperate?

They're desperate because their decades ideologically driven economic strategy of balancing their books by over selling leases that were bought up by big oil only after the governments signed guarantees of rock bottom taxes and royalties is now bankrupting Alberta and will soon cripple Ottawa. Back a couple of decades ago when Peak Oil was peaking it looked to Alberta and Ottawa like things could only go up, like the time of endless growth was upon them, but Peak Oil was really about peak easy oil and as soon as the prices skyrocketed, presto, big oil found a whole buncha other less easy, more ugly alternatives.

Now, with the tar sands and others over supplying the American Midwest and other markets inaccessible the dilbit dummies are, as economist Robyn Allen says, "Subjecting the Canadian public [and others] to a misleading narrative because Alberta needs to shroud the facts behind their deficit by spinning a web of self-serving lies." Her report, 'Canada’s Pipeline Mania: An Economic and Financial Analysis' shows clearly that the combination of oversupply and the technological difficulty of refining the Tar Sands crud is why it sells for a low price.

All in all, the dilbit dummies are desperate now because of their own mis-management. The Albertans bragged for a generation about their surpluses that were in fact created by over selling development leases not sound financial planning. Instead of, like the tortoise would have advised, proceeding on a slow steady pace, of having the type of royalty and tax structure that other jurisdictions employed, policies that at least to some degree try to make the corporations and wealthy pay their fair share, the right-wing ideologues in Alberta and Ottawa cut taxes and sold leases, now, like the rabbit, they're desperate.

The Road to Disaster in Bangladesh Paved by 'Free Food' Donations and Land Grabbing Corporations

The sad aftermath of another deadly dsiaster in a condemned building in Bangladesh containing clothing factories 

On 24 April 2013, an eight-story building collapsed in Savar, a sub-district of Dhaka the capital of Bangladesh, killing hundreds and injuring thousands. Bangladeshi news media reported that inspectors had discovered cracks in the building the day before and had requested evacuation and closure. The shops and a bank on the lower floors immediately closed, but garment workers were told to return to work by their supervisors who declared the building to be safe. Some 2,000 people were in the Rana Plaza building when it collapsed suddenly on Wednesday morning.

This is just the latest in the sad series of such disasters in Bangladesh which has one of the largest garment industries in the world, providing cheap clothing for major Western retailers which benefit from its widespread low-cost labour which averages less than $1 per day. A company called New Wave, with two factories in the building, supplies firms from around Europe, the US and Canada, including the popular Loblaws owned Joe Fresh line.

Bangladesh is far from the only country where underpaid workers are subjected to unsafe and inhumane working conditions. It happens all across Asia and Africa everyday. Why, why do all these workers end up packed into urban in ghettos? Where do they come from? What forces them to work as modern day wage slaves?

The answers aren't what we in the west want to hear. The road from small bucolic peasant farms, that successfully supported countless generations of their ancestors, to the hell of urban ghettos seem to be, as the old saying goes, 'paved with good intentions'. These particular good intentions are named 'disaster relief' and 'food aid' by us, but they're often called food dumping at the receiving end.

In short, here's how it works: The 'free food' devastates the food markets of local farmers. The farmers either sell out to the banks or simply leave the land they didn't own in the first place for "jobs in the city". The 'free food' is usually surplus production that our governments buy up as a form of farm subsidy from large corporate farms. The land the farmer left is bought up by the same 'land grabbing' investors and corporations who received the subsidies for over-producing the the 'free food' that the government and aid agencies distributed. This land is then converted into other uses such as turning corn or sugarcane into ethanol, or turning palm oil into biodiesel. A few of the peasant farmers are hired back and paid a pittance, the rest move into the ghetto and beg for scraps while praying to get a wage slavery job so they can stop begging and buy the food s/he used to grow for him or herself.

A news program on Haiti recently explained how a local grain distributor went out of business because people were not buying her grain because they were getting free grain from the flood of food aid. A recent study by Christopher B. Barrett of Cornell University titled 'Food Aid’s Intended and Unintended Consequences' and others have concluded these economic problems are one of the main reasons why people in global crisis’s are opting for cash rather than direct food aid.

La Via Campesina is, as always, leading the way in demanding change. They were at the forefront of recent massive protests in India to stop land grabbing and defend agriculture. Another study pointed out that recent droughts in key grain-producing countries – such as the United States, Argentina and Australia – play a role as well. With dwindling yields, these richer nations buy up land in other places to secure their own food supply. Africa and Asia have accounted for 44 and 37 percent, respectively, of the total land grabbed since 2000. U.S. companies have grabbed about 777 million acres since 2000. The largest acquisition by a U.S. company was a highly publicized 1,482,632-acre purchase in Sudan by Texas-based Nile Trading and Development. The firm purchased the land for about $25,000US, and attained the rights to do whatever it pleased with it – natural resource extraction, mining, subleasing or farming.

This is capitalism in action. It is the power of capital over people and the freedom of globalized capital to move anywhere so as to ensure the biggest return on that capital be it through the road from naive good intentions, to land and water grabbing, to bio-fuel 'profits', to wage slavery or some other road to third world hell.

Canadians Aren't Buying the Propaganda From the Govt's New Environmental Monitoring Portal

Two days ago, Earth Day, the Governments of Alberta and Canada announced the opening of the Canada-Alberta Oil Sands Environmental Monitoring Information Portal. By now, 2 days later, the comments on a wide variety of non-partisan, non-industry sponsored Canadian websites shows that the vast majority [at least 10-1] of regular Canadians have had enough of the lies and manipulated 'facts' coming out of the Government's various 'ministries of propaganda'. They simply aren't buying the spin.

Most Canadians understand that the site is a gimmick to show the USA [and give cover to the big oil lobby] that the Congressional testimony of independent scientists like SFU Professor Mark Jaccard and many others including Bill McKibbon and Bold Nebraska is false. Canadians know that the Alberta and Canadian governments have no credibility, that they continue to silence their own scientists at every turn to support their ideology and they long ago proved their disregard for environmental concerns.

Canadian government scientists, paid by with taxpayer dollars, are muzzled, so the only two sources of reliable information about the Tar Sands must come from independent scientists and those, like the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation community, who've lived on the ground for thousands of years and who's health and economy depend on an intact ecology [watch the video of their elder's statement about the pollution]. The new govt. website says that, "at of the time of this data release, the time series of data is too limited to draw any conclusions[about the Athabasca FN's claims]" But the two governments were ordered years ago to begin gathering stats and doing base line studies of the Athabaska River's contamination. They stalled, then basically refused knowing full well that without those early numbers it would be impossible to generate accurate data on the changes later.

The broader science community is also condemning the lack of independent review at the govt portal and, while waiting to see if that changes, are usually referring inquiries to other long accepted independent studies. Environmental organizations say that the monitoring program is still far from completed, and have concerns about the independence of the research as well. "The tar sands monitoring system is still not independent. There is no indication of when, or even if, this will become a truly independent monitoring regime as recommended by the federal government’s scientific panel," said Edmonton-based Greenpeace climate campaigner Mike Hudema.

This purposeful avoidance of real scientific information isn't an accident, it's a matter of ideology. Stephen Harper, and many of his underlings, belong to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, an evangelical Protestant church. The Alliance Church teaches that environmental groups are "one of the greatest threats to society and the church today." His environmental worldview is informed by The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, one passage of which reads, "The Green Dragon must die... [There] is no excuse to become befuddled by the noxious Green odors and doctrines emanating from the foul beast...God is sovereign over creation and therefore humans can do no permanent damage..."

Knowing all this, it's no wonder most Canadians don't believe a word they say.

Canada's Cons, Libs, The Fraser Institute, BoM and Homeland Security All in Cahoots on UFO Sighting

Canadians lineup to spend their money in America

There's been 4 stories in the media these last few days that are being reported and commented on as individual issues but are really the same story framed differently. They are: yesterday's Fraser Institute Report on the rising percent of taxes being paid by Canadian families, the the BoM report on how cross-border shopping is at least a $20-billion drain on the Cdn. economy, then there's the dramatic decline in middle-class well-being caused by the Nafta and globalization agenda of both the federal Liberals and Conservatives and, last but not least, how the US Dept of Homeland Security wants to charge every Canadian crossing into Amerika a fee for the privilege.

The Fraser Institute, an infamous right-wing think-tank, yesterday released its findings that in the last three decades the percentage of overall taxation on middle-class and working-class families has risen from about 34% of their total expenses in the early 80s to about 45% today. The early 80s is when the Mulroney-ites, using their 40% of the vote majority govt [the same split as Harpo's is today] - passed the original Free Trade pact with the US. Surprise-surprise, the shedding of good paying jobs = higher taxes on those still employed.

Next a new report by the Bank of Montreal into cross-border shopping showing that it accounts for between 5 and 10 per cent of Canadian consumer spending for items that can be transported, meaning somewhere between $20 billion and $40billion per year. They say cross-border shopping is costing the Canadian economy much more than believed and that new rules, introduced in the March budget, raising duty-free limits will only make matters worse. Two years ago Harpo's gang doubled and tripled the long existing limits. Now on June 1st the duty-free limit on stays longer than 24 hours rise to $200 from $50, while the limit on stays longer than 48 hours rises to $800, from the current two-tiered levels of $400 and $750, depending on the length of stay.

There has never been more Canadians heading south than now and after June 1st that will only grow. Of course the businesses on the US side think Harpo's policies are great but what about the Canadians businesses? What about the jobs lost and the UIC and welfare costs to support those now unemployed? What about all the taxes both the cross border shoppers and the displaced workers aren't paying? Who pays instead? Obviously the folks the Fraser Institute's report talks about.

The first two lead into the 3rd, how the free trade and globalization agenda of both the Conservatives and Liberals in Ottawa are destroying Canada's economy. The story is well summed up by Murray Dobbin's article 'All Hail Justin, You Know, I Mean, Trudeau'. In it Dobbin says, "What accounts for this dramatic decline in the class of people who used to define the nation? In a word, globalization, and the public policies which stem from it and helped create it. Amongst those policies are free trade; lowered labour standards; passive acceptance of de-industrialization; the weakening of labour vis-à-vis capital through cuts to EI and welfare; the virtual abandonment of industrial policies to promote high paying jobs; the use of  "temporary" foreign workers; cuts to the "social wage" which includes post-secondary education; and the transfer of wealth to the uber-rich from the middle class." 

Dobbin concludes, "What [Justin] Trudeau seems unwilling to admit is that the slow demise of the middle class is the result of corporate globalization and to revive middle class fortunes means a direct challenge of all of globalization's elements." It's important to ask: Who benefits from globalization? The uber-rich for sure, but also the upper middle-class, the consumer class, who on whichever side of the border, have the dough to buy all the needless crap they want. Those a$$holes are the ones whose votes the Liberals and Conservatives are vying for. In the type of multi-party, first past the post system, Canada calls a democracy all the parties know that 40% wins a near dictatorial majority.

Finally, comes the one progressive-ish story in the bunch that, and like seeing a UFO - is hard to believe. It comes from the brain-trust at the US Dept. of Homeland Security who is wants to charge a new fee for every vehicle or pedestrian crossing the U.S.-Canada border. As Business Council of B.C. executive vice-president Jock Finlayson said, "A fee would likely reduce the scale of cross-border shopping to the benefit of the B.C. retail sector." A cross border fee of about $3 on every single one of the 350 million individual Canadian residents crossings per year, if adopted, would drain another $1billion directly from the Canadian economy. Combine that with the average 3 hours spent waiting in a lineup that Canadians spend on the weekends just to get into 'the land of the free' and it may well end up that the only buncha neo-cons doing Canada's workers and govt' coffers a favour is Homeland Security.

Did ya see the UFOs flyover last night?.