Harper government budget bill triggers national campaign in defence of nature and democracy @ Vancouver Sun
Devon Page is executive director of Ecojustice.
Peter Robinson is CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation.
Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate drops by 36.9 per cent
Better access to contraception, higher quality sex education and shifting social norms have contributed to a 36.9 per cent decline in Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate between 1996 and 2006, according to a report released today by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada.
America’s emphasis on abstinence-only sex ed “tends to result in a higher percentage of teens becoming pregnant,” as does the country’s lack of universal health care. Poverty is another factor.
Among the four countries compared for 2006, Canada boasted the lowest teen birth and abortion rate per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 (27.9), followed by Sweden (31.4), England/Wales (60.3), and the United States (61.2).
(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)
“
For the general population, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movement, it’s been pretty harsh — and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less — the .1% — it’s just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?
Take, for example, Citigroup. For decades, Citigroup has been one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations, repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer, starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through the corruption, but it’s pretty astonishing.
In 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure for investors called “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances.” It urged investors to put money into a “plutonomy index.” The brochure says, “The World is dividing into two blocs — the Plutonomy and the rest.”
Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that’s where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don’t really care about them. We don’t really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function. These days they’re sometimes called the “precariat” — people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it’s not the periphery anymore. It’s becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.
” — Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, A Rebellious World or a New Dark Age? | TomDispatch (via nickturse)(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)
Radioactive bluefin tuna from Japan found in U.S. waters -
For the first time, scientists have discovered that tuna contaminated by last year’s radiation leak from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have crossed the Pacific Ocean into U.S. waters,according to the Associated Press. Scientists have been started to discover the radioactive fish some 6,000 miles from their place of origin, the first time that large, migrating fish have been shown to carry contaminants over such a great distance.
Normally, radiation and other contaminants are found in smaller fish and plankton, and only in waters close to the source of contamination. However, levels of radioactive cesium have been found at ten times the normal levels in fish off of the coast of California. The current levels, say officials, are still below the levels considered unsafe by the U.S. and Japanese governments.
In March of 2011, a massive earthquake and devastating tsunami struck northeastern Japan, killing thousands and reducing entire towns to mud and rubble. The Fukushima nuclear plant was caught unprepared for the disaster, and subsequently multiple reactors at the plant melted down, spewing radioactive materials into the air and water and triggering mass evacuations.
Welp.
(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)
Easy enough — he’s created an error-filled list of “ineligible voters”, which targets thousands of Democratic and Hispanic voters.
Voter suppression is real. Educate yourself.
He will do this. We have been fighting against this for a while now. Florida voters are having their democratic rights stolen.
(via itsratherimportant)
Talking Pineapples and Texas Education
Back in 2005, ALEC’s Education Task Force started pushing a concept called “virtual schools.” Unlike distance learning, where a homebound kid with a laptop can log into a real classroom from his very own hospital bed, virtual schools—also called cyberschools—exist solely online. What Facebook did to the yearbook, private virtual schools are doing to the actual school—taking the entire public school experience online.
Nationwide, more than 200,000 kids K-12 are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, and more than 2 million “attend” at least one online course. The online learning industry is expected to bring in $24.4 billion by 2015. Apparently the same kid who can’t remember to clear his juice glass is a huge business opportunity.
Virtual schools are great at making money, but they can’t seem to educate kids. Everywhere they’ve been tried—Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas most notably—they’ve failed to meet minimum standards and done worse than the real-world public schools that most kids—mine included—attend, according to a report put out recently by Progress Texas called “Invisible Schools, Invisible Success: How ALEC Promotes Virtual School Profits Over State Standards & Student Success.”
In Texas, where virtual school enrollment has grown from 254 students in 2009 to 8,136 in 2011, we’ve added insult to imbecility by throwing tax dollars at the false promise of fake schools. If there’s something in Texas state government that Rick Perry hasn’t privatized, it’s just because Governor Oops hasn’t thought of it yet. And now they are taking money out of public schools to fund private virtual schools.
When you look at ALEC’s Education Task Force, you begin to understand how this virtual corner of the public school system got privatized so quickly. Co-chairing the task force were executives for K12 Inc. and Connection Academy, two virtual school companies. Also on the task force was state Sen. Florence Shapiro, the Republican chair of the Senate Education Committee. When you have virtual school company executives writing legislation with key lawmakers, one of the efficiencies you create is eliminating the need for lobbyists.
In the 2011 session, Shapiro carried the big education bill that gutted public school funding by $5.4 billion—the first cut in school funding since the Great Depression. Shapiro’s bill also contained a requirement that virtual schools get the same amount of tax dollars per student that brick & crumbling mortar schools get, despite the fact that we didn’t have enough money to teach the kids who went to real public schools, much less fake private ones.
The Globe and Mail has a piece on the Koch Brother’s stakes in the Alberta oil sands. Read it all here.
Excerpt:» The company is one of Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters, with more than 130 crude oil customers.
» It is among the largest U.S. refiners of oil sands crude, responsible for about 25 percent of imports.
» It is one of the largest holders of mineral leases in Alberta, where most of Canada’s tar sands deposits are located.
» It has its name attached to hundreds of well sites across Alberta tracked by Canadian regulators.
» It owns pipelines in Minnesota and Wisconsin that import western Canadian crude to U.S. refineries and also distribute finished products to customers.
» It owns and operates a 675,000 barrel oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, a major tar sands export hub.
»And this year it kicked off a 10,000 barrel-a-day mining project in Alberta that could be the seed of a much larger project.
Legal Defense Fund for the Tinley Park Five -
Saturday May 19, 2012 Five antifascists were arrested in Tinley Park, a Chicago Suburb, for allegedly assaulting a number of white-supremacist organizers. Help us raise funds for their support and costly legal defense. One of the alleged “victims” was arrested on warrants for child pornography and another was arrested for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. Bond has been set at nearly $1 Million dollars for the alleged attackers. Legal funds are needed in order to secure adequate legal representation and ensure that their families are taken care of until they are released.
Stormfront , a known White Supremacist organization, has lifted photos of the five and have placed them on their forum. I’m not asking you to send much, just whatever you can afford. If anything, please pass this on so the message gets spread.
Signal Boost.
“Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don’t know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress.” — Paramahansa Yogananda (via humanformat)
(Source: hookahsmoke, via humanformat)
NATO: Some Police Refused to Arrest Nonviolent Protesters -
”In a surprising turn of events, reports have emerged that numerous Chicago Police officers openly refused to arrest non-violent protesters – some officers even refusing to show up for work.”
“It’s just not right, ya know? I mean… uh… a lot of people think that every guy with a badge and a gun has a thing for lockin’ people up. But that really ain’t the case most of the time… I became an officer to help people, ya know? I didn’t sign up to throw kids in jail for taking pictures on their phones.. and I certainly didn’t sign up to.. uh… arrest war veterans exercising their right to protest… I mean, this is still America right?”
(via sarahlee310)
