Jilin Chemical Catastrophe

The chemical plant explosion in Jilin that has loosed an 80km slick of carcinogenic benzyne into the Songhua river will soon reach the Amur river in Russia and result in the vast contamination of the rivers waters.
Russians are preparing for the emergency situation and to cut off the supply of drinking water as soon as the slick reaches them.


Only well water is potable at this stage and this seems to be largely accessible to corporate interests (McCains french fries need to keep the chinese KFC consumers happy) while the populations of tens of millions are scrambling to aquire adequate supplies of bottled water.




What I desperately want to know is this:



What's being done to clean up this spill and how has it already affected the ecosystem of the Amur and its tributaries???



Have any readers found any mention of the consequences of this spill (other than that of drinking water)?

Starved, tortured prisoners found in Iraqi cell

While the US is busy admitting to yesterday's news , today we hear of detainees who've had their skin peeled off.

The deputy interior minister was more explicit, saying he was stunned by the prisoners' treatment.


"I've never seen such a situation like this during the past two years in Baghdad; this is the worst," Hussein Kamal told CNN.


"I saw signs of physical abuse by brutal beating, one or two detainees were paralysed and some had their skin peeled off various parts of their bodies."

Depleted Uranium use = Nuclear War

A must read interview...



with Leuren Moret (a geoscientist whose credentials are listed at the top of the interview).





Here are just a few excerpts:

In April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020.

ICONOCLAST: What can soldiers expect when they come home?



MORET: If they were in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, they’re coming home with rectal cancer from sitting on ammunition boxes. The young women are reporting terrible problems with endometriosis. That’s the lining of the uterus malfunctioning, and they just bleed and bleed and bleed. Some of them have uterine cancer — 18 and 19 and 20 year olds.

ICONOCLAST: Does exposure to depleted uranium effect their psychological background when they come home?



MORET: Depleted uranium are these particles that form at very high temperatures. They are uranium oxides that are insoluble. They are at least 100 times smaller than a white blood cell, so when the soldiers breathe, they inhale them. The particles go through the nose, go through the olfactory and into the brain, and it messes up their cognitive abilities, thought processes.
It damages their mood-control mechanism in the brain. Four soldiers at Fort Bragg came back from Afghanistan, and within two months, those four had murdered their wives.

I could keep quoting, but it's really worth reading the entire interview.


Another bunch of information that the general public (including me!) would prefer to believe is not part of our present reality.



Sad news for the Planet.







Thanks to Blondsense where I picked this up.






Also posted at Pourquoi Pas.

Remembrance Day...for everyone...

Remembrance day will be upon us tomorrow and there is so much strife in our present day that I think many of us will find little time to give a moment's consideration to all those individuals who have fought for the rights of their people.


It is not only our organized military men and women serving in war-time (past & present) who deserve remembrance.


Many people around the world have made personal sacrifices and Ken Saro-Wiwa's story is but one of countless stories from around the world of the ultimate sacrifice being paid by non-violent protesters fighting against corporate and governmental sidelining of the interests of the people:



Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa (October 10, 1941 - November 10, 1995) was a Nigerian author, television producer and environmental activist.

The Ogoni people of the Niger Delta are still as confident, proud and strong as Ken Saro-Wiwa left them 10 years ago but they have little to smile about on the anniversary of his tragic death.


Their youths roam idly about their peaceful oil-rich land with no hope of employment, and their schools and hospitals are but a shambles.


~ full article

In 1990, Saro-Wiwa founded MOSOP, to advocate for the rights of the Ogoni people. The Ogoni Bill of Rights, written by MOSOP, set out the movement's demands, including increased autonomy for the Ogoni people, a fair share of the proceeds of oil extraction, and remediation of environmental damage to Ogoni lands. In 1992, Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned for several months, without trial, by the Nigerian military government.


In January 1993, MOSOP organised peaceful marches of around 300,000 Ogoni people - more than half of the Ogoni population - through four Ogoni centres, drawing international attention to his people's plight. The same year, Shell ceased operations in the Ogoni region.


Saro-Wiwa was arrested again and detained by Nigerian authorities in June 1993, but was released after a month. In May 1994, he was arrested and accused of incitement to murder following the deaths of four Ogoni elders, believed to be sympathetic to the military. Saro-Wiwa denied the charges, but was imprisoned for over a year before being found guilty and sentenced to death by a specially convened tribunal. The trial was widely criticised by human rights organisations.


~Ken Saro-Wiwa

US used chemical weapons in Fallujah

This is the sort of behaviour that would justify outrage so otherwise misplaced and vainly held aloft as though a golden calf.


This is the sort of behaviour that people will be called to answer for.

This is unforgivable behaviour that has no valid excuse.


This is making enemies in the world.

Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon.

Generosity of Spirit

A 12-year-old Palestinian boy shot in the head and chest this week by Israeli soldiers died of his wounds on Saturday, Palestinian officials said. His father said his family had decided to donate the boy's organs to Israeli children who needed them.

"We want to send a message of peace to Israeli society, to the Defense Ministry and the Israeli parliament," he said. Israeli forces "killed my son who was healthy and we want to give his organs to those who need them."

Americans & Canadians: please help TODAY

I'm sharing an email alert I received today (along with many others) and I'm asking humbly for your help:

Hello.


Sorry to bother you but times are desperate for the Refuge and if we can all send the information below to anyone we know in the U.S., plus other Canadians so they can send it to their contacts in the U.S. too, we could really help.


Also, please take the time to send a new letter through www.beingcaribou.com asking the PM to stand up to his strong statements to "pull out all the stops to ensure the integrity of the calving grounds".


The time may have come for him to figure out what those stops will be, and start pulling. Thanks for your help. We still believe that together we can stop this from happening, and that it's only over when the last person who cares, gives up. So please don't give up. We need your help.


Sincerely, Being Caribou Arctic Drilling Proposal on Senate Floor Drilling in the Arctic Refuge will be under debate today on the floor of the US Senate (Wednesday, November 2) while the Senate is debating the overall Budget Reconciliation bill. It is possible Arctic champion Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) will again offer an amendment to remove the Arctic drilling provision from the budget reconciliation bill. Debate is expected to go all day Wednesday and most of the day Thursday. Drilling in America’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has no place in the federal budget reconciliation bill.


This proposal has nothing to do with lowering gas prices. According the Government’s own Department of Energy, drilling in the Refuge will lower gas prices by only a penny per gallon 20 years from now. This proposal has nothing to do with reducing our dependence on foreign oil. The Department of Energy estimates that even when the Arctic Refuge is at peak production, our country will still be importing 66% - a whopping two thirds of all of our oil.


Drilling in America’s Arctic Refuge has nothing to do with the budget – it is a backdoor effort to ram an unpopular proposal through the Senate, sidestepping the usual process of open debate. The American people have made it clear that they want the Arctic Refuge protected. There are some places that are too special to ruin with oil drilling, and America’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of them. WE NEED AMERICANS TO CALL THEIR SENATOR NOW!!


Please take a moment and call your Senator – tell them to please protect America’s Arctic Refuge and vote against the budget reconciliation bill.


Every Senator is important, but it is critical that the following swing Senators hear from all U.S. residents:
Snowe (R-ME) • Collins (R-ME) • McCain (R-AZ) • Smith (R-OR) • Coleman (R-MN) • Dewine (R-OH) • Chafee (R-RI) Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121


To send an email, click here


If this bill passes the Senate, we will still have a chance to stop it in the House, and indications are looking better all the time that the House will not accept a budget with Arctic in it. But if we can stop it in the Senate, we don't have to worry about the House - please call your Senator today!


If you're not already a member, join the movement to protect Alaska's wild places. Visit www.alaskawild.org <http://www.alaskawild.org/> and click on the bear!


erica heuer publicist,
being caribou
p. 867.393.4440
seven cassino street whitehorse, yt

Lost & Forgotten?

The CIA's counting on it:

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

Now the countries who are aggin it will have to force the outing of the countries who are fir it so they can take their lumps.

The reports all say eastern Europe but I'm suspicious of democracy inviting itself to stay in places like Kyrgystan where the public's never even heard of the place, let alone what they might be doing there.

Cheney pushing to legalise torture

emphasis is mine.

Vice President Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans.

The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret detention centers abroad. In violation of the Geneva Conventions, it has refused to register those detainees with the International Red Cross or to allow visits by its inspectors.


Its prisoners have "disappeared," like the victims of some dictatorships. The Justice Department and the White House are known to have approved harsh interrogation techniques for some of these people, including "waterboarding," or simulated drowning; mock execution; and the deliberate withholding of pain medication.


CIA personnel have been implicated in the deaths during interrogation of at least four Afghan and Iraqi detainees. Official investigations have indicated that some aberrant practices by Army personnel in Iraq originated with the CIA. Yet no CIA personnel have been held accountable for this record, and there has never been a public report on the agency's performance.

How can the American public continue to blindly go on with their daily lives as their silence indicates a complicity and agreement with their governments policies of abuse and repression?

The world can't wait any longer!

Just another wacky conspiracy, you say?

Powerful Government Accounting Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings

Let's see how the administration deals with their own pesky General Accounting Office now.

Spread the news on this one - people need to know.

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the General Accounting Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.

I'm asking for your help...

... to preserve the some of the fruitful waters in the North Atlantic.

The Canadian government needs to know that while fishermen are out catching our dinner, we 'consumers' (gawd I hate using that word!) do care about, and want to ensure that the region's ecosystem is saved from destruction.









Sign the WWF petition to help save a region in our nation that is dangerously close to complete ecological collapse: The Grand Banks, off the shores of Newfoundland.

In this region, tonnes of marine life is being caught unintentionally, and dumped overboard dead or dying every year because of appalling fishing practices.

Among this "bycatch" are scores of endangered leatherback turtles, dolphins, porpoises, and ancient cold-water corals. As a result, the Grand Banks’ entire ecosystem is at risk.

Rosa Parks still has something to teach us

Rosa Parks individual action resulted in everyday freedoms being afforded to many. We take those freedoms for granted today, but the most important lesson she can teach us is that individuals CAN make a difference.


Civil disobedience is necessary behaviour when the representative government in a democratic nation no longer represents the citizens, nor acts democratically.

"People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true.
I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day.
I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was 42.
No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
Rosa Parks 1913 - 2005

Impeaching George Bush would be neither disobediant, nor illegal. All it takes is determined action through the systems laid out for just such a situation wherein the President of the United States is not fit to serve the office.


Now is such a time. It is long overdue and while citizens of the US allow him to remain in power, the world suffers.


Impeach GWB.


The picture and quote come via MickeyZ

The World Can't Wait!

Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Mobilize for November 2, 2005!


Your government, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. Your government is openly torturing people, and justifying it. Your government puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night.


Your government is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule.


Your government suppresses the science that doesnÕt fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price.


Your government is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion.


Your government enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.


People look at all this and think of Hitler — and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance.


Millions and millions are deeply disturbed and outraged by this. They recognize the need for a vehicle to express this outrage, yet they cannot find it; politics as usual cannot meet the enormity of the challenge, and people sense this.


There is not going to be some magical "pendulum swing." People who steal elections and believe they're on a "mission from God" will not go without a fight.


There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into "leaders" who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.

Brazilian deforestation 60% worse than we thought

Scientists from Brazil and the US say new research suggests deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has been underestimated by at least 60%

Mules in Pakistan providing relief to quake survivors

Nine days after the killer quake struck Kashmir and parts of northern Pakistan, the army mobilised its animal transport units (ATUs), or what's left of them, to reach inaccessible areas - sometimes without any human assistance.

I'm never happy to see creatures other than humans drafted to military service, but the current work of these so called 'beasts' of burden is most valuable and unique.

I hope they fare well.

Footage shows US troops burning bodies of 2 Taliban

The footage showed flames licking two charred corpses, their legs and arms outstretched, and a group of five US soldiers standing watching from a rocky ledge.


Footage showed two US soldiers reading two messages from a notebook that they said had earlier been broadcast.


"Attention Taliban you are cowardly dogs," read the first soldier, identified as psychological operations specialist Sergeant Jim Baker.


"You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burnt. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."


The other unidentified soldier read a second message, part of which said: "You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are."

Is anyone suprised? I certainly am not. I'm quite certain that this is just one example of the sort of activity that psyop officers are specifically instructed to carry out.

The occupation is little more than an excercise in stripping away the dignity of citizens while the corporations strip away the resources of their countries.

18th of October....

On this date, NASA took this lovely picture:

These people were born:





















Chuck Berry




Pierre Elliott Trudeau




Lee Harvey Oswald




Wynton Marsalis








And I met a very special cat:

Couple killed after being branded witches

In Calcutta (I'm supposed to say 'Kolkata' now - can't make the switch - sorry!):

A tribal couple has been hacked to death in West Bengal by villagers who suspected them to be "witches" responsible for a wave of malarial fever in the area.

So while we talk of human rights and advancing equality in the world - some people are so woefully uneducated that they are acting like 17th century colonial puritans - their compatriots who live in the big city are busy taking your call about your car insurance.

Talk about a disparity.

Reports reaching here on Friday said 55-year-old Soli Oraon and his wife Mungri were branded witches by inhabitants of Darjeeling's Mill Bagan tea estate and killed Wednesday night.

They were held responsible for malaria and other diseases affecting slum dwellers in the locality.

On Wednesday night, some villagers dragged the elderly couple to a nearby jungle and killed them.

The couple had reportedly been living in the area for a long time and had been practicing witchcraft.

Witch hunting is common in many tribal dominated areas of West Bengal. In many cases, women are branded witches and killed by relatives for their property.

Another article on the same topic here (CNN), or an older report here (Indian source called Frontline).

Celebration in the midst of disaster

In spite of the terrible toll that the recent earthquake in Kashmir, Pakistan & Afghanistan continues to take on all those in the region; the rich culture of India is unabated.

This week was Kali Durga Pooja for millions - a celebration of the Goddess Kali.

She is the Destroyer of Demons, allowing the natural balance of the world to be resumed.

Canadians right to privacy is being eroded

Paul Martin's government will be putting forward 'The Lawful Access Bill' next month. The bill will legislate that telecommunications companies be required build in the technology to enable wire taps in any future equipment upgrades .

Paul asks us to beleive him when he says:

"When the government brings forth this kind of legislation obviously the
question of civil rights is first and foremost in our minds and they will be
protected"

Meanwhile, our federal privacy commissioner has cold feet:

"We remain sceptical about the need for these potentially intrusive and
far-reaching measures."

Now I realise there are a lot a good number of distinctions remaining that differentiate us in Canada from our neighbours to the south; but gawd damn - I don't think most Canadians want a fear based administration as they have south of the all important 49th parallel; and I sure as hell don't need my rights diminished and diluted because the government can't afford the manpower to keep up with technological advances without doing so.

Apparently some police officers think that a good way to defray the costs of this legislation would be to tack another quarter onto our phone bills.

They want us to bend over and then pay them for it??

Really - get in touch with your local MP and express your outrage at this proposed legislation.

If you don't already know who your MP is, find them using your postal code here.

Tell them you don't want your tax dollars wasted on this legistlation that will do nothing to prevent criminal activity, and everything to ensure that Canadians right to privacy is undermined.