Alternative News
Articles from non-mainstream as opposed to corporate for profit sources.
CANADIAN SPIES COLLECT DOMESTIC EMAILS IN SECRET SECURITY SWEEP
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- Published on Thursday, 26 February 2015 12:00
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Canada’s electronic surveillance agency is covertly monitoring vast amounts of Canadians’ emails as part of a sweeping domestic cybersecurity operation, according to top-secret documents.
The surveillance initiative, revealed Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept, is sifting through millions of emails sent to Canadian government agencies and departments, archiving details about them on a database for months or even years.
The data mining operation is carried out by the Communications Security Establishment, or CSE, Canada’s equivalent of the National Security Agency. Its existence is disclosed in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Read more: CANADIAN SPIES COLLECT DOMESTIC EMAILS IN SECRET SECURITY SWEEP
Drilling in the Arctic by Shell
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- Published on Thursday, 26 February 2015 07:22
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Ending the War on Women
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- Published on Wednesday, 25 February 2015 10:00
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February 24, 2015 by Nancy Northup
In poll after poll, year after year, a clear majority of Americans—7 in 10—say they support Roe v. Wade, the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established a woman’s right to abortion.
In spite of this broad support, today a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her health, her pregnancy, her family, and her future is under relentless attack across the United States. Opponents of reproductive freedom are passing sham laws designed to make it nearly impossible for a woman to safely and legally end a pregnancy. These restrictions are duplicitously trumpeted as protecting women’s health, despite the fact that abortion is one of medicine’s safest procedures.
It’s the biggest assault in the war on women in the four decades since Roe was decided.
Nestle Pays $2.25 TOTAL to Bottle and Sell A MILLION Litres of BC Water
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- Published on Wednesday, 25 February 2015 10:00
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I repeat: Nestle pays $2.25 to bottle and sell a million litres of BC water.
By Bill Tieleman, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca
"The marketers can compete with free; it just has to be better. Look at bottled water if you don't believe me." --Psychologist Jonathan Potter
Have you ever paid $2.25 for a bottle of water? Of course, and you can pay a lot more than that if you go to a Vancouver Canucks game, a concert, movie theatre or restaurant.
So what if you could pay $2.25 not for a 500-millilitre bottle, not for a big office cooler full, but for 1 million litres of water?
Sounds ridiculous given the retail price, but that's the unbelievably low rate the BC Liberal government has given to giant multinational firm Nestle and others to extract fresh, clean groundwater to bottle and sell for exorbitant profits.
The price is so outrageous I have to repeat it. Nestle Waters Canada pays the province just $2.25 for every million litres of water.
The total estimated price of all the water Nestle will bottle in B.C. over an entire year is -- wait for it -- $562 a year!
Read more: Nestle Pays $2.25 TOTAL to Bottle and Sell A MILLION Litres of BC Water
Worlds First Carbon-Positive Prefab Home Hits the Market
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- Published on Wednesday, 25 February 2015 10:00
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Green building has entered an exciting new realm. Archiblox, an Australian architecture firm, has unveiled the world’s first carbon-positive prefabricated home. The Archi+ Carbon Positive House, currently on display in Melbourne’s City Square, is so efficient it can put energy back on the grid.
Read more: Worlds First Carbon-Positive Prefab Home Hits the Market
Shocking news Save the bees
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- Published on Wednesday, 25 February 2015 03:44
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ITUC Newsletter 56: Count Us In, Right to strike.. Latest News from the ITUC
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- Published on Wednesday, 25 February 2015 01:44
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Read more: ITUC Newsletter 56: Count Us In, Right to strike.. Latest News from the ITUC
Breaking Out of the Invisible Prison
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- Published on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 19:44
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1085 .... February 25, 2015
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Breaking Out of the Invisible Prison:
The Ten-Point Global Paradigm Revolution
John McMurtry
As we enter 2015, the global corporate system deepens and spreads in its eco-genocidal effects. But the dots are not joined in their common cause across domains. Money-value coordinates like gross domestic product (GDP), commodity productivity and stock market indexes are still adopted as the measures of "economic performance" rather than life capital development which is systemically depredated.
More than any prior stage of history, we know not what we are doing at the macro level of life organization, nor why no uptick of American sales can remotely solve the problem of collapsing social and natural life support systems. Greece -- the world's emblem of the sacrifice of society to bank...
Tories defend TFSA tax break for the rich
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- Published on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 17:00
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Below is PP's contribution to TFSA reports from the Broadbent Institute and PBO. We also look at the damage of the TFSA expansion coupled with the income-splitting plan.
Feel free to share:
http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/conservatives-try-defend-tfsa-tax-breaks-rich
Cheers,Chris
Go With The Flow: The Water Issue
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- Published on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 17:00
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Weekly offerings, happenings, and know-how of Ashevillage and friends.
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Greetings,We live on Planet Water. How can we design our landscapes to treat water as a gift, not a curse? How can we design our systems to conserve and reuse water? Unsustainable water management leads to so-called natural disasters, such as flooding, large scale fires, desertification, and a declining ground water table. The use of water retention landscapes offers answers to managing water in a way that humans can live in deeper cooperation with nature. Age-old and innovative water conservation and retention methods are being implemented and practiced globally. The results are impressive beyond expectation…
>> Learn water retention landscape design this summer in Asheville, NC: June 2-6, 2015.
The water cycle and the life cycle are the same cycle. When we look at sustainability, the question really is about our ability to sustain the cycles of life. - Brock Dolman
Brock Dolman is passionate about designing resilient watersheds. As the Director of Occidental Arts & Ecology Center’s WATER Institute, he is a master designer, consultant, teacher, advocate, and an expert on water retention landscapes. Watch Brock's inspiring TEDx talk below to learn about the connections between water + global warming + permaculture solutions.[ACTIVlist] ACTIVlist Update - February 24, 2015
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- Published on Monday, 16 March 2015 13:46
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This daily ACTIVlist e-mail is a compilation of blog posts, media releases and action alerts from the Council of Canadians. For more information about our campaigns, how to get involved, and how to become a member, go to www.canadians.org. Please forward this e-mail and encourage others to join our list! Thank you for your interest and support.
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WIN! Regina city council calls for inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women
The Council of Canadians Regina chapter joined with community members, including Amnesty International Saskatchewan activists, at a Regina city council meeting last night.
Defending the right to vote with charter challenge of "Fair" Elections Act
Yesterday was a busy day in the fight to defend democracy.
TransCanada refuses to hold a public...
[coalalert] RAVEN COAL MINE ARTICLE
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- Published on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 08:00
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http://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/news/293733521.html
COMOX VALLEY RECORD: “ COAL APPLICATIONS COVER VAST AREA OF COMOX VALLEY"
Tribal rights lawyer condemns conservation's devastating impact on tribal peoples - News from Survival
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- Published on Monday, 16 March 2015 13:46
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Alberto Nisman's Death and AMIA: Who Cares About the Truth?
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- Published on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 00:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1084 .... February 24, 2015
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Alberto Nisman’s Death and AMIA:
Who Cares About the Truth?
Ezequiel Adamovsky
On 18 January the Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his apartment in Buenos Aires. A few days before he had returned from his vacations in Europe and presented a shocking and unexpected accusation. He claimed he had proof that President Cristina Kirchner and the Foreign Minister Hector Timerman were in the process of orchestrating a cover-up in the investigation of Iran over the 1994 bombing of AMIA (the main Jewish community center of Argentina) that left 85 dead. He presented his proof -- a lengthy 289-page report -- to a federal judge, who was not able to immediately reveal its content, as it mentioned Argentine intelligence agents by name. The...
Read more: Alberto Nisman's Death and AMIA: Who Cares About the Truth?
Environmental Wisdom: Keeping Indigenous Stories Alive
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- Published on Monday, 23 February 2015 17:00
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Barbara Fraser
2/22/15"Long ago, when animals weregente..."
Those words, uttered countless times by indigenous Amazonian storytellers, blur the boundary between humans and other creatures in the forests and rivers, revealing a different view of the way human and non-human worlds intertwine.
"You can't talk about conservation without talking about enchanted lakes," says Leonardo Tello Imaina, the director of Radio Ucamara in this river port town of Nauta in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon.
The son of a Kukama father and an Achuar mother, Tello was born on an island in the Marañón River that is gone now, washed away by the shifting waters. As a child, he listened to his father and others tell tales of thecochas encantadas—or enchanted lakes—where a greedy fisherman might vanish if he took too many fish. He also heard stories of places where someone who transgressed unwritten rules about hunting animals or gathering plants might be devoured by theburi buri, a two-faced monkey.
In villages along the Marañón River, many Kukama people still remember how their families were evicted from the huge wetland that became the Pacaya-Samiria Reserve. Sadness, resentment, and resignation tinge their words when they discuss it. Knowing that hunting and fishing are permitted in parts of the reserve does not compensate for the loss of their traditional lands.
Stories build respect for resources
It might have been different if conservationists had listened to the stories.
"Initiatives for protecting the environment are considered from a technical standpoint, which is what technical experts have studied. And it's fine that they've studied it, but they make a serious mistake by excluding traditional ways of respecting nature," Tello says.
Read more: Environmental Wisdom: Keeping Indigenous Stories Alive
REDD and Neocolonialism in the Land of the Pataxo Warriors
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- Published on Monday, 23 February 2015 15:00
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Sunday, 22 February 2015 12:41
By Renata Bessi and Santiago Navarro F., CIP Americas Program | ReportIt’s 5 o’clock in the morning, southern cone time, on Oct. 13, 2014. The Pataxo indigenous people of the far southern region of the state of Bahía, in the northeast of Brazil, form three barricades across the BR101 Highway in the region of Monte Pascoal, in the city of Itamaraju, one of the main roads connecting the northern and southern parts of the country.
They have blocked the highway that runs along the edge of their territory with branches, sticks, and old tires, stopping hundreds of trucks transporting merchandise from transnational corporations. It doesn’t take police long to arrive. The indigenous people are aware of the possibility of repression. Some have painted their bodies with a mixture of colors– yellow, red, black–colors that their grandfathers used to announce war. Others contrast in white, the sign of peace. Indelible colors on the skin of these people, survivors of an unjust war that has lasted for over five centuries.
The atmosphere grew tense as Federal Police came in, although this was no surprise to the Pataxo. They have been long been rejected by cattle farmers, businessmen and people living in cities close to Monte Pascoal–one of the richest areas in terms of flora and fauna in the world. The area conserves what’s left of the Mata Atlántica, a formation of neotropical vegetation present in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.
The day they closed down the freeway, many locals openly expressed their hostility. Walking through the streets, you could hear the pejorative comments such as, “These Indians are going to steal all of our land.”
“Since 2010, indigenous people have intensified the re-taking of their lands in a process of self-demarcation,” explains Domingos Andrade, of the Indigenous Missionary Center (CIMI), to the Americas Program. Until recently, indigenous groups possessed 8,627 hectares of land, authorized in the 1990s. But the biggest part of this territory is sand and is not suitable for agriculture.
“The National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI) just completed a study that ‘confirms’ that these lands are indigenous, but the government has not authorized it. It is a policy of the government not to demarcate indigenous territories because of pressure from agribusiness,” argues Andrade.
Read more: REDD and Neocolonialism in the Land of the Pataxo Warriors
10 Ways To Fight The Corporatocracy
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- Published on Monday, 23 February 2015 15:00
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STRATEGIZE! CORPORATISM, SOCIAL CHANGE By Bruce E. Levine, www.alternet.com
February 21st, 2015
Many Americans know that the United States is not a democracy but a “corporatocracy,” in which we are ruled by a partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite and corporate-collaborator government officials. However, the truth of such tyranny is not enough to set most of us free to take action. Too many of us have become pacified by corporatocracy-created institutions and culture.
Some activists insist that this political passivity problem is caused by Americans’ ignorance due to corporate media propaganda, and others claim that political passivity is caused by the inability to organize due to a lack of money. However, polls show that on the important issues of our day – from senseless wars, to Wall Street bailouts, to corporate tax-dodging, to health insurance rip-offs – the majority of Americans are not ignorant to the reality that they are being screwed. And American history is replete with organizational examples – from the Underground Railroad, to the Great Populist Revolt, to the Flint sit-down strike, to large wildcat strikes a generation ago – of successful rebels who had little money but lots of guts and solidarity.
The elite spend their lives stockpiling money and have the financial clout to bribe, divide and conquer the rest of us. The only way to overcome the power of money is with the power of courage and solidarity. When we regain our guts and solidarity, we can then more wisely select from – and implement – time-honored strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have long used to defeat the elite. So, how do we regain our guts and solidarity?
[ACTIVlist] ACTIVlist Update - February 23, 2015
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- Published on Monday, 16 March 2015 13:46
- Written by editor
This daily ACTIVlist e-mail is a compilation of blog posts, media releases and action alerts from the Council of Canadians. For more information about our campaigns, how to get involved, and how to become a member, go to www.canadians.org. Please forward this e-mail and encourage others to join our list! Thank you for your interest and support.
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Media Release:
Fair Elections Act Legal Case Could Call Into Question The Validity Of Upcoming Election /
La contestation de la Loi sur l’intégrité des élections pourrait remettre en question la validité des résultats des prochaines élections
Media
Advisory:
Harper's Europe-Canada Free Trade Agreement Faces Another Hurdle
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Read more: [ACTIVlist] ACTIVlist Update - February 23, 2015
#INMroots From Spirit Gatherings at Oak Flat to Migration Water Walks
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- Published on Monday, 23 February 2015 06:44
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Read more: #INMroots From Spirit Gatherings at Oak Flat to Migration Water Walks
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