Each year, 16,000 Ontarians die from tobacco use and roughly 3,000 die from exposure to second-hand smoke. Peter Goodhand, Chief Executive Officer, Ontario Division, Canadian Cancer Society, Toronto
New tests find poisons in children's blood, urine
Minister accepts challenge to have blood and urine tested for contaminationOn Thursday, the group released results showing that the bodies of seven children tested are contaminated by a cocktail of toxic chemicals ranging from PCBs to flame retardants. The study found an average of 23 known or suspected toxins -- including carcinogens, hormone disrupters and neurotoxins -- in the bodies of the children tested. The researchers tested 13 individuals from five families, six adults and seven children. The families live in Vancouver, Toronto, Sarnia, Montreal and Quispamsis, N.B. "Our children are being poisoned every day by toxic chemicals that surround them at home, school and play,'' said Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence.
Our dirty little secret
Capital's sole air monitor in Sandy Hill not enough to keep up with our car-driven toxic soup
Milking It: Moms find industrial chemicals in their breast milk an outrage -- and a call to action
The Walrus Magazine | Everyday Poisons
Are fire retardants actually a toxic hazard? by Paul WebsterToxins in N.S. counties prompt health warning
Toxic exposure
Martin Mittelstaedt's Toxic Shock series (May 27-June 1 Globe and Mail) on chemical safety strikes a long-neglected note. As he points out, the list of potentially harmful chemicals is so exhaustive there's really no one among us who has not been exposed to at least a few of them. Chances are, we've been exposed to a great many.
The chemical industry often plays down the risks by saying individual exposures are so minimal we should not be concerned. But they fail to take into account that low-dose exposures are often most harmful, and that exposures to chemicals simply do not occur in isolation. Thank you for staying on top of this critical public-health story.
Ontario goes smoke-free this June
The ban includes all indoor-smoking in public places such as restaurants, casinos, bars and bingo halls. But many are calling the government's move one filled with hypocrisy. "If politicians really cared about our health, they would ban the production of polluting vehicles with poor gas mileage. They could do so many things that would reflect a serious purpose, but banning tobacco — even from places where only smokers concentrate — is a little too farfetched," adds Nidhi Mehta, who is often seen taking a puff outside her Bay Street office in Downtown Toronto during break and lunch time.
Terrorists are supposedly creeping into the US from Canada. This is being proposed not only by wacko US congressmen but by our own homegrown self appointed experts.
Terror Land North: Canada Becomes America's New Next Threat
Alienation at home, criticism from abroad
WASHINGTON -- A U.S. congressman warned yesterday that Canada, and in particular the enclave of "South Toronto," was a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists and that the United States will be under threat as long as passports are not required of all Canadians crossing the border."South Toronto, like those parts of London that are host to the radical imams who influenced the 9/11 terrorists and the shoe bomber, has people who adhere to a militant understanding of Islam," said John Hostettler, chairman of the House of Representatives subcommittee on immigration and border security, noting that Toronto has a very large South Asian community.
Mr. Hostettler's views were backed by several witnesses to the committee, including David Harris, an Ottawa lawyer and senior fellow at the Canadian Coalition for Democracies who used to work for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. He was the only Canadian asked to appear before the committee.
Mr. Harris described Canada as being "heavily infiltrated by terrorists" as well as "a recruiting, planning, financing and launch point for international terrorism."
'Cause our Chief Harpocrite can't do anything without asking Daddy first.
Canadian government, media use alleged terrorist plot to push right-wing agenda
Oh and the charges have upset MacDonalds. Those nice folks who are advertizing dates for their staff on bus ads in the city. Pimping I think is the term.
AFL Posts List of Employers Using 12-14 year olds on WebsiteEDMONTON, June 7 /CNW/ - Nine months into new rules allowing restaurants
to hire 12 and 13 year olds it is clear they are failing to protect young
workers says the Alberta Federation of Labour today. The AFL released the list
of employers who have submitted the paperwork allowing them to employ
adolescents. The AFL also announced its intent to post the entire list on its
website (www.afl.org) and update it regularly. The AFL received copies of the
forms through a FOIP request.
Between July 1, 2005 and March 31, 2006, the first nine months of the new
rules for hiring children, only 160 forms were submitted to the government.
This is a fraction of the number of applications the government received
before the new rules. According to government figures, 552 permits to hire
kids under 14 were granted in 2004, and 359 permits in the first four months
of 2005.
There is another side to the economic numbers, however. Canada's productivity is rising because the cost of labour is slowing.
Hourly compensation rose by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter, half the increase in the fourth quarter of 2005, keeping a lid on unit labour costs.
Whenever you hear the word productivity that simply means techology and cheap labour producing more profit. The watchword of capitalism. For workers it means you are getting screwed and paid less for it.
"Productive labour is therefore labour which reproduces for the labourer only the previously determined value of his labour-power, but as an activity creating value increases the value of capital; in other words, which confronts the labourer himself with the values it has created in the form of capital."
Fresh off the plane, I stood in a region engulfed by housing development and communities flush with new-found wealth. I wasn't in Sierra Leone or South Africa, where diamond mines have given rise to phrases such as "blood diamonds" and have caused massive social upheaval. On a work-related visit, I was in Canada's portal to the vast and serene north and, with my untrained eye, all seemed normal. We've all fallen prey to the marketing coup of the last century by believing that "a diamond is forever." But the communities that mine these diamonds are not.Since the discovery of Canadian diamonds in 1991, the Ekati and Diavik diamond mines have begun production in the Northwest Territories. The Snap Lake plant is gearing up for production next year and, as of this year, the Jericho project in Nunavut will also be in production. But according to Statistics Canada, these mines will be operational for only the next eight to 20 years.Once these mines shut down, miners can rarely transfer their skills beyond the industry. Diamonds are forever; prosperity isn't
MP: Help workers moveOf course this guy forgets that there are over 2500 tradesmen currently unemployed in Alberta looking for work. Unemployed trades?
Alberta Tory says government should help relocate unemployedUnemployed Atlantic Canadians should be encouraged by Ottawa to go where their opportunities are — namely job-rich Alberta — a parliamentary committee heard Thursday.
The suggestion, that the Conservative government could use taxpayers’ dollars to relocate jobless people from the Atlantic region, was made in Ottawa by Brian Jean — a Tory MP from northern Alberta — at a session of a federal committee studying employability in Canada.
My message to you, on Clean Air Day, is that the Government of Canada is working towards a “Made-in-Canada” approach to deliver real change and real results for all Canadians, in our common campaign to clean up our air and to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
Hon. Rona Ambrose (Minister of the Environment, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the truth of the matter is that thanks to the Liberal government being in power for 13 years the Bush government has done more on the environment than this country has for the last decad. The Americans are outperforming us on pollution control. They are outperforming us on emission reductions. This government is going to ensure that we outperform not just the Americans but all of our counterparts.How about we start comparing the Made In Cuba plan with the lack of plan that the Tories have. Because Cuba is way ahead of Canada, and the U.S.
Castro's new soldiers
Richard Gott
03 May 2006 04:59
At a petrol station outside the Cuban town of Cienfuegos, half a dozen teenage girls stand languidly by the pumps, jumping to attention when a car or lorry pulls up. They work the pumps efficiently, take payment and enter the transaction on to a large official form. They are dressed neatly in T-shirts and jeans and a slogan across their backs proclaims their identity as trabajadores sociales, or social workers. They are Fidel Castro’s latest army of guerrillas, deployed in the struggle against corruption, the scourge to which state-run economies have always been peculiarly vulnerable. They are also the vanguard of the generation upon whom the future of the Cuban revolution will depend.
On earlier visits to Cuba I have observed the petrol problem. Driving through the countryside you could always find a willing accomplice to direct you to a tank in someone’s back garden, where petrol would be sold at an advantageous price, or simply off-ration. It had been siphoned off the state’s supplies. The practice seemed harmless enough. Yet it had begun to create a large hole in the economy. Castro complained that “as much petrol was being stolen as sold’’, and last year his government stepped in with a novel solution. About 10 000 young activists, more than half of them women, have taken control of the country’s pumps, while the usual attendants have been sent home on full pay.
The social workers’ jobs do not stop at the petrol stations. They also go from house to house to hand out low-energy light bulbs, to check that everyone has the new electric pressure cookers provided by China and to prompt the exchange of old, gas-guzzling fridges from the 1950s for something more energy efficient. Others will move on to examine financial practices in bakeries and the construction industry. About 30 000 of these revolutionaries, aged between 16 and 22, have been deployed across the country. Identified some years ago as a potentially counter revolutionary class, they are helping to keep alive the revolution’s mystique.
And don't forget all the Canadian investment in Cuba. Like Sherritt Gordon.
Rogers Sportsnet holds the rights for the World Cup, but will share game broadcasts and the studio show with bitter rival TSN. More amazing, the biggest game of all — the final on July 9 — will be on CTV, parent network of the aforementioned bitter rival.For the game schedules click here. And it will be HD digital for really clear in your face viewing.
Why you should care about World Cup
NAMING THE BEAUTIFUL GAME It's Called Soccer
cheer for while I await Canada's day at the Cup.Ukraine
Prediction — This is one of the tournaments true sleepers. They could have a potential meeting with France, a country with which their footballing talents are often compared to. And with their defense and finishing up front, it could mean au revoir Les Bleus.
Praise the Lord the Christian Bible believers were right. We didn't come from apes.
"Any one structure, even any one group of structures is not conclusive evidence of life in itself," she said. "The way I approached this was to look at a very large number of structures over a region and as I walked along the outcrops I began to notice that rather than just one type of structure there were actually several different distinct types and realized that they were distributed in patterns so that actually they look very similar to reefs. But they're obviously not coral reefs. They're reefs entirely built by microorganisms."
Remember they claimed they got Saddam and the Bathist leadership in the same kind of hit back in the early days of the war.How They Got Zarqawi
The terrorist responsible for some of the most gruesome killings in Iraq was killed in a joint U.S.-Iraqi military operation Wednesday, after the U.S. and its allies had finally located him. A well-placed intelligence source in Jordan told TIME that the CIA was tipped off after Jordanian intelligence learned of a meeting that Zarqawi planned to hold in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad. His safe house was targeted in an air attack, and, says the same source, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed in the bombing.
And the US success at using CIA drones to kill Osama bin Laden well I rest my case.Al-Dura Farm, Baghdad
The war opened on March 20 with an attempted attack on Saddam Hussein. This strike was the beginning of a pattern that would be repeated many times. The U.S. military targeted a facility in the mistaken belief that the Iraqi leadership was there; instead of “decapitating” the regime, this strike resulted in fifteen civilian casualties because of faulty intelligence.
A human intelligence source provided the CIA with information on Saddam Hussein’s alleged location at a farm in al-Dura, a district of southeastern Baghdad.59 Two F-117A Nighthawk aircraft dropped four EGBU-27 2,000-pound penetrator bombs at 3:15 a.m. on a reported bunker at the farm. Moments later, the rest of the farm was hit with up to forty cruise missiles (Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, or TLAMs) in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.60 The U.S. military later acknowledged there was no bunker at the farm, and Saddam Hussein broadcast a television interview days later.61 The attack resulted in one civilian killed and fourteen wounded, including nine women and a child.62
NAZANIN FATEHI: The Kurdish woman awaits execution in an Iranian prison for killing the man who tried to rape her NAZANIN AFSHIN-JAM: The Canadian model is leading a growing international campaign to spare the jailed woman's life
Here is the original report from the European Council released only Yesterday!
US Disappointed at New Report Criticizing CIA TacticsJune 06, 2006The United States Wednesday expressed disappointment over a new report saying that secret U.S. transfers and detention of terrorist suspects in Europe violated international law. The State Department said intelligence cooperation among the United States and European allies saves lives.
The report commissioned by the Council of Europe is the latest in a series of critical assessments in the past year of cooperation between the CIA and European counterparts in the transfer and detention of terrorist suspects.
PACE committee: US has woven clandestine ‘spider’s web’ of detentions and transfers, with collusion of Council of Europe member statesStrasbourg, 07.06.2006 – The United States has progressively woven a clandestine “spider’s web” of disappearances, secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers – spun with the collaboration or tolerance of Council of Europe member states, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) said today.
In a draft resolution adopted at a meeting in Paris, based on a report by Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE), the committee said hundreds of persons had become entrapped in this web – in some cases when they were merely suspected of sympathising with a presumed terrorist organisation.
The parliamentarians said this knowing collusion of member states took several different forms, including secretly detaining a person on European territory, capturing a person and handing them over to the US or permitting unlawful “renditions” through their airspace or across their territory.
“It has now been demonstrated incontestably, by numerous well-documented and convergent facts, that secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving European countries have taken place, such as to require in-depth inquiries and urgent responses by the executive and legislative branches of all the countries concerned,” the committee said.
The committee called on Council of Europe member states to review bilateral agreements signed with the United States, particularly those on the status of US forces stationed in Europe, to ensure they conformed fully to international human rights norms.
The report is due for debate by the plenary Assembly – which brings together 630 parliamentarians from the 46 Council of Europe member states – in Strasbourg on 27 June 2006.
Draft resolution and recommendation
Video of the press conference
Appointing Hayden Makes Perfect Spook Sense
Early last year, the National Security Archive “posted the CIA’s secret documentary history of the U.S government’s relationship with General Reinhard Gehlen, the German army’s intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. At the end of the war, Gehlen established a close relationship with the U.S.,” writes Tamara Feinstein. “The documentation unearthed by the [Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group] reveals extensive relationships between former Nazi war criminals and American intelligence organizations, including the CIA. For example, current records show that at least five associates of the notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann worked for the CIA, 23 other Nazis were approached by the CIA for recruitment, and at least 100 officers within the Gehlen organization were former SD or Gestapo officers.” General Reinhard Gehlen was a big time war criminal, responsible for organizing the Iron Guard in Romania, the Latvian Vanagis, and the Croatian Ustashe, groups responsible for brutal atrocities against the “untermenschen” of Eastern Europe (not only Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and communists, but anybody who opposed Nazi rule).
Of course, that the CIA embraced Nazi murderers (including the notorious Claus Barbie) should come as no surprise. “Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy,” William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, noted in 1937. “They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.” William Randolph Hearst, Sr., the Mellon-Davis-Duke Alcoa monopoly, the Du Pont corporation, ITT, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, the anti-Semite Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, and of course the Bush crime family and no shortage of Wall Street bankers and financiers all supported and bankrolled the Nazis. Remember, the CIA’s first covert op was conducted in the name of the United Fruit Company and it has worked diligently in the service of corporations ever since.
This made headlines again this week with the realease of newly declassified CIA documents.
Why Israel's capture of Eichmann caused panic at the CIA
Guardian Unlimited, UK -15 hours ago
Newly declassified CIA documents show the Americans and the German BND knew Eichmann was hiding in Argentina at least two years before Israeli agents snatched ...
CIA used former Nazis as spies, did not act on war criminalsHindustan Times
CIA ignored tip to arrest Eichmann to preserve Cold War stabilityTelegraph.co.uk
Files show CIA didn't pass tip on EichmannInternational Herald Tribune
Efforts by CIA Fail in Somalia, Officials Charge
New York Times, United States -12 hours ago
... The officials said the CIA effort, run from the agency's station in Nairobi, Kenya, had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past year to ...
CIA role in Somalia may have backfiredDenver Post
Somalia militia flaunts controlChicago Tribune
