Nestlé, again . . .

THESE MAMZERS JUST DON'T QUIT: according to Sum Of Us, Nestlé is pulling a million litres of water a day for bottling — out of an acquifer in Ontario where there are surrounding drought conditions. Nestlé can take the water, but you, who live there — can't.

Ironically, the head Pirate of these bandits is on record that "access to water should not be a public right." Looks like he wasn't kidding. Click on the link and sign the Sum Of Us petition.

do NOT mess with our national animal

Many countries have a national mascot - the U.S. has its bald eagle, the British have their bulldog, the Russians have their bear. Fierce creatures all, but none of them compare with the Canadian beaver.
Oh sure, they look cuddly and were once prized as the raw material for stylish hats, but do NOT mess with "nature's engineer"  because any critter that can chew thru a tree is not to be taken lightly.

Stevie's Tar Baby . . .

THE BEAVER LAKE CREE JUDGMENT: The Most Important Tar Sands Case You’ve Never Heard Of. That's what Carol Linnitt at DESMOG CANADA contends. Do click on the link for more.

Sure they’re bad for the environment, for human health, and for wildlife, but we rarely stop to wonder if the Alberta tar sands are in fact unconstitutional.

But the constitutional standing of the tar sands – one of the world’s largest and most carbon-intensive energy projects – is just what’s at stake in a treaty rights claim the Beaver Lake Cree Nation (BLCN) is bringing against the Governments of Alberta and Canada in a case that promises to be one of the most significant legal and constitutional challenges to the megaproject seen in Canada to date. 

It's been a slow, grudging process, but it's here, at last, in spite of everything the governments of Canada and Alberta have tried to do. Win or lose, may this be Stevie's Tar Baby.

— Song of the South, 1946 —

The art of truth . . .

THE CHRONICLE HERALD has a fine cartoonist in Bruce MacKinnon, who has fine advice for Duffy. Kudos to the man, made my day.

Pox perspective . . .

OUR WELTANSCHAUUNG: how much of it has been shaped because somebody creative had a dose? You know, the gift-that-keeps-on-giving, aka syphilis, aka "The French Disease"?  Creative types, like Schubert, Schumann, Baudelaire, Maupassant, Flaubert, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Wilde and Joyce and their crotch critters?

Sarah Dunant, at The Guardian, has a fascinating look at the historical effects of 'The Pox', with an article, "Syphilis, sex and fear: How the French disease conquered the world" that is worthy of your attention. You sure did not want to live before the discovery of antibiotics, syph is a nasty way to die.  As pay-back for Smallpox, this New World invader cut a hell of a swath through Europe, you just took years to die and enjoy the process.

Historians mining the archives of prisons, hospitals and asylums now estimate that a fifth of the population might have been infected at any one time. London hospitals during the 18th century treated barely a fraction of the poor, and on discharge sufferers were publicly whipped to ram home the moral lesson.

The Critter: Treponema pallidum
on cultures of cotton-tail rabbit epithelium cells

Again, until the discovery of antibiotics, there was no cure. What's old, is new again:

Much of the extraordinary detail we now have about syphilis is a result of the Aids crisis. Just when we thought antibiotics, the pill and more liberal attitudes had taken the danger and shame out of sexual behaviour, the arrival out of nowhere of an incurable, fatal, highly contagious sexual disease challenged medical science, triggered a public-health crisis and re-awoke a moral panic.

Not surprisingly, it also made the history of syphilis extremely relevant again. The timing was powerful in another way too, as by the 1980s history itself was refocusing; from the long march of the political and the powerful, to the more intimate cultural stories of everyman/woman.

Corporate psychopaths . . .

MONSANTO CAN BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH. So contends GMO, a site devoted to "Raising awareness about the risks of genetically modified food (GMOs)", with an article, "Monsanto’s Dirty Dozen". Monsanto has been dangerous for a long, long time, since 1901. The company moved into the food area with the production of Saccharin for Coca-Cola, but Monsanto produced all sorts of toxic stuff, like Polystyrene, PCB's, Dioxin, DDT, Agent Orange and the scourge of today's farmers, RoundUp, as well as Bovine Growth Hormone, Aspertame and other toxics.

— Beneficiaries of Agent Orange —

And Monsanto has company. According to GMO:

Monsanto’s not alone. Other companies in the “Big Six” include Pioneer Hi-Bred International (a subsidiary of DuPont), Syngenta AG, Dow Agrosciences (a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, BASF (which is primarily a chemical company that is rapidly expanding their biotechnology division, and Bayer Cropscience (a subsidiary of Bayer).

A veritable smörgåsbord of corporate psychopaths, the folks who brought us Thalidomide are probably in there somewhere.

In the pile of poison is Aspertame. It can be really dangerous. That's the opinion of DORWAY, a site with the dedicated mission to "Get the Truth About Aspartame. The Whole Truth." The page "About Aspartame" has many links to many scary things — you really ought to stop guzzling. Pilots are very concerned; the FAA doesn't like the danger, but cannot ban it, because the FDA says it's OK, according to the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network's article, "Aspartame & Flying".

Aspartame was discovered as a drug in the 60s (first approved in 1974 then rescinded because of the brain tumor issue — then approved again, over the objections of many scientists, in 1981) and is composed of two synthetic amino acids, Phenylalanine, Aspartic Acid and Methanol (10% wood alcohol). At temperatures exceeding 85 degrees F (body temperature is 98.6) the substance breaks down further into Formaldehyde, Formic Acid, and Diketopiperazine (a brain tumor agent). Aspartame complaints make up 80% of all complaints volunteered to the FDA. Aspartame is often the unidentified environmental trigger for: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Alzheimers, Lyme Disease, Post Polio Syndrome, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Epilepsy, Anxiety/Phobia Disorders, Manic Depression, Graves’ Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Heart Disease, Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome and others. Many Doctors have reported drastic improvement or disappearance of symptoms after removing Aspartame from the patients’ diet. On rechallenge, the symptoms tend to return. Symptoms reported to the FDA include: headache, nausea, vertigo, insomnia, numbness, blurred vision, blindness, memory loss, suicidal depression, personality and behavior changes, hyperactivity, gastrointestinal disorders, seizures, skin lesions, muscle cramping and joint pain, fatigue, heart attack symptoms, hearing loss and tinnitus, pulmonary and cerebral edemas, shock and death.

Does everything but cause ingrown toe-nails and halitosis. I avoid the stuff, not necessary for de-blubberization. Taken two years, but I've gone from a 44+" to a 32" waist, like I had when I was twenty. No Aspartame required, just no wheat, wheat-starch, corn and corn-starch.

You can join in the fight. Visit March Against Monsanto, for details. It's world-wide.

That $90,000 cheque . . .

WE SHOULD BE

This could cause more damage than all of the Stevie gaffes to date, because it won't play in the beer parlors aka "sports bars", where the politically unaware and ignorant hang out. These people are unsophisticated, and things like Global Warming and the Tar Sands pipelines confuse. BC should be a reminder; all of the "Progressive" Canuck poliblogs were pronouncing Christie Clark toast. So, what happened? Simple, the ignorant voted for what they could understand. People can understand greed when they look at Duffy.

 — Sen. Maximus Avaritius —

Sociopaths are people, too, and as long as you're not one of their targets, hail, fellow well met, just don't get in their way, by doing stupid things like asking for accountability. It costs to live well, socially. As we see from Nigel's largesse, these sociopaths can afford to be gracious when it suits them — or when they are sufficiently shamed by publicity, or are on the wrong end of a 12-gauge.

Yon Duffy has a porky aspect, to bash the Bard, that plays so obscenely well. To Duffy, the Senate was an All-You-Can-Eat buffet of expensed perks: the Porkarama of Patronage. T-t-that's all, folks.

More you, as needed . . .

'

HEAP BIG BREAKTHROUGH: According to George Dvorsky at io9, scientists have made human stem cells by Dolly-type cloning. Check out his article, "Scientists Use Cloning to Create Embryonic Stem Cells".

The Godsquad's gonna freak . . . but the 'Genie' is out of the bottle, er, test-tube. Essentially your unique DNA can be used to grow more you to fix things that need fixing with you. Now, we got medicine. It's early days, now, but the path to control of our genetic expression just got a lot more defined. Also, long-term, this is probably not good if you make or sell pills and such for a living.

Lumberjack Commandos . . .

THESE FINE MEN AND WOMEN deserve better civilian management than what they've suffered in recent years. Getting rid of Stevie should go a long way towards achieving that.

Penny-wise . . .

Got an appeal for money from the Oakville Ontario PC's this week, on behalf of the latest chooch to give it a try.

What was interesting about it was the stamps on the envelope, two "A" postage and a surprise, a 1937 3¢ Coronation stamp. I guess two "A"s and 3¢ are what Canada Post charges these days. I mailed a #10 five or six months ago, for around 60 cents or so, as I recall. Don't do postes postage much anymore.

As to the 1937 stamp, the stamp catalogs list its value as around $1.50 or so, mint. I am told that used but not cancelled, it is essentially worthless. That's an instructive look at how successful the Ontario PC's might be with our money.

Also, seems like Canada Post is saving money on ink for the cancelling machines these days.

Ya gotta love it . . .

Cartoons for the Week of April 21-27, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Universal Press Syndicate