by Common Ground staff

Practising Democracy wins two Jessie Awards

Practising Democracy was honoured by the Vancouver professional theatre community with two awards in the small theatre category at the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards on June 14.

The first was for significant artistic achievement for demonstrating the power of theatre in the community. The second was for outstanding production, a breakthrough moment. For a Forum Theatre play created and performed by people living with chronic poverty to be recognized this way by the professional community is very important for community-based art.

The Vancouver city manager has announced that responses to policy suggestions from Practising Democracy will be released some time in July.

Stun guns to target crowds

According to British magazine New Scientist, weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.

At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances. But human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use.

The advent of wireless stun weapons has horrified human rights groups. Robin Coupland of the Red Cross says they risk becoming a new instrument of torture. And Brian Wood of Amnesty International says the long-range stun guns could “inflict pain and other suffering on innocent bystanders.” www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99996014

Creating a viable future for all species

Most environmental projects today seek to prevent and/or limit the destruction of species and nature generally. However, to create a truly viable future, both for humanity and all the other species we share the planet with, we also need to heal the damage which has already been done. The restoration of degraded ecosystems has to become a priority activity for all of humanity in this century.

Drawing on his 15 years of practical experience in helping to restore Scotland’s Caledonian Forest, Alan Watson Featherstone founded Restore the Earth, a UN-sponsored project to promote the ecological restoration of the planet’s ecosystems. Speaking in Vancouver on July 24, Alan will show what can be achieved when people work with nature, rather than against her. He will also highlight the folly of destroying ancient forests as is still happening in BC today and will present an inspiring and empowering vision of a new human culture which has as its goal the restoration of the Earth.

During the 1970s Alan worked and travelled extensively in the USA, Canada and South America, seeing first-hand the destruction of the rainforests, the devastating impact of poverty in developing countries and the effects of pollution. He developed a strong sense of the need to change the impact humanity is having on the rest of the planet. In 1978 this led him to join the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland, which first became known in the 1960s for developing a new relationship between humanity and nature, based on cooperation instead of exploitation.

A man not easily daunted, Alan founded Trees For Life (TFL), a charitable restoration project in the Highlands of Scotland, in 1981. His goal was to restore the Caledonian Forest, which once covered much of the Highlands of Scotland, but by 1981, had shrunk to less than 1 percent of the original forest. In eastern Canada a similar 1 percent is all that is left of the red and white pine forests; in Lebanon just 2 percent of the famous cedars remain; in Brazil the Atlantic Forest has been reduced to 7 percent of its original 1 million square kilometres; and in New Zealand the forests of kauri trees which formerly covered 12 million hectares are down to a mere 4,000 hectares or 0.03 percent. If present trends continue, the forests of New Guinea, Chile, central Africa and Siberia will suffer a similar fate.

Since its inception, TFL staff and volunteers have planted almost half a million native species of trees, most notably, the Scot’s pine. In 1991 they were recognized for their restoration work with the UK Conservation Project of the Year Award, and in 2000 they were awarded the Millennium Mark Award for environmental excellence for the 21st century. The following year Alan was awarded the prestigious Schumacher Award in recognition of his inspirational and practical work in conserving and restoring degraded ecosystems.

The work of Trees For Life is helping to pioneer the techniques of ecological restoration, the newly developing science of rehabilitating degraded and damaged ecosystems or, in simpler terms, the healing of the Earth. Restoration work is under way in a wide variety of ecosystems, ranging from Costa Rica’s dry tropical forests and the tallgrass prairies of the midwestern USA to the subtropical rainforests of New South Wales in Australia. From those diverse and wide-ranging situations, some common basic principles are emerging. Ecological restoration is based on the premise that nature knows best, and restoration is in fact a natural process which takes place normally in the absence of interference from humans.

Believing that ecological restoration has to become an international priority, Alan initiated Restore the Earth. Endorsed by the United Nations, the project’s goal is to promote the ecological restoration of the planet’s degraded ecosystems as the essential overriding and uniting task for the peoples and nations of the world in the 21st century.

To learn more about ecological restoration and to meet one very special individual who has dedicated his life to restoring the Earth, attend his talk and slide show on July 24. This presentation is a joint fundraiser for Trees For Life and The Land Conservancy of BC. Founded in 1997, TLC is a non-profit, charitable land trust working throughout BC. TLC protects important habitat for plants, animals and natural communities as well as properties with historical, cultural, scientific, scenic or compatible recreational value. Vancouver talk 604 733-2313 www.conservancy.bc.ca

Europe refuses GM canola as crop

Resistance to GM continues to grow worldwide with all 25 countries of the EU refusing last month to approve as a crop a transgenic Monsanto oilseed rape (canola), while in the US there is growing resentment at how companies that are anti-labeling have robbed people of the right to know what they’re eating. The EU result was closely watched by the US government, which has started a trade dispute over GMOs at the World Trade Organization.

One unfortunate consequence is that the industry is increasingly targeting Africa as its new frontier, with unprecedented assistance from the US government. Both are relentlessly pressurizing reluctant governments under the guise of helping the continent increase its food productivity. Hunger and malnutrition in Africa and Asia are not caused by a lack of agricultural technology, but by a widespread lack of access to land and productive resources.

African newspapers report that an initiative was launched on June 16 to increase productivity among Africa’s small-scale farmers. The African Agricultural Technological Foundation (AATF) plans to spearhead “transfer of agricultural technology” as a way of addressing Africa’s food insecurity. But don’t be in any doubt as to what this initiative on Africa’s perennial food insecurity is really about. The rice industry website oryza.com explained the purpose of AATF bluntly, “The goal of the AATF will be to work with governments, companies, non-governmental organizations, and research centres to negotiate the sales rights of genetically modified crops and bring new agricultural technologies to the African market.”

Needless to say, as well as getting money from the Rockefeller Foundation AATF gets money from USAID. It also receives support from major agbiotech corporations, including Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Agro Sciences and Syngenta. www.gmwatch.org

USDA creates fellowships after nations refuse GM foods

After several African nations refused shipments of US GM maize (corn), the US Department of Agriculture announced a new fellowship, designed to bring junior and mid-ranking scientists and policymakers from African, Asian and Latin American countries to the US to learn from their US counterparts.
But there is “absolutely no connection” between the countries’ stance toward GM foods and the fellowship program, Jocelyn Brown, the USDA’s assistant deputy administrator of international cooperation and development, told The Scientist.

Non-GM food available for Angola

The coordinator of the National Centre for Phytogenetics Resources (CNRF), Elizabeth Matus, affirmed that the World Food Program can acquire natural products from Southern African Development Community countries instead of GM foods.

According to Mrs Matus, last year, the World Food Program acquired maize from Zimbabwe and South Africa for countries that refuse GM foods and it can also do so for Angola, instead of bringing food from the US. This contradicts earlier claims by the WFP that countries MUST accept GM food.

www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3823

South African churches ask for moratorium

The South African Council of Churches has issued a powerful statement calling for the government to admit that GM is a high-risk technology and to impose a moratorium on further permits being granted for GMOs in South Africa. The statement affirms “Our conviction that there is sufficient food for all our people, but the problem remains inequitable access to and maldistribution of food.”

www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3797

FAO accused of pushing GM

Through an open letter delivered on June 16 in Rome, hundreds of organizations from across the world denounced the recent report by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization as a disgraceful public relations tool for the GM industry.

The FAO report on agricultural biotechnology and meeting the needs of the poor, was presented on May 17. In the space of a few weeks more than 650 civil society organizations and 800 individuals from 120 countries drafted and supported an open letter, which strongly condemns its bias against the poor, against the environment and against food production in general. Among them are many peasant organizations, social movements and scientists.

The open letter says the 200-plus-page FAO document struggles to appear neutral, but is highly biased and ignores available evidence of the adverse ecological, economic and health impacts of GM crops.

www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3824

Mendocino’s GMO vote sparks industry action

The Organic Consumers Association reports the biotech lobby will soon introduce a bill in California to nullify Mendocino County’s ban on growing GMOs and make it illegal for other California counties to pass similar laws.

Allan Noe, vice president of Crop Life International, a group affiliated with Monsanto and corporate agribusiness, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We’re looking at a number of things to remedy the situation.... a court challenge to Mendocino’s ban, an attempt to pass state legislation to prevent counties passing such bans or persuade the federal government, which regulates biotech products, to halt local bans.”

The Organic Consumers Association has launched a campaign called the Biodemocracy Alliance to defeat this legislation and spread GE-free zones across at least a dozen of California’s 59 counties as well as counties all over the United States.

www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3799

Patrick Moore debates anti-GM protestors

At the recent biotech bash in San Francisco, a debate erupted between corporate flak Patrick Moore, British author Luke Anderson and Food First’s Dr Raj Patel. According to the New Zealand Herald, Moore claimed nature did not make the world good enough, so we need to genetically modify it to make it better.

Anderson said biotech firms had solutions, but only to problems which they created. “Of the list of chemicals known by the state of California to produce cancer, Bayer produces most of them,” he said. “Bayer also produces cancer drugs. Then they turn round and say, ‘We don’t know why you’re protesting.’”

Dr Patel said manufacturers put trans-fatty acids into food to prolong its shelf life, and [promote] heavily advertised foods that were full of fat and sugar. Then they wanted to put new genes into crops and animals to reduce the human obesity and diabetes that their owns foods produced.

“The corporations that brought the system to its knees then come in and get the profits,” he said.

www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3796

Moore hypes problem GM insulin

It’s interesting that in his argument with Bio 2004 protesters, Patrick Moore used “genetically engineered insulin” as the one example of the supposed new medicines that are having us all “living longer than ever.”

To quote Stephen Leahy, a writer specializing in technology and the environment, “20 years later and how many breakthrough products has biotech produced? Gene therapy may actually have harmed more people than it’s helped. Genetically engineered (GE) crops haven’t aided hard-pressed farmers, improved the quality of our food or fed the hungry. The few drugs derived from GE such as insulin simply replace existing products while creating new risks. In fact, there is evidence that in Britain alone thousands of diabetics have suffered a deterioration in their health from GM insulin.

www.btinternet.com/~clairejr/Insulin/insul_1.html
www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3796

Backlash curbs GM investment

An article in the New Zealand Herald says investment in GM food is drying up in the world’s biggest GM market, the US, because consumers in the rest of the world are not willing to buy its products.

Roger Wyse of San Francisco-based Burrill and Company, the biggest investment firm focused on life sciences, said the consumer backlash against GMOs has forced a lull in projects aimed at modifying food. “We are probably looking at three, four or five years before the GMO issue subsides sufficiently that we will feel comfortable investing in it,” he said.
www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3799