by Common Ground staff

At-large vs. wards plebiscite

The plebiscite is October 16, 8 am to 8 pm. Advance voting October 6 and 12, 8 am to 8 pm at Vancouver City Hall. Here is the exact ballot question: “Are you in favour of, or are you opposed to, abolishing the at-large system and electing members of city council by a ward system, with boundaries as set out on the map on this ballot?" www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/ctyclerk/decision2004/boundaries.htm
It’s your city. You pick. www.pickone.ca 604-873-7681

Parade of Lost Souls October 30

One of the most popular free events in Vancouver, the Parade of Lost Souls, is expected to attract thousands of people to the Commercial Drive area at the end of this month.
The 13th annual parade, being held Saturday, October 30, will honour the dead, wake the living, bring up our fears and celebrate life.
Enjoy a scary night of fun for families, spirits and spooks of all ages. This unearthly procession guides you through the streets and alleys of the Grandview Neighbourhood.
Amazing displays of community involvement take place as residents decorate their houses, play haunting Halloween music and even act out ghoulish plays for the many hundreds of passers-by. The parade is led by ghostly orchestras and culminates in a grand fire finale. Dress up and bring noisemakers.
The events start at Grandview Park at 6 pm, with the procession at 7, finale fireshow at 8:45 and fireworks at 9 pm.
Volunteers are still needed for shrine building, production and security. Contact Heidi at 604-862-4130 or the Public Dreams Society www.publicdreams.org 604-879-8611.

Greek sailor imprisoned for refusing to go to Iraq

On September 13, seaman apprentice Giorgos Monastiriotis, member of the crew of the battleship Navarino was court martialed and sentenced to 40 months imprisonment for his refusal to follow the ship to his mission in the Persian Gulf during the war on Iraq. This happened 16 months after his refusal.
This sentence comes in a period when there are no more doubts about the motives and the consequences of this war.
The dead bodies of Iraqi civilians, the tortures of US warders in Abu Ghraib prison, the unjustified attacks against Iraqi cities justify the refusal of Giorgos Monastiriotis to take part in the war. His attitude is also in accordance to the will of the people in Greece and all around the world who demonstrated against this war, 16 months ago. The Greek government and the military leadership share part of the responsibility for this war. After the war, the social democratic government received a “thanks” from the US. Nowadays, the new conservative government prepares to send Greek military forces to Iraq.
Until a few years ago it was requested from the soldiers to “obey orders without thinking.” Today it is required from them to “kill without thinking.” In such an army, attitudes such as the one of Monastiriotis do not fit and have to be punished. It seems that their vision for the country and its military is even worse than the reality of Israel where soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories are sentence to two to four weeks imprisonment.
The struggle for the liberation of Giorgos Monastiriotis concerns the antiwar movement and all people that took part in the demonstrations and actions against the war on Iraq.
For much more on this story, to read a personal statement from Giorgos Monastiriotis and to send an email to the prime minister of Greece, go to
www.duckdaotsu.org/092404-war-resister.html
www.leas.ca/index.htm

Europe takes lead in banning PBDEs

Already ahead in product ingredient labeling and precautionary evaluation of new chemicals, the European Union has taken the lead in dealing with the newest persistent organic pollutant - polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs.
A new EU regulation on two forms of PBDEs — known as penta- and octo-BDE, based on the number of bromines in the chemical structure — just came into effect August 15. A third common form deca-BDE, is under risk evaluation and could also be banned soon.
The EU is the first to put ban the chemicals that are being seen as “the new PCBs” because of their persistence in the environment and their tendency to bio-accumulate up the food chain. Maine and California will ban penta and octo-BDE in 2006, Hawaii in 2008 and Maine will extend its ban to deca-BDE in 2008.
Canada has no similar ban proposed but an Environment Canada screening assessment in May proposed that PBDEs be declared toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. If adopted, it would require adoption of a risk-management plan that could lead to a ban or phase-out over the next few years.
PBDEs, which are used as fire retardants in dozens of products from polyurethane foam to plastic computer and monitor casings, were in the news recently because a follow-up study on PCBs in farm salmon found that levels of PBDE were also higher in farm salmon.
But PBDEs first showed up as a red alert on toxicology radar screens in 1998 when Swedish researchers found that PBDE levels in women’s breast milk had risen dramatically since 1972 and in fact were doubling every five years.
Even more alarmingly, follow-up studies on this continent showed that levels in North America were far higher than in Europe and Japan — and Canadian levels were the second highest in the world, just barely behind the highest US levels.
The highest level recorded in a Canadian sample was 956 ng/g, just slightly less than the 1,000 ng/g recorded for a US sample.
A study on PBDEs in US mothers’ breast milk, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives last November, also showed that the level of PBDE in Canadian breast milk samples rose exponentially from 1992 to 2002, from 3 nanograms/gram (or parts per billion) to 22 ng/g — a increase of more than seven times. Health Canada scientist John Jake Ryan was among the five authors of the study.
The study concluded: “This survey clearly indicates that high levels of PBDEs are found in US women and can be transferred to the nursing infants. There are particular concerns especially about infant health because the fetus and the developing child are more sensitive than adults to the effects of chemical compounds, including PBDEs, in breast milk and diet.”
Despite the high levels in Canadian samples and the legislative action taken in other countries, Health Canada has not proposed any of its own measures. A Health Canada advisory acknowledges that PBDEs are showing up in Canadians’ blood and breast milk but adds: “There have not been any studies conclusively linking PBDE levels in humans to any health conditions. Effects on behavioural development, as well as on the liver and thyroid, have been observed in studies on experimental animals exposed to PBDE levels much higher than the human population is exposed to in Canada.”
Nobody knows for sure the level at which PBDE concentrations trigger serious health effect, but in PCBs, which are structurally similar to PBDEs, that level is 1,250 ng/g, according to Tom Muir, a PBDE researcher with Environment Canada.
“PBDE is a poster child chemical for something that ought to be zeroed out,” he told the Globe and Mail in June.
Testing done so far on PBDEs has shown them to be neurotoxins and endocrine disruptors that interfere with the thyroid gland. Experiments in mice, demonstrated the neurotoxic effects, showing permanent memory and behavioural problems that actually worsened with age.
Preliminary testing carried out by the National Toxicology Program several years ago showed that deca-BDE was carcinogenic to mice at high exposure levels.
Because PBDEs don’t bind to plastic and other materials that contain them, they easily leach out of the millions of pieces of furniture foam, computers, TVs and monitors that are landfilled every year. They enter groundwater and move into the aquatic and marine environment. They also show up in the dust that accumulates on computer monitors everywhere.

Israeli nuclear whistleblower Vanunu on Mideast nukes

The US government has been making demands regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Recently, State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher was asked about Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli whistleblower and his proposal that “there be a trade-off between the Iranian nuclear program and the ending of the Israeli one.” Boucher declined to comment on the proposal.
When asked about Israel’s nuclear capacity, Boucher said: “I’m not making judgments or presumptions about that. We’ve had a view on the universal adherence to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that we’ve expressed many times, that applies in all cases.” Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. US government officials have consistently avoided acknowledging Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
Vanunu exposed the Israeli nuclear arsenal in 1986. He was released in April 2004 after serving an 18-year sentence, most of it in solitary confinement. Vanunu said last month:
“The US goes to Iraq in the name of fighting against weapons of mass
destruction while it does not even acknowledge Israel’s capacity. The obvious thing to do is to ensure that all states in the region - including Israel and Iran - do not have nuclear weapons.”
“Israeli governments which have been behind building these nuclear weapons are betraying the Israeli citizens, the Arab community and all of humanity. Israel has been building nuclear weapons, they now have enough material for hundreds of atomic bombs. I was a technician at the Dimona plant; my main job was making lithium-6 for use in hydrogen bombs. There is no justification for Israel having hydrogen bombs.”
“In 1986 I was kidnapped by Israel in Rome after revealing its massive nuclear arsenal to the London Sunday Times. I was sentenced to 18 years because I revealed the truth to the world. I suffered 18 years of cruel, barbaric treatment under the Israeli authorities. I’m glad to have some freedom now, but I’m not allowed to speak to any foreigners or to go to any other country for one year. I would like to go to the US where there are more freedoms. I do not feel safe in Israel, I have been threatened, I’m called a traitor in the street. Especially because I have become a Christian, I do not have equal human rights. The Israeli government and media have built a very bad image of my case here.”
“With its nuclear weapons, Israel is much more aggressive, so it doesn’t move to a real peace with the Palestinians or Syria or Lebanon or Jordan. Its nuclear weapons are used as political power. Without even using them, the nuclear weapons help Israel do what it wants so it doesn’t respect international law. When he was defence minister, Sharon destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 so that no other country in the region would have nuclear weapons.” For a recent interview with Vanunu, see: www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/18/136217
For more on Israel’s nuclear arsenal, see: www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm
Vanunu has just been awarded a peace grant by Yoko Ono. www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--yokoono-peace0916sep15,0,2694081.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire

The bank that ran into RAN

If there is one reason why many people feel so hopeless about the state of the world, regardless of heroic initiatives and small successes, it is because we know that behind every clearcut forest, oil pipeline, and GM crop are the bankers, investors, fund managers and Wall Street analysts that finance it all.
And yet, there are positive outcomes. The Rainforest Action Group, which is based in San Francisco, has just won a four-year battle with Citigroup, the world’s largest financial institution, with 2003 earnings of $17.85 billion. RAN’s activists convinced Citigroup to stop financing the destruction of the world’s rainforests. www.ran.org

Thai PM does U-turn on GMO

The prize for the most spectacular U-turn of recent weeks goes to the Thai Prime Minister, who happily morphed from an enthusiastic passenger on the train to GMO-land, to denying any GM contamination of papayas from government GM trials, to admitting the contamination, and finally to recommending that Thai farmers embrace organic methods! The country’s flirtation with GM is reported to have already cost producers one billion baht (Cdn. $31 million) and the story isn’t over yet. www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4341

Catholics condemn GM conference

A Catholic group, the Australian-based Columban Centre for Peace, Ecology and Justice, protested the pro-GM bias of a Vatican conference last month in Rome. The Moral Imperative of Biotechnology was organized by The Pontifical Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the US embassy to the Holy See. The hungry and malnourished of the world are not helped by GM food solutions according to protestors. www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4334

GM crops will not end hunger

Swiss experts have warned that GM crops are not the only nor the best way to combat global hunger. A government advisory committee said not enough research had been carried out into the impact of gene technology. www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4318

Did Monsanto breach declaration?

New Zealand’s Green Party is demanding to know why Monsanto still hasn’t provided Food Standards Australia New Zealand with the adverse rat-feeding data on its GE corn MON 863, despite supposedly signing a declaration it would reveal all the facts relevant to its approval application. News of this study was broken by French newspaper Le Monde. www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=3308

GM maze move called despicable

A decision by the EU commission to allow European farmers to grow 17 varieties of GM maize has been condemned as illogical and despicable. www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4343

French want Brazil’s GM-free soy

The French province of Brittany, in the person of the vice governor, Pascale Loget, has signed a letter of intent with the state of Paraná for the purchase of non-GM soy from Brazil. Brittany annually imports 6 million tons of the product. www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4357

Kenya fights British biopirates

British academic bioprospectors have allegedly taken micro-organisms from lakes in the Rift Valley without permission, patented some of the genes and are getting rich from them. Now the Kenya Wildlife Service is suing for royalties from companies that have profited from some of the world’s smallest organisms. www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4333

Campaign for GM-free zones gathers force

The Assembly of European Regions (AER) and Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE) have launched a joint campaign to protect traditional crops and products from the consequences of the introduction of new genetic technologies. The AER and FoE will lobby for a European legal framework on the coexistence of traditional and transgenic crops, as well as for the legal recognition of GMO-free zones and regions in Europe.
The AER and FOE call for a binding EU coexistence regulation, following the example of the law that was recently adopted by the German Parliament, with a clear definition of: - biosafety measures such as separation distances between GM and non-GM crops and a public register for GMOs; - a liability scheme in the event that conventional and organic crops as well as their seeds are contaminated by GMOs, on the basis of the precautionary and polluter-pays principles; - the right of Member States and regional authorities to prohibit or restrict the use or sale of GMOs within the Common Market if there is evidence of an advanced risk of extensive dissemination or a negative impact on the environment; - legal provisions enabling the regions to define GMO-free zones or regions. www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4343

NZ: Bioethics Council report whitewashes Maori concerns

Maori researchers have nailed the real reason for much so-called public consultation on unpopular technologies like GM: that of managing perception.
The Human Genes In Other Organisms Report released by the Bioethics Council ‘‘reads more like an advertisement for the biotechnology industry and mad scientists’’ say the Maori researchers. The report, widely touted to canvas the cultural, ethical and spiritual concerns of New Zealanders, comes down heavily in favour of placing human genes and their replicas into other species. Especially of concern has been the lack of awareness of scientific research that questions the merit and safety of transgenic research.
Maori researcher Dr Paul Reynolds says that there has been consistent opposition by Maori to the developments of the technologies.
www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4329