October, 14 2010, 03:46pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Earthroots' Campaigner Josh Garfinkel at 416-599-0152 ext. 15
Council of Canadians' Regional Organizer Mark Calzavara at 416-319-6524
STORM Coalition's Outreach Campaigner Debbie Gordon
Protecting OUR WATER Through Action and Implementation
People from across Ontario brought their concerns - and their local drinking water - to a rally at Queen's Park today to tell Premier Dalton McGuinty that they want their water protected from polluting industry, unsustainable business-as-usual development, and from the newly proposed 'Open for Business' and 'Water Opportunities' Acts that will make matters even worse.
WASHINGTON
People from across Ontario brought their concerns - and their local drinking water - to a rally at Queen's Park today to tell Premier Dalton McGuinty that they want their water protected from polluting industry, unsustainable business-as-usual development, and from the newly proposed 'Open for Business' and 'Water Opportunities' Acts that will make matters even worse. Despite highly praised, recent pieces of legislation like the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Plan and the Lake Simcoe Protection Plan, examples of the Ministry of the Environment not enforcing their own policies are abundant. The underlying message from the organizers of the rally is that a Provincial Water Strategy is sorely needed.
Long blue banners fluttered overhead as speakers gave accounts of government indifference and loopholes in current regulations that allowed bad projects to proceed to the point where full scale community organizing was the only way to stop them.
"The reality is that land use legislation for the Oak Ridges Moraine can't protect this critical landform without a new provincial approach to protecting our common water resources", explains Debbe Crandall, technical advisor to STORM (Save the Oak Ridges Moraine) Coalition. "Because of gaps and loopholes in moraine protection, we are fighting against a proliferation of roads, pipes and utilities, as well as trying to stop precious moraine water servicing new greenfield development off the moraine. How this is possible with all these new anti-sprawl statutes is beyond me - this is not what anyone thought 'protection' would mean."
Josh Garfinkel, senior campaigner for Earthroots, puts the issue in a provincial perspective. "A government that truly wants our water protected would look at the big picture, which means quantifying how much water is available, and how much is being lost to sprawl, climate change and pollution. There is an urgent need for a Provincial Water Strategy with teeth and the leadership necessary to enforce it."
"There is a global water crisis happening right now and Ontario is already feeling the impacts", said Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians. "We need real protection for our water more than ever, but Premier McGuinty is taking us down the wrong path. His 'Open for Business Act' strips away our ability to fight for our water in favour of boosting the profits of polluting industries, and his 'Water Opportunities Act' subsidizes the private water industry to clean up pollution that should not have happened in the first place. Allowing more pollution and then selling technology that will try to remove it is wrong. Blind faith in unregulated market mechanisms is what got us into this mess in the first place"
Protestors brought jars of their own drinking water from across the province and one by one they presented them to Queen's Park, urging the province to create a Provincial Water Strategy capable of carrying Ontario safely through this century's growing water crisis.
Founded in 1985, the Council of Canadians is Canada's leading social action organization, mobilizing a network of 60 chapters across the country.
Office: (613) 233-4487, ext. 249LATEST NEWS
World Bank, IMF Must Prioritize Wealth Tax and Canceling Debt to Tackle Global Inequality
While global institutions claim to want to tackle inequality, said one campaigner, "ordinary people struggle more and more every day to make up for cuts to the public funding of healthcare, education, and transportation."
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With world leaders convening in Washington, D.C. this week for the annual Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, global anti-poverty campaigners said Monday that delegates from the world's largest economies must prioritize taxing the superrich and taking other steps to alleviate rampant inequality in the Global South.
Oxfam International revealed that based on the World Bank's analysis of worldwide inequality and poverty, 64 out of 106 low- and middle-income countries that receive grants and loans from the bank and the IMF have high or increasing rates of income inequality.
Sixty percent of countries that are eligible for grants or low-interest loans from the International Development Association (IDA) have ratings above 0.4 on the Gini coefficient scale—a warning level developed by the United Nations. The scale rates more equal countries closer to 0 and countries with high income and wealth disparities closer to 1, with rating above 0.4 signifying high levels of income inequality.
Kate Donald, head of Oxfam International's Washington, D.C. office, noted that the news comes less than a year after more than 200 worldwide economists successfully pressured the World Bank to set a new goal of reducing the number of countries with high inequality rates.
The agreement was "a landmark move," said Donald. "But if the bank is serious about tackling inequality, the first test will be making it a headline priority for its lending to the world's poorest countries, being discussed now at the Spring Meetings."
According to Oxfam's analysis, half of IDA-eligible countries are overindebted and need roughly 45% of their debt to the banks canceled in order to address surging inequality in their own communities.
The global financial institutions must prove at the Spring Meetings that "tackling inequality is a priority," said Donald.
"Ordinary people struggle more and more every day to make up for cuts to the public funding of healthcare, education, and transportation," she said. "This high stakes hypocrisy has to end."
At Inter Press Service, Jaime Atienza, equitable financing director at the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, pointed to the example of Zambia, one of 37 countries identified by Oxfam as facing rising levels of inequality.
While still struggling, Atienza wrote, through the G20 Common Framework on Debt, Zambia "secured serious debt relief and restructuring with both government and private creditors, which will help enable vital and urgent investments in health, education, and social protection."
"For too long, Zambia's plans for ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, and for realizing crucial development needs, have been held back by constraints in investment caused by the debt crisis," wrote Atienza. "The debt relief and restructuring that has been agreed at last gives the country a fighting chance. All those who have facilitated this agreement have saved and transformed lives."
In dozens of countries in the Global South, said Oxfam, "ballooning debt and interest repayments are diverting scarce resources from crucial areas like public education and healthcare and social safety nets."
Both Atienza and Oxfam said delegates from G20 countries, the world's largest economies, must center at the Spring Meetings Brazil's call for a global plan to require wealthy people to pay their fair share in taxes.
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Two decades after they were tortured by U.S. military contractors at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, three Iraqi victims are finally getting their day in court Monday as a federal court in Virginia takes up a case they brought during the George W. Bush administration.
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"This lawsuit is a critical step towards justice for these three men who will finally have their day in court."
Plaintiffs Suhail Al Shimari, Asa'ad Zuba'e, and Salah Al-Ejaili accuse CACI of conspiring to commit war crimes including torture at Abu Ghraib, where the men suffered broken bones, electric shocks, sexual abuse, extreme temperatures, and death threats at the hands of their U.S. interrogators.
"This lawsuit is a critical step towards justice for these three men who will finally have their day in court. But they are the lucky few," Sarah Sanbar, an Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch, wrote on Monday. "For the hundreds of other survivors still suffering from past abuses, their chances of justice remain slim."
"The U.S. government should do the right thing: Take responsibility for their abuses, offer an apology, and open an avenue to redress that has been denied them for too many years," Sanbar added.
U.S. military investigators found that employees of CACI and Titan Corporation (now L3 Technologies) tortured Iraqi prisoners and encouraged U.S. troops to do likewise. Dozens of Abu Ghraib detainees died in U.S. custody, some of them as a result of being tortured to death. Abu Ghraib prisoners endured torture ranging from rape and being attacked with dogs to being forced to eat pork and renounce Islam.
A May 2004 report by Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba concluded that the majority of Abu Ghraib prisoners—the Red Cross said 70-90%— were innocent. In addition to thousands of men and boys, some women and girls were also jailed there as bargaining chips meant to induce wanted insurgents to surrender. Some of them said they were raped or sexually abused by their American captors; lesser-known Abu Ghraib photos show women being forced to expose their private parts. Some female detainees were reportedly murdered by their own relatives in so-called "honor killings" after their release.
Eleven low-ranking U.S. soldiers were convicted and jailed for their roles in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the prison's commanding officer, was demoted. No other high-ranking military officer faced accountability for the abuse. Senior Bush administration officials—who had authorized many of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used at prisons including Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay—lied about their knowledge of the torture. None of them were ever held accountable.
Bush's successor, former President Barack Obama, promised to investigate—and if warranted, to prosecute—the Bush-era officials responsible for the torture that had become synonymous with the War on Terror. Instead, the Obama administration protected them from prosecution.
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After a few weeks of "soft launch" mode, journalist Mehdi Hasan on Monday officially debuted his new media platform, Zeteo, and declared that "this is not a one-man band."
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They are Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman, comedian and podcaster W. Kamau Bell, Palestinian Canadian lawyer Diana Buttu, former CNBC and CNN correspondent John Harwood, foreign policy analyst Rula Jebreal, author Naomi Klein, novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, actor and activist Cynthia Nixon, and Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
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Hasan—who has also produced content for Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and The Intercept—has saidZeteo will feature "hard-hitting interviews and unsparing analysis" in a variety of forms, from op-eds and podcasts to streaming shows, beginning with "Mehdi Unfiltered."
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