Canada endorsing Monsanto 'suicide seeds'

"Canada is about to launch a devastating kick in the stomach to the world's most vulnerable farmers - the 1.4 billion people who depend on farm saved seed," said ETC Group Executive Director Pat Mooney speaking from Ottawa. "The Canadian government is doing the dirty work for the multinational gene giants and the US government. Even Monsanto wasn't prepared to be this upfront and nasty."

Public outrage greeted "suicide seeds" when they were introduced in 1988. Monsanto, the company which developed the technology, was forced to back down when activists and scientists around the world warned of possible wild crop sterilisation through contamination.

We're concerned that this is an attempt by at least one person within at least one department of the Canadian government to use Canada's political leverage within a relatively unknown scientific and technical committee in order to open the door to Terminator technology's release into the wild.

Fairness and Financial Stability

While Canadians are proud of the critically important international role their central bank governor will play in his role as chair of the Financial Stability Board, they are generally less aware of the organization’s limitations, constraints, and legitimacy issues. In the process of taking the bold action necessary to address the volatility of global finance, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney should take this opportunity to infuse the governance of this important international financial institution with a Canadian brand of respect for values of inclusiveness and fair play.

The G20 created the Financial Stability Board to replace its precursor, the Financial Stability Forum, at its London meeting in April 2009. This move increased the representative reach of the organization in a manner that mimicked the expansion of the G7 to the G20.

But while the legitimacy as well as the efficacy of the G20 are often questioned and suggestions are made for both its expansion (G31) and contraction (G2), due to its much more technical mandate, we hear too few parallel concerns regarding the FSB.

Revenge of the Technocrats

Three weeks ago, I suggested that democratic politics had reasserted itself in Europe – to the consternation of those who wanted Greece and Italy to fall into line on the policies needed to address the eurozone crisis.

This past week, by contrast, has seen moves to minimize those democratic impulses. On Friday, Italy’s newly appointed prime minister and respected eurocrat, Mario Monti, won a vote of confidence on the composition of his new government in Italy’s lower house of parliament – a government whose cabinet does not include a single elected official.

Monti proposes to double up as Finance Minister, with a plan to balance the budget, stimulate growth, overhaul Italy’s pension system, and fight against decades of tax evasion. It’s an agenda that technocrats have long wanted to pursue, but that democratic politics in Italy had apparently made very difficult.

Ozone gaffe shows Tories favour ‘spin over science,’ Trudeau says

Justin Trudeau figured he’d be made to look the fool but instead it was Environment Minister Peter Kent, who couldn’t answer the simple question as to what is ozone.

And Mr. Trudeau, the Montreal Liberal MP, told The Globe Tuesday he’s “sure now that Minister Kent will deepen his knowledge of his extremely important file.”

“It just worries me that this government consistently prioritizes politics and spin over science and facts,” Mr. Trudeau said. “Canadians deserve better.”

Too tightly scripted and perhaps caught off guard, the Environment Minister stumbled in the Commons Monday when the Montreal Liberal asked him to “explain to the House what ozone is and what is the difference between its impact at low altitude and high altitude?”

Bank Of America Warned By U.S. Regulators It Must Get Stronger

U.S. regulators have informed Bank of America's (BAC.N) board that the company could face public enforcement action if they are not satisfied with recent steps taken to strengthen the bank, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the situation.

BofA has been operating under a memorandum of understanding since May 2009. The memorandum, which is not public, identified governance, risk and liquidity management as problems that had to be fixed, the paper said, citing people familiar with the document.

In recent months, regulators met with BofA's board and said they wanted to see more progress on the bank's compliance with the memorandum, the Journal said.

In the absence of progress, the informal order could turn into a formal and public action, which would likely mean intensified scrutiny and greater restrictions, the paper said.

However, the newspaper said that BofA's directors believe the bank has met demands set out in the 2009 document.

Now, "the board's view is it's time to take us out of the penalty box," one person familiar with the situation told the Journal.

Bank of America spokesman Larry Di Rita declined to comment on the Journal report to Reuters.

Origin
Source: Huff 

America’s Not Broke: Solving the Debt Crisis By Making Nation More Equitable, Green & Secure

The bipartisan so-called "supercommittee" has failed to reach an agreement on reducing the federal deficit after three months of negotiations over taxes and spending. The full Congress will now have a little over a year to come up with an alternative. A trigger of $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts over 10 years to military and domestic programs takes effect in 2013. “What people need to remember is that we are a rich country and that this crisis is actually an opportunity to harness our abundant resources in ways that will position us better for the future,” says Sarah Anderson, co-author of a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, “America Isn’t Broke: “How to Pay for the Crisis While Making the Country More Equitable, Green, and Secure.”

Video
Source: Democracy Now! 

Reporter Greg Palast Exposes How U.S. “Vulture” Funds Make Millions By Exploiting African Nations

American "vulture" investors, including a top funder of the Republican Party, have demanded that African nations pay over half a billion dollars for old debts – for which the investors paid only a few million. One New York vulture speculator, Peter Grossman of FG Capital Management, is demanding $100 million from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Is he collecting a legitimate debt from the Congo — or is the vulture’s claim based on a stolen security? Greg Palast reports from the Congo, Bosnia and New York in the joint investigation by the BBC, the Guardian and Democracy Now!

Video
Source: Democracy Now! 

Stimulus program failed to measure job-creation, auditor finds

Ottawa failed to measure how many jobs it created through its multi-billion stimulus programs, the federal spending watchdog says, but the Conservatives otherwise emerge relatively unscathed from a detailed audit of their Economic Action Plan.

Interim Auditor-General John Wiersema released an audit report Tuesday that focused on three stimulus programs with a combined budget of $7-billion.

The audit focused on how federal officials monitored the Economic Action Plan (EAP) projects in terms of progress on construction and spending. Auditors did not look at the merits of the projects or how they impacted the Canadian economy.

“For the three specific programs we audited, the government was diligent in monitoring the progress of projects and their spending,” said Mr. Wiersema in a statement.

Religious Lobbying Groups Have Dramatically Increased In Washington: Study

With heated nation-wide arguments in recent years over issues ranging from same-sex marriage to abortion rights, it's no secret that religious organizations play a significant role in influencing the nation's policies.

Now, a new study shows just how big and expansive the "religious lobby" has become.

According to a study released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, religious lobbying and religion-related advocacy organizations have grown fivefold, from less than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today. The organizations, which range from the influential United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to smaller Hindu and Sikh organizations, together spend $390 million per year advocating on about 300 domestic and international issues, from bioethics and moral issues to economic and poverty concerns.

Lobbying for the Faithful: Religious Advocacy Groups in Washington, D.C. looked at 212 religion-related organizations that work in the nation's capital and collectively employ 1,000 people in the Washington, D.C. area. The study used tax and nonprofit filings by the organizations, some of which are registered as lobbying groups and others which do broader advocacy efforts, to come to its findings.

'Lawful Access' Online Spying Law Could Kill Small Internet Providers In Canada, Industry Group Says

The controversial online spying laws Ottawa has promised to reintroduce in Parliament could force independent Internet service providers to shut down, an industry advocacy group says.

The Canadian Network Operators’ Consortium, a trade group composed of 25 small and mid-sized ISPs, says the “lawful access” legislation the Conservative government has promised could put Internet providers out of business with its requirement that they retrofit their networks so that law enforcement can monitor communications in real time.

The Conservatives introduced a set of three bills in the last Parliament that would vastly expand the ability of law enforcement to gather information online. One provision would force Internet providers to hand over subscriber information -- such as names, email addresses and phone numbers -- without a warrant.