Greenspiration News: Pedal Power Produces Power

Tue Sep 7 22:53:19 EDT 2010

Greenspiration News

P.S. Pass this onto a friend! -a

“Something is very wrong with a system that leads patients to demand, and doctors to prescribe, a drug that provides no better relief and causes significantly more serious side effects . . . How have we gotten to a place where expensive new drugs could become ‘blockbusters’ when there was little scientific evidence to justify their routine use?”
— John Abramson, M.D., 2004

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Support Emergency Relief in Pakistan 

Doctors WIthout Borders / Medecins sans Frontieres 
http://www.msf.ca/

INSAN Foundation
http://www.worldaccord.org/index.php/component/content/article/73/258-disaster-relief 
Also, please ask the IMF to freeze Pakistan’s debt repayments for the next two years. In effect this will give them a vital $6 billion to spend on rebuilding. 

Sign the petition: 

http://www.one.org/international/actnow/pakistanfloods/o.pl?id=1896-4500792-F4wKAex&t=3

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Pakistan's misery yet another danger sign

Extreme weather has become widespread globally, resulting in aberrations like the heat wave that has caused wildfires in Eastern Europe and forest fires in British Columbia; drought followed by flooding on the prairies in Canada; and, of course, the heavy rains causing disasters in Pakistan and China. The human disaster in Haiti, while sparked by an earthquake, was the direct result of the island's poverty, owing to centuries of manipulation by foreign interests and colonialism. No similar-sized quake elsewhere has ever killed 300,000 people.
http://www.straightgoods.ca/2010/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=726&Cookies=yes 

Climate change, capitalism and war produce disaster in Pakistan

The massive floods in Pakistan that affect 20 million people are far from a random "natural disaster." Rather, they are a predictable result of global warming, capitalist development, and US-backed war.
http://rabble.ca/news/2010/08/climate-change-capitalism-and-war-produce-disaster-pakistan 

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Turning Our Waste BACK into Oil!

Waste is a treasure! This small machine turns plastic “garbage” into usable oil – 5 min. video – truly greenspirational!
http://pholia.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/turning-our-waste-back-into-oil/

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10/10 Global Work Party with 350.org   
Sun October 10, 2010
Various locations in Canada, USA & worldwide
www.350.org/about/blogs/getting-work-2010-our-new-plans

10/10/10 will be a day of work parties all over the world. Will you join us?
In every corner of the globe, we will implement solutions to the climate crisis: from solar panels to community gardens, wind turbines to bike workshops. We'll tell leaders: "We're getting to work - what about you?"

350.org's slogan for 2010 is "Get To Work." Get to work to start changing our communities, and get to work to make our leaders realize that they actually need to lead. We've sifted through thousands of your emails from all over the world, and come up with an action plan for this year that we think may break the logjam and get us moving. But only, of course, if we act together to make it happen.

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China's massive traffic jam could last for weeks

Triggered by road construction, the snarl-up began 10 days ago and was 100 kilometers (60 miles) long at one point. Reaching almost to the outskirts of Beijing, traffic still creeps along in fits and starts, and the crisis could last for another three weeks, authorities say.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100824/ap_on_re_as/as_china_traffic_jam

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Harm Reduction Guide To Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs & Withdrawal

The Icarus Project and Freedom Center's 40-page guide gathers the best information we've come across and the most valuable lessons we've learned about reducing and coming off psychiatric medication. Includes info on mood stabilizers, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, risks, benefits, wellness tools, psychiatric drug withdrawal, information for people staying on their medications, detailed Resource section, and much more. A 'harm reduction' approach means not being pro- or anti-medication, but supporting people to make their own decisions balancing the risks and benefits involved.

http://theicarusproject.net/HarmReductionGuideComingOffPsychDrugs

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Police arrest 12 Climate Camp protesters

Police arrested 12 climate campaigners during yesterday's protests in Edinburgh against the Royal Bank of Scotland's funding of the oil and miningindustries.
Harry Reynolds, one of the activists, said: "We've done a lot to disrupt RBS dirty energy operations today, but we are committed to keeping up the pressure until we manage to cut off the flow of capital from the banks to the fossil fuel industry."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/24/police-arrest-climate-camp-protesters

Yes, we broke the law as climate change activists. And this is why

We're not terrorists, we're people who believe delivering our message on climate change is worth being charged and fined
… We do so because we believe this is justified, proportionate and necessary in the face of catastrophic climate change, and that the negative consequences of our actions are more purposeful than the consequences of continued inaction. Sometimes, we believe, we have to break the law to disrupt lawful activities that are harming the prospects of future generations.

At this critical point in human history, civil disobedience is not just a good idea. It is vital.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/aug/25/climate-change-activists-broke-law

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Canada: Stop "Fox News North"
Prime Minister Harper is trying to push American-style hate media onto our airwaves, and make us all pay for it. His plan is to create a "Fox News North" to mimic the kind of hate-filled propaganda with which Fox News has poisoned U.S. politics. The channel will be run by Harper’s former top aide and will be funded with money from our cable TV fees!

Sign the petition here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_fox_news_canada/98.php?CLICKTF 

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Making a Killing
Mother Jones investigates how clinical trials have become marketing exercises for Big Pharma -- and cash-strapped universities are helping make the sale.
http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/psych-drug-corp/mj-irb-cros 

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Pedal power takes off as exercise produces electricity

Pedal power is gaining traction as thousands of bikes and elliptical machines are retrofitted to produce electricity. Gyms are using sweat equity to help power their facilities. A Brooklyn eatery uses it to make smoothies. Female inmates at a Phoenix jail pedal to power their TV to watch soap operas. Actor Ed Begley Jr. rides a bike to run his toaster. 

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/08/pedal-power-green-gyms/1 

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Eve Ensler Reads "Congo Cancer: My Cancer Is Arbitrary. Congo’s Atrocities Are Very Deliberate"

Earlier this year, award-winning playwright and bestselling author Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues) was diagnosed with uterine cancer. In a widely read article in The Guardian newspaper of London titled "Congo Cancer," Ensler writes about her illness and relates it to the widespread violence against women in Congo. "The atrocities committed against the people of Congo are not arbitrary, like my cancer. They are systematic, strategic and intentional," she writes. 

Watch the 7 min. video interview or read the transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/26/eve_enlser_reads_congo_cancer_my 

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Russia's agony a "wake-up call" to the world
Extraordinary heat wave has killed at least 15,000 people.

Soil moisture has fallen to levels seen only once in 500 years, says Brown. Wheat and other grain yields are expected to decline by 40 percent or more in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine — regions that provide 25 percent of the world's wheat exports. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a few days ago that Russia would ban all grain exports.

The global climate is warming and most food crops are both heat and drought sensitive. Rice yield growth rates have already fallen by 10-20 percent over the last 25 years in parts of Thailand, Vietnam, India and China due to global warming, new research has shown. Data from 227 fully-irrigated farms that grow "green revolution" crops are suffering significant yield declines due to warming temperatures at night, researchers found.

With such pressures on the world's food supply it is simply wrong-headed to use 25 percent of US grain for ethanol as a fuel for cars, said Brown.

http://www.straightgoods.ca/2010/ViewArticle.cfm?Ref=741&Cookies=yes

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America’s mental illness epidemic: It turns out that the drugs are the problem

America has a mental ill health epidemic on its hands that is grossly misunderstood because it is worsening, not by the supposed disease progression, but because of the neurotoxic, non-curative drugs that are somehow regarded as first-line “treatment.”

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6267.shtml

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GMO Crop Sabotage on the Rise: French citizens destroy trial vineyard
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/gmo-crop-sabotage-on-the-rise-french-citizens-destroy-gmo-vineyard/

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Psych Medication Myths 

Do psychiatric drugs act completely differently on the brain than recreational drugs? UK psychiatrist Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, author of The Myth Of The Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment, discusses how seeing psychiatric medications as treatments for disease misleads the public about how they actually work, and obscures their potential for abuse as tools of social control.
50 min. audio interview
http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/bipolarmedmyth/

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Is Applesauce More Dangerous Than Climate Change?

This 4 min. video by Truthfool covers a lot of ground: from big tobacco to big oil to the disastrous summer we've just witnessed around the world.
It's fast, entertaining and kind of scary. 

Http://www.truthfool.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkWQEKxoX_M&sns=em

Truthfool is a Vancouver based collective of activists, filmmakers, writers, musicians and comedians. We want to make your next video!

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Fort McMurray launches plastic bag ban
Fort McMurray launched its ban of single-use, plastic shopping bags on Wednesday. The decision to introduce the plastic bag ban bylaw was spurred by a petition presented by Graham to the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo's council in August 2008.

Melissa Blake, mayor of the municipality of Wood Buffalo, said she heard surprisingly little opposition to the ban from residents and the business community. She said residents are already in "adaptation mode," toting reusable bags. "There are no exceptions to this. You must bring your own bag," said Blake. 

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Fort+McMurray+launches+plastic/3471266/story.html

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