Are we destroying the effectiveness of antibiotics by feeding them in excess to animals?

Are Antibiotics In Our Meat Breeding Superbugs?

From NPR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook website, April 4, 2013

Everybody knows the basic issue with antibiotics. Overuse them, or casually use them, and you undercut the miraculous effectiveness of one of the most important classes of drugs humans have ever found.
Now here’s a shocker: today, 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the United States are sold for animals. For livestock. For feed. The meat we eat is overwhelmingly produced in a factory farm system that floats on massive use of antibiotics. Now farms are producing the antibiotic-resistant superbugs that kill.
From Tom’s Reading List
The New York Times “Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration systematically monitor the meat and poultry sold in supermarkets around the country for the presence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. These food products are bellwethers that tell us how bad the crisis of antibiotic resistance is getting. And they’re telling us it’s getting worse.”
Wired “It is difficult to imagine a study design that could trace specific animals, their meat, and their eaters in a large group of free-living humans; and unless you have volunteers, as Levy did, the study would push ethical boundaries as well. But having that lack of definition in the middle of the animal-to-human bacterial flow permits uncertainty — which proponents of continued ag antibiotic use exploit. A new study of Danish farmers and their livestock may have ended that uncertainty. It is still retrospective, but its observations — using whole-genome sequencing — are so fine-grained that their tracing of the bacterial traffic seems to me to be difficult to challenge.”
EMBO Molecular Medicine “We investigated the molecular epidemiology of these livestock-associated mecC-MRSA cases using WGS. Phylogenetic analysis across the entire core genome revealed that the isolates from these cases form two distinct, farm-specific clusters comprising near identical isolates from the human case and from livestock on that farm. Within each cluster, the human and animal isolates only differed by a small number of SNPs, which supports the premise of zoonotic transmission. In-depth genome analysis identified a number of candidate genes and mutations that may be associated with host–pathogen interactions and
virulence of this emerging MRSA clone.”
Antibiotics for curing illness in both humans and animals....YES!
However, antibiotics for producing heavier animals, (and thus more revenue) in shorter times, NO!
The Congresswoman from the 25th district in New York, Louise Slaughter, herself a microbiologist, and the only one currently serving in the U.S. Congress is attempting to get a bill introduced to ban the use of antibiotics in animals, except for healing illness in the animals.
Disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics are being found in meat sold at supermarkets....and Congresswoman Slaughter says it must be stopped.
For consumers who choose to continue to eat meat, one alternative seems to be the purchase of slightly higher priced organic meat that has not been fed excessive amounts of antibiotics thereby keeping the family diet free of the problem.

Heinbecker: Canada withdrawing like Cheshire Cat from UN

It’s not just the drought treaty. Canada is vanishing from the United Nations

By Paul Heinbecker, Globe and Mail, April 1, 2013
Paul Heinbecker is a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and chief foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. He is currently with Laurier University and the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

The decision to withdraw from the United Nations Convention on Desertification is the latest but regrettably likely not the last move to distance Canada from the world body. There is a disappearing character to contemporary Canadian multilateral diplomacy. Like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat, soon all that may remain of our country at the UN is a grin or, more accurately, a scowl.

Following the Harper government’s failure in 2010 to win a Canadian seat on the UN Security Council, its disregard of the UN gave way to disdain. Ottawa’s rare appearances at the UN have tended to stress what it regards as Canada’s uniquely “principled” foreign policy, bringing to mind U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s characterization of Canadian foreign policy in the fifties as “the stern voice of the daughter of God,” and cementing Canada’s long-standing reputation as global mother-in-law.

Because of the links between drought, land degradation, desertification and climate change, withdrawal from the Desertification Convention comes with potentially significant costs. Ottawa’s decision reinforces the impression that it does not care about climate change.
Given that the government of Alberta as well as ministers and departments in Ottawa have been going to considerable effort and expense to argue in the U.S. that Canada does care, it is self-harming to hand America’s Keystone opponents a stick to beat the pipeline with.
Also, because the locus of most of the devastation arising from desertification is in Africa, walking away from a treaty whose creation was led by the Mulroney and Chrétien governments reinforces the impression that Ottawa no longer cares about Africa. It is an impression that this government also went to some trouble and expense to try to reverse. Further, because the worst destruction from desertification is happening in the Sahara region, abandoning the treaty sends a mixed signal about the security issues at stake in Mali and the Sahel, and about Canadian mining interests there as well.
There is a larger cost, too, to the UN. The UN is not perfect – it is currently failing the people of Syria, for example – but warts and all it is necessary, and its effectiveness is in our interests. It is the one organization that can convene the whole world (except, these days, Canada) under one roof to deliberate and, when member countries can agree, decide what to do on the major issues of the day (e.g., the Iranian nuclear program and North Korean sanctions).
Further, the member countries of the UN have spawned an extensive body of international law, treaties, norms, practices, innovations and institutions that help members manage most facets of interstate relations. All told, over 500 multilateral treaties have been concluded under UN auspices, making the organization the world’s central operating system, performing the functions accorded to it by its members and generating policy drivers such as the Millennium Development Goals.
None of this neutralizes the exercise of power in international relations but it does constrain and channel power, bringing greater order, predictability and progress to global affairs, and greater modernity, security and dignity to people’s lives.
Before this decade is over, China will overtake the United States as the biggest economy in the world and not long after that it will rival the U.S. as the most powerful country. Its role in global governance will expand apace. Now is the time, as Asian intellectual Kishore Mahbubani and others have observed, for Western countries to reinforce the instruments of global governance, especially the UN, inculcating values and embedding Western interests into their fabric, the better to protect them later.
To put it bluntly, it is a major mistake to simply write off the institutions our parents and grandparents created, as if the current or next generation would have the wit, wisdom and will to do better. While Canada retreats to the United Nations sidelines, other countries, notably India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, seek larger roles in the organization.
The Desertification Convention is intended to be both preventative and restorative, entailing oversight and monitoring. Its cost to Canada is not large – less than some senators spend on travel, or Ottawa will pay to feed the pandas in Toronto.
If other United Nations members agree with Ottawa that the drought convention’s institutions spend too little of their funds on programing and too much on conference diplomacy, the constructive response is to build an alliance with them to fix the problem. Walking away, on the other hand, leaves just the Cheshire Cat’s scowl to protect Canadian interests.

Punishments include paralysis, execution, beheading under Sharia Law in Saudi Arabia

From Reuters, in Toronto Star, April 3, 2013
DUBAI- Amnesty International has condemned a reported Saudi Arabian court ruling that a young man should be paralysed as punishment for a crime he committed 10 years ago which resulted in the victim being confined to a wheelchair.

The London-based human rights group said Ali al-Khawaher, 24, was reported to have spent 10 years in jail waiting to be paralysed surgically unless his family pays one million Saudi riyals ($270,000) to the victim.
The Saudi Gazette newspaper reported last week that Khawaher had stabbed a childhood friend in the spine during a dispute a decade ago, paralysing him from the waist down.
Saudi Arabia applies Islamic sharia law, which allows eye-for-an-eye punishment for crimes but allows victims to pardon convicts in exchange for so-called blood money.
“Paralysing someone as punishment for a crime would be torture,” Ann Harrison, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said in a statement late on Tuesday.
“That such a punishment might be implemented is utterly shocking, even in a context where flogging is frequently imposed as a punishment for some offences, as happens in Saudi Arabia,” she added.
A government-approved Saudi human rights group did not respond to requests for comment.

From Reuters, in Toronto Star, March 4, 2013
RIYADH- Saudi Arabia is scheduled to execute seven men on Tuesday for crimes committed when they were juveniles aged under 18, the British-based rights group Amnesty International said.

The seven were sentenced to death in 2009 for an armed robbery in 2006, but Amnesty quoted the men as saying they were tortured into confessions. It said King Abdullah ratified their sentences in February.
“They have since said they were severely beaten, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, forced to remain standing for 24 hours and then forced to sign ‘confessions’,” said Amnesty.
A spokesman for the kingdom’s Interior Ministry was not immediately able to comment on the report, but has repeatedly said in the past that Saudi Arabia does not practise torture.
The kingdom, which follows a strict version of sharia, or Islamic law, has been criticized in the West for its high number of executions, inconsistencies in the application of the law, and its use of public beheading to carry out death sentences.
The last time the kingdom executed so many people at once was in October 2011, when eight Bangladeshi men were put to death for an armed robbery in which a guard was killed.
The seven are from the southern province of Asir, one of the least developed in the kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter.
Saudi Arabia has executed 17 people so far this year, said Amnesty, compared to 82 in 2011 and a similar number last year.

From Toronto Star, January 13, 2013
JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA—Saudi Arabia beheaded a young Sri Lankan housemaid on Wednesday after rejecting appeals by her home country against her death sentence for the killing of an infant left in her care in 2005, Saudi and Sri Lankan authorities said.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said in a statement run by the official SPA news agency that Rizana Nafeek was executed in the town of Dawadmy, near the capital Riyadh, on Wednesday morning.
Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry said Nafeek was sentenced to death in 2007 after her Saudi employer accused her of killing his infant daughter while she was bottle-feeding.
The Saudi Interior Ministry statement said the infant was strangled after a dispute between the maid and the baby’s mother.
The Colombo government appealed against the death penalty but the Saudi Supreme Court upheld it in 2010.
“President Mahinda Rajapaksa made a personal appeal on two occasions immediately after the confirmation of the death sentence, and a few days ago to stop the execution and grant a pardon to Miss Rizana Nafeek,” the Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry said in a statement sent by email.
“President Rajapaksa and the government of Sri Lanka deplore the execution of Miss Rizana Nafeek despite all efforts at the highest level of the government and the outcry of the people locally and internationally over the death sentence of a juvenile housemaid,” it said.
Amnesty International said the passport Nafeek used to enter Saudi Arabia in May 2005 stated she was born in February 1982, but her birth certificate states she was born six year later, which would have made her 17 at the time of the infant’s death.
Saudi households are highly dependent on housemaids from African and South Asian countries. There have been reported cases of domestic abuse in which families mistreat their maids, who have then attacked the children of their employers.
Human Rights Watch condemned the execution.

Obama sets world on "brain mapping" research path with $100 million downpayment

With several billion cells "communicating" with other cells in the human brain, according to one observer the capacity to "listen" to these energy circuits has to be increased, documented and diagramed and then mathematically analysed in order to "mine" their meaning. Speaking on "On Point" with Tom Ashbrook, Christof Koch, neuroscientist and chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, one of the partners of President Obama’s BRAIN initiative, enthusiastically endorsed the project.
It will take highly trained minds in many fields to conduct the research, and it will not be analogous to the "genome project" with 'industrialised' what was already known about the human DNA. In the "BRAIN" project, barely the first steps have been taken, and only the shaping of the project will take up the first few steps, without compromising the work of individual scientists, a fear of some skeptics, like Michael Eisen, biologist at the University of California, Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who also appeared on On Point earlier today.
The BRAIN project, is far more complex, and will take much longer to accomplish than the Genome Project, and will push human knowledge and awareness to the point of envisaging "the creation of consciousness in technological devices, according to the On Point panel.
While our children gasped at the possibility of landing on the moon, our grandchildren will gasp at the wonders unpacked from the human brain, a path on which the United States President has now set the human, as well as the scientific community.
And there will be no going back, no matter what we discover, both the benefits to those suffering from such illnesses as dementia, MS, PTSD, and others, and the inevitable downside(s).
This could be one of the more illuminating and challenging frontiers that humans have both encountered and wrestled with, in our endless search for answers to the most puzzling questions.
And the brain is the most complex, the most challenging and the most mysterious human organ...hence the worldwide interest in the project. There are, apparently, some 60,000 neuroscientists already working on discovering how the brain operates, so there is already an "army" of potential participants all of whom will be lining up for research grants, once the program is fully operational.


Brain mapping project aims to help treat brain disorders


Canadian neuroscientists believe they are in a good position to assist with the goal outlined by U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday to unlock the mysteries of the human brain.

By Mitch Potter, Toronto Star, April 02, 2013
 WASHINGTON—The last time global science got this ambitious, rallying alongside the Americans in a groundbreaking project to map the human genome, Canada was largely a bystander.
But as the Obama administration raises the curtain on an even more daunting effort to unlock the mysteries of the brain, a new generation of better-funded Canadian neuroscientists appears ready for a prime-time role.
The long-awaited U.S. announcement, unveiled Tuesday by President Barack Obama, plants seed money of $100 million (U.S.) and the potential for billions more to come in a world-leading, interdisciplinary effort to crack the code of the human mind.
The Brain Research Though Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, Obama promised, will “lead the world into that next frontier of human understanding.”
The White House goal is to develop new technologies to help scientists get their heads around how our heads actually work. The hoped-for payoffs include the prospects of futuristic breakthroughs in the treatment of brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia and traumatic brain injury.
Skeptics abound, just as they did 23 years ago, when the U.S. Human Genome Project set out to map our DNA, with the help of geneticists in the United Kingdom, France, Australia and Japan. Completion was declared in 2003, two years ahead of schedule, thanks to rapid advances in genomics and sequence analysis.
Underfunded Canadian researchers watched from the sidelines as the international effort took hold, prompting a grim 1998 warning from the National Biotechnology Advisory Committee.
“The reduction in Canada’s genome program,” the committee said, “has not only hollowed out the country’s existing capability, but has jeopardized the chances of Canada leading the next wave of postgenomic studies.”
( Genome Canada has since worked to reverse that situation, increasing funding for large-scale research through its six Genome Centres across the country.)
But Canadian researchers are in a measurably better place today, especially when it comes to the kind of interdisciplinary approach to brain research outlined Tuesday by Team Obama.
“Canadian neuroscientists are among the best in the world, and we expect that they will be invited to collaborate with U.S. teams as the project rolls out, starting in 2014,” said Dr. Mark Bisby, science adviser to Brain Canada , which oversees the $100-million Canada Brain Research Fund.
“We intend to be fairly proactive about it,” Bisby said. “Canada largely missed out on the Human Genome Project. We had excellent scientists but a lack of funding. Since then, funding for health research has improved greatly. And now, with the Canada Brain Research Fund, there’s a strength, breadth and depth to the Canadian neuroscience research community that we didn’t have even 15 years ago.”
The White House is especially fond of the comparison to the Human Genome Project, emphasizing the estimated economic payback at $140 into the U.S. economy for every tax dollar invested. In an era of shrinkage and sequester, such financial arguments are essential.
But as Techcrunch. com and many others observe, the comparisons get a bit awkward when it comes to the almost infinitely more complex processes of the human brain.
Unlike the HGP, Obama’s BRAIN Initiative has not yet detailed a plan, time frame or specific goals in its quest to accelerate our understanding of an organ involving an estimated 125 trillion synapses. The first piece of that puzzle is expected this summer, when a “dream team” of 15 U.S. scientists tables recommendations with the federally funded U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) on research priorities.
NIH director Francis Collins acknowledged the ambitiousness — “some might even call it audacious” — of such a project.
But Collins, who led the Human Genome Project in the 1990s, told a conference call with reporters that he held in his hand a DNA sequencer the size of a postage stamp, a device capable of doing in one second what took an entire day at the outset of the HGP.
Bisby, of Brain Canada, has no illusions about the difficulty of the work ahead.
“I don’t mean to belittle the Human Genome Project — it was a remarkable achievement. But it is highly unlikely that we can apply a single, repetitious routine task like brute-force sequencing to map out the brain,” Bisby said.
“Instead, this is going to be expensive and much more complex in concept. And the research will need careful management because it’s going to be so diffuse.
“But there will be space in that diffuseness, space for Canadian researchers to join up and participate in the search for answers. They’re ready for it and we’ll be actively looking to make it happen.”

Mayflower AR smells like an oil patch...from a broken, ancient decaying pipeline

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said in a recent report that more than half of the nation’s pipelines were built in the 1950s and 1960s in response to higher energy demand after World War II.

Some, like Pegasus, were built earlier.
“An influx of tar sands on the U.S. pipeline network poses greater risks to pipeline integrity, challenges for leak detection systems and significantly increased impacts to sensitive water resources,” environmental group the National Resources Defense Council said in an emailed note on Monday. (from "Smell of oil permeates Arkansas town after Exxon pipeline leaks thousands of barrels of Canadian crude," by Suzi Parker and Kristen Hays, National Post Wire Services, National Post, April 4, 2013, excerpted below)
We all recall the EXXON Valdez that ran aground on the Alaska rocks and spewed millions of gallons of it precious oil along the coast not so many years back. 

Some of us recall, further back in the 1950's that it was the same company, in Canada then called Esso or Imperial Oil whose storage tank sprung a leak and permitted millions of gallons of dark crude to seep into the beaches along the eastern shore of Georgian Bay, not to mention into the ecosystems that dotted the shoreline north of Parry Sound. Compulsory bathing was necessary for months, if not years, when one emerged from swimming at those beaches. I was one of those swimmers.
And while the company did spend considerable money in the clean-up operation, the risk of tank, tanker, tank-truck, and pipeline spill continues.
In fact, the risk may have risen, given the relatively ancient age and decayed condition of the existing pipeline infrastructure and the current "crop" of heavy crude coming from the "tar sands" in Alberta.
Depending on eroding pipes to carry much heavier crude, obviously is not working in the Arkansas town of  Mayflower, and this latest spill, in addition to the other more recent spills from (Enbridge)pipelines in Michigan, for example, may combine to render the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada through (or around?) the Nebraska aquifer dead in the Oval Office.
That is where the decision to finally grant the necessary permit now sits, with President Obama.
I recall working for a chief executive, as his assistant, who reminded his staff frequently that certain problems would, if left untouched, resolve themselves given enough time and the accumulating evidence of "events" and "circumstances.
It would seem, in retrospect, that Obama may have taken a page from that chief executive's playbook in this case. Wait long enough and the evidence will make the case for the executive charged with the decision to approve or disallow.
Clearly, Canadian heavy crude is already flowing into the U.S. from Alberta, with the Keystone XL pipeline, an extension to an already existing and already operating line. Should Obama decide to defer or to cancel the proposed Keystone XL, there will be other methods like tanker-trucks and rail cars and obviously deteriorating pipelines to carry the heavy crude to the insatiable U.S. market.
Will this latest spill, and the clarion calls from the environmental lobby be strong enough to derail the necessary debate on American dependence on fossil fuels? Probably not.
Will the debate take on a new sense of urgency? Probably not.
There will have to be something more catastrophic and more deadly, like an explosion after a spill that results in many deaths (God forbid even the thought!) before the Congress of the United States will be provoked to act against the oil companies, and their massive lobbying onslaught.
And meanwhile Canadian citizens watch, impotent to change their government's enmeshment in the "tar sands" development as the cash cow feeding the Canadian economy, even though prices in North America for that oil are below world averages.
With an environmental "tin ear" and empty head in Ottawa, and a foot-dragging Oval Office in Washington, could it be that the fossil fuel dependence debate will be forestalled for another decade, as we pump tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, while also pouring gallons of the heavy crude over unsuspecting neighbourhoods whose residents were completely unaware they were living on the ground atop the frail and failing pipelines?
Most likely! And tragically!

Smell of oil permeates Arkansas town after Exxon pipeline leaks thousands of barrels of Canadian crude

By Suzi Parker and Kristen Hays, National Post Wire Services, National Post, April 4, 2013
Exxon Mobil continued efforts on Monday to clean up thousands of barrels of heavy Canadian crude oil spilled from a near 65-year-old pipeline in Arkansas, as a debate raged about the safety of transporting rising volumes of the fuel into the United States.
The Pegasus pipeline, which ruptured in a housing development near the town of Mayflower on Friday, remained shut and a company spokesman declined to speculate about when it would be fixed and restarted. The line can carry more than 90,000 barrels of crude per day from Patoka, Illinois to Nederland, Texas.
Exxon had yet to excavate the area around the Pegasus pipeline breach on Monday, a critical step in assessing damage and determining how and why it leaked.

Twenty-two homes in the affected area were evacuated after the spill poured oil across lawns and down residential streets. The smell of oil permeated the town on Monday.
The spill has stoked a discussion about the environmental dangers of using aging pipelines to transport heavy crude from Canada, including tar sands, as a boom in oil and gas production in the United States increases volumes moving across the continent.
The Exxon pipeline was carrying Canadian Wabasca Heavy crude at the time of the leak, a bitumen oil from the massive Pelican Lake field in northern Alberta. It needs to be blended with lighter oils or natural gas liquids to flow through pipelines.
Exxon did not yet have a specific figure of how much oil was released when the 20-inch line ruptured on Friday. The company said Sunday that 12,000 barrels of oil and water had been recovered.
An oil spill of more than 1,000 barrels in Wisconsin last summer kept an Enbridge Inc pipeline shuttered for around 11 days.
Exxon spokesman Charles Engelmann said the ruptured section of the Pegasus pipeline was installed in the late 1940s, but had no information on when it last underwent maintenance.
PIPELINE MAINTENANCE
To prevent and track corrosion buildup, pipelines are periodically “pigged,” or cleaned with a device that moves through the line to remove buildup of hydrocarbons, dirt, and other substances. Often the device is outfitted with sensors that point out areas of corrosion or wear-and-tear that need repair.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said in a recent report that more than half of the nation’s pipelines were built in the 1950s and 1960s in response to higher energy demand after World War II.
Some, like Pegasus, were built earlier.
“An influx of tar sands on the U.S. pipeline network poses greater risks to pipeline integrity, challenges for leak detection systems and significantly increased impacts to sensitive water resources,” environmental group the National Resources Defense Council said in an emailed note on Monday.
Exxon said that trucks had been brought in to assist with the cleanup. Images from local media showed crude oil snaking along a suburban street and spewed across lawns.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and PHMSA, as well as state and local responders, were also present.

What's wrong with "subjective" political programming in Canada?

I am ashamed at the apparent pedigree of the editors and producers, the executives and owners of both public and private radio and television in Canada. Their collective, (if not individual) demonstration of what they might deem "objectivity" in their presentation of the public affairs and news on Canadian radio and television is both depressing and tragic.
There is little doubt that I disagree with every word, syllable and gesture of one Ezra Levant, currently holding forth on Sun TV in Canada, coming as he does from the "right of attila the hun" version of Canadian politics.
However, his opportunity to declare his political opinions is neither matched nor encouraged and fostered by those responsible for political coverage across the country, with the possible exception of the resident "radio talk show" hosts....and there is no comparable outlet on public or private national television.
Why?
Are Canadian advertisers so frightened of sponsorship of "controversial" political opinions?
Are Canadian executives, as representatives of what is considered in former sociology texts the "establishment," unable to cough up cheques unless they are doing it to all political parties who might attain power?
Are those executives so "small-minded" that they are unable to take the risk of  sponsorship of political coverage that actually "has an opinion" as expressed by the host, and also by the parade of guests that could and would appear?
CBC clearly is happy to tweek the nose of the Harper government through such incisive and comedic voices as both Rick Mercer and Ron James, both of whom pick their fingers in the eyes of whatever political stupidity and hypocrisy that grabs their attention. However, under the "cover" of humour is not the sole, or the necessarily best, vehicle for exposing the political culture of the various governments across the country.
"22 minutes" is also a revived vehicle for political satire, once again under the guise of comedy.
So, Canadians are prepared to laugh at ourselves, and to fork over the sponsorships that underwrite that comedic entertainment.
Why is there, however, such a dirth of political commentary, espousing both right and left political views, on separate and individual and unique political conversations?
Failing the acquisition of sponsorships for political conversation/debate shows like Chris Matthews' Hardball on MSNBC, or Rachel Maddow or Melissa Harris-Perry, both of whom are breaking new ground in their in-depth exposure of social, historic and cultural oppression, racism, sexism, ageism, and corporateism, why does the Canadian Labour Congress not move toward the acquisition and sponsorship of a uniquely "left" of centre television channel, where Canadians can learn "the other side" of the political argument to that being spewed from both the private and public broadcasters, on  behalf of the Harper conservatives?
A humble nomination for Executive Producer on such a proposed channel, Jim Sanford, current economist for the CAW, one of the most articulate, informed and authentic voices anywhere on Canadian television, radio and in print for the "left".

Gun for every home...passes in Nelson GA!

UPDATE:
By: Kate Brumback The Associated Press, Published on Tue Apr 02 2013
NELSON, GEORGIA—Backers of a newly adopted ordinance requiring gun ownership in a small U.S. town acknowledge they were largely seeking to make a point about gun rights.
The ordinance in the city of Nelson, Georgia — population 1,300 — was approved Monday night and goes into effect in 10 days. However, it contains no penalties and exempts anyone who objects, convicted felons and those with certain mental and physical disabilities.
City Councilman Duane Cronic, who sponsored the measure, said he knows the ordinance won't be enforced but he still believes it will make the town safer.
“I likened it to a security sign that people put up in their front yards. Some people have security systems, some people don't, but they put those signs up,” he said. “I really felt like this ordinance was a security sign for our city.”
Fears of a government crackdown on gun sales have prompted a few communities around the United States to “require” or recommend their residents arm themselves ever since a gunman killed 26 youngsters and educators Dec. 14 in a school in Newtown, Connecticut.
Such mandatory gun ownership measures reflect a growing divide in the wake of the Newtown massacre as President Barack Obama champions more gun control and the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby maintains that more guns keep people safer.
While lawmakers in generally more liberal states with large urban centres like New York and California have moved to tighten gun control laws, more conservative, rural areas in the American heartland have been going in the opposite direction.
Council members in Nelson, a small city located 80 kilometres north of Atlanta, voted unanimously to approve the Family Protection Ordinance. The measure requires every head of household to own a gun and ammunition to “provide for the emergency management of the city” and to “provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants.”







MSNBC "crawl" today: Nelson City GA set to vote on ordinance requiring every home to have a gun
Sometimes it is the tiny towns and villages that serve as predictive barometers of a nation's evolving political culture. There are few headlines that will drive me from the tv to the keypad faster than an item announcing the intention of a town council's impending vote to "require every home to have a gun".
From Wikipedia:
Nelson is a city partly (0.631 sq mi) in Pickens and mostly (0.792 sq mi) in Cherokee counties in the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 1314. It appears in the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Pickens County was created in 1853 from parts of Cherokee and Gilmer counties. Georgia's 100th county was named for General Andrew Pickens, a Revolutionary War soldier.
According to the USGS GNIS, it is named for John Nelson, early landowner, farmer, and rifle maker. It is served through its downtown by the Georgia Northeastern Railroad, and by the former route of state route 5 along its main street. South on old 5 is Ball Ground, north is Tate. The north end of Interstate 575 and south end of state route 515 is at the county line just to the southwest of Nelson.
Who cares if the man for whom the town is named, Nelson, was a rifle maker?
How soon will it be for another town to adopt the name of one of its founders who just happened to be a bomb builder, or an owner-operator of a still, or some other equally nefarious notoriety?
While the whole country is not necessarily following Nelson City, the fact that one city is moving in this direction will be considered by some "gun-nuts" as paving the way for others to follow suit.
What do 1314 people need with a gun in every home?
Why has the argument of "protection" superceded the more reasonable, more peaceful, more humane argument that available guns will eventually become deployed guns? This is one small voice from a neighbouring country urging the people of Nelson City GA to rise up against their town council, who from the outside could easily be portrayed as a puppet of the NRA, and force the council to withdraw the resolution.
As a signal of the contemporary political culture of the United States, Nelson City GA is demonstrating more stridently than most, the steadfast clinging to the misinterpretation of the Second Amendment that so infests the political argument across the country. And the NRA will be most grateful, even if the parents and families of the victims of Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown Connecticut will be among the most horrified to learn of the proposal. As will Gabby Giffords and her husband Captain Kelly, who have constructed a not-for-profit dedicated to the promotion and achievement of healthy gun control legislation.
While there are many towns and cities already having established reputations for keeping "outsiders" away permanently, Nelson City GA will become one at the top of a list for millions of people, for no other reason than a silly, ill-conceived and ill-begotten ordnance of its city council.
"Pull the bill" posters need to be posted on every post and every corner through the village of Nelson City today, in the vain hope that some sense will eventually penetrate the minds and hearts of those elected councillors who are about to cast their votes for this inhuman and evil proposition.