Baby-killers that so-called "pro-life" chooses not to attack.

Across the USA, there's an ideologically-fuelled campaign to limit women's reproductive choices.  Under the disingenuous banner of "pro-life" these rabid religious fundamentalist, neo-con, misogynist crotch-sniffers pressure like-minded politicians to do their bidding.  These laws and measures exemplify the kind of oppressive backlash women and girls suffer as government takes control of their breeding capabilities.

As a result of anti-choice bullying and lobbying the number of health clinics and other healthcare providers that give women options ranging from birth control to pregnancy termination have decreased.

Meanwhile hundreds of voluntarily pregnant women in communities like Vernal, Utah are having miscarriages or giving birth to infants, damaged by a toxic environment and whose survival is precarious.

"Fracking moved the oil patch to people's backyards, significantly increasing the pollution they breathed in small towns," says Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Basically, it industrialized rural regions, and brought them many of the related health problems we were used to seeing in cities."

Workers found dead atop separator tanks from exposure to wastewater fumes. Cows birthing stillborn calves on ranches near well-pad clusters. Children with cancers — leukemia, lymphoma — in places with no known clusters. "For a while, all we had were anecdotal reports, which the industry bashed as 'bad science,' " says Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a senior health scientist for the NRDC. "But in the past few years, there's been a torrent of studies finding worrisome air pollution stemming from oil and gas sites. The impacts of this pollution are regional, not just local, meaning it can make you really sick from miles away," and that the people most susceptible to its toxic effects are the ones at either end of the life spectrum: "fetuses and the elderly."

Dr. Brian Moench. Moench, an anesthesiologist in Salt Lake City who co-founded Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, is a cross between Bill Nye and Bill McKibben, a science-geek activist and erudite spokesman for a growing clean-air coalition. With the roughly 350 doctors in Utah he's recruited to the cause, he and his colleagues gathered dozens of studies about pollution and its long- and short-term damage to the unborn. "What we know now," he says, "from several blue-ribbon studies, is that the chemicals Mom inhales in industrial zones are passed to her baby through the umbilical cord, exposing them to many complications. We also know these toxins like to live in fat cells — and the brain is the largest fat reservoir in a developing fetus."

In an easy-to-follow slide show about the air in the Basin and its calamitous level of pollution, Moench and his fellow doctors, two of them obstetricians, spent an hour and a half building a brick-by-brick indictment against the effect of those toxins on fetal neurons. "Think of them as bullets to developing brain cells," said Moench. "They either kill some of those cells, alter them or switch them off, blocking their connections to other cells." Citing a wave of new studies that link inhaled contaminants to everything from diabetes and obesity to ADD, he added that babies "are being born now pre-polluted. Lower IQs, less serotonin, less white-brain matter: We're literally changing who they are as human beings."

MASSIVE hypocrisy? That, plus greed, and undiluted patriarchal hatred for women and children unless they can be commodified and used to extract profits.

Juxtapose the gravity of these health issues - for women and children - with the deceitful, fraudulent anti-abortion propaganda stunt that 'murrican fetushists are current shrieking about and peddling.

Insanity from CON senator.

The CPC propaganda machine, Stevie's Politburo aka the PMO and its hundreds of minions cranking it out for ministers, is showing signs of stress fatigue.

From here:

"Let me ask you this, honourable senators: If environmentalists are willing to accept money from Martians, where would they draw the line on where they receive money from? Would they take money from Al Qaeda, the Hamas or the Taliban?," Senator Don Plett, the party's former president, asked in the Senate.

"It's jaw-droopingly bizarre," Devon Page, executive director of EcoJustice told The Huffington Post Canada late Tuesday.

"I have no idea where this comes from. To me this defies reason, logic and all of this is so bizarre I have a hard time responding to it. To me, it's a good example of why we need an elected Senate," he said. "They are being irresponsible, I think they are not representing the Canadian public, I think the Senate is disassociating itself from reasoned debate."

Plett, who was appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009, made the comments during an inquiry into the foreign funding of Canadian charities.

Thanks to the Harper CONtempt Party, our Parliament now features scenes of unbridled fuckwittery, almost as riveting as the gonzo journalism writing of JJ's beloved Hunter Thompson.

Dr Wangari Maathai, visionary and Nobel Laureate

Though she was cut down by cancer, the legacy planted by Africa's "Tree Lady" will thrive, generation after generation.

Wangari Maathai, who died on September 25 aged 71, won the Nobel Peace Prize for encouraging women in rural Kenya to plant trees; from that simple idea sprouted a powerful movement that challenged what she saw as the incompetent, corrupt and often brutal rule of many male-dominated regimes in post-colonial Africa.

Wangari Muta Maathai was born on April 1 1940 in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri, in the central highlands of Kenya. Her parents were subsistence farmers from the Kikuyu tribe. She was the eldest of six children, and in most families would not have attended school. But one day her elder brother, Nderitu, wanted to know why he had to go to school when Wangari did not. She was soon being taught by Catholic missionary nuns at Loreto Limiru Girls’ High School, from which she graduated in 1959.

Her teachers recognised her talent, and recommended her for a scholarship to study in America. In 1964 she obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St Scholastica College at Atchison, Kansas, then, in 1965, a Masters from the University of Pittsburgh. Her work involved new techniques in tissue processing that were largely unknown in Kenya, and on her return to Africa her expertise was in great demand. She became research assistant to the head of the department of Veterinary Medicine at Nairobi University, where she also taught (on lower pay than her male colleagues) and, in 1971, completed her PhD. [...]

Wangari Maathai began to focus on the vicious circle that links poverty, hunger, environmental collapse and women’s status. She saw how in poor families women scavenged for firewood to cook, eventually wandering further and further from home to find it. As more and more trees are felled, soil erosion leads to desertification; fewer cooked meals, meanwhile, results in malnutrition.

She decided to break this chain of impoverishment, developing a simple tree-planting programme. In 1977 the National Council of the Women of Kenya (NCWK) embraced her idea, initiating what was soon called the Green Belt Movement (GBM). On World Environment Day, June 5 1977, GBM began by planting seven trees in a small park in Nairobi.

It then branched out, offering free seedlings to women across the country. For every tree that survived more than three months (about 80 per cent in fertile areas) the women tending them were paid a few pennies. The more trees they planted, the more they made. As they were encouraged to plant more than they would need for firewood, women were soon able to earn extra from selling the surplus. Not only did the scheme reverse deforestation but, for the first time, many women discovered financial autonomy.

From here. And more here (also source for photo).

Meanwhile in Canada and the US, First Nations women and men are leading the charge against an expansion of the toxic Tar Sands development, by opposing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and the one that will be threatening the ecological integrity of the land as it snakes its way through Alberta and BC to the coast.

Tar Sands update: Our esteemed sister blogger Alison at Creekside has been covering a number of aspects over the last year. Here's an excellent overview of key players and interconnected issues.

Le Devoir also had a good item about the connections between Cons and the Contempt Party, with regard to Who's who in promoting the Tar Sands. It's in French; Google translate is your friend.

Natural welfare "queens"

The "Welfare Queen" moniker is an American meme with both racist and sexist components that was intended to arouse the ire of ordinary people against small-time free riders in order to distract from the long-standing effort to make it possible for big-time free riders to get away with robbing the American public blind.

What does this have to do with Canada?

We keep hearing that the "political center" of Canada is shifting Westward, and that Ontario's manufacturing economy is in the doldrums and that it is a have-not province. And we keep hearing that this is fuelling the political shift to the right. If so, this situation is merely confirmation of something we already knew: that right-wing populist politics is only possible in the presence of large-scale free riding. In this case, the free riding is on oil, oil, and more oil---because it no longer pays to be an actual entrepreneur in (foolishly) export-dependent Canada.

The Canadian right is all about being the true welfare "queens"*---the welfare "queens" of nature, of the dinosaur plants that died so long ago. Of course, it is always the case that we living things subsist on and affect the world in unpredictable ways; but we must never pretend that it is anything other than what it is.

Now if there's anything that will fracture the Reformatory crypto-coalition, it is that fact: will Ontario and the Rest-of-Canada (relative to resource extracting provinces) share in that welfare-"queendom"? I thought that was taboo.

*In reality, welfare "kings" more than anything else.

As expected ... (with update).

assorted righwingnutz, teabaggers, hatriots and various Republicon ideologues are busy spinning conspiracy theories and blaming .... well, read the shrieeeks and judge for yourselves.

From Mother Jones: Rash 'Fatboy' Limbaugh suggests the explosion of the oil rig was a deliberate sabotage.

It appears the Wall Street Journal has determined the environmentalists are at fault (and not deliberate cost-cutting, shoddy, dodgy practices by the drilling companies) for insisting that rigs be located as far as possible from populated areas and fragile eco-systems.

There's even fatuous glurge from $arah Palin.

Finally, the Boston Globe has heart-wrenching photographs of the calamitous oil deluge slip-sliding its way towards Louisiana.

Lunatic rightwing conspiracy theory alert - fern hill found this gem. A grim report circulating in the Kremlin today written by Russia’s Northern Fleet is reporting that the United States has ordered a complete media blackout over North Korea’s torpedoing of the giant Deepwater Horizon oil platform ...

As if world politics were not murky enough. Nonetheless, a more interesting plot device than those plaguing season 8 of 24.

Better chocolate: less is more.

This could be the start of a DAMMIT JANET! tradition. Last year we blogged about cruelty-free chocolate.

It appears that the production of cocoa is threatened. The cultivation of cocoa trees require specific growing conditions and it leaves the soil leached of nutrients after 20 years or so. As well, monoculture practices and the reliance upon one type of tree that yields large crops has made it vulnerable to disease. A deadly fungus is decimating farms in central and south America. A virus spread by insects is destroying those in western Africa.

As with most agricultural practices, the challenge comes down to rotating crops and developing hybrids that have the most desirable and disease-resistant traits. Fair trade cocoa co-ops need the support and funding that will allow them to train specialists and to develop the resources necessary to sustain development.

So, choose delicious, flavourful fair-trade chocolate that's not sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Your health will benefit, as will the farmers' co-operatives.