1. 
   Joseph Raglione27 February 2014 10:22

   Hello Gentle People:
   Did you know that a few years ago: Al Gore and John Kerry and Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore all contacted me? I am a nobody from Canada but I had something they needed...a powerful computer and a few million readers.They wanted me to write for their new young presidential candidate, a U.S. Senator by the name of Barack Obama.
   
   Millions of computer writers joined together to bring about an agenda of change and that change must continue today if we are going to survive global warming.
   
   Don't give up trying to find the facts because we have introduced informative and educational content well worth reading...especially the articles created by NASA and the information they distribute utilizing their spectacular satellites circling the Earth.  Instruments so well calibrated they can measure you inch by inch. Just joking folks but I do strongly suggest you pass on any article based on facts that helps to protect the environment. Greenpeace continues to be a great source of honest facts and the United Nations is excellent for understanding our human rights. Always try to discover what is educational and important and you do not have to be in school to learn new things!
   I am one of the many writers who today continue to use computers for social change and surprisingly, it is working! The new Electric Cars on the market would not have entered the market or even exist if we had not pushed hard for change. In order to create social changes within the United States and Canada and the World we must continue the struggle against selfish greed and industrial pollution. What makes me slightly different is the fact that I am willing to share my Blog space with other writers. I give them full credit for their work. Visit my human4us2blogspot...I use the space for publishing articles geared towards the world humanitarian peace and ecology movement. As a World Humanitarian I often link to: the United Nations, Green-Peace, the Sierra Club, the W.W.F, Amnesty International, the Campus Progress Report, and many many more including the office of the President of Russia, Senator Barbara Boxer, the Barack Obama campaign, the office of the Prime minister of Canada and I could go on for a while because I've been on the internet from the beginning. I also remember helping TIG or the "Taking it Global" kids with some surreptitious suggestions a few years ago and then I backed off and watched their progress. This brings me to an important point.
   If you want to change the world, don't ask for money and don't expect to be acknowledged or rewarded for your efforts. In fact expect the opposite because our specie: Homo Sapien, is an Omnivorous and territorial and often selfish creature and attempting to change our human nature using culture is a difficult task. You don't have to be any of the following: Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Solomon, Ghandi or the Dalai Lama; just do the work needed for change and stay as positive and happy as possible. Being a Vegetarian helps! Don't forget to plant hundreds if not thousands of Trees everywhere. Trees are desperately needed to slow global warming. After planting Trees, make more than one food growing garden where it is needed most. I suggest in your own back yard but there is always a need in the middle of poor city areas.  Roof tops are great places for gardens if they are strong enough to hold the soil. I suggest gardens are necessary anywhere the poor and desperate congregate on this small Blue Planet we call Earth.
     Always use the following Ethics in whatever you do. They include: Freedom with Honesty and Justice, Courage with Compassion and Dignity, Tolerance with Sharing and Caring and Humor, Kindness with Peace in Love and in Harmony with all living things. I challenge you to find as many more positive concepts as possible and include them in the list.
   P.S. For you tough kids out there, don't forget to protest injustice at every possibility even if it means going to jail. Simply don't forget to do it the way Ghandi did, with non violent protest. ;-)
   Have a great day and a wonderful life!
   Signed: Joseph Raglione
2. 
   

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February 27, 2014

Gentle People:

 I do not like being trained. In fact I dislike it intensely! However, if you must train people and animals, I suggest you follow the best guidelines.

 I will not be attending your training session but you can use this information as a basis for your new sessions.

  As a web based international journalist for human rights and the environment I believe in freedom with justice and courage, compassion with dignity and tolerance and humour, peace with love and harmony towards all life on Earth.

  I am excellent at what I do and if you want to win the next election, I strongly suggest you follow my example. Protecting and enhancing the natural environment along with human rights and human dignity, must always be a priority for you. Strong new consumer protection laws must be created with better and longer product guarantees. This will create work within your home nation and slow the importation of cheap junk from other countries.

  If you talk about creating environmentally friendly low income housing and public gardens within cities while banning gas burning cars and prioritizing all Electric vehicles: clean public transportation and Bicycle paths, you will win the attention and respect of the people. For example, President Obama espoused humanitarian and environmental concepts years ago and he won the White House! He began to lose public support when he was forced away from his original concepts by the Banks and the Oil and Coal industries and their Republican friends in Congress. Oil based Carbon must be removed from our atmosphere even if that means removing Oil and Coal from our economy. They must be replaced with clean energy creating alternatives which surprisingly, includes new and safer Nuclear Reactors.

 P.S. I can feel you shrugging your shoulders and getting ready to forget I exist. 

 That, I promise, will not work in your best interests. I am, however,  going to place your invitation on my Google blog and maybe it will create some interest for your Montreal NDP training session.

Joseph Raglione.

Executive Director: The World Humanitarian Peace and Ecology Movement. 

From: npd-qc@npd.ca
To: npd-qc@npd.ca
Subject: Formations NPD/NDP training sessions
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 16:14:05 +0000

Bonjour,

Après la dernière formation en mi-février à laquelle 60 membres ont participé,  l'équipe d'organisation de la section Québec offrira deux autres journées de formation (une en français et l’autre en anglais) aux membres du NPD de la grande région de Montréal. 

La formation en français aura lieu le dimanche 23 mars de 10h à 16h au bureau de la Section Québec.

L’adresse est le 4428, boulevard Saint-Laurent, bureau 300 (entre Marianne et Mont Royal), situé à 10 minutes à pied du métro Mont-Royal. 

Les sujets suivants seront abordés: 

1. L'historique du Nouveau parti démocratique et ses accomplissements
2. La structure de la section Québec et rôle d'une association
3. Le financement
4. La préparation électorale
5. Défis et priorités pour 2015

Du café et des viennoiseries seront offerts le matin. Les participants auront une heure pour diner. Vous pouvez apporter votre lunch, ou manger à l'extérieur. Plusieurs restaurants sont proches du bureau de la Section Québec.

Veuillez confirmer votre participation à la formation en français avant le 14 mars à Emilie Beauchesne emilie@npd.ca 

Merci de votre collaboration, 

L’équipe de l’organisation

Section Québec du NPD

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

Following the mid-February training session in which 60 of our members participated, the Quebec organization team will be offering two more training sessions (one in French and one in English) for members from the greater Montreal area. 

The English training session will take place on Saturday, March 22, 2014, from 10am until about 4pm at the Quebec Section office.

The address is 4428 blvd Saint-Laurent, suite 300 (between Marianne and Mont Royal), about a 10 minute walk from Mont Royal metro station.

 The following topics will be covered:

1.       The NDP’s history and accomplishments

2.       The structure of the Quebec Section

3.       Fundraising

4.       Election preparedness

5.       Challenges and priorities for 2015

Coffee and snacks will be provided in the morning.  Participants will be given an hour to have lunch at one of the many restaurants located near the Quebec Section office. 

Please confirm your participation in the English training session before March 14 by writing to: dan@ndp.ca  

Thank you for your collaboration. 

The Org Team

NDP, Quebec Section

COPE225:JL /  SEPB225:JL
=================================================

North Carolina’s Moral Monday movement held a massive “Moral March” in Raleigh on Feb 10,2014, which began at Shaw University ... Tens of thousands of activists—from all backgrounds, races and causes—marched from Shaw to the North Carolina State Capitol, where they held an exuberant rally protesting the right-wing policies of the North Carolina government.
They're protesting the state's Republicans, who took over the legislature in 2010 and the governor's office in 2012 with the financial support of greedy billionaire Art Pope and with their marching orders written by ALEC.

Here's what they (the government)did:
*eliminated the earned-income tax credit for 900,000 North Carolinians;
*refused Medicaid coverage for 500,000;
*ended federal unemployment benefits for 170,000;
*cut pre-K for 30,000 kids while shifting $90 million from public education to voucher schools;
*slashed taxes for the top 5 percent while raising taxes on the bottom 95 percent;
*axed public financing of judicial races;
*prohibited death row inmates from challenging racially discriminatory verdicts;
*passed one of the country’s most draconian anti-choice laws;
*enacted the country’s worst voter suppression law which mandates strict voter ID, cuts early voting and eliminates same-day registration.

Writes Berman:
The fierce reaction against these policies led to the Moral Monday movement, when nearly 1,000 activists were arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience inside the North Carolina General Assembly. Rallies were held in more than thirty cities across the state and the approval ratings of North Carolina Republicans fell into the toilet. Sample signs at today’s rally: “OMG, GOP, WTF. It’s 2014, not 1954!!!” “Welcome to North Carolina. Turn Your Watch Back 50 Years!”...
The Moral Monday protests transformed North Carolina politics in 2013, building a multiracial, multi-issue movement centered around social justice such as the South hadn’t seen since the 1960s. “We have come to say to the extremists, who ignore the common good and have chosen the low road, your actions have worked in reverse,” said Reverend William Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP and the leader of the Moral Monday movement, in his boisterous keynote speech. “You may have thought you were going to discourage us, but instead you have encouraged us. The more you push us back, the more we will fight to go forward. The more you try to oppress us, the more you will inspire us.”
Here's what the Moral Monday protesters want:
1.Secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that insure economic sustainability;
2.Provide well-funded, quality public education for all;
3.Stand up for the health of every North Carolinian by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state's communities;
4.Address the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation or sexual preference;
5.Protect and expand voting rights for people of color, women, immigrants, the elderly and students to safeguard fair democratic representation.
Berman predicts the movement will continue to grow this year. Let's hope.
Posted by Teamster Power at 5:09 PM

------------------------------------------------------
In case you forgot: The Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group is the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

Read more about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
Find more recipients of Koch foundation money
$525,858 received from Koch foundations 2005-2011 [Total Koch foundation grants 1997-2011: $858,858]
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is one-stop shopping for state elected officials interested in perusing the wares of an array of Koch-funded opposition organizations including IER, ACCF, Mercatus and other sources.The American Legislative Exchange Council is a member of the State Policy Network.

ALEC has successfully peddled corporate-written legislation to numerous states attacking the Kyoto Protocol, undermining climate science education in schools and numerous other anti-environmental legislation. ALEC has close ties to Koch Industries, which helped bail the organization out of financial troubles with a half-million dollar grant.

ALEC publishes its own materials as well, including a "Climate Change Overview for State Legislators" which downplays the science and risks of global warming and exaggerates the costs of addressing it. The Overview was written by Daniel Simmons, who moved from ALEC to become AEA's Director of State Affairs. Simmons was at the Mercatus Institute before ALEC and is a graduate of the George Mason University School of Law.

Charles G. Koch is a recipient of ALEC's 1994 "Adam Smith Award."

Read more about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) on ExxonSecrets.org

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) on SourceWatch.org

Find more recipients of Koch foundation money
View "Koch's Web of Dirty Money and Influence"

Topics
global warming
Tags
american legislative exchange council, global warming, climate change, koch industries, denial, science, fossil fuel, funding, oil, billionaires, brothers, foundation, charles koch, david koch, claude r lambe, alec

The forest can't defend itself
The forest can’t defend itself

The forest can’t defend itself.

That’s why Greenpeace and two campaigners refuse to be silenced by a $7 million lawsuit by Resolute Forest Products for standing up to their reckless clear-cutting of Canada’s Boreal Forest. Sign the #StandForForests pledge now to help protect this critical habitat and add your name to the Guardian Tree as a symbol of our shared resolve to protect Canadian forests.

Yes, I stand with Greenpeace for forests.
Joseph Raglione

This has been a confusing week for me. For years I and my political activist friends voted against Nuclear fusion reactors. We were right to protest because the first reactors were commercial and dangerous and potential bomb makers. Yesterday, I discovered that the Coal and Oil industries were and continue to be also against Nuclear reactors; but for very different reasons. They are afraid of how today's clean and efficient and much safer reactors will create too much competition for them. In the past Oil companies actively supported anti-nuclear demonstrators. In the past nuclear bombs scared the living hell out of all of us. Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with thousands of above and underground Atom bomb tests terrified millions of people around the world and with good reason...we were staring death directly in the face!

Nuclear melt-downs entrenched the fear of nuclear energy deep into our souls. Mile-Island and Chernobyl and recently the Japanese disaster maintained that fear...but today there is proof that the cleanest energy creating systems on the planet belong to the Nuclear fusion industry. Nothing is fail safe but compared to Coal and Oil, nuclear energy has an extremely tiny risk, especially with the new reactors. A risk mitigated with modern day fail-safe systems which shut down the reactors the moment any problem is discovered. The modern day reactors even recycle and re-use their own nuclear waste.

Having learned to duck under a school desk during a nuclear bomb alert, I continue to fear nuclear fusion. The problem is that nuclear fusion is not killing us! Global warming created by Coal and Oil pollution, along with industrial by-products such as Plastic, are proving to be a lot more dangerous! If I were the president of the United States and I had a choice between the Oil industry and the Nuclear industry, I would choose the nuclear industry. They have cleaned up their act and the modern and safer reactors deserve another chance. As for the Oil and Gas industry, the C.B.C. has found new evidence of a cover up.

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A CBC News investigation has unearthed a critical report that the federal regulator effectively buried for several years about a rupture on a trouble-prone TransCanada natural gas pipeline.

On July 20, 2009, the Peace River Mainline in northern Alberta exploded, sending 50-metre-tall flames into the air and razing a two-hectare wooded area.

Few people ever learned of the rupture — one of the largest in the past decade — other than the Dene Tha’ First Nation, whose traditional territory it happened on.

In an early 2011 draft report about the incident, the National Energy Board criticized TransCanada, the operator of the line owned by its subsidiary NOVA Gas Transmission, for “inadequate” field inspections and “ineffective” management.

Final reports are typically published by the investigative bodies, either the NEB or the Transportation Safety Board, but this report wasn’t released until this January when the CBC obtained it through an access-to-information request.

The NEB said the delay was caused by an “administrative error” when an employee left without transferring the file over.

TransCanada did not respond to a CBC request for an interview.

Environmental policy expert Nathan Lemphers says he’s “deeply concerned” that the federal regulator kept the “fairly damning” report behind closed doors.

“It’s quite likely that there are other incidents like this that the public simply doesn’t know about,” said Lemphers, a former Pembina Institute analyst. “This one stands out simply because of its size and the timing and the company involved.”

Lemphers questions whether TransCanada’s contentious Keystone XL proposal, under environmental review in the U.S. at the same time, had a bearing on the regulator not publishing the Peace River Mainline draft report.

“It's hard to guess intentions,” said Lemphers. “It certainly seems fishy from the outside that this report was kept quiet due to an apparent administrative error. If the report came out it would have been, risen to immediate public attention.”

In January 2011, TransCanada was in the midst of negotiating dozens of U.S. safety requests on pipeline construction, operation and design on the controversial Keystone XL proposal. That was followed by several months of public comments in the States later that year.

The Keystone XL project, first proposed in 2008, is still in limbo. A crucial assessment released last week said there are no major environmental objections to the $7-billion mega-project, but a 90-day comment period still remains.

Members of Dene Tha’ First Nations community of Chateh, about 50 kilometres away from the site of the blast, also want to know why the report was not released until now.

“They should let the public know about these deficiencies that exist,” said Baptiste Metchooyeah, the former Dene Tha’ First Nation lands director. “We have to start saying something about these incidents, because the regulator is not there for us.”

According to the report, the pipeline spewed 1.45 million cubic metres of natural gas – equivalent to the volume of 580 Olympic-sized pools – over a period of hours before TransCanada stopped the flow and put out the fire.

Fabian Chonkolay, a local hunter who flew over the site, described the aftermath as looking like a “big ball of fire” had consumed the forest. “Just like when they drop a bomb,” he said.

Chateh residents fear that because the area is remote, it might be considered a low-risk area for pipeline operators, leading to fewer safety precautions. The pipeline runs under the community of Chateh, and hunters and trappers often travel in the area.

“It’s way in the bush, but there’s a lot of activities going on out there,” said Chonkolay.

The report reveals that the Peace River Mainline has a historically high rate of ruptures — six since the 1970s. The Alberta pipeline’s rupture rate is five times higher than Canada’s national rupture rate, reported in a 2004 study.

The pipeline had an uncommon problem: a bacteria that caused “particularly aggressive growth rates” of corrosion. But, as the NEB report notes, the bacteria was a known threat to the pipeline and caused a rupture in 2002.

The section of the pipeline that burst in 2009 was 95 per cent corroded. TransCanada’s own rules required that it physically inspect a pipeline when it reached 75 per cent corrosion, the report says.

The report notes the inline inspection tool failed to accurately assess the depth of the “corrosion within corrosion.”

Pipeline integrity experts say that given the pipeline’s high rate of ruptures and its known corrosion problems, the company ran along the “ragged edge” of the rules. Many operators use far lower thresholds, closer to 40 or 50 per cent corrosion, before inspecting.

The NEB says that since the incident, TransCanada changed criteria for identifying corrosion, while the NEB made changes to its management requirements for pipeline operators.

The report on the 2009 rupture sat in draft stage for nearly three years, only coming to light when CBC obtained a copy this January.

NEB spokesperson Rebecca Taylor wrote in an email that the investigation closed Jan. 19, 2011.

“The delay in publishing this report to our external website in no way compromised the safe operation of the Peace River Mainline,” said Taylor.

CBC asked for the report last October on at least four separate occasions. NEB refused to release the report to CBC News, saying that it could be requested through access-to-information.

When the report was released, the final report was dated November 2013. A one and a half page section on TransCanada’s field inspection was redacted in the 2011 draft and changed in the final report.

NEB says they asked CBC to request the document through access to information to meet “legal and confidentiality obligations associated with the release of the document.”

For the Dene Tha’ First Nations community that lives above the pipeline, the focus is on what happens in the future.

In 2010, TransCanada began signalling its intent to decommission a 266-kilometre southern section of the line, built in 1968. The NEB is holding public hearings soon to get input as it decides whether to approve the move and the conditions.

But the section under review for decommissioning doesn’t extend into the northern Alberta region where Chonkolay lives.

“It’s an old pipeline,” said Chonkolay. “Heaven knows how many more damage it’s going to do in the future. … How many more times is it going to rupture?”