The Guarani have a deep sense of connection to their land, but have seen most of it stolen and destroyed by intensive agriculture. © Fiona Watson/SurvivalOn the eve of the Olympics, a tribe in Brazil has made a powerful statement to the ranchers who are destroying their land and subjecting them to genocidal violence and racism.
Voters have just elected a coalition of men and women to govern Australia for the next four years after a long drawn-out and insipid election campaign. A collection of almost equally conservative men and women lost the chance to govern by the proverbial whisker. The election campaign was a protracted affair running over six weeks. The outcome was protracted uncertainty, with observers vaunting fanfare for one side while consigning the other to feculent ignobility… imaginings of gladiatorial heft were strictly in the eyes of the beholding pundits.
In mid-August of 1948, sweltering summer heat was largely negated by high pressure and the frigid winds of Cold War. The Second War to End All Wars still smoldered in the recent past, while the witch hunt of McCarthyism loomed on the near horizon. Of course, I knew nothing of this, having only recently earned a birth certificate and U.S. Citizenship as a reward for successfully negotiating Mom’s birth canal, and taking my first breath in America’s Heartland.
All fans of science fiction are familiar with Star Trek. It is an iconic science fiction show that has bequeathed the public with five TV series,1 one animated series, and a number of films over five decades. The storyline of Star Trek, however, spans three centuries. What makes Star Trek particularly attractive for many viewers is its progressivism.
May of 2012, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Prof. Olivier De Schutter, visited his first NATO country, Canada. He found Canada’s poor generally deprived of adequate nutrition (“People are simply too poor to eat decently”). He found the Aboriginal peoples at risk.
Indigenous women and Treaty 8 First Nations are spearheading the fight against BC Hydro’s Site C mega-dam, which is being aggressively pushed by province.
When we learn to come together we are whole
when we learn to recognize the enemy
we will know what we need to know
to learn to come together
to learn to weave and mend.
— Anne Cameron, Daughters of Copper Woman
As a scientist, I am dismayed by the common tactic of pleading scientific uncertainty as an excuse for continuing to allow people or companies to do things known to harm salmon.
— geomorphologist David R. Montgomery1
