Toban Black

Audio recordings from a Green Scams workshop, which was linked to local People’s Assembly for Climate Justice organizing -

Emissions intensity and GDP
Cortney spoke about climate change policies that officials in the most affluent nation-states have been supporting and promoting.

Organic agriculture
Sean discussed organic agriculture and consumer choices.

Cap and trade
Mike spoke about cap and trade policies.

‘Sustainable development’ and the Boreal Forest Agreement
Kota presented on compromised and anti-indigenous ‘sustainable development’ concepts. The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement is discussed as an example.

After each of the presentations, we collectively discussed these topics.

The climate bill image with Al Gore is from a Trillionaires for Bad Math protest.  We used it on our poster for the event.

I arranged, recorded, and edited the presentations.

Rainbow Park is immediately beside the ESSO / Imperial Oil facilities in Sarnia. These photos were taken there on Thursday, May 19th -

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Those graphics are from this Toronto Stock Exchange document (PDF).  (Click the image to enlarge it.)

To try to drum up even more of that dirty money, the company that profits from the Toronto exchange boasts about how it is the world’s number one hub for mining and fossil fuel capital.

This page gives a lot of important information about the crimes that the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) company profits from, as it helps mining companies to rake in money from tearing up lands and communities across the world.

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To continue drawing in mining investments and mining company listings, the company behind the TSX — the TMX Group Inc. –  proclaims  -

TMX: Your Global Resource for Capital
Be a part of TMX Group and benefit from greater access to capital, liquidity, visibility for transactions, analyst coverage, specialized indices and listing requirements specifically tailored to mining companies.

Capitalize on TMX Global Leadership in Mining
• Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange list more [traded 'public'] mining companies than any other exchange
• 79.1 billion mining shares traded on Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange in 2009

International Mining Companies Choose TMX
• 50% of the 9,700 mineral exploration projects held by [Toronto Stock Exchange] TSX & TSXV companies are outside of Canada
• Over 200 analysts cover Exchange-listed mining companies

[http://www.tmx.com/en/pdf/Mining_Sector_Sheet.pdf]

Those words are from a PDF document that gives a quick overview of Toronto Stock Exchange ties to mining industries.  The map on the second page is very informative.

(Note: the TSXV is a branch of the TSX)

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Filling up landfills with materials that are ripped out of our common environment.

These cups are waste — regardless of whether the cups are left in the garbage cans.

That image is a close-up of part of this photo of a McDonald’s cup.

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In Sarnia, Ontario

One sad thing about this scene is that people are poisoned to produce the synthetic substances in that trash (like the plastic straws), which then are quickly disposed of. I mention that toxic production because Sarnia is Canada’s main chemical processing centre — in a very dirty rust belt region, where there are a lot of nasty petro-chemical industries.

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I wrote this statement for a blog about Coulter in Canada events -
http://counteringcoulter.wordpress.com/to-bjorn/

That statement is a response to an e-mail (quoted at the bottom of that page) from a ‘Free’ Press organization.

Here’s a bit more background -
The ‘Free’ Press Society (which was backing the Ann Coulter in Canada events) had sent out hundreds of event RSVP e-mails by mistake. The Countering Coulter blog then was set up to take advantage of that opportunity to reach people who had RSVPed for the event here in London, Ontario, Canada. Someone out here sent those people a message (much like this post) to ask them whether they would want to use the blog to communicate their concerns about the Coulter in Canada event in London, Ontario. After a guy from the ‘Free’ Press organization sent out an insulting and confusing rant about that e-mail and that Countering Coulter blog — in a message to the same e-mail addresses — I put together the reply on the blog page that I’ve linked to above.

In that writing I tried to hint at the limited effectiveness of blogging and e-mailing in general. Online activism and dialogue (via Twitter, and Facebook, and so on) are very overrated, and I didn’t mean to reinforce the rhetoric and false hopes about ‘digital revolution’ and ‘digital democracy’ (Here are some relevant posts.)

To put this another way -
Free speech only can happen when there already is equality and justice in our everyday lives (with or without digital technologies).

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A lone cyclist — surrounded by automobiles
in London, Ontario, Canada

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As I noted in a previous post, our streets are battlegrounds. The automobile drivers definitely have the upper-hand in these battles -

A post on the Baltimore Spokes site -
“Half of traffic fatalities are not in cars (in June)

Elana Schor on the Streetsblog New York City site -
“WHO report highlights global health risk of traffic” (in June)

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Automobile branding

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Little drivers

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A car advertisement on the back of a local bus

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Andy Rowell on the Oil Change blog -
“Electric Vehicles May Increase CO2”
(I think it’s too much of a stretch to say that electric vehicles are “all the rage”; but some people definitely are looking toward them as ‘solutions.’)

Brad Aaron on the Streetsblog New York City site -
“Do Your Part: Buy an Audi, Drive Fast” (in October)
(Evidently the author is using the word “transit” to refer to mass transit — such as buses.)

Fred Pearce in The Guardian -
“BMW’s ActiveHybrid X6 Accelerates Nonsense About High-performance, Low-emission Cars” (in September)

Brad Aaron on the Streetsblog New York City site -
“Ad Nauseam: Toyota’s (Passive-Aggressive) Ransom Note to America” (in October)

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Here are some related posts on this blog -
http://tobanblack.net/blog/?tag=automobiles

[via Bouphonia]
(Click to enlarge)

That image…
is a metaphor for the divisions that separate the ‘First’ ‘World’ from the ‘Third’ ‘World’
and
it captures the ultimate dream of people who seek to profit without accountability for the consequences of their enterprises

Surbordination and exploitation are the lowest common denominators there.

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Back in 2005, Keri Smith offered some insight into problems that come with with ads on blogs — and ads that surround blogging.
Here are exerpts that I’ve snipped out of three of those posts -

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“As a blogger who has over time established a somewhat regular audience, I have been approached by many companies asking to advertise on my site, and in some cases endorse their products through my writing. have always had a policy to not do anything that goes against my own beliefs …
And so I would not advertise nor endorse any product or company that I do not fully believe in. But even then I struggle with advertising in general.

As a member of a culture that is so laden with advertising I become easily winded, oversaturated, numb to it all. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to find any public space WITHOUT some form of advertising.” “One grocery store I was in recently has televisions throughout the store selling products in every aisle! As one who was weaned on television at a young age, this is too much even for me.” “I have a hard time and resent being told what to look at as I walk through my day.”

“And so I make choices to not partake in a world that is about selling, (to me being exposed to advertising on a regular basis is the equivalent of emotional junk food and I truly care about my body, so there is an emotional cost to me).”

“If I am making the choice to not clutter my mind with the chaos that is advertising, (as I choose not to put junk food into my body), then I must cut down on the sites that are saturated with it.

If I am to speak frankly here, I am saddened when I go to a site of an artist or a blogger I admire and they have ads on their site. I feel a loss of respect. When companies have approached me for the same thing I admit to a moment of ‘it might make my life easier, I could focus on my personal work more, finish that manuscript’, yes I could.

But I ask again, what is the greater cost? When do we put our human needs before those of the corporations?”

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