Toban Black

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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That photo was taken last year in Toronto, Ontario, Canada –
well before the ‘garbage’ strike which is underway there right now.

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Christopher Hume (in this article) -

“At a time when a garbage strike has turned Toronto into a festering communal dumpsite, the connection between consumption and trash can be seen – and smelled – everywhere around us.”

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Waste in and around a bin which had been taped shut by the city government -

(From one of Matthew Blackett’s posts on the Spacing Toronto blog.)

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Mike Smith (in this article) -

The “strike opens our eyes to the awful levels of waste we produce.”

“They call it a work stoppage, but almost anyone can take it as an excuse to slow down and think.

At a local café, I drink coffee that’s arrived here in bean form from afar on a huge metal bird; I finish and put my cup in a bin, having no need ever to think of it again. It will simply… disappear.

Except, this time, it doesn’t. The cups, the wrappers, the refuse – the things we’ve been refusing to think about – sit there, reminding us that there are many wizards who work this magic for us, often behind the curtain of night. The breakdown of a machine proves the best way to observe how it works.”

“Even now, striking, garbage collectors are providing a sort of public service. As trash mounds grow in the rinks and pools of local parks, we are faced (nosed, specifically) with the reality of how much we throw away and the lives we lead in pursuit of the privilege to do so.”

“There’s a poetry to parks being chosen as dumps, a chance to see how connected things are.”

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(Photo by Andy_K)

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John Bennett (in this blog post) -
“How can simply placing our hands on the steering wheel impair our judgement, turn us against our fellow citizens and cause us to engage in risky behavior that we know will yield only small, fleeting rewards (if any).”

I’m going to start to explore those issues here –
without focusing so much on car equipment (such as steering wheels).

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Matt Richtel on the New York Times Gadgetwise blog -
“Driving While Texting Remains Popular — and Dangerous” (May 20th)

Brad Aaron on the New York Streetsblog -
“Ad Nauseam: Antisocial Thuggery From Pioneer”

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Tom Vanderbilt (in this blog post) -

“It’s almost as if there’s something about being inside a vehicle of any kind, removed from the normal pace and experience of walking — the only thing we were actually born to do, after all — that evokes its own special behaviors, its own convulsive social physics, and problems — traffic fatalities, it should be noted, were ranked as the leading cause of fatalities in London in the early 18th century.”

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Ian Sacs (in this blog post) -

“Drivers are confused, at best, with bicyclists on ‘their’ streets (angry at their interference, at worst), and bicyclists are summarily fearful of drivers.”

“Status-quo … design is not going to get more bikes on the road than there are brave messenger jobs and aggressive enthusiasts. The average person is just not that daring. After decades of our industry designing roadways for the [most] efficient throughput of cars, bicycling has been all but marginalized.”

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Brad Aaron on the New York Streetsblog -
“Is death an appropriate penalty for ‘jaywalking’?” (May 19th)

John Bennett on the Sustainable Savannah blog -
“Calling crashes ‘accidents,’ even when they aren’t” (March 31st)

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David Chernushenko (in this blog post) -

“In every city there are thousands of closet cyclists, people who would love to ride their bikes but don’t dare. They see cycling in the city as something for bike couriers, for the fiendishly fit, for neighbours with nerves of steel.”

Our cities are just bursting with pedaling potential, and it’s time to set it loose on the streets.”

(I have posted another exerpt from that blog post here.)

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(Photo by “dno1967“)

In a grocery store in Florida

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Marie Cocco at TruthDig.com -
“Guns and the Link We Won’t Admit“ (June 15th)

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(Photo by Willie Stark)

In Las Vegas — where this billboard also is or was on display to promote The Gun Store

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Gwen on the Sociological Images blog -
“Increase in Gun Sales“ …

(Comments 4 through 6 were posted by me.
Later I was planning to follow those statements up to respond to at least one of the other subsequent comments, but I didn’t get around to doing that.)

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One Britain –

Fighting the Terrorists

Together

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(By Pedro Figueiredo)

Their trash.

Your duty.

If it looks strange,
report it.

You’ve got nothing to hide.
You’ve got nothing to fear.

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(By “Teacher Dude“)

There is no such thing as community.
Fear your neighbours.
Respect your boss.
Love the State.

Don’t rely on others.
If you suspect it, report it.

WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

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In London, England

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The text on that sign is a generic message over there in the UK.
(The “SSP Air” text is unique though, of course — since the surveillance extends well beyond that airport.)

During a recent visit to the UK, I was surprised by the overt messages about CCTV cameras (which often are mentioned on signs, and over radio systems). Over here in Southern Ontario, the cameras aren’t highlighted so openly; so there also aren’t as many messages about why such government surveillance supposedly is justified.

Of course, over-inflated rhetoric about terrorist threats is pervasive throughout the pro-surveillance messages in the UK. (For instance, when I was in a museum in London, at least one radio announcement suggested that I should look for abandoned baby strollers; presumably I was supposed to be worried about a bomb that might have been left in one of those strollers — which, I assume, is why I was told to inform the guards if and when I saw one of those strollers. Otherwise, why were strollers mentioned over the radio broadcasting system?)

(I basically visited London and Cardiff when I was in the UK. Since those are capital cities, I’m sure that they’re somewhat unique. Yet, the UK also seems to be a cohesive bubble — so I expect that surveillance systems are consistent across the British isles.)

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On a bus in London, England

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George Monbiot (in this article) -
“Blaise Pascal (‘the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his own room’) couldn’t have been more wrong.”

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(Photo by Antonia Schulz)

Public art in Berlin

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Edited exerpts from an article by Joe Bageant -

Americans “remain one of the most controlled peoples on the planet, especially regarding control of our consciousness, public and private.”

“I know it doesn’t feel like that to most Americans. But therein rests the proof. Everything feels normal; [almost] everybody else around us is doing the same things, so it must be OK.

This is a sort of Stockholm Syndrome …, in which the prisoner identifies with the values of his or her captors, which in our case is of course, [American corporations, the American state, and a wider status quo -- including] its manufactured popular[ized] culture.

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By Andy Singer

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James Shelley on the From My Bottom Step blog -
“Car-less in London, Ontario” : The richness of life post the automobile

(Some people are bound to think I’m quibbling about petty details, but I’m going to point out that
I don’t use the word “soul,” myself.)

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In London, England

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Maris Zivarts on the fifty car pileup blog -
“Life outside the cage”

An exerpt -

“There is a feeling of exposure on a motorcycle. You experience all the elements around you. You are more sensitive to everything you pass.

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(Photo by Amanda Graham)

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Jeremy Seabrook (in Victims of Development – p. 166) –

“We are … subject to multiple dispossessions, precisely in the private lives to which we believe we have retreated, the shelter from a public realm which becomes increasingly incomprehensible and threatening beyond our control.”

“Individuals are supposed to take responsibility, not only for their own actions, but also for socially induced evils, like poverty and unemployment, and even for all the tribulations that life itself brings: it is now regarded as the duty of the individual to take care of sickness, loss, old age and infirmity, which have become other people’s business opportunities.”

“Individuals, especially women, have absorbed, secretly, privately, unspeakable burdens of social shame, disgrace and sorrow.”

(The photo is by “Tomms” — who has a blog here.)

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By Andy Singer

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“Set your watch to ‘me’ time”

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