Author: Adam Clare

Use TOR to Access the BBC on the “Dark Web”

computer screen

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has launched on the dark web to help those in authoritarian regimes access international news. To access the the site one only need the Tor browser and don’t need to use a VPN to get around national censorship firewalls. The TOR browser works anonymously by connecting to other TOR computers to generate a connection that cannot be traced to its source, so if you’re accessing a banned site from your country it’s nearly impossible to trace the connection back to your computer. As companies like Google track everything we do online we may all need to familiarize ourselves with privacy-focussed solutions. Check out the TOR browser and practice good digital protections.

The Tor browser is privacy-focused software used to access the dark web.
The browser can obscure who is using it and what data is being accessed, which can help people avoid government surveillance and censorship.

Countries including China, Iran and Vietnam are among those who have tried to block access to the BBC News website or programmes
Instead of visiting bbc.co.uk/news or bbc.com/news, users of the Tor browser can visit the new bbcnewsv2vjtpsuy.onion web address. Clicking this web address will not work in a regular web browser.

Read more.

User Molire at Reddit created the following list:

Tor Browser: https://www.torproject.org/
The BBC onion service is available in at least the following languages:
Arabic — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/arabic
Bengali (Bangladesh) — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/bengali
Chinese (simplified) — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/zhongwen/simp
English: https://www.bbcnewsv2vjtpsuy.onion/
French — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/afrique
Gujarati (India) — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/gujarati
Hindi (India) — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/hindi
Marathi (India) — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/marathi
Tamil (India) — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/tamil
Indonesian — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/indonesia
Japanese — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/japanese
Korean — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/korean
Portuguese — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/portuguese
Punjabi (Pakistan) — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/punjabi
Urdu (Pakistan) — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/urdu
Russian — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/russian
Spanish — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/mundo
Thai — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/thai
Turkish — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/turkce
Vietnamese — https://www.s5rhoqqosmcispfb.onion/vietnamese

London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone Cuts Toxic Air Pollution by a Third

fog

London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) can be considered a roaring success. The ULEZ was created by London mayor Sadiq Khan to combat the health crisis created from too many cars being in a small geographic area (and to improve the ability of people to get around the city). The plan called for a section of London to be only accessible to vehicles which meet the criteria of an ultra low emission vehicle, like electric cars. The policy has reduced the total amount of vehicles in that part of London while also reducing toxic pollutants in the air. If London can do it then surely other cities can too!

Since introducing the ULEZ new data reveals that:
• Roadside nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution has reduced by 36 per cent in the zone. This is measured from February 2017 to September 2019, to reflect when the Mayor publicly confirmed the Toxicity Charge (T-Charge) – the predecessor to the ULEZ – and people started to prepare for the schemes. Analysis in today’s City Hall report estimates that the reduction in NO2 pollution solely attributable to the ULEZ is 29 per cent*.
• None of the air quality monitoring sites located on ULEZ boundary roads have measured an increase in NO2 pollution levels since the scheme was introduced in April 2019.
• From March to September 2019 there was a large reduction in the number of older, more polluting, non-compliant vehicles detected in the zone: some 13,500 fewer on an average day, a reduction of 38 per cent.

Read more.

We Can Hold 20 Firms to Account for the Climate Crisis

industry

To address the climate crisis we need to cut back on the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere and there’s a simple way to do that: get 20 companies to improve their businesses. A mere 20 companies are responsible for a third of all carbon emissions and if we can get them to reduce their output then we can greatly reduce the global carbon output. What’s more we now have the proof that these companies have been negligent and ought to make them pay for the global harm they have caused.

Heede said: “These companies and their products are substantially responsible for the climate emergency, have collectively delayed national and global action for decades, and can no longer hide behind the smokescreen that consumers are the responsible parties.

“Oil, gas, and coal executives derail progress and offer platitudes when their vast capital, technical expertise, and moral obligation should enable rather than thwart the shift to a low-carbon future.”

Read more.

Canadians: Go Vote!

vote sign
vote!

People in Hong Kong are currently in the streets fighting for a small amount of democracy, and similar struggles exist around the world. In too many places the concept of democracy is under attack and if you live in a country in which democracy is strong it still requires you to show up. Today, Canadians get to vote in their democracy.

If you’re a Canadian then you should get out there and vote today (if you haven’t already). Most political parties are trying to make the future better while one party is actively trying to make the country a worse place. Readers of this blog know that there are issues in this world that need to be addressed now. I encourage you to vote with growing inequity and the climate crisis in mind.

Here are the voting hours for each time zone. All times are local.

Newfoundland — 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Atlantic — 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Eastern — 9:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Central — 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Mountain — 7:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Pacific — 7 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Green PAC’s list of ecologically conscious candidates.
Evidence for Democracy survey results of parties.
CBC election day – what you need to know

Remember democracy doesn’t end at the ballot box, it merely begins there.

Go vote!

Cli-Fi is the new Sci-Fi

books

If you want to understand current anxieties about the future then all you need to do is turn to science-fiction, and historically this has been true. Sci-Fi isn’t a way to predict the future but it is a way to understand what we think about the current state of humanity. Unsurprisingly, there is so much stress about the climate crisis that enough writers have created a new subgenre called climate fiction. Cli-Fi captures the anxiety we’re collectively experiencing about the environment while also being a useful teaching tool.

Atwood has become a major figure across the cli-fi literary universe. She not only helped the term catch on when she tweeted it in 2012, but her 2013 novel MaddAddam has been a popular teaching tool which largely summarizes the need for the genre in the first place. The book tells the story of a group of environmentalists, known as the gardeners, who rebuild the world after a global pandemic. The novel shows how fragile our global systems are. “People need such stories, because however dark, a darkness with voices in it is better than a silent void,” Atwood writes. The book was part of the curriculum for a course on cli-fi at Brandeis University in 2015.

Another notable book in the genre is Omar El-Akkad’s The American War. The book was listed as required reading in a 2018 freshman-level course entitled “Narrating Climate Change” at New York University. The 2017 novel is set in America’s second civil war when southern states defy a law that outlaws the use of fossil fuels. The book is told through the lens of Sarat Chestnutt, who is from Louisiana and is displaced by the rising waters of the Mississippi River. El-Akkad shows the life of an American climate refugee.

Read more.