Canada

OCAP Promo Video.

OCAP Action on September 26:
Raise the Rates! Mass Panhandle!
11:30 A.M. METRO PARK
(Queen and Church)

City-Wide Demonstration converging @ Queen's Park
2 P.M.

On Wednesday, September 26, a broad coalition of community
organizations, trade unions, health providers and low income people will be challenging Queen's Park to increase social assistance by 40%, raise the minimum wage, build affordable and accessible housing, and implement a Don't Ask-Don't Tell policy .

There will be a rally at the Ontario Legislature under the name of ˜Toronto Anti Poverty". Many of the organizations participating in the event, will hold their own actions on that day before marching on the Legislature for the united event.

For more information about the Day of Action HERE.

from the Montreal Mirror.

by Christopher Hazou

Twenty-five years ago this week, the Israeli army surrounded the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut and sent in their Christian Phalangist allies. Over the next two days, between 800 and 2,000 Palestinian civilians were butchered in a scene of carnage that shocked much of the world.

This Saturday, Sept. 22, at 1 p.m., the Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine commemorates this sombre anniversary by protesting outside of the Indigo bookstore downtown (corner Ste-Catherine and McGill College), where they will call on Chapters/Indigo majority shareholder Heather Reisman and her husband Gerry Schwartz to end their support of so-called “lone sol-diers”—young Jews who emigrate to Israel alone to join the military.

“This is about direct support to the Israeli army,” says Ehab Lotayef, a member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, another participating group. “The history of the Israeli army and what it represents is not consistent with the educational message that their bookstores should be advocating.”

It will be the 25th such protest against Chapters/Indigo in Montreal since they began in December, with similar demonstrations taking place in Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria and Winnipeg. For more info, visit www.cjpp.org

An excellent article from THIS magazine concerning the growing national campaign to boycott Chapters/Indigo bookstore due to the support for the Israeli military from the company majority shareholders Heather Reisman & Gerry Schwartz...

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Full Article at: This Magazine.

Imagination. Creativity. Inspiration. Three words to stir the soul crown the towering windows of Toronto’s flagship Indigo bookstore. At ground level, shoppers pass in and out of wood-framed glass doors, navigating planters and benches intended to create a friendly, front-porch sort of welcome. They take little notice as, on the sidewalk beyond, two women unfurl an off-white canvas banner. Printed on one side are another three words, less poetic perhaps than the store’s motto, but the intended effect is just as moving: Boycott Chapters/ Indigo.

No, the protest is not a last-ditch attempt by independent booksellers to draw the literate back into their fold. Rather, the activists—11 have turned up on this Friday in April, the first truly warm day of spring—are taking a page from a much larger book. They are members of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), a network of Palestinian rights, Jewish peace and socialist groups doing their part to promote an international boycott campaign against Israel. They compare themselves to the early voices against South African apartheid, and history, they believe, can repeat itself: If international pressure could help rescue South Africa from apartheid, the same can be true for Israel.

Toronto Star Editorial: "Particularly troubling is the 'right to self-determination' in article 3. Notwithstanding last-minute changes to the declaration that purport to protect the territorial integrity of existing states, could this phrase go beyond encouraging legitimate aspirations for native self-government and empower full-blown secessionist movements? Based on the declaration, it's hard to tell. That's worrisome."

Murray Dobbin has a fun piece where he compares Tom D'Aquino of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives to Iran's Grand Ayatollah. The role, it turns out, is not dissimilar.

Listen / Download HERE.

This edition of Radio Tadamon! brings you to the streets, from the ongoing demonstrations throughout Canada calling for a boycott of Indigo/Chapters bookstores due to their support for Israel, to the major demonstrations in Montabello, Quebec surrounding the North American trilateral summit in August 2007.

I just transcribed these remarks by Gord Hill in this interview for a story, and thought they might be worth posting. The whole interview is worth listening to.

An op/ed from Steve Anderson, published a little late, but it's relevant nonetheless.

by Steve Anderson

Several major media mergers are threatening to make the Canadian media scene an even more-concentrated affair. A few examples: CTVglobemedia has inhaled CHUM (with Rogers taking the spoils), Alliance Atlantis is on the brink of becoming a part of Canwest, and Quebecor Media is poised to take over Osprey Media.

The folks at Democratic Media are asking for help in pushing the CRTC to stop the rollback of media ownership regulations.

Notes from the Tar Pits: From McMurray to MacKay
Macdonald Stainsby
June 14, 2007

Editorial by Kate Heartford defending democracy promotion & the invasion of Afghanistanin today's Ottawa Citizen.

BBC is reporting that BP is going to resume operations in Libya, thanks to political wrangling by Tony Blair. BP pulled out of Libya over 30 years ago.

When a snake is not a snake: the limbless lizard.

Phil Fontaine, who is about as un-radical as it gets:

"The number of First Nations children today who have been removed from families and placed into state care is now three times the number of children that were in residential schools at the height of this terrible experience.

Akwesasne/Kahnawake, Mohawk Territory; March 5, 2007 -- A Mohawk woman from the Akwesasne Community remains in hiding, defying an arrest warrant from the Superior Court of Ontario in Cornwall.

"Katenies" (whose Mohawk name means "she changes things around") refused to appear in court on customs and border violations this past January 18, 2007. Instead, she served her own "Motion to Dismiss," questioning the jurisdiction of the courts and border officials over sovereign Mohawk peoples and their land.

Katenies is a mother and grandmother -- her third grandchild was born just 5 days ago on February 28 -- and a researcher with Mohawk Nation News.

Iraq in Fragments, James Longley's three year project, is a beautiful, poignant document that brings the viewer in for a close look at Iraq and it's people.

Coming soon to Calgary, Toronto, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Ottawa, the Peg, and more.

The Globe notes in passing that Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Canada's old Chief Electoral Officer, is off to join the International Federation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

Dominion contributor Anthony Fenton has done a fair bit of work exposing IFES and its role in the overthrow of Haitian democracy. A little background:

IFES successfully co-opted human rights groups, lawyers, and journalists, and "set the groundwork" for the creation of the Group of 184 business-led political opposition to Aristide.

Legendary Haitian organizer, grandmother, folksinger and former political prisoner Annette "So Ann" Auguste was in Montreal this week. Cafe Toc Toc was packed last night for her appearance there, where Dominion contributor Isabel Macdonald's short documentary film, "Our Arms do Not Kill," an investigation into the role of the UN military occupation of Haiti, was also shown, and members of Kalmunity performed.

The Montreal Mirror covered So Ann's visit in their last issue. In a press conference on Monday, So Ann said that Canada was to blame for her imprisonment without trial. During her 800+ days in jail, Paul Martin visited Haiti and claimed that "there are no political prisoners in Haiti", and CIDA provided funding for NCHR and other organizations that took the lead in building bogus cases against So Ann and hundreds of other political prisoners. Many remain imprisoned.