Blogs

Stan Goff tries to introduce the "netroots" to the idea of orientalism, and then suggest that they might be participating in that.

A film report produced by journalist Stefan Christoff
& Kodao Productions Inc. in Manila.

Watch film report on CURRENT TV.

A cultural benefit event for Tadamon! Montreal...

Friday, September 7th, 8pm
La Sala Rossa
4848 St. Laurent
Montreal.
Entrance: $5-15

Tadamon!

* Montreal Launch of the film ‘Roads Through Palestine’:

Screening / Launch of a film by Brett Story, with a piano score composed by Stefan Christoff. A cinematic journey through the roads of occupation and resistance in the West Bank of Palestine.

Including performances from.

[Andrea from People's Global Action picked up the CoC's petitions at the anti-SPP demonstration and decided to make a few points while offering to deliver them.]

Dear Maude and Staff at the Council of Canadians,

I just wanted to write to let you know that the 10,000 petitions you delivered with great fanfare to the gates of the Chateau Montebello last week are safe. You know, the ones in the three clear plastic bins with the blue lids. The ones featured in that photo on your website ( www.canadians.org).

Government urged to end Native blockade near Sharbot Lake. Doreen Davis, Chief of the Shabot Obaadjiwan Algonquin Nation, states "To come in here and force us out of here when we're standing on our Algonquin land puts us in a position of being at war."

Aid not reaching Afghan hospital: Senlis council reports that "Canadian aid efforts in Kandahar province are failing utterly while the Taliban is increasingly winning support in the southern region where Canadian troops are based... We could not find evidence of CIDA's work or CIDA-funded work at the hospital. We were not able to find the maternity project, or evidence of the $5 million that CIDA says it has given..."

Chileans take to streets in anger at regime: "Yesterday's protest comes after weeks of labour action, including strikes by poultry workers in southern Chile and copper miners in the north. Union leaders called the demonstrations to protest against the government's "neo-liberal" economic policies and to further the national debate about the country's minimum wage."

How to steal votes in Guatemala: Citizens warn that certain parties have a detailled system of vote rigging.

US union leaders push back against proposed free trade agreement with Colombia.

Flaherty on Two Years Post Katrina.

More electoral violence and assasinations in Guatemala. Police prepare to "reinforce" 60 municipalities where violence is expected during voting. Elections are September 9th.

Much has already been written about the now front-page story of police provocateurs captured in a video posted on Youtube. The scandal has managed to cleanly separate the story of the protest from the story of the SPP itself, but it is definitely an unlikely story to have become front-page news.

The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan took advantage of subprime/subcrime to the tune of $60,000,000.

BC: Demonstrators including members of Tahltan and Iskut First Nations blockaded a road in the Northwest of the province "preventing Royal Dutch Shell PLC crews from heading into a contested region to do road repair work and reigniting a debate over coal bed methane exploration in the area..."

Canadian Energy and Paperworkers Union leader David Cole physically outs a police provocateur dressed as a black bloc protestor in front of news cameras in Montebello. [Update: Canadian Press report here]

SQ and OPP police protect the dead from the living for 7 hours on Monday.

Photo: IMC Montebello

The tear gassing appears to have started around 5:30 PM. By that time, much of the corporate media had left Montebello, and many of the demonstrators had left for Ottawa and Montreal.

‘They’re going to wait for the media to leave before they start to clear the demonstrators,’ my friend Kabir had remarked 20 minutes before. It ended up being a dead-on prediction.

Mexico: Broken Ballot Boxes: The Fine Art of Bad Elections

Canada: The Cases of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr: Canada's Disgrace

Guatemala: National Human Rights ombudsperson receives death threats.

-Mining Related-

China: 181 miners feared dead, families pressured not to protest.

The Liberal party, currently the confused chameleon of the Canadian political scene, is attempting to brand itself as an ardent critic of the secretive Security and Prosperity Partnership.

USA: Diebold Inc, maker of voting machines that counted more than 80% of the votes in the US elections in 2004, are having a hard time hawking their product, renamed "Premier Election Solution." Diebold promised Republicans in 2003 that they were committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year," allegations of fraud and tampering abound.

[lifted from Upside Down World]

Port au Prince, Haiti
Contacts: Eugenia Charles and Jacob François
Phone 011-509-698-8134, 011-509-448-3672

Our international human rights delegation seeks the safe return of Lovinsky Pierre Antoine. A long-time defender of human rights and advocate of the poor, Lovinsky Pierre Antoine has not been seen since 10:00 pm Sunday, August 12, 2007. Our delegation has made numerous attempts to contact him but thus far has been unsuccessful.

Roger Annis is in Haiti, posting regular reports on human rights issues on the Toronto Haiti Action Committee web site.

Guatemala: Candidates for Encuentro por Guatemala, the leftist party for which Rigoberta Menchu is presidential candidate, have been the primary victims of armed attacks over the last week. Since last Monday, one party member has been killed and four injured in armed attacks. Elections are September 9th.

Vying for leadership, Lula heads north, Chávez south: Venezuelan oil, or US/Brazilian ethanol?

Coal mining and coal bed methane, BC to Montana: Environmental standards? What standards. We can roll the standards into mine start up... Get with the times, people!

Alberta: A strike at the patch?

Michael Ignatieff has published an apology for his apologia for the US invaston of Iraq.

From Al Jazeera: 'Civilians dead' in Nato air raids in Afghanistan.

John Pilger: The Invisible Government lecture delivered a few weeks ago.

Photo from the tyee.

Beware Europeans bearing gifts from bilaterals.org: after the emerging disaster of CAFTA, Central American countries recently launched into a new round of trade negotiations, this time with the European Union.

Ahni at Intercontinental Cry has this month's roundup of coverage of indigenous struggles around the world.

Miners digging rebates details the large subsidies that Québec is giving to mining exploration companies. Mongolia comes up again, as in "Quebec's stance is in marked contrast to Mongolia, where a windfall profits tax for mining companies has been introduced... Canadian mining companies had been active in Mongolia, with Canada second only to China in terms of foreign investment, almost all of it in the mining sector."

The BBC is reporting that the World Bank has announced a $178 million dollar loan to the D.R. Congo to repair 1,700km of electric cables "to increase power for the mining sector."

Nevermind that only 6% of people in the DRC have access to electricity, the mining industry needs another massive subsidy.

Drummond cleared of paramilitary links. Stevenson Avila, Sintramienergetica president states "We knew this was becoming a question of state policy, and that America protects its companies, but we held out hope that presenting real, documented evidence of the company's responsibility, that justice would be served."

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.

VBS.tv has a surprisingly good documentary series about the tar sands, watchable online. It rings true with the experiences I had in Fort McMurray--in fact, it's uncanny how many of the exchanges with workers are almost identical... only we didn't have a camera running the whole time.

[Received via email]

by Paula LaPierre

In Response to “Our natives must evolve into an economic force in Canada”, The Ottawa Citizen, published: Friday, July 06, 2007, by Fred Maroun of Ottawa, Re: “Turning guilt into billions of dollars”, July 1, and “We can't keep native communities on life-support forever”, June 29.

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.

Citizens protest the meeting of Canadian Prime Minister and Barrick

Two hours late and in the presence of a huge security entourage that included guards, police and special forces, Stephen Harper arrived at the offices of Barrick Gold and entered through the parking area, in order to avoid the peoples’ protest that started at 8:00 am at the entrance to the building.