Today was an international day of action against Toronto's Barrick Gold, said to be the largest gold mining company in the world. Here's one activist with a concise summary:

Estonia isn't in the news much, but after the government decided to implement a controversial law to move a Soviet memorial to soldiers who died fighting the Nazis, and unearth the bodies of several soldiers buried near the monument--which is referred to in the Estonian press simply as pronkssõdur, or bronze soldier--an international furor has ensued, with German, US, Russian and other governments weighing in.

The Stanley Cup is in Afghanistan, visiting the troops. And helping fight off the hordes of the east, specifically Persia, no doubt.

A Tiny Revolution continues to combine worldly political savvy with a sharp sense of humour.

Upon hearing that Nicholas Sarkozy's Montreal office had been vandalized, I couldn't help but bike over and snap a few photos. They didn't seem to be in much of a hurry to clean things up; they hadn't even taken down the sheets of paper that had been pasted to the window.

Some of the slogans: Sarkozy, sacre ton camp d'ici; Ni en France ni au Canada: pas de patrie pour les fachos; Lutte sans frontière contre le fascisme.

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion celebrates the anniversary of the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians (the UN says 711,000) from their homes, cities and villages that marked the founding of the state of Israel. And he dances the Hora, which would be more amusing in a different context.

So. It's been determined that Canada was sending Afghani POWs to be tortured. If true, it means that Canadian officers are guilty of war crimes.

But its also the case that Canadian soldiers are directly engaged in combat operations, undoubtedly resulting in civilian deaths. Which there is no doubt information about, but it's not available. The press seems content to repeat claims that "40 Taliban were killed" in fighting, and so on.

I've just published a new article about the UN's propaganda machine in Haiti and the way it has been misrepresenting its humanitarian work in the country. The article deals with the mass arrests in February in Cite Soleil and the photo ops and lies that followed each phase of these arrests. These lies continue to this day via the UN News Service and were unexamined by Canadian journalist Jean-Michel Leprince (Radio-Canada) when he was embedded with MINUSTAH in February during these missions. To read the article, go to Montreal Serai Magazine.

When in Haiti recently, I conducted an extensive interview with Mario Joseph, the head lawyer of the Bureau des avocats internationaux, the only legal firm working on the tens of thousands of human rights violations that preceeded and followed the Feb 29th, 2007 coup d'etat. In the interview, Mario discusses the impact of the coup on the justice system, the struggle to rebuild the rule of law, the thorny problem of MINUSTAH, the continued problem of foreign (including Canadian) hypocrisy and more.

Bill Moyers' documentary about "how the media got it so wrong on Iraq" will apparently be available to view on the PBS web site after it is broadcast tonight.

I would imagine it will have some relevance to contemporary coverage of, say, Afghanistan.

Justin Podur takes issue with the comments of Denis Rancourt, whom I recently interviewed.

Early descriptions of Mark Mackinnon's new book, The New Cold War received a skeptical reaction from this corner -- to say the least -- and Stefan Christoff's and my critique of his coverage in Lebanon resulted in a bit of a scrap via email.