Anthony Fenton shares his impressions from a ten-day trip to post-coup Haiti

"Clerk Fatigue," by Heather Meek

The US is using a new approach to sidestep developing countries' unified demands

Last September saw the spectacular collapse of World Trade Organization treaty talks in Cancun, Mexico. Joseph Stiglitz, former Chair of Clinton's council of economic advisors and Nobel Prize winner described the talks as "the usual: hard bargaining, extreme positions, last-minute concessions, arm twisting, peer pressure, tacit threats of cutting off development assistance and other benefits, and secret meetings among a small number of participants are all designed to extract concessions from the weakest".

by Yuill Herbert

On March 10th, a man calling himself Joshua Murray was arrested for shoplifting in a Victoria Canadian Tire outlet. According to police, fingerprints identified him as Tre Arrow, an Oregon environmental activist listed on the FBI's most wanted list with a reward of $25 000 for information leading to his arrest.
- by Dru Oja Jay -

When I talk to my new friend Tom, we're not just talking-- we're metatalking. When I ask him how he's enjoying the weather, he tells me he is not enjoying it at all because it has too many future tenses. "Will it rain?" he asks me. Then answers himself, "In the afternoon it may begin to rain." "It will soon be raining."
- by Linda Besner -

OCAP's John Clarke on the "Queen's Park Riot" and the changing rules of class warfare

[From a talk given by John Clarke in Halifax last December, at a public discussion on the criminalization of dissent.]

If we're talking about the criminalization of dissent, the first thing that must occur to us when we look at those kinds of examples is that we live in an insane world, where people who go out and challenge injustice are the ones who must defend themselves from the charge of being criminals.

When we marched on the Legislature, back in Toronto, we were aware that so far that year, 22 homeless people had died on the streets of Toronto. When it comes to the crimes of the G7, even the known ones would fill volumes. Those that we don't know about would probably fill volumes more.

To say that anyone who stands up against such acts of theft and murder and violence - and fights back against them - must defend themselves from the charge of being criminal is astounding, and insane. We should keep that in mind.

David Fuenmayor reports on Venezuela's deep political divide, US intervention, and issues surrounding a potential referendum.

"Neighbour," by Heather Meek

Geoff Berner has played in a punk band. Geoff Berner has written for Sesame Street. Geoff Berner plays the accordion and prefers to drink scotch out of a wine glass. The canuck's latest release, We Shall Not Flag or Fail, We Shall Go on to the End, has quickly gotten the attention of campus radio stations across North America and Europe. The record features his trademark stew of diverse and previously incompatible styles.
- by Henry Svec -

The Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI), launched at the end of last year, is a common vision for the largest conservation agreement in the world. It proposes a plan to protect approximately 265 million hectares of forest and to manage a further area of equal size according to stringent ecological standards of development.
- by Yuill Herbert -

Less than a decade after the end of Apartheid in South Africa, popular resistance movements are growing again. This time, the enemy is privatization.

"Snow," by Heather Meek

I recently had the misfortune to watch a man die on the street.

One result of this experience is that I started thinking about Ernest Hemingway. In the early pages of Death in the Afternoon, his famous journalistic account of the bullfights in Spain, Hemingway explains why he wrote it: "I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all, and the most fundamental, is violent death."

by Matthew Trafford

In a surprise announcement on January 22nd, Citigroup signaled its intention to adopt a comprehensive environmental policy that even the company's staunchest critics are calling "the most significant environmental commitment to date in the financial services sector."

- by Ted Rutland -