- Komagata Maru and the Politics of Apologies
- US Admits Detaining 7 Year Old Child for 5 Years
- Who Will Crash the Democratic and Republican Conventions?
- The Anarchists are Coming: Media Scare Tactics Unfounded
- Reinventing the Evil Empire
- Will "Oil Sands" Tar Olympic Games?
- Alberta: Two-Mouthed Fish, Rare Cancers, Environmentalists Walk
- Canadian Activist: Games are Time to Talk Tibet
- Iowa Town Turned into “Open-Air Prison”
- A Protesters Guide to "Less-Lethal" Police Weaponry
- "You Should Hate Us"
- A First in BC: Foreign Farm Workers Unionize
Mostly Water News
A selection of 'Canadian' and International News
Updated: 1 day 14 hours ago
Komagata Maru and the Politics of Apologies
By Harsha Walia - August 25, 2008
In the past few weeks, much has been written about Prime Minister Stephen Harper's so-called apology regarding the Komagata Maru incident...Many South Asian-Canadians have expressed that the racist discrimination inherent to the Komagata Maru incident in 1914 is being enacted today in the treatment of the community as second-class citizens who are not considered worthy of a full apology by the Conservative government.
US Admits Detaining 7 Year Old Child for 5 Years
Dr. Siddiqui is a Pakistani national, physician, mother of three young children, one in US detention since 2003. She was kidnapped five years ago in Pakistan and is obviously a victim of horrendous torture at Bagram AFB.
Who Will Crash the Democratic and Republican Conventions?
By Michael Gould-Wartofsky - August 24, 2008
From September 1-4, the [Republican National Convention] will be besieged by a panoply of protesters...At the frontlines will be America's young dissidents who will walk out of class, lock down intersections and dance in the streets...The view from Denver at the Democratic National Convention at the end of August will look a little different. That's because in the age of Obama many of these same movements, so united against the RNC, are deeply conflicted over the Democrats and the party system itself -- perhaps none more so than the youth movement.
The Anarchists are Coming: Media Scare Tactics Unfounded
By Andy Birkey , Minnesota Independent
With the Twin Cities set to host massive protests, an influx of media and thousands of Republicans and supporters, local corporate media are looking to fuel fears that things could get out of control. One activist group being targeted -- they say, unfairly -- is anarchists. They state that their plans do not include violence and that both their message and tactics are willfully misunderstood.
Reinventing the Evil Empire
America v. Russia. Today the stakes are bigger than ever and so are the risks.
Will "Oil Sands" Tar Olympic Games?
The Edmonton Journal
Canadian officials surveying the Beijing Olympics must be paying special attention to the myriad protests and criticisms -- some overdrawn and overwrought -- that have dogged China before and during the Games. If they are wise, our observers should fight the temptation to feel smugly superior.
Alberta: Two-Mouthed Fish, Rare Cancers, Environmentalists Walk
A mutant fish with two mouths was caught in northern Alberta, near the Canadian province's Athabasca oil sands...
Small community near Alberta [tar sands] has disproportionate number of bile duct disease...
[...T]hree environmental groups abandoned a nine year-old effort [August 19] to negotiate environmental responsibility in the [tar sands] region.
Canadian Activist: Games are Time to Talk Tibet
By Derrick O'Keefe and Melanie Raoul - Znet
David Emerson, Canada's foreign minister, attended the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games and made it clear that he felt that this was not the appropriate time to talk about human rights, "We're no shrinking violet on [the human rights] issue but we don't see the Olympics as the venue to make that point"...Perhaps Emerson was concerned that the world would be impolite about Canada's human rights record when Vancouver hosts the 2010 Winter Games.
Iowa Town Turned into “Open-Air Prison”
Wives of Men Arrested in Largest Immigration Raid in US History Forbidden to Work...or Leave.
A Protesters Guide to "Less-Lethal" Police Weaponry
Excited Delerium
The government just loves technology. They always assume that every problem—whether social, martial, economic, or ecological—is just waiting for some magic device to solve it. This is a weakness of theirs.
"You Should Hate Us"
By Robert Jensen - August 10, 2008
One of the common refrains I heard from progressive people in Pakistan and India during my month there this summer was, "We love the American people -- it's the policies of your government we don't like"..."You shouldn't love the American people," I started saying. "You should hate us -- we're the enemy"...[T]he stakes today are too high for those of us in the United States to accept these kinds of reassuring platitudes about hating-the-policy but loving-the-people of an imperial state. It is long past time that we the people of the United States started holding ourselves responsible for the crimes our government perpetrates around the world.
A First in BC: Foreign Farm Workers Unionize
By Tom Sandborn - August 21, 2008
For the first time, foreign workers imported to pick B.C. crops have been allowed to join a union...Migrant workers at Greenway Farms in Surrey have voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) of Canada. The historic certification was granted with the support of more than 75 per cent of the roughly 40 affected workers. Never before had B.C.'s Labour Relations Board approved a union to represent [migrant] workers...
Are You Ready for Nuclear War?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - August 19, 2008
The Republicans will get us into more wars. Indeed, they live for war. [Republican Presidential candidate John] McCain is preaching war for 100 years. For these warmongers, it is like cheering for your home team. Win at all costs. They get a vicarious pleasure out of war. If the US has to tell lies in order to attack countries, what’s wrong with that? “If we don’t kill them over there, they will kill us over here”...The mindlessness is total...The US government’s insane hegemonic foreign policy is a direct threat to life on the planet.
Ottawa Aims to Put its Stamp on 2010 Games
By ROBERT MATAS - Friday, August 22, 2008
Vancouver opening ceremony must help Harper government
"achieve its domestic and international branding goals," memo says.
Call for Solidarity with the Wood Squat in Guelph
Earlier this week, the pigs & the city of Guelph issued an ultimatum to us - leave your home or face a violent eviction. We have been living on abandoned prison land for the past year & when the pigs come to enforce the eviction Monday August 25th, we will all be left homeless & the connection with the land we have been building will be severed.
Guelph Wood Squat Threatened with Eviction
Nicole Visschedyk | Mercury Staff
City serves notice
Young people living off the grid instructed to move elsewhere.
"Peace Mom" v. "Guardian of Power"
Challenging entrenched power in Congress.
Credit both titles to the book authors. Cindy Sheehan as a mother, peace activist, and now candidate to succeed Nancy Pelosi in California's Eighth Congressional District. Pelosi as both "guardian" and possessor of what Davids Cromwell and Edwards wrote about in their powerful critique of the media.
Antiwar Activists Win $2 Million Settlement From New York City
Major Victory for Free Speech Rights
August 19, 2008, New York – A group of 52 local activists today announced a $2 million settlement in their lawsuit against the City of New York. The activists were illegally arrested on April 7, 2003 while protesting against the Iraq war in front of a military contractor's offices in midtown.
Peru Suspends Civil Liberties as Indigenous Struggle for Their Land
Oread Daily
The government of Peru suspended civil liberties following clashes between indigenous Peruvians and police. The action is taking place in remote jungle regions where Indian groups are blocking highways and oil and gas installations. The recently signed Free Trade Agreement with the United States and a number of draft laws in the legislature all allow for the easy commercial exploitation of indigenous territories.
Bush's Mouthpiece in Canada
By Jim Miles - Znet
For [Canadian Prime Minister Stephen] Harper to say that he is deeply troubled "that Russia somehow has a say or control over countries outside of its borders" is absolute garbage...Look at how the Americans act, always intervening in "countries outside their borders" either through military action, CIA intervention, or through supposed NGOs such as the [US-] federally funded National Endowment for Democracy. And then Harper needs to look closer to home, at how Canadian resources under NAFTA have been sold downstream to the Americans...and then consider Canadian troops in Afghanistan helping the Americans with their overall plans to secure those resource supplies.