Critic slams role of Canada in Haiti
Straight Talk By Matthew Burrows
Publish Date: September 27, 2007
http://www.straight.com/article-111607/critic-slams-role-of-canada-in-haiti
When it comes to assisting Haiti, the Canadian government is part of the problem rather than the solution, according to Vancouver resident Roger Annis, who was part of a human-rights delegation in Haiti in August.
"What we learned is that what the Canadian government is doing is not helping in Haiti," Annis, a member of the Canada-Haiti Action Network, said on September 25 during a slide show at the Maritime Labour Centre for members of the Vancouver and District Labour Council. (Today September 27, Annis will speak at SFU Harbour Centre at 7 p.m.)

Communiqué from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation.

Mexico, September 22, 2007

To the People of Mexico:
To the adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:

Brothers and Sisters:
Compañeros and Compañeras:
The EZLN communicates to you the following reflections and decisions we have made:

I. Reflections

Harold Carmichael, Sudbury Star

Five years after the inquest into the death of Kimberly Rogers, Greater Sudbury's Justice With Dignity Committee says it is still waiting for serious action to increase Ontario's social assistance rates.

So, what better time to renew the call for rates to be hiked than during a political election?

"At this point, we are not endorsing any political party, but we are calling on the parties to raise the rates," said Laurie McGauley, committee chairwoman, following a press conference Wednesday at St. Andrew's Place.

from http://www.turbulence.org.uk/worldsinmotion.html

The Free Association

‘People have been saying for some time that what the movement needs are some real victories. But – it’s a strange but frequent phenomenon – when movements finally win them, they often go unnoticed.’

Ding Dong! The Witch is dead… The Wicked Witch is dead! With the irrecoverable collapse of the latest round of trade talks, the WTO appears to be effectively defunct. The cycle of anti-summit protests of the turn of the century and beyond, and the social movements that formed around them, played a vital role in killing it off. Yet there hasn’t been a general affect of victory. In fact you could even say the opposite: the ‘we are winning’ sentiment of the couple of years following Seattle has disappeared and been replaced by, at best, head-scratching and soul-searching. More a case of WTF than WTO…

ZNet | Race

by Jordan Flaherty; September 21, 2007

Six courageous families in the small Louisiana town of Jena sent out a call for justice that has now been amplified around the world. Yesterday's mass protests in Jena were unlike anything I have seen in my life, a beautiful and enormous outpouring of energy and outrage that may have the potential to ignite a movement.

The basic facts of the case are by now widely known. In this 85% white town, where the high school yard was segregated by race, a Black student asked to sit under a tree that had been reserved for white students only. The next day, three nooses hung from the tree. The white students who hung the nooses received only a mnor punishment, and more importantly, no one in the white power structure of LaSalle Parish, where Jena is located, seemed to take the nooses seriously as racial incident. There were no lectures to the students on the meaning of the nooses, or the legacy of racism, slavery and Jim Crow in the rural south. Instead, the Parish's district attorney told protesting Black students that he could take away their lives, "with a stroke of my pen." He then proceeded to attempt to do just that, charging six students with attempted murder after a schoolyard fight later that year.

It is Being Reported that People from the Town of Nuevo Gracias a Dios are Buying High-Powered Weapons; The Town of 24 de Diciembre is Surrounded by Police and Paramilitary Apprentices

By Hermann Bellinghausen, La Jornada, September 21, 2007, Narco News

Autonomous Municipality of San Pedro de Michoacán, Chiapas. September 17, 2007: If what the Union of Forest Landowners (UES, in its Spanish initials) has been saying in their coming and going from Cruz del Rosario and Nuevo Momón to the settlement of Nuevo Gracias a Dios (recently built on lands that support bases of the EZLN from the town of 24 de Diciembre recently regained) is true, this coming October 8 they will start the evacuation of the Zapatista community, with support, they say, of the sector police, who has been camping on the opposite end of the Zapatista grounds.

by Kolya Abramsky, From Zapagringo

The Zapatistas have called for a Third Intergalactica to take place, “from below and to the left”. This call follows two previous Zapatista Intergalacticas, self-organized international gatherings of several thousand people aimed at weaving a global network of grassroots struggles. The invitations to participate in these meetings were humourously extended to participants throughout the galaxy, hence the name. The first took place in 1996 in Chiapas, and the second in the Spanish state the following year. The first two Intergalacticas had a profound effect on inspiring, galvanizing and even giving some organizational form to a major new circulation of global struggles, which we have witnessed in the last decade. There are many good reasons to believe that the new process of global convergence and resistance called for by the Zapatista’s 6th Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, issued through collective discussion in the Zapatista communities in the summer of 2005, could have a similarly important inspirational and catalytic effect in creating a space in which the next stages of global resistance can take shape and collectively organize themselves.

SHORT ONTARIO COALITION AGAINST POVERTY VIDEO:

September 26th: Day of Action Against Poverty
Raise the Rates Feeder March....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXMgFBd5a38

A Movement from Below: Words for the Day of Action Against Poverty on September 26

On Wednesday, September 19, 2007, 75 Toronto residents and activists
gathered at Central Neighbourhood House to listen to Toronto
Anti-Poverty members speak about why they will be in the streets next

Shawn Brant
Another case of Canada's political persecution of indigenous people
by Justin Podur
September 19, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID;=13830
On August 30, about two weeks before Canada became one of only four countries to vote against a UN declaration on indigenous rights, Tyendinaga Mohawk father and activist, Shawn Brant was released from Quinte Detention Centre on bail. Bail had been denied him twice before, when he first turned himself in on July 5th and again after a bail-review hearing on August 10th. The conditions of his bail were restrictive. $50,000 cash bond with another $50,000 surety, 30-day house arrest, curfew, no protests, and above all, no returning to the struggle for the Mohawk territory the government hoped to disrupt by putting him in jail in the first place. His trial will take place some time in 2008. He is to stand trial on 9 charges having to do with two blockades, one that occurred in April 2007 and the other in June 2007, including 6 charges of indictable mischief (for which the maximum penalty is 10 years in prison), and 3 charges of breach of bail. His actual crime, for which he is being persecuted, is being an articulate and militant spokesperson for his community and indigenous struggles in Canada more generally.

ZNet | Canada

by Jim Miles; September 18, 2007

NATO has recently had one of its regular meetings of the “Military Committee” in Victoria, B.C., Canada, with appropriate demonstrations against it for Canada’s role within NATO and Afghanistan. Phil Lyons, the organizer of the demonstration, which ended peacefully, says "NATO is now a weapon of American Imperialists." Another demonstrator asks, “I don’t understand why NATO exists,” then answers his own question, perhaps without realizing it, that "NATO is a war tool the West uses to intimidate other nations into submission." 1

From Occupied Afghanistan: Accounts of a Fact-Finding Mission
Interview by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan
by Mike Skinner and Hamayon Rag
Global Research, September 18, 2007
Mike Skinner and Hamayon Ragstar spent one and three months, respectively, in Afghanistan in the late spring/summer of 2007 on a fact-finding trip investigating how the Canadian and International mission is affecting Afghan civilian life.
Below is the edited transcript of an hour-long interview conducted in Toronto by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan about their reflections and conclusions coming out of the fact-finding mission.
Q: To begin, what was the objective of this trip you undertook to Afghanistan, what were you hoping to investigate?
Mike Skinner: The principal objective was to do an activist documentary film that asks Afghans what they think of the international intervention. We really wanted to listen to Afghans who don’t get heard in the West- workers we listened to people on the street, and we listened to students in the university and in teachers college, shopkeepers, and teachers. That was really the intent, to hear Afghans who don’t get heard.

Communiqué from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation, Mexico

September 16, 2007

To the People of Mexico:

To the Adherents of the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign:

Brothers and Sisters:

Compañeros and Compañeras:

On this new anniversary of the struggle for the first independence of Mexico, the EZLN communicates the following:

from http://www.turbulence.org.uk/anewweatherfront.html

Last year was the year that the world woke up to the prospect of catastrophic climate change. The debate about the future of life on Earth changed, from a few scientists and eco-radicals predicting doom to politicians and corporations proclaiming a need for action – even ‘radical’ action. Paul Sumburn assesses this new landscape

After years of drawing attention to the facts of climate change, suddenly the issue is everywhere, and everyone, it seems, is calling for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In some senses this is a rare victory, a response both to the pressure of activists and the scientific consensus channelled powerfully by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But, of course, some see the potential to expand the sphere of capital’s influence: most mainstream talk is of market-friendly technological solutions, ‘carbon trading’ and oil companies dabbling in renewable energy.

Written by Raúl Zibechi, Friday, 24 August 2007
Source: Americas Program, Translated by Maria Roof

The largest social movement on the continent, and one of the most important in the world, held its 5th Congress in mid-June 2007 in Brasilia. Despite successful mobilization of masses of people and significant media impact, under Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's government the movement faces strong challenges to activate its base against new enemies, such as agribusiness.

from http://gipfelsoli.org/Home/Heiligendamm_2007/Texte_danach/4090.html

This text provides a tactical analysis of the most crucial operation of the week of protests against the G8 in Germany: the blockades. Whilst Block G8 champions its successful mass blockades at two of the gates to Heiligendamm, the decentralised blockade concept, PAULA, seems to have vanished from the discussion. While this in itself would already be an interesting point for reflection, our interest here is neither to play one concept off against the other, nor is it to provide a deconstructive critique of each of them. Our aim is to offer a point of departure for a discussion about the effectiveness of our collective tactical operations during such direct actions as blockades so as to strengthen these in future.

Toronto Anti-Poverty Promo for Sept. 26th action.

Go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz8Hlf2QrK4

The Shock Doctrine Short Film

Go to http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/short-film

A Film by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein, directed by Jonás Cuarón.
"When I finished The Shock Doctrine, I sent it to Alfonso Cuarón because I adore his films and felt that the future he created for Children of Men was very close to the present I was seeing in disaster zones. I was hoping he would send me a quote for the book jacket and instead he pulled together this amazing team of artists -- including Jonás Cuarón who directed and edited -- to make The Shock Doctrine short film. It was one of those blessed projects where everything felt fated." - Naomi Klein

ZNet | Repression

by Jordan Flaherty; September 14, 2007

Next Monday the Fox network presents a new television show called K-Ville. Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, the show promises to highlight the heroism of New Orleans cops. Unfortunately, the true story of policing in New Orleans is unlikely to be told by Fox, or by anyone in the corporate media.

Since at least the 1950s, and shows like Dragnet, Hollywood's representation of cops has been as a thin blue line of heroes protecting the good people from the bad. The Seventies were a time of radical movements, and this brought radical criticisms of police into the mainstream, with films like Serpico and Chinatown exposing police corruption and brutality. However, the Seventies ultimately led to a new kind of hero. " Dirty Harry" played by Clint Eastwood – the cop – or, in the case of the Death Wish movies, vigilante - who was brutal and violent, but ultimately sympathetic.

ZNet | Argentina

by Marie Trigona; Monthly Review ; September 14, 2007

Nearly six years since Argentina’s worst economic crisis in 2001, both the level of popular participation in struggles and the breadth of the political spectrum have been radically transformed. There has been a resurgence of struggle inside the workplace and Argentina’s working class has turned to its historical tools for liberation: direct democracy, the strike, sabotage, and the factory takeover. Labor struggles in public hospitals, public universities, the bank sector, recuperated enterprises, and the Buenos Aires subway have resulted in new visions and victories for the country’s working class.

by Kelly Ebbels, The McGill Daily

An unlimited general student strike may be in the works this fall as Quebec student groups plan their responses to the Liberal government’s decision to unfreeze tuition.

Most students were off for the summer when the Ministry of Education announced in June that it would permit tuition to be raised $50 per semester for the next five years, to a total increase of $500 – approximately a 30 per cent increase. Tuition for Quebec residents had been frozen at $1,668 since 1994.

A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 56... September 9, 2007

John Clarke

A drastic reduction in the adequacy of income support payments is key to
the neoliberal agenda. This is especially true in a country like Canada
that had earlier seen the consolidation of a basic social infrastructure.
However much the balance is tilted in favour of the employers, employment
insurance (EI) and welfare payments limit the desperation of the unemployed
and the degree to which those with jobs can be forced to make concessions.
Massive reductions in federal EI and provincial social assistance rates
have been a focus of governments in the last fifteen years and the Mike
Harris 'Common Sense Revolution' in Ontario was a very big part of this
process.

from http://www.turbulence.org.uk/turb_g8heil_of_stones.html

I
Dear Vittorio,

The events at the end of the anti-G8 march in Rostock on Saturday 2 June, when there was an outbreak of prolonged and violent fighting between some of the demonstrators (the so-called “black block”) and the police, disturbed and challenged me. I felt critical of the violence of the black block, but also felt the need to discuss and understand. I think a lot of people on the march felt the same way – critical but wanting to talk and understand rather than condemn (there were, of course, others who simply condemned the action, but that is not my position).

During the 2007 Ontario provincial election, ask the candidates who want your vote where they stand on these issues

No tax funding for faith-based schools

The Progressive Conservative Party proposes to provide tax funding for non-Catholic faith-based schools. They say it’s an issue of fairness and will help to integrate Ontario’s increasingly diverse student population into the mainstream. We say it will provide tax money, including the taxes paid by queer people in Ontario, to finance the perpetuation of homophobia by schools controlled by the religious right. Many of the denominations that run faith-based schools view homosexuality as sinful, evil and abnormal and promote life-long celibacy for queer people who refuse to be cured. It’s bad enough that tax funding is already provided to Catholic schools, when Catholicism also promotes these views. Fairness does not require that more tax money be provided to promote homophobia and intolerance. Fairness requires that no tax funding of any amount be provided to faith-based schools, whether Catholic, other Christian denominations or other faiths.

by Linda McQuaig
September 6, 2007

It's often noted that each death of a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan erodes public support for the war. What is infrequently noted is the way, with each death, the Canadian media seems to ratchet up its support for the war.

On one level, the media's approach seems understandable. Canadians are deeply moved by these deaths, and the media accurately records this grief.

ZNet | Economy

by Naomi Klein and Kenneth Whyte; Maclean's; September 08, 2007

There's a school of thought that free markets and democracy go hand in hand and together they make people free and prosperous. You're arguing that free-market ideology has triumphed around the world not because people have embraced the market but because the ideology has been imposed on them, often in moments of distress. Furthermore, these moments of distress have sometimes been created by governments as a pretext to bring in free-market policies. To top it all off, the policies haven't really worked. They've just enriched the people who introduced them. How's that for a summary?