rabble.ca - News for the rest of us

Canada in breach of human rights obligations in Omar Khadr case

rabble staff — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:05:28 +0000

On May 21-22, 2012, the United Nations Committee against Torture will review Canada's failure to comply with its obligations under the Convention against Torture to prevent, punish and remedy the torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of Canadian Omar Khadr during his ongoing detention at Guantánamo prison.

In a report to the Committee against Torture, Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada (LRWC) and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (CLMG) state that Canada was both a direct participant and indirectly complicit in the torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Mr. Khadr by his U.S. captors.

Activist Communiqué: Open letter to the Canadian Federation of Students

Krystalline Kraus — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:54:31 +0000

The following is an open letter to the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), signed by student activists and supporters of the student movement across Canada.

Support Quebec Students by Bringing the Movement to Ontario!

To our representatives at the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and affiliated student union locals,

We the undersigned are writing to the CFS as proud student unionists and activists, as well as workers and community members who support the student movement in Canada.

We write this letter asking that the CFS engage in a consistent and serious mobilizing effort to bring the Quebec student movement to the rest of Canada.

Hill Dispatches - Message to environmental advisory body: 'Shut the fuck up!'

karl nerenberg — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:49:51 +0000

The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy has a new report out today.

That's just a couple of days day after the government revealed why it is killing the advisory body that the Progressive Conservative Mulroney government created in 1988.

The reason for this killing is simply that the current Conservative government doesn't agree with many of the Roundtable’s recommendations. That motive came out in an exchange between Liberal Leader Bob Rae and Foreign Minister John Baird in Question Period on Tuesday.

Changes to EI tighten the screws on the unemployed

Progressive Economics Forum — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:39:31 +0000

The significant changes to the Employment Insurance (EI) program which are to be quickly implemented through Budget 2012 with very little consultation have not received enough critical attention.

First, a word on what is not in the budget. It is disappointing, to say the least, that the government is failing to respond to the fact that less than 40 per cent of unemployed Canadians are now qualifying for EI, well below the already low pre-recession rate. And, for all of the talk about skills shortages in Canada, it is notable that there is NO increased investment at all in EI-supported training, which would assist unemployed workers to find good jobs.

Instead, the focus is on tightening discipline over those workers who have managed to qualify for a claim.

Canada's no-fly list: Who really controls Canadian airspace?

marar — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:53:09 +0000

I wish I could answer the above question with absolute certainty. One thing is certain: Canada is not the only decision-maker when it comes to refusing air travellers on overseas trips, and on some selected domestic flights which pass through U.S. airspace. This fact made many civil rights activists question whether Canada has lost its airspace sovereignty.

Has the Arab Spring given way to a Dark Fall?

rabble staff — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:46:34 +0000

In order to provide an intelligible understanding and analysis of the current situation in the Middle East, especially regarding Syria, it is important to briefly discuss the current Middle Eastern context within the larger frame of U.S. and European imperialism.

Throughout the last year, people all over the globe - especially on the left, the young and progressives - have been living the excitement of the achievements of the peoples in various parts of the Arab world, especially Tunisia and Egypt.

I am sure that also many of us were cheering for the NATO invasion - at the request of most members in the Arab League - which at the time we thought of as a life-saving intervention!

Concealment of Identity Law: A thinly masked attack on civil liberties?

rabble staff — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:02:03 +0000

Canadian human rights report on Colombia a 'sick joke'

MiningWatch — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:59:03 +0000

The Canadian government’s human rights report tabled in Parliament Tuesday regarding implementation of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement might as well have been a comic strip of three monkeys: "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."

Its substance is summed up in the first three pages of the 18-page report (that's counting the title page and two annexes that occupy 12 pages). In essence: there will be no human rights report this year because only nine months have passed since the agreement was implemented.

Picasso's Guernica as symbol of the peace movement

rabble staff — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:49:25 +0000

Seventy-five years ago Nazi warplanes -- aligned with Franco's Nationalists -- bombed and destroyed the Basque town of Guernica. In response, the Spanish Republican government asked Pablo Picasso to commemorate the tragedy via a mural to be exhibited at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. The large painting, the most memorable of the century, 11 feet and 6 inches by 28 feet and 8 inches, depicted the violence of the German bombardment. The attack was all the more terrifying because it demonstrated the existential significance of aerial barrage: all civilian populations would now potentially have to live in a state of emergency.

Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel channels Henny Youngman: 'Take my Opposition leader ... Please!'

djclimenhaga — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:34:31 +0000

Edmonton is going to have to deal with Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith. Got that?

Mayor Stephen Mandel rather dryly cleared that question up yesterday.

The mayor's actual words after a 30-minute closed-door meeting with Smith: "It was fine. … She's the leader of the Opposition."

Got that? OK, now we can … ummm … get down to business.

Vancouver joins international actions for Nakba Day

derrick — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:03:03 +0000

Diversity is strength: Occupy McMaster continues on

Campus Notes — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:59:51 +0000

The Occupy McMaster movement started in November 2011, when a group of McMaster students sought to stand in solidarity with the Occupy movements around the world. More than a year later Occupy McMaster continues to grow, evolving in number and activity.

Thermometer rising: Ice, methane and climate change

Christopher_Majka — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:43:58 +0000

It's true we're on the wrong track, but we're compensating for this short-coming by accelerating. – Stanislav Lec

In an article entitled Game over for the climate published in the New York Times last week, climatologist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, drew an environmental line in the sand:

Gitxsan remain divided

tyler.mccreary — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:22:06 +0000

Opponents of the Gitxsan Treaty Society spent Monday preparing themselves for arrest. For much of the day, Gitxsan community members crowded at one end of Omineca Street before the Gitxsan Treaty Society offices while police assembled a block away.

The day had a strange character. A hot, sunny day in the north, people set up lawn chairs, visited friends and family, and wandered down the block to buy ice cream. Children played on the sidewalk, while elders sat and talked. However, beneath the conviviality of community life lay deep-seated tensions.

Canadian abducted by Israel to address Prairie audiences

CanadianBoatToGaza — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:05:53 +0000

A Canadian who was forcibly abducted by Israeli forces from the Canadian ship Tahrir and detained without charge last fall continues to demand that the Conservative government press Israel to immediately return the boat and its contents, and is taking that message on a Prairies speaking tour.

London, Ontario activist David Heap, who was on board the Tahrir when it was boarded in international waters, will be speaking in Saskatoon on May 17 and Winnipeg on May 22, and will also address the campaign's ongoing plans to challenge the illegal blockade of Gaza.

Activist Communiqué: Occupied Ottawa update, May 2012

Krystalline Kraus — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:30:17 +0000

This is a guest post from Christophe Elie.

May 1, 2012 - An eventful month at "Occupy Ottawa" saw the General Assembly approve a change of name to "Occupied Ottawa." This discussion began the day the movement began and has been an ongoing discussion in particular in Oakland, Seattle and Toronto.

In Toronto, a Decolonization Statement was issued by the Occupy Toronto Cloud Gardens General Assembly.

Video: Doctors protest dangerous cuts to refugee health care

M.Gregus — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:23:53 +0000

On May 11, 2012, over 90 Canadian physicians protested dangerous cuts to refugee health care at MP Joe Oliver's office. Follow us on Twitter: @Docs4RefugeeHC // E-mail: docs4refugeehc@gmail.com. Video produced by Alex Lisman.

Understanding the crisis in Greece

Brian Topp — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:44:42 +0000

This weekend, the runner-up party in the recent Greek election, Syriza, seemed to rule out joining with New Democracy and PASOK to give them a majority in parliament. Instead, Syriza cheekily invited a smaller rival left-wing party, Democratic Left, to drink from that poisoned chalice in their place.

At least in the short term, this looks like excellent political hardball on the part of Syriza. They either get to go into opposition in the new parliament while their opponents further discredit themselves. Or there will be another election in June, in which Syriza seems positioned to make further gains -- perhaps enough to form a government.

Syriza then proposes to apply the same hardball approach to the European Union and to the International Monetary Fund.

The remaking of Canadian conservatism: 1988 to 2012

James Laxer — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:51:59 +0000

Brian Mulroney's success in leading the Progressive Conservative Party to a second majority victory in the general election of 1988 was the last hurrah of the old Conservative Party, the party whose lineage extended back to the great days of the Liberal Conservatives of the 19th century, under the leadership of Sir John A. Macdonald. It is ironic that the party's final electoral victory was in aid of the implementation of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement that had been negotiated between the Mulroney government and the Reagan Administration.

Nakba Day in Palestine: A time to remember and resist

derrick — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:26:01 +0000

Today, there are events across Canada to mark 'Nakba Day,' including a public forum in Vancouver which rabble.ca will be livestreaming this evening. Here, Haseena Manek explains the significance of May 15 to Palestinians.

Banks and the derivatives scam

rabble staff — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:41:06 +0000

John Kenneth Galbraith famously described financial genius as "a rising market." This was on display in the expansionary era of the 1950s and 1960s. New bank credits funded growing businesses. Investment bankers injected their own capital into initial share offerings of "public" companies, allowing businesses to grow by taking in shareholders as partners. Finance flourished.

New campaign aims to protect Canada's Great Lakes forever

derrick — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:05:45 +0000

What kind of message will Alison Redford send Stephen Harper in the next federal election?

djclimenhaga — Tue, 15 May 2012 05:12:25 +0000

The probability is very high that the next Canadian federal election will happen before the next Alberta provincial vote.

So, will Premier Alison Redford's Tories just sit on their hands? Or will they get out and actively work against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's so-called Conservative Party of Canada, whose Alberta MPs so openly betrayed their provincial kin in the election that took place on April 23?

This will become an increasingly important question as the next federal election approaches -- especially if the NDP under Thomas Mulcair manage to hang onto or increase their edge in the national polls.

The NDP should learn from defeat of Sarkozy in France

rabble staff — Tue, 15 May 2012 04:05:45 +0000

For the first time since the election of François Mitterrand in the 1980s, French voters elected a socialist president earlier this month. Is there anything progressive forces in Canada can learn from their French cousins? While the context is different, there are important similarities between the NDP and the French Socialist Party.

Both are progressive parties struggling to find their voice at a time when right-wing ideas seem to dominate. Both parties are flirting with the centre, at the risk of losing their base (and their identity) to the left. Ultimately, the challenges for the NDP are remarkably similar to those faced by the French Socialist Party.

Watch the rebroadcast: End the Nakba -- sharing stories, creating resistance

rabble staff — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:44:11 +0000

On the 64th anniversary of the occupation of Palestine, and as the Palestinian people enter the 64th year of dispossession and exile, the Vancouver Coalition to Commemorate Al-Nakba is organizing events to commemorate the Nakba, stand against the continuing Nakba, and call for the right of return for Palestinian refugees and freedom for Palestine. 64 years after the Nakba - the war of 1948 in which over 800,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and land and the state of Israel created on that land -- Palestinians continue to struggle for their right to return, for freedom from occupation, for justice, and against the Nakba that continues today. Watch this community event live, beginning at 6PM PST, Tuesday, May 15th.

Hill Dispatches: Canada to give its seal of approval to human rights abusers?

karl nerenberg — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:37:33 +0000

At last someone in Canada’s mainstream media has drawn attention to the frightening and growing phenomenon of neo-Nazi groups in Europe.

Although in much of Europe Muslims are the main neo-Nazi scapegoats, in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria – and especially in Hungary – the extremists focus their torment and hate mostly on the Roma.

The neo-Nazis harass and intimidate the Roma, and worse. There is a long list of violent acts that have continued unabated over the past five or six years.

What aroused the Canadian media out of its 'dogmatic slumbers' on this issue was the Greek election, where the neo-Nazis got themselves into Parliament for the first time.

Made on Haida Gwaii: Evan Putterill leads with passion for environmental issues

rabble staff — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:38:44 +0000

This is the second installment of the 'Made on Haida Gwaii' feature series, by writer April Diamond Dutheil. Each week we showcase the story of a talented young person who calls Haida Gwaii home. In this vast country, our major urban centres tend to soak up most of the attention. This collection of success stories, about young people living on these beautiful but remote islands off the Pacific coast, aims to disrupt the dominant myths of what it means to grow up in Canada’s North.

Reject the austerity agenda, become a member of rabble.ca

rabble staff — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:08:51 +0000

The world needs to hear a lot less from the mainstream media and a lot more from rabble.ca
~ Linda McQuaig

It seems that almost everywhere you turn today another government, another media organization, another pundit is worshipping at the altar of "austerity."

Not at rabble.ca. We're an alternative voice. They say austerity, we say abundance. We need an abundance of democracy, an abundance of voices calling for change. We need alternative media to trumpet alternatives. We're asking you to join us in rejecting the austerity agenda by becoming a member of rabble.ca today.

Maude Barlow begins Great Lakes tour this Tuesday

Council-of-Canadians — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:44:07 +0000

Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow will begin an eight-city tour in defence of the Great Lakes this Tuesday in Toronto.

Advance media on the tour has been good:

Enbridge rally, Freedom Train 2012

M.Gregus — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:06:42 +0000

I went to a demonstration yesterday, one that started April 30 in Jasper AB, but wound up here in Toronto in front of the King Eddie hotel. The annual Enbridge shareholders meeting was underway.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enbridge:

"Using data from Enbridge's own reports, the Polaris Institute calculated that 804 spills occurred on Enbridge pipelines between 1999 and 2010. These spills released approximately 168,645 barrels (26,812.4 m3) of hydrocarbons into the environment."