Supreme Court of Canada to hear Safe Third Country Challenge
Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International, Canadian Council of
Churches Media Release 29 September 2008

The Supreme Court of Canada is being asked to determine whether the
Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement is unconstitutional and violates
refugees’ rights, the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International
and the Canadian Council of Churches announced today.

On Friday 26 September, the three organizations, along with John Doe,
filed an application with the Supreme Court seeking leave to appeal the
Federal Court of Appeal’s ruling on the Safe Third Country Agreement. The
appeal court overturned an earlier Federal Court decision which struck
down the Agreement, on the grounds that the United States does not comply
with international human rights obligations.

The submissions highlight that refugees’ lives are at risk, as illustrated
by the case of a Honduran man. Turned away from the Canadian border in
2006 due to Safe Third, he was quickly deported by the US to Honduras,
where he was soon afterwards killed by the people he had been fleeing.
But for the Safe Third Country Agreement, he would likely be alive and
living in Canada today, with his wife and his son who was born after his
death.

The following excellent text is from the No One Is Illegal Montreal blog:

This coming Saturday at 2pm at Parc Pilon in Montreal-Nord, a diverse cross-section of Montreal groups and individuals are coming together to denounce police brutality as part of a child-friendly demonstration. This is a crucial protest for all those who oppose poverty, racism and police brutality, as well as support autonomous, grassroots organizing for real justice and dignity.

It comes just two months after the killing of Fredy Villaneuva in Montreal-Nord, one year after the tasering death of Quilem Registre in St-Michel, and more than two years after the unexplained shooting death of Anas Bennis in Côte-des-neiges. It comes in a context where 43 people have been killed by the bullets or electric shocks of the Montreal police in just 21 years.

There are three main demands for this Saturday’s demonstration: 1) a public and independent inquiry into the death of Fredy Villaneuva; 2) an end to racial profiling and to police abuses and impunity; 3) the recognition of the principle that as long as there is economic inequality there will be social insecurity.

DERAIL THE SPIRIT OF THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT TRAIN
ALL OUT ON OCTOBER 13 - THANKSGIVING MONDAY

MEET AT 12NOON !SHARP!
CORNER OF FRONT AND BAY/YORK (south-west corner)
FREE TRANSPORTATION
EMAIL NOONEISILLEGAL@RISEUP.NET FOR SEAT CONFIRMATION
OR AT COOKSVILLE STATION AT 1PM

On October 13, 2008, the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway)'s 'SpiritTrain' will be arriving at Cooksville GO Transit Station in Mississauga, here to continue its goal of spreading pre-Olympic "spirit".

The Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 are appropriating indigenous land, marginalizing the urban poor and exploiting migrant workers.

The 2010 Olympics spirit that this train carries is a spirit of racism and corporate greed. This spirit has met with opposition in each of its stops across the country.

This spirit of oppression needs to be met with our spirit of resistance.

When it stops in Mississauga, come out with pots, pans, whistles, flags and placards. As most of Canada gives thanks for the ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples on Turtle Island, we urge all allies to mobilize their communities to disrupt the Spirit Train in solidarity with the call for Indigenous sovereignty.

To confirm a spot or to share your solidarity, please email
nooneisillegal@riseup.net before Sunday, 12 October.

NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND!

For further information, see: http://no2010.com/node/18

Communiqué from the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee—General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Sixth Commission—Intergalactic Commission of the EZLN

Mexico,

September 15th and 16th, 2008

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

To the adherents of the Zezta Interazional:

To the People of Mexico:

To the Peoples of the World:

Compañeras and Compañeros:

Brothers and Sisters:

Once again here’s our word.

This is what we see, this is what we are looking at.

This has come to our ears, to our brown heart.

I.

Up there, they intend to repeat their history.

They once again want to impose on us their calendar of death, their geography of destruction.

When they are not trying to strip us of our roots, they are destroying them.

They steal our work, our strength.

They leave our world, our land, our water, and our treasures without people, without life.

The cities pursue and expel us.

The countryside dies and we along with it.

Lies become governments and dispossession is the weapon of their armies and police.

In the world, we are illegal, undocumented, unwanted.

We are pursued.

Women, young people, children, the elderly die in death and die in life.

And up there they preach to us resignation, defeat, surrender, and abandonment.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 17TH, 7pm – Concorde Café - 937 Bloor St

A panel discussion on Anti-Racist Organizing in Toronto
Sponsored by Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action
www.uppingtheanti.org

Speakers: Chris Harris from the Black Action Defense Committee, Alok
Premjee from BASICS and the Justice for Alwy Campaign, Joesphine Gray
of Low Income Families Together, Guled Warsame from UNITE-HERE Local
75 and CORD (Community Organizing for Responsible Development) and
Faria Kamal of No One Is Illegal - Toronto.

In recent years, some of the most dynamic organizing in Toronto has
taken place around a variety of anti-racist campaigns and struggles
initiated by radical grassroots activists. On the evening before our
launch party for UTA 7, Upping the Anti presents a dialogue between
anti-racist activists in Toronto inspired by our interview with Chris
Harris of the Black Action Defense Committee in this issue.

The discussion will be kicked off by Harris who will discuss the work
that BADC is doing to intervene within Crip and Blood gangs in Toronto
through the "Hood to Hood" movement and BADC's "Freedom Cypher"
program. Alok Premjee will talk about the work that BASICS Community
Newsletter is doing in Lawrence Heights around anti-gentrification
struggles and how the Justice for Alwy Campaign is going about

On September 29, 2008 around 30 protesters greeted the Canadian Pacific
Railway “Olympic Spirit Train” as it brought its propaganda machine
through Edmonton. Highlighting that the train and the Olympic Games are
interlinked with the same corporations carrying out the largest
industrial project on earth known as the Tar Sands, protesters disrupted
the “spirit train” celebrations with the spirit of resistance. Under the
slogan of “No Games, No Tar Sands on Native Land!” demonstrators from
the the community of Fort Chipewyan in “Alberta” came in solidarity to
act with Native 2010 Resistance, the Olympics Resistance Network,
Edmonton Anarchist Black Cross and the Indigenous Environmental Network
to let the public know what’s wrong with the Olympics and the Tar Sands.
Their message articulated the vast increases in Indigenous land
displacement, homelessness and the expansion of environmental
destruction brought about by the corporate agenda around the 2010 Winter
Olympics and the Tar Sands-- most notably by CP Railways, Petro-Canada
and the Royal Bank of Canada.

Protesters distributed flyers, stickers and balloons for children and
youth with counter-2010 information on both and used their presence and
their voices to confront the “festivities” and alert the larger Edmonton

A more complete reportback is forthcoming, however some basic news,
updates, and photos are compiled below.

==> Olympics Resistance Network News Release to Mainstream Media:

CP-VANOC SPIRIT TRAIN DERAILED WITH 'SPIRIT OF RESISTANCE'; POLICE MAKE
TWO UNPROVOKED ARRESTS

* For photos please visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/inkflip/sets/72157607424169310/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30781453@N08/

Monday September 22 2008- Amidst pots, pans, sirens, and chants of "No
Olympics on Stolen Native Land", Olympics Resistance Network (ORN)
activists- including families with children- successfully shutdown
yesterday's Canadian Pacific's Olympics Spirit Train launch in Port Moody
as intended.

According to Gord Hill, member of the Olympics Resistance Network, "With
protestors nearly outnumbering spectators, the most spirited part of today
was the spirit of resistance against the Olympics. We are confident that
the forced cancellation of the Spirit Train launch ceremonies will inspire
others as the train travels across Canada."

The action in Port Moody was the first in a series of actions against the
Olympic Spirit Train planned across the country including in Edmonton,
Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto over the next month.

Activists further state that they are outraged by the unjustified and

Dear friends, please pass this on as far as you can. Please note that
we're currently experiencing problems with Seth's website
www.sethhayes.org but we should have those fixed shortly. Please send in
letters in support of Seth's parole as soon as possible as the hearing
could happen anytime between September and December of 2008. For more
information please email torontoabcf@gmail.com

In solidarity,

the Toronto Chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross Federation

From Robert Seth Hayes
#74A2280, Wende Corr. Facility
P.O. Box 1187, Alden, NY
14004-1187, USA

September 8, 2008

Dear friends and supporters,

This brief letter wishes to update you about my strategy to gain
immediate release from confinement and return to working in the
community. Many of you know that I was expecting a parole board hearing
in September 2008. As it was, I was belatedly informed that the hearing
would commence on September 3, 2008. On the second of September I
reached out to my attorney Susan Tipograph to discuss the hearing
schedule and then learned of the passing of Comrade Bashir Hameed a.k.a.
James York. A strong and positive Brother in our struggle to free the
land, spirit and inhabitants, Bashir joined our ancestors on August 30,
2008. I ask you to join me in sending up prayers of rejoicing to a

Migrant workers fired from B.C. greenhouse as union vote neared
by Wendy Stueck, Globe and Mail, September 16, 2008.

VANCOUVER — Fourteen Mexican farm workers employed at an Abbotsford greenhouse were fired from their jobs and sent back to Mexico days before a union-certification vote, the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada said yesterday.

The workers were terminated late in the day on Sept. 5, a Friday, before being driven to the airport the next day in time to catch an afternoon flight to Mexico, the union said.

On Sept. 4, the UFCW had filed an application to represent 29 employees at the company, Floralia Plant Growers Ltd.

Workers were scheduled to hold a certification vote today.

A woman who answered the phone at the company late yesterday afternoon said in response to questions, "I can't tell you anything" before hanging up.

The union has filed a complaint with the British Columbia Labour Relations Board and asked the board to order the company to rehire the workers and pay for their flights back to Canada, said Local 1518 spokesman Andy Neufeld.

Reports of domestic violence on rise among Canada's soldiers: MP
from CBC News, September 11, 2008.

The Canadian military is receiving an increasing number of reports about soldiers acting out violently against their families, according to the NDP defence critic.

Dawn Black, who is also MP for New Westminster-Coquitlam in British Columbia, has been collecting serious incident reports filed with the Canadian Forces. They suggest violence in military families is increasing, she told CBC News.

"Certainly there's more reports of wife assault and angry soldiers exhibiting the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from Afghanistan," said Black.

"What I've found over the last many months is that there are many more — maybe even 50 per cent more — reports of post-traumatic stress disorder acting itself out in domestic violence."

On The Matter of Tar Sands & Indigenous Lands

This video examines the impacts of the Alberta Tar Sands on First Nations communities in the region. It features an interview with Clayton Thomas-Mueller, member of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation (Puktawagan) in northern Manitoba, and organizer with the Indigenous Environment Network's Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign. (Found via Intercontinental Cry.)

by Scott Campbell, MR Zine

This fall in Oaxaca marks a season of commemorations. Already marches for fallen APPO members Jose Jimenez Colmenares and Lorenzo San Pablo Cervantes have woven their ways through the streets of the city, pausing at the spots they were murdered in 2006, holding ceremonies at the Cathedral. Twenty-four more such processions await Oaxaca in the coming months. That number will only grow as efforts are made to identify the (at minimum) eight bodies in hidden graves discovered recently in Oaxaca's main cemetery.

Is This The Fourth World War?
by Bill Weinberg, published here, found via Fourth World Eye's post of September 10, 2008.

On September 13, 2001, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman wrote: "Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means there is a long, long war ahead."

More sophisticated minds have since challenged this declaration as numerically incorrect. While sharing the pro-war consensus, former CIA Director James Woolsey is on the lecture circuit asserting that the global crusade against terrorism is World War IV--the Cold War having been III. "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us," Woolsey told a group of UCLA students in April. "Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Mexican journalist Gloria Muñoz Ramírez says that in 1997 she left her work, her family, and her friends to live in Zapatista communities. Her book The Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement is the result of seven years of research, interviews, and—most importantly—listening in Zapatista territory.

Originally published in Spanish as 20 y 10: El Fuego y la Palabra in 2003 for the tenth anniversary of the Zapatista uprising and the twentieth anniversary of the EZLN, the book has since been translated into French, Italian, German, Turkish, Persian, and Greek. While English-speakers had to wait five long years to read it, Muñoz made The Fire and the Word worth the wait. The English translation updates the Spanish version, including new chapters and pictures of Zapatista history up through the Other Campaign in 2006.

The book itself is an artistic masterpiece. Domi, a Mazateca indigenous illustrator who helped Marcos tell The Story of Colors, and Antonio Ramírez, a Mexican artist and author of the Spanish-language children’s book Napí, illustrated the book. Graphic designer Efrain Herrera laid out the text to flow around, through, and between Domi and Ramírez’s illustrations.

The Clandestine Years

From Apathy to Activism: Student activists lead the way in building cross-campus, cross-movement coalitions
by Susan Dianne Brophy, from Canadian Dimension, September/October 2008.

Why is it that students don’t really give a damn about anything outside their own lives?” asks Mikhael Aziz. An upper-year undergraduate student at York University, Aziz is also a member of Students Against Israeli Apartheid, a group at the forefront of campus mobilization.

Regarding the deeply rooted apathy that many students exhibit, my observation, and that of those with whom I have consulted in writing this article, is that it is an offshoot of a sense of self-entitlement. Most students have yet to experience any political upheaval or economic hardship for themselves. The wave of relatively steady economic growth in Canada, and the consumer culture that accompanies it, results in a dangerous combination of political complacency and consumer insatiability. Coupled with the demolishment of the welfare state, the resulting competitive individualism produces a sense of hostility expressed as self-entitlement, which has had a potent demobilizing effect across campuses nationwide.

Harry Cleaver's paper on the effects of capitalist development on the environment. A bit dated but still very relevant.

This paper was prepared for the 4th Ecology Meeting on "Economy and Ecology" held by the Instituto Piaget, Viseu, Portugal, April 17-19, 1997.

"And all this time, in travail, sobbing, gaining on the current, we rowed into the strait --Scylla to port and on our starboard beam Charybdis, dire gorge of the salt sea tide." (Odysseus)1

At this point in history, policy thinking about human relationships with Nature seems unable to escape either the whirlpool of Neoliberalism or the mist-shrouded dangers of sustainable development. On the one hand free-marketeers tout an overt subordination of every aspect of the world to private property, commodity production and quick profit making; on the other, the critics of such short term calculus search for ways to continue the same processes indefinitely. What a choice!

Neoliberalism

Communique by Olympics Resistance Network

The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place on unceded indigenous land from February 12-28 2010. Far from being simply about ‘sport’, the history of the Olympics is one rooted in displacement, corporate greed, fascism, repression, and violence. Only the political and corporate elite – from real estate developers to security corporations – have anything to gain from the Olympics industry. The effects of the upcoming Winter Games have already manifested themselves- with the expansion of sport tourism and resource extraction on indigenous lands; increasing homelessness and gentrification of poor neighbourhoods; increasing privatization of public services; union busting through imposed contracts and exploitative conditions especially for migrant labour; the fortification of the national security apparatus; ballooning public spending and public debt; and unprecedented destruction of the environment.

RNC Welcoming Committee to Unmask, Answer Questions
PRESS ADVISORY:
10am Thursday, 627 Smith Avenue, St. Paul.

In light of the massive police and military violence playing out each day of the Republican National Convention, the targeting, entrapment, and persecution of protest logistics organizers, the inhumane conditions that continue for the hundreds of people in the Ramsey County Jail, and the harassment of supporters outside the jail, we in the RNC Welcoming Committee are not backing down from our organizing. The Welcoming Committee is working harder than ever to ensure that our friends and comrades are safe and that protesters who are speaking their minds in the face of repression have access to food, housing, bicycles, a meeting space, workshops, legal/jail support, and medical care.

The St Paul Police Department, the City of St Paul, and particularly Bob Fletcher with the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department have labeled us a "criminal enterprise", painting a picture of us and other anti-RNC organizers as faceless terrorists. On Thursday, September 4th at 10 AM on the 2nd floor of the RNC Convergence Space at 627 Smith Ave S., we will show the true faces and stories of the RNC Welcoming Committee.

By Sarah Lazare, Alternet/ ZNet, August 30, 2008

Robin Long, an Iraq War resister deported from Canada into U.S. military custody last month, was sentenced today to 15 months of confinement and dishonorable discharge, receiving credit for 40 days of time served.

Long's supporters, who flooded the Fort Carson, Colorado courtroom where the court martial was held and held a vigil in his honor, expressed dismay at the harsh verdict. "It sets a very chilling precedent that someone who is brought back gets the book thrown at them," said Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army Colonel who publicly resigned in opposition to the invasion of Iraq and served as a witness at Long's trial. "I hope the Canadian government recognizes that."

Three years ago, Robin Long fled to Canada rather than fight a war in Iraq he deems immoral and illegal. On July 15th, the Canadian government forcibly returned Long to U.S. military custody, making him the first war resister deported from Canadian soil since the Vietnam War.

The Canadian government's actions flaunt its long- standing tradition of providing safe haven for U.S. war resisters and ignore a non-binding parliamentary resolution to allow U.S. soldiers to stay in Canada.

http://www.counterpunch.org/terrall08282008.html
Counterpunch.com
August 28, 2008
"All the Time We are Hungry and Now We Have No One"
Return to Port-au-Prince
By BEN TERRALL

As I flew from JFK to Port-au-Prince Airport on August 11, a fellow journalist handed me the front section of that day’s New York Times with a laugh. My friend pointed to a passage in an article about Russia’s war with Georgia that had prompted her bitter chuckling.

The piece quoted Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad of the United States, who charged that the Russian foreign minister had told Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice “that the democratically elected president of Georgia ‘must go.’” Khalizad described the Russian’s comment as “completely unacceptable.”

Of course, Washington’s posturing as a beacon of peace and freedom has become increasingly more ludicrous as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue with no end in sight and Bush explains that we do not torture while testimony to the contrary accumulates around the globe. But the U.S. role in supporting the February 29, 2004 rightist coup in Haiti makes the hypocrisy of Khalizad’s statement especially galling.

'Social injustice killing on grand scale': report to WHO
From CBC News, August 28, 2008.

People are dying early not only because of health gaps between rich and poor countries but also because of a lack of housing and clean water in wealthy countries like Canada, policy makers said in a report to the World Health Organization on Thursday.

The 256-page report, titled "Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health" shows how the conditions in which people live and work directly affects the quality of their health.

The "toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in large measure, responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible," the report's authors wrote.

"Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale."

The report defines social determinants of health are the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness.

The 2008 Democratic National Convention is being held in Denver, Colorado, August 25th through August 28th.

Tuesday, 8/26/08: The Iraq Veterans Against the War orchestrated guerrilla theater in downtown Denver to show the brutality of the U.S. Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The war veterans, dressed in full military gear, staged realistic portrayals of actual interactions between U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians.

Monday, 8/25/08: Activists goal for the day was to crash lavish fund raising parties throughout downtown Denver. Five community organizers from Kansas and Missouri were arrested this morning by the FBI and Denver PD. Late in the day, a police "kettle" operation (whereby police surround, contain, and arrest large numbers of protesters at once) led to about 100 arrests near a delegate meeting in a Denver hotel.

Carolina S. Romero 27 Aug 2008 18:36 GMT (translated by Carolina S. Romero), Indymedia.

“We demand security against kidnapping, too!”

Yesterday, outside the Molino de Flores prison, about 70 members of the Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) of San Salvador Atenco and members of The Other Campaign shouted out their rejection of the brutal new sentences in the Atenco case while the Zapatista Lawyers went inside to file an appeal. Demonstrators called to the state police (ASES) guarding the gate: “How can you look your own children in the face? They’re poor, like us. What if they turn out to be rebels? Are you going to murder, rape, and torture them, too?”
And... voilá! Leaving the prison, the lawyer Juan de Dios Hernández reported that Judge Alberto Cervantes, who determined the new sentences, has been replaced. On charges of kidnapping? Conspiracy? Corruption? Ineptitude? None of the above. He was never anything but a vile prosecutor disguised as a judge who had his little deal worked out with the statewide mafia headed by Governor Enrique Peña Nieto. He did the dirty work he was charged with, endorsing and prolonging the kidnapping of Ignacio del Valle and all the other compañeros that took place in Atenco and Texcoco on May 3 and 4, 2006 and has continued ever since then.

John Clarke, OCAP, The Bullet, Socialist Project.

The City of Toronto's ‘Streets to Homes’ program is a finalist for one of two awards that will be presented during the celebration of United Nations' World Habitat Day. These annual awards are given for “practical and innovative solutions to current housing needs and problems.” ‘Streets to Homes’ is an initiative that focuses on placing people who are on the streets in housing units, and is presented as a bold and vital step that can actually eliminate the destitution of poverty in Toronto.

“Streets to Homes is helping us to end street homelessness,” Toronto Mayor David Miller has claimed. “It is making Toronto a more inclusive city, and the world is taking notice. This recognition is a tribute to both City staff and our community partners, who have worked together tirelessly and seamlessly to help some of our most vulnerable citizens.”

As I write this article, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is preparing to take a delegation to the office of the Coroner of Ontario to challenge the death of yet another person whose homelessness had been 'solved' by ‘Streets to Homes.’ He was dumped in substandard accommodation in an outlying part of the city without the supports that would enable him to survive. He perished in that setting.

By Harsha Walia, rabble, 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, which was delivered at the Gadhri Babian Da Mela (Martyrs Festival) in Surrey on August 3, 2008.

Much of the debate has focused around the apology needing to be made in the House of Commons in order for it to be afforded the respect and dignity it deserves. 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.

A history of racist exclusion

In order to discourage South Asian migration, the Canadian government amended the Immigration Act in 1908 with the "continuous-journey regulation," under which travel to Canada required a continuous passage from country of origin and entry with at least $200 cash.

These measures were intended to reinforce a "White Canada" policy, in conjunction with for example the Chinese Head Tax, to restrict migrants of colour at a time when massive numbers of European immigrants - over 400,000 in 1913 alone - were entering Canada.

By Anthony Hall, August 25, 2008

The United States forms one element of a broader and more abstract polity known as America. While the term, America, has been appropriated to identify the most powerful country in Americas, the word should be reclaimed so that it applies equally to all citizens of the Western Hemisphere. The idea of America remains as elastic and as subject to revision as ever. Throughout much of its history America has been seen by many beyond its shores as a symbol of hope, as a promised land for those yearning to breath free? But what is to be made of the experience of the Indigenous peoples who were pushed aside or eliminated to make room for wave after wave of immigrants? Will freedom for some in America continue to be purchased at the expense of others? Will America look outward to the world with confident humility or is the idea of America to be henceforth associated with the corrosive xenophobia that brands all those who do not conform to imposed norms as deviants and possible terrorists?

The Maze of Rhetoric

We hope our title is sufficiently unequivocal to convey our reaction to the events of Wednesday June 11, 2008. Maybe by example we can show how one must approach issues which require the utmost clarity. On the other hand, this probably won’t work, especially when it’s clear the predominant intention behind a communication is to obscure. Whatever… in any event, for us, sitting on a spiky metal fence is uncomfortable posture.

We listened with attention to what Stephen Harper had to say yesterday, and we did not hear what we needed to hear. Instead, again we watched and heard one more opportunity being thrown away, this one with more ceremony than those preceding it. We watched and heard the studious avoidance of truth, in what we can only regard as the hope that the repetition of a lie will somehow substitute for reality, a concept now reduced to another mantra (as is nowadays the case for, for example, “truth” or “reconciliation”).