On a quest for secular piety: Reviewing Tarek Fatah's Chasing a Mirage
by Justin Podur, ZNet, June 22, 2008.

Tarek personally asked me to review his book, Chasing a Mirage: the tragic illusion of an Islamic State (CM). With a book being favorably reviewed in the Canadian (and US and UK) media, including the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Huffington Post, the UK Guardian, and the Asper-family owned newspapers (Ottawa Citizen and National Post, which also published long excerpts of CM and frequently runs op-eds by Tarek), CM hardly needed a review from me to get attention. I therefore took the request as a signal of a serious desire to engage with people who might disagree about the ideas of the book.

CM's basic thesis is that religion and politics should be separated in Islam. Although it has major flaws, it also has many attributes of interest and will be thought-provoking on the relationship between religion and politics, and between Islam and the West.

A flawed book with some thought-provoking ideas

Canada-Colombia FTA: When Democracy Gets in the Way, Just Sign It, eh?
By: Michèal Ó Tuathail
http://canadacolombiaproject.blogspot.com/2008/06/canada-colombia-fta-when-democracy-gets.html

On June 7 2008, less than one year after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the beginning of bilateral free trade talks with Colombia, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade announced the conclusion of negotiations.

While the US-Colombia free trade agreement has been stalled in the US, due mainly to the grave human rights situation in Colombia and, some say, a US election campaign, Canada has offered transnational capital an opening through the back door.

Canada-style, eh?

"The Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to open up opportunities for Canadian business in the Americas and around the world," stated the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade David Emerson, revealing the true beneficiaries of this agreement. Emerson went on to note that "the free trade agreement will expand Canada-Colombia trade and investment, and will help solidify ongoing efforts by the Government of Colombia to create a more prosperous, equitable and secure democracy."

By John Cunningham

January's Art and Immaterial Labour conference at the Tate brought together some famous names from post-Autonomia to discuss conjunctions between the dematerialisation of art and immaterialisation of labour. John Cunningham reports

Film review by Eric Ray

There Will Be Blood - Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

There Will Be Blood, the latest from director Paul Thomas Anderson and adapted from Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel, Oil!, concerns the rise and descent of ruthless oil baron, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). It is, on one hand, a visually stark look at the machinations of American capitalism, as represented by the misanthropic Plainview. On the other hand, its failure is rooted in the lack of historical exposition that gives insight of how a miserable, scheming tycoon came to be. The film resorts to the ultimately simplistic notion of "innate evil" or "human nature" instead of attempting to examine social or economic relations explored in Sinclair's novel.

By Hans Bennett, Infoshop News, January 22, 2008

Following September 11, 2001, the corporate news media has almost uniformly supported the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the overall agenda of US imperialism. Simultaneously, the mainstream entertainment industry has produced several movies with remarkably scathing critiques of US militarism and foreign policy. Accompanying recent anti-war films like In The Valley of Elah and Lions for Lambs, is this summer’s blockbuster action movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, starring actor Matt Damon. Just released on DVD, The Bourne Ultimatum is the final installment of the Jason Bourne trilogy, which is based on the book series by author Robert Ludlum.

Defend the Border: The CBC’s new show can only help “the bad guys”
by Justin Podur, Z-Net, January 6, 2008.

The phrase “defend the border” wasn’t always a metaphor. And it isn’t just a metaphor in many parts of the world, even today: some states do have to worry about overland military invasions.

Canada is not such a state.

A useful movie (although it does not really move beyond liberalism and is open to racist readings) and a useful review by Fisk if we read beyond the heterosexism.

by Robert Fisk; The Independent; November 06, 2007

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.

By Chris Harris

Over the last four years, Tom Morello has been leading something of a double life.

To most folks, he's beenAudioslave's virtuoso guitarist — nothing more. But when his band hasn't been in a recording studio or rattling the rafters of packed arenas on the road, Morello has been moonlighting as a folk-singing activist, performing in small California coffeehouses and elsewhere under the moniker the Nightwatchman (see "Tom Morello Rages Against A New Machine On Solo Acoustic Tour").

A timely piece from the on point folks at the freedom road socialist organization (freedomroad.org).

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by Claire Tran
Sunday, 04 February 2007

I want to talk about love this month not because the corporate holiday is coming up but because it is a little summed-up experience that has a big impact on our movement. I draw here from both theory and practice. I am in no way an expert on dating or love, with my limited experience of it, but my mother always said that the people who struggle make the best teachers. She was talking about math as an example, not the struggle, but I think you can apply it to both. In either case, I think I might make a good teacher.