CANADA:Native Rights Concerns Cloud 2010 Games
Jon Elmer
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=1870

VANCOUVER, 1 Dec (IPS) - A coalition of indigenous elders, social justice activists and community organisers is voicing opposition to the upcoming Winter Olympics, promising to continue their protests up to and throughout the 2010 games.

Taking advantage of a three-day media briefing hosted by the official Olympic body in late November, the Vancouver Organising Committee (VANOC), activists and native representatives invited the local and visiting international media to an office in the heart of the what is commonly known as Canada's poorest neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside, to hear 'the other side of the Olympic story'.

Rallying under the banner of 'No Olympics on stolen native land', speakers representing nine native and community groups outlined connections between native poverty, dislocation and homelessness and the staging of the games in Vancouver and Whistler, 120 kms north of Vancouver.

Olmert Admits Israel Must Withdraw
by Jesse Rosenfeld, The Real News Network, October 14, 2008. (Found via The Dominion Daily Weblog)

Israel/Palestine- Ehud Olmert passes leadership of the Kadima Party to Tzipi Livni and leaves a challenging legacy. In comments he made during an interview with Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Olmert admits Israel must withdraw from areas of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and even the Golan Heights, an area at the center of the Israeli-Syrian dispute.

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.

Here is the cover of UTA 7

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.

An Afghan Woman Who Stands Up to the Warlords: An Interview with Malalai Joya
By Farooq Sulheria, CounterPunch, August 18, 2008.

Afghanistan lives in the fear of the US-sponsored war lords. These hated warlords are not scared by the Taliban-monster raising its head in the south. Ironically, they live in the fear of an unarmed girl in her late twenties: Malalai Joya. To silence Joya’s defiant voice, war lords dominating national parliament, suspended Joy’s membership for three years in 2007. Earlier, at almost every parliamentary session she attended, she had her hair pulled or physically attacked and called names (‘whore’). ‘They even threatened me in the parliament with rape’, she says. But she neither toned down her criticism of war lords (‘they must be tried’) nor US occupation (‘war on terror’ is a mockery). Understandably, she’s been declared the ‘bravest woman in Afghanistan’ and even compared with Aung Sun Suu Kyi.

Harper's Free Trade Mantra: Hush, Rush, and Sign
Written by Dawn Paley
Tuesday, 01 July 2008
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1356/1/
This January, after little more than 6 months of negotiations, the
Canadian Government announced the completion of negotiations of the
Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland.

Six months later, on June 7, 2008, Canada announced that negotiations
for a controversial Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia were
finalized.

The negotiations with Colombia were controversial from the get go: the
country has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and the
government of Alvaro Uribe is riddled by ongoing scandals that have
revealed proven links between Uribe's allies in Congress and
paramilitary death squads.

In a corruption scandal that would most certainly bring down a
Canadian Prime Minister, Uribe himself is the subject of a recent
Sentence by the Colombian Supreme Court. The justices condemned him
for buying the key vote of Congresswoman Yidis Medina in exchange for
political favours, a crime necessary for the constitutional changes
that opened the door to Uribe's re-election in 2006.

On June 26th, Medina was sentenced to 3 ½ years of house arrest for
accepting bribes from the president. The president promptly responded

Written by Ramor Ryan

"The Epic Struggle for Another Oaxaca Has Not Finished," says David Venegas.

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake." - Stephen Daedalus, in Ulysses, James Joyce 1922

Oaxaca City, Mexico, May 15 - Midnight in Oaxaca, and walking around the historic center, it's almost as if nothing had ever happened here. The bourgeoisie sit around under the colonial arches in the long stretch of French-style outdoor cafes lining the central plaza. Aside from being beset by a small army of ambulant trinket vendors and beggars, the well-heeled citizens sipping cappuccinos seem very at ease with the world. A few late night tourists wander about the pleasant old streets under the starry sky, and the industrious hum of the sultry cosmopolitan city invokes an eternal calm.

Features > June 4, 2008
No Strings Attached?
How U.S. funding of the world press corps may be buying influence
By Jeremy Bigwood
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3697/no_strings_attached/

Lebanese men in Beruit watch Alhurra, a U.S.-funded Arabic-language television network. The name of the satelite channel means 'the free one' in Arabic.

Domestic propaganda campaigns like the “Pentagon Pundits” fiasco have been exposed and decried. Mainstream media outlets hired high-ranking military officers to provide “analysis” about the war in Iraq. Turns out they had ties to military contractors with a vested interest in continuing the war.