POLITICS-AFRICA: Bush Exaggerates Increase in U.S. Aid
–Jim Lobe has a great article here looking at the exaggeration that the Bush Administration is putting on their aid increase. One has to wonder why the news outlets let them get away with it… (OK, maybe we do not wonder that much why.)

ZNet |Colombia | Terror As Anti-Union Strategy
–Violence in Columbia against union activists and militants.

rabble news: Drug marketing is upstaging science
–More is spent each year marketing drugs than making them. So next time someone trys to tell you that the companies need to charge the poor so much for drugs because the drugs are expensive you have every right to laugh out loud.

Straight Goods - Canada’s independent on-line source of news, analysis, information and fun
–A look at what happened at the latest Canadian Labour Congress meeting. The politics that plays at these conferences is crazy and the lack of democracy is something that should not be tolerated.

Straight Goods - Canada’s independent on-line source of news, analysis, information and fun
–The Canadian government is continuing its cuts in the social services sector.

Hitmen Attempt to Assasinate Venezuelan Land Reform Leader
–It has gone beyond the point of where being an activist in Venezuela is just a job. The right wing is using its regualar tactics to stop the people moving the country left. Assassination is the latest point of escalation.

DIRELAND: BUSH AND EMINENT DOMAIN–THE MONEY TRAIL
–Douglas Ireland has put together a indepth look at the new “eminent domain” ruling in the US. It turs out that Bush has profited off the underhanded use of this in the past.

CBC News: Same-sex vote likely on Tuesday, Harper questions ‘legitimacy’ of bill
–Any question about where Harper exists on the political scale. This is a trick only the far right use in other countries.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Britain rebuffs call to block anti-Aids needle exchanges
–The US continues its religious based attack on the AIDS community in Africa and around the world.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Scientists expect go-ahead for nuclear fusion reactor
–Fusion is an interesting prospect for power… but it has been a long time in the works and we still are not there yet. We should keep an eye on this one.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | ‘A wake-up call to government leaders’
–Now this is interesting. What is the US government going to do to when China tries to buy up all of the larger US Companies? China has already put in a bid to buy Unocal.

Though the article does a good job at articulating just to what degree Existentialism is an adolescant philosophical current, I believe that the author could have better dealt with Existentialism through an historical account of its genesis(as is touched on only in the fourth last sentence), rather than by means of comparing it with Marxism. Furthermore, the specific stream of Marxism described in the article is that which holds apart the Subject and Object (I will not here go into the political implications of this); and the ensuing attempt to solve the problem of necessity and freedom is expressive of this error. A further point of contention in the article is the stageism, mastery of nature, and progress in history implicit in this author’s understanding of humanity. Such claims culminate in statements such as, “For the historical materialist [!], humanity is above all the creative producer that has succeeded through its own titanic efforts in elevating itself from animality to the atomic age—and is just on the threshold of its authentically human career.” Such crassness should be replaced with a proper understanding of the dialectical development of the relation between society and nature. I also find it interesting that the article does not seek to address the “existence / essence” problem, which is one of the central differences of the two philosophies.

This article, published in June of 1935, is a brief example of one of many works on Art and Marxism. It is well written, but provides nothing beyond the standard Marxist position on Art.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | South Africans strike nationwide
–National strike over the horrible conditions in South Africa. The government changed but the policies towards the poor have not. The ANC are a neo-liberal party, it is not like they are going to pump money into social programmes. The people need a real alternative.

House Passes Flag Desecration Amendment Again
–Oh yes, the land of the free alright. It might soon be a crime in the US to burn the US flag. Would that mean they can extradite US citizens who burn the flag in other countries?

UK Watch - Home: European Crisis?
–Robert Fisk asks the question: What are the Europeans on about this idea that the Europe is breaking apart?

ZNet |Corporate Globalization | The Business of Hunger
–The people of the world need food but the Western nations are not doing anything about it… in-fact, they are making it worse.

ModBlog - Dear Kitty: UK: opposition to Blair’s ID card plans
–There is a growing opposition in Britain to the ID Card proposal from the Blair government. Neo-Labour is at odds, once again, with the workers.

ENVIRONMENT: GM Sceptics Smell a Rat
–A closer look at the GMO foods that Monsanto produces. They are not as safe as Monsanto has said. Again, I have to stress this, it is not the GMOs are bad, it is that the companies that are doing it only have their pocket books in mind. We need to get the coporations out of our Universities and we need to start funding public programmes and research more. If we do not we are going to see a lot more of court cases like this after it is effective.

BBC NEWS | Americas | US accused over Muslim detentions
–The police in the US arrested over 70 Muslim men after the attacks in 2001 for no other reason than that they were Muslim. It is this kind of racist profiling that the left is raising the red flag to.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israeli guilty of shooting Briton
–It is the systematic killing of Palestinians that should be in the light, not the actions of each soldier in the army.

DIRELAND: TONY BLAIR’S SON TO INTERN WITH CONSERVATIVE CLOSET-CASE DAVID DREIER
–A closer look at the story in the Independent from Doug Ireland. Have a read if you want to know the connection between Blair and the Republican Party in the US.