–A left of the union leadership look at the new split in the AFL-CIO in the US. I think that the split is a bad one (I think any split on the Left is a bad one especially if it means less power for the workers). The split is nothing to do with worker power and it has nothing to do with re-organizing the structure of the unions. This is about leaders getting upset that their goals for the union movement are/are not going to get implemented. This is not a good reason to split a union organization.

–A closer look at the Hersh report that there are more things going on under the surface in Iraq than are being examined by the mainstream media. The US government ran covert action to make sure that the Iraq elections went their way. “Democracy” strikes again, eh?

–A closer look at some new studies that talk about the real damage that the imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan are having. The human cost is not something that gets enough coverage… real coverage, that is.

–A Marxist look at protectionism in the light of the Mad Cow scare. Non-tarif bariers to trade have always been used to stop trade. The problem is that it gets attributed to the “left”. This is the wrong place to look for the reasons they are implemented.

–Are more bank mergers in Canada’s future? You betcha! says the Liberals… The only thing that seems to be keeping things in check here are the NDP and the Bloc. I would suggest that they start being a lot louder about the reasons regular working Canadians do not want more bank mergers to happen.

–There are some real questions being raised about the story coming from official sources when compaired to the realities on the ground. The Brazilian was shot after he was taken down by police… after he might have been concidered a real threat. The public should look at this and ask whether we really want to live in a society where this kind of police action is tolerable.

–Some questions about the current state of the economy in Britain. It seems that it is a little inflated and held up on debt. The question is “Can it last?”

–A look at the people who are losing their land yet again under the capitalist system that China has moved towards. The increase in wealth at the expense of the poor and the workers can not be any more evident. In China the mood is changing in the peasant and working classes as they start asking why they should put up with it.

–The social services sector of the US are being targeted more and more by the conservative capitalist movement in the US. The public and not-for-profit services must be maintained if the poor are going to have access to services.

–Striking Telus workers are getting a boost from other union members around the province. Solidarity is key here. Union members have to make sure that the Telus situation does not become a common one. The only way to do this is to join with the workers at Telus and support their right to negotiate a contract.

–The USW have agreed that strike action may be necessary in the negotiations with the Stelco steel company.

–More about the TeleSUR chanel coming out of Latin America and the US attack on it. The US seems to think that freedom of speach only applies to agents of the US government like FoxNews and CNN. The US government does not want you listening to other points of view… especially if they make more sense of the crisies around the world than do the US “news” stations.

–There is some question about civil war in Iraq creeping around the halls of the US Administration. This is not a good way forward for Iraq and it is being caused by the continued presence of the US and UK forces on the ground.

–The Blair government has craftily changed the question when it has answered if Iraq is causing a build up in terrorism. The question they are answering is if “Iraq is a good excuse for terror?” Of-course Iraq is not a “good” excuse for terror. There is no good excuse for terror. That is not the point Mr. Blair. The point is that your imperial actions abroad are making the UK a target for people’s anger who are affected by the killing and destruction that goes along with imperialism.

–The governments of the world are still not responding fast enough to the crisis in Niger. There are people dying and we have no excuse not to help them.

–The governments of the world are still not responding fast enough to the crisis in Niger. There are people dying and we have no excuse not to help them.

–The RCMP needs to have a citizens based watchgroup as well as a government based watchgroup. There is no reason at all for the national police force to be unaccountable.

–This is not acceptable. The government is not doing enough to get the people the care they need. More money needs to be put into the healthcare system at the public level and at the student level.

–Of-course business leaders are asking for the government to step in and control the strike. The public and the workers’ unions should turn around and ask the government to reign in the businesses that are miss-useing their control over wages and pay the truckers what they deserve. They should also demand that the businesses pay more tax to subsidize gass prices for the truckers to continue to work. At the same time the public should be demanding an investment from the government into publicly funded train and other more energy efficient ways of transporting material.

–We deserve a better response from the fishing industry sections of government. There are things that we do that damage the environment and we should have a very clear understanding of what that means. The public have the right and need to know the facts around this use of deep sea trawling.

–Some doctors accross Canada are getting upset at the use of malathion fogging against mosquitoes. I tend to agree that this method of control is a ‘quick fix’ to a poblem that is going to need real solutions in the future. The health risks associated with the chemical fog are not outdone by the riskes of West Nile virus. More care needs to be taken by the governments.

–The Telus blocking of a pro-union strike website hist the large scale blogs of Slashdot. This is when the response becomes broad enough to have a real impact.