Unfortunately, as long as individual nations are not compelled to abide by international law, extending coercive implements into space is a logical, natural progression, and there is no reason not to do it.

If, in some future time, the fetish of nationalism were subordinated to a functioning system of international justice, capable of enforcing transgressions of international law, then it would be possible to prevent the militarization of space.

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–Always a good call. A tribute to Harry Magdoff.

–An interesting article outlining some people’s ideas of the future of Cuba. Personally, I think that anyone who thinks things are going to swing wildly towards capitalism just because Castro is out of the picture do not know their history or the history of Cuba very well.

–Anthony Fenton takes a look at the role the North plays in the South. I have to say that the title is more than a little misleading but it is a good article.

–Arundhati Roy looks at some recent events in India and asks the question: “Can you believe the government’s story on this?”

–An interesting read.

–The word is not ‘wrong’, but “underestimated”.

–Democracy Watch has released a report trouncing the Conservatives in ability to match rhetoric with reality around accountability.

–This should be a major wake-up call to politicians who look to education to fund tax-cuts. Conservatives are always going on about their social values but they seem to ignore these types of stats when they get in the way of profits.

–The Canadian military cannot get recruits so they are relaxing the standards to get in. This and the mass failing of drug tests of our soldiers in Afghanistan should start people questioning if the Defence Department is really a competent organisation at all.

–This is not the way that you fight terror.

–Private militias in Iraq. This is the gift of “democracy” that we are leaving the people there?

–More tax cuts for the already rich.

–Can everyone say “Monopoly Capitalism“? Seems odd to me that a private monopoly energy company can be more efficient and provide the same level of service and low price as a monopoly public company. Wait, that is because it cannot. End corporate monopolies of the energy sector, it should be put back under public control and be reorganised to help fight climate change.

–I beg to differ. There is no evidence that the corresponding decrease in consumption after a rate hike continues for very long or is evenly distributed through the population. The working people of New Brunswick deserve the right to heat their homes without having to choose to sacrifice something else. We must find better ways of distributing power throughout the province without harming the people of the province.

–You have to earn votes with promises and platforms you can keep. The NDP needs to make sure that it stands for something in and between elections in the Maritimes otherwise it will continue to lose.

–Leftnews supports the calls of the Common Front. Support programmes that help the poor get back into the workplace without being penalised for it.

–Doing deals with the likes of the Conservatives means that you do not get what you asked for and they get some propaganda. The Conservatives do not have any credibility on the environment and it will be political suicide and a gift to the right-wing Green Party.

–The State has a monopoly on violence. Now it wants a monopoly on information and media so that it can continue its imperialist actions. The move to establish and consolidate power over the flow of information to the people is a deliberate action to further remove any aspect of democracy.

I find it amazing that the US administration can continue to deride the democratic states of this world while carrying out the very undemocratic policies that they blame these states for carrying out.

We must protect the independent media.

–A new article is available on the Citizens’ Press written by one of it editors Dana Brown.

–
Labour / Le Travail is a bilingual and biannual journal covering a broad range of approaches to studying the working class in Canada. Based out of Newfoundland’s Memorial University, L / LT has received international acclaim as a pioneer in Canadian working class history. This journal was born out of the political and socially tumultuous years of the ’60s and ’70s. Labour / Le Travail emerges from the New Left movement, and it might, as Verity Burgmann alludes, be a product of increased access by working class youth to Universities across the country during the ‘50s and ’60s.[1] The journal received its intellectual inspiration by a circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain, such as Eric Hobsbawn and E. P. Thompson.[2]

–The National Union of Students in the UK have put on a rather large demonstration against tuition fees. The Canadian Federation of Students here in Canada will be putting on its national day of action in February. We will only get freezes and reductions in tuition fees if we demand them. Look for the posters around your campus and demand that your student union get involved (or get involved yourself). Together, students can make a difference in their own lives and the lives of the next generation.

http://www.reducetuitionfees.ca/

–The title says it all. Support independent media.

–An analysis of culture that can easily be applied to Canada. We must help those within our boarders protect their cultures, otherwise it will be a very boring world of just empty and shallow Western capitalist “culture”. Culture takes time to develop and almost no time to destroy. We must bare this in mind when deciding what direction we want Canada to go.

–The veterans and soldiers of war reject the Iraq war as being illegal and not a war for the interests of the people. We must stand together to bring the troops home from both the Iraq and Afghan conflicts.

–Write to your MP and urge them to vote in favour of the Anti-Scab legislation. In New Brunswick this is especially important for working people to be able to bargain with their employers in good faith.

–The wold must keep an eye on the actions of the State in Mexico. There is no reason for violence by the State and it must be condemned. Support the right of workers to demand fair wages.

–The people continue to speak out against the neo-liberal model in Latin America. It is time for us, here in the North, to start to do the same.

–Public universities are becoming private institutions and places where politicians try their hair-brained schemes. Tuition should be the same for all people, no matter where they are from. Tuition should also be affordable by everyone (lower the better) and needs based grants should be available to students no matter where they are going to school. The federal government has the ability to make this happen and the provinces have the ability to push the federal government to act. Support a tuition freeze and equality in access to education.

–No fly lists have been shown not to work, are racist, and only interfere with the freedoms of the regular citizens of the world. All people should oppose such a list.

–Yet another bad article from the CBC. The inference at the bottom of the page is that because there were not a lot of people out at the rallies (given the bad weather it is not really a surprise) and because of the propaganda report that was published by the defense department there is still support for the war. This is simply bad logic. If there were lots of people out for a pro-war rally and if there had been a real survey about support for the AFGHAN mission (the report only asked if Canadians support ‘combat roles’ for Canadian troops) then you could make that claim but the realities are somewhat different. There is no support for the Afghanistan War that troops are currently engaged in. All the polls that ask that question say so and the vast majority of the people that are encountered by the Peace Movement in Canada say so. Given this, how is it that the CBC can come to the conclusion that there is support for the war?

The thing to remember regarding Afghanistan, is that the whole mission began when the US demanded the Afghan government hand over Osama. They refused to provide any evidence and when the Afghan government refused to comply, they bombed the country mercilessly. Now if Cuba, unilaterally decided to flatten the US for harboring a suspected terrorist, after refusing to provide evidence to support their claim, we all would think of it as a crime. When discussing Afghanistan, this is the first, and most critical point that should be addressed, namely, international aggression. Rebuilding the country as a democracy was not the original war aim. Bringing Osama to “justice” was. We are expected to believe that collective punishment of the Afghan people was justified since we wanted to capture Osama. Since civilians being crushed under rubble are only important and meaningful when American, this is a palatable hypocrisy.

After the aggression was over and Afghanistan was virtually destroyed by American power, the mission turned into one of “peacekeeping” and rebuilding Afghanistan in a way suitable to westerners. When you look at the Afghani cabinet, it is in large part, warlords and fundamentalists –not secular, democracy-loving politicians. There is one importance difference now - they are compliant with western business interests. Like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan – all nations with extensive human rights violations – they can be “partners” when they line up and help us put the squeeze on upstarts like Iran or North Korea.

The last point that should be discussed is the various intelligence studies, such as the one by Robert Pape of the university of Chicago, which demonstrate conclusively that foreign military presence, and/or intervention, simply increases terrorism, and rather obviously, refugee’s, starvation and human suffering.

In paragraph seven, the article mentions diplomatic efforts that obtained endorsements from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan for the Proliferation Security Initiative. It goes on to mention that Uzbekistan was already cooperating with the PSI. In the final paragraph, it mentions Kim Jong-il and his inner circle, which are “thought to be utterly insensitive to the suffering of the populace.” Then the article quotes a European Diplomat who states, “They’re closer to Al Capone than a state.”

It’s worth mentioning that in July 2000, Kazakhstan’s parliament passed a law granting President Nursultan Nazarbayev lifetime powers and privileges, including access to future presidents, immunity from criminal prosecution, and influence over domestic and foreign policy – a de facto “president for life.” Nazarbayev has repeatedly censored the press through arbitrary use of “slander” laws, blocked access to opposition web sites, banned the Wahhabi religious sect and drawn criticism from Amnesty International for excessive executions following specious trials.

Turkmenistan, according to the 2005 ‘Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index’ had the second worst press freedom conditions in the world behind North Korea.

Uzbekistan has been defined by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as the United States Department of State and Council of the European Union as “an authoritarian state with limited civil rights” with “wide-scale violation of virtually all basic human rights”. According to the reports, the most widespread violations are torture, arbitrary arrests, and various restrictions of freedoms: of religion, of speech and press, of free association and assembly. In 2005, Uzbekistan was included into Freedom House’s “The Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies”

It should be self-evident that what we have here is a group of monsters, aligned to help knock off an impetuous upstart.

–The “mainstream” media is saying that there is no clear indication who fired “first” but it is clear that the people that died were in solidarity with the popular struggle in Oaxaca. More news will be on the Narconews and Indymedia websites.

Externalities is when a corporation “out-sources” an expense. For example, anyone in Fredericton who has an oil tank in their home would have received a post card from Irving last week advising them that they could log onto www.gnb.ca, and if they are poor enough, they may qualify for an oil rebate.

Similarly, in the international realm, when vital commercial interests are endangered by indigenous insurgents, the job of protecting these interests can and will be “outsourced” to a national military, if the civilian population consents.

Its so absurd it would be comical, if this practice did not cause so much death and suffering.