“[As] long as the European Union shows its double standard and depravity by attacking a small Third World nation, while at the same time hiding its own crimes, it will continue to languish in the purgatory of discredit on the international scene and in the eyes of the world.”

–A union running a paper. Rather great!

–The government should not be in the business of misleading the people it is supposed to represent. The people of Calgary should demand better. Support the workers.

–Is he ever?

–James Laxer continues to tell us the real truth.

–Or, at least they should be able to. Derrick O’Keefe tells us why.

–The new trade model seems to be getting more attention. The socialist model for trade’s core principle is “don’t screw-over your neighbour just to get ahead”. Seems sensible, no?

–Equality is in the other direction, comrades.

–It will not end because the governments of the countries that could do something continue to ignore the conflict. If we truly had democracy in the West things like this would not continue to occur.

–Yep, blame the oppressed for things going badly. It couldn’t possibly be the fault of the “liberators”.

–They say scientists, however, there have been mass walkouts from the IPCC over the rather political position they are talking in trying to balance profits with the environment. There needs to be some popular pressure put on our governments to stop right-wing party hacks from interfering with the process.

–Anyone know any decent analysis of what is going on in Turkey?

From: geoffrey tanner

So Hellmanns is having this contest. They’ve secured empty lots in five Canadian cities and they want to give out plots to people to garden on. What a concept, eh. Unilever Community Gardens. (Unilever owns Hellmanns). Co-opting community gardens is pretty low. I read all the small print and it’s pretty awful. I think one of the most offensive rules is they reserve the right to tend your garden for you if they don’t like the way you are tending it. I could go on and on. I won’t. I think we should all enter this contest. Fill out the e-forms with bogus info then write the 150 essay that they request. I suggest starting off straight but veering off into anti-Hellmanns/anti-Unilever rants. Get yer creative juices flowin’ and have some fun! Enter as many times as you can. And send this to everyone on your contact sheet. It would be awesome if we clogged their system so bad that they had to cancel their contest. If you want to enter, or just check it out, go to www.hellmanns.ca and click on the GARDENS button.

COMMUNITY GARDENS ARE FOR PEOPLE, NOT MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS.

–We must protect the public health care system.

From the article:

Unionized health-care workers say they know exactly where Murphy is going, and they don’t like it.

Daniel Leger of the Canadian Union of Public Employees says if hospital equipment is sitting idle late at night, renting it out to the private sector is not the solution.

“We should put an extra shift on. Put an extra shift on 4 -12. Put an extra shift on the weekend. Hospital workers, health care workers are shift workers. We don’t mind working a 4-12 shift,” Leger said.

“The vast majority of the countries that have followed its policies have suffered a sharp slowdown in economic growth over the last 25 years, and a resulting decline in progress on social indicators such as life expectancy and infant and child mortality.”

AB physician sounded cancer alarm, slapped with College complaint

“Amnesty International stated after the war ended that many of the attacks on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure were collective punishment, and not the “collateral damage” that Israel claimed.”

“[The Israeli] government have reflexively rejected every Arab peace offer, whether from Saudi Arabia, Syria, the Arab League or Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. Ariel Sharon’s and Mr Olmert’s policies these past seven years have shaped a new paradigm in which Israel is the rejectionist party. The Three No’s of Khartoum have been replaced by the Three No’s of Jerusalem: no negotiations with Syria, no acceptance of the Arab initiative and, above all, no peace talks with the Palestinians.”

–Yet another unworkable and generally ridiculous idea out of this Liberal government. What world are they living on? We do not have to come up with hair-brained schemes that are, quite obviously, going to lead to the demise of the health care system and economy of this province… if we wanted the economy to collapse we could have just left the Conservatives in power. They are just wasting time and money trying to come up with ‘new’ ideas. Who do they think that they are? Everything that they are coming up with is nuts and not based on any knowledge or experience from the academic or work worlds. There has to be a response to this from those that actually know how the system is put together and what changes need to be made politicians should just stay out of the way if privatization is all they can come up with. No one wants it and there are many alternatives.

–Ah, there is nothing like commercialised research to give you completely biased results. What do we think is going to come out of this research, that they should cut back on logging? Would that even be an option to report?!?

Pornography is big business, a thriving multi-billion dollar industry so powerful it drives the direction of much media technology. It also makes for complicated politics. Anti-pornography arguments are frequently dismissed as patently “anti-sex”–and ultimately “anti-feminist”–silencing at the gate a critical discussion of pornography’s relationship to violence against women and even what it means to be a “real man.”

In his most personal and difficult book to date, Robert Jensen launches a powerful critique of mainstream pornography that promises to reignite one of the fiercest debates in contemporary feminism. At once alarming and thought-provoking, Getting Off asks tough but crucial questions about pornography, manhood, and paths toward genuine social justice.

To listen to an interview with the author:

http://lists.wort-fm.org/archive/permalink/wort_070309_120401apafri.mp3

The head of Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism command said yesterday that al-Qaida had survived the six-year long “war on terror” launched by President George Bush and Tony Blair, and its central leadership had retained the ability to order devastating attacks on Britain.

Deputy assistant commissioner Peter Clarke, the national counterterrorism coordinator, warned in a lecture last night that terrorists “have momentum” and were on an “inexorable trend to more ambitious and more destructive attack planning”.

“We have seen how al-Qaida has been able to survive a prolonged multinational assault on its structures, personnel and logistics. It has certainly retained its ability to deliver centrally directed attacks here in the UK.