–The Bolivian political party (and mass movement) Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) is leading the charge in Bolivia to keep its leader Evo Morales on course. We must support the socialist movements in South America that continue to move forward.

–The police state in Canada is exposed.

–Support the workers, end scab labour.

–The Left is growing in Quebec.

–Robert Fisk writes about the Armenian genocide.

–More value for your dollar. Public utilities are to compete with already-present private companies.

–The business elite are staging a lockout in Bolivia to oppose the people and popular policies of Morales. The new battle ground between the interests of the rich elite and the working people has expanded from Venezuela to Bolivia it seems. Support the people, demand justice, demand fairness, demand worker control during a boss’ lockout.

–This is why the `developing’ countries should not hitch themselves to the US economy.

–Job loses look likely in Canada.

–Public money pays for it but the government won’t tell us who it is for… seems fair, no?

–Politics are strange in Britain now that Labour has become New Labour… even the Tories can look like they are progressive because all parties now basically agree that neo-liberalism is inevitable. The working people of Britain need an alternative or they need to take back their Party from the Blairites and neo-liberal cranks.

–Too little, too late. It was cultural genocide after a `regular’ genocide and all the government of Canada can offer is a few thousand dollars. The government hasn’t even guaranteed to not continue the theft of land.

–While it is nice to see that the CBC is promoting free and open source software, they could at least have put an updated version of OpenOffice on the front page of CBC instead of version 1.0. Why not go one step further and promote GNU/Linux.

Justice Gordon Thomson of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Kingston issued a new injunction on Monday, after Frontenac Ventures asked the court to remove the protesters from the land.

The company, which is prospecting the property for uranium, is also suing the protesters for $77 million.

Members of the Algonquin and Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nations have been camped out since June at the entrance to the land near Sharbot Lake, about 80 kilometres north of Kingston.

The Algonquins say the land is theirs because in 1873 the British government signed an agreement proclaiming land not sold to or surrendered to the Crown belongs to their First Nations allies.

“With the demise of the mathematical modeling speculative science, we are now in the period of the Mystical Black Hole. The big investment houses and hedge funds are holding back on revelations, hoping that investment confidence will return if investors are kept in the dark about how much they lost. This is a step below Voodoo Economics.”

A most unexpected article.

Asaf Rashid
August 24, 2007

(*My emphasis*): “…our media activism has often been confined to critiquing the mainstream media, coupled with attempts to get our 20 second sound bytes on the networks, as if that will solve the problem. Others are happy when their work gets published in the mainstream, little realizing that this isn’t necessarily a good sign. It often means that what that person wrote was acceptable within the mainstream media spin or that the writer censored her/himself and the result is that mainstream media can claim to be showing ‘both sides’ (both sides meaning 2,000 articles/books/whatever from the conservative/corporate viewpoint; 1 from the self-censored radical perspective….What we want is for mainstream media to include peace and justice programming, prepared by the peace and justice movement, in their daily reports. *If they do not agree to this demand, we picket their offices, occupy them if necessary, and shut them down.*”—Lydia Sargent, March 2003, (Z Magazine) Lydia Sargent is co-founder of South End Press and Z Magazine)

Those are some powerful and timely words by accomplished U.S.-based media activist Lydia Sargent. They were obviously spoken in the context of frustration and desire for tactical change in response to systematically poor coverage of the voices of anti-war activists in the lead-up to the U.S.-led (escalation of) war on Iraq in 2003. Terribly imbalanced coverage has helped contribute to the production of a politically disarmed public, who are limited from making rational choices as a result of being provided with insufficient information about key political issues. Those who actually are able to arm their minds have to search madly amongst the journalistic rubble for empowering content by engaging with alternative and autonomous media sources, or even do their own journalism – and they rarely get paid. A major result of these poor dynamics of information flow is a condition arguably worse that mass apathy: the majority of people are without political building materials, which prevents the construction of ideological foundations and the organization of, and participation in, actions for social change.

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“It is bad enough that a police force in Canada thinks it has the right to infiltrate peaceful protests in such a way but the real issue is who ordered them to do it?” said Dave Coles, President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

NDP Hosts a public discussion on the `Security and Prosperity Partnership’ in Fredericton, NB.

Following the August 20 Leaders’ Summit in Montebello Quebec concerning the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the Fredericton NDP is hosting a gathering for discussion.
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–More reflections of Fidel Castro of Cuba.

–Bolivia, like Venezuela, is engaging in some democratic reforms that are helping the people of that country find some independence from US imperialism. Have a read of how they are doing it.

–Support the student workers.