A major report released today by the Conservation Council of New Brunswick’s Fundy Baykeeper program demonstrates that the salmon aquaculture industry in the Bay of Fundy is not sustainable and needs to be dramatically restructured.

The Conservation Council of New Brunswick has examined emissions data for the Irving Oil refinery in Saint John provided by the company to Environment Canada for the past 10 years and found that emissions of some VOCs and metals, specifically aluminum, have increased more than 10 times since the upgrade.

–Think of the good that could be doing.

The status quo is no longer an option.

“Since Israel and the Palestinians revived their peace negotiations in late November after a seven-year freeze, at least 145 people, mostly fighters, have been killed by Israeli troops in Hamas-run Gaza”

Also see: Gaza militant killed near Rafah | BBC

“On Wednesday, Israel’s supreme court upheld the cabinet’s decision to reduce fuel and electricity supplies to Gaza”

–Neo-liberal policies have taken a toll on our welfare packages.

–An analysis of the current situation in the capital and finance markets. Reasoned analysis from Leo Panitch.

–All in a bit of fun this morning. Have a watch of this short British comedy on how markets really work.

The FBI said it is investigating 14 corporations over possible accounting fraud and insider trading violations in a crackdown on subprime lending. The companies were not named.

The agency said they include developers, lenders and financiers that securitized ordinary home loans into exotic investment instruments, as well as banks that held them.

I was somewhat hesitant to post this news-story because it is in many ways decontextualized from the point I think needs to be drawn from it. The coverage and trial of this murder is a good example of the hypocritical way domestic abuse is interpreted in our society.

It turns out that immigrant fathers don’t have a monopoly on murdering their daughters. I wonder why the media didn’t ask whether there is something about English-Canada’s culture or religion that led to this tragedy.

Also see: Kitimat father pleads not guilty in death of daughter | CBC

–If you haven’t watched this talk (where Chomsky introduces Robert Fisk) then you should. Now.

–Yep, apparently Canadians are too clean, think the environment is too important, are too worried about untested drugs, and are too concerned over use of dangerous pesticides. So, I guess it is a good thing that democracy can be undermined by NAFTA.

–As we continue to ignore the core issues we also continue to make things worse for the future.

–Have a look where all your tax breaks are going… right into the pockets of the rich.

–A run-down of what is happening at STU.

Police at India’s airports are on the alert for a doctor accused of masterminding an illegal organ transplant ring that harvested more than 500 kidneys from itinerant labourers for wealthy patients. Some donors say they were tricked into taking part and forced at gunpoint to have the operation.

Working from a house in a city near Delhi, the doctor is said to have taken kidneys from hundreds of labourers in the past nine years and transplanted them to high-paying recipients, many from overseas. Neighbours said they wondered what was happening when they saw blood running out of the gutters. Reports say transplant recipients paid up to £300,000 while the people who sold their organs received £625 if they were paid at all.

When is a civil war a civil war? A bomb a week? A street battle a month? For after yesterday’s funerals in Beirut, this question is no longer academic. Eight Shia Lebanese Muslims were killed in just two hours in the Mar Mikael district of the city in a shootout involving unknown assailants in – and this is the most sinister part of the carnage – the very streets where the 15-year Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975.

While there is increasing evidence that the euro-area economy is slowing, most of the factors that are contributing to the bleak outlook in the United States are not present on the Continent, according to the governor of the Bank of France, Christian Noyer.

In an interview, Noyer also said he did not expect any “strong shocks” from French banks as they report their 2007 earnings, despite the constant stream of major losses by banks in the United States.

Noyer was at pains to stress that consumers and financial institutions in France and the rest of the euro zone appeared relatively insulated from the effects of the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market across the Atlantic.

“Historically, there was some correlation between the U.S. and the EU economic cycles,” Noyer said. “Now it seems there could be at least a partial decoupling. Thats not to say that were immune from a weakening U.S. economy, but there are a series of factors that should dampen the effect.”

“The breaking of the Gaza-Egypt wall is clearly a good thing … [t]his was, after all, the first big, smart Palestinian move since the David and Goliath stone intifada, which pitted mere stone-throwing teenagers against Israeli tanks and body-armored soldiers, and exposed the Occupation, twenty years ago … [Palestinians] just have the right to their rights.”

The “Battle of Fallujah” demonstrated the tactical extremes of the U.S. military, resulting in the heaviest aerial bombing campaign of any major city in Iraq since the start of the war. Here’s a look at the city three years on.

It’s called: exercising self-determination.

An excellent piece outlining the mechanisms and consequences of “neo-liberal education reforms” within the public post-secondary education system.

The Mexican city of Cananea, site of one of the world’s largest copper mines, is moving toward a virtual state of siege after fighting swept through the streets between police and strikers more than a week ago. The attack on the Mexican miners’ union, followed by a massive police occupation of the mine and surrounding town, has sparked a growing uproar among the country’s workers and unions. More than 25,000 miners across Mexico walked off the job for a day on January 16 in protest. Six days later, 1,500 teachers, electrical and telephone workers, and farmers marched on the Mexico City office of Labor Secretary Javier Lozano Alarcon to demand that the government withdraw police from the struck mine.

George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has died. However, the demand for a socialist Palestine lives on!

The U.S. installed government in Somalia is under attack.

“Months ago, Barak and Olmert - imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, and boasted about it. Lately they have tightened the deadly noose even more, so that hardly anything at all could be brought into the Strip. Last week they made the blockade absolute - no food, no medicines. Things reached a climax when they stopped the fuel, too. Large areas of Gaza remained without electricity - incubators for premature babies, dialysis machines, pumps for water and sewage. Hundreds of thousands remained without heating in the severe cold, unable to cook, running out of food … It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and hungry people break down the wall that is shutting them in, their eyes radiant, embracing everybody they meet … The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation.”

“I accuse the government of Colombia of plotting a conspiracy, acting as a pawn of the North American empire, of plotting a military provocation against Venezuela”
Chavez

“The Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of the Americas (ALBA) is starting to make an important impact in the financial sphere,” said Venezuelan economist Jesus Farias stated Thursday referring to the creation of the South Bank.

Caribbean leaders are heading to Venezuela this weekend for talks aimed at cementing their country’s participation in the Bolivarian alternative for the Americas (ALBA).

“This may not have been quite the collapse of the Berlin Wall. But if anyone doubted the impact of a prolonged siege on an imprisoned people, they had the evidence yesterday.”

NEW YORK Reuters - Citigroup Inc is abandoning its plans to open as many as 100 U.S. branches a year, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday.

The report said the bank will likely sell or close some new branches in areas like Tampa, Florida, while focusing on large metropolitan areas like Boston, Miami, New York City and San Francisco.

The report said the company began reconsidering its expansion plans when Vikram Pandit became its new chief executive last month. His predecessor, Charles Prince, stepped down amid mounting mortgage-related losses.

“We want to buy food, we want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese,”

–It is the worst economic downturn since the second world war…

–Women continue to lead the charge against the blockade of the Palestinian territories.

–Not the direction that this country or the country of Peru should be going.

–Some good news for people who oppose the wasteful and environmentally unsustainable practice of using litres of water, gallons of oil, and huge amounts of waste just to produce a bottle of water that is not as clean as the stuff coming out of your tap. And, really, who supports those practices other than the largest multinational corporations?