By Nick Egnatz | Counterpunch | “As the New Year approaches and with it the one year anniversary of Obama’s administration I have a request for my friends on the left. Name one good thing that Obama has done.”

“Chavez was responding to a prediction by Newsweek magazine, which listed a coup in Venezuela among its world predictions for 2010.”

“The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If anybody treated us like we’re treating the people in Gaza, what would we do?”

–Attacks on workers continue from this government. The public service must fight back.

–Undemocracy. I know it isn’t a word, but there it is. Harper’s government is an undemocracy. Undoing Canadian democracy bit by bit.

The convoy is carrying humanitarian aid for Palestinians. Egypt would not allow the convoy to travel from Aqaba across the Red Sea to Egypt, which would have been a trip of approximately four hours.

Instead the convoy, led by George Galloway MP, has been driven back into Syria. It will now travel to Egypt via boat.

“school cafeteria workers in some of Sodexo’s districts are being disciplined for staying home while they’re sick, even though they prepare and serve food for a living.

Watch Illinois school cafeteria worker Cathy Gaul tell her story and then spread the word by telling your friends about our campaign”

– Sodexo’s website boasts that they are the #3 corporation to outsource to (from private prisons to food services).

UNB’s negotiating team presented an offer to the union Dec. 23, in which it proposed a two-year wage freeze retroactive for 2009 and into 2010, according to the e-mail.

Following that, the university is offering 0.5 per cent July 1, 2011, and Jan. 1, 2012, and 0.75 per cent July 1, 2012, and Jan. 1, 2012.

“This amounts to a total increase over four years of 2.5 per cent, which is less than the university received this year alone in the provincial budget,” said the bargaining committee’s e-mail.

The bargaining group said it already lags behind teachers at comparable universities and the UNB contract offer would leave professors 13 per cent behind the average wage package by the end of 2011.

– support the workers

–Support the striking workers of Vale Inco!

“Vanunu was a former low-level technician at an Israeli nuclear plant who leaked details and pictures of the operation to the Sunday Times of London in 1986. Israeli intelligence agents kidnapped him in Rome and brought him back to Israel to stand trial. He served 18 years in prison before being freed, but he is not allowed to leave the country. Upon his release in 2004, Vanunu was banned from leaving the country and having unauthorized contact with foreigners.”

“[F]or the movement to go further and become truly revolutionary, it would have to have a leader who wanted to overthrow the old regime and who could attract the loyalty of both the people and elements of the armed forces. So far this key revolutionary element, insofar as opposition leaders Mir Hosain Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, of dual sovereignty, has been lacking. Saying you want slightly less autocracy within a clerical theocracy is not a recipe for revolution.”

“It’s clear that we can’t consider the issue of climate change without considering changing the system. … The environmental crisis as a result of the increased temperatures of the atmosphere is a consequence of the capitalist system, of the prolonged and unsustainable pattern of production and consumption of the developed countries, of the application and imposition of an absolutely predatory model of development on the rest of the world”

“Short of the 1860s or 1930s, this was perhaps the most disastrous decade in American history, and it deserves a good goddamned label to celebrate that fine achievement.” | David Michael Green

“The independent Palestinian Centre for Human Rights described the killings as ‘extra-judicial executions’.”

“The explosion, which followed a weekend of deadly attacks, highlighted the multiple security challenges confronting the embattled Pakistani government, including violent vendettas by Taliban militants and sectarian violence against Shiites. … The attack appeared to be retribution for the Pakistani military’s bombing and helicopter strafing of Taliban hide-outs in Kurram and the neighboring tribal area”

See also: Suicide bomb targets Shia Muslims in Karachi | Guardian

“The blast follows more than 500 civilian deaths in bomb attacks across Pakistan since mid-October when the country’s army launched an attack on alleged al-Qaida and Taliban refuges in the border province of South Waziristan.”

Quite possibly, the most succinct recounting of the terror and brutality visited upon Gazans one year ago.

“The war on the population of Gaza is an attempt to break Palestinian resistance by means of destroying, in part, the aforementioned population.”

BREAK THE SIEGE ON GAZA! Two Million People Remain in the World’s Largest Open Air Prison

Gaza Freedom March in Toronto

DATE: Sunday, December 27, 2009, TIME: 1:00 pm.
PLACE: Israeli Consulate (180 Bloor St. W.)

Community and activist organizations in Toronto will be holding a rally to mark the one-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion and military assault on the Gaza Strip that left more than 1,400 dead. This rally is held in conjunction with the Gaza Freedom march

Initial list of Sponsors:
Gaza Freedom March (Toronto)
Palestine House Educational and Cultural Center
Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA)
Canadian Arab Federation (CAF)
Canadian Shia Muslims Organization (CASMO)
Toronto Coalition to Stop the War
Educators for Peace and Justice
Not In Our Name (NION): Jewish Voice Opposing Zionism
Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA-York)
Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA-UofT)
Labour for Palestine
Jewish Anti Zionist Network
Independent Jewish Voices
York Federation of Students
Venezuela We Are With You Coalition (CVEC)

“[T]he opposition movement has expanded beyond its base of mostly young, educated Tehran residents to at least some segments of the country’s pious heartland.”

According to mainstream press reports, the post-election protests in Iran have taken an interesting turn over the past two days. The passing and funeral of dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri have sparked anti-government protests in the religious city of Qom; the artisan and working class city of Isfahan; and the agricultural-based city of Najafabad.

Power to the people of Iran, may they have the fortitude to move beyond Mousavi.

“But describing [the failure in Copenhagen] as a fight between countries misses the essential point: that the issue is really linked to an economic system — capitalism — that is crucially dependent upon rapid growth as its driving force, even if this “growth” does not deliver better lives for the people.”

“The BDS campaign is particularly relevant to workers in the United States. … however, many U.S. labor officials — often without the knowledge or con-sent of union members — have ignored Palestinian appeals for justice. Instead, they continue to collaborate with the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that not only supported Israel’s war on Gaza, but which has spearheaded — and whitewashed — racism, apartheid, dispossession and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians since the 1920s.”