Features

Pussy Riot pays for ‘punk prayer’

Jun 032013

New documentary highlights freedom of spirit, not just speech.

by Christa Hillstrom

Uproar. Pogrom. Uprising. That's how Nadezhda Tolokonnikova defines the word "riot" in a new documentary on Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist punk collective that rattled the world last year when three members were arrested for performing an anti-Putin "prayer" in Russia's premier Orthodox church.

Tolokonnikova, better known as Pussy Riot's complex, mysterious, fist-raising "Nadia," is perhaps the most intriguing and provocative figure in Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer. The film premiered in January at the Sundance festival, where filmmakers Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award.

Bradley Manning goes on trial

Jun 032013

Features

Whistleblowers' supporters organize protests locally and globally.

from the Bradley Manning Support Network

June 1 2013 — Nearly two thousand supporters of US Army PFC Bradley Manning rallied and marched on Fort Meade, Maryland, this afternoon for the young whistle-blower.

A new global conversation about drugs

Jun 032013

Features

South America takes lead in calling for end to War on Drugs.

by Jess Hunter-Bowman

As Manuel, a Colombian farmer, showed me his peppercorn crops ravaged by the defoliant sprayed in a futile effort to kill his neighbor’s drug crops, he explained why the Drug War could never be won. No matter how much money or chemicals drug warriors threw at eradication efforts, he told me, the crops always reappeared.

After 40 years of failing to stem the drug trade, there’s a global conversation about new approaches. That debate is particularly vibrant south of the Rio Grande.

Bonnie Klein: ‘Fierce Canadian’ fears for her country

May 302013

Features

The renowned filmmaker muses on receiving the Order of Canada in perilous times.

by Bonnie Sherr Klein

"They desire a better country" (Desiderantes meliorem patriam) — Order of Canada motto

September 1967. We are holding our breath. We have to get into Canada immediately or Michael, my new husband, will be jailed. At the advice of the Montreal Committee to Aid War Resisters, we have arrived at Dorval Airport after midnight, when mostly sympathetic French-Canadian immigration officers are on duty. Michael has a hastily-offered letter of employment from Montreal Children's Hospital. Twenty minutes later, we are relieved to be welcomed as landed immigrants! We are among the wave of over 200,000 Vietam-era women and men who became an integral part of the Canadian mosaic.

Before our immigration, Michael had been offered a position as a medical officer in the American military but had planned to go to jail rather than serve the Vietnam War in any capacity. Serendipitously, the day he received the commission, I was at a seminar for documentary filmmakers and had just seen the Canadian documentary Mills of the Gods. In it, director Beryl Fox bravely sat filming from the cockpit of a helicopter as it sprayed napalm on a Vietnamese village. We Americans who opposed the war knew about the atrocities, but our US media never exposed them. A Canadian woman did, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired her film.

Excerpts from Nigel Wright’s Diary

May 302013

Features

'I keep forgetting to tell the PM about the cheque I wrote for Duffy…'

by Linda McQuaig

Tuesday March 12

Dear Diary:

A little down time today at the office. Gives me a chance to catch up on my diary writing. Not much going on in the PMO these days. A trade deal with the Europeans. La-di-da! Review of Chinese takeovers. Dullsville! Pipelines for that muck Alberta tries to pass off as oil. What a snore! Oh, wait. There’s a call coming in from Mike Duffy. Gotta run.

Salvaging the Senate

May 302013

Features

The late Senator Eugene Forsey praised the Senate's purposes.

by Helen Forsey

"The idea of senators as lazy old busters who sit twiddling their thumbs and don't earn their keep is seriously exaggerated." Eugene Forsey, Canada's beloved constitutional expert, was being interviewed back in 1978 in his Senate office. "Our work is not spectacular as a rule, but it can be exceedingly important."

Has my father's assessment of the Senate become obsolete in the years since? Some more recent appointees certainly seem to have dedicated themselves to proving him wrong. Sensational cases of breach of trust, fraud and even alleged violence have disgusted a long-suffering public and revived calls for Senate abolition or radical reform. Clearly, there's something rotten in the Upper Chamber. The question is what to do about it.

Harperites pushing austerity abroad

May 302013

Features

Canada opposes bank reforms, Tobin tax, EU efforts to retain social spending.

by Yves Engler

If the Harper government were honest about its policies, it would proclaim for all to hear: “Our goal is to make the rich richer.” While many Canadians would agree that has been the effect of Conservative domestic policies, they might be surprised to learn the extent to which it is also true in international affairs.

A history of resistance

May 272013

Features

Idle No More one regional aspect of Indigenous peoples' resistance to destruction.

by Kristin Moe

There’s a remote part of northern Alberta where the Lubicon Cree have lived, it is said, since time immemorial. The Cree called the vast, pine-covered region niyanan askiy, “our land.” When white settlers first carved up this country, they made treaties with most of its original inhabitants — but for reasons unclear, the Lubicon Cree were left out.

Two hundred years later, the Lubicons' right to their traditional territory is still unrecognized. In the last four decades, industry has tapped the vast resource wealth that lies deep beneath the pines; today, 2,600 oil and gas wells stretch to the horizon. This is tar sands country.

Exploiting the Arctic meltdown

May 272013

Features

Some see profit where most see catastrophe.

by Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 16 2013 (IPS) – Many eyes are turning north to the Arctic, some in horror at the rapid decline of a key component of our life support system, others in eager anticipation at the untapped resources beneath the vanishing snow and ice.

Islamic banking starts to look attractive

May 272013

Features

Open to all faiths, Islamic banks have survived in global economic crisis.

by Charles Recknagel

May 25, 2013 — When Islamic banking was first developed in the 1970s in the Persian Gulf states, its customers were almost exclusively observant Muslims who wanted a banking system that complied with their religious values. These include prohibitions against lending money with interest, which is defined as usury, and investing in businesses deemed morally harmful, such as alcohol or pornography.

But today, Islamic banking is getting wider attention, including among non-Muslims. That is because Islamic banks, which are open to people of all faiths, have largely survived the global economic crisis intact. So far, none has had to receive substantial bailouts to keep them afloat, suggesting that they somehow offer a safer haven to savers than conventional banks.

Mohammed Amin, a London-based Islamic finance consultant, says that perception is partly true, and partly not.
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