Hot headlines

Exhibition blocked

Jun 202012

Harper government targeted artist for her green conscience, internal documents reveal.

by Beth Hong

Independent artist and environmental advocate Franke James has obtained over 1,500 pages of internal government documents revealing extensive discussion about her art and its effect on the Harper government's agenda.

Franke James, a Canadian artist and environmental advocate blacklisted by the Harper government, has obtained internal documents indicating Canadian officials worked behind the scenes to discredit her work.

An internal Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) media monitoring report from July 2011 lists James as "an inconvenient artist" ("une artiste qui dérange"), the headline of an article in La Presse. The document was part of the 1,500 pages of internal documents James obtained through Access to Information requests since August 2011.

"To be on the list of hot foreign issues, it was just shocking," James said in a telephone interview. "I'm right up there with Arctic sovereignty and Afghanistan."…

Newfoundland restricts FOI

Jun 182012

Hot headlines

Public responds angrily to perceived secrecy.

from the CBC

An expert on international access-to-information laws calls key changes in Bill 29 "breathtaking," and says Newfoundland and Labrador will rank lower than some Third World countries if the amendments pass.

The CBC show On Point with David Cochrane asked the Centre for Law and Democracy to analyze the changes proposed in the bill, which is currently being filibustered by the opposition in the house of assembly.

"The new cabinet exception is, well, breathtaking in its scope," said Toby Mendel who runs the centre.

"I think it's one of the widest exceptions of that sort I've seen anywhere."

Bill 29 expands the scope of cabinet secrecy, making whole new classes of documents off limits from public oversight…

Immigration changes cases

Jun 122012

Hot headlines

Non-white births outnumbered white births in US last year.

by Gwynne Dyer

What if China, flush with its new wealth, opened its doors to mass immigration? It would make sense from an economic and social point of view, because its one-child-per-family policy has produced a young generation far smaller than the one that now does most of the work. China's population is "aging" (ie its average age is going up) faster than any other country in history, and it could certainly do with some more young people.

Getting rolled in Wisconsin

Jun 122012

Hot headlines

Why electoral politics sold out the popular uprising in the Badger State — and why it's not all over.

by Andy Kroll

The revelers watched in stunned disbelief, cocktails in hand, dressed for a night to remember. On the big-screen TV a headline screamed in crimson red: "Projected Winner: Scott Walker." It was 8:49 pm In parts of Milwaukee, people learned that news networks had declared Wisconsin's governor the winner while still in line to cast their votes. At the election night party for Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, supporters talked and cried and ordered more drinks. Barrett soon took the stage to concede, then waded into the crowd where a distraught woman slapped him in the face.

Walker is the first governor in American history to win a recall election. His lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, dispatched her recall challenger no less decisively. So, too, did three Republican state senators in their recall elections. Democrats avoided a GOP sweep with a win in the sixth and final senate recall vote of the season, in Wisconsin's southeastern 21st district, but that was small consolation. Put simply, Democrats and labor unions got rolled.

The results of Tuesday's elections are being heralded as the death of public-employee unions, if not the death of organized labor itself. Tuesday's results are also seen as the final chapter in the story of the populist uprising that burst into life last year in the state capital of Madison. The Cheddar Revolution, so the argument goes, was buried in a mountain of ballots.

What sex means for world peace

Jun 062012

Hot headlines

The best predictor of a state's stability is how its women are treated.

by Valerie M Hudson

In the academic field of security studies, realpolitik dominates. Those who adhere to this worldview are committed to accepting empirical evidence when it is placed before their eyes, to see the world as it "really" is and not as it ideally should be. As Walter Lippmann wrote, "We must not substitute for the world as it is an imaginary world."

The dreams of Captain Amadou Sanogo

Jun 062012

Hot headlines

Or, how one man destroyed Mali in just one month.

by Gwynne Dyer

Imagine that you are a junior officer in a West African army. You joined the army at 18, you worked hard, you managed to get sent to the United States four times for various training courses, but somehow the promotions never came. You have just turned 40, and in 10 or 15 years you will have to retire on a captain's pension. What to do?

Northern light

Jun 062012

Hot headlines

Quebec's "casseroles" movement affects USA too.

by Chris Hedges

I gave a talk last week at Canada's Wilfrid Laurier University to the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Many in the audience had pinned small red squares of felt to their clothing. The carre rouge, or red square, has become the Canadian symbol of revolt. It comes from the French phrase carrement dans le rouge, or "squarely in the red," referring to those crushed by debt.

The streets of Montreal are clogged nightly with as many as 100,000 protesters banging pots and pans and demanding that the old systems of power be replaced. The mass student strike in Quebec, the longest and largest student protest in Canadian history, began over the announcement of tuition hikes and has metamorphosed into what must swiftly build in the United States — a broad popular uprising.

Challenging NATO in Chicago

May 222012

Hot headlines

Police took "soft approach" in dealing with mostly-peaceful demonstrators.

by Chicago Tribune staff

For four days, and nearly around the clock, Chicago police guided, cajoled and blockaded roaming groups of NATO protesters, following a set of strategic goals that laid the foundation for everything they did.

Egypt’s next president

May 222012

Hot headlines

Election outcome unknown, but radicals won't win.

by Gwynne Dyer

After 11 demonstrators were killed outside the Ministry of Defence in Cairo early this month, Mohammad al-Assaf, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), expressed his astonishment that anybody might suspect the military of wanting to rig the forthcoming presidential elections in Egypt. "The armed forces and its supreme council are committed to handing over power at the scheduled time or even before 30 June," he said.

Big student debt, no jobs

May 222012

Hot headlines

Robert Reich to class of 2012: "You're f**ked."

by Robert Reich

Members of the Class of 2012,

As a former secretary of labor and current professor, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the truth about the pieces of parchment you're picking up today.

You're f**ked.

Older Entries Newer Entries