Alternative News
Articles from non-mainstream as opposed to corporate for profit sources.
B.C.s Not-So-Sweet Sixteen
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- Published on Thursday, 04 March 2021 17:10
- Written by editor
Fighting the Medical Monopoly
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- Published on Thursday, 04 March 2021 14:40
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Fighting the Medical Monopoly:
Mobilizing for ZERO-COVID and Decommodified Healthcare
Salimah Valiani
With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, ‘vaccine nationalism’ is only slightly more rife than the calls against it. The focus on ‘vaccine nationalism’ by critical thinkers and activists misses some key lessons of the pandemic elaborated in my October 2020 article, “Access to medical supplies and devices – the lesser known story of COVID-19 and medical monopoly.” This piece summarises my October 2020 piece and links it to new developments, most importantly, the need to organize for a ZERO-COVID approach to ending the pandemic.
As with N95 masks and ventilators, the underproduction of vaccines is at the root...
Chocolate and slavery
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- Published on Thursday, 04 March 2021 05:24
- Written by editor
Children are being trafficked into slavery harvesting cocoa for Nestle, Mars, and Hershey.
A brave group of former child laborers is fighting back against these companies in US courts, but they need your help to win. Will you chip in CA$89 today?
A,
In Ivory Coast, thousands of children as young as 11 are being forced to work on cocoa plantations supplying some of the world's biggest brands -- including Nestle, Mars, and Hershey.
The chocolate companies have been dragging their feet for decades when it comes to ending child slavery in their supply chains.
It’s time to demand real action: With your support, we can help fund a lawsuit by a group of former child labourers. They were trafficked into slavery in Ivory Coast cocoa plantations and are now fighting back in US courts, charging these multinational chocolate companies with knowingly profiting from forced child labor.
They're up against high-priced corporate lawyers, but they've got someone on their side that Nestle, Mars, and...
Harmful misinformation is spreading—get the facts
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- Published on Wednesday, 03 March 2021 09:58
- Written by editor
Download this newsletter in PDF.
Human rights can be complicated
International and domestic laws around Indigenous peoples' human rights can be complicated. Unfortunately, this means that social media, and even respected news outlets, can wind up spreading misleading and outright false information. When it comes to human rights, you can't believe everything that you read.
Read more: Harmful misinformation is spreading—get the facts
The Fortunate Marxist: Ernie Tate (1934-2021)
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- Published on Wednesday, 03 March 2021 04:28
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The Fortunate Marxist: Ernie Tate (1934-2021)
Bryan Palmer
Born poor on Belfast’s Shankill Road in the midst of the Great Depression was certainly no entré to a life that would cross paths with Bertrand Russell, Vanessa Redgrave, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. Ernest (Ernie) Tate would nevertheless work closely with luminaries such as these and many others who, like him, opposed the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. A lifelong revolutionary socialist, Tate was a leading organizer of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, worked for Russell’s Peace Foundation and its International War Crimes Tribunal, and partnered with the then leftist, David Horowitz (now a prominent conservative spokesman), in taking...
Were almost there! Help us address the crisis in long-term care
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- Published on Tuesday, 02 March 2021 10:04
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Read more: Were almost there! Help us address the crisis in long-term care
100,000 Deaths and a White Paper: What we need instead in Britain
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- Published on Tuesday, 02 March 2021 05:28
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100,000 Deaths and a White Paper:
What we need instead in Britain
Colin Leys
When Imperial College’s modeller Neil Ferguson told the British government in early March 2020 that it was on course to see 250,000 deaths from COVID-19, he was widely seen as scaremongering. Now his warning looks no more than sober. The government has already taken us past the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths, more deaths per capita than any other country in the world except Czechia, and is on course for 125,000 by the end of the winter. And the government’s plans for lifting the national lockdown that began in January look likely to cost between...
Read more: 100,000 Deaths and a White Paper: What we need instead in Britain
Trans Mountain name dropped us
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- Published on Monday, 01 March 2021 15:06
- Written by editor
r33
, this is huge.
Last week Trans Mountain filed a request asking the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) to keep the identity of its insurers a secret. The document explicitly name-drops Stand.earth and credits the pressure from our movement as the reason why the company is struggling to find insurers to back the project.
Trans Mountain is right to be afraid: without insurance, the pipeline is dead.
But what it doesn’t understand about campaigning is that when you get crystal clear evidence your strategy is working, you don’t back off – you go even harder.
This is a critical moment to target the project’s remaining insurers and prove that there’s no point in hiding. We already know who they are, and the pressure won’t stop until we win.
Read more: Trans Mountain name dropped usFebruary 2021 Update
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- Published on Monday, 01 March 2021 09:14
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Urgent: We can't save the bees without you!
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- Published on Monday, 01 March 2021 07:52
- Written by editor
Hi A, a quick thing: hundreds of bee-lovers are backing our global fight to save bees from toxic pesticides. They’re scaling up our war chest to take on Bayer and co in all corners of the world -- will you join them?
Donate CA$1 monthlyDonate CA$4 monthlyDonate CA$6 monthlyDonate another amount
No thanks, but I'll make a one-time donation.
Thanks for all that you do,
Nick and the SumOfUs team
Here's...
Solidarity with Farmers of India
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- Published on Monday, 01 March 2021 06:44
- Written by editor
Solidarity with Farmers of India
In a full-page ad in the Toronto Star on February 27, labour, community and civil society organizations in Canada and elsewhere expressed their support for India’s farmers. This Declaration of Solidarity comes at a time when thousands of farmers in India have been engaged for months in the largest and longest sustained non-violent resistance movement in Indian and possibly world history, surpassing Mahatma Gandhi’s historic 1930 Dandi March against the abhorrent British colonial Salt Law. The Declaration is part of a growing movement outside India to demonstrate that the world is watching and that we are firmly behind the farmers and their struggle to survive.
The farmers are protesting farm laws that will destroy the livelihoods of the millions employed in agriculture in India...
City Councillor files CRTC complaint against CFAX radio on Pink Shirt Day
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- Published on Sunday, 28 February 2021 20:34
- Written by editor
City Councillor files CRTC complaint against CFAX radio on Pink Shirt Day 2021 for “misleading, unbalanced programming” on issue of homelessness
February 24, 2021
VICTORIA, BC— On Pink Shirt Day 2021, which calls on the public stand up to bullying and harassment, Victoria City Councillor Ben Isitt has submitted a complaint to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), claiming that CFAX 1070 radio has breached its obligations under the Broadcasting Act and Radio Regulations for its “misleading, unbalanced programming” on the issue of homelessness in BC’s capital region.
“Broadcasters have a legal obligation to provide balanced coverage on matters on public concern,” says Isitt. “CFAX has unfortunately not been a good actor, demonstrating a disturbing and persistent pattern of misleading, unbalanced programming on the complex social issue homelessness.”
Isitt’s complaint draws from a detailed analysis of a CFAX segment from
February 11, 2021, which he describes as “typical of the wider pattern of
unbalanced, misleading information.” Along with his complaint to the CRTC, Isitt
has issued a “Fact-Check” document, debunking several claims that CFAX advanced
in that Feb. 11 segment.
Isitt says that he was motivated in part by Pink Shirt Day to file his complaint against CFAX, as part of a...
Read more: City Councillor files CRTC complaint against CFAX radio on Pink Shirt Day
E-News: Nestlé sale to Wall St / Big Pharma blocks universal pharmacare / Council presents to HoC and more...
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- Published on Sunday, 28 February 2021 06:04
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Beyond Digital Capitalism
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- Published on Sunday, 28 February 2021 03:42
- Written by editor
Moderated by Michael Lardner. Presentations by:
- Stephen Maher: “Remembering Leo Panitch and Beyond Capitalism.” Stephen is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, Canada, and Assistant Editor of Socialist Register.
- Greg Albo: “Leo Panitch, the Socialist Register and Beyond Digital Capitalism.” Greg teaches in the Department of Politics at York University. He is co-editor of the Socialist Register.
- Ursula Huws: “Reaping the Whirlwind: Digitalization, Restructuring, and Mobilization in the Covid Crisis.” Ursula is Professor of Labour and Globalization at the University of Hertfordshire.
Forward to a friend: this link
r39
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Feb 28 forum: Take the Plant, Save the Planet
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- Published on Saturday, 27 February 2021 13:04
- Written by editor
Take the Plant, Save the Planet:
Workers and Communities in the Struggle for Economic Conversion
Sunday, February 28th, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm EST
Please join us for a discussion of the politics of plant conversion for an ecologically sustainable future.
The current pandemic crisis has dramatically exposed the need for a massive shift of new resources into the caring sector and the production of medical equipment to meet social needs. But even before the fallout for workers in many sectors from the ecological disruptions already being felt from global warming had already indicated the need for a comprehensive approach to industrial conversion. Several sectors immediately stand out in demanding an approach that goes well beyond a ‘just transition’ in moving workers from one job to another. There is a need for a more radical reworking of these sectors – transportation, military arms and fossil fuels, with the factories, facilities and workers steadily re-deployed to alternate socially responsible production. Ecological strategies focusing on conversion will be...
Urgent: HSBC
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- Published on Saturday, 27 February 2021 01:14
- Written by editor
In the next 48 hours, HSBC could make a plan to end coal financing — forever. But we need to ensure they’re under enormous pressure to do it. Let’s not miss the chance:
A,
Banking giant HSBC could rewrite our climate future in the next 48 hours — if we don’t miss our chance.
Right now, HSBC is Europe’s second-largest fossil fuel financier. But a group of major shareholders has forced a vote at an upcoming AGM that could stop the bank from investing in coal projects and companies — starting now.
This would be one of the biggest climate victories in recent memory. And HSBC is under unprecedented pressure, from major investors to activists at branches. Insiders say that top execs will decide in the next 48 hours whether to endorse the move -- or try to water it down. We can’t miss this chance! Send a message to key decision-makers:
The Amazon is for sale on Facebook?!
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- Published on Friday, 26 February 2021 14:54
- Written by editor
BREAKING NEWS: Investigative journalists have just revealed land-grabbers are selling stolen Amazon rainforest on Facebook.
Tell Facebook to listen to indigenous communities who live there and stop stolen land being advertised on its Marketplace, NOW.
A,
For sale on Facebook: Brazil’s Amazon rainforest.
A groundbreaking BBC investigation has just revealed that plots of Amazon rainforest -- including national forests and land reserved for indigenous peoples -- is being sold illegally via Facebook’s classified ads service, Marketplace.
And Facebook doesn’t seem to want to do much about it.
Fuelled by the cattle ranching industry, and in the knowledge that remote locations won’t be inspected by the authorities, ‘investors’ are clearing forest ready for farming and selling it off.
Facebook, once again, is hiding behind its usual excuse that it ‘requires buyers and sellers to comply with laws and regulations’. But really, does it expect land invaders...
Council This Week
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- Published on Friday, 26 February 2021 14:02
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Social leaders challenge fracking agenda
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- Published on Friday, 26 February 2021 09:56
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Ecopetrol president updates investors on fracking pilot project in Puerto Wilches as social leaders warn of harm to water and biodiversity
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Read more...
PBI-Canada notes article that highlights the legal, reputational and market valuation risks corporations could face in Colombia
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Read more...
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Bees
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- Published on Friday, 26 February 2021 05:12
- Written by editor
A quarter of bee species have disappeared in the last 30 years.
Bayer and Syngenta's deadly pesticides are catapulting bees to extinction -- so we’re amping up our global campaign to stop them.
Can you chip in a little each month to power our bee-saving plan?
Donate CA$1 monthlyDonate CA$4 monthlyDonate CA$6 monthlyDonate another amount
No thanks, but I'll make a one-time donation.
A,
A damning new study just revealed that we...
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