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Articles from non-mainstream as opposed to corporate for profit sources.

Tell PM Harper: Show up for the climate.

Details: Published on Saturday, 13 September 2014 09:20; Written by editor

Friends,

Earlier this week, Stephen Harper announced that he currently plans skip the historic United Nations climate change summit coming up in New York.

I would say that's embarrassing, but next to Canada's climate record generally, it's par for the course.

The truth is that Canada has fallen badly behind the international community when it comes to climate change, which is why we're daring PM Harper to go to New York to face the music.

Can you send a message to PM Harper to tell him he must go to the UN climate summit? Click here to join our climate dare to PM Harper

The day before the United Nations Climate Summit in New York, we will bring hard truths to light at Canada's Consulate -- which also happens to be at one of the world's most iconic addresses, on one of the busiest streets in the US. If you can...

Shifting Centres and Dead-Ends in Turkey

Details: Published on Monday, 15 September 2014 01:40; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1035 .... September 12, 2014
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Shifting Centres and Dead-Ends:
An Analysis of the Presidential Election in Turkey

Ezgi Yildiz

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became the first publicly elected President of Turkey in the history of the Republic, winning 52 per cent of the votes at the presidential elections of August 10. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu, joint candidate of the CHP (secularist, so-called centre-left) and the MHP (nationalist, centre-right), finished second with 38 per cent of the vote. Selahattin Demirtaş of HDP (pro-Kurdish, left) came in third with 9.6 per cent of the votes.

The August 10 elections illustrated well the conundrum of Turkish politics and the success of Erdoğan's AKP in shifting the centre of Turkish politics to the right. An evident outcome of this election was Erdoğan's clear win in the...

Amazon Indian leaders shot dead by suspected illegal loggers - News from Survival

Details: Published on Wednesday, 10 September 2014 21:40; Written by editor

Amazon Indian leaders shot dead by suspected illegal loggers

Ashéninka leaders Edwin Chota was murdered on 1 September 2014 by suspected illegal loggers.© Scott Wallace

Four Ashéninka Indian leaders, renowned for their work against illegal logging in the Amazon, have been murdered near their home in eastern Peru.

The men – Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos Pérez, Leoncio Quinticima Melendez and Francisco Pinedo – were traveling from their community of Saweto on the Peruvian border to attend a meeting with other indigenous leaders in Brazil.

A search party reportedly found the men with fatal gunshot wounds on 1 September.

The widows of the men traveled for three days through the jungle, arriving in the regional city of Pucallpa late Monday night to demand immediate action by the Peruvian authorities to bring the killers to justice.

“The Ashéninka women of Saweto are now taking leadership of the community to continue fighting for territory for our children,” Ergilia Ríos told press.

Edwin Chota was a well-known indigenous activist who had dedicated his life to preventing rampant illegal logging from destroying his Amazon home.

Chota had received death threats from loggers in recent years, but the authorities “did nothing” to protect him, according to Amazon Indian organization AIDESEP.

Peru’s Ministry of Culture has said a government team will travel to Saweto to investigate the murders.

Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/10421

Missionary contacts highly vulnerable uncontacted Amazon tribe

Read more: Amazon Indian leaders shot dead by suspected illegal loggers - News from Survival

Truth. Dare.

Details: Published on Wednesday, 10 September 2014 13:00; Written by editor

Time to play truth or dare.

Truth: Canada’s climate performance is the worst in the entire Western world. The exploitation of tar sands is the primary reason Canada will fail to meet its own meagre climate targets.

Truth: Tar sands production is set to triple in the coming years while emissions could double, fueling a catastrophic increase in global temperature.

Truth: Tar Sands and climate change are devastating Indigenous communities in Northern Alberta and around the world. Over 20,000 treaty rights violations have been recorded by one community, the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, in the face of tar sands expansion.

And now for the dare.

We're daring Stephen Harper to try and tell the world that he is taking climate change seriously.

We're daring him to face the music in New York and see how far out of touch he has become from the international community.

We're daring him to see tens on tens of thousands of people...

Ukraine Ceasefire - Underlying Political Conflicts Unresolved

Details: Published on Monday, 15 September 2014 01:40; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1034 .... September 10, 2014
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Roger Annis

A ceasefire in the war in eastern Ukraine was announced in Minsk, Belarus on September 5. Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko made a simultaneous announcement in Wales where he was a special guest at the summit meeting of the NATO military alliance. A 12-point agreement was signed in Minsk by representatives of the Kyiv government and the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Also signing were former Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma, Russian ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov and Heidi Tagliavini of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

The text of the agreement has been published in Russian (unofficial translation to English). Terms include a cessation of military hostilities, exchanges of prisoners of war and release of people illegally detained, humanitarian aid and reconstruction assistance, and most importantly, recognition of political autonomy for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the southeast of the country.

The autonomy provision presumably obliges the withdrawal of Ukrainian military and fascist paramilitary forces from southeast Ukraine. But it's not clear if that will happen, including from the important cities of Mariupol and Slavyansk.

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The Fraser Institute says it's not "values-based." Here's a reality check.

Details: Published on Monday, 08 September 2014 16:40; Written by editor

Hi there,
Did you see the comments of the Fraser Institute president over the weekend about how the think tank shouldn't be considered conservative. Rather, it's "not valued-based, it's data-driven."
We debunk this statement in a new post, exposing how ideology drives the institute's agenda about labour law and all other areas.
http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/right-wing-fraser-institute-now-claims-it-not-right-wing

Please share on FB and other social networks if you're able.
Sarah

[24 hours left] Will Harper call a spring election?

Details: Published on Monday, 08 September 2014 16:20; Written by editor

As September begins, politicians are returning to Ottawa and we’re hearing widespread rumours that Prime Minister Harper might ignore his own fixed election date law again and call a snap election in the spring.

Harper knows that the Opposition parties are getting stronger - but he also knows that he can rely on the Conservative Party’s massive fundraising lead, vote-splitting between the NDP, Liberals and Greens, and redistricted federal ridings that give the Conservatives a new advantage in 2015.[1]

If the rumours are right, here’s what he’d try to do: release a spring budget targeted at likely voters in swing ridings, call a surprise election when students have left campus, and then win a new government before anyone’s ready.

Thanks to you, the Leadnow community can be ready for a spring election, but we need your help.

We’re in the last 24 hours of Leadnow’s Summer Community Fundraiser for a massive people-powered campaign to mobilize hundreds of thousands to vote to hold this government accountable in key ridings - and build support for crucial reforms for our democracy, environment and economy.

Today Tsilhqot'in Supreme Court Decision Webinar

Details: Published on Monday, 08 September 2014 08:20; Written by editor

...

Unions call on World Bank to adopt as strong a labour standard as other development banks - ITUC OnLine

Details: Published on Saturday, 27 September 2014 16:00; Written by editor

INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION

Unions call on World Bank to adopt as strong a labour standard as other development banks

Brussels, 8 September 2014 (ITUC OnLine): ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow has urged World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to ensure that the institution he leads adopts a labour standard lending requirement that is as comprehensive as those adopted by other multilateral development banks, and to correct the major weaknesses in the draft “labour safeguard” that was recently issued for consultation.

Burrow stated: “While we welcome the intention of the World Bank to adopt a labour safeguard, the version proposed would have almost no impact in protecting the rights of those who work in Bank-financed projects, since it would not apply to contracted workers nor, except for some very limited provisions, to public servants. The Bank’s proposed labour safeguard would...

Rights Under Unprecedented Attack in the Arab World - ITUC OnLine

Details: Published on Saturday, 27 September 2014 16:00; Written by editor

INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION

ITUC OnLine

059/080914

Rights Under Unprecedented Attack in the Arab World

Brussels, 8 September 2014 (ITUC OnLine): Human rights are under sustained and unprecedented attack across the Arab world, as thousands of young people, members of a generation of dispossessed, are drawn into the vicious embrace of violent jihadists seeking to bring the entire region under their control.

The conditions for the current crisis in the region, described by UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay as the “murderous summer” of 2014, represent a collective failure of government, both within the region and in the international community.

“Islamic State” which has received huge financial support from within the Gulf State monarchies is now building its own financial base through robbery, extortion, human trafficking and the sale of captured oil reserves...

New post on Christy Clark's fact-challenged press conference

Details: Published on Sunday, 07 September 2014 11:00; Written by editor

We just posted this video reality-check. share on your social streams if you can:

http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/video-putting-christy-clarks-talking-points-about-teachers-test

thanks,

sarah

Botswana government lies exposed as diamond mine opens on Bushman land - News from Survival

Details: Published on Friday, 05 September 2014 12:00; Written by editor

Botswana government lies exposed as diamond mine opens on Bushman land

In 2004, a Botswana Minister said there was no mining nor any plans for future mining anywhere inside the CKGR. In 2014 a $4.9bn diamond mine opens.© Gem Diamonds

A $4.9bn diamond mine will open on September 5 in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, the ancestral land of Africa’s last hunting Bushmen, exactly ten years after the Botswana government claimed there were “no plans to mine anywhere inside the reserve.”

The Bushmen were told they had to leave the reserve soon after diamonds were discovered in the 1980s, but the Botswana government has repeatedly denied that the illegal and forced evictions of the Kalahari Bushmen – in 1997, 2002 and 2005 – were due to the rich diamond deposits. It justified the Bushmen’s evictions from the land in the name of “conservation”.

In 2000, however, Botswana’s Minister of Minerals, Energy & Water Affairs told a Botswana newspaper, "the relocation of Basarwa (Bushmen) communities from [the Central Kalahari Game Reserve] is to pave way for a proposed Gope Diamond Mine”; and in 2002, the Bushmen told Survival International, the global movement for tribal peoples’ rights, "Foreign Minister General Merafhe went to the reserve and told us we had to be moved because of diamonds.”

The mine opening has also exposed Botswana’s commitment to conservation as window dressing. The government falsely claims that the Bushmen’s presence in the reserve is “incompatible with wildlife conservation,” while allowing a diamond mine and fracking exploration to go ahead on their land.

Qatar: Human Rights Investigators Vanish, as FIFA Forges Ahead on 2022 World Cup - ITUC OnLine

Details: Published on Saturday, 27 September 2014 16:00; Written by editor

INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION ITUC OnLine 060/040914 Qatar: Human Rights Investigators Vanish, as FIFA Forges Ahead on 2022 World Cup Brussels, 4 September 2014 (ITUC OnLine): The ITUC has expressed serious concern for the safety and welfare of two human rights investigators, Ghimire Gundev and Krishna Upadhyaya, in Qatar. The two British nationals were being followed and harassed by Qatari security agents as they documented extreme violations of workers' rights in the Gulf state. They then disappeared as they prepared to leave their hotel for Doha airport to leave the country on 31 August. Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary said "Qatar seems to think that creating a climate of fear and intimidation will somehow turn the eyes of the world away from its modern slavery economy. Hundreds of migrant workers, many of them women, are languishing in Doha's detention centres simply for running away from abusive...

[CFSC-E-News] Actions and upcoming events

Details: Published on Tuesday, 02 September 2014 16:40; Written by editor

Download File

Dear Friends,

The September e-news is here. Inside you'll find:

CFSC's position on an inquiry and national action plan for missing and murdered Indigenous women;
We are more than our genes;
World week for peace in Israel/Palestine;
Climate change rally;
World Quaker day;
WWI and contemporary policy on war and peace; and
Giving thanks for the life and service of Susan Stevenson.

Feel free to be in touch and to let us know if your Meeting has any items for the October e-news!

Matthew Legge
Peace & Sustainable Communities Program Coordinator.

		
				
					Read more: [CFSC-E-News] Actions and upcoming events

[VLCSolidarity] Working Class Politics After the NDP

Details: Published on Tuesday, 02 September 2014 13:20; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1030 .... September 1, 2014
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Working Class Politics After the NDP

Sam Gindin and Michael Hurley

Introduction: Crisis in Labour Politics

The issue that we can't ignore this Labour Day is the disorientation in our movement's politics. List the issues working people are most concerned about today – whether deindustrialization, unemployment and underemployment; access to healthcare, childcare and pensions; poverty, racism, conditions of foreign workers and appalling levels of overall inequality; the environment, transit costs and transit services; another corporate-friendly trade agreement that is insensitive to workers and communities; or the horror of Gaza – and two things especially stand out. First, how fundamental the actions of the Canadian state are to what is most important to us. Second, how distressingly unable we have been to influence those actions.

This speaks to the limits of capitalist democracy, but it also highlights the profound failure of our movement's politics. For a good many years labour has farmed its politics out to the New Democratic Party (NDP). When members asked what the union was doing to ease the latest attack on the working class, the quick reply was often ‘wait for the next election’ and vote NDP. For some this was a matter of unquestioned principle and solidarity. It was also a convenient answer for leaders either stumped by what else might be done, or uncomfortable with – even fearful of – the implications of broader working class engagement.

ITUC Newsletter 48: Somalia, Gaza, The Right to Strike.. Latest News from the ITUC

Details: Published on Saturday, 27 September 2014 16:00; Written by editor

ITUC r1 ...

Beloved children's entertainer Raffi has some choice words for Christy Clark over teachers' dispute

Details: Published on Monday, 01 September 2014 23:00; Written by editor

Please share if you can.

http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/childrens-troubadour-raffi-schools-christy-clark-over-teacher-dispute
--
Sarah

Meet the Global Ambassadors

Details: Published on Monday, 01 September 2014 15:40; Written by editor

Dear friends,

The People’s Climate Mobilisation is not far now! While we are organising local mobilisations everywhere, heads of state are getting ready to gather in the New York, and thousands of local people are gearing up to take the streets in a massive march to push them to take serious action on the climate.

But there is going to be a special group of people in New York that we want to introduce today. They’re the “Global Climate Ambassadors” – climate leaders from many different regions who will be representing the voices of our communities and the climate struggles across the planet.

And here’s their story. Please read it and share with others.

Efleda is one of the Global Climate Ambassadors who’ll be taking our voices to New York in September

These Ambassadors are from Argentina, Turkey, Senegal, Poland,...

Post about EI eligibility hitting all-time low

Details: Published on Saturday, 30 August 2014 17:00; Written by editor

Hi,

We've just posted a story about how EI eligibility in Canada has hit an all-time low (to 36.6%).

Drawing on research from the CLC, it also shows huge discrepancies among cities -- how the percentage of unemployed who are regular beneficiaries is down in nearly all cities, when you look at June 1997 compared to June 2014.

http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/unemployed-good-luck-getting-ei-eligibility-hits-all-time-low-0
Please share on your social streams.

Thanks,

Sarah

Alarm over tourists' encounters with uncontacted Indians in Peru - News from Survival

Details: Published on Saturday, 30 August 2014 17:00; Written by editor

Alarm over tourists’ encounters with uncontacted Indians in Peru

Dozens of encounters between uncontacted Mashco-Piro Indians, tourists and settlers have been recorded in recent years.© G. Galli/uncontactedtribes.org

Peruvian Indians have issued an urgent appeal for government action following a spate of encounters between highly vulnerable uncontacted Indians and tourists.

Dozens of encounters between uncontacted Mashco-Piro Indians, tourists and settlers have been recorded near the border of the Madre de Dios Reserve in south-east Peru in recent years. Tourists traveling through the area have taken photographs and left items of clothing on the riverbanks for the Indians, sparking fears that “human safaris” are spreading to the region.

Amazon Indian organization FENAMAD traveled to the Madre de Dios Reserve last week, and has issued a damning statement against government inaction.

FENAMAD President Klaus Quicque said in a press statement, “It’s high time the Peruvian government put words into action instead of these endless meetings about devising protocols and policies. The uncontacted Indians are coming out of the forest but the authorities say and do nothing.”

All over Peru, uncontacted Indians are being forced to flee from their Amazon homes as cocaine traffickers, loggers and oil companies invade their lands.

A group of uncontacted Indians believed to have fled from Peru across the border into Brazil made international headlines earlier this month after members of the tribe were filmed by Brazilian authorities for the first time.

Survival is urging the Peruvian government to protect the uncontacted tribes’ land. (Photograph taken in 2011)© Jean-Paul Van Belle

Alternative News

Tell PM Harper: Show up for the climate.

Shifting Centres and Dead-Ends in Turkey