Sierra Life: Sailing the Seas of Change

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Published on Sunday, 04 May 2014 17:00

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Sierra Life: Sailing the Seas of Change

Climate change got you down?

Come out for a fun-filled day of climate action on May 10 in your community. Let’s wake up those sleepy decision-makers with our loud voices and positive ideas!

From Sea to Sea, Plastic-free

Sierra Club BC guest blogger Carol-Lynne Michaels travels to Halifax. Read about her trip and find out how to snack on-the-go and stay plastic-free.

A Whale of a Tale

Just days before they ran out of time to legally protect the Pacific Humpbacks, the feds announced the whales are now considered ‘special concern’ instead of ‘threatened’, conveniently relieving themselves from the obligation to protect the whale’s critical habitat from oil tanker proposals like Enbridge and Kinder Morgan.

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AFN Chief Resigns Over First Nations Education Act

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Published on Friday, 02 May 2014 16:20

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Shawn Atleo Forced Out as National Chief by Indignation of First Nations Peoples, as Opposition Builds Against Rushed, Assimilationist First Nations Education Act

#KillBillC33 #NoWayFNEA #IdleNoMore #CDNPoli

Today, after four years of servility and weak leadership in the face of a Harper government bent on an aggressive agenda of assimilation and termination of First Nations, National Chief Shawn Atleo was forced by popular pressure and a brewing chiefs’ revolt to resign, the first time a national chief has resigned since the creation of the institution. Throughout his term, Atleo has been more concerned with keeping Ottawa happy than with representing the aspirations of First Nations people. When people rose up during Idle No More, he undermined the movement by legitimizing the government’s empty posturing by attending a controversial meeting with the Prime Ministers’ Office on January 11, 2013 without the mandate of the Chiefs in Assembly.

Most recently, he has served as the fig leaf for the government’s Orwellian First Nations Education Act, which aims to finish the job of “killing the Indian in the child” that residential schools began by placing First Nations education under the control of governments and central authorities remote from the realities of First Nations - all while disingenuously claiming to place education under First Nations control. This was too much for First Nations peoples, and many chiefs, to bear.

Defenders of the Land cofounder Arthur Manuel, whose father George Manuel founded the National Indian Brotherhood that later became the AFN, said, “when my father began the NIB, it was a grassroots organization that represented the people. Now it is an organization that serves Ottawa and is controlled by Ottawa’s funding. Only a real movement of the people can fill the vacuum of leadership among First Nations, and I hope Shawn Atleo’s departure will allow that kind of movement to bloom.”

Read more: AFN Chief Resigns Over First Nations Education Act

AFN Chief Resigns Over First Nations Education Act

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Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2014 16:00

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May 2nd, 2014 Indigenous news on rabble.ca

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Published on Friday, 02 May 2014 13:20

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rabble.ca weekly e-news for May 2nd, 2014

This is your daily dose of our Editor top picks! For more new rabble content, visit www.rabble.ca-->

Indigenous This week's top news and analysis about the struggles of indigenous peoples for rights and sovereignty. For more on indigenous issues visit our topic page: http://rabble.ca/indigenous

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Brace yourself for a tumultuous three weeks in Parliament May 1, 2014 | By Karl Nerenberg The House is dealing with the Fair Elections Act, the temporary foreign workers issue, the First Nations Education Act, the newest omnibus budget bill and much more, all in great haste. Spying on Canadians: What can we do? April 30, 2014 | By Joyce Nelson Activists are increasingly appalled by the continuing revelations that they are being spied on by police and the CSEC on behalf of the corporate sector. Should we share our spying stories? Chief Shawn Atleo should tear up First Nations Education Act April 30, 2014 | By Pamela Palmater Recognition of First Nation jurisdiction and adequate funding could change lives of First Nations and Canadians as we know it. The new First Nations Education Act accomplishes none of this. National Day of Action April 28 -- Stop the First Nations Education Act April 26, 2014 | By Krystalline Kraus First Nations convened in Ottawa to reject Canada's latest bill on education.

Read more: May 2nd, 2014 Indigenous news on rabble.ca

Yup, he said it

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Published on Friday, 02 May 2014 13:20

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Action Alert

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How low will the Israel lobby go in order to preserve the oppression of Palestinians?

Oops! I said it...

Tell the lobby it cannot stop people from using the word Apartheid.

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Secretary of State John Kerry unleashed the wrath of the Israel lobby this week when he used a painful but fair word to describe the direction he believes Israel is heading: apartheid.

In fact, many of us, including high-ranking Israeli officials, believe that after 47 years of occupation, Israel already is a de facto apartheid state. But such unvarnished truth-telling is a threat to groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), who came down hard on Kerry and helped pressure him to backtrack on his remarks.

Unless we act now, and call out Israel lobby groups for trying to police the truth, they will continue to silence others with impunity. Can you help us flood these three groups with our message now?

Click here: jvp.org/truth

Read more: Yup, he said it

Google isnt paying its taxes

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Published on Friday, 02 May 2014 13:20

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Citizens in France, the UK, Italy, Australia and the United States are paying the price for the millions of dollars Google owes in unpaid taxes.

This week Google shareholders are pushing a proposal to adopt a comprehensive and responsible tax policy that pays its dues to national economies -- let’s join them!

Google isn’t paying its taxes. The multi-billion dollar corporation has been under scrutiny for using shell companies in Bermuda, Ireland and elsewhere to shelter at least $33 billion of revenue.

It’s the same old story of a corporation avoiding taxes to maximize short-term profits and CEO pay-outs, while ordinary people are left to foot the bill for critical services -- our children’s schools, fire and police services, teachers, roads and hospitals -- which directly benefit the company.

This week Google’s shareholders are proposing a comprehensive tax policy at the shareholder meeting. If enough of us support them we could get Google to pay the $2 billion it owes in taxes around the world and ensure it complies with national laws that benefit Google’s customers, employees, suppliers and society as a whole.

Can you join Google’s brave shareholders and ask it to pay taxes?

Google is one of the most notorious multinational corporations exploiting cross-border tax loopholes across the world:

• In the UK, Google only paid £11.6 million despite making a £5.5 billion profit, channeling its profits through Ireland to Bermuda where no taxes are levied.
• In the US, Google has been investigated by US Senator Carl Levin for deferring taxes on over $24 billion of revenue.
• In Italy, the company is being audited by the Tax Police for its tax avoidance strategies -- even its offices have been searched.
• In France, Google's tax avoidance prompted the government to institute policies to prevent tax evasion by internet giants like Google.

Across the globe, cash-strapped governments are imposing austerity. Governments are cutting essential public services and corporate tax avoidance means ordinary people have to pay the price for massive profits being funnelled away into tax havens. What is more, tax avoidance severely exacerbates growing inequality around the world.

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The coal industry is trying to make us illegal

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Published on Friday, 02 May 2014 11:20

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Friends,
Australia's coal industry is trying to make our fossil fuel divestment campaign and other boycotts illegal -- and we need your help to push back:
Tell the Australian government that you are against a ban on divestment campaigns.
According to an article in the Guardian last week, "The powerful mining lobby is considering whether to join the push by resource industries to ban environmental boycott campaigns as it battles an escalating grassroots movement calling for banks, superannuation funds [i.e. pension funds] and institutions to ditch fossil fuel investments."
The Minerals Council of Australia went on to call us a “small number of noisy extremists from creating the false impression that the community does not support Australia’s second-largest export sector.”
Well, they got the noisy part right. But we are not small in number. And the real extremists are the fossil fuel companies that are willing to profit from polluting our countries and climate. We think it's pretty reasonable to try to maintain a planet somewhat like the one we were born into -- something that they refuse to do. Now we need to show the coal and mining companies, and the Australian government, that we're not backing down from this campaign. Instead, we are going to turn up the heat.
Let's show them that we're anything but a small group of extremists. The divestment movement is a huge global network of school teachers, religious leaders, students, parents, and regular people who think it's time to invest in a real future and a livable climate.


Click here and stand with the divestment movement in Australia. We will make sure we deliver your comments and bring global pressure to bear on the Australian government.
As Gandhi said: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” No longer are we being ignored. No longer are we being laughed at. Now, the fight is on, and they clearly underestimated us.
We can win this, but we need your support to make this happen.

Read more: The coal industry is trying to make us illegal

Become a Producer on Our Latest Film

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Published on Friday, 02 May 2014 11:00

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NationBuilder Dear M --

The Koch Brothers continue to pour millions and millions into the coffers of organizations and politicians who will only help them get richer while most of us struggle to make a living wage. I am happy to announce that because of your feedback and support, we are working to revise and update the entire Koch Brothers Exposed film with brand new footage, interviews and information that will highlight the dangers of the Kochs and their ilk.

Sign on with a $25 donation and have your name listed as a producer for Koch Brothers Exposed: 2014 Version!

We have also received a $50,000 matching donation for our efforts. Every dollar you donate to update this film will be matched 100% by this generous donor. Our goal is to have the film done by the end of May when we will release it online free of charge (yes, FREE!) to make certain that everyone in the U.S. can see the film and fully comprehend the dangers of the Koch Brothers political machine.

Donate more than $50 now and also get the Shepard Fairey designed Koch-topus t-shirt for yourself or a friend!

We need your help to stop the Koch Brothers from using our government as their "mouthpiece." Our goal is raise awareness about these billionaires and put a wrench in their greedy plans. You can make the difference today!

Read more: Become a Producer on Our Latest Film

Are You Ready to Step Up to Defend the Climate?

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Published on Thursday, 01 May 2014 14:00

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Earlier this week marked over 40 years since the first Earth Day, and never have we needed to take action more than today. With a government bent on recklessly expanding extreme energy projects, we need to show the power of the growing climate movement like never before - we need to step up.

On May 10th people all across Canada will be gathering to march and rally to Defend Our Climate. Will you join in?

You can join an action or sign up to host one here.

Tar Sands, fracking, pipelines and other extreme energy threatens the climate and our communities. Last fall, thousands rallied at over a hundred events and this spring, we are aiming for bolder in events in more communities - join in.

See you on May 10th,

Sincerely,

Cameron Fenton, CYCC National Director

Read more: Are You Ready to Step Up to Defend the Climate?

Free the NATO 3

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Published on Wednesday, 30 April 2014 14:20

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http://www.payitsquare.com/collect-page/29941

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On May 16, 2012, Chicago cops raided an apartment in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago in an all-too-common attempt to scare people away from the imminent protests against the NATO summit. With guns drawn, the cops arrested 11 people in or around the apartment and quickly disappeared them into the bowels of the extensive network of detention facilities in Cook County, Illinois.

After a few days, a few things started becoming clear: 2 of the arrested “activists” were actually undercover Chicago cops who had targeted the real activists for arrest, 6 of them were illegally held and released at the last possible minute before court action could be taken to force their release, and 3 had been slapped with trumped-up, politically motivated terrorism charges for allegedly creating Molotov cocktails. These three—Brent Betterly, Brian Jacob Church, Jared Chase—are now known as the NATO 3. They were ultimately charged with 11 felony counts: material support for terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism, possession of an incendiary device (four counts), conspiracy to commit arson, solicitation to commit arson, attempt arson, and unlawful use of a weapon (two counts). The terrorism charges are part of the Illinois state version of the USA Patriot Act, which was passed shortly after 9/11.

After being held a month without formal charges, the NATO 3 were indicted on June 13, 2012. Even so, the prosecutors refused to provide their defense attorneys with copies of the indictment, invoking their seldom-used right to withhold the indictments until the arraignment. The presiding judge called this petty, bad-faith move “a little strange” but did not order the prosecutors to hand over the indictments until the arraignment on July 2. Nevertheless, the defense attorneys were able to obtain the indictments from the court clerk on June 20.

The “discovery” process began in earnest after the arraignment. In this phase of the pre-trial proceedings, both sides must present the other with all the evidence they have collected and could use at trial. To date, the prosecutors have clearly demonstrated their desire to overwhelm the defense with mountains of useless, irrelevant information instead of providing substantive evidence to back up their outlandish charges. The defense team has been steadily poring over about three terabytes of electronic information and thousands of typed pages of information as part of the defense preparations.

Read more: Free the NATO 3

US Economy a House of Cards/Paul Craig Roberts

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Published on Wednesday, 30 April 2014 14:20

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US Economy Is A House Of Cards

Paul Craig Roberts

The US economy is a house of cards. Every aspect of it is fraudulent, and the illusion of recovery is created with fraudulent statistics.

American capitalism itself is an illusion. All financial markets are rigged. Massive liquidity poured into financial markets by the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing inflates stock and bond prices and drives interest rates, which are supposed to be a measure of the cost of capital, to zero or negative, with the implication that capital is so abundant that its cost is zero and can be had for free. Large enterprises, such as mega-banks and auto manufacturers, that go bankrupt are not permitted to fail. Instead, public debt and money creation are used to cover private losses and keep corporations “too big to fail” afloat at the expense not of shareholders but of people who do not own the shares of the corporations.

Profits are no longer a measure that social welfare is being served by capitalism’s efficient use of resources when profits are achieved by substituting cheaper foreign labor for domestic labor, with resultant decline in consumer purchasing power and rise in income and wealth inequality. In the 21st century, the era of jobs offshoring, the US has experienced an unprecedented explosion in income and wealth inequality. I have made reference to this hard evidence of the failure of capitalism to provide for the social welfare in the traditional economic sense in my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, and Thomas Piketty’s just published book, Capital in the 21st Century, has brought an alarming picture of reality to insouciant economists, such as Paul Krugman. As worrisome as Piketty’s picture is of inequality, I agree with Michael Hudson that the situation is worse than Piketty describes. http://michael-hudson.com/2014/04/pikettys-wealth-gap-wake-up/

Capitalism has been transformed by powerful private interests whose control over governments, courts, and regulatory agencies has turned capitalism into a looting mechanism. Wall Street no longer performs any positive function. Wall Street is a looting mechanism, a deadweight loss to society. Wall Street makes profits by front-running trades with fast computers, by selling fraudulent financial instruments that it is betting against as investment grade securities, by leveraging equity to unprecedented heights, making bets that cannot be covered, and by rigging all commodity markets.

The Federal Reserve and the US Treasury’s “Plunge Protection Team” aid the looting by supporting the stock market with purchases of stock futures, and protect the dollar from the extraordinary money-printing by selling naked shorts into the Comex gold futures market.

The US economy no longer is based on education, hard work, free market prices and the accountability that real free markets impose. Instead, the US economy is based on manipulation of prices, speculative control of commodities, support of the dollar by Washington’s puppet states, manipulated and falsified official statistics, propaganda from the financial media, and inertia by countries, such as Russia and China, who are directly harmed, both economically and politically, by the dollar payments system.

As the governments in most of the rest of the world are incompetent, Washington’s incompetence doesn’t stand out, and this is Washington’s salvation.

But it is not a salvation for Americans who live under Washington’s rule. As all statistical evidence makes completely clear, the share of income and wealth going to the bulk of the US population is declining. This decline means the end of the consumer market that has been the mainstay of the US economy. Now that the mega-rich have even more disproportionate shares of the income and wealth, what happens to an economy based on selling imports and off-shored production of goods and services to a domestic consumer market? How do the vast majority of Americans purchase more when their incomes have not grown for years and have even declined and they are too impoverished to borrow more from banks that won’t lend?

The America in which I grew up was self-sufficient. Foreign trade was a small part of the economy. When I was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, the US still had a trade surplus except for oil. Offshoring of America’s jobs had not begun, and US earnings on its foreign investments exceeded foreign earnings on US investments. Therefore, America’s earnings abroad covered its energy deficit in its balance of trade.

Read more: US Economy a House of Cards/Paul Craig Roberts

April 25th, 2014 - Indigenous news on rabble.ca

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Published on Wednesday, 30 April 2014 13:20

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rabble.ca weekly e-news for April 25th, 2014

This is your daily dose of our Editor top picks! For more new rabble content, visit www.rabble.ca-->

Indigenous This week's top news and analysis about the struggles of indigenous peoples for rights and sovereignty. For more on indigenous issues visit our topic page: http://rabble.ca/indigenous

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Stand Our Sacred Ground -- Honour the Treaties April 24, 2014 | By Krystalline Kraus Standing Our Sacred Ground -- First Nations, tribal leaders and land owners send a message to Canada: stop tar sands at the source. Liberation movements then and now: Interview with author and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz April 23, 2014 | By Tanya Hill Interview with author and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz about...

Read more: April 25th, 2014 - Indigenous news on rabble.ca

Take our All Party Political Poll

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Published on Wednesday, 30 April 2014 13:20

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Hello rabble readers,
We want to hear from you. We've launched our All Party Political Poll, to see which party you would vote for if an election were held tomorrow.

Take our All Party Political Poll!

We plan to take the pulse of the rabble.ca community from time to time in the lead up to the next federal election — which is expected to take place in October 2015.

Cast your ballot! The results could surprise you...

Don't forget to share with your friends!



Thanks,
rabble.ca

P.S. Be sure to vote in our All Party Political Poll before May 2nd at 5 pm PDT.

Read more: Take our All Party Political Poll

Enbridge kills humpback whales

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Published on Wednesday, 30 April 2014 12:00

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The Harper government is downgrading protections on humpback whales -- just so that Enbridge can build its climate-destroying Northern Gateway Pipeline.

Speak out to protect our humpbacks from oil tankers.

Guess how the Harper government celebrated Earth Day? It decided to slash protections to endangered humpback whales, and make it easier for Enbridge to push through its risky Northern Gateway oil pipeline.

Leading scientists say that North Pacific humpback whales are still endangered -- the species was once hunted to near-extinction and is still classified as "threatened" by many bodies. But the Conservative government downgraded the species under Canadian law on Monday.

The reclassification means that humpbacks will not be protected under the Species At Risk Act, clearing the way for approval of the Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline. Experts say these whales are particularly sensitive to the noise pollution and risk of collision that would come with the pipeline's increase in tanker traffic.

We need to speak out loud and clear to make sure the Harper government hears us, and stop this unscientific attack on the whales.

Take action now to protect humpbacks from dirty oil tankers.

Read more: Enbridge kills humpback whales