Alternative News
Articles from non-mainstream as opposed to corporate for profit sources.
And now for some good news
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- Published on Thursday, 08 October 2020 15:08
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Can you add your name today to demand Trudeau defund the Trans Mountain pipeline?
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- Published on Thursday, 08 October 2020 14:44
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Dear Paov,
We are in a climate emergency and our government can’t seem to move past half measures.
Yesterday, the Trudeau government announced a plan to ban single-use plastics by the end of next year.1 This is a baby step in the right direction. The crisis we’re in demands bold and ambitious action.
The most important thing that Trudeau can do to show he’s actually serious about climate action is defunding the Trans Mountain pipeline. Will you send him a message by signing our Defund TMX petition?
Earlier this week, the Trudeau government survived a confidence vote and dodged a potential election. The Throne Speech that parliament passed earlier this week acknowledges something you and I have known for a long time: people in Canada want decisive action on climate change. And the Liberals’ speech promised to deliver. Now it’s time for us to hold them accountable to the promises they’ve made.
We’ve been blown away by the response to our Defund TMX campaign so far. We know the pipeline doesn’t make economic sense, it most definitely doesn’t make climate sense, and it’s a disaster for Indigenous communities all along the pipeline and tanker...
Read more: Can you add your name today to demand Trudeau defund the Trans Mountain pipeline?
The Amazon is burning – and one mans fanni
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- Published on Thursday, 08 October 2020 07:06
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One year on from 2019’s disastrous Amazon fires, the forest is burning again – and it’s even worse than last year.
Dear friend,The Amazon is burning – and one man’s fanning the flames.
One year on from 2019’s disastrous Amazon fires, the forest is burning again – and it’s even worse than last year.
Ranchers and landgrabbers, protected by Brazil’s President Bolsonaro and backed up by their own private militias, invade and burn indigenous lands with impunity.
For Brazil’s tribal peoples, it’s a catastrophe. The lush rainforests they’ve looked after for centuries are going up in smoke on a vast scale. With them go their livelihoods, their children’s futures, their very survival. And as we all know by now, their survival is bound up with our own.
It’s happening beyond the Amazon too. The Pantanal – Brazil’s unique wetlands, safeguarded for millennia by indigenous people – are also burning. A staggering 20% has been destroyed this year alone. Yet when a young girl asked President Bolsonaro and his ministers “Is the Pantanal burning?” their response was – to laugh.
Ontario Urgently Needs Money for Hospitals
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- Published on Thursday, 08 October 2020 04:38
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2211 ... October 8, 2020
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Ontario Urgently Needs Money for Hospitals
Ontario Health Coalition
Over the last week, the Ford government has rolled out a series of media announcements about healthcare funding and staffing. Today the Ontario Health Coalition issued the following statement to break down what has been announced, what it means, and whether it is enough.
"Hospitals are reporting across Ontario that have been promised their extraordinary COVID-19 pandemic costs will be funded, but much of the money has not flowed. Local hospitals are reporting deficits, some have lay offs, some are drawing down their cash reserves. Hospitals need not only their extraordinary costs, but also their lost revenues from the pandemic funded, and the Ford government needs to get the funding out the door post-haste," said Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition. "The same applies to the late and slow release of announced funding for long-term care homes. Our vital healthcare institutions need stability and certainty to build urgently needed capacity for healthcare services now."
There are significant and urgent capacity issues...
Mass bee extinction
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- Published on Thursday, 08 October 2020 04:34
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It’s a bee massacre: A third of our honeybees are lost each year. There's just one way to stop it: a total ban of Bayer’s toxic pesticides.
If we can collect one million signatures for a European Citizens’ Initiative to save the bees, the EU will be forced to listen to us.
Can you chip in to save the bees?
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The bees are vanishing at alarming rates: Over the last 10 years, we’ve lost 30-40% of our honey bees each single year.
Just three weeks ago, 4 million honey bees mysteriously died overnight in Italy. Local beekeepers are devastated. Investigations are ongoing, but one thing we know for sure: Bayer’s pesticides play a huge role in the global bee die-off.
That’s why we want to join beekeepers all over Europe for an ambitious plan: if we can collect one million signatures for a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), the EU is...
For an Egalitarian, Cooperative Road to an Ecosocialist Future
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- Published on Wednesday, 07 October 2020 03:50
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2210 ... October 7, 2020
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For an Egalitarian, Cooperative Road to an Ecosocialist Future
This important Ecosocialist Manifesto, published by the Green Left emerges out of Australia in preparation for the forthcoming conference, Ecosocialism 2020: From rebellion to revolution, supported by the Socialist Alliance. It will be open for further discussion and development through a series of Ecosocialism conferences in several cities across Australia in late October.
We are in the midst of a climate emergency and there is no way out without radically changing the way society is organized. If humanity does not free itself from the capitalist drive for ever greater profits and ever-expanding economic growth, rising global temperatures alone will make the planet uninhabitable for humans and millions of other living species.
We urgently need to find a collective road to a new way of living that is based on human solidarity and ecological sustainability.
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I heard your voices
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- Published on Tuesday, 06 October 2020 09:48
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TAKE ACTION
Let’s Unite Against COVID-19 Globally, and Here in Canada
Read more: I heard your voicesBC election voting information
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- Published on Tuesday, 06 October 2020 06:02
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Voting in a pandemic is new for all of us.
What does a surprise election plus a global pandemic mean for voter turnout in BC? Voter turnout could reach a record low this year.
So with election day just weeks away, we’re doing everything we can to get important information out to climate voters like you on how to cast your ballot – despite the unusual circumstances.
Here’s the 411:
- Advance voting will be open from Thursday, October 15 to Wednesday, October 21, 8am-8pm. Learn more about where and when you can vote right here.
- Voting by mail is a great option for those wanting to avoid public spaces in light of COVID-19. Make sure you request your ballot as soon as possible, so you have enough time to return it by October 24th. Find out more and request your vote-by-mail package from Elections BC here.
Naomi Klein on Trump's Shock Election Politics:
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- Published on Tuesday, 06 October 2020 06:04
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Haymarket Books upcoming online teach-ins...
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Join us this week:
Wednesday, October 7, 7:00 PM EDT
With the highly contested U.S. election less than month away, join a conversation with Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough, to discuss how to fight back against shock politics — and for a fundamentally different world.
Community Fridges and Mutual Aid Amid the Pandemic
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- Published on Tuesday, 06 October 2020 02:50
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2209 ... October 6, 2020
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Community Fridges and Mutual Aid Amid the Pandemic
April M. Short
On one side of a refrigerator that stands on a sidewalk in New Orleans, two alligators encircle a woman with dark mocha skin wearing a tattered white slip. Her hair is a single braid that reaches the ground. She stands with her right foot on top of an orange snake. Above her, white birds seem to be flying toward a celestial body. Below her, two white Bengal tigers prowl between two halves of a papaya. This is just one of several paintings created by artist Sydney Calderon in support of New Orleans Community Fridges (NOCF), which is a mutual-aid effort setting up refrigerators around the city that offer free food to community members, many of whom currently struggle with hunger.
Twenty-four-year-old Calderon, originally from Richmond, California, says about her art, "[I am] deeply inspired by my Mexican heritage, and aim to honor it within my art. To me, painting is more than a career; it’s the core of my existence." She says New...
Read more: Community Fridges and Mutual Aid Amid the Pandemic
Last chance to RSVP!
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- Published on Monday, 05 October 2020 12:22
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Dear BCCLA Supporter,
Don't forget to RSVP for our upcoming webinar in collaboration with Amnesty International—“Predict and Surveil: Racism in Policing & Surveillance Tech”, a timely event on anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, surveillance, and criminalization through the rise of invasive digital technologies.
Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Time: 11 AM-1 PM PST (2 PM-4 PM EST)
Where: The event will be livestreamed on YouTube. You can RSVP below if you wish to receive the livestream link directly into your inbox.
RSVP here to receive the link!
ASL Interpretation: Confirmed.
Police and security agencies in Canada have long subjected Indigenous, Black, and Muslim communities as well as activist groups to illegal surveillance. Algorithmic policing and technological surveillance by law enforcement and spy agencies have rapidly—and quietly—expanded in Canada. These practices threaten privacy and civil liberties, encode patterns of inequality, and solidify colonial structures.
Join us for a chance to hear from academic, community, and legal experts on how new forms of technological surveillance...
Heres how we get them to care
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- Published on Monday, 05 October 2020 11:16
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Friends,
On Thursday, the Liberal government announced $10 billion in new infrastructure spending.¹ I was happy to see that some of the money is going to fund renewable energy projects, green retrofits and electric buses. That means Trudeau is starting to feel the pressure from our movement for a Just Recovery and Green New Deal.
Then I remembered he’s still planning to spend billions on the Trans Mountain Pipeline. The project could end up costing taxpayers more than $20 billion. That’s double the total infrastructure investment announced last week!
That’s why we’re building a campaign to force the government to make a bold choice: #DefundTMX once and for all. For over a week, we’ve flooded the inboxes of the Prime Minister and all the opposition leaders urging them to defund the Trans Mountain pipeline and fund a Green New Deal instead. We know politicians don’t make big choices if they don’t think they have the public on their side, so now we’re taking our message to the media.
On Friday we launched an online tool that lets you customize...
Internationalism or Extinction
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- Published on Monday, 05 October 2020 03:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2208 ... October 5, 2020
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Internationalism or Extinction
Noam Chomsky
Returning to the major crises we face at this historic moment, all are international, and two internationals are forming to confront them. One is opening today: the Progressive International. The other has been taking shape under the leadership of Trump’s White House, a Reactionary International comprising the world’s most reactionary states.
We are meeting at a remarkable moment, a moment that is, in fact, unique in human history, a moment both ominous in portent and bright with hopes for a better future. The Progressive International has a crucial role to play in determining which course history will follow.
We are meeting at a moment of confluence of crises of extraordinary severity, with the fate of the human experiment quite literally at stake. The issues are coming to a head in the next few weeks in the two great imperial powers of the modern era.
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A Party of the Trade Unions?
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- Published on Sunday, 04 October 2020 03:04
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LeftStreamed:
A Party of the Trade Unions?
Trade unions have played a central role in the UK Labour Party since its creation. Today, Labour has 12 trade union affiliates who provide funding, resources, activists and candidates, and who have considerable representation within the democratic structures of the party. As Labour moves in a new direction under Keir Starmer’s leadership, what will this mean for the trade unions’ relationship to the party?
Join labour movement leaders and thinkers to discuss the role of trade unions within Labour, how the union link has shaped the development of both the party and the unions, and how the unions should relate to the new Labour Party leadership.
Moderated by Gemma Bolton. Speakers:
- Len McCluskey, General Secretary of Unite the Union
- Sam Tarry, MP for Ilford South and previously the national political officer for the TSSA union
- Jo Grady, General Secretary of the University and Colleges Union (UCU)
- Leo Panitch, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy at York University
Click here to view...
United Front or Bust
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- Published on Saturday, 03 October 2020 01:44
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2207 ... October 3, 2020
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United Front or Bust
Ethan Young
People lie. People cheat. People steal. Some get punished. Some wind up taking the punishment for someone else. That’s the way of this wicked world. But a wise man once said that the prevailing ideology of a society reflects the ideology of its ruling class. So, when the president blatantly lies, cheats, steals and twiddles his lips as others suffer, it follows that people will lose confidence in truth, honesty, property and the rule of law.
It’s a bitter lesson, and the capitalist class is only starting to get it. We face the distinct possibility of a presidential election where the popular vote will be irrelevant, as it was in 2016. We can’t even be sure that the Electoral College will be relevant, if Trump makes a hash of the voting process and the other powers-that-be play possum, as they have on other occasions.
This is the agony of the pre-election months of 2020. The whole world is living through it, because if the Republicans continue to...
Helping to defend the defenders!
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- Published on Wednesday, 18 November 2020 13:22
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Press Release - Wet'suwet'en JR BC Supreme Court
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- Published on Friday, 02 October 2020 10:08
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Wet’suwet’en Legal Challenge to Coastal GasLink to be heard in the BC Supreme Court
Wet’suwet’en Yintah/Vancouver, October 1, 2020 - The Office of the Wet’suwet’en is asking the B.C. Supreme Court to set aside B.C.’s decision to extend the environmental certificate for Coastal GasLink’s (CGL) proposed fracked gas pipeline in northern B.C. for another five years. The Wet’suwet’en application for a Judicial Review will be heard by the B.C. Supreme Court on October 1, 2020.
The extension decision is of crucial importance to the Wet’suwet’en as it represents the only opportunity for legally binding conditions to be added to Coastal GasLink’s certificate in order to address adverse effects not anticipated at the time of the original assessment. One such adverse effect, not widely understood until the 2019 final report of the Inquiry of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), is the risk of harm to Wet’suwet’en women and girls arising from the project, including an influx of temporary labour and the proximity of CGL’s work camps, also known as “man camps”. The MMIWG report found a direct link between work camps for resource projects and the increase of gender-based violence in Indigenous communities.
Message From The Future II: The Years of Repair
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- Published on Friday, 02 October 2020 10:02
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Our new film launches right now.
If you're feeling low about the state of the world right now, I’m with you. In this moment of unprecedented crises, it’s almost comical how our political and media establishments keep finding spectacular new ways to fail us. By 45 minutes into Tuesday night's U.S. presidential debate, I was awash in existential nausea.
But through it all, I have been blessed to be working - and dwelling - in another mode entirely. For six months, we have been working on this short piece of art. It’s a beautiful, movement-fuelled vision of what it would look like if we seized this moment and turned things around. And today, we get to share Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair with you.
Watch Message on Facebook now
Watch Message on Twitter now
Watch Message on IGTV now
Watch Message on YouTube now
And if the film strikes a chord for you, please share it far and wide.
61 Indigenous Communities in Canada Still Need to Boil Water for Safety
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- Published on Friday, 02 October 2020 04:36
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61 Indigenous Communities in Canada Still Need to Boil Water for Safety
...Read more: 61 Indigenous Communities in Canada Still Need to Boil Water for Safety
Attawapiskat First Nation versus De Beers Diamond Mine
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- Published on Friday, 02 October 2020 02:58
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 2206 ... October 2, 2020
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Attawapiskat First Nation versus De Beers Diamond Mine:
Massive Garbage Dump in Fragile Wetlands Habitat?
Attawapiskat First Nation
In May 2019, production at De Beer’s Victor diamond mine on the traditional territories of Attawapiskat First Nation came to an end. In all, more than 8 million carats of diamonds were taken from the giant open pit mine, generating billions in revenues for the mine’s owners, leaving behind a legacy of pollution and broken promises for the near-by community. For all its promise, the Victor mine failed to deliver much in the way of prosperity to the impoverished Attawapiskat First Nation, which declared an emergency over water quality just two months after the mine closed. Documents showed that Attawapiskat’s diamond royalties, earned as part of an Impact-Benefits Agreement with the company, amounted to less than 1 per cent of the mine’s annual revenues.
The wider public did not retain much either: In 2013-14, the company paid a provincial royalty of just $226 against revenues in the hundreds of millions. De Beers proved what little regard...
Read more: Attawapiskat First Nation versus De Beers Diamond Mine
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