From Apathy to Activism: Student activists lead the way in building cross-campus, cross-movement coalitions
by Susan Dianne Brophy, from Canadian Dimension, September/October 2008.

Why is it that students don’t really give a damn about anything outside their own lives?” asks Mikhael Aziz. An upper-year undergraduate student at York University, Aziz is also a member of Students Against Israeli Apartheid, a group at the forefront of campus mobilization.

Regarding the deeply rooted apathy that many students exhibit, my observation, and that of those with whom I have consulted in writing this article, is that it is an offshoot of a sense of self-entitlement. Most students have yet to experience any political upheaval or economic hardship for themselves. The wave of relatively steady economic growth in Canada, and the consumer culture that accompanies it, results in a dangerous combination of political complacency and consumer insatiability. Coupled with the demolishment of the welfare state, the resulting competitive individualism produces a sense of hostility expressed as self-entitlement, which has had a potent demobilizing effect across campuses nationwide.

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Harry Cleaver's paper on the effects of capitalist development on the environment. A bit dated but still very relevant.

This paper was prepared for the 4th Ecology Meeting on "Economy and Ecology" held by the Instituto Piaget, Viseu, Portugal, April 17-19, 1997.

"And all this time, in travail, sobbing, gaining on the current, we rowed into the strait --Scylla to port and on our starboard beam Charybdis, dire gorge of the salt sea tide." (Odysseus)1

At this point in history, policy thinking about human relationships with Nature seems unable to escape either the whirlpool of Neoliberalism or the mist-shrouded dangers of sustainable development. On the one hand free-marketeers tout an overt subordination of every aspect of the world to private property, commodity production and quick profit making; on the other, the critics of such short term calculus search for ways to continue the same processes indefinitely. What a choice!

Neoliberalism

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Communique by Olympics Resistance Network

The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place on unceded indigenous land from February 12-28 2010. Far from being simply about ‘sport’, the history of the Olympics is one rooted in displacement, corporate greed, fascism, repression, and violence. Only the political and corporate elite – from real estate developers to security corporations – have anything to gain from the Olympics industry. The effects of the upcoming Winter Games have already manifested themselves- with the expansion of sport tourism and resource extraction on indigenous lands; increasing homelessness and gentrification of poor neighbourhoods; increasing privatization of public services; union busting through imposed contracts and exploitative conditions especially for migrant labour; the fortification of the national security apparatus; ballooning public spending and public debt; and unprecedented destruction of the environment.

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RNC Welcoming Committee to Unmask, Answer Questions
PRESS ADVISORY:
10am Thursday, 627 Smith Avenue, St. Paul.

In light of the massive police and military violence playing out each day of the Republican National Convention, the targeting, entrapment, and persecution of protest logistics organizers, the inhumane conditions that continue for the hundreds of people in the Ramsey County Jail, and the harassment of supporters outside the jail, we in the RNC Welcoming Committee are not backing down from our organizing. The Welcoming Committee is working harder than ever to ensure that our friends and comrades are safe and that protesters who are speaking their minds in the face of repression have access to food, housing, bicycles, a meeting space, workshops, legal/jail support, and medical care.

The St Paul Police Department, the City of St Paul, and particularly Bob Fletcher with the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department have labeled us a "criminal enterprise", painting a picture of us and other anti-RNC organizers as faceless terrorists. On Thursday, September 4th at 10 AM on the 2nd floor of the RNC Convergence Space at 627 Smith Ave S., we will show the true faces and stories of the RNC Welcoming Committee.

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By Sarah Lazare, Alternet/ ZNet, August 30, 2008

Robin Long, an Iraq War resister deported from Canada into U.S. military custody last month, was sentenced today to 15 months of confinement and dishonorable discharge, receiving credit for 40 days of time served.

Long's supporters, who flooded the Fort Carson, Colorado courtroom where the court martial was held and held a vigil in his honor, expressed dismay at the harsh verdict. "It sets a very chilling precedent that someone who is brought back gets the book thrown at them," said Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army Colonel who publicly resigned in opposition to the invasion of Iraq and served as a witness at Long's trial. "I hope the Canadian government recognizes that."

Three years ago, Robin Long fled to Canada rather than fight a war in Iraq he deems immoral and illegal. On July 15th, the Canadian government forcibly returned Long to U.S. military custody, making him the first war resister deported from Canadian soil since the Vietnam War.

The Canadian government's actions flaunt its long- standing tradition of providing safe haven for U.S. war resisters and ignore a non-binding parliamentary resolution to allow U.S. soldiers to stay in Canada.

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http://www.counterpunch.org/terrall08282008.html
Counterpunch.com
August 28, 2008
"All the Time We are Hungry and Now We Have No One"
Return to Port-au-Prince
By BEN TERRALL

As I flew from JFK to Port-au-Prince Airport on August 11, a fellow journalist handed me the front section of that day’s New York Times with a laugh. My friend pointed to a passage in an article about Russia’s war with Georgia that had prompted her bitter chuckling.

The piece quoted Ambassador Zalmay Khalizad of the United States, who charged that the Russian foreign minister had told Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice “that the democratically elected president of Georgia ‘must go.’” Khalizad described the Russian’s comment as “completely unacceptable.”

Of course, Washington’s posturing as a beacon of peace and freedom has become increasingly more ludicrous as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue with no end in sight and Bush explains that we do not torture while testimony to the contrary accumulates around the globe. But the U.S. role in supporting the February 29, 2004 rightist coup in Haiti makes the hypocrisy of Khalizad’s statement especially galling.

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'Social injustice killing on grand scale': report to WHO
From CBC News, August 28, 2008.

People are dying early not only because of health gaps between rich and poor countries but also because of a lack of housing and clean water in wealthy countries like Canada, policy makers said in a report to the World Health Organization on Thursday.

The 256-page report, titled "Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health" shows how the conditions in which people live and work directly affects the quality of their health.

The "toxic combination of bad policies, economics, and politics is, in large measure, responsible for the fact that a majority of people in the world do not enjoy the good health that is biologically possible," the report's authors wrote.

"Social injustice is killing people on a grand scale."

The report defines social determinants of health are the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness.

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The 2008 Democratic National Convention is being held in Denver, Colorado, August 25th through August 28th.

Tuesday, 8/26/08: The Iraq Veterans Against the War orchestrated guerrilla theater in downtown Denver to show the brutality of the U.S. Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The war veterans, dressed in full military gear, staged realistic portrayals of actual interactions between U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians.

Monday, 8/25/08: Activists goal for the day was to crash lavish fund raising parties throughout downtown Denver. Five community organizers from Kansas and Missouri were arrested this morning by the FBI and Denver PD. Late in the day, a police "kettle" operation (whereby police surround, contain, and arrest large numbers of protesters at once) led to about 100 arrests near a delegate meeting in a Denver hotel.

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Carolina S. Romero 27 Aug 2008 18:36 GMT (translated by Carolina S. Romero), Indymedia.

“We demand security against kidnapping, too!”

Yesterday, outside the Molino de Flores prison, about 70 members of the Peoples’ Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT) of San Salvador Atenco and members of The Other Campaign shouted out their rejection of the brutal new sentences in the Atenco case while the Zapatista Lawyers went inside to file an appeal. Demonstrators called to the state police (ASES) guarding the gate: “How can you look your own children in the face? They’re poor, like us. What if they turn out to be rebels? Are you going to murder, rape, and torture them, too?”
And... voilá! Leaving the prison, the lawyer Juan de Dios Hernández reported that Judge Alberto Cervantes, who determined the new sentences, has been replaced. On charges of kidnapping? Conspiracy? Corruption? Ineptitude? None of the above. He was never anything but a vile prosecutor disguised as a judge who had his little deal worked out with the statewide mafia headed by Governor Enrique Peña Nieto. He did the dirty work he was charged with, endorsing and prolonging the kidnapping of Ignacio del Valle and all the other compañeros that took place in Atenco and Texcoco on May 3 and 4, 2006 and has continued ever since then.

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John Clarke, OCAP, The Bullet, Socialist Project.

The City of Toronto's ‘Streets to Homes’ program is a finalist for one of two awards that will be presented during the celebration of United Nations' World Habitat Day. These annual awards are given for “practical and innovative solutions to current housing needs and problems.” ‘Streets to Homes’ is an initiative that focuses on placing people who are on the streets in housing units, and is presented as a bold and vital step that can actually eliminate the destitution of poverty in Toronto.

“Streets to Homes is helping us to end street homelessness,” Toronto Mayor David Miller has claimed. “It is making Toronto a more inclusive city, and the world is taking notice. This recognition is a tribute to both City staff and our community partners, who have worked together tirelessly and seamlessly to help some of our most vulnerable citizens.”

As I write this article, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is preparing to take a delegation to the office of the Coroner of Ontario to challenge the death of yet another person whose homelessness had been 'solved' by ‘Streets to Homes.’ He was dumped in substandard accommodation in an outlying part of the city without the supports that would enable him to survive. He perished in that setting.

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By Harsha Walia, rabble, August 25, 2008

In the past few weeks, much has been written about Prime Minister Stephen Harper's so-called apology regarding the Komagata Maru incident, which was delivered at the Gadhri Babian Da Mela (Martyrs Festival) in Surrey on August 3, 2008.

Much of the debate has focused around the apology needing to be made in the House of Commons in order for it to be afforded the respect and dignity it deserves. Many South Asian-Canadians have expressed that the racist discrimination inherent to the Komagata Maru incident in 1914 is being enacted today in the treatment of the community as second-class citizens who are not considered worthy of a full apology by the Conservative government.

A history of racist exclusion

In order to discourage South Asian migration, the Canadian government amended the Immigration Act in 1908 with the "continuous-journey regulation," under which travel to Canada required a continuous passage from country of origin and entry with at least $200 cash.

These measures were intended to reinforce a "White Canada" policy, in conjunction with for example the Chinese Head Tax, to restrict migrants of colour at a time when massive numbers of European immigrants - over 400,000 in 1913 alone - were entering Canada.

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By Anthony Hall, August 25, 2008

The United States forms one element of a broader and more abstract polity known as America. While the term, America, has been appropriated to identify the most powerful country in Americas, the word should be reclaimed so that it applies equally to all citizens of the Western Hemisphere. The idea of America remains as elastic and as subject to revision as ever. Throughout much of its history America has been seen by many beyond its shores as a symbol of hope, as a promised land for those yearning to breath free? But what is to be made of the experience of the Indigenous peoples who were pushed aside or eliminated to make room for wave after wave of immigrants? Will freedom for some in America continue to be purchased at the expense of others? Will America look outward to the world with confident humility or is the idea of America to be henceforth associated with the corrosive xenophobia that brands all those who do not conform to imposed norms as deviants and possible terrorists?

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The Maze of Rhetoric

We hope our title is sufficiently unequivocal to convey our reaction to the events of Wednesday June 11, 2008. Maybe by example we can show how one must approach issues which require the utmost clarity. On the other hand, this probably won’t work, especially when it’s clear the predominant intention behind a communication is to obscure. Whatever… in any event, for us, sitting on a spiky metal fence is uncomfortable posture.

We listened with attention to what Stephen Harper had to say yesterday, and we did not hear what we needed to hear. Instead, again we watched and heard one more opportunity being thrown away, this one with more ceremony than those preceding it. We watched and heard the studious avoidance of truth, in what we can only regard as the hope that the repetition of a lie will somehow substitute for reality, a concept now reduced to another mantra (as is nowadays the case for, for example, “truth” or “reconciliation”).

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John Clarke, the Bullet, Socialist Project

A drastic reduction in the adequacy of income support payments is key to the neoliberal agenda. This is especially true in a country like Canada that had earlier seen the consolidation of a basic social infrastructure. However much the balance is tilted in favour of the employers, employment insurance (EI) and welfare payments limit the desperation of the unemployed and the degree to which those with jobs can be forced to make concessions. Massive reductions in federal EI and provincial social assistance rates have been a focus of governments in the last fifteen years and the Mike Harris 'Common Sense Revolution' in Ontario was a very big part of this process.

The dramatic and confrontational Harris years have given way to a more sedate pace of social retrogression under the direction of the McGuinty Government. Nonetheless, once inflation is taken into account, 760,000 people on social assistance in Ontario will be poorer when McGuinty goes to the polls than they were when he began to implement his rather dubious agenda of 'change' in this province. At least a 40% reduction in the spending power of welfare cheques has taken place since 1995. Harris's work has not been reversed under the Liberals. It has really only been consolidated.

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A Blow for Democracy
by Rahul Mahajan, Empire Notes, August 18, 2008.

A great blow has been struck for democracy.

No, it wasn’t John McCain posturing about the nonexistent U.S. defense of Georgia and Mikhail Saakashvili. Nor was this blow struck by the keyboard commandoes who infest the media, congratulating themselves on their courage in standing up to the Russian bear.

It happened halfway around the world and, as is so often the case, the United States and its chattering classes were on the wrong side of history.

The military dictator Pervez Musharraf, facing certain impeachment, resigned the last of his usurped offices, President of Pakistan.

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An Afghan Woman Who Stands Up to the Warlords: An Interview with Malalai Joya
By Farooq Sulheria, CounterPunch, August 18, 2008.

Afghanistan lives in the fear of the US-sponsored war lords. These hated warlords are not scared by the Taliban-monster raising its head in the south. Ironically, they live in the fear of an unarmed girl in her late twenties: Malalai Joya. To silence Joya’s defiant voice, war lords dominating national parliament, suspended Joy’s membership for three years in 2007. Earlier, at almost every parliamentary session she attended, she had her hair pulled or physically attacked and called names (‘whore’). ‘They even threatened me in the parliament with rape’, she says. But she neither toned down her criticism of war lords (‘they must be tried’) nor US occupation (‘war on terror’ is a mockery). Understandably, she’s been declared the ‘bravest woman in Afghanistan’ and even compared with Aung Sun Suu Kyi.

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By Justin Podur, Z Net

ISLAMABAD – The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) is a women’s organization that runs underground schools and other projects, educates Afghan girls, runs a periodic journal, and agitates politically for women’s rights, human rights, secularism, and social justice in Afghanistan. From the 1979 Soviet invasion through to the 2006 closings of the camps, millions of Afghan refugees lived in Pakistan and many still do. While RAWA’s operations were always based primarily in Afghanistan, they have also had a strong presence in the Pakistan refugee community. I spoke to Mariam from RAWA in Islamabad when I was there in July 2008.

JUSTIN PODUR (JP): To begin, perhaps you could introduce readers to RAWA and its work in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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- No Olympics on stolen land!
- Disrupt and abolish the G8 and SPP
- Active support and solidarity for local struggles of self-determination,
justice and dignity*

[August 2008 - OTTAWA]

In the year 2010, three major international events will be taking place in
the Canadian state: the Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler (between
February 12-28); the G8 Leader's Summit in Huntsville, Ontario (most likely
in June or July); and the meeting of the NAFTA leaders as part of the
so-called "Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)" (date and location not
yet known).

Already, groups and individuals on the West Coast have come together under
the banner of "No Olympics on stolen native land." They have been organizing
and raising awareness, from an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist
perspective, against the 2010 Olympics, for several years. [More info
available at www.no2010.com and http://harrietspirit.blogspot.com/]

Inspired by the mobilizing on the West Coast, organizers across "Canada"
have begun awareness-raising efforts. Building on the call from the West
Coast for anti-capitalist and anti-colonial resistance to the Olympics, some
organizers affiliated with the "People's Global Action" Bloc (PGA-Bloc) in
Ontario and Quebec have begun mobilizing around "Resistance2010", linking
anti-Olympics efforts to organizing against the G8 and SPP, and the

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By Naomi Klein, Huffington Post, August 8, 2008

So far, the Olympics have been an open invitation to China-bash, a bottomless excuse for Western journalists to go after the Commies on everything from internet censorship to Darfur. Through all the nasty news stories, however, the Chinese government has seemed amazingly unperturbed. That's because it is betting on this: when the opening ceremonies begin friday, you will instantly forget all that unpleasantness as your brain is zapped by the cultural/athletic/political extravaganza that is the Beijing Olympics.

Like it or not, you are about to be awed by China's sheer awesomeness.

The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."

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There’s a new big story: climate change. Tadzio Müller suggests a way for anticapitalists to deal with the issue’s urgency without falling into catastrophism or quietism. Fromhttp://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-4/the-movement-is-dead-long-live-the-movement/

R.I.P., or: the death of a movement
The movement’s dead! More precisely: the alterglobalisation movement as a common place for movements and ‘activists’ to meet and to become-other, together, linking their struggles under and against the common referent of neoliberal globalisation, is dead. Not that the particular struggles are dead. Nor have we seen the end of countersummit mobilisations: as I’m writing this, preparations for engaging the G8 in Japan are in full swing, and at every gathering of the radical and not-so-radical left, plans are busily being made to shut down one summit or another: the G8 in Italy in 2009; NATO’s 60-year birthday bash in France; and so on and so forth: countersummits-r-us?

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