Grief And Hate.

     After the recent killings of two soldiers in Canada, it's own version of the babbling brook of bullshit, its mainstream media, has gone into overdrive with the usual, "We need more surveillance", "what extra powers do the police need", "What laws do we need to change, to get these people sooner" It is the usual and predictable ranting that we get here, whenever there is any violence, suspected or otherwise, by anybody who can be labelled a Muslim.

     However, sadly in Canada the population seem to be falling for the propaganda, and are on the streets calling for these types of actions. This not so subtle, rendering of grief for the victim, then moving on to hatred of a group which the perpetrator can be linked, is brutal, dangerous, and intended state propaganda. It is garnering support for tighter control over the people. Teaching hate and fear of the manufactured enemy abroad, and the imaginary enemy at home, attempting to create in the minds of the people, a desire for a stronger state, and should be resisted at all times.

 

An extract from a recent article in Anarchist News:

     -----The media is incessantly asking what could draw good Canadian youths to Daesh's ideology. But one could just as well ask what drew the young soldier killed in Ottawa to take up arms in defense of a genocidal, imperialist nation state. Interviews with his family show that he loved the military since he was a child, it just seemed to be in his blood they say. As despicable as it is to claim that any child is born to follow orders to kill and die, Canada is using the same kinds of narratives as Daesh to attract the same directionless, war-fetishizing young men to its cause.
      The grain of truth in the Canadian propaganda is that people in Canada enjoy many social freedoms. The historical narrative is of brave explorers befriending natives (who then somehow disappeared) and who through their work and dedication, opened up the country from sea to sea to sea, and developed an enlightened nation while avoiding the excesses of the United States. The authoritarian project looks different here – it's a trade of complicity for privilege, including the privilege to not be bothered by political matters. In times of crisis though, more is asked of us to stay on the state's good side.-----

Well worth reading the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Toxic Tar Sands, Cancer And Profit.

     The grasping hand of the corporate world will devastate, communities and the environment, in its endless quest for profit. No risk is too big, no damage too great, as the fallout from their plundering and marauding, doesn't infect the marble halls of the world's stock exchanges, nor their shareholders bank accounts.

 

   

     The Alberta tar sands project is one of the corporate world's most brutal destructions of of pristine natural environments on the planet. It stretches for mile after mile of what used to be green mountains and abundant wildlife, but is now a filthy wasteland of sterile black slush. What is worse, is that to get at the oil in the tar, the companies use some of the most toxic substances in existence. This in turn finds its way down streams and rivers, into the water table.

 

Lake Athabasca is fed by the Athabasca River, which flows through the project region, and earlier studies have found unsafe levels of arsenic, mercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon in the lake’s fish, as well as in sediments, water and wildlife.

 

      Among the local population down river from the project, there has been an increase in cancers, Of course the usual vomit is emitted by the mouthpieces of the project, stating that the increase in cancers may be due to better detection and/or lifestyle. Obvious they can't or wont, see any connection between toxic water and wildlife, and increase in cancers.

 

    This rape and plunder of the planet will continue as long as the present system of capitalism exist. As long as the financial mafia control where the investments go, and the aim is increase wealth for the shareholders, you and I, and the environment, will just have to take what we get. It is their world, or it is our world, there is no middle road, no compromise.

 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Canada, Land Of Immigrant Detention.

      Some countries manage to create the illusion of being a ”nice” country and keep the nasty side in low profile. Canada is one of those countries, the great outdoors and land of opportunity, but the same shit goes on there as else where in the capitalist world. Some months ago there was the student riots, which once again proved that under capitalism, anger and discontent are always simmering under the surface, ready to explode. More recently the way the Canadian government treats immigrants has been leaking out. In Canada the authorities can hold immigrants indefinitely in detention, and do. 

     According to figures released by the organisation No One is Illegal, between 2004 and 2011, the Canadian authorities locked up, 82,000 people in immigration detention, and since 2011, at least another 25,000 people have been detained. Of those detained in 2012, a staggering 289 were children, some under the age of ten. Approximately 33% of immigration detainees are held in maximum-security provincial prisons. Of course this is capitalism and immigration detention centres are big business, and in Canada that business is worth $50 million, and is run in partnership with private companies. Big international vultures like G4S and Corbel Management have their greedy hands in the pot. Recent figures show that in Toronto alone, these two companies, between 2004 and 2008, were paid $19 million of tax payers money to lock up immigrants.

      At present Canada accepts less than a quarter of all refugee claimants, and with recent legislation, immigrants are classed as “non-status people” a precarious position to be in as they are targeted in raids and detentions. To add to the difficulties of of those detained, approximately 200 immigration detainees have recently been moved from prisons in the Greater Toronto Area and sent to a maximum-security prison in Lindsay, Ontario. This has created greater difficulties for the detainees who have friends and families and adds to their desperation and isolation. Due to under staffing these immigrants now face lockdowns and in some cases are unable to leaver their cells for 18 hours a day.

    However, as always, people who are ill treated eventually try to hit back in self defence and since September 18, many detainees are on hunger strike. They are calling for better access to medical care, better food, adequate legal aid and services, cheaper phone calls, and an end to the persistent lockdowns.

      Canada, just another capitalist country, knee deep in fire tinder, waiting for the spark.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

An Appeal from LabourStart.

     Solidarity is how we can change the world and create that better world for all. An appeal from LabourStart:

 

      Crown Holdings is a company you probably never heard of. But it's huge -- producing metal containers in 149 countries. And it's highly profitable -- doubling its profits in 2012.
      But Crown is also attacking its own workers in Toronto, Canada, eliminating their cost of living allowance, creating a two-tier wage system, and continuing a nine-year freeze on pensions.
     Crown workers, members of the United Steelworkers, have had enough, and are walking the picket line, forced to strike by an employer that refuses to negotiate seriously.

Their slogan is "Take-Backs No More" and they've gotten the support of unions around the world including Unite (UK), the International Association of Machinists, and IndustriALL Global Union.
     Now they have a LabourStart campaign and they're asking all of us to send off messages to the company CEO with a simple message: "get back to the table to negotiate a fair agreement now".

Please support them by sending off your message today.  And please spread the word.

Thank you.

Eric Lee

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Just Beneath The Surface.

       Canada doesn't often hit the headlines for street protests, but 2012 saw some of the biggest protests in Canada's history. It was the students revolt that rocked the country, lasted almost six months and forced an election. It is just more proof, if any was needed, that unrest is simply just murmuring under the surface of every capitalist country on the planet. Dissatisfaction is grudgingly borne and then it explodes.

https://ia700406.us.archive.org/23/items/STREET_POLITICS_101_HD/STREET_POLITICS_HD.mp4

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THE GREED AND MADNESS OF THE CORPORATE BEAST.

      I previously posted about the Canadian tar sands project and referred to it as the biggest shit pan on earth, I personally believe that description doesn't go far enough. This project is corporate greed and destructive madness going completely unrestrained.

The video was taken from an excellent article on the Polizeros site.

Read the Polizeros article HERE:

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HOW THE QUEBEC STUDENT MOVEMENT WON.

        The student protests in Quebec reached a successful conclusion. They did not win by marching from A to B and then going home. They got organised to fight back and meet state violence with self defence force. They were determined not to be driven off the streets, not to be intimidated, they fought back. The state will always fall back on violence to gain control, control through intimidation is always in their armoury. It is a hard lesson to learn but to negotiate with the state you have to negotiate from a position of strength, it is the only thing that will make them concede.

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THE ANGER IS GLOBAL

      What seems to be in the spotlight at the moment is the European crisis, but it is not just in Europe that the people are taking to the streets against an economic system that is now seen to be totally unjust and unable to serve the people. It is really across the globe that people are taking to the streets in an attempt to put an end to this continual exploitation of the many by a small group of parasites. What has always been seen, politically, as a quiet backwater, Canada, now has turmoil and anger on its streets. From East to West, the world is in revolt and the anger is directed at the same thing, this exploitative economic system controlled by an unelected, faceless, financial Mafia.

This from  Linchpin:

      Early on the student strike in Quebec adopted the slogan “it is a student strike, and a popular struggle” (in French, “la grève est étudiante, la lutte est populaire"). Over the course of this unprecedented strike, the slogan has become a reality, as people from all sectors of society have joined the students in opposition to the neoliberal government of Jean Charest and his Liberal party.
    As this is written, neighbourhood committees are forming in Montreal and daily protests, including the now famous casseroles (pots and pans) protests, are occurring across Quebec – including in small towns and regions not known for their militancy. The legitimacy of the government and its police force is being called into question as tens of thousands defy its “special law 78”, which criminalizes spontaneous protests among other measures. The student strike has indeed become a popular struggle. While no one could have predicted that the student strike would spill across society, this development is not entirely without a foundation in recent struggles. And this foundation is best exemplified by the Coalition Opposée a la Tarification et Privatisation des Services Publics (in English, the Coalition Against User Fees and the Privatization of Public Services).

Continue READING:

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THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

The Universal Language:

 “Fuck the Police” (Montreal, Night 47)

This from, Outside the Circle: 

            I feel like I probably saw and was in the middle of only a fraction of all the tides of popular protests against the Grand Prix tonight. But to likely understate it, the police (SPVM to SQ) totally lost control and the people totally held the streets. And as one person said to us on the streets as riot cops swarmed by us for the umpteenth time–after about the umpteenth time that nearly everyone (and by nearly everyone, I mean an eclectic mix of thousands and thousands of people, many dressed in fancy Saturday night party clothes, far from “the usual suspects” and not a black bloc in sight) pushed the police back or for all intents and purposes kettled the cops, and after the many umpteenth times that nearly everyone booed at and many threw plastic bottles (or a beach ball) at the police–there’s a universal language on the streets this evening, and it’s “fuck the police.”

          Of course, there was plenty of good reason to speak this global language on Montreal’s streets this evening: tear gas, batons, the incessant beating on shields, pushing, harassment, pepper spray, injuries, arrests. But none of those tactics worked. Nor did the tactic of attempting to divide the thousands of people “marching” or simply filling the streets. Each time the police managed to split enormous amounts of people into two, three, or four groups, or seemed to have dispersed people altogether, seconds or minutes later, there was a new massive group, or several, or another hot spot, with no rhyme or reason, and definitely no coordination. The sheer beauty of a mysterious spontaneity birthed of some sort of popular will and determination. Whether tourist or local, student or person in their seventies, a kid a stroller or an adult in a wheelchair, white or black, out for a drink or out for a protest, and on and on, people just kept coming at the cops again and again and again, with little fear and lots of animosity.

Continue READING:

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WHERE ON THE PLANET IS CAPITALISM WORKING?

         Europe is in turnmoil with every city across the continent having protests, strikes and angry people on the streets, America has the Occupy Movement growing on a daily basis, even sleepy old Canada where a pedestrian crossing the street without using the pedestrian crossing is considered news, is having its problems. Montreal say running battles with the Police at  the proposed North Plan. A plan to allow the corporate mining gangsters to plunder the Northern Territories of Quebec.

      It seems that capitalism is having a hard time at the moment. I suppose it would the kindest thing to keep up the pressure and put it out of its misery.

      This from Contra info:

      A demonstration against the neo-colonial project “Plan Nord” (North Plan), which seeks to exploit to a maximum extent the minerals in Québec’s northernmost territories for the profit of mining companies, has turned into a street battle between insurgents and riot police, with an intensity and length rarely seen in Montréal.

Gathering about 2,000 people including indigenous militants, ecologists, striking students, anarchists and trade-union militants, two demonstrations converged and heavily disrupted the Plan Nord’s Employment Fair taking place inside Montréal’s Palais des congrès (convention center) last Friday 20th of April.

At around 12h30, a group of demonstrators (mainly striking students) has succeeded in entering the huge building, even if it was heavily guarded by riot police.

Continue READING:

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WHICH ONE-- WHITE CAT OR BLACK CAT???

          Sometime you think we will never learn, this little cartoon was based on a speech by Tommy Douglas give in the 1940's As far as I know the original mouseland story was by a canadian miner, and here we are in the 21 century still choosing between the black cats and the white cats. In the words of the song, "When will we ever learn". Enjoy and learn.

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LOCK-OUTS, PAY-OFFS, THEY'RE ALL AT IT.

An appeal for solidarity from Labour Start:

       Workers locked out by a French-owned company in Canada need our help today. It's now been three months since Acadian Coach Lines, a subsidiary of French multinational Keolis, locked out their employees because of a labour dispute. This has resulted in no intercity bus service in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, leaving many who rely on buses to get to and from cities in these provinces stranded.

Being locked out of work is always bad. For an employer to do this in mid-winter is positively cruel.

Please show your support for these workers today -

click here. It will take you less than one minute to send a strong message to Keolis demanding that they return to negotiations.

And to see what recent campaigns you may have missed,

click here.

Thanks very much!

Eric Lee

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GROWING ANTI-PEOPLE LEGISLATION.

     

        In one of my recent posts, “Anti-people legislation”, I stated that the Institute of Directors has called for collective bargaining to be scrapped for all public sector workers. Some may think that this is too far fetched to come about. However, just cast your eyes across the pond to that land of freedom, the good ol' US of A, and you will find that the Governor of Wisconsin has included in his budget proposals, legislation that would more or less remove collective bargaining from all public sector workers. Fortunately the people are having none of it, as they have taken to the streets in their tens of thousands and are being joined by workers in other states and across the border in Canada. You can read a full report HERE. Of course our media is not big on reporting mass demonstrations in the western developed countries, they prefer when it is happening in other countries. The only way we will ever turn around this greed driven corporate world to a federation of sustainable needs based societies, will be for the workers across all borders to link hands and fight in unison. It is a common enemy, the state and its companion the corporate world, no matter the country. An injury to one is an injury to all.

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