Graphic details. The ‘democratic’ Ukrainian election

Source: Ria Novosti (Click to enlarge)

Four Halifax events in November

No to Canadian Participation in U.S.-Led Wars of Terror! No to Criminalization of Dissent!

— public discussion —

What is to become of Canadians’ rights?

Monday, Nov. 3, 5–7 pm

Just Us! Cafe, 5896 Spring Garden Road, Halifax

Exploiting the tragic events earlier this month in Quebec and Ottawa, the Harper regime declared war last week on “Islamic extremism” in Iraq under the leadership of the Obama administration. But, now that this country has become an open warmonger in the U.S. camp, what is to become of Canadians’ rights? Join us in an important public discussion.

Build the workers’ press to oppose media monopolization: The working class must have its own voice!

Samples of the Party and non-Party press on display at the celebration marking the 44th anniversary of the Party press, Etobicoke, August 23, 2014.

BY DOUGAL MacDONALD

The U.S.-controlled media monopoly Postmedia announced on October 9 that it had purchased the Sun Media chain, the English-language publications of the Peladeau media monopoly, Quebecor, for $316 million. The deal gives Postmedia control of the five daily Sun newspapers in Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg; 27 small-market dailies; 140 weeklies; the London Free Press and numerous other media properties. Postmedia already owns, among other properties, the National Post, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Regina Leader-Post, Ottawa Citizen, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Windsor Star, Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province. The purchase of Sun Media still requires regulatory approval from the federal Competition Bureau.

Photo report: Actions against Canadian participation in US-led wars of terror and the criminalization of dissent

CALENDAR OF ANTI-WAR EVENTS

On the weekend of October 24-26, anti-war rallies, marches, pickets and other activities were organized in cities across Canada. Events took place in Charlottetown, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, London, Windsor, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and in the Comox Valley and other places. The actions took a firm stand against U.S.-led aggression, war, occupation and regime change and Canada’s participation in them, especially the U.S. bombing campaign underway in Iraq and Syria.

At the UN: The world condemns the US blockade against Cuba

Votes in support of ending the blockade:  188
Votes against the ending of the blockade:  2 (USA, Israel)
Abstentions:  3 (Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia)

The blockade is the longest in the history of humankind and has imposed economic, financial and commercial restrictions on Cuba for 50 years and was enacted as a tool for U.S. foreign policy to oust a government that it opposed. It has failed to do so and has only imposed harsh restrictions on goods that have a detrimental effect on the lives and health of Cubans. The fact that the U.S. continues to flagrantly ignore world opinion and international law on this issue shows that there is not a vestige of democracy in the U.S. political system. Any country in the world that decides its own independent path does so at the peril of inhumane punishment.

Telesur reports from New York:

The US ‘journalist’ as ‘tourist’

The U.S. State Department is continuing its influence program against the Russian government. It finances “workshops” in Russia to eventually prepare for a “colour revolution” there. It hires academic trainers from U.S. universities to work on various parts of the plans. One of those parts is the recruitment and influencing of Russian journalists. When the State Department sends those trainers to Russia it tells them to falsely claim to be “tourists.” The Russians found out about practice and told those “trainers” to stop such nonsense.

Turkish delight: humanitarian aid

Turkish ambulance in Morek, Syria | Al-Masdar News

Upon the capture of the strategic city of Morek last Wednesday, Oct. 22, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) discovered an ambulance that possessed Turkish license plates; it was stockpiled with weapons and ammunition.

UN votes today on Cuba’s resolution against US blockade for the 23rd time

The blockader gets blockaded

On Resolution 68/8 of the United Nations General Assembly entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”

To read the full content of Cuba’s detailed Report on the UN Resolution, issued July 2014, click here: Cuba vs the Blockade.

The blockade has been in place since October 1960, almost two years after the triumph of the Revolution over U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, with more and more sanctions being imposed by the U.S. over the last 55 years.

Uruguayan elections: Vazquez wins first round

Tabare Vazquez thanks Uruguayan voters for a peaceful day of elections

Tabare Vazquez

After learning he won the first round this Sunday and that he will face Luis Lacalle in the runoff November 30, ruling Broad Front party presidential candidate Tabare Vazquez pledged he would seek the entire political and social consensus to maintain his country on the road toward growth and development.

Dilma Rousseff wins second term as Brazil’s president

Rousseff seizes second term, carrying forward 12 years of Workers’ Party administration for another four years.

Based on the official election results Dilma Rousseff has won the Brazilian presidential Elections.

According to the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has won the Brazilian presidential elections with 51.45 percent of the vote compared to her political rival Aecio Neves who captured 48.55 percent, a difference of two million votes.

Evo Morales: Indigenous people are prepared to govern

Bolivian President, Evo Morales, stated on October 22, that indigenous people are prepared to govern, despite what neoliberal politicians have said for many years.

Morales, who participated in the inauguration of irrigation projects in Ocuri, in the north of Potosí, stated that in the past it was said that indigenous people were only good for voting and not governing.

Communications Security Establishment Canada and Spying

We are posting an item by OpenMedia.ca about the Communications Security Establishment Canada, one of the government agencies that is involved in spying on Canadians, in particular monitoring private electronic communications of Canadian citizens, including emails and text messages, phone conversations and video chats.

Government tracking of protests

Newly released documents show that the federal government has tracked some 800 demonstrations across Canada and around the world since 2006, including “uneventful protests” and public university lectures.

These surveillance reports, in some cases provided by CSIS or the RCMP, were collected centrally by the Government Operations Centre, an agency ostensibly assigned to prepare the federal government’s response to emergencies. Some reports on international protests were collected by Foreign Affairs, but the majority focused on domestic events, especially First Nations protests and environmental activism, the Toronto Star reports.

Spying on Canadians: Harper dictatorship seeks to increase arbitrary powers of warrantless access to private information with Bills C-13 and S-4

Bill C-13, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act, the Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act passed third reading in the House of Commons on October 20 and then passed first reading in the Senate on October 21. Also known as the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, and informally called the cyberbullying bill, it was first introduced on November 20, 2013 by Justice Minister Peter MacKay.

Harper’s self-serving anti-terrorist agenda: When does a group or an individual pose a danger to society?

By PAULINE EASTON

(Oct. 25) – IT IS CLEAR that there are a lot of people across the country who are very disturbed by recent events. Under such circumstances, it is not fruitful to incite passions and fuel tensions by presenting opinion as fact as the Prime Minister and his Ministers have done and continue to do, or to enact more legislation which is self-serving and destroys the standards and due process established by a civil society based on the Rule of Law, as the Prime Minister and his Ministers are planning to do. On the contrary, what needs to be done is to go into the heart of the matter and appeal to all people to draw warranted conclusions and unite on that basis. The issue is to focus on what will resolve the crisis in favour of the people and what will not. The outlook that upholds Might Makes Right and enacts legislation on a self-serving basis will not permit any problem to be sorted out. On the contrary, it exacerbates the problems which already exist. This is especially true when the outlook is racist and targets mentally ill and socially displaced people for attack in the name of high ideals.

End Canada’s participation in a new Iraq war!

On October 21, fighter jets left Cold Lake, Alberta to join the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq. They will join aerial bombing which is said to target the bases of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Canada has not yet been drawn into the air war in Syria, which is also in violation of international law. The Syrian campaign lacks the authorization of not only the United Nations but that of the Syrian government as well.

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on all Canadians who want a peaceful solution to problems within and between nations to join the demonstrations convoked for this weekend and take a firm stand against the U.S.-led wars of aggression and occupation and regime change and Canada’s participation in them.

The justification for sending Canada’s armed forces to Iraq is that ISIS poses a threat to Canadian security and this is therefore a matter of defending Canada’s national interest. The tragic events in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and in Ottawa on October 20 and 22 respectively are also being used to declare that Canada is threatened by ISIS and we must fight them in their own territory and on Canadian soil as well. Meanwhile, the stated aim is in fact to carry out regime change in Syria, establish permanent military bases in Syria and Iraq, plunder their resources, and target Iran, all the while attempting to rescue Israel and its nefarious plan to wipe out the Palestinian Resistance so as to take over the entire territory of historic Palestine. Obama who is ultimately the Commander-in-Chief of Canada’s armed forces integrated into the U.S. war machine, speaks of years of bombing while the calls for an invasion and ground war are becoming more strident every day.

No to Canada’s Participation in Wars of Aggression and Occupation!
No to the Use of Force to Settle Conflicts Between Nations!
Canada Needs an Anti-War Government!

ISIL attacks Ottawa? Harper’s use of tragic events to promote war agenda and suppression of rights

By LOUIS LANG
(Oct. 24) – On the evening of October 22, Prime Minister Harper addressed the country about the tragic events of the day. He did so again in the Parliament the following day. His televised speech and address to Parliament were designed to continue the assault on people’s minds and to promote fear and a siege mentality which the police forces, security agencies and media propagated throughout this.

Freedom of the press, US style: Attack dogs set against courageous journalist

The American monopoly media is unleashing its attack dogs all over against the late Gary Webb, who had the courage to expose the relationship between the CIA, the Contras and the drug trade, including the role of the CIA Cuban-American terrorist, Posada Carilles. Courage is, after all, contagious. The attack is carried in a definite and surreptitious way. “A different rule actually governs American journalism – that journalists need ‘extraordinary proof’ if a story puts the US government or an ‘ally’ in a negative light, but pretty much anything goes when criticizing an ‘enemy’.” PETER HART*

In 1996, in the wake of his explosive “Dark Alliance” series for the San Jose Mercury News (8/18-20/96), the Washington Post was one of the major newspapers to attack Gary Webb (FAIR Blog,  10/21/14).

It’s 2014, and they’re still at it.

Freedom of the Press, US style: How to drive a colleague to his grave and sleep easy at night

On the collaboration of American monopoly journalists. “The fact that the Contras were the CIA’s army, and not, say, the Bolivian secret service’s army, was crucial to understanding the story – and therefore Webb’s attackers did everything they could to obscure this point.” JIM NAURECKAS*

Gary Webb

Ryan Grim’s 2009 book This Is Your Country on Drugs–recently excerpted in the Huffington Post (10/10/14)–sheds light on the establishment media’s 1996 effort to discredit Gary Webb’s Contra crack revelations (“Dark Alliance,”San Jose Mercury News, 8/18-20/96) by talking to some of the key players. As depicted in the new biopic Kill the Messenger, other journalists’ attacks on Webb cost him his job, and after being run out of the profession he loved, in 2004 he apparently took his own life. But the people who wrote those attacks sleep very well, they want you to know–it’s an object lesson in how to do bad without feeling bad.

ISIL attacks Ottawa? The Harper government and media are creating a moral panic

Canada and the war on terror: The Ottawa shootings, what really happened? MAHDI DARIUS NAZEMROAYA*

(Oct. 24) – Prime Minister Steven Harper and the Canadian federal government are using the shooting rampage on Parliament Hill as a justification for imposing surveillance and detainment measures that they were already implementing and going forward with.

On October 22, 2014 a solitary gunman named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (originally Michael Joseph Hall) from the city of Laval, Quebec went on a shooting spree in downtown Ottawa, the capital of Canada.

October 25/26 Anti-War Day of Action

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

The climate of terror

– Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec (PMLQ) –

Since 2001, terrorism is not only a tragedy for the peoples but also a problem to be solved. Since 2001, the peoples of the world have had no respite, no rest. War and terrorism are multiplied to create a climate of terror in the country and on the world scene. Civilized norms between nations are thrown in the mud in favour of brute force. Anarchy is raised to authority in international relations.

It is the peoples of the world who are the victims of our governments, who lead our soldiers into dirty, unjust wars or in plots for regime change and who support U.S. imperialist domination. The same peoples of the world helplessly watch the destruction of forums like the United Nations by the perpetrators of war and chaos.

The need to oppose terrorism on an enlightened basis

By ENVER VILLAMIZAR
ON OCTOBER 22, a reservist soldier from Hamilton was shot and killed while standing guard at the National War Memorial in downtown Ottawa. After shooting the solider, the gunman headed to the Parliament where he seized a car, entered Parliament Hill’s Centre Block where he exchanged fire in its halls eventually being killed by security officers. This event follows another two days before in the town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec in which two soldiers were rammed by a car driven by 24-year-old Quebecker Martin Couture-Rouleau. One soldier was killed and the other injured. In that incident it is alleged that Couture-Rouleau waited outside of a military office and then ran down the two soldiers. Courture-Rouleau then fled by car and was chased by police and was eventually shot and killed.

Soldier killed at war memorial; Canadians suffer results of Harper government’s anarchy and violence

Statement of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

THE Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) calls on Canadians to remain calm in the light of developments taking place in Ottawa at this time following the shooting of a soldier at the War Memorial.

As the events unfolded it became clear that the various levels of police forces, armed forces, various levels of the state and the media all went into action as if they were conducting an exercise in bringing the whole city under their direct control. Schools were shut down, all government buildings in the downtown area were shut down. No one could go in or out. At 6 pm, some government workers were still locked down at work. The outlying government buildings were evacuated and shut. All bridges going to the Quebec side were blocked by the QPP and RCMP and every driver was forced to open the trunk of their car and which was searched before they were allowed to cross.

Bolivia’s president talks about the country’s ongoing socio-economic transformation and his third term in office

I have no regreats – in fact, I am pleased to have expelled the US ambassador, the DEA and to have closed the US military base in Bolivia. Now, without a US ambassador, there is less conspiracy, and more political stability and social stability. Without the IMF we are better off economically – Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia

Event. Pan-Africanism in a Global Perspective: Africa & the Diaspora, 1919-1939

A Public Lecture by acclaimed African Historian, Dr. Hakim Adi 

‘Free Syrian Army’ – ‘for lack of a better term’

Central to US disinformation to justify its war in Iraq and the bombing of Syria is the illusion that the new desert army it is preparing to overthrow the government of the sovereign Syrian Arab Republic led by President Bashar al-Assad constitute “moderate rebels,” who are to be accepted as “legitimate”, as distinct from Islamic State.

Yahoo News propagates and runs today as its prime piece of news a video, which celebrates the use of US-made and US-supplied anti-tank missiles by terrorists inside the Syrian Arab Republic. The propaganda video is also evidently intended as a form of confirmation of the deliveries and the orders fulfilled to the “moderate rebels.”

U.S. Steel’s bogus bankruptcy

Local 1005 Steelworkers protest outside CCAA court hearing in Toronto, October 6, 2014

Legal restructuring means the claims of employees, retirees, suppliers and the federal and Ontario governments are to be disappeared

On September 16, U.S. Steel filed for bankruptcy protection for its Canadian operations under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).

Information Update, the newsletter of Local 1005 United Steelworkers, questions the assertion that U.S. Steel’s Canadian facilities, called USSC, are bankrupt when they are wholly-owned by the U.S. parent company and the parent company, USS, is far from bankrupt.  This assertion appears as the main argument for CCAA. The factum presented to the court presents no proof of separate ownership of the Canadian subsidiary. The sole equity ownership remains in the hands of the U.S. Steel stock traded as X on the New York Stock Exchange.

Turkey: NATO holds war games with 12 partners, including Ukraine

ISLAMABAD (Oct. 20): Turkey will host NATO drills between October 20 and 24 that will include participation from 12 other countries, the Turkish general staff announced in a statement.

The war games will take place in Istanbul and gather military personnel from Azerbaijan, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Moldova, Jordan, Ukraine, Mauritania, Algeria, and Pakistan, the Anadolu News Agency Reported.

The drills aim to enhance the capacity of the countries to work together and cooperate, the statement said. Turkey is expected to participate in the games with 84 personnel.

Source: Associated Press of Pakistan

 

Cuba criticizes attempts to legitimize the use of force

Geneva (Oct. 15) — The Cuban delegation attending the 131st Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly participated widely in the debates taking place at the legislative conference in Geneva.

In depth discussions were held between delegations from developed countries and those from the developing nations in the sessions of the Standing Committee on Democracy and Human Rights, with complex negotiations regarding a draft resolution for the Assembly on international law and its relationship with national sovereignty and non-intervention in the internal affairs of States.