Cuban Five member speaks about US-sponsored terrorism

René González, the lone Cuban 5 member freed from U.S. prison, speaks out from Havana on Democracy Now

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Ex-Cuban Foreign Minister on Threats by Militant Exiles & Why Obama Should “Free the 5”

Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up: Saul Landau on U.S.-Aided Anti-Castro Militants & the Cuban 5

Harper Throne Speech a sop to the resource monopolies and wrong direction for the country

Step up the work to oppose the anti-social offensive

By K.C. ADAMS

TML Daily – THE Harper Throne Speech pushes resource extraction as Canada’s strategy for prosperity. The government vows to do everything it can to assist the resource monopolies extract and ship as much resources as they can in the shortest possible time. It even generates panic on this issue suggesting, “The window for gaining access to new markets will not remain open indefinitely.” The government wants Canadians to believe that our very lives and security depend on resource extraction and rapidly transporting it to the far ends of the earth. Any hindrance to this is considered against the national interests and even national security.

Word: The hubris of the American general

Retired Marine General John R. Allen – “What has sustained us as a superpower has been the sheer capacity that we have across many of the measures of national power, enormous political capacity, enormous diplomatic capacity, the strongest economy on the planet.

“But undergirding all of that . . . has been in the end the ability for us to exert coercive power, and no diplomacy in the end can be effective without the potential coercive arm necessary to drive diplomacy home if diplomacy fails.”

U.S. ‘science’ group is a corporate shill

Secret finances of a pro-monopoly science group

The American Council on Science and Health defends fracking, BPA, and pesticides. Guess who their funders are. Guess who its executive director is. (Hint: he’s a convicted felon.)

By Andy Kroll and Jeremy Schulman*

 

wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock

Mother Jones (Oct. 28) – THE American Council on Science and Health bills itself as an independent research and advocacy organization devoted to debunking “junk science.” It’s a controversial outfit—a “group of scientists…concerned that many important public policies related to health and the environment did not have a sound scientific basis,” it says—that often does battle with environmentalists and consumer safety advocates, wading into public health debates to defend fracking, to fight New York City’s attempt to ban big sugary sodas, and to dismiss concerns about the potential harms of the chemical bisphenol-A (better known at BPA) and the pesticide atrazine. The group insists that its conclusions are driven purely by science. It acknowledges that it receives some financial support from corporations and industry groups, but ACSH, which reportedly stopped disclosing its corporate donors two decades ago, maintains that these contributions don’t influence its work and agenda.

Edmonton scientists and allies oppose Harper attacks on science

 

Posters at Ottawa rally held on Sept. 16 to oppose the politicization of science by the Harper government

TML Daily – EDMONTON scientists and their allies participated in a very lively public meeting on October 23 at the Alberta Art Gallery under the title “Get Science Right.” The meeting, attended by about 120 people, was organized by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) as part of a series of ongoing Canada-wide regional town halls aimed at providing an opportunity for the public and scientists to look at what is happening in science and research, and discuss what should be done to improve the situation in the interests of the people.[1]

This day. The massacre of al-Dawayma perpetrated on 29 October 1948

ONE of the worst but best-documented massacres during the offensive took place at Dawayma. This town was taken by a company of the 89th Commando Battalion which was composed of former Irgun and Stern Gang terrorists.

A veteran of the unit has published an account of the massacre. He notes that in order “to kill the children they fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one house without corpses.”

After murdering the children, the Jewish soldiers herded the women and men into houses. where they were kept without food or water. Then the houses were blown up with the helpless civilians inside.

Sighting. Palestine – A mother and her murdered son

Photo credit: Benedicte Kurzen
Date taken: May 2004
Location: Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Palestine

SAMI KISHAWI (Oct. 24) – A MOTHER comforts her young boys during a funeral for one of her other sons who was shot and killed while sleeping in his Khan Younis home.

Sighting. Fukushima

Josetxo Ezcurra

Canadian Arctic temperatures highest in at least 44,000 years

Live Science (Oct. 25) – NEW research shows that average summer temperatures in the Canadian Arctic over the last century are the highest in the last 44,000 years, and perhaps the highest in 120,000 years.

“The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is,” Gifford Miller, a researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a joint statement from the school and the publisher of the journal Geophysical Researcher Letters, in which the study by Miller and his colleagues was published online this week. “This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

The study is the first to show that current Arctic warmth exceeds peak heat there in the early Holocene, the name for the current geological period, which began about 11,700 years ago. During this “peak” Arctic warmth, solar radiation was about 9 percent greater than today, according to the study.

U.S. political prisoners and the media; the truth emerges

By SALVADOR CAPOTE*

“In those 194 days, El Nuevo Herald published 806 articles, and The Miami Herald 305 – a total of 1,111 items, which could adversely impact the judicial process, an average of more than five per day, without a single objective article included.”

Sighting. Just the facts, ma’am

From Dougal MacDonald’s Facebook page: In a rare moment of unintended candour, federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently told the CBC that “[Canadian scientists and environmentalists] are entitled to their opinion, but they are not entitled to the facts.” Whatever Oliver meant to say, his words accurately reflected the efforts to make a state secret of any and all information that could be considered damaging to the interests of the global monopolies.

Hoyne Santa-Balazs commented: See if I have this right: the scientists are entitled to find facts and to form opinions about them, but not entitled to the facts. Said “facts” are destined to be proprietary (“title” implies legal constructs around property). Loose lips and the truth slips out.

4 hours ago · Like

Important reading: Harper government to usurp more arbitrary powers on behalf of the monopolies

FINANCE Minister Jim Flaherty tabled the Omnibus Budget Bill C-4 on October 21, 2012. The bill is an act to implement certain provisions of the budget and other measures put before Parliament on March 21, 2013. It marks the second federal budget implementation bill this year, and the fourth omnibus budget bill introduced in the House in the past two years.

Word

Charles Dickens visited the Nova Scotia House of Assembly of the British colony in 1842 and observed:

“It was like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a telescope. The Governor delivered the Speech from the Throne. The military band outside struck up God Save the Queen with great vigour; the people shouted; the Ins rubbed their hands, the Outs shook their heads; the Government party said there never was such a good speech; the Opposition declared there never was such a bad one; and in short everything went on and promised to go on just as it does at home.”

Harper government’s second Speech from the Throne: Exercise in smoke and mirrors

TML Daily (Oct 22) – THIS WAS  the second Speech from the Throne since the Harper Conservatives pulled off their electoral coup and declared a majority government in the May 2, 2011 election. The speech took place in a very different context from the first one. Harper came to power claiming that he would make government accountable. Today, he does not dare even make such a statement for fear of ridicule and pointed questions.

Disinformation on gas attacks in Syria (10): A panoramic look at the U.S. case

By MAHDI DARIUS NAZEMROAYA

(Oct. 13, 2013) – THE US federal government and the various agencies, media organizations, individuals, foreign governments, non-governmental organizations, lobbies, forces, and other entities that are tied to it have done everything in their power to obscure the details involving the chemical attacks in that took place in Syria on August 21, 2013. The aim has been to justify the US-led foreign campaign that was launched against Syria in 2011 by making the Syrian government appear culpable of grievous crimes. The chemical attack on Ghouta has now come to represent the crux of the matter.

Word

To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree.” – Jefuchs, Reddit, cited in Undernews

Malala meets the British Queen

Malala Yousufzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl from Swat, has become an international celebrity. She wants to become the prime minister of Pakistan to “save” it, as she puts it. There is plenty of help available. The latest in a long line of international personalities to promote her was none other than Queen Elizabeth of Britain. Malala was invited to Buckingham Palace as part of 350 youth from the Commonwealth.

Events and actions at the Conservative Party National Policy Convention

Say No! to Harper Dictatorship
Conservative National Policy Convention
Calgary, October 31-November 2

Harper government extends military deployment in Arabian Sea to 2015

Artemis’ “main vocation was to roam mountain forests and uncultivated land with her nymphs in attendance hunting for lions, panthers, hinds and stags.”

By TONY SEED

THE Harper government announced October 21 that it will extend its naval deployment in the Arabian Sea region until April 2015.  The unprecedented deployment is another act of a rogue state that under the pretext of defending “Canadian values” goes around the world attacking sovereign nations militarily, economically and politically, overtly and covertly, as part of a hooligan gang of allies led by the United States.

The Halifax-based patrol frigate HMCS Toronto and her crew of approximately 250 personnel are currently patrolling the Arabian Sea region. She departed her home port of Halifax, Nova Scotia on 14 January, 2013.

Espionage: Harper Government turning Canada into rogue state

Governments Must Uphold Public Right, Not Monopoly Right! 

TML Weekly Information Project (Oct. 12) – THE HARPER GOVERNMENT is transforming Canada into a rogue state that goes around the world attacking sovereign nations militarily, economically and politically, overtly and covertly, as part of a hooligan gang of allies led by the U.S. Its actions are in defiance of the norms and laws governing international relations, precisely what it falsely accuses many other countries of doing. At every opportunity and in every venue at home and abroad the Harperites seek to divide people on any basis they can and incite conflict among peoples and nations in order to advance the narrow interests of the monopolies with which they are aligned, and block any organized opposition to imperialism and monopoly right.

U.S. global spying: subversion of Mexico, France

By TONY SEED

Der Spiegel: Fresh leak on US spying – NSA accessed Mexican president’s email (full text see below). Another disclosure from former CIA agent Edward Snowden has revealed that, as part of its global spy network against the nations and peoples of the world, the United States has been eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years – in particular former President Felipe Calderon, whose email messages have been targeted. According to the report, the spying into the email server of the “Mexican Presidencia domain” contained “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications” that allowed for “deep insight into policymaking and the political system.” An NSA division for “particularly difficult missions” called the “Tailored Access Operations” handled the operation.  The covert operation was carried out in conformity with an April 2013 list that enumerates the US’ surveillance priorities. That list, classified as “secret,” was authorized by the White House and “presidentially approved,” according to internal NSA documents, Der Siegel reports.

Idle No More reiterates call for nation-to-nation relations

On October 7, the 250th Anniversary of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, a Day of Action was called by Idle No More to mark the anniversary of the Proclamation. Events were held across Canada and world wide. TML Daily summarizes the salient issues and reports on these events with many photos.

THE Royal Proclamation was issued in the context of the British acquisition of France’s colonial territory in North America after France was defeated in the Seven Years’ War. The Proclamation was issued by King George III to officially demarcate what were considered the lands of the British Colonies and lands considered the territory of the Indigenous peoples (Indians), within the British Dominion. It states, “And whereas it is just and reasonable, and essential to Our Interest and the Security of Our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians, with whom We are connected, and who live under Our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to, or purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds; […]”

Elsipogtog First Nation’s defence of rights met with state violence

RCMP pepper spray peaceful protestors, October 18, 2013.

TML Daily (Oct. 21) – THE Elsipogtog First Nation in New Brunswick has been blockading a fracking operation by SWN Resources Canada, a subsidiary of Texas-based Southwestern Energy (SWN). This spring, SWN began preliminary testing for shale gas exploitation in the area without prior consultation with First Nations, as required by law.

Self-serving double standard

APTN Photographer/reporter: Ossie Michelin – text added by Ronnie Dean Harris)

5,200 Palestinian detainees currently held by Israel

IMEMC 14 Oct — The Palestinian Ministry Of Detainees issued a press release revealing that Israel is currently holding captive 5,200 Palestinians in 17 prisons, detention camps, and interrogation facilities. It said that this year witnessed a sharp escalation in arrests as the soldiers kidnapped 2450 Palestinians, including 476 children and 49 women, since the beginning of the year. It said that the army kidnapped at least 600 Palestinian security and police officers, and that the number of Hamas affiliated detainees is 1,100, and 365 detainees who are members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), while the rest are members of different factions. The Ministry stated that Israel is currently holding captive 13 democratically elected legislators, and that the Israeli military kidnapped a total of 60 legislators and ministers (46% of the members of the Palestinian Legislative Council). Among the detained legislators are Marwan Barghouthi, Ahmad Saadat and Hassan Yousef … There are currently 150 Palestinians held under arbitrary Administrative Detention orders, while 23,000 Palestinians have been held under these orders since the year 2000.

U.S. Homeland Security nominee thinks executive branch gets to choose whether to murder American citizens

U.S. state as judge, jury and executioner, abandons the rule of law

Washington’s Blog (Oct. 18): – USA Today reports:

President Obama plans to nominate former Pentagon attorney Jeh Johnson as the next secretary of homeland security, officials said Thursday.

Johnson is a supporter of assassinations … even against American citizens.
AP noted in 2011:

Halifax demonstration in support of Elsipogtog First Nation

OVER 250 PEOPLE took part in a spirited demonstration in Halifax on Friday afternoon, October 18,  to condemn the violence unleashed by the Canadian state against the Elsipogtog First Nation in New Brunswick. Some 40 protesters were arrested Thursday, outside the Elsipogtog First Nation reserve near Rexton, NB where they had set up a blockade two weeks ago to try to stop seismic testing at the site of a proposed shale gas development.

All out to support the just demands of the Elsipogtog First Nation! Oppose criminalization of their just demands! Energy monopolies watch out!

Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), October 18, 2013

CPC (ML) vigorously condemns the violence unleashed by the Canadian state against the Elsipogtog First Nation in New Brunswick. We equally condemn the diversionary tactic of the monopoly media for sowing confusion by making the central issue that of who instigated the actions that occurred  yesterday, October 17. This diversion is designed to hide that what is at stake in the struggle of the Elsipogtog First Nation is the defence of their inviolable national and hereditary rights in the face of the negation of those rights by the Canadian state, which is working hand-in-glove with the energy monopolies.

Mi’kmaq anti-fracking protest: RCMP bring 60 drawn guns, dogs, assault rifles, to serve injunction on the wrong road

The following is an eye-witness report of the state violence carried out by the RCMP early in the morning of October 17, written by journalist and colleague MILES HOWE for the Halifax Media Co-op

War Chief Seven Bernard was unarmed, outmanned and off the path of SWN’s injunction. Was any of this necessary? [Photo: Miles Howe]

Actions in solidarity with Mi’kmaq anti-fracking protest!

– Idle No More, October 17, 2013 –

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Our Mi’kmaq relatives need our support. Members of the Elsipogtog First Nation and supporters of the Anti-Shale, Anti-Fracking Nonviolent Action in New Brunswick (Canada) were under attack today because of state-initiated violence by the RCMP. Idle No More denounces this state violence and calls out to all of our supporters GLOBALLY to light your sacred fires or other peaceful actions to show support and alliance with the people of New Brunswick.

Today, settlers and Indigenous protestors and Warriors were subjected to violent action from the RCMP for their participation in a legitimate peaceful nonviolent action defending their lands and asserting their sovereign duty to protect the land and the people.  Stand in solidarity with the protestors by taking action below!