OTTAWA—Employment Insurance benefits in Canada are well below the OECD average, says a new study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA).
The study, by economist Lars Osberg, finds that in terms of access, benefit duration, and income replacement levels, EI in Canada falls far below most other OECD countries and below the levels of Canadian unemployment insurance in past recessions.
By JOHN ROSS - June 26-28, 2009
Virtually ignored by the international media, the stealing of the Mexican presidential election by the right-wing oligarchy [on July 2, 2006] stirred little indignation anywhere outside of Mexico...A comparison of coverage extended to both instances of electoral fraud (Mexico and Iran), by the New York Times, the "paper of record", is instructive.
(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube / Watch it at boingboingvideo.com.)
Founders of The Pirate Bay have made a deal to sell off "the world's largest BitTorrent tracker" to a Swedish gaming company for about $7.8 million.
More than 20 million visitors use the site each month. This April, TPB's three founders and a representative of their ISP were sentenced to a year in prison and damages of about $4 million over allegations of copyright violation.
BB Video - Pirate Bay Surrenders to Hollywood: Peter Sunde interview
Xeni Jardin
by Laura Carlsen
Thousands of Hondurans are now in the streets to protest the coup d'etat in their country. They have been met with tear gas, anti-riot rubber bullets, tanks firing water mixed with chemicals, and clubs. Police have moved in to break down barricades and soldiers used violence to push back protesters at the presidential residence, leaving an unknown number wounded.
The Chinese government has decided to delay the implementation of its controversial client-side filtering software, Green Dam Youth Escort. The deadline for PC makers to preinstall or package the software was originally set for July 1, but it has now been pushed back to an unspecified date.
Coup d'Etat Underway in Honduras: OBAMA’S FIRST COUP D’ETAT
Here is what is hopefully one of the last of a once-robust breed - The Apocalyptic Canadian Housing Market Story:
Judging by the latest real estate data, the Canadian housing market could scarcely be better. Average home prices are up more than 16 per cent this year, and in May they hit an all-time monthly high, according to the Canadian Real Estate Association. By those numbers, Canada didn’t just sidestep the housing market crash that continues to plague the United States, it sailed right through it virtually unscathed. And yet, there are plenty of signs that the Canadian housing market is still sitting on some very shaky ground—and even the potential that Canada’s big housing crash is yet to come.
The housing market: the oversold story of the Canadian recession
The Honduran military kidnapped democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya this morning. They took him under heavy guard to an airbase outside Tegucigalpa, the capital city. Since then he has been flown to Costa Rica, where a Washington-friendly regime is in power. At this moment, Telesur is interviewing Zelaya on television.
BREAKING NEWS: COUP D'ETAT IN HONDURAS TODAY, SUNDAY, JUNE 27
A recent article called “Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It” by Flynt and Hillary Leverett is not the only source with serious credentials offering reasonable, non-sensational explanations for events around Iran’s presidential election.
Kaveh Afrasiabi, a scholar who once taught at Tehran University and is the author of several books, says many of the same things.
Close analysis of the election results gives absolutely no objective basis for making charges of a rigged election. Mousavi’s expected win – expected, that is, by the Western press and by Mousavi himself - never had any basis in fact.
Ahmadinejad Won: The Real Source of Interference in the Iran Elections was the US
A growing body of research suggests that whales have as much of a claim to personhood as our closest primate relatives.
Tar sands could produce 6 million barrels of oil per day by 2035: report
Five-Fold Increase in Oil Sands Production
Moira Peters
Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:05:38 GMT
A group of Mayan Mam villagers set fire to a pickup truck and an exploration drill rig earlier this month at the Marlin gold mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacan municipality, San Marcos, Guatemala. The mine is operated by Montana Exploradora de Guatemala, a subsidiary of Canada’s Goldcorp Inc.
Another bomb for a future Harper attack ad.
June 25 2009 - rabble.ca
Past comments by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff are coming back to haunt him as members of the Korean community accuse him of suggesting he would starve North Koreans...While at Harvard in 2005, Ignatieff said, “I strongly support reductions in food aid” to strengthen the international community’s negotiations with North Korea on nuclear weapons.
For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
Authorization for Use of Military Force: 2001 "Tonkin Gulf Resolution in perpetuity"
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:13:00 GMT
For more details, please click on the link to read the article.
High-tech Barbarism:: Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's a Raytheon Spy Blimp!
Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:34:00 GMT
After closely watching the way that the Canadian copyright debate has proceeded (from a new copyright bill drafted in secret and off-limits to input by Canadian artists, librarians, ISPs and scholars; to a plagiarized "independent" report that used faked-up research and US lobby-group talking-points to "prove" Canada's copyright pariah statement), Michael Geist has created this handy chart showing how the copyright lobby in Canada uses a variety of fronts to subvert the legislative process.
How the Canadian copyright lobby uses fakes, fronts, and circular references to subvert the debate on copyright
Cory Doctorow
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:34:37 GMT
The United States and Venezuela are to reinstate ambassadors to Caracas and Washington, setting aside a diplomatic spat that soured ties last year.The two nations expelled each other's envoys last September in a dispute involving allegations by Bolivia, a close ally of Venezuela, that Washington was meddling in its internal affairs.The normalisation of diplomatic ties 'will take place in the coming days, and as soon as the ambassadors have resumed their functions we will move forward to a more fluid communication,' Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan foreign minister, said on Wednesday."
Writing in the New Yorker's June 29, 2008 issue, Seymour Hersh said "Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership." Involved is support for Iranian dissidents and "gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program." Perhaps later to disrupt the presidential election with Hersh saying Bush's Finding "focussed on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change (by)working with opposition groups and passing money," according to a person familiar with its contents. His account is a year old but may be relevant to today, hopefully something he'll substantiate in a future report given what's now playing out.
Iran's Election And US - Iranian Relations By Stephen Lendman
A reader writes, "Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore gave a speech this week that appears to suggest a surprising shift in Canadian policy on copyright. Moore talked about the great opportunities presented by the Internet and how many older politicians don't understand these opportunities."
Reflecting on the Digital Economy Conference
Canadian government expresses cautious enthusiasm for Internet
Cory Doctorow
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:40:38 GMT
A look at Ralston Saul's new book by one of my favourite writers of things Canadian, Robin Mathews. (photos of Baldwin and Fontaine)
In a brilliant and deeply flawed new book, John Ralson Saul joins Mel Hurtig in an attempt to tell Canadians the [ugly] present "truth about Canada".
I'm probably not the only Dominion reader who has spent the past couple of days wondering how Canada is involved in US-led "Black Ops" in Iran.
Today I found a clue when I happened across Psiphon Inc., which was recently spun off from Citizen Lab, itself a branch of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the U of T.
"Canada's Psiphon Inc. on the Frontlines of Iranian Netwar," reads a June 19 press release by Ontario based Psiphon Inc.
I find it fascinating that this little item surfaces just two days after Parliament goes on summer break:
Tories withhold future war costs, citing national security concerns
OTTAWA — In a significant policy shift, the Canadian government now believes that telling the country’s taxpayers the future cost of the war in Afghanistan would be a threat to national security, Canwest News Service has learned.
The Defence Department cited a national security exemption when it censored a request under Access to Information by the federal NDP for the military costs of Canada’s military participation in the NATO-led, United Nations-sanctioned military mission to Afghanistan.
If a democracy falls in the summer, does anybody hear it?
Jennifer Smith (runesmith@tarahill.com)
Image via Wikipedia
The sun's surface has been unusually quiet over the past two years, with a worrying absence of sunspots and flares. This is connected to cooler temperatures, which means lower crop yields, which means higher wheat prices, which means higher prices for food, which is a big problem. But there's no great cause for panic - gold, silver and oil benefit mightily from such uncertainty.
THE MOGAMBO GURU : Solar-powered downturn
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Image via Wikipedia
The Trans-Asian Railway Network, a decades-old vision to link the vast expanses of Asia by rail to accelerate trade and integration, has been boosted with the passing of a key inter-governmental agreement. The proposed 114,000-kilometer link, delayed for years by geopolitics and war, is a step closer.
All aboard the Trans-Asian Railway
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I honestly don't know where this post will be lead you or me, to...I am hoping it will lead us both to the Truth.
This has been "brewing" in my mind for some time already...actually it's been brewing in my mind for a very long time...I was not quite sure how to approach it though...It is as if I needed some more convincing, some more proofs, some more evidence...my own way of knowing something "intellectually" and have it distilled and reach the gut level -- some like to call that an "insight".
Painting : Iraqi artist, Ismail Fattah Al-Turk.
The Conquest of Iraq - Appropriating the Body.
laylaanwar@gmail.com (Layla Anwar)
Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:04:00 GMT
A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.
The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.
idential memo reveals US plan to provoke an invasion of Iraq | Politics | The Observer
What's that guy sticking up his nose? With smoking bans on the rise, an age-old method of getting a nicotine fix is making a comeback.
Robert Fisk
Now that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has placed himself shoulder to shoulder with his officially elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the very existence of the Islamic regime may now be questioned openly in a nation ever more divided between reformists and those who insist on maintaining the integrity of the 1979 revolution.
By Andre Vltchek - June 18, 2009
...[T]he great majority of the people in the English speaking so-called "First World" actually believe what they read in the newspapers and what they see on the television screens. The lies and one-sidedness seem to be too obvious to be ignored! But they mostly are...
by Michael Parenti
Nations that chart a self-defining course, seeking to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets as they see fit, free from the smothering embrace of the US corporate global order, frequently become a target of defamation. Their leaders often have their moral sanity called into question by US officials and US media, as has been the case at one time or another with Castro, Noriega, Ortega, Qaddafi, Aristide, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, and others.
Its unofficial anthem may be Farewell to Nova Scotia, but the province is drawing major companies and recruiting out-of-work Wall Street bankers
Naked Lunch, the infamous novel by American writer William S. Burroughs and the subject of the final literary obscenity trial in the United States, turns 50 this year. To celebrate the anniversary, the first collection of critical essays devoted to the novel will be published this month and a three-day "homage and symposium" will be held in July at the University of London Institute in Paris, with complementary celebrations taking place in New York and other cities throughout the rest of 2009.
by Lila Ghobady
Why didn't I vote in the latest elections for the president of the country of my birth, Iran? Because no matter who is the president of Iran, they would stone me!
As a young Iranian woman, I require big changes in order to convince myself that a change in president would mean an improvement of my basic rights as human being inside Iran.
Here are some simple facts that demonstrate that irrespective of who is president, I would be stoned to death in Iran:
Diving hummingbirds experience g-forces in the range that could cause human stunt pilots to blackout. According to new UC Berkeley research, male Anna's hummingbirds fly 30 meters up and then dive down. As they pull up before smashing into the ground, they hit up to 9 Gs. The trick is all about impressing females. From Science news:
"Hummingbird pulls Top Gun stunts"
File-sharing, to the (very large) extent that it involves copyright infringement, has affected the music business. But, as a pair of academic researchers happily point out in a working paper they've posted online, copyright law was never meant to protect the music business in the first place—instead, it is intended to foster creative production in the arts, which happen to include music. As such, they argue it's worth analyzing the deeper question of whether file sharing is putting a damper on music creation. Their conclusion is that this is a much more complicated question, but the answer seems to be "probably not."
Click here to read the rest of this article
also see Post-Soviet lessons for a Post-American century at his site: cluborlov.blogspot.com
In a talk titled Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation given at The New Emergency Conference, Peak Oil activist and writer Dmitry Orlov (previously 1 2 3) shows how he has come to the conclusion that the oil price spike of summer 2008 was the trigger for the financial collapse that occurred later on in the fall. He goes on to summarize (from his point of view) pretty much everything that has been happening in the past year or so, and what he thinks is coming up next.
Definancialisation, Deglobalisation, Relocalisation
GMT
Barbarism Lite
by Ed Broadbent
Good article. As one who monitors the web as much as one could and still maintain one's sanity I'll put two thumbs up. The chatter is all about fraud at the polls, another color revolution, twitter coming to the rescue from the left the right the inbetween. I'm immediately suspicious with such unanimity. Remember Iraq?
“Change for the poor means food and jobs, not a relaxed dress code or mixed recreation…Politics in Iran is a lot more about class war than religion.”
- Financial Times Editorial
Iranian Elections: The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax
the editor of Harpers Magazene
by John R. MacArthur
It isn't quite fair to call Barack Obama a liar. During the campaign he carefully avoided committing to much of anything important that he might have to take back later. For now, I won’t quibble with The St. Petersburg Times’s Obamameter, which so far has the president keeping 30 promises and breaking only six.
By Ali Jawad
Come the Iranian elections and the unexpected landslide victory in favour of Ahmedinejad, and once again rushing to enlighten the world are the normatively All-Knowing Western capitals and media pundits. Swarming the airwaves, one and all cried out fraud, stolen elections and a nations will silenced
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - June 16, 2009
As a person who has seen it all from inside the U.S. government, I believe that the purpose of the U.S. government’s manipulation of the American and puppet government media is to discredit the Iranian government by portraying the Iranian government as an oppressor of the Iranian people and a frustrater of the Iranian people’s will. This is how the U.S. government is setting up Iran for military attack...
105 years ago today.....
"STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned..."
Wiki has a decent capsule study of the whole thing.
Tune into Radio Woodshed starting a noon EDT to hear the whole novel read aloud, unabridged, all 27+ hours of it.
Happy Bloomsday
the rev. paperboy (noreply@blogger.com)
Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:47:00 GMT
Move follows fatal protests between police and indigenous groups over land laws.
Peru PM to quit over land disputes
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