The treatment of Iran’s election last June, the depictions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the alarm over Iran’s nuclear program all parallel the one-sided coverage that the U.S. news media directed toward Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Iraq’s alleged WMD program before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

In both cases, the leading U.S. news outlets took sides; they cast developments in the “enemy” Muslim nation in the harshest possible light; they treated the leaders as unrelentingly evil; they exaggerated the threats (and potential threats) posed by the country’s weaponry, real and imagined.

• to develop recommendations for improving the future sustainability of the sockeye salmon fishery in the Fraser River including, as required, any changes to the policies, practices and procedures of the Department (of Fisheries and Oceans) in relation to the management of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery.

* Federico Fuentes, resident of Venezuela, editor of venezuelaanalysis.com, Bolivia Rising blog, and Marea Socialista magazine

* Jon Beasley-Murray, Professor of Latin America Studies, University of British Columbia

* Andrea Pinochet, Haiti Solidarity BC

* Other invited speakers

Organized by Haiti Solidarity BC   

More info: 604 773 9057 or 778 858 5179

Voters seem to agree.  Two words, “polarization” and “gridlock” -- or hyperbolic cousins like “paralyzing hyperpartisanship” -- dominate the news when the media describes that dysfunctionalism.  Foreign observers have been similarly struck, hence a spate of pieces like the one in the British magazine the Economist headlined, “America’s Democracy, A Study in Paralysis.”

Okanagan Nation Slams Government Indifference

over Safety of OKIB Drinking Water

by Okanagan Nation
In response to the imminent threat of logging within the watershed that supplies the Okanagan Indian Band with much of its drinking water, Chief Fabian Alexis of the Okanagan Indian Band today announced that “all options were on the table” in order to protect his community’s water supply.

“The federal government has done nothing to protect the 1,800 people who live on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve,” noted Chief Alexis. “The provincial government has made it clear that the financial interests of Tolko are of greater concern to them than the health and safety of the people who derive their drinking and irrigation water from the Browns Creek Watershed.”

“When it comes to protecting the watersheds that supply Vernon with its water, government agencies would not hesitate to act, but suddenly when it involves our community our concerns are discounted. This systemic racism will not stand,” declared Chief Alexis.

Yoo, Bybee, and Disinformation
by David Swanson
Everything you're reading about torture lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee getting off the hook is wrong. They are not torture lawyers, they are not off the hook, there never was any hook, they may not be lawyers for long, impeachment and indictment are on the agenda, and you have a role to play.

 

Over a million Iraqis lie dead. So stop obsessing on the torture for godsake and try to focus on the fact that these people are conspirators in the supreme crime of war. Read the memos of September 25, 2001, and October 23, 2002, if this is all new to you.

The Information Super-Sewer
by Chris Hedges
The Internet has become one more tool hijacked by corporate interests to accelerate our cultural, political and economic decline. The great promise of the Internet, to open up dialogue, break down cultural barriers, promote democracy and unleash innovation and creativity, has been exposed as a scam. The Internet is dividing us into antagonistic clans, in which we chant the same slogans and hate the same enemies, while our creative work is handed for free to Web providers who use it as bait for advertising.

Ask journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists what they think of the Web. Ask movie and film producers. Ask architects or engineers. The Web efficiently disseminates content, but it does not protect intellectual property rights. Writers and artists are increasingly unable to make a living. And technical professions are under heavy assault. Anything that can be digitized can and is being outsourced to countries such as India and China where wages are miserable and benefits nonexistent. Welcome to the new global serfdom where the only professions that pay a living wage are propaganda and corporate management.

The Web, at the same time it is destroying creative work, is forming anonymous crowds that vent collective rage, intolerance and bigotry. These virtual slums do not expand communication or dialogue. They do not enrich our culture. They create a herd mentality in which those who express empathy for “the enemy”—and the liberal class is as guilty of this as the right wing—are denounced by their fellow travelers for their impurity. Racism toward Muslims may be as evil as anti-Semitism, but try to express this simple truth on a partisan Palestinian or Israeli website.

Palestinians tear segregation barrier
by TRNN

During the weekly protest in the Palestinian village of Bil'in, thousands of activists assembled to celebrate five years of non-violent resistance. This form of popular struggle has spread to many other Palestinian villages and areas in East Jerusalem. The protests are made to show opposition to the confiscation of roughly half of the village's land by the Israeli Jewish-only settlement colony of Modi'in Illit. In 2007, after the village protested every Friday for almost 3 years, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the barrier does not serve a security purpose and ordered it rerouted. The Israeli army however, did not start to reroute the barrier until last week and informed the village that it will only return 364 (or 60%) of its 575 taken acres. During this week's protest the army fired dozens of tear gas canisters, shock grenades, and sprayed the crowd with liquid smelling like sewer and feces.  

 

 

 

 

by Chris Floyd   
This is the lesson that the United States government -- the government of the historic progressive, Barack Obama -- taught the children of America today:

    "Children, the law is nothing but a rag smeared with blood and shit.

    "It is only for suckers, rubes and losers.

    "Claw your way to the top -- by any means necessary -- and the law can never touch you.

    "This is the American way."

Yes, as the Washington Post reports, the United States government announced today that there will be no penalties whatsoever for the lawyers who were ordered by their superiors, George Bush and Dick Cheney, to write memos "justifying" the tortures that Bush and Cheney wanted to unleash upon captives held indefinitely without charges, without evidence, without trial, without rights.