Jan. 30 – Hundreds of Egyptians and their allies have been demonstrating outside the Egyptian consulate in Montreal for the past several days. They are out in solidarity with the uprising of hundreds of thousands of people in Egypt, calling for the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak and his regime. Mubarak has ruled Egypt for thirty years, under a “state of emergency.”
“We are just organizing solidarity demonstrations to shed light on what’s taking place in Egypt,” says Montreal activist Mostafa Henaway, reached by phone Friday evening. “We want to make sure the issue isn’t dropped in the international and Canadian media.”
Henaway is a member of the Middle East social justice collective, Tadamon! (Solidarity! in Arabic), which has played a role in organizing protests in Montreal.
“We are trying to be in touch with the people on the ground, but today it’s been impossible to get a hold of people. In the past few days, though, we have been in touch with friends, cousins and activists there.” The Egyptian government literally turned off the Internet to try and ward off the protests on Friday. Read more…
With the arrival of 2011 life became much more uncertain for senior citizens behind bars in Canada.
On June 1, 2010, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act (also known as the Eliminating Entitlements for Prisoners Act), was introduced in the House of Commons by the Conservatives. It has since received Royal Assent and come into force as law.
The amendments made by the Act effectively prevent seniors who are incarcerated for two years or more in federal institutions from receiving their pensions while on the inside (except during the first month). The new law also provides a provision which allows the provincial governments to collaborate with the Conservatives to similarly deny pensions to persons while they are serving sentences of 90 days or longer in provincial institutions.
Bill C-31 enjoyed widespread support from Members of Parliament of all political stripes, and was passed with an expedience wholly uncharacteristic of how lawmaking typically grinds along in Ottawa. Even the zealously right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation – a major backer of the proposed amendments – seemed surprised by how easily prisoners’ pensions were rescinded. Read more…
The bewildering appearance in Haiti of the country’s former dictator, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier on an expired diplomatic passport and aboard an Air France flight is only the latest assault on the dignity of the Haitian people. Jean-Claude Duvalier presided over the second half of a brutal 29 year father-son dictatorship (upheld by the US and France), until a mass popular uprising forced “Baby Doc” to flee in 1986 on board an American plane (along with hundreds of millions of embezzled fortune) for a life of luxurious impunity in the South of France.
His reappearance 25 years later comes at a critical time when the Haitian people are grappling with the failed recovery from a catastrophic earthquake, a cholera epidemic, an election crisis and the directly associated foreign takeover by the US, its allies and their institutions. In fact, like many of the recent crises in Haiti, Duvalier’s reappearance is linked to the 2004 foreign-assisted coup against the democratic government of Jean Bertrand Aristide and the subsequent US/Canadian/French and UN imposed dictatorship of Gérard Latortue. The illegal Latortue regime was stacked with Duvalierists who had set the stage for Duvalier’s return by issuing his current diplomatic passport.
While speculation over Duvalier’s renewed haunting ranges from a bold gamble to recover some 5.6 million dollars in a frozen Swiss bank account to contemptible ambitions for Haiti’s presidency; what is indisputable is that Jean-Claude Duvalier could never have returned without the aid of powerful international and local Haitian supporters.
By Errol Young
The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is so focused on closing community schools and selling off the land that they are skewing the data that they present to the community at Accommodation Review Committees (ARC).
That is what happened in the Jane and Finch last year.
TDSB staff told them the local enrolments were going to plummet and never recover. Read more…
University of Toronto General Assembly press release
On Wednesday, January 19, 2011, over two hundred students, workers, faculty, and community members packed a room to form a General Assembly that challenges the legitimacy of the University of Toronto’s administration and Governing Council. They shared accounts of their attempts to raise serious concerns with the University, only to be met with closed doors. Midway through the evening participants broke into twelve working groups that directed the General Assembly on key areas of concern ranging from university life to anti-corporatization to academic planning. At the conclusion of the meeting participants voted to continue this experiment in self-governance and will convene again before April. Over the next month organizers will keep knocking on doors and visiting classrooms on the U of T campus. They also hope to build ties with groups across Canada and the world that are demanding changes to university governance. Read more…
Noaman G. Ali, BASICS Community News Service, Canada
“We are ready to convert academic institutions into barracks. And ourselves into soldiers,” says Ramil Bhum, a student leader from Nepal’s far-west region of Seti Mahakali.
Sitting on the grass outside a large hall of Tribhuvan University on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Bhum is surrounded by a group of international observers, of whom I am one. We’ve been invited to observe the 18th national convention of the All-Nepal National Students’ Union (Revolutionary), or ANNISU-R.
With 1.4 to 1.8 million members, there is no doubt that ANNISU-R is the largest, best-organized and most militant of students’ unions in this poor, land-locked country of 30 million. It is a mass organization of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the country’s largest political party.
“A big storm is imminent in Nepal,” says Krishna Bahadur Mahara, a Maoist leader, sitting with us now in the large conference room on the roof of his party’s headquarters. “Our party is not confused about our immediate and ultimate goals. Our immediate goal is the people’s federal republic, then socialism, then communism.” Read more…
Ashley M, BASICS Community News Service
On December 4, 2010, a group of women, men and children gathered in a circle around the Tree of Hope Sculpture at Ryerson University to remember the names of women that died and that have fought against violence.
To commemorate the Montreal Massacre (December 6) and International Day to End Violence Against Women (November 25), the Revolutionary Women’s Collective organized an event to share women’s struggles in Toronto and abroad.
It was important for the group to remember not only the 14 women that were killed at the L’Ecole Polytechnique , but also remembering all the women that have been ignored and CONTINUE to be forgotten by mainstream society: Read more…
‘Strikingly Similar’ Pattern Alleged in Non-G20 Related Incident
by Geordie Gwalgen Dent – Toronto Media Co-op (Jan 10, 2011)
Toronto – Two Toronto Police officers implicated in the assault of a G20 protester are also being accused of police brutality in an unrelated incident.
Abbas Jama of Toronto is claiming that constables Luke Watson and Todd Storey assaulted him during his arrest for weapons possession. The same constables have also been accused of assault by G20 protester Adam Nobody.
Jama was arrested in June 2009 and is currently before the Ontario Superior Court facing 9 charges including possession of a firearm with ammunition and failure to comply with a probation order. Read more…
JOIN & SUPPORT WE ARE JOSE www.wearejose.com - JAN.16 2011
Vancouver, January 2nd, 2011. People from all walks of life and community-based organizations are joining forces to reverse the deportation order against José Figueroa and his family and are making a call to all to join the WE ARE JOSE campaign. Several initiatives are being organized for the WE ARE JOSE Campaign held across several Canadians cities on January 16th, 2011. Visit www.wearejose.com for more information.
WE ARE JOSE supporters believe that the Canadian government’s decision to deport José is a mistake and that this error impacts not only Jose and his family but also puts many Canadians of Salvadorean origin at risk of deportation. The campaign requests that the Canadian government, in particular the Minister of Public Safety, Vic Toews, respond to the demand to grant José an exemption by January 16th declaring him no threat to national security, in honour of the Salvadorean Peace Agreement and as a reminder to Canadians that our country played a key role in putting an end to El Salvador’s bloody 12-year civil war. Read more…
By: Kevin Edmonds – Basicsnews.ca – January 6th, 2011
On January 12th, one year will have passed since the catastrophic 7.0 earthquake devastated an already troubled Haiti. When the dust settled, it was learned that nearly 300,000 people had perished, 1.5 million had been left homeless, and much of the government infrastructure (schools, hospitals, and administrative buildings) had been
destroyed. Immediately after the earth stopped shaking, the United Nations and the major donor nations of the United States, Canada and the European Union vowed to “build Haiti back better.” One year into the reconstruction effort, for many Haitian people their lives remains in the same tragic state as they did on January 13th – yet for a great deal of others it has become tragically worse.
While the earthquake unleashed untold structural and human suffering, it also set the stage for several manmade aftershocks which continue to threaten not only the course of the already sluggish reconstruction process, but also erode the entire political and economic sovereignty of the Haitian people. Read more…
