BREAKING NEWS For Immediate Release
October 12, 2008

Rail Blockade Disrupts CP Rail’s Olympic Spirit Train
“Six Nations and solidarity activists resist Olympic theft of Indigenous
land, ecological destruction, and attacks on the poor”

Toronto, Ontario – Moments ago, a group of activists occupied Canadian
Pacific (CP) Railway’s train tracks by locking themselves down to the
tracks and hanging banners off of the rail overpass on highway 27 near
Elder Mills. The protest was organized in solidarity with the Olympics
Resistance Network (ORN) and their call to disrupt CP’s “Spirit Train”
that is traveling across Canada. Directions to the blockade site can be
found at the bottom of this release.

“We are here today to show the world what the Olympics really stands
for; capitalist greed and colonialist theft of Indigenous lands” said
Winnie Small. They continued, “In stark contrast to Canada’s cherished
reputation as a human rights advocate, our First Nations live in abject
poverty; casualties of Canada’s apartheid policy refusal to respect
Indigenous rights to their own land.”

DERAIL THE SPIRIT OF THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT TRAIN
ALL OUT ON OCTOBER 13 - THANKSGIVING MONDAY

MEET AT 12NOON !SHARP!
CORNER OF FRONT AND BAY/YORK (south-west corner)
FREE TRANSPORTATION
EMAIL NOONEISILLEGAL@RISEUP.NET FOR SEAT CONFIRMATION
OR AT COOKSVILLE STATION AT 1PM

On October 13, 2008, the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway)'s 'SpiritTrain' will be arriving at Cooksville GO Transit Station in Mississauga, here to continue its goal of spreading pre-Olympic "spirit".

The Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010 are appropriating indigenous land, marginalizing the urban poor and exploiting migrant workers.

The 2010 Olympics spirit that this train carries is a spirit of racism and corporate greed. This spirit has met with opposition in each of its stops across the country.

This spirit of oppression needs to be met with our spirit of resistance.

When it stops in Mississauga, come out with pots, pans, whistles, flags and placards. As most of Canada gives thanks for the ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples on Turtle Island, we urge all allies to mobilize their communities to disrupt the Spirit Train in solidarity with the call for Indigenous sovereignty.

To confirm a spot or to share your solidarity, please email
nooneisillegal@riseup.net before Sunday, 12 October.

NO OLYMPICS ON STOLEN NATIVE LAND!

For further information, see: http://no2010.com/node/18

On The Matter of Tar Sands & Indigenous Lands

This video examines the impacts of the Alberta Tar Sands on First Nations communities in the region. It features an interview with Clayton Thomas-Mueller, member of the Mathais Colomb Cree Nation (Puktawagan) in northern Manitoba, and organizer with the Indigenous Environment Network's Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign. (Found via Intercontinental Cry.)

Law Suit a Tar Sands Stopper?
by Tom Sandborn, The Tyee, July 28, 2008.

Jack Woodward and the Beaver Lake Cree aim to change Canadian law -- and their success likely would throw a huge wrench into Alberta's tar-sands oil production.

The suit pits the Beaver Lake Cree band against the governments of Canada and Alberta, asking the court to rule invalid the government authorization for thousands of petroleum projects on the band's core territory.

Lakes across Canada face being turned into mine dump sites: Lakes are in B.C., Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories and Nunavut

by Terry Milewski, CBC News

CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly "reclassified" as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.

Environmentalists say the process amounts to a "hidden subsidy" to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.

Under the Fisheries Act, it's illegal to put harmful substances into fish-bearing waters. But, under a little-known subsection known as Schedule Two of the mining effluent regulations, federal bureaucrats can redefine lakes as "tailings impoundment areas."

That means mining companies don't need to build containment ponds for toxic mine tailings.

CBC News visited two examples of Schedule Two lakes. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Vale Inco company wants to use a prime destination for fishermen known as Sandy Pond to hold tailings from a nickel processing plant.

Racism in the Tar Sands: exploiting foreign workers and poisoning indigenous people

By Macdonald Stainsby, June 12, 2008, reposted from Oil Sands Truth

The giant corporations that are determined to exploit the Alberta tar sands face a major problem — a serious shortage of local labour to do the actual work. So the Canadian and Albertan governments have a plan, ideal in their eyes, to solve the crunch.

Currently, employers desperate to find needed hands, backs and minds for the vast production targets of the “Gigaproject” are flying workers from the Maritimes from their homes for shift stretches and then back again, but that effort faces limits in terms of workers available. Nary a day goes without a business page article somewhere in Alberta bemoaning the lack of workers. Many of the Newfoundlanders who would have come out this way in the past will now work in Newfoundland premier Dany Williams’ new off shore oil and gas ventures, using skills learned in Fort McMurray, Alberta.

Written by Cyril Mychalejko, Upside Down World,
Tuesday, 20 May 2008

An independent report published last month condemns the business practices of Canada's Goldcorp Inc. and exposes the Canadian mining industry's often socially and environmentally destructive practices throughout the hemisphere.

Investing in Conflict-Public Money, Private Gain: Goldcorp in the Americas, is about the "nexus of mining companies, the mainstream media, the Canadian government, International Finance Institutions and bought off NGOs" that is working "hard to keep the reality of large-scale, open pit mines out of picture, keep[ing] community resistance marginalized, and no matter what, to keep talking about 'development'."

"The idea is to encourage debate and discussion about the effects of mining megaprojects, from Canada to Argentina, using Goldcorp's mines as case studies," said Dawn Paley, an independent journalist who penned the report with Sakura Saunders, and the assistance of Rights Action and MiningWatch Canada.

GATHERING OF MOTHER EARTH PROTECTORS

Sovereignty Sleepover: Toronto, Queen’s Park May 26th – May 29.

Rally: Queen’s Park May 26th, 5 p.m. – dusk.

Respect the right of First Nations to say no to economic exploitation and environmental destruction.
No jail for saying no.
Free Bob Lovelace and the KI Six.

On May 26th Indigenous communities and our supporters will gather at Queen’s Park to uphold our duty to protect the land, forest, water, and air and to promote respect for our Indigenous rights to say no to economic exploitation and environmental destruction. It is time to end the jailing and harassment of our people for protecting mother earth and traditional ways. Please come to our large rally on May 26th at the legislature. We are also inviting supporters to join us in four days of ceremony, speakers, workshops, music, and a three night sovereignty sleep-over directly on the front lawn of the legislature.

Right now Indigenous communities across Ontario are taking a stand to assert our right to protect our traditional territories and the future of our peoples. Our communities are peacefully protesting destructive industrial projects that the government is permitting on our traditional lands without community consent.

by Alternative Libertaire, from the Northeastern Anarchist, NEFAC.

For decades, anti-capitalists have rightly raised the question of the “redistribution of wealth” between the Global North and Global South. This idea has commonly been imagined to mean an end to the pillage of the Third World by the advanced industrialized powers, so that the people of the Global South are able to attain an equivalent level of development. This demand, put simply, means that the South should catch up to the North’s "standard of living."

But this old view is clumsy and over-simplified, since certain countries are already fully in the process of "taking their share" of the cake that is Planet Earth, and this is accelerating the destruction of the great ecological balances. The arrival of China and India as industrial, political and military powers obliges revolutionaries to rethink, from top to bottom, issues surrounding the model of development itself.

Into a Black Hole

Tar Sands and Oil Production in Western Canada

Macdonald Stainsby

When I moved from British Columbia to Alberta recently, I discovered that the political realities of one province are largely unknown to those living in the other. In BC, oil is seen as a scheme hatched by mad cowboys that has little effect on the mountainous peace of the West coast. Similarly, when people speak of the Olympics in Alberta, it’s still in reference to the Calgary Games of 1988 – a stark contrast to BC, where the coming 2010 Winter Games are associated with rapidly increasing property values and social dislocation. Despite these differences, the economies of both provinces are said to be “booming.” The Albertan economy is growing faster than that of any other North American state or province, while BC is in the middle of a significant economic upswing. While sharp differences in political consciousness remain, especially at the local level, both BC Premier Gordon Campbell and Alberta Premier Edward Stelmach are supporting policy initiatives aimed at reconciling the political and economic differences between their provinces.