- No Olympics on stolen land!
- Disrupt and abolish the G8 and SPP
- Active support and solidarity for local struggles of self-determination,
justice and dignity*

[August 2008 - OTTAWA]

In the year 2010, three major international events will be taking place in
the Canadian state: the Winter Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler (between
February 12-28); the G8 Leader's Summit in Huntsville, Ontario (most likely
in June or July); and the meeting of the NAFTA leaders as part of the
so-called "Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)" (date and location not
yet known).

Already, groups and individuals on the West Coast have come together under
the banner of "No Olympics on stolen native land." They have been organizing
and raising awareness, from an anti-colonial and anti-capitalist
perspective, against the 2010 Olympics, for several years. [More info
available at www.no2010.com and http://harrietspirit.blogspot.com/]

Inspired by the mobilizing on the West Coast, organizers across "Canada"
have begun awareness-raising efforts. Building on the call from the West
Coast for anti-capitalist and anti-colonial resistance to the Olympics, some
organizers affiliated with the "People's Global Action" Bloc (PGA-Bloc) in
Ontario and Quebec have begun mobilizing around "Resistance2010", linking
anti-Olympics efforts to organizing against the G8 and SPP, and the

Rita MacNeil, who went on to become a popular singer, was named in an RCMP document on a 1972 feminist gathering, Feminist singer of 'women's lib songs,' among dozens under scrutiny in early '70s

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press, August 5, 2008

OTTAWA–RCMP spies infiltrated the women's movement in the early 1970s, monitoring marches and rallies to keep an eye on feminists including Rita MacNeil, who would become a much-admired Maritime songstress.

An undercover source reporting on a March 1972 gathering of women's liberation groups in Winnipeg compiled biographical sketches of several delegates, noting MacNeil was in attendance from the Toronto Women's Caucus.

"She's the one who composes and sings women's lib songs," says the RCMP memo, portions of which remain secret.

MacNeil, who lent her musical talents to the feminist cause before turning to music full-time, was among dozens of women from across the country who came under Mountie scrutiny, new research reveals.

The entertainer was not immediately available for comment, nor was her manager.

Historians Steve Hewitt, a Canadian lecturer at the University of Birmingham in England, and Christabelle Sethna, of the University of Ottawa, sifted through hundreds of pages of declassified files detailing the RCMP Security Service's interest in women's groups that began flowering in the late 1960s.

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.

By Keith Jones, 18 July 2008.

Canada’s Border Services Agency turned Iraq war resister Robin Long over to US authorities Tuesday morning. Long, who fled the US Army in 2005 after learning he was to be deployed to Iraq, was immediately sent to a Bellingham, Washington county jail. He has since been transferred to the US Army base in Fort Carson, Colorado where he will be subject to military discipline for “desertion”—an offense for which US military personnel can be court-martialed, jailed and, in time of war, executed.

A US military spokesman told Canwest News Service that “the unit commander will look at the facts” and make a recommendation “about what disciplinary actions will ensue.”

The 25-year old Long had been in the custody of Canada’s border and immigration police, the CBSA, since last October. He had sought political refugee status in Canada, arguing that the 2003 US invasion of Iraq was illegal, that were he deployed to Iraq he would be complicit in war crimes, and that he would suffer irreparable harm if deported to the US.

By Macdonald Stainsby, July 14, 2008

For much of the last year, many of the anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian forces across Canada have started to work towards converging many of the bigger issues to take place in 2010 into a larger whole.

Some of the issues included are: The 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, the next round of Security and Prosperity Partnership [SPP] negotiations to be held within Canada-- and the G8 Summit to be held in Ontario all during that same year. On many different levels these issues interlink and have an inherent connection with one another. Some of them, more than others. Here I wish to make the case that what belongs as a major thread through all of these discussions is often absent among those of us trying to make these larger connections coherent in our organizing.

Here I will specifically focus on making a connection for the 2010 Games resistance, the SPP and the Albertan Tar Sands as another central organizing point.

Harper's Free Trade Mantra: Hush, Rush, and Sign
Written by Dawn Paley
Tuesday, 01 July 2008
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1356/1/
This January, after little more than 6 months of negotiations, the
Canadian Government announced the completion of negotiations of the
Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland.

Six months later, on June 7, 2008, Canada announced that negotiations
for a controversial Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia were
finalized.

The negotiations with Colombia were controversial from the get go: the
country has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and the
government of Alvaro Uribe is riddled by ongoing scandals that have
revealed proven links between Uribe's allies in Congress and
paramilitary death squads.

In a corruption scandal that would most certainly bring down a
Canadian Prime Minister, Uribe himself is the subject of a recent
Sentence by the Colombian Supreme Court. The justices condemned him
for buying the key vote of Congresswoman Yidis Medina in exchange for
political favours, a crime necessary for the constitutional changes
that opened the door to Uribe's re-election in 2006.

On June 26th, Medina was sentenced to 3 ½ years of house arrest for
accepting bribes from the president. The president promptly responded

Barriere Lake Algonquins Occupy MP Office!
by Lia Tarachansky, Dominion Weblogs, June 26, 2008.

GATINEAU- On Thursday, June 26th, Algonquin representatives from Barriere Lake and allies assembled outside the Indian Affairs government building across the river from Ottawa. Their demonstration was a diversion, intended for a peaceful occupation in Birmingham, QC of Lawrence Cannon's office, the MP for the Barriere Lake region. The Algonquins demand a meeting with the MP to discuss the recent government ousting of the Customary Chief and Council as well as a re-election monitored by outside observers.

The Barriere Lake Solidarity Collective, based in Montreal, as well as Algonquin representatives from Barriere Lake itself have vowed they will not leave the office until their demands are met. They have been threatened with arrest, and are welcoming support from anyone who is willing or able to assemble in Buckingham, QC.

On a quest for secular piety: Reviewing Tarek Fatah's Chasing a Mirage
by Justin Podur, ZNet, June 22, 2008.

Tarek personally asked me to review his book, Chasing a Mirage: the tragic illusion of an Islamic State (CM). With a book being favorably reviewed in the Canadian (and US and UK) media, including the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Huffington Post, the UK Guardian, and the Asper-family owned newspapers (Ottawa Citizen and National Post, which also published long excerpts of CM and frequently runs op-eds by Tarek), CM hardly needed a review from me to get attention. I therefore took the request as a signal of a serious desire to engage with people who might disagree about the ideas of the book.

CM's basic thesis is that religion and politics should be separated in Islam. Although it has major flaws, it also has many attributes of interest and will be thought-provoking on the relationship between religion and politics, and between Islam and the West.

A flawed book with some thought-provoking ideas