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2013
Articles
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1 September 2013, by Rob Prince and Ibrahim Kazerooni
An Obama Attack on Syria Will Backfire
False Flag Operations for Dummies. While the US, UK and France (the old and the new colonial powers) debate their response to the suspected chemical weapons use in Syria, the Syrian (...) -
1 September 2013, by Hans Blix
Even if Asad Used Chemical Weapons, the Wset has no Mandate to Act as a Global Policeman
George Bush, the then US president, waves to US navy personnel at Mayport Naval Station, in Jacksonville, Florida, 13 February 2003, after urging the United Nations to uphold its relevance by (...) -
1 September 2013, by Patrick Cockburn
Only a Peace Conference, Not Air Strikes, Can Stop Further Bloodshed
Governments in Washington, London and Paris should realise that in one respect the slaughter by chemical weapons of hundreds of people in Damascus on 21 August is an opportunity as well as a (...) -
1 August 2013, by Bipasha Sultana
Can a Moderate President Entail a Moderate Future for Iran?
Following the end of the presidential legacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during June 2013 elections, the Islamic Republic of Iran will welcome the moderate cleric Hassan Rowhani as its new president. (...) -
1 August 2013, by Bradley Castelli
Egypt and Democracy
Democracy is a fully loaded word, open to a broad spectrum of interpretations and used to justify what sometimes amounts to contradictory political realities. Indexes that rank countries by the (...) -
1 August 2013, by Kathryn Rockwell
Oil in Canada
The construction of the Keystone pipeline and the exploitation of the Alberta oil sands mark a drastic change in Canadian environmental policy. Once an example of moral leadership on ozone, (...) -
1 August 2013, by Bipasha Sultana
Academic Democracy and the Boycott of Israel: A Question of Ethics
Among the series of calls for academic boycott that have taken place in the past few years as a consequence to one of the most volatile geopolitical conflicts at present – Israel’s occupation of (...) -
1 August 2013, by Geneviève Lavoie-Mathieu
Beyond Land Grabs: The Need for a New Approach
The controversy surrounding land grabbing in Africa has sparked debates worldwide, but according to Dr. Lorenzo Cotula, who is a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and (...) -
1 August 2013, by Kathryn Rockwell
"The administration is getting ever more...
"The administration is getting ever more angry and doing everything they can to break our hunger strike. Honestly, I wish I was dead." Judging from the harrowing Guardian interview with (...) -
1 August 2013, by Olivia Zeydler
Violence Begets Violence: Finding An Alternative Solution to the Maoist Insurgency
Agreements made between corporations and governments on natural resource extraction go further than economic ties, as they fundamentally affect the lives of the local people that live on the (...) -
2 July 2013, by Bradley Castelli
The Mussalaha International Peace Delegation to Syria
This past May the Mussalaha International Peace Delegation traveled to Lebanon and Syria to speak with Syrians immediately affected by the ongoing conflict, and to discuss the competing (...) -
2 July 2013, by Suzanna Khoshabi
Whistleblowers: Heroes or Heretics?
One year ago this June, Julian Assange was granted political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. However, the anniversary of his stay at the embassy had to share headline space with (...) -
2 July 2013, by Michael Sabelli
Turkey Protests
I love Istanbul. It’s a city without comparison. A city spread across two continents, a grandeur that is fitting of its culture, history and mega metropolis geography. I also love Turkey (...) -
2 July 2013, by Sta Kuzviwanza
Rapid HIV Self-Tests
According to the 2012 UNAID report on the AIDS epidemic, about 34 million people are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS – with 2.5 million new infections each year and 50 percent of (...) -
2 July 2013, by Tariqa Tandon
The Palace of Illusions: A Book Review
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s bestselling novel, The Palace of Illusions, is an interpretation of the events of the Hindu epic Mahabharata through the lens of the woman married to the five (...) -
2 July 2013, by Steve Fake
When Will Dirty Wars End?
Director Rick Rowley and journalist Jeremy Scahill’s much talked about docu-thriller Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield opened on June 7 to strong positive reviews. A companion piece to (...) -
2 July 2013, by Jessica Newfield
Homosexuality in West African Countries
If the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (also known as the “Kill the gays”) proposed by Ugandan parliament member David Bahati in 2009, imposed the death penalty or life imprisonment of HIV-positive (...) -
2 July 2013, by Wendy Papakostandini
The Game Changer
“And the white smoke is out!” tweeted Vlora Citaku, Kosovo’s minister for European integration, “Habemus Pactum!” What Citaku was referring to was a deal struck this past April between the (...) -
2 June 2013, by Suzanna Khoshabi
Neo-Fascism: The Beginning of a New Chapter in Europe’s History?
Scattered across seven years, seven cities, and seven professions, nine of the victims of the ‘Doener murders’ had one thing in common: a shared status as immigrants in Germany. It took the (...) -
2 June 2013, by Kathryn Rockwell
Crossing the Line: Will the United States Intervene in Syria?
Despite its best efforts, the Obama administration is sliding down a slippery slope towards intervention in Syria. A humanitarian crisis that has cost between 80, 000 and 120, 000 lives, and (...) -
2 June 2013, by Bradley Castelli
Muslim Minorities in Myanmar and Sri Lanka
In the past year, tensions between Buddhists and Muslims have been rising in both Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Both states are home to minority Islamic ethnic groups that have forcibly assumed the (...) -
2 June 2013, by Anne Guay
Kenyan Indemnities and Empire History
Last October, three Kenyan elders won the right to claim compensation for their torture in British colonial prison camps after bringing their cases to the London High Court. The scale is of an (...) -
2 June 2013, by Tariqa Tandon
National Food Security Bill Debated in Indian Parliament
India’s reports on hunger and malnutrition are abysmal. For a rapidly developing country, showing much promise for the future, it still remains a country with one of the highest rates of (...) -
2 June 2013, by Sta Kuzviwanza
The New Scramble for Global Farmland
A recent article in the Guardian UK reporting land evictions in Laos and Cambodia has brought to attention, once again, the recent phenomena of global land grabs by private investors in Asia, (...) -
2 June 2013, by Olivia Zeydler
Avoiding Tragedy: A New Role of Corporate Involvement in the Aftermath of the Bangladesh Factory Collapse
The April 24 collapse of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza factory took the lives of 1,127 individuals, and left more than 1000 injured. The tragedy gained significant international attention, shedding (...) -
2 June 2013, by Bipasha Sultana
The Endemic of Rape in India: Will the Newly Amended Rape Laws Address the Root of the Problem?
Nation-wide protests have provoked a re-consideration of existing rape laws in India. These were triggered by the fatal rape incident in New Delhi this past December, in which a 23 year old (...) -
2 June 2013, by Houda Chergui
A Violent yet Successful Transition in Civilian Governance in Pakistan
Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif was the victor of Pakistan’s recent National Assembly elections, his party securing 125 of the 137 seats needed to form a majority (...) -
2 June 2013, by Michael Sabelli
An Interview with Andrés Fontecilla of Québec Solidaire
I want to start by speaking to you about your nomination as president of Québec Solidaire (QS), and what are you going to do to continue the development/growth of QS? To begin with, I was (...) -
2 June 2013, by Joanny Bélair
Is the Harper Government Going too far to Control Information?
In our digital era, in which the media is so ubiquitous and people are so connected, we tend to think that we are well informed. However, it appears that for the state, it is not very difficult (...) -
1 May 2013, by Climate Space Steering Committee
To Reclaim Our Future, We Must Change the Present
Our Proposal for Changing the System and not the Climate The capitalist system has exploited and abused nature, pushing the planet to its limits, so much so that the system has accelerated (...) -
1 May 2013, by Houda Chergui
Concern Over China’s Environment
China has been anything but immune to environmental criticisms in the past: from Melamine-tainted milk powder, to exploding watermelons, to pesticide-riddled vegetables and antibiotic-induced (...) -
1 May 2013, by Suzanna Khoshabi
Thatcher and Femenism
Earlier this month the United Kingdom laid its longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century to R.I.P. However, the nation is divided over whether this stands for Rest In Peace, or Rest In (...) -
1 May 2013, by Anne Guay
An Aggregate Picture of Post-Invasion Iraq
Since the beginning of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, a total of 189,000 people have died as a direct cause of the war. The numbers include American and allied troops, opposition forces, (...) -
1 May 2013, by Bradley Castelli
Canada and the Human Right to Water and Sanitation
In considering the growing threats of climate change, and the exploitation and mismanagement of natural resources’ impact on the phenomenon, water as a natural resource is often overlooked. (...) -
1 May 2013, by Meera Karunananthan
Water Justice for Tunisia: Regime Change is Not Enough
From March 26-30, an estimated 50,000 people flocked to Tunisia to participate in the first World Social Forum to take place in the Arab world. The theme was dignity — a term that had become a (...) -
1 May 2013, by Amira Haas
Inverse Hasbara: How ’5 Broken Cameras’ Changed Palestinians’ Attitude Toward Nonviolence
One Palestinian prisoner writes that the bravery in the Oscar-nominated documentary, denounced by the Israeli government as slander, affected even militant inmates, suggesting they could benefit (...) -
1 May 2013, by Michael Sabelli
North Korea’s Nuclear Craze
I’m just going to come out and say it: North Korea is bad. It’s true. They’re really bad. Like trouble making children. But they’re not the bully in the playground. They’re much more like (...) -
1 May 2013, by Julien Boumard Coallier and Roger Rashi
“Leave the oil in the soil, the coal in the hole and the tar sands in the land!”
This verse is taken from Nnimmo Bassey’s poem, I Will Not Dance To Your Beat (1), which he read at the opening ceremony of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change, held in Cochabamba, (...) -
1 May 2013, by Joanny Bélair
Escraches: Time for Outrage and Resistance
The Western ideal of democracy has been put in jeopardy since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, especially in the European Union. The World has learned, that when the capitalist (...) -
1 April 2013, by Houda Chergui
ICC indicts Kenyatta
Kenya elected its new president, former Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta on March 9, and many wonder what the long-term consequences of the elections will be, as there has never been an election in (...) -
1 April 2013, by Anne Guay
Civilian Activism in Syria
Civil war rages on in Syria. As the death toll reaches an estimated 70,000 Syrian civilians, over 1.1 million are refugees in neighboring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt and 2.5 million (...) -
1 April 2013, by Houda Chergui,
Kamal Lahbib
From Porto Alegre to Tunis
More than 50 regional forums and seminars have taken place since 2002. Algerian generals are still hostile toward the idea of a North African movement, and Libya is still dealing with the (...) -
1 April 2013, by Geneviève Lavoie-Mathieu
Burkina Faso: Gold, a Double-Edged Sword?
Talatout Boukari, community leader of Essakane in Burkina Faso, in partnership with the international organization FIAN, was in the Netherlands to raise awareness on the negative impact of (...) -
1 April 2013, by Michael Reford
Does Chavismo Have a Future?
The left in Latin America had struggled for a rebirth. The days of CIA- backed coups and assassination of leftists have calmed somewhat. The longstanding fight against imperialism has seen a (...) -
1 April 2013, by Kaveh Boveiri
Bordered and Borderless University Life: A Review of the Recent Happenings in Universitatea Babes-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
If you happen to be interested in ancient art, you may have come across the Thinker of Hamangia and The Seated Woman. These figures, dating back to the Hamangia culture of around 5200 BC in the (...) -
1 April 2013, by Esther Vivas
From the World Social Forum to the Arab Revolts
Tunisia, cradle of the revolts in the Arab world, hosts from today [26 March] and until Saturday the World Social Forum (WSF), the most important international meeting of social movements and (...) -
1 April 2013, by Oluwafunmilayo Oyatogun
Bailiff Champion: Nnimmo Bassey
The conversations in Nigeria are ever so often shaped around what’s wrong with our country and everything the leaders are not doing. What we fail to celebrate are the efforts, big and small, of (...) -
1 April 2013, by Feroz Mehdi
Event: Fighting Big Oil!!
Fighting Big Oil!! Date: Saturday, June 15, 2013 - 14:00 - 16:00 Defender of climate justice in Africa and in Europe, central figure in the fight against multinational oil corporations, (...) -
1 March 2013, by Houda Chergui
Civil Disobedience, in Theory
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time,” said Winston Churchill. This powerful statement of course stems from the (...) -
1 March 2013, by Houda Chergui
Interview on Civil Disobedience
Phillippe Duhamel is a strong proponent of civil disobedience. He was one of the instigators of Operation SalAMI that in May, 1998, was successful in its efforts to prevent the Multilateral (...) -
1 March 2013, by Brittany McGillivray
Break the Law, Save the Earth
Civil disobedience: is it a radical form of organization, or a meaningful way to resist unjust laws? Should laws be changed ‘democratically,’ and is civil disobedience a part of our democratic (...) -
1 March 2013, by Anne Guay
Sierra Club, Calling the Shots
Sierra Club has declared civil disobedience in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline. A protest outside of the Whitehouse February 13 saw Michael Brune, Sierra Club’s Executive Director, get (...) -
1 March 2013, by Bradley Castelli
Canada Needs Civil Disobedience
On February 17, 2013 an estimated 35,000 protestors assembled in front of the American White House to urge President Obama not to approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline extension to the Gulf (...) -
1 March 2013, by Marianne Hill
Making Their Presence Known: The Visually Charged Civil Disobedience of Ukrainian Activist Organization, FEMEN
Throughout February 2013, FEMEN activists have staged protests in over ten countries spanning two continents, making their presence known to a multitude of news outlets as a result of their (...) -
1 March 2013, by Tamkinat Mirza
Open North: New Civic Engagement Tool Opens Up City Hall to Residents
Open North, a Montreal-based nonprofit that works to promote government transparency and citizen engagement at government level, is working to provide Canadian citizens with online tools to (...) -
1 March 2013, by Michael Sabelli
Perpetual Acquiescence: A Reading of Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”
When reading spirited texts written over 150 years ago about the goodness of individuals and the impeding role of government in their lives, the effect of romanticizing these words has an (...) -
1 March 2013, by Michael Reford
For Sale: The Canadian Identity
A young, adolescent country, Canada often struggles with what it is. The rich, exciting, history of other Western nations is absent because of the few historically defining moments. As such, the (...) -
1 March 2013, by Brinda Karat
Deciding Who Gets to Eat
By allowing futures trade in food and diversion of farm land for commercial purposes, the government (of India) is fuelling the price rise International agencies are warning of high food (...) -
1 March 2013, by
Sergio Yahni
Palestinians: Israel’s Arrogance Will Provoke Intifada
Israel has clearly demonstrated that its objective is not to resolve the Middle East conflict, but to keep the flames of the conflict at a manageable level. Israel has further demonstrated with (...) -
1 March 2013, by Rob Prince
Tunisia Boils Over
Once again, Tunisians’ anger has overcome their fear. Spurred by a political assassination, tens of thousands have taken to the streets to protest the state into which their country has (...) -
1 March 2013, by Sergio Yahni
Israeli Measures Following UN Recognition of Palestine
The objective of Israel is not to resolve the Middle East conflict but to keep the flames of the conflict at a manageable level. Israel has already declared and proven with acts that it is not (...) -
1 February 2013, by Houda Chergui
A New Vision for Agriculture?
With the Eurozone still plagued by its crisis and the US in the midst of its fiscal challenge, it was not surprising that the world’s economy was the primary item discussed on this year’s Davos (...) -
1 February 2013, by Brittany McGillivray
Rising Opposition to The Northern Gateway Pipeline in British Columbia
Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline is facing growing opposition as Canadians protest the project that seeks to pump roughly 525,000 barrels of petroleum from Alberta to British (...) -
1 February 2013, by Bradley Castelli
Idle No More: A Global Grassroots Movement
Last November, a group of Saskatchewan women comprised of Jessica Gordon, Sheelah McLean, Sylvia McAdams and Nina Wilsonfeld came together to discuss their concerns relative to the Harper (...) -
1 February 2013, by Emilie Katavic
To Arm or Not to Arm: A Commentary on Gun Control
After the tragic December 14 shooting in Connecticut at Sandy Hook Elementary school, many pro gun control supporters spoke out saying: "enough is enough". This had been the second deadliest (...) -
1 February 2013, by Harriet Sherwood
Israel Must Withdraw All Settlers Or Face ICC, Says UN Report
Israel must withdraw all settlers from the West Bank or potentially face a case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for serious violations of international law, says a report by a United (...) -
1 February 2013, by Geneviève Beaudet ,
Pierre Beaudet
The High Stakes of Native Resistance
The blossoming of the Idle No More movement signals the return of native resistance to the political and social landscape of Canada and Quebec. With its origins in Saskatchewan in October 2012, (...) -
1 February 2013, by Michael Sabelli
Turkey’s Internal Issues Reflect Their Aggressive Posture with Syria: Capturing the Minds of Their People and the Respect of a Volatile Region
Turkey is one of the few complicated states in the word that is difficult to classify and force into a neat cultural and political grouping. Its land is the setting of Biblical stories, the (...) -
1 February 2013, by Michael Leon Guerrero
Peoples’ Social Forum
Background The process for a Peoples’ Social Forum was launched at a general assembly convened in Ottawa, Ontario on January 26 and 27, 2013. It was an inspired and dynamic gathering. (...) -
1 January 2013, by Feroz MEHDI
Reading Zinn in Times of Insanity
The Palestine Authority submitted a proposal to the United Nations General Assembly demanding a non-member observer status. There were 139 countries that voted in favour except Canada and a (...) -
1 January 2013, by Pablo Solon
Strike Four in Climate Change
World Social Forum 2013: A “Climate Space” to rethink analysis and strategies. In baseball, when you have 3 strikes, you are out. In the climate change negotiations we already have 4 (...) -
1 January 2013, by Joy Moore
World Social Forum Free Palestine
The first World Social Forum Free Palestine was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from the 27th November – 1st December and brought together popular social movements from around the world to (...) -
1 January 2013, by Noam Chomsky
What The American Media Won’t Tell You About Israel
The savage punishment of Gaza traces back to decades ago. An old man in Gaza held a placard that read: "You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, (...) -
1 January 2013, by Michael Moore
Celebrating The Prince Of Peace In The Land Of Guns
After watching the deranged, delusional National Rifle Association press conference on Friday, it was clear that the Mayan prophecy had come true. Except the only world that was ending was the (...) -
1 January 2013, by George Monbiot
“Bug Splats”
Some dead children are mourned; others are dehumanised. “Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, (...) -
1 January 2013, by Charlotte Silver
Israel Gets a Kick(back) Out of Conflict
Israel’s image as "an isolated, besieged country" is good for its weapons and homeland security exports. 2012 did not turn out to be Israel’s finest year, diplomatically: from being called (...) -
1 January 2013, by Sankar Ray
When Ravi Shankar Was Comrade Robuda
When Pandit Ravi Shankar and his disciple, Beatles guitarist George Harrison, performed at the 1971 ‘Concert for Bangladesh’ at Madison Square Garden in New York, I asked the Communist theorist (...)