* updated with Action items, links to articles/photos, talking points, and endorsers. Please forward widely *

END THE SIEGE ON GAZA! PROTEST ISRAELI WAR CRIMES !

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Saturday Jan 3 @ 1 pm
Vancouver Art Gallery (Robson side - corner Hornby)

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Healing the Earth Radio explores the connections between many social and ecological issues. Motivated by a desire to foster more understanding, alliances, and effective action, the show interviews Native people defending their land and culture, environmental, local food, and peak oil activists, writers, lawyers, supporters of political prisoners, scientists, whistle-blowers, tree sitters, and many others who devote their lives to making things better.

The 2010 Olympics are over, and we’re told that everything is back to normal. Wrong. Vancouver will never be the same.

There's a freeSkool launching in Hamilton, Ontario on January 3rd. Freeskool is a place where people who know a thing can meet with people who want to learn a thing. We’re all curious, clever people with a lot of knowledge and skills to share with each other. Freeskool is a way to learn without incurring crippling debt, to tap into all the knowledge already in our community.

In 1995, just before the Harris Government cut social assistance rates by 21.6%, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty marched from the low-income community of Regent Park into affluent Rosedale. The impending welfare cut and Provincial tax breaks would soon transfer about $1 million a month from one community to the other. Replicated across Ontario, this vast transfer of wealth to the already wealthy was at the very heart of the ‘Common Sense Revolution’. Initiatives around poverty that ignore this continuing injustice are of very limited value.

By MARK HUME - December 17, 2008

VANCOUVER — The British Columbia government has quietly opened high-level political discussions with native leaders in an attempt to head off a showdown with aboriginal groups that have threatened road blockades around the province.

By Rafe Mair - The Tyee.ca

There is a big plus for Autocrat Campbell and his toadies. All along the highway [to Whistler] there are new developments built by Liberal supporters. As Kevin Costner's character was told in Field of Dreams, "Build it and they will come"...This is all about "showcasing" (a dreadful word dreamt up by ad men) Vancouver and Whistler...I say, "dream on." Vancouver in February is not all that showcase-able and Whistler is already well enough known to wealthy offshore skiers.

[Ontario Provincial Police] determined to escort garbage into the Edwards Street Landfill, but even after [the] arrest of 4 supporters, Six Nations activists refuse to remove [their] blockade. OPP violently arrest Six Nations man leaving the site.

Mohawk Nation News - 07.12.2008

The vermin have come out of the woodwork. Now that Canada’s Parliament has been suspended, it should now be obvious to everyone, Canada is not a democracy. It never was. It is a colony that has a single person, the Queen, sitting on top as the head of state. It’s been run for the benefit of a few business interests.

Reposted from www.friendsofgrassynarrows.com

On Monday, November 10, an action was carried out in Guelph, in solidarity with the members of the Mohawk Warrior Society of Tyendinaga. The intersection of Gordon Street and Clair Road was blocked with debris and loose nails. An attempt was made to light the debris on fire. Protestors held signs and passed out flyers to the waiting motorists. Selections of statements from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, and statements from the Tyendinaga Support Committee serve to explain the situation facing the people of Tyendinaga:

OCAP

How Ontario's Poverty Reduction Strategy Will Fail

by Jon Elmer - Tuesday, 02 December 2008

A coalition of indigenous elders, social justice activists and community organisers is voicing opposition to the upcoming [Vancouver/Whistler] Winter Olympics, promising to continue their protests up to and throughout the 2010 games.

27.11.2008 - Mohawk Nation News

Canadian police and military are being sent to Israel for training on “crowd control”. Many of these fascist tactics were used on us during the 1990 Mohawk Oka Crisis. 5,000 Canadian soldiers surrounded three of our communities...behind razor wire and fully armed troops. It was because we opposed the desecration of our burial and ceremonial sites. We were surrounded by walls of police, soldiers, armaments and checkpoints for 78 days.

Mohawk Nation News - Nov. 17, 2008

Anger and frustration...is simmering across Akwesasne and beyond. If Canada wants to call trade in our cigarettes contraband, that’s their business. It doesn’t make it so. We think their gang wars are to get a piece of the action, as they see it. We don’t want any part of them. We want them to get their fake border, goons and dangerous behavior out of our community. If they want to do s--t like this, let them do it in their own bedroom community. We’ve had enough.

The Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a hoax contrived by the legal establishment to evade culpability...The lead federal negotiator of the settlement contract was Frank Iacobucci of the Tory Law Firm that specializes in serving the blue chip corporate clients whose business interests diametrically opposes the truth concerning the genocidally unconstitutional invasion...