On Monday April 28th, 2008 Indigenous Warriors on Coast Salish Territory blocked a vital intersection used for commercial shipping to the United States. The action was done in solidarity with the Tyendinaga Mohawk community. Five Warriors from Tyendinaga had been arrested and attacked by the OPP days before. SWAT teams and paramilitary units were on Tyendinaga Territory surrounding dozens of other unarmed Warriors who were peacefully occupying a rock quarry claimed to be on their territory.

As we prepare to celebrate Mothers Day across the Americas and abroad, for some this is a sad time. Within the Aboriginal communities in Canada, America and Mexico sorrow fills the eyes of those who lost their beloved mothers. In Canada alone over 500 Aboriginal women have been murdered and simply came up missing in the last 20 years. This statistic is shared throughout the Northern Hemisphere. This disproportionate figure is a clear sign the conquering people of the America’s have little regard for the Native populations as a whole. Of course other social issues go unaddressed as well and the “secret third world of the America’s” struggles to exist in this ambivalent world we live.

B.C. Provincial Court heard Thursday that cannabis is safer than aspirin and can restore the balance in people's bodies to help fight illness...That was the testimony of Dr. Robert Melamede, an associate professor at the University of Colorado, who was brought in by the defense team for the four men accused in the Holy Smoke Culture Shop drug trafficking case taking place in Nelson this week.

By Dan Freeman-Maloy - May, 07 2008

When Ben Dunkelman...returned from the European battlefields of WWII...he had already been [asked]...to participate in the looming fight in Palestine. Soon, Dunkelman was juggling management responsibilities at Tip Top Tailors with his tasks as head of the Canadian branch of the Hagana. These included fundraising for weaponry, direct arms procurement, and recruitment for Hagana forces. By the summer of 1948, he was in command of a Brigade actively depopulating Palestinian villages by force - a unit so heavily comprised of recruits from Canada, the United States and South Africa that it came to be known as the "Anglo-Saxon Brigade."

Israel's ambassador says he is concerned that the growing number of Muslim Canadians might cause a shift in this country's Middle East policy...Alan Baker, Israel's ambassador in Ottawa, said Muslim communities have had an impact on the foreign policies of such countries as France, and he is concerned Canada might follow..."Do you expect...these greater numbers [of Arab immigrants]...will absorb themselves into Canadian society as Canadians or that they'll try to push Canadians to adopt their own values and principles? And this is the gist of the problem"...

By Dan Freeman-Maloy - May, 06 2008

...Canada is operating in particularly crude alignment with Israel against the Palestinians. Within the framework of the "war on terror," the Canadian government has criminalized nearly all major Palestinian political parties by designating them as "terrorist groups"...even as it cultivates ever more intimate trade, security and diplomatic relations with the Israeli state. On the United Nations Human Rights Council, Canada has emerged as the staunchest opponent of meaningful criticism of Israeli human rights violations and war crimes.

CBC News

The federal Conservatives have quietly killed an access to information registry used by journalists, experts and the public that users say helped hold the government accountable.

...[T]he [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] has warned that...actions will increase in violence; of course it’s not violent when they taser someone to death. The APC scoffs at the allegations of violence and repeats, 'the disruption targeting the preparations for the Olympic Games will definitely intensify'.

by Linda McQuaig - May 06, 2008

...[D]uring [the 1950's, '60's, and '70's] the share of income received by the richest 1 per cent actually declined...The rich didn't like this, and have been waging a kind of class war ever since, convincing governments to impose "neo-conservative" policies like lower minimum wages, tighter monetary policy, less social insurance protection, open markets and shifting the tax burden from capital to labour...The results have been grim for many Canadians, but spectacular for the rich, particularly the very rich.

by Alex Samur | Rabble

Last year, peace activist Mordecai Briemberg was served with a lawsuit by CanWest. The charge? Producing a fake edition of CanWest's Vancouver Sun, and infringing upon the company's trademark related rights in the process.

"It's a SLAPP [Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation] suit, an attempt to chill people, these kind of mechanisms that corporations use to silence criticism of the policies and practices that they engage in [are] very dangerous and increasingly used across the country and it's really necessary to fight against this in a public campaign..."

Martin Lukacs | Rabble

In this small, impoverished northern village, people eke out a miserable existence. One of the world's most powerful countries occupies their land, plunders their resources, interferes with their governance and seems intent on assimilating them into wider society.

With its Olympic Games at hand, the country would rather the international community dwell on its national achievements than cast scrutiny on these abuses.

by Don Butler - Monday, May 05, 2008

The [Stephen] Harper government is embracing tough-on-crime policies even as the United States backs away from similar approaches that have produced record levels of incarceration, huge costs and racialized prisons, says an American expert on sentencing policy...The Harper government pushed the[ir] bill through even though crime rates in Canada are falling and are now at their lowest level in 25 years.

by Norma Greenaway - The Ottawa Citizen

Feel like you're just treading water economically? Well, join the club. Most working Canadians are in the same boat, according to the latest Statistics Canada analysis of the 2006 census...The agency reported yesterday that despite a stretch of healthy economic times, there has been almost no growth in the after-inflation earnings of Canadian workers over the last quarter century. It also said the gap between the rich and the poor widened dramatically during that period and that the gap was only partially offset by the tax system.

CBC

May join Vancouver in putting limits on billboard ads to restrict 'visual pollution'

Historic Quebec City hopes to take down a modern roadside decoration – the ubiquitous billboard.

CBC News

A wildlife group says it predicted problems years before hundreds of migrating ducks were found dead and dying this week in a pond of toxic residue at a Syncrude [tar]sands plant in northern Alberta.

Syncrude failed to report the incident.