"But these election night indiscretions were not the source of that sick feeling in my stomach, that sense of being punched in the gut, that difficulty in breathing. It was the recognition that what I had run from thirty-nine years earlier had caught up with me. The religious fanatics who had terrorized my childhood and adolescent years were back."

MONTREAL -- Backtracking on a decision that fuelled a furor over free speech, Concordia University in Montreal has agreed to invite former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to speak on its campus.

"Probably of more significance in the overall media distortion, however, is the downplaying (omission) of information contrary to the Canadian Government line that would have us not only believe that supporters of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide are to blame for Haiti's problem, but that Canada's presence (100 RCMP officers who command the UN police contingent) is helping Haiti out."

More than 200 members of the Saskatoon Police Association have voted unanimously to support two constables suspended after the release of a report on [native youth,] Neil Stonechild.

"Hungary will withdraw all of its 300 troops stationed in Iraq by the end of
March 2005, the country's prime minister has said.



There has been intense pressure from the public and opposition groups to
pull them out."

"Colombian President Uribe lied to union delegation: International unionists took part in a meeting with Uribe, where the President assured the delegation of his government's full commitment to trade union rights, and thanked them for their interest in the situation in Colombia. When they returned to the country again, they were expulsed."

I think that an a useful comparison for leftists today to use when

talking to people about Bush is the election of Richard Nixon in

1968.  The election that year took place in a context of growing

social polarization and anger around the Vietnam War.  In the

spring of 1968, the Tet Offensive in Vietnam had demonstrated the

incredible unpopularity and weakness of the U.S. occupation in that

country.

by Charles W. Petit | November 2, 2004

"Eskimo? I must tell you. We are not Eskimos," says Percy Nusunginya, 63,
president of the Inupiat tribal council in Barrow, Alaska, northernmost city
in North America and home to 4,600 souls, mostly indigenous Alaskan natives,
on a dusty gravel strand between vast tundra and the Arctic Ocean. "We are
hyperboreans," the weather-beaten whaling captain says proudly over breakfast
in tiny Osaka Restaurant. Nusunginya leans slowly forward with a small smile:
"It's from the Greek. Hyperborean."

He has his etymology right, perhaps more than he realizes. Dictionaries show hyperborean as the general designation for high Arctic denizens. But the word has even greater resonance for today's environmentalists and scientists. In Greek myth, the Hyperboreans live in a warm, perpetually sunlit polar land beyond the north wind. That notion -- of warmth in a polar land -- is today becoming uncomfortably close to the truth.

Financial independance for a territory or cultural independence and self-determination for a nation?

--

"I would say that as soon as that pipeline is functioning and the diamond mines are continuing to produce diamonds we probably won't have any need to have money through our territorial financing agreement at that time," says Premier Joe Handley.

There's been a lot of media attention focused on Kanehsatake in the past couple weeks. Reports of James Gabriel and his loyalists going to the Quebec National Assembly to plea for RCMP and SQ intervention into the "lawlessness" Kanehsatake were sympathetic to Gabriel's martyr act and reported that he and his Goons were not getting enough support from Chagnon or the SQ. James Gabriel said the lack of support was due to racism

HALIFAX -- "Is Kemosabe a racist greeting?
Not according to a Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission board of inquiry,
which spent an entire day watching episodes of the Lone Ranger to decide
whether being called Kemosabe demeaned a woman's Mi'kmaq heritage."

In Colombia, the Day of Resistance was marked by a general strike. In the
biggest show of unity, labor federations, Indigenous groups, peasants,
women, students and progressive organizations mobilized a million people

throughout the country. A poster for the strike read, "Surrounded by threats
that give us courage ... we will all participate in the work stoppage
without fear or cowardice."

At present the origins of the camera and its associated equipment is not known. However, Kanehsatake residents suspect that the RCMP, SQ and the KMP are responsible for placing the camera in that location. Community members also suspect that the installation of the surveillance equipment has a twofold purpose; firstly as a precursor to a police action against Kanehsatake, secondly to monitor the movements of community members who are working at the KCSHQ.

The newly-(re)elected Bush Administration justifies all the people they've killed and made homeless by their need to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden; as the Counterpunch exclusive below suggests, based on interviews with an Afghan-American businessman, the U.S. could have practically had Bin Laden and his top Lieutenant's gift wrapped by a willing Taliban government eager to avoid any confrontation with the U.S.

[Good News to start your morning: Brought to you by Resistance to Bush part III

-- Macdonald]

Fighters have mounted the biggest attacks yet on Iraq's oil infrastructure,

blowing up three pipelines in the north and hitting exports via Turkey, oil

officials say.