by Lakshmi Chaudhry | In These Times | October 29, 2005

For the past five years, Americans have been wallowing in (a) quaint version of sexual pleasure, defined by skimpy thongs, stripper poles, porn boobs and faux chick-on-chick action. In a Bush World where commerce is king, it is all-but-inevitable that the dominant image of sexuality is that of a woman on sale...The sexuality that reigns supreme...bears the basic imprimaturs of right-wing ideology: gross materialism, sexual hypocrisy and acquiescence in the name of empowerment. It is in every sense a conservative wet dream come true.

By Murray Dobbin | TheTyee.ca | October 27, 2005

Zooming costs, worse care, more deaths.

It's difficult and perhaps pointless to try to pick the most dangerous threat to public Medicare in Canada...But, perhaps, the most immediate threat is the de-facto privatization of our hospitals through the use of public private partnerships known as P3s.

Derrick O'Keefe | Seven Oaks | Octpber 27, 2005

http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/commentary/84_comm3.html

Anti-war activists from across the country will meet in Ottawa November 11-13 at the 20th anniversary conference of the Canadian Peace Alliance.

The weekend event’s theme, ‘Challenging Canada’s Role in Empire’, is most appropriate at this dangerous juncture. Paul Martin’s government is quickly moving to a more openly aggressive foreign policy, and meeting little opposition from elected officials in parliament.

[Afghanistan and Haiti will be at the forefront of the discussion]

By Robert C. Koehler | Tribune Media Services | October 27, 2005

Plame, as everyone knows by now, is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who - about the time Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner was beginning to sink into the quagmire - wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” What he didn’t find was any evidence that Saddam Hussein had purchased yellowcake uranium in Niger, which could have been used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson’s testimony exposed the whopper justifying the invasion: Saddam’s cache of WMD.

What happened next is a case study in why we teach children not to lie.

By Laure Bretton | Reuters | Oct 29, 2005

Hundreds of French youths fought with police and set cars ablaze in a Paris suburb on Saturday in a second night of rioting which media said was triggered when two teenagers were electrocuted while fleeing police.

Mohawk Nation News | Oct. 30, 2005

Kashechewan, a remote northern Ontario Cree community of almost 2000 people has become an international scandal over reports of contaminated water.

As they have done in so many other communities, Indian Affairs forgot about little details like health [and] safety...buil[ding] the water plant 135 meters downstream from a sewage lagoon.

[The Solution?] Move the Indians away from their original constitutional territory onto another Indigenous nation’s land.

If the US Congress does not immediately establish a very broad Special Investigation of torture by the US administration, then this is a text book case where the International Criminal Court should initiate proceedings against the suspects (Dickey Chenney, Karpinsky, CIA Directors Tenet, John McLaughlin and Porter J. Goss, Major General Geoffrey Miller, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – among dozens.).

By Jonathan Watts | The Guardian | October 10, 2005

Groundswell of protest feared by party officials

Lu Banglie, now missing, feared dead, is typical of the new breed of peasant activists who are giving the Communist party its biggest political headache since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

worth a click:

http://www.yeeguy.com/freefall/

give george a jiggle if he isn't sufficiently broken when you are done.

Any worker at any time can be put on to an Australian Workplace Agreement (AWA) individual contract that cuts take home pay and removes conditions like overtime, penalty rates, meal breaks, public holidays, weekend rates and redundancy pay.

Bush is stuck with another war he can't win. He is trying to get the Europeans to take over from US troops, but with the exception of Toady Blair, who is sending a few thousand British troops to be shot at, the Europeans are having none of it. The British were defeated three times in Afghanistan: in 1838-1842, 1878-1880 and 1919; referred to as the First, Second and Third Afghan Wars. Then the Russians were forced out of their occupation in the 1980s. The Fifth Afghan War will be another horrible legacy of Bush to his country.

Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS - Fifty-one members of the New Orleans Police Department - 45 officers and six civilian employees - were fired Friday for abandoning their posts before or after Hurricane Katrina.

“They were terminated due to them abandoning the department prior to the storm,” acting superintendent Warren Riley said. “They either left before the hurricane or 10 to 12 days after the storm, and we have never heard from them.”

BBC

Six hundred police officers are still patrolling the Handsworth and Lozells areas of Birmingham, a week after the riots which shook the community.

The rioting in the Lozells area of the city involved youths from the black and Asian communities.

It was said to have been sparked by a claim that a black girl of 14 had been raped.

The pirate radio station accused of broadcasting the so far unsubstantiated rumour has voluntarily closed down.

Just this past week, Harold Thompson, an anarchist prisoner in Tiptonville, TN, was attacked by five or six Arayan Brotherhood nazis while doing work in the law library in Tennesee's Northwest Correctional Complex. He suspects one of the prison staff, a racist sympathizer, might be in on it as well. He seems to be doing all right, nothing is broken, but every time he clears his throat or blows his nose he is spitting up blood.