"(Northern Ireland's) Catholics and Protestants both celebrated the 1998 Good Friday (Peace) Agreement....With over thirty years of brutal violence during 'the Troubles' behind them, Catholics and Protestants both were eager to grasp any sign of peace. The Agreement, along with its accompanying ceasefire between pro-British (Loyalist or Unionist) and Republican forces, was to formally end sectarian violence, and provide a way to relax Britain's rule with a Northern Ireland Assembly. It was also supposed to end the racist laws used by the British government to persecute Catholics and deny them political and civil rights, supposedly on behalf of the Protestant majority....It proved to be an empty promise."

"The following is an inexorable truth: the U.S. government does not know what to do with the Bolivarian government of President Chavez. Our revolution is too democratic, too humanistic, too profound and too transcendent; and is therefore beyond traditional capitalist analysis and beyond the comprehension of a government of a country where values revolve around individualism."

"When you go through life abiding by all the rules and conforming to all the regulations of society, and one day you look out your car window and there stands a slew of cops barking orders and pointing guns at you and your girlfriend's head, your immediate feeling is that you are part of some elaborate prank. I waited for my friends to emerge from a bush, laughing hysterically, but they never appeared....Instead, more cop cars pulled up, their lights and sirens blazing frantically. The officer yelled at us to spread our arms wider and lie face down on the cold, oil-covered concrete."

QUEEN CHARLOTTE CITY - "Two groups of protesters, one in Queen
Charlotte City and one an hour north in Port Clements, blockaded roads
to Weyerhaeuser's two main log-sorting facilities on the Queen
Charlotte Islands Tuesday to draw attention to what the Haida say is
an ongoing violation of their rights.

At issue is the planned transfer of a Weyerhaeuser tree farm licence
to Brascan as part of an impending sale. The Haida say they aren't
being properly consulted about the transfer, in spite of a recent
Supreme Court of Canada decision requiring such consultation."

URGENT: Bill C-263 will go to a vote in the House of Commons on April 7, 2005

"Though egomania and naivete may well lead him to believe that he can coerce (Paul) Wolfowitz to implement more humanitarian policies, Bono's de facto endorsement of this explicit advocate of imperialism is way beyond the pale. And it marked the culmination of my disillusionment with the politics of the man whose lyrics are permanently embedded in the heads of people my age, if not of people of all ages, so long has been their hold on the title of world's No.1 band."

The following statement was made at the 61st session of the Commission of Human Rights by Felipe Pérez Roque, minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba

"The Commission on Human Rights - despite the efforts by those who honestly believe in its importance and wage a battle to return it to the spirit of respect and cooperation of its founders - has lost legitimacy. It is not credible. It allows the impunity of the powerful. It is handcuffed. In it, there are plenty of lies, double standards and empty speeches by those who, while enjoying their wealth, squander and pollute, look the other way and pretend not to see how millions of human beings endure the violation of the right to life, the right to peace, the right to development, the right to eat, to learn, to work; in brief, the right to live in dignity."

I have to thank the folks over at the Coffee Shop for the excellent article entitled Socratic Marx, which discusses this letter from Marx which was published in the Tucker Anthology The Marx and Engels Reader as: For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (1843).

This is one of my favorites short radical writings by Marx which expresses exactly what revolutionary thought is, philosophy in action. It is here we find the essence of Marx's revolutionary thought, and the phrase For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing, was not lost on me when I first read this thirty-five years ago.

Dozens of Police, Mounted Units, Police Wagons Greet Toronto Vigil of 10
People Protesting Production of Canadian Bullets for U.S. Forces in Iraq,
Afghanistan....

"VANCOUVER - The 82 officers who patrol Vancouver's rapid transit SkyTrain system will be allowed to carry guns, the regional transit authority says."

"In November of 2004, Canada deported another unsuccessful Palestinian refugee claimant, Ahmed Nafa, to the US. He is currenly being held in indefinite detention after his refugee claim was refused by US immigration authorities....Starting in January 2004, a Montreal campaign run by The Coalition against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees attempted to halt the Canadian government from what it said was the unjustified deportation of dozens of Palestinians....The members of the coalition heavily criticised what they saw as a bureaucratic and ineffective immigration policy, which discriminates specifically against Palestinian refugees arriving from Lebanon and the Occupied Territories."

"The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a precursor to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and an extension of the existing North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), was passed by the legislature of Guatemala on Thursday, March 10. Massive anti-CAFTA protests in Guatemala City had delayed the vote on the treaty, but CAFTA was finally passed with thousands of police surrounding the Guatemalan congress and tear gas wafting throughout downtown."

"For the last two months the reformist left parties in Israel, the Labour party,
Yahad, together with "Peace Now", had prepared a demonstration that was supposed to be a large one and show that the supporters of Sharon's disengagement plan are many more than the 100,000 who came out a month ago in support of the settlers in a demo in Jerusalem.

Contrary to the expectation of the organisers, the demonstration was small, with
only 10,000 people attending a rally in support of disengagement last Saturday,
March 19, at the end of the demo that started off from Rabin Square and ended in
Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv."

Homeless advocates are reacting with outrage to Kelowna RCMP's latest target in cleaning up the downtown: The shopping cart.

March 15th, 2005, was the ninth annual International Day Against Police Brutality (IDAPB).