Shakedown as the Earth Shakes

While this will not be a full list by any means, it seems relevant to note that Canadian banks, especially the Bank of Montreal, have a large presence in Haiti. The Montreal-based Gildan Activewear, the largest blank t-shirt manufacturer in the world, has production based out of Haitian sweatshops...Finally, there is the issue of how Canada ‘aids’ Haiti. For starters, Canada has mostly provided tied aid – a full 66% of Canadian aid must be spent in Canada...[I]t seems that it is in Canada’s [economic] interest to keep Haiti poor.

Youthful Rage Could be Potent: Rampage in Philadelphia

By DAVE LINDORFF - February 23, 2010

City leaders and the downtown business community in Philadelphia are wringing their hands and calling for “tough action” against a horde of some 150 high school kids from eight of the city’s decrepit and failing high schools who [went on a rampage] late Tuesday afternoon...[T]he official response...reeks of the growing police-state mentality that is poisoning our society, locally and nationally.

March 4th: Occupy Everything! [California]

The call has gone out. On March 4th, students, workers and teachers throughout the nation and across the globe will strike.

Howard Zinn, Radical Historian, Dies at 87

January 28, 2010 - Znet

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam...died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, California, where he was traveling..."His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives," Noam Chomsky...once wrote of Dr. Zinn.

Canadian Students Launch Campaign to Divest from Israeli Apartheid

Students at Carleton University in Ottawa have launched a campaign asking the university to divest from five corporations benefiting from the Israeli occupation, and to establish a socially responsible investment policy.

The Voices of Participatory Democracy in Venezuela: A Review of Venezuela Speaks! Voices from the Grassroots

There are many different ways that the corporate media continues to misrepresent the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Many critics of this biased media coverage have directly challenged the demonization of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but very few critics, if any, have exposed the media’s virtual erasure of the vibrant and growing participatory democracy in Venezuela (also featuring a video interview with co-author Carlos Martinez).

Cops Attack Peaceful Student Occupation in San Francisco

By Sid Patel and Alex Fu - December 13, 2009

IN THE early morning hours of December 10, police in full riot gear attacked a peaceful building occupation at San Francisco State University that was organized to protest budget cuts, furloughs for faculty and fee hikes...The police broke into the business administration building through a window and proceeded to clear it with guns drawn, endangering the safety of all the activists. Officers forced open doors from the inside and violently shoved aside students picketing the entrances on the outside, throwing some to the ground.

Human Terrain Systems, Anthropologists and the War in Afghanistan

By DAVID PRICE - Counterpunch

While political science was the academic discipline which the wars of the twentieth century drew upon, the asymmetrical wars of the twenty-first century now look toward anthropology with hopes of finding models of culture, or data on specific cultures to be conquered or to be used in counterinsurgency operations. But anthropology is not political science, and anthropologists have different commitments to those who share their lives and vulnerabilities with them.

Behind the Privatization of the University of California: A Police Riot Squad [Video]

By George Ciccariello Maher - November 29, 2009

It was not moderation and negotiation that created and sustained this pivotal moment and generated its outcome: it was the unmistakable show of force that the students gathered represented, a force that was not merely symbolic...Oakland's...rebellions taught us this much in January, as it was only the threat of continued rioting that put BART officer Johannes Mehserle behind bars. The Berkeley occupation movement teaches us the same lesson today.

Students Taught How to Grow Marijuana in Detroit's New Cannabis College

Syndicated from Common Dreams
by Chris McGreal

It goes without saying that there's no smoking in class. But there is a good deal of sniffing of leaves, discussion of the finer points of inhaling and debate over which plant gives the biggest hit.

Update from Athens: Reactions to Repression

By taxikipali - November 19, 2009

The day after the mass repression of the 36th anniversary march of the Polytechnic Uprising and Massacre, which saw the detention of 277 people in Athens only, and the arrest of 13 throughout the country, the reaction to the latest leg of socialist counterinsurgency was voiced today...in a variety of ways.

Campus Watch Copycats Close in on Israeli Professors

By Jonathan Cook - November 16, 2009

Right-wing groups in Israel want to create a climate of fear among left-wing scholars at Israeli universities by emulating the "witch-hunt" tactics of the US academic monitoring group Campus Watch, Israeli professors warn...The watchdog groups IsraCampus and Israel Academia Monitor are believed to be stepping up their campaigns after the recent publication in a US newspaper of an Israeli professor's call to boycott Israel.

Racism and the Censorship of "Gay Imperialism"

Syndicated from Upping the Anti

By Aren Aizura - October 23, 2009

Pointing out racism...is often perceived as a personal and individual affront...This problem of white, "well-intentioned" activists ignoring or actively silencing the desires of the people they profess to help in order to maintain the myth of their own generous self-sacrifice is endemic to many struggles: feminist anti-"trafficking" activism; indigenous land and rights struggles; migration activism; the backlash against the wearing of hijab by Muslim women in France...The only way it might ever stop is for its perpetrators to acknowledge their role.

Students Hang "Arrest Bush" Banners at University of Alberta

Sean Steels - The Gateway

The words "Arrest Bush" hung visibly from the side of the Tory Building's upper facade throughout the day. And although the students who hung the sign were not directly affiliated with the groups that gathered at the Shaw, they too protested against the taxpayer expense resulting from Bush's visit, and human rights violations they claim the former president is guilty of.

Schools and the Pedagogy of Punishment

By Henry A. Giroux - October 21, 2009

The shift to a society now governed through crime, market-driven values and the politics of disposability has radically transformed the public school...[S]chools begin to take on the obscene and violent contours one associates with maximum security prisons: unannounced locker searches, armed police patrolling the corridors, mandatory drug testing, and the ever-present phalanx of lock-down security devices such as metal detectors, X-ray machines, surveillance cameras, and other technologies of fear and control.