The papers have been hyping it all week and it’s finally here: Thursday July 21st, the supposed hottest day of the year. We’re in downtown St Catherines, watching as the scorching heat pushes everyone off the north side of St Paul Street in favour of the shady south side.

August 24, 2011 - Intercontinental Cry

Another fifty-two environmental activists were arrested on Monday for taking part in the Tar Sands Action, a peaceful two-week protest that's urging President Obama to reject a permit for the risky Keystone XL pipeline.

By Ian Sample - Common Dreams

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim...Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilization growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat...

Setting out from Pinehouse Lake on July 27, Debbie Morin thought she had only a few allies for a walk to protest nuclear waste storage in Saskatchewan. By the time the 820-kilometre walk finished in Regina on Tuesday, Morin and the other walkers said thousands were on their side.

A new publishing house in Minneapolis, Subsect Press, will be releasing a book to describe how a non-hierarchical, regenerative and anti-capitalist society can meet human needs.



Monday, August 15, 2011 - CBC News

The federal Conservative party has sent a threatening email to the widow of an asbestos victim in the latest chapter of Canada's debate over the hazardous mineral...Michaela Keyserlingk, whose husband Robert died in 2009 of mesothelioma, has been running an on-line banner since the spring that reads, "Canada is the only western country that still exports deadly asbestos!"

Friday, August 5, 2011 - Common Dream

Canada is worried that proposed European legislation would penalize imports of oil derived from its tar sands and so restrict access to the European market for Canadian oil. This might in turn embolden US legislators to do similar. To prevent this...Ottawa has been conducting an intensive lobbying campaign aimed at preventing the British government and the European commission from watering down the legislation.

SchNEWS - Thursday 4th August 2011 | Issue 782

Western countries have spent decades propping up dictators, imposing free market ‘reforms’, bombing rebels, bribing officials and flogging military equipment. The aim of these policies wasn’t to support rebuilding a continent ravaged by colonial powers and proxy wars, but merely to protect and further western ‘interests’...The west is just as instrumental in the oppression of ordinary Africans as it was in the days of colonies and empires, just in a less overtly racist manner.

...There was once a tannery here that leaked its poisons into the soil for decades, and hazardous waste continued to be dumped here even after the old tannery was torn down. The popular story is that the Tannery Grounds are poisonous, unsafe, and need to somehow be dealt with.

By Suzanne Goldenberg - The Guardian

An activist who became a hero to campaigners for disrupting a Bush administration auction for the oil and gas industry with $1.8m in bogus bids was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday...Tim DeChristopher was immediately ordered into custody, and fined $10,000. He had been facing a potential sentence of up to 10 years and a $750,000 fine.

By Krystalline Kraus - July 25, 2011

The Dene First Nation...passed a resolution supporting British Columbia's Yinka Deneerent in their opposition to Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline and supporting the right for Indigenous decision making power over their territory..."More than 50 per cent of the proposed Enbridge pipeline and tanker route passes through the territories of First Nations that have banned this development according to their traditional laws. These Nations now have the support of Dene from northern Alberta to the Arctic coast."

By Jake Silver - WSWS

Canada’s Conservative government has prevented asbestos — a notorious carcinogen responsible for tens of thousands of deaths each year — from being listed as a hazardous substance under the United Nations’ Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade.

Although it’s been hard to stay inside gluing and scanning during the summer time, the second Knowing the Land is Resistance zine is now released! This second collection contains the nine most recent articles from the KLR collective, including the map of the Spencer Creek Watershed and lots of handy tips for ID’ing plants and animals in the Carolinan zone. The zine is 16 sheets, double-sided, black and white, and you can download it over at indybay.org in either printable or electronically readable version.

By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith - June 30, 2011

The Keystone XL pipeline is a key link in an energy path that will lead to devastation for American working families...We've all heard about global warming caused by the emission of carbon and other "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere...[T]here is a near-total consensus among climate scientists that it is real and that it will cause devastating climate change. That means rising sea levels, an ever-increasing number of extreme weather events like droughts, floods, and heat waves, and consequences like forest fires and species extinction.

By Manuela Picq - 10 July 2011

In Ecuador, "terrorists" are indigenous peoples from the Amazon and the Andean highlands fighting to preserve access to water in their communities. Old penal codes written in times of dictatorship are being revived by leftist presidents to repress indigenous activists. As "terrorists", they are labeled as enemies of the state, and arrested - by the very president that claimed leftist credentials and staged his inauguration in overtly ethnic style.