A Toronto drug dealer is asking for C$200,000 (£130,000) for the full tape and the US website Gawker is currently approaching $100,000 in its online attempt to raise the money to get its hands on it, which I think we can all agree is the kind of thing democracy and online fund-raising sites were invented for.

By Duncan Cameron - May 21, 2013

The capitalists won the B.C. election. Extractive industries make big profits in the province, and have bigger plans for its future...Corporations support the BC Liberals as a form of insurance protecting shareholder privileges. Most of the business and commercial world follows the corporate lead.

By Bill Van Auken - WSWS

...[U]nder conditions in which the Venezuelan working class lacks its own independent mass party, mounting hostility toward the “Bolivarian” government among broad layers of workers and other sections of oppressed found its expression in an increased protest vote for the right.

The UN Declaration makes it clear that the invasion of another state is an illegal act and those who authorize it can, under the law, be brought to account.

By Sue Sturgis - Monday, May 13, 2013

Amount the sequester will cut from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as WIC: $333 million.

Washington's addicted to war. It's waging it at home and abroad. Rogue states operate that way. America's by far the worst.

More than targeting political enemies is involved. The practice is longstanding. Republican and Democrat administrations use the IRS abusively.

By Michael Laxer - May 18, 2013

...Ford has to be seen as having come to symbolize the basic unfairness of our society. If there has ever been a more obvious personification in the Canadian context of the reality that rich white men can get away with actions and behaviour that absolutely no one else would be able to, I am not aware of it. And, not just get away with the behaviour, but get elected to office and defended by otherwise self-described "law-and-order" right wing types despite it!

By Graham Beverley - 18 May 2013

Canada’s Official Opposition, the trade union-backed New Democratic Party (NDP), brought forward a motion last month to scuttle the recently negotiated Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA)...[The NDP] used the occasion to repeatedly denounce the “Communist” regime in China. And in heated nationalist terms, they charged that the adoption of FIPA would “do serious damage to Canada” and “be dangerous for the future of our country.”

By Nathan Crompton - May 15, 2013

In reality the [New Democratic Party] allowed itself no alternative platform from which to launch a criticism against the BC Liberal record. On each big issue the NDP chose instead to emulate the BC Liberal platform: rock-bottom corporate taxes, privatized affordable housing, health care austerity and ongoing neoliberal reforms. Instead of fighting on the basis of a progressive policy platform, the NDP message was simple: We can govern; we can oversee the status quo because we are as mature as the common-sense Liberals.

In 1949, the American Zionist Council (AZC) was established. It operated until 1962. It was ordered to register as a foreign agent. It failed to do so. It transferred its responsibilities to AIPAC. It calls itself "America's Pro-Israel Lobby. It operates as an unregistered foreign agent.

By Dylan Lubao - 13 May 2013

[BC New Democratic Party leader Adrian] Dix has emphasized the NDP’s support for the huge deterioration in the social position of the working class over the past three decades, by stressing that he will not make the purported mistake of previous NDP governments of “trying to do too much.” With the full support of the trade unions, Dix has been avidly courting big business, pledging that an NDP government will be “business-friendly” and will use its ties to the union bureaucracy to develop a right-wing “consensus.”

By Edward S. Herman - Z Mag

So we see in this country not a revitalized Democratic Party working congruently with the needs of this culture and demands of fundamental change, but one so paralyzed by dependence on money and internal divisions that it is unable to mount a credible defense of a sinking welfare state and finds it easier to go after “terrorists” and join in the fight to contain the debt.

By Daniel Wilson - rabble.ca

In Stephen Harper's Canada, the art of willful ignorance has reached new heights...Despite a legal duty to consult, insights from First Nations are neither sought nor welcome...Non-governmental sources of information, like the Sisters in Spirit project that brought to light numbers around missing and murdered women, have lost their funding.

Obama's thirdworldizing America. He's ideologically over-the-top. He's waging war living standards. He's targeting the nation's social contract.