Editorials

CCFTA Prorogued. Be ready for action when Parliament resumes
2010-03-03

Widely Opposed CCFTA which died with prorogation will likely rise again.
By Janet M Eaton, Trade and Environment Campaigner, SCC.

Bill C-23, the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA) Implementation Act, which has created a furor of opposition in Canada, was temporarily sidelined, along with 35 other bills working their way through Parliament, when Stephen Harper prorogued parliament on December 31st 2009.

By Dana Gabriel

U.S.-Canadian state and provincial integration is being achieved in areas of transportation, the economy, energy and the environment. With some national, trilateral and global initiatives being discredited, stalled or ineffective, it appears as if the strategy has further shifted to a regional and local level in an effort to lay the groundwork for new agreements. 

As much as half the food aid sent to Somalia is diverted from needy people to a web of corrupt contractors, radical Islamist militants and local United Nations staff members, according to a new Security Council report.

Is the Transatlantic Alliance Doomed?
By John Feffer

Contributors Note: 

U.S. lawmakers launch push to repeal NAFTA

   Doug Palmer, WASHINGTON
   Thu Mar 4, 2010 4:35pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A small group of U.S. lawmakers unveiled legislation
on Thursday to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement in the
latest sign of congressional disillusionment with free-trade deals.

The bill spearheaded by Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, would
require President Barack Obama to give Mexico and Canada six months notice
that the United States will no longer be part of the 16-year-old trade
pact.

A violation of the terms of appointment for Special Prosecutors was almost certainly the case in the appointment of William Berardino in the BC Rail Scandal matter.  The B.C. Attorney General's ministry refuses to discuss the appointment - on unacceptable grounds.  In the following letter officers of the Supreme Court of B.C. are requested to act.

 Younger Canadians will not remember David Lewis as the leader of the New Democratic Party from 1971 to 1975, but he made a critical contribution to the political lexicon of our country when he coined the term “corporate welfare bums” and ran a federal election campaign on that theme. It is a term that was very pertinent then and has even greater pertinence today, as today these same bums have become even more pervasive and dangerously parasitic.

The administration of justice in B.C. has been shaken to its roots in a BC Rail Scandal pre-trial process marked by delay, apparent obstruction, erasure of disclosure materials by government, the de facto refusal to release search warrants, juggling of judges ... and more.  May 3 is the day the trial will begin.

The Senate voted Wednesday to extend for a year key provisions of the nation's counterterrorism surveillance law that are scheduled to expire at the end of the month. In agreeing to pass the bill, Senate Democrats retreated from adding new privacy protections to the USA Patriot Act.

Three important sections of the Patriot Act are to expire at the end  of this month. One authorizes court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. A second allows court- approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations. A third permits surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen suspected of engaging in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

Chris Hedges * (graduate of Harvard Divinity School, foreign  correspondent for over two decades a NY Times foreign correspondent and author of many books on war, American Fascism and most recently "The Empire of Illusion" ) begins with an example of the human pain of a corporatist system that throws its workers on the scrap heap of human misery. 

By Thom Hartmann

Globalization is killing Europe, just as it's already wiped out much of the American middle class.

Spain and Greece are facing immediate crises that many other European nations see on the near horizon: aging boomer workers are retiring with healthy benefit packages, but the younger workers who are paying for those benefits aren't making anything close to the income (or, therefore, paying the taxes) that their parents did.

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

  Premiers and governors to meet in Washington,February 20