Americas

Sunday, 10 June 2007 20:00 Leon T Editorial Dept - Americas
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LeonT asked his old friend Vlad for a conversation over coffee. Here's the unedited transcript.

LeonT: Tell me Vlad, in the great democracy known as the United States, the President has signed a bill allowing for faster prosecutions and quicker sentences. Why would he do such a thing that seems to violate the spirit of the constitution?

Vlad: Ah, my friend you have stumbled upon the great unspoken and unreported contradiction in the American Government. As they become more desperate in this losing war on terror, they tighten civil liberties at home and guard against all opposition, be it at home or abroad.


LeonT: But why are they so reflexive in their actions instead of being the great liberators Vice President Cheney thinks they are in Iraq?
 

 
Wednesday, 23 May 2007 20:00 Leon T Editorial Dept - Americas
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The upcoming mid-term elections in the United States are going to be very important to the future of America’s grandchildren. The debt that the US has acquired by government “thrift” and a couple of major wars overseas, has put the country’s red ink as deep as $8.5 Trillion, according to David M. Walker, Comptroller of the United States at the General Accountancy Office in Washington.

Walker, who has been trying to bring the issue of debt to the election campaign, says that it isn’t a particularly sexy issue so most people are looking the other way. Well, maybe that’s what the Bush Gang wants: Pacify the population with phony rhetoric about the little successes while ignoring the big picture.


Trouble is, the longer you ignore the problem the more difficult it will be to solve it. When it comes to debt, especially in the United States, you can’t find a bigger one.

The debt is so high that the unborn grandchildren of the American family will be paying for it in a generation. Some legacy ain’t it?

 

 
Monday, 14 May 2007 20:00 Khaled Mouammar Editorial Dept - Americas
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Talking about and working towards peace is a major trademark of Canadian principles and ethics, and is certainly the main mandate for the anti-war movement in Canada. The Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) views the ongoing smear campaign against the Canadian peace and anti-war movements as a desperate act by people who support the war agenda of the Harper and Bush governments and those who are prejudiced against Arabs and Muslims.

A Globe and Mail poll released on April 25, 2007 indicated that 64 percent of Canadians support the withdrawal of Canadian combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2007.

A BBC globe-spanning survey, which included Canada, released on March 6, 2007 indicated that Israel has the most negative image of all countries around the world in that it is viewed negatively by 56 percent of all respondents and positively by only 17 percent.

Public opinion poll such as these have rattled the pro-war lobby and the Israel lobby and as a result, they have resorted to smear tactics to distract the public from the unpopular foreign policies of the Steven Harper government in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
 

 
Saturday, 28 April 2007 20:00 Michael Byers Editorial Dept - Americas
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"Political and military leadership has been playing fast and loose with torture," says Michael Byers. His tormentors were the Afghan police, he said, but the Canadian soldiers who visited him between beatings had surely heard his screams.

Of the news reports last week, this is the most damning. For it suggests that Canadian soldiers have not only transferred detainees into a known risk of torture, but actively participated in the interrogations the alleged torture was intended to aid.

Torture - the deliberate inflicting of severe pain on a fellow human being - is a heinous crime. It is categorically prohibited under the laws of war, international human rights law and international criminal law.

Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, a provision that applies to "non-international armed conflicts" such as that in Afghanistan today, forbids "cruel treatment and torture" at "any time and in any place whatsoever."
 

 
Thursday, 26 April 2007 20:00 Guerry Hoddersen Editorial Dept - Americas
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Immigrant rights activist Hugo Orellana and I just returned from a two-week trip to Guatemala where we visited schools and spoke with teachers and students in Hugo's hometown of Chimaltenango a few days before their current strike began. This is an urgent call to support them in their fight to stop privatization.

For the third time this year, Guatemalan teachers are engaged in a national work stoppage. It began on Monday, April 23 when thousands ofteachers joined parents in blocking major highways, circling Congress and holding community assemblies to discuss their long-time grievances against the government of President Oscar Berger.

The government quickly called for talks with the teachers' unions--La Asamblea Nacional del Magisterial (ANM) and Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educación de Guatemala (STEG). Cardinal Rodolfo Quezada Toruño and Sergio Morales, state attorney for Human Rights, were asked to join them by the Minister of Education. Simultaneously, President Berger threatened to fire teachers who stay off the job.

The educators and their unions are fighting to save the publicly funded education system that Berger and the Guatemalan oligarchy are attempting to privatize through national legislation. Instructors are demanding a 15% wage increase, guarantees of nutritional student snacks even in hard to reach rural areas and redirecting money from the military and other government departments to pay for improvements in school construction. Teachers also want funds for better instructional tools and guarantees that their retirement and benefit system will not be dismantled.
 

 
Tuesday, 24 April 2007 20:00 Alexa McDonough Editorial Dept - Americas
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NDP tables opposition motion for safe and immediate withdrawal from Afghan combat role

The NDP tabled a motion today to put an end to the counter-insurgency Afghanistan mission that the Liberals, Conservatives and Bloc Québécois want to last until 2009.

"The NDP motion, to be debated Thursday and voted on Monday, calls for an immediate safe and secure withdrawal of our troops from the counter-insurgency mission and to focus our assistance, not through counter-insurgency but through development and aid," said NDP Leader Jack Layton.

"Both Liberals and Conservatives admit that the conflict in Afghanistan won't be won militarily. We believe that two more years of participating in the wrong mission for Canada is two years too long."

The NDP motion is consistent with the party's position since the counter-insurgency mission began, unlike Liberal leader Stéphane Dion's recent flip-flop on the issue.
 

 

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