By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF - July 3-5, 2009

...[O]ne prominent legislator on Capitol Hill has leapt to the defense of the new coup regime which took power in Honduras on Sunday. That politician is Republican South Carolina Senator Jim Demint...It’s hardly surprising that Demint would come out for the military takeover in Honduras given that he’s been a long time booster of Central American free trade.

By Simon Granovsky-Larsen Larsen - June 29, 2009

[In Central America] the same message is being heard: a line has been crossed, and the now-regional right is willing to defend with any available means their hoarding of economic privilege and political power. How the Honduran coup settles...will determine just how viable an option military action will be when the new Central American economic elite faces its next challenge.

By Manuel Rozental - Znet

...[T]he Uribe government is highly criminal and corrupt. Canadians should demand that Uribe's government do the opposite of what it has done since coming to power. Most importantly, Canadians should listen to the victims in Colombia who are clearly not calling for ratification of this deal. On the contrary, they have taken great risks...to oppose it.

By Paul Street - June 26, 2009

Some of Obama's unwillingness to buck the money class...probably...reflects his basic and "deeply conservative" faith in the business-ruled capitalist order and in existing class hierarchy...It's who he is. It's also what his political party - once accurately described...as "history's second most enthusiastic capitalist party" - is all about. There are no anomalies or surprises here. Progressives should acknowledge and process these harsh realities and act accordingly, without illusion.

By Nasser Zarafshan - 21/04/08

...[W]hen rights and freedoms of a nation are negated and trampled upon and its progress and development are blocked due to the domination of reactionaries, is it the duty of a destructive foreign power to restore this nation's rights and freedoms and open the gate of progress and development? Where in history is there an instance of a foreign power, instead of the nation in question itself, doing any such thing?

“Bad Bank”: all the absurdities of constructing such a thing in order to rescue the banking system, the huge effort with which it will be launched and then nurtured for 20 years, all this makes clear how absolutely and unrelentingly the regime of money, the objective constraint of its propagation, commands the life of the market economy. And if one has figured this out, one simply no longer desires to go through life with the stupid opinion that its not fair because its really about something else.

Obama's financial reform proposal is scandalous.

This anti-war music video uses excerpts from tunes by Bob Dylan ("Masters of War") and Pete Seeger ("Last Train to Nuremberg"). All of the major weapons delivery systems shown in this video are embedded with numerous military components manufactured in Canada by corporate exhibitors that showcased their wares at CANSEC 2009 in Ottawa, May 27-28.

The City of Ottawa's historic 1989 ban on hosting arms trade shows was knocked down this week, but it was NOT knocked out...On Monday, June 15, the City of Ottawa's aptly-named "Corporate Services" Committee voted against a Motion to preserve Ottawa's 20-year ban on war-industry trade shows.

The dollar system the world has been based on since Bretton Woods in 1944, is undergoing a death agony. Every measure advocated to date by two US Administrations - Bush and now Obama - as well as the other G7 governments has amounted to giving heavy and heavier doses of financial chemotherapy to a dying patient.

Barack Obama and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt.

By Frank Seier and Joanne Robertson - June 15, 2009

The following email exchange took place between...Canadians Joanne Robertson and Frank Seier and Conservative parliamentarian Ed Fast. Most remarkable about it is the sarcasm and contempt shown by a politician towards constituents. During the parliamentary debates, Conservatives showed surprise when they heard that Liberal, NDP, and Bloc (Quebecois) politicians were receiving letters from all over the country against the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Campaigners generally didn't write the Conservatives. The Conservative parliamentarian's attitude towards those who wrote him shows why.

By Trudy Lieberman - June 14, 2009

Most journalists, let alone the public, haven't read the lengthy comments the [American Medical Association] submitted to the Senate Finance Committee, laying out what the AMA really wants...The group, which represents the hard-liners of organized medicine, has been as instrumental as insurers in blocking serious health reform...According to the AMA, the magic of the market will bring insurance to all...[T]he AMA wants to rid the market of state-mandated benefits...[and] to begin eroding government coverage for poor kids.

By Justin Podur - Znet

Regimes that violate people's rights don't stop at any borders. Indeed, for the [Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement] to pass, it is probably necessary that those of us who are against it in Canada receive smears, false accusations, and perhaps legal persecutions the way people in Colombia do.

By Tom Loudon - Thursday 11 June 2009

The tragic violence currently unleashed in the Peruvian Amazon is directly linked to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the US and Peru. On Sunday, interviewed at one of the many roadblocks set up by the demonstrators, indigenous leader and protester Luis Huansi stated, "We will not give up until they reverse the laws that damage us. They want to take away our lands and forests and make our traditions disappear."