by Ghada Chehade, Z Magazine

In the so-called war on “terror” the most powerful weapon being deployed is the word itself. In the post-9/11 geo-political climate, throwing in the word “terrorist” automatically mutes coherent and critical debate. Any valid and necessary criticisms of North American governments and their foreign policy are silenced and demonized with the use of that one word, while opposition to foreign invasion and imperialist plundering can be at once quelled and criminalized by deeming it terrorist.

Canada’s anti-terrorist list is being used in this very way-as a vehicle for stifling, demonizing and criminalizing resistance to the North American imperialist project and Canada’s role in it. At the same time the word acts as subterfuge from the mass terror perpetrated by the US and its imperialist baby brother-Canada. What Canadian citizens need to ask is just who does this labeling protect? Does it protect the Canadian population who has never suffered at the hands of Hezbollah, or does is protect the Canadian government and business elite who are part of a North American project to ransack the world’s resources while discrediting and eliminating any parties that stand in the way? To understand the distinction we need to understand imperialism, as well as the one-sided and suspect way in which “terrorism” is currently defined.

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by Stefan Christoff, Montreal Mirror, April 5th, 2007

CSIS questioning of Canadian Muslims threatens their jobs

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is conducting regular interviews and interrogations with hundreds of Arabs and Muslims across Canada at their work places, homes and in the vicinity of local mosques, say national and Montreal-based Arab and Muslim community groups. The groups are reporting major increases in the numbers of calls from distressed community members concerning CSIS interventions. According to the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations in Canada (CAIR-Canada), CSIS intelligence gathering activities have increased over the past year.

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Aboriginal leader decries military draft as ‘complete attack on our political rights’

By Bill Curry, Globe and Mail, Saturday, March 31st 2007

OTTAWA: Radical natives are listed in the Canadian army’s counterinsurgency manual as a potential military opponent, lumping aboriginals in with the Tamil Tigers, Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad.

The military is putting the finishing touches on the manual, but a draft version of the document obtained by The Globe and Mail outlines a host of measures the military might use to fight insurgents at home and abroad. The measures include ambushes, deception and killing.

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Report UN News. March 31st, 2007

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses a joint press conference with Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in Beirut, Lebanon. [UN Photo]

In South Lebanon, Ban Ki-moon stresses need for eventual permanent ceasefire 31 March 2007 – United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today visited South Lebanon, where he voiced hope that a cessation of hostilities in place since the end of last year’s 34-day war between Israel and Hizbollah could be transformed into a permanent ceasefire.

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Canadian Press

NATO soldiers at the at the Kandahar Techers’ College. [Combat Camera]

EDMONTON: The commander of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan says his troops aren’t likely to face another summer of pitched battle against hundreds of Taliban.

Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant suggested yesterday that NATO troops will have to fight smarter — using both intelligence and development assistance – as insurgents may well turn to tactics such as kidnapping.

COMPARES TO OKA

In a wide-ranging interview with The Canadian Press, Grant also compared the difficulty Afghanistan and Pakistan have policing their Taliban-friendly border areas to the trouble Canada had on the Kanesatake reserve during the Oka crisis in 1990.

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MONTREAL: Over 100 people gathered at the Mile End Cultural Center on Tuesday, March 20th for a film-screening and public discussion entitled “Lebanon: Resistance and Hezbollah” organized by Tadamon! Montreal.

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Press Release: Al-Haq, March 30th, 2007

Al-Haq takes the occasion of Land Day to highlight the intrinsic link between land and the exercise of the right to self-determination. Over nearly 40 years of occupation, Israel’s pervasive policies of land expropriation and confiscation, settlement construction and movement restrictions have severely damaged the access of the Palestinian people to their land in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), thereby rendering the meaningful exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination all but impossible.

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BBC News: Israel was criticised for bombing Lebanese civilian centres

A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability.

Mr Bolton said an early ceasefire would have been “dangerous and misguided”.

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Tyre, Lebanon [Agence France-Presse]

Read Tadamon!’s blog on Cluster Bombs HERE.

Prosthetic limb-fitting centers in southern Lebanon are struggling to cope with the rising toll from the one million unexploded munitions left over from last year’s war with Israel.

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New York Times, March 13th, 2007

By Antonia Juhasz, San Francisco

TODAY more than three-quarters of the world’s oil is owned and controlled by governments. It wasn’t always this way.

Until about 35 years ago, the world’s oil was largely in the hands of seven corporations based in the United States and Europe. Those seven have since merged into four: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP. They are among the world’s largest and most powerful financial empires. But ever since they lost their exclusive control of the oil to the governments, the companies have been trying to get it back.

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