"... It speaks to the very heart of the dilemma amongst us utopians? how do you move a pile of excrement without getting any on you? At the very least, you are bound to smell of it..." Greetings Dear Reader, I recently read a piece by an ex-Alternatives member that was posted on the little-beaver-that-could that is the admirably plucky rabble.ca website. Entitled ?The term ?NGO' is a misnomer?, the article explores the clout of government in the non-governmental world. And while those (...) - September 2010

Legendary lefty Cy Gonick speaks to ecosocialism founder Joel Kovel about creating global resistance movements; ecosocialist activism that moves beyond pressing for direct caps on polluters; and his take on the Dark Mountain Project, the UN biodiversity report and the implications of Deepwater Horizon. Cy Gonick: There are lots of serious struggles around the world against instances of environmental destruction, privatization of water and other resources, etc. Yet these efforts are almost (...) - September 2010

Franz Fanon only got to see the first fires that were the false dawn of African independence. Sickness took him before the hope forged through liberation struggles dissolved into the neocolonial night, itself only marginally less intolerable than the darkness of imperial domination. Would he have been surprised at the state of Africa? We can be so bold as to say no! In fact, nothing of this story of fraud and betrayal would have surprised he that understood and explained the ravages of (...) - September 2010

From the ramparts of the Red Fort, celebrating the 64th anniversary of India's Independence, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, offered to hold dialogue with the agitating youth of Kashmir if they ?abjured violence?. Since June 11, the youth of Kashmir have been agitating for Azaadi (freedom, self-determination). All over Kashmir, people defying curfew orders are holding rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, mass meetings and hartals (general strikes). They are willing to hold a dialogue, however (...) - September 2010

?The election looms in the coming days; it is an amazing scene of lies and manipulations. If Ortega wins there may be a civil war here. It is quite tense,? my father warned me before my last visit to Nicaragua in 2006. Nicaraguans struggle to make ends meet in the wake of political upheaval and natural disaster in what remains second only to Haiti among the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. After my father picked me up at the airport we drove to his home in Masatepe, a small town (...) - September 2010

At its core, the controversy surrounding the proposed Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan is not about religion. It's about war. For some years now the fear factor that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001 and fueled public support for the ?global war on terror? (or the onomatopoetic ?GWOT?) has been diminishing. Along with the long and intense work of the antiwar movement and the rising levels of casualties, fear reduction has played a key role in building opposition to the (...) - September 2010

Sitting on one of the packed yellow school buses on the way to the Journées Des Alternatives, my expectations were dim. After all, I was spending my first weekend in Canada at a no-frills summer camp? with strangers. However the experience proved to be not only fun, but also a great introduction to Canada. I was surprised by the diversity of the participants and panels. On the bus I sat next to a man from Cameroon who shared his experiences as an African in Canada. Around the bonfire that (...) - September 2010

A Conversation with Return to El Salvador director Jamie Moffett; Video installation infiltrates 6000 NYC taxis; Artist Profile: Nicholas Hlobo A Conversation with Return to El Salvador director Jamie Moffett by EZRA WINTON Return to El Salvador is an intimate documentary that tells?mainly through candid interview?the story of the individuals and communities effected by El Salvador's brutal civil war that ended nearly two decades ago. While a little heavy-handed on narration (which isn't to (...) - September 2010

Islam, like other religions, is a religion that began as a message to ensure better material and spiritual conditions for human beings. Movements of political Islam however, refer to the interpretation of Islam by a particular group of Muslims. The same applies to the political Christian and Jewish movements in the world. There has always been religion based on its original revelation-related sources, just as there has always been a subsequent political interpretation. The latter has (...) - September 2010

Join us at the historic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Conference in Montreal this October! From 22 to 24 October 2010, Montreal-based Palestine-solidarity organizations will host an historic 3-day conference which aims to move forward the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid. In July 2005, over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, from unions to women's groups, from refugee organisations to cultural groups, came together to (...) - September 2010

Hats off to the hat that's finally on that dastardly oil pipe. We can all rest assured that the Gulf of Mexico will be as good as new in no time. Indeed, word is coming out that clean up efforts are being hampered by? a lack of oil to clean up. The dreaded standoff against a monolithic adversary has come to nought? the oil has dissipated, hooray! This development can only be described as an incredible blessing of good fortune that marks a massive strategic victory in American efforts to (...) - August 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

Canadian activists talk about their experiences onboard the Mavi Marmara and announce North American ships to depart for Gaza. Addressing a mixed crowd including Palestinian and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish supporters at a conference in Montreal on Sunday, Canadian activists Kevin Neish and Farooq Burney, who participated in the ?Free Gaza? flotilla, announced that they are planning to join another convoy aimed at bringing an end to the Israeli embargo on Gaza. Only this time, they say, ships will (...) - August 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

A month ago, thousands of chanting voices echoed between downtown towers in the core of Canada's largest city, with people reclaiming the streets, facing down thousands of armed police ? a dignified challenge to the closed-door G20 summit. Brightly coloured protest flags flew in the summer winds, while people confronted a billion-dollar security machine aimed at stifling dissent. Behind multilayered razor security walls, far away from street protests, technocrats crafted global policy in an (...) - August 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

?The idea is definitely to bring people together.? Socially conscious rapper Lou Piensa chats with the AIJ. Lou Piensa is co-founder of the multi-cultural, multi-lingual, eclectic hip-hop super-group called Nomadic Massive. Montreal's own will be playing at this year's Journées des Alternatives on August 28th. I spoke with Lou about hip-hop and activism. How do you think music can influence society to make change? The most important thing is that music kind of penetrates people's (...) - August 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

After years of grassroots pressure, the UN General Assembly will debate a resolution on the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation. Maude Barlow, former senior advisor on water to the president of the UN General Assembly, has described the lack of access to clean water as the ?most violated human right.? Currently, 1.2 billion people have no access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion live without proper sanitation. Every eight seconds a child dies from preventable (...) - August 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

It's summertime and therefore I've been in programming mode. After watching dozens and dozens of docs (and a few fiction), I thought I'd pass along some great summer flicks to cool off with, while ratcheting up the politico-meter at the same time. GASLAND: Part banjo-anthem, part agit-prop, part road-trip and oh yes, part burning faucets. This well-researched and extremely creative exposé on America's natural gas extraction industry is most famous for an early clip released on the web by the (...) - August 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

The Israeli Knesset voted on July 13th to strip of MK Haneen Zoubi of key parliamentary privileges as punishment for her involvement in the Freedom Flotilla aid convoy, in which Israeli naval forces killed nine international activists, wounded dozens and hundreds were detained and deported. ? ? "You are punishing me out of vengeance," Zoubi told fellow Knesset members during the hearing. "When you threaten the Arab MKs and the Arabs' protectors, you threaten democracy and co-existence between (...) - August 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

I recently had the honour of joining Montreal's Women of Diverse Origins as a volunteer for the upcoming Montreal International Women's Conference (MIWC). Hosts and organizers of the conference, Women of Diverse Origins (WDO) Montreal are a collective of grassroots women's organizations from a dozen different cultural communities in Montreal and have been organizing events and speakers around International Women's Day for the past nine years. In honour of the 100th Anniversary of International (...) - August 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

Happy birthday, Canada! And what better way to celebrate than throwing a $1 billion dollar birthday party. Curious, though, that most of it was spent on keeping people away from the festivities and that there were rubber bullets in the goodie-bags. Curious too that, between bites of caviar-stuffed lobster wrapped in sirloins of Kobe beef braised with gold dust flecked foie gras, we lectured guests on the joys of austerity. I exaggerate a smidge, of course. Opinion without exaggeration is (...) - July 2010

The FIFA World Cup Finals and the G20 summit may at first glance seem entirely disparate, but both events have had a profound effect on the narratives of their respective cities. Those narratives, at least this week, are linked, and deserve a review. Earlier this week, I found myself traversing two worlds ? both of them familiar, both suddenly upside-down. For years, I've been commuting between Toronto and Johannesburg, which is not quite as bad as the 400 to Barrie during rush hour, but (...) - July 2010

Today, at the 50th anniversary of Congo's independence, the country continues to be a source of wealth for the world, yet the Congolese people live in poverty. Like many African nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is suffering under this new era of neocolonialism, where natural resources belong not to those who live on the land but to those with power and access to global markets. Congo has long been the focus of resource exploitation. The first era of colonization in Africa, (...) - July 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

On December 3, 1984, Bhopal became the site of the world's worst industrial Disaster. The question is: should India entertain hazardous industries at all? If the answer is yes, then what should be done to minimize the chances of disaster? And what should be done to minimize the suffering of the survivors and the families of the dead? More than 25 years after Bhopal was turned into a city of death on the morning of December 3, 1984, the provincial High Court delivered its judgment on June 7, (...) - July 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

Here are this month's top stories from Art Threat... The G20 summer blockbuster by Ezra Winton That the hundreds (at last count 900+) of G20 protesters (and random civilians) held in pens at a detention centre in Toronto also happen to be extras in a former movie studio should come as no surprise to those who took part in this summer's biggest blockbuster hit. This production note is but one piece of a larger spectacle of fascism recently carried out in the streets of Toronto... Standing on (...) - July 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

?We are all Greeks' - Percy Bysshe Shelly, from the preface of his lyrical drama Hellas Having recently spent five wonderful weeks in several parts of Greece, I return to Montreal refreshed. I was often reminded by acquaintances, friends and comrades throughout this turbulent period that this civilization goes back in history for a very long time, and having also survived 400 years of ruthless Turkish occupation, and the first war of national liberation ending in the partial victory of 1831, (...) - July 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

The previous meeting of the G20, last fall in Pittsburgh, ended on a positive note. The closing statement affirmed that G20 countries had done ?everything necessary to ensure recovery? and that it ?had worked?. Since then, growth has been so weak that it cannot even confront the issue of unemployment. From that time on, governments have been so laden with debt that merely responding to citizens' demands has been a challenge. In that sense, the difficulties that Greece is currently facing (...) - July 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

The recent Cochabamba Conference on Climate Change has issued a call to build ?a global peoples movement for climate justice.? A novel feature of this call is that it is supported by progressive countries, mainly those of the ALBA Alliance (Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, and others), as well as by social movements, primarily but not exclusively, from Latin America. A potential pitfall lies in the danger felt by some social movements that they might lose their autonomy, or worse, become (...) - July 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

We are pleased to inform you that the registration for organizations and self-organized activities for the World Education Forum in Palestine (October 28 - 31) opened on June 25. This event is vitally important in the context of today's world, moreover holding this Forum in Palestine is of powerful symbolic value and of crucial importance for Palestine and people of conscience around the globe. The World Education Forum in Palestine takes place during a time of on-going occupation of the (...) - July 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

Alternatives welcomes you to the 16th edition of Alternatives' Days to participate with hundreds of other activists in debates, discussions and activities grouped this year under the title: Solidarity in Action! Reserve your place NOW for the 16th annual Alternatives' Days!! Dates : 27, 28, 29 August 2010 Place : Camp Papillon de St-Alphonse de Rodriguez Limited space, reserve now!! Call: (514) 982-6606 poste 2221 Alternatives welcomes you to the 16th edition of Alternatives' Days to (...) - June 2010 / Bulletin Alternatives

On the morning of 31 May 2010, the Israeli navy perpetrated a crime against humanity when it attacked the Freedom Flotilla, bound for Gaza, sailing in international waters. On the boats were 750 people from 40 different countries, among them 44 parliamentarians and politicians. Based on the initial news after the attack, the number killed is 16 and at least 60 are wounded. All the victims are international activists who helped organize this campaign to end Israel's three year siege on Gaza. (...) - June 2010

An investigation into NGO Monitor's participation in the de-funding of Canadian human rights organizations Kairos and Alternatives. At the end of August 2009, an Israeli-based non-governmental organization (NGO) called NGO Monitor wrote a letter to the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) identifying 33 Canadian organizations that exemplified ?the emergence of an anti-Semitic global movement?. This list included smaller organizations, such as Alternatives and the (...) - June 2010