Dec 1, 2011

Beyond the camps by John Restakis As the co-op movement in Canada gears up for celebration of the UN International Year of Co-operatives in 2012, a very different movement has burst upon the scene, taking shape and occupying plazas, parks and other urban spaces in over 2,000 cities around the world. The Occupy movement, sparked with little more than a hope and...

Dec 1, 2011

by Lyndsie Bourgon Dr. Shiv Chopra is tireless. Speaking from his home in Ottawa, Chopra describes how he and his Health Canada colleagues were consistently harassed, reprimanded and eventually dismissed for whistleblowing on issues involving public health and food safety between 1988 and 2004. “It’s not just our right, it’s our obligation to...

by David W. Rowland If Health Canada has its way, the only place you will be able to buy your vitamins and supplements is in drug stores. The agency that claims “to ensure that Canadians have ready access to natural health products that are safe… while respecting freedom of choice” is covertly accomplishing a very different objective. It is...

Nov 3, 2011

article and photo by Geoff Olson It’s an image you may have seen around lately. You might recognize the pale, goateed face with the ear-to-ear grin from the 2006 film V for Vendetta. To disguise both his identity and disfigurement, the central character wears a mask representing Guy Fawkes, a 17th century Englishman who plotted to blow up the Houses...

Nov 2, 2011

  Social awakening Occupy social consciousness by Chris Zaporoski   Common Ground publisher speaks at Occupy Vancouver October 15, 2011. Photo by Patrik Parkes. On a warm Friday night several weeks ago, I was sitting on a bench at English Bay, watching the stars shoot through the late summer sky. Many people were out that night –...

Nov 2, 2011

by Chris Zaporoski On a warm Friday night several weeks ago, I was sitting on a bench at English Bay, watching the stars shoot through the late summer sky. Many people were out that night – mature people strolling after dinner, romantic couples on the benches and, as usual, youth hanging out on the beach. I could hear distant conversations and...

Nov 1, 2011

SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki I’m not the only one unhappy with economic systems based on constant growth and endlessly increasing exploitation of finite resources – systems that concentrate wealth in the hands of a few while so many people struggle. Beginning on September 17, protests spread from New York to a growing number of cities across the...

  I’m hopeful; I’m hoping that, in fact, the people will rise up against the smart meters because the issue is so much like the HST. It’s the government imposing – imposing something on the people that hasn’t been sufficiently looked into and that the people are upset about and they are spending a billion dollars without any...

Nov 1, 2011

by Brigette DePape     On June 3, in an unprecedented protest, Brigette DePape, a Parliamentary Page, silently held up a sign during the throne speech of the Government of Canada in the Senate that read “Stop Harper!” She was quickly removed. This article represents a shortened version of the talk she gave at theThinking Beyond the Ballot...

Sep 30, 2011

  International Hearings on 9/11 A decade after the events of September 11, 2001, which resulted in the immediate deaths of nearly 3,000 people on American soil, countless victims from toxic dust and hundreds of thousands of deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq, international hearings on this pivotal event will begin in Toronto in September. The events of...