Freedom for Palestine

A week ago I transited through Johannesburg -- my first time in South Africa. I found it quite ironic that I arrived in O.R. Tambo International Airport -- I am sure that I was the only person on the plane that had actually met Oliver Tambo, as the African National Congress headquarters in London during the apartheid years was just down the street from where I was living.

South Africa in the 1980s. Palestine in the 2010s. Different time, same struggle.



Thanks to David McNally for directing me to this.

Twenty-two years later, we still believe the Tiananmen myth

This is an excellent post on the myths and realities around the Tiananmen events of 20 years ago.

Brian's blog

the curious case of the missing recovery

Join Jim Stanford in this excellent search for Canada's economic recovery.



My thanks to Brian Robinson for showing me this.

"Every 30 minutes": crushed by debt and neoliberal reforms, Indian farmers commit suicide at staggering rate

A quarter of a million Indian farmers have committed suicide in the last 16 years—an average of one suicide every 30 minutes. The crisis has ballooned with economic liberalization that has removed agricultural subsidies and opened Indian agriculture to the global market. Small farmers are often trapped in a cycle of insurmountable debt, leading many to take their lives out of sheer desperation. Democracy Now! speaks with Smita Narula of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School, co-author of an excellent new report on farmer suicides in India.



Thanks to Peter Mollinga for drawing my attention to this.

The death of Osama bin Laden

An excellent personal reflection by Richard Jackson on the meaning of the death of Osama bin Laden, published in The Hindu, India's best newspaper.

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The death of Osama bin Laden: it's a pity …

My thanks to Sharada to forwarding it on to me.

Painful staffing cuts ahead

It has been drawn to my attention that there is a malicious rumour circulating that I am advising upper-year students at Trent University to reconsider completing their degree in Peterborough. Nothing could be further from the truth, as this recent interview in the Arthur makes clear.

Painful staffing cuts ahead

Dorothy Millar Osborne-Stewart, 22 April 1934 - 16 April 2011

I am sad to announce that my mother, Dorothy Miller Osborne-Stewart, passed away on 16 April 2011 at the Peter Lougheed Center in Calgary following a brief battle with cancer, at the age of 76 years.

She was born in Darvel, Scotland on 22 April 1934, the daughter of James Miller Osborne and Dorothy Asquith. She was evacuated to Loch Katherine during World War II, attended school in Musselburgh, East Lothian, and worked as a golf caddy at Gleneagles, before moving to Glasgow, where she studied nursing. After living in Hainault, Cumbernauld and Cambuslang she immigrated to Port Arthur, Ontario on 27 June 1967, and in Thunder Bay she became very well known in the community for her professional social work, particularly tending to the needs of the homeless and the abused. She opened Thunder Bay’s first shelter for abused teenage girls, and subsequently two shelters for battered women. In the late 1970s she was the first person in Ontario to be granted a divorce for mental cruelty. In 1980 she met John Stewart, marrying in 1985 and eventually moving to Winnipeg, where she was the founding director of that city’s Ronald MacDonald House. In 1986 she moved to Manitou and retired with John, her cats, and her dog. Following John’s death she moved to Coleman, Alberta in 1997, where she lived with her beloved dog Kelpie and devoted herself to her garden and her cooking.

She will be dearly and deeply missed by her children, Haroon Akram-Lodhi of Toronto and Soraiya Boland of Calgary; and by her grandchildren Cameron Lodhi and Róisín Lodhi, both of Toronto.

A person with a profound sense of warmth and generousity to all, she was predeceased by John in 1990 and her sister Margaret in 2010.