This Week on Connexions.org

Reflections on a violent day in Ottawa

After a long day focused on these gripping events in the nation's capital, I have to wonder if this direct experience of fear and trauma will force us to examine our own addiction to violence as the solution to conflict. Last week's events provide us with an opportunity to reflect on our insidious contribution to the climate of hate, and the chance to disengage from our increasingly militarized culture. Read More

Keywords: State Violence - Terrorism

Time to Unfence our view of Migration

Instead of pretending that fence-building will solve anything, it is high time that we ‘unfence’ our views of migration. On the one hand, this means seeking other, more humane responses to human movement, including orderly refugee resettlement. On the other, it means not seeing migration as a self-contained ‘problem’ in need of a security response – but rather as an intrinsic part of a world inexorably on the move. Read more

Keywords: Migration - Migrants

Electronic Frontier Foundation offers counter-surveillance resources

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has launched IFightSurveillance.org, a new site showcasing digital privacy advocates from around the world who are leading the fight against mass surveillance. The site includes figures from the organization's growing list of counter-surveillance success stories, a set of guides showing how individuals and organizations have taken on state and corporate spying in their own countries—and won.

More Info:

News Release

Surveillance self-defense

ifightsurveillance.org

Keywords: Surveillance - Police State

Ghana's farmers battle 'Monsanto law' to retain seed freedom

Ghana's government is desperate to pass a Plant Breeders Bill that would remove farmers' ancient 'seed freedom' to grow, retain, breed and develop crop varieties - while giving corporate breeders a blanket exemption from seed regulations. Now the farmers are fighting back. Read more

Keywords: Agriculture - Seeds

Rebuilding communities: a type of resistance

In Tundayme, a parish located in the Cordillera del Cóndor in Ecuador's southern Amazon, the indigenous and peasant communities have decided to recover the territories of abandoned or forcefully evicted communities in order to oppose mining megaprojects. The first few steps have been successful, but they fear that the government and the affected companies will respond aggressively. Read more

Keywords: Ecuador - Indigenous Peoples and Mining

Treasures from the Archives

Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women's Movement

An article from 1972: "Our movement's strategy must grow from an understanding of the dynamics of power, with the realization that those who have power have a vested interest in preserving it and the institutional forms which maintain it. Wresting control of the institutions which now oppress us must be our central effort if women's liberation is to achieve its goals. To reach out to most women we must address their real needs and self-interests. " Read more

Keywords: Socialist Feminism - Women’s Liberation Movement

People's History: From the Archives

Eye in the Sky: Surveillance and the Art of Arnold Mesches

Round about the turn of this century Arnold Mesches, who is neither monk nor medievalist nor Christian, began illuminating manuscripts from the world that long since had killed God but appropriated or accommodated to a version of His all-seeing eye.The manuscripts in question: Mesches’ FBI file, 1945 to 1972. Read more

Keywords: FBI - Surveillance

Topic of the Week: Refugees

Resulting from today's numerous conflicts, there has been an influx of refugee claimants all around the global. However, many nations are reluctant to take refugees despite the humanitarian need and grand pledges. And the few they take in often times are left with no support in their newly adopted countries. Thus resulting in poverty and exploitation. For more sources on the challenges faced by refugees in their home countries and abroad click here. You can also browse or use our search feature.

Book of the Week: Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate

Lakoff explains how conservatives think, and how to counter their arguments. He outlines in detail the traditional values that progressives hold, but are often unable to articulate. Lakoff also breaks down the ways in which conservatives have framed the issues, and provides examples of how progressives can reframe the debate. Read more

Keywords: Framing Issues - Political Spin

Film of the Week: Kill the Messenger

Kill the Messenger is an account of investigative journalist Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" reports, and the criticism and consequences of Webb's reports. The reports had alleged a link between the 1980s crack cocaine trade in the United States and the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras. Read more

Website of the Week: Media Matters

Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation - news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda - every day, in real time. Using the website mediamatters.org as the principal vehicle for disseminating research and information, Media Matters posts rapid-response items as well as longer research and analytic reports documenting conservative misinformation throughout the media. Additionally, Media Matters works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation, providing them with the resources to rebut false claims and to take direct action against offending media institutions. Read more

Keywords: Media Criticism - News Bias

Connexions Calendar

November 7, 2014
'Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention' with Tings Chak
Ottawa, ON

November 8, 2014
Fiesta Verde - Canadian Organization for Tropical Education and Rainforest Conservation
Scarborough, ON

November 13-16, 2014
Waves of Change: Sustainable Food for All National Assembly
Halifax, NS

Read more →

Seeds of Fire

October 30, 1899

Birth of Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam (1899-1980), Russian writer and memoirist. The wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam, who died in the Stalinist camps, Nadezhda memorized Osip’s poetry, which could not be published, in the hope that one day it would be possible to publish it. Many years later, after the death of Stalin, she was able to arrange for publication. She also wrote two volumes of memoirs, Hope Against Hope, and Hope Abandoned, which paint a vivid picture of the persecution and fear of the Stalinist Years. (The titles of the books encompass a word-play: ‘Nadezhda’ means ‘Hope’ in Russian.)

October 30, 1922

Benito Mussolini’s fascist Black Shirts march into Rome and seize power. The next day, Mussolini takes the office of prime minister and assumes dictatorial powers.

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