The Doc the Koch Brothers Don't Want You to See

One year ago, Global News pulled "The Koch Connection" by acclaimed Canadian TV producer and investigative journalist Bruce Livesey just days before it went to air. 

Promo material about the Koch brothers' influence in Canada, including an interview with an Alberta cattle rancher an Alberta Fort McKay First Nations negotiator in talks with Koch Oil Sands Operating, was also scrubbed off their site. 

Livesey told his story on Canadaland and was subsequently fired - along with, if memory serves, some members of his production crew.

Now The Real News Network is teaming up with Livesey to get his doc finished and to market. The film exposes how :

"the Kochs’ are waging relentless campaigns to deny climate change and using their wealth to get conservatives elected to office to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and further their corporate interests."

Founded by filmmaker Paul Jay - producer at Fifth Estate and Frontline, creator of the brilliant CBC debate program CounterSpin with host Avi Lewis, and founding chair of Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival -  The Real News Network airs alternative in-depth Canadian content, sans the usual corporate spin. 

Kudos to them for picking up the Canadian slack, and if you want to see this doc made, show it some support here. 

For more from Bruce Livesey, see his work as lead investigative reporter at the National Observer.
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*correction in 2nd sentence*
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How strategic is strategic voting?

Jamie Biggar of Leadnow.ca and David Bush of RankandFile.ca debate whether such a strategy is useful or effective. 
Good respectful discussion of the issues involved. 
You'll have to restart it from the beginning.

Transcript at The Real News Network
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RNN : Canada's "Patriot Act" as a political ploy.

The Real News Network is doing a weekly panel discussion on Canadian issues and it's refreshingly less middling than the media panels we have become accustomed to. 
In today's panel, Leo Panitch and Dimitri Lascaris take on Bill C-51, the tanking tarsands, and the political positioning of the Libs, Cons, and NDP going into the next election. 

Please click through to RNN at the link to show your support for a vid I've only pillaged from their site. 
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It's still class warfare

The European Monetary Union was born of countries pegging their exchange rate to Germany's so all countries would have the same inflation rate of 2 %. The EMU gave those countries a formal voice.

The plan was to have each European country’s wages rise in line with their own productivity plus 2%, ie living according to your means – not above it, not below it.

Just before the euro was implemented, Germany cut wages to bring down unemployment, deviating downward from the agreed-upon 2%, resulting in the beggaring of all its neighbours by making German products cheaper and wiping out its EMU partners' exports.

German economist Dr. Heiner Flassbeck: 

“The big battle that we have in this world is not between Germany and the other Europeans, is not between south and north, China and so on. The big battle is still, believe it or not, between labour and capital. This is still the big battle. I know it’s fashionable in the US to a priori dismiss such arguments by calling them class warfare arguments – Republicans like this very much to say “This is class warfare”. 

 I’ll tell you what happens in this world is class warfare. Look at the US. What happens in the US right now? For the first time in modern history since WW2, we are two years into a recovery and nominal wages are rising by absolutely zero - they’re not rising at all. For the first time we have not only a jobless recovery - that’s a normal thing – for the first time in the US we have a wageless recovery. Wageless recovery. And that is exactly what Germany did 15 years ago – wageless recovery – and I can tell you how this experiment is going to end because in the US there is no market that they can occupy, no partners that they can exploit, there is no currency union that they can use - the experiment will end in disaster. It will end in disaster because if you do not have a regime that allows the systematic participation of workers in the productivity increase – and this is what the people are talking about when they talk about the 99% but it is worse now than 10 years ago, worse than ever  -  then capitalism hits the wall because no economy can grow successfully if their people only have to rely on bubbles, that sooner or later burst, to consume, and if they cannot expect that they will participate in the success of all.”

Via The Real News Network


Iceland arrested the former CEO of one of its three failed banks, along with a broker and market director. Here in North America we arrest people for protesting the banks instead.

Bruce Campbell, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives : Rising Inequality, Declining Democracy
on how this works in Canada.

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Beware the coming police state

Part One : Paul Jay interviews constitutional/criminal lawyer Clayton Ruby, who is defending satirist Charlie Veitch, the second person charged at G20 under the Public Works Protection Act. Because that act was amended in secret just for the G20, there was no way for the public to know how to obey it.

Part Two : So do we have the right to protest, to peaceful assembly, at events like G20?

Yes. Unfortunately, we have no effective way of enforcing that right.

Hence, as Ruby says : "Beware the coming police state."

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G20 - Who gave the orders?

Oddly, Media Co-op has an opinion piece up, criticizing Paul Jay for doing opinion pieces like this one above.

Meanwhile, in an alternate universe :

After an emotional morning-long debate, city council voted 36-0 to "commend the outstanding work" of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, his officers and other police forces working during the G20 summit in Toronto.

Then they all signed another one of those "Please, sir, can I have another?" greeting cards everyone is sending to Steve lately and fired it off to him, just in case he missed their public endorsement of Lockdown Toronto on the news.

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