The Vancouver Sun published a description on October 24 of the troubled man who killed a guard in Ottawa two days before and then entered Canada鈥檚 parliament building carrying his gun. The 32-year-old man, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, was shot and killed by police.
The Sun reporters spoke to people who knew Zehaf-Bibeau while he lived in Vancouver during recent years. They described an angry and troubled man grappling with mental illness and drug addiction.
Canada
A deranged gunman, Michael Zehab-Bibeau, shot dead a soldier at the Canadian war memorial in Ottawa before being shot dead while trying to storm parliament on October 22. The motive for the actions, if there was a clear one, remains unknown.
The attack came two days after two Canadian soldiers were hit by a car in Quebec. The car was driven by Martin Couture-Rouleau, a 25-year-old Canadian who had recently converted to Islam. One of the soldiers died, as did Couture-Rouleau when he was shot by police upon apprehension after allegedly brandishing a large knife.
St Louis officer shoots unarmed Black teen 鈥 yes, again
鈥淎ngry protests erupted again in St. Louis on Wednesday night after an 18-year-old man was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer 鈥 reigniting tensions in a city still reeling from the killing of Mike Brown in nearby Ferguson in August 鈥
Confronting Injustice: Social Activism in the Age of Individualism
Umair Muhammad
www.confrontinginjustice.com
Too many supposedly radical books are written by academics for academics, apparently competing to see who can produce the most incomprehensible prose.
My list of 鈥渂ooks to be reviewed鈥 contains literally dozens of overstuffed and overpriced volumes that only a handful of specialists will ever read, and with little relevance to the non-university world.
In 2012, Quebec鈥檚 student movement carried out a months-long strike, managing to push back and hold off a neoliberal government鈥檚 bid to raise tuition fees.
Repeatedly mobilising upwards of 200,000 people at monthly 鈥渕ega-manifs鈥, the 鈥淢aple Spring鈥 was an all-too rare win against the forces of austerity, and so it captured imaginations around the world.
Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s & '60s Volumes I
By Ernest Tate
Resistance Books, 2014
www.resistancebooks.org
鈥淎 police cruiser with two uniformed officers pulled up alongside me,鈥 recalls Ernest Tate in his newly published memoir Revolutionary Activism.
鈥淭hey jumped out and asked me for identification. I gave it to them. 鈥榃hat鈥檚 in your suitcase?鈥 Dirty underwear, I said. 鈥極pen it,鈥 they ordered. I told them it was none of their business. They almost went berserk 鈥︹
A rupture of the TransCanada PipeLines (TCPL) gas line occurred in the middle of the night on January 25 near the village of Otterburne. A huge fireball erupted into the night sky and burned for many hours.
The explosion tore a large crater in the ground. Several thousand homes in 10 small communities were left without gas heating during temperatures that dipped to minus 30C. It took days for full service to be restored.
The pipeline brings gas from Alberta to the US across the Manitoba-Minnesota international border. It feeds parts of southern Manitoba along the way.
鈥淏angladesh is a world leader in adaptation to natural disasters,鈥 Bangladeshi community organiser Nasima Akter told a Toronto audience January 8. 鈥淏ut now climate change threatens to wash away all our gains.鈥
Akter had been invited by East End Against Line 9, a neighbourhood committee formed to protest against a proposed cross-Toronto tar-sands pipeline. The East End committee wanted to learn about the implications of Canada鈥檚 reckless tar-sands development for a poor and vulnerable nation.
The irony of fracking is that it destroys the natural resource it needs most.
The tragedy for those living near fracking operations is that natural resource is the fresh 鈥 and increasingly scarce 鈥 water supply on which they, too, depend.
Fracking 鈥 or hydraulic fracturing 鈥 is the fracturing or rock by pressurised liquid. It is used to access several natural resources, such as shale gas and coal seam gas, in otherwise out-of-reach places.
Workers across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico united in an Inter-Continental Day of Action on January 31 to stop a massive new trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership 鈥 commonly referred to as 鈥淣AFTA on steroids.鈥
In the U.S., the immediate fight is to block a bill that would grant the president 鈥渇ast track鈥 authority to sign off on the TPP. Defeating fast track would likely stop the TPP.
Fast track is designed to swiftly pass trade deals, circumventing the standard Congressional procedures of hearings, debates, and resolutions.
The ice storm that struck central and eastern Canada and northeastern United States, on December 20-22 should be viewed not only an important news event, but also a big climate change story.
Not because the storm was a direct consequence of the Earth鈥檚 average warming temperatures. That would be a speculative claim. No, it鈥檚 because of the social crisis created by this weather emergency and what it illustrates about the challenges that are facing human society in a new and warming world.
Power loss
A special meeting of Toronto City Council was convened on November 18 to deal with the city鈥檚 鈥淔ord problem鈥. It was the most bizarre chapter yet in the scandal surrounding Mayor Rob Ford.
The meeting was convened by city councillors to adopt measures to reduce the power and financing of the mayor鈥檚 office. The council majority had supported Ford in office, but the politically well-connected conservative mayor had become a liability for business interests in the city.
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