All of Ontario is flooded. From Ottawa to Thunder Bay, from Toronto to North Bay, most homes have been swept away, all agriculture is ruined for this year and possibly the next year, factories are gone and will take years to rebuild. You're stranded in Toronto with 3 million other people and you can't get to Montréal because the 401 has been ( Read more... )

If you aren't in Canada or haven't been paying much attention to the news, most news organizations have been obsessed with the Tamil refugee ship, the MV Sun See, that's arrived in BC. On board are 490 Tamils seeking refugee status in Canada ( Read more... )

TransGriot: UMass Amherst Student Facing 30 Years For Defending Himself Against Hate Attack

Justice for Jason page.

This is on the University of Massachussets campus. Not in the "deep south". Pretty shameful.

Latest Right-Wing Meme: Von Brunn's A Lefty

wuh-wuh-what?

White House Czar Calls for End to 'War on Drugs'

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use ( Read more... )

The Morning After ‘American Idiot’ - Good article on the new Green Day album.
Obama Is Nudging Views on Race, a Survey Finds.
Voices Reflect Rising Sense of Racial Optimism in the wake of Obama's election. (Companion article to the survey above)

On a more sour note, if you read French:
De la haine d'Obama à la violence armée -- From hatred of ( Read more... )

Palin hasn't yet quite turned on the racist hatred yet (she's promising to talk more about Rev. Wright soon though), but her supporters know a fellow hate-mongerer when they see one... Read through Richard Hétu's round-up, or if you don't understand French, just click on the links in the text, which send back to American media articles... "Taitor ( Read more... )

RCMP officers pinned down aboriginal teenage girl, tasered her legs and her groin area after she threw a drunken punch at an officer.

Her mother wants to know why the officers had to resort to such force when they could have walked away and left her in the locked cell ( Read more... )

Mildred Loving, matriarch of interracial marriage, dies

(hat tip to schoolofsoul on debunkingwhite By DIONNE WALKER, Associated Press Writer ( Read more... )

China ready to discuss Tibet

But the decision to talk also reveals a "dilemma" the Chinese Communist Party leadership is now facing, caught between the burgeoning forces of Chinese nationalism on the one hand, and the demands of world civil society on the other. "This will definitely be seen as a climbdown by many people in the nationalist ( Read more... )