To all our readers world wide we wish you our heartfelt

best wishes for the New Year: we'll be back 13 January

Students challenged to address modern day slavery

'You and the girl next door can be captured and sold' 

15 December 2011 OTTAWA Canada — Students at Rideau District High School (RDHS) were shocked to hear that there are more slaves in the world today than during the entire period of black slavery.

Modern slavery includes labour, but the vast majority are women and children who are being used as sex slaves abroad and in our own backyards.

"It happens (here in Canada Ontario) in Kingston, Brockville and Smiths Falls. It's happening right now and it's only getting worse," said Kourtney McCordic of the Rideau Engaging in Activism and Change Today (REACT) who presented the special talk with Miss Canada 2011, Tara Teng, to students December 1. — 697 words.

First Nations 101

The media focus on failures rather than successes

of First Nations on and off the reserves says expert

Beverly Blanchard is an Ojibway First Nation from Northern Ontario.  She holds a degree in Economics. During the past twenty-two years, she has worked as a consultant to First Nation and Inuit organizations in a variety of disciplines including: homelessness, suicide prevention, violence prevention, childcare, HIV/AIDS, women’s issues, business planning, and economic development. She has also designed and delivered Aboriginal awareness and stress management workshops to Federal government employees. Currently, Ms Blanchard is a life strategy coach, author and energy healer in Ottawa.  

16 December 2011 — Over the course of my consulting career I have seen everything. Trolling through the articles and comment boards, it appears everyone seems to have an opinion about how to fix the Attawapiskat development.

 

There seems to be an endless list of options and everyone seems to have a different perspective on the First Nations’ situation. So here is mine. — 947 words.

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Loblaws' cruel policy is damaging its public image

Ottawa's Raging Grannies continue to hammer Loblaws

for abuse of employees with pay cutbacks and unfair hours

'Cell phone cameras went off like paparazzi at a red-carpet event'

By Shannon Lee Manion

Contributing Editor

True North Perspective

16 December 2011 — Fresh from our successful demonstration last week at the Loblaws at Carlingwood, the Ottawa Raging Grannies hit the Loblaws store on Rideau Street in Ottawa mid-day on Friday, December 16.

They pulled up in a bright red van, unloaded an activist's cornucopia of signs, hats, shawls and handouts and positioned themselves in the foyer.

Immediately, a crowd formed on the stairway leading into the store, clapping in time to the Jingle Bells-tuned song the chorus of which goes like this: — 638 words.

We can't do this without you Thanks to all of you who have answered our call for financial assistance But we're still in a state of acute starvation If you haven't yet donated, please click the link above to make a secure donation Or send a cheque or money order to: Carl Dow, True North Perspective Station E, P.O. Box 4814 Ottawa ON Canada K1S 5H9

Victory in Iraq — but whose?

How Maliki and Iran outsmarted the U.S.

16 December 2011, WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's suggestion that the end of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is part of a U.S. military success story ignores the fact that the George W. Bush administration and the U.S. military had planned to maintain a semi-permanent military presence in Iraq.

The real story behind the U.S. withdrawal is how a clever strategy of deception and diplomacy adopted by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in cooperation with Iran outmanoeuvered Bush and the U.S. military leadership and got the United States to sign the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement.

A central element of the Maliki-Iran strategy was the common interest that Maliki, Iran and anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr shared in ending the U.S. occupation, despite their differences over other issues. — 1,179 words.

True North Perspective publishes in the best traditions of Canadian journalism If you think it's too radical, please read www.truenorthperspective.com/Friday_15_April_2011/editors_notes

Editor's Notes

To all our readers world wide we wish you our heartfelt

best wishes for the New Year: we'll be back 13 January

I have never liked December. It's a difficult time for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere. In December the darkness gets serious. As I write this at 03:12 I know that the sun will not rise until 07:36. It will grace us for only about nine hours and plunge us again into darkness at 16:20.

 

I have long concluded that I'd like to go to sleep December 1 and wake up New Year's Eve. — 308 words.

"News is what (certain) people want to keep hidden. Everything else is just publicity." -- PBS journalist Bill Moyers.   Your support makes it possible for True North to clear the fog of "publicity" and keep you informed on what's really happening in the world today. Please send your donation to:   Carl Dow, True North, Station E, P.O. Box 4814, Ottawa ON Canada K1S 5H9.   Or use our new Paypal system! Just click the secure link below — and if you're paying by credit card, you don't need a PayPal account to make a donation!

Alex Binkley is a foremost political and economic analyst. Readers will be aware that his columns in True North Perspective have foreseen political and economic developments in Canada. This week in ... 

The Binkley Report

Slow and cautious wins the race

Meanwhile, 'I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The next few years may well be a rough ride economically, but that’s no reason to get all gloomy and grumpy. Enjoy life, family and friends.'

16 December 2011 — The Canada-U.S. border streamlining agreement barely held the interest of the news media for a day before it drifted into obscurity on the back pages.

That’s probably just what the architects of the deal want so they can get on with implementing it.

BC court holds hearings on lab results that show

potentially lethal virus attacking wild Pacific salmon

15 December 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The fate of wild salmon is a sensitive topic in the Pacific Northwest and arguments often end up in court in the United States, whether over threats to endangered fish by hydroelectric dams or sea lions swallowing them along their migration routes.

Bits and Bites of Everyday Life

'Be of love a little more careful than of anything'

Advice from children on how to be better parents

Geneviève Hone is a grandmother, family therapist and social worker.  With her husband, Julien Mercure (also a family therapist), she has co-authored three books on couples and family life. Her home on the web is www.hone-mercure.com/index_hone_en.php.

16 December 2011 — “So what has Alberte written about this week?” asks my husband as I walk into the room holding Alberte’s latest TNP article, Choosing to live with love on a daily basis. He knows I like to gather inspiration from my friend’s writings and use her thoughts as a launching pad for my own articles. He remembers also that no later than yesterday I had announced that “If Alberte gives me half a chance, I’m going to write about Santa Claus.”

First North American Christmas Carol was written

by Jean de Brebeuf, a missionary priest and martyr

 

By The Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan

True North Perspective  

                    

'Twas In the Moon of Wintertime is undoubtedly the first carol ever written on the North American continent. Jean de Brebeuf, a missionary priest and martyr, saw the Incarnation taking place in 1644 in a true north native setting.

 

I can only imagine that the divines of the Curia in far off Rome were left unimpressed and frowned on the transposition of the manger scene from Bethlehem to the wilds of Huronia. — 412 words.

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ParkTales 

 

From the Desk of Darren Jerome

A continuing update on the war against WikiLeaks transparency

Please be advised that the below is not just the same old thing. By clicking on it you'll find the petition in support of Julian Assange and discover fascinating on-going reports and videos related to one of the most important events in modern history, and the desperate attempts to put a lid on information that everyone should know. Don't miss this special opportunity to stay informed.

Bradley Manning goes to court

Lawyer Calls for Military Judge to Recuse Himself

If the business of America is business

The business of business is repression

How the Pentagon tried to strangle the Arab Spring

By Nick Turse

TomDispatch.com

13 December 2011 — As the Arab Spring blossomed and President Obama hesitated about whether to speak out in favor of protesters seeking democratic change in the Greater Middle East, the Pentagon acted decisively.  It forged ever deeper ties with some of the most repressive regimes in the region, building up military bases and brokering weapons sales and transfers to despots from Bahrain to Yemen.

    As state security forces across the region cracked down on democratic dissent, the Pentagon also repeatedly dispatched American troops on training missions to allied militaries there.  During more than 40 such operations with names like Eager Lion and Friendship Two that sometimes lasted for weeks or months at a time, they taught Middle Eastern security forces the finer points of counterinsurgency, small unit tactics, intelligence gathering, and information operations -- skills crucial to defeating popular uprisings.  — 2,130 words.

'Give us the tools and we'll finish the job'

— Winston Churchill

Christopher Hitchens dies aged 62

Lost his (political) way in the USA

Celebrated journalist, writer and unshakeable secularist has died from complications of oesophageal cancer

Science

Another myth bites the dust:

No difference between men and women's math abilities

13 December 2011 — Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed. — 480 words.

You can count on the True North Team While publishers are cutting back and that includes in-house editors Outside editors of the True North Team are rescuing writers from oblivion. We handle fiction and  memoirs, manuscript editing to ghost writing   Everything to put the best face on your work to publishers and the reading public   For a free consultation please don't hesitate to contact carl.dow@truenorthperspective.com or Carl Dow at 613-233-6225 Always looking forward ...

Early colonial adventures

Pirate, colonist, slave: an Englishman's autobiography

of living in Brazil under the lash of his Portuguese masters

The admirable adventures and strange fortunes of Master Anthony Knivet

The Economist

17 December 2011 — ONE cold morning in 1591 an English sailor found himself shivering on Ilhabella, now an island of yacht clubs and well-appointed weekend houses that is to Brazil what Martha’s Vineyard is to America. He had been left for dead—again—the fourth or fifth time Fate had deserted him in his short career as a pirate. He survived for eight days by catching crabs in his stockings and cooking them over a fire, and then for a further two weeks by picking at the carcass of a beached whale.

He was naked, alone but for the savages who lurked inland and a man-eating dragon he had spotted in the shallows, and far from Virginia, where England would subsequently found a colony: here was a man in the wrong hemisphere at the wrong time. Yet painful as they were to him, Anthony Knivet’s misfortunes offer a fascinating, if mostly overlooked, insight into an early stage of colonialism. Unusually, Knivet was both an exponent and a victim of it. He experienced both the thrill and enchantment of contact with remote tribes and the brutality of enslavement. And he recorded all that (with the odd embellishment) in his memoir. — 2,670 words.