Occupy Dublin Raided: Police Clear Dame Street For St. Patrick's Day Festival

In anticipation of St. Patrick's Day, police cleared protestors from the Occupy Dublin site early Thursday morning.

The Guardian reports that only 15 people were at the camp outside Ireland's Central Bank when it was raided.

[Click here for the latest Occupy Wall Street updates.]

Authorities removed large tents, wooden shacks and a kitchen before hosing down the camp site, Ahram Online reports. Protesters told the site that police started pulling apart their tents while they were still sleeping. One arrest was made.

"We're not going to go away, we're in it for the long haul," Jim Mclean one of the 15 protesters told Ahram Online. "They (the government) are embarrassed because we're highlighting issues they're not dealing with."

On Wednesday, Tourism Minister Leo Varadkar said it was a shame protesters refused to willingly leave the site ahead of the the St. Patrick's Day festival.

"I think it's disappointing that they're not going to move the camp for a few days," Varadkar told the BBC. "I understand they feel very strongly about their politics but I'm sure they don't want to damage the festival."

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Youngtown, Arizona Would Sooner Die Than Levy Property Taxes

In Youngtown, Ariz., city officials are contemplating the legal equivalent of shutting down.

The city of about 6,500 people 30 minutes northwest of Phoenix is, for all practical purposes, a small-government, low-taxes, no-compromise kind of place. Youngtown sold its water authority to a private company nearly two decades ago. It's been nearly three years since city crews, instead of private contractors, mowed the lawn outside town hall. And trash pick-up has never been a city-run operation.

Youngtown was founded almost 50 years ago as the nation’s first all-senior citizen city, where part of the attraction was the absence of a property tax. A 1998 court order forced Youngtown to welcome younger residents. But as the city expanded its police force and other services to meet its changing needs, it never instituted a property tax, the single most important revenue ingredient in most municipal budgets.

Now, faced with a $183,000 deficit that will force the city to drain more than 10 percent of its rainy day fund, officials are considering everything from the historic to the nearly unthinkable, The Arizona Republic reported Tuesday.

Kansas Abortion Bill Could Raise Taxes On Women Seeking Procedure

The sweeping anti-abortion bill working its way through the Kansas Legislature would levy a sales tax on women seeking abortions, including rape victims.

Buried in the 69-page bill being considered by the House Federal and State Affairs Committee are several provisions, in fact, that opponents say would increase taxes on those who seek abortions. The tax sections do not include exemptions for women who want an abortion after a sexual assault or to end a life-threatening pregnancy.

The committee is likely to continue discussing the bill Thursday afternoon.

Under the proposal, women who end up receiving abortions would not be able to deduct the cost of the abortion as a health care expense if they had not purchased special abortion insurance, said Sarah Gillooly of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.

Last year, Kansas enacted a law removing abortion coverage from health insurance plans in general. Women can purchase a special rider to cover the procedure in advance of a pregnancy.

Who Created Bill C-30? The Liberals Would Rather Forget (They Did)

You have no doubt heard or read about the opposition's attacks on minimum sentences and on Bill C- 30, which would adapt the investigative powers of police services to fight cybercrime. My purpose today is not to take a position for or against either of these proposals but instead to highlight two contradictions that are rather embarrassing for the Liberals.

The opposition's criticisms are long on vitriol and short on content. Liberal MPs have even posted an online petition against Bill C-30 titled "Don't let Stephen Harper creep your emails." Well, I won't comment on the outrageous misinformation contained in the petition's title or the biased statements in its introduction. Rather, I'm wondering who is behind Bill C-30? By reviewing the legislative records, I learned that it was the Liberal government of Paul Martin! Indeed, on November 15, 2005, the Liberal government's deputy prime minister, Anne McLellan, noted law professor and legal scholar, introduced Bill C-74. This bill had virtually the same form and content as Bill C-30. The title of Bill C-74 was itself highly revealing of its purpose: "An Act regulating telecommunications facilities to facilitate the lawful interception of information transmitted by means of those facilities and respecting the provision of telecommunications subscriber information."

Canada-U.S. Price Gap: Higher Canadian Dollar Hasn't Helped Consumers, Data Shows

Many economists have argued that a strong Canadian dollar is good for the country, because it makes imports less expensive and therefore lowers costs for consumers and businesses.

But with the Canadian dollar hovering around parity with the U.S. dollar in recent years, many border-hoppers have been complaining that prices are obviously higher in Canada than in the U.S., and the benefits of a strong dollar haven’t been passed on to consumers.

Now, the latest data from the OECD offers proof that this is a real phenomenon. According to the organization’s updated figures, the purchasing power parity of the Canadian dollar was exactly the same in 2011, when the Canadian dollar was around $1 U.S., as it was when the Canadian dollar was worth 62 cents U.S. a decade ago.

In 2002 when the dollar was weak, it cost $1.23 Canadian to buy what $1 U.S. bought south of the border. Today, it still costs $1.23 Canadian to buy what one U.S. dollar buys in America.

“In other words, the loonie’s ascent has delivered no apparent improvement in purchasing power,” writes Erin Weir, an economist with the United Steelworkers’ Canadian office who first flagged the OECD data.

Harper Could Make This a Happier Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day, so expect a lot of feel-good words in the House of Commons.

As the father of a 13-year-old daughter, I want her to know that she stands on the shoulders of giants. The opportunities she has today were made possible by the courageous pioneering women that came before her. And while there is much to celebrate in the significant achievement of Canadian women, there is also a great deal of unfinished business.

Two weeks ago, years of Harper government inaction forced Mrs. Jackie Scott, now 66, to file an action in the Federal Court in Vancouver gain her citizenship. It was denied to her because she was born out-of-wedlock.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Jackie's mother was an English War bride who came to Canada with her young baby in 1948 to be with her husband, a WWII veteran, James Ellis, who was born in Canada and was wounded in Europe fighting for our country. Sent back to Canada to be treated and recover from his battle injuries, Jack was unable to marry his bride until after infant Jackie was born.

Tory ads take on Wildrose

Signalling a combative provincial election is just around the corner, the Alberta PC party is expected to launch radio ads today slamming the Wild rose for its stance on the province's new drunk driving law - warning voters, "Danielle Smith and the Wildrose: not worth the risk."

The ad, which will run only in Calgary, marks a major shift in strategy for the long-governing Tories, who've usually paid scant attention to opposition parties before or during election campaigns.

However, the Redford-led Conservatives have suffered recent political turmoil over their handling of a judicial inquiry into problems in the health-care system, as well as accusations MLAs have bullied municipal leaders and school boards.

Some recent polls also indicate that while the PC party still leads the Wildrose, Liberal and NDP opposition in popularity, the gap between the province's two right-of-centre parties has narrowed.

"Negative advertising is always in the tool kit, but you wouldn't bring (it) out if you were clearly and unassailably the front-runner," said pollster Ian Large, vice-president of Leger Marketing in Alberta.

Alberta's long political sitzkrieg gives way today to Tory blitzkrieg

Can it be only four years ago that Ed Stelmach was loudly bemoaning the incivility of those notoriously unsuccessful anti-Tory attack ads, the ones that whispered how the premier of the day had "No Plan, No Plan"?

Alert readers will recall how the province's commentariat was unanimous in the view Albertans just wouldn't stand for that sort of thing.

Well, never mind the "Albertans for Change" campaign of 2008. That was then and this is now.

Today, Alberta's election "phoney war" is over and dirty attack advertisements, the kind that caused such hysterical hyperventilation when they were paid for by a coalition of unions, have officially gone mainstream.

For the first time anyone can remember in the 41-year reign of Alberta's Natural Governing Party, the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Alison Redford has gone deeply negative with the release today of radio attack ads targeting the Wildrose Party of Danielle Smith.

Guatemala women defenders defy Canadian mines and plead for help

GUATEMALA -- The road to San Miguel Ixtahuacán, Guatemala is a descent into a valley along an asphalt road riddled with potholes that could easily swallow your tire. In the chilly pre-dawn of a February day, six of us -- a videographer, human rights activists, a photographer, an interpreter and a driver -- make our way in the dark. We share the road with large and old slatted trucks carrying cattle, rickety brightly-painted school buses packed with sleeping passengers, women in traje, their indigenous dress, walking to town carrying babies across their chests. It's cold and the stars outline the silhouette of the mountains that separate Guatemala from Mexico just an hour and a half to the west. On our right we start to see the first rays of the sun as we climb into the Sierra of the Cuchumatanes mountains, high above the clouds.

We're moving into a conflict-torn area where communities, like San Miguel Ixtahuacán and neighbouring Sipacapa, have been drastically changed by the arrival of mining companies like Montana Exploradora, a Guatemalan subsidiary of the Canadian-owned mining company Goldcorp, which began the exploitation of the Marlin Mine in 2004. We're not sure what to expect, but our role is clear: Record first-hand testimonies from women who say their lives have been changed dramatically by the mining in the area. We're here as part of a larger fact-finding mission sent to Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala in January by the Nobel Women's Initiative (NWI). Based in Ottawa, the organization was founded by six female recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, and is led by Laureate Jody Williams, winner of the 1997 prize for her anti-land mine work. The organization sends delegations of prominent citizens -- lawyers, journalists, human rights defenders, artists -- into high-conflict areas around the world to investigate the plight of women and human rights defenders, defensoras, including those who are targeted as women -- raped, assaulted, denied the power to protect their land, livelihood, health and families. We've heard some terrible stories during the past 10 days travelling through these countries.

No lessons learned from Japan's nuclear disaster in U.S. politics

Super Tuesday demonstrated the rancour rife in Republican ranks, as the four remaining major candidates slug it out to see how far to the right of President Barack Obama they can go. While attacking him daily for the high cost of gasoline, both sides are travelling down the same perilous road in their support of nuclear power. This is mind-boggling, on the first anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission warning that lessons from Fukushima have not been implemented in this country. Nevertheless, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: They're going to force nuclear power on the public, despite the astronomically high risks, both financial and environmental.

One year ago, on March 11, 2011, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit the northeast coast of Japan, causing more than 15,000 deaths, with 3,000 more missing and thousands of injuries. Japan is still reeling from the devastation -- environmentally, economically, socially and politically. Naoto Kan, Japan's prime minister at the time, said last July, "We will aim to bring about a society that can exist without nuclear power." He resigned in August after shutting down production at several power plants. He said that another catastrophe could force the mass evacuation of Tokyo, and even threaten "Japan's very existence." Only two of the 54 Japanese power plants that were online at the time of the Fukushima disaster are currently producing power. Kan's successor, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, supports nuclear power, but faces growing public opposition to it.