Stephen Harper turns down invite to premiers meeting for third straight year

The premiers are upset because they're not getting enough love from Ottawa.

Canada's premiers and territorial leaders are convening in Halifax this week for the annual Council of the Federation, a.k.a. the premiers' conference.

And once again, for the third straight year, Stephen Harper is invited but won't be attending.

Harper government denounced at International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC

To launch off the AIDS 2012 XIX International AIDS Conference Washington D.C., Canadian and international activists demonstrated at the Canadian exhibition booth yesterday afternoon.

The Canadian booth is financed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and is a symbol of the government's presence at the conference. "The Harper government's lack of commitment on HIV and human rights is negligent and shameful," said Alex McClelland of Canada’s AIDS ACTION NOW, the group who organized the demonstration. "We need to act in order to save our lives and our communities," stated McClelland who is living with HIV.

An idiot's persistence: Asinine adventures of the Harper Conservatives

"Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Economist Jeffrey Sachs' book The price of civilization: Economics and ethics after the fall is a razor-sharp dissection of the implosion of American democracy and economy. As the jacket cover says, "Sachs goes deeper than an economic diagnosis. By taking a broad, holistic approach -- looking at domestic politics, geopolitics, social psychology, and the natural environment as well -- Sachs reveals the larger fissures underlying the current economic crisis." All this is true, and much more as well. I won't explore the many perceptive analyses contained within this book, but simply wish to pluck one string and examine how it reverberates in a Canadian context.

Aurora shooting may ruin one victim's finances

(CBS News) Victim Caleb Medley was shot in the eye at the Aurora movie theater massacre and remains in intensive care in an induced coma. In the same hospital, one floor away, his wife Katie is about to give birth to their first child.

"He's a strong guy," said Seth Medley, Caleb's brother. "I'm not used to seeing him like that. I don't ever want to see him like that again."

But even if Caleb fully recovers, what happened at the midnight movie threatens to ruin the couple financially. His family has been told medical bills could total $2 million. Longtime friend Michael West is trying to raise money.

Loblaw locked in labour dispute at Asian supermarket chain

Loblaw Cos. Ltd.’s fast-growing Asian supermarket chain is locked in a dispute with its warehouse employees over their attempt to form a union.

The nearly 100 employees at one of T&T Supermarket Inc.’s distribution centres voted Monday on union certification.

But the Ontario Labour Relations Board sealed the ballot box because the union and the company disagreed over which names should appear on the voters’ list, said Kevin Shimmin, national representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada union.

Austerity's Big Winners Prove To Be Wall Street And The Wealthy

WASHINGTON -- The poor and middle classes have shouldered by far the heaviest burdens of the global political obsession with austerity policies over the past three years. In the United States, budget cuts have forced states to reduce education, public transportation, affordable housing and other social services. In Europe, welfare cuts have driven some severely disabled individuals to fear for their lives.

But the austerity game also has winners. Cutting or eliminating government programs that benefit the less advantaged has long been an ideological goal of conservatives. Doing so also generates a tidy windfall for the corporate class, as government services are privatized and savings from austerity pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens.

Summer yawn: Indifference meets UN report on Canadian complicity in torture

It's been more than a month, but Canadians in general have been able to go about their daily business despite the United Nations declaration that the federal government is complicit in torture. July 1st flag-wavers didn't have their spirits dampened by the findings that, apart from a few headlines, fell victim to the vagaries of the 24-7 news cycle.

The report from the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) came on the heels of another UN report from the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, who not only expressed concern about the growing inequality gap in this country, but also took Canada to task for what he called its "appallingly poor" record of respecting and implementing the recommendations of UN human rights organizations.

We must keep saying the names of killers

There was, as David Carr pointed out in The New York Times, a sickening predictability to the aftermath of the theatre shooting in Colorado last week. Even the mistakes and rumours felt familiar.

But there was one element, this time around, that felt new: the pleas, especially online, for the victims’ names and stories to be remembered. For that we can thank, primarily, two remarkable people: Jessica Ghawi and her brother Jordan.

Why we feel like America is going to hell

What’s wrong with the United States of America? It’s a question countless people are asking, in the United States and around the world, following the massacre at a movie theatre in Colorado. Why does the United States spawn such madness, so frequently? And why is it getting worse?

I’ll get to that. But first, let’s recall another massacre in Colorado, not far from last week’s atrocity.

Residential school abuse claims surpass federal estimates

The number of people coming forward to say they were seriously abused at Canada’s Indian residential schools greatly outstrips early federal estimates and will boost the cost of settlements by more than $2-billion, federal officials say.

It is a situation that suggests the problems at the government-funded, church-run institutions that operated for most of the previous century were far more pervasive than originally believed.