Enmity From Above, Amity From Below

by Richard Abernethy, US Marxist-Humanists

On one level, the threat of war between Israel and Iran is a real conflict, a struggle between two state powers for dominance in the Middle East. On another level, each set of rulers finds in the other a "useful enemy," an external threat that appears to validate its ideology, and consolidate its rule at home.

In both countries, there is a body of enlightened opinion that opposes the rulers' drive toward war. In an extraordinary new development, Israeli and Iranian dissidents have come together, first over the Internet and more recently in person in Berlin, to oppose the drive to war.

by Alexis Lathem, Toward Freedom

On the morning of June 10, a group of Innu people from the community of ManiUtenam, near the Quebec city of Sept Isle, set out on a 360 kilometer march towards a Hydro Quebec dam construction site on the Romaine River. Dressed in florescent vests, they departed from an encampment at the entrance to the reserve, beside Route 138, the only major road in the region, where the group has maintained a continual protest since the end of April.

Impossible to miss as vehicles pass along the route, the encampment strikingly asserts the presence of the Innu—who have been consistently ignored by governments and developers as they continue to encroach upon Innu territory.