About the size of an aerosol can, the colourful bomblets drop from airplanes.

“They look like sweets scattered in the sky,” said one survivor. “You don’t realize what they are until they touch you. You don’t know until they make you bleed.”

A single cluster bomb packs thousands of the small explosives, each with enough explosive punch to kill. Dropped from the air or fired from artillery, they spread over a wide area, and if that area has civilians, some of them are sure to die.

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Photo: Student gather in opposition to privatization in Montreal.

Throughout recent years social movements in Quebec have been locked in a political battle with the current Liberal government. A social struggle revolving around public control over key institutions in Quebec society. At the front-lines in this struggle has been the Quebec student movement, which in building on a long history of militant action has openly confronted government attempts to cut public funding from educational institutions and open doors to private corporations to Quebec’s public education systems.

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MONDAY DECEMBER 15th 12h00 – 14h00
live broadcast on CKUT Radio, 90.3fm
tune-in globally via live stream at www.ckut.ca

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Israel’s siege on Gaza, now in its 19th month, has wreaked havoc on all aspects of life and significant attention has been paid in particular to the economic consequences of border closures and blockade. However, an overlooked epidemic threatens the social and familial ties that bond the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Living under a constant state of crisis in which their livelihoods have been denied, the people of Gaza’s once exemplary resilience and determination are giving way to an unfathomable sea of depression and psychological illnesses.

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BEIRUT: Beirut is attempting to reclaim its status as the “international book capital” this year at the 52nd Beirut Book Fair, and is taking special aim at younger readers. Organizers of the book fair are pleased that more than 210 exhibitors are taking part in this year’s edition following a two-year hiatus due to political and security tensions in the country. The participation rate is up by some 20 percent compared to the last edition of the event, and 192 private and 18 government exhibitors are on hand from Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Palestine and Oman and Lebanon.

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Photo: Palestinians sit on Gaza wall after brief liberation from confinement in 2008.

AMMAN: Gaza faces a humanitarian “catastrophe” if Israel continues to prevent aid reaching the territory by blocking crossing points, the head of the main U.N. aid agency for the Palestinians said on Friday.

Karen AbuZayd, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the human toll of this month’s sealing of Gaza’s goods crossings was the gravest since the early days of a Palestinian uprising eight years ago.

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United States President-elect Barack Obama’s election victory has revived hopes that stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations could finally lead to a two-state solution. Few new presidents have been greeted with such optimism and associated high expectations.

However, the chances for progress depend on more than a new American president. There are several interrelated factors: US engagement, the availability of a viable peace agreement, Israeli and Palestinian internal politics and the broader international situation.

An examination of these factors indicates that the optimism is unjustified and that President Obama will not be more successful in bringing about a two-state solution to the conflict. This does not however mean that the situation will remain static or that those pursuing a just peace have no recourse for action.

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within the ongoing cultural series uniting artists in Montreal against Israeli Apartheid.

SUNDAY DECEMBER 7th 2008
8pm. 5-10$
La Sala Rossa, 4848 St. Laurent
Montreal, Quebec

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Interview with Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch. Broadcasts from Beirut VIII.

In Lebanon, between 150,000 to 300,000 women work as migrant domestic workers, with approximately 100,000 having legal status in the country. In August 2008, Human Rights Watch released a report covering the period of January 1, 2007 to August 15, 2008 revealing migrant domestic workers had extremely high death tolls due to unnatural causes.

Migrant domestic workers experience harsh working conditions and consistent workplace abuse, and currently many migrant domestic workers can be found sleeping under cars or on the ground surrounding their respective countries’ embassies in Lebanon, searching for assistance for their situations. Nadim Houry is the senior researcher at Human Rights Watch covering Lebanon and Lillian Boctor from Tadamon spoke with Houry about the situation.

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The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is deeply concerned over continued policies of collective punishment imposed by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip. These policies have included ban on delivery of food supplies and basic goods, including energy fuel required for electricity generation, grains and wheat. Following the halt of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip in the past six days, more than 30 percent of the population of Gaza was in complete darkness last night, and people lined up in front of bakeries to buy flour and bread. Although IOF allowed the delivery of 427,410 liters of energy fuel this morning, which is enough to operate Gaza’s power plant for a single day, PCHR in concerned that humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip may further deteriorate.

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