ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Ten-month-old Darina Gromova presses her soft, barely-toddler hands on the window of an airport terminal. "The main passenger," her mother's comment reads, followed by smiley faces.

Tender images like this one, posted on social networks by Russian vacationers in Egypt, mark the last public record of their lives. Darina and her parents were among 224 people killed Saturday when their plane disintegrated in midair.

One couple had just celebrated their anniversary. One young man flew to Sharm el-Sheikh to propose to his bride. At least three victims marked birthdays during their trip, according to postings on Russian network VKontakte, Instagram and other sites.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia -- Mystery and confusion surrounded the final moments of a Russian jetliner that plummeted suddenly from high altitude to the Egyptian desert, killing all 224 people aboard......

A Russian government plane brought 130 bodies and partial remains to St. Petersburg. The city is holding three days of mourning through Tuesday.

In his first public appearance since the crash, Putin described it as an "enormous tragedy" and said his thoughts are with the families of the victims.

Mourners have been coming to St. Petersburg's airport since Saturday with flowers, pictures of the victims, stuffed animals and paper planes. Others went to churches and lit candles in memory of the dead.

Sunday was a national day of mourning, and flags flew at half-mast across Russia.

After long refusing to disclose how many soldiers have killed themselves after serving in the Afghanistan war, the Canadian military released new figures late Monday that raises the suicide count to at least 59.

The updated tally includes 53 who were still-serving military members and six veterans identified through a Globe and Mail investigation. The new count is five higher than the number uncovered by The Globe and includes four suicides of active-duty members that have occurred this year.

158 Canadian soldiers died in the Afghanistan mission. But the losses did not end there. A Globe and Mail investigation reveals a disturbing number the military has kept secret: that at least 54 soldiers and vets killed themselves after they returned from war

RENATA D’ALIESIO

OROMOCTO, N.B. The Globe and Mail Last updated: Monday, Nov. 02, 2015 3:45PM EST

The Canadian army desperately needed men like Scott Smith.

A hard-nosed counsellor who worked with troubled teens in the Vancouver Island wilderness, he looked the part of a soldier. He was tall and muscular, with a gruff appearance that concealed his fun-loving side.

He came back a frayed man, his mind ravaged by the eternal replay of war. He started drinking more and spending less time with his wife and two young boys. Large crowds spooked him. Even an outing to a pumpkin patch he found unnerving.

Last December, two years after returning from Afghanistan, Cpl. Smith, who had counselled others against suicide, ended his own life after a military Christmas party. He was 31 years old.

.....Then came the Mavi Marmara incident, when Israel attacked a ship while that was on its way to Gaza to attempt to break the Israeli siege. Many activists were killed and injured. As a journalist, I was receiving the information updates beforehand for use in my reporting. Ergo, I decided to put my Twitter account—which I rarely used back then—to good use. I started pushing all the exclusive info I was getting into the cybersphere, in real time. In other words, I was “live tweeting”, but that term didn’t exist back then. People started noticing what I was doing. And my pool of followers began expanding.

Then in 2011 the Arab world was hit with a series of unprecedented “revolutions”. It started in Tunisia and slowly crept into Egypt, Libya, Syria and so on. As a Palestinian, living under occupation and siege, aching for freedom, I had to be a part of the regional conversations. So I became an avid user of social media. I was on all platforms, all the time, despite the power outages that have plagued Gaza for years now. I had to find ways to stay updated and alert, so I started looking into ways of remaining connected during power outages, which helped me a great deal during the rest of the Israeli assaults on Gaza and on Palestine in general.

In 2012, the United Nations selected me to participate in their annual training of Palestinian Journalists. It was the first year they stopped focusing on TV and radio, and started focusing more on digital and social media. My work took me all the way to New York, which was a dream come true. Given my experience as a journalist in Gaza and a social media “star” in my country, it was only natural for me to pick “Social Media and Journalism Safety” as the topic for my training project. I was given access to the headquarters of luminaries in the world of news and social media such as Twitter, Google, BBC, Reuters and others. It was like coming full circle, an experience of a lifetime that left me with affirmation and knowledge. Social media had paid off.

The natural progression after this was for us to be threatened, attacked in the cyber world and pushed to be silenced. My email was hacked, my Twitter account was suspended after hackers tried to access it, and my Facebook account was flooded with posts spouting hatred and private messages from people threatening to kill me and my family if I didn't “shut up”. But I didn’t stop, because, as I learned from my training at the UN, sometimes a tweet can change the world.

Now, as Palestine experiences what some are calling the Third Intifada, citizen journalism is again on the frontlines as a primary source of news for the public and for media agencies. Truth is the only propaganda-buster.

The region of Cerro de Pasco, in the central Andes of Peru, has traditionally been a mining area. This area is rich in mineral deposits that have been exploited since the 16th century, beginning in the colonial era. This is also where there are currently 14 mining sites operating at high production levels. Nevertheless, the wealth extracted from Pasco's land and its natural resources are not enjoyed by the majority of the region's inhabitants. In fact, statistics from last year show that between 2013 and 2014, Cerro de Pasco was the region that saw the sharpest rise in poverty in all of Peru.

Moreover, mining activities have apparently enjoyed little oversight, and for years have been contaminating the rivers and the land, creating a variety of environmental liabilities in the Pasco region. In the specific case of the city of Cerro de Pasco, the mining industry has both contaminated the local environment and created an open pit mine in the city center—one that continues to grow and engulf the city.

It's in this context that the population and authorities of the district of Simón Bolívar, in the city of Cerro de Pasco, approved a motion on September 5 to hold a “march of sacrifice” to the capital city, Lima, a distance of 296 kilometers, on September 17. The goal is to protest the central government's neglect of the 2,000 children poisoned with high levels of lead in their blood—a case that has gone on unresolved for four years.

One of the key points agreed upon was that the Ministry of Health will medically examine the children affected by high levels of lead in their blood. Also, the Peruvian government will carry out a technical site survey of the location to build a clinic for heavy metals detoxification and a modern toxicology lab. In addition, a healthcare center will be constructed in the Paragsha neighborhood of Cerro de Pasco, and other project plans to build health care centers in more towns will be evaluated. On the environmental side, the government agreed to monitor the closure of areas with strip mining, tailings, and toxic pools that still await shutdown, and to neutralize water sources that have become acidic, oversee all relevant audits.

To view the video with English subtitles, click here.

Finally, César Sáenz Suárez writes in his blog about the perhaps-little-known aspects of the Pasqueño issues, such as how the population has less access to water rights than the mining industry and the levels of contamination produced by the negligent mining production, among other concerns:

Not many people enjoy the existence of poverty. Some think it’s inevitable, others that tackling it is politically impossible. But for those with ambition, an end to poverty is a worthy enough goal. Naturally the self-congratulation will be in full flow this weekend, as celebrities and world leaders gather in New York to launch their latest effort to do just that, in the form of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

But something will be missing in between the speeches and performances by the likes of Ed Sheeran, Beyonce, Bill Gates and Meryl Streep. That thing is power. Because unless you understand that the poverty of some flows from the wealth and power of others, efforts to fight poverty will not truly work.

The real problem is that this wish-list comes with no historical background of how we got here, and no political strategy for how we get out. As such it relies on a mixture of more market and more technically competent governments. There’s no sign that the economic model itself is broken – just that it needs some tuning.

Take one obvious gap: trans-national corporations. They aren’t mentioned in the SDGs, yet the power of corporations is fundamental to the staggering levels of inequality which afflict the world, and are at the centre of an economic model quite prepared to burn the planet in its drive for ever more profit. it is impossible to realise the targets of the SDGs without tackling corporate power.

Nor is there any acknowledgment of colonial history, of slavery, of racism, of desperately unfair terms of trade, of structural adjustment policies which flushed dozens of countries’ economies down the drain only 30 years ago. Far from critiquing the control of the market, the SDGs exhort world leaders to “remove market distortions” and “ensure the proper functioning of food commodity markets”.

The SDGs’ answer to ‘hunger’ is growing more food – despite the fact that we have more than enough food in the world to feed everyone. Technology plays a key role in the targets – for instance in the eradication of epidemics of HIV and malaria - but with no sign of how governments will improve the flow of knowledge around the world without breaking the ever more ferocious intellectual property regime that allows corporate giants to monopolise that knowledge. More foreign investment is encouraged, but without a framework for controlling that investment, how is it supposed to benefit the majority?

Poverty Fact #2: History matters

......... Later, neoliberal policies—like the deregulation of capital markets, privatization of essential services, elimination of social and environmental protections, and a constant downward pressure on both corporate taxation and workers wages—were imposed across the global South, mostly by way of western-supported dictators and the structural adjustment we mentioned above. This turned into the biggest single cause of poverty in the 20th century, because it created both the incentives and the systems required—like tax havens—for wealth and power to be centralized in the hands of the elite. Today, the process of wealth extraction continues in the form of tax evasion, land grabs, debt service, and trade agreements rigged in the interests of the rich, a reverse flow of wealth that vastly outstrips the aid (the epitome of a small, technical fix) that trickles in the other direction. ..........

Poverty Fact #3: The "good news" story is premised on false accounting

....... It is a comforting story but unfortunately it is just not true. For a start, it all rests on The World Bank’s $1.25-a-day poverty line, which is insultingly low. The UN body UNCTAD has pointed out that anyone living on less than $5 a day is unable to achieve "a standard of living adequate for health and wellbeing": the inalienable right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If you use that figure, a soul-scorching 5.1 billion people, or 80% of humanity, are living in those conditions today. .........

All of this is about politics and power. It’s a well-established truth that those with the money make the rules, usually in ways that serve their own interests. This is why 93 cents of every $1 made since the 2008 crash has gone to the 1%.

The Gates want us to believe that it’s possible to solve poverty without challenging the forms of power that caused it in the first place. It sounds nice, especially for rich people, but it’s a fairy tale. Solving poverty will require a fundamental reorganization of power away from the oligarchy and toward real, meaningful democracy. Any plan to end poverty that doesn’t put this front and center isn’t really a plan at all.

Collateral damage. Enhanced interrogation. What’s the name for those phrases or words that sound relatively innocuous but are actually covering up something that’s very violent or very bad. Here’s another one: regulatory cooperation. Cooperation is a good thing, right? It doesn’t sound so threatening, but it’s a masterful example of the power of language to make something terrible sound benign. And it’s nestling at the heart of the trade deal being hammered out between the EU and the USA.

To most people, regulations such as air pollution limits and food safety standards are common sense protections against dangerous threats. However, to many big businesses, these rules are just red tape or “non-tariff barriers to trade” (NTBs) which inhibit profits. Proponents of TTIP say that 80% of the supposed benefits of the deal will come from getting rid of these NTBs.

Our new briefing shows how regulatory cooperation presents a unique opportunity for corporate interests on both sides of the Atlantic to lobby for these standards to be brought down to the lowest common denominator. Many of the major corporate interests pushing for TTIP actually think this, not ISDS, is the aspect of the deal that is most important to them. Some supporters of TTIP have even gone as far as to advocate sacrificing ISDS to protect regulatory cooperation. Corporate lobbyists have expressed the hope that regulatory cooperation will make them so powerful that it will allow them to effectively “co-write” regulation with policy-makers.

Proponents of TTIP say all of this is just scaremongering, but the reality is that this stuff is already happening. The mere prospect of the deal is already weakening certain EU standards. For example, US officials successfully used the prospect of TTIP to bully the EU into abandoning plans to ban 31 dangerous pesticides with ingredients that have been shown to cause cancer and infertility. A similar fate befell regulations around the treatment of beef with lactic acid. This was banned in Europe because of fears that the procedure was being used to conceal unhygienic practices. The ban was repealed by MEPs in a Parliamentary Committee after EU Commission officials openly suggested TTIP negotiations would be threatened if the ban wasn't lifted.

Canada has paid American corporations more than $200 million (approximately €135 million) in the seven cases it has lost and foreign investors are now seeking over €1.75 bn from the Canadian government in new cases. Even defending cases that may not be successful is expensive. Canada has spent over $65 million (approximately €45 million) defending itself from NAFTA challenges to date.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reports that almost two-thirds of claims against Canada involved challenges to environmental protection or resources management that allegedly interfered with the profit of American corporations.

Cases include:

Ethyl, a U.S. chemical corporation, successfully challenged a Canadian ban on imports of its gasoline that contained MMT, an additive that is a suspected neurotoxin. The Canadian government repealed the ban and paid the company $13 million (approximately €8.8 million) for its loss of revenue.
S.D. Myers, a U.S. waste disposal firm, challenged a similar ban on the export of toxic PCB waste. Canada paid the company over $6 million (approximately €4 million).
A NAFTA panel ordered the Canadian government to pay Exxon-Mobil, the world’s largest oil and gas company, $17.3 million (approximately €11.6 million) when the company challenged government guidelines that investors in offshore exploration in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador – where the company is heavily involved – must invest in local research and development.
New Jersey-based Bilcon Construction is demanding $300,000 (approximately €200,000) in damages from the Canadian government after winning a NAFTA challenge when its plan to build a massive quarry and marine terminal in an environmentally sensitive area of Nova Scotia and ship basalt aggregate through the Bay of Fundy, site of the highest tides in the world, was rejected by an environmental assessment panel.
Chemical giant Dow AgroSciences used NAFTA to force the province of Quebec, after it banned 2,4-D, a pesticide that the Natural Resources Defence Council says has been linked in many studies to cancer and cell damage, to publicly acknowledge that the chemical does not pose an “unacceptable risk” to human health, a position the government had previously held.
The Canadian government paid American pulp and paper giant AbitibiBowater $130 million (approximately €88 million) after the company successfully used NAFTA to claim compensation for the “water and timber rights” it left behind when it abandoned its operations in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador after 100 years, leaving the workers with unpaid pensions. This challenge is particularly disturbing because it gives a foreign investor the right to claim compensation for the actual resources it used while operating in another jurisdiction.
Mesa Power Group, an energy company owned by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens, is claiming $775 million (approximately €523 million) in a challenge to the province of Ontario’s Green Energy Act, which gives preferential access to local wind farm operators.
Lone Pine, a Canadian energy company, is suing the Canadian government through its American affiliate for $250 million (approximately €152 million) because the province of Quebec introduced a temporary moratorium on all fracking activities under the St. Lawrence River until further studies are completed. This challenge is concerning because it involves a domestic company using a foreign subsidiary to sue its own government.
Eli Lilly, a U.S. pharmaceutical giant, is suing Canada for $500 million (approximately €337 million) after three levels of courts in Canada denied it a patent extension on one of its products. This case is particularly disturbing because it challenges Canadian laws as interpreted by Canadian courts and represents a new frontier for ISDS challenges

Several weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people across Europe and the UK marched to protest the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a massive planned new trade deal between Europe and the US. They were rightly sounding the alarm as TTIP will greatly reduce the ability of local governments to spend public money for local development, impose new limits on the right of governments of all levels to regulate on behalf of their citizens and environment, endanger public services and jeopardize Europe’s higher standards on labour, food safety and social security.

TTIP also includes Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a provision that will allow American corporations to sue European governments for laws and practices that threaten their bottom line. There are now over 3,200 bilateral ISDS agreements in the world, and foreign corporations have used them to sue governments over health, safety and environmental laws.

Cigarette maker Phillip Morris used ISDS to challenge Australian rules around cigarette packaging intended to promote public health. A Swedish company, Vattenfall, is suing Germany for a reported €4.7 billion relating to Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power. ISDS is profoundly anti-democratic and threatens the human rights of people everywhere.

But people in the UK and Europe should be paying attention to another deal that has had way less attention. CETA – the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada – is equally disturbing and way further along in the process. I’m coming on a speaking tour of the UK to share a powerful story of Canada’s experience that is relevant for two reasons.

The first is that we Canadians have lived with ISDS for twenty years. It was first included in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, and has been used extensively by the corporations of North America to get their way. As a result of NAFTA, Canada is now the most sued developed country in the world.

Justin Trudeau withdraws fighter jets from Syria-Iraq

by Yves Engler / October 30th, 2015

...... But, by citing the Liberal sponsored Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to justify Canadian participation in the US-led bombing, these pundits are revealing the essence of this “humanitarian imperialist” doctrine.

The truth is, human rights rhetoric aside, R2P is an effort to redefine international law to better serve the major powers. While the less sophisticated neoconservatives simply call for a more aggressive military posture, the more liberal supporters of imperialism prefer a high-minded ideological mask to accomplish the same end. Those citing R2P to pressure Trudeau to continue bombing Iraq-Syria are demonstrating an acute, but cynical, understanding of the doctrine.

British police are to be given the power to view the entire Internet history of everyone in the U.K. in a new surveillance bill to be published next week, reports say.

Under the proposed plan, telecoms and Internet service providers will be legally required to retain all Web browsing history for all customers for a period of 12 months, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The Guardian reports that “senior officers want to revive the measures similar to those contained in the ‘snooper’s charter,’ which would force telecommunications companies to retain for 12 months data that would disclose websites visited by customers.”

It comes as David Cameron, the Prime Minister, announced moves to strengthen its treaty with America to ensure Internet companies based there hand over requested data on suspects.

Some of the largest companies have been increasingly reluctant to supply customer communications in the wake of the claims of mass surveillance programmes by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden.