The Dominion - Pierre Loiselle

Dominion Radio #8

Stuart Neatby — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:04:35 +0000

Subhead:

The Cancer industry, Canada's legacy in Indonesia, and fighting Irving in court

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Dominion Radio broadcasts grassroots news from across the country, focusing on stories and voices silenced by the mainstream media.

Episode #8:

A discussion with Taylor Gray, Energy Advisor with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick about their efforts to take on Irving's proposed LNG refinery in Saint John, NB.
An interview with journalist and Cape Breton University Professor Garry Leech about the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
Devra Davis uncovers the sordid history of government, industry, and scientists efforts to obscure the commonly known causes of cancer such as smoking, benzene, and asbestos.
David Webster of the East Timor Alert Network looks back at Canada's role in facilitating the legacy of the late Indonesian President General Suharto, one of the biggest mass murderers of the twentieth century.

Dominion Radio #7

Stuart Neatby — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:21:50 +0000

Subhead:

Police Brutality in Canada

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Dominion Radio broadcasts grassroots news from across the country, focusing on stories and voices silenced by the mainstream media.

Episode #7:

An interview with Thomas Melenfant of the Vancounver-based Anti-Poverty Committee about resisting police violence against the poor in Vancouver.
A discussion with Mantel a resident of Halifax's north end about "community policing" in black neighborhoods.
A recorded excerpt of a discussion with Kim Pate of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Canada about the criminalization of women with mental health issues.
Natercia Coelho, the wife of Gary Freeman, who is facing extradition to the US after what he describes as defending himself against police brutality in Chicago in the 1970's.

Dominion Radio #6

Stuart Neatby — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:34:37 +0000

Subhead:

Special Podcast Episode on the Tar Sands

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Dominion Radio broadcasts grassroots news from across the country, focusing on stories and voices silenced by the mainstream media.

Episode #6:
Our Special Podcast Issue on the Athabasca Tar Sands.

A live conversation with Tim Murphy, who was part of a bike trip organized by the Sierra Youth Coalition, that cycled from the Canada-US border to Fort McKay, an indigenous community just North of Fort McMurray , Alberta. Find out more at tothetarsands.ca
An interview with Clayton Thomas-Mueller of the Indigenous Environmental Network and whose article We Speak For Ourselves appears in the Dominion's Tar Sands issue.
Analysis from Macdonald Stainbsy of oilsandstruth.org and author of Impacting Unimpaired which appears in the Dominion's Tar Sands issue

We apologize for some of the sound quality issues in this podcast, we experienced technical difficulties in the recording of this program

Dominion Radio #5

Stuart Neatby — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:55:59 +0000

Subhead:

Special Diet East, LNG colonization, and a NAFTA Superhighway

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MP3:

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Dominion Radio broadcasts grassroots news from across the country, focusing on stories and voices silenced by the mainstream media.

Episode #5:

An Interview with Richard Vogel, Texas-based correspondent with Monthly Review Magazine, about the Security Prosperity Partnership and the 'NAFTA Supercorridor' planned to extend from Winnipeg to Mexico City.
An excerpt from Praxis Media Production's newest audio documentary Taking it Back about the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty's Special Diet Campaign.
A discussion with David Moses Bridges, traditional artist, educator, community activist, and co-founder of the grassroots Passamaquoddy campaign We Take Care of Our Land, which is currently struggling against efforts to locate a Liquified Natural Gas terminal on Passamaquoddy land near the Fundy Bay of Canada's East Coast.

Dominion Radio #4

Stuart Neatby — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:27:42 +0000

Subhead:

Resource Wars in Bolivia, Anti-Poverty Resistance, and Media Democracy

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MP3:

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/files/dominion/audio/DominionRadio-4.mp3

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Dominion Radio broadcasts grassroots news from across the country, focusing on stories and voices silenced by the mainstream media.

Episode #4:
Aired May 4th, 2007

An interview with Benjamin Dangl, author of The Price of Fire in Bolivia and commentator with Upside Down World. about resource wars in Bolivia.
A conversation with Chris Probert, of Adbusters Magazine about the media carta legal battle.
Finally, in light of recent police attacks against anti-poverty demonstrators outside of a Tory Party fundraiser in downtown Halifax we air a discussion with Keli Belair and Aaron Webber of the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty and Mike DesRoches of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty about anti-poverty resistance in Canada today.

Dominion Radio #3

Stuart Neatby — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:00:55 +0000

Subhead:

Vancouver's 'Stolen Land' Olympics and Broken Promises in Afghanistan

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MP3:

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Dominion Radio broadcasts grassroots news from across the country, focusing on stories and voices silenced by the mainstream media.

Episode #3:
Aired April 27th, 2007

An interview with Kanahus Pellkey, a member of the Native Youth Movement, a group that is calling for a boycott and cancellation of the 2010 Winter Olympics primarily because the games will take place on unceded Native land. (28:10)
A conversation with Chris Sands the Dominion's special correspondent in Afghanistan on what he describes as NATO’s “broken promises” in the Southern region.(25:18)

Dominion Radio #2

dru — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:45:53 +0000

Subhead:

Climate Change, Colonialism, and Cité Soleil

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MP3:

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Dominion Radio broadcasts grassroots news from across the country, focusing on stories and voices silenced by the mainstream media.

Episode #2:

an interview with Pat Mooney, Executive Director of the ETC Group. Pat examines new "solutions" to climate change that are good for business, but might cause more problems than they solve. (1:15)
an excerpt from "Hoping Against Hope" the recently released documentary about the struggle against colonialism in Canada. (20:35)
an interview from Haiti with independent journalist Darren Ell about life on the ground in Cité Soleil (28:54)

Dominion Radio #1

dru — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:44:02 +0000

Subhead:

Lincolnville, Secret Trials, Afghanistan, Gaza

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In its inaugural broadcast, Dominion Radio broadcasts grassroots news from across the country, focusing on stories and voices silenced by the mainstream media.

The first show features interviews with:

Lincolnville resident Wendy Campbell. Lincolnville is a small black community in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, that has launched a campaign against a landfill and environmental racism.
Matthew Bahrens from Toronto-based Stop Secret Trials in Canada. Matthew examines the impact of Security Certificates in this country and talks about the three men being held in "Guantanamo North" on their third month of a hunger strike.
Norine MacDonald, President and Southern Afghanistan Coordinator for the research group the Senlis Council on a new report on Canada's impact in Southern Afghanistan.
Independent journalist John Elmer, on the ground in Gaza City, examining the impacts of Canada's sanctions on Palestine.

Like Weeds in a Garden

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 21:31:37 +0000

Genocide, International Law & Canada's "Indian Problem"

Canada's solution to what was once casually referred to as its "Indian problem" has been a strategy of social engineering known as assimilation. photo: General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada

Not all of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) made it into the Canadian Criminal Code. The following parts of Article Two, which define the crime of genocide, were omitted when the Convention was ratified and became law in 1952: "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" and, "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, director of the Department of Native Studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, says that the omissions are not a coincidence. The original two omissions correspond directly to Canada's official policy of abducting Native children and keeping them in residential schools, where many were subject to gruesome and well-documented abuse and torture.

"Modern genocide is an element of social engineering, meant to bring out a social order conforming to the design of the perfect society," wrote Zygmunt Bauman in his 1989 book 'Modernity and the Holocaust.' "This is a gardener's vision... Some gardeners hate the weeds that spoil their design... Some others are quite unemotional about them: just a problem to be solved, an extra job to be done."

As Chrisjohn explains, the glitch in Canada's garden begins with the problem that, according to European law, title to most of the land in Canada still belongs to its original inhabitants.

Canada's solution to what was once casually referred to as its "Indian problem" has been a strategy of social engineering known as assimilation which began with the 1857 'Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes of the Province;' its modern-day equivalent is the Indian Act. Serving as head of the Department of Indian Affairs during the development of the residential school system, Sir Duncan Campbell Scott summarized the agenda of Canadian policy towards Native people: "Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian problem."

The Genocide Convention

Rafael Lemkin, who coined the word genocide and was responsible for drafting the CPPCG, explained in 1945 that "the term does not necessarily signify mass killings... More often it refers to a co-ordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight."

"The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion," Lemkin wrote in 'Genocide - A Modern Crime.'

The CPPCG went through two drafts before it was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. Earlier versions of the Convention included means to establish an international court and many definitions reflecting the substance of genocide, including a provision that condemned forcible citizenship. These parts were removed in the final draft. According to Canada's representative at the UN, the Canadian stance was that, "a more limited interpretation of the term 'genocide' would be preferable." Objections primarily from Canada and the US eviscerated the final version of the Convention.

In his book 'The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada,' Chrisjohn writes that even in its watered-down form, Canada is in violation of the CPPCG. Residential schools were run from the 1800s to the 1990s where children were removed, by force of law, from their communities and sent to institutions run by the churches.

In the words of Scott, residential schools were designed to "take the Indian out of the Indian."

Chrisjohn explains that under the CPPCG, residential schools were clearly genocidal according to Article Two, which defines genocide as: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

"a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

"I could argue all five, but the fifth one is a slam dunk," says Chrisjohn. "There is absolutely no way Canada can deny that they legislated the transference of children from their parents to the church authorities."

On May 21, 1952, when Canada's Parliament ratified the Convention, bringing it into the Canadian Criminal Code, they omitted sections b) and e) of Article Two. A further amendment in 1985 removed section d). It was around this time when accounts of the involuntary sterilization of Native women began to surface.

"They left out three-fifths of International law," says Chrisjohn, "that specifically would make in Canadian law what they were doing to First Nations people, from 1948 until the present day, the crime of genocide."

"It's not a coincidence. This is all too convenient."

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

At first glance, a new international agreement seemed to bring about a means of holding those who commit genocide accountable.

"In the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)... there is provision for establishing International Criminal Courts in which Crimes Against Humanity could be brought to an impartial judge," Chrisjohn explains, referring to the Covenant passed in 1966 that came into force in 1976. The covenant affirmed that participating countries could not "derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of the [CPPCG]."

"Canada couldn't allow that to happen, so in the Covenant there is a little provison..." says Chrisjohn. "That is, minority populations of a country are considered citizens of the country and when the country does something to its own citizenry, that's considered an internal matter...So a citizen cannot sue his own country in international court."

"In 1960, with nobody having asked for it, Indians were declared to be citizens of Canada. It wasn't an act of generosity. They were already working on the [ICCPR] and they wanted to make sure that the Indians wouldn't be able to go to an international court and bring a charge against the Canadian government."

"All Canadians were made 'genociders' by their government," states Chrisjohn pointing to Article Three of the CPPCG that also defines complicity in genocide as a crime. "You have a responsibility as a citizen of the world to know what your government is up to and resist [their] unlawful actions," he says. "The crime of genocide is being covered up. Now it's a double crime."

Pierre Loiselle asks why the Canadian government omitted over half of the Genocide Convention before making it law.

Psychiatry and Human Rights

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 00:38:06 +0000

Bush's Drug Plan for America

A protester in front of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer's Association (PhRMA) in Washington DC in May. photo: Pierre Loiselle

On May 2nd, dissident mental health professionals joined forces with people who have been psychiatrized to protest human rights abuses in mental health treatments and what they call the collusion between the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatric profession. Targeting the pharmaceutical industry's lobby group PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer's Association) in Washington D.C., they sounded the alarm on a Bush Administration plan to screen all United States citizens for mental illness.

The screening initiative is the outcome of the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, a year-long task force which concluded by making recommendations to improve the mental health of Americans, including mandatory nation-wide screening of individuals for mental illness. The screening is to be based on the Texas Medication Algorithm Program (TMAP), established in 1995 - coincidentally when Bush was the governor of Texas. TMAP is designed to standardize treatments for various diagnoses ranging from schizophrenia to depression and its use and influence has spread to over 9 states.

In states where TMAP has been implemented, critics say it has disastrous consequences for patients, while increasing profits for the pharmaceutical companies. David Oaks is the Director of Mindfreedom Support Coalition International, an umbrella group bringing together the voices of those harmed by the psychiatric model of mental health. He explains that TMAP "actually funnels people to the most expensive drugs first; then if those don't work, maybe they'll try the generics, and then next up is electroshock." TMAP recommendations not only suggest using new drugs that are, by their nature, the most experimental, but it excludes methods of treatment such as therapy, exclusively prescribing bio-medical intervention.

"They are already going into schools," said Oaks. "They are testing the kids and then pressuring (them) to be on the psych drugs but they've also called for this program to apply to every single adult, for instance through your general health care practitioner. In New York City already, physicians are being trained to ask certain mental health questions." The May-June 2005 issue of Mother Jones reported that "in one month, Texas put 19,000 kids on atypical antipsychotics. Half were overmedicated: and as many lacked a diagnosis that validated the drugs' use in the first place."

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) have made their allegiances clear on this issue, boasting of their role in suppressing attention to TMAP and Bush's screening of America. An article that appeared the APA's membership newsletter stated that the "mainstream media have not touched the story, in part thanks to the APA's work, for which the [Bush] administration is appreciative."

Allen Jones is a whistleblower who lost his job as an Investigator in Pennsylvania at the Office of Inspector General. In a legal affidavit, he reported that "the pharmaceutical industry has methodically compromised our political system at all levels and has systematically infiltrated the mental health service delivery system of this nation." He publicly exposed extensive pharmaceutical bribery used to bring TMAP into legislation and warned about how "the pervasive manipulation of clinical trials, the non-reporting of negative trials and the cover-up of debilitating and deadly side-effects render meaningful informed consent impossible by persons being treated with these drugs."

Informed consent is also being disregarded in many cases. In many states, government agencies can force people to take medication. In some documented cases, children were removed from the custody of their biological parents and forcibly drugged for months in state-run mental institutions. The parents had refused to place their child on medication.

"People suffer from real problems and struggle daily with mental health issues, making mental health an important priority," said Sandy Ingram at the protest outside of PhRMA. "But this initiative ensures individuals are denied a full range of treatment options while furthering human rights violations in the name of psychiatric treatment."

» British Medical Journal: Bush Plans to Screen Whole US Population for Mental Illness

» MindFreedom Online

» Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

» American Psychiatric Association

The Bush Administration has plans to screen all Americans for mental illness. Pierre Loiselle finds critics asking questions about the role of the pharmacos.

Mustard Gas and Seismic Blasts

Mon, 22 Dec 2003 21:15:44 +0000

The threat of chemical dumps in Atlantic waters

Corroded barrels of mustard gas like those scattered along the Atlantic coast.

The coastal waters of Atlantic Canada have been polluted with a legacy of chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry. The primary culprits include the Canadian, American and British militaries, which have obsessed over our safety from alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while the communities and eco-systems of the Atlantic region have been under attack from the very same weapons of mass destruction since the 1940’s. Now, with corporations being given permission to do seismic testing in Atlantic waters, the impact of these dumpsites may be compounded.

Canada has played an integral role in the development and production of biological and chemical weapons. "Almost every biological agent that you hear talked about in today's news as a threat from terrorists and that kind of thing, was actually first developed (and) thought of here in Canada," says John Bryden, former journalist and editor at the Toronto Star who is currently an MP from Ontario. His 1989 book "Deadly Allies" exposed Canada's pioneering role in the development of chemical and biological weapons. Bryden also chronicled the delivery of 2800 tons of mustard gas from Stormont Chemicals in Cornwall, Ontario to where it was dumped off the Coast of Sable Island in 1946.

After the Second World War, Canada and Britain declared much of their chemical and biological stockpiles as surplus and dumped them both inland and in the ocean. There is an estimated one billion pounds of mustard gas and related chemical weapons munitions at the bottom of the world's oceans, but more insidiously, there is a large number of dumpsites that were never officially recorded. According to Cape Breton resident Myles Kehoe, who formed Myles and Associates to actively bring attention to the perils of oil and gas exploration over military dumpsites, even the Department of National Defence is unsure as to what lies on the ocean floor. "They don't have a clue where the stuff is, or even what's down there, it's terrible."

Recently, some efforts have been made to address the problem. The military has created the Warfare Agent Disposal Project "to identify and assess water and land-based sites where chemical and/or biological warfare agents may still exist as a result of past defence activities." Last year, an engineering firm contracted by the Department of National Defence, identified 1,200 munitions disposal sites along the Atlantic coast including 70 locations with unexploded weaponry and the possibility of mustard gas.

The Bras d'Or Lake region on Cape Breton Island was also used as a dumping ground for mustard gas, but to what extent is unknown. There are two locations in the lake itself that are known to have been disposal sites for mustard gas, Johnston and Kempt Head. These sites are close to two Mi'kmaq communities that have always depended on the fish in that area for their survival.

Mustard gas and the by-products resulting from its breakdown are carcinogenic and teratogenic and many people are concerned about the impact of this toxic waste on both human health and marine eco-systems. Aboriginal communities along the Bras D'or Lakes, and on Cape Breton Island in general, have the highest cancer rates and the lowest life expectancy in the country.

Senior DFO scientists have been baffled by the increasing death rates among young cod dying off the coast of Nova Scotia, reporting to the Chronicle Herald in December 2000 that: "it's a mystery; a unique phenomenon that I don't think has been observed anywhere else in the North Atlantic." John Bryden suspects that "there might be a connection between it [the mustard gas] and the mysterious disappearance of the cod stocks [considering] the huge amount of munitions now known to have been disposed of and the number of sites involved." The Minister of Fisheries reported in June 2002 that the "DFO has not conducted any studies on the toxicity or behavior of mustard gas in water as DFO's labs are not equipped to deal with such highly toxic substances."

This month, fishers and environmentalists have raised grave concerns about the decision to allow oil companies to employ seismic tests off the Coast of Cape Breton in their search for oil. "Seismic guns generate sound waves strong enough to penetrate the earth's surface two to five km down and back again–these are powerful blasts. There is relatively little known information about the impact of a sound wave passing through barrels of chemicals that have been lying on the ocean floor for 50 years," explains Mark Butler from the Ecology Action Center. "When there is uncertainty or lack of knowledge, the precautionary principle tells us 'don't do it'. It would be wise for oil companies to pay heed to that."

The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NSOPB) regulates petroleum resource exploration permits. They do not believe that seismic blasting poses a threat to human or marine health, nor have they explored the impact of seismic testing on chemical and biological contaminants in munitions dumps. They have granted licenses for Corridor Resources and Hunt Oil to engage in oil and natural gas exploration. The Department of National Defence has informed the C-NSOPB of the locations of known dumpsites with the intent that these areas be avoided. According to Hunt Oil's Environmental Impact Assessment of June 2003, the Sydney Bight is home to 16,000 tons of mustard, 7,500 tons of arsenic containing the blistering agent lewisite, and a few barge loads of nerve gas. Nevertheless, the company plans to continue exploratory activities. Hunt Oil has also announced its intentions of conducting seismic blasting over a known dumpsite north of the Magdellan Islands. "That's pretty hard to believe that they're allowed to do that and nobody is stopping them," says Kehoe.

The threat of chemical dumps in Atlantic waters
The coastal waters of Atlantic Canada have been polluted with a legacy of chemical, biological and nuclear weaponry. The primary culprits include the Canadian, American and British militaries, which have obsessed over our safety from alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while the communities and eco-systems of the Atlantic region have been under attack from the very same weapons of mass destruction since the 1940's. Now, with corporations being given permission to do seismic testing in Atlantic waters, the impact of these dumpsites may be compounded.
- by Pierre Loiselle -