The Dominion - development

Canada's International Cop Out

dawn — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:28:20 +0000

Former head of Ontario Provincial Police named Minister of International Co-operation

MONTREAL—On July 4, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Julian Fantino, the former head of the Ontario Provincial Police, as his new Minister of International Cooperation. The arrival of an ex-cop at the top of Canada's international development portfolio seems like a fitting symbol for the overall direction of Canadian foreign policy during the Harper government's reign.

A policeman for more than 40 years, Fantino rose steadily through the ranks, serving first as chief of police in London, Ontario, then the former York Region, and later Toronto, before being named as the Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner in 2006. Fantino's career then went political, and he was elected the Member of Parliament for Vaughn in November, 2010, and was re-elected in May, 2011.

Throughout his career, Fantino has been involved in a considerable number of controversies. Perhaps most famously, Fantino oversaw the harsh repression of Toronto residents and anti-G20 protesters in the Ontario capital city in June of 2010.

Enzo DiMatteo, associate news editor at Now Magazine, covered Fantino's career for over more than 20 years, and coined the term "the OPP's top dick" to describe the province's former head cop.

"When you think of Julian Fantino you have to understand that there wasn't a microphone that he didn't like. He was constantly in the spotlight," DiMatteo told The Dominion. "He was very much his own man, very much did his own thing, very much didn't really care about civilian oversight… He was viewed as a bit of a cop's cop, but I think he was just a stubborn fellow who really didn't have much time for anybody's point of view, other than his own, quite frankly."

The new International Cooperation minister hasn't always placed cooperation at the forefront, especially when it pertains to cops killing civilians. Fantino's name is on the docket of a case expected to appear before the Supreme Court of Canada in 2013, regarding how police take notes at crime scenes. The families of Levi Shaeffer and Douglas Minty, both of whom were killed by officers during Fantino's days as top dick at the OPP, have used the courts to try and prevent police from having their crime scene notes vetted by lawyers before they're written.

Rachelle Sauve, from the Coalition Justice for Levi campaign, agrees with DiMatteo's description.

"The modus operandi of a man who is very much a police officer, and who...has gotten very comfortable with a certain level of impunity that he still gets to act out [in] moving away from that old role, leaves me in a very uncomfortable feeling position regarding what sort of aid and development we are going to bring through CIDA while he is in office," Sauve told The Dominion.

Nation-to-nation relations have not been Fantino's strongest suit. Fantino's fame as a bully exploded with the release of wiretapped conversations between himself and Mohawk activist Shawn Brant in 2007.

In the spring and summer of that year, when Mohawks at Tyendinaga repeatedly blocked CN Rail lines, Fantino called Brant to let him know what his future would hold if he continued to work with his community to defend the land.

"And you know what I don’t wanna I don’t wanna get on your bad side but you’re gonna force me to do everything I can within your community and everywhere else to destroy your reputation," Fantino told Brant in a phone conversation which was illegally recorded by the OPP. Fantino later claimed he was unaware the line was tapped. Their conversation, which was later published by the CBC, continued:

Julian Fantino: You know if you pull this off I’m liable to say that your your issues are are are are critical and they’re important and and I’ll speak to that but uh if you don’t then I’m gonna go the other way and I’m gonna say that you’re just destroying and you’re abusing you’re using the people and you’re you’re actually being a mercenary about it using the suicide of children and all those those legitimate uh issues and you don’t want that because I think I can I can I can play the media routine like you do

Shawn Brant: Hey Mister Fantino uh

Julian Fantino: Right

Shawn Brant: I I put two of my own babies in the ground um

Julian Fantino: I’m sorry

Far from his checkered past of politicized police raids in poor communities, and threats of ruining the reputation of activists, Fantino's first statement as Minister of International Cooperation aimed for a kinder, gentler message.

"I look forward to continuing the good work already done by CIDA around the world," said the newly-appointed minister. "In particular the efforts to save the lives of mothers, children, and newborns as part of Canada's Muskoka Initiative."

The first male to hold the position since Don Boudria left his post in 1997, Fantino will oversee an international cooperation ministry with a growing emphasis on policing and police training.

"Maybe it's fitting that we have a police officer—a former police officer—running the aid agency now, kind of playing the good cop to the military's bad cop as far as global order is concerned," said Nik Barry-Shaw, who co-authored a recent book on Canadian non-governmental organizations titled Paved with Good Intentions. "One of the kind of rough titles that we had for the book was...Good Cops of Global Capitalism. That's kind of the role, putting the human face on things that are fundamentally pretty ugly."

Canada is deeply involved with police training around the world, but it is the RCMP's ongoing role in training Haitian police forces has come under perhaps the most intense public scrutiny.

"A large part of what was...listed as aid to Haiti was in fact funding for police training in Haiti, and that was done with RCMP officers who were down there to train their Haitian counterparts in the arts of close quarter combats," Barry-Shaw told The Dominion.

RCMP training of Haitian police was happening at a time when there were regular raids of neighbourhoods that supported deposed president Jean Bertrand Aristide. Some of these raids ended in civilian massacres carried out by police. More recently, the RCMP have become involved in training Mexican police.

Fantino's appointment followed the announcement of former Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda's resignation. Oda will leave her post as MP of Durham, Ontario, on July 31.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Twitter @dawn_.

Fantino

Saving the Land, Saving History

Tim McSorley — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 06:11:25 +0000

Questions of archeological and spiritual significance rally community to protect Beaver Pond Forest

OTTAWA—On the last day of the first month of the UN-declared Year of the Forests, clear-cutting began on the Beaver Pond Forest (BPF), a section of the sacred and ecologically-unique South March Highlands (SMH) in the west end of Ottawa. Since January 31, 2011, 100-year-old trees have been cut, animals have died, and the living legacy of a potentially 10,000-year-old cultural site is being destroyed.

All this is occurring despite broad-based opposition from a coalition of local residents and community associations throughout the city, Algonquin First Nations communities, and several high-profile national organizations like the Sierra Club Canada and the David Suzuki Foundation.

According to Paul Renaud of South March Highlands-Carp River Conservation Inc (SMHCRC), the SMH is “the last wilderness area inside the urban boundary of Ottawa. It’s an area that’s incredibly biodiverse—it is home to 20 documented species-at-risk. If we cannot protect a small forest that’s unique in the world, [one] that has all these strong and compelling reasons to protect it, what hope do we have for all the other places that are vital to the maintenance of the environment that we require?”

The BPF section of the SMH is being cut in order to turn the area into a subdivision built by KNL Developments, a partnership between Urbandale Corporation and Richcraft Homes. Last-ditch efforts, such as two Algonquin warriors chaining themselves to trees, a sit-in at the mayor’s office, and about 20 activists forming a circle around a tree cutting machine, were the latest in a 30-year fight to protect the forest.

“The [BPF] clear-cutting is a violation of Algonquin law,” said Bob Lovelace, former Co-Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation. Lovelace, along with Daniel Bernard of the Amikwabe (Beaver) Clan, chained themselves to trees in an effort to stop the clearcutting.

“What we did was a natural response [to] the violence that is actually carried out against Algonquin First Nations, but also against the actual living things in there,” said Bernard. “The hundreds of thousands of animals that are actually living there and hibernating, this is their homes.”

The city is required by its Official Plan to acquire and protect environmentally sensitive areas, but says it does not have the money to do so in the case of BPF. Concerned residents of the area came up with a tentative stewardship plan to buy the land, which the outgoing city council considered as an option, but after a fall 2010 municipal election and with the developers not wanting to sell, the new council gave final approval to the development, saving a mere 80-metre-wide wildlife corridor to link natural areas on either side of the subdivision.

Before the cutting began, revered Algonquin elder Grandfather William Commanda declared, “This is a living temple, a place of Manitou, a special place of nature, and that precious reality also demands immediate protection and reverence.”

Spurred by Commanda’s words, Bernard led a one-day sacred fire ceremony at the forest in mid-January 2011, and a few days later, on January 19, he started a sacred fire at an entry point to the forest, a fire that burned for 11 days and was tended around the clock.

Bernard also held a four-day sacred fire at Queen’s Park in February, taking the message to the doorstep of the provincial government, who many felt had the responsibility to issue a stop-work order to allow for further archeological studies of the forest.

An archeological assessment for the developers was done by archeologist Nick Adams in 2003, as part of the approval process for the subdivision.

Between 11,000 and 9,000 years ago, the BPF area was an island, while much of what is now Ottawa was beneath the Champlain Sea.

Dr Robert McGhee, past President of the Canadian Archeological Association and recipient of the Massey Medal of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, conducted a review of Adams's assessment in 2010 and found what he termed a "fatal flaw": in his study, Adams had dismissed any potential for historical, pre-European-contact archeology on the site. Another review, led by a prominent local archeologist Dr Marcel Laliberte, echoed McGhee's concern and called for further study to be done in the area.

In addition, according to Renaud, “In 2005 [archeologist] Ken Swayze published a report showing a significant find adjacent to the KNL property that is estimated to be 10,000 years old.”

The city and province both have legal processes to stop the cutting and order more studies, but neither has acted on any of the post-2004 information, and each states that it is up to the other level of government.

The most recent archeological development is a February 13, 2011, paper from American historian/archeoastronomer William Sullivan, who judges a very high probability that the SMH could be a World Heritage Site, based on its characteristics and an analysis of a circle of stones found in the forest in 2010.

Ottawa is situated on the Kitchissippi (Ottawa) River, which starts over 1,000 kilometres northwest of the city and serves as the Ontario/Quebec provincial border as it flows down to the St Lawrence River. The lower part of the river’s watershed is recognized by many as the unceded and unsurrendered traditional territory of the Algonquin.

The government has a “duty to consult” with the Algonquin under Section 35 of the Canadian Constitution, as well as under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The courts’ interpretation of the constitutional duty is that the government must uphold the honour of the Crown in consulting with Aboriginals—this responsibility does not rest with the developers. The province, on the other hand, has not consulted at all, and the city has only consulted in efforts to foster dialogue between the developers and the “Algonquins of Ontario.”

The “Algonquins of Ontario” (AOO), who are participating in a land claims process, do not represent all Algonquins in Ontario. Five eastern Ontario Algonquin First Nations not part of AOO sent letters to the government, asserting their own right to consultation, but they were ignored. Even Commanda’s letters to the city and province were only met with generic responses, despite his key position among the Algonquin people and the fact that he was awarded the Key to the City of Ottawa in 2006.

The fact that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities are uniting over the protection of BPF makes it similar to other instances of resistance to development projects in eastern and southern Ontario over the past few years. This includes protests against a highway through the Red Hill Valley in Hamilton; a dump (Site 41) in Simcoe County, north of Toronto, that threatened the underground water supply; a business park development in Hanlon Creek, Guelph; and uranium exploration in Robertsville, about an hour east of Ottawa.

Shared characteristics of these battles include efforts over many years at dialogue with government (without much success), followed by direct actions in a final effort to stop imminent environmental destruction.

Mireille Lapointe, who became Co-Chief of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation midway through the opposition to the uranium exploration in their territory, has come to see a bigger picture at work in these situations. “I think that the new colonialism is corporate colonialism, and we are all under this corporate colonialism," said Lapointe. "Where we [Aboriginal people] have experienced colonialism over a long period of time, I think non-Aboriginal people are now experiencing this colonialism and they’re realizing that the laws that are on the books are not really protecting them nor the environment that they want to protect, and I think that a lot of people are bewildered and wondering how this could happen.”

For more information on the efforts to save the South March Highlands, please see www.ottawasgreatforest.com, www.southmarchhighlands.ca, and www.union-algonquin-union.com.

Greg Macdougall is active in education, decolonization and community/activist infrastructure initiatives in Ottawa. His writings, including a printable Aboriginal Understanding booklet, can be found at www.EquitableEducation.ca.

Feather for Beaver Pond Forest

Beaver Pond Forest Drum Circle

Whose Woods These Are

Moira Peters — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 05:08:00 +0000

Land defenders celebrate a year since Hanlon Creek occupation

OCCUPIED NEUTRAL TERRITORY (GUELPH)—The struggle to defend the Hanlon Creek Wetland Complex (HCWC) against developers and the city of Guelph has been ongoing for close to a decade. Last summer, from July 27 to August 15, this struggle culminated in a 19-day defensive land occupation just south of Guelph, and resulted in a $5 million Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP) suit against five people—myself among them. We were charged with conspiracy, interference with economic relations inducing breach of contract, trespass, nuisance, and intimidation. The Court recognized our struggle by awarding us an injunction against development, which strengthened a popular direct-action campaign to stop development and challenge the city's policies of greenfield development (development of a green space ecosystem, as opposed to redevelopment) and sprawl.

What drove people to stand against the city to prevent development around the HCWC forest? Here is a look at some features of the land that have motivated us. Perhaps you will recognize some of these features in the land around you.

The Struggle to defend the HCWC did not end with the May 2009 occupation. On May 7, 2010, a protest and disruption was held outside of Carson Reids Homes, Astrid J. Clos, Van Harten Surveyors and Guelph City Hall. The three companies are major contributors to sprawling developments in and around Guelph. On May 25, 2010,   City Hall approved a $3 million contract with Capital Paving, a Guelph-based aggregate company, for clearing, grading and servicing one-quarter of the Hanlon Creek site formerly occupied by land defenders. As engines start on the HCWC, a new chapter in the struggle to defend the land and halt the sprawl begins...

Matthew Lowell is rooted in occupied Neutral Territory.

Hanlon Creek Essay

Hanlon Creek Essay 1

Hanlon Creek Essay 2

Hanlon Creek Essay 3

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Hanlon Creek Essay 7.5

Hanlon Creek Essay 8

Hanlon Creek Essay 9

Case Closed?

Moira Peters — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:20:53 +0000

Site 41 resistance seeks revocation of environmental permit

WATERLOO, ON—The “People’s Fire” has been allowed to burn to ashes at the 150-day-old protest camp on 2nd Concession Road in Simcoe County, across from the proposed Site 41 landfill development 45 kilometres east of Blue Mountain, Ontario.

Site 41 sits on top of the Alliston aquifer, which contains some of the world’s purest groundwater and is connected with water sources across Southern Ontario, including Georgian Bay and the Oak Ridges Moraine.

For the protesters, many small victories have been achieved; still, this community demonstrates vigilance in its efforts to ensure a landfill is never built on the property.

September 22, 2009 will remain lodged in the memories of everyone involved in the Site 41 struggle as the day Simcoe County Council voted 26-3 in favour of cancelling the proposed garbage dump project.

However, those who remained encamped until October 20 (when they decided to shut down the protest camp for pre-winter agricultural preparations) note that while the current project has been called off, Council voted 22-7 against a motion to have the Ministry of the Environment’s Certificate of Approval (CofA) rescinded. The defeat of this second motion raises doubts about Council’s sincerity in their disapproval of the controversial dump project.

A communiqué from those who kept vigil at the site after the Sacred Fire was allowed to burn down in September was printed in a recent edition of the Tekawennake News. It declared: “The struggle has been so long, so hard and the most current victory so tangible, so close, that it seems unforgivable to cast any doubt on the enthusiasm so freely offered by the media and politicians.”

The letter continues, “First and most pressing, the CofA is still in effect and its power cannot be underestimated... This is a very real danger.”

Rejecting the current CofA would force any newly-proposed developments to undertake a new environmental impact assessment process. This was a process which, for this contested garbage dump development, took more than 20 years to complete, and was loaded with well-documented political pressure. By not annulling the CofA, Council leaves open the possibility for future development of the site—either for the County or a private developer who purchases the land.

Those writing from the People’s Fire insist they will continue to protest, as their communiqué states, “Until such a time as the Certificate of Approval is revoked for good.”

They acknowledge that, in the face of massive public relations spending by the County, they "need more than ever to maintain a strong presence and not to suddenly fade away in the face of our first victories.” They warn that “there is a very real danger of privatization...” and that without unrelenting pressure, another 30-year-long battle against development could take place, “This time at the hands of a faceless, multinational corporation instead of a local, elected County Council.”

Council has budgeted $250,000 for public relations consultations in an effort at “cleansing the fallout of the Site 41 debacle,” wrote Travis Mealing of the Midland Mirror.

While the debate around the PR costs continues, County environmental services director, Rob McCullogh, insists that restoring the land that was disrupted due to construction of garbage holding cells would be too expensive. The high-end estimate for recovery at the site is $368,000.

Refusing restoration means damage which occurred, according to the Council of Canadians, when cell construction commenced in violation of County Council approval processes, will not be reversed.

County Warden, Tony Guergis, maintains that the County no longer seeks to build a landfill on the site. However, Guergis’ sincerity is also being called into question; soon after he was elected, Guergis changed his stark opposition to the dump to a position of strong support. Meanwhile, County CAO Mark Aitken recently asked, in reference to removing the infrastructure that was built to support a dump site, “Why would [the County] remove all those things when you’re not sure if they have a use in the future?”

While the protest camp itself is no longer active, the campaigns for ecological and social justice continue. The "Restore and Revoke" campaign is working toward having the CofA cancelled and ensuring that the land is restored to a state which is as near its pre-disruption state as possible. A campaign is also underway to have the mischief and intimidation charges dropped for the 17 protesters arrested at Site 41. Only Indigenous protesters were charged with intimidation.

United by the responsibility of local environmental and community protection, and by the direct actions they took to protect the land and the water from the project that the Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the UN General Assembly, Maude Barlow, calls “ill conceived,” the Site 41 resistance vows to persevere until the permanent restoration and protection of this precious land is achieved.

Dan Kellar is a geography PhD student in Waterloo and an analytical banner painter with AW@L.

Site 41 Garbage Drink Cropped

“Build Back Better,” Says Dr. Paul Farmer, UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti: Part I

WadnerPierre — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:14:39 +0000

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By: Wadner Pierre

Since 1983, Dr. Paul Farmer has been working in the Cange locality of the Central department of Haiti. His organization Zanmi Lasante (Partners in Health) has won international recognition for its work. In August, former US President Bill Clinton, currently the UN Special Envoy for Haiti, appointed Farmer as his Deputy Special Envoy.

In early September, Farmer toured Haiti for the first time in his official capacity with the UN. The stated goal of the mission, whose motto is “build back better,” is to explore short and long term solutions to Haiti’s ongoing economic crisis. Haiti’s educational system, environmental problems and agricultural productivity were addressed in discussions with numerous sectors.

Farmer explained:

“We are not coming to dictate to people who have already been working in Haiti, but we can coordinate their work to make for better results. During my five days I met and listened to everybody, the President, the Prime Minister and other ministers in the government. And I met with the private sector, MINUSTAH, NGOs and the farmers.” Farmer stressed, “When I talk about the private sector, I don’t mean big business people only, but the ‘Madanm Sara’ [street merchants], the peasants who represent an incredible workforce for this country. We need to sustain them. And we also need to make sure that these people find capital to grow their crops and small businesses. And finally, their children should be able to go to school.”

However, Dr. Farmer noted, “This is not a political mission, but a mission to help people build back better Haiti. Haiti has its own potentialities and we can use them to develop Haiti.”

A Tale of Two Sites

Moira Peters — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:48:50 +0000

The HCBP occupation and Site 41

SUDBURY, ON—At the end of a summer of activity, a 675-acre tract of land in the south end of Guelph rests relatively quiet. It has won a one-year break from development. It remains, however, a proposed construction site for what the City of Guelph is calling the "Hanlon Creek Business Park" (HCBP). The land itself is home to a rare Old Growth forest; a Provincially Significant Wetland, the Paris-Galt moraine; a vital drinking water recharge zone; and a threatened species called the Jefferson Salamander.

A three-hour drive north of Guelph, another piece of land has seen a lot of action this summer. This place, in Simcoe County, is called Site 41, and is the location for a proposed garbage dump. It sits directly above the Alliston Aquifer, an important source of drinking water in the area, one which international scientists claim provides some of the cleanest drinking water in the world.

The two sites have seen comparable public outcry over the respective proposals for their development; the resulting protests have also brought people together to successfully oppose the developments.

The HCBP in Guelph has been met with much grassroots opposition over the fact old growth trees would be cut and meadows that surround the forest would be paved over, stopping rainfall from percolating into the groundwater.

An old growth tree is one that is 150 years or older, and an old growth forest is one that has been left undisturbed for a similar period of time, allowing for the ecosystem to mature. On the site grows a Hop Hornbeam that is estimated to be between 500 and 600 years old, meaning it likely predates colonization of the western hemisphere. Beyond remaining one of the few forests of its kind in Southern Ontario, the site also provides the exact conditions necessary for the threatened Jefferson Salamander to breed.

As for its impact on water, the HCBP would be built alongside Tributary A, which runs into the Speed River and eventually the Grand River. Any sewage or industrial waste that leaches into the water in Guelph would be passed on to communities downstream, including Cambridge, Brantford and Six Nations, the largest Native reserve in Canada.

After months of city hall meetings, rallies and education campaigns, opposition to the HCBP was not heeded by the City of Guelph and it looked like construction of the HCBP was going to go ahead. This was thrown into question on July 27 when, in the early morning, about 60 people set up an occupation camp on the site, complete with a kitchen, shade structure and composting toilet system.

Meanwhile, in Simcoe County, the Site 41 protest camp had been set up since May 8, initiated by a group of Anishinabe Kweag (Anishinabe women) from Beausoleil First Nation. Vicki Monague was part of the initial group of campers and describes how the weekend camp-out turned into a permanent protest camp:

"May 8, 2009 was the day that we started the camp, and we lit a sacred fire there. At the end of the weekend, we were going to pack up and go home, but it was channeled to our fire keeper that the fire was lit in protection of the water and that purpose had not yet been completed, so we stayed. The fire has been burning now for 112 days (as of Aug 31)."

The Site 41 protest camp drew farmers from the surrounding area who joined with the Anishinabe people. The camp evolved into a blockade later in the summer when the warden of the township announced that trucks hauling garbage would arrive within a couple of weeks.

Local government bodies at both the HCBP and Site 41 have been pushing the developments. The City of Guelph owns about 60 per cent of the proposed HCBP lands and Simcoe County owns Site 41. Each has engaged aggressive legal means to bypass grassroots opposition and to see construction through.

In Guelph on the afternoon of July 31, a group of city representatives, employees, police and an intelligence officer delivered the files the city would use to support its motion for an injunction against the occupation and its lawsuit against several named and unnamed persons.

"You can't submit an injunction without a lawsuit, so the city filed for an injunction as well as a lawsuit," explains Sam Ansleis of the occupation. The lawsuit included allegations of "conspiracy, destruction of property, intimidation [and] extortion." The city was seeking $5 million in damages.

The lawsuit was quickly classified a SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) by the occupiers' lawyers.

“The people we showed this [to] were pretty disgusted by the fact that the city would use a SLAPP suit [to discourage public participation] against its own citizens,” said Ansleis.

Guelph City Council had agreed unanimously to launch the lawsuit and injunction following an in-camera council meeting. The suit named a local group, Land Is More Important Than Sprawl (LIMITS), which has been organizing around the HCBP. The group, however, has never been involved in the occupation.

"I don't think that it is unreasonable to assume that the city's intention in naming LIMITS was to create a rift between LIMITS and the occupation, since LIMITS was being implicated in a $5 million SLAPP suit arising from an occupation that they were not involved in," said Ansleis.

Accidentally, it seems, documents accompanying the lawsuit contained copies of correspondences from the Ministry of Natural Resources imploring the city to stop the construction of the HCBP and copies of gag orders against a researcher and a local neighbourhood group. These documents assisted the defendants in winning a counter-injunction against city construction on the lands.

Karen Farbridge, the mayor of Guelph, has come out in active support of the HCBP project, despite being elected on a "green" platform, where she names “clean water, clean air and clean parks” and “encourag[ing] public involvment” as being among her priorities.

Delays caused by the occupation, and the resulting injunction, have led the city to postpone construction until spring 2010. In its press release, the city and Mayor Farbridge are quoted as saying, "A handful of protesters have held our city hostage and ignored democratic processes."

Similarly, in Simcoe County, Tony Guergis was elected mayor of Springwater County in 2006, and during the election stated clearly that he would oppose Site 41. Upon later election in 2007 as Warden to Simcoe County, he oversaw waste management and became a proponent of Site 41. He claims that Site 41 would be a more technically sound site in comparison to the other landfills in the area that are equipped with "inferior engineering."

In response to the blockade and protest camp, some County Council executives launched a lawsuit naming two of the Anishinabe Kweag, seeking damages of $80,000 per week in lost time. "[W]e were estimating that they were going after us for about half a million," said Monague.

On August 25, county council voted to drop the lawsuit and to instate a one-year moratorium on construction at Site 41.

When questioned about whether or not construction would continue at Site 41 next year, Guergis pointed to the cost of renewing permits and winterizing, along with the considerable public pressure, as reasons for not going ahead. "It seems an impossible situation to get approval to reopen the site 12 months from now."

He also pointed out that "100 per cent" of the houses in the county put garbage at the curb every week, implying that those in the community are to blame for the need to open a new dump site.

"I think we have to stop and say we are going to wait for direction from those dealing with the issues. So we will look to the people on the ground and see what their decisions are regarding their own garbage," he said.

Guergis claims that Site 41 would be used almost exclusively for residential garbage, but when pressed further about corporate waste, he stated, “Anyone could pay to dump there.”

Guergis has made statements characterizing people at Site 41 as simply not wanting a dump being constructed “in their backyards.” However, the people themselves cite different reasons for wanting to protect the site.

"I was raised traditionally, raised to do ceremonies for the water, and raised with the inherent responsibility and duty to protect the water for the seven generations to come," Monague explained. "I did what I did for the water. Not just for me, but because we could all use a little less contamination."

On September 22, county council voted to permanently cancel the plans for Site 41. Only then was the sacred fire at the protest camp extinguished.

In Guelph, Ansleis sees the delayed construction of the HCBP as a victory. "We were successful in our goal; our goal was to stop construction of the culvert for this summer. The project will continue in the spring, so resistance will continue in the spring."

She added: "This resistance has not only been about the the Hanlon Creek Business Park. It is about this kind of development that is taking place all over Turtle Island."

Monague also recognizes that, while a victory at Site 41 has been achieved, the issue is not resolved. "The important thing now is that, even though we got the moratorium, the work definitely is not done. I know that many of us will be working to make sure that the water is protected.

"This partnership [that we have experienced around Site 41] between native and non-native communities is pretty much historic. I don't remember a partnership like this ever happening around here and i think it is going to last for a long, long time."

Shailagh Keaney is from Sudbury, in occupied Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory.

To read more, see For the Water by Dan Kellar and Alex Hundert, and "Protect Mother Earth, Don't Settle for Less" by Adam Lewis.

Site 41 Sunrise

Site 41 - Water Ceremony

Occupation to save Old Growth Forest in Guelph

Tim McSorley — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:00:42 +0000

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Residents of Guelph, ON, have been occupying the proposed site of the Hanlon Creek Busines Park. The site is also home to Guelph's Old Growth Forest, and endangers local wetlands and the Jefferson Salamander, on Ontario's official threatened species list.

The occupation began on Monday, July 27th. They were notified that they would be evicted as of July 30th at 4pm, but the time came and went and protestors are still there.

More information is available on their blog at http://hcbpoccupation.wordpress.com, or contact them for interviews or more information at +15198206280, +15198206239 or hcbpoccupatio[at]gmail[dot]com. They are also inviting supporters to the site to lend a hand - a map with directions can be found on their website.

Photo by Sal Jefferson

The Steep Price of Power

Moira Peters — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:50:09 +0000

Colombian coal fuels Atlantic Canada, but at what cost?

LA GUAJIRA, COLOMBIA–In the Guajira, a remote northern region of Colombia, the human and environmental costs of coal extraction go beyond the climate crisis, and it is Atlantic Canadians who are fueling part of the demand for Colombia's mineral fuel.

Production at the Cerrejón coal mine started in 1976, and through the course of its operations it has come into conflict with Afro-Colombian and indigenous Wayuu communities, whose existence and cultures have long depended on the surrounding lands and rivers.

Their livelihoods are under constant threat because of the expansion of the mine, the largest of its kind in the world.

As the biggest exporter of Colombian Coal, Cerrejón counts Canadian utility companies Nova Scotia Power and New Brunswick Power amongst its clients.

The beginning of major imports of Colombian coal coincided with the closing of the last nationalized mines in Nova Scotia in 2001. The climate of fiscal austerity at the time compelled the Liberal-led federal government to view the mining operations as too expensive. Buying coal from overseas sources, such as the Cerrejón operation, was seen as a the more cost-effective strategy.

Colombia’s armed conflict has defined the country’s economic and social layout for over 40 years, resulting in arguably the worst humanitarian environment in South America. There are at least four million internally displaced persons within Colombia’s borders. The country also carries the dubious distinction of being the world's most dangerous country for unionized labour. Since 1991, over 2,300 unionists have been murdered with few charges laid in any of those murders.

As major economic players in a country whose elites are focused on attracting foreign investment, BHP Billiton, Anglo American and Xstrata operate the Cerrejón consortium, and enjoy a comfortable position of advantage over the local communities.

The companies orchestrated the destruction of the small Afro-Colombian town of Tabaco, without any attempt to facilitate a collective relocation for the dispossessed residents.

Leading up to Tabaco’s displacement, Cerrejon pursued a strategy of buying out individual property owners rather than negotiating with the community as a collective through their elected Committee to Relocate Tabaco. At the time of displacement in August 2001, 67 families out of 120 represented by the committee still had not received compensation.

According to the company, the community consultations and expropriations were carried out within the framework of the law and consent of the area's municipal seats.

An independent panel assessing the Cerrejón's consultation process earlier this year recommended that "It might be appropriate, furthermore, to continue to promote group as opposed to individual re-settlement, as is advocated in modern standards covering re-settlement."

The panel advised the companies to acquire land for the approximately 20 remaining families and that its development should be assisted by the companies.

The independent review recommendations show promise for improved practices in community relations, but for the remaining communities in the area, the fear of meeting a similar fate as Tabaco remains part of the hardship of dealing with the encroaching open-pit coal mine.

The suffocating dust from the operations, the pollution of the river that was once the life-blood of the villages, the lowering of the water table, the degradation of farmland and the harassment from mine-employed security forces serve as daily reminders that politicians and business leaders place profit before the well-being of people and the land.

As far as politicians and economic development technocrats are concerned, the ‘progress’ brought to the Guajira by the mine is measurable through indicators such as increased GDP and foreign investment, the creation of mining jobs, and public relations-boosting social spending by the Cerrejón Foundation, the charity arm of the company.

In reality, many of the best jobs have gone to outsiders and the investment in healthcare and education programming by the Cerrejón Foundation has occurred only in the Guajira’s main municipal areas of Riohacha and Barrancas, out of reach of the remote communities in the rural zones near the mine.

In the Cerrejón Environmental Impact Statement, the companies downplayed the Wayuu and Afro-Colombian cultures by claiming “The human settlements in the study area are not well developed... The only population along the railroad line is Uribia, which is a small indigenous community with a primitive infrastructure.”

Villagers from the Wayuu community of Tamaquitos, along with the Afro-Colombian communities of Chancleta, Roche, Patilla and the already destroyed Tabaco, worked hard to make their voices heard as they resist the advances of the mine.

"We’ve gone from being a productive community to a community of paupers,” said president of the Chancleta neighborhood council, Wilman Palmezano, "In the 1980s, the company started buying up land and today we have nowhere left to sow crops, nowhere to put our animals."

“Life was rich, we shared, and no one suffered because we shared what we had,” explained Emilio Pérez, a former resident of Tabaco. “But the last nine years we have had no land to work. We are displaced, and we have no lodging.”

Years of work to raise the profile of their struggle has started yielding results, and the community members can now count the mine’s unionized workforce among their allies. Despite already facing enormous struggles of their own, the workers of Sintracarbón, the national union of coal industry workers, insisted that the plight of the communities affected by the Cerrejón’s operations are indeed a concern for the workers, and the union succeeded in convincing the company to be at the table for future negotiations with communities concerning their land.

The villagers contest Cerrejón’s propaganda tagline “Coal for the world, progress for Colombia.”

“There’s been talk of coal for the world and progress for Colombia. If that is so, we ask, to what country do our towns of Chancleta, Roche and Tabaco belong?" asked Eder Arregoces, president of Chancleta’s community action council. "[Cerrejón] may be one of the largest coal mines in Latin America but most families here can eat only one meal a day," he said.

Solidarity from Atlantic Canada, via the Mining the Connections campaign, has sought to raise awareness among consumers of the coal and bring international attention to the strugging communities.

Suzanne MacNeil is a political science student and associate editor of Colombia Journal.

Cerrejón

Children from Tabaco

Myths for Profit: Canada's Role in Industries of War and Peace

Amy Miller — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:22:02 +0000

All Eyes On Bolivia

hillarybain — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:40:22 +0000

US espionage and aid

Since the election of Evo Morales, an indigenous peasant of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party, US involvement in Bolivia’s political sphere has come out of the shadows – if ever there were any idyllic illusions about US intervention in South American politics.

Recent allegations of spies at the American Embassy have the Bolivian media abuzz, and civil society and government alike enraged. Just last week, while strolling with my friend Ramiro in Cochabamba, we ran into an acquaintance of his who took notice of my fair complexion and blue eyes and warned him to be careful around North Americans. Ramiro organizes with Red Tinku, an autonomous group that is heavily involved with grassroots politics.

Ramiro laughed and said I wasn't "one of those gringas," but the woman took a while to be convinced - and rightly so. During the course of her life she has seen perpetual provocation from North American foreign policy that has recently come to a head.

At the end of January, Fulbright scholar Alex van Schaick and Peace Corps volunteers declared publicly that Vincent Cooper, a US diplomat, encouraged them to keep an eye on Cubans and Venezuelans while in Bolivia.

In mid-February, the Bolivian Vice Minister of Government Ruben Gamarra filed criminal charges against Cooper, who has since left Bolivia and may or may not be protected under diplomatic immunity. According to an agreement made February 13 between Philip Goldberg, the US ambassador to Bolivia, and Bolivian Foreign Relations Minister David Choquehuanca, Cooper will not be returning. Investigations against the US will continue, though, and will help determine the next steps to be taken.

On February 15, Alfredo Rada, Interior Minister of the Bolivian government, met with Goldberg to discuss the accusations of espionage. After three-and-a-half hours deemed "difficult" by employees of the government ministry, Rada and Goldberg confirmed the dissolution of the Development of Police Studies (ODEP), formerly known as the Special Operations Command (COPES).

ODEP was an intelligence organization working in parallel with the National Police, and received funding from the US. ODEP received approximately $350,000 per year for ´intelligence´ work. To date, there have been five intelligence organizations ostensibly protecting state security in Bolivia. In light of these allegations their activities will also be scrutinized.

Rada would not speak publicly at the meeting locale, but dramatically rushed journalists in state SUVs with sirens wailing to the now defunct ODEP headquarters, in the wealthy Zona Sur of La Paz.

"After this meeting with Philip Goldberg I am confident that the decision to dissolve COPES is the right one," said Rada once within the walled compound. He added that the dissolution of ODEP had to do with the "structural reorganization of the intelligence section of the National Police.”

"It's the first time as minister I've had to take such a step, and it is to ensure effective work of the National Police concerning crimes, and state security," Rada said.

When pressed for an explanation of how the dissolution of ODEP is related to charges of espionage against the US, Rada said that the matter of espionage is still under investigation and refused to elaborate. He did, however, stress the importance of maintaining good relations with the US, a statement which, in light of such serious allegations, may come as a surprise for MAS supporters who back the government's anti-imperialist agenda

Goldberg was even more reticent than Rada. In Spanish, heavily clad with an American accent, he said slowly and repeatedly, "Neither the embassy nor the United States government is involved with spying […] The majority of our help is against narco-trafficking and terrorism."

Goldberg's statement comes at a time of tense political relations between the US and Bolivia. On the same morning Rada and Goldberg met to discuss accusations of espionage, Morales publicly denounced the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the agency of supporting Bolivian opposition NGOs.

"The US agency offers money to NGOs on one condition – that they work and mobilize against the Bolivian government," said Morales.

Through both governmental and non-governmental avenues, North American interference in Bolivia is eerily reminiscent of the Cold War era, when the United States sought to undermine Southern governments who rejected the doctrine of free market capitalism.

The Human Rights Foundation, based in New York, recently wrote a letter to the Bolivian government stating that the country's new constitution is contrary to human rights, an accusation the Bolivian government refuted. The HRF website describes the organization's devotion "to defending human rights in the American hemisphere," but focuses almost exclusively on Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba, with brief mention of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

And despite this Fifth Ave, New York City, based organization's statement of commitment to human rights, they make no mention of Guantanamo Bay, of impunity in Guatemala, or of the treatment of indigenous peoples across the Americas.

Contrary to criticisms from the North, Morales did not design the new constitution-- a constitutional assembly comprised of a cross-section of Bolivian society developed it. In addition, two years into his term Morales still has widespread popular support, especially among the poor majority. However, Morales’ "decolonization" project has drawn the attention of US intelligence and aid to right-wing opposition like bees to nectar. As a taxi driver recently told me, "It's like a baby used to getting everything he wants. He is sucking on a candy, and then someone takes it away - of course he is going to kick and scream and cry."

For more information on the US undermining democracy in Bolivia, see Ben Dangl's Undermining Bolivia: A Landscape of Washington Intervention.

Mural In La Paz

Grass stains on Canada’s hands

hillarybain — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:28:58 +0000

Why are Canadians subsidizing a park built on razed Palestinian towns?

Walking through the peace and tranquility of ‘Canada Park’ with Israeli families picnicking around you, it’s nearly impossible to tell that you’re in the occupied West Bank, treading on the site of two destroyed and evicted villages from the 1967 war.

Established in 1973 through donations fundraised by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in Canada, Ayalon/Canada Park sits on top of the Palestinian villages of Imwas and Yalo, just off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Nearby, the Jewish settlement of Modi’in sits on top of the Palestinian village of Beit Nouba, also demolished in 1967. In Canada, the JNF, which enjoys charitable status, is fundraising for "renewal and development" of the park.

Ahmad Abu Gaush is an Imwas refugee and current head of the Imwas association, which demands the right to return for the displaced villagers. In a Ramallah coffee shop, he describes the terror and confusion of the early hours of June 5, 1967.

"My family left an hour before the soldiers reached us... We walked through the mountains for 32 kilometres with no food or water until we reached Ramallah," he says, adding that when the soldiers arrived they ordered everyone to leave the village, firing their weapons in the air.

Now 54, Abu Gaush was 14 when he was forced to flee his home. As we look at photos of Imwas before it was destroyed, he reminisces about the calm beauty of his village and how he feels Israel stole his childhood. He says that when his older brother tried to return with several hundred villagers a week after the war, they were stopped before they got to Beit Nouba and ordered back, after which he maintains the army destroyed what remained of the villages.

Growing up in Ramallah, Gaush says that West Bank Palestinians were able to visit the village until 1991. After the First Gulf War, however, the Israeli military erected a checkpoint, barring displaced villagers from visiting their land.

“When returning to the park, I had mixed feelings. It’s very hard, standing on the ruins of where you used to live while seeing people laughing, eating and enjoying themselves,” he says. Israel’s wall now encompasses the park and it has become virtually cut off to West Bank Palestinian access.

John Reynolds, a legal researcher with the independent Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, argues that displacement and destruction of the three villages located in the Latroun Valley constitutes a war crime. “The forcible transfer of people from their villages and the destruction of those villages are defined as a grave breach of the Geneva Convention, which is in the category of the most heinous war crimes,” he says.

While the maps of pre- and post-1967 Israel indicate otherwise, the JNF has argued that the park was within the borders of Israel in 1948, and donors are not informed of the political controversy surrounding the park. Al-Haq’s claim “is ludicrous and has no foundational basis in law,” Executive Director Joe Rabinovitch says, rejecting the statements and sworn affidavits of displaced villagers. Questioning the need for the park to acknowledge the existence of the villages, he maintains they were destroyed for security reasons. “There were Palestinians lobbing shells onto the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway,” he argues, though asked if this occurred in the 1948 or 1967 wars he answers, “I don’t know.”

Al-Haq has officially released a report about the Latroun Valley and Canada Park, contending that the Israeli government, JNF Canada and the Canadian government bear responsibility in violating international law and human rights. The report, which was shown to villagers on December 3, combines their affidavits, recorded testimony of soldiers serving during the displacement, maps, photos and legal analysis.

“The state of Israel bears the primary responsibility for the human rights violation. The JNF also has legal responsibilities as a charitable organization and NGO, not only to Canadian charitable laws but also international law,” Reynolds argues. He adds that the Canadian government also holds some responsibility because the money to build Canada Park came through government-subsidized tax exemptions.

Looking around the park, the only visible signs of previous inhabitants is a crumbling cemetery with Arabic engraved on the stones and a series of old stone village walls. On some of the walls at the entrance to the park are rows of plaques commemorating Canadian donors such as the City of Ottawa, the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department, former Ontario-premier Bill Davis, and Toronto city councillor Joe Pantalone, who helped make the park possible.

There is no visible sign postage about the villages that pre-date Canada Park or their inhabitants. Eitan Bronstein, however, is not surprised. Bronstein works with Zochrot, a mainly Jewish Israeli organization that educates the Israeli public on the creation of Palestinian Refugees in 1948 and 1967.

“For Israel, it’s better not to show the history because if you know the history, you have to take responsibility. It’s easier for Israel and the JNF to keep the myth about blooming the desert,” says Bronstein. Often, he adds, people get angry when confronted with this history.

Wandering Canada Park, many people I speak with have no idea that villages had ever existed or that the park is officially in the West Bank. Only one person from a nearby kibbutz knew the park's history, acknowledging many of the kibbutz residents boycotted the park because of the evictions, before returning to her picnic.

Jesse Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in Ramallah. He writes for NOW Magazine and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

A version of this article was originally published in the December 20, 2007 issue of Now Magazine

Canada Park 1

Canada Park 2

The Price of Aid

dru — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 18:53:43 +0000

I wrote an opinion piece for the most recent issue of This Magazine about the historical background of Canada's foreign aid, and what that means for current efforts to "reform" and increase foreign aid. It's available online, though for some reason it's missing include apostrophes and quotation marks.

Microcredit and Women's Poverty

dru — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:54:00 +0000

Granting this year's Nobel Peace Prize to microcredit guru Muhammad Yunus affirms neoliberalism.

DOLLARS & SENSE--The key to understanding why Grameen Bank founder and CEO Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize lies in the current fascination with individualistic myths of wealth and poverty. Many policy-makers believe that poverty is "simply" a problem of individual behavior. By rejecting the notion that poverty has structural causes, they deny the need for collective responses. In fact, according to this tough-love view, broad-based civic commitments to increase employment or provide income supports only make matters worse: helping the poor is pernicious because such aid undermines the incentive for hard work. This ideology is part and parcel of neoliberalism.

For neoliberals the solution to poverty is getting the poor to work harder, get educated, have fewer children, and act more responsibly. Markets reward those who help themselves, and women, who comprise the vast majority of microcredit borrowers, are no exception. Neoliberals champion the Grameen Bank and similar efforts precisely because microcredit programs do not change the structural conditions of globalization—such as loss of land rights, privatization of essential public services, or cutbacks in health and education spending—that reproduce poverty among women in developing nations.

What exactly is microcredit? Yunus, a Bangladeshi banker and economist, pioneered the idea of setting up a bank to make loans to the "poorest of the poor." The term "microcredit" reflects the very small size of the loans, often less than $100. Recognizing that the lack of collateral was often a barrier to borrowing by the poor, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in the 1970s to make loans in areas of severe rural poverty where there were often no alternatives to what we would call loan sharks.

His solution to these problems was twofold. First, Grameen Bank would hire agents to travel the countryside on a regular schedule, making loans and collecting loan repayments. Second, only women belonging to Grameen's "loan circles" would be eligible for loans. If one woman in a loan circle did not meet her obligations, the others in the circle would either be ineligible for future loans or be held responsible for repayment of her loan. In this way the collective liability of the group served as collateral.

The Grameen Bank toasts its successes: not only do loan repayment rates approach 95%, the poor, empowered by their investments, are not dependent on "handouts." Microcredit advocates see these programs as a solution to poverty because poor women can generate income by using the borrowed funds to start small-scale enterprises, often homebased handicraft production. But these enterprises are almost all in the informal sector, which is fiercely competitive and typically unregulated, in other words, outside the range of any laws that protect workers or ensure their rights. Not surprisingly, women comprise the majority of workers in the informal economy and are heavily represented at the bottom of its already-low income scale.

Women and men have different experiences with work and entrepreneurship because a gender division of labor in most cultures assigns men to paid work outside the home and women to unpaid labor in the home. Consequently, women's paid work is constrained by domestic responsibilities. They either work part time, or they combine paid and unpaid work by working at home. Microcredit encourages women to work at home doing piecework: sewing garments, weaving rugs, assembling toys and electronic components. Home workers—mostly women and children—often work long hours for very poor pay in hazardous conditions, with no legal protections. As progressive journalist Gina Neff has noted, encouraging the growth of the informal sector sounds like advice from one of Dickens' more objectionable characters.

Why then do national governments and international organizations promote microcredit, thereby encouraging women's work in the informal sector? As an antipoverty program, microcredit fits nicely with the prevailing ideology that defines poverty as an individual problem and that shifts responsibility for addressing it away from government policy-makers and multilateral bank managers onto the backs of poor women.

Microcredit programs do nothing to change the structural conditions that create poverty. But microcredit has been a success for the many banks that have adopted it. Of course, lending to the poor has long been a lucrative enterprise. Pawnshops, finance companies, payday loan operations, and loan sharks charge high interest rates precisely because poor people are often desperate for cash and lack access to formal credit networks. According to Sheryl Nance-Nash, a correspondent for Women's eNews, "the interest rates on microfinance vary between 25% to 50%." She notes that these rates "are much lower than informal money lenders, where rates may exceed 10% per month." It is important for the poor to have access to credit on relatively reasonable terms. Still, microcredit lenders are reaping the rewards of extraordinarily high repayment rates on loans that are still at somewhat above-market interest rates.

Anecdotal accounts can easily overstate the concrete gains to borrowers from microcredit. For example, widely cited research by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) reports that "Women in particular face significant barriers to achieving sustained increases in income and improving their status, and require complementary support in other areas, such as training, marketing, literacy, social mobilization, and other financial services (e.g., consumption loans, savings)." The report goes on to conclude that most borrowers realize only very small gains, and that the poorest borrowers benefit the least. CIDA also found little relationship between loan repayment and business success.

However large or small their income gains, poor women are widely believed to find empowerment in access to microcredit loans. According to the World Bank, for instance, microcredit empowers women by giving them more control over household assets and resources, more autonomy and decision-making power, and greater access to participation in public life. This defense of microcredit stands or falls with individual success stories featuring women using their loans to start some sort of small-scale enterprise, perhaps renting a stall in the local market or buying a sewing machine to assemble piece goods. There is no doubt that when they succeed, women and their families are better off than they were before they became micro-debtors.

But the evidence on microcredit and women's empowerment is ambiguous. Access to credit is not the sole determinant of women's power and autonomy. Credit may, for example, increase women's dual burden of market and household labor. It may also increase conflict within the household if men, rather than women, control how loan moneys are used. Moreover, the group pressure over repayment in Grameen's loan circles can just as easily create conflict among women as build solidarity.

Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize because his approach to banking reinforces the neoliberal view that individual behavior is the source of poverty and the neoliberal agenda of restricting state aid to the most vulnerable when and where the need for government assistance is most acute. Progressives working in poor communities around the world disagree. They argue that poverty is structural, so the solutions to poverty must focus not on adjusting the conditions of individuals but on building structures of inclusion. Expanding the state sector to provide the rudiments of a working social infrastructure is, therefore, a far more effective way to help women escape or avoid poverty. Do the activities of the Grameen Bank and other micro-lenders romanticize individual struggles to escape poverty? Yes. Do these programs help some women "pull themselves up by the bootstraps"? Yes. Will micro-enterprises in the informal sector contribute to ending world poverty? Not a chance.

Susan F. Feiner is professor of economics and women's studies at the University of Southern Maine. Drucilla K. Barker is professor of economics and women's studies at Hollins University. They are co-authors of Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization (University of Michigan Press, 2004).

SOURCES: Grameen Bank, grameen-info.org; "Informal Economy: Formalizing the Hidden Potential and Raising Standards," ILO Global Employment Forum (Nov. 2001), www-ilo-mirror. cornell.edu/public/english/employment/geforum/ informal.htm; Jean L. Pyle, "Sex, Maids, and Export Processing," World Bank, Engendering Development; Engendering Development Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources, and Voice (Oxford University Press, 2001); Naila Kabeer, "Conflicts Over Credit: Re-Evaluating the Empowerment Potential of Loans to Women in Rural Bangladesh," World Development 29 (2001); Norman MacIsaac, "The Role of Microcredit in Poverty Reduction and Promoting Gender Equity," South Asia Partnership Canada, Strategic Policy and Planning Division, Asia Branch Canada International Development Agency (June, 1997), www.acdi-cida.gc.ca/index-e.htm.

Microcredit Celebration in Vanuatu

Microcredit Conference in Luxembourg

dru — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:47:24 +0000

Attendees at a microcredit conference in Luxembourg. Barker and Feiner say that microcredit founder Muhammad Yunus's approach to banking "reinforces the neoliberal view that individual behavior is the source of poverty and the neoliberal agenda of restricting state aid to the most vulnerable when and where the need for government assistance is most acute." [Creative Commons photo]

Microcredit Celebration in Vanuatu

dru — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:43:58 +0000

A celebration of microcredit in Vanuatu. Feiner and Barker argue that microcredit helps individual women, but does little to alleviate poverty. [Creative Commons photo]