» Archive: June 2005
Envisioning Peoples' Struggle
Today is the first day of Envisioning People's Stuggles, a conference going on in Vancouver. According to the organizers:
We are organizing the Envisioning People's Struggles Conference to bring together issues and analysis from the many struggles against war, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism. The conference will also explore and discuss the history of resistance movements locally and around the world to broaden and contextualize our understanding of current struggles, while emphasizing the need for long-term strategy and vision through open dialogue that builds solidarity between diverse organizing communities.
Canadian Military accused of spraying Agent Orange
It was just a "small scale" spraying of the carcinogenic defoliant, says the Dept. of Defense.
The most obvious question is missing however..."Why?".
Presumably they were spraying to denude trees, since "At the time of the spray program, it was believed the chemicals were harmless to human health and virtually no precautions were taken to minimize human contact", according to CBC.ca, "U.S. forces sprayed Agent Orange to defoliate large areas of forest in Vietnam from 1961 until 1971, when it was discovered to contain dioxin".
Pettigrew with "blood" on his hands
Haiti Action Montreal: Pierre Pettigrew Splattered With Red Paint At Montreal Conference On Haiti; A Symbol Of The Haitian Blood On The Hands Of The Canadian Government.
Here is Theirs
Megan Wennberg did a story in the T-Star about the Irvings' buyout of the only independent English-language paper in New Brunswick. Irving now owns all of the English-language press in NB.
On Oct. 29, 2004, residents of Saint John, New Brunswick woke up to the news that here newspaper, the province's only alternative weekly, had been bought by the Irving family, the province's most powerful corporate entity with industries spanning oil and forestry, real estate and newspapers. Here was now in the crowded company of every English-language daily paper in the province, as well as the numerous weeklies, periodicals and radio stations owned by Brunswick News, Irving's media arm.
Poll asks Americans "Who is a journalist?"
University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center did a survey asking the question "Who is a journalist?". Rush Limbaugh and Bob Woodward scored the same.
Interview with Carol Wall, Presidential Candidate for the Canadian Labour Congress
by Sean Cain
This week, trade union activist Carol Wall will run against incumbent Ken Georgetti for the presidency of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). If elected, she will be the first woman and first person of colour to hold the position. From 1995 to 2000, she was a National Representative for the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) and became its first human rights director. In 2002, she was elected CLC Vice President representing Workers of Colour. She is also a member of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and has served on the boards of several non-for-profit organizations.
Carol took time this week to answer some questions about her experiences in the trade union movement, its challenges, and what it needs to do in order to rebuild its membership and gain greater influence among working Canadians.
read more...Kazemi
You remember Zahra Kazemi, right? She was beaten and raped before being killed by Iranian policemen because she was taking photos of a student protest.
The [simpering, gutless, corrupt --ed] mayor of Côte St. Luc in Montréal had some of her photos removed from an exhibition at a local library after one complaint. Her son, who organized the exhibit, said they could exhibit all of the photos or none of them, so they took the whole thing down.
The controversial photos (controversial photos!) were, of course, of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the repression carried out there.
"It's a very complicated conflict, and to create an impression where the Palestinian cause is being martyred by oppression by the Israeli government, we don't consider that to be a fair portrait," Borough Mayor Robert Libman said.
Today, Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation held a protest denouncing the censorship of the photos. They say: "[city officials] should be offended, but not by the fact that the photos were taken, or [are] being shown. They should be offended by what's being shown, which is a brutal military occupation."
For a tonne of coverage and blogging about the censorship, check out Zeke's Gallery.
Reporting on Struggles for Social Justice in Lebanon
There don't seem to be many spontaneous, popular pro-democracy movements that the US, Europe and Canada aren't keen to coopt and manipulate with funding and skewed media coverage.
That's why it's pretty important that Stefan Christoff, a long-time activist and independent journalist, is off to Lebanon to file reports on popular movements for social justice there, and what's really going on.
Between June & September 2005, Christoff will produce written, audio, and visuals on present-day struggles in Lebanon.
For more information, and to donate to help him cover his costs, visit this page.
Anti-Semitism in America
FAIR has an interesting breakdown about how, despite constantly calling attention to occurences of anti-jewish acts in Europe and the Middle East, the US media nonetheless ignores some prominent incidents in at home.
Shortly before Christmas last year, syndicated radio star and MSNBC host Don Imus called the book publishers Simon & Schuster “thieving Jews” (Imus in the Morning, 12/15/04), returning to the subject later in the program to offer a mock apology, saying that the phrase he used was “redundant.”
Anti-Semitism is nothing new on Imus’ show, which is notorious for its ethnic and sexual slurs. In 1998, for instance, Imus called Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz “that boner-nosed . . . beanie-wearing little Jew boy” (Newsday, 10/19/98).
When Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman complained about Imus’ Simon & Schuster slur, describing it in a letter (12/20/04) as “an age-old anti-Semitic canard that still, unfortunately, has great currency today,” Imus was defiant. “I wrote a two-word response across the face of [the letter],” Imus told listeners (1/4/05), “and sent it back to them.” Besides a handful of mentions in tabloid newspapers (New York Post, 1/5/05; Boston Herald, 1/7/05) and a short UPI report (1/5/05), the Imus affair received next to no coverage.
Technologically-nudged equality
A Spanish company has developed technology to divide household chores neatly in half.
It's a washing machine that encourages men to share the burden of doing laundry. Endowed with software that recognizes the fingerprint of household members, the machine shuts down when the same person tries to use it twice in a row. "It obliges men to do things around the home," says Mr. Torres.
Already-massive protests are getting bigger in Bolivia.
Here's rabble's take:
The leftist dream of how you can take power is a popular uprising culminating in a general strike until victory. Today the bolivian left has embarked upon such an adventure. It is when the left stops demanding reform and takes the risk of direct engagement to replace the existing system. Often it fails. In France in May 68 the most famous general strike nearly succeeded. The '54 general strike in Hungary was crushed by Soviet tanks. In Uruguay in 1973 there was a general strike held out for over two weeks against a brutal military dictatorship.
It's a risky tactic, but it's also about winning. The bolivian left has been very successful at picking fights, winning the battle, and coming out of each struggle stronger.
An investigation into War Crimes in Sudan has begun. Keeping in mind that the CIA considers the genocidal regime "a friend".
And the New Standard has a good story: Native Americans, Allies Resist Expansion of Utah Nuke Wasteland
Today in Canada
A Saskatchewan school is hosting gay-straight clubs to dispel stereotypes and homophobia.
Lakes in the Arctic are disappearing.
Sick of getting their traps cut and the DFO doing nothing, lobster fishers from Burnt Church say they're going to fish in the fall, which is apparently off-season. A Woodstock, NB school dropped the "Warrior" as its mascot.
7,000 day care workers are on strike in Québec.
Gilles Duceppe is considering leading the PQ, though he's operated only at the federal level until now. The choice between criticizing policy and making policy seems like a no-brainer for a career politician, and the likelihood that he would be Premier is pretty high. I reckon he'll do it.
This old map
Check out the massive, handcrafted, Greenwood's Map of London, circa 1827.
20 killed in Haiti
In today's news and analysis...
Police trained and vetted by the Canadian RCMP burned down houses in poor neighborhoods and killed as many as 25 people today in Haiti.
Condi Rice is pushing the same old agenda at the OAS meeting. No sign of humility since the US was forced to back down from their support of an anti-Chavez OAS chair.
Bolivian social movements have picked a fight with the elite over the exploitation of Bolivian natural resources and who benefits from that.
Gilles Duceppe is under pressure to quit the Bloc and lead the PQ, which would almost certainly be deeply detrimental to the Bloc and hugely beneficial to the PQ. A no-brainer career-wise, but Landry screwed Duceppe with the timing of his resignation.
For some ungodly reason, the Toronto Star insists on reprinting Thomas Friedman's fascistic rants in its weekend edition, the latest one being a racist screed about how Europe can't keep its welfare state because of wage competition from India et al. (What is the Star's editorial board's thought process? 'Gee, what Toronto-area readers really need is a little taste o' the Friedman...')
As timing would have it, Greg Palast has a lovely rebuttal of Friedman's latest, which likely won't be printed in any Canadian papers, unless you count this link.
Pilger on Foreign Aid
John Pilger: "More than 740 foreigner advisers and experts earn nearly as much as 160,000 Cambodian civil servants, who get as little as 25 dollars a month. In many ministries, the pay of foreign advisers exceeds the entire annual budget. It is more than twice the budget of the agricultural ministry and four times that of the justice ministry. Foreign aid workers constantly complain about local corruption, often justifiably. But they rarely identify and measure their own legitimised corruption"
Landry Steps Down
Bernard Landry stepped down as leader of the PQ today. He had just received the endorsement of 76 per cent of his party, but apparently it wasn't enough.
In other news, the RCMP and CSIS don't have to give information to elected officials if they don't wanna, according to this report in the Star.
US Prisons
ZNet: "The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other developed nation on earth. The population of the United States comprises 5% of the world's population but its incarcerated population is equal to more than 25% of the world's prisoners."
Engler on Haiti and the Media
Yves Engler: Media ignores Canada's role in Haiti
Did you read in your local paper that in mid-May, 250 people braved a rainy Sunday morning in downtown Montreal to confront Canadian colonialism? The demonstration, at the conclusion of a conference for Land, Decolonization and Self Determination and in conjunction with the Haitian community's flag day commemoration, was called to point out the link between the continued encroachment upon aboriginal land (in Kanehsatake and Grassy Narrows for example) and Canadian imperialism in Haiti.
Nowarian
Dominion contributor, scholar, and hip-hop journalist extraordinaire Susana Ferreira has a weblog up at Nowarian.com.
A bit about the title:
The word is Trinidadian in origin, and Espinet applies it to her protagonist - a multicultural patchwork character, floating between a number of clashing identities and homes. It breaks down to mean someone who comes from nowhere - a nowhere-ian. (With the flip side to that coin being: a nowarian is also someone that comes from many places; he or she can be from nowhere and everywhere all at once.) In essence, the word strikes at the very heart of the multicultural phenomenon. There is an entire generation of nowarians in North America and the West Indies and beyond, all of us floating together, struggling with overlapping cultural identities in the face of so much deep-rooted structural or institutional racism. A new movement is taking shape, and quickly.
Siberian Fire
Guardian: "Fires in the Siberian forests - the largest in the world and vital to the planet's health - have increased tenfold in the last 20 years and could again rage out of control this summer, Russian scientists warn."