» Archive: October 2005
N.W.T. prepares for rich girls on bling flings
The N.W.T. launched its diamond tourism program earlier this month, marketing the territory – mainly in southern Canada, the U.S. and Japan– as an exotic and alluring place to shop for jewelry.
"They come up in a private jet, have a lovely day at a lodge, the last day they actually come here, pick out their diamond, get their names laser-inscribed on it and off they go," says Hillary Jones, director of Arslanian Cutting Works in Yellowknife.
"But, the one I find really exciting is the 'bling fling'. It's where 10 ladies get together and come explore the North, see the aurora and buy diamonds. It's a girls'-weekend-that's-gone-wild sort of thing."
According to monitoring by the Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation in 1999, the Ekati diamond located a few hours outside of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, has had negative environmental and social impacts.
Employment at the site has fluctuated over its short life. In 1997, 22 people from Lutsel K'e were reported as employed in the mining sector, while six months later only three people were still working there. Low wages, no overtime, little room for advancement, no native food, and concern about environmental hazards were given as reasons for this flux in employment.
Voisey's spills unacceptable: Innu Nation
The Innu Nation says Inco must do more to protect the environment at the Voisey's Bay mine site, following two incidents that killed fish and damaged habitat.
BusinessWeek on China v US
BusinessWeek: "Despite the howls from Congress, China's management of its exchange rate is not the reason America's current account deficit has soared in this period. As Morgan Stanley economist Stephen S. Roach recently observed, it would take the current account surpluses of 10 economies -- including those of Japan, China, Russia, Germany, and Saudi Arabia -- to equal the U.S. current account deficit. America is running a massive current account gap not because of an undervalued Chinese currency, but because the U.S. is saving too little to finance its investment needs."
Petras on US v China
James Petras: "The fact is that substantial sectors of the US economy are not competitive given the product lines in which they are engaged, the inferior quality of their goods, the lack of long-term, large-scale investments in upgrading technology and productive organization and the siphoning off of profits to speculative sectors or to offshore subsidiaries."
Ongoing in Afghanistan
Eric Ruder: "After the bodies had been defiled, U.S. psychological operations specialists used loudspeakers to taunt local villagers, in an attempt to draw out other Taliban supporters. 'Attention, Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs,' blared the loudspeakers, after calling out several religious leaders by name. 'You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be...You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs, but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion, and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are.'"
New Brunswick Bans Junk Food From School Menus
CBC: Junk food is out at all New Brunswick elementary schools – starting immediately.
The new policy applies to cafeterias, vending machines, canteens and fundraising schemes in schools across province.
Lunchtime and snack staples such as French fries, hotdogs, doughnuts and chips will be phased out of high schools over the next two years. In elementary schools, any foods with low nutritional value will be eliminated immediately.
With This Ring I Thee Bled
A great article was printed in the New York Times today on the impacts of gold mining:
In the early 1500's, King Ferdinand of Spain laid down the priorities as his conquistadors set out for the New World. "Get gold," he told them, "Humanely if possible, but at all costs, get gold."
I guess Canadian mining companies didn't hear the second part:
This month a Philippine province sued the world's fifth-largest gold company, Canada-based Placer Dome, charging that it had ruined a river, bay and coral reef by dumping enough waste to fill a convoy of trucks that would circle the globe three times.
Mining Companies Don't Need to Follow Canadian Laws Abroad: Pettigrew
IPS News: "A call by members of Canada's parliament for legally binding measures to govern the behaviour of Canadian mining companies around the world, and specifically to investigate the activities of a Calgary-based operation in the Philippines, has been turned down flat by the Canadian government's foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew."
Chomsky on Iraq
Noam Chomsky: "An independent Iraq would
probably take steps to gain a leading position in the Arab world, which would mean confronting the main enemy, US-backed Israel. hat would mean rearming, probably with WMD, to counter Israel's. It might also lead to improving relations with Iran. Not impossible is a Shi'ite alliance with Iran and a majority-run Iraq, which might further stimulate moves towards independence in the nearby Shi'te areas of Saudi Arabia, where the oil is. That would
lead to domination of the world's energy resources by an independent Shi'ite alliance. Nothing inevitable about any of this of course, but hardly impossible. Can you imagine the US tolerating anything like this? These are among the
reasons why permitting democracy in Iraq, even if the rhetoric were meant seriously by Washington and Western commentators, is hardly a likely prospect."
Other Regional Battles
Colby Cosh hypothesizes that Albertans seem smarter than Ontarians due to their school system and then gets a whole bunch of mail from readers.
Walmart Exploits and Destroys a Little Less
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will start holding its suppliers more accountable, for environmental and social standards at foreign factories says CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.
But Paul Blank, director of Wake-Up Wal-Mart, backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, is not impressed.
"Unfortunately, Wal-Mart's exploitation of workers is not limited to its use of sweatshop labor overseas," he said in a statement. "Our campaign is building a sea of public pressure to force Wal-Mart to end its race-to-the bottom business model." Blank added that sweatshop labor is only the beginning of many problems Wal-Mart must address.
Canadian Insurgents?
CBC: "James Judd, the director of CSIS, revealed Thursday evening that some of the foreign fighters in Iraq battling coalition troops are Canadians. He said there aren't many, but more are expected to join."
Genocide Charges
Globe: "The RMCP laid this country's first-ever charges of genocide yesterday, alleging that a Rwandan who is fighting to stay in Canada played a significant role in the 1994 slaughter of more than half a million people."
US planning invasion, says Chavez
In a BBC interview, Mr Chavez said the US was after his nation's oil, much as it had been after Iraq's.
"We have detected with intelligence reports plans of a supposed invasion, one that would never happen. But we have to denounce it."
Mr Chavez, 55, first came to prominence as a leader of a failed coup in 1992.
After being released from prison, he embarked on a political career that swept him to power in 1998, with a promise to transform Venezuela.
Relations with Washington reached a low when he accused it of "fighting terror with terror" during the war in Afghanistan after 11 September.
The situation hardly improved when Mr Chavez accused the US of being behind the failed coup to oust him in 2002, and of funding opposition groups.
The country's vast oil reserves - the largest in the Americas - have given it a strategic importance, but the US state department denies trying to overthrow the president.
Nonviolent Palestinians
Patrick O'Connor: "The fact that thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis are together employing nonviolent tactics similar to those of the US civil rights movement and the South African anti-Apartheid movement would come as surprising and welcome news to most Americans. Americans are largely unaware of the struggling but vibrant grassroots nonviolent movement in Palestine, because the US corporate media prefers a simple, flawed story of Palestinian terrorist attacks and Israeli retaliation."
Possibilities for BC Teachers
Vancouver Sun: "A poll released Monday, after a massive demonstration in support of teachers outside the B.C. legislature, suggested 57 per cent of British Columbians side with the teachers while 34 per cent back the government and the B.C. Public School Employers' Association, the bargaining agent for B.C.'s 60 school boards. 'I think the government misread public support for the teachers,' said Ken Thornicroft, a labour relations professor at the University of Victoria. 'I think they were thinking public sentiment would swing their way.'"
Irving Pulls Breastfeeding Cover, Fires Editor
The Irving newspaper group pulled the Ocober 6th issue of New Brunswick's Here magazine from store shelves and fired its editor after a photo of a breastfeeding baby appeared on its cover.
The incident was not reported in any of New Brunswick's dailies. They are all owned by Irving.
The cover story was written to celebrate World Breastfeeding Week and to highlight the fact that rates of breastfeeding in New Brunswick are half that of the rest of the country.
Freelance journalist Brent MacDonald wrote the cover story and is angry the photo was pulled. He says the cover was an important part of the piece. He says he won't work for the paper any more.
"That photo was pulled, the image of a mother breastfeeding her baby, and it really didn't do any justice to the story, or the real issue here, that mothers in New Brunswick aren't breastfeeding their babies and babies are being shortchanged."
Here is a free weekly magazine targeting urban youth in New Brunswick. It was an independent publication for five years until 2004, when Irving-owned Brunswick News bought it
Kidnapping, Gaza style
Dion Nissenbaum: "You know your kidnapping is probably going to turn out all right when your abductors give you souvenir baseball caps to take home. And when they serve you fresh dates while channel-surfing. Doting hospitality isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of being held in captivity, but that's pretty much what British freelance photographer Adam Pletts and I got after being snatched Wednesday afternoon by an obscure group of Palestinian militants apparently looking for work."
What's more important...
...millions of lives or some Swiss company's patent? Believe it or not, that's a serious question.
Dean Baker: "The major obstacle to large-scale stockpiling is that the drug is under patent by Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company. Roche has limited manufacturing capacity for Tamiflu, and would charge a high price in any case. Roche has been pressured to license the manufacture of Tamiflu to other companies, but has thus far resisted this pressure. Roche, with the support of the pharmaceutical industry, has claimed that forcing it to license Tamiflu would reduce incentives to develop new drugs. It has also claimed that the manufacturing process is so complex that it would take 2 years for other companies to get facilities up and running in any case."
Democracy Watch on Dingwall
Democracy Watch: "The entire unethical, wasteful mess involving David Dingwall and the TPC fund would have been prevented if former Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson and former Registrar of Lobbyists Diane Champagne-Paul had done their jobs properly."
In brief...
Saskatchewan had the third "grim harvest" year in a row.
New Brunswick Liberals, who are in opposition, are saying they would build a second nuclear reactor.
Some of Quebec's Eastern Townships flooded.
CBC and "Pink Lloyd" on Albright
CBC:
"A small group of protesters briefly interrupted a speech by former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright at the University of Winnipeg on Sunday."
This bit is particularly grim:
Inside, university president Lloyd Axworthy had to interrupt Albright's address to quiet hecklers. When the audience simmered down, Albright commented almost immediately on the state of U.S.-Canada relations.Indeed. You think that the "price" of 500,000 dead children is "worth it", while I think that it's not. A simple difference of opinion; why let a little thing like mass murder get in the way of a productive relationship? We can still be friends.
"We have been friends, and friends can quarrel, of course, and see issues differently, but they also come through for one another in times of crisis, and to me, that is what the relationship between the United States and Canada has been all about," she said.
Quite the humanitarian, that Axeworthy.
Meanwhile, the CBC quotes a student as saying "We oppose her because of her record in Yugoslavia and her record of sanctions in Iraq, and the things she's been quoted as saying," but doesn't bother to include the quote that the student obviously told the reporter about.
Because, you know, reprinting things that were said on the record on national television isn't, you know, objective.
What Do Kyoto, SNC Lavalin, and the Innu Nation Have In Common?
The chief executive officer of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro says now is the time to develop the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project.
"In addition to the U.S. and Quebec demands, peak demand in Ontario is expected to reach up to 30,000 megawatts in 2015, and the Ontario government is forecasting the need to replace 25,000 megawatts of coal and nuclear generation capacity over the next 15 years."
The government of Ontario has partnered with Hydro-Quebec and engineering firm-and weapons manufacturer-SNC Lavalin for one of three shortlisted bids picked in August by the provincial government to develop the Lower Churchill.
Ontario has pledged to close its coal fired power plants to help the country meet its Kyoto targets and Ontario Energy Minister Dwight Duncan is hoping hydroelectric power from Lower Churchill can help meet the province's energy needs.
Some environmentalists believe thatmega-dams cannot be dubbed 'green power' and that forest lost to flooding will count against the country's Kyoto targets due to deforestation and the release of methane gas.
An open letter that the president of the Innu Nation wrote to Newfoundland
Premier Brian Tobin shortly after the announcement of the new Churchill generating facilities, stated that the Innu have aboriginal title to the Churchill River and that any developments requires their consent.
Weir bought off
Treading in the footsteps of many an influential NDP, lone New Brunswick NDP MLA Elizabeth Weir accepted the position of "president and CEO of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Agency of New Brunswick" in exchange for her seat in the Provincial legislature.
NDP names its price
The NDP wants support for public health care, end to privatization, climate change action, protected pensions and ethics reforms in return for support through the winter.
Burning Man: Community for Whitey
Wired News: "'What I've heard said about BM before,' said Steinbock, 'is it's the way that rich white people find community, because people who have undergone any cultural strife automatically develop community out of survival. But here you have a group that's never experienced marginalization, so the only way they can develop community is to spend a bunch of money on this crazy art out in the desert.'"
Pina: The McGill Daily Interview
The McGill Daily did a good interview with Kevin Pina, an American independent journalist who lives in Haiti.
The Canadian government is up to its neck in supporting this campaign of extermination against Lavalas, of trying again to add a veneer of legitimacy. Canada has become the faux kinder, gentler face of U.S. foreign policy, basically. Canada is helping to reform the judicial system, yet there are thousands of political prisoners. Canada is helping to reform the Haitian police, yet the Haitian police are responsible for numerous human rights violations. The whole while, Paul Martin and [former Special Adviser for Haiti] Denis Coderre are justifying this policy and trying to paint a positive light, as representing the altruistic interests of the Canadian people, when in fact what it is doing is justifying a campaign of slaughter.
Recently...
BC Teachers were planning a day of action, and the provincial governmetn was refusing to negotiate unless the strike was called off. A gala event in Gatineau was cancelled because Bill Clinton cancelled his planned appearance. In Saskatchewan, people were considering burning grain for heat due to rising oil and gas prices. Ontario was restarting two Nuclear reactors that have been idle since the mid-90s. In an ongoing strike at an Alberta meatpacking plant, striking workers laid down in front of busses to prevent other workers from entering the plant. The American company that owns the plant asked police to clear a path through the striking workers. A judge issued an order allowing the RCMP to move strikers from the picket line. The Toronto Police department was insisting on investigating itself on charges that drug squad offices beat and robbed drug dealers, refusing to call in an outside police force. News footage showed two Montreal police officers "slamming a woman into a police cruiser and later bashing her head into the roof of the car", according to the Gazette. A study found that massive amounts of cannabis could potentially improve learning ability. Commenting on the study, scientists suggested that "depression is triggered when too few new brain cells are created." PEI police were charging three men for illegal lobster fishing, using a boat named "Phanton Ship", an investigation was looking for empty drums of Agent Orange buried on a military base in Gagetown, and a Russian sailor disappeared in St. John's. An Amnesty Int'l report said that Canada's security certificates contradict "essential international legal standards", called for investigation into violence against aboriginal women, and told the government to quit stalling on land claim disputes involving the Lubicon Cree. The Lubicon, whose land contains tar sands and is affected by nearby operations, sent a delegation to the UN human rights committee. "The Lubicon are basically telling the United Nations committee that it's been 15 years since they ruled Canada was in violation of their human rights and Canada still hasn't resolved the situation," said a Lubicon spokesperson.
PEI Considers Two-Tier Minimum Wage
The P.E.I. government is exploring the possibility of lowering the minimum wage for untrained workers, and people who receive tips or gratuities as part of their job.
Robert Crockett, past president of the P.E.I. Federation Labour and a national CUPE representative, said he's against two minimum wages.
Black churches excluded from Atlanta aid effort
LA Times: "McDonald -- who is on the board of the Red Cross' Metropolitan Atlanta chapter -- says he does not know a single black church that has an arrangement with the Red Cross. As he has struggled to meet FEMA and Red Cross officials, he said, he has gradually realized that he is an outsider despite his connections. 'Black ministers have not been allowed in the door,' he said. 'Our eyes have been opened too.'"
Fisk on Iraq
The Independent: "[Robert Fisk] said that the portrayal of Iraq by Western leaders of efforts to introduce democracy, including Saturday's national vote on the country's proposed constitution was 'unreal' to most of its citizens. In Baghdad, children and women were kept at home to prevent them from being kidnapped for money or sold into slavery. They faced a desperate struggle to find the money to keep generators running to provide themselves with electricity. 'They aren't sitting in their front rooms discussing the referendum on the constitution.'"
2005 Set To Be The Warmest Year - EVER
New international climate data show that 2005 is on track to be the hottest year on record, continuing a 25-year trend of rising global temperatures.
In response to recent warming in the Arctic, a coalition of environmental groups said it plans to sue the Interior Department to force it to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because the sea ice they depend on is disappearing
Puerto Rican Martyr?
The Hill: "However, the FBI may have created a martyr for the independence cause. At the very least, Ojeda Rios's violent death may revive a political issue -- the island's status -- that the present government has downplayed. Repudiation of the FBI's actions has brought about a rare unanimity among political groups."
[A few weeks ago, the FBI shot Ojeda Rios, a Puerto Rican independence fighter, and let him bleed to death while denying medical teams access to his house.]
US Bike Sales Exceed Car Sales
Agence France-Presse: "More bicycles than cars have been sold in the United States over the past 12 months, with rising gas prices prompting commuters to opt for two wheels instead of four. Not since the oil crisis of 1973 have bicycles sold in such big numbers..."
Glacier's retreat exposes radioactive rock
Good to hear climate change is helping out mining companies.
A melting glacier along the Yukon-N.W.T. border has uncovered a potential uranium deposit in the mountainous region.Mining company officials have known for decades that there was radioactive material in the central Yukon. Twenty-five years ago, prospectors with geiger counters found uranium-rich boulders scattered at the foot of a glacier in the Werneke Mountains.
A drill rig was set up on the ice and attempts were made to drill exploration holes into the rocks below.
However, Basil Botha, president of Cash Minerals, says the moving glacier ice snapped the drills off at the ground.
"Once you got through the ice flow into the rock that was it," he says.
Botha says his company is getting ready to spend millions of dollars on new drilling now that melting ice has retreated to expose the former drill sites.
"We'll we'll go back next year and our budget next year is $2 million," he says.
In addition to uranium, Botha's company is also developing coal deposits in the Yukon
Srebrenica, myth and reality
Diana Johnstone has a long, interesting piece on the propaganda uses of the Srebrenica massacre. To wit:
A left that retains any capacity for critical thinking should regard the lavish public breast-beating over "Srebrenica" (the quotation marks indicate the symbol rather than the actual event) with a certain skepticism. If mainstream media commentators and politicians are so extraordinarily moved by "Srebrenica", this is because it has become an incantation to justify whatever future foreign war the U.S. government and media decide to sell under the label of "humanitarian intervention".
Labour
CBC: "About 60 per cent of the employees at the [massive slaughterhouse near Calgary] are immigrants, many from Sudan. Some people believe locally-born workers would report for work in the event of a strike, while the new Canadians remain on the picket line."
Globe: BC Teachers still on 'illegal' strike. "Since taking office in 2001, the Liberals have imposed two contracts on public-school teachers, stripped them of their right to bargain learning conditions and severely restricted their right to strike by designating education as an essential service."
Tariq Ali in Lahore
Tariq Ali: "Even in the midst of disaster, life goes on. Like a giant vulture flock, the global media has descended on the country. The same images repeated every few minutes over three days. The same banal comments. Soon they will get tired and move on. When they are really needed, to monitor relief efforts and reconstruction, to maintain a watch on the funds and alert viewers to the inevitable corruption (in the past blankets and tinned food designed for victims of the floods earlier this year were being openly sold in the black-market) they will not be there."
Vermont to Secede?
The state of Vermont has a nascent anti-imperialist independence movement, which is holding a conference later this month. For more, see VermontRepublic.org.
Everest
Chinese scientists have found that Mount Everest is 12 feet shorter than previously believed.
Will they, won't they?
The Hill Times has a long piece weighing whether there will be an election this fall, and which party that would favour.
The Political Mind of J. Stewart
The Guardian has an interesting profile on Jon Stewart.
If the parties and the media serve the country so badly, why do Americans put up with it? "Because for the majority of Americans life is pretty tolerable," says Stewart. "It's very hard to organise reasonable people with moderate views. Reasonable people with moderate views don't usually light their torches and head out to town with pitchforks shouting, Be reasonable. Shit has to get really bad before people stand up and take notice."
Caviar to Fake Crab Meat
In the last paragraph of this NYTimes piece on the effects of oil companies tearting up hundreds of thousands of acres of Alberta, Stéphane Dion gets the quote of the day.
"With concerted effort and the technology in play, we will be taking on the environmental challenge aggressively," Mr. Lambert of Suncor said. But he conceded that "the economic growth we are experiencing means a rising greenhouse gas production profile."The process uses huge amounts of natural gas to extract oil from the sands.
The only thing likely to slow production is a sustained decline in oil prices, something few energy specialists predict.
"There is no environmental minister on earth who can stop the oil from coming out of the sand, because the money is too big," said Canada's environment minister, Stéphane Dion, in an interview. "But we have to be very strict on environmental impact."
"What bugs me about oil sands is that it is a resource that is being inefficiently used," said Marlo Raynolds, executive director of the Pembina Institute, an environmental research group based in Calgary. "We're using natural gas, which is the cleanest fossil fuel, to wash sand and make a dirtier fuel. It's like using caviar to make fake crabmeat."
Critical Mass Reaches Critical Mass and other news
Quebec wants its own foreign policy, and Ottawa (specifically Pettigrew) isn't having any of it.
A few weeks ago, the FBI assasinated a Puerto Rican independence leader. They surrounded his house, shot him, and refused entry to doctors "for security reasons" while he bled to death.
Paris Indymedia reported on the resistance to removal of "sans papiers" (immigrants without papers), culminating in a fight with police.
A Critical Mass bike ride in Budapest, Hungary brought over 24,000 people into the streets, making it possibly the largest ever ride of its kind. The bikers were demanding bike paths and bicycle-friendly infrastructure, and protesting the lack of regard for cyclists by Hungarian drivers.
According to COHA, Spain's PM Zapatero has reversed course in relations with Venezuela and Argentina, going against the US, but still supports Plan Colombia and the occupation of Haiti.
Kevin Pina's visit to Montreal got some press coverage.
Montreal To Host International Climate Negotiations
Montreal will host the 11th Annual United Nations Climate Change Conference from November 28 to December 9, 2005. According to Canada's Environment Minister and the meeting's chair, Stéphane Dion
"Humanity must emerge from the 21st century having learned to control its impact on the climate. The Montreal Conference on Climate will be a turning point: it will allow the process of identifying the post-2012 international regime to get off on the right foot.”Whether talk will turn to action remains to be seen. Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by the period between 2008 and 2012 Canada's emissions are now 20% higher than what they were in 1990.
Stewart on US Magazines
Jon Stewart moderated a panel on humour in magazines featuring the editors of Time, Cosmopolitan, Men's Health, and Vanity Fair. It wasn't quite as scathing as his appearance on Crossfire (though that may simply be because video is not available).
Gawker has the short summary, and MediaBistro has the extensive account (in three parts!) based on tapes and notes.
In related news, the NYTimes has an interview with Stephen Colbert.
Monbiot on Peak Oil
looks at the likelihood that oil supply has peaked.
"If the figures have been fudged, we're stuffed. That might sound extreme, but it is not my conclusion. It is that of the consultants hired by the US Department of Energy."
The result? Don't expect gas prices to go down.
And longer term, the global economy is going to look a lot different.
Tiny Revolution
Some great stuff over at Jonathan Scharz's A Tiny Revolution. Two samples:
By my observation, colonial wars always have three stages in the minds of supporters:1. We've got to help these people!
2. Why are these people resisting our attempts to help them?
3. These people MUST BE KILLED!!!!!!!!
And:
I used to joke that the Soviet Union collapsed because they only had one communist party. They'd still be around if they'd been smart enough to have two communist parties that were exactly alike on every issue except abortion.