dru's blog

Koumbit, which hosts the Dominion and many other sites, including CMAQ, was threatened with seizure of their servers if they didn't turn over their access logs. Full story here. Unofficial translation below.

From Kim Stanley Robinson:

Dystopian science fiction has its place, as a warning sign, saying "Don't go this way." So it can be important. But the dystopian cliche of our times is just too easy, it no longer says "Don't go this way" but rather "This is the only way no matter what you do, so don't try to fight it." That kind of dystopia is reinforcing of the status quo, it's a capitulation. I'd say most dystopias today are of the latter type: people don't really suffer (not the book's protagonist anyway, they're too "street smart"), and the reader is told that no alternative world is possible, the dystopia being the most likely of all possible worlds.

Okay, say that we're in trouble at the end of the 20th century. We are. Resources are depleted, populations are rising, we're in a race to invent a kind of living that will work before our problems overwhelm us. That being the case (and who but the rich think tank experts can deny it?), what kind of political art do we create? The utopia is the only choice. And for a novelist, the problem then becomes the utopian novel; which is a kind of bastard genre, from two very different kinds of parents, because the novel is about what IS, while the utopia is about what should be; so what then is the utopian novel? No one knows.

The Own Your Media tour has started to get some modest coverage in other media.

Scott Harris wrote a rather decent article for Vue Magazine, Edmonton's independent weekly.

Chris Cook interviewed me on this week's Gorilla radio.

And I was also interviewed for Canadian Dimension's next episode of Alert Radio.

We arrived in Windsor just in time for the Windsor Peace Coalition's antiwar march. Stuart was interviewed by the local TV station after he made some remarks about corporate media coverage of Afghanistan.

A decent crowd made it out, and folks expressed a lot of concern about the ongoing collapse of the manufacturing sector.

We were honored to have Jean Candio attend the talk. We also chatted with James Winters, author of Mediathink and the editor of Flipside, an online magazine of sorts that ran from 1995 to 2000, and Margaret Villamizar, a local organizer who contributes to the TML Daily. We also saw a few copies of the Scoop, a local paper that does some alternative coverage.

In Hamilton, a lively crowd packed into Sylvia Nickerson's little studio.

Hamilton is a fascinating little city, with a strong history of working-class labour organizing, but a rather depressed economic situation at present.

Local radio show The Other Side showed up, and there seemed to be a fair bit of interest in organizing a local media coop. A number of folks signed up as sustainers, and a decent discussion was had.

We stuck around for the art crawl the following day, before leaving early in the morning for Windsor.

Waterloo saw a decent turnout of students and young community members, mostly thanks to the organizing of Evan at WPIRG and Laird of New University.

We heard the sad story of how frat-boy student politician types managed to sneak through a referendum to defund CKMS, the local community station.

I also got to chat very briefly with Taarini Chopra of Alternatives Journal, a venerable subscriber-driven independent publication that has managed to stick around for the last 35 years.

Guelph saw two events, back to back. The first was a quick gathering at the Bookshelf's eBar, and the second was more of a student crowd at the University. We chatted with Mary Skerrett of CHAN, Karen Houle, and fielded a lot of thoughtful questions from a great many others.

It was good to see something of a nascent movement towards awareness of native sovereignty issues and a possible tilt towards decolonization among some of the student organizers.

From Ottawa, we moved quickly to our nation's capital in order to miss the massive snowstorm that was... oh wait. Anyway, we went to Toronto quickly, and were able to avoid the monster snow dump last weekend. Other than an interlude involving a fever and stumbling around in a haze for one and a half days, things went well.

We picked up the rest of our tshirts from the excellent and supportive Punchclock Printing, and did a quick little presentation at OISE.

David from Canadians for Democratic Media and Reg McQuaid from Kairos were there, among others. John David took a bunch of photos during the presentation.

David told us about how he used to teach journalism in BC, but how there was very little point, it seemed, in teaching students how to practice journalism ethically, because there was really nowhere that would actually let them use those kinds of skills.

Greg Palast has an interesting article about the connection between former NY governor Eliot Spitzer's public shaming and the sub-prime crisis.

Reposted from an OCAP email

(Please see Robert Maurice's ex-wife's response at bottom)

On March 4, OCAP held a protest in city council around the freezing death of a homeless Native man named Robert Maurice which had been reported in various media. Twelve days earlier OCAP, and a number of agencies attended a committee meeting to express our concerns about the closing of over 300 shelters beds, which has led to serious overcrowding in Toronto hostels. We expressed our anger at Mayor David Miller and city politicians who had remained silent around Robert’s death.

It was later discovered that although Robert had been homeless on and off for many years, he did have housing at the time of his death. Robert had been living in a private Habitat boarding home for psychiatric survivors since late summer 2006. He was forced to share a small room. We were told that up to thirty people lived in the house. Robert would have had very little privacy in that boarding home. Most of Robert’s income would have gone to pay for his room and board leaving him very little money.

These blogging plans start with the best of intentions, but things get out of hand quickly. Here's an attempt to catch up on the places we've visited:

Sackville gave us lots of love, with a well-attended event at the United Church (thanks to Judith Weiss and Ramsey Hart for an excellent organizing job). I got to chat (briefly) with the current editors of the Argosy, which is always fun. We heard grumbling about the Irvings, and their new refinery (as we did everywhere in NB). The big story in town, it seems, is the back room dealings around water privatization. I confess to not delving into the details, but it sounds to be a sordid story of backroom deals, no-bid contracts and cash bonanzas for French water multinationals. Exciting times.

Woodstock wasn't actually an official stop on the tour, but it's a good stopping point on the way to Montreal, and it's also the home of one of the only newspapers not owned by the Irving family in NB, though we didn't get a chance to visit. We did hear about the Irving's tactics in the forestry industry, which is hurting (due in large part to Canada's "strong" oil profits). Many pulp and lumber mills are closing, and Irving has taken the opportunity to grab the rights to crown land and sign deals with the government to keep the mills permanently closed, effectively making their lock on the local industry even stronger and long-lasting.

Our stop in Halifax went by all too quickly. We met up with our co-editor Hillary, said hi to a few dozen people, gave a presentation to what was once again quite a decent turnout.

We didn't really get to hear about anything in enough depth to discuss it, so some mumblings about Lincolnville, HCAP, Cinema Politica, and cool housing coops will have to suffice.

For a town of 800 (and by any standard), Tatamagouche has set the bar high for support of the Media Coop. About 15 people came out to our presentation during a blizzard on a Saturday night, and we signed up five sustainers.

Granted, the Media Coop has strong roots in the area, as the folks at Waldegrave farm are good friends of many Dominion editors and supporters since the beginning.

Pictured here is Meghan MacCulloch--who hand-painted a beautiful Dominion banner which will be accompanying us on future stops--sporting her new Dominion t-shirt.

Tatamagouche is home to some strong local organizing, including a regular Cinema Politica Film screening, a local currency, a free school, a cooperatively-run organic farm or two, and much more.

The Own Your Media tour had its first on-time arrival in Antigonish, though we had some stiff competition a Bob Dylan tribute show was playing the same night.

An enthusiastic crowd nonetheless filled up the Antigonish fixture the Tall and Small Café, and peppered us with questions following a longer-than-usual presentation.

We didn't get as much of a chance to hear about local issue, though many told us that the Tar Sands issue found resonance in the region.

We did, however, stay at a farm featured in Briarpatch Magazine's "Alternative Routes" series, thanks to artist-and-resident Fenn, who, along with Tall and Small Proprietor Meghan Peters and St. FX student Jesse Watkins Coady, helped organized the local stop.

Jesse's great-uncle was Moses Coady, the founder of the Coady Institute, an affiliation than many attendees shared.

The first leg of the Own Your Media tour got off to a slow start when copious snow and slow snow plows tacked an extra four hours onto the stretch of road between Montreal and Quebec City. We were forced to reschedule the Fredericton to the following night, but had a brief informal discussion with some students taking a class from Tracy Glynn, our inestimable Fredericton contact.

Tracy has written a number of articles for the Dominion. Go check em out. She's also a tireless local organizer, and she was busy promoting local Cinema Politica screenings, postering for a native solidarity talk in New Brunswick, showing up to intervene at countless discussions, hearings and consultations, and in the recent past, campaigning against the ubiquitous "support our troops" placards and stickers.

Last fall, Tracy and others visited local businesses, asking them to remove "support our troops" stickers from their windows. They pointed out that the stickers were funded by the Department of National Defence and amounted to a pro-war stance. Predictably, the campaign angered some military families, and several members of the group received death threats.

We also met Dana Brown, one of the founders of Citizen's Press www.citizenspress.org, an interesting and promising independent project that, like many others, seems to be on hiatus for the moment.

Alex Corey has also been an organizational force in Fredericton, distributing copies of the tar sands issue downtown and helping promote the Fredericton stop.

I never thought Anne Coulter would get my attention, but here she is on Fox News, making the case that Hillary Clinton is more conservative than John McCain, and she makes some decent points. Actually, I find it impossible to tell if these people take themselves even a little bit seriously, but while I was confused, she managed to get my attention, which is of course the point. Coulter 1, Me 0.

An interesting treatment in Reason traces the political ins and outs of Sylvester Stallone's Rambo franchise. In light of the fact that Rambo fights alongside US-funded Mujahideen in Rambo III, this excerpt is mildly amusing.

the word "Iraq" appears nowhere in the movie, and neither do "Al Qaeda," "Islam," "9/11," or "bin Laden." The writer/director/actor told Ain't It Cool News that he did this because "the idea of Rambo dealing with Al-Qaeda, etc. would be an insult to our American forces that are actually dying trying to rid the world of this cancer. To have at the end of a 90 minute movie the character of Rambo seizing Osama bin Laden in a choke hold then dragging him into the Oval Office then tossing him in the President's lap declaring 'The world is now safe, Chief' would be a bit insulting." I don't doubt Stallone's sincerity, though World War II-era GIs didn't seem to mind the fact that Superman, Captain America, and the rest were fighting alongside them in the comic books. Personally, I wouldn't have minded seeing some of the Afghan heroes of Rambo III return as villains in Rambo IV, but that might push the franchise into areas that Stallone would rather leave alone.

The second part of the Globe and Mail's tar sands touches on the paradox at the heart of talk of Canada becoming an "energy superpower".

American thirst for Canadian oil is fuelled in part by Canada's lack of geopolitical ambition. Despite its growing importance as a supplier to the world's biggest oil consumer, Canada is the anti-superpower: a gentle giant that doesn't wield its oil clout as a geopolitical club (think Russia or Venezuela), or set a benchmark for world prices (like Saudi Arabia). It isn't lawless or war-ravaged (Nigeria or Iraq).

So if I understand this correctly, Canada wields massive geopolitical leverage, but chooses not to use it. Is that because Canadians are so nice?

But seriously, if a superpower chooses not to do anything with its influence, is it still a superpower? If you don't spend money, can you be rich? Is Canada's elite really that boring, that even when they are handed unimaginable piles of riches and significant geopolitical influence, the best thing they can think to spend it on is a) enriching a small fraction of Americans and b) taking a cut of what's left over... in that order?

That would appear to be the case.

The problem, of course, is that the riches and influence that Canada's elite are choosing to give away are also the source of what's shaping up to be the most significant environmental disaster in North America's living memory.

If that wasn't the case, I'd wonder if anyone has made a list of what could be done with those resources and influence other than, say, nothing.

[Press release, passing it on]

For immediate release
January 28, 2008

PRESS RELEASE

The self-determining people of the Tobique First Nation (TFN) are saying loud and clear that we have had enough of the racism and bureaucratic bullying that our community has received from the Department of Indian Affairs since the first Indian Act and the first Indian Reservations were forced upon our people. Why is it that ONLY Indians are forced to live on government-made reservations and under the government-made Indian Act? Why is there no government act or government reservation for the French or Germans etc? Everyone knows why, and it has nothing to do with Indians wanting it that way and everything to do with the theft of our homeland.

Our people are fed up and are organizing to take our self-respect and our self-determination back in order to fulfill our responsibility to the Seventh Generation. We are meeting in order to develop a strategy and an action plan.

Both the strategy and action plan are to create a better and equal relationship with our political and bureaucratic "rulers". A relationship that is based on mutual respect, mutual tolerance, mutual understanding and mutual acceptance. As opposed to how it has been: distrustful, adversarial, confrontational and acrimonious.

The straw that broke the camels back was the recent action by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) officials to fire the consulting firm that was hired by INAC to assist the Tobique First Nation as it works to straighten out its longstanding financial/fiscal mess.

INAC’s action to fire this consultant firm was done without cause. It was done highhandedly with no prior consultation with neither our community, nor its elected officials nor the consultant firm.

Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

The first of the Globe and Mail's week-long series on the tar, I mean, oil sands has at least one interesting insight, though it'll be interesting to keep track of all the things that they don't mention.

And money is getting tight in Thunder Bay. Anyone who looks closely may see some irony in the fact that the closing of local paper mills is at least partly because the loonie has been driven to record heights thanks to Alberta's staggering wealth.

But one person's downturn is another's upswing. While places like Thunder Bay suffer, many Canadians enjoy the proceeds of rising oil stocks. The spotlight on Alberta ended the long-lamented discount attached to Canadian oil company shares, which have outperformed their U.S. counterparts of late. (Suncor, for instance, has become the world's best performer among big oil companies that are traded publicly.)

It's something that the Globe can toss out there casually and then forget about, but it's actually a huge economic issue in Canada. The oil boom in Alberta allows investors to continue to pretend that the economy is ok, while sectors like timber and manufacturing approach a full-blown crisis.

For a bit of background on the Laibar Singh story, check out NOII organizer Harsha Walia's article from December.

[FYI...]

With Kanahus Pellkey from the Native Youth Movement and Dustin Johnson

With the 2010 Winter Olympics scheduled to occur on unceded Coast Salish, St'at'imc and Squamish territory in two years, the spectacle surrounding them continues to wreak havoc on Indigenous people, poor people, and the Earth. In the spirit of resistance to colonialism, with the 2010 Olympics as a main target, Kanahus Pellkey of the Native Youth Movement and Native youth Dustin Johnson are touring throughout the Great Lakes and East Coast in January and February 2008.

"By them choosing to have the Olympics here, it's opening up our land, our sacred sites, our medicine grounds," says Kanahus Pellkey. "We want investors to know our land is not for sale." Pre-Olympic fever occupies the province of BC, and the economic excitement has massively accelerated gentrification and the building of highways, resorts, and condos. The construction of infrastructure for the 2010 Olympics itself is adding to extensive destruction of traditional homelands of the local Indigenous peoples.

In October 2007, more than 1500 Indigenous people representing communities across this hemisphere held the Gathering of the Indigenous Peoples of America, on Yaqui territory in Vicam, Sonora, Mexico. They stated in their final declaration, "We reject the 2010 Winter Olympics on sacred and stolen territory of Turtle Island–Vancouver, Canada." This speaking tour is strengthened by this momentum, and by the knowledge that hundreds, if not thousands of Indigenous people now plan to attend the Olympic Games, not in celebration, but in resistance to the danger the Olympics poses to Indigenous lands, identity, culture, health, livelihoods, and to future generations.

[The following is a letter to the editor received on Jan 8, 2008]

From the beginning, the Crown, Ontario and agents wanted the farcical mediation meetings to be held behind closed doors. They wanted to isolate the Ardoch and Shabot Algonquin "leadership" to make secret $deals$ over a supposed uranium mine. According to Indigenous law, such meetings that concern the people should be open to the people as the Algonquins have repeatedly insisted.

Suddenly, Ontario says the meetings are open to the public but now they are to be held in Kingston, outside of Algonquin territory, two hours away from the affected community. Moving the mediation out of Algonquin territory is also a breach of Algonquin law.

However, this is a clear case of the proverbial, "Out of the frying pan and into the fire!" Kingston is in Mohawk territory!

Why, we must ask, would the meetings be moved to Kingston? For whose convenience? We hear rumours of Crown agents who need city night life and their accustomed type of "watering hole", not available in the remote areas of Sharbot Lake. The new location was certainly handy for the Mohawks, perhaps too handy. When they changed the venue, the mediation team knew Kahentinetha Horn of MNN was planning to attend - Randy Cota and Bob Lovelace had invited her!

(In July 2007, the Algonquins sent a wampum to the Mohawks seeking their help in the blockade against uranium mining at Robertsville. Nuclear development on Algonquin land would affect Mohawk communities downstream. This official nation to nation agreement is ongoing.)

Stanley Fish: Will the Humanities Save Us?

To the question “of what use are the humanities?”, the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said – even when it takes the form of Kronman’s inspiring cadences – diminishes the object of its supposed praise.

The Hexayurt project is an attempt to create an extremely efficient, easy-to-construct, versatile and sustainable dwelling that can be affordable for people who live on around $1/day... in addition to the obvious structure, the project deals with heating, water purification, and sewage treatment. This is combined with an "open source," no-intellectual-property, globally collaborative approach development. The results are pretty interesting.

Here's a fascinating interview with the project founder, wherein he explains the difficulties in getting institutions to support something so obviously compelling. Here's his basic ethos:

:My goal is pretty simple: by the time I die, everybody in the world has a place to sleep and a bowl of rice a day. No starvation, no poverty of the kind that forces men and women to live like beasts of the field. We can do it: we are well past the point that Buckminster Fuller said our technology had to pass before it was possible.

Most people envisage making the poor rich: this is a social and economic approach. The rich fight it like hell all over the world.

So instead, I decided to focus on cutting the price of essential goods and services to the point where the poor can afford them. Nobody seems to be against that, and if we all agree, then the work will go so much faster than if I had to waste effort arguing with people who don’t think what I’m doing is a good idea.

Lakota Freedom: "We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have suffered from cultural and physical genocide in the colonial apartheid system we have been forced to live under. We are in Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law."

Venezuela Analysis: "This opens up the possibility for the use of fake polling, as was done in the last (2004) referendum, to cast doubt on the results if the proposed constitutional reforms are approved"

A number of Stephane Dion's constituents marched through his riding, demanding that the Liberal leader oppose legislation around Security Certificates.

The McGill Daily, a student paper in Montreal, has a pair of decent articles about the tar sands in their most recent edition.

Is New Brunswick finally getting tired of having one company own all of its newspapers?

With a new paper starting up and the Conservatives saying that the media monopoly needs to be looked into, NB might just be on the verge of doing something about its little problem.