The Dominion - 16

"Stalin's Last Army" Advancing on Europe

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:56:25 +0000

Scientists hold two Giant Pacific Crabs. Introduced by the Soviets Union in the 1950s, the versatile species has multiplied rapidly, and the growing population is moving south along the Norwegian coast.

The Norwegian government is concerned that a population of giant crabs is moving south from the Arctic, fueled by explosive population growth and a lack of natural predators.

Known as "Giant Pacific Crabs", the species were introduced to the arctic region by the Soviet government in the 1960s. Scientists say the species has a remarkable ability to adapt to new conditions, and could reach as far south as the Mediterranean in the coming decades.

Scientific research has yet to draw solid conclusions on the crab's ecological impact. A debate is raging in the Norwegian media over whether the crabs are a valuable resource or a dangerous pest. Some favour the valuable crab meat, while others draw attention to the possibility that the crabs could compromise the fisheries, as the crabs eat the eggs of many species of fish, and often get tangled in fishers' nets.

» Agence France-Presse: Giant Crabs Invade Norwegian Sea

US Government Provided Millions in Funding to Venezuelan, Haitian Opposition Groups

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:53:30 +0000

According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the US government provided over a million dollars in funding to the Venezuelan opponents of President Hugo Chavez in 2002. The funds were channeled through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a non-profit agency with a congressional mandate to "encourage democracy".

Among the groups receiving funding are those collecting signatures for a referendum on Hugo Chavez's presidency, and the people who unseated the president in a short-lived coup two years ago.

The NED also provided funds to opposition groups in Haiti opposed to the recently-deposed president Aristide. Critics have claimed that the funding, along with a major aid embargo, was part of a successful attempt to systematically destabilize the country.

» Independent: US revealed to be secretly funding opponents of Chavez

» William Blum: Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy

» National Endowment for Democracy: official web site

» Media Transparency: National Endowment for Democracy Funded Venezuelan Coup Perpetrators: Someone should tell the NED that a coup is the opposite of democracy

Former Guantanamo Prisoner Describes "Torture"

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:51:55 +0000

Jamal al-Harith, a British citizen who was held for over two years without charge by the American military was recently released. Upon his return home from "Camp X-ray" on the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he described gruesome conditions to the British press.

Al-Harith said that prisoners were kept in small wire cages, exposed to the weather from above and to snakes, insects, and scorpions below. The former prisoner described brutal treatment such as frequent beatings for minor offenses, torture, and systematic humiliation. He cited specific instances where devout muslims were forced to watch female strippers, and prisoners were told "we will kill your family and you."

US foreign secretary Jack Straw explained that there was "good reason" for detaining the suspects. When asked if any of those held were innocent, he replied, "I can't answer that question, nobody can."

» Mirror: Terror of Torture in Cuba Camp

"One Big Guantanamo"

Over 10,000 Iraqi men and boys are being held without charge by the US military in Iraq, according to a recent New York Times report. The prisoners, who have been captured by the military, are in most cases not allowed contact with the outside world, including their families.

"It took the Americans five minutes to take my son," said Fadil Abdulhamid. "It has taken me more than three weeks to find him." Human rights lawyer Adil Allami commented that "Iraq has turned into one big Guantánamo," explaining that the prisoners, who are as young as 11 and as old as 75, have "essentially no rights".

» NYTimes: As U.S. Detains Iraqis, Families Plead for News

"Hundreds Killed Every Day" by Well-Equipped Former Military

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:49:24 +0000

The 28-year-old former mayor of Milo, a town of 50,000 in northern Haiti, told reporters that the formerly disbanded Haitian military is now killing hundreds of people. Jean Charles Moise, who is now in hiding, said that "the journalists are in Port-au-Prince, but here in the north no one is reporting what's going on, that the former Haitian military is killing people. They are killing about 50 people a day in Cap Haitien."

Moise also said the former army has been equipped with sophisticated weaponry, including helicopters and planes, and asked reporters to find out where it was coming from. He said that the army, which killed thousands of Haitian dissidents during the US-supported Duvalier dictatorships, was traditionally used to oppress the poor of Haiti before it was disbanded by President Aristide in 1994.

Moise also drew attention to the achievements of Haiti's democratic government, and asked why the US chose to destabilize the country with an aid embargo.

"One has to ask, why is all of this happening? Is this because we used to have only 10 public high schools but now we have over 150?"

» Pacific News Service: Through These Trees, I See Haiti's Murderous Army Reborn

UN Recommends Reparations for Africville Residents

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:35:54 +0000

Before: Africville circa 1984; the community was denied basic sanitation and water services by the city of Halifax.

After: Years after the village was demolished and the land appropriated by the city of Halifax, the only remnant of Africville is a small monument.

The fight for compensation for former residents of Africville received a boost when a United Nations report urged Canada to consider paying reparations.

Located in north Halifax, Africville was home to about 400 black Nova Scotians until it was razed by the city starting in 1964.

First a settlement for black Americans who fled the United States during the war of 1812, Africville existed as a community starting in the 1850s. Though the residents paid taxes, the city of Halifax provided no services, and residents were left to make do with what was available. This set the stage for the city's relocation program in 1964, which was initiated on the basis of the alleged poor sanitation in Africville. Most families were paid around $500 in compensation.

Many historians cite evidence that the city used the humanitarian justification as an excuse to appropriate what was then seen as an ideal area for industrial development. Africville residents were not consulted in the formulation of the relocation program. Despite the trying conditions, many surviving Africville residents have recalled the community with some fondness, citing the strong community and independence.

Efforts by the Africville Genealogy Society to gain compensation for the families of Africville residents have, to date, not been fruitful.

Additional Reading:

» Radio Canada: Africville: expropriation des Noirs néo-écossais

» Photographs: Africville Before and After

» HWP: Africville: Urban Removal in Canada

» CBC: Africville – The Lost Town

» Chronicle-Herald: UN draft report suggests Africville compensation

» Denise Allen: Lessons from Africville

» Isaac Saney: On Reparations

» Rocky Jones: The case for reparations

Five Arrested for Protesting Cuts to BC Women's Centres

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:29:24 +0000

Five representatives from the British Columbia Coalition of Women's Centres were arrested last weekend after refusing to leave an office in the province's legislature.

Prior to the refusal to leave, the representatives had a meeting with Minister of State for Women's and Seniors' Services Ida Chong concerning the Liberal government's cuts to the province's women's centres.

According to the Lower Mainland Coalition for Social Justice, 100 per cent of core funding to BC's 37 Women's Centres will be cut as of March 31, 2004, resulting in widespread closures.

The representatives had two main requests during the meeting with Chong. First, they wanted a commitment to re-open the agreement between the government and the centres, thereby continuing the funding. Secondly, they wanted to arrange an emergency meeting with Finance Minister Gary Collins before the end of March to discuss the issue. The representatives refused to leave the Legislature until Chong came back to the table to have an "open and honest discussion about the realities for women in BC."

The funding that will be ceased has provided crisis intervention, as well as referral and emergency response services. The coalition warns that cutting the funding will continue the BC Liberal government's trend of subjecting women to "starvation, harassment, violence, homelessness, addiction, unemployment, loss of their children, and isolation, with no legal aid and nowhere to turn."

Stronger Whistleblower Protection Needed: PSAC

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:26:42 +0000

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) is worried that the Liberal government's new bill for "whistleblowers" is not extensive enough to provide the proper protection and recourse for those who choose to bring relevant issues forward. PSAC says it has been advocating for whistleblower protection for more than 20 years.

PSAC says that for whistleblower protection to be effective, it must meet several criteria. It must allow for a person to confidentially report any suspected wrongdoing to a responsible third party outside formal departmental structures and the allegations must be investigated by an independent agency, providing anonymity to the whistleblower whenever possible. If an allegation turns out to be wrong or there is not enough evidence, no penalties should be imposed on the whistleblower so that others will not be discouraged. Recourse must be provided throughout the procedure, and the entire set of rules must be applied to the entire public sector.

"We also want a cultural change in government where it is possible to question the motives and actions of the higher-ups without recrimination," says PSAC national president, Nycole Turmel. She also says that the government is refusing to agree to PSAC's suggestions and it is not offering any other solutions, even in light of the ongoing media and public scrutiny.

"When the sponsorship scandal broke I thought the government was serious, but with each passing day, their actions say otherwise," she said.

Is "Fighting to Win" a Criminal Act?

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 08:01:36 +0000

OCAP's John Clarke on the "Queen's Park Riot" and the changing rules of class warfare

John Clarke is an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) in Toronto. The following is an edited transcript of a talk John gave at a public discussion on the criminalization of dissent in Halifax, NS on December 16, 2003. A full transcript and audio recording are also available.

[Coming from the print edition? Jump to the beginning of the second half.]

John Clarke at an OCAP demonstration. Clarke is one of OCAP's two paid organizers. photo: OCAP

I'd like to bring a message of solidarity from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty to this meeting, but more importantly to everyone here in this city who is facing harassment and intimidation because they stand up for what is just, and what is fair.

On June 15th, 2000, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty organized a march for homeless people and allies on the Ontario Legislature, and we faced criminal charges as a result. In Halifax, it was a protest against the G7.

If we're talking about the criminalization of dissent, the first thing that must occur to us when we look at those kinds of examples is that we live in an insane world, where people who go out and challenge injustice are the ones who must defend themselves from the charge of being criminals.

When we marched on the Legislature, back in Toronto, we were aware that so far that year, 22 homeless people had died on the streets of Toronto. When it comes to the crimes of the G7, even the known ones would fill volumes. Those that we don't know about would probably fill volumes more.

To say that anyone who stands up against such acts of theft and murder and violence - and fights back against them - must defend themselves from the charge of being criminal is astounding, and insane. We should keep that in mind.

Further Reading:

ZNet: From Protest to Resistance: and interview with John Clarke

Naomi Klein: Would You Invite John Clarke to Your Riot?

CNEWS: A discussion with John Clarke [includes responses to several hostile callers]

John Clarke: Interrogation at the US Border

Eye: John Clarke calls from jail

It's important to look at some of the backdrops to the state and legal attacks that are coming down on people today.

The first and most important one - and it plays out everywhere - is what is sometimes called the neoliberal agenda. A decision has been made in the corporate boardrooms (and correspondingly, in the legislatures and parliaments) to completely change the rules of the game. To take back all barriers that stand in the way of the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, and to remove all previous social entitlement - all regulations that limited the banditry of multinational corporations.

That is the agenda that is unfolding. As it unfolds, and as populations start to feel a sense of grievance, and start to resist those changes - whether it be fishers in PEI or people in any Canadian city - when people stand up against that agenda, increasingly the response of the state is to say that "we are not going to make concessions; we are not going to provide social provision; we are not going to provide health care and social programs. Our solution to your grievance is going to literally be the policeman's billy club." And the jail cells, and the courts.

That is the backdrop to this whole situation.

"2,000 people per month are being evicted in Toronto"

We went through a long period in history after the second world war - especially in the privileged parts of the world - when concessions were being made. When living standards were improving, when social programs were being introduced, when the succeeding generation had a realistic expectation that they were going to do better than their parents had done in their living standards and their future.

And that has come to an end.

That period of tactical concessions, sometimes referred to as the post-war settlement, has been replaced by its complete opposite. During that period of relative social compromise, the reality was that social resistance became more constrained, more limited... less explosive, and more ready to settle for compromise, because concessions were being provided.

The difficulty we have today is that the other side has unilaterally revoked the deal, but many on our side are still playing by the rules of that dead deal, of that exhausted compromise.

And so we have to grapple with the question of how we can, as we say in OCAP, fight to win. That question of how we deal with resisting - of how we take up an effective resistance - is an absolutely decisive one.

At an earlier period in history, people didn't believe that the notion of resistance was raising a futile moral protest in the hope that the governments were listening. Because the governments of those days certainly weren't listening.

They weren't interested in moral protest. In order to win things, you actually had to build a movement, a social movement that would be strong enough and powerful enough to actually achieve things. That's how the trade unions were built. That's how people in the 1930s were able to organize for their survival in the face of the great depression.

In 1929, when a delegation of the unemployed was allowed to meet with the Prime Minister of the day, R.B. Bennett, they suggested to him that the government should introduce unemployment insurance for unemployed people, which at that time made up a huge chunk of the population.

Police watch a feast for homeless people organized by OCAP in Yorkville, a posh Toronto shopping district. photo: OCAP

Bennett's response was: "Never will I, or any government I'm part of, put a premium on idleness." And yet, in 1935, Bennett tabled a bill for the introduction of unemployment insurance... just before he was voted out of office.

And today, I think what is happening is that people are beginning to realize that we cannot go on playing by the rules of a dead deal. We cannot go on resisting on the basis of hope that those in the parliament buildings are listening to us because we make a compelling moral argument.

During the days of the protest movement against Mike Harris, I was always enormously irritated when I heard people make the comment: "Mike Harris, I hope you're listening." Believe me, Mike Harris was not listening.

But he could have been made to listen.

But to do that, you had to speak his language. It's no good speaking to him in the language of reason and moderation and compassion; you have to speak in a language that he's going to understand.

And so, throughout the world today, you're starting to see people organizing to fight back in a way that really makes a difference. It's in what is sometimes called the South, in the historically oppressed countries, where you see the most compelling examples.

A couple of weeks ago in Toronto, we were enormously pleased that Joao Pedro Stedile, one of the leading figures of the landless peasant movement in Brazil, came to Toronto and gave a talk on the struggles of his organization. In countries like that, you're seeing people organize resistance that isn't based on the possibility of a good sound byte on the six o'clock news, or putting forward an argument that will be compelling and interesting to the people in power.

"It seemed to us entirely reasonable that homeless people should be allowed to speak to people who were in many ways the direct architects of their misery."

People are actually organizing to take what they need, and to make a difference in their lives. I think we need to start looking at those kinds of examples ourselves.

At OCAP, a small poor people's organization based largely in the city of Toronto, we've tried to put into effect the same kind of notion: that it is today absolutely imperative, if we are going to organize an effective resistance, to proceed on the basis of fighting to win.

We live in a very large city where there is an enormous amount of homelessness, and an enormous amount of poverty, and where each and every day, there are rampant injustices going on. People are denied welfare, people face deportation from the country, people are being evicted from their housing - some 2,000 people per month are being evicted in Toronto at the moment.

We try to organize on a case by case basis to fight back against those things. So we've organized something that we call "direct action casework". It doesn't usually mean going to tribunals and speaking to adjudicators, it means bringing fifty people to a welfare office to ensure that a family gets the cheque that they're entitled to. It may involve going to Pearson Airport to try to prevent a deportation from happening. We've done that successfully on a couple of occasions.

"I was always enormously irritated when I heard people make the comment: 'Mike Harris, I hope you're listening.' Believe me, Mike Harris was not listening.

But he could have been made to listen.

On one occasion, it involved going to a Shell gas station that was refusing to pay wages owed to an employee who had been laid off, and putting up a picket line to prevent them from pumping any gas for a couple of hours. This had an enormous impact in creating social conscience on the part of the employer.

We organize these kinds of actions all the time; we intervene in hundreds and hundreds of situations.

The one action that seems to have offended the powers that be, perhaps more than any other, was the event on June 15th.

On that day, we brought around 1,500 people to the Ontario Legislature. A great percentage of the crowd was made up of homeless people. We didn't want to do what most people do when they go to Queen's Park, which is make 78 speeches and then leave. We wanted to do something that would be more challenging to the government. Something that could actually have the potential to force them to show a mark of respect to people who really were what you might describe as "despised collateral damage", homeless people. We therefore went to the legislature with a simple demand: that a delegation of people affected by homelessness be allowed to address the legislature.

We're not, I confess, experienced Parliamentarians, and we were told, in the words of the speaker's executive assistant, that "it would be outside the Westminister Model of parliament" for such a thing to occur. We knew that Hillary Westin, the lieutenant-governor, gets to yammer on in front of the legislature all the time, and we knew that visiting dignitaries get to do it, so it seemed to us entirely reasonable that homeless people should be allowed to speak to people who were in many ways the direct architects of their misery.

We also anticipated that it was likely that they would take a different view. We were aware that we would be blocked, and we were ready to press the demand and hope that we might broker a deal - that we might be given the opportunity to meet with the Premier, to meet with senior cabinet ministers, whatever.

But they chose a course that we were astounded by. They moved to clear the grounds of the legislature. They rode horses into the crowd, and they began what the riot police refer to in their technical terminology as "punch outs" - that is, full speed baton charges into the crowd. And when the head of the riot squad was asked in court, "I take it, sir, that your officers are trained to hit with these large clubs as hard as is necessary," he said: "No, they are trained to hit as hard as they possibly can."

So when this happened, I imagine they anticipated there would be a rout - people would flee the grounds. What actually happened is that there was a battle. People stood their ground and people fought back. It wasn't organized, it wasn't planned that there would be a confrontation, but once they began the confrontation, there is no question that the people we brought to Queen's Park did not turn their backs.

Now, at the end of this, they began a process of demonization and criminalization. The event was portrayed in the mainstream media as the most evil thing that had ever occurred in the history of the planet... I'm only slightly exaggerating.

As well, they went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to win the right to all the media tapes and photographs of the day. They ended up arresting 45 people, and charging some of them with quite serious things. Between a third and a half of the people arrested were homeless, they had the hardest time of all getting out of jail. One young homeless man, James Semple, spent seven months in the Don jail before he could make bail.

I was there to pick him up when he got out, and the first thing he said was "It was worth it."

Now, what they also did was impose absolutely rigid bail conditions. Every person who was arrested was given the condition that they could not associate with any other member of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. So that was 45 people who were faced with the sort of banning order that we could associate with the Apartheid regime in South Africa. There would also be serious repercussions when anybody would get arrested on a minor charge afterwards.

I was arrested at a political protest some time afterwards, and because of the bail conditions I had, it took a month for me to get out of jail. That was an experience that several people had.

What they also did was to single out three of us - Gaetan Heroux, Stefan Pilipa and myself - and they charged us as so-called "organizers of a planned riot". They laid two charges; against Stefan and Gaetan they laid the charge of "participating in a riot", which carries a two-year jail term.

To participate in a riot, it is only necessary that you are one of "three or more persons gathered together for a common purpose in an unlawful assembly that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously".

That could be Jerry Springer. That could be just about anything. It could be any picket line skirmish; it certainly could be a demonstration where any level of disturbance occurs.

Against me, they laid two charges: "counselling to participate in a riot", and "counselling to assault the police", based on a speech I had made just before we went up to the legislature.

To lay a charge of that kind against somebody who makes a speech has implications that are so obvious that I don't even need to spell them out, but a conviction on that would have been incredibly serious. Conviction on the two charges together could have meant seven years in jail.

Now, I would like you to step back and say that the laying of those kinds of charges in the post war period has been very, very rare. And to lay them as part of an orchestrated attempt to crush an organization is almost unprecedented. You would have to go back to the charges that were laid against the leadership of the Communist Party in 1931, where they laid section 98 criminal code charges and seditious libel charges against them, and gave seven members of the Communist Party something like fourty years in jail.

And you would have to go back to the kind of charges that were laid - "conspiracy and riot" - against unemployed workers in Newfoundland in 1935.

When they sought to bring in legal precedents to put before the judge, they themselves had to keep coming back to the 1930s; that was where all the precedents lay. We couldn't find any direct comparisons to charging someone for making a political speech. The two examples we could find in Canadian history were Annie Buller, who got six months of hard labour in 1931 for a speech that she never actually made because she wasn't there.

And the other one would be a Nova Scotia example in the 1920s: J.B. McLaughlin, who in protesting against a brutal police attack on striking steelworkers, wrote a letter deploring this to his own union members urging them to take solidarity action in support of the steelworkers. He was sentenced to two years in Dorchester penitentiary for "seditious libel". And the prosecutor in that case argued that it didn't matter whether what McLaughlin said about the police was true or untrue; the very fact that he was trying to create disaffection by saying it made him guilty, and a jury right here in Halifax convicted him.

So those are the kinds of charges that we were looking at and basing our case upon. Now, the whole point is that when they go that kind of a route, they have to make a real go of it. They have to lay on all the trappings.

So we had the right to a jury, and we had the right to full answer in defense. And we decided to utilize that right to the maximum. We went with a jury, and we put forward a defense that was, to us, very very important. We were looking at serious criminal charges, but we also knew we were engaged in a really vital struggle. We didn't want to engage in some set of wretched, cringing apologetics.

We didn't want to go into that courtroom and put forward a defense that would shame the movement that we were a part of. Even if we were going to jail, we were determined to put forward a principled but effective defense. I really believe that we did.

So much so, that I remember when I'd finished my testimony, the prosecutor suggested to the judge - when the jury had left the room - that I had made a de facto admission of guilt.

It didn't quite work out the way they wanted. We put forward this basic theory of the defense: that we were a militant poor people's organization; that we were an anti-capitalist organization; that we were engaged in a struggle against an inhuman system and an inhuman government, and we were working for the defeat of that government. And that we came to Queen's Park to demand that a delegation of homeless people be heard, and that we were prepared to organize a militant standoff with the police; that we were prepared, if necessary, to pull away a section of the barricades that they had erected in order to facilitate that standoff.

But: we also argued, quite truthfully, that the confrontation that occurred in the way that it did, occurred because - through incompetence or deliberate provocation - the police hadn't erected the barricades properly and they collapsed en masse. And secondly, they engaged in an insane drive to clear the grounds of the legislature, despite the fact that after some initial interaction, there was a palpable, undeniable lull in the situation. They organized this punitive attack that precipitated what became known as the "Queen's Park Riot".

We put that forward, and we put it forward very clearly, and without any hesitation. What happened at the end of the day, to their amazement, was that the jury became deadlocked. Now, it didn't really amaze us, because we sort of thought that the jury tends to be drawn from more conservative sectors of society, and it's not really operating in what you'd call a worker friendly environment.

But nonetheless, we calculated that a jury would probably reflect some of the political differences that exist in the province of Ontario. And it did.

So the jury became deadlocked. The crown had assumed that 20 police witnesses, hours and hours of video tape, pictures of people wearing bandanas, and the accused making militant speeches would guarantee a conviction. And they were wrong.

The jury became deadlocked, and at the end of the day, the judge had to declare a mistrial. They then made a pathetic attempt to try to go it again. They decided to stay the charges against Gaetan and Stefan, and put me on trial before the jury a second time on the same charges.

What happened was that we put forward a constitutional argument that I had not been given a trial within a reasonable period of time. And that was won. My charges were stayed, and it never went to a jury the second time. The Attorney General intervened to ensure that the crown would not appeal, and the whole thing died.

As I said, what was enormously important about all this to us was that we wanted more than anything to be able to put forward a defense that counted for something. I believe that we did. And I believe that at the end of the day we can say that you don't have to go into court and get down on your knees and beg, and say, "I'm sorry, I do really live in a wonderfully fair society, and I don't know what went wrong but it'll never happen again." You don't have to do those things, but on the other hand you don't just have to say, "I defy you and your filthy system, take me away and lock me up, and I'll love every minute of it."

It is possible to put forward a defense that actually counts for something. It's possible to put forward a defense that can actually win you some things. That's the most important lesson that we draw from the whole June 15 trial experience.

However, what has also happened in the wake of June 15 is that we have experienced, on an ongoing basis, the most insane levels of police mobilization against our demonstrations. There are a lot of cops in Toronto, as you can imagine, and they're not very nice people by and large.

But there aren't enough cops in Toronto to police OCAP demonstrations anymore.

When we organize a demonstration, they bring in police from Barry, from Hamilton, from the Ontario Provincial Police, from the RCMP; they bring in police reinforcements from other police forces to bolster their numbers. They're all kitted out in riot gear, and the horses are there. And they have tear gas launchers and plastic bullets.

So the mobilizing that we've done after June 15 for a whole extended period had to be conducted in the face of that. We've also had to learn some important tactical lessons about how to deal with the fact that they have state power and they're better organized than us at the moment. We're working for the day when that changes, but for the moment, the point is well taken: they have a capacity to deal with us that we can't just ignore. We have to find ways to deal with them.

What we've tried to put into effect is a form of mobilizing that works to achieve our objectives, and still takes a militant and disruptive direction, but at the same time neutralizes - in one way or another - their capacity for violence. That has been important.

One year and a bit after June 15, we organized a march into the city's financial district. We organized about 2,500 people to march into the Bay Street area of Toronto - the financial part of the place, the belly of the beast, as I like to say. The march deliberately aimed to have a major impact: a march by a poor people's organization into the largest financial centre in the country.

We knew that the police mobilization would be insane. They used seven different police forces, they had I don't know how many, but there was a four-figure crowd of cops. They had the plastic bullets ready to go, and the rest of it.

We used the tactic of the snake march - the tactic of not actually having a specific place that we were bound for, but marching in different directions and making it up as we went along, all with the purpose of getting into the financial district. It was an incredibly effective tactic.

Since then, the police have learned to respond to it, and you can't just endlessly replicate your tactics, but used on that occasion in that way, it was enormously effective. It threw them into an absolute quandary. People who were arrested that day were listening to the police radios, and got a sense of just how perplexed they were by the whole thing. At one point, they decided we were going to the Stock Exchange, so they moved a whole pile of cops down to the Stock Exchange. Then they decided we weren't, so they pulled them away. Then they decided they were again, so they pulled them back. And then they had a conversation in which they said, "They're not coming to the Stock Exchange, but we can't leave again because someone in the media is going to get the idea we don't know what we're doing."

We were told by two paramedics who were standing next to Chief Julian Fantino that at one point he slammed down the phone receiver and said "There is nothing we can do to stop this."

For me the highlight of the whole thing was the Deputy Chief of Police Boyd doing this interview with City TV, saying that "There is absolutely no way that these people are going to get to the corner of Bay and Adelaide." And at that moment, City TV's cameras show a crowd of 2,000 people standing at Bay and Adelaide.

So that was an effective technique. There have been a couple of other examples where we've used the same approach of trying to find a way to get around their capacity for violence.

You may remember a couple of summers ago the Pope came to Toronto. We thought that the Papal visit might be an occasion when even Julian Fantino would be a bit embarrassed about clubbing homeless people on the head. So we organized the takeover of an empty building and we called it the Pope Squat. We got enormously wide support from whole sections of the community, including many Catholic people who came out and supported it.

And our calculation was correct: It was the lowest kind of police mobilization that we had seen for a very very long time. The place actually held for three and a half months before they finally found a legal pretext to evict, although it is now going to be opened up as a rooming house. At least it won't remain a totally empty property.

Then, during the summer, we organized a huge feast for the homeless... in Yorkville. If you don't know Toronto, Yorkville is the most upscale restaurant and boutique district you could imagine. On a Saturday night, it's astounding who goes to Yorkville, and what money there is to spend. The Conservative government in Ontario had introduced a massive cut to social assistance. At the same time, it had implemented lavish tax breaks for the wealthiest in society.

We did a little bit of research, and we discovered that a corporate CEO making a million dollars a year (of which there are a few) would be receiving from the government the same amount of money that had been taken from 17 single parent families on welfare.

"In countries like Brazil, you're seeing people organize resistance that isn't based on the possibility of a good sound byte on the six o'clock news, or putting forward an argument that will be compelling and interesting to the people in power."

We went to Yorkville that night to target that whole sick transfer of wealth. We didn't want to have some street theatre soupy gruel to give to homeless people; we really did want to organize a feast. We appealed to people in the community to cook, and to do a huge huge feast up. The high point of the thing was that the people from the Mohawk community Tyendinaga, which is down near Belleville, brought up 600 servings of venison. There was picnic table after picnic table full of every kind of desert, and every - it was just a fantastic feast.

Finally, just last month we organized another takeover of another empty building and were able to win that when the reigning Member of Parliament for the area intervened and offered to resign his seat in Parliament if he couldn't succeed in getting the building turned into social housing within a month. We actually discovered in the last couple of weeks that that was successful, and that building will be opened up. [It has since been discovered that Dennis Mills, Liberal MP for Toronto-Danforth did not secure the building for social housing, despite announcing that he had. Mills did not resign, though OCAP has since intervened. - ed]

I'd just like to conclude by saying that I think the most important lesson, when it comes to this whole question of the criminalization of poverty is that our right to resist must be regarded as non-negotiable. Our right to organize resistance is something that cannot be stopped. It is imperative when we face these criminal charges - and sometimes they appear very serious, and sometimes they are. But it's enormously important that we not be diverted from what we're doing.

At the end of the day we came out of it stronger, wiser, and with a much more diverse and wide set of activists actually organizing within OCAP. In large measure, we owe that to the prosecutors and the cops who provided us with that enforced training regimen.

I think we're now dealing with this situation, where there is this inhuman agenda that is being imposed on communities. It's reflected in a thousand different ways. It's reflected in the privatization that's happening to the people in the townships in South Africa, and in what's going on in the streets of Toronto and Halifax. It's an agenda that has to be resisted, and has to be stopped.

And I believe, in the course of building that struggle, if we organize effectively - politically and legally - we can come out of those battles stronger than we went into them. We have to learn to share our experiences, to share the victories - and the setbacks as well - but I believe that we are on the road to building a movement of resistance that really is going to fight to win, and even ultimately transform the society.

Thank you very much.

OCAP's John Clarke on the "Queen's Park Riot" and the changing rules of class warfare

[From a talk given by John Clarke in Halifax last December, at a public discussion on the criminalization of dissent.]

If we're talking about the criminalization of dissent, the first thing that must occur to us when we look at those kinds of examples is that we live in an insane world, where people who go out and challenge injustice are the ones who must defend themselves from the charge of being criminals.

When we marched on the Legislature, back in Toronto, we were aware that so far that year, 22 homeless people had died on the streets of Toronto. When it comes to the crimes of the G7, even the known ones would fill volumes. Those that we don't know about would probably fill volumes more.

To say that anyone who stands up against such acts of theft and murder and violence - and fights back against them - must defend themselves from the charge of being criminal is astounding, and insane. We should keep that in mind.

Venezuela's Political Battle

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:57:05 +0000

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez surveys a crowd demonstrating US intervention in Venezuela. photo: Indymedia Argentina

Political struggle has been the day-to-day reality for Venezuelans in the last year or so. The country is polarized and the vehemence of the two opposing factions is greater than ever. A large part of the population now stands in the middle, disillusioned with both Chavez and those who oppose him. The opposition is playing their last card to oust him.

On March 2 the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared that 1,832,493 signatures had been approved and another 876,017 needed verification. These signatures were collected by the opposition in support of a referendum on Chavez's presidency. The opposition has used different measures to attempt to overthrow Chavez in the past. In April 2002 they attempted a coup d'état; later on in December they managed to stop the oil industry, the pillar of Venezuela's economy, for several months. Economists have predicted it would take years to recover what was lost during those months. The opposition has placed all their hopes on the possibility of revoking the Chavez government using the referendum, a tool Chavez himself introduced.

The CNE declared that a corroboration process would be carried out in the following days to prove the legality of the 800,000 signatures that have not yet been recognized. The minimum number necessary to call a referendum is 2.4 million, which represents approximately 20 percent of the Venezuelan electorate. Initially reluctant to accept the CNE decision, the opposition resorted to violent protests to express their disagreement. The riots that lasted for at least five days left 9 dead and many wounded. Both sides suffered losses during the demonstrations and several members of the National Guard and policemen were wounded.

The authenticity of 876,017 signatures was called into question due to similar handwriting used to enter large numbers of signatures. This, despite numerous clarifications from the CNE stating that everyone had to fill in forms in their own handwriting, with the only exception being the illiterate or handicapped. In Venezuela, 91.1 percent of the total population over the age of 15 are literate.

This is the first referendum of this nature in the democratic history of Venezuela, and the first of its kind for the whole Latin American region. That explains some of the flaws in the process and the need for thorough revision of signatures before giving a final result.

If all of the signatures collected by the opposition are validated, they will add up to 2.6 million, a fraction of the 11 million Venezuelan voters. It is said that abstention at the polls is on the rise. However, even assuming that 50 percent of the voters refrain from voting, the opposition could still be far away from winning against Chavez. The Constitution states that in order to revoke Chavez's presidency his rivals would need to get at least as many votes as the president received in the 2000 election, i.e. 3.76 million votes.

Further more, the opposition is a conglomerate of different parties that before Chavez came to power were always disputing supremacy. The unity among these parties is only a fragile one, a unity that will be broken if they manage to vote Chavez out. A separation of the opposition will make it even harder for them to win against Chavez, who is still quite popular, especially among the poor.

See additional photos...

Some hold the theory that the opposition had already done this math and seeing the improbability of defeating Chavez in a referendum tried to resemble Haiti's situation hoping for an international intervention. US administration has kept a hostile stand toward the Chavez government, partly motivated by Chavez's defiance of US plans in the Americas. During the Summit of the Americas held in Monterey, Chavez along with Argentina's Kirchner and Brazil's Lula rejected the American-proposed free trade agreement. Recently, Chavez has been increasingly adamant in his accusations of US intervention in Venezuela. Meanwhile, spokesmen from the opposition have appealed for a foreign intervention.

After Colin Powell invited the opposition to submit to the reparation of the signatures, there was a sudden decline in anti-Chavez demonstrations.

Venezuela's commercial newspapers and TV companies openly support actions against the president and have called for violence in pursuit of their interests. The international media coverage has been rather poor. It appears that the international media base their reports on coverage in the fiercely partisan local media, detracting from their claim to objectivity. It is also common for international press to cite numbers out of context. For instance, the figure of 3.4 million signatures that the opposition claims to have has been widely reported, but very few have mentioned that there are 11 million voters in Venezuela.

It appears that the international media base their reports on coverage in the fiercely partisan local media, detracting from their claim to objectivity.

During Chavez's presidency, unemployment has increased, as well as inflation, poverty and malnutrition. Impunity, nepotism and corruption are also rampant. These maladies are not restricted to Chavez administration and aren't exclusively his responsibility, as they have been present for decades. Just as Chavez failed to carry out fundamental reforms in his six years in power, the opposition who seeks his removal failed for 40 years at achieving the very same task. It is no surprise, then, that many Venezuelans distrust the opposition and feel disillusioned by Chavez. Those Venezuelans are the ones who will decide what will happen next.

Being cynical, one might predict that they'll wait until the next election, hoping for a new messiah who promises to save the country.

David Fuenmayor reports on Venezuela's deep political divide, US intervention, and issues surrounding a potential referendum.

Neighbour

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:50:08 +0000

"Neighbour," by Heather Meek

On to the End: Geoff Berner

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:42:01 +0000

Geoff Berner is forever touring. To learn more about him and his music visit www.geoffberner.com. photo: Henry Svec

Geoff Berner has played in a punk band. Geoff Berner has written for Sesame Street. Geoff Berner plays the accordion and prefers to drink scotch out of a wine glass.

The canuck's latest release, We Shall Not Flag or Fail, We Shall Go on to the End, has quickly gotten the attention of campus radio stations across North America and Europe. The record features his trademark stew of diverse and previously incompatible styles. Berner's work combines folk, punk, rock, pop, and traditional Jewish music into an organic whole. He is also difficult to pin down lyrically; Charles Bukowski, T.S. Eliot, and Naomi Klein all seem to have influenced these provocative songs.

While touring in Europe, the socially conscious troubadour took a breather to answer some questions for the Dominion:

Have you spent much time writing since the new album? Any songs you'd like to tell us about?

The next album is in the can. It's a live CD, recorded in Oslo, with Wayne Adams on percussion and Diona Davies on violin. It features some old songs, some odd covers, and a few songs that will be on the next studio album. The studio album will be called Lucky Goddamn Jew and will be a hardcore klezmer album. One of the highlights should be The Violins, a poem by the great Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, the laureate of the Intifada. This will be set to a klezmer melody and arrangement.

That's about as clear a statement as I can make about the current situation in Israel.

Is corporate power and influence something that you are concerned with? We All Gotta Be a Prostitute Sometimes and Porn Queen Girlfriend seem to be very critical of consumerism and its effects.

I think that whenever we fail to see other people as people like ourselves, we are vulnerable to the possibility of committing terrible crimes. And when we start to see ourselves as not worth much, then we are vulnerable to despair.

In Iron Grey you sing about the government not being able to find your hiding place; if you could have one minute of Paul Martin's attention, what would you say to him?

Paul Martin is an old man. He doesn't have much time to build a legacy, which is clearly his main concern, after the elections themselves. But money and power aren't all that matters to him, or he would have stayed in the private sector. He sees himself as a man of destiny, building a legacy for himself and for his dead father, who just missed becoming Prime Minister himself. I'm sure that he has dialogues with his father every hour of the day.

So if I had one minute, I'd say: If you want to make your father proud, remember that every ruler, every society in history, is remembered and judged mostly on this criteria: Hw effective was he at taking care of the least powerful, the very young, the very old, and the ill?

You seem to be much more a performer than a recording artist. Is the record just a necessary marketing tool, or an artistic medium in its own right?

A record is certainly an artistic medium in its own right, and requires a lot more hidden artifice. It's sort of like the difference between a play and a movie.

Here in Norway, where I am now, there's a place called the Vigeland Mausoleum. Vigeland the painter spent 50 years covering the inside of a church-like building with his vision of human existence. When he died, he had his ashes placed above the doorway of the building. When I die, my record company will pour my ashes into the vinyl vat at an LP factory. Each copy of this limited edition of my "Best Of" compilation will contain a little piece of me.

Do you ever get the feeling that no matter how potent or biting your art may be, the people who are most interested are already aware of the issues or sentiments you're dealing with?

The key is to find a new angle on it that strikes someone in a way that it never has before. No one's world-view is totally rigid. It's always full of swirling contradictory prejudices that can be plucked out of the soup and exploited.

Is the Canadian drunken accordion player the twenty-first century version of the Greek blindsoothsayer? Or maybe I've got it all wrong...

Why not? Homer was just a guy, after all. He probably wasn't blind, either. He just kept leaving his glasses in the previous town while he was on tour.

Is the bard a role that you want to play forever? Do you ever see yourself settling down?

[Not] until I drop dead on stage.

Henry Svec is currently studying English literature and history at Mount Allison University, New Brunswick.

Geoff Berner has played in a punk band. Geoff Berner has written for Sesame Street. Geoff Berner plays the accordion and prefers to drink scotch out of a wine glass. The canuck's latest release, We Shall Not Flag or Fail, We Shall Go on to the End, has quickly gotten the attention of campus radio stations across North America and Europe. The record features his trademark stew of diverse and previously incompatible styles.
- by Henry Svec -

A New Era in Conservation

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:33:41 +0000

The Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI), launched at the end of last year, is a common vision for the largest conservation agreement in the world. It proposes a plan to protect approximately 265 million hectares of forest and to manage a further area of equal size according to stringent ecological standards of development.

"We have a unique opportunity to pursue a balanced vision to conserve the entire Canadian boreal region, while providing for extensive economic benefits," explained CBI's Director, Cathy Wilkinson.

Canada's Boreal Forest is the largest intact forest ecosystem in the world. photo: Bryan Evans

Stretching across most of northern Canada, the boreal forest is the largest intact forest ecosystem in the world.

The vision is powerful due to its unusual mix of proponents, representing cooperation on an unprecedented scale. The Boreal Leadership Council, the spearheading committee of the initiative, is a mix of industry, environmental and First Nations organizations, including representatives of some of the most significant political and economic interests in the boreal region. The World Wildlife Fund, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Forest Ethics and Ducks Unlimited Canada are the environmental groups involved. The Deh Cho First Nations, the Innu Nation and Poplar River First Nation are also at the table. Most intriguing are the industry representatives, including forestry companies Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, Tembec Inc, Domtar Inc and Suncor Inc.

"We know that it is crucial for the Canadian boreal region to be managed in a responsible way if we want future generations to benefit from its economic, environmental, and social value," said Raymond Royer, president and chief executive officer of forestry company Domtar Inc. Royer believes that Domtar's involvement in CBI does not only demonstrate good corporate citizenship, but also good business.

"It will allow us to better understand stakeholder concerns," he explained, "which will in turn improve our planning for future fiber supply."

The economic value of the boreal is rivaled only by its ecological significance. Globally, the boreal forest is of vital importance. A 2001 report by the United Nations Environment Program called on Canada and a handful of other countries to take immediate steps to protect the remaining large swaths of untouched forest. It found that just 21 per cent of the planet's land area was still covered with healthy forests, including large chunks in Canada, Russia, the United States, the Congo and parts of South America. Globally, the largest conservation commitments to date have been made by the Sakha Republic in northern Russia with 70 million hectares, and by the Amazon Region Protected Areas Agreement, which protects 40 million hectares. "By acting now, Canada can safeguard one of the world's remaining large ecosystems - while it is still for the most part ecologically intact," urges Wilkinson.

Although the over 500 million hectares involved in the CBI far outdoes earlier conservation commitments, the unusual nature of the partnership, the magnitude of its vision and the process itself have generated controversy amongst environmentalists. Charles Caccia, a Toronto MP and chairman of the House of Commons Environment Committee, believes that protection of only 50 per cent of the Boreal is not enough, suggesting instead that the target should be set at 80 per cent.

But according to Monte Hummel, one of the agreement's chief architects and president of the World Wildlife Fund, the CBI goes far beyond the 80 per cent proposed by Caccia.

"The Boreal Forest Conservation Framework targets 100 per cent of Canada's boreal region for 'conservation,' where conservation is defined as striking a balance between strict protection and sustainable use that meets the highest international environmental standards," said Hummel.

The standard that the agreement proposes is the Boreal Forest Stewardship Standard, which was recently approved by Forest Stewardship Council, a certification process that is based on the principles of ecological protection and respect of the First Nations.

Caccia is also concerned by who is leading the initiative.

"It is the task of elected governments--not of private sector businesses and organizations--to produce a framework for a very sensitive and fragile resource that has more than monetary value."

According to Hummel, however, the initiative is not taking over the government's job, but helping the government to do its job better.

"Our initiative should be understood for what it is - an attempt by leading non-government parties and Aboriginal peoples to collaborate and generate solutions for governments to consider. In the past, governments have claimed their options were severely limited by adversarial relationships between First Nations, industry, and conservation groups. This constant warfare has forced governments to referee among competing interests - a dynamic which... has not historically benefited Canada's forests".

The government shares Hummel's view, but makes no committments. Brian Emmett, who heads Canadian Forest Service, said, "We see CBI's contribution as a potentially positive input in the on-going global and informed debate on how best to practice sustainable forest management".

In the meantime, the logging continues, and one wonders for how long the boreal forest can simultaneously be both the world's largest remaining wilderness and the world's largest source of facial tissues and advertising fliers.

March 16

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:27:51 +0000

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