The Dominion - 22

AIDS exacerbating food shortages in Africa

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 22:01:06 +0000

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is trying to bring attention to the devastating effect that the African AIDS crisis is having on the continent's ability to feed itself. Aside from depriving Africa of labourers, AIDS is killing many farmers before they can pass on to their children basic knowledge about traditional farming techniques. The FAO's study observed that farmers in Mozambique are cultivating less land and producing less food per acre than even a few years ago.

The FAO is working to adapt education programs targeted at adult farmers for the benefit of their orphaned children. These programs include teaching farmers about drought- and disease-resistant plants and modern farming techniques.

Unless existing AIDS treatments become widely accessible, many African nations are expected to lose up to 25% of their agricultural labour force to the disease within the next six years.

» Mail and Guardian: Aids threatens Africa's agriculture

» CBS: AIDS Hindering Africa Food Output

Spain holds 200 Moroccan migrants

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 22:00:55 +0000

Mild weather and the promise of legal status have spurred over 200 Moroccans to risk a journey to Spain in small crafts.

Over 200 Moroccans caught trying to illegally enter Spain are being held by authorities in Granada pending their return to Morocco. The Spanish Coast Guard intercepted five inflatable boats loaded with migrants, which brings the total captured to 1500 for the year – double the figure from this time last year. Over 4000 illegal migrants are believed to have died in the treacherous crossing between Morocco and Spain in the past five years alone.

The increased migration this year is believed to be a result of particularly fair weather, which favours water crossing in small crafts, and also because Spain's new socialist government is considering granting residence permits to illegal migrants with jobs. Spanish opposition parties have seized on the migration numbers as evidence that this relaxed immigration policy is flawed.

Nevertheless, in the recent months the US government has discussed a similar amnesty for illegal migrants as a means of solving expected long-term labour shortages, though this move is believed to be as much a way of courting the Latino vote in upcoming US presidential elections as anything. Proposals to accept more immigration into Canada have been put forward as a means of countering a declining national birthrate, though little movement in this direction is expected with the fragile minority government currently in place.

» Reuters: Spain holds 200 Moroccans

» CBS: Big Change For Illegal Aliens?

» London Free Press: Labour shortage looms in London

Iraqi death count rises as troop toll passes 1000

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 22:00:44 +0000

Amid growing Iraqi civilian casualties, the Pentagon announced on Sept 10th that the 1000th American soldier had been killed in the 18-month long occupation of Iraq.

Although the milestone was a lead story in North American media, American soldiers on the ground in Iraq tended to put the figure in context. Captain Gregory Wingard, of the 1st Infantry Division in Baqouba, told Agence France-Presse, "Sad as it is for those 1000 families and their friends, they're nothing to the number of Iraqis that get killed trying to defend their own families."

The Pentagon has not quantified the mounting Iraqi casualty rate, but an estimate culled from worldwide media reports by the Iraq Body Count indicates that the Iraqi noncombatant death toll is conservatively 12 000. Less specific figures based on US estimates suggest the deaths of Iraqi soldiers during the invasion, and resistance fighters since, have surpassed 40 000.

» New Standard: Iraqi deaths quietly mount as official U.S. troop toll passes 1,000

» AP: The uncounted toll on Iraqis

» The Age: Iraqi children killed in US strikes

OCAP Protests Ontario Liberal BBQ Fundraiser

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:49:31 +0000

On Saturday, August 28, the Ontario Liberal party held its "Red Hot Grits" fundraiser at the residence of party supporter Joseph Kurian in the York Mills/Bayview area. This was to be the party's biggest fundraiser of the year. However, members and supporters of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) decided to show up as well in order to protest the inaction that they feel the Liberal government is showing toward the poor in Ontario.

Two busloads of protesters arrived at the party, and they were immediately blocked by police, resulting in a two hour standoff. During this time, the fundraiser was hindered by OCAP's chanting. Liberals and friends who arrived needed a police escort, and many decided simply not to go – a success for the protesters.

Eventually, three people were arrested during the confusion that involved police pepper spray and police horses riding into the crowd. According to OCAP, one of its members was injured by the police and later charged with obstruction after being released from the hospital.

OCAP says Premier McGuinty and the Liberal government have done precious little to fight poverty, despite their campaign of "change." They point out that while a few pennies have been added to the minimum wage, social assistance has only gone up 3%, an increase that has not yet even been delivered.

Canadian Company Manufactures Bullets for War in Iraq

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:46:56 +0000

SNC Technologies Inc., based in Le Gardeur, Québec, is under contract to supply the US military with 300 to 500 million bullets per year in a contract that could potentially run for five years. The occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are of course taking longer than initially expected, and the US manufacturers cannot keep up with the demand for ammunition, so SNC's bullets have become part of Bush's "war on terror."

SNC, according to its website, has annual revenues of CAD$266 million, and it is also the sole military ammunition producer in Canada. SNC supplies the Canadian Department of National Defence with 70% of its ammunition and also sends its products to several companies across Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, Australia, and New Zealand.

» Chris Spannos (ZNet): Canadian Bullets, Dead Iraqis

» SNC Tech official web site

1,000 March to Support Palestinian Refugees Facing Deportation

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:45:48 +0000

Montreal residents protest in support of non-status Palestinian refugees. photo: CMAQ

An estimated 1,000 Montrealers attended a September 19th protest in support of Palestinian refugees in Canada. More than 40 Palestinians in Canada are facing deportation.

"They're deporting people back to a military occupation," said Rabie Masri, head of the Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees. Masri says that 99 per cent of Palestinian refugees are refused refugee status by immigration Canada.

One elderly family has been living in the basement of the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce church. According to one protester, "they just want to live out their remaining years in Canada."

» Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees: Media coverage of the demonstration

» CMAQ: Stateless and Exhausted: Refugees in Montreal face the endurance test of Immigration Canada

A Pleasing Demeanor

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:08:01 +0000

This spirited Calgary native has finally found his zone.

The "Hockey Song" is available at krisdemeanor.com.

Nearing the end of his set at this summer's Hillside Festival in Guelph, Kris Demeanor arrived at Down in the Zone, his rollicking discourse on Canada's national obsession. It's an excellent song, and it exemplifies Demeanor's irreverent pop artistry.

Though the song is ostensibly about hockey, it actually plays on the banal sexual metaphors ("scoring" etc.) associated with the sport in order to subvert the vacuous machismo that is so pervasive in our nation's rinks and bars. The tune unfolds as a witty and self-deprecating satire in which the singer's macho boasts continually dissolve into the titular lament, "I never have a clue what to do/ When I'm down in the zone."

Clearly, that's a lot to pack into a couple of minutes. Sensing this, Demeanor favoured his uninitiated audience with an introductory anecdote concerning a performance at a high school in Denmark.

"Their English wasn't very good," Demeanor related, "so, much of the lyrical effect of my songs was lost on them. After the set, however, a boy approached me."

Here Demeanor adopted a thick Scandinavian accent in order to recount the young Dane's grave words: "That song, Down in the Zone, it is not about hockey."

With that, Demeanor broke into a huge smile, and his band took off, leaving the audience members to draw their own conclusions about the nature of "the zone." The crowd laughed and lapped the song up, just as they had for the rest of Demeanor's humourous and theatrical performance.

While the audience was cheering by the end of Demeanor's set, it's a good bet that most in attendance didn't know much about him before he hit the stage. That's because, up to this point, Demeanor has devoted his energies to building up a following in Europe and Western Canada.

Though Demeanor hails from Calgary, and his songs often refer to the West, he admits he has a complicated relationship with the region.

"I still can't figure out whether or not I feel a particular connection to the West and its culture," he says. "Some of my songs are direct products of the Western experience, but they tend to be more universal stories of human joy and trouble and could probably have been written in Michigan or Israel."

In fact, many of his songs actually were written in far-flung locales. A youthful wanderlust drove Demeanor to flee the long shadow of the Rockies for the bustling streets of Europe and the Middle East, a move that turned out to be critical to his artistic development.

"[That trip] was a first-rate musical education," Demeanor maintains. "The year and a half busking and writing in Europe gave me the nerve to play live. There's nothing more challenging or humbling than busking in Glasgow in December in the rain, desperately needing another 50 pence for a can of cider."

The experience also helped him develop his theatrical performance style. "My energetic and somewhat spastic playing style was a direct product of having to play everything fast and loud in order to get people's attention on the street."

Returning to Calgary, Demeanor formed the band Tinderbox in 1994. Five years later, he struck out on his own with his self-titled debut album. Since then, Demeanor has toured steadily, and in 2002 he released his second solo album, entitled Lark.

That release heralded his arrival as a singer-songwriter with a lyrical sensibility reminiscent of Dan Bern. The collection of folk-pop songs addresses many societal issues including alienation and superficiality, particularly in the biting spoken-word piece Extreme to Me.

Though Demeanor deconstructs these issues with a sharp and cerebral wit, that force is tempered by an engaging sense of wonder that effectively guards against cynicism. Demeanor attributes this to a creative technique he learned from his father.

"I try to approach songwriting the same way my Dad approaches visual art. He used to tell his students to forget the masters, forget copying famous pieces, forget

technique, and pretend you are the first neanderthal in the first cave picking up a piece of ochre for the first time. What are you going to draw? Why are you drawing it?"

This approach has enabled Demeanor to explore contemporary issues pertaining to prostitution and gender identity in a sensitive and elucidatory manner. Demeanor is adept at crystallizing the essence of complex issues in detailed characterizations, thereby making them tangible and poignantly human.

The songs One of Two Things (about a bookmobile turned prostitute outreach clinic) and Cactus Man exemplify this ability. Demeanor admits that he initially had reservations about the latter song. "I was a little wary of the potential pitfalls of a five and a half minute transvestite suicide ballad. I thought at first it was too heavy and bizarre."

He forged on, however, and the result was a tender narrative that takes the most essential of Western images as its metaphoric centre. "The genesis of the idea for the song came from that life cycle idea, inspired by a near dead cactus in my room that everyone kept telling me to throw out, but that miraculously sprung a bright red shooting star flower one weekend."

That compelling image could also represent the artist himself, as he appears to be in full bloom. Demeanor has a new live album – entitled Party all Night! – and a Scandinavian tour planned for November.

Demeanor will also continue to write because, as he says, "a songwriter is only really happy when he knows he's written a good song." By that measure, this restless spirit should be enthused about his efforts thus far, even as he pushes on in search of the next great chorus or fascinating country.

***

To find out more about Kris Demeanor, and to hear his "hockey" song, check out www.krisdemeanor.com.

Chris Cwynar listens to Chris Demeanor's irreverent pop artistry.

Starving for Journalism

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:38:23 +0000

Canadian media avoid fundamentals of Palestinian Prisoners

Arrested Palestinians, escorted by Israeli soldiers; many prisoners are never charged with a crrime. photo: bethlehemmedia.net

Over 600,000 Palestinians--roughly 40 per cent of the male population of the occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip--have spent time in an Israeli jail since 1967. According to official government data, there are currently over 7,300 Palestinians in Israeli prisons; of these, 530 are "administrative detainees", which means that they won't ever be charged with a crime. An additional 2,600 are awaiting trial. 351 are children under the age of 18. According to Israeli Human Rights organizations, prisoners are regularly abused and kept in sub-human conditions, subjected to frequent strip searches and in some cases tortured.

These facts, which are not disputed and are widely available, would be useful information for anyone reading the news that the majority of these prisoners have gone on a month-long hunger strike. Not so, according to Canada's national media.

The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and CBC all provided minimal coverage of the strike. All three outlets provided truncated or rewritten versions of a handful of Associated Press stories, and one Agence France-Presse report.

The first, featured by the Globe as a brief on page A8, simply noted the beginning of the hunger strike. Clocking in at 97 words, the brief simply provided a vague estimate of the number of prisoners that were participating, and quoted an Israeli official as saying that the strike would be "futile".

An Associated Press article which only appeared on the Globe's web site went a little farther, listing a few of the prisoners' demands. "The prisoners want more family visits and telephone access, but an Israeli cabinet minister said he'd rather let them starve," the report said. The article provided a slight elabortation towards the end, adding "a cessation of strip searches" to the list of strikers' demands. As a result of the placement of this additional claim at the end of the article, any readers who look at the brief form of the article (common in printed newspapers) would leave with the impression that prisoners were striking for "more family visits and telephone access".

In reality, the demands (accessible to any journalist with an internet connection) were far more extensive. While it would be unreasonable to expect journalists to list them all, several are significant. Among the demands: an end to the presence of male guards in female detention facilities, improving conditions for minors, access to education, access to toothpaste, reinstatement of weekly cleaning, limits on solitary confinement, and the application of the Geneva convention.

It has long been the policy of Israeli governments to ignore the Geneva Convention when it comes to the occupied territories. According to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, "Israel's position is that there was no recognized sovereign in these areas before 1967, so they are not 'occupied territory' as defined in the convention."

Again, a discussion of such topics would be relevant in the context of a report on a hunger strike. Nor would they be particularly controversial, except among those who are convinced that Israel can do no wrong.

To be controversial would require that the CBC, Star, Globe and numerous other outlets extend their coverage of a month-long hunger strike beyond two short (and in the case of the Globe, inconsequential) articles. This is a prerequisite that Canadian media seems to lack when it comes to Palestine.

As a case in point, the Canadian and American media (all relying on the same wire stories) have commonly referred to recent suicide bombings as breaking a "lull" in "mid-east violence". That is to say, no Israelis were killed in bombings for six months. What these reports almost universally neglect to mention is that during this so-called "lull", Israeli forces killed 336 Palestinians; children and a pregnant woman among them. Of these, only the high-profile assassinations made front page news. During the same period, Israel bulldozed 400 Palestinian houses, leaving 1,700 people homeless.

There can only be one reason for the disparity in coverage: the media considers Israeli lives lost to be more newsworthy than those of Palestinians. Analysis has shown that this is a long-term trend in reporting. Indeed, it is seldom, if ever, that the Canadian national media mentions the total number of Palestinians and Israelis killed since September 2000 (3,315 Palestinians and 948 Israelis since September 2000--reports are much more likely to mention the combined total, perhaps because it is less biased).

Evidence overwhelmingly shows that Canadian and American media have little to no interest in understanding the conditions of life under occupation--in Israeli prisons, or at the hands of occupying soldiers. If they had a minor interest, they would include these and other non-controversial facts in their reports.

If they had a real interest, they might even investigate relatively controversial (but nonetheless substantiated) claims: of sexual humiliation of Muslims as an interrogation tactic perfected by Israel and used by US jailers in Iraq; of torture; of hundreds of Palestinian children shot; of entirely different legal standards for non-Jewish Palestinians and Jewish citizens of Israel.

The whole truth about such "controversial" topics will not become public until media organizations with the resources to investigate pay attention to these things. Similarly, if these are in fact malicious rumours spread in the form of reports from respected human rights organizations, they can only be disproven if investigated. If the media continue to ignore topics that aren't served to them by the wire services, as they do now, neither of these things will happen.

In the end, the prisoners' hunger strike managed to gain concessions from their captors, but at a heavy cost: they have been denied medical care, and many claim they were heavily abused by prison guards. The CBC covered the end with a severely truncated Associated Press report, which quoted Israeli jailers as saying that "nothing is being discussed". The Star and the Globe only ran one other story after the first, which briefly discussed the Israeli tactic of baking cakes and cooking meat outside the prisons to break the will of the strikers.

For a compilation of in depth media coverage of the strike, see FromOccupiedPalestine.org.

Dru Oja Jay looks at Canadian media coverage of the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike.

Books, September 2004

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:35:10 +0000

Joy, Joy, Why Do I Sing?
by Darlene Madott
Women's Press: Toronto, 2004.

"Is there anything," the narrator asks midway through the title story, "more serious than joy, the dangerous freedom of singing it out?" Madott's stories insist on joy because they are stories about pain, concerning characters in recovery from lost lovers, broken marriages, and smashed dignity. The pain implicit in joy finds its way into the details that Madott chooses: the smooth fenders of a sand sculpture Volkswagen, or the cool wet teabags in the fridge waiting for the next headache. The earnestness with which she approaches her subject matter, however, occasionally betrays her. It broke my heart to see her ruin a powerful passage with heavy-handed repetition, a problem which spoils the final sentences of the book's opening segment, "Extract of a piano lesson concerning Chopin's C sharp minor etude." When Madott keeps her writing controlled and sparing, she hits a ringing note and follows her imaginary piano teacher's instruction: "Well, make it leap." --Linda Besner

The Possible Past
by Aislinn Hunter
Polestar: Vancouver, 2004.

In this elegant themed collection, Hunter visits the sites of memory -- museums, archives, galleries -- and inserts herself into their gaps, expertly drawing our attention away from Christ to the thief on Christ's right. She presents history's marginalized everyday voices in a witty poem called, "Marginalia Found in Books at the Vancouver Public Library." She writes, "In a cookbook, recipes corrected,/ an even hand that writes in blue pen,/ They're wrong about the eggs". More haunting is the piece, "Factory Conditions c. 1815: A Female Millhand Responds to Parliamentary Commissioners." Hunter fills in the girl's answers with abstract imagery, lending the nameless worker an authoritative poetic voice. There are a few unfortunate moments when the author's focus moves too far away from the object. I was strangely disappointed by the piece, "Leper Colony, D'Arcy Island," in that it focused on the somewhat trendily esoteric question of language's relationship to objects -- to the exclusion of the more tactile possibilities of this unpublicized chapter of Canadian history. The drawback to the book's subject matter is that it's easy to rely on the way "history," and "the past" lend instant weight to a line. It's a pitfall that Hunter manages for the most part to escape, but the inevitable repetition of these words in the collection tends to deaden their impact. --Linda Besner

The Robbie Burns Revival and Other Stories
by Cecilia Kennedy
Broken Jaw Press: Fredericton, 2004.

Kennedy's unadorned prose introduces the character Tony Aardehuis, a small-town Ontario policeman whose work takes him inside the scandals and sorrows of his community. It's a slow building book, with each story adding a measured drop to the reader's knowledge of Tony and his charges: a philandering priest, a farmer who won't stay off his expropriated land, a mayoral candidate running under an assumed name. The pace may cause some readers to lose interest, since each story's payoff comes only in the final paragraphs when we are sanctioned a peep into the surprising and delicate sensitivity that drives Tony's actions. Kennedy has chosen a somewhat shuttered approach, giving her protagonist-narrator the tone of a good solid country boy, unwilling to gossip about other people's affairs. It has the effect of keeping the reader at a polite distance; we learn about the characters from the outside without being allowed to intrude upon their privacy. --Linda Besner

Weave
by Lisa Pasold
Frontenac House: Calgary, 2004.

This verse novel follows a woman's life from her childhood in Prague and Vienna through the war years, during which her house is destroyed and her family dispersed. She quickly ends up in Canada, searching out her past in the person of her lost brother. In this set of poems, Pasold's speaker lets everything tumble out immediately: her grandmother's fruit dumplings, the candy shop she visited as a child, the constant movement of her later life. There are times when this quickness moves the story forward in quick smarting pinches, as in the poem "Iron Cross," in which she writes, "The metal of the medal would not bend. I came downstairs/ because of the noise, he was/ beating something in the fire with a poker. saying nothing./ in what was left/ of my grandmother's house." With the hook of history to hang her story on, Pasold's war period poems are perhaps the most graceful. On either side of the war, however, this sense of purpose is lost. "Whatever colour the lines/ on the map, Prague is there in the middle/ where the heart should be," Pasold says. But where is the heart of this book? In her speaker's unpunctuated hurry to get her story out, the full development of character or place is compromised, and the series becomes a set of promising sketches without quite achieving the rounded fullness of a finished work. --Linda Besner

Linda Besner reviews new work by Lisa Pasold, Cecilia Kennedy, Darlene Madott and Aislinn Hunter

Arrested Developments

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:29:40 +0000

New York hosts Republicans... and the largest US demonstration in decades

Demonstrators lay pairs of shoes to symbolize Iraqi and US casualties of war. all photos: NYC Indymedia

"New York certainly is an exciting city."

Thus remarked Brad Freeman, a Republican delegate from LA, and friend of George W. Bush, regarding the several hundred thousand protestors who flooded Manhattan on Sunday, August 29, the eve of the Republican National Convention."

Given the scale and volume of the demonstrations that unfolded on the streets of NYC during the week of the convention, it was quite an understatement---although one would hardly know that from the scant coverage the anti-GOP demos received in the Canadian mainstream media.

The organizers United For Peace and Justice estimated that over half a million marched that day under the banner "The World Says No to the Bush Agenda"; the number was greater than they had expected. Despite a number of fear-mongering articles about the dangerous protestors descending on the city in the local New York press, it was the largest march that New York City had seen in 20 years.

photos: NYC Indymedia

Hundreds of people took part in a procession carrying coffins wrapped in American flags to represent the almost one thousand American soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, urging the government to bring home the troops.

The march was joined by "Stone Walk," a group that had come all the way from Boston pulling a 1400 lb granite memorial honouring the "Unknown Civilians Killed in the War."

I talked to a member of the group "Koreans who oppose the US war and occupation" and he told me that the group was protesting because "we want to show that as people of colour, we oppose aggressive wars throughout the world." A number of placards read "the mission is not accomplished" and highlighted the US military's prisoner abuse scandals.

For Bill Smith, a member of School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), the recently publicized prisoner torture was nothing new. "We've been saying for years that [torture] has been part of government policy," said Smith. SOAW has for years been pressuring the US government to shut down its military training institute in Fort Benning, Georgia, which is notorious for training Latin American death squad leaders.

Some Republican officials responded to the Sunday demo by connecting the demonstrators with Democrats, in an effort to paint Kerry as non-mainstream. There was a sprinkling of "Vote Kerry" buttons in the crowd.

However, at the heels of the standard protest chant of the day"No Bush!" one often heard shouts of "Or Kerry!" tacked on, exposing the most prominent of many differences between demonstrators.

On the streets, in panel discussions, and between marches, there were heated discussions about the ultimate goal of the demonstrations--about whether it was to "re-defeat" Bush, or something more. At an August 30 panel discussion "Can we do any better than anyone but Bush?", Democracy Now's Jeremy Scahill argued that Kerry is really no alternative because he is not anti-war, and not opposed to the attack on civil liberties associated with the war on terror. At the same event, Canadian journalist Naomi Klein made the case to Americans that it would be an international disgrace for the nation to reelect Bush.

At a panel discussion on the corporate media the week before, one audience member, excited at what he saw as broader implications of the emerging social and political movement against Bush, was interrupted by fierce retorts from a fellow audience member, who decried any kind of radical protest tactic that could be spun by Republican propaganda mills into pro-Bush propaganda. "Not until after the election!" he screamed. This prompted a long-winded response from an anarchist, who began: "No! We need to overthrow the capitalist system..."

The week was crammed full with protest actions. There were various marches--from the "Still We Rise" people of colour's march, to a women's rights march, to an immigrant workers' rights march, to a poor people's march. The latter event ended in a scuffle between a police officer on a scooter and a protestor, which the media covered extensively (after a week of well-behaved protests, the scuffle was one of the few instances of the much-anticipated "violence").

A tent city christened "Bushville" was set up in Brooklyn to emphasize the negative social impact of the Bush administration's policies while activists confronted Republican delegates in the streets, and around theatres and hotels.

While heavily patrolled police barricades made it difficult for any protests to get within a radius of three blocks of Madison Square Garden, several demonstrators managed to infiltrate the convention. Particularly successful were the activists from Code Pink, an anti-war women's organization which uses the symbol of the pink slip (they often wear a pink slip--the garment--while protesting) to highlight job losses under Bush, and to call for his dismissal. By sending brigades of attractive women from within their ranks to woo male Republican delegates at bars, Code Pink managed to obtain a number of guest passes.

Alongside the numerous marches, there were a number of less conventional protest events, including anti-Bush street theatre performances and art shows.

Anyone within a two block radius of ground zero on August 28 would have heard the eerie chiming and tolling of hundreds upon hundreds of bells. The ringing filled the air just before dusk, as hundreds of people walked around the pit where the World Trade Centre had been prior to September 11, 2001, in "Ring Out," a mourning ceremony for those killed in terrorist attacks and wars around the world. Each participant rang a bell, either one of a thousand identical tiny metal bells brought to the site by "Ring Out" organizers, or another bell brought from home.

Another placard-free anti-Bush protest event was the "Billionaires' Ball," organized by the satirical group Billionaires for Bush, formerly Billionaires for Bush and Gore, who now boast dozens of chapters across the US, and who staged a number of events during the RNC. While the Republican delegates gathered at Madison Square Gardens to cheer for another four-year term for the President, the Billionaires, dressed to the nines in top hats, tuxes and ballgowns, and political buttons proclaiming "Free the Enron 7," gathered at a bar on the Chelsea Piers for an evening of their own over-the-top entertainment. Periodically, the crowd would erupt in jubilant screeches: "Four More Wars! Four More Wars!"

The anti-GOP demonstrations were contained by the largest security force ever assembled in New York City.

Undercover cops swarmed one of the main hubs of organizing, St. Marc's Church, to the point where many activists were steering clear of the place altogether. At every demonstration, the undercovers could be spotted cruising in close proximity to the protestors on new Italian scooters, sporting Harley Davidson t-shirts. Jokes were cracked about protesters attacked by an Upper East Side biker gang.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) had announced that it was deploying 10,000 officers for convention security. The National Guard, the FBI, and 200 officers from the Federal Protective Services of the Department of Homeland Security also descended on New York for the occasion.

Demonstrators repeatedly found themselves face to face with police officers' video cameras. The Homeland Security officers were outfitted with helmets with built-in video surveillance cameras, which sent live footage to a central control room, enabling greater coordination between different agencies. Choppers and an occasional blimp supplied aerial surveillance.

The NYPD used pepper spray on protestors at the poor people's march. During a protest at Union Square on August 31, police chased down and beat one protestor. At a smaller protest the same day, a police officer grabbed another kid by the neck and held him against a wall. Cyclists in the critical mass bike ride reported that cops on bicycles rode into them. However, that was the extent of the violence I--and it seems, most others--witnessed in the streets. The most prevalent police strategy used against the protestors was systemic, indiscriminate mass arrests.

* * *

Karen Agugliaro and her two friends, Cynthia and Cliff, were standing on the curb on Manhattan's West 34th Street, near Broadway, on a balmy Tuesday evening, the second day of the Republican National Convention, when a spontaneous protest erupted on the sidewalk beside them.

A group of about 30 people converged on the corner singing "these streets are our streets."

The three passersby, who had no intention of getting themselves arrested, dutifully obeyed the cops when police officers ordered the crowd to "stand by the wall on the side of the sidewalk if [they] didn't want to get arrested."

"We said OK," Agugliaro recalled; the three friends heeded the police warning, moving aside. To her surprise, when she looked back at her two companions a moment later, they were both being arrested. "There were my two friends, who were co-operative and polite, caught up in handcuffs."

The police placed metal fences around everybody on the sidewalk at the corner of Broadway and West 34th, informing them they were being arrested for "disturbing the peace." I saw a police officer running after two pedestrian bystanders who tried to escape; one man in an orange Buddhist robe managed to get away, though not before the police gave him a shove. I watched another man narrowly dodge out of reach of another police officer's grasp and sprint away to the freedom of Fifth Avenue, with a petrified expression on his face.

Aglugliaro's friends were two of over 1000 arrested on August 31.

That afternoon, the police conducted mass arrests at a peaceful march commemorating the casualties of war and terror. The procession, organized by the War Resisters League, in conjunction with School of the Americas Watch, had not advanced less than a block from its departing point at Ground Zero when the police rounded up and arrested 80 people.

The majority of the arrestees had been walking in rows of two on the sidewalk--exactly as they had been instructed to do by police. They had not advanced more than a block when they were fenced in and surrounded by over a hundred police officers, cruisers, vans and buses on the corner of Church and Fulton Streets. The cops penned the protestors in with orange netting, and told them that they were all under arrest for "obstructing governmental administrations."

As the police transported the arrestees from the plastic pen into the awaiting NYPD buses, a legal observer from the National Lawyers Guild informed the remaining protestors of the police's most recent communiqué: those protestors who chose to could continue with the march, in double file, on the sidewalk, without blocking the sidewalk. Also, there was a strong possibility of arrest for those who chose to march.

An hour later, the remainder of the march continued. A couple of hundred protestors set off down the sidewalk, two by two, like a procession of obedient school-children on a class trip, attracting jeers from young anarchists as they passed. The march culminated in a "die in" on Broadway, around 28th St, where 54 people lay down in the middle of the street and were promptly arrested.

As the cops told those lying on the road they were under arrest, a young woman began reading aloud from the US Constitution. The passage that she shouted out read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

She continued reading until the police drove the remaining protestors down side streets. As they were pushing people back, the police told about a dozen people, including a reporter from the New Standard, that they were under arrest. They were penned in, and then allowed to escape.

The mass arrests had begun during the Critical Mass bike ride, in which 264 people were arrested.

All the arrestees were brought to a processing centre in the warehouse Pier 57, and were then transported to a jail. Many were held for over 48 hours without charges, some for as many as 5 days, without being read their rights. There were a number of complaints of oil and chemical residue on the floor of the warehouse where they spent the night.

Although the NYPD had told the city that they anticipated 1000 arrests per day of the convention, they rationalized the delays in releasing protestors by invoking the volume of the arrests. Finally, the delays in processing led a judge to invoke fines against the city. On September 2, State Supreme Court Justice John Cataldo fined the city $1,000 for every protester held past a 5 p.m. deadline he had set for their release.

The impact of the mass arrests was evident in the climate of fear at subsequent actions. On the last evening of the convention, 600 protestors gathered at Union Square for a candlelight vigil organized by United for Peace and Justice. The vigil group, in concert with a number of other groups, had been planning to march to Madison Square Garden. However, a number of protestors began expressing fears of arrest.

During discussions over whether to proceed with the plan to march up to the convention site, one protestor began shouting "Don't do it. It's a trap! They'll pen you in!"

The NYPD finally told the protestors that they should march in pairs, on the sidewalk. The crowd obeyed, and formed lines. They waited in double file for half an hour. Then, spontaneously, a river of people surged into the road, taking it over completely.

However, it was only an hour before the police set up a police barricade in the middle of the march, splitting it in two, and preventing the last half of the march from moving. The first half of the march proceeded, but was soon stopped by another police barricade, long before it approached Madison Square Garden.

New York hosts Republicans... and the largest US demonstration in decades

"New York certainly is an exciting city."

Thus remarked Brad Freeman, a Republican delegate from LA, and friend of George W. Bush, regarding the several hundred thousand protestors who flooded Manhattan....

by Isabel Macdonald

October

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:13:47 +0000

Deck:

Download Issue #22 [950MB, pdf]

Body:

Download Issue #22 [950k, pdf]

Issue #22 is formatted as sixteen pages of letter sized paper (8.5x11").

(You need Acrobat Reader or an application that reads pdf files to view the print version of this issue.)

Distribution rights:

You are free (and encouraged) to download, print, and distribute as many copies of the Dominion as you like, with the following restrictions:

the content of the paper will not be modified
no advertising or additional content will be attached to the paper (this is a temporary restriction, until an advertising policy is worked out)
15% of any profits derived from the sale or distribution of the Dominion will be paid to the Dominion

Exceptions to any of these restrictions may be granted on a case by case basis. Contact dru@dominionpaper.ca with any questions.

"I take this as genocide"

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:09:30 +0000

Secwepemc battle BC government over land, Aboriginal Title

Secwepemc demonstrators and their supporters are erecting permanent structures on land they say remains unceded. photo: Tao.ca

"You may be able to use your police to grab and handcuff our elders, land-users and youth and haul them away. But you will not be able to keep them away from our land. They will return and all our people will return." These are the words of Chief Arthur Manuel of the Secwepemc, who have long been locked in a struggle over land rights with developers and the British Columbian government.

The province of British Columbia was settled and colonized without treaties with the indigenous inhabitants. Large areas of BC still remain unceded, and the indigenous populations claim sovereignty over these lands. One such area is in the southeastern part of British Columbia where a nation of 17 bands, the Secwepemc people, continues to struggle to recover their territory they call Skwelkwek'welt.

About 30 kilometres northeast of the BC interior city of Kamloops, on what used to be known as Tod Mountain, is Sun Peaks, a golf and ski resort built on Secwepemc territory. A $70 million development plan for Sun Peaks, submitted by the Japanese consortium Nippon Cable and investors Nancy Greene and Al Raine, was approved the BC government in 1997. This plan permits Sun Peaks to expand the resort from 4,000 to 20,000 beds and put ski runs on the nearby Mt. Morrisey. The Secwepemc rejected the development, and have since been engaged in an ongoing battle to win recognition from the provincial government and courts.

The Secwepemc have been opposing the development of their lands for more than a decade; 54 people have been arrested for protesting. Neskonlith Band Chief Arthur Manuel, who is among those already arrested and sentenced, commented that the "sentences are directly linked to the failure of the Canadian government's Aboriginal Title land policies". He decried the absence of "good-faith negotiations" related to Aboriginal title in BC as was mandated by the Supreme Court of Canada's Delgamuukw decision, which legally recognized the existence of Aboriginal Title in Canada.

The decision limited infringement on Aboriginal Title to cases where it was demonstrable that the infringement is for the good of society or resource regulation. Since the Supreme Court decision, First Nations have the right to legally challenge infringements. Upon such legal challenge the government must meet a "justification test" to demonstrate that its legislation is valid. Any infringement as per the Delgamuukw decision must accommodate the interests of the affected First Nation. Following the Constitution Act of 1982, only the federal government has authority over Aboriginal title.

The Secwepemc have not yet launched a title claim, a requirement of Delgamuukw; therefore, Sun Peaks has not been subject to a "justification process." The government of BC has nonetheless proceeded without a legal determination of the legitimacy of Aboriginal title in the case of the Secwepemc.

Manuel admonished the BC government for its failure to negotiate on the expansion of Sun Peaks Resort based on the applicability of the Haida Tree-Farm License case, a unanimous BC Court of Appeals decision that determined that the province and corporate logging giant Weyerhaeuser must accommodate Haida Title rights, and Haida cultural and economic interests.

On 29 August a convergence organized by a group of local First Nations people, the Council of Canadians, and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs attracted nearly 200 people in support of the Secwepemc people in their struggle. One placard summed up the struggle succinctly: "no justice on stolen land."

Neskonlith First Nation organizer Janice Billy identified the issues: "It's the continuing destruction of the land, the ongoing expansion project that we're opposed to, and the non-recognition of our title to the land in this area." In this spirit, the Skwelkwek'welt Protection Center has resorted to erecting tents on the resort, blockades, and protests. Journalists Harsha Walia and Stefan Christoff commented, "these are not just protests for the sake of protesting."

From a camp on the planned 16th fairway of a golf course, Billy revealed Secwepemc plans for the site: "it's going to be a center for youth and elders to come together and teach cultural activities like hunting and trapping and preserving meat. You can't teach those things down on the reserve."

I have known genocide ever since I was six-and-a-half years old..."

Sun Peaks tourism director Chris Nicholson sides with the resort. "It's got a legal right to exist, and everything that happened was approved in the early 90s by the provincial government."

Kamloops-North Thompson MLA Kevin Krueger defended the resort, threatening the protestors with trespass charges: "If they do not respond by vacating the property I expect they will be arrested and charged. If they put themselves through this course they'll end up with criminal records."

"Sun Peaks is a major generator of jobs locally and is fully supported by people of Kamloops, and that includes First Nations groups who have a number of very successful ventures with the resort," said Krueger.

In reply, Secwepemc leaders maintain that the Provincial government's decisions are illegitimate, and have not taken into account the legal rights granted by Aboriginal Title.

To make room for fairways and ski trails, trees are being cut. Skwelkwek'welt is a thriving ecosystem for deer, moose, bears, beavers, lynx, bobcat, cougars, to wolverines and a variety of plants, many essential to the Secwepemc as sources of food and medicine. The resort will also place enormous water and energy demands on the local ecosystem, while threatening intensified pollution. The BC government has brushed aside Secwepemc concerns on the environment and culture though recognized by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

The resort also allegedly destroyed Secwepemc sweatlodges and a cordwood home. The Secwepemc and their supporters continue to erect permanent structures to back their claim to Title.

The Secwepemc Nation have been served with a notice of trespass and a court injunction (sought by Sun Peaks) and face forcible removal from their territory in the coming week.

In support of the Secwepemc Nation, a group in Montreal has initiated an economic boycott of Skican Limited, the only distributor of travel packages to Sun Peaks Ski Resort, and has organized a phone-in to Skican on September 30 from 9am to 5pm.

Secwepemc elder Irene Billy spoke out against the long-running occupation of Skwelkwek'welt at the convergence:

"I have known genocide ever since I was six-and-a-half years old... My language was taken away from me; my culture was taken away from me. When we said no expansion, no development. I take this as genocide... I don't accept any more genocide."

Development, genocide, or both? Kim Petersen looks into the conflict at Sun Peaks

Canola Fields and Oil Fields

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:04:03 +0000

The Uncertain Future of Biodiesel

Community-scale fuel production?

The price of diesel in Canada has increased by almost 12% over the past year. The agricultural industry has been one of the hardest hit, due to the large amounts of fuel needed for farm machinery and tractors. As people across Canada begin to discover biodiesel, however, some soy and canola farmers are realizing that they're sitting on a gold mine of renewable fuel. Despite its promise, the future sustainability of biodiesel will depend on who wins control of this emerging market.

Biodiesel, a fuel that can be made from vegetable oil, beef tallow, or feedstock, is proving to farmers that they already have a solution to high fuel costs growing and grazing in their own fields. Even better, biodiesel can also be made cheaply and easily using waste vegetable oil recovered from restaurants and fryers. The result is a fuel that can be used in any diesel engine or home heating tank, without conversion, with obvious benefits.

As the Canadian Renewable Fuel Association (CRFA) states, "The main benefits of biodiesel are increased energy self-sufficiency for importing countries, increased demand for domestic agricultural products, biodegradability and improved air quality, particularly lower sulphur emissions than from fossil fuels." The burning of biodiesel emits almost 80% less greenhouse gases than petroleum diesel, and also decreases the amounts of soot, sulfur, PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), major carcinogens and respiratory inhibitors emitted into the air.

Much of the global biodiesel supply is being produced from canola oil, a commodity whose production is rapidly increasing. There emerges a debate, however, as to whether fertile cropland should be used for fuel production over food production, especially considering the substantial amount of waste oil created by the food processing industry. Though normally channeled into dumps and secondary markets like cosmetics, waste oil represents a viable source for biodiesel production. While Canadian figures are vague, the US produces 3 million gallons of waste oil per year. Though by no means a viable substitution, this represents almost 15% of the annual diesel consumption.

There is currently only one biodiesel fuel pump in Canada, located in Unionville, Ontario; but things are slowly changing. As biofuel and biotech companies begin sprouting biodiesel production operations across North America, many believe that the best bet for rapid advancement of the fuel is community-scale production. In fact, farmers, rural dwellers, and community cooperatives are taking the lead in igniting production towards fuelling our future.

The CRFA's west coast office has been relocated to the Saskatchewan Canola Development Commission in Saskatoon, to accommodate the prairie's canola growers. In the US, the Farmer's Union Marketing and Processing Association, an almost century-old animal fat rendering co-op in Minnesota, is developing a processing plant set to produce 2.8 million gallons of biodiesel per year. As a recent study appearing in Bioresource Technology asserted, there is a need "to have this added value [of biodiesel from food products] go to farmers and rural economies instead of to specific national companies."

The United States government is also jumping on the biodiesel bandwagon, but many are skeptical of how long the fuel can maintain its green grass roots under the President's plan. At a recent agricultural exposition in Iowa, US President Bush and Vice President Cheney were in attendance to sow their support for alternative fuels in America's future farms. "I believe in ethanol, and I believe in biodiesel," Bush asserted to a reception of applauding agribusinessmen. Hinting that biofuels are part of his energy policy yet to be approved by Congress, Bush has recently called for an increase in the production of the corn-based fuel to 5 billion gallons by 2012, up from a 3.07 billion gallon production capacity in 2003.

Bush's approach to biodiesel will likely mirror his approach to agriculture in general, favorably subsidizing industrial scale farms (using GM crops and pesticides) over the family farms, and leaving the rest up to global market forces. This approach not only seriously limits the long term sustainability of biodiesel, but will likely have socio-economic impacts around the world. In fact, this may have already begun.

Dan Amstutz, the former senior executive director for Cargill, a multinational corporation that has recently initiated biodiesel production in the UK, is now head of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq. Under the control of this free-market practitioner who is well embedded in the American-based agricultural industry, the Iraqi market will likely be directed towards US foreign interests, rather than rebuilding Iraq's domestic agricultural industry. Not only does this translate to the further commercialization of Iraq but it also promotes support for US multinationals over small-scale Iraqi farmers. The Sydney Morning Herald wrote of Amstutz, "[his] background and experience is as a senior executive of the Cargill Corporation … and president of the North American Grain Export Association. He is in Baghdad to flog American wheat, not ours." Oxfam International, the British aid agency, further opined that "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission."

Shifting one's gaze from the Middle East back to the midwest, only moments after praising the benefits of biodiesel at the farm show, President Bush expressed his pleasure at the capture of Saddam Hussein. "Even though we did not find the stockpiles that we all thought were there," Bush said, "I would have made the same decision." If steps are not taken to secure a sustainable harvest of biodiesel, it threatens to follow in the footsteps of oil, coal, and nuclear energy, representing a first world fortified economy sown into a ravaged, ransacked field.

Dave Ron is the Appropriate Technology and Biofuel Coordinator for the Falls Brook Centre, in Knowlesville, New Brunswick.

Dave Ron looks at the future of biofuel and community-based production.

Extinguishing the Post Cold War Dream

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:02:50 +0000

World Bank-Mandated Energy Privatization Taxes Armenia's Poor

Late last month, an independent Armenia became a teenager. Food, fireworks and a festive atmosphere commemorated the 13th anniversary of its independence, declared on September 21, 1991. As the first Soviet republic to proclaim sovereignty during the collapse of the USSR, Armenians have reason to rejoice—after decades of cultural and political oppression they may finally flout their language, heritage and national identity without fear of reprisal.

A boy heading home from school in Karabagh, Armenia. photo: Rob Maguire

Many in this tiny republic, however, have little else to celebrate. While civil liberties were subject to Soviet-style constraints, the Armenia of the 1980s enjoyed a strong economy, a healthy and highly educated public, and one of the most egalitarian distributions of wealth in the USSR. Once the newly independent government began to adopt market reforms and neoliberal values, gross domestic product plummeted, prices for basic needs such as food and water increased dramatically, while public goods like health care and education began to crumble.

Over a decade later, GDP has finally returned to pre-reform levels. Who has benefited from renewed economic growth, however, is not so clear. Spending on education and health remains low. Real wages are less than one-eighth of what they were in 1990, and economic inequality in Armenia has become extreme. In Yerevan, Armenia's capital, the number of BMWs seen rolling along city streets has mushroomed; and so have the ranks of panhandlers roaming those very same urban boulevards.

Poverty has indeed become widespread in Armenia. Affecting roughly fifty percent of the population, it has quickly become an epidemic that shows little sign of subsiding.

An old man in Shushi, a village in Karabagh, a part of Armenia isolated from the rest of the country during long border disputes. photo: Rob Maguire

Living on less than two dollars a day, the poor are particularly vulnerable to increases in the price of basic commodities. Privatization within the energy sector, however, has preyed upon this very weakness. Imposed by the World Bank through loan conditions, reforms designed to make electric utilities more attractive to foreign takeover left people paying more than twice as much for electricity then they were in the mid-1990s.

Furthermore, inability to pay these inflated rates now results in disconnection. This strict marketplace logic is expressed by Andrei Rappaport, a senior official for Unified Energy System of Russia, and the new owner of several Armenian generating facilities: "If you want energy pay for it, and if there is not any money to pay, then goodbye."

Not unsurprisingly, these new conditions led to a serious decline in household energy consumption. The poor in particular were forced to cut electricity use considerably, by twenty percent on average. According to a World Bank report, the typical household barely has enough electricity to power a refrigerator and a handful of light bulbs.

Despite the decline in consumption, increased energy costs now account for approximately thirty percent of all household expenditures, with electricity making up the bulk of these payments. A related concern is the move towards greater wood consumption. While this reduces the reliance on costly electric power, it has also contributed to higher levels of indoor air pollution and accelerated deforestation.

Energy—widely recognized as a fundamental need for human development—has become increasingly inaccessible in Armenia. At the insistence of the World Bank, control over this precious commodity has been handed over to foreign interests, where social priorities are sacrificed in the name of corporate profit and capitalist ethos.

The picture is similar in much of the former Soviet Union: increases in cultural and, to a lesser degree, political freedoms have been overshadowed by a sharp decline in the freedom to meet basic human needs. This failure is directly related to the "shock therapy" imposition of market capitalism on countries with centralized economies—a prescription borne more of ideological zeal than sound economic principles.

Soviet leftovers, Yerevan. photo: Rob Maguire

Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, explains: "From this cold-war perspective, those who showed any sympathy to transitional forms that had evolved out of the communist past and still bore traces of that evolution must themselves be guilty of 'communist sympathies.' Only a blitzkrieg approach during the 'window of opportunity' provided by the 'fog of transition' would get the changes made before the population had a chance to organize to protect its previous vested interests."

Poverty and inequality remain Armenia's greatest challenges, and some question whether the political will exists to tackle these vital problems. This is true for the Armenian government, but perhaps more importantly, for the World Bank and related organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the United States Agency for International Development. The coercive pressure these institutions place upon governments to engage in fire sale privatisation tactics could be redirected to produce publicly owned utilities that are transparent, efficient, and designed to serve the public good.

Unfortunately, these institutions appear more concerned with ideological imperialism and creating profit opportunities for Western corporations than they are with promoting sustainable economics, accountable governance, and poverty reduction—all of which are necessary for human beings to truly prosper.

Rob Maguire is a Canadian activist and graduate student living in Yerevan, Armenia. He can be found online at www.projectcommunis.org.

Rob Maguire reports from Armenia, where civil liberties have not increased quite as fast as the cost of living.