The Dominion - 23

Terrorist proceedings "a show trial for political ends"

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:50:45 +0000

Defence lawyers representing the 17 men being held as terrorist suspects in Southern Ontario since June 2 are protesting the recent publication ban levied by justice of the peace Keith Currie.

Rocco Galati, the defence lawyer representing 21-year-old Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, told reporters, "I want the public to see the bail hearing, I want the public to assess for itself and have confidence in the administration of justice and the only way to do that is with a live feed."

Galati accused "confidential police sources" of unfairly leaking selected information to the media "to ensure the denial of a fair bail hearing and the denial of a fair trial."

Aljazeera quoted Galati, condemning what he described as "a show trial for political ends," noting the intention was "to influence the vote in the House of Commons on extending the anti-terrorism provision and to influence the Supreme Court ... in its constitutional review of anti-terrorism provisions."

According to the Toronto Star, defence lawyers said their clients' cell lights are being left on 24 hours a day, they're being forced to keep their eyes on the floor and are being woken every 30 minutes. The lawyers said that amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment," and a breach of their clients' Charter rights.

Multiculturalism: It Hurts Us All

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 21:46:18 +0000

Why Canada isn't, never was, and probably never will be a multicultural nation

A Brazilian family is interviewed outside a public discussion about the status of undocumented immigrants. photo: Tanja-Tiziana Burdi

On a recent broadcast of CBC Radio One’s Metro Morning, the Toronto-based programme broached the topic of undocumented construction workers in the city’s undocumented economy. Katherine Jacobs, Manager of Research and Analysis for the Ontario Construction Secretariat (OCS) was on hand to divulge the details of the OCS’ most recent media campaign—“The Underground Economy: It Hurts Us All!” Jacobs outlined the concerns of the OCS management and the provincial labour ministry, explaining that billions in revenue is lost yearly by way of untraceable income and un-collectable income tax, and painted the under-the-table cash transactions as comparable to robbing the province of education and healthcare dollars. What Jacobs, host Andy Barrie, and the entirety of the OCS’ radio, television, and web campaign neglected to expand upon, however, was the delicate, complex nature of the underground economy. Specifically, who are these faceless, thieving workers, and why have they been forced to work “under the table”?

Immigrant, refugee, and illegal people of colour constitute the majority of the underground economy in the Greater Toronto Area's residential and industrial construction market. A large portion of this group is made up of members of the Portuguese-speaking diaspora—of Portuguese, Brazilian, and East/West African decent. (Their female counterparts make up the backbone of the industrial and domestic cleaning and textile labour markets.) The OCS' public attack on the underground economy and illegal or immigrant workers of colour immediately calls to mind the xenophobic threat tactics of the Canadian government during the first several waves of non-British immigration. White Canadians, legitimized by their skin, felt as though they had an inherent right to be protected against this foreign influx of People of Colour.

Aside from issues surrounding legality, immigration policy, the conduct of immigration officers, and the tactics of the OCS, a simple question begs to be addressed: just what does it mean to be Canadian? Is it a sheet of paper, stamped and signed by the Citizenship Office that makes one Canadian? Does Canadianness reside in skin, in speech, or in cultural customs? In common history or religion or political affiliation? Can one marry into Canadianness or be born Canadian? What gives one person the right to be treated as Canadian while that same right is denied to another? The OCS, for example, would like to measure Canadianness in terms of income tax revenue and union fee payment.

Jorge Da Costa, an activist in the Toronto Portugese-speaking community, speaks at a public discussion about the status of undocumented immigrants. photo: Tanja-Tiziana Burdi

At an emergency meeting held in the heart of Toronto's Portuguese-speaking community in early October, local politicians, social workers, and members of the underground construction market came together to express concern, to outline the many-tiered nature of the threats being leveled against them, to bemoan their own misinformed perceptions of citizenship and legality, and to lobby for a collective amnesty. They argued that while the cash-only, untraceable nature of their income earnings preempts them from paying income taxes, they do work hard, contribute to the economy, pay property taxes, pay their bills, put their children in school, and contribute to community cultural events. If they work so hard to be productive, positive members of Canadian society, and if they have consistently filled a giant gap in the labour market, then why must the only source of income available to them be wrested away? Choosing to comply with OCS's proposed strictures means choosing between unemployment and deportation—a no-win situation.

Another major issue, palpably absent from the CBC's report on the situation, but still very relevant to the illegals and immigrants that gathered in October, is the effect these threats and deportations have on the workers' children. Many undocumented families have been in Canada for a decade or more, having chosen the route of illegal residency following immigration policy changes in 1990 and political and economic unrest in their home countries. Their offspring—born, raised, and educated via Canadian schools and pop culture—are caught in one of the most unpleasant positions imaginable for any family. If their parents are deported back to Portugal, Brazil, Angola, or Mozambique, then they must choose to either stay behind in Canada alone or in foster care, or be deported with their parents. The latter option means life in a country and culture (and often a language) these children have little to no connection with, exiled from the only home they know.

The question of Canadian Identity is a familiar and prominent one. Canadians spend so much time agonizing over our lack of solid, touchable, definable identity that it has practically become a national pastime. Some would argue that it is this agonizing itself that best defines our national identity.

Having a static national identity, as much as we covet this particular luxury, can have treacherous effects. A static identity has defined borders and properties; it can be both threatened and defended. To Giller Prize-winning, Canadian author M. G. Vassanji, our problem is not that we lack a solid, tangible identity:

The problem is, what constitutes that core; and in the demographically changing society doesn't its definition end up being exclusionary and divisive, potentially destructive and ultimately redundant? I believe that if such an essence [as Canadian identity] exists… it is or will be more subtle than being comprised of a mere response to nature, making a fetish out of low temperatures, or turning away and looking north out of a mule-headed defiance of the south.

Furthermore, a firm identity of what is requires a firm identification of what isn't—commonly referred to in academic circles as "Other". Canada is a nation made up of racial hierarchies and Others, where the dominance or legitimacy of one group (the White, European core) relies on the existence and juxtaposition of lesser players. Educator, activist and author Himani Banneranji recounts her own experience, as a landed-immigrant-turned-citizen:

There has emerged an ideologically homogeneous identity dubbed Canadian whose nation and state Canada is supposed to be….the identity of the Canadian 'we' does not reside in language, religion or other aspects of culture….Colour of skin is elevated here beyond its contingent status and becomes an essential quality called whiteness, and this becomes the ideological signifier of a unified non-diversity. The others outside of this moral and cultural whiteness are targets for either assimilation or toleration…. Even after years of being an 'immigrant,' and upon swearing allegiance to the same queen of England from whom India had parted, I was not to be a 'Canadian.' Regardless of my official status as a Canadian citizen, I, like many others, remained an 'immigrant.' The category 'Canadian' clearly applied to people who had two things in common: their white skin and their European North American (not Mexican) background.

Canada has taken the non-stance of leaving the question of identity open—making it easy to slip into laziness, apathy, blame-shrugging indifference and irresponsibility, and effectively shutting down dialogue. The government made this approach official in 1996 when the national census featured "Canadian" as a possible response to the ethnic origin question for the first time ever. Much of our laissez-faire approach to identity has to do with our broad embrace of Multiculturalism. Introduced to us by Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canadians have been touting this happy badge of tolerance and progressive-mindedness for decades, not really taking pains to understand its basis or implications, and taking for granted that our non-identity is a mask for an established, deep-rooted White European identity. The very concept of Multiculturalism is based on inequality—essentially, having a core "norm" surrounded by Others.

The process of nation-building is tied to space, language, education, and common or shared knowledge. The failure of the Multiculturalist model is evidenced in our failure to incorporate non-White cultures in how we organize our living and work spaces, in how different languages or dialects are disrespected (French is included in this, despite its token "official" status), in how our public education system continues to be framed according to Euro-centric models of learning and history, in how our popular culture and mass media is unrepresentative of even the largest cultural minority groups. While hardly an excuse, Canada's divisive history and proximity to the United States' cultural monster have much to do with our inability or unwillingness to take an active role in re-shaping this country's political, economic and social structures to reflect our changing demography and official policy. Sherene Razack, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, published Race, Space, and the Law in 2002, in which she identifies Canada's strong and seemingly unshakable connection with our White Settler Society roots. In a White Settler Society, she says, the White European continues to be seen as "the group most entitled to the fruits of citizenship," while "people of colour are scripted as late arrivals…. In this way, slavery, indentureship, and labour exploitation… are all handily forgotten…". She also cites the "racialized structure of citizenship" that operates in this country and roles played by Anti-Terrorist and Immigration laws in denoting who should have the right to be called Canadian and who should not.

Responsibility for race-based inequalities in Canada—which may include inequalities within different labour markets, the ghettoization of neighbourhoods, cultural groups with consistently low levels of education, a high concentration of poverty among particular groups, etc.—is attributed to something called "the linear theory". This theory is based on the principle that all newcomers face difficulties when they first arrive in a country, but as they learn to adapt and integrate, they eventually fare as well as native-born citizens. Framed around that old myth (we're all on a level playing field and success depends on an individual's ability to work) the linear theory, coupled with the concept of Multiculturalism, shirks responsibility for the racist structures and hierarchies that have held up Western society for centuries.

With this in mind, Canadianness becomes something obtainable via assimilation to White, Western mindsets and practices. However, the politics of visibility (i.e. "I can see that you are different, therefore foreign") makes assimilation to the Canadian ideal a physical impossibility for those without the prerequisite Whiteness. White Privilege, invisible and all too powerful, is inherent in the negotiation of Canadian Identity.

In a position paper delivered at The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in South Africa three years ago, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) took careful pains to unravel popular misperceptions of immigrants, Canadians of Colour, and the non-role of Multiculturalism:

The multiculturalism policy, while it embraces folkloric and cultural particularities, does not address issues of, nor guarantee access to the privileges of citizenship to ALL Canadians. The greatest weakness of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act is, thus, its limited effectiveness in the modification of the fundamental structure, and organizational cultures of Canadian institutions whose practices reflect systematic and institutionalized racism…[It] does not address nor challenge integration and citizenship issues as they are affected by the Whiteness ideology that is prevalent in Canadian past and current consciousness…. Colour blindness is a powerful method for people in the media to deny the existence of power relations of our everyday lives and how they are affected by race…. Based on the merit principle, this discourse denies the fact that everyone is not on a level playing field and historical factors do influence achievement and privilege.

The CRRF's criticism also extended to the situation of immigrant and refugee offspring—the Second Generation Canadians of Colour. This is of particular interest, given that the linear theory of immigrant acculturation no longer applies; their setbacks and hurdles cannot be brushed off as anything but race-based discrimination.

…Most children of colour are currently attending schools where their identity is not given due recognition within the curriculum…. Racialized children continue to be taught euro-centric history that does not accurately reflect the contributions of their own ancestors, resulting in them experiencing feelings of unimportance and also rendering them invisible and inconsequential to others…

The double bind of Canadian birth and alien origin—evidenced in the skin—makes Second Generation Canadians of Colour the most able critics of Multiculturalism, and the best-equipped to point out inequalities within our societal, economic and governmental structures. Perhaps the OCS sees it as decidedly wrong for bodies of colour, whether landed or without papers, to be earning as much as legitimate Canadian bodies within the construction industry. While it is still difficult to gage whether a cry of "racism!" is justifiable in this case, one certainly does wonder—would they have treated assimilated, Canadian-born workers this way?

Multiculturalism, for it to be a meaningful, sincere element of Canadianness, precludes a complete re-evaluation and overhaul of current political infrastructures and cultural models. As it stands, Multiculturalism is little more than a song-and-dance distraction from bona fide inequalities and injustices. Our laissez faire approach to Identity is matched by our shoulder-shrugging treatment of Canada's fast-changing urban and suburban demographic, and its quiet, invisible nature makes it far more harmful than most Canadians realize.

Until a change comes—perhaps led by the Second and Third Generation—it is not unreasonable to say that Multiculturalism has failed us. Or, to be blunt, that we have failed it.

Susana Ferreira is a writer living in Toronto. She can be reached at saudade@gmail.com.

Why Canada isn't, never was, and probably never will be a multicultural nation
Susana Ferreira explores Toronto's underground economy, and the real effects of Canada's "multicultural" policies.

Yes Means No!

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 21:38:21 +0000

The Yes Men dish up artistic critique to straight-faced corporate audiences

Yes-man Andy pitches his golden “leisure suit” control centre to textile executives. Visit the Yes Men website.

Batman and Robin have been replaced. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonnano have updated crime fighting to fit the times: they steal the identities of the rich and deliver crap burgers to the poor. They call themselves the Yes Men and they have been making some of the freshest, most effective art I’ve ever seen.

The Yes Men started out as an unanticipated addition to their Web site, GATT.org., which is a parody of the World Trade Organization's main Web site. As a result, unobservant people looking to contact representatives of the WTO for public appearances reached the Yes Men instead. And the Yes Men gave them exactly what they wanted: two men in business attire delivering PowerPoint presentations and debates expounding the benefits of an ultra-capitalist world economy.

They state: "Small-time criminals impersonate honest people in order to steal their money. Targets are ordinary folks whose ID numbers fell into the wrong hands. Honest people impersonate big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else."

In Tampere, Finland, Andy posed as the intended speaker and delivered the keynote address originally intended for GSO textiles representative Hank Hardy Unruh. He claimed that the American Civil War was history's most unprofitable and avoidable war, since slave labour would have eventually and naturally been replaced by cheap sweatshop labour. Andy delivered the lecture wearing a gold unitard "leisure suit," complete with a giant inflatable penis containing a monitor for the control of remote workers. The audience was polite and asked no questions.

In fact, even the most uncompromisingly fascist statements made by the Yes Men in various presentations received little more than well-bred applause. Despite a presentation about selling votes to the highest bidder, a petition to expedite the onset of global warming, and a comment during a debate about how private education will cause the children of anti-globalization protesters to think along the lines of the WTO, no mouths dropped. It seems that political rhetoric, especially in North America, has become perverted so that even an outright call for dictatorship, couched in appropriate corporate lingo, is accepted in stride. Mike and Andy set out to shock their audiences with the WTO's uncensored ideology, but instead were shocked themselves when audience members revealed their Orwellian acceptance.

The only presentation that was heard rather than swallowed by audiences was delivered to a group of economic students in Plattsburg, New York. The crux of the presentation was the WTO's partnership with MacDonald's to end world hunger by recycling Western consumers' feces into new burgers in developing nations. The students recognized the idea as racist, classist and disgusting. The session ended with the budding economists throwing things at the Yes Men. The Yes Men were proud.

In most cases, the Yes Men reveal their "true" identities in press releases following public appearances. After an address in Sydney, Australia, in which Andy informed a roomful of reporters that the WTO had decided to disband because it was doing more harm than good, several thousand notices went to media all over the world. Alliance MP John Duncan even brought the WTO's "newest development" to the floor in Parliament.

Mike Bonnano is a professor of Tactical Art Media in the United States. He has been performing his Identity Correction interventions since the 1990's. An earlier "piece" you might remember was the 1993 Barbie Liberation Organization, in which the BLO bought three hundred talking Barbies and G.I. Joes and switched their voice boxes. On Christmas day, youngsters found their Barbies saying "Dead men don't tell lies," and their G.I. Joe's confessing, "I love to shop!" If the goal of art is to reach the viewer in such as way as to prompt new thoughts and initiate change, then this type of interventionist performance is perhaps the most effective art form currently in use. Most art "sits on its ass in a gallery" and preaches to the converted, whereas the Yes Men present their work to the general public where political art is most needed. This type of art is like an interactive form of graffiti.

Their current target for Identity Correction is, appropriately, the Bush administration, an administration that solicits its support mainly through words and presentations (not to mention tax cuts). The spoof Web site accompanying the campaign against Bush is www.GWBush.com, with the tag line "drug free since 1974." As in their WTO presentations, the rhetoric on their Web sites is not easily identified as parody, since much of the language employed by international businessmen and politicians is empty of real meaning (for example, the concept of pre-emptive self-defense). In a press conference, George W. Bush responded to a question about the Web site by saying "There should be limits to freedom." It seems that the Yes Men are already scripting for the President of the United States.

Many of the Yes Men's adventures and appearances are well-documented on their Web site, www.theyesmen.org. They have also been featured in a new film called The Yes Men, directed by Dan Olman, Sarah Price, and Chris Smith, whose previous credits include the 1999 Sundance Winner American Movie. The film has been viewed by audiences in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, as well as those in a number of American cities. If you are able to catch the film, please do - it is both hilarious and deeply disturbing; my favourite artistic combination.

When international gatherings of corporate executives (mistakenly) ask the Yes Men to be their keynote speakers, they are only too happy to oblige. Max Liboiron watches the results.

The Struggle for Haida Gwaii

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 21:27:23 +0000

Sovereignty, resources and culture at stake, say Haida

Long-term tenure by the Haida has been legally established. Justice Douglas Halfyard concluded that the Haida people have inhabited Haida Gwaii without interruption since 1776. The Crown first claimed sovereignty in 1846. The Haida were never conquered and have never relinquished their title. The Haida have decided to forego protracted territorial negotiations and go the legal route to establish their sovereignty.

In the 1997 Delgamuukw decision, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the importance of dealing with aboriginal title, and prodded provincial governments to get on with negotiating treaties with First Nations in order to unburden the court system with legal proceedings on the matter.

The Haida already have one major legal victory. Up against the BC government and US corporate timber conglomerate Weyerhaeuser, the Council of the Haida Nation secured a ruling from the BC Court of Appeal that tied the hands of the province over direct disposal of Crown land where aboriginal title might exist since it would be a legal "encumbrance" upon the First Nation. Establishment of the Haida Nation's proof of aboriginal title on Haida Gwaii is still pending. Even though title is as yet legally unproven, the BC government must consult with the Haida Nation on land utilization.

A satellite view of Haida Gwaii (center). Vancouver Island is in the lower right-hand corner.

Weyerhaeuser had sought to cut a stand of old growth cedar trees that hold great cultural importance for the Haida. For a people as bound to nature as the Haida, there is much concern that the current rate of logging is unsustainable and would threaten the existence of the large trees for future generations. The Haida have used the towering cedar trees on Haida Gwaii for canoe building and erection of their elaborately carved totem poles. Old growth cedar plays a vital part in Haida culture.

The lawyer for the Council of the Haida Nation, Lousie Mandell, said that the case raises the question of "the province's capacity to infringe on aboriginal title and rights, and where that line should be drawn."

"If Weyerhaeuser's tenure is so complete that aboriginal title cannot be accommodated, then they have crossed that line."

The legal battle boils down to the question of sovereignty. The BC government refuses recognition of any territorial claim by the Haida. Justice Halfyard, however, has said that he considers it very likely that the Haida will be able to establish aboriginal title to at least some areas of Haida Gwaii.

A recalcitrant province insists it won't play the odds when deciding how to dispose of Crown land in British Columbia. It contends that aboriginal title must be proven in court before it will be acknowledged. The Haida demand the odds have to be taken into account, and argue that to do otherwise would be a violation of their charter rights.

The federal government, for its part, jointly recognizes the Haida Nation in administration of the large park on Gwaii Haanas, also known as South Moresby Island.

A new threat looms on the horizon for the Haida Nation. BC has had a decades-old moratorium on offshore drilling. Under Gordon Campbell, the current Liberal government has been agitating to lift this moratorium. Some estimates point to $300 billion worth of oil and gas lying in the seabed near Haida Gwaii.

Haida leader Guujaaw, however, supports a continued moratorium. He says, "You cannot buy the lifestyle we have with money."

The Haida have reason to be skeptical about the possibility of revenues "trickling down" to them. Of the timber wealth on Haida Gwaii, Guujaaw lamented, "We've been watching the logging barges leaving for years and years. And we have seen practically nothing for Haida."

The Haidas' greatest concern is for the environment. They have already witnessed the devastation left behind by resource extraction. Clearcutting around the Ain River has left the landscape blighted and saw the salmon runs--a food staple for the Haida--disappear.

There is an ongoing contest over the resources in Haida Gwaii, particularly timber. That the outcome of the struggle will have ramifications for the archipelago is adduced by the destructiveness of unsound corporate resource management in contrast with the successful record of Haida conservation. Guujaaw said of the Haida Nation: "We have so far successfully protected approximately 50% of the islands as intact old growth forests."

On March 6, 2002 the Haida Nation began legal action in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The Haida are seeking an unprecedented sovereignty over the land, seabed, and surrounding waters of Haida Gwaii. Guujaaw stated, "The Haida Nation É has no treaties and on that basis has challenged Canada's claims to Haida waters and the validity of all licenses issued by the Crown. The Haida Territorial waters include halfway to the mainland and Vancouver Island, all the way to Alaska (where Haidas also reside) and westward into the abyssal depths."

This sovereignty is sought within Canada and is not absolute sovereignty.

"We don't believe offshore oil and gas can be safely obtained, the technology doesn't exist, and we are not prepared to see offshore oil and gas drilling in any waters within a 200-mile limit surrounding Haida Gwaii," stated Guujaaw -- an opinion shared by some environmentalists.

"They've come and wiped out one resource after another," said Guujaaw.

The Council of the Haida Nation believes that it can provide better stewardship over Haida Gwaii in a spirit of cooperation. Said Guujaaw, "Today the Haida people are engaged in every variety of occupations and careers, [and we] still maintain a strong relationship to the land. The population of Haida Gwaii [is] about half Haida, [and we] enjoy a good relationship with our neighbors. Last year, the municipalities signed a Protocol with our neighbors who recognize Haida Aboriginal Title, and who will represent themselves in any negotiations to reconciliation."

Guujaaw remarked, "What we're doing today is taking charge of our lives. We're going to design our own future, and we're going to make sure there is a future for the following generations."

The Haida people claim to have inhabited Haida Gwaii for 10,000 years, but official recognition of their sovereignty is still in question. Kim Petersen looks at what are sometimes called the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Kerry on Vietnam

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 20:39:40 +0000

The recently defeated presidential candidate, 33 years earlier

Kerry, presidential candidate, campaigns in 2004. photo: Johnkerry.com

[The following are excerpts from remarks made by John F. Kerry in 1971, during his testimony to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate. At the time, Kerry had recently returned from service in the Vietnam war. --ed.]

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.
It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

* * *

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of Orientals.

* * *

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to dies so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to dies in Vietnam? How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President's last speech to the people of this country, you can see that he says, and says clearly:

"But the issue, gentlemen, the issue is communism, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people."

But the point is they are not a free people now under us. They are not a free people, and we cannot fight communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now.

* * *

Suddenly we are faced with a very sickening situation in this country, because there is no moral indignation and, if there is, it comes from people who are almost exhausted by their past indignations, and I know that may of them are sitting in front of me. The country seems to have lain down and shrugged off something as serious as Laos, just as we calmly shrugged off the loss of 700,000 lives in Pakistan, the so-called greatest disaster of all times.

33 years before running for President, John Kerry returned from Vietnam to tell lawmakers about the atrocities that were being committed.

Counterbalance to Reality

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 19:20:08 +0000

Canadian Media on Haiti

US-appointed interim Prime Minister Latortue. The Canadian press has largely ignored substantive criticism of his regime. photo: White House

Editors place a great deal of importance on maintaining the appearance of objectivity and impartiality. Sometimes this leads to "forced balance", a term first used by media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). FAIR was referring to coverage of the US elections, where it found that journalists were assuming "that both sides must be found equally guilty," and attempted to dig up the same amount of dirt on both candidates, even when doing so misrepresented the events being covered.

There are no Canadian journalists filing regularly from Haiti. As a result, media coverage of the situation has come almost entirely from the US-based Associated Press (AP). The CBC, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and National Post have all relied heavily, in some cases exclusively, on AP stories.

In the case of the situation in Haiti, the AP has taken the practice of forced balance to extreme lengths, using facts that are nominally accurate to construct a depiction that is directly at odds with reality.

There are two basic narratives that have appeared in Canadian newspapers: Aristide supporters attacking police, and thousands starving in the aftermath of hurricane-related natural disasters.

For example, the Globe and Mail's online edition offered the following headlines over the month of October: "Haiti struggles to stem unrest"; "S. Africa denies allowing Aristide to plan uprising"; "UN peacekeepers wounded in Haiti"; "UN soldier wounded in gun battle in Haiti"; "UN, police move into Haiti slum to curb gangs"; "Wave of unrest sweeps Haiti after devastation of floods"; "Haitian gangs causing havoc"; "Massive effort strives to stave off famine in Haiti"; and "Peacekeepers, police storm Haiti's Bel Air".

The cycle of violence that has been the focus of these reports began on September 30th, when a massive protest demanding Aristide's return had been planned. According to reports from independent observers and the Haiti Information Project (a group of independent journalists in Haiti), the march began at approximately10 a.m., with an estimated 10,000 participating, and many thousands more expected later in the day. Although the organizers had received permits approved by the government, the Haitian National Police (PNH) began shooting into the crowd at 10:30 a.m.

Initial AP reports ignored this incident almost completely, focussing instead on three police officers that were killed in a counterattack by armed Haitians, presumably Aristide supporters. AP reports gave prominent placement to assertions by government officials that three policemen had been decapitated in an action that was reportedly named "Operation Baghdad" by the resistance. However, human rights officials were never allowed access to the bodies to determine what had happened. The AP only acknowledged the PNH's attack on the crowd in later reports, which described the attack as mere "allegations" by protesters, despite interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue's admission that at least two people were killed.

According to independent journalist Kevin Pina, many other atrocities are being ignored by the international press. Pina points to the 600 corpses that appeared in a Port-au-Prince morgue in the month of October. Widespread reports of repression, arrests, and murder of Aristide supporters have scarcely been covered by the AP, which only reports that "at least 50" people have been killed.

"When I read the international press, I'm not sure that I'm living in the country they are describing," Pina told a reporter.

Amnesty International recently reported that "the interim government has swiftly moved to arrest members of former President Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas Party," which it accuses of corruption, "but has not acted with the same commitment against accused or convicted perpetrators of grave human rights violations". Most recently, Amnesty has condemned the arrest of Jean Juste, a Haitian priest and popular advocate of poor people.

Some have described Amnesty's criticism as soft, given that the government acknowledges that Haitian prisons were emptied of common criminals, murders and thieves, and have since been filled with thousands of dissidents.

On October 27, 30 members of the United States Congress called for the release of political prisoners in Haiti. Signatories included former candidate for leadership of the Democratic party Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee and James McGovern. Earlier this summer, 32 members of the US Congressional Black Caucus refused to meet with Latortue, referring to him as a "puppet".

AP stories have not mentioned any of these, or any of the many other human rights reports and experts that make similar claims.

Despite extensive coverage, the AP (and thus, Canadian media), media reports have almost universally neglected strong criticisms of the US-appointed government's handling of the humanitarian situation in Haiti. In a news release, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington DC-based research institute, explained that

Latortue and his confederates were not even competent enough to take the basic step of establishing an emergency national radio grid over which they could have broadcast calls to the population to go to high ground in order to escape from the flooding. This abdication of responsibility alone should have been enough to justify calling for his and his colleagues' resignations.

In a September 23 interview with Flashpoints, Kevin Pina explained that the Civil Protection Bureau, a network of community-based disaster relief organizations organized under the Aristide administration, had been dismantled since Aristide's ouster on February 29. "People who were associated with [the Civil Protection Bureau] were also driven from their offices, [their] offices were burned, and they were driven into hiding," said Pina.

No mention of these criticisms, or the facts behind them, was made in any of the Canadian coverage of the situation in Haiti. With these criticisms in mind, one might imagine that a lively debate might ensue about the manner in which Paul Martin's liberal government handled the situation in Haiti. The government chose to ignore President Aristide's pleas for help with security for a full month, sending in troops only after Aristide had been removed from office by US Marines.

As it stands, such a debate is not possible, as the most basic and essential facts about Haiti's ongoing crisis are not available in the media sources that most Canadians rely on.

Canadian media present two pictures of Haiti: helpless victim and land of violent "gangs". Dru Oja Jay compares their story to the facts on the ground.

Vioxx Populi?

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 09:49:58 +0000

Withdrawal raises questions about drug approval in Canada

The molecular structure of Vioxx. The drug approval process for drugs like Vioxx in Canada is largely controlled by the pharmaceutical companies that develop them.

On September 30th 2004, Canadians learned that Vioxx was being voluntarily withdrawn from the market by its producer, Merck & Co. Inc. A COX-2 selective non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), Vioxx had been approved in Canada since October 1999 for the treatment of acute and chronic symptoms of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, acute pain and menstrual pain. At the time, Vioxx was tenth most commonly prescribed drug in Canada, with three million prescriptions for it written in the last year alone. Merck withdrew the drug following the results of a study of the drug’s effectiveness for preventing colon polyps which demonstrated that people who use Vioxx for 18 months or longer have an increased risk of stroke and heart attack.

Since Merck's announcement, numerous class action suits have been launched against the company. The plaintiffs claim that Merck failed to adequately test the safety of the drug and warn physicians and pharmacists of the potential for adverse cardiovascular events. The case of Vioxx raises questions of how a drug with serious side effects made it to the market and stayed there for five years. More generally, it raises questions about the process of drug approval and consumer protection in this country.

In order for a drug to be approved, Health Canada requires data from animal or laboratory tests and from clinical trials. The clinical trials must "prove that the drug has potential therapeutic value that outweighs the risks associated with its use." Typically, clinical trials involve between 2000-3000 people and only investigate the effects of a drug for a short period of time. New drugs do not have to be tested against existing treatments – they only have to show that they are more effective than a sugar pill. And unlike the US, the data submitted to Health Canada is not available to the public, making it difficult for physicians and the public to evaluate a new drug. Some critics say that these policies enable pharmaceutical companies to produce and patent multiple and more expensive variations of the same drugs. These more expensive drugs are then marketed as new and improved treatments for the same conditions. Because the data is not public, and thanks to aggressive marketing campaigns, many doctors will prescribe the newer, more expensive medication without knowing whether it is more effective or not.

Most post-market research on pharmaceuticals is undertaken by the industry, generally to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug for other conditions, such as Merck's study of the usefulness of Vioxx in preventing colon polyps. This means that most studies do not get to be conducted by independent researchers who do not have a vested interest in a drug's approval.

Health Canada's Health Products and Food Branch reviews evidence of a drug's safety and effectiveness submitted to them by the manufacturer, and makes the decision as to whether or not the drug is acceptable for marketing. After a drug is approved, it is monitored through the voluntary submission of adverse drug reactions reports to the Canadian Adverse Drug Reaction Monitoring Program (CADRMP). Consumers or physicians can report drug reactions – but consumers are not aware of the program, and there are no incentives for physicians to file reports. However, companies are required to report any further findings of adverse reactions.

Within its first year of being on the market, CADRMP received 151 reports describing 417 suspected adverse reactions to Vioxx. Of these reports, 91 were classified as serious, including 5 deaths associated with Vioxx and 25 reports of suspected cardiovascular reactions. As reports are made to the CADRMP on a voluntary basis, they do not provide an indication of the prevalence of suspected drug reactions. As a result of a study conducted in 2000 in which patients taking Vioxx experienced an increased risk of heart attacks and stroke, Health Canada issued an advisory in 2002 stating that Vioxx should be used with caution in patients with a history of heart disease.

Concerns around the safety and marketing of pharmaceuticals are further fueled by proposed changes to Canada's Health Protection Act. Slated revisions include partial and full introduction of direct-to-consumer advertising. In the US, Merck spent $160.8 million (US) in 2000 advertising Vioxx to Americans, and made $1.5 billion (US) in sales. The US experience with direct-to-consumer advertising has driven up prescription drug costs, compromising public safety by encouraging the widespread use of drugs whose safety and side-effects are not well-known. While the Health Protection act currently forbids promotion of prescription drugs to the public via advertising, Health Canada has been extremely lax in enforcing the legislation since 2000. Direct-to-consumer advertising could mean that Canadians would be exposed to more prescription drugs, such as Vioxx, whose safety was uncertain.

As a recent editorial in the medical journal The Lancet observed, "[the] Vioxx story is one of blindly aggressive marketing by Merck mixed with repeated episodes of complacency by drug regulators." (The Lancet, October 7, 2004) Hopefully the example of Vioxx will be treated as an opportunity to re-evaluate slated revisions to Canada's Health Protection Act, and perhaps motivate efforts to increase the awareness of and incentives for adverse effects reporting, create a mandatory clinical trial registry that would force drug companies to report both negative and positive trial results, and enforce the prohibition of direct-to-consumer advertising. Because of Vioxx, Health Canada may have to convince the Canadian public that it is capable of serving the public's best interests.

» Canadian Health Coalition: Direct-to-Consumer Prescription Drug Advertising: Health Canada's Proposals for Legislative Change

» Women And Health Protection: Just say NO to direct-to-consumer-advertising of prescription drugs

In the wake of revelations about side effects and effectiveness of Merc's Vioxx, Andrea Smith looks at the drug approval process in Canada.

Insisting on Working

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 09:43:20 +0000

An interview with <cite>The Take</cite> Director Avi Lewis

The Take, directed by Avi Lewis and written by Naomi Klein

Avi Lewis is the director of The Take, a documentary about factory occupations in Argentina. The Take opened in Canadian theatres on October 29th. A longer version of this interview originally appeared in Seven Oaks Magazine (sevenoaksmag.com).

What was your initial motivation in making this film?

Avi Lewis: We set out to make a resolutely hopeful film. We wanted to find people constructing real alternatives to corporate capitalism. And we looked all over the world where people were doing interesting things, and it just happened, when we were looking, that in Argentina it was on fire--a laboratory of democracy.

You are from a very well known social democratic family here in Canada. What lessons do you think the movement in Argentina, what's depicted in the film, has for the labour movement here?

I think this film--and this movement--is a real challenge to the traditional labour movement. And an opportunity, I would add. What they do down there is they invert the traditional labour action. Instead of withholding their labour, which--in a globalized era of downsizing and closing of public services--is exactly what they want us to do, they insist on working. A strike is kind of meaningless in that context, when a factory is closing. But insisting on working is an inversion of the traditional labour action. In terms of optics it's incredible because you put the onus on the authorities to stop people from working. And in an economy where people are desperate for work, here and there, that's a very powerful symbolic statement.

There's also a real debate between how much of our energy, as activists and people who want to change the world, we put into electoral politics versus outside the electoral system; and I believe that you don't have to choose. At election time, we should get out there and try to get rid of the worst Campbells and Kleins, and Paul Martins, and try to get the slightly less bad politicians. But not think, in that way that my parents' generation and my grandfather [David Lewis] did, that we're actually going to see real change at the legislative level anytime soon, because all of their hands are tied by the same trade agreements and by the same forces of international capital. And things have gotten dramatically more globalized and more centralized in globalization since my grandpa's day. And so I think that the grassroots movements and the electoral movements have to work together, and I don't think we have to choose. But right now, where we feel the energy [is best used] is outside the political system.

The workers of the Brukman textile factory march in Buenos Aires. The Brukman factory, which was successfully taken over by its workers after the owner closed shop, is one of several hundred such factories in Argentina, which are the subject of Lewis and Klein's The Take. photo: Argentina Indymedia

There's a segment in the film where one of the central characters invites you back to film a sequel, to see the movement's progress. In terms of sequels, are you considering looking at the process in Venezuela, where you have that interplay between government and grassroots, and where there's a growing cooperative sector?

There's a huge amount of autonomous organizing in Venezuela. It's a totally different situation because the space is being created by the state. And there's a lot of debate about how much is being co-opted by the state and how much Chavez is actually creating community media and community services that are autonomously run and are not politically indebted the way the Peronist machine uses all social services to keep people in the service of The Party.

I haven't been [to Venezuela], so I wouldn't be able to weigh in; I know it's a big debate. But in terms of the sequel: I think it's being lived right now all over the world. I'm interested in seeing the sequel in Canada. I'm really interested in seeing what happens as these ideas leak into Canadian communities that are losing work and the increasing number of places where the crisis has arrived in Canada. And where people are fighting back and building things, not just protesting.

In this interview, The Take director Avi Lewis talks about the film, and the implications of "inverting the traditional labour action".

Books, November 2004

Sat, 06 Nov 2004 04:08:54 +0000

Mirabel
by Pierre Nepveu
Signal Editions, 2004

This new English translation of the 2003 Governor General’s Award winner Lignes Aeriennes gives anglophone Canada an eerie, slanted glimpse into one of its most unlikely epic disasters: the birth and death of an airport just outside Montreal. The first two sections of the book, entitled Surveyor’s Notebook, Summer 1969, and Disturbances, focus on the animate and inanimate communities displaced by the construction of the monster airport. “I counted my steps to that boulder,” the surveyor says, “the size of a bull, with no memory but of himself, his folds of moss soaked with dew, his belly wrinkled like an old woman’s.” From here, Nepveu cuts straight to 1997, when the airport is an obsolete dungeon for “Ghosts of suitcases turning round and round in an eternity of non-arrivals”. Despite some regrettable repetition–the word “lamentation” appeared lamentably often, and “women” was used with uncomfortable frequency as a stand-in for the concept of helplessness–Nepveu’s elegy is darkly, cleanly worded, forcing us to contend with a past which has left the spacious fabrications of the present rattling empty. --Linda Besner

Making Light of Tragedy
by Jessica Grant
Porcupine's Quill, 2004

In a choice story, "Bellicrostic", the speaker, who is an editor for a literary journal, takes seriously for a moment the joke that she might be illiterate. "Eye problems were her best bet. She would feign blindness while she learned to read. Hooked on Phonics tapes in the car. What car? You're blind. Right." There is a comedian's voice musing here, that sense of mutability of meaning, as the speaker takes the long way round or a shortcut connection that mockingly goose-steps alongside sense. Grant's representative speaker is the type who not only wonders if walking like a pregnant woman could actually fool her body into being pregnant, but tries it. There is nothing silly about this collection: the humour is a digging tool, scraping away the assumptions that deaden our engagement with our surroundings and ourselves. The characters here are innocently intelligent, with strong plain questions, always open to–indeed attracted by–the possibility that so far they have been wrong about everything. In Grant's world view, security should never be taken for granted, and calamity is a viable option for any story, any prediction. She surprises us, however, by allowing any given character's penchant for seemingly destructive action to bring them only somewhere different, often somewhere better. Generously, she allows us to come with them. --Linda Besner

Monk's Fruit
by A.J. Levin
Nightwood, 2004

Some lines and images of this collection are memorable: from "The World's Oldest Toast", the grumpy admission, "So on the day my daughter/ your grandmother,/ was born–the first thing we liked about/ the New World–my wife Chana saved/ a piece of toast. There wasn't/ enough money for bronzed booties." Especially when we hear that it was "revered unbuttered" through the Depression, Levin's piece of toast makes the leap from quirky cultural jetsam to small but valiant raft capable of bearing symbolic weight. Often, however, Levin's attempts to invent surprising word pairings provokes nothing more than a physical sensation of distaste: "Why work markings onto paper,/ tree corpse, when it could warm/ the winter dust, our iced stew?" With its unsettled mix of classical and popular settings and themes, Levin's verse feels a bit garbled; in particular, his preoccupation with identifying ethnicities verges on the obsessive. Levin's first collection feels like a series of elbow nudges in the ribs, as he hashes over old material without arriving at many new insights. --Linda Besner

What's Remembered
by Arthur Motyer
Cormorant, 2004

The novel is framed in a Toronto bar where an English professor, Peter, tells his life story to Chris, an artist he met just three hours before. Moving at memory's pace, sometimes glossing over whole years in a few sentences, sometimes lingering for pages over a single course at a dinner party, the book captures the emotions and experiences of a generation of gay men often forgotten, one that lived in the closet but still, through the gaps in the slats, witnessed the birth and slow growth of the gay civil rights movement. Motyer ends the book in 1979, before the AIDS crisis, a move which infuses the book with both a sense of hope and a macabre dramatic irony. Unrequited love and anonymous bathhouse sex contrast with Peter's quest to understand the Romantic ideal of love and to discover if–between two men–this kind of love is possible. While Motyer's reliance on literary allusion sometimes traps him in pretension, on the whole the writing is meditative, intelligently guiding the reader through an intricate and complex era. --Matthew Trafford

Linda Besner reviews new books by Grant, Nepveu and Levin. Matthew Trafford reviews Arthur Motyer's What's Remembered.

November

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 22:03:38 +0000

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