The Dominion - 27

April Books

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 01:33:10 +0000

West Wind, North Chatter
by Deanna Kent-McDonald
NeWest Press, 2004

In Deanna Kent-McDonald's novel, West Wind, North Chatter, she takes on the bubble-gum pink ChickLit genre and rewrites it with all the bitter depth of her heroine's favourite coffee. Emily, a Vancouver transplant recovering from a recent miscarriage and the departure of her husband, opens Grande Prairie's first cybercafé, using this project's voyeuristic opportunities to start anew. A montage of emails, recollections, voicemails, and Emily's meditations, West Wind, North Chatter proves that the epistolary novel is alive and well in the electronic era. Kent-McDonald consistently complicates her characters' chatter with their reflections on landscape, acceptance, relationships, and mothering. As the prairie wind pushes Emily to a doubled-edged sense of confinement and liberation, she writes: "Sometimes the helplessness isn't a sense of subservience to a world unregulated, but rather a cloudy, comforting sense of knowing.... the mistake as may not be mine alone but a shared responsibility with something too evasive, too elusive for me to ever comprehend." Although Emily's contemplations can feel overwritten and her symbolism heavy-handed, her engagingly angsty personality draws us in. Ultimately West Wind, North Chatter offers both characters and readers not resolution but companionship.
--Jane Henderson

The Alien House
by Élise Turcotte
Cormorant Books, 2004

Basically the story of one long, hard breakup, The Alien House pretends to be more with the inclusion of trendy yet consistently underdeveloped elements: a heroine who loves thirteenth century bestiaries and the lives of female saints, an elderly father leaving for Europe to rekindle an old love, a precocious and awkwardly attractive student. Sentence fragments and dream sequences abound, while the narration falls short of psychological verisimilitude or credibility. What's worse, the story seems to reconfirm literary stereotypes about women while vaguely insinuating that it is doing the opposite. Elisabeth can't be happy without a man and claims to be afraid of her body. Neither is she capable of being erotically engaged and intelligent at the same time (her preferred activity is to have her partner go down on her while she ignores him and reads medieval texts aloud in a dispassionate manner). The novel might have been passable if it had left Élisabeth and her co-characters in their dire and clichéd straights, but instead the book ends deus-ex-machina with every character suddenly achieving closure, wisdom, and an ill-chosen happy ending.
--Matthew J. Trafford

Somewhere, A Fire
by Donna Kane
Hagios Press, 2004

Donna Kane makes even the word "hubcap" delectable. Her tactile lines–"a marshmallow browned/ in the fire, its wrinkled shell slipped off like a seersucker cuff/ and toasted again"–unearth solid truths with the exactness bred of close familiarity. Kane writes with a sturdy endurance, an acceptance that the small wonders of nature are all we can reasonably expect. At the same time, she admits the inadequacy of this small-scale happiness, admonishing a squawking raven with the curt dismissal, "We're all half-starved for a miracle". Among the many memorable poems of this first collection is the matter-of-fact "For Good". The speaker accounts for a failed marriage saying, "If I go away for a week, so much seems different./ The grass needs mowing, the cat, having disappeared for days,/ returns hungry, grass stains on one paw". She continues, "If I go away for a year, nothing will feel like news./ In ten, there will be even less to say." Although the occasional descriptions of people or events are less expertly handled than her evocations of weather and landscape, all tingle with the transformative effect of being singled out for Kane's attention.
--Linda Besner

The Long Slide
by James Grainger
ECW Press, 2004

Grainger's collection of short stories contains a few well- rendered sketches: at a hippie campfire, "in the firelight you could catch their former identities asserting themselves in ghost gestures: a sudden hand movement acquired in boardroom deal-making sessions, a batting of the eyes that was once a signal for flirtation–the fading accents of pioneers abandoning their mother tongue." However, Grainger never quite succeeds in endowing his characters (a disappointingly interchangeable set of men in their teens or early twenties) with the distinct personalities needed to carry the weight of these moments. The epiphanies arrived at–the vague rejection of youth culture, "Yeah, well, I'm getting sick of this"; or the stoned revelation, "No, I mean, okay, you're here, you're naked and you're dancing around a fire. I mean, where do you go from here?"–advance the characters only to the next mundane step. Sometimes, as the speaker in "A Confusion of Islands" does, they get as far as moving to Vancouver, sitting in cafes drinking coffee instead of beer, and learning to respect women. Grainger has missed the real seam of urgency that could have lent these portraits depth.
--Linda Besner

Besner, Trafford and Henderson review new work by James Grainger, Donna Kane, Élise Turcotte, and Deanna Kent-McDonald.

April

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 23:27:54 +0000

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Canada, Racism, Genocide, and the Bomb

Wed, 06 Apr 2005 00:15:03 +0000

The Legacy of C.D. Howe

It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe.
-- William Lyon Mackenzie King (uncensored diaries)

The first shipment of Uranium is transported on Sahtu (Great Bear Lake) in 1931. Photo: Public Archives

Few Canadians know of Canada's link to Little Boy, the so-christened uranium bomb that exploded over Hiroshima, and Fat Man, the plutonium bomb that devastated Nagasaki. Not only were Japanese citizens expendable in the nuclear holocaust, but the "Canadian Genocide Machine" (see Robert Davis and Mark Zannis, Black Rose, 1973) wreaked long-lasting damage on the Original Peoples in the Arctic.

Sahtu (Great Bear Lake) is the ninth largest lake in the world, famed for its record-size lake trout and Arctic graylings. The Sahtugot'ine (Dene First Nation of Sahtu) have traditionally carried out a subsistence livelihood following their food, mainly caribou and the fish, seasonally around Sahtu. A thriving community of 650 has settled in Deline. Previously called Fort Franklin after an English explorer, Deline means, "Where the water flows," in the Slavey language.

The uranium mine was developed by the Canadian government to satisfy US needs for the World War II effort to construct an atomic bomb. From 1942 to 1960, the Sahtugot'ine worked at the mine in Port Radium, unknowingly polluting their massive freshwater resource and irradiating themselves. In the early 1960s, the danger became apparent. The Sahtugot'ine workers started to die from lung, colon, and kidney cancers -- diseases previously unknown to them.

Cindy Kenny-Gilday is a Sahtugot'ine who has worked on the issue of uranium contamination of lands and people around Sahtu. About the lethal legacy of uranium mining, she stated in 1998:

Deline is practically a village of widows, most of the men who worked as laborers have died of some form of cancer. The widows, who are traditional women were left to raise their families with no breadwinners, supporters. They were left to depend on welfare and other young men for their traditional food source. This village of young men are the first generation of men in the history of Dene on this lake to grow up without guidance from their grandfathers, fathers and uncles. This cultural, economic, spiritual, emotional deprivation impact on the community is a threat to the survival of the one and only tribe on Great Bear Lake.

Declassified documents reveal that the danger from uranium was known during the mining operation. However, neither the Canadian nor US governments saw fit to make known the health dangers. The Sahtugot'ine were sacrificed for an effort that ultimately slaughtered hundreds of thousands.

"In my mind, it's a war crime that has been well hidden," said Kenny-Gilday. "We were the first civilian victims of the war."

Canada and the Bomb

In 1930, Gilbert LaBine discovered uranium near Sahtu, but he shut down the mine at the outbreak of World War II. In 1942, Minister of Munitions and Supply C.D. Howe told LaBine to reopen the mine and instructed him: "Get together the most trustworthy people you can find. The Canadian government will give you whatever money is required. ... And for God's sake don't even tell your wife what you're doing."

Hundreds of Canadian scientists collaborated with allied scientists on the atomic bomb program, for which Canada supplied the uranium and heavy water. Canada also had representation on the Combined Policy Committee that administered the atomic bomb program. Canada's Howe was among the committee members who approved the use of the bomb on Japan.

On 6 August 1945, B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped Fat Man on Hiroshima, a city of 343,000, killing 100,000 people immediately and leveling the city.

In 1998, six members of the Sahtugot'ine went to Japan to commemorate the victims of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an atrocity that some Sahtugot'ine unwittingly had a hand in, a role they now regret.

Canadian Genocide Machine

On 22 March 1998, community evidence was presented to the Canadian government alleging "prior knowledge and ongoing complicity in the environmental crime" suffered by the Dene First Nation of Deline. Chief Raymond Tutcho said:

We, the Dene, have been subjected to over 60 years of horrible injustice because of apparent national interests. Our people have paid for this with our lives and the health of our community, lands, and waters. We have set out a 'Plan for Essential Response and Necessary Redress.'

The six-point plan called for immediate crisis assistance, a comprehensive environmental and social assessment, full public disclosure, clean-ups and monitoring, acknowledgment of government responsibility, and community healing and cultural regeneration.

Tutcho's call saw the formation of the Canada-Deline Uranium Table (CDUT) in 1999, which was charged in 2002 with putting together an action plan "to describe, scope and recommend studies and activities that, when completed, will provide information necessary to enable the CDUT to make informed decisions about long-term management of Port Radium site and any ongoing health requirement ..."

Cathy Mackeinzo, manager of the CDUT, stated that "the community, leaders and community, had agreed to work with the federal government to address joint issues."

"At that time people thought it was a good process," she said. "It's working out to date."

A final report, due for completion in March 2005, has since been extended to June. Danny Gaudet, chief negotiator of the CDUT confirmed that no special treatment of radiation-afflicted people been undertaken "other than developing assessments of high risk patients."

In response to the over "60 years of horrible injustice," without compensation, without health treatment, and without an environmental cleanup, Mackeinzo admitted that there was "a lot of outstanding grieving" in the community and that she was only speaking in her managerial capacity.

The Deline Uranium Team's November 2004 newsletter suggests frivolity. The newsletter detailed how 15 Deline community members and four CDUT staffers flew over for a tour of the mine, had a cup of tea, enjoyed the view from above, and felt "tired but satisfied" afterwards. While some speak of action, the noxious environmental and health risks linger.

Howe is eponymously memorialized by a right-wing think tank, but his name is also linked to enormous suffering.

Canada's little-known role in the construction of the first atomic bombs is still affecting people of the Dene nation today, says Kim Petersen

Haida Block Roads, Seize Lumber from Weyerhaeuser

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 01:46:44 +0000

Haida protesters say they have seized an estimated $50 million worth of cut timber from Weyerhaeuser Corp. Around a hundred members of the Haida nation were already blocking roads that access the American corporation's log-sorting yards.

"We hope we can use this money to get hospitals here... and all our schools are in debt because they've been funded like everywhere else in the province," Guujaaw, president of the Council of the Haida Nation, was quoted as saying.

In a communiqué, the demonstrators said that the province of British Columbia has disobeyed a Supreme Court order that requires the Haida nation to be consulted on resource use, pending claims of Aboriginal title over the land in question, and it has given "almost all regulatory authority over to the forest industry." They also say that the provincial government has ignored their local land use planning process, "issuing cutting permits in areas that are needed for purposes other than logging."

"Weyerhaeuser was going in and grabbing whatever they could on their way out the door," Guujaaw was quoted as saying. "We had a contract with them and they broke it."

According to archaelogical evidence, the Haida have inhabited Haida Gwaii (sometimes called the Queen Charlotte Islands) for at least 5,000 years; they claim 10,000 years of history there. The Haida say that their culture and way of life are intrinsically tied to the islands.

"You cannot buy the lifestyle we have with money," Guujaaw has said.

Weyerhaeuser, which is currently transferring its harvesting rights of 3.6 million cubic metres of public land timber to the multinational conglomerate Brascan. Based in Federal Way, Washington, Weyerhaeuser has 55,000 employees in 18 countries and controls 30.5 million acres of Canadian forest. The company's website mentions its "high ethical standards, a century of leadership and team-oriented culture." Weyerhaeuser had USD $19.8 billion in revenues in 2003, almost double the company's take ten years ago.

Toronto-based Brascan had net revenues of $688 million in 2004. Brascan's stock fell 74 cents on the day of the Haida seizure.

» The Dominion: The Struggle for Haida Gwaii

» CBC Vancouver: Haida set up blockades on Queen Charlottes

» CBC Vancouver: Haida protests escalate

» Gwaii Sgaanawaay Siigaa Iijaa: Why is this action taking place?

» CBC Vancouver: Brascan and Weyerhaeuser in $1.2B deal

» Weyerhaeuser Corp.

» Brascan Corp.

Loblaws Cuts 1,400 Jobs, Hikes CEO's Salary

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 00:38:41 +0000

Loblaw Companies Ltd. is closing six warehouses in Canada and Québec. The move by Canada's largest grocery store chain means 1,400 workers will lose their jobs. The move was part of a three year plan "to take all redundant costs out of the system," one anonymous industry analyst was quoted as saying.

In 2004, president John Lederer received a 14 per cent pay raise, from $2.05 million to $2.35 million.

» Canadian Press: Loblaws to close six warehouses in Ontario and Quebec, affects 1,400 jobs

Israel Expands Housing in West Bank

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 12:56:15 +0000

Last month, the Israeli government announced plans to construct another 3,500 new housing units in the West Bank's largest Jewish settlement.

The plan goes against provisions in the Roadmap for Peace under which Israel agreed to freeze all settlement activity.

The area selected for settlement, as one Washington Post report explains, is a strategic area representing the "last stretch of empty land between East Jerusalem and the West Bank." The construction of housing units on the land will "seal off" East Jerusalem from the other Palestinian territories.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat fears that this move will weaken the Palestinian negotiating position over Jerusalem. "They [the Israelis] want to determine the fate of Jerusalem before the negotiations on Jerusalem begin."

According to Am Johal, this recent Israeli move is not an isolated incident. Johal notes that the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased from 105,000 in 1992 to 236,000 at present.

"The peace process certainly has not been kind to the Palestinians," Johal writes in ZNet magazine. "Last year alone, 4,000 housing units were constructed during the US led the Roadmap to Peace."

» Washington PostU.S. Envoy Presses Sharon on West Bank

» ZNet: What Will Be the Sharon Legacy?

» New York Times: Israel to Build New Housing in West Bank Settlement

» Resist.ca: Israel to Build 3,500 New Houses in West Bank

"I can't go back to Iraq"

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 01:03:12 +0000

American "deserters" seek refugee status

Darrell Anderson speaks to a crowd in Halifax. Photo: Benjamin Witte

HALIFAX--US Army Specialist Darrell Anderson hated his seven months in Iraq. He hated the people he was fighting against, hated the people he was fighting for. There was hate between soldiers. And hatred against the Iraqi people. Anderson hated facing death every day. Knowing people who died made him hate even more.

"You stub your foot, you're going to hit something. You ruin your life, you're going to kill someone," the stocky 22-year-old Kentucky man told a crowd gathered at Dalhousie University in early March.

In all likelihood, Anderson did kill people. That, after all, is what the US Army trained him for. In Najaf, he and his fellow soldiers in the 1st Armored Division fired hundreds of rounds. Of course people died. But that was combat at a distance. It was impersonal. Anderson didn't see his enemies fall. Najaf isn't what keeps him up at night.

What haunts the young American is a pair of incidents in which he came very close to killing innocent Iraqi civilians

What haunts the young American instead are a pair of incidents in which he came very close to killing innocent Iraqi civilians. Anderson says he is haunted in recurring nightmares by a series of "what-ifs". What if I'd pulled the trigger that day? What if I'd followed procedure and fired? Those are the questions he focuses on now, as he looks back on the recent chain of events and decisions that led him to flee the US Army and join a handful of other American war resisters in Canada.

"That's why I can't go back to Iraq," says Anderson. "You can't have a normal life after killing innocent people."

Anderson is hoping to find that "normal life" here in Canada. It won't be easy. Right now he's stuck in a frightening legal limbo. With the help of his lawyer, Jeffrey House -- himself a Vietnam War-era "draft dodger" -- Anderson has asked Immigration Canada to grant him refugee status. It's a process that could take several years. Even then, there's no guarantee the powers that be here in Canada will empathize with Anderson's situation.

Frankly, gaining refugee status is a long shot. In fact, the Immigration and Refugee Board to which Anderson is applying has just recently ruled against granting such recognition to a "deserter" named Jeremy Hinzman, another of House's clients. Hinzman, who's been in Canada since 2003, was the first U.S. citizen ever to apply for refugee status in Canada.

Although House says he will appeal the decision against Hinzman, it's clear the Immigration and Refugee Board's March ruling has complicated matters for Anderson and several other U.S. resisters who, with House's help, have gone public with their pleas for asylum in Canada. In addition to Hinzman and Anderson, House is also representing former U.S. soldiers Brandon Hughey, 19, David Sanders, 20 and Clifford Cornell, 24.

"Their legal case is plausible. It's not far-fetched"

In order to prove their refugee status, says University of Toronto Law Professor Audrey Macklin, Anderson and the others need to show a "well founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a certain group." The key, she says, is to distinguish between persecution and prosecution. Desertion, according to the US military, is a crime, punishable by imprisonment. That's prosecution, and it's not Canada's job to protect foreign nationals from criminal prosecution in their home countries. However, if a foreigner can successfully argue that his or her liberty is being threatened for actions or opinions protected under Canada's list of Charter rights - political opinion is one example - that, says Macklin, might be deemed persecution and thus justify the granting of refugee status.

"Their legal case is plausible. It's not far-fetched," says the University of Toronto law professor. "Other deserters have won refugee status, just not from the United States."

Therein lies one of the problems House and his US clients are facing. "We don't tend to think of the United States as a refugee producing country," says Macklin. "It makes it so that the burden [of proof] is heavier."
Another problem is that unlike the so-called "draft dodgers" of the Vietnam years, all five of these current refuge seekers voluntarily enlisted with the US military. That raises an obvious question, namely, if they really object to the war on political or humanitarian grounds, why did they volunteer as soldiers?

Critics on both sides of the border cite the fact that these men enlisted to argue that Anderson and the other war resisters are cowards - "pussies" as one US-based right-wing Web site recently declared.

Hamilton Spectator columnist Claire Hoy criticized the former servicemen as "volunteer skedaddlers" in a December 4 op/ed. "At a time when thousands of people from some of the world's worst despotic nations are desperately seeking legitimate refugee status in this country, do we really want to welcome some Americans who are only here because of personal cowardice?" she wrote.
Conservative Fox News host Bill O'Reilly took the issue one step further, blaming Canada's "aggressively liberal" media for creating a media "circus" that "is insulting to America, and especially to those American soldiers who have lost their lives fighting terrorists and supporters of the brutal dictators Mullah Omar and Saddam Hussein."

These criticisms aside, neither Audrey Macklin nor Jeffrey House see the enlistment argument as an insurmountable legal obstacle. These men believe in serving and defending their country. They don't object to war, per se, just to what they've come to recognize as an unjust war, Macklin explains.
That's exactly what House attempted to demonstrate during Jeremy Hinzman's Dec. 6-8 hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board. To present evidence of US-authored injustices in Iraq, House called former US Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmey Massey to the witness stand. Massey, 31, recently discharged following a 12-year career in the Marines, recounted how during one 48-hour period early in the war, soldiers in his platoon killed over 30 unarmed Iraqi civilians.
"I was never clear on who was the enemy and who was not," Massey testified before the Board.

"How would that lack of clarity affect your ability to comply with the Geneva Conventions?" House asked the former staff sergeant.

"It hindered our ability tremendously," Massey replied. "When you don't know who the enemy is, what are you doing there? What's the purpose of being there? When Marines go into battle they are designed, Marines are trained and designed for one thing, and that is to meet the enemy on the battlefield and destroy you. That is their mission. That is their purpose in life. If you have no enemy or you don't know who the enemy is, what are you doing there?"

Most of the civilian deaths Massey witnessed took place at a military checkpoint. Three times soldiers opened fire on cars that failed to stop in the checkpoint's "red zone." In each case, soldiers hits the cars with approximately 500 bullets. They killed all three drivers, plus one passenger, said Massey. After searching the wreckages, he went on to say, soldiers uncovered no evidence that any of the people in the vehicles were armed.

Darrell Anderson's recollections from Baghdad are similar. At one point, he and a group of soldiers were stationed in front of a roadblock near an Iraqi police station. For several hours they sustained enemy fire. Several soldiers had died. Then, for a while, it was calm. Suddenly a car drove toward Anderson's position. It had broken what soldiers call a "safety perimeter." Also the car was emmitting sparks, probably from bad brakes. Protocol in that situation is to shoot first and ask questions later, which is what Anderson's fellow soldiers were yelling for him to do.

"It's ok, it's ok, it's a family," he yelled back.

Anderson held his fire. He had assumed the driver was confused, that he was trying to flee the city. He guessed right. Before the car sped away Anderson could make out two children sitting in the back seat. A boy and a girl, he thinks.

"Why didn't you shoot?" some of the other soldiers asked him. "Next time you shoot," they ordered.

"They got their procedures," says Anderson. "Even if it is a family, you're supposed to open fire, cause they broke the safety perimeter."

Anderson has another combat memory he can't shake. A hot, Baghdad morning. There had been reports of people with RPG's [Rocket Propelled Grenades], he recalls. "They sent us out to confirm this, which basically means they were out there waiting for us." To investigate the reports, Anderson and about four or five other soldiers boarded a Howitzer tank. Several guys, including one of his best friends, were leaning out of the tank's portholes, guns in hand. Anderson and the rest of team sat inside, across from each other, eyes closed, "just calmly getting ready for what's about to happen."

The attack came suddenly. The deafening rally of machine gun fire drowned out all other sounds. "The next thing I know," Anderson recalls, "my buddy's falling, and he falls on to of me, 'cause I'm sitting down, and he's bloody, and he's spitting up blood thinking he's going to die. He's asking us if he's going to die."

"I turn it to fire, I point again, and it's a little kid, 14 years old. He's running for his life scared," says Anderson. "Just like me and my fellow soldiers."

Anderson looked around. Everyone was scared. No one wanted to take his friend's vacated spot atop the vehicle. So Anderson took it upon himself, moved into the porthole position. "I go up there, and I'm thinking, 'right, we're under attack. Shoot somebody!'"

Anderson lifted his gun, aimed, pulled the trigger. Nothing. He'd forgotten to switch the safety to off.

"I turn it to fire, I point again, and it's a little kid, 14 years old. He's running for his life scared," says Anderson. "Just like me and my fellow soldiers."

Again, if he'd followed procedure, he would have shot. In a firefight situation, procedure and training dictate that if you're shot at, you fire at anyone around. They're not innocent anymore, Anderson was told. If they're standing there when someone's done this crime against you, they're guilty.

"I joined the Army to serve my country," says Anderson. "I joined knowing there's a fact that we could fight wars. But the war in Iraq is an illegal war. There's no reason for these kids to be over there doing this, and thousands of innocent Iraqis are being killed.

"I started thinking about the insurgency they're fighting. And I remember seeing their faces and I remember being in combat against them. These were just regular people, there were elderly men, young men. And then I remember looking around Baghdad and seeing the blown up buildings, the people on crutches, the dismembered people, and thinking that these are just their family members. If someone blew up your house and killed a couple of your family, you're going to pick up a weapon and you're going to fight a war for it."

"So there's no way I could go back. It's my human right to choose not to kill innocent people," he says. "And there's no way I could go die for money and oil, rich people's investments. That's when I decided I couldn't go back."

Anderson made his decision while home on leave this last Christmas. Desperate for options, he turned to the Internet, through which he learned about Jermey Hinzman and Brandon Hugley and their efforts to gain refugee status here in Canada. He also tracked down a phone number for Jeffrey House. The lawyer assured Anderson he'd find people in Canada who would help him, give him a place to live, offer him some measure of protection. "It's the right thing to do," says House. "There's a criminal war going on in Iraq and thousands of people are dying. Anyone who doesn't want to be a part of that is a hero to me."
And so on Jan. 5, two days before he was set to report for duty in Germany - en route to a second tour of duty of Iraq - Anderson, accompanied by friends and family, left Knoxville, Kentucky in a rented car. Twelve hours later, after driving through the night and a blizzard, they reached the US/Canadian border at Niagara Falls.

"We just showed them I.D.'s and they let us go," he recalls. "We drove across Niagara Falls. We rolled the window down. It was a beautiful sight. Just a breath of fresh air - my freedom basically. For now, I was safe."
For now.

Just as Jeffrey House promised, Anderson has received a lot of support - and press attention - here in Canada. In Toronto, he meets regularly with Hinzman, Hugley and the other American refuge seekers. Through them he's also been involved with The War Resisters Support Campaign, a Toronto-based organization established last year specifically to help these US military "deserters." The Support Campaign, explains Michelle Robidoux, one of its founders, performs several basic functions. To start with, Robidoux and her colleagues provide day-to-day support for the young men, helping them find housing and jobs. The group is also busy lobbying the government to make a specific provision that would protect US war resisters from the whims of the Immigration Refugee Board. Robidoux says her organization has already gathered some 25,000 signatures, including those of several prominent Canadians - David Suzuki, Naomi Klein, Anne-Marie MacDonald and many others. Affiliated committees have also formed across in the country, in Victoria, Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax. "It makes me optimistic that we can build a campaign to oblige the government to act," says Robidoux. "I think we can win it."

So far, however, the government has shown little interest in coming to the aid of the young war resisters. In fact, through its attorneys, the government has actually made it more difficult for Anderson and his fellow American resisters to win refugee status. Going into Hinzman's Dec. hearing, Jeffrey House had originally planned to build his case on the "illegality" of the Iraq war. Justice Minister Irwin Cotler himself, House claims, once signed a petition of international lawyers, arguing that the war is illegal. Nevertheless, it's been government policy not to follow UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's lead and publicly classify the war as illegal. During the Hinzman hearing, government counsel urged presiding Immigration and Refugee Board member Brian Goodman not to accept the war's legality as a relevant issue in the case. Goodman obliged, much to House's dismay.

"For me it's hard to say a soldier should go to jail for refusing to participate in an illegal war," says House. "But if I can't even prove the illegality of the war, it's harder to make the argument."

The small group of resisters have caught the attention of a few sympathetic members of Parliament, specifically NDP MP Libby Davies of Vancouver. Davies met Brandon Hugley last year and was impressed and moved by the 19-year-old. She rejects the argument that Hugley and the other refuge seekers are cowards. "I think they're very brave to take it on," she says. "They're taking on the whole US Army and [U.S President George] Bush's agenda."

Davies admits, however, that neither she, nor NDP leader Jack Layton - who has also met with some of the war resisters - have any concrete plans to pressure the liberal government on the issue. "I think Canada should be helping them in providing some sort of sanctuary," she says, though she isn't "totally optimistic" the government will change its policy. "Paul Martin isn't the guy to go out and make a statement like that."

Still, Anderson says he's confident he'll be able to stay in Canada. "Look at Star Wars," he says. "Bush tried to bully Canada, and the people spoke up. I'm hoping this is the same type of situation... They're going to find a way."

Darrell Anderson doesn't want to kill innocent Iraqi civilians, and is seeking refuge in Canada. Benjamin Witte looks at his situation and his odds of success.

Quebec Students Strike, Occupy, Blockade

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 07:16:29 +0000

Striking students march in Montréal. Photo: Dru Oja Jay

Over 230,000 students are now on strike in Québec, in opposition to $103 million in cuts to bursary programs by Jean Charest's Liberal government. Other demands made by the students include an end to tuition hikes for international students and an end to "the privatization of universities and CEGEPs."

According to the CBC, Liberal Education Minister Jean-Marc Fournier offered to reinstate $40 million of the cut bursary programs, but the students have argued that giving up the bursaries this year is compromise enough.

Students have staged strategic blockades of highways and port facilities and have occupied various buildings in Montréal. Dozens of students have been arrested in confrontations with police. Thousands marched on the National Assembly in Québec City, repeating their demands. Hundreds of students recently occupied the offices of the province's largest business lobby group, the
Conseil du patronat du Québec.

Some student organizations are organizing a march in solidarity with those affected by the Liberal government's cuts of $150 million to social assistance and the welfare reform of Bill 57.

While there are varying levels of enthusiasm and radicalism among students, all those currently on strike voted on whether to join. It reportedly is the largest student strike in Québec since 1974.

With Charest's government low in the polls already, the striking students are convinced they can win. "If the government has the means to lower taxes by $750M, we have a hard time understanding that it does not have the means to reinvest $62M in grants," said Québec Federation of College Students President Pier-André Bouchard.

» Canadian Federation of Students - Québec

» CBC: Quebec students march on National Assembly

» FEUQ-FECQ: The Government Can Correct its Mistake: Just $1.56 per Taxpayer Will Guarantee Grants to the Poorest Students

» WSWS: Quebec: Student strikes exemplify mounting social discontent

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Cosmetics Industry Under Fire

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 06:39:57 +0000

Health effects of chemicals, endocrine disruptors, "penetration enhancers" questioned

Women and men in Berlin marked International Women's day by drawing attention to the relationship between women and chemicals -- X is the symbol for toxic chemicals. Photo: Beatrice Vohler, wecf.org

On March 8th, women around the world acted to acknowledge their struggle for equality and justice. For some, this year's International Women's Day served as a platform from which to draw attention to a range of issues typically not identified as affecting women in particular- including chemical contamination.

"Women are particularly at risk from dangerous chemicals, through their work, at home, in the family or when shopping," said Sascha Gabizon, Director of Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF). As research continues to reveal how chemicals such as endocrine disruptors act to affect fetal development, while others bioaccumulate and can be passed on through breast milk, chemical hazards has come to be understood as a women's issue. WECF was one of several organizations which came together to organize the Women and Chemicals March 8th action where over a hundred women and men gathered in Berlin to form a massive X out of cloth -- the symbol for toxic chemicals.

The action was coordinated by a coalition of environmental and women's organization, and was a show of support for REACH, a draft law in the European Union that requires the registration, evaluation and authorization of all chemicals. Should REACH be approved in its strongest form, REACH could lead to the identification and phasing out of many harmful chemicals within three years of its implementation. The task remains a daunting one, particularly given the paucity of information on toxicity and health effects on most chemicals.

Women are particularly at risk of being exposed to chemicals whose short and long-term health effects are unknown though the use of cosmetics, shampoos, creams and other personal care products. Exposure to chemicals found in personal care products can occur through absorption through the skin, or through being ingested after application. Some companies, such as L'Oreal and Estee Lauder, are now adding nanoparticles to their products to act as "penetration enhancers" -- to deliver ingredients even deeper into the skin. Some worry that these particles ability to breech the skin - whose purpose is to keep harmful substances out -- may have unintended consequences for user's health.

In the United States, only 11 percent of the 10,500 cosmetic ingredients on the market have been reviewed at all -- and those evaluations have been conducted by the industry-sponsored Cosmetic Ingredient Review. Although the US FDA does not require safety testing on cosmetics, they do require companies to post a warning label on personal care products that have not been safety tested. After pressure from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the US EPA warned companies to comply with the law or face persecution. Should companies comply, EWG estimates that over 99% of cosmetic products could be labeled.

According to Health Canada's Cosmetics Programme, "only ingredients that do not pose an unreasonable health and safety risk to the Canadian public, when used according to directions, are allowed in cosmetic products." Like the US, cosmetic companies are not required to submit information on product safety to Health Canada. Industry is only required to notify Health Canada of the full ingredients in cosmetics. However, Health Canada can request that the manufacture provided safety information. With recent changes to the Cosmetics Regulation, companies will be required to notify consumers of the full ingredients of cosmetic products by 2006. It is hoped that this labeling will enable consumers to avoid products that are of concern to them, and assist individuals to identify ingredients to which they have sensitivities.

But it is likely that labeling alone will be no match for the million-dollar cosmetics industry's advertising campaigns. Long-time recipient of criticism, the cosmetic industry has faced accusations of marketing an image of youth and whiteness -- a physical image few resemble yet damaging to the physical and social well being of many. And as the events of this International Women's Day suggest, it is likely that potential health hazards from chemical exposure will be added to the list.

Activists in Europe are questioning the health effects of chemicals, endocrine disruptors, and "penetration enhancers" in cosmetics, writes Andrea Smith

Revaluing Value

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 17:01:24 +0000

The Condition of Copyright

The Department of Behavioural Investigation's No Copyright Seal.

Copyright laws have always been a contentious issue. These laws are designed to provide economic protection for persons' and businesses' "intellectual property", which is defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization as "…creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce." Copyright is designed for inventors, artists, writers, and musicians to ensure that they are compensated monetarily when their work is reproduced and/or distributed. As it applies to art, copyright reinforces the value of authenticity. It ensures that a particular image or sound can be designated as the original (i.e. authentic), and that any reproduction of these items will be designated as a copy. This hierarchy establishes the value of the original as the point of reference by which the value of a reproduction is determined. This relies on a scarcity model, which means that if there is more of something, it is less valuable in general. This gives the object a capital and hence economic value. Copyright laws rely on this presumption, and posit that the value of an idea is primarily measured in economic terms.

As tools for the reproduction and distribution of art become more available, this value has to be reformulated to account for the changing needs of artists and their audiences. In many cases artists are producing work in which the copy is of primary importance, or in which there is no original proposed at all. There is a difference in how such a product is valued - rather than valuing it as an object that can be sold, and therefore benefited from monetarily, the object's value lies in how it is distributed and used. If I write a book and I decide that it is more important for people to read the book than to pay for it, I formulate the value of the book as one of information. In a broader sense, I privilege the value of the book's content entering the public sphere rather than the potential monetary gains of its distribution. Copyright as it exists today is unable to account for these different expressions of value. It is diametrically opposed to valuing an object differently because it is designed to formulate value only in terms of ownership and authenticity. Intellectual property must be reevaluated and revalued by the artists whose work challenges its principles.

Artists Revaluing Copyright

by Max Liboiron

For artists who believe that copyrighting their work restricts viewers' access to it, and that accessibility is central to the success of their art, there exists a "No Copyright Seal." The No Copyright Seal can be obtained from a website and once put on a piece of intellectual property, "[ensures] that it cannot be copyrighted by any person, business or organization; not even you."

The seal itself comes from an interesting place: the Department of Behavioural Investigation, whose mission is "to provide everyone the opportunity to voice their dissent, dissatisfaction and disgust with their government, their community, and their daily lives." Sound strange? The DBI is actually a continuing art project that functions as a satirical yet serviceable institution (of the anti-institutional variety). Created by Lawrence Mesich, the DBI operates as a temporary office in art galleries, and sponsors workshops, instructional videos, and activity kits for viewers to use to protest issues such as community garbage, institutional uses of space, or surveillance cameras and privacy infringement. The pieces only operate if "volunteers" are copying and carrying out the plans outlined by the DBI. Not only is the DBI copyright free, it needs to be copyright free in order to function.

There are now multitudes of art and music projects that are based on anti-copyright ideas.
The band Negativland, which is just as much a conceptual art piece as a band, operates by appropriating sound, image, and text in a such a way as to just barely miss the requirement of fair use. They exist in the grey area of copyright laws in order to comment on both the laws themselves and the source materials they have appropriated. The term "culture-jamming" was originally coined by the group to explain their appropriation process. They now have a radio show called "Over the Edge" where listeners can "deposit their programming into the mix" by calling in. Negativland also "manages" the Intellectual property Fund of ®™ark (read: Art Mark). ®™ark an activist institution much like the DBI made by the same people who head The Yes Men (see November 6, 2004 issue), which funds "corporate products sabotage and intellectual property disobedience."

In an atmosphere of art and digital culture that is beginning to blur the boundaries between the gallery and the public sphere, and, more specifically, using appropriation and interaction as some of its primary functions, the idea of strict copyright is not only contradictory and inappropriate, but is also becoming cannon fodder for subject matter.

The DBI currently has a temporary office at The Staller Gallery at Stonybrook University, NY from March 5 to April 9, 2005.
You can get your No Copyright Seal at http://emedia.art.sunysb.edu/lawrence/dbimo.html

Negativland will play at "Open Ears," a festival of music and sound to be held in Kitchener, Ontario, from April 6 to May 1, 2005. Information on how to contribute to Over the Edge can be found at http://www.negativland.com/ote_live/

Max Liboiron looks at the Department of Behavioural Investigation's anti-copyright art movement.

Textbook Treatment

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 21:39:55 +0000

State-Sponsored Violence in Pinochet's Chile

A mural painted in Pisagua, 25 years after the concentration camp was closed. On the left is the torso of an executed prisoner. In the middle: "25 years, Pisagua: Nothing is forgotten!"

IQUIQUE, CHILE--It is easy to become frightened, watching the world around you respond to the world at large. In the suburbs, some flip on the news at 7 for war on Iraq, the tsunami, and the NASDAQ index. Some eat breakfast and drive to work. We move through our days both aware and oblivious. We listen to the news and are affected, but things seem apart. We have our own concerns.

Perhaps a part of our difficulty in responding to injustice today is the too-little of our responses to violence in the past.

On September 11,1973, Augusto Pinochet bombed the government buildings in Santiago, Chile. Salvador Allende, the elected socialist president, was killed inside. The American government and members of the Chilean business community were said to have supported the coup. Allende was known for nationalizing industry and for the long lines in which people would wait for provisions after the economy crashed. He once provided all school children with milk.

Nadia, reading the mural in Pisagua: "What hurts most in not defeat, nor the shameless hegemony of the powerful ... nor the pardon of the executioners.... The most painful thing, is always when people forget."

The cemetery in Pisagua, where the desert falls into the sea. To the left lies the town. To the right is the site where a mass grave was uncovered in 1990.

A stencil in Santiago: "Because they take everything from us... we reclaim everything, we take everything. Capitalism is misery."

A stencil in Santiago: "As long as there is misery, there will be rebellion."

In 1973, a crew of German human rights activists, disguised as military officials, shot a film in Pisagua. Prisoners were asked why they had been detained; most had no answer. The film was shown overseas, fueling pressure to close the camp. For this shot, which appeared in the film, prisoners were made to pose, shirtless, in ranks. (Photographer unknown.)

A mural in Santiago. On the figure's hand is a line from Pablo Neruda: "Even though the footsteps of a thousand years pass over this site, they will not erase the blood of those who fell here."

Pinochet undertook an aggressive campaign to detain or execute those who had been involved in Allende's government or in unions and community organizations. His tactics were both quiet and horrifying. Those who survived have yet to see justice.

As a student in Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College, in May and June of 2004, I worked with ex-political prisoners in Iquique, Chile. Most had been detained in Pisagua -- a small fishing village in the north. They wanted to create a book of memories that could speak to younger generations.

Our interviews lasted for hours, over tea and bread with plum jam, or shots of Pisco Sour and off-colour jokes. Some took on a fantastical air, and I would wonder which was more important, the real or the believed?

Nadia is a survivor of Pisagua. In 1973, Pinochet's soldiers came for her in the night, leaving her two children alone. She is in her sixties now, sharp featured to her laugh lines. When she passes those who once tortured, in the supermarket, she yells "look what you have done!" and points to the man who begs for money outside. Juan Hervas was beaten so badly that he often doesn't remember his past.

When the soldiers came for Sextor, he jumped from the old trees at the cliff's edge into the river. He hid until nightfall when his uncle came, calling through the fog. Later he stood with hundreds in a cell that reeked of urine and rotten bean gas. He showed the bloodstain on the wall - the place where they shot the man gone crazy from torture - to the people from the Red Cross.

One afternoon, in a lime green office cluttered with pills and patients' files, I spoke with a doctor who had been detained in Pisagua for having studied medicine in Cuba and later refusing to strike against Allende. Our talk moved on from torture under Pinochet to Iraq today and the abuse of those detained there: "This type of torture is not new," he said. "It is textbook treatment. We have known that for years." I asked the doctor what he thought of Pinochet's pending trial and current talk of reparations. He said he thinks that both are important, but that the world will never see real justice if we continue to support an economic system that destroys the environment and abandons the poor. I left his office with a twenty-page letter from him to the Canadian government. It outlined economic and environmental disaster resulting from Canadian mining operations in Chile.

Shortly after speaking with the doctor, I visited Pisagua. I went with Nadia, Lalo (another survivor), and Cesar (a painter and human rights activist). We headed up the cliff behind Iquique, then travelled north across a desert plain. We passed the dusty remains of the salitreras, English-run salt mines, where thousands of Chileans worked for tokens at the company store at the turn of the last century. We dipped into a river valley where bull's-eyes were painted on cliffs across the way - military training. Then the terrain gave way and we descended a slope where the road was broken by fallen debris and ruts in the sand. Below us was Pisagua, where there was a group of fisherman, drinking to Sunday.

First, we went to the theatre where the women were kept in 1973-74. We passed the courtyard where prisoners were made to stand, naked through the night, before their last interrogation. We went to the cemetery where, in 1990, a mass grave was uncovered while military helicopters hovered above. We went to the jail. Images from the interviews came flooding back to me. (The building is now a hotel, shy on business and painted red, with pink trim. In a concrete courtyard outside, a giant puppet of Sponge Bob sits watch above the impoverished village.)

I left Chile via Santiago. From the top of a hill, I could see the black building where Pinochet made his headquarters. I tried to imagine myself working there, or working as a guard at the camps. How do people bring themselves to abuse others? How is a torturer's violence different from that of a society, quietly going about its business while others are denied human rights?

Back in Canada, I still don't understand what happened in Chile, nor can I imagine what the videotapes showing torture, recently released on Chilean news, might mean for survivors.

Our own reporters trudge along. I imagine the news anchors, ironing their jackets and applying make-up carefully, reciting the names of places, reading body counts, and updating the terrorist alert -- all in the same tone of voice. What has made us so accustomed to hearing of horror in a matter-of-fact or distant way? Is this partly why our responses to violence are subdued?

Nadia once told me that she wanted to share her story "so that younger generations will know what a coup really is... so that they will never allow one to occur in the future." I asked how she thought a society numbed by violent television and bland readings of the news might respond to her story. "People may have heard of misery before," she said, "but they have not yet heard about it from me. Don't you think that would be different?"

The courtyard in front of the jail in Pisagua. Spongebob Squarepants sits in the background.

15 years after Pinochet, Carey Jernigan looks at the effects of state-sponsored violence on Chilean society.

Despite 4 Million Deaths, the Congo's War Remains Largely Ignored

Mon, 14 Mar 2005 08:58:06 +0000

According to a recent Reuters poll of over 100 humanitarian professionals, media personalities, academics and activists, the civil war in the Congo is the most important crisis "forgotten" by the mainstream media.

With over four million casualties since 1998 - more than 10 times as many as killed in the Asian tsunami - John O'Shea of Ireland's GOAL relief agency has branded the Congo conflict the worst humanitarian disaster since the Holocaust.

Although the conflict officially ended in 2003, violence has continued in most parts of the country. According to one BBC report, mass rape has been a tactic employed "as a weapon of war; a means of humiliating and controlling civilian populations."

The Reuters Alternet poll also mentions conflicts in Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan as the second and third most "forgotten" new stories respectively.

Reuters: Poll: Congo war is world's top 'forgotten' crisis

BBC: No justice for DR Congo's raped

The Dominion: Congo's President Promises Elections