The Dominion - 45

Canada in the Congo War

hillarybain — Mon, 14 May 2007 14:43:14 +0000

Role of mining, resource extraction has been neglected

Even for those who follow world events, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is little known in Canada.

The DRC holds two major distinctions. First, it is the richest country in Africa in terms of mineral wealth: gold, diamonds, cobalt and chromium all exist in abundance. Second, it is the country in which the highest number of people – roughly, 4 to10 million – have died due to war since World War II.

Africa’s First World War

The second major civil war in the Congo is often referred to as Africa’s first world war. It raged between 1996 and 2003. Several countries, including Zimbabwe, Angola, Chad and Namibia fought with the Congolese government and their rebel allies against the rebels in the east and soldiers from Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. Alliances, militias, rebels and sites of conflict were constantly shifting throughout the war. At the height of the conflict, 60 per cent of the Congo was under foreign control. In addition to the millions dead, millions more were forced to flee their homes; mass rapes and destruction were commonplace. Large parts of the DRC are still under rebel control and, according to the Belgian-based Crisis Group, about 1000 people are dying every day due to war-related disease, hunger and violence.

The official reason for the war is that it was caused by inter-African tensions. After Congolese president Laurent Kabila came to power, he became distrustful of the power held by his former allies, Rwanda and Uganda. According to a number of sources, Rwandan forces became worried that possible Hutu militias hiding in the Eastern Congo could wage further attacks on Tutsis. An uprising in the Eastern Congo prompted an invasion by Rwanda. Ugandan and Burundi forces entered the country soon thereafter. The DRC government responded by sending forces to retaliate, and the war began.

Western Backing

Writers Asad Ismi, Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski, who have been writing about the Congo for years, believe this is not the full story. They assert that the Congo conflict had more to do with Western desires for Congo’s resources than squabbling between African states.

A 2004 report by Global Witness points to what drives these desires. According to the report, large amounts of coltan (used in mobile phones), copper, cobalt, gold, diamonds, oil, gas and timber were mined and transported out by companies operating mines in Congolese territory while it was under the foreign control of Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda, and even Congo’s allied states.

Ismi believes that the millions dead in the Congo are mainly the product of Western desires for the Congo’s mineral wealth. “Congo has been ripped apart by imperialism and foreign powers for over a hundred years," he says. "It is well known that [the Congo war] was a brainchild of the US.”

In his article “Congo: The Western Heart of Darkness,” published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Ismi points to numerous reports, including those from Human Rights Watch and the Washington Post, which show that “US soldiers were sighted in the company of Rwandan troops in the Congo on July 23 and 24, 1998.” He also notes the US’s refusal “to call for the immediate withdrawal of its close allies, the Rwandan and Ugandan forces, which it…trained, armed and financed.”

“There is enough evidence to conclude that the U.S. backed and justified the invasion of the Congo by its proxies Rwanda and Uganda and then proceeded to join in and encourage the plunder of the country,” especially when taken in context with former US-backed Congo regimes, he says.

Western Mining

In their article “Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in the Congo,” Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski cite numerous examples of companies which directly or indirectly benefited from the DRC war, including Anglo-American, Cabot Co., Metalor and Sony. “Mining in the Congo by western companies proceeds at an unprecedented rate," Snow and Barouski write, "and it is reported that some $6 million in raw cobalt alone… exits DRC daily.” They also argue that the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, the largest UN mission ever, is concentrating on rebel groups in the eastern Congo, “effectively clearing it for large-scale multi-national mining.”

Ismi agrees. “The richest areas in the East...were being mined…with a weak government in Kinshasa. International Panorama Resources [a Vancouver-based mining company] was mining in the most violent area [of the DRC] and being protected by Uganda.”

Canada’s UN commitment to one of the most deadly wars in history was two aircraft and fifty troops in 2003. In September 2006, Liberal Senator Peter Stollery slammed Canada's "disgraceful" military presence in Africa. When it comes to the major recipients of Canadian aid through CIDA, the DRC doesn't even make the top ten.

Ten Canadian companies were implicated in the UN report entitled "Report on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the Congo,” published in 2002. One of the most comprehensive and damning reports on Western activities in the Congo, the UN report implicated 157 companies and recommended travel bans, legal action and investigation by states where these companies were located.

Though all 10 companies were accused of violating the guidelines of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and some were accused of bribing officials in order to have access to land, the Canadian government has failed to investigate the companies’ role in the Congo war, said Mining Watch Canada.

The recommendations from a 2005 report by the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which call for stricter monitoring of mining companies in hotspots like Congo, Guatemala, Romania, El Salvador, India, the Philippines, Peru and Mexico, have not been adopted.

European Union forces stationed in the Congo

NGOs, Invasions and the News

hillarybain — Sat, 12 May 2007 19:34:27 +0000

Part two of an interview with veteran reporter Jooneed Khan

Jooneed Khan has worked as a foreign correspondent and foreignaffairs writer for La Presse for 35 years. This, part two of a threepart interview, picks up where part one left off; Khan had just described an incident in which a report from Iraq had been rewritten "and the language had been changed completely, to the point that it was saying the opposite of what I was trying to say."

Jooneed Khan: To me that is a very good example of the kind of changes that are taking place. In thirty years of journalism, it has never happened to me, and it seems to me that there is more and more convergence, that there is a kind of uniform thinking in the west and it's also due to the fact that Quebec, over the past 25 years, has native bourgeousie. Which I don't think it had, in all manner of speaking, before '75 with the coming to power of the Parti Quebecois, and the use of the state apparatus to promote the emergence of a new class of cadres, and facilitating the accumulation of capital in private hands. Now, you actually have private fortunes in Quebec.

A good example is the story of the Expos--in a way the Quebecois are very American, they like to do things that the Americans do. Montrealers wanted a major-league baseball team, but that costs a lot of money. There was no way for a Quebecois family to have their own franchise as they do in all the American cities. So it was Charles Bronfman who actually bought the franchise--with the Bronfman fortune, which they made in bootlegging during the Prohibition. I think it cost him about $20 million. Twenty years later, he decided to get rid of the franchise. By then, it was worth $100 million. Even at that time, there were no private Quebecois fortunes to take it over. So the franchise was kept in Montreal by a combination of the Quebec Pension Plan, the trade unions, the city of Montreal, I think even the Quebec government--that is how they got the money to buy the franchise from the Bronfmans and to keep it here.

All that's to say that you didn't have private wealth in the same concentration as you did among English Canadians--you know, Westmount, the McConnells, old money, some based on the slave trade, sugar from the Caribbean, exporting to Europe... but now, you can talk about the Peladeau family of the Quebecor empire, you can talk about Jean Coutu, you can talk about Bombardier, and SNC-Lavalin. These are major players now in the Quebec economy.

So there is a community of interests now between this new bourgeoisie and the old English-Canadian fortunes. And if you're talking in terms of globalization, of mergers worldwide, there is the same approach.

The Dominion: So do you think that the result is that Quebec has lost its edge in terms of its critique of Canadian foreign policy through the emergence of this new wealth? Whereas with World War I, there was a very clear-cut difference between Quebec and English Canada?

Even in World War II. They've lost it, up to a point. I think Quebec still has a very deep reserve of social solidarity, and has a better feel for the Third World. But--now you do also have this other player in Quebec society.

Would you say, then, that the emergence of the Quebec NGOs in Haiti was sort of the comingout party for Quebec elite in terms of being a player in American-led foreign policy and la Francophonie, where you have what is very much an imperialist line being implemented by nominally grassroots groups in Quebec?

I think you're right. There has been this drift towards a dominant attitude. NGOs--obviously, the whole concept of civil society and all that--has been by and large co-opted by political and economic power. One of the major exercises of cooptation has been these workshops organized by the federal government, bringing mining companies and NGOs together to try to elaborate some kind of common approach.

By their very nature, NGOs that are deeply committed to social issue, ecological issues, justice and fairness must be at loggerheads with mining companies. So when the lamb and the lion begin to sit at the same table, it may be a very beautiful metaphor for reconciliation, but given the inequalities and injustice that exist, it's something unnatural. NGOs have been co-opted also through subsidiesfederalgovernment financing. So this drift has, I think, worsened over the past ten to fifteen years.

As a journalist, have you experienced or heard about any resistance to this trend, or a grassroots view that this trend is actually happening?

That, to me, has been the sad thing, that I have not witnessed any resistance-- the post-Cold War years, for me, have been years of ideological and moral drift. For example, the Rwandan Patriotic Front's [RPF] invasion of Rwanda from Uganda in October of 1990 went uncondemned. At the very time that apartheid was being dismantled in South Africa, you had what was basically an attempt to restore a form of apartheid in Rwanda. You had the minority and the majority. The majority had run the country, with many mistakes and errors and even crimes, but it was majority rule. And here was the minority that had grown up in exile, took up arms with US and British support, and invaded the country. Nobody condemned it.

I don't think anyone even knows about the invasion.

Because the media did not raise a hue and cry. That's the main reason. Had it been the other way around, where our interests were threatened, there would have been no end to negative reporting on that issue.

It all led to 1994, with the genocide, and the genocide became then the big story, because it legitimized the conquest of power back in 1990. And all the NGOs went along with that. There was no questioning it. I just mentioned in a story that in '89 a major member of the Tutsi community, who was very close to the army at that time, would come from Ottawa to see me every week, to try to win me over to the cause of the invasion. He would say "we are getting ready, we are going in, in a month we'll take over Kigali," and all that.

I remember telling him that it would be an incredible mistake to do that, to take up arms, invade the country and plunge the country into civil war. That the RPF would bear responsibility to its history for inflicting war on the country when they had just had elections.

There was a whole wave of democratization all over Africa. In the Congo, under Mobutu, the opposition had called a national conference, and they were discussing all the new ideas of how to go about updating their system and introducing more democracy. I said [to the Tutsi advocate], I don't think you have justification for armed struggle. I think [President Juvénal] Habyarimana is opening up in Kigali. Maybe he's lying, but he's being forced by the UN to show at least that he is becoming more democratic. You should go, set up an office in Kigali, begin political activities. If you are repressed, then you can call Africans, Rwandans and the world community as witnesses, and make your case. But without even trying out a political plan, to take up arms and invade a country, I thought it was the wrong thing.

And Canada was silent about the invasion?

Canada was silent initially, and then Canada joined the RPF bandwagon with the US, with the Europeans and the British. I know for a fact that Rights and Democracy also helped with RPF propaganda. Suddenly, overnight, there was a whole slew of reports coming out, denouncing the human rights abuses of the Habyarimana government. Nothing was written on what the RPF was doing. They were conquering territories in the north, coming towards Kigali, and there were massacres and all that. Never reported. Human Rights Watch played the same game.

I have always been very critical of the role of Rights and Democracy, although it was Ed Broadbent in those days. In fact, I have made the point--we were talking about this ideological and moral drift--that a lot of it was due to the fact that when the Soviet empire crumbled, it was seen as a victory for the right, for conservatives, for Reagan, for Thatcher, and don't forget that Mulroney was in power, and it was seen as a setback for the left--even for the Western left, for social democrats. And what Mulroney did was he set up Rights and Democracy and picked Ed Broadbent as director. It's interesting how the Western left--because I found that the same thing happened with Bernard Kouchner, who was a founder of Medecins sans Frontieres and became health minister under Chirac--all these Western lefties became the servants of the new victorious right. They became the moral fig leaf to press the rightwing agenda. And human rights became a tool for conservative governments of the West.

I always say it jokingly, but I think there's a grain of truth in it--the only more dangerous for the Third World than the Western right is the Western left.

Or the western human rights groups.

No, but the left bodies in the west are convinced that they can do a better job of managing the world than the right wing can. They have this version of the white man's burden. When you have people like Kouchner--he's the one who developed this concept of humanitarian intervention, which later on Canada took up with the Liberal Party, the Responsibility to Protect...

Developed by Lloyd Axworthy and Michael Ignatieff.

But Ed Broadbent was still the director of Rights and Democracy. He had invited Kouchner and he invited me to a roundtable discussion. And there was Kouchner and he was sitting and talking about how there are failed states all over Africa and we have to go and protect the people from their own governments and all that. So when everyone had spoken, I said, ‘If I may, I am a visible minority of one around the table, I would like to say that all the speeches of Mr. Kouchner are meaningless if Mr. Kouchner does not look at himself in the mirror, and look at his own responsibility in the so-called failed states in Africa.’ I said, ‘At the time when we are speaking, Mobutu is vacationing in his villa in the south of France. Mobutu's soldiers have shot a French diplomat through the embassy window in Kinshasa, this happened while you were talking. And all of this talk about human rights, it's just a pretext for recolonization. If you really want to help, we, as members of NATO, should put pressure on Turkey to stop persecuting the Kurds. We get all worked up about what Saddam did to Iraq's Kurds, but we never talk about what the Turks are doing to their Kurds.’ So I said that this kind of double talk has no credibility.

Other than that situation, have you seen any occasion where that kind of critique was brought to people--whether in the NDP or the Liberals--who are advocating for so-called humanitarian intervention?

No. No, I haven't seen that critique. In terms of what I told you, in fact, I think that the debate has yet to happen.

Can you see signs that it will happen?

I think it will.

Where will it come from?

But when and where, I don't know. I think that you guys are starting something which I consider very promising and very seminal in Canadian political debate. What I appreciate in your approach is that you don't come at it from a Marxist-Leninist point of view, or a Trotskyist point of view, or an Anarchist point of view. There are small groups--in Europe, particularly--that have attacked official diplomacy and foreign policy, and have done it for a long time, but they have been too confined on the politics.

But I think that there is now another phenonemon which might help to open up the debate, and that is the fast-approaching limits of Western power within the global context. It seems to me that we're going very fast to the point where we’re going to realize--and I think we've started realizing--that Western power has reached a wall and is now beginning to shrink. The west can still annihilate the world over and over many times, but economic power? Undoubtedly. The OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development], which groups all the major capitalist economies in the world, has a developmentassistance comittee, which is made up of 22 member countries. These are more or less the same countries you find in NATO, which is the military arm of globalization. And the OECD is the economic arm of globalization.

As opposed to the IMF [International Monetary Fund] or the WTO [World Trade Organization]?

The IMF and the WTO are the sort of global structures that have been put in place to integrate on Western terms. But the driving force is really the major capitalist countries of the OECD. Don't get fooled by the fact that countries like Mexico and Turkey are also OECD members; they don't really count.

The OECD recognizes that over the past 25 years, the western share of the world's population has been constantly decreasing. The Western share in the global economy has also been decreasing, with the emergence of China, Russia, India, Brazil. So I think that there is already a recognition there.

The last Davos Forum in February 2006 was centred on this issue, the emergence of China and India. That was the constant objection. There was an AP journalist who did a very interesting report, saying that wherever you go at Davos this year, you see the slogan "saving the world." Practically everywhere, this is the catch phrase. But then he said that when he attended the discussions--because in Davos, all the discussions are around banquets and dinner parties and this sort of thing--you realize that what they really mean is "saving the West."

So there is a recognition. And I think that it is reaching home more and more with the disaster in Iraq. Look at the Baker-Hamilton Commission report, which Maureen Dowd of the New York Times has called the council of elders, trying to tell the President that the world is not going the way that he wants it to go. In fact, he is taking the country and the world to disaster.

There are the limits of Israeli military power in Lebanon, which was shown this summer. I would even say, have been shown in Gaza. One soldier was captured there [in Gaza] in June. We are in December and Israel has not been able to set the soldier free. And Gaza is hardly bigger than Kanahwake, with 1.5 million people stuffed into it.

But I think that the greatest change to come is probably going to come sooner than we think. Because of the growing realization of the West losing ground, and the instinct of the ruling classes has been to kind of set up a wall around the West--a defensive wall. New immigration rules, new antiterrorism rules, new pass laws--which is a phrase I'm borrowing from apartheid South Africa--meaning new identity papers to cross borders, et cetera. And the creation of a sort of laager mentality, which the South Africans had, which was kind of "it's time to circle the wagons."

But it seems to me at the same time that there are healthy signs of cause for open debate about these issues. The Baker-Hamilton Commission I think leads the way, as far as US political debate is concerned.

There is a sense that we have sort of come out of a kind of intense reaction to 9/11, that we're starting to see the terms of debate emerge in a different way...

Exactly. After that, we went into Afghanistan, we went into Iraq, we were going to reshape the Middle East. The rest of the world had in fact been shunted by us--when I say us, I mean the West over the East. I know that Canada refused to go into Iraq, which I think is all to our credit. But by and large, Western interests thought we were going to go and make mincemeat of [Saddam's regime] and we were going to be welcomed with open arms. It's not what happened, and now the rest of the world is sitting back and watching us, watching the US sink in the Iraqi quagmire.

[...]

When I say I did not see the kind of critique from the NGOs during the 90s, over Rwanda, or Haiti--but even the manipulating of Yugoslavia. Here we are, we are the ones talking of federalism, we are proposing federalism as a model for Iraq. And there was federalism, which we tore apart in a bloody way, because NATO had to go in and flex its muscles, and now it’s doing the same in Afghanistan.

I think that primal instinct of recourse to force and war is still very much present and a great danger, that the right wing and the neo-conservatives are there already doing. The Baker-Hamilton report has been savaged by the neo-cons and the Israeli lobby, as you know.

But they seem to be on the decline.

They seem to be, but as they say, il ne faut pas vendre la peau de l'ours, avant de le tuer. The recourse to force, pressing on the button of patriotism, is very deeply ingrained. The whole history of Western influence and dominance for the last five centuries brings us back to this deep belief that the West is right and the use of force is legitimate.

You were talking about journalists. I feel very often when I go to Third World countries, I am very uncomfortable with fellow Western journalists, either from Canada or from the US, or any of those places. It's because they tend to look at the Third World in the same way as their predecessors looked at Nazi Germany: as an enemy that cannot do anything right. That all the moral right is on our side, and therefore we have every legitimate right to go and tell them what to do.

You find this prevalent among Western journalists from Canada, or the West in general?

The West in general.

But no different from Canada?

By and large no different. I remember in Mozambique, I was there with-- I tend to avoid-- I very much like to work with fellow journalists from here. But in those situations, when I'm trying to explain a reality which is complex, from the underdog's point of view, and then I'm faced with these people who have this overdog self-righteousness. It's not easy.

It seems to me that the Second World War has become, ideologically, something of a trap for the West. We tend to apply the categories of the Second World War to anybody we don't like in today's world. If there's somebody we don't like, we call him the "new Hitler" or the "new Nazis." And look how genocide has become a popular catchword for Western diplomacy. "Darfur is a genocide." "In Rwanda, our guys were victims of genocide." Where are the genocides that we have encouraged or abetted? These don't exist. It's selective, but it's also demagogic. It seems to me that for the West, for the ruling elites to maintain their grip in this context where Western power is being rolled back would be the new call to a sort of Third World War. It has been tried with the War on Terror, because the concept itself is undefinable. But there has been the "axis of evil"--that hasn't worked, because we have a deal with North Korea. Now Baker-Hamilton is telling us we must also deal with Iran and Syria. But I don't think that those that are behind this conflict are going to give up easily.

Jooneed Khan

Issue #45

dru — Fri, 11 May 2007 20:04:58 +0000

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Opposition Grows

hillarybain — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:38:35 +0000

Will a B.C. Federal Minister Break the Wheat Board…or the Law?

Who controls the Canadian Wheat Board? That is the question, according to key players involved in a hotly contested plebiscite that is pitting Western farmers against a B.C. federal minister.

The plebiscite concerning the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) and its monopoly on barley is the latest event in a year that has seen government firings, inter-provincial fighting, opposition motions and what some are calling a gag order against the CWB.

Though the details and complexities of the CWB may seem boring and inconsequential to some, literally hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars are at stake. Farmers are already struggling; between 1996 and 2001 almost 30,000 farms were lost in Canada.

Started in 1935, the CWB was a means for farmers in the West to sell various types of grain collectively, attracting a single price and avoiding unstable shifts in the market. In 1998, the then-governing Liberals amended the Wheat Board Act to strip the CWB of its Crown Corporation status and allowed farmers to elect the majority of directors. It was the fourth- largest Crown Corporation in Canada at the time.

In the 2006 election, the Conservatives promised to dismantle the Wheat Board's monopoly both on wheat and barley. Since then, the CEO of 25 years for the Wheat Board was fired (incurring outrage from Wheat Board directors) while an order in council was issued preventing the CWB from spending money in favour of the monopoly.

"[ Agricultural Minister Chuck Strahl] doesn't seem to understand that this is a shared governance corporation with a board of directors, 10 of whom are elected by farmers," says CWB Director Bill Toews. "He seems to want to take full authority over the operations of the Board."

Last June, the government tried to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act. The motion failed and opposition parties reminded the government that a “clear and direct” plebiscite was required before it could be amended.

Opposition Grows

According to Stewart Wells, president of the National Farmers’ Union, the Conservative government ignored the call for the required plebiscite until the NDP government of Manitoba announced their own plebiscite for Manitoba farmers this January. The results showed that between 60 and 70 per cent of farmers want to maintain the monopoly on barley and wheat.

Strahl, a Conservative MP from B.C., dismissed the results as being 'propaganda' and announced a plebiscite for barley farmers would be held in March. Instead of asking whether the monopoly should be maintained or not, however, a third option was put on the ballot; a dual system, where an open market would co-exist with the CWB.

“It's not possible,” says Maureen Fitzhenry, a media relations contact for the CWB, in reference to the existence of the CWB in an open market. “The Wheat Board has almost no facilities…we’d be asking our competitors to move grain. Okay, in all fairness, we could become a grain company, but that would involve the government investing [over a billion dollars] in infrastructure and they’ve made no commitment to do so yet.”

According to Fitzhenry, because the CWB is in competition with major US companies, the Australian Wheat Boardand others., the CWB requires high volume of product from a monopoly. “If [farmers] think there is no risk...they are wrong.”

Conrad Bellehumeur, director of Communication for Minister Strahl, disagrees. “A number of studies in Alberta…show this is possible.” He maintains the Conservatives envision a “strong CWB” within an open-market system and that his party is simply trying to give farmers the “opportunity to choose.”

But Alex Atamanecko, the agricultural critic for the NDP says that, according to the statistics he's seen -- including price comparisons and a report by Murray Fulton from the University of Saskatchewan -- “the Wheat Board as it stands would cease to exist in an open market.”

Fitzhenry doesn’t think Strahl’s Alberta studies are credible. “I think farmers want to keep the Wheat Board. Consistently 60 to 70 per cent of farmers support the single desk system.” Four out of five office directors elected during the last CWB elections are also monopoly supporters, says Fitzhenry. For her, the conflict is a question of “who controls the CWB: farmers or government?”

Wh(e)at’s Next?

Bellehumeur says that barley is the only part of the CWB under review at the moment, but that a ‘wheat plebiscite’ will be instituted later. Wells believes Conservatives are waiting to tackle the wheat monopoly when they get a majority in parliament. Both Wells and Fitzhenry said before the plebiscite that regardless of the result, the Conservatives would interpret the results how they wanted.

Indeed, before the plebiscite, neither Strahl nor his communications director outlined what percentage of the vote was required to move ahead with reforms, saying, “The data will be available to anyone but it's up to me to say what this advice means.”

Wells states that the ‘attack’ on the Wheat Board is caused by a combination of “ignorance, malicious companies, commodity brokers and long standing anti-wheat board people… all within the government.” He wonders if Strahl, with a background in forestry, understands how the Wheat Board operates and whether he is getting biased information from sources in the US.

Atamanecko suggests the 14 US trade challenges under NAFTA and other trade organizations to the CWB may be influencing the Conservative stance.

In response, Strahl’s communication director says that Strahl has been called everything from “undemocratic” to “a communist,” but notes that Conservatives have the largest caucus of farmers in parliament. He thinks that the people making the most noise challenging Strahl’s credibility “are the same people against plebiscite.”

Meanwhile, CWB directors and staff have complained of a government “gag-order” after the CWB was told not to spend money promoting the monopolies. Because Fitzhenry is paid staff, she worries that the government can interpret any comment she makes as an expenditure of funds. “I’m not prepared to do a legal interpretation” she says, “Staff don’t know what they can and can’t say…it makes [our] job difficult.”

Atamanecko goes even further: “Their tactics are sinister and deceitful...they want to dismantle the Wheat Board and are doing everything possible to do so. They've singled out directors, the Wheat Board and contradicted the current CEO…and made the [plebiscite] question fuzzy.”

Results in, Conclusion Not

The plebiscite results released on March 28 show 38 per cent of farmers wanting to keep the monopoly, while 14 per cent want to scrap the CWB all together. Fourty-eight per cent say they want the dual system. Strahl has said he will remove the barley monopoly by August 1, 2007.
For Fitzhenry, the results are meaningless because the plebiscite offered “an unrealistic scenario.” She points out that the minister added up options two and three to declare that farmers wanted to scrap the CWB, “But why not add up one and two…and assume they want to keep [it]?”
Strahl has insisted on amending the Canadian Wheat Board Act by changing the regulations. “We're quite sure we can take it out through regulation,” Strahl says.
Strahl might come up against more opposition, only this time it might be in the courts. Though Strahl and Bellehumeur claim they can legally make the CWB a dual-system, others claim otherwise. Liberal Leader Stephan Dion told a group in March that legislation through parliament was legally required before abolishing the monopoly.

Fitzhenry is not willing to call the government’s actions illegal, but she doesn't think the government’s plebiscite constitutes a plebiscite under the Wheat Board Act. She says that directors for the CWB are of the opinion that in order to change the Wheat Board’s monopoly, an act of parliament is required.

“This isn’t over,” she says

Wheat Field

Firestorm

hillarybain — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:31:04 +0000

A review of <em>The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia</em>

Across Bolivia, fireworks and blockade fires illuminate a resistance that has been sustained for years, and which is gaining momentum across the South American continent.

Benjamin Dangl’s The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia, recently published by AK Press, is a compilation of anecdotes and political analyses that spans Bolivia’s history of resource-based mobilizations. Written over five years, often from the fray of mass mobilizations or boisterous fiestas, this book offers a glimpse into the rich fabric of Bolivian social movements.

Dangl’s writing also frames his analysis of Bolivia in the broader context of Latin American politics. By drawing on creative and functional examples of community-based, socialist-minded initiatives from across the continent, such as factory takeover co-operatives in Argentina and comedor libres (community-operated soup kitchens) in Caracas, he shows that alternatives to neoliberalism are indeed possible.

In The Price of Fire, Dangl asserts that colonialism of the past has been replaced with economic policies of the present. Since colonization, “the wealth in the rest of the world [has] depended on poverty in Latin America,” he writes.

Despite being a country rich in natural resources, Bolivia is, economically, the poorest country in South America. The dearth of social services and basic infrastructure is crystalline in Dangl’s depictions -- especially of the hyper-urbanized city El Alto on the fringe of La Paz -- but Bolivia’s potent social movements and community organizations are filling these chasms with pro-active articulations for change.

Throughout successive dictatorships and a long stretch of Cold War interventionism in Bolivia, people were not able to express their needs through the political system, and were driven to the streets. In a phone interview, Dangl explains that the impetus for the Bolivian people to mobilize so effectively stems from absolute necessity. “Economic and political policies affect their living rooms, their stomachs.”

Bolivian social movements have become extremely cohesive. In El Alto, “the city that contains a nation,” even the street vendors are unionized -- they attend community meetings and shut down during strikes.

Perhaps The Price of Fire’s most endearing attribute is the conversations Dangl shares with people he meets on his travels, from elderly coca growers and government officials, to street-youth theatre performers and graffiti artists. Abraham Bojorquez, a political hip- hop artist based in El Alto, tells of being in the military during a 2003 uprising in response to IMF-imposed income tax hikes. Thirty-one people -- protestors as well as bystanders -- were killed during the violent repression carried out by the Bolivian military. Bojorquez quickly left the military and joined the other side. He now rhymes in Spanish, English, Portuguese, Quechua and Aymara (two of the principle indigenous languages in Bolivia) and sees this politically charged music as an “instrument of struggle, an instrument of the people.”

The election of Evo Morales to presidency in December 2005 was a victory for Bolivian social movements and marks a stark shift in Bolivian politics. Morales, the former leader of the Six Federations Coca Growers’ Union, made the transition to the Movement Towards Socialism Party (MAS) and was elected on an explicit anti-imperialist, anti-neoliberal platform. He is the first indigenous president Bolivia has had, despite the fact that the country’s population is 60 per cent indigenous.

“Morales and Lula [the working class president of Brazil] are two amazing examples of really important social advances that can push Latin America, Bolivia and Brazil out of the intense divisions between rich and poor, indigenous and mestizo [part Spanish descent],” says Dangl on the phone from Minnesota, a stop on his recent book tour. In The Price of Fire, however, Dangl does not idealize Bolivia’s precarious position, situated in a “continent on a tightrope.”

When elected, Morales promised nationalization of gas, improvement of coca policies and a new constitution. However, his promises have not been entirely fulfilled. Morales swiftly introduced a legal quota arrangement for coca growers, but previous contentious laws are still in place; he has improved gas policies immensely, but a full expropriation of the resource has yet to be seen. Finally, the new constitution is still in the works.

Since Morales’ election, Bolivian social movements have shifted from antagonism to collaboration with the new government, explains Dangl, but the cohesive relationship is a delicate one. “I think the danger or the challenge among many of these movements now is to work with their new allies in the government without jeopardizing their own independence or autonomy -- the same independence that empowered them from the beginning, outside of the political sphere…There’s a danger that all the momentum that has built up, particularly over the past six years, could be dispersed and weakened because of this centralization of power with Evo in the government.”

In addition to a healthy criticism of the Morales administration, Dangl does not allow the positive attributes of the MAS to eclipse the salient racism, classism and sexism in Bolivia. He interviews Julieta Ojeda and Maria Galindo of the La Paz-based collective Mujeres Creando, a “small influential group of anarcho-feminists not very well-liked in Bolivian society.” This aversion to progressive feminist groups, Dangl says, is indicative of prevalent sexism throughout the country.

In a corner of the Mujeres Creando’s multi-purpose centre, crowded with pamphlets and books, Galindo tells Dangl that the sexism and repression in Bolivia is not much different from anywhere else in the world. In fact, neither is the colonial history, the impact of structural adjustment policies, or the foreign ownership of resources. What is unique is the Bolivian people’s response and their ability to instigate and implement fundamental paradigm shifts, whether in the streets, the coca fields, or the congress. And, as Mujeres Creando demonstrates, repressive structures within these movements will also be held to the flames.

The Price of Fire is available through AK Press

For further reading, check out UpsideDownWorld and Mujeres Creando

The Price of Fire

May Books

dru — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:40:58 +0000

Plays by Amiel Gladstone, poems by Susan Elmslie, Tanya Chapman's King, and Creamsicle Stick Shivs by John Stiles

Hippies and Bolsheviks (and other plays)
Amiel Gladstone
Coach House Books: Toronto, 2007

It’s refreshing to read drama with a minimalist aesthetic in this era of over-used pyrotechnics and arty projections. A pity, then, that the minimalism here extends to plot and character development. What is interesting and successful about these plays, however, is Gladstone's play with time: each play is like a closed tank in which the events of the characters’ lives slosh back and forth between the present and the past, resulting in something rhythmical and cyclic. Lena’s Car, a short one-woman show, takes place solely in the front seat of a car, but moves from a crumbling marriage in the present to a past crisis of innocence lost. The Wedding Pool, by far the most ambitious, speculates on what might happen when three unhappily single friends decide to contribute $50 per month to a pool, to be collected by the first one to get married. The title play, Hippies and Bolsheviks, examines the consequences of free love through an unlikely love triangle in 1960’s Vancouver. Together, these three plays make a lively and entertaining read.

--Matthew J. Trafford

I, Nadja, and Other Poems
Susan Elmslie
Brick Books: Toronto, 2006

One of the first things to notice about this collection is how sensitively juxtaposed the poems are. The first poem, “Pomegranate,” though unrelated to “Felicity,” the second, sets up the tone so well that when we reach the phrase, “peerless alexandrine,” it sounds like an unfamiliar tropical fruit. Elmslie moves back and forth here between the sensuous and the hilarious, from “collarbones, knobs of the locked armoire of his heart,” to “rapping out blurbs a la Don Pardo/ for unlikely TV pilots:/ She's a hard-nosed Wall Street lawyer;/ He's a displaced Eskimo woman. Together/ they're Fishing for Clues.” The book's five sections focus around a few specific areas of concern: “femininity,” violence against women, physical objects, and illness all pique Elmslie's poetic interest. Although the “Nadja” poems—a suite of poems exploring the real character of the Nadja on whom Andre Breton's novel is based— are meant as the book's centrepiece, and while they bring the historical context of Elmslie's thinking more sharply into focus, I actually preferred the sections in which Elmslie speaks in her own voice. It's an intelligent and original one.

--Linda Besner

King
Tanya Chapman
Coach House: Toronto, 2006

This is a strange and endearing book. The protagonist, who calls herself Hazel, is a girl from an upper- middle class family who has moved to a trailer park and shacked up with King, the eponymous mixed-up rock-star-cum-layabout she's fallen in love with. It both is and isn't the usual story of a woman living in a trailer park and being abused by her beer-swilling partner; although a beer bottle does at one point bounce off Hazel's head, King has none of the melodrama you might expect. Hazel, who narrates, does so with an amiable fuzziness that makes her sound always slightly buzzed . She tells us about the flower seeds she's scattered over the grass around her trailer—“You have to walk right through the flowers to get to the door—I never thought of a path”—and the fearlessness that makes King so special—“King's very existence would terrify my dad and my dad's dad and a hundred dads before them.” The split, when it comes, is remarkably understated and spoils none of the sweetness of the book's first half. Though the story is simple and somewhat repetitively structured, Hazel is worth getting to know.

--Linda Besner

Creamsicle Stick Shivs
John Stiles
Insomniac Press
2006

Stiles' second poetry collection travels from Nova Scotia to England by way of Toronto, and its three sections reflect these phases. Stiles delights in dialect, humour, and narrative and uses colloquialisms to put poetry in the mouths of those who wouldn't call it such, like the rogue romantic begging: “But Jesus girl, wouldja take off / yer goddamned top en let that stunning church of a tit / fall out yer blouse, so we can turn our heads en waltz / like two goddamned lovestruck swans cross the rooftop / in this glorious Halifax snowstorm?” Constantly self-satirizing, Stiles is cheeky, neurotic and occasionally poignant as in “Felt Like Cryin,” or “Oh, About the Money.” His narrators make characters and caricatures of those around them, be they strangers, coworkers, church fellows, or devoted life partners, and the satiric humour is well supported by soundplay. The richest stories and language play are in the first section, Halifax Snowstorm, and for this alone the collection deserves attention. Frequent shifts of person, usually from first to second, mostly work well to involve the reader and multiply perspectives, but can occasionally blur the story to confusion.

-- Jane Henderson

The US has Returned Fundamentalism to Afghanistan

dru — Mon, 07 May 2007 01:42:32 +0000

Afghan MP speaks about the US-backed warlords currently in power

The following is a transcript of the speech given by Malalai Joya, member of the Afghan Parliament, given at the University of Los Angeles on Tuesday April, 10th:

In the name of Democracy and Peace –

Dear friends, first of all I extend my deep regards and thanks to the friends in the University of California to provide the opportunity for me to be here and share my point of view with you and inform you about the ongoing tragedy in my crying Afghanistan.

While the pro-democracy and anti-fundamentalists groups and individuals of Afghanistan are being marginalized, suppressed and silenced, you give a helping hand to me as a small voice of my suffering people to speak about the crisis in Afghanistan and terrible conditions of its people. You in fact play your role in raising awareness on what is going on in my devastated country.

Respected friends, over five years passed since the US-led attack on Afghanistan. Probably many of you are not well aware of the current conditions of my country and expect me to list the positive outcomes of the past years since the US invasion. But I am sorry to tell you that Afghanistan is still chained in the fetters of the fundamentalist warlords and is like an unconscious body taking its last breath.

The US government removed the ultra-reactionary and brutal regime of Taliban, but instead of relying on Afghan people, pushed us from the frying pan into the fire and selected its friends from among the most dirty and infamous criminals of the “Northern Alliance”, which is made up of the sworn enemies of democracy and human rights, and are as dark-minded, evil, and cruel as the Taliban.

The Western media talks about democracy and the liberation of Afghanistan, but the US and its allies are engaged in the warlordization, criminalization and drug-lordization of our wounded land.

Today the Northern alliance leaders are the key power holders and our people are hostage in the hands of these ruthless gangs of killers. Many of them are responsible for butchering tens of thousands of innocent people in the past 2 decades but are in power and hold key positions in the government.

Let me list few of the key power-holders of Afghanistan:

Karim Khalili, the vice-president, is leader of a pro-Iran party called Wahdat, responsible for killing thousands of innocent people, and named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Ismael Khan, another killer warlord and lackey of the Iranian regime is the minister of water and power.
Izzatullah Wasifi, Afghanistan’s anti-corruption chief has been a convicted drug trafficker who has spent around 4 years in a Nevada state prison in the US.
General Mohammed Daoud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister in charge of the anti-drug effort, is a former warlord and famous drug-trafficker.
Rashid Dostum, the chief of staff of the Afghan army, is a heartless killer and warlord, named by Human Rights Watch as a war criminal.
Qasim Fahim, former defense minister and now a Senator and adviser to Mr. Karzai is the most powerful warlord of the Northern Alliance, and accused of war crimes.

And this list has hundreds of men on it, including Sayyaf, Ulomi, Golabzoi, Rabbani, Qanooni, Mohaqiq, Mullah Rocketi, etc. They should all be removed from power and put on trial for war crimes. In fact all the major institutions in Afghanistan are occupied by warlords and drug-lords. How can we talk about democracy when our legislative, judicial and executive bodies are infected with the viruses of fundamentalism and drug mafia?

Many freedom-loving individuals and groups in Afghanistan had long ago warned that bringing the criminal “Northern Alliance” back into power by the US government will pose a danger to Afghanistan. But today, most governments and world institutions accept that Afghanistan is a failed state which is heading toward disaster.

Afghans are deeply fed-up with the current situation and every day that passes they turn against the government, the foreign troops and the warlords. And the Taliban make use of it to increase their influence and acts of terror. Countries like Pakistan, Iran, Russia etc. are also meddling in Afghanistan for their own interests.

The U.S.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in a recent report: “…Afghans are frustrated with their economic situation… They suffer from unsteady employment and economic insecurity, and are turning to illicit and illegal activity, such as corruption and opium production…the Taliban has become an alternative source of employment, recruiting the jobless as foot soldiers in the insurgency.”

In such a situation when a bunch of killers are in power, life cannot be easy for our unfortunate people. I would like to describe the tip of the iceberg on the reality of life in my bleeding Afghanistan:

Seven hundred children and 50-70 women die on a daily basis because of a lack of health services. Infant and maternal mortality rates are still very high — 1,600 to 1,900 women among each 100,000 die during childbirth. Life expectancy is less than 45 years.

The number of suicide cases by Afghan women was never as high as it is today: A month ago eighteen year old Samiya, hung herself by a rope because she was to be sold to a sixty year old man. Another woman called Bibi Gul locked herself up in the animals’ stable and burned herself to death. Later her family found nothing except her bones.

The study by the governmental agency Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission shows a marked increase in reported cases: Two years ago in Farah province, there were 15 cases of women burning themselves reported, but the number jumped to 36 in the first six months of 2006. Kandahar province had 74 cases two years ago and 77 cases in the first six months of the past year. But the real numbers are much higher.

According to a UNIFEM survey, 65% of the 50,000 widows in Kabul see suicide as the only option to get rid of their misery. UNIFEM estimates that at least one out of three Afghan women has been beaten, forced into sex or otherwise abused.

The gang-rape of young girls and women by warlords belonging to the “Northern Alliance” still continues especially in the northern provinces of Afghanistan. People have staged mass protests a number of times but no one cares about their sorrow and tears. Only a few of the rape cases find their way into the media. One shocking case was that of 11 year old Sanobar, the only daughter of an unfortunate widow who was abducted, raped and then exchanged for a dog by a warlord. In a land where human dignity has no price, the vicious rapist of a poor girl still acts as district chief.

The Taliban continue their fascism in the eastern parts of Afghanistan where the government has no control. They carry out public executions and kidnappings. When some days ago an Italian journalist and his Afghan translator and driver were kidnapped, the Afghan government made a deal with them and released five Taliban leaders from prison so the Italian journalist was freed. But no one cared for the fate of the two innocent Afghans and both of them were beheaded by the Taliban.

A report by Human Rights Watch about war criminals in Afghanistan and the hanging of Saddam Hussein scared many Afghan criminals and now they are trying to block any efforts for their prosecution. Last month the warlord MPs, under the name of “national reconciliation” passed a bill in the parliament based on which no one can file a case or prosecute anyone for committing war crimes in the past 25 years.

I and a few other MPs raised our voices against it but as the fundamentalist warlords hold over 80% of the seats, the bill was easily approved. This bill will now provide amnesty to all criminals.

But Afghan people who have suffered terribly in the past 3 decades consider this bill an abuse against them. According to a survey conducted by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission over 80% of Afghan people want to prosecute those responsible for past crimes and brutalities and see it as the only way to experience a bright future in Afghanistan.

Even Mr. Karzai signed this disgusting bill which is regarded as a joke and abuse to the millions of Afghans who have suffered and lost their loved ones and were waiting for the day of justice. Meanwhile the killers forgave their own crimes and live without fear. Such bills officially sanction further brutalities and human rights violations against our defenseless people.

The story of Afghanistan’s reconstruction is painful: After 5 years you cannot see any serious reconstruction projects. Billions of dollars of aid has been looted by the warlords, corrupt NGOs, the UN and government officials. Afghanistan still stands 175th out of 177 countries in the UN Human Development Index and the rate of unemployment is over 40%.

The so-called “freedom of speech” in Afghanistan is another joke with our people. Let me describe my own recent experience: In early February this year, during the passage of the infamous bill of amnesty for war criminals in the parliament, I had an interview with a local TV channel; they had interviewed some other people including Sayyaf, who is a wanted criminal and member of the parliament.

The TV station broadcast an advertisement for the program a number of times in which they showed some parts of my interview. After this Sayyaf himself called the TV station and threatened them that if Joya’s interview was broadcast the consequences would be dangerous for the director. So they resorted to censorship and excluded me from the program. And this is not the first time that I have been censored in the media. Many journalists are too afraid to report my comments.

Last year the UN announced that Afghanistan under US troops could become a narco-state but today no one has any doubt that it has been changed into a mafia-state when Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s supply of opium. High-ranking officials like ministers and deputy ministers etc. have links to the drugs mafia. And all of it happens under the very noses of the thousands of foreign troops.

A mafia system is in place in Afghanistan. The US backed president Karzai and his westernized intellectuals have joined hands with fundamentalists of all brands to impose this mafia system on our people. This is the main reason for today’s problems in the deadlocked Afghanistan. Those who speak for justice are threatened with death.

My voice is always being silenced even inside the parliament and once I was physically attacked by pro-warlord and drug-lord MPs in the parliament just for speaking the truth. One of them even shouted “prostitute, take her and rape her!” Despite hating guns, I need to live under the protection of armed bodyguards to survive.

President Hamid Karzai, instead of relying on people to bring the criminal warlords to trial, appoints these criminals to higher posts. Due to his criminal-fostering policies, the people of Afghanistan hate him as someone equally responsible for the current catastrophe. Even the CIA admitted in its report recently that he has lost the people’s support and has no control outside of Kabul.

The Afghan government is the most corrupt and unpopular in the world. In a March 2007 survey conducted by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, it was revealed that about 60 percent of Afghans think the current administration is more corrupt than any other in the past two decades.

It is due to this tragic situation that returning to Afghanistan is still an unattractive option for the 4 million Afghan refugees living in Iran and Pakistan and many more still trying to flee the country.

Dear friends, in 2001 the US government announced that it has learned from its past mistakes of supporting the fundamentalists in Afghanistan and will not repeat them. But the agonizing truth is that the US is committing the same mistakes. It is generously supporting the fundamentalists more than ever.

Besides supporting the bands of the Northern Alliance, underground efforts are going on to include some elements of the Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the government. The US included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on its list of most wanted terrorists, yet his party was allowed to have 34 members in the Afghan parliament, which was elected in an un-democratic and fraudulent election. I have announced a number of times that the US administration has no problem working with pro-American terrorists, but oppose only anti-American terrorists. This is the reason that our people make a mockery of the “war on terror”.

I fully agree with Kathy Gannon, an expert in Afghanistan, that “the US is not interested in peace in Afghanistan. The people who killed thousands, who patronized the drug business are in charge of the country.”

Dear friends, the US is not concerned with the suffering and disastrous conditions of our people; it is in the US’s strategic and economic interests to put our people in danger as long as its own regional interests are met. That is why our people do not consider the US a “liberator” of our country. The US invaded Afghanistan under the name of human rights and democracy but today we are as far from these values as were 5 years ago. However, since 2001 the death toll of innocent civilians as a result of the so-called “war on terror” is five times the number killed in the 9/11 tragedy.

I hope you have realized from the small taste of the problems that I just shared, that my country is still in the chains of bloody and terrorist fundamentalists. The situation in Afghanistan and the conditions of its ill-fated women will never change positively, as long as the warlords are not disarmed and both the pro-US and anti-US terrorists are not removed from the political scene of Afghanistan.

It is a clear and proven fact that no nation can donate liberation to another nation. Liberation is not money to be donated; it should be achieved in a country by the people themselves. The ongoing developments in Afghanistan and Iraq prove this claim. People of other countries only can give us a helping hand and support.

I think that the people of the US can play a great role to put pressure on their policy-makers to stop its wrong policies in Afghanistan and value the wishes of our people. I should say that unlike its government, the people of the US are great, caring and peace-loving, so the democratic-minded elements of Afghanistan can count on your support and solidarity.

The people of the US must help poor Afghan people and its democratic-minded individuals and groups, who are currently defeated and under much pressure. This is the only correct policy that can help Afghan people and guarantee a bright future for us. Unlike the US administration, the true friends of Afghan people must care about the voices of our men and women for justice; they should realize that the existence of fundamentalist groups of any brand as political and military forces, is the main cause of all the problems in Afghanistan. They should know that bringing the Northern Alliance to power was the key to all the disasters that we are experiencing today.

I am well aware of the hardships, challenges, and prospects of death from anti-democratic forces. But I trust my people and enjoy their full support and encouragement. The enemies of my people have weapons, political power and the support of the US government to suppress me. But they can never silence my voice and hide the truth. I am proud to be a beacon of hope for my people and enjoy strong support from them in my mission for democracy and freedom.

Your show of solidarity and support gives me more power and determination to fight the enemies of democracy and humanity in my devastated Afghanistan. You can give me a helping hand by providing moral support and your generous donations so that I can continue and expand my work for the benefit of the desperate and sorrowful women of Afghanistan.

The fundamentalists are counting their days to kill me, but I believe in and follow the noble saying of the freedom-loving Iranian writer Samad Behrangi:

“Death could very easily come now, but I should not be the one to seek it. Of course if I should meet it and that is inevitable, it would not matter. What matters is whether my living or dying has had any effect on the lives of others…”

Thank you. ---

Malalai Joya is Afghanistan’s youngest and most out-spoken parliamentarian. She has openly criticized the US-backed warlords that dominate the Afghan parliament. In return, she has received a continuous stream of death threats. At the age of 28, Malalai has survived 4 assassination attempts. Recently a documentary profiling her, Enemies of Happiness, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Malalai Joya is on a brief US speaking tour. For more information about Malalai Joya, please visit www.malalaijoya.com.

Malalai Joya at McGill University

Malalai Joya at McGill University 2

A Woman in a Mine’s World

hillarybain — Thu, 03 May 2007 15:11:24 +0000

National roundtable on mining fails those struggling against Canada’s corporations abroad

The hidden costs of the steel found in our forks, cars and bombs are not easily traceable but are more than tangible for those most affected by steel’s origins. Nickel, a main ingredient found in stainless steel, is all around us. The companies that have controlled the extraction, processing and refining of nickel have been implicated in a multitude of serious human rights abuses and extensive environmental degradation around the world.

Werima Mananta, known by her abbreviated first name Rima, turns 60 years old this year. At an age that many in Canada begin planning their retirement, she has begun a new life back on the land that she and others in the Karonsi’e Dongi Indigenous community say was stolen from them in the midst of a rebellion and resource-grab a half-century ago. Today, Rima and her community are once again being threatened with displacement.

Rima hails from the scenic village of Sorowako on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Historically, Sorowakans were shifting cultivators of various crops and jungle foragers of rattan, bamboo and other forest products. They lived in relative seclusion among mountains surrounded by impassable rivers.

The land where the Karonsi’e Dongi people lived produced such lucrative rice yields that the area was known in the local language as “Lembo Moboo”, the valley where the harvest rotted. The Karonsi’e Dongi would give away surplus rice to those less fortunate in nearby communities.

Rima was ten years old when the 1957 rebellion broke out and her family and community were forced to flee their homes for safer parts of the island. Rima and others in Sorowako rarely talk about this painful part of their past that claimed the lives of many including some of Rima’s family.

When the rebellion ended and it was safe to return in the late sixties and seventies, many came home to find their green roaming hills roaring with the sound of bulldozers and excavators stripping their sacred mountains for nickel. A contract had been signed in 1968 between Indonesian President General Suharto and Inco, a Canadian-owned mining company. Inco took control of huge swaths of land on the island of Sulawesi for the purposes of nickel mining and production.

The Karonsi’e Dongi received little or no compensation for their lost lands and crops. They were not involved in the land negotiations. Local leaders in the Sorowako community were jailed in an apparent demonstration of who was in charge.

The Karonsi’e Dongi people, stripped of their land and livelihoods, asked for assistance and justice from their local government officials. One official’s response is etched in the minds of many Karonsi’e Dongi people today: “It is better to get rid of one community at a time than it is to get rid of Inco.”

Once again, the Karonsi’e Dongi people were forced to flee their land to find a means to support their families. In the 1970s through the end of the 1990s, Rima lived in the nearby city of Palu, where she married and raised three children while working at a church bookstore.

President Suharto was forced from power in 1997 and windows of political freedom opened throughout Indonesia. Abandoned mining land was freed in 2002 along the outskirts of the Inco golf course, once the site of the homes, fruit tree groves and graveyard of the Karonsi’e Dongi people. In 2002, Rima walked away from her job - five years shy of retirement and a pension - to return to Sorowako and take part in the effort to restore, live and work on the land that she says is integral to the survival of her people’s Indigenous identity.

Thirty families, including the families of Rima and her equally vocal sister Naomi, have built huts and planted crops of cassava, corn and other vegetables and fruits on this piece of reclaimed land. Today, they are told that they may have to leave to make way for a world-class hotel to accompany the world-class golf course.

In the past, before the mining operations, Sorowako was a place of about 300 households with fertile land that provided livelihoods for growers of rice, cocoa, cassava, spices and a variety of fruit and vegetables. Three lakes provided transportation, clean drinking water, and habitat for the endemic Butini fish, found nowhere else in the world.

Today, Sorowako, to its disenfranchised population, is a place of hardship, where homes, lands and livelihoods have been taken away. Lack of access to land and overcrowding, due to immigration of people seeking jobs at the mining operation, have led to approximately 1,000 shanties on Lake Matano’s waters. The tectonic Lake Matano, the seventh deepest lake in the world, is now a disposal site for raw sewage and garbage. Its resident butini fish are a threatened species; and the fishes’ disappearing and shrinking teeth and smaller bodies are yet to be explained. Sorowako has become a place where an Indigenous community watches expatriates and local elite play golf on their land.

The turn of the century has been a time of frequent community demonstrations in Sorowako over unresolved land issues and unfulfilled promises of provisions that were supposed to accompany the mine like education, healthcare, electricity and clean water. Today, the Karonsi’e Dongi people continue to live in their huts along the Inco golf course with no secure water supply and no electricity, under the watchful eye of armed security.

In November 2006, Rima travelled across Atlantic Canada to talk to Canadians about her community’s struggle with Inco. The reaction of the audience was telling of a public sympathetic but largely ignorant of the plight of communities around the world affected by Canadian corporations. She commented repeatedly in public presentations and media interviews that her community is becoming an audience to its own extinction . “Our children are not able to go to school because parents cannot afford school fees. To feed our families, we women have planted vegetables and bananas around our huts. We can no longer grow rice because the land has been degraded. In 2003, the police and Inco security threatened to burn our huts because we were on ‘Inco land.’ Some of us were brought to the police station, interrogated and threatened with a three-month jail sentence.”

Rima gave her final speech before returning to Sorowako at a government-organized roundtable on “Corporate Social Responsibility and the Canadian Extractive Sector in Developing Countries” in Montreal on November 14, 2006.

When asked what she wants to convey most to Canadians, Rima reiterates four demands, “First, the Canadian government must acknowledge that Canadian mining companies have caused human rights abuses and therefore the government has a responsibility to resolve these abuses. Second, the Canadian government must ensure that Canadian companies abide by the same regulations in Canada at its operations abroad. Third, the Canadian government must ensure that Canadian companies do not intervene on regulations of other countries, like what happened when Inco successfully lobbied the Indonesian government to amend its Forestry Act that previously banned all open-pit mining in protected forests. Finally, the Canadian government must ensure that environments destroyed by Canadian mining companies are restored, and compensation, agreed upon by the communities, is provided to communities that have incurred losses due to Canadian mining companies.”

The roundtable report released in late March 2007 by an advisory group comprised of industry, government and civil society representatives, recommended the adoption of a set of corporate social responsibility standards for Canadian extractive-sector companies operating abroad. The recommended enforcement of these standards is through reporting, compliance and other mechanisms.

At best, the long-anticipated roundtable report is a first step towards binding and enforceable legislation that would rein in mining companies and stop the wave of mining abuses seen today. But while Canadians pat themselves on the back for voluntary guidelines pointing in the right direction, according to local newspapers, the Sorowako community is turning to hostage-taking of Inco workers, road blockades and the occupation of the Inco regional office in a desperate attempt to defend their land.

Werima Mananta

Inco In Indonesia

Events in April

dru — Thu, 03 May 2007 03:37:28 +0000

Direct actions in Vancouver, mining strike in Peru, Immokalee workers, Somalia, and more

Montreal-based multinational aluminum processor Alcan pulled out of a contentious mining project in Kashipur, in the Indian state of Orissa. The company held a 45 per cent stake. The Montreal solidarity group Alcan't in India had previously undertaken a multi-year campaign against the project, gaining the support of several union locals representing Alcan workers, who said they would refuse to smelt aluminum from the proposed mine. The mine faced fierce resistance from local indigenous groups, who said that the resulting destruction and pollution would destroy their way of life. Alcan is the second investor that has divested its shares, and a renewed battle is expected with whoever buys Alcan's shares.

Members of immigrant rights group No One Is Illegal Vancouver staged an occupation of Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) offices for several hours on April 23, and demanded a meeting with Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley. In a statement, the group said that it intended to challenge Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and CBSA employees to account for their participation in "the destruction of the lives of those deported and detained every day." Group members and supporters returned two days later and shut down the CBSA building, blocking the entrance and placing a lock on the front doors before police threatened arrests and the demonstrators agreed to leave. The group said that about 500,000 people live without official status in Canada, and an estimated 13,000 are deported annually.

In Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers won a major victory in their campaign to force McDonald's to raise the price it pays for tomatoes by 32 cents per packet. The price had not been raised since 1978. A spokesperson for the Coalition said that McDonald's was "just trying to find another way to find a solution, but without necessarily including us in that process." The Coalition previously forced Taco Bell to negotiate a price increase, and now sets its sights on Burger King.

Journalists in Guangzhou, China found that fast food chains like McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut are using loopholes to exploit service industry workers. While the part time minimum wage is officially 7.5 yuan per hour in large cities, loopholes are used to pay part-timers between 5 and 6 yuan per hour.

Anti-poverty activists besieged a meeting of the Non Partisan Association (NPA), the ruling political party in Vancouver. The demonstration, organized by the Anti-Poverty Committee (APC), attempted to breach police lines to gain access to the meeting three times, and used whistles and loudspeakers to disrupt the proceedings. "The NPA's political vision is social cleansing and they conduct their brutal business with no real significant 'official' opposition," APC members wrote on their web site. 22 police officers were reported to be working overtime to keep the demonstrators out.

A delegation of 44 poor people and Halifax Coalition Against Poverty (HCAP) organizers disrupted the AGM of the riding association of Provincial community services minister Judy Streatch. " We felt that it was necessary for Streatch to come face-to-face with poor people in Nova Scotia, the people who live with the day-to-day reality of the deplorably low rates of social assistance in Nova Scotia," said HCAP member Susan LeFort. HCAP is demanding that the Department of Community Services double income assistance rates and peg these income assistance rates to inflation.

Organizers from the Bay of Quinte Mohawk community in Ontario promised more "economic disruptions" after ending a blockade of train tracks between Montreal and Toronto. The community members, who are operating outside of the government-run band council system, are targeting a gravel pit that is operating on disputed land. The operation should be shut down until land claim negotiations are concluded, spokesperson Shawn Brant told journalists.

Deh Cho Grand Chief Herb Norwegian announced that Canadian troops would "not be welcomed" in Fort Simpson. Forty military personnel were scheduled to arrive in Fort Simpson as a part of Operation Narwhal, billed as a security exercise to prevent terrorist attacks against the proposed Mackenzie Gas Pipeline. The Deh Cho are currently in negotiations over a land-use plan, which they say must be adopted before they grant permission for the pipeline to cross their land. "We have our own sovereignty over this land and do not intend to be intimidated by soldiers of a government using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to show their flag on our land," said Norwegian. Defence officials later met with Norwegian, who said that the Deh Cho feel the "pressure of Canada, the psychological pressure of their presence on our territory."

"Military intervention won't stop the killing. Those who are clamouring for troops to fight their way into Darfur are suffering from a salvation delusion." Those were the opening words of a review of recent peace talks in Sudan by Alex de Waal, published by the London Review of Books. In an extensive description of peace talks around conflict in Sudan, de Waal writes that the "crisis in Darfur is political. It's a civil war, and like all wars it needs a political settlement."

Fighting in Somalia's capital of Mogadishu was described as the heaviest warfare in the city's history, as occupying US-backed Ethiopian soldiers battled forces aligned with the Islamic Courts. According to the UN, roughly a third of Mogadishu's population has fled the fighting. Most observers note that Islamic Courts had restored stability to the war-torn country, while introducing unpopular bans on movies and televised soccer. The US-backed invasion by Ethiopia overthrew the Islamic Courts and created Somalia's largest humanitarian crisis in a decade, observers say. The US has said that it will not call for a ceasefire, saying it doesn't want to "leave the field to violent extremists who do not have an interest in building up the institutions of a democratic state." Canada has said little about the crisis, though Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has publicly speculated that Canadian troops could invade Somalia or Sudan in the future. In January, hundreds of members of the Somali diaspora denounced the invasion, in which US Special Forces also participated.

Fourteen people were arrested during a protest inside a US Senate office building on the same day that Senators voted 51 to 46 to approve $95 billion in funding for the occupation of Iraq. Demonstrators from a group known as Artists Against War unfurled a banner inside the building, which read "your silence, your legacy." The largest banner contained the full text of Article II Section 4 of the US Constitution, which defines the conditions under which a President can be impeached, provoking chants of "impeach now."

Unions in Russia are reckoning with declining membership and pressure from the country's political class to avoid participation in political struggles, IPS News reported. "I urge trade unions to carry out stable and balanced work which is not timed to political events in the country," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech to union delegates. "Many institutions' management are unprepared to see such bodies standing in opposition to their capitalist policies," one Russian academic was quoted as saying.

UBC professor of international law Michael Byers and Irish professor of human rights William Schabas sent a letter to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requesting an investigation of possible war crimes. The letter indicates that Canada's General Rick Hillier and Minister Gordon O'Connor appear to have allowed Afghan detainees to be handed over to the Afghan government "despite an apparent risk of torture," and chose "not to take reasonable and readily apparent steps to protect detainees against torture." If the evidence is shown to be accurate, the law professors argue, Hillier, O'Connor and other Canadian officials would be in contravention of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was drafted in 1998 and ratified by Canada's parliament in 2000. According to the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs, "Canada supported the ICC effort from the very beginning and continues to support the ICC with crucial leadership, advocacy and resources."

The "One Laptop Per Child Project" announced that rising costs of materials would result in an increase from $100 dollars per laptop to $175. The non-profit project aimed to provide low-cost access to technology for children in the developing world.

The US military announced the creation of a new command centre in Africa, known as AFRICOM. In a news release, a State Department spokesperson denied that the US was taking a military leadership role in Africa. The report also denied claims that the US was responding to a larger Chinese presence in Africa, or was seeking influence over natural resources. AFRICOM is "not being stood up in order to secure resources such as oil," the briefing said.

The Associated Press reported that the Japanese government's practice of coercing women into prostitution continued after US troops occupied Japan. "Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to US troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down," the report said. According to a recently released official police history, "police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops... The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls."

Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli technician and whistleblower who revealed the size of Israel's nuclear arsenal to the world public, was convicted of violating a court order forbidding him to communicate with non-Israelis. After he told journalists that Israel possessed an estimated 100 nuclear warheads, Israeli agents kidnapped him in Rome and brought him to Israel. He subsequently spent 18 years in prison, 11 of which were spent in solitary confinement.

Facing massive protests, military recruiters announced their withdrawal from a job fair at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "If every school prevented recruitment, if every port stopped shipping weapons, if every community refused to accept war profiteers as neighbors, war would be impossible," said student organizer Natalie MacIntyre.

Several groups, including Jews for a Just Peace and the Canada Palestine Association, staged a protest at the annual dinner of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in Vancouver on April 29. Israeli peace activist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery recently called for the abolition of the JNF. Avnery wrote that the fund, which holds 13 per cent of all land in Israel, has an explicit mandate to "prohibit the sale or rental of land to non-Jews," and as a result, is inherently racist. Donations to the JNF are tax-deductible charitable donations under Canadian law.

A global day of action against Toronto-based Barrick Gold is planned for May 2. The company, which is considered the largest gold mining company in the world, is facing increasing resistance to its projects worldwide. Simultaneous actions will be held in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Australia, Canada, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Europe. In Peru, protesters opposing a Barrick Gold project in the province of Àncash have been killed by paramilitary groups. In Australia, aboriginal groups have targeted a planned mine at Lake Cowal with a direct action campaign, and the massive Pascua Lama project in Chile and Argentina has faced significant local opposition.

Mine workers in Peru are gearing up for a major strike over wages, benefits and labour rights. The Peruvian government has declared the strike illegal. In the early 1990s, the World Bank established a "structural reform" program designed to make conditions favourable for mining. Peruvian critics say that under current laws, the mines provide very little benefit for Peru, despite rising commodity prices. Canadian firms' investments in Peru reached $2.3 billion in 2005, with the vast majority of investments going towards mining. Canada and Peru signed a bilateral trade agreement in 2006, which then Trade Minister David Emerson said would "help companies by creating a predictable environment for Canadian investors." Canadian companies have faced resistance from mine workers in Peru before. During a strike in 1999, a protest against the Canadian companies Barrick Gold and Antamina was broken up by the Peruvian army.

Worldwide demand for uranium is outstripping supply, and a flood at a major mining operation in northern Saskatchewan has pushed prices up. According to Bloomberg news service, a "rock fall" at Cigar Lake rendered 10 per cent of the anticipated world supply of uranium inaccessible for the time being. The current shortage "could limit the nuclear power industry's plans to develop 168 new nuclear plants worldwide by 2020," Bloomberg reported. Rising prices have set off a wave of uranium speculation in New Brunswick. Canada is the world's largest supplier of mined uranium, accounting for 28 per cent of world supply. Critics have long opposed uranium mining for its adverse effects on health and ecology, and Canada's history of using indigenous workers to mine and haul the uranium used to create the first atomic bombs continues to affect northern communities.

NOII Demonstration in Vancouver

CIW in Chicago

Kandahar Faces Daily Misery

dru — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:46:44 +0000

"You did not bring us freedom," say residents of Afghanistan's southern province

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN --Anyone who values their life tries to avoid going out after dark in Kandahar. This place is a death trap at the best of times and the odds of survival plummet with the sun.

Security is almost non-existent here. More than five years after they were promised peace, prosperity and liberty, many now want the Taliban to come back.

“The Americans say they are democratic, modern and know everything, but they fuck us in so many different ways,” Faiz Mohammed Karigar, a local resident said. “How can we forgive them? How can we forgive the Americans?

“If I sit at a table with an American and he says he has brought us freedom, I will tell him he has fucked us. 'You did not bring us freedom.'”

As the world starts to acknowledge the full horror of the present state of Iraq, Afghanistan slips towards the same state. With each passing week the list of the dead grows in a war Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists is being won.

“When the Taliban were here I escaped to the border of Iran, but I was never worried about my family,” Karigar told me. “Every single minute of the last three years I have been very worried. Maybe tonight the Americans will come to my house, touch my wife, touch my children and arrest me.

“I have already decided to stand against them. I will stand against them even when I see them on the road. I will fight them with my tongue, my hands, with guns – I will fight them in any way I can.”

The southern province of Kandahar is where the Taliban movement was born and it is here that it has come back to life, resuscitated by the widespread anger Afghans feel towards the foreign troops in their midst.

When Mullah Mohammed Omar was in power people could walk the streets safely as long as they complied with a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Now a simple outing to the market is a risk.

“That’s right, [President Hamid] Karzai is always shouting about democracy and saying everything is fine, but it’s just words,” Maria Farah, mother of five, said. “If you meet women their faces are very sad. I don’t just mean two or three women; all our faces are very sad. And if you go to houses you will see the same faces on husbands as well because they cannot get jobs, they worry about security and they worry about their children.

“I can only talk about Kandahar city. I think life under the Taliban was very good. If we did not have a full stomach we could at least get some food and go to sleep. If we went out somewhere there were no problems,” she continued.

“How about now? If we go out we don’t know if we will arrive home or not. If there is an explosion and the Americans are passing they will just open fire on everyone. The security problems are too much here. If someone is driving on the highway they will be stopped and beheaded. If women leave the house when it is getting dark people look at them with a hatred in their eyes.”

The 33-year-old finished our conversation with a simple request.

“Ask [George W.] Bush to come here once and meet with women who want to tear his skin off,” she said.

Soon after the Taliban first surfaced in Kandahar during the mid 1990s they brought peace to an area previously ruled by rival warlords.

Today this is one of the most dangerous places in the country, with political and criminal violence spreading fear among the population. There are approximately 2,500 Canadian troops based here and casualties on all sides are mounting, with suicide attacks, firefights and roadside bombings increasingly common in the southern province.

But whatever the real cause of the bloodshed, Afghans almost always blame the foreign soldiers and local security forces. Many of them simply regard this as a US occupation, often seeing little or no difference between the various countries that make up the NATO-led mission.

“Forget that a road has been built,” Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder, said. “If a road has been built and you are killed, what good is it?

“Everyone is a robber. I guarantee if you sit in my car and we go for a drive no Taliban will take you away. But I cannot guarantee you [the same] about the police. If they stop you they will steal your money and your camera.”

His friend, Abdul Hamid, shared similar concerns. All of his six sons are unemployed and he believes jihad is he only way forward for Afghanistan.

“It’s much, much worse than when the Russians were here,” the 71-year-old said. “At that time maybe we were scared a rocket would land on our house, but we were not scared of them coming into our house.

“One of my sons wanted to join the military. I was not happy about that. I told him this country is fucked up, everyone is a robber and you have to make a stand and fight for the truth.”

Panjwayi is a Taliban stronghold in the west of Kandahar province. Last May US-led forces conducted an air strike on alleged insurgents in the district.

American officials claimed as many as 80 militants might have been killed, but villagers at the scene said a number of the casualties were civilians.

Mawlawi Abdul Hadid told me 18 members of his family died in the raid. He said 30 innocent people were killed in all, the youngest of them a two-year-old girl.

“In the beginning you had only one enemy. Then you made two, then three and now I also stand against you,” he declared. “You made me your enemy as well and I will stand against you.

“The Taliban are the sons of this country: my son is a Talib and your son is a Talib,” the 45-year-old added, gesturing towards another man in the room.

“The Taliban are fighting for our rights, they are fighting for humanity and they are fighting for the truth. Day by day the Americans are losing support, but lots of people support the Taliban.”

Asked how long it would take to defeat the foreign soldiers, Hadid gave the kind of response increasingly heard across Afghanistan.

“In Islam we don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” he said. “But one thing we do know is that God brought them here and God will take them away.”

Abdul Hamid and Haji Abdul Rahman

Freedom for Alan Johnston

dru — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:40:49 +0000

Freedom for Us All

In Trafalgar Square in London, dozens of journalists representing every major news organization descended on a designated corner in the tourist-infested area in support of Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent kidnapped in Gaza on March 12, 2006. The gathering took place one month after his ordeal began.

Awaiting the arrival of Alan’s family to a press conference organized by Reporters without Borders, I stood alongside a few activists. My nervous smiles, interrupted by brief statements to inquiring journalists, could hardly hide my utter feelings of shame. It’s not often that I feel this way, taking part in a solidarity event in support of anyone. This time was different, however, despite all attempts to distance oneself from responsibility. “Alan, they are not from amongst us,” read the banners held by hundreds of journalists gathering in Ramallah in the West Bank in a show of support for Alan on the same day we gathered in London. The unfortunate fact is that while the kidnappers were not exactly elected representatives of the Palestinian people, mostly known for their unparalleled generosity, warmth and kindness to strangers, they were exactly what that banner tried to refute; they were a rational outcome of the state of chaos, corruption and overt militarism that has plagued Palestinian society for years. Indeed, they were from amongst us, and there is now denial of that.

In times like these, reporters care little for details. All they seek are a few soundbites, preceded by an intense introduction and a snappy finish, and consequently a TV news report is made. I had to accommodate. “These kidnappers don’t represent the Palestinian people, and I call on the Palestinian government to do its utmost to free Alan, whose professional reporting and unprecedented objectivity is a rarity in the age of polarized media,” I told a Spanish newspaper.

Then Alan’s family arrived; they were the most unthreatening and kind-looking group of people one could ever encounter. Alan’s father, Graham, an older version of his son, dressed in a dark suit, his belly sticking out slightly, and a voice proud yet somehow broken. "Chin up, my son," he told Alan, hoping that the message would reach him somehow. Then to the kidnappers, “You have family. Please think about what this is doing to my family, including in particular the distress and deep concern Alan's mother and sister have had to endure for all these long weeks. As I have said before, please let my son go now, today."

A Palestinian with links superior to mine in the Occupied Territories leaned and whispered in my ear. “Why must these depraved individuals (referring to the kidnappers) keep placing us in these tough spots? What is even more bizarre about all of this is that everyone in Gaza knows who the kidnappers are.”

Everyone in Gaza knows, I was told, including the authorities, and even the BBC received some heads- up. He named names, elaborated on the demands of the kidnappers, who belonged to a powerful clan, affiliated with some people in Fatah, the once-leading Palestinian resistance movement which slowly evolved into an impressive network, a power-hungry batch of individuals, factions, sub-factions, clans and so forth, a great source of national fragmentation and political discord. It turned out that other people at the press event had similar information. The kidnappers are apparently asking for $5 million US and loads of ammunitions. My friend believes that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas must agree to the demands, to keep the rogue elements in his party in line; clan wars in Gaza tend to be politically taxing.

As journalists petered out following Alan’s parents' departure, and as Trafalgar Square returned to its cheerful self, there was nothing left but the large poster carrying Alan’s photo, which was unfurled earlier that day, and scores of doves reclaiming their space at centre-stage.

How did we end up where we are? I asked myself as I too left the square, and Alan, behind. How could our struggle for freedom, for justice and for rights be so utterly reduced to an active state of civil war, factional clashes and constant cries for aid, and how could our narrative, our entire narrative, be so effortlessly hijacked, and now dictated by mere gangsters, vying for power and money?

Alan’s ordeal has lasted longer than other journalists and aid workers kidnapped in Gaza since chaos ensued in the Strip nearly two years ago, but most notably following the Hamas victory in January 2006. Israel ensured that it left formidable allies in the area who acted to ensure that Israel’s narrative prevails, even after its ‘withdrawal’ from the devastatingly poor strip. And so the narrative goes. Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves, and thus, in hindsight, four decades of Israeli occupation is justified and Israel’s current illegal military occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is vindicated. Those allies held true to their purpose, and have wreaked havoc since the withdrawal.

The advent of Hamas, a well regarded and anti-corruption group changed nothing; it in fact precipitated the political fragmentation that defined the Palestinian struggle since the Oslo accords in 1993, and even before. Israel’s active military onslaughts, since Hamas's electoral victory, have killed hundreds, and the US political and economic embargoes weakened the Palestinian front like never before. But the truth must be told: political cohesion was hardly a quality that Palestinians had ever enjoyed. They were too vulnerable, too receptive to pressure, which made their various leaderships, especially the pro-Israel camp -- as galling as this term may sound -- as flexible as clay, shaped by skilled Israeli hands and positioned wherever they were most useful.

But how can we claim that they are not from amongst us? How can we claim that they don’t represent us if we lack the political will to confront them? And when Alan is freed, as he must be, who will free us, Palestinians, from this destructive path on which we tread?

Trafalgar Square is so distant, teeming yet so lonesome, but Alan’s friendly face continues to spur a sense of hope.

Ramzy Baroud is an author and a journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is available from Amazon and other booksellers.

Alan Johnston Vigil, Brussels

Growing Up Backstage

hillarybain — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:41:13 +0000

An unconventional upbringing

I recently interviewed my 22-year-old son, Gibraltar, about what it was like for him to grow up with -- in essence -- the circus. My son was raised in the magical world of summer fairs; complete with fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, stilt-walkers, clowns, magicians, campfires with Klezmer music and forest paths lined with booths lit by candle and lantern light. He witnessed little worlds in the woods that would come to life and then disappear each summer. He knew the back paths to the secret doors that led backstage. He grew up, in sum, amid the rituals of a performer family and I would like to think that this lifestyle, in which thousands of us travelled and performed together for decades, provided an interesting backdrop for the life of a child. When my son was growing up, my main performances were on the street at the Pike Place Market in Seattle, on the Mall in Santa Cruz, California, and at open-air festivals and markets.

Back in 1986, I was interviewed as a local performer for Seattle’s renowned alternative weekly newspaper The Rocket. Gibraltar, then two, was on my back during the interview and the story included a line about him getting “one heck of an upbringing.” When I began street performing at age 18 in 1978, the double-standards in society about childcare played out on the street. A mother and child were not to be seen or heard on public streets, but locked up at home. Men with children immediately found girlfriends to take care of them while they performed; I had live-in boyfriends, yet was still forced to watch my child on street corners and at festivals like all the other single-mother performers I knew.

When I asked Gibraltar how growing up in our performer family had affected him, he compared his upbringing to that of a friend who was raised in the middle-class suburbs of Eugene, Oregon, and who had access only to mainstream art and media. As he grew up, Gibraltar became aware of the fact that he was different from other kids. He began to understand that the amusements he was used to had an avant-garde and political tone lacking in the mass-media entertainment environments his friends grew up in. He finds that he does not appreciate sloppy, poorly written vaudeville after seeing how intelligent and clever that genre can be in the works of performers like Reverend Chumleigh and the Flying Karamazov Brothers.

One of the things that stuck with Gibraltar about growing up backstage was being able to see the performers right next to him, rather than above him onstage. Our family campfires were peopled with these entertainers and seeing these exceptionally talented artists perform right in front of him at ground level, at his level, left an indelible impression on him. Growing up backstage also allowed him to see the performers getting ready, which gave him a more holistic picture of what performing actually entails. Gibraltar does not see art and artists separate from him. He explained that many people look at artists as "other people over there," but that in our family everyone is an artist of some kind, so he lives within a culture of art and music. His friends who grew up in the middle-class suburbs saw artists primarily on TV, whereas the kids in our family witnessed the process of creating art, not just the product.

He furthermore feels that performer families like ours “groom” their children for future artistic endeavours and that growing up in the environment he did gave him an apprentice-like exposure to the performing arts. Now 22, my son is very comical and threatens to become a professional comedy writer. Most recently, he's been saying he's going to ‘strike a pose’ when Mount Rainier blows, covering Seattle in lava like Pompeii… When the lava hits, he is going to strike the pose of ‘The Thinking Man,’ for the entertainment value for future generations. Currently, he is a manager at a national drugstore chain and enjoys playing music with me and others in our family. He calls his straight job in the straight world a ‘wild glimpse into the exotic lifestyles of the middle class.’ Growing up in the underground made the straight world absolutely fascinating to him; the same way alternative lifestyles could appeal to someone growing up in a straight suburban world.

Growing up around such accomplished performers gave him a reality check that very talented performers we know have straight jobs just to survive. Part of why he has a straight job is that he is sick and tired of poverty. He is not interested in the mistreatment and the constant free-speech issues that go along with a busking career. He does not want to end up like I am at age 46, begging for survival at the hands of my art and politics. He is also considering going to law school, since he attended law school with me as a nine-year-old child and is familiar with that environment. We are both considering returning to law school, actually. But for now, he just wants a job he can count on.

Gibraltar was with me almost 24/7 throughout his whole childhood and he accompanied me to all my gigs and shows. He lived backstage with me and hung out with other performers' kids. Although at times it was difficult, when he and I look back, we both remember sharing great times -- in the woods, with talented performers, for decades -- and I am thankful to have shared that with my son.

This article is a result of a mixture of an article of the same name, whose original can be found here and interviews with the author. Kirsten Anderberg currently makes her living as a street performer and journalist.

Spies at work

dru — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:54:47 +0000

CSIS questioning of Canadian Muslims threatens their jobs

MONTREAL MIRROR--The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is conducting regular interviews and interrogations with hundreds of Arabs and Muslims across Canada at their workplaces, homes and in the vicinity of local mosques, say national and Montreal-based Arab and Muslim community groups. The groups are reporting major increases in the numbers of calls from distressed community members concerning CSIS interventions. According to the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations in Canada (CAIR-Canada), CSIS intelligence-gathering activities have increased over the past year.

“Community members who have been approached by CSIS across the country are calling our office on a weekly basis,” says Sameer Zuberi, CAIR-Canada’s communications co-ordinator. “This hike in CSIS visits is alarming to CAIR-Canada as it casts a blanket of fear and intimidation that is spread over our entire community.”

In response to increased CSIS activity, CAIR-Canada has shipped thousands of copies of a publication designed for Canadian Muslims dealing with CSIS and other Canadian authorities, entitled Know Your Rights Guide, to local mosques and community centres.

“I got a call from a CSIS agent a couple of months ago asking for a meeting at a café downtown on Peel street,” says former Concordia student Mohammed over the phone from Kuwait, where he is currently working as a mechanical engineer. He asked that his last name not be used due to fears of possible repercussions. “I was asked numerous questions concerning my own involvement in the Muslim community [and] was asked by the CSIS agent to not bring a lawyer to the meeting. The agents acknowledged that they had no specific incriminating evidence against me, but explained in a non-direct fashion that they simply wanted to gather information on our community, leading me to feel suspect in Canada simply because of my religion.”

“People are being targeted by CSIS for simply belonging to a certain ethnic group with certain religious beliefs without any obvious rationale for such targeting,” says Bassam Hussein of the Centre Communautaire Musulman de Montréal. “I was recently visited by a mother of four in Montreal who was seeking help due to CSIS harassment against her and her husband,” says Hussein. “CSIS went to her husband’s employer to inquire about him, the employer was terrified when CSIS contacted him and two weeks later, the employer let the husband go.”

The 2007 Conservative federal budget “earmarks new funding for CSIS,” according to the Ministry of Finance website, to the tune of $80 million over two years in addition to the approximately $200 million already allocated to Canada’s national spy agency. Media representatives from CSIS did not return repeated requests for an interview from the Mirror before deadline.

CAIR-Canada recently reported that approximately 30 per cent of all CSIS visits in the Muslim community are occurring at the workplace, often putting individuals’ careers in jeopardy.

“Community members feel that their civil liberties are being seriously compromised under the pretext of fighting terrorism,” says Hussein. “Community members who I know are being contacted by CSIS are simple people working hard to live in peace and raise their families.”

The following letters were published in the Mirror in response to this article.

Letters of April 12:

[Re: “Spies at work,” April 5]: Stefan Christoff’s article is inaccurate and misleading in several respects and does not represent the state of relations between CSIS and Canada’s Muslim community.

Mr. Christoff’s assertion that “Media representatives from CSIS did not return repeated requests for an interview from the Mirror before deadline” is simply untrue. Mr. Christoff left one message, which was returned within two hours, at which point he had apparently already filed his story.

Had Mr. Christoff decided he wanted to balance his story with commentary from CSIS — or information from the extensive CSIS website — he would have learned that interviewing a person at his or her workplace is an exception, not the rule, in how CSIS performs its duties. CSIS makes every effort to interview people at a location that is convenient for them.

In addition, CSIS is not a law-enforcement agency. We do not gather evidence, as the story suggests, and we cannot arrest people. CSIS relies upon the voluntary assistance of members of the community. Despite counsel from some associations not to assist us, CSIS receives useful information from all segments of Canadian society, and we are grateful for this assistance because it helps us keep all Canadians safe.

For several years, CSIS has been an active participant in a number of outreach meetings with various ethno-cultural communities across Canada, including in Montreal. CAIR-CAN, which seems to be advising Muslim Canadians to not help CSIS discharge its duties, has participated in some of these meetings, and is fully aware that they can alert CSIS to any perceived instances of inappropriate behaviour on the part of CSIS employees. To date, it has never done so, choosing instead to bring its vague accusations to the media.

A minimum of research on Mr. Christoff’s part would have resulted in a balanced story, one that would have informed readers rather than trying, rather blatantly, to incite anger in the community.

John M. Dunn, Director General, Communications, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Ottawa

[Ed’s note: Stefan Christoff replies that he left messages on March 30 and April 2]

I just wanted to congratulate you for your article “Spies at work.” My first reaction is fear and disgust towards the racist behaviour of government agents here in Canada. But my second reaction is hope and pride that some newspapers like yours publish this kind of information. First, because it needs to be told, but especially because it seems that it is usually hidden not only out of ignorance or lack of interest, but out of fear of going against the “Terrorist Act,” “Patriot Act,” “War Against Terror” and all this propaganda that we are being fed all day long.

Thereby, in the name of our protection, our governments actually subtly shut our freedom of speech. So congratulations for going against this form of self-censorship.

Prof. Dror Warschawski, UQÀM

Kudos to Christoff for shedding light on the state intimidation and institutionalized racism in Canada towards Arabs, Muslims and those who might be perceived as Arab or Muslim. It is such a relief to see that alternative media like the Montreal Mirror still covers issues that the mainstream press is not willing to touch.

Having moved to Parc Extension recently, I see the type of intimidation that Christoff describes on a weekly basis with police patrols on Fridays and overall increased police presence in the neighbourhood. Their mere presence (ie. the parade of cop cars in front of the mosques) causes discomfort and unease amongst all of the residents of the neighbourhood and creates an atmosphere of fear and distrust.

I am absolutely disgusted to read that CSIS is playing an even more insidious part in all of this by going to innocent people’s employers to inquire about them. How dare CSIS interview or interrogate people who are not under investigation? According to their logic, in our modern democracy, it is perfectly fine to endanger the livelihoods of people, trample their civil liberties and abuse their fundamental human rights just because of the colour of their skin or their creed. I hope that more people speak out about this frightening trend.

Indu Vashist

Kudos to the Mirror for revealing the disturbing facts about CSIS’s harassment of Muslim communities. I have long heard about this going on, but I have not, until now, seen any coverage in the press about these activities.

If there are reasonable measures that can be taken to stop people with plans to attack people or targets inside the US or Canada, CSIS has clearly gone several steps beyond these. Broad racial profiling of this kind is criminal, and it is embarrassing and shameful that they have been doing it with impunity for so long.

Dru Oja Jay

Letters of April 19:

[Re: “Spies at work,” April 5]: We have been closely following the important discussion in the Mirror about CSIS and the targeting of Muslim communities. The assertions made by CSIS’s communications director [Letters, April 12], John Dunn, about good relations between the spy agency and the communities it is targeting do not correspond to testimony we heard during the People’s Commission’s public hearings held in Montreal last spring.

Witness after witness spoke about the sense of intimidation and alienation in communities that CSIS is targeting. There was nothing at all vague about the detailed testimonies about experiences with CSIS, or about the sometimes devastating impact on people’s lives; from job loss after workplace visits, to social isolation, to living in limbo without legal status for years.

The final report from the hearings includes a full subsection on CSIS practices and can be downloaded at www.peoplescommission.ath.cx. Mr. Dunn should know that there is nothing “voluntary” about “assistance” provided in a context of fear. The fact that CAIR-CAN, a well-respected and very moderate national organization, has gone to the length of warning people not to cooperate with CSIS for their own safety says a great deal about the level of distrust that CSIS practices have generated.

We hope Mr. Dunn will forgive us for not taking his invitation to report abuses to the very agency that perpetrates them very seriously. Indeed, it was the lack of effective recourse that led community organizations to establish the People’s Commission in the first place.

People’s Commission on Immigration Security Measures, Montreal

Letters of April 26:

In his letter [Letters, April 12] response to Stefan Christoff’s article [“Spies at work,” April 5], John Dunn, CSIS’s General Director Communications, made a number of factually inaccurate statements about the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN).

Mr. Dunn alleges that CAIR-CAN advises the community not to co-operate with the spy agency. In fact, we simply advise community members of their rights under Canadian law, and insist that meetings with CSIS only be arranged when a lawyer is present. This ensures that abuse, misunderstanding and intimidation are minimized. Unfortunately, CSIS operatives oftentimes discourage people from contacting lawyers. In a number of cases, CSIS has actually cancelled meetings when a lawyer’s presence is insisted upon.

Additionally, Mr. Dunn states that CAIR-CAN has never directly confronted CSIS on their dubious practices; this again is false. On several occasions, CAIR-CAN has directly communicated concerns about workplace visitations, discouraging legal counsel and community intimidation to CSIS’s top levels.

As a result, instances of abuse and insensitivity have been reduced; nevertheless, there is still much room for improvement.

CAIR-CAN holds that protecting our country’s national security is paramount; however, its pursuit is not above the law, nor can it disregard the fundamental rights of people. By acting as a watchdog, and insisting on public accountability over CSIS, a powerful state apparatus, CAIR-CAN is simply contributing to the democratic process.

Like the People’s Commission on Immigration Security Measures, CAIR-CAN has also published a report on CSIS. This document is available at the publications section of our Web site, www.caircan.ca.

Sameer Zuberi

[Re: “Spies at work,” April 5]: I guess I should start by thanking the Mirror editors for deciding to publish this article about the Canadian Security Intelligence Service — Canada’s spy agency — questioning Canadian Muslims at their workplaces. This has not been reported anywhere else and you should be applauded for doing so. Bravo to the writer of the article, and more importantly, to those who give their full names in the article, because it can be scary to publicly criticize a spy agency. Spies can be dangerous and intrusive, right?!

CSIS needs to be reminded—and publicly—that it cannot abuse its role of “protecting the national security interests of Canada” by harassing people at work. CSIS is also supposed to be “guided by the rule of law and the protection of human rights.” Is the right to work without harassment not a human right?

Hopefully, the Mirror’s attention to this inappropriate behaviour by CSIS will get its “workplace visits” reviewed by the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), which “ensures that (CSIS) powers are used legally and appropriately, in order to protect Canadians’ rights and freedoms.” Since SIRC does not oversee CSIS, but “examines CSIS’s performance on a retrospective basis,” this type of reporting is crucial to prevent further inappropriate behaviour, which can only lead to abuse of power and corruption.

And we certainly don’t want a post-9/11 trend of increased institutionalized racism in Canada towards Arabs and Muslims to lead this country to an East German-style Stasi protecting our security and interests. That’s for sure!

David Widgington

This is really scary. Are we turning into a country like any other where people’s rights are affected? People will start living in fear and many immigrants leave their countries to come to Canada to find peace and freedom.

This is sad.

Thanks.

Jehad

Bassam Hussein

A Clearcut Answer?

hillarybain — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:23:33 +0000

A year after the Great Bear Rainforest deal was struck, some wonder if the political compromise was worth it

In February 2006, the “Big Greens” -- Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and ForestEthics -- along with many of their supporters celebrated a historic agreement to bring an end to the “war in the woods” in the Great Bear Rainforest in coastal British Columbia, Canada. But a year later, observers say the Big Greens’ agreement -- made under the campaign umbrella of the Rainforest Solutions Project (RSP) -- may be unravelling. Timber companies have ratcheted up the rate of clear-cut logging to unprecedented levels and guidelines for sustainable logging are not being implemented.

Ian McAllister of the Raincoast Conservation Society says the sudden increase in logging on the Central Coast is “unprecedented in 15 years."

“It’s unbelievable,” McAllister says. “It’s still just cut and run."

“Talk and log,” says Qwatsinas (Ed Moody), hereditary chief of the Nuxalk Nation. “It is not a victory; everyone loses.”

What’s at stake is the largest intact coastal rainforest in North America -- home to thousand-year-old red cedars, wolves, moose, mountain goats, grizzly, black bears and the rare white spirit (Kermode) bears. Protected from logging and development by formidable mountains, this wild and mountainous coastline stretches hundreds of miles, from the tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan panhandle. Whales and orcas swim through the channels and inlets. Indigenous communities, who in Canada are known as First Nations, fish, hunt and gather berries, as they have done here for thousands of years.

The Great Bear Rainforest deal was trumpeted as a wilderness legacy for our children and our children’s children in 2006. But reports from the grassroots suggest this “success story” has already turned sour.

Twelve years of campaigning

It was members of the Nuxalk Nation who first invited non-native environmentalists to their traditional territory to witness large-scale clear-cut logging in 1994. The following year, Greenpeace teamed up with the Nuxalk and other environmental groups to launch the campaign to save the place they named “the Great Bear Rainforest.”

By 1997, Nuxalk members and their allies -- Greenpeace, Forest Action Network, Bear Watch and People’s Action for Threatened Habitat -- were blocking logging operations on Roderick Island, King Island and Ista, which is sacred to the Nuxalk as the place where the first woman came to earth.

At dawn on June 6, 1997, workers for International Forest Products (Interfor) arrived at Ista to cut trees as usual. Thirty protesters -- including Nuxalk chiefs in full regalia -- greeted the workers with a blockade and a huge tripod towering over the middle of the road. One protestor was locked down to a cement anchor buried in the road, while two more were perched at the apex of the tripod.

In total, 55 people took over the road and shut down Interfor’s logging operation for 19 days. Twenty-four people, including six members of the Nuxalk Nation, were arrested when police arrived to enforce a court injunction.

In the 1990s, massive industrial clear-cutting was already taking place -- without the permission of First Nations -- under the auspices of the province, which simultaneously hosted a process called the Central Coast Land and Resource Management Plan (CCLRMP). The process was widely condemned as a “talk and log” exercise, until Sierra Club and Greenpeace set their sights on the planning committee. The groups won a moratorium in 1998 to suspend logging in intact rainforest valleys in the Central Coast while they participated in the CCLRMP process.

Meanwhile, environmentalists organized an international boycott of B.C. wood products around the world. As the boycott campaign picked up steam, companies like Home Depot and Ikea dropped their B.C. wood contracts, and the pressure was on to find a compromise.

“Customers don’t want to buy their two-by-fours or their pulp with a protester attached to it. If we don’t end it, they will buy their products elsewhere,” Bill Dumont, chief forester at Western Forest Products, told the Vancouver Sun in May 2000.

Also in 2000, the Rainforest Solutions Project (RSP) made a decision that changed the course of the campaign. According to Qwatsinas and others close to the Great Bear Rainforest, it was a serious strategic error.

While negotiating the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, the RSP formally agreed to end their protests, blockades and marketing campaigns. For the duration of the agreement, there would be no more high-profile blockades of logging operations on the B.C. coast, no lobbying international wood buyers and no hardball criticism of the process to the media.

Qwatsinas believes environmentalists gave up their only bargaining chip.

“They made the Central Coast an environmental-protest-free zone,” Qwatsinas says. “They’ve given away too much. It takes time to get the market campaign, the boycott campaign going again. Think about those strengths that were given up -- the power that they had in making demands, but it’s gone now. What else can they use?”

The Science of Compromise

RSP forged ahead with negotiations about how much land to protect and how to log the rest. With the Joint Solutions Project, the eco-groups collaborated with industry, government, communities, labour groups and First Nations to establish interim agreements, logging moratoriums and other small victories.

In 2006, the final agreement was announced with fanfare by a provincial government eager to paint itself Green after years of cutting park budgets and opening wilderness areas to development and logging. However, the Great Bear Rainforest agreement only commits to a "conservancy" designation for 32 per cent of the land -- part of which is open for mining and all of which may be open to roads, hydroelectric projects, tourism and other uses.

The parties pledged to base the agreement on the best independent science available and the province requisitioned a scientific review of the Central and North Coast flora and fauna to make recommendations about habitat protection. In 2005, the Coast Information Team found that a minimum of 44 to 50 per cent of the land area would have to be set aside to save ecosystems and wildlife. The decision to protect only 32 per cent may end up sacrificing the survival of the spirit bear.

Sierra Club campaigner Lisa Matthaus admits, “The protected areas alone are not sufficient, but this is a political compromise. You need to have a lot of parties in agreement. We wanted to meet the recommendations of the scientists [on the Coast Information Team], but we couldn’t.”

According to the deal, if one-third of the land base of the Great Bear Rainforest is protected, two-thirds will be logged. How it will be logged is still the subject of debate.

The logging industry agreed to phase-in new ecosystem-based management (EBM) logging practices by 2009. The RSP website describes "lighter touch practices" that would "protect old growth, wildlife habitat, sensitive watersheds and salmon streams."

Instead of starting to adopt gentler practices, it appears that some -- if not most -- timber companies are stripping the land as fast as possible before the 2009 deadline.

Even spokespeople for the RSP are expressing concern. An RSP press release in September noted that “some forest companies” still have not begun the eco-logging practices they promised three years ago.

Merran Smith of ForestEthics says, “These agreements are now at risk because a cornerstone of the agreement, ecosystem-based management, is faltering. We are tired of big talk with no action."

Division in the ranks

Qwatsinas calls the Great Bear agreement an “empty box.” Essentially, he says, the deal is only a framework. Ecosystem-based management is one of the details left undefined. Even when a set of practices is eventually spelled out, the definition will be subject to change.

The David Suzuki Foundation, one of Canada’s largest and most respected environmental groups, wouldn’t endorse the Great Bear agreement for this reason. “There are no guarantees that acceptable EBM practices will be adopted,” the foundation’s Bill Wareham said.

Other groups dedicated to the Great Bear Rainforest have walked away from the table, including the Forest Action Network (FAN), the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition, Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS) and Raincoast.

Valhalla Wilderness Society has been collecting scientific data and working to protect the coast for 18 years. In a 2004 memo, society Chair Anne Sherrod blasted the RSP:

“In the future, while logging the unprotected ecosystems, timber corporations on the mid-coast will enjoy the signed agreement of two of B.C.’s largest groups, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, as well as the U.S.-based ForestEthics and Rainforest Action Network. The groups that will continue working on additional protection on the coast -- such as VWS, Raincoast, Forest Action Network and David Suzuki Foundation -- will be blocked by the B.C. government and timber industry, using the agreement signed by the RSP groups as a ’done deal.’

"In the last few years, some environmental groups and activists have lost patience with this. After 15 years of seeing this happen, there should have been more learning, more awakeness to the crisis of what we are losing and how we are losing it. Instead we have the rhetoric and delusion of ’win – win’ agreements.”

First Nations people are also divided in their response to the agreement. Even within the Nuxalk Nation, the band council supports the process, while traditionalists like Qwatsinas and the House of Smayusta vehemently oppose it. Their dissent is further fuelled by the fact that the agreement fails to respect a protocol with the Nuxalk members who first invited Greenpeace to their territory in 1994. The protocol between Greenpeace and the House of Smayusta stated that no deals would be made without the approval of the First Nations partners.

“It was a bold move for Greenpeace Canada to ignore the protocol and make the [Great Bear] agreement without our approval,” Qwatsinas notes. “The sovereignty of Nuxalk lands and rights in our sense took a back seat.”

Elsewhere on the coast, the Kitasoo Nation has signed the deal and now plans to reap the benefits by logging Green Inlet, part of its traditional territory. Although almost half of Kitasoo land is protected, and Kitasoo Forest Products is cutting trees selectively instead of clear-cutting, the project has brought the wrath of Simon Jackson, founder of the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition.

The coalition says that the agreement has protected only two-thirds of the spirit bear’s crucial habitat and that the province is back-pedaling on its commitment to protect the rest. Jackson says the deal fails to protect the small spirit bear population, estimated at about 200 animals.

“Everybody thought the white bears were protected with that announcement,” he says. “A lot of great steps were taken . . . but it didn’t protect the spirit bear.”

Buying Silence?

Observers report that one of the conditions imposed on the negotiations was a ban on any public complaints or criticisms aimed at the process or any of the participants. The parties involved are not disclosing details about any such restrictions.

Qwatsinas suggests that more groups should be speaking out about the agreement’s shortcomings, but, “I don’t think they can. Some of their hands are tied, and the gag order is in place,” he says.

Besides the health and survival of the ecosystem, a substantial financial package is at stake for the Great Bear Rainforest agreement participants. The government and various foundations have pledged $120 million for First Nations sustainable economic development and conservation projects. Judging by the amount of glossy, self-serving literature generated by their offices, the RSP’s high-profile campaign, with the spirit bear as its mascot, appears to be serving the groups well.

Forest campaigner Ingmar Lee says that a cost-benefit analysis of the money spent on the Great Bear agreement comes up short.

“We’ve found organized, institutional environmentalism [in B.C.] has failed over the last four years to accomplish anything,” he says. “The successes have come from individual grassroots efforts that have basically bypassed the entrenched, bureaucratic, environmental institutions that have been sucking up the enviro-buck and just not getting the kind of accomplishments we need.”

Lee is not surprised that the RSP groups are getting “stabbed in the back” by government and industry apparently reneging on the spirit of the agreement.

“I just believe that we should be working together against these incorrigible forces of destruction rather than working together with them,” he says. “I have always advocated a broad spectrum of environmentalist effort, but the grassroots activist community has been excluded from the project from the start.”

Qwatsinas also makes a distinction between the grassroots groups and the “Big Greens”: “I’m glad there are some out there -- groups like Raincoast -- trying to make an honest effort, protecting the environment, who are not handcuffed by the process.”

Spirit Bear