The Dominion - 46

Issue #46

dru — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:08:51 +0000

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June 2007

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Right Protest

hillarybain — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 20:00:12 +0000

A photo essay on the protests surrounding the election of a right-wing president in France

On May 6, Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president of France after a particularly divisive electoral campaign. Immediately following the announcement of the election results thousands of people rallied at the Bastille in Paris in opposition to the new right-wing French leader. The police stepped in and clashes ensued, resulting in injuries, arrests and arson.

France 3

France Protest

France Protest 4

France Protest 5

France 3

France Protest 2

Events in May

dru — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 22:50:46 +0000

Robin Hood pepper sprayed, foreign oil workers kidnapped, security wall for G8 leaders, and more

Prosecutors in the US are seeking "terrorism enhancements" for the sentences of 10 animal rights and environmental activists arrested for causing more than $40 million in damages to targets that included an SUV dealership, a meatpacking plant and a ski resort. "This is the first time in the history of the US that the federal government is seeking this enhancement for property crimes that did not result in injury or death to humans," said Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Oregon. These enhancements could add up to 20 years to the existing jail sentence.

A wall 12 kilometres long and 2.5 metres high has been erected in preparation for the G8 summit to be held in Germany in June. The wall is intended to keep the expected tens of thousands of protesters away from G8 leaders when they meet in the idyllic bathing resort of Heiligendamm from June 6 to June 8. Sixteen thousand police will also be deployed to contain the protests, making it the largest security operation in Germany's history. In May, 900 police raided the homes and offices of activists all over Germany. Justified under the country's "anti-terror" law, the raids were subsequently condemned by a number of jurists and politicians who declared them to be out of proportion to any real danger to the state.

Greenpeace leaked a document showing that the US has raised serious objections to a proposed global warming declaration for next month's G8 summit, specifically mandatory emissions targets and language calling for nations to raise overall energy efficiencies by 20 per cent by 2020. According to the US document, such proposals "are fundamentally incompatible with the (US) president's approach to climate change."

Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner announced that the province will not be setting absolute targets for greenhouse gas emissions, favouring intensity targets instead. Intensity targets allow overall emissions to grow as long as the greenhouse gas producer is using energy more efficiently. A recent provincial survey found that 90 per cent of respondents think the province should move quickly to adopt absolute greenhouse gas reduction targets for industry rather than intensity targets. Those who filled out the survey also rejected the ideas of nuclear power, carbon capture and storage and clean-burning coal. If recent economic growth rates continue, by 2020 the total emissions in Alberta will rise to 72 per cent above 1990 levels.

The proposed new Irving oil refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, which will double Irving's refining capacity in the city, will not undergo a fully comprehensive environmental impact assessment, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency announced. Irving’s current refinery in the city is already the largest in Canada, with an output that accounts for 75 per cent of Canada's gasoline exports to the US. The environmental impact assessment of the refinery will not look at greenhouse gas emissions. The Conservation Council of New Brunswick noted that Environment Minister John Baird flew to Saint John to meet with the Irvings about the project but has refused to respond to the organization’s concerns.

At least eight journalists from the Russian News Serviceresigned to protest a new policy that requires 50 per cent of stories to show the Kremlin in a positive light. Nightly news broadcasts in Russia increasingly feature lengthy footage of President Vladimir Putin speaking to officials and reports on the activities of the two deputy prime ministers seen as possible successors to the president when his term runs out next year.

Radio Caracas de Television (RCTV), a network critical of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, went off-air when its license expired on May 27. The television station was intimately involved in a military coup d'etat which suspended the Venezuelan constitution, closed down the elected national assembly and the Supreme Court, and took Hugo Chavez, the elected President, prisoner. When the government was returned to power by street demonstrations, RCTV did not report on it, cautioning people to stay at home. Thousands of people gathered in the streets for days, both opposing and celebrating the decision. RCTV's license has been handed over to TVes, a new "public" channel, which will operate with relative independence from the government.

The NewStandard, an online newspaper based out of the US is no longer in publication. The NewStandard, which published nearly 3,000 hard-hitting articles over the past three years, cited the fact that the publication "...never gained the level of support needed to provide sustainable jobs and to develop the readership it needed to thrive," as the reason for its closure. The NewStandard was founded on the belief that the dominant model and methods of profit-focussed news journalism have failed the public interests. Among the characteristics that made the publication unique was the fact that is was run by a collective of editors and journalists who refused to accept advertising or grant dollars as they believed it would detract from the paper’s independence. The NewStandard was funded 100 per cent by its readers.

Anti-poverty activists in Vancouver launched an eviction campaign against members of the Vancouver Olympics Organizing Committee. Protesters put board member Ken Dobell's belongings into boxes and threw them into the hallway outside his office. The action was carried out by members of the Anti-Poverty Committee who say that since poor people are being evicted from their homes to make room for the 2010 Olympic games, they will continue ‘evicting’ Olympic organizers from their offices.

Immigrants, refugees and their supporters took to the streets of Toronto to demand a national regularization program and a moratorium on detentions and deportations as well as access to city services regardless of status. The march was part of a week of actions for immigrants and refugees living in Canada and the US, and included actions in several American cities, Vancouver and Montreal.

Halifax anti-poverty activists dressed up as Robin Hood disrupted a Conservative Party fundraising dinner where supporters were paying $5,000 a table to eat in the company of Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, Preston Manning and John Hamm. The Robin Hoods snuck into the dining hall and disrupted the dinner with chants such as, "The cost of one table here could feed a family for a year!" The Halifax Coalition Against Poverty says police used aggressive force when attempting to evict the protesters, using pepper spray and batons, as well as punching and kicking activists.

About 150 family members and friends of missing aboriginal women held a rally in Edmonton to raise awareness of unsolved disappearances. Over the last 20 years, more than 500 aboriginal women in Canada have been murdered or have disappeared.

The federal government forced the Akaitcho Dene First Nations into not claiming areas where exploration companies want to look for uranium, says Western Arctic NDP MP Dennis Bevington. In a document obtained through access to information, dated August 11 2006, an official wrote to Northern Affairs Minister Jim Prentice, stating that the Akaitcho agreed to exclude land claims on sacred land in the Thelon Basin because "this addresses Canada's significant interest to allow the continuation of uranium exploration in the Basin." Although the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Review Board recently rejected one company's bid to look for uranium in the Thelon Basin, it is ultimately up to Prentice to decide whether to accept or reject the Review Board's recommendation.

A plan by the Australian government to force Aboriginal children to learn English is being called racist by Aboriginal leaders. Tauto Sansbury, of the Aboriginal justice advocacy committee, said the idea was insulting and would reinforce old-fashioned stereotypes. "They still want to treat Aboriginal people the way it was back in the 30s and 40s, where they're the master and we're the servant.” The number of Aboriginal languages that existed in Australia prior to colonization is estimated to be about 600. Currently there are 200 different Aboriginal dialects across Australia, with about 20 in constant use.

A group of foreign oil workers were kidnapped in Nigeria. There have been more than 100 abductions of foreign workers in the oil-producing Niger Delta this year. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), responsible for many of the abductions, says multinational oil companies are making millions off oil in the region while local people continue to live in poverty. Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer.

According to Statistics Canada’s latest census on agriculture, the average farm size has increased from 608 acres in 1996, to 676 acres in 2001, and to 728 acres in 2006. As farms get bigger, the number of farms gets smaller; there are 17,000 fewer farms in Canada today than there were in 2001. The census also found that the average age of farmers has increased.

Outspoken Afghanistan MP Malalai Joya was suspended for saying Afghanistan's parliament was worse than a stable, noting that cows provide milk and donkeys carry loads. "They are worse than cows and donkeys -- they're dragons," said Joya in a television interview seen by parliament. Joya is a feminist and staunch critic of the West for aligning itself with Northern Alliance warlords who now hold seats in parliament. She has survived four assassination attempts and reportedly never sleeps two nights in the same place.

Robin Hoods

Status For All March

Mark Mackinnon's New Cold War

dru — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:48:21 +0000

Canada, the US and democracy promotion in the former Soviet republics

Mark Mackinnon's new book opens with a tale of two large buildings blown up by terrorists. The president, until then an unremarkable leader with deep ties to the country's secretive intelligence agency, seizes on the tragedy by launching a war against the terrorists. Suddenly popular for his decisive strikes, the president sends troops to a small Muslim country that had been occupied, then abandoned by previous administrations. He uses the urgency of war as a pretext for consolidating power, naming his lackeys to key positions. The "oligarchs" of the country, Mackinnon writes, proceeded to set up a system of "managed democracy," where the illusion of choice and a popular longing for stability cover up the fact that fundamental decisions are made in an undemocratic fashion and power remains concentrated in the hands of the few.

Mackinnon, who is currently the Middle East bureau chief for the Globe and Mail, is of course talking about Russia, and its president, ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin--though if Mackinnon notices parallels with another country, he doesn't say so. The Muslim country is Chechnya and the terrorist attacks were against two apartment buildings in the town of Ryazan, 200km southeast of Moscow. Questions were raised about KGB involvement.

Mackinnon's book is The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union.

Almost without exception, Canadian reporters find it a lot easier to cut through PR spin and official lies when they're covering foreign governments--especially when those governments are seen as rivals of Canada or its close partner, the US. But when the subject is closer to home, their critical acumen suddenly wilts.

Mackinnon suffers from this common affliction less than most reporters. One gets the sense that it's a conscious choice, but still a tentative one.

Over the last seven years, the US State Department, the Soros Foundation and several partner organizations have orchestrated a series of "democratic revolutions" in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. And, during those years, each "revolution," whether attempted or successful, has been portrayed by journalists as a spontaneous uprising of freedom-loving citizens receiving inspiration and moral support from their brothers and sisters in the West.

Evidence that this support also involved hundreds of millions of dollars, meddling with choices of candidates and changes to foreign and domestic policies has been widely available. And yet, for the last seven years, this information has been almost entirely suppressed.

Perhaps the most glaring evidence of suppression came when the Associated Press (AP) ran a story on December 11, 2004--at the height of the "Orange Revolution"--noting that the Bush Administration had given $65 million to political groups in Ukraine, though none of it went "directly" to political parties. It was "funneled," the report said, through other groups. Many media outlets in Canada--notably the Globe and Mail and the CBC--rely on the AP, but none ran the story. On the same day, CBC.ca published four other stories from the AP about Ukraine's political upheaval, but did not see fit to include the one that tepidly investigated US funding.

Similarly, books by William Robinson, Eva Golinger and others have exposed US funding of political parties abroad, but have not been discussed by the corporate press.

Canada's role went unreported until two and a half years later, when--coinciding with the release of The New Cold War--the Globe and Mail finally saw fit to publish an account, written by Mackinnon. The Canadian embassy, Mackinnon reported, "spent a half-million dollars promoting 'fair elections' in a country that shares no border with Canada and is a negligible trading partner." Canadian funding of election observers had been reported before, but the fact that the money had been only a part of an orchestrated attempt to influence elections had not.

For reasons that remain obscure, the editors of the Globe decided, after seven years of silence, to allow Mackinnon to tell the public about what Western money has been up to in the former Soviet Union. Perhaps they were influenced by Mackinnon's choice to write a book about the topic; perhaps it was decided that it was time to let the cat out of the bag.

It's a fascinating account. Mackinnon starts in Serbia in 2000, where the West, after funding opposition groups and "independent media" that provided a constant stream of coverage critical of the government--as well as dropping 20,000 tonnes of bombs on the country--finally succeeded in toppling the last stubborn holdout against neoliberalism in Europe.

Mackinnon describes in detail how Western funding--an effort spearheaded by billionaire George Soros--flowed to four principle areas: Otpor (Serbian for 'resistance'), a student-heavy youth movement that used grafitti, street theatre and non-violent demonstrations to channel negative political sentiments against the Milosevic government; CeSID, a group of election monitors that existed to "catch Milosevic in the act if he ever again tried to manipulate the results of an election"; B92, a radio station that provided a steady supply of anti-regime news and the edgy rock stylings of Nirvana and the Clash; and assorted NGOs were given funding to raise "issues"--which Mackinnon calls "the problems with the power-that-is, as defined by the groups' Western sponsors." The Canadian embassy in Belgrade, he notes, was a venue for many donor meetings.

Finally, disparate opposition parties had to be united. This was facilitated by then-US Secretary of State Madeline Albright and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who told opposition leaders not to run, but to join a "democratic coalition" with the relatively unknown lawyer Vojislav Kostunica as the sole opposition candidate for the presidency. The Western-funded opposition leaders, who didn't have a lot of say in the matter, agreed.

It worked. Kostunica won the vote, the election monitors quickly announced their version of the results, which were broadcast via B92 and other Western-sponsored media outlets, and tens of thousands poured into the streets to protest Milosevic's attempted vote-rigging in a demonstration led by the pseudo-anarchist group Otpor. Milosevic, having lost his "pillars of support" in the courts, police and bureaucracy, resigned soon after. "Seven months later," Mackinnon writes, "Slobodan Milosevic would be in The Hague."

The Serbian "revolution" became the model: fund "independent media," NGOs and election observers; force the opposition to unite around one selected candidate; and fund and train a spray-paint-wielding, freedom-loving group of angry students united by no program other than opposition to the regime. The model was used successfully in Georgia ("the Rose Revolution"), Ukraine ("the Orange Revolution") and unsuccessfully in Belarus, where denim was the preferred symbol. The New Cold War has chapters for each of these, and Mackinnon delves deep into the details of the funding arrangements and political coalitions built with Western support.

Mackinnon seems to harbour few illusions about the US exercise of power. His overall thesis is that, in the former Soviet Union, the US has used "democratic revolutions" to further its geopolitical interests; control of oil supply and pipelines, and the isolation of Russia, its main competitor in the region. He notes that in many cases--Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, for example--repressive regimes receive the hearty support of the US, while only Russian-allied governments are singled out for the democracy promotion treatment.

And while Mackinnon may be too polite to mention it, his account significantly contradicts the reporting regularly vetted by his editors and written by his colleagues. Milosevic, for example, is not the "Butcher of the Balkans" of Western media lore. Serbia was "not the outright dictatorship it was often portrayed in the Western media to be," Mackinnon writes. "In fact, it was more like an early version of the 'managed democracy' [of Putin's Russia]." He is frank about the effects of the bombing and sanctions on Serbia, which were devastating.

But in other ways, Mackinnon swallows the propaganda whole. He repeats the official NATO line on Kosovo, for example, neglecting to note that the US and others were funding drug-dealing autocratic militias like the Kosovo Liberation Army, the subject of many misleading, laudatory reports by Mackinnon's colleagues circa 2000.

More fundamentally, Mackinnon ignores the West's central role in the destabilization of Yugoslavia after its government balked at further implementation of IMF reforms that were already causing misery. Mackinnon experiences and discusses the phenomenon of destabilization-by-privatization in most of the countries he covers, but seems unable to trace it back to its common source, or see it as principle of US and European foreign policy.

Former Russian Politburo operative Alexander Yakovlev tells Mackinnon that Russia's politicians had "pushed the economic reforms too far, too fast" creating "a criminalized economy and state where residents came to equate terms like 'liberal' and 'democracy' with corruption, poverty and helplessness."

In one of the more dramatic moments in the book, the 82-year-old Yakovlev takes responsibility, saying: "We must confess that what is now going on is not the fault of those who are doing it... It's us who are guilty. We made some very serious errors."

In Mackinnon's world, the rapid dismantling and privatization of the state-run economy--which left millions in poverty and despair--is an explanation for the Russian and Belarussian peoples' love affair with strongman presidents who curb liberties, marginalize opposition, control the media and maintain stabilnost, stability. But somehow, the ideology behind the IMF-driven devastation doesn't make it into Mackinnon's analysis of the motivations behind "New Cold War."

Mackinnon notices the most literal US interests: oil and the Americans' fight for regional influence with Russia. But what escapes his account is the broader intolerance for governments that assert their independence and maintain the ability to direct their own economic development.

Energy and pipeline politics are a plausible explanation for the US's interest in the southern former Soviet republics. He might have added that the US used Georgia as a staging ground during the Iraq war. When it comes to Serbia, Mackinnon is forced to rely on an implausible account of NATO carrying out a moral mission to prevent genocide. The claim no longer makes any sense, given available evidence, but remains prevalent in the Western press.

Mackinnon mentions Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela in passing. In all of these places, attempts have been made to overthrow the governments. In Venezuela, a US-backed military coup was quickly overturned. In Haiti, a Canadian- and US-led coup resulted in a human rights catastrophe that is ongoing and recent elections confirmed that the party that was deposed remained more popular than the alternative presented by the economic elite. In Cuba, attempts to overthrow the government have been thwarted for half a century.

To explain these additional, more violent attempts at "regime change," it is not enough to cite the literal interests. Venezuela has considerable oil, but Cuba's natural resources do not make it a major strategic asset, and, by this standard, Haiti even less so. To explain why the US government provided millions of dollars to political parties, NGOs and opposition groups in these countries requires an understanding of neoliberal ideology and its origins in the Cold War and beyond.

This much would be evident if Mackinnon added some much-needed historical context to his account of modern-day methods of regime change. In his book Killing Hope, William Blum documents over 50 US interventions in foreign governments since 1945. History has shown these to be overwhelmingly anti-democratic, if not outright catastrophic. Even mild social-democratic reforms of government in tiny countries were overwhelmed by military attacks.

If true democracy involves self-determination--and at least the theoretical ability to refuse the dictates of the "Washington Consensus" or the IMF--then any evaluation of democracy promotion as the tool of US foreign policy has to reckon with this history. Mackinnon's account does not and remains almost resolutely ahistorical.

The last chapter of The New Cold War, entitled "Afterglow," is dedicated to evaluating the ultimate effects of democracy promotion in the former Soviet republics. It is Mackinnon's weakest chapter. Mackinnon limits himself to asking whether things are better now than before. The frame of the question lowers expectations and severely stunts the democratic imagination.

If one sets aside these considerations, then it is still possible for curiosity to get the better of the reader. Is it possible that good things can come even from cynical motivations? Liberal writers like Michael Ignatieff and Christopher Hitchens made similar arguments in support of the Iraq war and Mackinnon flirts with the idea when he wonders whether young activists in Serbia and Ukraine were using the US, or whether the US was using them.

So, did things get better? The information Mackinnon presents in his answer is extremely vague.

In Serbia, he says, life is much better. The revolution hasn't brought too many benefits to the daily lives of Serbs, a cab driver tells Mackinnon. However, he writes, "The era of gasoline shortages and of young men being sent off to fight for a 'Greater Serbia' was long past and the late-night laughter and music that spilled out of Belgrade's packed restaurants spoke to an optimism unheard of under the old regime."

In this and many other cases, Mackinnon buys a well-diffused propaganda line without looking at the facts. Straying from the meticulous detail he brings to his reporting of the ins and outs of democracy promotion, Mackinnon seems to believe that it was a diabolical scheme by Milosevic--and not economic sanctions or bombing and subsequent destruction of the bulk of Serbia's state-owned industrial infrastructure--that led to gasoline shortages. Mackinnon admonishes Serbs to face up to their role in the war, while letting NATO's bombing campaign, which left tonnes of depleted uranium, flooded the Danube with hundreds of tonnes of toxic chemicals, and incinerated 80,000 tonnes of crude oil (thus the gasoline shortages), off the hook.

In Georgia, Mackinnon again relies on nightlife in the capital city as an indicator of the country's democratic well-being. "The city bubbled with a sense that things were starting to move in the right direction...swish Japanese restaurants, Irish pubs and French wine bars were popping up on seemingly every corner." The leisure activities of the economic elite are just that; there are many ways to judge the well-being of a country, but to rely on the sights and sounds of well-heeled city dwellers enjoying themselves to the exclusion of other criteria is peculiar.

Mackinnon remarks in passing that the Western-backed regime of Saakashvili has resulted in "declining freedom of the press," but has "boosted the economy."

In Ukraine, "newspapers and television stations could and did criticize or caricature whomever they wanted," but the Western-backed free market ideologue Yuschenko made a series of blunders and unpopular moves, resulting in major electoral setbacks for his party a few years after the "revolution" that brought them to power.

Strangely, Mackinnon's sources--other than the odd cab driver--seem to consist entirely of the people receiving funding from the West. Independent critics, apart from aging and deposed former politicians, are virtually nonexistent in his reporting.

Still, the question: did the West do good? In the final pages, Mackinnon is equivocal and even indecisive.

Some countries are "freer and thus better," but the Western funding has made it more likely for repressive regimes to crack down on would-be democratizing forces. In Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan, he is critical of the lack of funds for democratic promotion, leaving local NGOs and opposition groups hanging. He attributes this inconsistency to arrangements where American needs are better served by repressive regimes. In other parts of the chapter, he finds democracy promotion as a whole to be problematic.

At one point, he comments that "the help that [US agencies] gave to political parties in countries like Ukraine would have been illegal had a Ukrainian NGO been giving such aid to the Democrats or Republicans." One also imagines that Canadians would not be impressed if Venezuela, for example, gave millions of dollars to the NDP. Indeed, the prospect seems as ridiculous as it is unlikely...and illegal.

Mackinnon's information suggests, though he does not say it outright, that associating the idea of "democracy" and its attendant freedoms with Western funding and US-led meddling in the governance of countries is likely to undermine legitimate grassroots efforts at democratization. For example, dissidents in Russia tell Mackinnon that when they gather to demonstrate, people often look at them spitefully and ask who is paying them to stand in the street. In one case, Mackinnon points out that a report from an authoritarian government claiming that dissidents are pawns of the West is dead-on.

Mackinnon's assessment does not follow this evidence to its conclusion; he doesn't stray from the view that alignment with either the US or Russia are the only options for countries in the region.

While alignment with one empire or another may seem to be inevitable, Mackinnon's implicit Russia-or-US manicheanism obviates other ways of promoting democracy. Mackinnon ignores, for example, a decades-long tradition of grassroots solidarity with democratic forces in countries--predominantly in Latin America--where dictators were often financially backed and armed by the US government. Such movements were usually limited to curbing excessive repression rather than sponsoring democratic revolutions, but this lack of power can be attributed, at least in part, to the lack of media coverage from mainstream journalists like Mackinnon.

If one is concerned with democratic decision-making, then surely one is also concerned with the ability of countries to make decisions independently of the meddling of foreign powers. Mackinnon also does not address how such independence might be brought about. One can speculate that it would involve preventing the aforementioned meddling.

The New Cold War is notable for its thorough account of the internal workings of democracy promotion and the point of view of those receiving the funding. Those looking for an analysis that bring such a thorough accounting to its actual aims and effects, however, will have to look elsewhere.

New Cold War

Orange Revolution

Laying the Law (Down)

dru — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:23:56 +0000

Legal context for sex work in Canada

Over the past 20 years at least 60 sex workers have ‘gone missing’ or have been murdered in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and the bodies of at least 20 murdered sex workers have been found in Edmonton. Current laws on prostitution and the manner in which they are applied put sex workers’ lives in danger by legitimizing and perpetuating abuse and violence against sex workers. Sex workers on the street are disproportionately affected by these criminal laws and specifically targeted for violence. Very recently, in Canada and elsewhere, these laws have allowed individuals, like Gary Ridgeway, dubbed “the Green River killer,” to use the ambiguity of these laws to his sordid advantage. In 2003, Ridgeway justified the murder of over 40 prostitutes and declared that he “picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

The criminalization of sex workers prevents them from accessing social protection and contributes to grave human-rights abuses of sex workers. This criminalization explains why sex workers are too often exploited, beaten, raped and killed.

Violence is a reality that sex workers around the world face everyday: violence through stigma, violence from the government, and violence from policies that put sex workers’ lives in danger. While prostitution is legal, virtually every activity surrounding it is not. The criminal code prohibits the public solicitation of business ("communicating"), the management and use of regular work sites ("bawdy-houses"), and any other managerial activity ("procuring"). This contradictory legislation makes it nearly impossible for sex workers to work safely and without intimidation from clients, police and residents. Not only has sex work been criminalized to this extent but sex workers and clients are subjected to oppressive treatment from their communities in terms of exclusion, violence and extreme repression. As reported by Stella, a Montreal-based sex-workers’ organization, “in 2002 residents of a central neighbourhood in Montreal went [after sex workers] out into the streets with baseball bats. The media tagged the event ‘a witch-hunt’. We saw the same thing in the summer of 2000 when police operations against clients began with intensity: three times more acts of violence were reported in Stella’s Bad Tricks and Attackers List."

Lobbies to amend, repeal, or reform prostitution law have had a vibrant presence since the 1970s. When sex workers began organizing for decriminalization in the 1970s, the term ‘sex worker’ rather than ‘prostitute’ was used to define their movement. This new term was created at the onset of this new social movement in an attempt to counteract claims that sex work is inherently exploitative and to emphasize that sex workers view their work as employment and themselves as workers. Sex workers’ fight for decriminalization of their work and better working conditions has since grounded much of the sex workers’ rights movement. In addition to this, sex-worker leadership and self-determination stands at the forefront of sex workers’ demands.

The sex-workers’ rights movement is not without its opponents. Among the most vocal sources of opposition are feminist abolitionists who view sex work as an inherent exploitation of the body and sex workers as victims with little agency. These feminists typically oppose decriminalization and concentrate on the eradication of sex work entirely. This perspective has posed grave difficulty for sex workers attempting to seek their rights. Many of the policy reforms that feminist abolitionists propose also criminalize sex workers and their clients, and perpetuate a cycle of abuse and exploitation. This perspective, at best, excludes sex workers, and, at worst, results in policies that impact negatively on sex workers’ lives and work. Whereas the majority of the mainstream feminist movement (including abolitionists and other liberal women’s groups) is seeking to end the exploitation they see as sex work, sex workers and other feminists are seeking to end exploitative conditions in sex work caused by dangerous working conditions and oppressive legislative contexts.

The above debate is one that has, unfortunately, stalled the progress of law reform efforts that seek safer working conditions for sex workers. Organizing around law reform has therefore posed a double challenge: Sex workers not only have to combat the negative stereotypes of sex work that feminist abolitionists perpetuate, they have also been obligated to educate parliamentary leaders on the realities of sex workers’ lives. For this reason sex workers insist on leadership around sex-work issues and on having input into the creation of laws that affect their lives.

In 2002, Canadian sex workers had a small opportunity to educate parliamentary leaders on sex workers’ realities, in the attempt to create safer working conditions. Vancouver East Riding MP Libby Davies had responded to the violence in her community by calling for the creation of a parliamentary committee (SSLR) to review current prostitution law. However, sex worker organizations found that the recommendations presented in their 2006 report did little to improve working conditions for sex workers; instead, the report encouraged common stereotypes of sex workers. Other initiatives have included a constitutional court challenge taking place in Ontario (2007) and one to take place in Vancouver in the next year.

Acknowledging that sex workers are in the best position to speak to their own realties, sex workers have, alongside these legal initiatives, created education initiatives and campaigns to highlight the human-rights abuses caused by current legislation. In Canada alone there are hundreds of sex workers organizing for their rights. Stella, a community resource group created in 1995 and run by and for sex workers, has been leading education campaigns, violence awareness, community building and empowerment strategies. Over the past 30 years numerous sex worker initiatives have been organized to create a solid front against human-rights abuses and to promote safer working conditions for sex workers worldwide.

Sex workers and their supporters insist that law reform is only part of the solution to a much bigger problem caused by stigma and discrimination against sex workers. Law reform has been the focus of morality debates around prostitution while the morality that guides prostitution laws has not yet been put into question. The current criminal code in conjunction with the discriminatory application of these laws contributes to a culture of indifference and violence towards sex workers for which all members of society need to be accountable. Sex workers need to be acknowledged as experts in law-reform debates, and their perspectives be privileged. Until sex workers are acknowledged as experts about their own experience and considered by the broader culture as full members of society, communities of sex workers will thrive and continue to create empowering tools by which they can put an end to the human-rights abuses they face.

Jenn Clamen is a sex-work activist based in Montreal, Canada. Next month in the Dominion Jenn will explore labour issues for sex workers and sex workers' organizing within labour movements

Resources for sex-worker groups and further reading:

Canada:
www.chezstella.org
www.lacoalitionmontreal.com
www.maggiestoronto.ca
www.eroticguild.com

International:
www.nswp.org
www.bayswan.org
www.durbar.org
www.empowerfoundation.org
www.ziteng.org.hk
www.iusw.org
www.apnsw.org

Sex Workers Demonstrate

Goose Break

hillarybain — Sun, 27 May 2007 21:01:49 +0000

The changing climate and hunting in the North

It can be hard to concentrate when you're stuck inside a stuffy classroom in springtime. For the kids of Eeyou Istchee, the territory of the James Bay Cree, it can be nearly unbearable: after a long winter, the sunlight is getting warmer every day and the sound of the first Canada geese flying overhead can drive the entire classroom -- as well as the janitor, principal and everyone else in town -- to the window to gaze up at this graceful embodiment of the changing seasons.

Kids as young as four years old can do a perfect two-tone goose call. A few well-executed throaty honks, and the whole flock will change course, circle gently and alight on the lake.

In these communities, Goose Break is a big deal. It's a two-week holiday during which schools and offices close, and just about every family heads into the bush to hunt geese and hang out at the camp. Sort of like France in August, and bigger than Christmas, the communities become ghost towns as everything is put on hold to allow people to go after the geese.

But Goose Break's character -- and timing -- has changed over the past few years. Parents pull their kids out of school as much as two weeks in advance of the scheduled start of the break, because the geese don’t follow the calendar and they’re coming sooner than the school board has calculated. Experienced hunters put their snowmobiles away earlier and earlier, not willing to risk their lives on ice that is thinner with each passing spring. Even the elders, whose advice has been followed closely for decades, are not always able to predict the weather patterns. No one can be sure whether crossing the river at the regular spot is still a safe bet, and every year there are stories of seasoned hunters going through the ice. Some families opt to hire a helicopter -- not a cheap ride -- to get to and from their favourite hunting grounds, rather than travel over the lakes and rivers as they have done for generations.

Scanning the skies, hunters watch in wonder as flocks continue heading northward. Usually, Canada geese can be coaxed out of the sky if they see ice below on which to land. But this year, lakes that would normally be frozen are open water, and the geese are passing right overhead.

A Cree boy usually shoots his first goose at age nine or ten, and the whole camp celebrates with a feast in his honour. The goose's head is preserved as a keepsake -- a symbol of this transition from childhood to maturity. But some mothers are beginning to wonder how long the tradition will continue. There are plenty of geese this year -- fluttery heaps of feathers outside the camps attest to that -- but with so much changing so quickly, it's hard not to speculate about re-scheduling Goose Break for early March next year. Some worry that it will be cancelled altogether by the time this year’s first-time hunters have kids of their own.

Recipe for Shigabon (Canada goose roasted over an open fire)

-Pluck the goose

-Chop off the wings, feet and head. These can be boiled to make soup

-Run two slender pieces of wood crosswise through the goose, at the points where the wings and legs attach to the body

-Tie a string to these wooden sticks

-In the tipi, place fresh pine boughs on the floor to create a heavenly aroma

-Before building a fire at the centre of the tipi, install wooden poles horizontally at about shoulder height over the fire

-Suspend the goose by its string from the wooden poles over the fire

-Place a stainless steel bowl or tray below the goose to catch the drippings

-Roast, turning occasionally, until the goose is thoroughly cooked –- about three hours. Try hanging it with the breast side down for the first two hours, then turn to cook the other side for the final hour

-Serve along with drippings

Jaime Little works with CBC North Quebec

Geese Feet

June Books

hillarybain — Sun, 27 May 2007 16:33:04 +0000

A review of <em>Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid</em>

Tyrannosaurus Rex Versus the Corduroy Kid
Simon Armitage
Anansi: Toronto, 2007.

Armitage's eleventh poetry collection first came out in Britain in 2006, where it was promptly shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize. Anansi's edition of this book marks Armitage's first Canadian publication; here's hoping it'll bring a wider audience into contact with one of England's greats.

The full range of Armitage's talents is on display in this work. He is at turns prophetic (“A Vision” claims that “the future was a beautiful place, once”) and historical (“The Bayeux Tapestry” is told in the ruthless, exhausted voice of William the Conqueror). He can be tender, as in a trio of quiet, elegiac poems in the voice of a son to a dead father. He can write sonnets that gently mock the irrelevance of both aging squeegee kids (“The Clown Punk”) and poetry itself (“Poetry”); in the latter, the writer's chosen genre is likened to an amazing but sadly overlooked ornamental clock hidden away in Wells Cathedral. Most memorably, Armitage can be funny. His humour is wry and bleak, and never cheap, even with the four-letter words and scatological references. In “The Six Comeuppances,” a man in the throes of an epic mid-life crisis says: “I was all over the place, like the shit / of a mad person.” A punchier simile is hard to find outside the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel.

Armitage takes one of poetry's riskier gambles; instead of using an elevated diction to make poetry out of small things, Armitage takes large, sometimes ambiguous and unsettling ideas and serves them straight up. Aside from some colourful slang new to these eyes (notably: “hoik” and “shonky”), all of Armitage's words come from familiar territory, and you won't catch him relying on polysyllables or fancy word choice to get at his themes. The brand of English here is warm and solid and reassuringly unpretty. Reading these poems, you can almost hear them pronounced in the round, lackadaisical accent of Armitage's native Yorkshire. This is most true in a suite of poems called “Sympathy” (quite possibly inspired by his stint as a probation officer in the 80s, before he became a full-time poet). Each part tells the story of a “case”—some unfortunate victim of violence, economic hardship, or plain old bad luck—and reiterates it through the voice of the perpetrator, in full-blown accent: “Anyways, on t'morning after t'party, / I trogs downstairs, still bolloxed, and gives t'pantry / t'Hans Blix, lookin' for brain-numbin' drugs.” The voices are vengeful, regretful, and above all, human; despite belonging to society's 'misfits', they cut straight to the reader's sympathy.

This isn't to suggest there isn't plenty of bold, inventive language here—there is. In more than one place, Armitage employs slant rhyme to push slightly unnerving poems over the edge into eerie, trading on that sense of something not quite right. In “The Perverts,” a creepy, insinuating quatrain:

We cornered one coming out of the gym.
Now everyone feels a whole lot better.
We held a buttercup under his chin,
made him kneel, asked him if he liked butter.

Armitage has been called the Philip Larkin of his generation; brief, haunting lines like these make this conparison seem particularly apt.

Mid-way through the book, the reader comes across “Surtsey,” an arresting pair of poems. The first, “Genesis,” riffs on an island formed off the coast of Iceland by volcanic activity in 1963— also, we're told, the year of the poet's birth. Armitage recounts the rapid development of an ecosystem as observed by avid scientists: “And the liquid stone / had barely set when a microbe blew in, / press-ganged by a wind squeezed out of the west[.]” Eventually this new land gets its own “brainless” deity, in the form of a fishing float washed up onshore. The creation of life, and of myths, is on fast-forward in this accelerated, artifice-heavy world. In the companion poem, “Where Are They Now?” the island is a haven for “a waist-high mob” of forgotten child stars and whiz kids, among whom the poet feels, oddly, at home.

Tyrannosaurus Rex includes a sample of Armitage's ambitious translations—portions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Odyssey bookend the volume, and they're surprisingly fresh for two of the most dreaded college literature class staples. If the excerpts are any indication, Armitage has breathed new life into Odysseus' swagger (“And I was the last man to escape, suspended beneath / the cockiest ram of the lot”), and infused Sir Gawain's gore with appropriately English matter-of-factness (“his bloody neck still bled”). Whether interpreting old work or creating what's new, Armitage never backs away from what's hard to hear, or tell.

Rex

Mining the Congo

hillarybain — Sat, 26 May 2007 16:04:34 +0000

Canadian mining companies in the DRC

This article is second in a two part series. Read the first article here.

Despite eight years of war in the Congo (from 1996 to 2003), with a death toll estimated at between four and ten million, and the continued risk of conflict today, Canada’s interest in the country since 1995 has been almost completely restricted to Congo’s mineral wealth.

Canada plays a major role in mining in Africa, says Denis Tougas, who is a staff member of l'Entraide Missionnaire, an international solidarity organization based in Quebec. Tougas has worked and lived, on and off, for 15 years in the Great Lakes region of Africa. As a resource-based economy, he says, Canada has a developed mining sector, one that accounts for over 30 per cent of all investment in prospecting on the African continent, a portion rivaled only by South Africa.

Before the war and the installation of Laurent Kabila as president, Tougas was working in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and remembers being asked why Kabila was meeting with Canadians. At that time, many of Congo's mining companies were government-owned. According to Tougas, "Kabila was using the plane of [mining company] American Mineral Fields to fly around the county... he was showing that he could make deals with the international community... even though he was not yet president. One of the people Kabila was meeting with was Joe Clark, former Canadian Prime Minister. In the mid 1990s, Clark was both leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and a special advisor on Africa for the mining company First Quantum Mineral. Records show that Canadian mining companies American Mineral Fields and Tenke received large contracts soon after these meetings.

UN report

When the Congo war broke out in 1996, a number of small Canadian mining companies were active in the DRC. In 2002, eight 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”. In it, the UN panel said that American Mineral Fields, Banro, First Quantum, Hrambee Mining, International Panorama Resources, Kinross Gold, Melkior Resources and Tenke had violated OECD guidelines in mining activities during the Congo war. The report recommended investigations by the Canadian government into their actions.

“The Panel insists that they [the Panel] have concrete evidence of violations,” Mining Watch reported. “The companies vehemently deny the charges.”

The report generated a large backlash within the UN, says Tougas. "A number of UN representatives were angry that the panel [responsible for the report] did not ask for information from the companies involved." In response to the complaints, the panel received explanations from 119 of the 157 companies involved, and in 2003 it released its final report on the exploitation of the Congo, claiming that the allegations for seven out of the eight Canadian companies had been ‘resolved'.’ Many companies alleged they were cleared of wrongdoing but Tougas points out that the report’s use of the word ‘resolved’ “should not be seen as invalidating the Panel’s earlier findings with regard to the activities of those actors.”

In response to the UN report, l'Entraide Missionnaire filed a complaint to the Canadian National Contact Point for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to confirm the allegations against First Quantum. Quantum had been accused in the report of bribing officials in Katanga province to get land. However, says Tougas, the strategy of the mining companies had worked, since the complaint was refused because it was deemed to have been ‘resolved’ by the UN Panel.

Part of the problem for solidarity organizations that want Canadian mining companies to change is that, strictly speaking, Canadian companies never broke Congolese law, says Tougas. “These companies were allowed to be [in the Congo] according to the new mining code... signed during the war.” For example, Banro was operating on occupied territory but had signed a contract with the DRC government in Kinshasa allowing their presence in the region.

Still Mining

Eight to ten small Canadian mining companies are in the DRC today. The Montreal Mirror reports that accusations against Anvil Mining Ltd., which mines copper and silver in the DRC, may result in a lawsuit. The Australian-Canadian company is accused “of helping soldiers end an uprising in a village near an Anvil mine... in an assault that killed more than 80 rebels and villagers. Foreign Affairs Canada refuses to comment on whether Canada has been contacted by the AFP or the Australian government for the Anvil investigation,” the Mirror reported.

Le Monde Diplomatique reported that Canadian mining companies Barrick and Banro had been "funding military operations [in the DRC] in exchange for lucrative contracts." A report in Z Magazine in 2006 said Barrick still “operates in the town of Watsa, northwest of the town of Bunia, located in the most violent corner of the Congo. The Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) controlled the mines intermittently during the war. Officials in Bunia claim that Barrick executives flew into the region, with UPDF and RPF [Rwanda Patriotic Front] escorts, to survey and inspect their mining interests.”

Over the years advisors and directors for Barrick have included George H.W. Bush, Brian Mulroney, Edward Neys (US ambassador to Canada), Howard Baker (US Senator) and J. Trevor Eyton (Canadian Senator), among others.

Government Inaction

Aside from direct links to politicians, Canada has other reasons for not monitoring or trying to stop Canadian exploitation of resources in the DRC. In a recent article in the Georgia Straight, Mining Watch pointed out that governments have allowed mining-friendly tax laws and a “long and lousy tradition of poorly regulated penny-stock companies.”

According to Tougas, “Most of the known resources [in the DRC] are now being found by junior (under $4 million) Canadian companies who were able to take risks... and take advantage of the war.” Today, Tougas says these same companies have a major interest in the South-West province of Katanga.

Though the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade released a report last year, the government has refused to implement its recommendations regarding better monitoring of Canada’s mining firms abroad. Today, the committee says questions about Canadian companies in the Congo are “now under the jurisdiction of the Standing Committee on International Trade.”

Though the mandate and the powers of the Standing Committee on International Trade can be requested via e-mail, repeated requests for these documents were not met.

Tougas says that although the Canadian government occasionally talks about aid to the DRC, more often than not, what the Congolese receive are more Canadian mines, not aid dollars. 75 per cent of mining resources in the DRC are owned by foreign companies. Congo is rated 142nd worldwide on the human development index and 158th for GDP per capita. “The profit is only going to the companies, not the Congoese people,” he said.

However, the Congolese government may be taking matters into its own hands. A report released last year by the DRC looks at mining deals made by the president between 1996-1998. It recommends that deals between the president and 6 Canadian companies and a host of others be ‘revised’ in order to benefit the Congo. The recommendations may not be adopted, however. “It has certainly divided parliament,” he says.

Congo Part II

Wonder Wine?

hillarybain — Fri, 25 May 2007 17:23:58 +0000

Who decides what wine stocks the shelves of the LCBO

Last week at a Toronto restaurant, you had a memorable bottle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano—so memorable that you wrote down the name, and have now decided it will go perfectly with the meal you are planning for a dinner party. You make your way to one of the 25 Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) retail stores in Toronto to find a bottle. The first shop you hit has a bottle of Carmenere from Chile; the next has a Hungarian Pinot Gris; all of them have Blue Nun white wine from Germany…but none have your Vino Nobile, not even the gigantic outlet on Summerhill. You decide to go for your fall-back, no-fail standard—a decently-priced South African Shiraz—only to discover the LCBO no longer carries it. Plan C has you resigned to finally grabbing the Californian Pinot Noir that you bought last week because of a glossy promotion in the LCBO’s Food and Drink magazine. Considering the time you have squandered scouring the city, you might be wondering how exactly the LCBO decides what the province’s oenophiles drink, and why you never found that bottle of Vino Nobile.

It’s complicated. With the Ontario liquor board having the distinction of being the largest single buyer of beverage alcohol in the world, one can imagine how winemakers the world over dream of courting it with their elixirs. The journey from foreign vineyard to Ontario vintner is an elaborate affair that is decidedly market-driven, one that involves private agents, LCBO buyers and LCBO tasters. As The National Post’s wine and spirits columnist Michael Vaughan laments, “agents and producers alike stand in line hoping to receive the blessing of [the LCBO]—all too reminiscent of groveling orphans begging for more gruel please, sir. ”

Chris Layton, Media Relations Coordinator for the LCBO, explains that “The LCBO functions like any other major retail buyer; we figure out what the customer wants through extensive consumer research.” LCBO buyers need to stay on top of trends (think Pinot Noir after 2004’s sleeper-hit film Sideways) and are hired for their expertise in sales, not wine. Fortunately, their corporate palettes are not involved in the tasting of the products, which require the sophisticated noses of the board’s expert panel—the majority of whom have accredited wine knowledge and have already worked as in-store LCBO product consultants.

Unfortunately, the LCBO’s market-driven selection process means you probably won’t see your stand-by Shiraz sold in Ontario again. While you may have been delighted with the robust character you got for such a reasonable price, too few consumers shared your enthusiasm to secure its continued shelf life. In its current Vintages Product Needs Letter, the LCBO explains that 75 per cent of a new wine’s stock has to be sold within the first two months, and 100 per cent within the first three, for it to survive. Not only is this frustrating for wine drinkers with obscure or unpopular preferences, it’s even worse for the agents, who have to pay a 20 per cent rebate if a wine they bring in doesn't sell out in the allotted two months.

In order to safeguard against such penalties, wine agents refer religiously to the LCBO’s “Product Buying Plan.” Based on consumer research and marketing trends, the plan outlines the wines buyers are likely to accept. It is heavy on phrases like “contemporary packaging and approachable brand image,” whereas specific varietals are only mentioned twice: Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir for the U.S., and “no Chardonnays are required at this time,” for Chile. With these factors in mind, over 500 independent Ontario wine agents traverse the globe looking for products that might interest the LCBO. These oenophiles—and most of them do indeed love what they sell—find the suppliers and facilitate the sale of the wine to the LCBO, who then sells it to the customer.

For a wine to be sold in Ontario, an agent has to submit an extensive application, including a marketing plan and a product sample, which an LCBO buyer then assesses, passing the sample on for the Grading Panel to taste. At this point, some forty expert tasters gather in the Organoleptic Evaluation Room on the 3rd floor of the old Toronto LCBO warehouse near Queen’s Quay. The room’s white walls ensure that the colour of the wine can be properly assessed. Testing blind, tasters look for defects in the products and determine whether the wines taste the way they are billed. Once the wine passes this test, the agent is required to submit an even more detailed “LCBO Product Profile and Marketing Plan.” The product then heads to the laboratory where chemical analyses are performed, and the packaging (including the label), selling units, and shipping cartons are reviewed. Only at this point do buyers issue a purchase order specifying the terms and conditions of the purchase. When the wine arrives from the supplier, it is held in the warehouse until a second lab test is completed and the final price is determined.

While Layton insists the relationship between the wine agents and the LCBO is positive, the agents would certainly be happier sans the extensive paperwork, the emphasis on strong marketing plans, and “the draconian LCBO rules” that prevent them from selling less than a case to any entity. Moreover, because of the volume that the LCBO requires to stock its some 600 outlets, small winemakers, both international and local, resent being excluded from the agents’ search. On the other hand, anybody old enough to remember an LCBO retail outlet in the sixties might be inclined to agree with The Globe and Mail’s Eric Reguly who called it “the country’s most improved retailer.” Established in 1927 after prohibition was repealed, the first shops were intentionally foreboding; after all, they were not in the business of selling alcohol, but controlling its sale and consumption. Like filling a prescription at the pharmacy, the customer would write down his or her selection from a scant product list and a staff member would fetch it. The first self-service store opened in 1969, but it wasn’t until the ‘90s that stores were renovated and brightened up and every employee began to receive mandatory product-knowledge training. Most exciting for wine enthusiasts was the introduction in 1985 of Vintages, a separate fine-wine section of the retail outlet, to satisfy the growing demands of a more sophisticated Ontario wine-drinking public.

Even though Vintages releases about 2,800 new products a year, poor product range persists as the principle complaint about Ontario’s liquor board. In the most recent edition of Toronto’s CityBites magazine, writer Stephen Tempkin compares the selection of a number of French wines available at the LCBO with Quebec’s government-run SAQ (Société des Alcools du Quebec). In each of the 11 cases, the SAQ, which also supplies dépanneurs and grocery stores, had more variety. Tempkin reasons that “the greater number of competing retailers in any given market, the better the overall selection is likely to be.” Take Alberta—the only province that has opted for privatizing the sale and distribution of alcohol in Canada. The total selection of liquor there increased by 72 per cent between 1993—when the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission went private—and 1995. However, Dr. Trevor Harrison, a sociology professor and the research director of the Parkland Institute (an Alberta think tank), insists that the selection for consumers has actually declined because most private stores carry standard brands, not rare or exotic wines that only satisfy niche markets. In Alberta, there may be hundreds of German white wines available in different locations—at varying price points. In Ontario, Blue Nun will be available in every city at $9.15 a bottle. Layton is also quick to remind that given the LCBO’s prominent position as the largest purchaser of beverage alcohol in the world, prestigious wine producers come to the Board, whereas they might not approach a smaller retailer. “Over the years, [Vintages] has established good relations with high-end suppliers of good reputation.”

Despite its much-bemoaned selection, the LCBO tries to ensure that Ontario wine buffs have options. If you can’t find an LCBO wine at your local store, it can be shipped to any outlet you wish, free of charge. Moreover, the entire stock is computerized, so you can check ahead of time to see if they even carry the wine you want (www.lcbo.com). If they do not, private ordering is an option, although most people would prefer waiting in line at the passport office than involve themselves in the paperwork and time required (up to six months). Your best bet for superior selection, and a way to bypass the bureaucracy, is something of which few consumers are aware: anyone can purchase directly from one of the over 500 wine agents in the province who are eager to sell you their wine-finds, often including boutique-style gems. Josh Parnt of wineonline.ca notes that “most articles discussing the inherent flaws of the LCBO seem to ignore this very fact.” You might even luck out and discover that your Shiraz has an Ontario representative. Though the process requires that you order a one-case minimum (12 bottles), you can usually mix and match bottles, and cases can often be delivered at no charge to your doorstep. And if you still desperately want that bottle of Vino Nobile, ask the restaurant owner and just maybe he’ll be kind enough to tell you which agency supplied him.

More wine for thought:

A resource for those who want to make their own wine
Canadian wine stats
Wine information and education
Canadian wine industry
List of Ontario wine agents

LCBO

¡Si, Se Puede!

hillarybain — Thu, 24 May 2007 11:43:43 +0000

Field workers in Florida say “Yes we can!” - and are

Outside it's a chilly, grey morning in Chicago, but inside the House of Blues, there's a carnival in progress. An organization of migrant farmworkers has just won an agreement for higher wages and better working conditions from McDonald's, a fast food multinational headquartered in the city.

On stage, against a backdrop of giant puppets, an MC leads the crowd in call and response. “Coalition!” he yells. “Presente!” the people chant in return. Many in the audience raise their clenched fists in the air. Now, they are saying, it is Burger King’s turn.

“Coalition” is shorthand for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers [CIW], a group made up of mostly Latino, Haitian and Mayan Indians who work in the fields of Immokalee, an area of southwestern Florida. They pick, among other crops, most of the winter tomatoes grown in the U.S. The tomatoes are sold through a series of suppliers to restaurant chains like McDonald's or Burger King; eventually ending up as part of a meal sold at fast food drive-ins and counters across the United States.

“The major buyers of Florida produce...corporations like McDonald's [and] Burger King, leverage their unprecedented market power to secure the lowest possible prices for the produce they buy,” explains an analysis paper written by the Coalition. “This downward pressure on their suppliers’ prices in turn drives down workers’ wages.”

Workers in Immokalee earn as little as 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes harvested. To make minimum wage in a ten-hour day, they have to pick nearly 2 1/2 tons of tomatoes. In addition to not receiving health insurance, sick leave, paid vacation or pension, they also “have no right to overtime pay even when they work 60--70 hour weeks, and have no right to organize,” adds Lucas Benitez of the CIW. The Coalition uses the word 'sweatshops’ to describe their working conditions in the United States.

John Bowe, writing in The New Yorker, notes that most farmworkers in southern Florida are recently arrived immigrants to the U.S., who often do not to speak English. They are hired as crews by labour contractors who “...can exert near absolute control over their workers’ lives; besides handling the payroll and deducting taxes, they are frequently the sole source of the workers' food and housing, which in addition to the ride to and from the field, they provide for a fee.”

In the worst-case scenario, farmworkers are being held in involuntary servitude. In the past six years the CIW, through worker-led investigation and human-rights education, has helped the U.S. federal justice department with the prosecution and conviction of five modern-day slavery rings located in Florida, involving over 1000 workers.

The Coalition began about 13 years ago as a small group holding weekly meetings in a borrowed space. The CIW quickly grew in strength with community-wide work stoppages, three general strikes -- including a month-long hunger strike by six members in 1998 -- and a 230-mile march through Florida in 2000.

In 2001, after two decades of declining wages in the tomato industry, the CIW launched the first ever farmworker boycott of a major fast-food company, Taco Bell.

Between 2000 and 2005, 22 universities and high schools in the U.S. prevented or removed Taco Bell restaurants or sponsorships with the “Boot the Bell” campaign, spearheaded by one of the Coalition’s major allies, the Student Farmworkers Alliance (SFA).

In 2005, Taco Bell, owned by Yum! Brands, bowed to the pressure, making a historic agreement with the CIW. Taco Bell agreed to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked, almost doubling the workers daily wages; and to implement an enforceable code of conduct for its suppliers, to ensure the working conditions and human rights of the farmworkers are protected.

The Coalition has since attempted to secure similar agreements with a number of other restaurants chains, including Subway, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Burger King and McDonald's. The successful campaign against McDonald's culminated in the 2007 Truth Tour: a caravan of buses full of farmworkers travelling from Florida to Chicago.

So far, Burger King has publicly rejected CIW offers to negotiate. Instead, in a statement to the press, the company offered to send “recruiters” to Florida to retrain farmworkers, offering “ongoing professional training and advancement opportunities around the country for both entry level and skilled employee jobs at Burger King restaurants.”

The CIW is unenthusiastic about the proposal. “The farmworkers who pick tomatoes for Burger King are among this country's worst paid, least protected workers,” says Lucas Benitez, spokesperson for the Coalition. “Offer[ing] to address farmworker poverty by retraining tomato pickers to work in Burger King's restaurants -eliminating farmworker poverty by eliminating farmworkers - adds insult to injury with such an obviously unworkable, and frankly pretty ridiculous idea.”

Coalition of Imolakee Workers

Watered Down Excuse

hillarybain — Mon, 21 May 2007 21:29:04 +0000

According to one scientist, high cost is no excuse for lack of safe drinking water in First Nations communities

Across Canada, Original Peoples suffer a plague of unsafe drinking water in their communities. As of May 11, there were 88 First Nations communities under a drinking water advisory, according to Health Canada. But there is hope that the problem can be solved and, according to one scientist, inexpensively.

The Saddle Lake Cree Nation (SLCN), home to a community of 5,800 people, situated on the upper bank of the North Saskatchewan River northeast of Edmonton, once had what water experts described as “among the worst drinking water in the country.” Up to 40 percent of people at SLCN were said to be suffering gastrointestinal disorders. In May 2004, the Chief and Council called for a boil water advisory because of problems with chlorine disinfection. Health Canada maintained that the water at Saddle Lake was fine to drink. This did not satisfy the residents of SLCN. Health Canada’s solution was to increase chlorination to kill microorganisms. An emergency ultra-filtration system was installed at SLCN to treat the water with a mix of powdered activated carbon, coagulants and coagulant aids, as well as sulfuric acid added in large quantities. This process cost $15,000/month plus $30,000/month for ultra-filtration. The process failed because high chlorine levels at the treatment plant were lost in the distribution system and Health Canada also called for a boil water advisory in September 2004.

In 2005, SLCN’s water keeper Tony Steinhauer brought Dr. Hans Peterson, executive director of the Saskatoon-based Safe Drinking Water Foundation, and Dr. David Schindler, a University of Alberta blue-green algae specialist, to the community.

Among the water culprits at SLCN, Schindler identified classic toxin producing species of blue-green algae, Aphanizomenon and Microcystis. In addition to the noxiousness of the blue-green algae was the assault on the nostrils from the stench of algal decomposition. Peterson described the situation at SCLN as “a story that city people need to hear and see.”

Health Canada contends there are various reasons why many First Nations communities are on long-term drinking water advisories. Among the reasons, are community decisions to decrease or shut off their chlorinator because of community concerns about the taste of chlorine in drinking water after treatment. But chlorination is problematic, as it does not kill all dangerous microorganisms.

The March 22, 2007 progress report of Plan of Action for Drinking Water in First Nations Communities boasts that the federal government has made “significant progress” in providing drinking water to Original Peoples on reserve. Among the achievements cited by INAC are: reducing identified high-risk drinking water systems from 193 to 97 in the past year; appointing an expert panel report on regulatory water schema; training of 875 water and wastewater operators; and putting the Protocol for Safe Drinking Water in First Nations into effect.

The Protocol stems from a three-member expert panel that solicited feedback from First Nations communities on safe drinking water. The report, completed in late 2006, prescribes a new regulatory framework to deal with the problem.

Peterson, however, doesn’t see the problem being solved by bureaucrats, but by people donning rubber boots and trudging into the drinking water reservoirs. In the summer of 2005, an Integrated Biological and RO membrane treatment (IBROMT) pilot project began. Peterson developed the IBROMT process which uses biology instead of chemistry to treat water by removing organics from the water.

In the treatment process, water flows through transparent pipes, mixing with sand-like clay aggregates that provide a substrate required by water-purifying bacteria to live on. The bacteria act as a filter, removing nutrients and energy that inhibits the development of disease-carrying microorganisms. This represents the biological component of the water pre-treatment process at the SLCN project. Afterwards, the water passes through the RO membranes, separating further harmful viruses, protozoa, parasites and organic material from the clean water.

The Saddle Lake pilot project has been operational since August 2005. The distributed water is biologically stable -- i.e., the growth of dangerous microorganisms is thwarted.

Peterson first oversaw the implementation of the IBROMT Process at the Yellow Quill First Nation in northeastern Saskatchewan. Since then, it has been implemented by both the Pasqua and George Gordon First Nations.
The IBROMT system is not only effective and environmentally friendly; its operation is much less expensive. “For the current process [at SLCN] $500 worth of chemicals is required every day,” says Peterson. “For the IBROMT process, that number drops to less than $10 per day.”

“Other costs also need to be considered,” Peterson adds. “Cleaning of reservoirs, pipelines, etc… is either redundant or much reduced [with IBROMT].”

“The process has now improved to such an extent that it is less expensive than conventional treatment. It is even less expensive than no treatment (treating anaerobic groundwater) due to much lower chemical use when operational costs are taking into account over a 20-year time span (the no treatment will have cheaper capital costs to start off with).”

“The Saddle Lake IBROMT is a pilot project right now and the design of the full-scale plant has been started,” says Peterson. “It should be built and up and running within a year providing INAC doesn’t delay funding.”

Clean Water

UN-Reliable

hillarybain — Fri, 18 May 2007 19:13:30 +0000

The UN is misleading the public regarding its role in Haiti

On February 15, 2007, the United Nations News Service published an article stating that UN forces in Haiti – MINUSTAH – had transformed a former gang leader’s headquarters in Cité Soleil into a free medical clinic following its raid on the man’s residence. I had just arrived in Haiti to work on a project about the impact of the 2004 Canada-backed coup d’état. I knew MINUSTAH had brought in a few doctors for a photo op after their military operations in the seaside shantytown, but I didn’t realize that fully functioning clinics were being set up. Two days later, I attended a demonstration on the site where the medical clinic was supposed to exist, but it was nowhere to be found. In the two weeks that followed, the UN News Service reiterated the existence of this medical clinic with each new mass arrest in Cité Soleil. By March 2, it stated that more gang headquarters had been converted into “medical and social centres.” I visited and photographed the headquarters of gang leaders Evans, Amaral and Ti Bazil, three of the sites of supposed UN social services, but there was nothing to be found.

It is hard not to notice that the UN’s humanitarian gestures were being performed at the same time as mass arrests were being conducted among a vulnerable population. When I notified the head of media relations at MINUSTAH about the distortions being published by the UN News Service, she agreed they were misleading. She acknowledged that MINUSTAH had only ever handed out water bottles and offered free checkups the day after 72-hour mass arrest operations. Nonetheless, the exaggerations have not abated to this day. Here is a sample from the UN News Service’s most recent article about Haiti (March 23, 2007):

"From helping to set up local municipal administrations to providing electricity, education and health services to restoring a library to laying out a football field, no task is too small or parochial for the UN peacekeepers as they try to make a difference for the people on the ground in one of the poorest countries on earth."

Disturbed by these reports, I decided to look into the arrest operations occurring during my stay in the country. On March 2, MINUSTAH spokesperson David Wimhurst proclaimed to the UN News Service, “We’ve got a good catch.” He was referring to the results of three operations in which UN troops claimed to have arrested one gang leader and sent three more into hiding, one of whom was subsequently arrested. In addition to the gang leaders, 70 “suspected gang members” were also arrested. In other UN News Service articles, these people are referred to as “presumed bandits,” “suspected gangsters,” or “suspected criminals.” Sometimes the term “suspected” is dropped altogether. In the days following these arrests, my Haitian colleague Wadner Pierre and I interviewed four people in Cité Soleil who claimed five of their relatives or neighbours had been arbitrarily arrested, without warrants, on their way to work or school. While we did not corroborate these claims, two of Haiti’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Mario Joseph and Brian Concannon, confirmed that MINUSTAH routinely arrests people without warrants and that it receives information from informants who in desperate economic environments are notoriously unreliable. I wondered how many more of the 70 presumed gang members might be innocent civilians now languishing in the deplorable conditions of Haiti’s prisons.

I decided to take a closer look at what the UN News Service is telling the world about Haitian reality. Most startling is a phrase that has been repeated in every article related to the origins of MINUSTAH: “The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) [was] set up in 2004 to help re-establish peace in the impoverished Caribbean country after an insurgency forced then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to go into exile.” This is a problematic statement.

An insurgency suggests a popular rebellion against a corrupt leader. Mr. Aristide, democratically elected in a landslide victory in 2000, was overthrown in a coup d’état fomented and supported by the United States, Canada and France. The coup followed the deliberate destabilization of the Aristide government by these same countries. The ‘insurgency’ consisted of US-trained and armed former Haitian Army personnel. They swept through the country, killing police officers and civilians, and opening jails. Their leader, Guy Philippe, subsequently ran for President under MINUSTAH’s watch. The US ambassador then threatened Mr. Aristide with the spectre of increased violence in the country if he didn’t step down. US forces then took Mr. Aristide out of the country as Canadian troops secured the airport. It is important to note that these troops were not used to stop the attempted overthrow of the overwhelmingly popular, democratically elected president. Mr. Aristide has not been permitted to return to Haiti since, despite the presence of MINUSTAH. In other words, he was not “forced into exile” but was overthrown by a criminal coup d’état.

MINUSTAH In Haiti

Les Talibans regagne la faveur des Afghans

hillarybain — Sun, 13 May 2007 11:30:13 +0000

À Kandahar, où l’insécurité règne, les américains perdent peu à peu le soutien de la population

Quiconque tient à la vie évite de sortir le soir à Kandahar. Dans cette ville, véritable coupe-gorge, les chances de survie diminuent au coucher du soleil.

Subissant quotidiennement cette situation d’insécurité, la population s’exaspère et désigne les coupables. Plus de cinq ans après les promesses de paix, de prospérité et de liberté, nombreux sont ceux qui souhaitent le retour des Talibans.

« Les États-unis se disent démocratiques, modernes et possesseur du savoir, mais ils nous mystifient de tant de manières. Comment pouvons-nous leur pardonner ? », s’indigne Faiz Mohammed Karigar, un résident de Kandahar.

« Si je m’assois à une table avec un Américain et il me dit qu’il nous a apporté la liberté, je vais lui répondre qu’il nous a trompé : “ Tu ne nous a pas apporté la liberté “. »

Alors que le monde commence à prendre la pleine mesure de l’horreur en Irak, l’Afghanistan sombre dans le même bourbier infernal. Chaque semaine, la liste des morts s’allonge dans une guerre que le Premier ministre du Canada, Stephen Harper, considère sur le point d’être remportée.

« Quand les Talibans étaient ici, je me suis enfui jusqu’à la frontière iranienne, mais je n’ai jamais été inquiet pour ma famille », assure M. Karigar. « Chaque minute durant les trois dernières années, j’ai été très inquiet. Peut-être les Américains vont venir chez moi ce soir, toucher ma femme, toucher mes enfants et m’arrêter. »

« J’ai déjà décidé de me tenir debout, de les affronter. Je vais me dresser contre eux même si je les vois dans la rue. Je vais me battre contre eux avec ma langue, avec mes mains, avec des fusils. Je vais me battre contre eux de toutes les manières possibles. »

C’est au sud, dans la province de Kandahar, que le mouvement Taliban est né, et c’est là qu’il est revenu à la vie, régénéré par la colère des Afghans envers les troupes étrangères.

Quand le Mollah Mohammed Omar était au pouvoir, les Afghans pouvaient marcher en sécurité dans la rue, tant qu’ils souscrivaient à l’interprétation stricte de la Loi islamique. Maintenant, une simple sortie au marché est risquée.

« C’est exact, [le président Hamid] Karzai en appelle toujours à la démocratie et assure que tout va bien, mais ce ne sont que des mots », proteste Maria Farah, une mère de cinq enfants. « Si vous rencontrez des femmes, leurs visages sont très tristes. Je ne dis pas seulement deux ou trois femmes. Tous nos visages sont très tristes. Si vous allez dans les maisons, vous verrez la même expression sur le visage des maris car ils n’arrivent pas à trouver d’emploi et s’inquiètent pour la sécurité et l’avenir des enfants. »

« Je ne peux seulement parler de la ville de Kandahar. Je crois que la vie sous les Talibans était très bonne. Si nous n’avions pas le ventre plein, nous pouvions au moins obtenir un peu de nourriture et puis aller dormir. Si nous sortions quelque part, il n’y avait aucun problème », ajoute-t-elle.

« Qu’en est-il maintenant ? Si nous sortons, nous ne savons pas si nous rentrerons à la maison sain et sauf. S’il y a une explosion et que les Américains passent par là, ils vont ouvrir le feu sur tout le monde. Les problèmes de sécurité sont considérables ici. Si une personne roule sur l’autoroute, elle sera arrêtée et décapitée. Si les femmes sortent de la maison la nuit tombée, les gens les regardent avec de la haine dans les yeux. »

La femme de 33 ans termine notre conversation par une simple requête : « Demandez à [George W.] Bush de venir ici une seule fois pour rencontrer des femmes qui veulent lui arracher la peau ».

Peu de temps après leur arrivée à Kandahar, au milieu des années 1990, les Talibans ont apporté la paix à une région jusque là dirigée par des seigneurs de guerre rivaux.

Aujourd’hui, c’est une des régions les plus dangereuses du pays ; les violences politique et criminelle y répandent la peur à travers la population. Dans cette province du sud, les quelques 2 500 soldats canadiens font face aux attaques-suicides, aux échanges de coups de feu et aux bombardements routiers de plus en plus fréquents. Les pertes en vies humaines augmentent dans les deux camps armés.

Mais quelle que soit la cause réelle des effusions de sang, les Afghans blâment presque toujours les soldats étrangers et les forces de sécurité locales. Un grand nombre d’entre eux considèrent la présence des États-Unis dans leur pays comme une occupation militaire, ne faisant souvent peu ou pas de distinction entre les différentes nations engagées dans la mission dirigée par l’OTAN.

« Peu importe si une route a été construite », commente Haji Abdul Rahman, un aîné tribal. « Si vous construisez une route et tuez en même temps, quel est le bénéfice ? »

« Tout le monde est voleur. Je te garantis que si tu t’assois dans ma voiture et que je t’emmène faire un tour, aucun Taliban ne va te prendre. Mais je ne peux rien te garantir de la police. Si on t’arrête, on va te voler ton argent et ta caméra. »

Son ami, Abdul Hamid, partage ses inquiétudes. Ses six fils sont sans emploi et il croit que le jihad est la seule possibilité d’avenir pour l’Afghanistan.

« La situation est bien pire que la période d’occupation russe », dit l’homme de 71 ans. « À cette époque, peut-être étions-nous inquiets qu’un missile s’écrase sur notre maison, mais nous n’avions pas peur qu’ils viennent eux-mêmes dans notre maison. »

« Un de mes fils voulait se joindre aux militaires. L’idée ne me plaisait pas. Je lui ai dit que notre pays est détraqué, que tout le monde est voleur et qu’il faut se tenir debout et se battre pour la vérité. »

Panjwayi est une place forte des Talibans dans l’ouest de la province de Kandahar. En mai dernier, les forces menées par les États-Unis ont attaqué par voie aérienne les présumés insurgés du district.

Les officiels américains ont annoncé la mort de 80 militants, mais les villageois présents sur les lieux affirment que nombre de victimes étaient des civils.

Mawlawi Abdul Hadid, un homme de 45 ans, affirme que dix-huit membres de sa famille ont péri lors du raid. Selon lui, une petite fille de deux ans figurait sur la liste de la trentaine de victimes innocentes.

« Au début, vous n’aviez qu’un ennemi. Puis vous vous en êtes fait deux, puis trois, et maintenant moi aussi je me lève contre vous », déclare-t-il. « Vous avez fait de moi votre ennemi et je vais me lever contre vous. »

« Les Talibans sont les fils de ce pays : mon fils est un Talib et ton fils est un Talib », ajoute M. Hadid en faisant des gestes vers un autre homme.

« Les Talibans se battent pour nos droits, l’humanité et la vérité. Jour après jour les Américains perdent des appuis et beaucoup de gens soutiennent désormais les Talibans. »

Quand on lui demande combien de temps va prendre la défaite les soldats étrangers, M. Hadid donne une réponse qu’on entend de plus en plus à travers l’Afghanistan.

« Dans l’Islam, nous ne savons pas ce qui va arriver demain », dit-il. « Mais nous savons une chose : Dieu les a amenés ici, et Dieu les fera partir. »

Traduit par Loca Noregreb

Afghanistan

MINUSTAH Intimidates Journalist on World Press Freedom Day

dru — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:12:09 +0000

On his way to cover a UN Stabilization Mission (MINUSTAH) police operation in Cité Soleil's Little Haiti neighbourhood, freelance reporter Jean Ristil, who was riding his motorcycle, was stopped by a group of Brazilian soldiers who surrounded him and pointed their guns at him.

"Three of them grabbed me and twisted my arm" Ristil said through a translator. They held him by his neck and took him inside a nearby school, which has been transformed by MINUSTAH into a military base inside Cité Soleil.

When they took him inside the school, they saw that he was wearing press identification around his neck.
"It was Thursday, May 3, the World Day of Press Freedom," Ristil said.

Inside, he saw somebody in handcuffs. MINUSTAH troops asked him if the man was a bandit. "I told them I didn't know him," Ristil said. Then they started kicking the man.

They made Ristil face the wall and spread his arms apart to search him. "One of the soldiers was going to hit me in the back, but another stopped him saying, 'No he's a journalist.'"

After about 30 minutes they brought in another man who had been beaten. "I saw them hit him with a gun," Ristil said. The man was wearing a badge that showed he worked as security at the Chapi Clinic. The man asked the soldiers to loosen his handcuffs because they were hurting him and they replied that if he asked again they would beat him.

Meanwhile, people outside were calling for his release. Ristil was able to leave, but by that time the soldiers had damaged parts of his motorcycle while attempting to search it.

Ristil did not report the arrest directly to authorities, but went on the radio to inform listeners of what had happened.

Twice in recent weeks while riding his motorcycle Ristil was approached from behind by a UN tank which then put on its brakes just behind him, in an effort, he thinks, to intimidate him.

"Right now I'm very afraid." If no one were around, he says he could have been seriously hurt.

Ristil is a freelance reporter for the Black Commentator, Radio Lakou in New York, Associated Press, and HaitiAnalysis.com, among other news outlets.

Ristil, along with an American journalist, was arrested and briefly put in jail by SWAT members of the Haitian police force in September 2005 after they allegedly witnessed the police officers planting weapons at the church of Father Gerald Jean-Juste.

Ristil was also arrested in November 2005, this time near the Central Headquarters of the Judicial Police (DCPJ). He recalls being beaten after he refused to hand over photographs that he had taken showing the results of violent raids carried out by the Haitian police and UN forces in Cité Soleil.

Freelance journalist Jean Ristil recounted the incident to Bay Area journalist Judith Scherr by telephone through a translator on May 6, 2007.

Freelance journalist Jean Ristil recounted the incident to Bay Area journalist Judith Scherr by telephone through a translator on May 6.

MINUSTAH Troops in Haiti