The Dominion - 50

Issue #50

dru — Sat, 10 May 2008 18:49:23 +0000

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April 2008

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Coup d'état in Indian Country

hillarybain — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:00:36 +0000

Community members say traditional leadership ousted by the Canadian government

Marylynn Pouchachiche thought the video camera her mother-in-law purchased with residential school compensation money was the perfect gift for building the family album.

But when a massive Quebec police force pepper-sprayed and billy clubbed their way through her small Algonquin community, enforcing the federal government's March 10 decision to oust the traditional Chief and Council and appoint a small faction as the leadership, she took on the new documentary subject with bitter irony.

"It's just another one of the government tactics we've had to face," said Pouchachie, while showing me film of the arrests of ten people, including her husband. The group was protesting the return of Casey Ratt, recognized by the Canadian government as the new Chief of Barriere Lake, despite their already having a Chief and Council in place.

The regime change has left the community of 450, located three hours north of Ottawa, in a political crisis. Pouchachie and others allege that the government is trying to can a co-management agreement Barriere Lake signed with Canada and Quebec nearly twenty years ago – and which has yet to be implemented. Under the agreement, Barriere Lake would gain a decisive say in the management of their traditional territories, benefit from the forestry industry, and preserve their traditional way of life.

Pierre Nepton, the Associate Director of the Regional Office of Indian Affairs, emphasized that the government did not intervene.

Unlike most other reservations, which are mandated under the Indian Act to select leadership through elections, Barriere Lake’s leadership is selected through customary laws. In January, Pouchachie says a small faction of community members organized a separate leadership selection process and then sought recognition from the government.

“We were satisfied by their leadership process, and we recognized the [new] council,” said Nepton. “I want to emphasize that the decision was made by the community.”

But ousted Customary Chief Benjamin Nottaway, who maintains the majority of the community does not support the new Chief, believes Nepton has other motivations for recognizing the new leadership.

"We think the two groups [department of Indian Affairs and the small faction] are collaborating," he said. "The two sides want to cut a new deal for programs and services that ignores the previous agreements we've signed."

The “trailblazing” agreement

In 1961, a priest and the Quebec government negotiated Barriere Lake's 59-acre reservation, which rests on badly eroded sand near a reservoir that flooded the land decades earlier.

In the 1980s, unrestrained clear-cut logging and the depletion of game stock within Quebec's La Vérendrye Provincial Park – a park that covers part of the Algonquin’s traditional territories - threatened the harvesting lines where Barriere Lake community members continue to hunt and trap.

Their initial protests were ignored, but after blockading logging roads under the leadership of their Customary Chief Jean-Maurice Matchewan, Canada and Quebec signed the Trilateral Agreement in 1991.

The Trilaterial Agreement is a forestry co-management and sustainable development plan for 10,000 square kilometres of the Algonquin’s traditional territories, praised by the United Nations as a "trailblazer" and recommended by the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples as a model for resolving resource conflicts.

Just before the Trilateral's implementation in 2001, however, Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault pulled out. Nault said the process had dragged on for too long and cost too much.

The regional economy draws $100 million annually through logging, hydro-electricity, and tourism from the surrounding land, but the Algonquin, who live in mouldy, overcrowded housing without electricity from the hydro-grid, have yet to receive a cent.

Disputed leadership

The lack of progress on the agreement has fueled increasingly acrimonious divisions over leadership.

"I'm trying to pick up after the former council," said new chief Casey Ratt, who has already started negotiating an infrastructure plan with Indian Affairs officials. "They [the protesters] were trying to shut down everything, so they could play the victim card."

Michel Thusky, a community elder, says minor infrastructure deals only offer quick fixes and won't ensure long-term development suited to the community’s needs.

"[The new council] is clueless, and they're being used," he said. "It's not Indian Affairs programs and services that are going to preserve and sustain our culture, language, and connection to the land."

Community members say the federal and provincial governments never liked the Trilateral Agreement. If implemented, it would establish long-term measures to protect their harvest lines and areas of medicinal and spiritual importance from logging, conserve wildlife, give them a share in resource-revenue, and not require them to extinguish their Aboriginal title, precedents that other native communities in Quebec and across Canada might like to follow.

Background to a coup

During the Trilateral Agreement's first phase, which provided research funding and interim measures to harmonize logging with Algonquin land uses, Quebec and Ottawa dragged their heels. "It is David and not Goliath who is attempting to sustain the agreement," Quebec Superior Court Judge Rheajan Paul wrote during mediation in 1993. "If one wants [the agreement] to die, one only has to shut off the funding tap."

In 1996, after resuming funding, the Department of Indian Affairs changed tactics. They rescinded recognition of the Customary Chief and Council and appointed a small faction, keen on getting a piece of the logging action, as an "Interim Band Council."

Never subject to the Indian Act's electoral band council system, Barriere Lake's hereditary Chiefs and Councillors are nominated by an Elder's Council and selected in community assemblies. The community assemblies are open only to Barriere Lake adults who live on the traditional territories and maintain a connection to the land. But after the faction submitted a signed petition, Indian Affairs claimed the community's leadership customs had evolved into "selection by petition."

This Indian Affairs-supported leadership was rejected by the community, and forced to rule as a "government-in-exile" from Maniwaki, a town 150 kilometres to the south. Through 1996, the group received millions from Indian Affairs while community members in Barriere Lake were deprived of funding for employment, social assistance, electricity and schooling for more than a year.

"The whole community got together, and survived on the traditional territory," said Thusky, who worries that scenario might be repeated, with a few new twists. "It was the same players then, but we didn't have the SQ [Quebec Provincial Police] to deal with, so we managed to keep the government-supported band council away."

After mediation in 1997 restored the Customary Chief and Council, and Indian Affairs agreed to restore the withheld funding, the community codified their traditional laws into a 'Customary Governance Code.' Superior Court Judge Paul concluded that their customs had not changed, and judicial review later revealed that Indian Affairs had instructed the small group to submit the petition.

Same old government tricks

Community members now believe Indian Affairs is up to its old tricks. In 2006, Jean Maurice Matchewan was re-elected Customary Chief, but a small faction ran a parallel leadership selection, claiming to have adhered to the Customary Governance Code. Indian Affairs refused to recognize Matchewan, and then put the community under Third Party Management – which mandates that an external consultant unilaterally run the community's finances and funding – claiming it was justified by Barriere Lake's large deficit and leadership uncertainty.

The Customary Elder's Council immediately challenged the decision in federal court, arguing the deficit issues could be cleared up if the money owed to Barriere Lake from the 1996 funding deprivation had been repaid as promised.

But in the yearly funding budget, negotiated by the Third Party Manager and Indian Affairs in 2007, the money owed by the government was simply struck from the record.

Associate Director Nepton refused to comment on the matter.

Superior Court Judge Paul confirmed the legitimacy of Matchewan's council in leadership mediation in spring 2007, calling the challengers a "small minority" who "did not respect the Customary Governance Code."

New chief Casey Ratt insists he has majority support this time, but has refused to enter a leadership re-selection process demanded by the Elder's Council to settle the leadership division.

Indian Affairs says it plans to take the new council off Third Party Management, something the previous leadership say was never offered to them. The new council has also indicated it wants to quash the court case challenging the federal government for unfairly imposing Third Party Management and for breaching the Trilateral Agreement.

Meanwhile, Quebec has sat for a year-and-a-half on the recommendations for its Trilateral obligations – including implementation of the co-management regime and a $1.5 million yearly share in resource revenue. But even with Quebec's agreement, the Trilateral could only go ahead with federal co-operation.

Marylynn Pouchachie says the last weeks have taken a toll on everyone, including children, who have acted out the leadership rivalry with name-calling. "I think the government has us where they want us, fighting with each other and forgetting about the real issues," she said. "And they can then keep exploiting our land and renegotiate the outstanding issues on their terms."

Police In Barriere Lake

Barriere Lake Protest

February and March in Review

Moira Peters — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:04:22 +0000

Tar Sands Snags, Uranium Mining, and <i>The Dominion</i>'s First Roadshow

In the midst of Alberta’s provincial election campaign, incumbent Premier Ed Stelmach was confronted on a campaign stop in Fort McMurray by Mikisew Cree resident George Poitras. Poitras publicly accused the premier of dismissing evidence of accelerated rates of cancer within Fort Chipewyan and other first nations communities downstream from tar sands projects. Pressure from first nations organizations within the province has been mounting upon the provincial government in recent weeks. At a meeting in Calgary on February 25, first nations chiefs from across the province passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on new developments within the tar sands; 200 residents of Fort Chipewyan staged a rally outside Alberta’s legislature days later. Most made a 600-kilometre drive in order to attend the rally. The community of 1,200 has seen the deaths of six of its residents to cancer over the last month alone.

Students at York University have won a significant victory after University President Mamdouh Shoukri announced that York would be adopting a 'no sweat’ policy for its clothing and apparel. The announcement followed a two-day sit-in outside Shoukri’s office by members of the Sustainable Purchasing Coalition, after organizers demanded to personally present a petition signed by over one thousand York students. York becomes the 17th Canadian university to adopt a ‘no sweat' policy, which will require companies to set minimum labour standards before the University will buy their products. These codes of conduct are a form of large-scale consumer pressure designed to assist apparel and textile workers who struggle for better working conditions.

In Colombia, 40,000 people marched in Bogota calling for the government to rein in paramilitary forces throughout the country. Marchers at the demonstration, organized by the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes, carried photographs of the thousands of individuals who have been killed or disappeared by paramilitary organizations throughout the country. Paramilitary organizations such as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) have had close ties to Colombia’s military over the last few decades, and have carried out an average of 600 political killings each year since 2002. The demonstration occurred in the midst of the controversy surrounding Colombia’s military attack within Ecuador, which killed several members of the FARC-EP, the leftist rebel political organization, including Paul Reyes, FARC chief ideologue. Although the attacks were later condoned by most mainstream commentators in the United States, including both Democrat frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the act drew the ire of Colombia’s neighbours, particularly Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuala and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, and nearly provoked a regional military crisis.

At Seneca College, just outside Toronto, cafeteria and janitorial staff – members of the food service union UNITE HERE – began a strike, demanding improvements in wages and benefits. The workers, employed by the multi-national food service giant Aramark, earn just above minimum wage, and receive little in benefits while facing "abusive behaviour by supervisors." The strike followed Aramark’s offer of a raise of ten cents per hour, which workers have called "ridiculous." "We voted – 100 per cent – to take strike action, because these poor working conditions can't go on," said Andy Chui, a janitor at Seneca's Markham campus and member of UNITE HERE’s Aramark bargaining committee. "This company makes a lot of money and we're simply asking for a living wage and to be treated with dignity and respect."

Aramark employees at the University of Toronto also staged a rally, demanding the company honour their contractually required wage increases and that Aramark end retributive practices against union leaders. Aramark’s website claims the company’s total sales amounted to $12.4 billion last year.

Leaders and representatives of Indigenous communities in Guatemala refused to participate in a workshop held by the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL) and their local counterpart, the Indigenous Development Fund (FODIGUA). The workshop, titled "Economic Opportunities and Indigenous Development," to have taken place in Guatemala City, was co-funded by Canadian mining companies Goldcorp and Skye Resources, the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) and the Prospectors' and Developers' Association of Canada (PDAC). FOCAL's stated objective was to provide a space for Indigenous peoples in concessioned or active mining areas to dialogue with private sector and government representatives. However, Indigenous community representatives withdrew from the meeting unanimously, stating in a press release that "the position of Indigenous communities with respect to mining in Guatemala... has been manifested through more than 17 community referenda (consultas) which have rejected mining activity."

Following Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, thousands of Serbs took to the streets in Bosnia and Serbia, as well as in cities in Europe and North America, to protest the immediate recognition of Kosovo’s independence by the United States, Britain and France. Vigils were also held by the Serb minority within Kosovo. In a state-organized rally in Belgrade in late February, 200,000 people demonstrated against the unilateral declaration of independence. At the end of the demonstration, approximately 1,000 descended upon the US embassy, setting it aflame. While thousands of Kosovar Albanians greeted the declarations with celebrations in the streets in Pristina, Serbian president Boris Tadic angrily condemned the declaration, arguing that it represented a violation of UN Resolution 1244, which stated in 1999 that Kosovo would remain a state within Serbia. Little evidence exists to suggest the billions of dollars that have been pumped into Kosovo by NATO powers since 1999 have benefited the region’s population. Electricity is intermittent throughout the province, clean water is almost non-existent, and corruption is rampant within Kosovo’s government.

Mass protests in Haiti marked the fourth anniversary of the US- and Canadian-backed coup d'état which saw the removal of the democratically elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide. Tens of thousands took to the streets in Port-au-Prince, calling for the return of Aristide to Haiti, and denouncing raids by Brazilian UN troops in poor neighbourhoods earlier in the month. These demonstrations are widely viewed as evidence of the continuing strength of the Lavalas movement within Haitian politics. Actions denouncing the coup were held in over forty cities worldwide.

A new study of living conditions of women in Afghanistan has found that, in most areas, the status of women has remained the same or worsened. Eighty-seven per cent of Afghan women have experienced violent attacks, often of a sexual nature, while 60 per cent of marriages reported in the study were forced. The report, conducted by the UK-based NGO Womankind, found that only five per cent of Afghan girls currently attend school.

For the first time since occupation by foreign troops began, an Afghan newspaper has called for a "firm date" on the departure of foreign troops, according to a Reuters report. An editorial published in Anis, a government-run newspaper, claimed that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was under the influence of foreign powers, and that government appointments are subject to review by foreign governments. "If the world does not pay attention to this matter, soon the fire of Afghanistan will burn the region and a situation will emerge that will be unimaginable for anyone," the editorial warned.

The head of the second-largest mining company in the world drew protests when he was asked to lecture on sustainability at Dalhousie University in Halifax. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, chairman of AngloAmerican, is also the former head of Shell Oil's Nigerian operations. "This company... is responsible for forcibly displacing hundreds of subsistence farmers in northeastern Colombia," said one protester. Owned in part by AngloAmerican, the Cerrejon coal mine, the largest open-pit mine in the world, expanded its operations after the Indigenous and Afro-Colombian village of Tabaco was destroyed by bulldozers in 2002.

About 50 residents of the African-Nova Scotian community of Lincolnville and their supporters marched two kilometres from their town to blockade a nearby dumpsite. The Lincolnville dump is the second landfill built in the area. The protesters demanded the dump be shut down, and called for an "end to environmental racism," drawing parallels to the fate of the former Halifax community of Africville, which was destroyed in the 1960s in what many see as an exercise in racist municipal planning. Many residents have complained that the dumpsite poses a clear health hazard to Lincolnville residents. Resident James Desmond noted that the site has been a dumping ground for, among other substances, transformers from power poles, which he believes have leached PCBs into the ground. Said Desmond, “I’ve seen dead horses, I’ve seen dead carcasses, I’ve seen a little bit of everything going in and around that dump.”

Canadian mining company Cameco Resources is attempting to expand its uranium mining operation near Crawford, Nebraska, and is requesting the use of an additional 2.4 billion gallons of water per year from the High Plains aquifer. At the historic Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, a recent spate of brain seizures, cancers, miscarriages, and birth defects has been linked to previous radioactive spills. Cameco claims it has cleaned up all radioactive material that entered the water supply.

Recent reports indicate that shareholders of pipeline company TransCanada are taking the company to task over its "mismanagement" of the issue of aboriginal land rights in its dealings with the Lubicon First Nation in northern Alberta. In letters between TransCanada legal counsel and Lubicon advisors, TransCanada had previously refused to "alter project timelines" in order to address Lubicon concerns. Several UN committees have issued rulings upholding Lubicon rights to the land; however, the rulings have been ignored by the governments of Alberta and Canada.

Boise, a major supplier of paper to office supply chains OfficeMax and Grand & Toy, has agreed to stop using materials that originate from traditional use areas in Grassy Narrows, Ontario. Abitibi/Bowater, the world's largest paper company, has been clearcutting trees from the traditional land of the Grassy Narrows community and selling the pulp to paper suppliers. Boise made the decision after a campaign initiated by the Rainforest Action Network targeted stores supplied by the company.

Canada’s Bank of Nova Scotia is now owner of the second largest “mega-bank” in Guatemala, as well as additional banks in the Dominican Republic, after their purchase of Grupo Altas Cumbres of Chile. The acquisition was announced on February 4. Terms of the sale have not been released.

Algonquin leader Paula Sherman agreed to stop protesting a planned uranium mine on Algonquin land near Sharbot Lake, Ontario. Sherman, a single mother of three, and Robert Lovelace, both co-chiefs of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation, were sentenced to six months in jail and fines for disobeying a court injunction granted to mining exploration company Frontenac Ventures. Both admitted to their involvement in protests on the property upon which Frontenac hopes to build the uranium mine. Although Frontenac Ventures had obtained the approval of the Ontario government, Algonquin communities in the area had not been consulted or notified before Frontenac began destroying trees and rocks on their territory. Protesters from both the Shabot Obaadjiwan and Ardoch Algonquin First Nations occupied the disputed site from late June to mid-October last year. The occupation ended after the Ontario government agreed to mediation talks, but began again this month after talks failed.

Robert Maurice, one of Toronto’s 70,000 reported homeless people, died of exposure at the age of 50. Maurice had housing at the time of his death but, according to sources close to him, as a result of overcrowding and other conditions within the boarding home in which he had been staying, he remained on the streets. At the time of his death he had a broken leg and was walking on crutches. Two weeks earlier the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), along with a number of agencies, had expressed concerns about the closing of over 300 shelter beds in Toronto, which has led to serious overcrowding in Toronto hostels. OCAP would stage a noisy, disruptive rally inside Toronto city council chambers after learning of Maurice's death. A letter from Maurice’s ex-wife to OCAP reminds Canadians that “anyone can be allowed to freeze to death this day and age; where Rob died was downtown, Bay & Bloor area.”

Tens of thousands of agricultural workers with tractors, cows and banners gathered at Mexico City's downtown plaza, the Zocalo, urging the Mexican government to renegotiate the rules in the agricultural sections of the North American Free Trade Agreement. These rules effectively do away with customs tariffs for corn, beans, sugar and milk starting in 2008. Governmental officials have recognized the agreement has helped commerce and the economy in Mexico but has not helped the agricultural sector, which suffers from low salaries and insufficient financial assistance. According to La Jornada, farmers’ leaders said they are planning to proceed with a national work stoppage which will include blocking roads, ports, airports and custom offices.

Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president of 49 years, at the age of 81. Castro’s rule was the longest in the world for a head of government, and his retirement saw the peaceful passage of power to his brother Raul Castro and a younger generation of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC). Fidel, who has not been seen in public since unofficially transferring his authority as leader of Cuba to Raul in 2006 due to illness, wrote to the Cuban people: “I am not saying goodbye to you. I only wish to fight as a soldier of ideas.”

Although "clean air" legislation has cleaned up the most visible smog-like pollution in industrialized countries, Lung Chi Chen of the medical school at New York University said microscopic soot particles from vehicle exhaust kills an estimated 30-40,000 people a year in the United States. Breathing the air in New York City is similar to living with a smoker in terms of risk from heart disease, he explained, and its effect on the human cardiovascular system is comparable to that on fish living in an oil spill. In fact, the most modern diesel and petrol engines with efficient filters generated the most dangerous particles (less than 2.5 microns in diameter).

Australian media reports on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government’s apology to members of the “stolen generations” – the Aboriginal and “half-caste” children who were forcibly removed from their parents by government authorities from 1900 to the early 1970s – left out the voices of 2,000 Aborigines from across the country who gathered in Canberra to protest the federal government’s Northern Territory (NT) police-military intervention. Natasha Moore, a 23-year-old social worker, travelled from Perth, Western Australia, to attend the demonstration. “[The NT policy] is a clear attack on Aboriginal people in remote areas who live in poverty and don’t have any real services. There was the report on child abuse but the government just used this as an excuse to intervene. The intervention is racist and discriminatory.”

A Federal Court has ordered an environmental review panel to justify its decision to allow a $7 billion tar sands project in northern Alberta to go ahead. The ruling, released Wednesday, comes after four Prairie environmental groups went to court in January to try to stop Imperial Oil’s Kearl project, claiming the federal-provincial review panel that approved the project had not adequately assessed the potential environmental damage. The Court ruled that this latest tar sands project approved for the Fort McMurray area must go back to an environmental review panel.

A Pakistani family who lived in a church for 18 months to avoid deportation was finally granted their freedom on the condition that they make a short drive. Hassan Raza, his wife and their six children spent most of the last year and a half in sanctuary in the Crescent Fort Rouge United Church in Winnipeg, afraid of being arrested and deported if they ventured outside. The family has been granted temporary resident status after negotiating a deal with federal immigration officials that required them to make a one-hour drive to the US border where, technically at least, they left Canada for a brief time and then re-entered.

Canada and the US have signed an agreement that paves the way for military forces from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal. Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed on February 14 in Texas. The US military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.

Israeli troops reportedly pulled out of northern Gaza after days of fighting that killed 130 Palestinians in the deadliest military assault on Gaza in years. The assault drew worldwide protests, but Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has warned the withdrawal of troops does not mean Israel’s military operation there is over. The clashes reached a peak after Israel sent in a regiment of ground troops in an operation dubbed “Hot Winter” that killed 77 Palestinians in two days, and 130 over five days. Of the dead, 39 were children and 10 were women. In addition, 370 children were injured.

More than 1,000 members of Toronto's Tibetan community and their supporters marched in the streets, some lying down in major intersections, to peacefully draw attention to human rights violations by China and censorship of the press in the face of rising civil unrest in Tibet. On another continent, three pro-Tibetan protesters face misdemeanour charges of disrespectful behaviour after disrupting the flame-lighting ceremony for the Beijing Olympics at Greece’s Ancient Olympia stadium. In the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, days of peaceful protests of the Chinese occupation of Tibet led by Buddhist clergy spiralled into riots on March 14, after Chinese riot police fired bullets and tear gas on protesters in an effort to control the city. In the ensuing chaos, mobs smashed and looted Han Chinese-run businesses and shops. Estimates put the number of dead between 22 and 140, with over 600 injured. Beijing has accused the exiled Dalai Lama of plotting terror in Tibet, while Jacques Rogge, head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), refused to criticize China for its violent crackdown on demonstrations. Canadian Olympic rower Jake Wetzel expressed surprise that there has not been more of an international outcry about China’s repression of Tibetan protesters. "I guess it kind of shows how weak the position of athletes is in making a statement about these things when the international community can't really even condemn what's happening." Meanwhile, Toronto mayor David Miller will continue with a scheduled trade mission to China, whose stated goal is to build ties between Toronto and its sister city, Chongqing.

In Toronto, 1510 King Street West became the object of technical bickering between a neighbourhood residents’ group and the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), when residents protested a development plan to turn the “Pope Squat” building into a rooming house. Abandoned in the 1990s, the building was occupied by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) during Pope John Paul II’s 2002 summer visit to Toronto. The building, which has a history of squatting and abandonment, has been sold by the city to a private individual, who received federal funding to develop rooming houses. Rooming houses – single-room rentals which share kitchen and bathroom facilities – are currently Toronto’s most inexpensive permanent housing option. Residents opposed to the King Street West development claim it will change the stability of the neighbourhood. In fact, many houses on the street were originally rooming houses, and have been converted into large private homes, and those conversions have already had the effect of changing the "stability" of the neighbourhood.

In Belgium, hundreds of peace activists were arrested after they attempted to breach North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Brussels. The activists were protesting military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as NATO’s use of nuclear weapons. Police in riot gear and on horses clashed with the protesters, using dogs, horses, pepper spray, clubs and water cannons to prevent the protesters from entering NATO grounds. Reports on the number of protesters arrested vary from 100 to 1,000. Organizers of the “NATO - Game Over” protest say that without this political and military organization, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would not be possible. They also point out that according to international humanitarian law, nuclear weapons are illegal. NATO has 350 US nuclear weapons deployed in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain and Turkey.

The vote by Liberal and Conservative MP's to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan to the year 2011 was disrupted by chants within the House of Commons gallery by anti-war proestors. Two days later, hundreds of people took to the streets in 20 communities across Canada to protest the extended troop deployment. The Conservative motion passed by a vote of 198 to 77. The Liberals voted in favour of the motion, while both the Bloc Québécois and the NDP voted against.

To mark the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, hundreds of marches, sit-ins and other protests were held around the United States. Among those actions were the Winter Soldier hearings, held over four days at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland. US soldiers who served in Iraq convened to give eyewitness accounts of the war and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Up to one million Iraqis have been killed; 2.5 million people are estimated to be displaced inside Iraq; and more than two million have fled to neighbouring countries. Nearly 4,000 US soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands wounded. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the overall cost of this war will be $3 trillion.

Two hundred members of the Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) and their supporters took over the Senate Chambers of York University. The protesters called on York’s President Mamdouh Shoukri to allow an open debate of the international campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions seen to be complicit in the violation of Palestinian freedoms imposed by the Israeli army. These violations are said to include the closure of universities, restrictions of the movement of Palestinian students and faculty and, in extreme cases, the arrest, torture and killing of students. On exiting the Senate Chambers, the SAIA was met with a counter rally of pro-Israeli supporters. Undeterred, one SAIA member stated, “We will continue to organize for holding the debate about the academic boycott of Israel and to fight for our University to divest from institutional ties to Israeli Apartheid.”

The Cerrejon Mine Company in Colombia, owner of the world’s largest open-pit coal mine, recently received a final report from its own review panel. The company has been accused of failing to comply with basic human-rights norms with regards to indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities that have been forcibly dispaced as a result of its mining operations. The five-member panel, chaired by John Harker, president of Cape Breton University, recommends the company engage in the collective – rather than individual – resettlement of residents of future displaced communities. The panel also encourages the expanded implementation of social programs for affected communities and an increased transparency of company conduct if necessary trust levels are to be achieved.

After nearly five years of publishing on the web and in print, The Dominion launched Own Your Media!, a cross-Canada tour aimed at recruiting members and sustainers to the newspaper, which recently incorporated as a solidarity cooperative. Editor Dru Oja Jay and Managing Editor Stuart Neatby travelled from Antigonish, Nova Scotia to London, Ontario pitching the media cooperative to towns and cities east of the prairies. Jay continued west, presenting in communities from Winnipeg to Victoria, accompanied by Eva Bartlett, who organized simultaneous speaking engagements where she discussed her recent solidarity work in Gaza. The Dominion editors gave 24 presentations in 23 rural and urban communities in six weeks. Backed by the likes of Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and Naomi Klein, and facilitated by over 50 organizing volunteers, Jay and Neatby solidified a national network of individuals and organizations committed to supporting independent grassroots media in Canada. Jay said he was “surprised by how enthusiastic people were about the idea of local media cooperatives, especially in the prairies,” where The Dominion traditionally sees a smaller following. To find out more about the cooperative, to become a member, or to sign up as a sustainer, visit mediacoop.ca.

February and March in Review

Manufactured Crises on Stolen Land

dru — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:34:10 +0000

The Chalk River Reactor and the Kichesipirini Algonquin (part two of three)

[Continued from Part I]

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is an independent federal agency charged with protecting health, safety, security and the environment and to respect Canada's international commitments on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

The CNSC has two components: a staff organization and the Commission Tribunal. The Tribunal is designed to make independent decisions on the licensing of nuclear-related activities in Canada.

The Commission reports to parliament through the minister of natural resources, but does not deal directly with the minister. According to the Guide Book for Heads of Agencies, "Maintaining an arm's length relationship to ministers is particularly important for those organizations whose mandate is to make decisions that determine or regulate the privileges, rights or benefits of Canadians."

The Nuclear Safety and Control Act does allow cabinet to issue directives but they must be of "general application on broad policy matters" [section 12]. It goes against the rule of law and the principle of separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive that the government exercise any authority regarding the autonomy of the CNSC.

The minister is not authorized to give any directive to the CNSC on a specific case.

But that is what has taken place in the case of Chalk River, when the Harper government removed Linda Keen from her post and reversed the CNSC's decision to shut down the reactor.

The Chalk River reactor, however, is not the only dangerous nuclear project on Algonquin land toward which the CNSC has turned a blind eye.

Also located within Kichesipirini jurisdiction and unceded traditional territory is SRB Technologies Canada Inc. (SRBT), a tritium light manufacturer operating in a mini-mall on Boundary Rd., Pembroke, Ontario. This nuclear facility is located near several businesses, a hockey arena and a residential area, including new subdivisions with young families.

SRBT uses tritium to manufacture glow-in-the-dark signs.

This company is considered a source of tritium environmental contamination in the Pembroke area. A growing body of evidence suggests that tritium is mutagenic (mutates genes causing hereditary defects) and teratogenic (causes malformations of an embryo or fetus). The populations most sensitive to tritium are considered to be fetuses, young children and women of childbearing age.

CNSC researchers found that levels of radioactive tritium in the groundwater on plant property were up to 80 times the permissible limit for drinking water. SRBT does not yet have an approved decommissioning plan to deal with the current contamination issues and no financial guarantee for decommissioning or cleaning up their mess.

As a Class 1 nuclear facility, it was required to have such a plan under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, which came into effect in 2000. The federal nuclear regulator's report called SRBT's record on environmental protection, "significantly below requirements." Previously, CNSC inspectors identified several irregularities and illegal operations by SRBT while under Commission licence. Despite this, SRBT was continually awarded new licences and allowed to continue operations.

Only after Kichesipirini environmental steward Al Villeneuve intervened did the CNSC reverse its endorsement of the at-fault SRBT, in early 2007.

Villeneuve argued: "We have been here since time out of mind. As our ancestors did, we continue to follow 'Algonquin Law' as it pertains to the outright protection of this Earth, our Mother, and all that exists on it."

Referring to a long documented history of persecution and genocide, he added: "Through history from first contact in 1603, the Kichesipirini/Algonquin people have suffered greatly at the hands of non-natives and government[s]. We suffered as a nation, perhaps the greatest attempted genocide in Canada...

"SRB Technologies," continued Villeneuve, "in order to reduce their toxic, nuclear waste contaminating their site, believes it is better to use our river for a 'nuclear dump.' You have no right to pollute the waters of our spiritual and historic heartland...You have no right to dump any garbage...into our waters.

"While this land and this river is still under dispute with our nation and the governments of Canada and Ontario, we, as members of the Kichesipirini/Algonkin nation, will do all that is in our power as a nation of people to alert others of any destruction of our homelands, including the United Nations."

Villeneuve went on to hold the members of the CNSC, including Linda Keen, personally responsible for any breaches of law, associated damages and the continued persecution of the Kichesipirini Algonquins.

To this day, the Algonquins have never signed a land treaty pursuant to the Constitution of Canada. Following the 1997 Delgamuukw decision by the Supreme Court, we now know that "Lands reserved for the Indians" include not only First Nations reserves set aside deliberately, but also all land subject to valid First Nation claims of Aboriginal title.

The Algonquin situation is unique in that reserves have been illegally set aside in unceded Algonquin territory. Algonquin citizens, therefore, have the constitutionally protected right to identify with traditional governance if they so choose. Traditional governance must meet legal requirements according to established rules of law, including international law.

The Canadian Supreme Court has determined that those political entities in place prior to sovereignty assertion of the Crown, which have never come under domestic laws such as the Indian Act, are still considered to exist and have jurisdiction. The laws of these entities supersede domestic laws, municipal laws and the Indian Act. Those individuals residing on reserves, or land not recognized by Indian Act registration, still hold inherent Aboriginal rights to participate in governance according to traditional custom and practices, and can seek compensation for infringements.

Currently, nothing in the Nuclear Safety Act relieves the Commission of liability in respect to a tort or extra-contractual civil liability to which the Commission would otherwise be subject.

This guarantees that in an area of grave responsibility, such as nuclear safety, strong incentives are in place to ensure the strictest exercise of due diligence.

On April 1, 2007, however, the Government of Canada put into effect the Cabinet Directive on Streamling Regulation (CDSR) under the pretense of making regulatory improvements. If these regulatory changes are applied to nuclear safety, there will be a gradual shift away from safety and environmental protection as priorities. Regulatory activities resulting in the greatest overall benefit to current and future generations of Canadians would become the new objectives.

On November 18, 2007, the CNSC ordered the shut-down of the 50-year-old reactor after numerous previous concessions over safety concerns regarding the emergency power system not being connected to cooling pumps, as required to prevent a meltdown during possible disasters such as earthquakes.

Federal Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn claimed that the Conservative government consulted with 800 healthcare facilities across Canada, including close to 250 nuclear medicine facilities reliant on the products to understand the impact of the shortage.

"From the government's discussion with medical experts, it was obvious--the isotope shortage was potentially very serious," he said.

"It was also clear, Mr. Chair, had we not acted, that people invariably would have died. We could not let that happen. We had to act, and we did," Lunn said during a hearing on the matter.

On December 10, the Conservative government issued a ministerial directive and ordered the CNSC to reopen the site. The CNSC, with Keen as president, refused, contending that a required back-up safety system be first installed to prevent the risk of a meltdown during an earthquake or other disaster.

On December 11, an emergency measure passed through the House of Commons overturned the watchdog's decision and the reactor was restarted for a 120-day run on December 16.

In a subsequent press release issued by the Commission on January 15, 2008, the CNSC announced that the Privy Council had adopted an Order in Council terminating Linda Keen’s position as president of the Commission be effective immediately.

Framed as emergency measures taken by a government concerned about the health and safety of Canadian citizens put at risk because of the shortage of medical isotopes, the failing reactor was reactivated and Linda Keen was fired from her position as nuclear safety watchdog.

"In effect, this was a manufactured crisis," says Dr. Ole Hendrickson. "The Harper government depicted the CNSC as being negligent by delaying critical medical diagnostic procedures for patients. This diverted attention away from AECL's [Atomic Energy of Canada Limited] negligence in failing to complete essential safety upgrades."

He says the Harper government was responding to pressure from corporate healthcare giant MDS Nordion and that the shortage of isotopes was an isolated problem that could have been managed. He speculates that by diverting attention from AECL's other problems, this emergency legislation helps the federal government maintain AECL's asset value for future privatization.

It would seem that the dependency of the nuclear medical industry on the facilities located at AECL and the apparent lack of safety-net planning and back-up alternatives are more a display of the inadequacies of the current parliamentary government, than any misjudgement of Linda Keen in her capacity as nuclear safety watchdog.

The Sierra Club of Canada has called on parliament to protect the Nuclear Safety Commission from political interference. It insisted the watchdog be granted powers of independence similar to those given to Superior Court judges and the auditor general. "The safety of Canadians is threatened when our Nuclear Safety Commission is subject to the kind of bullying the minister has demonstrated," Stephen Hazell, the Sierra Club's executive director, told the Canadian Press.

A lead editorial in the magazine The New Scientist condemned Canada's handling of the Chalk River reactor. "Canada is sending a dangerous message to these countries when it is prepared to undermine its own watchdog and compromise the protection of its workers and the public in order to keep one of its reactors open."

The deeper question, rarely discussed, remains that of the land that Chalk River laboratories are built on.

Professor of law John Borrows has argued that "Canada is built on a foundation of sand, as long as the rule of law is not consistently applied to Aboriginal peoples."

If Canada's legal foundations with regards to Aboriginal title are in question, where does that leave a nuclear facility built on unceded Algonquin territory?

[Read Part III: An Eagle Feather for Linda Keen?]

Migizi Kiishkaabikaan

The Art of Walking

hillarybain — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:00:36 +0000

Art project creates blisters and curiosity

On July 15, 2007, Eryn Foster started her vacation predictably enough: by walking out of her Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, home and locking the door. Her destination of Sackville, New Brunswick, lay a couple of hundred kilometres away, or about a two-hour drive. But rather than throw a suitcase into the back seat of her car, Foster threw a backpack on and started the first day of New Canadian Pilgrimages.

Vigorous exercise, mild impoverishment, dirtiness -– not everyone's idea of the perfect way to spend a vacation. "I was just feeling, like, 'I am so tired of working in an office all day...I want to just walk -– for weeks, just walk,'" explains Foster, a visual artist and the director of Eyelevel Gallery in Halifax. For those who feel they spend too much time slumped over a computer, it’s easy to sympathize with her urge to literally walk away. But unlike many sufferers of office malaise, Foster wasn’t paralyzed by her inaction. She rang up Struts Gallery in Sackville and began to publicize New Canadian Pilgrimages (NCP) as part of the Ok. Quoi?! Contemporary Arts Festival. NCP was now an event and everyone was invited.

Marking uncharted territory by foot through rural New Brunswick and Nova Scotia may have a certain rustic, romantic appeal, but the reality of walking for three weeks straight with a 20-lb backpack is punishing, unnerving and lonely. Although Foster allowed participants to join NCP for however long they wanted (after all, not everyone can take three weeks off at a time), Michael Waterman and his 15-year-old son Nic boldly signed on for the entire duration.

"I've done hiking and backpacking trips in the past," says Waterman Sr., "so when Eryn told me about this project, I was immediately interested. There was a lot of time to be with my own thoughts, which weren’t bound by the time and space we were travelling through." Wandering gave respite to their minds and spirits, but Foster and her companions also became intimate with the physical suffering that’s central to the traditional pilgrimage. "The blisters were relentless,” says Foster, “but I actually got into the pain part of it and learned how to take a lot of Ibuprofen, while also tricking my mind into thinking it wasn't so bad."

While New Canadian Pilgrimages shares the physical tribulation, introspection and need for adequate footwear that goes along with such well-known pilgrimage routes as the Appalachian Trail in the US, or the Camino de Santiago in Spain, it diverges in the specifics. There is no trail infrastructure, except for highways and rural routes built primarily for vehicular traffic, and the walk does not adhere to any static geographic location or "sacred path." Planned as a yearly event, Foster wants NCP to be an evolving series of performances about walking. Each year the route, participants and art generated about the subject will vary.

As Foster got used to explaining to curious onlookers, the pilgrimage isn’t “for anything.” She’s not raising money for a cause and by traditional pilgrimage standards, it’s quite secular: no martyrdom or “deal with God” involved. Foster was mainly walking to test an idea, generate new ones and explore the unexpected. "My walk to Sackville was a research project, to see what it would be like to walk a pilgrimage," she explains. "I spent a lot of time thinking: 'Is this art? How could I make this art?'"

One way Foster transformed her pilgrimage into art was by staging performances and interventions en route. In "Laundry Line," for example, Foster and Waterman hung a clothesline between themselves and dried their clothes on it as they walked. "The intention was to create a rupture of some sort," says Foster, "something unusual or slightly absurd to draw attention to our walking, and as a way to creatively interact with each other as we walked."

"I think artists and other creative people have been using walking as a way to think, create, make, contemplate for a millennium," says Foster. "I was really interested in the idea of having a mobile studio as well, to get away from being in front of a computer all the time." As it turns out, Foster has joined an active and expanding international artistic community. From September 17 to November 2, 2007, the Banff Centre for the Arts hosted the “Walking and Art Residency,” which featured the collaboration of over 25 different artists, writers, curators and theorists working in all media. The similarly titled "Walking Project," hosted by the University of Michigan and the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, also brought together artists from around the world in a series of residencies from 2003 through 2006.

As rapid transit and urban infrastructure around the world increasingly displace moderate or long-distance walking, the subject is becoming more relevant to artists and other cultural thinkers. According to Will Self, who details his walk from his suburban home in London to downtown Manhattan in his book Psychogeography, travel by foot is neither valued nor supported in contemporary culture, because the way humans interact with geography, space and transport has changed so dramatically. These days, it’s too impractical and time-consuming for most people to approach walking the way Wanderlust author Rebecca Solnit describes as, "an investigation, a ritual, a meditation […] physiologically like and philosophically unlike the way the mail carrier brings the mail and the office worker reaches the train."

"In Europe, people have been travelling from one village to the next on foot for thousands of years, so the car has not completely obliterated the ancient infrastructure which supports such activities," says Michael Waterman. But, he says, a modern-day pilgrimage in North America demands “an improvisatory imagination.” It seems only natural, then, that artists are the ones blazing that trail and inspiring others to do the same.

Eryn Foster will be releasing the details of this year's pilgrimage near the end of March/beginning of April. Check her blog for details. For more information on the art of walking, check out Walking Project and Walking and Art Residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

New Canadian Pilgrimages

Mission Extended

hillarybain — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:00:36 +0000

Pro-US panel was key in extending Afghan mission

Buoyed by the recommendations of a government-appointed blue-ribbon panel, on March 13 Canada's parliament approved a motion to extend its combat mission in Afghanistan until the end of 2011.

The outcome of the motion was effectively predetermined, as the two largest parties in the House of Commons -- the Liberals and the governing Conservatives -- agreed on the wording of the resolution in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay called the vote "historic" and applauded the "bipartisan consensus" it achieved. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion characterised the resolution as "basically the Liberal motion on Afghanistan."

The political debate about the motion to extend the mission was shaped by the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan, a study group appointed by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and led by former Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley.

The Manley Panel, as it came to be known, was created by the prime minister in October 2007 and foreshadowed the importance of the parliamentary vote on Afghanistan, which took place within the context of a Conservative minority government. Without approval from the Liberal members of parliament, the Conservative confidence motion would not have passed, thus bringing down the government and forcing a federal election.

For their part, the Liberals were hard-pressed to vote against the Afghanistan intervention given that it was Liberal governments that brought Canada into the mission in 2001 and into the heart of the counterinsurgency war in Kandahar in 2005.

The motion passed 198-77, with the New Democratic Party and Bloc Québécois in opposition. NDP leader Jack Layton criticised the "carte blanche" the motion afforded and urged Canadians to "remember this during elections."

During the vote, protestors in the House of Commons public gallery chanted, "End it, don't extend it," while demonstrations against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took place in more than 20 cities across Canada on Saturday, March 15.

While the Manley Panel was bipartisan in affiliation, its members shared an essential vision of the importance of Canada's integration with the United States. Stephen Clarkson, a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, said the panel "was clearly selected on the basis of reliably delivering a pro-US interpretation of the Canadian interest."

The panel included three senior officials from the era of Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, including: Derek Burney, a key architect of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement; Jake Epp, a former cabinet minister and oil executive; and Paul Tellier, former head of the Canadian National Railway and Bombardier Inc.

The fifth panel member, former journalist Pamela Wallin, recently served as the Canadian Consulate General in New York. For his part, Manley's significant efforts to integrate Canada-US security apparatuses with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge after the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, earned him TIME Magazine Canada's "Newsmaker of the Year" in December 2001.

"They are all either conservative Liberals, or Conservatives who have an involvement in the United States-Canada relationship," said Clarkson, who has written extensively on US-Canadian political and economic relations and is the author of Uncle Sam and Us.

"Since Canada's role in Afghanistan is so obviously connected to Ottawa's desire to please Washington, it was very unlikely they would recommend anything other than staying in Afghanistan," he said.

Shortly after the publication of the panel's report, the Manley committee's executive director, Elissa Goldberg, was appointed Canada's top civilian representative in Kandahar, where she said she will be facilitating the "overall leadership and strategic direction" of Canada's mission.

The significance of the report on the outcome of the vote was clear. Defence Minister Peter MacKay immediately pointed to the "important work of the Manley Panel [which] formed the basis for members of parliament to draw upon." Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier called the report "key" to the vote and said it was "appreciated internationally."

Bernier told reporters on Parliament Hill that the motion allowed the prime minister to go to the upcoming NATO summit in Bucharest "with a strong mandate in his pocket." The Bucharest meeting is considered an important strategy session for NATO, as the security conditions continue to deteriorate in Afghanistan.

The motion that passed in parliament stated that the "extension of Canada's military presence in Afghanistan is approved by this House expressly on the condition that NATO secure a battle group of approximately 1,000 to rotate into Kandahar, no later than February 2009."

The parliamentary extension also calls for Canada to secure transport helicopters and improved unmanned aerial surveillance drones, something the Manley Panel also recommended to reduce the number of casualties of Canadian soldiers. Since 2002, 82 Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan; 31 of the last 33 combat fatalities resulting from roadside bombs.

Speaking at a conference of senior government officials and policymakers in Brussels on Sunday, MacKay pushed his request for additional NATO troops in Canada's area of responsibility: "Come up with a thousand troops and you get to keep 2,500," he said, referring to the number of Canadian troops stationed in Kandahar.

US President George W. Bush said that he intends to use the Bucharest summit to persuade allies to ramp-up the fight in the south. "We're mindful of their request and we want to help them meet that request," Bush said of the Canadian contingency.

Retired Canadian Major-General Terry Liston said that the troop request is simply a political gesture, far short of what NATO generals on the ground say is required. "Just in Kandahar province, according to American [counterinsurgency] doctrine you'd need about 16,000 soldiers," he said. "It's a drop in the bucket, the 1,000."

Meanwhile, in anticipation of the so-called fighting season in Afghanistan, the US has sent an additional 3,600 Marines on a seven-month deployment to southern Afghanistan. The Marines, about half of whom have already arrived in the country, will operate under Canadian Major-General Marc Lessard and NATO's Regional Command South, which includes Helmand and Kandahar provinces -- the heart of the Afghan insurgency.

A report by the United Nations secretary-general earlier this month detailed a sharp increase in insurgent activity in 2007, an average of 566 incidents a month, compared with 425 a month in 2006. Data from the United States Central Command indicates a concurrent rise in NATO and US airstrikes during that same period –- 2,926 bombs dropped in 2007, up from 1,770 in 2006. More than 8,000 people were killed last year, including at least 1,500 civilians, the U.N. said.

A version of this article was published by IPS

Fighter Plane in Afghanistan

Lies, Omissions and Nuclear Waste

dru — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:43:28 +0000

The Chalk River Reactor and the Kichesipirini Algonquin (part one of three)

On January 16, the Harper government made headlines when it fired Linda Keen from her post as president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). Under Keen's leadership, the CNSC had shut down the aging Chalk River nuclear reactor in November, and had been at odds with the Harper government ever since. Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn ostensibly fired Keen because of a "worldwide shortage" of medical isotopes supplied by the reactor allegedly caused by its closure. In Canada's media, the debate has been about whether Keen's firing violated the arm's-length nature of the CNSC, depriving it of the ability to make independent decisions.

What reports largely miss is the long history of lies, theft and radioactive contamination surrounding Chalk River Laboratories (CRL). If the reactor continues to operate, this history will find its way to the fore. The one-sided battle between Canadian government and corporations and the area's original inhabitants will continue until accountability, public health and the rule of law--the supposed mandate of organizations like the CNSC--are achieved.

Chalk River Origins

The mining project that became the infamous Port Radium began in 1890, when a prospector laid claim to a vein of silver and pitchblende on the shore of Sahtu, or Great Bear Lake. In the early 1940s, uranium from that site was needed for the Manhattan Project, the US-UK-Canadian intiative that built the first atomic bomb, and the mine was expropriated. Sahtugot'ine workers who were exposed to radioactive materials but who were not warned of the danger began to die of exotic cancers years later; their land and water was contaminated with radioactive materials.

From there, the uranium headed south.

The Combined Policy Committee, the three-country committee charged with collaboration in the creation of an atomic bomb, mandated the construction of the world's first large-scale heavy water reactor in Canada. The ultra-secret project required immediate access to very deep water for generation and cooling purposes.

On August 21, 1944 it was decided to locate the heavy water project at Chalk River, Ontario, situated along the shores of the Ottawa River. Here begins the relationship between the nuclear industry, the historic "Kichesippi River" and the Algonquin people.

In an article written in 2000, professor of psychology and historian Evan Pritchard has written that "One band of 'Anishinabe-Algonkians,' the 'Kiche-sipi-rini' or 'People of the Great River,' were possibly the first of this ancient culture to settle down in one place, Allumette Island.

"Allumette is the largest island in the Ottawa River, the river which forms the boundary between Ontario and Quebec, and there is evidence of sedentary Anishinabe-Algonkian settlements there going back at least 6,280 years, and occupation in the area dating back 7,000 years as it became inhabitable after the Ice Age. From this power base in the center of the trade route, their influence and language spread throughout North America. Hence they have been called 'The First People.'

"Allumette Island," Pritchard continues, "was a turning point in the civilization. There is little doubt that the Anishinabe-Algonkians of Allumette are the direct descendants of the so-called "Clovis" people, long considered the oldest group of Native Americans."

The Kichesipirini, in accordance with the Aboriginal legal system -- in place prior to any sovereignty assertions by any imperial Crown, controlled economic activity and political diplomacy of the Ottawa River and surrounding region. Initially, that jurisdiction was to have been protected but the government suddenly changed its mind in 1837, cancelling the promises of a reserve, preferring to move people from their traditional land to areas away from the river. The move opened the door for exploitation of Kichesipirini territory by the lumber trade, and destroyed the Algonquin traditional governance system.

While those who agreed to move to the established reserves or who joined other satellite historic bands were then federally "recognized," many others from the Ottawa, Renfrew and Pontiac Counties did not re-locate and were later referred to as "stragglers." The governments of Canada, Ontario and Quebec, like the colonial imperial governments that preceded them, consistently treated the traditional Algonquin people as squatters on their own land. The Kichesipirini, despite continuing to exist within their territory, were administratively erased from the public record through Canadian domestic Aboriginal policy.

More than 3,000 hectares along the Ottawa River were expropriated, including farm land from several Kichesipirini families, 30 km northwest of Pembroke, Ontario. Thus, Chalk River Laboratories (CRL) had its beginnings. The area is a place of spiritual significance to the Algonquin people because of the depth of the water and its proximity to other sacred sites, including ancestral gravesites.

The local people, predominately Kichesipirini Algonquin, were told that what was being built was a plastic processing plant.

During the first several decades of operation at Chalk River, no safety standards or protocols were in place. Nuclear wastes were handled carelessly, causing widespread radioactive contamination of the site far beyond what would be considered acceptable standards today.

Local residents were never properly informed. Civilians, especially the persons of Aboriginal descent more dependent on local natural resources for food, have still never been identified or monitored. According to expert sources, radioactive wastes are still leaking into the Ottawa River, which is an important source of food, recreation and drinking water used by numerous communities downriver in Ontario and Quebec, including the city of Ottawa.

This site, with its legacy of secrecy, expediency, and experimentation is now owned and operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), the federal crown corporation that designs and markets CANDU reactors.

The reactor built at Chalk River began operation in 1957, and has been slated for retirement for years. In 2006, AECL assured the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) that safety upgrades would be made to the reactor, including emergency power supply to two heavy-water pumps. AECL then lied when they submitted a Safety Analysis for NRU relicensing, claiming that the required safety modifications were completed. During a routine meeting in November of 2007, CNSC learned that the pumps were in fact not connected.

AECL loses revenue to a private company. Under the Conservative Mulroney government, one of AECL's hopes of financial sustainability, the lucrative revenue from medical isotope productions, was sold from the Crown corporation to the private firm MDS Nordion. Most of the revenue from isotope productions would always go to MDS Nordion as per their 40 year supply agreement. As a result, taxpayers carried the expenses of reactor and isotopes production, liabilities, decommissioning, and maintenance but MDS Nordion recieved most of the profits that accrued.

The local population, not having recovered from declines in the forest industry, is now becoming dependent on the subsidized nuclear industry as their major employer and economic contributor. Lacking economic diversity, fearful of job loss and community revenue losses, few local people or community leaders will now oppose this leeching giant, this Windego, on their shorelines.

[Read part II: Manufactured Crises on Stolen Land]

Paula Lapierre is the Principal Sachem of the Kichesipirini Algonquin First Nation

Chalk River

Machetes, Ethnic Conflict and Reductionism

dru — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:44:03 +0000

Racist assumptions mar western media coverage of Kenya

Arriving back in Montreal after a brief journey to my home country of Kenya during the December elections there, I went online to get the latest updates. In the days immediately following the election on December 27 the incumbent President Kibaki stole the vote and had himself sworn in before a motley group of dejected government officials. Opposition supporters rose up to protest the rigged result. Ironically, the only source of news in Kenya before I left was the BBC. The government had banned the local media from reporting any conflict, leaving the country in a domestic media blackout.

Reading media reports from Montreal, I found myself more confused and afraid than when I was still in Kenya. According to many of these reports, my country was suddenly in the midst of a "civil war," or even a "genocide," not unlike the stories the media told about Rwanda in 1994. It was as if the situation could be reduced to a few violent images, like those of machete-wielding youth dancing next to burning houses.

Among the mainstream media's favourite words when referring to the current political crisis in Kenya are "ethnic," "chaos" and "tribal." In its report on January 27, the Los Angeles Times carried the title "'Tribal war' spreads in Kenya." The same article provided almost no historical context or explanation for how this "tribal war" was linked to the December elections, save for two paragraphs that clumsily summed up the country's history since its independence in 1963.

The word "tribal" itself is denied specific meaning. Kenya is composed of more than 40 ethnic groups, none of which media reports have attempted to describe with any accuracy. Instead, we get scant descriptions of men from the Kalenjin or Luo ethnic groups "at war" with their Kikuyu neighbours.

Again and again, the corporate media has reduced complex political events to simple binary conflicts. In Rwanda, it is the "Hutu" versus the "Tutsi." In Sudan-- the "Arabs" versus the "Africans" or the "Muslims" versus the "Christians." In the vast territory of the Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, the "Hema" fight against the "Lendu."

All these groups do exist on the African continent, but not as rigidly fixed identities dating from time immemorial. Identities are complex and often fluid in nature, sometimes hardening in the crucible of political movements or colonial struggles. Simplifying every violent episode down to an “ethnic conflict” has a familiar effect: making every conflict on the African continent seem irrational, chaotic, and without historical precedent.

The BBC’s reporting is no less culpable for oversimplifications. On one of the broadcaster's news pages, provocative quotes entice readers: “We will start the war. We will divide Kenya.” These are the words selected by the BBC to reflect the views of one Kalenjin "leader," Jackson Kibbur. Readers relying on the BBC to find out about the Kalenjin are likely to assume that he represents the views of all Kalenjin. Elsewhere in the article, snippets that seem to have been cut and pasted from an action film are quoted in isolation. “We will of course kill them,” an interviewee is reported to have said of the Kikuyu.

This variety of sensationalism and oversimplification is not atypical of corporate media reporting from Africa. Their representations perpetuate the racist assumptions that have historically influenced western perceptions of "Africans" as barbaric, primitive and inherently destructive. Such representations also have the advantage of justifying external intervention in the region which in most cases serves to disguise many different kinds of exploitation.

Western journalists reporting on the current situation in Kenya frequently approach their work with an air of adventure and sensationalism mixed with disappointment at the direction in which Kenya is moving. Doug Miller, the host of "Amandla!" -- a radio program on Montreal's CKUT dedicated to political events in Africa -- says this approach does not help readers understand what is going on.

Miller praises the Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent Stephanie Nolen for her "wonderful stuff on AIDS in Southern Africa," but criticized her approach to the political crisis in Kenya. It is, he says, a "cheap thrill kind of journalism."

"The emphasis was on her going into the 'valley of death' and facing these bloodthirsty warriors. It's an awful attraction for a journalist to go out there. But is it giving us any insight into the situation? I don't think so."

In her article, entitled "Into the Valley of Death," Nolen writes, "the Kenya I travelled through this week was not a country I recognized ... the Kenya that was prospering and ambitious and dignified and peaceful." Nolen is echoing a frequent refrain in the media since the conflict: that Kenya was the last remaining "democracy" -- the only hope on a continent ravaged by senseless violence. In the words of one writer and according to the sentiment of many, the situation is a "tragic setback for democracy in Africa."

Missing Colonialism and Class

Celebrated Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o has observed that the current crisis does indeed concern two tribes: not tribes based on ethnic identity, but on the divide between "the haves and the have-nots." It is not accidental that much of the violence has taken place in Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa and also in Mathare, another collection of slums.

Writing for African news publication Pambazuka, Nunu Kidane and Walter Turner remark that the people living in Kibera and Mathare have "nothing to fear and nothing to lose." Running battles between armed police and residents of Kibera were fought in the post-election period, while the middle-classes and elites remained largely unaffected by such conflicts. The media has neglected to report sufficiently on the heavy-handed tactics of repression used by the Kenyan police and the notorious paramilitary General Service Unit in areas like Kibera and Mathare.

Nonetheless, Kibera has attracted international attention; it is becoming increasingly popular as a venue for "slum tourism." Reuters correspondent Andrew Cawthorne recently wrote of Kibera: "Any journalist wanting a quick Africa poverty story can find it there in half an hour."

How, then, to make sense of the situation in Kenya while avoiding the pitfalls of sensationalistic reporting and racist assumptions?

If the media claim this is an ethnic conflict, how did it begin? When did it begin? It is important to first differentiate between the different acts of "violence" that are taking place in Kenya. Security forces are responsible for a large number of the killings. Acting on government orders immediately after the election results were announced, they have largely been operating on a shoot-to-kill policy.

Disturbing scenes of police brutality have been aired on local television. In one case, a young man in western Kisumu -- a region with a large number of opposition supports -- is shown taunting the police by sticking his tongue out and jumping up and down. A police officer runs toward him, shoots him from a few feet away and kicks him in the ribs. Little or none of this makes it into corporate media reports.

As “ethnic violence,” it certainly did not emerge out of nowhere, and not all members of the Kikuyu, Kalenjin and Luo communities are bent on destroying each other. But what other impression would people get when they read headlines like “Rival Kenyan tribes face off with machetes and clubs” next to photographs of black Africans holding weapons, silhouetted by the sun?

Certainly it is not ordinary Kenyans who benefit from the climate of terror stoked by politicians who manipulate ethnic differences to serve their own political agendas. They have mobilized gangs of young men, who are marginalized and cut off from any participation in the country’s economy, to target ethnic groups, thus prompting revenge attacks.

I received an alarming text message from a friend who had to leave home for fear of being targeted by members of the Kikuyu community. "Am ok," it read, "There were revenge attacks from Kikuyus as the place is predominantly Kikuyu. Looking for another house." The same friend was rushing to the Rift Valley three weeks ago to help evacuate members of the Kikuyu community who were being targeted by Kalenjin supporters of the opposition in the elections.

These kinds of stories -- of ordinary Kenyans who are trying to help each other and who are troubled and alarmed by what is happening as the result of a power struggle between two men -- are not covered by the many foreign correspondents visiting Kenya.

A notable exception to the lack of critical and accurate coverage in the corporate media was an article by author Caroline Elkins, who wrote about Kenya's national resistance movement in her book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. Writing in the Washington Post, Elkins explains: "If you're looking for the origins of Kenya's ethnic tensions, look to its colonial past... we are often told that age-old tribal hatreds drive today's conflicts in Africa. In fact, both ethnic conflict and its attendant grievances are colonial phenomena."

In Kenya, says Elkins, the British spent much of their time trying to keep the Kikuyu and Luo divided for fear that if they united, the colonial order in the country would collapse. A Kikuyu-Luo alliance in the 1950s forced the British to release Jomo Kenyatta, who would later become the country's first president, from a colonial detention camp and hastened the removal of the British colonial structure. But the alliance was short-lived, and the imperial "divide-and-rule" policy was applied time and again in Britain's colonies. The policy was strong enough to create the "ethnic units" that are now playing into the hands of elites.

These same elites, carefully cultivated by the British to protect their geopolitical interests in the region, took control of the legal systems left behind that, according to Elkins, "facilitated tyranny, oppression and poverty rather than open, accountable government."

We also have to consider the many other factors that make possible the kind of violence currently taking place. Kenya is a very poor country whose more serious troubles concern low wages, unemployment, structural poverty, lack of social security, poorly funded health and education systems and lack of access to land and resources.

Doug Miller of "Amandla!" says, "It is no wonder that the structural poverty imposed on Africa throughout history has created an underclass of young people who have no hope and no future. Many people are getting an education but there is nowhere to go with it."

"The economies have been undermined by world capitalism. Even if you do what they say and you grow tobacco or something, you get crap prices and you can't live off what you do as a farmer. What this is about is people with no access to resources in a country where they can't do anything and a rich person can come by with any amount of money and mobilize them into what I call 'the army of the unemployed.'"

It is these armies of disenfranchised youth that have been mobilized to set Kenyan against Kenyan. Understanding the origins for their exclusion will bring us closer to transcending the stereotypes that dominate Western media reportage, and perhaps a little closer to envisioning a resolution.

Machete-wielding men

Daily Life

February Books

hillarybain — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 01:52:09 +0000

New works by MacArthur, Armstrong, McPherson and Glenn

Take Us Quietly
Tammy Armstrong
Goose Lane Editions,
Fredericton, 2006.

The poems in this book meander: geographically they cover Canada from coast to coast, as well as foreign locales like Spain, Guatemala, and Indonesia. While the range of content may be admirable, there’s a sense of something missing in this collection, and in the individual poems themselves—a lack of common purpose and cohesion. Take these two stanzas from “Mathematics:” “A cigarette mark/ burnt through a twenty-dollar bill/ into your forearm/ is my logarithmic reminder./ I’ve memorized them all./ When my sight is faulty tungsten,/ my fingers will read polysyllabic.// This rock and scald of absence blisters/ into Saturday morning:/ coffee, samosas, Globe and Mail,/ my feet tucked beneath the angles of your leg.” While the thread connecting mathematics, the number twenty, and logarithms is clear, the movement to chemistry (tungsten) and literature (polysyllabic) feels strange, not to mention the tangle of other images and allusions which are in no way accessible to the reader. Throughout the collection the poems seem to skim the surface of something beautiful, but never take the plunge into real depth or meaning. Take Us Quietly leaves the reader wanting more matter and more art.

--Matthew J. Trafford

Six Ways to Sunday
Christian McPherson
Nightwood, Gibsons, BC, 2007.

In his debut collection, McPherson conjures a gritty and colourful Ottawa, populated by addicts and losers, obsessives and gawky teens. In “The Plastic Garden,” the first and best story of the collection, a retired model-maker named Rumford feuds with skateboarders menacing a little girl’s garden. Rumford’s rage after the first failed confrontation is touching in its excess, and McPherson's other hapless characters are equally sympathetic: jazz-playing Two Seconds and Elvis-haired Squid seem to scrape by mostly on luck and pure gall. Occasionally, the plots beggar belief, or coast along the edge of an easy pathos. The intentionally silly “Chilidog Love” is playful enough to escape standards of believability, but it feels out of place among the darker stories. Where the collection falters is in the saggy dialogue, and also where the writing dips into weak similes, like Johnny’s father in “Autograph,” “scribbling away with the intensity of an accountant.” But McPherson’s endings, like the pool hustles, drug deals and long afternoon shags of these stories, have a nice way of leaving things open to the unexpected.

--Saleema Nawaz

Combustion
Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Brick Books: Toronto, 2007.

Glenn's second poetry collection considers the big abstractions of connection, cyclicity, and death. Glenn's background is in ethnography, and her removed evenness of tone, which could have seemed clinical, here reassures the reader with its empathic solidity. Her first and second person narration feel both intimate and cautious, considering some of her explosive subject matter, like the true story of FBI investigators severing the hands of murdered M'ikm'aq woman Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. Glenn shifts lightly and cleanly from physical and emotional detail to broader images and ideas. Addressing the title object in "Smooth Rock on Laurencetown Beach," she muses "memory / like you, is shucked from mystery, / rests snug in my hand." The changing moon is one of Glenn's recurrent images, her nod to a vaster perspective of time. Glenn's own perspective occasionally takes a wry turn into gallows humour, as in "Birthday in Middle Age," where she harrumphs, "So, each lacy card a shovel." Combustion is a surprising title for so steady and compassionate an exploration of what it means to watch and be watched. "The heart is a hymnal," writes Glenn, and indeed her collection is also something brave, to be read and sung.

--Jane Henderson

Isolated: Two Plays
Greg MacArthur
Coach House: Toronto, 2007.

Get Away and Recovery, the two plays contained in this collection, have a lot in common. Both storylines feature a nebulous epidemic—in Get Away, it's apathy and discontentment, in Recovery it's a vague, nameless drug— that engulfs society and leaves MacArthur's characters huddled on the outskirts, in outposts they like to imagine they've chosen themselves. Macarthur's characters, despite their slightly surreal surroundings, feel real, as do their interactions with each other. Garbo and Henry are a pair of teenage vagabonds; Leroy is a snotty Dutch teenager; David is a hopeful middle-aged man whose loneliness leads him to desperate acts. “What do they say?” is a recurrent line in both plays, an appeal to old adages and folk wisdom, neither of which can be marshaled to offer the characters much more than temporary comfort. Both stories play with the idea of numbness, and while both storylines unspool towards events that should provoke an emotional reaction, these stories occur in a kind of frozenness that makes them difficult to connect to. It's hard for readers to feel invested in characters who don't seem invested in themselves.

--Linda Besner

Reporting on the Ghost of Sankara

dru — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:03:56 +0000

Interview with Journalist Jooneed Khan

[Read part I of this series, an interview with Aziz Fall of GRILA]

GRILA, the Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa, a grassroots collective in Montreal, is leading the international legal charge concerning the case of Thomas Sankara, recently winning a key case at the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations.

According to GRILA, the impunity of those involved in assassinations in Africa is finally being called into question. The Sankara case could set new precedents in an issue of profound importance to a continent with a history of unresolved assassinations of national leaders and political activists.

Jooneed Khan, a reporter on international affairs for Montreal's La Presse, has been covering the case of Thomas Sankara for a number of years. He is one of the few journalists working at a major media outlet to cover this story.

* * *

Stefan Christoff: Explain your accounting of the history surrounding the revolution of Burkina Faso and the assassination of Thomas Sankara. What is the historical and contemporary importance of these events to African politics?

Jooneed Khan: Sankara became president of Upper Volta, shortly after changing the name to Burkina Faso, which translates to the land of people with dignity. At that time, when apartheid in South Africa was still holding sway, Sankara represented a new hope for African development. He advocated simple principles like self-reliance, rooted in the belief that Burkina Faso could not develop if the nation continued to rely on outside support, that the first resource to tap is the internal energies of the country, the energy of the people.

Sankara was also very strongly anti-corruption, cutting back a great deal on government expenses. At one point Sankara was traveling to work on a bicycle, later on giving in to the demands of some within the government cabinet Sankara accepted that government officials use cars. However the government then used very small cars, not the traditional Mercedes that made the African elite known very often known in those days as the new tribe of "wabenzi," [a reference to their preference for the Mercedes Benz car].

In 1987 Sankara was assassinated by a companion in the revolution named Blaise Compaoré, who carried out a coup d'état seizing power, remaining in power for 20 years [until today]. Often we discuss the importance of democracy in Africa, however recently Burkina Faso has been elected to serve a two year term on the Security Council of the United Nations, together with Vietnam, Libya along with the permanent members.

Africa has a long history of national leaders who have been murdered, massacred, or overthrown in one way or another. Beginning with Patrice Lumumba in Congo, in Ghana Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown and died in exile in Egypt, Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique. Many anti-Apartheid workers, activists in South Africa were assassinated, some by hit-men, some with letter bombs. You could say that Thomas Sankara is one of the last in that long list of great African martyrs.

You have been following the case of Thomas Sankara in relation to the work of a local organization here in Montreal which as been active on the case in recent years. Can you explain Sankara’s case in relation to Montreal?

There is a small NGO in Montreal named GRILA [of the Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa], which was formed in the 1980’s during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Interestingly, after the fall of apartheid it continued working, as it was clear that the end of apartheid had not liberated Africa; there were still many battles to be fought. GRILA looked to Sankara as a model for African Development and picked up the case aiming to have light thrown on the circumstances of the death, to commemorate Sankara’s assassination every year.

In 1997, ten years after the assassination GRILA managed to lodge a formal complaint with the authorities in Burkina Faso, asking for Sankara’s assassination to be investigated, and it managed to secure the legal move just a few days before the deadline, the local statute of limitation, beyond which the matter could not be raised. There is a limit of 10 years under Burkina Faso law in which one can access legal recourse, after which time the point becomes moot.

GRILA lodged the complaint just prior to the deadline with the support of Sankara’s family, who was living in exile in France successfully raising the matter, which of course irritated authorities in Burkina Faso. The response that they received that this was a military affair, since Sankara had been an army officer and could not be dealt with in civilian courts but within the military courts.

Within these legal proceedings GRILA had the support of twenty-two volunteer lawyers from around the world, in Canada, in Europe and Africa. After failing within the Burkina Faso legal system GRILA took the matter to the UN Committee on Human Rights and they succeeded last year in obtaining a formal denunciation of the Burkina Faso regime of Blaise Compaoré. The denunciation dictated that the government had to throw light on the circumstances of the death of Sankara, had to identify the grave clearly and properly, and also had to pay some form of financial compensation to Sankara’s widow and two sons.

Apparently when Sankara died the death certificate bore the inscription, “died of natural causes”, apparently the authorities have now removed the word “natural” from the death certificate, and offered somewhere near ninety thousands dollars as compensation to the family, which of course the family and GRILA have considered very inadequate.

Until now the grave of Sankara has still not been identified, while the circumstances of the death have not been elucidated and all the obstruction of justice that has taken place around this case has not been looked into. So GRILA is pursuing the case, they are waiting for the UN Committee on Human Rights to react to the Burkina Faso response.

Can you explain the contemporary importance of the case of Thomas Sankara on a global scale?

What's interesting concerning the Sankara case is that the principle involved is the fight against impunity in Africa because there are so many crimes and violations which continue to be committed and go unpunished. The international criminal court on Rwanda concerning the genocide that took place is just a drop in the bucket concerning crimes in Africa. This is an attempt from the international community and the UN to bring the criminals in Rwanda to justice. However, there are many, many other cases in Africa.

Currently Darfur is a very fashionable cause among many people in the West who want to go to protect the people of Darfur. At the same time according to the United Nations itself, five to six hundred thousand civilians die each year in the eastern Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, deaths stemming from a war that is closely tied to the struggle for natural resources by international corporations. This is often forgotten, one of the many forgotten genocides that is going on as we talk in Africa.

GRILA has picked up the case of Thomas Sankara as another example of impunity, wanting those responsible to be brought to account. These are all interesting factors which have kept me interested in the Sankara case. As the Sankara case has evolved I have tried every now and then to try to asses the situation and do a story in order to keep it alive in the eyes of the public.

Sankara

Down on the Upside

dru — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:10:18 +0000

Group gathers to discuss the "Alberta (dis)Advantage"

EDMONTON--A small but passionate group of activists, researchers, front-line workers, and volunteers gathered in Edmonton on January 25 to discuss the inequalities that are a result of Alberta's current economic climate. The conference, entitled the Alberta (dis)Advantage for Families and Youth was co-hosted by the MacEwan Institute for Research on Families and Youth and the Edmonton Social Planning Council.

The conference sought to unpack the concept of the 'Alberta Advantage,' to exchange the province-building slogan for a narrative that more accurately describes the effects of the current economic boom on the lives of Albertans.

In two panel discussions, speakers from various Edmonton anti-poverty and social justice organizations explored the disproportionate distribution of new wealth and the rapidly rising cost of living, and how those factors compound to marginalize vulnerable and low income Edmontonians. Six break-out sessions allowed participants to share their experiences of working for change.

The Tory concept of the 'Alberta Advantage' promises a favourable business climate: low corporate taxes, a mild regulatory regime, and ample opportunity for investment. Despite the fact that, as one speaker noted, the political slogan has since "been purged," Alberta continues to market itself, both within Canada and internationally, as a destination for big business.

For conference participants however, the slogan has come to signify the widening gap between Alberta's wealthy and Alberta's poor.

Panelist Jim Gurnett of the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers defined the Alberta Advantage as "a prideful rejection of Ghandi's famous statement that 'the Earth has enough for everyone's need but not everyone's greed'"

"It is an oil-drenched lie that everything is well as long as I am well."

And while for some the Alberta Advantage may mean better investments and bigger profits, for many others it has had devastating consequences. As the name of the conference suggests, the Alberta "disadvantage" is perhaps a more apt slogan for a province that neglects its citizens and allows its natural resources to be plundered. In Alberta, the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, with close to a four-fold difference in household income between the richest and the poorest neighbourhoods in the City of Edmonton.

This 'disAdvantage' affects social groups disproportionately. "More often than not poverty has a colour; it has an accent," noted panel speaker Marilyn Fleger, a director of the Bissell Centre, an Edmonton inner city anti-poverty organization. She explained that most often lone mothers, people with disabilities, recent immigrants, single adults without family, and urban Aboriginal residents have borne the burden of poverty.

While average wage rates are on the incline, and earners in the upper tax brackets are earning more than ever, the minimum wage in Alberta is still $7 -- the lowest rate in Canada. The wage increases workers have been able to attain are barely able to compensate for inflation—which averaged 5% for most of 2007. The cost of living is increasing more rapidly than wages. While the average wage is closer to $20 per hour, lower wage earners simply can't keep up.

The promise of lucrative employment continues to draw migrants from across Canada and internationally. However, the reality for the many who arrive with no plan, no contacts, and no place to live is a sad one. "Sure, there are opportunities," Hope Hunter, director of Boyle St. Community Services, an inner-city anti-poverty organization stated, "but you need support and resources to take advantage of those opportunities."

It is a struggle, within the non-profit sector, to help provide some of those supports and resources. Panel speaker Heather Day, a program coordinator with Ben Calf Robe Youth Intervention Program, described how even full-time social agency workers are struggling to make ends meet. Social agencies cannot recruit the staff they need and turnover rates are higher than ever, making it even more difficult to tackle the effects of poverty. Workers become clients, snowballing the effects of the Alberta 'disAdvantage.'

With acute awareness of these contrasts, conference participants declared--defiantly, passionately, and optimistically--their intolerance for the social injustices they encounter in Canada's 'richest' province. While some asserted the importance of simply working around government social policies that seem to hamper progress, others emphasized the importance of participating—actively—within our democratic system.

To outside observers, Alberta can appear to be a province of complacency, inaction and apathy. The Alberta disAdvantage conference shows, however, that there is also resistance, collaboration, action, and hope. for those disadvantaged by the province's economic direction.

"We are still in a democracy, despite years of one-party rule," one panel speaker told the conference-goers. "We have education, motivation, research, knowledge, and examples from history of what individuals can do... we have the opportunity to make change."

Housing Demonstration 2

France's Colonial History, Contemporary Conflicts

dru — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:14:37 +0000

A new wave of actions challenges escalating and violent deportation policies

In the early evening outside of Belleville metro in Paris, a crowd gathers for a demonstration demanding citizenship for France's hundreds of thousands of non-status immigrants, locally known as sans papiers (literally "without papers"). As protest chants echo through the Parisian streets, a sound-track to a powerful contemporary social movement is edged into history. Demonstrators embody a critical current of contemporary French politics in this ancient European city.

Protests throughout France have opposed waves of deportations confronting immigrant communities. In 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced an official government target of twenty-five thousand deportations for the year, igniting a storm of state-driven immigration raids across the country.

Intensity of popular opposition to the government-initiated crackdown has spiked in recent months, in response to violence and tragedy. A Chinese woman in the Belleville district of Paris died after plunging from a window as a police unit entered the apartment building; a Russian boy sustained head injuries after falling from a balcony while trying to escape immigration authorities; and a North African man fractured his leg after slipping from a window ledge in the French capital during a police raid.

Immigration is now a deadly issue in France-- in politics and in reality.

Political mobilization against the state-sponsored flood of deportations is spreading throughout the multiple districts or arrondissements of Paris, and throughout the country. French President Sarkozy stated recently that France is "exasperated by uncontrolled immigration." However any basic investigation illustrates that exasperation is limited to conservative sectors within a politically complex society. Many reject contemporary immigration policy.

Profound political networks have emerged in recent years to respond to the crisis of deportations facing the country, including Réseau Éducation Sans Frontières (RESF), a national network rooted within the French public school system, driven by students and teachers fighting for the regularization of non-status students and their families.

"Our focus is to protect families, also to ensure family unification in France, for all families in all situations, including families without papers," explains Armelle Gardien, a teacher at a French Lycée active within RESF. "As teachers it is critical to address the reality of students in our schools [who] have no papers, students and their families who are illegal in France, often living in terrible conditions, so we formed our network to fight for regularization."

Across Paris and throughout the country organizing committees of RESF have formed in schools and communities, sparking a wave of media attention internationally after the network announced plans to shelter sans papiers students in open opposition to government-backed deportation orders.

"Our battle is to fight against current immigration policy across France," says Gardien. "Also we are struggling from community to community, building support within each school for non-status students, attempting to build awareness on the realities facing sans papiers today in France."

Immigration battles in France

On the streets, in the schools and within the major political institutions of the country, political battles around immigration point to the critical importance of the issue. A growing number of street demonstrations have been occurring in Paris in recent months, often lead by sans papiers.

"I reject living a life of fear in France," says Karim Djebloun of 9ème Collectif des Sans-Papiers, at a demonstration in the Belleville district of Paris. Djebloun is a sans papiers originally from Algeria. "Each time entering the metro should I have to fear being captured by police simply because France has refused to grant me or my family French nationality?"

"I am not a criminal, I want to be treated as a full human being," Djebloun says amidst the chanting crowd in Paris. "I am demanding status for myself and all sans papiers in France, immediately."

"Today, I am attending this demonstration openly, speaking to the media because I refuse to live in fear," he continues. "It is only through a struggle on the streets that we can change government policy; all major political change in history began on the streets, even our struggle against the French in Algeria began on the streets."

In late 2007 the French government introduced a DNA testing program targeted at family members of immigrants applying for visas to the country.

Protests were organized across France in opposition to the DNA testing law that eventually passed with a slim majority in the French parliament. DNA testing for foreign nationals attempting to secure visas isn't compulsory under the new law. However, it is feared that visa applicants who don't submit to the test -- taken at their own expense -- will have their applications rejected by France.

Civil liberties groups across France and internationally – including Amnesty International -- condemned the new DNA testing law, an adaptation of existing practices already established in the US, Canada and other western European countries.

Across Africa, deportation policies adopted by successive French governments, which target non-status immigrants, often define political perception of modern day France.

In May 2007, Sarkozy's visit to Mali sparked large protests and widespread local opposition due to new immigration policies in France that have tightened visa requirements, while eliminating an existing law that allowed migrant workers to apply for citizenship after ten years.

"We are indignant about this visit and we honestly think that the arrival of Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy in our country at this time is purely and simply a provocation," explained a Malian member of parliament at the time of Sarkozy's visit. Activists from the Association of Malians Expelled from France organized a sit-in outside Sarkozy's hotel in Bamako, Mali's capital, in protest of French immigration policy.

France: Immigration and colonial history

As a former colonial power throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia, contemporary migration to France can be traced to colonial history.

Diaspora communities throughout the country -- currently facing mass deportations -- find roots in southern nations across the globe struggling with the shadows of colonialism, a historical reality indisputably connected to the economic instability, civil conflict and war driving contemporary migration to France.

"France's current policies towards immigrants echo the colonial past," explains Atman Zerkaoui, from the Mouvement des Indigenes de la République. "In colonial times, in Algeria, we were expected to serve the French empire without question, as workers, as soldiers, while today recent laws passed by the French government basically allowing only professionals or the wealthy into France translates to the state reasserting a colonial ideology, in which people from the colonies exist to serve France, the French economy, while France sets the terms of our relationship unilaterally."

As France has moved in recent years to seal borders and stiffen immigration laws, legal moves have been made with regard to colonial history as well. In 2005, the French parliament passed a controversial law on the teaching of French colonial history in public schools, a law that critics argue attempts to erase from history France's numerous colonial crimes through North Africa, specifically in Algeria.

"School programs are to recognize in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in North Africa," reads the 2005 law, signed on the 60th anniversary of the 1945 Sétif massacre in Algeria, when French soldiers killed thousands of Algerians after celebrations in reaction to Nazi Germany's defeat turned into a massive Algerian independence rally.

"Roots of xenophobia today in France trace back to the Algerian war," explains David Common, CBC's Europe correspondent based in Paris. "Many people have written on this connection, as at the time of the Algerian war, France had a real shock, a loss of international prestige due to victory of the Algerian independence movement."

"Sarkozy has now said everything but sorry in regards to France's role in Algeria, in the former French colonies," continues David Common, "bringing forward instead the idea that the past is the past, without talking about healing, which is a similar position to Canada saying everything but sorry in regards to the history of residential schools for the First Nations."

Uprisings in the suburbs

Today, France stands at a crossroads of national identity, as history funnels into the contemporary debate on immigration, which in recent decades has redefined the nature of major urban centers in the country.

Deportation stands as only one state-backed difficulty within economically marginalized immigrant quarters across the precarious suburbs of Paris, epicenter of massive confrontations between state security forces and local residents that sparked international headlines in 2005.

"History is separated from the contemporary context, which is exactly what we are fighting to change," explains Sonia Barbacha of the Mouvement des Indigenes de la République. "We are struggling to break free of this colonial history that continues to persist until today."

"In Paris we are experiencing a colonial situation; the urban geography is very similar to the colonial situation in Algeria," says Barbacha. "There is essentially a white city center, while people from the former colonies surround the city center, living in the suburbs; it's a racist geography, which translates at times into social uprising as the world saw in 2005."

France remains a nation on edge. As political turmoil in recent years has defined French politics, from the popular explosions in the Paris suburbs driven by socially marginalized immigrant youth, to the growing grassroots rejection of massive deportations to former French colonies and serious prospects of a severe economic downturn, as a result of growing international economic turmoil, resulting in fewer economics opportunities in the country.

"Compound total social alienation with almost no economic opportunity-- you can begin to understand the situation in the suburbs," Common tells me over coffee in Paris. "Violence is compounded when young French police are sent into the suburbs, within the first few years of their service, arriving in a heavy handed fashion in already volatile suburbs and then the existing social violence, mainly due to poverty, feeds into violence against the police."

History etches deep impressions onto the contemporary French political reality, a history, which like the present, is a battlefield defined by opposing sides of a profound conflict which is best understood in colonial terms.

Parmentier: "“conjugaison des liens"

Paris: Parrainage républicain à la Mairie du 14è arrondissement

Bobigny: Journée Nationale de protestation de RESF

Kosovo Crisis Continues

dru — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:18:27 +0000

Serbia and EU escalate conflict; misery of majority of Serbians and Kosovars likely to continue

Pro-European Union (EU) candidate Boris Tadic won the final round of Serbian Presidential elections on February 4. Tadic beat nationalist Serbian Radical Party candidate, Tomislav Nikolic, by a little over two per cent of the vote. His win is largely attributed to the Serbian expatriate vote.

The central election issue was the status of Kosovo. Serbia's southernmost province has been under UN tutelage and occupation since the NATO bombing campaign of 1999 forced Serbian forces out of the province. Kosovo holds historic and religious significance for Serbs. Now, for many Serbs, the province has become a symbol of US and European attempts to weaken and break apart the former Yugoslavia, and now Serbia. Less symbolic crises -- such as widespread unemployment, sub-poverty wages and restrictions on migration -- loom in the background, but have yet to share in the electoral spotlight.

European and US diplomats hailed the election results as an endorsement of their policies. "The results for me at least signalled the wish of the majority of the people in Serbia who want to continue the path towards Europe, and I'd like to say Europe is very happy with that," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters.

The day after the election, the EU announced a new force of 1,800 "police and legal officials" to be deployed to Kosovo, which has been under UN administration for the past eight years. The EU did not announce their decision before the election, arguing they did not want to "interfere" with the outcome of the vote.

With Kosovo expected to declare independence in the coming weeks, the EU's move has thrown the Serbian government into crisis. Any move to support EU efforts towards Kosovo's independence would be deeply unpopular, and would likely trigger another election or a place in a coalition government for the Radical Party.

Half the Serbian population supported the Radicals, led by Vojislav Seselj. Seselj could not stand for election; he has been imprisoned at The Hague for five years, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity. He is viewed by many as a symbol of Serbian defiance against foreign imperialism. Tadic, on the other hand, represents compromise. He made it clear during his campaign that Kosovo should remain a province of Serbia but that European integration was the primary goal, and that sacrifices might have to be made.

Serbia currently faces a 50 per cent unemployment rate. The average income remains 300 Euros a month. Serbs face tough visa restrictions and the vast majority of people under the age of 30 have never left the former Yugoslavia.

Some observers say fundamental issues are being overshadowed by concern over Kosovo. Igor Todorovic, editor of Privredni Pregled, a Belgrade-based economic daily, said Serbia’s two main political parties are using the Kosovo conflict to their advantage. "By making the Kosovo issue such a constant issue, by filling the headlines everyday, it means they managed to neglect all the other problems that they actually have the authority and the power to solve."

When the news of EU plans for the Kosovo mission broke (without consultation of Serbia), Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica cancelled the meeting in which he intended to sign the integration agreement between Serbia and the European Union. Newly-elected President Tadic wanted to go along with the signing regardless of the EU decision. Many felt Tadic was bowing to international pressure and disregarding the views of people of Serbia. Before assuming his current role, Prime Minister Hassim Thaci was the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an organization funded by the smuggling of illegal arms, drugs and people, and likely on the receiving end of significant CIA backing. Analysts are nearly unanimous in predicting the fall of the new government.

It has become evident that eight years of UN occupation has done little in terms of benefiting most people living in Kosovo -- either the Albanian majority or the Serb, Roma or Egyptian minority groups. It is estimated that between three and five billion dollars in "international aid" has been pumped into Kosovo since the 1999 bombing, which resulted in over 250,000 Serbs and Romas from the region becoming refugees. An estimated 300,000 Albanians fled in the months preceding the escalation of fighting between the Serbian army and the KLA, and the resulting addition of NATO forces and bombings.

The result was Kosovo as a UN protectorate, its population unable to determine its own affairs.

Today, there is no clean drinking water throughout the province. Electricity is sporadic and can be out for 12 hours at a time. Despite these conditions, the UN maintains that "much progress has been made."

Corruption is rampant. International organizations and institutions based in Pristina often repeat the "need to address the problem," but Kosovars are skeptical. Avi Zogiani is with the Anti Corruption Organization, a grassroots group trying to keep track of aid money-fueled deals in the area. "The so-called government of Kosovo is in a constant state of readjusting ideas of development to coexist with economic and industrial interests of the outside world," says Zogiani.

"With eight years of having no influence on the political process, on decisions, the people have given up on trying to guarantee any of their rights and instead choose to suffer at the whims of the international actors and players."

Privatization of state-owned resources and services is nearly complete. The coal factory is the latest to be sold off, and the development wing of the US State Department is in charge of much of the operations of its sale. This involves regular consultation with the energy minister and handpicking the NGO that would do the "outreach" to "educate the population on the benefits" of privatization.

Over a billion dollars already has gone into this coal plant, and it still suffers from daily blackouts. The expected buyer, a US-Czech company CEZ has promised an additional $3.1 billion in investment to make it operational, if they get the deal. Zogiani believes part of the last ditch dealings could involve ensuring major players in the current UN force receive more of the privatization booty before the UN moves out and the EU settles in.

Kosovo has become a diplomatic and geopolitical flashpoint, with Russia backing Serbia's opposition to full independence. Meanwhile the US State Department and EU have taken an aggressive stance in favour of independence, using EU membership as a carrot and the country's economic woes as a stick.

Russia holds the powerful UN Security Council veto, and can to block any attempt to push through a resolution. With opposing positions set by the two sides, the future looks dismal for the people of Kosovo caught in the middle. Alexander Popadic, editor of Kontrepunkt, a widely-read independent popular web forum, magazine and grassroots media organization based in Belgrade, expressed frustration with both the Russian and American influence in the region.

"The presence of Russian Big Brother in the minds of Serbian people and the US for the Albanians has to be cut off," said Popadic.

"Such steps are necessary if we are to see some real progress and independent development of this region. Stuck within the process of so-called unfinished modernization, with the burden of wars and neoliberal reforms, Serbia and Kosovo are deeply polluted with nationalist hatred, religious fundamentalism and social insecurity."

A declaration of independence is imminent. Most EU countries and the US have already signaled they will immediately recognize Kosovo's country status. Few people in Serbia seem ready to physically fight for Kosovo again. However, many politicians have shown they are not willing to hand over the province.

The only certainty is that people in both Kosovo and Serbia will continue to live in desperate conditions with few opportunities. The international institutions which speak of peace and prosperity for the region have in fact delivered the opposite.

Czech Helicopters

Jo Negociata -- Vetëvendosje!

Signs in a Serbian Area of Kosovo

Food aid

Kosmet

Tadic Supporters

Road Kill

dru — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:43:15 +0000

New highway blocked by protesting "Raccoons"

Yellow plastic sunflowers, two graffitied TV sets and an oversize truck tire line a meter-wide trench just past the pavement's end. They mark the boundary between the city and a protest camp occupied by a new generation of Canadian environmental protestors: the Raccoons.

The Raccoons are a ragtag mob of irregulars holding back a major highway interchange project designed to service Bear Mountain, a sprawling golf resort in Langford, just west of Victoria, BC. A few dozen dumpster-diving, trash-talking anti-authoritarians with a passion for undisturbed natural places have built a camp in the path of the new highway. The proposed interchange cuts through a pocket of forest packed with natural and cultural rarities: a sacred First Nations cave, a seasonal pond, garry oak meadows, arbutus bluffs, red-legged frogs and chocolate lilies.

Right now the Bear Mountain Tree Sit looks like a gloomy, swampy hobo camp, dotted with tents, tree forts at dizzying heights overhead, and a giant teepee covered with tarps. "A tarpee," notes one of the campers.

"This is the only example of eco-anarchist action in Canada right now," says Ingmar Lee, a Victoria environmentalist and camp supporter. "This is the grassroots, and it's a totally different kind of protest." Hundreds of people in the community directly support the camp with donations of food, camping gear, and funds for legal defense.

Almost all the Raccoons are under 25, and some are veterans of the Cathedral Grove treesit protest, which lasted two years and ultimately defeated a BC Parks plan to cut down giant trees to build a parking lot. Here, the first platform went up in April. Five more followed, and they are staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Kicking the protest camp off public property is a sticky legal issue, and so far no one has moved to start a court case. But Stewart Young, the gung-ho pro-development mayor of Langford, is ramping up his criticism. The mayor's rumblings peaked with Young accusing the campers of poaching deer and rabbits at the site.

Young said bylaw officers found a deer carcass near the camp in the woods. "We've respected their right to protest, but killing deer and rabbits is absolutely disgusting," Young told the Goldstream News Gazette in December. The city directed the RCMP and conservation officers to investigate and lay charges if they find out who is responsible. No one has been charged.

Two neighbors who live adjacent to the forest said it's not the campers who are killing animals. "There's been poaching in this area for decades," said an elderly neighbor on Goldstream Avenue who declined to give his name.

"We've called the conservation officers about deer carcasses a couple times a year ever since I've lived here," said Ron Rayner, a long-time resident who lives just north of the camp and the TransCanada Highway. "It's an ongoing problem."

Langford resident Bob Partridge is "skeptical" about the mayor's claims. He writes, "[J]ust now, as construction is supposed to begin on the Spencer Road Interchange, the protesters/activists who have previously been requesting donations of whole grains, have apparently suddenly become carnivores, slaughtering innocent animals in the woods of Langford?"

"Are we certain they are also not sleeping on duvets stuffed with spotted owl feathers?" Partridge asked sarcastically.

Some of the campers admit they eat deer, rabbits and even raccoons – but they insist they are not hunting . The meat is road kill collected from the TransCanada Highway, one tree sitter told A Channel News. Another pointed out the hypocrisy of building a highway that will result in many more animal deaths, while simultaneously trying to cast the environmentalists as bunny killers. A third wondered aloud if Stewart Young was vegan.

RCMP and bylaw enforcement officers tell us the Raccoons are "guests of the city of Langford," and they even allow them to have a campfire without a permit. Back in April, Young huffed to reporters, "They are on provincial land right now and it's going to be a year or so before we get to the point of having to go there, so they can sit there as long as they want." The protestors took him at his word and set up a kitchen, where they cook raccoon stew, venison steaks, and bunny burgers.

The tree sit is a thorn in Young's side, but the blustery mayor has bigger fish to fry. Langford City Council, in a "special" meeting convened two days after Christmas, made the unusual move of adopting two new bylaws, rather than just giving them first reading. One bylaw authorizes borrowing $25 million to build the interchange, while the second exempts the process from the usual counter-petition process, which gives citizens the right to challenge a decision.

The community's response has been a roar of outrage. Many residents of Langford, it seems, are more irate about the apparent abuse of process than about the imminent loss of green space, wetlands, and rare species. Dozens of volunteers are joining forces to canvass the city with a (non-binding) petition to reject the bylaws.

Steven Hurdle of Langford is organizing the petition drive. "While Langford may have found a legal loophole in declaring the interchange a 'Local Service Area' to let them avoid the referendum, we can still win the political war," he writes. "Langford council might find this an albatross that's unexpectedly hanging around their neck as this issue drags on."

Back at the camp, tree sitters and visitors are critiquing the City of Langford's annual levee tour. Every New Year's, politicos across the region open up their offices to the public, with free booze and food for all.

Well, not quite all. "They only had bag lunches for like 25 people," one complains. "I got there at the end and there was no more food. So I took all the tea bags that were left."

Another camper pipes up, "That punch was weak."

"Yeah, the punch was watered down, so we had to drink more of it to get a buzz."

"Yeah, that's why we brought our own cups. We did it up proper with the cups."

"We asked if we could take their poinsettias with us, but they said no. Then after a while, they gave us the poinsettias just so we would leave."

This article originally appeared in Only Magazine.

Barricade

Tarpee

People Power in Gaza

dru — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:21:36 +0000

Palestinians descend on border, break Israeli blockade

Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, interviewer David Barsamian asked Noam Chomsky what ordinary Americans could do to stop the war. Chomsky answered, "In some parts of the world people never ask, 'what can we do?' They simply do it."

For someone who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, Chomsky's seemingly oblique response required no further elucidation.

When Gazans recently stormed the strip's sealed border with Egypt, Chomsky's comment returned to mind, along with memories of the still relevant--and haunting--past.

In 1989, the Bureej refugee camp was experiencing a strict military curfew, as punishment for the killing of one Israeli soldier. The soldier's car had broken down in front of the camp while he was on his way home to a Jewish settlement. Bureej had previously lost hundreds of its people to the Israeli army and killing the soldier was an unsurprising act of retaliation.

In the weeks that followed, scores of Palestinians in Bureej were murdered and hundreds of homes were demolished. The killing spree generated little media coverage in Israel.

I lived with my family in an adjacent refugee camp, Nuseirat, at the time. Characterised by extreme poverty, it was a natural home for much of the Palestinian resistance movement. Our house was located a few feet away from what was known as the 'Graveyard of the Martyrs'. It was an area of high elevation that the local children often used to watch the movement of Israeli tanks as they began their daily incursion into the camp. We whistled or yelled every time we spotted the soldiers, and used sign language to communicate as we hid behind the simple graves.

Although watching, yelling and whistling were the only means of response at our disposal, they were far from safe. My friends Ala, Raed, Wael and others were all killed in these daily encounters

During Bureej's most lethal curfew, the sound of explosions coming from the doomed camp reached us at Nuseirat. The people of my camp became engulfed in endless discussions which were neither factional nor theoretical. People were being brutally murdered, injured or impoverished, while the Red Cross was blocked from accessing the camp. Something had to be done.

And all of a sudden it was. Not as a result of any polemic endorsed by intellectuals or "action calls" initiated at conferences, but as an unstructured, spur-of-the-moment act undertaken by a few women in my refugee camp. They simply started a march into Bureej, and were soon joined by other women, children and men. Within an hour, thousands of refugees made their way into the besieged neighbouring camp. "What's the worst they could do?" a neighbour asked, trying to collect his courage before joining the march. "The soldiers will not be able to kill more than a hundred before we overpower them."

Israeli soldiers stood dumbfounded before the chanting multitudes. While many marchers were wounded only one was killed. The soldiers eventually retreated to their barricades. UN vehicles and Red Cross ambulances sheltered themselves amidst the crowd and together they broke the siege.

I still remember the scene of Bureej residents first opening the shutters of their windows, then carefully cracking their doors, stepping out of their homes in a state of disbelief breaking into joy. My memory--of the chants, the tears, the dead being rushed to be buried, the wounded hauled on the many hands that came to the rescue, the strangers sharing food and good wishes--reaffirms the event as one of the greatest acts of human solidarity I have witnessed.

The scene was to be repeated time and again, during the first and Second Palestinian Uprising: ordinary people carrying out what seemed like an ordinary act in response to extraordinary injustice.

The father who lost his son to free Bureej told the crowd: "I am happy that my son died so that many more could live."

Later than day, our refugee camp fell under a most strict military curfew, to relive Bureej's recent nightmare. We were neither surprised nor regretful. We had known the right thing to do and "we simply did it."

Now Palestinian women, once more, have led Palestinian civil society in a most meaningful and rewarding way. Just when Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak was being congratulated for successfully starving Palestinians in Gaza to submission, ordinary women led a march to break the tight siege imposed on Gaza.

On Tuesday, January 22, they descended on the Gaza-Egypt border and what followed was a moment of pride and shame: pride for those ever-dignified people refusing to surrender, and shame that the so-called international community allowed the humiliation of an entire people to the extent that forced hungry mothers to brave batons, tear gas and military police in order to perform such basic acts as buying food, medicine and milk.

The next day, the courage of these women inspired the same audacity that the original batch of women in my refugee camp inspired nearly twenty years ago. Nearly half of the Gaza Strip population crossed the border in a collective push for mere survival. And when people march in unison, there is no worldly force, however deadly, that can block their way.

This "largest jailbreak in history", as one commentator described it, will be carved in Palestinian and world memory for years to come. In some circles it will be endlessly analysed, but for Palestinians in Gaza, it is beyond rationalization: it simply had to be done.

Armies can be defeated but human spirit cannot be subdued. Gaza's act of collective courage is one of the greatest acts of civil disobedience of our time, akin to civil rights marches in America during the 1960's, South Africa's anti-Apartheid struggle, and more recently the protests in Burma.

Palestinian people have succeeded where politics and thousands of international appeals have failed. They took matters into their own hands and they prevailed. While this is hardly the end of Gaza's suffering, it is a reminder that people's power to act is just too significant to be overlooked.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Gazans cross into Egypt to buy supplies

Israeli Patrol in Gaza