The Dominion - 56

A Costly Commute

Moira Peters — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:32:59 +0000

Foreign migrant workers provide long hours of cheap labour on Canadian farms

MONTREAL, QUEBEC–Don Jorge* stands outside the St Joseph Oratory, looking at the Montreal landscape in awe.

Don Jorge is a peasant farmer from a small town in Central Mexico.

Every summer he comes to Canada to work for six months on a farm close to Montreal. He has been working that farm for the last 14 years.

Even though he comes every year, he doesn't know Montreal or its surroundings. His knowledge of Canada and Quebec is confined to the fields that he harvests, the IGA where he shops for his weekly groceries and Montreal's St Joseph Oratory – where agricultural workers go to mass once a year.

He cannot leave the farm except for Sunday afternoons, and his only human contact is with other farm workers like himself and with his foreman.

Don Jorge lives and works in Les Fermes du Soleil, a farm owned by the ex-Quebec MNA André Chenail. Don Jorge says Chenail does not really take care of the farm business anymore, leaving day-to-day operations to his family instead. Chenail’s retirement was good news for the workers.

"He used to ‘tabernacle’ us all the time.” Tabernacle – the receptacle for the sacrament in Catholic churches – is used in Quebec an insult. “We were not treated as people. It is as though he thought we were animals," Jorge says, looking at his hands, calloused and roughened by farm work.

Don Jorge is part of the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (CSAWP), a Canadian federal program that brings migrant workers from Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean to work in the agricultural sector every summer.

The CSAWP began as a pilot project with Jamaica in 1966, when 264 Jamaican workers came to Ontario to harvest tobacco. The first Mexican workers arrived in Canada in 1974 after Mexico and Canada signed a memorandum of understanding.

The Mexican government plays a double role in this arrangement: it makes sure the program works smoothly, and it also functions as the representative of migrant agricultural Mexican workers in Canada.

For Caribbean workers, the program is run jointly with the governments of the participating Caribbean states, which recruit workers and appoint representatives in Canada to assist in the program’s operations. Workers come from Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (Grenada, Antigua, Dominica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Monserrat).

For Guatemalan workers, the project was established in 2003 through an agreement with FERME (Foundation of Recruiting Enterprises of Foreign Agricultural Labor), which also lobbies the Canadian government for Canadian farm owners, under the supervision of the Department of Human Resources Development of Canada.

According to the Canadian United Farm and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), 20,274 migrant workers came to Canada in 2005: 11,798 came from Mexico and 5,916 from Jamaica; the rest came from Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). In 2004, fewer than three per cent of participants in this program were women. In 2009, the number of migrant workers in Canada is expected to be over 156,000.

Seasonal workers like Don Jorge come to work in the horticulture and fruit and vegetable sectors. Most workers (nearly 16,500) are employed in Ontario; Quebec follows suit with 2,670 seasonal workers.

The temporary workers visa allows them to work only on a specified farm and for a limited period of time. Mexicans and Jamaicans can stay for a maximum of eight months.

Workers live in housing provided by the employer and are not allowed to spend the night outside the quarters. Employers are required to cover certain costs (which vary depending on the nationality of the worker), to ensure that the employee is covered by workers’ compensation and under health insurance, and to sign a contract with the worker.

"The Guatemalan workers pay $35 per week for their lodging but the farm owners pay for their plane ticket. Mexican workers pay for half their plane ticket (up to $550) but they don't pay lodging," says Edgardo Flores Rivas, General Consul of Mexico in Montreal.

Most workers are married with children, which ensures they have an "anchor" back home, preventing them from staying in Canada after their work term. They have health and labor insurance while in Canada, and when they fall ill their employers must take them to a doctor. Under the rules of the program, a worker cannot be repatriated due to illness.

Don Jorge says, however, that this is not always the case. He recounts an incident that happened during his first years in Canada.

"We were working in the fields even though they had announced a severe storm. When the storm hit, it hit hard. We had a bunch of boxes full of produce stacked up. They were knocked down by the wind and they were going to fall over a Quebecker. A young Mexican jumped in, risking his life. He was hit here and there, and afterward he was suffering from intense shock and trauma. He couldn't work and asked to see a doctor, and the patron” – the boss – “refused. Two days later, while we were all in the fields, they tried to repatriate him. But the young man left a message for his roommate and that's how we found out. They never thought we would find out," he says.

Don Jorge says the farm workers decided to take action. After lunch, they all refused to go to work. When Chenail found out about the strike he went to the workers’ quarters and threatened to send them all back to Mexico if they refused to go to the fields. The workers called the Mexican Consulate for support, but were baffled when Fanny Carranza, a Consulate staff member, told them to get back to work instead of looking for trouble.

But the workers refused, saying they would rather return to Mexico than allow such injustice to occur. The young man finally received medical attention and worked the Canadian fields that summer. He wasn't offered a job the next year.

Andrea Galvez works at a Temporary Workers Support Center (Centro de Apoyo) in St. Remi, Qc. She cites numerous problems that allow for worker abuse in the program.

"The workers sometimes work 14 hours per day. They don't get a break. They are afraid to complain because they fear they will be sent home," she says.

The majority of workers want to work as many hours as possible to maximize their earnings, since they have to cover for the costs of coming to Canada in the first place. No matter how many hours per day they work, migrant workers do not get paid overtime.

"What they earn is what the Canadian government establishes as the minimum wage for agricultural workers. People and media ask why they earn so little. We can't modify Canadian law. Those who come know this is how it is," says Flores Rivas.

"[The government omitted overtime pay] because they wanted to protect small family farms. The problem is that now agriculture is industrial, not family owned," says Galvez.

For René Mantha, General Director of FERME, low wages are essential to stay competitive in the global economy.

"They can’t be paid time and a half. Let’s use the lettuce harvest as an example. If workers are being paid too much the lettuce will be more expensive to compensate for the higher wages. If the lettuce doesn’t sell because it is too expensive we will not be able to hire any workers later. You see, we are in a global economy," he says.

Furthermore, a survey in the Niagara region showed that Canadian farm workers' hourly rates increased nine to 14 per cent over the past five years.

Bilateral government agreements call for a rest day after six days of work but employers can ask workers to volunteer to work their rest day during harvest periods.

"I wish they would work no more than 12 hours per day. It is what is stated in the contract," says Mantha. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that the workers sometimes face longer working hours.

"They are not here for one week. They are here for six or seven months, so if they are exhausted I can tell you they will not be as productive," he says.

Flores Rivas agrees, saying they are not supposed to work more than 12 hours per day ever. "This has been decided to protect their health," he says.

In Canada, agriculture accounts for several times more work-related injuries and deaths than other industries. Risks stem from operating heavy machinery, applying pesticides, and working long hours during extreme heat. These dangers are compounded with the fact that most workers have inadequate training and sometimes do not understand safety instructions.

According to the North-South Institute, one in three workers from St. Lucia, Grenada and Mexico and one in five workers from Trinidad, Jamaica and Dominica report injuries or sickness due to the combination of long hours and exposure to chemicals and other hazards. Between one half and one third of sick and injured workers go to work rather than risk being considered unfit for work or losing wages.

****

Paulino* has worked Canadian fields for seven summers.

He has been a peasant all his life. “My father showed me how to clean the corn, the yucca, the camote since I was a little boy,” he says.

He appreciates his job, since he says it is hard to find a job back home, but he bitterly complains about the expenses involved in working here, and the lack of wage increases in spite of a rising cost of living in Mexico.

“In Mexico everything is very expensive. We want our salaries to increase but it’s not like anybody asks us what we want. We are illiterate; we have no say in the negotiations,” he says.

To begin with, while still at home, Mexican CSAWP hopefuls bear the cost of traveling to Mexico City five times or more to fulfill the bureaucratic requirements of the program.

To be eligible for the program, workers must pay for and pass the medical screenings required by the Canadian government. Canadian Immigration Health Services has approved very few clinics that carry out required medical screenings, and all of them are in Mexico City.

Workers must also travel to Mexico City to apply and pay for their work visa with the Canadian government.

"We cannot force the Canadian government to open offices elsewhere to give the visa. In the Third World they use their own standards. Not all clinics can pass the standard. The worker who comes knows he will have these expenses," says Flores Rivas, adding that the Mexican government has opened several offices in Mexico to make the Mexican paperwork easier for the workers.

Mexican workers pay half the cost – $550 – of their plane ticket. An economy class round trip from Mexico can be bought by the general public for as little as $600. However, Galvez says the tickets are bought through a travel agency owned by FERME, and she believes this is clearly a conflict of interest. Flores Rivas disagrees.

“The only way they can reserve the seats with the airlines is to reach an agreement with them,” he says. For Paulino, the $550 amount is staggering.

Seasonal migrant workers have to pay income tax like all other workers in Canada. They also pay Canadian Employment Insurance (EI) and make contributions to the Canadian Pension Plan. In 2001, Ontario CSWAP workers contributed $3.4 million to EI even though they cannot claim such EI benefits as welfare.

Paulino says the money he is able to bring back home is spent fast, and he believes the Mexican government is unwilling to negotiate better salaries.

Given the great personal cost, why do so many agricultural migrant workers like Paulino keep coming to the Canadian fields year after year?

Paulino says he, like many others, comes from a poor rural Mexican family. His parents couldn’t afford to send him to high school. He says he leaves his sweat and health in the Canadian fields when he comes and that it is very difficult to be away from his family for so long. “I have two young children. They miss me and I miss them,” he says.

Even so, traveling to work every year is an act of love towards his family. “I want to give my children a better life. I want them to study. That’s the only reason I come so far to work: for them,” he says.

Flores Rivas believes the conditions of the program are the best the negotiations have allowed.

“It [the program] is not that bad since people keep on coming,” he says.

When asked if he will continue to come back to Canada, Paulino says he will. He says it is not because the program is good for the workers, but because there are not enough jobs back home.

“We come because we have to come,” he says.

*Workers' names have been changed to avoid problems with their employers.

Verónica Islas is currently completing a Masters degree in Public Policy and Public Administration at Concordia University.

TFW Fence

Land & Jail Part II

Moira Peters — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:45:19 +0000

Canada's incarceration strategy

NANAIMO, BRITISH COLUMBIA–Armed Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) entered the Six Nations Territory of Douglas Creek in Caledonia, Ontario – about 20 kilometres east of Hamilton - on September 19 of this year. According to witnesses, the OPP jumped a resident, “beat him down,” and arrested him while threatening other residents not to interfere.

The Crown, after repeated arrests and jailings, reached a deal with the defense on September 29 to have activist Shawn Brant plead guilty to involvement in two blockades in Desoronto, Ontario, in April 2007. The Crown agreed to drop all but three of the mischief charges, with Brant to receive a sentence of time already served pretrial, a 90-day conditional sentence, and one year of probation.

Brant cited familial considerations behind his agreement with the Crown. However, OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino still faces scrutiny over his controversial threats to Brant. Ontario New Democrat MP Peter Kormos chided Fantino for his “pugnacious and bellicose” remarks and his “Rambo-style policing.”

Brant challenged Fantino afterwards: “Commissioner Fantino has always said he couldn’t comment because [the case is] before the courts. Well, now it’s settled, and it's time the public hears from Mr. Fantino.”

****

Incarceration of First Nations people has been the long-standing strategy for Canadian authorities.

The Supreme Court of Canada stated on April 23, 1999, in R v. Gladue: “If overreliance on incarceration is a problem with the general population, it is of much greater concern in the sentencing of aboriginal Canadians.”

R v. Gladue referred to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples which held that the “crushing failure” of justice meted out to Original Peoples was due to “the fundamentally different world views of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people” and that it “emphasize[d] the importance of an understanding of history.”

In the vein of this recommendation, it is important to note that culturally insensitive and racist proclamations have long been a part of the Canadian criminal justice and political establishment’s make-up. Meanwhile, provincial authorities continue the use of aggressive strategies in disputes with Original Peoples. At Barriere Lake First Nation, in October of this year, the Quebec police used tear gas and “pain compliance” techniques against peaceful demonstrators, including elders and children, said witnesses.

Canada’s first prime minister, John A Macdonald, exposed an animus toward the Métis in writings to his London agent: “These impulsive half-breeds have got spoilt by their emeute," he wrote, "and must be kept down by a strong hand until they are swamped by the influx of settlers.”

The controversial deputy superintendent general of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, testified before a Special Committee of the House of Commons examining the Indian Act amendments of 1920:

I want to get rid of the Indian problem.
...
Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.

In 1991, the Kanienkehaka community of Kanesatake was at odds with the township of Oka, ON over the township’s proposal for a golf course expansion and condo development on land claimed by the Kanienkehaka. The Sûreté du Québec, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the Royal 22nd Regiment were brought in to break up the Kanienkehaka blockade.

Racism was heightened by the Oka Crisis. Warrior Publications informed of “white mobs” burning and hanging effigies of Kanienkehaka warriors from lamp posts.

In 1995, a group of Original Peoples had gathered to hold the previously banned Sundance ceremony at Ts’peten (Gustafsen Lake) in central British Columbia. There the celebrants were accosted by ranch hands and told to vacate the land. This led to a major standoff over the unceded Secwepemc land of the Canoe Creek First Nation.

Prior to the mobilization of the RCMP at Ts’peten, Bruce Clark, legal counsel for the Ts’peten Defenders (as the defenders of indigenous title were called), informed the RCMP that action against the Sundancers would be illegal according to international and constitutional law.

Clark reminded the RCMP of their duty “to respect and to defend the rule of law” that he insisted was "clear and plain.”

Clark applied logic to remediate the crimes committed against the Original Peoples: “Legal justice requires that the rights usurped be restored, and that reasonable compensation be made for past transgressions. Territory should be restored where it has been illegally taken away. And the existing aboriginal right to govern upon that territory should be respected.”

Fifteen of the 18 Sundancers at Ts’peten were found guilty, including Secwepemc Elder Wolverine (William Jones Ignace), who was found guilty of mischief to property and other crimes.

Wolverine contended that ranch “owner” Lyall James was a squatter on indigenous land.

“It’s the real criminals who are in control here. The judges," he said. "The lawyers. The politicians. And in the enforcement arm, the RCMP and its agencies. These are the real criminals because they're covering up the theft of native land.”

Clark stated that the treaty process is designed to “extinguish the Indians’ natural law, international law and constitutional law right of jurisdiction that otherwise is not supposed to be ‘molested or disturbed’ by domestic crown governments, their courts or their police.” Clark implicated the judiciary in the “theft of jurisdiction” and cover up of genocide. An RCMP management team video depicted Ryan relaying orders from Superintendent Len Olfert: "Kill this Clark and smear the prick and everyone with him," and, "Clark is a goddamned snake."

The Law Society of Upper Canada v. Bruce Clark acknowledged on June 19, 1996, that “the ‘genocide’ of which Mr. Clark speaks is real” and inescapable. Despite this, Clark was disbarred in 1999 for being “ungovernable.”

Clark does not flinch from indicting many of his peers in the genocide. He contends that the judiciary is running the “perfect scam,” “the absolute quintessence of crime personified” by preventing an impartial third party from ruling on the genocide perpetrated on the Original Peoples in Canada. Wrote Clark, “The moment you get third party adjudication, it’s game over for these criminals.”

Kim Petersen is the Original Peoples Editor for The Dominion.

For more on Canada's strategy of incarceration, see "Land & Jail: Ipperwash, official racism, and the future of Ontario," also by Kim Petersen.

Six Nations Cops

retreat

Moira Peters — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:06:17 +0000

ComicRetreat.jpg

Issue #56

dru — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:22:31 +0000

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Abundance

hillarybain — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:28:33 +0000

Art and trash in Dawson City

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK–One woman stood on tiptoes, biting through fishing line for a full minute until she ‘released’ the paper raven. Another well-dressed woman bent awkwardly over a hard-to-reach shelf, rummaged around, and then held the garbage she found up to her nose to smell it, smiling in delight. A third person spent half an hour surrounded by garbage, left, came back and pondered the garbage for another twenty minutes before selecting a small part to take home.

Each of these people participated in Abundance: The Dawson City Trash Project in late August. Abundance was a gallery installation of a miniature diorama of Dawson City, Yukon, made entirely out of Dawson City’s trash. The installation was the raw material of a performance: each of the 1,000 pieces in the exhibition was available to be taken away by gallery viewers at any time during the show.

While my project engaged in environmental activism on a material level by moving objects out of the landfill, it also set out to achieve a loftier goal: the redefinition of garbage. If trash is generally defined as unwanted, disgusting, diffuse, useless, and unowned, I aimed to make it desirable, beautiful, unique and popular. My success would be measured by the rate at which my art installation disappeared, piece by piece, when people were invited to take the ‘garbage’ home. Locals were friendly when giving me lifts to the landfill to gather the trash I needed, or when donating their used teabags (post-waste-stream teabags are in pretty rough shape and usually moldy), but I wondered: Would they want their teabags back?

The gallery was concerned that perhaps there would be no art to show after the first few days. I was nervous that the gallery would be full until the end. My dream was an empty gallery. Predictably, something in between happened. During the opening, nothing could be taken to ensure that everyone had a chance to see the installation in its entirety. The next day, the audience could literally do anything they wanted, from taking the art, to playing with it, to damaging it. And they did.

People came in little groups and took three or four items at a time. The biggest and best items went in the first week, but not on the first day. Most participants touched the art, even if they didn’t take anything, and many started conversations with other “shoppers.” People searched, played, regarded the piece like a science display with plenty of pointing and comparison, picked pieces up and carried them around before putting them back, taking them away or just moving them around. Some people made messes. Some people stepped on things. To my knowledge, no one added anything. I made a bet with several people who worked in the gallery that no one would take the little plastic Christmas tree parts remodeled as trees or the bottle caps that represented the rivers because they were not sufficiently transformed into art and still resembled their source as garbage. I lost the bet. An eight year old took some trees — and many other pieces — to remodel a diorama in his room, and a visiting artist took bottle caps to hold glue for her art camp students.

In the end, of 1,000 pieces (not including bottle caps), around 500 were taken. Considering the fact that Dawson City’s population hovers around 1,000 and that the show occurred at the end of the tourist season, I believe solid waste management should reconsider its treatment of trash, in light of the fact that trash can be useful, desirable, and aesthetic material, with the potential of creating positive social interactions. The term ubiquitously used to describe Abundance was “fun.”

There is one aspect of Dawson City that made this project possible and a potential leader in the future of solid waste. Dawson City’s dump is not heavily regulated and scavenging in its landfill is not only viable, but occurs as a matter of course. Things are very expensive in Dawson, and there are plenty of good, free materials at the dump. There is even a “free store” at the Quigley landfill, where people can leave their still-serviceable items for others to use. In every other municipal dump I have visited, even if they have a free store, the gates are closed to scavenging. Dawson City, like many other rural communities, has a culture of scavenging and reuse. In many ways, the residents of Dawson City already know that rubbish is valuable, and Abundance: The Dawson City Trash Project was merely a coordinated and playful effort to make this fact measurably visible.

Abundance: The Dawson City Trash Project was made possible by the generous support of the KIAC Artist in Residence Program, the ODD Gallery, The Canada Council for the Arts, and a New York University Dean’s Grant for Student Research. The installation-performance ran from August 14 to September 23, 2008 at the ODD Gallery in Dawson City, Yukon.

Max Liboiron is an artist and Doctoral Candidate in Visual Culture at New York University. She would like to thank the residents of Dawson City for an informative and inspiring project.

Art&TrashParticipation

Art&TrashQuiggley

They’re Animals!

hillarybain — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:58:34 +0000

Dehumanization, media and the War on Terror

MONTREAL, QUEBEC – While most people were glued to their television screens, confounded by the images of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, Erin Steuter started to notice a trend among television announcers and in news coverage of the event. "I noticed right away that some commentators were starting to use animal metaphors, terms like 'the hunt for bin Laden,' instead of 'the search for,' or they would talk about them hiding in caves and lairs or nests instead of bunkers or something human-made."

While the Professor of Sociology at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, found the analogies off-putting, at first she thought little of it, chalking it up to the immediate frenzy that would follow such an event. But gradually, as she followed the language used informally, she noticed a disturbing trend. "[The animal metaphor] started to grow and be used for all citizens of Afghanistan or all the people of Iraq." Increasingly alarmed by the pervasiveness of this language, she began following it more closely, doing thorough searches in media databases such as Lexis-Nexis. As she delved deeper, she realized that instead of receding as time went on, the dehumanizing metaphors continued to spread, "not just to specific enemies or to specific people associated with particular countries we were at war with, but to all Muslims and in some cases all Arabs." The result is the recently published At War With Metaphor, which documents and attempts to explain not just where this language comes from, but what its dangers are, particularly based on historical precedent.

Taken alone, using animal metaphors does not necessarily seem so nefarious. Indeed comparisons to animals – eating like a pig, strong as a bull – are fairly common in nearly any language. The danger lies, according to Steuter, when we move beyond simple comparisons, to persistent metaphors; people are no longer like something, but have become something. You’re not like an animal; you are an animal. Steuter points out that we have seen this kind of dehumanization before in some of the most brutal and bloody human conflicts.

The image of the rat was used both by Nazis in their dehumanization of Jews, making it easier for neighbour to turn on neighbour during the Holocaust. The rat metaphor was also adopted in America when it came to locking up Japanese-Americans in internment camps later in the Second World War, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour and the United States' subsequent entry into the conflict. Most recently, Steuter points to the 1994 genocide of Tutsi populations by Hutus in Rwanda. International tribunals have condemned journalists for inciting and provoking the massacre, particularly radio stations, which painted Tutsis as cockroaches and calling for their extermination. As animal metaphors grew in the coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Steuter found it difficult to believe that these recent lessons about the use of language in committing violent acts had disappeared from the public consciousness. "I thought it would be more resonant, but people have short memories. I don't think they realized that the records of what is being said about this war on terror is not dissimilar to those previous records."

In April 2008, it was revealed that the Pentagon, with the complicity of the major American news agencies, had co-ordinated the use of military analysts in US coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in order to drum up support for the military operations. The American media has been roundly criticized since for allowing military officials too large a place in shaping the media's approach to its reporting on the war on terror and related elements.

Steuter agrees that militaries – American and Canadian – have played a large role in pushing the animal metaphor. "I think there's a sort of masculinity and intensity and power in the military language and I think the media is sometimes quick to adopt it to take on some of the power and authority for themselves." But she is quick to add that chalking up how the war is framed only to military officials is scratching the surface.

"The very notion of the war on terror was developed with consultants to make sure it brought forward the right kind of responses that suited the American political agenda and even now in Canada, the Canadian political agenda."

Steuter contends that the Canadian media have not escaped falling into the trap of dehumanizing its opponents either. According to Steuter, while the Canadian media were fairly critical of the first Gulf War under George Bush Sr. in 1991, their analysis has since significantly softened. Though Canadian media seemingly haven't engaged in dehumanizing Muslims, Arabs or Afghans as much as our southern neighbours, Steuter sees a growing trend, leaving her with little doubt that if our media do not start to turn a critical light on our own country we will soon be as complicit as our American counterparts.

“I definitely see it happening as well in Canada and I think that as the Afghanistan situation is not being resolved I think it's going to escalate, so I've been keeping tabs on the way that the Taliban and the Afghan people are being portrayed.

"I think that soon enough we're going to start to see that if you keep thinking that these people aren't even human beings, you're not going to be treating them as such. I think it is just going to explode, where Canada is going to be humiliated and embarrassed by the way we're treating civilians of enemy combatants or anyone who’s in our hands in that way."

How do we avoid heading down that road? For Steuter, the first step is to develop more informed and critical-thinking media consumers. The last chapter of At War with Metaphor, "Talking our way to peace," outlines her vision of how more critical debate can help break apart the monolithic viewpoint presented by corporate media and that government public relations should have a more rounded debate on military exploits. The lack of a critical approach, she says, is what led to prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, where images and videos of prisoner abuse have clearly shown a physical manifestation of the metaphorical dehumanization within the media.

"The very famous picture we have of [US Army Specialist] Lynndie England is her standing over a prisoner who's on all-fours naked on the end of a leash. Look at the pictures at Guantanamo Bay – they're chained to the ground in little cages with water bowls like dogs. So these are the actions that are following [from the media's dehumanization]." To counter this, people need to start revisiting their own everyday language in discussing the war – and challenging the language used by others.

"If we start to consciously change our language and start to talk about the criminal acts that have to be prosecuted and tried and that people need to be brought to justice for their actions, then we will see a much better situation in terms of addressing the problems of the violence and not of spreading the abuses with it. So having a personal consciousness of the use of language and calling others to account, calling them on it in the way that we do often call public figures and journalists on inappropriate language in other contexts, I think it's definitely something that we need to step up."

Tim McSorley is Media Analysis Editor at The Dominion.

They're Animals

110-Year Rush

dawn — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:57:28 +0000

Songs moved to survive the goldrush are returned to the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in

WHITEHORSE, YUKON–When 10,000 men showed up in Dawson City, Yukon, 110 years ago they were chasing gold in Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in territory. Prospectors and settlers arrived in hoards, almost overnight.

Chief Isaac of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in nation saw the influx of settlers as a threat to preserving the way of his people. He sent their precious legacy – the community's stories and songs – to a safe place: extended networks of family in the interior of Alaska

Ever since, newcomers have come in waves, seeking the earth's resources and building roads. In the process, First Nations have been denied access to some of their traditional hunting and gathering areas and other areas have become degraded and contaminated.

Today, Western Copper is aiming to open a mine near Carmacks. The company plans to use a form of sulphuric acid heap leach technology in the Yukon River watershed, which was approved by the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB). Heap leaching involves piling the crushed ore and irrigating it with sulpheric acid in order to dissolve the copper from the ore. The heap leach pile in this example will be as high as a thirty-story building and cover 31.5 hectares on the side of a mountain nine kilometres from the Yukon River.

“The YESAB screening report acknowledges that there is no example of this kind of heap being successfully detoxified anywhere in the world,” says Yukon Conservation Society Executive Director Karen Baltgailis. “Yet, YESAB is recommending that the project be allowed to proceed, using the first cell of the heap as a ‘field trial.’”

While an industrial scale field trial could be useful to determine whether or not the project is environmentally responsible, the so-called ‘field trial’ is occurring as the mine goes into full commercial operation. Thus, say critics, it is more accurate to call the entire mine experimental.

“Do we want to experiment with the Yukon River like this? How is this going to work? We can’t stop them from continuing if their experiment goes wrong,” says Eddie Skookum, Chief of the local Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation.

But the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation does not have the right to refuse the mine, according to provincial and national law.

Experts consulted by the First Nation include Dr. Lionel J.J. Catalan, Canada Research Chair in Industrial Waste Management and Site Remediation, and Dr. Kendra Zamzow, Aqueous Geochemist at Center for Science in Public Participation in Anchorage, Alaska. Both expressed doubt that complete leaching could ever be achieved given the size and complexity of the heap. This means that decontamination is not certain and it is likely a significant amount of copper will remain in the heap after the mine is closed.

This copper, highly toxic to salmon, may eventually find its way into the watershed. To date, no one has been able to challenge the findings of these experts.

“These chemicals will poison the salmon," says Chief Skookum. "It’s our duty to other First Nations to protect the river… We still have a big mess at the Mt. Nansen mine site and we don’t need to hear any more apologies from bureaucrats about a new disaster on our land.”

To thrive in the Yukon for millennia, First Nations have had to consider the long term consequences of their decisions. In 1898, at the height of the Gold Rush, Chief Isaac’s deliberate protection of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in stories, songs and dances is an example of foresight.

After 100 years of safeguarding, Alaskan elders have been returning the oral traditions home to the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in.

Chief Skookum and others concerned by Western Copper's mine are worried that the "modern" Yukon lacks the vision and skill to protect and preserve the traditional and ecological value of the Yukon River.

Chief Isaac of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in nation

November Books

hillarybain — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:05:56 +0000

New works by Stifter and Endicott

Rock Crystal
Adalbert Stifter
Translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore
New York Review of Books Classics, 2008.

Rock Crystal, a 19th-century Austrian story now available in an attractive little edition from NYRB Classics, is written in pure, evocative language, never too virtuosic but not at all plain, and the narrative is relayed with majestically broad omniscience and a bountiful sense of history. It is a story that starts off calm and easy but gradually becomes a tale of excruciating suspense. It is about Christmas, but it is not insipid or Christmassy.

A boy, Conrad, and his little sister Sanna embark on a hike to their grandparents' village on the other side of an alpine mountain range. Their grandmother, whose hunger to lay eyes upon the pair "amounts to a morbid craving" (a perfect characterization of grandparental longing), receives them, feeds them until they are full, loads them with snacks and gifts for their parents, and sends them trundling home. On the way back, the children run into trouble: it begins to snow and they take shelter in a mountainside cave. Their grandmother's bundle keeps them warm for the night, a canister of coffee staves off sleep and cold, and in the morning they are found by a search party, to the supreme relief of their mother, whose fears have brought the village to the family's aid. These themes of communal living and of the constancy of rural communities emerge near the beginning of the story, as the narrator surveys the region and its customs:

"The village people thus constitute a separate world, they know one another by name and are familiar with all the grandfathers' and great-grandfathers' tales. All mourn when anyone dies; all know the name of the new-born; they speak a language which is different from that used in the plain; they have their quarrels and settle them; they help one another, and if anything unusual happens, come flocking together."

The author, master stylist Adalbert Stifter, lived from 1805 until 1868, but did not do so with the assistance of any such flocking. When his father died young, Stifter was sent to boarding school. He was barred from speaking to the love of his life, and, when he did marry, one of his adopted children ran away and another was killed. Suicidal, he bled to death from a self-inflicted wound.

How painful it must have been to know tranquility and to have lived its opposite, and how rare to have retained the gift to describe it so acutely. There can never be too many lucid evocations of the past in literature, partly because of the memory-distorting effects of nostalgia, which, as Austria would find out less than a century after Stifter, can usher in problems for the present by erasing those of the past. Stifter is worth reading because he evokes nostalgia without succumbing to it. It should come as no surprise, then, that the late, great W. G. Sebald, possessor of the most clear-sighted vision of the past in recent literature, admired Stifter's powers of expression. So should we all.

– Robert Kotyk

Good to a Fault
Marina Endicott
Freehand Books, 2008.

It is unusual to come across a contemporary novel that takes up moral themes as modestly as Endicott does in her latest work, Good to a Fault. Goodness, in this meditation, is a functional thing, a hospital corridor where reluctant visitors brush past each other on their way to confront realities larger than themselves. Clara Purdy, a middle-aged insurance clerk, is driving to the bank one July day, “thinking about herself and the state of her soul,” when she plows into a beat-up Dart conveying (and housing, as it turns out) the Gage family: hardscrabble parents Lorraine and Clayton, a mulish mother-in-law, and three children; Dolly, Trevor and baby Pearce. Clara’s life is transformed; with Lorraine in the hospital for an extended period, Clayton deserts the family and Clara ends up taking over the care of the three children.

There is immense subtlety in the way Endicott handles her characters and themes; when Clara looks at sleeping Lorraine, Endicott observes, “her mouth had fallen slightly open, relaxed, and her hand lying nearest to Clara had opened too. Long fingers, nicely shaped. She was worth helping.” While the Gages’ lower-class status fundamentally shapes their interaction with Clara, her childlessness acts as an equivalently handicapping ‘status’ marker. At the grocery store, “They got the special grocery cart with the red baby seat. Secretly, Clara supposed, she must always have longed to use this cart. And now she had every right to pop Pearce into the vinyl seat and wrestle with the knotted straps and bent buckles.” Good to a Fault is a work of nuanced social portraiture, and the slow romance between Clara and her (Anglican) priest draws out the problem of childlessness and societal worth in a surprisingly modern way.

– Linda Besner

"And Then Let's Go for that Justice" Part I

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:47:13 +0000

The Walk4Justice

This article is part one of two on the Walk4Justice.

OTTAWA – It was hard to miss the giant Mohawk and Iroquois flags painting the parliament buildings with their splashes of red, yellow, brown and blue. On September 15, a crowd of about 250 was gathered in Ottawa for the Walk4Justice Rally. Even at ten a.m., there was a strong, shocking feeling of possibility in the air. This feeling would only grow as the five-hour stretch of speeches progressed, making parliament feel much more like a sacred village square.

According to a Canadian government statistic, young Indigenous women are five times more likely than other women of the same age to die as the result of violence. In honour of missing and murdered indigenous women, the Walk4Justice began in Vancouver on June 21, 2008, Aboriginal Day. Many First Nations women, men and children participated from across the country, walking for 87 days, ending in Ottawa on September 15.

The journey began with a vigil at the notorious Pickton farm site, where confessed serial killer Robert Pickton murdered 30 women (many of whom were sex-workers from Vancouver, and a third of whom were Native).

Among the many powerful speakers at the rally in Ottawa was a group of First Nations women who have devoted their lives to unpaid, front-line work with women living in Vancouver’s poverty-stricken Downtown East Side (DTES).

Bernie Williams is a front-line worker, residential school survivor, and Matriarch in the House of the Raven. She spoke of a lack of support for the Walk from Vancouver as well as a less than smooth experience along the way.

"It’s been a long walk and a very emotional one. I would be lying to you if I said that everything was all rosy out there on this journey. It hasn’t been. Since we left BC, we’ve been followed. One of our women has been stalked...We have compiled names all through the nation, all through your territories. We’ve added another three more in the last couple of days."

The Walkers began with a list of 500 — a rough estimate of the number of missing and murdered First Nations women in Canada over the last three decades (76 of whom were from the DTES), and by the time they arrived in Ottawa, they had compiled a list of 3,000 women. Upon their arrival, there were three more women to add to the list, two of whom are teens from nearby Maniwaki recently found to be missing.

The aim of the Walk was to deliver the list of names to the Canadian government and demand public inquiries into the many violent deaths.

Also present at the rally was Aboriginal rights lawyer and president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), Beverly Jacobs, from the Mohawk Nation Bear Clan in Six Nations Grand River. Jacobs has worked with Amnesty International as a lead researcher and consultant on their report "Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada." One of the many recommendations included in the report was that Canada should support research into the causes of violence against Indigenous women. There are currently no statistics on the number of missing and murdered Aboriginal women, only estimates. She noted that although Canada is aware that reports have been done, many have been shelved or ignored.

Seventy-four-year-old Mabel Todd, who has seen four of her family members disappear, participated in the entire walk, making it clear that she would not be ignored.

Cecilia, an Elder from Tofino, BC, cried while speaking of her missing granddaughter, Lisa Marie, who disappeared in 2002.

"My daughter and I have a candle vigil every year, the day she went missing. We light candles, give out posters, T-shirts, hoping that somebody will see. Who knows what happened to her."

Richie Dominic walked for his aunt, Ramona Wilson, who went missing in 1994 at the age of 16 on BC’s now infamous Highway 16. After ten months, her remains were found, but no one has been held accountable to this day, and there are countless cases just like hers.

"Justice would mean a final bit of closure," says Dominic. "This is what we need [pointing at the crowd]. We need numbers. We need to show Canada that we do care. That the country does care."

The speakers, who ranged from youth to Elders in their nineties, emphasized the fact that most of the cases they were addressing had not been taken very seriously by police or the media. When the missing or murdered women happen to be sex-workers, they are taken even less seriously and their disappearances or deaths are rarely, if ever, investigated to the point of resolution.

In a radio interview, Jacobs cites the case of Pamela George as an example of prevalent attitudes that act as obstacles to justice.

George was a 28-year-old mother of two who struggled with poverty and occasionally worked the sex-trade in Regina. She was murdered in 1995 by two white, male university students who picked her up, beat her severely and left her by the side of the road.

Testimony at the trial indicated that the two men had attempted to pick up another Indigenous woman before they had encountered George. The woman testified that when she had refused to go with them they had called her "Indian trash" and a "squaw slut."

According to a friend of one of the killers who also testified, one of the young men later bragged about picking up an "Indian hooker," saying "She deserved it. She was an Indian."

The case was tried before a white judge and all-white jury. The men were each sentenced to a short six years in prison. According to Amnesty’s Stolen Sisters Report, little attention was paid to the victim throughout the trial; her sex-work was the main focus. The Crown prosecutor told the jury to consider the fact that she was a prostitute, "far-removed from them," and the judge told them to bear in mind her profession when they considered whether or not she had consented to sexual activity. A Court of Appeal decision briefly considered the prosecutor and judge’s comments and concluded they "were not made for the purpose of conveying a negative view of the victim to the jury."

Amnesty International expressed concern that comments of this type might reflect social attitudes faced by sex-workers in general, and Indigenous sex-workers in particular.

Jacobs cites the case of Helen Betty Osbourne as an example of the attitudes of many police authorities, also standing in the way of justice.

Osborne was a Cree woman, kidnapped and murdered by four white men in 1971. A Manitoba Justice Inquiry later concluded that the Canadian Justice Authorities had failed Osbourne, and criticized a "sloppy, racially biased investigation" that took over 15 years, and brought only one man to justice. The inquiry concluded that police had long been aware of who had been responsible for the murder.

Thirty-three years later, when Osborne’s cousin was murdered, the police reaction was similar. According to the young woman’s family, officers showed up at two a.m., interrogated everyone present, and searched their home. It was only six weeks later, when the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) held a press conference, that an investigation finally commenced. The former pow-wow dancer’s body was eventually found.

Walker Brenda Wilson explains why many families of victims eventually give up on police and the media:

"There’s a lot of barriers to face in finding your loved one. You have to prove to the authorities that your loved one is missing, that they didn’t just run away. And you also have to prove to them that they’re not all the same case…They each are an individual person, and they each have different cases…They need to be individuals, because when they left this world, they were individuals."

Wilson points out that many missing and murdered First Nations women have been stuck with the same label, which reads: "Highway of Tears," and not given much more thought. More than 30 women have gone missing or been found murdered on BC’s Highway 16 in the past 30 years. The RCMP has confirmed four murders and five disappearances linked to the Highway of Tears, only one of whom was non-Native.

Many families are very angry about how they have been treated by police, and object to having to wait a year or more in some cases for investigations to commence, if they do at all.

Seeing little progress in police investigations, BC private investigator Ray Michalko, a former RCMP officer, started probing into the cases at his own expense in 2006. Michalko has had to contend with numerous warnings from RCMP that he could be charged with obstruction of justice if he does not "tread carefully," almost ending his investigations more than once.

Walker Gladys Radek describes how front-line workers stand in for both police and media on a daily basis. Radek, like Bernie Williams, works front line in the DTES with homeless and poverty-stricken women, many of whom work in the sex-trade for survival.

"Families have approached us before they even go to the police. I remember families walking up to Bernie on the street: Have you seen my daughter, Have you seen my son? This is the kind of work she does and everybody knows it. She doesn’t get paid for what she does. None of us get paid for what we do. We work from our heart.”"

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie grew up in the woods and hopes to make it back there at some point. She currently studies life and works from Montreal.

The original version of this article was published in Oil Sands Truth (Fall 2008 print issue).

Walkers 4 Justice on Parliament Hill in Ottawa

Crowd Members at the Walk4Justice in Ottawa

Indigenous Justice in Colombia

dawn — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:02:08 +0000

Traditional justice sentences kidnappers, restores faith in community and traditional authorities

The town center of the Resguardo (Reserve) of Jambaló in Northern Cauca. On November 26th, seven people were kidnapped on the road leading out of Jambaló's town center, in the village of Pioyá. Five were liberated later that night, and the other two in the early hours of the next day. The hostages were liberated by the Indigenous Guard of Jambaló and members of the community, and four of the five kidnappers were apprehended.

Colombia I

Colombia II

Colombia V

Colombia XV

Colombia IV

Colombia VII

Colombia IX

Colombia X

Colombia XII

Colombia XI

Colombia XIII

Colombia XIV

Colombia III

A Hillbilly, a Judge, and a Coal Company

Moira Peters — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:21:19 +0000

The opening skirmish in the court battle over mountaintop removal mining

PIGEONROOST HOLLOW, WEST VIRGINIA–Lucinda Weekley grew up in Pigeonroost Hollow in the coalfields of southern West Virginia, near the little town of Blair. To her, Pigeonroost was a place of incomparable beauty. In winter, with the limbs of trees weighed down with snow, “it was like looking at a postcard,” she remembers. Her family settled in Pigeonroost in the early 1800s. She had kinfolk living from the mouth of the hollow to its head three miles away. After work required her family to move elsewhere in the state, she used to serenade her father Jim, singing, “Daddy, won’t you take us back to Pigeonroost Hollow,” a takeoff on the John Prine standard. Her family did return. She was too young at the time to realize how much the hollow also meant to her father.

By the mid-1990s, however, it looked as though the hollow’s days were numbered. Arch Coal, a leading producer, had begun a gigantic mining operation a short distance from Pigeonroost on the mountain ridge above Blair. This was not old-fashioned underground mining or even conventional strip mining. Arch was blowing the top off the mountain to get at the seam of coal beneath, deploying two huge shovels and a dragline--a towering crane-like machine atop a base the size of a nine-storey hotel--to help shove millions of tons of debris over the sides into the valleys and streams below. Valley fills, they were called. Such strip-mining was known as mountaintop removal.

For the people of Blair living just below the mine, named Dal-Tex, it meant explosions just hundreds of feet away, powerful enough to crack the foundations of their homes, and dust so thick cars turned their lights on in the daytime. The mining went on around the clock, seven days a week, year after year. There was no escaping it except to sell out and move.

Jim Weekley and his wife Sibby were just half a mile from the dragline, close enough that the blasting broke things in their house and clouds of dust drove them off their porch and caused them to cough even when they were inside. They could not avoid the continual high-pitched squeal of the dragline’s bucket – so large it could scoop up the equivalent of five tractor-trailer loads of dirt and debris – as it was dragged across the ground. The dragline, named the Aracoma Chief, moved back and forth along the ridgeline, working from hollow to hollow. Even when it was out of sight, they could hear its racket.

The Weekleys knew Arch had also applied for another mining permit covering five square miles and including Pigeonroost. If approved, it would be the largest mine in West Virginia’s history. They knew two giant valley fills and two waste-treatment ponds were to be constructed not far from their house. Most of their neighbours in the hollow had already moved out. As soon as Arch finished the Dal-Tex operation, it would begin the new Spruce #1 mine. Much of Pigeonroost Hollow would be buried in rocks and dirt from the leveled mountain.

Jim Weekley, an intense, rail-thin man who had broken his back working in a coal mine when he was young, used to sit on the huge “meditating rock” above his house. It rested on the very top of the mountain and from there he could see for miles. For years, it had been so “quiet and peaceful up there, it put you close to heaven,” he recalls, but now he gazed at the spreading devastation. Perched on the rock, he’d time the dragline’s operation: Drop the bucket. Drag it along the ground. Fill it up. Swing it wide to the left. Dump the debris. It took 47 seconds. He wanted, says Lucinda, to know how long it would take to flatten the mountaintop.

Finally, after two years of watching Blair Mountain being carved up, he’d had enough. One summer day in 1997, he was outside his house looking at the mountains surrounding Pigeonroost and the dragline. The house was flanked by a brook where he and his grandchildren liked to fish. Around the house stood some 50 beehives he tended for honey. Dust kicked up by the dragline hung in the air. Sibby was standing on the porch. He whirled around toward her and declared, “Something’s got to be done.” He quoted words he believed were in the Bible: “God spoke thus, ‘Let no man destroy what I have created.’” Sibby agreed they had to act. They decided to get a lawyer.

Something else was driving Weekley. A former union miner, like many in his family before him (several of whom were killed in mine accidents) he considered Blair Mountain sacred ground. In 1921 it had been the scene of the largest labour insurrection in American history and the biggest military engagement on American soil since the Civil War, involving upwards of 20,000 miners and supporters. Their aim on the battlefield had been to free their brothers in southernmost West Virginia from the oppression of the coal company by extending their union, the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA), to them.

Even in West Virginia most people know little about the Battle of Blair Mountain. The story has been passed down in union families, but for more than half a century the battle was not mentioned in public-school textbooks, a suppression of their history that still rankles some West Virginians. Today, Blair Mountain is noted in schoolbooks, but only briefly.

Weekley, however, had grown up learning about the battle. His mother told him members of the miners’ army had camped in Pigeonroost and that her parents had taken them food, despite warnings they were risking arrest or worse. Weekley eventually grew determined to save the miners’ battlefield from mining and to honour it “This is what made our union…,” he says, “this battle right here on Blair Mountain.”

The struggle to commemorate it goes on to this day and has finally made some headway. After three decades of fruitless attempts to nominate the battlefield to the National Register of Historic Places, the federal government is now considering awarding it that historic status. Yet even if it does, that will not necessarily keep coal companies from destroying it through strip-mining. The fight to preserve the battlefield continues.

The Weekleys were referred to a neophyte environmental lawyer in a firm that represented the poor for free. Indeed, they were Joe Lovett’s first clients. No one had ever sued over mountaintop removal and Lovett had to find grounds to do so. He called every environmental lawyer he could think of, but no one had any ideas. And only one, a law professor, was initially interested. “It’s Appalachia,” they told him. “See, nobody serves Appalachia.” Lovett finally figured out he could sue under the US Clean Water and Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Acts. He wound up filing in federal court on behalf of Pigeonroost and two other communities experiencing similar problems. There were six plaintiffs beside the Weekleys, plus the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.

While Joe Lovett poured over mining law, Weekley and Sibby were doing their own legal research at the county courthouse and at home. Lucinda says her father preferred knowing the law himself to relying on someone else’s word. Weekley had wanted to be a lawyer as a youngster and had started taking classes in law in junior high. Instead he had met Sibby in Pigeonroost and married her at age 18 and gone to work in the mines.

The last judge Lovett wanted to hear the case, named Robertson vs Bragg, was Charles H. Haden II, a Republican from a mining family whose rulings took a decidedly pro-mining bent. But Haden got the case. Weekley encountered Arch’s general counsel, Blair Gardner, speaking at a conference and badgered him mercilessly until he agreed to come to Pigeonroost to see what was at stake. A battery of reporters learned of the meeting and met an unsuspecting Gardner there. That day, Weekley, as always, spoke from the heart, while Gardner, struck by nature’s abundance in Pigeonroost, remarked, “This is like a rainforest.” It was, says Lovett, their first media victory.

While the court case proceeded, Weekley was speaking out at protest rallies and in interviews. “Just ’cuz I have a high-school education and was born in a hollow don’t mean I’m a dumbass hillbilly,” Weekley says.

Then Judge Haden himself came to Pigeonroost before flying over southern West Virginia to see mountaintop removal firsthand--remarkably, at the defense’s request. On landing, “Haden was astonished,” writes Penny Loeb in Moving Mountains, her penetrating book on the Bragg case and its key figures, “‘What were they ever thinking to take me up there?’ he said to his clerks.” Says Lovett, “I think that the flyover and the visit turned him completely.”

A few days later, Haden stunned nearly everyone by issuing a preliminary injunction that barred opening Spruce #1. (His opinion cited the threat to wildlife and aquatic life in Pigeonroost.) That meant the 300 or so Dal-Tex miners who were ready to transfer to the new mine now faced a layoff. Arch, the miners, and the county commission howled. “COMMISSION: THIS IS WAR” headlined the local Logan Banner. One day, when the two sides were negotiating several issues in the Charleston courthouse, “A noisy parade of coal trucks continually drove around the courthouse constantly honking their horns--heard loud and clear by Judge Haden and all the rest of us,” recalls plaintiff Cindy Rank. (Nearly all the other issues would be settled in the plaintiffs’ favour with lasting effects in West Virginia, including smaller valley fills and improved reclamation.)

But this was nothing compared to the reaction that October, when Haden not only made the injunction permanent but also banned the dumping of mining debris in West Virginia streams--in effect, ending mountaintop removal throughout Appalachia.

Lovett had won a landmark decision, and Pigeonroost seemed safe from mining. But the decision brought denunciations from the coal industry and a declaration of a state of emergency from Gov. Cecil Underwood. A thousand coal miners rallied in Washington, D.C. “Things were really tense,” says Lovett. “We were lucky no one was killed.”

A few days later, Haden sought to calm the waters by staying his ruling temporarily. Strip-mining immediately resumed. Ultimately, his far-reaching decision would be reversed by an appellate court on the grounds that the case should have been brought in state court, leaving the legality of valley fills--and so mountaintop removal itself--unresolved. They would be challenged again and again in various courts. Weekley’s lawsuit had opened the door to legal combat over mountaintop removal. This year, however, the Spruce #1 mine started operating and mountaintop removal has begun in Pigeonroost within sight and sound of Weekley’s home.

Peter Slavin, a freelance journalist based outside Washington, DC, has been writing about the West Virginia coalfields since 1995.

MTRArial

MTRWeekley

November in Review Part II

dawn — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:36:56 +0000

Barriere Lake Algonquins press demands, OCAP builds a wall, the Minga shakes Colombia

Thanks to the high price of food and recent drought in Afghanistan, it is estimated that 1.6 million children under five years of age and 625,000 women of child bearing age are at risk of dying this winter.

A study commissioned by the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety found that mice fed with genetically modified corn developed by the US-based Monsanto Corporation had lower fertility and body weight.

The UN called on the Harper government to investigate why hundreds of deaths and disappearances of Aboriginal women remain unsolved.

Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom asked Governor General Michäelle Jean to prevent the opening of the Rosia Montana gold mine. The proposed open pit mine, owned by Gabriel Resources, would flood out villages and cemeteries.

The ETC Group released "Who Owns Nature?", a report on corporate concentration in commercial food, farming, health and the strategic push to commodify the planet's remaining natural resources. The report reveals that 10 companies now control more than two-thirds of global proprietary seed sales. The report also points to a very different reality and a powerful contrast to the corporate-controlled life sciences. Although a single company--Monsanto--accounts for almost one-quarter of proprietary seed sales, about three-quarters of the world's farmers routinely save seeds from their harvest and grow locally-bred varieties.

As part of the International Week Against Israel's Apartheid Wall, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty erected a cement wall in front of a building owned by elite real estate developer Leviev-Boymelgreen. According to OCAP, Leviev-Boymelgreen builds Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestine as well as luxury condos in Toronto.

Barriere Lake Algonquins blockaded highway 117 in Northern Quebec for a second time. The community wants Quebec and Canada to respect environmental and revenue-sharing agreements and Canada to end interference in their leadership selection.

Wal-Mart shoppers trampled a Wal-Mart employee to death at the Valley Stream location on Long Island, NY. The shoppers took the store's doors off their hinges and stampeded towards the Christmas discounts, crushing the worker underneath. Two people were also reported dead after a shooting in a Toys R Us store in California. The killings took place on November 28, aptly named "Black Friday," the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States. November 28 is also Buy Nothing Day.

Independent journalist Anthony Fenton revealed Pierre Pettigrew's current role as an adviser to Canadian oil companies in Iraq.

Six teenagers were arraigned for gang assault and hate crimes in the killing of an Ecuadorean man who had lived in the US for 16 years. The killing occurred in Long Island during one of the teenagers' regular outings during which they would target and hurt (in this case fatally) Latinos. “To them, it was a sport. We know for sure that there are more victims out there,” said Thomas J. Spota, Suffolk County’s district attorney.

Fifteen Palestinian fishermen and three international Human Rights Observers (HROs) were surrounded by the Israeli Navy and taken from their boats seven miles off the coast of Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip. The HROs have been accompanying Palestinian fishermen who are regularly attacked by Israeli navy vessels from as little as three kilometres from shore. They have filmed Israeli forces using live ammunition, shells and water cannons against unarmed fishermen. These attacks constitute breaches of the current cease-fire. Over 40,000 people in Gaza make a living from the fishing industry.

Mike Mercredi from the community of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, continued to speak out about the effects of the tar sands on his community. He referred to the dirty crude projects as "slow industrial genocide" for the Athabascan Cree people living downstream.

Over 1,500 women activists from around the world gathered in Cape Town, South Africa to participate in the 11th International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development. Organized by the Toronto based Association of Women in Development, the forum featured discussions on women’s struggles for respect of labour, health, housing and indigenous rights, peace building efforts in conflict and post-conflict situations, building social movements across the Occupied Territories and Israel (and beyond), and initiatives to counteract global religious fundamentalist tendencies. For Papua New Guinean Onge Nufuk of the Mining Affected Women’s Foundation and the International Women and Mining Network, “We are fighting for issues affecting our communities as a whole; our societies as a whole, not just for individual development based on the concept of ‘me.’”

Jack Layton canceled a visit to Vancouver because of the possibility that opposition parties may bring down the Harper government through the formation of a coalition. The Conservatives floated a proposal to ban strikes for all public service workers until 2010-2011, a plan which the Public Service Alliance of Canada called "an affront to free collective bargaining."

Gregor Robertson was elected Mayor of Vancouver. Robertson's Vision Vancouver candidates, together with two elected COPE councilors, took away every council seat but one from the right-wing Non Partisan Association.

The route to be followed by the Olympic torch was announced. The torch route will crisscross Canada, visiting 1,020 communities including 115 "Aboriginal Centres" over 106 days. The Vancouver Sun quoted Tewanee Joseph from the Four Host First Nations Secretariat saying that he hoped that the "native resistance" to the games would be alleviated due to their inclusion in the torch ceremonies. In addition, Vancouver's Olympic Organizing Committee announced where road closures would be during the 2010 Olympics, and asked businesses to shut down during the games. “We have hundreds of thousands of people earning less than $10 an hour in this province. They simply cannot afford to lose two weeks pay because their employer decides to shut down their business during the Olympics,” said Jim Sinclair from the BC Federation of Labour. Anti-Olympics protestors garnered media attention by doing outreach to the international press, who were visiting Vancouver on a junket.

The number of families who applied to receive Christmas hampers in Charlottetown has soared to over 400, up from 50 last year.

The NDP spoke out about the fact that children who are removed from their families by the Ministry of Social Services are being housed in daycares and hotels in Saskatchewan.

The CBC reported that people who immigrate to PEI often do not get back the "deposits" that they are required to give the provincial government under the Provincial Nominee Program. One deposit is for $25,000 and acts as a "guarantee" that the person will stay in the province for at least a year, the second is for $20,000, and is refunded after the person learns English.

Irish politicians pushed for a second referendum on the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The Irish voted against ratifying the EU harmonization deal in June, but the Treaty will not go ahead unless all 27 EU states ratify it. Together with Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic have not yet ratified the Lisbon Treaty.

Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales were indicted for organized crime by a South Texas grand jury. The indictment relates to Cheney's stake in the Willacy County's federal detention centers, and an alleged failure by Gonzales to properly investigate prisoner abuse at the jails. The indictment has not been seen by a Judge.

The time line for bringing the Irving Oil refinery in New Brunswick up to full capacity has doubled from four to eight years.

A cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe has killed at least 400 people, which represents only the "tip of the iceberg" of how bad the crisis could get, according to the United Nations.

Rafael Correa, the President of Ecuador, announced that the country "will seek to not pay the illegitimate, corrupt, and illegal foreign debt." According to the the Americas Policy Program, Ecuador's foreign debt increased from $240 million in 1970 to $17.4 billion in 2007.

Tens of thousands of people marched from the southern Colombian city of Cali to Bogotá as part of a popular movement known as a Minga. "The Minga once again confirms that this government is not with the people, that its economic policies favor multinational capital at the expense of the people, that it does not respect the fundamentals of the Constitution, that it accuses anyone who demands their rights of being a terrorist, and that it uses the tools of the mass communication media to silence the popular will, and distract public opinion with lies and threats," reads the final document of the mobilization.

Attacks in Mumbai killed over 195 people as bombs were detonated in different areas of the city. "So many simultaneous attacks on so many different parts of the city, with gunmen taking hostages in some places, setting off bombs in others, settling in to fight commandos for days in others, is something new, and terrifying," wrote Justin Podur. “People of India are resilient. People of India are strong. They have built a vibrant, multiethnic democracy that can withstand this trial. Their financial capital of Mumbai will continue to be the center of commerce and prosperity,” said George W. Bush, speaking from the White House lawn.

Seven prisoners were murdered, five of them beheaded, during fighting between inmates at the Pavoncito prison in the outskirts of Guatemala City.

Ten thousand high school students in Berlin protested accelerated testing and demanded more teachers, smaller class sizes, and free education for all. Some students began a riot, which German paper Die Welt called an "orgy of destruction." During the riot, a monument to ‘Reichskristallnacht’ or Night of the Broken Glass, was partially destroyed, and university staffers "placed themselves in front of the busts of the intellectual giants such as Hegel and Fichte that line the hallways in order to protect them."

Research on Australian army recruits and athletes in Las Vegas showed that touching your toes before a workout is bad for you. In fact, “There is a neuromuscular inhibitory response to static stretching,” explains Malachy McHugh, director of research at the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. The central nervous system rebels against stretching. Static stretching – holding a stretch for 30 seconds – also weakens muscles, by up to 30 per cent. Before a workout, opt for dynamic stretching, and save static stretching for afterwards to realign pooped muscle fibres.

Dick Cheney

Barriere Lake Most Wanted

November in Review Part I

dawn — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:12:17 +0000

Coal plants shut down in Australia, march against the tar sands in Edmonton, Nigerians take oil giant Anglo-Dutch Shell to court

Barack Obama was elected president of the United States with a 62.5 per cent voter turnout, the highest in 44 years. 2.2 million more young people voted than did in 2004; over 2 million more African Americans voted this time 'round; and Hispanic voters made the difference for Obama in Colorado, Florida, and New Mexico. New Hampshire became the first US state ever to elect a majority of women to their State Senate. Residents of Washington DC, 75 per cent of whom are non-white, still do not have the right to vote for representatives in Congress.

Puerto Ricans elected Luis Fortuno governor. Fortuno wants the island to become the 51st US state.

Rupiah Banda was elected president in Zambia. Opposition leader Michael Sata said that elections were fraudulent and called for a recount.

Johnson Toribiong won the presidency in the North Pacific island nation of Palau.

New Zealand shifted to the right as Conservative John Key was elected, ending nine years of Labour rule.

McClatchy Papers reported that Obama's army of online volunteers may be used in the coming months to help him intimidate his enemies, rally his allies and promote his agenda. Others have suggested that, having been trained as organizers, volunteers and campaign workers may take on other campaigns.

Peg Oliveira and Jennifer Vickery became Connecticut's first same-sex couple to wed. Connecticut is the third state to legalize gay marriage (Massachusetts became the first in 2004 and California the second this past June).

The town of Silverton, Oregon, elected a transgender mayor. Said Stu Rasmussen, the first man to run a town in heels, "Some guys' midlife crisis is sports cars or motorcycles or climbing mountains or trophy wives. I always wanted cleavage."

In the days after the US federal election, tens of thousands in communities across the States protested the passage of Proposition 8 in which gays lost the right to marry in California.

Chileans honoured Salvador Allende, who became president of the country on November 3, 1970. Allende's presidency lasted just over 1000 days before he was killed during a coup orchestrated by the CIA.

People continued to flee eastern Congo for refugee camps in Goma. Leaders of African countries called for an immediate ceasefire to the fighting between government backed forces and Tutsi rebels.

Members of the Congolese community demonstrated in Montreal and Ottawa, demanding that the Canadian government end its silence about war in the Northern Kivu region of Congo. UN reports have implicated several Canadian mining companies in atrocities committed in Congo. An estimated 50,000 Congolese live in Canada.

The Tyendinaga Mohawk Police issued arrest warrants for 30 Tyendinaga Mohawks who oppose the construction of a $1.9 million police station. The new police station is to be financed by the Band Council and the Ministry of Public Safety and Security. According to a statement from Tyendinaga territory, "The people targeted for arrest are Longhouse people who maintain scrutiny over Band Council operations and spending."

3,350 teaching assistants and contract faculty went on strike at York University, demanding job security and wage increases. Top University officials have recently given themselves raises of up to 112 per cent.

Organizers, leaders, and spokespeople from indigenous communities across Canada gathered in Winnipeg for the Defenders of the Land Gathering. Attendees hope to discuss common strategies for achieving "land rights and self-determination."

Britain's National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit disclosed that they are monitoring environmental groups including Earth First. The "anti-extremist unit has already alerted a number of major companies which have been accused of being carbon polluters with advice on how they can withstand being targeted by eco-terrorists," reported the Guardian.

Astronomers at both the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, BC, and at University of California, Berkeley, believe they have taken the first pictures of extrasolar planets – planets orbiting other stars.

CanWest Global, which spent the 1990s buying up newspapers and television stations, laid off 560 workers, about five per cent of its workforce.

CanWest dropped its lawsuit against Mordechai Briemberg, but is still suing Gordon Murray and Carel Moiseiwitsch. The latter two created a spoof version of the CanWest-owned Vancouver Sun, which Briemberg helped to distribute. Canwest is claiming trademark violations.

Thousands of copies of a spoof version of the New York Times were distributed in Manhattan. The paper, dated July 4 2009, conveyed a utopic post-election scenario. The main headline read "Iraq War Ends," and articles discussed progressive legislation that had been passed since Obama was elected. A New York Times report called the stunt flattering, and the paper has announced no plans to press charges.

An Iranian man who is imprisoned in Maple Ridge, BC, began a hunger strike. According to his cell mate, Mohammad Reza Nouri does not know why he is being jailed and wishes to return to Iran. There are currently 46 people jailed because of "immigration violations" in BC.

A secret deal in which the City of Vancouver would lend an additional $100 million to Millennium Development Corporation, the entity responsible for building the Athlete's Village for the 2010 Olympics, was revealed. Vancouver has already lent $30 million to the project and may tap into a $90 million line of credit, on top of a $190-million loan guarantee that the City previously made to Millenium's lender, Fortress Investment Group.

The American Civil Liberties Union demanded a probe into a street battle at the Democratic National Convention that documents the fight was staged by police. According to a letter written by the ACLU, "The actions of the undercover detectives on August 25, 2008, may have had the effect of exacerbating an already 'tense situation,' as their feigned struggle led nearby officers and the public to believe that a commanding officer was being attacked by protesters and that the situation necessitated the use of chemical agents."

Israel's Supreme Court issued a decision allowing an ancient Muslim cemetery to be removed to make way for a $250 million "Museum of Tolerance," designed by architect Frank Gehry.

A Harvard School of Public Health study revealed that 330,000 people died in South Africa, and 35,000 babies were born HIV positive, because of former President Thabo Mbeki's failure to make HIV treatment available to South Africans.

CBC television journalist Mellissa Fung was freed in Afghanistan. She was abducted in Kabul on October 12. Her abduction was kept a secret until she was rescued.

CBC-TV announced its intent to launch Current Canada (no relation to CBC-Radio program The Current), a joint venture with Al Gore's Current TV. The interactive digital channel will feature content based on material generated by viewers on its website.

Documents obtained through the Access to Information show that up to 12 members of the CBC's senior executive team divided up a bonus of $964,860 they gave themselves in the 2007-08 fiscal year. CBC is a crown corporation financed by Canadian taxpayers.

Two companies won licenses to explore for oil and gas off the coast of Nova Scotia. They are Shin Han F&P Inc. and 1164214 Alberta Ltd.

Public Works Minister Christian Paradis and Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced the signing of two contracts totaling approximately $2 billion for Lockheed Martin. The contracts are for the installation, integration and long-term in-service support of a new combat system for Canada's Halifax-Class frigates.

Details emerged about a wide ranging questionnaire to which every Indian national that visits Canada will be subjected. The questionnaire is being used by Canadian Border Services Agency. It asks sweeping questions about personal and family activities and links with a host of organizations, some of which are listed as "terrorist" groups in Canada. According to immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, "Not even the Americans, who are post-9/11 paranoid, engage this intrusive a questionnaire."

Community members from Fort Chipweyan and their supporters marched through Edmonton to demand a stop to approvals of new projects in the tar sands. Mike Mercredi referred to the tar sands as causing "slow industrial genocide" in Fort Chipweyan. In the community of 1200, 20 people died of cancer last year.

Four Nigerian citizens and Friends of the Earth Netherlands/Nigeria filed a law suit against Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell. The Nigerian plaintiffs, fishermen and farmers from the oil-rich Niger Delta, have had their villages heavily polluted by oil spills.

A school in Port au Prince, Haiti, collapsed, killing at least 93 people. Poor building standards were blamed for the incident. The school was under construction when it fell in.

People across Australia temporarily shut down four coal fired power stations across the country. Activists from Rising Tide occupied the coal yard and blockaded the conveyor belt supplying coal to the Bayswater power station. Twenty-nine people were arrested. Three other coal fired power stations were subject to lock downs, stopping electricity production: the Hazelwood power station near Melbourne, the Collie power station in Western Australia, and the Tarong power station in Queensland.

Part time employees at York University went on strike, shutting down the university. Members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3903, which represents teaching assistants, research assistants and contract faculty, walked out to demand higher wages, better benefits, and more job security.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada filed allegations of unfair labour practices in contract talks with Canada Post to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.

The global financial crisis continued. At a meeting of G-20 countries in Brazil, Robert Zoellik from the World Bank warned that poverty could grow worldwide as a result of the crisis, stating, “All countries are moving into a danger zone.” The IMF predicted that "developed" countries will see their economies contract. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the bottoming out of markets, which would mark the end of the downwards economic slide resulting from the financial crisis, will likely be “sometime in the first half of next year.” In Canada, a coalition of industry groups and lobbyists wrote a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper urging him to mount a government rescue package – including emergency lines of credit – to keep Canada's battered manufacturing sector afloat during the financial crisis.

A firehall in in Oakhill, Nova Scotia, caught fire.

The obscure two-sentence pledge by the Conservative Party of Canada in their recent platform to "establish a new, non-partisan democracy promotion agency that will help emerging democracies build democratic institutions and support peaceful democratic change in repressive countries," could lead to US Republican-style interference in the affairs of other countries, NDP and Liberal representatives told the Canadian Press. Concerns were also raised over proposals for the upcoming CPC convention to once again introduce legislation to protect "unborn children" and to examine establishing a "North American perimeter" with the United States.

The United Kingdom was warned by the EU's Joint Committee on Human Rights that if prisoners don't have the right to vote in the next general elections, the elections will be considered illegal. Britain's 84,000 prisoners currently do not have the right to vote, nor do "people with learning disabilities or a mental illness deemed incapable of making a reasoned judgment," according to the Guardian.

Studs Terkel died on October 31, at age 96. He was considered to be among the finest oral historians in the USA.

Known as "Mama Africa," singer and anti-apartheid activist Miriam Makeba died of a heart attack.

The Tyee released an in-depth report on housing standards in the City of Vancouver. The report highlights how a major Vancouver slumlord has avoided doing repairs on their buildings and dodged any attempt at City enforcement.

Members of the Halifax Coalition Against Poverty (HCAP) occupied the office of Nova Scotia Department of Community Services in response to the closure of Pendleton Place, a “harm reduction” shelter in Halifax. “The decision not to reopen Pendleton Place is a cost cutting move by the provincial government that will take $150,000 out of the shelter system in Halifax,” stated a pre-action notice by HCAP.

The world economic order continued to shift as Cuba and Russia agreed to several trade agreements involving automobiles, wheat, oil and nickel.

The tiny nation of Bhutan underwent a major political shift as Bhutan's new king became the youngest monarch in the world.

A 42-year-old American living in Berlin who is recovering from leukemia therapy appears to have been cured of AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect HIV in his blood for more than 600 days. The patient's hematologist had replaced his bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Japanese scientists created clones from mice that had been dead and frozen for 15 years. The experiment "gives some hope for those who might seek to clone extinct species from frozen carcasses," said one scientist.

Writer Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, died.

Bayswater Power Station shut down

Tar Sands Protest

The Steep Price of Power

Moira Peters — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:50:09 +0000

Colombian coal fuels Atlantic Canada, but at what cost?

LA GUAJIRA, COLOMBIA–In the Guajira, a remote northern region of Colombia, the human and environmental costs of coal extraction go beyond the climate crisis, and it is Atlantic Canadians who are fueling part of the demand for Colombia's mineral fuel.

Production at the Cerrejón coal mine started in 1976, and through the course of its operations it has come into conflict with Afro-Colombian and indigenous Wayuu communities, whose existence and cultures have long depended on the surrounding lands and rivers.

Their livelihoods are under constant threat because of the expansion of the mine, the largest of its kind in the world.

As the biggest exporter of Colombian Coal, Cerrejón counts Canadian utility companies Nova Scotia Power and New Brunswick Power amongst its clients.

The beginning of major imports of Colombian coal coincided with the closing of the last nationalized mines in Nova Scotia in 2001. The climate of fiscal austerity at the time compelled the Liberal-led federal government to view the mining operations as too expensive. Buying coal from overseas sources, such as the Cerrejón operation, was seen as a the more cost-effective strategy.

Colombia’s armed conflict has defined the country’s economic and social layout for over 40 years, resulting in arguably the worst humanitarian environment in South America. There are at least four million internally displaced persons within Colombia’s borders. The country also carries the dubious distinction of being the world's most dangerous country for unionized labour. Since 1991, over 2,300 unionists have been murdered with few charges laid in any of those murders.

As major economic players in a country whose elites are focused on attracting foreign investment, BHP Billiton, Anglo American and Xstrata operate the Cerrejón consortium, and enjoy a comfortable position of advantage over the local communities.

The companies orchestrated the destruction of the small Afro-Colombian town of Tabaco, without any attempt to facilitate a collective relocation for the dispossessed residents.

Leading up to Tabaco’s displacement, Cerrejon pursued a strategy of buying out individual property owners rather than negotiating with the community as a collective through their elected Committee to Relocate Tabaco. At the time of displacement in August 2001, 67 families out of 120 represented by the committee still had not received compensation.

According to the company, the community consultations and expropriations were carried out within the framework of the law and consent of the area's municipal seats.

An independent panel assessing the Cerrejón's consultation process earlier this year recommended that "It might be appropriate, furthermore, to continue to promote group as opposed to individual re-settlement, as is advocated in modern standards covering re-settlement."

The panel advised the companies to acquire land for the approximately 20 remaining families and that its development should be assisted by the companies.

The independent review recommendations show promise for improved practices in community relations, but for the remaining communities in the area, the fear of meeting a similar fate as Tabaco remains part of the hardship of dealing with the encroaching open-pit coal mine.

The suffocating dust from the operations, the pollution of the river that was once the life-blood of the villages, the lowering of the water table, the degradation of farmland and the harassment from mine-employed security forces serve as daily reminders that politicians and business leaders place profit before the well-being of people and the land.

As far as politicians and economic development technocrats are concerned, the ‘progress’ brought to the Guajira by the mine is measurable through indicators such as increased GDP and foreign investment, the creation of mining jobs, and public relations-boosting social spending by the Cerrejón Foundation, the charity arm of the company.

In reality, many of the best jobs have gone to outsiders and the investment in healthcare and education programming by the Cerrejón Foundation has occurred only in the Guajira’s main municipal areas of Riohacha and Barrancas, out of reach of the remote communities in the rural zones near the mine.

In the Cerrejón Environmental Impact Statement, the companies downplayed the Wayuu and Afro-Colombian cultures by claiming “The human settlements in the study area are not well developed... The only population along the railroad line is Uribia, which is a small indigenous community with a primitive infrastructure.”

Villagers from the Wayuu community of Tamaquitos, along with the Afro-Colombian communities of Chancleta, Roche, Patilla and the already destroyed Tabaco, worked hard to make their voices heard as they resist the advances of the mine.

"We’ve gone from being a productive community to a community of paupers,” said president of the Chancleta neighborhood council, Wilman Palmezano, "In the 1980s, the company started buying up land and today we have nowhere left to sow crops, nowhere to put our animals."

“Life was rich, we shared, and no one suffered because we shared what we had,” explained Emilio Pérez, a former resident of Tabaco. “But the last nine years we have had no land to work. We are displaced, and we have no lodging.”

Years of work to raise the profile of their struggle has started yielding results, and the community members can now count the mine’s unionized workforce among their allies. Despite already facing enormous struggles of their own, the workers of Sintracarbón, the national union of coal industry workers, insisted that the plight of the communities affected by the Cerrejón’s operations are indeed a concern for the workers, and the union succeeded in convincing the company to be at the table for future negotiations with communities concerning their land.

The villagers contest Cerrejón’s propaganda tagline “Coal for the world, progress for Colombia.”

“There’s been talk of coal for the world and progress for Colombia. If that is so, we ask, to what country do our towns of Chancleta, Roche and Tabaco belong?" asked Eder Arregoces, president of Chancleta’s community action council. "[Cerrejón] may be one of the largest coal mines in Latin America but most families here can eat only one meal a day," he said.

Solidarity from Atlantic Canada, via the Mining the Connections campaign, has sought to raise awareness among consumers of the coal and bring international attention to the strugging communities.

Suzanne MacNeil is a political science student and associate editor of Colombia Journal.

Cerrejón

Children from Tabaco

Vanishing Mountains

dawn — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:35:38 +0000

Coal mining in Appalachia

CHARLESTON, WV, USA–"I say to you, what do you hold so precious in your own circle of life that you don't have a price on it? What would it be? For me, it's my home. For me, it's Appalachia. For me, it's the mountains. For me, it's a whole way of life that they're wiping out here, and nobody seems to care."

This is what Larry Gibson has been telling people who make the pilgrimage to his home on Kayford Mountain, outside of Charleston, West Virginia. A not-to-be-missed destination for any tourists who want their hearts broken, Kayford is an island of green in a 12,000 acre wasteland of mountaintop removal coal mining.

Mountaintop removal coal mining is a type of mining particular to Appalachia. The coal lies in thin horizontal seams, stacked up like the frosting in a layer cake. In the past, miners tunneled through the side of the mountain to scoop out the frosting, but current (and cheaper) practices allow giant machines to destroy the entire cake. Coal companies use diesel fuel and fertilizer to explode up to 800 feet of mountain to scoop out the coal. Afterward, some of the rubble is piled back where the mountain used to be, and some of it is piled into nearby valleys, creating valley fills.

Eight hundred thousand acres of land have been destroyed in this way in Appalachia, and hundreds of thousands more are slated for the same process. The valley fills and loosened rock leach out heavy metals like selenium. According to fisheries biologist A. Dennis Lemly, these selenium discharges have affected fish in Mud River, West Virginia; fish have been found with spiral spines and two eyes on the same side of their heads.

Coal processing leaves billions of gallons of toxic waste - called sludge - behind, a witch's brew of mercury, diesel from the explosives, and dozens of other deadly chemicals which are placed into unlined earthen structures called slurry dams or injected underground, often into abandoned underground coal mines. These toxins are free to seep into the ground water of nearby communities.

One of these communities is Prenter, West Virginia, where a group of residents have started to organize to fight for clean water. According to a casual health survey they undertook, a staggering 97 per cent of Prenter residents have gallbladder disease. Brain tumours, thyroid cancer, and skin conditions are also common. In many homes in Prenter, the water leaves the faucet black or orange, and vegetables rot in the garden. A short video on YouTube features Prenter bathtub water tarnishing a penny. Citizens in Prenter have been lobbying state and national officials for nearly a year to get help, but officials say they can’t do anything – because they can’t confirm coal has anything to do with the problems the community is facing.

However, in a similar community in Mingo County, also located near known slurry injection sites, residents are also suffering from rare disease patterns. Ben Stout, an aquatic biologist at West Virginia’s Wheeling Jesuit University, has discovererd the same chemicals found in coal slurry – including aluminum, arsenic, beryllium, and sulfuric acid - at rates thousands of times the legal limit in well water.

I learned about mountaintop removal coal mining in 2005, when I moved to West Virginia to work on oral history and arts preservation. I unknowingly rented a house next to the state's largest mountaintop removal coal mining site, Hobet 21. In my first week, I was hiking behind my new house when suddenly the mountain stopped. I was at the edge of a cliff, and as far as I could see was grey rubble. A crane 13 stories tall (nicknamed Big John) scooped away loose rock to reveal a flat black surface.

People I interviewed about the mine always said they hated it, but what could they do? This is one of the poorest areas in West Virginia, which in 2004 was ranked the 48th poorest state in the US, and money is money. The economy of West Virginia is built on coal. According to the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health Safety and Training, coal mining in West Virginia provides about 20,000 jobs in coal production, with 40,000 jobs total if you count jobs indirectly created by the mining industry. In the 1970s, before strip mining became prevalent, there were over 120,000 mining jobs in West Virginia. Currently, direct and indirect coal mining jobs make up about five per cent of the labour force of West Virginia, which produces 15 per cent of coal in the US, and makes up 50 per cent of the US' coal exports. Coal mining is one of few industries that exists here.

Mountaintop removal coal mining could never happen in a rich community. For example, in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, a wealthy county with little coal mining history only a few hours away, members of the second home community vehemently fought a proposed wind farm on their mountains because of the damage to their viewshed and second home market. The same government officials that have refused to help Prenter citizens get clean water have supported the Greenbrier citizens in their fight to keep their view clear of unsightly windmills.

Environmentalists working on this issue quickly realize that a few laws are not going to fix this problem. The mono-economy of Appalachia needs to be diversified, and the value system that tells us what is worth money and what is not needs a second look.

Coal is profitable because it externalizes the costs of extraction and burning onto the surrounding communities and the government. Coal trucks tear up area roads; abusive employee treatment leads to disabled workers; bad water and air pollution lead to sickness. These are only a few of the costs government and communities must absorb in addition to the tax cuts and subsidies already provided to big coal. Even if we could put a price tag on the nearly 500 mountains that have been destroyed in Appalachia so far, the environmental costs alone would make the price of mountaintop removal coal too high.

“The coal company always talks about jobs - there are no jobs on a dead planet,” Judy Bonds, the Goldman Award-winning legend with Coal River Mountain Watch mining often says.

“I know that our community survived before there was electricity,” adds Virginia activist Kathy Selvage of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, “But I don’t think we can survive without clean water, or air to breathe.”

About 12 per cent of total energy consumption in Canada comes from coal (it's about 50 per cent in the US), and about 40 per cent of the coal Ontario Power Generation uses is Appalachian coal. The fact is, we live in a world where blow drying your hair in Canada blows up family cemeteries and pristine streams in Appalachia. Deforestation and coal processing in Appalachia is increasing the effects of global warming in Canada.

In the words of English journalist and activist George Monbiot, “Everything I have fought for and that all campaigners for social justice have ever fought for - food, clean water, shelter, security - is jeopardized by climate change.”

Appalachian author Ann Pancake has said, "What we are doing to this land is not only murder; it is suicide."

“Something must be done. You have got to do something,” Larry Gibson tells his visitors.

The Coal River Wind Project is trying to do something. The group is attempting to block a 6,600 acre mountaintop removal permit by proposing 440 megawatts of industrial scale wind on the mountain instead.

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have publicly stated their opposition to mountaintop removal coal mining, yet both continue to support 'clean coal.’ The 'clean' in 'clean coal' refers to carbon sequestration at power plants and not to the extraction process. Thus, 'clean coal' can still come from the ripped off mountain tops in Appalachia.

Neither candidate has expressed support for the Clean Water Protection Act, which would curtail the use of most valley fills in Appalachia. This bill currently has 152 co-sponsors in the House but has not yet been introduced in the Senate.

Dana Kuhnline lives in West Virginia where she works for The Alliance for Appalachia, a coalition of 13 non-profits with the goal of ending mountaintop removal and creating a just sustainable Appalachia.

Moutaintop Coal Removal