The Dominion - 61

Issue #61

dru — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:14:55 +0000

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July 2009

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Tragedy at Toncontín

Moira Peters — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:09:31 +0000

Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, the democratically elected president of Honduras, was removed from the country during a military coup on June 28. Major demonstrations have been calling for his return, but the corporate media has virtually ignored them. Transcribed below is an interview from the Real News Network with Dominion correspondent Sandra Cuffe, who was at the Tegucigalpa airport on July 5, awaiting Zelaya’s return.

“When the march was approaching the airport—and at first there was the roadblock set up by soldiers one kilometre away from the airport [to] stop it from getting to the airport, and there were other roadblocks set up on the way to the march, so that people who hadn’t joined the march from the very beginning, this morning at the Tegucigalpa University, and were heading to the airport or to meet up with the march, couldn’t even get that far. So I had gotten through one of the roadblocks and made it to the airport. I was there when the march finally arrived. And the march—which was probably two, three times the size it had been in the past couple of days, so we’re talking, like, literally hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people—managed to get to the airport, because they actually kept advancing peacefully, slowly, and steadily, and pushing back soldiers and the police all the way back to the airport.

Everybody who’s participating is against the coup, they’re against a rupture of democracy, and therefore [are demanding] the return of the elected president. That’s pretty much clear across the board.”

“The army has shot at a completely unarmed civil population. For more than five hours the people were respectful of the army and of the police. [...] The people were not bringing sticks, were not bringing weapons. [...] There was no need to shoot. Many were trying to remove the mesh [to enter the landing strip], it is not possible to deny that. But it was not necessary to shoot the people with bullets.”
–César Omar Silva, television journalist, Channel 8

James Rodríguez is an independent photo-documentarian currently based in Guatemala. To contact, and for more of his work, please visit www.mimundo.org.

Honduras

Honduras 1

Honduras 2

Honduras 3

Honduras 4

The Future of Warfare

dawn — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:01:53 +0000

Canadian counterinsurgency manual reflects US-Canada "synergy"

Capping a sweeping transformation that began in the late 1990s, the Canadian Forces recently issued their first counterinsurgency (COIN) operations doctrine, which will help Canadian soldiers prepare to fight the wars of today and the "foreseeable future," alongside its chief ally and the sole global superpower, the US.

In development since 2005, the COIN manual was authorized by Chief of Land Staff Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie in the waning days of the Bush administration. It was not formalized for another two months—six weeks after the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Obama's administration has sent clear signals, through political appointments and holdovers (such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates), that the US military and national security apparatus' transformation toward fighting smaller, "irregular wars" begun under Bush will continue apace.

Only a week before Bush left office, Gates, together with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Director of USAID, Henrietta Fore, co-signed the US Government Counterinsurgency Guide. Neo-conservative historian Eliot Cohen, who oversaw the Guide's creation, wrote in its introduction:

Insurgency will be a large and growing element of the security challenges faced by the United States in the 21st century...Whether the United States should engage in any particular counterinsurgency is a matter of political choice, but that it will engage in such conflicts during the decades to come is a near certainty. This Guide will help prepare decision-makers of many kinds for the tasks that result from this fact.

According to Lt. Gen. Leslie, the Canadian Army is "at the cutting edge" of Western armies readying themselves to fight 21st-century wars.

"The paradigms of the past based on the Cold War have changed a great deal. We have demonstrated beyond any doubt that we can adapt our doctrine and training quickly in order to meet scattered, complex operations focused on counterinsurgency missions," Leslie told a Senate defence committee meeting in March.

Shifts in Canadian policy adhere closely to those of her allies, like the US, the UK and other NATO partners. These governments are at the forefront of institutionalizing COIN principles and practices in military culture, across the "whole-of-government," and, eventually, within the "whole of society."

Based on the "comprehensive approach," the Canadian COIN manual represents a synthesis of two recent US Army Field Manuals: Counterinsurgency (FM 3-24); and Stability Operations (FM 3-07).

In 2007, after over one-and-a-half million downloads, the US Army COIN manual was published in print by the University of Chicago Press and received wide media coverage. The subsequent US Army Stability Operations Manual, published in early 2009, has also been widely distributed. By contrast, the Canadian manual is not yet publicly available. A copy of the Canadian COIN manual was obtained by The Dominion from the Department of National Defence.

Writing in the Canadian Military Journal last fall, Leslie defined the comprehensive approach as the "ability to bring to bear all instruments of national and coalition power and influence upon a problem in a timely, co-ordinated fashion." This definition aligns with that of the US Army, as found in the Stability Operations Manual:

A comprehensive approach...integrates the co-operative efforts of the departments and agencies of the United States government, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, multinational partners, and private sector entities to achieve unity of effort toward a shared goal.

The concept of "unity of effort" is drawn from classical counterinsurgency theory and doctrine.

In 1966, John J. McCuen wrote in The Art of Counter-Revolutionary War that, "Unity of effort...is extremely difficult to achieve because it represents the fusion of civil and military functions to fight battles which have primarily political objectives."

As the Canadian manual foregrounds, today's insurgencies remain inherently "a political problem."

"The nature of operations today and in the future will resemble the Three Block War construct—one that demands that soldiers interact with many different players other than their own armed forces, and undertake non-traditional tasks," wrote Leslie in the Canadian Military Journal.

In October 2003, [then Chief of the Land Staff and Lt. Gen. Rick] Hillier made the Three Block War scenario "a guiding concept for the Canadian Army."

Hillier's support for the Three Block War was one of the reasons he was selected to be Chief of Defence Staff in 2005. According to then-Prime Minister Paul Martin, "[Hillier] advocated a concept called the 'three-block war,' to describe the [military's] mission...This was not a rejection of our peacekeeping tradition, but a revision to suit tougher times, and I supported it."

Martin's government dovetailed the Three Block War approach with the broader institutionalization of the "whole-of-government" (or 3D: Defence, Development, Diplomacy) foreign policy approach in its International Policy Statement of 2005. This trajectory has continued, with minor modifications, under the minority Conservative governments of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

That Canada should shift its foreign and defence policies in concert with the US comes as no surprise given their close historical relationship, even if the level of integration is often downplayed by the mainstream media. "No two militaries are more closely united than those of the United States and Canada," said US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins in 2007.

With counterinsurgency practices and principles on the rise under the Obama administration, an increasing level of "COIN-synergy" exists between the two militaries.

"We are learning from others. I happen to know General David Petraeus, who is very good man. You will find that some of our recent philosophies closely match his and those of the US Army and our friends and allies," Lt. Gen. Leslie told the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence in March.

Gen. Petraeus is likely the person who contributed the most to the resurrection of a new "counterinsurgency era" in the US. He oversaw the drafting of the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual in 2005 and 2006, and supervised its implementation during "the surge" in Iraq in 2007.

As Commander of US Central Command, Petraeus currently oversees both the Iraq and "AfPak" wars. Many followers of Petraeus have risen to prominence within Obama's cabinet; others have gone on to become "experts" in private think-tanks and appear regularly in the US media as proponents of counterinsurgency war.

Petraeus visited Calgary this week for a "social" meeting with Canada's top military brass. Partly a public relations exercise, the meeting saw Petraeus and Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Walt Natynczyk, who once served in Iraq at the same time as the US general, donning cowboy hats as they attended the Calgary Stampede. There, according to Petraeus, they discussed "the way forward for the next two years" in the COIN fight in Afghanistan.

Petraeus was subordinate in rank to Natynczyk when the Canadian general was Deputy Commander of the Multi-National Corps in Iraq in 2003-04. At the same time, Petraeus commanded a small number of Canadian soldiers in Iraq on a low-key NATO mission to train Iraqi soldiers, according to declassified documents obtained by The Dominion via Access to Information.

The clearest embodiment of COIN's institutionalization and the Canada-US "comprehensive approach" can be found in the US Army and Marine Corps COIN Center. Established at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 2006 by Petraeus and US Marine General James Mattis, it was from the COIN Center that the US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3-24) was drafted.

The COIN Center's pamphlet describes its purpose as "facilitat[ing] the development of a culture that enables us to more effectively adapt as a whole government when called upon to deal with future COIN or COIN-like threats."

Canada is identified in the pamphlet as a key COIN-partner of the US in the "COIN SITREP reports" that Lt. Col. Daniel Roper, Director of the COIN Center, publishes periodically.

"Each country needs to institutionalize it in a way that works for them," Roper told The Dominion. "But I see some pretty impressive collaboration at the inter-agency level in Canada, with people of cross-functional expertise trying to grapple with some issues; some similar things that we're doing."

Since General Leslie signed off on the COIN manual last December, the COIN Center and Canada have collaborated on more than 20 exchanges, including "COIN Leader Workshops" and "COIN Integration" meetings.

Members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) met with the COIN Center for discussions about "US-Canada COIN synergy" five days after Leslie wrote in his issuing order for the new COIN doctrine that it is "complementary to our allies."

In April, the US COIN Center "visited military installations and think-tanks in Canada to inculcate the Canadian military establishment with COIN doctrine and best practices."

During one presentation with top officials from Prime Minister Harper's government, the COIN Center found that "policy advisors were most interested in how the merits of [Canada's new Afghan COIN] strategy could be explained to the Canadian public and Canadian political leadership."

Figuring out ways to sell the COIN campaign to a skeptical Canadian public has been a key aim of the Canadian government and military, and Canada's COIN manual emphasizes the goal of "creating and maintaining the legitimacy of the campaign." One of the central figures steering the Canada-US COIN-synergy is Lt. Col. John Malevich, who joined the COIN Center in November 2008 by way of a newly created exchange program between the two countries. He is currently the Deputy-Director of the COIN Center and recently gave a series of COIN lectures in Canada.

Reached via telephone upon his return to Ft. Leavenworth, Malevich told The Dominion that the biggest assets that he brings to the COIN Center are his scholarly background in asymmetric warfare and first-hand COIN experience in Afghanistan.

Prior to joining the COIN Center, Malevich was a member of the Strategic Advisory Team—a team of military advisors set up by General Hillier to provide direct advice to top Afghan cabinet ministers. He was later seconded to the Afghan Independent Electoral Commission, where Malevich says he "came up with their operations plan and their security plan" for the presidential elections scheduled for August 2009.

"When I speak, these guys give me a pretty good respect and they're pretty grateful to have this help...they're very grateful to have Canadians among them and grateful for the contribution we've made in Afghanistan," said Lt. Col. Malevich of his colleagues at the COIN Center.

Col. Roper, who says he's been to Canada "four or five times" to discuss COIN, told The Dominion that by having Malevich "institutionally embedded" in the COIN Center, "The Canadian Army benefits from having a full-time person working in here with full access to everything we've got and recognizing [when] he stumbles upon something here that, hey, he knows somebody in the Canadian Army that might benefit from that; he can very quickly share that information."

Invoking Gen. Charles Krulak, the US marine who coined the term "Three Block War" and who, in 1997, predicted the importance of "transnational movements" to 21st-century warfare, Roper said that today, "what we're looking at are transnational insurgencies."

Partnering as closely as possible with key allies like Canada is seen as crucial to conducting what some COIN experts call "global counterinsurgency."

According to Malevich, one of his key roles is "bringing [US COIN] expertise up to Canada and bringing it into the Canadian military culture."

Such a level of COIN integration has never been undertaken before, and it is difficult to foresee the possible implications for Canada's military culture, which inevitably spills over into broader society.

"The better the people understand the pros and cons and the risks [of COIN], the more informed a decision they can make," says Roper.

In her introduction to the University of Michigan Press edition of the US Army Stability Operations Manual, Janine Davidson acknowledges that, “[There] are those who see the new doctrine as another dangerous step on the slippery slope toward imperialism.”

Davidson dismisses those critics, writing that they "seriously misunderstand the purpose and role of military doctrine"—because the military doesn't set the policies that send them to occupy other countries.

On the other hand, influential COIN advocates such as Eliot Cohen have argued that the US needs to establish an "Imperial Army," the likes of which Canada is increasingly becoming appended to.

Anthony Fenton is an independent researcher and journalist based in Pitt Meadows, B.C. This article is based on a book he has been researching and writing with Jon Elmer. Fenton can be reached at fentona@shaw.ca

Tim Horton's opening Ceremony, Kandahar, 2006

Indigenius Socialism for the 21st Century

dru — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:34:32 +0000

KUTENAI TERRITORY, TURTLE ISLAND—First thing's first: “Indigenius” is not a typo in the headline; it’s an example of the syncretic nature of the Cree language. Cree uses building blocks called morphemes; the genius of the Cree language is that speakers creatively jam morphemes together to create new, more accurate words, with two focuses: humour and poetry. And it’s an action, not mulled over in quiet deliberation, but spit out in the heat of the moment. Language as performance art.

Ready?

By the the beginning of the 21^st century—after the imagined end of history, and much to Euro-origin intellectuals’ surprise—a call for socialism in the 21^st century arose in Latin America, first among Mayan Zapatistas and then spreading southwards across the remainder of Turtle Island.

Socialism for the 21^st century became Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s electoral battle cry, where, in spite of the complete and absolute opposition of the privately owned public media, he won election after election on the promise to redistribute oil revenues to the 60 per cent of the Venezuelan population that was desperately poor. Following Chavez’s program of Catholic liberation theology mixed with a smattering of Marx and topped off with hefty doses of pragmatic state capitalism, nation states across the southern continent tilted Left, with the notable exception of Colombia—after Israel, the largest recipient of US military aid in the world.

Like Evo Morales and the Bolivian Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Indigenous-led social movements throughout Latin America are openly anti-capitalist, because capitalism as a system of political economy means ongoing genocide for Indigenous Peoples and perpetual ecocide for the non-human portion of the Mother Earth Super-Being, of which humans are a part. (See CIBC and Me, Part IV for details.) Coming from a deep history of harmonious relations with Mother Earth, and having already spent millennia in systems of political economy based on simple egalitarian sharing, Indigenous Peoples have something to say about what a potential future steady state global system of political economy could look like.

The first thing I have to point to is the European model of industrial development. It doesn’t work for a multiplicity of reasons, and negates Marx’s theoretical explanation of how capitalism would automatically create a human society filled with workers who will, some day, transform capitalism into a socialist society. From an Indigenous perspective, the Euro-origin industrial model arises from a psychological pitting of human against nature, manufacturing an ideological division that does not exist in Indigenous reality. Further, it posits that something called "scarcity" exists, and that technological development is necessary to better this supposedly natural state of scarcity. Within this imagined dichotomy, nature is wild and humans are civilized; humans living in a state of nature are wild, and therefore not real humans. The real humans live in a state of technologically ameliorated scarcity, assembling vehicles for Ford, GM and Chrysler, with two mortgages and four credit cards. So much for Marx.

From the Indigenous-to-Turtle Island point of view, there is no dichotomy between wild and civilized. There is no such thing as wilderness. When Europeans arrived on Turtle Island they saw wilderness, while Indigenous Peoples saw the space as fully inhabited by culturally developed humans who were living in an active relationship with Mother Earth. Land that was fully, ethically, sustainably inhabited by Indigenous Peoples was seen by Europeans as undeveloped. John Locke’s labour theory of value claims that an Indian’s land is not worth one-thousandth of what the same acre of land would be worth were it located in England. Several hundred years after Locke’s writings, agricultural researchers are suggesting that, if all factors from the global industrial base are included, free-ranging a 60,000,000-head herd of buffalo is most likely the best agricultural use of the High Plains region of North America—exactly the use it was being put to prior to the introduction of Europe’s industrial development model.

From an Indigenous point of view, a logical recommendation for socialism for the 21^st century is a complete redesign of humanity’s global industrial base. The redesigned industrial base has to abandon both the myth of scarcity and the myth of wilderness, while embracing the reality that humans actually are an integral part of an enormous Super-Being, whom Indigenous folks have long known as Mother Earth.

A quick dash back to reality for a moment: we humans aren’t going to voluntarily undertake a task of that magnitude while we are in our current antisocial state of mind. It’s easy to point to the global problems facing humanity and say that our self-induced trauma has shaped us to be the species we are now. The challenging part is imagining the way forward from here.

This brings my imagination to the crucial place: the crux of the matter; the originating point. The human vagina. Not being personally endowed with one, and certainly subject to the same forces noted by psychological studies concluding that a man’s imagination goes there at least once every 10 seconds, I realize I’m fair game for criticism.

However, as a once-popular song might have said had it been penned by an Indigenous lyricist, the vagina bone is connected to the stomach bone, and the stomach bone is connected to the heart bone. In an odd way, that just about sums up gender relationships while being anatomically correct, energetically speaking. Indigenous socialism arises from the relationship between mother and child, the first social relationship we humans experience. Looking into the structure of the social institution of Indigenous motherhood, prior to the cataclysmic assault staged by Christian missionaries hell-bent on their civilizing mission, I see some noteworthy features.

Connecting the heart bone to the head bone, I see the common thread of Indigenius Socialism expressed through a particular aspect of human sexuality. Modern medical researchers call it oxytocin, but you don’t have to name it to know it. Human females experience an inter-human bonding, or a primary socialism, during sexual arousal, sexual activity, sexual orgasm(s!), child birth, breast feeding, communal food preparation, communal feasting, and communal socializing in general, when the mood is non-violent. From the very specific Indigenous point of view found on the High Plains, where all those buffalos were roaming among the playful deer and antelope, pre-Christianized human societies practised a non-hierarchical matrifocal social form, where women’s relationships established the social norms. Men had roles, too, and I’ll get to that in time, but women’s relationship roles, revolving around motherhood, are the key to understanding Indigenius Socialism and the foundation of what I am proposing here as Syncretic Indigenius Socialismo.

In the human brain, there is a formation medical researchers call the limbic node; it is croissant-shaped, with one end arching around to almost touch the other. Almost, but not quite. Electricity-based human nerve impulses can jump the gap; stimulation on either end causes excitation on the other end. Oral receptors are at one end of the limbic node and genital receptors are at the other end of the limbic node.

Those crazy medical researchers! Their studies show that in societies with higher emphasis on general brain development, there is a corresponding higher level of oral-genital sexual activity. French and Cree societies both fit into the higher-brain development category and I’ll gamble a wager on the origin of the Metis Nation from the shared preference for oral sex. Is the Metis infinity symbol really just a clever play on a sideways 69?

The head bone is connected to the vagina bone, as many intelligent people know, and you don’t have to be able to articulate the mechanics of it all to get it. In pre-Christian Cree society, adventures in sexuality were separated from pregnancy by well understood and widely practised plant-based and practice-based birth control. You could have your cake and eat it, too. Women were free to choose when, where, and with whom they would conceive a child. Women chose to have children spaced about four years apart—two or three at most—in a lifetime and had children in age cohorts within their own circle of age cohort sister-cousins. Children grew up with an age cohort of cousins, without the burden of having immediate older or younger siblings and with the benefit of being born into a circle of similarly aged playmate relatives.

Women often chose to have a first child around the age of 16, when their mothers were about 32, their grandmothers were about 48, their great-grandmothers were about 64, and their great-great grandmothers were about 80. It was not uncommon for women to live to 100 years, so up to six generations of mothers could be present in an extended family, with the newborn infant representing the seventh generation. This meant that every new mother was surrounded by a depth of experience in the fine arts of Indigenous Socialism. She was certainly never on her own, without support, trying to care for several, or even a dozen or more children, all her own, often on her own, as was the European standard at that same time in history.

Out of this foundational matrix arose the basic form of Indigenous Socialism. By choosing fathers from across the bio-region, extended family villages were cross-linked with many other extended family villages, in an intricate web that formed the regional and national governance systems. It was literally all in the family. The genius of Indigenous Socialism was that it did not extend from an avant-garde of intellectuals as a theory imposed imperfectly, top down, on a mass population, but instead was an organic product of a matrifocal society. When Fredrick Engels travelled to upper New York State to see for himself Haudenausaunee society in action, he marvelled at how a territorially large and heavily populated region could self-manage without elected officials, judges, police or prisons.

Like technological development, the organization of daily affairs in human society was founded on a completely different paradigm. Men did have roles, but women’s expectations of men were adjusted to account for men’s inherent weaknesses, most notably a propensity towards violence and a severe shortage of oxytocin. The poor dears could only get a blast of the primal socialist juice during orgasm; all the more reason to assist them in attaining as many as possible during a lifetime. Along with frequent orgasms, ceremonial activities also played an important part in reducing the potential stressor on a socialist system caused by an overabundance of testosterone—for instance, the sweatlodge. This wasn’t just an Indigenous introduction; Scandanavian societies, too, recognized the social benefits of immersing men in energy-sapping hot steamy environments for prolonged periods of time.

The Indigenius twist was an emphasis on the latent altruistic nature possibly underlying male humans’ obvious violent nature, as a remedy to the anti-social behaviours otherwise all too dominant. Protocol rituals in a simple sweatlodge ceremony remind and reinforce the necessary immersion of humans in the natural world; many times I’ve heard Elders leading sweatlodge ceremonies ritually comment on how we humans must humble ourselves and crawl on our hands and knees into the lodge, re-entering the womb of Mother Earth. During normal sweatlodge proceedings, water, earth, wind and fire are acknowledged with gratitude, from the perspective of the human family, while reminding us of our survival-based obligations to the circle of natural forces we have emerged from. The combination of intense heat, complete darkness and an extraordinary soundscape often moves participants out of day-to-day mundane realities and into the immediacy of relationship with Mother Earth. Everyone simultaneously has a unique experience and a deeply bonding common experience. Real socialism.

The genius of Indigenous ceremony is that it intentionally creates a psychological space where Indigenius Socialism can come to life, rewarding co-operation, voluntary sharing and spontaneous acts of kindness, while penalizing greed, selfishness and violence. These actions are easy for women, but hard for men—that damn testosterone! Within the ceremonial space, Indigenous women have figured out a method, over millennia, for engaging men, by using the same tactics used with young children. Useful roles are identified and social prestige is offered, while steady, firm Elder female hands quietly steer the ceremonial proceedings from a discreet position in the background.

I realize that we seem to be a long way away from the way of life that Rosa Luxemburg called primitive communism; she was just looking at what Marxists call the mode of production and she didn’t mean the mode of reproduction of the reserve army of labour. A syncretic Indigenius Socialism for the 21^st century has to account, in practice, for both the mode of production and the mode of reproduction and does so by putting the mode of reproduction where it belongs: first. You can’t build a socialist future among antisocial human beings; the 20^th century is a fine illustration of that point.

Becoming pregnant, being pregnant, giving birth, nurturing a new life: here’s where we can see the transcendence of the notions of wilderness and scarcity. Mother Earth is not wild, nor is She short on essential items for Her existence. The same is potentially true for every human mother; the keys are sharing and co-operation. Exactly what a global human society would look like following those two simple concepts is not for me to say, but I can predict something.

Indigenius Socialism will be built by women, for humanity, utilizing everything now in existence, to rise above the barbarism of the present moment. We men can choose to be women’s assistants in this project; it could be an ecstatic experience. Imagine global human population plummeting in a women-led movement, while orgasms per lifetime are skyrocketing. Perhaps the Metis Nation is a signpost to the future: Indigenous Peoples will be Peoples indigenous to Mother Earth—one race, diverse, living locally while thinking globally, wickedly intelligent, one more species among many worth saving from extinction. There is a window of opportunity now, but, if we humans don’t take it, we will just create another one soon. We will eventually choose socialism over barbarism; our Mother told us to.

Gifted with a white privilege suit on his birthday, Steinhauer has been slipping back and forth across the invisible boundary between Turtle Island and Canada since 1952. And this is what he saw.

Mother Earth

From Memory to Resistance, Children Bear Witness

Moira Peters — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:33:34 +0000

HIJOS celebrates 10 years in Guatemala

TATAMAGOUCHE, NS–Walking through the streets of Guatemala City, HIJOS slogans are hard to miss: "Justice for Nueva Linda"; "Trial and Punishment for Military Assassins!" Words demanding an end to impunity remind everyone that 36 years of civil war in Guatemala have not ended in justice or peace.

HIJOS Guatemala—Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence—was founded in 1999 by young people who were forced into exile, or who lost family members due to State repression during the war. (The group's name, HIJOS, is a play on the Spanish word for "children.") In June 2009, HIJOS Guatemala celebrated 10 years of fighting to preserve historical memory, to end impunity, to memorialize the victims of the war, and to shed light on the human rights violations committed during the conflict.

Using public education events, protests, and political art and murals to articulate and strengthen the movement toward justice, HIJOS is comprised of students, workers and professionals of Ladinos (Guatemalans of mixed Hispanic and Indigenous origin) and Indigenous descent. A new generation of HIJOS is now being born as those who started the group 10 years ago pass on to their hijos the struggle of those before them. HIJOS members—including children of the disappeared and murdered, and Guatemalans who stand in solidarity with the group—work in rural communities as well as in the urban centre of Guatemala City. While many group members hold "day jobs" with other human rights and social justice organizations, they are more than simply volunteers for HIJOS; for many, HIJOS is a way of life, an extended family.

HIJOS not only focuses on justice for past crimes, but also draws attention to new threats Guatemalans face today. In a recent bulletin, HIJOS stated: "According to our interpretation of the history and the memory of the resistance of the People, we understand justice to be a historical demand of the grassroots struggle for dignity, sovereignty and self-determination."

Bety Reyes Toledo knows HIJOS well. Reyes Toledo is the daughter of Hector Reyes, a Guatemalan peasant who, after trying to organize workers and obtaining evidence of back-door dealings involving the owners of the Nueva Linda plantation where he worked, was kidnapped and disappeared on September 5, 2003. Reyes Toledo, her family, and over 170 other families have been camped on the side of the road outside the plantation since 2004, demanding justice and information on the whereabouts of her father.

"HIJOS has been with us throughout our struggle and because of them, more people have become involved. They help give us the strength to go on because we feel supported," said Reyes Toledo. HIJOS, in collaboration with other social justice organizations, has arranged food and clothing drives, the "Caravan for Justice" on the anniversary of the disappearance of Hector Reyes and protests to support justice for the Reyes family and all families and workers at Nueva Linda.

But not everyone is happy with HIJOS’ call for an end to impunity. The group has experienced threats and acts of intimidation, including office break-ins and an attempted kidnapping. Members of HIJOS have been victims of political campaigns and attacked through the Guatemalan media. According to a June 2008 "Urgent Action" (a call to action sent to HIJOS' national and international solidarity networks), one member was followed, beaten up on the street and warned to tell others to back off a public demilitarization campaign that involved HIJOS and 15 other organizations, or suffer the consequences.

The group continued its work and 2008 marked the first year the military parade was suspended from its annual June 30 march through Guatemala’s historic centre.

"For HIJOS Guatemala, who have been going out into the streets...to point out [and] to reject the criminal presence of the army and its high command which acts in total impunity, the suspension of the parade is a victory that has been won thanks to the people who year after year have marched in light of threats, attacks and repression," said Wendy Mendez, a human rights defender and co-founder of HIJOS Guatemala.

In fact, HIJOS' June 30 anniversary falls on the same day as Guatemala's annual military parade—a day now known, thanks to the efforts of HIJOS and others, as the "Day of Heroes and Martyrs."

"Along the way we have learned that the struggle for memory, truth and justice in Guatemala is a long and historical process for the survivors of genocide, therefore it has many actions, strategies and chapters that must be written in order for those democratic principles to become a reality." Mendez said that stopping the Military March was one such action on the road to democracy and peace.

Born in Guatemala, Mendez and her family fled to Vancouver, B.C., after witnessing the forced disappearance of her mother, Luz Haydee Mendez, by the Guatemalan Military Intelligence on March 8, 1984.

Following its investigation between April 1997 and February 1999, the United Nations Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH)—a commission created through the peace negotiations and the Accord of Oslo in 1994—reported that state forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93 per cent of the violations documented by the CEH, including 92 per cent of arbitrary executions and 91 per cent of forced disappearances. Victims included men, women and children of all social strata: workers, professionals, church members, politicians, peasants, students and academics; in ethnic terms, 80 per cent were Indigenous Maya. During the 36-year conflict, the CEH reported that over 200,000 men and women were killed or disappeared. Forced disappearance is a war tactic used to systematically terrorize a population. 626 villages were completely destroyed, 1.5 million people were displaced by the violence, and more than 150,000 were driven to seek refuge in Mexico.

Ten years after the release of the report, the numbers are estimated to be higher still as clandestine graves continue to be exhumed and those once unwilling to talk about la violencia have begun to open up and tell their stories.

To date, however, none of the intellectual authors of the war—including military high command and civilians in power during the violence in the early 1980s—have been tried, let alone convicted.

The recent presentation of the Guatemalan Presidential Peace Secretariat’s "Report on the Authenticity of the Military Diary" verified facts found in a military dossier detailing crimes committed by the military during the civil war. The dossier was smuggled from Guatemalan military intelligence files in 1999. Given the release of historical documents from the national policy archive that affirm these details, Mendez is disappointed with the Guatemalan government's unwillingness to act on its own findings. She reiterated the sentiment of those who continue to struggle for justice: "We do not need another study into the authenticity of the facts. We need a judicial investigation, trial and punishment for those responsible."

It has been 13 years since the state and the URNG (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity) signed the Peace Accords for “true and lasting peace.” However, structures of exclusion, antagonism and conflict continue to oppress the majority of Guatemalans who suffer at the hands of an unwieldy and corrupt National Civil Police force, a so-called social democrat government with a neo-liberal trade agenda, corruption and weak state institutions. Above all, the power of the highly trained Guatemalan military continues to seep into and thus control all levels of Guatemalan society, provoking instability and fear throughout the country.

Mendez reflects upon the disturbing trend of increased violence in Guatemala: "At first we were certain that the wall of impunity would come down with the fulfillment of the Peace Treaties signed in 1996, but since these have not been respected by any of the governments since, and on top of that, the Free Trade Agreements' agenda and policies have been imposed, the reasons that gave origin to the war are still present and the levels of impunity and corruption have grown."

As crime levels surpass those reported during the war—of which 99 per cent go unpunished—and drug cartels control borders and entire communities, the military continues to move freely into rural communities. These are the same Indigenous communities wherein not long ago the state orchestrated massacres. The low-paid National Civil Police provide little civil security for Guatemalans, and in many cases they are not trusted due to their associations with the mafia. Practices include demanding bribery payments, brutal treatment of civilians and general abuse of power. In its desperation to reduce the high levels of crime, the population is turning to the military for protection.

On the other hand, thanks to a beefed-up military budget, military bases have been reopened and new ones have been created. In communities fighting to save their natural resources from transnational mega-projects, such as mines and dams that threaten to destroy the land and displace thousands of Indigenous people, the newly created "combined forces"—police-military patrols—are stationed to remind citizens that their moves are being watched and reported upon.

Mendez reflects on the work and struggle to which HIJOS has committed. "On our 10th anniversary, we confirm that the best way to bring honour and glory to our mothers and fathers, to all the victims of genocide in Guatemala, is to continue the struggle for social justice and democracy."

Jackie McVicar works with the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network (BTS) in Guatemala City. BTS has been supporting and collaborating with HIJOS initiatives for nine years.

HIJOS close up

HIJOS drums

Disputed Property Sale in Guatemala Results in Death Threats, Charges

Moira Peters — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 05:41:45 +0000

Canada's Goldcorp agrees to negotiate; police, military arrive instead

TORONTO–The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights received an urgent request this month that precautionary measures be taken to protect Guatemalan families as Goldcorp, the Canadian gold mining company that owns the controversial Marlin mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacan, expands its operations in the mostly Indigenous Western Highlands.

The Association for Integral Development of San Miguel Ixtahuacan (ADISMI) filed the request on June 12, 2009, following a confrontation between residents concerned over water resources and Goldcorp, acting through its Guatemalan subsidiary, Montana Exploradora.

In an effort to protest what they see as an illegitimate property sale, residents of Saqmuj, a community in the village of Agel, occupied the land on June 10 in hopes of negotiating with Goldcorp.

Company officials returned to the site on June 11 and signed an agreement stating their intention to address community demands, to withdraw their equipment, and to return the morning of June 12.

According to reports from the region, six national police units and two special anti-riot troops arrived in Saqmuj, allegedly to protect Goldcorp officials. When company representatives did not return on June 12, anger at having been stood up and increased tensions among the protesters led some of those occupying the property to set fire to company equipment.

The Guatemalan police and military (10 police units, two micro buses and five or six pickups—50 to 75 individuals in full), along with District Attorneys and Montana Exploradora officials, arrived in the region on June 15, surrounding the offices of ADISMI, while Goldcorp filed charges against seven local leaders.

This is not the first time Goldcorp has laid charges against individuals opposing mining activities. In 2007, the company filed charges against seven men for their involvement in organized opposition, followed by another set of charges in 2008 against eight women.

Tensions have been high in the area since 2005 when Montana Exploradora began extracting minerals from the Marlin mine without the full, prior and informed consent of residents. In accordance with Article 169 of the International Labour Organization, which was ratified by Guatemala, international companies wishing to participate in resource extraction must first receive consent from those affected by the proposed operation.

Various democratic referenda have been organized since 2005, but neither Goldcorp nor the Guatemalan government has accepted as legitimate the near-universal community opposition to the mine. Since then, those living nearby claim an increase in sickness, water contamination and damaged houses due to the gold mine’s mainly open-pit operations.

As Agel borders Goldcorp's Marlin mine, residents of Saqmuj are gravely concerned about the company’s plans for further mineral exploration in the area. According to reports from the region, Goldcorp has used intimidation tactics to convince local landowners to sell and one community member has sold his land to the company.

Families of Saqmuj assert that because its operations will negatively affect the entire community, the mine proposal must have community consent before it can operate. They claim the community as a whole does not support the presence of the mine and therefore Goldcorp does not have exploration rights.

According to a call to action sent to national and international solidarity networks, released by the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) and Collectif Guatemala: “The families fear that selling this land puts at tremendous risk the integrity and access to at least three water springs on which families in Saqmuj depend.”

Despite reports of disagreements within the family that sold its land and significant opposition in the community, Montana Exploradora moved company equipment onto the property on May 19 to begin exploration.

Since the June 15 confrontation, locals have witnessed further intimidation, while some have received threatening text messages and phone calls. In particular, Javier de Leon, Director of ADISMI, has received four death threats, including threats against his wife and children.

The events in Agel are not isolated; rather they are part of a larger pattern of conflict when extraction companies begin operations on claimed lands. In 2005, a man was killed while taking part in a blockade of mining equipment destined for the Marlin mine (then owned by Glamis Gold). A Goldcorp-funded development committee in Agel cut off running water to the home of one opponent to the proposed mine in Saqmuj. Organized resistance is frequently met with militarized oppression, while local leaders are threatened and others intimidated.

Valerie Croft is a freelance journalist living in Toronto. She worked as an International Accompanier in 2008, in the region of San Miguel Ixtahuacan.

Marlin and Man

Riot Police in School Yards Prompt Demonstration

Moira Peters — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:43:10 +0000

Youth not the problem, say protesters

HALIFAX–With solemn faces, CJ Hamilton and Chris Whynder carried a banner reading “Education Not Incarceration" through the North End of Halifax. The two Auburn Drive High School students, who have since graduated, led a 50-strong multicultural march on June 20 to Halifax Regional Police headquarters on Gottingen Street. The message of the protest, organized by the Black Independence Network Nova Scotia (BINNS), was clear: Halifax police and media need to stop portraying black youth as criminals.

“Schools, not prisons!” Dalhousie University faculty member Isaac Saney bellowed into a megaphone. Walking beside him, a young girl carried a sign that read: “Domestic Terrorists Wear Blue!”

Since violent events at Cole Harbour District High School and Auburn Drive in May, BINNS has accused the media of misrepresenting what the group says was unprompted police brutality towards black students. BINNS literature handed out at the protest said riot police arrested 14 black youths at Auburn Drive after a schoolyard argument on May 1.

In a similar incident at Cole Harbour, three youths were arrested following a series of fights at the school on May 4.

One protesting parent, who preferred not to be named, said police used unreasonable force against her son, leaving him with a black eye and rings around his wrists from handcuffs.

“Police have to do their job, but I think they’re being excessive, especially towards youth,” she said. “I mean, wow, you’re a big, bad cop, you’re carrying a gun, you’re going to bully a 15- or 16-year-old?”

An editorial in a local daily called the black youths involved in the two school incidents “pimps and drug dealers,” but The Dominion's anonymous source says her son, a student at Auburn Drive, is a good kid.

“Youth are not the problem,” Saney said after the protest, “it is the way society is structured socially, economically and politically.”

He said racism from police and the media is typical, not unusual.

“The black community has come to unfortunately expect it,” he said. “It’s part of being black in Nova Scotian society.”

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op. Currently she's writing the first ever Ethics Code for the oldest newspaper in North America, The Dalhousie Gazette.

Domestic Terrorists

Five-Fold Increase in Oil Sands Production

Moira Peters — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:05:38 +0000

Tar sands could produce 6 million barrels of oil per day by 2035: report

VANCOUVER–"The oil sands have moved from the fringe to the centre of energy supply," notes the report "Growth in the Canadian Oil Sands: Finding a New Balance," released by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) on May 18.

Environmentalists and some aboriginal groups want the oil sands to stay on the fringes because extracting heavy oil produces more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional crude.

On May 22, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) issued a report entitled "The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs Climate Change," which argues that the negative environmental impacts and benefits to US energy security from Canada’s tar sands are both overstated.

"Smart regulation can place a fair and reasonable price on the oil sands’ greenhouse gas emissions, providing the right incentive to reduce them," said Michael Levi, an author of the CFR report.

In a phone interview, Levi said lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands are 17 per cent worse than conventional US oil imports. Environmentalists dispute this claim, stating oil production from the tar sands is at least 300 per cent worse than conventional oil.

"The development of Canadian oil sands encapsulates the complexities that the world faces on energy, environment and security," said IHS CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin.

Yergin won a Pulitzer Prize for his book The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, which details the history of the oil industry. CERA did not respond to interview requests.

Oil today accounts for 35 per cent of the global energy supply—the largest share of any form of energy. In 2008, worldwide oil demand was 85.2 million barrels per day (mbd). CERA estimates global oil demand in 2035 could range from 97 to 113 mbd.

If the global economy stays in recession or a slow-growth scenario, production from Canada’s tar sands will reach about 2.3 mbd by 2035—an increase of about one mbd from present levels—according to CERA's report, which posits three possible scenarios for the future of tar sands development. In a high-growth scenario, the figure will reach six million mbd.

In 2008, Canada supplied the US with 19 per cent of its oil imports. That figure could rise to 37 per cent by 2035, according to CERA.

Canada's dependence on oil exports to the US worries Gordon Laxer, Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta. "We need 21st-century public interest ownership [of oil reserves]," he said in an interview.

Relying on exports to the US rather than the domestic market puts Canada in a weak position if there is a supply crisis, warned Laxer. Unlike the US, Canada does not maintain a strategic petroleum reserve.

In contrast to Canada’s private ownership structure, the vast majority of world oil reserves are controlled by government-owned companies which can, in theory, use oil wealth to finance national development, according to Laxer.

While arguing for a price on carbon emissions, the CFR report is not concerned with other environmental problems, including water contamination.

"Local impacts are not the concern of US policy-makers," said Levi.

Environmentalists say that exponential increases in water extraction from the Athabasca River could destabilize the North American water cycle.

Most water used in tar sands extraction is not returned to the natural water system. Instead, wastewater containing toxins is dumped into what the industry calls tailings ponds. As outlined in CERA’s report, Staten Island, New York, could fit inside the tailings pond operated by Syncrude, the largest tar sands consortium.

"It takes a huge amount of energy just to melt the tar sands and then you have to use a huge quantity of water: that's a cost which has to be internalized [by industry]," said environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki.

Environmentalists like Suzuki, along with some economists, believe industry should pay for the water it uses and the air it pollutes. With these costs, the economic viability of tar sands development would be questionable. "Right now the oil industry is getting away scot-free," said Suzuki in an interview.

The CFR report supports adding a cost or externality to carbon emissions. The report estimates that a carbon price of $20 per tonne of CO₂ equivalent—the average price in the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme—would add only $2.21 per barrel to production costs of the oil sands.

"The US will have a large market for emissions; Canada will benefit from that stability," said CFR’s Levi, extolling the benefits of a carbon pricing system that is being debated by legislators on both sides of the Canada-US border. Environmentalists say these cost estimates for carbon are too low to stop runaway climate change, a scenario many scientists agree would destroy life on Earth as we know it.

CERA maintains a list of the world’s top 15 countries that have the potential to increase oil production over the next decade. Canada ranks fourth and Brazil is the only other country in the Western Hemisphere to make CERA’s list.

Critics of CERA’s methodology say this accounting neglects Venezuela’s massive and virtually untapped heavy oil reserves in the Orinoco belt.

A version of this article appeared on Inter Press Service. The author is currently studying rural opposition to oil development and sabotage in Canada. He can be reached at arsenault_chris@hotmail.com.

Tar Sands Production

June Books

Moira Peters — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:02:27 +0000

New release by Bolano, new work by Fiorentino

Nazi Literature in the Americas
Roberto Bolano,
New Directions, 2008

Roberto Bolano’s Nazi Literature in the Americas operates on a principle expressed by the narrator of another of the late Chilean’s novels, The Savage Detectives: “In one sense, the name of the group is a joke. At the same time, it’s completely in earnest.” The speaker is talking about a literary faction, but he could easily be referring to the enterprise that is Nazi Literature, a book structured as a “Who’s Who” of the Latin American literary community’s extreme right wing. With each chapter taking on the form of a short biography followed by several handily provided appendices, the project reads initially like a Borgesian prank. But in the end, the sheer doggedness of the work (the joke-teller shows no signs of abatement) lends the tone a strange bleakness that persists after the formal novelty has worn off.

In reading Bolano it becomes apparent almost immediately that he was an insatiable reader and active literary scenester. But Nazi Literature’s peculiar strength is that it evinces a mind actively channeling, re-coding and at times parodying all of the writing that has been so zealously absorbed. Beyond the virtuosic, universe-creating scope of the book, Bolano tests the limits of readerly empathy with his characters; a parade of fascist monsters striving to make their own art through personal strife and political turmoil. Within such stories of artistic development, we are conditioned to root for success: the publication of the novel, the acquisition of enough means to pursue one’s craft, the achievement of some expression of vision. Such assumptions do not hold up, however, when what follows is a sentence like the one that concludes the chapter on fictional poet Jim O’Bannon: “He remained firm in his disdain for Jews and homosexuals to the end, although at the time of his death he was beginning, gradually, to accept African Americans.”

With this mysterious and bracing book, Bolano the mischief-maker reminds us that writers are neither saints nor saviours, that they ought not be lionized by virtue of their vocation and that they are, above all, a product of their time and place. It's a joke worth hearing.

Nazi Literature in the Americas is newly available in paperback.

–Robert Kotyk

Stripmalling
Jon Paul Fiorentino
ECW Press, 2009

Whenever someone gets around to writing the Great Canadian Novel, it ought to take place in a land of big-box stores and cluttered, unremarkable suburbs. It is not an easy place to write about. For the bulk of its population, Canada isn’t a country of wide-open spaces and endless, frozen landscapes. From most angles, it’s a practical place full of modest lives that don’t offer a lot of dramatic material for epic narratives. Jon Paul Fiorentino seems to be looking in the right place for a truly Canadian narrative in Stripmalling, his debut novel/autobiography with illustrations by Evan Munday.

When he keeps his story in the suburbs of Winnipeg, Fiorentino explores the darker aspects of the standard strip mall upbringing: the hopeless teenage jobs, the promiscuity, the fights and the boredom. But these familiar fragments are not at the core of the book. Stripmalling is really a novel about a young man who uncovers a creative instinct and leaves the strip mall to eventually write a novel called Stripmalling. Fiorentino attempts a quirky metanarrative, but nothing remarkable materializes in the text itself or the world beyond.

This is a diary of sorts. And you probably shouldn’t publish your diary until you’re dead. Too much of Fiorentino’s writing contains insights he should have kept to himself. An opening paragraph which references the “necessary unreliability of memory” serves as an early warning that for a book hyped on its comedic charm, someone is trying to make it awfully heavy. And there would be nothing wrong with that if so much of the novel didn’t come across as juvenile pontificating. For every nostalgic and vaguely beautiful image of a sprawling landscape, Fiorentino provides at least one empty rumination (“I do not want to thrive in YOUR world,” “Mine is a static literature.”). We never get the hidden stories of strip mall lives; we get romanticized pictures of places young Canadian authors glorify too often. Jonny ends up in Montreal (where else?), in the same cafes where, “Everyone is a writer, or was.” Despite initial promises, Fiorentino spews out stories of poverty, drugs and heartbreak like any other gloomy Mile-End amateur. Instead of sparking a literary imagination in under-explored places, Stripmalling reminds me of so many of my own strip mall nights: disappointing and easy to forget.

–Shane Patrick Murphy

Picky

Moira Peters — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 05:20:19 +0000

Picky_HMeek.jpg

"Everybody has a Voice"

dru — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:18:10 +0000

Images from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne

KAWEHNOKE, AKWESASNE, MOHAWK TERRITORY–As part of a national border security plan slated for 2016, the Canadian government is arming all Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) agents.

The Canada-US border runs through the Mohawk community of Akwesasne. Like many other communities, the Mohawks have never given up their rights to the land, maintaining traditional government and sovereignty separate from the Canadian state.

Months ago, community representatives contacted the government to express concerns about giving 9mm guns to CBSA agents. In the past, instances of harassment and racial profiling have been reported, but the response was minimal. In June 2008, CBSA agents violently arrested two Mohawk grandmothers, one of whom suffered a heart attack. Both refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Canadian court in Mohawk Territory. Charges against one were dropped and the second was released with conditions.

After the government refused to reconsider its position, the community set a deadline of midnight on May 31 for a resolution to the conflict.

The government of Canada responded to the deadline by presenting the community with an ultimatum shortly before midnight. Akwesasne could either accept the arming of the CBSA or face the immediate closure of the two bridges—and the international border. Approximately 400 Akwesasne community members gathered around a sacred fire and announced their united decision: "No guns for the CBSA in Akwesasne!"

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has not backed down from his position. "They'll have to accept armed border officers there. What we're looking at is a potential long closing, and as a result we are right now examining the long-term viability of that particular port of entry...and that includes moving it."

Sandra Cuffe is a vagabond freelance journalist, photographer and organizer originally from Coast Salish Territories. She is a contributing member of The Dominion and Media Co-op, and Honduras correspondent for UpsideDownWorld.org.

Akwesasne #1

Akwesasne #2

Akwesasne #3

Akwesasne #4

Akwesasne #5

Akwesasne #6

June in Review, Part I

dawn — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Feds clash with Mohawks, agree on Free Trade with Peru, and fund Afghan police

Police in Peru massacred at least 54 Indigenous people and wounded more than 100 others in the Amazonian town of Bagua. More than a dozen police officers were killed. The massacre was the state's response to an extended mobilization against the implementation of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement. In New York, activists chained themselves to the door of US Senator Chuck Schumer's offices to protest Schumer's vote in favour of the US-Peru deal. Activists in Ottawa picketed the Peru Embassy.

Canadian NGOs called on the Canadian Senate to halt the passing of the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement, which reached its third reading in parliament just two days before the bloodshed. "If people are being killed on behalf of Canadian investors to promote and protect investment projects on Indigenous land, then their blood is on our hands," said Jamie Kneen of MiningWatch Canada.

The Mohawk community of Akwesasne, including all three band and tribal councils as well as both longhouses, protested the Canada Border Services Agency's (CBSA) attempt to arm border guards at the Cornwall crossing, which lies within the Akwesasne reserve. The CBSA withdrew personnel from the border post shortly before the midnight deadline set by the Mohawk community on Sunday, May 31. Police blocked the bridge that serves as a border crossing between Canada and the US.

On "National Reconciliation Day," Akwesasne band council Grand Chief Tim Thomson accused Public Safety Minister Peter van Loan of being a "liar" for claiming to have consulted with the community of Akwesasne about the plan to arm CBSA agents.

A week later, Mohawks in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory shut down the Skyway Bridge in solidarity with the struggle in Akwesasne. The CBSA plans to arm all 4,800 border guards by 2016.

Tyendinaga police and the Ontario Provincial Police violently broke up the Skyway Bridge blockade and arrested 13 men on charges of mischief. Three were hospitalized and released back into police custody. Women from Tyendinaga re-took the Skyway Bridge until the release with conditions of the majority of the men—including minors—was confirmed later that afternoon. At least five men, including prominent activist Shawn Brant, were detained at Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee over the weekend pending further investigation into additional charges.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) destroyedat least two Chevron pipelines in Nigeria's Delta State. The Nigerian Army's Joint Task Force responded to the bombings by launching counterattacks, which affected thousands of community members. "I have seen over 5,000 people displaced, over 2,000 people looking for where to hide and 1,000 people dead," said Dr. Chris Ekiyor, the leader of the Ijaw Youth Council.

Royal Dutch Shell settled out of court with the family of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the families of eight other leaders who were executed by the Nigerian military government in 1995 for protesting the oil company's activities in their territory.

The Federal Court of Canada ruled that the Canadian government must "issue [Abousfian Abdelrazik] an emergency passport in order that he may return to and enter Canada," and "arrange transportation for [Abdelrazik] from Khartoum to Montréal, Canada, such that he arrives in Canada no later than 30 days from the date hereof." Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen who has been living in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum since April 2008, was jailed and tortured while visiting Sudan. He has been cleared of all charges by the government of Sudan, CSIS and the RCMP, but the federal government has not allowed him to return home.

A former Soviet KGB agent took sanctuary in a church in Vancouver to avoid deportation to Russia. Commentators from Vancouver's South Asian community noted that the media's treatment of Mikhail Lennikov was more sympathetic than it was in the case of Laiber Singh, an economic refugee who returned to India last year. "Media hostility towards Singh in the past reflects discriminatory attitudes of the mainstream towards people of colour in this country," wrote journalist Gurpreet Singh.

It was revealed that the US Transportation Security Administration would start verifying the gender of passengers boarding flights in the US against their identification. "Many of us...who endure questioning if particularly zealous agents notice a mismatch between a gender marker and their perception of our gender will now enter airports certain of an unavoidable gender check," wrote Dean Spade, a transgendered lawyer from the US.

Fifteen members of the Olympics Resistance Network (ORN) were visited by officers from the Vancouver Integrated Security Unit over a period of 48 hours. "This is a clear effort to intimidate and monitor people who have concerns about the negative impacts of the Games on our communities," said ORN member Cara Fisher.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez visited Montreal and Ottawa to promote the stalled free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia. In Montreal, Uribe was met by more than 100 protestors. Canwest News Service ran a story timed with Uribe's visit, which indicated that the Colombian government had discovered established groups of supporters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC, a guerilla army in Colombia) in Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto and Vancouver.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon announced that Canada would spend an additional $12 million to pay the salaries of Afghan National Police officers in Kandahar.

Public Works Minister Christian Paradis announced that the Conservatives will improve communications with the aerospace and defence industries in an effort to streamline military procurement procedures. "We want to make sure industry is part of the solution given the investments that are coming in military procurement," said Paradis. According to the Ottawa Citizen, the government is slated to spend billions on new equipment, including supply ships, fighter aircraft, armoured vehicles, and helicopters.

The Organization of American States invited Cuba to rejoin the group, having been removed in 1962. The Cuban government rejected the offer.

The merger of tar sands giants Suncor and Petro Canada was approved by shareholders in both companies. The deal, worth approximately $22.2 billion, needs a green light from the Canadian government before it is finalized.

The New Democratic Party won a majority in Nova Scotia's provincial election.

Hot weather and continued lockdowns exacerbated living conditions for prisoners at Matsqui Prison near Vancouver, BC, who have been forced to remain in their cells for 23 hours a day since May 11. "There are no toilets in cells. [Prisoners] are having to wait hours, in some cases, to use the toilet. Some are using buckets and throwing it out the windows," said lawyer Donna Turko. The lockdown began after prisoners protested having their work hours extended from eight to 12 hours a day.

A NAFTA tribunal ruled in favour of the Quechan people, recognizing their sacred space and dismissing Glamis Gold's (now Goldcorp) claim that the State of California's and the United States' moves to regulate hard-rock mining on public lands infringes on the company's rights.

Barack Obama named a new US Ambassador to Ottawa. David Jacobson fundraised for Obama's election campaign and is widely considered an "Obama insider." Ottawa will be Jacobson's first posting as a diplomat.

A cargo ship was hijacked by pirates off the coast of Oman.

People in Hong Kong and around the world commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4. Journalists were banned from Tiananmen Square, which was heavily surveilled by police.

On the same day, the Polish government celebrated 20 years of post-communism. The state-sponsored celebrations, which included a concert by Kylie Minogue, were picketed by Polish anarchists who view the last 20 years in Poland as "20 years of widening class divisions."

Soldier in Bagua, Peru

Reclaimed Border Post

Sea Fare

Moira Peters — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:26:08 +0000

Cooking, Nuu-chah-nulth style

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, B.C.)–At first glance, despite its unfamiliar title, Čamus looks like most other cookbooks. However, Čamus is a cookbook that is about more than just cooking. Čamus is about food, nature and language; it is a reflection of a culture, a way of life, and about preserving that way of life.

On the cover is a slice of moist salmon fillet arranged on a bed of leeks, celery leaves and the leaf of a skunk cabbage. A few sprigs of green onions are laid across the fish. Below, photos of berries, crab, sea urchin and mussels indicate that seafood and nature’s foods will be prominent in the Nuu-chah-nulth style cookbook. Good taste is also important. Čamus (chum-us) is an adjective meaning the satisfaction of being well-fed.

The cookbook contains recipes from the 17 Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations found on the west coast of Vancouver Island and the Makah First Nation of Washington State. In addition to the Indigenous cuisine, the reader is also introduced to the culture, language, and philosophy of the Nuu-chah-nulth.

Tom Happynook, President of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, laments the drift away from the traditional foods. Although many elders still value the nutritional and medicinal benefits of the traditional Nuu-chah-nulth diet, eating traditionally is less common among young people.

There is scientific research linking eating traditional foods with eliminating obesity, heart disease, diabetes and other afflictions that plague Indigenous Peoples. This, says Happynook, “should be enough incentive to turn to our customary foods. Healthy people equals healthy communities.”

Happynook holds that eating is part of one’s cultural identity: “If we are to preserve our Nuu-chah-nulth-ness we must eat Nuu-chah-nulth foods.”

Dawn Foxcroft, spokeswoman for Uu-a-thluk (Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council Fisheries), sees “a lot of movement [projects, identified needs] in the communities towards a more traditional diet, eating foods from our territories and learning how to harvest and manage these resources.”

“With the cookbook we are also trying to promote the use of the resources—their use in a sustainable and respectful way—so that Nuu-chah-nulth people will go out into our territories and learn about harvesting, learn about management and the value of who they are and where they are from," says Foxcroft. "Also, we want people to go out with their families and learn how to harvest and where to harvest; this is one of the ways that keeps the culture alive and strong.”

Čamus includes a Nuu-chah-nulth Seasonal Round, a wheel that explains the territorial locales, months of the year and foods that are available for harvesting.

The cookbook cautions shellfish harvesters to check for water closures and never to harvest from water suspected of containing pollution.

Good food comes from a cared-for environment. Uu-a-thluk is devoted to the sustainability and management of the aquatic environment.

Each recipe in Čamus has a list of ingredients with instructions for combining and cooking. The cookbook is divided into three sections: ocean (with 39 fish-based recipes), beach (11 recipes) and land (15 recipes). The ocean-based recipes are tilted toward salmon (there are 15 salmon recipes); predictable, given the west coast locale and the long-intertwined history of the Nuu-chah-nulth people and salmon.

Many salmon lovers hold strong preferences between wild Pacific salmon and farmed salmon. Foxcroft finds, however, that consensus is lacking among the different Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations on this issue.

Consensus is not lacking about seafood. Fish, chiton, clam, oyster, mussel, barnacle and sea urchin recipes are found in Čamus. The land section carries recipes for duck, elk and deer. There are also recipes for the popular fried bread bannock (sapnin).

There are some meatless recipes, but Čamus is not a cookbook geared to vegetarians.

The book is an invitation to the adventurous. Some of the ingredients will be outside the average person's food repertoire—for example, salal, fish head, chitons, marinated alaria and gooseneck barnacles. Two recipes even feature whale meat: whale jerk candy and whale in the middle.

Like berries? There is also a seasonal berry chart for salmonberries, salal berries, bog cranberries, thimbleberries, huckleberries, wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

The cookbook is peppered with tips like: “Salal berry leaves make a good antacid. Chew the leaf and suck juice from it.”

For the sun-dried berry candy recipe, Mamie Charles of the Hesquiaht First Nation remembers, “We used to use skunk cabbage [timuut] leaves for drying the berries, instead of cardboard.”

The Nuu-chah-nulth recipes indicate a non-wasteful, conservation ethic.

Says Foxcroft, “Nuu-chah-nulth people, like many other First Nations people, traditionally use all of an animal. I think that it is about respect for the animal and the connection to food and where the food is from. For example, when you prepare salmon, people use all of it; people eat the head, eyes, cheeks and skin. Where other people may throw away the salmon head, for many Nuu-chah-nulth it is a treat. Traditionally, the bones were put back in the river or ocean where they came from.”

Čamus offers much: from photos (black-and-white and colour) and illustrations to Nuu-chah-nulth vocabulary with each recipe and a phonetic alphabet at the back of the cookbook; there are sections devoted to canning salmon and underground baking; there is a recipe for kelp chips and a page devoted to kelp facts.

If the aphorism “you are what you eat” is valid, then Čamus is a great way to gain insight into the Nuu-chah-nulth people and at the same time reward one’s health and palate.

Bon appétit!

Kim Petersen is the Original Peoples Editor at The Dominion.

Gooseneck Barnacles