The Dominion - 62

Arctic Fox

dru — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 04:00:54 +0000

Because a serious world needs serious cuteness

In the farthest northern reaches of Turtle Island, Asia and Europe, right to the shores of the Arctic ocean, this extraordinarily hardy creature and its brethren hunt and wander. To adjust to widely varying seasonal temperatures, the fox grows a head-to-toe coat thick enough to walk on ice without freezing, and then sheds massively in the spring thaw. Other adaptations include powerful vascular circulation and a proportionally small skin surface area. These foxes will eat any available meat, but most commonly dine on lemmings—small rodents that share the foxes’ circumpolar territory. —DOJ

Arctic Fox

Life in the Calais Jungle

Moira Peters — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 04:06:30 +0000

A week in the migrant camps on the France/UK border

CALAIS, FRANCE—A tranquil scene greets visitors as they approach Calais, France, on the ferry from Dover, England: people play on the beach and lounge on the balconies of their waterfront condos; children fly kites by the shore. It has all the appearances of a charming place to spend a few days soaking up the sun and practicing your French. But this peaceful façade obscures the harsh reality for thousands of migrants, predominantly from the Middle East and Northern Africa, attempting to complete the final leg of their journey to what they hope will be a better life in the UK.

As the ferry docks, it is immediately clear that Calais’ port is surrounded by a maze of fences covering all access points. These fences are a physical representation of Europe’s increasingly obsessive efforts to close the doors to so-called illegal migrants. As the EU institutes increasingly severe and unforgiving immigration policies, Calais has become a bottleneck for migrants attempting to cross the English Channel, and a site of resistance for those wishing to challenge the repressive and racist actions of governments.

Tensions began to rise in Calais following the 2002 closure of the Red Cross Reception Centre in nearby Sangette. French and UK authorities had pushed hard for the closure, hoping that removing the centre would decrease the number of migrants seeking to cross the border. It appears the move has simply made the journey more difficult for those desperate enough to try. In the past five years the UK has stopped nearly 90,000 individuals from entering Britain, two-thirds of whom came via the Calais crossing. Current estimates are that anywhere from 700 to 2,000 people are camped in Calais at any given time, hoping to cross the border. They live in an area known as ‘the Jungle’ on the outskirts of the city: a collection of makeshift tents and cardboard homes where migrants live a cramped and precarious existence.

Police repression against migrants and political and legal pressure against any organizations assisting migrants has increased in recent years, in an attempt to starve the migrants out of France and Europe as a whole. In France it is illegal to assist undocumented migrants, which makes it very difficult for organizations to provide support or to build solidarity networks.

In response to the emergency situation in Calais, a week-long camp was organized from June 23 to 29, to demonstrate solidarity with migrants and protest their treatment by European governments. The camp was a mix of activists from across Europe, predominantly from the UK and France, who came together under the broad banner of ‘No Borders.’ The movement is a network of autonomous groups calling for freedom of movement for all, and which sees borders as maintaining a structure of inequality and repression, based on categories of legal/illegal and citizen/non-citizen.

The level of organization was impressive: beyond a physical presence, they planned a series of workshops, concerts, radio broadcasts and even a camp newspaper. When a plumber arrived on the Sunday morning to set up showers, it was clear these were not just a bunch of crazy radicals set on crashing the border, as some mainstream media reports had suggested. The camp was created by a group of intelligent and dedicated individuals who were seeking to create a meaningful space for dialogue, and to question the notion of borders, citizenship, and state repression.

While the camp was purposely built away from the Jungle to prevent police retaliation against migrants, a group of approximately 20 Iranians had taken up residence right behind the camp. This group of men varied in age, including a redheaded boy of 16. Using the camp generator to charge his cell phone he looked like he should be playing soccer with his friends, not risking his life to elude detection crossing the border in order to evade capture and detention. Sleeping most of the day, these men spent their nights trying to sneak aboard trucks that would take them across the Channel.

A sign made by several of the Iranians depicted their journey across the channel and expresses their desire to be treated with dignity and respect. It highlighted the three checkpoints they must pass through undetected before they even reach the Channel. In 2004, France and England signed an agreement on "juxtaposed controls," which allows UK immigration authorities to establish their own checkpoints in certain French locations, including Calais. Those who are caught are given a warning, held in detention centres for a short period time, and then released to try their luck another day. Those caught on the UK side of the border face harsher detention facilities and deportation. According to the UK Border Agency, they deported a total of 63,140 migrants last year.

Organizers of the camp seemed to have negotiated a compromise between addressing security concerns to protect the camp and creating a welcoming and open environment. Decisions were made by consensus over meals, with translators relaying information back and forth between Anglophones and Francophones. This was done against the background of constant surveillance, as a van-load of police circled the camp every five to ten minutes. During the week-long camp, there were numerous reports of clashes between police and protesters, and camp participants posted stories online of being held and searched at the border. The camp created an alternative space in defiance to the hostility and repression created by the constant police presence. There were moments of solidarity, where people from opposite backgrounds sat side-by-side, sharing food and song, giving a glimpse of what a world of “no borders” might be.

The fact that Western, white citizens were able to travel to Calais to participate in the No Borders camp for such a short time illustrates the privileges many hold. Protesters travelling to and from the camp faced police harassment and detainment, but it is the thousands of migrants who remain who bear the brunt of the state’s increasingly violent and extreme attempts to build walls between people and exploit their labour and lives.

The UK and French governments continue to build their fortress. An agreement reached between the two countries on July 7, 2009, will invest an additional £15 million in increased security controls and technology to, according to the UK Minister of Border and Immigration, "further strengthen the ring of steel that protects Britain." The questions is, who will protect migrants—those seeking asylum, reunification with their families, freedom from violence, repression and economic disaster—from being squeezed and suffocated by this ring of steel?

For more information on the No Borders Movement or situation in Calais please visit:

http://www.noborders.org.uk
http://www.contre-faits.org
http://www.associationsalam.org/

Amanda Wilson spent two days at the No Borders Camp in Calais, France, in advance of the weeklong mobilization to protest the treatment of migrants by the French and UK governments.

Calais Arrest

Port of Calais

Richmond City Councillor Stands Up for Farmland

dawn — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:20:19 +0000

Vancouver port expansion poses bigger threat to food security than climate change: farmland advocate

A recent land sale has veteran farmland advocate Harold Steves worried that port expansion may be a bigger threat than climate change to food security in the BC Lower Mainland.

Steves, a Richmond city councillor who helped found BC’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) as an MLA in the 1970s, said the expansion of Port Metro Vancouver is a threat to 8-9,000 acres of farmland in eastern Richmond.

In May, Port Metro Vancouver—formed by the amalgamation of the Fraser River Port Authority, the North Fraser Port Authority, and the Vancouver Port Authority, in January 2008—purchased the 200-acre Gilmore Farm in Richmond, which is in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), an area of land designated for agricultural use.

"It is the key parcel for control of the entire ALR in Richmond," Steves told Vancouver's Georgia Straight.

Gilmore Farm lies adjacent to other land owned by Port Metro Vancouver. This has led Steves and others to believe it will be used for container storage, which they argue could undermine the viability of surrounding farms.

Port Metro Vancouver spokesperson Anne McMullin said that won't happen—at least for now.

"We do not have any plans at this stage to change that piece of property away from agricultural land," McMullin told the Straight by phone.

McMullin called Gilmore Farm a "strategic asset." She said that Port Metro Vancouver "wants to ensure, certainly in the short term, that land up against port operations is maintained."

Gilmore Farm has been leased back to its previous owners for the next five years. What’s planned for the property once the lease is up hasn’t been made public.

On June 26, the Metro Vancouver board, an inter-municipal body covering Richmond, Vancouver and over a dozen other municipalities, approved a resolution objecting to the port’s purchase of the farm.

Steves vowed to fight any destruction of farmland by Port Metro Vancouver until his "dying breath."

"In 1973, when we brought the ALR in, we were concerned that we were only producing 86 per cent of our vegetables and small fruit," Steves said. "[D]uring WWII and after the war, we were producing 100 per cent, so a drop down from 100 per cent to 86 per cent was significant. Today, we’re producing 43 per cent. And that’s the problem."

Steves also chairs Metro Vancouver’s agriculture committee. The committee received a staff report in April that shows warmer climates may increase the productivity of the region’s farms.

According to the report, which looks at the potential impact of climate change on agriculture in Metro Vancouver, warmer winter temperatures will give pests and diseases a better chance of surviving the cold, and rising sea levels will increase the possibility of flooding.

But the report also predicts that, by the 2050s, the growing season will be extended by two weeks at both its beginning and end, increasing the viability of bell pepper and melon crops, and allowing for double cropping.

That’s just more reason to preserve Richmond’s farmland, according to Steves.

"The end result is that it is warmer, so [unlike] the Interior of BC, which is drier, and the Prairies, which are drier and less productive, we actually can increase crop production," he said.

Reflecting on more than 40 years of campaigning for farmland, Steves sees little that has changed. "The issues are the same, the knowledge of climate change and running out of food is a little better, but we knew it was happening even then, and that’s what’s so frightening, is that we’ve done so little in such a long time."

A version of this article was published at Straight.com, and at the Vancouver Media Co-operative.

Farmland

Issue #62

dru — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:16:14 +0000

Subhead:

August 2009

Cover Image:

dominion-issue62-1.jpg

Body:

Download Issue #62 (August 2009) [5.2 MB, pdf]

To read articles from this issue on the web, visit this page.

Issue #62 is formatted as twenty-four pages of letter sized paper (8.5x11").

(You need Acrobat Reader or an application that reads pdf files to view the print version of this issue.)

Distribution rights:

You are free (and encouraged) to download, print, and distribute as many copies of the Dominion as you like, with the following restrictions:

the content of the paper will not be modified
no advertising or additional content will be attached to the paper
15% of any profits derived from the sale or distribution of the Dominion will be paid to the Dominion
We ask regular readers for a voluntary contribution of between $2 and $10 per issue. See our donation page for details.

Exceptions to any of these restrictions may be granted on a case by case basis. Contact us with any questions.

Return to Tarmageddon

dawn — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:04:51 +0000

An Italian company's plan to develop tar sands in the Congo has activists worried

IGLESIAS, ITALY—You’ve likely heard about the tar sands in northern Alberta. You’re probably familiar with the devastation—environmental and social—this megaproject has brought to the land. Maybe you even have a relative who lives or works there.

There's less chance you've heard of the tar sands in the Republic of Congo (sometimes called Congo-Brazzaville). Even people living in the African nation, home to the second largest stand of tropical forest in the world, have been left in the dark.

“There is almost no information available about the project. We don’t even know the exact location, and communities are angry that they haven’t been consulted,” Brice Mackosso of the Justice and Peace Commission, told The Dominion.

Congolese activists gathered at a recent civil-society meeting in Italy around the G8 do know that Eni, an Italian oil company, has signed agreements with the scandal-ridden government of President Denis Sassou-Nguesso for tar sands development, as well as for a palm oil plantation with the intention to make biofuels.

Eni has begun exploration and intends to start drilling by 2011.

According to these activists, the license that Eni obtained covers an area of 1,790 km² a fraction of the 140,000 km² total size of the Alberta tar sands.

Preliminary tests show that oil deposits in this area could store up to seven billion barrels of oil.

Eni has signed its lease agreements not with the Oil Ministry, but with the Mining Ministry, revealing that they may intend to strip-mine the area.

Experience in Alberta shows that this kind of extractive activity requires deforesting vast stretches of land and pollutes the air and sky with toxic runoff generated in the upgrading from bitumen-laden sands into something that can be used as fuel.

The Congolese activists who spoke about these issues in Italy were alarmed to learn that Indigenous communities are being poisoned by the tar sands in Canada. “It is hard to imagine this kind of thing happening in Canada, and what would happen in the Congo,” said Mackosso.

In the Congo, the exploitation of the tar sands threatens one of the remaining great tropical ecosystems on earth, not to mention the global threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions released in the production of heavy synthetic crude.

But the immediate risk of opening up tar sands in the Republic of Congo is one that Indigenous and local communities face. Will they be poisoned and displaced to make way for the oil companies?

Even asking about the project has meant trouble for some. “People have been thrown in jail for opposing oil and gas, even for just questioning it,” said Christian Mounzeo from Rencontre pour la paix et les droits de l’homme (RPDH).

Both activists talked about how in Congo resentment still hangs in the air due to past deeds of oil companies. These companies include Congo's national Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo and French giant Total, accused of failing to compensate local people for lands and habitats that were obliterated during previous oil exploration and extraction, as well as contaminating food and water sources.

Eni has completed an environmental impact assessment, but according to Congolese activists, a review of the company's study showed that some of the predicted impacts were underestimated.

At the local level, there are demands for an independent impact assessment and meaningful consultations with Indigenous and other local communities. Congolese groups have also called for an end to development of the tar sands and the palm-for-oil scheme until all the risks are disclosed.

“People [in Congo] are afraid to speak out. We need to get the information about the devastating impacts to communities,” said Mounzeo.

Ben Powless is a Mohawk activist with the Indigenous Environmental Network and an independent journalist and photographer. He visited Italy during the 2009 G8.

Flaring in Congo

Turtle Island Re-Emergent

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:08:33 +0000

KUTENAI TERRITORY, TURTLE ISLAND—The genocide of Indigenous Peoples inside the territories claimed by Canada doesn’t end until Canada de-colonizes. As Jean-Paul Sartre recognized when he focused the intellectual power of european philosophy onto the subject of european colonization, colonialism equals genocide. As long as the fair folk of the Canadian State have a colonial relationship with the territorial Indigenous Peoples, then the genocide continues. Canadians left, right and center do not actively advocate genocide. However, there exists an unconscious denial of what Canadians conveniently do not have to witness at close range, thanks to several centuries of apartheid social organization.

Over the past several months, the media collective that calls itself The Dominion has generously offered me a space in the margins to talk to the few of you who happen by. If you’ve been following me, we’ve crossed the invisible apartheid border, looked at the forms of political economy that require apartheid, and had a brief glance at an indigenous socialism from Turtle Island’s past. The ideas I’ve been sharing with you aren’t my ideas. In cultures with an oral tradition, the great libraries of knowledge are held within the ranks of the living, and I’m grateful to those librarians who have gathered, and then passed on to me, some of the enormous storehouse of indigenous knowledge. Now I, in turn, am passing fragments to you.

The current phase of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples will not end by fiddling with the details and single instances of the mechanics of the genocide, for instance addictions, or suicide, or lateral violence. These are symptoms, not causes. For example, I don’t believe that addictions are a problem of the individual, but are individuals' reactions to the cause of the genocide. Colonialism. The entire relationship between our euro-ancestry sisters and brothers, and the remnants of our own societies, indigenous to Turtle Island, is colonial. The structure of modernity, with a representative democracy funded by and responsible to a capitalist economy, based on an extractive, exploitative, minimalist relationship with the natural environment, is colonial. Colonialism kills Indigenous Peoples.

An indigenous method of problem solving involves moving towards the desired solution, rather than away from the perceived problem. Many indigenous knowledge bases propose that human intention has actuating power in the physical world; we affect whatever we place our intentions on, through our conscious attention. If we place our attention on our problems, because we want to repair those problem areas, we unintentionally increase the level of energy flowing to the problem areas. Over uncounted millennia, this observed pattern has resulted in an indigenous social program of focusing on the desired outcome, a group behavior that some european somewhere called spiritual. In Dios, literally “In God.” However, I believe that euro-centric notions of spirituality are as far off base as euro-centric notions of what addictions are, for the same reasons.

Practicing my indigenous knowledge, I conjure an intention: humans as indigenous to the actual physical place where we each are, right now. I feel this "indigenaiety" as a relationship, signaled by the pull of gravity to my great Mother, the earth. You, reading these words, can feel this pull, too. Don’t let the illusion of cyberspace or printspace throw you off balance; call to your floating mind with your heart and flow into the physical pull. In Dios. Without the human-made confusion about God and Man.

The French called us the "Cris," the cryers, from the ceremonial action of making a specific sound set with voice, a syncopated counter-rhythm heard during many lodge-type ceremonies. In our own language we are known as the four-part beings, referencing the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects of being human.

These four aspects are in motion. When they are balanced, you get a smooth ride. Riding the spinning wheel of these four aspects—call it a four directions medicine wheel—I conjure an intention: indigenizing Canada. Having this torture session stop would be nice. Ending the genocide would be great. But that’s not where to put my good energy, my builder’s energy, my creative energy. So I call with a Cree cry into the space between your heartbeats, the drum beat of Mother Earth, syncopated: let’s build social power, you and I.

Traveling the pathway from apartheid modernity to an indigenous socialism for the 21^st century calls for walkers, each walking in our own way, but together, in the same direction. The footprints in the grass are already outlining a pathway, from the Mayan Zapatistas to the Bolivian MAS to the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Even from here I can faintly see the emerging outlines of a communal council system that someday will organically overgrow colonial forms of political economy.

In my ancient culture, the extended family was the core of the regional governance system, with female Elders gently guiding the whole process. A cross-linked communal council system existed inside the extended family structure. One organic possibility for Canada’s future is the re-emergence of extended, family-based, communal councils, where, for instance, Canadian youth, if faced with dysfunctional families of origin, can simply decide to create new extended families of choice.

In the ancient culture, fresh new humans were intentionally created, by adults three generations deep in childcare facility, on an as-needed basis. In other words, the absolute total size of the human population in any one bio-region was controlled by the members of the group acting in concert. Birth control was understood and practiced, sexuality was recognized as the powerful force that it rightfully is, and social systems were evolved to provide safe and complete outlets for all of that extra non-procreative sexual energy for which we humans are renowned.

By using this system, each new child entered an extended family circle where she/he was the center of attention for an adoring circle of adults who defined themselves in relation to her/him. Great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, aunt, cousin, sister were the circle they toddled into. Every effort was made by all of these adults to prevent injury or abuse.

The Cree education system had two childhood phases before one entered adulthood at puberty. Phase one was the above-described building of a central, indestructible core of individual personhood. When children reached a certain age, they were gently moved into stage two, consciously learning how to seek humbleness. By humbleness I mean seeking balance across both human and non-human systems, so that there is no Above or Below.

Cree children had, as companions in search of humbleness, all of their age-peers, and, as role models, all of the adults around them. Within this educational system, fresh new humans matured into adult humans who were fearlessly themselves and knew how to make decisions for individual action based on the best outcome for the whole group.

The entire practice was ritualized into a belief system that relied on the metaphor of ceremony. Each individual carried inside of themselves their own unique understanding of ceremony, while the actual practice of gathering together to perform ceremony created the conditions for the harmonization of individual, society, and Mother Earth. In Dios.

Turtle Island is re-emerging, after a long eclipse under the shadow of the Americas. I see a wonderful opportunity here for Canadian social activists to place intentions on creating an indigenized pluri-national, multi-ethnic space to fit into Turtle Island re-emergent. I ask each reader to consider what this would mean in their personal life.

Thank you for gifting me with this brief space of your attention.

Together, towards Turtle Island.

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

StarWoman

"Pack Up and Get Out"

Moira Peters — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 05:11:21 +0000

Why the Tobique First Nation took control of their territory’s hydro dam

TOBIQUE FIRST NATION, NB—A group from the Tobique First Nation walked peacefully into the hydro station just outside their reserve on the morning of Monday, June 8. Stephen (Red Feather) Perley approached the New Brunswick Power Corporation (NB Power) employees and said, “You guys have fifteen minutes to pack up and get out.” The employees left. Perley and others wrapped a chain around the gate and locked it. The dam was now the property of the Tobique First Nation.

Tobique, the largest Maliseet reserve in the province, first rejected a developer’s bid to build a hydro dam on its territory in 1844. The next such bid came in 1895 and was also rejected. As New Brunswick’s Telegraph Journal reported in a series of historical pieces, the Tobique River was then “part of what may well have been the greatest salmon river system in the world;” hundreds of thousands of fish swam up these rivers each year to spawn. The abundant salmon defined the community’s way of life, providing food and employment—many worked as guides in the summer months.

Individual developers eventually gave way to provincial and federal agencies. In 1950 New Brunswick’s premier approved the construction of a dam at Tobique, this time without consulting the land’s Maliseet owners. By the end of that year, construction on the dam had begun.

When Tobique’s chief learned of the plan, he wrote to Indian Affairs, demanding “suitable action to protect our rights.” He continued, “If the building [of the dam] cannot be stopped, we demand compensation,” suggesting “free electricity for all domestic uses [and] business on the reservation.” This was never honoured—as soon as the community had power lines, they received power bills. The Band Council paid these bills for Elders and people on social assistance.

****

Today, few wild salmon make their way up the Tobique river. The dam has eroded the reserve’s riverbanks, leading to “trees being washed away and homes in danger of falling into the river,” according to Maliseet activist Terry Sappier. Many of the edible and medicinal plants are gone—the islands they grew on are underwater. And ironically, because they are considered a rural area, Tobique residents are charged among the highest electricity rates in the province.

The Tobique Band Council is currently around $20 million in debt and, last spring, Canada’s Department of Indian and Northern Affairs put Tobique’s finances under third party management. The new manager stopped paying the power bills of Elders, and in April of 2008 these households began receiving bills for thousands of dollars.

****

Despite its troubles, Tobique remains a lush, picturesque locale, with many proud residents deeply devoted to their land and to each other. When NB Power threatened to cut off an Elder’s electricity in May 2008, the community stepped in. They set up a blockade, denying NB Power access, first to the reserve and soon after that to the dam. Almost all band members stopped paying their power bills pending a negotiated agreement.

In July 2008, the Tobique First Nation began allowing NB Power access to the dam to do repairs and maintenance on the condition that NB Power employees check in with them first and that a band member escort the employees into the dam or reserve.

That month, NB Power "forgave" over $200,000 in hydro bills, but they were not willing to negotiate a long-term arrangement to the community’s satisfaction. Women sat at the blockade every day until November, when New Brunswick’s annual no-disconnect policy came into effect. (The policy prevents NB Power from cutting off anyone’s electricity from November to April, which is all the more poignant since the death in 2008 of Paul Durelle, a man in Baie-Ste-Anne, NB, whose power was cut off by NB Power when he couldn’t pay his bills over the winter.)

This spring, the struggle resurfaced. In May, band members discovered an NB Power employee on the reserve reading meters. The community mobilized and, on June 8, took over the generating station. The 2008 blockade went back up, this time by the highway in front of the dam.

Tensions escalated on June 26, when a truck rolled by the blockade and into the station. When the blockaders caught up with it, the driver was talking on his cell phone. Perley told him to hang up. “You’re trespassing,” Perley said, “On behalf of Tobique First Nation, I’m seizing the truck.”

They escorted the flustered driver up to the blockade, where they gave him food and water. He phoned his employer to pick him up, but NB Power refused. The RCMP drove him home.

At the time of writing, negotiations continue. Maliseet women sit at the blockade every day playing cards and watching for NB Power trucks as cars drive by, many honking in support. The dam continues to operate; NB Power continues to profit from Tobique’s land, and the blockaders continue to allow workers in for maintenance and repairs.

The First Nation has made some gains: on June 30 the provincial Minister of Aboriginal Affairs committed New Brunswick to funding the restoration of eroded riverbanks and to cleaning up toxic and other wastes dumped at and around the dam.

Additionally, Ottawa’s Department of Justice recently validated Tobique’s specific land claim, which will likely be the largest in Atlantic Canada, and negotiations are underway for compensation.

However, the dam, and now a truck worth $170,000, are in the hands of the Tobique First Nation. They say they are not giving them back without an equitable settlement. In addition to riverbank restoration and toxic waste cleanup, the Maliseet activists have asked NB Power to compensate them for the damage done to their land, royalties on the electricity generated and a share of it for their reserve, as well as training for Tobique First Nation members in operating the hydro station. Given NB Power's interactions with the First Nation so far, such a solution seems unlikely in the near future, and Tobique’s unpaid power bills now total over $800,000.

Daniel Thau-Eleff is a playwright, activist and journalist based in Winnipeg.

NB Power

Butcher and Bolt

dawn — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:45:30 +0000

Why "special forces" fail in Afghanistan, from Churchill to Obama

VANCOUVER—With the ongoing enlargement of US forces in Afghanistan—expected to include a 29 per cent increase in special forces—observers reasonably expect a corresponding rise in violence in that country. But if history is any guide, the augmented firepower may also bring more of a particular brand of counterinsurgency.

As early as 2007, reports emerged of a vicious special forces attack on civilians in Helmand province. Villagers from Toube, in a remote area near the Pakistan border, claimed that foreign special forces along with Afghan soldiers entered the village in a helicopter late at night and proceeded to enter homes and kill civilians on the spot.

Locals interviewed by Afghan journalists "spoke consistently of soldiers breaking down doors, shooting children and cutting throats," and claimed as many as 18 civilians were killed. The accusations were ignored by the international press.

In Winston Churchill's day, such tactics were known as "butcher and bolt" operations and involved indiscriminate attacks on Pashtun villages, leaving crops and homes burned. Circa 1897, the young Churchill's unit, stationed on the edge of British India, were practitioners of the art. Later in his career, Churchill would recommend their use, by name, against the coastal towns of occupied Europe.

But savagery against the Afghan enemy was a feature of British policy from day one, going back to the First Anglo-Afghan War, whose failures would be repeated twice more at 40-year intervals.

The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in 1842 with a storm of English revenge for an infamous incident where the British garrison forces at Kabul were massacred as they retreated. The "Army of Retribution," led by General Nott, was duly dispatched from British India for the purpose of "re-establishing our reputation," in the words of the Governor General. With their reputation at stake the British forces set to work, and several months of savagery reached its climax in an attack on a village north of Kabul where British-led forces killed every adult male and raped and killed many women.

The Second Anglo-Afghan War saw General Roberts' still-remembered "reign of terror" in Kabul. In 1880, as the war was winding down, Pashtun forces met the British in Helmand in the Battle of Maiwand, wiping them out. The retreating Brits then occupied the city of Kandahar, ousting its 8000 civilian inhabitants while they prepared retribution.

Despite history's lessons, and in the face of Afghan opposition, US president Barack Obama is going to ramp up the war. "Most of the Afghans interviewed," writes veteran correspondent Pamela Constable, "said they would prefer a negotiated settlement with the insurgents to an intensified military campaign."

Skeptical responses to the surge don't end with its civilian recipients. Even some American officers and military theorists who championed the surge doctrine's use in Iraq are "divided" over its applicability in Afghanistan, according to counterinsurgency specialist Andrew Exum.

Neither is it the case that troop surges have not yet been tried in the current conflict. The results have been consistent—namely, an increase in insurgent violence commensurate with the build-up of foreign troops in the country. Civilian casualties have inevitably followed the surge in violence, hence the opposition of the Afghan population to another troop surge. There is little reason to expect a different result this time around.

This apparent disconnect between tactics and expected results has spread, along with the war, into Pakistan. A recent New York Times report cites "CIA veterans" in Pakistan who warn that Predator strikes "won't undermine, and may promote, the psychology of anti-American militancy" which is already on the rise.

While civilian casualties are widely considered the most important determinant of success for the counterinsurgency effort, there too the US-led war machine is out of touch. While we are regretful when we kill civilians, goes the Pentagon line, we must remember that we do so by accident. The Taliban, on the other hand, do so on purpose, revealing the depths of evil in which they lurk.

Yet Pashtun civilians see it decidedly differently. In their view, violence against civilians is mainly the fault of the US/NATO occupation. As a correspondent with substantial recent experience in the country explains, "[I]t does not matter if the victim was killed by the Taliban, US forces or Nato soldiers. Relatives of the dead now usually blame the government and the occupation for their loss."

Nor does the highest law of the land support the Pentagon stance. International law makes no distinction between deliberate attacks on civilians, which western military leaders often accuse the Taliban of committing, and indiscriminate attacks. "From the standpoint of the law of international armed conflict," notes a leading legal scholar, "there is no genuine difference between a premeditated attack against civilians (or civilian objects) and a reckless disregard of the principle of distinction; they are equally forbidden."

None of this vital context gets coverage or commentary in the mass media, which prefers stories about helpful occupation soldiers whose victory is imminent. Amnesty International's recent assessment of the war in Afghanistan might therefore shock any North American news editor: "Violations of international humanitarian and human rights law were committed with impunity by all parties, including Afghan and international security forces and insurgent groups. All sides carried out indiscriminate attacks, which included aerial bombardments" by NATO and US-led forces.

In spite of impending violence and disaster, the Obama administration and its international partners will persevere in bringing more misery to a terrorized land. As the staid publication The Economist predicted last year: "If America fails in Afghanistan, as it might, it will be remembered there for killing children."

Dave Markland lives in Vancouver where he organizes with StopWar.ca and edits a blog at stopwarblog.blogspot.com.

Helmand Afghanistan Sand

Helmand Afghanistan Mountains

The Boycott Debate

Moira Peters — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:39:11 +0000

Klein, Lerer, Baskin on the effects of internal, external pressure on Israel

EAST JERUSALEM—"More than twenty-five people were arrested today in Beit Ummar," says a Canadian member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who sits behind me in a Ramallah auditorium in the West Bank. In front of me in the Friends School Hall, writer Naomi Klein prepares to speak to about 500 internationals, intellectuals, activists, NGO workers and journalists packed into the auditorium meant to seat 350. Spectators stand shoulder-to-shoulder at the back of the hall; a handful crouch in the aisles.

"Last week the same thing happened," explains the ISM activist.

The police had arrested eight activists from Ta'ayush, an Israeli human rights organization, although they had documentation from the Israeli Supreme Court proving the military isn't allowed to shut off agricultural areas. Bat Ayin settlers uprooted over 100 trees near Beit Ummar in late June, reported The Palestine Media Center. The Israeli Army's response was to name the area a closed military zone. Anyone going in and out of the area would be arrested.

The Bat Ayin settlement is within Gush Etzion, one of the largest Israeli settlement blocks. The region, southwest of Bethlehem, is the most agriculturally fertile land in the West Bank. According to the spiritual beliefs of religious Jewish settlers, all of British Mandate Palestine should be returned to the Jews. This includes the West Bank, or what they call by the biblical term Judea and Samaria. The settlement of Bat Ayin is home to the "Bat Ayin Underground," a group that plotted the bombing of a Palestinian girls’ school in East Jerusalem in 2002.

International Palestinian solidarity workers and Israeli human rights activists have been escorting farmers from Beit Ummar to their agricultural lands near Hebron to protect them from violent attacks by nearby Israeli settlers.

Settler attacks, military arrests, and uprooted trees (which are a means of sustenance, livelihood and spirituality) are daily realities for Palestinians since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 and radical religious Jewish settlers began setting up outposts across the West Bank. Concurrently, on the other side of the separation barrier – which will stretch more than 700 km when completed – Jewish Israelis live without such disturbances. The Israeli Security Agency Shin Bet admitted in May that there is no security reason to continue building the wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice five years ago. Nonetheless construction continues.

Klein’s talk in Ramallah (full transcript here) heralds the first coordinated speaking tour in Israel/Palestine promoting the boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions. Palestinian civil society first called for a broad boycott, divestments and sanctions against Israel in 2005. The boycott demands Israel honour UN Resolution 194 and end the occupation and colonization of all Arab lands, dismantle the separation barrier, and recognize as equal the rights of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and the right of refugees to return to their homes.

Klein blushes as Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian Initiative lauds her as a woman of her word for participating in the weekly nonviolent demonstration against the separation barrier in the border town of Bil'in. The barbed wire fence annexes over 50 per cent of Bil'in's land to Israel. This has allowed two Canadian-registered companies, Green Park and Green Mount, to construct settlements on the annexed land. A Quebec judge is currently deliberating on whether to hear Bil'in's case against the companies, which argues that their actions violate international law by transferring civilians onto occupied territory.

"There is a debate among Jews – I’m a Jew by the way," Klein tells the audience in Ramallah. "Whether the lesson of the Holocaust should be 'never again' to anyone, or 'never again to us.'" For Klein the answer is clear. Growing up Jewish in Toronto, she first became active in the social justice movement as a student at the University of Toronto, where she occupied administrative offices to call for divestment from apartheid South Africa. "It is precisely because of what we experienced as Jews that we must denounce racism, denounce systems of segregation wherever they crop up, even and especially when they crop up amongst our own," says Klein.

As Israeli attacks on Palestinians have escalated, Israeli trade relations haven’t suffered, but deepened, says Klein. There's a reason there is no motivation for peace, she explains: People in Israel can live normal lives.

The economy, built on homeland security, is thriving, says Klein. "The Occupied Territories are the laboratory and [...] the Palestinian people are the test market for these technologies." Israeli companies like Elbit Systems, who built the "apartheid wall" in the West Bank, are selling their expertise to the US government. The main subcontract for a network of sensors, guard towers and electrified fences on the Canada-US and US-Mexico borders went to Elbit, Klein reports.

"We are challenging the idea of normalization because when a film that you really want to see isn’t playing in the Jerusalem Film Festival, when a conference you wanted to go to isn’t going to happen in Tel Aviv because people have decided that they are not going to have it there, that challenges such a central part of Israeli identity," explains Klein. This, she believes, will pressure a part of Israeli society to say: "We need peace to have a normal life."

Klein thinks there has been a change within Israeli society after the 2008 massacre in Gaza and the election of the far right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. "Most progressive Israelis drew the line at calling Israel an apartheid state and calling for a boycott," but now, she says, a group of Israelis have come together to form Boycott from Within.

****

Yael Lerer is the founder of Andalus Publishing and a Boycott from Within member.

The publishing company hasn't turned a profit. It can barely afford to translate The Shock Doctrine into Hebrew. Fortunately, Klein donated Andalus the publication rights. All royalties from Hebrew copies sold in Israel will go towards Andalus for translating Arabic literature into Hebrew. "I think that all our work is a work of resistance," says Lerer. She explains that publishing books in Hebrew by authors like Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and Elias Khoury (both donated publishing rights to Andalus) is part of the fight against the cultural hegemony in Israel. Most Israelis "don't really want to be part of the Arab world," says Lerer. "They don't want to read Arabic literature or to be aware of what is going on around them."

From her home office in Tel Aviv, Lerer tells me, "With every book that I publish, I always have some moments that I think 'this is the last book that I publish'; and for what, for whom?

"But on the other hand," she adds, "I think that if there are a thousand Israelis that read Naomi Klein, like some of those that read our Arabic translations, it’s going to make some impact."

Lerer says boycotting Israel doesn't mean you must stop speaking to Israelis. Instead, she wants to end the normalization of the occupation. "I cannot bear this normality that Israelis live," explains Lerer. "Personally, I'm disturbed by all of these Israelis who think of themselves as enlightened people and at the same time don't do anything against the occupation, or do things, but in a very minor way." She hopes intellectuals won't be welcomed to international festivals if they're contributing to the portrayal of a "normal liberal Israel, when Israel is an apartheid state." Lerer thinks more academics who fear the repercussions of speaking against Israel might be motivated to speak out if they’re pressured by the international community.

Lerer has been an activist for nearly 30 years. "No-one could imagine then what is going on now. Nobody could imagine massacres like Gaza," she says. "With the slogans of peace Israel gets all this support and can continue to do what it wants." The Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, the peace agreement with Egypt in 1978. And yet, says Lerer, "So much blood has been shed since then."

Lerer doesn't expect change from inside Israel anymore. "I need this boycott. I need external pressure." When I ask her if she thinks the boycott will further antagonize Israel she reminds me of the Tel Aviv University poll: 94 per cent of Israeli Jews supported the attack on Gaza. "What is more aggressive than this [attack on Gaza]?" she asks. "Concentration camps? Gas chambers?"

****

Some critics of the boycott believe the BDS campaign will only increase Israeli fears that they're being attacked. Very few Israelis, including those calling themselves peace activists, support the boycott.

"What we're going to do by doing that [boycotting Israel] is create greater anxiety amongst Israelis," says Jerusalem Post columnist Gershon Baskin. CEO and founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), Baskin believes that if there is still a chance for a two state solution—"the only solution," in his view—then the focus should be on that.

IPCRI is housed in a unique location inside the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, overlooking East Jerusalem. Down the road is the concrete wall and the checkpoint into Bethlehem. Across the street at the foot of the hill, an active construction site builds block houses in the settlement of Har Homa.

"I think it's using ammunition too early," reiterates the peace activist. "It won't get the support of governments around the world at this point. It'll be on the margins."

Baskin thinks the international community should instead employ a concentrated boycott of products coming from the settlements, focusing on Israeli policies in the settlements and the occupied territories. "That would have more support amongst ordinary Israelis and it would not be using a tool that might be important to use at a later stage, and we're not there yet," says Baskin.

"If you check you'll find a direct correlation between those who are using the language of apartheid South Africa and how they see the solution to the conflict. And I disagree with them entirely," says Baskin. "I think it denies Palestinian people the right to self determination. A large majority of Palestinians want an independent state. They don’t want to be part of a bi-national state, neither do Israelis." Furthermore, Baskin believes that one secular democratic state for all Israeli and Palestinian citizens will mean continuing the conflict. According to Baskin, "It means that we're going to be killing each other in much greater numbers with much greater intensity."

****

Nonetheless, Israel's assault on Gaza this winter has turned more people into supporters of the worldwide boycott, especially in Canada. Independent Jewish Voices Canada (including signatory Naomi Klein) became the first national Jewish organization to support the boycott in June.

The University of Toronto held the first Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) in 2005. This year, 40 cities participated in IAW and Hampshire College became the first American school to completely divest from Israel. (The institution has withdrawn its investments in six companies that supply the Israeli military with equipment and services in the occupied territories.)

Citing IAW events in Toronto, Canadian director John Greyson pulled his film from TLVFest in June, the annual LGBT film festival in Tel Aviv. "The Israeli apartheid forum this week, and particularly Naomi Klein's speech, helped clarify my thoughts. Her words took me back to the BDS movement of the Eighties, against South African apartheid, and the first 16mm film I ever made, which was in support of that struggle, clips of which are included in Fig Trees [Greyson's latest film]. The cultural boycott worked in South Africa's case, and lead directly to the sweeping changes and activism that Fig Trees celebrates in song. Therefore, in the spirit of the film, and those activists, I don't feel there's a choice any longer," explains Greyson in his letter to the director of TLVFest.

The Yes Men also chose not to screen their film at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July.

In Jerusalem, according to an Israeli currently organizing a social justice literature festival in the city, there is no place to hold an event where both Israelis and Palestinians will come.

Meanwhile, Ma'an News reports settlers from Bat Ayin set fire to fig, olive and grape trees in Beit Ummar, and ten more Palestinians from Beit Ummar were arrested in July.

Klein’s arguments for BDS are expounded on in her article for The Guardian, "Enough, it's Time for a Boycott.

Carmelle Wolfson is an independent journalist from Toronto currently based in Israel/Palestine, and a copy editor for Briarpatch Magazine.

nidal apartheid colour

Yael at Andulus

Boycott Shuts Down Haiti Elections

dru — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:27:44 +0000

Leading political party excluded from polls again

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI—A second successful boycott of Senate elections, called by Haiti's Fanmi Lavalas party, poses a serious challenge to the credibility of their results, says a spokeperson for the Lavalas party. President Rene Preval's handpicked Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP) barred Fanmi Lavalas from participation in the elections—held in April and June of 2009—on a technicality.

The June 21 boycott called for by Lavalas was called "Operation Closed Door 2." The campaign urged voters to stay away from the polls. Rene Civil, one of the leaders of the boycott campaign, stated, "They have to hold the elections again and allow Fanmi Lavalas to participate or face having a parliament that is not recognized as legitimate by the Haitian people. They will swear [the newly elected officials] into office but no one is going to take them seriously."

Buses and taxis operated throughout election day, unlike during the first round of Senate elections held April 19. Most voters did not take advantage of the lifting of the transportation ban and stayed home. Journalists in Haiti's nine departments provided reports throughout the day of napping poll workers and near-empty ballot boxes.

Brazilian ambassador Igor Kipman arrived with a group of observers at a large polling station on the outskirts of the sprawling pro-Lavalas slum of Cite Soleil. Kipman's menacing security staff and the visiting observers stood virtually alone in the facility as the ambassador commented, "These are great elections. I'm very happy with today's results."

Canadian Ambassador Gilles Rivard, who at one point made a mild call for political reconciliation with regard to Lavalas' exclusion, told Agence Haitien Presse (AHP) that he considered the elections legitimate.

The last time the party was allowed to participate in an election—in 2000—Fanmi Lavalas won 73 out of 83 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, and 26 out of 27 seats in the Senate. In the same election, Lavalas Presidential candidate Jean-Bertrand Aristide won with 91.81 per cent of the vote. The Lavalas-led government was removed by a coup d'état backed by Canada, France and the United States. Aristide was removed from office and forced into exile, and a campaign of violence and intimidation forced most Lavalas members into hiding or exile.

AHP summed up the situation, "Indeed, the election was marked by very low participation, perhaps more pronounced than in the first round at the national level. On 19 April, the Electoral Council had tried to explain the success of the first boycott by threats allegedly made against the elections, or because the transit system was not authorized."

This analysis stood in contrast to the official English report of the elections provided by the Associated Press, which sought to downplay the effect of the boycott. "Haitians fed up with chronic poverty and unresponsive leaders stayed away from Senate run-off elections Sunday, ignoring government efforts to improve on the paltry voter turnout that undercut the first round of voting in April."

The Portuguese language daily Folha repeated assertions made by CEP president Gerard Frantz Verret that protesters handed out threatening leaflets during the funeral of popular Catholic priest and Lavalas supporter Father Gerard Jean-Juste. The CEP official claimed that the leaflets "contained death threats against citizens who dare to vote."

While no leaflet was presented to back up the claim, Verret also demanded that the Ministry of Justice take "public action in motion against all those who undertake to invite the people to abstain from voting and against those who intend to endanger lives and property." The move was widely seen as an attempt to intimidate members of the Lavalas Mobilization Commission—the organizers of the boycott—ahead of last Sunday's election.

The sporadic violence and clashes between Preval's ruling Lespwa party and its rivals at the polls were unrelated to the non-violent election boycott called by Fanmi Lavalas.

The June 21 election was preceded by an incident on June 18 involving UN forces during the funeral procession of Father Jean-Juste. Witnesses reported that Brazilian soldiers with the UN military mission opened fire after attempting to arrest one of the mourners. A second mourner was killed and the UN has since denied the shooting, claiming that the victim had been killed by either a rock thrown by the crowd or by a blunt instrument. Eyewitnesses and reporters on the scene have countered that the UN is trying to cover up the affair and that the victim was felled by a shot fired by Brazilian soldiers as mourners left Haiti's national cathedral.

The international community and most notably the Obama administration financed and endorsed the controversial Senate elections. While exact figures are difficult to obtain, it is estimated that the two rounds of Senate elections cost over $17 million. Among Haiti's nine million inhabitants, the average wage is estimated to be below $2 per day.

Kevin Pina is a journalist and filmmaker who has been covering events in Haiti since 1991. A version of this article previously appeared on HaitiAction.net.

Polling Station 2

Kipman

Death Watch in Haiti's Jails

dru — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:01:36 +0000

MONTREAL—Located in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti's largest jail looks like a stage piece: a blue and white fortress with high walls and square turrets of the type favoured by operatic drama.

But inside the compound—guarded by UN soldiers and protected by an Armored Personnel Carrier—a tragedy of a more contemporary and mundane sort is playing out.

Constructed in 1918 by US Marines eager to consolidate their occupation of Haiti, the National Penitentiary was designed to hold eight hundred prisoners. With only minor expansions since then, the facility now crams four thousand male inmates into an area of two thousand square meters.

At a density of two detainees per square meter, conditions in the jail are undercut by four times the minimum standard established by the International Red Cross, which calls for an allowance of two square meters per inmate.

Eyewitness accounts paint the picture of a packed environment inside the cell blocks, with prisoners' health further undermined by poor lighting and ventilation, a vitamin-deficient diet, and the prevalence of communicable diseases such as tuberculosis.

Since the overthrow of Haiti's democracy in 2004, the country's prison population has more than doubled, rising from 3,500 shortly before the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to 8,000 today.

Haitian human rights lawyer Evel Fanfan estimates that six thousand people were arrested in Port-au-Prince because of their political loyalties in March 2004, the month following Aristide's ousting. Although some were released soon afterward, since that time both the Haitian police and the UN peacekeepeing mission MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti) have conducted aggressive operations in poor sectors of the capital, drag-netting youth at a faster rate than the Haitian judicial system can process.

Brian Concannon, a lawyer who directs an Oregon-based Haiti solidarity organization, describes a typical Haitian inmate:

"They are almost all poor," responds Concannon. "Over 80 per cent have not been convicted of anything. Many don't have a lawyer; most have been tortured."

Concannon's group, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, works in association with the Port-au-Prince based Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI), an advocacy group which was financed by Haiti's elected government until its funding was cut following the 2004 coup.

Visiting the BAI office, I met my first case study of the post-coup Haiti incarceration pattern: Michaelle LaFrance, a former TV journalist who says she was arrested for wearing dreadlocks. Seated in the shaded courtyard of the building, LaFrance does her best to convey to me the atmosphere of class tension that gripped Port-au-Prince during the weeks before President Aristide's overthrow.

Because Aristide invested in social spending, and applied protectionist measures to sustain Haiti's economy, he remained popular with the poor. He also drew the ire of neoliberal-minded donor nations, including the US and Canada, which moved to undermine him by channeling money to middle class-based opposition groups. In a repeat of scenes seen in Venezuela and elsewhere, affluent Haitians flooded the streets of the capital, calling the elected government illegitimate, and demanding Aristide's resignation. During this period, telejournalist LaFrance was physically assaulted while covering an opposition demonstration.

Following Aristide's departure on February 29, a posse of former Haitian soldiers aligned with the middle-class opposition occupied the city. The names of wanted persons were read on the radio, and anyone or anything associated with grassroots activism immediately became suspect.

Shortly after February 29, recalls LaFrance, who was 24 at the time, "The police came to my house. They took everything."

She describes the feelings of fear and uncertainty during the three days she spent confined at the local police station. "I wrote on the wall, 'God help me,'" she says."I thought two things: either they'd kill me, or I'd be out in a few years.”

Denounced by a neighbour, LaFrance says her dreadlocks stigmatized her because they were interpreted as a statement of loyalty to the poorer classes. Social profiling stories are common in a context where both the Haitian police and members of the hastily-constructed UN mission—dominated by the same countries that helped undercut Aristide—accept a middle-class narrative portraying Aristide's followers as a violent mob that needs to be controlled by force.

Many of the men and women clogging Haiti's jail system are in fact minor casualties in the campaign of class repression. Arrested during an anti-gang sweep, fingered by a neighbour, or picked up for talking too loudly or angrily, they are warehoused for months to years while awaiting trial on vague or difficult-to-prove charges such as "associating with miscreants." In the case of known political organizers, however, the charges can be more specific.

Ronald Dauphin, now 43 and Haiti's longest-serving prisoner, was arrested by paramilitaries on March 1, 2004, the day after President Aristide was forced from office. A member of Aristide's party and a port official from the city of Saint Marc, Dauphin was accused of participating in a massacre which reportedly occurred when anti-government paramilitaries clashed with police outside Saint Marc on February 11. Through more than five years of incarceration, Dauphin has maintained his innocence. The case has never gone to trial.

Dauphin's 27 co-accused in the case include former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, pro-Aristide activists, and at least one cabinet member. In a pre-trial indictment handed down in 2005, many details of the Saint Marc incident remain fuzzy. The document cites fifty killed, but identifies only eight casualties from the February 11 events, and furnishes no evidence about the whereabouts of missing bodies. Named witnesses claim that Dauphin was present during the clash, but do not specifically link him to either of the offenses for which he is accused: murder and arson. Writing in French, investigating Judge Cluny-Jules instead argues that Dauphin has been denounced by "la clameur publique," broadly translatable as by rumour.

While most observers do not dispute that some sort of armed conflict arose between members of pro- and anti-government forces on February 11, it has yet to be demonstrated that government agents overstepped the bounds of a legitimate police action, or targeted non-combatants.

I briefly met Dauphin at the National Penitentiary in April 2007, three months after one of his co-defendants in the Saint Marc (also known as the La Scierie) case, Wantales Lormejuste, died from untreated tuberculosis in the same facility. Though there were legitimate concerns about Dauphin's health—he suffers from a prostate condition—in 2007 he looked alert and was standing on two feet.

In the intervening two years Dauphin's well-being has declined dramatically.

Traveling to Haiti in April 2009 as part of a union delegation, California teacher Seth Donnely heard disturbing reports that Dauphin suffered from an acute, untreated illness. Accompanied by other delegates, Donnely arrived at the National Penitentiary on April 16 for a scheduled visit.

Upon arrival, he says, "Dauphin was in fact very ill. He had to be carried out in the courtyard by other prisoners...During our visit, he collapsed. [He] was unconscious with his eyes wide open. He was not responding to pressure that was being applied by the health care professionals [there were two nurses on the delegation] to his sternum."

In spite of complaints about headaches and abdominal pain, Dauphin had not been authorized to leave the jail for medical treatment. The nurses concluded that Dauphin "may have a septic infection that was spreading through his upper body."

Many of Haiti's grassroots activists believe that extending pre-trial detention is a government tactic to neutralize or even kill unwelcome political actors without the worry of having to build a legal case against them.

According to documents released to researcher Anthony Fenton under an access to information request, in March 2004 a Haitian NGO known as the National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) asked for and received $100,000 from Canada's development agency to prosecute the authors of the alleged massacre of La Scierie. NCHR's membership had previously stated a position which identified it closely with the anti-Aristide camp. In its funding request the NCHR promised to disburse money through a "victims" fund to citizens who had suffered from political violence in Saint Marc.

The incidents that were eligible for compensation were limited to those which had occurred from February 9 to 29, excluding victims of the wave of violence against Aristide supporters that crested after the fall of the government on February 29.

Using Canada's money, the NCHR thus conducted a publicity and legal campaign to push for the incarceration of pro-Aristide actors. But neither the NCHR nor the Canadian government has subsequently pushed for a trial, suggesting that open-ended detention, rather than due legal process, may be what they're after.

Scratch the surface of the debate on how to improve jail conditions in Haiti, and two different tactics emerge: increase the amount of floor space by expanding or constructing jails, or reduce the number of prisoners by releasing those held on vague suspicions or for petty crimes.

While the latter approach is favoured by social justice advocates, Canada and most big donors see "security" and the elimination of crime as the overriding priority for Haiti. This "security" priority requires more state investment in jail-building, and training police and judges. The logic behind this elaborate investment strategy is that foreign investors—especially in the manufacturing sector—will be attracted when they feel safe and to achieve this, Haiti must tackle criminality by disbanding gangs. In the years after the 2004 coup, a series of high-profile kidnappings, sometimes of foreigners, gave Haiti a bad name, and may have scared off investment.

According to many Haitians, the problem of security has been sensationalized to justify class-based repression. Most of those imprisoned are extremely poor and have been the victims of social and political profiling. Many prisoners are being held for petty crimes for which they would not have been targeted if it was not for their low social status.

Patrick Elie, a Port-au-Prince-based activist and former cabinet member, sees the path to economic development in Haitian-based agriculture, rather than investor-based manufacturing. According to Elie, most of Haiti's current crime is poverty-related, and for this reason investing in incarceration as a deterrent is a futile exercise. Jail construction and security measures are expensive, gobbling up scarce resources that could otherwise be invested in schools or agriculture, which would help reduce poverty in the long term.

"When you have 70 per cent unemployment, and you build more jails, you'll be building jails 'til Kingdom come," he says.

With Haiti still occupied by UN soldiers, the made-in-Canada ideology seems dominant for the time being. Under international pressure, the government of President Rene Preval, who succeeded Aristide, has promised to double the number of Haitian police officers, from 7,000 to 14,000 by 2011. Similarly, a quick glance at CIDA's website shows that a high number of big ticket projects funded in Haiti are directed toward "governance measures," including a commitment to build a new police academy at the cost of $18.1 million by 2014.

Chris Scott is a member of the Montreal chapter of the Canada Haiti Action Network.

National Penitentiary

Toronto Housing Crisis

Tim McSorley — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:03:57 +0000

TORONTO-The City of Toronto is struggling to cope with an ongoing housing crisis, according to The Toronto Report Card on Housing and Homelessness, published by the City of Toronto. The study reveals that 550,000 residents are living in poverty—that’s roughly 25% of the city’s population. With few options available to them, thousands find themselves living on the streets. In 2002, 32,000 people stayed in Toronto’s emergency shelters; 4,779 of these were children. Well-over 500 people have died on the streets as a result of being homeless. With the financial crisis being felt around the world, there are no indications the situation is improving. For one of the wealthiest cities in the world, how is this allowed to happen?

The following photos tell the stories of a few of the people who have found themselves losing control over their lives, living in government housing or on the streets, as well as some people who are raising questions about the City’s priorities and looking for solutions themselves.

Abandonment Issues is a coalition of housing activists fighting to have abandoned buildings converted into affordable housing. According to the group, "Toronto is in the throes of an affordable housing crisis that has seen thousands of citizens made homeless [...] Property that could house people is going to waste.

"When communities assert a collective right to their own neighborhoods, municipal policy should support them, not oppose them."

Allan Lissner is an independent photojournalist based in Toronto, Canada. Some of the organizations Allan has done work with include Amnesty International, GlobalAware Independent Media, Oxfam Canada and Make Poverty History.

Torture, a Canadian Value?

dru — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:56:06 +0000

Ottawa's complicity in torture merits a national discussion

MONTREAL—Each year in June the UN marks the International Day in Support of Torture Victims. However, numerous UN member states continue to practice torture—in many cases, openly. Political contradictions here abound, nuzzled between the horror of torture as a politically administered reality and the apparent international consensus in opposition to torture.

Canada is one country where political links to torture in recent years are unmistakable.

From the haunting testimonials from Canadian Omar Khadr who remains at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, to the widely documented torture of Canadian Maher Arar in a Syrian prison, torture is key in Canada’s political relationship to the world since 9/11.

"Today, a very specific narrative on torture is circulating in Canada," outlined Sherene Razack, professor at University of Toronto and celebrated author of multiple books on race issues in the law.

"The narrative that torture works and that it is necessary is gaining prominence more than it ever has before—claims that have really gone unchallenged in the popular media, which is really very dangerous for our society," she told The Dominion by phone.

Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian who can speak directly to Canada’s take on torture.

Abdelrazik was imprisoned in Sudan, where he was tortured. He is now at the epicentre of a grassroots campaign that recently pressed the government to repatriate Abdelrazik from Sudan, a citizenship right denied by successive Canadian governments.

According to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, "every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada." These rights were denied to Abdelrazik. In June, after six years in exile, he returned to Montreal when a key ruling from a federal court judge forced the government to respect Abdelrazik’s right of return to Canada.

"I traveled to Sudan to visit my sick mother; without telling me, agents from CSIS recommended to Sudan that I should be arrested," explained Abdelrazik. "I was thrown in prison because Canada asked, imprisoned [and] beaten. I was tortured."

Beyond the false intelligence from Canada leading to Abdelrazik’s imprisonment and torture in Sudan, the direct role that the Canadian government played in Abdelrazik’s torture is the most arresting factor in his case.

"The Canadian government knows that Sudan tortures prisoners but it did not help me," outlined Abdelrazik. "Instead, the Canadian government sent CSIS agents to interrogate me in the prison."

Today, Abdelrazik is demanding redress from the Canadian government.

"I want those people who play a role in this matter to face justice, not because I seek revenge," Abdelrazik explained to the press shortly after returning to Montreal. "I want this not to happen to any Canadian."

Abdelrazik is now struggling for a full restoration of his citizenship rights in Canada. Due to claims that Abdelrazik maintains associations to Al-Quada, radical allegations which have never been proven in court, Abdelrazik remains on the United Nations' terrorist watch-list. This prohibits him from holding a bank account or accepting any kind of financial assistance, including employment wages in Canada.

Denying Abdelrazik a passport was a clear breach of Canada’s Citizenship Act, and serious criticism has been leveled against successive Canadian governments for it.

Abdelrazik's case is one example of how the Canadian state is turning its security arsenal against citizens. Another is the government's "security certificate" program, currently directed towards five permanent residents of Ontario and Quebec.

In 2003 Canadian security forces seized Adil Charkaoui in a highly publicized arrest, issuing a security certificate against him. This sparked a popular campaign across Canada to abolish the legislation, which allows the indefinite detention and eventual deportation of terror suspects without a public presentation of evidence.

After more than four years in prison, without ever knowing the charges against him, Charkaoui was released on severe conditions, including wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.

In 2006 Charkaoui launched a successful challenge to the security certificate, condemned by the UN Committee against Torture and in the Supreme Court of Canada, which deemed the legislation unconstitutional. In response, the Conservative government revamped the legislation in 2007, introducing a "special advocate" into the certificate process, maintaining the fundamental structure of the legislation, which was reinstated in 2008.

Today, Charkaoui remains under threat of deportation to Morocco, a country where he could face torture. Canada’s attempts to deport Charkaoui to Morocco are in violation of Canada’s commitments under the UN Convention against Torture.

Canada’s security certificate legislation is another key to understanding Canada’s relationship to torture in recent years.

"In Canada, when the security label is applied to people, their humanity is automatically degraded and torture becomes a possibility," explained Mary Foster, an activist with the Peoples Commission Network, a community coalition opposing Canadian immigration and security policies which undermine human rights. "The trends towards normalizing torture works towards dehumanizing our society, pushing people to think more about their own individual security and not about our collective security."

Canada has also come under harsh criticism for its treatment of Afghan detainees, many of whom were tortured.

In 2008, after torture testimonials were collected from multiple prisoners, Amnesty International launched a lawsuit against the Canadian government which would permanently halt the transfer of Afghan detainees to Afghan prisons.

"In Afghan prisons torture is rampant and systematic, [and] in our view it's very likely that a good number of those who are transferred from Canadian custody into the Afghan prison system will end up being tortured," explained Alex Neve, the secretary general of Amnesty International's section in Canada, in 2008. "If the risk of torture is a real one, which Amnesty believes it is, it's incumbent upon Canada and it's actually a matter of international legal obligation not to hand the prisoners over."

Amnesty’s case on Afghan torture is now pending at the Military Police Complaints Commission, which launched a series of public hearings on the issue last month.

The hearings are centered on whether Canada knowingly transferred prisoners to torturers in Afghanistan.

In Ottawa, the Conservative government is attempting to secure a court injunction to halt public hearings scheduled to continue this fall.

Other tales of torture, told by Canadians Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki, who were tortured in Syrian prisons, are accompanied by silence from Canadian officials.

"As a nation we need to face up to the reality of our complicity in torture," stated Alex Neve of Amnesty International, whom The Dominion reached by telephone.

Canada is a signatory to the 1984 UN Convention against Torture. Even so, the actions of Canadian governments contradict the anti-torture convention.

"Torture itself, as well as stories about torture, are actually meant to teach us something," said Razack. "Stories meant to teach us who belongs to the national community and who doesn’t, so you get massive numbers of people who think that Muslims do not belong to the national community and are not deserving of their fundamental rights—and that really is the damage of torture."

Stefan Christoff is a journalist and community organizer.

Torture as a Canadian Value

July in Review, Part II

Tim McSorley — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:38:13 +0000

Strikes, Spies, Salamanders and Sexy Bubblegum

The coup in Honduras entered its second month. Ousted President Manuel Zelaya returned briefly to Honduras, but left under threat of arrest. Putchist president Roberto Michelleti announced support for Zelaya's return to office with drastically reduced presidential powers, but claimed there was opposition from political and business leaders. The US sent mixed signals: a State Department representative claimed events in Honduras did not qualify as a coup, while the US government revoked the visas of Honduran coup-government officials. Canadian protesters rallied outside the Vancouver offices of mining company Goldcorp Inc. to highlight its link to Honduran groups endorsing the coup. The Canadian Government confirmed that it was still training members of the Honduran military.

Anti-mining groups held a 36-hour sit-in at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico to mark the first Global Day of Action Against Open-Pit Mining. Seventy per cent of the mining concessions in Mexico are held by Canadian corporations.

Emprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier was granted his first parole hearing in 15 years. Peltier, who maintains his innocence, has been jailed for 33 years for the shootings of two FBI agents in Oglala Oyanke, Lakota Territory (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, North Dakota). The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in South Dakota, where Peltier grew up, argued for his release, saying they would help the 64-year-old re-integrate into society. A decision is expected around mid-August.

Sixty people occupied the site of the proposed Hanlon Creek Business Park in Guelph, Ontario. Protesters say the HCBP development, which includes the city's Old Growth Forest, threatens local clean water sources and will destroy the habitat of the Jefferson Salamander, on the Ontario list of threatened species. The City of Guelph sent an eviction notice to the protesters, but has yet to take action.

A farmer in Richmond, BC, who was cut off from harvesting his crops when part of his farm was expropriated for highway construction, vowed to continue with his harvest. "August is harvest period and nothing will keep me off the land," he said.

Representatives of Jefferson County, Colorado, sought legislation that would make it illegal for bicyclists to cycle freely on any country road in the state. "This issue may be the biggest challenge yet to bicycling in Colorado," according to Bicycle Colorado.

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson stated that he'd like to see a new jail built in the city's downtown east side.

The Integrated Security Unit for the 2010 Olympics posted a request for proposals for the construction of 2,000 handgun storage lockers, "big enough to not only store a pistol, but also contain a separate compartment for up to 50 rounds of ammunition and a 110-gram pepper spray canister," according to Vancouver's 24 Hours.

A spy working for the US Army as an infiltrator in anarchist and anti-war organizing in Tacoma and Olympia, Washington, was outed by local researchers. John Towery, aka John Jacobs, spent two years undercover, and according to local anarchists he "admitted that he reported to an intelligence network that included county sheriffs from Pierce, Thurston and other Washington counties, municipal police agencies from Tacoma, Olympia, Seattle and elsewhere, Washington State Police, the US Army, FBI, Homeland Security, Joint Terrorism Task Force, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency among other agencies."

A dozen professors in New Brunswick announced a boycott of the provincial Telegraph-Journal newspaper in response to the firing of a student intern who wrote about an academic protest of an honorary degree for NB Premier Shawn Graham. The professors claim censorship, while the TJ's editor claims the student was fired for comiting factual errors.

Inside and outside Toronto, city workers voted to return to work, ending the city's longest-ever labour dispute. Described commonly as a 'garbage strike' because of cancelled waste collection, union representatives said city tactics had set labour relations back "decades."

Seventy-five members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty went to Toronto's city hall to demand the city issue welfare checks and grant benefits to people on social assistance. The city has been illegally withholding special diet and other benefits to welfare recipients, blaming the municipal workers' strike. CUPE lifted its picket of city hall so OCAP protesters could cross.

Via Rail workers went on strike for 48 hours before negotiations were announced and service resumed. They had been without a contract since December 31, 2006.

Workers at the Vestas Windsystems factory on the Isle of Wight, UK, conducted a sit-in at the factory to protest its closure, slated for July 31. The closure, which would result in over 600 lost jobs, comes as the UK government claims to be increasing their support for climate friendly energy production. "We are calling on the government to intervene to save jobs at Vestas - through nationalisation if that is what it takes - to show that it is serious about saving the planet," reads a statement from the Save Vestas campaign.

The Ritz and Mariott hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia, were hit by explosions, killing eight and wounding dozens. The attacks, carried out by suicide bombers, are the first in Indonesia since the Bali bombings in 2005.

Shawn A-in-chut Atleo was elected as the new Chief of the Assembly of First Nations during their General Assembly in Calgary. "They're talking about all this poverty, and yet here they are spending a million dollars on booze and posh hotels," delegate Rachel Wuttunee told The Tyee.

The Pittsburgh G-20 resistance project released a call-out for convergence in Pittsburgh from September 22-25, when the G-20 will be meeting in the city.

Between 55 and 100 people were killed in clashes in northeastern Nigeria. The Nigerian army is battling Islamist militants, who are allegedly attempting to impose Sharia law.

The European Union ruled against importing any products that come from the seal hunt in Northern Canada. According to data compiled by the Canadian Press, "The decision affects more than 6,000 sealers in small coastal communities along the Atlantic coast, as well as Inuit and other northern Aboriginal populations."

The Conservative government announced four priorities for their Arctic strategy. The plan includes "$37.6 million to support initiatives related to the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project," and the procurement of new Arctic patrol ships. "While the four priorities set out in this strategy are useful, they need to be accompanied by a fifth priority. That fifth priority should be a specific and direct relationship with Inuit in the four Inuit land claims regions," stated Mary Simon, national leader of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), in a press release.

Hamas accused the Israeli army of distributing gum that increases the sex drive of youth in the occupied territories. "The intelligence services are aiming to corrupt the young generation by distributing these products among students," a police spokesperson for Hamas told AFP.

Dubliners took direct action against rock band U2 after complaints about round-the-clock truck traffic went unheard. Angry locals blocked several of U2's trucks, which were moving the group's gargantuan 390-ton stage setup to their next date in Sweden. The trucks missed a ferry as a result of the blockade.

Embassy sit-in

Goodbye, St Pat’s-Alexandra

hillarybain — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:18:25 +0000

Replacing North-End Halifax’s Africentric school with condos

HALIFAX—Janitors are polishing the floors at St. Patrick’s-Alexandra School while the halls are empty. It’s summer vacation. On the second floor the library shelves are half-filled with books. It’s as if the shelves have been cleared for dusting, but a janitor tells me they’ve been mostly bare for years. Across the hall the primary room looks like an outdated, unfurnished home, waiting to be filled. Four tiny tables form an archipelago in the centre of the room. Crafts, in short supply, are stacked in cupboards and a small number of stuffed animals are tucked into a hamper. This fall the classroom will do double duty for the combined Primary and Grade 1 classes, containing 11 toddlers in total.

Attendance at St. Pat’s, one of the hopeful beacons of education in Halifax’s tightly woven North End community, has been falling for years. The south wing of the third floor has been closed to students in recent years since attendance began to drop and teachers began to quit. Just 80 students attended the P-to-9 school in 2008—58 students less than the 138 enrolled the year before, though the building has the capacity for 800. Falling enrollment is one of many reasons the Halifax Regional School Board voted in March to close the brick building as a school by 2011. The former school property will be sold to make way for condominiums.

St. Pat’s is one of the few schools in Nova Scotia with Africentric leanings. Serving the mostly African-Canadian population of Uniacke Square, the school teaches the history and values of the black community, giving priority to African Nova Scotian role models such as Wayne Adams, the first black member of the province’s legislature; Dr. William P Oliver, the first African Nova Scotian to receive two degrees; and Corrine Sparks, the first African Nova Scotian judge. Plaques bearing their names and penciled portraits hang in the halls.

In a series of meetings, community members and local representatives fiercely debated the pros and cons of closing St Pat’s. Eventually, the Halifax Regional School Board voted five to three that the unique school must close.

In the end, the School Board said the overwhelming presence of social problems in the neighbourhood led to the final decision. Sex trade workers frequent nearby Creighton Street. Homeless people occasionally sleep under the brick awning at the back of the building. “Those squeegee kids sleep ‘til noon,” another janitor told me, matter-of-factly. Metro Turning Point, a halfway house on Barrington Street is also in the school’s neighbourhood.

Irvine Carvery, Chair of the School Board, was unavailable to comment further on the Board’s decision.

Denise Allen, Chair of the Halifax Central Education Committee, says the closure of the school is a sign of gentrification—tantamount to the end of the community, in her opinion. That’s why she rallied St. Pat’s parents together to fight for the school’s future. She helped to organize bus fare and car pools to an Imagine Our Schools meeting (the School Board’s public consultation process regarding a host of educational decisions), and the committee held writing sessions in advance for parents who wanted to be heard at the meeting. But it wasn’t enough to counteract the school’s dropping attendance and the area’s reputation for crime and prostitution.

“We have to look at the issue of poverty, one of the root causes of why there’s violence in the inner city. Poverty’s the number one root cause. So we should address the poverty. But instead of dealing with that, the solution is close down a school. And whenever you close down a school in the inner city, you always open up a prison.”

Allen is speaking metaphorically, expressing what is not a new idea: when youth drop out of school, she says, they often turn to a life of crime.

St. Pat’s serves a mostly impoverished community of single parents, immigrants and unemployed workers—a demographic Allen says is desperate for education. She believes a community school is the solution to poverty and violent crime in the neighbourhood because education can prevent inner-city youth from making bad life decisions.

“The drugs, the halfway house, all that is just compacted into this one community,” 19-year-old Kadeem Hinch tells me. “It’s around the kids.” He says he can see both sides of the debate but is adamant the school should stay open.

Hinch squints through the cloudy glass windows of the school’s front entrance. He remembers bursting through these doors with his friends at lunchtime and sliding down the snowy slopes of the moat that separates the school from Maitland Street.

A vibrant mural is barely visible through the mottled front door windows. It covers the opposite wall, floor to ceiling. Hinch, who will attend the graphic design program at NSCC this fall, helped to paint it as part of African Heritage Month when he was in junior high. Giraffes roam through a jungle oasis of grassland and waterfalls. Community members gather in the foreground, dressed in vibrant prints and head coverings. Grass huts stand in the shade of tall palm trees in the distance. The painting represents the school's cultural roots.

But there are no protective palms on Maitland Street. Instead, on the next block over and creeping ever closer is a row of brand new condominiums. "For Sale" and "Sold" signs pepper the properties. They’re waiting to be filled. Meanwhile, St. Pat's classrooms continue to empty.

As I bike the wrong way down the one-way street, another row of condos appears to my left. They look like suburbia in downtown Halifax.

“We have enough condos in this neighbourhood,” Hinch says. “I really don’t think that we should tear down a good school to build more expensive condos. I think we’re losing the community by building those condos, losing the history.”

The bright-eyed and bubbly graduate is a Staff Coordinator at Saint George’s Youth Net, a youth outreach and activity centre housed by the robin’s-egg-blue church next door. For seven years he’s participated in and helped to organize after-school activities for the dwindling St. Pat’s population.

When the building closes two years from now, the neighbourhood children will move to Joseph Howe Elementary School and Oxford Junior High School, one kilometre and two kilometres away, respectively. Hinch says it’s a shame the kids will have to walk so far when they already have a perfectly good school in their neighbourhood.

“The school itself has a lot of potential,” he says. “I mean it has a lot of things other schools don’t have, like sewing rooms, like cooking labs, a pottery lab, a nice big art room, a nice big gym. They have a lot of things that can be used. I think it should stay up. I love the school.”

On the back deck of Denise Allen's home off Windsor Street, her grandson, Lenai, gurgles in his cozy baby carrier, eyes locked on Grandma. Allen says she hopes he’ll attend a school in her neighbourhood when he gets a little older.

“The one thing that is going to make that area feel like a community, they took away,” she says. Allen also laments that once the school is closed, the land will be privatized. She saw it happen in Toronto, where she grew up.

“The most vulnerable people in our society have to suffer. Why? Because that area, that land that St. Pat’s is sitting on and Uniacke Square is sitting on, is too good for them. It’s too precious. They have to be forced out of there. And eventually that’s what’s going to happen.”

Allen hoped the St. Pat’s building would become an affordable vocational school that offers skills training to youth. “If that’s not happening then you haven’t addressed the root cause of violence in that area,” she says.

Unfortunately for Allen and Hinch, it seems the fate of the school has already been decided: the school board’s development proposal for the property says the “former Alexandra School site” will be sold to make way for 48 additional condos. Another chunk of the property will be dedicated to one of three development options, currently under appeal: six-storey multi-units, a private school or a homeless shelter.

“It’ll be condos for sure,” the grey-bearded janitor tells me as I leave through the school’s side door into the sunlight. “That’s the rumour, anyway.”

Hilary Beaumont is a freelance journalist and editor in Halifax, and a contributing member of the Halifax Media Co-op.

St Pat's