The Dominion - 70

Issue #70

Tim McSorley — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:48:40 +0000

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September 2010

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Ties that Bind

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:00:46 +0000

Canadian military seeking lessons from Israeli occupying army

OTTAWA—Canadian military officials have undertaken a comprehensive effort with their Israeli counterparts to “pursue deeper relationships,” to borrow from Israel’s weapons, war training, and counter-insurgency strategies, and to strengthen diplomatic ties, according to documents obtained through access to information (ATI) requests.

The documents from the Department of National Defence (DND) detail an October 2009 visit to Israel by General Walter Natynczyk, chief of the Canadian Forces (CF).

“Your trip to Israel…will also offer you insight into broader regional issues, the multitude of threats facing Israel, the lessons learned from IDF [Israeli Defence Force] operations, and Israeli strategic thinking and military equipment,” states one briefing note.

Although Israel has found itself increasingly isolated diplomatically in recent years, support from successive Canadian governments has grown.

“It is harder to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days,” ultra right-wing Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on a trip to Canada last year. “No other country in the world has demonstrated such a full understanding of us.”

Canadian government and military officials appear ready to disregard what critics like South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu refer to as Israel’s apartheid practices in order to maintain, as the documents put it, a “robust and rich” bilateral relationship.

The DND refused repeated requests for an interview.

The series of formal high-level meetings between figures in the Canadian military and the IDF have gone under the name of “Strategic Dialogue,” according to the disclosed documents. The first of these meetings, described in the documents as being “very successful” took place in Tel Aviv in February 2008.

“Overall, the trip solidified existing friendships, uncovered further opportunities for military-military cooperation, and, perhaps most importantly, revealed that DND/CF is well situated to pursue deeper relationships,” states a memo written after the meetings. Since February, 2008, there have been a number of formal “staff talks” between the upper echelons of Canada and Israel’s defence establishments.

Comprised mostly of briefing notes and backgrounders, the documents explain contentious issues, outline strict talking points, and, under heavy redaction, disclose “future considerations” for improving Canadian bilateral relations with Israel and the IDF. Several briefing notes deal exclusively with particular issues of cooperation, such as Science and Technology Cooperation, Military Medical Cooperation, and Defence Material Relations.

Documents prepared for Natynczyk’s trip in October, 2009, note that one of the “key objectives” was to “examine IDF equipment, tactics, doctrine, procedures, that might have operational benefits for the Canadian Forces.” To that end, Natynczyk met with a host of IDF senior generals, as well as Defence Minister Ehud Barak. The meetings focussed on gaining access to Israeli areas of “expertise,” including gaining insights into Israeli military strategies and tactics.

While meeting Brigadier General Harel Knafo, Natynczyk received a briefing on “the lessons learned from [2008’s] Gaza War.” Knafo commanded Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion during the Gaza War that killed more than 1380 Palestinians, 400 of them children, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

The visit came on the heels of the Goldstone Report, a UN investigation into the Gaza War by former South African Supreme Court judge Richard Goldstone.

In his report, Goldstone criticized both Hamas and Israel for crimes of war during the conflict, but the report singled out Israel for the most serious condemnation. Goldstone documented the IDF’s use of Palestinians as human shields – itself a war crime – and warned that the Israeli blockade of Gaza amounted to “collective punishment intentionally inflicted by the government of Israel on the people of the Gaza Strip.”

Israel’s war, according to Goldstone, was designed to “punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population.”

Natynczyk also discussed counter-insurgency operations with top Israeli General Gabi Ashkenazi.

“[Ashkenazi] suggested further military-military cooperation with Canada, including regarding doctrines and tactics that enable forces to switch conduct both asymmetric and conventional operations and switch between the two,” recounts a summary note of the meeting.

The switch between “asymmetric” and “conventional” operations is a reference to Israel’s special brand of counter-insurgency: the unconventional, often urban warfare Israel engages in against Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Presiding over one of the longest military occupations in modern times, Israel is an acknowledged leader in innovating new tactics of urban warfare. As Israeli scholar and architect Eyal Weizman has documented, the Israeli military reshape the battleground to meet their objectives in the densely populated and often impenetrable cities and refugee camps of the West Bank: rather than fight in the streets, for instance, they blast holes through the walls and ceilings of houses, moving in this manner often through entire streets.

Battles in half-demolished living rooms, bedrooms and corridors of refugee camp homes have blurred the lines between civilian and military – or private and public – space.

This is the military laboratory in which the “doctrines and tactics” mentioned by Ashkenazi are studied and, as the memo indicates, exported to other urban environments.

Canadian military officials have clearly stated their strategy in Afghanistan has focused on developing stronger counterinsurgency tactics. Canada has said it will withdraw its military presence in the country in 2011, but Canadian Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie has said Canada’s military future is based on counterinsurgency measures.

“It’s not going to be peacemaking anymore, it’s going to be counter-insurgency because the odds of us doing peacemaking between two functional states are probably pretty low, ergo COIN (counter-insurgency),” he told the Toronto Star in 2009.

While clearly interested in borrowing from IDF technologies, briefing notes also indicate Canadian officials are eager to win recognition of their war-making capacities from both Israeli and U.S. authorities.

“In Israel, the IDF’s warm welcome and insistence [redacted] is open to Canada reflects both the deepening relations between our two militaries and the credibility and respect won by CF operations in Afghanistan,” says a briefing memo to Natynczyk.

In various notes, Natynczyk is reminded to highlight Canada’s military efforts in Afghanistan and stress Canada’s contributions to various U.S. and Israeli diplomatic initiatives.

In addition to advancing military cooperation through the Strategic Dialogue, documents reveal that Natynczyk’s trip is part diplomatic mission. An array of diplomatic initiatives are tied to the Strategic Dialogue, and Canada’s increased role in supporting a militarized international agenda premised on an aggressive and militarized Israel in the Middle East.

The Canadian military’s most significant operation in Israel is in support of US-led operations under the command of US Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton. Dayton, in close coordination with Israel, leads the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) program, initiated in 2005. It was created, according to then-US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in order to oversee the training of a new integrated Palestinian police force and to referee problems between rival political parties Hamas and Fatah. Under Dayton’s leadership, the program is closely coordinated with the Israelis. Canadian members make up the bulk of Dayton’s training team – with 18 Canadian officers alongside 10 American.

The USSC program has come under scrutiny, though. A 2008 exposé by Vanity Fair revealed that these security forces attempted to overthrow Hamas and prop up Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party following Hamas’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections.

US forces face restrictions around their movement in the West Bank, though, that Candian forces do not. Due in large part to Canada’s reputation as a “trusted, impartial third-party,” the notes claim that CF personnel enter the West Bank daily allowing them to offer a useful window of intelligence on the West Bank to the American army. As briefing notes indicate, Dayton is “an enthusiastic advocate of Canada’s support to his mission” with the US government.

Canada plays a similar conduit like role in respect to facilitating communication between NATO and Israel. In this regard, the Canadian Embassy in Tel Aviv is serving as Israel’s NATO Contact Point Embassy until 31 December 2010.

Beyond the role as a NATO contact, the documents reveal a small glimpse into Canada’s behind-the-scenes role in lobbying for Israel’s inclusion into NATO.

Canada serves as “the liaison between Israel and NATO, assists with visits of NATO officials...to Israel.” Canada is also the first country to speak at NATO meetings that involve Israel, details one briefing note.

The documents show Canada has been working with Israel towards its goal of a stronger partnership with NATO. This includes helping Israel in its “pursuit of a Status of Forces Agreement, getting access to the NATO Maintenance Supply Agency, [redacted].”

The fundamental principle of the Cold War NATO alliance is that an attack against one party is equivalent to an attack against all parties of the alliance. Hence bringing Israel into NATO could mean that Canada would automatically declare war on an aggressor that attacked Israel, whatever the definition of aggression.

These sentiments were recently made public when junior Foreign Affairs minister Peter Kent mused to the magazine Shalom Life that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.” Kent later apologized for the public comment but noted that Israel understood its substance.

The documents are only a small glimpse into the dialogue between the two nations’ militaries. A talking point laid out in a note to Natynczyk during his October 2009 visit confirm a strong commitment to increasing and future collaboration.

“I am pleased with the increased cooperation between Canadian Forces and the IDF and I am looking forward to future coordination and partnership between our armed forces.”

SIDEBAR: Recent Developments in Canada-Israel Relations

• Although Canada’s diplomatic support for an Israeli state predates Israel’s inception, policy toward the country became more friendly under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin, and veered further right under Stephen Harper.

• Among the long list of examples of Canada’s ardent pro-Israel turn was Harper’s response to the massive bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 following the Hezbollah abduction of two Israeli soldiers. While the international community decried Israel’s aberrant bombardment, Harper described it as a “measured response.”

• The conflict killed at least 1,500 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, and severely damaged Lebanese infrastructure. Among the accounts of widespread collateral damage was the death of Canadian soldier Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener.

• Kruedener was among four UN Military Observers killed when the Israeli Air Force attacked a UN observation post in southern Lebanon. Briefing notes written for Natynczyk shed light on Canadian diplomatic actions in the aftermath of Kruedener’s death.

• The notes state Israel took responsibility for their deaths, but that the killings were unintentional. Unbeknownst to many, however, the notes mention that Harper subsequently wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Olmert accepting Israel’s account. While Harper presents himself as a defender of military personnel, it appears – in the face of widespread criticism of Israel following the attack on the UN position – that Canada was more inclined to defend the reputation of its ally than demand answers to uncomfortable questions on behalf of its soldiers.

• Revealing Israel’s sensitivity to the issue, Natynczyk is warned in the briefings: “Israel has made clear that it has answered all the questions it intends to with respect to the deaths of the four.”

Yavar Hameed is a human rights lawyer and sessional lecturer at Carleton University in Ottawa. Jeff Monaghan works with Books to Prisoners in Ottawa.

Canada-Israel ties that bind

DND document

G20 Over, but Legal Woes Drag On

Tim McSorley — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:14:16 +0000

Three hundred to appear in court, G20 organizers face police threats as arrests continue

TORONTO and MONTREAL—Nearly two months after the G20 protests in the streets of Toronto, hundreds of people are slowly moving through the legal system. They face a wide range of charges, from obstruction to conspiracy, and a variety of possible punishments, from fines to serious jail time.

The complexities of the justice system can be difficult at the best of times, but with mass arrests and what many see as politically motivated charges, things have become more daunting.

“The court system is incredibly alienating,” says Ryan White, a lawyer working with the Movement Defense Committee (MDC). “That's why [the courts] are used, to use up time and energy to destroy social movements.”

While it’s difficult to predict the outcome for people facing charges, an estimated 300 people – mainly those who were arrested and held at the detention centre set up in a former film studio in Toronto’s east end – are slated for “set date” court appearances on August 23.

A set date is the first step in the trial, where the accused will be able to clarify their exact charges, will be given their next court dates, and will possibly receive disclosure – meaning they will be permitted to see the evidence being held against them.

Since the set date hearings are not arraignments, defendants will not plead innocent or guilty, but resolution discussions – otherwise known as plea deals – may take place. A spokesperson for the Crown's office refused to comment on the possibility of such negotiations, though Riali Johannesson, another lawyer who volunteers with the MDC, says such discussions are common-place.

Those who remember the temporary bail court hearings immediately after the G20 summits may doubt the wisdom of processing 300 defendants in one day, but both Crown prosecutors and MDC volunteers believe there should be enough resources and staffing for the process to move smoothly. According to Johannesson, legal defence volunteers are in contact with the Crown to find ways to ease the process and ensure hearings do not drag on.

That is reassuring for the dozens of people who will come in from out of town for the hearings, including 110 people from Quebec alone. Montreal’s Anti-capitalist Convergence (CLAC), which organised buses to Toronto for the G20 summit, is organising transport and lodging for those who need to travel to Ontario for their hearings. Other out-of-town defendants, including most from BC, have secured legal counsel to represent them so they do not need to make the 4,000km trek.

There is a possibility that some charges will be dropped on August 23, and that others may be downgraded following resolution discussions. No one will be obliged to take plea deals and groups like CLAC have expressed hope that enough funds will be raised to enable individuals who wish to challenge their charges to do so.

Fundraising takes time though, and in both Montreal and Toronto, where the two main pushes for fundraising are taking place, it is estimated that at least $250,000 needs to be raised in each city in order to cover the legal fees associated with those facing the most serious charges. Farrah Miranda, a spokesperson with the Toronto Community Mobilisation Network (TCMN) was unable to confirm how much money has been raised so far. The TCMN and CLAC are both planning a series of large events over the coming weeks, though, including a performance by trip-hop band LAL in Toronto, and a fundraising dinner and art auction in Montreal as part of what will be year-long funding drives.

Some of the seventeen people co-accused on charges of conspiracy will be among those appearing August 23. All but one of them have been released on bail and face severe restrictions, including house arrests and limits on who they can associate with, on public statements, organizing or participating in protests, using laptops, cell phones and other wireless devices. Kitchener-based community organizer Eric Lankin however, has been in custody for over six weeks.

The courts have issued a publication ban against reports on the proceedings, and some have been warned that speaking to the media may constitute a violation of the bail conditions, which would leave the sureties financially liable. The sureties for Leah Henderson and Alex Hundert were contacted recently by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), who told them comments to the media made by Henderson and Hundert could be interpreted as a breach of their 'no advising or planning political protest' condition, according to Hundert’s brother Jonah. Such a breach would allow the police to put them back in jail.

“It's absolutely absurd and the principle behind it is disgusting,” he says, adding that if there are concerns about breach of bail conditions the proper route is to contact legal representation. “[The OPP] are basically
harassing my family, just as they try to intimidate all people who speak and stand for social justice.”

Many have been critical of the bail conditions, seeing them as particularly repressive. “The coercive bail conditions force those released into a false choice: to stop organising or to face further repression,” says SK Hussan, who, like Henderson and Hundert, has been accused of conspiracy, among other charges. “We are not simply choosing to fight for a better world; it is our responsibility to do so,” he added.

Ongoing arrests continue to evoke the spectre of the G20 mass detentions. No one knows when they will end, and Toronto police have not said they are through with arrests. In mid-July the Toronto Police Service (TPS) released a “most wanted” list of G20 protesters. Since then, the TPS have arrested several of those listed, most recently Ryan Rainville, an Indigenous solidarity activist, who was arrested in Waterloo, Ontario.

“It's clear that the police will extend [the wave of arrests] as long as they can,” says White. But he is optimistic that fighting in the courts could lead to a kind of victory for the defendants. “There are so many stories out there of people who had their rights trampled by the state who have had success in the courts. It's exciting to think about it proactively. It's one way of holding the state accountable.”

Hussan, for his part, is insistent that the focus not be on the ongoing legal battle he and others face, but on building towards a just world: “What’s become increasingly important is not just how are we going to deal with state violence, but how are we going to create the autonomous, just, free communities we all want to live in?”

For more information about what defendants can expect on August 23 and information on legal defense, visit http://movementdefence.org. For more information on legal defense fundraising efforts and news, visit http://g20.torontomobilize.org/ and http://www.clac2010.net/.

Tim McSorley is an editor with The Dominion. Megan Kinch is an activist and journalist in Toronto.

G20 police line

Why is Canada Blocking Congo Debt Forgiveness?

dru — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:21:21 +0000

Mining companies and Canada's “civilizing mission”

WINNIPEG—In the lead-up to the G20 summit in Toronto, as several major demonstrations and tens of thousands of police and military personnel filled the downtown, a quieter summit took place 200 kilometres to the north, in Huntsville, Ontario. In closed meetings Canadian officials worked to convince the world's major military and industrial powers to criticize the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

They succeeded. The final G8 communique called on the DRC to “enhance governance and accountability in the extractive sector,” and “extend urgently the rule of law.” Just a few days later, on June 29, Canada attempted to block a decision by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cancel the overwhelming majority of the DRC's roughly $8 billion debt.

In spite of Canada's objections, the World Bank and IMF approved DRC's debt cancellation two days later. But Canadian diplomats delayed the process long enough that the announcement missed celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the country's independence from Belgium which had ruled Congo with legendary violence while extracting its mineral wealth. The DRC's debt, widely considered to be "odious"—consisting of loans to illegitimate rulers—had accumulated through their history as a colony of Belgium, then through the years of the Mobutu dictatorship and on to the present. The loans rarely benefited ordinary people in what is one of the most impoverished countries in the world. Even after one of the IMF's own reports during the Mobutu era showed the loans were being misused and would likely never be repaid, the lending programs were not only kept in place but boosted to higher levels.

Why would Canada want to interfere with relieving a poor country from illegitimate debt?

The Congo has long been the site of bountiful natural resources, which governments and corporations the world over have scrambled to access. The Vancouver-based mining company First Quantum has not been immune to this allure. In 2006, the company's president Clive Newall said of the DRC: "It's the holy grail of the copper industry. Companies are saying: to hell with the political risk, we just have to be here."[1]

The risk did not pay off as well as he would have liked. Over the past year, the government of the DRC canceled three of First Quantum's mining concessions, worth about $1-billion, as part of a review of contracts signed during the tumultuous period of conflict at the end of the 1990s. Canada retaliated on the company's behalf through the G8 and international lending institutions.

Maurice Carney, Executive Director of the Friends of the Congo, a Washington DC-based advocacy group, is asking why Canada was not worried about illegality in the Congo before the recent cancellations; illegality on the part of the companies themselves. He points to a 2002 UN Security Council report called the “Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” that showed connections between foreign mining companies, including First Quantum, and the ongoing conflict in the DRC, the deadliest conflict the world has seen since the second World War.

“The United Nations clearly stated that these companies that were involved are fueling the conflict, illegally exploiting Congo's wealth, and have violated OECD Guidelines,” says Carney. “Yet neither Canada, nor the G8 have issued any major declarations against these corporations.”

The report pointed to payouts by First Quantum to top Congolese officials.[2] The company's Kolwezi project, the first to be canceled by the DRC, was secured through deals with then-rebel leader Laurent Kabila before he took power in 1997, at a time when mining companies were helping finance his insurgency against the national government. The deal was made with a smaller firm called American Mineral Fields, which First Quantum was planning to buy, and did, securing the contract for themselves. From 1997 to 2001, while accumulating these contracts, their share prices shot “from zero to around $140 USD.”[3]

First Quantum's board has always been politically well-connected. Around this period, former Prime Minister Joe Clark was serving as an adviser and later he became a board member. In 2008, Carney told Democracy Now! that nearly all Canadian Prime Ministers since Trudeau have been involved in a mining company working in the Congo.

The international community's main concern remains re-shaping the DRC government much in the way foreign powers in Congo's colonial period saw themselves to be carrying out a “civilizing mission.” The World Bank and the UK have announced $92-million for their PROMINES project in the DRC “to increase transparency and accountability in the mining sector.”

Although the government of the DRC claims that during the period of mining renegotiation the people in charge of the First Quantum project in Kolwezi were “the only ones who refused to negotiate," and that "[t]hey refused with a lot of arrogance," the cancellation was, in fact, dubious. The holdings were transferred to a company registered in the British Virgin Islands owned by businessman Dan Gertler, among the wealthiest Israelis, who owns other companies financing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Carney says in regard to Gertler that “just about every deal he's made in the Congo has benefited him, a select few people in the government, and undermined the people.”

The Canadian Ministry of Finance did not respond to a request for an interview from The Dominion. A Ministry representative previously told Reuters they would “continue to work with our international partners to ensure Canadian investment in the DRC is protected.”

Carney asks us to consider another way the G8 leaders' summit could have played out. “We're not aware of any statements the G8 has issued regarding the millions of Congolese dead or the hundreds of thousands of women raped... Imagine if the call from the G8 was for an end to the conflict and bringing peace and stability to the Congo, as opposed to securing mining deals for First Quantum.”

With files from David Barouski.

Macho Philipovich lives in Winnipeg.

Notes

1.Bloomberg, “BHP, Anglo Shun Congo Risks to Expand as Copper Soars,” 7 February 2006, quoted in Global Witness, “Digging in corruption: Fraud, abuse and exploitation in Katanga's copper and cobalt mines,” July 2006.

2.UN Security Council 16 October 2002 “Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” p 9: “In its attempts to buy rights to the Kolwezi Tailings, First Quantum Minerals (FQM) of Canada offered a down payment to the State of $100 million, cash payments and shares held in trust for Government officials. According to documents in the possession of the Panel, the payments list included the National Security Minister, Mwenze Kongolo; the Director of the National Intelligence Agency, Didier Kazadi Nyembwe; the Director General of Gecamines, Yumba Monga; and the former Minister of the Presidency, Pierre-Victor Mpoyo.”

3.Alain Deneault et al., Noir Canada: Pillage, corruption et criminalite en Afrique, Montreal, 2008. p 69.

Congo debt

Worst Job

Moira Peters — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 05:22:14 +0000

Worst_Job_heather.levels.jpg

Weathering the Storm

dru — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:44:08 +0000

Cooperative Quebec sawmill thrives despite forestry crisis

MONTREAL—Quebec's forestry industry has seen regular, predictable slumps (recent downturns happened in 1974, 1982-3, and 1991-4), each accompanied by a round of layoffs in the province’s mill towns and forestry sector. Between the softwood lumber crisis in 2000 and the US housing collapse of 2006, 26,000 millworkers and loggers have lost their livelihoods.

In one corner of Quebec, communities have used a cooperative business model to defy the boom-bust cycles and short-term thinking that characterize much of the forestry sector.

For tourists, as well as for many urban Quebecers, the province’s effective eastern boundary lies at Tadoussac. Beyond here, on the north side of the St. Lawrence, extends a rugged territory where snow squalls in October are frequent, communities are sparse, and the expense of transport can make commerce difficult. Returns on investment are often modest, and in the days before the provincial government re-ordered and centralized the economy in the 1960s, locally-owned cooperatives brought electricity as well as grocery stores to many a North Shore town where private entrepreneurs did not see enough of a profit opportunity to attract their interest.

Sacre-Coeur, with a population of 2000, located fifteen kilometers from Tadoussac, is in most ways a typical North Shore community. The town depended on forestry for several generations, but by 1984, in the wake of one of the cyclical slumps, the local sawmill had undergone its third consecutive bankruptcy in ten years under three separate managements, and seemed set to close for good.

“We had a reputation as the [forestry] plant that had lost the most money in Quebec,” recalls Marc Gilbert, who was an employee at the sawmill at the time. “Nobody wanted to touch us.”

Ultimately the facility, which constituted the town's main industry, was to remain shuttered for two and a half years.

The town’s residents might have given in to fatalism; but instead, after the bank that held the mill's mortgage was unable to find a buyer and offered to sell the plant at liquidation prices, locals decided to undertake a ground-breaking initiative. Banding together to form the Sacre-Coeur Development Corporation [Societe d'Exploitation de Sacre-Coeur], they secured the support of a credit union as well as a provincial government subsidy, and bought the mill for $1.2 million.

According to those who know the local history, the motive in doing this was to forestall the flight of young people to the city and the slow death which is the bane of so many single-resource communities in unfavourable times.

After studying various models, the interested parties decided to constitute themselves as a single company called Boisaco Inc, owned in three equal parts by a loggers' cooperative, (Cofor) a millworkers' cooperative (Unisaco), and a consortium of local businesses.

An advantage of this structure, according to Marc Gilbert, who was one of the project’s founders and until recently served as company president, is that it allows the workers, as majority shareholders, to benefit from the management experience of the members of the business consortium.

Gilbert says that decision-making is rarely adversarial.

"We adopted a shareholder's charter that gave everyone [all three parties] a veto right on all big decisions," says Gilbert. "This forced us [to seek] a working consensus."

The model is superior to what typically prevails on shop floors, says Gilbert, where management squares off with unions and the need to explain (or debate) procedures slows down productivity.

Three months after its reopening in 1985, the combined advantages of a market recovery and the new management allowed the Boisaco sawmill to generate enough revenue to pay off all its debts.

Since then, the company has divided profit according to a formula that would seem out of place in the corporate world. Twenty-seven per cent is shared equally as dividends among the three shareholders; eighteen per cent goes to workers' bonuses, while fifty-five per cent (an unusually high proportion, according to Gilbert) is targeted—once taxes have been paid—to research and development. Part of this fifty-five per cent is also allocated to a rainy-day fund.

Sarah Toulouse, a recent Masters graduate in cooperative management from the University of Sherbrooke, has studied Boisaco. I asked her why the consortium of business shareholders would agree to finance Boisaco when they could have obtained a higher return on their investment elsewhere.

“In Sacre-Coeur the [business] shareholders are mostly...folks from the region,” she says. “Their priority is to keep the region alive.”

Today, Boisaco provides employment to about two hundred workers as members of one of the two founding co-ops.

Moreover, over the last twenty-five years as Boisaco has thrived, it has used part of its profits to acquire shares in diverse companies in the region with which it has then signed supply contracts.

In one such case, Boisaco provides lumber to Sacopan, a one-hundred-worker company founded in 1999 that operates out of the same lot as Boisaco in Sacré-Coeur. Sacopan sells fibrewood doorskins within Canada and to the USA. In the wake of the American subprime crisis, Sacpan's sales have helped keep Boisaco afloat.

“Historically, whenever [home] construction flags, [home] renovation takes up the slack,” says Gilbert, explaining a strong American niche market for the product.

Once the affiliated companies like Sacopan are factored in, Boisaco can be said to secure employment for six hundred forestry sector workers throughout the Upper North Shore.

It is source of pride to the company that it has come through the forestry crisis, now seen to be ending, without a high level of debt, and that it accepted a deficit situation rather than shut temporarily or resort to lay-offs.

And from conversation it is clear that the management sees this decision as rooted both in sound business sense as well as in Boisaco’s original social mandate.

“If we had stopped, we would have lost our best workers,” says Marc Gilbert, in response to my unstated question. “All those folks couldn't have waited four years. They would have lost their equipment. And when we wanted to start up again, how much would it have cost us to recreate all of it, and all that expertise?”

Chris Scott is a Montreal-based writer, researcher and activist who makes regular visits to eastern Quebec.

Boisaco

Strengthening Our Resolve

Moira Peters — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 05:36:24 +0000

An interview with Alex Hundert

Since this article was first posted on the website of the Vancouver Media Co-op, Alex Hundert and others have been warned not to speak to the media. We are reposting the article to share Hundert's words with a larger audience.

VANCOUVER—In the wee hours of June 26, Alex Hundert awoke to the sound of police breaking down his door with a battering ram. Members of the gang unit entered his home in Toronto with guns drawn, arrested him and his partner, and took them to the now infamous temporary jail set up in an old film studio in Toronto.

By the time the mass arrests began Saturday evening (June 26), Hundert had been transferred to the Maplehurst jail in Milton, Ontario. Over the next days, more than 1,000 G20 arrestees were put behind bars, including 16 more organizers and activists from southern Ontario and Quebec who face serious, trumped-up charges.

This might seem a far cry from the life of a self-described former "ski bum" who grew up the older of two boys in a middle class Toronto home. But Hundert, who was released on bail July 19 and faces charges of conspiracy related to G20 organizing, can trace a line from his early activism right through to today.

While studying at Wilfred Laurier University, Hundert's early forays into organizing were typical of many university students. "I was thrust into situations where these big, very effective organizing efforts—like doing campus fundraisers for popular causes such as AIDS—were happening and we'd get hundreds of people involved. But then everyone one would go home and feel that they'd done their part and everything was okay," he said. "I felt that no matter how much money we raised on a university campus, we were not really contributing anything to the solution."

Providing support at the blockade in Grassy Narrows opened Hundert's eyes to a far more holistic form of activism, and deepened his analysis of capitalism and colonialism. "In Grassy Narrows, I got to see first-hand the extent to which many of the things we're told about this country are flagrant lies, and the extent to which the exploitation of resources and labour is synonymous with the destruction of communities," he said.

Judy Da Silva, Asubpeeschoseewagong Anishinabe (Grassy Narrows First Nations), who has worked closely with Alex since 2006, attributes the growing movement of non-Natives in support of Indigenous land rights to the work of Alex and others in southern Ontario.

“Alex Hundert is a patient, generous person who works tirelessly on environmental and social issues on behalf of Mother Earth and her inhabitants,” said Da Silva in a statement of support for Hundert. “He has continued to support us in our struggle to protect our boreal forest from logging and pollution and to raise awareness about our issues [among] non-Natives.”

But instead of being in Grassy Narrows, Hundert remains under house arrest at his father's home in Toronto. He jokes that he's been reading too much Chomsky, but says being jailed confirmed events he'd witnessed as an activist in support of Indigenous struggles.

On the inside, other prisoners helped him fill out forms and navigate the prison system, which Hundert says is designed to dehumanize prisoners and their communities. But he thinks the attempt of the state to quash dissent through repression will have the opposite effect.

"I think in the long run it's going to have the same effect that cracking down on legitimate dissent and the public voices of communities always has," said Hundert. "The effect is strengthening the resolve of that very voice."

Already, people with no interest in political radicalism have been radicalized, said Hundert. "For every person that they are pulling out of the movement—to the extent that they're able to do that through criminalizing and incarcerating us—there are several people to take our place," he said.

Hundert doesn't want a focus on the criminalization of activism to obscure the reasons people are in the streets.

"Whether it's remote-controlled airplanes dropping bombs in Pakistan, or whether it's the OPP [Ontario Provincial Police] attacking Six Nations land defenders, or whether it's the Integrated Security Unit criminalizing so-called anarchists, it's all about the attempt to break people's resistance to an imposed order," he said. "It is important to question just how democratic or legitimate that order is, and lots of people know that, and hanging on to that conviction is just as important as being honest about the experience of criminalization."

Though this has been a difficult time for Alex’s friends and allies, they remain firm supporters of his work. "Alex’s family and friends are proud that he is putting his future on the line in the service of social justice," said Amy Rossiter, a Professor at York University, in a letter of support for Hundert.

"I think the most important thing we can do is to make space for those communities that have been most silenced in shaping the current system to facilitate a process of transformation with their voices, visions and practices," he said.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Community Center for Social Justice, which Hundert helped found, is one example of creating that space. "Once we make space it is a lot harder for them to take it away, and no matter what they do to us, other people can join that community and culture of resistance and fill it with what they want."

To support those still in jail and facing charges, donate to the legal defense fund.

Dawn Paley is an organizer with the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Alex Hundert

G20 police officer

The Land that Feeds

hillarybain — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Rural community divided over proposal to rezone farmland

GREENWICH, NS—A proposal to rezone 380 acres of active farmland in the hamlet of Greenwich, Kings County, has raised public concern over food security, cultural history, and sustainable community-planning in Nova Scotia’s fertile Annapolis Valley.

“Removing the agricultural district zoning will take away the Greenwich farms that helped build Kings County,” says Tom Cosman, a Greenwich honey farmer who believes the proposal is short-sighted.

In August 2009, five Greenwich landowners submitted an application to Kings Council proposing an amendment to the Kings County Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS) and Land-Use Bylaw which would allow the involved agricultural lands to be rezoned for residential, commercial or industrial purposes—a Comprehensive Development District (CDD), as the MPS labels it.

The proposal roused an immediate outcry from several Greenwich residents who want to preserve the fertile farmland.

“The proposed development is intended to remove almost 75 per cent of Greenwich’s prime agricultural lands, which the current owners themselves claim to have been farmed for 700 years collectively,” states Marilyn Cameron, a Greenwich resident and active member of No Farms, No Food, a community coalition devoted to the protection and preservation of Nova Scotia farmland.

Three of the five landowners own, operate, and supply three popular farm markets in Greenwich, and their businesses form the core of the community’s identity. No Farms, No Food have accused the landowners of selfishly disregarding their responsibilities to the community and stewardship of the land.

Doug Hennigar, a fruit and vegetable farmer and owner of one of the farm markets, believes those residents are unwilling to accept the reality of his situation. “My soil could be considered prime if we were only talking about Nova Scotia, but globalization has put my land in competition with soils from all over the world. I have to compete with farmers from countries that have better soils, longer growing seasons, cheaper labour, and high government subsidies,” he relates.

In the global competition for Nova Scotians’ food dollar, local farmers are losing out. A report released Tuesday by the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Ecology Action Centre, found that for every dollar spent on food in the province in 2008, Nova Scotian farmers got 13 cents. “The study examined over 60 products and found that, on average, the food products were traveling nearly 4,000 km from farm to plate,” says Marla MacLeod, co-author of the report entitled Is Nova Scotia Eating Local?

This needs to change, says MacLeod, who believes the province should prioritize food security and food sovereignty. “I think it’s important to retain the capacity to grow our own food here,” says MacLeod, who argues that a local agriculture system has environmental, social, economic and health benefits. “It doesn’t make any sense to depend on everyone else in the world to feed us.”

Given the significant public opposition to the proposed amendment, many Kings County residents are irate that Kings Council used $36,000 in taxpayer money to have consulting firm Environmental Design and Management Ltd. (EDM) process the contentious application. The resultant 20-page EDM report was submitted to the Kings Planning Advisory Committee in May 2010—it recommended that the “subject site be made available for development by creating a CDD and designating the area a new Growth Centre.”

Hennigar says those opposed to the proposal are simply afraid of change. “They’re trying to preserve an agricultural past that is dead—they want to make this place an agricultural museum. We need to balance high-paying business opportunities while also preserving our best farmland. We’re an aging population, and we can’t have a successful regional agriculture if we don’t have a variety of solid employment opportunities for our youth.”

MacLeod believes that farming, given proper support, could be a viable and sustainable employment opportunity for youth. “There are young people interested in farming, and interested in doing it differently,” she says, pointing to new models like Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) and direct marketing.

MacLeod says we need to support people who are farming now, and invest in programs that promote mentorship and learning for young and new farmers. She believes a long-term view is needed: “once you’ve built over land, you can’t get it back,” adding that Nova Scotia will need that land to feed itself in the future.

“In a world with an ever-increasing population, the looming threat of peak oil, and shrinking farmlands, it is destructive to allow the loss of this agricultural resource,” says Cosman.

Tensions were recently heightened in Greenwich when, on July 6, 2010, Kings Council voted to rezone 167.5 acres of prime farmland in the neighbouring village of Port Williams for residential purposes.

Council’s motion has led to a redoubling of opposition efforts in Greenwich. “If the present owners don’t want to farm that land, it should be banked for farmers that do,” says Cameron.

If the application for rezoning continues to move forward, two readings at Council and a public hearing will be necessary before it is handed over to the provincial Minister of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations, Ramona Jennex, for final approval. Jennex would then have 60 days to either reject or approve Council’s motion to develop the farmland.

Regardless of the outcome, farmers need more support if land is going to be protected in the future, says MacLeod. “In many cases [the land is sold] to help fund farmers’ retirement plans,” she says.

MacLeod asserts that if farmers had pensions, extended health care plans, and a viable income, they’d have more options when they stopped farming—and more people interested in picking up where they left off.

“Put your energy into protecting the farmer and you’ll automatically protect the farmland,” says Hennigar. “Farmers only make up about 1.5 per cent of the Canadian population—we need help and support from the public.”

Steven Wendland is a writer, vegetable gardener and filmmaker from Harmony, Nova Scotia.

With files from Hillary Lindsay.

Save Our Farms

Tom Cosman

July in Review, Part II

Moira Peters — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 05:01:26 +0000

Oil spilled (again), prison farms defended, posters permitted, dykes marched

An Enbridge pipeline that runs toward Sarnia, Ontario leaked three million litres of oil into Battle Creek in southern Michigan, threatening the Kalamazoo River and the Great Lakes, in one of the worst spills in the history of the Midwest. Although the Chinese government claimed less than a million gallons spilled into the Yellow Sea when a pipeline exploded earlier this month near Dalian, China, a researcher at the University of Alaska has concluded that it was in fact 19-28 million gallons. The US delayed a decision about green-lighting the proposed $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline, which would flow bitumen from Alberta to refineries on the US Gulf Coast. The Green Party of Canada joined with the Save Our Seas and Shores Coalition to oppose drilling in the Gulf of St. Laurence; a lease has been granted to Corridor Resources to explore for oil around the Iles-de-la-Madeleine.

BP announced a record loss due to the cost of cleanup of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, though their CEO will leave the company with a one million pound payoff and ten million pound pension. The company admitted to photoshopping images on its website to give the impression of increased activity at its command centre in Houston, Texas. Transocean's chief technician testified that crucial warning systems on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico had been switched off at the time of explosion, to save sleeping workers from being woken by false alarms.

China surpassed the United States as the top energy-consuming nation, with energy use in the country doubling over the past decade. The US still remains far ahead in per capita energy use.

Polar bears in the Hudson Bay will die out in 10-30 years, according to researchers at the University of Alberta.

More than 100 people attended Halifax's first annual Dyke March. "This Dyke March is very distinctly not a parade. Parades are important... but we also have to remember how we got to where we are today,” said organizer Rebbecca Rose. “We didn’t win these victories by parading... We and the activists that came before us won these fights by marching, by chanting, by kicking, by screaming, by challenging the law." Winnipeg also held its first Dyke March earlier in June, joining other marches in Toronto and Vancouver.

Argentina legalized same-sex marriage.

The United Nations General Assembly voted to enshrine access to clean, fresh water as a fundamental human right. The motion, presented by the Bolivian government, passed with 122 nations in support, none against and 41 countries—including Canada—abstaining.

BC resident Nathalie Gray publicly accused the Toronto police of shooting her with rubber bullets at the G20 Summit, and launched a lawsuit, presenting photos from the emergency room showing her wounds. Police finally admitted to using rubber bullets at the protest in which Gray participated, after initially issuing denials.

The Toronto Police Services Board solicited public input into its "independent" inquiry of police action during the G20 summit. The review will exclude consideration of security inside the fence, on-the-ground operations outside the fence, tactics like "kettling" for which there is no police policy, individual cases of abuse and the Ontario Cabinet's approval of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair's request for secret powers during the summit.

The regional headquarters of the Correctional Services of Canada in Kingston was blockaded by some 250 people—including residents, farmers, and prison activists—to protest the Conservative government's proposal to shut down Canada's prison farms, with promises of continuing civil disobedience until the government reverses its decision. The seven farms across Canada, including one in Kingston, provide a different form of rehabilitation and skills development than typical prisons, say supporters.

Montreal schools in poor neighbourhoods were found 30 times more likely to have a nearby fast-food restaurant than those in rich neighbourhoods.

A Federal Court judge ruled that the Crown must review all evidence against Mohamed Mahjoub, arrested in 2000 under a National Security Certificate, after concluding that CSIS, Canada's spy agency, does not have mechanisms in place to ensure evidence it uses is not obtained under torture.

The French government took action to "clean" the internet of evidence of an hoax website, modeled after the French foreign ministry's, that announced the French goverment would pay $21 billion in reparations to Haiti to compensate for the money it extracted from the country after a successful 1804 revolution overthrowing slavery. French government officials also refused to rule out possible leagal action, and an employee of the French Foreign Ministry has allegedly made threatening phone calls to the group responsible for the hoax in the days since the action.

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled Canadians should be compensated for breaches of their charter rights, even if such breaches are committed in good faith. The Court ordered the Canadian government to pay $5,000 to a Vancouver lawyer who was held and searched after a suspected "pieing" of then-prime minister Jean Chretien. Experts say the case could have far reaching consequences.

After 10 years in court, Montreal's municipal bylaw on postering was overturned by the Quebec Court of Appeals, which ruled the regulation violates freedom of expression rights guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The city says it will continue to enforce its law until it decides whether to challenge the court's decision, with which it has six months to comply. It has indicated it may seek a compromise, increasing the size of public billboards to accommodate posters.

Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), called for the Indian Act to be scrapped within five years and replaced by a just relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian government. "We will once and for all work to dismantle the unnecessary machinery of the Department of Indian Affairs, which only perpetuates our poverty," he told the 2,000 delegates at the AFN's annual general assembly in Winnipeg.

Members of the Algonquin of Barriere Lake north of Montreal blockaded the road leading into their reserve, stopping a federal government official from holding a nomination meeting for band council elections imposed through section 74 of the Indian Act. While there have been divisions in the community in recent years over the identity of their Customary Chief and Council, the different sides are collectively opposing the federal government's attempt to replace their traditional leadership selection process, which is tied to their land use.

WikiLeaks, an organization that publishes and protects material from journalists and whistleblowers, made public 91,000 secret US-military reports about Afghanistan. The reports describe in minute detail US military operations from 2004 to the end of 2009, and are "the most comprehensive history of a war ever to be published during the course of a war," according to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks.

July was the deadliest month for US troops in the nine-year war in Afghanistan.

The conservative government ordered a review of the Public Service Employment Act with the goal of putting an end to affirmative action in the public service. Unions criticized the move as an attack on equity and diversity in the workplace.

Bank executives were overpaid $1.6 billion at the height of the financial crisis, according to a review by the White House special master on Wall Street compensation.

The BBC released a damning report on Canada's role in the global asbestos industry. Canada federally funds an asbestos lobby group to sell Canadian asbestos worldwide; last year Canada exported 153,000 tonnes of white asbestos, mostly to India. Blamed by the World Health Organization for 90,000 deaths a year, asbestos is the largest contributor to work-related cancer in the world. Supporters of the industry say asbestos is not dangerous if handled correctly.

Polar Bear Breaks Ice

Prison Farms FiR

July Books

Moira Peters — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:19:39 +0000

Non-fiction by Prince, graphic novel by Hill

The Politics of Black Women’s Hair
Althea Prince
Insomniac Press: London, ON, 2009

Black women’s hair has always possessed a certain sort of magnetism that attracts (often unsolicited) pats and tugs, as well as inquiries about its properties and care. However, recently the hair of Black sistas has been drawing unusual attention, and not just on The View. Between Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair, Tyra Banks reveal of the hair that lies beneath her weaves, and general fascination with Michelle Obama’s fashion sense—hairdos included—Black women’s hair has become quite a “hot topic.”

To provide further insight into the phenomenon of “Black women’s hair”, sociologist and novelist Althea Prince presents readers with The Politics of Black Women’s Hair, a brief anthology that analyzes the complex relationship that women of African descent have with their tresses, through the use of the personal essay form, interviews, excerpts from the media, and observations.

Prince begins by tracing the subject back to the negative historical depictions of Black people, as seen in the late nineteenth-century Golliwog and Little Black Sambo storybooks, which caricatured stereotypical “Black” features, such as pitch-black skin, huge red lips, and woolly hair. She argues that the mainstream beauty ideal, reinforced by such imagery, was internalized by Black women and girls and has “dictated” their hairstyle choices ever since. Natural black hair has thus been equated with “political” hair. This notion, which is addressed throughout the book, is highlighted in a chapter dedicated to the significance of the “relaxed,” and therefore relaxing, nature of Michelle Obama’s hair.

Prince also features personal essays by Black mothers and daughters from Canada, the US, the UK, the Caribbean and South America, providing a glimpse into the Black female hair experience from a diasporic perspective. Their stories illustrate the psychological and sociological impact that attempting to measure-up to the “yardstick of mainstream beauty”, namely the European aesthetic, has had on Black women. The essayists speak about how their efforts to attain the beauty ideal (by straightening their hair with chemicals and hot combs), or their lack of desire to do so (by opting to go shaven or wearing it in its natural state), has affected both their personal and professional lives.

The Politics of Black Women’s Hair could have benefited from expanding its scope to include the perspectives of African women and Black men (whose perceived views are mentioned frequently in the text). Given the author's intention to write a "little book," Prince successfully outlines the complexities of a topic that can get rather hairy. The Politics of Black Women’s Hair achieves its purpose: to establish that Black hair is beautiful and assist Black girls and women with learning how to embrace that fact.

—Ndija Anderson

The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book
Gord Hill
Arsenal Pulp Press: Vancouver, 2010

Comics aren't always known for treating serious subjects, but Gord Hill's The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book adds a dose of reality to the genre.

Hill, of the Kwakwaka'wakw nation, has taken the topics of dispossession, genocide, and the colonization of First Nations in the western hemisphere and, surprisingly, pulled off a rendering in comic book form. The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, published by Arsenal Pulp Press, presents in black-and-white panels the history of the overseas invasion by Europeans and the resistance of Indigenous peoples.

As a medium, comics have many attractions. They engage visually. They give information in bite-sized chunks—ideal for the modern reader's short attention span. They are fun.

Much of colonial history in the Americas has been sanitized—indeed, current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper denies colonization ever occurred in Canada. Today, the European invasion of Indigenous territories is often depicted in popular culture as the settlement of an untamed wilderness, a terra nullius, not the homeland of sophisticated civilizations who often fiercely contested Europeans' claims to their lands.

Hill seeks to visually combat this narrative. “The story of our ancestors' resistance is minimized, or erased entirely," he writes in the preface. "This strategy has been used to impose capitalist ideology on people, to pacify them, and to portray their struggle as doomed to failure.”

Knowledge is key to fighting an oppressive system. “When we know and understand this history of oppression, we will be better able to fight the system it created,” he writes.

One way to counter the colonial depiction of history is to “always call things by their right name" as enjoined by Philip Deere, a Muskogee-Creek involved with the American Indian Movement. For instance, Hill places British Columbia within quotation marks, thereby questioning the legitimacy and morality of so-naming unceded First Nations territory. 500 Years of Resistance does this unevenly, though; Hill and Ward Churchill in his introduction use inaccurate designations for Indigenous peoples: “American Indian,” “Mohawk” instead of “Kanienkehaka,” “Huron” instead of “Wyandot.”

500 Years of Resistance roots invasion in the voyage of Genovese navigator Christopher Columbus, who encountered the Taino people in the Caribbean during his infamous 1492 voyage from Europe. It continues through to 1890—describing the Incan Mapuche, Pueblo, Pontiac, Seminole, Apache, Lakota, and Pacific Northwest Indigenous resistances to the colonists—and the fight to maintain their lifeways on their territories—at which point Hill signals the end of military Indigenous resistance. Millions of Original Peoples had been wiped out, many by warfare, but mostly by European-introduced diseases. The treaty process then picked up (a process noticeably absent from much of "BC"), and assimilation took over.

Hill tells of colonizers imposing slave labour, of barbarity, of disease epidemics, of greed for gold, of land theft and of the insinuation and imposition of the capitalist system during settling of the "New World." To maintain the dispossession of their land and resources, the invaders tried to assimilate the remaining Original Peoples into European ways of being through religious conversion, the Indian Residential School system, and the imposition of the capitalist economic system.

Despite diligent colonial efforts to break them away from their identities—so closely tied to their land—Indigenous peoples persist in struggles for self-determination. Hill captures this graphically—from war on the Pacific Northwest coast, to the '68 rebellion and Wounded Knee, Oka, Chiapas, Ts'peten, and Aazhoodena. 500 Years of Resistance is a well-drawn comic book that resurrects the history “erased, replaced by the occupying nation.”

—Kim Petersen

Kim Petersen is Original Peoples editor with The Dominion.

Ndija Anderson, a law student at McGill University, was a 2006-2007 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, which allowed her to travel to seven countries to research the practice and aesthetic of hair braiding and locking in various cultures.

The Politics of Black Women's Hair

500 Years

Allies in Media Justice

Tim McSorley — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:05:16 +0000

A report back from the Allied Media Conference

DETROIT, MICHIGAN—The Allied Media Conference's reputation is that it is one of the best conferences in the United States—period. After attending the 12th annual AMC in June, I think it’s fair to say that the conference outdoes its own reputation.

There are broad lessons for organizing conferences that can be taken away from the AMC, as well as specific insights linked to media organizing in the United States that could go a long way in rejuvenating media activism in Canada.

Stepping out of the hot and humid air into the lightly air conditioned building at Detroit's Wayne State University—which served as a hub for the conference—it was obvious this was different from typical media conferences.

Most of the volunteers and folks hanging out in the lobby were people of colour. The vibe was friendly and uninhibited: punks, queers, nerds, fashionistas and students milled around, chatting, sitting up on couches deep in discussion or leaning back, resting. Throughout the weekend there was a strong presence of students and activists from Detroit, an encouraging sign that the conference wasn’t just descending on the city but that it was learning from and contributing to local community projects.

“We are here at the Allied Media Conference this year, and every year there are more hearts, there are more souls, there are more stories, there are more connections, there’s more love, there’s more hope, there’s more happening, than anywhere I go in the year, and I mean that, seriously,” said Ron Scott from Detroit’s Coalition Against Police Brutality in the opening ceremony. This year about 400 people, mostly from the US, attended the AMC.

Organizers and participants made direct links between the need for alternative and radical media and broader social and economic issues including capitalism, police violence, prisons, environmental destruction, ableism, and gendered and racialized violence, to name a few. These links were made possible by a holistic approach to reclaiming media that went far beyond the idea of “media democracy” into the realm of “media justice.” To date, there is no equivalent to the AMC in Canada.

“If you hope to radically restructure the media you have to begin with the slow and deep work of allowing space for the oppressed to speak and have control over media,” Anthony Meza-Wilson, a Vancouver-based educator who attended the AMC told The Dominion. “It isn't enough to label yourself as ‘democratic media’ or ‘progressive media’ if the voices that are heard, the languages used, and the narratives spoken still all come from people of privilege, academics, and professional journalists.”

It’s clear that over the last 11 years, the founders and organizers of the AMC have been able to do that work that Meza-Wilson describes and create trusting spaces for media activists that are outside of the academic, professional world of media to come together and “create, connect, transform”—as the conference slogan goes.

One of the strengths of the AMC was that presenters were themselves media activists, journalists, mud stencilers, and Indigenous media makers, people with different abilities, women of colour who organize against violence, and ex-prisoners.

The AMC adheres to a series of network principles, which include emphasizing the power and legitimacy of participants, assuming agency not victimization, and working to highlight solutions coming through process, not at the end of a process. Perhaps most important is the last principle: “We begin by listening.”

Workshops were based around seven tracks, which included the Art and Practice of Disability Justice, Ecojustice Media Making for Sustainable Communities, Communication Strategies for Ending the Prison Industrial Complex and Indigenous Media and Technology.

The ambitious 84-page AMC schedule was filled with workshops, discussions, caucuses, panels and skill builders ranging from queer/trans people of colour zine-making to youth discussions on the movie Avatar. The definition of “media” was broad enough to include activities like mud stencils, coding drupal, political art and silkscreening.

Throughout the weekend, there were information tables set up, creating a book fair atmosphere and a space for people to talk at length about their projects. Downstairs, there was a live radio stream set up with DJs old and new sharing the mic with conference attendees. A table dedicated to building radio transmitters was busy all weekend, while people soldered, discussed and plotted.

AMC organizers have already put the word out for people to “save the date” for next year’s conference, to be held June 23-26 in Detroit. Anyone interested in media and justice would be well served by being there.

Dawn Paley is a journalist based in Vancouver. She made a presentation about the Vancouver Media Co-op during a packed session at the AMC in June.

Creating a print at the AMC

Capybara

dru — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 05:33:45 +0000

Because a serious world needs <cite>serious</cite> cuteness

Found in rivers, swamps, ponds and other freshwater bodies throughout South America, the capybara grazes on grasses and aquatic plants. This sheep-sized rodent—it is the largest of the rodents—is most comfortable in the water, and can stay submerged for up to five minutes.

Reminiscent of an aquatic hippo-guinea pig, the capybara can reach up to four feet in length. Few reach that size, however, as they are preyed on from the sky by harpy eagles, from the water by caimans and from the land by jaguars, pumas, ocelots and anacondas. Capybaras have adapted to these threats by breeding rapidly, swimming swiftly with their webbed feet, sleeping for short periods during the day and grazing at night. The capybara can sleep underwater, keeping only its nostrils above the surface.

Its name derives from a name meaning "master of the grasses" in the Indigenous Guarani language, and its Greek name, Hydrochaeris, means "water hog." The furry, water-dwelling beaver-pig is also hunted for its hide, which has the characteristic of stretching in one direction, and its meat. At one point the Catholic Church classified the sleek aquatic herbivore as a fish, making it an appropriate food while observing Lent. According to legend, 16th-century missionaries hinted that their converts (in modern-day Venezuela) would starve if they were not able to dine on the meat of the hardy rodent.

Capybaras are highly social, living in groups of ten or more which feature a dominant male. They communicate with a combination of purring, clicks, whistles and grunts. The gregarious web-footed grass-munchers also communicate by scent; the dominant male is identifiable by a prominent scent gland on his nose, which he uses to wipe pheromones on grasses to mark his group's territory. Young capybaras will form their own group within a group, and nurse from any of the group's females.

A capybara named Boris became a local legend in Scotland last January after he escaped from a zoo. Locals reported sightings of an animal the size of a sheep with the head of a bear, until word spread about an escaped capybara. He "led the life of Riley for months," reported the Ayrshire Post, until cold autumn weather forced Boris to seek food and warmth in the local residents' gardens and porches. He was finally captured whilst "warming his backside" at a dryer vent inside a garage, according to retired businessman David Hammond. Hammond quickly closed the garage door, and Boris was returned the zoo.

—DOJ

Capybara

Race to the Bottom to Continue for G20 Nations

Moira Peters — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:04:00 +0000

A critical analysis of the G20's Toronto Summit Declaration

TORONTO—As the 2010 G20 summit wound down behind the fences of "Fortress Toronto", more than 1,000 people had already been sent to jail. While the police attacked crowds and snatched organizers in the streets, the Group of 20 gathered to write the Toronto Summit Declaration, a 27-page document released the evening of Sunday, June 27. A critical reading of this text reveals it as evidence that those who took great risk to mobilize against the G20 did so on behalf of the health of communities and the planet.

Although the Toronto Declaration begins with a populist appeal to sustainability, job creation and financial regulation, it enshrines a commitment to force the poor and working class around the world to tighten their belts yet again as states are ordered to implement strict new austerity programs.

The Declaration proposes an ambitious new structural adjustment agenda, designed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which aims to halve First World deficits by 2013.

Shoring up financial sector abuse of public funds is one of the most pressing public concerns (bank bailouts have been denounced around the world), but the language in the Toronto Declaration does not guarantee meaningful public oversight of the financial sector.

The Declaration welcomes the recently-passed US Financial Reform Bill, which according to Newsweek "effectively anoints the existing banking elite" without putting a cap on executive compensation. Nor does the bill crack down on banks that are supposedly "too big to fail"—banks like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.

Financial oversight will remain with elites—led by the IMF and other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs, such as the Inter American Development Bank and the African Development Bank)—and the declaration proposes these institutions should become "even stronger partners" in the future.

The Declaration indicates that G20 countries will pump $350 billion into MDBs, doubling the MDBs' lending capacity, so they can "focus on lifting the lives of the poor, underwriting growth, and addressing climate change and food security."

The move towards putting MDBs on the front lines of global lending could be a response to the growing global rejection of larger International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank and the IMF. This shift is reminiscent of a move away from global trade and regional agreements like the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and the World Trade Organization, and towards smaller regional deals and bilateral agreements such as the recently-inked Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

The Toronto Declaration makes a point of noting that Haiti's debt with IFIs will be cancelled, but avoids mention of the larger debt the country owes to the Inter American Development Bank (IADB). Haiti owes less than $200 million to the World Bank and the IMF, while their outstanding debt to the IADB is upwards of $441 million. The IADB has also positioned itself to become the lead development bank behind the $10 billion given by "donor nations"—mostly OECD countries—for reconstruction of the country.

In addition to increased involvement in global economics by the IADB and by other regional development banks, the Toronto Declaration promises more privatized "development financing" for low-income countries. This could mean further subsidies for transnational corporations active in resource extraction and the maquila (sweatshop) sector.

Language in the document about increasing "global output," creating tens of millions of jobs, and reducing global "imbalances" flies in the face of the document's own recommendations for countries with higher debt-loads to continue a regulatory race to the bottom by "maintaining open markets and enhancing export competitiveness"—an openness that has historically widened global gaps, put millions of people out of work (or forced them to migrate for work) and siphoned the resources of low-income countries into the bank accounts of corporations.

The Toronto Declaration also welcomed the launch of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, which proposes to create food sovereignty with public-private partnerships. This contradicts the demands of peasant groups like Via Campesina, who stated at the end of 2009 that "the absence of the heads of state of the G8 countries [at the November 2009 Food and Agriculture Summit] has been one of the key causes of [its] dismal failure. Concrete measures were not taken to eradicate hunger, to stop the speculation on food or to hold back the expansion of agrofuels."

The Declaration asks that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Devleopment, the International Labour Organization, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) "report on the benefits of trade liberalization for employment and growth" at the next G20 meeting. States are cautioned to stick with WTO measures and avoid new "barriers to investment or trade in goods and services." Such barriers could be new environmental legislation and new forms of taxation on corporate activity.

On the topic of climate change, G20 countries that support the accord which came out of Cophenhagen last year issued a weak call for other nations to "associate with it."

Dawn Paley is an organizer with the Vancouver Media Co-op. This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Corporate Facism

RebELLEs Give Oppression the Boot

Moira Peters — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 05:19:02 +0000

New Brunswick gumbooters troupe give feminist education a kick

FREDERICTON—There are many uses for rubber boots. The obvious ones are to keep your feet dry when it rains or to keep them clean while doing yard work. Some people use them as flower pots. But the Fredericton-based NB RebELLEs are using their boots to challenge capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and all other oppression that plagues our society. They are feminist; they are synchronized; and—oppressors beware!—they will call you out to the catchy rhythm of stomping and boot-slapping.

As any of the gumbooting RebELLEs would explain, gumbooting as a dance is only a fraction of what they do.

“If you wanted a sterile description of gumbooting, it is stomping, slapping and clapping; but it is so much more than those mechanics. The richness comes from the symbolic value of its history, and its use as a tool of communication and resistance,” stated Carolyn*, one of the troupe’s gumbooters.

Gumbooting started in the mines of South Africa when slaves were given rubber boots because it was cheaper than draining water out of the mines. The slaves, working in the dark, were forbidden to talk to each other. In defiance of the slave-owners they developed a language by stomping and slapping their boots. The practice evolved out of the mines, and is now used in a spirit of celebration. The RebELLEs have appropriated the medium—originally a resistance to oppression, now an art form—to further the feminist struggle.

The NB RebELLEs were born out of the national "Waves of Resistance" Pan-Canadian Young Feminist Gathering in Montreal in 2008. They weave parts of the gathering's manifesto between bursts of percussive dance to make a stance on issues of oppression, such as the historical and ongoing colonial policies Canada embraces.

Rise against colonialism!
Down with governments that use force and intimidation to impose conformity, limit choice and reinforce the status quo.
We resist the discrimination against Muslims and Middle Eastern people, and all forms of racial profiling.
We stand in solidarity with families and communities of missing and murdered Aboriginal women.
All over Canada, stolen native land continues to be developed illegally and for profit while the government fails to uphold treaty rights.

The RebELLEs' performances outline their vision of communities committed to eradicating violence, building solidarity and developing institutions that promote justice, peace and equality.

These are big ideas, but by using the dance as a vehicle for their message, they are able to reach a wide audience.

“Gumbooting is so accessible and draws people in. We’ve been at events where everyone seemed hostile and we weren’t even sure if they were going to clap,” said Carolyn. “But we've had people come to us at the end and tell us that they had never thought of these issues. We once had a man tell us: ‘I can’t believe you managed to slip in such a feminist message.' We’re making people aware that there is still a women's movement and [women] are still not equal.”

“[The gumboot troupe] is a visible part of the feminist movement, and blatant visibility is often lacking,” said Keri, another RebELLE gumbooter.

The NB RebELLEs do not preach to the converted, nor do they soften their message to avoid offending the audience. They performed at two ”Women in Business” conferences on International Women's Day this year. Many of the women in attendance worked in a corporate environment.

“Capitalism hurts women,” said the RebELLEs during the performance. “Pay inequity, insufficient parental leave, unacceptable childcare, unaffordable childcare, double standards, sexual harassment, glass ceiling, sweatshops. Rise against capitalism!”

“We felt that it was important to speak specifically about how capitalism hurts women, so we adapted our message for it. That was the only time that I’ve actually noticed people walking out of our performance,” said Keri, laughing. “It was antithetical to their conference and provocative, but we wanted to show up and challenge people, their assumptions, and the way they exist in the world.”

Keri explained that most performances have been well received. “I’ve had an intergenerational spectrum of people come to me and tell me, ‘That was amazing!’ I even had a lady ask, ‘Can I gumboot with my cane?’"

Keri reflected on a RebELLEs performance at a memorial vigil in Miramichi for the victims of the Montreal Massacre. "Right before we took the stage, some of the troupe met a survivor of domestic abuse who had just recently started talking openly about her experience. During our performance, there is a part when I talk about feminism and give our definition of it while the rest of the gumbooters stand with their fists in the air. At that point, the woman was sitting in the audience and she raised her fist with us, which then prompted the majority of the crowd to do the same. It was such a powerful moment."

*The gumbooters requested that only their first names be used in this article.

The RebELLEs are recruiting in the fall! Check out their blog for the full manifesto and more information.

Marie-Christine Allard is a member of the New Brunswick Media Co-op. An original version of this story was published by the New Brunswick Media Co-op.

Rebelles Panorama

Don't Rape, Part 3

Kaley — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:31:39 +0000

Believe me

Disclaimer: Some scenes in this story may be triggering for people who have experienced sexual assault. Names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of sexual assault survivors.

HALIFAX—After his first day of grade 12, Jason and his two buddies picked up a couple eight-packs from the cold beer store in his Nova Scotian hometown and drank them behind the hockey rink. Since junior high, Jason had averaged between a pint and a quart of hard liquor per day. When they left for a friend’s house, Jason trailed behind the rest of the guys. He had drunk more than usual. A Kids Help Phone poster grabbed his attention. Lately he had thought about calling the hotline. He took out his phone and dialed the 1-800 number.

“I need help,” he said when the woman answered. He began to sob and couldn’t stop. She asked if he was in danger. He said no; it had happened 10 years ago.

His friends saw his tears and asked what was wrong. They pushed him until he told his story out loud for the first time.

When Jason was eight, his parents paid a babysitter to take care of him over a period of a year and a half. The touching started with innocent games of tag, which turned into wrestling and eventually into groping, each time with less and less clothing, “encroaching on boundaries until they started to disappear.”

The babysitter—an older boy in high school—said no one would believe Jason if he told, and that his parents would be mad at him, so Jason stayed quiet.

“I shut down. I was like a shell and I kind of hung out inside that shell. I stopped using ‘feeling’ words. Anytime someone asked me what was going on I said ‘regular’ or ‘neutral’ or ‘average.’ I stopped being expressive at all.”

His parents took him to a therapist. There was a book in the therapist’s office about a kid who had a secret but couldn’t tell anyone.

“I was screaming inside myself that I recognized exactly what that was about.” But he couldn’t say it out loud.

When he was 13, Jason began drinking to deal with his trauma, which manifested into night terrors. Nearly every night for five years he was scared to fall asleep. Sometimes he woke up paralyzed, able to open his eyes but unable to move his body. Other times, as he drifted off, he hallucinated scenes of torture and death. Often he couldn’t wake up from vivid nightmares. To cope, he began taking shots of vodka each night before bed. Jason coaxed cab drivers to buy him liquor with the money he saved from his paper routes and computer cleaning business.

Jason, now 26, has been sober for two years. “I’m by no means past it, but it’s two years since it’s controlled everything I do. It was live or die because I ended up in hospital trying not to live anymore. It was either get on with living, or choose the other...” he says, trailing off.

His problem had peaked in his 20s when he downed a bottle of pills with a quart of vodka and called in sick to work. He vaguely remembers the police in his apartment. He woke up in hospital.

One in six boys and one in four girls are sexually assaulted before the age of 16 according to Statistics Canada.

Though males make up the smaller side of rape statistics for any demographic, Jackie Stevens of the Avalon Sexual Assault Centre says the root cause is still the power dynamic of one person exerting control over another.

“Predominantly males who are sexually abused are sexually abused by other males, and statistically people who are committing sexual violence mostly are men,” she says.

“Particularly if it’s a male assaulting another male, that is the ultimate way—how do you control another man? By reducing him to the equivalent of a woman, who is not your equal. How do you do that? Through sexual domination. The flip side, for women who are sexually abusing, [is that] they don’t have power or control, so how do you get power and control? By violently dominating someone else. I would see sexual violence as a tool for that power control.”

Anyone can be sexually assaulted and anyone can sexually assault, Stevens says. The epidemic surpasses all societal barriers. However, layers of oppression contribute to the initial problem, and make it harder for vulnerable people to get help.

When Jason told his mom he was sexually abused, she said it didn’t happen, that he made it up.

“As a symptom, you learn to manipulate and that involves a lot of lies and storytelling and that kind of stuff, which I used to do habitually,” Jason said. “So she wasn’t willing to go down that road at all.”

“That’s one of the most common things that we hear from people,” Stevens says. “That they’re not believed, or that they’re afraid they’re not going to be believed, or they’re going to be blamed in some way for it.”

She says because our society still subscribes to myths and stereotypes surrounding who gets sexually assaulted and why, it is easier for us to doubt a person who says they were raped. If someone has previously lied to their parents or friends, or if they are mentally ill, we are sometimes quicker to blame or disbelieve that person than to immediately accept that they were raped.

Jason stayed quiet for 10 years because society perceives sexual assault as “something different, and by calling attention to that, it makes you different.”

Even today, he doesn’t talk openly about it.

“You don’t want that to be the only label you have... By broadcasting that you just get terrified that it’s all people are going to see.”

At the time, Jason partially blamed himself. His babysitter told him he had wanted, and started, the abuse.

“Initially you get terrified that it was you who did something wrong, it was you who was in trouble, it was you who would be punished. There’s a panic that you’re not in control of your own body anyway. So losing that control to someone else gives you such a fear that it makes irrational thoughts rational. Terror supercedes what your rational course of actions would be.”

“For a lot of people there’s still that shame and fear attached to being sexually violated that would certainly keep them from wanting to come forward because they’re not sure how people will perceive them,” Stevens says.

The Avalon Centre says believing and supporting a friend or family member who tells you they were sexually abused are the most important things you can do.

A step-by-step website, advises the following actions if someone tells you he or she has been sexually abused:

Believe her (or him) without condition.

Speak to her (or him) without blame or judgment.

Do not judge her (or his) response to the assault.

Allow her (or him) to make the decision about what happens next.

Take care of yourself.

This story is Part 3 of a three-part series.
read Part 1
read Part 2.

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