From resist at resist.ca  Mon Aug  4 10:22:03 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 04 Aug 2003 10:22:03 -0700
Subject: [news] Queers Challenge BC Liberals, Police
Message-ID: <1060017722.904.149.camel@murray>


- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

QUEERS CHALLENGE BC LIBERALS, POLICE

SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 2003 - For the second year in a row, Queers United 
Against Kapitalism (QUAK) crashed the Pride Parade for BC Liberal MLA 
Lorne Mayencourt.  The out gay politician has been targeted by QUAK for 
the past year for his complicity in his government's attacks on the queer 
community.

This year Pride was kicked off early with a "Proud of What" poster and 
advertising campaign against MLA Lorne Mayencourt.  Supported by various 
queer union, student and community groups, the poster exposes the harsh 
realities of 2 years of Liberal rule.

The poster was also distributed along the parade route, as QUAK marchers 
jumped in to join Lorne Mayencourt in marching.  The group took to the 
streets during the Pride Parade to directly challenge the presence of 
participants like Lorne Mayencourt and the police.

We currently have a government and a gay MLA who march in our parade, 
while they cut our human rights, health care, and services for queer 
youth.   At the same time there have been numerous recent incidents of gay 
bashings where the police proved to be more than useless.  In the past 
month, during 2 separate gay bashings, the police failed to take witness 
statements and choose to not apprehend the bashers - despite being given a 
license plate number in one case and the bashers still being on the scene 
in another.  Enough is enough.

The Vancouver Pride Society named this year's parade 'marshal' us - the 
queer community.  They go on to state in this year's Pride guide, "I'm 
proud of you because you are courageous and willing to defend what is 
right and good.  I am proud of you because you are a strong individual 
with powerful convictions."

QUAK too is proud of the history of resistance and struggle waged by 
queers for justice. QUAK and other fed up queers will not stand by 
silently as our community comes under attack.  Nor will we allow our 
attackers to hijack our community events for their flailing public 
relations.

QUAK is committed to helping build a community that is strong enough to 
demand more than later bar hours.  Gay politicians and the police clearly 
aren't doing anything for our community.  Today's action is just part of 
QUAK's on-going campaign to expose the hypocrisy, and oppose the agenda, 
of Pride marchers like the BC Liberals and the police.

For more information on QUAK and our Pride activities, contact 
quak at resist.ca or call 604-682-3269 ext. 9915.

The "Proud of What" poster can be downloaded from: 
http://quak.resist.ca/posters

Happy Pride
See you in the streets
QUAK!

quak at resist.ca
604-682-3269 ext.9915

- 30 -




From resist at resist.ca  Tue Aug  5 00:36:30 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 05 Aug 2003 00:36:30 -0700
Subject: [news] 
	[Fwd: [antiwar-van] TORONTO WEAPONS INSPECTORS DECLARED GUILTY]
Message-ID: <1060068990.10672.10.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: hanna kawas <hkawas at email.msn.com>
To: Antiwar-Van at Resist.Ca <antiwar-van at resist.ca>
Subject: [antiwar-van] TORONTO WEAPONS INSPECTORS DECLARED GUILTY
Date: 04 Aug 2003 21:48:31 -0700

http://www.montrealmuslimnews.net/weapons.htm

TORONTO WEAPONS INSPECTORS DECLARED GUILTY

EIGHT PEOPLE FINED FOR THEIR ROLE IN PROTEST AGAINST THE PENDING ESCALATION
OF THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ

by Homes Not Bombs

TORONTO, AUGUST 4, 2003 -- Eight citizen weapons inspectors were declared
guilty of trespassing and fined $75 in Ontario Provincial Court for their
role in a nonviolent action at military manufacturer Northrop Grumman/Litton
Systems Canada on Martin Luther King Day, January 20. The action, organized
by Homes not Bombs, had been designed to show that while weapons inspectors
gained unfettered access to suspected weapons facilities in Baghdad,
Canadians were hauled away in handcuffs for undertaking similar actions at
home.

Before the trial even began, it was clear that this was no ordinary day in
the provincial court on Keele Street. Access to these courts, normally
smooth, was slowed up ONLY at court 701, site for the trial, as all
spectators and defendants were searched with airport-style security
equipment.

Once inside, a meeting was arranged with Crown counsel Rebecca Rosenberg. We
told her that we would be happy to concede identification and the fact that
we were there on January 20, all of which was contained in the police
report. All we asked was that she read that report into the record so we
would not have to sit through eight pairs of cops testifying about who we
were and where we were arrested.

She seemed bewildered that we would concede such facts, but "reluctantly"
said she would go along with it. She's not used to seeing people who come to
court prepared to take responsibility for their actions.

She then looked at the file and said that she was only going to proceed
against 73-years-young Ed Babb, a Burlington resident whose arresting
officer was the only one who had yet shown up in court. After a quick
huddle, we told her that either the charge should be withdrawn against Ed or
that all eight of us should be proceeded against, especially since we were
already admitting the facts of the case. Unfamiliar with the concept of
solidarity, Rosenberg said she could not in good conscience do that. We
assured her that, in good conscience, we could, and explained how she could
go about it. Once another crown butted his head into the conversation and
realized what an open and shut case this could be, he urged Rosenberg to
take the deal.

Happy that we could now have our trial and explain our actions, the court
was sent into a flux with the first plea of the day. It's typical of court
language that during the arraignment, there is no such thing as context or
morality, only meaningless terms which are completely divorced from the
action which resulted in the charge.

Thus, when the chief clerk stood up and said, "You, Francis Barningham, were
charged with the offence of fail to leave premises on or about the 20th day
of January in the vicinity of Toronto, how do you plead?" Barney responded,
"I plead for an end to war."

The sullen "justice of the peace", a Mr. Flaherty, reacted with rage. "NOT
IN MY COURT! You plead guilty or not guilty. How do you plead!?!?"

Again, Barney calmly responded that he pleaded for an end to war and that
this was his plea. It directly connected his presence in the court to his
presence at the weapons of mass destruction factory where he had been
arrested six months earlier.

The JP started laying down the rules and, his patience already at the end of
its tether, tried once more. "I plead for an end to war, and not guilty,"
Barney smiled, and sat back down.

And so it went with each defendant, with a plea for an end to war, for the
enforcement of the Nuremberg Principles, for books not bombs, for world
peace, all affixed to a not guilty. The JP held his breath and looked at the
clock. This was going to be a long afternoon.

The Crown's case was short. Shorter, in fact, than we had agreed to. We had
agreed that she would read into the record the police report, which, in one
of those rare occasions, actually got our reasons for protesting correct.
Since this was part of the case we were willing to admit against us, we
figured this was a plus, as it would prevent the JP from interjecting with
his "irrelevant" declarations every time we tried to explain the whys of our
action.

But Rosenberg was in no mood to stick to our agreement. By the end of the
first paragraph, she had omitted the words "citizen inspectors" in
describing the group. In the line where police described us demonstrating,
she omitted "against the pending military action of the United States of
America against Iraq." In the line that said why we were attempting to
enter, she neglected to say "to inspect the premises for mechanisms of war."
Again, this wasn't us speaking, this was the police description.

We objected and had those words re-inserted to the record, and began our
defence. Right off the bat, JP Flaherty objected to the relevance of our
testimony regarding UN Reports, reports from International Physicians
organizations, and reports on the effects of depleted uranium weapons, as
irrelevant. We suggested that the "learned" JP actually look at the trespass
to property act, where he was surprised to learn that a defence against
trespass is listed under "colour of right, when "the person charged
reasonably believed that he or she had title to or an interest in the land
that entitled him or her to do the act complained of."

Although he accepted the reports as exhibits, he never bothered to look at
them.

We explained that the sincere belief in our need to be on Northrop Grumman
property was contained in our citizen inspection certificate, which outlined
21 different international and domestic violations of law which we linked to
the company's "first sight, first kill" equipment, which includes the
guidance system for the cruise missile.

We proceeded to provide the JP with letters announcing our intention to
attend the factory and asking for dialogue (a request which was completely
rejected at the time).

There followed powerful personal testimonies from the various defendants.
Barney Barningham described what it was like to be a 7-year-old boy going
into air raid shelters during the bombing of London in WWII, waking up and
wondering if friends and family would still be alive.

Diana Ralph spoke both of her Jewish roots and of her father, an
international lawyer who worked at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. "All
our lives the importance of the Nuremberg Principles were drummed into us,"
Ralph explained, noting that her brother was thrown out of ROTC during the
Vietnam War for refusing to obey an illegal order. Ralph pointed out that
billions of public dollars have flowed into Northrop Grumman, and now the
company is working on space warfare "which threatens the very existence of
life on earth."

Diana's testimony was followed by Kevin Shimmin's, who spoke both of his
obligations as a world citizen as well as from his frustration that
Canadians all too often blame the U.S. for war without looking into our own
backyard. He spoke specifically of seeing the Bell helicopters, manufactured
in Canada, wreaking death and destruction in Sri Lanka, where he had worked
as a human rights reporter. He reminded the court of the urgency of the
situation at the time of the protest, coming six days before a key U.N.
meeting which was to decide whether or not a green light would be given for
the invasion of Iraq.

Kirsten Romaine spoke movingly of the role that Quakers play in opposing
war, noting "we must at every opportunity protest war and the preparations
for war. And Northrop Grumman is always in a state of preparing for war."

The testimony closed with Ed Babb, who told the JP that he went into combat
for the very first time at the age of 21 in 1951 in Korea. On that day, he
said, "many people were blown to bits. One man was blown up so that he would
have stretched from one end of this room to the other." He said he hated to
see companies like Northrop Grumman profiting from the waging of war, and
that he was proud in his own way to try and inhibit warmaking at the action.

Matthew Behrens provided summation, pointing out that in a variety of Homes
not Bombs acquittals, judges of the Ontario court have concluded time and
again that protests should not only be allowed, but encouraged,. In such a
context, he asked, how can peaceful protests be encouraged if they are met
with arrests, charges, and the potential for a fine, in this instance, as
high as $2,000?

The defence summation continued with cases based on defence of
necessity--that the action was necessary as part of the worldwide
condemnation of the impending escalation of the war. An attempt to enter a
U.S. case, which is commonly done in Canada for informing a defence, was
rejected out of hand. "I do not have jurisdiction in Virginia, in Badgdad,
or in Seoul. I have jurisdiction in Toronto," Flaherty stated. A reminder
that the Supreme Court of Canada has often looked to U.S. decisions for
assistance in Charter interpretation was met with glassy eyed silence.

The Crown's reply was short and pointed. We had no right to be there, she
said, because the corporation is private, and what it does is legal
(notwithstanding the 21 legal violations which we found its weapons
production posed). Without having a chance for us to respond to her
arguments, the JP told us that we were all guilty, including Gary Connally
and Andrew Loucks, who were represented by agent.. How could we not be
guilty, he asked. Though impressed with the personal testimonies, the law is
the law. His reasons were pretty standard, from "the court has extended you
a generous amount of time to present your case" (as if mounting a defence is
a privilege to be "granted" rather than a right to be respected) to the
"there are other ways" to protest and make your voices heard rant..

In that suddenly silent moment when everyone looked around following the
passing of sentence--a $75 dollar fine, equivalent to the fine of a
restaurateur who earlier in the afternoon had been convicted for unsanitary
conditions, far more of a threat than us -- Behrens stood up and called out
to the JP, "We again have an inkling of how difficult it must have been for
German citizens to hold to account their own regime, whose courts were the
legal arm of genocide at Auschwitz and Dachau. You should read your
Nuremberg Principles." The flustered JP ordered security to remove Behrens
from the court.

But in one of those nice moments, when you wonder if it's worth such an
exercise in making a case to someone not willing to hear, we looked around
as we left and saw that all of the police had stayed for the whole trial, as
they normally leave after the crown's case. They seemed intent on listening.
And as we walked past the glassed-in windows of the court clerk's office, a
group of young women, who had been in court earlier on their lunch breaks
for the first part of our trial, stood and applauded. They had gotten the
message and were very supportive of the concept that one must do everything
one can to stop mass murder, and that things like the Nuremberg Principles
are not simply words on paper, but laws which should be respected and
adhered to.

May they one day sit on the judicial benches of this country.

(for more information: Homes not Bombs, PO Box 73620, 509 St. Clair Ave.
West, Toronto, ON M6C 1C0, tasc at web.ca,  (416) 651-5800.)




----

_______________________________________________
antiwar-van mailing list
antiwar-van at lists.resist.ca
https://lists.resist.ca/mailman/listinfo/antiwar-van



From resist at resist.ca  Tue Aug  5 20:14:20 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 05 Aug 2003 20:14:20 -0700
Subject: [news] Montreal ISM Activist Soledad Delgado Detained by Israeli
	Occupation Forces in West Bank
Message-ID: <1060139660.10660.71.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Stefan Christoff <christoff at dojo.tao.ca>
To: pga at riseup.net
Subject: [pga] URGENT! Montreal ISM Activist Soledad Delgado Detained by Israeli Occupation Forces in West Bank
Date: 05 Aug 2003 11:20:23 -0400


URGENT! Montreal Activist Detained by
Israeli Occupation Forces in West Bank

Tuesday August 5th 11am EST

Soledad Delgado a Montreal area activist, is being illegally detained in
Palestine by the Israeli Occupation Forces. She, along with 46 other
Palestinian and foreign nationals are participating in the Freedom Summer
Campaign with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Palestine .
They were captured last night during an action organized by the ISM which
was attempting to prevent the demolition of a home in Masha Palestine
(near Nabulus) that lies in the projected path of the Israeli separation
(Apartheid) Wall.

The international activists were rounded up at early in the morning on
August 5th 2003 and taken to the Ariel police station near Naulus where
they are currently being held without charges.

ISM-Montreal has spoken with Delgado & other activists currently being
detained. ISM Montreal is asking Canadians to pressure the Canadian
Department of Foreign Affairs.

We are demanding that Canada uphold it's official diplomatic position of
non-recognition of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian
territory, and vigorously protest to the Israeli government their
detention of a Canadian national, and demand her immediate and
unconditional release.

Those being held are also demanding an end to the ongoing harassment
campaign by Israeli security forces against local and international
activists resisting the occupation. The illegality and immorality of the
detention of these activists - along with the continued imprisonment of
over 6000 Palestinian political prisoners - is further underscored by the
illegality and immorality of the occupation of Palestinian territories.
While the Israeli state is likely planning to deport the international
activists, ISM Montreal stands with international law which states that
Israeli has no legal authority to determine who does and does not enter
the Palestinian territories.

For more information on the details of the action and what you can do to
help, please see the ISM Palestine release included below.

Contact the International Solidarity Movement of Montreal at: 514.583.4890

----> URGENT ACTION ALERT

Urgent Action Requested:
Demand Canada:

1) Uphold Canada's official diplomatic position of non-recognition of the
illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
2) Protest the Israeli governments detention of a Canadian national /
Soledad Delgado.
3) Demand of the Israeli government her immediate and unconditional
release.

Pressure the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT) at:
613-944-6788, or toll free (from within Canada only) at 1-800-267-6788.

Pressure the Canadian government Embassy in Tel Aviv
(www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/telaviv)
Telephone : +011-972-3-636-3300
Fax : +011-972-3-636-3383
E-mail : taviv at dfait-maeci.gc.ca

The Israeli Embassy in Canada:
50 O'Connor Street,
Suite 1005,
Ottawa Ontario
KlP 6L2
Tel: (613)567-6450
Fax: (613)237-8865
E-mail: embisrott at cyberus.ca

Please cc your emails to montreal at ismcanada.org

----> PROTEST ILLEGAL DETENTION OF ISM ACTIVISTS IN ISRAEL CALL:

1) The Ariel police station: 011 972 3 906 5444 or 011 972 3 906 530

2) Israeli Minister of Interior, Tel: 011 972 2 629 4701; Fax:
011 972-2-629-4750

3) Israeli Foreign Minister, Silvan Shalom Fax: +972 2 5303704 e-mail:
sar at mofa.gov.il

4) Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz Fax: +972 3 6916940, 6976990 e-mail: :
sar at mod.gov.il

5) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fax: 972 2 566-4838 or 651-3955 or 651-2631

Contact the Israeli Embassy in your country:
http://www.embassyworld.com/embassy/israel1.htm

---> BACKGROUND:

Peace Activists Threatened by the Israeli Military
Tuesday, August 5, 2003, Mas'ha, Occupied Palestine

Bulldozers destroying land in preparation for the Apartheid Wall are now
less than 10 meters away from the threatened house in Masha. Over 30
peace activists are maintaining a round-the-clock vigil at the home in
order to block its imminent destruction.

Two Israeli activists were detained and removed from the site Monday,
August 4 and spent several hours in the Ariel police station before being
released.

Now, army security and security personnel have threatened to remove and/or
peace activists before work resumes at 7:30 a.m.

Activists have pledged not to leave the site and are planning to block the
bulldozers from demolishing the property or continuing construction on the
Apartheid Wall.

If construction of the wall is completed as planned, the A'amer family
will be imprisoned on less than 100 square meters of land between the Wall
and the Elkana settlement fence.

Activists are demanding:

* A written guarantee from the Israeli Defense Ministry that the Aamer
family house will not be cut off from the village
* Immediate repair of all damage already done to the house
* An end to construction of the wall and dismantling of all parts already
constructed
* Repair and compensation for all damages already caused to the house
* Return of all land confiscated due to construction of theWall
* Dismantling of the settlements
* End to the Occupation

For more information contact:

ISM Media Office: 011 972 2 277 4602

----------------------









From christoff at dojo.tao.ca  Wed Aug  6 09:32:47 2003
From: christoff at dojo.tao.ca (Stefan Christoff)
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 12:32:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [news] CKUT Radio: ISM Activists Arrested Protesting Apartheid Wall
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0308061232350.29365-100000@dojo.tao.ca>


CKUT Radio: ISM Activists Arrested Protesting Apartheid Wall

Listen to an interview with Greta an activist with the International
Solidarity Movement (ISM) about the recent arrest of over 40 Palestinian
and foreign nationals participating in the Freedom Summer Campaign with
ISM in Palestine. The arrests took place on August 5th, during an action
organized by the ISM. The activists where attempting to prevent the
demolition of a home in Mas'ha Palestine that lies in the projected path
of the Apartheid Wall. The Israeli military beat several of the activists,
one seriously enough that his ribs may be cracked.

-> To listen to the interview visit:
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=7541

-> To get more information on the International Solidarity Movement visit:
http://www.palsolidarity.org

----------------------




From christoff at dojo.tao.ca  Tue Aug 12 14:31:47 2003
From: christoff at dojo.tao.ca (Stefan Christoff)
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 17:31:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [news] CKUT Radio: Detainees Hunger Strike in New Jersey 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0308121731340.21308-100000@dojo.tao.ca>


CKUT Radio: Detainees Hunger Strike in New Jersey

Listen to an interview with Jeannette Gabriel of the New Jersey Civil
Rights Defense Committee about the ongoing hunger strike of two detainees
at the Passaic County Jail in New Jersey. The hunger striking is in
protest of systemic injustices of US immigration policy. Nigel Moccado, a
legal resident from India, has been on a hunger strike for over 50 days,
and Henmauth Mohabir, a permanent resident from Guyana, has completed a
fourth week without solid food.

Both detainees join the untold thousands of immigrants being held in
Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service jails without being charged
with any crime. In both cases the detainees are in jail because of past
offenses. The Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of
Citizenship and Immigration Services - formerly the INS - have a green
light to forego due process within the context of the Bush Administrations
War of Terror.

-> To listen to the interview with Jeannette Gabriel visit:
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=7590

-> For more information visit New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee:
http://www.nj-civilrights.org

-----------------------------------------------

NJCRDC New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee
STATEMENT OF THE NEW JERSEY CIVIL RIGHTS DEFENSE COMMITTEE

I want to begin with a brief quotation from Dalia Hashad, an ACLU
attorney, which appeared in the Herald News last Saturday:

"Twenty or 30 years from now this will be remembered as one of the
bleakest periods in American history. Don't let it be said that you did
nothing about it."  We are the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee,
a group of citizen activists from this area. And we are here to do
something about it.

We are here to express solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the
Passaic County Jail--all of them. But we are here particularly to applaud
the courage and perseverance of two of the immigrant detainees being held
here, among the hundreds who have been held over the past couple of years,
and among the many who have previously held hunger strikes in this
facility.

They are Nigel Maccado and Hemnauth Mohabir.

Nigel is from India. He is 54 years old. He has been subsisting on only
water and juice for over three weeks. He has a heart condition and is
being denied medication. Hemnauth, from Guyana, is 42. He is a permanent
resident with a green card. He has been virtually without solid food for
over two weeks. He is a musician and an artist. He was detained at JFK
last April, as he returned from Guyana after a visit to his mother in a
medical emergency. He has been denied contact with his wife and child
since. Hemnauth has written to us of the conditions inside the Passaic
County Jail.

'The food is very small in portion and strange in combination, like
macaroni and peanut butter....The jail is roach infested, the bathroom
shower goes from 160 to 60 degrees in one minute....The police do
shakedowns...on a regular basis with a dog....A policeman would be
marching on the metal table yelling for us to keep our heads on the bars,
the dog would be barking and jumping....One day a detainee was in the
bathroom during a shakedown, he was pulled out and beaten. I saw his head
bleeding....

'In March [during an earlier hunger strike], 8 of us was picked put and
put in the bullpen...the police came in the dorm with their dog. It jumped
at one prisoner and the prisoner pulled away. A policeman ran up ...and
hit him on his head and pushed his face into the ground. One... came up
and push his finger in my face and said, Do you want to say something? Two
more officers jumped on the other prisoner and was trying to handcuff
him....I saw them hitting him in his ribs and he was yelling "Look, my
hands, put the cuffs on!"...On the night of the second day they came to do
roll call with a dog. A senior officer...started cursing me, he said get
off your bed you f-ing asshole" I said it didn't call for that. Then he
and another officer came in and put us against the wall. The first officer
slammed my ribs. I said I'm sorry, please don't hit me, then he hit me
harder. I felt my breath cut for a minute....Later they came in in full
madness [with a dog]. They threw all the mattresses on the floor and
scattered all our papers, took our towels and sheets and put them in the
toilet, and tore up a Bible...They [scare us] ending our hunger
strike...Then...they came upstairs in the dorm with a pellet gun a dog and
metal detectors and searched and took all the toilet paper, detergent, and
extra blankets. They poured lotions on the towels. There were reports of
other beatings. They spit on one detainee. They insult us, saying "You
f-ing immigrants." I can go on and on....'







From resist at resist.ca  Tue Aug 12 15:39:55 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 12 Aug 2003 15:39:55 -0700
Subject: [news] Canada's role in A-Bomb on Japan
Message-ID: <1060727995.24439.361.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Hari Sharma <sharma at sfu.ca>
Subject: [pr-x] Canada's role in A-Bomb on Japan
Date: 12 Aug 2003 12:06:34 -0700

Dear friends:

You may find this article by John Price (on the question of Canada's 
role in the 1945 a-bombing of Japan) of interest to you.

hari

>>
>>Our own atomic victims
>>An uncaring, racist Canadian government added men of the Dene to 
>>Hiroshima's toll
>>
>>John Price
>>Special to Times Colonist
>>
>>
>>Saturday, August 09, 2003
>>
>>Photo
>>CREDIT: U.S. Army Air Forces
>>
>>Hiroshima after the first operational atomic bomb was dropped on 
>>Aug. 6, 1945. The Dene of Deline joined its victims, writes John 
>>Price, when the Canadian government conscripted them to transport 
>>uranium ore for the atomic effort, keeping from them the knowledge 
>>that radioactivity would likely kill them. There is now some doubt 
>>that the bomb was needed to force Japan's surrender without an 
>>invasion.
>>
>>
>>Five years ago, six members of the Sahtu group of the Dene First 
>>Nation from Deline on Great Bear Lake in Alberta travelled to Japan 
>>to attend the commemorative ceremonies for the victims of the 
>>atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
>>
>>They went to Japan to express their regret for the suffering that 
>>the atomic bombs caused. They went to highlight the fact that they, 
>>too, had unwittingly been victimized by the atomic bombs.
>>
>>In the 1940s, the Canadian government conscripted Dene of Deline to 
>>transport uranium ore on their backs from the Eldorado mine near 
>>Deline that was then processed into fuel for the atomic program.
>>
>>Today, most of the men of that group of Dene are dead -- their 
>>bodies ravaged by cancer from their exposure to uranium, a danger 
>>of which the Canadian government was aware, but neglected to tell 
>>the Dene ore carriers.
>>
>>Racism was deeply rooted in Canada during the war years -- it made 
>>the Dene expendable, it justified the internment and dispossession 
>>of Japanese-Canadians, and it made it easier to decide to 
>>obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
>>
>>Indeed, immediately after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, 
>>Canada's prime minister at the time, Mackenzie King, reflected: "It 
>>is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the 
>>Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe."
>>
>>The Canadian government should take responsibility not only for 
>>what happened to the Dene ore carriers, it should also be 
>>aggressively educating Canadians about our government's role in the 
>>atomic holocaust and it should be sending government 
>>representatives to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
>>
>>The wartime nuclear program was a tri-national venture that 
>>included not only the United States but also Great Britain and 
>>Canada. In a statement released shortly after the atomic bombing, 
>>C.D. Howe, Canada's minister of munitions and supply, boasted of 
>>his pleasure that "Canadian scientists and Canadian institutions 
>>have played an intimate part and have been associated in an 
>>effective way with this great scientific development."
>>
>>Not only did the Canadian government help provide uranium and heavy 
>>water for the wartime program, it also mobilized hundreds of 
>>scientists and technicians to work with British and American 
>>scientists. Furthermore, the Canadian government, along with the 
>>British and Americans, sat on the Combined Policy Committee that 
>>oversaw the co-ordinated effort to develop the bomb. At 9:30 a.m. 
>>on July 4, 1945, this committee, with Canada's Howe in attendance, 
>>officially agreed that the bomb should be used on Japan.
>>
>>Indeed, King knew in the summer of 1945 that the bomb would be 
>>dropped. In his diary, he mused: "It makes one very sad at heart to 
>>think of the loss of life that it will occasion among innocent 
>>people as well as those that are guilty. It can only be justified 
>>through the knowledge that for one life destroyed, it may save 
>>hundreds of thousands and bring this terrible war quickly to a 
>>close."
>>
>>We now know that King had deluded himself. In Hiroshima for 
>>example, of the 70,000 who died instantly, only 3,243 were military 
>>troops -- the rest were civilians.
>>
>>Traditional Canadian historians suggest that the atomic bomb was 
>>necessary to end the war and save Allied lives. We now know that 
>>such was not the case. According to J. Samuel Walker, chief 
>>historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: "The consensus 
>>among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion 
>>of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is 
>>clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that (U.S. 
>>President Harry S.) Truman and his advisers knew it."
>>
>>In 1996, the International Court of Justice (The Hague) ruled that 
>>the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to 
>>international law. Yet today, the United States continues to 
>>maintain a huge nuclear arsenal and hopes to ensure its nuclear 
>>superiority by implementing a new Star Wars program.
>>
>>This is not the way to convince other nuclear countries to disarm, 
>>let alone convince North Korea to abandon its hope for nuclear 
>>weapons.
>>
>>As the first to use nuclear weapons, it is up to the U.S. 
>>government to take unilateral steps towards disarmament. The 
>>Canadian government should encourage it to do so. Supporting a new 
>>Star Wars program is not the way forward and would be to turn our 
>>backs on the lessons from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
>>
>>John Price teaches Japanese history at the University of Victoria.
>>
>>?? Copyright 2003 Times Colonist (Victoria)
>>
>>John Price
>>University of Victoria
>>Tel: 250 721-7386 (W)
>>Fax: 250 721-8772

Project-X list:
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From gflett1 at shaw.ca  Wed Aug 13 20:53:06 2003
From: gflett1 at shaw.ca (Gordon Flett)
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 20:53:06 -0700
Subject: [news] Amazing Stand by First Nations and Workers In Carnaby
Message-ID: <3F3B07A2.EF888292@shaw.ca>

    Pretty incredible what is going on up in Carnaby right now.

      http://www.cep298.com/negotiations/carnaby.html

                             August 9, 2003
                      More arrests at Carnaby today
        80 year old First Nations grandmother chained herself to
                                 trucks

     Dan Veniez Manager of the New Skeena tried to remove equipment
     from the Carnaby saw mill in Hazelton. The workers have been
     out of work for 2 years and are still owed about 3.7 million
     dollars.

     First Nations and CEP workers proudly stood together to
     prevent the equipment from leaving the site to be sold off by
     Dan Veniez. As the RCMP arrested one person, another person
     would step in to their place.

     If you went into a bank and took $20,000.00 out at gunpoint
     the RCMP would go after you. But if you take 3.7 million
     dollars from people you do not even have to wear a mask, and
     the RCMP will be forced to help you.

     WHAT CAN YOU DO?

     * Send Mo Azaz, President of Local 404, a message of
     solidarity by email to mo at bulkley.net
     * Email Dan Veniez at VeniezD at Skeena.com and tell him he
     should sell the mill to the people like he said he would.
     * Contact B.C. Minister of Forests Michael de Jong by email
     FOR.minister at gems2.gov.bc.ca or by fax: 1-250-387-1040  and
     ask him to have the government turn the mill over to the
     workers.
     * Send funds by check, bank draft, or money order, made out to
     CEP
     Local 404: Save Carnaby, to the following address:
                    PO Box 160
                    New Hazelton, BC, Canada
                    V0J 2J0




     --------------------------------------------------------------
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From resist at resist.ca  Thu Aug 14 08:52:46 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 14 Aug 2003 08:52:46 -0700
Subject: [news] Press Conference in support of Daschevi family
Message-ID: <1060876366.24439.585.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: OCAP <ocap at tao.ca>
To: ocap at lists.tao.ca
Subject: IMPORTANT: Press Conference in support of Daschevi family
Date: 14 Aug 2003 11:09:35 -0400


PRESS CONFERENCE
FRIDAY AUGUST 15, 2003
11am
Immigration Canada- Ontario Regional Office
25 St. Clair W. (just west of Yonge)

On Tuesday August 12, Milton and Jane Daschevi, along with their two young
children defied Immigration Canada by refusing to report for their
deportation flight out of Pearson International airport.  The family has
done what they have to do in order to stay in Canada until their
Humanitarian and Compassionate application for status, can be heard.  In
Brazil, Ms. Daschevi was a radio station manager and anti-police brutality
activist. Because of her leadership on this issue, the family was
harrassed and hounded by local police.  Immediately after leaving Brazil,
their house was found burned to the ground.  The family seems sure to face
more of the same, if they are forced to return.

The Daschevi story has galvanized widespread support and sympathy within
their Church community and  well beyond.  The family has made a very
difficult decision to move underground, hiding from the arrest warrant of
Immigration Canada.  Across the country other individuals and families are
having to make the same difficult choice all the time.  At this Press
Conference on Friday August 15th,  we will show our support for the
families and demand that they be allowed to come out of hiding, be granted
landed status, and that across Canada there be justice for all non-status
people.

	Speakers include:
	Darryl Grey- Reverend for Union United Church of Montreal ,
	currently giving sanctuary for the third time and Chair of the
	Interfaith Sanctuary Coalition of Quebec.

	Member of the Action Committee against Racial Profiling of
	Pakistanis, Montreal

	Member of the Angolan Aid Committee of Toronto

	Steve Watson of the Canadian Auto Workers Union

	Representative of the Central Ontario Regional Council of
	Carpenters, Drywall and allied Workers

	Carlos Cordoza of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty


			       **
		   Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
	517 College Street, Suite 234  Toronto, Ontario  M6G 4A2
	     416-925-6939   ocap at tao.ca   www.ocap.ca
			       **




From resist at resist.ca  Sat Aug 16 09:05:29 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 16 Aug 2003 09:05:29 -0700
Subject: [news] Victory Squat: Injunction will not stop homeless protests
Message-ID: <1061049928.6966.1021.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: anton at resist.ca
To: apc-announce at resist.ca
Subject: [APC-Announce] Victory Squat
Date: 16 Aug 2003 00:40:39 -0700


Just a heads up to folks about Victory Squat stuff.
In solidarity,
Anton


Media Advisory
Anti-Poverty Committee
Phone: 604-682-2726 Fax: 604-682-2652 email: apc at resist.ca

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 15, 2003

Victory Squat Press Conference

The homeless encampment at Thorton Park has been served with an injunction and spokespeople for the homeless encampment will be there to address the issue of the injunction and the issue of homelessness.

Location:	Thorton Park
South side, in front of the BC Housing Office.
Time:		11 AM

	All corporate and independent media are welcome.  We request that that Jon Ferry of the Province and David Carrigg of the Vancouver Courier not be sent by their respective media outlets, due to concerns over the accuracy of their stories.  Note:	Please respect the privacy of the squatters and ask before taking pictures of people or trampling around their space.

	The designated spokesperson for the Victory Squat is James Mickelson.  He can be reached at 604-780-5117.  The designated media contact person for APC is Tony Ruzza.  He can be reached at 604-682-2726.

News Release
Anti-Poverty Committee
Phone: 604-682-2726 Fax: 604-682-2652 email: apc at resist.ca

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 15, 2003

Injunction will not stop homeless protests

	The homeless encampment at Thornton Park has been served with an injunction, but the protest is not over. According to spokespeople for the homeless encampment, the protest will continue, though how and where is not known.  ??We will leave at 12 noon tomorrow, but we will not end it here,?? says James Mickelson, the official spokesperson for Victory Squat.

Today at 10 AM, BC Supreme Court Justice Ian Pitfield granted the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation an injunction against homeless people erecting structures in the park. According to the terms of the injunction, all tents, shanties, and shelters have to be removed by 12 noon tomorrow, Saturday, August 16th.  After the deadline, the Parks Board staff accompanied by police will begin dismantling and removing the shelters homeless people have been sleeping in since they moved to the park on July 26th.

	??We are not pleased with this ruling, and we are angry that the Parks Board would choose to do the dirty work of the BC Liberals,?? says Mickelson. ??They had many alternatives to seeking an injunction. They say that they want to help the homeless, but they evict them from city parks.  City council and Parks Board are conspiring to hide the homeless, and they are doing this under the pretext of protecting the sanctity of parks. What is more important to them ?? a park or a homeless person?  Two parks or one hundred and fifty homeless people???

??Clearly the COPE ?? dominated Parks Board and City Council would rather throw homeless people out of one of the few safe places to sleep in their own community, than assist them in finding decent, affordable housing. So far, all they've offered are platitudes, rooms in run-down SRO hotels, injunctions, disinformation, and contempt for the homeless and their supporters.??

??This is an open air shelter run by the homeless for the homeless.  This makes Victory Squat a political act,?? says Tony Ruzza, an APC spokesperson.  ??This is political protest against the BC Liberals.  It is about welfare legislation that has seen more than 70,000 people forced off welfare.  It is about a two-year-out-of-five welfare rule that will see more than 40,000 more thrown off welfare on April 1st.  It is about the lack of adequate and affordable housing.  What does city council and the parks board think will happen on April 1st?

??This encampment has provided shelter and security to Vancouver??s homeless since July 26th.  Over 50 people have been sleeping here the last few nights.  We peaked at 80 last week.  Before that at Victory Square, we had almost one hundred.??

The Victory Squat started on July 2nd in Victory Square, the same day it was announced that Vancouver would be hosting the 2010 Olympic Games.  On Saturday July 26th it moved to Thornton Park after a loud and energetic march through downtown Vancouver.  The protest has two central demands addressed to the provincial government:
1. End the two-year welfare time limit.
2. Social housing for all in need.

There will be a press conference at 11 AM tomorrow, Saturday, August 16th, at Thornton Park on the south side in front of the BC Housing office. Spokespeople for the homeless encampment will be there to address the issue of the injunction and the issue of homelessness.

	All corporate and independent media are welcome.  We request that that Jon Ferry of the Province and David Carrigg of the Vancouver Courier not be sent by their respective media outlets, due to concerns over the accuracy of their stories.  Note:	Please respect the privacy of the squatters and ask before taking pictures of people or trampling around their space.

	The designated spokesperson for the Victory Squat is James Mickelson.  He can be reached at 604-780-5117.  The designated media contact person for APC is Tony Ruzza.  He can be reached at 604-682-2726.

- 30 -


Sincerely, Anton Pilipa, APC

-------------------------
Sender Information:
	Name: Anton Pilipa
	email: anton at resist.ca
	address: #1011-239 E. Georgia St.
	city: Vancouver
	province: BC
	postal code: V6A 1Z6
	country: Canada
	home phone: 604-685-7363
_______________________________________________
APC-Announce mailing list
APC-Announce at lists.resist.ca
https://lists.resist.ca/mailman/listinfo/apc-announce



From resist at resist.ca  Sat Aug 16 13:43:57 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 16 Aug 2003 13:43:57 -0700
Subject: [news] Selling land giving up trational practices
Message-ID: <1061066636.6966.1063.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: ANGE S. <noxmadima at yahoo.com>
To: socialjustice at lists.resist.ca, redwire list <redwire at resist.ca>, noxmadima at yahoo.com
Subject: [Redwire] Selling land giving up trational practices
Date: 14 Aug 2003 09:01:35 -0700

Here is some mainstream information of the treaty that was signed up here in Prince George (Lheidli T'enneh territory). For me it is sad that our people continue to sell land to be futher exploited. I think if you wanted some good feedback about the treaty you may want to contact mavis ericson, although she is difficult to get a hold of and no longer works at the Tribal Council. The article following the treaty article is an article regarding the DFO and Aboriginal fisheries. There have been a few Nations up here that I have heard of that are following this very oppressive model of giving up traditional food and ceremonial fishing in exchange for recieving "donations" or "handouts" from the commercial fisheries. There is something very wrong with that picture and I do not understand why there has not been any form of protest from the communities. 

BACKGROUND ARTICLE (July 14):
 
Free press Article, July 14, 2003

Its finally official. The Lheidli Tenneh First Nation has completed the
first land claims agreement-in-principle in the history of the
modern-day treaty process. 

Chief negotiators for the band and the provincial and federal
governments recommended the AIP to their respective political bosses on
May 2. 

The agreement needed to be approved by the Lheidlis treaty council and
the B.C. and federal cabinets before negotiators could begin working on
a final treaty. 

Federal negotiator Tom Molloy confirmed Thursday the federal cabinet has
approved the agreement. The provincial cabinet did the same three weeks
ago, while the Lheidli Community Treaty Council approved it in early
June. 

Whether there will be an official signing ceremony, and when it might
be, have yet to be decided, he said. 

The Lheidli had not heard the news when contacted. It wasnt unexpected,
though, said Rick Krehbiel, director of treaty policy and research for
the band. 

It was just a rubber stamp. It was never really in doubt with the
federal government. With the province, it was a little more touch and
go. 

The AIP definitely fell within Canadas negotiating mandate, he said. So
there was little doubt the federal cabinet would approve it. 

Because the province changed its negotiating mandate after last years
treaty referendum, there was more concern around whether the B.C.
Liberal government would support it, he said. 

The three parties will now spend the summer creating a work plan that
will guide what are expected to be up to two more years of negotiations
toward a final agreement. 

The main components of the proposed deal include 4,027 hectares of land,
$12.8 million in cash less money borrowed to negotiate the treaty for
the 304-member band. It also includes self-governance provisions and a
number of resource sharing arrangements in fisheries and forestry. 

The Snuneymuxw First Nation in Nanaimo reached a tentative AIP earlier
this spring, but it has yet to be formally approved. The Maa-nulth  a
breakaway group of five bands from the Vancouver Island Nuu-chah-nulth
Tribal Council  are also near final approval of an AIP
 
****Free Press staff writer Aug 14, 2003****

The Lheidli T'enneh First Nation will accept nothing less than the 7,500
sockeye salmon commercial fishery offered to it in an
agreement-in-principle. And a recent court ruling calling a pilot
aboriginal sales fishery "racially discriminatory" will not change their
minds, says a band spokesperson. 

"We will certainly not accept any backtracking on what's agreed to in
the agreement-in-principle on the fishery," said Rick Krehbiel, director
of treaty policy and research for the Lheidli T'enneh. "The commercial
fishery is a fundamental part of it." 

The Lheidli are in the third year of a "feasibility study" to determine
if a commercial sockeye fishery on the upper Fraser River is viable. The
study is being done, in part, in anticipation of the creation of a
"harvest agreement" to be negotiated in conjunction with a treaty. 

Senior political leaders from the Lheidli and the provincial and federal
governments were in Prince George, July 26, for the official signing
ceremony of the agreement-in-principle. Two days later, provincial court
judge William Kitchen ruled an aboriginal-only pilot fishery on the
lower Fraser River contravenes the Charter of Rights and constitutes
"government-sponsored racism" against non-aboriginal commercial
fishermen. 

The decision appeared to throw all aboriginal fisheries into question.
But the federal government contends the ruling only applies to three
specific pilot sales fisheries - the lower Fraser, Port Alberni and the
Skeena River. It will affect neither sales under the Lheidli feasibility
study nor negotiations toward a final treaty, they say. 

"It's not a pilot sale. It's a feasibility study, but it does include an
element of sale," said Brian Martin, acting regional director with
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. "We're proceeding with the
feasibility study. We're quite confident that it's lawful." 

The B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition, the most vocal opponent of
aboriginal-only fisheries, considers such distinctions a cop-out. 

"It doesn't matter whether it's in Prince George under a so-called
feasibility study or on the lower Fraser or Port Alberni under a
so-called pilot project," said spokesperson Phil Eidsvik. "No matter
what you call it, it's a race-based commercial fishery and it's
discriminatory and racist." 

Eidsvik's group continues to attack the provincial and federal
governments for including a commercial fishery in the Lheidli AIP. He
points out statements made by Premier Gordon Campbell in 1997, in which
the then-opposition leader said native-only fisheries "are morally,
ethically and legally wrong." 

"It's still morally, ethically and legally wrong even if it's called a
feasibility study," said Eidsvik. 

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is running the study, says
there is one crucial difference between it and a pilot sales fishery, a
distinction that insulates it from any legal challenge - it is being
conducted as part of the treaty process. 

"I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding on what grounds it would
be challenged. We have AIPs in place in other places where there are
commercial opportunities provided for," said Don Radford, DFO's acting
regional director of fisheries management. 

The Lheidli's Krehbiel says the difference is that treaty rights deal
with governmental jurisdiction. It's not about skin colour, but rather
about who was here first, he says. 

"It has nothing to do with race, it has to do with being here originally
and the international recognition of rights that belong to people who
were here originally. 

"It wouldn't have mattered who was aboriginal. Were the Vikings
aboriginal Canadians, they would have those rights." 

Krehbiel throws the racist label back at the feet of Eidsvik. He
suggests that, by trying to deny the Lheidli T'enneh what he says is a
constitutional right, they are in fact promoting inequality. 

"The language of equality is the new language of racism. Mr. Eidsvik and
his ilk don't understand what equality means in Canada. 

"When he says aboriginal people should not be entitled to the protection
of the Constitution, that's the worst form of racism that I can
imagine." 

The harvest agreement referred to in the AIP is to be negotiated as a
side agreement rather than as part of the final treaty and will
therefore not be constitutionally protected. 

According to the terms of the AIP, the band will also have the right to
harvest 5,000 sockeye and 500 chinook salmon for food, social and
ceremonial purposes. There is also an allowance for an "incidental"
catch of pink and coho salmon. 

Negotiation of a final agreement is expected to take a further 18 months
to two years. 


---------------------------------
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----

Redwire Native Youth Media
www.redwiremag.com
Our stories, our voices, ourselves



From resist at resist.ca  Tue Aug 19 13:38:35 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 19 Aug 2003 13:38:35 -0700
Subject: [news] Faith-based deregulation
Message-ID: <1061325515.19035.210.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: moe <moe at kootenaycuts.com>
To: project-x at resist.ca
Subject: [pr-x] Faith-based deregulation
Date: 19 Aug 2003 10:46:46 -0700

i'm actually just sending this because I love the phrase I quote in the header.

moe


August 19, 2003

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Road to Ruin

By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/19/opinion/19KRUG.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=

We still don't know what started the chain reaction on Thursday. Whatever
the initial cause, however, the current guess is that a local event turned
into an epic blackout because the transmission network has been neglected.
That is, the power industry hasn't spent enough on the control systems and
safeguards that are supposed to prevent such things.

And the cause of that neglect is faith-based deregulation.

In the past, electric power was considered a natural monopoly. It was and
is impractical to have companies competing either to wire up homes and
businesses, or to build long-distance transmission lines. Because effective
competition was impossible, power companies were given local monopolies,
and regulated to keep them from exploiting customers.

These regulated monopolies took responsibility for the whole system ??
transmission and distribution as well as generation. Then came the
deregulation movement. It argued that a competitive market could be created
in power generation (though not in transmission and distribution), and in
much of the country utilities were forced to sell off their power plants.

In fact, effective competition has been elusive even in power generation.
In California, deregulation led to one of history's great policy disasters:
energy companies drove up prices by creating artificial shortages. This
plunged the state into a crisis that ended only after much of its
electricity supply was locked up in long-term contracts, and price controls
were imposed on the rest.

Incidentally, there seems to be a weird reluctance to face up to what
happened in California. Since the blackout, I've seen national news reports
attributing California's woes in part to environmental restrictions, while
ignoring the role of market manipulation. Huh? There's no evidence that
environmental restrictions played any role; meanwhile, even the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission, which strongly backs deregulation, has
concluded that market manipulation played a major role. What's with the
revisionist history?

Anyway, market manipulation aside, energy experts have long warned that
deregulation would lead to neglect of the grid. Under the old regulatory
system, power companies had strong incentives to ensure the integrity of
power transmission ?? they would catch the flak if something went wrong. But
those incentives went away with deregulation: because effective competition
in transmission wasn't possible, the companies providing transmission still
had to be regulated. But because regulation limited their profits, they had
little financial incentive to invest in maintaining and upgrading the
system. And because of deregulation elsewhere, responsibility was diffused:
nobody had a strong stake in keeping the system reliable. The result was a
failure not just to add capacity, but to maintain and upgrade capacity that
already existed.

These experts didn't necessarily oppose deregulation; their point was that
deregulation could lead to disaster unless accompanied by policies not just
to keep the grid reliable, but to expand it. (To make competition possible,
a deregulated system needs considerably more transmission capacity than one
based on regulated monopolies.) But their warnings weren't taken seriously;
politicians and deregulation enthusiasts simply had faith that somehow "the
market" would take care of the problem.

Four years ago, Paul Joskow of M.I.T. told FERC: "Proceeding on the
assumption that, at the present time, `the market' will provide needed
network transmission enhancements is the road to ruin." And so it was.

Have we learned our lesson? Early indications are not promising. President
Bush now says that "our grid needs to be modernized . . . and I've said so
all along." But two years ago Tom DeLay blocked a modest Democratic plan
for loan guarantees for system upgrades, calling it "pure demagoguery." And
press reports say that despite the blackout, the administration will bow to
pressure from Senate Republicans and put on ice the only part of its energy
plan that had any relevance to the blackout, a FERC proposal for expanded
oversight of the transmission system.

This nation needs to invest billions in its power grid, yet given recent
history, it's crucial that this investment not be simply another occasion
for energy-industry profiteering. Somehow, I'm not optimistic.




Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

--
http://www.kootenaycuts.com/
"S/he who fears not the death of a thousand cuts will dare to unhorse the
emperor."
- Ancient Chinese proverb


Project-X list:
initiated for the (re)building of the Left.



From resist at resist.ca  Tue Aug 19 22:30:23 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 19 Aug 2003 22:30:23 -0700
Subject: [news] Natives protest Red Hill expressway
Message-ID: <1061357422.19034.444.camel@murray>


-------- Original Message -------- Subject:  
Natives protest Red Hill expressway
       Date:  Mon, 18 Aug 2003 09:05:07 -0400
       From:  Russell Diabo <rdiabo at sympatico.ca>
       To:  <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>

Natives protest Red Hill expressway


By Michael-Allan Marion, expositor staff

Tuesday, August 12, 2003 - 01:00

Local News - A dispute between protesters and Hamilton city hall over the 
building of an expressway through the Red Hill Creek Valley intensified this 
week after members of the Six Nations traditional Confederacy occupied the 
area.

Protesters cheered and applauded Sunday night when Confederacy members 
arrived to build a round house, and again when some clan mothers lit an 
"eternal" fire inside it Monday morning.

"We're absolutely thrilled," Ken Stone, a protest co-ordinator, said Monday 
morning near the round house.

"This is the thing that has thrown terror into the hearts of people who want 
to build this expressway."

Hamilton city councillors met Monday to discuss getting an injunction to 
remove the protesters but had no immediate comment on the entry of natives.

Protesters from a number of environmental, animal activist and citizens' 
groups have stymied contractor Dufferin Construction for more than a week 
from building a ramp at a point halfway down the valley in the east end of 
Hamilton.

The ramp is in advance of the still unconstructed expressway planned to run 
through the last remaining creek bed and large natural green space in the 
city.

The Confederacy long ago erected no-trespassing signs informing pedestrians 
that the valley is Six Nations territory. The protest groups, Friends of Red 
Hill Valley and the Showstoppers Union, were issued "permits" by the 
Confederacy to carry out a protest on the land.

The city has said it does not recognize the claim or the permits. It 
recently reached an agreement with Chief Coun. Roberta Jamieson and the 
elected band council over the issue of native grave sites in the valley 
whose location has not been revealed, but hadn't managed an understanding 
with Confederacy groups.

Protesters have camped for the past week at the entrances to the proposed 
ramp and a nearby road for construction vehicles.

Both areas have been adorned with tents and signs containing protest 
messages.

The protesters have been living under a threat issued from city hall in 
letters and e-mails that it would get an injunction to clear the pickets, 
then sue protesters for delaying construction - including seizure of their 
houses as compensation.

By last weekend the city still had not made good on its threat. Nonetheless, 
protesters were visibly relieved when Confederacy members arrived Sunday 
evening.

The natives chose a spot in the woods just off a main trail to build the 
round house. They spent a few hours chopping down some younger walnut trees, 
sank the trunks into the ground as posts, and fashioned a roof from the 
branches and leaves.

Then in a nearby clearing where the ramp is to be built, an elder spoke 
through a representative to a gathering of protesters informing them the 
Ongwehomweh (People of the Longhouse) were prepared to work with them.

Around daybreak Monday, a group of clan mothers arrived to applause from the 
protesters. They lit an "eternal" fire in a pit under the round house roof, 
sat around the flames and sent a out representative who called himself 
Thohahoken to speak to the media.

"A fire is lit to address our ancestors and to provide a place where people 
can sit and talk," Thohahoken told reporters. "A sacred fire stays lit until 
the issues are resolved."

In an interview he said the occupiers are concerned about preservation of 
the wildlife habitat and burial sites.

"They require to be protected. How much green space do you get rid of before 
you can't pollute any longer?"

Thohahoken took members of the media through a series of treaties and 
historical events which he said show Six Nations is still a "sovereign 
people" which has legally ceded only 32 square miles of territory. All the 
rest has been taken illegitimately, he said.

He said Six Nations is quite aware of the long-running dispute over the 
expressway, which has consumed Hamilton politics for nearly five decades. 
But Confederacy members considered their move for some time before taking 
action, he insisted.

"The thought that went into this wasn't cavalier. There was a lot of talking 
about it."

Thohahoken said natives were willing to talk with city officials, but 
acknowledged: "We haven't been approached yet."

Hamilton councillor Larry Di Ianni, chairman of the expressway 
implementation committee and a candidate for mayor in the November municipal 
election, visited the site and talked to protest leaders.

The expressway has been on Hamilton's books since 1957. It received approval 
in the mid-1980s. Amid protests and angry debate, the city completed the 
east-west Lincoln Alexander Parkway portion on Hamilton Mountain six years 
ago.

But the most sensitive part of the project stalled during the permit process 
and an environmental challenge from the federal government, which was beaten 
back.

Until now the debate has been carried on locally between two disparate 
groups. Developers, trucking interests and east Hamilton residents want it 
to provide easier access to the QEW and Highway 403, and to relieve 
congestion in east Hamilton.

Environmentalists and citizens' groups decry what they consider the 
destruction of an ecosystem, including the cutting of more than 40,000 trees 
(which Hamilton planners say will be replaced by at least triple the number 
planted). Animal activists are concerned about the loss of habitat for a 
colony of flying squirrels and salmon which spawn upstream in the creek.

Stone, protest co-ordinator with the Showstoppers group, deplored the city's 
use of "old colonial divide and conquer tactics" in getting an agreement 
with the Six Nations elected council, but not securing agreement with the 
Confederacy.

"They know the Confederacy would never agree to the expressway."




From resist at resist.ca  Thu Aug 21 11:56:07 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 21 Aug 2003 11:56:07 -0700
Subject: [news] Vancouver Province refuses to run ad containing criticisms
	of VPD
Message-ID: <1061492166.19035.650.camel@murray>

The Vancouver Province newspaper has refused to publish a paid
advertisement of an open letter to Mayor Larry Campbell. The letter
contains criticisms of the Vancouver Police Department and their
dealings with the native community, women and others. 

The letter emphasizes the lack of trust in the community for the police
and the lack of accountability that they have. 

================
Re: Open Letter to Mayor Campbell, Chair of Police Board 

Hello, everyone. I just got word from Province newspaper they are
declining now to print the advertisement below.

They have had the copy for 3 working days, it went through and passed
their lawyer's scrutiny, went into typesetting, back to me twice for
approval / changes. Now at the 11th hour, they advise they cannot run
the ad. At this point they have not given me a reason - they maintain
they have the option to decline any advertisements, and will now
exercise that option. The Publisher can accept or decline paid
advertisements. I am waiting to hear from their legal dept. tomorrow
morning, as I would like to know the reason. In the interim, you can
read the attached final copy to see the impact of the ad. Needless to
say I am frustrated at this last-hour turn of events. Thank you for your
continued support, and I will update you as new information arises.

Regards, Julie Berg

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

August 14, 2003 

Advertisement

Open Letter

Mayor Larry Campbell, Chair of Police Board

Are you listening? Hear these voices.this is what concerned citizens and
groups have to say about Vancouver's Police Department (VPD):

Chief Stewart Phillip, President, Union of BC Indian Chiefs: "From a
native perspective, too many people have died at the hands of law
enforcement. Despite hundreds of recommendations, no fundamental changes
have been implemented. Policing agencies have a propensity to take care
of their own, but those individuals accused and charged with deceitful
cover-ups or misconduct must be dealt with in the severest manner
possible."

Frances Jourdain, sister of Frank Joseph Paul: "It pains me daily to
think of my brother's tragic and unnecessary death, especially how he
died. I question the motto 'To Serve and Protect'.shouldn't it have
applied to my brother?"

Deborah Jardine, mother of murdered Angela Jardine: "I know first hand
how the loss of a loved one affects families and communities under
normal circumstances, but the families of Vancouver's missing women were
not allowed normal police procedures. We didn't have diligent people in
office trying to solve each woman's disappearance. We know the truth and
must speak out."

Cameron Ward, Civil Liberties Lawyer: "In my law practice, I regularly
deal with people who have come into contact with members of the VPD. As
a result of this work, I have come to the regrettable conclusion that a
public inquiry is warranted because the police cannot objectively
investigate themselves. Nothing less than the public's trust and respect
for law enforcement is at stake."

Cristina Freire, Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter: "The police
are not making violence against women a priority. We need a police force
that will protect women's freedom to walk down the streets at night and
will support her decision to leave an abusive man."

Pivot Legal Society: "We maintain that the considerable number of
incidents of violence and abuse is indicative of a systemic and
pervasive problem within the VPD. A public inquiry is the most thorough,
independent, and effective investigative tool available. It is necessary
in order to serve the public interest and protect against future human
rights violations by Vancouver's police force."

Charlotte Airlie, mother of Barry Lawrie (victim, Stanley Park
Beatings): "The police need to be held accountable for their actions. It
appears there are two sets of laws - one for the general public, and
another for the VPD. Where is the justice?"

Barb Moyle, Mediator/Human Rights Advocate: "It's a bottomless pit.
VPD's lawyers through the courts have spent millions of BC taxpayers'
dollars on arbitrary, time-consuming, whimsical legal challenges. The
end result? No resolution, no accountability, and a steady erosion of
public trust."

Mayor Campbell, when are you and the Police Board going to take action
instead of turning a blind eye?

Julie Berg
Contact: 
juliebergdesign at hotmail.com 





From resist at resist.ca  Thu Aug 21 12:31:21 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 21 Aug 2003 12:31:21 -0700
Subject: [news] New report on WTO now online
Message-ID: <1061494281.19034.660.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Aziz Choudry <azizch at spl.at>
To: redwire at lists.resist.ca
Subject: [Redwire] Fwd: New report on WTO now online
Date: 21 Aug 2003 12:09:26 -0700

We at ASEJ/ACERCA are happy to announce that we have
just printed...

Neoliberal Globalization: Cancun and Beyond. An
In-Depth Report on the World Trade Organization
Published July, 2003, 24 pages.

...that was written by Aziz Choudry and provides an
in-depth analysis of the WTO and what's in store in
"Cancun and Beyond" as well as highlighting its
relationships to militarization, regional free trade
agreements, megaprojects (PPP) and more.

We are hoping that other solidarity organizations will
place orders in bulk and help to distribute this
organizing tool leading up to Cancun and Miami. 

It's now available as a downloadable pdf file from
www.asej.org

*INDIVIDUAL ORDERS
$3 each (which includes postage).

*BULK ORDERS
10- 49= $2.50 each (includes postage)
50 or more= $2.00 each (includes postage)

For more information:
Please email Lauren at acerca at sover.net or call
802-863-0571.

To place an order:
1.Please send a check/ money order (made out to ASEJ)
and your name and address to: 
OR 
2. Send credit card info (name on card, card number,
expiration date, and billing address) to:

ASEJ/WTO GP Order
PO Box 57
Burlington, VT, 05402



From resist at resist.ca  Fri Aug 22 06:07:56 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 22 Aug 2003 06:07:56 -0700
Subject: [news] Nurses Claim Privatization Deal Threatens Safety,
	Province Boosts Take
Message-ID: <1061557676.19034.714.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Will Offley <willo at lynx.bc.ca>
To: project-x at resist.ca
Subject: [pr-x] Today's Georgia Straight
Date: 21 Aug 2003 20:45:19 -0700

Nurses Claim Privatization Deal Threatens Safety
Province Boosts Take

Five emergency-room nurses at St. Paul's Hospital have alleged to the
Straight that a recent decision to privatize health-care
security services will jeopardize people's lives. Three of those
nurses--Alison Jordan, Kate Honner, and Hilary Henley--told the
Straight they didn't object to having their names published in the
paper.

"The employees are brassed off like you wouldn't believe," Jordan said.
"This decision is so incredibly inappropriate."

However, an executive whose security company recently won a lucrative
contract has claimed that his nonunionized staff have
superior training than their counterparts in the Hospital Employees'
Union.

"There has been a bunch of propaganda and misinformation out there," Leo
Knight, senior vice-president of Paladin Security Group
and a weekly columnist for the North Shore News, told the Straight. "It
is part of our mandate to review existing procedures and
suggest ways to improve and enhance the service, not detract from the
service. We intend to do that."

On August 14, the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority and Providence
Health Care announced that Paladin signed a five-year,
$23-million agreement to provide security services at nine health-care
institutions, including St. Paul's, Vancouver Hospital and
Health Sciences Centre, and Lions Gate Hospital.

The St. Paul's nurses said they work at an inner-city hospital with a
unique clientele. They claimed that Paladin will not be able
to provide as much protection or professionalism as the existing
hospital security staff, who will lose their jobs in November.

"It's a small department. They're saving a ridiculously small amount of
money," Jordan said. "It's more about union-busting."

Honner said that many emergency-ward clients are addicted to drugs, have
a sense of entitlement coupled with a very short fuse, and
don't respond to logic. She said she is threatened physically about once
every shift, and credits staff security for dealing with
patients competently yet with compassion. "It's the most violent place
I've ever worked, but I've never felt so safe," Honner said.

Henley said that St. Paul's is special because the staff work together
as a team. She predicted that many emergency-room nurses
will find work elsewhere after the staff security people are replaced by
Paladin security guards.

"There is a shortage of emerg nurses all over the city that will be
absorbed by different hospitals if we're not able to be kept
safe," Henley said. "None of us will end up staying."

Roger Kishi, a security supervisor who has worked at St. Paul's for 16
years, told the Straight that he has spoken to staff who
literally fear for their lives. Kishi said that this year, there have
already been more than 300 incidents of violence at the
hospital.

"One of the big things we're facing right now is a lot of drug-induced
psychoses from crystal meth," Kishi, an HEU shop steward,
said.  "It takes four or five people to hold the person down so you can
apply restraints so they won't hurt themselves and they
won't hurt other people."

On August 14, the HEU issued a news release alleging that privatizing
security put patients and workers at risk. The HEU also
claimed that just a week earlier, a Paladin manager was receiving
training in how to deal with violent incidents involving
psychiatric patients.


Knight described this allegation as "drivel", claiming that this
manager, Miles Chown, actually trains security personnel in
dealing with psychiatric patients. According to Chown's r??sum??, which
Knight faxed to the Straight, he was security coordinator
and assistant manager of safety services at Vancouver General Hospital
from 1980 to 1993, then worked as security manager at
Nanaimo Regional General Hospital from 1993 to 1995.

>From 1996 to the present, according to the r??sum??, Chown was a
self-employed safety consultant in Nanaimo, and he has training
and certification in numerous areas, including disaster planning,
earthquake search and rescue, health-care management, and
nonviolent crisis intervention. "He is certified to train in more
courses than you can think of," Knight said.

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority spokesperson Viviana Zanocco told the
Straight that the contract with Paladin will result in
security-staffing hours increasing by 23 percent and annual savings of
$1 million across the system. She said that VCHA security
staff are paid more than $19 per hour.

Knight said that for competitive reasons he would not reveal how much
Paladin will pay its hospital security staff, but he claimed
they will be the highest-paid private security guards in B.C. He also
said Paladin has provided security at many hospitals,
including Vancouver Hospital, Royal Columbian, and Surrey Memorial.

Knight also emphasized that his company introduced a mandatory certified
course in health-care security, which includes dealing
with psychiatric patients. "We do training on everything from
blood-borne pathogens to nonviolent crisis intervention," he said.

After winning the competition to provide security services, Paladin
hired the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority's director of
security services, Archie Fisher, as its new director of health-care
security. According to Zanocco, Fisher was on one of four VCHA
committees that evaluated the bids to provide security services.

Knight said that his company asked for permission to speak to Fisher.
Zanocco said Fisher signed a confidentiality clause promising
not to reveal anything about the tendering process.







From resist at resist.ca  Mon Aug 25 12:44:57 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 25 Aug 2003 12:44:57 -0700
Subject: [news] [Fwd: [pga] [CHRI] Migrante Intl slams unjust deportation of
	60 Filipinos]
Message-ID: <1061840697.31240.656.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Jane G. <nicajg at panix.com>
To: pga at lists.riseup.net
Subject: [pga] [CHRI] Migrante Intl slams unjust deportation of 60 Filipinos
Date: 25 Aug 2003 12:43:39 -0400


Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 12:37:21 -0400 (EDT)
To: Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants <chri at itapnet.org>
Subject: [CHRI] Migrante Intl slams unjust deportation of 60 Filipinos

[Note: The following press release from the Philippines-based group
Migrante International is followed by an ABS-CBN news article announcing a
mass deportation flight scheduled to arrive in Manila on Wed., Aug. 27.]

Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 21:49:26 +0800
From: MIGRANTE International <migrante at tri-isys.com>
Subject: Migrante Intl slams unjust deportation of 60 Filipinos from US

News Release
August 25, 2003
For reference: Maita Santiago, Secretary-General 0919-333-2803

Migrante Intl slams unjust deportation of 60 Filipinos from US

This Wednesday, another batch of 60 Filipinos deported from the United
States will arrive in Manila.

"Like the hundreds of other Filipinos deported since 9/11, we expect this
group will also be handcuffed and treated like terrorists or hardened
criminals," said Maita Santiago, Migrante International Secretary-General.

Including this latest group, at least 465 Filipinos have been deported from
the US since September 2001.

"The Bush administration's crackdown on foreigners, Filipinos included, is
on the pretext that they are terrorists. But instead of terrorism, most are
only guilty of trying to earn a living," said Santiago.

According to the US Justice Department's own Office of Inspector General,
"None of the 1,200 foreigners arrested and detained in secret after
September 11 was charged with an act of terrorism."

"Instead, after periods of detention that ranged from weeks to months, most
were deported for violating immigration laws," reads the report's excerpt
posted on the internet.

Most who are deported are victims of the US' Absconder Apprehension
Initiative Program. This program targets about 314,000 immigrants for
arrest, detention and deportation. Among them are around 12,000 Filipinos
(most with expired visas), according to the Filipino Community Support
Group (FOCUS) in San Jose, California.

Santiago further explained that even if some of those deported were
previously imprisoned in the US, this still does not mean they deserve to
be deported, handcuffed or treated like violent criminals.

"For all we know they could have been arrested for speeding or shoplifting.
Besides, whatever they may have been jailed for, they already served their
time and this doesn't necessarily mean they are 'threats' to society," she
said, in reaction to reports that the National Bureau of Investigation will
monitor the deportees with 'criminal records' in case they 'create trouble'
in the Philippines.

In contrast to the NBI statement that the deportees might 'create trouble',
Santiago noted that Jerome Aricheta, 28 years old, became severely
depressed after he was deported from the US. Two weeks ago, Jerome hung
himself in his Makati City home.

Santiago concluded that on Wednesday, Migrante International and other
groups will mount a protest rally at the US embassy to oppose the Bush
administration's continued anti-immigrant crackdown on people of color,
including Filipinos. She also called on President Gloria to register a
diplomatic protest against these mass deportations by the US. #

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: ABS-CBNNEWS.COM
X-URL: http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=Metro&oid=31421

   ABS-CBN.COM

   Friday, August 22, 2003 10:47:0 p.m
   Metro

   US sets deportation of 60 Pinoys in security crackdown

   By JIMMY PEREZ
   TODAY Reporter

   More than 60 Filipinos, most of them with criminal records, will be
   deported from the United States as part of the homeland security
   measures being enforced by American officials to stop terrorists.

   Local International Police (Interpol) chief lawyer Ric Diaz said
   majority of the deportees have served terms in US jails for various
   offenses ranging from fraud to robbery and other petty crimes.

   The Filipino deportees are included on the list of undesirable aliens
   that American officials consider as security threats.

   They [Filipinos] will be deported partly because they are undocumented
   aliens without valid purpose in staying in the US, Diaz said.

   Tentative date of the arrival of the deportees is on August 27. A team
   of local Interpol agents will fetch them from the US with an American
   team of federal agents on hand for the formal turn over to local
   authorities.

   The US crackdown on undesirable aliens took a stricter phase to
   include those who were arrested, charged and jailed as their criminal
   records are viewed as a threat to national security at a time the US
   was against all nationalities, especially Arabs, in what could be a
   cleansing process designed to weed out potential members of terrorist
   sleeper cells.

   Diaz explained that the deportation is legal because the deportees are
   undocumented aliens and have violated American laws that merit their
   jail terms.

   We may yet see another batch of deportees in the future. The US
   government is determined to stamp out illegal immigrants as part of
   the newly approved stricter immigration laws, he said.

   The National Bureau of Investigation will monitor the deportees who
   have criminal records to prevent them from creating trouble in the
   Philippines.

   Many of the deportees arrived in the US fifteen years ago in search of
   the proverbial greener pasture. But as undocumented, they had a hard
   time landing jobs and eventually got entangled in dubious activities
   to survive, it was learned.

   Most of the Filipinos used US tourist visas to enter the United States
   and later worked illegally in American companies after their visas
   have expired.

   The US government has been deporting hundreds of foreigners almost
   daily, mostly Arabs and Asians.

   International human-rights groups have criticized the US government
   for possible human rights violation brought about by the strict
   security measures.

   US authorities have been monitoring the activities of suspected
   international terrorists to prevent another major attack like the
   attacks in New York and Virginia.

   Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback at abs-cbn.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
END FORWARDED MESSAGE(S) / FIN DE MENSAJE(S) REENVIADO(S)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message distributed by / Este mensaje distribuido por:
Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI)
Coalicion para los Derechos Humanos de los Inmigrantes
339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 tel 212-254-2591 / 888-575-8242
fax 212-674-9139 email <chri at itapnet.org> http://www.itapnet.org/chri

-->> To get on the CHRI email list (average 4-5 messages a week), sign up
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para unirse a o quitarse de la lista, escribanos al chri at itapnet.org.



From resist at resist.ca  Mon Aug 25 22:53:26 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 25 Aug 2003 22:53:26 -0700
Subject: [news] Bush appoints anti-Muslim to peace role
Message-ID: <1061877206.31237.690.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Tanya West <tdjwest at hotmail.com>
To: project-x at lists.resist.ca
Subject: [pr-x] (no subject)
Date: 25 Aug 2003 22:30:48 -0700

Bush appoints anti-Muslim to peace role

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday August 23, 2003
The Guardian

A Middle East expert who has written dismissively of diplomacy and holds 
views to the right of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was 
yesterday named to the board of the US Institute of Peace.

The largely honorary appointment of Daniel Pipes, a gift of President George 
Bush, has outraged Democratic senators, American Muslims and Arabs, liberal 
Jews and a large portion of the academic community, who say his opinions are 
not conducive to peace.

The manner of Mr Pipe's appointment is likely to deepen the sting. Mr Bush 
exploited the summer recess to avoid a congressional vote on his selection. 
But as a recess appointment, Mr Pipes will serve less than 18 months rather 
than the normal four years.

Mr Pipes would not comment until his appointment was formally announced but 
he has been no stranger to controversy, especially since the September 11 
attacks.

As a frequent commentator, he has warned that America's Muslims are the 
enemy within and called for unrestricted racial profiling and monitoring of 
Muslims in the military.

>From his own thinktank in Philadelphia, he has also clashed with fellow 
scholars, who say his Campus Watch website has initiated a witch-hunt 
against those he views as critics of Israel or lacking in patriotic zeal.

Within the community of Middle East scholars, he is regarded as extreme. He 
opposes the "road map" for the Middle East, as he opposed the Oslo peace 
accords, and objected to efforts to reform the Palestinian Authority.

_________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*   
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

Project-X list:
initiated for the (re)building of the Left.



From resist at resist.ca  Tue Aug 26 14:17:29 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 26 Aug 2003 14:17:29 -0700
Subject: [news] Yorkville Feast Takes it to the Tory Trough
Message-ID: <1061932649.31237.737.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: OCAP <ocap at tao.ca>
To: ocap at lists.tao.ca
Subject: YORKVILLE FEAST TAKES IT TO THE TORY TROUGH
Date: 26 Aug 2003 15:49:56 -0400


YORKVILLE FEAST TAKES IT TO THE TORY TROUGH

        On Saturday, August 23rd, well over 500 people gathered amid the
luxury condos, 'fine dining' establishments and upscale boutiques of
Toronto's Yorkville district for a huge feast.  Homeless people came to
dine.  Residents of nearby poor communities turned out.  First Nations
people brought their support and solidarity.  Immigrant neighbourhoods
under attack were represented.  Trade unionists and social justice
activists stood together.

        We took over Cumberland Park, across from some of the most
renowned watering holes of the rich and famous.  The huge rock that had
been ripped out of Northern Ontario and brought at great expense to form a
landmark in this enclave was covered in people.  A long row of tables
groaned with a vast selection of foods.  Organizations and individual
supporters had prepared a dazzling assortment of dishes.  The Mohawks of
the Bay of Quinte fed our fightback by providing some six hundred servings
of venison.  On that night, no one went hungry.

        In the days leading up to the Feast, it was clear that we had
touched a very raw nerve with this action.  The Toronto Police issued a
press release that left no doubt as to who they are there to 'serve and
protect'.  They denounced OCAP for attacking this citadel of wealth on the
grounds that we were undermining Toronto's economic recovery from the SARS
epidemic and the power blackout.  They promised to deal with any
'impropriety' to 'the fullest extent of the law'.  The Mayor of the City
waded into the debate and visited Yorkville to inspect police preparations
to defend the district from the demands of the poor for justice.  The
force mobilized against us seemed designed to turn back an invading army
rather than respond to a feast.  Riot police were lined up in vans all
along one of the streets to the north.  Mounted units were poised for
action at all times.  The Toronto cops were so threatened by a gathering
of poor people that they had to call in back up.  A contingent of the
Ontario Provincial Police stood ready to move into action.  RCMP officers
were also present.

        None of this vast and costly exercise in intimidation had the
slightest effect.  Homeless people, who are vulnerable as anyone can be to
police abuse, showed no fear but boldly walked into Yorkville past lines
of cops to join the Feast.  Speeches from a range of supporting
organizations were clear and defiant.  A sense of strength and solidarity
united everyone.

        It was clear that the authorities in general and the police in
particular were enraged that we had created the political conditions that
made it impossible for them to stop us.  An election is looming and we
were mobilizing poor and homeless people to come to one of the most well
known centres of lavish consumption to expose and challenge the Ontario
that eight years of Tory government has created.  We came to denounce the
cuts to social housing and welfare, to decry the freeze on disability
support money, and to explain how tax cuts given to the rich have been
financed by these very austerity measures inflicted on poor people.  To
deny us the right to make this statement and exercise our democratic
rights would have been too naked and ugly a display for the authorities to
engage in.  Still, they seethed with anger, as they had to stand back and
watch the Yorkville Feast unfold.

        Police were ready to move in as we concluded the Feast and took to
the streets of Yorkville in a March that passed through the heart of the
district.  A line of mounted cops brought up the rear, police on foot were
everywhere along the route, riot squads waited nearby hoping we would give
them any pretext to move in.  The March was loud and defiant but we had no
intention of giving them a fight on their terms.  We stopped three times
along the way to point out some of the local fixtures and to highlight
their significance from the standpoint of social injustice. Morton's
Steakhouse, where leading Tory Cam Jackson spent $3,000 of Taxpayers'
money on meals was pointed out, as was the Four Seasons Hotel where this
same man spent thousands more of our dollars on high priced accomodation.
(Unlike Kimberly Rogers and others convicted of 'welfare fraud', Jackson
has not been cut off for life.  His place at the trough is still
reserved.)  In this same Four Seasons, they sell a bottle of wine that
goes for $3,500.  Sweatshop employers who have not had to pay their
workers any increase since 1995 (thanks to the Tories) get to guzzle and
gorge while 150,000 people a month turn to the City's foodbanks.

        The March dispersed at Bay and Bloor.  Bloor Street was blocked to
the west by a line of police on foot and the upscale retail outlets to the
east were protected by a huge and solid phalanx of police on horseback.
And how many units of social housing could have been paid for with the
resources put into policing the poor that night?

        While the March had been disciplined and proud, the police could
not let us achieve what we had without striking back.  As the crowd
dispersed, the cops waited for the numbers to decrease and then charged
into the crowd, hitting out with their batons and making four arrests.
It was a futile and ugly attempt to undermine our victory.

        Soon an election will take place.  The Yorkville Feast set some of
the tone for the interventions that we will make as the campaign unfolds.
We will mobilize to dog the Tories and challenge their hateful election
manifesto.  But we will also serve notice to whoever follows them that the
just demands for living income and decent housing that we advance will be
fought for with no regard as to which gang holds the most seats in the
Legislature.  We said in Yorkville that 'they are rich because we are
Poor'.  We can't end poverty until their wealth is taken from them and the
means by which they obtain it is eliminated.


			       **
		   Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
	517 College Street, Suite 234  Toronto, Ontario  M6G 4A2
	     416-925-6939   ocap at tao.ca   www.ocap.ca
			       **





From resist at resist.ca  Wed Aug 27 12:45:33 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 27 Aug 2003 12:45:33 -0700
Subject: [news] hunger strike vs. psychiatric drug industry
Message-ID: <1062013533.31239.792.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Liz <yashi at direct.ca>
To: Project-x <project-x at lists.resist.ca>
Subject: [pr-x] on hunger strike vs. psychiatricdrug industry
Date: 27 Aug 2003 09:19:42 -0700

August 26, 2003

Activist strikes over psychiatrists' faith in
drug therapy

By Tim Christie
The Register-Guard -- Eugene, Oregon, USA

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2003/08/26/d1.cr.mindfreedom.0826.html

Since 1987, David Oaks of Eugene has been leading
a quiet war against the psychiatric establishment
and its reliance on pharmaceutical drugs to treat
mental illness, sometimes against the will of
patients.

Now, Oaks said, he and his organization,
MindFreedom Support Coalition, are turning to
direct action, in the form of a hunger strike, to
turn up the heat on psychiatrists and drug
companies.

"It's time for our social change movement to move
to bolder actions, from patience to passion," he
said Monday from Pasadena, Calif., where he and
four other activists have gone without solid food
since Aug. 16.

A sixth member of the group dropped out of the
strike Sunday because she had lost too much
weight and was starting to suffer health
problems. But about 17 other people in other
parts of the United States and Europe also began
hunger strikes in solidarity, Oaks said.

At issue is the notion that mental illness is the
result of a chemical imbalance in the body that
can only be corrected with drugs, he said.

Oaks became an activist after his own experiences
with the mental health system. When he was a
student at Harvard, he became depressed and
overwhelmed. He said he was locked into a cell in
a psychiatric unit and forcibly injected with
psychiatric drugs.


He describes MindFreedom as a coalition of 100
groups in a dozen countries "working for a
nonviolent revolution in the mental health
system."

Oaks said his group isn't opposed to the use of
psychiatric drugs, but believes that they
shouldn't be the only option for mentally ill
people.

"We feel choice is being squeezed out by the
psychiatric drug industry," he said. "When a
family has a member in crisis ... there needs to
be a range of options: jobs, housing, counseling,
peer support."

Oaks contends that there is no scientific
evidence to support the assertion that mental
illness is the result of chemical imbalance.

The hunger strikers are demanding that the
American Psychiatric Association produce
scientifically valid evidence that mental illness
is biologically based.

A spokeswoman for the the association, Laurie
Oseran, declined comment, but pointed to a letter
that the group's medical director wrote to Oaks
before the hunger strike began.

In the letter, Dr. James Scully told Oaks the
hunger strike was "ill-advised" and said that the
answers to his questions are "widely available in
the scientific literature and have been for
years." He referred to several medical texts and
journals, but made no specific citations.

A 14-member panel of medical doctors and
psychologists assembled by MindFreedom to review
the evidence checked Scully's sources and found
the opposite: 10 different citations that
indicate no scientific evidence exists that
mental illness is biologically based.

The hunger strikers are assembled at the Pasadena
Church of Religious Science - Oaks said it isn't
connected to the Church of Scientology, a
vociferous critic of the psychiatric
establishment. They picked the church because it
was available for a reasonable cost and in a
major media center.

They have had only clear broth, fruit juice,
vegetable juice and coffee or tea, Oaks said.
That includes a concoction that Oaks has been
making from kale, carrots, beets and garlic.

Oaks said he's starting to feel a little weak and
tired, but doesn't know how long the strike will
continue. The group is looking for an
acknowledgement from the American Psychiatric
Association that it has reasonable concerns, Oaks
said.

"We feel there's some possible middle ground and
we're feeling out what that means," he said.

Failing that, "People are prepared to go on," he
said. "Several people are pretty strong and
prepared to go quite a long distance."

HUNGER STRIKE

For more information on the hunger strike by
members of MindFreedom Support Coalition
International:

http://www.mindfreedom.org.




From resist at resist.ca  Wed Aug 27 13:17:43 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 27 Aug 2003 13:17:43 -0700
Subject: [news] Chretien Refuses Meeting With Families of Secret Trial
	Detainees
Message-ID: <1062015463.31240.797.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Jamie Kneen <jkneen at magma.ca>
To: NOWAR list <nowar at flora.org>, ACA <aca-list at lists.mutualaid.org>, PGA-gen <pga at lists.riseup.net>
Subject: [pga] Chretien Refuses Meeting With Families of Secret Trial Detainees
Date: 27 Aug 2003 16:01:10 -0400

Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2003 15:39:02 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Chretien Refuses Meeting With Families of Secret Trial Detainees
From: tasc at web.ca

Prime Minister Jean Chretien Refuses to Meet With Families of 
Canada's Secret Trial Detainees; Tears Flow as Members of Five 
Families, Including 10 Children, Plead for the Release of Their Loved 
Ones


(In which a group of five families goes to Ottawa hoping to meet the 
prime minister with a single question on behalf of the children: when 
is my dad coming home? They are the human fallout from Canadian 
repression, and the front line of the battle to preserve civil 
liberties in Canada. If these families cannot win justice, no one in 
this country can win justice. The shadow of the anti-democracy probe 
of the RCMP/CSIS which secretly jailed 19 Pakistani men in Toronto a 
week earlier hangs over the gathering as an omen that unless we 
continue to speak up, the slender threads of democracy will continue 
to tear and come apart.)

Ottawa, Ontario, August 25, 2003 -- It takes a lot of courage to 
fight a fire, courage which has been on display the past few weeks as 
fires have ravaged parts of British Columbia. Even Prime Minister 
Jean Chretien came out of his seclusion to view the human toll of the 
tragedy and to shake hands with the survivors.

There is another fire raging in Canada that is causing deep, possibly 
irreparable harm to Canada, and threatening the safety of all who 
live here. It is a fire whose flames lick at the Canadian 
constitution, and which has already burned deep holes in the Canadian 
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In many instances, it has seared 
Canada??s international obligations under such covenants as the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The fire is represented by words like "CSIS security certificate," 
and by headlines from the past week about 19 Pakistani men who 
disappeared from the streets of Toronto for over a week before anyone 
knew they'd been arrested. On Monday, the focus was on the Secret 
Trial 5: Mohammad Mahjoub (jailed since June, 2000), Mahmoud Jaballah 
(jailed since August, 2001), Hassan Almrei (jailed since October 
2001), Mohamed Harkat (jailed since December 2002) and Adil Charkaoui 
(jailed since May 2003).

These five men have been held, largely in solitary confinement, a 
collective 94 months without charge or bail, on secret "evidence" 
neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to see. That "evidence" is 
provided by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, a 
scandal-ridden spy agency with a remarkable record of dishonesty, 
corruption, and disregard for civil rights.

On Monday, August 25, a courageous group of fire fighters came to 
Ottawa to extinguish this fire. They were the friends and families of 
the secret trial detainees who, in a historic moment, were all 
gathered together in one place, in common cause, in an act giving new 
life to the worn-out cry of solidarity.

They came to Ottawa to present a petition to the PM with thousands of 
signatures demanding freedom for loved ones and the end of the secret 
trial security certificate. They came to Ottawa in the same spirit 
they came to Canada -- with hope that they would find freedom from 
persecution and torture. They came here because they believed in the 
democratic process and the promise of a new, more peaceful life. And 
they came because they want so desperately to see democracy work.

It's unclear ultimately what every family member expected, balancing 
their deepest hopes for justice against the litany of abuses they 
have suffered and continue to endure. But by the time they made it to 
the red carpet at the entrance to the PMO, they had the door slammed 
in their face by Chretien's deputy communications director Steven 
Hogue as a wall of RCMP officers looked on.

It was the end of a one-month journey that began in late July, when a 
letter from the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada was sent to 
the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), requesting a meeting for August 
25. A letter was also sent from Ahmad Jaballah, a 17-year-old whose 
father, Mahmoud, just marked two years in Metro West Detention 
Centre, as well as from the Jaballah's MP, Liberal Jim Karygiannis.

Throughout the month of August, numerous calls were made every few 
days to check on the status of our proposed meeting with Chretien or 
with one of his aides. Each time we called we were told that the file 
was still "open," and that we would be hearing from them.

But as our vehicles from Toronto pulled in to Ottawa late Sunday 
evening, we had not yet had confirmation of this meeting. As of 
Monday morning, as the vans began showing up from Montreal, we were 
still told that the PMO had an open file on us, but that it was not 
clear if we would get our meeting. We kept getting transferred to an 
answering machine where we could leave a message about our "concerns."

Two weeks after the letters had been sent, members of the Mahjoub and 
Jaballah families gathered at CSIS in Toronto to seek a meeting. 
August 14 marked the second anniversary of the arrest of Jaballah, 
who had won against a previous certificate but who was arrested on a 
second certificate and was now behind bars despite the fact that CSIS 
said it had no new "evidence" against him, only a new interpretation 
of the old "evidence" that had been dismissed by a federal court 
judge.

Once at CSIS, they were met again with a wall of police who refused 
them entry. This was not new. At the end of a three-day walk to stop 
secret trials held in June in Toronto, a similar response met the 
families.

But on August 14, the media suddenly seemed interested, and lots of 
cameras were finally there to record the voices of families of secret 
trial detainees.

"If you don't want us to go in, at least get somebody to come out," 
said Mona El-Fouli, whose husband Mohammad Mahjoub has been detained 
38 months. "So they [CSIS] are free to go into homes and take people 
out of their homes, but they're not free to come and talk to us and 
tell us why they did that. If they have evidence, why don't they show 
it?"

For a few hours, it seems the story will get a national airing. But 
the big blackout began around 4:15 that afternoon, and the story of 
secret trials in Canada again went to the backburner.

The trip to Ottawa represents another opportunity to speak to the 
people of Canada, to awaken their sleeping conscience.

Monday morning dawns early for Mona El-Fouli. Before the sun is up, 
CTV has sent a cab to bring her to Ottawa's experimental farm where, 
following a story on mad cow disease, Mona will go before a national 
audience to explain why she is making her first trip to Ottawa along 
with her three children. The cab driver is a perky fellow who 
normally does a lot of pickups for the Canada AM show, and seems to 
deliver his standard line as Mona gets ready to disembark: "Don't let 
all this media go to your head, Mona!"

Mona smiles politely and then looks around at the bizarre site of a 
small camera crew trying to coax some cows into early morning "cow 
action," but the creatures would rather stare back with that sense of 
detached wonder at the antics of humans. El-Fouli tries to explain to 
the male technician that as a woman wearing hijab, she would prefer 
to put the earpiece in her ear by herself.

Some members of the crew have gone inside a barn and upset another 
group of cows, who scream out and kick wooden planks constantly, a 
distracting noise that will underlie Mona's interview. And then Mona 
goes on and, in four and a half minutes, has to explain the effect 
the secret trial process has had on her and her children. She 
explains how difficult it has been, and the threat to her husband if 
he is deported back to Egypt. Indeed, when Mahjoub first came to 
Canada and was accepted as a refugee, the Canadian government 
informed the Egyptian government, and Mahjoub's two brothers back 
home, a teacher and a doctor, were disappeared, and have not been 
heard from since.

The interview is very brief, but Mona's message is clear: if the 
government has evidence against her husband, let them show it and 
have a fair trial. Otherwise, stop holding him and return him to his 
children.

It's back into the cab and a trip to a nearby house, where, after the 
driver's repeated warning not to let all this media go to her head, 
Mona prepares to do a more extensive radio interview with CBC 
morning. Throughout the day, CBC radio will be airing lots of 
coverage of two seemingly related but equally weighted stories: the 
plight of the families of secret trial detainees, and whether the 
RCMP should continue to use yellow as part of its uniform colours.

"I'm hoping to speak to the prime minister or member of the prime 
minister's office and to be able to get them to understand this is 
not fair at all and to ensure a fair process," she explains. "It's 
very, very difficult for my husband. It's not easy to be in detention 
for three years and not to know what it's all about. For the family 
it's a nightmare. It's stressful for me. First of all, he [Mahjoub] 
was the sole support for the family. The children keep asking where 
he is, what he's doing, why doesn't he come back?

"When they go and visit him, they feel uncomfortable speaking to him 
behind glass, they keep kissing and hugging the glass. It's very 
emotional. One day my 6-year-old son saw guards behind my husband and 
started to break down and scream and scream, 'I know, I know that 
he's in jail, why is he in jail?' It was too emotional a moment. I 
wonder, if I were to tell him why he is in jail, what would I say to 
him? Because we don't know what the evidence is that's put him in 
jail. So I would like to see the evidence that put my husband for 
three years in jail."

El-Fouli explains that "at the moment, because they [the children] 
are still small and they don't understand what jail is all about, 
they wouldn't understand that there is no evidence against him, so I 
tell them that he is travelling and that he will be coming one day. 
But at the same time that I tell them that he is coming one day I 
wonder, IS he going to come back? What's going to happen to him? And 
for what reason? I??d like to see the evidence, I'd like to see fair 
trials."

After gathering all the children together, El-Fouli, Sophie Harkat 
and her family, and the Jaballah family head downtown with placards 
and banners to set up at the Human Rights monument.

On the grass near the monument, surrounded by a huge horde of media, 
gather the wives, sisters, children and adopted families of the 
detained men. The families are amazed at the masses of media. There 
is a sense of hope that today, perhaps, their story will get out 
across the country. Live spots are set up for CBC, CTV, and Global.

It??s a morning filled both with the weight of the emotion that comes 
with living through a daily nightmare, and the liberation that comes 
with looking around and seeing that you are no longer alone in your 
struggle. Little children run around playing hide-and-seek behind 
banners and placards just like any other group of kids would do, only 
this group of kids shares a common tragedy: their dads are in jail on 
weightless allegations ??supported?? by secret ??evidence??.

An officer with the RCMP comes over and discusses the march route 
with walk organizers. He is friendly enough, and says he has been in 
touch with the prime minister's office in the hopes of helping us get 
a meeting. He also informs us that the Montreal bus has been 
cancelled, and asks if we'll leave sooner rather than later. We ask 
his source for this information, but none is provided. (We know that 
the Montreal folks are coming in vans, not a bus, and received a call 
that they were a bit behind, and so find the RCMP's "news" curious!)

Before we even start speaking at the rally, the media have gathered 
in a big pack around Mona, around Diana Ralph, one of the adopted 
Canadian family members of Hassan Almrei, Sophie Harkat, and Ahmad 
Jaballah, a 17-year-old who eloquently puts forward his position as 
he explains how difficult the last few years have been.

"It's been pretty hard," Jaballah says. "First of all, my studies are 
going down. I can't focus in school for the past two years. I've been 
missing a lot of school because of going to court and so on. And also 
this week I'm supposed to be preparing for next week and going into 
grade 12 but now I'm here in Ottawa doing this, so I can't prepare 
for school. School is the basis for my future, and as you can see my 
future is being messed up from the start. So it's been pretty hard. 
And I'm the oldest, I'm only 17. I'm taking more responsibilities 
than I'm supposed to. I'm supposed to take care of my five brothers 
and sisters, and that's not a responsibility for a 17-year-old. I 
have more stuff on my back than I should have. It's hard."

Jaballah is asked why he thinks his father was arrested. It is the 
fifth time. Previously, he has said the media should really ask CSIS 
for an answer. "They claim him to be a terrorist, but I don't believe 
that. If you ask me what I think, I'd say it's something against 
Muslims these days, they go all around the world, all around cities 
and towns arresting Muslims for no reason. It's not just against my 
dad or the five but it's something against all Muslims."

As with loved ones of the other detainees, Jaballah??s message is 
simple, and does not seem too much to ask, especially considering 
what they've been through. "If you have anything against my dad, show 
it and give him a fair trial, I'm on your side," Ahmad says. 
"Otherwise, stop torturing Muslims and my dad."

After brief speeches from family members, the walk gets underway, 
stopping first at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, where minister 
Coderre signs the security certificate. It is also where legislation 
is being drafted to allow Coderre to rescind citizenship of permanent 
residents based on secret evidence, with no right of appeal. Finally, 
we note it was the site of a peaceful sit-in by "non-status" 
Algerians seeking an end to deportations last May, an occupation 
broken up in brutal fashion by electric-prod toting RCMP tactical 
squad members.

We pass by the Supreme Court, which continues to refuse to take on a 
case where they would have to rule on the constitutionality of secret 
trials. And then we head for the PMO. The RCMP officer informs us 
that someone will meet us to take the petitions. We tell him that 
this is not good enough. We are insisting on a meeting. He says he 
will call back, and he does. He has been listening to these stories 
all morning, and he seems affected. He comes back and says we can 
have a representative of each family go in.

As we approach the entrance to the PMO, the tension is palpable. The 
little kids are excited about seeing Jean Chretien, the older folks 
are wary, hoping not to be disappointed yet again, yet also prepared 
for what may be the inevitable letdown.

As we wait on the red carpet of the PMO entrance, Steve Hogue, a 
deputy communications director, comes out the door and takes the 
petitions from Ahmad Jaballah. Explaining the petition, Jaballah 
says, "It says either show the evidence or release them and end the 
secret trial. Can you show the Prime Minister? That would be 
appreciated."

Hogue grabs the petitions and scurries back inside, as RCMP officers 
close in behind him. There will be no meeting. We turn to the RCMP 
officer who has been on the phone all morning. He seems more shocked 
than we do, and tears well up in his eyes as one by one, family 
members take the megaphone to discuss their reaction.

Hind Charkaoui, whose brother Adil is detained in Montreal, says the 
government is closed, so we'll have to keep organizing and 
demonstrating. She then picks up 3-year old Howla Charkaoui, who 
manages to quietly chant "so-so-so, solidarite" and "no borders, no 
nations, stop the deportations."

Mrs. Charkaoui stands among the group, eight months pregnant, likely 
to give birth with her husband in solitary confinement.

Seven-year-old Ali Jaballah speaks as well, saying it's not fair, and 
that he wants his dad to be free. 10-year-old Afnan Jaballah says she 
thought this country was supposed to be free, but she sees that it 
isn't. The kids are getting a heavy-handed lesson in what democracy 
in Canada is really all about, especially for Muslims.

Ahmad Jaballah picks up the megaphone. Again, it is his leadership 
and eloquence which point us forward. "We have demonstrated before, 
and we know we will have to demonstrate again, and come back to 
Ottawa again and again until everyone is free and we can return 
Canada to a land of peace and justice," he says.

We close the gathering by hoping that Chretien will one day soon have 
a chance to look into the eyes of the children and tell them face to 
face why their fathers are still not coming home. The group retires 
to a local community centre for lunch, for reflection, and for 
dedication to working together in the future.

It comes with a cautionary note, however. We remind one another that 
now that we are together, we are stronger. But CSIS and the RCMP will 
view that as a threat, and are likely to engage in more surveillance, 
more harassment, more rumour-mongering, more wiretapping, and more 
arrests.

With that caveat in mind, we announce that the Campaign to Stop 
Secret Trials in Canada will return to Ottawa for Halloween and a 
mass trick-or-treat for sealed evidence at CSIS national headquarters 
on Friday, October 31. Couches will be set up at the entrances of 
CSIS to offer free psychological counseling to CSIS agents to help 
them overcome their irrational fear of Arabs and Muslims. Great 
detectives from history will be there to help CSIS learn the art of 
the trade, and many will wear masks with the faces of Canada's 
disappeared, the Secret Trial 5, a number which, unfortunately, may 
be higher by the time we gather again in two months time.

As we climb back into our vehicles to head home, we get a call on the 
cell phone. It's from the prime minister's office. They want us to 
know that the file is still "open." We explain our disappointment at 
today's turn of events, but say we are free again to meet in late 
October, and that hopefully a bit more respect will be shown to the 
families. The voice on the other end thanks us for our concerns.

For more information, contact us at tasc at web.ca. Additional 
information on secret trials is available on the following websites: 
http://www.homesnotbombs.ca
http://www.adilinfo.org
http://www.geocities.com/mohamedharkat/info.htm

(Report from Matthew Behrens of the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in 
Canada. SPECIAL THANKS to everyone who helped organize this event, 
from transportation to food preparation to lodging to postering and 
all the other tasks that are necessary to pull this off. Lots of 
great coverage appeared on the CBC National, Global and CTV, and in 
most papers across Canada, with a special on The Current (CBC Radio) 
on Tuesday morning featuring Ahmad Jaballah, Mohammad Syed, one of 
the lawyers for the Pakistani men being detained, and a poor response 
from solicitor general Wayne Easter. See you in October!)




From christoff at dojo.tao.ca  Thu Aug 28 14:38:59 2003
From: christoff at dojo.tao.ca (Stefan Christoff)
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 17:38:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [news] CKUT Radio: Resisting Pakistani Deportations in Montreal 
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0308281738470.4144-100000@dojo.tao.ca>


CKUT Radio: Resisting Pakistani Deportations in Montreal

Listen to a report with members of the Action Committee of Pakistani
Refugees in Montreal and the No One is Illegal Campaign, who are currently
organizing a political campaign to fight against the deportation of over
400 Pakistani refugees from Canada. These refugees are facing deportation
in the coming days, weeks and months.  Since September 11th, Pakistani
refugees have been systematically rejected at a rate of approximately 80%,
by Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

These refugees are facing deportation to both Pakistan and to the United
States their port of entry into Canada. If deported to the United States
many the 400 Pakistani refugees would face the same persecution many
recently fled, detention and the mandatory INS registration program for
many Arabs, Muslim and South Asians. If deported to Pakistani these 400
refugees mainly Shi'ia Muslim would face the same religious persecution
they fled in Pakistan. The grounds for rejection of these refugee claims
from CIC, being that the situation in Pakistan for these refugees has
improved in Pakistan despite contrary human rights reports from Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch.

One Pakistani refugee Bilquis Fatima a 63-year-old a wheelchair-bound
woman with a serious heart condition has been incarcerated along with her
son Imran Hussain at Montreal?s Laval Immigration Prevention Centre for
over a month. During this period her medical condition has deteriorated
drastically. Bilquis Fatima case has become a focal point of the campaign
to fight the deportation of Palestinian Refugees.

-> To Listen to the CKUT Radio Report Visit:
http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=7629

-------------------------------

Background Information on the Action Committee of Pakistani Refugees:

In Montreal, there are over 400 Pakistani refugee claimants facing
deportation in the coming months as their cases are being rejected in
unprecedented numbers by the Immigration and Refugee Board. These refusals
are based on the grounds that the situation in Pakistan from these
refugees has improved, whereas, the facts are contrary to it. These
refugees are fleeing a violent political and sectarian crisis in Pakistan,
which has been well documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch. They have escaped from the killings, torture, kidnappings, rape and
constant humiliations.

A close review of the rejected cases indicates that some IRB judges are
not aware of their own departments published reports, which clearly agrees
with the aforementioned human rights reports, and as such the decisions of
the IRB judges decisions are indicative of systemic racial profiling. In
the post 9/11 climate, there is also an increase in detention of
Pakistanis, particularly men, with most of them being held in detention
upon arrival at either Dorval airport or at the LaColle border.

Facing evident persecution, it is a deplorable and unacceptable that a
significant number of these refugees are being rejected and deported in
the coming days and months. On the part of the members of the Immigration
and Refugee Board, there is a clear lack of understanding, and
inconsistency in judgment, with regards to what these refugees face-
torture, rape, murder- upon their return.

This situation points to the growing criminalization of asylum seekers
world. Montreal's Pakistani refugees are developing a political campaign
against the efforts of Immigration Canada to deport them. The developing
campaign to fight against the efforts of Immigration Canada to deport
Montreal's Pakistani refugees is also clearly part of the growing movement
world wide, which confronts and challenges the Canadian State and its
racist policies against immigrants, refugees and indigenous peoples.








From resist at resist.ca  Fri Aug 29 12:11:30 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 29 Aug 2003 12:11:30 -0700
Subject: [news] Haidabucks update
Message-ID: <1062184290.31240.951.camel@murray>

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Tania <tania at redwiremag.com>
To: redwire at lists.resist.ca
Subject: [Redwire] Haidabucks update
Date: 29 Aug 2003 11:53:28 -0700

By ALEXANDRA GILL
>From Friday's Globe and Mail


The coffee in Masset, B.C., tastes exceptionally strong and sweet this week
as the owners of a small native-owned cafe savour their victory over
Starbucks.HaidaBucks, a 60-seat restaurant in a town of 700 on the remote
northern edge of the Queen Charlotte Islands, was just an aromatic drip in
the rain forest before the international coffee giant filed a
trademark-infringement lawsuit last spring. In true David-and-Goliath
fashion, the owners of HaidaBucks stood up to the multibillion-dollar
company, becoming international heroes in the process.

Having created a public-relations nightmare for itself, the Seattle-based
global enterprise, which prides itself on "support for local communities"
and fair trade practices, has officially announced that the case is closed.

"We won," said Darin Swanson, one of four HaidaBucks co-owners. "We did more
than defend our name; we defended our honour as indigenous peoples and our
right to our heritage."

The brew-ha-ha began boiling last March, when a Vancouver law firm, acting
on behalf of Starbucks Corp., sent a cease-and-desist letter to the owners
of HaidaBucks, requesting that they change the caf??'s name and stop using
the "confusing" variation of the Starbucks name and trademark. A formal
notice of litigation arrived the following month.

The owners of HaidaBucks, who opened the caf?? in 1999, refused to budge.
They argued that "bucks" is a colloquial expression, akin to "dude," that
young native men use among themselves.

"Three of the original owners were Haida," Mr. Swanson said. "And the other
guy was married to a Haida woman. So we decided to call ourselves
HaidaBucks. 

Rather than back down, HaidaBucks launched a massive Web campaign and
enlisted the support of Joseph Arvay, the Victoria-based lawyer who
represented natives in a landmark 1997 Supreme Court case that established
the concept of aboriginal title.

After both sides fired off several rounds of letters, Starbucks offered to
let HaidaBucks keep the name until the end of the year. The owners refused,
countering that they not only planned to keep the name but wanted Starbucks
to concede in writing that it would not be a trademark infringement for them
to do so. 

In July, Starbucks sent another letter, stating that HaidaBucks had made
appropriate accommodations by changing its logo, name and signage. The
letter also said that HaidaBucks had agreed not to move or expand its
business beyond the Queen Charlotte Islands.

The owners of HaidaBucks deny making any such changes or agreements.

The latest letter from Starbucks simply states that the matter "is closed."
Neither the coffee company's lawyer nor its director of worldwide public
affairs would return calls to elaborate.

"This is what Starbucks is so concerned about," Mr. Swanson explained a few
weeks ago, laughing quietly as he looked around the small caf?? with
peach-coloured walls, natural-finish wood tables and a stuffed trout on the
wall. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, and HaidaBucks had no customers.

Unlike Starbucks, which primarily serves beverages, desserts and ready-made
snacks, HaidaBucks employs a full-time chef who dishes up everything from
sushi to steak dinners.

Of course, it also sells coffee.

It once brewed Seattle's Best, the main rival to the Starbucks brand until
Starbucks bought it a few months back. Now, HaidaBucks offers self-serve
Canterbury coffee for $1 a cup.

This tempest in a coffee pot may not do much to help business on rainy days
when the tourists aren't around, but it has generated a huge amount of
publicity and an outpouring of encouragement.

A memo board on the caf?? wall proudly displays several newspaper articles
and editorials about the dispute, next to a four-page computer printout of
people who have sent donations for the legal fight or other forms of
support. 

Included on the list is Lane Baldwin, a businessman from West Virginia who
heard about the case and offered to create and maintain a HaidaBucks Web
site, free of charge. At last count, http://www.haidabuckscafe.com
<http://www.haidabuckscafe.com/>  had received almost a million hits.

Since March, the proprietors have sold nearly 800 HaidaBucks T-shirts,
mostly on-line. And in May, Jack Greenwood, the owner of Chubbie's Coffee
Shop in Queen Charlotte City, joined the fight by changing his caf??'s name
to ChubbieBucks. 

"I don't think Starbucks knew what it was getting itself into," said Mr.
Arvay, who is representing the Haida Nation in a land claim that seeks title
to the entire Queen Charlotte Islands and the surrounding waters of the
Hecate Strait. "When they took on HaidaBucks, they took on, to some extent,
the entire Haida Nation."

The case may be over for Starbucks, but not for the owners of HaidaBucks,
who plan to seek compensation for their legal costs.

"It's kind of a hollow victory," said Mr. Swanson, who is upset that
Starbucks has not apologized.

"But I guess if there's a moral to this story, it's that you shouldn't back
down to anybody who tells you what to do. If you know you're right, pursue
it, even if you've got a big bully coming at you."

Redwire Native Youth Media
www.redwiremag.com
Our stories, our voices, ourselves



From resist at resist.ca  Sat Aug 30 15:14:15 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 30 Aug 2003 15:14:15 -0700
Subject: [news] New Native Land-Claim Act Appalls Experts
Message-ID: <1062281655.31240.987.camel@murray>

New Native Land-Claim Act Appalls Experts
? By Alex Roslin

It's hard to believe now, but when Vancouver lawyer Stan Ashcroft filed
his first Native land claim case in the early 1980s, it took only one or
two years to get an answer from Ottawa. Today, that kind of response
time is as likely a scenario as all non-Natives packing up and going
back to where they came from.

"Right now in B.C. it takes seven to nine years to get a response, which
is craziness. You're lost in never-never land," Ashcroft says, reached
by phone at his West Vancouver office.

And despite the widespread attention given the recent final agreement
for the Northwest Territories' Dogrib Nation, Canada's sloth-slow system
of settling Native land claims is about to get a lot worse, according to
Native groups and legal experts.

It's thanks to the Specific Claims Resolution Act, or Bill C-6, a
little-noticed bill that has slipped through the House of Commons,
overlooked amid the protests over the First Nations Governance Act.

Robert Nault, federal Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern
Development, has said Bill C-6 will make the Native land-claims process
faster, fairer, and more transparent and will clear the backlog of 771
specific land claims, including 330 in British Columbia alone.

At the existing rate, it will take until 2058 to settle the existing
claims, and 60 new ones are being filed each year. Half of the new cases
are in B.C., where the backlog is the worst of any province.

Bill C-6 would meet a long-standing Native demand: a tribunal with
binding powers to judge specific land claims that have been rejected by
the federal government. The tribunal will be part of a new Specific
Claims Resolution Centre, which would replace the existing Indian Claims
Commission.

The present commission is also like a court of appeal for specific
claims rejected by the feds, but unlike the proposed new binding
tribunal, this commission only has the power to mediate disputes and
make recommendations to Ottawa on reopening a case. The government often
ignores the commission's reports; one report has been on the books nine
years with no response from Ottawa.

The government's reform deals only with "specific" land claims. These
claims cover the hundreds of cases in which First Nations say they were
fraudulently or unlawfully dispossessed of reserve land by federal and
provincial governments in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
("Comprehensive" claims deal with broader self-government issues; they
have a massive backlog of their own.)

Some of the country's leading land-claims experts say that Bill C-6, far
from improving the process, will actually disembowel the land-claims
system and do nothing to clear the backlog.

"You've got a process that's in a hopeless gridlock," says Vancouver
lawyer Allan Donovan, who has represented B.C. First Nations in more
than 40 specific claims. "The biggest problem that isn't being addressed
is the backlog," he says on the line from his office. "Until they deal
with the backlog, the rest is just tinkering."

Ron Maurice, a Calgary lawyer who was chief counsel of the Indian Claims
Commission from 1996 to 1998, agrees. "With Bill C-6, you've got more
gridlock, more litigation, more roadblocks, more animosity," he says,
reached by cellphone while travelling in Alberta.

The Assembly of First Nations has called for Bill C-6 to be scrapped. It
is mounting a last-ditch effort to lobby the Senate to kill the proposed
legislation when Parliament resumes in September. "My goodness, there
are nearly 800 specific claims now before Canada," says Phil Fontaine,
newly elected national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, in a
phone interview while vacationing in the Kootenays. "It's completely and
absolutely unreasonable."

"When we talk about poverty, an important process has to be the
resolution of these claims," Fontaine says.

The issue is a contentious one. Long-simmering specific claims presaged
many of Canada's worst conflicts over Native land during recent years,
including Gustafsen Lake, Ipperwash, and Oka.

"The social costs of not settling these claims are enormous,"
land-claims lawyer Alan Pratt says from his office in Dunrobin, Ontario.
"You have people growing up in poverty who shouldn't be and who don't
have opportunities they should have. The government has never come to
grips with how big the problem is."

The biggest concern with Nault's land-claims reform, say some, is what's
not in the bill: more money for settlements and more government staff to
review claims.

The Indian Affairs budget for specific-claim settlements is $75 million
per year, and that's not going to change, according to Audrey Stewart,
assistant deputy minister for claims and Indian government. Even with an
extra minimum $25 million annually kicked in by the Treasury Board in
recent years, it's still only enough to settle an average of 14 claims
each year, far less than the number of new cases being filed.

"Every program manager in the government would like more resources,"
Stewart laments.

The lack of new funds angers some land-claims experts. "Seventy-five
million dollars a year is not adequate for B.C., let alone the whole
country," Donovan says.

"You would never see that [budget ceiling] in the context of pay equity,
for example," Maurice says, pointing to the $5-billion pay-equity ruling
for federal employees in 1998. "No one will ever balk at that because
they are charter rights. It really is the same thing for aboriginal
rights."

In the B.C. and Yukon region, the federal justice department has only
five lawyers doing all the legal reviews of specific claims, and much of
their time is spent on treaty and claim negotiations and dealing with
the Indian Claims Commission.

"It's not sufficient," says an Indian Affairs official who spoke on
condition of anonymity. "If a claim was sent now for legal review, it
would take 20 years. It's very frustrating, extremely frustrating. The
real problem with the whole process until now is the huge backlog, and
this reform doesn't do anything to address that.

"I'm not sure what the motivation behind the legislation was unless it
was just to make it look like the government was doing something," he
says.

Ironically, the delays only add to the government's final settlement
costs, because the biggest component is usually interest, says Kim
Fullerton, who was the Indian Claims Commission's chief counsel in the
early 1990s.

"Taxpayers--and I'm a taxpayer--should be downright pissed off that the
government is not dealing with these claims. It's a mortgage on our
future," Fullerton says, reached by phone at his office in Oakville,
Ontario, where he represents several First Nations in private practice.

 

THE LACK OF new funds is not the only concern. Much outcry has also
focused on the fact that Bill C-6 will require a First Nation to agree
to a $7-million cap before the new tribunal would hear its case. That
amount, claims experts say, is laughably low.

"The $7-million cap is not going to work," says Stephen Pillipow, a
Saskatoon lawyer who has represented First Nations in 15 claims
settlements.

Only one of the claims was worth less than $7 million, Pillipow says
over the phone from his office. "And that was 12 years ago. If you look
at all the claims being settled now, there is nothing even close to $7
million."

(After protests from Native groups, the Senate raised the ceiling to $10
million, but the government won't say whether or not it will accept the
amendment when the bill comes back to the House for final approval.)

Even the current government-appointed Indian Claims Commission, which
does not have a settlement cap, has expressed concern about Bill C-6. In
its winter 2003 in-house newsletter, it said the cap "may have a
negative effect on the access-to-justice principle". Only three of the
27 claims the commission helped settle or mediate since its creation in
1991 were resolved for under $7 million. The average was more than $26
million.

"The vast majority of claims I've come into contact with far exceed the
cap," says Maurice, the former commission counsel. He dismisses the new
tribunal as "essentially a small-claims court".

In a twist that has puzzled some, the $7-million cap will apply not only
to settlements but also to First Nations that simply want to ask the new
tribunal to study the validity of their claim.

Such studies are a key role of the existing Indian Claims Commission.
The commission's reports have helped convince Indian Affairs to reopen
45 claims that the department had previously rejected. In 30 cases, the
department changed its mind and agreed to negotiate a settlement.

The new tribunal would not have heard these cases, except in the
unlikely event that the bands had waived settlements over $7 million. "I
think it's absolutely absurd," Maurice says.

Without access to the tribunal, most First Nations will only have one
option left: suing Ottawa. But in B.C., First Nations are barred from
doing that, too. Breach-of-trust cases must be brought within 30 years
under the province's statute of limitations. Native land claims are
usually a century or more old; before 1951, the Indian Act effectively
barred First Nations from using their funds to advance land claims.

Even in provinces that allow older claims, most First Nations can't
afford the colossal legal bills of fighting the government in court;
costs are five to 10 times higher than settling a claim at the
negotiating table.

As if that isn't bad enough, Ashcroft says, Bill C-6 will hit B.C.
harder than any other province because it has new restrictions on what
constitutes a legitimate land claim. The government's new claims centre
will only be able to mediate or judge claims that arise from
mismanagement of reserve lands or breaches of treaties or law.

B.C. is in a unique situation because turn-of-last-century provincial
leaders refused to sign treaties with First Nations, preferring to grab
land without compensation. Meanwhile, the feds argue that many
territories taken from B.C. First Nations weren't reserves, either. The
result, Ashcroft says, is that Bill C-6, the reform that is supposed to
bring fairness and speed to land claims, will leave many B.C. First
Nations out in the cold.

"The claims being made for this bill are that the key deficiencies in
the process are being addressed," Pratt says. "The government has simply
misled people." 




From resist at resist.ca  Sun Aug 31 13:53:54 2003
From: resist at resist.ca (resist)
Date: 31 Aug 2003 13:53:54 -0700
Subject: [news] [Fwd: [copb-van-l] Security Guards Attack Man]
Message-ID: <1062363233.15265.1.camel@murray>

In typical fasion, the Province reporter refuses to ask obvious
questions like "So then, the Bay's protocol for dealing with someone
with a history of shoplifting is to send six men to beat them up, even
if they are not resisting?"


-----Forwarded Message-----
From: chris at resist.ca
To: copb-van-l at lists.resist.ca
Cc: copwatch at resist.ca
Subject: [copb-van-l] Security Guards Attack Man
Date: 31 Aug 2003 11:41:11 -0700


Security guards rough up wrong man

Salim Jiwa
The Province

Friday, August 29, 2003


Jason Martin was wrongly attacked after security at the Bay in Metrotown
mistakenly identified him as a person banned from the store for
shoplifting.


The Bay store at Metrotown admitted yesterday its security men roughed up
the wrong guy when they accosted a musician and slammed him face-first
into a wall.

Robert Jason Martin said his ordeal began when he walked into the main
mall from The Bay last Friday and heard guards running and shouting behind
him.

The next moment his face hit the wall and up to six guards were twisting
his arms as he cried out in anguish.

"I was walking down the hall and I heard people yelling and I turned and
saw security guards so I moved over toward the wall to make way and I kept
walking," said the 24-year-old.

"Three beats later somebody smashed me from behind and I am flying into
the wall face-first. They pretty well just attacked me -- somebody had a
piece of my hair, somebody had my neck, somebody had one arm and they were
twisting it one way and then the other, which is making me scream.

"One guy put his elbow into my neck and crashed me into the wall.

"They took me downstairs into the security kiosk and by that time they had
realized I was the wrong person."

The guards told him they were looking for another man and it was a case of
mistaken identity.

Martin said he called 911 and police investigated, but they told him
yesterday no charges would be laid even though he was attacked without
cause.

Martin is still in pain and has numbness in his hand. He is in physiotherapy.

The Bay spokeswoman Hillary Stauth said it was a case of mistaken identity
and the company has asked an outside adjuster to investigate.

"Clearly it is a very unfortunate incident -- it is something that
shouldn't have happened," she said. "And we would like to deal with it as
quickly as possible in order to reach a resolution."

Stauth said the company is talking to the security department in a bid to
prevent the same thing happening again.

sjiwa at png.canwest.com
? Copyright 2003 The Province



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