The Truth Buried Alive

By Greg Palast
From Greg Palast.com
2003

Of the thousands of bless you and f___ you messages that arrived at the Guardian papers after we broke the Florida vote swindle story in November 2000, none ruffled my editors English reserve but one: a letter demanding we retract the article or else. It was from Carter-Ruck, a law firm with the reputation as the piranhas of Englands libel bar, a favorite of foreign millionaires unhappy about their press. Their letter stated they represented Barrick Corporation a Canadian-American gold-mining operation that employed George Bush Sr.

Barrick particularly did not like my mention of the stomach-churning evidence that Sutton Resources, a Barrick subsidiary, had buried alive as many as fifty gold miners in Tanzania in August 1996, prior to Barricks purchase of Sutton in 1999.

What set their complaint apart from the scores of others we receive from corporations bitching and moaning about my exposes was Barricks extraordinary demand. They did not want their denial printed (I'd done that), nor their evidence the story was wrong (I would do that too, if they would provide it). They demanded my paper apologize and pay a tiny fortune for simply mentioning the allegations first reported by Amnesty International. And even that would not be enough. Barrick also demanded we print a statement vowing that my paper had confirmed that no one was killed at the Tanzanian site. Now, I would have been more than happy to confirm that if I had evidence to that effect. The evidence was, in so many words, We are billionaires and you aren't.

Lacking a first amendment, Britain has become the libel-suit capital of the world. Stories accepted elsewhere draw steep judgments in London. The Guardian papers receive notice of legal action about three times a day, that's one thousand libel notices a year. This creates a whole encyclopedia of off-limits topics, including an admonition from our legal department not to disparage the marriage of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman sent the day after they announced their divorce. No paper can afford to defend against all these actions. The Guardian papers operate on a small budget from a not-for-profit foundation. No doubt about it, Barrick could break us in defense costs alone.

In Canada, where libel laws are similar to Britains, Frank magazine had picked up my story. Frank swiftly grabbed its ankles by running that incredible retraction that no one had been killed or injured in the mine clearance. The editor apologized to me; they simply had no resources to fight billionaires. Who could blame them? The first report of the alleged killings in Tanzania came from Amnesty International, whom I quoted. I called their headquarters in London. Courageously, Amnesty refused to help. The organization whose motto is,'Silence is Complicity' announced that, on advice of lawyers, they would be silent.

Barrick made good use of Amnestys self-censorship. The company told the court and the many news outlets around the world that were sniffing around the story that Amnesty had conducted an investigation and had concluded that no one was killed in the course of the peaceful removal of miners. If this were true, I would have retracted the story immediately. I'm not infallible, and nothing would have made me more joyous than to find out those miners were still alive. But Barrick could not produce the Amnesty clearance no such report could be located. Amnesty said Tanzania had barred them from investigating, so the killings remained neither confirmed nor denied in short they had never cleared Sutton Resources. But that was off the record. Publicly, the Nobel Prize-winning organization (despite several angry calls to them from Bianca Jagger) continued to hide under a desk, knees knocking.

One excellent reporter, chosen Britains journalist of the year, told me just to sign whatever it took to get out of trouble. That's just how it's done here. Floyd Abrams, who defends the New York Times in the United States and Europe, explained to my astonishment that the truth alone is not a defense in English courts. Photos of dead bodies and body parts in Tanzania meant nothing in our case.

I'm not a Man for All Seasons. Honestly, I was ready to go along with some kind of bum-kissing apology to Barrick, only because at the time I was living on Red Bull, potassium powder and no sleep trying to get out the Florida vote theft story, and I sure as hell didn't need another distraction.

But I had a problem. Our paper had encouraged an internationally respected expert on human rights and the environment, Tanzanian lawyer Tundu Lissu, familiar with the allegations, to go to the mine. If Lissu said no one died, I'd sign off as Barrick requested. Instead, over several missions to his home country, he sent back more witness statements, photographs of a corpse allegedly of a man killed by police during the clearing of the site, a list of the dead and a videotape of bones, and a worker going into one pit to retrieve bodies buried, he says on the tape, by the Canadians. (Barrick says the bodies were not from the subsidiarys mine site or, if from the site, the deaths were not the result of the clearance of the site.)

In April 2001, when Barrick found out Lissu was asking questions inside the mine site, they sent him and his employer, the World Resources Institute of Washington, DC, a letter outlining a lawsuit if he repeated the allegations concerning the removal of miners.

Then it turned grim. The Tanzanian police, we learned, were hunting for Lissu. Lissu, while in the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, told officials that the allegations of deaths should be investigated. Hardly an inflammatory statement; but the Tanzanian government determined that was sufficient grounds to charge him with sedition.

That's when I lost all sense of reason. I hinted that if the Guardian fabricated a lie to save a few coins, I might take action against my own newspaper for defaming me as a journalist. I'd never do it; the threat was nuts (and not exactly a career maker), but I couldn't let Lissu go to jail by going along with an easy lie. The Guardians good moral sense slowed the rush to the usual cheap exit from a suit. However, the money clock on legal fees was ticking, making me the most expensive journalist at the Guardian papers.

Bad news. In July 2001, in the middle of trying to get out the word of the theft of the election in Florida, I was about to become the guinea pig, the test case, for an attempt by a multinational corporation to suppress free speech in the USA using British libel law. I have a U.S.-based Web site for Americans who can't otherwise read my columns or view my BBC television reports. The gold-mining company held my English newspaper liable for aggravated damages for my publishing the story in the USA. If I did not pull the Bush-Barrick story off my U.S. Web site, my paper would face a ruinously costly fight.

Panicked, the Guardian legal department begged me to delete not just the English versions of the story but also my Spanish translation, printed in Bolivia.(Caramba!)

The Goldfingers didn;t stop there. Barrick's lawyers told our papers that I personally would be sued in the United Kingdom over Web publications of my story in America, because the Web could be accessed in Britain. The success of this legal strategy would effectively annul the U.S. Bill of Rights. Speak freely in the USA, but if your words are carried on a U.S. Web site, you may be sued in Britain. The Declaration of Independence would be null and void, at least for libel law. Suddenly, instead of the Internet becoming a means of spreading press freedom, the means to break through censorship, it would become the electronic highway for delivering repression.

And repression was winning. InterPress Services (IPS) of Washington, DC, sent a reporter to Tanzania with Lissu. They received a note from Barrick that said, if the wire service ran a story that repeated the allegations, the company would sue. IPS did not run the story.

I was worried about Lissu. On July 19, 2001, a group of Tanzanian police interest lawyers wrote the nations president asking for an investigation instead, Lissus law partner in Dar es Salaam was arrested. The police were hunting for Lissu. They broke into his home and office and turned them upside down looking for the names of Lissus sources, his whereabouts and the evidence he gathered on the mine site clearance. This was more than a legal skirmish. Over the next months, demonstrations by vicims families were broken up by police thugs. A member of Parliament joining protesters was beaten and hospitalized. I had to raise cash quick to get Lissu out, and with him, his copies of police files with more evidence of the killings. I called Maude Barlow, the Ralph Nader of Canada, head of the Council of Canadians. Without hesitation, she teamed up with Friends of the Earth in Holland, raised funds and prepared a press conference and in August tipped the story to the Globe & Mail, Canadas national paper.

The Toronto-based newspaper was excited: This was big news about one of the richest men about town, Barrick CEO Peter Munk not to mention their former prime minister Brian Mulroney, George Bush, repression, greed and blood. The rule in the news biz is, if it bleeds, it leads. So they promised Maude a front-page splash if she'd hold off on her public statement.

The Globe & Mail quickly put Mark McKinnon, their best reporter, on the case. Just as quickly, they yanked him off it and told him to fly home from Africa. From page one to page nothing. Barlow was incensed at the decision of the editor. According to Barlow, the editor pleaded that it wasn't his call the spike came from the highest levels.

While the big shots at the Globe & Mail dove to the mat, spunky little Frank magazine effectively retracted its retraction. They'd seen a videotape with bodies spirited out of the country by Lissu and would not stand silent. Barrick insisted the bodies in the films were not from the mine clearance but Frank wasn't buying.

Meanwhile, not waiting on that palsied institution, the so-called free press, to act, I issued an alert to human rights groups worldwide. The Guardians lawyers went ballistic: In the United Kingdom, one can't complain of being sued for libel, because under their law, a paper is guilty of defamation until it proves itself innocent. Therefore, publicly defending oneself repeats the libel and makes the paper and reporter subject to new damages and court sanctions. Kafka had nothing on the British court system.

The pressure was on. I'm pleased to say that my editor refused to sign the abject, lying retraction just fifteen minutes before the court-imposed deadline. He told me these encouraging words: We are now going to spend hundreds of thousands on some fucking meaningless point you are trying to make. I hope you are happy.

Can Elders Save the World?

By Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
From Yes! Magazine
2005

The work of elders may never have been so important as it is today, when the continuation of life on Earth is at stake and wisdom is in short supply

I didn’t know what was happening to me when I reached my 60s. I wanted to be the same workaholic I had always been, but I couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t keep up. I was depressed in situations where I had no reason to be. I felt like I had a guilty secret that I couldn’t share with others. I kept pretending that I still could do what I used to do.

My inner work involves a mystical form of Judaism called Kabbalah. As part of that work, I do a nightly examination of conscience. I ask myself: What was this day all about? What did I do? How did I feel? How did I relate to people?

It became clear to me as I did this work that the spiritual practices I had been doing up to that time couldn’t help me with the new season of life into which I had entered.

Seasons
It was then that I began to look at life from the point of view of seasons. It seemed to me that the biblical seven years are important time periods, and that each seven-year span could be represented by one month in a hypothetical year. If the Feast of Nativity, December 25, is birth, by the end of January you’d be seven years old. By the end of February, you’d be 14, and by the end of March you would be 21. Then comes the spring of life. By the time you are 42, you are at the end of June, and you’re figuring out what you are going to do when you grow up. And you have summer—July, August, and September—to do your life’s work.

There is a script for each of these phases. From one to seven, you’re a toddler and you start kinder­garten. From 14 to 21, you become an adult. You have a script for all of life until you reach retirement age; then there are no more scripts. You’re no longer a “productive-consuming” adult, so you fall off the perimeters of visibility and must be warehoused until you kick off. From 60 on, when you are in the October and November of your lifetime, there aren’t any good models.

It is very difficult to live without a script, so from 65 on, many of us just continue playing the same games we played before.

The Spiritual Eldering theory is this: In the first months, January, February, and March, we are in the world of sensation. In the spring months, we move into the world of feeling. We are in the world of reason in the summer months. But in the fall, we go to a place of intuition, of spirit, and we need models on how to do this.

In aboriginal and native societies, elders have a place; they sit in council together.

There’s a wonderful dance that is done at the Jewish wedding of the youngest child. The mother puts on a crown and dances with joy that the last child is out of the house and the burden is over. But then what does she do? Then she becomes the shtetl who carries under her apron a pot of food for somebody. So the script is there.

In our society we have been given an extended lifespan, but we don’t have the extended consciousness to go with it. We have the largest elderly population ever, and we have a planet that is sick and is trying to heal itself. Do you see why elders are so needed today?

But you don’t become an elder unconsciously. Nobody is going to do it for you—not mommy, not a teacher, not rabbis, not priests. You’ve got to do this work yourself.
As baby boomers enter the elder years, I’m seeing people learning to do the work of spiritual eldering.

Harvesting
Why is it that people are often depressed about getting older? One reason is that most people, when they get older, have a long history of plowing and of sowing seeds, but not much history of harvesting.

How do you harvest a lifetime? You need internal tools that add to awareness.
Every day, for example, I walk toward the future. What do I see as I look ahead? The angel of death.

Oy! I don’t want to look.

So I back into the future. But what happens if I back into the future? I see the past.

Oy! I remember what I did wrong, and I remember the disappointments.

So I cut myself off from the past. As to the present, I don’t want to think about the diminishments, so I have little awareness of the present either.

When you don’t look at the future or at the past, and you don’t pay much attention to the present, you’re in a box of crunched, narrow consciousness. This is the psychic field of Alzheimer’s. No future, no past, very little of the present. Intentional non-
consciousness. Invincible ignorance.

October: the Ancient of Days
When I stretch my awareness of time, I get in touch with an aspect of God that is called the Ancient of Days, which is witness to everything that has ever happened and ever will happen. That’s my companion for eldering. This kind of meditative work is what needs to be learned in October.

When I go inside myself and start checking the past, I come to things that I don’t want to look at—the file in which I keep my failures, the things I don’t like, the things that are not yet reconciled. Anxiety keeps me away from there.

But in that file may be treasures. Imagine I had some stocks from before the Depression that I thought were worthless and I put them in a file of failures. And then one day I see in The New York Times a name that sounds familiar. I go to the filing cabinet and pull out the stock certificate, and by now it has become very valuable.

So it is with failures. What I felt at the time was a failure may be what moved me in a new direction; the fallout of my failures may be where my successes are.

Letting go of vindictiveness and forgiving are other parts of the harvest work of October. To give you an illustration, the prisoner does his time in prison, but the warden does time in prison, too.

Every time you hold somebody in the prison of your anger, you tie up vital energy in the grudge.

Remember the phrase from the Psalms that goes “Thou prepareth a table before me in the presence of mine enemies?” This is often interpreted as vindictive: I’m going to have a good dinner, and you’re not.

Instead, in this October work, I hold (imaginary) testimonial dinners for the people who did me wrong: Because you did this nasty thing to me, you turned me away from a routine life to an extraordinary life. You didn’t know you did it for my good, but you did it anyway. Today I honor you for having been a difficult teacher, and I let you go free.
The more energy we can recover from the past, the more life comes back to us and the more energy we have for the present. That’s why we say, “Teach us to number our days that we may get at the heart of wisdom.”

If you don’t recover the past, you won’t get to the wisdom. Wisdom comes from having learned from experience.

How do we expand awareness of the present? There is a kind of conversation that I call spiritual intimacy that many of us crave more than any other form of intimacy. It sometimes happens when you sit on an airplane next to a stranger and have a conversation that doesn’t require you to tiptoe around the landmines of everyday relationships. It feels so good to be heard and be understood.

You can consciously initiate a conversation of this kind with a trusted confidant. Take turns asking each other questions such as these: What are my questions? How do I perceive my problems? What troubles me?

One Hasidic master said, “When someone comes to me with his problems, I listen to his Higher Self give me the solution. Then I offer the solution that he has brought to me.”

Finally, in opening up to our higher capacities, we need to bring in the body’s contribution to extended awareness, keeping in mind the old Hermetic axiom, “As above, so below.” This means, among other things, that the brain/mind and body are mirror images of each other, reflecting and intensifying the capacities of each.

November and service
Imagine for a moment you’ve done the October work and become an elder.
To understand what it means to be an elder, recall that God told Moses, “Speak to the elders.” The elders of the church serve as mentors and guides. The Russians call their spiritual director Staretz, which means an elder. The Sufis call their teacher a Shaikh, which means an elder. There is work for the elders to do at this time to give over to the next generation and to help heal the planet.

So you could do what Jimmy Carter did. As an elder citizen of the planet, you could do conflict resolution or build affordable housing for Habitat for Humanity.

I’m thinking of an elder corps. Instead of sending young soldiers into the world’s trouble spots, we would send in elders. They would meet with those who had lost grandchildren on both sides of the conflict and grieve with them. I think that with such conversations, the aggravated political climate would yield to wisdom and compassion.

What if we are caught in the crossfire? It’s better than dying from emphysema. And if we are unarmed, I doubt if we would get shot.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “I’ve been to the mountain.” I have a contribution to make that is made deeper and richer by my witness at the painful spots on the planet. This is my work now.

Within the context of eons, our personal lives and actions are both meaningless and intensely meaningful. On the one hand, we’re specks of dust on a little planet in an obscure corner of the Milky Way. On the other hand, we’re inhabitants of a planet that is trying to save its life. Earth needs a cadre of conscious elders who are aware of their task for healing the planet.

December and the exit from life
The December work is preparing for the passage from life in such a way that a child can come to the bedside of a dying grandparent and say, “Oh, wow, so that’s how it goes.”
A good completion would take away much of the fear associated with death, which, in our culture, is often translated to “Eat and drink and take drugs, for tomorrow we shall die.”

The work of December is also to leave a moral legacy. This means deputizing the next generation: This is what is unfinished; would you continue that for me?

Can you imagine if people who are not afraid of dying would tell the truth to their children and grandchildren and work with them consciously when a will is written?

When I would ask my Dad (God rest his soul) what he wanted to have done with his remains, he would give me a sort of nasty rebuke like, “You can’t wait until I die.”
Then one day I said to him while taking a walk, “Dad, the following are the arrangements I’ve made for my remains.”

He listened and wanted to correct me a little bit, but then he got to talk about what he wanted for himself. And it was a relief for him to be able to talk about that because he couldn’t talk to his own father about death. Do you see what intergenerational healing has to be done so that people are not so afraid of dying?

I would like to see an elders’ ashram where people wouldn’t try and cheer us up with old television reruns, but would let us do the serious work that we want to do. It’s so much easier to do this work with other people; the atmosphere gets filled with that electric, shared wave of people doing their inner work.

A good death would be one that says, “I’m not hungry for more life, and I don’t think I’ve over-stayed my time here.”

It used to be that life began and ended at home. Then we took it to the hospital, and now birth and death have become pathologies.

Instead of being in intensive care, with tubes in you, strapped to the bed, can you imagine being surrounded by loving people as you prepare to die? Can you imagine having a chance to once again glimpse what life is about and to give thanks for the privilege of having had the chance to live?

You begin to appreciate what those last rites are all about, where somebody says, “Taste it once again, a taste of salt. Feel again a soft and gentle touch with oil.” All of these things are a way of saying, “Go out in a nice way.”

If the right December work is done, the work of grieving for those left behind is easier. Taking the sting from death would help us to live in greater harmony with the process in which life recycles itself for further growth and consciousness.

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is the author of From Age-ing to Sage-ing (1995, Warner Books) and the founder of the Spiritual Eldering Institute, www.spiritualeldering.org.

‘A New Kind Of Movement’ Decolonization And Revolution

By Taiaiake Alfred
From New Socialist Magazine

There is always a danger in speaking of colonization in theoretical ways, whether legal, political or sociological. Those of us in a position to be able to rethink our own identities and our nationhood, and to contribute to the remaking of our relationships and institutions, cannot allow ourselves to distance our minds or our hearts from the present and personal realities that the vast majority of Onkwehonwe (First Peoples) are living. The spiritual disconnection I am claiming here to be the root problem of colonization has affected us all in painful and psychologically debilitating ways. This must be acknowledged and respected.

Disconnection is the precursor to disintegration, and the deculturing of our people is most evident in the violence and self-destruction that are the central realities of a colonized existence and the most visible face of the discord colonialism has wrought in Onkwe-honwe lives over the years. Now we will turn to gaining an intimate understanding of what that disconnection means, of the personal effects of colonialism, and of the hopes we have of overcoming those effects by using the strength within ourselves, our families and our communities.

“People always used to say I was optimistic, but I’m really frustrated because of the divisions among our people. There are some of us that believe so strongly in the culture and our values, but then there are others that want to sell-out our rights, thinking that it’s going to solve all of our problems if we just own land and pay taxes like everybody else. I don’t really worry about it a lot though, because I think that if you just do what you can to make things harder for the government, you’re really doing something. That’s what I like to do: make things difficult for them.” Tahehsoomca, former elected band chief of a small Nuu-Chah-Nulth community on northern Vancouver Island

For those unfamiliar with the quality of life in most indigenous communities, getting a grip on the seriousness and intensity of the effects I am referring to here is difficult. Our communities for the most part are closed to outsiders, and Settler scholars and the corporate media have ignored our living realities in favour of reportage and scholarship on economic and bureaucratic issues; they have not conveyed to the mainstream any sense of the challenges we face. It is even difficult to obtain reliable data or statistics from the colonial government institutions that claim the mandate to manage our affairs.

But to give some sense of the problems faced by Onkwehonwe communities, consider the information contained in a 1999 report from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, which stated Onkwehonwe are victimized by violent crimes at more than twice the rate of all American residents. The report covered the years 1992 through 1996, a period before more recent surges in drug abuse and violence in Onkwehonwe communities. It found the average annual rate of violent acts among Onkwehonwe was 124 per 1,000 people ages 12 years and older; this figure was compared with 61 violent victimizations per 1,000 African-American, 49 per 1,000 Euroamerican, and 29 per 1,000 people of Asian ancestry.

It is important to note as well that the anomie experienced by Onkwehonwe youth generally is combined with colonial psychologies of self-hating, repressed rage, drug and alcohol dependency and an overall social climate of racism which create a situation in which they are more likely than any other group of people to experience interracial violence. In addition, the study found alcohol is a major factor in the violent acts committed by and against Onkwehonwe.

“There’s lots of things that people say, and the way they are towards Native people –they don’t give you a chance. They expect the stereotype, they think that you have no education, you should be on drugs, you should be selling your body for money, you should be drinking. That’s what I face a lot: people write you off. Even our own people, they have their own stereotypes. It just makes it harder, and when you don’t do those kinds of things, you’re always kind of having to be proving it to people. But you don’t always want to be proving something to people, you just wanted to be treated fairly, heh?” Chris, Saskatoon youth

Add to this the main legacy of colonial dislocation and physical dispossession that have led to widespread poverty and governmental neglect: health problems. Onkwehonwe suffer health problems at rates exponentially higher than that of Settler populations; epidemic diseases, obesity/diabetes, HIV/AIDS and the effects of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder are the primary concerns.

Cycles of oppression are being repeated through generations in Onkwehonwe communities. These social and health problems seem to be so vexing to governments; large amounts of money have been allocated to implement government-run organizations and policies geared towards alleviating these problems in both the United States and Canada, for example, but they have had only limited positive effect on the health status of our communities. These problems are not really mysterious nor are they unsolvable. They are the logical result of a situation wherein people respond or adapt to unresolved colonial injustices.
People in indigenous communities develop complexes of behaviour and mental attitudes that reflect their colonial situation, and out flow unhealthy and destructive behaviours.

“There is a spirit among young people today that is motivated by hate and that is motivated by anger. There’s a big sense of injustice coming from our young people. We’re pissed off because we’ve been shit on and we’ve been abused. It’s like waking up from a sleep and then noticing that you’ve been messed with, you know? And when you wake up out of that sleep, you’re like a bear, you’re fuckin’ angry. But in terms of our approach, and I wouldn’t want to use the word “refined” here, but it is a responsibility to carry on and to conduct ourselves properly – we’re always being watched by the people, heh? So yeah, there is hatred, anger and destructiveness, all coming from our sense of belonging in history and our sense of where these conflicts come from. It also comes from a sober understanding of our relationship with the Canadian government: we don’t bullshit ourselves into believing that Canada has the best intentions for our people.” David Dennis, instrumental in the formation of the Native Youth Movement in Vancouver and other urban centres in British Columbia; founder of the Westcoast Warrior Society

The American legal scholar Deborah Yashar’s survey of contemporary indigenous-state negotiations on issues of land claims and self-government explains that discussion and negotiation encompass a wide range of topics and offer many creative reform models. But a close reading of her research reveals all these processes – in Latin America as well as in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — fall short and strictly define indigenous peoples in the context of colonial structures and within the framework of Euroamerican values and cultures.

At this point, decolonization discourses exclude the discussion of what the colonizers consider to be their exclusive purview: elements of statehood. What’s more, Yashar’s research points out that all of the so-called decolonization and reconciliation processes implemented so far are premised not on altruism or a sincere desire on the part of Settlers for either justice or peaceful coexistence with Onkwehonwe, but on what she calls the premises of a “neoliberal discourse.” This means the promotion of the existing political, economic and social institutions and the integration of Onkwehonwe into colonial society on terms acceptable to the Settlers – the reduction of collective rights, the promotion of individual rights and decentralization of governance to aboriginal structures designed to mimic colonial forms of authority.

“We’re all getting so canadianized that we can’t even stop to think about taking some kind of action against the colonial state. We’ve been so assimilated into that state that we can only look for redress within the parameters already established by that state. I don’t know if it’s going to be this generation or the next, but I don’t believe there is a lot of time left for those who are thinking in terms of revolution and resistance and creating the liberated zones for indigenous people to survive in.” Sakej, Head of the East Coast Warrior Society; one of the main strategists and organizers behind the post-Oka Warrior Society movements in the east and west coast fishing disputes between Onkwehonwe and the government of Canada

The authentic Onkwehonwe reaction to this has been diverse in terms of defining the ideal relationship of the Onkwehonwe nation and the state (there are varying approaches to the practical implementation of the nation-to-nation concept that underlies all Onkwehonwe ideas of coexistence). But Onkwehonwe are united in their demand of the Settler state a recognition of cultural diversity, political autonomy, collective identities and rights, legal pluralism and indigenous forms of political representation. Yet they have run head-on into the fundamental reality of state sovereignty and the Euroamerican notion of power: control and monological thinking.

Onkwehonwe ideas and complex, pluralistic beliefs are too complicated and difficult, it seems, for simple-minded Settler institutions and the elites who control them, who reduce the world into categories of us-versus-them and right-versus-wrong. Aboriginalism, with its roots in this dichotomizing essentialism, plays the perfect foil to the Euroamerican mentality. Settlers can remain who and what they are, and injustice can be reconciled by the mere allowance of the Other to become one of Us. What higher reward or better future is there than to be finally recognized as achieving the status of a European?

Disentangling the elements of the Settler state from our lives any time soon seems out of the question for many of our people. But I wonder whether Onkwehonwe can even hope to survive without respect for our freedom and rights as nations of people? Think of the European definition of sovereignty, and try to imagine how any people could preserve themselves for long without possessing the elements of such a national existence: the power of and cultural capacity for self-definition; a singular or unitary identity; a shared belief in their independence and rights as a people; the capacity for self-defence; and land and a connection to the land that provides the bases for self-sufficiency and for an independent existence. Without all of these things, a people will not be long on this earth.

Yashar has surveyed the current situation facing indigenous peoples; considered the rising tide of dissatisfaction with aboriginalist-integrationist agendas pushed by aboriginalist politicians, as well as the expressed demands for recognition of national existences; and concluded that we need to come up with different and more complex political mappings that are capable of balancing the Euroamerican preoccupation with individual rights with Onkwehonwe’s diverse collective identities, forms of representation and evolving structures of governance. In doing so, she hits on the core obstacle to peaceful coexistence in this post-modern imperial age: the implicit homogeneity of neoliberalism.

Yet her progressive proposal is still framed within the state. This is its fatal flaw, reflecting the futility of all internalist approaches. The state itself is incapable of relating to other entities in a pluralistic and peaceful way. Acceptance of an Onkwehonwe existence within the colonial state, however creatively imagined, is a death sentence for that indigenous nation. The imperative of the state by design is homogenization and singular control by the monopoly of force and legitimacy. Without a fundamental remaking of the state itself, there is no chance to reform the relationship of the state to indigenous peoples.

“We were so colonized intellectually that we never even thought beyond what the government told us to think about. The fact that some of our people started to get educated opened up a lot of ideas, and it led us to start speaking out about them. We were just emotionally, physically, intellectually tied up by the government – everybody was complacent. It’s only been in recent years that things have started to change, and lot of that had to do with Oka. That was something that people had never experienced before … There’ll be a lot of internal friction in the next few years. It’s the young people who are standing up and demanding that our leadership take a different route and turn away from what the government is offering us.”
Anonymous woman from a West Coast First Nation on Vancouver Island

Even the state’s moderate advocacy of aboriginalism’s goals has not been acceptable to the conservative core of colonial society. Beyond the commonplace superficial rhetoric of toleration and reconciliation in contemporary neo-colonial countries, state policy and the law remain solidly sovereign in their effective denial of distinctiveness and autonomy for indigenous nations in any way, shape or form that can be construed as meaningful to the continuing existence of Onkwehonwe.

Negotiation and reconciliation as defined and implemented thus far are perversions of justice in that Settler societies end up gaining legal possession of not only land and governing power, but Onkwehonwe histories and identities, integrating the desirable and useful elements into their own social fabric at little or no moral or economic cost. In their efforts to co-opt First Nations politicians and to legitimize their presence in this hemisphere, Settlers attempt to take root the only way that it is possible for them to do so, by seizing the indigenous heritage of the land.
Through negotiation and the development of compromise solutions with aboriginal politicians who they themselves employ, the Settlers are in effect buying the legitimacy of their state, although they are buying it from people who have no right or authority to be selling it in the first place. In the long-term view though, protests by “traditionalist” Onkwehonwe who hold out against validating the colonial project through negotiations mean nothing to the colonizers. The token amounts of money given and the limited minority-group rights granted to indigenous peoples are a very small price to pay for the Settlers to be released from the moral repercussions of conquest and for their legitimacy as nation-states.

Every generation has to speak for itself, but I see a lot of degrading of leadership today, right across the country. I don’t see the kinds of leaders that were there when I was young. We’ve got a lot of very active young leaders today, but their goals are different. They’ve caught the white man’s gold fever. That’s what’s happened with our people, to put it simply…. Confusion is really the main problem. I understand what goes through young people’s minds when they’re trying to find their way. You know, I think it’s very difficult now for young people.
Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation; member
of the traditional Rotinoshonni Longhouse government; activist in the Red Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s

Instrumentally reforming indigenous cultures to make them more amenable to this endeavour, recognizing them, and then making amends for “historical” injustices against those reimagined and now aboriginal artifices is the perfect colonial end-game. It assuages the guilt of colonization that allows Settlers to delude themselves into believing they have transcended their own brutal, immoral past and generated a new society free of the sins of empire.

It is possible for Onkwehonwe to cut through the miseducation and colonial mythologies presented to us as truth. What is being Onkwehonwe? From what I’ve been told, and from what I’ve seen in all the time I’ve spent among Onkwehonwe all over the world, “being Onkwehonwe” is living heritage, being part of a tradition – shared stories, beliefs, ways of thinking, ways of moving about in the world, lived experiences – that generates identities which, while ever-changing and diverse, are deeply rooted in the common ground of our heritages as original peoples.

The great Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said understood being part of a culture as participation in an ongoing dynamic that revolves around people’s attempts to answer certain crucial questions about themselves in the public life of the community, questions such as how the central traditions of a people are held onto, what is considered as a tradition and how a people’s history is read. Like Said was of his own identity as a Palestinian, I am drawn to the idea of indigeneity as practice, a dynamic of reflection and dialogue; I’ve written in the past about the idea of a “self-conscious traditionalism.” My sense is that the notion of peoples’ interactions with their history is the foundation, but that a meaningful Onkwehonwe identity, one that is consistent with Onkwehonwe teachings, must go beyond reflective practices to an actual political and social engagement with the world based on consensus arrived at through broad conversation among people who are part of that culture.

“There is something starting these days, a new kind of movement among the youth, something that people may not think is very positive or healthy, but which has to be seen as a good thing in the long run, and that is the take-over and occupation of band council offices. We need more of this kind of activism; we need a real grassroots revolution in this country.” Stewart Phillip, Okanagan Nation, who with his wife Joan is leader of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC).

He's a Leader -- In Social Cutbacks

Where will Martin’s bandwagon take us? Do we really want to go there?
By Murray Dobbin
From CCPA Monitor
2003

Millions of Canadians seem willing--even eager--to get a chance to vote for Paul Martin whenever he calls the next federal election. That he would win the Liberal leadership and be in a position to call an election by next February was never in doubt. But why Canadians seem so eager to vote for a Martin-led Liberal party remains a mystery if you compare what he did as finance minister to what Canadians say their values are.

Here is a man who instituted the largest cuts to Canada’s most cherished social programs of any politician in history-- including the reviled Brian Mulroney. Then, in the year 2000 when he had huge surpluses--$193 billion over five years--which he could have used to restore those programs, he instead handed out the largest tax breaks in Canadian history: $100 billion. And more than three-quarters of that huge personal income tax cut (77%) went to the wealthiest 8% percent of Canadians!

We’ve had more than a year now to hear from Martin about the kind of Canada he wants to create and lead once he wins a mandate from Canadians. Last year, in an interview with Time (which named him their Canadian Man of the Year), Martin said he wanted to change his CEO approach to governing: “We don’t need managing. We need building. That’s why I think the next decade is going to be the most exciting decade in which you or I have lived.” That’s pretty heady stuff for a man who took Canada back to 1949 levels of social spending--and boasted about it.

The more you examine what Paul Martin says, the less substance there seems to be. In speech after speech to his party supporters last spring, he repeated this statement: "This leadership race is about the future and the changes we need to make as a country. It is about embracing new ideas and charting a new course. I want to lead a new government with a renewed sense of purpose, a sharper focus, and a clearer plan--a government unafraid to change and eager to turn the page and look to the future."

What on Earth does all this mean? It’s almost impossible to satirize simply because it reads like satire. It is totally devoid of any content.

A “renewed sense of purpose” could mean anything--from restoring Ottawa’s share of Medicare funding to its historic level of 25% to the federal government getting out of funding Medicare altogether. What purpose is Martin talking about? Which is more likely? Judging from his record, we would have to conclude that he will “renew” the purpose stated in his watershed 1995 budget. In that budget, Martin radically reduced Canada’s share of Medicare’s funding to barely 14%. And in every budget after that--even in years when he had huge surpluses--he refused to restore long-term funding. Instead he provided one-off contributions or five-year plans. Medicare is still as insecure as it was after his 1995 budget. In his many promises of the past few months, he has not once stated that he will keep Jean Chrétien’s promise to restore long-term funding.

So just what are Martin’s priorities in the area of social programs--an area that Canadians say is one of their highest priorities? Well, according to Martin’s statements at a major social policy conference last year hosted by the Caledon Institute, it is an extremely modest agenda. According to those in attendance, the future prime minister has three policy areas he wants to act on: people with disabilities, Aboriginal issues, and community economic development. Now, all of these are very important, particularly the first two where Canada has a poor and terrible record, respectively. But when pressed on other larger issues, Martin said, “You know, I can only do so much even if I have a couple of terms, and I want to pick a small number of issues that I can really have an impact on.”

So that’s it. In eight years we can expect Paul Martin to deal with these three social policy issues. That means that restoring Medicare, bringing the funding of universities back to 1995 levels, and reinstituting the principle of universality to these and other programs (eliminated in 1996) are simply not on his agenda.

Ekos, the polling firm that does the most extensive values polling in the country, asked a large sample of Canadians what overall goal they would pick for Canada to achieve, if they were Prime Minister. The majority picked a better quality of life, improved health care and education systems, and the elimination of child poverty--values that are all the reverse of thise reflected in Martin’s budgets during the nine years he was minister of finance.

Our future prime minister deliberately set out in his 1995 budget to reduce the role of the federal government in shaping the nation. Our health care system deteriorated, child poverty increased by 60%, tuition fees more than doubled. His priorities were spending cuts, reduced taxes, debt reduction, and boosting productivity by driving down wages.

Nothing Martin said in his leadership campaign suggests that he has changed his values or his priorities. Before jumping on his bandwagon, Canadians would be well-advised to think about where it would take us.

(Murray Dobbin is a CCPA research associate and a member of the CCPA’s board of directors. He’s the author of several best-selling books, including his latest, Paul Martin: CEO for Canada?)

Maclean’s Magazine And The War On Feminism

From briarpatch Magazine
2006

AN OLD BUTTON HAS reappeared recently among young feminists at the University of Saskatchewan. “This is what a feminist looks like,” it reads. This button illustrates at least two concepts that are key to understanding the current state of feminism in Canada. First, feminists are diverse. Feminists don’t all look the same and don’t all agree about everything. Second, it demonstrates that feminism is alive and well, and is still being proudly worn on the sleeves of people of all ages, races, classes, orientations, and abilities.

Feminism has undergone a number of developments since the turn of the millennium. Although some feminist organizations have closed up shop (the National Action Committee on the Status of Women), and others are struggling to reinvent themselves (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund), other feminist organizations such as the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) have gathered momentum and have broadened the focus of feminist education and organizing in a number of important directions. And feminists in Canada are increasingly approaching their struggles with a global analysis, joining with others in cross-border campaigns to secure and maintain basic human rights for women around the world.

Moreover, young feminists in particular have turned to electronic organizing, femblogging, ‘zine publication, creative protest, and other decentralized and autonomous projects that offer new venues and approaches for challenging patriarchy. Feminists and their allies in related communities of struggle (anti-racism, anti-capitalism, queer activism, etc.) are increasingly bringing a fluidity to their organizing that eschews strict gender roles, taking the first hesitant steps in building a society in which gender difference is no longer an index of hierarchy.

That’s a lot of new growth for a movement pronounced dead again and again by the mainstream media! Feminism gets bad press not because it’s dead, but because it’s dangerous. Fortunately for all those anxious patriarchs, however, Maclean’s magazine recently stepped up to soothe the confused with a poisoned cup of misogyny, with a twist of Islamophobia.

Feminism gets bad press not because it’s dead, but because it’s dangerous.”

On January 9th, in a Maclean’s essay entitled “The War on Terror is the Real Women’s Issue,” Mark Steyn asserts in short order that the Western male has, at the hands of feminists, become a weak and emasculated sissy; that feminism has “won pretty much every battle in every sphere of modern Western life;” and that “Canada long ago had the hormone treatments and a couple of snips and crossed over to the Venusian side of the street,” joining Old Europe in the camp of the effete cowards who lacked the huevos to join the attack on Iraq.

With his extreme (and rather wacky) worldview firmly established, Steyn then goes on to point out that mass murderer Marc Lepine’s name at birth was Gamil Gharbi, and that he was “the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater.” From there it’s but a small leap to Steyn’s main point: that Islamist fundamentalist barbarians are not just pounding at the gates of the West (which is helpless to respond, remember, because it’s already been castrated by feminists); but “they’re” also breeding rapidly in “those French—and Belgian, and Scandinavian, and maybe even Canadian—suburbs.”

So, Steyn’s argument concludes, you feminists had better quit your “whining,” express your gratitude for the “liberation” of Afghanistan, and start making babies before the demographic trends that are presently “delivering western Europe into the hands” of radical Islam overwhelm us all.

That’s right: feminists and terrorists, hand-in-hand, working to bring down Western civilization. In Canada. We are not making this up.

But no need to take our word for it: type “macleans war on feminism” into a search engine and see what comes up first.

Oh, and in case you missed it: Canadians recently elected a party that (if given the chance, and enough seats) would roll back affirmative action programs, fertility rights, and same-sex marriage, and halt in its tracks any effort towards pay equity or subsidized daycare. This precarious electoral disfunction, combined with the media hostility evidenced by the widely-read ravings of big daddy Mac, tells us feminists will need every ounce of creativity, energy, and determination for the struggle ahead.

The New Israel Lobby in Action

By David Noble
From Canadian Dimension
2005

This is not about Jews. It is not about race, ethnicity or religion. It is about power. The new Israel lobby in Canada — the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) — has enormous power, derived from abundant resources, corporate connections, political associations, elaborate and able organization and a cadre of dedicated activists. Since its inception several years ago, this hard-line lobby has used its power, first, to gain political hegemony and impose ideological conformity on the matter of Israel within a heretofore diverse Jewish community, and second, to influence government decisions and shape public opinion regarding Israel — ostensibly in the name of all Canadian Jewry.

From the outset, a primary focus of this lobby’s attentions has been the university campus, alleged centre of anti-Israel sentiment, conveniently construed as anti-semitism. Over the last two years, the lobby has by various means attempted to pacify these campuses and bring them into line, particularly Concordia and York. While the lobby has made some significant gains, at York their effort has been stalled.

In the fall of 2002, student protests at Concordia University led to the cancellation of a speech by right-wing Israeli politician Bejamin Netanyahu. The event sounded an alarm for some powerful people sympathetic to Netanyahu. “What happened at Concordia was, to many people, appalling,” Maxyne Finkelstein, executive vice president of the United Israel Appeal Federation of Canada, explained to the Toronto Star. “What happened at Concordia was a real shock.” According to a recent profile in Toronto Life, Concordia was a wake-up call for the so-called “power couple,” Heather Reisman and Gerald Schwartz. Reisman, niece of free-trade negotiator Simon Reisman, is CEO of Indigo/Chapters Books. Her husband, Gerry, Liberal Party chief fundraiser and former co-founder of CanWest Global Communications, is CEO of Onex Corporation. As fundraisers, both enjoyed “exceptional closeness to [Prime Minister Paul] Martin” and were eager to “flex their newfound political clout.”

Trying to “decode their agenda,” Toronto Life noted that the first signs of their intentions had surfaced immediately after the Concordia controversy. “Shocked into action, Schwartz and Reisman summoned a group of fellow philanthropists, including Toronto tycoons Larry Tanenbaum and Brent Belzberg, to plot a counter-strategy.” Tanenbaum is co-owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and venture capitalist Belzberg owns Torquest Partners. The four gathered together a select group of like-minded and monied colleagues and “self-appointed” themselves the “Israel Emergency Cabinet,” intent upon lending “more conviction and financial muscle” to advocacy for Israel in Canada. The Toronto Star observed that “the membership of the emergency cabinet reads like a who’s who of power and influence among the Jewish community” and that “some members are well known for their hawkish opinions favoring Israel in the long and bloody Middle East conflict.”

In addition to Reisman, Schwartz, Tanenbaum and Belzberg, the group included Senator Leo Kolber, former director of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, Seagrams and Loews Cineplex; Israel Asper, co-founder and CEO of CanWest Global; Stephen Reitman, whose family owns Reitman’s clothing stores; Julia Koschitzky, whose family fortune derives from the IKO Group, global manufacturer of construction materials; and Stephen Cummings, CEO of Maxwell Cummings. Together, the group represented billions of dollars in assets, which its members knew how to use. Over the next year, through the facilitation of the United Israel Appeal Federation, which funded both the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC), the Emergency Cabinet morphed into the CIJA. Chaired by Tanenbaum, Belzberg and Cummings, CIJA eventually brought both the CJC and the CIC under its effective control. The stated aim of the new umbrella organization was to double the funding for Israel advocacy in Canada and make it more “pro-active.”

A Hostile Takeover
Not everyone was happy with the new extremist conglomerate. “What we are talking about here,” one official told Toronto Life, “is essentially a takeover of the country’s Jewish institutions.” Frank Dimant, executive vice president of B’nai Brith Canada, which belatedly — and grudgingly — entered into an agreement with CIJA, pointed out that “the group known as the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy had on its inaugural steering committee some of the most powerful men and women in this country.” CIJA co-chair Brent Belzberg himself acknowledged that “this is being seen as a bunch of rich guys telling the others what to do.”

According to the Forward, one observer described the CIJA’s incorporation of the CJC and the CIC as a “hostile takeover,” while another told the Toronto Star that it amounted to a “coup d’état by powerful financial interests bent on cementing their control over Jewish advocacy activities in the country,” adding that “these guys are used to getting their way.” “This is a group of self-appointed people who have very little linkage with the Jewish [masses] and they have private agendas of their own,” Thomas Hecht, former Quebec chair of the CIC, pointed out.

According to the Toronto Star, some members of the community believed that the CIJA “will put control of Jewish lobbying efforts in Canada into the hands of a few wealthy and powerful individuals.” “It’s the funders who will determine the policy,” B’nai Brith’s Dimant insisted; “they will be deciding policy for all those entities.” “I think it’s a process cloaked in secrecy right now,” he added, cautioning that, “It’s a dangerous move.” “The underlying theme is a total centralization of Jewish thought, opinion, and messaging. It’s an attempt to silence the activists in our community.” In the eyes of some Jews, then, the formation and agenda of the CIJA, which even in its name conflated the term Jewish with Israel, constituted a threat not only to Jewish critics of Israel, but also to Jewish moderates, a hijacking of Jewish identity in Canada by a well heeled and politically well connected cabal of zealots.

Success Stories
After its first year of operation, the CIJA boasted of its “success stories.” These included “new initiatives initially sponsored by Israel Emergency Cabinet,” like symposia, conferences and seminars designed to promote pro-Israel “education.” They more than doubled the number of visits, dubbed “missions,” to Israel arranged for Canada’s politicians and “opinion makers.” Among the most noteworthy of such efforts was a visit by premiers Mike Harris and Brian Tobin, which included meetings with Netanyahu, the ultra-right Israeli politician whose speech was cancelled at Concordia, and right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The CIJA also arranged for meetings in Toronto between federal, provincial and community leaders and Aviv Bushinsky, spokesman for Netanyahu.

The CIJA also created CIJA-PAC (alternately called the Public Affairs Committee and Political Action Committee). Under its managing director, Josh Cooper, a former Conservative candidate from Thornhill, CIJA-PAC set about “attracting, involving, informing and training strong advocates” and “establishing a coordinated rapid-response capability.” In Ottawa, meanwhile, CIJA influence had already achieved dramatic effects, through justice minister Irwin Cotler, a former CJC president, and the prime minister himself.

The CIJA “has the ear of those who make decisions,” Belzberg boasted to the Canadian Jewish News. According to Toronto Life, “CIJA can already claim political dividends” with the shift in Canada’s posture regarding Israel at the United Nations. For the first time Canada sided with the United States on several Israel-related UN resolutions. “In foreign policy circles,” Toronto Life noted, “the turnabout qualified as a diplomatic bombshell.” “In case you missed it,” John Ibbitson observed in the Globe & Mail, “our Mideast policy has shifted.” According to Ibbitson, instruction for the change in policy came directly from the Prime Minister’s Office, where Paul Martin was “under intense pressure” from CIJA co-founder Gerald Schwartz.

Campus Action
Given that the formation of the Israel Emergency Cabinet had originally been prompted by events at Concordia University, it is not surprising that a major focus of CIJA activities has been the university campus. CIJA efforts in this arena centred on the new National Jewish Campus Life department of the UIA Federation, created specifically to train pro-Israel advocates and cultivate campus “influentials.” “In a key strategic move,” the CIJA website reported, “CIJA has contributed more than one million dollars for use on Canadian post-secondary campuses,” noting that “professionals to support Jewish student life have recently been put on campuses across the country.” “The National Jewish Campus Life has hired seven organizers at campuses in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver … to provide support to pro-Israel advocacy,” and “is developing an on-line resource for campus Jewish advocacy.” The CIJA spent a quarter of a million dollars “subsidizing the visits to Israel of campus leaders.” As well, “several student leaders have already been sent to training programs to become more effective campus advocates.”

“On the campus front,” the Canadian Jewish News reported, “CIJA has funded the hiring of seven advocacy experts in seven Canadian cities, who assist local student groups and address anti-Israel agitation on campus. CIJA has also recruited Jewish Agency shlichim [emissaries] who provide students with information, education, resources and someone to talk to when they experience difficulties” (the Jewish Agency for Israel is the international agency for Israeli immigration). As well, CIJA CEO Hershell Ezrin told the Canadian Jewish News that, “Professors at various schools have agreed to act as advocates in confronting anti-Israel colleagues.”The CIJA campus campaign coalesced in the formation of the new Canadian Federation of Jewish Students (CFJS), on CIJA’s recommendation, which was spawned by the CIJA’s National Jewish Campus Life subsidiary at a conference of 32 Jewish student leaders in Ottawa. In addition to engaging in “skillbuilding events,” the group met with foreign affairs minister Bill Graham, courtesy of the CIJA’s insider connections.

The new federation immediately set about to establish a board of directors, with each campus Hillel or Jewish student association holding two seats. “For campuses with large Jewish student populations, such as York University, the board will have one additional seat for each 1,000 Jewish students,” the Canadian Jewish News reported.

The Campaign at York
York was vitally important to the CIJA, and not only because of the large number of Jewish students in attendance. York was the watering hole for many leaders of the lobby. “Emergency Cabinet” members and later CIJA co-chairs Belzberg and Tanenbaum had close ties with York’s Schulich School of Business, where Belzberg sat on the advisory committee. Emergency Cabinet member and later CIJA director Julia Koschitzky sat on the board of the university’s influential Foundation, which was headed by Paul Marcus, former director of development at United Jewish Appeal. Other prominent pro-Israel advocates on the Foundation’s board included Alonna Goldfarb, H. Barry Gales, Maxwell Gotlieb, Honey Sherman and Howard Sokolowski.

Early this year York University president Lorna Marsden and her entourage, including a number of top York administrators (Paul Marcus and Stan Shapson among them) went on their own CJC-sponsored mission to Israel, underwritten in part, according to CJC national president Ed Morgan’s report to the Canadian Jewish News, by Gerry Schwartz and Julie Koschitzky.

“At York University,” the Canadian Jewish News reported, “where a student slate unseated an [sic] pro-Palestinian student government, CIJA ‘helped create a better environment for all students’ and ‘empowered’ Jewish students to get involved in politics,” according to CIJA co-chair Cummings. The successful effort of Young Zionist Partnership members Paul Cooper and Yaakov Roth and their Progress Not Politics (PNP) slate to take control of the York Federation of Students and reshape student politics there was supported by Josh Cooper, managing director of CIJA-PAC. It was supported also by Hillel at York, whose director Talia Klein, in the wake of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at that university, exclaimed to Aretz Sheva “Now it seems as if York has turned into Concordia.” Klein recently co-produced a film with Igal Hecht entitled Not In Our Name, which, as Hecht told the Jewish Tribune, condemns “these leftist Jews who choose to criticize Israel.” The political shift at York was supported as well by the student newspaper Excalibur, whose news editor, Aliza Libman, was a founding officer of CFJS.

Daniel Pipes Visits York
CFJS was just in formation when its York operatives invited Daniel Pipes to speak on campus, in what appears in retrospect to have been a deliberate provocation of York’s “pro-Palestinian” activists. It seems to have been an attempt to create a controversial environment at York akin to that created with Netanyahu’s proposed visit to Concordia, one which might invite stern corrective action by the York administration. Of course, this is only speculation, but it is not implausible. Pipes is a well known lighting rod for campus critics of Israel. Not only is he a tireless right-wing pro-Israel propagandist but — far more important — he was the editor of the notorious witch-hunt website “Campus Watch,” which devotes itself to smearing academics who do not stick to the Israel lobby’s line on Middle East politics. CFJS had to know the invitation would spark protests at York, as it had elsewhere — as did their mentors in the CFJS parent organizations.

When the York protests predictably emerged, almost immediately — as if on cue — the Israel lobby leaped into action. The spectre of Concordia is uppermost in everybody’s minds,” Hillel of Greater Toronto executive director Zac Kaye reminded the media. In the midst of the controversy, according to the Canadian Jewish News, Bernie Farber of CJC Ontario “spoke to [York president] Marsden directly.” A CJC Ontario organization editorial later boasted that, “we fought back attempts at keeping Daniel Pipes out of York University.”

Marsden’s insistence upon having Pipes speak, for which she was congratulated by the CJC’s national president, Ed Morgan, entailed a change in venue and a dramatic beefing-up of security. Her action signified for the Israeli lobby a triumphant reversal of the shameful Concordia debacle, in which the administration had caved under pressure in cancelling Netanyahu’s speech. More significantly, it set the precedent and the stage for the establishment of a regime of repression on campus.

The implementation of this new regime was carried out by President Marsden through the good offices of the university secretary and general counsel, Harriet Lewis; Office of Student Affairs operatives Bonnie Neuman, Debra Glass and Amelia Golden; and Communications and Media Relations directors Richard Fisher and Nancy White. The effort entailed the formulation and imposition of administrative policies that effectively restricted freedom of speech and assembly on campus. These measures included the charging of prohibitive security fees to student groups wishing to bring controversial speakers to campus, severe limits onleafleting, postering and tabling, and outright bans on the use of central campus space.

The Daniel Freeman-Maloy Incident and the Noble Affair
In the spring of 2004, President Marsden herself unilaterally and without regard for established university student disciplinary policies suspended pro-Palestinian activist Daniel Freeman-Maloy for three years on spurious charges, and banned him from the campus. Freeman-Maloy was the embodiment of Talia Klein’s worst nightmare: a leftist Jewish anti-Zionist. After a provincial court judge made it clear that Marsden’s actions would be subject to judicial review, she rescinded the ban. In the fall, however, the administration again initiated disciplinary action against Freeman-Maloy and other pro-Palestinian activists, who had engaged in a peaceful, off-campus vigil in support of the people of Gaza. At the same time, Marsden and her colleagues unveiled their revised Temporary Use of Space Policy, restricting such use to approved student groups and requiring those to complete an elaborate application for approval, including the names and past activities of all proposed participants. All activities in the Vari Hall rotunda, themain campus forum, which had traditionally been the site of demonstrations (and which had, indeed, had been designed by the architects with this in mind), were banned outright.

Later that fall I distributed a flyer suggesting, among other things, that the presence on the York University Foundation of a significant number of Israel lobbyists and fundraisers might help explain the administration’s repression of pro-Palestinian activists. Within 24 hours of its distribution, York University, the York University Foundation, Hillel, CJC Ontario and the UJA federation issued simultaneous press releases denouncing me — another leftist Jewish anti-Zionist — as anti-Semitic. These defamatory denunciations were published the following day by the Globe & Mail, and, the next day, by the Toronto Star. The remarkable efficiency of this effort appeared to confirm my suggestions. Among those publicly condemning my actions were, in addition to Lorna Marsden herself, Talia Klein, Zac Kaye and Dori Borshiov.

In the wake of the Noble affair and the disciplining of pro-Palestinian students, an “illegal” demonstration was held in the Vari Hall rotunda in defense of freedom of speech on campus. It was called by members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the union representing teaching assistants and contract instructors, and included graduate-student, undergraduate and faculty speakers, including myself. Later, some of the students were once again threatened with disciplinary action.

Finally, on January 20, another demonstration was held by a progressive political group in protest of the inauguration on that day of U.S. president George W. Bush. This time Marsden decided the demonstrators were “trespassing” on private property and called in the Toronto police to enforce the ban on unapproved speech and assembly. The police promptly assaulted the peaceful protest, beating and arresting students on their own campus. The administration alleged — preposterously — that the action of the police was provoked by student violence and they justified their decision as a defense of order. Curiously, although the demonstration focused upon the inauguration of Bush and York’s corporate and military ties, the students were immediately condemned for being anti-Israel.

How Free Speech Won the Day at York
There is a happy ending to the York story, one that is still unfolding. The Israel lobby’s campaign, designed to pacify the campus, has in fact had the opposite effect. In the wake of the mounting repression, a veritable York Free Speech Movement has emerged (roughly in time for the fortieth anniversary of its Berkeley antecedent). Defiant, unauthorized demonstrations have already been held in Vari Hall. The dramatic events of January 20 triggered outrage and sparked demonstrations, the largest in York’s history, supported by York students, faculty and unions. The university’s Senate officially condemned the administration for its use of force, and the York University Faculty Association (YUFA) called upon the Canadian Association of University Teachers to launch a formal investigation of York’s suppression of academic freedom and freedom of speech, an investigation now underway. Despite several attempts by the administration to force a suspension of the CAUT inquiry, it remains on track. At the same time, in response to intensifying demand from students and faculty, the Senate has undertaken a review of the revised Temporary Use of Space Policy, which had been formulated in secret by Marsden and her minions.

In the mean time, having been reinstated and having resumed his activism, Dan Freeman-Maloy has launched an $850,000 lawsuit against Marsden, which is now moving through the courts. Likewise, I filed a $10-million grievance against the university for violation of my academic freedom and defamation. The YUFA executive committee later voted unanimously to take the case to arbitration, which is scheduled for November. Finally, the PNP slate supported by the Israel lobby was overwhelmingly defeated in the latest York Federation of Students elections, replaced by a coalition of people with diverse sympathies. Similar changes in personnel have taken place at York’s student newspaper, the Excalibur.

The Israel lobby has had its day at York, and it appears to be over, especially now that their campaign has been exposed and our perceptions and understanding of recent events have been enlarged. The owl of Minerva, as the wise man said, takes flight at dusk. And now that the lobby has lost York, the new day dawning promises to be one in which robust debate and a diversity of opinion will once again be allowed to flourish on this proud campus, and where the thoughts, voices and actions of all members of the York community, including all Jewish members, will be freed from the constraints of compulsion and conformity.

Commercialism In
Canadian Schools

Who's Calling the Shots?
From CCPA Monitor

Executive Summary
Publicly funded education, universally accessible and inclusive, is a societal responsibility instituted to provide equal opportunities for all children. Funding for this public good is an obligation of the provincial and territorial governments.Private funding sources (corporate or individual) can divert or compromise the ability of public schools to fulfil the expectations established for them.

The Canadian Teachers’ Federation, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Fédération des syndicats de l’enseignement undertook a national survey to collect data on a range of school commercialism activities in Canadian elementary and secondary public schools.

Survey Results
The National Picture, an advertising presence. Nationally, 32% of schools reported the presence of advertising in or on the school, with higher reported rates in secondary schools than in elementary schools. The lowest incidence of advertising was found in Quebec. Most advertising in elementary schools was found on school supplies and in hallways, cafeterias and other school areas. In secondary schools, most advertising was found in school areas such as hallways and cafeterias, and to a lesser extent on school supplies and team uniforms.

Private Money In Public Schools
15% of elementary schools and 21% of secondary schools reported selling services to generate revenue. Nationally, schools reported raising—through fundraising and other activities including user fees, advertising revenue and partnerships/sponsorships—sums ranging from a few hundred dollars to, in some cases, several hundred thousand dollars (average amount: $15,705, median amount: $10,000). Secondary schools raised larger sums than elementary schools, and English schools raised larger sums than French schools.

Exclusive Marketing Deals
Coke and Pepsi are the two most prominent corporations in schools: nationally, 27% of all schools had an exclusive marketing arrangement with Coke or Pepsi (16% with Coke, 11% with Pepsi). 10% of all schools reported an exclusive contract for food services, while 6% reported another type of exclusive
contract.

Corporate Sponsorships and Incentive Programs
15% of elementary schools and 30% of secondary schools reported a partnership or sponsorship arrangement. 30% of all schools reported having incentive programs (school communities collect products or product labels that can be redeemed for merchandise for their schools) although they were much more prevalent in elementary than secondary schools. Quebec had the lowest involvement of any region in incentive programs as a result of the 1997-98 government ban on such activities.

User Fees and Fundraising
36% of schools reported that their school or board had a charitable tax number.School trips (67%), supplies (34%), programs (29%) and sports teams (24%) top the list of the most common items for which schools charge user fees. Secondary schools are more likely to charge user fees for sports teams, school programs and clubs than elementary schools. Fundraising is common in public schools, with money raised for school trips (73%), library books (49%) athletic programs (44%), technology (35%), school clubs (26%), academic programs (24%), school supplies, textbooks andother activities. 60% Of Elementary Schools Fundraise For Library Books What’s wrong with private money in public schools? Inequity: Schools and school communities have varying degrees of capacity to fundraise and otherwise attract outside funding.

Competition for funding
Relying on private donors may create competition among programs and schools, as different institutions go after the same sources of funds. targeted funding: Relying on private sources, through fundraising or corporate donations, allows those private sources, rather than schools and school boards, to make decisions on programs deemed more “worthy” of support.

Conditional funding
Some private donors may attach strings—an advertising requirement, or the inclusion of certain students and the exclusion of others, or the use of specific curriculum—to their funding for public education. Selective funding: An increasing number of items such as playground equipment, field trips, and even some classroom and learning resources are being defined as “frills,” outside of government funding. unstable funding: Many private sources of funding do not make commitments to provide the resources over any extended period, particularly in times of economic instability.

Lack of educational quality control
Who ensures that the curriculum/classroom materials being provided to schools
by corporate sources are unbiased, complete, and accurate? Who’s calling the shots in your school? Keep funding for public schools public!

Faux Logo

By ROB WALKER
From New York Times Magazine/Adbusters

Dylan Coyle, who is 24, studies music at San Francisco State University. He has been a vegan for five years and is a careful consumer. Last year, somebody asked him what he wanted for Christmas, and he said he wanted a pair of Blackspot shoes. This was a considered choice: the shoes are made from "vegetarian materials," including organic hemp and recycled tires. They are manufactured in a "safe, comfortable union factory" in Portugal and sold by the creators of Adbusters, a magazine best known for its withering critique of the advertising business and of mindless materialism. Instead of a logo – or as its logo – the Blackspot is decorated with a rough circle meant to suggest the obliteration of branding; the shoe Coyle wanted is called the Unswoosher, in an unsubtle reference to the most famous shoe logo of all, Nike's swoosh.

The makers of the Blackspot explain their mission as being "to establish a worldwide consumer cooperative and to reassert consumer sovereignty over capitalism." The first Blackspot shoe, a low-top sneaker, was released in August 2004 and has sold more than 13,700 pairs; the bootlike Unswoosher appeared in March 2005 and is selling at a faster pace (6,000 so far) than the original sneaker, according to the company. This is a pretty good showing, considering the underlying challenge: that those most sympathetic to the mission might also be those most hostile to the idea of a brand as an antidote to the ills of consumer culture. In a sense, the Blackspot is designed for those most cynical about consumerism.

Consumer cynicism is a topic of great interest to Amanda Helm, an instructor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. In connection with her research, she has conducted in-depth interviews with about two dozen consumers on the subject and has looked specifically at fans of Adbusters. Some of her preliminary findings were summarized in a 2004 article in the journal Advances in Consumer Research.

One thing she has encountered is a desire among cynical consumers not simply to avoid companies and brands they dislike but also to punish them. At the far end of the cynical-consumer continuum, this might mean defacing advertisements, but for most it plays out differently. For example, shopping at Target because you can't stand Wal-Mart – Wal-Mart came up a lot, Helm says – thus denying dollars to the disfavored company. The marketplace itself is not the enemy in this situation; it's a tool for expressing discontent. Thus one of Helm's most interesting findings: that the cynical consumers who are her main focus "demonstrated very strong brand loyalty to the few companies they could trust."

Coyle, the San Francisco student, is an interesting example. That Christmas-list request came from Outlaw Consulting, a trend-research firm. Outlaw first found Coyle several years ago, when one of its representatives approached him in a mall outside a Hot Topic. "You and your girlfriend look like hip people," Coyle recalls being told, before getting a little cash in exchange for their opinions about some brand. Thus Coyle became a member of Outlaw's "trendsetter panel," which entailed answering questions about brands and products from time to time in exchange for small sums.

When the Christmas-list request came, he thought it would be interesting to inject the Blackspot into the corporate bloodstream. (He did get a pair, but for his birthday, and not from Outlaw.) Partly because of Coyle's wish, Outlaw included the Blackspot in a list of things that appealed to its "trendsetter panel," and this was followed by a story in Forbes suggesting that the Blackspot is one of the "hottest urban brands." According to a newsletter from Adbusters, that (somewhat critical) Forbes article "netted us another new retailer . . . and many, many Web sales." Coyle's wish was honest, but the situation was more or less what he'd hoped for. Challenging consumerism by participating in it might sound like an uphill battle, but Coyle says he thinks it can work; he is, in other words, quite optimistic.

The Prison Industry In The United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?

BY Vicky Pelaez
From Digital Granma
2005

HUMAN rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance.

For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world’s prison population, but only 5% of the world’s people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?

"The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself," says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. "This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors."

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

CRIME GOES DOWN, JAIL POPULATION GOES UP
According to reports by human rights organizations, these are the factors that increase the profit potential for those who invest in the prison industry complex:

• Jailing persons convicted of non-violent crimes, and long prison sentences for possession of microscopic quantities of illegal drugs. Federal law stipulates five years’ imprisonment without possibility of parole for possession of 5 grams of crack or 3.5 ounces of heroin, and 10 years for possession of less than 2 ounces of rock-cocaine or crack. A sentence of 5 years for cocaine powder requires possession of 500 grams – 100 times more than the quantity of rock cocaine for the same sentence. Most of those who use cocaine powder are white, middle-class or rich people, while mostly Blacks and Latinos use rock cocaine. In Texas, a person may be sentenced for up to two years’ imprisonment for possessing 4 ounces of marijuana. Here in New York, the 1973 Nelson Rockefeller anti-drug law provides for a mandatory prison sentence of 15 years to life for possession of 4 ounces of any illegal drug.

• The passage in 13 states of the "three strikes" laws (life in prison after being convicted of three felonies), made it necessary to build 20 new federal prisons. One of the most disturbing cases resulting from this measure was that of a prisoner who for stealing a car and two bicycles received three 25-year sentences.

• Longer sentences.

• The passage of laws that require minimum sentencing, without regard for circumstances.

• A large expansion of work by prisoners creating profits that motivate the incarceration of more people for longer periods of time.

• More punishment of prisoners, so as to lengthen their sentences.

HISTORY OF PRISON LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES
Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of "hiring out prisoners" was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else’s land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery – which were almost never proven – and were then "hired out" for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of "hired-out" miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.

During the post-Civil War period, Jim Crow racial segregation laws were imposed on every state, with legal segregation in schools, housing, marriages and many other aspects of daily life. "Today, a new set of markedly racist laws is imposing slave labor and sweatshops on the criminal justice system, now known as the prison industry complex," comments the Left Business Observer.

Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that "there won’t be any transportation costs; we’re offering you competitive prison labor (here)."

PRIVATE PRISONS
The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under the governments of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., but reached its height in 1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton’s program for cutting the cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Departments contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.

Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut, which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, "the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners." The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for "good behavior," but for any infraction, they get 30 days added – which means more profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost "good behavior time" at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING INMATES
Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals. When a federal judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to build and run new jails and share the profits. According to a December 1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state’s governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private prison profits.

After a law signed by Clinton in 1996 – ending court supervision and decisions – caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering "rent-a-cell" services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed. The county gets $1.50 for each prisoner.

STATISTICS
Ninety-seven percent of 125,000 federal inmates have been convicted of non-violent crimes. It is believed that more than half of the 623,000 inmates in municipal or county jails are innocent of the crimes they are accused of. Of these, the majority are awaiting trial. Two-thirds of the one million state prisoners have committed non-violent offenses. Sixteen percent of the country’s 2 million prisoners suffer from mental illness.