July 2006

By Barbara Barker
and Tyler McCreary
Briarpatch Magazine
August 2006

Every school child knows that you should respect a person’s name. And in accordance with this simple maxim, Grade 2 students in the town of Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland are petitioning to change the name of the Mary March Museum — named after a Beothuk woman captured by European settlers in 1819 — to her real name: Demasduit.

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Photo: YiLing Chen-Josephson, Presents & Law, www.presentsandlaw.com

By Angela Regnier
Briarpatch Magazine
August 2006

“I would like to be able to drink my water without fear and wash my clothes with no further damage.”
-LETTER TO THE EDITOR, WIARTON ECHO, SEP. 20, 2000.

Six years ago, a drinking water experiment in small town Ontario resulted in residents complaining of damage to laundered clothes, taste and odour, and illness. Although the complaints attracted national media attention and resulted in the early termination of the study, the subsequent academic write-ups of the experiment declared it a success. The chemical company sponsoring the experiment and the university hosting it received a national award, and the study is now being cited in recommended revisions to federal drinking water guidelines and provincial standards. Requests by the Canadian Federation of Students to initiate an investigation into the Wiarton experiment publications have been dismissed repeatedly by the university and the relevant federal granting council.

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By Andrew Kennis
Briarpatch Magazine
August 2006

On May 3 of this year, at about 7 a.m., Mexican state police in the city of Texcoco blocked some five dozen flower vendors from setting up their stalls in the local market. Police authorities had reportedly alerted the vendors days beforehand that their space would be blocked by officers. A handful of activists accompanied the vendors to work, determined to force the police to let the vendors carry on with their business. When the police violently stood their ground, additional supporters were called and a confrontation ensued.

Resistance quickly spread, as protesters blockaded the Lecher’a-Texcoco highway that joins the two towns and lies about fourteen miles northeast of Mexico City. Protesters initially thwarted police efforts to break up the blockade, but the police response intensified until about 3,500 officers swept through Atenco in an indiscriminate wave of brutality, beating and arresting hundreds of protesters and bystanders.

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Help Briarpatch tackle tourism

By Roger Annis
Briarpatch Magazine
August 2006

Haiti�s occupiers and elites badly needed the legitimacy of a �democratic� election. Unfortunately for them, the poor majority took them at their word….

Sometimes even the best-laid plans of the powerful go astray. Such was the case in Haiti in February of this year when Haitians turned out in overwhelming numbers to elect Rene Preval as president. Preval, who first served as president from 1996 to 2001, is an ally of the deposed President Jean Bertrand Aristide, and thus his election was a powerful rebuke to the foreign powers, including Canada, that conspired to overthrow Aristide’s government in February 2004.

The US, France, and Canada drove Aristide from office because his government sought to protect Haiti’s poor majority from the worst ravages of the world economic order. Aristide’s foreign policy measures, including the forging of diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba, were deemed equally unacceptable. This placed Aristide and his popular, mass-based movement, Lavalas, at odds with the economic powers in the Caribbean region, for whom he and his government served as a dangerous example.

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Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This ‘rise of slime,’ as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people.

By Kenneth R. Weiss
Los Angeles Times
July 30, 2006

The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.

When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

“It comes up like little boils,” said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. “At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked.”

(more…)

by Linda McQuaig
The Toronto Star
July 30, 2006

For the Israeli air force, carrying out bombing raids over Lebanon is about as challenging as shooting fish in a barrel.

Hezbollah has no air force or air defences. So the Israeli air force

Is Israel Losing Its War In Lebanon?

Robert Fisk
The Independent
July 27, 2006

“This plan - which, like all American proposals on Lebanon, is exactly the same as Israel’s demands - carries the same depth of conceit as that of the Israeli consul general in New York, who said last week that ‘most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing.’”

~*~

On a Red Cross mission of mercy when Israeli air force came calling

Robert Fisk
The Independent
July 28, 2006

“ICRC workers in Lebanon travel without flak jackets or helmets - their un-militarised status is something they are proud of - and driving with them in the same condition was an oddly moving experience.”

And the summer’s “Raising the Tenor of Online Debate” award goes to…

Stephen Whitworth, editor of the usually excellent Regina alt bi-weekly, prairie dog.

It all started as a genuine disagreement over whether or not an ad featuring a three-breasted woman and the slogan “better than beer” is sexist, and what responsibility struggling independent media outlets have to censor their advertising (prairie dog is a left-leaning workers’ cooperative that, like many other alt weeklies, is distributed for free and therefore entirely reliant on advertising dollars).

But it very quickly descended into name-calling and ad hominem attacks.

Be warned: reading this exchange is a lot like watching a slow-motion film of a man repeatedly banging his own head against a wall, as Whitworth’s utter lack of tact, apparent persecution complex, and piss-poor gender analysis leave him lashing out in every direction.

Ouch.

From today’s MediaScout:

Unable to come to an agreement on when a ceasefire would be appropriate, it appears the only consensus the leading nations have been able to reach is that none of them wants to actually participate in the peacekeeping activities themselves, though all readily agree they