Articles by dispatch

“It is logical to expect that we will go somewhere fairly similar to Afghanistan and do much the same sort of activity.”

By Jon Elmer

TORONTO, Mar 22 (IPS) - Following closely behind their counterparts in the United States and Britain, Canada’s Department of National Defence is preparing a comprehensive counter-insurgency field manual for its soldiers and officers.

The manual will guide Canadian Forces doctrine and training well into the future, according to a draft edition obtained by IPS.

A 250-page publication, the field manual outlines the principles and practices of fighting the kind of insurgencies that have come to define warfare for the Western powers in the 21st century, in places like Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The manual has been two years in development and is scheduled for release later this year. In it, insurgent wars are characterised by their tendency to be local and often popular movements, rather than the traditional military conflicts between states. This type of irregular warfare has confounded U.S. and NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, where growing insurgencies have taken a bloody toll on local populations as well as Western troops, and signs of success are few and far between.

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“All over the world, autocratic-minded rulers [...] have learned that de facto control of the political content of television is perhaps the most important lever of power in our day. They have learned that it does not matter politically if 15 or even 25 percent of the public is well informed as long as the majority remains in the dark. The problem has not been censorship but something very nearly censorship’s opposite: the deafening noise of the official megaphone and its echoes—not the suppression of truth, still spoken and heard in a narrow circle, but a profusion of lies and half-lies; not too little speech but too much. If you whisper something to your friend in the front row of a rock concert, you have not been censored, but neither will you be heard.”Jonathan Schell, The Nation, August 14, 2006

Media concentration. The manufacture of consent. Canadian content. CBC cutbacks. Shock-jock talk radio. The blogosphere. Embedded reporting. The indymedia movement. The recent folding of Clamour, LiP, and the Independent Press Association south of the border….

Briarpatch Magazine invites submissions on the above and much more for its June/July “focus on the media” issue. Read the rest of this entry »

After accusing Liberals of using Employment Insurance fund as a ‘partisan piggy bank’, Harper Conservatives are now doing the same thing.

National Union of Public and General Employees
March 9, 2007

Ottawa - A criminal complaint has been filed against Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative cabinet for misusing the now-staggering $51-billion surplus in Canada’s national Employment Insurance (EI) fund.

The surplus, which the Conservatives howled that the Liberals were abusing when they were in office, has mushroomed by $7 billion since 2004 and continues to grow at a spectacular rate - fed by ongoing worker contributions and interest gains.

Yet the Tories are behaving the same as the Liberals behaved, putting the surplus into general revenue where it can be used for anything and not specifically for the benefit of unemployed workers as the law requires.

The RCMP has confirmed that the complaint was lodged March 7 by a lawyer representing the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU).

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March 7, 2007
Canoe.ca

ABBOTSFORD, B.C. (CP) - Lax safety standards are at play in the deaths of three women as a van loaded with agricultural workers crashed and flipped over on a rain-slicked Trans-Canada Highway, a farmworkers union spokesman says.

The van carrying 17 women between 20 and 50 years of agoe hit two trucks truck east of Vancouver early Wednesday and 14 occupants were injured. The van rolled and came to rest impaled on a concrete median, crushing the middle of the vehicle.

Several people were ejected and some victims had to be airlifted to hospitals in the region.

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Come out and help us launch the “Briarpatch does gender” issue in style at the Infringement Cabaret this friday!

Oooh la la…

(Please forward to interested parties.)

Burlesque! Commedia dell’Arte! Hoola Hoops! Sketch Comedy! And More!

Artistree Productions is pleased to present:
‘The Infringement Cabaret: Twisted Love’

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Physician raised concerns about high cancer rates downstream from oil projects

Monday, March 5, 2007

CBC News

A small Alberta community is rallying behind a local doctor residents believe is being silenced by Health Canada because he raised concerns about high rates of cancer near the booming oilsands.

Health Canada officials have filed a complaint against Dr. John O’Connor.

O’Connor alerted the media last year to what he believed was a disproportionately high incidence of colon, liver, blood and bile-duct cancers in patients who live in Fort Chipewyan, a small community downstream from major petroleum refineries.

In filing the complaint against O’Connor with the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons, Health Canada did not explain the action, but said the doctor was causing undue alarm.

Meanwhile, physicians who work alongside O’Connor in Fort Chipewyan believe officials are targeting their colleague because his comments potentially threaten billions of dollars of investment in the province’s oilsands.

“I am absolutely shocked that they would treat a physicians of this calibre like this. There’s a deliberate attempt to beat him down or shut him up,” the area’s head nurse, George MacDonald, said.

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By Chris Arsenault
Thursday February 22nd, 2007
Here (New Brunswick)

It’s a common perception south of the border that we Canadians are taxed to death by a pseudo-socialist nanny state.

In the lousy 1992 Tom Selleck movie, Mr. Baseball, the main character is terrified of being moved to Canada due to higher taxes and instead ends up being shipped off to Japan.

And, as call-centre workers, baristas, kitchen staff and office employees trudge off in search of old T4 forms from jobs quit months ago, the idea of paying taxes, especially higher taxes than Americans, may seem unnerving.

Add a well-funded choir of voices like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the Fraser Institute screaming about ‘tax rage’ and one could easily assume that Canadians are taxed to death.

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Feeding the Fire:
Food, energy & the spectre of scarcity

Food and energy: considered together, they offer a powerful lens for understanding the nature and magnitude of the environmental challenges we face. This issue of Briarpatch features contributions from some of the leading visionary thinkers in their fields, including Richard Heinberg, Helen Caldicott, Nettie Wiebe and others.

Click image to enlarge.

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By Brett Bradshaw
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2007

CLUTCHING A MUG OF COFFEE, Gwenda Yuzicappi retreats from the cold outside. There’s a spark in her eyes. Her long brown hair is pulled back, and the pink sweater she wears complements the flush in her cheeks from the biting winter wind. Her younger sister sits beside her in the coffee shop and they speak animatedly. If you watched long enough you could find the grief that Yuzicappi carries, but in this moment she looks hopeful.

Yuzicappi spent the day with other families like hers, those with missing or murdered daughters and sisters. She told them about Amber Redman, her daughter, and then she listened as they spoke of their loved ones. The family members of Saskatchewan’s missing women had come together to share their stories and remind each other that they aren’t alone, and that together they aren’t powerless.

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By Becky Ellis
Briarpatch Magazine
March/April 2007

FEMINISM IS FOR EVERYBODY, THE mantra goes. This slogan, inspired by bell hooks’ book of the same name, is widely used to envision a feminist movement that is open to all people and that, in theory, recognizes the real diversity among feminists and among women more generally.

What could be wrong with that?

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