Feb 2008: Cannabis coffeeshops

In this issue, Briarpatch’s intrepid contributors “go Dutch” to make the case for cannabis coffeeshops in Canada, brave the front-line violence of Guatemala’s recent elections, mark the 10th anniversary of the Mine Ban Treaty with South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia, assess the fighting words of shock troops Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klein, and still make it home in time for dinner.

Artwork by Todd Julie. Click image to enlarge.

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By Dariusz Dziewanski
Briarpatch Magazine
February 2008

In the wake of the 10th anniversary of one of Canada’s greatest foreign-policy successes, the ripple effects of the Ottawa Treaty, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty, are still being felt among the sea of 65,000 south Sudanese refugees living in Ethiopia.

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By Simon Granovsky-Larsen
Briarpatch Magazine
February 2008

With the dust of the fall 2007 elections settling, many Guatemalans are breathing a sigh of relief. Another violent campaign period has come and gone and, although more than 50 candidates and activists were assassinated in the process, the lesser of evils has come out on top. Alvaro Colom and the National Alliance for Hope (the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza, or UNE) won the presidency in a November run-off vote that pitted Colom’s social platform against the militaristic approach of former general Otto Pérez Molina. In the still-violent aftermath of the recent civil war, the elections represented a choice between rebuilding government institutions and responding forcefully to spiralling violent crime.

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Words and photos by Elaine Brière
Briarpatch Magazine
February 2008

“Here, we have Dutch cannabis, Moroccan hash, and Lebanese red hash.”

Pieter van der Camp gestures to the neatly packaged, labelled, rolled and ready-to-smoke cannabis products that are his stock-in-trade. He is owner of the marijuana coffeeshop Pas Op! (Watch Out!) in the picturesque municipality of Schiedam on the outskirts of Rotterdam. Coffeeshops like Pas Op! are now at the centre of a national debate about legalizing the growing of cannabis. Though the sale of marijuana through coffeeshops has been quasi-legal in the Netherlands for 30 years, the “backdoor” supply of the drug has remained illegal.

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By Jon Elmer
Briarpatch Magazine
February 2008

Blackwater: The rise of the world’s most powerful mercenary army
Jeremy Scahill
Nation Books 2007

The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism
Naomi Klein
Knopf Canada 2007

The Global War On Terror did not give birth to mercenary warfare: the Pharaohs used mercenaries, as did the Persians, Napoleon and Alexander the Great. The Romans and the British deployed soldiers-for-hire to police native rebellions, particularly in the twilight of their empires. Indeed, 19th century American industrialists and statesmen, lionized in so many textbooks and park monuments, made private security forces-particularly the infamous Pinkertons-an integral element in American social and political history. As Pinkerton was to private policing in the U.S. in the 19th century, Blackwater USA is to the American military of the 21st century: a symbolic expression of systemic capitalist forces running far deeper than a single company.

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