Antigone Magazine: Antigone participates in Equal Voice Experiences

We’ve been featured! Check out the Equal Voice Experiences June newsletter here featuring our own Amanda Reaume, Kristen Myres, and Emily Yakashiro!

Experiences is a mentorship program that aims to engage girls and young women in learning and thinking about the impact of politics on their lives and how they might become involved.
For the most part, [...]

Creekside: “This is The Current” with another ad for the terrorism industry

Following his 30 hour journey back to Canada from Sudan on Saturday, Abousfian Abdelrazik did the last six hour journey from Pearson Airport to his home in Montreal by van because “federal officials barred him from the one-hour flight from Toronto”. (h/t Dr.Dawg)
A one hour flight entirely within Canadian airspace.

CBC’s The Current did not mention this in their segment on Abdelrazik this morning. However in their quest for fair and balanced reporting, they did follow up their interview with Abdelrazik’s lawyer Yavar Hameed with one from media terrorism expert and torture advocate Neil Livingstone, introduced only as “Chairman and CEO of the security consulting firm Executive Action and the author of nine books on terrorism.”

Mr. Livingstone explained that Abdelrazik was probably incriminated during the “extremely valuable” and “credible” testimony provided “under duress” by Abu Zubaydah and said that CSIS’s “sister organizations in the US” have taken note that Canada is “not prepared to go to the mat for Abdelrazik”.

From Mr. Livingstone’s own description of his company Executive Action :

“Think of us as a McKinsey & Company with muscle, a private CIA and Defense Department available to address your most intractable problems and difficult challenges.”

Indeed Executive Action boasts former CIA Director James Woolsey and former FBI Director William Sessions on its Senior Advisory Board and claims over 1300 media interviews on terrorism.
From Mr. Livingstone’s own bio at Executive Action :

“He predicted the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center on CNBC six months before they occurred, said the terrorists would drop both towers, and that Osama bin Laden would be behind the attacks.”

Mr. Livingstone also advocated the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, where his company subsequently won several ‘reconstruction’ contracts, and is an advocate of destabilising Iran.
Last year in an article on counter-terrorism profiteering – “What did you do in Iran-Contra, Daddy?” – Larisa Alexandrovna traced Livingstone’s career back to the Iran Contra affair and the push to establish an Iran-anthrax-al Qaeda link.

I don’t expect The Current to have provided all this in their bio of Livingstone, but their propensity for reaching for the nearest rightwing US advocate for the terrorism industry without identifying him as such to comment on Canadian affairs continues to annoy.
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A Secret Chord: Anger

A big part of the reason I haven’t been blogging lately has been that I’ve been feeling a lot of anger. While of course there are probably plenty of issues onto which I could vent my righteous indignation and make good productive use of said anger, I’ve come to realize that I’ve become extremely uncomfortable [...]

Antigone Magazine: Dreams for Women – Week 29

What are your dreams for yourself, your friends, your sisters, your daughters? Paint, draw, write, sketch, or decoupage your dreams on a postcard and
send it to us.
Antigone Magazine
C/O WILLA
Box 61 – 6138 SUB Blvd
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z1
OR antigonemagazine(at)hotmail.com

Posted in Dreams for women

Creekside: Abdelrazik is home

Birth Pangs: A.L.L. Over Again

“Praise God! After months of tireless effort from American Life League and pro-life heroes in Boston and around the country to expose a potential scandal only days away from becoming a tragic betrayal of Catholicism’s unwavering commitment to the dignity of the human person, Cardinal Sean O’Malley has heard our voices and will end the [...]

Creekside: Canada Border Services Agency upholding Reagan’s legacy

A Salvadoran judge personally invited by the government of Canada to a conference in Ottawa was detained for 24 hours at Pearson Airport by the Canada Border Services Agency because he is a member of the FMLN.

“They told me that because of my affiliation with the organization, they wouldn’t let me into the country,” Eugenio Chicas said from San Salvador.
“I told them that the war in El Salvador ended 17 years ago and the FMLN is now the governing party in El Salvador, but they told me that was the information they had available.”

Eventually Chicas was permitted to attend the meeting of inter-American electoral bodies hosted by Elections Canada and the Organization of American States but :

Border officials kept his diplomatic passport and instructed him to promptly return to Toronto following the conference to get his flight home.

Chico said the CBSA “repeatedly pointed out his affiliation with the FMLN”.

Ronald Reagan’s 12 year war on the people of El Salvador ended in US disgrace a long time ago. The former revolutionary guerrilla organization FMLN has been sitting in the Salvadoran legislature as a registered political party since 1992. Earlier this month Hilary Clinton and Canadian minister of state Peter Kent attended the presidential inauguration of the FMLN leader.

Note to CBSA : Who exactly are you working for? Reagan is dead. Possibly it’s time to update your security brief on that.
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Creekside: Breaking …

Lilith Attack: Bank of Glass Ceiling er America

Attorney at Law reports:

Bank of America, which acquired the former Merrill Lynch and Co. last year, discriminated against female brokers by offering them lower retention benefits than their male colleagues and steering wealthier investors to brokers who were men, according to a newly filed lawsuit.

The suit was filed today on behalf of Jaime Goodman, a Merrill broker since 1992 who joined Bank of America when the bank acquired Merrill on January 1, 2009. Goodman claims her new bosses demonstrated gender bias against her and other female employees.

She is seeking class-action status for her suit, which if granted would allow other women who claim they were similarly harmed by Bank of America’s allegedly discriminatory practices to join in the litigation.

Info Source: Calgary Herald

Creekside: Day pushes for new free-trade talks with U.S.

When I replaced my ancient stove with something slightly less antiquated, I phoned Dave our local garbage contractor to pick up the old one. Dave, you see, knows who best to pass it on to – whether that be a scrap metal joint, a dangerous appliance refurbishing business, or just someone looking to build stovehenge in their backyard.

Dave knows this valuable info because he lives here. Somehow I suspect that the International Waste Management Consortium in Houston Texas is not as up on the day-to-day requirements of the local stove-stacking crowd, so it’s a good thing that our local municipality gets to Buy Local and give the contract to Dave instead.
In fact the Foreign Affairs page on “Assessing Government Procurement Under Canada’s Trade Agreements” explicitly states that WTO, GATs, and NAFTA do not apply.

Day pushes for new free-trade talks with U.S.
… in which the same government that formerly freaked at the idea of revisiting a single page of NAFTA to prevent bulk Canadian water exports is now hoping for a whole “new chapter of free trade” to “ease the tendency by states, provinces and municipalities to favour local companies”. Provinces and municipalities would allow US companies to bid on local contracts and in return Canadian businesses get to bid on theirs.
Notwithstanding that the US Fed has already misplaced its ability to account for trillions of their bailout money, why would US taxpayers go for this?
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One North American economic security perimeter : it’s not a new idea and “a feared rise of protectionist Buy American measures” is just the latest justification for giving it another push.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to call up Dave. The more I think about that stovehenge idea…
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A Secret Chord: Things I Really Wish I Couldn’t Believe, Part Four Billion

I really do wish I was naive enough to suspect that this story was false – public health officials delay delivery of hand sanitizer for added protection against H1N1 to reserves in Manitoba because of the alcohol content. The point makes itself, really, but the highlight I want to add is that the article notes [...]

Creekside: Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement

Bill C-24 the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement received royal assent last week.
By neatly avoiding the controversy that has temporarily stalled the Colombia-Canada FTA, Canadian mining companies in Peru now have the legal standing to challenge the few Peruvian laws standing between them and the 45 million hectares of the Amazon opened up to them by Peruvian President Alan Garcia.

Council of Canadians Stewart Trew : “About 50% of resource extraction in Peru is carried out by Canadian companies.”

Earlier this month 30,000 indigenous protesters blocked roads, rivers and railways to force the repeal of Garcia’s new laws opening up its oil, gas and forestry resources to foreign investors by privatizing community land plots and ignoring aboriginal rights to their land. A 10,000-acre African palm plantation to produce biofuels displaced the local inhabitants Garcia contemptuously referred to as “garden watchdogs”. Garcia has also “framed privatization of the Amazon as a means of fighting drug traffickers”.
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Protests. Massacres. Police in helicopters gunning down Indians. 24 police killed on the ground. Accusations of the government burning the bodies of unknown numbers of protesters. Prime minister resigns, president apologizes. Score one for the Indians.

Ben Powless from Six Nations Ontario was there.

Aside from a mention in the Senate as they ratified Bill C-24, Canada’s official response to date has been to issue a travel advisory :

Minister of State for the Americas Peter Kent : “

“There were no Canadian companies involved or affected, so the linkage that folks might make shouldn’t be made, because our free trade agreement and this tragedy don’t have any obvious or visible connections.”

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae :

“The killings and dispute were internal matters for Peru. This isn’t about the free trade agreement, let’s not confuse things here.”

UBC political science professor Maxwell Cameron :

“We’re in exactly the same position as the U.S. [The US-Peru FTA was implemented this February] – that is that this agreement is designed to foster particularly Canadian investments, and Canadian investors are going to operate, and do operate in exactly this area and many other areas where there are conflicts. To have an agreement like this come out at the same time that there’s a major massacre certainly no one would say that’s good.”

Well, no one but Stockwell Day :

“These agreements will help increase prosperity, help provide better working conditions, and improve environmental management.”

According to Export Development Canada, over 30 Canadian companies operate in Peru. Canadian companies expected to “increase prosperity, provide better working conditions, and improve environmental management” in Peru include Petrolifera, Teck Cominco, Barrick Gold, ScotiaBank, SNC Lavalin, Dessau Soprin and Sandwell.

This might be a good time to mention that Canada has not signed the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights.
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Related : The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy
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redjenny: Solidarity with City Workers

In my inbox today:

OCAP STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH TORONTO CITY WORKERS

The members of CUPE 416 and 79 who work for the City of Toronto
are now on strike. The business media has begun its inevitable campaign of
misinformation to produce the greatest possible backlash against these
workers. We are encouraged to focus on uncollected garbage and suspended
services but not, of course, to give any regard to the rights of public
sector workers or to think as working people about what is at stake in
this strike.

OCAP, as a matter of basic principle, stands in solidarity with
workers’ struggles. We don’t hate or blame workers who have been able to
win a living wage or support calls for them to be driven into poverty.
Rather, we want to see the poor provided with wages and incomes that raise
them out of poverty.

This strike occurs in a context that makes it especially important
for all of us that it end in victory and that the concessionary demands of
the ‘progressive’ Miller Administration be defeated. The Mayor defended
his shameful efforts to gut the collective agreements of City workers by
pointing to rising welfare caseloads brought on by the economic downturn.
What a disgusting statement. To pit City workers against those who are
being forced to turn to the wretched sub poverty pittance that welfare
provides is an outrage. This comes from a man who boasts that there are
more cops on the streets under his regime than every before and who is
taking us towards an obscene billion dollar a year police budget, while he
has frittered away the welfare reserve fund
to a fraction of where it was when he took office.

The Mayor points to the state of the economy to justify his attack
on City workers. In doing this, he makes clear what side he is on when it
comes to who should pay for this economic crisis. As unemployment shoots
up, we face the situation with an empty shell of an unemployment insurance
system that shuts out most of the unemployed and with a post Mike Harris
welfare system that fails to provide the necessities of life. None of the
’solutions’ to the crisis involve meeting the basic needs of the
unemployed and poor. For those who still have jobs and unions, the
bankrupt corporations they work for will be bailed out at vast public
expense while their rights as workers are destroyed and they are presented
with massive concessionary demands.

The process of attacking workers started in the auto industry and
other parts of the private sector. The drive for austerity is now
spreading, inevitably, to the public sector. Beginning with militant
fights by postal workers in the 1960s, public sector workers have spent
decades struggling for decent wages and conditions.

The present crisis of capitalism will mean an all out confrontation to
take back those gains. Moreover, an attack on the workers who deliver
public services can’t be separated from the attack on the services
themselves and the rights of those who receive them. That is the context
of this strike and we in OCAP know what side we’re on. We call for full
support for the City workers. Send messages of solidarity. Be there with
them on their picket lines. Stand with them in their fight because they
are fighting for all of us.

Finally, some common sense. I am shocked (although I guess I shouldn’t be, after the reaction to the TTC strike – though even that wasn’t nearly so bad) at the mean-spirited selfishness of local citizens.(Just read the comments on any news story about the strike). I can’t believe how many people think that city workers shouldn’t have x,y,z (benefits and perks, job security, decent wage, etc) because private sector employees don’t have these things. It’s like the child who breaks a toy someone else is playing with. If I can’t have it, nobody can. Of course my metaphor breaks down because lots of the people complaining are not exactly in dire straights. We’re talking lawyers and middle management here.

Not that the media is helping any. Zeroing in on the bankable sick days as if that is what this fight is really about. If you didn’t live here, you’d think the streets were flowing with garbage.

Cognitive dissonance abounds. Garbage collectors shouldn’t be given the same increases as police officers got because garbage collectors aren’t as important. But me oh my, it’s been TWO days without garbage collection and already they are screaming to have someone take away their refuse. Somehow forgotten is that fact that it is not just a garbage strike. Inside and outside workers include paramedics, parks and rec staff, workers at swimming pools and community centres, health inspectors, office workers, social workers, child care workers, and even the people who clean the nasty (and desperately important especially for the homeless) public washrooms. They supply incredibly important services.

What I think we should realize is just how many services we receive from the city and how invaluable they are. If we were to try to buy all these services, few could afford them. They make all of our lives better, and they happen so routinely we rarely even notice them. Using the recession as an excuse to claw back hard-won benefits from public-sector employees is just wrong. Pretty much the entire world (even the IMF) understands that a recession is the time to spend on public works, not cut them. And if you are cutting, why not start at the top (police chief? city manager?) and work your way down instead of starting at the bottom (non-unionized workers have already been screwed with wage freezes earlier this year)?

If this were France, we’d probably have a general strike just to support them. Everyone would take the day off work (parents wouldn’t have to worry about child care at least) and we’d all sit in the streets drinking wine.

Perhaps we could also use this as an opportunity to meditate on the excess of waste we produce as a society. Two days without collection and all hell breaks loose? Honestly. What is wrong with us?

Creekside: U.N. turning the screws on Abdelrazik

Yesterday, a mere three days after the government announced it will comply with the Federal Court decision ordering it to bring Abdelrazik home, the United Nations Security Council blacklist committee decided to publish their reasons for putting him on its 1267 blacklist back in 2006. The allegations mirror similar charges posted on the U.S. Treasury Board website three years ago. What impeccable timing.

He is, they assure us, “associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban” and “a key member of a Montreal terrorist cell”. Their case :

He attempted to go to Chechnya to fight against the Russians – twice – they say.
Really? And we’re holding that against him?

He knew Ahmed Ressam, the Millenium Bomber who attempted to attack LAX in 2000.
Yes and as an avowed repudiator of terrorism, Abdelrazik testified against him for the prosecution, an act he could be forgiven for coming to regret in light of how that is turning out for him.

He told one individual that he was “personally acquainted with Osama bin Laden.”

He knew Abu Zubaydah, the schizophrenic halfwit waterboarded 83 times in 2002 in order to elicit a false confession linking Sadaam and al-Qaeda that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.
“That information is the fruit of torture,” responded Abdelrazik’s lawyer.

Abu Zubaydeh again. Abu Zubaydeh is the sad source of many allegations under torture.
Rather surprised that the UN Security Council 1267 page would have the fucking audacity to bring him up actually, but now that they have, let’s go with that :

Abu Zubaydeh’s lawyer, Brent Mickum :

Who is Abu Zubaydah? He was born in Saudi Arabia, but is not a Saudi citizen. He was educated in India. Following his university training, he traveled through the United States, considering possible universities where he might pursue his master’s degree. In an interview with ABC, former CIA agent John Kiriakou described him as “a very friendly guy” who wrote poetry and was keen to talk about current events and compare the differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity. That has been my experience as well.

Like many other young Muslims before him, Zayn ultimately embraced the teachings of the Qur’an and traveled to Afghanistan to fight against communist insurgents who remained after the withdrawal of the Soviet army. In 1992, while fighting on the front lines, he was injured in a motor attack that left him with two pieces of shrapnel that remain embedded in his head to his day. So severe were his injuries that he lost the ability to speak for more than one year. His memory is compromised even today. He cannot remember his mother’s name or picture her face. He cannot remember his father’s name, but recalls that he looked like a prominent movie star in the Arab community. Although Zayn ran a news agency with a partner, he cannot remember his former partner’s name.

Later, when Zayn returned to the front lines, he was told that he was no longer fit for fighting because couldn’t remember how to shoot.

Zayn was never a member or a supporter of any armed forces that were allied against the United States. He had no weapon when he was taken into illegal custody. He never took up arms against the United States nor against its coalition allies. He was not picked up on a battlefield in Afghanistan at the time of his detention, but was taken into custody in Pakistan, where he was wrongfully attacked, shot, and nearly killed. So serious were his wounds that a surgeon from John Hopkins University was flown to Pakistan to perform emergency surgery to save the life of a man the Bush administration believed to be the number three man in al Qaeda.”

We await the UN Security Council’s explanation on why all their hardwon resolutions against torture should be laid aside to countenance the torturing of a halfwit on behalf of US colonialism.
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Abdelrazik is expected to land back in Canada on Saturday, accompanied on the flight by his lawyer, a Foreign Affairs official and two RCMP.
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Lilith Attack: Viva Vintage Monologues

Lilith Attack: Treated Equal Stuff

I’m aghast. And I’m also not, in that Doug Elniski was elected by conservative voters and supported by Stelmach. From the Calgary Herald:

A Tory MLA is under fire for online comments in which he advises girls to smile to attract men, scolds them for seeking equality and alerts his Twitter followers to a bikini car wash where “girls look cold.” . . . In an entry that began with reflections on junior high school graduations, Elniski posted this advice to girls: “Men are attracted to smiles, so smile and don’t give me that ‘treated equal’ stuff, if you want equal it comes in little packages at Starbucks.”

He also wrote: “There is nothing a man wants less than a woman scowling because he thinks he is going to get sh–for something and has no idea what.”
On the same day, Elniski posted the following Twitter comment: “bikini car wash 82 129 ave girls look cold (…)”

Yuck. This guy also twittered at the Edmonton Pride Parade some remarkable homophobia. Check out Tiny Perfect Blog’s report on his remarks.
His website and biography note some quirky trivia: he’s the tallest MLA in the legislature! WOW! What a claim! He’s a great big tower of misogyny.

Creekside: Man of Steel vs Government of Silly Putty

redjenny: Entitlement

Puzzle me this: Why is it that the same people who bitch about workers sense of entitlement (you know, workers wanting decent treatment and wages) themselves feel entitled to free plastic bags? (It’s true)

I think its a marvelous success so far: Toronto’s new 5 cent plastic bag law has reduced the use of plastic shopping bags by something like 75%.

the black ewe: Meatless Monday and vegetarianism in the Guardian

When Hadley Freeman wrote last week about how awful it was for her to be a vegetarian, I was puzzled. If it’s so awful for her, then the only thing keeping her from eating meat is that she finds it revolting. OK, I can sympathise with not wanting to be evangelical about it – having [...]

the black ewe: I.B. Singer and animals

Prior to researching a long paper I wrote for Veterinary Heritage on the history of antivivisectionism and the animal rights movement, the name Isaac Bashevis Singer barely registered for me. I was vaguely aware of his status as a renowned Yiddish storyteller, but I hadn’t read a single one of his stories, and in fact [...]

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