Globalization Quote

Sorry that this is the third quote from the same author I've posted in the last month or so, but that is just what I've been reading. The word "Onkwehonwe" in the following excerpt is a Mohawk term meaning "original people."

Working white people used to benefit along with the rich from the exploitation of indigenous lands and resources. There was never a complaint from the mainstream public against globalization when the only people to suffer from the exploitation were black and brown! Now that white middle- and working-class people are feeling the effects of exploitation, job loss, and cultural dissolution, we find that globalization has been labelled as evil. Every day unprivileged whites wring their hands and whine on the airwaves and in public displays about how they've seen their communities destroyed and how they've felt the loss of control over their future to sell-out politicians and foreign elites with other concerns, priorities, and ways of life that threaten the very existence of their identity.

I have to say, when I see a white fisherman or logger or factory worker complaining about the pain his family is feeling because of the disruptions globalization has caused in their lives, I try to muster sympathy and to stifle my recollection (short-term memory at that) of that same white man blaming Onkwehonwe misfortune and poverty on the 'lazy Indians' themselves. I try, but I always find myself thinking something like, 'Looks like we're all Indians now, heh?'

...

Domestic opponents of globalization in colonial countries like Canada and the United States are in fact adversaries of Onkwehonwe because they are nothing but staunch defenders of the first wave of globalization against the second wave. They are Euroamerican nationalists intent on preserving colonial institutions and relations of power.

-- Taiaiake Alfred

I might argue that the last statement applies more to the more moderate wing of the movement whose focus is left nationalism, while the more radical wing has goals that are at least potentially consistent or even allied with Onkwehonwe struggles...but then I might also be looking at the side of things that I identify with through glasses that are somewhat rose-coloured, because large-scale, material solidarity action with anti-colonial struggles in North America has not happened that I am aware of, and I have not been involved in such a thing. Though I think such solidarity has emerged in some corners of configurations that came out of anti-globalization activity, certainly the initial impulses towards solidarity by radical youth were more visibly directed towards members of non-Western nations outside of Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia.

Anti-Arms Trade Email List

The Ottawa-based Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) has a new email list. Check it out and sign up to receive occasional emails keeping you informed of COAT's research and campaigns.

Election Post #2: Can't Tell The Players Without A Program

This will probably be of marginal interest to anyone who is following the current Canadian federal election campaign closely, but I felt it was important to include a non-partisan, mainstream, progressive summary of the circumstances, both for the sake of completeness and for any non-Canadian readers who might happen by.

The Liberal Party of Canada has been called the country's "natural governing party" and they held power for much of the 20th century. They are also in power now, and have been since 1993. Weakened by scandal, in the May 2004 election they were reduced to minority status in Parliament, and it is that minority government that recently fell after the opposition parties combined to pass a non-confidence motion. In the recently deceased Parliament, the Liberals had 135 of 308 seatss, 75 of which were in Ontario, 21 in Quebec, and the rest scattered across the country.

The current Conservative Party is the product of a 15 year long civil war within Canada's right, which began when social conservatives mainly from Western Canada split from socially liberal or moderate fiscal conservatives largely led from central Canada. The split ended just before the last election, with a reunited party of the right that was totally dominated by the social conservatives. They tend to be more like the U.S. Republican Party than like the Tories of yesteryear (who were bad enough). The Conservatives held 99 seats in the most recent House, 68 of them west of the Manitoba/Ontario border and none at all in Quebec.

The majority of the Quebec seats in the recent Parliament (54) were held by the Bloc Quebecois, a separatist party that formed in 1990 from disaffected Liberal and Conservative MPs. The party tends to have a social democratic character.

The NDP is the social democratic party in English Canada, and they held 19 seats -- barely too few to hold the decisive balance of power.

The Green Party has never won a seat in Canada, but they polled 4.3% of the vote nationwide in 2004. Though at one time the federal party had (and some provincial parties still have, or so I am told) a strong social justice agenda, the current federal greens are quite right-leaning in many ways.

The scandal that weakened the Liberals in 2004 has continued to develop. The substance of the matter is that during the referendum on sovereignty held in Quebec in 1995, the federal Liberal government authorized a slush fund to be spent to keep the province in Canada. Controls over that money were very substandard, and there is evidence that some of it, perhaps a couple of million dollars, found its way back into Liberal Party coffers. There is currently an official inquiry into the matter which had issued a preliminary report before the election was called but is not scheduled to pronounce its final verdict until after the election. Not surprisingly, the report blamed the man who was Prime Minister at the time while largely exonerating the current Prime Minister, even though the current Prime Minister was finance minister and senior minister from Quebec at the time. Go figure.

Realistic outcomes to the current election range from a Liberal majority to a Conservative minority, with the most likely outcome another Liberal minority. The Conservatives do seem to be doing better than expected, mainly because of the success of their frightening leader in hiding his scariness and projecting an illusion of normalcy that is actually moderately convincing to many voters. The most progressive outcome would be a Liberal minority with the NDP holding the balance of power. An imperfect realization of this dynamic resulted in the just past Parliament doing some progressive things, including an increase in social spending (very modest, though still significant in that it represents a reversal of momentum since the major onslaught of neoliberal restructuring began at the federal level in 1995) and equal marriage legislation (not that I support state meddling in relationships regardless of the genders involved). Historically, a number of important advances in introducing aspects of social citizenship to the Canadian state resulted from Liberal minorities with support from the left in the late '20s, the '50s, the '70s, and in Ontario at the provincial level in the '80s. As well, one motivating factor for the (limited) embrace of the welfare state after World War II was the electoral threat of the left. The NDP is eternally disappointing to the left -- that seems to be the cosmic role of social democracy more generally -- and the current leadership has said and done some questionable things, but they would no doubt continue to exert a progressive influence on the Liberals.

A Liberal majority, however, would be likely to cut social spending, continue on with the neoliberal remodelling of the Canadian state, and accelerate its accommodation with Washington (recent theatrics between Paul Martin and the U.S. ambassador notwithstanding). A Conservative government would do all of these things but faster and nastier and worse.

In my next election post, I'll talk more about the differences (if any) between the Liberals and Conservatives, but not in terms of image or policy platforms but rather in the language of unities and divisions that exist among Canadian elites.

Election Post #1: Caving In and General Analysis

Anyone dropping by the home of Progressive Bloggers, a blog ring of progressive Canadian blogs to which this site belongs, might come to the conclusion that there is a federal election taking place in Canada at the moment. They would be correct, of course.

However, I tend to write more about "our" politics than "their" politics, so I have, as yet, had very little to say on the subject. But I have been plagued by a vague feeling of obligation to tackle it at least once before that fateful January day when we will find out that very little, even in the narrow context of the composition of Parliament, has changed.

I have made a couple of false starts in composing a post. These starts have been false because my general lack of enthusiasm for the topic has not stopped a surprising volume of relevant things from spilling out of my pen/keyboard, and I have soon run out of energy. To spare both myself and readers a single massive post, I have decided to break it up into five (at least) parts.

This post is the first part: my apology for the topic, and a general summary of my take on electoral politics. The second will be a fairly mainstream progressive non-partisan summary of the immediate circumstances of this election. The third will be a look at the substance, if any, of the division among Canadian elites at issue in this election. The fourth will turn to Canada's social democrats, the NDP, and argue that the current environment, while presenting them with rare opportunities, is also one of considerable risk. And finally I will talk about why the whole business is and should be extremely depressing for those of us in the diverse but sparsely populated territory to the left of social democracy.

Of course I reserve the right to change my mind, add parts, or delete them as I see fit, and I make no promises about how fast I'll be able to get them up here. Check back often if you're interested!

In any case, my general take on electoral politics is simple: The scope of potential configurations for society is this big (picture two hands, held five feet apart); the scope of change possible through electoral politics alone is this big (picture two fingers, held three inches apart). But if that three inches represents fewer deaths, decreased suffering, and increased space for organizing for oppressed and exploited people, then completely dismissing its significance and engaging in puritanical abstention from electoral politics is morally and politically indefensible and, often enough, an act of privilege on the part of a certain subset of radicals with middle-class (often white) backgrounds. I find it incomprehensible that someone would refuse to take 15 minutes out of their lives to vote for the least evil candidate in their riding on the basis that it won't bring the revolution.

However, I find it very difficult to recommend any particular level or kind of participation in electoral politics beyond the bare minimum of voting. I think that decisions of that sort have everything to do with the concrete situation on the ground in a particular community and/or movement.

For example, during our stay in L.A. over the course of the 2004 election, I encountered some very persuasive arguments for why progressives and leftists already grounded in social movement activity in working-class communities of colour in the United States should engage in electorally focused, pro-Kerry organizing that was independent of the Democrats. The arguments had to do with the small but very real differences between the parties that would have a clear impact on the lived realities of Black folk and other working-class people of colour in the United States, and with the opportunity for building independent left capacity and organizations grounded in oppressed communities. None of this suggested faking even an ounce of real affection for John Kerry, but rather presenting a realistic assessment of why voting for him made regrettable sense for the communities in question while at the same time taking the opportunity to provide solid left analysis of the issues.

However, electoral politics is also a spectacle that has the capacity to suck the life out of social movements -- to get us so focused on the three inches that we forget about the five feet. This is political suicide. One strength of social movements is that they can take that three inch window and push the whole thing in more progressive directions, or expand it slightly, or even, at rare moments in history, make it completely irrelevant and/or transform it altogether. The trick is to walk and chew gum at the same time: finding ways to acknowledge and respond to the impact those three inches can have in the lives of ordinary people, while never for a moment losing site of our broader transformative goals.

What does that mean in practice? Impossible to say, in abstract terms, though I like the idea of movements intervening electorally (when appropriate) not by individual activists turning themselves over as footsoldiers to hierarchically structured parties, but as autonomous, non-party, collective entities -- though I'm sure I could come up with scenarios where this wouldn't make sense, either. Anyway, what it means for me in this particular election, in my particular circumstances, is that I will take my 15 minutes to vote but not much else. The little energy I currently have for direct participation will continue to go to social movement activity that is extra-electoral. And I would say to others that however you choose to participate or not in the current election, it is social movements that can and will make positive change outside of the three-inch window possible over the longer term, so put your time and energy there!

Anti-Anti-Poor Rant

Alright, it's that time of year again -- not sure how frequent my posts will be over the next two weeks, but I do intend to try and I haven't packed this period as insanely full of activity as last year so trying might actually make a difference. In any case, I thought I'd leave you with a great rant about the way supposedly clever supposed irony by supposedly liberal middle-class folks can be a thin, thin veil for class supremacism and hatred of working-class people. It's an English post so the slang is different but the sentiment is often the same on this side of the pond -- perhaps Canadian myths of tolerance and politeness disguise it a little more, but then again, perhaps not, given that my first social occasion in our new city was a party at which I got to listen to a middle-class woman go on and on about how people on welfare just blow it all on smokes, junk food, and who knows what else as soon as they get it, so no wonder they can't feed their kids. But I'll bet she donates food to the food bank at Xmas to make herself feel all righteous and good, right?

Well, in that spirit, here's a seasonal quote from George Bernard Shaw:

The social friction set up by inequality of income is intense: society is like a machine designed to work smoothly with the oil of equality, into the bearings of which some malignant demon keeps pouring the sand of inequality. If it were not for the big pools of equality that exist at different levels, the machine would not work at all. As it is, the seizings-up, the smashings, the stoppages, the explosions, never cease... And to outface this miserable condition we bleat once a year about peace on earth and good-will to men: that is, among persons to whom we have distributed incomes ranging from a starvation dole to several thousands a day, piously exhorting the recipients to love one-another. Have you any patience with it? I have none.

Ontario AIDS Network Opposes Special Diet Cuts

An article from Xtra! reveals that the Ontario AIDS Network has serious concerns with the recent decision by the Liberal government in Ontario to drastically reduce access to supplementary food funding for people on social assistance, and require that peoples medical conditions be revealed to people other than their health care providers. The right to medical privacy has historically been an issue of major concern for people living with HIV and AIDS.

Here's the article:

New weight rule hits PWAs
NEWS / Ontario tightens up special diet allowance

Fred Kuhr / Xtra / Thursday, December 08, 2005
John Corso isn't able to work due to his AIDS diagnosis. So as part of the money he receives from the provincially run Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), Corso gets $240 per month as a special diet allowance, funds that are provided to low-income Ontarians who have special nutritional needs due to a medical condition.

But Corso fears that new regulations regarding the allowance will mean he will lose that money.

"Without that money, I will end up going to a food bank, which I have done in the past, but it's not the kind of quality food I need to keep myself healthy," says Corso. "I'm panicking, and my friends are panicking. It's pretty depressing."

A Nov 4 directive from the ODSP outlines a number of changes to how the allowance is paid. In addition to requiring a doctor's confirmation that the person is eligible for the allowance, the size of the allowance for HIV/AIDS patients will be based upon weight loss as compared to a patient's usual body weight.

For example, a patient who has lost two percent body weight would receive $75, whereas a patient who has lost over 10 percent would receive the full $240.

Sandra Pupatello, minister of Community And Social Services, says those who are already receiving the allowance will not be affected. She says the changes are meant to prevent abuse of the system by applicants. Even so, community activists have concerns.

"These changes were announced without adequate notice and without proper medical advisement," says Rick Kennedy, executive director of the Ontario AIDS Network.

While the weight-loss guidelines take their cue from wasting syndrome -- weight loss often seen in people with AIDS -- some patients actually gain weight or suffer from a shifting of body and yet would still have specific dietary needs, says Lori Lucier, executive director of the AIDS Committee Of Toronto.

Lucier and Kennedy are also concerned about patient privacy.

"In the past, you did not have to disclose your HIV status to a government agency in order to receive this allowance," says Kennedy. Now recepients must provide a doctor's confirmation of need.

Pupatello says that she is reviewing the weight-loss requirement as part of what she calls "an ongoing process."
The Ontario AIDS Network would like to hear from anyone who loses their special diet allowance. It can be reached at (416) 364-4555 or info(at)ontarioaidsnetwork.on.ca.

www.Ontarioaidsnetwork.on.ca

(Via an email from GK.)

Ontario Cabinet Minister Challenged

Yesterday, ten members of the Hunger Clinic Organizing Committee (HCOC) confronted Ontario MPP and cabinet minister Rick Bartolucci over his support for policies which force constituents to go hungry. Bartolucci was visiting Laurentian University to announce a major project related to mining engineering. The HCOC members protested outside the hall with signs and noise makers, leafletting attendees and members of the media. When Bartolucci entered he was met with raucous chants of "We won't be quiet 'til we get our special diet!"

In October, the Liberal government gutted the Special Dietary Supplement provision of the Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support programs. Previously, healthcare provider recognition of the ways in which inadequate social assistance rates result in ill-health could enable recipients to receive up to an extra $250 per month. Anti-poverty advocates and healthcare providers across the province actually using the provision in a significant way prompted the Liberals to drastically change the regulation so that only specific conditions pre-approved by provincial bureaucrats are now eligible for the Special Dietary Supplement, while the scientifically documented negative health consequences of inadequate amounts and quality of food for people who do not fit in the pre-approved diagnoses are treated as acceptable by the system.

As previously reported, the association of Ontario's Medical Officers of Health have determined that OW and ODSP do not provide for adequate nutrition after housing costs are taken into account. In Toronto, the Board of Health has passed a resolution calling upon the provincial government to raise social assistance rates by 40% and to assume full responsibility for funding Ontario's social assistance programs.

Ontario Common Front groups like HCOC have been challenging cabinet ministers and demonstrating to show the government that starving social assistance recipients is not acceptable. A group of medical professionals has also launched a legal challenge based on privacy issues because the new regulations require that patients' medical details be disclosed to people other than their healthcare providers, an issue historically of particular concern to people living with HIV and AIDS.

On a personal note, it was L's most enthusiastic participation in political activity to date -- the shouting on Bartolucci's arrival unnerved him a little, but he took great delight in shaking a maraca the rest of the time.

A Piece of Pre- and Anti-Capitalist History

There is something magical about that moment when you can feel the model of the world inside your head shift so that a stretch of years previously existing as flat and undifferentiated time becomes nuanced, rich, meaningful -- becomes history. I just read a fascinating review (HTML or PDF) of a book called Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. It is about the role of exploitation of women in the formation of capitalism from about 1000 AD onwards. Not only does it talk about the ways in which gendered (and violent) divisions were deliberately fostered within the working classes by elites as a stratey of rolling back gains made by those classes in previous centuries, but perhaps an even more basic way in which the review opened my eyes was its talk of amazing radical struggle farther back in history than I've ever learned about before. I knew vaguely that it is not true, but I still had this lingering idea from high school history that the very idea that social change was possible did not exist in European society before the French Revolution in 1789. But apparently there were massive movements, often centred around religion, that not only engaged in class struggle but often were in large part women's struggles and had nontrivial queer components as well.

Anyway, read the review. I intend to read the book too!

(Found via Sketchy Thoughts, whose author wrote the review.)

Anti-Colonial Quotes

One can be reconciled to every situation, and the colonized can wait a long time to live. But, regardless of how soon or how violently the colonized rejects his situation, he will one day begin to overthrow his unliveable existence with the whole force of his oppressed personality.

-- Albert Memmi




All of the world's big problems are in reality very small and local problems. They are brought into force as realities only in the choices made every day and in many ways by people who are enticed by certain incentives and disciplined by their fears. So, confronting huge forces like colonialism is a personal and, in some ways, a mundane process. This is not to say it is easy, but looking at it this way does give proper focus to the effort of decolonizing.

-- Taiaiake Alfred

Neoliberal Health Concepts

The front page of the Sudbury Star yesterday featured a story with the title, "Aboriginal Cancer Rates Skyrocket". The article is a prime example of how health in this neoliberal world is regarded as something privatized, both in how we as a society take action to improve it and, as a consequence, in how we think and write about it. The focus of the article is a particular set of health outcomes for a particular grouping of people -- Aboriginal peoples -- which is constructed through shared patterns of experience and history, yet the article does almost nothing to explore the social and historical questions for which the facts presented in the article cry out for explanations.

The article begins:

The rate of cancer among Aboriginals in Canada is rising quickly and may soon surpass that of other Canadians, research released Monday show.

To reverse the trend, Aboriginals need education so they can make better lifestyle choices, native leaders and cancer-care experts said in Sudbury while launching the Lets Take a Stand Against Cancer NOW! campaign.

The overall cancer incidence rate in First Nations people, while still below the rate for the general population, is rising more quickly, Carmen Jones, director of the Aboriginal Cancer Care Unit, said in a release.

The most interesting content from farther down in the article is a quite long quote from an Assembly of First Nations official:

Angus Toulouse, Assembly of First Nations Ontario Regional Chief, said cancer is devastating for anyone. But for native people, it is even more difficult because many must leave their home communities to get treatment.

"I would hate to see more of our people suffer through this disease and I hate to see more of our people get separated from their families, especially in the North," Toulouse said.

"It is really hard on the individual and hard on the family to see their loved ones leave their community, in one aspect physically and then some of them not getting the treatment early enough leaving this place we call Earth sooner than later in a lot of cases."

Additional medical resources in native communities could bring earlier detection of the disease, Toulouse also said.

"I dont think there are sufficient resources available, as was identified recently in the first ministers meeting that took place. There is a serious gap where First Nations health is at and where the general population health is at.

"We really need to close that gap and find ways and means of addressing those things that cause the health and quality of life of people in First Nations to be much lower than that of the Canadian public," he said.

So what you have here is a situation where health outcomes for a specific social group are distinct from health outcomes in the broader society. Isn't "why" the logical first question to ask? Yet the article does not tackle this question head on, but rather leaves hints from which the readers might draw conclusions about what is different in the experiences of these groups that leads to different health outcomes.

One of the possible explanations readers might draw from the article is from the comments by Toulouse, who indicates that health system resources are not sufficient in Aboriginal communities. This is a very important point and an injustice that needs to be addressed. It is also a social factor, but only one among many that could conceivably be relevant. As well, it is presented in as weak a way as possible in the article -- buried in the later paragraphs, on an inside page; supported only by the words of a member of the group impacted, which should be enough but often isn't for many people; and with no corroborating statistics from the journalist, which would probably be easy to find.

The other possible explanation comes in the second paragraph of the article, which gives it more weight because of how newspaper articles are structured and because most people read only the first few paragraphs of a given article. Also, it is attributed to both Aboriginal leaders and "experts," which would give it more authority for many readers. I am talking about the phrase, "Aboriginals need education so they can make better lifestyle choices." It is intended specifically with respect to the cancer issue, but I would imagine many readers would take it to heart more generally. This is particularly true since it reinforces racist stereotypes that are widely held. Everyone can benefit from a better understanding of health issues, but the way this is phrased gives the impression that personal failings related to racial background are the principle factor at play in poor health outcomes.

"Why" remains substantially unanswered.

I cannot answer the various "whys" that might occur to a reader of this article, nor talk with authority about the specific social factors involved. But I can speculate.

First, on the issue of low cancer rates historically and rapidly increasing rates now. I can't help but seek explanations in the history of colonization, and the ways in which Aboriginal communities have adapted to and struggled against that reality at different times. How does the spatial distribution of Aboriginal peoples in Canada play out in all of this? How does the steady degradation of even the most remote pieces of wilderness by resource extraction industries and mobile industrial pollutants in air and water factor in? Does the rapid increase now have to do with details of the current stage of the colonial project by the Canadian state? In other words, are the factors in the dominant society's ways of living that are personally carcinogenic penetrating Aboriginal lives to a greater extent in this generation than before? Why is this the case? How might decolonization struggle be part of how Aboriginal people "Take a Stand Against Cancer NOW!"?

In any case, before blaming Aboriginal peoples for needing "education so they can make better lifestyle choices" about cancer we should maybe appreciate that the disruption of traditional Aboriginal ways of being, the destruction and decentring from the lives of many communities of traditional Aboriginal teachings on health and wellness, and the terms under which Aboriginal communities deal with the dangerous aspects of the settler society have been determined much more by white people, settler state institutions, and their affiliated economic institutions than Native peoples themselves.

And it would have been nice to see even one paragraph and a couple of summary statistics from the journalist corroborating Toulouse's assertion of disproportionately negative health outcomes for Aboriginal peoples more generally. Another couple of paragraphs talking about social reasons for this would've been even nicer. Again, the article leaves nothing more than the lack of health system resources in Aboriginal communities (which is true and important) and the need for "education" as explanations for any readers that wonder about this point based on Toulouse's words.

But even a short search of peer reviewed (Western) medical literature can raise other factors that are very relevant to health:

• Aboriginal peopels tend to be disproportionately poor, and poverty is bad for your health.
  
  
• In Canadian urban areas, Aboriginal people are overrepresented in the homeless population, and a significant proportion of housing stock on many reserves is in very poor condition. Homlessness is bad for your health.
  
  
• Aboriginal peoples experience racism, and experiencing racism is bad for your health.

It is possible to go into more detail -- things like incidence of depression amongst oppressed people and the impact of depression on immune function, or the incidence of experience of acute trauma amongst oppressed people and the impact that trauma has on immune function -- but the references above are at least a start in laying out the social landscape that is likely playing a role in determining differential health outcomes between Aboriginal peoples in northern North America and the Canadian population as a whole.

In other words, the provincial Liberals have managed to get some good ink from one small educational program making public health information more accessible to Aboriginal peoples (which should have been happening all along). This isn't a bad thing, as far as it goes. What is bad is the credit they can take for "doing something" about Aboriginal health issues, when in fact they are doing no more than any other settler state government to achieve the basic factors that are really necessary for Aboriginal health: decolonization and justice.

And though this post is in response to an article that is about Aboriginal health, the points that I've made about looking beyond individualistic, privatized blaming and to the social factors that create the landscape for individual choice is relevent to everyone's health -- real social justice could improve health for all of us.

Korea Context

Good contextual material on the decades-long conflict engulfing the Korean peninsula is quite rare even in alternative and independent sources in North America, but given the inclusion of North Korea in Dubya's fantasy of an "axis of evil" and the persistent American role in the conflict, it is important stuff to know. This is a very interesting article in the form of a review by an academic named Bruce Cumings of two recent books on North Korea. (Found via Feral Scholar.)

Public Health Officials Call for Significant Welfare Increase

I found the following media release on IMC Hamilton this morning:

NEWS RELEASE

December 1, 2005 For Immediate Release

The Association of Local Public Health Agencies (alPHa) calls on the province to raise social assistance rates.

TORONTO --The Association of Local Public Health Agencies (alPHa) has passed a Resolution sponsored by Ontario's Medical Officers of Health urging a significant increase in social assistance benefit rates to address poor health due to poverty and hunger in the province. The resolution was carried unanimously at the November 22nd alPHa Annual General Meeting and coincides with the release of a report by Campaign 2000 warning that one in six Canadian children, or 1.2 million, still lives in poverty.

"If this government is serious about making Ontarians the healthiest Canadians, then it must address the root causes of illness and premature death. There is no disputing that poverty and hunger are chief among these root causes", said Dr. Rosana Pellizzari, the Medical Officer of Health for Perth County.

Ontario's Public Health Units have calculated that the Basic Allowance of Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program do not provide for adequate nutrition after housing costs are taken into account.

Nutritious Food Basket measures, locally derived estimates of the weekly cost of a healthy diet, indicate that families on social assistance can not afford adequate nutrition. The situation is worse in northern and remote aboriginal communities where food costs are even higher.

In 2004, the McGuinty government announced a 3% increase to Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program allowances. It was the first such increase since Ontario Works recipients had their income cut by 21.6% in 1995 by the Mike Harris government.

"The 3% is woefully inadequate," added Sudbury's MOH, Dr Penny Sutcliffe. "Recipients of social assistance in this province are still living far below the poverty line."

This desperate situation led to a recent grassroots effort that saw health care providers throughout Ontario approving thousands of applications for access to a Special Diet Supplement that would increase monthly assistance by up to $250. The success of this effort has led Social Services Minister Sandra Pupatello to severely narrow the qualification criteria for this supplement, effectively cutting off the vast majority of people who were receiving it.

In Toronto, the Board of Health has responded with a resolution calling upon the provincial government to raise social assistance rates by 40% and to assume full responsibility for funding Ontario's social assistance programs.

"Being poor and living below the poverty line causes very poor health and a greatly increased likelihood of premature death. As Medical Officers of Health we have an obligation to speak to important health issues like poverty," advises Dr. Chuck Gardner, Medical Officer of Health for Simcoe-Muskoka. "We call upon the province to raise the Basic Allowance of Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program to ensure that the recipients and their families do not live below the poverty line."

As the provincial organization representing public heath, alPHa provides leadership and expertise on public health management issues. Its members include Medical Officers of Health, board of health members and senior managers in public health disciplines including inspection, epidemiology, nursing, dentistry, nutrition, health promotion and business administration.

I'd provide the link to the original release on the alPHa site but it doesn't seem to be Firefox-friendly and I can't get it to load properly, so you'll have to make do with the version from the IMC.

In any case, though I am dubious about whether yet another resolution passed by yet another organization will finally shame the provincial Liberal government out of its nasty habit of starving people, it is still positive to see this. After all, Medical Officers of Health are government employees themselves, so to see them take a position like this is significant.

Narnia and War

I like it when the meanings of two independent media encounters collide in my life.

Earlier today I went to see Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on the novel of the same name by C.S. Lewis. I read that book and a number of others in the series something like twenty years ago; I remember that I liked that one, though there were one or two later in the series I was less fond of, but I didn't remember a whole lot more about it.

Generally speaking, the movie was well done. The story features the adventures of four human children -- siblings -- in a fantastic land. I found the actors who played the youngest girl and boy to be very engaging, though the older girl and boy less so. I loved Tilda Swinton's take on the evil White Witch -- Swinton is Scottish, a Communist, and she's got a talent for being creepy, so what's not to like? I also remembered that Lewis was a devout Christian, in his own early 20th century Church of England kind of way, so I took the necessary mental precautions to prevent political contempt for certain factions of present-day faithful who dress reactionary politics in faux-divine cloth from spoiling my enjoyment of a film that I knew would have Christian imagery dripping from it like smelly water from a soaking dog.

Rather, what spoiled my enjoyment of the film was the fact that it is one big gross hymn to war. I suppose I could try and concoct some reading of it that was anti-colonial, because the good folk of Narnia are trying to throw off the tyrannical rule of the White Witch, but I just can't make that stick in my own mind. The imagery surrounding the "good guys" is too English (i.e. too linked to real-world histories of colonization and conquest), while the enemy foot soldiers are Othered by every ugly inch of their inhuman computer-generated skins. The Great Leader of the "good guys" provides assurances that the war is unfortunate but just, and that the world will be a better place when it is over. And, of course, since it's a story this can be uncomplicatedly true. No hint is shown of the scars inevitably left by participation in mass violence, no matter how just it might seem. No, the armies form their very traditional battle lines with visions of glory in the air, the two young human boys commanding the "good guys" dressed like medieval English knights, and then the two sides whack the heck out of each other until the "good guys" win with help from the mysteriously returned-to-earth Christ figure of Aslan the Lion. It made me weary to appreciate once more just how much of the representation of and metaphor for struggle against evil in our culture, and that which is treated as being most important, turns into interpersonal violence and war.

I wasn't going to write about any of this until I ran across this article by Ben Tripp. It provided me with a much needed, sobering, real-world counterpoint to the fantasies of a glorious and consequence-free "just war" pimped in this film. Tripp writes:

Waging war is when you send your kids to kill someone else's babies. It is nothing more noble than that, and all the good reasons in the world won't differentiate your war from Hitler's, or Napoleon's, or Genghis Khan's, or Caesar's, or any of the thousands of other little excursions into bowel spilling that humankind has indulged in with monotonous regularity over the last few millennia. The stated reason for going to war is always the same; as the prophet Orwell said, "Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac."

And he concludes:

Winnie Churchill said, "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." True dat. A pity Bush can't read, or he might have stumbled across this little observation. For the rest of us there's another useful remark made by a fellow that made anti-war sentiments seem almost noble: "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?" These are the words of M. 'Trimspa' Gandhi. Ultimately, war is the purpose of war. It makes pacifists of a few, and passivists of the majority.

In fantastic literature, because the world is made up, the author can make anything inarguably True. He or she can, for example, claim legitimacy in representing the inhuman Other that the "good guys" battle as being eternally and metaphysically Evil, rather than grounded in some kind of history that could be changed in many different ways in many different futures. In the real world, this is never true, but the "Master of War" -- the rich who send off working-class kids to die -- pretend, like clockwork, that it is.

And in saying all of this about war, I am not dismissing the importance of the right of colonized peoples to resist occupation. But for those of us surrounded by the opulence of Fortress North America that was amassed in large part by internal and external colonial processes, and who benefit even in ways large or very small from the privilege of being part of a nation that does the colonizing rather than one that has been colonized -- we cannot afford to have illusions about war as glorious, easy, or just; we cannot feed the domination of the world from which we benefit, but that most of us don't even recognize as existing, with stories of inhuman Others that respond only to the mass violence we somehow get to be the ones to apply.

Upping the Anti #2 Ready Soon

The second issue of Upping The Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action, produced by folks involved with Autonomy & Solidarity, will be ready for distribution soon. Their first issue (full text here) was great and the table of contents for the second issue looks similarly compelling. Look here to find out how to get ahold of a copy.

To get a flavour of what this journal is all about, here is the first paragraph of the editorial in the introductory issue:

Our name Upping the Anti refers to our interest in engaging with three interwoven tendencies which have come to define much of the politics of today’s radical left in Canada: anti-capitalism, anti-oppression, and anti-imperialism. These three political tendencies, while overlapping and incorporating various contradictory elements, together represent the growth of a radical politics in a space outside of the “party building” of the sectarian left and the dead end of social democracy. Despite their limitations, movements based on these “anti” politics have grown out of a real process and practice of social contestation and mobilization, and they point towards ideas and activist practices which will have a significant role in shaping the form and content of new revolutionary movements born out of future cycles of struggle against exploitation and oppression. This journal is intended to provide a space to address and discuss unresolved questions and dynamics within these struggles in order to better learn from our collective successes and failures.

Read it!

Carnival of Feminists

As an effort to address gender-based imbalances in power in the world of weblogs, and as a right-on celebration of good writing and interesting ideas, many feminist blogs in the blogosphere have started putting together a periodic, collective "Carnival of Feminists" in which the greatest latest posts from various and sundry feminist blogs are assembled for your reading enjoyment. Here is the latest edition. Please check it out and take the opportunity to get to know some new-to-you feminist writers and activists in the blogosphere!

Foreign Policy in Election Time

As is usual and not terribly surprising, very little of substance has been said so far in the Canadian federal election campaign about foreign policy. Sure, Bono scolded Paul Martin about foreign aid commitments, but I would bet that even most NDP candidates (Canada's mainstream party of the left) would be unable to tell you anything about Canada's role in empire and the destruction of democracy in Haiti, let alone take a vocal position in favour of getting out of there right now.

So it is very timely that Briarpatch, an independent progressive Canadian magazine, should devote its current issue to "The Responsibility to Dissect" Canada's foreign policy. I'm not sure if the hardcopy is on the newstands anywhere yet -- I had a look at my local magazine seller, one of the best in the country, and they still had the last issue out -- but much of the content is available online.

I have not yet had a chance to read the whole issue, but I would particularly like to recommend this article on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan by Sonali Kolhatkar and Justin Podur -- Kolhatkar is the host of Uprising Radio, my favourite show on KPFK when we lived in Los Angeles, and Podur is a Toronto-based activist whose blog I visit regularly. Please also check out Anthony Fenton's piece on Canada in Haiti and this article on secret trials in Canada. Ahhhh, heck...read the whole thing. Given how much easier it is to become critically educated on U.S. foreign policy, I don't imagine there are too many Canadian progressives and radicals who won't learn from this material -- I've certainly learned. So read up, then go to an all-candidates meeting and help our wanna-be Parliamentarians display their ignorance of Canada's complicity in war and empire. Or even better, get involved in grassroots anti-imperialist activity in your community.

(Thanks to DJ for the heads-up on this material.)

Secret Trial Detainees Call for CPTers' Release

The following media release came today from Homes Not Bombs and the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada. In it, three Muslim men held illegitimately by the Canadian state call for the release of Jim Loney and other CPT members held in Iraq.

Here's the full text:

MUSLIM DETAINEES IN CANADA CALL FOR RELEASE OF JIM LONEY AND OTHER CPT MEMBERS HELD IN IRAQ

DECEMBER 3, 2005 -- The following open letter has been written by the secret trial detainees held in Toronto, and is being sent to Arab media outlets around the world in the hope that it will add to the millions of voices calling for the release of Toronto's Jim Loney and other Christian Peacemaker Team members currently held in Iraq:

To the people holding James Loney and the other Christian Peacemaker Team Members in Iraq,

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious and Merciful,

Our names are Mahmoud Jaballah, Mohammad Mahjoub and Hassan Almrei, and we have been detained without charge for between four and five and a half years. Some of us have spent as many as four years in solitary confinement as well. We are being held captive under security certificates because the government of Canada alleges we are linked to terrorist organizations and that we pose a threat to the national security of Canada. Allah is witness to our innocence of these allegations.

We are suffering a great injustice here in Canada because the government stereotypes Muslims and because of our strong faith and daily attendance to mosque. We have been suffering innocently.

Many Canadians have heard of our injustice and have been supporting us in our fight for freedom by contacting politicians, by holding demonstrations in front of the jail, by writing letters to authorities and spreading the word all over Canada by way of media.

James Loney of the Christian Peacemaker Teams is one of thousands of people who have been fighting to right this wrong. He is a person who has organized and motivated people to participate in this struggle for what is right. We have recently seen a photo of him in the newspaper and it has saddened our hearts to learn that he is being held captive in Iraq.

This is the same James Loney who has travelled to Iraq on more than one occasion to help the people of Iraq. This is the same James Loney who has reached out to the families of the Abu Ghraib prisoners. This is the James Loney who was against the U.S. invasion and is against the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

It pains our heart to know that a person of this calibre is being held captive. We care about his freedom more than we do our own.

If you love Allah, if you have goodness in your heart, please deal with this matter as righteous Muslims and not let these kind, caring, compassionate and innocent people suffer. Prophet Mohammad, Peace be upon Him, said, "If you do not thank the people, you do not thank Allah." The Prophet, Peace be Upon Him, also said, "If someone did a favour to you, try to return his favour."

We hope and pray to see these captives freed as much as we hope and pray for our own freedom here in Canada, a freedom for which James Loney has worked so hard.

*******

For further information: Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada, (416) 651-5800, tasc(at)web.ca

One Piece of Everyday Oppression

I've been thinking recently about one very particular kind of use to which oppressive statements get put, one that I really do not get to witness all that often these days. I can think of one social context that I still occasionally inhabit in which it occurs, and one or perhaps two other contexts which used to be part of my life. It is an interesting example because it functions somewhat differently than most instances of people with privilege making oppressive statements amongst ourselves, and it illustrates a particular way in which different oppressions interact with each other.

Most of the time when we are in a group consisting solely of others who do or are presumed to share privilege along a certain dimension, most of the oppressive statements that we hear (and, let's be honest, at least occasionally make, no matter how well developed we think our politics are) are made with either no conscious understanding that they are oppressive or with a kind of semi-conscious invokation of complicity among the privileged people who are present. Those kinds of statements happen all the time, in all contexts of which we are a part.

In this instance, I'm thinking about the relatively rare (in my experience, at least) situation in which a statement is deliberately made precisely because it is known by the speaker and the listeners to be oppressive. It is made deliberately because its oppressive nature is seen by the speaker as being transgressive, because most of the listeners would rather it was not being said. In the contexts in which I have experienced this, most often these statements are racist but occasionally homophobia is also used this way, and even more occasionally a subset of sexist statement which carefully objectifies women in general or some other specific woman or class of women but could (in a sexist way, of course) be argued to have nothing to do with those women who are present. In any case, it is important to how these statements function that they are not perceived as being directly oppressive to anyone actually hearing them (whether or not this is actually true). The contexts in which I have seen this happen are ones in which all of the people present are white or presumed to be straight, but the majority of people present would object to such blatantly oppressive use of language, albeit mostly not in a way with any overtly political basis.

The people who use these statements, in my experience, tend to be older white men who occupy a position of power within the context.

These deliberately oppressive and transgressive racist or homophobic statements are used to assert and reinforce patriarchal power within the context in question. The speaker knows that most people present would object in some way to the statement, and he makes them precisely to assert that he has the power to exert decisive influence over the content and boundaries of this social context. Gender-based power is signified and reinforced by racially or sexually oppressive statements.

In my experience, these statements have usually remained unchallenged. Over the lifetime of the social contexts in which I have experienced this kind of statement, I can recall some early efforts to engage with them, before the contexts had settled into the form in which these statements were a defining feature. These efforts at engagement usually resulted in conflict in which the gendered power inherent in the context was asserted more directly, failed to effectively challenge that gendered power, did not stop such statements from occuring again, and soon enough were no longer attempted. Once or twice since the still-current context attained its current shape, I have witnessed a response which tries to address the blatant racism of the original statement with a counter-statement crafted in such a way as to disagree with its content in a way that replaces blatant racism with liberal orientalist racism, and that makes clear in its conciliatory manner an acceptance of the underlying patriarchal structure of the interaction. When this has happened, it has not been well received by the original speaker, and obviously it is responding to the transgressive (i.e. impolite, "not tasteful") nature of the original statement rather than its oppressive nature as a whole.

I should add that this kind of situation is among those in which I do the worst job of responding to oppressive statements, I'm not proud to say. In general, everyone present -- subordinate males, women, children -- has made decisions to navigate that particular social context by enduring rather than challenging its underlying patriarchal structure. I tend to exist in the contexts I'm talking about in this post in a very detached way, so I'm not generally part of the conversations in which such statements arise, merely a weary witness who mostly isn't paying much attention. All of this makes it much more difficult to respond to in a constructive and politically appropriate way, I find, than if it is peers talking over a pint or whatever. Which doesn't excuse inaction, of course, for anyone who tries to claim the label "ally."

But still, one part of figuring out how to respond in situations like this is recognizing that doing so involves challenging a very intimate, personal, gendered assertion of a right to dominate a social space. It is important to consider such situations in advance because the power structure most personally relevant to how we respond is not the one that the statement itself is about, and we need to figure out what that means for how we respond.

Petition Asking for CPTers Release

Please sign this petition asking for the release of anti-war and anti-occupation activists Jim Loney, Tom Fox, Harmeet Sooden, and Norman Kember. Prominent signatories include Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, Mahmood Mamdani, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, and Dennis Halliday.

Statement of Support for Missing CPTers

The following statement of support was hastily put together and released today.

Statement of Support for Christian Peacemaker Team members missing in Iraq.

Hamilton Action for Social Change and
Fathers' Day Coalition for Peace
PO Box 19, 1280 Main Street West
Hamilton ON L8S 1C0
905-627-2696
www.hwcn.org/link/hasc

December 02, 2005

Hamilton Action for Social Change (HASC) and Fathers' Day Coalition for Peace (FDC4P) wish to express their steadfast support for Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and their work of violence reduction in war zones.

From 1999 to 2001, members of CPT participated with HASC and FDC4P in the resistance to the use of war planes as family entertainment at the Hamilton International Air Show. The Air Show closed for good in 2001.

Participants of HASC and FDC4P express our sadness at hearing the news that CPT members Jim Loney and Tom Fox and CPT delegates Harmeet Sooden and Norman Kember are missing in Baghdad, Iraq. We along with many others wish for their safe return home and our hearts go out to their families.

We urge those who are holding the CPTers to treat them with dignity and with care for their safety. We ask for CPT's partners in the region to convince those holding the CPTers to release them immediately.

We agree with CPT's consistent opposition to both the war and the continuing presence of foreign forces of recolonization in Iraq.

We pray for the safe return of all who have been kidnapped in Iraq and for liberation with justice of the Iraqi people.


Murray D. Lumley, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Randy Kay, Dundas, Ontario, Canada
Beatrice Ekoko, Dundas, Ontario, Canada
Andrew Loucks, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
John Milton, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Michelle Cho, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
David Jefferess, Kelowna, B.C., Canada
Scott Neigh, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
Rabea Murtaza, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Ontario Peace Activist Missing In Iraq

Here is an article that talks briefly about members of a faith-based peace and justice organization who are being held by a resistance group in Iraq. In particular, the write-up links to more detailed material which focuses on Jim Loney, his work in documenting prisoner abuse in Iraq, and his opposition to the occupation. I post this link because, though I do not know him well and have not seen him in years, I met Jim several times in the course of peace and social justice work in Hamilton, Ontario. It shouldn't, I know, but for some reason that makes it even more disturbing than hearing that it had happened to a random stranger.