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March 18, 2009

Star puts the heat on nanny business profiteers

Posted by Anna Bowen at 04:17 PM ET | Comments (0)

This week, the Toronto Star has begun to shed some light on the plight of Filipina nannies and their struggle within the flawed federal Live-in Caregiver program. This past Saturday the Toronto Star began its ongoing investigation into the matter, beginning with a look into the dealings of what has begun to look like a Thornhill nanny depot. They have reported that Trakela Spivak, one among many recruiters, is using the system to her advantage, getting families to sponsor one Filipina - a process that takes several months - and landing them a nanny within a week. The trick? She's been hooking up families with nannys who were sponsored three months earlier, an activity that not only leaves new nanny's jobless but is illegal.

Groups of Filipinas under Spivak's care were housed on mattresses in her basement in order that Spivak could offer the speediest nanny connections by having several women on hand. In the meantime, the Star reports that Spivak held their passports and social insurance cards. The potential nannies paid Spivak placement fees, and many hope to attain permanent Canadian residency. Placement fees are banned in four western provinces, but not yet in Ontario, No-one is Illegal reports. Permanent residency can occur in the narrow window after two years in a position as a paid, live-in caregiver, but before three years of landing.

Although the live-in caregiver website urges caregivers to know their rights, reinforcing that people within this program are subject to all the same rights as other Canadian workers and are entitled to overtime pay, vacation, and safe working environments, many Filipina live-in care givers have complained of unsafe working environments and overtime without pay.

No-one is illegal reports that more than 34,000 nannies and caregivers enter Canada every year, and reporting for NIE, Harald Bauder suggests that these temporary foreign workers are going to feel the sting of the economic depression perhaps more than most.

The issue is not only north of the border, however. As Marjorie Ingall reports today for the NY Jewish daily, Forward, domestic workers in NY are also struggling for rights and recognition. Ingall takes a look at the history of racialization on the domestic worker scene.

Thanks to the Star for putting this story in the spotlight.

PIC COURTESY OF JOECLARK'S flickr PHOTOSTREAM

More entries on: Human rights

February 06, 2009

...and the clocks were striking thirteen

Posted by Anna Bowen at 04:12 PM ET | Comments (0)

The details of a UK detainee's torture at Gitmo still under wraps. Binyam Mohamed's case has recently brought pressure on the Obama Administration to clean up more of Bush's legacy. This past Wednesday it was made clear by a British High Court that secret information concerning the details of Binyam Mohamed's torture should be kept behind closed doors, at least for now. Under the Bush Administration, the US threatened to "break intelligence cooperation" with the UK if the details were made public.

Writes the Boston Globe, "While President Obama has promised a new era of transparency and vowed to end torture, there has been no move to disclose information previously hidden during the Bush administration."

Scott Horton asks the Harper's blog, No Comment, whether the Bush Administration concealed these kinds of details because of national security concerns or out of "concern that the disclosures would fuel further demands for a U.S. criminal investigation of their own conduct, followed by their possible indictment and trial."

Although charges were dropped against Mohamed in 2004, he is still awaiting release from Guantanamo. Since his capture in 2003, Mohamed has been subject to torture and moved through prisons in Morocco and Afghanistan as well as Guantanamo.

More entries on: Human rights

January 07, 2009

Chernobyl in the Jungle

Posted by Elaisha Stokes at 03:40 PM ET | Comments (4)

Looking for an adventurous and educational holiday to beat the winter blues? Why not tour the chaos and misery of the mess Texaco Oil left behind in the Amazon Basin. For the last fifteen years Chevron Corp, which acquired Texaco Oil in 2001, has been in a deadlock legal battle with the citizens of Lago Agrigo, Ecuador. With the case against the oil giant is set to conclude latter this year, locals are busying themselves touring the public around the toxic waste dump they now call home.

Among the claims against Texaco Oil:
1. Soaking dirt roads with crude to keep down the dust
2. Encouraging local oilfield workers to smoother their legs and scalp with crude
3. Dumping 18 billion gallons of wastewater into unlined waste pits
4. Burning natural gas and solid waste, resulting in deadly air pollution

The result has been over 1400 deaths from cancer in the tiny community, nearly twice Ecuador’s national rate. While it’s impossible to predict who will win the legal battle, local experts believe the payout from Chevron could be as high as $27.3 billion.

For more on this story and other eco-catastrophe, check out forecast earth.

More entries on: Environment | From the intern desk | Global politics | Human rights | Planet Earth

January 06, 2009

Police State, Version 2.0

Posted by Elaisha Stokes at 01:28 PM ET | Comments (0)

Lately, it seems everyone is talking about slumdog millionaire. I haven't seen it, but I've been assured it is the thing to do. Having recently returned from a little overseas adventure of my own, I've been thinking a lot about slums. What does it mean to live in a slum? Or a compound, a favela, a township, depending on your nation state boundaries. I've got a feeling it's not not as glitzy and glam as Mr. Boyle would have us believe. According to this really cool website, 2008 marked the first time in global history that more people are living in an urban than rural setting. In fact, urban slums are the fastest growing habitat on earth, with one billion people calling a 'slum' their 'home.'

And yet governments around the world continue to treat slums as illegal settlements, refusing to acknowledge the community, culture and necessity they provide for millions. Earlier today, The Washington Post reported that Brazil has begun a counter-insurgency occupation in the shantytown of Santa Maria, located in Rio de Janeiro. The government is taking the concept of police state to new and exciting levels, employing a counter-insurgency pilot project that aims to emulate the tactics used by U.S. soldiers in Iraq to stem drug related criminal activity in the favela.

Maybe it's just me, but the whole operation seems a bit extreme. When did being poor become illegal? (I know, I know, governments around the world have always tried to criminalize the poor just for being poor...) I'll be the first to admit that Rio has had its share of crime related issues, but employing war-time tactics in a peaceful country effectively violates the rights of the citizens who occupy the communities. And I stress the word community. Since its inception, the occupation of Santa Maria has successfully stunted local culture, shutting down businesses, dance parties and motorcycle taxis. While citizens report feeling safer, they also lament the days of yore, when you could walk down the street and chat with your neighbour. These days, no one leaves the house for fear of an interrogation, or worse...

It all prompts the question — in taking the concept of a police state to the next level, are we really engaging in a 'war on drugs' or a war on people?

More entries on: From the intern desk | Global politics | Human rights | War and peace

December 10, 2008

International Human Rights Day!

Posted by Daniel Tseghay at 04:31 PM ET | Comments (0)

Today is the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Human Rights. On December 10th, 1948, 48 states voted in its favour. Although not one state voted against it, eight abstained: including the former Soviet Union, taking issue with the inclusion of individual property rights; apartheid-era South Africa, saying that "human dignity would be impaired if a person were told he could not reside in a particular area"; and Saudi Arabia, saying that the Declaration was too Western-centric and did not reflect the values of everybody.

The history of human rights, as we all no doubt are aware, has been rocky. There have been countless abuses, unjust imprisonments, unresolved disagreements over how human rights should be understood, and whether legal prosecutions should be the fate of its violaters. For instance, today's Globe and Mail featured an opinion piece by Erna Paris in which she praises the International Criminal Court's first trial next month. In place to prosecute war criminals, the ICC has an obvious appeal. Nevertheless, there has been some understandable criticism of this prosecutorial body. Namely that it doesn't reflect the varying ways in which people around the world settle their disputes. Prosecutions are, in more places than we might expect, unpracticed - while reconciliation is the norm.

People also differ over the weight they should give to the different kinds of rights. The Declaration is composed of civil and political rights; as well as economic, social and cultural rights. The former consists of things like the right to a fair trial, the right to free movement, religion, conscience, and the like. The latter is made up of rights to food, clothing, medical care, education, clean water, etc. Now, it appears the fault lines of disagreement lie between the developed and the developing world. The former emphasize civil and political rights, while the latter (a majority, in this economically disproportioned world) emphasize economic, social, and cultural rights, or what some call "freedom from want."

In light of the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, where more than 500 people have died since August because of a poor sanitation system and a contaminated water supply, I think we in the West must come around to the developing world's emphasis on freedom from want. To make human rights exclusively synonymous with political freedoms would be to condemn many people to certain death.

Update: The cholera numbers are now 775 deaths, with 16,141 cases.

More entries on: Human rights

April 10, 2008

Bidini: China's concrete welcome mat

Posted by mason at 12:19 PM ET | Comments (0)

In this instalment of his twice-monthly column, Dave Bidini laments China's unstoppable development rush. In an effort to be seen as good Olympic hosts, he writes, it is sacrificing pieces of its cultural uniqueness. Bidini's trip ten years ago to the walled city of Yingpao is particularly illustrative:

We ended up staying at the only place in town, a ten-storey concrete hotel that, outside, possessed a grim Scarborough-projects facade, but, inside, bustled like a Cotton Club of the Far East, with brilliant chandeliers and young female attendants wearing '70s-era taupe and mauve stewardess outfits serving gold-seal white liquor and countless exotic dishes to small tables horseshoed around the glittering lobby. It was like being dropped through a strange fissure in time--'70s fashion meeting '40s China meeting a futuristic tourist idyll; a backwater Plaza on a quilt of ricepaddies--and our time in Pingyao--we stayed for three days, until the next train passed through the town--is my most sustaining memory of my first trip to China.

Today, that previously remote city is home to an international photography festival and has become a hotbed of tourism. Similarly, Bidini writes, Beijing is giving up some of its historical charm to roll out an "asphalt welcome mat" for this summer's Olympics.

Read the whole column right here.

PHOTO FROM FLICKR BY MONIQUZ

More entries on: Human rights

March 12, 2008

Torture and hypocrisy

Posted by derek at 03:00 PM ET | Comments (1)

On December 5, 2002, Dilawar, a young Afghan taxi driver, was arrested, handed over to US troops and taken to Bagram Air Force Base for interrogation. 5 days later he was dead. In his five days in that dungeon, he was hooded, chained to the ceiling of his cell, and beaten repeatedly. His legs were so badly injured that they were described as "pulpified" - like they had been crushed by a truck. Dilawar's story is an example of what can happen to people in places like Afghanistan who are simply judged to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What happened to Dilawar is unique only in the sense that we know about it - the story of his torture and murder was made into a film, Taxi to the Dark Side, which recently won the Academy Award for best feature documentary. But as numerous horror stories from Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo show, these crimes have become routine.

I was inspired to post this today because of the US State department's release of a worldwide report on human rights, in which they criticize other countries over violations like violence, humiliating treatment, and yes, torture. It is galling hypocrisy, hypocrisy without limit.

PHOTO THINKFILM

More entries on: Film | From the intern desk | Global politics | Human rights

February 19, 2008

Moving environmentalism forward

Posted by mason at 11:05 AM ET | Comments (0)

Two things that have come through my life recently have me thinking about problems and solutions. The first is an incredibly well-presented online video and website called The Story of Stuff. In it, activist Annie Leonard describes her years-long investigation of the lifetime of consumer goods: where they come from, how they get in our homes and what happens when we trash them. The video is about 20 minutes long and worth a look. Its design is simple and elegant and features clever animations and plain, urgent language.

But something about it makes me feel uncomfortable. It's 19 minutes and 30 seconds about the problem at hand and roughly 30 seconds about hope for change. It appears to be aimed at the average consumer, but its educational tone comes across as a bit pedantic. It encourages viewers to stay on the site and click around for information and stories about positive change, and that's probably where the real use of the site comes in, but I expect only a small percentage of viewers take the time to stick with it -- especially if they approach the topic as skeptics.

Contrast this with a talk I went to last night by Chris Turner, journalist and author of the book The Geography of Hope: A Guided Tour of the World We Need. Through a photo slideshow and Q&A session, Turner outlined some of the amazing strides being made in sustainable living in places like Germany, Denmark, New Mexico and Thailand. Concrete examples of new ways to live, with an emphasis on renewable energy, reducing consumption and recycling. He mentioned a new wave of environmentalism, moving beyond doom-and-gloom predictions and concentrating on what is possible with the technology and willpower we already possess.

In my mind, this is the best way to reach the constituencies of people who remain doubtful about the urgency of climate change or the problems with the free market system. Enough warnings. Those who will listen to the warnings have already heard, and those who will not need a new kind of motivation for change. By getting the word out -- and Turner mentioned an activist he knows who consults for Wal-Mart, and the importance of spreading our messages through the mainstream, commercial media -- we are best positioned to inspire change in others.

IMAGE: STILL FROM THE STORY OF STUFF
More entries on: Activism | Generally Interesting | Human rights | Planet Earth

December 10, 2007

Maher Arar helps Amnesty's letter-writing marathon

Posted by mason at 01:37 AM ET | Comments (1)

If you're reading this on Monday, you're likely able to check out live coverage of Amnesty International's Global Write-a-thon in association with the brand new rabble endeavour, rabbletv. Wrongly accused Canadian Maher Arar will be among those speaking during the day's events.

To mark International Human Rights Day, AI is hosting letter-writing events in Ottawa and Toronto to raise awareness of a variety of human rights causes, and has joined forces with online news outlet rabble to provide live online video coverage of the events using the Mogulus player, a first for both organizations. Late Sunday night, there were 937 individual letter-writers and groups across Canada registered for the event, including 49 in Ottawa and 87 in Toronto.

Coverage runs from 11:30 am to 8 pm (presumably this is Eastern time, since the events are in Ontario). Rabble will be basing its coverage out of AI's downtown Toronto office, while AI will file footage from its Ottawa office.

Click here or go to rabble.ca to view the coverage.

(PICTURED: GUANTANAMO BAY DETAINEE OMAR KHADR)

More entries on: Human rights | Media navel-gazing

June 07, 2007

Inside Toronto's social housing action

Posted by mason at 10:30 AM ET | Comments (4)

On Sunday, This Magazine writer Jennifer O’Connor participated in a march for social housing leading up to the takeover of an abandoned house in Toronto. Here is her account of the action.

(PHOTO: KRISZTINA KUN)

"How would you like to live with roaches, no heat, no water and no money to cover basic necessities?" asked one of the signs clothespinned to a fence in Toronto's Cawthra Park.

Hundreds of people came here on Sunday for a rally before marching through downtown Toronto and arriving at an abandoned house on Howard Street (near Bloor and Sherbourne streets) that had been taken over by the Women Against Poverty Collective.

The collective, a group of women and trans people, organized the takeover to provide "safe and affordable community spaces where women can live." A tent city was also set up in the park across the street from the house. WAPC's eight demands include federal right-to-housing legislation, universal childcare and a 40 per cent increase to social assistance rates. (The complete list of demands is available here.)

The facts connecting violence and women's poverty are shameful. According to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, one in seven women in this country is living in poverty. Plus, recent research from Statistics Canada states that women report just over one-third of physical assaults to police. The CRIAW has also found that the early death rate for homeless women is 10 times that of women with housing. "Any plan to reduce or eliminate violence against women," reads one of the institute's fact sheets, "must deal with the issue of creating safe, affordable, accessible housing."

At the housing takeover, I joined in the chants: "Housing by women, for women, now!"; "Our housing, our right, we want a place to sleep tonight!"; "Poor women under attack, what do we do? Stand up! Fight back!" I grooved along when "Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves" was played. I tried to figure out the answers to the speculative questions: Did the police just take the horses in the trailer up the street or come back down? The police had blocked the house as soon as we'd arrived, and I waited to see what was going to happen.

Just after 7 p.m., in the middle of a rainstorm, the police began moving those of us in front of the house back onto the sidewalk across the street and the horses were brought in. "Many, many of the women that were there yesterday were injured," WAPC member Anna Willats said on Monday. We shouted and cheered for the four women who were arrested when they came out. (Another woman was arrested outside of the house; they were all released.)

Those of us in tent city were going to move out of the park, as we'd been invited to another location, but I found myself scrambling to get my tent and my belongings out of the way of the horses as we were chased through the park and out to Sherbourne Street while most of the demonstrators were being forced straight down Howard to Sherbourne. We walked back to Cawthra Park, with the police following us on bicycles, before disbanding.

On Monday, the WAPC held a lunch/press conference at the 519 Church Street Community Centre. The idea was to keep the focus on the demands, and the collective has promised to "demonstrate for change until it happens."

More entries on: Feminism | Human rights | Poverty

April 23, 2007

The Canwest Museum of Human Rights?

Posted by aaron at 01:43 PM ET | Comments (2)

Philip Gourevitch, in his essential We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, describes the ridiculousness of reading a newspaper article on Rwandan atrocities while waiting in line at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington.

During a speech at the museum's opening ceremonies, Bill Clinton called it "an investment in a secure future against whatever insanity lurks ahead." Gourevitch writes, "Apparently all he meant was that the victims of future exterminations could die knowing that a shrine already existed in Washington where their suffering might be commemorated..."

Gourevitch goes on to chronicle not only the horrors of the Rwandan genocide (a word the Clinton administration was loath to use) but the west's complicity in the act. Not only for acting too late, and acting incorrectly but for a creating the historical circumstances that lead up to it and ultimately for supplying the resources with which to carry out mass murder.

This week we've been hearing a lot (especially if you live in a Canwest owned town) about Gail Asper's coup in securing federal status for the Human Rights Museum to be built in Winnipeg. Stephen Harper, always the intellectual, described the partnership as such, "never before has there been a collaboration of this scale to develop a national museum, but if ever there were a Canadian cultural institution suited for a public-private partnership, it is this one, because human rights can never be the exclusive preserve of the state."

According to Canwest News Services, "It's unclear how much say the Asper family, whose private foundation is putting $20 million into the museum, will have in the running of the museum. However, Harper said major contributors will serve on its board."

Call me an alarmist, but somehow "the Canadian state," in partnership with a right-wing media behemoth, defining human rights in my community doesn't sit right. Even worse, this is all happening in a structure expected to tower over Winnipeg in the form of an ancient Babylonian Ziggurat. Why such an obscure--and ugly--architectural reference, if we're giving homage to the great slave-labour empires of antiquity why no go with something a little more pleasing to the eye, a Pharaonic Pyramid perhaps, or maybe a couple Kremlinesque domes.

Last summer I visited the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. The memorial to one of America's greatest heroes is a small National Park Service red-brick building across the street from his childhood home. The once thriving middle-class black neighbourhoood is now depressed. Only blocks away, I saw hundreds of people encamped underneath massive highway overpasses, many laying on bare concrete, amidst posters that said re-elect Ray Nagin as mayor.

The exhibit chronicling MLK Jr's life and the history of the civil rights movement was moving as was the video presentation that acknowledged the radical path he was on right before his death. In the section of the centre aimed at children I found a booth admonishing us to make ethical purchases. The exhibit gave an overview of sweatshops around the world and listed some organizations fighting child labour. "Great," I thought, but turning around I noticed a large plaque with the words "this exhibit is proudly sponsored by the Coca Cola corporation."

Coca Cola is one of Atlanta's biggest companies and they have a budget with which to sponsor culture, but this is the same brand that many student groups have been trying to kick of campuses world wide for human rights abuses in Colombia, India and other countries. The month before, I had watched a Colombian bottling-plant labour organizer weep as he recounted being tortured at the hands of the paramilitaries hired by Coke to imprison him and harass his family.

I'm not sure if it was the same feeling Gourevitch experienced outside the Holocaust memorial, a combination of shame and frustration, but my visit had been ruined and one of my heroes dirtied.

Cornell West talks about the Santa Clausification of Martin Luther King Jr, the rebranding of a political radical into someone cuddly and safe. I'm not sure if he knows that, like Santa Claus, MLK is now a shill for an authoritarian beverage company. And pretty soon, Canadian school children will have the privilege of learning about "Human Rights" from the number one purveyor of anti-labour, anti-muslim, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-women sentiment in this nation.

More entries on: Human rights

March 21, 2007

It's spring! ... and I love Europe

Posted by john_d at 10:44 AM ET | Comments (2)

Is Europe just about the most progressive society in the world today?

The Independent thinks so:

So, what has Europe ever done for us? Apart from...

Hmmmm, it might fall under #40: Human rights legislation has protected the rights of the individual, but I am madly impressed by Europe's longstanding refusal to accept any country with discriminatory laws against homosexuality. Strangely, the right to marry does not make it into the EU package of rights.

Oh, Romania -- you are so close.

(flag image courtesy of the Europa.eu web portal)

More entries on: Human rights

February 26, 2007

Sak vid pa kanpe

Posted by mason at 01:27 AM ET | Comments (9)

So last night, the Arcade Fire played Saturday Night Live for the first time, performing two songs from their upcoming Neon Bible album. In the above clip the band plays their first song, "Intervention," after which frontman Win Butler smashes his acoustic guitar. Speculation as to why has been met online with a predictable array of theories, but my favourite connects with the phrase written in tape on the guitar: Sak vid pa kanpe, which is apparently a Haitian expression meaning, "An empty sack cannot stand up." In other words, starving people can't do anything.

As the theory goes, the guitar smash was a political reaction to the situation in Haiti, where Canada has a role in providing stability or undermining democracy, depending on your perspective. If that was Butler's intention, let me help him out by noting the website for Canada Out of Haiti, where you can get involved or make a donation to the cause.

More entries on: Activism | Ear candy | Human rights

January 25, 2007

Panhandling bans don't make sense

Posted by annette at 11:04 AM ET | Comments (3)

Good editorial in the Toronto Star today about a proposal to ban panhandling in Toronto. It calls the proposal "ill-conceived...on several fronts." Which it is, really.

Personally, I don't get the logic behind such a ban. Yes, panhandlers make tourists uncomfortable and citizens feel guilty. But what's the point of fining people who have no means to pay? Will meaningless tickets really deter them from panhandling in high-traffic areas?

More importantly, why focus energy on sweeping the problem under the carpet instead of pushing for real solutions like more affordable housing?

For proposals that do make sense, in my humble opinion, check out the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee's "One Percent Solution." Along with a description of the plan, there's also link to endorse the solution online.

More entries on: Human rights

December 06, 2006

December 6 Fund

Posted by john_d at 10:21 AM ET | Comments (1)

Micro loans to women attempting to escape abusive homelives. Give generously, today especially.

From the website of the December 6 Fund of Toronto:

On December 6, 1989 Marc Lepine entered the Ecole Polytechnique, in Montreal, Quebec. He separated the men from the women and declaring his hatred for feminists, killed the following women:

Genevieve Bergeron, 21

Helene Colgan, 23

Nathalie Croteau, 23

Barbara Daigneault, 22

Anne-Marie Edward, 21

Maud Haviernick, 29

Barbara Maria Klucznik, 31

Maryse Laganiere, 25

Maryse Leclair, 23

Anne-Marie Lemay, 27

Sonia Pelletier, 23

Michele Richard, 21

Annie St-Arneault, 23

Annie Turcotte, 21

On December 6, in addition to remembering the 14 women who were killed in Montreal, we also mourn the many women who continue to die, each year, as a result of male violence. While the Massacre victims were murdered together, the death toll of women killed alone – by men they know – rises annually.

NOTE: I tried to get the accents correct in all the names, but the computing device is not cooperating this morning. Apologies.

More entries on: Human rights

October 31, 2006

Don't worry, we're doomed

Posted by mason at 11:29 AM ET | Comments (3)

Two bits of pretty scary news in the past two days:

1. World hunger ‘intolerable,’ with scant progress in decade: UN

2. Slumping Flames fall to Capitals. Er, no. Scratch that. Global warming will devastate economy: report

Not that any of us are necessarily that surprised, but the news hardly comes as a welcome reminder. I’ve often been pretty amazed at the collective optimism (ignorance?) of entire populations when things are at their worst, with no hope in sight. It’s bad enough to have to hear about it from afar, but with something as awful as abject hunger one question is never asked, let alone answered: Why aren’t more people worried? Can ignorance really be to blame when you hear warning after warning about how much trouble pollution is getting us in?

In North America there is nothing even approaching urgency toward fixing the problem of global warming. In the past, naysayers have been unwilling to sacrifice jobs and the economy to save the planet in some distant future. Now it looks like we’ll lose both. Stuff like this makes me want to banish any thought of procreating—why bring a child into a place like this?

Not that I’m writing my suicide note—I’m too inspired by the communities around me that actually care about social change—but sometimes it makes me wonder why more people aren’t giving up.

More entries on: Human rights | Planet Earth | Signs of the Apocalypse

October 06, 2006

Reprehensible repression

Posted by mason at 10:23 PM ET | Comments (1)

Soup is Good Food directed us to a nifty campaign by Amnesty International, a campaign that now has a permanent presence in the right-hand column of Blog This. The idea is to spread the word about sites that are censored in their own countries by publishing their writings. Freedom of speech is a fundamental right that is often being denied people, and part of the power of the internet is to circumvent oppressive authorities who seek to hide injustices.

The green box you see is an attempt at broadening the reach of controversial ideas and proving they are "irrepressible." Each time you load Blog This, a new censored site is excerpted with a links to the site. No shortage of important, censored stories to sift through, from the killing of an opposition politician in Kazakhstan to the kidnapping of reporters in Iraq.

More entries on: Human rights | Interweb | Resistance | THIS matters

Greening Apple

Posted by mason at 05:06 PM ET | Comments (5)

It's about time we saw a campaign like this: Greenpeace has launched an effort to organize Apple customers and demand that the company employ non-toxic materials in its hardware.

For those of us who consider themselves environmentalists and buy a lot of junk from Apple (myself included), it's time to stop turning a blind eye to the harmful impacts of e-waste on the planet, as well as on workers in developing countries.

If any constituency is suited to a campaign getting to change a company's behaviour, it's Apple users. Greenpeace has set up a few cool features on its Green My Apple site that allow creative types to design t-shirts, make videos or print stickers to slap on Apple products.

Let's do it, folks.

More entries on: Activism | Human rights | Interweb | Planet Earth

September 17, 2006

Vancouver Queer Film Fest Raises the Ire of the Right

Posted by Krisztina at 02:05 AM ET | Comments (2)

LifeSite, a close affiliate of Campaign Life Coalition, is targetting Out on Screen, the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, and demanding the federal government revoke its funding.

A recent article, headlined "Why is the Conservative Government Wasting Taxpayer Dollars on "Queer" Film Festival?" is posted on LifeSite.net

Gwen Landolt, national vice president of REAL Women of Canada is quoted as saying "The films are simply degenerate and degrading to humanity. There is no artistry there, the films are used as a political statement against established social mores, a way of showing contempt...".

Landolt goes on to call the Department of Canadian Heritage's funding decision in question, "...it's a disgrace. I think the government is trying to show how wide open they are to all diversity, but surely there is a limit to tolerance."

What started out as a fairly minor posting on a right wing site is fast becoming an all out campaign, spreading over blogs and through emails. Wait a second, aren't those our tactics?

More entries on: Human rights | Vancouver

September 05, 2006

Canada continues to fail guest worker

Posted by mason at 12:06 AM ET | Comments (21)

Monday’s Toronto Star carries a Labour Day feature updating the plight of Hermelindo Gutierrez, a Mexican who worked as a seasonal farm worker in Ontario for several years before kidney failure left him dependent on a dialysis machine—an unthinkable expense in Mexico for the working class.

Hermelindo’s story was previously told in the pages of This Magazine thanks to the crafty pen of writer Maria Amuchastegui.

Unfortunately, things haven’t improved much for Hermelindo, save for the fact that his wife is about to give birth to their third child. He has applied for refugee status, but until that is sorted out he remains isolated from his family in Mexico, without much help from either the Mexican or Canadian governments.

If anyone has a kidney to spare, now would be a good time to look into donating it…

More entries on: Healthcare | Human rights | Labour days | THIS matters

July 19, 2006

Remember this story for when he runs for office...

Posted by mason at 12:48 AM ET | Comments (16)

Funny, why haven't we seen this article about John Bolton saying there is no moral equivalent between Lebanese civilian deaths and terrorism victims published anywhere but the independent media?

More entries on: Bushfraud | Human rights | Media navel-gazing | Signs of the Apocalypse | War and peace

July 17, 2006

War is not the answer

Posted by mason at 11:51 AM ET | Comments (1)

I find myself completely appalled by today's front-page column by George Jonas in the National Post. Normally I try not to let Post columnists provoke me into posting about them, since it just draws attention to their views. But in this case...

Jonas is an apologist for the Israeli military, and practically the first words out of his mouth are that Israel "didn't mean to harm" the eight Canadian citizens it killed in an air strike on Lebanon yesterday. He goes on to put Israel on the moral high ground: while Hezbollah and other terrorists target civilians in their operations, Israel targets its terrorist enemies in the name of protecting civilians, and any civilians deaths that result are "sad, but unavoidable."

That comment alone is so infuriating I should just stop right here. Nothing is gained by painting one side in a war as "good guys" and the other as "bad," as Jonas does. It gets us no closer to peace, understanding or a diplomatic solution to this conflict, and completely ignores the multiple motivations either side might have for an attack.

When eight Israeli civilians are killed, this is rightly portrayed as a tragedy by columnists such as Jonas and papers like the Post. When eight Arab civilians are killed, how can anyone feel good about letting their killers off the hook, just like that? And if we go along with the dubious suggestion that Israel is targetting only terrorists, why is having terrible aim any better than launching a missile over a border? Killing is killing. War is not going to make it stop, nor is it "unavoidable." If that's the world Jonas lives in, I want no part of it.

More entries on: Human rights | Terrorism (not the state-sponsored kind) | War and peace

June 27, 2006

Tease This

Posted by john_d at 02:25 PM ET | Comments (5)

THIS Magazine's super-efficient and ever-delightful new editor, Jessica Johnston dropped off an advance copy of the July/August THIS (her first) at my office this morning -- as she was also dropping off a small pile of poetry submissions to the literary contest (I am a panner for poetic ore). The mag will hit store shelves by the end of this week. In the meantime, sink into your fetid well of envy because I can read it now while you cannot. This is how the left engages in advance marketing.

I took the mag with me to my favorite little hole in the wall lunch joint on Dundas and laughed in my soup over Scott Piatkowski's account of not being invited back onto the Michael Coren television show for the unforgivable transgression of catching the host being wrong. Apparently Coren insisted that the right to marry is not one of those pesky rights covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the UN way back in 1948).

This came up in the context of a discussion about same sex marriage. I'll let you folks figure out who was advocating which position -- rabble-columnist Scott Piatkowski v. Crossroads Television talk show host Michael Coren.

Annnyway, of course the right to marry is there in the declaration (article 16), which, as I've just proven, any boob with Google can call up on their computer in under ten seconds.

So, having publicly exposed Coren not knowing something he really should have known, our man Piatkowski finds himself frozen out of guest duty on the show. Not surprising really; this is standard fare with the neocon and religious right as they struggle to combat the evil and pervasive leftwing media bias -- see Fox's Bill O'Reilly, whose hypocritical froth is so well documented in Al Franken's Lies, And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Chapter 13, Bill O'Reilly: Lying, Splotchy Bully.

What I wonder is how any "journalist" can still take himself seriously after such a display of intellectual bullying.

Hey, there's article 19 of the UDHR. What's it say?:

Article 19:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers unless they publicly embarrass Michael Coren or Bill O'Reilly.

Oh, nevermind.

Go, buy THIS. Excellent Canada Day reading.

More entries on: Human rights | Media navel-gazing | THIS matters

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