tomorrow night: what's next for iraq war resisters in canada

If you're in the Toronto area and you support US war resisters in Canada, please join us tomorrow night for a casual dinner, socializing, and a political and legal update on the campaign to Let Them Stay.

When:
Friday, June 19
5:30 doors open
6:00 buffet dinner
7:00 updates, featuring lawyer Alyssa Manning, campaign representatives and war resisters

Where:
Steelworkers Hall, 25 Cecil Street, Toronto

Admission:
$20, proceeds go to war resister legal defense.

RSVP:
Email resisters@sympatico.ca or leave a comment here and I'll pass it along.

war resisters in limbo: "this place is hell, and i didn't do anything wrong"

This report was written by Sarah Lazare, of Courage To Resist.

At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, AWOL soldiers find themselves detained for months under difficult conditions in an extended legal limbo they cannot escape.

Dustin Stevens is one of about 50 soldiers being held at Fort Bragg awaiting likely AWOL and desertion charges that seem like they will never arrive, he says.

A former soldier who refused to continue military service seven years ago because he did not want to fight a war, Stevens says that he and his colleagues are being held in legal limbo - a no man's land of poor living standards and arbitrary punishments - while awaiting charges and possible court-martial. Stevens has been in a holdover unit for five months without charges, and he says that others have been held for up to a year in conditions he describes as harrowing.

The unit is overcrowded and filthy, he says, with four people to a room. The command verbally abuses the soldiers, with one commanding officer proclaiming, "We should just shoot you all," according to Stevens. Troops are not receiving the medical and mental health care they need. "People around me are literally going crazy. I hear people threaten suicide on a daily basis," says Stevens. "They won't give us leave passes unless it's a dire emergency, so we're just sitting here, day by day."

The command offered the soldiers a free pass if they agreed to deploy to Afghanistan, according to Stevens. About ten people took up the offer, he says. Those who decline must find a way to endure.

. . . .

Stevens says that the people being held in the 82nd Holdover Unit went AWOL for various reasons, some because they were opposed to the war, some because the Army wouldn't let them leave to tend to family problems, and some because of medical problems.

"It is horrible here. We are treated like animals," he says. "We're all just lost, wanting to go home. Some of us are going crazy, some were already crazy, some are sick," he says. "I'm bouncing on a pin needle. I read all of the time, I talk to people all of the time to try to stay out of this place in my mind. It's really hard."

"AWOL troops being held in a replacement unit is totally absurd and unusual and is an example of how the command has plenty of ways to punish people and enforce discipline, bypassing the formal justice system. Smoking people, giving them unofficial duties, mistreatment, and in this case, making an example out of people and segregating them, are all informal mechanisms of punishment commonly used in the military." says Carl Davison, Iraq war resister and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. "People who follow their consciences deserve our support, and there needs to be a highly vocal community out there to let them know they are not alone."

"Every single person here should not be here. There are people here who should be in mental hospitals, who are just sitting here. This place is hell, it really is," says Stevens. "And in my mind, I didn't even do anything wrong."

Read the report here.

new york state condones taser abuse

I have another good item from James, which is handy, because I'm transcribing for the campaign today and tomorrow, and have limited blogging time.

In what is believed to be the first ruling of its kind, a New York State court has determined that police can taser a suspect in order to obtain a DNA sample without his consent.

Think about the implications of this.

If the police cannot obtain the evidence they need through the normal methods - that is, by doing their jobs - they can zap you to get some. And you can be forced to give up evidence, as long as there's a warrant and the police aren't being "malicious". Although who will judge this maliciousness and how it will be defined isn't noted.

The taser in this case isn't being used to subdue a dangerous, out-of-control suspect, or to protect the police; it's being used to force a suspect to give potentially incriminating evidence. It's pain compliance, pure and simple. The more pain compliance is rationalized and condoned, the more it will be abused, as law enforcement knows the state will back them up.

In other words, this court has ruled that the police can torture you to obtain evidence.

With any luck, the ACLU will be on this, and it will be overturned. But this is a frightening and dangerous push of the envelope of state intrusion into bodily integrity.

Note that in this case, the suspect has already given a DNA sample, which was corrupted through bureaucratic incompetence.

It is legally permissible for police to zap a suspect with a Taser to obtain a DNA sample, as long as it's not done "maliciously, or to an excessive extent, or with resulting injury," a county judge has ruled in the first case of its kind in New York State, and possibly the nation.

Niagara County Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza decided that the DNA sample obtained Sept. 29 from Ryan S. Smith of Niagara Falls — which ties him to a shooting and a gas station robbery — is legally valid and can be used at his trial.

Smith was handcuffed and sitting on the floor of Niagara Falls Police Headquarters when he was zapped with the 50,000- volt electronic stun gun after he insisted he would not give a DNA sample.

He already had given a sample, a swab of the inside of his cheek, without protest the previous month. But police sent it to the wrong lab, where it was opened and spoiled. Prosecutors who had obtained a court order for the first sample went back to Sperrazza, who signed another order without consulting the defense.

Defense lawyer Patrick M. Balkin denounced the ruling in an interview with The Buffalo News.

"They have now given the Niagara Falls police discretion to Taser anybody anytime they think it's reasonable," he asserted. "Her decision says you can enforce a court order by force. If you extrapolate that, we no longer have to have child support hearings; you can just Taser the parent."

A police officer said that when Smith was ordered by officers to give his DNA, he adamantly refused.

"I ain't giving up my DNA again. I already gave it up once. I'll sit in jail. I ain't giving it up. You're going to have to Tase me," the officer's report stated.

The officer wrote that he then applied the stun gun to Smith's left shoulder, a "drive stun" that is regarded as less painful than shooting electric prongs into a person, which is the usual Taser approach. Smith then consented to the sample, and he was arrested on a contempt of court charge.

In her ruling, Sperrazza cited numerous legal precedents and the state's Criminal Procedure Law, allowing the use of reasonable force to carry out a court order.

u.s. vs canada (unscientific) health care poll

Small sample size, and unscientific survey, but interesting nonetheless. From a Daily Kos journal, sent to me by James.

91% of Canadians have never had necessary health care delayed or denied... as opposed to 34% of Americans.

. . .

Total Canadians: 333
Never had necessary health care denied or delayed: 304 votes - 91%
Have had necessary health care denied: 7 votes - 2%
Have had necessary health care delayed: 19 votes - 5%
Have had necessary health care denied and delayed: 3 votes - 1%

Total Americans: 841
Insured, never had necessary health care denied or delayed: 283 votes - 34%
Insured, have had necessary health care denied: 99 votes - 12%
Insured, have had necessary health care delayed: 125 votes - 15%
Insured, have had necessary health care denied and delayed: 122 votes - 15%
Uninsured: 212 votes - 25%

Good graphic representation of this and discussion here.

the tory-lib coalition lives on

The Coalition lives on.

Canadians will lose their homes and rely on food banks while the Government and the so-called Opposition study Employment Insurance. Not fix. Study.

The endless minority Government lives on.

And Michael Ignatieff shows himself to be Stephane Dion with a better accent. Full of threats and bluster, but too weak to make real change.

James Curran sums it up with one question, "We dumped our former Leader because...?"

It's too depressing to write another word. Here are some other people's words:

Canadian Soapbox:

Iggy gets a powerplay and scores ... into his own net

Ignatieff's plan was to criticize and demand changes. ... Harper mulled those demands over for perhaps a nanosecond before basically saying "no". ... I've never seen someone trying to sound forceful and decisive while back pedalling so fast.

Peace, Order and Good Government, eh?:

Ignatieff must think this little bit of theatre allows him to be perceived as holding the government accountable and makes it appear as though we have a system that works. But in fact, people who have recently lost their jobs and don't qualify for EI, or those who will lose their jobs between now and the end of September (at least) and don't qualify for benefits, are still out of luck. Ignatieff claims he got results but he didn't. He got an agreement to talk about maybe getting some results in three and a half months.

Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star:

It's hard to take the federal Liberals seriously. They claim they want to hold Prime Minister Stephen Harper to account. But they don't. They criticize the Conservative government endlessly. But when the crunch comes, they support it. ...

For the Liberals, the time is never right. They come up with endless excuses for never forcing an election on the minority Harper government: They don't have enough money; they don't have enough candidates; their leader is too new; the polls are inauspicious; the weather is too warm; the weather is too cold.

In the spring, they say wait until fall. In the fall, they say wait until spring.

Don Martin, National Post:

The rookie Liberal leader went from condemning the government on multiple fronts, preening himself as a portrait of moral rectitude willing to defend his party’s virtue on the campaign trail if those Conservative evil-doers didn’t play nice with the unemployed, to a leader who was knocked back on his heels by a Prime Minister who did nothing but reject his key proposal.

Tiny Perfect Blog:

Remember "I will not sign a blank cheque," or "this government changes EI or they're done"?

This week, Ignatieff was reduced to begging for a bit of information from Harper in exchange for confidence, and he didn't even get that.

It seems as if the Ignatieff team felt the only thing needing change from the Dion days was the ability to knuckle under with flair!

Scott Feschuk, Macleans:

Stephane Dion may be gone from a leadership role, but his legacy of hysterical threats followed by ignoble climbdowns lives on, affecting our perception of his successor. This government is terrible, it is horrible, it is an abomination unto God himself – and we are totally going to do something about it, eventually, somewhere down the road, maybe spring-ish. But now we dance!

More Feschuk:

What do we want? Further numerical information pursuant to a number of ongoing political files!

When do we want it? By Friday. Or perhaps later. Listen, we’re flexible on that!

Michael Ignatieff, CTV News, June 17, 2009 [emphasis added]:

Let me be clear, we don't have an agreement here. We have an agreement to work hard, professionally, and seriously with top level officials to get a legislative proposal before parliament if we can. I give you no guarantees that we can get there, but I know in my heart I can look unemployed Canadians in the eye today and say I’ve done my darnedest for you.

Many thanks to Redsock for gathering and posting the quotes.

memo to british airways: slavery was outlawed in the 19th century. do try to keep up.

Cash-strapped British Airways has come up with a sure-fire cost-cutting plan: slavery.

British Airways has asked its 40,000 staff to work without pay for up to a month as the ailing airline seeks to cut costs.

The group, which made a record £401 million loss in 2008 amid surging fuel prices and a collapse in premium-fare passengers, is seeking to reduce costs dramatically and has already offered staff unpaid leave or a reduction in hours.

Willie Walsh, BA's chief executive, has now gone a step further by asking staff to volunteer for between one and four weeks of unpaid work in what he says is a "fight for survival."

Mr Walsh, who said last week that he would work for free in July, has set a deadline of June 24 for employees to volunteer for unpaid work. He said that the salary deductions would be spread over three to six months wherever possible.

BA denied that those staff who volunteered for unpaid work would be given preference if the airline imposes a further round of redundancies.

This is outrageous. But even more outrageous, is that the no-pay strategy is not as unusual as we might think. At least one southern Ontario factory is doing this right now - and frightened workers are still showing up, weeks after their paycheques have stopped doing so.

Don't be fooled by CEO Walsh's own unpaid work. Presumably he can afford to coast on investments, savings or discretionary cash a bit better than the average worker. How many of us could survive with no income for any length of time?

There are also more insidious forms of this type of slavery. The worker who must come in early to set up, or stay late to prep for the next day - off the clock. Layoffs that leave survivors doing three times the work for the same level of compensation. The subtle - and overt - pressure to never use a sick day or vacation time, lest your job disappear in your absence.

Further on, we have people working two and three part-time jobs because housing costs have so outstripped pay levels. And even for those currently well employed, the constant stress of not knowing if your job is next.

If you have to stop paying workers to run your business, your business isn't working.

If you need massive infusions of tax dollars to prop up the entire system, your system isn't working.

The answer is right under our noses, but people are too addicted to profit and the sacred idea of private ownership to see it. Capitalism is collapsing. We need a better way.

the blog is dead. yawn.

Why are you all reading this blog? Don't you know no one reads blogs anymore?

About a week ago, I saw yet another blogging-is-dead story in the Globe and Mail. (I can't find the version I saw online, but I did find the same story in the Halifax Chronicle Herald.) The headline was enough to set me off: "For most, blogging is a boulevard of broken dreams - Online writers start out with dreams of money and fame, but the reality is that only 5 per cent of blogs are frequently updated".

What is it about these stories that bother me so much?

First, stories that turn something patently obvious into a "report" generally make me slap my forehead. People start projects and don't finish them? Do tell!

But the "life" sections of newspapers are full of perennials - literally full, that's basically all they are - and while I find most of those stories silly, they don't make me grind my teeth. It's the pseudo-analysis of internet activity, and of blogging, that irritate me here.

Of course millions of people started blogs and didn't continue to write them. That's what people do. Blogging is free, and at some point it became a hip thing to do. So a lot of people started blogs, but didn't continue. The end. But because it's on the internet - ooo, the internet! - it gets treated as news.

So why, as the article claims, are only 5% of blogs "frequently updated"?

Apparently some bloggers stop blogging because they lack readership. There's a shocker.

Another reason bloggers stop blogging, the story suggests, is that they move on to other platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. I would argue that if Facebook and Twitter can replace your blogging, you weren't much of a blogger in the first place. I'm not denigrating social networking or micro-blogging. They clearly have a place and serve their many functions. But those functions are not redundant with blogging. There's no reason Facebook or Twitter should make good blogs obsolete.

But mainly, the writer seems to be trying - somewhat desperately - to make the case that people thought they would get rich and famous by blogging. He doesn't offer much proof. One person says:

I was always hoping more people would read it, and it would get a lot of comments. . . Every once in a while I would see this thing on TV about some mommy blogger making $4,000 a month, and thought, 'I would like that.'

Yes, wouldn't we all. But most of us don't read the subject lines in our spam folders as serious job opportunities.

Another former blogger opines:

Before you could be anonymous, and now you can't. . . The Internet is different now. I was too web 1.0. You want to be anonymous, you want to write, like, long entries, and no one wants to read that stuff.

A third defunct blogger brought in some advertising dollars posting videos of his dog destroying things in his home. Amazingly enough, that got old and fizzled out.

So some people never attracted an audience, others lost interest in blogging, and others people ran out of things to say. Whoever heard of such a thing?

Meanwhile, there's no mention of all the activity blogs - the knitting, home renovations, gardening, cooking, cycling, (etc. etc.) blogs - where people with similar interests read and share ideas.

No mention of all the therapeutic blogs, where people are working out specific issues and offering support to others doing the same.

No mention of all the blogs that serve as personal journals, with no great concern for building readership.

And, most bizarrely, no mention of political blogs. Because yes, people do want to read that stuff.

* * * *

Regarding the millions of people who started blogs and didn't continue them, one word: writing. Blogging is writing. Not everyone wants to write, has a need to write. And not everyone can write.

In another era, the cliche was the unfinished screenplay in the desk drawer; before that, it was the unfinished novel. Now it's the abandoned blog. The only difference is now the unfinished work hangs around online, announcing its abandoned state. The last visible post begins with "Sorry I haven't posted in so long..." and a vow to post more often.

How many bloggers really started out "with dreams of money and fame"? Were so many people that foolish?

I was writing for a decade or more before I learned that some people try to write a book because they imagine it's a good way to earn a lot of money. Writing books as a way to get rich! This still leaves me slack-jawed and head-shaking. For every J. K. Rowling (depending on the generation, substitute John Grisham, Stephen King, Danielle Steel, and so on) there are 5,000 published writers you'll never hear of, who teach (and work in law firms!) to support themselves. There's another 5,000 whose books are never published.

But there's probably another 100,000 who never complete the book. "You're a writer? I always thought I should write a book. I have a great idea..." Oh yes, the great idea. And, "It's all here in my head, I just have to write it down..." I smile and nod. Yes, that's the hard part. Getting it out of your head into a form that someone else can read. That's called writing.

Blogging is easier than writing a book, and it's easier than writing a newspaper column, if only because you're not obligated to churn out a certain number of words every week. Blogging doesn't give you a word length, doesn't oblige you to find credible sources. It also doesn't censor you, tone you down - or guarantee you a readership.

But blogging is still writing. It doesn't make you rich, and it's not for everybody.

Some thoughts on why I blog are here.

letter from iran

From The Mark, How Social Movements Can Change Iran, by Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Iranian women's rights activist, author, journalist. Worth reading.

frank rich on fox news, responsibility and domestic terrorism

Frank Rich's most recent column is excellent.

When a Fox News anchor, reacting to his own network's surging e-mail traffic, warns urgently on-camera of a rise in hate-filled, "amped up" Americans who are "taking the extra step and getting the gun out," maybe we should listen. He has better sources in that underground than most.

The anchor was Shepard Smith, speaking after Wednesday's mayhem at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Unlike the bloviators at his network and elsewhere on cable, Smith is famous for his highly caffeinated news-reading, not any political agenda. But very occasionally — notably during Hurricane Katrina — he hits the Howard Beale mad-as-hell wall. Joining those at Fox who routinely disregard the network's "We report, you decide" mantra, he both reported and decided, loudly.

What he reported was this: his e-mail from viewers had "become more and more frightening" in recent months, dating back to the election season. From Wednesday alone, he "could read a hundred" messages spewing "hate that's not based in fact," much of it about Barack Obama and some of it sharing the museum gunman's canard that the president was not a naturally born citizen. These are Americans "out there in a scary place," Smith said.

Then he brought up another recent gunman: "If you're one who believes that abortion is murder, at what point do you go out and kill someone who's performing abortions?" An answer, he said, was provided by Dr. George Tiller's killer. He went on: "If you are one who believes these sorts of things about the president of the United States ..." He left the rest of that chilling sentence unsaid.

These are extraordinary words to hear on Fox. The network"s highest-rated star, Bill O'Reilly, had assailed Tiller, calling him "Tiller the baby killer" and likening him to the Nazis, on 29 of his shows before the doctor was murdered at his church in Kansas. O'Reilly was unrepentant, stating that only "pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters" would link him to the crime. But now another Fox star, while stopping short of blaming O'Reilly, was breaching his network's brand of political correctness: he tied the far-right loners who had gotten their guns out in Wichita and Washington to the mounting fury of Obama haters.

What is this fury about? In his scant 145 days in office, the new president has not remotely matched the Bush record in deficit creation. Nor has he repealed the right to bear arms or exacerbated the wars he inherited. He has tried more than his predecessor ever did to reach across the aisle. But none of that seems to matter. A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country. Change can be frightening and traumatic, especially if it's not change you can believe in.

We don't know whether the tiny subset of domestic terrorists in this crowd is egged on by political or media demagogues — though we do tend to assume that foreign jihadists respond like Pavlov's dogs to the words of their most fanatical leaders and polemicists. But well before the latest murderers struck — well before another "antigovernment" Obama hater went on a cop-killing rampage in Pittsburgh in April — there have been indications that this rage could spiral out of control.

This was evident during the campaign, when hotheads greeted Obama's name with "Treason!" and "Terrorist!" at G.O.P. rallies. At first the McCain-Palin campaign fed the anger with accusations that Obama was "palling around with terrorists." But later John McCain thought better of it and defended his opponent's honor to a town-hall participant who vented her fears of the Democrats' "Arab" candidate. Although two neo-Nazi skinheads were arrested in an assassination plot against Obama two weeks before Election Day, the fever broke after McCain exercised leadership.

That honeymoon, if it was one, is over.

Full column with links here.

the people of iran show us how it's done

Last night, watching the streets of Tehran overflowing with protesters, people demanding election accountability, demanding change, I thought: this is what the United States should have looked like in 2000. If it had, maybe there wouldn't have been a second stolen election in 2004.

My mother used to say there would never be a revolution in the US, because people would miss their favourite TV show.

She was right. Our minds are so deadened from consumer culture, that as long as we can eat McDonald's, watch American Idol and buy ShamWow, democracy can go to hell.

I am hopeful for the people of Iran. I look at their courage and strength, at their numbers, and I envy them.

ignatieff: dion with eyebrows?

Yesterday morning, Allan and I watched Michael Ignatieff's press conference, and we thought we were headed for an election. At long last, a chance to get rid of this endless, anti-democratic, anti-human Conservative minority government.

I read the "I don't want an election," as a rhetorical device. "I don't want to do this, but the actions and attitude of the Prime Minister leave me no choice...". Just as when Ignatieff announced, "We hate this budget, it's the worst, it stinks, but...", the real message is in the "but".

We didn't watch Harper's reply, and we didn't watch question period.

Then next time we turned on the TV, the election threat had cooled. On The National, the "At Issue" panel said Ignatieff looked weaker as the day wore on. Today's Globe and Mail says Ignatieff was mollified with a few vague, minor promises from Harper, undoubtedly worth no more than the hot air on which they floated out of the Prime Minister's lying mouth.

Polls show Canadians don't want an election. But as a friend said last night, when do Canadians want an election? How does "never" sound? There's no evidence that the Liberals would be punished at the polls for triggering an election. The Conservatives sure weren't punished last time.

The Liberals aren't ready? If they're not ready now, what the $%^&?! are they waiting for?

If Ignatieff doesn't pull the trigger this Friday, he looks as weak as his jellyfish predecessor. The Liberals should be more worried about that than the wealth of their campaign fundraising or Canadians complaining about another election. Michael Ignatieff should be worried about becoming Dion Deux.

sweet creamery: great gelato in cabbagetown

Yesterday we finally visited Sweet Creamery, the new gelato and ice cream sensation in Toronto's Cabbagetown neighbourhood.

The gelato is a knock-out. Rich but light, sweet and refreshing, popping with flavour. The newest flavour may be my favourite: watermelon. It takes like a watermelon melted into cream. And it's watermelon, the fruit, not watermelon flavour.

The lemon-mint is another stand-out. As with all Sweet Creamery gelato, this is made with fresh, authentic ingredients: real lemon and real mint, not mint flavour. Passion fruit is also a crowd favourite. There's also raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, and a raspberry-strawberry mix.

If you don't care for fruit flavours, try the vanilla bourbon, chocolate, or pistachio. If you're a bit more adventurous, there's spicy chocolate, blending rich, creamy chocolate with the bite of chile peppers. It's very interesting.

If you can't decide, whoever is scooping will be happy to offer you a free taste of any and all flavours. Customers will typically sample three or four before making the difficult decision.

If ice cream is more your thing, Sweet Creamery serves a wide variety of flavours made by Kawartha Dairy, a locally-produced favourite. The ice cream is very dense and super creamy.

Allan loved the banana and chocolate-peanut butter flavours, and the steady stream of customers all seemed very happy with their cones. It's very good, but when there's gelato around, I'm not eating ice cream.

Sweet Creamery also features home-made cakes and pastries. That part of the business is just getting going, but it promises to be delicious.

* * * *

Why am I writing about ice cream, you may ask? Sweet Creamery is the labour of love and devotion of two of new Canadians, Tom Smeraldo and Emilio Ojeda, who some of you know through the blog Canadian Hope.

Tom and Emilio came to Canada after living with years of frustration and fear in the US. Emilio is not a US citizen, and because their relationship is not legally recognized in the US, they were unable to secure Emilio's status. Every day the couple lived under the threat of deportation. They finally gave up on the US and moved to Canada to enjoy a peaceful life together, equal to their neighbours, accepted fully as who they are.

Tom and Emilio are not only my friends and fellow immigrants, they're some of the best people I know. They have been active supporters of the War Resisters Support Campaign: Tom told me that the war resisters' struggle to live in peace as their conscience dictates really resonates with them. When Sweet Creamery was ready to add an employee, they went to Supporting Our Youth (SOY), a mentoring and resettlement program for young gays and lesbians.

Tom and Emilio opened Sweet Creamery only a few weeks ago, and it's already become a neighbourhood fixture. Tom works full-time, then joins Emilio at the store for the evening rush. And what a rush it is! They thought they'd close at 9:00, but Emilio couldn't bear to turn so many customers away. Even with a 10:00 p.m. closing, they still see sad faces at the door, many of them making their second Sweet Creamery run of the evening.

Our mutual good friend Kim - a fixture of the wmtc community, who writes My Canada Includes Justice (at least occasionally!) - often can be seen behind the counter, scooping away. Nick and Mason - who used to write Life Without Borders - also volunteered long hours in the early going. Adam and Eric of Canadian Boomdiada have volunteered their time, as has other friends. Tom told us Sweet Creamery never would have made it through its first weekend if these guys hadn't pitched in. Community. What an amazing thing.

* * * *

Sweet Creamery is located at 521 Parliament Street, in the heart of Cabbagetown, between between Carlton and Winchester.

You can find them on Facebook, on Twitter, and on the web.

But most importantly, find them in a cup, a crunchy cone, or in a container in your freezer.

medical rape in africa: sterilization abuse lives on

Reproductive rights is not only about access to safe and legal abortion. Reproductive rights is about all women and all men being free to choose whether and when to have children, and how many children to have.

This means having access to reliable, nonjudgmental sexual health information, affordable contraception, and prenatal and neonatal health care.

It means opposing any state or religious interference with people's private reproductive decisions.

And it means shining a light on a persistent, pernicious problem: sterilization abuse.

Today's Globe and Mail has a feature about sterilization abuse in several African countries - and about courageous women who are speaking up and fighting back.

A few weeks after giving birth to a baby boy by Caesarian section, Hilma Nendongo went back to hospital to have the stitches removed. A nurse glanced at her medical record and casually asked her a horrifying question.

“Oh,” the nurse said, “did they tell you that you had been sterilized?”

Ms. Nendongo, a 30-year-old villager from northern Namibia who barely spoke English, tore through her personal health card, looking for a clue to what had been done to her in the state hospital.

She couldn't read any of the doctor's scrawled handwriting, except for the word “stop” and the word “closed.” She later discovered the sickening truth: this was a common code for a tubal ligation, the most frequent form of sterilization in Namibia.

She suddenly remembered that the hospital staff had told her to sign some papers as she entered the operating room for her C-section. Nobody had explained the papers.

“It was a very big shock,” she said, brushing back tears. “I was very emotional. I cried a lot. I wanted a sister for my three boys, and now I can't have one.”

She returned to the hospital to search for the doctor who had sterilized her. She hoped that somehow he could reverse the operation. But every time she went to the hospital, the staff said the doctor was busy or away.

Ms. Nendongo didn't know it at the time, but she was one of dozens of African women – perhaps hundreds – who have been sterilized without their knowledge or consent in recent years because they were HIV-positive. At least 20 such cases have been documented in Namibia, some occurring as recently as six months ago, and similar cases are believed to have occurred in Zambia, South Africa and Congo.

Women's groups say the coerced sterilizations are examples of the continuing stigma and discrimination suffered by African women who have the AIDS virus. Governments and doctors still sometimes see HIV-positive women as irresponsible dangers to society who must be restricted or even criminalized. Despite new medicine that allows them to live normally and have healthy children, many women are told they must not get pregnant. Two countries, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, even passed laws that criminalize the mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

I chose not to have children. It's a choice I was able to make because of the place and time I live in, and because I have enough education and resources to be a free human being. Women who are unable to control their reproduction are slaves.

Although I chose not to have children, I can think of few things worse than a government and a medical establishment taking that choice away from me without my knowledge or consent. I can only imagine the rage and the sorrow these women feel.

And although I won't pretend to know what they are experiencing, I do know from my own experience with sexual assault that becoming an activist - educating the public, reaching out to survivors - can be enormously therapeutic and empowering. I hope these women are finding comfort and strength in their cause.

* * * *

Lest anyone believe this to be an African problem, consider that forced sterilization of impoverished black Americans was once known as a "Mississippi appendectomy". Between 1928 and 1972, nearly 3,000 people in Alberta were victims of forced or coerced sterilizations.

Sterilization abuse of mentally ill and developmentally disabled people, of aboriginal people, and of Roma (Gypsies) has all been well documented.

As a sidebar to the story, above, the G&M has a summary of some 20th Century forced sterilization policies from the US, Canada, Japan, Germany and elsewhere, but of course they use very conservative estimates, and they seem to have omitted the medical abuse of aboriginal people.

The Wikipedia entry on compulsory sterilization is extensive, although largely unsourced.

This article from the Our Bodies, Ourselves website is about sterilization abuse in the US.

The blog Mississippi Appendectomy (which seems to be defunct) has a post on the forced sterilization of Romani women.

The 1996 documentary "The Sterliization of Leilani Muir" is about the eugenics policies of the province of Alberta. From the National Film Board site:

Twenty-five years ago Leilani Muir was informed she would never be able to conceive a child. Unbeknownst to her, at the age of fourteen, she had already been sexually sterilized, by an Act of the Alberta government. The film entwines her personal search for justice with the background story of eugenics, a respected "science" during the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1928, the Alberta government, supported by some of society's most prominent members, passed the Sterilization Act. By the time the Act was repealed in 1972, the lives of nearly 3,000 individuals were irreparably changed. Included in the wide net of people considered "unfit" to bear children were new immigrants, alcoholics, epileptics, unwed mothers, the poor and native people. The film opens as Leilani concludes years of emotional and legal preparation and steps into court to sue the Alberta government.

British Columbia had a similar policy, although less extensive.

The Globe and Mail story is worth reading. The women profiled - using their own horrific experiences to expose these human rights abuses - are inspiring.

silenced: a clinic volunteer speaks out, or tries to

This video was put out by the Women's Medical Fund in Philadelphia, ten days before Dr George Tiller was assassinated. Please watch, it's great.

Many thanks to Mara for sending.

wmtc4, and canada

Best. Wmtc party. Ever.

This just gets better every year. There were 30 people, seven (!) dogs, mountains of incredible food, plenty of liquid refreshment, and perfect weather. As a bonus, $150 appeared in the Campaign donation jar without a word from me.

I never had a potluck before. It was a big challenge for me, letting go of my natural inclination to organize and manage, trusting other people to contribute. That means, in essence, realizing that I have friends. It was a great experience.

And as M@ said yesterday, the potluck is proof that collectivism works. The food was amazing! And there was a lot of it. I had to force people to take home leftovers, and our fridge is still full.

The wtmc3 volleyball game resulted in continual fence-climbing to retrieve the ball from neighbours' yards. So this year I cleverly thought of low-to-the-ground games: bocce ball and croquet. Initially people were reluctant, but eventually 10 or so people split up into two teams. Try playing bocce with dogs running around, and one of them a retriever! But I think they had fun.

Tala never stopped running around, sometimes bullying a lovely dog named Chelsea, often chasing a puppy named Quincy (and barking in his face). Cody charmed everyone with her sweet calmness, and sometimes took a break inside by herself. This morning she is sleeping it off with some extra pain meds. Tala? She's back to patrolling the perimeter for squirrels.

Allan, as always, made my birthday an incredible day, full of thoughtful, creative gifts, cards and indulgence. After everyone left last night, I discovered that one of the reasons I had such a good time was because he worked his tail off. He should have asked me for help! But he didn't. So this morning I left him to sleep in while I did all the cleanup.

* * * *

I recently blogged about a difference I've found between my activism in New York and in Toronto. Here, it's been much more social. I've made friends - and found community - through activism here in a way that never happened in New York. At the time, I said I didn't know if it was specific to my experience, or if it was a New York thing, or a Canadian thing, or what.

Last night, I was so pleased to finally meet Adam and Eric from Canadian Boomdiada, who moved here from San Francisco. Talking about their move and the differences they've found, Adam said, "Everyone is so friendly here! We have more friends after a year than we ever had in San Francisco!"

I thought, ohmygod, me too. I had friends in New York, of course, but I lived there for 22 years. I've lived here just under four years and am surrounded by a richness of community and friendship that I've never had before. We've had a big assist from the internet - all the great people I've met through this blog. But it's much more than that, because the internet can start a connection, but it can't create friendship. People do that.

I think it's Canadians. People who reached out to us, who immediately accepted us, people who are open, friendly, accepting, trusting, giving - and fun.

I am so lucky. Thanks, everyone.

PS: The beer brand in the photo is a pun. That's all I'll say.

happy birthday to me

I have been alive and kicking 48 years today. And I'm happy about it!

When Allan wakes up, I get spoiled with presents, then tonight is wmtc4.

Last night, I checked the weather report one last time, and was so disappointed. No rain Friday, no rain Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. But rain on Saturday, wtmc day! How can this be? It never rains on my birthday! Please be wrong.

* * * *

Update! I wrote this post last night, but this morning there's no rain in the forecast! Yay!!

The forecast is almost as important as the actual weather. If it rains, we'll deal with it, but if it says rain is coming, I'll be anxious about it all day.

will they get fooled again? striking back at harry and louise

When I first started this blog, I was besieged by wingnuts alternately offering to help me pack and howling with derision at the wacky country called Canada.

Canada, where you can be hauled off in the middle of the night for saying bad things about the Queen.

Canada, where you can be arrested for not speaking French.

Canada, where it's always cold, and always snowing.

And above all else, Canada, where you will die while you wait for health care.

I am not exaggerating. I heard all this and more.

By now everyone knows the health care non-system in the US isn't working. It's unjust, inhumane, and wildly expensive. The quality of care is great for the wealthy, a crap-shoot for everyone else, and nonexistent for tens of millions. It's also immensely profitable for a few.

There can't be an intelligent person left in the US who thinks it's working. There can only be people who believe that if you can't afford care, that's your own problem, go die on your own; people who fear the government (except when it comes to war and the supposed fight against supposed terrorists, then the government is always right); people who are so defensive and myopic about TGNOTFOTE™ that their brains (such as they are) shut down when the subject comes up; and people who are profiting off the current non-system. Of course there's some overlap among these groups.

We Canadians know the health care system in each Canadian province is not perfect; nothing is. But as I always say, if you want to know what's wrong with the Canadian system, ask someone who uses it. Because, up until very recently, all of what you will hear and read in the US mainstream media about Canada's health care has been lies. Not some, not most: all.

There's a veritable cottage industry of single-payer-bashing in the US media. I'm not talking Fox News. I'm talking New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, AP. Everyone.

I am beyond skeptical that the US will institute universal, single-payer health insurance in my lifetime, but if it's ever going to happen, people have to see a working model. They have to know what is possible. Imagine Tommy Douglas fighting for something he couldn't even prove would work! Fighting to make a dream a reality! Now, some 50 years after Canada's first medicare system was born in Saskatchewan, USians have a bright and shining example of how the whole thing can and does work, right in their own backyard. If only they will be able and allowed to see it.

I don't know how much and what kind of publicity Jack Layton's meeting with Obama garnered. I saw the wingnut blog headlines - "socialist visits US to promote government takeover of your life!!" - but I didn't find much in the mainstream. Any CNN watchers reading this? Did you see anything?

Perhaps this column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times is a harbinger of change. The Times was one of the worst offenders of Canadian-health-care-bashing. Could it be that is beginning to change?

Perhaps you've seen those television commercials denouncing health care reform as a plot to create a Canadian-style totalitarian nightmare, and you feel a wee bit scared.

Back in the election campaign, some people spread rumors that Barack Obama might be a secret Muslim conspiring to impose Sharia law on us. That seems unlikely now, but what if he's a covert Canadian plotting to impose ... health care?

Rick Scott, a former hospital company chief executive, leads a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights. He was forced to resign as C.E.O. after his company defrauded the government through overbilling and is now spending his time trying to block meaningful health care reform by terrifying us with commercials of "real-life stories of the victims of government-run health care."

So here's a far more representative "real-life story."

Diane Tucker, 59, is an American lawyer who moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 2006. Like everyone else there, she now pays the equivalent of just $49 a month for health care.

Then one day two years ago, Ms. Tucker was working on her office computer when she noticed that she was having trouble typing with her right hand.

"I realized my hand was numb, so I tried to stand up to shake it out," she remembered. "But I had trouble standing."

A colleague called 911, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital.

"An emergency room doctor met me at the door, and they took me straight upstairs to the CT scan," she recalled. A neurologist explained that she had suffered a stroke.

Ms. Tucker spent a week at the hospital. "The doctors were great, although there were also a couple of jerks," she said. "The nursing staff was wonderful."

Still, there were two patients to a room, and conditions weren't as opulent as at some American hospitals. "The food was horrible," she said.

Then again, the price was right. "They never spoke to me about money," she said. "Not when I checked in, and not when I left."

Scaremongers emphasize the waits for specialists in Canada, and there's some truth to the stories. After the stroke, Ms. Tucker needed to make a routine appointment with a neurologist and an ophthalmologist to see if she should drive again. Initially, those appointments would have meant a two- or three-month wait, although in the end she managed to arrange them more quickly.

Ms. Tucker underwent three months of rehabilitation, including physical therapy several times a week. Again there was no charge, no co-payment.

Then, last year, Ms. Tucker fainted while on a visit to San Francisco, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital. But this was in the United States, so the person meeting her at the emergency room door wasn’t a doctor.

"The first person I saw was a lady with a computer," she said, "asking me how I intended to pay the bill." Ms. Tucker did, in fact, have insurance, but she was told she would have to pay herself and seek reimbursement.

Nothing was seriously wrong, and the hospital discharged her after five hours. The bill came to $8,789.29.

Ms. Tucker has since lost her job in the recession, but she says she's stuck in Canada — because if she goes back to the United States, she will pay a fortune for private health insurance because of her history of a stroke. "I'm trying to find another job here," she said. "I want to stay here because of medical insurance."

Another advantage of the Canadian system, she says, is that it emphasizes preventive care. When a friend was diagnosed as being pre-diabetic, he was put in a free two-year program emphasizing an improved diet and lifestyle — and he emerged as no longer being prone to diabetes.

If Ms. Tucker's story surprises you, you should know that Mr. Scott's public relations initiative against health reform is led by the same firm that orchestrated the "Swift boat campaign" against Senator John Kerry in 2004. These commercials are just as false, for President Obama is not proposing government-run health care — just a public insurance element in the mix.

No doubt there are some genuine horror stories in Canada, as there are here in the United States.

But the bottom line is that America's health care system spends nearly twice as much per person as Canada's (building the wealth of hospital tycoons like Mr. Scott). Yet our infant mortality rate is 40 percent higher than Canada's, and American mothers are 57 percent more likely to die in childbirth than Canadian ones.

In 1993, the "Harry and Louise" commercials frightened Americans into abandoning health reform. Let's ensure those scare tactics don't work this time.

A few notes on the above.

Most US hospital patients do not get private rooms, either. And Canadians with supplemental (private) health insurance may have coverage for a private room.

I also think it's fair to say most USians have never seen an "opulent" hospital! I realize they're out there, but unless you are very wealthy or have amazing insurance, you're not going to get into one.

More importantly, many Americans have a mistaken impression about "wait times," so often talked about here in Canada. They believe it means how long you will wait to see a doctor on any given day, as if there is some central clinic where everyone goes and endlessly waits for care.

Doctors in Canada have their own offices and appointments are scheduled the usual way. There are also walk-in clinics where you don't need an appointment. But "wait times" refers to queues for certain procedures, such as hip or knee replacements, or to see certain specialists. There is a shortage of doctors in many fields, and in many areas.

There's a lot of discussion about how to bring wait times down. But plenty of us don't wait at all. We just make appointments and go to the doctor. We pay nothing, because we pay for our health care with our taxes. My taxes in Ontario are about the same as they were in New York.

And two, as my partner always says, there are millions of Americans who would be thrilled to be on a waiting list, and when their name comes up, get free surgery and rehab.

Instead, they're just left to deteriorate or die.

pot, meet kettle

Letters to the editor in today's G&M.

I think highly of Bob Rae, and I deplore the war crimes of both sides in Sri Lanka's conflict, but the notion that Canada's government can protest with authority to Sri Lanka's government is hypocritical nonsense (Canada Demands Answers After Sri Lanka Expels Rae - June 11).

Our government recently forbade British MP George Galloway and U.S. peace activists Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright from entering Canada to lecture about the faults of our country; so, by what right do we criticize Sri Lanka for barring Mr. Rae? And for years, our government has detained Muslims who it thinks are terrorists on security certificates, without criminal charge or limits on the duration of imprisonment; so, where is our credibility to fault Sri Lanka for indefinitely detaining Tamil Tigers without charge?

One can debate questions of degree, but one cannot deny that Canada participates in identically stupid and wrongful actions as Sri Lanka.

Amir Attaran, Ottawa

*

A perfect example of don't do as we do, just do as we say.

Pat Seguin, Windsor, Ontario

trust women

Thank you, Katha Pollit. Ever my hero.

Dr. George Tiller, 1941-2009

By Katha Pollitt

Trust women. That was the motto of Dr. George Tiller, abortion provider and hero. Dr. Tiller trusted women: to know their own life circumstances, to know themselves. Trusting women has an old-fashioned ring to it, doesn't it, like "sisterhood." How quaint, the notion that a woman, faced with a crisis pregnancy, can reach into herself and make the decision that's right for her--at any rate, a better decision than someone else would make for her, someone who doesn't know her, has never been in her predicament and doesn't have to live with the consequences.

Someone like, oh, a man. In the immediate aftermath of Dr. Tiller's murder it was astonishing how many men were called upon to weigh in on abortion on national television. CNN featured William Schneider, Sanjay Gupta and Bill Press. On Fox, Bill O'Reilly defended his use of "baby killer" and "death mill" to describe Dr. Tiller and his clinic. On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann--who the last time I checked in spent a whole segment making fun of Miss Anti-Gay Marriage California's breast implants with waspish misogynist Michael Musto--had only men: Slate's Will Saletan, who thinks we can "end" abortion by stigmatizing women with unwanted pregnancies, because right now everyone is just too kind, and Andrew Sullivan, who knows as much about women's reproductive lives as I know about soliciting bareback sex on the Internet. Sullivan confessed:

I do think that--I mean, I'm personally opposed to what he does. I actually don't believe in late-term abortions. But I have to say--on my blog today, a lot of women wrote in and told me their own stories of this. And I was kind of shaken by the fact that most--most women--almost all women that go to these places, are in desperate straits. The children are very, very deformed or ill or will not survive birth or the mother's health is directly threatened. These are very grave and difficult circumstances.

So Sullivan, who has been an outspoken antichoicer for two decades, is only now finding out why women terminate pregnancies? Shouldn't that have been part of the basic research? And even after hearing the awful stories, he still, apparently, thinks Dr. Tiller was wrong to help them: women ought to carry anencephalic fetuses to term, give birth to Tay-Sachs babies who will live a few brief agonized years, postpone their own cancer treatment or heart surgery to give birth even if delay means they die, have their stepfather's baby in middle school. But at least he feels bad about it now.

In the more than three decades since Roe v. Wade, "the fetus" gradually became the star of the abortion drama, and the voices of women who had abortions, aka "the woman," leached out of the public discussion. How many embryos can dance on the head of a pin--now that's interesting! Off-the-cuff judgments about how late is too late and what kinds of health problems count as serious--everyone's a doctor! Even women who have had abortions sometimes play the blame game--my abortion was necessary, but you're just a slut. The murder of Dr. Tiller has gotten more women telling their stories, and that is a crucial, good thing. Not so that panels of pundits can approve or disapprove but so that society can hear, firsthand, what girls and women go through. After all, since Roe, 45 million American women have terminated at least one pregnancy. That's more women than the dwindling flock who accept Catholic doctrine on sexual matters, and more women, I'll bet, than even know who Rick Warren is.

President Obama speaks frequently about finding common ground in the quest to reduce abortions, as if we all agree that the problem is the number, and not the need. Prochoicers, who have rejoiced at his support for contraception, realistic sex ed and accurate reproductive science, must be scratching their heads at his nomination of Alexia Kelley, founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, to direct the Health and Human Services Department's Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. CACG has many fine positions--it opposes war and poverty and the persecution of immigrants--but it supports church doctrine banning abortion and contraception. It's a travesty that its head will now control more than $20 million a year in funding to religious groups for family-planning services: you might as well put an astrologer in charge of funding for NASA. Maybe reproductive rights organizations think they have bigger fish to fry, but I am disturbed by the quiet around this appointment, made before Dr. Tiller was even cold in his grave. Only Catholics for Choice seems worked up about it. As we go to press, Feminist Majority, Planned Parenthood and NOW have said not a word, although NOW's Kim Gandy told me she was "aghast" and would speak out soon. A NARAL spokesperson e-mailed me this tepid statement: "We would not have picked her for this position. What's important to note is that she will be working for a pro-choice Secretary of Health and Human Services and a pro-choice president. We fully expect this administration to continue to promote pro-choice policies in the same way they have since day one."

Meanwhile, word comes that Dr. Tiller's clinic will not reopen. Terrorism works...

* * *

You can honor the life of Dr. Tiller and make sure that low-income women receive safe abortion care by making a donation to the George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund at the National Network of Abortion Funds. Contribute online at nnaf.org/tiller.html or mail a check to George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund, c/o National Network of Abortion Funds, 42 Seaverns Avenue, Boston, MA 02130.

Also thanks to The Great Zerbisias for commentary and addenda to this.

thought for the day: michael ignatieff, your spine is calling you

I apologize in advance for temporarily turning wmtc into some kind of bad FacebookTwitter clone. I have a long list of topics to blog about, but no mental space in which to write coherently. It's wmtc4 minus 1 and counting!

Therefore, here is my thought for the day.

Canada needs a new Government. But first we need an Opposition with a spine. Michael Ignatieff, please find your vertebrae.

(And yes, I know we are not likely to see an election in June. This is not a prediction, merely a wish.)