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Tuesday, July 27, 2010 by Elie Nasrallah Daily Star Photo: Tanya Traboulsi Sky over sea, Beirut, Lebanon. Canada has always been a favorite destination for many Lebanese emigrants. However, the country is now changing its immigration policies and is beginning to resemble a club open to a chosen few who possess the required skills, education and selective [...]

open letter from Palestinians, 29 July 2010 Photo Dome of the Rock at Al Aqsa mosque compound under open sky in Palestine. The following open letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose elected mandate expired in July 2009 and who has remained in power under controversial emergency laws, was issued on 22 July 2010: We are Palestinians [...]

Andrew Bacevich July 29th 2010 Huffington Post Photo Palestinian UN school bombed by Israeli military in Gaza. “In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history.” This sentiment, introducing the essay that made Francis Fukuyama a household name, [...]

Pictou   Landing   Band   Council

July 8, 2010

PRESS  RELEASE

The Chief and Council of the Pictou Landing First Nation announced today that the Community has taken the first step towards suing the Province of Nova Scotia over the pollution of Boat Harbour. On June 30, 2010 Pictou Landing First Nation’s lawyers, Wickwire Holm, delivered a Notice of Intended Action to the Province. Anyone suing the Province is required to give notice of the intended lawsuit 60 days before the suit is commenced pursuant to s. 18 of the Proceedings Against the Crown Act. The Notice of Intended Action sets out the claims that the Pictou Landing First Nation will make against the Province and will ask the Court to find that the Boat Harbour Treatment Facility creates a nuisance and will ask for an injunction to shut it down. Chief and Council are now in a position to start a lawsuit on August 31, 2010.

In 1967 the Province built an industrial wastewater treatment facility at Boat Harbour adjacent to the Pictou Landing First Nation community. The treatment facility was operated by the Province until 1995 to treat the waste water from the pulp mill at Abercrombie Point. In 1995 operation of the treatment facility was turned over to the owner of the mill under a lease/license agreement with the Province.
This step towards a law suit was taken by Chief and Council after the Province failed to follow through on a commitment contained in a letter dated December 4, 2008 in which it agreed to relocate the treatment facility.

In the letter the Province stated, “To say that the Band has been long suffering would be a masterful understatement of the obvious. It is our unwavering intention to end that suffering as quickly as possible. It should have been done long ago.”

On April 19,2010, after months of inaction by the Dexter Government, lawyers for the Pictou landing First Nation demanded that the Province revoke the license allowing effluent to be dumped into Boat Harbour and set June 30, 2010 as the deadline. On June 16, 2010 Chief and Council instructed the lawyers to proceed with the lawsuit if the license was not revoked by June 30, 2010.

Pictou Landing is prepared to negotiate a solution with the Province but ant such negotiations will now take place alongside the lawsuit.

Breach of the Peace - a delayed communiqué from the Pink Bloc:

This was a solidarity rally with people who had  been arrested during the anti G20 Convergence in Toronto.

In response to comments made by Ashley Fehr of Canadians Advocating Political Participation in the Georgia Straight that both condemned the black bloc and de-invited anyone wearing masks to the rally, a group of about ten people dressed head to toe in pink, wearing pink face masks with with pink flags and a banner that read, 'Solidarity 1073 plus.'

Fehr had retracted the de-invitation before the rally, and claims to have been misquoted, but many people who support direct action, including black bloc, felt the matter still needed to be addressed.

“You’re making us look bad.”
“No, we’re making you look gay!”

The concept of ‘making people look bad’ is a ludicrous rationalization for denouncing any action or group. Excluding illegal activity from resistance movements –even mainstream ones, is outlandish and historically revisionist. While the mass arrests in Toronto led to many ‘normal Canadians’ feeling the impact of the brutality of the Canadian state, it is unacceptable to allow continued resistance to exclude and condemn people who already live outside the protection of Canadian law and policy.

Some of the speakers at this event were people who had been arrested in Toronto. They spoke from a very vulnerable place about abuse and violation they experienced. Also, a bunch of politicians spoke at this event too, while numerous heckles could not be contained Pink Bloc people were holding back a lot of frustration hearing long speeches about Canada, and how police action during the G20 went against Canadian values. For a lot of people --in this instance, trans, queer and Indigenous people- Canada itself is a violation of everyday life and of people's bodies.

"While we can show solidarity with all of the arrestees in Toronto, it is not going to be at the expense of our own resistance movements. We see the breach of the peace in Toronto and celebrate, because for us, peace in Canada exists at our –and many others’- expense" --Pinky Tuscadero

A pamphlet titled, ‘No Dress Codes! No Fashion Police’ was handed out with information on the many reasons people wear masks and briefly touching on the use of direct action in popular liberation movements through history. Also, in the rally before the march, there was lots of discussion and debate between people in the pink bloc and other people attending the rally. Aside from a human troll who pulled the mask off one pink blocker, it was a good example of how diverse elements of resistance movements can –and do- engage with each other in a fruitful manner.
 

• Dominion Stories

Halifax event part of national day of action against Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism

On July 27, about 50 people gathered at the North Branch Memorial Library for a panel discussion on migrant justice.  The event was part of a national day of action against Jason Kenney, the federal minister of immigration. Panelists criticized Kenney for a variety of reasons, including immigration policy changes that have occurred under his authority, and statements he has made that activists say overstep his role as minister.

“Jason Kenney has been dubbed the Minister of “Censorship and Deportation” because of his record as one of the most repressive immigration ministers,” explained David Parker who spoke on behalf of No One is Illegal – Halifax,. “There is a growing grassroots movement across the country rising out of schools, neighbourhoods, and workplaces to reject Kenney and his oppressive and racist policies.”

According to NOII-Halifax, under Jason Kenney, 13,000 people were deported last year or approximately 75 per day, and 56 per cent fewer asylum claims were accepted. Kenney was also behind Bill C-11, which establishes a two-tiered immigration system [how?], and removed references to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights from the Canadian citizenship guide.

Panellist Roger Davies came to Canada when he was 23 to resist the draft for the American war on Vietnam.  He spoke to Kenney’s assertion that refugee claims by war resisters from the US are illegitimate, despite two orders passed in the House of Commons supporting the rights of war resisters to stay in Canada.

“[When I came to Canada] a door was open. It was a door that was really welcoming at times. It was a door that made it somewhat easy for many of us to come here, and 50 or 60 000 did come. Since those days that door has been slammed shut,” said Davies.

Judy Haiven, who spoke to Kenney’s pro-Isreal agenda, discussed how Kenney’s policies are based in racist assumptions that attempt to polarize people as good or bad.

“Kenney and his cabinet cronies are big boosters of the idea of good guys and bad guys – people in white hats and people in black hats. Christians, Jews, people of “the Book” who are white and European and western-oriented, they represent the good,” said Haiven.   “And frankly  [according to Kenney] Arabs and Muslims represent the bad.”

Amr Nassrat, an Egyptian Muslim man who has been living in Canada since 2004, says he is one of the black hats.

“I never realized the list of [Kenney’s] injustices was this long,” he said. “It gives me hope in Canada to see you all here.”

“There are many Kenney’s in the immigration system,” says Nassrat, who explains that he has been repeatedly mistreated within the immigration system. “I came here today to tell people there is injustice and to see if there is something I can do for my self and others.”

Currently, there are between 200 000 and 500 000 people living without status in Canada.
 

mondoweiss by Hatim Kanaaneh July, 2010 Photo Palestinian boy views photos of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. I have known Ameer Makhoul since the day he came to my office at the Galilee Society to be interviewed for the position of director of our then new and ambitious project called ITTIJAH, the Arabic acronym for Union [...]

Greenpeace activists locked themselves to door of Enbridge's head office in Vancouver Wednesday morning in an act of resistance against a pipeline rupture that has released at least three million liters of oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

While their truck containing equipment and supplies was moved onto the sidewalk outside the building, Christine LeClerc and 3 others entered the office on the 6th floor and announced their intentions to conduct a sit in while chaining themselves to the door and temporarily hanging a banner behind them.
 
At the same that this was happening at about 10 AM, other volunteer activists were busy unloading the truck, hanging another banner and building a fake pipeline.  Greenpeace BC director Stephanie Goodwin and Brian Beaudry were meanwhile ensconced in the truck by sheet metal plating covering the inside of all windows. 

Once all the equipment was in place the group staged a mock oil spill while handing out literature and advising those opposed to the idea of the proposed pipeline to write to the Prime Minister and Enbridge CEO Pat Daniel.   "Don't worry folks, it's just an oil spill.  It happens all the time, Enbridge spills 63 times a year.  They're professionals," said Aaron Laurie-Joice, a Greenpeace member. A tar ball from the Gulf of Mexico was symbolically used to write a message on the glass doors the protesters had secured themselves to.

Enbridge staff were rumored to have vacated the office after the lockdown, leaving security and the police to deal with the problem. They also asked security to lock off elevator access to their floor but we were able to gain access shortly before 2 PM for a few pictures until security demanded that we were not allowed on the floor.  Attempts were made throughout the day by Ms Goodwin to reach Pat Daniel and John Carruthers, President of Northern Gateway Pipelines.  The only response was from Mr Daniel's executive assistant to inform them that the CEO was out of town.

 
VPD Chief of Police Jim Chu had put in an appearance at the protest but there was limited police activity throughout the day and it appeared that they would rather just leave it alone rather than hasten the exit of the activists.  Bentall security maintained their vigil both inside and out of not only the Enbridge office but also the main entrance to the building.

Greenpeace Media and PR Officer Raina Delisle indicated no awareness that the police had any immediate intention to arrest anyone, but an unnamed Greenpeace representative was overheard
shortly after 6 PM to be asking those still doing well despite their self imposed chained status for over 8 hours what the police on the 6th floor had to say to them.

Section of pipeline could carry tar sands bitumen through Trailbreaker Pipeline reversal project

MONTREAL - On Tuesday July 27, 2010, a section of pipeline owned by Calgary based pipeline giant Enbridge, ruptured leaking an estimated 3.1 million litres of oil into a nearby creek and threatening the Kalamazoo River and Lake Michigan, further downstream from the spill. Residents of nearby communities were warned to keep away from the spill, and a state of emergency has been declared for the affected region The leak appeared to come from a section of pipeline less than 80 cm wide.

According to a National Energy Board of Canada report to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in June 2005, the Great Lakes region is one of the highest concentration areas for pipeline leaks and breakages in North America. The region is also home to the Enbridge owned Lakehead system, the largest overland pipeline network on the planet.

Activists across Canada have pointed out the danger of pipelines and their susceptibility to leaks and breakages, especially given the unprecedented expansion slated to coincide with a five-fold increase in tar sands production over the next fifteen years. In fact, the section of pipeline that ruptured appears to be part of a pipeline that would feed into Enbridge's eastward delivery project, the Trailbreaker.

The Trailbreaker would use existing pipelines, reversing the flow of many, to transport tar sands bitumen from Fort McMurray to Portland Maine in order to be loaded onto tankers bound for the Gulf Coast of Texas. A segment of the Trailbreaker, from Chicago, Illinois to Sarnia, Ontario, would need to run through the location of this most recent leak, before crossing into Ontario and Quebec. 

For more information on the Trailbreaker, check out this report.

Activists and community members will be gathering in Dunham, QC this summer for a convergence resisting the Trailbreaker project find out more about the Quebec Climate Action Camp.

The Deutsche Aids-Hilfe (DAH) is the leading German non-governmental organization that deals with the concerns of people living with HIV/AIDS and helps raise awareness of effective HIV prevention techniques.
As the governing body for more than 120 local AIDS service organizations, it supports this work at many different levels.

The DAH website, aidshilfe.de, is one of the organization’s main communication channels. It offers information on HIV and other sexual transmitted infections and covers the field of counseling for private matters. The website also provides contact information for local self-help-centers, a broad selection of free information material, workshops, community features, etc.

Work on the aidshilfe.de project was supported by many partners. Christoph Schüßler designed the website, which was implemented in Drupal by Berlin-based Werk21. The new aidshilfe.de is a step forward toward a future-proof system that features an attractive new design, interactive features, user-friendly community functionality and great usability.

read more

Contact:  Indigenous Action Movement:  (604) 682-3269, Ext. 7718

CURTIS BRICK, One Year Later, the People’s Inquest

The Indigenous Action Movement is organizing a 2nd gathering to remember one of their fallen. Curtis Brick needlessly and horrifically died on the hottest day on record, in plain view of the public, in Grandview Park , July 29, 2009. The final insult: In their report, the attendants stated they had provided care to Curtis, including placing cool towels on him, and trying to provide liquids to him, when according to witnesses, they had not. Then upon arrival to hospital, it took another hour before Curtis was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. An hour too late.   It is now one year later, and what's being done?

“Our people standing together, is immensely important to break the cycle of, not only racial discrimination, but society’s indifference towards injustice where it concerns our brothers and sisters. Doing our part, may help one of our family members, friends and loved ones, and maybe even ourselves one day.  We should not have a fear of laying there dying on the street only to be seen as “most likely just passed out.” I hope that someone will check on me to see if I’m okay and get medical assistance. I hope for that assistance to be at least considerate, given that they know I have a society behind me that cares.”  Kat Norris, Coast Salish/Nez Perce

On July 29, 2010the community will gather together at Grandview Park in East Vancouver, Commercial Drive and Charles Street, We ask supporters to arrive about 5:00 to help put together the survival packs to hand out.  Drumming, singing, speakers, and a smudging ceremony will take place. Survival packs will be handed out. Survival packs will include:  Bottled water; juice cartons; frybread or sandwiches; mini sun block. Some of Curtis Brick’s friends will be there, & we are inviting any family members as well to share in this dedication and call for an inquest. If you know of family members, please have them contact me at (604) 682-3269 Extension: 7718

City Hall Update:  “As a result of Curtis Brick’s death, (Vancouver City) Council on September 10, 2009, moved: “FURTHER THAT staff undertake a review of existing extreme weather emergency services offered by the City and make recommendations on these services that would further reduce the risk for street homeless and other vulnerable populations, such as homebound senior citizens, in the event of extreme heat or cold events.” This report provides follow up to this motion in the form of a brief review and a proposed Preparedness and Response Plan for 2010.  Full document here: http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20100706/documents/rr1.pdf

 “The Creator works in mysterious ways and I am sure that Curtis is pleased that his friends will be better taken care of.  It still means that, as a community, we must continue to do our parts, ensuring that respect is apparent when services providers are at work and to call advocacy and/or call attention to mistreatment or racism.

We will still do the gathering in his honor and to call for a public inquest into his untimely death. We want to educate ourselves as to how we can better help those in need and to ensure that this doesn’t happen ever again.”  Kat

We are just doing our part that his death, the deaths of Frank Paul, who police dragged and dumped outside in freezing weather comatose;  Francis McAllister who ambulance attendance left out only to freeze to death in 2008; the Saskatoon “Starlight Tours” where Neil Stonechild, Lawrence Wegner and so many more who didn’t make it into the news.  We also do this for our young generation today; hopefully many lessons will be learned.”  Kat Norris, Community Contact Line:  (604) 682-3269 Extension:  7718

BACKGROUNDER: Curtis Brick was a homeless man who, through circumstance,ended up on the streets of Vancouver ’s east side. On July 29, 2009, he was spotted by community member Eric Schweig at 9:00 am lying in Grandview Park with his shirt covering his head.  Approximately 4:00 pm, the same day, Eric again saw Curtis laying in the same spot, convulsing and in extreme physical distress. No one had stopped to help. Ambulance was called by staffers of the Vancouver Aboriginal Transformative Justice Services Society, which operates out of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre.

 Witnesses, including the VATJSS staff were stunned at how crude emergency attendants were towards Curtis pushing at his foot, yelling for him to get up, knowing he lay there all day, seeing his darkened tongue and foam at his mouth. They took him away by ambulance, no sirens, the back of the ambulance dark.

** Family friendly event **Everyone welcome to bring food .. clean or new baseball caps, socks, underwear, soaps, shirts.. anything you can think of.. that our people on the street need.  If there are a lot of left over items, we can bring them to the First United Church or the DTES Women's Centre.

• Original Peoples

Anti-fascists confront homophobes at London, Ont. Pride parade

London, Ont. - On Sunday July 25, fifty anti-fascist activists from southern Ontario joined hundreds of Londoners to show their support for the London Pride Parade. By all accounts, the day was a great success; the weather was excellent, the floats were fun and creative, the atmosphere was great – and the fascists were nowhere to be seen.

The latter was a surprise, but certainly a welcome one. After one year’s absence, members of the Northern Alliance (a neo-nazi organization based in London, Ontario), playing on traditional fascist imagery, had promised a “rebirth” of their vile tradition of showing up en masse to disrupt what they refer to as a “parade of perversion”.

Their absence during the previous year’s festivities was widely understood to be the result of a concurrence of demoralizing setbacks: the loss of ideological compatriot Wayne Kellestine - arrested and convicted of multiple-homicide for his role in the slaying of eight members of the Bandidos biker gang – and the embarrassing turnout of their 2008 “protest”, in which their members were outnumbered and openly mocked by a larger contingent of militant counter-protesters.

The Northern Alliance’s intentions to disrupt the parade were first leaked by Dave Ruud, a prominent member of the group, on the forums of a White Supremacist website. The comments were quickly picked up by organizations that monitor the site, and a call out for a convergence of anti-fascist activists was issued by Common Cause’s London branch. Anarchists in London had already been planning on organizing an event to coincide with an international “call to action” issued by Portland anti-racist activists following the shooting of ARA member Luke Querner by suspected fascists on March 27; the prospect of the Northern Alliance’s return offered an ideal opportunity to uphold the spirit of the call while demonstrating solidarity with the city's queer communities.

Joined by activists from Windsor, Guelph, Kitchener/Waterloo, Toronto and Six Nations, locals gathered in Victoria Park and waited for news of the fascists to arrive. With uniformed police watching on from an unmarked van, the group began moving into position upon receiving intelligence that a potential Northern Alliance member had been spotted with a black canvas bag full of signs.

By the time the group arrived, the individual with the signs was gone – and the promised “rebirth” of the hate-protest failed to materialize. Without the presence of any serious adversaries, the activists surrounded members of the Christian Right, using banners to block out their various signs denouncing homosexuality as an abomination against God. They were joined by several local queer activists with hilarious signs of their own, such as “God hates shrimp” and “God hates polyester” – both true, according to the book of Leviticus.

Overall, the action was a great success for anti-fascist activists in southern Ontario, and marks the latest in a series of political defeats for members of the organized far right – following a series of recent victories in Caledonia against supporters of anti-Native bigot Gary McHale. In these times of economic uncertainty, when working class youth are increasingly susceptible to the hateful scapegoating of marginalized communities promoted by white supremacist organizations, it is vitally important that any attempt by fascists to organize is met with an overwhelming and unified response: Not on our watch!

 

This article was originally published on www.linchpin.ca

• London, Ontario

• Dominion Stories

photo essay on Artists Against Apartheid by Heri Rakotomalala & Khalil Allioui Photo Kalmunity Jazz collective performs at Artists Against Apartheid, La Sala Rossa. Artists in Montreal are uniting in unprecedented ways in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, last winter 500 artists from Montreal signed a collective declaration to support the global boycott, divestment and [...]

Hazem Jamjoum, Electronic Intifada, 21 July 2010 Photo Palestine Remembered Palestinian refugees fleeing ‘Imwas village in 1967 turned into Canada Park by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) For anyone taking a road trip along the highways of the part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948, one is bound to spot a blue and green structure [...]

Jimmy Johnson, Electronic Intifada, 21 July 2010 Photo: Women march against the Israeli wall in a scene from Budrus. Event-based storytelling is an infamous form most prominent in the science fiction sub-genre of the Space Opera. The main failing of the style is the general inability of event progression to effectively substitute for character development. Budrus is [...]

Max Blumenthal, Electronic Intifada, vendredi 30 juillet 2010 Photo Oren Ziv ActiveStills Haneen Zoabi. La décision est une mesure de rétorsion pour la participation de Zoabi à la « Flottille de La liberté » pour Gaza. Comme l’a rapporté le quotidien israélien Haaretz, au cours du débat qui a fait rage, un député de la Knesset, Anasatassia [...]

One of the three G20 arrestees remaining in custody has been released from a courtroom in North Toronto tonight, after more than a month in prison.

Amanda Hiscocks, a community organizer in Guelph, is among 17 people facing conspiracy charges stemming from the police crackdown on G20 dissent. She and several other prominent activists were pre-emptively detained in violent, early morning raids on several Toronto homes prior to the demonstrations on June 26th.

She was released on bail totalling $140,000 and has been placed under house arrest with family in Ottawa until trial.

As part of the conditions of her release, Hiscocks is under strict surveillance by her sureties and police, is not allowed access to a cell phone, pager or any other device with wireless connectivity, cannot organize, plan or attend public demonstrations (a breach of her charter rights), have contact with her co-accused or associate with anyone who is a part of No One Is Illegal (NOII), Anti-War at Laurier (AW@L) or the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance (SOAR). 

The details of the proceedings have been placed under a publication ban.

• The Co-op

On 19 July 2010, three days after 28-year-old Loni Edmonds gave birth to her son Andre, a provincial ministry team came into her hospital room to forcibly separate her from her own newborn child. The "team" included a lot of enforcement: two RCMP officers, two hospital security staff, and one medical doctor. Supportive relatives of the parents pleaded with authorities, but they could not stop the snatch.

A member of the Lil'wat Nation who lives in the town of Mount Currie, Edmonds first went to the clinical centre in Pemberton. Even though baby Andre arrived four weeks early, he was otherwise healthy. Health care officials chose to move mother and child to more extensive facilities available at Squamish General Hospital. Shortly after her relocation, and without providing further explanation, an agent of the BC Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) told Edmonds that her baby was going to be taken into foster care on Sunday. 

On that same Sunday, Bill Chu received a telephone call from a distraught relative. Chu, who has a two-decades relationship with the Mount Currie community, immediately contacted the Squamish hospital to ask about the pending apprehension. Hospital staff said they knew of no such plans.

Over the following three days, Chu sought contact with relevant MCFD officials. The Pemberton case officer stuck to generalities and claimed no apprehension would occur without prior steps (family meeting and consultation, exploration of alternative family support, etc.). Another Pemberton official returned multiple calls after two days, but only to say that privacy concerns would prevent any discussion of the case.

After encountering these bureaucratic stone walls, Chu saw no alternative but to issue a press release, which he did with the consent of Andre's parents. Authorities offered him no answers to the following two questions: Why was Loni Edmonds given no written reason for the removal of her child? How did the advance threat of removal fit in with MCFD policy?

On Tuesday July 20 Chu and one other person made a day trip to Mount Currie, to meet the parents of Andre and to talk to acquaintances. He offers this assessment:
 

As one who has known many aboriginals for two decades, I can say the parents' appearance match their claim to be neither on drugs or alcohol. Loni’s aunt also is willing to take Loni and her baby in her home. While her husband Andrew has an unrelated health condition (infrequent seizures) and both parents are not working, the same can be said about most parents within impoverished reserves and Loni should not be denied her right to nurture her baby.

This snatch by MCFD again strikes the fourth generation of the Edmonds family with child apprehension: Edmonds’s grandmother and mother were sent to residential schools, Edmonds herself was put into foster care at the age of 10, and now this baby has been taken away with no due process. In 2007, Edmonds lost four children to MCFD, and then a younger daughter in 2009. Andre makes Edmonds’s sixth apprehended child.

A court hearing is set for 16 September 2010 in Pemberton.

Chu thinks the incentives for the apprehension stand in continuity with the discredited colonial practice of shipping aboriginal children off to residential schools. The result is "similar legacies of abuses, addictions, suicides, and dysfunctional adult lives".

MCFD summarizes the statistics: "As of September 2009, approximately eight per cent of children in British  Columbia and approximately 53 per cent of the 8,677 children in the Ministry’s care were  Aboriginal." The Federation of Aboriginal Foster Parents mentions an alarming rate: "Between 1995-2001 there was a 71.5 per cent increase in the number of on-reserve children with status being placed in foster care." To put this in context, Canada's 2006 census shows the British Columbia "aboriginal identity population" as 196,075 out of 4,074,385, or 4.8 per cent.

Edmonds believes that the government is now paying foster parents about $7000 per month to care for her first four children. A glance at the rates and levels posted by MCFD confirms $5000 as a likely minimum.

The MCFD annual budget shows that the Province of British Columbia spends more than $1 billion a year on "contracts, grants, and payments to families" and more than $300 million on "ministry salaries and benefits." Further breakdown is hard to come by. Official BC budget estimates for 2010-2011 show that almost $750 million goes toward a list of efforts that opens with

service support, direct operating costs and local administration of community-based support services for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children, youth, and families; quality assurance initiatives; establishing new Aboriginal governance structures ...

The 2010-2013 Service Plan for MCFD targets a 6.3% increase (to the 2008/2009 baseline of 53.2%) for

per cent of Aboriginal children having to leave their parental home who receive services delivered by delegated Aboriginal agencies, Aboriginal foster care providers or Aboriginal friends and family.

This means that only slightly over half of those children separated from their own families currently remain in direct contact with their cultural background.

There is clearly a fast-growing big business side to aboriginal foster care, involving a massive chunk of the provincial budget. Who benefits? And how? And why? These macroeconomic and social questions provide the backdrop to the suffering that the state is inflicting on Loni.

There are no overall figures for British Columbia reserve residents who receive a welfare pittance. The Province offers this explanation for its convenient lack of statistics: "LICO [low income cut-offs] data is not available for Indian Reserves as the LICO methodology includes the cost of shelter and aboriginal housing on Indian Reserves is usually provided."

The spendable welfare currently received by both Loni and her husband amounts to a total of less than $500 per month. (Compare this amount of less than $6000 per year with the $7938 average household expenditure for food alone in British Columbia in 2008.) Imagine the care that Loni and Andrew Edmonds themselves could provide for their family if they could receive the resources being paid out to foster care givers.

Seperately, POW has organized in response to ongoing child apprehensions in the DTES and in Vancouver the Downtown Eastside Power of Women has just announced a gathering at the Ministry of Child and Family Development Regional Office: MCFD: KEEP OUR FAMILIES TOGETHER! on Tuesday, August 3, 3:30 – 5:30 pm, 865 Hornby at Smithe. For more information (about the demonstration, POW members can not comment on the Edmonds case) email project@dewc.ca or call 604 681 8480 x 234.

• Original Peoples

As I was surfing the Internet, seeking out feminist mindporn to entertain me, I came across these two posts:

Kate Elliot, asking Epic Fantasy and the Bechdel Test, in which she asks:
How much epic fantasy passes the Bechdel Test? All, most, some, little?

She defines the Bechdel Test for those who do not already know it, but despite that people in the comments-thread that follows (on livejournal, where I have been banned, deleted, and purged… more of that later) still come up with the same old arguments, which are, in no particular order:

1. OMG WHY SO JUDGY? Or: Even if the story doesn’t have at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man, it’s still a good story!

Yes, it may well be. Lord of the Rings fails the Bechdel Test, totally utterly and completely – most of the named women in it never get to talk to each other – but it’s still a good story. It’s just a story that, in Kate Elliot’s fine phrase, “ellides women”. That’s what the Bechdel Test measures.

2. BUT SOME STORIES JUST DON’T HAVE WOMEN IN THEM. As Kate Elliot notes in the comments-thread, while the fighters of your epic fantasy may be mostly or entirely men, unless the war of which the epic fantasy is the story is being fought by an all-male group against an all-male group in deserted hills, there are going to be women around. Medieval times might have seen soldiering and ruling as a role for men, but that didn’t make armies or courts all-male environments: and the presence of women in the world of the narrative means you get to ask the Bechdel question: why are there no women who get to talk to each other about something other than a man?

3. OH I DON’T SEE THAT AS A PROBLEM, PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING PASSES THAT TEST NOW. Followed by the cite of a well-known writer with the assurance that she has LOTS of strong female characters. Lois McMaster Bujold, for example. Mercedes Lackey. Even Anne McCaffrey or C. J. Cherryh. Well, yes. But mostly their narratives don’t pass. Cherryh and Bujold both have lots of strong female characters. But mostly, they don’t talk to each other, except about men. They fail the Bechdel Test in that key respect: as female characters, they tend to have plot-driven conversations only when they are talking to male characters. (Rimrunners, for example, passes the Bechdel Test more strongly than most Cherryh novels, by two brief conversations that Bet has with her bunkmate, apologising for breaking the hygiene regs on her first night, and with the ship’s doctor, claiming she walked into a door: Cyteen, unless we count the long online “conversations” than Younger Ari has with Older Ari, I don’t think passes at all.)

4. WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Well, we’re feminists, so it does. *is judgy*

The other post was Mary Catelli’s, babies in world-building, about how SF writers “neglect to figure out Where Babies Come From and Why It Matters.” It bears almost no relation to the previous post, except in that “having babies” is always (unless you posit Unusually Advanced Technology) something that women – and only women -can do. (Even breastfeeding is feasible for a man given the right hormonal balance, but for growing a fetus from fertilised egg to baby, you need a working uterus….) I cannot help feeling that the dismissal of women from the central narrative correlates with the dismissal of “women’s work” from the central narrative.