Briarpatch articles from April 2000

Briarpatch archives from April 2000

Mac-Pap monument (a memorial to Canadian volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War is unveiled in Victoria)%XOT.
April 1, 2000... The "Spirit of the Republic," an eight-foot statue, was unveiled in Victoria at a moving ceremony on February 12, 2000. The statue, situated across the street from the B.C. Legislative Buildings, is the second and final phase of the B.C....

No time for overtime (B.C. pulp and paper workers forego overtime to allow creation of new jobs)%XOT.
April 1, 2000... Seventy percent of pulp and paperworkers in B.C. are ready to cut overtime to create new jobs, says a new report by the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union (CEP). "Your neighbour's laid off. How do you feel coming home at night...

Say "cheese" (tariffs are levied on French food products in the latest development in the trade war between the U.S. and European Union)%XOT.
April 1, 2000... Last year the European Union banned U.S. beef imports because the meat came from cows that were treated with hormones. In retaliation, the U.S. government imposed a 100 percent tariff on many French products such as Roquefort cheese and Dijon...

Plutonium (the hazardous substance is transported from the U.S. to Chalk River Canada by air when protesters block overland shipment)%XOT.
April 1, 2000... Weapons-grade plutonium from the U.S. that was flown by helicopter to Atomic Energy of Canada labs in Chalk River, Ontario did not meet strict U.S. standards for transporting the deadly cargo. In the U.S., the plutonium would have been...

Saving Medicare: an ambulance tour sounds the alarm about the future of public health care.
April 1, 2000... On February 14, three ambulances set off from Nanaimo, Hamilton and St. John's on a national tour to sound the alarm about health care privatization and underfunding. The ambulances, driven by CUPE health care activists, stopped in communities...

Solidarity network: a report on the state of the social justice movement.
April 1, 2000... The latest incarnation of the Pro-Canada Network and Action Canada Network met in Saskatoon for an Assembly from February 25-27. The Network, an umbrella organization of social groups, originally formed in 1987 to fight free trade with the...

Women on the rise: the World Women's March 2000%XOT.
April 1, 2000... More than 2,100 groups from 135 countries are joining the World March for Women in 2000, making it the largest demonstration by women in history. After the 1995 women's march in Quebec and the National Women's March Against Poverty in...

APEC update.
April 1, 2000... It has been a long time since the pepper-spray and unjust arrests, since former Indonesian President Suharto and the Indonesian government flexed their muscles at the Canadian government. It has been a long time since that day in November when...

Myths & realities of the farm income crisis: comparing the links in the food chain.
April 1, 2000... Farm incomes have returned to depression-era levels. Farmers' realized net incomes will be very low for 1999 and 2000, and negative for 2001, 2002 and 2003, with losses worse than those during the depression. Saskatchewan presents the...

Funny money: why printing money is a high-tech reality.
April 1, 2000... Imagine the semi-authoritarian leader of a medium-sized Latin American country - one with a GDP of, say, $30 billion. The leader wants to make several major state purchases: take over a mining company here, build a showy new airport there. ...

Open-source movement: helping you find your way on the information highway.
April 1, 2000... Over the past decade, information technology has advanced at an astonishing rate, and the impact on business has been dramatic. It is estimated that Canadians will spend $6 billion on IT products and services this year, and that by 2003, that...

Tuition fees: why post-secondary education should be free.
April 1, 2000... Education is expensive. Educating an entire country is very expensive. In poll after poll, Canadians have made it clear that education from kindergarten through college and university is important. Somehow, someone has to pay for this education...

Torture school: like a magician, the U.S. army would have us believe that torturers and murderers can become transformed into doves of peace.
April 1, 2000... There's good news and bad news. The good news is that the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia may be closing down. The bad news is the school will be just the same as before, only with a new name....

Can anybody stop this madness? Actions to oppose the genocide in Iraq.
April 1, 2000... Does anybody in North America care about the dying children in Iraq? "The war against Iraq and subsequent sanctions will go down in history as one of the great crimes of the twentieth century, along with the Holocaust, Pol Pot and the...

Last of the big time $pender$ (voters in San Francisco organize in opposition to automated teller machine charges).
April 1, 2000... Last November, the majority of voters in San Francisco passed an ordinance banning ATM surcharges on customers from a different bank. One month earlier, the city of Santa Monica, California enacted a similar ordinance. Dozens of other cities...

Talisman loses its charm: the link between oil profits and human rights abuses in Sudan.
April 1, 2000... A group associated with the recent failure of talks between NGOs and Talisman Energy for a human rights monitoring mechanism in Sudan predicts there will be no takers for the company's offer to work with NGO partners in the Sudan oil field. ...

Rebel life.
April 1, 2000... Rebel Life by Mark Leier New Star Books, Vancouver, 1999, $14.95 Robert Gosden was a fiery working class radical, a formidable trade union militant, a confirmed syndicalist, and a relentless advocate of direct action including sabotage. But...

White umbrella.
April 1, 2000... The White Umbrella by Patricia Elliott Post Books, Bangkok, 1999 available in Canada for $21.00 plus $4.00 shipping from Patricia Elliott. E-mail: whiteumbrella@hotmail.com Or phone Buzzword Books at (306) 522-6562. On the day Trish...

Pitfalls of mutual fund investing.
April 1, 2000... Mutual funds seem to be the vehicle of choice of many Canadians for their investments. There is no question that the mutual fund industry became big business in the 1990s. Assets soared from $25 billion in 1990 to $389 billion in December 1999....