Briarpatch articles from August 2006

Briarpatch archives from August 2006

War on error?(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... Dear Briarpatch: It is ironic that a magazine that calls itself the War on Error would itself publish an article that contains the following sentence: "Then the United Nations divided this territory into two states, and following this...

The beef with veg.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... Dear Briarpatch: Marieka Sax's message about skipping beef and eating cereal crops for greater food-energy efficiency has merit ("Skipping a Step," June/July, 2006). However, it is not universally advisable. Speaking for many parts of...

Fair threads.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... Dear Briarpatch: I read your cover story about the group called Just Shirts ("Emerging Alternatives in the Garment Industry," May 2006), and thought you might be interested in another company that has started in Canada. A store called the...

Protecting and improving Medicare.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... Dear Briarpatch: Thanks to Mr. Collier for this invaluable story and comment on the history of Canada's Medicare system ("The Roots of the Medicare Crisis," May 2006). I am a senior, who during the 1930's required several continuing years...

"If you have no critics, you'll likely have no success." (Malcolm X).(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 1, 2006... Friends: I encourage you to evolve from Good to Great by paying closer attention to your design and layout and headlining. I refer to your June/July 2006 issue. First, your headline "We need Stephen Harper. Really," on page 5...

Grade two students petition to "set the record straight".(Demasduit's Museum)
August 1, 2006... "Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name." (Genesis 2:19) EVERY SCHOOL CHILD knows that you should respect a person's name. And in accordance with this simple maxim, Grade 2 students in the town of Grand...

Hung out to dry? Academic research 'partnerships' and the Wiarton water experiment.
August 1, 2006... "I would like to be able to drink my water without fear and wash my clothes with no further damage." LETTER TO THE EDITOR, WIARTON ECHO, SEP. 20, 2000. SIX YEARS AGO, A DRINKING WATER experiment in small town Ontario resulted in...

And flowers bled in Atenco: San Salvador Atenco and the Suppression of Mexican Democracy.
August 1, 2006... ON MAY 3 OF THIS YEAR, at about 7 a.m., Mexican state police in the city of Texcoco blocked some five dozen flower vendors from setting up their stalls in the local market. Police authorities had reportedly alerted the vendors days beforehand...

Two-tier justice? Secret trials go on trial at the Supreme Court of Canada.
August 1, 2006... ON JUNE 13 AND 14, THE Supreme Court of Canada held historic hearings, at the core of which were fundamental questions that may well determine the course of Canadian civil liberties for years to come. Unlike some of the technical, dry cases...

Caledonia's fifth column: white anti-racism in solidarity with Six Nations.
August 1, 2006... ON FEBRUARY 28, 2006, MEMBERS OF the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy reclaimed a suburban construction site on lands belonging to them and initiated one of the most significant anti-colonial struggles in North America in recent years....

"Foreign troops on the national territory": Haiti's resurgent majority takes power: Haiti's occupiers and elites badly needed the legitimacy of a "democratic" election. Unfortunately for them, the poor majority took them at their word....
August 1, 2006... SOMETIMES EVEN THE BEST-LAID plans of the powerful go astray. Such was the case in Haiti in February of this year when Haitians turned out in overwhelming numbers to elect Rene Preval as president. Preval, who first served as president from...

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.
August 1, 2006... Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change Elizabeth Kolbert Bloomsbury, 2006 The Weather Makers: How We Are Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth Tim Flannery Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006 AS...

The entire point of racism.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)
August 1, 2006... "Hitler's Final Solution missed the entire point of racism within the capitalist world-economy. The object of racism is not to exclude people, much less to exterminate them. The object of racism is to keep people within the system, but as...

Who owns the resources.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)(Willis Andrew)(Quotation)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... "In a simpler time, when the president of a South American nation started to make noise about getting a fair deal from the Yanks and nationalizing mines and oil fields, a team of CIA agents would be sent. There would be an uprising. And in...

Exploiting the "under-polluted".(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)(Summers Lawrence)(Quotation)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... "Shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? [...] The measurement of costs of health impairing pollution depends on the forgone earnings from increased morbidity and...

Small acts of passion.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)(Dandicat Edwidge)(Quotation)(Brief article)
August 1, 2006... "After most of the workers had left for the stream, Sebastien and I went to a mud-and-wattle cooking hut near a wooden fence where the compound met an open dirt road. He brushed two rocks against a dry pine twig and sparked a flame for our...

Requiem for a question period?(Parting Shots)(Essay)
August 1, 2006... "I WAS HOPING THAT YOU could speak to the current situation in Saudi Arabia," he said, and left the microphone to return to his seat. And for a moment, I thought that the curse had been lifted: there stood the heroic Robert Fisk on stage,...