Briarpatch articles from May 2006

Briarpatch archives from May 2006

Regina visual artist with global perspective dies at 92.(death of Bea Harding )(Obituary)
May 1, 2006... LONGTIME COMMUNITY ACTIVIST AND Briarpatch supporter Bea Harding died at Regina's Grace Hospice on March 22, 2006, at the age of 92. Bea was active in community-building activities during the hard Depression years, and supported the CCF's...

The case against an elected Senate: let me state my contention clearly: an elected Senate would destroy parliamentary government as we know it.(Canadian Senate and political system analysis)
May 1, 2006... CANADA'S SENATE, PEOPLED by governmental appointees, is an institution with very little real power. It exists, in theory, to provide "sober second thought" to measures proposed by the House of Commons. And indeed, it sometimes succeeds in...

Emerging alternatives in the global apparel industry: just garments and the Single Mothers' Co-operative: Daniel Martinez and Claudia Quintanilla report from El Salvador on two worker-driven initiatives that have captured the imagination of a global solidarity movement.(Industry overview)
May 1, 2006... HILDA CASTRO LIVES IN El Salvador near the capital, San Salvador, where she cares for her three children and works in a maquila, a garment assembly plant. Her hands leave no doubt as to the hard work she does to put food on the table for her...

The roots of the medicare crisis.
May 1, 2006... WHILE ALBERTA STAGES PROVOCATIONS aimed at privatizing at least part of medicare, the rest of Canada watches and wonders whether provincial programs elsewhere may meet a similar fate. Much argument is made about how to defend medicare, how to...

Palestine and Israel: reclaiming our hijacked words.(Arab Israeli conflict forecast)
May 1, 2006... "The new tyranny, like other recent ones, depends to a large degree on a systematic abuse of language. Together we have to reclaim our hijacked words and reject the tyranny's nefarious euphemisms; if we do not, we will be left with only the...

Indigenous sovereignty and the Mackenzie Gas Project.
May 1, 2006... THE NATIONS THAT CONTROL THE largest oil reserves outside of Saudi Arabia--and Im not talking about Iraq or Afghanistan--have seen their sovereignty violated and their most valuable resource taken from them for the benefit of corporations...

The nukes of hazard: Canada's CANDU snafu, Bush's Nuke-You-Lure, and South Asian nuclear proliferation: if India and Pakistan ever nuke it out, or if ever those CANDUs should snafu, Canada will have to face up to its own role as a nuclear proliferator.
May 1, 2006... IN A MAY 20, 1974 INTERVIEW, THE LATE CBC reporter Barbara Frum asked India's UN Ambassador Samar Sen whether India violated its agreements with Canada in developing and detonating an atomic bomb. Ambassador Sen's response was that India had...

Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror.
May 1, 2006... Grand Theft Pentagon Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror Jeffrey St. Clair Common Courage Press, 2005 In Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror, Jeffrey St. Clair (co-founder...

Wealth, dreams, and comfort.(quotes from the underground)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... "The secret of great wealth with no obvious source is some forgotten crime, forgotten because it was done neatly." BALZAC "You get what you pay for. Pay a lot and you get an expensive life. Take what's free, and you get freedom." ...

What's left.(quotes from the underground)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... "He hadn't prepared himself for the situation when it's not what you have that matters, but rather what's left when they've taken everything away.... He wished for some other fate: to have spent those decades storing up wisdom, refining...

Sit down for Canada.(QUOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND)
May 1, 2006... "To give support to nationalist sentiments subverts, ultimately, even the values that hold a nation together, because it substitutes a colourful idol for the substantive universal values of justice and right." MARTHA NUSSBAUM

Imperial prerogative.(quotes from the underground)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... "The power of superpower: first to describe a given leadership as unacceptable; then to create the circumstances in which it becomes unacceptable; and finally to obliterate the memory of its (the superpower's) own part in the process." ...

The limits of lifestyle politics.(quotes from the underground)(Brief article)
May 1, 2006... "If the Situationist author Raoul Vaneigem was right that those who speak of revolution without mentioning everyday life 'have a corpse in their mouth; then maybe its fair to say that those who equate revolution with the lifestyle choices of...