This Magazine articles from January 1999

This Magazine archives from January 1999

One of these things is not like the others (This Magazine is dedicated to exposing sinister connections between business and political interest).
January 1, 1999... For a journalist, there is little in this world more satisfying than having your most lunatic-fringe hunches confirmed. Imagine, if you will, the satisfaction experienced by the American reporters who broke the story about cigarette executives...

Share the wealth (closing the gap between rich and poor need not have adverse economic effects).
January 1, 1999... The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Armine Yalnizyan's "The Growing Gap: A report on growing inequality between rich and poor in Canada." The report is the first major project of the Toronto-based Centre for Social Justice...

Workers of the World Wide Web unite!
January 1, 1999... In a recent IBM ad, two hackers snooping around in a corporate data base discover major discrepancies in the salaries of the vice-presidents and decide to send a message out to all the workers of the company detailing the amount each head...

Reading, rhyming, 'rithmetic (the teaching of Jamaican Creole in schools is proposed).
January 1, 1999... The students, shiny-faced, crowd into the dusty, cement-dome assembly hall, a Dutch oven under the noonday Jamaican sun. Beige uniforms wilt. I stand at the back with the rest of the Open House latecomers. A group of students giggle and nudge...

Hey big spender! (Andersen Consulting bilks Ontario taxpayers while advising the provincial government on welfare reform).
January 1, 1999... "Press One For Poverty" November/December 1998 A couple of days after an article appeared in This Magazine citing concerns about Andersen Consulting, a provincial auditor's report confirmed that Ontario taxpayers have been taken for a ride....

Can a bank change? (World Bank employees gain a better understanding of poverty through field work in developing countries).
January 1, 1999... Imagine this. World Bank executives leaving their colleagues, cellphones and other creature comforts to trek into the poorest regions in the world--from the depths of urban slums to back country untouched by westernization--to stay for a week...

Confidence game (provisions of the constitution protect Canada's prime minister from impeachment).
January 1, 1999... As we observe the fate of U.S. President Bill Clinton, some Canadians may be wondering what mechanisms we have in place to dispose of errant leaders. The answer is not nearly as dramatic or as satisfying as methods used by the republic to the...

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medecine go down (the Ontario government's pamphlet on health care was notable for what was omitted).
January 1, 1999... Just because Ontario Premier Mike Harris doesn't get out much any more doesn't mean we haven't been seeing a lot of him. In the lead up to a 1999 election, the Tories have been saturating the broadcast and print media and the province's homes...

Globalization failed and all I got was this lousy loonie: ... how can there be ... such little fallout when things go badly wrong?
January 1, 1999... Consider, if you will, the year past. Currencies falling like dominoes; MAI negotiators momentarily with nothing to do; economists of all persuasions--including the many who are paid to shill for the market--with no choice but to agree that...

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em: ... the Reform Party came up with the United Alternative conference ... to establish a conservative challenge ...
January 1, 1999... During its first decade, the Reform Party of Canada endured no end of humiliation. People laughed at its ambitious plans to invade Ottawa and purify Canada's Babylon-by-the-Rideau. Jokes about the party's hillbilly pedigree abounded. A series...

Skull is made of such thin bone: in Burma, the riot police do not use pepper spray ... they wield their weapons to crack open heads.
January 1, 1999... The events described in this essay took place in Rangoon, Burma, in early December 1996. Karen Connelly was subsequently blacklisted by the Burmese regime and denied a visa to re-enter the country. She will return to the border in 1999. ...

Great trade-off (despite calls for sanctions and its association with the heroin trade, Canadian investment in Burma is largely unrestricted).
January 1, 1999... In 1997, Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's deposed democratic leader and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, asked students at American University to "please use your liberty to promote ours" and to "take a principled stand against companies doing...

Christians versus the unions: ... the Christian Labour Association of Canada likes to talk about its own improved brand of labour relations ...
January 1, 1999... THE MOOD OF LABOUR RELATIONS IN ONTARIO WAS many things in the fall of 1995, but non-confrontational is not a word that comes to mind. Premier Mike Harris had just pushed through Bill 7, which, among other things, repealed many of the...

There's no place like home: the headline in the Cape Breton paper screamed "poisonous yellow ooze coming out of the ground" ...
January 1, 1999... "...after two decades of focusing my work on aspects of Cape Breton history and experience, I left home with a baggage of insecurities I didn't know I carried until I set off for...the larger world. I mention this because I know these feelings...

Somewhere running.
January 1, 1999... TOGETHER PERHAPS THEY ARE TOGETHER in and out of the image one stopping at a distance from the other which would account for the absence of one the one woman who appeared later in the image before the artist who might not have noticed her...

Slumming it at the rodeo: the cultural roots of Canada's right-wing evolution.
January 1, 1999... GORDON LAIRD By now, the Reform Party and its kin (cousin Ralph and cousin Mike) are easy targets. They're loud, they dress badly, and they say stupid things. Like your least-loved knucklehead uncle, the neocons are essentially parody...

1999 calendar of Harrisees: Ontario in the dark age of Mike Harris.
January 1, 1999... Hear ye, faire townspeople, hear ye! The greate and fearsome change of these tymes cometh! Hath thee a fyne parchment to marketh the dayes? Well, fear not, humble citizens and goodly folke--have we got a calendar for ye. Artist Jim Miller and...

Pas de chance.
January 1, 1999... If I'm a really, really nice writer and say my prayers every night, the fairies will reward me by publishing my unworthy scribbles in a PAS DE CHANCE book. Run by artist and mad bookbinder Ian Phillips, Pas de Chance is a fetish house for...

Music (the Quebec band Lili Fatale is underrecognized in English Canada).
January 1, 1999... In another vainglorious attempt to define what's wrong with Canada, we offer the example of LILI FATALE. The Montreal pop group has everything going for it, except the mixed blessing of the Queen's English. Blondie tribute riffs, sweet,...

Golden boy (finance minister Paul Martin's announcement that mergers would not be allowed runs counter to the privileges generally accorded banks).
January 1, 1999... Brian Steck could have just been having a bad Monday morning. Or maybe the vice-chair of the Bank of Montreal and CEO of investment dealer subsidiary Nesbitt Burns Inc. was having a delayed reaction to the findings of the Ianno report, which...