This Magazine articles from January 2003

This Magazine archives from January 2003

Iraq and ruin. (Under The Hood).(fallout of Gulf War, 1990-1991)
January 1, 2003... IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN A DECADE SINCE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH FOUGHT THE "mother of all battles" against Saddam Hussein. In January 1991, an American-led ground blitz lasted a mere 100 hours and succeeded in obliterating everything but the Iraqi...

Indirect action. (Salvo).(activism)(Column)
January 1, 2003... YO REVOLUTIONARY. I'VE BEEN WATCHING you. Seen your Che baby-T stretched salaciously across your B12-deficient booty. Heard you rhyme Pinochet with CIA. Tasted your "no WTO" vegan chili. Watched you convene--reciting awkward renditions of...

Pill pushers. (Red-Handed).(advertising law and the pharmaceutical industry)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... THE CANADIAN FOOD AND DRUG ACT KEEPS pharmaceutical ad execs on a pretty tight leash. Direct-to-consumer ads aren't allowed to make any link between the name of a drug and the condition it treats. But craftier companies have found new ways...

Slurring your words? (Lexicon).(politically correct and incorrect expressions)
January 1, 2003... STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES, BUT CALL ME A KIKE AND I'll smash your face in. We all know that's a bad one, but what about those other expressions that cause us to trip over our politically correct tongues? Common expressions with...

Get organized. (How-To).(forming a union)
January 1, 2003... HATE YOUR JOB? DREAM OF LONGER VACAtions, reasonable workloads, bigger paycheques and a little respect? Well, you can have all this and more--and you don't even have to quit. In Canada, there are two sets of rules around the workplace. One...

The new drug war. (Sign Of The Times).(Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate looks into possible use of psychoactive drugs in handling protestors)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... TRANQUILIZERS HAVE LONG KEPT SUBURbanites from cracking under the daily stress of consumer capitalism. Now American authorities are planning to use them to "crack" down on pesky protestors. U.S. citizens' group The Sunshine Project has...

Growing concerns. (Up Next).(plant biotechnology and genetically modified food)
January 1, 2003... FAR FROM PUBLIC VIEW, AN EPIDEMIC OF little-noticed biotech accidents is raising alarm about the safety of genetically modified (GM) food. The latest mishaps occurred in Iowa and Nebraska, where U.S. food and agriculture officials have launched...

Military budget boosters. (In The House).(the politics behind planned military budget)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2003... AS THE FEDS DRAW UP THE NEW BUDGET, the forces for re-arming Canada's dilapidated military are gathering. In May, the Commons defence committee recommended a spending hike of roughly 40% in the short term, and more than 100% in the longer term....

Consuming passions. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2003... Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter's critique of popular anti-consumerism is right on ("The rebel sell," Nov/Dec), but still falls short of recognizing the real reasons we can't stop shopping. They suggest, for example, that the scourge of excess...

Sexy shirts? (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2003... In the latest issue, Julie Crysler wrote a glorious Salvo piece ("Take back the knit?" Nov/Dec) about the trouble with girlie feminism. She was bang on when she argued that women should be "reclaiming things that are a little more dangerous...

Sesame speaks out. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2003... It's really unfortunate that your readers were exposed to such a negative, skewed view of Sesame Workshop in Danielle Egan's article "Sesame Street sells out" (Sept/Oct). Sesame Workshop, which was founded more than 30 years ago, has built...

Who's this.
January 1, 2003... Aaron Freeman is an Ottawa-based NGO consultant and a columnist with the Hill Times. Jeremy Gans recently completed his internship at THIS Magazine. He is currently freelancing in Toronto, although his grandmother is wondering when he will...

Out of Africa: travelling through Africa, Mel Watkins learns how strange it is to be a tourist in a place so many citizens want to leave. (Foreign Affairs).
January 1, 2003... AT THE FRANKFURT AIRPORT THE PASSENGERS, mostly black, are waiting to board a flight to Accra. The flight is overbooked and people are being upgraded to business class. My wife Kelly Crichton and I, the whites closest to the counter, are...

Celebrity spin: elevating ordinary people to star status is a growing trend in indie culture. But does treating average joes like matinee idols really undermine the cult of personality--or reinforce it? (Culture).(independent magazines deconstruct the idea of fame)
January 1, 2003... "SOMETIMES THE AUTHORS OF THE NOTES don't always paint themselves in the best light" jokes Davy Rothbart. On stage, the lanky redhead pulls another crumbled sheet of paper out of a considerable stack. He reads a rant that ends, "Why would I...

Leftout: even though millions of workers of colour want the protection unions provide, they're still under-represented in labour's rank and file. But, as Sabitri Ghosh reports, failing to organize the growing--and increasingly non-white--contingent labour market, could have disastrous consequences for the union movement as a whole.
January 1, 2003... A CANADIAN FLAG SALUTES PASSERSBY FROM atop 224 Wallace Street, alternately slackening and snapping to attention in the cheerless fall wind. It marks the domain of Dominion Hosiery Mills. The factory takes up the entire second level of the...

I chink therefore I am: Canasian comedian Kate Rigg takes bigot's words right out of their mouths.
January 1, 2003... WHEN WOLFGANG ARNEHEIM CALLED ME A chink in grade three, I punched him. My mother always told me that if anyone called me a name I should "punch them in the nose" My mom is what's known as an Indo-thug from a proud line of Bataks who, legend...

Am I Racist? Test your racial sensitivity quotient (RQ).
January 1, 2003... Ever since Trudeau passed that damn Multiculturalism Act, getting along with our multicoloured neighbours has become risky business. It used to be only Archie Bunker and men in white sheets were racist. These days, a slip of the tongue or using...

Remembering anti-racism: can identity politics make a comeback? Raghu Krishnan reflects on the lessons of the last decade.(Column)
January 1, 2003... A FEW MONTHS BEFORE MY 20TH BIRTHDAY IN 1987, I scrawled "No Sandinista ever called me Paki" on the back of a Viva Nicaragua Libre T-shirt and wore it proudly around the University of Toronto campus. I was inspired by photos of black Vietnam...

The spirit of Haida Gwaii: last spring, the Haida launched a Supreme Court case claiming title to the Queen Charlotte Islands. Then something interesting happened: the local loggers took their side. Chris Tenove and Brooke McDonald report on an emerging partnership that has the potential to reshape aboriginal politics in British Columbia and beyond.
January 1, 2003... LAST JUNE, A GATHERING WAS HELD AT THE deceptively named Small Hall, a community building in the tiny coastal village of Skidegate. The island delicacy of herring roe and sea kelp, or k'aaw, was set out along with hundreds of pounds of Chinook...

Ten recollections of Theo Jones. (Fiction).(Interview)(Short Story)
January 1, 2003... I. LAST SCHOOL In the library of my last school there was a little room that sold second-hand books. It was a pet project of one of the profs at the college, a German dude who taught a course in Renaissance English poetry. He had an office...

Salt Fish Girl.(Book Review)
January 1, 2003... Our public institutions are crumbling--witness the debacle of P3 schools in Nova Scotia, privatized hydro and hospitals on the horizon in Ontario. The whole country's going to hell in a handbasket, or at least in a pocketbook. In these...

Zines. (Cultural worker: a random review of alternative culture).(periodical Big Boots)
January 1, 2003... Perhaps it's best to let BIG BOOTS describe itself: "A zine about resistance on paper, about the power of silent words and art to inspire change, about women of colour reclaiming their voices and telling their own stories." This bold mandate is...

Music. (Cultural worker: a random review of alternative culture).(Internet radio)
January 1, 2003... When your FM dial is full of pop tarts, your AM dial full of mindless chatter and your campus station is re-broadcasting Clubs and Groups Day, sweet salvation can be found with a click of the mouse. One of the cool things about internet radio...

Art. (Cultural worker: a random review of alternative culture).(Yahgulanaas Michael Nicoll)
January 1, 2003... ABOUT A YEAR AGO, THE OWNER OF A MULTILINGUAL BOOKSTORE IN Vancouver cornered me. He was brandishing a copy of a thin, illustration-heavy book and commanding me to read it. I did and it knocked my socks off. Published by Theytus, a small...

Colour blind? Dr. Mahazir Banaji reveals the racist within. (Free Thinker).(Interview)
January 1, 2003... YOU MAY THINK YOU AREN'T PREJUDICED, BUT THE RESEARCH of Dr. Mahazin Banaji and her collegues at Yale shows that most of us have unconscious beliefs that are quite different from our conscious values. The Implicit Association Test reveals that...