This Magazine articles from March 1999

This Magazine archives from March 1999

My banker, my priest (financial institutions acquire moral authority).
March 1, 1999... Last Christmas, I received a gracious letter from my bank. Issued by the Loan Forgiveness Department, it declared that the Ministry of Education and Training had "forgiven" a portion of my student loan. Apparently, the Ministry would send the...

Wrestlemania '99 (the election of David Orchard and Jesse Ventura proves there is room in government for non-professional politicians).
March 1, 1999... One is a gay-positive ex-wrestler who bodyslammed his way into the hearts of disillusioned voters, pinning America's two-party system to the mat. The other is a strong-jawed Saskatchewan farmer and fiery free-trade foe who made Tory...

World according to Ted (Turner) (the billionaire philanthropist puts his mouth where his money is).
March 1, 1999... Write 'em, cowboy. When U.S. media mogul Ted Turner decided to share $1 billion of his wealth with the United Nations, he obviously felt he'd bought the right to share his pearls of wisdom with us as well. In TV interviews and speeches, Ted has...

Loan rangers (Bill C-36 would deprive student debtors of bankruptcy protection).
March 1, 1999... You know those freeloading students--suckling merrily at the fatted sow of the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP) and never giving anything back. The MPs who voted in Bill C-36 sure do: their changes to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act make...

Flirting with disaster (population growth results in strain on the world's natural resources).
March 1, 1999... You can't stop the rain. Each year natural disasters stalk us, leaving bitter reminders. In 1998 we saw record high temperatures cause drought and wildfires; Hurricane Mitch's Caribbean travels killed more than 20,000 people; and floods in...

Comrade country: for years we've fretted about America's undue influence over our country - when it's Sovietization we should really be fearing ...
March 1, 1999... I am someone who has spent, I confess, an inordinate amount of time being concerned about the Americanization of Canada. Can you blame me? The worst of U.S. popular culture hogs our space on newsstands and airwaves; our homeless line up for a...

Mining your business: banks have always wanted to know how much money we have. Now, they can also tell how and where we're likely to spend it ...
March 1, 1999... It's the middle-class moment of truth: two people have applied for a mortgage, one a machinist from Lindsay, Ontario, the other an employee at a high-tech firm in downtown Toronto. Both earn $50,000 a year, and both are applying for the same...

Can a ballpark figure? In just 10 years, Toronto's SkyDome went from World's Greatest Entertainment Centre to bust - and taxpayers paid ...
March 1, 1999... It was the final indignity for "the World's Greatest Entertainment Centre." Last October, after a roller-coaster 10-year history that included a delayed opening, millions of dollars of debt, and a cut-rate sale by the Ontario government to...

Dawn of a new dome? (the Blue Jays might very well look for a new stadium in the near future as a result of the SkyDome's revenue loss).
March 1, 1999... When revenues from a stadium begin to wane, sports tradition is to demand a new one, whether the old facility is a century old or has barely had time for its concrete to set. Why should the Blue Jays think any differently? Surely, the Jays...

SkyDome, then and now.
March 1, 1999... 1969-75: Various proposals are floated to build a publicly financed domed stadium to attract a major-league baseball team to Toronto. All meet significant public opposition, and none are seriously pursued. 1975: City spends $18 million to...

Who needs NAC? ... if feminists don't start asking some tough questions ... we may end up leaving our women's movement in the hands of its critics.
March 1, 1999... TRUST THE B.C. REPORT TO RUN WITH IT. IN "WEANING NACSOW from the federal trough," a sweepingly inaccurate pice that appeared in that righter-than-right publication, writer Joe Woodard declares: "It took about 10 years but Ottawa has apparently...

Tracking NAC.
March 1, 1999... September, 1970 The Royal Commission on the Status of Women releases its call to action reporting on discrimination against women in Canada. This is big news in 1970, when a woman still needs her husband's permission to get a Bay card. ...

Food fight: low costs, no unions: that's the secret of Sobeys' success. It's also the ... chain's key weapon against the wave of big-box stores ...
March 1, 1999... Among union organizers, they're called the "flying squad" of Sobeys--a precision troupe of businessmen in suits, skilled in union-busting as performance art. Everyone from deli clerks to store managers in the family-run grocery chain's Atlantic...

Watermelon row.
March 1, 1999... SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4. He beat the hell out of her. Before, the other times, he managed to control himself. A short, measured elbow to the gut. Sharp, quick twists of her wrist. Half-nelson games of uncle. At worst an open palm, just a little...

Grounds.
March 1, 1999... (EXCERPT) from Fresh Coffee, a work-in-progress FROM Grounds 5 c. i didn't want to see the president blush or his eyes dart back and forth like fish caught in a poison spill. one last breath brings you to the...

Where words like monarchs fly.
March 1, 1999... Let's play a word game. I'll say Mexican poetry and you say the first three words that pop into your head. If your list begins with tequila and ends with bull-fight, go find WHERE WORDS LIKE MONARCHS FLY (Anvil Press), a new collection of...

Great peace.
March 1, 1999... When I was in Grade 6, Mrs. McCready taught us all about "the Indians": a happy people who ate racoons, made slippers out of porcupine quills and politely died off just in time to make way for white people from France. But let's not blame the...

Collect call to Ma Bell (a plan to sell operators' jobs to an American call centre is an outrageous instance of corporate greed).
March 1, 1999... Not since Rogers Cable tried negative billing last year has a corporation's policy sparked as much consumer outrage as Bell Canada's plan to sell off its operators' jobs to a low-rent American call centre giant. Effective March 31, Bell will...

Do not resuscitate (unemployment insurance) surplus destined for transplant.
March 1, 1999... In 1990, 75 per cent of Canada's unemployed workers were able to count on unemployment insurance benefits. Successive cuts throughout the 1990s culminated in the passing of Bill C-12 in 1996 and the change to the hours-based Employment...

Untold story.
March 1, 1999... I wrote a little article For the Left-Wing Daily News The editor perused it And let me know his views: "The arguments are excellent The style is clear and strong But, sorry, here's the bottom line: Your article's...

Impossible balance (a middle way between treating youth as responsible and giving them the support needed for success is necessary).
March 1, 1999... Lori Palano is currently working with the `decorations committees' in Filipino co-ops. I think it is time to ask (yet again) what are we supposed to do about "the youth"? Not the youth in gangs on the streets, not the youth joining...

Organize or die (downsizing and outsourcing are blamed for the decline in the proportion of unionized workers in the labour force).
March 1, 1999... Geoff Bickerton is CD's commentator on national labour issues. He lives in Ottawa. In the labour movement there is an expression: "Organize of Die". Judging from recent numbers released by Labour Canada, a new emphasis on organizing is...

Behind closed doors -- (and the feds want to keep it that way) (secrecy envelopes Revenue Canada's tax decisions affecting the wealthy).
March 1, 1999... Each year when the Auditor General's report is re leased the country's attention is focussed on ways in which our government has overspent, providing recommendations on how our government could do better. The report in 1996 was different. It...

U.S. war against the people of Iraq.
March 1, 1999... At the end of 1998, the United States once again rained bombs on the people of Iraq. But even when the bombs stop falling, the US war against the people of Iraq continues through the harsh economic sanctions. This is a call to action to end the...

Is the party over? (Debating the future of the left and the NDP).
March 1, 1999... In a recent issue of This Magazine, Sam Gindin, Assistant to the President of the CAW, published an article on a hotly-debated topic within the CAW: the new direction of the NDP. Titled "The Party's Over," Gindin's piece begins by casting a...

The Party's over. Where do we go from here? Many of us have been involved in coalition politics since the early 1980s ... What has it gotten us?
March 1, 1999... Several years ago Jim Fyfe of the West Australian Greens traveled across Canada and stopped in Regina where he had a long discussion with our local red-green political group. The main thrust of his argument was that feminists,...

Good plan: is now the time? (the New Democratic Party considers new strategy).
March 1, 1999... I like Sam's proposal. It's the sort of thing I've advocated for some years, but timing is all important and I think the broad Left could be ripe for it now. Recent developments in the NDP have cleared the way--although the NDP has long ago...

For me, the Party ended years ago (the New Democratic Party has foresaken its socialist principles).
March 1, 1999... The Party was over for me about ten years ago. I was an activist in the NDP during the 1980's. I never really believed that the NDP would bring us socialism but I figured that its support in Parliament on progressive issues was critical to...

NDP and its discontents: for a movement of solidarity, the Left is notoriously divisive.
March 1, 1999... If the NDP discredits itself utterly and completely, it is also likely to discredit any alternative to itself. A new party will be viewed as just more of the same--and might well be. Even someone as disaffected with the NDP as Sam Gindin...

Green jobs could just be the answer.
March 1, 1999... As the politics of globalization unfolds, we all recog nize the need to develop serious alternatives. There has been lots of work done in challenging the corporate goals of unlimited free trade, deregulation and privatization. But to date we...

Beyond Peppergate: why the RCMP's performance at APEC may lead to larger uestions and deeper scrutiny.
March 1, 1999... The spotlight that has been turned toward the RCMP treatment of protesters at the last year's APEC leaders' summit in Vancouver has begun to raise concern among academics and activists about other RCMP operations. At "SprAyPEC," the RCMP...

Riot police bloody protesters at anti-(Jean) Chretien demo.
March 1, 1999... Close to 2,000 demonstrators gathered at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Vancouver last December 8 to protest a $400-per-plate fundraiser for Canada's governing Liberal Party. The focus of the demonstration was Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who was...

Revoking corporate charters.
March 1, 1999... Activists and lawyers in Canada and the United States are dusting off old statutes that have been largely forgotten--laws that give the government the power to dissolve a corporation which acts against the public interest. The laws allow...

Canada loses freedom of speech.
March 1, 1999... 1998 marked the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first international affirmation of the principal rights and freedoms necessary for every individual--irrespective of religion, race, colour,...

Globalization in a regional context.
March 1, 1999... In the spring of 1995, NDP Aboriginal Affairs minister - and United Church clergyman - John Cashore made a speech to Vancouver businessmen which was startling in its implications. Cashore declared that a "new era" had dawned in relations...

New Brigadistas: you just don't hear about Nicaragua anymore.
March 1, 1999... The neon lights are gentle in the twilight and the mercury lamps are pale and beautiful... And the red star of a radio tower is as lovely as Venus in Managua in the evening sky and an Esso advertisement is like the moon......

Mitch erases 20 years of development: devastation hits children hardest.
March 1, 1999... Tragedy has hit Nicaragua once again--Hurricane Mitch has brought rampant devastation to the country. The United Nations estimates that development has now been set back 20 years. Thousands of people died, and billions of dollars in damage was...

Russian "communists" bend to anti-semitism.
March 1, 1999... The setting could have been Germany in the 1930s. Over a period of about a month, a well-known parliamentary deputy claimed that "Yids" were responsible for the country's economic problems and should be rounded up and jailed; vowed before media...

Origins of post-modernity.
March 1, 1999... by Henry Heller BOOK REVIEW: The Origins of Post-Modernity (London, Verso Books, 1998) Perry Anderson The decline of the appeal of the Marxist ideology is an important aspect of the late twentieth century. Marxism's ability to attract...

Promesse.
March 1, 1999... A Film Review by Louis Proyect When we first meet Igor (Jeremie Renier), a teen-aged garage mechanic, he is stealing the wallet of an elderly woman whose car he is servicing. That act would seem to define the essential immorality of La...

Nurture assumption.
March 1, 1999... Review by Mary Soderstrom Judith Rich Harris's The Nurture Assumption (New York: The Free Press, 1998) has all the makings of a dangerous book. As presented by the media, it is a marvelous justification for middle-class parents to buy...

Argentina te asesina. Todos Tus Muertos.
March 1, 1999... Review by Doug Brunell It should come as no surprise that the title of Todos Tus Muertos' new CD, Argentina Te Asesina, translates into "Argentina Will Kill Ya". After all, Argentina isn't known for its friendly police force and benign...

Politics of cancer revisited.
March 1, 1999... by Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. East Ridge Press, 770 pp., $52.90; $33.25 (paper) It has been 20 years since the release of Dr. Epstein's book The Politics of Cancer. That book exposed and indicted the cancer establishment for...

Jolt.
March 1, 1999... What are they on about on that talk show? Oh battered women That tired story You've been there done that You're okay now The imprints have long ago peeled off you like old skin rolled off by the whimsical water hose...

Buffalo hunters.
March 1, 1999... The rims of my eyeglasses cross my plain of vision and I see things moving there, I imagine them--buffalo, pintos, paints, travois, appaloosas, dogs, tobacco, teepees, men in buckskin, Gabriel Dumont, ...

Joe's father, killed on the job.
March 1, 1999... There'll be a check but it won't be your father; there'll be a tightening of company regulations, but they can't be backdated and won't be enough anyhow; there'll be a tear in the eye of his boss but an...

My Christian mechanic.
March 1, 1999... a good man starts to talk about the Promise Keepers a moment I've dreaded since I began to bring my car to him. Today it is the axle. He is under the car. I say I do not want to be in heaven forever with...

Wobblie in Copper Harbour remembers four men who died.
March 1, 1999... Once plentiful, sturgeon piled on bleached docks like cordwood were left in sun long enough for their fat to dry then brought aboard the steamboats and burned below boilers. Black ash would float above the white-caps of Lake...

Waging war on miners.
March 1, 1999... Doug Smith is a selfproclaimed symbolic manipulator. About time, I thought, as I read the Report on Business headline announcing that "Rules governing miners coming soon, regulators say." The Canadian mining industry is far too dangerous....