This Magazine articles from May 2001

This Magazine archives from May 2001

Profitting from repression (in Colombia).
May 1, 2001... SINCE 1990, COLOMBIA HAS WITNESSED A horrific escalation of political violence. Over the last decade, some 35,000 Colombians have been killed, two million have been internally displaced and about 3,000 have disappeared. The conflict in...

Freedom 25: (we should retire first, then work after we're thirty).
May 1, 2001... I GUESS I SHOULD BE GLAD I SPENT MY 25TH year in a pointless, unchallenging job, working for a company that I had no vested interest in. It gave me a chance to think. Maybe it happened on one of my unnecessary trips to check the mail in...

Smoggy math: (Ontario Power Generation claims its air emissions are down by 60%).
May 1, 2001... IF YOU BELIEVE THE ONTARIO POWER GENERATION (OPG) ads that ran in major newspapers last fall, its air emissions are down by 60%. If you ask the Ontario Clean Air Alliance (OCAA), OPG needs to brush up on basic arithmetic. OPG's own figures show...

Difference between left and wrong.
May 1, 2001... IF DAVID LEWIS IS LOOKING DOWN ON OUR fair nation from some social democratic paradise in the sky, he must be scratching his head. In 1972, Lewis headed up the NDP and ran for federal election on an anti-corporate welfare bum platform, railing...

You say tomato.
May 1, 2001... POLL AFTER POLL SAYS THE SAME THING: THE vast majority of Canadians want more public spending to support health care, education and housing. But our government and corporate elite just can't seem to figure out how to fit all that spending into...

Dirty uniforms? (Are Quebec police uniforms being produced in the sweatshops of Burma?).
May 1, 2001... ARE YOUR TAX DOLLARS HELPING TO PROP UP the Burmese junta? That's what the Canadian Labour Congress was trying to find out when it posted a cable from the U.S. embassy in Burma on its website in March. The document refers to an American tourist...

How-to light up your life: (solar power).
May 1, 2001... FOR ME, SOLAR POWER CONJURES UP AN IMAGE of a furry straw bale shack and a large patch of swiss chard. I am mentally transported back three decades, to a time when the dream of self-sufficiency meant moving to a hillside beyond the city hum and...

Anti-novelist: Ken Sparling is faced with an interesting dilemma. He's a talented writer who loves to - and needs to - express himself through the written word ...
May 1, 2001... WHERE SHOULD WE BEGIN? THE MIDDLE, Spading would probably tell me. Why waste time? Just get right to it. So, okay, I call Ken Spading. I say: What's this I hear about you self-publishing your next book? I say: Don't do it...

Crooked blue line: in the last 10 years, the battle over Quebec's drug trade has claimed more than 150 lives ... the new anti-gang legislation on the table could actually make Quebec's biker problem worse.
May 1, 2001... Two blocks up from the St. Lawrence River, just outside the spring flood zone, in the Montreal suburb of Chateauguay is a non-descript 1960s--style bungalow. It was probably the last place police expected to find the headquarters of northern...

Weight of evidence.
May 1, 2001... TESTIMONY: My taxi driver's first, offhanded question as he pulls away from the international airport in Phnom Penh is "When do you want to see the Killing Fields?" Cambodia. Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot. The Killing Fields. Everyone who...

Public relations nightmare: ... today, corporate communications is better described as corporate counterinsurgency, online espionage, intrusive infiltration ...
May 1, 2001... SECURITY IS TIGHT AT THE POINT, SONY ELECTRONIC'S NEWEST STATE-of-the art facility in the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo. Past the perfectly manicured palm trees, planted in a colourful garden bed that surrounds the four-storey building, a...

Not playing: Canadian films... could screen quotas do the same thing for our homegrown filmmakers (as they did for the music industry).
May 1, 2001... "DAMMIT. EVERYBODY SHOULD BE LOOKING TO GET IN ON the action this summer. There will be cheap gear, cheap actors, cheap crew. More access to locations. We should be gearing up for that now, Rob. Come to think of it, why aren't we?" Jonathan...

Light and death.
May 1, 2001... To start, more recent treasons: the misspent energy of a smile at the wrong stranger; a rumble in the garden behind the clutch of lilacs; roamy branches scrumming on the tree. The tiny juniper scowling in the...

Patricia's legs.
May 1, 2001... YOU PICK UP THE PHONE AND HEAR HER VOICE AND YOU FEEL HER LEGS around you again. You close your eyes because fine blonde hairs shimmer up and down Patricia's legs. The hairs are catching light above a tan that deepens in your memory. You feel...

(Tijuana Bibles are a Toronto-based surf/punk/wrestle-rocker music group).
May 1, 2001... MUSIC Let's get ready to rumble! Toronto-based surf/punk/wrestle-rockers the TIJUANA BIBLES are gonna power-slam you harder than Hulk Hogan. The Bibles are Buddy Lee Roth on drums and vocals, La Felina Negra on sax and percussion,...

(Website www.Saskabush.com is an authentic document of Western alienation).
May 1, 2001... WEB You know that old chestnut about imitation and flattery, well, WWW.SASKABUSH.COM is sincerely obsessed with that Swiftian juggernaut known as The Onion. Saskabush.com isn't quite as polished as its forebearer and the layout is more...

Hamburger Valley, California.
May 1, 2001... BOOKS How does a well-read poet answer the siren call of pop culture? By diving in head-first, to judge by David McGimpsey's HAMBURGER VALLEY, CALIFORNIA (ECW Press). In his third collection of poetry, McGimpsey tears into popular...

250W.
May 1, 2001... ZINES With the decreasing cost of digital cameras and the continuing cachet of Super-8, underground films are quickly becoming the new zines. But that hasn't stopped Vancouver's The Blinding Light!! Cinema from creating 250W -- a brand-new...

Cold comfort.
May 1, 2001... TWO SUMMERS AGO, A POWERFUL HEAT WAVE SETTLED OVER Toronto. The smog wasn't just a yellow-brown halo in the sky, but a thick suffocating blanket that was impossible to shake off. Thirty-five degrees. In the shade. After dark. It was like being...