Headlines for Wednesday, May 27th

NYM warrior arrested on 7 year old charges

A Native Youth Movement statement has reported that Shark, a member of the NYM Warrior Society, has been arrested on 7-year-old charges.

He is... being held... in the Kamloops Regional Correctional Center, facing charges stemming from protecting Secwepemc mountains, Skwelkwek'welt.  Since 2000, Secwepemc people have been taking direct action to stop Sun Peaks [Resort Corporation] from destroying Skwelkwekwelt, their Hunting, Berry Picking & Medicine Mountains.

Saskatoon cab drivers locked out for protesting management racism

In Saskatoon, libcom.org is reporting that

At least 25 taxi drivers... have been suspended by United Cabs after raising allegations of racism and discrimination by their employer at a demonstration [on] Wednesday [the 13th]. The company denies the allegations and says it moved to lock out the employees for a wildcat strike.

 

Around 50 drivers, mostly of Pakistani descent, gathered Wednesday night at a parking lot near the airport to raise concerns about alleged verbal abuse by company managers and to protest the firing of a co-worker.

 

The drivers took to the streets again [the next day], eventually moving their protest inside the lobby of City Hall, where they stood waiting for several hours while demanding a meeting with Mayor Don Atchison.

 

“People decided to get together and demonstrate and get their voices heard so their rights wouldn't be violated,” said Fawad Muzaffar, 33, a United driver who was suspended Thursday.

“This treatment of locking people out (for) making a legal demonstration is not fair,” he said.

 

The cab drivers allege one of the company's managers has verbally abused many of the Pakistani and other South Asian employees with racial slurs.

 

[The United Cabs General Manager] said any comments perceived to be racist were the result of a “misunderstanding” from a manager who “may have said some things that (the Pakistani drivers) may have found offensive.”

Teacher's aide cuts off First Nations child's hair

In Thunder Bay, a mother demanding answers after her seven-year-old son's long hair.  According to the CBC,

His mother said staff at McKellar Park Central Public School were aware her son was letting his hair grow so that he could take part in traditional First Nations dancing.

The Globe and Mail quoted the boy's mother as saying

“The hair is a symbol of our strength, our heritage and the culture of our family. She took it away from him.”

Cutting the hair of First Nations children was standard procedure in Canada's residential schools, which had as their task the assimilation of all indigenous people.  They operated for over 150 years, from the 1840s to the closure of the last school in 1996.

Hamilton cops compare anarchist book fair, 2010 resistance to hate crimes

The Ontario provincial anarchist organization Common Cause issued a press release on Sunday saying they

fear Hamilton police are seeking to criminalize local organizers after a Hamilton police report identified the 2nd annual Hamilton Anarchist Book Fair as a potential source of hate crime.

While presenting the Year-End Hate Crime report to the Hamilton Police Board on May 19, acting sergeant Michael Goch stated police would be “actively monitoring” the book fair scheduled to take place on June 6.

Common Cause says that

This is a manipulation of hate crime laws to criminalize activism. At this time of economic and environmental crisis, alongside increasing political disengagement, activism and educational events such as the book fair should be encouraged, not chilled with surveillance.

Hamilton launches ABC

Anarchists in Hamilton are also announcing the creation of a chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross, or ABC, a prison abolition and prisoner support group, and an on-line newsletter.  There are now active Canadian ABC chapters in at least Winnipeg, Calgary, Halifax, Hamilton, and Toronto.

Vancouver passes open city legislation

The ‘open city’ legislation we mentioned last week on Black Mask has passed.  CBC reports that

Vancouver city council has endorsed the principles of making its data open and accessible to everyone where possible, adopting open standards for that data and considering open source software when replacing existing applications.

For example, [said city councillor Andrea Reimer,] videos made at city hall, including videos of council meetings, are currently in a proprietary format that cannot be posted on YouTube. They can only be viewed on the City of Vancouver website by people who have the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer. She expects that to change.

Canada to sell arms to Pakistan

Canada is thinking of lifting the 11-year-old embargo on the sale of military technology to Pakistan, and restart training Pakistani militiary officers.  Defence Minister Peter MacKay made the announcement in a phone interview from Islamabad.

This comes as the Pakistani military has launched a military offensive that has resulted in the internal displacement of 1.5 million people since the start of this month.  Pakistan says the operation aims to clear the northern part of the country of the Taliban.   Pakistani bloggers have called for the Pakistani government to be held accountable for the people displaced, and question why the goverment hasn't let journalists into the area.

The Toronto Star quoted a western diplomat as saying that “there's the concern over whether Canadian-made weapons could be used for human-rights abuses [in Pakistan].”

Canadian copyright recommendations report was plagiarized

BoingBoing.net reports that

The Conference Board of Canada — a supposedly independent think tank that took Canadian tax-money to produce a report on the “Digital Economy” that plagiarized press-materials from the US copyright lobby — ignored conflicting evidence that an independent legal expert produced after they paid him to investigate the subject.

 

In other words, they went into this project knowing what conclusions they wanted to draw, and ignored everyone — even their own researchers — who had anything different to say.

Michael Geist tells us

A review of the report finds that the only arguments that the Conference Board seems to have adopted come directly from the International Intellectual Property Alliance, since it is their work (and words) that are recycled repeatedly in the report.

The Conference Board of Canada says it stands by the report.

Judge reviewing Pirate Bay trial bias is removed — for bias

In other copyright news, Wired is reporting that

The judge assigned to review whether the trial judge in the Pirate Bay trial was biased has now been removed — for bias.

The original judge was revealed after the verdict to have been a member of organizations tied to the Swedish copyright lobby.  The judge charged to investigate whether a retrial was warranted has been outed as a member of the same organizations.

Physician says Haitian political prisoner should be hospitalized

In Haiti, political prisoner Ronald Dauphin, who has been imprisoned without trial for 5 years, was allowed a visit by a physician on 2 May.  An article by Joe Emersberger on HaitiAnalysis.com reports that

The physician concluded that Dauphin should be immediately hospitalized.  He was illegally seized by armed paramilitaries on March 1, 2004—the day after the democratically elected government of Jean Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in a coup.

Scientology on trial in France

The BBC says

The Church of Scientology has gone on trial in the French capital, Paris, accused of organised fraud.

 

The case centres on a complaint by a woman who says she was pressured into paying large sums of money after being offered a free personality test.

 

France regards Scientology as a sect, not a religion, and the organisation could be banned if it loses the case.

Israel considers banning calls for an end to Israel as a Jewish state

Two new bills being considered in Israel will jeopardise the rights of Palestinian Israelis, according to Aljazeera's senior political analyst Lamis Andoni.  She said that

"It is considered a prelude to the expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs as advocated by many Israeli leaders."

 

The Israeli parliament has passed a preliminary reading of a bill that would mandate the imprisonment of anyone who calls for the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

 

The bill is part of two draft laws.

 

The first is the Loyalty Oath Law that obliges all Palestinian Israelis to pledge allegiance to the Jewish identity of the state.

 

The second is the Nakba Law, which bans commemoration of the 1948 dispossession of the Palestinians as a result of the creation of Israel.

World's oldest blogger dies at 97

Slashdot is reporting that

a Spanish woman who is thought to be the world's oldest blogger has died in Muxia, the northern coastal town where she was born on December 23, 1911. María Amelia López's posts, which chronicled her civil war memories, failing health, left-wing views, and cantankerous humor, attracted a global following and more than 500 readers have left tribute messages on her site after her family published a final post to announce her death.

Review: No Girls Allowed

This week, we're presenting what I hope will be the start of a new trend on Black Mask.  Reviews of recent books and other works.  This week's review is of a new graphic novel called No Girls Allowed, and comes from boingboing.net

Susan Hughes and Willow Dawson's graphic novel No Girls Allowed: Tales of Daring Women Dressed as Men for Love, Freedom and Adventure tells the story of six real-life historical woman heroes who defied the limits society put on them because of their gender, dressing as men and kicking ass (there are seven stories in total, but one of them, Mu-Lan, is likely mythological).

 

It's a great and inspiring read intended for young adults, and it runs from 1470BCE (the Egyptian Pharoah Hatshepsut) to the mid-1800s, and the stories will appeal to anyone who revels in tales of people who overcome the unfair limits others place on them. No Girls Allowed ties the quest for gender equality in with stories of racial and economic injustice, as with the amazing story of James Barry, a woman who lived her whole life as a man, becoming a young army surgeon who went on to lead controversial reform movements in South Africa and Canada, standing up for what was right in the face of punishment and even though she had so much to lose.