Tag Archives: Haiti

2011, The Year of Democracy: Haiti and Libya

Aristide has returned to Haiti in the last hour after Canadian troops, US marines and others kidnapped him almost 85 months ago, with Obama trying to impede his return. Bad move. This morning we are also seeing a Libyan cease fire in response to the UN Security Council’s resolution for a no-fly zone in Libya.

While the UN Security Council is usually an anti-democratic, imperialist body, this decision, is an unusual example of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine actually working. Libya is experiencing a grassroots democratic revolution along with many other nations in 2011, the year of democracy.

Haiti will experience the joy of their returned president in the coming days and months.

And there were 3 bald eagles in the Active Pass bald eagle count this morning.

Namaste, world.

Endorsing Alnoor Gova for the Burnaby-Douglas Federal NDP

I am supporting Alnoor Gova to be the next federal NDP candidate in Burnaby-Douglas, and that riding’s next MP.

Seven-year NDP MP Bill Siksay announced in December that he will not run in the next election, which could be called as early as this spring.

So the Burnaby-Douglas NDP is having a nomination convention on February 25 to find a replacement.

The party has approved three candidates to compete for the right to maintain the NDP legacy in that riding: Alnoor GovaSam Schechter and Kennedy Stewart.

Here are the reasons why I am endorsing Alnoor Gova and helping his campaign win the nomination and the general election.

  1. Alnoor’s creativity, insight and policy depth are compelling. Though I have known about Alnoor for quite some time in the COOP Radio circle and through progressive politics around town, I only met him in person last Thursday night at the “Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan” event he helped produce. I found him to have a keen mind. He also has a creative way of engaging in policy issues linking idealism and philosophy to practical ways of addressing national security, citizenship and immigration and basic human rights like universal public healthcare.
  2. Alnoor’s analysis of the political realm is rich. It’s one thing to support the NDP and be appalled with Stephen Harper and quite put off by Michael Ignatieff, but I heartily agree with Alnoor’s sense of how the federal Conservatives and Liberals are working in a de facto coalition to pursue regressive goals that work against the interests of the poorest 95% of Canadians.
  3. Alnoor is a 21st century politician. Despite it actually being the 21st century, not all candidates seem to understand that the post-9/11 world is profoundly different from the 20th century. The highest profile endorser for each of his opponents is a provincial NDP cabinet minister/leader whose greatest political successes were in the 1990s. Today’s world is global, with permeable, dotted-line borders and multi-faceted citizenship. The Burnaby-Douglas riding is emblematic of Canada. It is ethnically diverse with recent immigrants and children and grandchildren of immigrants, of whom many consider Canada to be but one of their homes. People come from all over. They relate to more than one place. They have global sensibilities. Despite this cosmopolitan reality, Canada is becoming a more closed place through divisive policies. Alnoor understands this. He understands what is dangerous about these policies and he will be a powerful voice for opening up Canada to the 21st century world to recover our global reputation as a progressive nation.
  4. Alnoor personally understands the necessity of universal healthcare. A topic dear to my heart is the corporate attack on universal healthcare, and the gaping policy hole from the absence of a national pharmacare and seniors’ care component of medicare. Canadians are being gouged and bankrupted because they have to pay Big Pharma for medicine and cynical real estate speculators for elder care. With our aging population, we cannot abide this attack. Alnoor’s personal commitment to be a part of his parents’ healthcare reflects how he honours our elders. At a time when we are increasingly reminded of the path our elders have carved for us, more of us need to recognize our multi-generational commitments.
  5. Kennedy Stewart’s campaign is not compelling. Not only is his campaign website free of any federal policy priorities, the most compelling argument he seems to be making about why he should be the NDP’s candidate in Burnaby-Douglas is that he was asked to run by the riding executive. His campaign material also states that he will work hard and that he has big shoes to fill. That’s fine, but I can’t see what he would bring to the federal political arena. He also has a healthy body of academic work on municipal politics, but that makes me wonder why he isn’t running to be a municipal politician since that is his academic specialty.
  6. Sam Schechter’s lacks experience in federal political issues. Also a candidate from a municipal background, he was a city councillor in North Vancouver before he moved to Burnaby, while Alnoor has lived in Burnaby for 25 years. And while Sam Schechter does a reasonable job reviewing some key federal NDP party platform ideas on his website, he does not offer much in terms of his own insight into how he would address these federal policy issues.

I have lived in Burnaby-Douglas twice in the last 20 years, having only left several months ago. I found the community to be warm, richly personal, compassionate and progressive. That is much of the reason the NDP has held that seat federally for so long. Another reason has been the high quality of MPs who have served the community so well.

I also know the riding needs a vibrant, passionate advocate for issues that resonate with the people of the riding and all Canadians.

Members of the Burnaby-Douglas NDP will receive candidate information this week and have a chance to see the three candidates at a meeting on February 22 before voting on February 25. I strongly recommend members visit the three candidates’ websites above to learn about what they have to offer and how they plan to be a public servant in the tradition the riding is used to.

Alnoor Gova impresses me most, so I am supporting his campaign and I encourage you to become informed and support him as well.

Live-Blogging “Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan” 2.10.11

Live-blogging Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan starts in a few minutes, below.

Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan

Time: February 10, 2011 from 7pm to 10pm

Location: W2 Storyeum

Website or Map: here

Event Description

Siraat and W2 Community Media Arts Society present a forum on

Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan

• Will pulling Out of Afghanistan end our Occupation?

• What is our Role in Haiti?

• What about our history of Colonialism?

Panel will include:

Yves Engler – Writer and critic on Canada’s Foreign Policy

Wafi Gran – Afghan Political Scientist

Kat Norris – Coast Salish, Nez Perce and Musqueam Elder

Kaye Kerlande – Haitian Community Organizer

Pay what you can • Refreshments served

-Kat Norris, is Coast Salish and Nez Perce & her maternal great great grandmother was from Musqueum. As survivor of the Kuper Island Residential School, she learned to be ashamed of her color and ancestry. At 19 years of age, she became involved with the American Indian Movement Leonard Peltier Defense committee where she learned not only pride but how to organize.

-Yves Engler has been dubbed “one of the most important voices on the Canadian Left today” (Briarpatch magazine) and “in the mould of I. F. Stone” (Globe and Mail). His books have been praised by Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Rick Salutin and many others.

-Wafi Gran is from Afghanistan, he has grown up there, worked for the Afghan Government and the United Nations as well as other non profit organizations.

via Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan – W2: Community Media Arts Vancouver BC.

Live-blog here:

Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan – W2 Storyeum 2.10.11

I will be live-blogging this event tomorrow night:

Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan

Time: February 10, 2011 from 7pm to 10pm

Location: W2 Storyeum

Website or Map: here

Event Description

Siraat and W2 Community Media Arts Society present a forum on

Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan

• Will pulling Out of Afghanistan end our Occupation?

• What is our Role in Haiti?

• What about our history of Colonialism?

Panel will include:

Yves Engler – Writer and critic on Canada’s Foreign Policy

Wafi Gran – Afghan Political Scientist

Kat Norris – Coast Salish, Nez Perce and Musqueam Elder

Kaye Kerlande – Haitian Community Organizer

Pay what you can • Refreshments served

-Kat Norris, is Coast Salish and Nez Perce & her maternal great great grandmother was from Musqueum. As survivor of the Kuper Island Residential School, she learned to be ashamed of her color and ancestry. At 19 years of age, she became involved with the American Indian Movement Leonard Peltier Defense committee where she learned not only pride but how to organize.

-Yves Engler has been dubbed “one of the most important voices on the Canadian Left today” (Briarpatch magazine) and “in the mould of I. F. Stone” (Globe and Mail). His books have been praised by Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Rick Salutin and many others.

-Wafi Gran is from Afghanistan, he has grown up there, worked for the Afghan Government and the United Nations as well as other non profit organizations.

via Canadian Occupation from Here to Haiti and Afghanistan – W2: Community Media Arts Vancouver BC.

Will 2011 Be the Year of Service With Integrity?

“Honour House is a refuge, a place of unity and composure for Canadian Forces personnel, first responders and their families to stay while healing occurs.”

Honour House Society

Think of all the people who selflessly serve our country and citizenry, often involving risking their lives. What is their healing worth to us when they suffer in the line of duty? And I’m not talking about Don Cherry building a career raging against what he feels to be the inferior Quebecois while hypocritically visiting the Vandoos, a Quebecois regiment in Afghanistan, over the Christmas break.

I have some small affinity with Romeo Dallaire and the emotional suffering he endured as Canada, the UN and the world abandoned Rwanda to its 1994 genocide. What kind of respect and commitment from Canadian society do our Canadian Forces personnel deserve when they encounter difficulties including PTSD, which is significant if not rampant in the Forces.

What kind of emotional, physical, spiritual, psychological and financial support do our first responders [police, fire fighters, ambulance paramedics] deserve when they encounter some of the most brutal circumstances humans endure.

Last night I watched a short clip from The Daily Show from a few weeks ago pointing out the hypocrisy of the US Republicans holding up financial support for health treatments for the 911 first responders suffering brutally ill health. This is just tragic, but sadly not very surprising. Canada’s treatment of our Forces personnel is less than dignifying as well.

Last night I also watched episodes 4.14 and 4.15 of the West Wing. They aired in February 2003 in a month when millions of people around the world protested the Republican invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was launched 6 weeks later, under cover of the lie that Saddam Hussein was connected to Osama bin Laden.

The episodes revolved around the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, humanitarian intervention and what the fictional president would do with his own Rwandan genocide. He stepped up, in case you missed the episodes.

This was also pretty much my final year teaching high school after some disturbing years of new educational policy by the BC Liberal government and Education Minister and Deputy Premier Christy Clark designed to undermine universal access to high quality education, part of the government’s multi-sectoral privatization agenda.

This was also a time when I was about to start a couple political science degrees culminating in my thesis on how Canada contributed to the Responsibilty to Protect doctrine, then demonstrated how to scuttle it with our participation in the kidnapping of Haitian President Aristide on 2.29.04, particularly galling after our contributions to restoring his presidency a decade earlier. Another contributing factor in the Haitian case is Canada’s neoliberal economic occupation of that struggling nation which has had economically crippling effects similar to the Duvalier eras. And I won’t even go into Canada’s shameful behaviour in Haiti since the earthquake almost a year ago.

February 2003 civil society exercises in democracy, my views of Romeo Dallaire and the preventable Haitian genocide and these poignant West Wing episodes contributed to my desire to explore the idealism of the responsibility to protect, to promote freedom from fear and want, and to enshrine human dignity as a core motivation on our planet and in BC. And sadly, exploring idealism is often matched with understanding how it falls short.

So today, so early in 2011, I think we all ought to reflect on what service means, what integrity looks like, what gratitude demands and how commitment to the human community calls us to act. Honour House is an important but nowhere near complete response to selfless sacrifice. It deserves our support. As does the One in a Million Fund and the Hire Canadian Military initiative, among other programs.

And the BC NDP and BC Liberal parties are spending the first few months of this year rebranding themselves. Service, integrity, gratitude, community and selflessness are appropriate benchmarks to consider when watching this process.

Will 2011 be the year of service with integrity?

I know as individuals we can support programs that have merit. We can also support political movements that reflect these benchmarks because if we do not demand commitment to high standards we will all accept an inferior society. And that would be our fault.

Let us lead by example and participate in society by acting with integrity and service to those in need, particularly those who selflessly serve us.

A Voice from Haiti, Who We Are Further Victimizing

This morning I wrote about how we and the French are continuing to rip off Haiti 7 months after their earthquake.

Today I read about one woman’s experiences. She sounds so much like us. Getting to the human level during these kind of existential events, we always see that “they” are just like “us”. I wonder if we can think of our new Tamil visitors that way?

Beyond some poignant quotes below, she finishes here piece this this, which seems like a futile hope from where we stand:

We have a lot of work to do. We need to have dialogue so we can tell the international organizations what we need, what problems we have. I’d hope that the Haitian authorities and the international community can collaborate, can have good relations to develop really useful solutions for those who have problems.

Some other disturbing elements of her piece:

Young women suffer sexual aggression because they have to bathe in public.


There’s a lot of theft, you have to watch what you have very carefully. …Anyone can just frequent the camp, whether they live there or not

You have to work hard not to get sick. You see children who were normal before January 12 and now you see their color has changed, they’re skinnier, they have bumps all over their skin.

You can’t be walking around all day with all your belongings under your arms. You have to be able to say, “That is my place, that’s where my possessions are, that’s where I sleep, that’s where my home is.”

via t r u t h o u t | Amid Haitian Housing Crisis, Student Calls for Dialogue.

How We [and the French] Keep Ripping Off Haiti

It was so nice to see so many billions pledged to help Haiti after its earthquake where the planet kicked the country after it was down from centuries of racist, imperial and neoliberal exploitation.

But how much money pledged has shown up?

And worse, did you know that Haiti spent more than a century paying off France reparations money for their own freedom? Imagine what the country would have been like if it didn’t pay that odious debt.

Let’s explore all the odious exploitation of Haiti for the last 206 years, with special focus on the last seven months. Continue reading How We [and the French] Keep Ripping Off Haiti