"What if the federal government imposes a chief and council on an indigenous community, but no one – including the imposed chief – agrees to abide by the decision?"  Read the whole article at Indian Country Today.

Halt the Tide of Islamophobia

A Call for Solidarity from the People's Commission Network and No One Is Illegal Montreal

**See below for what you can do**

The People's Commission Network and No One Is Illegal Montreal call for solidarity with Muslim communities and individuals in Canada and Quebec who are experiencing even more intense Islamophobia and racism as a result of the media coverage of last week's "Project Samossa" arrests of Hiva Alizadeh, Khurram Sher and Misbahuddin Ahmed. Journalists have actually visited mosques where the people arrested have prayed, thereby greatly intensifying feelings of being vulnerable, under surveillance, marginalized and profiled simply for being Muslim or being perceived as such.

The People's Commission and No One Is Illegal Montreal are also concerned for the well-being of the three men who have been named by media as part of the alleged plot and are currently overseas. In recent years, we have seen similar RCMP and CSIS suspicions - even without intense media attention - result in the overseas detention and torture of Maher Arar, Abousfian Abdelrazik, Abdullah Almalki and others. None of these individuals were ever charged with any crime and their names were later officially cleared. However, their lives continue to be marred by the immediate consequences of CSIS and RCMP actions, consequences that include tarnished reputations, the loss of freedom of movement, and, in one case, a freeze on all assets.

A few organizations and individuals are speaking out against the storm of racism the arrests have unleashed (see, for example, the statement by No One Is Illegal Vancouver: http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=2328). The People's Commission and No One is Illegal Montreal support these statements of concern and encourages all organizations and all individuals who are opposed to racism to speak out and vigorously and categorically reject the ways of thinking that lead to an exceptionalization of "terrorist" cases (especially those involving Muslims), to an assumption of guilt, and to profiling that is affecting entire Muslim communities.

To date, no credible evidence has been produced - let alone established in court - that any of the men who have been so very publicly accused are guilty of any wrong-doing or even any crime. In fact, it hasn't even been established that there was a plot in the first place. Although they were immediately painted as inspired by Al Qaeda, there is nothing to indicate that the men arrested are anything other than Muslim. Although, like the majority of Quebecers, they may well oppose the occupation of Afghanistan and Palestine and be concerned for the well-being of people currently subject to all the violence of war and torture, such attitudes should be celebrated, not criminalized or viewed as suspect.

In the current climate of racism, the People's Commission and No One Is Illegal Montreal are concerned that the men will not be treated fairly by a criminal justice system that has proven itself far from immune from Islamophobia and that relies on the unjust anti-terrorist law adopted in 2001.

In the public sphere, the men are not being presumed innocent until proven guilty. The sensationalist media coverage has suggested that the police acted on information provided by CSIS and that the RCMP made their arrests when they did because of suspicion that money was going to be transferred overseas for unspecified "terrorist purposes".

CSIS's record of incompetence and abuse should inspire immediate scepticism about the cases. In particular, the fact that, according to its own oversight bodies, CSIS continues to use information that comes from torture should lead to questions about the credibility of the allegations and the information that CSIS received from Pakistan and Afghanistan which is supposed to have led to the arrests. (See www.peoplescommission.org/en/csis for more on CSIS and its use of torture-evidence.)

The involvement of the RCMP should also raise red flags for all who are familiar with past operations such as Operation Thread, which were similarly deliberately brought to public attention by RCMP press releases and press conferences. The long-standing RCMP practice of infilitrating organizations and the ambiguous role RCMP under-covers have played in suggesting and facilitating violence in such operations should also be recalled. It is important to ask what political purposes were served by bringing these cases to the attention of media at this particular time.

The statements by the Minister of Security, Vic Toews, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, inciting paranoia and literally encouraging people to spy on their neighbours, friends and family, show how the arrests are being used to further political agendas. Recently, the Conservative government has been cutting off funding for organizations which disagree with its foreign and domestic policies, criminalizing community organizers who challenged the G20 process, and creating scapegoats (such as the Tamil asylum-seekers) to justify its anti-immigrant policies. The comments of Toews and others close to the Conservative party are aimed at silencing Muslim voices and more broadly eroding social solidarity.

Solidarity as well as actively and collectively struggling against injustices are our only safeguards against state repression, exploitive economic policies and destructive environmental practices.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1. Write letters to editor objecting to racist framing of media coverage. In particular, write to the Star to object to their reporter's intrusion into a Montreal-area mosque.

Letters must be short (100 words), include name, mailing address and daytime phone number of the writer; state "Letter to the Editor" in subject; and content should be in the body of the email (i.e. don't send an attachment).

Globe and Mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
National Post: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Montreal Gazette: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Toronto Star: lettertoed@thestar
Toronto Sun: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Ottawa Citizen: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Ottawa Sun: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Hill Times (Federal Parliament): This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Winnipeg Free Press: www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/send_a_letter/
London Free Press: www.lfpress.com/comment/letters/write/

2. Ask organizations you are involved in to issue a statement insisting on innocence until proven guilty, rejecting the use of torture-evidence, and denouncing Islamophobia

3. Distribute CSIS Watch materials and encourage people not to collaborate with CSIS:

If CSIS comes knocking (flyer in English, French, Arabic, Spanish, Turkish):
http://www.peoplescommission.org/en/csis/whattodo-csis.php

CSIS visits videos (in English and French):
http://www.peoplescommission.org/en/csis/videos.php

Top Ten Reasons not to Speak to CSIS (French, English, Turkish):
http://www.peoplescommission.org/files/csis/top10_en.pdf

4. In Montreal, join in organizing the People's Commission's "Whose Security? Our Security!" popular forum, which will take place in February 2011.

To get involved in organizing the forum, email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

-------------------------------------------
People's Commission Network
www.peoplescommission.org
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

AND

No One Is Illegal Montreal
http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

"Carbon offsets, organic food, and biofuels all promise to help us save the planet, by compensating for greenhouse gas emission, replacing petroleum, and reducing the pesticides and fertilizers that are poisoning our waterways and bodies. Unfortunately, says Heather Rogers, such products may be less green than they seem. She traveled around the world to investigate and her conclusions are devastating."  Listen to an interview with her on Against the Grain and/or watch a talk at We are Many. Her recent book is Green Gone Wrong.

While you're at it, if you don't know Climate and Capitalism, why not check out this valuable website?

"This past week four men were arrested, three in Ottawa, as part of a 2-year investigation entitled “Project Samosa” (cultural sensitivity training seems to have missed the fact that not many Pakistanis and Indians actually like samosas)... The men must be presumed to be innocent, both in the court process and in public consciousness. Media sensationalism, government statements, and public commentaries have revealed that the men are being considered and treated as guilty terrorists. This is despite the fact that defence counsel Anser Farooq has said that he knows almost nothing about the specifics of the case and that the charges are vague."

Read the whole statement on "Project Samosa" from No One is Illegal (Vancouver). Among other things, it reminds us about the 2003 "Operation Thread" arrests of South Asian men wrongly accused of being an Al-Qaida cell and the 2006 "Toronto 18" cases.

South of the Canada-US border, New York City has been the epicentre of anti-Muslim racism sparked by the plans to build a Muslim community centre in Manhattan. Read Deepa Kumar's article "The Challenge to Islamophobia."

As the big public sector strike in South Africa continues, read the statement on the struggle from the Conference of the Democratic Left (which you can read about here, along with an interesting article by one of its supporters).

Listen to an interview with Rebecca Solnit about natural disasters, how states and the corporate media respond to them, how ordinary people have responded and how this challenges right-wing ideas about human nature, and more, in examples including the San Francisco Earthquake, the Halifax Explosion, London during WW2 and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina on Against the Grain.

"The grassroots relief efforts that have emerged across the country are heartening, but a crisis of this magnitude can only be handled by an institution with the resources and reach of the federal government."

Read the rest of the statement "The Disaster, and the Way Out," with its call for a popular movement in this time of crisis, and other material on the Action for a Progressive Pakistan site.

To donate to the Sindh Labour Relief Campaign, see the website of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy.

Teachers, nurses and other public sector union members began strikes on Aug. 18 against the ANC-led government, yet again highlighting the divisions between classes (and within the working class -- formal workers, informally employed and unemployed) in South Africa today. Read Patrick Bond's article and check out the website of the left-wing magazine Amandla.

"A comprehensive understanding of capitalism’s false solutions to the climate crisis is an essential prerequisite for moving forward in a thoughtful and proactive way," writes Brian Tokar. But "If technological fixes are insufficient to usher in an age of renewable technologies, is the situation hopeless? Is a nihilistic response, anticipating a cataclysmic “end-of-civilization,” the only viable alternative?," as people like Derrick Jensen argue. "Or can the prefigurative dimensions of earlier, more hopeful radical ecological movements be renewed in our time?"

These are crucial questions, and Brian Tokar's article, "Movements for Climate Action: Toward Utopia or Apocalypse?," is worth reading.

"The growing racist backlash that is taking root should concern all of us."

-- CALL FOR CANADA-WIDE ACTIONS - WAYS TO SUPPORT ---

CANADA: STOP JAILING AND DEPORTING REFUGEES, LET THEM STAY!
SUPPORT THE TAMIL MIGRANTS! SAY NO TO RACISM!

In Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territories
Saturday August 21 @ 3:30 pm
Gather at Vancouver Art Gallery, Robson Side

* Download poster PDF http://bit.ly/aq9HWI or JPG: http://bit.ly/c0VN60
* Facebook RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=111292085591553&ref=ts

Join No One is Illegal to call for the immediate release of detained Tamil
asylum seekers, and an end to racist and restrictive refugee policies.
Justice, Freedom, and Status for All!

Surviving a dangerous journey, 500 Tamil refugees, including women and
children, arrived in BC after fleeing war and persecution in Sri Lanka.
When the ship first neared Esquimault, territories of the Songhees First
Nation, it was immediately boarded by the Armed Forces, Border Services,
and RCMP. Families are now being separated, with many children being taken
by the Ministry of Child and Family Development. The refugees now face the
threat of incarceration and eventual deportation.

Canadian government officials and media outlets are perpetuating false and
dehumanizing stereotypes of 'illegals', 'terrorists', and so-called
queue-jumpers. The earlier arrival of 76 Tamil migrants on Ocean Lady was
similarly sensationalized. This deliberately created hysteria appeals to
prejudices of refugees as undesirable. Well-known neo-Nazis, like Paul
Fromm and the Aryan Guard, also known as the Canada First Immigration
Reform Committee, are openly organizing rallies for the ship to be sent
back.

This fear-mongering is just another tactic used to disguise the racist
policies that define Canada’s immigration and refugee system. The Canadian
government was recently forced to apologize for its “keep Canada white”
measures, such as the Komagata Maru incident. Yet Minister of Censorship
and Deportation Jason Kenney continues to increase detentions and
deportation of refugees and undocumented migrants, while bringing in more
temporary exploitable migrant labour. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews
recently declared that Cabinet is drafting new policies to clamp down on
migrants and “make this country less welcoming for future shipments of
human cargo.”

No One is Illegal-Vancouver asserts the basic human right to safety,
mobility, and protection. It is well known that Tamils in Sri Lanka are
fleeing military atrocities and mass displacement. The only crime the
migrants have committed is transgressing this imposed settler-colonial
border.  We encourage you to join us in rejecting repressive, racist, and
exclusionary ideologies and policies, and instead encourage compassion,
solidarity, respect for life, and justice for all refugees. Release
Detained Asylum-Seekers! Let the Boat Stay! Status for All!


*** HOW ELSE CAN I SUPPORT? ***

THERE ARE 10 THINGS YOU COULD DO!

1)  Join other cities and communities for nation-wide actions. Wherever
you maybe, whatever you can organize (delegation to a Minister’s office,
street theatre, leafleting, community speak-out), will help build this
movement. Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and let us know how you can
participate.

2) Engage in dialogue and widely circulate the factsheet on the 6 most
popular myths about the 490 Tamil Refugees, available here:
http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=2167

3) Sign the online petition here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/16082010/petition.html. Join the Facebook
group Uphold the Rights of the MV Sun Sea Migrants here:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=106719212717437

4) Put up posters in your neighbourhood, workplace, and campus, and as
your social media profile. We have ‘Let them Stay’ and ‘Anti Neo Nazi,
Fight Racism’ posters available here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nooneisillegal/. PDF’s: http://bit.ly/9HBtGa
and http://bit.ly/cgM3gK

5) Participate in the Call/Email/Fax Campaign to the Government and your
MP. State your support for the refugees to stay in Canada and denounce the
government for spreading unsubstantiated racist lies. This is easy to do
and you can tell others to do the same!

Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration
Phone 613-992-2235 or 403-225-3480. Fax 403-225-3504 or 613-992-1920.
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety
Phone: (204) 326-9889 or (204)345-9762 or (613) 992-3128.
Fax: (204) 346-9874 or (204) 345-9768 or (613) 995-1049
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

To find out who your MP is and where to write them:
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalCode.aspx?Menu=HOC

6)  Always take a minute to write letters to the editor and comment on
news stories - make a difference in public discourse! Reinforce your
support for the migrants and condemn irresponsible reporting including
repeating unsubstantiated lies and giving white supremacists like Paul
Fromm a platform. All letters must be short (100 words), include name,
mailing address and daytime phone number of the writer; state “Letter to
the Editor” in subject; and content should be in the body of the email.

Globe and Mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Vancouver Sun: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Vancouver Province: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
24 Hours: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Metro News: http://www.metronews.ca/Vancouver/comment/lettereditor
National Post: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Toronto Star: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

7) Take your own initiative. This issue is not just the Tamil communities’
or for migrant justice organizers. The growing racist backlash that is
taking root should concern all of us. Think of creative ways to disrupt
this xenophobic climate (do a banner drop, host a community picnic, take
some friends postering, organize a forum or press conference, distribute
anti-racist zines, take action at the prison).

8)  Consider inviting a speaker to your next meeting. Email
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and we would be happy to attend or suggest speakers, as
well as provide educational materials.

9)  Have your organization, traditional council, union, community group,
or artist collective write a short public statement of support for the
Tamil migrants. Please email us a copy at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

10) Join our low-traffic email announcement list to receive news and
events. You can subscribe yourself
https://lists.resist.ca/mailman/listinfo/noii-l. Our Facebook group is:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6252584281&ref=ts. Visit our website
regularly for articles: http://noii-van.resist.ca/

www.nooneisillegal.org

No One Is Illegal-Vancouver has produced a useful factsheet, which is online as a PDF here, and a poster that's online here.

New (Aug. 16): Jeff Webber, who is currently in Bolivia, has published an article that looks at the situation in detail: "The Rebellion in Potosi."

Read the article by Federico Fuentes, "Bolivia: Social Tensions Erupt" and this comment on the situation by Jeff Webber:

This article is interesting but misses crux of the situation:  that the mining regime that prevails in the department (province) of Potosi, as elsewhere in the country, is fundamentally neoliberal, and that this is a MAS strategy, not a deviation from their plan, or a distortion by disgruntled state bureaucrats leftover from old regimes.

A recent study of a Canadian subsidiary, PanAmerican Silver, operating in the department through a shared-risk contract with the state company COMIBOL (COMIBOL effectively controls about 30% of the project), for example, shows that the company will pay merely 17% taxes and royalties on projected profits over the next 30 years. The taxes going to the municipality where the company is located, one of the poorest in the country, is just over 0.5%. This is straightforward looting. By comparison, for example, in various shared risk contracts in Chile taxes and royalties going to all levels of the state amount to up to 51% for equivalent contracts.

So we're dealing with the poorest department in the country (where life expectancy is something like ten years less than the national average), which gave 80% support to the MAS in the last elections, rising up in a protest against neoliberal continuity and the failure of basic responses to endemic poverty. The class character of the protest is complex. Some of the leadership is clearly the cooperative miners. The richer layer of the cooperative miners are basically reactionary petty capitalists working together with transnationals in Potosi against the rights of state-employed miners. Also in the leadership are other sectors that might accept merely a clientelistic buy-out by the MAS to supposedly solve the situation. But this has grown into something much, much larger. Sixteen days of general strike (total lockdown of the city) and road blocks that have cut the department off from all other departments, as well as from Argentina and Chile.

Negotiations have now started with the government, but it's hard to exaggerate the significance of this break with the MAS, and the ways in which the government's populism will be unable to contain the growing discontent from urban and rural popular classes. For example, the factory workers of La Paz, who supported the MAS officially in the December 2009 elections, have broken officially with the government.  FEJUVE (Federation of Neighborhood Organizations) El Alto, for the first time in four years, have changed course with new elections and have said that this government represents neoliberal continuity; three members of the new executive board come from a new revolutionary federation of neighbourhood councils in the city. There will be major conflicts, possibly major strikes, over the proposed pension law which is abysmal and which effects the entire formally-employed working class.

With millions of people affected by the flooding in Pakistan, if you want to make a donation to relief please give to the left-wing Labour Relief Campaign (member organizations include Progressive Youth Front, Women Workers Help Line, Labour Education Foundation, National Trade Union Federation, CADTM Pakistan, Labour Party Pakistan, Pakistan For Palestine and Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee). Details about how to transfer funds to the LRC are here.

Harsha Walia writes, "From the Komagata Maru carrying 376 Punjabi passengers and the SS St. Louis travelling with 900 Jewish asylum seekers, to the boats with 600 people from China's Fujian province and the Ocean Lady that docked in B.C. last year with Tamil refugees - there is something about boatloads of migrants that triggers a national hysteria. Perhaps it is the realization that the expanse of ocean is not enough to enforce the divide between the West and the so-called Third World." Read the rest of her article in the Vancouver Sun here.

Uphold the Rights of Tamil Migrants aboard MV Sun Sea

August 11, Vancouver – The immigrant and refugee rights group No One Is Illegal is demanding that Canadian government officials respect the human rights of the estimated 200-500 Tamil migrants aboard the MV Sun Sea. The boat is expected to land by the weekend and the detainees will be transferred to Fraser Regional Corrections Centre and Alouette Correctional Centre for Women, who have both prepared for a 3-4 month incarceration. Based on reports in the media, the group includes up to 100 women and children, and there has been at least one death during the voyage.

According to Magin Payet Scudalleri, a member of No One Is Illegal, “Public officials and the media must refrain from stereotyping these migrants as queue-jumpers or terrorists based on unsubstantiated speculations. The migrants have survived a long and arduous journey in the hopes that the Canadian state will fully comply with its international refugee and human rights law obligations to the right to asylum.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has previously warned that “The association of irregular migration with criminality promotes the stigmatization of migrants and encourages a climate of xenophobia and hostility against them.”

Harsha Walia, member of No One Is Illegal, states “We saw a similar unfounded hysteria last October with the 76 Tamil migrants. All were eventually released when Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) was forced to admit they had no evidence of a LTTE connection. In fact, based on a lack of evidence, CBSA consented to the release of the last group of 25 detained refugees in January 2010.”

“The Canadian government is relying on fear-mongering and racist stereotypes to justify their new prison budget and the violent incarceration of asylum seekers, many of whom are women and children. The Conservative government throws around the catch-all phrase ‘terrorism’ to create an atmosphere of paranoia and to prevent any public or media scrutiny of their actions. This is reflected in a growing trend of anti-refugee policies and sentiments under Minister Jason Kenney,” further states Walia.

Rohan Gunaratna, the Canadian’s government’s primary source, has already been discredited by lawyers as well as an Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator. They have questioned his sources as well as his credibility given his ongoing close relationship with the Sri Lankan government.

In a March 2010 meeting with Kenney, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned that refugee claimants from countries with human rights violations including Sri Lanka are faced with a “shrinking humanitarian space”. This is evident in the Australian government’s recent repressive decision to no longer accept refugee claims from Sri Lanka, despite well-documented human rights violations against Tamils and mass displacement into refugee camps. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed a panel to investigate war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan military against Tamils last year.

Despite this, Kenney met with the Sri Lanka High Commissioner in Ottawa this month to discuss greater cooperation with the Sri Lankan government. “It is clear that the Canadian government is more interested in promoting a relationship with a government known to commit massive human rights violations, military atrocities against civilians, and indiscriminate killings; rather than supporting the victims of such a regime,” further states Scudalleri.

From No One Is Illegal - Vancouver.