OCAP has a site dedicated to chronicling the efforts to support Shawn’s case, recently updated with an open letter from his wife and fellow activist Sue Collis.

Less than a month ago, my husband was acquitted of charges he carried for more than 18 months. When issuing the ruling in this acquittal, the judge described the investigative practice and evidence employed and presented by the cops and the Crown as “problematic” and “troubling,” as they related to Shawn. During this same period, CBC Radio aired a documentary in which several Mohawk people recounted conversations with OPP Commissioner Fantino that occurred during the 2007 Aboriginal Day of Action, in which they say he threatened to “ruin” Shawn. During Shawn’s detention at the Napanee OPP detachment last week, several different police officers threatened to “slit his throat” and “cut off his head.”

Incidentally, Propagandhi’s “oldies” (haha) show in Winnipeg at the Albert — which occurred the very day of Shawn’s most recent arrest — managed to raise somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3000 for the defense fund. If you can, consider sending in your own pledge of support.

With all the news these days about protests in Tibet, China’s crackdown, and talk of Olympic boycotts, it’s worth remembering that — more often than not — the heroes and villains portrayed in the mainstream media are in reality villains and heroes. That is to say: we are presented an inverse view of reality. The world isn’t so black and white of course, but it should be a reminder to dig a little deeper.

In the case of China and Tibet — and the ubiquitous cry of solidarity with the cause of Tibet and the Dalai Lama — it’s worth digging into this article by Michael Parenti which was sent on to me by my friend Pierre. By no means a defense of China, it’s a rarely-heard and sobering analysis of the history the Tibet-China relationship.

To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. “To idealize them,” notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), “is to deny them their humanity.”

It’ll also be interesting to see how much international outcry there will be as we approach the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. (located in Salish territory, which was never ceded to the Government of Canada.) If only the First Nations of Canada had a charismatic leader with celebrity endorsements and CIA backing!

But interestingly, PeTA doesn’t get high marks in this area from author Nathan J. Winograd in his book Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America. I listened to an interview with him on Vegan Freak Radio not long ago and I was genuinely surprised by some of what he had to say. The programs he’s implemented sound truly awesome. Check ça.

So let’s get started!

Yup. Let’s fire this thing up!

Uh.

What’s that?

Oh. Nothing? Nothing. Aaalllllrighty.

Sorry folks, false alarm.

It would be an interesting coincidence (not irony, as a less incredibly smart and literariliy-minded author might have written) that tomorrow holds the expected verdict of Robert Picton, who is accused of abducting, torturing, raping, and murdering up to 31 women on his farm in B.C.

Alas, it is not, because in our “enlightened” society, misogyny still stews in our culture, our institutions, our workplaces, and even in most of us. In a society that still happily depicts women as sexual objects, domineering nags, or helpless victims, it’s no surprise that those in that society who are prone to violence and are looking for a scapegoat for their shortcomings would specifically target them. And with hundreds of Aboriginal women reported missing in Canada with little or no police action, what message is sent to those already warped by our culture’s fucked-up view of half of the population?

While it’s easy — and even fashionable these days — to point with disdain at cultures in other parts of the world where women are considered second-class citizens and have few rights enshrined legally, we should remind ourselves that women are getting a fucking raw deal in the West as well. Despite hard-gotten gains, there’s still a ways to go.

Hopefully this doesn’t come off as paternalistic, further portraying women as “helpless victims” while condemning that very portrayal. Cuz that would actually be ironic.

And that’s coming from a guy … with a dink!

See previously: 17 years later, how much has changed?.

He also forwarded the following interview with Shawn Brant, spokesperson for the Bay of Quinte Mohawks who is facing 12 years in jail for his part in actions that closed the CN rail lines through Tyendinaga on April 20, 2006 and 2007, and the 401 and rail lines June 29, 2007. Very interesting indeed.

For more information, solidarity action suggestions, and donations
details for the Tyendinaga Legal Defence Fund go here.

Interview with Shawn Brant, Nov. 7, 2007.
by Matt Silburn, Kingston Indigenous Solidarity Network

Matt Silburn: I don’t feel like regular Canadians, understand that what seems like an increased militancy on indigenous territory within Canada is coming from a cultural revitalization. Or that’s how it seems to me anyway, I wonder if you’d speak to that.

Shawn Brant: Well it’s interesting because I think the cultural revitalization comes from the militancy and not the other way around. I think that what has happened even in the last year has created a sense of pride and optimism that wasn’t otherwise available to young people living in First Nations communities. Particularly when the demographics show that 50% of the community is under the age of 22. There really wasn’t a belief that learning the culture, learning the language, learning that attachment to the land was important because there was no pride that was being taken in the community or from leadership or a direction that promoted that. I think in the last year, young people have come to realize that there are options available rather than the status quo and waiting for things to happen and it’s that whole taking control of your life and making things happen. I think that that has allowed for what we see now, that community, that culture, that integrity and that pride. And people are seeing that in First nations communities just because you’re poor, doesn’t mean that you’re lacking of character and integrity and culture. And it’s nice. It’s a nice change. We know that those are the types of feelings that reduce the number of suicides. And even if there isn’t any immediate financial relief, there needs to be immediate an social relief. And that’s best demonstrated by the actions that have been taken, and militant action.

MS: Tell me about the 401. And that day, how that went down. The only story I’ve heard was from Sue, and getting a phone call saying ‘you should come to the bridge’ after the traffic had been reopened and hearing the reaction of the people passing under the bridge, honking their horns, with their fists in the air.

SB: The whole 401 business is something that goes way back. The 401 has always been a target set forward by the community. The first deployment ever of JTF2 [Joint Task Force 2, Canada’s most elite military squad] was to Tyendinaga. The first deployment after its creation in 1990 was to Tyendinaga, and that was in response to talk of closing the 401. That was in 1994. Since that time, there has been a lot of talk of using that as a means. Generally the band leadership has tried to use that as leverage as say to the government that ‘these are things being talked about within the community, these are rumours being brought forward, and you need to do something’.

June 29 eliminated in anybody’s mind the ability of this community to act on what it sets forward to do. Unlike Rosseau River and Terrence Nelson, who has advocated a train blockade on at least 4 different occasions, but hasn’t done it, Tyendinaga has eliminated all that doubt. Not only can we do it, we’re quite prepared to do that. I know when people talk about the rail line, yeah the 401 is significant, the rail line is significant. We’re not on a small line, a feeder line off the Northern track, we’re on the CN main line between Toronto and Montreal. And so comparably, the 401 is very much [a demonstration] that these things can happen, but they can only happen when you’re prepared to stand up and fight for it. It doesn’t come simply for First Nations people as a result of peaceful protest.

We know that in the early morning hours of June 29 there were armoured personal carriers that were brought up, there was RCMP…

MS: From Trenton?

SB: From Trenton and London, they were ordered in about 4 o’clock in the morning. TRU team, public order unit, emergency response team.

MS: TRU is the tactical response unit?

SB: Commonly known as the SWAT team. Everyone was brought up on alert . It’s interesting going through the disclosure, you can actually see the point at which they concede, and they conceded the plan to launch a full scale assault simply because nobody backed down. They sent people in, brought a message from Fantino [Commissioner of OPP, Ontario Provincial Police], who said the message is, ‘Anyone who is still here in one hour is dead.’ They delivered that message about 5 o’clock in the morning.

MS: Who delivered that message?

SB: It was 4 women from this community. And they wrote it down and the one woman said, I wrote it down word for word, what Fantino said, because I didn’t want to misunderstand or misinterpret his message. And when she said I have a note here, we were all standing there, and she said ‘Anyone who doesn’t leave now and who is here in an hour, is dead. You are all dead.’

MS: Not because I doubt what you’re telling me, but if the paper wanted to corroborate that story are you allowed to share that person’s name with us?.

SB: Oh yeah, absolutely. Her name is *******. And another woman was **********. [names withheld by editor until permission from these women to print their names is obtained]

MS: So what is it like as a community knowing you are Canada’s most like targets of political assassination?

SB: I think that given that Tyendinaga doesn’t just have a strong organization of a few people, it is strong organization of an entire community. It has matured into that over fighting for the last 17 years. In Tyendinaga, you can’t come in and target one element. You’d have to come door to door and roust everyone from their homes and kill half the population in order to stop the ability to stand up and fight. I think Tyendinaga is probably a target because we don’t sit defensively behind a barricade, and allow ourselves to be corralled into a small area and be contained. June 29 we went out and went after targets, and were arrogant enough to say we’re going after these three targets, try and stop us. That’s something that people aren’t used to and it really took it to another level of fighting.

MS: For other communities to develop themselves with that kind of strength, what developments have been necessary over the last 17 years? In seems to me, native or non-native, that’s a cultural shift that’s necessary to build those kinds of relationships.

SB: I think that it’s difficult when you’ve been really held within the world of poverty, that it’s hard for those things to emerge from. I know that people in the past have spoken of revolution and revolution not being able to come from the people who struggle every day to put food on the table, but from elsewhere. In First Nation communities we don’t have the benefit of getting help and support from anywhere other than from the people who struggle every day to put food on the table. It has taken that length of time…That’s what makes it so serious and so significant. These are the people who are standing on the lines. These are the people that are doing that, and that hasn’t been realized before. People have found a way in which to live in their existence but also at the same time to bring it together.

Since I’ve been out of jail we’ve been contacted by no fewer than 10 different communities saying that people want to identify and follow the model of fighting in Tyendinaga, and throw that support into one collective movement. A fellow from BC, who was speaking to the feelings of the band elect chiefs and tribal chiefs. And even though there may have been some apprehension or misunderstandings about how significant and important economic disruption can be, I don’t think people doubt it any more, I think that they saw what happened on June 29th particularly with Tyendinaga, and saw the degree of costs to Canada and to its government. People saw that this is where the power lies, and people want to be able to organize and mobilize. If what happened on June 29 wasn’t significant enough to cause move this government to deal with some of the social issues and political concerns that comes from the reserves then people are saying we have to step it up. Because there is no ability for people to say ‘this is still important to us. This is still important to people and it’s still a part of the issues and the day to day lives.’ So we can’t simply stop. That would be conceding that June 29 was a day of protest. And it wasn’t a day of protest. June 29th was a day of significant fighting and of a significant shift in the way First Nations people are going to confront this government.

MS: Maybe this is the same question I asked in terms which came first, the militancy or the cultural resurgence… You said you were approached by 10 different communities looking to follow what has happened here. My very cursory understanding of what is happening here is that it is not just the militancy. I’ve heard you speak publicly about being able to feed people, and that to have any legitimacy as a force within your own community, you need to be able to meet people’s needs. People have all kinds of needs and all of them need to get met. Obviously one person is not providing all of those needs, that there is a building of what real community ought to be. Could you speak to the interactions of those particular institutions that feed people and house people and keep others from being evicted, and the flipside?

SB I know how that has always been talked about. But really from our perspective, it’s always been that way, but it is not done through the kindness and generosity of individuals or some sort of communal, social, utopian society. It really comes because we comprise a legitimate government that has served our people for thousands of years, and that exists. We do reach out through gardening and social programs, we deal with issues within the homes, if there’s abuses, or other activities within the homes we intervene in those circumstances to assist those people. We demonstrate to people that we are an organized body, we are a society of people who can provide better than any band council, better than any provincial government, better than any federal government. When people are asked to stand on the lines, then people have to trust that what they are standing for is far better than what they have right now. We want to structure things as not just individuals helping individuals, but of a society that has maintained us and one that can continue to maintain us. That’s why we do that, is because we say you fight for us, and we’ll ensure that those needs you have will be met. And we do it, and that’s the fine line. Socially too, people help each other. That does occur, that does exist. And so it is a very socialist type structure here. It only exists that way for the other reason, of a demonstration to people.

We talk about a government having to be organized. We have two long houses here on the reserve. There’s one longhouse that looks like shit, it’s built in a ditch. It’s an eyesore. I was talking to the people there, who were taking about the longhouse and governance, and I said, ‘How in the hell do you expect this community to trust in your ability to suggest a governance, when you can’t even organize your people to build a building? How is it that you’re going to organize yourselves to govern a nation?’

There has to be that, maybe its culturally, there has to be that demonstration constantly, of your ability to deal with people’s issues, what’s personal to them and what they need to survive. Demonstrated on a daily basis. The fighting part, is a nothing part of it, because that’s temporary. It’s about building those long term relationships and rebuilding a society that emerges from people standing up and fighting back.

Culturally, I know that when you’re speaking of what came first, the culture or the militancy, I know that since taking the quarry over and being on the land in that dispute, from that emerged drum making sessions, singing, people getting together, like a whole resurgence that comes just from that situation. But the situation didn’t come necessarily from that [the cultural resurgence] occurring first.

MS: I don’t think I was suggesting …

SB: Yeah

MS: I just wanted to talk about the interaction between those…

SB: And there is a relationship. There absolutely has to be a relationship. You can’t distinguish yourself from the rest of society if you are indistinguishable. Those things exist within the hearts and minds of Mohawk people. We know exactly who we are, and why we exist here, and where we come from and where we are going. There is no separation. Fine tuning it is something that happens, it becomes more obvious to other people.

MS: Would you talk more on what the effect of the quarry blockade has been on the community of Tyendinaga and Deseronto and also how it has changed the relationship between Tyendinaga and the feds and the province.

SB: Well the quarry blockade came from…we started back in November [of 2006] and we wanted to stop development on the Culbertson Tract. And what we said to the town was that anytime you try to build a house, or make an announcement, we’ll take an action and we’ll punish you. So we have shut down roads, we’ve shut down businesses and the quarry shut down came from a January announcement of a potential sod-turning. That’s how the quarry got its 60-day notice and shut down in March, it was punishment for something else. While it [the quarry] was on the slate to be stopped, I think that the way things found their place and came to be, that the effect of the relationship between us and the town is that the town [laughing] doesn’t make any more announcements about development. They know that there is punishment and consequences. So the quarry really represents that, it represents a different type of relationship of not us being subservient to the town, but rather, the town having to keep itself in check.

It’s not like a Caledonia situation, where the mayor can beak off about people being on welfare, and other people having jobs. If that were to happen, the entire town would go down in flames, and everybody knows it. So, we’ve really enjoyed a comfortable relationship with the town, since starting this campaign. For our community, people are happy that it is being done. It was based on a community mandate that people went forward to do that. It is a rare thing for people just to go out and do what needs to be done because it is right, when it is easier to sit at home and just make threats. They really see it as a real tangible expression of support for the land, for the preservation of the land, and for the preservation of our land. That’s what the community takes pride in. All those other things can just go away. But the land is permanent. So when you get caught into a land issue, you bring other social issues forward, that get carried through the land. But the land is of primary importance. When the land is involved, it’s something that is under your feet, something you can touch, and that’s something that people will make an ultimate sacrifice to defend.

MS: I’d like you to talk more about why the province has dug in its heels, and the precedent it would set…well, maybe I’ll just stop there.

SB: Yeah. The situation involving the quarry, in a land claim set of circumstances, is that the federal government sits at the table to discuss the land while the province in not just this case, but all cases throughout the province of Ontario, is responsible for issuing licenses for harvesting of resources on the land. There’s always been the feds at the table saying it’s the province’s responsibility or the province at the table saying it’s the fed’s responsibility, yet the two overlap. What happens is that the province derives its revenue from royalties that are harvested on land, that in this case is involved in a land claims dispute, transfers that money to the federal government and then it comes back in the form of federal transfers and budgetary program funding. It’s kind of like a wink-wink, nudge-nudge. So long as the province doesn’t come to the table it still continues to generate the resources and the feds are happy because they continue to get the revenue from the resources. And nobody wants resource harvesting to stop, the federal and provincial governments certainly don’t want it to stop. It’s a scam to perpetuate 40, 50, 60, 70 years at a negotiating table while everything gets stripped. And at the end of that when everything is gone, then they’ll stand up and walk away from the table, and say ‘you don’t get it anyway’.

I was in Grassy Narrows, people sat at the table, talked about it, talked about the land, the land claims, and up there it is Crown land. The province is issuing licenses to Abatibi to clearcut it, and the feds are saying, ‘well there’s nothing we can do, we can’t intervene in provincial jurisdiction’. So they clearcut the land, and when the land is clearcut the feds get up and walk away from the table, and say, ‘we have nothing left to discuss’. So the land claims don’t get resolved. It’s an age-old scam.

So to answer your question, in this case, the province issues the license, but they won’t sit at the table because they say it is a federal responsibility. It was from that frustration, that we said, ‘we’ll just stop it. We have a mandate to stop it and we’ll just stop it. Whether you pull your license or you don’t, it doesn’t matter, because we’ll physically stop it. And the indignity of plotting our people on the land in order to have to ensure that that’s not continuing.

When we went into the quarry, we thought that it was so clear, that there wasn’t nobody who wouldn’t understand, that you don’t sit at the table and discuss land and literally chew it up and truck it away on the other side of the table. The very acreage that you’re trying to determine is disappearing on a daily basis. We thought it was so clear. That people would just say this is an absolute inconsistency in Canadian values and it should stop. But the provincial government hasn’t done that. I think that people say that they’re afraid of setting a precedence of revoking that license, [constant interruptions through this whole section by a happy, but loud 2 year old] of setting the precedence, because then they’ll have to do it in Grassy Narrows, and elsewhere. Whenever the Indians get pissed off and shut down a road, the province will be losing resource royalties and we’re obviously aware of that. But we also said that their failure to act in a timely manner [will bring about] actions that we felt were appropriate in order to resolve the matter. That’s how we ended up with a rail blockade in April. It’s how we ended up in smaller blockades, fights, fights with the OPP within our community, the military, and then we ended up at June 29th. All these things are really emerging from that.

MS: Explain the courage that it takes to know that the state would rather kill you than give you resources that are yours.

SB: Well, I think for First Nations people it has been painfully evident that the governments have been willing to use ultimate force in order to crush people in their assertion for control over the land. Dudley George is the most obvious example. They demonstrated then and in 1990 in Oka that they were quite prepared to kill Indian people for defending where their ancestors were buried. That’s a fundamental issue that speaks to organizing encouragement in First Nations communities. When the government is prepared to kill you, because you don’t want a condominium development on your ancestors graves, then they are quite willing to kill you for trying to impede their royalty harvesting, when there isn’t a grave site there [laughs]. And so when you talk about courage, there isn’t anybody in this community that isn’t painfully aware, of what happened in 1990, and what happened to Dudley George in 1995, and goes to the line with the full expectation that that could happen again. And yeah, you talk about courage, we don’t talk about it in the sense of courage, because everyone’s courage is assumed. We talk about it now in terms of sacrifice and demonstrating to our people that there needs to be sacrifices made in order to make change, or for change to occur. Sacrifices of freedom, sacrifices of lives, sacrifices that just need to be demonstrated. We’ve also pressed the issue that leadership, the supposed leadership through the Assembly of First Nations or the band council chiefs need to step forward and make those sacrifices, but they’re not the ones who are prepared to do it, and it comes to the people .

MS: Can you speak to what must feel like a daily betrayal by non-native Canadians, who purport to value the rule of law, and won’t follow their own law?

SB: It’s simply because they’ve never had to, it just falls out of the consciousness of people. While it may have been high through the polls in the summer, from April, through to the end of June 29, First Nations issues were important to people and its because there was a real potential for economic disruption, and the hype that was being brought to it, and that put it in the forefront

At the end of the day it comes down to average Canadians don’t see First Nations issues as being their responsibility, they see it as government’s responsibility, they see it as a government obligation. As we like to say, we’ve been relegated to an issue, like health care or education or the environment, and really not as a high priority within those issues.

You were talking about what if the people in the town realized that these things were happening to them. I couldn’t imagine if the town of Napanee had incredibly high suicide rates, couldn’t drink the water, lived in abject poverty and begged the government for 100 years for relief. I couldn’t imagine them just sitting on their hands and saying, ‘well, no problem, whenever you get around to it.’ At some point people have to understand and put themselves in our circumstances and really see how that would be if they were the ones who were involved and affected by it. I think it is only when that empathy emerges the people are going to truly understand the suffering that First Nations people have been put through for at least the last 125 years, and way beyond that, but certainly within the last 125 years. Residential school abuses, 50, 000 kids dying just because they went to school, you know would the town of Napanee tolerate that? And how far would people be willing to go to defend the very lives of their children? And so placing us in our circumstances, I think that we could have done far worse than simply shut down the highway and the railway to keep our kids alive. I think that anybody, when properly understanding the issue, would say you have to do what you have to do. And certainly the government can step in at any time and provide that relief, before it goes to further extremes.

MS: What about the deliberate failure of the education system to teach Canadians about their history?

SB: Obviously those things are important, obviously understanding the relationship between the emergence of Canada as a country… (Matt interrupts…)

SB: I gave up on society in 2001. You know? I really gave up on society then and I realized that it was going to have to be our responsibility. Honestly, I have no feelings of betrayal by the Canadian public, I’m not speaking of organizations or individuals, but in large part, you can only be betrayed when people were there before to support you and that has never existed. And so when you start with no support and you start to build support then you’re moving in the right direction, and the types of things like education and understanding will emerge as more people come onside. Canadian society has to reckon with itself. The very fact that it only cared about First Nations issues when people were talking about shutting down the 401, or the rail lines, or the potential for food riots in major cities if the rail lines were closed for long enough. People’s concern emerged from that, and when the threat of that was gone, then people just went back to the way that they were. Really the issues of priority for Canadian people should have been raised and understood because of the degree of suffering and hardship and deaths of First Nations children in this country. That should be the motivating factor for people to stand up, and want to educate themselves, not because they’re going to be inconvenienced for a couple hours driving around a 401 blockade. It isn’t so much that I feel betrayed, I feel humbled and sad, but really Canadian people themselves should even feel worse.

In 2001, I remember when an international organization, made a domestic call for food in Canada. Because 1700 kids up around Sioux Lookout were at risk of malnutrition and starvation. I remember reading it in the Toronto Star where they said ‘we’re a Canadian organization, but we’re an international food agency and we have never made a domestic call before’. And they made a domestic call for food to be sent to Sioux Lookout. And that didn’t cause a groundswell of people to move to move forward and put pressure on this government to make change. We saw Kesechewan, where people were drinking their own shit, that was being sucked in through an inadequate system, that was set up by the government. But that only became an issue when they found oil on the shores of the bay where they were situated, and diamonds for DeBeers, and then it wasn’t about fixing it, the immediate talk was about relocation. It’s really a sad state of affairs, I don’t believe for the most part that people are disingenuous, or not interested, but the dilemma for First Nation people is how do we get their intention, and how do we keep it.

MS: How about the countersuit against CN?

SB: The whole CN thing, filing the countersuit…well on one hand I’ve got a lawsuit [against me], in which they’re claiming a couple hundred million dollars, and on the other hand I’ve got a Crown Attorney, brought in from Ottawa, specially appointed to prosecute one Indian, who’s saying we have to put this guy in 12 years because of the money he cost CN. So I got CN suing me on one hand, and a prosecutor prosecuting me for the same loss of money. It’s a real contradiction. CN launched the lawsuit in order to say ‘we don’t want you to do any more rail blockades.’ They got that [injunction] in April, and in June we shut em down again [laughs]. If they hadn’t got the injunction or launched the lawsuit, they probably would have been spared June 29 [laughs] but people just thought, you get the injunction, and that’s a slap in our face. You can’t tell us what to do and what not to do. We’ve shut it down 3 times in 14 months. The likelihood of it happening again is quite high. CN should be looking a other means of developing a relationship that’s equitable with this and other First Nations communities, in order to foster an environment where the economy can be advanced and it can move through our community. And it just simply doesn’t want to do that. So we launched a countersuit, Peter [Rosenthal] put in a countersuit, and it was just done to bring attention to that and the hardship that those rail lines have cost. From the spot on June 29 [where the rail blockade was] it was about 2 miles away where my grandparents, 50 years ago were killed on the lines. 5 of my mother’s brothers and sisters and her parents were all killed on the train lines. When they were killed they were going to town. When the workers came to take care of them, they took their money, they took their rings off their fingers, and robbed all the people that were there that were dead. And that was 50 years ago. So when you talk about CN’s historical relationship to First Nations people and its treatment, it really hasn’t changed much in 50 years. I think in that lawsuit that those are the types of things that need to be talked about.

MS: What do you think the chances are that CN is talking to the government behind the scenes about changing their approach?

SB: Well, CN is no longer a public company. Everybody knows CN is a private corporation with its roots in the States. I’m not being sued by the government, cuz its not a government interest other than the VIA part, I’m being sued by a US corporation. I think people in Canada should see that as well. I don’t even know how many people in Canada know that CN is not a public corporation. People don’t believe it. Most people I talk to say, ‘what? it’s a US corporation?’, It’s hard for them to believe that. When did it happen? I don’t believe they are talking about changing their ways. There’s very few companies looking at the human interest compared to the bottom line, and I think that’s why they are so vigourous in their prosecution of me, is that it’s the whole issue of NAFTA and Free Trade Area of the Americas, to provide the free flow of goods and services along lines that are being held by foreign interests. And that’s the Canadian police and military’s responsibility, to protect those interests of those companies that are working under those agreements. So if they are talking behind the doors, in Ottawa, they are probably talking about the most effective way to eliminate the threat [laughs] as opposed to dealing with the human issues involved.

“What would happen if in some bizarre mutation of reality crusty punks actually achieved their goals of making North America a zone of total and utter chaos? The vermin eat the weak, the strong die of filth, the elderly rot as cities go dead, the grocery stores are sold out of their last packs of Mr. Noodles and no one has any more power to play their Amebix records. Well, it’s quite possible that you may end up being forced to flee your beloved homeland to another part of the world where the punk scene does not have such an overwhelming grip on society. Becoming a refugee could happen to anyone on this planet, even you.

Imagine your life if you had to pay and trust traffickers and smugglers to help you get to safety. What if when you got to where you were going you were met with detention, threat of deportation, and unwelcoming citizens? What if your situation was taken advantage of by criminals and employers who would heartlessly abuse your situation?

Now add to this list the fact you ended up in a part of the world where you didn’t understand the language, or customs, where your gestures of good will were interpreted as insulting, where people are not willing to take the time to help you, where everyday new obstacles were introduced, where you could not, no matter how hard you tried, grasp the way your new home works, and even though you were a highly skilled engineer back home your degree has been rendered worthless.

Lets add to that that you were a different colour than everybody else and lets say you were there alone, frustrated, you are dropped in an unsafe area of the city and you afraid to leave the room you stay in.

This (minus the crusty punks) is reality for millions of courageous people in this world everyday.

Human Cargo is one of the greatest books of all time. It may change the way you look at life.”

You can check out Human Cargo here, or look for it at your local library.

Remember, i live in a bubble.

What spineless, Smithers-esque toad of a lap-dog is responsible for this absurdity?

i hope derek got the flowers i sent him.