let me count the ways...

See the following excerpt from a Toronto Star Article on how e-waste (a clever, sanitary term for piles of very real, physical garbage made up of plastics and metal) from wealthy nations* is poisoning and killing workers and residents in poor nations.

*Note, how to characterize the distinctions between these nations? Global South, Global North? Developing and Developed? Third and First World? Poor, Wealthy? Colonized, Colonizing? I'm trying to finds terms that do not generalize or automatically imply values.

--
OTTAWA — Canadians threw out 67,000 tonnes of obsolete computers, cellphones and printers last year, probably not aware that this junk harbours toxins that can kill.
Now the UN Environment Program warns that much of the rich world’s electronic junk is being dumped in developing countries where it can pose serious health risks to those who handle it.

Electronic trash is laced with arsenic, selenium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, mercury and other toxic metals.

Canada is among more than 160 countries who are meeting this week in Nairobi, Kenya in hopes of updating the Basel Convention on Hazardous Waste to deal with the problem.

Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program, told the conference consumerism was driving a “growing mountain of e-waste” and a lot of it is being dumped in poor African countries.
He referred to a recent case in Ivory Coast, where fumes from European toxic waste killed at least 10 people and left more than 70,000 seeking medical treatment. Now the impoverished country is spending $30 million to retrieve the waste and send it back to France.

“This is a scar on the conscience of the international community,” said UNEP spokesman Nick Nuttall.

“A poor country coming out of a civil war with little money, a country with many living on less than a dollar a day, is footing the bill for cleaning up toxic waste which has killed some of its citizens and poisoned thousands more.”

He cited a recent study of the marine environment that found heavy metals and other contaminants from obsolete electronic goods are starting to appear in coastal waters and marine sediments in Asia.

The Basel Convention, of which Canada is a signatory, was intended to prevent dumping of hazardous waste in poor countries. It requires exporters to obtain prior, informed consent of any country receiving waste. But that regulation is being thwarted, partly because of corruption in recipient countries, and partly because it is hard to distinguish toxic waste from second-hand equipment that could still be useful.

Developing countries have proposed an amendment to the Basel Convention that would place a complete ban on the export of hazardous waste to their shores.

About 65 countries, including EU members, now have ratified the amendment but Canada has not, said Sarah Westervelt of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network. She hopes Canada will support the amendment.

Joe Wittwer, an expert at Environment Canada, said Canada will support a strong resolution on dumping of e-waste at the meeting in Nairobi, but he defended the “informed consent” approach.

In the United States alone, some 14 million to 20 million personal computers are thrown out annually. The number of cell phone users will reach two billion by 2008, and studies say cell phones tend to be thrown out within 18 months.

--
*I don't throw out my cell-phones. I drop them in the toilet. Whoops!

suzuk creates pop posters

Visit my boyfriend at David Suzuki Foundation

Take Back the Tech

An online campaign calling for everyone to take control of ICTs [information communication technologies] and make efforts to consciously (and conscientiously) change the power relations between men and women.

For 16 days, Nov 25 - Dec 10, Take Back the Tech is asking people to engage with the communication technology around them ("internet, radio, telephone or even your camera") and take action concerning Violence against Women.

Now, you're probably thinking what does ICT have to do with domestic violence, sexual violence, and harassment in the community? There are several reasons to make this connection:
- All sexual violence stems from a base-level understanding in our society that unequal gender dynamics are acceptable; that women (and their bodies) are somehow communal property. [i won't get started on reproduction rights here...]
The mindset that permits a man to make unwanted sexual advances or even mildly annoying (but not physically threatening) cat-calls to me on the street is at its core the same as the mindset that allows a man to beat his partner to death. They stem from the same worldview, and are on the same spectrum of relation, though on opposite ends.

Specifcally, Take Back addresses online harassment and abuse, and also encourages us to use technology as a tool to combat V.A.W.

Some of the connections outlined are:
- Both ICTs and VAW affect our capacity to completely enjoy our human rights and fundamental freedoms.
- For example, websites can be a useful place for women in violent relationships to get information and help. However, tools like spyware and GPS tracking devices have been used by abusers to track and control their partner's mobility.
- Reclaiming women’'s critical participation and contribution to ICTs (e.g. Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper…)
- Echoing the "Take Back The Night" campaign
- Online Spaces - Right To Move Freely Without Harassment or Threat to Safety
- Maintain the right to Shape, Define, Participate, Use, and Share online.

Take Back the Tech has created a wiki through which users can actively participate in this intervention by uploading campaign ideas, stories and experiences, contribute campaign tools, materials, photos, and add resources. It's the perfect formal match for their goal.

So, use technology to make a statement about violence against women: create a poster or photo-collage; create a blog, research and send around a group e-mail, compile newspaper articles on the topic... and don't forget to contribute to the wiki to let the organizers know their network of activism is extending itself.

The shovel is brother to the gun

A Canadian soldier with her national brand.
I wonder what she feels on this day that honours the fallen. Does she think about our collective idea of a veteran as a kindly old white-haired fellow with his war bride on his arm, accolades adorning one breast-pocket, and a poppy on the other? How does she incorporate herself into that image?

Is it possible for the image of the veteran to be supplanted by today's soldiers who fight under a different and ill-planned banner of justice? Soldiers who lack the ideological support of a large percent of the population? Afghanistan is not a sure thing. Citizens are confused, the government is bumbling, and our Foreign Minister will not apologize for his sexist "mistake" and therefore cannot be expected to be accountable for moral and mortal mistakes in warfare.


~Marge Piercy ~ Right to Life
[A Woman is] not a purse holding the coins of your
descendants till you spend them in wars.


~ Katha Pollit ~
Trying to Write a Poem Against the War

My daughter, who's as beautiful as the day,
hates politics: Face it, Ma,
they don't care what you think! All
passion, like Achilles,
she stalks off to her room,
to confide in her purple guitar and await
life's embassies. She's right,
of course: bombs will be hurled
at ordinary streets
and leaders look grave for the cameras,
and what good are more poems against war
the real subject of which
so often seems to be the poet's superior
moral sensitivities? I could
be mailing myself to the moon
or marrying a palm tree,
and yet what can we do
but offer what we have?
and so I spend
this cold gray glittering morning
trying to write a poem against war
that perhaps may please my daughter
who hates politics
and does not care much for poetry, either.


~ Wilfred Owen ~
Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: "Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."


~ Randall Jarrell~
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.


~ Carl Sandburg ~
Iron

Guns,
Long, steel guns,
Pointed from the war ships
In the name of the war god.
Straight, shining, polished guns,
Clambered over with jackies in white blouses,
Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth,
Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses,
Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties.

Shovels,
Broad, iron shovels,
Scooping out oblong vaults,
Loosening turf and leveling sod.

      I ask you
      To witness-
      The shovel is brother to the gun.


~ ani difranco ~
to the teeth

the sun is setting on the century
and we are armed to the teeth
we're all working together now
to make our lives mercifully brief
and schoolkids keep trying to teach us
what guns are all about
confuse liberty with weaponry
and watch your kids act it out
and every year now like christmas
some boy gets the milkfed suburban blues
reaches for the available arsenal
and saunters off to make the news
and the women in the middle
are learning what poor women have always known
that the edge is closer than you think
when the men bring the guns home

look at where the profits are
that's how you'll find the source
of the big lie that you and i
both know so well
in the time it takes this cultural
death wish to run it's course
they're gonna make a pretty penny
and then they're all going to hell
he said the chickens all come home to roost
yeah, malcolm forecasted this flood
are we really gonna to sleep through another century
while the rich profit off our blood?
true, it may take some doing
to see this undoing through
but in my humble opinion
here's what i suggest we do:

open fire on hollywood
open fire on MTV
open fire on NBC
and CBS and ABC
open fire on the NRA
and all the lies they told us
along the way
open fire on each weapons manufacturer
while he's giving head
to some republican senator

and if i hear one more time
about a fool's right
to his tools of rage
i'm gonna take all my friends
and i'm gonna move to canada
and we're gonna die of old age


~ Moxy Fruvous ~
Gulf War Song

we got a call to write a song about the war in the gulf
but we shouldn't hurt anyone's feelings
so we tried but gave up 'cause there was no such song
but the trying was very revealing
what makes a person so poisonous righteous
that they think less of anyone who just disagrees
she's just a pacifist
he's just a patriot
if i said you were crazy, would you have to fight me?

fighters for liberty
fighters for power
fighters for longer turns in the shower
and history seems to agree that I would fight you for me

so we read and we watched all the specially selected news
and we learned so much more about the good guys

won't you stand by the flag was the question unasked
won't you stand by and fight for the allies?

what can we say, we're only twenty five years old
with 25 sweet summers, and hot fires in the cold
this kind of life makes that violence unthinkable
we'd like to play hockey, have kids and grow old

fighters for texaco
fighters for power
fighters for longer turns in the shower

don't tell me i can't fight cause i'll punch out your lights
and history seems to agree
that i would fight you for me
that us would fight them for we

is that how it always will be?

toy ideas...

Very popular this year is the reclaimed Gun. Curious. These two models, Caroline and Svetlana, come from Antonio Riello's "Ladies Weapons" collection. Fascinating.




See also this reclaimed gun by Columbian musician Cesar Lopez called la escopetarra.


My personal fav is this Jimmy Carter doll from Toy Presidents.

He speaks! Some of his phrases are:
- “Americans did not invent Human Rights. In very real sense, human rights invented America.”
- “Every single American must stop wasting energy”

I wonder how many US citzens are wistful for the days of a President who said, in 1979 in his "crisis of confidence" speech:
"To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel." Though I suppose most from the US would be happy just to have peacetime.

On that note, once more with feeling:

iPod Man

An intrepid nerd who spends hours combing the surface of the planet with Google Earth has uncovered a peculiar shape in the Rocks of Northern Alberta: a huge representation of an aboriginal man (complete with head-dress)....who appears to have an ear-bud in his ear.... presumably attached to his iPod.