Quote of the week:

“What’s going to be banned next? Sex?” —Paris bar owner Laurent Lefevre, reacting angrily to news of France’s upcoming smoking ban, which comes into effect in January 2008.

Canada weak on natives

A group of around 30 international experts, including Rodolfo Stavenhagen, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on indigenous rights and freedoms, were in Montreal last weekend to discuss the rights of indigenous peoples worldwide. The seminar, organized by Montreal-based human rights organization Rights and Democracy, was also attended by members of the Canadian federal government and took place prior to a UN vote on the adoption of a declaration on indigenous peoples’ rights this fall—a declaration the Canadian government, as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, voted against this summer. Only Russia joined Canada in opposition, with 30 others voting for its adoption.

Marie Léger, Rights and Democracy’s coordinator of indigenous peoples, says Canada’s opposition was an unexpected and abrupt about-face from the previous Liberal government’s position. “We know the government has problems with the [declaration’s] land section, but it could have been solved with more discussions,” she says. “Canada turned its back on its own work.”

The U.S., New Zealand and Australia are also reportedly unhappy with the declaration, which calls for the recognition of indigenous rights and for measures to ensure their cultural survival. —Patrick Lejtenyi

Poetry for freedom

Poets these days might have a reputation as a lugubrious and stilted breed, but ideally, wrote P.B. Shelley, they are “the trumpets which sing to battle” and “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” In this fine tradition, nine Canadian poets, including Canada’s poet laureate Pauline Michel, will gather at O’Hara’s Pub (1197 University) Saturday, Oct. 14, to launch Freedom, an anthology of poems dedicated to Turkish prisoners detained in Belgium on terrorism charges.

“We as poets have something to say here,” says contributing poet Elias Letelier, who was imprisoned as a youth in Chile by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship. “As a former political prisoner, I can imagine what [the Turkish detainees] are facing. We celebrate freedom by not being silent.”

Michel and the other poets will give readings from the anthology, which Letelier says protests the abuses which the Turkish government metes out to political dissidents, and the detentions in Belgium. The detainees belong to the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, a Turkish militant group listed by the U.S. and the EU as a terrorist organization for attacks against Turkish police and government workers.

The event starts at 8 p.m.; $10 cover includes a free copy of Freedom. —Samer Elatrash

Unionizing McJobs

A year and a half ago, when an undocumented immigrant was denied wages by his manager for training hours at a Latin Quarter pizzeria, he returned with 40 supporters for both his money and his dignity. Within seconds he got them both.

The unsuspecting manager was dealing with the Workers Solidarity Network, a group dedicated to defending the rights of non-unionized workers. The WSN is staging a protest Friday, Oct. 13 in Berri Square at 4:30 p.m. to launch a campaign for Quebec’s first geographically-based union, targetting the St-Denis restaurant strip.

“If you have a restaurant with only four employees, you can’t go on strike or get unionized, so the idea is to create worker solidarity on a geographical basis so these workers can get the help of people in other workplaces,” says Samuel Laliberté of the WSN.

The group chose St-Denis for its obvious proliferation of restaurants and shops, places which require little training, thus breeding more precarious working conditions.

“More and more, we’re seeing lower pay wages for these people. They have no benefits, no paid vacation,” says Laliberté. “Maybe we’re not legally recognized by the government as a union, but we’re still organizing together and we can still defend each other.” —Benjamin Barna

Food for NDG

Everyone gets hungry, and if you’re a toddler, teen, mentally challenged or a senior citizen, odds are there’s some sort of organization looking out for you. But for more-or-less mentally healthy people between 18 and 45, services can be rare. That’s why the NDG Community Council, a non-governmental organization that addresses community needs, is trying to set up a food security organization to address the shortcomings in that department. The plan will be unveiled at the Community Council’s next meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 18, to be held at the Saint-Raymond Centre (5600 Upper Lachine), 7–9:30 p.m.

“The Cuisine Communautaire de NDG is the most important topic,” says council coordinator Halah Al-Ubaidi. “We’re trying to create a replacement project for Chez Mes Amis,” the community restaurant that closed early last year.

Other food-related topics will also be on the discussion menu. Among them will be the Collective Garden Networks, where groups of residents grow, harvest and cook veggies from the same plot of land, and the Lunch Box Workshops, an initiative aimed at providing healthy lunches for schoolchildren. There will also be discussions on street safety and mega-hospital-related traffic chaos.

For more information, call the NDG Community Council at 484-1471 or e-mail ndg2020@ndg.ca. —Patrick Lejtenyi

REAR-VIEW MIRROR

17 years ago - Oct. 13–19, 1989

On the cover: “Worldweary chanteuse” Marianne Faithfull, touring to promote her album Strange Weather. But she still finds it difficult to escape from the Rolling Stones’ shadow. “If my name is in the same paragraph as the Rolling Stones, I get very upset,” she says. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t even feel like dealing gracefully with it anymore.”

• Poor single young mothers aren’t getting the government help they need. “They are a bit like PCBs,” says one social worker. “No politicians want the problem of poverty in their backyard.”

• Oeuvres by Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Peter Greenaway and Atom Egoyan, among many others, are screened at the 18th Festival of New Cinema and Video.

• Three letters—one from a Burlington, Vermont, MD, another from San Luis Obispo New Times and a third from “Your friends at NOW magazine, Toronto”—offer congratulations on the Mirror’s Sept. 14, 1989 move from biweekly to weekly format.

• Slum Dog’s fleas wind up human-blood junkies.

Angel >> The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty Tuesday, Oct. 10, marked the fourth annual World Day Against the Death Penalty, the fruit of the France-based World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, with members from Amnesty International, bar associations, local governments, unions and other groups. Over the years, they’ve met with some success: both the Philippines and Moldova abolished capital punishment this year, bringing the total number of death-penalty free countries to 129. Of course, some countries are still lagging behind: China, for instance, and Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and the U.S., where 43 people have been executed this year and another 12 are scheduled. Texas announced recently it would seek the death penalty for child molesters.
Insect >> The blue-green algae epidemic When cottage country water turns so bad it can’t be touched, you know things are amiss. That was the situation recently in Lake Massawippi, an idyllic Eastern Townships country spot, when it was turned rancid by a proliferation of blue-green algae, and made headlines across the country. But Eau Secours, a local water watchdog, says Massawippi is just the most visible of lakes contaminated by cyanobacteria, which causes the algae to proliferate. They say some 60 Quebec lakes and rivers are contaminated, and are calling on provincial authorities to do something about it. They blame global warming, saying the bacteria prefers warmer temperatures.