The Weaver by Doug Taylor

THE WEAVER is a publication of the Saskatoon Parklands Eco-left Collective. This is Issue 1, Autumn 2010. Web: http://www.ecoleftsask.ca

Introduction: Welcome to the Weaver Welcome to the first issue of the Weaver, a quarterly publication of the Saskatoon Parklands Eco-left Collective, or SPEC.

Contents: Article 1, Introduction: Welcome to the Weaver, Article 2, The Envisioners: 1, Antonio Gramsci, by Dave Greenfield Article 3, Transforming the Machine, by Dave Greenfield Article 4, What Holds the Roof Up, (a song), by Dave Greenfield Article 5, Keepers of the Water, A Reflection, by Mark Bigland-Pritchard Article 6, Nuclear Abolition, for a Future, by Dr. Dale Dewar, Article 7, A Global Call to Action for a Ban on Uranium, Statement of the19th World Congress of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, August 2010. Article 8, Book Review: Glimpses of Freedom, Glimpses of

We have formed the Eco-left Collective to promote an ecological vision that goes beyond capitalism and is infused with the socialist values of egalitarianism, cooperation, cooperative ownership, active nonviolence and a class analysis. We are a non-partisan collective of the independent left, placing itself to the left of social democracy. We are loosely affiliated globally with the Eco-socialist International Network, seeking to build an ecological socialism which arises out of the Saskatchewan experience. In an age of information excess, many varieties of individual blogs, impersonal information websites, and online opinions at our fingertips, we felt there was a need for a much warmer, cooperative online publication that would bring together a number of progressive minds and function as a collective voice. As one of our members put it, "I don't like the loneliness or individualism of a blog. I would rather be part of a collective effort to bring about change."

Peace, A Review of Maxine KaufmanLacusta's Book, "Refusing to be Enemies", reviewed by Dave Greenfield

We plan to publish the Weaver quarterly, in October, January, April and July. Thus far, we are planning to have three regular features. First, "The Envisioners" shall be a regular column profiling the life and work of a progressive activist or thinker, living or deceased, and commenting on their contribution. Second, we plan regularly to publish either a poem or song lyrics by Dave Greenfield, usually a poem or song relevant to one or more of the articles. Third, we plan to have a regular book review feature which will

How many eco-leftists does it take to change a light bulb? Well, it only takes one, but it is important to remember that we are all the light bulb, and the change is in all of us.

review a book, whether recent or from years past. In addition to these three features, we hope to have articles, reports and opinion pieces by a number of people from both Saskatchewan and elsewhere who share a desire for an ecologically sound and radically equitable world.

increasing disarray, Gramsci moved toward greater leadership roles in the party. In November of 1926, Gramsci was arrested and imprisoned for his political activism. In August of 1935, in failing health, he was released and allowed to spend his final twenty months in hospital, under armed guard, until his death on April 27th 1937.

Our decision to call our publication, the Weaver, arises out of a number of associations. It came initially from the image of a spider weaving a web, and the idea that we are weaving a web of change or weaving different ideas and struggles together. It is also a term that can refer either to a worker at a loom or to several species of both birds and spiders known as weavers, thus linking together both the social justice and ecological dimensions of our thought. It also conjures up the words of an eco-activist chant from the 1980's.

During his years in the Italian prison system, he wrote some three thousand pages in some thirty notebooks, which have become known as the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Much of his writing dealt with coming to understand how the capitalist ruling class and the capitalist state yields power, and how the working class might organize to overthrow capitalism and create what he hoped would be a more just society under socialism. One key aspect of his thinking was the idea of cultural hegemony and counterhegemony. The capitalist ruling class yielded power, not simply through brute force or fear, but through a more subtle indoctrination of the culture and consciousness of the entire society. In Gramsci's day, in the Italy of the 1920's, the Catholic Church played a major role in telling people to stay in their place and submit to authority. In our own time, it might be observed that the mass culture provided to us by the corporations, and particularly the corporateowned media of various sorts, plays a major role in creating an ideology of individualism, competitivism, material acquizitivism, and passive cynicism with regard to all political involvement. Gramsci's remedy to the situation was his idea that the working class had to create its own culture, a politicized counter-culture which could create a working class counter-ideology through popular education, progressive art, informationsharing, story-telling and truth-speaking, which would enable the working class to fully liberate its collective mind from the ideology imposed upon it by the ruling class. This cultural counter-force could then help to build and expand the power of the working class in the political realm. One quote from Gramsci that is sometimes sited is "If you have the minds of the people, you will have their hearts and hands.".

"We are the flow. We are the ebb. We are the weaver. We are the web." We hope you will enjoy this and all future issues, and if you feel led to contribute material to a future issue, we welcome your contributions.

The Envisioners: 1, Antonio Gramsci Antonio Gramsci was born on the island of Sardinia, in Italy, in January of 1891. When he was seven, his father was convicted and imprisoned for embezzlement, which left him and his family in destitution. He quit school and worked at odd jobs for the next six years. He also suffered various health problems. By his early twenties, he had gravitated toward the socialist movement in Italy, and after seeing the limits of the more moderate, reformist wing of the Socialist Party, he gravitated toward the more militant wing of the movement and helped found the Communist Party of Italy in 1921. As Italian society descended into fascist rule under Mussolini, from 1922 onward, and the organized progressive movement was in

Though it may seem self-evident to us today, this idea that the battlefield of progressive social

change exists in the realm of ideology and worldview, as much as in the realm of sheer numbers or political strength, was one of Gramsci's great contributions to the marxist and socialist left. Today, as we find ourselves bombarded by the propaganda of the corporate agenda, the idea that we need material growth, even if it means trashing the earth, the idea that corporate-based development is good, and that socialism simply doesn't work, the idea that our purpose in life is to be individual consumers, and not to think about the bigger picture, or of building bonds of solidarity, it is only too clear to us how absolutely correct Gramsci was in this respect.

Since Gramsci's death in 1937, many others have theorized how to bring about progressive change. Saul Alinsky, Gene Sharp, Paulo Friere, George Lakey, Bill Moyer, the Movement for a New Society, The Polaris Institute, and many others, have developed ways of organizing for social change. The above have had the advantage of decades of living in the open air, and interacting with many individuals and groups, as opposed to the nine years that Gramsci spent locked in a series of prison cells, mostly in solitary confinement. I suspect that this work by the thinker-organizers of the last thirty to sixty years has improved upon Gramsci, and is probably more directly relevant to the questions facing us in 2010 and beyond. Nonetheless, Antonio Gramsci deserves our respect, as an envisioner of change and analyzer of capitalism and fascism, who lived literally in the prisons at the heart of the first modern capitalist fascist state.

Gramsci's solution was, not simply to create a working class counter-culture in bits and pieces, but to create a strong, unified political counterforce which could challenge and overthrow the capitalist state hegemony and create a new society. As a metaphor for this counter-force or counter-hegemony, Gramsci drew upon Machiavelli's prince who takes power and keeps power through pragmatic governance. Gramsci introduces the idea of the "modern prince" or mythic prince which he defines, not as a person, but as a collective organism, specifically, a revolutionary left-wing party which can coordinate a socialist workers' movement, and bring about the necessary revolutionary change. For Gramsci, in the Italy of the 1920's and 30's, this force, or mythic prince, was the Italian Communist Party.

Transforming the Machine: One Way of Thinking about Society and Social Change by Dave Greenfield The system in which we live, the whole great industrial capitalist militarist system, may be viewed as one great machine. It is a machine with many functions, components and tentacles spanning the entire planet.

Gramsci was concerned, specifically, with resisting and overthrowing the Italian Fascist state. His cultural and political counter-force were proposed primarily in the context of the Italy of his time.

Every individual part of the machine is intended to be shaped in the ideological image of the machine as a whole. Every company, every municipal council, every school system, every neighbourhood association, every media outlet, every household, every classroom, etc., is supposed to play its role of reproducing the ideology of the machine at a microcosmic level. The machine, to various degrees, relies upon the conformity of its various individual parts. While the machine will not stop or slow down if only a few of its parts stop conforming, if enough

Today, we have the task of confronting an unfettered, multi-faceted global capitalism, which is destroying the ecosphere, oppressing billions of human beings, and fueling global militarism and war. One single vehicle such as a party can certainly not play the role of a transformative counter-power for the whole world. The counterpower that we must create must be multi-faceted, multi-organizational, open to diversity and democratic process within, and yet in some ways coordinated.

individual parts stop playing their prescribed role, the machine is forced to adapt or change policy.

social and ecological equity. Over the years, different perspectives and writers have focused on transforming different aspects of the machine.

The individual boss or supervisor in a company, the teacher in a classroom, the majority of members on a municipal council, school board or neighbourhood association executive, the radio talk show host and newspaper columnist, all play the role of reproducing the ideology of the machine. Since most participants in these various perceived parts have also received similar ideological infusions in other contexts, past and present, the ideology of the machine is normally not questioned.

Classic marxism as well as anarchosyndicalism focus on the relationship between capital and labour, and on the work place as a primary focal point for change. For marxism and anarchosyndicalism the focus is on encouraging workers to form revolutionary unions that can not only fight for better wages and working conditions under capitalism, but which can also be prepared to overthrow capitalism and create a workerowned collectivist economy from below. Traditional marxists and anarchosyndicalists argue that the context of workers' struggles remains the most important area of engagement, because it deals directly with the fundamental economic relationship in capitalism, the relationship between the owners of production and the workers.

The fact that the machine exists, and that most individual parts of the machine reproduce the machine's ideology at the microcosmic level, becomes a concern when we realize that the nature and activities of the machine are fundamentally destructive and oppressive. The ideology of resource extraction, energy use and continual material growth is fundamentally destructive to the biosphere and to the human future. The profit-driven corporate ruling class agenda tends, by its nature, to be oppressive toward the labouring classes around the world. To the degree that various corporations are involved in the manufacture of weapons, and to the degree that wars are fought to defend corporate access to resources such as oil, the corporate system as a whole helps fuel wars and conflicts in various parts of the world.

The bioregional movement has focused on the question of place, asking people to re-imagine the places in which they live in ecological terms. Rather than people seeing themselves as isolated atoms of consumption who live in square houses on square blocks in gray industrial cities, people are asked to see themselves as being parts of valleys, river basins, prairies, forests, mountain ranges and so forth, which are able to produce their own food, energy and basic goods. Murray Bookchin, in his philosophies of social ecology and libertarian municipalism, focused in a somewhat different way on transforming place. He argued that municipal governments and neighbourhood associations within municipalities could be transformed from playing the rather submissive function that they currently play into being autonomous, revolutionary local entities that could break away from the larger state machine and become the basis for a new radical ecological society. In Bookchin's strategy, municipal councils and neighbourhood associations would become the vehicles through which citizens' movements would seek to transform the machine from the microcosmic level outward. Bookchin, and the social ecology perspective he founded, have been criticized for downplaying questions of class conflict within a

When we begin to transform the normative reality in a particular part of the machine, when a town council or neighbourhood association says no to a nuclear reactor or a toxic waste dump, when a teacher encourages students in a classroom to think about the abuses of capitalism, when a radio talk show host allows for genuine free and open discussion, and so forth, microcosms of the machine are being transformed, step by step, piece by piece. Since the machine recreates itself at a microcosmic level in practically every social context, it is often impossible to know exactly where to start, if one's goal is to radically transform the entire machine from a state of social and ecological exploitation to a state of

municipal unit and focusing too exclusively on dismantling state structures rather than attacking corporate power.

transformed successfully by isolated individuals working alone, nor by isolated single issue movements working alone. It is only when hundreds and thousands and millions of human beings come alive, becoming active transformers of reality, rather than passive functional parts, that the machine is compelled to transform. Each component part of the machine, each classroom, each work place, each neighbourhood, each issue area is a context for confrontation and transformation. No single context if categorically more important than the rest. The process of transforming the machine can be and must be waged everywhere. We must transform every component and aspect of the machine, understanding both microcosm and macrocosm, both immediate struggle and long term goals, and be strengthened in the knowledge that there are millions of us all over the world fighting the same battle from all possible angles.

Some progressive writers in the field of education, such as Bill Ayers, focus on the question of how we might transform the education system and educate young people in a way consistent with a peace and justice perspective. Further back in the twentieth century, anarchists and other progressives involved in the modern school movement and free school movement also attempted to reshape the education system to help raise free and healthy children in the midst of an often oppressive and patriarchal society. All the above perspectives have focused on transforming particular component parts of the big machine. Meanwhile the machine rumbles on. Individuals and small groups who work to transform particular microcosms usually find themselves fighting against counter-attacks from entrenched interests. The machine is not simply something that exists of its own accord functioning mindlessly; it is the product of ruling class interests and these interests have billions of dollars at their disposal, and they generally fight back whenever one or more parts of the machine has the courage to rebel.

In closing, I thought I would quote the words of a song Pete Seeger used to sing many years ago. "Deep inside remains the dream, Make us the masters, not the machine. Deep inside remains the dream, That makes us the masters, not the machine." This double acknowledgment that the common people dream of becoming the masters of their own destiny, and that this dream, by its existence, means that they are in some way already the masters, rather than passive parts of the machine, is perhaps a thought to live by as we continue our transformative work.

It is useful, and even necessary, therefore, for those who work in various areas to transform the machine, to be aware of and in contact with each other. A group of people opposing the expansion of the nuclear industry, another group of people planting community gardens, workers seeking to organize a union in a work place, and a group challenging the corporate dominated nature of a university, may all benefit from being aware of and in touch with each other's work. The marxist, bioregionalist and social ecology models all have their place and their role to play, but no one model can succeed alone. As we all work to transform our particular parts of the machine, we must build a quiet network of networks, or conspiracy of conspiracies, that sees the big picture, while strengthening as all to transform our particular microcosm.

What Holds the Roof Up A Song by Dave Greenfield (Introduction) In the sixteenth century, a young French law student, named Etienne de La Boetie, wrote an essay, while in university in his early twenties, called "a Discourse on Voluntary Servitude". In the essay he argued that tyrants are only able to rule because the people voluntarily choose to

The machine will not be confronted or

serve them. If all the people would walk away from the slots that they fill in the tyrannical system, and refuse to serve, the tyrants would not be able to rule. Such a rejection of tyranny or of a specific tyrant would not require the use of violence; it would simply require a universal refusal to serve the tyrant or tyrannical system. La Boetie was not involved in any organized movements for social change. After writing the essay, and circulating it privately, he continued with a normal life as a lawyer and judge, dying of natural causes in 1563, at the age of thirty-two. It was only some thirteen years after his death that his essay was published. His basic idea, implying what today we would call nonviolent resistance or nonviolent civil disobedience, has been heralded by modern advocates of nonviolent social change as a forerunner of active nonviolent revolutionary thought. My song below was inspired, in part, by La Boetie, and in part by nonviolent resisters presented in Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta's book, "Refusing to Be Enemies", one of whom mentioned being inspired by La Boetie.

Being bricks in the wall. But in my mind A brick can learn to dream, And learn to say no, And become a human being. But in my mind A brick can learn to dream, And learn to say no And become a human being. What holds the roof up, O so high. It's all the individual bricks That never ask why.

Keepers of the Water A reflection by Mark Bigland-Pritchard Hatchet Lake Denesuline Nation are based on the western shores of Wollaston Lake, in the northeast corner of Saskatchewan. From the south, there are two options for getting there. Either you drive until the road ends at the other side of this immense lake, then take the ferry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a whole day's journey from Saskatoon -or else you fly in.

What Holds the Roof Up What holds the roof up, O so high. It's all the individual bricks That never ask why.

The remote location has perhaps left the Hatchet Lake band in many ways less impacted than most First Nations by the demands and pressures of settler peoples' way of life. However, they are also surrounded by uranium mines â&#x20AC;&#x201C; six in total to the west or the south of the reserve.

But if the bricks would get up And walk away, The roof would cave in. It would be a holy day. And then we would have An opportunity, To build a new building, Whatever it may be.

This August, Hatchet Lake was the location for the fourth Keepers of the Water conference, bringing together indigenous people and environmental activists from most of western Canada's major watersheds. Any opportunity for settler environmentalists to hear the authentic voice of indigenous tradition is an important event. But this is especially the case at a time when northern ecosystems are under pressure from rapidly expanding tarsands development, from uranium mining, and from the effects of climate change.

And the bricks wouldn't have to hurl themselves At anything or anyone. All they would have to do Is learn to say no, the game is done. But until that day comes, The roof won't fall, As long as we are satisfied

base from which those issues were presented. One of the Cree elders present commented that the presentations given at the conference fell into two distinct categories – those (mostly by southern activists) which argued from science, and those (mostly by First Nations elders) which spoke from deep spiritual values.

Like other Dene bands, this community of 1500 has been able to continue traditional hunting, trapping and fishing, and so has been able to offset some of the impact of an 80% unemployment rate. However, this is changing. Moose, caribou and other mammals are less plentiful. Mine developments encroach on traditional hunting grounds. Human health is at threat, with a substantial increase in the numbers of cancers: yet the responsible authorities have commissioned no serious study to establish the causes.

It was clear that he saw the former as unnecessary in a community where people heeded the latter. (For myself -an applied scientist by training and a Christian by conviction -I see no basic conflict.)

The balance of power doesn't help either. No Dene band can match the mining companies' PR budget, nor their connections in high places. Indeed, the prominence of the corporate logos of Cameco and Areva in more than one public space, and their ability to make their presence felt even at this conference, suggested that these are the new colonial overlords. Yet apparently they can rule without the responsibilities incumbent upon even the feudal lords of the middle ages -these companies provide employment, we were told, to only 19 of the 1500 people in the community. And, for all the uranium industry's claims that it is bringing prosperity to northern Saskatchewan, the region remains one of the poorest in Canada, with more than one First Nations speaker referring to “third world” living conditions.

During the 9 or 10 hours of speeches by First Nations elders and chiefs, certain themes became abundantly clear; Human beings are intimately connected with the rest of the natural order, so that intrusive interference with natural systems would inevitably boomerang back on human well-being. The responsibility of the human community is to care for the earth: to use it merely as a treasure store to raid is to act irresponsibly. We were told that the Dene word for the earth is almost identical to that for “mother”, and you don't rape your mother... When you take something from the earth, you take what you need and no more. Greed destroys. So, as Ray Dejarlais of Cold Lake put it, “A dollar does not come first. Our land does.” Then there is the matter of truthfulness and keeping promises. The treaties (Treaty 10 covers the Athabasca basin) did not hand over the land to the settlers but permitted them to share it. They did not give them any rights below the depth of a plough. They did not give indiscriminate rights to water. They did not hand over the right to pollute or to interfere with traditional livelihoods. But all of these “rights” have been taken for granted by industry and government alike. Even when companies are forced to admit mistakes – such as a Cameco mine leak into Wollaston Lake twenty years ago – they “move on and forget”, according to former Hatchet Lake chief Ed Benoanie. The initial problem is addressed but the long-term consequences are not considered.

Jim Harding, who was also at the conference, http://sites.google.com/site/cleangreensaskca/Ho me/jim-harding-s-column wrote at length for R-Town news (2010:Sep:17) on the corporate co-option of First Nations communities by buying off some of their key leaders – his article is well worth reading. http://sites.google.com/site/cleangreensaskca/Ho me/jim-harding-s-column Jim has also written eloquently for the same paper (2010:Sep:10) about the issues raised at the conference - also a worthwhile read. Rather than duplicate his material, I would like to open up a slightly different matter, that of the spiritual

Because respect for basic spiritual teachings has been absent, the animals are no longer as

plentiful, and people are contracting diseases which were previously unknown. And, according to prophecies by a previous generation of First Nations elders, things could get even worse, with serious water contamination and even water shortages.

Hatchet Lake fishery provides little income because processing happens off-site in Manitoba: why could not this “added value” be obtained by the local community? The reserve is dependent on a frequently-interrupted SaskPower supply for electricity and expensive imported fossil fuels for heating – but why not radically improve the energy efficiency of the buildings, and then meet the reduced requirement through local solar, wind and sustainable biomass projects, providing local jobs? If these types of economic opportunities are not pursued, then people have little choice but to depend on the government and the new corporate overlords.

Like that Cree elder, I see the roots of the present crisis in the north as fundamentally spiritual. I came away with a renewed call to speak from my own biblically-rooted spiritual tradition to enable the churches not only to understand this better but to act on it. And yet science helps us to understand the linkages. Hence the importance of the studies being carried out by Dr Erin Kelly, Prof David Schindler and their University of Alberta colleagues into the distribution of heavy metals and polycyclic aromatics up-and downstream of tarsands operations.

As their recent experience shows, the result will be that they will be compelled into actions contrary to the spiritual values set out by the elders. And a poor bargaining position when pushing for recognition of their legitimate treaty rights.

Hence also Erin's continued work, reinforced by connections made at the conference, in working with local communities to monitor the levels of key toxins in fish on an ongoing basis. And hence Trent University masters student Fin McDermid's sampling work on metal and acid deposition. As Fin pointed out, this type of work is vital to treaty rights -if you can't say what impacts there will be then how can you truly consult the people?

Hopefully we can begin to address that one at Keepers of the Water 5 next year in northern Manitoba.

And we also need the baseline health study necessary to determine the impacts of uranium mining on human health. With unknown quantities of radioactive material escaping into the watercourses from tailings ponds, and unknown quantities of radioactive dust blown through communities by the wind, it is a provincial scandal that no such study has ever been carried out.

Nuclear Abolition: For A Future

A Report from the 19th World Congress of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)

We in the south also need to hear true stories of what has been happening in the north. Another project which was proposed at the conference was the collation of the experiences of elders and particularly of former miners. Few southerners get to know what life is like in the north – this needs to change.

August 25th – 30th, Basel, Switzerland by Dr. Dale Dewar (The IPPNW is a global organization of some one hundred thousand physicians who are opposed to both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Dr. Dewar is the Executive Director of the Canadian branch, called Physicians for Global Survival.)

Yet, from my point of view, one aspect was seriously missing from the conference. People in the north need new means of livelihood. The

As experts, we affirm that the health of future generations is threatened by increasing development of the atomic industry and sources of radiation. ..... We also believe that new mutations that occur in humans are harmful to them and their offspring.” (WHO, Genetic effects of radiation in humans. Report of a study group convened by WHO, Geneva, 1957, p. 183.)

How to report on a conference that had more than 600 participants, plenaries with speakers from around the world and more than nine simultaneous workshops? Most of the participants were physicians which is heartwarming for those of us who feel we are “voices in the wilderness” amongst our colleagues in our home countries. It is for collegial reinforcement that brings us to stamp so large a carbon footprint.

In 1958, another report was tabled: “The genetic heritage is the most precious property for human beings. It determines the lives of our progeny, healthy and harmonious development of future generations. As experts, we affirm that the health of future generations is threatened by increasing development of the atomic industry and sources of radiation.” (Technical report No. 151, p. 59, WHO, Geneva, 1958).

There were three major take-home messages for me: The US military-industrial complex rules the world. Dr. Bernard Lown, one of the founders of IPPNW, spoke from his home in Boston by Skype. He opened his message with greetings followed by this statement: “My own country, I lament, is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”.

After 1959, the WHO made no more pronouncements about radiation and health. An agreement was struck between the WHO and IAEA wherein the WHO relinquished its authority on health effects of radiation to the IAEA, whose recognized purpose is the commercial promotion of nuclear power. The agreement stipulates “whenever either organization proposed to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement” (Article I:3). Article III of the agreement anticipates that it may be “necessary to apply certain limitations for the safeguarding of confidential information” and “In view of the desirability of maximum co-operation...the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization undertake to avoid undesirable duplication between them with respect to the collection, compilation and publication of statistics”.

He continued stating that 52% of the worlds armaments are provided by the USA and that the pentagon spends more than the entire world on “defense” and arms. He emphasized that this is more than expenditures on education, housing, pensions, food, welfare and health care combined and that 49 million US citizens live in “abject poverty”. He reported that the United States has more than 700 military bases in more than 130 countries. “Twenty-seven trillion dollars since World War II was not enough to prevent some angry badly educated men (referencing 9/11) from bringing the USA to its knees.” Physicians must help break the link between the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the WHO (World Health Organization): the official report on Chernobyl was manipulated by the IAEA.

The IAEA reports to the Security Council of the UN and hence is hierarchically dominant to the WHO which reports only to the Economic and Social Council.

In 1956, the WHO convened a study group that concluded: “.. genetic heritage is the most precious property for human beings. It determines the lives of our progeny, healthy and harmonious development of future generations.

Regarding Chernobyl: Four months after the explosion, in August 1986, the IAEA convened the first conference in Geneva to examine the accident and its consequences. Apparently, the

Western observers of the disaster had already decided upon a final “reassuring figure of 4,000” for the death toll. While the Soviet representatives had concealed (or denied) the extent of the disaster from their own citizens, they presented data that would have been the death knell of the nuclear industry.

In 2007, IPPNW launched ICAN, an International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons. ICAN calls for the outlawing of production, testing, possession and use of nuclear weapons. It demands the immediate removal of “high-alert” status from those weapons currently capable of deployment within minutes. Furthermore, it sets in motion the mechanisms for monitoring the process.

Meetings of the working groups in Vienna were held in camera but leaked information indicated that Academician Vasily Nesterenko and Professor Valery Legassov presented a voluminous report with an annex of 70 pages devoted entirely to medical and biological problems. Without dosimetry figures, the Soviets predicted by mathematical calculations an additional 40,000 cancer deaths in the 75 million inhabitants.

At the same time, in 2007, Costa Rica and Malaysia submitted a model Nuclear Weapons Convention to the United Nations. In 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon endorsed ICAN and the campaign grew. In 2009, a global lobbying effort was launched using the five points of ICAN and by 2010, more than 120 nations called for a comprehensive Nuclear Weapons convention at the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) talks in May. The call was loud enough that such a convention was mentioned in the final consensus document.

Equally abstract, and also without evidence, Westerners considered the figure to be too high. Mr. Beninson, president of the ICRP (International Committee for Radiation Protection) and head of Atomic Energy in Argentina, released a media report stating that the Soviet figures were “extremely overestimated”. Director of security of the IAEA, Mr. Rosen, set the upper limit of 25,000 deaths.

The audience was exhorted to be persuasive and persistent and reminded that changing the minds of politicians required more that one letter. One speaker said, “Hope without action is hopeless.” More than once the examples of abolition of slavery, the fall of the Berlin wall, and the election of a black man as president in South Africa were highlighted as changes that occurred as a result of progressive human action and solidarity.

Over the next five years, in stages and with difficulty the number of deaths was consistently lowered until the “International Chernobyl Project” report, presented in Vienna in May 1991, put the number of deaths at 4000 and asserted that “radiation had no effect on population health”.

The next NPT review talks will occur in 2015. Many attendees will be returning home to their countries with renewed vigour to provide educational and promotional material to the public, to decision-makers and to media.

Subsequently, research linking radiation and health has been under-funded, extensively and unfairly criticized, and frequently simply ignored. Whistle-blowers have been harassed, fired from their jobs and in Russia, Israel and India, jailed.

In conclusion, while despair immobilizes, the recognition that there are no either-or foci for activism, that all are part of the same global puzzle – an immoral monetary system, unethical approaches to radiation and environmental contamination, climate change, corrupt politicians and political structures, and expanding militarism. Change is in the air. There is no other alternative.

Established three years ago, a vigil outside the WHO emphasizes this nefarious link and demands change. With international participation, someone has been present every working day. Check www.independentwho.info. A Nuclear Weapons Convention, similar to those on Land Mines, Chemical and Biological Warfare, is possible.

Global Call to Action for a Ban on Uranium Mining

threaten them with short‐ and long‐term health risks and damaging genetic effects. As well as the direct health effects from contamination of the water, the immense water consumption in mining regions is environmentally and economically damaging – and in turn detrimental for human health. The extraction of water leads to a reduction of the groundwater table and thereby to desertification; plants and animals die, the traditional subsistence of the inhabitants is eliminated, the existence of whole cultures are threatened.

Here is a resolution adopted by the INTERNATIONAL PHYSICIANS FOR THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR WAR at its 19th World Congress held in Basel, Switzerland this past August. RESOLUTION Adopted on August 29, 2010 Title of Resolution: Global call to action for a ban on uranium mining Submitted By: Helmut Lohrer Affiliates: IPPNW Germany and PSR/IPPNW Switzerland Date Submitted: August 18, 2010

This is not all. Ending uranium mining ‐ also because of its relevance to the processing of uranium, its military use, the production of nuclear energy and the unresolved problem of how to permanently dispose of nuclear waste ‐ would represent a provision of preventive health care, as well as a policy of peace and reason. Banning uranium mining would reduce the risk of proliferation. It would make uranium resources more scarce, thus accelerating the abandonment of the civil use of nuclear energy. The pressure on political decision‐makers to find safe methods of permanently disposing of nuclear waste would increase. Banning uranium mining would thus promote the phasing‐out of the irresponsible practice of using nuclear energy and increase pressure globally to force a change‐over to renewable energies.

BE IT RESOLVED THAT: Uranium ore mining and the production of uranium oxide (yellowcake) are irresponsible and represent a grave threat to health and to the environment. Both processes involve an elementary violation of human rights and their use lead to an incalculable risk for world peace and an obstacle to nuclear disarmament. The International Council of IPPNW therefore resolves that: IPPNW call for appropriate measures to ban uranium mining worldwide.

Describe how this resolution might be implemented and by whom: In order to achieve the goal of an international ban, IPPNW will strengthen its public education on this issue and exert influence on both national and international political decision‐makers.

Reasons for Above: Uranium mining contaminates groundwater and radioactivity remains in the heaps, tailings and evaporation ponds. Uranium and its radioactive decay elements are highly toxic. They attack inner organs and the respiratory system. Scientific studies have shown that the following diseases are caused by exposition to radon gas, uranium and uranium’s decay elements: Bronchial and lung cancer; cancer of the bone marrow, stomach, liver, intestine, gall bladder, kidneys and skin, leukemia, other blood diseases, psychological disorders and birth defects. Approximately three‐quarters of the world’s uranium is mined on territory belonging to indigenous peoples. The inhabitants of affected regions are (for the most part) vulnerable to exposure from radioactive substances that

Glimpses of Freedom, Glimpses of Peace A Review of Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta's book, "Refusing to be Enemies, Palestinian and Israeli Nonviolent Resistance to the Israeli Occupation", by Dave Greenfield

Palestinian civil societies like the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People which seeks to teach the skills of nonviolent resistance to the people of occupied Palestine.

Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta is a Canadian Jewish Quaker activist with over twenty years of experience working with nonviolent antioccupation activists in both Israel and occupied Palestine, including seven years living and working in Jerusalem. Her book, "Refusing to be Enemies", is the culmination of these twenty odd years of experience.

One theme that recurs throughout the book is the idea that nonviolent resistance is popular resistance. Active nonviolence allows entire communities of an oppressed group to mobilize in various ways, whether through boycotts, strikes, blockades, peaceful demonstrations, trespassing, etc., and tends not to concentrate power in the hands of military or political elites.

The book has two underlying premises: the belief that Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, since 1967, is fundamentally wrong and illegal under international law, and that Israel must withdraw from these lands, and a belief that, in all likelihood, the only way to force Israel to withdraw is through massive nonviolent resistance in both Palestine, Israel and the international community.

Many of the activists look back favourably to the First Intifada, from 1987 to 1993, when a largely nonviolent grass roots uprising occurred in occupied Palestine, and the decision-making power was very much in the hands of the community. In 1994, the PLO leadership returned to Occupied Palestine and imposed a very strong state structure on the West Bank and Gaza, in effect marginalizing the civil society that had emerged in the preceding years. The Second Intifada since the fall of 2000 has been a much more state-centred operation, with a more militarized focus. While a new wave of nonviolent resistance has emerged since 2000, its practitioners have often felt rather marginalized by the official channels of state-based Palestinian struggle. I use the term, state, in this paragraph rather loosely, since the Palestinian Authority might best be called a kind of quasi-state, with authoritarian institutions typical of a state, but without real autonomy or international recognition.

The book revolves around a series of interviews with nonviolent activists, mostly in Palestine and Israel, who reflect on the issues of nonviolent resistance in this context from a variety of angles. The book opens with Maxine introducing us to several nonviolent activists who tell us why they chose nonviolence and why they got involved in activism against the occupation. Through the voices of Palestinian and Israeli nonviolent activists, the book then moves on to reflect on the last several decades of nonviolent activism in Israel/Palestine with its successes and failures, on the question of both the triumphs and challenges of nonviolent organizing, and on the activists' hopes and visions for the future. The umbrella term, nonviolent activism, in this context, includes a range of people and organizations working in a variety of ways for a just peace by peaceful means. It ranges from the work of Israeli organizations like New Profile, which uses the power of the word to challenge the increasingly militaristic nature of Israeli society, to Israeli groups like the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, which works in solidarity with Palestinians using direct nonviolent action to resist the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, to joint organizations like Combatants for Peace which consists of former combatants from both sides who have now committed themselves to peace-building, to

While the book celebrates the many people and groups dedicated to nonviolence, it is honest about the limits. In Chapter Five, you feel the warmth and the joy of Palestinians, Israelis and internationals gathered around a camp fire in the village of Bil'in, where grass roots Palestinians have maintained an ongoing nonviolent protest since 2005. In Chapter Six, you share the pain and frustration of activists who talk about how marginalized the path of nonviolent resistance often is, in both Palestinian and Israeli society. Then in Chapters Eight and Nine, you share the hopes and dreams that the anti-occupation activists have for the future of Palestine and

Israel. Four reflective essays by individual thinkeractivists round out the book, and help ground the spiritual energy of the journey through which the book has taken you. A bibliography and a list of related websites then invite the reader to explore these topics further. There is perhaps one major weakness in the book. There should have been a first chapter that set forth the chronological background to the current situation, saying what happened in 1947, in 1948-49, 1967, 1987, and so forth, explaining how and why the Israeli occupation is illegal under international law, and describing the general nature of the occupation. Just as many in the west are unaware of nonviolent activism in Palestine and Israel, many westerners are profoundly ignorant of the general historical facts. As it is, the reader pieces things together, chapter by chapter, or has to go elsewhere for this kind of general background. While it is not the intent of the book to deal with the general history, it could have been summarized adequately in ten to twenty pages at the beginning of the book, so the reader could have that basic description to refer to. I agree with Ursula Franklin's opening words. This is an important book. Every open-minded westerner should read it, and more importantly, act upon it. Israel's increasingly militaristic and technological system of control over occupied Palestine, (and to some extent over dissenters within Israel itself), the apathy of most of the Israeli public, and the disempowerment of many Palestinians, can all be seen as a microcosm of the world as a whole. In North America, we are both oppressed and oppressors. The more we fail to act in response to one example of oppression, the more we potentially injure ourselves and all future generations. Israel is all of us. Occupied Palestine is all of us. Perhaps the nonviolent resistance movement, and its power to transform, can become all of us.