Alison Bodine Update: Barred From Canada For Two Years

by matttbastard

@$%#@!!11 pale @ A Creative Revolution brings the bad news:

The Immigration and Refugee board says [Alison Bodine] “lied” or misrepresented herself when entering Canada, way back on September 10.

The Canadian Press has more details on the ruling:

Marc Tessler said the Immigration Act stipulated that her lack of full disclosure at the border crossing south of Vancouver amounted to “misrepresentation” as defined in the legislation.

[…]

He said Bodine arrived at the Peace Arch crossing south of Vancouver about 2 a.m. Sept. 10 with a vehicle loaded with personal belongings. The border officer said the amount of belongings and her limited funds made it unlikely she only planned to stay for the two months she indicated.

[…]

She was refused entry and headed south to the small community of Blaine, Wash., where a friend loaded much of her belongings and the anti-war literature into his car.

She returned to the border crossing, said Tessler, and was admitted into Canada but didn’t tell the border agent of her earlier attempt to cross. The bulk of her belongings and the anti-war literature were seized when the friend attempted to cross the border.

The adjudicator conceded he was “bewildered” by the earlier opinion of the border agent that she might not leave after two months. He said she had been at UBC for four years and had crossed the border many times.

He also said the anti-war literature and her belief that they were what led to her problems had nothing to do with his decision.

The adjudicator said that when she went to the border the second time she told the official her car contained only her possessions; she didn’t tell the agent that some of her belongings had been transferred to her friend’s vehicle.

She also said she planned to stay in Canada for two to three days and did not mention her earlier entry refusal, said Tessler.

While the initial refusal was “unjustified,” the “elements of the allegations of misrepresentation are established,” he said in ordering her removal.

So, Tessler’s decision has nothing to with the anti-war literature found in Bodine’s car. Right, but the adjudicator did admit to being “bewildered” by the first border guard’s “unjustified” initial refusal. Any way you look at it, the optics aren’t good – especially when coupled with the repeated refusal by Canadian border officials to allow Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright entry into Canada.

Keep watch for more updates @ ACR & Alison Bodine Speaks Out!

[edited to reflect additional information and for style, format and clarity]

Update: What Prole said.

Update 11.01:

The Province quotes Bodine:

“There is no reason to exclude me,” said Bodine, originally from Denver but who studied at the University of B.C. for four years. “I was just an easy target. We’ll continue organizing.”

[...]

She said her ordeal is meant to intimidate others who oppose Canada’s role in the war in Afghanistan.

“This is political targeting. They did this to intimidate people in the anti-war effort,” Bodine said.

more from The Globe:

“They shouldn’t have arrested me at all,” she said outside. “What the Immigration adjudicator ruled on upstairs was completely a technicality that they’ve chosen to pursue based on the fact I’m a political organizer. … I will not be allowed back in Canada for two years, for political organizing, for raising my voice, speaking out against war and occupation.”

Asked if her numerous bags, her pending job interview and the presence of a boyfriend in Vancouver signalled a desire to move here, she replied, “Eventually yes, I do want to live here in Canada.”

Also:

Alison Bodine Defence Committee Meeting

THUR NOV 1 6:30pm

in the Large North Hall of Joe’s Cafe

(on Commercial Drive at Napier St)

Join us to meet, discuss and analyze the legal outcome of the Admissibility Hearing Process. The Alison Bodine Defence Committee will meet, and invites all who are interested, to assess the campaign and discuss what’s next after this legal stage of this battle!

I’m several thousand kilometres away from spitting distance–anyone closer to the ‘hood going to attend the meeting?

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

Why I’m Wearing Red Today

by matttbastard

“We call these people ‘missing women’ – Aboriginal women are missing in so many ways in our society. … I really believe there are aspects of society that have to change so that things like this, in the best case, don’t happen, but more realistically, if they do happen, that they aren’t brushed aside – that the issue isn’t missing as well as the women.”

- Dr. Ellen Bielawski, Dean of the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Native Studies

I’m wearing red for Bernadette Lynda Ahenakew, Edna Bernard, Katie Sylvia Ballantyne, Delores Dawn Brower, Bonnie Joanne Jack, Rachel Liz Quinney, and other disposable Edmonton sex workers whose violent deaths are being investigated by Project KARE.

Many were First Nations women, women of colour. Some were allegedly (“allegedly” *blinks*) murdered by smiling (suspected, accused, etc) serial killer Thomas Svekla. But there are several suspects (“and potential rapists all are…“).

43 unsolved murders; the earliest one dates back to 1932.

The majority of the fallen will likely never receive justice. These women dared to reside outside of society, beyond the boundaries of bourgeois interest and patriarchal, proprietary outrage; far away from the glare of the 24 hr news cycle spotlight. Marginal corpses lying in a ditch, an alleyway, a cheap, tobacco-stained motel room, surrounded by the dirty implements of self-destruction (“they got what they deserved” *blinks*).

Outside of society.

Goddammit; their lives had-have-just as much value as a (blond-haired, blue-eyed) cheerleader, soccer mom, or business executive.

That’s why I’m wearing red*: for those used, then tossed, crumpled up like soggy, sperm-soaked tissue paper; to represent the blood of the forgotten and recycle their valuable legacies.

Related: More from Daniel MacIsaac of the Edmonton Sun here and here; CBC News backgrounder on Svekla and 25 years of unsolved Edmonton area sex worker slayings.

Update: Prole in comments:

You can help. Give to Pretty Bird Woman House.

http://www.prettybirdwomanhouse.blogspot.com/

Update 2: Kevin is wearing red for “the strong, brave women who refuse to stay silent about the increasing violence perpetuated against women, particularly women of color.”

Please read the whole thing–especially the links.

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

*When I woke up today, I realized I don’t own anything red, not even socks nor underwear. So, I’m wearing red directly on my skin.

Hump Day Music Spotlight: “And I Never Cared About…Whatever.”

by matttbastard

Before delving into decidedly weighter subjects, please enjoy the following frivolous ear candy to hopefully help get your system primed and ready for Halloween sugar shock:

Los Campesinos! – International TweeXcore Underground (Arts & Crafts/Wichita Recordings)

annemarie – apple (suicide on your stereo set) (Music Is My Girlfriend)

Sambassadeur – New Moon (Labrador)

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This Is Only A Test

by matttbastard

I’m really getting sick and tired of this constant letter ‘A’ bullshit.

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers (please.)

AATW FTW!

by matttbastard

This one goes out to Timmy, George and everyone @ Nocturnal Commissions:

TUNE!

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PSA: Urge Canada to Vote YES for Nuclear Disarmament at the UN

by matttbastard

From Ceasefire.ca:

Urge Canada to Vote YES for Nuclear Disarmament at the UN

There is an important meeting taking place right now at the United Nations to discuss nuclear disarmament, with voting on key resolutions scheduled to happen this week.
I am worried that Stephen Harper may be planning to reverse Canada’s longstanding support for nuclear disarmament.

The world is watching how Canada will vote.

Our sources tell us that the government remains undecided on whether they will vote “YES” in favour of these critical resolutions. I urge you to send your letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier, calling on him to vote “YES”, and continue Canada’s tradition as a champion of nuclear disarmament.

Best wishes,

Related: Tilman Ruff – Let’s ban all nuclear weapons — now; ICAN report: Securing Our Survival (SOS) The case for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.

Elsewhere: The Bulletin Online: A rebirth of the anti-nuclear weapons movement?

During the 1980s, a strong anti-nuclear war movement made the notion of a world without nuclear weapons seem possible. Today, the drumbeat for a nuclear-weapon-free world is growing loud again, with protests in Britain about the Labour Party’s decision to renew its nuclear capability, hunger strikes at the University of California in opposition to U.S. plans for a reliable replacement warhead, and prominent policy leaders such as Henry Kissinger and George Shultz calling for the nuclear states to rethink their reliance on nuclear weapons. Kate Hudson, the chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and head of Social and Policy Studies at London South Bank University, Aaron Voldman, an undergraduate at Brandeis University and director of the Student Peace Alliance, Jessica Wilbanks, a co-coordinator of Faithful Security: National Religious Partnership on Nuclear Weapons Danger, and Lawrence S. Wittner, a history professor at the State University of New York/Albany and coeditor of the forthcoming book Peace Action: Past, Present, and Future, debate whether we are witnessing the start of a new anti-nuclear/peace movement.

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

Due Process (And Sanity)? Stop Being So September 10th, d00d.

by matttbastard

Via Stageleft – The Globe and Mail:

Canadian officials are taking the unprecedented step of asking a judge to install closed-circuit video cameras inside a terrorism suspect’s family home, arguing national security necessitates the scrutiny.

Hang on, rewind my selekta:

Canadian officials are taking the unprecedented step of asking a judge to install closed-circuit video cameras inside a terrorism suspect’s family home, arguing national security necessitates the scrutiny. [emphasis mine]

K, closed circuit video cameras. Inside a private residence. No conviction.

Got it.

Wait, there’s more:

Canadian officials accuse [Egyptian asylum seeker Mahmoud] Jaballah of playing a “communications relay” role in a major terrorist massacre – al-Qaeda’s 1998 African embassy bombings. His potential access to fax machines, computers and telephones inside his family home, where he lives with his wife and five children, deeply worries the government.

Mr. Jaballah, who was never charged with a criminal offence, spent nearly all of 1999 to 2007 in jail. Attempts to deport him to Egypt, a country known to torture fundamentalists, failed on humanitarian grounds.

Hold up, hold up now – DJ rewind:

Mr. Jaballah, who was never charged with a criminal offence spent nearly all of 1999 to 2007 in jail.

K, closed circuit video cameras. Inside a private residence. 8 years in jail, no charges.

Now I’ve got it. We are no longer in Canada; we’re living in a hysterical realist 1984 pastiche.

Stage nails it:

I’m all for punishing terrorists but don’t you think that before we lock people away and/or put surveillance camera’s [in] their houses that they should be found guilty of something first?

Just remember, (uncharged/unconvicted) evildoers:

Recommed this post to Progressive Bloggers

PSA: Document the Silence Tomorrow

by matttbastard

October 31st: Be Bold, Be Brave, Be Red:

• Wear red on October 31, 2007. Take a picture or video of yourself and friends wearing red. Send it to: beboldbered@gmail.com. We’ll post it!
• Take Your Red to the Streets! Know of a location where violence occurred against a woman of color? Have a public location where you feel women of color are often ignored? Make violence against women of color visible by decorating the space in red. Be sure to send us pictures and or video of your display!
• Rally! Gather your friends, family, and community to rally. Check out the Document the Silence website for the litany we’re asking participants to read together on October 31^st. Be sure to send us pictures and/or video of the event! You could even gather where you created a display!

More details on how you can participate @ Document the Silence.

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

Sleep Is, Like, SO 20th Century

by matttbastard

The deficit keeps mounting; hopefully tonight I can get into the black again. Suffice to say, minimal blogging and/or thinking tonight (y’all think we could procure those monkeys some typewriters? All that booze might inspire some HST-esque gonzo brilliance).

For now, I want to further highlight a post featured in yesterday’s blogwhoring orgy. Superlative journalist/blogger Shaun Mullen asks: Why Is Gay Hating James Dobson Still Licensed As a Therapist in Colorado?

There may be no aspect of Dobson’s career where he has wanted and gotten it both ways more than in blurring the lines between his roles as an ordained minister and licensed marriage and family therapist.

Dobson believes that the gay rights movement has “sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family.” He depicts gays as amoral, polygamous, disease prone and emotionally troubled. Despite his equivocating when it came to Haggard, he claims that he can “cure” gayness through “reparative therapy.“

Such declarations put him at odds with national marriage and family therapy organizations, as well as the American Psychological Association, which states unequivocally in its Diagnostic Statistical Manual that homosexuality is not an illness, mental disorder or emotional problem. The APA has not viewed being gay to be an abnormality since 1973.

Despite being totally out of step with his own profession regarding homosexuality, Dobson remains a licensed marriage and family therapist in Colorado.

Two former members of that state’s Board of Marriage and Family Therapists, speaking anonymously, said that Dobson’s dual role is improper and demeans the profession, but the board’s hands are tied because of a waiver in state law.

“He can’t have it both ways,” said one of the former board members of Dobson’s dual role as a gay-bashing preacher who claims he can cure homosexuality and a licensed therapist. “Is he dealing with someone as a therapist or as a minister? There has to be a distinction.”

Patients treated by therapists “with beliefs rather than nationally accepted principles and standards of diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment can be harmed by the very person they trust to help them,” said the other board member.

“We professionals in psychology and psychotherapy are often the ones who have to fix the breakage done by other psychotherapists. A therapist who tells patients that homosexuality is merely an act of will and as such can be subverted or reverted to something else works in the world of beliefs and not the world of professional standards and accepted practices.”

The entire post is amazing (in other words, please do read the whole damn thing). In the meantime, I’m going to look for some ether, a case of Jim Beam and 1,000 red IBM Selectrics. Oh, and a shiteload of bananas.

Go forth, my simian scribes.

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

Sunday Blogwhoring: Gotta Have Friends

by matttbastard

To all the folks @ Bread & Roses (Debra, Godammitkitty, fern, skdadl, berlynn, deBeauxOs etc etc etc); to JJ, Prole and pale; to boomgate, Isabel, and sassywho (best cobloggers EVAR) : thank you. For everything.

Love, muchly.

(big ups da one Shakespeare’s Sistah!)

Alas, a blog: Feminism is not your expectation. (thanks for the acknowledgment, Mandolin)

Kiko’s House: Why Is Gay Hating James Dobson Still Licensed As a Therapist in Colorado? (MUST read – who sez bloggers can’t do quality journalism?)

The Heathlander: Unworthy victims (h/t The Cylinder)

elle, phd: Really, This Is Not Wholly a Post to Gain Your Sympathy

Dawg’s Blawg: US activist “not welcome in Canada”

nexy’s cocoon: statistics

TransAdvocate: Methodist Judicial Council To Rule On The Sin of Transgenderism

Trans Group Blog: Call for Transsexual Narratives (h/t nexyjo)

misscripchick: here’s your cookie

Feline Formal Shorts: NPR on Nooses (Oh, hell no they didn’t go there? Yup, they did.)

The Unapologetic Mexican: Racism in a time of Need (h/t Tom)

Slap Upside The Head: The Editorialist’s Wacky Perspective

pogge: A solution in search of a problem

A Creative Revolution: Eat all your ethanol, there’s children starving in Africa!

Shakesville: Women are not prey. Oh, and by the way, they’re not toilets, either.

Staged Awareness: (untitled)

Objectify This: Showdown: Chauvinist Humor vs. Racist Rhetoric

Politics’n'Poetry: Navajos seek funds to clear uranium contamination

April Reign: Fighting Back or Prince hates Babies

Girl, Dislocated: Foreign dislocation

Too Sense: Jockey Syndrome And The Dream Act

Le Revue Gauche: Contracting Out Harpers War, Hidden Costs of Harper’s War and Fight or Else

Impolitical: Afghanistan out of control

The Galloping Beaver: As the Bush administration scrambles for a legacy…

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers