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Ajay Puri, Andriy Mishchenko
Editors in Chief
East of Main

In 17 days 919 Palestinians killed by Israel including 284 children & 100 women, 4260 injured

UPDATE January 7, 2009:

• CEASEFIRE talks are finally being considered by Israel – there is hope but offensive on Gaza still in full-force [BBC]
• Estimated Death toll: 683 Palestinians since Israel offensive began (December 27, 2008). 7 Israeli soldiers have also died. [BBC]
• Estimated Injured: 3,085 Palestinians
• 3 UN-sponsored schools in Gaza have now been hit, with at least 45 dead [Manila Bulletin]
• Canada plans to provide $4 million in humanitarian relief to Gaza – 3 million go to the UN Relief and Works Agency and 1 million to Red Cross [CBC Radio | China News]

Israel intensifies attack in Gaza, while Rally for Gaza goes on despite continued snowstorm in Vancouver

Israeli sends ground troops into Gaza

Israeli forces have intensified their presence in the Gaza: in addition to the week of bombing, today they have started to move in their ground forces. 10,000 soldiers also await at the Gaza/Israel border.  Many causalities have already occurred and will continue to happen (latest figures estimate more than 500 civilian deaths).

Hope and progress are now farther from reach for 1.5 million Palestinians who are suffering and living in fear.

Rally For Gaza in Vancouver

New Video just posted

Sources: Salimah Ebrahim, News1130, Facebook Event page

The onslaught of the snow bombing Vancouver didn’t deter protesters to rally in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery today.

More information can be found at the Facebook Event page. According to the event page 1000+ were planning to attend the event, and estimates indicate 500+ braved the poor snowy conditions.

People of the world rally for peace in the Middle East

Huge rallies by progressive citizens and groups across the world today have been held. BBC reports rallies of tens of thousands are being held in Europe London (15,000+), Paris, Spain, Germany, Rome, Athens, also in many cities Asia; and here in North America as well – Toronto (2000+), Montreal (2000+), Ottawa (1000+), Vancouver, Winnipeg, New York, Miami, San Francisco, following similar events in parts of the Muslim world (Indonesia, Egypt etc).

At these rallies, shoe-throwing has become a popularized gesture of protest and contempt against Israel since an Iraqi journalist tossed his pair of brogues at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad last month.

Citizens around the world are urging the Israeli government to stop the unjust attack and are hoping negotiations can start soon for a proper ceasefire agreement and assistance to the Palestinian people.

World powers condemn attacks

France, UN, Spain and many other international groups have condemned Israel from using this further force – but this has not deterred the Israelis. This attack is planned to last for days until Israeli forces are able to destroy the all the physical infrastructure and take control of the open spaces in the Gaza. Unfortunately, the Canadian and US governments are still supportive of the attacks.

A non-violent solution is needed immediately before attacks further escalate.

I really hope the snow melts away fully today (it is slowly doing so), if not- as Frances Bula mentions, we’re in trouble… Help us Raymond Louie!

January 4th, 2009 UPDATE:  Another 15 cm of snow dumped on Vancouver  Sunday.

INTERESTING FACT: Frances Bula reports in 2008, the City spent nearly $940,000 for snow removal (this was spent on the City’s only 47 trucks with ploughing and salting attachments). This was ~$200,000 more than expected due to all that extra white powder we received.

I highly suggest reading her commentary as she discusses why the side streets haven’t been ploughed as well as the main streets.

My only comments are

(a) it was surprising to hear that only 4 people called the City to complain about the snow on the side streets (as if anyone who walks around the streets will know there’s a lot snow!); but more importantly

(b) that when the side streets were attempted to be cleaned in 1993, residents complained about the noise the trucks made!

What is a mayor and council to do!?

Jan. 3, 2009 UPDATE: More snow continues to fall Saturday; an  estimated snowfall of 10-15 cm. Residents ask when will it stop?

Main St at Broadway - December 24, 2008

Snowfall Record in Vancouver

The end of December in Vancouver has not seen this much white powder in years. As of Wednesday morning, the accumulated total had hit a whopping 62 cm with more still to fall (and make no mistake all you East Coast readers, it’s 62 not 6.2!). That’s almost 4x as much as the 16 cm that falls on an average this month.

This Dec. 25th will rank as the Christmas Day with the most snow on the ground ever in Vancouver – the previous record was 17.5 cm.

A heartfelt thank you to all Translink bus drivers

I tried my best to commute to work this morning (I know, working on Xmas eve is hardcore). I don’t have any winter boots but fortunately I found my ski gloves, toque and my ‘Shaw’ endorsed water-resistant jacket. I slipped and slid my way to the bus stop which was fortunately the 99 stop at Main and Broadway. And to my surprise,  the accordion style bus came within 15 minutes and not fully loaded (which is impressive considering the amount of snow on the ground and falling at the same time this morning added to how the trolley buses were not working).

I boarded and was amazed at all the others on the bus: many wore whatever they could find at home an older gentleman wore one red and one black glove and a a woman was complaining about how she tried to waterproof her shoes with a special spray (but as you could tell from her wet shoes, it didn’t stop her feet from getting soaked).

And my connecter the 98 bus also came within moments (it must have been my lucky day as the day before it took 1.5 hours for me to commute what usually takes me 30 min). After reaching work it was very difficult to focus on the work at hand as the window beside my cubicle you could just see the snow dumping down and various daring drivers trying to ambitiously get around.

But I must commend all the bus drivers who came to work today and helped all of us crazy folk trying to get around. For you, a thousand times over, I thank you!

Snowy Photos competition and stories

Please send in your photos either as comments or via email to East of Main and we’ll put them up!

In addition, if you have some amazing stories of how the snow either positively or negatively effected you over the past little while – we’d love it for you to share it!

Commercial drive already enjoys the car-free days. Having no cars on the street allows people to walk and shop more comfortably. It encourages shoppers to explore the area at leisure, increases the profits of the local merchants and also saves the environment. Overall having car-free Sunday’s will be good for the area socially, economically and environmentally.

Car-free days are common annually around the world. They attract large crowds and give the area a festive atmosphere. Although some merchants are worried they might not be good for business. “Newly elected city councilor and environmental advocate Andrea Reimer wants the city to organize car-free days every Sunday for three months. The proposal was part of the Vision Vancouver platform during the recent civic election campaign.”

Some people seem to be for it and others not so much. The area on Main street with a high concentration of Punjabi businesses is referred to as the Punjabi Market or District. Both Commercial drive and Punjabi Market are being considered at the moment although Ms. Reimer thinks any area that wants car free Sundays should be considered.

References:
www.cbc.ca    2008/12/11
www.cbc.ca     2008/12/13

Dispossessed is an award winning science fiction novel set on another planet, among an alien species. The questions it tackles are as important today as they were when the book was first published in 1974. Ursulak Le Guin explores the class system and feminism in this classic novel. The discrepancies among the genders are not as bad as they used to be. Women can do anything today that a man can. Unfortunately, I am here to tell you that we will be judged as an uncivilized species if the report is based on how we treat majority of the women on this planet. Half of the human species is discriminated against. And according to infanticide and feticide rates across the globe it is done even before birth.

India and China alone make up a fair chunk of the world population therefore any ills affecting these two societies have a worldwide impact. Major minority groups in British Columbia consist of these two Asian populations. Currently there are less females than males in India. This is no accident. Daily females babies are murdered both after and before birth.

“No, no child is innocent.
Especially not a girl-child. Why, men of every colour and creed find blame in girls for rains that come and don’t come, but mostly, men blame girls for living.” –What the Body Remembers

Instead of just blaming the girls, the Indians are killing them even before they are born with the help of technologies such as the ultrasound. Abortion is legal in India. Family planning and promotion of three or less children has managed to decrease the rate of population growth. Preference of a male over a female child is very prevalent. Parents look upon female babies as a financial burden. Due to dowry practice, a girl child is often not good for family finances. Moreover the parents of girls are expected to pay for the marriage ceremony. Families have been known to go bankrupt in the process of getting their daughters married. Females who have experienced adversity themselves due to their gender, prefer to kill off their daughters than to let them suffer the same fate. Girl children are generally regarded as a curse in India. In a society where female goddesses are still worshiped the living female is regarded as a bane from God.

“I do not need to understand words to know that he is disappointed I am not a boy. Some things need no translation. And I know, because my body remembers without the benefit of words, that men who do not welcome girl-babies will not treasure me as I grow to woman –though he calls me princess just because the Gurus told him to.
I have come so far, I have borne so much pain and emptiness!
But men have not changed.” – What the Body Remembers

The practice of killing young girls has long been recognized as a problem in India and China. Both are strongly patriarchal societies. Female infant mortality rate is 40% higher than male mortality rate in India. It is noted that female infants die more often of preventable diseases than male infants and female infants are less often immunized than male infants in a research study conducted by Dr Jha, whose research into premature mortality is partly funded by Canada’s Global Health Research Initiative (GHRI), a cooperative venture of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Canadian International Development Agency, Health Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

It is illegal in India to use ultrasound tests to determine the gender of the fetus. Recently, a doctor and his assistant were sentenced to two years in jail for revealing the sex of the female fetus and then agreeing to abort it. This was the first conviction of its kind since India made it illegal to abort fetus based on sex in 1994. It has been estimated that over 10 million female fetuses have been terminated in India in the past 20 years. National sex ratio in India is 960 women per 1000 men. In Punjab, the Indian state from which most of the Indian community in Canada stems from, there are 882 females per 1000 males. With only one other state, Uttar Pradesh, having a lower female to male ratio.

Many different factors (for example, hormonal changes, exposure to Hepatitis B, even the father’s occupation) have been proposed as explanations. But Dr Jha says those factors could not account for such a huge gap, leaving the misuse of medical technology as the only credible explanation. Extrapolating the average of the 1997 figure to cover the period from 1985 to 2005 when ultrasound became available, Dr Jha and his colleagues calculate a cumulative deficit of 10 million females over those two decades. Reporting on their findings in the medical journal The Lancet in January 2006, the researchers say the cultural pressure to have at least one son is most strongly indicated by declining female birth rates in families where previous children have been girls. For example, the sex ratio for a second birth when the first child had been female was 759 females per 1 males. The ratio fell even more dramatically — to 719 females per 1 male births — in the case of third births when the previous children were female.
- Stephen Dale, India’s Missing Daughters.

Doctors in India can only do so much. The pressure on the medical community is tremendous to abort female fetuses. There have been cases of home conducted abortions gone array with both the mother and the baby succumbing to death. The medical profession is not perfect. Medicine is riddled with doctors motivated more by monetary gain than ethics. Henceforth even with laws in place to ban feticide, they continue. Doctors in India are calling for international help to prevent two million abortions they say are carried out each year because the unborn babies are female. The Indian Medical Association is urging international colleagues at the World Medical Association to support a campaign against female feticide and female infanticide to rid India of what it calls “this social evil”.

The international medical community is responding. There are laws in place right here in BC which prevent individuals belonging to the Indian or the Chinese community from knowing the sex of their fetus. These laws are in place for a reason. Just because the Indians or the Chinese have moved from their home countries does not mean that the social biases they carry have been left behind. Women are being pressured into having boy children right here in BC and are blamed by the in laws if they fail to produce one.

So even if you don’t plan to kill your unborn baby just because it is a girl remember that there are at least a billion people in this world who do.

Even if you cannot plan the nursery décor because they didn’t tell you the sex of your unborn child, remember that some girls were given a chance at life because their parents were not told their sex.

Right here in Canada. Right here on East of Main.

Barinder Singh

————————————————————————————————

References:

M. Rao. 2005. The way the wind blows: population policies in India. In Gangolli, L.V.; Duggal, R.; and Shukla, A., ed. Review of Healthcare in India. (Mombai, India: Centre for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes), pp 117-125.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2765853.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2008/nov/23/india-gender

http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-95719-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

Global Zoo [Baghe e Vahsh e Jahani] Tour
Richards on Richards
November 30, 2008

Had the fortunate chance to see the amazing Iranian Rock band, Kiosk, tonight. The show was simply amazing.

I haven’t been to Richards on Richards in quite some time, probably since my early twenties and certainly not on a Sunday; but when I was invited to hear a gypsy band singing in Farsi was quite intrigued. As I walked into the night club I saw a sea of stylish and beautiful Iranian fans all over the club. Most were hip students or well dressed youth but there was also many middle aged and older couples excited to see this traditional yet contemporary band play.

Kiosk I should mention is a six-member Iranian Rock band based in Tehran. To learn more about them I highly suggest their website or Wikipedia. But I wouldn’t just label them as a Rock band – after hearing them play I would certainly say they blend in some Blues, Jazz, Traditional Farsi Music and with their new album Global Zoo they have also mixed in Gypsy Folk. This is certainly shown as they have 4 guitarists (Arash Sobhani, Ali Kamali, Anoush Khazeni, and Babak Khiavchi), a keyboard player (Ardalan Payvar) and a drummer (Shahrooz Molaei). This has helped them create such a unique eclectic sound. And even though I couldn’t understand the lyrics as it was all sung in Farsi the beat was mesmerizing and rhythmic.  As the night went on, the fans became increasingly crazy as they sang along louder and louder, rocked their heads back and forth faster and faster and even participated in the party train dance [note: this extra excitement could have been because the lead singer, Arash Sobhani, challenged the crowd in saying that they were so much more tame than his LA crowd!].

Click below to see to one of their popular music videos, eshgh e sor’at [Need for speed], which on YouTube has over 450,000 hits! It is an interesting video as it follows the lyrics through the people of Tehran:

Next time their in town I highly suggest seeing them live, the show will definitely captivate you. Rock on Tehran!

What is a Kiosk?
According to Wikipedia, a Kiosk is a separated garden pavilion open on some or all sides1. They were common in Persia, India, Pakistan, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward.

(Top 6 of 15 candidates)
GRAPH: Vancouver Mayoral Race 2008 |PDF

Proportion of Votes for Vancouver Mayoral Race 2008

Gregor won by 18,804 votes (or 15.1%), which is a sizable majority over Peter Ladner. Interestingly, for Betty Krawczyk of the Work Less Party – she can tell her voters and fans that she finished third in this race (even though she only captured 1.1% of the casted votes)! And despite her finishing third as well as the WLP in many of the contests Pete Quily’s Social Networking Analysis didn’t cover it – however he should have as WLP has a strong presence on Facebook.

COUNCILOR

(Top 26 of 32)

GRAPH: Vancouver Councilor Race, 2008 | PDF

Proportion of Votes for Vancouver City Council 2008

From the councilor elections of the top ten that were elected: 7 were Vision, 2 COPE and 1 NPA.

• Raymond Louie had the highest voter support at 53.3% of the vote (or 66226 votes)
• Kashmir Dhaliwal of Vision was just 1023 votes shy of getting onto council (0.8% of the vote)
• Interestingly, the top ten candidates are separated by 20,000 votes (66,000 to 46,000)
• If NPA delivered another 10,000 votes on election day, this would have been an all-together different ball game!
• The highest non-Vision/COPE or non-NPA party was the Work Less Party again – with Chris Shaw racking up 11,237 votes (9% of the vote). He was followed closely by independent Lea Johnson (less than 300 votes apart). These stats also show how strong the 3 big parties are in Vancouver- no one else can come close.

Next post: will analyze Parks Board and School Board races. This will be followed by an in-depth review of why Eastside votes more progressively than the Westside.

[Note: data provided by the City of Vancouver xls file]

Gregor Robertson giving his speech after winning the Vision Nomination, Summer 2008

For the people of Vancouver it seems the world is becoming a more progressive place. In late October two key Provincial ridings had by-elections where the NDP won both seats. Then on November 4th, Obama was elected as the next President of the United States. And on November 15, 2008 the people of Vancouver voted for CHANGE. Sam Sullivan and his NPA-led council were taken over by the progressive VISION and COPE parties. Gregor Robertson, who was recently the NDP MLA for Vancouver-Fairview, will become our newly elected Mayor. In addition, City Council has 9 of its 10 seats filled by VISION and COPE members; Parks Board and School Board also are dominated by VISION, COPE and also one Green party candidate.

Robertson giving his speech at the Vision victory party at the Hotel Vancouver- November 15, 2008

On Saturday night all of Vision and COPE supporters celebrated across the city, but the biggest and loudest party was hosted by Vision at the Hotel Vancouver. All the players were there and it was definitely a night to remember. Gregor gave a very touch speech and actually mentioned his key areas of emphasis including housing and homelessness.

This is great news for the city – as we are now able to have a group of dedicated people tackle the City’s growing problems of homelessness, lack of affordable housing and bike/non-car infrastructure, and the outsourcing and neglect of core city services such as police, libraries, parks and community centres – all of which Gregor and his team have been long advocating to change for the better.

In terms of contracting out the Georgia Straight makes a great point:

Gregor Robertson, promises not to contract out civic services. NPA mayoral candidate Peter Ladner has said he is open to the idea of contracting out services if this provides a better deal for taxpayers. The NPA has already supported an $800,000 expansion of the Downtown Ambassadors program; this is, in effect, contracting out security to business-improvement associations.

One of the sad news of the night, particularly for the South Asian community, one of it’s prominent leaders, Kashmir Dhaliwal, was not elected to city council despite the hard work of his campaign. For more on this check out Frances Bula’s blog story.

There are many questions left to be answered:

• So how did this win happen?
• What does this mean for the people of City?
• What does it mean for the Olympics?
• What does the data look like by voting poll station and for each candidate?
• And what does this mean for the people East of Main?

Over the coming days, East of Main will be providing in-depth analysis on these and many other questions  (e.g., Some theories and important historical events – Vision pack with COPE, Gregor being wooed by key Vision people to run, map of Vancouver to show East/West divide, ethnic votes etc).

For now we’ll report on Voter Turnout and the Electoral Map. According to the City of Vancouver‘s unofficial results -

Out of the 403663 Registered Voters, 124285 voted.

That’s a turnout of 30.8%.This was the lowest turnout since 1956 (which had 26%).

City MAP [courtesy of City of Vancouver)

Vancouver Electoral Map 2008

As one can see there is a clear division between east of main voters (Gregor supporters) and west of main voters (Ladner supporters). This will be discussed in great depths in the coming posts with income analysis by districts to show how people’s wealth (or lack of it) is correlated to their voting behaviour.

When the tents were set up, the burgers ready to be devoured and the audience ready to be head bobbing to the music – the men in uniform came a storming.

By the height of the whirlwind drama, there were at least 100 officers marching down Hastings Street trying to intimidate the crowd of peaceful supporters. Fortunately word on the street was there weren’t that many cases of abuse – but it definitely was not a picnic in the park.
The whole event had to be shut down – which dampened the spirits of all those there. Beth a community activist in the area indicated that there were many pushed aside and verbally abused by the police. She had wished they had acted more respectfully. Another bystander indicated that some of the Insite volunteers were offering the Police burgers to ease tensions – and while the accepted, it didn’t help relieve the damage that was already done.

East of Main will report more on the story as it unfolds – and we’ll try to talk to some of the main organizers of the event to find out what the next steps are and what actually alarmed the police to come in a raid fashion.

Photographer Andriy Mishchenko was live on scene and while have photos up shortly.

Canadian Press report check out this link.

Poor Leadership

• He controls his Conservative cabinet ministers and MPS from saying what they would like. There is good reason as some of them are quite the loose cannons – but having that tight control over his team just shows the lack of leadership and trust he has in his team. Don’t believe me, try to name 5 MPs the Conservatives have in cabinet currently – see it’s difficult to do!

International Disaster

• China. Harper has avoided talks with China in terms of unjustices against Tibet, but also in terms of trade (as China is one of our key trading partners, especially now when the US is going into recession). This has destroyed 50 years of relationships with the country
• USA. Harper has aligned our country with the US in this competition for scarce energy resources.
• Harper has taken several steps to bring Canadian economic, climate-change, and military policies in line with the debt-saddled superpower to the south. and as the Georgia Straight mentions Last February, for instance, the Harper government quietly signed a deal with the Bush administration to permit U.S. troops to enter this country in an emergency.
• Harper has supported and encouraged the Security and Prosperity Partnership with the United States and Mexico – this is a deadly deal which will reduce our sovereignty as a nation but also each of us individually (i.e., reducing our human rights).
• Afghanistan. Harper extended Canadian combat operations in southern Afghanistan to 2011. In addition, a recent report shows the cost to be more than double what Harper has projected (to $22 billion!).
• Foreign Aid. Harper’s refusal to support the United Nations goal of having developed countries donate 0.7 percent of their national incomes to international development.

Personal

• Harper is the son of a former Imperial Oil executive and had worked for them as well.

Destroying the Environment

• Described the Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse gases as “a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations”. His policy for trying to reduce greenhouse gases (setting intensity levels) has been proven not work in other parts of the world.
• At the Bali climate conference last year, the Conservative government opposed efforts by the European Union to reduce emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.
• Fast tracked Exxon Mobile’s bid to open a new tar sand recently in Alberta (instead of the regular process of reviewing the environmental and economic impact of starting a new tar sand which takes several months, Harper somehow approved Exxon on getting the approval in a week!)

Will Increase Spending on Imprisoning People Not Helping Them

• Misleading use of crime statistics to make Canada appear less safe than it is (statistics actually shows crime going down in Canada).
• Harper has also committed to increase sentencing to children (14-18 year olds) which only burdens the system more with building more jails and not getting to the roots of the problems

Poor Economics

• Broken promise which he indicated that he would not tax income trusts but he did
• Reducing the GST from 7% to 5% – which many economists say was the wrong thing to do (as that is lost income for the government)
• Harper presiding over declines in Canadian productivity

Cuts to Health, Arts and Social Services

• Harper’s abandonment of agreements with the provinces that would have created more daycare spaces
• Harper’s decision to appeal a B.C. Supreme Court ruling which favoured  Vancouver’s supervised-injection site
• Harper’s stacking of a stem-cell advisory panel with opponents of embryonic stem-cell research
• Harper’s $45-million cuts to the arts;

Not Supporting First Nations Communities

• Harper voted against the Kelowna Accord – which sought to improve the education, employment, and living conditions for Aboriginal peoples through governmental funding and other programs.

Sources: The Georgia Straight, CBC, Wikipedia