New Jets logo: militarization of our hockey continues

J. Boyden

The Winnipeg Jets have crash landed.

The hockey team, supposed to bring good hockey back to a city with some of Canada's poorest neighbourhoods, has revealed its new design -- which features a killing machine.

The Jet's new logos were released Friday. The main design is a blue circle with the metallic grey silhouette of a McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet fighter jet above a red maple leaf, mirroring the Canadian air force's roundel. The Hornet is the same jet the Canadian military has deployed to bomb Iraq, Yugoslavia and now the million-dollar-a-week "humanitarian" destruction of Libya.

The design was put together by True North Sports and Entertainment (the union-busting company who own the Jets), the NHL and the transnational corporation Reebok. A secondary logo features a fighter pilot's set of wings.

“We felt it was important to authenticate the name Jets and we believe the new logo does that through its connection to our country’s remarkable Air Force heritage, including the rich history and relationship that our city and province have enjoyed with the Canadian Forces,” Jets owner Mark Chipman told reporters at a news conference.

That history and relationship starts with the bloody military suppression of the Metis and Red River people's uprising, which lead to the hanging of leader Louis Riel and the founding of Manitoba. One of the latest chapters was written by Operation Charging Bison, when over 500 Canadian troops (backed by helicopters, armoured vehicles, and artillery) took-over downtown Winnipeg for urban-war games.

True North Corporate Welfare

Winnipeg’s poverty is most highly concentrated in the inner-city (a recent report on poverty in the city by feminist writer Erin Vosters notes that over half of all inner-city households are affected by poverty, and many are Aboriginal families). That is also exactly where the MTS centre, future home of the team, is located.

Last May, protesters gathered outside the P-3 privitized MTS centre to oppose the spending of public money on the hockey capitalists.

“This is being rammed down on the public without any idea of what we’re facing,” Darrell Rankin leader of the Communist Party of Canada (Manitoba Committee) and organizer of the demo told the Winnipeg Sun at the time. “We don’t think it’s right to support union-busting billionaires that are going to buy an NHL team and want even more public money.”

Despite urgent demands for affordable social housing in down-town core, the provincial NDP has instead agreed to refurbish the MTS Centre for the Jets. The MTS Centre and True North contracted out the work of the 220-member International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 63, which staffed events at the old Winnipeg Arena.

Growing militarism of economy, society

The design comes after major controversy surrounding the Harper Conservative government's purchase of replacements for the CF-18 from US munitions giant Lockheed Martin. The total cost of the new F-35 fighters quadrupled in just two years.

Pentagon figures now indicate that the total cost of this purchase over a thirty‑year period is expected to hit $29 billion, a staggering sum for a country with serious social and economic problems.

The new Joint Strike Fighter, which carries more bombs and weapons, is not designed for defence, but rather offensive bombing runs. As a single‑engine aircraft, it is reportedly unsuitable to patrol the Canadian Arctic. The F-35 is just another example of the Harper Conservative Government's massive increase military spending and the adoption of a much more bellicose, overtly imperialist foreign policy.

According to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, “the Canada First Defence Strategy, unveiled by the Harper government in 2008, promises that Canada’s military spending will continue to grow by an average of 0.6% in real terms (adjusted for inflation) and an average of 2.7% in nominal terms (not adjusted for inflation) per year from FY 2007‑08 to 2027‑28″. Total spending over the 20‑year life of this plan would likely be in the $415‑440 billion range (2009 dollars), or about $13,000 per Canadian.

On top of the massive increase in military spending there has been a renewed attempt towards the militarization of Canadian society. Recruiting booths, promoting the military's activity like the imperialist war in Afghanistan or the military "aid" to Haiti, are now common across Canada from Naniamo's Bath tub races on Vancouver Island to sports events in Halifax.

The Manitoba Moose, Winnipeg's previous AFL Hockey team before it re-acquired the Jets, held special "Manitoba Moose Military Appreciation Nights."

One of the most outspoken proponents of this pro-war jingoism has been controversial hockey commentator Don Cherry, already known for his sexist, homophobic, racist and anti-Quebec statements.

Cherry, who makes a special point of commemorating the occupation of Afghanistan in his commentaries and has started referring to hockey players as troops, went as far as visiting Afghanistan and signing bombs last December.

In response, a group called Hockey Fans for Peace formed, successfully staging several actions outside hockey games and engendering widespread interest and support.

Hockey Fans for Peace points to polls showing that the vast majority of Canadian's oppose the war in Afghanistan. Already, a significant number of the population are against the bombing of Libya (a majority in Québec).

Hockey Fans for Peace also encourages other sports to refrain from promoting support for the war in Afghanistan. The group calls for the NHL and the mass media to end the practice of using hockey games and broadcasts to promote the view that full support for the war is the only acceptable position for any genuine hockey fan -- or to give anti-war fans equal air-time.

Their message is a timely one for the owners of the Winnipeg Jet's.

Millions of Canadians enjoy hockey - and also oppose militarism and war.

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Imagine what could be done with the $29 billion in savings by scrapping the F‑35 deal!

To give just a few examples, the public transportation systems of Canadian cities could be provided with 10,000 fuel‑efficient new buses for just $5 billion. We could restore the start‑up cost of the cancelled national child‑care program, for another $5 billion. To build 30,000 social housing units, at a cost of $200,000 each, would take another $6 billion ‑ an investment which would immediately save millions spent by provinces and municipalities on emergency services for homeless people. The federal government could provide free post‑secondary tuition for 50,000 students annually, for a total of about $8 billion over three decades. That would still leave another $5 billion for urgent needs such as providing clean drinking water to indigenous communities, or emergency aid to countries hit by natural disasters. These initiatives would create jobs, lower greenhouse‑gas emissions, and reduce provincial government spending.

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The police will fail at keeping us down

BY LENNY LEPRINCE, SPECIAL TO THE GAZETTE JULY 21, 2011


MONTREAL - In recent weeks, the student movement has been increasingly targeted by GAMMA, the newest haphazard concoction of the Montreal police.

The Guet des activités et des mouvements marginaux et anarchistes is mandated to monitor the activities of “fringe movements” and “anarchists.”

It is reminiscent of times when authoritarian forces arrested people simply for thinking too far on the left, when progressives were disallowed freedom of thought, expression and assembly. Whether the arrests were done for good reasons or not, and whether the people arrested were student activists or members of any political movement, is of little importance. The fact is that the police have created an illegal unit that goes against Quebec’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms by arresting and closely scrutinizing any groups that it deems to be “marginal” or “anarchist.”

Must we fear to trespass the invisible frontiers of what is allowed to be thought? Shall we live worrying about an unjustified arrest? Or shall we walk our streets with pride in our ideals and our actions?

The police have already lost the trust of many Montrealers with case after case of racial profiling; did they really need to toss political profiling into the mix?

History tells us that you cannot crush revolutions; a revolution is a set of new ideas, not people. Revolutionaries are only the tools by which new ideas are propagated.

If the city of Montreal is alarmed by the rate at which non-mainstream groups are growing, it should start an open discussion with leaders of groups it finds intimidating, instead of feeling the need to bully, arrest and criminalize actors of social change.

The powers that be may be scared, but we are not. We will not be pushed into submission. We will not stand silent and be subjected to discriminatory acts of political profiling.

If the Montreal police have a problem with this, well – I’m sure they know how to find us.

Lenny Leprince is director of external affairs for the Dawson Student Union at Dawson College.

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Youth and prisons, graphics from the Globe and Mail

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Canada's youth crime plans bewilder international observers

By ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Britain, U.S. and Australia stepping back from tough-on-crime approach

If Canada follows through on plans to crack down on miscreant youth, it'll be one of the few jurisdictions in the world heading in that direction.

And the tough-on-crime approach in the face of contrary evidence is bemusing international observers.

Judges, criminologists and policy-makers in the United States, Britain and Australia - countries whose systems, for the most part, closely resemble Canada's - can't figure out why this country is planning to shift toward a jail-intensive approach. Everyone else seems to be doing the opposite, not for ideological reasons, but because evidence shows it works.

"It's somewhat ironic, actually," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project, which studies jail policy across the United States.

"After nearly four decades of the so-called 'get tough' movement in the U.S., which has meant sending more people to prisons [and] keeping them there for longer periods of time, there's beginning to be a shift away from that."

Ottawa's intention to adopt principles of deterrence and denunciation when it comes to sentencing teens makes no sense to Judge Jimmie Edwards. He's chief justice of the juvenile division of Missouri, an otherwise conservative state that for half a century has focused on diverting youth from the prison system, and rehabilitating the ones that are incarcerated. Now, the "Missouri Model" is being adopted elsewhere.

"I don't think it deters anything," he said. "You have to look at what type of community are you building by constantly sending kids to jail."

Britain

Bob Ashford calls it the three cherries on the slot machine: Fewer teens committing crimes, fewer teens in custody and fewer teens reoffending once they're out.

That's the multi-year trend Britain is looking at when it comes to youth justice. But it's not an obvious correlation, by any means. And the method - pour money into prevention and rehabilitation, in the hopes it will pay off years down the road - was a tough sell for the man in charge of prevention strategy in the Youth Justice Board of England and Wales.

Now, he has £32-million a year (about $49-million; or the amount it costs to keep 405 British youths in jail for a year) to put toward programs designed to catch potential young criminals before they commit crimes, and more on top of that to divert those facing charges out of the prison system, and rehabilitate anyone who does end up in custody.

A couple of years ago, he was invited to Canada to give a talk on his program's success. He spoke in Vancouver and Montreal, and was encouraged to see a country receptive to more innovative alternatives to locking teens up.

"Our approach has been to say, 'There are too many young people in custody.' ... Prison not only doesn't work in terms of preventing reoffending, it's also extremely expensive. And that's not to anyone's benefit."

United States

As of Aug. 1, Texas will have a total of six youth-incarceration institutions - down from 15 four years ago.

That's a huge shift for a state that in 2007 was embroiled in horror stories of teens facing harsh, abusive conditions far from home. Damning national headlines and allegations of mistreatment from hundreds of youth sparked a sea change in the way the state tackles juvenile delinquency.

"There's been a real shift to make sure that we really look at the youth, the seriousness of the offence and the youth's risk to reoffend, and only incarcerate those that are the highest risk in terms of public safety," said Texas Youth Commission executive director Cherie Townsend.

"We had some horrible things occur which really got our attention. And we then re-evaluated."

In the past two years alone, Ms. Townsend has seen more therapeutic services, educational and vocational programs on offer for close to two-thirds of the teens who come through her doors and, for youth who do end up in prison, a focus on transitioning back to their home community, "so there's a greater chance for successful re-entry."

Now, her organization is almost a victim of its own success: As youth-incarceration rates are halved in a matter of years and the state looks for ways to save money, the organizations dealing with imprisoned youth are seeing cutbacks of their own.

"Certainly, we've had some very significant cuts," Ms. Townsend said, "but the investment in education and re-entry stays."

Australia

For more than two decades, youth-incarceration rates in Australia trended in one direction: down.

That started to change about four years ago, when the trend was reversed and the number of young people being put in custody rose - by as much as 40 per cent over two years in one state.

This spring the government of New South Wales responded to consternation over rising rates of teens locked up by pledging to review the Bail Act, a law critics point to as a major factor in sending more youth to jail since it was last amended in 2007.

The Bail Act, a product of Australia's most-populous state, was supposed to crack down on offenders of all ages who'd been dodging bail or breaching conditions. But it had the unintended result of sending youth-incarceration rates soaring, especially for teens awaiting trial.

Now, the state's premier has vowed to change that.

"There's been a lot of outcry," said Kelly Richards, a senior researcher with the Australian Institute of Criminology. "It's been identified as a big problem given that detention is supposed to be the last resort. Obviously, it's not quite, perhaps, being used as it should be."

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