Author Archives: Theresa Wolfwood. Director, The Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation

About Theresa Wolfwood. Director, The Barnard-Boecker Centre Foundation

Theresa Wolfwood is the co-founder and director of the Barnard-Boecker Center Foundation.

Forche, Carolyn. THE COUNTRY BETWEEN US. 1981. Harper & Row. USA.

“Your voices sprayed over the walls/ dry to the touch by morning.” I had not read these fine poems for many years until I was asked recently to read poetry at the memorial for a Salvadorian political leader. One again I was moved by Forche’s spare and graphic lines, her sure control of  her subject matter and her astute awareness of the political evils she portrays with startling images. The 1880s were a time of cruel and bloody civil war in El Salvador and Forche’s government, the USA, was a major contributor to it, supporting Read more [...]

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Flinker, Jean et al. L´affaire Luk Vervaet. 2011. Revue Contradictions. Bruxelles, Belgique.

English review by Theresa Wolfwood. French translation by Andrée Scott follows the English On July 14, 2011, I received a press article from Belgium that states in part, “A Belgian prison teacher has won a two year battle against a work ban on security grounds. Luk Vervaet, who had taught in prisons for five years when he was summarily dismissed from his post in August 2009, was a regular commentator on prison issues for national newspapers and had collaborated with academic research projects into prison conditions, high suicides rates, Read more [...]

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Fisk, Robert. THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION: The Conquest of the Middle East. 2005. Fourth Estate, UK & Alfred A. Knopf. USA.

“Peggy [his mother] became a flame of optimism in my young life. [during WW2] And when I once asked what was the point of struggling with my homework when we were all going to die, she replied: “By the time you grow up, they may have found a cure for that”… “She asked me repeatedly [during the Israeli siege of Lebanon in 1982] why governments spend so much money on guns.” page 793 For nearly thirty years, Fisk has been a journalist in that part of Asia, called the ‘Middle East’ now (it used to be the “Near East’) Read more [...]

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Fiennes, William. THE SNOW GEESE: A story of home. 2002. Random House. Canada.

´We tend towards home. Migrant birds don´t travel for the sake of it…In any species, an individual that remains within a familiar environment has more chance of finding food and water, more chance of avoiding predators and exposure, than an individual that strays into unknown territory. Homesickness may simply have evolved as a way of telling an ape to go home.´ On one level this is a fresh and personal travelogue, a journey that follows thousands of snow geese from their winter home in Texas to Baffin Island, their summer nesting home. Read more [...]

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Farmer, Paul. The Uses of Haiti, 3rd Edition. 2006. Common Courage Press. Maine, USA.

Canada is totally committed to a state of oppression in Haiti where a democratically elected government was overthrown with our support because it would not obey the edicts of international financial oppression. The USA has a long history of ensuring that the independent country, founded by freed slaves in 1804, never gets to be truly independent. This is an authoritative work that details a history that Noam Chomsky in his introduction fears may be slated for oblivion. But The Uses of Haiti has sold well and is in its third edition, one rare Read more [...]

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Engler, Yves. Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping – The Truth May Hurt. 2012. RED Publishing/ Fernwood Publishing. CANADA.

My earliest memory of Canada´s famous, so–called peace maker is when he made Canada a nuclear nation. I remember that after his well–funded campaign defeated Diefenbaker, Bowmarc nuclear missiles entered Canada on the back on a truck on New Year´s Eve, 1963. They stayed across Canada in various military bases until Trudeau phased them out in 1971. So much for peace–keeping and the Nobel Peace Prize (awarded to Henry Kissinger in 1973, thereby losing all credibility anyhow). However it should be no surprise, as Engler documents in the Read more [...]

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Engler, Yves. The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. 2009. Fernwood Publishing & RED Publishing. Canada.

“I believe Earth is our home and we are its stewards. While citizens of Canada, we are also neighbours to everyone who shares this planet. We must be good neighbours. That should be the underlying premise of Canada´s foreign policy. This book is aimed at people who share this basic political viewpoint and who also believe that democracy requires citizens to keep themselves informed about what their country is doing. Canadians have a right and a responsibility to know, debate and ultimately shape what is being done in our name around the world.” When Read more [...]

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Engler, Yves. Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid. 2010. RED Publishing, B.C. and Fernwood Publishing, N.S. Canada.

“Thousands of books describe various aspects of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Only a handful detail Canada´s ties to the dispute and most do from a pro–Israel perspective. This is the first book to focus on Canadian support for the dispossession of Palestinians, for a state based on one religion, and for the last major European colonial project.” Canadian progressives and activists are distressingly like the right–wing elite in one way; we tend to get our information and analysis from the USA, not Canada. So Yves Engler´s books Read more [...]

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Engels, Mary-Louise. Rosalie Bertell: Scientist, Eco-Feminist, Visionary. 2005. Women’s Press, Women Who Rock series, Toronto, CANADA.

Rosalie Bertell has been a hero of mine for many years so I was pleased to learn that a much needed biography of her was in the making. I was even more pleased to be asked to contribute some thoughts and a photo of Rosalie to Engels’ work. The scholarship, courage, determination and foresight of this remarkable woman deserve to be known to all activists seeking sources of inspiration and wisdom. Frail from birth, Rosalie was a serious student encouraged in her talent for mathematics and music by caring parents. Her Canadian mother was Read more [...]

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Elmessiri, A.M., editor. The Palestinian Wedding: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Resistance Poetry. 2011. Lynne Rienner Publishers Inc. Colorado, USA & London, UK.

“The seed sprouts even within the heart of the dead./ Morning busts forth from darkness.” Fadwa Tuqan Mourid Barghouti, Palestinian poet in exile, has said, “literature is also resistance” The current poetry of resistance is important as part of a greater history and cultural resistance of Palestine and its Arab neighbours, all of whom have resisted European, Ottoman and the present Zionist invasions and occupations. The poems in this intense collection are an expression of the beauty of life and the horrors of injustice, compressed into Read more [...]

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Eichler, Maya. Militarizing Men: Gender, Conscription and War in Post–Soviet Russia. 2012. Stanford University Press, USA.

“Men are not naturally militaristic, they become militarized…If men are not willing to serve and their mothers or female partners do not want them to join the military, the state is less able to wage war or legitimate its rule on the basis of militarized patriotism.” “Militarized masculinity is part of the foundation of the contemporary international system.” From this dry sounding title of an academic work – the book is based on a PhD dissertation – comes a fascinating story of militarization of men as the very basis of modern Read more [...]

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Edwards, David. Free to be Human: Intellectual Self-Defence in an Age of illusions. Resurgence Books, Totnes, Devon, UK. 2000.

This UK environmental writer draws on Chomsky, Fromm and other writers to explain how we can free ourselves from the destructive and unthinking acceptance of corporate capitalism and all its trappings.

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