Thomas Pawlick brings The War In The Country to Ottawa

After a looooong blog silence we're on fire today... second post within half an hour!

We're getting very excited about our next 40th anniversary event - the launch of The War In The Country - How The Fight To Save Rural Life Will Shape Our Future by Thomas F. Pawlick.

The book launch will take place on Saturday at 11 a.m. at a fresh, local and organic venue - the Main Farmers' Market (223 Main St.) Come early to fill your shopping basket with local products! www.mainfarmersmarket.org

In addition, we'll have a raffle: two lucky winners will go home with a copy of the new book, and one lucky winner will take Mr. Pawlick for a a lunch at the Green Door Restaurant.



Pawlick's new book The War In The Country is a provocative look at rural communities and a passionate call to arms to save them. Rural life in North America has changed dramatically over the past fifty years and the few remaining family farms now struggle to survive. They have been replaced by corporate-backed factory farms, mining interests, and large-scale tourism developments, all favoured by governments with little understanding of or sympathy for traditional rural life—a life that is sustainable and healthy.

Pawlick, himself a farmer, uses the microcosm of his own rural community in eastern Ontario to portray the groups involved around the world who are waging a war to save their rural way of life. The outcome of these clashes will decide not only the future of rural life globally but also the quality and sustainability of our food, our water, our soil, and our air—of the environment on which we depend for survival. The War in the Country argues, passionately and persuasively, that every one of us must join the fight to secure our food future.

Thomas F. Pawlick has more than thirty-five years of experience as a journalist and editor, specializing in science, environmental, and agricultural reporting. He is a three-time winner of the Canadian Science Writers’ Association Award and received a National Magazine Award for his agricultural reporting.

Flashback from August

Better late than never... If you missed our August 26 event We All Have A Right To The Truth or want to refresh your memory, you can finally watch the presentations and Q & A session at:

http://www.vimeo.com/6636789 (presentations)
http://www.vimeo.com/6636560 (Q & A)

You can also listen or download the Rabble podcast at:

http://www.rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/needs-no-introduction/2009/08/we-all-have-right-truth-surveillance-detention-interrog

The event with its heavy topic - violation of the human rights and civil rights, increasing surveillance, torture, and accountability - attracted over 80 people to the Glebe Community Center. Moderated by Carleton U human rights instructor, Bill Skidmore, the two-hour discussion was enlightening and thought provoking.

The first speaker, Abdullah Almalki, a Canadian who was detained and tortured in Syria based on the information provided by the Canadian government agencies, told that the release from the Syrian prison in 2004 was only a beginning for a new struggle – search for justice in Canada: “My life has been destroyed, my family has been severely affected and a good number of Canadian citizens have faced similar ordeals but until today not a single government official has been held accountable.”

Yavar Hameed, the counsel for Abousfian Abdelrazik (another Canadian whose civil rights were violated by the government) pointed out the need for solid journalism in order to make cases like this public, and to correct the misinformation that the government tends to spread whenever higher levels of governance are or have been involved. Hameed also reminded the audience about the importance of grass roots involvement: in Abdelrazik’s case, the project Fly Home was launched and over 100 courageous Canadians helped to purchase a ticket for him, even though they could have been subjected to federal prosecution.

The final speaker, Maureen Webb, the author of Illusions of Security, linked Almalki’s and Abdelrazik’s experiences to the new global security environment. This environment, including the creation of global registration system and the global surveillance of movement has lead to intensified international data sharing and mining. “Surveillance is used not just to follow up on leads, but rather to generate leads. And it’s used even more alarmingly, to predict who among us might be a terrorist.”

We All Have A Right To The Truth

Here at Octopus Books, we been watching closely as case ofter case of Canadian citizens having their civil rights trampled by CSIS, the RCMP, and the government keep making the news... barely. Instead of just reading about the torture of Canadians and the creation of a tiered citizenship in Canda, we decided to confront the issues and celebrate our 40th anniversary all at the same time by hosting an evening of discussion with Abdullah Almalki, Yavar Hameed, Maureen Webb, and Bill Skidmore.

Wednesday August 26, 7:00 pm

Scotton Hall (Main Hall)

Glebe Community Center

175 Third Ave.

Admission is free. Wheelchair accessible.

We All Have A Right To The Truth is a panel discussion on the shocking abuses of civil rights of Canadian citizens by our government. Please join us to learn from and discuss about the experiences of:

Abdullah Almalki - Canadian citizen who was detained, interrogated and tortured in Syria.

Yavar Hameed - Human rights lawyer, counsel for Abousfian Abdelrazik

Maureen Webb - Human rights lawyer, co-chair of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and author of Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Bill Skidmore, who teaches human rights at Carleton University and is particularly interested in torture and other forms of political repression, as well as the impact of warfare on human rights.

Welcome to the dollhouse

We haven't been able to stop thinking about all of the lofty ideas that John Bellamy Foster strung together for us last week when we hosted an event with him. We're not sure we fully understand the nuances of the current economic meltdown as he explained them, but there is no doubt that we learned a lot that night.

In keeping with the atmosphere of the event at the Glebe Parent's Daycare we decided this lovely pink dollhouse was a perfect podium. Someone in the audience joked about the stability of its mortgage. For two hours, John talked about stagnation and financialization as he stood at the dollhouse, surrounded by cheerful butterflies and flowers, and clouds that appeared a little less foreboding by virtue of the fact that they were raining sparkly streamers.

It was a very Octopus moment.....serious discussion with a nice touch of light hearted ridiculousness. It's what we strive for in this crazy world.


This is Steve who traveled from Toronto just for the event, without so much as a place to stay for the night. Since that makes him an A-1 John Bellamy Foster fan we figured he was the best person to introduce the man himself, so here he is talking about why Bellamy Foster's work is important to him and why it should be important to everyone. He was a lovely smart guy and Octopus was thrilled to make his acquaintance.

As always, a good evening was had by all.
Fin.

We're so excited and we just can't hide it!

Mark May 31st on your calendars because Eduardo Galeano is coming to town to launch his new book, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, translated by Ottawa's very own Mark Fried, and we'll be there slinging books at Saint Brigid's Centre for Arts and Humanities (314 St. Patrick @ Cumberland) at 7:00 p.m.

Mirrors, is an unofficial history of the world seen through history’s unseen, unheard, and forgotten. As Galeano notes: “Official history has it that Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first man to see, from a summit in Panama, the two oceans at once. Were the people who lived there blind??”

Recalling the lives of artists, writers, gods, and visionaries, from the Garden of Eden to twenty-first-century New York, of the black slaves who built the White House and the women erased by men’s fears, and told in hundreds of kaleidoscopic vignettes, Mirrors is a magic mosaic of our humanity.

Eduardo Galeano’s works, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages, include Memory of Fire (three volumes); Open Veins of Latin America; Soccer in Sun and Shadow; Days and Nights of Love and War; The Book of Embraces; We Say No; Walking Words; Upside Down; and Voices of Time. Born in Montevideo, he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for years before returning to Uruguay. He was the recipient of the first Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom.

Galeano defies easy categorization as an author. His works combine documentary, fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. The author himself has denied that he is a historian: "I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia."

John Bellamy Foster in Ottawa

We feel awfully lucky to be hosting an event with John Bellamy Foster, editor of the long-running, highly esteemed socialist magazine Monthly Review and author of a long list of important books on economy, ecology and empire. He's our kind of guy.

We will be helping him launch his newest book, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, on Thursday, May 28th at 7:30 p.m. at the Glebe Parent's Daycare (10 Fifth Ave.).

Coach House appreciation night

We are happy to have an evening with two great authors published by our good friends at Coach House Books. From its early days of printing draft-dodger pamphlets and commemorative flags to nurturing the literary careers of Ondaatje, Bowering, Anne Michaels and bpNichol to being the birthplace of current electronic publishing technology, Coach House has been the headquarters and meeting place for creative figures of every stripe.

Please join us for the launch of Amphibian, the first novel by Carla Gunn, and a reading by Ottawa-area local Mike Blouin, author of Chase & Haven, on Wednesday, May 13th at 7:00 p.m. here at the store.