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In Remembrance of the Charter of Rights and Freedom

Saturday, November 13th, 2010

William Hogarth, "Court of Law"By Elizabeth Littlejohn

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
- John F. Kennedy (1917 – 1963), in a speech at the White House, 1962

I write this on the eve of Remembrance Day, 2010, as PM Harper flies to South Korea for a repeat performance of the G20, as three days of testimonies unfold in Toronto and Montreal to question RCMP conduct, and the government continues to refuse a public inquiry into the G20. This judicial inquiry is morally imperative as it would enable the federal court to subpoena evidence from witnesses under oath to knit together the patchwork of incriminating evidence, establish the chain of command of policing during the G20, and finally assign culpability. Both parties are standing firm- this all-encompassing inquiry must not be allowed happen. It may be the only issue they agree upon at this time, having closed ranks to goose-step around civil liberties. Meanwhile, PM Harper is fiddling while Rome burns, selling more of our assets to multinationals in South Korea. Has it occurred to him that Canada is not his to sell?

I dedicate this article to my grandfather, who fought in the First World War, and was one of the few who survived the air force. He came back so shell-shocked that if his family spoke while he drove, he had to pull over to the side of the road to calm down. Within my extended family, several members have been awarded Orders of Canada for public service. I am, however, a vilified ‘protester’, as I believe that there must be a full inquiry into the G8/G20 Summit so that both levels of government are forced to be responsible for the gross abuse of police power, violation of civil liberties and powers of taxation, and desecration of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If the Charter cannot defend its own constitution and abrogation of civil rights, it is a constitution no longer.

It is exactly one week since I witnessed the voting down of the second reading of Bill 121, a public interest investigation into the G8/G20 Summit tabled by Welland’s NDP MPP, Peter Kormos, by 8 ‘ayes’ to 28 ‘neas’ in Queen’s Park. Upon the resounding ‘nea’ across the floor by the consolidated Liberals and Conservatives, there was a unanimous, audible gasp by those in the peanut gallery. Included in that singular voice was my own, and within an hour, having sped away on my round legs, I was listening to Chris Hedges talk about his new book, “The Death of the Liberal Class” at the Munk School for Global Affairs. His lecture was a play-by-play of what I had seen at Queen’s Park, and spoke directly to me.

Could it be, according to Chris Hedges, that the liberal left – unions, churches and universities, progressive political parties, and the press – has lost moral suasion as a guiding voice for democratic dialogue? Have we abandoned our moral compass in favour of corporate elitism? And have we allowed the gutting of ethics, and the erosion of civil liberties, for financial gain? As I watched the provincial NDP fight back at Queen’s Park, and be mocked for their efforts by the opposing parties, I thought no- it is worse- citizens’ rights are being viewed with contempt as they contest the streamlining of economic interests, the growing division between the rich and poor, and the destruction of the environment. As Chris Hedges notes, without a robust liberal voice to engage in this debate, there is a very real danger that things will degrade into violence as the middle and working classes become increasingly disenfranchised, angry and confused. Internationally, general strikes rage, generated by falsely imposed austerity measures imposed by the banks, and Chris Hedges predicts that the US, then Canada, will be next, on the front line. A cynical friend said that no doubt the Conservatives had a contingency fund for legal challenges as part of their G20 bottom line, a line item right after their $500, 000 worth of delegate party favours -glow sticks, hand sanitizer, and $100 pens.

At Queen’s Park, throughout the presentation of the bill, I was distressed by the disregard the opposition had for the NDP. They held extended conversations during their presentation, loud enough to be heard by me in the upper gallery, to show their displeasure at the possibility of the second reading of Bill 121. For me, as a Canadian citizen, it was a momentous historical occasion, for the Liberals and Conservatives, it was a $1.3 billion farce of the highest order, worthy of a William Hogarth cartoon – when Peter Kormos mentioned the editorial in the Star demanding a formal inquiry, a Liberal MPP turned to the fashion section, searching for it there. I watched her. A MPP from the Muskoka region, Garfield Dunlop, mentioned the success of the G8 in Huntsville, although I heard how golfers were losing balls off the green, and militia were crawling out of the brush, holding the golf ball up, and warning them not to hit off the fairway again.

I have always been ambivalent about the Ontario Parliament Network, the official channel of the provincial legislature, but I was glad that it was recording and broadcasting this debate for posterity, ignored as it was by the opposition. MPPs, please be aware that you are being observed. I have heard how the intellectual level of discourse, as transcribed in the Hansard, the official record, is the lowest it has ever been historically, but the resounding speeches of NDP MPPs, Peter Kormos, Andrea Horwath, and Cheri DiNovo , showed courage, a monumental standing up for the underdog. As I left the gallery, I made the universal symbol for typing to Cheri DiNovo. I will transcribe my own citizen’s Hansard of events, and I will remember this travesty of justice in the defense of the Charter, and my grandfather, who fought for a kinder, gentler Canada, and my right to protest. During the G20, police erased incriminating photographs on iPhones by resetting the factory settings to default, and stomping on memory cards, to erase incriminating evidence of police brutality. I refuse to let these memories be erased.

Later, at the lecture, deeply shaken, I asked Chris Hedges about the vilification of protesters, and he spoke of having his microphone cut off, twice, during a lecture, and being escorted off a university campus. The press reported that he had created a riot, and the university sent him his coat by mail. Protesters, intellectuals, academics, environmentalists- these are all epithets, just as a Liberal MP pointed out the eloquence of Peter Kormos was due to his background as a lawyer during the Bill 121 debate. Those who ask for educated discussion are discredited to enable bigotry and prejudice, as PM Harper plays his role as ideologue to evade facts, discourage analysis, and hold court through emotion. Elitists, environmentalists, lawyers, lefties, union members, protesters- these have all become dirty words – just read the comments section online, and see how democratic discourse has descended into name calling, supported by this new form of government.

There will be no justice until there is a public inquiry, which ties together the disparate inquiries into a coherent series of events enabled by a chain of command, and yes, assigns blame. We deserve to know what happened, and not to be distracted by the pomp and circumstance of yet another G20 Summit, quick on the heels of our own. Regulation 233/10, the five meter fence rule, will lead right back to the Premier McGuinty’s office, then to the Prime Minister’s Office.

Investigation of this fallacious law will prove PM Harper’s desire to cut away the backbone of peaceful resistance by targeting caring, educated and engaged youth to ensure their future political passivity. The young woman, hit by rubber bullets, may never return to Toronto, and sadly, these memories of the state of martial law have changed a generation’s perception of police. As an educator, I will never forget this deliberate humiliation of over eleven hundred protesters, and as a citizen, I will never forget that my grandfather fought for naught, because I can be taxed to the hilt to have my civil liberties suspended for a political spectacle enabling police brutality, and civilian abuse. Canada is not safer since the Summits and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been allowed to be put into question, and with that, the fundamental rights of every citizen. Shame.

References:
Hedges, Chris. The Death of the Liberal Class. New York: Nation, 2010. Print.
Theo Moudakis, Opinion in Toronto Star, Public Inquiry November 1st, link at http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/883743–g20-summit-public-inquiry-still-required
Krystalline Kraus, “Activist Communique: Ontario G20 inquiry public members bill failed to pass second reading and the Summit cost totals”, ‏link at http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/krystalline-kraus/2010/11/activist-communiqu%C3%A9-ontario-g20-inquiry-public-members-bill
The Hansard, November 4th, http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/house-proceedings/house_detail.do?locale=en&Date=2010-11-04&detailPage=%2Fhouse-proceedings%2Ftranscripts%2Ffiles_html%2F04-NOV-2010_L066.htm&Parl=39&Sess=2#P1300_294131

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Posted in Assault on Democracy, Corporate Globalization, Economic policies, Environment, Featured, Labour, The Real Issues | No Comments »

This Is Not My Canada; This Is Not My Media

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

By Elizabeth Littlejohn
A curator and blogger for the RealG8/G20.com
This blog has also appeared on Railroaded by Metrolinx: Toronto and rabble.ca

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Paul Craig Roberts
Good-Bye: Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

At the end of September, Rick Salutin, an award-winning, left-leaning columnist, was fired by the Globe and Mail. His second last article, ‘Stephen Harper – the last Straussian?’ received over 590 comments. The first sentence is pure Salutin:

People keep asking why Stephen Harper acts as he does, it looks so buttheaded. He seems to muck up his own prospects: firing decent people, lashing out, raising the partisan rhetoric, proroguing Parliament haughtily, binging on military toys, mauling the census – he’s a bright boy, it’s hard to figure.

I am curious why the Globe and Mail is not publishing the numerous letters questioning why Rick Salutin was fired for writing articles of such gravitas, and supporting his twenty years of incisive political analysis. Indeed, Rick Salutin’s final paragraph in his last article, ‘Rob Ford and the loss of Hope’, was censored by the Thomsons, as farewells are ‘not permitted’. Rick gives a clarion call against Rob Ford coming to power, and states ‘It’s the failure or shortfall of hope that leads to fear.’ As the London School of Economics responded by letter to the Queen, when she asked why their experts had not foreseen the economic meltdown of 2008, that ‘it was a failure of imagination’, so it will be for Toronto if we elect Rob Ford, and turn back the progressive policies enacted during the past seven years under Mayor Miller. Our actions will show that we no longer believe that our city that it can be a better place to live, and we will permit it to be ruled by suburban interests, rather than responsible urban planning and engaged environmental and social stewardship. Collectively, we care much more than Rob Ford for our city, and we have much more knowledge of how it can be run.

Is such a censored dismissal Straussian, Globe and Mail? Hundreds of thousands of readers, and Rick, deserve a proper explanation. ‘Redesigning’ is not enough. PM Harper pays $75,000 of our tax money to have a new media company monitor negative online comments, and no doubt, he just pressed the panic button to notify them to quickly repudiate the readers’ indignation and howls of support for Rick. You can read the online comments here. Off with his head, the Conservative Privy Council Office said, and the Thomsons agreed. It doesn’t pay to be controversial.

In their attempt to attract younger Internet savvy readers, who are not accustomed to investigative reporting, and prefer larger pictures, the Thomsons are revamping the newspaper to have a more glossy tabloid look and feel, with one of the issues that ‘define Canadians’ extolling the bright future of the armed forces. In the Globe’s recent ‘Canada: Our Time to Lead’ TV ad, touting the redesign, a young woman, riding a bicycle on a country road toward the camera, says that ‘Canada is not defined by universal health care or peacekeeping’. Funny- last time a poll was run in Canada, 80% of respondents said healthcare is the crown jewel, and distinguishing attribute of Canadian society, and why we accept high taxation levels. This subtext of this ad asks us to envision a new Canada, militarized and ‘open for international business’- a corporate Canada we are beginning to know, driven by unsustainable, neoliberal policies for endless exploitation. Who will take care of us when media corporations own us, and our messaging? Curiously, Irshad Manji, ‘Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare’ has been chosen to replace Rick Salutin. The independence of the fourth estate is no longer.

This silencing of the media opposition is just another instance of what I have known for some time- the leftwing media is being censored and sidelined, soon to be extinguished, as part of the campaign against freedom of information in Canada. PM Harper holds a stranglehold on media relations stronger than any other prime minister in Canadian history. The scientific community’s head, and right to speak, is on the block, as well, as the byzantine process of asking for scientific data has been enforced, no doubt, to control press releases about the recent, peer-reviewed report about the poisoning of the Athabasca River due to the runoff of the tarsands’ tailings ponds. It is hard to speak when your head has been cut off.

On July 27th, I launched a formal CRTC complaint regarding the inequitable coverage of the G20, which prioritized images of police cars burning over issues peacefully presented by non profit and non governmental organizations. On August 16th, I received a phone call from a bigwig in one of the major Canadian TV networks. His tone was pugilistic, and twenty-five minutes later, after he mocked my commitment to march, I felt discredited, and verbally beaten up, for defending my rights to have adequate, or any, media coverage of the civil society response to the G20. I was told that footage of the ‘violent riots was fresh, new, important and newsworthy’, whereas the democratic discourse surrounding the dismantling of civil society, and fire sale of Canada to private interests, was a tale told again, and again, and was simply not newsworthy. ‘Anyway,’ I was told, ‘the people in the Labour Parade on Saturday did get 30 seconds of airtime.’ Let’s divide 25-40,000 citizens by thirty seconds each, and see if they can get a word in edgewise.

I hung up the phone feeling that the onus was on the left to provide more and more flamboyant spectacles of protest, and that the left, by its nature diverse in its concerns, is beholden to provide a unified message for easy media consumption. It is the job of activist organizations to be credible public relations firms, and perform theatrically, for a few seconds of media coverage, although the pockets of our opposition run deep, lined with our tax money being readied to be used against us, such as hiring a new media firm to troll online comments, or looping clips of a police car burning ad infinitum. Whoever controls the media, controls the mind (Jim Morrison).

What is newsworthy was the current exponential speed, impact, and secretiveness of the media campaign attempted by the Prime Minister’s Office to extinguish our democratic right to free speech through a Category 1 news channel, SunTV, nicknamed ‘Fox News North’ by Margaret Atwood. Fox has repeatedly undercut President Obama during his time in office, and its unrelenting critique of his administration is often perilously close to slander. SunTV would be a mirror image of Fox News, and a house organ of the Conservative party, as developed by Kory Teneycke, Mr. Harper’s former director of communications. Next, the Conservative Party will try to beam this news channel into schools as part of the curriculum, just after students rise for the new national anthem – ‘O Say can you See’. ‘No, I cannot, I do not have access to different media sources and opinions. I am blinkered by the government.’ The public outcry has been swift, and there are over 87,000 signatures on a petition against this news channel initiative on Avaaz.org.

As a new media professor, I am aware that investigative reporting has become increasingly expensive for news networks, and print media, as media content becomes less profitable because of online access to primary source coverage, and decreased advertising revenue (read Clay Shirky’s ‘Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable’). I was reminded by the TV network representative that the alternative press culls from the mainstream media’s content through search engines, yet his company bears the brunt of employing stringers on Parliament Hill. If I had had greater presence of mind, I would have reminded him that the alternative press reporters were denied access to the Fake Lake media press resort during the G20.

Disenchanted after the phone call, I was left feeling that mainstream media assumes that involved analysis regarding policy is considered too complex for the average citizen. This is condescending in the extreme, as evidenced in the brilliant citizen media reportage in the Real News Network, Democracy Now, and Tyee, which use the web and Youtube as outlets for distribution. I have turned to citizen media to supplement my media diet, and found such gems as Kevin P. Miller’s “A QUESTION OF SOVEREIGNTY”, which defends John Turner’s nationalistic views of Canada. Historically, it recounts Mulroney’s free trade agreement in 1988, and Bills C-51 and C-6, which have formed the basis of the yet-to-be passed Bill C-36.

Bill C-36 needs to be stopped for the following reasons, according to Kevin P. Miller:

In the new Bill C-36, Health Canada has proposed that the powers provided to Parliament should be forfeited so that Canada can “honour its international agreements and commitments.” If Bill C-36 and similar Bills are adopted, foreign entities, multinational corporate interests, Codex, WTO and WHO would be free to write self-serving laws that affect Canadians — and they could do so by bypassing Parliament completely.

Perhaps this is what they mean by ‘Free Trade’ — ‘free’ of oversight by elected officials.

In three weeks, PM Harper will attempt to hammer the last nail into the Comprehensive European Trade Agreement, which will make us the only company in the world which has free trade agreements with both the US and Europe, undercutting our sovereign ability to control international trade agreements, provide municipal services, and employ our own citizens. The government is dismantling regulation federally through C-36, and sub-nationally through CETA.

And despite signs, signs, everywhere signs, all 8,500 Economic Action Plan signs, carefully monitored by PM Harper and his Privy Council Office, with obligatory, Monday updates by eighteen, overstretched departments and agencies, that my quality of life is better under the Conservative regime, I know that there has been more environmental destruction during my lifetime than any other generation, and that PM Harper, and his ongoing advocacy of the tarsands, thus oil consumption, is directly related to why over three hundred diesel, rather than electric, trains daily will be running blocks from my house, and directly through and beside seven west-end parks, affecting my community’s health, until 2020. Rob Ford, of course, cannot be convinced that the upcoming cost of 33 diesel engines and 11 ARL vehicles is three times that of electric, and that the final tally is even higher, once electric vehicles are bought in 2020 to replace diesel.

One of these Economic Action Plan signs is planted in front of the field house in MacGregor Park. I have written about my neighbourhood park, MacGregor Park, extensively in my blog, and enclosed this Youtube clip of children performing there:

I recognize this sign for what it is – part of a false advertising media campaign generated, controlled and tightly monitored by the federal Conservative Party. This flimsy sign is just another testament to the federal, and provincial, disregard of environmental and urban planning policy in citizens’ best interests, constrained by the tightening of restrictions on access to environmental information, and the loosening of these regulations to privilege sole-sourced contracts to their corporate allies. Prisons, fighter jets, and the creation of a Conservative news network are more important than the right of children to play without harm to their health, and Ontario’s right to clean, quiet, sustainable transit. The direct cost to me? At least $1000.

To finish as I began, another quote by Paul Craig:

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.
Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

The policies being tabled will affect us long after the memories of the Action Plan have faded. Afterwards, we will ask “Where is my Toronto? Where is my Canada? And where is my media?” if we do not speak in defense of the dismissal of Rick Salutin, in support of a progressive mayor, and against the passing of C-36, and the final round of CETA, now. Unlike PM Harper, I believe Canadians are fully capable of determining our own international trade agreements, contracts for municipal services, and need for univeral healthcare, all of which require sovereignty, and a strong Mayor of Toronto working on our behalf.

Call to Action:
To defend Rick, please email: letters@globeandmail.ca, jstackhouse@globeandmail.com, nacampbell@globeandmail.com, sstewart@globeandmail.com

To support the fight against CETA, please demand permanent exemption for municipalities from CETA by supporting the Council of Canadians, and emailing your city councillors to support the Logan Lake Resolution, and also to vote against C-36.
More at http://www.canadians.org/action/2010/CETA-1709.html

References:
Paul Craig Roberts,’Good-Bye: Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It’ at http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/03/26/good-bye-truth-has-fallen-and-has-taken-liberty-with-it/
Rick Salutin,’Stephen Harper – the last Straussian?’ at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/stephen-harper-the-last-straussian/article1710880/
Rick Salutin, ‘Rob Ford and the loss of Hope’, at http://rabble.ca/columnists/2010/09/rob-ford-and-loss-hope
Globe TV Ad, ‘Canada: Our Time to Lead’, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/video/canada-our-time-to-lead/article1736099/?from=1735276
Bruce Wark, ‘Rick Salutin out as Friday Globe columnist’ at
http://www.thecoast.ca/RealityBites/archives/2010/09/29/rick-salutin-out-as-friday-globe-columnist
Kathryn O’Hara, ‘Canada must free scientists to talk to journalists’ at
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100929/full/467501a.html
Clay Shirky,’Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable’ at
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
Jane Taber, ‘Margaret Atwood Takes on Fox News North’
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/margaret-atwood-takes-on-fox-news-north/article1692853/
Avaaz.org Petition, ‘Canada: Stop “Fox News North’- Close to 100,000 signatures, and important to sign!
http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_fox_news_canada/?cl=716944315&v=7018
Kevin P. Miller, ‘A Question of Sovereignty’,
http://www.aquestionofsovereignty.com/ and
http://web.me.com/kevinpmiller/kevin/KEVIN_MILLERS_WORLD/Entries/2010/8/26_A_QUESTION_OF_SOVEREIGNTY.html
‘Green Pan Am Games, Green Parks and the Right to Play’ at
http://railroadedbymetrolinx.blogspot.com/2009/11/green-pan-am-games-green-parks-and.html

Posted in Assault on Democracy, Featured, Political Art, The Real Issues | 4 Comments »

Return to El Salvador, a film by Jamie Moffett

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Return to El Salvador will be playing in Toronto at the Carlton Cinema from Oct 8th-14th, 2010

The documentary  tells the story of vibrant Salvadoran individuals and communities and the intricate geo-political systems that have so profoundly impacted their lives.

The above video is the entire, uncut first seven minutes of Return to El Salvador. This sequence will introduce one of the many Salvadoran faces you’ll get to know over the course of the film, and a brief introduction into the past 40 years of rocky Salvadoran history.

Narration by Martin Sheen.
Opening title sequence music by Manu Chao.
Edited by Dan Moretz and James Knightly.
Visual Effects and Graphics designed by Steve Chandler.
Directed by Jamie Moffett

Pre-order the DVD: www.returntoelsalvador.com

Video posted on YouTube by jamiemoffett

Posted in Corporate Globalization, Featured Video, Video, War and Occupation | 1 Comment »

A registry to prevent crime, not domestic violence

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

By Claire Tremblay at rabble.ca,  September 28, 2010.

We suspected it and now it is confirmed. The Conservatives don’t think domestic violence is a crime.

MP Candace Hoeppner said as much on CBC Radio, no less, in Toronto last week. At the tail-end of her long, failed crusade against the long-gun registry, she distinguished use of the registry in domestic violence from fighting crime.

She said: “if the only defence of it [the gun registry] right now is domestic violence” then that means “nobody is saying that it [the registry] stops crime anymore.” It’s hard to interpret that any other way than it expressing the thought that domestic violence is not a crime.

Conservatives appear to think preventing suicides is a bit of a waste of time too. Apparently, the only lives the gun registry is worth saving are those that are caused by “criminal” activity. Or, as Hoeppner puts it: “I’m kind of watching with interest the pro argument that’s being made. It doesn’t even have to do with stopping crime in the sense of criminal activity. It has to do with domestic violence and suicide.”

So, as this reasoning would appear to suggest: if someone wants to go ahead and kill themselves, fine — it ain’t a crime is it? And the gun registry is supposed to be there to prevent crimes, like duh. In this argument, Ms Hoeppner appears to be working with a different definition of crime on behalf of her Conservative colleagues. A definition that defies the Criminal Code of Canada that says a murder is a murder no matter who commits it. One that says when a woman is killed by her husband it’s not a crime, but if she’s killed by a stranger on the street, it is a crime. A definition that in a nutshell that diminishes the nature and impact of a husband killing his wife, because a man’s home is his castle.

Or perhaps Hoeppner isn’t aware that most murders are not committed by strangers. The fact is, women are more often than not murdered by the intimate males in their lives. In the seven-year period from 2000 to 2006, more than 500 women in Canada were shot, stabbed, strangled or beaten to death by the intimate males in their lives. To provide perspective on these figures: 101 Canadian soldiers and police officers were killed here at home and in Afghanistan during a seven-year period of war in the same decade(Figures are from The War on Women: Elly Amour, Jane Hurshman and Criminal Violence in Canadian Homes, by Brian Vallée.)

In Hoeppner’s view, it would appear that the gun registry is a dud because it doesn’t prevent deaths cause by crime, you know, the Conservative’s definition of a “real” crime. But for those of us who are an uneducated lot who call a tragedy a tragedy no matter how it occurs, the gun registry really does seem to have something going for it. Gun deaths have dropped by a third since implementation. And for those even less uneducated of us who think that a murder is a crime — whether it happens on the street or behind closed doors, it is great value. Police use this tool more than 13,000 times a day. There is a reason for that. That’s because unlike Hoeppner, police treat an attempted murder as a crime — where it happens or by whom and to whom doesn’t matter. But, then again, the police and the Conservatives haven’t been agreeing on much lately.

“Uneducated” policemen, who wouldn’t know a crime if it hit them, know that a woman is 12 times more likely to be murdered if a gun is involved in domestic violence. They know that they need to remove a gun from someone who is beating up another person. They know if they remove a gun from a premises where a woman and or her children are at risk, they might save their lives. There is a reason for that: statistics from the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee found firearms to be present in 47 per cent of domestic homicides in 2007. They also know that 88 per cent of women shot in domestic violence are shot by a long gun. If police know a registered long gun is on the premises and someone is at risk, it needs to be removed. Guns can kill, period.

At $4 million a year, the gun registry costs two times the price tag of the G8/G20 Fake Lake pavillion. Or if you really want to knuckle down to it — it costs 10 cents per Canadian per year to operate. Better still, it costs nothing to register a gun and is a simple on-line “operation” (so it won’t hurt a bit) that takes no longer than booking a hotel. So let’s all pry those two nickels from our cold, cold hands and get on with the business of protecting public safety.

Claire Tremblay is the Co-ordinator of the Ad Hoc Coalition for Women’s Equality and Human Rights.

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Posted in Featured, Gender and Sexuality, The Real Issues | No Comments »

Monsanto, Blackwater, and GM Crop Saboteurs

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

Rady Ananda for Dissident Voice, September 20, 2010

Agribusiness giant Monsanto, which genetically modifies plants to exude or tolerate pesticide or to produce nonviable seed, hired the services of the mercenary firm, Blackwater, to spy on activists, Jeremy Scahill reports. A death-tech firm weds a hit squad.

This is no doubt in response to a decade of GM crop sabotage efforts around the globe.  Since the publicly-announced introduction of GM crops in 1996, concerned citizens have vandalized such crops every single year somewhere on the planet. Several thousand GM plants have been partially or wholly destroyed. (See brief history below.)

Blackwater is most notorious for its Nisour Square Massacre in 2007. Seventeen innocent civilians died when Blackwater goons opened fire in a busy market square. The hit team was later acquitted in a U.S. court.

Scahill reports that through its web of companies, Blackwater (now Xe Services) spied on and/or infilitrated groups opposing Monsanto in 2008 through early 2010.  He writes:

The relationship between the two companies appears to have been solidified in January 2008 when Total Intelligence chair, Cofer Black, traveled to Zurich to meet with Kevin Wilson, Monsanto’s security manager for global issues.

After the meeting in Zurich, Black sent an e-mail to other Blackwater executives, including to [then-president Erik] Prince and [former CIA paramilitary officer Enrique] Prado at their Blackwater e-mail addresses.

Black wrote that Wilson ‘understands that we can span collection from internet, to reach out, to boots on the ground on legit basis protecting the Monsanto [brand] name…. Ahead of the curve info and insight/heads up is what he is looking for.’

Black added that Total Intelligence ‘would develop into acting as intel arm of Monsanto.’ Black also noted that Monsanto was concerned about animal rights activists and that they discussed how Blackwater ‘could have our person(s) actually join [activist] group(s) legally’….

…Wilson confirmed he met Black in Zurich and that Monsanto hired Total Intelligence in 2008 and worked with the company until early 2010. He denied that he and Black discussed infiltrating animal rights groups, stating ‘there was no such discussion.’”

Monsanto said only publicly available information was monitored. Scahill writes of Monsanto’s security manager, Kevin Wilson:

He claimed that Total Intelligence only provided Monsanto ‘with reports about the activities of groups or individuals that could pose a risk to company personnel or operations around the world which were developed by monitoring local media reports and other publicly available information. The subject matter ranged from information regarding terrorist incidents in Asia or kidnappings in Central America to scanning the content of activist blogs and websites.

Tom Philpott of Grist notes:

I can confirm that Monsanto likes to keep a close eye on blogs and websites. Back in 2005, I got my break as a food-politics writer after a Monsanto lawyer slapped my blog, with its all of 30 readers, with a cease-and-desist letter.

Monsanto has also openly engaged with activists on blogs. During my tenure as Senior Editor at OpEdNews.com, site owner Rob Kall approved membership for Brad Mitchell, Monsanto’s public relations chief.  Mitchell particularly focused on articles by Linn Cohen-Cole. (See e.g. the comments on Monsanto’s dream bill, HR 875.)  Cohen-Cole claimed that after her articles at OEN received widespread attention, she noticed surveillance vehicles on her street.

That early 2009 decision at OEN spiked the ire of food writers. They objected to a forum for ordinary people granting equal access to a multi-billion dollar corporation which can publish in mainstream media, and hire professional psyops agents like Burson-Marstellar. B-M represents genocidal regimes, claimed the Bhopal disaster wasn’t so bad, promotes secret vote counting software, and is generally the go-to spin doctor for the world’s worst enterprises.

By a wide majority, OEN members condemned Kall’s approval of Monsanto membership, forcing him to rescind it. Two months later, in May 2009, he demoted and/or banned several “radicals,” including those of us who deride GM foods. In fact, my banishment prompted the inception of Food Freedom, a website that includes coverage of GM foods and Monsanto.

But no matter how many bloggers it tries to silence, the biotech industry has lost in the court of public opinion. This is why it lobbies to ensure genetically-modified foods are not labeled. Not even Burson-Marstellar has been able to overcome the “frankenfood” reputation.

GM Crop Sabotage in Defense of Biodiversity

But it isn’t just public opinion that concerns Monsanto.  Monsanto didn’t hire assassins to sway public opinion. GM crop sabotage, which originated in Europe, has been an ongoing global effort since at least 1997.

In 1999, Andrew Hund compiled several reports of GM crop sabotage around the world, some of which are included in the time line below.

Just focusing on the U.S., Gordon Rausser documented thousands of GM plant destructions in 1999 alone. Citizens targeted GM corn, sugar beets, sunflowers, melons, tomatoes, walnuts, and strawberries. The attacks occurred in Maine, Vermont, Minnesota, New York, and California.

Kathryn Brown reported in Scientific American that in 2000, “in Maine, midnight raiders hacked down more than 3,000 experimental poplar trees. And in San Diego, protesters smashed sorghum and sprayed paint over greenhouse walls.”

This year, Marcel Kuntz described 70 instances of GM crop sabotage in England, Switzerland, France, and Germany from 1999 through 2010.

The timeline below is but a brief sampling of such actions. It shows a wide variety of crops on several continents. And it shows unending interest in ridding the planet of this technology. (Too numerous to list, the cases of GM crop sabotage in the US are not included. See sources above.)

1997 Irish destroy GM sugar beets
1998 Irish destroy GM sugar beets
1998 French destroy GM corn
1998 Brits destroy GM crops on over 40 separate plots
1999 Indian farmers burn GM cotton
1999 New Zealanders destroy GM potato
1999 Canadians destroy GM trees
1999 Brits destroy GM corn
2000 Brits destroy GM corn
2001 Brits destroy GM corn
2001 Brazilians destroy GM corn and soy
2001 Brits destroy six separate fields of GM corn and rapeseed
2002 Indian farmers destroy GM cotton
2003 French destroy GM rapeseed (canola)
2004 French Guiana activists destroy GM coffee
2005 French destroy 50 acres of GM corn
2006 Germans destroy GM corn in several attacks
2006 French destroy GM corn
2007 Brits destroy GM potatoes
2008 Brazilians destroy GM corn
2008 Swiss destroy GM wheat
2009 Swiss destroy GM wheat
2009 Icelanders destroy GM barley
2009 Brits destroy GM potatoes
2009 Brits destroy GM apple trees
2010 Swiss destroy GM wheat
2010 Spaniards destroy GM corn
2010 Italians destroy GM corn
2010 French destroy GM grapes

Not everyone has the luxury of destroying GM crops. In India, under a new biotech bill known as BRAI, people can be imprisoned and fined simply for “misleading” others about GMOs.  Since the entire biotech industry is based on “misleading” information (e.g. one protein-one gene, or that GMOs are substantially equivalent to normal food), one has to wonder if Monsanto executives will get a pass, while only those who disparage the technology become the law’s target.

Elsewhere, dissent has been met with violence.

Last month in La Leonesa, Argentina, 100 thugs attacked local farmers who gathered to hear a scientific presentation on the toxicity of glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup. The Chaco provincial government had previously reported a tripling of childhood cancers and a quadrupling of birth defects in the area in the ten years since “the expansion of glyphosate and other agrochemical spraying in the province.”

Monsanto, by hiring a mercenary army and former CIA field agents, is deadly serious about protecting its deadly products. Yet, this contract further discredits the company. The public can now paint an even bleaker picture of the firm that brought us Agent Orange, PCBs, rBST, DDT, aspartame and, now, hit men.

Image via Ghana Business News

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National Week of Action on Education in Ottawa – First Nations are rallying for better education

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

OTTAWA, Sept. 20 /CNW Telbec/ – Several First Nations of Quebec under the leadership of their Chiefs are taking part in the National Week of Action on Education to denounce the shocking attitude of the federal government regarding the education of First Nations. “By maintaining a system based on colonial tenets, the Conservative government is keeping our children and our communities in an unfair situation. This is a shame for the Canadian society”, declared Ghislain Picard, Chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Québec and Labrador (AFNQL).

Chief Picard and other Chiefs from Quebec, Ontario and other regions of Canada undertook a week of action to denounce the discrimination suffered by First Nations children in education. This discrimination speaks for itself regarding the underfunding of First Nations schools at the elementary and secondary level. The Chiefs also denounce the impending threat of the federal government to terminate the Post-Secondary Student Support Program. In Quebec, students and parents from First Nations communities will be undertaking actions, such as sending letters to the federal government, holding awareness raising activities, distributing flyers, and dispatching regional press releases. The main event is a walk from the community of Kitigan Zibi to Parliament Hill in Ottawa, in view of making the federal government react and grant the attention necessary to the important issue of First Nations education. A great national gathering of First Nations organizations and communities is also scheduled to conclude the National Week of Action on Education on September 23rd, on Parliament Hill.

On September 21st, the Chiefs will be present at the Parliament to meet with parliamentarians, senators and members of the political scene to present their vision of education and discuss the stakes and issues regarding the future of First Nations education. “The time has come to go beyond The Indian Act and build a new relationship with Canada. A relationship built on mutual respect instead of colonialism”, stated Chief Picard.

Other initiatives will be held across the country in addition to the activities scheduled in Ottawa and within the First Nations communities of Quebec.

Underfunded schools

“Our schools are striving to survive with an obsolete funding formula that hasn’t been revised since the last twenty years. This is simply unacceptable and intolerable”, indicated Lise Bastien, Director General of the First Nations Education Council (FNEC).

Developed in 1988, the federal formula for First Nations education is highly discriminatory as it allows for a considerable gap in funding when compared to the much higher funding received by Quebecer schools from their provincial government. The federal formula ignores the following costs:

  • Costs relating to the integration of technology in the schools.
  • Costs relating to school libraries.
  • Costs relating to vocational training.
  • Costs relating to the sports and recreation.
  • Costs relating to keep pace with provincial reforms, with considerable impact on the curriculum, teaching hours and support measures, such as homework help.

What is more to it, the funding of First Nations schools has not been indexed since 1996.

Contrarily to the provinces which have been investing since several years in modern systems for their schools, the federal government disregards this crucial need for the First Nations schools under its fiduciary responsibility. This does not prevent the government from accusing First Nations of withholding data, even though they are deprived of the tools to obtain the requested data. “By denying First Nations the means and access to quality education, the government of Canada is fully aware that it is closing the doors to their future”, added Lise Bastien.

Threats to abolish Post-secondary financial support
The federal government recently announced its intention to terminate the Post-Secondary Student Support Program. This support is crucial for the First Nations youth to undertake collegial and university studies and thereby increase their socioeconomic conditions and that of their families. “This threat is clearly based on ideological doctrines instead of common sense and good judgement”, pointed out Lise Bastien.

For further information:

SOURCE: Éric Cardinal
Communication consultant
(450) 638-5159
Cellphone: (514) 258-2315		 INFORMATION: Lise Bastien
Director of the FNEC
(418) 842-7672

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An Indian Summer for the Tar Sands

Monday, September 20th, 2010
By Ben Powless, rabble.ca, September 13, 2010
Wet'suwet'en Nation protest against Enbridge pipelines in May, 2010. Photo: Ben Powless

It has been an abnormally hot summer. Climate change has been breaking record temperatures, and even oil companies haven’t been able to beat the heat.

From British Colombia to Quebec, the United States to the United Kingdom, a movement is ever expanding to hold oil companies and oily politicians’ feet to the fire and stop the association of tar sands with runaway and rampant destruction.

Earlier this year, far away from the prying eyes of the media, government offices, or corporate headquarters, in the middle of mosquito country, members of the Wer’suwet’en First Nation in British Colombia established a camp. Their territory lies along the path of proposed pipelines which Enbridge (and a number of other oil companies) want to build to pipe crude oil to Kitimat, where it could be loaded onto tankers and shipped across the ocean.

The camp was a physical and cultural rejection of that plan, set up in May to allow one of the hereditary chiefs to permanently reside there. To inaugurate the camp, the Nation held a five-day gathering, inviting members of nearby communities, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Council of Canadians, and other allied groups and individuals to come connect with the land, and to share strategies and tactics to protect it.

Incidentally, a number of participants, including this author, got much closer to the land than expected, when a traditional war canoe capsized going down the river, and many of us spent the cold night outdoors before meeting up with a search-and-rescue team the next morning. On the bright side, this helped us become a lot closer, and deepened our respect for the land and waters.

As Mel Bazil, of the Lhe Lin Lïyin community group behind organizing the camp explains, “The Action Camp was devised to draw in more of our clans’ membership to learn of peaceful means to protect their lands and waters, and to unite nations in their opposition to the tar sands giga-project. Last year, we issued Enbridge a warning they were trespassing on our territory. At this year’s camp, we issued them a Feather Warning, which traditionally meant they could be killed if they came back onto the land. We are ready and willing to do whatever it takes to keep our lands and waters healthy for our descendents yet to come.”

The camp was followed with a rally in nearby Smithers, where many people supported the First Nation’s opposition to the proposed pipeline. Over a month later, hundreds rallied in Prince George and Vancouver, opposing Enbridge’s application to the Joint Panel Review process meant to allow or deny their permit.

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The same day, in Ottawa, a crowd gathered in front of Parliament Hill on the arrival of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from the U.S., who was to meet with tar sands promoting politicians and executives. The crowd called for her to reject the proposed Keystone pipeline and tar sands expansion generally.

In August, many Wet’suwet’en community members later made the long trip to Fort McMurray, ground zero of tar sands expansion, for the first-ever Healing Walk held there. The event was also the first of its kind in Fort McMurray to oppose tar sands development, a significant point in the history of this movement. Over 150 people took part in the 13-km trek through the heart of Canada’s largest industrial experiment, calling for healing of the land, water, skies, and animals.

Many who spoke highlighted the impacts that the tar sands have had in polluting the region, including a loss of wildlife and severe health impacts in the communities near the developments. They also brought up the need to have their communities speak up and be heard.

George Poitras, a former chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation was quoted as saying, “We have lived here for thousands of years. We rely on the land — our lives are intrinsically linked to the land. We are one and the same. It is very frustrating to see the unprecedented pace of development with little to no consideration of the land, as we call it, our mother earth — it gives us life.”

Further east, a large delegation from tar sands impacted communities made their way to protests at the G20 in Toronto, where they were prominent speakers on the day of action for environmental justice. Other community members were featured participants at the Detroit-based U.S. Social Forum, where over 30,000 social movement leaders gathered.

In August, hundreds of activists established a 16-day Climate Camp just outside Montreal, in the community of Dunham. One of the organizers, Cam Fenton, explains that, “The camp was set up to support and expand local resistance against the construction of a pumping station in Montreal. At the camp we also started a pledge of resistance campaign, which is a community oriented pledge to engage in direct action to shut down the construction of this project should it ever be built.” The town’s mayor came and spoke out against the pumping station, a key infrastructure piece in the Trailbreaker pipeline to bring tar sands oil to the eastern seaboard in Maine.

About the same time, two young women from northern B.C. made the trip to the U.K. Climate Camp, where hundreds of activists gathered outside the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland, targeting it as one of the main financiers of tar sands companies like BP.

Expressing solidarity and support for the efforts of First Nations and others in Canada, the activists were successful in blocking work at the headquarters and another administrative office that day. The action and camp represents a growing sentiment in the U.K. and other parts of Europe that this single project is the most environmentally damaging project on the planet.

A short month later, another Climate Camp was established at the same time as the World Energy Congress came to Montreal, an event that takes place every three years. The tar sands again were the central target in actions outside the Congress’ doors.

One of the most surprising effects of all this ramped-up resistance? The oil companies have noticed, and they’re scared. In fact, some of the leading opposition comes not just from grassroots towns and cities in the United States, but all the ways to the offices of a number of congressmen and congresswomen.

Last year, the president of the Canadian Association of Oil Producers announced that it was too risky to depend solely on the U.S. as the main buyer, since American environmental laws are in many respects more progressive than Canadian laws. This is the main impetus behind the search for new markets, and the rush to build new pipelines to get the oil to Asia. The protests are working.

This year, TransCanada Pipelines is trying to push through a pipeline from Alberta to Texas, but needs federal U.S. approval. They’ve already pissed off Nebraska landowners and politicians by threatening to absorb their land under eminent domain if they didn’t sell it. Farmers, rural residents and Native communities have led much of the opposition to the pipelines going through their lands. Another setback came from the Environmental Protection Agency called for more time to review the application, an implicit acknowledgement of the environmental risks and damages. Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network has noticed a real rise in opposition to the tar sands recently, and not just in North America. “What we’re really seeing is the escalation of opposition, with mass movements and mass protests, by those who understand we have to stop this right here, right now. Because if we don’t, it’s only going to spread across the planet. If you think Natives have it bad in Canada, just imagine what it’ll be like for Natives of the Congo, Madagascar, Siberia, or the Amazon, all places where tar sands have been found, and who will be looking to Canada for lessons.”

About the expanding opposition to the tar sands, Bazil comments, “We’re really happy to see the growing expansion from cities and communities around the world. We are especially grateful for all the strong shows of solidarity we have received from people as far away as Toronto, Quebec, the U.S. and Europe. Even James Cameron!” — referring to an upcoming visit planned by the Avatar director to the region, to see a live version of “Pandora” for himself.

Fenton agrees, and sees the future of environmental work in Canada in “supporting struggles by communities directly impacted by these kind of projects, localizing the resistance, while steadily targeting the heart of the tar sands infrastructure in Alberta.”

Future “Climate Camps” are already planned for Ottawa and Edmonton. What started out as a hot summer for the future of the tar sands might only be heating up.

Photos from the Healing Walk can be seen here.

Photos from the Wet’suwet’en Action Camp can be seen here.

Photos from the Parliament Hill Nancy Pelosi Action can be seen here.

Photos from the Quebec Climate Camp can be seen here.

Photos from the G20 Environmental Justice Day can be seen here.

Ben Powless is a Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario, and is currently studying Human Rights Indigenous and Environmental Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. He has been involved with the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, the Indigenous Environmental Network, sits on the board of the National Council for the Canadian Environmental Network, and is on the Youth Advisory Group to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. Powless also blogs for rabble.ca.

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Capitalism and Pollution: A Way Out?

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Ron Jacobs discusses the increasingly popular and ubiquitous notion of “green capitalism” as critiqued by author Chris Williams in his new book, Ecology and Socialism.

This article appears in Dissident Voice, August 19th, 2010

There have been hundreds of books dedicated to the subject of environmental destruction. Very few of them have addressed the subject in terms of the economic system most of the world’s inhabitants struggles under. Indeed, as the first Earth Day in 1970 shrinks further into the distance of time, it is corporations that try to convince us that, despite being the cause of most of that destruction, they can also be the remedy. Grasping at straws while we watch our woods, waters and fields become more polluted by the day, many of us believe the commercials from Exxon and BP when they tell us they are green, even though we know better. In addition, we go along with the consumerist schemes to alter our way of living to a more ecologically sound one, even though these actions make very little difference in a world of corporate pollution.

Author Chris Williams does not believe that capitalism can solve the pollution problem it has created. In his new book, Ecology and Socialism, he not only refutes the corporate claims that they care about the environment and are working on halting its devastation; he argues that capitalism is the cause of the bulk of that devastation. Operating from a well-reasoned hypothesis that (put simply) because capitalism needs to expand it can not halt environmental destruction, Williams discusses the history of capitalist destruction of the environment and its supposed solutions. While he doesn’t dismiss all of the schemes proposed by corporate entities to ease the earth’s environmental demise, he points out that the dominant capitalist enterprise in the modern world revolves around the procurement and utilization of fossil fuels, Because of this fact and the easy profits to be made from this fact, the corporate world has no reason or will to change. The ongoing wars for energy market domination prove this again and again.

Williams describes a Marxism that is holistic and sees the earth and its systems, human beings and economy as an organic whole. Capitalism cannot see the world in a similar manner because of its dependence on exchange value instead of use value. In other words, its need to profit and the consequent history created by that need has produced a situation where things are produced because they make a profit, not because people necessarily need them. Nowhere perhaps is this more obvious than in the auto industry. Williams writes that over 30 million new cars are produced every year. The amount of work-hours and resources put into this process could be diverted into producing a transportation system that would not only be environmentally viable, but would serve the needs of a greater population. Yet, there is no profit motive (certainly not on the scale of the world’s automobile industry). The point is that production for profit is environmentally unsustainable. Production based on need is.

What about the former Soviet Union and China? Weren’t they socialist economies and didn’t they cause a lot of environmental destruction? It is Williams’ contention that these economies were much closer to a form of state capitalism than socialism. While leftists might debate this question to the end of time, the fact is that most of the enterprise in those two countries during the historical moment they called themselves socialist did meet the accepted left description of state capitalism: a system which utilizes the wage system of producing and appropriating surplus value in a commodity economy controlled by the state apparatus. Of course, since both economies are now capitalist, it doesn’t really matter too much what they were then.

George W. Bush once stated that the United States was addicted to oil. It was one of the few truths he ever spoke. It was also accepted without a blink by politicians and citizens alike. When Williams discusses the extraction of oil from shale and tar sands, I could not help but think of a practice undertaken by heroin junkies. For those who don’t know how oil extraction from shale and tar sands works, I will attempt a brief description of the process. The oil substances in oil shale are solid and cannot be pumped directly out of the ground. The oil shale must first be mined and then heated to a high temperature. The resulting liquid must then be separated and collected. Sometimes the oil is heated to liquid underground before it is extracted.

The junkie process I am reminded of goes like this. Before an addict shoots heroin into his vein, he must first dissolve the powder in water. This is sally done in a spoon which is heated with a lighter or match. After the drug dissolves, the addict draws up the liquid from the spoon into a syringe. In order to keep undissolved additives from entering the solution in the syringe, the addict usually places a piece of cotton in the liquefied solution in the spoon. He then draws the liquid through the cotton “filter.” Most junkies do not throw away the cotton. Instead, they save it for a time when they have no access to the drug. When this occurs, they soak the cotton in water and draw the water (which has taken the heroin residue from the cotton) into the syringe. Drawing oil from tar sands is not too different and is representative of the nature of our oil addiction. Other parallels can be seen in the nature of actions undertaken by corporate America and its citizens in our pursuit of oil to feed our addiction. The aforementioned wars and the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are but the most obvious of these.

Ecology and Socialism is not merely about what’s wrong in the world where fossil fuels rule our lives. It also presents a blueprint for change that could conceivably diminish certain key indicators used by environmental scientists to determine the earth’s health. The basics of this blueprint revolve around the use of solar and wind energy on a scale never before seen. Of course, such a plan flies against the powers that be and their blueprint to extract as much profit as they can from the diminishing supply of fossil fuels. This, writes Williams, is why nothing, not even reforms like the development of wind and solar farms, will come about without a popular movement demanding them. The technology already exists, he continues, but the demand for it must be vocal and large. That is where we come in: the building of that movement.

Like the other titles in this nominal series from Haymarket Books in Chicago — Women and Socialism, Black Liberation and Socialism, Sexuality and Socialism — Ecology and Socialism provides a cogent and accessible look at one of today’s pressing social issues through the viewpoint of socialist activists and thinkers.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. His most recent novel Short Order Frame Up is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

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OECD Pursues Free Trade at the G20 Business Summit

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

G20 Toronto Protester

One of the prime concerns of those who protest the G8/G20 summits is the lack of transparency that accompanies these meetings, as well as the absence of democratic channels through which global citizens can voice their concerns with the policies that are pursued.

The following article is a transcript of the remarks made at the G20 Toronto Business Summit by Angel Gurria, the Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). These remarks provide insight into the inner workings of the G20 policymakers as they continue to consolidate free trade policies such as privatization, the scaling back of government services and anti-protectionism across the globe.

These policies have direct impact on the lives of billions of citizens who have absolutely no say in the actual decisions that are made. By using the G8/G20 summits as forums for these kind of topics, trade ministers and corporations are circumventing the traditional routes of democracy to implement policies against the will of the people. This is why it is important to insist that our voices be heard, to make our presence known at the summits and demand that our concerns be taken into account.

Remarks by Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD
G20 Business Summit
Toronto, Canada
26 June 2010

It is a pleasure to be here on the occasion of the G20 Business Summit. I welcome the opportunity to discuss with you the current economic context and the challenges that Leaders will be discussing in the Summit.

A strengthening recovery, but also new risks

The recovery is on its way, but it is uneven across regions. In our latest projections, we project global growth will reach around 4 ¾ % this year and next. The main engines of growth are the emerging market economies. These economies will account for well over half global growth.

However, major challenges remain. First of all, joblessness is unacceptably high. This is the human face of the crisis that we need to continue to address effectively. In OECD countries, and even though unemployment is likely to have peaked, is still at post war high of 8.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

The crisis required unprecedented measures to stimulate the economy. And some countries were better prepared to afford this effort.  Right now, however, public debt and deficits are also at record high, and in some regions like Europe, financial markets have reacted strongly with rising interest rate spreads on sovereign debt.

Inflationary pressures are emerging in some G20 countries where growth has been vigorous, and are receiving substantial capital flows, contributing to sharply rising asset prices.

Finally, the crisis has reduced the productive capacity of our economies. This is due to the higher cost of capital, and also high unemployment. We estimate that the fall of this productive capacity is around 3 percent in OECD economies.

In this delicate environment, governments face difficult policy choices. First of all policy needs to strike a balance between the imperative of fiscal consolidation and the need to support a job rich recovery. If public debt is left to accumulate at its current pace, the cost of borrowing is likely to rise, crowding out private investment. And private business investment is exactly what we need right now. Private demand needs to replace policy stimulus as the source of recovery in order to be self-sustaining.

But, if countries consolidate too soon, too fast and by too much, the fragile recovery could stall. Job creation, also a driver of a sustained expansion, would in turn be delayed. Moreover, if all countries move to consolidate at the same time, these effects would be exacerbated through trade and financial linkages. Thus getting the balance right is primordial!

This issue is at the core of the G20 Leaders’ agenda. The solutions inevitably will be country specific, but through cooperation the trade-offs can be reduced, and growth maximized. At the OECD, we believe that there is no option other than combine sound fiscal policies with specific actions to maintain the momentum for recovery and job creation.

Our view is that fiscal consolidation should be as growth-friendly as possible. Specifically, it means that on the spending side, growth enhancing programmes, such as on education, innovation and infrastructure should be preserved to the extent possible, and efforts, for example, to improve public sector efficiency and phase out inefficient subsidies should be pursued. Moreover, consolidation measures should concentrate first on cutting government spending.

When additional revenue is needed, emphasis should be placed on the least distortive taxes. Our analysis found that such taxes include consumption and property taxes, rather than taxes on labour and business income. Recently announced fiscal consolidation plans in the UK move in this direction. Other options include, putting a price on carbon, via a carbon tax or through tradeable emission permits, which would both raise revenue and help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

However, we must ensure that the tax burden is fairly shared, and seen to be fairly shared. This requires a renewed effort to achieve better tax compliance. Here, thanks to the combination of G20 political support and OECD work, the world has achieved important breakthroughs in combating tax evasion. Such is the case of exchange of information for tax purposes, where since November 2008 we made more progress than in the last 10 years. This breakthrough means a more level playing field for international business, where competitiveness depends on the productivity of business enterprises, rather than aggressive tax planning.

In addition to fiscal policy, we must also focus on structural policy reforms. These are essential to speed up the recovery and to lay the groundwork for a more sustainable and fairer economic future. Structural reform will also be needed to reduce global imbalances in a durable manner. For example, action will need to be taken to raise savings in countries with large current account deficits, such as the United States, and to rebalance demand towards domestic sources in surplus countries, such as China and Germany. In such an environment, businesses have a stronger incentive to hire, which in turn boosts household incomes, leading to a virtuous cycle of stronger domestic demand.

The last point I would like to make is that it is not only policy reforms that count. Avoiding policy reversals and mistakes also matters. During the past one-and-a-half years, it is fair to say that the most important lessons from previous crises have been well learned. Leaders avoided misguided labour market policies and committed to open markets as an integral part of getting the world economy out of the crisis.

The OECD, WTO and UNCTAD report to G20 leaders on trade and investment measures conclude that most G20 members are holding to these commitments. The key role that trade is playing in the current upturn is there to remind us of the fundamental benefits of keeping markets open.

But we need to remain vigilant. Protectionist sentiments are likely to increase with low growth, persistent

unemployment and mounting pressures on government finances. And as our last joint report warned, discretion in the application of the many state support and support programmes for troubled firms may be used to favour domestic companies and disguise protectionism.

Bringing the Doha Development Agenda to a successful conclusion would prevent backsliding, bring much needed stability and predictability to international businesses and, in a period of intense fiscal consolidation and other headwinds holding the pace of growth back, give added impetus to the recovery.

In this context, strengthening international dialogue and consolidating the G20 as the prime forum for economic cooperation is key. We have already seen certain decisions taken by G20 governments that go in the right direction to boost productivity and rebalance the global growth. We are certain that the outcomes of this important meeting will have a positive impact. That’s why we are here, and why international organisations are committed to contribute to this important process.  Business too has a role to play by initiating new investments and hiring to expand productive capacity in order to be ready to take advantage of the recovery.  Together we can build a stronger, cleaner, fairer world economy.

Taken from the OECD website.

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Avoiding “Controversy”? In-Between the Silences on Abortion and Family Planning at the G8 and Beyond

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Unfortunately, when women’s health and bodily autonomy are at stake in public policy, silences can speak louder than words. 

At a February 2010 news conference, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon made it clear that Harper’s G8 pledge to “harness funds and resources from G8 countries and non-government organizations to reduce millions of preventable maternal and child deaths in the developing world” would exclude any discussion of abortion, contraception or funding for women’s reproductive choice. Cannon stated that the G8 initiative “does not deal in any way, shape or form with family planning.”

Jane Cawthorne characterized this position on maternal health succinctly, writing, ”the Conservative government is effectively saying only women who become mothers are worthy of complete health care. They are expressing a deep disregard for women who don’t conform to their image of the ‘good’ woman and doing so in a public policy initiative that will negatively affect women globally.”

In the following Op-Ed, Marcy Bloom explains how, when it comes to womens’ rights,  ”‘neutrality’ leaves no choice”.

Image via photobucket.com

Health Inequality: Gates Foundation Bans Abortion

By Marcy Bloom, On the Issues Magazine, Summer 2010

Melinda French Gates, philanthropist, co-founder and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was greeted with great applause on the first day of the Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this summer. But the hand clapping was temporary. As a reproductive health advocate, I was not the only one who began to raise questions about her comments and her foundation’s capacity  to set the worldwide agenda for global health priorities. Gates announced that the foundation with her name on it, known for its important work on the prevention of poverty and the development of vaccines for HIV/AIDS and malaria, will designate $1.5 billion over the next five years to assist developing nations with integrated women’s health care services.

She explained that this new priority will add to the empowerment, education and equality of women and girls. She described the services: nutrition, pre- and post-natal care, infant care, the training of women’s health workers and obstetrical services.

Yes, this is impressive, and will do much good to help women and girls, and to save their lives. But it is silent on a central and fundamental issue for women: access to safe abortion and protection from unsafe abortion.

This is so despite the fact that access to safe abortion was one of “three core strategies to save women’s lives” on the agenda of the Women Deliver conference, which was titled Invest in Women. It Pays. In attendance were 3,500 advocates from 140 countries. The goal was to seek out strategies to prevent maternal mortality so that “no person should die giving life.” It’s critical to note that if you believe in investing in women and girls, no woman or girl should ever die preventing life either. The statistics are stark: approximately 350,000 women lose their lives each year giving birth, from childbirth complications and injuries, and from illegal and unsafe abortions. All are preventable tragedies.

Let Women Live

At the conference, the Guttmacher Institute shared the significance of emphasizing the need for both family planning and maternal and newborn health services.

Tragically, only one-half of the 123 million women and girls each year who give birth receive the full range of prenatal, delivery and post-natal care that they need. If women’s equality were recognized, and this care were prioritized and funded, women’s lives would be vastly improved. Unintended pregnancies around the world would decrease by more than two-thirds, dropping from 75 million (2008) to 22 million per year (still disgracefully high, but certainly an improvement). Seventy per cent of maternal deaths would be avoided. Unsafe abortion rates would decline by 73 percent.

The reality is that these critical needs cannot — and should not — be separated. All represent a continuum of women’s lives and their reproductive health concerns. Women who have abortions become mothers; mothers have abortions. Safe abortion can help women become better mothers in the future. These are the same women making different choices at different times in their lives.

Illegal, unsafe abortion is a reproductive health crime and a form of violence against women. Ignoring abortion, siloizing abortion, denying its significance as a fundamental public health need for women, is absurd and unrealistic.

As reported in 2006 in the public health journal, The Lancet, abortion is “a pandemic — an urgent public health and human rights imperative.” Nearly 68,000 women and girls die as a result of botched abortions — this is 13 percent of all maternal deaths. Twenty times that number of women and girls will experience abortion-related complications that threaten their lives. Nearly all (97 percent) of these preventable deaths and injuries are in developing nations. “Access to safe abortion improves women’s health,” according to The Lancet authors. “Access to competent care” is a critical need, they state.

While the Gates Foundation said that it is interested in funding access to contraception for the 200 million women and girls around the world who are unable to obtain birth control, The Lancet authors underscored: “(T)he availability of modern contraception can reduce but never eliminate the need for abortion.”

“Neutrality” Leaves no Choice

So why is the Gates Foundation ignoring the abortion care needs of women?

When asked on NPR by reporter Michele Norris, Melinda Gates said, “We don’t want to be part of the controversy.”

In response to a request for comment to the Gates Foundation, a response was emailed from “Deborah Lacy (Independent Contractor)” who said: “While the foundation is making new investments in maternal and child health, our position on funding abortion services has not changed. Specifically, the foundation does not fund abortion and does not take a stance on the issue. We focus on improving access to the tools women need to prevent unintended pregnancy, by supporting organizations that provide voluntary family planning information and services for women in developing countries. Family planning services are critical to prevent unintended pregnancy and reduce abortions.”

Does she fear that the image of the foundation will be affected? Fear anti-choice boycotts of Microsoft products? Does she have security concerns? Fret about the moral complexity of women’s decision-making? Or does she view women’s lives as controversial?

Gates seems unable to understand that the true moral issue is allowing women and girls to die because of lack of access to a safe medical procedure. By trying to avoid the “controversy” surrounding abortion, Gates has created another: it is impossible to work on maternal mortality issues and ignore abortion.

The clear and well-documented reality — one I have witnessed and experienced for 40 years in my work as an abortion counselor, feminist clinic director and fundraiser for international reproductive rights — is that safe and legal abortion preserves the dignity and saves the lives of women and girls. Contraception fails. Women change their minds about their pregnancies. Sexual activity is often unexpected, involuntary and unprotected. The misogyny and control demonstrated in sexual violence are part of the lives of far too many women and girls in the world. Without access to safe abortion, women suffer.

Bill and Melinda Gates are undoubtedly aware of these realities of women’s unequal lives. The end result of their “neutrality” is but one choice for women and girls who become pregnant. That one choice equals no choice.

Allowing the further stigmatization of abortion validates and strengthens the belligerent anti-choice movement.

But the power and influence of the foundation go further. Because of its prestige, size and assets, the foundation is central to “setting the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda around the world,” in the words of policy researcher and writer Brook Elliott-Buettner in Gender Across Borders.

Whatever the intent, the Gates Foundation is establishing, even distorting, the direction of investments by other foundations, individuals and even governments. Although Bill and Melinda Gates have the right to spend their money as they wish, it is also true that their inordinate power in determining universal health agendas demands accountability.

When they slam the doors to safe abortion initiatives, the impact is felt around the world. The result? These reproductive health crimes against women are permitted to continue, unchecked. The Gates Foundation has chosen to sweep abortion off the charts of women’s health and lives. And that is yet another crime against women.

Marcy Bloom worked as an abortion counselor and clinic director in New York, and for more than 18 years served as the executive director of Aradia Women’s Health Center in Seattle. In 2006, she received the William O. Douglas Award, the Washington State ACLU’s lifetime achievement award. She is currently the U.S representative for the Mexico City-based GIRE~Grupo de Informaci?n en Reproducci?n Elegida (The Information Group on Reproductive Choice), Mexico’s leading for for reproductive justice and access to legal abortion. 

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