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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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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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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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Stopping the Flow: Quebec Climate Action Camp takes on the Enbridge Trailbreaker project

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

by Cameron Fenton

DUNHAM, QC—From August 7 to 23, the Quebec Climate Action Camp took root in Dunham, QC—an hour drive southeast of Montreal. The camp aimed to continue to build opposition to the construction of a pumping station in Dunham, a key piece of infrastructure in the Enbridge Trailbreaker project.

The Trailbreaker pipeline project would reverse the flow of existing pipleline infrastructure, moving tar sands oil from Alberta through the United States, Ontario, and eventually crossing through Montreal and Quebec’s Eastern Townships region. It would then be piped to Portland, Maine, to be loaded onto tankers destined for Texan refineries.

Community organizers from Dunham joined the Climate Camp to build momentum in a growing local movement against the pumping station. On August 15 over 100 people marched from Parc L’Envol, down Dunham’s Rue Principal to Town Hall. Dunham Mayor Jean-Guy Demers ended the march by voicing his support for the camp and for the campaign opposing the pumping station.

Over the two weeks of the Climate Camp, over 300 people visited the camp from across Quebec, eastern Canada, the northeastern United States and coming from as far as California and Austria. The visitors came not only to take action themselves, but also to work towards building a broad, empowering climate justice movement. The camp, powered by solar, wind and kinetic energy, was organized as an exercise in collective self-management.

Climate Camp ended with a march to the site of the proposed pumping station, and the launch of the Trailbreaker Pledge of Resistance. The pledge states that “because of the grave threat the Trailbreaker project poses to the climate, the community and all others in its path, we pledge to engage in non-violent direct action to stop the pumping station should they ever attempt to follow through with its construction without community consent.”

This article appeared in The Dominion on September 6, 2010.

Photo by Allan Cedillo Lissner

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Annual bird mortality in tar sands tailings ponds exceeds government/industry figures: Study

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

By Treeline Ecological Research | September 7, 2010

Edmonton – A study in the peer-reviewed journal The Wilson Journal of Ornithology to be published in early September (online in late August) shows annual bird mortality in the bitumen tailings ponds of northeastern Alberta – an internationally significant migratory bird corridor – greatly exceeds industry estimates.

The authors investigated three types of data: government-industry reported mortalities; rates of bird deaths at tailings ponds; and rates of landing, oiling, and mortality to quantify annual bird mortality due to exposure to tailings ponds.

For the period 2000 to 2007, reporting by industry indicated a mean annual mortality from tailings pond exposure of 65 birds. The study, entitled “Annual Bird Mortality in the Bitumen Tailings Ponds in Northeastern Alberta,” however, indicated an annual mortality in the range of 458 to 5,029 birds – a range deemed conservative because birds found dead represent an unknown fraction of true mortality and data do not include mortalities that occur before spring, between spring and fall migration, and after fall migration. The wide range in the annual mortality estimates is due in large part to spatial and temporal variations in bird mortality rates.

“The ad hoc monitoring by industry, sanctioned by government, cannot address pressing questions whose answers would aid in the conservation of both migratory and resident birds,” said Dr. Kevin Timoney of Treeline Ecological Research, one of the study’s authors along with Dr. Robert Roncini of Dalhousie University.

Other findings of the study include:

Landing deterrent systems at tailings ponds are only partially effective. The only way to prevent bird deaths is to discontinue the use of tailings ponds.

While tailings ponds, which contain bitumen, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, naphthenic acids, brine, heavy metals, and ammonia, pose the greatest threat in spring when warm effluent-fed tailings ponds provide open water at a time when natural water bodies remain frozen, a high risk of oiling may extend throughout the open water season.

The fate of lightly oiled birds that continue migration, in particular to summer breeding areas, is unknown.

The total number of birds migrating through the region and the total annual bird mortality due to tailings ponds are not known with sufficient scientific rigor.

Data on mortalities during extreme weather events and on the frequency of mass mortality events are lacking.

The study concludes: “Government-overseen monitoring within a statistically valid design, standardized across all facilities, is needed. Systematic monitoring and accurate, timely reporting would provide data useful to all those concerned with bird conservation and management in the tar sands region.”

This press release appeared on rabble.ca on September 7, 2010

Image via treehugger.com

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Posted in Animal Rights, Environment, Health, The Real Issues | 5 Comments »

Lee Hall: What are Animal Rights? The Vegan Peace Declaration

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

 

The recent BP Oil catastrophe is a tragic example of industry and corporate intrusion into a shared planet, whereby gain is private and disaster is public: executives, shareholders, and consumers reap the financial and material benefits of environmental exploitation , while ecological costs are shared amongst all humans, animals, and biological communities.  Below, Lee Hall discusses the implications of animal rights ethics in an age of unprecedented environmental degradation and ever-increasing habitat loss, and links the animal rights movement and environmental advocacy.

Originally published in Dissident Voice,  April 8, 2009.

Animal-rights activists are famous for talking about what we don’t want. But what kind of rights do we want? Let’s start by thinking about why we use the term “rights” at all.

We’ve constructed a system that treats everything and everyone on the planet as a person or as a piece of property. Water and seeds, trees and beaches: all for sale. Conscious animals too are classified as property, available for use by “persons” (including businesses). Only those legal persons have rights — socially created shields which oblige us to respect other people’s interests.

Which brings us back to animal-rights activists. People who are serious about nonhuman rights wish to discontinue the system that makes human interests the top priority and then controls all other beings for our uses and conveniences.

The animal-rights idea has been around a long time. Henry Salt, author of Animals’ Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress (1892), asserted that the human habit of raising other animals in order to consume them is to inflict unnecessary harm on sentient beings. Salt, as well as Anna Kingsford (who graduated from medical school in Paris in 1880, unique in doing so without having experimented on a single animal), influenced Gandhi to decide it’s a moral duty “not to live upon fellow-animals.” And in 1944, the word “vegan” was coined to express the idea of conscientious objection to war against our fellows. The vegan peace declaration is a commitment to avoid the products of animal use, such as dairy items, flesh, eggs, and honey. By preferring melon slices or a plate of stuffed grape leaves, vegans erode the custom of animal breeding — a custom that, at the same time, uses habitat needed by animals who could live free.

In its broadest sense, veganism is the cultivation of a society that renounces domination and systematic killing. This is the core of animal-rights theory: the forthright claim that all conscious beings, human or not, should be allowed to live on their own terms, not the terms set down by those who seek to control and exploit others.

Plea From Planet Earth

Imagine the day the extraterrestrials pay us a visit. Being more capable and advanced than ourselves (get a load of that spaceship), but not having any way of hearing or understanding our words or cries, they debate whether to consume us, experiment on us, or wrap us up and carry us home as playthings. Our options end. They decide to enlist us in fulfilling their interests in food, research and entertainment. We’re frightened and appalled, even by the ones who only insist on doing it for our own good (stewardship, we Earthlings have called that). We like to decide what’s good for ourselves.

“Please, let us alone,” we beg. “Don’t split up our families to introduce us into your more advanced culture; don’t talk about how well you should care for us before using us up. Don’t try to mimic our natural habitat so we can live and reproduce when you display us. Don’t do it even if you know we’ll blow ourselves up or go extinct under the melting ice caps. Just go in peace.”

Could we ourselves heed that plea? Most people will call it impossible, saying we must be realistic; they’ll say patterns of domination and subjugation, and hierarchical ideas about species, are too ingrained in human thinking to be undone. Whether they are right or not, most people thereby perpetuate the power structures humanity has constructed. The first step to achieving change is conceiving it, and that’s what the vegan proposal has done. At its best, our movement inspires society to accept risk, to respect other beings even if that means accepting some level of danger, to ensure that we leave animals capable of living and moving freely in spaces to which they’ve naturally adapted, and to refuse to alienate them from those habitats.

Plain fairness challenges us to intervene in the cycle of breeding animals, and to stop sending domesticated cats, tropical birds, school-raised ducklings and other displaced animals into the world to fend for themselves in biocommunities that are ill-equipped to sustain or cope with them. To leave birds in their own forests rather than remove them and cage them as decorative or talkative pets, to let chimpanzees live in their natural territories rather expect them to have babies in zoos and language labs, to let bats and wolves and jaguars migrate without impediments, to respect turkeys’ natural lives rather than consider their slaughtered bodies essential to our holiday buffets; to leave fish in their waters, swimming free. The dignity of freedom, along with life itself, is at the core of what rights are meant to defend.

That doesn’t mean we ignore the dependent and domesticated — abandoned rabbits or feral cats or dogs in need of homes. Animal-rights theory challenges the cycle of making animals vulnerable and then coming to their rescue; yet it is not a pass to ignore the welfare of dependent animals who are already born. We are all members of humanity, the class we’ve constructed in order to bestow on ourselves the right to control all the others. Where we’ve endangered our fellow-animals and made them dependent, we have a collective responsibility to care for them today. So a caregiving ethic properly applies to cats, dogs, and other purpose-bred animals, while animal rights means preventing the cycle of control in the first place, preventing the destruction of communities of deer and coyotes, elk and wolves, wildcats, whales, bats and bees. This is why the strongest case for animal rights must be engaged with environmental advocacy.

In turn, animal-rights theory presents environmentalists with their strongest case. After all, a society that seriously considers animals’ claims to their habitat would refuse to let Mobil, Shell, and BP — or the Nature Conservancy, which has profited from drilling for natural gas in the habitat of highly endangered speckled grouse — ignore the interests of animals. Animal rights would change humanity’s way of doing business.

Tom Regan’s Case for Animal Rights (1983) urged: “With regard to wild animals, the general policy recommended by the rights view is: let them be!” These three little words go right to the core of the theory, and they free the spirit of activism. Regan’s three little words also highlight the need for a positively framed right for free-living beings to exist. If the rights proponent focuses simply on “abolition” — that is, on removing animals from the property category — there’s a danger of missing the positive need for free animals to procreate and experience their lives. We could stop bringing other animals into being for our purposes but ignore the loss of communities who enter the world for their own; and animal rights is a hollow idea if animals don’t survive to benefit from the concept. This means we’ll need to control our own numbers and learn to respect the environment not just for our health or aesthetic satisfaction, but because it’s home to other living beings.

Evolution of Animal-Rights Activism

One of my co-workers in the movement, Peter Wallerstein of Friends of Animals’ Marine Animal Rescue group, is an expert at assisting coast-dwelling animals who get caught in anglers’ gear. The idea is to free animals from dangers humans have caused (consistent with this mission, Wallerstein won’t eat fish), and quickly return them to their normal lives. To rescue is to exert control over a seal or a pelican, so Wallerstein believes interventions should be temporary: just long enough to enable the animals to return safely to their sea or skies, where they might flourish on their terms. In most cases, for Marine Animal Rescue, the interactions are brief — although some sea animals are found so debilitated they need long-term care; and unusual algal blooms, thought to be connected with warming oceans, cause domoic acid poisonings, which are often fatal to sea lions and seabirds.

Some others — spider monkeys, chimpanzees, gibbons, parrots, and various animals kept in human settings and then discarded, such as the ones who now live at our San Antonio sanctuary — need a caregiving ethic, and they need it for life. Primarily Primates offers its animals private space, and publicly challenges humanity’s feeling of entitlement to use other animals. And that, in turn, means confronting any business which breeds domesticated animals into existence, displacing habitat where free-living animals once thrived. So the evolution of our work now includes collaboration between the rescue and rehabilitation community and animal-rights theorists. We point out that advocates can and do care for the animals caught in our current system yet at the same time organize a new cultural reality, so that whole communities of animals won’t be driven from their lands and waters, selectively bred to meet our specifications, or in some way pressed into positions of needing refuge.

We know we’re asking questions that challenge many, many generations of our cultural patterns. In light of the tremendous responsibility we’ve accepted, what kind of rights should we seek?

Seen in its strongest and best light, the animal-rights proposal does not present a list of demands, but cultivates an attitude of respect. A willingness to live gently on the land and walk respectfully along the ocean without seeing either as a store of resources for us. A desire to allow natural plants to flourish for bees, to grow our crops with an appreciation for the animals who move beneath and over them. We need to learn, as much as possible, to let other animals be.

To respect the lives of seals means respecting the lives of fish and other animals in their waters. Respecting the lives of primates would necessarily mean respecting tree frogs in the forests that need us to put down our logging machinery. What other members of Earth’s biocommunity need from us is a robust movement to defend what natural places remain.

Once we agree in principle what animal rights should be and then implement it, cultivating a society that can outgrow its drive to kill and conquer, we then decide the best approach in specific situations. Some difficult questions will involve conflicts we might have caused or aggravated between living communities, given our outsized population and the ways we have already changed the face of the planet. The key will be mindfulness, so as to steadfastly avoid reinstating the primacy of humans over the other animal communities.

Because it defends the vital interests of our fellow-animals in viable habitats, the vegan declaration of peace presents the most serious challenge to those who deforest the land, commodify life, and pollute the earth, water, and atmosphere. As such, it’s not only a key to our becoming full moral actors on the ecological stage, but also needed for keeping that stage from falling apart. We cannot afford to surrender to the loss of whole biocommunities and the meltdown of major ice sheets; if we don’t change soon, our options will run out. Never has it been more important for vegan advocates to know just what we’re asking for, and be heard.

Image by Frederic Larson, San Francisco Chronicle

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Posted in Animal Rights, Corporate Globalization, Environment, Featured, The Real Issues | 1 Comment »

Clare Demerse: Leaked G20 documents – Canada won’t cut extra subsidies for fossil fuels

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Canada’s section of a leaked G20 document detailing plans to phase out fossil fuel subsidies reveals that Canada has no plans to phase out any of its estimated $2 billion a year in tax breaks to oil and gas producers.

By Clare Demerse, Pembina Institute Climate Change Blog
Originally Published Jun 29, 2010
Image courtesy of ImageShack.us

Despite the Harper government’s decision to downplay climate and energy issues at the G20 summit, there was no way to avoid a discussion of phasing out fossil fuel subsides. That’s because leaders at the previous G20 summit, held in Pittsburgh in September 2009, decided to phase out these subsidies “over the medium term” – and specifically asked ministers to prepare implementation plans and timetables for discussion in Toronto.

The Toronto summit gave G20 leaders an opportunity to take the next step with their subsidy commitment by agreeing to a joint target and timeline. (That’s exactly the approach that Stephen Harper proposed, and won agreement on, for reducing the G20′s budget deficits.) And G20′s Toronto declaration does refer to fossil fuel subsidies – but it doesn’t set a common target or timeline. Instead, Paragraph 42 welcomes “the work of Finance and Energy Ministers in delivering implementation strategies and timeframes, based on national circumstances.” It also encourages “continued and full implementation of country-specific strategies” and commits to reviewing “progress towards this commitment at upcoming summits.”

The problem with a “country-specific” approach is that there’s no common definition of what constitutes a subsidy, and no collective deadline for getting rid of them. So instead of a joint commitment with mutual accountability, you end up with a potluck, where everyone can decide for themselves what they want to bring. Some people will make a mouthwatering dessert, but others will merely pick up some ketchup chips en route to the party – or even arrive empty-handed.

Canada’s Contribution

Officially, the G20 has not released countries’ implementation plans and timeframes. But thanks to a leaked document published yesterday by the U.S. news service ClimateWire , we now know that they prepared to do exactly that: the group drafted a 50-page annex listing the G20′s plans and actions, with the words “Not for distribution until the Toronto summit” right on the cover.

Unfortunately, Canada’s section does not make for inspiring reading. It offers no new plans to phase out any of the estimated $2 billion a year (as described in a previous blog post ) in current tax breaks to oil and gas producers. Instead, it relies on a commitment from Budget 2007 to phase out a specific subsidy to the oil sands – a good decision, but one made long before the Pittsburgh commitment.

In other words, if the G20′s approach is a potluck dinner, Canada arrived with some stale leftovers.

We can’t say that we weren’t warned. In late May, articles from journalist Mike de Souza described a leaked memo from the Department of Finance to federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. The memo gave the minister two choices:

• “Lead by example” in phasing out Canada’s remaining tax breaks to the producers of oil, gas and coal. This was the option that the department recommended, for a number of very sound environmental and economic reasons.

• Make no policy change and instead “seek to minimize the commitment”.

Just in case Minister Flaherty went against the department’s advice and chose the second option, his officials provided him the arguments he could use to try to defend it. On page six of the memo, Finance officials suggest listing three older commitments as evidence of Canada’s early action.[1] The government’s 2007 decision to phase out the accelerated capital cost allowance to the oil sands could be portrayed as “a current action helping to fulfill the commitment,” according to the memo.

It’s very telling to compare that list with Canada’s actual G20 submission : while the G20 document is a bit longer, the content is almost identical. You rarely get to see such clear documentation of a minister’s decision to override his own officials’ recommendations on the right course of action. 

We outlined our concerns with Canada’s approach at a media briefing over the weekend, and we’re going to keep pushing the government to re-think its attempt to “minimize” the Pittsburgh commitment.

One argument we’ll be making is to compare and contrast Canada’s approach with President Obama’s, because Canada’s government often likes to say that it’s harmonized with the U.S. on climate policy. But in his budget plan for this year (see Table 14.3 on p.30), President Obama has proposed phasing out 12 specific subsidies to the producers of oil, gas and coal, which they estimate will save a cumulative total of $38 billion from 2011 to 2020.

So it turns out that some countries did show up with goodies in hand to the G20′s subsidies potluck. But despite the extra pressure of hosting the party, Canada wasn’t one of them.

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Bloody Oil: BP invests in Alberta Tar Sands

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Global corporate elites come together to make decisions that significantly and negatively affect the health and livelihood of local communities, and contribute heavily to environmental degradation, pollution and climate change. The video demonstrates the functioning of corporate globalization, industrial environmental destruction and the abuse of Indigenous rights, all of which were protested at the G20 in Toronto. It also features the work and struggles of community members and activists working everyday against these encroaching powers.

This video was posted by youandifilms on April 19, 2010.

George Poitras, member of Mikisew Cree indigenous First Nation talks about the issues of pollution and cancers suffered by many of the First Nations people as a result of the Oil companies action extractive industries.

At a BP shareholder’s meeting a resolution about BPs involvement in tar sands production was discussed and put to the vote at the oil majors AGM. Results presented by BP at the meeting show that almost 15% of voters either supported the resolution or abstained despite the boards recommendation to reject it. This is a significant expression of concern about the company’s decision to invest in new tar sands projects.

For more information visit the Indigenous Environmental Network, Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign

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Posted in Corporate Globalization, Environment, Featured Video, Health, Indigenous Rights, The Real Issues, Video | No Comments »

Stiffed with the Bill: A Private Banquet at Civil Society’s Expense

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Stiffed with the Bill: A Private Banquet at Civil Society’s Expense

http://railroadedbymetrolinx.blogspot.com/2010/08/stiffed-with-bill-private-banquet-at.html

“With a stroke of the pen, a government can destroy the social safety net built carefully by generations.”
- John Hilary, Executive Director of the War on Want

Left: A trade union picnic banquet before the G20 Rally on Saturday, June 26th

An untendered contract for $16 billion for unneeded fighter jets. $1.3 billion spent on security for the G8 and G20 Summits. 116 votes passed quickly by Premier McGuinty – time for consideration approximately 8.2 minutes each – to pass unheard of laws to criminalize dissent, days before the G20 Summit. A federal Conservative Party which filibustered the vote for a full public inquiry into police conduct during the Summits, calling all 25,000 protesters ‘pro-violent’.

The provincial Liberal government’s MacDonald Block offices raided on July 15th by the OPP – specifically, Ministries of Transportation, Economic Development and Trade and Community and Social Services – launching an investigation into “irregular financial transactions” between the provincial government and outside vendors. And the only good news – on July 30th, there was the sudden withdrawal of SNC-Lavalin from the $1 right of way contract for the Air Rail Link. The full responsibility for the ARL has been transferred to Metrolinx, whose Chief Operating Officer Rob Prichard is being replaced by Bruce McCuaig, with the possibility now of the ARL becoming electric. Preemptive?

Canada’s national deficit stands at $54 billion, yet there were $6 billion in corporate tax cuts this year. A 13% HST has been imposed which means that the average wage earner will have even less discretionary income to spend, so that companies can have even greater tax cuts, ostensibly to invest in new jobs. New austerity measures, recommended by a right wing think-tank, the Conference Board of Canada, to cut many thousands of public sector jobs in health care, education and social services in the next three years, while testing an unproven job creation scheme subsidized by the HST.

Have you ever felt that someone else has held a private banquet at your expense, and stiffed you with the bill, and tip? A bill which now has the Harmonized, also known as the Hated, Sales Tax added? Is any of this HST going toward maintaining public services? No. It is an additional tax to enable banks, corporations and the military to fortify themselves at civil society’s expense, and the public sector’s demise. As someone pointed out, a wartime levy.

Canada is becoming militarized, and as we witnessed during the G20, this military state can work against its citizens as well as its aggressors. Provincially, the HST is streaming more funds into the pockets of corporations, with a tax deduction to them as they ransack Canada for its resources, and externalize the cost of destruction of our environment, and no one is fighting to defend the imperative civil right for the full environmental assessment process. On June 8th, Bill C-9, the Budget Implementation Act was passed, which contained several provisions enabling the National Energy Board to conduct their own environmental assessments for oil and gas developments – which is like asking my students to mark themselves. This bill was passed during the BP oil spill, with minimal outcry by the Liberal Party.

And what does it mean when 11,000 jobs from the public sector will be cut by 2013?

A close friend of mine told me that when his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, his family thought it prudent that she was placed into a private, rather than public, nursing home, assuming that the care was better. A few months later, they found that she was terribly neglected, and moved her into a public home. Surprisingly, they found that public sector care was much better than private, because the public nursing home was regulated by the government.

These are the public sector jobs – in nursing homes, schools, hospitals, transit, municipal services – which will be slashed to feed the bailout by the government for financial mismanagement incurred by the banks, which, incidentally, are making quite a healthy profit this quarter. The banks rebounded quickly, but our public sector, subjected to this drummed up, specious logic of emergency bill austerity measures, will not. Rather than requesting that the banks repay the debt they owe taxpayers by instituting a novel, and effective, infinitesimally small Robin Hood tax on bank transactions to tackle poverty and climate change, we will pay for these cuts with our society’s health. PM Harper opposed the imposition of the Robin Hood tax before the G20 to ensure his illusory future job as CEO of an American corporation, with Canada as a subsidiary, specializing in natural resources.

Of course, there is no interest in a long census form by the Conservative Party. They have stopped representing Canadians, particularly lower income Canadians, long ago. Their goal is to have corporate taxes cut down to 15% by 2012. What does this mean? As the social safety net is eroded, the federal government is anticipating growing dissent from those they are contesting the need to collect data about – those who are lower income, disabled and on a fixed income- to justify building a larger military-industrial complex to suppress those who are disenfranchised. Part of this Orwellian speech model is to publicly conflate protesters with vandals in the public mind so that they ramp up their expenditure on weapons of war, as opposed to building public transit infrastructure for the rabble. Sustainable, electric rail transit throughout Ontario could have been handily built with this promised contractual money for fighter jets, but was not deemed worthy. No explanation needed.

We can look forward to much more violence in our cities as basic needs are no longer met, as they have robbed Peter to pay Paul, and the Pauls are a tiny fraction of the population, secure behind a costly fence which cost $9.4 million, almost double the quoted $5.5 million by SNC-Lavalin. During the G20, the Toronto police were handed a blank cheque by the federal government, enabling the purchase of a substantial arsenal for a police state, so that the military has been fortified to quell growing dissent. It is not a coincidence that this police arsenal will be kept in Toronto, one of the hot spots of the thinking left, but it is a pity that Mayor Miller, who has felt the brunt of this G20 fiasco on police credibility, did not defend the protesters who were speaking in his best interests for the environment, transit and social justice.

Historically, when a society’s parliamentary process is suspended and disrupted, trade unions undermined, and people of property, such as the right wing press, banks and big business, are privileged, these policies are the precursors to a fascist state. I use this term with full cognizance of its weight and implication. Parliament has been prorogued twice by PM Harper within thirteen months, and the formal request by over 50,000 citizens, including lawyers, Amnesty International, and the Civil Liberties Association, for the full, public inquiry into the tactics and cost of the G20 and G8 Summit has been denied by PM Harper and Premier McGuinty. The Liberals stood up against the census, but did not speak out for a public G20 inquiry, which shows implicit support for the military apparatus being put in place. Spines, please.

In ‘Journey to a Revolution’, Michael Korda writes of the Hungarian Revolution: ”the general object of fascism was to stifle dissent, and bolster the existing establishment, while producing much drama in the way of rallies, parades, and propoganda, and the occasional foreign adventure to siphon off the energy of the lower middle class and the working class, who might otherwise have moved towards radical social reform”.

The Olympics? The G8 and the G20? The Pan Am Games? Bread not circuses, anyone? In addition to ceaseless pageantry, PM Harper deliberately prorogued parliament a second time to enact a bill, more powerful than NAFTA to undercut our sovereignty, the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). This far reaching bill will provide sub-national access to municipal services, and undermine the public sector even further, losing thousands of good, Canadian jobs to international outsourcing.

Put it together. Civil society is no longer is prioritized by our government, our country is being sold off to corporations and banks, enabled by a newly armed police state, and expanding prison system, and jobs in our public sector are about to be slashed for international corporations to profit through CETA. This is a Conservative agenda campaign, military in execution, orchestrated by PM Harper, against local economies and the right to self-determination. Provincially, Premier McGuinty is designing his own policies through corporate gladhanding of governmental contracts.

Meanwhile, all over the Internet, discussion postings on news articles are polarized – are we allowed to protest, or not? And I think- for those who are Conservative – your rights are next. Although your values have been upheld by this minority government, I have noticed your online responses can only discredit the protesters by saying that they do not know what they are talking about, and labeling them as unemployed and shiftless. Name calling. Ad hominem attacks. And when you call someone names, all discussion ends. A primary school tactic used by bullies on the playground, undercutting fundamental rights upheld by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for the right to assembly, and free speech, which you are using to discredit serious concerns about the democratic process, and silence those who are brave, engaged, and well-versed in international policy.

I have never been so concerned about the future of Canada, and I am hearing this from many of those who lived through the events of the past seven weeks in Toronto. Nowhere is the civil society being served or protected – by our police, by our elected representatives, by our city councilors, our Mayor, or by our media. When I read letters on the editorial page ranting about the public sector salaries, I compare these costs to the multi-billion dollar bailouts given to the banks, the golden parachutes given to bank executives, and the inflationary pageantry, and corporate contracts, for the Vancouver Olympic Games and G8 and G20 Summits. Compare these taxpayers’ expenses to those supporting our civil society, and quality of life. At least the public sector provides essential services, and is forced to be accountable.

I am an ethical citizen, yet my voice no longer matters. The moral and financial costs arising from all this pomp and circumstance, and the insidious HST, have already deeply hurt me. I have no government representation – not in Premier McGuinty, or Prime Minister Harper – and neither do the vast majority of Canadians. I cannot afford, and do not want to pay, for cuts to the public sector under these new, jerry-rigged austerity measures so that a self-selected corporate elite can pad their pockets, banks can prosper again, and a military empire, outfitted with massive, $10.65 billion  new prisons, can arise from the ashes, and I am not sure I can. I am too busy counting my pocket change to pay the HST on my electricity, gas, transit and groceries to join the banquet, while predicting that I will be stiffed with the tab as the more important guests flee the table.

I ardently believe, though, if you held a poll of Canadians and asked them if they wanted to live in a country which valued the military, corporations and banks more than our health care system, social services, education, transit system and environment, even the most deeply Conservative Canadian would say ‘no’.

References:
Shout for Global Justice, John Hilary speaks at 30:00, link to
http://vimeo.com/13227243
The War on Want, link to http://www.waronwant.org/
Jeffrey Simpson, ‘Just what we need: a $16-billion fighter jet’, link tohttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/just-what-we-need-a-16-billion-fighter-jet/article1641373/
Robert Benzie, ‘Cabinet rushed secret G20 change, documents show’, link at
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontog20summit/article/840529–cabinet-rushed-secret-g20-change-documents-show
Steven Chase,’Tory filibuster seeks to block hearings on G20 policing’, link to http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tory-filibuster-seeks-to-block-hearings-on-g20-policing/article1637756/
Keith Leslie,’Questions linger over OPP raids Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne confirms Transport Ministry was a target’, link tohttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontario/questions-linger-over-opp-raids/article1652761/
Tess Kalinowski, ‘Province vows rapid rail link to Pearson by 2015 Pan Ams’, link to http://www.thestar.com/article/842240–province-to-run-rail-link-to-pearson-airport
Michael Korda, ‘Journey to a Revolution: A Personal Memoir and History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956′, HarperCollins; 2006. page 54. Link to http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Revolution-Personal-History-Hungarian/dp/0060772611 More athttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/books/Heilbrunn.t.html
The Robin Hood Tax, link to http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/how-it-works/ and http://robinhoodtax.ca/
David J. Climenga, Bill C-9: ‘Earmarks’ have no place in Canadian legislation, link tohttp://www.rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/djclimenhaga/2010/05/earmarks-have-no-place-canadian-legislation
Heather Scoffield, ‘Canada says no to ‘Robin Hood’ tax athttp://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/canada-says-no-to-robin-hood-tax-91683444.html
Stephen Hui, ‘Statistics Canada head resigns over long-form census controversy’, link to http://www.straight.com/article-335208/vancouver/statistics-canada-head-resigns-over-longform-census-controversy
Lauren O’Neill, ‘G20 fence costs $9.4M, nearly double original estimate’, link tohttp://www.thestar.com/news/gta/torontog20summit/article/833495–g20-fence-costs-9-4m-nearly-double-original-estimate?bn=1
Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, link to http://www.canadians.org/trade/issues/EU/index.html

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