Trudeau Bullying on Trade Deal
by Joyce Nelson - Counterpunch, October 19, 2016
Despite its “sunny ways,” the Justin Trudeau government appears to have resorted to bullying and spin to try to get its way on a controversial trade deal – the Canada –EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) – that millions of Canadians and Europeans are opposed to.
The target is the Belgium region of Wallonia, which has so far resisted approval of CETA and on October 18 prevented EU trade ministers from gaining unanimous approval of the deal at a meeting in Luxembourg.
Walloon President Paul Magnette has been subjected to intense pressure to change his mind on CETA, after Wallonia’s regional legislature earlier rejected the deal on Oct. 14. The Council of Canadians reports that not only did the Canada European Roundtable for Business send President Magnette a “bluntly worded letter,” but Canada’s Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland sent former Liberal trade minister Pierre Pettigrew to meet with Magnette last Friday (Oct. 14) right after Wallonia’s regional vote. Freeland’s parliamentary secretary had already told Walloon legislators there would be “consequences” if they reject CETA. [1].
After the meeting with Pierre Pettigrew, Magnette told reporters that “The pressures are very strong.” He also said his region had faced “thinly veiled threats” from corporations before the Oct. 18 trade ministers meeting in Luxembourg, which decided to delay their CETA voting until later this week. [2]
Pettigrew, Canada’s European trade envoy, told the press on Oct. 18 that the vote by the EU trade ministers “could happen as early as Thursday (Oct. 20), when EU leaders kick off a two-day summit.” [3] CETA is scheduled to be officially signed at an EU-Canada meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau in Brussels on Oct 27.
The Council of Canadians has issued a press release calling on the Trudeau government, EU officials and transnational corporations “to stop their intense pressure on Wallonia to sign CETA and to listen to widely held public concerns about the deal.” [4]
CETA Spin
The corporate media on both sides of the Atlantic attempt to create the impression that a mere 3.5 million Walloons are the only ones opposed to CETA and are unfairly holding up a deal that everyone else wants.
In fact, the European Trade Union Confederation, representing 45 million workers across Europe, is solidly opposed to CETA, as is the European Public Service Union, representing 8 million European public service workers. As well, 3.5 million individuals from all EU member states and Canada have signed a petition opposing CETA, along with 120 civil society organizations. [5]
In a report released on Oct. 18, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) states that “More than 2,000 local and regional governments in 13 EU countries have declared themselves TTIP/CETA free zones, often in cross-party resolutions. National and regional parliaments, too, worry about CETA, for example in Belgium, France, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Ireland, and the Netherlands.” [6] Dozens of Canadian municipalities are also officially opposed to CETA.
Much is now being made of a new “interpretative declaration” that would supposedly ease the fears of the Walloons and other opponents to CETA. But the (Oct. 18) report from CEO called “The Great CETA Swindle” says the declaration (“designed by Brussels and Ottawa”) is simply a PR attempt “to sell CETA as a progressive agreement” while it remains “what it always has been: an attack on democracy, workers, and the environment.” The CEO report goes through the “declaration” point by point, revealing its empty rhetoric that “has the legal weight of a holiday brochure.” [7]
“Moving the Furniture Around”
This “declaration,” now being buffed and shined and circulated among the EU trade ministers and others, is apparently what former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney was referring to on Oct. 18 when he called the CETA delay just a “hiccup.” Mulroney is now a senior partner with giant law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.
As CBC News reported, “Mulroney had nothing but praise for the Canadian government’s approach, saying it’s doing the right thing having former Liberal trade minister Pierre Pettigrew involved as its envoy and having Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard lobby the French-speaking Wallonian holdouts. ‘I think they can move the furniture around,’ [Mulroney] said of efforts to reach a compromise before the European Council meets at the end of the week. ‘You may remember that having campaigned against free trade and NAFTA, that Mr. [Jean] Chretien, for example, said he’d never sign NAFTA. And he signed it. Why? Well because [former U.S. president Bill] Clinton made a few little changes at the end that the new government was able to use to say, ‘well, it’s different.’
‘Well, it wasn’t different,’ said Mulroney, whose previous Conservative government had led negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement before it was voted out of office. ‘But it was enough to be able to justify a change in position’.” [8]
Mulroney seems to think that European leaders like Walloon President Paul Magnette are capable of the same kind of cynical posturing with regard to CETA.
Pierre Pettigrew told the same CBC reporter, “Hopefully our friends from Wallonia will realize that that interpretative declaration can reassure them with some of the challenges that they have and some of the resistance that they have around labour standards and human rights, and challenges with the investor-state [dispute settlement] chapter.” [9]
ISDS
The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, first introduced in NAFTA, allows foreign corporations to sue governments over policy decision or regulations that harm their future profits. For example, TransCanada Corporation is suing the U.S. government (under NAFTA) for more than $15 billion for failing to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, even though the company invested just $2.4 billion in the controversial project. With ISDS, there is no upper limit to how much a company can claim in “lost future profits.”
Current trade deals like CETA and TPP (TransPacific Partnership) would open up huge new vistas for ISDS lawsuits, which is one reason why the corporate sector is pushing the deals so relentlessly. In my forthcoming book – Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism – I call CETA the “no lawyers left behind” treaty because of the number of ISDS and other lawsuits it would likely engender on both sides of the Atlantic.
Interestingly, the Oct. 18 CEO report is especially critical of the PR attempts in the so-called “interpretative declaration” to be reassuring about ISDS lawsuits. CEO states: “There are many rules in CETA which will make it more difficult to fight climate change and protect the environment; CETA’s investor rights could trigger costly lawsuits from polluting companies when governments ban or regulate toxic dirty mines…” [10]
According to Bloomberg’s executive profile of Pierre Pettigrew, the trade envoy is the director of several mining companies and is also on the board of Sulliden Mining Capital Inc., whose website states: “We generate value through the acquisition and development of quality mining projects. In addition, we identify opportunities across industries for active investments.” Sulliden Mining Capital has mining projects/investments in Quebec, Brazil and Romania.
The Canadian government under former PM Stephen Harper promoted CETA as good for Canadian mining companies who want to enter the European market because it would eliminate “red tape” and “smooth the movement of capital” across the Atlantic. [11] By appointing Pettigrew as trade envoy, the Trudeau government is obviously following in Harper’s footsteps.
Corporate Europe Observatory says Canada and the EU governments have gone into “a massive propaganda mode,” framing CETA as “a very progressive” trade agreement when actually “the gains from CETA would overwhelmingly flow to owners of capital.” [12]
Whether the Walloons and others fall for the spin will be clear in a very short time.
Footnotes:
[1] Council of Canadians, “CETA decision delayed at EU meeting, Trudeau government bullies to get deal,” October 18, 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Canadian Press, “Canada-European trade envoy Pierre Pettigrew optimistic CETA will be approved,” October 18, 2016.
[4] Council of Canadians, op. cit.
[5] Transnational Institute, “Letter to Chancellor Kern on CETA,” October 6, 2016.
[6] Corporate Europe Observatory, “The great CETA swindle,” October 18, 2016.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Janyce McGregor, “Canada-EU trade deal delay just a ‘hiccup,’ ex-PM Brian Mulroney says,” CBC News, October 18, 2016.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Corporate Europe Observatory, op. cit.
[11] Council of Canadians, “Oliver says CETA will be good for mining companies,” November 12, 2013.
[12] Corporate Europe Observatory, op. cit.
The target is the Belgium region of Wallonia, which has so far resisted approval of CETA and on October 18 prevented EU trade ministers from gaining unanimous approval of the deal at a meeting in Luxembourg.
Walloon President Paul Magnette has been subjected to intense pressure to change his mind on CETA, after Wallonia’s regional legislature earlier rejected the deal on Oct. 14. The Council of Canadians reports that not only did the Canada European Roundtable for Business send President Magnette a “bluntly worded letter,” but Canada’s Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland sent former Liberal trade minister Pierre Pettigrew to meet with Magnette last Friday (Oct. 14) right after Wallonia’s regional vote. Freeland’s parliamentary secretary had already told Walloon legislators there would be “consequences” if they reject CETA. [1].
After the meeting with Pierre Pettigrew, Magnette told reporters that “The pressures are very strong.” He also said his region had faced “thinly veiled threats” from corporations before the Oct. 18 trade ministers meeting in Luxembourg, which decided to delay their CETA voting until later this week. [2]
Pettigrew, Canada’s European trade envoy, told the press on Oct. 18 that the vote by the EU trade ministers “could happen as early as Thursday (Oct. 20), when EU leaders kick off a two-day summit.” [3] CETA is scheduled to be officially signed at an EU-Canada meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau in Brussels on Oct 27.
The Council of Canadians has issued a press release calling on the Trudeau government, EU officials and transnational corporations “to stop their intense pressure on Wallonia to sign CETA and to listen to widely held public concerns about the deal.” [4]
CETA Spin
The corporate media on both sides of the Atlantic attempt to create the impression that a mere 3.5 million Walloons are the only ones opposed to CETA and are unfairly holding up a deal that everyone else wants.
In fact, the European Trade Union Confederation, representing 45 million workers across Europe, is solidly opposed to CETA, as is the European Public Service Union, representing 8 million European public service workers. As well, 3.5 million individuals from all EU member states and Canada have signed a petition opposing CETA, along with 120 civil society organizations. [5]
In a report released on Oct. 18, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) states that “More than 2,000 local and regional governments in 13 EU countries have declared themselves TTIP/CETA free zones, often in cross-party resolutions. National and regional parliaments, too, worry about CETA, for example in Belgium, France, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Ireland, and the Netherlands.” [6] Dozens of Canadian municipalities are also officially opposed to CETA.
Much is now being made of a new “interpretative declaration” that would supposedly ease the fears of the Walloons and other opponents to CETA. But the (Oct. 18) report from CEO called “The Great CETA Swindle” says the declaration (“designed by Brussels and Ottawa”) is simply a PR attempt “to sell CETA as a progressive agreement” while it remains “what it always has been: an attack on democracy, workers, and the environment.” The CEO report goes through the “declaration” point by point, revealing its empty rhetoric that “has the legal weight of a holiday brochure.” [7]
“Moving the Furniture Around”
This “declaration,” now being buffed and shined and circulated among the EU trade ministers and others, is apparently what former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney was referring to on Oct. 18 when he called the CETA delay just a “hiccup.” Mulroney is now a senior partner with giant law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.
As CBC News reported, “Mulroney had nothing but praise for the Canadian government’s approach, saying it’s doing the right thing having former Liberal trade minister Pierre Pettigrew involved as its envoy and having Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard lobby the French-speaking Wallonian holdouts. ‘I think they can move the furniture around,’ [Mulroney] said of efforts to reach a compromise before the European Council meets at the end of the week. ‘You may remember that having campaigned against free trade and NAFTA, that Mr. [Jean] Chretien, for example, said he’d never sign NAFTA. And he signed it. Why? Well because [former U.S. president Bill] Clinton made a few little changes at the end that the new government was able to use to say, ‘well, it’s different.’
‘Well, it wasn’t different,’ said Mulroney, whose previous Conservative government had led negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement before it was voted out of office. ‘But it was enough to be able to justify a change in position’.” [8]
Mulroney seems to think that European leaders like Walloon President Paul Magnette are capable of the same kind of cynical posturing with regard to CETA.
Pierre Pettigrew told the same CBC reporter, “Hopefully our friends from Wallonia will realize that that interpretative declaration can reassure them with some of the challenges that they have and some of the resistance that they have around labour standards and human rights, and challenges with the investor-state [dispute settlement] chapter.” [9]
ISDS
The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, first introduced in NAFTA, allows foreign corporations to sue governments over policy decision or regulations that harm their future profits. For example, TransCanada Corporation is suing the U.S. government (under NAFTA) for more than $15 billion for failing to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, even though the company invested just $2.4 billion in the controversial project. With ISDS, there is no upper limit to how much a company can claim in “lost future profits.”
Current trade deals like CETA and TPP (TransPacific Partnership) would open up huge new vistas for ISDS lawsuits, which is one reason why the corporate sector is pushing the deals so relentlessly. In my forthcoming book – Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism – I call CETA the “no lawyers left behind” treaty because of the number of ISDS and other lawsuits it would likely engender on both sides of the Atlantic.
Interestingly, the Oct. 18 CEO report is especially critical of the PR attempts in the so-called “interpretative declaration” to be reassuring about ISDS lawsuits. CEO states: “There are many rules in CETA which will make it more difficult to fight climate change and protect the environment; CETA’s investor rights could trigger costly lawsuits from polluting companies when governments ban or regulate toxic dirty mines…” [10]
According to Bloomberg’s executive profile of Pierre Pettigrew, the trade envoy is the director of several mining companies and is also on the board of Sulliden Mining Capital Inc., whose website states: “We generate value through the acquisition and development of quality mining projects. In addition, we identify opportunities across industries for active investments.” Sulliden Mining Capital has mining projects/investments in Quebec, Brazil and Romania.
The Canadian government under former PM Stephen Harper promoted CETA as good for Canadian mining companies who want to enter the European market because it would eliminate “red tape” and “smooth the movement of capital” across the Atlantic. [11] By appointing Pettigrew as trade envoy, the Trudeau government is obviously following in Harper’s footsteps.
Corporate Europe Observatory says Canada and the EU governments have gone into “a massive propaganda mode,” framing CETA as “a very progressive” trade agreement when actually “the gains from CETA would overwhelmingly flow to owners of capital.” [12]
Whether the Walloons and others fall for the spin will be clear in a very short time.
Footnotes:
[1] Council of Canadians, “CETA decision delayed at EU meeting, Trudeau government bullies to get deal,” October 18, 2016.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Canadian Press, “Canada-European trade envoy Pierre Pettigrew optimistic CETA will be approved,” October 18, 2016.
[4] Council of Canadians, op. cit.
[5] Transnational Institute, “Letter to Chancellor Kern on CETA,” October 6, 2016.
[6] Corporate Europe Observatory, “The great CETA swindle,” October 18, 2016.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Janyce McGregor, “Canada-EU trade deal delay just a ‘hiccup,’ ex-PM Brian Mulroney says,” CBC News, October 18, 2016.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Corporate Europe Observatory, op. cit.
[11] Council of Canadians, “Oliver says CETA will be good for mining companies,” November 12, 2013.
[12] Corporate Europe Observatory, op. cit.
Press on the Dole: How Canada Pays to Shape the News
by Yves Engler - Counterpunch
September 12, 2016
Last Saturday the Ottawa Citizen published a feature titled “The story of ‘the Canadian vaccine’ that beat back Ebola”. According to the article, staff reporter Elizabeth Payne’s “research was supported by a travel grant from the International Development Research Centre.” The laudatory story concludes with Guinea’s former health minister thanking Canada “for the great service you have rendered to Guinea” and a man who received the Ebola vaccine showing “reporters a map of Canada that he had carved out of wood and displayed in his living room. ‘Because Canada saved my life.’”
A Crown Corporation that reports to Parliament through the foreign minister, the International Development Research Centre’s board is mostly appointed by the federal government. Unsurprisingly, the government-funded institution broadly aligns its positions with Canada’s international objectives.
IDRC funds various journalism initiatives and development journalism prizes. Canada’s aid agency has also doled out tens of millions of dollars on media initiatives over the years. The now defunct Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has funded a slew of journalism fellowships that generate aid-related stories, including a Canadian Newspaper Association fellowship to send journalists to Ecuador, Aga Khan Foundation Canada/Canadian Association of Journalists Fellowships for International Development Reporting, Canadian Association of Journalists/Jack Webster Foundation Fellowship. It also offered eight $6,000 fellowships annually for members of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, noted CIDA, “to report to the Canadian public on the realities lived in developing countries benefiting from Canadian public aid.”
Between 2005 and 2008 CIDA spent at least $47.5 million on the “promotion of development awareness.” According to a 2013 J–Source investigation titled “Some journalists and news organizations took government funding to produce work: is that a problem?”, more than $3.5 million went to articles, photos, film and radio reports about CIDA projects. Much of the government-funded reporting appeared in major media outlets. But, a CIDA spokesperson told J-Source, the aid agency “didn’t pay directly for journalists’ salaries” and only “supported media activities that had as goal the promotion of development awareness with the Canadian public.”
One journalist, Kim Brunhuber, received $13, 000 to produce “six television news pieces that highlight the contribution of Canadians to several unique development projects” to be shown on CTV outlets. While failing to say whether Brunhuber’s work appeared on the station, CTV spokesperson Rene Dupuis said another documentary it aired “clearly credited that the program had been produced with the support of the Government of Canada through CIDA.”
During the 2001–14 war in Afghanistan CIDA operated a number of media projects. A number of CIDA-backed NGOs sent journalists to Afghanistan and the aid agency had a contract with Montréal’s Le Devoir to “[remind] readers of the central role that Afghanistan plays in CIDA’s international assistance program.”
The military also paid for journalists to visit Afghanistan. Canadian Press envoy Jonathan Montpetit explained, “my understanding of these junkets is that Ottawa picked up the tab for the flight over as well as costs in-theatre, then basically gave the journos a highlight tour of what Canada was doing in Afghanistan.”
A number of commentators have highlighted the political impact of military sponsored trips, which date back decades. In Turning Around a Supertanker: media-military relations in Canada in the CNN age, Daniel Hurley writes, “correspondents were not likely to ask hard questions of people who were offering them free flights to Germany” to visit Canadian bases there. In his diary of the mid-1990s Somalia Commission of Inquiry, Peter Desbarats made a similar observation. “Some journalists, truly ignorant of military affairs, were happy to trade junkets overseas for glowing reports about Canada’s gallant peacekeepers.”
The various arms of Canadian foreign policy fund media initiatives they expect will portray their operations sympathetically. It’s one reason why Canadians overwhelmingly believe this country is a benevolent international actor even though Ottawa long advanced corporate interests and sided with the British and US empires.
A Crown Corporation that reports to Parliament through the foreign minister, the International Development Research Centre’s board is mostly appointed by the federal government. Unsurprisingly, the government-funded institution broadly aligns its positions with Canada’s international objectives.
IDRC funds various journalism initiatives and development journalism prizes. Canada’s aid agency has also doled out tens of millions of dollars on media initiatives over the years. The now defunct Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has funded a slew of journalism fellowships that generate aid-related stories, including a Canadian Newspaper Association fellowship to send journalists to Ecuador, Aga Khan Foundation Canada/Canadian Association of Journalists Fellowships for International Development Reporting, Canadian Association of Journalists/Jack Webster Foundation Fellowship. It also offered eight $6,000 fellowships annually for members of the Fédération professionnelle des journalistes du Québec, noted CIDA, “to report to the Canadian public on the realities lived in developing countries benefiting from Canadian public aid.”
Between 2005 and 2008 CIDA spent at least $47.5 million on the “promotion of development awareness.” According to a 2013 J–Source investigation titled “Some journalists and news organizations took government funding to produce work: is that a problem?”, more than $3.5 million went to articles, photos, film and radio reports about CIDA projects. Much of the government-funded reporting appeared in major media outlets. But, a CIDA spokesperson told J-Source, the aid agency “didn’t pay directly for journalists’ salaries” and only “supported media activities that had as goal the promotion of development awareness with the Canadian public.”
One journalist, Kim Brunhuber, received $13, 000 to produce “six television news pieces that highlight the contribution of Canadians to several unique development projects” to be shown on CTV outlets. While failing to say whether Brunhuber’s work appeared on the station, CTV spokesperson Rene Dupuis said another documentary it aired “clearly credited that the program had been produced with the support of the Government of Canada through CIDA.”
During the 2001–14 war in Afghanistan CIDA operated a number of media projects. A number of CIDA-backed NGOs sent journalists to Afghanistan and the aid agency had a contract with Montréal’s Le Devoir to “[remind] readers of the central role that Afghanistan plays in CIDA’s international assistance program.”
The military also paid for journalists to visit Afghanistan. Canadian Press envoy Jonathan Montpetit explained, “my understanding of these junkets is that Ottawa picked up the tab for the flight over as well as costs in-theatre, then basically gave the journos a highlight tour of what Canada was doing in Afghanistan.”
A number of commentators have highlighted the political impact of military sponsored trips, which date back decades. In Turning Around a Supertanker: media-military relations in Canada in the CNN age, Daniel Hurley writes, “correspondents were not likely to ask hard questions of people who were offering them free flights to Germany” to visit Canadian bases there. In his diary of the mid-1990s Somalia Commission of Inquiry, Peter Desbarats made a similar observation. “Some journalists, truly ignorant of military affairs, were happy to trade junkets overseas for glowing reports about Canada’s gallant peacekeepers.”
The various arms of Canadian foreign policy fund media initiatives they expect will portray their operations sympathetically. It’s one reason why Canadians overwhelmingly believe this country is a benevolent international actor even though Ottawa long advanced corporate interests and sided with the British and US empires.
Trudeau’s Embrace by Unifor Leaders: a Step Backwards for Canadian Labour
by James Napier - Counterpunch
Sep. 9, 2016
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received four standing ovations during his short address to the Unifor Convention in Ottawa August 24. Why would Canada’s largest private-sector union give such a warm reception to the leader of the corporate-owned Liberal Party of Canada? Unifor was created 3 years ago through the merger of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Communications, Energy and Paper Workers (CEP), although the CAW was the dominant partner.
Jerry Dias, Unifor National President, began his introduction of Trudeau with a denunciation of the previous Stephen Harper government “that I honestly believe did not like Canadians”. Dias said he was “enthused” to welcome Trudeau because when he met with him, Trudeau “talked about the importance of the labour movement … if we wanted a strong economy”. Dias asked the delegates “The first week after being sworn in – did he go meet with the business community? Did he go meet with the chambers of commerce, the banks, the oil companies? No no – he came right to the CLC headquarters right here in Ottawa and met with Hassan, myself and the other labour leaders.” Hassan Yussuff is the head of the Canadian Labour Congress, and was on the Unifor staff for many years. Yussuff spoke later in the Convention and heaped more praise on Trudeau: “Everything that the new government has done since they’ve been elected is to undo the ten years of damage that that bastard [Harper] did to this country… It is nice to have a government in this Ottawa that they’re not attacking workers anymore”. It is odd that Canada’s business leaders have not noticed that the Prime Minister is favouring labour over them.
Unifor is practicing “lesser evil’ politics to an extreme that is unusual for the Canadian labour movement. In fact, the Canadian Labour Congress was a founding partner in the creation of the New Democratic Party in 1961. The Canadian labour movement has historically championed the NDP as a party of labour, an alternative to the pro-capitalist Liberal and Conservative parties. The founding leader of the NDP, Tommy Douglas, is well known for his dramatization of the story of Mouseland, whose moral is that the mice must see through the charade of choosing between black cats and white cats to be their rulers. “Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea… He said to the other mice. ‘Look fellows why do we keep electing a government made up of cats, why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?’ Oh, they said, he’s a Bolshevik. So they put him in jail.” Well Tommy, these Unifor/CLC ‘mice’ have decided they are better off being ruled by the white cats after all. And so we were treated to the unsettling sight of Jerry Dias staring deeply into the eyes of Justin Trudeau.
What are the implications of the Jerry/Justin bromance for Unifor, for the Canadian Labour movement and for the prospects of progressive political change in Canada? Here are six ways that turning the Unifor Convention into a Justin Trudeau photo op has been a step backwards:
1) Canadian Union of Postal Workers
The Unifor Convention was an opportunity to put the struggle of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers front and centre. But that might have been embarrassing to Trudeau who has been in power almost a year and has done nothing to curb the rabid-dog management at Canada Post.
The CUPW waged a courageous battle against Canada Post and this week achieved a remarkable victory – forcing Canada Post to maintain defined-benefit pensions for the next generation of workers. The issue was still in doubt during the Unifor Convention, and is critically important to many Unifor members who are under pressure from employers to eliminate defined-benefit pensions, or who have already been forced to do so for newer workers. Defined-benefit pensions have been cut in half for new hires at Ford and Chrysler for the last four years, and have been eliminated at CAMI Automotive (which is owned by GM) and replaced with riskier defined contribution pensions. Some 500 workers at GM Oshawa hired over the last ten years are classified as temporary (Supplementary Workforce Employees, or SWEs) and get no pensions at all.
The Convention could have had a feature speaker from the CUPW to highlight their struggle, and build solidarity for a labour movement battle for decent pensions for all workers. Instead, the heroic battle by postal workers barely got a mention.
2) The Trans-Pacific Partnership and CETA (European Trade Pact)
The TPP is a “trade” agreement designed to benefit corporate interests, weaken the ability of governments to put limits on corporate domination, and to support and expand the US sphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Despite the fact that Unifor has been waging a public campaign against ratification of the TPP, the Unifor leaders couldn’t bring themselves to directly challenge Trudeau on the issue during his visit.
In fact, the Trudeau government’s position on international trade deals is basically identical to that of former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper – support whatever the US asks it to do. In 2013, when Harper announced a trade and investment pact with the European Union (CETA), Trudeau congratulated him and promised that his Liberals would support the deal in principle. According to Linda McQuaig, “CETA will undermine Canadian democracy, handing foreign corporations a powerful lever for pressuring our governments to, for instance, abandon environmental, health or financial regulations, while leaving Canadian taxpayers potentially on the hook to pay billions of dollars in compensation to some of the wealthiest interests on earth.” Trudeau is scheduled to sign CETA in October in Brussels. Yet instead of focusing attacks on the Trudeau government for continuing to promote these deals, Unifor leaders were praising him for being different from Harper.
3) Syria
Advocating that workers should support Trudeau and his government, makes it impossible to promote an independent working-class view of world affairs. At the Unifor Convention delegates showed strong support for Syrian refugees, including families that are being supported by Unifor. But nobody at the Convention pointed out that the Canadian government has helped to create those very refugees by providing military and financial support to the US so-called “Global Coalition”. True solidarity with the victims of the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the millions of refugees from the fighting would mean opposing Canadian government support for the US illegal efforts at regime change.
4) Saudi Monarchs and Israel
Treating Trudeau like a celebrity also makes it virtually impossible to critically examine other areas where his government has followed in the footsteps of Stephen Harper in supporting right-wing, undemocratic governments that are creating instability and war. Trudeau has continued to support the regime in Saudi Arabia and provide them with billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry which is being used to kill civilians in Yemen. And of course, Trudeau continues to be a staunch defender of Israel, with his party voting en masse for a Conservative motion to “condemn the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement”. BDS is an attempt to use peaceful tactics to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, and accord equal rights to Palestinians in Israel.
5) Labour Party or ‘Strategic Voting’?
The most serious problem with supporting the Liberal Party is that it undermines independent labour politics. Labour leaders concluded more than a century ago that capitalist parties would never act on behalf of workers. The working class needs its own party. As long as the labour movement was aligned with the NDP this idea was alive, whatever the shortcomings of the NDP. But when labour leaders argue that it doesn’t matter who gets in as long as the biggest evil is defeated, we stop building a party that will really represent workers.
The CAW began promoting “strategic voting” in Canada some 20 years ago, and this has been toxic to labour politics. Now Trudeau can be invited to be the star guest of the Unifor Convention, and there is no discussion of the class interests that the Bay Street Liberals represent.
6) Lack of Democracy in the Union
In order to have a successful showcase for the Liberal Prime Minister, the Convention was stage-managed to limit dissenting voices. The Convention was turned into a spectator event. The time filled with videos and guest speakers, and the delegates became an audience.
As a result many resolutions were pushed to the end, and many of them were not discussed at all because time ran out. That means the remaining resolutions were referred to the National Executive Board, which suits those leaders who don’t want the delegates to make the decisions.
Another indication of the sham democracy of the Unifor Convention was the selection of the top officers. Every position was acclaimed. There were no opposition candidates or opposition program. Despite talk of diversity, the top two positions in the union, National President and National Secretary Treasurer, were occupied again by two older white males.
Jerry Dias, Unifor National President, began his introduction of Trudeau with a denunciation of the previous Stephen Harper government “that I honestly believe did not like Canadians”. Dias said he was “enthused” to welcome Trudeau because when he met with him, Trudeau “talked about the importance of the labour movement … if we wanted a strong economy”. Dias asked the delegates “The first week after being sworn in – did he go meet with the business community? Did he go meet with the chambers of commerce, the banks, the oil companies? No no – he came right to the CLC headquarters right here in Ottawa and met with Hassan, myself and the other labour leaders.” Hassan Yussuff is the head of the Canadian Labour Congress, and was on the Unifor staff for many years. Yussuff spoke later in the Convention and heaped more praise on Trudeau: “Everything that the new government has done since they’ve been elected is to undo the ten years of damage that that bastard [Harper] did to this country… It is nice to have a government in this Ottawa that they’re not attacking workers anymore”. It is odd that Canada’s business leaders have not noticed that the Prime Minister is favouring labour over them.
Unifor is practicing “lesser evil’ politics to an extreme that is unusual for the Canadian labour movement. In fact, the Canadian Labour Congress was a founding partner in the creation of the New Democratic Party in 1961. The Canadian labour movement has historically championed the NDP as a party of labour, an alternative to the pro-capitalist Liberal and Conservative parties. The founding leader of the NDP, Tommy Douglas, is well known for his dramatization of the story of Mouseland, whose moral is that the mice must see through the charade of choosing between black cats and white cats to be their rulers. “Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea… He said to the other mice. ‘Look fellows why do we keep electing a government made up of cats, why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?’ Oh, they said, he’s a Bolshevik. So they put him in jail.” Well Tommy, these Unifor/CLC ‘mice’ have decided they are better off being ruled by the white cats after all. And so we were treated to the unsettling sight of Jerry Dias staring deeply into the eyes of Justin Trudeau.
What are the implications of the Jerry/Justin bromance for Unifor, for the Canadian Labour movement and for the prospects of progressive political change in Canada? Here are six ways that turning the Unifor Convention into a Justin Trudeau photo op has been a step backwards:
1) Canadian Union of Postal Workers
The Unifor Convention was an opportunity to put the struggle of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers front and centre. But that might have been embarrassing to Trudeau who has been in power almost a year and has done nothing to curb the rabid-dog management at Canada Post.
The CUPW waged a courageous battle against Canada Post and this week achieved a remarkable victory – forcing Canada Post to maintain defined-benefit pensions for the next generation of workers. The issue was still in doubt during the Unifor Convention, and is critically important to many Unifor members who are under pressure from employers to eliminate defined-benefit pensions, or who have already been forced to do so for newer workers. Defined-benefit pensions have been cut in half for new hires at Ford and Chrysler for the last four years, and have been eliminated at CAMI Automotive (which is owned by GM) and replaced with riskier defined contribution pensions. Some 500 workers at GM Oshawa hired over the last ten years are classified as temporary (Supplementary Workforce Employees, or SWEs) and get no pensions at all.
The Convention could have had a feature speaker from the CUPW to highlight their struggle, and build solidarity for a labour movement battle for decent pensions for all workers. Instead, the heroic battle by postal workers barely got a mention.
2) The Trans-Pacific Partnership and CETA (European Trade Pact)
The TPP is a “trade” agreement designed to benefit corporate interests, weaken the ability of governments to put limits on corporate domination, and to support and expand the US sphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Despite the fact that Unifor has been waging a public campaign against ratification of the TPP, the Unifor leaders couldn’t bring themselves to directly challenge Trudeau on the issue during his visit.
In fact, the Trudeau government’s position on international trade deals is basically identical to that of former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper – support whatever the US asks it to do. In 2013, when Harper announced a trade and investment pact with the European Union (CETA), Trudeau congratulated him and promised that his Liberals would support the deal in principle. According to Linda McQuaig, “CETA will undermine Canadian democracy, handing foreign corporations a powerful lever for pressuring our governments to, for instance, abandon environmental, health or financial regulations, while leaving Canadian taxpayers potentially on the hook to pay billions of dollars in compensation to some of the wealthiest interests on earth.” Trudeau is scheduled to sign CETA in October in Brussels. Yet instead of focusing attacks on the Trudeau government for continuing to promote these deals, Unifor leaders were praising him for being different from Harper.
3) Syria
Advocating that workers should support Trudeau and his government, makes it impossible to promote an independent working-class view of world affairs. At the Unifor Convention delegates showed strong support for Syrian refugees, including families that are being supported by Unifor. But nobody at the Convention pointed out that the Canadian government has helped to create those very refugees by providing military and financial support to the US so-called “Global Coalition”. True solidarity with the victims of the humanitarian crisis in Syria and the millions of refugees from the fighting would mean opposing Canadian government support for the US illegal efforts at regime change.
4) Saudi Monarchs and Israel
Treating Trudeau like a celebrity also makes it virtually impossible to critically examine other areas where his government has followed in the footsteps of Stephen Harper in supporting right-wing, undemocratic governments that are creating instability and war. Trudeau has continued to support the regime in Saudi Arabia and provide them with billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry which is being used to kill civilians in Yemen. And of course, Trudeau continues to be a staunch defender of Israel, with his party voting en masse for a Conservative motion to “condemn the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement”. BDS is an attempt to use peaceful tactics to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, and accord equal rights to Palestinians in Israel.
5) Labour Party or ‘Strategic Voting’?
The most serious problem with supporting the Liberal Party is that it undermines independent labour politics. Labour leaders concluded more than a century ago that capitalist parties would never act on behalf of workers. The working class needs its own party. As long as the labour movement was aligned with the NDP this idea was alive, whatever the shortcomings of the NDP. But when labour leaders argue that it doesn’t matter who gets in as long as the biggest evil is defeated, we stop building a party that will really represent workers.
The CAW began promoting “strategic voting” in Canada some 20 years ago, and this has been toxic to labour politics. Now Trudeau can be invited to be the star guest of the Unifor Convention, and there is no discussion of the class interests that the Bay Street Liberals represent.
6) Lack of Democracy in the Union
In order to have a successful showcase for the Liberal Prime Minister, the Convention was stage-managed to limit dissenting voices. The Convention was turned into a spectator event. The time filled with videos and guest speakers, and the delegates became an audience.
As a result many resolutions were pushed to the end, and many of them were not discussed at all because time ran out. That means the remaining resolutions were referred to the National Executive Board, which suits those leaders who don’t want the delegates to make the decisions.
Another indication of the sham democracy of the Unifor Convention was the selection of the top officers. Every position was acclaimed. There were no opposition candidates or opposition program. Despite talk of diversity, the top two positions in the union, National President and National Secretary Treasurer, were occupied again by two older white males.
Canadian Media Bias
Counterpunch - by Yves Engler
Sep. 2, 2016
An elitist, nationalist, bias dominates all areas of Canada’s paper of record.
On the front of last weekend’s Style section the Globe and Mail profiled Sonja Bata on turning 90. Business partner and wife of the deceased Thomas Bata, the Globe lauded Sonja for the “many contributions she has made to Canada”, including the Bata Shoe Museum and various other establishment “cultural, environmental and social causes.” The article touched on the shoemaker’s early history and described how she “traveled the world building a shoe empire – between 1946 and 1960, 25 new factories were built and 1700 Bata stores opened.”
While the three-page spread included an undated photo of Sonja and her husband on the “African continent”, it ignored how the Toronto-based shoe company took advantage of European rule to set up across the continent. By the end of the colonial era Bata had production or retail facilities in Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Libya, Sudan, Algeria, Senegal, Congo, Tanzania, Rhodesia and elsewhere. In the 1940s and 50s, notes Shoemaker with a Mission, “the organization’s expansion was especially great in francophone Africa. As Mr. Bata himself noted, there was no country in that part of the world where his company was not established as the number-one supplier of footwear.” While “Mr. Bata” may not be the most objective source on the shoemaker, a government study just after independence found the company controlled 70% of the footwear market in British East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania).
In a 1974 Saturday Night article titled “Canadians Too, Can Act like Economic Imperialists”, Steve Langdon describes the company’s operations in Kenya: “Bata seems to be undercutting decentralized rural development in Kenya, to be blocking African advance in other areas, and to be throwing its weight around politically — all at a handsome profit.” In a bid to subvert the establishment of a domestic competitor, the Toronto-based multinational wrote its overseas suppliers to discourage sales to its challenger and asked Kenyan government officials to intervene on its behalf.
Bata’s mechanized production methods squeezed out indigenous footwear producers all the while increasing imports of plastics and machinery, which came at the expense of local materials (leather) and employment. In the 1975 article Canada’s Relations with Africa Robert Matthews notes that Bata drained “money and opportunity from poor rural areas” to the benefit of a small group of locals and the Toronto head office.
When the post-independence Tanzanian government announced that it would acquire a 60 percent share of a multitude of major foreign firms Bata was the only hold out. The Toronto firm attempted to sabotage Tanzania’s push to acquire a controlling interest in the local company’s operations. In Underdevelopment and Nationalization: Banking in Tanzania James H. Mittelman explains: “Bata Shoes (a Canadian-based concern), for example, ran down stocks, removed machinery, supplied imperfect items, and later withdrew all staff, supposedly closing down for annual repairs! The Company refused to relinquish more than 49 per cent of its controlling interests, tried to set up a new wholesaling operation dependent on its firm in Kenya, and urged other foreign investors to fight.”
Bata’s aggressive reaction to Tanzania’s efforts aimed to dissuade other newly independent African countries from following a similar path. The shoemaker no doubt feared for its significant operations across the continent.
Bata received Canadian government support as well. In mid-1973 the Canadian High Commissioner in Nairobi visited Uganda to ask Idi Amin if he would attend the annual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting taking place in Ottawa. But, the primary objective of the high commissioner’s meeting was to convince Amin to reverse his nationalization of Bata. A cable published by WikiLeaks read: “CANADIAN HIGH COMMISSIONER OLIVIER MET WITH PRESIDENT AMIN JUNE 29 TO DISCUSS GOU TAKE-OVER OF BATA SHOE FIRM. AMIN REVERSED EARLIER DECISION AND ORDERED THAT A NEW PARTNERSHIP ARRANGEMENT (51 PERCENT BATA, 49 PERCENT GOU) BE WORKED OUT.”
Through the 1970s Bata worked under the white regime in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). It broke sanctions against Rhodesia by exporting goods manufactured there to South Africa. Even more controversial, it operated in apartheid South Africa until the late 1980s. The company broke unions and blocked black workers from semiskilled, skilled and executive positions. Listed among the “hardline defenders of investment in South Africa” in Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney years, Bata faced an international boycott campaign. During this period Sonja Bata was quoted in the Canadian media justifying the company’s South African policy and Thomas Bata proclaimed “we expanded into Africa in order to sell shoes, not to spread sweetness and light.”
The Globe and Mail is exposing its elitist, nationalist, bias in ignoring Bata’s unsavory history.
On the front of last weekend’s Style section the Globe and Mail profiled Sonja Bata on turning 90. Business partner and wife of the deceased Thomas Bata, the Globe lauded Sonja for the “many contributions she has made to Canada”, including the Bata Shoe Museum and various other establishment “cultural, environmental and social causes.” The article touched on the shoemaker’s early history and described how she “traveled the world building a shoe empire – between 1946 and 1960, 25 new factories were built and 1700 Bata stores opened.”
While the three-page spread included an undated photo of Sonja and her husband on the “African continent”, it ignored how the Toronto-based shoe company took advantage of European rule to set up across the continent. By the end of the colonial era Bata had production or retail facilities in Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Libya, Sudan, Algeria, Senegal, Congo, Tanzania, Rhodesia and elsewhere. In the 1940s and 50s, notes Shoemaker with a Mission, “the organization’s expansion was especially great in francophone Africa. As Mr. Bata himself noted, there was no country in that part of the world where his company was not established as the number-one supplier of footwear.” While “Mr. Bata” may not be the most objective source on the shoemaker, a government study just after independence found the company controlled 70% of the footwear market in British East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania).
In a 1974 Saturday Night article titled “Canadians Too, Can Act like Economic Imperialists”, Steve Langdon describes the company’s operations in Kenya: “Bata seems to be undercutting decentralized rural development in Kenya, to be blocking African advance in other areas, and to be throwing its weight around politically — all at a handsome profit.” In a bid to subvert the establishment of a domestic competitor, the Toronto-based multinational wrote its overseas suppliers to discourage sales to its challenger and asked Kenyan government officials to intervene on its behalf.
Bata’s mechanized production methods squeezed out indigenous footwear producers all the while increasing imports of plastics and machinery, which came at the expense of local materials (leather) and employment. In the 1975 article Canada’s Relations with Africa Robert Matthews notes that Bata drained “money and opportunity from poor rural areas” to the benefit of a small group of locals and the Toronto head office.
When the post-independence Tanzanian government announced that it would acquire a 60 percent share of a multitude of major foreign firms Bata was the only hold out. The Toronto firm attempted to sabotage Tanzania’s push to acquire a controlling interest in the local company’s operations. In Underdevelopment and Nationalization: Banking in Tanzania James H. Mittelman explains: “Bata Shoes (a Canadian-based concern), for example, ran down stocks, removed machinery, supplied imperfect items, and later withdrew all staff, supposedly closing down for annual repairs! The Company refused to relinquish more than 49 per cent of its controlling interests, tried to set up a new wholesaling operation dependent on its firm in Kenya, and urged other foreign investors to fight.”
Bata’s aggressive reaction to Tanzania’s efforts aimed to dissuade other newly independent African countries from following a similar path. The shoemaker no doubt feared for its significant operations across the continent.
Bata received Canadian government support as well. In mid-1973 the Canadian High Commissioner in Nairobi visited Uganda to ask Idi Amin if he would attend the annual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting taking place in Ottawa. But, the primary objective of the high commissioner’s meeting was to convince Amin to reverse his nationalization of Bata. A cable published by WikiLeaks read: “CANADIAN HIGH COMMISSIONER OLIVIER MET WITH PRESIDENT AMIN JUNE 29 TO DISCUSS GOU TAKE-OVER OF BATA SHOE FIRM. AMIN REVERSED EARLIER DECISION AND ORDERED THAT A NEW PARTNERSHIP ARRANGEMENT (51 PERCENT BATA, 49 PERCENT GOU) BE WORKED OUT.”
Through the 1970s Bata worked under the white regime in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). It broke sanctions against Rhodesia by exporting goods manufactured there to South Africa. Even more controversial, it operated in apartheid South Africa until the late 1980s. The company broke unions and blocked black workers from semiskilled, skilled and executive positions. Listed among the “hardline defenders of investment in South Africa” in Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney years, Bata faced an international boycott campaign. During this period Sonja Bata was quoted in the Canadian media justifying the company’s South African policy and Thomas Bata proclaimed “we expanded into Africa in order to sell shoes, not to spread sweetness and light.”
The Globe and Mail is exposing its elitist, nationalist, bias in ignoring Bata’s unsavory history.
Guantánamo’s Quagmire
by Cesar Chelala - Counterpunch
August 26, 2016
The US Government’s recent decision to send 15 Guantánamo Bay detainees to the United Arab Emirates is the largest and most recent detainee transfer under President Obama. The transfer, however, doesn’t hide the fact that Guantánamo (“Gitmo”) remains a stain in the foreign policy reputation of the United States.
Gitmo was opened in January 2002, under the administration of former President George W. Bush, for the purpose of locking up foreign terror suspects after the 9/11/2001 attacks and subsequent U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Some 779 men have been brought there since Gitmo opened. Nine prisoners have died at the facility. While most of them were released by President George W. Bush, 161 were released during President Obama’s administration. Only 61 prisoners remain in Guantánamo, of which only seven are facing criminal charges.
Both Republicans and some Democrats claim that Guantánamo prisoners are too dangerous to keep in U.S. soil, totally rejecting the idea of bringing them to the U.S. for trial. Keeping an individual locked up for years under administrative detention is in itself a judicial travesty, however, and maintaining such indefinite deprivation of liberty without bringing criminal charges is a gross human rights violation.
Confirming what impartial observers stated in the past President Obama acknowledged last February that “not a single verdict has been reached” on any of Gitmo’s prisoners, adding that “Guantánamo undermines our standing in the world.” Not only President Obama but many military leaders and national security experts agree that the facility harms national security and should be closed. Thirty-two of the most respected retired generals and admirals asked President Obama to submit a plan to Congress detailing actions the administration will take to close Guantánamo.
Obama’s plans to close Guantánamo suffered a setback when, on November 25, 2015, Congress passed a defense authorization bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), reinforcing a ban on the use of torture, another historical stain on U.S. foreign policy also tied to Gitmo’s infamous story. Although widely praised by its stand on torture, the NDAA contains provisions that make it practically impossible for President Obama to close Guantánamo.
Following the enactment of the NDAA, President Obama said, “I am, however, deeply disappointed that the Congress has again failed to take productive action toward closing the detention facility at Guantánamo. Maintaining this site, year after year, is not consistent with our interests as a Nation and undermines our standing in the world. As I have said before, the continued operation of this facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and emboldening violent extremists. It is imperative that we take responsible steps to reduce the population at this facility to the greatest extent possible and close the facility…It is long past time for the Congress to lift the restrictions it has imposed and to work with my Administration to responsibly and safely close the facility, bringing this chapter of our history to a close.”
President Obama’s decision to close Guantánamo has found strong Republican opposition. Republicans have criticized the last wave of releases and want to keep that facility open and imprison there fighters from the Islamic State. Donald Trump, with his characteristic insouciance said that, if he were elected, he would fill Guantánamo with “bad dudes” and “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” This is not the wisest course of action.
President Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo is based on speeding up the work of the Periodic Review Boards, created by executive order on March 7, 2011. As stated by Human Rights First, an independent advocacy and action organization: “The Periodic Review Boards are meant ‘to determine whether certain individuals detained at [Guantánamo] represent a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States such that their continued detention is warranted.’”
Insisting on maintaining a facility that has only brought shame and embarrassment to the U.S. is wrong. There are presently about 35 countries willing to accept a Guantánamo detainee, where the remaining 61 detainees could be transferred. There are too few inmates to justify maintaining Gitmo. Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, has said that the human spirit of many Guantánamo detainees has been broken, the saddest commentary on that tragic place.
Gitmo was opened in January 2002, under the administration of former President George W. Bush, for the purpose of locking up foreign terror suspects after the 9/11/2001 attacks and subsequent U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Some 779 men have been brought there since Gitmo opened. Nine prisoners have died at the facility. While most of them were released by President George W. Bush, 161 were released during President Obama’s administration. Only 61 prisoners remain in Guantánamo, of which only seven are facing criminal charges.
Both Republicans and some Democrats claim that Guantánamo prisoners are too dangerous to keep in U.S. soil, totally rejecting the idea of bringing them to the U.S. for trial. Keeping an individual locked up for years under administrative detention is in itself a judicial travesty, however, and maintaining such indefinite deprivation of liberty without bringing criminal charges is a gross human rights violation.
Confirming what impartial observers stated in the past President Obama acknowledged last February that “not a single verdict has been reached” on any of Gitmo’s prisoners, adding that “Guantánamo undermines our standing in the world.” Not only President Obama but many military leaders and national security experts agree that the facility harms national security and should be closed. Thirty-two of the most respected retired generals and admirals asked President Obama to submit a plan to Congress detailing actions the administration will take to close Guantánamo.
Obama’s plans to close Guantánamo suffered a setback when, on November 25, 2015, Congress passed a defense authorization bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), reinforcing a ban on the use of torture, another historical stain on U.S. foreign policy also tied to Gitmo’s infamous story. Although widely praised by its stand on torture, the NDAA contains provisions that make it practically impossible for President Obama to close Guantánamo.
Following the enactment of the NDAA, President Obama said, “I am, however, deeply disappointed that the Congress has again failed to take productive action toward closing the detention facility at Guantánamo. Maintaining this site, year after year, is not consistent with our interests as a Nation and undermines our standing in the world. As I have said before, the continued operation of this facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and emboldening violent extremists. It is imperative that we take responsible steps to reduce the population at this facility to the greatest extent possible and close the facility…It is long past time for the Congress to lift the restrictions it has imposed and to work with my Administration to responsibly and safely close the facility, bringing this chapter of our history to a close.”
President Obama’s decision to close Guantánamo has found strong Republican opposition. Republicans have criticized the last wave of releases and want to keep that facility open and imprison there fighters from the Islamic State. Donald Trump, with his characteristic insouciance said that, if he were elected, he would fill Guantánamo with “bad dudes” and “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” This is not the wisest course of action.
President Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo is based on speeding up the work of the Periodic Review Boards, created by executive order on March 7, 2011. As stated by Human Rights First, an independent advocacy and action organization: “The Periodic Review Boards are meant ‘to determine whether certain individuals detained at [Guantánamo] represent a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States such that their continued detention is warranted.’”
Insisting on maintaining a facility that has only brought shame and embarrassment to the U.S. is wrong. There are presently about 35 countries willing to accept a Guantánamo detainee, where the remaining 61 detainees could be transferred. There are too few inmates to justify maintaining Gitmo. Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, has said that the human spirit of many Guantánamo detainees has been broken, the saddest commentary on that tragic place.
Revoke Jewish National Fund of
Canada’s Charitable Status
by Yves Engler - Counterpunchy
Aug. 5, 2016
Imagine during Jim Crow a Canadian political party polled its members about pressing Ottawa to stop subsidizing US racism only to be smeared by an organization driving the discrimination. But, instead of relishing the attacks, party leaders sought to placate the racist group by inviting them to address their convention, which the said organization refused, claiming… discrimination.
This hard to fathom scenario mirrors the Jewish National Fund of Canada/Green Party scrimmage since members put forward a resolution calling for the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the JNF’s charitable status because it practices "institutional discrimination against non-Jewish citizens of Israel.” In the first round of a multipronged voting process, 62% of party members green lighted the JNF resolution, 24% yellow lighted it and 15% red lighted it. (A similar number green lighted a concurrent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution.)
So, in a last ditch bid to overturn these results and circumvent the party’s one member one vote structure, JNF President Josh Cooper penned a furious National Post op-ed last week. It began by stating, “among the various reasons I won’t be addressing the Green Party of Canada’s upcoming convention is the fact that I was invited by the party to do so on a Saturday — a surprising (and some would say insensitive) invitation for a Jewish organization.” It takes Chutzpah for the leader of an explicitly racist organization to claim an opportunity to defend his institution is discriminatory because the convention takes place on a weekend.
(I emailed and phoned Cooper to ask if he ever works between Friday and Saturday sundown. He failed to respond. A Green Party spokesperson said, “the GPC was first made aware of Mr. Cooper’s concerns regarding our Convention timing via his oped in the National Post. The Party subsequently reached out to Mr. Cooper and offered to discuss an alternative time in which he could attend; Mr. Cooper declined this invitation.”)
Unable to respond to charges it discriminates in land-use policies, Cooper all but accused the Greens of anti-Semitism. He claimed a Jewish Green official recently faced an “onslaught of hateful accusations”, cited a former Green candidate who denies the Nazi Holocaust and questioned whether the party is “inclusive”. Cooper also argued the JNF resolution would damage the Greens, “driving the party to the far margins of Canadian discourse” and turning it into “a marginal activist group”. “What’s ultimately at stake is the Green party’s future in Canadian politics”, warned Cooper. “Will the Greens reclaim their party from fringe anti-Israel ideologues and conspiracy theorists?”
But, Cooper’s “conspiracy theorists” include the US State Department, UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Israeli Supreme Court and 70 British MPs. They are all on record regarding JNF, which controls 13% of Israel’s land and has significant influence over most of the rest, discrimination towards the 20% of Israelis who aren’t Jewish. (JNF racism is not the all too common ‘personal’ or even ‘structural’ variety, rather a legalistic discrimination largely outlawed in North America half a century ago. And today’s primary victims of JNF racism are not the Palestinian exiled, nor those locked up in Gaza or under military occupation in the West Bank, but the small number of ‘lucky’ Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.)
The strongest legal argument for rescinding JNF–Canada’s charitable status is its parent organization’s discriminatory land-use policies, which contravenes the Canadian Human Rights Act and a Canada Revenue Agency Policy Statement that calls racial equality an objective of charitable policy. But, the Green Party resolution also cites Canada Park, which JNF–Canada built on land Israel illegally occupied after the June 1967 War (three Palestinian villages were demolished to make way for the park). JNF Canada has also been directly complicit in at least two other important instances of Palestinian dispossession. In the late 1920s JNF Canada spearheaded a highly controversial land acquisition that drove a 1000 person Bedouin community from land it had tilled for centuries and in the 1980s JNF–Canada helped finance an Israeli government campaign to “Judaize” the Galilee, the largely Arab northern region of Israel.
Established internationally in 1901 and nine years later in Canada, the JNF was the principle tool of Zionist colonization before the creation of the state. In the early 1900s it bought land from absentee property owners and drove out the Palestinians tilling it. In 1940 the head of the JNF Settlement Department, Yossef Weitz, said, “the only solution is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be let off.” Much of the JNF’s land, on which most of Israel’s population now lives, was stolen from Palestinians during the 1947/48 war.
While Shabbat is the reason Cooper gives for bypassing the Green convention, the Jewish Defence League won’t be resting Friday to Saturday evening. Banned in the US and Israel for a series of killings, JDL – Canada announced on its website they would protest the convention because “the Green Party of Canada has been taken over by hard core Jew haters… The Jewish Defence League will always confront anti Jewish gangs whereever and whenever they appear.” In another post to fundraise for travel from Toronto to Ottawa, the group wrote, “JDL will not allow the Green Party of Canada to incite hatred.”
In the face of these wild attacks Elizabeth May and the Green leadership needs to stop equivocating on Palestinian rights. Past efforts to mollify the JNF, B’nai B’rith, JDL etc. have only emboldened these groups. It is time to show these bullies you won’t be intimidated by respecting the will of the membership and embracing the call for the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the JNF’s charitable status.
This hard to fathom scenario mirrors the Jewish National Fund of Canada/Green Party scrimmage since members put forward a resolution calling for the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the JNF’s charitable status because it practices "institutional discrimination against non-Jewish citizens of Israel.” In the first round of a multipronged voting process, 62% of party members green lighted the JNF resolution, 24% yellow lighted it and 15% red lighted it. (A similar number green lighted a concurrent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions resolution.)
So, in a last ditch bid to overturn these results and circumvent the party’s one member one vote structure, JNF President Josh Cooper penned a furious National Post op-ed last week. It began by stating, “among the various reasons I won’t be addressing the Green Party of Canada’s upcoming convention is the fact that I was invited by the party to do so on a Saturday — a surprising (and some would say insensitive) invitation for a Jewish organization.” It takes Chutzpah for the leader of an explicitly racist organization to claim an opportunity to defend his institution is discriminatory because the convention takes place on a weekend.
(I emailed and phoned Cooper to ask if he ever works between Friday and Saturday sundown. He failed to respond. A Green Party spokesperson said, “the GPC was first made aware of Mr. Cooper’s concerns regarding our Convention timing via his oped in the National Post. The Party subsequently reached out to Mr. Cooper and offered to discuss an alternative time in which he could attend; Mr. Cooper declined this invitation.”)
Unable to respond to charges it discriminates in land-use policies, Cooper all but accused the Greens of anti-Semitism. He claimed a Jewish Green official recently faced an “onslaught of hateful accusations”, cited a former Green candidate who denies the Nazi Holocaust and questioned whether the party is “inclusive”. Cooper also argued the JNF resolution would damage the Greens, “driving the party to the far margins of Canadian discourse” and turning it into “a marginal activist group”. “What’s ultimately at stake is the Green party’s future in Canadian politics”, warned Cooper. “Will the Greens reclaim their party from fringe anti-Israel ideologues and conspiracy theorists?”
But, Cooper’s “conspiracy theorists” include the US State Department, UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Israeli Supreme Court and 70 British MPs. They are all on record regarding JNF, which controls 13% of Israel’s land and has significant influence over most of the rest, discrimination towards the 20% of Israelis who aren’t Jewish. (JNF racism is not the all too common ‘personal’ or even ‘structural’ variety, rather a legalistic discrimination largely outlawed in North America half a century ago. And today’s primary victims of JNF racism are not the Palestinian exiled, nor those locked up in Gaza or under military occupation in the West Bank, but the small number of ‘lucky’ Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.)
The strongest legal argument for rescinding JNF–Canada’s charitable status is its parent organization’s discriminatory land-use policies, which contravenes the Canadian Human Rights Act and a Canada Revenue Agency Policy Statement that calls racial equality an objective of charitable policy. But, the Green Party resolution also cites Canada Park, which JNF–Canada built on land Israel illegally occupied after the June 1967 War (three Palestinian villages were demolished to make way for the park). JNF Canada has also been directly complicit in at least two other important instances of Palestinian dispossession. In the late 1920s JNF Canada spearheaded a highly controversial land acquisition that drove a 1000 person Bedouin community from land it had tilled for centuries and in the 1980s JNF–Canada helped finance an Israeli government campaign to “Judaize” the Galilee, the largely Arab northern region of Israel.
Established internationally in 1901 and nine years later in Canada, the JNF was the principle tool of Zionist colonization before the creation of the state. In the early 1900s it bought land from absentee property owners and drove out the Palestinians tilling it. In 1940 the head of the JNF Settlement Department, Yossef Weitz, said, “the only solution is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be let off.” Much of the JNF’s land, on which most of Israel’s population now lives, was stolen from Palestinians during the 1947/48 war.
While Shabbat is the reason Cooper gives for bypassing the Green convention, the Jewish Defence League won’t be resting Friday to Saturday evening. Banned in the US and Israel for a series of killings, JDL – Canada announced on its website they would protest the convention because “the Green Party of Canada has been taken over by hard core Jew haters… The Jewish Defence League will always confront anti Jewish gangs whereever and whenever they appear.” In another post to fundraise for travel from Toronto to Ottawa, the group wrote, “JDL will not allow the Green Party of Canada to incite hatred.”
In the face of these wild attacks Elizabeth May and the Green leadership needs to stop equivocating on Palestinian rights. Past efforts to mollify the JNF, B’nai B’rith, JDL etc. have only emboldened these groups. It is time to show these bullies you won’t be intimidated by respecting the will of the membership and embracing the call for the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the JNF’s charitable status.
My Fellow Americans: We Are Fools
By Margot Kidder - "Information Clearing House"
July 29, 2016
There is something I am going to try and explain here after watching the Democratic National Convention this evening that will invite the scorn of many of my friends. But the words are gagging my throat and my stomach is twisted and sick and I have to vomit this out. The anti-americanism in me is about to explode and land god knows where as my rage is well beyond reason. And I, by heritage, half American in a way that makes me “more” American than almost anyone else in this country except for the true Americans, the American Indians, am in utter denial tonight that I am, as you are, American as well.
I am half Canadian, I was brought up there, with very different values than you Americans hold, and tonight — after the endless spit ups and boasts and rants about the greatness of American militarism, and praise for American military strength, and boasts about wiping out ISIS, and America being the strongest country on earth, and an utterly inane story from a woman whose son died in Obama’s war, about how she got to cry in gratitude on Obama’s shoulder — tonight I feel deeply Canadian. Every subtle lesson I was ever subliminally given about the bullies across the border and their rudeness and their lack of education and their self-given right to bomb whoever they wanted in the world for no reason other than that they wanted something the people in the other country had, and their greed, came oozing to the surface of my psyche.
I just got back from a rather fierce walk beside the Yellowstone River here in Montana, trying to let the mountains in the distance reconnect me to some place of goodness in my soul, but I couldn’t find it. The scenery was as exquisite as ever, but it just couldn’t touch the rage in my heart. The visions of all the dead children in Syria that Hillary Clinton helped to kill; the children bombed to bits in Afghanistan and Pakistan from Obama’s drones, the grisly chaos of of Libya, the utter wasteland of Iraq, the death and destruction everywhere caused by American military intervention. The Ukraine, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, you name it — your country has bombed it or destroyed its civilian life in some basic way.
When I heard all the Americans cheering for the military and the pronouncements of might coming from the speakers in the Wells Fargo Centre, I loathed you. I loathed every single one of you. I knew in my gut that what I was taught as a child was true, which is that YOU are the enemy. YOU are the country to be feared. YOU are the country to be disgusted by. YOU are ignorant. And your greed and self-satisfaction and unearned pride knows no bounds.
I am not an American tonight. I reject my Puritan ancestors who landed in this country in 1648. I reject the words I voiced at my citizenship ceremony. I reject every moment of thrilling discovery I ever had in this country.
You people have no idea what it is like for people from other countries to hear you boast and cheer for your guns and your bombs and your soldiers and your murderous military leaders and your war criminals and your murdering and conscienceless Commander in Chief. All those soaring words are received by the rest of us, by us non-Americans, by all the cells in our body, as absolutely repugnant and obscene.
And there you all are tonight, glued to your TVs and your computers, your hearts swelled with pride because you belong to the strongest country on Earth, cheering on your Murderer President. Ignorant of the entire world’s repulsion. You kill and you kill and you kill, and still you remain proud.
We are fools.
I am half Canadian, I was brought up there, with very different values than you Americans hold, and tonight — after the endless spit ups and boasts and rants about the greatness of American militarism, and praise for American military strength, and boasts about wiping out ISIS, and America being the strongest country on earth, and an utterly inane story from a woman whose son died in Obama’s war, about how she got to cry in gratitude on Obama’s shoulder — tonight I feel deeply Canadian. Every subtle lesson I was ever subliminally given about the bullies across the border and their rudeness and their lack of education and their self-given right to bomb whoever they wanted in the world for no reason other than that they wanted something the people in the other country had, and their greed, came oozing to the surface of my psyche.
I just got back from a rather fierce walk beside the Yellowstone River here in Montana, trying to let the mountains in the distance reconnect me to some place of goodness in my soul, but I couldn’t find it. The scenery was as exquisite as ever, but it just couldn’t touch the rage in my heart. The visions of all the dead children in Syria that Hillary Clinton helped to kill; the children bombed to bits in Afghanistan and Pakistan from Obama’s drones, the grisly chaos of of Libya, the utter wasteland of Iraq, the death and destruction everywhere caused by American military intervention. The Ukraine, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, you name it — your country has bombed it or destroyed its civilian life in some basic way.
When I heard all the Americans cheering for the military and the pronouncements of might coming from the speakers in the Wells Fargo Centre, I loathed you. I loathed every single one of you. I knew in my gut that what I was taught as a child was true, which is that YOU are the enemy. YOU are the country to be feared. YOU are the country to be disgusted by. YOU are ignorant. And your greed and self-satisfaction and unearned pride knows no bounds.
I am not an American tonight. I reject my Puritan ancestors who landed in this country in 1648. I reject the words I voiced at my citizenship ceremony. I reject every moment of thrilling discovery I ever had in this country.
You people have no idea what it is like for people from other countries to hear you boast and cheer for your guns and your bombs and your soldiers and your murderous military leaders and your war criminals and your murdering and conscienceless Commander in Chief. All those soaring words are received by the rest of us, by us non-Americans, by all the cells in our body, as absolutely repugnant and obscene.
And there you all are tonight, glued to your TVs and your computers, your hearts swelled with pride because you belong to the strongest country on Earth, cheering on your Murderer President. Ignorant of the entire world’s repulsion. You kill and you kill and you kill, and still you remain proud.
We are fools.
RIMPAC 2016 Naval Exercises
Canada's Participation in Massive U.S.
-Led War Games in the Pacific
TML Weekly
July 16, 2016
The U.S. imperialists, as part of increasing their war preparations worldwide, are leading the world's largest maritime war games known as the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2016 from June 30-August 4 in and around the Hawaiian Islands and southern California. Canada is participating in these war games again as it has every two years since they began in 1971.
This year RIMPAC involves 26 countries, 45 ships, five submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel. The 2016 edition is taking place in the context of the U.S. pivot to Asia started under the Obama regime, which includes the attempts to isolate the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- earlier this year the largest ever war games in Asia, Key Resolve/Foal Eagle 2016, were aimed directly at invading the DPRK. It also includes the threat to China, Russia and the DPRK posed by the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system to be installed in south Korea, as well as U.S. interference in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
RIMPAC is used by the U.S. to integrate command and control with other countries, embroil them in U.S. imperialist misadventures and as a show of force. The U.S. military presents these war preparations in a banal and misleading manner. It says that RIMPAC "provides a unique training opportunity that helps participants foster and sustain the cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world's oceans."
Anti-war activists, environmentalists, those demanding Hawaii's sovereignty (an independent kingdom before the U.S. annexed it in 1893) and others are holding actions to oppose RIMPAC 2016, as part of the broader movement to oppose the U.S. military presence in Hawaii. Similar to the U.S. Navy's 50 years abuse of the island Vieques in Puerto Rico, the U.S. military's Pohakuloa Training Area on the island of Hawaii, has caused serious environmental damage and the local people have long demanded that the military get out and ensure the land is rehabilitated. The Malu 'Aina (Land of Peace) Center for Non-Violent Education and Action pointed out in a June 29 statement:
"The U.S. is currently waging wars in at least six countries, and provoking and risking new wars with other countries, including possible nuclear war with Russia and China.
"Meanwhile, RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific), the world's largest U.S.-led war game is now taking place in and around Hawaii. [...]
"During RIMPAC countries conduct live-fire operations that include surface-to-air weapons, air-to-air missiles, surface-to-surface weapons firing, laser-guided bombs, and rounds of naval gunfire from surface combatant warships. Units fly air sorties and drop bombs. Ground forces complete amphibious landings and conduct live-fire. In all, different training events are scheduled in all Hawaiian operations area, encompassing Kaneohe Bay, Bellows Air Force Station, the Pacific Missile Range Facility, and the Pohakuloa Training Area, etc.
"It has been confirmed that RIMPAC air and ground live-fire will be taking place at Pohakuloa in the center of Hawaii Island during the month of July. Pohakuloa is contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU) radiation and a wide range of other military toxins. Continued bombing risks spreading the contamination downwind, endangering the lives of troops, residents and visitors alike. DU is particularly dangerous when small particles are inhaled and can cause cancer, birth defects and genetic damage. In short, RIMPAC is an attack on the air, land and sea environment of Hawai`i! We want it stopped!
RIMPAC is hosted by U.S. Pacific Fleet and led by U.S. Vice Admiral Nora Tyson, commander of the U.S. 3rd Fleet (C3F), who serves as the Combined Task Force (CTF) commander. Royal Canadian Navy Rear Admiral Scott Bishop serves as deputy commander of the CTF and Japan Maritime Self Defense Force Rear Admiral Koji Manabe as the vice commander. Other key leaders of the multinational force include Commodore Malcolm Wise of the Royal Australian Navy, who is in command of the maritime component; Brigadier General Blaise Frawley of the Royal Canadian Air Force, in command of the air component; and Royal New Zealand Navy Commodore James Gilmour, in command of the amphibious task force.
This year's exercise includes forces from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the Republic of Korea (south Korea), the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the United States. Australia, like Canada, has participated alongside the U.S. in every RIMPAC. Denmark, Germany and Italy are participating for the first time.
The U.S. Navy website conveys Brazil's absence as due to "unforeseen scheduling commitments." The most notable absence is that of the Russian navy, highlighting that these war games are aimed in part at Russia.
Also notable is the participation of several European countries that are located far from the Pacific Ocean. Why are they in RIMPAC if not because they are members of NATO?
Japan's participation in these aggressive war games is also notable given that the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is attempting to revise the country's constitution to remove the limitation on the deployment of Japanese forces beyond national self-defence.
Regarding the participation of China, Xinhua reported on June 29: "A Chinese fleet with about 1,200 soldiers and officers arrived in Pearl Harbor Wednesday [June 29] to take part in the Rim of the Pacific 2016 (RIMPAC 2016) multinational naval exercise. It is the second time the Chinese Navy has taken part in RIMPAC. The fleet, PLAN TG-XI'AN, is composed of missile destroyer Xi'an, missile frigate Hengshui, supply ship Gaoyouhu, hospital ship Peace Ark, submarine rescue vessel Changdao and three helicopters, as well as a marine squad and a diving squad.
"As previously agreed by China and the United States, the Chinese Navy will take part in drills including gunfire, damage control and rescue, anti-piracy, search and rescue, diving and submarine rescue. Sports events and exchanges will also be held.
"The fleet left on June 15 from a military port in Zhoushan City in east China's Zhejiang Province. At the sendoff at Zhoushan, deputy navy commander Wang Hai said the mission was important for the 'new type of major-country relationship' between China and the United States, in addition to promoting military-to-military cooperation and exchanges."
The absence of Russia, a large pacific rim country but the inclusion of China as well as the participation of European countries which are not anywhere near the Pacific underscores the true aims of RIMPAC which is to impose the U.S. as the gendarme in the Asia-Pacific and keep its rivals in check.
Canada's Participation
Canada has sent four warships, several aircraft and more than 1,500 Canadian sailors, soldiers, airmen and airwomen to RIMPAC 2016. The maritime component is comprised of the Halifax-class frigates HMCS Calgary and HMCS Vancouver, as well as the Kingston-class coastal defence vessels HMCS Saskatoon and HMCS Yellowknife, and a team of clearance divers. As noted above, Canadian military commanders have been put in various leadership positions.
Reporting on the departure of the Canadian vessels for RIMPAC on June 14, Xinhua wrote:
"Beyond their exercise responsibilities, the Kingston-class warships will also carry out testing and exercises using advanced mine countermeasure equipment, thereby reducing risks to sailors and warships while increasing interoperability with allied nations.
"HMCS Calgary and Vancouver will test weapon systems and upgrades to their equipment. RIMPAC will allow the Canadian warships to test electronic countermeasures designed to better protect sailors and warships operating in war zones, and fire Evolved Sea Sparrow and Harpoon missiles as well as heavyweight torpedoes to increase the warfighting capabilities of the Halifax-class warships."
Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan in a May 31 press release stated, "Canada has participated in every RIMPAC since 1971. Over the years, our participation has helped us build and foster collaborative relationships with our allies and partners in the region. RIMPAC 2016 will once again provide the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) with a valuable training opportunity, while demonstrating Canadian leadership and operational excellence abroad."
The Department of National Defence, in the same press release, outlined "Canada's Objectives" at RIMPAC 2016:
"The biennial exercise provides an opportunity for all services (Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force) to train in a joint environment along with international allies and partners.
"The joint forces deployed on RIMPAC comprise personnel and assets from across Canada, and may be drawn from any or all of the primary force-generators of the Canadian Armed Forces.
"The CAF objectives during RIMPAC are to:
- develop and implement plans to enable the army, navy and air force to operate as a joint force within a multinational coalition setting;
- enhance the CAF's ability to conduct international missions in accordance with the Government of Canada's objectives; and
- develop skills and procedures designed to foster operability, readiness, communications with partners and crisis response capabilities."
These justifications and so-called objectives for Canada's participation are shameless attempts to cover up Canada's subservience to U.S. imperialist interests and the dictate of Might Makes Right that seeks to resolve all issues through the threat or the use of military force.
The working people of Canada and Quebec must vigorously reject Canada's participation in RIMPAC 2016 and all U.S. war preparations, aggression and war. They must ensure that Canada has an anti-war government so that it is a force for peace in the world that provides genuine security for all countries by upholding the principles of international law whose fundamental aim is to ensure the resolution of conflicts through peaceful means.
(With files from Voice of Revolution, Department of National Defence, Naval Today, Xinhua, Malu 'Aina)
This year RIMPAC involves 26 countries, 45 ships, five submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel. The 2016 edition is taking place in the context of the U.S. pivot to Asia started under the Obama regime, which includes the attempts to isolate the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- earlier this year the largest ever war games in Asia, Key Resolve/Foal Eagle 2016, were aimed directly at invading the DPRK. It also includes the threat to China, Russia and the DPRK posed by the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system to be installed in south Korea, as well as U.S. interference in the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
RIMPAC is used by the U.S. to integrate command and control with other countries, embroil them in U.S. imperialist misadventures and as a show of force. The U.S. military presents these war preparations in a banal and misleading manner. It says that RIMPAC "provides a unique training opportunity that helps participants foster and sustain the cooperative relationships that are critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and security on the world's oceans."
Anti-war activists, environmentalists, those demanding Hawaii's sovereignty (an independent kingdom before the U.S. annexed it in 1893) and others are holding actions to oppose RIMPAC 2016, as part of the broader movement to oppose the U.S. military presence in Hawaii. Similar to the U.S. Navy's 50 years abuse of the island Vieques in Puerto Rico, the U.S. military's Pohakuloa Training Area on the island of Hawaii, has caused serious environmental damage and the local people have long demanded that the military get out and ensure the land is rehabilitated. The Malu 'Aina (Land of Peace) Center for Non-Violent Education and Action pointed out in a June 29 statement:
"The U.S. is currently waging wars in at least six countries, and provoking and risking new wars with other countries, including possible nuclear war with Russia and China.
"Meanwhile, RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific), the world's largest U.S.-led war game is now taking place in and around Hawaii. [...]
"During RIMPAC countries conduct live-fire operations that include surface-to-air weapons, air-to-air missiles, surface-to-surface weapons firing, laser-guided bombs, and rounds of naval gunfire from surface combatant warships. Units fly air sorties and drop bombs. Ground forces complete amphibious landings and conduct live-fire. In all, different training events are scheduled in all Hawaiian operations area, encompassing Kaneohe Bay, Bellows Air Force Station, the Pacific Missile Range Facility, and the Pohakuloa Training Area, etc.
"It has been confirmed that RIMPAC air and ground live-fire will be taking place at Pohakuloa in the center of Hawaii Island during the month of July. Pohakuloa is contaminated with Depleted Uranium (DU) radiation and a wide range of other military toxins. Continued bombing risks spreading the contamination downwind, endangering the lives of troops, residents and visitors alike. DU is particularly dangerous when small particles are inhaled and can cause cancer, birth defects and genetic damage. In short, RIMPAC is an attack on the air, land and sea environment of Hawai`i! We want it stopped!
RIMPAC is hosted by U.S. Pacific Fleet and led by U.S. Vice Admiral Nora Tyson, commander of the U.S. 3rd Fleet (C3F), who serves as the Combined Task Force (CTF) commander. Royal Canadian Navy Rear Admiral Scott Bishop serves as deputy commander of the CTF and Japan Maritime Self Defense Force Rear Admiral Koji Manabe as the vice commander. Other key leaders of the multinational force include Commodore Malcolm Wise of the Royal Australian Navy, who is in command of the maritime component; Brigadier General Blaise Frawley of the Royal Canadian Air Force, in command of the air component; and Royal New Zealand Navy Commodore James Gilmour, in command of the amphibious task force.
This year's exercise includes forces from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the Republic of Korea (south Korea), the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the United States. Australia, like Canada, has participated alongside the U.S. in every RIMPAC. Denmark, Germany and Italy are participating for the first time.
The U.S. Navy website conveys Brazil's absence as due to "unforeseen scheduling commitments." The most notable absence is that of the Russian navy, highlighting that these war games are aimed in part at Russia.
Also notable is the participation of several European countries that are located far from the Pacific Ocean. Why are they in RIMPAC if not because they are members of NATO?
Japan's participation in these aggressive war games is also notable given that the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is attempting to revise the country's constitution to remove the limitation on the deployment of Japanese forces beyond national self-defence.
Regarding the participation of China, Xinhua reported on June 29: "A Chinese fleet with about 1,200 soldiers and officers arrived in Pearl Harbor Wednesday [June 29] to take part in the Rim of the Pacific 2016 (RIMPAC 2016) multinational naval exercise. It is the second time the Chinese Navy has taken part in RIMPAC. The fleet, PLAN TG-XI'AN, is composed of missile destroyer Xi'an, missile frigate Hengshui, supply ship Gaoyouhu, hospital ship Peace Ark, submarine rescue vessel Changdao and three helicopters, as well as a marine squad and a diving squad.
"As previously agreed by China and the United States, the Chinese Navy will take part in drills including gunfire, damage control and rescue, anti-piracy, search and rescue, diving and submarine rescue. Sports events and exchanges will also be held.
"The fleet left on June 15 from a military port in Zhoushan City in east China's Zhejiang Province. At the sendoff at Zhoushan, deputy navy commander Wang Hai said the mission was important for the 'new type of major-country relationship' between China and the United States, in addition to promoting military-to-military cooperation and exchanges."
The absence of Russia, a large pacific rim country but the inclusion of China as well as the participation of European countries which are not anywhere near the Pacific underscores the true aims of RIMPAC which is to impose the U.S. as the gendarme in the Asia-Pacific and keep its rivals in check.
Canada's Participation
Canada has sent four warships, several aircraft and more than 1,500 Canadian sailors, soldiers, airmen and airwomen to RIMPAC 2016. The maritime component is comprised of the Halifax-class frigates HMCS Calgary and HMCS Vancouver, as well as the Kingston-class coastal defence vessels HMCS Saskatoon and HMCS Yellowknife, and a team of clearance divers. As noted above, Canadian military commanders have been put in various leadership positions.
Reporting on the departure of the Canadian vessels for RIMPAC on June 14, Xinhua wrote:
"Beyond their exercise responsibilities, the Kingston-class warships will also carry out testing and exercises using advanced mine countermeasure equipment, thereby reducing risks to sailors and warships while increasing interoperability with allied nations.
"HMCS Calgary and Vancouver will test weapon systems and upgrades to their equipment. RIMPAC will allow the Canadian warships to test electronic countermeasures designed to better protect sailors and warships operating in war zones, and fire Evolved Sea Sparrow and Harpoon missiles as well as heavyweight torpedoes to increase the warfighting capabilities of the Halifax-class warships."
Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan in a May 31 press release stated, "Canada has participated in every RIMPAC since 1971. Over the years, our participation has helped us build and foster collaborative relationships with our allies and partners in the region. RIMPAC 2016 will once again provide the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) with a valuable training opportunity, while demonstrating Canadian leadership and operational excellence abroad."
The Department of National Defence, in the same press release, outlined "Canada's Objectives" at RIMPAC 2016:
"The biennial exercise provides an opportunity for all services (Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force) to train in a joint environment along with international allies and partners.
"The joint forces deployed on RIMPAC comprise personnel and assets from across Canada, and may be drawn from any or all of the primary force-generators of the Canadian Armed Forces.
"The CAF objectives during RIMPAC are to:
- develop and implement plans to enable the army, navy and air force to operate as a joint force within a multinational coalition setting;
- enhance the CAF's ability to conduct international missions in accordance with the Government of Canada's objectives; and
- develop skills and procedures designed to foster operability, readiness, communications with partners and crisis response capabilities."
These justifications and so-called objectives for Canada's participation are shameless attempts to cover up Canada's subservience to U.S. imperialist interests and the dictate of Might Makes Right that seeks to resolve all issues through the threat or the use of military force.
The working people of Canada and Quebec must vigorously reject Canada's participation in RIMPAC 2016 and all U.S. war preparations, aggression and war. They must ensure that Canada has an anti-war government so that it is a force for peace in the world that provides genuine security for all countries by upholding the principles of international law whose fundamental aim is to ensure the resolution of conflicts through peaceful means.
(With files from Voice of Revolution, Department of National Defence, Naval Today, Xinhua, Malu 'Aina)
Chilcot: What can we learn from a report that
ignores Iraqis?
By Robert Fisk - Information Clearing House
July 08, 2016
So where are the Titans now? I’ve often asked that question but today, I realise, Blair wanted to be a Titan. Up there with the Churchills and the Roosevelts and Titos and – dare I suggest – the Stalins. Men who made the earth move. Maybe that’s why Chilcot’s achievement was not to prove that Blair was a war criminal but that he was a midget.
Just take that cringing quotation to Bush on 28 July 2002. “I will be with you, whatever.” Sure, we understand the political importance of this tosh. Blair was trying to sound Titan-like. but proved in legal terms that what he meant was: I will be with you – whatever the British people think.
But it’s got deeper roots than that. I have a hunch this was the Blair version of the infinitely more powerful words of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s personal representative to wartime Britain, who – exhausted, but asked to speak to an audience in Glasgow – looked down the room at Churchill and tried to express his love for the great man’s stand against Hitler and Roosevelt’s support for Britain as she stood alone against Nazi Germany. Hopkins quoted the Bible. Churchill wept as he spoke. “Whither thou goest,” Hopkins said, “I will go… Even unto the end.”
And the best our little Tony could say was: “I will be with you, whatever.” It’s the “whatever” bit that gives the game away, of course; a kind of tossed-out line, the midget’s version of “even unto the end”, an “aw-shucks come-hell-or-high-water, you can rely on me”.
And this, remember, was not a spokesman for the US president telling the British prime minister that he could depend on America. Wee Tony tweaked the whole sorry quotation to turn himself into Roosevelt, and Bush into Churchill. So earnest was he in the imitative role he had constructed for himself that Blair could not see, when he used these words, that they undermined any moral foundation the future invasion of Iraq might have had in British eyes.
But I’m already tired of the “lessons” of the Chilcot report. We must learn from what we did wrong, we mustn’t do it again – Cameron repeated the same doggerel, although he might apply it to his own knavish Brexit tricks – and we really, really must get it right before we blunder into more wars that cost hundreds of British lives, millions of dollars and tens of thousands of other chaps who got in the way but don’t feature as human beings in the Chilcot report.
That’s the real problem, I fear, with the flagellation of Lord Blair. Yes, he sure was a nasty piece of work, lying to us Brits and then lying to us again after Chilcot was published, and then waffling on about faith and “the right thing to do” when we all know that smiting vast numbers of innocent people – and even bringing about the smiting of a vaster number of the very same Muslims, Christians and Yazidis up to this very day – was a very, very bad thing to do. For these victims – anonymous and almost irrelevant in the Chilcot report – we cannot say “even unto the end”, because they are dying unto the present day. The real “end” for these victims cometh not even yet.
But here’s an underlying dishonesty about Chilcot’s reflection on Blair’s dishonesty. The evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was not strong enough, but it was – according to Lord Blair – still worth getting rid of Saddam. But surely if he was really sincere about the dangers of WMDs, he and Bush would have invaded a nation which undeniably did possess and boasted about them: North Korea.
Now there’s a crazed dictatorship, butchering its own people, threatening the world – in 2003, just as today – yet not once has anyone, let alone Blair, suggested we should invade North Korea even unto the end and all the way up to the Yalu river. And we know why. Because North Korea really does have WMDs. Lord Blair and Bush would never have dared consider a military adventure against the beloved Kim Jong-un. For the same reason, Blair would never have advocated the invasion of a Muslim nation which is packed with Islamist extremists who knife, shoot and burn to death their infidel enemies and who also possess nuclear weapons, WMDs writ large and boasted about and tested: Pakistan.
I’m leaving out here a peace-loving Middle East nation which possesses even more nuclear weapons than Pakistan and North Korea combined, but mercifully treats all those it occupies with immense respect, never steals their land and always treats those others with whom it comes into contact during colonisation projects with total respect for their human rights. Yet why not mention, for that matter, the Iranians? Blair has an odd habit of targeting enemies which are also hated by the aforesaid peace-loving nation – and would presumably like to assault before they actually are able to possess nuclear weapons and therefore immediately become un-invadeable.
Poor old Saddam, he told the truth – that he didn’t have WMDs – and thus doomed both himself and the poor old Iraqis to mass death.
And that’s the point, isn’t it? The Arabs of Iraq – and now Syria – endure human disaster on an unprecedented scale because of the Blair-Bush lies, yet all Chilcot can produce with his seven years of literary endeavour and volumes to break the strength of any library shelf is a puny little domestic report on British politics and the self-righteousness of the midget who got it all wrong.
We weep for our British military martyrs, for such is how the Arabs refer to their wartime dead, yet scarcely a single suffering Arab was to be heard in the aftermath of Chilcot. The Iraqis were not allowed to give evidence; the dead Muslims and Christians of Iraq had no-one to plead for the integrity of their lives. Had their case been made, Chilcot’s report would have gone on to the crack of doom. It would have been longer than the Holy Bible, the Holy Koran, the entire corpus of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Proust, Shakespeare and Dante – though the latter’s circles of hell would certainly have caught the measure of the suffering of Iraq and Syria.
No. It was, in reality, a midget report on a midget man. That’s why, if we brought in the real human beings called Iraqis, their evidence would have indeed been worth a Nuremburg trial. And yet, in the end, weren’t the ranks of obsequious, strutting, lying and defeated Nazis on the bench at Nuremburg also midgets? Even unto the end. Whatever.
Just take that cringing quotation to Bush on 28 July 2002. “I will be with you, whatever.” Sure, we understand the political importance of this tosh. Blair was trying to sound Titan-like. but proved in legal terms that what he meant was: I will be with you – whatever the British people think.
But it’s got deeper roots than that. I have a hunch this was the Blair version of the infinitely more powerful words of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s personal representative to wartime Britain, who – exhausted, but asked to speak to an audience in Glasgow – looked down the room at Churchill and tried to express his love for the great man’s stand against Hitler and Roosevelt’s support for Britain as she stood alone against Nazi Germany. Hopkins quoted the Bible. Churchill wept as he spoke. “Whither thou goest,” Hopkins said, “I will go… Even unto the end.”
And the best our little Tony could say was: “I will be with you, whatever.” It’s the “whatever” bit that gives the game away, of course; a kind of tossed-out line, the midget’s version of “even unto the end”, an “aw-shucks come-hell-or-high-water, you can rely on me”.
And this, remember, was not a spokesman for the US president telling the British prime minister that he could depend on America. Wee Tony tweaked the whole sorry quotation to turn himself into Roosevelt, and Bush into Churchill. So earnest was he in the imitative role he had constructed for himself that Blair could not see, when he used these words, that they undermined any moral foundation the future invasion of Iraq might have had in British eyes.
But I’m already tired of the “lessons” of the Chilcot report. We must learn from what we did wrong, we mustn’t do it again – Cameron repeated the same doggerel, although he might apply it to his own knavish Brexit tricks – and we really, really must get it right before we blunder into more wars that cost hundreds of British lives, millions of dollars and tens of thousands of other chaps who got in the way but don’t feature as human beings in the Chilcot report.
That’s the real problem, I fear, with the flagellation of Lord Blair. Yes, he sure was a nasty piece of work, lying to us Brits and then lying to us again after Chilcot was published, and then waffling on about faith and “the right thing to do” when we all know that smiting vast numbers of innocent people – and even bringing about the smiting of a vaster number of the very same Muslims, Christians and Yazidis up to this very day – was a very, very bad thing to do. For these victims – anonymous and almost irrelevant in the Chilcot report – we cannot say “even unto the end”, because they are dying unto the present day. The real “end” for these victims cometh not even yet.
But here’s an underlying dishonesty about Chilcot’s reflection on Blair’s dishonesty. The evidence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was not strong enough, but it was – according to Lord Blair – still worth getting rid of Saddam. But surely if he was really sincere about the dangers of WMDs, he and Bush would have invaded a nation which undeniably did possess and boasted about them: North Korea.
Now there’s a crazed dictatorship, butchering its own people, threatening the world – in 2003, just as today – yet not once has anyone, let alone Blair, suggested we should invade North Korea even unto the end and all the way up to the Yalu river. And we know why. Because North Korea really does have WMDs. Lord Blair and Bush would never have dared consider a military adventure against the beloved Kim Jong-un. For the same reason, Blair would never have advocated the invasion of a Muslim nation which is packed with Islamist extremists who knife, shoot and burn to death their infidel enemies and who also possess nuclear weapons, WMDs writ large and boasted about and tested: Pakistan.
I’m leaving out here a peace-loving Middle East nation which possesses even more nuclear weapons than Pakistan and North Korea combined, but mercifully treats all those it occupies with immense respect, never steals their land and always treats those others with whom it comes into contact during colonisation projects with total respect for their human rights. Yet why not mention, for that matter, the Iranians? Blair has an odd habit of targeting enemies which are also hated by the aforesaid peace-loving nation – and would presumably like to assault before they actually are able to possess nuclear weapons and therefore immediately become un-invadeable.
Poor old Saddam, he told the truth – that he didn’t have WMDs – and thus doomed both himself and the poor old Iraqis to mass death.
And that’s the point, isn’t it? The Arabs of Iraq – and now Syria – endure human disaster on an unprecedented scale because of the Blair-Bush lies, yet all Chilcot can produce with his seven years of literary endeavour and volumes to break the strength of any library shelf is a puny little domestic report on British politics and the self-righteousness of the midget who got it all wrong.
We weep for our British military martyrs, for such is how the Arabs refer to their wartime dead, yet scarcely a single suffering Arab was to be heard in the aftermath of Chilcot. The Iraqis were not allowed to give evidence; the dead Muslims and Christians of Iraq had no-one to plead for the integrity of their lives. Had their case been made, Chilcot’s report would have gone on to the crack of doom. It would have been longer than the Holy Bible, the Holy Koran, the entire corpus of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Proust, Shakespeare and Dante – though the latter’s circles of hell would certainly have caught the measure of the suffering of Iraq and Syria.
No. It was, in reality, a midget report on a midget man. That’s why, if we brought in the real human beings called Iraqis, their evidence would have indeed been worth a Nuremburg trial. And yet, in the end, weren’t the ranks of obsequious, strutting, lying and defeated Nazis on the bench at Nuremburg also midgets? Even unto the end. Whatever.
The Department of Political Justice
By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano "Information Clearing House"
July 07, 2016
Is it worth impairing the reputation of the FBI and the Department of Justice to save Hillary Clinton from a deserved criminal prosecution by playing word games?What has become of the rule of law – no one is beneath its protections or above its requirements – when the American public can witness a game of political musical chairs orchestrated by Bill Clinton at an airport in a bizarre ruse to remove the criminal investigation of his wife from those legally responsible for making decisions about it?
How hairsplitting can the FBI be in acknowledging "extreme carelessness" while denying "gross negligence" about the same events, at the same time, and in the same respect?
These are questions that now beg for answers in light of what can only be the politically motivated FBI report delivered earlier this week on the likely criminal behavior of Hillary Clinton.
The espionage statute that criminalizes the knowing or grossly negligent failure to keep state secrets in a secure venue is the rare federal statute that can be violated and upon which a conviction may be based without the need of the government to prove intent.
Thus, in the past two years, the DOJ has prosecuted a young sailor for sending a single selfie to his girlfriend that inadvertently showed a submarine sonar screen in its background. It also prosecuted a Marine lieutenant who sent his military superiors a single email about the presence of al-Qaida operatives dressed as local police in a U.S. encampment in Afghanistan – but who inadvertently used his Gmail account rather than his secure government account.
And it famously prosecuted Gen. David Petraeus for sharing paper copies of his daily calendar in his guarded home with a military colleague also in the home – someone who had a secret security clearance herself – because the calendar inadvertently included secret matters in the pages underneath the calendar.
Yet earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey – knowing that his bosses in the DOJ would accept his legal conclusions about Clinton’s failure to keep state secrets secure, because they had removed themselves from independently judging the FBI’s work – told the public that whereas the inadvertence of the above defendants was sufficient to justify their prosecutions, somehow Clinton’s repeated recklessness was not.
It is obvious that a different standard is being applied to Clinton than was applied to Petraeus and the others. It is also now painfully obvious that the game of musical chairs we all witnessed last week when Bill Clinton entered the private jet of Comey’s boss – Attorney General Loretta Lynch – unannounced and spent 30 private minutes there with her at a time when both he and his wife were targets of FBI criminal probes was a trick to compromise Lynch and remove her and her aides from the DOJ chain of command regarding the decision as to whether to present evidence of crimes against either of the Clintons to a federal grand jury.
Why do we stand for this?
The criminal case against Mrs. Clinton would have been overwhelming. The FBI acknowledged that she sent or received more than 100 emails that contained state secrets via one of her four home servers. None of those servers was secure. Each secret email was secret when received, was secret when sent and is secret today. All were removed from their secure venues by Clinton, who knew what she was doing, instructed subordinates to white out "secret" markings, burned her own calendars, destroyed thousands of her emails and refuses to this day to recognize that she had a duty to preserve such secrets as satellite images of North Korean nuclear facilities, locations of drone strikes in Pakistan and names of American intelligence agents operating in the Middle East under cover.
Why do we stand for this?
Comey has argued that somehow there is such a legal chasm between extreme carelessness and gross negligence that the feds cannot bridge it. That is not an argument for him to make. That is for a jury to decide after a judge instructs the jury about what Comey fails to understand: There is not a dime’s worth of difference between these two standards. Extreme carelessness is gross negligence.
Unless, of course, one is willing to pervert the rule of law yet again to insulate a Clinton yet again from the law enforcement machinery that everyone else who fails to secure state secrets should expect.
Why do we stand for this?
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit http://www.creators.com
How hairsplitting can the FBI be in acknowledging "extreme carelessness" while denying "gross negligence" about the same events, at the same time, and in the same respect?
These are questions that now beg for answers in light of what can only be the politically motivated FBI report delivered earlier this week on the likely criminal behavior of Hillary Clinton.
The espionage statute that criminalizes the knowing or grossly negligent failure to keep state secrets in a secure venue is the rare federal statute that can be violated and upon which a conviction may be based without the need of the government to prove intent.
Thus, in the past two years, the DOJ has prosecuted a young sailor for sending a single selfie to his girlfriend that inadvertently showed a submarine sonar screen in its background. It also prosecuted a Marine lieutenant who sent his military superiors a single email about the presence of al-Qaida operatives dressed as local police in a U.S. encampment in Afghanistan – but who inadvertently used his Gmail account rather than his secure government account.
And it famously prosecuted Gen. David Petraeus for sharing paper copies of his daily calendar in his guarded home with a military colleague also in the home – someone who had a secret security clearance herself – because the calendar inadvertently included secret matters in the pages underneath the calendar.
Yet earlier this week, FBI Director James Comey – knowing that his bosses in the DOJ would accept his legal conclusions about Clinton’s failure to keep state secrets secure, because they had removed themselves from independently judging the FBI’s work – told the public that whereas the inadvertence of the above defendants was sufficient to justify their prosecutions, somehow Clinton’s repeated recklessness was not.
It is obvious that a different standard is being applied to Clinton than was applied to Petraeus and the others. It is also now painfully obvious that the game of musical chairs we all witnessed last week when Bill Clinton entered the private jet of Comey’s boss – Attorney General Loretta Lynch – unannounced and spent 30 private minutes there with her at a time when both he and his wife were targets of FBI criminal probes was a trick to compromise Lynch and remove her and her aides from the DOJ chain of command regarding the decision as to whether to present evidence of crimes against either of the Clintons to a federal grand jury.
Why do we stand for this?
The criminal case against Mrs. Clinton would have been overwhelming. The FBI acknowledged that she sent or received more than 100 emails that contained state secrets via one of her four home servers. None of those servers was secure. Each secret email was secret when received, was secret when sent and is secret today. All were removed from their secure venues by Clinton, who knew what she was doing, instructed subordinates to white out "secret" markings, burned her own calendars, destroyed thousands of her emails and refuses to this day to recognize that she had a duty to preserve such secrets as satellite images of North Korean nuclear facilities, locations of drone strikes in Pakistan and names of American intelligence agents operating in the Middle East under cover.
Why do we stand for this?
Comey has argued that somehow there is such a legal chasm between extreme carelessness and gross negligence that the feds cannot bridge it. That is not an argument for him to make. That is for a jury to decide after a judge instructs the jury about what Comey fails to understand: There is not a dime’s worth of difference between these two standards. Extreme carelessness is gross negligence.
Unless, of course, one is willing to pervert the rule of law yet again to insulate a Clinton yet again from the law enforcement machinery that everyone else who fails to secure state secrets should expect.
Why do we stand for this?
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit http://www.creators.com
“A deadly undertaking”
UN experts urge all Governments to protect environmental rights defenders
Geneva, June 2, 2016
Speaking ahead of World Environment Day on Sunday 5 June, three United Nations human rights experts call on every Government to protect environmental and land rights defenders.
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox; the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, Victoria Tauli Corpuz, stress that protecting environmental rights defenders is crucial to protect the environment and the human rights that depend on it.
“Being an environmentalist can be a dangerous, even deadly undertaking. Berta Cáceres, the Goldman Prize winner who was assassinated in Honduras in March 2016, was only one of dozens of environmentalists to be killed in recent months.
Every week, on average, two environmental and land rights activists are killed and the numbers are getting worse, according to civil society figures. The situation is particularly grave in Latin America and Southeast Asia, but it affects every region of the world. It is truly a global crisis.
On this World Environment Day, we want to underscore that environmental human rights defenders should be lauded as heroes for putting themselves at risk to protect the rights and well-being of others. Instead, they are often targeted as if they were enemies of the State.
The brave women and men who work to protect the environment are routinely harassed, threatened, unlawfully detained, and even murdered, merely for opposing powerful business and governmental interests bent on exploiting and destroying the natural environment on which we all depend.
The enjoyment of a vast range of human rights, including rights to life, health, food, water, and housing, depend on a healthy and sustainable environment. Those who work to protect the environment are not only environmentalists – they are also human rights defenders.
In March 2016, the Human Rights Council adopted a landmark Resolution (res 31/ 32) which requires States to ensure the rights and safety of human rights defenders working towards the realization of economic, social and cultural rights.
That was a good initial step, but Governments must do far more. They have obligations under human rights law to protect environmentalists’ rights of expression and association by responding rapidly and effectively to threats, promptly investigating acts of harassment and violence from all parties including business and non-State actors, protecting the lives of those at risk, and bringing those responsible to justice.
States must also adopt and implement mechanisms that allow defenders to communicate their grievances, claim responsibilities, and obtain effective redress for violations, without fear of intimidation.
They must take additional steps to safeguard the rights of members of marginalized and vulnerable communities, especially indigenous peoples, whose cultures, identities and livelihoods often depend on the environment and whose lives are particularly susceptible to environmental harm, placing them on the frontlines of conflict.
Currently, States are failing to meet these obligations. Of the nearly 1000 reported murders over the last decade, fewer than 10 have resulted in convictions. The real culprits are rarely held accountable for their crimes.
In the last year, the international community has reached consensus on the new sustainable development goals as a roadmap to a more sustainable, prosperous and equitable future. But those goals cannot be met if those on the front line of protecting sustainable development are not protected.
It is ironic that environmental rights defenders are often branded as ‘anti-development’, when by working to make development truly sustainable, they are actually more pro-development than the corporations and governments that oppose them.
Supporting environmental human rights defenders is crucial to protect our environment and the human rights that depend on it, and Governments should never forget that.”
*******
The UN Human Rights Council appointed Mr. John H. Knox (USA) in 2012 to serve as Independent Expert, and reappointed him in 2015 as Special Rapporteur, on the issue of human rights obligations related to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The Council requested him, a professor of international law at Wake Forest University in the United States, to clarify the application of human rights norms to environmental protection, and to identify best practices in the use of human rights obligations in environmental policy-making. Learn more, visit:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Environment/SREnvironment/Pages/SRenvironmentIndex.aspx
Mr. Michel Forst (France) was appointed by the Human Rights Council as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in 2014. Michel Forst has extensive experience on human rights issues and particularly on the situation of human rights defenders. In particular, he was the Director General of Amnesty International (France) and Secretary General of the first World Summit on Human Rights Defenders in 1998. For more information, log on to:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/SRHRDefenders/Pages/SRHRDefendersIndex.aspx
NOTE TO EDITORS: Mr. Forst will present a report on the situation of environmental and land rights defenders to the UN General Assembly in October 2016.
The Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Ms. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Philippines), is a human rights activist working on indigenous peoples’ rights. Her work for more than three decades has been focused on movement building among indigenous peoples and also among women, and she has worked as an educator-trainer on human rights, development and indigenous peoples in various contexts. She is a member of the Kankana-ey, Igorot indigenous peoples in the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. Learn more, log on to: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/SRIndigenousPeoples/Pages/SRIPeoplesIndex.aspx
The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms. Special Procedures mandate-holders are independent human rights experts appointed by the Human Rights Council to address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. They are not UN staff and are independent from any government or organization. They serve in their individual capacity and do not receive a salary for their work.
For more information and media requests, please contact Ms. Ahreum Lee (+41 22 917 9391/ahreumlee@ohchr.org) or write to srenvironment@ohchr.org
For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts:
Xabier Celaya – Media Unit (+ 41 22 917 9383 / xcelaya@ohchr.org)
For your news websites and social media: Multimedia content & key messages relating to our news releases are available on UN Human Rights social media channels, listed below. Please tag us using the proper handles:
Twitter: @UNHumanRights
Facebook: unitednationshumanrights
Instagram: unitednationshumanrights
Google+: unitednationshumanrights
Youtube: unohchr
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John Knox; the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, Victoria Tauli Corpuz, stress that protecting environmental rights defenders is crucial to protect the environment and the human rights that depend on it.
“Being an environmentalist can be a dangerous, even deadly undertaking. Berta Cáceres, the Goldman Prize winner who was assassinated in Honduras in March 2016, was only one of dozens of environmentalists to be killed in recent months.
Every week, on average, two environmental and land rights activists are killed and the numbers are getting worse, according to civil society figures. The situation is particularly grave in Latin America and Southeast Asia, but it affects every region of the world. It is truly a global crisis.
On this World Environment Day, we want to underscore that environmental human rights defenders should be lauded as heroes for putting themselves at risk to protect the rights and well-being of others. Instead, they are often targeted as if they were enemies of the State.
The brave women and men who work to protect the environment are routinely harassed, threatened, unlawfully detained, and even murdered, merely for opposing powerful business and governmental interests bent on exploiting and destroying the natural environment on which we all depend.
The enjoyment of a vast range of human rights, including rights to life, health, food, water, and housing, depend on a healthy and sustainable environment. Those who work to protect the environment are not only environmentalists – they are also human rights defenders.
In March 2016, the Human Rights Council adopted a landmark Resolution (res 31/ 32) which requires States to ensure the rights and safety of human rights defenders working towards the realization of economic, social and cultural rights.
That was a good initial step, but Governments must do far more. They have obligations under human rights law to protect environmentalists’ rights of expression and association by responding rapidly and effectively to threats, promptly investigating acts of harassment and violence from all parties including business and non-State actors, protecting the lives of those at risk, and bringing those responsible to justice.
States must also adopt and implement mechanisms that allow defenders to communicate their grievances, claim responsibilities, and obtain effective redress for violations, without fear of intimidation.
They must take additional steps to safeguard the rights of members of marginalized and vulnerable communities, especially indigenous peoples, whose cultures, identities and livelihoods often depend on the environment and whose lives are particularly susceptible to environmental harm, placing them on the frontlines of conflict.
Currently, States are failing to meet these obligations. Of the nearly 1000 reported murders over the last decade, fewer than 10 have resulted in convictions. The real culprits are rarely held accountable for their crimes.
In the last year, the international community has reached consensus on the new sustainable development goals as a roadmap to a more sustainable, prosperous and equitable future. But those goals cannot be met if those on the front line of protecting sustainable development are not protected.
It is ironic that environmental rights defenders are often branded as ‘anti-development’, when by working to make development truly sustainable, they are actually more pro-development than the corporations and governments that oppose them.
Supporting environmental human rights defenders is crucial to protect our environment and the human rights that depend on it, and Governments should never forget that.”
*******
The UN Human Rights Council appointed Mr. John H. Knox (USA) in 2012 to serve as Independent Expert, and reappointed him in 2015 as Special Rapporteur, on the issue of human rights obligations related to the enjoyment of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The Council requested him, a professor of international law at Wake Forest University in the United States, to clarify the application of human rights norms to environmental protection, and to identify best practices in the use of human rights obligations in environmental policy-making. Learn more, visit:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Environment/SREnvironment/Pages/SRenvironmentIndex.aspx
Mr. Michel Forst (France) was appointed by the Human Rights Council as the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in 2014. Michel Forst has extensive experience on human rights issues and particularly on the situation of human rights defenders. In particular, he was the Director General of Amnesty International (France) and Secretary General of the first World Summit on Human Rights Defenders in 1998. For more information, log on to:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/SRHRDefenders/Pages/SRHRDefendersIndex.aspx
NOTE TO EDITORS: Mr. Forst will present a report on the situation of environmental and land rights defenders to the UN General Assembly in October 2016.
The Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Ms. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (Philippines), is a human rights activist working on indigenous peoples’ rights. Her work for more than three decades has been focused on movement building among indigenous peoples and also among women, and she has worked as an educator-trainer on human rights, development and indigenous peoples in various contexts. She is a member of the Kankana-ey, Igorot indigenous peoples in the Cordillera Region in the Philippines. Learn more, log on to: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/SRIndigenousPeoples/Pages/SRIPeoplesIndex.aspx
The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms. Special Procedures mandate-holders are independent human rights experts appointed by the Human Rights Council to address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. They are not UN staff and are independent from any government or organization. They serve in their individual capacity and do not receive a salary for their work.
For more information and media requests, please contact Ms. Ahreum Lee (+41 22 917 9391/ahreumlee@ohchr.org) or write to srenvironment@ohchr.org
For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts:
Xabier Celaya – Media Unit (+ 41 22 917 9383 / xcelaya@ohchr.org)
For your news websites and social media: Multimedia content & key messages relating to our news releases are available on UN Human Rights social media channels, listed below. Please tag us using the proper handles:
Twitter: @UNHumanRights
Facebook: unitednationshumanrights
Instagram: unitednationshumanrights
Google+: unitednationshumanrights
Youtube: unohchr
Your TPP Update: Big week for people power!
A message from Maude Barlow
Council of Canadians, National Chairperson
May 21, 2016
I’m thrilled to send you this brief report back on how your support is driving significant progress towards stopping the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Last week alone, the Council of Canadians joined with our friends in the social justice, environmental and labour movements to organize big rallies around the federal TPP hearings in Toronto, Montreal and Windsor.
Hundreds of people who applied to speak at the “public hearings,” but were denied, instead stood together outside, undeterred in sending our government a clear and powerful mandate from the people: Say NO to the TPP!
This builds on months of tireless work by Council staff and activists to raise public awareness and political pressure around this terrible corporate rights deal.
You may recall from my last report to you that the Council has also presented your concerns directly to Members of Parliament at the federal TPP hearings in Winnipeg.
Supporters like you also helped to crowdfund a massive Jumbotron outside of the TPP hearings in Vancouver, where we projected the concerns of hundreds of people larger than life!
Last week alone, the Council of Canadians joined with our friends in the social justice, environmental and labour movements to organize big rallies around the federal TPP hearings in Toronto, Montreal and Windsor.
Hundreds of people who applied to speak at the “public hearings,” but were denied, instead stood together outside, undeterred in sending our government a clear and powerful mandate from the people: Say NO to the TPP!
This builds on months of tireless work by Council staff and activists to raise public awareness and political pressure around this terrible corporate rights deal.
You may recall from my last report to you that the Council has also presented your concerns directly to Members of Parliament at the federal TPP hearings in Winnipeg.
Supporters like you also helped to crowdfund a massive Jumbotron outside of the TPP hearings in Vancouver, where we projected the concerns of hundreds of people larger than life!
Council chapters and board members have also been busily coordinating countless public forums and actions in communities across Canada, including St. John’s, Charlottetown, Fredericton and Saint John, Peterborough, Guelph, Saskatoon, Yellowknife, and an extensive tour through B.C..
In all, over 170,000 of us have now joined the fight to stop the TPP – and more are joining every day!
This is the kind of hard-hitting, cross-Canada public advocacy work that you are supporting through the Council of Canadians, and I can’t thank you enough.
But now the clock is ticking – and we have to keep the pressure on.
Prime Minister Trudeau has now announced that he is closing the public comment period on the TPP on June 30.
I’m sure you agree that not nearly enough of our friends, family and neighbours have heard of the TPP, let alone the many ways it stands to harm you, me, our communities and our country.
That’s a prime example of how our new government is failing in its promise to consult with Canadians on what Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is calling “the worst trade deal ever.”
So we only have a short few weeks left to amplify our national public outreach campaign to get even more people across the country informed about the TPP – so that we can flood the government with the concerns of thousands more of us before they shut the window.
I’ll be reaching out to you in the coming days for your feedback on how we can best achieve that very goal.
In the meantime, please accept my heartfelt thanks for your continued support.
With thanks and hope,
Maude Barlow
Mining companies need stronger oversight abroad says Liberal MP McKay
By Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press
National Newswatch - Apr 5 2016
CALGARY — Liberal MP John McKay is calling for stricter oversight of Canadian mining companies abroad as plaintiffs increasingly look to Canadian courts to seek justice.
He says the government needs to do more because Canadian companies operating internationally continue to face accusations of violating local laws and human rights, despite overall improvements in the industry.
"These unwelcome instances keep on coming up," McKay said in an interview after a New York Times front-page story over the weekend shone a harsh spotlight on a Canadian mining company accused of serious crimes in Guatemala.
"And not only does the mining company suffer brand problems, so also does the industry suffer brand problems, and so also does our nation suffer brand problems .... It has been and continues to be a bit of a black eye on our country."
McKay has long been pushing for the creation of an ombudsman position that could investigate claims against Canadian companies abroad and impose sanctions.
"There still has to be a day of reckoning for a company that commits egregious actions," said McKay.
CONTINUE READING HERE ...
He says the government needs to do more because Canadian companies operating internationally continue to face accusations of violating local laws and human rights, despite overall improvements in the industry.
"These unwelcome instances keep on coming up," McKay said in an interview after a New York Times front-page story over the weekend shone a harsh spotlight on a Canadian mining company accused of serious crimes in Guatemala.
"And not only does the mining company suffer brand problems, so also does the industry suffer brand problems, and so also does our nation suffer brand problems .... It has been and continues to be a bit of a black eye on our country."
McKay has long been pushing for the creation of an ombudsman position that could investigate claims against Canadian companies abroad and impose sanctions.
"There still has to be a day of reckoning for a company that commits egregious actions," said McKay.
CONTINUE READING HERE ...
Derrame de cianuro: pedirán el procesamiento de nueve ejecutivos de Barrick Gold
Por Juan Pablo Parilla / Resumen Latinoamericano / infobae
10 de marzo de 2016
La querella presentará como prueba un peritaje de la Policía Federal que confirma que hubo “una clara infracción de la ley” de residuos peligrosos. Bronca en Jáchal porque el municipio esconde los análisis.
Los asambleístas que denunciaron penalmente a la canadiense Barrick Gold por el derrame de cianuro en la mina Veladero, de San Juan, pedirán el procesamiento de al menos nueve gerentes de la empresa, luego de que un informe de la Policía Federal confirmara que se contaminaron cinco ríos y que se violó la ley que regula los residuos peligrosos.
Hay dos causas penales abiertas por el derrame de más de un millón de litros de agua cianurada ocurrido entre el 12 y 13 de septiembre del año pasado, una en San Juan y otra en Buenos Aires. Mientras la Corte Suprema se toma su tiempo para decidir la competencia, las novedades que surgieron en un expediente podrían repercutir en el otro.
CONTINUE LEYENDO AQUI
Los asambleístas que denunciaron penalmente a la canadiense Barrick Gold por el derrame de cianuro en la mina Veladero, de San Juan, pedirán el procesamiento de al menos nueve gerentes de la empresa, luego de que un informe de la Policía Federal confirmara que se contaminaron cinco ríos y que se violó la ley que regula los residuos peligrosos.
Hay dos causas penales abiertas por el derrame de más de un millón de litros de agua cianurada ocurrido entre el 12 y 13 de septiembre del año pasado, una en San Juan y otra en Buenos Aires. Mientras la Corte Suprema se toma su tiempo para decidir la competencia, las novedades que surgieron en un expediente podrían repercutir en el otro.
CONTINUE LEYENDO AQUI
Canada. It’s time to LEAP forward on
climate change action
The Council of Canadians is part of a coalition of more than 50 environmental and social justice groups, representing hundreds of thousands of people across Canada, demanding that federal, provincial and territorial leaders embrace the policy changes needed for Canada to meet its Paris climate change commitments.
In a letter sent to Prime Minister Trudeau and all provincial and territorial leaders, the groups revealed their expectations ahead of intergovernmental meetings on climate policy, which are expected to be held this week. Read more.
Across Canada, Council of Canadians chapters are pushing for a bold “leap” forward on the issue of climate change. Chapters are raising awareness about the Leap Manifesto with screenings of This Changes Everything, a documentary film directed by Avi Lewis and inspired by Naomi Klein’s non-fiction bestseller of the same name.
In a letter sent to Prime Minister Trudeau and all provincial and territorial leaders, the groups revealed their expectations ahead of intergovernmental meetings on climate policy, which are expected to be held this week. Read more.
Across Canada, Council of Canadians chapters are pushing for a bold “leap” forward on the issue of climate change. Chapters are raising awareness about the Leap Manifesto with screenings of This Changes Everything, a documentary film directed by Avi Lewis and inspired by Naomi Klein’s non-fiction bestseller of the same name.
Ontario Takes Last Place in Jobs, Social Programs
and Income Equality:
New Report Says Fully Half of Ontarians
are Caught in a Backslide
|
An Ontario-wide coalition of more than 90 labour and community groups concerned with growing inequality released an alarming report today that delivers a grim warning about the erosion of income transfer programs, social programs and a labour force that is leaving millions behind.
“Ontario is dead last in funding for social programs and, by nearly every measure, it is trailing every other province in income equality and poverty reduction,” said report author, Natalie Mehra. “While it is hard to start a family anywhere in Canada, young families in Ontario are struggling with the largest student debt loads, the most expensive child care, the worst access to affordable housing and highest costs for health care – all at a time when good jobs are being replaced with precarious, part-time and temporary employment at unprecedented.” “A quarter-million jobs have completely vanished from Ontario and fully half of all Ontarians have seen little or no improvement in their incomes, while the top 10 percent are making off like bandits,” said Ontario Federation of Labour President Sid. “When I look at the fact one third of Ontario’s workforce are earning at or near the minimum wage, it feel sick for the future. We cannot sacrifice youth and young families on the altar of deficit reduction and corporate tax giveaways. It is time for a real plan to create meaningful jobs to support the next generation.” The comprehensive report, called “Backslide: Labour Force Restructuring, Austerity and Widening Inequality in Ontario,” pulled together national research that paints a picture of the changing standard of living for Ontarians. This report documents three concurrent trends: a sea change in the labour force, the erosion of income transfer programs that protect people from falling through the cracks, and Canada’s worst cuts to social programs. Consider the following report findings: |
The report gives credit to Premier Kathleen Wynne for taking initial steps to break with the austerity agenda laid out by her predecessor. In recent years, child poverty was reduced by nine percent across Ontario, minimum wage received modest real dollar increases and Ontario led the country in pushing for an expanded public pension plan. While each of these initiatives is important in its own right, they represent only small steps forward, particularly when juxtaposed against massive corporate tax cuts that are paid from the public purse.
“If there is good news to be extracted from this report, it is that every other province in Canada has charted a better course than Ontario. This serves as proof that every government is capable of making different choices,” said Mehra. “This report highlights Ontario’s obligation to reverse the trend towards income inequality and allow for a more fairer shouldering of the benefits and burdens of our economy. We look forward to engaging in discussions with the Wynne government on how to make that happen.” |
Download a full copy of the report here!
The Ontario Common Front is a coalition of more than 90 community and labour groups that was first spearheaded by the Ontario Federation of Labour in 2012. This grassroots group is focused on exposing Ontario’s growing inequality and proposing workable solutions to fix it. Visit the campaign website!
The Ontario Common Front is a coalition of more than 90 community and labour groups that was first spearheaded by the Ontario Federation of Labour in 2012. This grassroots group is focused on exposing Ontario’s growing inequality and proposing workable solutions to fix it. Visit the campaign website!
El sueño de paz de Obama: 761 bases militares y
135 países con fuerzas especiales de EEUU
TomDispatch, Blog “Descubriendo verdades”/ Resumen Latinoamericano/ Hispan TV/
9 de Octubre 2015
Fuerzas especiales de EEUU, desplegados en 135 países en 2015.
Las tropas de élite del Pentágono han sido enviadas a casi el 70 % de los países del mundo en 2015, según un informe.
“Los soldados de operaciones especiales de Estados Unidos están llevando a cabo misiones todos los días en hasta 90 países”, publicó ayer jueves la página Tom Dispatch, citando a Ken McGraw, un portavoz del Comando de Operaciones Especiales (SOCOM, en su acrónimo inglés) del Ejército estadounidense.
El espectacular aumento en los últimos cinco años es “indicativo de la expansión exponencial del SOCOM, que comenzó a toda velocidad después de los ataques del 11 de septiembre”, según el informe, que añade que el SOCOM no facilita “el nombre de los 135 países en los que se han desplegado este año las fuerzas de élite de Estados Unidos, ni mucho menos revela la naturaleza de esas operaciones”.
Tom Dispatch explica que los documentos obtenidos del Pentágono reflejan las actividades que llevan a cabo día a día las fuerzas de operaciones especiales.
Read More Here ...
Canada's Arrogant Autocrat:
the Rogue Politics of Stephen Harper
Counterpunch, by Michael Weltom
Sept. 4, 2015
Everyone has a friend like Howard. We have known each other for over forty years. He is very smart and very funny and loves to send crazy cartoons out to friends. The other day I received this one. Above a picture of Stephen Harper, these words: “If his party is tainted by corruption and he doesn’t know all of the answers, why is it still in power running the country?” Stephen Harper, 2005. And below these words, “For once, Mr. Harper, we agree.”
This is the question many of us on Canada’s tattered Left are asking themselves and whoever presents an audience. “Why is Harper still running and ruining the country?” Why in the world do 40% of those polled think Sleazy Stephen is doing a reasonably good job? The only decent reason must be that most Canadians don’t have a clue how he has stealthily dismantled democracy at home and supported the US Empire’s perpetual wars abroad. If the US were the Hell’s Angels, then Canada works as one of the designated enforcers.
My cousin Pam, who lives in a small village in the southwest of Saskatchewan, thinks that most of her friends are on to Harper, but I am not sure we have enough to send thus miserable guy packing. Noble pundits remorsefully tell us that the youth don’t bother to vote. Sleazy Stephen thinks he can sneak in with less than 1/3 of the votes. Less the kids know, the better, eh?
I picked up Mel Hurtig’s little book, The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper’s takeover of Canada (2015) at the last remaining old commie bookstore in Vancouver’s hip Commercial Drive on the city’s east side. On a Saturday afternoon stroll one can observe punk families all dressed in black with even the four year olds wearing a stud in the ear with a careful tear or two in their jeans. Pretty rough-looking folks jostle the streets with trendy youth heading to the Havana Café for lunch and a peek at a poster of Che.
The People’s Co-op Bookstore (they don’t acknowledge their Communist Party roots too openly, but a few books by Lenin are on the shelves) had a small pile of Hurtig’s book, so I guess the masses have been surging in off the streets to learn more about the malevolent actions of Canada’s rogue Prime Minister.
Hey, maybe my cousin is right! The masses are rising up against Stephen the Cruel! Well, maybe not. Calm down.
Read More Here ...
This is the question many of us on Canada’s tattered Left are asking themselves and whoever presents an audience. “Why is Harper still running and ruining the country?” Why in the world do 40% of those polled think Sleazy Stephen is doing a reasonably good job? The only decent reason must be that most Canadians don’t have a clue how he has stealthily dismantled democracy at home and supported the US Empire’s perpetual wars abroad. If the US were the Hell’s Angels, then Canada works as one of the designated enforcers.
My cousin Pam, who lives in a small village in the southwest of Saskatchewan, thinks that most of her friends are on to Harper, but I am not sure we have enough to send thus miserable guy packing. Noble pundits remorsefully tell us that the youth don’t bother to vote. Sleazy Stephen thinks he can sneak in with less than 1/3 of the votes. Less the kids know, the better, eh?
I picked up Mel Hurtig’s little book, The Arrogant Autocrat: Stephen Harper’s takeover of Canada (2015) at the last remaining old commie bookstore in Vancouver’s hip Commercial Drive on the city’s east side. On a Saturday afternoon stroll one can observe punk families all dressed in black with even the four year olds wearing a stud in the ear with a careful tear or two in their jeans. Pretty rough-looking folks jostle the streets with trendy youth heading to the Havana Café for lunch and a peek at a poster of Che.
The People’s Co-op Bookstore (they don’t acknowledge their Communist Party roots too openly, but a few books by Lenin are on the shelves) had a small pile of Hurtig’s book, so I guess the masses have been surging in off the streets to learn more about the malevolent actions of Canada’s rogue Prime Minister.
Hey, maybe my cousin is right! The masses are rising up against Stephen the Cruel! Well, maybe not. Calm down.
Read More Here ...
The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper's Warmongering
Michael Welton - Counterpunch
August 7, 2015
I have spent a few days reading Yves Engler’s book, The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy (2012) about the inhumane, cold-hearted and ruthless actions of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper. This has left me feeling nauseated and ill. Today, sitting in a coffee shop in Vancouver, I looked across the sunny street at Indigo Books and they had a huge banner inscribed with “The world needs more Canada” in their front window. If it’s Harper’s Canada we are talking about, the world certainly does not need more Canada.
Early on before Harper was PM, people warned that if Canadians elected this guy there would be big trouble ahead. He was to be feared. But not enough people really believed that he would unleash the most right-wing agenda ever seen in good old progressive Canada, the big geographical country with lots of resources and billed as a fine place to live. We hike in the mountains and toast our peacekeepers in faraway stormy lands. “It’s all good” as my son might say.
Engler is in his mid-thirties and has established himself as a Chomsky-styled iconoclast. He has punctured holes in Canada’s beloved myths. Canada’s esteemed diplomat and former PM, Lester B. Pearson, doesn’t look too good after Engler takes the myth apart, brick by brick. In Engler’s portrait, Pearson was an ardent cold warrior, supported colonialism and apartheid in South Africa, Zionism and coups in Guatemala, Iran and Brazil. He also supported the US war in Viet Nam and pushed to send Canadian troops to Korea. Engler certainly poked a stick in a hornet’s nest. Really? Couldn’t be so. Not sweet Lester.
Canadians who keep a critical eye on Ottawa at least sense that Harper has unleashed a frontal attack on our democracy.
Read More here ....
Early on before Harper was PM, people warned that if Canadians elected this guy there would be big trouble ahead. He was to be feared. But not enough people really believed that he would unleash the most right-wing agenda ever seen in good old progressive Canada, the big geographical country with lots of resources and billed as a fine place to live. We hike in the mountains and toast our peacekeepers in faraway stormy lands. “It’s all good” as my son might say.
Engler is in his mid-thirties and has established himself as a Chomsky-styled iconoclast. He has punctured holes in Canada’s beloved myths. Canada’s esteemed diplomat and former PM, Lester B. Pearson, doesn’t look too good after Engler takes the myth apart, brick by brick. In Engler’s portrait, Pearson was an ardent cold warrior, supported colonialism and apartheid in South Africa, Zionism and coups in Guatemala, Iran and Brazil. He also supported the US war in Viet Nam and pushed to send Canadian troops to Korea. Engler certainly poked a stick in a hornet’s nest. Really? Couldn’t be so. Not sweet Lester.
Canadians who keep a critical eye on Ottawa at least sense that Harper has unleashed a frontal attack on our democracy.
Read More here ....
Open letter in response to
missing Mexican migrant workers article
Justicia for Migrant Workers Collective
Radical Action with Migrants in Agriculture
August 3, 2015
Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW) and Radical Action with Migrants in Agriculture (RAMA) are writing to express our outrage concerning the actions of the Vernon RCMP detachment in releasing to the public, personal information of four Mexican migrant workers employed under the auspices of the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). We believe that the RCMP has infringed on the rights of these migrant workers by publicly releasing photos, names, and passport and drivers license information to the general public.
Migrant workers employed under Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) endure both precarious and exploitative working and living conditions as a result of immigration restrictions on their mobility, the absence of provincial legislation protections, and the lack of enforcement of their rights in the workplace.
The release of this personal information establishes a dangerous precedent that may be practiced by law enforcement agencies across Canada to identify migrant workers and their whereabouts. The actions of the RCMP exacerbate an already precarious situation by further contributing to the climate of fear that migrants endure while working in Canada. When migrants attempt to seek recourse to address labour and human rights violations in the workplace or medical help for injuries and ailments sustained while working in Canada, they now have to contemplate that law enforcement agencies will violate their right to privacy by releasing personal information once they are deemed 'AWOL'.
In the context of encroachments on the civil liberties of Canadians through the enactment of Bill C-51, the criminalization of non-status migrants through their indefinite detention in jails across Canada, mandatory biometric screenings of migrant workers to Canada, and regressive reforms to the temporary foreign worker program, the actions of the RCMP only reinforce the criminalization of racialized migrant workers through the vile and reprehensible portrayal of these men through mug shot like images that create the perception that these men are a threat to the well being of communities across British Colombia and the rest of Canada.
It is our experience that witch hunts conducted against migrant workers have long lasting and negative consequences for migrant workers and their families. J4MW and RAMA demand that the RCMP issue an apology for its actions and put an end to the practice of disclosing personal information about migrant workers to the general public. We demand that steps are taken so that this racist and reactionary practice is never undertaken again.
Post your comments here ...
Migrant workers employed under Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) endure both precarious and exploitative working and living conditions as a result of immigration restrictions on their mobility, the absence of provincial legislation protections, and the lack of enforcement of their rights in the workplace.
The release of this personal information establishes a dangerous precedent that may be practiced by law enforcement agencies across Canada to identify migrant workers and their whereabouts. The actions of the RCMP exacerbate an already precarious situation by further contributing to the climate of fear that migrants endure while working in Canada. When migrants attempt to seek recourse to address labour and human rights violations in the workplace or medical help for injuries and ailments sustained while working in Canada, they now have to contemplate that law enforcement agencies will violate their right to privacy by releasing personal information once they are deemed 'AWOL'.
In the context of encroachments on the civil liberties of Canadians through the enactment of Bill C-51, the criminalization of non-status migrants through their indefinite detention in jails across Canada, mandatory biometric screenings of migrant workers to Canada, and regressive reforms to the temporary foreign worker program, the actions of the RCMP only reinforce the criminalization of racialized migrant workers through the vile and reprehensible portrayal of these men through mug shot like images that create the perception that these men are a threat to the well being of communities across British Colombia and the rest of Canada.
It is our experience that witch hunts conducted against migrant workers have long lasting and negative consequences for migrant workers and their families. J4MW and RAMA demand that the RCMP issue an apology for its actions and put an end to the practice of disclosing personal information about migrant workers to the general public. We demand that steps are taken so that this racist and reactionary practice is never undertaken again.
Post your comments here ...
OBAMA HA ACABADO CON LA PRESUNCION DE INOCENCIA"
By N. Chomsky
June 15, 2015
El presidente de EEUU, Barack Obama, un oportunista, ha anulado el principio histórico de presunción de inocencia, y la candidata a sucederlo Hillary Clinton es aún más agresiva, dice Noam Chomsky.
“Escribí sobre él en las primarias de 2008, basándome tan sólo en su página web (…), y me pareció un oportunista”, dice el prestigioso lingüista estadounidense en una entrevista publicada el jueves por la página World Net Daily.
Al no albergar ninguna expectativa previa sobre Obama —cuyo mandato expirará a principios de 2017—, Chomsky no se sintió decepcionado. Incluso aprecia lareforma sanitaria del mandatario como “un pequeño paso” hacia una “sanidad nacional”, que es lo que deseaban dos terceras partes de los estadounidenses y que fue desechado sin discusión alguna, recuerda.
“El sistema de sanidad de Estados Unidos (EE.UU.) es horrible. Cuesta al menos el doble del de sociedades comparables y da uno de los peores resultados”, evalúa.Mucho más crítico se muestra el referente de la izquierda estadounidense con el lanzamiento por Obama de un programa de asesinatos por medio de aviones no tripulados.
Con este programa de asesinatos, alerta Chomsky, Obama “ha anulado el principio (de presunción de inocencia) designando personas como culpables si la Casa Blanca decide que podrían un día querer dañarnos”. “Si cualquier otro país, como Irán, hiciera esto, lo consideraríamos como justificación de una guerra nuclear”, señala sobre el doble rasero imperante en la política exterior de Washington. Y aún considera “quizá un poco más agresiva” a la exsecretaria de Estado estadounidense Hillary Clinton, al preguntársele sobre la posibilidad de que suceda a Obama en 2017.
También carga contra los círculos sionistas: “aquellos que se llaman defensores de Israel, de hecho están defendiendo su degeneración moral, su creciente aislamiento internacional y es posible que, finalmente, su destrucción”, dice, señalando el expansionismo belicista del régimen israelí como “suicida e inmoral”.
El señalado en 2005 como “el máximo intelectual del mundo” hace además unacrítica demoledora del régimen político de EE.UU., observando que la mayoría de la población está, en la práctica, “privada de derechos”.
“Los tres cuartos —más o menos— inferiores en la distribución de ingresos no tienen absolutamente ninguna influencia en la política del Gobierno (…). La orientación política se establece en la cúspide”, denuncia Chomsky.
Chomsky llega a equiparar la participación actual en las elecciones estadounidenses a la existente alrededor del nivel de principios del siglo XIX, cuando el derecho al voto estaba limitado a los propietarios blancos varones”, y considera esta regresión histórica como “el abandono de la creencia en (la existencia de) ningún tipo de sistema democrático”.
En medio de este desastre político estadounidense y occidental, el politólogo advierte: “la especie humana va a la carrera hacia el desastre”, que divisa, por un lado, en “la amenaza nuclear, que es significativa y creciente”; y, por otro, en “la catástrofe medioambiental”.
“A no ser que todos nosotros, incluyéndome a mí, nos dediquemos a salvarnos de nuestra propia locura, estamos condenados”, alerta.Para prevenir esos desastres, dice Chomsky, se hace necesario “una clara inversión de la orientación política” para avanzar “muy rápido hacia la energía sostenible”, además de “eliminar la amenaza de las armas nucleares”. Cambio que considera “a nuestro alcance y realizable, pero con mucho esfuerzo”.
Other related articles here...
“Escribí sobre él en las primarias de 2008, basándome tan sólo en su página web (…), y me pareció un oportunista”, dice el prestigioso lingüista estadounidense en una entrevista publicada el jueves por la página World Net Daily.
Al no albergar ninguna expectativa previa sobre Obama —cuyo mandato expirará a principios de 2017—, Chomsky no se sintió decepcionado. Incluso aprecia lareforma sanitaria del mandatario como “un pequeño paso” hacia una “sanidad nacional”, que es lo que deseaban dos terceras partes de los estadounidenses y que fue desechado sin discusión alguna, recuerda.
“El sistema de sanidad de Estados Unidos (EE.UU.) es horrible. Cuesta al menos el doble del de sociedades comparables y da uno de los peores resultados”, evalúa.Mucho más crítico se muestra el referente de la izquierda estadounidense con el lanzamiento por Obama de un programa de asesinatos por medio de aviones no tripulados.
Con este programa de asesinatos, alerta Chomsky, Obama “ha anulado el principio (de presunción de inocencia) designando personas como culpables si la Casa Blanca decide que podrían un día querer dañarnos”. “Si cualquier otro país, como Irán, hiciera esto, lo consideraríamos como justificación de una guerra nuclear”, señala sobre el doble rasero imperante en la política exterior de Washington. Y aún considera “quizá un poco más agresiva” a la exsecretaria de Estado estadounidense Hillary Clinton, al preguntársele sobre la posibilidad de que suceda a Obama en 2017.
También carga contra los círculos sionistas: “aquellos que se llaman defensores de Israel, de hecho están defendiendo su degeneración moral, su creciente aislamiento internacional y es posible que, finalmente, su destrucción”, dice, señalando el expansionismo belicista del régimen israelí como “suicida e inmoral”.
El señalado en 2005 como “el máximo intelectual del mundo” hace además unacrítica demoledora del régimen político de EE.UU., observando que la mayoría de la población está, en la práctica, “privada de derechos”.
“Los tres cuartos —más o menos— inferiores en la distribución de ingresos no tienen absolutamente ninguna influencia en la política del Gobierno (…). La orientación política se establece en la cúspide”, denuncia Chomsky.
Chomsky llega a equiparar la participación actual en las elecciones estadounidenses a la existente alrededor del nivel de principios del siglo XIX, cuando el derecho al voto estaba limitado a los propietarios blancos varones”, y considera esta regresión histórica como “el abandono de la creencia en (la existencia de) ningún tipo de sistema democrático”.
En medio de este desastre político estadounidense y occidental, el politólogo advierte: “la especie humana va a la carrera hacia el desastre”, que divisa, por un lado, en “la amenaza nuclear, que es significativa y creciente”; y, por otro, en “la catástrofe medioambiental”.
“A no ser que todos nosotros, incluyéndome a mí, nos dediquemos a salvarnos de nuestra propia locura, estamos condenados”, alerta.Para prevenir esos desastres, dice Chomsky, se hace necesario “una clara inversión de la orientación política” para avanzar “muy rápido hacia la energía sostenible”, además de “eliminar la amenaza de las armas nucleares”. Cambio que considera “a nuestro alcance y realizable, pero con mucho esfuerzo”.
Other related articles here...
C-51 sparks KI First Nation to request spy records
Formerly jailed Chief calls for stop to spying on First Nations
KI has filed a detailed request today under the Access to Information Act that seeks documents and other information regarding record keeping and retention, policy guidelines, statistics, and investigatory records concerning the RCMP and CSIS surveillance of KI.
For more information please read document attached!
For more information please read document attached!
Chomsky Says U.S. is World’s Biggest Terrorist
-Interview-
By Euro News
April 18, 2015
- Isabelle Kumar: “The world in 2015 seems a very unsettled place but if we take a big picture view do you feel optimistic or pessimistic about the general state of play?”
- Noam Chomsky: “In the global scene we are racing towards a precipice which we are determined to fall over which will sharply reduce the prospects for decent survival.”
- Isabelle Kumar: “What precipice is that?”
- Noam Chomsky: “There are actually two, one is environmental catastrophe which is imminent and we don’t have a lot of time to deal with it and we are going the wrong way, and the other has been around for 70 years, the threat of nuclear war, which is in fact increasing. If you look at the record it is a miracle we have survived.”
Read more here
- Noam Chomsky: “In the global scene we are racing towards a precipice which we are determined to fall over which will sharply reduce the prospects for decent survival.”
- Isabelle Kumar: “What precipice is that?”
- Noam Chomsky: “There are actually two, one is environmental catastrophe which is imminent and we don’t have a lot of time to deal with it and we are going the wrong way, and the other has been around for 70 years, the threat of nuclear war, which is in fact increasing. If you look at the record it is a miracle we have survived.”
Read more here
WASHINGTON WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DIVIDE LATIN AMERICA
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
What are Washington’s prerogatives to intervene in the revolutionary processes undertaken by the peoples of other nations exercising their sovereignty based on universally recognized international law?
By virtue of which norms and principles of International Law does Washington have the right to order new sanctions against the sovereign government of Nicolas Maduro?
In the late eighteenth century, the founding fathers of US imperialist ideology developed the principles of "manifest destiny"; a philosophy which attributed to the US the alleged "special mission" of taking its system of economic, social and political organization throughout the whole of North America and, subsequently, to the entire Western Hemisphere. RED MORE HERE ...
By virtue of which norms and principles of International Law does Washington have the right to order new sanctions against the sovereign government of Nicolas Maduro?
In the late eighteenth century, the founding fathers of US imperialist ideology developed the principles of "manifest destiny"; a philosophy which attributed to the US the alleged "special mission" of taking its system of economic, social and political organization throughout the whole of North America and, subsequently, to the entire Western Hemisphere. RED MORE HERE ...
US and Canadian Church Stand in Solidarity with Latin American Bishops to Lift Up Perils of Irresponsible Mining
March 20, 2015
At a historic hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights yesterday, bishops representing the Latin American Episcopal Conference, CELAM, testified on the effects of exploitative practices of mining and extractive industries on communities and the environment in Latin America.
Joined by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, representing the USCCB, and Bishop Donald Bolen, representing the bishops of Canada, Peruvian Archbishop Pedro Barreto, Guatemalan Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini, and Bishop Roque Paloschi of Brazil detailed in strong and compelling terms the human rights, public health and environmental consequences related to operations in Latin America by U.S. and Canadian mining companies.
They urged that U.S. and Canadian mining companies be held accountable to laws and standards that protect local economies, the environment, indigenous communities and vulnerable groups even when operating outside of the country. Read More here .....
Joined by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, representing the USCCB, and Bishop Donald Bolen, representing the bishops of Canada, Peruvian Archbishop Pedro Barreto, Guatemalan Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini, and Bishop Roque Paloschi of Brazil detailed in strong and compelling terms the human rights, public health and environmental consequences related to operations in Latin America by U.S. and Canadian mining companies.
They urged that U.S. and Canadian mining companies be held accountable to laws and standards that protect local economies, the environment, indigenous communities and vulnerable groups even when operating outside of the country. Read More here .....
Canada-Colombia FTA Human Rights Report Fails to Take
Human Rights Seriously
For the second year in a row, the Conservative government has failed to live up to its moral obligation to analyze the impact of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCOFTA) on human rights. The reporting obligation, embedded as a side agreement in the FTA, was hailed by the Liberals as a “new gold standard” for human rights reporting in free trade agreements and touted by the Conservative government as a meaningful way to address human rights accountability in trade. Civil society, labour and human rights organizations feared that it was merely unenforceable window dressing.
Last year’s report, referred to by many as a“non-report”, promised that a real study would come in 2013. It would “provide an analysis of any noticeable changes in trade and in human rights situation in the most active economic sectors stemming from the agreement” and some basic “baseline information”about human rights and trade in Colombia. Released mid-June, this year’s report falls way short of the promised gold standard and confirms suspicions that the reporting obligation was mere window dressing. It speaks almost exclusively of macroeconomics and trade flows, and -- most alarmingly -- limits its scope to actions taken by the Canadian government under the FTA’s Implementation Act. Clearly absent from the report is any data or analysis
around changes in the human rights situation or the impacts of Canadian investment on human rights in Colombia, rendering the report virtually irrelevant.
One could be forgiven for thinking the government is aware of the human rights issues in Colombia and trying to evade public and media scrutiny on the issue: Rather than publically announcing the release of the report as a good news story for trade and human rights, it surreptitiously tabled it through the back door just before Parliament rose for the summer.
The report outlines a consultation process with stakeholders that is indicative of a deeper issue with the Harper government: contempt for genuine broad-based popular consultation. This is evidenced by its“public call for
submissions” for civil society. An unpublicized posting on DFAIT’s website gave participants just over a week to provide input into this important debate. Not surprisingly, no submissions were received. The government went through the motions of a consultation process, but clearly did not provide a meaningful or genuine opportunity for input.
Canadians should be outraged at the government’s lackadaisical report and its disingenuous attempt at public consultation on the serious human rights situation impacting Colombians. They should also question the waste of taxpayer dollars on a process that included expensive Ministerial travel with outcomes as trivial as “designating formal contact points” but did not actually meet its goal of examining how free trade is impacting human rights in Colombia.
Considering the alarming prevalence of human rights abuses, violence, intimidation and assassination in Colombia, the Conservative government has missed an important window of opportunity to hold the Colombian government accountable for the deplorable human rights situation there. It has shown, once again, that corporate rights dominate our government’s agenda, at the expense of human rights and labour concerns.
According to a recent article published in Embassy magazine, “more than one third of Colombia’s Indigenous peoples are threatened with extermination, according to the country's highest court -- a crisis fueled by the violent imposition of megaprojects on indigenous territories. And in 2012, over 280 Colombian trade unionists received death threats and 20 were killed – making it one of the world’s most dangerous places for unionists”.
Last month, two Colombian union leaders from the Colombian Oil Industry (USO) toured various cities in Canada to denounce violations by Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales Energy. Their final statement denounced the “failure of the governments of Canada and Colombia to comply with labour and environmental agreements and respect human rights, in spite of commitments being ratified by both governments under the CCOFTA”.
The report does highlight one notable piece of information, which contradicts a key narrative of the government’s Americas’policy. This narrative often used to counter opponents of free trade agreements with troubled countries like Colombia and Honduras, claims that increased mutual prosperity leads to economic development -- which in turn improves human rights. However, the report fails to prove this connection, stating instead that “there is no evidence of a causal link between the reductions in tariffs by Canada in accordance with the CCOFTA and changes in human rights in Colombia”.
The report makes it clear that the Canadian government is not walking the talk when it comes to human rights. Its failure to undertake a genuine Human Rights Impact Assessment not only makes a mockery of the principles behind the reporting obligation but also demonstrates the government’s lack of regard for human rights. This report further undermines Canada’s credibility in Latin America and across the globe.
Raul Burbano is the Program Director at Common Frontiers
Last year’s report, referred to by many as a“non-report”, promised that a real study would come in 2013. It would “provide an analysis of any noticeable changes in trade and in human rights situation in the most active economic sectors stemming from the agreement” and some basic “baseline information”about human rights and trade in Colombia. Released mid-June, this year’s report falls way short of the promised gold standard and confirms suspicions that the reporting obligation was mere window dressing. It speaks almost exclusively of macroeconomics and trade flows, and -- most alarmingly -- limits its scope to actions taken by the Canadian government under the FTA’s Implementation Act. Clearly absent from the report is any data or analysis
around changes in the human rights situation or the impacts of Canadian investment on human rights in Colombia, rendering the report virtually irrelevant.
One could be forgiven for thinking the government is aware of the human rights issues in Colombia and trying to evade public and media scrutiny on the issue: Rather than publically announcing the release of the report as a good news story for trade and human rights, it surreptitiously tabled it through the back door just before Parliament rose for the summer.
The report outlines a consultation process with stakeholders that is indicative of a deeper issue with the Harper government: contempt for genuine broad-based popular consultation. This is evidenced by its“public call for
submissions” for civil society. An unpublicized posting on DFAIT’s website gave participants just over a week to provide input into this important debate. Not surprisingly, no submissions were received. The government went through the motions of a consultation process, but clearly did not provide a meaningful or genuine opportunity for input.
Canadians should be outraged at the government’s lackadaisical report and its disingenuous attempt at public consultation on the serious human rights situation impacting Colombians. They should also question the waste of taxpayer dollars on a process that included expensive Ministerial travel with outcomes as trivial as “designating formal contact points” but did not actually meet its goal of examining how free trade is impacting human rights in Colombia.
Considering the alarming prevalence of human rights abuses, violence, intimidation and assassination in Colombia, the Conservative government has missed an important window of opportunity to hold the Colombian government accountable for the deplorable human rights situation there. It has shown, once again, that corporate rights dominate our government’s agenda, at the expense of human rights and labour concerns.
According to a recent article published in Embassy magazine, “more than one third of Colombia’s Indigenous peoples are threatened with extermination, according to the country's highest court -- a crisis fueled by the violent imposition of megaprojects on indigenous territories. And in 2012, over 280 Colombian trade unionists received death threats and 20 were killed – making it one of the world’s most dangerous places for unionists”.
Last month, two Colombian union leaders from the Colombian Oil Industry (USO) toured various cities in Canada to denounce violations by Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales Energy. Their final statement denounced the “failure of the governments of Canada and Colombia to comply with labour and environmental agreements and respect human rights, in spite of commitments being ratified by both governments under the CCOFTA”.
The report does highlight one notable piece of information, which contradicts a key narrative of the government’s Americas’policy. This narrative often used to counter opponents of free trade agreements with troubled countries like Colombia and Honduras, claims that increased mutual prosperity leads to economic development -- which in turn improves human rights. However, the report fails to prove this connection, stating instead that “there is no evidence of a causal link between the reductions in tariffs by Canada in accordance with the CCOFTA and changes in human rights in Colombia”.
The report makes it clear that the Canadian government is not walking the talk when it comes to human rights. Its failure to undertake a genuine Human Rights Impact Assessment not only makes a mockery of the principles behind the reporting obligation but also demonstrates the government’s lack of regard for human rights. This report further undermines Canada’s credibility in Latin America and across the globe.
Raul Burbano is the Program Director at Common Frontiers
Social Forum: General Assembly Jan.26 & 27 2013
T
The General Assembly that will launch the Peoples’ Social Forum
will be held at the University of Ottawa, 120 University, Faculty of Social Sciences building, Room FSS- 2005.
There will be organizations/individuals from across Canada including a strong representation from Indigenous groups, indie media, youth, labour and community groups-see
proposed agenda.
The assembly will set-up the structure and hold initial discussions on the themes, axe, process, date and place of the Peoples Social Forum. The Assembly is free and open to all
interested parties.
L'Association pour une solidaritésyndicale étudiante (ASSÉ) along with a diverse collective of organizations from across Canada have begun the process of developing a proposal for a pan-Canadian coalition that would bring together Indigenous, Quebec and Canadian social movements. This proposal will be discussed at the forum and can be found here.
Idle No More founders and organizers in solidarity withCommon Causes - a new initiative bringing together social justice, environmental, and labour, will be present at the forum to share information about the Idle No More world day of action on January
28th 2013 .
For more information please contact Roger Rashi roger@alternatives.ca or Raul Burbano burbano@rogers.com
'IDLE NO MORE'
| arrange_meeting_requested_by_chief_spence.pdf |
Why we need a Canada-Québec-Indigenous Social Forum
By Raul Burbano and Roger Rashi| October 9, 2012| rabble.ca
Españoles y franceses en la final
Anger and discontent against the ruling Conservative government is on the rise all across Canada. Human rights groups, women's organizations, cultural
associations, environment groups, labour, indigenous peoples, students, generally civil society organizations feel threatened and angered by the government's policies and actions.
Protests for social and environmental justice are erupting all over the
country. Casseroles have been organized on the streets of many cities in support of the student movement in Quebec. The youth across Canada are joining hands with those from Quebec in challenging neo-liberal austerity policies.
Indigenous communities are also fighting against the government to preserve their culture and defend their lands from predatory mining and oil corporations. There are many campaigns, gatherings and protests planned for the months to come.
Yet our movements continue to be fragmented and ghettoized. We must work together and create a space for all these voices of dissent and strategize together our progressive agenda to help build links and solidarity across movements and issues.
A grassroots approach to a Canada-Québec-Indigenous Peoples' Social Forum
The grassroots horizontal approach was taken while organizing a Social Forum across Canada as a means of stimulating debate, discussion and furthering our sense of community and collective action. The process of the social forum seeks to reach out to a plurality of social movements, groups and progressive institutions across Canada, Québec and Indigenous communities. The short term goal being to build on existing struggles by building a united and cohesive front against the Conservative agenda of austerity and privatization but long-term to help transform the current political, economic and social paradigm, by employing creative resistance while proposing alternatives solutions.
So far, several organizations and individuals have come together to form Expansion Commissions in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. Discussions are going on to form similar commissions in Vancouver, Calgary, St. John's, etc. The Expansion Commissions will focus on involving as many other organizations and individuals in the process.
There is a proposal that these Commissions call for a General Assembly later this fall or in early winter to launch the Peoples’ Social Forum. This general assembly will take the decisions on the name, final dates and places as well as the process leading to the forum, and its final format.
These are the organizations that have already joined the discussions:
Alternatives; Canadian Union of Postal Workers; Centrale des syndicats du Québec (CSQ); Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal; Chantier de l’économie sociale; Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), Toronto; Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union; Common Frontiers; Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN); Conseil Central Montréal métropolitain (CCMM-CSN); Conseil
québécois des gais et lesbiennes; Council of Canadians; Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ); Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec (FIQ); Fédération nationale des enseignants et enseignantes du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN); Front d’action populaire en réaménagement urbain; Indigenous Environmental Network; Indigenous Peoples Solidarity
Movement; Institut du nouveau monde; Public Service Alliance of Canada; Quebec Native Women (FAQ-QNW); Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network; Occupy Toronto; Toronto Bolivia Solidarity; Toronto Stop the Cuts.
What is a social forum?
The first social forum was the World Social Forum held in January 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Simply put, it was a response to the growing onslaught of the neoliberal agenda of the ruling parties in many parts of the world. It challenged the TINA syndrome as well as the right-wing theses of "the end of history" and "clash of civilizations." It also proposed the slogan "Another World is Possible."
The World Social Forum was intended as a regular meeting of activists to move experiences from the individual to the collective.
This forum set the trend for organizing such events on an annual basis. Until 2007 there were seven WSF in different cities of the world with an average participation of 100 000 people. From then onwards a WSF is held every two years. The next WSF-2013 will be held in Tunis.
In addition to this global event, there emerged national and regional social forums. For example "Quebec Social Forum," "European Social Forum," "Africa Social Forum","India Social Forum." At the same time social forums were organized on thematic basis. For example, "Democracy Social Forum," "Education Social Forum," etc.
The WSF charter explains the social forum in the following manner:
"The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Humankind and between it and the Earth...
The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations’ interests, with the complicity of national governments. They are designed to ensure that globalization in solidarity will prevail as a new stage in world history. This will respect universal human rights, and those of all citizens -- men and women -- of all nations and the environment and will rest
on democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.
The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party context that, in a decentralized fashion, interrelates organizations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the international to build another world."
The World Social Forum Charter of Principles was approved and adopted in São Paulo, on April 9, 2001, by the organizations that make up the World Social Forum Organizing Committee.
Raul Burbano is an activist with Common Frontiers, and Roger Rashi is a member of Alternatives.
To ge involved contact Raul Burbano burbano@rogers.com or Roger Rashi at roger@alternatives.ca
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Sacred Stones
Co-presented with Planet in Focus and the Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network.
Resource extraction in Palestine is creating severe ecological, social and health consequences for residents in villages, towns and refugee camps.
The Toronto Palestine Film Festival is screening the film "Sacred Stones" on Tuesday Oct 2nd, 9pm @ Art Gallery of Ontarioto raise awareness of this issue. Get tickets here: http://tpff.ca/tpff-program-2012/.
Resource extraction in Palestine is creating severe ecological, social and health consequences for residents in villages, towns and refugee camps.
The Toronto Palestine Film Festival is screening the film "Sacred Stones" on Tuesday Oct 2nd, 9pm @ Art Gallery of Ontarioto raise awareness of this issue. Get tickets here: http://tpff.ca/tpff-program-2012/.
'Maple Tour' kicks off with a bang! Next stop: Toronto
Day two of our national speaking tour dawned sunny in London, Ontario -- a
good omen for things to come. On day one we spoke to over a hundred people at King's College in London, an active and engaged crowd who kept us half an hour past the end of the event with questions.
We then had a lovely dinner party with several dozen of London's finest activists at the home of our wonderful host, professor Bernie Hammond.
Discussion and drinking continued into the wee hours, and a fabulous time was had by all. We couldn't have asked for a better start to the tour.
As I write this we're in a car headed to Toronto, where we'll be doing some interviews before heading to a pub night at the Regal Beagle at 8pm. Tomorrow
kicks off bright and early with Gabriel doing an interview on Metro Morning, the CBC Radio morning show in Toronto, shortly before seven. From there Cloé will be speaking at a rally to kick off social justice week at Ryerson at Noon, before we head to York for a panel discussion and close the night off with a massive event at Ryerson. You can also see Gabriel interviewed live on CTV News
Channel tonight at 6pm.
You can find the details for these events, and upcoming stops in Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Victoria and Vancouver later this week, here. If you're in one of these cities I hope you'll join us. Sadly time and money prevented us from stopping in Alberta or the Maritimes, which we had originally planned to do -- so my apologies to friends in those places.
The tour has already received great coverage in national and local outlets, and local organizers tell us they expect large crowds at each of the stops. But perhaps the most gratifying compliment we're received came in the form of a mocking blog post by Stephen Taylor entitled "Student entitlement tour coming to a city near you." When you piss off the President of the National Citizens Coalition (Harper's former employer) enough to accuse you of "fanciful marxist bleating", you know you're doing something right!
I'll have to keep this post short, as we're about to arrive at the annual
convention of the Latin American Solidarity Network, but I'll try to write regular, if short, updates from the road as the week progresses.
You can also keep up with the latest news from our tour by following me on Twitter @EthanCoxMTL, and using the hashtag
#MapleTour.
good omen for things to come. On day one we spoke to over a hundred people at King's College in London, an active and engaged crowd who kept us half an hour past the end of the event with questions.
We then had a lovely dinner party with several dozen of London's finest activists at the home of our wonderful host, professor Bernie Hammond.
Discussion and drinking continued into the wee hours, and a fabulous time was had by all. We couldn't have asked for a better start to the tour.
As I write this we're in a car headed to Toronto, where we'll be doing some interviews before heading to a pub night at the Regal Beagle at 8pm. Tomorrow
kicks off bright and early with Gabriel doing an interview on Metro Morning, the CBC Radio morning show in Toronto, shortly before seven. From there Cloé will be speaking at a rally to kick off social justice week at Ryerson at Noon, before we head to York for a panel discussion and close the night off with a massive event at Ryerson. You can also see Gabriel interviewed live on CTV News
Channel tonight at 6pm.
You can find the details for these events, and upcoming stops in Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Victoria and Vancouver later this week, here. If you're in one of these cities I hope you'll join us. Sadly time and money prevented us from stopping in Alberta or the Maritimes, which we had originally planned to do -- so my apologies to friends in those places.
The tour has already received great coverage in national and local outlets, and local organizers tell us they expect large crowds at each of the stops. But perhaps the most gratifying compliment we're received came in the form of a mocking blog post by Stephen Taylor entitled "Student entitlement tour coming to a city near you." When you piss off the President of the National Citizens Coalition (Harper's former employer) enough to accuse you of "fanciful marxist bleating", you know you're doing something right!
I'll have to keep this post short, as we're about to arrive at the annual
convention of the Latin American Solidarity Network, but I'll try to write regular, if short, updates from the road as the week progresses.
You can also keep up with the latest news from our tour by following me on Twitter @EthanCoxMTL, and using the hashtag
#MapleTour.
To watch videos of speakers at conference see http://www.solidarityresponse.net/mining-injustice-conference-2012/
Movement Report back: Environmental Justice and Solidarity
Original blog post from Toronto Media Co-op posted on February 18, 2012 by Megan Kinch
The environmental justice movement has been distinguished by
practicality as opposed to a particular ideological or tactical framework for
action. This diversity was exemplified by Thursday’s panel- part of Latin
American and Caribbean Solidarity Month, which featured a broad range of tactics
from direct action, to community organizing to put political pressure on
governments, to indigenous resistance, all together on one panel, bound by a
common cause.
The environmental justice movement is reacting to changes in the
global political context. Brent Patterson from council of Canadians talked about
the need to fight the new UN‘green economy” which he called the
“financialization and commodification of nature and the privatization of public
water’. This kind of greenwashing of high finance indicates the limits of the
traditional environmental movement, and the extent to which corporations and
capitalism have adapted a ‘green’rhetoric that does nothing to change the
systemic exploitation of people and nature. Raul Burbano said: "Issues of
environment, of water of austerity are all inter-related. The same issues we see
here are the same as you see in the south and that is why solidarity is so
important.”
Ben Powless, a Mohawk photojournalist speaking on behalf of the
Indigenous Environmental Network, told the audience that “First nations are
beginning to lead a lot of this resistance. We’re all on the front line in some
way. Of course some communities are more directly affected, but we have to find
our own front line and find a way to act from our own positions, from our own
privileges”. Dave Vasey spoke about how living through Walkerton’s water crisis
opened his eyes to the crisis of water contamination in indigenous communities
and the systemic racism that makes Walkerton newsworthy but ignores even worse
water problems on reserves.“Communities take action because the they have to.”
he said. “And now we in Canada have to.”
The audience included many environmental justice activists,
including Ron Plain from Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia, which has been
described as the most polluted place in Ontario. It’s not often on the left that
the question and answer period includes both people urging that struggles be
channeled through the NDP, and Ron Plain talking about how when he was young he
served a 6 month sentence for blocking the Gardiner expressway, and how
organizers need to be honest about the kind of risks faced by protesters so that
new people can make informed decisions. But in many ways, its important to lay
out the real possibilities for different kinds of action that are on the table -
not a stereotype of 'diversity of tactics', but a real one that includes people
who want to lobby parliament, or use UN international law, or vote NDP as well
as people who want to do protests or act in solidarity with indigenous
communities taking direct action.
Environmental justice organizers are leading the way In working
across political differences and taking indigenous solidairty seriously, and
this panel was another example of what they have to teach to broader social
movements.
Megan Kinch is an organizer with Mining Injustice, a member
organization of the Latin American and Caribean Solidarity Network. The month of
solidarity continues, check here for the schedule of
events.
practicality as opposed to a particular ideological or tactical framework for
action. This diversity was exemplified by Thursday’s panel- part of Latin
American and Caribbean Solidarity Month, which featured a broad range of tactics
from direct action, to community organizing to put political pressure on
governments, to indigenous resistance, all together on one panel, bound by a
common cause.
The environmental justice movement is reacting to changes in the
global political context. Brent Patterson from council of Canadians talked about
the need to fight the new UN‘green economy” which he called the
“financialization and commodification of nature and the privatization of public
water’. This kind of greenwashing of high finance indicates the limits of the
traditional environmental movement, and the extent to which corporations and
capitalism have adapted a ‘green’rhetoric that does nothing to change the
systemic exploitation of people and nature. Raul Burbano said: "Issues of
environment, of water of austerity are all inter-related. The same issues we see
here are the same as you see in the south and that is why solidarity is so
important.”
Ben Powless, a Mohawk photojournalist speaking on behalf of the
Indigenous Environmental Network, told the audience that “First nations are
beginning to lead a lot of this resistance. We’re all on the front line in some
way. Of course some communities are more directly affected, but we have to find
our own front line and find a way to act from our own positions, from our own
privileges”. Dave Vasey spoke about how living through Walkerton’s water crisis
opened his eyes to the crisis of water contamination in indigenous communities
and the systemic racism that makes Walkerton newsworthy but ignores even worse
water problems on reserves.“Communities take action because the they have to.”
he said. “And now we in Canada have to.”
The audience included many environmental justice activists,
including Ron Plain from Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia, which has been
described as the most polluted place in Ontario. It’s not often on the left that
the question and answer period includes both people urging that struggles be
channeled through the NDP, and Ron Plain talking about how when he was young he
served a 6 month sentence for blocking the Gardiner expressway, and how
organizers need to be honest about the kind of risks faced by protesters so that
new people can make informed decisions. But in many ways, its important to lay
out the real possibilities for different kinds of action that are on the table -
not a stereotype of 'diversity of tactics', but a real one that includes people
who want to lobby parliament, or use UN international law, or vote NDP as well
as people who want to do protests or act in solidarity with indigenous
communities taking direct action.
Environmental justice organizers are leading the way In working
across political differences and taking indigenous solidairty seriously, and
this panel was another example of what they have to teach to broader social
movements.
Megan Kinch is an organizer with Mining Injustice, a member
organization of the Latin American and Caribean Solidarity Network. The month of
solidarity continues, check here for the schedule of
events.
Foro público con la activista social Betty Matamoros
Betty Matamoros
Betty Matamoros, activista social hondureña y Coordinadora para Centroamérica de la Alianza Social del Hemisferio, llegará a Toronto para participar en el Fórum Público “Golpes de Estado, Comercio y Derechos Humanos”.
Este evento se efectuará este próximo viernes 18 de noviembre a partir de las 7:00 p.m. en Beit Zatoun House, ubicado en el 612 Markham Street, al oeste de la estación de Bathurst.
En dicho Fórum también participará el periodista Kevin Edmonds conocedor del tema sobre Haití y el rol que la Minustah ha desempeñado en ese país.
Complementando el tema, Betty Matamoros, quien también fue vocera internacional del Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, se referirá al caso de Honduras.
Como es sabido, en junio de 2.009, el presidente constitucional Manuel Zelaya fue depuesto por un golpe militar apoyado por los gobiernos de los Estados Unidos y Canadá -entre otros, luego de lo cual la represión contra la oposición ha sido constante.
El Fórum es organizado por Common Frontiers- Toronto Haití Action Commitee y la Red Latino Americana y el Caribe de Solidaridad, dentro de la serie de eventos que vienen siendo promovidos por grupos y organizaciones locales con la finalidad de informar sobre sucesos de nuestra América y la región del Caribe
Marco Antonio Castillo
http://www.elcorreo.ca/story.php?story_id=18475
Este evento se efectuará este próximo viernes 18 de noviembre a partir de las 7:00 p.m. en Beit Zatoun House, ubicado en el 612 Markham Street, al oeste de la estación de Bathurst.
En dicho Fórum también participará el periodista Kevin Edmonds conocedor del tema sobre Haití y el rol que la Minustah ha desempeñado en ese país.
Complementando el tema, Betty Matamoros, quien también fue vocera internacional del Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, se referirá al caso de Honduras.
Como es sabido, en junio de 2.009, el presidente constitucional Manuel Zelaya fue depuesto por un golpe militar apoyado por los gobiernos de los Estados Unidos y Canadá -entre otros, luego de lo cual la represión contra la oposición ha sido constante.
El Fórum es organizado por Common Frontiers- Toronto Haití Action Commitee y la Red Latino Americana y el Caribe de Solidaridad, dentro de la serie de eventos que vienen siendo promovidos por grupos y organizaciones locales con la finalidad de informar sobre sucesos de nuestra América y la región del Caribe
Marco Antonio Castillo
http://www.elcorreo.ca/story.php?story_id=18475
www.aguaypachamama.org
The Verdict of the Ethical Tribunal on Criminalization
At the Continental Gathering of the People of
Abya Yala in Defense of Water and Pachamama
Cuenca, Ecuador from June 21 to 24, 2011
CLICK BELOW TO DOWNLOAD THE VEREDICT
| summary_of_the_verdict_of_the_ethical_tribunal_on_criminalization.pdf |
| ethical_tribunal_verdict_full_22-23jun11.pdf |
The U.S.’ War on Democracy
The War on Democracy is a 2007 award-winning documentary film directed by Christopher Martin and John Pilger. Focusing on the political state of Latin America, the film is a rebuke of both the United States' intervention in foreign countries' domestic politics, and its "War on Terrorism". The film was first released in the United Kingdom on June 15, 2007.
Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the films message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
to see Video
http://vimeo.com/16724719
Set both in Latin America and the United States, the film explores the historic and current relationship of Washington with countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger says that the film "...tells a universal story... analysing and revealing, through vivid testimony, the story of great power behind its venerable myths. It allows us to understand the true nature of the so-called "war on terror". According to Pilger, the films message is that the greed and power of empire is not invincible and that people power is always the "seed beneath the snow".
to see Video
http://vimeo.com/16724719
Deny Bail to Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes! Human rights groups seek denial of bail to Guatemalan in Calgary accused of crimes against humanity
On February 23, Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes will have a bail hearing in a Calgary court. Captured in Lethbridge, Alberta in January, 2011 Sosa Orantes is facing possible extradition to the USA where an indictment there alleges that he participated in carrying out a massacre in the community of Las Dos Erres during Guatemala's 36 year Internal Armed Conflict. He faces charges in the USA of lying on citizenship forms about his role with the Guatemalan military. Canada has a responsibility in this case to ensure that Sosa Orantes is not released on bail, nor extradited to the USA where he will be tried for lesser crimes.
Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes is one of 17 former Kaibiles, a Special Forces unit of the Guatemalan army, charged in relation to the Las Dos Erres massacre. On December 6, 1982, at least 252 unarmed civilians were systematically tortured and killed in the community of Las Dos Erres, in northern Guatemala. Only two children survived. In the years since the massacre, family members of the victims have sought justice, despite many obstacles and threats. The facts of the case are corroborated by the two surviving eyewitnesses, as well as by declassified documents from the US Embassy and evidence unearthed in two exhumations of the remains of the victims. Sosa Orantes is named as one of those who planned the massacre in the testimony of other Kaibiles tried in the case.
The Association for the Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Guatemala (FAMDEGUA) is plaintiff in the case against the Kaibiles and has been providing legal support for the case since investigations began in 1994. In 2000, the legal case against the 17 former Kaibiles was launched. Since then, 45 injunctions have been put forward by the defendants. There have also been numerous threats made against the staff of FAMDEGUA. In 2009, the OAS Inter-American Court on Human Rights ruled that the State of Guatemala was guilty of impeding justice in this case, and in 2010 the Guatemalan Supreme Court of Justice issued arrest warrants for the 17 men charged. Three of them were arrested and are being tried in Guatemala. Three others were arrested for immigration fraud in the United States, for lying on their immigration applications and for committing crimes for which they have not been tried. In 2010, one was convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in prison (the maximum possible sentence). The other two await trial in the United States, though the Guatemalan Attorney General has requested their extradition.
Sosa Orantes is also wanted for immigration fraud in the United States, but fled to Mexico before being captured. In October 2010, the RCMP alerted police in Lethbridge that Sosa Orantes might try to contact family living there. In January 2011, Sosa Orantes left Mexico for Canada and was arrested in Lethbridge on January 18. The United States has requested his detention in anticipation of possible extradition on charges of immigration fraud. He holds Canadian, American, and Guatemalan citizenship.
Sosa Orantes could be investigated here in Canada for crimes against humanity. He also faces charges in Guatemala for crimes against humanity, and his participation in the Las Dos Erres massacre could implicate him in the Guatemala genocide case in Spain. These countries may also seek extradition orders. These cases are at a critical juncture, and it is possible that the family members of those who were tortured and killed in the Las Dos Erres massacre may finally see justice, if Sosa Orantes and others are tried for the participation in the planning and execution of the massacre.
There are strong allegations that Jorge Vinicio Sosa Orantes was involved in the massacre in Las Dos Erres. He must not be released on bail, nor extradited to the United States where he will be tried for lesser crimes. Families of the victims as well as Guatemalan and international organizations are calling on the Canadian government to ensure that he is tried for the crimes that he has allegedly committed.
For more information see the Canadian Centre for International Justice website: http://www.ccij.ca/programs/cases/index.php?WEBYEP_DI=16
Ecuadorean Judge Orders Chevron to Pay $9 Billion
Statement by Ecuadorian Plaintiffs on Judgment Against Chevron
Lago Agrio, Ecuador – Pablo Fajardo, the lead Ecuadorian attorneys representing the indigenous tribes suing Chevron for oil contamination, released this statement today about the judgment against Chevron, issued by the Provincial Court of Justice of Sucumbíos in Lago Agrio, Ecuador:
"We believe today's judgment affirms what the plaintiffs have contended for the past 18 years about Chevron's intentional and unlawful contamination of Ecuador's rainforest. Until we have had a chance to review the lengthy decision, we will not be able to comment in detail.
"As a general matter, the plaintiffs provided the court with a great quantum of scientific and documentary evidence that Chevron deliberately and in violation of all industry norms discharged billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest and into the water supply relied on by thousands of Ecuadorian citizens.
"Rather than accept that responsibility, Chevron has launched a campaign of warfare against the Ecuadorian courts and the impoverished victims of its unfortunate practices. We call on the company to end its polemical attacks and search jointly with the plaintiffs for common solutions. We believe the evidence before the court deserves international respect and the plaintiffs will take whatever actions are appropriate consistent with the law to press the claims to a final conclusion."
www.chevrontoxico.com
"We believe today's judgment affirms what the plaintiffs have contended for the past 18 years about Chevron's intentional and unlawful contamination of Ecuador's rainforest. Until we have had a chance to review the lengthy decision, we will not be able to comment in detail.
"As a general matter, the plaintiffs provided the court with a great quantum of scientific and documentary evidence that Chevron deliberately and in violation of all industry norms discharged billions of gallons of toxic waste into the rainforest and into the water supply relied on by thousands of Ecuadorian citizens.
"Rather than accept that responsibility, Chevron has launched a campaign of warfare against the Ecuadorian courts and the impoverished victims of its unfortunate practices. We call on the company to end its polemical attacks and search jointly with the plaintiffs for common solutions. We believe the evidence before the court deserves international respect and the plaintiffs will take whatever actions are appropriate consistent with the law to press the claims to a final conclusion."
www.chevrontoxico.com
Footage and Pictures from the January 29th, 2011
Hamilton Day of Action
USW Local 1005 and its 900 members and 9,000 pensioners are waging a battle on behalf of ALL of us. Foreign-owned companies, like U.S. Steel, are attempting to steal our futures by attacking our pensions while the Harper government is attempting to hand public pensions over to private Banks.
Winning this battle for Hamilton Steelworkers is the first step in a National Campaign to defend retirement security for everyone.
South of the Border, which premiered at the Venice film festival, is the latest documentary in which Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone journeys to South America to see first-hand how their political system functions. In this film, co-written by Tariq Ali, he interviews Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner (Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nestor Kirchner, Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raul Castro (Cuba), Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon the exciting transformations in the region
WATCH THE MOVIE HERE
Register Now for Solidarity Brigades!
2011 May Day solidarity brigade to Venezuela
 Brigade dates: April 25th – May 4th, 2011
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SOLIDARITY TOUR TO BOLIVIA -2011
 Brigade Dates: May 12th 2011 to May 21st 2011
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 A Canadian campaign to reverse the deportation order against José Figueroa
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World's Largest Environmental
Lawsuit in Ecuador
SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN In Ecuador, 30,000 Indigenous people fight for compensation against Texaco (now Chevron), accused of 3 decades of toxic dumping in Amazon.
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