The Dominion - Earth

The Dark Knight Rises: Class War in the Dystopian Present

Miles — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:59:17 +0000

More than a movie review

This review only contains mild spoilers as it focuses on the political aspects of The Dark Knight Rises rather than plot per se.

TORONTO—The Dark Night Rises is a portrayal of a workers’ revolution from the perspective of the bourgeoisie. It is a profoundly authoritarian movie which includes severe criticisms of revolutionaries, but also liberal democracy, bourgeois charity, and the apathetic, ultimately offering a hopeless political vision that only the status quo is tenable and that one should look to one's own personal happiness.

Our first thought on leaving the theatre was, "What kind of society could produce a big-budget movie with such a completely hopeless message about the future of humanity and the inability of ‘the people’ to govern themselves?" Neither of us were able to remember a major motion picture made in our lifetimes that was as openly counter-revolutionary and reactionary as this one, though the politics of this movie are built up in the two earlier films of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and simply culminate here.

It seems that this movie is able to be explicitly counter-revolutionary because revolution itself is beginning to come on the agenda in the advanced capitalist world for the first time since the 1970s. Science fiction has often shown resistance and rebellion to fascistic societies, but “Dark Knight Rises” actually defends the dystopian reality that it presents, a reality not far removed at all from our actual present.

There was a large and visible security presence at the Scotiabank theatre in Toronto where we saw the film on Friday night, and people in the line were half afraid/half joking of the possibility of copycat shootings. During the film both of us wondered what it had been like for those who were watching a Batman movie and suddenly find themselves in the midst of a meaningless terror assault for real.

The movie's plot seems to the result of mixing a topical Occupy theme with a Batman movie. Unfortunately, Batman is the worst possible hero to have in a movie about class war, being clearly on the side of the bourgeoisie capitalists, as well as only being capable of individual vigilantism rather than collective action.

It is interesting however, that the movie has a particular kind of class politics which still presents the bourgeoisie class as corrupt, effete and powerless to change society. Bruce Wayne expresses a severe critique of charity balls, and Wayne’s own foundation fails to ensure that the orphan boys in a home that he funds aren’t simply kicked out when they reach 16, abandoned to work in the literal underground with Bane’s army.

The bourgeoisie are also often ignorant of realpolitik, thinking that money or connections buy power, a mistake when faced with the brutal fighting power and impressive human leadership qualities of Bane, or the combination of complex individual manipulation, stealth and fighting ability displayed by Selina Kyle/Catwoman.

Lower class people are presented as having special powers due their impossibly tough upbringings and lives, which is true for both Kyle and Bane, as well as an honest cop who grew up in Bruce’s orphanage (Blake). The only way that Bruce Wayne/Batman can gain equal powers and be able to fight the lower classes on their own ground is in a sense to commit class suicide. He can only gain/regain his special fighting powers when he is in an underground middle eastern prison among the lowest of the low, just as in Batman Begins, the first movie of the trilogy.

Only after he has gone through this trial and suffering can he fight the lower class characters as an equal, by experiencing equal suffering and overcoming equal obstacles, even though he is still fighting for the interests of capital (although not financial capital—the movie makes a venture capital vs. financial leeches distinction that is playing out in critiques of Mitt Romney’s history at Bain Capital).

At times it was left very uncertain who we were supposed to be cheering for. When Bane and his cadre go after the Stock Exchange, it was clear that the sold-out crowd in the Toronto Scotiabank theatre was cheering for Bane. When a stock exchange capitalist pleaded to the cops that the thugs could destroy the economy and wipe out everyone’s savings, a Black cop tells the capitalist that he doesn’t care because he keeps his savings under his bed, and when another stock trader tells Bane that there is nothing to steal at the exchange, Bane replies, "Then what are you here for?"

Bane’s cadre are often disguised as (or are) service workers, construction workers, shoe shiners, maintenance people etc, heightening the class war aspect of the movie (Selina Kyle/Catwoman sneaks into Wayne’s mansion disguised as a catering worker). The crowd at our theatre also seemed onside with Bane’s terrorists (at least at first) when they set up a people’s court for trying finance capitalists for their crimes. The court was clearly set up to be unfair and arbitrary, but we wonder how the bourgeoisie think their own courts look like to us.

If it wasn’t for Bane’s nuclear bomb and his ultimate plan to destroy Gotham with it, which clearly makes him a terrorist bad guy, it seemed like most of the crowd would have been openly cheering for him. In fact, without the nuclear bomb, he would simply appear to be a very authoritarian communist who believes in revolution from above by a people’s army that somehow requires basically no ideological preparation of the populace, and who are just supposed to follow their lead.

In the context of the movie, this would actually make him appear to be the most sympathetic character, and to be the clear good guy, regardless of the problems with his authoritarianism. However, given his plan to blow up the city no matter what, Bane isn’t actually an authoritarian communist but actually a reactionary in disguise. The plot reveals that he doesn’t even really care about the revolution that he pretends to lead, as his only goal is to blow up Gotham City to fulfill the wishes of his old master in the League of Shadows, Ra’s al Ghul, who believed Gotham’s destruction would help to restore order and balance to a world corrupted by money and greed. The revolution is just a way to toy with the people by giving them false hope before their ultimate destruction.

This has an odd third-worldist element to it as well, with Gotham representing the heart of capitalist decadence and even the majority of its lower classes being totally corrupted by money and greed, with this imperialist metropolis being seen by Ra’s and Bane as beyond salvation and deserving of punishment. Many of Bane’s cadre are shown as foreign, perhaps Russian or Middle Eastern, thus contributing to the othering of terrorism and the third worldist vs. First World theme.

Catwoman/Selena is the only major Gothamite character we meet who is at all sympathetic to Bane’s revolutionary army; she is in an ambiguous middle position of despising the bourgeoisie, but only working with Bane to some extent out of fear. Bane is ultimately also a counter-revolutionary for whom the people’s courts and the redistribution of wealth is only a method of toying with the population of Gotham before he fulfils his plan to liquidate the city and its population.

The movie’s position on the police is particularly confused, reflecting a general confusion about the police in the real world, especially in the wake of the Occupy movement (are they part of the 99 per cent?). The Occupy sub-theme of the movie makes the presence of the police especially weird, as the creators of this film have generally given up on pretending that ‘Gotham’ is not New York, with New York subway signs and the like being plainly visible. So, given the role of the police in brutally repressing protests in New York and elsewhere, how then are we supposed to view a police protest in the movie where these same cops advance as protesters on Bane’s army as heroes representing the population?

This scene is also very weird to watch because of its complete lack of realism, as the NYPD would never stand up to an army of the kind Bane had assembled, unless they heavily outnumbered them and had superior weaponry, which did not seem to be a case in the film. In police actions generally, cops will try to protect their own safety first, and do not generally charge on small armies with AK-47s without having any shields or riot gear whatsoever, and will even run away when faced with unarmed protesters at the G20 or in the Quebec student strike.

However, the heroism the movie cops display in TDKR visually links them with working class demonstrators who take on the actual cops in real life. The deputy police commissioner even wears a gold braid reminiscent of the retired Philadelphia police captain Ray Lewis who took part in some Occupy protests. But anyone who has been to any protests in the past few years has seen charging police not as saviors but as attackers—during the movie it was at times unsure whose side we the audience were supposed to be on.

There were other contradictory portrayals of the police in the film: as incompetent stooges who refused to investigate anything that would make their statistics look bad; as goons who follow orders, blindly dooming civilians to their death; as brave representatives of the population; as keepers of vital secrets from the population in order to ensure long term incarceration without proper trial; and as representatives of the good people of Gotham. One cop decides to bury his uniform and hide with his family: this response is held up as cowardly despite the general message of the movie that the silent majority is what really represents "the people."

At the end of the film everything goes back to normal—Gotham normal anyway. Bourgeois charity ensures the orphans get a better orphanage, and the surviving characters retreat into family and their personal lives rather than trying to make any substantive difference. The silent majority gets their city back, having survived Bane’s attempted revolution through hiding in their homes, and Commissioner Gordon appears to be the most powerful surviving political figure and tries to rebuild the police force in order to guarantee stability. A secondary hero, the working class cop Blake, turns in his badge in frustration with the limitations of the police force to change society and act ethically.

Despite its reactionary politics, TDKR is a great summer blockbuster with interesting characters, a fairly complex plot and good special effects. The only other major problem is that the plot is a bit marred by trying to combine an Occupy theme with Bane’s plan to blow up Gotham, making this part of the story slightly bloated and more difficult to understand in terms of its logic (though still highly entertaining to watch as it plays out). The "fake" revolution is also often awesome to watch at times, especially in a big-budget movie on a big screen.

Ultimately, the movie seems to justify an authoritarian liberalism that is essentially anti-democratic and supportive of the status quo as the best of all possible worlds. We are supposed to trust a good progressive bourgeois like Bruce Wayne to look out for our interests as workers and even save us from our own revolutions as well as the limits of legal bourgeois democracy through their personal heroism and vigilantism.

Clearly, without these great bourgeois visionaries and benevolent protectors, we would all be lost. The political message of the movie is that we need progressive authoritarian leaders (some of whom work in secret) who will give us mild reforms towards a better life when we are ready, but that we should never attempt to take them for ourselves, as this will only result in tragedy.

Essentially, this is a kind of hopeless pro-Obama message considering the political context in which the film is being released, as the Democratic Party is supposed to represent the liberal, reforming wing of the bourgeoisie despite authoritarian and imperialist policies. The political messaging of this movie reflects the general confusion and hopelessness among liberals, and represents a failed attempt by the bourgeoisie to stabilize their ideological hegemony by discounting any positive possibilities for revolution.

Michael Romandel and Megan Kinch are members of the Toronto Media Co-op, where this movie review first appeared.

Batman versus Bane

Canada's International Cop Out

dawn — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 19:28:20 +0000

Former head of Ontario Provincial Police named Minister of International Co-operation

MONTREAL—On July 4, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Julian Fantino, the former head of the Ontario Provincial Police, as his new Minister of International Cooperation. The arrival of an ex-cop at the top of Canada's international development portfolio seems like a fitting symbol for the overall direction of Canadian foreign policy during the Harper government's reign.

A policeman for more than 40 years, Fantino rose steadily through the ranks, serving first as chief of police in London, Ontario, then the former York Region, and later Toronto, before being named as the Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner in 2006. Fantino's career then went political, and he was elected the Member of Parliament for Vaughn in November, 2010, and was re-elected in May, 2011.

Throughout his career, Fantino has been involved in a considerable number of controversies. Perhaps most famously, Fantino oversaw the harsh repression of Toronto residents and anti-G20 protesters in the Ontario capital city in June of 2010.

Enzo DiMatteo, associate news editor at Now Magazine, covered Fantino's career for over more than 20 years, and coined the term "the OPP's top dick" to describe the province's former head cop.

"When you think of Julian Fantino you have to understand that there wasn't a microphone that he didn't like. He was constantly in the spotlight," DiMatteo told The Dominion. "He was very much his own man, very much did his own thing, very much didn't really care about civilian oversight… He was viewed as a bit of a cop's cop, but I think he was just a stubborn fellow who really didn't have much time for anybody's point of view, other than his own, quite frankly."

The new International Cooperation minister hasn't always placed cooperation at the forefront, especially when it pertains to cops killing civilians. Fantino's name is on the docket of a case expected to appear before the Supreme Court of Canada in 2013, regarding how police take notes at crime scenes. The families of Levi Shaeffer and Douglas Minty, both of whom were killed by officers during Fantino's days as top dick at the OPP, have used the courts to try and prevent police from having their crime scene notes vetted by lawyers before they're written.

Rachelle Sauve, from the Coalition Justice for Levi campaign, agrees with DiMatteo's description.

"The modus operandi of a man who is very much a police officer, and who...has gotten very comfortable with a certain level of impunity that he still gets to act out [in] moving away from that old role, leaves me in a very uncomfortable feeling position regarding what sort of aid and development we are going to bring through CIDA while he is in office," Sauve told The Dominion.

Nation-to-nation relations have not been Fantino's strongest suit. Fantino's fame as a bully exploded with the release of wiretapped conversations between himself and Mohawk activist Shawn Brant in 2007.

In the spring and summer of that year, when Mohawks at Tyendinaga repeatedly blocked CN Rail lines, Fantino called Brant to let him know what his future would hold if he continued to work with his community to defend the land.

"And you know what I don’t wanna I don’t wanna get on your bad side but you’re gonna force me to do everything I can within your community and everywhere else to destroy your reputation," Fantino told Brant in a phone conversation which was illegally recorded by the OPP. Fantino later claimed he was unaware the line was tapped. Their conversation, which was later published by the CBC, continued:

Julian Fantino: You know if you pull this off I’m liable to say that your your issues are are are are critical and they’re important and and I’ll speak to that but uh if you don’t then I’m gonna go the other way and I’m gonna say that you’re just destroying and you’re abusing you’re using the people and you’re you’re actually being a mercenary about it using the suicide of children and all those those legitimate uh issues and you don’t want that because I think I can I can I can play the media routine like you do

Shawn Brant: Hey Mister Fantino uh

Julian Fantino: Right

Shawn Brant: I I put two of my own babies in the ground um

Julian Fantino: I’m sorry

Far from his checkered past of politicized police raids in poor communities, and threats of ruining the reputation of activists, Fantino's first statement as Minister of International Cooperation aimed for a kinder, gentler message.

"I look forward to continuing the good work already done by CIDA around the world," said the newly-appointed minister. "In particular the efforts to save the lives of mothers, children, and newborns as part of Canada's Muskoka Initiative."

The first male to hold the position since Don Boudria left his post in 1997, Fantino will oversee an international cooperation ministry with a growing emphasis on policing and police training.

"Maybe it's fitting that we have a police officer—a former police officer—running the aid agency now, kind of playing the good cop to the military's bad cop as far as global order is concerned," said Nik Barry-Shaw, who co-authored a recent book on Canadian non-governmental organizations titled Paved with Good Intentions. "One of the kind of rough titles that we had for the book was...Good Cops of Global Capitalism. That's kind of the role, putting the human face on things that are fundamentally pretty ugly."

Canada is deeply involved with police training around the world, but it is the RCMP's ongoing role in training Haitian police forces has come under perhaps the most intense public scrutiny.

"A large part of what was...listed as aid to Haiti was in fact funding for police training in Haiti, and that was done with RCMP officers who were down there to train their Haitian counterparts in the arts of close quarter combats," Barry-Shaw told The Dominion.

RCMP training of Haitian police was happening at a time when there were regular raids of neighbourhoods that supported deposed president Jean Bertrand Aristide. Some of these raids ended in civilian massacres carried out by police. More recently, the RCMP have become involved in training Mexican police.

Fantino's appointment followed the announcement of former Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda's resignation. Oda will leave her post as MP of Durham, Ontario, on July 31.

Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Twitter @dawn_.

Fantino

Straight from the Heart

Moira Peters — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:06:32 +0000

Messages from Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK CITY—While in New York on October 8 and 9 to photograph the ongoing Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest, I was struck by the clarity and simplicity of the messages being delivered by those attending. While protesters had many ways of expressing themselves, I was affected most by the direct, simple, and visceral messages coming from young and old, employed and unemployed, activists and non-activists. The posters—handmade and written in pen or felt marker on the simplest of surfaces—told the story of an angry, heartbroken and disillusioned population. It made me think of the signs I saw Haitians holding in Port-au-Prince following the 2004 coup d’etat: simple messages scrawled on cardboard demanding human rights and an end to injustice.

While the United States is certainly not Haiti, the disgust that people are feeling with the current economic system and those who run it for their own benefit is palpable. Among the protesters were those who understood the complex workings of the corporate capitalist system that is ruining the lives of millions of people. Also among them were people with a less sophisticated understanding of the issues, but nonetheless a very clear lived experience of the damage being done.

Although Liberty Square measures only one square block in the massive city of New York, I wondered like many of those present if this growing protest would have the long-term effect of satisfying some of the demands of those holding the signs.

On the eve of OWS coming to Canada, I am hopeful.

Darren Ell is a freelance photographer in Montreal and a member of the Canada Haiti Action Network. His work can be viewed at www.darrenell.com.

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July in Review, Part I

Moira Peters — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:26:24 +0000

Canada not disarming, Israel not boycotting, prisoners not eating, ships not sailing (nor flying)

St. Mary's Bay residents and wild salmon groups filed an appeal to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court to oppose the creation of one of the province’s largest fish farms. St. Mary's Bay, one of the richest lobster fishing grounds in the world, is being considered by Parks Canada as part of a new national marine conservation area. Salmon farms in Nova Scotia are drawing ire from wild salmon associations and lobster fishermen, as salmon farms produce toxins and disease that threaten the wild runs and lobster nurseries.

BC's Provincial Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure set plans to demolish the Glenrose Cannery as part of the Gateway freeway expansion program. The cannery, a historic property, was built in 1896. The provincial government originally claimed that no heritage properties would be affected by the development.

Six environmental activists in Montana occupied the office of the state governor while about 100 others protested inside the Capitol building. The action was taken to oppose the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would bring tar sands oil from northern Alberta through the state, as well as the large shipments of heavy machinery being shipped to Alberta, known as "megaloads." Five protesters were arrested. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer has been vocal in his support for the pipeline.

Residents of Durham, NB, tore up stakes marking areas set for shale gas exploration, saying they have not been consulted by companies or government. "We want to slow them down, we want to stop them. We don't want them here," one person told GlobalTV. SWN Resources, the exploration company, has been opposed by Maliseet and Mi'kmaq people, who also cite lack of consultation.

French senators voted 176 to 151 to ban the controversial process to extract natural gas from shale known as fracking, making France the first country to do so.

A prominent Honduran environmental activist was arrested along with two others for his participation in an action that blocked loggers from accessing a watershed near the municipality of El Porvenir in his home country. The watershed is owned by a group with ties to Canadian mining company Goldcorp, and it is widely speculated that the logging of the land is a preliminary step towards Goldcorp gaining permission to mine in the area.

Roger LeBlanc, a former worker at the Brunswick Mine in Bathurst, NB, appeared in court to continue what is being called a groundbreaking workplace health and safety case. Leblanc is seeking compensation from WorkSafeNB for the heavy metal poisoning treatments he has undergone since 2006, which he says came about from unsafe working conditions at the Brunswick mine.

Ten thousand Koreans marched to Hanjin Heavy Industries shipyard in the Philippines to protest the mass-dismissal of members of the Korean Metal Worker Federation, which has been demanding safer working conditions at the Hanjin Shipyard. Five thousand accidents were reported in the yard's first year of operations and 31 work-related deaths have occurred. Police responded to the protesters with tear gas and water canons. Fifty unionists were arrested and released. One worker at the shipyard has been protesting from a crane since January.

The Simon Fraser University Student Union locked out 20 of its employees, all members of CUPE Local 3338, ending two years of pay negotiations. The next day, the Simon Fraser Student Spacing (SFSS) Committee issued a surprise termination of Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group's lease. Supporters of the locked-out staff and organizations rallied at the university. A poster by the SFSS student board claims that $748,911 paid out to SFSS staff is inflated compared to the $115,908 transferred to clubs and student union funding. Last year, the SFSS spent $831,000 renovating a campus pub.

National Football League (NFL) union legend John Mackey died of frontotemporal dementia. NFL football players, whose average careers last three-and-a-half years and who live an average of twenty years less than the average American male, were locked out of their current season by NFL owners over issues including post-career health benefits.

Canadian civil society expressed outrage over Environment Canada’s proposed budget cuts that will eliminate more than 1,200 full-time positions over the next three years. The main focus of the cuts are climate change and clean air programs.

California prison officials agreed to negotiate with inmates at Pelican Bay Prison as hundreds of prisoners entered the third week of a hunger strike. Thousands of prisoners across at least 13 other California prisons joined the strike. Prisoners were protesting the slow implementation of correctional reforms, including the elimination of long-term solitary confinement.

Solidarity protests across North America included actions in Montreal, where demonstrators gathered twice outside the US consulate and anti-prison activists sent an open letter to California officials in support of the prison strikers' demands. Actions were also held in Toronto, Kingston, Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas.

Halifax mayor Peter Kelly was accused of bribing high profile concert promoters: since 2008 the mayor signed a series of contracts that advanced promoters amounts exceeding $300,000. Kelly has refused several requests to resign since the scandal emerged.

Charity workers across Canada receive upwards of six-figure salaries, according to an analysis of Canada Revenue Agency tax filings by The Canadian Press. As organizations are only required to report the wages of their top ten earners, even more donations may be going into workers' bank accounts.

Fifty to sixty Quebec families remained homeless after the province's July 1 moving day, reported the Front d'action populaire en reamenagement urbain. The housing rights group denounced higher rent, a lack of social and affordable housing and insufficient provincial aid strategies.

Social justice organization Kairos led a news conference calling on the Conservative government to act on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada has endorsed with qualifications but has not yet implemented.

Eight hundred women marched on Parliament to draw attention to the high number of murdered and missing Aboriginal women in Canada.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo called for the abolishment of the Aboriginal Affairs department and Indian Act, replacing them with a new agreement between First Nations and the Crown that would create a new way to deliver services to Indigenous peoples. Atleo also suggested the AFN may try to develop alternative funding sources in order to break its financial dependence on the federal government, which he says has prevented the organization from fully advocating for the rights of First Nations.

Three thousand Canadian soldiers packed up and prepared to leave Afghanistan, as Canada's $11 billion combat mission in the country draws to a close, almost a decade after it began. Nearly 1,000 soldiers will remain in the country to conduct training, though. The departure comes amid questions surrounding the government's handling of detainees captured by the Canadian Forces.

Canada jumped from fifteenth to twelfth largest exporter of military hardware in the world. The country exports to several governments engaged in human rights violations, like the Philippines, Israel, Saudi Arabia, China, Libya and Tunisia.

The military geared up for 1,000-personnel show of force in the Arctic.

The Canadian military secured a new base in Kuwait.

Canada announced it would boycott the United Nations Conference on Disarmament because North Korea has taken on the rotating presidency of the conference, a move critics called "grandstanding" that would have no measurable effect on negotiations. No other countries followed Canada's example.

Canada opposed Palestinian efforts to be recognized as an independent state at the United Nations. Palestinians are reported to have the support of 100 countries, but will need two-thirds support in the assembly before the matter is considered by the Security Council.

Boats in the Freedom Flotilla II were sabotaged, threatened and falsely accused of homophobia and planning to kill Israeli soldiers. The mission was grounded in Greece at the bequest of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. After one last-ditch, failed attempt by the Tahrir, the Canadian boat, to escape Greek authorities by using kayaks as deterrents, many of those hoping to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza returned to Canada. Some Canadians decided to continue to Gaza by land.

In Canada, supporters of the flotilla protested Greece's illegal prevention of the Tahrir from leaving Greek port.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry provided airlines heading to Israel with lists of people they were not to allow on planes in order to stymy what activists were calling a "fly-in." Hundreds were denied entry to Israel, interrogated and jailed. Four people listed were finally allowed entry to Palestine.

Israeli warships that had been firing water cannons on fishing boats two miles off the coast of Gaza fired on the Olivia, a Civil Peace Service Gaza boat which monitors human rights violations in Palestinian waters. Israel claims to allow fishing boats to work within three miles off the coast of Gaza.

The Israeli parliament passed a law allowing any individual or institution claiming that it could be damaged by calls for boycotts to sue for compensation, in effect banning citizens from calling for academic, consumer or cultural boycotts of Israel.

Some tax payers were not happy about paying for Will and Kate's royal honeymoon. Heritage Canada spent over $1.2 million in preparation for the nine-day visit of the Duke and Dutchesse of Cambridge. Meanwhile, it pulled the plug on funding to independent theatre festival SummerWorks.

The first Purple Thistle Institute, an educational experiment where manual labour and intellectual labour are equally valued, was launched in Vancouver.

The first Halifax Queer and Rebel Days offered an anti-capitalist alternative to July's Pride parade. Built on community-building, education and empowerment—not partying—the celebrations were further justified by comments by the co-chair of the Halifax Pride Festival. Dan Savage, the long-time organizer, said that he strives to make the Halifax parade "less promiscuous" than others. The Halifax queer community's outrage prompted the festival's board to apologize.

CTV’s Quebec City bureau chief quit his job due to dissatisfaction with TV news in Canada. In an open letter he outlined his reasoning behind the move and went on to describe the kind of news Canadian mainstream media should be covering, but isn't.

Eska Water announced it was pulling an ad campaign after First Nations groups called for a boycott of Eska Water, one of Montreal Pride Week's official sponsors. The ads depicted stereotypical images of Native people protecting the purity of water with spears. Indigenous people say the ad campaign reinforces the stereotype that Natives use violence to resolve conflict, while their ancestors were in fact peacemakers. Eska's water is piped from Algonquin territory. One-hundred-eighteen First Nations communities are under a drinking water advisory.

An audit of forestry practices in North-West Ontario's Whiskey Jack Forest confirmed what Native groups in the region have been saying for years: industry is not conforming to the laws around lumber extraction. In an effort to halt the destruction, the Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation (Grassy Narrows) has been engaged in the longest running road blockade in Canadian history.

Open-locked

Boat to Gaza.Break for it

REDD Light!

Moira Peters — Mon, 30 May 2011 05:37:55 +0000

Indigenous say offset plan threatens traditional title

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, MEXICO—The carbon market was the hottest issue at last year’s Conference of the Parties (COP)-16 summit in Cancun. Inside the meeting, delegates approved the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation and Conservation program (REDD+). However, outside the official meeting, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Indigenous-led organizations clashed over its merits.

Opponents of REDD+ (or simply “REDD”), say the mechanism is a false solution to the climate crisis which will intensify a pattern of land grabs by the private sector throughout the Third World. The final Cancun text on REDD does little to address these concerns, as it does not contain wording that would prevent conservation projects from encroaching on the rights and title of Indigenous peoples living in forest-rich lands.

Deforestation is responsible for at least 18 per cent of global carbon emissions—more than aviation and global transport combined—according to a report by carbon management company Carbon Planet. REDD is a mechanism by which forests in developing countries are “sustainably managed” or designated as carbon sinks in order to mitigate climate change. Though REDD primarily emerged from the COP-13 in Bali in 2007, the idea germinated during Kyoto Protocol negotiations in 1997.

In Cancun, a clear anti-REDD message unified many Mexican Indigenous, environmental and peasant groups, but NGOs such as Greenpeace International, the World Wildlife Federation, the Environmental Defense Fund, and Conservation International promoted the REDD agreement.

No REDD projects have yet been implemented in Chiapas, which, as a state with heavy forest cover, is a target region for the program. According to Gustavo Castro Soto, an organizer with Otros Mundos (“Other Worlds,” a social and environmental justice organization) in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, the mechanisms for measuring the effectiveness and impact of REDD programs have yet to be designed.

Already, precursors to the implementation of REDD have people like Castro worried. Barring people’s access to forests on ejidos (communally-held lands) is the first necessary step in putting these forested areas on the carbon market.

“This is how the government will ensure that there is a forest in each ejido, and this will obviously be sold as an Environmental Service [a UN-defined category of the carbon market], for which the government will receive a quantity of money, of which the community will receive a fraction,” said Castro.

“This is what they call sustainable community forest management,” he said dryly.

Decisions about how exactly to finance REDD have been postponed to COP-17 in Durban.

“If REDD is going to be financed through the carbon market, it won’t be a real solution to climate change,” Mariana Porras of Friends of the Earth Costa Rica told The Dominion in a phone interview from San Jose. “We’ve denounced this, but government groups don’t see it the same way,” she said.

Market-based financing for REDD will likely complement the ongoing privatization of forest reserves, which moves ownership and access rights of forests currently owned communally by Indigenous or peasant communities into the hands of individuals.

In Costa Rica, as in Mexico, the government is in the early phases of implementing REDD, which means engaging in public consultations. “If you see who gets invited to the meetings about REDD—to the consultations—it’s rare that you’ll see a peasant community, or peasant organizations,” said Porras. “Mostly, you’ll see people who own private lands, or people from private organizations.”

In Cancun, the Indigenous Environmental Network stood in opposition to the discourse of many other NGOs. In a final statement from Cancun, they berated COP-16 as the “World Trade Organization of the sky,” and harshly criticized the REDD plan. “The agreements implicitly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies and land grabs—anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions,” reads their final release.

In the streets of Cancun, Greenpeace International brought delegates from around the world to show support for popular movements, but the organization’s language fell short of grassroots solidarity. Days before the final agreement was reached, Executive Director Kumi Naidoo released a statement saying that “a good REDD deal would benefit biodiversity, people and the climate.”

Greenpeace was steadfast in its support for the outcome of the climate negotiations in Mexico, and after COP-16 wound down, Naidoo posed for a photo with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and praised the president’s leadership in reaching a global climate agreement.

Resistance to the REDD program did not end with COP-16. Activists say that the COP-17 meeting in Durban at the end of the year will be decisive as to the future of REDD, and the carbon market is sure to be a key issue in the months preceding the conference.

Dawn Paley is a journalist based in Vancouver.

Cop 16 Picture 3

The Roads We Travelled

Moira Peters — Wed, 18 May 2011 05:39:02 +0000

Building the Toronto People's Assembly

TORONTO—Copenhagen, December 15, 2010. The day before what CNN referred to as “the most hotly anticipated action of the summit,“ nearly 1,000 activists huddled together in a Danish squat that became the focal point of grassroots mobilization against the United Nations annual Coalition of the Parties (COP) Climate Change Conference.

Lisa, an American activist and veteran of 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, delivered a final pitch for the plan of action while maps were distributed, blocs were formed and participants felt the growing anticipation of being part of a plan to change the course of history.

“We will use the combined mass of our bodies to push through the police lines and then break through the fence,” she announced. “Once we are inside the UN grounds we will secure a safe space where delegates coming out from the conference can join us and together we will form a People’s Assembly.”

As much as has been said about the day of December 16—the “Reclaim Power” People’s Assembly in Copenhagen—the prior two weeks of frantic meetings, alliance building and constant striving to create an inclusive and horizontal process were critical in creating a new model for organizing that could be exported around the world. This action in Copenhagen was to inspire the Toronto People’s Assembly, a global gathering held in parallel to the 2010 G8/G20 summits.

Cochabamba, April 2010. Bolivia hosted the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. Toronto activists in Cochabamba observed a conference that, while engaging the grassroots participation of 30,000 activists from across the globe, was largely organized from the top down. The Toronto People’s Assembly drew much inspiration from Cochabamba, which also acted as a guide for the Assembly to be critical of its own process.

The main development to come out of Cochabamba was a collective understanding that the best way to answer the international call for justice is to build your struggle locally. One of the lessons drawn from Bolivia was the need to put in place impactful structures to build and maintain a movement that is substantial, consistent and long-term. The call from Cochabamba was to build a worldwide climate justice movement.

Toronto, May/June 2010. The weeks in May immediately following Cochabamba and in June prior to the G20 were a crucial and transformative period for the social and climate justice communities. Ongoing talks and discussions evaluated which elements could be drawn from Cochabamba.

“The People’s Assembly is an extension of the dialogue, organization, and mobilization that took place in Cochabamba. It’s an instrument through which local activists can create new spaces, and generate new possibilities,” said organizer Raul Burbano, who is also active with Toronto’s Latin America Solidarity Network.

As June 2010 and the G20 grew closer, a call was put out through the Toronto Community Mobilization Network for a day of resistance for climate and environmental justice during the G8/G20. Responding to this call, a circle of unaligned climate justice and environmental organizers started meeting weekly in a park on Church Street. Two plans for action emerged. One was a rally that would become known as the Toxic Tour. The other was the People’s Assembly on Climate Justice (PACJ).

The G20 hit Toronto like a storm, and the collective response was quick and widespread, with a resounding call to establish new relationships that was not only heard, but also understood.

In the aftermath of the G20, the organizing community would suddenly find itself in a new, highly charged environment. After the Toronto People’s Assembly on June 23, 2010, and through July and August, the intensity of organizing would remain high, with action camps across the country and groups in Toronto together emphasizing the immediate need for movement building. There would be no doubt that a second PACJ would take place.

Maxim Winther, a participant in the June 2010 Assembly, said, “I don’t really know what the G20’s like because it’s behind two layers of fence and it’s costing billions of dollars and I’m not seeing any of that. All I see is police roaming the streets.“

Police from across the country turned the downtown Toronto hub into what the Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin would later call “a time period where martial law set in the city of Toronto, leading to the most massive compromise of civil liberties in Canadian history.”

Despite this atmosphere, the Toronto PACJ was vibrant and successful, and another People’s Assembly was organized on December 4, 2010—the Worldwide Day of Climate Action. While the first PACJ focused on defining the meaning of climate justice, the second focused on the collective work of building a stronger movement for climate justice in Toronto. For both Assemblies, the starting point for participants to generate ideas was a “framing question”—a direct import from the Reclaim Power Assembly in Copenhagen.

The main innovation introduced in Toronto was a round of break-out groups, allowing more space for the Assembly’s horizontal process both to generate ideas and also to orient itself for action by harnessing the intimacy and energy of small group work. Beginning with the December 2010 Assembly, Toronto activists took the working-group model that emerged from Cochabamba and re-framed it as a series of permanent action-oriented bodies known as People’s Councils. People’s Councils included Movement Building, Outreach & Education, Group Coordination, Building Alternatives Spaces, Mass Action & Political Pressure, and Personal Development.

Both assemblies generated more than 200 participants and more than 40 endorsements from community groups in Toronto.

“It was very participatory and very open,” said Alaynah Smith. The new activist who travelled to Toronto from Michigan said the People’s Assembly was “unlike the G8/G20 where we can’t see stuff...and its really kind of almost a mystery. But this was open to the public; anybody could come and we all had a voice equally.”

The Assembly is an open collective dialogue which organizers have termed “radical horizontality.” Within the Assembly, radical horizontality is a two-pronged process which allows participants, through two rounds of break-outs and intermittent plenaries, to first generate ideas, and then to develop and synthesize them with the goal of establishing mandates for the People’s Councils. Radical horizontality extends to everyday life, seeking to establish shared responsibility and accountability in the entire community, making local resistance and organizing sustainable.

From its beginning, the Assembly focused on being a point of convergence inclusive to a wide range of organizations: women’s groups, anti-poverty, food security and environmental and migrant justice organizations, cyclists, co-operatives, collectives, and so on. To transform communities, the Assembly posited closing the gap between activism and everyday life.

Raul Zibechi, a Uruguayan socio-political theorist, explained how “in the new pattern of action...mobilization starts in the spaces of everyday life and survival, putting in [motion] an increasing number of social networks or, that is to say, societies in movement, self-articulated from within.” The People’s Councils were modeled on the hope of establishing this sort of organizing on a permanent basis, to make the leap from activism to organized communities.

The post-G20 realities of community organizing in Canada presented a challenge, and a new dynamic that calls for activists to develop, out of necessity, new methods of organizing. This requires ingenuity, responsibility, and a long-term willingness to sculpt a new grassroots paradigm.

Small beginnings and creative examples were observed in Canada during the months following the G20.

Action camps took place throughout the country during the summer of 2010, themed around climate justice, Indigenous solidarity, non-violent direct action and tar sands/pipeline resistance. Organizers built links between cities and strengthened regional networks. Simultaneous People’s Assemblies were organized in December 2010 across Canada; organizers in Montreal began to develop a climate justice co-op, and the climate justice community in Toronto established a permanent People’s Assembly. Climate justice organizers have used momentum from the G20 to create their own grassroots infrastructure, without waiting for existing infrastructure to get on board, or being dependent on external funding.

The People’s Assembly in Toronto rose on the tide of a paradigm shift towards popular assemblies as an alternative to the failure of international institutions and nation-states to address the urgent global threat presented by the climate crisis.

At the same time, a global climate justice movement has grown organically, shaped by horizontal structures, and differentiating itself from mainstream environmental voices through a deep anti-capitalist analysis.

The year 2010 presented the organizing community in Canada with two major opportunities to mobilize—one in Vancouver to oppose the Olympics and one in Toronto to resist the G20. Toronto organizers took this confluence of factors as an opportunity, and the People’s Assembly was one outcome.

By eschewing traditional hierarchies, the open and inclusive process of the Assembly is an invitation for communities and organizers to come together and build solidarity, share skills and coordinate efforts.

“The aim of the People’s Assembly in Toronto,” an organizer told The Dominion, “is for the climate justice community and its allies to utilize it as a vehicle or a space through which it can operate as a movement, a self-articulated space that will allow it to remain a movement.”

Kimia Ghomeshi, an organizer of the June Toronto People’s Assembly, told a Toronto Media Co-op reporter that the entire process was “highly participatory which we so rarely see in Canada...What will change things is the solutions being home-grown because then they’re relevant to the local context and people feel more ownership in creating that change rather than it being imposed on them.”

This article was produced by the Toronto Media Co-op for A People's Forecast: The Climate Justice Issue, our 2011 special issue. To read more articles as they are published, click here.For more news driven by readers and not advertisers, check out www.toronto.mediacoop.ca

People's Assembly Image

Infographic: Degrees of Disaster

dru — Fri, 06 May 2011 05:02:33 +0000

degreesofdisaster.png

This infographic was published in A People's Forecast: The Climate Justice Issue, our 2011 special issue. To read more articles as they are published, click here.

Fair Weather Warning

Tim McSorley — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:09:36 +0000

This is the opening editorial of our 2011 special issue, A People's Forecast: The Climate Justice Issue. We'll be posting articles from this issue every Monday & Friday throughout April. For more about the issue click here. To read other articles from this issue as they are published, click here.

The earth is trying desperately to communicate with us. Record high temperatures, crop failures, natural disasters, and the flight of ecological refugees are its surefire signs that climate change is wreaking havoc in the present, and promising much worse for the future. Nevertheless, these warnings have done little to stir political and economic elites in Canada. Unwilling to take action domestically to curb runaway climate change, Canada has become an obstructionist pariah internationally at United Nations negotiations.

The Canadian government’s reputation has taken a deserved beating, as the gulf widens between popular demands for action on climate change and the establishment’s commitment to business as usual. The Conservatives' attempt to re-brand the Alberta tar sands as “ethical oil”—unlike that produced by tyrannical Saudis, goes their argument—is one indication of increasing concern over its tarnished image. But no rhetorical footwork can change the fact that the tar sands, sprawling and unregulated, are an extraordinarily destructive and thus immoral enterprise—even if it is a liberal democracy presiding over its operations, not a dictatorship.

Prompting absurd apologetics from the government and its polluting partners is but a small part of ending business as usual. Meaningful change will only come about with a powerful climate justice movement—grassroots, democratic, diverse—that brings concern for the human element to the climate debate’s centre and makes social justice its top priority. We can do this best by organizing around frontline communities—Indigenous, racialized, working class or poor, in the North and South, the same communities that are most severely impacted by the ecological crisis and least responsible for it.

These communities are hit first and worst, and that is precisely why they fight back the hardest. Their struggles did not, however, suddenly emerge when someone cried, “Climate justice!” So instead of pondering how to win over these struggles to the banner of climate justice, we are tasked with building wider networks of support for the most-affected communities. Victories in these struggles—against super highways and for mass public transit; against industrial pollution and for universal health care; against mines and oil and gas extraction, and for a low-energy economy; against mono-crops and for sustainable agro-ecological farming; against wars for hydrocarbons and for democratic control over where we work, where we live and how we collectively make decisions—will ease and improve the lives of many and cool the planet.

Science has laid out the non-negotiable targets for carbon emission thresholds, beyond which catastrophe looms. But such targets shouldn’t become campaign centrepieces. Fixation on particles per million or emission percentages will encourage a carbon fundamentalism that can distract from the root causes of climate change and present opportunities for false solutions. Genuine solutions—for both the immediate crisis of runaway climate change and the enduring crises of an economic system committed to wastefully endless growth, resource wars and colonial land theft—are those advanced by communities everywhere, as they strive for healthier, richer and better lives.

While science sets out hard and fast limits, the notion of “climate justice” will shift and meld as the movement grows and becomes more inclusive and representative. If it is many things, it should at least be a call to address mass poverty and suffering, the energy and biodiversity crisis, and climate change within an integrated vision of human progress. As some Indigenous peoples say, let us “live well,” with each other and with the earth.

This is the enormous challenge for our movements. Our goal in this special issue of The Dominion is to leave with you an array of stories about the pursuit of such struggles in or connected to Canada, glimpses of communities on the front lines of climate change, and some pathways to collective action for resilience, for justice, and for survival.

Cleaning house

Race to the Bottom to Continue for G20 Nations

Moira Peters — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:04:00 +0000

A critical analysis of the G20's Toronto Summit Declaration

TORONTO—As the 2010 G20 summit wound down behind the fences of "Fortress Toronto", more than 1,000 people had already been sent to jail. While the police attacked crowds and snatched organizers in the streets, the Group of 20 gathered to write the Toronto Summit Declaration, a 27-page document released the evening of Sunday, June 27. A critical reading of this text reveals it as evidence that those who took great risk to mobilize against the G20 did so on behalf of the health of communities and the planet.

Although the Toronto Declaration begins with a populist appeal to sustainability, job creation and financial regulation, it enshrines a commitment to force the poor and working class around the world to tighten their belts yet again as states are ordered to implement strict new austerity programs.

The Declaration proposes an ambitious new structural adjustment agenda, designed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which aims to halve First World deficits by 2013.

Shoring up financial sector abuse of public funds is one of the most pressing public concerns (bank bailouts have been denounced around the world), but the language in the Toronto Declaration does not guarantee meaningful public oversight of the financial sector.

The Declaration welcomes the recently-passed US Financial Reform Bill, which according to Newsweek "effectively anoints the existing banking elite" without putting a cap on executive compensation. Nor does the bill crack down on banks that are supposedly "too big to fail"—banks like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.

Financial oversight will remain with elites—led by the IMF and other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs, such as the Inter American Development Bank and the African Development Bank)—and the declaration proposes these institutions should become "even stronger partners" in the future.

The Declaration indicates that G20 countries will pump $350 billion into MDBs, doubling the MDBs' lending capacity, so they can "focus on lifting the lives of the poor, underwriting growth, and addressing climate change and food security."

The move towards putting MDBs on the front lines of global lending could be a response to the growing global rejection of larger International Financial Institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank and the IMF. This shift is reminiscent of a move away from global trade and regional agreements like the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and the World Trade Organization, and towards smaller regional deals and bilateral agreements such as the recently-inked Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

The Toronto Declaration makes a point of noting that Haiti's debt with IFIs will be cancelled, but avoids mention of the larger debt the country owes to the Inter American Development Bank (IADB). Haiti owes less than $200 million to the World Bank and the IMF, while their outstanding debt to the IADB is upwards of $441 million. The IADB has also positioned itself to become the lead development bank behind the $10 billion given by "donor nations"—mostly OECD countries—for reconstruction of the country.

In addition to increased involvement in global economics by the IADB and by other regional development banks, the Toronto Declaration promises more privatized "development financing" for low-income countries. This could mean further subsidies for transnational corporations active in resource extraction and the maquila (sweatshop) sector.

Language in the document about increasing "global output," creating tens of millions of jobs, and reducing global "imbalances" flies in the face of the document's own recommendations for countries with higher debt-loads to continue a regulatory race to the bottom by "maintaining open markets and enhancing export competitiveness"—an openness that has historically widened global gaps, put millions of people out of work (or forced them to migrate for work) and siphoned the resources of low-income countries into the bank accounts of corporations.

The Toronto Declaration also welcomed the launch of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, which proposes to create food sovereignty with public-private partnerships. This contradicts the demands of peasant groups like Via Campesina, who stated at the end of 2009 that "the absence of the heads of state of the G8 countries [at the November 2009 Food and Agriculture Summit] has been one of the key causes of [its] dismal failure. Concrete measures were not taken to eradicate hunger, to stop the speculation on food or to hold back the expansion of agrofuels."

The Declaration asks that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Devleopment, the International Labour Organization, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO) "report on the benefits of trade liberalization for employment and growth" at the next G20 meeting. States are cautioned to stick with WTO measures and avoid new "barriers to investment or trade in goods and services." Such barriers could be new environmental legislation and new forms of taxation on corporate activity.

On the topic of climate change, G20 countries that support the accord which came out of Cophenhagen last year issued a weak call for other nations to "associate with it."

Dawn Paley is an organizer with the Vancouver Media Co-op. This article was originally published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Corporate Facism

Powers of Eight

dru — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:20:04 +0000

powersofeight.png

The G8 accounts for a small portion of the world’s population, but a majority of its power. Through their influence over international financial institutions and their economic and military dominance, the G8 countries shape the world’s economic structures.

Download a pdf version of this infographic.

Underground Diplomacy

Moira Peters — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 05:57:53 +0000

Canada’s transnational mining industry implicated in abuses

TORONTO—Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Aslam Raisani announced the termination of a mining contract for Barrick Gold’s Reko Diq project on January 5, 2010, following a unanimous decision by the Pakistani province’s cabinet. According to the minister, “They [Barrick and Chile’s Antofagasta, co-owners of the mine project] only have an exploration license, which does not cover extraction,” adding his government would not approve an agreement undermining people’s rights.

Immediately afterwards, US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson warned that “multinational corporations will not invest in a country where deals are cancelled.” Canada’s international trade ministry followed suit, pressing Pakistani officials to “fulfill their obligations under a 2006 Pakistani-Canadian-Chilean agreement potentially worth billions of dollars,” according to the Vancouver Sun.

According to the Asia Times, “Critics said the local government’s action [to cancel the mining contract] was politically motivated to appease Baloch nationalists in the desperately poor and insurgency-hit province, who have been demanding the cancellation of the agreement.”

Balochistan, the province in Pakistan bordering Iran and Afghanistan, has been struggling for independence from Pakistan since 1948. The fifth uprising of the Balochistan independence movement was in 2004. More than 8,000 Baloch have been disappeared since then and 26 prominent leaders have been assassinated.

This ongoing independence struggle was overlooked by Canadian and US delegates as they pushed the Pakistani state to force Balochistan’s approval of the Barrick/Antofagasta mine. Meanwhile, in a move that the group American Friends of Balochistan say reveals insensitivity to the region’s politics, Barrick hired a Pakistani army colonel as its public affairs manager and head of security for its Balochistan mine project.

Disregard for political conflict reveals an international diplomacy concerned primarily with profits, and is consistent with the actions of Canada and its corporate ambassadors in situations around the globe where mining profits conflict with human rights.

Despite their human rights record, these corporate ambassadors of the mining sector will again be well-represented at discussions during the G20 summit in Toronto in June. Mining companies Banro, Barrick, Iamgold and Freeport McMoran will attend a parallel conference to the G20 summit, “G20 Business Leaders: Partnering with Africa’s Dynamic Markets,” at Toronto‘s Marriott Downtown Eaton Centre.

Questions about the ties between the mining sector and governement do not end in Balochistan though. Canadian Ambassador to Guatemala James Lambert published an op-ed in support of mining in Guatemala on the same day a survey revealed that 95.5 per cent of the people in San Miguel Ixtahuacan, Guatemala, opposed mining projects in their region.

Six years after that survey and the subsequent establishment of Goldcorp’s Marlin mine in San Miguel, villagers suffer from health issues linked to arsenic levels seven times the maximum limit recommended by the World Bank.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Barrick Gold officials during diplomatic visits to Chile and Tanzania, where Barrick mines have been widely protested for mistreatment of workers, environmental destruction, and for failing to pay Tanzanian taxes and royalties. Since Harper’s visit, a toxic spill killed 43 people and 1,358 livestock, according to the Ward authorities near Barrick’s Tanzanian North Mara mine.

An Amnesty International report published in February 2010 found Indigenous peoples in Colombia are at risk of being exterminated by state forces, right wing paramilitary groups and guerrilla organizations. “Far from creating a legitimate economy, as Liberal MPs have been suggesting in defence of the Colombia free trade agreement, the deal before Parliament would increase the chances that Canadian companies invested in agriculture, mining and resource extraction in sensitive areas will be doing business with murderers, drug traffickers and arms smugglers,” said Stuart Trew of the Council of Canadians in a recent press release.

As a consequence of this growing list of allegations, Canada has drawn criticism from around the world, first from environmental, religious and human rights organizations and labour unions, and now increasingly from international institutions such as the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxic Waste and Products.

The Canadian government has also begun to acknowledge its lack of accountability within the transnational mining industry. The first National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Canadian Extractive Industry in Developing Countries was organized in 2006, in reaction to a 2005 report from Canada’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT). The report acknowledged Canada does not have laws ensuring Canadian mining companies “conform to human rights standards, including the rights of workers and [I]ndigenous peoples.”

The Roundtables released a consensus-based, multi-stakeholder report approved by the main industry group, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC).

The Harper government took two years to respond to the Roundtables’ recommendations. Its report, “Building the Canadian Advantage: A Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Strategy for the Canadian International Extractive Sector,” rejected the recommendations and offered no tools for redressing the documented abuses of Canadian industry abroad.

Instead, the report offered increased subsidies to Canadian mining companies under the CSR banner. The “voluntary approach of CSR” is a strategy advocated by G8 countries as part of the Heiligendamm Dialogue Process, initiated at the 2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. Before this dialogue process, the Commission for Africa (CfA), launched in February 2004 by Tony Blair in the lead up to the G8 in Gleneagles, advocated the same strategies in a 2005 report.

In an analysis of the report, watchdog NGO Corporate Watch said, “The Commission for Africa does concede that ‘oil, diamonds, timber and other high-value commodities all fuel Africa’s conflicts.’ However, [CfA] points the blame at the OECD [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] Guidelines on Multinational Companies for failing to provide ‘clear enough guidance on what companies should do in these situations.’...Rather than regulating, or even dismantling, these corporations, the CfA will allow them to continue plundering at will, apparently satisfied by their ‘corporate social responsibility’ policies and promises to be more transparent.”

Recently, members of Canada’s parliament have proposed legislation to hold Canadian transnational resource extraction companies accountable to Canadian law. Liberal MP John McKay introduced private members bill C-300 to the House of Commons February 29, 2009. The bill would withhold government funds, including billions of dollars in Canadian Pension Plan investments and diplomatic support for companies found—following a government investigation—to be abusing human rights. Some contend that this bill—while a positive step forward in holding corporations to account for their crimes—is most valuable in its exposure of the Canadian government’s support for its mining industry abroad.

Canada is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Private member’s bill C-354 aims to codify these international agreements into Canadian law. The International Promotion and Protection of Human Rights Act (IPPHRA), introduced by NDP MP Peter Julian, amends the Federal Courts Act to permit people who are not Canadian citizens to initiate lawsuits based on violations of international law or treaties to which Canada is a party if the violations occur outside Canada.

“The IPPHRA contrasts with Bill C-300 in that C-300 keeps the monitoring of corporate activities out of the criminal or civil courts, in administrative processes controlled by ‘the Ministers,’” said Grahame Russell of Rights Action in an email.

“With respect to reforming Canada’s criminal code so that corporations and their directors could be brought to trial for criminal actions in their corporate activities in ‘developing countries,’” he added, “no one in Canada has taken up this challenge.”

Sakura Saunders is an editor for protestbarrick.net, an all-volunteer news site that networks organizations and community groups around the world against Barrick Gold.

This story was published in The Dominion's special issue on the G8 and G20 summits in Ontario. We will continue to publish independent, investigative news about the G8 and G20 throughout the month of June.

For up-to-the-minute G8/G20 news from the streets of Toronto, visit the Toronto Media Co-op.

G20 Mining image

Jalil Rieki

December in Review, Part I

Tim McSorley — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:44:39 +0000

Italian Berlusconi attacked, Chilean "Berlusconi" ahead, coral reefs poisoned and Canada fossil fooled

Canada was at the centre of daily criticism during the UN Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen, receiving four Fossil awards for being a major obstacle to negotiations; being the target of a Yes Men hoax to highlight lack of action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and witnessing climate justice protests across Canada, including a banner drop from the Parliament Buildings calling for the tar sands to be shut down, and a brief sit-in during a House of Commons Environment Committee meeting.

In Copenhagen, the Inuit Circumpolar Council called for global action to protect Inuit populations, and scientists announced they are now working with Inuit communities to help research climate changes impacts in the North.

One hundred thousand protesters took to Copenhagen's streets to call for a strong commitment from global leaders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and implement climate justice legislation. The nine-kilometre march was peaceful, with the exception of fewer than 15 protesters who threw rocks at windows, which was followed by a mass arrest of nearly 1,000 people. Danish human rights organizations demanded an inquiry into controversial mass preventative arrest tactics, or "kettling," a police trend in Copenhagen this month.

Thousands of people attempted to breach security at the climate negotiations conference centre in Copenhagen. The action coincided with protests within the centre, with the purpose of converting the negotiations into a "People's Assembly." Police used tear gas, dogs and plain-clothed officers to infiltrate and break up the groups of protesters. Hundreds were arrested.

British scientists reported rising CO₂ levels in the air are causing oceans to absorb the molecule, raising the acidity of the water, putting all forms of aquatic life at risk. They warned current targets of stabilizing atmospheric CO₂ at 450 parts per million could prove lethal to coral populations worldwide.

Hondurans continued to protest the contested presidential elections held November 29 which saw conservative Porfirio Lobo elected president. A Canadian delegation that observed the elections denounced Canadian Minister of State for the Americas Peter Kent's statement that "there was a strong turnout for the elections, that they appear to have been run freely and fairly, and that there was no major violence." The delegation reported witnessing low turnout, and violence and oppression against civilians. Regional state coalitions ALBA and MERCOSUR rejected the elections, and ALBA approved economic sanctions against the government of coup-president Roberto Micheletti.

Twelve hundred residents of Sept-Iles, Quebec, marched against uranium exploration taking place just outside of the town and less than 13 kilometres from the local drinking water source. The protest was also in support of 24 doctors who resigned en masse to protest provincial government inaction on the issue.

Plans are moving ahead to build Alberta's first nuclear power plant after the Albertan government decided not to impose a moratorium on nuclear power in the province.

The Israeli government announced a freeze on further construction in illegal settlements in the West Bank, while also allowing settlers to benefit from new funds meant to go to economically deprived areas, which are primarily inhabited by Arab Israelis.

Former Sri Lankan army chief General Sarath Fonseka spoke out against his own government, accusing the defence secretary of having ordered Tamil rebel leaders killed as they tried to surrender during the height of last spring's civil war.

Houston City Controller Annise Parker was elected mayor of the Texas city, making Houston the largest American city to elect an openly gay mayor.

The Federal Court of Canada struck down the security certificate against Hassan Almrei, saying that the federal govenrment had not presented justification for renewing the certificate last year, relying instead on "stale" and "contradictory" evidence. Certificate detainee Mohamed Zeki Mahjoub was released from the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre, dubbed "Guantanamo North," for medical care as his health deteriorated due to a hunger strike he began in June. Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan announced a major review of Canadian security certificate laws.

Extradition hearings against Hassan Diab continued in Ottawa. Diab, a University of Ottawa professor, faces deportation to France under allegations of carrying out a bombing there in 1980. French anti-terror laws have been severely criticised for undermining the rights of the accused.

Three hundred people protested the Olympic Torch as it passed through Montreal.

The Crying Room art gallery in Vancouver was forced by the city to remove a mural critical of the Olympics.

Land defenders arrested for occupying the Site 41 dump site in Ontario saw their charges stayed or dropped. Ina Wood, 75, who was hospitalized from a recent stroke, was one of two people whose charges were immediately dropped. She said she was disappointed that others only had their charges stayed.

Residents of Sudbury, Ontario, launched a campaign to clear the name of John Moore, a member of the Serpent River First Nation who grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, and who was imprisoned for 10 years for a 1978 murder prosecutors admit he did not commit. He was convicted under a since-repealed law that allowed him to be prosecuted for allegedly knowing a murder may take place.

A new report ranked the economic well-being of Canadians as ninth out of 14 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-opertaion and Development. Norway ranked first, Spain last, and the US thirteenth.

Twenty-two million "lost" emails from the George W. Bush administration were recovered by computer technicians following two lawsuits brought by two government watchdog organizations. The current US government is still searching for missing emails from dozens of days during the Bush administration.

Sebastian Pinera, known as the "Chilean Berlusconi," won the first round of Chile's presidential election. A run-off is scheduled for January 2010. If he wins, Pinera would be the first right-wing president elected since the end of Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship 19 years ago.

Three hundred fifty thousand Italians gathered in Rome for "No Berlusconi Day" to call for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's resignation. Berlusconi has had his immunity from prosecution lifted over corruption charges. Days later, the prime minsiter was attacked by a man carrying a metal replica of the Duomo Cathedral, breaking his nose and two front teeth; the arrested attacker has apologized and may be remitted to psychiatric care. A prominent Italian journalist told BBC Newshour, “If we were in America, where madmen carry guns, Berlusconi would be dead. We are in Italy. Madmen carry souvenir replica of the Duomo.”

Copenhagen Protest Dragon

Copenhagen Protest Night

Joint Efforts are the Key

Paula LaPierre — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:36:16 +0000

Concerns

Paula LaPierre — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:45:41 +0000

The Dialogue Denied Us

Appreciates Recent Correspondence

Paula LaPierre — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:13:35 +0000