The Dominion - 77

Issue #77

dawn — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 02:21:39 +0000

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Once, We Welcomed Tamil Refugees

Tim McSorley — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 05:16:59 +0000

Twenty-five years later, Canada jails "boat people"

MONTREAL—"We thought we were going to die...because we were not seeing any land, or light, or any boat or anything."

Sooriyakumaran Sathananthan was among more than 150 Tamil asylum-seekers discovered in a pair of crammed lifeboats off the coast of Newfoundland in August, 1986.

The Tamil refugees, who had fled persecution in Sri Lanka, were quickly granted work permits by Canadian authorities.

Nearly a quarter-century later, when another boatload of Tamil migrants reached this country’s shores, Canada responded differently.

Of the 492 Tamil refugee claimants who arrived in August 2010 on the MV Sun Sea, nearly all were detained by Canadian immigration authorities; some remain in custody.

In the wake of the Sun Sea's arrival, the Canadian government has pledged to pass a bill that critics say will punish refugees deemed "illegal," with measures including a one-year mandatory jail sentence without judicial review.

"We see a very different government now," says David Poopalapillai, spokesperson for the Canadian Tamil Congress. "The compassion is not there."

Today, Sathananthan works full-time as a delivery truck driver in Toronto. Over the years, he sent remittances back to Sri Lanka, and sponsored several family members to come to Canada as refugees. He says he's happy to have built a better life for them. But his road to asylum was long and difficult.

In the early 1980s, still living in Sri Lanka, he was forced to drop out of school after the death of his father. He worked as a farmer to support his mother and four siblings, but life in the South Asian island country became unbearable when civil war erupted in 1983.

The government of Sri Lanka—under the control of an elite group of Sinhala Buddhist nationalists—had persecuted the Tamil-speaking population for decades. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, took up arms, demanding national independence. Atrocities were committed on both sides, with civilians caught in the middle.

"So many people died then," Sathananthan recalls.

He fled the country with his cousin to seek a better life abroad, first traveling to Yemen. But work there was scarce.

"That's when people said, you have to go to Canada," he says. "Your family will have a better life."

Sathananthan and his cousin flew to East Germany before crossing the Iron Curtain into West Germany. In July 1986, they embarked for Canada on the freighter Aurigae with more than 150 other Tamils.

Sathananthan said they spent about two weeks at sea before the captain of the crowded cargo ship set the migrants adrift in two lifeboats. For nearly three days they drifted with no sign of land.

"We didn't have any food, any water...we [were] thinking we were going to pass away," he says.

They were finally spotted by fishermen and brought ashore by Canadian officials on August 11, 1986. Upon their arrival, the migrants were met with enormous media coverage and an outpouring of public sympathy.

The asylum-seekers were released within days and quickly granted work permits.

"There was no aggressive detention," says Peter Showler, director of the Refugee Forum, an Ottawa-based think tank.

Two-and-a-half decades later, the federal government has adopted a harsh stance aimed at discouraging "illegal migrants" from entering Canada by sea in the wake of the MV Sun Sea's arrival, Showler says.

"The government clearly has admitted that they have got this aggressive detention policy because they want to deter additional boats from coming," he says.

As of May 30, 2011, the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) had ordered the deportation of four of the Sun Sea migrants, on the grounds that they were members of the LTTE, a group also known as the Tamil Tigers.

The Harper government listed the LTTE as a terrorist organization in 2006.

In March 2011, when the IRB ordered the deportation of one of the migrants—whose name cannot be released due to a publication ban—Public Safety Minister Vic Toews called the decision "an unmitigated victory for the rule of law."

Critics say the government is making criminals out of refugees, while downplaying the atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan state.

"When we're talking about violence committed by resistance movements, we're talking about violence that imperialism is quick to condemn, because state violence is never considered terrorism, when in fact it's the greatest form of terrorism," says Harsha Walia, an organizer with migrant justice group No-One Is Illegal.

Activists from the group began organizing to support the MV Sun Sea migrants even before Canadian authorities boarded the boat last August near Victoria, BC. The group opposed what Walia calls a climate of xenophobia fueled by the Harper government and mainstream media.

"There's a particular hysteria about boats arriving...coupled with the post 9/11 climate, and the criminalizing and the fear-mongering around terrorism," she says.

Janet Dench, executive director for the Canadian Council for Refugees, says the government has exaggerated the threat posed by the asylum-seekers to win political mileage.

"You condemn the Tigers for their bad deeds, but you don't take an equal position on emphasizing the abuses that many Tamils themselves have suffered at the hands of the Sri Lankan government," Dench says.

Lawyers for the Canada Border Services Agency have stated in IRB hearings that anyone who did business with the Tigers—including, in one case, a rice farmer who sold crops to the LTTE—should be considered inadmissible to Canada.

Critics say that since the LTTE acted as a de facto government in predominantly Tamil areas of Sri Lanka, with a military and police force at its disposal, it was practically impossible to avoid dealing with the group.

"Many of the Tamils who make refugee claims, they make claims against the Tigers," Dench says. "And yet you don't hear any sympathy for the Tamils who have suffered abuse at the hands of the Tigers, and they're asking for our protection on that basis."

The civil war that displaced Sathananthan and his family officially ended in 2009, amidst reports of mass civilian casualties at the hands of the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE.

Since then, the UN's refugee agency has noted improvements in the human rights situation in Sri Lanka.

But hundreds of Tamils suspected of affiliating with the LTTE are arbitrarily arrested annually and detained for months or years without charge, according to a report released in February 2011 by Amnesty International. Many are tortured in custody, the report adds.

Thousands of Tamil civilians live under military surveillance in "open air prisons" in the country's northeast, according to Ajay Parasram, a doctoral student researching Sri Lankan politics at Carleton University.

"I think that's especially concerning because really the civil war was about the systematic exclusion and subordination of the Tamil people," he says.

As migrants from Sri Lanka continue to seek refuge abroad, the federal Conservative Party has pledged to pass a bill that would keep people designated as "irregular arrivals" in jail for at least one year upon their arrival, without any chance for judicial review of their detention.

The Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and New Democrats vowed to oppose Bill C-49—which the NDP's then-immigration critic dubbed the "attack refugees bill"—when it was first introduced to the House of Commons by Vic Toews last October.

Harper now appears poised to impose the reforms, which he says will deter migrants who attempt to "jump the immigration queue."

Critics say the notion that asylum-seekers must wait in line for asylum violates international agreements including the 1951 Refugee Convention, of which Canada is a signatory.

"There's no queue," Poopalapillai says. "When you have the fear that you're being persecuted, you're being raped, you're being jailed, you're being gunned down, do you have the time to go...and ask for a visa?"

Groups of migrants designated as "irregular" by the government would also be barred from receiving permanent residency status for five years, leaving them in a state of legal limbo. University of Victoria refugee law specialist Donald Galloway calls the government's reforms "anti-humanitarian."

"What they're recognizing is that if somebody is found to be a genuine refugee, but hasn't been given permanent resident status, we can always take the refugee status away," Galloway says.

"You're not going to be able to get long-term work, you're not going to be able to get a credit rating in this country, you're not going to be able to settle down, or buy yourself a home," he adds.

He also noted that the bill would apply retroactively, giving the government discretionary power to name the Sun Sea migrants and others as "irregular."

"It seems that this is a level of viciousness, of anti-humanitarian venom, that we haven't seen before," he says.

Walia says activists should oppose C-49 while building an anti-racist culture.

"They're not just policies," she says. "They exist in climate of racism, xenophobia, and anti-migrant sentiment."

David Koch is a freelance reporter and a journalism student living in Ottawa.

Tamil children

tamil noise

In BC, Pipes Spell Double Trouble

Moira Peters — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 09:01:27 +0000

KSL gas pipeline is low profile, high threat

VANCOUVER—The struggle against the proposed Enbridge pipeline, which has galvanized First Nations throughout northern BC and earned popular support from people across the country, has become one of the highest profile Indigenous and environmental issues in Canada. Concerns are mounting that in Enbridge's shadow, other energy projects are slipping under the radar—with potentially explosive consequences.

The Kitimat Summit Lake (KSL) gas pipeline, also called the Pacific Trails Pipeline, is of emerging concern to Wet'suwet'en land defenders and local residents. If built, this pipeline would connect to an existing Westcoast Energy Pipeline at Summit Lake, near the geographical centre of BC, and cut west to Kitimat.

“The general location of the pipeline was the first phase of BC’s new and controversial Energy Corridor discussions; other phases...included the Enbridge oil pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to Kitimat, which many First Nations strongly opposed in early 2011,” reads a recent report prepared by the BC Tap Water Alliance about the KSL pipeline proposal.

At the western end of the proposed pipeline would sit a brand new Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) port, which is being built by a handful of former Duke Energy insiders on Haisla reserve land at Bish Cove, an area described in media reports as pristine beachfront. First planned as a pipeline to supply the tar sands with natural gas, the project has since been modified to provide an export channel for the emerging shale gas bonanza in northeastern BC and Alberta.

“In 2004, for all of the energy processes in North America, we didn’t have enough gas,” said Will Koop of the BC Tap Water Alliance. “Now they want to export this gas, they want to change the direction of the import gas proposal from Kitimat to the tar sands and reverse it,” Koop told The Dominion.

The proposed KSL pipeline would be almost 500 kilometres in length and 91 centimetres in diameter; it would also be flanked by an 18-metre right-of-way on each side. The project has quietly received approval from both the federal and provincial governments, and is awaiting the final nod from the National Energy Board, the federal agency that oversees oil and gas projects in Canada.

“Nobody showed up for the first open house in Houston—three people I think—so they cancelled all the other open houses. There was never another open house on the KSL pipeline,” said Glenda Ferris, a long time environmentalist who lives in the Buck Creek Valley near Houston BC. “There was never even a news article about this pipeline in the local papers...They did this all under the table,” she said.

In February 2011, Vancouver-based Pacific Northern Gas sold its stake in the KSL project to the Houston-based Apache Corporation and EOG Resources (formerly Enron).

Ferris is not alone in feeling left in the dark about the plans to build the KSL pipeline.

In early April 2011, Freda Huson, a spokesperson for the Unist'hot'en Clan of the Wet'suwet'en, received a letter from Pacific Trails Pipeline, indicating that the company planned to put drilling pads on the site of her family’s camp. A week later, Huson visited the location, the company having neglected to seek permission or prior consent from her clan as traditional land owners.

On the site, Huson noted fluorescent ribbons inscribed with the words “Pacific Trails Pipelines” hanging from tree branches, marking the path the pipeline would follow. Enraged, Huson took down the ribbons, and returned the next day with members of her family to build a makeshift fence around the area.

These days, Huson is entertaining the idea of moving into a cabin on-site so that she can keep a closer eye on what is happening on the land she says her family has depended on for trapping and fishing for hundreds of years.

“I received a telephone call and they said they were wanting to meet with us, because we told them they were not coming in, and we would block them,” said Huson, referring to her last interaction with one of the pipeline companies.

Unlike in the case of the Enbridge pipeline, elected officials from the 14 First Nations along the KSL pipeline path have already agreed to the project. Some have received incentives, including employment for band members, for agreeing to the project. The Haisla Nation did not respond to a request for an interview before press time.

The cumulative impacts of the infrastructure connected to the KSL pipeline will be enormous, and range from LNG terminal and storage areas near the coast to the massive shale gas projects in northeastern BC, which are slated to use a significant portion of the energy generated by the proposed Site-C dam. A recent study from Cornell University indicates that natural gas extracted from shale through a process known as hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) may actually release more carbon emissions in the long run than coal or oil.

Oil and gas pipelines running side by side also make a dangerous combination.

East of the Morice River, lying to the west of the town of Smithers, BC, a significant distance separates the proposed route of the Enbridge oil pipeline and that of KSL. However, closer to the river as well as to the west, the proposed pipelines would run side by side.

“When they go up the Morice and through the coast mountains to Kitimat, they’re right on top of each other,” said Ferris. “The basic probability of failure is an explosion, why would you ever allow an oil pipeline to be built next to the KSL pipeline?"

“I’ve never seen Enbridge acknowledge the KSL pipeline,” she said, “and what hazard the KSL pipeline is going to pose to an oil pipeline.”

Enbridge did not return this reporter’s request for an interview before press time.

Dawn Paley is a journalist in Vancouver.

Treeline

Convicted by the Media, Sentenced by the Courts

hillarybain — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 05:52:51 +0000

Supporters of Nicole Kish say she is innocent and the media is guilty

HAMILTON—Nicole Kish feels like she’s “living in a bad John Grisham novel.”

Kish was convicted of second-degree murder on March 1, 2011, and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 12 years. An activist, artist and a singer-songwriter with no criminal record, Kish has maintained her innocence since the 2007 death of Ross Hammond, which occurred after a large street brawl near the Toronto intersection of Queen and Bathurst.

Friends and supporters of Kish argue the media storm around the so-called "panhandler killer" was partially responsible for her unfair trial and wrongful conviction, and they are fighting for her release.

The physical altercation that resulted in one man’s death, first described by Detective Sgt. Gary Giroux—and then reiterated by both local and national media—as being between “street kids” and “jocks,” began when a woman identified as Faith Watts allegedly asked for money from George Dranichak and Ross Hammond. On the stand at the preliminary hearings and at the trial, Dranichak testified that he and Hammond, who died of a stab wound that night, responded to Watts with sexually derogatory remarks, such as telling her to perform sexual acts if she wanted money. While on the stand, Dranichak went on to acknowledge that their persistence had fuelled the confrontation.

Nicole Kish had been walking down Queen Street that night with a large number of people celebrating her 21st birthday. She had been in Toronto only for a day prior to the altercation.

Out of the 20 witnesses to testify at the trial, not one identified Kish or saw anyone stabbed that night. In rendering his verdict, Justice Nordheimer addressed this as being inconsequential, saying, “In this case we are not dealing with direct identification but rather with circumstantial identification.”

Two witnesses did testify to seeing a woman in possession of a knife. Kish’s former co-accused, Faith Watts, testified to having pulled out a knife during the altercation and said she had done so out fear for her life and the life of her boyfriend, who witnesses testify was beaten unconscious. Additionally, a substantial amount of DNA was found on Watts’s clothing. However, Nordheimer attributed the DNA findings as being the “limitations of physical evidence,” and while he acknowledged that the knife belonged to Watts, he goes so far as to suggest the knife may have changed hands three times before its fatal use. Stating his case for conviction, he focused on Kish being stabbed, saying that since Kish had been stabbed, there’s an “irresistible inference” that she must have killed Hammond.

Several surveillance cameras were recording that night; two, however, were inexplicably lost while in police custody: the footage on one was recorded over, and the other was “lost”. The explanation Detective Giroux had provided to the courts was that the video was placed in the evidence box but by the time it came into his possession, the video was simply no longer there. Citing previous case law (R. v. La), Nordhiemer attributed the loss of that video to the “frailties of human nature.”

“It’s dumbfounding,” says Kish via telephone from the women’s prison in Kitchener, Ontario. Reflecting on her conviction and the lack of evidence to substantiate it, she emphasizes that she is not alone, saying, “To one end, I understand oppression. I understand humanity’s long history of abuse; I understand I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to be convicted of a crime I did not commit. I just don't understand why.”

“This was not a fair and impartial trial, but a politically-motivated attempt to vilify a young activist, justify draconian ‘Safe Streets’ legislation and further criminalize and marginalize youth and poor people,” says Kevin MacKay, a Professor at Mohawk College and the Executive Director of the Sky Dragon Community Development Centre in Hamilton. MacKay first met Kish when she asked if she could use the centre as a drop off location for Books to Bars, a non-profit organization she founded in Southern Ontario which donates reading and educational material to over a dozen correctional facilities. Describing Kish as being “hard-working and passionate,” MacKay grew to know her through their joint organizing of the G20 Hamilton Primer and her stage performances at the Sky Dragon. MacKay describes Kish’s trial as revealing “a desire on behalf of the police to force a conviction against massive contrary evidence,” in order to obtain the conviction that, from the very beginning, the Toronto Police had promised to the media and the public.

Furthermore, MacKay blames the mainstream media for showing an “equally disturbing level of bias and corruption” in what he describes as “erroneous reports” such as the Toronto Sun claiming Kish was identified at trial as having the knife clenched in her mouth (which she wasn’t), or the media labeling her “the panhandler killer” despite the fact that no evidence indicated that Kish had been panhandling.

Many of Kish’s supporters share this criticism of the media. Within hours of the altercation, the case was highly publicized as the “panhandler stabbing,” causing an extraordinary amount of public outcry against the city’s perceived leniency towards panhandling and the homeless. Top city and provincial officials as well as columnists and talk show hosts weighed in on the incident, calling for panhandling to be made illegal in the city. The media storm began before much was known about the case except what was included in press releases from the Toronto Police, which Kish’s mother Christine Bivens said the media treated “as gospel.”

“One of the ways they [the media] shaped the case [is that] Nicole was always referred to as the panhandler despite the fact there was absolutely no testimony that she was a panhandler,” said Bivens. “Contrast this with the portrayal of George Dranichak, purveyor of porn, and his business associate Ross Hammond, whom the media referred to as internet marketers.”

George Dranichak is an owner of a multi-level porn marketing company, which manages such sites as Uncaged Marketing and Guerrilla Traffic. Also, it came to light during the trial that while attending school in Kentucky, Dranichak settled out of court after violently assaulting an individual after forcing his way into the person's dorm. Being someone who runs a pornography marketing company and has a history of violence carries entirely different implications than being an “internet marketer,” and might have provided a very different narrative to the public discourse. However, these elements of Dranichak’s character were left out of media coverage.

When Kish was out on bail she was under a stringent publication ban that prohibited her and her family from speaking publicly about the case. Her grandmother Val Lewis says the ban affected the outcome of the case. She feels this way especially in regards to Kish’s character, saying that Kish “would fight for a cause up to but excluding violence. Violence has never been a part of her makeup. But drawing attention to wrongs always has.”

Despite the media coverage, Kish’s conviction sparked immediate backlash and a grassroots campaign to advocate for her release. Weeks after her conviction, supporters organized a show to raise awareness and funds for her appeal. They held a rally outside the courthouse immediately following Kish’s sentencing on April 4, 2011, which heard the courtroom erupt in chants of “Free Nyki!”

When asked what’s next for the Free Nyki Campaign, Bivens believes that the courts will “overturn Nicole’s conviction if [they find] it wasn’t properly based on points of law.” If this happens, it will make Kish eligible for bail pending a second trial, which is a priority for Kish’s family and supporters.

Eugene is a writer and activist living in Hamilton Ontario. He came to know Nicole Kish through both their participation in the arts and in community organizing. He currently supports the campaign to free Nyki.

Free Nyki

Victoria Bivens

Infographic: Threatening Ideologies

Moira Peters — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:36:25 +0000

tim-infog.11X17.new_.jpg

Tim Groves is an independent researcher and journalist in Toronto.

The Plastic Bag Debate

Tim McSorley — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 05:34:14 +0000

Lessons from Rwanda

KIGALI, RWANDA—One of the first things you will likely notice if you have the chance to visit Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is the extraordinary cleanliness that spans the city. This pleasant reality can be explained by looking closely at how the Rwandese manage their environment.

Of particular importance is their stance on plastics: Rwanda is now entering its fourth year with a nation-wide law banning all plastic bags.

As Canada continues to debate the future role of plastic bags, it is worth looking at the Rwandan example, and understanding how such an initiative operates, and what benefits it can bring.

Toronto is the only Canadian city with a mandatory fee to the consumer of five cents per bag. However, in recent months Toronto mayor Rob Ford has repeatedly attacked the fee, and has explicitly stated that he wishes to get rid of it. Why you may ask? The answer: consumers are apparently annoyed.

A spokeswoman for the mayor, Adrienne Batra, told CBC news in December 2010 that “the mayor speaks with residents every day, and the thorny issue of the bag tax keeps coming up. People are sick and tired of being nickel-and-dimed to death.”

It seems that Mayor Ford may be ignoring the facts, as multiple reports have indicated that the tax has greatly reduced the purchase of plastic bags in Canada. For example, Metro grocery stores have reported a drop of 80 per cent since 2009.

This reduction in plastic bag use is important for the Canadian environment, says Franz Hartmann, Executive Director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance.

“Plastic bags require fossil fuels and many chemicals to be produced. This is having a negative impact on the environment, and using up precious materials. They are also a major source of liter in Toronto, and are having a bad impact on wildlife outside the city.”

Although the fee is playing a positive role, it is worth looking past initiatives that simply aim to reduce use and toward those that target outright elimination. The perfect case study is the fight against plastic bags in Rwanda, a fight that has led to their complete demise.

For anyone who has travelled in Africa the ubiquitous nature of plastic bags sprawled everywhere is an undeniable reality. The problem has not gone unnoticed though: several African countries have been working to ban plastic bags for years.

Located in Eastern Africa, Rwanda is largely known for its tragic genocide that exploded in April 1994. Since then it has tended to operate as a relatively unknown country outside certain political and economic circles. However, for such a small, developing nation it is home to a variety of unique, forward thinking policies.

In 2008, Rwanda declared a nation-wide ban on all plastic bags.

The initiative was a response to the two most common ailments caused by plastic: a well documented understanding of plastic's negative environmental impacts, but equally influential, the extensive physical presence of bags around the country.

Dr. Rose Mukankomje, the Director General of the Rwanda Environmental Authority (REMA), has been at the forefront of this policy, and continues to work on a daily basis to monitor its progress.

“In 2004, the Ministry of the Environment began to conduct studies on the use of plastic bags in Rwanda,” she explains. “At that time people had started to see plastic invading everywhere—black, yellow, red colored bags—causing even visual pollution.”

In addition to the visual pollution, research from the National University of Rwanda reported the widespread environmental consequences of plastic. “Plastic was not only all over the ground, but underneath as well. This hindered agricultural production in Rwanda, as plants cannot grow past the plastic. As well, our water sources were becoming highly polluted with plastic being found inside many dead fish,” Dr. Mukankomje recalls.

The first step was raising awareness about this information. This began in 2005 during the national day of cleaning, called Umuganda. As the communities around Rwanda began to clean up they were asked to collect all the plastic they could find.

“We came up with a huge, huge amount of plastic—in the land, around our compounds, everywhere—everyone was scared,” says Dr. Mukankomje.

This event signaled the turning point. It not only sensitized many Rwandans to the problem of plastic within the country, but it got politicians thinking about the issue as well—President Paul Kagame took part in this event. A nation-wide campaign began by flooding the media. Furthermore, local NGOs and businesses were commissioned to create alternatives—mainly cotton or banana leaf bags.

The advocacy was a success and in 2008 a bill was finally passed to ban plastic bags within Rwanda. While there was still much resistance from the affected private sector, the culmination of the campaign can largely be attributed to developing a general consensus among Rwandans. Dr. Mukankomje explains, “You need a policy to get rid of plastic bags, but it must be wanted to be successful.”

The benefits of Rwanda’s plastic bag ban were quickly evident: in 2008 UN Habitat named Kigali the cleanest city in all of Africa. Now three years since the bill was passed, Rwanda remains a plastic bag-free country, and has developed a reputation across the region for its extreme cleanliness. The passing of the bill coupled with Rwanda’s monthly day of cleaning has insured that it remains this way, and will continue for the foreseeable future.

As Toronto debates the future of plastic bags, the story of Rwanda, now more than ever, should be considered. Though different in many fundamental ways, Canada, like Rwanda, relies greatly on its natural resources. Thus, the future health of the land is of pivotal importance in both countries.

“Human civilization has worked just fine without plastic bags. It’s only been in the last 30 years that they’ve reared their ugly head,” says Hartmann. “Getting rid of them completely is the best solution. I don’t see what the issue is.”

Eliminating plastic bags will play a huge first step in curbing the prevalence of plastics in the Canadian environment. As Dr. Mukankomje frames it, “We must not see this as a challenge, but as an opportunity.”

Mayor Ford, take note.

Ryan Kohls is a freelance journalist out of Peterborough, Ontario.

Bag in tree

Beating Bad Habits

Tim McSorley — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 10:00:27 +0000

How community organizers are working together for more secure online communications

Image by Shira Ronn

KITCHENER, ON—Over the past two years infiltration and disruption of activist and media organizations as well as anarchist communities by undercover cops have been on the rise across Canada. This has included high profile cases of police infiltrating groups organizing resistance to the 2010 Winter Olympics on Coast Salish Territories and the G20 summit in Toronto.

Throughout these experiences one thing is now clear: beyond our often naive approach to security culture many in the social and ecological justice movements are not practicing good computer security habits.

In response to this growing need the Montreal-based Anarchist Tech Security collective (Anarchistes pour des technologies solidaires—ATS) formed after the G20. Mobilizing to fill the tech security gap they provide workshops and information about online safety and anonymity. “I think in a general sense we are working on bringing the secure technologies and useful tools to anarchists,” said founding member Boskote (a pseudonym).

The ATS has been travelling throughout the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario since summer 2010 holding workshops on tech security in front of all kinds of crowds: from small groups in living rooms to standing room only halls at anarchist book fairs.

“People were stressing due to all the surveillance and we responded to that,” said Boskote. “Email and instant messaging is insecure by default; it was normal, but as surveillance and infiltration was becoming more obvious, that normal became a problem.”

Beyond showing participants how to set up certified and encrypted email, anonymous and secure web browsing and verified and encrypted instant messenger programs, the two-and-a-half hour workshop also opened up discussions on hard drive and file encryption, security firewalls and the way internet communications work. Sometimes the workshops were followed by discussions on open source software (see box 1), steps for establishing difficult to break passwords (see box 2), or emerging ideas on the intriguingly named “zones of opacity.”

”The inspiration for the ‘zone of opacity’ comes from a community in Athens, Greece, where there is a really strong anarchist presence,” said Boskote. “The relationships...and all the aspects of what is going on in a space (physical, social, or technological), are opaque to the state or other form of dominating power,” he explained. “It is not possible for the state to see or know what is going on there.” The ATS emphasizes that if the state cannot determine your daily patterns and movements, your attitudes and relationships, or how you accomplish the objectives of your aspirations, it will be hesitant to invade your community’s spaces.

“We hope to help build zones of opacity in anarchist communities,” said Boskote. “If we can prevent the state from surveilling us we will be stronger.”

One of the challenges of sharing these kinds of skills, though, is the widely varying degree of experience among community members. While some—especially those with prior computer experience—have found the ATS's information relatively straightforward and easy to understand others find the learning curve a bit steeper.

“[The workshop] was a lot of info and I will likely have to go over a lot of it again,” said one participant after their first session with ATS. “But it was surprising how easy it was to set up and start using these tools. Plus, if practicing better computer security will help keep my friends and allies out of jail, then yeah, it is obviously worth it.”

It is not only participants who are still adapting to the new reality of online security.

“Far from being experts, we started out knowing nothing about this. We were figuring it out by ourselves and it took quite a while,” said Boskote. “It is through the process of these workshops that we are learning more and more about computer security as some people who come attend the workshops help to fill the gaps in our knowledge.”

It is important for us to recognize the values in the way these tools were created, Boskote said, relating as they do to the horizontal, anti-corporate organizing of the subculture of open source software and self-identified hackers who built these tech security systems.

Even with this recognition however, he explained “The technology that we use needs to change along with, and contribute to, the changes of the rest of society.”

With so many in need of creating a safer space online, and with a limited supply of knowledgeable facilitators, people may be overwhelmed at the prospect of setting up their own systems of computer security. Thankfully, those who are yet to organize a tech security workshop in their town can start practicing good computer security guided by great online resources.

Security In A Box is a collaborative project whose aim is to "meet the digital security and privacy needs of advocates and human rights defenders." The site includes how-to guides addressing various digital security issues and offers free instruction taking users through the processes of setting up and maintaining private internet communications and secure file storage systems.

With the spread of social media, computer security and web anonymity have become important issues. “The kind of information people are posting on the internet is the kind of stuff that the state usually infiltrates groups to get: social networks, personal relationships, day-to-day movements. That is what surveillance is and that is a major problem that needs to be criticized and thought about,” said Boskote.

Noting that facebook and other social media are “really useful tools,” Boskote argues that “we need to figure out how to separate out their usefulness as tools and the dangerous aspects of sharing information that the state can use to infiltrate, disrupt and repress our movements. We need to use the tools in a safer way.” (See box 3.)

As social and ecological justice movements grow in the face of increasing criminalization of dissent, there is a need to build a tech security culture beyond the use of secure communications and Trojan-free computers. (Trojans are malicious programs which create “back-door” access to your computer over the internet or use your computer to carry out attacks on other computers).

“We stress this in our workshops: tech and computer security technologies are necessary but not sufficient part of security culture,” said Boskote. Taking out your cell phone’s battery while planning demonstrations may eliminate audio surveillance but, as was highlighted at the ATS workshop, if tech security is being used and the other security measures are being ignored then there are obvious failure points. In other words: tech security does not identify an infiltrator or informant in your community.

In addition to understanding and implementing computer security, the need to build supportive and resilient communities that communicate across regions remains. “There is no way to make communication 100 per cent inaccessible to surveillance and it's obviously not possible to make ourselves socially secure,” said Boskote in his final remarks before departing to New York to hold another workshop at the city’s annual anarchist book fair. “In both cases, we just have to try our best. Security goes way beyond tech security.”

Box 1

Quick Reference Guide:

More Secure Email address: riseup.net, resist.ca
Secure Email Client: Thunderbird with gpg and enigmail addons
Browser: Firefox with ToR (software which works to anonymize web browsing), noscript, https anywhere addons
Online Chat (most services): Adium or pidgin with otr plugin
Encryption: True Crypt
Operating System: Linux
“Secure” social networking: we.riseup.net
Guides and Info: security.ngoinabox.org- security.angrynerds.com - help.riseup.net - we.riseup.net/ats-mtl

Box 2

Password creation:
Search Youtube for: How To Choose Strong Passwords

A sentence that only you will think of/a unique phrase that you will remember (8+words long).
Substitute numbers for words where possible or add numbers to end of phrase.
Take the first letter from each word.
Substitute special characters and numbers for letter (a=@, s=$, i or 1=!, etc.)
Use suffixes for different sites (facebook=fbk, twitter=twt, youtube=ytb, etc.)
Have a few of these passwords depending on how secure you need.
Change passwords every 3-6 months.

Box 3

ATS Facebook Tip
Setting up a single account on Facebook which is for a whole group who shares a password, where members can access the accounts anonymously through ToR (torproject.org), and folks can communicate with these entities and remain anonymous. It does not get away from all the problems of Facebook but it creates barriers between these online presences and peoples’ actual identities. Things like that try to make it so we can use these important tools when it is necessary without having all the negative consequences.

Dan Kellar is an organizer with AW@L in Kitchener, co-host of AW@L radio on rabble.ca and 100.3 SoundFM co-op radio Waterloo, and was a co-conspirator with the 2010 G20 and anti-Olympic media centres.

This article was produced with the support of Koumbit, as part of an ongoing series on technology, society and politics. Koumbit is a non-profit company which promotes the use of free & open source software by community groups in Quebec, Canada and abroad.

Tech Watch

When Guns Go Green

hillarybain — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 11:54:21 +0000

Lockheed Martin dives into the "renewable" electricity game

HALIFAX—Tom Rand needs a trillion dollars. With that trillion, Rand, the venture capitalist with an eco-twist, believes he could wean the world off of its fossil fuel addiction, curb greenhouse gas emissions and make renewable energy financially competitive.

Rand sits on the board of several green energy companies and businesses, has designed an award-winning, low-emissions hostel in downtown Toronto and has written “Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit,” a green energy primer. Rand is also an accomplished speaker and headlined April’s “Renewable Energy Conference” in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The problem, although Rand would not call it that, is that he doesn't particularly care where his trillion comes from, so long as it comes. So while some might cringe at seeing the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, as a sponsor of the conference, Rand lets the money talk.

“The only way we're going to be able to solve this problem [climate change],” says Rand, “is to get the people with the capacity to build this stuff at scale at the table. So, people like GE, Lockheed Martin, Siemens, BP, Duke Energy...these are all companies who could either be friend or foe. The most helpful thing for us to do is to say 'How do I make you a friend? How do I bring you on board?'...It's just not pragmatically useful to have those people not on your side. It doesn't make things any easier.”

“Past sins forgiven,” says Rand. “Come on in, help us out...I think is the approach.”

Tamara Lorincz, of the Halifax Peace Coalition, is not so ready to forgive Lockheed's sins, past or present.

“Anything Lockheed Martin might do on a renewable energy front pales in comparison to the plundering of the climate by its weapons systems,” says Lorincz. “If Lockheed Martin truly cared about renewable energy and a sustainable future, it would stop producing the weapons systems that use so much fossil fuel, and pushing for military spending and war spending that degrades the environment and contributes to climate change.”

Lorincz, the self-proclaimed mosquito in Lockheed Martin's ear, recently drew blood when her Access-to-Information request revealed that the many billions—continuously escalating, according to experts—that the Harper Government plans on spending on F-35 stealth fighters would net them 65 engine-less aircraft. The story went global.

“Each stealth fighter holds 10,000 pounds of jet fuel," says Lorincz. "Jet fuel is extremely carbon intensive and will cause climate change, and will use our dwindling fossil fuels. They have no credibility on renewable energy and they are not needed on renewable energy.”

So, while Tom Rand won't ask the question, I will.

Who the hell invited the war pigs to the table?

“I can say that our presence here is based on our interest in renewable energy, and reducing greenhouse gas consumption and environmental damage,” says Steve Marsden, Lockheed Martin’s representative at the conference. “And to the extent that our activities in renewable energy will accomplish that, I think that's a good thing.”

Things were far more black and white, good versus evil, in the days when Lockheed's F-117s were dropping thousands of tons of ordinance on Iraq, or when their Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program had the world in American cross-hairs. Then, Lockheed Martin was simply the biggest arms manufacturer and exporter the world had ever known, a peddler of products that caused untold suffering and mayhem.

Lockheed Martin is still the world's biggest arms manufacturer and exporter. The Canadian military still consumes thousands of barrels of oil per day. But the Lockheed Martin website, aside from lauding missile defense systems and F-35 fighters, loudly toots on the suddenly-popular green horn. F-22 Raptor diagnostics systems now have a completely paperless approach, in that no paper will be used when diagnosing what ails the F-22 Raptor. Copper-beryllium, the dust of which can cause severe lung damage, has also been eliminated from the F-35 assembly line.

Lockheed Martin has also been awarded a contract by the provincial government of Nova Scotia, in consort with Irving Shipbuilding and Atlantis Resources Corporation, to build an experimental tidal turbine to be tested in the Minas Passage, near Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. The turbine is expected to cost between $10 and $15 million, and is expected to generate 1 megawatt of power. Lockheed Martin is going green, and coming to the Bay of Fundy.

So, who the hell invited the war pigs to the table?

The NDP provincial government of Nova Scotia, that's who.

The invitation comes in the form of the Renewable Electricity Plan (REP), released by the Nova Scotia Department of Energy in 2010. The REP includes a mandate to create 25 per cent renewable electricity by 2015, and 40 per cent renewables by 2020.

Ostensibly, the REP is meant to wean Nova Scotia off its dirty coal habit. Realistically, it opens a veritable Pandora's box of options that, upon closer inspection, do not appear renewable at all. These include large-scale biomass operations that threaten to decimate Nova Scotia's already fragile forests, as well as an increased interest in natural gas exploration, which most likely would involve the environmentally-catastrophic technique known as “fracking.”

Tidal power, to be gathered from the Bay of Fundy, weighs heavily in the dreams of the REP, and this is where Lockheed Martin's so-called expertise comes in.

The Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE), a berthing station for turbines in the Minas Passage, can accommodate up to four tidal turbines. FORCE has been built using millions of taxpayer dollars. So far, only one turbine has ever been berthed at FORCE, and the Fundy tides knocked it off-line in only seven days. This is the place where the magic is supposed to happen.

Never mind that the old Annapolis Royal Generating Station has been chugging along in the Annapolis sub-basin, at an output of 20 megawatts, for almost 30 years. The NDP government, and now Lockheed, appear to have their sights set on the Herculean task of harnessing some of the most massive tides in the world. But as they say at FORCE, “One day the world will ask...Is it Fundy-tested?” It remains to be seen whether this line will be spoken as the butt-end of a joke.

The REP doesn't even touch on solar energy, considering it an "emerging" technology. Considering that FORCE has not generated its first kilowatt of energy to the grid, and yet is being offered an extremely favourable rate of return should it ever do so, and considering that the power-generating properties of solar energy have been well-proven around the world, the Department of Energy appears to be flagrantly selective in its use of the word "emerging." REP is also very restrictive on wind projects, another of the areas where smaller players stand to make a go of the energy game.

Neal Livingston, co-founder of Black River Ltd., thirty-year veteran in the solar, wind, and small-hydro installation business, isn't getting swept away by the tidal wave.

“The Premier is 100 per cent in bed with big business and the old boys' network in Nova Scotia in terms of designing this policy,” says Livingston. “And that's why you see tidal being so prominent in their thinking, because they've bought into a whole corporate structure that isn't about you and I having the ability to generate power. It's all restricted.”

According to Livingston, the REP stresses the notion of COMFIT (Community Feed-In Tariff), which essentially ties the hands of renewable energy entrepreneurs, and favors big-time investors. COMFIT has strict rules as to who can sell power back to the grid, and more than likely this isn't you. Communities, co-ops, universities, and Aboriginal groups are fine. But if you can't find 25 of your closest friends to co-sign with you on a small-scale wind farm, forget it.

“It’s going to be a mess in two ways,” says Livingston. “One way is that very, very few people are going to own [renewable energy sources] and thus be able to produce their own electricity. This is much like the current situation, with Nova Scotia Power owning everything,” he says. “And also, if you want to be a smaller player you have to work under a whole set of crazy rules which make it not a very interesting place to do it.”

For Lockheed Martin, however, Nova Scotia is the perfect place to get their feet wet in the renewable energy game.

Miles Howe hails from Ottawa, Ontario, and currently calls Halifax home. He has a Masters degree in Sociology, plays a wicked harmonica, and ferments a mean kimchi.

Green Guns

Nova Scotia’s Tar Sands

hillarybain — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:13:34 +0000

“Shale gas is the fossil fuel industry’s latest suicide mission”

HALIFAX—After years of learning about climate change and oil and gas development in other parts of the world, Michael Jensen was upset, but not surprised, to learn that natural gas exploration may be coming to his backyard.

"It's indicative of a much larger pattern of environmental destruction," says Jensen. "I'm deeply worried about the climate."

In December, the Nova Scotia Department of Energy issued a call for exploration proposals for three blocks of land along the province's North Shore, from the New Brunswick border to Merigomish. Jensen's house and small market garden fall within the "Scotsburn Block." He and hundreds of others from across Nova Scotia don't trust the government’s assurance that they will “recognize the importance of the environment when considering shale gas operations,” and many have decided to fight back.

Natural gas exploration and extraction can include drilling, seismic testing and hydraulic fracturing or "fracking." Fracking involves pumping water, chemicals and sand underground at high pressure in order to fracture the shale and release the gas. Over the past several months, the practice has gained notoriety with the release of the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland and several high-profile articles in The New York Times, which documented the production of massive amounts of toxic waste-water, the contamination of wells and the up-swell of human health complaints.

The impacts of exploration and development—from clear-cutting, to increased traffic, to water and air pollution—have many Nova Scotians concerned, but it's fracking in particular that has struck a nerve.

Tatamagouche is on the province’s North Shore and falls within the area slated for exploration. Within a week of a public screening of the movie Gasland in February, a community meeting at the Tatamagouche Centre drew 70 people, says Jensen. A slew of activity has followed: letter-writing nights; a petition; a protest at the office of the Minister of Energy, Charlie Parker; and a Halifax rally to ban fracking that drew over 100 people from across the province.

Beth Norrad would have liked to travel from her home in Penobsquis, New Brunswick to attend the rally, but she and her neighbours are tied up in a legal battle with Potash Corp, the world's leading potash producer and owner of 25 per cent of the gas wells in New Brunswick.

“We’re all broke,” she says. “A trip to Halifax just isn’t in the cards.”

Norrad has 40 gas wells within a few kilometers of her home. When asked how this has affected her quality of life, she responds,"it's ruined it."

Norrad grew up in New Brunswick but moved to Toronto, working there for 25 years. She moved to Penobsquis in 2007, seeking a higher quality of life, “totally ignorant” of the development that was underway.

Today, she would do anything to leave—except she can’t sell her house.

"The homes are worthless," she says."There's no farms left here anymore. You need water to farm."

The natural gas in the area was discovered by Potash Corp in 1999, when the company was using seismic testing to find the large body of water that was draining into their potash mine—also a few kilometers from Norrad's home. Instead, the company found gas. The first few wells went dry in 1999. The company drilled more gas wells, and did more seismic testing.

"One home right after another [lost their water] until 60 homes lost their wells," says Norrad. Residents believe the blasting created cracks in the ground that allowed the water that fed their wells to flow into the mine. "For the next six years we went off water tanks."

The town now has a municipal water supply, but Norrad believes it was put in place for Potash Corp, rather than for the 60 homes without running water. Sixty cisterns would costs $600,000, says Norrad. "But you can't run a mine and gas wells on a cistern. So the federal and provincial governments, in collusion with industry, spent $10,000,000 on a water line to provide industry with water."

Norrad says her community has been destroyed. "We basically live in an industrial park. An industrial park with no rules."

"They lie," she says. "They'll tell you anything to get gas wells on your property."

"What we have [in Cape Breton] is a company that has no real interest in what the community thinks, and a Department of Energy that cares even less," says Geoffrey May from his home in Margaree, Cape Breton, overlooking the Margaree River. May works at the local campground and has lived in the area for 35 years. He says fishing and tourism are two major sources of employment in the area, and both are under threat from oil and shale gas exploration and drilling.

PetroWorth Resources Inc. has secured the exploration and development rights to 383,000 acres of land in Cape Breton. Nova Scotia's largest lake, Lake Ainslie, is in the middle of the block of land, which is connected to the Margaree River, known for its natural beauty and salmon pools. The "Margaree-Lake Ainslie Heritage River" is a designated protected area in Nova Scotia.

"They're proposing drilling through the water table right next to Lake Ainslie," says May. "This is a poster child for inappropriate development."

“The province has received a number of letters from Nova Scotians about fracking, most of which concern protection of water,” noted an April 4 press release from the departments of Energy and Environment. As a result, it was announced that “The province will review environmental issues associated with hydraulic fracturing.”

But for May, even a ban on fracking does not go far enough. "I want to see the leases [for oil and gas exploration] withdrawn."

He says drilling for more oil and gas is not the answer to Canada's rising energy needs. "In Canada we're currently wasting half the energy we produce," says May. "What we need to increase is our conservation, not our energy supply."

"Shale gas is not a transitional fuel," he says. "It's the fossil fuel industry's latest suicide mission."

Elizabeth Marshall agrees. "Destroying water is like destroying life. For what? A few dollars? For someone else to get rich? It's insane. Once you destroy the environmental infrastructure, you destroy the community."

Marshall is Mi'kmaq, and says her people's connection to the land is not for sale.

"The big oil companies are driven by profit. How many will lay down our lives for a dollar or 10 dollars?" asks Marshall. "But where I come from, people like me, we're wiling to give up our lives for something that's sacred to us. That's the difference between a multinational company and my community. For us, it's a matter of life and death. For them, it's a matter of profit."

Marshall says Petroworth better be ready for a fight. "We know we have title and sovereignty. We'll do what we can to exercise it," she says. "It's not a hobby. It's all connected to our life...When I'm long gone, my children and grandchildren will be continuing this struggle and hope."

“Where do we go once our water is destroyed?” she asks. “We have to protect it with everything we have.”

This article was originally published by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Hillary Lindsay is Coordinator of the Halifax Media Co-op and Editor with the Dominion Newspaper.

NS Tar Sands

May in Review, Part II

Tim McSorley — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 11:44:47 +0000

Great Slave Lake polluted, Pickton intervenors excluded, mining companies refuted

The BC government announced the creation of a civilian-led police oversight office in response to recommendations made by public inquiries into the deaths of Robert Dziekanski and Frank Paul. Dziekanski, a Polish migrant, was tasered at Vancouver International Airport by RCMP officers. Paul succumbed to hypothermia after being dumped in an alley by Vancouver police officers.

After a recent slew of violent or sudden deaths in BC prisons, the BC Civil Liberties Association released a statement calling for more inquests into correctional facility deaths. Since 1999, 144 deaths—and only 13 inquests—have occurred in BC provincial and federal institutions.

The BC provincial government rejected funding for legal representation for all but one of the 13 groups that Pickton commission head Wally Oppal recommended receive financial support. The province will fund legal costs for the families of victims killed by William Pickton, but not sex worker, Aboriginal or Downtown East Side Vancouver residents' groups.

Canada Post rejected the Canadian Union of Postal Workers' final offer. While the union announced it is preparing to strike as of Thursday at midnight, it said it is willing to negotiate up to the final minute. “After seven months of negotiations, Canada Post continues to demand major concessions, including unsafe work methods, a 22 per cent wage reduction for new hires and the elimination of a sick leave plan that members have had for over 40 years," said CUPW National President Denis Lemelin in a statement.

Paper Excellence Canada Holdings Corporation purchased its fifth paper mill in Canada in as many years. Paper Excellence is a shell company of global pulp and paper giant Asia Pulp Paper, which has been accused of many environmental crimes, including illegally logging a national park in Cambodia.

A naturally-forming ice dam caused water to stream through a gold mine tailings pond in the Northwest Territories. The toxic overflow leaked back into a water system that feeds Great Slave Lake, which has been heavily polluted from the mining industry expanding along its shores.

Dow AgroSciences dropped its complaint to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) challenging Quebec's ban of pesticide 2,4-D, which four other provinces have banned for aesthetic uses. Dow had claimed the policy violated NAFTA because it constituted a barrier to trade.

Some 200 people marched for Status for All in Montreal, calling for an end to deportations, detentions and punitive measures against migrants. Approximately 50,000 undocumented people live in Quebec.

Mining justice advocates introduced a shareholder's resolution at Vancouver-based Goldcorp's AGM which would suspend operations at the company's Marlin gold mine in Guatemala. Goldcorp advised shreholders to vote against the resolution, which was supported by 36 human rights organizations in Europe. Six per cent of Goldcorp's shareholders voted for the resolution. Some critical shareholders were prevented from entering the meeting. Two hundred people, including affected people from Papua New Guinea, Honduras and Guatemala, protested the company's alleged human rights and environmental abuses outside the AGM in Vancouver.

While protesters rallied outside, delegates from Wixarika in Mexico addressed shareholders at First Majestic Silver's AGM in Vancouver. The company plans to build a silver mine in San Luis Potosi, territory sacred to the Wixarika people.

Members of the Algonquin of Barriere Lake voiced opposition to mining on their territory at the annual general meeting of Cartier Resources, Inc. Cartier's copper mine is slated to operate on unceded Algonquin land covered by a trilateral agreement which does not permit mining exploitation.

The Mishkeegogamang First Nation launched a historic legal challenge in an Ontario court. The First Nation is suing both the federal and provincial governments for upwards of $1 billion over multiple violations of James Bay Treaty No. 9, signed in 1905. Violations include the forced relocation and the flooding of treaty lands for hydro power development. The treaty covers over 350,000 square kilometres of territory around James Bay.

The NDP stated that the Ontario Liberal government is delaying an inquest into the deaths of seven First Nations students in Thunder Bay after questions were raised by their families about the lack of Aboriginal representation on the inquest's jury. Since 2009, when the inquest was supposed to begin, two more students have died: Kyle Morrisseau, 17, and Jordan Wabasse, 15.

A Toronto city councilor abandoned his motion demanding a written commitment from Pride Toronto to prevent Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from participating in this year's Pride Parade, saying he was satisfied with a commitment from one of the march's co-chairs to eject unregistered QuAIA members from participating. QuAIA will not march this year.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford asked the courts to halt a full audit of his campaign funding, as ordered by a compliance audit committee in response to questions about Ford’s family company paying more than $77,000 in early campaign expenses.

Byron Sonne, the last person to remain in jail on G20-related charges, was released on bail after 11 months behind bars.

The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) continued to provide US intelligence agencies with the names of Canadians and foreign nationals in Canada they suspect of having ties to terrorism-related activities and groups. The names often end up on US watch-lists and no-fly lists, blocking those people from entering or flying over the United States. According to US diplomatic cables newly released by Wikileaks, in some cases, CSIS has no concrete proof of its allegations.

In a defense department briefing, the Canadian Military revealed that Canadian fighter jets have dropped 240 bombs over Libya in 324 flights.

Well-known British peace activist and former Guatanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg was prevented from boarding his direct flight from England to Toronto because of the chance the plane could, in an emergency, be diverted to the United States. Begg, who was released after five years at Guatanamo without being charged with a crime, was slated to speak at a conference on Islamophobia in Toronto and in other Canadian cities. Begg routinely travels in Europe, Africa and Asia for speaking engagements and has met with several high-ranking British officials, but remains on a US no-fly list.

Germany announced plans to shut down all nuclear reactors by 2022, a move prompted by mass nationwide protests against nuclear power.

Musician Carlos Santana was booed in Atlanta at Major League Baseball's annual Civil Rights Game after speaking out against a new Georgia law. HR 87, which was modeled after Arizona's controversial SB 1070, gives state and local police federal powers to demand immigration papers from people they suspect to be undocumented, and to jail those who do not provide papers on request.

Peabody Energy threatened to sue the Yes Men for unfairly singling it out as the only coal company ruining children's health. The satirical group created a parody company website, Coal Cares™, offering free novelty inhalers to families living near coal plants. Peabody Energy didn't issue a cease and desist notice, but a letter complaining that while they are in fact the largest coal company, they aren't the only one causing asthmatic attacks in children.

Metalcore puppets

Status for All march 2011

Barrick's Bodysnatchers

Tim McSorley — Thu, 26 May 2011 22:00:22 +0000

Wanton killings, criminalization, and degradation continue at the North Mara Mine in Tanzania

NEW YORK, NY—On May 16, over 1,000 people entered a mine in northern Tanzania, desperate to collect whatever gold they could from the modern industrial site that used to be their bread and butter. But instead of providing the displaced artisanal miners with a boost to their meager income, the day ended in horror. Seven men were killed, and at least a dozen wounded when police unleashed a hail of bullets.

The next day, African Barrick Gold, a subsidiary of Toronto-based Barrick Gold, released a statement admitting that seven people were killed and twelve injured at their North Mara mine in Tanzania. The killings came at the hands of Tanzanian police, who Barrick originally claimed were under sustained attack by 800 "criminal intruders" (a number Barrick revised to 1,500), who illegally entered the North Mara mine to steal gold ore. Since this fatal confrontation, tensions have been high in the Tarime District, with an increase in the number of police, the deployment of water cannons, the arrest of journalists and two members of parliament for "instigating violence," and the theft of five of the seven bodies from the mortuary by police.

Confrontations between local people and the mine's security forces are not uncommon near Barrick's North Mara mine in Tanzania. As Bloomberg journalist Cam Simpson reported in a December 2010 feature story about the mine, before this latest massacre "at least seven people have been killed in clashes with security forces at the mine in the past two years." These security forces, according to company documents, include police who Barrick pays to guard its North Mara mine.

“They are not arresting them or taking them to court,” said Machage Bartholomew Machage, a member of the Tarime District Council, the highest local government body, in an interview with Simpson. “They are just shooting them.”

One week after the most recent spate of killings, the police stormed a local mortuary and stole the bodies of four of the dead. This move, according to locals, was to prevent the villagers from holding a planned memorial service at the mine on Tuesday.

Police also arrested and charged two members of Parliament, a legal advisor, and journalists for "instigating people to cause violence." MP Tundu Lissu, who was among those arrested, was in Tarime to assist with post-mortem medical examinations of bodies to identify exactly which parts of the bodies of the deceased were shot by the police.

“Normally if you shoot a person on the head it means you intended to kill them. However, if you shoot them on the leg it means you tried to stop them from doing something… this exercise will help us to know the police’s intention,” he explained to local journalists. Tundu was arrested two days later at the funeral of the local villagers killed by Barrick security.

At this time, Lissu and six others remain in police custody and their bail has been denied. Meanwhile, the four journalists, MP Esther Matiko, and opposition cadre John Heche posted bail and were released after six hours in custody.

According to George Marato of Tazania's Guardian newspaper, these violent confrontations can be blamed in part on corruption amongst the security forces at Barrick's mine. According to his interviews with locals following the latest killings, police and company staff conspire to facilitate illegal entry into the premises to scoop sand with gold concentrates. For example, one group would pay one million shillings (around $650) in exchange for a half-hour of scooping sand from the ground.

The violent confrontations occur, according to Marato, when disagreements arise over the amount of compensation for company insiders, often due to hikes in "gold theft fees." He writes, "Ensuing wars of words turn into confrontations that provoke policemen to fire at the very people who had been co-conspirators not long previously."

This situation, according to Marato, is then compounded by local youngsters who attempt to force their way to the compound to scoop the sand free of charge.

Tensions with the locals can be traced back to the mine's early history of displacement and dispossession. Before the mine opened, an estimated 40,000 people living in the area, a large majority of the population, depended on small-scale mining for their livelihoods, according to a history compiled by the mine’s first proponent, Afrika Mashariki Gold Mines Ltd.

Small scale miners, represented by five villages, had mineral rights to the lands that they mined, but were forced to sell these claims to Afrika Mashariki under illegal and irregular circumstances, according to a legal complaint launched in July 2003 by the Lawyers Environmental Action Team (LEAT) on behalf of 1,273 former small-scale miners. In another lawsuit, 43 landowners alleged to have been paid no compensation, while being forcefully evicted from their lands.

Since then, there have been multiple fatal confrontations at the mine site. In December 2008, one such incident resulted in a civilian uprising where locals set fire to $7 million worth in mine equipment. This number, which was originally estimated at upwards of $15 million, is disputed by locals. As now, Barrick blamed the damage to equipment on "well-organized groups" that raided the mine site. However, signed affidavits [1, 2] from witnesses to the event claim that angry villagers had only set one Caterpillar loader on fire on a road outside the mine, after they had heard of the killing of their compatriot. These affidavits and others [3, 4] describe this incident in detail, as well as documenting the history of violence and impunity at the mine site, and the criminalization of community advocates following the murders.

Sakura Saunders is the co-editor of protestbarrick.net, an all-volunteer network of groups researching and organizing around mining issues, particularly those involving Barrick Gold.

To read this article in Spanish/Para leer este articulo en espanol: No a la mina

North Mara mine

Living in the shadow of the North Mara mine

Canada on Secret Oil Offensive: Documents

Martin Lukacs — Wed, 25 May 2011 05:11:40 +0000

Foreign ministry's tar sands team rebranding Alberta oil in Europe

MONTREAL—The Canadian government has been carrying out a secret plan in Europe to boost investment and keep world markets open for the Alberta tar sands, collaborating with major oil companies and aggressively undermining European environmental measures, documents obtained by The Dominion reveal.

In 2009 the federal government launched a strategy to “protect and advance Canadian interests related to the oil sands," fearing that growing protest could curb European investment in the industry and that EU restrictions on tar sands imports could be mimicked globally.

“Oil sands are posing a growing reputational problem [in Europe], with the oil sands defining the Canadian brand,” states one document released under the Access to Information Act. “Canada’s reputation as a clean, reliable source of energy may be put at risk.”

Run by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAIT) and involving eight foreign missions, working alongside Natural Resources, Environment Canada and the Albertan government, a European “Oil Sands Team” has gone on the offensive against threats to the tar sands: they have monitored green groups, responded to “significant negative media coverage,” helped Canadian policymakers lobby European parliamentarians and organize trips to Alberta, worked to “enhance cooperation” with oil companies, and coordinated regular meetings between top European oil executives and Albertan and federal ministers, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The “pan-European oil sands advocacy strategy” was launched in December 2009 around the time of the United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen. Hundreds of civil society groups there gave Canada a “Fossil of the Year” award for being "the absolute worst country at the talks," fingering a powerful tar sands industry as the driving force behind Canada’s hardline stance against ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The extraction of Alberta’s vast deposits of bitumen, which hold the second largest supply of oil after Saudi Arabia, has been widely criticized as the world’s most environmentally destructive and carbon-intensive industrial project.

One of the main targets of the strategy has been a EU energy law—the Fuel Quality Directive—that would slap a dirty label on tar sands oil as a way of promoting cleaner transportation fuel in Europe.

Europe does not import tar sands oil from Canada, but Canadian policymakers are worried a measure categorizing tar sands oil as an undesirable fuel could spread to other continents. With the Albertan fossil fuel industry—and supportive provincial and federal governments—increasingly looking to Asian markets to sell their crude such precedents would spell trouble.

The obtained documents further reveal that the diplomatic campaign by the Canadian government to “prevent discriminatory treatment of the oil sands under the EU Fuel Quality Directive” was much more co-ordinated than previously understood.

The mission in Brussels took the lead: lobbying the European Commission, engaging in “regular information sharing with industry,” organizing “high-profile events,” and Ministerial visits. The mission provided “reporting with intelligence, analysis and advice” to the Canadian and Alberta governments while the larger Oil Sands Team played a “very useful coordination mechanism” in the campaign.

They appear to have been so aggressive that a European parliamentarian told the Globe and Mail in March that Canada’s lobbying had been “unacceptable.”

The Canadian government was also concerned that a dirty label on the tar sands could galvanize pressure to curb investment by European companies who have been subject to increasingly noisy environmental campaigns calling for divestment.

With the end of cheap, easily accessible oil, European oil giants have scampered to extend their lifespans by turning to unconventional gases and investing billions in the Alberta industry.

A mid-year report of the Oil Sands Team, covering activities between January and July 2010, paints a picture of a Canadian government eager to work closely with these companies to ensure the money keeps flowing.

One section reads less like international lobbying records than a joint playbook. In Oslo, Canada’s mission “holds regular meetings” with largely state-owned Norwegian oil giant Statoil to “update on each others activities and co-ordinate where appropriate.” Statoil has invested more than $2 billion in tar sands operations.

A Wikileaks cable has revealed that in November 2009, a month before the European strategy was launched, then-Environment Minister Jim Prentice described his shock to U.S. Ambassador Jacobsen on witnessing Norwegian public sentiment against investment in Alberta’s “dirty oil,” during a visit to the country. The experience had “heightened his awareness of the negative consequences to Canada’s historically ‘green’ standing on the world stage,” and he believed the Canadian government’s reaction to the dirty oil label was “too slow” and “failed to grasp the magnitude of the situation.”

Each barrel of bitumen Statoil produced in the Alberta tar sands in 2010 released 85 times more carbon than a barrel of conventional North Sea oil, according to company figures.

At Statoil’s annual general assembly last week, shareholders representing nearly 20 per cent of private capital voted in support of a resolution calling for the company to withdraw from tar sands operations.

This was the third year in a row that motions campaigned for by Greenpeace and the Indigenous Environmental Network have dominated the meetings. In November 2010, Statoil buckled to campaigners' pressure and sold 40 per cent of its Alberta tar sands portfolio.

When Prime Minister Harper flew to France for a few hours on June 4, 2010, to meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy in the run-up to the G8 and G20 meetings in Canada, he found time for an unpublicized meeting with Christophe de Margerie, the CEO of France’s oil major Total. Top Total executives have also met with Canada’s Deputy Minister of Trade and regularly meet with Canada’s ambassador.

The released documents do not reveal anything about the nature of the PM's discussions. The company, however, recently announced they plan to spend $20-billion in the oil sands by 2020 in hopes of boosting their production to 200,000 barrels day.

In recognition of the tar sands' new importance to their portfolio, Margerie and the company's international advisory board spent last week in Alberta. During a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, he acknowledged that environmental criticism has impacted the company's reputation. "In terms of image, it's not good," he said.

Shell, the biggest energy company in the world, holds the most land leases in the tar sands and plans to triple production to more than 750,000 barrels a day. They have been named in five lawsuits related to environmental damages and violations of Indigenous rights, and have faced shareholder resolutions demanding disclosure of the social and environmental risks of their projects.

The Hague mission is “enhancing its engagement with the sector, and with Shell recently.” The London mission is “in regular contact with the private sector including meetings with Shell, BP, and Royal Bank of Scotland [RBS] as well as Canadian oil companies,” and participated in Shell’s Stakeholder dialogue where they were able to “gather intelligence.” Brussels has “worked with Shell by hosting complementary events” including a multi-stakeholder workshop and dinner.

The released documents indicate that government officials believe their efforts have failed to fully “defend Canada’s image as a responsible energy producer and steward of the environment including climate change issues.” They cite tight budgets and a lack of resources. The oil sands team, according to DFAIT, is composed only of 11 officials, working part-time, spread across Ottawa and the European missions.

The report states that they will need an injection of “significant resources” and also suggests that “a professional PR firm may be able to assist us in moving forward strategically with the use of approved but sharpened messaging.” With a "recent increase in the NGO campaigns targeting public [sic], we anticipate increased risk to Canadian interests much beyond the oil sands (e.g. recent campaign targeting tourists to Alberta).”

Rethink Alberta, co-ordinated by an international network of green groups, has run a billboard campaign in Europe and is mailing postcards to travel agents and tourism operators to discourage tourists from visiting Alberta.

European countries have seen a “resurgence of highly critical public campaigns,” including protests that “have become a regular occurrence in London mostly towards BP, Shell and RBS but also towards the High Commission.”

The report also points to “growing media attention to environmental aspects of oil sands developments in Europe,” resulting in “enhanced media monitoring” by most Canadian missions. Media coverage in Paris was especially bad in their eyes: “the negative articles are essentially about pollution, the wildlife, and the health of native peoples and the destruction of the boreal forest.”

Their campaign against the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive law also appears to be failing. The law aims to force fuel suppliers to cut carbon emissions by six percent by 2020. In initial evaluations EU officials assigned tar sands production a high carbon footprint, meaning suppliers would shun tar sands oil in favour of lower-emission fuels from conventional sources of petroleum.

Canadian policymakers jumped into action against the initiative because they worried other countries like the United States and China—who has previously mimicked European emissions standards on air pollution in the 1990s—might adopt the model.

“Our fear is that if something happens in the EU and it is spread in other countries—not only members of the EU—we could have roughly one-third of the world’s population subscribing to regulation or legislation that mitigates against our oilsands,” Alberta International and Intergovernmental Relations Minister Iris Evans told media in the fall of 2010.

Canadian and industry officials have vigorously contested that the carbon footprint of tar sands is higher than traditional sources, but European policymakers gained new ammo when an EU study released this February concluded that production creates 23 per cent more emissions.

After aggressive lobbying from Canadian officials resulted in the removal of the dirty fuel label on tar sands crude in the fall of 2010, a re-emboldened European commission announced this spring that they would move ahead with the plan to discourage tar sands fuel imports.

Ensuring open markets, however, is also the objective of the ongoing free-trade negotiations between Canada and the European Union, which would involve eliminating environmental “barriers” to trade like the Fuel Quality Directive. Negotiators have frequently raised the issue of the Fuel Quality Directive and recent media reports indicate they even threatened to scrap the agreement if the issue was not resolved to their satisfaction.

DFAIT officials told the Dominion that the advocacy plan is an “official level” strategy at the departmental rather than ministerial level, meaning Cabinet would not have any oversight.

The seeds for it may have been planted in a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s (DFAIT) planning document from March 2008. DFAIT's Report on Plans and Priorities for 2008-2009 states that one of its priorities is to “enhance international commercial opportunities for Canadian companies.” It suggests developing an “energy advocacy strategy to brand Canada as a leader in best practices for the development of oil sands reserves, energy research and development, advanced energy technologies, energy-efficient technologies, renewable energy and alternative energies.”

Download the documents: Pan-European Oil Sands Advocacy Strategy & Pan-European Oil Sands Team Mid-Year report.

Martin Lukacs is an independent journalist and a member of the Dominion editorial collective.

clayton climate camp

Kanesatake and a Canadian Mine

Tim McSorley — Wed, 11 May 2011 05:58:38 +0000

Controversial niobium mine is receiving little public attention

MONTREAL—Only minutes up the road from the focal point of the 1990 Oka Crisis, Niocan Inc. plans to set up an underground mine for the extraction of niobium, a rare element used in high-grade steel production.

Despite the past history of tensions and widespread opposition to the current proposal within the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, the proposed mining project has remained under the radar: even as the company continues to lobby government officials and push forward with the project, little media or mainstream political focus has been paid to the issue. Residents of Kanesatake, though, are not letting their guard down in the face of the mining project.

“A very short-sighted vision drives this mining project that will impact the land and environment for future generations, but the government and Niocan only see dollar signs,” says Ellen Gabriel, a celebrated activist from Kanesatake. “Our community has been resisting for over 300 years and our rights are not recognized, particularly our rights to the land, but we have every right to defend this land.”

As the site of the Oka Crisis, Kanesatake has already served to ignite a generation of protest and action within Indigenous communities. If the Quebec government grants permission to open the mine against the will of Kanesatake, the potential political implications are serious.

“Quebec's government holds no jurisdiction to grant mining permits on traditional Mohawk lands,” Sohenrise Paul Nicholas of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake told The Dominion. “We are opposed to the mine and are willing to defend the land...A mine is not [an] appropriate project for our traditional lands.”

Voices opposing the project highlight the long-term environmental impacts of underground mining, a process that will use large amounts of water from local aquifers and affect an estimated 25 square kilometres of fertile agricultural lands.

“One immediate concern is environmental,” says Nicholas. “A major mine operating in a mixed residential and agricultural area is not acceptable. Beyond permanently altering the natural landscape, the mining process will disturb high concentrations of radioactive elements within the land.”

Radium and polonium—both radioactive—have been measured in elevated concentrations within the underground ore body that Niocan Inc. is proposing to mine, a process that may lead to large volumes of radioactive waste.

Many Mohawks also oppose the mine on the basis of their collective water rights.

“A mine like this will be detrimental to our water table and our health in general,” says Nicholas, in an urgent tone. “About 90 per cent of our homes in Kanesatake use well water every day, and once those aquifers are disturbed for mining use there is no guarantee that our water will be safe anymore.”

Over the past decade Niocan Inc., based in downtown Montreal, has been lobbying to set up the controversial project amidst agricultural lands just outside of Montreal. Highly unpopular in both Kanesatake and surrounding Quebec communities like Oka, the contested mining project is uniting local farmers and Mohawks in an anti-mining struggle.

“Local farmers living close to where the mine would be situated are totally opposed and are expressing outrage that this mine would position itself right in the middle of the farming area,” Kanesatake resident Walter David told The Dominion in an interview at his Moccasin-Jo coffee and tea shop in Kanesatake. David says he has seen a solidarity develop over the last decade through joint opposition to the Niocan mine. “Agricultural workers are growing many fruits and vegetables on these lands just beside Montreal. Do we want toxic chemicals entering our food and water supply?

“Today we are supporting the farmers and the farmers are supporting us.”

Points of opposition to the mine put forward by Mohawk activists in Kanesatake and community residents in Oka are similar, even if disagreement over fundamental land rights in the area exist. It is a fascinating political solidarity, born from opposition to corporate mining, in an area historically shaped by territorial conflicts.

Recently, Quebecois community activists collected thousands of signatures for a petition they delivered to Quebec's National Assembly. Arguing that “there is a blatant conflict in using land in the Oka area for both agricultural purposes and the establishment of a niobium mine,” the petition calls on the Quebec government to “protect the important agricultural, residential, recreational and environmental areas in the Oka region against any current or future mining development project in the area.”

Representatives for Niocan continue to lobby to mine niobium, a highly lucrative element actively extracted from mines only in Canada and Brazil and used for aerospace, military and industrial machinery. Any new mine could result in revenue to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year. The immediate economic gains for a company seeking to extract the element from Indigenous lands are clear.

A final decision on whether to grant permission to Niocan Inc. for the mine is forthcoming from Quebec's Environment Ministry, although the decade-long negotiations have lead to two separate reports from Quebec's Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement (BAPE).

On water, a 2005 BAPE report concluded that the “ground water pumping required for operating the mine would lead to lowering of water levels in the deep aquifer...it could also lower the ground water table and the level of certain wetlands,” impacting “agricultural water supply.” Pollution stemming from the mine “could trigger contamination of ground water,” it said.

Despite these findings, progress toward the establishment of the mine continues, as local residents work to raise awareness and struggle against the project.

“We have had conversations; it is an issue that we will deal with,” Hubert Marleau, interim Chairman of the Board and CEO of Niocan, said of land disputes involving the Mohawks of Kanesatake.

“In Canadian history there have been many cases where things were not so easy,” said Marleau. “In the end things worked out and people were happy.”

But not everyone agrees with Marleau’s rosy assessment.

"Well, this is a selective view of Canadian history," says Clifton Nicholas, a community activist and videographer from Kanesatake. "Throughout all of Canada's history we were never given a fair shake."

The debate about Niocan's niobium mine points to a larger context of simmering land conflict across Canada. In recent years, Indigenous people from coast to coast have taken to the front lines to oppose industrial development on traditional territories. These areas, like the one where the proposed Niocan mine will be situated, are often officially classified by Canadian or provincial authorities as crown lands open for private development, even though they have been long held by local Indigenous communities and are sometimes subject to ongoing land claims, legal challenges or disputes.

Community activists and traditional leaders opposing development on “disputed” land are facing increasing state repression, including the arrest of six Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) elders in Northern Ontario, police repression of community leaders of the Algonquin of Barriere Lake in northern Quebec, and the ongoing fight by the Sinixt Nation against logging on traditional lands in BC.

The future of Niocan's pending mining operation in Kanesatake remains unclear; however, if recent history and the historic 1990 land-rights standoff are any indicators, Niocan is set to face fierce, community-led resistance if the project moves forward.

"No means no and Niocan Inc. needs to understand this,” says Nichloas. “Nothing the company says will change our position; we do not want our traditional lands to face [an environmentally destructive] mining project that goes against our wishes."

For more information on Niocan and Kanesatake visit MiningWatch Canada's resource page http://www.miningwatch.ca/en/home/country/canada/quebec/kanesatake-niocan.

Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based writer, community activist and musician who contributes to The Dominion. Stefan is at http://www.twitter.com/spirodon.

Mohawk Flag

Ngobe Protest Prevails

Tim McSorley — Wed, 04 May 2011 12:58:21 +0000

Indigenous Panamanians rise up against Canadian mining interests

PANAMA CITY—Massive Indigenous mobilization in Panama recently brought down a contentious law that made it easier for multinational mining corporations to gain entry into the Central American country. Law 8, a revision of Panama's 1963 mining code, enabled foreign, state-owned companies to directly invest in large-scale mining projects.

While seen as a tentative victory for the Indigenous Ngobe people, who strongly opposed the law, international corporations continue to scramble to win concessions to Panama’s mineral wealth. Canadian companies are at the forefront of international mining interests in the country.

The new laws granted foreign, state-owned companies the right to acquire concessions to vast tracts of land in Panama, a change many deemed a threat to national sovereignty. “It is a very good time in Panama for international mining corporations, as foreign governments will be permitted to buy national territory. This is impossible and prohibited in Panama’s constitution,” commented Julio Yao, a professor of international relations at the University of Panama.

Panama contains several major copper and gold deposits. The two largest copper deposits are Cerro Colorado and Cobre Panama. Canada’s Inmet Mining Corporation, a publicly-traded company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, owns 100 per cent of the Cobre Panama concession, located in north-central Panama. The proposed open-pit mine site neighbours several Indigenous Ngobe and campesino (peasant) communities. The Cobre Panama project is expected to begin operations in the near future, pending approval of its Environmental and Social Impact Assessment.

Covering approximately 630 square kilometres, Cerro Colorado is the world’s fifth largest untapped copper reserve. The deposit lies in the heart of Ngobe territory in the rugged mountains of Panama’s interior.

There has been much speculation that Inmet’s need for financing for its Cobre Panama project underlies the introduction of Law 8. The stipulations of Law 8 would allow Inmet to obtain the massive start-up capital necessary to begin operations in Cobre Panama through previously illegal investment from foreign, state-owned companies. Prior to Law 8’s approval, state-owned LS-Nikko Copper Inc. of South Korea and Temasek Holdings Ltd. of Singapore expressed interest in backing the Cobre Panama project.

“Singapore corporations are putting pressure on [Panamanian President Ricardo] Martinelli, threatening that they won’t invest in Cobre Panama, worth millions of dollars, if Law 8 is not put in place,” commented Yao.

Due to the cancellation of the mining code revisions, neither LS-Nikko Copper Inc., nor Temasek Holdings Ltd. will be permitted to directly invest in the Cobre Panama project. Inmet must now seek alternative funding.

Indigenous and campesino communities surrounding Inmet’s project are divided on whether they support the copper mine. While some community members feel mining development would create jobs and increase community welfare, a strong resistance movement emerged as Law 8 was debated in the Legislative Assembly of Panama. Roadblocks were established and marches held on the road leading to the Cobre Panama project site.

The Cobre Panama project lies adjacent to the Molejon Gold mine owned by Petaquilla, a Panamanian corporation. This is the only mine currently in production in the country and is reputed for its poor environmental track record; community members have suffered from contaminated water. They have also endured harassment from company employees and fear similar fall-out from the Inmet project.

Due to the rejection of Bill C-300 (The Corporate Accountability of Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations in Developing Countries Act) by the Canadian parliament in October 2010, Canadian companies operating in Panama, such as Inmet, are not obligated to meet Canadian standards of operation. Given the history of Canadian mining injustices across Latin America, and the poor precedent set for mining regulation in Panama, it comes as no surprise that communities fear Inmet’s project will have a negative impact on their livelihoods.

Although Law 8 was most directly related to the development of the Cobre Panama project, the focal point of resistance lay in the Ngobe–Bugle territory surrounding the Cerro Colorado copper deposit. Ngobe leaders feared that opening Panama’s mining concessions to foreign enterprises would accelerate development of the Cerro Colorado project, violating their territorial rights.

"These mega-projects put at risk our territory and our natural resources. This has not been co-ordinated with the leaders of the Comarca [Ngobe territory] or with traditional authorities. They are violating our Comarca legislation," explained Celestino Mariano, traditional authority of the Nedrini region in the Ngobe Comarca.

The Ngobe are the largest Indigenous group in Panama. They have been fighting to protect their traditional territories from mining since prospecting began in the region in the early 1970s. Today, rising copper prices have renewed interest in the development of the area, including from Canada's Corriente Resources. According to Ngobe leaders, Corriente has been present in the community promoting sustainable mining opportunities through community capacity-building programs.

Law 8 pushed the Ngobe to new levels of opposition. Before the law came into legal effect, it passed through three rounds of debate in the legislative assembly in early February. As the first debate session began, over 500 Ngobe mobilized and took to the streets of San Felix, a small town located just outside the Ngobe territory. As word spread across the Ngobe territory, protests swelled to 3,000.

The Ngobe’s peaceful demonstrations were met by tear gas and police violence, leaving several with minor injuries. “We are a peaceful population,” said Eleto Martin, resident of the Ngobe community of Guabo. “So it was surprising that when 3,000 Ngobe demonstrated their rejection of Law 8, that instead of sending a commission to enter into dialogue with us, the government sent riot police.”

Despite opposition from the Ngobe and other civil society groups, Law 8 was passed on February 11, 2011. Immediately thereafter, waves of demonstrations spread across Panama. Protests in San Felix, a community of roughly 1,200 residents, grew to 10,000 people. Many protestors travelled several days by foot from the interior of the Ngobe Comarca to attend the marches.

Still unsatisfied with the government’s lack of response, the Ngobe intensified their efforts by establishing a four-day roadblock of the Transamerican highway. This effectively blocked the flow of people and goods through Panama.

Government and pro-mining groups attempted to delegitimize Ngobe protests by accusing outsiders of inciting Indigenous resistance. Daniel Esquivel of CAMIPA, a pro-mining lobby group whose member companies include Inmet’s Panamanian subsidiary, explained the uprisings this way: “Environmentalists and other outsiders opposed to mining transmitted these [anti-mining] ideas to Indigenous peoples and incited the Ngobe to rise in protest against Law 8.”

It was on these grounds that Francisco Gomez Nadal, a Spanish journalist freelancing for one of Panama’s national newspapers, was detained by police and deported from the country. The government blamed Nadal of encouraging Indigenous violence at an anti-mining protest held in Panama City on February 26.

The March 3 cancellation of Law 8 by President Martinelli came as a surprise to pro- and anti-mining groups alike. South Korea's government had already committed to help finance Inmet’s Cobre Panama project; Law 8’s repeal prevents such investments from proceeding.

Following Martinelli’s announcement of the repeal, Inmet stock price plummeted. Inmet immediately issued a press release attempting to appease investor concerns. The company claimed the project’s feasibility was not linked to Law 8 and that it would proceed with alternative funding. Industry representatives are certain that this project will become a reality, especially in light of recent core samples revealing higher-than-anticipated copper levels within the Cobre Panama concession.

With Inmet's Cobre Panama project looming on the horizon, the political atmosphere surrounding mining in Panama remains tense. The Ngobe realize that Cerro Colorado is still being eyed by the government for development. Mining in Panama remains an investment priority for Canadian companies. A Panama–Canada Free Trade Agreement was signed in 2009, promoting Canadian involvement in Panamanian industry. The mining industry is one of the major attractions for Canada’s participation in the Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

In hearings of the Standing Committee on International Trade last November, Don Clarke, manager of a consulting group working to promote what Clarke calls “sustainable mining” in Cerro Colorado, stated that, “Canadian industry, in our experience, is generally well received by people in Panama, and particularly in the Ngobe–Bugle Comarca, and we believe this is the biggest case that supports the FTA. In the case of mining, this industry needs to be founded, established, and legitimized in Panama.”

Despite Clarke’s assertions, the Ngobe have strongly demonstrated their opposition to mining development. The cancellation of Law 8 has been adopted as a platform from which they have called for a moratorium on all mining and hydroelectric projects in their territory.

Celestino Mariano confirms this position: “We [the Ngobe] know that consequences of mining are terrible, and we are working within our community to together stop mining projects in our Comarca.”

Dana Holtby and Rosie Simms are Montreal-based students and environmental organizers with a focus on water justice and Indigenous rights. They are currently travelling throughout Panama on a four-month field study semester.

Ngobe vs Canadian mining

A Very Calm Revolution

Moira Peters — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 05:18:57 +0000

Community acupuncture in Canada

VANCOUVER—If you step into a certain storefront on East Broadway in Vancouver, and walk around the black tissue paper screen, you see six, maybe eight, people sleeping in recliners under blankets, their heads and exposed limbs studded with tiny silver needles. You don't feel alarmed, though; the sense of tranquility takes over, relaxing your forehead. This is a typical scene at Poke Community Acupuncture.

“In today’s world, it is so difficult to stay connected to one’s self,” says Darcy Carroll, owner of Poke, who argues that the shared stillness is perhaps as significant as the needles.

“There are numerous distractions—email, cell phones, television,” she says. “Having time to sit with oneself is so valuable. Likely more valuable than much of what I may have to say to a patient.”

Acupuncture is the millennia-old practice of inserting fine needles at specific points in the body to cultivate health and treat disease. It is effective in treating a myriad of physical and mental illnesses and every conceivable type of pain. It can cost almost nothing and, aside from relaxation and mood elevation, it is generally understood that acupuncture has no side effects.

In Canada, most acupuncturists charge $65-175 per hour-long session, making it inaccessible for most people. A small but growing number of community acupuncturists—affectionately referred to as "acupunks"—are working to change this.

Carroll opened Poke Community Acupuncture in 2009 on a busy street in Vancouver. Poke offers treatments on a sliding scale of $20-40. Patients are told, “You pay what you can afford,” no questions asked. Poke is open seven days per week, employing three acupuncturists and one part-time office manager, with 150-170 patient visits each week. (Carroll does not advertise; Poke's patients take care of that, grabbing fistfuls of business cards on their way out the door.) At Poke, patients are booked six per hour and are treated, fully clothed, in recliner chairs, in a group setting.

This is the way acupuncture is traditionally practiced in Asia: many patients per hour and very little talking. Community acupuncture practitioners say that a collective energy field (known as “community qi”) generated by several people having treatments at once enhances the effects of individual treatments. Up to eight people share the treatment room at a time, relaxing under blankets to the sound of soothing music (and steady traffic on Broadway). It is common to slumber among strangers for two hours at a stretch. A busy day in Poke is very, very calm.

Patients at Poke are encouraged to stay as long as they like (“We do encourage napping,” Carroll smiles), letting the acupuncturist know with a look or a soft “ah-hem” when they’ve decided they are ready to go. For many patients this is new: their own bodies will know what’s best for them.

Community acupuncture is a potent form of nonverbal community building, says Carroll. Healing in a group interrupts the isolation that often accompanies depression, illness and chronic pain. People from all backgrounds sleep deeply in recliners at Poke.

“Community acupuncture as practiced at Poke breaks down class barriers, challenges the idea of value being attached to a price,” Carroll says. Effective pain relief without drugs or side effects leads to a more critical view of pharmaceutical drugs. "The group setting also disputes the concept of health as something that you consume, privately, if you can afford it. Instead, health is something you share with your community."

Community acupuncture is growing in Canada. In Vancouver, Poke Community Acupuncture, Fir Street Community Acupuncture, and 5Shen offer sliding-scale acupuncture treatments. In Victoria, Hemma Community Acupuncture and Heart & Hands Health Centre are options for affordable acupuncture. A community clinic has sprung up in Nelson, BC, as have a handful in Ontario.

Acupuncture is a therapy, and works best with regular treatments—a course of a dozen treatments, given at least once a week, is often necessary for lasting effects. People of average incomes generally stop after one or two treatments, not because they are apathetic about their health, but because they can’t afford the expense of multiple visits to the acupuncturist. Instead of achieving success by marketing their services to the wealthy, the community acupuncture model provides practitioners a stable income from many small sources.

Carroll recommends Lisa Rohleder's manifesto, Acupuncture is Like Noodles: The Little (Red) Cookbook of Working-Class Acupuncture for any acupuncturist interested in exploring community acupuncture. The community acupuncture network offers a worldwide directory of community acupuncture clinics, as well as online camaraderie, inspiration and advice. In April 2011 the first-ever Community Acupuncture Network Conference will take place in Portland, Oregon. At the time of writing, at least four Canadian acupuncturists are planning on attending the conference.

"I think we have enough practitioners out there who cater to folks with lots of money, or juicy medical plans," says Laurel Irons. Irons operates 5Shen, an accessible mobile community acupuncture clinic providing individual and group acupuncture throughout Vancouver. The five shen are the five psycho-emotional aspects of our selves, corresponding with the five elements in traditional oriental medicine.

5Shen promotes harm reduction and peer-led, client-centred services. Irons focuses on increasing accessibility to acupuncture and holistic therapies, especially among marginalized people who often don't have access to such forms of health. Locations include women’s recovery houses, BC's Queer Resource Centre and Positive Living BC (formerly BCPWA). Irons bills through Medical Services Plan, which covers 10 acupuncture visits per year for those on premium assistance (100 per cent subsidized health care for low-income British Columbians).

"Folks living in poverty are in serious need of greater options around health and wellness, and we need more practitioners who can find a way to get involved,” she says.

Last summer, for instance, Irons and a colleague offered free acupuncture aftercare to people returning from anti-G20 protests in Toronto, using the five-needle auricular protocol developed by the National Acupuncture Detox Association. The five points in each ear ease cravings and the emotional roller coasters of addiction and withdrawal, and also provide potent treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. The five-needle protocol treats sleep disturbances, depression and anxiety, often achieving instant results.

In a free drop-in clinic in East Vancouver last summer, three times per week for over a month, two acupunks treated several dozen people dealing with the emotional, psychological and physical consequences of violence and incarceration as a result of police brutality at the G20. People who arrived stressed out, anxious and in pain received acupuncture (many for the first time) and experienced deep relaxation sitting on couches and folding chairs arranged in a loose circle.

The effects of unresolved trauma can fracture families and friendships as well as movements. When a group is calm and quiet together, hope and resilience rise powerfully. More than one participant from the post-G20 clinic commented that after an acupuncture treatment, “That was the most relaxed I’ve ever been.”

Worldwide resource depletion, austerity measures and increasing state repression are creating the need for simple, creative and unconventional ways of taking care of each other. Community acupuncture and other alternative healing methods are a growing part of radical liberation movements as the focus increases on not only dismantling repressive structures but also on actively building a more just and gentle world.

Acupuncturists were on hand in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in Haiti after the earthquake and in New York after the 9/11 attacks. Community acupuncture was also available after Vancouver’s Transgendered Day of Remembrance in 2010, and at an event in connection to the Womens’ Memorial March in February 2011. It was offered with the understanding that these memorial events, while important for the healing of the community, are potentially re-traumatizing.

“The acupuncture helps us to hold on, helps us to let go,” says Irons. “I love being involved with radical, inspiring, revolutionary folks in a nurturing capacity—this is how I choose to support the movements I am a part of and I am honoured to be accepted into these kinds of spaces.”

Lisa Baird is a spoken word poet and acupunk in Vancouver BC.

acupunk