The Dominion - 40

Visualizing Canada in Haiti

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:12:24 +0000

A poster version of coverage from the Foreign Policy issue

Two 11x17" posters in pdf format that visually document Canada's intervention in Haiti over the last six years. "Promoting Democracy?" maps out relationships between Canadian government agencies, NGOs and US agencies involved in "democracy promotion" in Haiti. "No Time for Democracy" is a timeline that chronicles the last six years of Canadian intervention (a web version is available).

» Download PDF (748kb)

Preview:

A visual representation of the relationships between Canada's NGOs, government agencies and US agencies operating in Haiti, in a printable poster format.

November: Foreign Policy Issue

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:52:47 +0000

Deck:

Download Issue #40 [3.4MB, pdf]

Body:

Download Issue #40: The Special Issue on Canadian Foreign Policy [3.4 MB, pdf]

Issue #40 is formatted as thirty-two pages of letter sized paper (8.5x11").

Note: The Canadian Foreign Policy issue is available in cities across the country, and events are planned in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and elswhere. Visit the foreign policy issue page for more information, or to get involved in distribution on any scale.

(You need Acrobat Reader or an application that reads pdf files to view the print version of this issue.)

Distribution rights:

You are free (and encouraged) to download, print, and distribute as many copies of the Dominion as you like, with the following restrictions:

the content of the paper will not be modified
no advertising or additional content will be attached to the paper
15% of any profits derived from the sale or distribution of the Dominion will be paid to the Dominion
We ask regular readers for a voluntary contribution of between $2 and $10 per issue. See our donation page for details.

Exceptions to any of these restrictions may be granted on a case by case basis. Contact dru@dominionpaper.ca with any questions.

Selectively Terrified

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 12:27:05 +0000

How Hezbollah became a terrorist organization in Canada

A Hezbollah flag hangs in Baalbek, Lebanon. Hezbollah enjoys popular support in much of the country. photo: moogdroog

Throughout much of the Arab world, Hezbollah is being celebrated as the champion that was, at long last, able to establish a victory over invincible Israel and its omnipotent western backers. In the Middle East, Hezbollah's victory has energized movements against imperialism and its system of client regimes.

In Canada, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. It is thus illegal to "participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, any activity" of this Lebanese political party or even to urge anyone to act in a way that could be construed as benefiting Hezbollah.

Some explanation for the distance between these starkly different approaches to the same organization can be found in the story of how Hezbollah's political wing came to be placed on Canada's list of terrorist organizations in December 2002. Examined in detail, this brief history provides insight into how key Canadian foreign policy decisions are made.

Hezbollah's ideological roots lie in the 1970s "movement of the deprived," which advocated for the rights of Lebanon's historically marginalized Shi'a population and for all oppressed groups. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing as many as 14,000 and wounding another 20,000–the vast majority of whom were civilians–in the first two weeks alone. Hezbollah emerged out of the popular Shi'a militias resisting the Israeli occupation and participating in the civil war, formally announcing itself in an open letter to "all the oppressed in Lebanon and the world," published in 1985. The letter endorsed Khomeini and the Iranian revolution and proposed an Islamic state for Lebanon "which, alone, is capable of guaranteeing justice and liberty for all." It was stipulated that this should be achieved only through the will of all the people, however, and not by force. "Confessional privileges [the domination of one religious group over others] are one of the principal causes of the great explosion which ravaged the country," the letter noted. Since 1992, when the party first ran for national elections, Hezbollah's leadership has publicly endorsed the importance of co-existence and pluralism within a multi-religious, diverse Lebanon and the vision of an Islamic state has faded into the background.

Today, Hezbollah is at once a political party with 14 seats in the Lebanese Parliament, the main provider of social welfare throughout the poor areas of Lebanon, a social movement voicing the aspirations of the Shi'a, and a fighting force. It receives financial and logistical support from Iran and political support from Syria and, lately, Venezuela. Its ideological underpinnings blend Lebanese nationalism, Islamism, social justice and pan-Arab nationalism.

It would be a serious challenge to substantiate the claim made by Canadian Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day; that the "stated intent of Hezbollah is to annihilate Jewish people." An examination of official texts and speeches indicates, rather, that Hezbollah's opposition to Israel is based on Israel's history as a European colonial movement that occupied Arab lands, established an exclusionary state at the expense of the original inhabitants and has subsequently pursued a persistent pattern of settlement and expansion.

Hezbollah's military operations wound down in 2000 with the end of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, but a military wing was maintained on the grounds that Israel continued to violate the "blue line" established by the UN, illegally held Lebanese prisoners in their jails and occupied a tract of what Hezbollah considered to be Lebanese land in the Golan Heights.

By 2002, Canada had arrived at a typically Canadian, middle-of-the-road position: Hezbollah's armed wing–the Hezbollah External Security Organization–was classified as a terrorist group, while its political wing was not.

A campaign to list the Hezbollah political party started in July 2002, when the government failed to include the party in an expanded list of designated terrorist organizations.

Pressure to list Hezbollah came from the Canadian Alliance Party (the precursor to today's Conservative Party), senior Liberal politicians Irwin Cotler and Art Eggleton, B'nai Brith (a Jewish human rights organization, staunchly pro-Israel in orientation), and the Canadian Jewish Congress.

A series of articles by Stewart Bell published in the National Post–replete with terms like "terror suspects," "clandestine cells" and "masterminds," and based largely on information obtained from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), dating from the 1980s–documents the campaign. The National Post at the time was owned by ardent Zionist Israel Asper. Stewart Bell himself has been questioned about his role in CSIS's practice of selectively leaking information to the media.

Denis Coderre, Minister of Immigration at the time, recently claimed to have played a role in the campaign as well. Indeed, the arrest and deportation of a supposed Hezbollah "agent" took place in October 2002, with accompanying media fanfare.

Interestingly, both Jean Chretien and Bill Graham, then Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs respectively, resisted placing Hezbollah on the terrorist list. Chretien met with Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, in Beirut in October 2002. On November 28, a new set of groups was banned–and Hezbollah was still not among them. Irwin Cotler denounced the omission as "inexplicable and, given their [Hezbollah's] murderous ideology, unconscionable."

B'nai Brith responded the next day, on November 29, with a press conference in which they announced a lawsuit against the government, brought on the grounds that the government was failing to protect Canadians by refusing to ban Hezbollah.

The following day, November 30, the National Post picked up a story from the Washington Times claiming that, at a Beirut rally, Nasrallah had condoned and encouraged suicide bombing. Nasrallah was alleged to have said: "Suicide bombings should be exported outside Palestine"; and "I encourage Palestinians to take suicide bombings worldwide, don't be shy about it."

Two weeks later, after going to Beirut to investigate, CBC journalist Neil MacDonald exposed the story as a fabrication.

MacDonald traced the story to journalist Paul Martin. Martin had previously been accused of writing a false report about Palestinian militants under an alias in the same journal, the Christian-right Washington Times. MacDonald said that Martin, when challenged, "came up with three quotes [attributed to Nasrallah], one of which, to be charitable, was a gross mistranslation, and the other two were never even uttered." Martin named his source for the quotes as Lebanese ultra-nationalist and pro-Israel Walid Phares, currently a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), whose board and advisors is composed of well-known neo-con Zionists. Phares has also contributed policy briefs to the publication of Daniel Pipes's think tank, the Middle East Forum.

MacDonald reported on CBC on December 11 that, "Ottawa now knows that the Nasrallah quotes in the Washington Times about exporting suicide attacks were almost certainly never uttered."

However, the alleged comments by Nasrallah had already received enough attention to force the government's hand; a special Cabinet committee meeting was held the evening of December 10, 2002, in which it was decided to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The Canada Gazette, official newspaper of the government, reported, "The change has been made on the basis of the close connection between the organization as a whole and the Hezbollah External Security Organization, and the recent statement by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, encouraging suicide bombings."

Curiously, the decision came the same day as the high-profile arrest of "terrorist suspect" Mohamed Harkat under a security certificate, a top news story across the country which heightened public fear about terrorism. The security certificate was signed by Immigration Minister Denis Coderre on the recommendation of CSIS. The decision to arrest Harkat at this particular time may well have been taken independently of any other considerations. However, the timing of the arrest does not appear to have been linked to any exigencies in Harkat's own case.

The political significance of labelling Hezbollah a terrorist organization is extensive: it is an act of tangible alignment with the apartheid state of Israel and its American backers, both regionally and in Lebanese internal politics; it is a stand against the right of Palestinian self-determination and the Palestinian right of return; and it is an affirmation of the double-standard under which Israel's habitual disregard for international humanitarian law is tolerated. In Canada, the designation helps obviate the possibility of meaningful discussion about the causes of oppression and war in the region–witness the media storm around the visit by three members of Parliament to Lebanon in the aftermath of the Israeli assault, and around the participation of Quebec politicians in Montreal's August rally against the attack on Lebanon. It also eviscerates the political potential of the large Lebanese diaspora community in Canada by threatening them with the terrorist label should they dare question the official line themselves.

No revision of the decision appears to have been made in light of the exposure of the Washington Times' story.

Mary Foster tracks the history of Hezbollah and examines how it became a terrorist organization in Canada.

Warfighters, Not Missionaries

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:30:57 +0000

The origins of the three-block war

Canadian soldiers guarding prisoners in Aghanistan. illustration by sylvia nickerson

Based on an excerpt from the forthcoming book, The Afghanistan Adventure: Canada's foreign policy for the 21st century by Jon Elmer and Anthony Fenton

Notwithstanding the massive historical record of brutal colonial interventions justified as "for the good of the natives," Canada's politicians and pundits wax daily about Canada's unique effort to liberate the schoolgirls of Afghanistan. This missionary rhetoric stands in stark contrast to the jargon that pervades the pronouncements of Canada's foreign policy establishment – including not only the military, but also Foreign Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency.

The posture of the establishment's policymakers and planners betrays an aggressive, military-borne doctrine rooted in advancing Canadian "interests" on a global scale. The implementation of the "three-block war" doctrine is an illustrative example of Canada's intentions. Simply put, the three-block war is an urban warfare doctrine that identifies three separate but often simultaneous spheres of enforcing military control in a city–warfighting, policing and facilitating aid.

Canada's top soldier, General Rick Hillier, has stated that, "We have to be experts on what is called in general terms the three-block war in order to have an effect across the world." As he explained to a Senate Committee, the entire structure of the Canadian Forces (CF) is training in the three-block war "every hour of every day."

While Hillier is surely the loudest, he is not the only one discussing it. Throughout policy documents, reports and speeches, the three-block war names the operational thrust that the CF–indeed, the whole of the foreign policy establishment–are implementing for the 21st century.

The doctrine did not begin in Afghanistan (see Haiti); but, as Michael Ignatieff acknowledged during the parliamentary debate on the extension of the mission in the spring of 2006, the significance of the Afghanistan operation is that it is a test of the "paradigm shift" from "peacekeeping" to "peace enforcement."

What is the "three-block war"?

The term 'three-block war' was coined by then-head of the US Marine Corps, General Charles C. Krulak, in a revealing and instructive speech at the National Press Club in Washington in the fall of 1997. In setting the stage for the introduction of the new doctrine, Krulak drew on a lesson from imperial Rome: adapt or be defeated.

Krulak's speech was crafted around a tale of woe suffered by the mighty Roman infantry under the commander of Caesar Augustus's expeditionary forces, Publius Quintilius Varus, in 9 AD. After being roundly defeated by the under-armed militias of the indigenous Germanic tribes, Varus was said to have retreated while despondently muttering "ne cras, ne cras"–not like yesterday, not like yesterday.

"[O]ur enemies will not allow us to fight the son of Desert Storm," said Krulak, "but they will try to draw us into the stepchild of Chechnya." With this phrase, Krulak ushered in the 'fourth generation' of warfare, bidding adieu to the 'manoeuvre' warfare doctrine that defined WWII and the Cold War posture, ie. formal state militaries fighting in enormous mechanized battalions.

The Russian wars on Chechnya, particularly in the capital, Grozny, were among the bloodiest urban fights since WWII, characterized by almost total destruction of the human and physical landscape. The fighting is house to house. Gone are the frontlines and the uniforms; the battlefield is the city. The enemy is ostensibly the entire population.

And, as Krulak said to Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline in 1999: "There is absolutely no environment more lethal than fighting building to building."

Said Krulak: "Throughout modern history, we have consciously skirted fighting in urban areas. It is a very difficult and dangerous place to fight. It is one that we want to avoid. But by 2010, over 70 per cent of the world's population will live in urban slums and in cities, most of them within 300 miles of a coastline. It is here where our enemies will challenge us. The urban areas will become the centre of gravity of our foes, and cities, as I'm sure you realize, have the potential to negate much of our technological advantage."

This, however, is the landscape of the 21st century battlefield. Barely halfway into the first decade of the century, there have already been two major wars unleashed by the US centred on the three-block model, and when Israel's wars in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the month-long war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 are added to the mix, the "stepchild" of Chechnya is Gaza, Jenin, Kandahar and Fallujah.

"The three-block war in microcosm"

Iraq's Fallujah is "the three-block war in microcosm," Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne told the Marine Corps Times. Byrne led Marines into Fallujah in the landmark aggression in 2004, only days after four mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm were killed there, their charred bodies notoriously hung from a bridge.

In large swathes of Fallujah, a city of 300,000, the fighting was essentially block-by-block, backed by a massive aerial bombardment from jet fighters and helicopter gunships. Thousands were killed, more than 150,000 displaced and 50 per cent of the city's buildings, including more than 39,000 homes, were damaged or destroyed according to US officials. "Fallujah has been a return to full-up Marine Corps smash-mouth combat," Byrne said.

In a story published during the second major invasion of Fallujah in November 2004, the Times of London told a remarkable tale of the operative doctrine in stark relief. It is therefore worth quoting at length:

Between burnt-out apartments and minarets shot through by tank shells, a lone Iraqi man marched resolutely down Fallujah's deserted main street, a pair of white long johns held aloft on a stick instead of a white flag. Under his arm he bore a rare treasure: a boxed TV dinner with the alluring brand name in English: My Kind of Chicken. Kemal Muhammad Saleh, an unexpectedly cheerful 44-year-old man... [who] relies on handouts by the US and Iraqi forces to survive in his devastated city... In the distance the occasional cloud of smoke rises from an incoming US artillery shell. This is what US military doctrine terms a three-block war–troops can be fighting a deadly foe in one part of town, patrolling another and rebuilding the safer areas. Colonel Mike Olivier, of the Marines civil affairs team, put the US strategy in more blunt terms. 'This is the way the Americans work: first we blow the f*** out of your house, then we pay you to rebuild it. Look at World War II, look at Najaf [Iraq]. We'll give them money, we'll give them jobs and we'll make capitalists of all of them,' he grinned.

Despite multiple massive offensives into Fallujah, the US has not been–by any measure–able to control Fallujah, or indeed, almost anywhere in the whole of Iraq. The same is true for large parts of Afghanistan. Both wars–for which victory has already been claimed–are continuing to worsen. In light of these failures, the US armed forces set about writing a counterinsurgency manual for its soldiers in order to bring the war doctrine up to speed with the operational realities in Iraq and Afghanistan. So strong was the military's avoidance of fighting insurgents or guerrillas in urban settings, that this is the first field manual on urban counterinsurgency in a generation. A final draft of the field manual–FM 3-24–was leaked in June of 2006

Marine Corp commander James Mattis–with leadership experience in southern Afghanistan and Iraq, including leading the Fallujah assault–was tapped to oversee the penning of the manual, along with army general David Petraeus. Mattis, known as "Mad Dog," is an architect of the three-block war strategy. Mattis made headlines in February 2005 when he told a public audience during a recruiting speech: "It's a lot of fun to fight 'em, it's a hell of a hoot, it's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawlin', and one thing we have to do is make certain we're advertising, recruiting, selecting the right kind of people to go into this fight so you're not out there with people who have any misunderstanding what this is all about. You go into Afghanistan, you've got guys who slapped women around for five years 'cause they didn't wear a veil. Guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway, so it's a helluva lot of fun to shoot 'em. It's a good fight. But as much emotional satisfaction–for all the emotional satisfaction you get from really whacking somebody like that, the main effort, ladies and gentlemen, is to diminish the conditions that drive people to sign up for these kinds of insurgencies."

In his more refined pronouncements, Mattis has been a leading figure in the transformation of the Marines, from boot camp to doctrine. His model is the three-block war; it is the urban battlefield. As Mattis said in an influential paper published in the journal of the US Naval Institute: "Look at combat in the 'contested zones' of urban and other complex terrain. We need to create the same sort of dominance we currently hold in the Global Commons to our ground forces in these contested zones."

In short, Mattis argues that if the US is to maintain its dominance in the coming era, it will have to micromanage hostile urban environments. This is reflected throughout the counterinsurgency manual, which is clear in its repeated references to the doctrine as proactive, management warfare; warfare of choice. The three-block war doctrine is a model for domination, first and foremost; it is a warfighting doctrine with the express purpose of cementing US dominance in the world for the next generation and beyond.

The counterinsurgency Field Manual is thorough and serious, and stands in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric of the War on Terror. The two hundred fifty page manual makes very little use of the term or the concept of 'terrorism', noting in the first sentence that rather than random violence, the uprisings that forces will face are "political in nature" and deeply rooted in the social fabric of what the military would euphemistically term the 'contested zone', namely: the community.

The objective is not to deal with individual threats; it is to construct doctrine to deal with wars of imposition and conquest in the new environment.

Canadian planners tend to focus attention on the two other blocks of the three-block war in order to cement the political message that they are trying to advance within the peacekeeper mythology. The goal, according to the doctrine, is to set the 'development' aspects to the tune of the combat element. A Maclean's embed last year described a pre-battle pep-talk in which Lt Col Ian Hope sent CF into battle by calling them Canada's "developmental warriors."

The political messaging of the Afghanistan mission centres around a "hearts and minds" campaign. Rhetorically, the three-block war doctrine is well-suited to Canada's aggressive shift. It maintains the "peacekeeping" and "clothing refugees" missionary elements that have been so deeply entrenched in the national consciousness. Emerging as it is from the era of the peacekeeper mythology, Canadian opinion-makers would prefer this to be the face of the Canadian Forces until it can be determined that the Canadian populace is behind the warfighting component.

The corporate press has been happy to oblige. In the spring of 2006, as the fighting in Afghanistan reached the fiercest levels since 2001, Maclean's ran a feature under the title "Canada's Kandahar balancing act," and illustrated the piece with "the other side of Canada's rather menacing military firepower." The magazine chose a picture of Master Corporal Elizabeth Churchill cradling an Afghan baby.

The generals put more clarity to the issue. As Major-General Stuart Beare said during Senate committee testimony, Canadian Forces are "not necessarily trying to win hearts and minds here. That's a pretty tall order. You're trying to create tolerance of the international forces."

In short, says Hillier, CF must "be combat-ready and be able to conduct operations to survive. If you want to deter people from threatening your mission, you have to be seen as capable and seen as too big a bully to take on. If all those things fail and you cannot deter violence, you have to be able to fight and win. That is fundamental to everything we do."

It was precisely in articulating the three-block war doctrine during a cross-country speaking tour with Bill Graham that Rick Hillier ripped a page from General Mattis's playbook and made Canadian headlines with his comment that Canadian Forces were fighting "detestable murderers and scumbags" in Afghanistan, in defence of Canada's interests. "We're not the public service of Canada," he said. "We're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people."

Afghanistan is not a random act of Canadian policy; it is the entire foreign policy apparatus acting on a well-articulated plan. Despite the well-crafted mythology of the peacekeeper, Canada's intervention in Afghanistan is important not because it is a departure from the past but because it is, in the words of the country's top soldier, a "glimpse of the future."

Jon Elmer determines that Afghanistan is not a random act of Canadian policy, but an entire foreign policy apparatus acting on a well-articulated plan.

Whose Trauma?

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 18:50:35 +0000

The "Somalia Affair" and Canadian mythology

From the cover of Dark Threats and White Nights. During the "Somalia Affair," Canadian soldiers captured and tortured Somalis from Belet Huen.

During Canada's 1993 peacekeeping mission in Belet Huen, Somalia, Canadian soldiers captured impoverished Somalis who were said to have stolen food and supplies from the Canadian military encampment. The captives were subjected to beatings, torture and public humiliation. Most victims were children, many of whom were tied to one another around posts in the street, blindfolded and left next to signs that read 'thief' for all passers by to see. On March 4 of the same year, two Somalis were shot in the back by Canadian soldiers, one fatally. In what came to be known as the "Somalia Affair," 16-year-old Shidane Arone was tortured over the course of an entire night before being killed by Canadian soldiers barely two weeks after the shooting. Six Somalis were killed in total. A series of shocking "trophy photos" of detainees were later exposed, often depicting children detainees being degraded by members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment. In the case of Shidane Arone, an infamous series of photos of the boy at various stages of his torture was revealed, including one of a Canadian soldier using a baton to hold up his head, which is covered in blood. The soldier is grinning at the camera. A video of soldiers on the base making blatantly racist comments about Somalis was discovered a little later, in January of 1995. In it, one of the soldiers announces to the camera that their Somalia operation is called 'Operation "Snatch Nig-Nog."'

The revelations came as a shock to Canadians accustomed to a steady image of armed forces dedicated to benevolent and competent "peacekeeping." Canada's "national mythology" is a central focus in Sherene Razack's study of the official response to the "Somalia Affair." The result was her 2004 book Dark Threats and White Nights: The Somalia Affair, Peacekeeping, and the New Imperialism. Razack writes that with the exposure of torture by Canadian soldiers, "modern peacekeeping revealed its sordid colonial origins. Soldiers had acted more like conquerors than humanitarians."

In response, Canadian officials instituted a Commission of Inquiry. The Canadian government, however, shut down the Commission, before it could fully investigate the murders or the potential complicity of military leaders in these acts. What the Commission did have time to convey was closer in form to an acquittal. In the opening lines of its report, the Commission said that "The soldiers, with some notable exceptions, did their best. But ill-prepared and rudderless, they fell invariably into the mire that became the Somalia debacle. As a result, a proud legacy was dishonoured...the leadership errors in the Somalia mission were manifold and fundamental." Despite this acknowledgement, the Commission stopped short of holding specific leaders accountable, while maintaining that the troops were not to blame for the torture and murder they committed.

Media reports, says Razack, were "reporting with sympathy the animosity Canadian soldiers were feeling towards rock-throwing Somalis" long after Arone's murder.

"Many soldiers say privately they wish they could shoot more often," Paul Watson reported in the Toronto Star in a story describing the "rough life" of the soldiers in Belet Huen. But it wasn't as though the media were not interested in the "Somalia Affair" as a scandal. Razack asks us to look at the particular kind of attention that it was paid, however; the violence against Somalis didn't interest the media, but the "cover-up of that violence by the military did."

Canadians "believe we were duped by our own, and that it was our very niceness and national naivete that led to the debacle in Somalia." Even though Canada was clearly responsible for the killings, what the media and the government chose to focus most on was a "nice" Canadian character that had been tainted by a few rogue soldiers. On Razack's account, Canada has integrated the "Somalia Affair" into its national understanding in a narcissistic fashion.

To recap, violent acts of an inarguably and fundamentally racist character were committed and six human beings were killed and several more were tortured. But to the Commission--as was the dominant public interpretation--it was Canada that had been betrayed. This betrayal, however, was committed by an anonymous institution, conspiring with the "mire" of Somalia, which was never held accountable, either for its murder and torture or for its betrayal of Canadian self-perception.

Racism slid out the back door of Canada's collective interpretation. Heroism took its place.

"The hold that mythologies have should not be underestimated," writes Razack. "They have the power to make a nation replace tortured and dead bodies with traumatized soldiers." The prevailing account stressed that "our mythological virtues as a nation that is somehow too gentle, too bureaucratic, and too given to navel-gazing," Razack argues, "enabled us to look at racism in the Somalia Affair and still not really see it."

It is the mythology itself, Canadian identity, which acted to enable the conclusion that the racist torture and murder committed by members of the airborne division was exceptional. In fact, several witnesses suggested to the Inquiry that if there were racists in the military, it was unlikely to be a number higher than existed in "Canadian society as a whole."

What, Razack asks, does Canadian identity mean in terms of self? "A Canadian knows herself or himself as... a modest, self-deprecating individual who is able to gently teach Third World Others about civility." At bottom, she argues, this is a fundamentally colonial mindset that renders "any sort of personhood" of those being taught "inconceivable." At home, Canada's mythology covers over 200 years of remarkably frank attempts to eliminate the existence of the country's original inhabitants, a fact that in part explains the sophistication and deep-rootedness of the mythology in the relatively new context of "peacekeeping."

Dark Threats and White Knights offers an in-depth and subtle analysis of the mentality of a nation that wants to "weep and to collectively remember, but...not to probe too deeply into the difference between looking on and direct suffering." In essence, Razack provides an extensive inventory of the colonial mindset that the Canadian public has not yet recognized or begun to address.

The book's concluding sentence enjoins us to "look critically at who we are." To bring Razack's injunction to bear on ongoing Canadian interventions abroad means to insist, first of all, that Canada's identity--as a peacekeeper, as well-meaning, or as nice-- not be allowed to supersede what Canada is in fact doing abroad. Only by holding mythology at bay can we begin to form a critical understanding of ourselves.

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie explores the place of the "Somalia Affair" in Canadian mythology.

Canadian Aid or Corporate Raid?

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 12:52:41 +0000

Canada's development agency in South Asia

Police officers beat up demonstrators on February 1 2006, the first anniversary of King Gyanendra's coup on Nepal after suspending democarcay in the country. King Gyanendra's government programs benefit from CIDA funding. photo: shshrestha

Though not largely discussed, South Asia is a major hub of global economic interests with a massive concentration of Canadian finance capital, foreign aid and development agencies.

"The most significant Canadian interests in South Asia are financial capital through investment, banking, and development aid," says Dr. Hari Sharma, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University's department of sociology and anthropology, and author of the seminal book "Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia."

"Development aid through CIDA has been known to be a form of economic raid, particularly because it operates through a politically ideological framework," continues Sharma. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is Canada's lead development agency.

Much of Canadian foreign development aid has been termed "phantom aid"-- aid that does not improve the lives it is intended to-- and includes spending on overpriced technical assistance and tied aid. Canadian corporate lobbies advocate tied aid because it is foreign aid that must be spent in the donor country, therefore providing an indirect subsidy to domestic corporations. According to Action Aid, phantom aid accounts for over 50 per cent of Canada's aid spending and 47 per cent of Canadian phantom aid is tied to spending in Canada. Critics argue that tied aid is part of the larger objective of neoliberalization and private sector development. In fact, one of CIDA's top five priorities states that, "Poverty reduction requires strong efforts to address the needs of the private sector in developing countries."

Bangladesh has been one of Canada's largest aid recipients over the last three decades. According to CIDA's Country Development Programming Framework 2003-2008 for Bangladesh, private sector development is a major program objective. As part of a multilateral global effort, Canada pushed for Bangladesh to set up Export Processing Zones in 1978, which are regulated by the Bangladesh Export Processing Zone Authority. This allows sweatshops to operate outside the realm of national labour laws. A CIDA-funded Local Enterprise Investment Centre facilitates local private enterprise by partnerships with foreign business, giving corporations from other countries access to the growing garment industry, exporting $5 billion worth of goods annually.

According to a New Age report in June 2006, Bangladesh's apparel sector employs 2.5 million, 80 per cent of whom are women, in more than 5,000 factories. Amirul Haq Amir, co-ordinator of the Bangladesh Garment Workers Unity Council, says that garment workers are paid "between US$14 to US$16 per month, the lowest salary in the world."

From May-July 2006, around 4,000 garment factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh, went on strike, resulting in major unrest and the death of at least one person by police gunfire. Since 2003, the Maquila Solidarity Network has been pressuring the Retail Council of Canada to ensure that the factories they use in Bangladesh are safe and healthy workplaces.

In others parts of the world, CIDA has come under fire for supporting governments who align with Western government and business interests. For example a July 2006 MacClean's Business report outlines CIDA's involvement in creating Colombian mining laws beneficial to Canadian companies, while in Haiti, CIDA has been criticized for political destabilization by funding agencies opposed to Aristide.

A similar situation has evolved in Nepal. Since 1964, Canada has contributed more than $213 million in development assistance to Nepal, including $10.4 million in 2004-05. Although the CIDA website boasts of "neutrality" in the civil war, it lays blame for poverty and underdevelopment on the "Maoist insurgency." CIDA's 2004 Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment acknowledges, "CIDA will need to monitor whether its projects become Maoist targets because of linkages with government programs." The "government" of Nepal is King Gyanendra who first dismissed the elected government in 2002 and then proceeded to seize complete control after a royal coup in 2005.

Afghanistan has been the single largest recipient of Canadian bilateral aid, with almost $1 billion allocated from 2001-2011. At the same time, one of the most visible manifestations of the Canadian presence in South Asia is Canada's increased military involvement in Afghanistan. There are those who see this as a contradiction and others as a convenient coincidence. As written by J.W. Smith in The World's Wasted Wealth, "Politics is the control of the economy… It is the military power of the more developed countries that permits them to dictate the terms of trade and maintain unequal relationships." Former US President Woodrow Wilson recognized this: "Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down."

Canadian exports to Afghanistan have increased over 100-fold in the past five years, growing from $167,000 to over $19,000,000, according to Industry Canada statistics. Canadian corporations such as Bell Helicopters and CAE (one of Canada's largest defence contractors) have profited immensely: Bell won a $1 billion contract with the US military to supply helicopters, while CAE won a $20 million contract to supply combat simulation technology.

In May 2006, CIDA launched the "Confidence in Government" initiative in the Shah Wali Kot district of Afghanistan. In a May 22 Globe and Mail article, Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Doucette, commander of Canada's provincial reconstruction team, stated that this initiative "is a useful counterinsurgency tool."

Much of the rhetoric surrounding Canada's military presence in Afghanistan has been focused on the need to 'liberate' Afghan women. However, Sonali Kolhatkar, co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission, recently wrote that "despite the best efforts of the Bush and Blair administrations to convince the world that the 2001 war 'liberated' women in Afghanistan and that they continue to work in the interests of Afghan women, grassroots women activists reveal a very different picture. With the Taliban regime ousted, Afghan women have not experienced better times."

The CIDA-funded Women's Rights in Afghanistan Fund, established by Rights and Democracy (created by the Canadian Parliament in 1988) provides grants to grassroots women's organizations in Afghanistan. A "non-partisan" Afghanistan backgrounder on the website of the Fund highlights only the historic abuse of women by the Taliban and characterizes the current period as one of "ongoing conflict" without any mention of foreign forces in the country.

Gender governance programs are also funded by CIDA in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Leila Ahmed's "Women and Gender in Islam" documents the co-optation of feminism by imperial and colonizing forces, revealing the contradictions of humanitarian interventions. "Whether in the hands of patriarchal men or feminists," she writes, "the ideas of western feminism essentially functioned to morally justify the attack on native societies and to support the notion of comprehensive superiority of Europe."

Vijay Prashad, an associate professor at Trinity College, has characterized one of the dominant manifestations of imperialism as the manufacturing of strategically placed NGOs. "The NGO", he writes, "becomes an arm of the international bureaucracy that ends up, consciously or unconsciously, doing the work of imperialism." Other CIDA funded NGOs in South Asia include South Asia Partnership, Sri Lanka Canada Development Fund, Aga Khan Foundation, World Vision, Oxfam and Shastri Institute.

"Canadians need to realize what Canadian companies and Canadian development agencies and NGOs are doing in South Asia," says Sharma. "CIDA-funded agencies and NGOs, as a whole, uphold corporate interests and serve the overall objective of pacification within an institutionalized neoliberal framework. This is an issue that all Canadians should be gravely concerned with and deal with."

Harsha Walia examines the work of Canada's development agency in South Asia.

Will Eliminating Subsidies Help Poor Farmers?

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:53:16 +0000

The NFU's Darrin Qualman discusses how corporate control of markets goes missing in discussions of "free trade"

Cargill-owned grain elevators on Lake Erie. photo: Maureen Jameson

When discussion turns to the plight of the farmers of the world, especially in the Third World, the narrative is remarkably consistent. The story is one of rich countries--in Europe and north of the Rio Grande--that subsidize their farmers. These farmers are able to produce foodstuffs for artificially low prices, with prices driven lower still by their established scale and ability to invest in advanced technology. Poor countries, notably those in Africa and the Caribbean, are devastated when their markets are flooded with cheap rice, corn and other food products from rich countries.

WTO critic Joseph Stiglitz, CBC journalist Michael Enright, former Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew and the Third World Network agree on the best course of action. So do the editorial boards of the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, much of the progressive press and the financial press. There is a near-consensus about the solution. To help Third World farmers, Europe, the US and Canada fulfill their part of the bargain at the WTO and remove subsidies for their farmers and reduce tariffs that deny Third World farmers access to their markets.

The only things standing in the way of prosperity for a billion poor farmers, this diverse chorus tells us, are the entrenched interests of farmers in rich countries and their hold on governments that refuse to open up their markets to foreign competition.

According to Darrin Qualman, director of research at Canada's National Farmer's Union (NFU), there's a problem: the narrative is a distraction and removing subsidies will do very little to help poor farmers.

"It's all just wrong. It's the wrong talk about the wrong topics," says Qualman. "The one thing they're not discussing at the WTO is what's causing the farm income crisis--corporate power taking out profits and impoverishing farmers."

Qualman says that one of the basic problems with the narrative is the central "mantra" that "market access" will help farmers in the majority world. A picture-perfect case study for why this is not the case can be found close by.

"Canada is probably one of the most successful countries in the world in terms of gaining market access--I can't imagine that there are many countries in the world that have been as successful at getting access."

"The net result has been the worst farm-income crisis in Canadian history."

Instead, Qualman says that all available data point to trade liberalization as being wildly enriching for those who have consolidated control over markets, but devastating to small-scale farmers. Farms are told to become more "efficient" in order to compete, while transnational agribusiness takes in huge profits by squeezing farmers and controlling distribution and retail channels.

As a general trend, Qualman says that "farm income around the world is inversely proportional to trade volumes and the number of trade agreements we sign."

"The WTO guys would say that it's directly proportional... They're just lying. All the data from the last 20 years says they're wrong."

It's not that poor farmers aren't being put out of business by subsidized crops. This, Qualman explains, is a natural side effect of putting a billion farmers into competition with each other by removing the ability of governments to regulate what enters their borders.

"Dumping shouldn't happen, but the problem isn't subsidies. You have to give poor countries the power to say no to these products." This means addressing the source of those policies: often the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which use their leverage over poor countries to impose "free trade" policies.

Agribusiness has "merged and merged" at the transnational level, consolidating power and resulting in massive profits, while "the system has been altered such that all the farmers have been brought into competition with each other." Qualman says that the results are entirely predictable: "We have been put in a race to the bottom triggered by the dissolution of barriers."

Grain and oil seed farming provide the quintessential example. "Cargill [a US-based crop nutrient producer and distributor] will play canola farmers in Canada against soy farmers in Brazil, against palm oil producers in Indonesia." Because each region's farmers can be threatened with the threat of lower-priced product from their counterparts, the result is a massive power imbalance between farmers and distributors, with a predictable effect on profits: farmers are struggling to get by, while the consolidated agribusiness multinationals are showing record profits year after year.

In the abstract, Qualman agrees with the premise of the "free trade" crowd.

"Farmers would love to see the market distortions taken out, but we need to start with the highest-profit links in the chain"--the corporations deriving record profits from consolidating power over markets, not farmers in the First World, the majority world, who are losing money every year. "The WTO wants to just focus on one link."

"If they want to help farmers, we need to talk about breaking up cartels and breaking up the power of these near-monopoly agribusiness corporations."

In the end, the problem for farmers isn't about having better data or a more convincing argument to petition the government. Currently, "the government is largely hostile to the family farm and the needs of rural communities," so the problem is one of political clout. To oppose a global system that is stacked against them, farmers must organize globally.

"Farmers used to organize provincially, then they saw that the policy was made at the national level," says Qualman. "Now if you look at where policy is happening, you would say that farmers need to organize planet-wide."
This is a task of mammoth proportions, but the process has already begun, albeit slowly. The NFU is a member of Via Campesina, an international network dedicated to "uniting farmers toward common goals." Many Via Campesina members are currently dedicating their energy to fighting policies imposed by the World Bank and IMF on farmers, particularly in Asia and Latin America.

Dru Oja Jay investigates how corporate control of markets goes missing in discussions about "free trade."

An Indian Act

Sat, 21 Oct 2006 10:36:07 +0000

A response to an attempt of genocide

A helicopter hovers over the Six Nations' blockade in Ontario. photo: David Maracle

Artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun publicly protested after his painting 'Red Man Watching White Men Trying To Fix A Hole In The Sky' was purchased by the National Art Gallery to be shown in their 'Indian Room.' He didn't want his work to be associated with the notional concept of 'Indians.' Earlier in his career, he had been charged with desecrating an official document when he showed, in one of his professional exhibitions, a photographic series of himself firing a high-powered rifle into a target-mounted official copy of Canada's 'Indian Act.' The photographic series was titled 'An Indian Act.'

Indian. There is no such word in any language indigenous to Turtle Island. In fact, there's no such word in any language indigenous to India. Back when Columbus made his historic voyage, the nation we now call India was called Hindustan, and the people there, because of their all-day-every-day spiritual practice, were characterized by the Spaniards as living in God, "in dios."

'The Admiral of the Ocean Seas' – the name given to Columbus by the Spanish Court for only being half a planet off course -- encountered what is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Folks there were living in God too. They weren't white folks either and they just happened to be where the flat-Earth mentality folks thought Hindustan must be. Columbus called them Indians, too.

Around 1550, the Spanish Court convened the Council of the Indies to clear up the legal and moral questions surrounding the lands and peoples living in Europe's New World. Despite an impassioned presentation by Bartoleme De Las Casas, documenting the horrors already visited upon the "in God" people by the Spaniards under Columbus's command, the decision was taken to identify all of the peoples in the New World as Indians. To the court, Indians were a monolithic population developmentally lagging behind Europe and in need of the civilizing influence of Europeans. From the conference came the theoretical construction of an international system of wardship, where Europe's men of influence took upon themselves a task that has come to be known as "the White Man's Burden": bringing civilization to the darker 'races' of humanity.

'Indians' and Europe's international system of wardship came together in Canada as "An Act For The Gradual Civilization Of Indians," an official copy of which Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun was charged for desecrating. This act of Parliament is still in effect; we now know it by its short name, the Indian Act.

As my uncle, Mike Steinhauer, likes to point out, all you need to know about the Indian Act is that it says, "The minister may…." The Indian Act gives the minister sweeping discretionary powers unheard of in modern democracies.

The basic notion behind modern democracy is that the people freely give fully informed consent to be ruled and choose representatives to form the government that decides the what, where, when, why and how of those rules. It's called the 'rule of law.'

Although the version of the Indian Act Canada currently uses dates back to 1876, that version was a rolled together collection of legal notions stemming from the 1550 Council of the Indies. In 1876, the people whose lives would become subject to the discretionary powers of the minister were not Canadian citizens, nor were they consulted, nor did they freely give fully informed consent to be ruled by the Indian Act. In fact, the people so ruled did not become citizens of the nation exercising this rule until March 10, 1960, and became so without being consulted, never mind freely giving fully informed consent.

A lot of important events occurred before 1876 and a lot of important events have occurred since 1960, but let's narrow down our focus to the 84-year period when peoples not of the Canadian citizenry -- notionally called Indians -- were ruled by an act of a foreign parliament giving foreign persons dictatorial powers over their day-to-day lives in their own homelands.

Let's start with property rights. Indigenous views of property rights are not the same as European views of property rights, but a concept of property rights did, and still does, exist for indigenous peoples. Under the Indian Act, both original indigenous property rights and property rights as constituted under Canadian law were prohibited. This is still in effect.

The October 1876 version of the Indian Act coincides with the successful destruction of the 60-million-head buffalo herd, seen as a food source for 'Indians' and therefore necessarily destroyed by a concerted joint effort of Canadian and US governments. In my area of Alberta, an internationally binding treaty had just been signed in September 1876, promising that the indigenous way of life would continue as before, but with Her Majesty's gifts on top.

As compensation for agreeing to share some of the land with the Queen's people, indigenous people found themselves trapped on 'lands reserved for Indians,' with an Indian agent and an agent of Christianity, whose orders were backed up by the newly-formed North-West Mounted Police.

In her 1980 'From Colonialism to Economic Imperialism: The Experience of the Canadian Indian,' sociologist Gail Kellough likened the effects of the Indian Act to a forced march through European history because it created a feudal relationship on every reserve in Canada. Writing in 1970, Robertson notes:

"The Indian Affairs Branch is the lord of the manor. The Indian agent is the local manager. The lord has total control over the lives of his serfs, who neither own their land nor rent it. They are "crofters" permitted to live on the land and farm it but not for their own individual benefit. The lord or manager tells them what to plant and when to sow or harvest; he provides the equipment; he tells them when to sell the crop, and at what price."

What Kellough and other well-meaning Canadians looking sympathetically at Canada's "Indian Problem" don't mention is the intentional destruction of the national characteristics of indigenous peoples. Raphael Lemkin, who originated the concept of genocide, called this its stage one. Economy, governance, language, spiritual practice and customary law were all abolished by decree of the Indian Act. During that 84-year period: Indian Act Chief and Councils were established and traditional governance systems suppressed; John A Macdonald ordered forced starvation as collective punishment for the North-West Rebellion; the pass law controlling movement outside of reserves was implemented; and Duncan Campbell Scott's 'kill the Indian and spare the man' residential schools removed up to five generations of children from family homes, leaving the children thus 'schooled' in a mental/emotional state modern psychologists call 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.'

The cumulative effects of this 84-year period were:

– Killing members of the group.
– Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
– Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
–Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
–Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

For those not familiar, that is the definition of genocide as enshrined in the Genocide Convention, which Canada signed in 1949 and ratified in 1952.

By 1925, social scientists were rushing to reserves to observe the last of a 'dying breed'; it had become common sense to ordinary Canadians that 'Indians' would not and could not survive because of their natural inferiority; Darwinian notions of the survival of the fittest had been applied to human societies and 'Indians' were obviously slated for extinction.

Inexplicably, this monolithic population did not become extinct, as predicted, but instead began a resurgence that carries on today, and explains the forced imposition of Canadian citizenship in 1960 and the continuing development of Canada's 'aboriginal doctrine' in 2006. According to this doctrine, 'Indians' are put through the next transformation, with neither consultation nor consent, on a journey towards becoming 'ethnic Canadians of aboriginal ancestry.' As the Indian Act's full title makes explicit, it's a gradual process. 'Indians' must be contained within the framework of a developmentally backward monolithic dependent population.

The bottom line? Calculate Turtle Island's current market value and GDP and you'll get the picture. There is something called the Great Game going on, the international struggle for geopolitical control of the entire planet. Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island have been caught up in this game for over 500 years, most recently as pawns called 'Indians' created by the Captains of Industry and the Great Statesmen who claim the right to play the game.

Stewart Steinhauer's response to a genocide attempt in Canada.

Recognition and little else

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:27:46 +0000

Canada's Anti-Venezuela Diplomacy

Venezuela is vying for a seat on the UN Security Council. photo: UN

Since Venezuela elected a government led by Hugo Chavez in 1998, the South American country has frequently been on the receiving end of US-backed attempts to destabilize its government. Some say Canada has tacitly or openly supported the US campaign to replace the government of Venezuela.

In January of 2005, Foreign Affairs officials invited Maria Corina Machado to Ottawa. "While the Government of Canada recognizes the legitimacy of the democratically elected government of Venezuela," the invitation explained, "Súmate's visit to Canada will provide a useful opportunity to hear about the human rights situation in Venezuela from a different perspective."

Why was it necessary to note Canada's recognition of Venezuela's government? Machado is the head of Súmate, an organization that is nominally an NGO, but has been at the forefront of anti-Chavez political campaigns. The NDP has called on the government to invite Chavez for an official visit, but the president was passed over in favour of the leader of the US-funded opposition group.

Súmate was most recently at the head of an unsuccessful campaign to recall Chavez through a referendum. Before that, however, Machado's name appeared on a list of people endorsing a 2002 military coup that took Chavez prisoner and imposed a new, unelected government in Venezuela. The coup only lasted two days, before popular demonstrations and a split within the army forced the return of the elected government. But, that proved time enough to incur strong condemnation of the coup frommost Latin American and Caribbean countries -- and for the US to announce its recognition of the short-lived government. Canadian diplomats were silent.

Now, Machado faces charges of treason; if convicted, she could spend as long as 28 years in prison for her involvement in the coup. She denies signing the now-infamous Carmona Decree, which suspended the elected government, and annulled land reforms and increases in royalties paid by oil companies passed by the Chavez-led government. Machado now claims she only visited the presidential palace during the coup and entered her name on a sign-in sheet.

Súmate receives as much as six per cent of its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, an arm's-length satellite of the US State Department and USAID.

Canada has also supported Súmate.

According to disclosures made in response to a question by NDP Foreign Affairs critic Alexa Mcdonnough, Canada gave Súmate $22,000 in 2005-06. Minister of International Co-operation Jose Verner explained that "Canada considered Súmate to be an experienced NGO with the capability to promote respect for democracy, particularly a free and fair electoral process in Venezuela."

After meeting with NGOs, officials and members of Parliament in Canada, Machado went south, where she was granted an hour-long meeting with George W. Bush and met with other officials and NGOs.

Canada has also taken sides in the diplomatic row between the US and Venezuela over the Western Hemisphere Security Council seat vacated by Argentina. The US is backing Guatemala, while Venezuela is seen as a protest vote by developing countries fed up with US policy.

Some observers have called the US backing of Guatemala a bizarre choice, given the country's dismal human rights record. Before voting began on October 16, 90 NGOs from Guatemala sent a letter to members of the UN General Assembly opposing Guatemala's candidacy.

"Guatemala has allowed, and occasionally has contributed to, the deterioration of the situation of human rights and the proliferation of violence, again making these issues a matter of profound concern for the international community," the letter read.

A second letter, signed by Guatemalan human rights groups and two hundred prominent figures, explained that "little has been done to combat impunity and strengthen the judicial system to prevent the reoccurrence of genocide, crimes against humanity and serious human rights violations carried out during the conflict."

US diplomats have been pushing other countries hard to vote for Guatemala. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, for example, announced in early October that Chile would vote for Venezuela. After pressure from Washington, Chile backed off, deciding to abstain in the charged Security Council vote. The Los Angeles Times reported that the US had sold fighter jets to Chile, but Chilean pilots "will not be trained to fly them if the government supports Venezuela's bid." Evidence points to similar diplomatic pressure in other countries that might consider voting for Venezuela.

In the face of this pressure, many governments have continued to support Venezuela. The 15-member Caribbean Community, for example, has thrown its support and 14 General Assembly votes to Venezuela.

What would a Venezuelan Security Council seat mean? According to Venezuela's UN ambassador, it would give impoverished nations "an independent voice needed on the Security Council to fight against the power of money."

While Venezuela would not be able to veto any resolutions, it would have an effective platform from which to criticize US interventions in places like Iran, Iraq, Korea and Israel. Given the myriad of double standards enshrined in US foreign policy on human rights standards, war crimes, possession and use of weapons of mass destruction and violations of sovereignty, Venezuelan diplomats would not lack opportunities to embarrass the US.

By contrast, no observers are suggesting that Guatemala would be a critical voice. Given a lack of awareness of Canadian diplomacy inside Canada, and taking into account American pressure, that makes the small Central American country a safer place for Canada to place its support, for the moment.

Critics say Canada has tacitly or openly supported the US campaign to replace the government of Venezuela. Yves Engler asks why.

"Dust in the Eyes of the World"

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:22:42 +0000

Feminists debate logic of "humanitarian" war

Is the military deployment in Aghanistan – which some Afghan feminists are calling an occupation– improving the lives of women?

The claim that the war in Afghanistan will liberate Afghan women has been circulating since before the bombs began to drop, on October 7, 2001. By mid-October of that year--the day before World Food Day--the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 7.5 million Afghans had no access to food and were at risk of starvation. A few months later, on January 29, 2002, during his State of the Union address, George Bush jubilantly declared: "Today, women are free and are part of Afghanistan's new government." In July 2006, it was reported that the war had created 2.2 million refugees and at least 153,200 internally displaced people. It is estimated that between 12,541 and 25,308 Afghan people have died in the war.

Global opposition to the invasion of Iraq was mobilized even before the war began; by contrast, the war in Afghanistan, spun as a humanitarian effort, is the war relatively few Canadians seem to want to--or know how to--audibly oppose. Canadians take pride in themselves for not following the United States into an illegal war in Iraq, but not many questions were raised about Canada taking over the US mandate in Afghanistan (which allowed the US to focus its military and resources in Iraq). Part of the reason for this is that the war in Afghanistan – named 'Operation Enduring Freedom' – was, from the beginning, promoted as war that would restore the women's rights by deposing the Taliban.

In a recent article published in the Winnipeg Free Press, Penni Mitchell, a prominent Canadian feminist who is managing editor of the national feminist magazine Herizons, suggests that the war in Afghanistan is doing just that. In fact, Mitchell argues that the Conservative government is failing to make the same commitment to human rights in its domestic policy that is embodied in its deployment in Afghanistan, referring to the government's decision to close the Court Challenges Program, which provided litigation support to individuals seeking to challenge a federal law on the grounds that it contravened the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Mitchell writes: "Human rights of linguistic minorities and women are worth Canadians fighting for in Afghanistan, but advancing the rights of minorities and women in Canada's courts are a luxury Ottawa says it can little afford." In an article published on October 15 in The Toronto Star, Linda McQuaig points to the same disjunction. Referring to Harper's attack on Status of Women Canada, emblematic of his socially regressive domestic policy, McQuaig quips: "for women, the good news is – burqas are out. The bad news is – so are careers [for Canadian women]."

At present, 2,300 Canadian soldiers are stationed in Afghanistan, of whom approximately 2,000 are actively engaged in combat as part of the International Security Assistance Force, currently led by a Canadian general. In an interview with The Dominion, Mitchell acknowledged that "Canada should re-focus its mission" in Afghanistan, and said, "It is clear that women in Afghanistan want greater security, they want girls to be able to attend school, they want a justice system that will protect them, not warlords who will rule by violence and intimidation."

But the question is, will the military deployment – which some Afghan feminists are calling an occupation– achieve these ends? When I pose this question to Roksana Bahramitash, she asks, by way of reply: "What is the historical evidence to show that war has ever liberated women?" Bahramitash is a feminist scholar at the Centre for Developing-Area Studies at McGill University and at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, who produced a documentary on Afghan women, "Beyond the Burqa," in 2004. She says that the notion that the US and Canada are emancipating Afghan women by bombing them is a dangerous fiction produced by a "war propaganda machine" that feminists need to undermine. She worries that some feminists have forgotten the historical roots of the North American feminist movement in anti-militarist and anti-racist struggles, and are now "supporting a neoconservative agenda."

Rather than positing Canadian military intervention as the solution to Afghan women's problems, Bahramitash urges feminists to make connections between Canada's foreign policy and its domestic policy. Unlike Mitchell, who sees a contradiction between Harper's domestic and foreign policies, Bahramitash argues that both emerge from the same ideology: "The policies are not separate. Neoliberalism [at home] and neo-conservatism [abroad] are part of the same package." To see this, Bahramitash suggests that we need a feminist analysis that sees that race, class and war are inseparable factors in women's experiences. And we need to understand how, transnationally, feminist struggles are unified. Take, for example, the issue of participation in formal political institutions. "As a feminist," Mitchell says, "I do consider that having women occupy 28 per cent of seats in [the Afghan] government is… an improvement." It's not clear, however, that Canada has much to teach Afghan civil society in this regar;d only 20.8per cent of members of the Canadian Parliament are women. "To assume that the struggles for women's rights are fundamentally different is a major problem," Bahramitash says. Also dangerous is the assumption that Western women or governments know what Afghan women's actual needs are. Bahramitash warns that feminist support for the Canadian military deployment in Afghanistan "feeds into Islamophobia" because it is based on the paternalistic "Orientalist assumption that Muslim women are victims (not agents) who need their Western sisters to help them," says Bahramitash. Instead of attempting to define Afghan women's needs, Bahramitash says that Canadian feminists need to pressure their own government to "change its mandate from military deployment to peacekeeping" and to re-allocate the resources it currently expends on the war to reconstruction, human security and decommissioning of weapons. In this, she echoes the concrete demands of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), which has been mobilizing Afghan women in resistance to war and occupation since 1977.

Ultimately, Bahramitash suggests, Canadian feminists need to relate to Afghan women as "agents of transformation" of their own conditions. After all, as RAWA puts it, "Real emancipation of women can be realized only by themselves." To claim otherwise, they say, is just "throwing dust into the eyes of the world."

Prominent feminists debate the logic of a "humanitarian" war in Aghanistan. Anna Carastathis investigates.

Canadian Member

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:09:50 +0000

Membership is limited at the Canada Club in Bogata, Colombia

There is something implicitly boring about Canada's elite.

Even in the fastest, flashiest, most beautiful places, they're still lumbering, reserved and placated; that's the only conclusion I can draw from an evening at The Canada Club in Bogota, Colombia.

We walk from the old city, where every bag of garbage left outside is torn apart by people looking for something to sell or something to eat, to arrive at the carpeted hotel convention centre that hosts the Canada Club every Friday night.

In Bogota's posh Zona Rosa convention centre, we saunter past the lobby and up a flight of stairs with brass rails to a medium-sized lounge. Canadian business boys in their mid-50s, wearing golf shirts with oil company insignias tucked into waist-high khakis, shoot pool as Colombian waiters in bow-ties carefully replenish their drinks.

Waiters slice and pass around delicious white cake with a cherry red topping; a seafood bar with iced shrimp and squid sits in the corner.

An unspoken three-drink maximum seems to be in effect and conversations are quiet and distant.

At neighbourhood bars in the city's historic district, young Colombians are just sitting down for a beer. Soon the tables and chairs will be pushed aside and every square inch of space will become a dance floor.

"You know, 60 per cent of the Canada Club's members are Colombians," says a tall, affable fellow with a blond moustache; the group's president.

I nod respectfully. It would, after all, be sensible that an organization based in Colombia would have Colombian members.

"But you know," he whispers in my ear. "Most of them are women trying to meet Canadian men," he smiles. I stare.

In the era of globalization, passports are personal power; privilege from apiece of paper connected to nothing but the randomness of birth.

And when it comes to passports, Colombia has a losing hand. "We can't go anywhere," says my friend Michelle as she negotiates the paperwork for a Canadian travel visa so she can visit her boyfriend's hometown of Montreal.

When I entered this country, I just walked in.

"Welcome to Colombia," said the customs officer after taking a quick look at my Canadian passport.

One doesn't need to follow immigration policy closely to know why a Colombian passport is held as suspect by anxious border officials and timid wonks at the department of citizenship: drugs and violence.

But the drug trade, and the violence that often accompanies it, is based on that simplest of all capitalist principles: supply and demand.

The American (and Canadian) people demand cocaine. Colombian cartels supply it. The American government decides cocaine demand among Americans is problematic and initiates a $3 billion eradication campaign called Plan Colombia, contracting private militias like Dyncorp to spray toxic herbicides over vast swaths of land.

Powerful nations destabilize countries and then wonder why refugees show up at their borders; in 2004, 3,635 Colombians applied for refugee status in Canada--more than any other country.

Colombia grows some good coffee; disgusting instant Nescafe is served at many local restaurants.

Profits are shipped north, but problems stay behind. Someone is getting rich here; Colombia's stock market performed better than any country in the world in 2004, according the Economist, an influential London-based magazine.

And when it comes to getting rich, the boys at the Canada club are doing just fine. I just don't know if they're having much fun doing it.

Chris Arsenault drops by the exclusive Canada Club in Bogata, Colombia, and considers the cost of Canada's elite.

Lebanon Solidarité

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 18:18:05 +0000

The Québec-Lebanon solidarity movement is strong and growing

Québecers reacted quickly and strongly to Israel's bombing of Lebanon. photo: Rob Maguire

Merely two days after the initial Israeli attack on Lebanon on July 24, protests were staged in front of the Israeli Consulate in Montreal. The Montreal-based solidarity group Tadamon! was one of the first to call for demonstrations after the conflict began, joined by other groups such as Palestinians and Jews United (PAJU).

Stephen Harper's oft-cited suggestion that Israel's response to the kidnapping of two soldiers by the Lebanese group Hezbollah was "measured"--the response included the complete destruction of civilian neighbourhoods and bombing of infrastructure such as bridges and power plants--elicited widespread and immediate condemnation; polls suggested that fully two-thirds of Quebecers disagreed with the Conservative position. One protest sign at a Quebec City rally read, "Killing children is not 'measured.'"

The gatherings grew significantly as the war raged on, with upwards of 60,000 taking to the streets of Montreal on August 6. The turnout was more modest in Quebec City, with 500-600 protesters taking part on both the August 6 weekend and the last weekend in July, but as Micha'l Lessard of the Quebec City-based coalition Quebec-Liban points out, "the numbers that turned out in Quebec, in July, for a political cause of international solidarity, were good."

According to Lessard, the strong public response prompted the government to make 'nuanced' changes in their rhetoric and position. Ahmad Rustom, an activist of South-Lebanese origin, notes that while "Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay still say the same things, at least they know there were people out there who don't agree with them."

The most important thing, Lessard and Rustom agree, was the awareness that was raised at a public level. In the capital, the solidarity network ("more of a Quebec-Middle East coalition," Lessard says, noting that it is the same group that runs Quebec-Palestine and Quebec-Iraq coalitions) was able to set up tables at many street festivals, which are commonplace during the summer months. There, they were able to meet many members of the public who were looking for information that was not readily available in the mainstream media, such as the fact that protests were being organized.

Protests during the recent conflict did not touch the record numbers set during the build up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, where according to the police over 200,000 marched in Montreal, and 18,000 hit the streets in Quebec City. The difference, according to Lessard, was that there was a lot more discussion about invading Iraq. There was quite a strong reaction from the public concerning the US-led 2003 invasion, he notes, and the media allowed for a fairly open debate on the issues. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon didn't have the same lengthy build-up in public view.

Even if somewhat smaller, "at the public level [the protests] had a very, very big effect," says Rustom. "Lots of groups, unions, political parties such as the Bloc Quebecois, the Parti Quebecois, and [newly founded left-wing provincial party] Quebec Solidarite were involved in the mobilisations," demonstrating a widespread commitment to the issues. And this remains of great importance for the future, he suggests, because "the source of the problem"--the occupation of Palestine--"is still there."

After the cease-fire, the situation is still very dangerous in Lebanon, with economic and social injustices rampant in the region, and the fact that thousands of Palestinian refugees--many born and raised in Lebanon--still lack legal status. The country's infrastructure remains largely unviable, with estimates suggesting it may be twenty years before Lebanon can be built back up to its former state. As many as a million unexploded cluster 'bomblets' litter the countryside, acting as de facto landmines. The bomblets have killed 14 civilians since the ceasefire, adding to the approximately 1,300 killed during the open hostilities, and are preventing many refugees from returning home.

In the occupied West Bank and Gaza, the situation can only be said to be getting drastically worse. Reporter Patrick Cockburn recently wrote that, "Gaza is dying... A whole society is being destroyed," as hundreds are killed by the Israeli occupying forces, houses are destroyed, and connections to the outside world are all but denied for the 1.5 million Gazans, including access to food and electricity. Many, Cockburn reports, are being forced to scavenge garbage dumps for something to eat.

As Rustom notes of the solidarity network's work to raise awareness amongst the public and to work with the media to present the issues in an accurate light, "it will continue to be very important."

Dave Johnson investigates the strong --and growing-- Quebéc-Lebanon solidarity movement.

Israel, Lebanon and your own backyard

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 11:21:43 +0000

Canada and Israel are the same type of state: a nation state founded on colonialism

Canadians concerned with injustice abroad should also consider the land under their own two feet. photo: Lone Primate

When Israel has reduced its Arab population to three per cent of the national total and that Arab three per cent has stopped resisting and been "pacified," to use counter-insurgency jargon, then Israel will have reached the place where Canada is now. Canada and Israel are the same type of state: a nation state founded on colonialism.

In 1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky--one of the founders of Zionism--wrote 'The Iron Wall,' an essay that laid out a direct comparison between expropriation of the Arabs with the genocide of the indigenous people of North America.

"There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between us and the Arabs, not now, and not in the foreseeable future," wrote Jabotinsky. All well-meaning people long ago understood the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority. Each of you has some general understanding of the history of colonization. Try to find even one example when the colonization of a country took place with the agreement of the native population. Such an event has never occurred

Israel's actions in the Middle East receive public support from the heads of state of Canada and the US because both are involved in the same type of behaviour.

Canadians rightfully decry the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians under Israeli military attacks, but there is no public outcry over the 2,374 on-reserve accidental deaths in Alberta between 1983 and 2002 recorded by Health Canada. Half of these deaths were suicides, while almost all involved addictions. This is just in Alberta; multiply these numbers by the entire landmass known as Canada and you have a staggering ongoing death toll.

In the pacified stage of colonial oppression, the resistance turns inwards and becomes self-directed. Better to die, or to live under the influence of drugs and alcohol, than to struggle hopelessly in a trapped and tortured situation. Incarceration rates are high, unemployment is high, disabling addiction levels are high, educational outcomes are low, health is poor; and all this happens in an environment micro-managed by Canada's Indian and Northern Affairs Department. Canadians lament the Israeli pass system for Palestinians, the bantustans, and the military control of the Arab population, but these were all aspects of Canada's Indian policy—written right into the Indian Act—between 1876 and 1960.

Things being what they are, the most effective place for well-meaning Canadians to protest Israeli actions is right at home, under their own feet. Canada's elected government can actually do something about this situation, unlike its capacity to right wrongs in the Middle East.

Five contested sites of power -- namely race, gender, class, authority and ecology -- come together in the indigenous struggle for survival in Canada. From north to south, the indigenous peoples of the Americas are leading the resistance to the global colonial madness. If Canada can be pulled out of alignment with the US/UK/EU sphere of influence, and into the Turtle Island-wide indigenous sphere of influence, it will have more impact on the Israeli/US Middle Eastern project than any amount of hand-wringing or fist-waving about a colonial project half a world away.

Why alter the colonial arrangement? Canadians will not act out of pure altruism; you need to see the money. Canada's GDP is over the trillion-dollar mark; $1.3 trillion in 2004 and $1.4 trillion in 2005. What if, instead of the current colonial arrangements -- where a legal fiction called 'The Crown' holds root title to all lands, and the state exercises totalitarian control over Indigenous Peoples through the Indian Act -- we go into a straight business relationship?

'Fee simple' (the term for the current property rights regime where people 'own' property while the Crown retains the underlining title) could be left intact, except with root title transferred from the Crown to Indigenous Peoples, and with the introduction of an annual royalty or rent to be paid to Indigenous Peoples, based directly on Canada's GDP. A two per cent royalty on Canada's GDP would be about $28 billion, which could be paid through the foreign debt repayment section of the federal budget. No new money has to be raised from taxpayers. Scrap the Indian Act, terminate the Department of Indian Affairs, and save about $12 billion that is currently pouring into that black hole built to hide corruption. Indigenous Peoples can establish an international trust fund that we will manage ourselves.

It's a business arrangement. Theft and murder is the business that organized crime is in; it doesn't have to be the business that the nation of Canada is in.

The most effective place for well-meaning Canadians to protest Israeli actions is right at home, under their own feet.

Stewart Steinhauer is an internationally-known stone sculptor who lives on the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, where he was born and raised. He is the author of Voice from the Coffin, a book about life on the Rez.

Looking to address global injustice? Stewart Steinhauer suggests looking under your own two feet.

Like Weeds in a Garden

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 21:31:37 +0000

Genocide, International Law & Canada's "Indian Problem"

Canada's solution to what was once casually referred to as its "Indian problem" has been a strategy of social engineering known as assimilation. photo: General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada

Not all of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) made it into the Canadian Criminal Code. The following parts of Article Two, which define the crime of genocide, were omitted when the Convention was ratified and became law in 1952: "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" and, "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, director of the Department of Native Studies at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, says that the omissions are not a coincidence. The original two omissions correspond directly to Canada's official policy of abducting Native children and keeping them in residential schools, where many were subject to gruesome and well-documented abuse and torture.

"Modern genocide is an element of social engineering, meant to bring out a social order conforming to the design of the perfect society," wrote Zygmunt Bauman in his 1989 book 'Modernity and the Holocaust.' "This is a gardener's vision... Some gardeners hate the weeds that spoil their design... Some others are quite unemotional about them: just a problem to be solved, an extra job to be done."

As Chrisjohn explains, the glitch in Canada's garden begins with the problem that, according to European law, title to most of the land in Canada still belongs to its original inhabitants.

Canada's solution to what was once casually referred to as its "Indian problem" has been a strategy of social engineering known as assimilation which began with the 1857 'Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes of the Province;' its modern-day equivalent is the Indian Act. Serving as head of the Department of Indian Affairs during the development of the residential school system, Sir Duncan Campbell Scott summarized the agenda of Canadian policy towards Native people: "Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian problem."

The Genocide Convention

Rafael Lemkin, who coined the word genocide and was responsible for drafting the CPPCG, explained in 1945 that "the term does not necessarily signify mass killings... More often it refers to a co-ordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight."

"The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion," Lemkin wrote in 'Genocide - A Modern Crime.'

The CPPCG went through two drafts before it was approved by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. Earlier versions of the Convention included means to establish an international court and many definitions reflecting the substance of genocide, including a provision that condemned forcible citizenship. These parts were removed in the final draft. According to Canada's representative at the UN, the Canadian stance was that, "a more limited interpretation of the term 'genocide' would be preferable." Objections primarily from Canada and the US eviscerated the final version of the Convention.

In his book 'The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada,' Chrisjohn writes that even in its watered-down form, Canada is in violation of the CPPCG. Residential schools were run from the 1800s to the 1990s where children were removed, by force of law, from their communities and sent to institutions run by the churches.

In the words of Scott, residential schools were designed to "take the Indian out of the Indian."

Chrisjohn explains that under the CPPCG, residential schools were clearly genocidal according to Article Two, which defines genocide as: "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

"a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

"I could argue all five, but the fifth one is a slam dunk," says Chrisjohn. "There is absolutely no way Canada can deny that they legislated the transference of children from their parents to the church authorities."

On May 21, 1952, when Canada's Parliament ratified the Convention, bringing it into the Canadian Criminal Code, they omitted sections b) and e) of Article Two. A further amendment in 1985 removed section d). It was around this time when accounts of the involuntary sterilization of Native women began to surface.

"They left out three-fifths of International law," says Chrisjohn, "that specifically would make in Canadian law what they were doing to First Nations people, from 1948 until the present day, the crime of genocide."

"It's not a coincidence. This is all too convenient."

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

At first glance, a new international agreement seemed to bring about a means of holding those who commit genocide accountable.

"In the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)... there is provision for establishing International Criminal Courts in which Crimes Against Humanity could be brought to an impartial judge," Chrisjohn explains, referring to the Covenant passed in 1966 that came into force in 1976. The covenant affirmed that participating countries could not "derogate in any way from any obligation assumed under the provisions of the [CPPCG]."

"Canada couldn't allow that to happen, so in the Covenant there is a little provison..." says Chrisjohn. "That is, minority populations of a country are considered citizens of the country and when the country does something to its own citizenry, that's considered an internal matter...So a citizen cannot sue his own country in international court."

"In 1960, with nobody having asked for it, Indians were declared to be citizens of Canada. It wasn't an act of generosity. They were already working on the [ICCPR] and they wanted to make sure that the Indians wouldn't be able to go to an international court and bring a charge against the Canadian government."

"All Canadians were made 'genociders' by their government," states Chrisjohn pointing to Article Three of the CPPCG that also defines complicity in genocide as a crime. "You have a responsibility as a citizen of the world to know what your government is up to and resist [their] unlawful actions," he says. "The crime of genocide is being covered up. Now it's a double crime."

Pierre Loiselle asks why the Canadian government omitted over half of the Genocide Convention before making it law.

Post-Colonial?

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 16:36:55 +0000

Canada Post and the privatization of Guatemala

Canada Post is accused of union-busting in Guatemala. photo: Dulcie Meatheringham

Originally published in Briarpatch Magazine

In 1997, the World Bank loaned 13 million dollars (US) to the government of Guatemala to finance privatization of the country's seaport, electrical grid, and telephone and postal services. A Canada Post subsidiary and its offshore partner, International Postal Services (IPS), received the lucrative concession to manage the privatization of the Guatemalan postal service.

Canada Post International Limited (CPIL), which at the time was known as Canada Post Systems Management Limited, is a subsidiary company of Canada Post, a crown corporation wholly owned by the government of Canada.

The World Bank had predicted that the three labour unions representing Guatemalan postal workers would resist the privatization project and the plan to 'shed excess labour.' But rather than negotiate a contract with the unions, CPIL is alleged by former postal workers and postal union leaders to have deliberately eliminated all three unions using illegal tactics.

Former workers and union officials allege that by using bribery, company unions, intimidation, physical assaults, death threats, and various other illegal tactics, CPIL-IPS not only eliminated the unions, but alsoengineered a complete turnover of staff within 18 months.

Guatemalan labour federation leader José Pinzón observes that even the worst labour abuses during the dictatorships (which followed the CIA coup against the labour-friendly democratic government in 1954 and lasted through the 1980s) were no worse than the union-busting tactics employed by CPIL-IPS and the other transnational agents of privatization.

The final step of CPIL's union-busting was to terminate every worker, after which the public postal service was restructured as a private company and renamed Correos. Some former workers, who did not have a history of union activism and who signed a contract promising not to join or organize a union, were rehired by Correos. However, to further ensure no union infiltration of the workplace, these workers were again terminated after they provided sufficient training to their own replacements.

Guatemalan labour federation officials state that wage increases and other perks promised to the new Correos workers never materialized and that the company defaulted on its payments to the national social security fund, which left these unorganized workers without healthcare and other benefits.

The World Bank's privatization scheme had a profoundly devastating effect on Guatemalan society. The United Nations reports the proportion of the Guatemalan population engaged in economic activity fell six per cent during the period of privatization, from 27.6 per cent in 1995, to 21.6 per cent in 1999. At the same time, union representation in Guatemala fell from five per cent of the workforce to 2.5 per cent.

Approximately 65 per cent of the terminated postal workers were women. In Guatemala's highly gender-divided society, these women had a particularly difficult time finding new work. The most accessible 'women's' jobs are domestic servants, maquila workers, home-industry workers, or street vendors. Former postal workers could not hope to find wages and work conditions comparable to their old jobs and many never found employment.

Many former workers had to remove their children from school so they could work to supplement the family income. According to a UN report, Guatemalan children spend, on average, only 1.3 years in school. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions reports that 821,875 Guatemalan children between seven and 14 years of age were active in the informal economy in 2001, and the International Labour Organization reports that in 2002, 937,530 children worked as domestics in 'conditions of modern slavery.' According to the US State Department, child domestics work 13 to 16 hours a day for an average monthly salary of $51 (US). Many of these child workers suffer psychological mistreatment, violence and sexual abuse.

The unions of Guatemala, as part of a broad coalition of social justice organizations, played a key role in bringing about the peace negotiations that ended Guatemala's 36-year civil war in 1996. Ironically though, the end of the war also made Guatemala an attractive target for transnational companies intent on union-busting and siphoning off national wealth. The negotiated peace accords outlined basic human rights with specific provisions for women, indigenous people and workers. However, a failure to ratify the peace accords after their signing in 1996--largely due to organized right-wing resistance--led to unfulfilled promises for social progress. This also gave corporations the ability to violate the intent of the peace accords without technically violating laws not yet in place.

Regardless of the failure to implement the peace accords to establish expanded workers' rights, Guatemala is a signatory to the major international labour agreements and has a national labour code comparable to most states, including Canada. It is not lax laws or some peculiar cultural traits of Latin Americans that allow abuse by transnational corporations such as CPIL; it is the complicity between states and corporations that allow such abuse to occur.

Proponents of privatization claim that overall service and security has improved since the privatization of the Guatemalan postal service. Former postal workers recognize that the service was in need of improvement, but they add it was government security officers who were most responsible for delaying, opening and stealing mail during the war years.

With all of Correos' profits, as well as guaranteed consultancy fees, flowing to an unidentifiable group of investors in IPS, a company registered in the Bahamas, it may not be clear who specifically is benefiting from the privatization of Guatamala's postal service, but we know who isn't --the people of Guatemala and Canada.

In 2004, the Guatemalan government renewed the initial concession awarded in 1997 to Canada Post International Ltd. and its faceless offshore partner International Postal Services for another 10 years. Since 1990, Canada Post's international wing has undertaken 180 projects, including a similar privatization scheme in Lebanon.

Michael Skinner is a labour activist, musician and educator. Since 2000, he has been on education leave from his job as a letter carrier with Canada Post to pursue studies as a specialist in Peace and Conflict Studies at the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Toronto, and as a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University.

This article is based on original research in Guatemala and interviews conducted with former Guatemalan postal workers, union leaders, labour federation leaders, social activists, Guatemalan government officials and United Nations officials. Canada Post officials have thus far declined to comment.

Michael Skinner discovers that the impact of privatization in Guatemala has Canada Post's stamp of approval.