The Dominion - social movements

Fertile Soil for Social Change

Martin Lukacs — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:22:12 +0000

Kuyek's "Community Organizing" a wise guide for activists

Community Organizing: A Holistic Approach
Joan Kuyek
Fernwood Publishing: Halifax, 2011

The strength of this book comes from Joan Kuyek’s perspective, informed by over 40 years of organizing. Initially intended as an update of Fighting For Hope: Organizing to Realize Our Dreams, which Kuyek wrote in 1990, it has instead become a book that reflects both the changes in the world and Kuyek's learning over the last two decades.

Kuyek’s political experience is rich and deep. It began in the 1960s, when she did research for the federal government’s Company of Young Canadians program. What she learned there quickly transformed her interest towards participatory democracy and community action. She did community organizing in Kingston, where she dedicated herself to the women’s liberation movement and was elected as a city councillor (“alderman”). Later came various organizing in Sudbury, and then national work with the United Church’s “The Church and the Economic Crisis” project and the Urban-Rural Mission with the World Council of Churches. She then went back to Sudbury to work as the founding program coordinator of the Better Beginnings Better Futures community development program, followed by a year with the national Urban Issues Program of the Bronfman Foundation. She then helped found MiningWatch Canada, where she stayed for ten years.

Community Organizing: A Holistic Approach is indeed holistic and comprehensive. Kuyek examines the creation of positive social change based on a coherent and wide-ranging analysis of the context in which the work is done and the principles needed to make it effective. Her concept of a holistic approach draws on Aboriginal ‘medicine wheel’ philosophy, in an effort to bring balance to the various aspects of organizing. She notes, “whole chunks of experience and information are often missing from our work.” She uses stories from her own history of involvement to illustrate the holistic approach, which add much to the principles and analysis contained in the book.

Perhaps the most important part of the book is her perspective on starting points for effecting real change—by which she means changing the societal systems that perpetuate problems, and not just winning piecemeal victories. It is not, as she would have argued earlier in her life, on environmental, social or political questions that we must begin our organizing. Instead, she offers a gardening analogy, of creating fertile soil from which good things can grow.

We need to begin with our own lives and those closest around us. We must generate enthusiasm in those who are willing to get involved, so that they will stay involved and enjoy doing so. This must be so, because we are asking a lot of people: “Asking ourselves and others to take on the work of confronting these systems of domination is asking people to take on a dangerous and difficult task.”

Kukey finds hope and inspiration in First Nations communities, where the maintenance of traditional ways of life has gone hand in hand with improvements in social, political and economic life. Having outlined the many problems with our current culture, she finds it necessary for non-Indigenous people, too, to undertake a radical transformation of our cultures and communities.

And along with this type of coherent vision, she provides many principles and tools: a list of conditions for how to create safe learning environments, "the web of influences" exercise, questions for visioning exercises, activist theatre, media resources, and more.
This book is really a toolbox, a strategy-box, and a vision-box, all in one.

Kuyek clearly illustrates how we can either meet or fail the challenge of class or race, and its impact on our organizing. She’s also able to communicate a valuable understanding of subtleties in discussions on different aspects of power and economics, both of which are often insufficiently or problematically discussed or investigated in activist efforts.

Kuyek has much wisdom to share: frankly acknowledging the problems of fragmentation and disunity in organizing; explaining why developing a sense of “we” based on vision and values is better than organizing based on defining “enemies”; and learning to welcome how synchronicity seems to play a supportive role whenever we’re doing the right work.

For someone interested in getting involved in organizing, this book can serve as a comprehensive and inspiring introduction. For those already committed to this work, it is a valuable resource for reflection and guidance.

An accompanying Resource Guide for Community Organizing is available at www.fernwoodpublishing.ca/community

Greg Macdougall is an educator, activist and writer in Ottawa. More of his writings and work are online at www.EquitableEducation.ca.

Community Organizing

Indian Farmers Beat Back Tata

Geordie — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 05:38:39 +0000

Farmers in West Bengal, India have pushed Tata Motors off agricultural land.

"The West Bengal government acquired 1,000 acres of land for the Nano project in 2006.

"At least 10,000 farmers accepted compensation for their land, but approximately 2,000 of them rejected it as inadequate and demanded 400 acres of land be returned.

"'You cannot run a plant with police protection, you cannot run a plant when bombs are being thrown, you cannot run a plant when workers are being intimidated,' Tata said."

Workers Rising

hillarybain — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:22:36 +0000

Hotel union strikes, rallies and demands social change; gets contracts

“I feel great,” mused Abdul Husseini, a server at the Holiday Inn restaurant on Toronto’s airport strip. On July 15, he was in the middle of a hotel walkout, part of a series of spontaneous rolling strikes aimed at securing an agreement in three Toronto airport hotels. Two weeks and one strike later, tentative agreements had been reached at all three hotels.

Victory for Husseini’s union, UNITE HERE Local 75, was the result of an intense and aggressive campaign, targeting the remaining three member hotels without a contract: the Radisson, Holiday Inn and Fairmont Royal York. Most of the UNITE HERE hotels in Toronto had already settled with the Local 75 “standard contract,” according to Husseini, but Westmont Hospitality Group, who owns or operates these three hotels, had been holding out since 2007, leaving their staff some of the worst paid on the airport strip. “Cooks in my restaurant are paid $4 less than other hotels,” said Husseini.

Working standards in the hotel industry, where most workers are from immigrant communities, are not high to begin with. Heavy workloads, low job security and exploitation are rampant, according to union representatives. “Most days, I don't have time to take a break,” Radisson Suite Hotel room attendant Delsie Morgan was quoted as saying in the Toronto Star. Morgan was making
$13.17 an hour compared with $15 at other hotels.

At the same time, Toronto hotels are enjoying a period of strong economic growth. Westmont Hospitality Group, the Radisson Hotel, the Holiday Inn and the Greater Toronto Hotel Association did not return calls to the Dominion and publicly refused to comment on the strikes. However, speaking in the Toronto Star, Andrew Weir, Vice-president of Communications for Tourism Toronto stated that “hotel occupancy rates were up three per cent in May and another one per cent in June compared to last year.”

Even given the David and Goliath scenario, UNITE HERE’s July actions were unusually militant: spontaneous, rolling strikes are rare in the hospitality industry. More often strike-notice is used as a pressure tactic; it also gives the employer time to prepare for the possibility of a strike. Without notice, managers are left scrambling to cover positions, clean rooms and attempt to calm dissatisfied customers.

If tough tactics like these seem out of the ordinary for a hotel union, it’s not the only thing that UNITE HERE does differently. The seemingly quick victory in July is part of a long-term strategy to engage communities in making change.

Unique membership, leadership

When asked why he and his co-workers decided to organize with Local 75, Husseini says that “Local 75 is very well known in Toronto.” Husseini, who used to belong to the Steel Workers Union, says that UNITE HERE is much better than other unions when it comes to “dealing with communities.” “They provide services to their members: money for training, culture funds…they provide help for the young.”

Few unions have such a high proportion of immigrants as members. “We’re part of the movement for immigrant rights in Toronto and the hotel industry,” says J.J. Feuser, a researcher with UNITE HERE Local 75. “Seventy per cent of our workers are immigrants to Canada.” The union also says 48 per cent of members are women and 53 per cent are visible minorities.

“It’s sometimes an interesting challenge organizing people from different communities with low union density,” says Feuser. “We have to be good at making people absorb the fact that they have rights.

“Our focus is on developing leadership in the rank and file. In every case, workers sit on the negotiating committee at every level of negotiations. Our executive board and solidarity committee…works with the community and take on the role of organizer in the workplace,” says Feuser. This approach empowers the communities and individuals involved with the union, and according to UNITE HERE organizers, makes the union more powerful in the workplace and beyond. “Increasingly we can act on facing problems in the hotels, political fights, helping our members, etcetera,” says Feuser. “We can do that on a dime.”

One of the fights UNITE HERE locals in Canada and the US took on last year is the “Hotel Workers Rising” campaign. The aim of the campaign is to improve working conditions across the board, but most significantly, to have all hotel-worker contracts settled on the same calendar year: 2010.

Though contracts at unionized hotels are common, the fact that so many are now coming up for renewal in 2010 means that UNITE HERE workers are in position to undertake connected labour actions across the continent. A general strike or attempt to increase wages across Canada and the US could be in the works. “[This is] continent-wide: Boston, Honolulu, and Los Angeles,” says Feuser.

With 100,000 of UNITE HERE’s 450,000 North American members being exclusively hotel workers, settling all hotel workers' contracts by 2010 would be a significant accomplishment. According to Feuser, the union is already well on its way.

“Local 75 represents 40 hotels in Toronto. Thirty have been negotiated until 2010,” he says. “The goal is to have the other 10 negotiated to that date as well.”

“Broader issues defining the union”

Andrea van der Heever, an organizer with UNITE HERE based in New Haven, Connecticut, believes that the union’s forays into community activism are what most set it apart from other unions. “I think what distinguishes UNITE HERE is that…the union is not confined to conflicts at the workplace. The union has a role in where people live and in communities. Local 75 is at the forefront in transforming the way a lot of locals are looking at their communities. The broader issues are starting to define the union.”

In Toronto, these "broader issues" include fighting gentrification and demanding rights for immigrants.

Local 75 has begun influencing commercial developments in Rexdale, one of the poorest communities in Toronto. Guled Warsame, an organizer with the union, says that in December 2006 communities in Rexdale found out about an open-house for Woodbine Live: a major expansion of the local race track. "People started asking about local benefits,” says Warsame. “The first big meeting [of coalition partners] was in May 2007; over 600 people came.” Then the Community Organizing for Responsible Development (CORD) campaign was launched. UNITE HERE local 75, the Toronto Social Planning Council and other organizations signed on to support the campaign.

CORD’s goal is to obtain concessions for the Rexdale community. The campaign is modeled after one in the United States in which “everything that the neighbourhood wanted got written into the agreement,” including provisions for parking, housing, hospital debt, jobs, training and asthma reduction, says Van der Heever, who worked with the CORD initiative in New Haven.

When asked about the objectives of Toronto’s CORD campaign, Sima Sahar Zerehi, Communications Specialist with Local 75, says that the Rexdale community has similar goals. “We have a huge shopping list; it’s exhaustive. More jobs, better services, youth services, etc.”

Summer of hope

Beyond its participation in the CORD campaign in Rexdale, UNITE HERE has also joined the “Summer of Hope” campaign.

“The Summer of Hope is a campaign aimed at bringing together members across Toronto to fight for the rights of immigrant workers,” says Zerehi. Tactics have included the union job actions as well as a rally at City Hall on July 31 entitled, 'We Are the New Majority'.

Feuser believes that UNITE HERE’s bargaining tactics, community work and high immigrant membership will eventually gain the support of most workers in Toronto. “It’s in everyone’s interest that service industry jobs are good jobs. Manufacturing jobs are decreasing [in Ontario] and service sector jobs…these are the jobs that are going to be the jobs that stay.”

Unite Here

Unite Here 2

July in Review

dru — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:33:19 +0000

G8 feasts, pancakes go dry and "yellowcake" soars

The Federal Court of Appeal reversed a decision that had struck down an agreement banning refugee claimants from seeking asylum in Canada if they touched down on American soil first. The "Safe Third Country Agreement" was found by the Federal Court of Canada to be in violation of the Refugee Convention, the Convention Against Torture and Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The appeal court overturned the federal court's ruling, however, rejecting the argument that the US is not a safe country for refugees.

After children in the Algonquin community of Barriere Lake were punished for speaking Anishnaabe at the government-run school, parents and elders started an alternative school in the community. Two thirds of children in Barriere Lake, north of Ottawa, are now attending a volunteer-run school that focuses on traditional language and learning.

The Canadian government announced that it will give energy giant Suncor an additional $25 million grant (in addition to $22 million awarded in 2005) for the expansion of an Ethanol plant in Sarnia, Ontario. Suncor's second-quarter earnings this year were $829 million, a marked increase from the same period last year.

A publication ban was lifted on the preliminary inquiry into charges against Tyendinaga Mohawk spokesperson Shawn Brant, revealing police evidence that included wiretap transcripts between Brant and OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino. The taped conversations took place during the build-up to the First Nations blockade of Highway 401 in 2007. During the phone conversation, Fantino is quoted as saying "your whole world’s going to come crashing down" and threatening to "do everything I can within your community and everywhere to destroy your reputation." After spending two months in jail as what many considered a political prisoner, Brant was cleared of assault charges from a separate incident and released from custody. His trial for involvement in the blockade of Highway 401 is scheduled for January 2009.

Six people were arrested in Halifax for protesting the widening of a residential road to accommodate 300 additional cars per hour. Some demonstrators sat in trees slated to be cut down; they were removed by police, and the trees removed and ground up.

Temperatures hit all-time highs in Iqaluit several days in a row, peaking at 26.8 C. The normal temperature for this time of year is between 12 C and 4 C.

The Gwich'in may have to limit hunting of the Porcupine Caribou -- an important food and clothing source -- due to plummeting numbers. The last full count of the herd in 2001 showed 120,000 caribou, and the number may now be as low as 90,000.

The number of cruise ships in the Arctic have increased from 50 ships in 2004 to 250 ships in 2007.

The Governor General appointed 75 new people to the Order of Canada, including five "companions" -- the order's highest rank. The order's newly appointed companions include former prime minister Kim Cambell, billionaire businessman Wallace McCain and Architect Raymond Moriyama, who designed the new Canadian War Museum.

SaskEnergy applied for a gas rate hike of nearly 40 per cent, a raise that, if passed in October, will hit low-income families particularly hard if no subsidies are offered.

Goldsource Mines Inc., a junior exploration company, discovered coal in its search for Saskatchewan diamonds. The company's shares rose from 37 cents in late April to $14 per share. With energy costs on the rise, the company says a coal deposit discovery is more valuable than diamonds.

In Kanehsatake, a new band council was elected that includes a record number of women in the Mohawk community's local government. Priorities for the council will include education, especially preserving the Mohawk language. "Quebec's got Bill 101 to protect the culture and everything else," said new council member Sheila Bonspille. "We've got to protect our culture. In our education system, we have to protect our language."

Newly declassified government documents revealed that CSIS spied on Indigenous and activist groups in the summer of 2007. Targeted groups included the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty in Toronto, No One is Illegal, and Block the Empire in Montreal, and anti-Olympic activists in Vancouver.

Students and collaborators continued to resist the closure of D-Q University, the only tribal college in California and the only indigenous-controlled institution of higher learning outside of a reservation in the United States. Water and electricity services were shut off this past month after violent police raids and arrests of students and elders earlier this year. D-Q was founded in 1971 after the occupation of a former US Army communications facility by Native and Chicano youth and activists.

A native protester was arrested in Brantford, Ontario, after over 150 Six Nations people and supporters blocked a Kingspan Insulation truck. Kingspan is building a warehouse facility on land that protesters say belongs to Six Nations.

Authorities in Guerrero, Mexico, agreed to pay 14 indigenous men US$3,400 in compensation for being coerced into having vasectomies. More than a dozen countries, including Canada and the United States, have in the past sterilized men or women without their knowledge or consent.

Guatemalan campesinos faced kidnappings and multiple violent attacks by paramilitaries associated with the biofuel agribusiness Ingenio Guadelupe. Farmers were planting crops on their traditional land when the first attack took place. The community was attacked the following day during a demonstration to protest the violence. Two company managers, and members of the paramiltary security force that accompanied them, fired into the peaceful crowd. The Inter American Development Bank is supporting the development of biofuel industry in Guatemala.

A homeless count in Calgary found that more than 4,000 people do not have a home, including almost 200 families -- an increase of 18 per cent over 2006. July 1, Quebec's traditional moving day, left 11 new families homeless in Montreal, according to activists. Two homeless men died in Toronto, prompting a protest of the city's refusal to address poverty.

"Subjective Atlas of Palestine," a book that "challenges the one-sided approach of the Western media," received a prestigious Dutch award for best-designed book.

US war resister Robin Long was deported to the United States where he faces punishment for refusing to participate in the Iraq War. Long was deported after Canada's Parliament voted to allow US war resisters to stay in Canada.

The number of names on the US government "terrorist" watch list surpassed one million. The watch list has resulted in the delay or cancellation of flights for thousands of people. In one notable case, a flight carrying Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, was diverted from its destination. The man who penned such songs as "Peace Train" and Moonshadow" is barred from entering the United States.

Another man died after being stunned by a Taser in Winnipeg. Robert Dziekanski's Taser-related death at Vancouver International Airport last year has sparked a number of probes into the use of the weapon.

New evidence called into question the RCMP's commitment to get to the bottom of the Taser-related death of Robert Dziekanski. Email exchanges obtained by the CBC indicate that the head of the RCMP and the BC Premier have offered their support to the officers involved, before the provincial inquiry into Dziekanski's death has begun.

The European Union proposed an import ban on products derived from seals that it deems to be "inhumanely killed;" the legislation would exempt products from traditional Inuit sealers. Inuit say that despite the exemption, the import ban would destroy the sealing economy in the North. Mary Simon, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami said she was angered by animal-rights activists who are "ignorant of and callous towards Inuit culture."

President Bush signed the FISA Amendment Act into law, allowing the government to spy on emails, phone calls, web surfing and other communications without warrants. Numerous democrats voted for the bill, including Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada is considering making HIV a reportable disease, which would make it mandatory to report cases to public health officials. "There are huge privacy concerns that are raised when people with HIV go through the system, particularly given the fact that HIV is not something that is easily spread," said Michael Battista, a Toronto immigration lawyer.

Beijing's 170,000 recyclers are being pushed out of their homes and livelihoods as part of China's "sanitization" of the city for the Olympic Games. Most of the people who scour the city for scraps to be reused and resold are migrant workers. The homeless, the mentally ill and prostitutes are also being targeted.

China is implementing extraordinary security measures in preparation for the Olympics. According to the state media, an anti-terror force of 100,000 and hundreds of thousands of police and security guards will be deployed in Beijing and other cities hosting Olympic events.

In Canada, wheat farmers are cashing in with wheat prices more than double what they were two years ago. The increase in price is due partly to biofuel production worldwide. An Internal World Bank report obtained by the media says biofuels are responsible for raising global food prices by up to 75 per cent.

Aid agencies estimated that by December, 3.5 million Somalians, or half the country's population will be in need of life-saving aid due to displacement and hunger. Aid workers, however, are fleeing the country for safety and security reasons.

Pancake-lovers on Prince Edward Island were out of luck as none of the Island's maple syrup producers made syrup this year. Nation-wide, this has been the worst year for maple syrup in four decades, due to unusual weather and rising fuel costs.

Hopi and Dine (Navajo) communities held emergency town-hall meetings after the Office of Surface Mining rejected their request for an extension to the period for public comment on the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) for Peabody Coal's plans to re-open and expand their coal mine in Black Mesa. After years of protest in the northeastern corner of the Navajo Nation, the Environmental Protection Agency granted an air permit for the Desert Rock coal-fired power plant proposed by Houston-based Sithe Global Power and the Dine Power Authority. The Governor and Attorney General of New Mexico immediately announced a legal challenge to the EPA decision.

Workers at Drummond's Pribbenow coal mine in Colombia ended their six-day strike after being granted a pay increase.

In Cauca, Colombia, the Indigenous guard detained mine exploration workers working for Vancouver's Cosigo Resources Ltd. for trespassing on their territory.

A controversial copper mine was approved near Carmacks, Yukon. In Yellowknife, the city is seeking compensation for the contaminated Giant Mine site. One of the biggest issues is the 237,000 tonnes of poisonous arsenic trioxide dust left over from 50 years of gold production.

Indigenous people of the Bismarck-Solomon Sea met to discuss seabed mining in their seas by Canadian-based mining company Nautilus Minerals. The group declared their rights "to Free Prior Informed Consent over anything potentially impacting our land." Due to the experimental nature of the mining, the group opposes the government of Papua New Guinea's decision to grant Nautilus a contract.

Farmers in Northern Mexico are worried that a mine owned by Canada’s Minefinders Corporation Ltd. will destroy their grazing land and their ability to maintain a traditional livelihood.

The former top executive of Canadian mining company Inco Ltd. says Canada is not supportive enough of "global industry champions."

Goldcorp Inc.'s Marlin Mine in Guatemala was unable to operate at full capacity for over a month due to opposition by local residents and anti-mining activists. One community member intentionally damaged a power line on her property that supplied the company with electricity and protesters then blocked the mining multinational from fixing it.

The Federal Chambers of Tucumán in Argentina brought criminal charges of environmental contamination against Julián Rooney, Vice-President of Bajo La Alumbrera, Argentina’s largest mining operation. The ruling is a result of a complaint filed ten years ago that Alumbrera dumped millions of litres of toxic liquid waste into a canal used by animals and farmers.

Four people were arrested in Tennessee for protesting against mountain-top-removal coal mining.

In Bogotá, the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal came out with a guilty verdict against 43 multinational corporations active in Colombia. Canadian union leaders attended the judgement of the Tribunal. The labour leaders denounced the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Paul Moist, National President of CUPE, told The Dominion that "the proposed free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia is all about enabling the corporate agenda."

Cameco plants in Port Hope, Ontario, will be refining "yellowcake" uranium from Iraq -- remnants of Saddham Hussein's nuclear program. Port Hope has been refining uranium for decades. The industry has employed many people and has also made parts of the town radioactive. Cameco only admitted last year that uranium, arsenic and fluorides have been leaking into groundwater, likely for decades.

After two heated public meetings, the New Brunswick government announced that it will limit uranium exploration and staking of claims. The number of staked claims for uranium in New Brunswick has more than tripled in the last three years and many residents have found flags on their land. "There's no scientific basis for the public fear of uranium exploration but mining companies do recognize the government must calm its citizens," said Dave Plant, spokesman for Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.

The US House Natural Resources Committee exercised rarely used emergency powers to ban uranium mining near the Grand Canyon. The decision affected more than a thousand mining claims on one million acres of land adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park. Meanwhile, an industry analyst claimed that a recently discovered undeveloped uranium deposit in Virginia is the largest in the United States and the seventh biggest in the world. The industry lobbied to lift the state's uranium mining ban, while local environmental and indigenous activists worked to maintain the ban and enact local ordinances. New uranium deposits were also found in Botswana, leading one company to speculate that the country may hold eight per cent of the world's uranium.

A popular assembly convened in Argentina in response to the country's expanding uranium industry. The Indigenous Municipality of Tilcara in northern Argentina ratified legislation that prohibits open-pit metal mining, as well as the storage, use, sale, production, extraction and transportation of dangerous substances used in the mining process.

A new study by researchers from Cambridge and Yale found a correlation between International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs and mortality rates from tuberculosis (TB). According to the study, countries in the former Soviet Union that participated in IMF programs suffered greater deaths from TB, while those that dropped IMF programs saw improvements. The authors hypothesize that IMF policies force governments to spend less on health care and cut social programs to qualify for loans.

A World Bank Study reported that an estimated 105 million more people could drop below the poverty line due to rising food prices. G8 leaders met in Japan to discuss the crisis and enjoyed a six-course lunch followed by an 18-course dinner featuring milk-fed lamb and hairy-crab bisque.

After a five-month journey of over 8,000 miles, the Longest Walk 2 for the environment, the protection of sacred sites, and indigenous rights arrived in DC. The Manifesto for Change was presented to congressman John Conyers, who announced that the Congressional Committee on the Judiciary will hold public hearings on each of the issues addressed in the proposed resolutions.

Since May 2, 800 undocumented immigrants have occupied the Paris CGT (General Confederation of Labour). The protesters are seeking residence rights in France and are demanding the support of the CGT trade union. The Paris prefecture has insisted all applicants be forwarded through the CGT, but the union has only been prepared to take the cases of workers who belong to its ranks.

An upstart St. John's, NL-based newspaper, the Independent, announced that it has lost its financial backing and will close its doors if it does not find new sources of support. Despite regular growth in circulation, the weekly newspaper's editors say that their advertising sales have been undercut by Quebec-based Transcontinental, which owns both dailies and most weekly papers in Newfoundland and Labrador.

"I will call on a new generation of Americans to join our military, and complete the effort to increase our ground forces by 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines." That was the first of many statements by US Presidential candidate Barack Obama that upset his supporters with anti-war sentiments. In other appearances, Obama reiterated his support for continued war in Afghanistan and voted to grant broad wiretapping powers to the government.

Business owners in Vulcan, a small town in southern Alberta, said that high gas prices are revitalizing the community, as the cost of transportation has encouraged people to shop locally. "I think we have a little more life in us now," a grocery-store owner told the CBC.

Evo Morales asked the US to stop interfering in Bolivia's internal affairs. Bolivia's coca farmers were asked to sow food crops due to soaring food costs.

Ecuador and Venezuela signed a contract to build a new oil refinery on the coast of Ecuador. Ecuador's new constitution has been approved by the country's Constituent Assembly. During the drafting of the constitution, the Canadian ambassador has worked to protect the interests of mining companies.

If passed in a popular vote, Ecuador's new constitution will recognize nature as having the inherent right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles," and mandates the state to protect and restore ecosystems.

Despite a year of record oil prices, shares in some oil companies have dropped in value as major oil developments have been taken over by local governments, particularly in Russia and Venezuela. In other areas, multinational oil companies are "moving down the value chain" as contracts are increasingly given to state-owned companies.

The Colombian army rescues Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages held by the FARC. After the military operation, Colombia was criticized for using the symbols of the Red Cross, which is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Four of Canada's largest oil companies announced combined profits of over $5 billion, leading to speculation about what executives might do with the money.

A penitentiary in New Brunswick started a program to train inmates to work as "roughnecks," or entry-level oil workers.

Greenpeace activists clad in hazardous-materials suits broke into a tar sands plant belonging to Syncrude near Fort McMurray, Alberta, and unfurled a banner reading "world's dirtiest oil: stop the tar sands."

Plans advanced for the construction of pipelines to carry natural gas from Alaska's north slope to Alberta's tar sands; to carry natural gas from the BC coast to the tar sands; and to carry bitumen from Alberta to refineries in Texas. The Carrier Sekani tribal council of interior BC is pushing for a review of pipeline plans with regard to aboriginal title. The pipeline brings the risk of environmental damage, while providing no permanent jobs to the region.

Former Bosnian Serb paramilitary leader Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade and is slated to go on trial for war crimes. No US, Canadian or NATO officials have ever been brought to trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, though NATO forces provided air support for major ethnic-cleansing operations targetting Serbs.

A subcontractor working for tar sands extraction operations owned by Suncor was killed on the job while moving a heavy hauler -- a house-sized truck used in strip-mining operations.

A ten-year-old boy was killed at a demonstration against the construction of the seperation wall in the West Bank village of Na'lin. A Canadian student was arrested and deported after taking photos of Israeli soldiers breaking up a protest, also in Na'lin. Israeli bulldozers and tanks invaded a refugee camp in Rafah, shooting a man twice in the leg. An Israeli rights group said that soldiers are rarely disciplined for offenses committed against Palestinians. Israeli soldiers invaded the city of Hebron, kidnapping five civilians and ransacking several houses. In Nablus, Israeli troops set fire to a furniture store. The sea near the Gaza strip was filling with sewage; officials say sewage treatment is impossible without steady electricity. Since Gaza power plants were attacked by Israeli planes in 2006, Gaza's power supply relies on Israel, which periodically cuts off supply to punish Gazans for rocket attacks. Israeli troops raided schools, orphanages, medical centres, and soup kitchens in Gaza, seizing supplies and posting closure notices. West Bank Palestinians were dealing with a chronic undersupply of water, due to a system which reserves the majority of water supplies for Israeli use. The Dahiyeh al-Salam neighbourhood in East Jerusalem has become a dump for Israeli garbage from West Jerusalem; human-rights complaints put a stop to some of the dumping; cleanup has not begun.

A project by the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem distributed 100 video cameras to document the daily grind of life under occupation. The result is an archive of footage of Israeli settlers beating, abusing and humiliating Palestinians, with Israeli military often turning a blind eye, or participating. In one typical segment, an Israeli settler shouts "I will exterminate you" at Palestinians.

Almost 400 Afghan civilians were killed in July -- at a wedding and in the streets. Meanwhile, the Taliban continue to dominate the country, leading major attacks, distributing media and controlling roughly 60 per cent of Afghanistan.

In Saskatoon, potash workers demanded improved wages while the price of potash increases. Montreal hotel workers demanded job security. Workers at a Cape Breton gypsum plant threatened a blockade if they don't receive back wages. Toronto hotel workers staged a 45-minute wildcat strike to protest lagging contract talks.

3,000 workers lost their jobs when Bell Canada, Owens-Illinois and Air Canada decided to cut positions.

The subprime mortgage crisis in the US spread to Cuba after billion-dollar losses were reported at the two largest US mortgage providers. Canada saw its 2007 April surplus of $2.8 billion become a $500 million deficit in 2008. George W. Bush declared that ""Wall Street got drunk."

Mohawk elder Katenies again refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the Superior Court in Cornwall, Ontario, on July 14, 2008. Katenies and fellow Mohawk Nation News (MNN) editor Kahentinetha Horn were arrested and beaten by Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers last month as the two attempted to cross the US-Canada border, which lies within their community of Akwesasne.

Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, issued an unprecedented warning to 3,000 faculty and staff, advising them to limit their cell-phone use because of possible risk of cancer.

A New York City police officer was stripped of his gun and badge after an amateur video, taken by a tourist standing on the sidewalk, surfaced on the Internet showing the officer pushing a bicyclist to the ground in Times Square during a Critical Mass ride. The cycler was arrested by the officer and charged with attempted assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

Greenpeace Action

Meeting Crashers

hillarybain — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:00:00 +0000

Anti-mining activists confront shareholders at AGM

It was the first time that Mexican Congressman Armando Barreiro, historian Juan Carlos Ruiz Guadalajara and hydraulic engineer Mario Martinez visited Toronto, but this trip was not a vacation.

They came to the city to denounce the activities of Metallica Resources, a Canadian mining company running an open-pit mine in Cerro de San Pedro, Mexico.

After negotiating with Metallica Resources, the corporation granted Barreiro, Guadalajara and Martinez access to the mining corporation's annual general investors' meeting, but told them they had to follow the rules: They were not allowed to make statements and could only ask questions during the question period.

On the eve of the AGM, the Mexican delegation hardly slept, thinking of ways to transmit their message to shareholders via questions. "We have to word our questions carefully to tell them everything we want, and that the legal and social situation jeopardizes their investment," said Martinez that night.

The next day, the Mexican delegates arrived at the Sutton Hotel in Toronto's business area, where the AGM would occur. They were equipped with three key questions about the legal challenges to the mining project, the widespread social unrest and the opposition that the mining project is facing.

As they entered the meeting, they received a pamphlet stating that Metallica's mining projects were in "mining-friendly jurisdictions."

When question period came, the delegates calmly asked their questions.

"Have you told your investors that right now the Mexican Congress is in an extraordinary session, that 156 Congress people and 57 Senators are working to pass a law project to stop the mine from working under such irregularities and that retribution for the environmental damage to the area will likely be imposed?" asked Barreiro.

"Thanks for your information," replied the mediator.

Exasperated by the condescending tone, Guadalajara raised his voice, demanding the company get out of Mexico and stop creating environmental chaos.

This gave the corporation the opportunity it had been waiting for. Hotel security moved swiftly to demand that Guadalajara leave the premises. He started backing up towards the door while continuing to tell investors to divest from Metallica Resources.

Suddenly, the door swung open and Guadalajara was pulled back and grabbed by police. He tried to get loose, not realizing it was the police. They moved quickly: three officers dragged Guadalajara into the main lobby among the hotel guests, while Barreiro was pushed and pulled around, even after identifying himself as a Mexican congressman.

The police did not press charges due to the non-violent approach of the delegation, but demanded that the delegates leave the hotel.

Outside the hotel, a demonstration against the mining company was in full swing. Alternative press members were waiting to learn what had happened during the meeting.

"They were able to hear exactly what we wanted them to hear," said Barreiro. "Now they know that their actions will have legal implications."

Despite the encounter with the police, Enrique Rivera, a member of FAO Montreal (Broad Opposition Front against the mine in Cerro de San Pedro), thinks Guadalajara's outburst was appropriate and necessary.

"People in Cerro de San Pedro are angry and exasperated. This kind of outburst represents the frustration that people in San Pedro live day by day because their concerns are ignored by their own government and the company while their town is destroyed," says Rivera, who is seeking refugee status in Canada because of his opposition to the mine.

Guadalajara also believes the outburst was necessary. "We wanted them to really listen to us,” he says. “We wanted to disrupt their meeting if they didn't listen to what we had to say. Their meeting was pretty much ruined after the police came in."

This was the first time FAO Montreal and the visiting Mexican delegation used this strategy--targeting the investors of the Canadian companies through shareholder activism--to showcase their frustration and their environmental and social concerns. It is a strategy that is gaining momentum among anti-mining activists in Canada.

"Community representatives and human rights advocates from around the world come to Toronto because Canada is home to 60 per cent of the world's mining corporations," says Paul York, member of the Toronto Mining Support Group, a group that gives logistical support to groups who come to Toronto to oppose mining projects on their land.

"Gold prices have soared, leading to the opening of new mines, so this is a bad time for hundreds of indigenous and campesino communities whose misfortune it is to live near--or on top of--gold deposits," says York.

In May, Barrick Gold was similarly "honoured" with the presence of unexpected guests during their annual investors' meeting. Delegations of indigenous leaders from Papua New Guinea, Australia and the United States travelled to Toronto to make statements at the AGM about the deleterious impacts of the company's mining operations in their communities.

The delegation informed the shareholders about the destruction of spiritual sites in the US and Australia and about the killing, rape and illegal detention of local opposition villagers by Barrick's security in Papua New Guinea.

"A broad-based movement, pursuing a 'shotgun' approach of multiple tactics is needed," says York.

Barrick founder and chairman Peter Munk has felt the pressure of the shotgun approach before, from anti-mining groups such as Protest Barrick. As he was being interviewed for Vanity Fair at Indigo Books in June, a protester confronted him with questions regarding the human rights violations that Barrick has incurred.

Protest Barrick members also crashed the African Medical Research and Education Foundation gala in Toronto, for which Barrick was a "Gold" sponsor. Activists passed out flyers talking about human rights violations in Barrick's mining sites to gala participants until they were escorted out by security.

Ultimately, these tactics attempt to create awareness about the human rights abuses and environmental degradation by shaming those involved.

Delegations comprised of indigenous and campesino leaders from Guatemala, Honduras and Chile also visited Toronto in May for Goldcorp's annual investors' meeting.

The leaders went into the shareholders' meeting and explained to investors how their communities have been affected. As the leaders spoke inside Toronto's Prince Edward Hotel, protesters held a demonstration and an information session outside to warn Canadians of the negative environmental impact Goldcorp mines have on the global South.

York says opposition groups go to investors' meetings in the hopes that socially and environmentally responsible investors will divest (i.e., sell their shares). While some investors do not know about these issues, others do not care or are satisfied with the Corporate Social Responsibility reports from the company.

"A few care enough to divest or make a fuss...These are the ones we hope to reach," he says. In fact, due to criticism regarding the environmental and human rights impacts of its mining operations in Guatemala and Honduras, Goldcorp agreed this past April to conduct an independent Human Rights Impact Assessment at the request of its Canadian and Swedish shareholders. Jantzi Research, an independent investment research firm that evaluates and monitors the social and environmental performance of securities, recommended that Goldcorp be considered ineligible for socially responsible investment (SRI) portfolios that seek to avoid companies with relatively poor records in the areas of community and aboriginal relations and environment.

Anti-open-pit mining activists like York believe most investors will keep their shares as long as they increase in value, and that "many of these individuals hold no sway over the company." Thus, the media attention gained from shareholder activism and other actions is used to embarrass the companies, deter further investment and have them "de-listed" as ethical investments.

Shareholder activism has also brought together anti-mining groups from around the world. As those opposing mines come to Canadian cities to denounce human rights and environmental abuses, they realize other communities are facing similar challenges.

"[Shareholder activism] has helped the creation of an international movement of people who oppose open-pit mining. Still, the reforms they have hoped for from the companies have not yet taken place," says York.

According to a 2005 Parliamentary Standing Committee Report, "Canada does not yet have laws to ensure that the activities of Canadian mining companies in developing countries conform to human rights standards, including the rights of workers and of indigenous people."

Even if reforms have not materialized, certain Canadian MPs are listening to what these activists have to say.

Several attempts have been made in parliament to change legislation in Canada to avoid environmental and human rights abuses by Canadian mining companies. NDP's Alexa McDonough has spearheaded the movement in the Canadian Parliament to enact legislation and ensure Canadian transnationals behave ethically and obey the law when operating abroad.

The National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Canadian Extractive Industry Operating in Developing Countries, which wrapped up in late 2006, were an effort to do something similar. The Roundtables process represents the only recommendation of the aforementioned 2005 Standing Committee Report that was acted upon by the Canadian Government. After large meetings across the country with participation from industry, civil society, academics and the government, a consensus report written by all participating sectors was released in March of 2007. The federal government has yet to respond to the Roundtables report and its recommendations.

York does not believe lobbying for legislative changes is an effective tactic. He says changes in legislation--if achieved--will make little difference to those affected by the mines; if anything, such a move might further legitimize the extractive industries.

"Liberal reforms are not needed as much as shutting down open-pit mines altogether,” says York. “All open-pit mines violate human rights and environmental integrity and should be disallowed as fundamentally unjust and environmentally irredeemable. There are so many cases of unhappy communities--aboriginal and campensino--destroyed by open-pit mines...we need a broad-based social movement, global in scale, to advocate against such mines."

Tonantzin Mendoza, who lives in the Cerro de San Pedro community affected by Metallica Resources, could not agree more.

"This mine has effectively destroyed our community. I am not only talking about the plant and animal species that have disappeared, but about the people of Cerro de San Pedro. We used to be a tight community; now the mine has hired some within the community as guards and they bully and beat up those who disagree with the project," she says.

It is because of this kind of community erosion that anti-open-pit mine groups are willing to try any new strategy to stop mining projects in their communities; their communities and livelihoods depend on the result of this struggle.

Metallica Protest 4

Metallica Protest 3

Contemporary Currents of Quebec’s Student Movement

hillarybain — Sat, 31 May 2008 08:26:07 +0000

An interview with Sophie Schoen of L'Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ)

Waves of student protest have swept Quebec in recent years. In 2005 a major strike galvanized students across Quebec, with over one hundred student unions participating at the height of a strike organized around the demand for free post-secondary education in Quebec.

Major currents within Quebec’s student movement draw parallels between the struggle for accessible and free education in Quebec and larger movements for social justice in the Americas. From campaigns combating poverty, to fights for labor rights, Quebec students have woven profound connections between campus-based struggles and broader social movements.

The 2005 centered on a confrontation with the Liberal government of Jean Charest. Upon taking power in Quebec, Charest’s Liberals attempted to slash $103 million from bursaries granted to students, and the students fought back. Eventually, Charest was forced to back down on the cuts, and the funding was restored.

Quebec's Liberal government announced a protracted hike in tuition fees across Quebec for the first time since the late 1990s. In response, L'Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (ASSÉ) -- one of Quebec’s strongest student unions, boasting 42,000 members -- held a series of protests. Thousands took the streets in Montreal in mid-November while multiple student associations held strikes at CÉGEP* and university campuses.

Sophie Schoen is a community organizer and activist with ASSÉ. In this interview Schoen discusses the history of Quebec’s powerful student movement and the recent mobilization against rising tuition fees.

* CÉGEP is the French acronym for a "College of General and Vocational Education." In Quebec, High School ends in grade 11, after which students can attend one or two years of technical training or "pre-university" classes at a CÉGEP.

Stefan Christoff: Can you paint a picture of the current state for Quebec students? What are the central issues and political demands that are being pushed by students today?

Sophie Schoen: Last June, Quebec’s education minister, Michelle Courchesne, announced that tuition fees in Quebec would rise. A fifty-dollar hike in tuition fees is planned for each semester over the next five years, which means that by 2012 it will cost five hundred dollars more each year to go to school. Taking into account additional fees that universities continue to mount -- without government regulation -- every year, students will pay thousands more in tuition fees.

Two years ago, there was a major student strike in Quebec due to cuts to the loans and bursaries program, a strike that was historic. At the peak of the strike, over one hundred students unions were participating across Quebec. Demonstrations mobilized tens of thousands of people on the streets of Montreal, on the streets of Quebec City, across Quebec. At seven weeks, it was the longest student strike in the history of Quebec.

Today, two years later, people within students unions and activists within the student movement are working to mobilize for a response to tuition hikes on the same scale as in 2005. Students remember a massive strike that cost seven weeks of lost classes, such as at CÉGEP St. Laurent; students remember a massive strike that didn’t win concrete gains, which makes mass mobilization more difficult.

For readers outside Quebec could you explain the role of CÉGEPs in Quebec society today and also the historical context in which the CÉGEP system was created in the late 1960s?

CÉGEPs exist only in Quebec, and were officially created in 1967. Quebec’s government at the time aimed to bring people planning on attending vocational schools and people moving onto university into the same educational institutions, studying together and having a common curriculum of classes.

In 1967, the year CÉGEPs were created, was a time of huge reforms within Quebec society, reforms that led to things such as free healthcare, the will to have free education in Quebec and also the creation of CÉGEPs.

What is often forgotten is that these major changes to Quebec society took place due to social struggles during that period, led by unions, led by students, led by social movements.

In 1968 there was a massive student strike, leading to the creation of UQÀM, the Université du Québec à Montréal. UQÀM was a second francophone university, created because there wasn’t enough room in the existing francophone university in Montreal. At the time UQÀM was created there was an ambition to have free post-secondary education in Quebec; mainstream political parties such as the Parti Québécois supported the idea at the time. Now UQÀM has obviously changed; it has become another tool of neo-liberalism, while at the time of its creation the goal was to have a university for the people. [...]

At the time that CÉGEPs were created, at the time that UQÀM was created, many radical student unions were also created. Student unions that function with direct democracy, through general assemblies, which from the onset took on radical positions in terms of free education, in terms of a critique of capitalism, in terms of solidarity with other social movements.

Those structures, those radical institutions have changed with time, but [they] still exist today. In Quebec we still have many, many student unions that function through direct democracy and that demand free education while viewing the student movement as a part of larger social movements.

Today, Quebec is known throughout Canada as having the most inexpensive education or affordable tuition in the country. Could you talk about the context of the student movement in the past ten years?

There is clearly only one reason why in Quebec we have low tuition. Low tuition in Quebec is a direct result of the major student strikes.

A large student strike happened in 1996 in response to the Parti Québécois saying they intended to raise tuition fees in the province. It wasn’t as massive as the strike in 2005, but it did force the government to step down from their decision to raise tuition.

An organized student movement is the only barrier to the state’s intentions to raise tuition fees -- a move that would be detrimental to the majority of students in Quebec society. It’s really important that people understand this point, that an organized student movement is the only barrier to having a situation in Quebec in which inaccessible education is the norm.

A student strike is the only way to halt government efforts to raise tuition fees in Quebec. A strike is extremely difficult to organize; it takes a lot out of the people -- the students who participate -- but a strike is what is takes.

Concerning accessibility to education in 2008, can you talk about the current economic conditions surrounding education in Quebec?

There are more and more barriers to education, mostly financial or economic barriers for the majority of people accessing quality education. Today many of these barriers to education exist because the student movement hasn’t been able to adequately defend students or the right to education.

Today, fewer and fewer poor people are attending school; fewer and fewer poor people are attending CÉGEP or university. Those in CÉGEP or in university who aren’t struggling to get by financially often don’t realize that there are major economic barriers to going to school for many in society.

Also, for students who have kids or who aren’t well-off, there are very few measures in Quebec that assist students with children, leading to many student parents leaving CÉGEP or university due to financial pressures.

People attending CÉGEP from families with parents who can’t help out financially could be working 20 to 30 hours per week over and above school work to cover the expenses of life or expenses related to studying, which is extremely difficult. Often people in this financial reality never finish CÉGEP or even start CÉGEP simply due to financial barriers.

Let’s jump back to the strike of 2005. Mainstream media coverage presented the strike as revolving around the cuts to the loans and bursaries program. Could you talk about the 2005 strike in detail and the importance of the strike for Quebec society in the face of neo-liberal economic reforms being pushed by Jean Charest’s Liberals?

Cuts to the loans and bursaries program, as proposed by the Liberals, meant that people would receive the majority of their funds from the government in loans and a small amount in bursaries, loans that students would have to pay back to the government soon after graduating or stopping their studies. Now in Quebec students would face a similar situation to the rest of Canada, where students graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt to the government.

Now also it must be understood that those who are accepted into the loans and bursaries program are those deemed by the government to be the most in need financially, or the poorest students. Generally, to be accepted for bursaries, the student has to be without major financial backing from their family; so these students, the poorest students, were directly targeted by Jean Charest’s Liberals' proposed cuts to the loans and bursaries program.

Can you talk about the proposed cuts to the loans and bursaries program within the context of larger neo-liberal economic reforms pushed by the same provincial government?

Certainly the cuts to financing for students are directly connected to all the other policies that the Jean Charest Liberals put forward, including raising daycare fees, opening up space for the privatization of social services, and the implementation of repressive labour laws in Quebec.

It’s clear that the success of the student strike in Quebec in 2005, in terms of political momentum or mobilization, was directly connected to the widespread opposition to Charest’s neo-liberal economic policies in Quebec in general.

Could you highlight a couple important actions that took place within the context of the student strike or broader social struggle against Jean Charest’s Liberals?

Starting from two weeks into the strike many small actions started to take place in Montreal and also throughout Quebec. The office of the Minister of Education was occupied; there was also an occupation at the Quebec office of the Ministry of Education for Quebec and there was also a blockade at the entrance to the port of Montreal.

In Quebec there were many actions that aimed to economically disrupt the government and corporations in Quebec -- the institutions behind the massive cuts to social services and to education. Targets for actions within the student movement were those individuals who promoted privatization, promoted a free-market vision for Quebec, promoted tuition fee increases.

At one point during the strike the bridge that leads to the Montreal casino was blocked for one evening. Many actions of this nature took place in Quebec. It was an important message of economic disruption. Of course there were large demonstrations across Quebec, however it’s important to understand that economic disruption was an important part of the student strike.

Talk about who was behind the strike; there were a number of student unions, federations and organizations involved in the strike.

The strike was first initiated by student unions that are members of ASSÉ, a student union in Quebec that right now has about 42,000 members -- a student union based on the fight for free education, on principals of social justice; basically a student union fighting for larger social change through the student movement.

ASSÉ has existed since 2001 and it didn’t come from nowhere: it exists within the historical context of other student organizations in Quebec prior to ASSÉ, including L’Association nationale des étudiants et étudiantes du Quebec (ANEEQ). ANEEQ was a large student union that existed in the 1970s and 1980s and was a large student organization with a large number of members. Basically, ANEEQ had similar principals to those that ASSÉ has today on free education and broader social change.

In 2005, student unions that were members of ASSÉ were behind the strike; they formed a coalition called Coalition Élargie de l’Association de Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante, or CASSÉE. This coalition included unions from ASSÉ and other independent unions that mobilized for the strike.

A couple of weeks after the strike had started, the more mainstream student unions in Quebec, the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ) and Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ) joined the Quebec-wide strike.

It was excellent that they joined the strike; we can never say no to having a bigger movement. The important point concerning these two mainstream student federations is that their executives were continually negotiating a deal with the government throughout the strike, maintaining channels of communication with the government while not seeking to build a mass movement, not seeking to mobilize their membership or fight for genuine social justice in society.

[In 2005] ASSÉ and CASSÉE were shut-out of all negotiations with the government and with the education minister. It was FECQ and FEUQ that put an end to the strike. It was a deal that was flawed because we didn’t really win that much. It even fell short of reinstating the status quo.

There are major elements of the student movement that until today are thinking about broader social change. The Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001; the massive protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and then again solidarity protests with the mobilization against the Summit of the Americas in Quito, Ecuador in 2002 -- each saw a major demonstration in Montreal. Can you comment on the larger international movement the Quebec student movement operates within?

The year ASSÉ was created was also the year of the protests against the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001. There is a direct connection there, as one of the first major plans of action that ASSÉ had was continental days of action against the FTAA and neo-liberalism, in collaboration with allies in Latin America.

In 2002, there was an important demonstration against the FTAA in Montreal. Around five-thousand people participated in the protest, which was a very important mobilization for ASSÉ. In 2001 and 2002, people in ASSÉ openly talked about a five year plan of action, which would end with a continental strike against neo-liberal economics. Not even five years after ASSÉ was created there was a major general student strike in Quebec, which is an achievement.

It’s essential for a social movement to make those broader links and it’s excellent that ASSÉ was created in this context. Personally I always push to have ASSÉ focus more on the broader analysis, beyond Quebec, looking at neo-liberalism and broader issues, while trying to build links with other social struggles in our society such as indigenous struggles at home, and with social struggles internationally in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Europe and beyond. Many around the globe are struggling against on a daily basis in a much more profound way than the student movement in Quebec.

Today we are experiencing a strange political moment in Quebec: we have the extreme-right Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), which has become the official opposition in Quebec. Can you talk about the recent actions or mobilizations organized by ASSÉ within this context?

Following the government's announcement of tuition hikes in June 2007, it was decided that ASSÉ would undertake a campaign of an unlimited general strike to fight back against those tuition raises. A strike effort commenced in a political context where a growing right-wing ideology is present in the province: for the first time in recent history people aren’t really scared anymore to state that they are openly right-wing.

Before in Quebec, one would always have to be watchful when stating you were hard right or right wing, as there was a sense of social shame involved with right wing ideology, which today doesn’t exist in the same way.

Despite this context, many student unions in 2007 had mandates from general assemblies to undertake a strike campaign this year, with the central demand for free education and other demands also, including reinvesting in the education system, and having more support structures for parents going to school, in terms of daycare but also more generally.

In the end, the strike was massively rejected this year in the CÉGEPs. In the universities, people were more open to the strike; at least this was the reality at UQÀM and at Laval University in Quebec City. Many student unions at UQÀM, as there isn’t one big student union at UQÀM but many smaller faculty unions, decided that they would go on a general strike this year.

Association facultaire étudiante des sciences humaines de l’UQÀM, (AFESH-UQÀM), the social sciences union at UQÀM, went on strike for two weeks. In mid-November there was a week of action; at the high point almost 60,000 students were on strike, an important achievement regardless of other things that happened during the campaign.

In Montreal, this week of action was punctuated by the attitudes of administration at UQÀM and also at CÉGEP du Vieux Montreal. Administrations reacted very violently against the striking students.

At UQÀM, students attempted to sleep at the university overnight in order to welcome people from other parts in Quebec who were coming to Montreal for a major demonstration. Students wanted to stay late at UQÀM and also at CÉGEP du Vieux Montreal to make banners for the demonstrations, and to make props for the protests, however both administrations refused to allows the student access to their own campus.

At UQÀM, students were violently evicted by the riot police. The next day at CÉGEP du Vieux Montreal, the CÉGEP was barricaded very well; the way it’s constructed allows for this. Students held on to the space for at least part of the night; however, finally the police evicted the students from their campus very violently.

Over one hundred students were arrested. Students were hit with serious charges such as assault on police and assault with a weapon, charges which will eventually come up in court. Protests for a strike this fall were marked by a refusal by university or CÉGEP administrations to even negotiate with students around the strike.

Also there was a large demonstration the same week organized by ASSÉ, which brought three or four thousand people onto the streets of Montreal to demand free education, more investment in the current educational system and more services for parents.

Can you discuss the central points that continue to drive the Quebec student movement?

Today it’s essential for people involved in the student movement to talk to people in Quebec, to students in Quebec, to highlight the fact that it’s necessary to act now. There are emergencies happening socially in terms of set-backs that many sectors within society are facing - not only students: direct attacks on people such as increasingly unaffordable housing, increasingly repressive immigration laws, and direct attacks on the education and healthcare systems. All such attacks we have the power to fight.

Quebec Student Strike 2007

“People’s War” Turns to People’s Vote

hillarybain — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:18:41 +0000

Maoist return to the democratic process

Communism in Nepal is not a new concept. Nepal’s first communist party was created in 1949 and communism has shaped the history of the country ever since. In 1994, a coalition government came together to form one of the few elected national communist-party governments in history. The breakdown of this coalition led to the death of 13,000 Nepalese in a brutal decade-long civil war.

Often portrayed as brainwashed savages holding onto an anachronistic ideology, the Nepalese Maoist movement receives virtually no Western media attention unless blood is shed in the name of the cause. Nepal’s recent election has given Western media another reason to focus on the Nepalese Maoist movement.

On April 10, the Communist Party Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) won a majority of seats in Nepal’s election. The victory has been seen as a cause for alarm for the Bush administration, which sent both military and financial aid to the former Nepalese government in order to fight the Maoist insurgency.

Before the election, in November of 2007, I was brought to a rural Maoist village where I had the opportunity to talk with Maoist leaders and locals. I was able to see the human side of the civil war in Nepal as well as the grassroots organization of Nepal's Maoist party.

The rise of the CPN-M is a success story for grassroots movements. On February 13, 1996, Maoists began what is known at the “People’s War” by taking control of the Small Farmers Development Bank in Gorkha. Bank workers were overpowered late one night, leading to a takeover of the building, the burning of loan papers and a speech that described the bank as instrument of exploitation used by the state. After a brief parting speech, the Maoists left. Thus marked the beginning of the “People’s War.”

Most peasants who witnessed the takeover had no idea who these rebels were, but understood their message and shared their anger. Many villagers were subjugated to cast, ethnic, linguistic and gender injustices and became sympathetic to the Maoist cause.

The CPN-M held political gatherings throughout the “People’s War.” The message espoused by Maoists not only spoke to the outrage felt by the villagers throughout the countryside, but did so in the local dialect. The Maoists respected the local languages, customs and beliefs of various tribes and promised to bring about a secular, democratic state with safeguards for minority rights including language protection. Women also played a vital role in the movement.

It was in the mountainous villages of Lamjung on the border of Gorkha where I was introduced to the Maoists' way of life and the hardships they face. I was first taken to my friend Nanda’s village. The village is ethnically Mongolian and residents hold both Buddhist and Hindu religious beliefs.

The murder of journalist Birendra Shah at the hand of Maoist card holders occurred only one month before my visit. The Federation of Nepalese Journalists had released a statement in the Kathmandu Post warning journalist not to meet with Maoists due to safety concerns. I departed from tourist friendly Pokorah on a seven-hour bus trip and was dropped off on the side of a windy, mountainous road. Two jeep rides and a two-hour hike landed us in Nanda’s village.

It is hard to describe the stunning natural beauty and sense of community one feels when entering such a village. Nanda had recently been paid and we spent the better part of our first day visiting villagers and distributing gifts and money. In the days that followed I travelled to surrounding villages and was taken aback by the communal way of living and property sharing embedded in the culture. Hiking from village to village the sense of collectivism was ubiquitous.

Although the people I met shared what they had, communities were lacking in essential services like medicine. While traveling to a neighbouring village, I met an elderly woman who asked if I had any medicine for her stomach pains. I gave her what medicine I had and through Nanda explained how it was to be taken. Further up the mountain I saw a man being carried on another man's back, clearly in pain. He was being transported to a hospital 10 hours away.

The lack of general social services (including electricity) along with the lack of employment opportunities forces many young villagers into urban areas in search of wage-labour work. In cities one experiences a different Nepal: a Nepal with electricity and paved roads. Once living in cities, the low wages and lack of transportation infrastructure into rural areas makes returning home a onerous task. Nanda’s sister has a one-year-old child. Her husband works over ten hours away and comes home whenever he can. He literally has to climb the Himalayas to see his wife and child. It is within this context of neglect that the Maoists released their 40 demands in 1996.

Of the 40 demands, perhaps six could be seen as communist in nature. The rest focus on basic rights, including: the abolition of the caste system, rights for women, the creation of a constitution, the end of the monarchy and the creation of a democratic secular state with intellectual freedom for all. When these demands were not met, Maoists began their “People’s War.”

The war on terror gave Colin Powell the perfect pretext to visit Nepal in January 2002. He pledged support for the government’s “war on terror,” known to locals as the People’s War. To date, the U.S has donated an estimated $29 million in military aid to Nepal. According to critics, this aid led to the widening of the war and an increase in atrocities on both sides. While surely not Powell’s intent, this military aid also helped the Maoists gain new sympathizers, members and soldiers.

When she was 11 years old, Nepalese police killed Sita Kumari’s brother while he was harvesting potatoes. Quoted in the book When There Were No Men: Women in the Maoist Insurgency, Kumari’s story exemplifies how these attacks helped the party recruit members. “Yes my brother was killed. But we have 1000 brothers of the same kind. We will all come together and take revenge. We will not spare those responsible for our grief.” Before her brother's murder Sita Kumari was not a Maoist, nor were any of her family, however, after he was killed she became an ardent Maoist supporter and her two older brothers became Maoist insurgents.

Maoist military strategy dictates that the rural areas must come under party control before any action is taken in urban areas. After cities are surrounded by Maoist-supported communities, major military offensives on urban areas can take place. While limited-scale attacks took place in Kathmandu and other urban areas during the civil war, no full-scale military assault occurred. Instead, the party chose a different tactic: the CNP-M formed the All Nepalese Trade Union Federation (Revolutionary), and spoke to the needs of the urban working class.

As the party grew in both membership and legitimacy in cities and throughout the country, the CPN-M decided to re-enter the political sphere in January of 2008. It agreed to rejoin the government allowing Nepalese Maoist to be sworn in as cabinet ministers.

I had the opportunity to meet with a Maoist district leader (who wishes to remain nameless) and his second and third in command. All three have been members since the beginning of the civil war. All are in contact with Prachanda, the leader of the CPN-M and leader of People's Liberation Army (PLA), the military wing of CPN-M. All have served in the PLA in varying forms.

The first thing I was told during our meeting was that if I had any problems I should come to these men; that they were the security in the district. Nanda then told me of the soldiers who patrolled the mountains, going from village to village to ensure domestic peace and to record any grievances. These patrols are organized by the district leader and report directly to him. An hour before we arrived in one village, two soldiers passed through. These routine patrols have caught many unsuspecting trekking tourists by surprise, when the soldiers request a “donation.” The donations cost an average of three American dollars. For the three trekkers I met, the donation experience was not frightening. Of the three, two were issued receipts and one lied and said she had already paid. Maoists feel it is well within their rights to ask tourists for a modest amount for crossing their lands, since the Nepalese federal government charges 1,270 Rupees (20 American dollars) for trekking permits yet provide no services to the areas in return.

As we spoke, some villagers came to listen to our conversation. All showed the utmost respect for the PLA leaders. It was difficult to ascertain whether the respect came from fear or admiration.

“We are confident that we will win many seats,” the leader said. “Our country knows what is at stake and the sacrifices we have given in the name of justice.” While the leader sounded very confident, most prognosticators at the time did not believe the Maoists had a chance at becoming the ruling party in Nepal. “We are on a path of peace, and we feel that this election will serve to prove to the people of Nepal our party is serious about its commitment to peace and democracy.” On that note the three men stood up, gave the Maoist salute and walked off into the valley.

The next day while trekking, I met the CPN-M’s third ranking member, Dubar. He remembered me from the day before and affably invited me to his village for tea. I agreed and we hiked to his village where he put on tea and introduced me to his family. This took longer than one might expect due to the fact that the entire village was in some way related to him. After the introductions, he turned to me and said, “This is the face of Maoism in Nepal.” He took great pride in his village and their accomplishments. He was eager to show me that a few of the younger villagers could speak some English.

I attempted to ask Dubar more about the upcoming elections and the future of his party, but he preferred to discuss politics in my country. He was very excited to hear how communism was progressing in Canada. I explained to him how the New Democratic Party was most popular socialist party in Canada, amassing 17.4 per cent of the popular vote, and that both Communist Parties do not receive one per cent. He was shocked but still in high spirits. His face brimmed with hope and enthusiasm when he asked, “What does average Canadian think of us Maoists? What we have accomplished?” I did not have the heart to tell him that the average Canadian knows virtually nothing about Nepalese Maoists, or that the only way that the average Canadian hears about the Nepalese Maoist movement is when government troops die or when police stations are raided. Instead I told him simply that the movement receives little attention in Canada.

Villager in Nepal

Rural Nepal

All Eyes On Bolivia

hillarybain — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:40:22 +0000

US espionage and aid

Since the election of Evo Morales, an indigenous peasant of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party, US involvement in Bolivia’s political sphere has come out of the shadows – if ever there were any idyllic illusions about US intervention in South American politics.

Recent allegations of spies at the American Embassy have the Bolivian media abuzz, and civil society and government alike enraged. Just last week, while strolling with my friend Ramiro in Cochabamba, we ran into an acquaintance of his who took notice of my fair complexion and blue eyes and warned him to be careful around North Americans. Ramiro organizes with Red Tinku, an autonomous group that is heavily involved with grassroots politics.

Ramiro laughed and said I wasn't "one of those gringas," but the woman took a while to be convinced - and rightly so. During the course of her life she has seen perpetual provocation from North American foreign policy that has recently come to a head.

At the end of January, Fulbright scholar Alex van Schaick and Peace Corps volunteers declared publicly that Vincent Cooper, a US diplomat, encouraged them to keep an eye on Cubans and Venezuelans while in Bolivia.

In mid-February, the Bolivian Vice Minister of Government Ruben Gamarra filed criminal charges against Cooper, who has since left Bolivia and may or may not be protected under diplomatic immunity. According to an agreement made February 13 between Philip Goldberg, the US ambassador to Bolivia, and Bolivian Foreign Relations Minister David Choquehuanca, Cooper will not be returning. Investigations against the US will continue, though, and will help determine the next steps to be taken.

On February 15, Alfredo Rada, Interior Minister of the Bolivian government, met with Goldberg to discuss the accusations of espionage. After three-and-a-half hours deemed "difficult" by employees of the government ministry, Rada and Goldberg confirmed the dissolution of the Development of Police Studies (ODEP), formerly known as the Special Operations Command (COPES).

ODEP was an intelligence organization working in parallel with the National Police, and received funding from the US. ODEP received approximately $350,000 per year for ´intelligence´ work. To date, there have been five intelligence organizations ostensibly protecting state security in Bolivia. In light of these allegations their activities will also be scrutinized.

Rada would not speak publicly at the meeting locale, but dramatically rushed journalists in state SUVs with sirens wailing to the now defunct ODEP headquarters, in the wealthy Zona Sur of La Paz.

"After this meeting with Philip Goldberg I am confident that the decision to dissolve COPES is the right one," said Rada once within the walled compound. He added that the dissolution of ODEP had to do with the "structural reorganization of the intelligence section of the National Police.”

"It's the first time as minister I've had to take such a step, and it is to ensure effective work of the National Police concerning crimes, and state security," Rada said.

When pressed for an explanation of how the dissolution of ODEP is related to charges of espionage against the US, Rada said that the matter of espionage is still under investigation and refused to elaborate. He did, however, stress the importance of maintaining good relations with the US, a statement which, in light of such serious allegations, may come as a surprise for MAS supporters who back the government's anti-imperialist agenda

Goldberg was even more reticent than Rada. In Spanish, heavily clad with an American accent, he said slowly and repeatedly, "Neither the embassy nor the United States government is involved with spying […] The majority of our help is against narco-trafficking and terrorism."

Goldberg's statement comes at a time of tense political relations between the US and Bolivia. On the same morning Rada and Goldberg met to discuss accusations of espionage, Morales publicly denounced the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the agency of supporting Bolivian opposition NGOs.

"The US agency offers money to NGOs on one condition – that they work and mobilize against the Bolivian government," said Morales.

Through both governmental and non-governmental avenues, North American interference in Bolivia is eerily reminiscent of the Cold War era, when the United States sought to undermine Southern governments who rejected the doctrine of free market capitalism.

The Human Rights Foundation, based in New York, recently wrote a letter to the Bolivian government stating that the country's new constitution is contrary to human rights, an accusation the Bolivian government refuted. The HRF website describes the organization's devotion "to defending human rights in the American hemisphere," but focuses almost exclusively on Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba, with brief mention of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

And despite this Fifth Ave, New York City, based organization's statement of commitment to human rights, they make no mention of Guantanamo Bay, of impunity in Guatemala, or of the treatment of indigenous peoples across the Americas.

Contrary to criticisms from the North, Morales did not design the new constitution-- a constitutional assembly comprised of a cross-section of Bolivian society developed it. In addition, two years into his term Morales still has widespread popular support, especially among the poor majority. However, Morales’ "decolonization" project has drawn the attention of US intelligence and aid to right-wing opposition like bees to nectar. As a taxi driver recently told me, "It's like a baby used to getting everything he wants. He is sucking on a candy, and then someone takes it away - of course he is going to kick and scream and cry."

For more information on the US undermining democracy in Bolivia, see Ben Dangl's Undermining Bolivia: A Landscape of Washington Intervention.

Mural In La Paz

Reporting on the Ghost of Sankara

dru — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:03:56 +0000

Interview with Journalist Jooneed Khan

[Read part I of this series, an interview with Aziz Fall of GRILA]

GRILA, the Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa, a grassroots collective in Montreal, is leading the international legal charge concerning the case of Thomas Sankara, recently winning a key case at the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations.

According to GRILA, the impunity of those involved in assassinations in Africa is finally being called into question. The Sankara case could set new precedents in an issue of profound importance to a continent with a history of unresolved assassinations of national leaders and political activists.

Jooneed Khan, a reporter on international affairs for Montreal's La Presse, has been covering the case of Thomas Sankara for a number of years. He is one of the few journalists working at a major media outlet to cover this story.

* * *

Stefan Christoff: Explain your accounting of the history surrounding the revolution of Burkina Faso and the assassination of Thomas Sankara. What is the historical and contemporary importance of these events to African politics?

Jooneed Khan: Sankara became president of Upper Volta, shortly after changing the name to Burkina Faso, which translates to the land of people with dignity. At that time, when apartheid in South Africa was still holding sway, Sankara represented a new hope for African development. He advocated simple principles like self-reliance, rooted in the belief that Burkina Faso could not develop if the nation continued to rely on outside support, that the first resource to tap is the internal energies of the country, the energy of the people.

Sankara was also very strongly anti-corruption, cutting back a great deal on government expenses. At one point Sankara was traveling to work on a bicycle, later on giving in to the demands of some within the government cabinet Sankara accepted that government officials use cars. However the government then used very small cars, not the traditional Mercedes that made the African elite known very often known in those days as the new tribe of "wabenzi," [a reference to their preference for the Mercedes Benz car].

In 1987 Sankara was assassinated by a companion in the revolution named Blaise Compaoré, who carried out a coup d'état seizing power, remaining in power for 20 years [until today]. Often we discuss the importance of democracy in Africa, however recently Burkina Faso has been elected to serve a two year term on the Security Council of the United Nations, together with Vietnam, Libya along with the permanent members.

Africa has a long history of national leaders who have been murdered, massacred, or overthrown in one way or another. Beginning with Patrice Lumumba in Congo, in Ghana Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown and died in exile in Egypt, Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique. Many anti-Apartheid workers, activists in South Africa were assassinated, some by hit-men, some with letter bombs. You could say that Thomas Sankara is one of the last in that long list of great African martyrs.

You have been following the case of Thomas Sankara in relation to the work of a local organization here in Montreal which as been active on the case in recent years. Can you explain Sankara’s case in relation to Montreal?

There is a small NGO in Montreal named GRILA [of the Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa], which was formed in the 1980’s during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Interestingly, after the fall of apartheid it continued working, as it was clear that the end of apartheid had not liberated Africa; there were still many battles to be fought. GRILA looked to Sankara as a model for African Development and picked up the case aiming to have light thrown on the circumstances of the death, to commemorate Sankara’s assassination every year.

In 1997, ten years after the assassination GRILA managed to lodge a formal complaint with the authorities in Burkina Faso, asking for Sankara’s assassination to be investigated, and it managed to secure the legal move just a few days before the deadline, the local statute of limitation, beyond which the matter could not be raised. There is a limit of 10 years under Burkina Faso law in which one can access legal recourse, after which time the point becomes moot.

GRILA lodged the complaint just prior to the deadline with the support of Sankara’s family, who was living in exile in France successfully raising the matter, which of course irritated authorities in Burkina Faso. The response that they received that this was a military affair, since Sankara had been an army officer and could not be dealt with in civilian courts but within the military courts.

Within these legal proceedings GRILA had the support of twenty-two volunteer lawyers from around the world, in Canada, in Europe and Africa. After failing within the Burkina Faso legal system GRILA took the matter to the UN Committee on Human Rights and they succeeded last year in obtaining a formal denunciation of the Burkina Faso regime of Blaise Compaoré. The denunciation dictated that the government had to throw light on the circumstances of the death of Sankara, had to identify the grave clearly and properly, and also had to pay some form of financial compensation to Sankara’s widow and two sons.

Apparently when Sankara died the death certificate bore the inscription, “died of natural causes”, apparently the authorities have now removed the word “natural” from the death certificate, and offered somewhere near ninety thousands dollars as compensation to the family, which of course the family and GRILA have considered very inadequate.

Until now the grave of Sankara has still not been identified, while the circumstances of the death have not been elucidated and all the obstruction of justice that has taken place around this case has not been looked into. So GRILA is pursuing the case, they are waiting for the UN Committee on Human Rights to react to the Burkina Faso response.

Can you explain the contemporary importance of the case of Thomas Sankara on a global scale?

What's interesting concerning the Sankara case is that the principle involved is the fight against impunity in Africa because there are so many crimes and violations which continue to be committed and go unpunished. The international criminal court on Rwanda concerning the genocide that took place is just a drop in the bucket concerning crimes in Africa. This is an attempt from the international community and the UN to bring the criminals in Rwanda to justice. However, there are many, many other cases in Africa.

Currently Darfur is a very fashionable cause among many people in the West who want to go to protect the people of Darfur. At the same time according to the United Nations itself, five to six hundred thousand civilians die each year in the eastern Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, deaths stemming from a war that is closely tied to the struggle for natural resources by international corporations. This is often forgotten, one of the many forgotten genocides that is going on as we talk in Africa.

GRILA has picked up the case of Thomas Sankara as another example of impunity, wanting those responsible to be brought to account. These are all interesting factors which have kept me interested in the Sankara case. As the Sankara case has evolved I have tried every now and then to try to asses the situation and do a story in order to keep it alive in the eyes of the public.

Sankara

January in Review

dru — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 03:35:43 +0000

News from social movements

Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI)-- aka "Big Trout Lake"-- Chief Donny Morris announced that he is ready to go to jail to defend his community's sovereignty. "I'm prepared to give myself up if the court decides I've disrespected the November ruling to allow Platinex on our land. I'm prepared to acknowledge that," Morris stated in a press release. Two years ago Ontario-based mining company Platinex sued the KI First Nation for $10 billion for preventing mining on their land in the far northwest of Ontario. In November 2007, KI withdrew from the legal proceedings, citing over $600,000 in debt accumulated while fighting the province and Platinex. Morris' contempt of court charges stemmed from an encounter with Platinex, where the chief escorted officials from the company back to their plane, and threatened to file trespassing charges if they came back. Observers expect the people of the remote fly-in community to continue to resist attempts by Platinex to mine their lands. Future resistance, however, is unlikely to be undertaken through the courts.

Six Nations leaders have put towns and cities along the Grand River on notice that the land still belongs to the people of Six Nations. The stretch of land, which extends from Lake Erie to the area lying to the northwest of Toronto, was granted to the Six Nations Confederacy in the 1784 Haldimand Proclamation. "There's no more of this sweeping it under the rug. It's not OK to steal land anymore and we're going to make people aware of that," one representative told the CBC.

Three hundred supporters of Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey, the first two war resisters to cross into Canada after refusing to deploy to Iraq with the US military, gathered in Toronto calling upon the Canadian parliament to pass a motion allowing them to remain in Canada. The rally was attended by Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae, as well as Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow. Similar rallies and actions were held in 11 cities across the country. Days before, a rally of 50 Iraq veterans gathered at the Canadian Embassy in Washington urging the Canadian government to provide sanctuary to all military service personnel looking to escape deployments with the US military. In November the Canadian Supreme Court refused to hear the cases of Hinzman and Hughey, on the grounds that they had previously been turned down by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board, which considered the illegality of the Iraq war under international law inadmissible. There are at least 30 war resisters in Canada at the moment.

A group calling itself the Wreath Underground vandalized buildings on Vancouver's University of British Columbia (UBC) campus. The group released a communiqué, taking credit for the actions and opposing commercial and Olympic-related developments that resulted in the destruction of public space on campus. The action comes in the context of an ongoing campaign by Students for a Democratic Society UBC (SDS-UBC) to prevent further privatization of public spaces on the UBC campus. SDS-UBC says the University's development plan's purpose "is to make the centre of campus a corporate/private space to which students only have access as customers or condo owners/renters." SDS-UBC is organizing a conference in March entitled "Resisting the University," which will address "privatization and commodification of education."

Hundreds rallied and marched in Montreal in support of Abdelkader Belaouni, a 40-year old blind Algerian refugee who has been living in sanctuary in St. Gabriel's Church for over two years. Solidarity pickets and embassy visits were also held in most major cities across Canada and in several cities internationally, including Tokyo, New York, Beirut, Paris, Durban, and London. Belaouni's supporters were demanding that federal Minister of Immigration Diane Finley grant a stay of the deportation order, and grant him permanent resident status in Canada. Belaouni fled Algeria's brutal civil war in 1996, arriving first in the United States. He came to Montreal in 2003 and applied for refugee status. His application was rejected by Immigration and Refugee Board judge Laurier Thibault, who had close to a 100% rejection rate amongst refugee claimants. Belaouni entered sanctuary in early 2006, and has since received international support for his case, including from Laibar Singh, currently in sanctuary in Vancouver. Said Singh in a statement issued days before the solidarity march: "The Canadian government says it raises its voice for the less fortunate around the world but if it can't see us, who can it see?"

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Derek Sikua affirmed his full support of the Australian-dominated occupation force, known as RAMSI. The force, consisting of over 2,000 soldiers, along with bureaucrats and "advisors," who took effective control of much of the Islands' state apparatus, including prisons, police, courts, public service, and central bank. Critics called the move a "neo-colonial" effort to "safeguard Australian corporate interests and maintain its regional domination." Former Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare had angered Australian diplomats when he moved to roll back some of RAMSI's powers over spending and pave the way for an eventual withdrawal. He was ousted in a parliamentary vote, and replaced with a Sikua-led coalition, which has been enthusiastically current pro-occupation.

Despite Canada's official stance of non-participation in the invasion of Iraq, another Canadian general has been sent to work with the command group overseeing the US-led occupation and counterinsurgency war. Brigadier-General Nicolas Matern of the Special Forces is the third Canadian general to serve in the command group, as part of an inter-military exchange program. According to a report from the US State Dept., "the governments of the United States and Canada collaborated on a broad array of initiatives, exercises, and joint operations that spanned virtually all agencies and every level of government."

An anti-Olympics speaking tour visited 18 cities and Indigenous communities, calling attention to destruction caused by development fuelled by the Olympics. "There is an infrastructure being created for 2010 that will result in the further destruction of mountains and valleys that are traditionally Salish, St’at’imc, and Squamish territory," said Dustin Johnson. Resistance to "Sun Peaks" development on Secwepemc lands, one of many areas affected by the Olympics, extends back a decade. There have been dozens of arrests, and government-supervised destruction of a house and two traditional sweatlodges. Johnson and Kanahus Pellkey of the Native Youth Movement are calling for direct action to shut down the Olympic Games.

Itchy the Bedbug, Creepy the Cockroach and Chewy the Rat will be the official mascots of Vancouver's Poverty Olympics. Organizers, who hope to draw attention to Vancouver's "world class poverty," decried the lack of funding for social housing and the devastating effect of rapid gentrification on Vancouver's vast population of poor and homeless.

A recent report estimated that between 8,000 and 15,500 British Columbia residents are "absolutely homeless," while an estimated 39,000 are "inadequately housed." BC Forest and Housing Minister Rich Coleman had previously estimated the number of homeless at roughly 5,000.

A Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report warned of the possibility of "violent protests" during the Olympic Games in 2010. The heavily-censored public version of the report has raised concerns about "how far CSIS will go." "We're more than a little worried about the potential for infiltration of non-profit societies and legitimate protest groups," a representative of the BC Civil Liberties Association told the Canadian Press. The Anti-Poverty Committee (APC) is one of the groups targeted by police and intelligence agencies. APC representative Mary Claremont said, "This is what we have been protesting... the coming Olympic police state. People thought we were nuts, but look, from 40 kilometers of electric fence, surveillance cameras, civil city, CSIS... it's here."

A group of academics and media watch groups filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), alleging that media coverage of the attempted deportation of Laibar Singh was "not accurate... or comprehensive". CBC TV, CBC Radio, CKNW, CTV, and Global TV are cited in the complaint, which states that Singh was falsely said to have come to Canada "illegally" or that he "was illegal" in Canada prior to taking sanctuary. The complaint says that repetition of falsities despite widely available accurate information "fuelled ignorance in the public sphere and has negatively influenced perceptions of Mr. Laibar Singh and all asylum seekers to Canada."

Security Certificate detainee Mohammed Harkat was seized, then released again by Police and Canadian Border Services agents. Widely referred to in media reports as a "terrorism suspect" Harkat is being held without charges under Bill C-3, "anti-terrorism" legislation passed after September 11, 2001. "I think it's a political move," Sophie Harkat told the Ottawa Citizen in an interview, adding that the government seeks to "stir fear" in the leadup to a vote over bill C-3. If the government does not vote to renew Bill C-3 before the end of March, existing security certificates--including the one under which Harkat is being held--will be struck down, in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling that found the legislation unconstitutional.

Alberta tar sands giant Suncor has given final approval for a plan to increase output by 200,000 barrels per day in a $20 billion expansion project. The company says that the increase is part of a plan to double the company's output to 550,000 barrels per day by 2012.

Energy company TransCanada has moved forward with plans to build a natural gas pipeline across unceded territory belonging to the Lubicon Cree. In a letter to TransCanada, Lubicon legal counsel F. M. Lennarson wrote that the "response of the Lubicon people is that they are the aboriginal owners of the land that TransCanada wishes to violate with this huge new pipeline." The pipeline will transport natural gas to the tar sands, allowing for expanded tar sands processing capacity.

Ecuadorian officials revoked a total of 587 mining concessions effectively cancelling Canadian-based Ascendant Copper’s bid to the controversial Junin Project. The transnational corporation is under intense scrutiny for impacts on local communities and environmental degradation. Human rights lawyers contend that the mere purchase of the mining concession is in breach of community members’ rights, and Ecuador’s constitution.

Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra was at the center of a political scandal in the United States involving Bill Clinton and a mining deal in Kazakhstan potentially worth tens of millions of dollars. According to the New York Times, Giustra gained access to Clinton's inner circle after he donated $31 million dollars to the former US President's foundation. Giustra subsequently accompanied Clinton on a trip to Kazakhstan, where he signed a deal that "stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers," according to the Times.

George Habash, Palestinian leader, and founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), died January 26th, 2008 at the age of eighty-two after six decades of struggle. Habash dreamt of Arab unity and an end to the dispossession of Palestinians. Seen by supporters as “the conscience of the Palestinian revolution,” Habash effected his politic treating the poor for free as a medical doctor, and through the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the largest secular resistance group in Palestine. U.S., Canadian, and Israeli governments have branded Habash as a terrorist for bombings and hijackings carried out by the PFLP during the 1970’s. Many Palestinians, however will remember Habash as a man who “embodied Palestinian and Arab aspirations.”

Despite reports of rising environmental consciousness among Canadians, car ownership and usage is on the rise. A study conducted by Statistics Canada found that 74 per cent of Canadian adults made all of their trips by car. A similar study in 1998 found 70 per cent using cars for all of their trips, while the number was 68 per cent in 1992. The study found a strong connection between low density neighbourhoods and high car use, while those living in high-density neighbourhoods were relatively far less likely to use cars.

Representatives from Venezuela's grassroots social movements gathered to discuss ways to advance a grassroots socialist agenda, while addressing growing bureaucracy within the Chavez-led government. "There is a reformist sector that has been working internally to construct a force to build a counterweight to the revolutionary sector that is in the government," said one participant. Another spoke of a "return to the street," adding "we didn't realize that the bureaucracy isolated us from this reality and this deterioration in which we are living."

In response to the ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza, a convoy of Arab and Israeli peace activists held a demonstration of between 1500 and 2000 at the Eretz border crossing, calling for an end to the Israeli siege of the Gaza strip and the immediate lifting of the blockade of badly needed medical equipment, fuel, and food. The demonstration, which was organized by organizations such as Gush-Shalom and the International Coalition Against House Demolitions, was held in conjunction with the delivery of 5 tons of food aid to the border crossing near Gaza city. A demonstration of 200 Palestinians was held in Gaza at the same time, from which speeches were broadcast to the Eretz gathering via amplified cellphones. The Israeli military barred the aid supplies from entry into Gaza, ordering that they be stored at a nearby Kibbutz. Organizers have pledged to petition the Israeli supreme court in order to allow the aid supplies to be delivered to Gaza, where 83 Palestinians, including 16 children, have died due to the ongoing Israeli siege.

NYM Speaking Tour

Haldimand Tract

People Power in Gaza

dru — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 09:21:36 +0000

Palestinians descend on border, break Israeli blockade

Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, interviewer David Barsamian asked Noam Chomsky what ordinary Americans could do to stop the war. Chomsky answered, "In some parts of the world people never ask, 'what can we do?' They simply do it."

For someone who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, Chomsky's seemingly oblique response required no further elucidation.

When Gazans recently stormed the strip's sealed border with Egypt, Chomsky's comment returned to mind, along with memories of the still relevant--and haunting--past.

In 1989, the Bureej refugee camp was experiencing a strict military curfew, as punishment for the killing of one Israeli soldier. The soldier's car had broken down in front of the camp while he was on his way home to a Jewish settlement. Bureej had previously lost hundreds of its people to the Israeli army and killing the soldier was an unsurprising act of retaliation.

In the weeks that followed, scores of Palestinians in Bureej were murdered and hundreds of homes were demolished. The killing spree generated little media coverage in Israel.

I lived with my family in an adjacent refugee camp, Nuseirat, at the time. Characterised by extreme poverty, it was a natural home for much of the Palestinian resistance movement. Our house was located a few feet away from what was known as the 'Graveyard of the Martyrs'. It was an area of high elevation that the local children often used to watch the movement of Israeli tanks as they began their daily incursion into the camp. We whistled or yelled every time we spotted the soldiers, and used sign language to communicate as we hid behind the simple graves.

Although watching, yelling and whistling were the only means of response at our disposal, they were far from safe. My friends Ala, Raed, Wael and others were all killed in these daily encounters

During Bureej's most lethal curfew, the sound of explosions coming from the doomed camp reached us at Nuseirat. The people of my camp became engulfed in endless discussions which were neither factional nor theoretical. People were being brutally murdered, injured or impoverished, while the Red Cross was blocked from accessing the camp. Something had to be done.

And all of a sudden it was. Not as a result of any polemic endorsed by intellectuals or "action calls" initiated at conferences, but as an unstructured, spur-of-the-moment act undertaken by a few women in my refugee camp. They simply started a march into Bureej, and were soon joined by other women, children and men. Within an hour, thousands of refugees made their way into the besieged neighbouring camp. "What's the worst they could do?" a neighbour asked, trying to collect his courage before joining the march. "The soldiers will not be able to kill more than a hundred before we overpower them."

Israeli soldiers stood dumbfounded before the chanting multitudes. While many marchers were wounded only one was killed. The soldiers eventually retreated to their barricades. UN vehicles and Red Cross ambulances sheltered themselves amidst the crowd and together they broke the siege.

I still remember the scene of Bureej residents first opening the shutters of their windows, then carefully cracking their doors, stepping out of their homes in a state of disbelief breaking into joy. My memory--of the chants, the tears, the dead being rushed to be buried, the wounded hauled on the many hands that came to the rescue, the strangers sharing food and good wishes--reaffirms the event as one of the greatest acts of human solidarity I have witnessed.

The scene was to be repeated time and again, during the first and Second Palestinian Uprising: ordinary people carrying out what seemed like an ordinary act in response to extraordinary injustice.

The father who lost his son to free Bureej told the crowd: "I am happy that my son died so that many more could live."

Later than day, our refugee camp fell under a most strict military curfew, to relive Bureej's recent nightmare. We were neither surprised nor regretful. We had known the right thing to do and "we simply did it."

Now Palestinian women, once more, have led Palestinian civil society in a most meaningful and rewarding way. Just when Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak was being congratulated for successfully starving Palestinians in Gaza to submission, ordinary women led a march to break the tight siege imposed on Gaza.

On Tuesday, January 22, they descended on the Gaza-Egypt border and what followed was a moment of pride and shame: pride for those ever-dignified people refusing to surrender, and shame that the so-called international community allowed the humiliation of an entire people to the extent that forced hungry mothers to brave batons, tear gas and military police in order to perform such basic acts as buying food, medicine and milk.

The next day, the courage of these women inspired the same audacity that the original batch of women in my refugee camp inspired nearly twenty years ago. Nearly half of the Gaza Strip population crossed the border in a collective push for mere survival. And when people march in unison, there is no worldly force, however deadly, that can block their way.

This "largest jailbreak in history", as one commentator described it, will be carved in Palestinian and world memory for years to come. In some circles it will be endlessly analysed, but for Palestinians in Gaza, it is beyond rationalization: it simply had to be done.

Armies can be defeated but human spirit cannot be subdued. Gaza's act of collective courage is one of the greatest acts of civil disobedience of our time, akin to civil rights marches in America during the 1960's, South Africa's anti-Apartheid struggle, and more recently the protests in Burma.

Palestinian people have succeeded where politics and thousands of international appeals have failed. They took matters into their own hands and they prevailed. While this is hardly the end of Gaza's suffering, it is a reminder that people's power to act is just too significant to be overlooked.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Gazans cross into Egypt to buy supplies

Israeli Patrol in Gaza

December in Review

Stuart Neatby — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:32:31 +0000

Halted deportations, Lakota secession, and social tension in Latin America

In Vancouver, 1500 demonstrators effectively paralysed the Vancouver International Airport and halted the planned deportation of 48-year old paralysed Punjabi refugee Laibar Singh on December 10-- international Human Rights Day. The vast majority of the supporters were members of Vancouver’s Sikh community, who had been mobilizing and campaigning against Singh’s impending deportation to India for months, while he lived in sanctuary within a Sikh temple. On January 9, a second attempt by the Canadian Border Services Agency to deport Singh was thwarted after officials showed up at the Nanak Sikh Temple in Surrey at 4AM to find 300 of Singh’s supporters blocking the entrance to the temple. Singh’s supporters have argued that he should remain in Canada on Humanitarian and Compassionate grounds due to his medical needs.

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the Safe Third Country Agreement-- legislation that has cut refugees' eligibility to remain in Canada-- was illegal. The STCA, enacted by the Martin government, prohibits political refugees from remaining in Canada if they have landed first in the US. The ruling declared that the United States could not be deemed a “safe” country for refugees due to its violations of the UN Convention Against Torture and the Refugee Convention.

The Lakota Sioux nation made steps to legally secede from the United States on December 20 in Washington after Lakota representatives withdrew from all treaties signed with the US. Following years of discussions amongst treaty representatives within the various Lakota communities throughout Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, the notice of withdrawal from the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties was hand-delivered by a four-member Lakota delegation to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the US State Department. According to delegation members, the legal basis for this withdrawa stands with the continuous violation of the 1851 and 1868 treaties by the United States, as well as the conditions of extreme poverty that exist within the Lakota communities.

Environmentalists have perhaps won a partial victory after the United States and Canada both backed down from their obstructionist positions at the UN Climate Change Summit in Bali. After the summit was extended an extra day, Canadian Environment Minister John Baird, who had been dogged by a delegation of Canadian youth activists throughout the week, reversed his original position against a binding target of 25 to 40 per cent reductions of carbon emissions from wealthy countries by the year 2020. The United States also agreed in the end to endorse the “Bali roadmap,” although only after the section requiring binding targets for all nations to collectively reduce carbon emissions was removed. Some environmentalists have argued that the summit’s key failing was the “single-minded focus on getting Washington on board,” to the detriment of actually achieving firm carbon-reduction targets.

In Haiti, grassroots leader Rene Civil was released after spending 20 months in prison. Civil was a member of the Lavalas party of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and was also a leader of the Popular Power Youth (JPP), a grassroots organization of youth from poor communities. Civil was arrested in August 2006, shortly after organizing a demonstration calling for the release of political prisoners and the return to the country of Aristide. However, another grassroots activist, Wilson Mesilien, acting director of the September 30th foundation, a human rights organization, was recently forced into hiding after receiving death threats. Mesilien’s predecessor, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, remains at large after he was kidnapped by unknown figures last August. The US and Canadian governments took part in the military overthrow of Aristide in 2004, and Canadian RCMP officials currently head the UN training program for the Haitian National Police, which is accused by Haitians and international observers of human rights abuses including mass murder, sex trafficking and rape.

In Pakistan, in the midst of political turmoil in the week following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the United States government announced it would approve the nearly five-hundred million dollar sale of eighteen Lockheed Martin fighter jets to the regime of Pervez Musharraf. Although no definitive investigation has been carried out of Bhutto’s murder (the Pakistani President has refused to allow a UN investigation of the killing), many of Bhutto’s supporters, as well as Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, have expressed belief that elements of Pakistan’s military may have been behind the assassination, and have criticized the continued sale of arms to the regime.

A new report issued by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has found that Canadian arms sales reached $700 million, the highest levels ever recorded, in 2003. This figure did not include sales made to the US which, if counted, would have brought the total sales of Canadian arms to over $2 billion. According to Ken Epps, an arms control researcher with Project Ploughshares, many of these sales were made to countries with dubious human rights records, such as Colombia, China, and Saudi Arabia. Epps also noted that the Pakistani military purchased $250 million worth of helicopters from Canada between 2004 and 2005.

The Bush administration’s case for war with Iran was dealt a severe blow after sixteen different US intelligence agencies concluded that the country had ended its nuclear weapons more than four years ago. Despite this, George W. Bush, claimed publicly that he still believed Iran to be a threat to the United States. The completion of the report by the National Intelligence Agency had reportedly been held up and postponed by vice-President Dick Cheney for two months.

In Toronto, a new report by the provincial government has found that, despite crackdowns, 31,000 people currently receive a "special diet" supplement designed for welfare recipients with medical dietary needs. The supplement, valued at $250 extra dollars for food per month, is an obscure and often overlooked government program. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has publicly set up special diet clinics throughout the city and province in recent years, arguing that individuals on welfare live in conditions of state-sponsored poverty, which limits their dietary health. Over the last two years, this campaign effectively redirected over $30 million of provincial revenue into the hands of the province's poorest residents.

Recent reports from human rights organizations in Chiapas, Mexico indicate that the Mexican government is ramping up its military presence in regions under heavy influence of the indigenous Zapatista Liberation Army. According to the Centre for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Research, a human rights NGO based in Chiapas, there has been a marked increase in the presence of military and paramilitary deployments within this Southern Mexican state which, coupled with an increase in expropriations of land occupied by indigenous Mayan sympathizers of the Zapatistas, has prompted IPS News to dub this escalation “the worst onslaught by state forces in the last 10 years.” Since the 1994 uprising by the Zapatistas, indigenous self-rule has been quietly built within the region, as the Zapatistas have established their own health, education and development programmes, while forming their own governing “caracoles,” or good-government councils.

In Bolivia, clashes continued between middle- to upper-class supporters of the the Democratic and Social Power (PODEMOS) political party and the social movements and indigenous communities united under the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) of current president Evo Morales. Partisans of the right-leaning PODEMOS, which include the governors of four eastern departments, have been staging blockades, strikes, and demonstrations for months against the proposed constitutional changes championed by Morales and the social forces united under the MAS, largely movements of the country’s majority poor and indigenous peoples. The constitution would grant the central government greater control over the country’s rich natural resources, but would also guarantee expanded autonomy for departmental governments and indigenous communities. The opposition disagrees with the limitations on land ownership established in the document, as well as the redirection of departmental gas revenues to a new National Pension Fund for all citizens of the country over the age of sixty. Late last month, the opposition has declared autonomy from the central government for the city of Santa Cruz, establishing a new police force, television station and special ID cards.

The Ontario government finally announced that the province will be returning the Ipperwash Provincial Park lands to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nations. This announcement follows the conclusion of the Ipperwash inquiry into the 1995 Ontario Provincial Police killing of Dudley George last May. The land was originally expropriated from the Stony Point band in 1942 to allow the federal government to build a military base.

First Nations survivors of the Canadian residential school system received their first cheques as part of a $2 billion compensation settlement for the collective experience of mass sexual and physical abuse suffered by indigenous children at Catholic-run schools between the 1950s and 1980s. Eighty thousands First Nations people are eligible for this compensation, which is paid in lump sums, and which amount to an average of $28,000. This amount, however, only accounts for the federal government’s portion of the settlement; The Catholic church is also responsible for paying 30% of the settlement. Although viewed by residential school survivors as an important milestone in the process of achieving justice, the size of the settlement pales when compared to a similar settlement given to Australian aboriginals of the “Stolen Generation,” whose treatment at the hands of their government throughout the twentieth century bears many striking similarities to that of the Canadian aboriginal experience.

In New Orleans, police attacked, tazered and pepper-sprayed public housing residents who had arrived at city hall to take part in a “public hearing” about the proposed demolition of 5000 public housing units in the city. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there remains a homeless population of 12,000 within New Orleans. City Hall and private developers have nonetheless intensified efforts to demolish public housing in order to make way for commercial property and high-priced condominiums. Police had initially erected a metal gate around city hall, prohibiting public housing residents from entering the building. Fifteen were arrested in total as the council passed the motion in favour of the demolitions. Residents have pledged to continue fighting, and have called for supporters to travel to the region and take part in a campaign of direct actions against these home demolitions.

Officials in India have conceded that the construction of the World Bank-backed Narmada Dam is illegal. Shri Afroz Ahmad of the Narmada Control Authority admitted that the construction of the dam to the height of 121.9 metres has led to the illegal submergence of houses and farms, particularly those of the Bhil tribal people, many of whom have been struggling against the construction of this mega-dam for more than twenty years. Critics of the dam have demanded that its size be reduced in order to avoid flooding still further indigenous communities, and continue to fight for land for those who have been displaced by the dam’s construction.

Hundreds of trade union demonstrators gathered in Toronto to protest the proposed Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, while approximately 30-40 activists with the Canadian Union of Public Employees picketed the office of former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mackay in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Critics from trade unions, human rights organizations, and ecumenical organizations in Canada have argued that this trade deal has been negotiated in complete secrecy, after a dramatically similar trade deal between the US and Colombia met with overwhelming opposition within Congress due to human rights concerns. Colombia currently has the worst human rights record of any country in the Western Hemisphere, and more trade unionists are killed in the region than in the rest of the world combined. Little has been made public about this trade agreement, nor of the timeline for its implementation, but public officials have speculated that the trade pact could be completed within the next few weeks. Many Colombian activists have argued that this trade agreement encourages para-military political violence against indigenous peoples, trade unionists, afro-Colombian communities, and poor people within resource-rich territories, and also provides the framework to “legalize and legitimize” this economic and political terrorism. Meanwhile, reports of increased military and para-military attacks upon indigenous protests against land expropriation have emerged from the Southwest Cauca in recent weeks.

African political leaders have rejected a neo-liberal trade agreement with the European Union, which would have forced punitive duties upon imported goods from the continent, such as sugar, meat and bananas, which would have competed with European producers. The “Economic Partnership Agreements” have been the subject of protests by trade unions and social movements throughout the continent, and were voted down during an EU-Africa summit in Lisbon. The increased amount of investment from China in Africa has likely provided the subcontinent with a greater amount of breathing room in negotiating such trade deals in recent years.

Lakota Map

Laibar Singh and Supporters

Echoes of Revolution: Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara

dru — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 05:02:31 +0000

Part I: Interview with Aziz Fall

Thomas Sankara, the former president of Burkina Faso, a political leader renowned across Africa as a revolutionary, died 20 years ago in an assassination that sent political shock waves across the continent, marking a critical moment for progressive social movements in Africa.

Burkina Faso, a small western African nation formally known as Upper Volta, was renamed Burkina Faso, meaning “the land of upright people,” after the 1983 revolution that brought Thomas Sankara's government to power.

As president, Sankara actively appealed for pan-African self-determination, for the full cancellation of foreign national debts across the continent and for liberation from apartheid in South Africa.

"The question of debt is the question of Africa’s economic situation, as much as peace; this question is an important condition of our survival," Sankara said as president.

"The debt cannot be repaid. If we do not pay, our creditors will not die. We can be sure of that. On the other hand, if we pay, it is we who will die. Of that we can be equally sure."

In 2007, Thomas Sankara remains a powerful symbol within grassroots social movements in Africa, as the 1983 revolution of Burkina Faso catapulted an alternative vision of African development onto the world stage.

Revolution in Burkina Faso led to a national development model rooted in "self-reliance" and social solidarity.

Burkina Faso presented a radically different concept of development to the charity model common today, strongly promoted by international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or fashionably displayed through events such as Live Aid or campaigns such as "Make Poverty History."

Independently driven development policies and an anti-colonial political platform brought international attention to Burkina Faso, inspiring grassroots social movements across Africa, and won Thomas Sankara powerful political enemies in France, Europe and the US.

Ten years after the death of Thomas Sankara, the Montreal-based Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA) launched an international legal campaign into the circumstances surrounding Sankara’s death. In the courts of Burkina Faso, GRILA put forward a controversial legal challenge to the government of President Blaise Compaoré, a close ally of France who organized a coup d'état against Sankara and who has held power since. Compaoré is widely understood as having a direct role in Sankara's 1987 assassination.

After complete dismissal within the courts of Burkina Faso, GRILA presented Sankara’s case to the UN Human Rights Committee. In 2006, the UN Committee ruled in favour of the International Justice for Sankara Campaign on behalf of Thomas Sankara's widow, Mariam, and his children, Auguste and Philippe.

Aziz Fall is a member of the Group for Research and Initiatives for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA) and the international co-ordinator for the International Justice for Sankara Campaign. In this interview, Aziz Fall reflects on the case of Thomas Sankara 20 years after the assassination and outlines contemporary efforts to seek justice for the 1987 assassination.

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Stefan Christoff: October 2007 marks the 20th anniversary of Thomas Sankara’s assassination, to highlight this anniversary you recently participated in an international speaking tour organized by the Justice for Sankara Campaign, focused on the UN case surrounding Sankara’s killing. In this context, can you reflect on the political significance of Sankara’s case in relation to contemporary African history and also to international movements for social justice?

Aziz Fall: First it’s important to say that Sankara’s case remains relevant and critical to the understanding the current debate on ‘African development.’

This year is the 20th anniversary of Sankara’s death and for 20 years the circumstances surrounding Sankara’s death remain unknown. In this context, GRILA recently won a major victory at the United Nations, in establishing a legal precedent against impunity in Africa. Until today, the official death certificate in Burkina Faso claims that Thomas Sankara died of natural causes and this is certainly not true.

It is the first time within the UN system regarding African affairs that in the investigation of a case in the death of a former head-of-state, a UN body has ruled on the side of justice, outlining clearly [in its recent decision] that people have a right to know the circumstance surrounding Sankara’s death and that the family has the right to be compensated.

In the context of the recent UN decision, why is Sankara’s death significant in terms of struggles for social justice in Africa?

Sankara incarnated the last African revolution, the last radical African experience of the 20th century; today, we can collectively reference no other similar political experiences in Africa. In the Burkina Faso revolution, there was the establishment of self-reliant development. Concretely, this meant there was a serious attempt on a national level to ensure that the peasantry would have the correct amount of food crop to supply the national population with nutrition, prior to considering the possibility of exporting to the international market.

In Burkina Faso, on a national level, there was an effort to establish a model of self-reliant development in regards to food, education and healthcare; within four years, the national political mentality and national production model were shifted in a progressive direction that no other African nation has succeeded in achieving before.

This political process had an enormous impact on the imagination of the youth, while also had an impact in regards to the neo-colonial framework of development within Africa, mainly in regards to the ongoing French influence over African development.

France, in reality, hasn’t granted independence to the former colonies due to the neo-colonial economic development framework that it continues to impose on Africa. France utilizes mainstream development models to smuggle resources from Africa, to have easy access to valuable minerals, to have access and influence over the maintenance of a system of capitalist development in Africa. An economic development system that can only be maintained with the support of local puppets that are totally reluctant to listen to the grievances and demands of their own population.

Sankara’s project in Burkina Faso is certainly a project that is important to consider for Africa because it relates directly to pan-Africanism, the collective integration of the African nation-states, certainly an economic model that advocates something inherently different than NEPAD [the New Economic Partnership for African Development], which is actually a plan that is fostering relations between Africa and western nations. In reality, NEPAD can’t be viewed or understood as an African plan for development.

Today, Africa needs to outline an African plan for development and the development of a local or indigenous definition of development was fundamental to the economic program that Sankara was advocating. This is why Sankara died; this is why Sankara was assassinated.

What has been the echo-effect of Thomas Sankara--the way in which the legacy of Sankara’s alternative economic ideas impacted all of Africa, the political and economic ideas that are being discussed today in Africa within networks advocating for social and economic justice?

In terms of civil-society: I must first admit that I have mixed feelings concerning the role of civil-society today, as major parts of ‘civil-society’ on an international level have been co-opted by the international neo-liberal economic framework and institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, there are still very authentic and participatory elements to networks today in Africa that are labelled 'civil-society.'

In this context, it’s important to note the contemporary recognition of Sankara’s economic and political ideas as models for exploring possibilities of self-reliant development models. It is interesting to note that the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, echoed the African Social Forum in recognizing Sankara’s policies as potential models for self-reliant development.

Today in Africa, there is a growing movement in support of Sankara, with political parties based on Sankara’s ideas in Burkina Faso and Mali; this movement didn’t exist while Sankara was alive, but is thriving today with an amazing number of associations, groups and organizations around Africa and abroad that are very active today.

In 2007, I met with many organizations in multiple countries who continue to work on Sankara’s case while also advocating for the political and economic ideas surrounding development that Sankara pushed while alive. Throughout our recent international caravan from Mexico to Europe, where we visited multiple countries, I was amazed by the crowds that welcomed us and the support and solidarity that we witnessed.

Sankara’s ideas are still extremely relevant today. Internationally, people are wearing t-shirts and buttons throughout the world, so Sankara is becoming an icon, which is not necessarily a good thing; however, it illustrates the support for Sankara’s ideas today in Africa. Sankara is the Che Guevara of Africa, who died at almost the same age, at 37, accomplishing great things in a short time while operating with political honesty, with a total dedication to the people of Burkina Faso and Africa.

African social movements continue to recognize Sankara’s legacy in terms of the demand for debt cancellation, an unconditional demand for cancellation of national debts, as part of an effort to change the balance of power between modern economic imperialism and Africa, towards the development idea of a true pan-African movement for liberation.

Can you explain for yourself why Sankara’s case is touching for you on a political level? How do Sankara’s ideas strike you? Why are they important to you as a social activist?

It’s simple to understand. GRILA was born the year of the revolution in Burkina Faso, based on the same values that Sankara advocated, as GRILA shared a similar world view, shared a similar dream of establishing a self-governed model for development in Africa, which explains the attachment, the connection.

Self-governed, or managed development, means that nations must rely on their internal forces first, before looking to external assistance. Development must be rooted in creating your own markets of consumption. A nation must feed its own population, which means that all citizens must have access to the national land, while the natural resources and mineral wealth should be owned by the people, not foreign companies.

Sankara advocated for a model of development as focused on first fulfilling the basic needs of the population, including providing access to clean water, to quality education, to housing and healthcare. Once these critical elements are fulfilled on a national level, then you can adapt to modern economic markets and modern technology based on the rhythm of your own society and culture.

Today, most African nations aren’t in a position to compete in the world capitalist market due to realities such as the subsidies within the agricultural market within European countries and the unfair nature of the international economic system. African nations must rely on their own forces first, while co-operating with other nations in the global south.

Sankara did not formulate ideas of economic development in Africa within the charity conception common within wealthy countries as a solution to the gross social inequities between the north and the south that are a pressing reality today throughout the world. Sankara didn’t ask for charity; Sankara demanded social justice, calling for self-determination rooted in a completely different social and economic vision to the charity model often promoted today…

It’s important to remind people that the reality today is that ‘international development’ is strategically assisting northern countries or developed countries. Fifty years after the establishment of the Bretton Woods system of international monetary management, with the creation of the World Bank and IMF, an economic system that still dictates large parts of the international economic system, poverty and inequity has only increased.

In this context, it’s important to note that the majority of development aid granted to southern nations is never truly received because all financing received is returned to the donor countries through debt payments. So the very tiny amounts of aid or charity that is given is returned, which is important to note, while direct aid only makes up only three per cent of the entire balance of international development, anyways. Charity from developed nations to the south, when reviewing the real statistics, has never actually existed.

Additionally, it’s important to mention that if the international economic system was truly fair, charity would not be needed at all. If international policies rooted in fair trade were applied, even in a capitalistic framework, charity would not be necessary as long as you maintain a balanced method to international trade.

Today, the entire understanding of northern charity and the humanitarian framework in which international development is presented is a complete falsity rooted in propaganda, a false message that has been repeated for years. Thomas Sankara never believed in this propaganda, trying to push an alternative to the present model of international development, trying to ensure that international development projects in Africa were undertaken on African terms.

Sankara created a consultation table between international donors to Burkina Faso, forcing Italy, France and England, for example, to sit at the same table and actually co-operate with the local ideas or concepts of development. For this reason, Sankara faced an international aid boycott, which forced Burkina Faso to rely and focus solely on national development, which saw the government begin the construction of national water dam projects, a national railway system using the local energy of their own population, not international donors or advisers.

International development aid pulled out of Burkina Faso because the western donor nations were reluctant to be dictated conditions, because in fact it is the current international development system that dictates the conditions for development. So, for the first time you had a country in Africa putting forward a strong position that international development aid must be delivered and implemented only through the leadership of the local population.

For this reason, Sankara’s government became unpopular with the governments of Europe and North America. As soon as Sankara died, the strong position on insisting that the people of Burkina Faso play the central role in defining national development or the implementation economic assistance was reversed. After Sankara’s death, all the international development agencies returned to Burkina Faso, achieving little in comparison to the major steps forward achieved throughout Sankara’s government.

Many international development organizations exist or thrive on the conditions of our poverty playing a large role in sustaining our poverty in Africa. Current models of international development thrive on creating dependency within the south, a development perspective in which you can’t rely on your own people, resources or skills--a model of development based on reliance, not self-reliance.

International development agencies mushroomed throughout the globalization era due to the downsizing of the state, due to the privatization of the social sector as pushed by institutions like the World Bank and IMF, which saw the creation of the NGO sector.

Today, the NGO sector is unsuccessfully attempting to fill the void of the state, to support the type of social development in southern nations that governments traditionally have taken responsibility for. Development must be viewed as a central responsibility of national governments, not of the private sector, as the private sector exists simply to accumulate economic profit, which is priority number one, not the interests of the people. This is the context in which Sankara’s economic policies for Burkina Faso were not supported by western governments or international development agencies.

Sankara did win the praise of the World Health Organization (WHO) after the government of Burkina Faso managed to vaccinate the entire population for multiple diseases within one week. Sankara, with the exception of the WHO, was boycotted by many international institutions for the alternative or self-reliant development models adopted in Burkina Faso. It is for the revolutionary development and national economic programs that shook the foundations of the traditional economic development models imposed on Africa--which economically benefit European countries--that eventually led to Sankara’s assassination.

[Read part II of this series, an interview with journalist Jooneed Khan about Sankara's contemporary impact]

Sankara

Impacting Unimpaired

dru — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:36:25 +0000

New agreements like the SPP and TILMA are aimed directly at unimpeded extraction in the tar sands

Demonstrations against the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) began in the Summer of 2007, but several of the issues raised by anti-SPP organizers invoked déjà vu for many observers: informal agreements, secret talks, plans to do away with layers of national sovereignty in favour of corporate rules of engagement set to supersede labour organizing, environmental regulations or human rights. The laundry list of rule changes sounded a lot like debates of years past--the FTA, MAI, APEC, FTAA and NAFTA.

However, a deeper look at the driving force behind the new acronyms tells a different story, one of a world with new dynamics like peak oil, tar sands and the extreme measures that North American governments are attempting to use in the tar sands to keep an oil-dependent economy going.

Before the SPP became a larger issue nationally and continentally, the Trade, Investment & Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) had already been passed in British Columbia and Alberta. The agreement, having passed as legislation and set to be "phased in" by April 2009, plays a role complementary to the SPP and continues to be similarly criticized by many organizers for the anti-democratic way it has been implemented.

According to an analysis published by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, TILMA "encompasses provincial and local governments, regional districts, school boards, health and social services.

"Nearly every action by a government, now and in the future, is potentially constrained unless expressly excluded in the agreement. Measures are defined broadly and include any legislation, regulation, standard, directive, requirement, guideline, program, policy, administrative practice, or other procedure."

CUPE also describes the SPP as "another attempt of corporate America, in partnership with their political and corporate allies in Canada and Mexico, to reduce the power of government to protect citizens from profit-hungry business.

"Their intention is to scale down government regulations and controls that try to protect our society, culture and environment. Specifically, the SPP will minimize controls in areas like immigration, food and agriculture, natural resource exploitation, public services and entertainment."

TILMA is a new set of limitations on government's ability to regulate and the SPP is the removal of a pre-existing set of regulations. Both TILMA and the SPP have specific aims that go beyond the usual attempt to enshrine investors' rights and protect corporations from government regulations.

Both agreements pave the way--in many cases literally--for the largest industrial project in history to move forward: a project that calls for the extraction of over 170 billion barrels of recoverable oil from the tar sands of Alberta's Athabasca, Peace and Cold Lake regions.

The SPP and TILMA have anticipated popular resistance and preemptively removed the ability of governments to control the massive supply of energy, land, water and labour needed in the tar sands. They similarly preempt governments' ability to regulate the destruction and pollution that the "gigaproject" will create.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union (CEP) is concerned.

"As energy workers, we are compelled first of all to respond to the SPP energy agenda," the CEP said in a statement. "Through the SPP and the North American Energy Working Group, the governments of Mexico, United States and Canada have formed an unprecedented collaboration with energy corporations to promote the continental integration of our energy industries and infrastructures."

The result has surprisingly few benefits for Alberta or Canada. A massive, ecologically rich region will be reduced to an industrial sacrifice area. The synthetic crude that it renders will go south to the US. Royalties for Albertans and Canadians are minimal, and communities living in the vast area that will be strip-mined--Indigenous and settler alike--will be dismantled.

The "Oil Sands Experts Working Group," a part of the 2006 SPP meetings in Houston, calls the tar sands "a significant contributor to energy supply and security for the continent." According to the group, it was founded "when the three countries agreed to collaborate through the SPP on the sustainable development of the oil sands resources." The working group includes the US, Canadian and Alberta government representatives.

What does "sustainable development of the oil sands resources" consist of? The same SPP report says that it requires expanded "integrated long distance pipelines," plans for which are "already in place" to accommodate "the certain doubling of oil sands production to two million barrels per day by 2010.

"The five-fold expansion anticipated for oil sands products in a relatively short time span," the report says, "will represent many challenges for the pipeline industry."

To accomplish this, the report concludes, "Governments are encouraged to streamline the regulatory approval process and better manage the risk to both pipeline and energy projects.

"Canadian governments have already gone a long way to co-ordinating and streamlining the environmental and regulatory approvals, but more needs to be done."

TILMA sets up a free trade zone between Alberta and B.C. that "breaks down barriers" for all industries. April 2007 saw the official beginning of the TILMA agreement, sold as giving Alberta and B.C. a "competitive" way to deal with Ontario's vast size advantage. In reality, TILMA turns the provinces into locations where corporations can sue any person or entity that tries to legislate or otherwise invoke regulations that would make investment more "troublesome." The agreement bans measures which "impact or impair" investment and allows even an individual investor the right to sue governments to knock down such "impediments" and receive compensation for loss of revenue.

What can be seen as an impediment under TILMA is extensive. Under NAFTA, corporations can "challenge" legislation that affects their profits. A third party then rules on the "dispute" at hand. This has seen Canada paying to maintain some of its legislation around tobacco and environmental regulations, for example.

TILMA, however, starts on the assumption that the investor is correct. Unlike the resolution process seen in Chapter 11 of NAFTA, the current agreement includes an automatic up-to-$5 million penalty for a government body (at any level other than federal) that violates the rules of "free access" for capital. For example, if a city blocks the construction of a building for reasons of heritage, costing a corporation a projected $4 million, then the governing body that invokes the regulations "impacting or impairing" owes that corporation $4 million.

Article 3 of TILMA reads, in part: "Each Party shall ensure that its measures do not operate to restrict or impair trade between or through the territory of the Parties, or investment or labour mobility between the Parties." The agreement has specifically designed protocols for hearings to be held if one or more of the signatories are in breach of the agreement.

These secretive deals and agreements are taking place during the single largest energy policy shift in North America since the peaking of US domestic oil production in the seventies.

Internationally, the US is in a scramble for remaining oil reserves. Chinese demand for oil continues to grow. Disasters such as hurricanes and war--and the fact that only one barrel of oil is discovered for every nine that are used--have brought oil prices to record highs since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003. With an economic and military structure that needs vast supplies of hydrocarbons everyday, North American energy concerns have found the oil "boom" in Northern Alberta that was expected in the aftermath of a regime change in Iraq.

In response to Chinese interest in the tar sands, US energy expert Irving Mintzer blurted out, "The problem with the Chinese is that they don't know that the Canadian oil is ours. And neither do the Canadians." In the same breath Mintzer noted, "One provocation for rethinking US energy policy will be when Chinese investment in Canadian tar sands and Venezuelan oil development make it increasingly difficult for us to get access to the resources."

That hypothetical situation has come about more quickly, since the Iraqi resistance has cut off access to "stable" flows of petroleum and Venezuela has reduced its contribution to US energy markets by one third. The US has shifted their boom from Baghdad and Kirkuk to Fort McMurray and Grand Prairie. Many Venezuelans who oppose their country's socialist government have re-settled in Alberta.

Whether led by Liberals or Conservatives, Canada has been more than willing to help this shift. Approvals for tar sands operations and newly designed agreements help to take Tar Sands development to unfathomable levels of expansion.

The industry that extracts bitumen and then crude oil from tar sands was once aiming to get to production levels of one million barrels per day (bpd) by 2012. Last year, the average already surpassed 1.3 million. The swiftly rising price of oil and the near-impossibility of a long term drop in price has suddenly allowed a major shift towards producing this oil, which is only profitable at a barrel price of at least $30.

The production process of the synthetic oil is unlike anything else: there are huge labour and energy needs currently unavailable to the producers, needs that are being drawn up and planned through TILMA and the SPP.

The US Department of Energy and Natural Resources Canada had another secret meeting, along with US energy corporations, in February 2006. Some details of the meeting were leaked earlier this year to the CBC. The agenda: to reduce labour and environmental rights in order to ramp up production from the Athabasca, Peace and Cold Lake tar sands to five million barrels per day.

The United States has reorganized their long-term plans for petroleum energy by setting a goal to get up to 25 per cent of their daily oil from tar sands based operations (in addition to Canada's conventional oil). In 2003, the US Department of Energy began declaring tar sands reserves part of their calculation of oil imported from Canada. This will include massive pipeline construction across territories within British Columbia, made nearly impossible to block by TILMA.

The SPP is setting the stage for the creation of a series of "super highways" that may extend from as far as Panama City north to Edmonton and branching off to the three "hot spots" of the Albertan Peace and Athabasca Regions and northeast British Columbia.

Along with the reduction in labour rights across both provinces through TILMA, the SPP will provide much-needed labour through the expansion of the "temporary foreign workers" program. The growth of Alberta's economy has already exceeded the available population of workers. Workers from the Maritimes are paid to fly to Fort McMurray from Moncton, Halifax or St. John's and work in camps in the tar sands.

The energy needs of production in the tar sands process--whether the strip-mining operations or the "in-situ" underground "Steam-assisted gravity Drainage" (Sag-D) procedure--are equal to almost a third of what is produced. (For comparison purposes, the crude in Iraqi reserves produces about 100 times the energy that is needed to pump it out.) Sag-D consumes more energy and water than strip-mining operations, setting the stage for the requisite equivalent of four to five billion cubic feet of natural gas per day required in tar sands operations if they become fully operational.

This reality is what is leading Energy Alberta to promote nuclear power for the Peace Region, where Sag-D has barely even begun to operate.

The two maps included show the plans for this vast expansion, both in terms of the importation of labour by highway and the construction of needed energy supplies by pipeline to get to the planned five million bpd.

The first one shows the flow of goods and labour. The aim of TILMA and the SPP is the immediate creation of far more labour inflow from places such as Mexico and China, most of it ultimately destined to work in the tar sands. Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) began using 500 Chinese labourers on a "guest worker" program at their Horizons Oilsands Project last year. The SPP is a cost-effective means of importing needed labour and keeping costs down at the same time, through enacting 'labour mobility' and allowing non-citizen workers to be exploited at rates currently unreported.

The Alberta Federation of Labour points out that 2006 was the first year that the number of people admitted into Alberta who were not even allowed to apply to become landed immigrants (let alone citizens) exceeded the number of new immigrants. With agreements like the SPP in place, this will increase sharply. With TILMA, every time a labour right is undermined, it becomes the new bottom line.

According to Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour, "Employers are using temporary foreign workers as a way to suppress wages and working conditions and to avoid legitimate unions...we oppose the importation of hundreds of workers just to complete a job and then sending them back home. That is exploitation."

The truly daunting reality is that the production level being proposed will have no other option: the only way to keep up with projected production rates is to bring in people from outside.

The guest worker programs keep non-status workers in camps where they are not allowed visitations by any union. The only means by which such a "guest" will be allowed to stay beyond the term of their contract (up to 24 months) is if the employer applies, not the individual. Figures on pay and to whom it is delivered are not available and have not yet been obtained by organized labour in Alberta--we simply do not know how much migrant workers in the tar sands are being paid.

The "guest workers" may not end up only in the camps. The proposed size of tar sands expansion is such that constructing infrastructure for vast new energy "inputs" will take thousands of workers as well. Two pipelines of various gas are needed "in" to the tar sands for every pipeline going "out."

The energy needed to go into the tar sands are slated to come from the natural gas in such places as Alaska's north slope, coal-fired mega plants in Alberta, proposed nuclear reactors in the Peace Region and near Whitecourt, along with the industrialization of the Mackenzie Valley (and much more). The outward shipping of bitumen-sludge (later converted to mock oil) entails corridors across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and more, all the way to Texas and Louisiana. These schemes, in particular the one known as the Keystone Pipeline headed by TransCanada, is already causing the AFL to warn of dire consequences for job loss and deregulation of currently union-run operations.

The other corridor for sending sludge to refineries is slated to be across British Columbia, over the lands of the Carrier, Gixtsan, Haisla, Tsimshian and other unceded nations to a yet-to-be-constructed port to operate out of Kitimat, where oil could theoretically be shipped to California, Japan and China. The same port would serve to import "diluent" from Russia, a kerosene-like substance used to make the thick mud of bitumen flow like oil in a pipe.

"Pipeline ruptures happen, they're inevitable," says Gerald Amos of the Haisla Nation from Gitamaat Village on the Coast of B.C., where the construction of a Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) port is being planned.

"We just don't know the location yet...All of the proponents of the Gateway project and all the other pipelines which would mean more tanker traffic here point out that we've had tanker traffic here, big ships coming in for about 40 to 50 years now. I think you are talking about a substantially different ball game when you talk about supertankers."

This project, the "Enbridge Gateway," is currently delayed due to lawsuits launched by seven First Nations, Indian Act-mandated governments and the China National Petroleum Company's withdrawal from the project.

Other pipelines heading southward are the Alberta Clipper Project and the Spearhead Expansion Project, also led by Enbridge, a self-described "leader in energy transportation." In June of this year, the first new refinery in the United States in decades was announced. The map shows only some of the refineries planning to receive tar sands bitumen.

Under the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, every single project in the Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River tar sands region has been approved. TILMA will streamline the regulations in line with these projects across all of B.C. and Alberta. It will also mean the elimination of a long-time moratorium on oil and gas offshore tankers on the central coast of B.C.

Kitimat and Gitamaat Village, currently host to major Gray and Humpback whale migration, would see 330 super tankers of oil and gas a year migrating offshore, according to the Dogwood Initiative. Nations up and down the proposed corridor would see a loss of forest cover in areas where giant grizzlies still roam near ranchlands.

The oil and gas going to and from the tar sands would cross rivers and streams and the tankers will come near 1,000 salmon spawning areas. Upon completion, the entire 1,200-plus kilometre pipeline systems would provide 75 full-time jobs. Enbridge has quietly shifted gears towards building the infrastructure to send the current bump in oil production to Texas, promising to complete this project at a later date.

That later date may well coincide with the B.C. government's other "Pacific Gateway Strategy," designed to use TILMA, the SPP, the 2010 Olympics and vast tar sands export growth to make the West Coast of Canada a major hub of de-regulated trade with Asia.

It could soon be illegal and not 'merely' politically difficult to regulate how these constructions go ahead. Environmental regulation, revenue for nations who approve the use of their lands, taxation for reclamation purposes, requirements on unionization for the construction--all of these things are being legislated and signed away.

With TILMA, Alberta and B.C. have united to ensure that the oil dug out of the earth is sent south, at an incomprehensible rate. The primary legacy of the project will be run-away climate emissions, the second fastest rate of deforestation on earth, the dismantling of previously won workers' rights, a sacrifice area in Alberta the size of Florida and the removal of meaningful democratic oversight at the community level.

The usual critiques of the SPP and TILMA are not inaccurate. Placing new developments in a global context, however, changes our understanding of what is driving this latest set of deals. Instability around the planet, dwindling reserves of oil, a collapsing American dollar and more are exposing imperial economic structures to a level of insecurity unknown in a generation. By lurching headlong in 2003 towards the Albertan tar sands, the US has made the rising price of oil work to their advantage, rather than its opposite; when the price of oil goes up, those who invest heavily in expensive, unconventional oil gain a larger foothold in market share.

The SPP and TILMA have been drawn up to increase and integrate this into a decades-long strategy for North American economic stability, a strategy that does not address our dependence on oil. Understanding the true nature of these plans allows people to make informed decisions about what to do during the rapid changes in energy politics--changes that will affect the entire population of North America (and the planet) for decades to come.

SPP Tar Sands

NAFTA Trade Corridors

Letting the Wildcat Out of the Bag

dru — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:05:31 +0000

Alberta's Averted Energy Tradesworker General Strike and the Fall Wildcat Walk-Outs

There can be little doubt that this summer and fall yielded a significant page in Albertan Labour history. For the first time in 30 years, a collection of unions representing construction workers came to the brink of a general strike. No such strike vote has been carried out among Albertan tradeworker unions since the inception of Alberta's 1979 Labour Code. The Labour Code makes a strike prohibitively difficult in Alberta due to the requirement that 60 per cent of unions with unsettled contracts agree to a strike vote in order for any union to be able to stage any work action. This means that no union can legally hold a strike vote on its own. As noted by Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan last July, the vote "speaks to how strongly rank and file construction workers feel, that they haven't been treated fairly.”

Although a sector-wide construction strike did not actually happen, there are a few significant developments from the strike vote. The first is that, in an attempt to buy off union support, industry gave the concession of agreeing to recompense employees for the unpredictable impacts of inflation upon the wages of workers under contract. Inflation in Alberta is rapidly offsetting the high salaries being earned by workers in all sectors. The fact that industry would agree to offset these wildly unpredictable rates is an indication of the alarm caused by rumours of the impending work disruptions within tar sands sites.

In addition, the fall-out from the strike vote was a series of wildcat strike actions, for the most part carried out illegally by hundreds of rank-and-file carpenters in open challenge of the Alberta government's hostile labour laws. Although this wave of worker direct action lasted little more than a week, they have prompted organized labour in Alberta to mount a Supreme Court challenge of the Alberta Labour Code, a process which has the possibility of removing one of the biggest stumbling blocks for organized labour in Alberta.

In case you missed all of this over the summer, the timeline below runs through the basic points of interest of the averted “summer of strikes,” culminating in September's economic disruption of the energy sector.

July 4 – A strike vote is held by five unions representing 25,000 trade workers at energy industry worksites across Alberta. The representative unions of boilermakers, plumbers and pipefitters, electrical workers, millwrights and refrigerator mechanics hold simultaneous ballots in Calgary, Edmonton and Fort McMurray. Points of contention are largely “quality of life issues,” including conditions at work camps and the demand that employers provide flights for workers from their homes in Calgary to Fort McMurray rather than transporting them by bus. In addition, a predominant issue is the length of the contract offered by industry to these tradesworker unions; industry has offered a contract for four years, while the traditional standard, owing to uncertainty of inflation, has been for two years. Although the contract would offer wage increases alternating between 6.5 per cent and five per cent annually over four years, the unions argue that these increases would be eroded by skyrocketting inflation--inflation has increased by five per cent over the first six months of 2007 alone.

The unions had been without a contract since the expiry of the previous agreement in May. At stake is $100 billion worth of construction projects at oil sands sites in northeastern Alberta. The ballots are sealed until after an ironworkers union can hold its vote on July 13.

July 21 – Emergency Health workers in Calgary vote by a margin of 99 per cent for a strike, citing wage rates lower than other municipal workers. This vote, coupled with the looming strike vote of tradesworkers, prompts the Globe and Mail to warn of a “summer of strikes” throughout the West after rotating wildcat strikes also begin among 6,000 civic workers in Vancouver.

July 23 – Results of the trades strike vote are presented to the Alberta Labour Relations Board. Electrical workers vote 94 per cent in favour, while the boilermakers and plumbers vote 99 per cent and 97 per cent in favour respectively. Millwrights vote 90 per cent in favour and refrigeration mechanics vote 85 per cent in favour. However, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers(IBEW) spokesman Barry Salmon downplays the idea of a general construction workers strike, suggesting that what may happen would be rotating walk-outs.

"It just shows the level of frustration among trades," says Salmon, “This is all about getting back to the table.”

August 10 – The unions representing plumbers and pipefitters, millwrights and refrigeration mechanics agree on settlement terms with the Construction Labour Relations Association, which represents construction contractors and industry. The plumbers and pipefitters, and millrights accept the four-year wage increase offer (alternating between 6.5 per cent and five per cent for the following four years), although manage to gain adjustment to inflation for these wage increases. The unions representing refrigeration mechanics enter into a memorandum of settlement.

August 14 – The unions representing electricians formalize a memorandum in respect to the settlement framework, largely accepting the same conditions as the plumbers and pipefitters, and millwrights.

August 23 – Following the settlements on August 14, and August 10, hundreds of electrical workers and pipefitters rally in Fort McMurray in protest of their union leadership's resolution with contractors. “My thoughts on a four-year contract is it’s too long,” says worker Shane Brooks, referring to the skyrocketting housing costs in Alberta, as well as the potential erosion of their wage increases due to run-away inflation. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in four years from now.”

August 30 - A settlement is reached with the Labourers' Union, based upon the plumbers and pipefitters’ settlement of August 10. This brings the number of represented tradesworker group settlements to 17 out of 25, although the carpenters and roofers have yet to vote on the offer. Under Alberta's labour laws, if 19 trades groups reach agreement, the rest are stripped of their right to strike. But union leaders who have accepted the settlement claim that the concession by contractors to guarantee indexing of wage increases to inflation is a significant victory. “There wasn't much more to get,” says IBEW local spokesman Barry Salmon.

Results of ratification votes from the electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, and labourers are expected by September 10.

September 2 – The Alberta Federation of Labour threatens to take the Alberta government to court over the the 1979 Labour Relations Code, the Alberta law that, according to AFL President Gil McGowan, "was designed to make it almost impossible for [construction] workers to go on strike." Under the labour law, no strikes can be allowed for tradespeople if agreements are reached with 75 per cent of the bargaining units in the construction industry. McGowan's warning comes after a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in favour of B.C. healthcare workers in June. The Supreme Court ruled that the right to join a union and the right to collective bargaining were protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

September 5 – Two months after the strike vote by the five tradesworker unions, 4,000 carpenters and 100 roofers who had not been among the five trade groups to make a strike vote on July 4 vote to strike by a margin of 97 per cent. A strike notice is served to the Alberta Labour Relations Board, with job actions scheduled to take place on September 8.

September 7 – The Alberta Labour Relations Board rules that the strike vote by carpenters is illegal, claiming that another union representing labourers had not served a strike notice at the same time as the carpenters. The Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers vows to carry out work stoppages in spite of the ruling.

September 10 – Wildcat strikes, focused moreso on the Labour Relations Board (LRB) than energy corporations, begin at energy industry worksites throughout Alberta. Two hundred and fifty workers walk off the job at a Petro Canada refinery project east of Edmonton and others stage a walk-out at the Long Lake project southeast of Fort McMurray. Other walk-outs occur in Calgary. The industry-backed Construction and Labour Relations Association (CLRA) responds by obtaining cease and desist orders from the LRB. Workers continue picketing outside of the LRB offices.

Electrical workers vote 50.8 per cent in favour of the CLRA settlement, although several workers claim that they never received ballots for the mail-in ballot process. Regardless, this ratification ultimately signals that, under Alberta's Labour code, no other tradesworker unions, including the carpenters who rejected the settlement, have the right to strike until the end of the contract in 2011. Meanwhile, plumbers and pipefitters vote against ratification of the CLRA settlement.

September 11 – After hundreds of tradespeople walk off job sites for the second day in a row, hundreds converge upon the Alberta legislature to demand the right to strike under Alberta Labour legislation. Alberta Regional Council of Carpenters and Allied Workers President Martyn Piper distances himself from the wildcat strikes, claiming that he has ordered workers to return to work. Piper's back to work order comes in response to Alberta Employment Minister Iris Evans' government order prohibiting pickets “at any general construction site or maintenance site in Alberta.”

The Petro-Canada upgrader project in Edmonton remains closed after other unionized tradespeople refuse to cross the carpenters' picket-line.

September 12 and 13 – In spite of the government's 'cease and desist' order, as well as a back-to-work order from the Carpenters' Union, walk-outs and protests continue throughout the week. Outside of a Petro-Canada refinery in Fort Saskatchewan, workers stage what they call a “social gathering.” Workers wave plackards bearing the slogans “don't ever give up," “united we stand, divided we beg," and “liberate Alberta, not Afghanistan” at passing traffic. Hundreds of other union workers protest in front of Edmonton's courthouse.

Frustration with union leadership seems evident at these walk-outs. "All the workers are here by their own choice, not by the union's choice," says a scaffold worker taking part in a rally at the Edmonton courthouse. "My union told me to go back to work and let them deal with it." A speaker at the demonstration who urges workers to return to work is booed off the stage.

CBC News reports that 200 unionized employees working at a steam injection site near Long Lake have been fired after clocking off work to take a first-aid course. The workers were apparently given two hours to remove their belongings from the work camp.

September 14 – Although information pickets and protests continue in Edmonton, Fort Saskatchewan and elsewhere, including a march by 300-400 workers on the Alberta legislature, the actions are much smaller than earlier in the week. Workers have begun to return to work. Union leaders and industry negotiators both welcome the end of work stoppages.

Members of the union representating Labourers (Local 92 of the Labourers International Union of North America) vote against a strike by a margin of 66 per cent, thereby ratifying the four-year contract offer by the energy industry. This brings the total number of tradeworker unions voting in favour of the contract to 20 out of 25, well over the 75 per cent required to render a strike action by any union illegal under Alberta law.

September 22 – In a weekend demonstration, hundreds of workers stage a mock funeral of the Alberta Labour Relations Code. Says Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan: “Alberta's labour laws don't facilitate collective bargaining, they discourage it...It's not only wrong; It's now illegal.”

October 1 – Four Construction unions mount a constitutional challenge to Alberta's Labour Relations laws on the basis that it violates workers' rights to freedom of assembly.

Although most tradesworker unions, including most of the unions which had initially voted for strike preparation in July, have ratified settlements with the energy industry, carpenters, roofers, and plumbers and pipefitters remain holdouts against this contract.

Strike Vote