Alternatives International

Alternatives' Days 2010

Feroz MEHDI — 2010-06-02T18:49:45Z

Alternatives welcomes you to the 16th edition of Alternatives' Days to participate with hundreds of other activists in debates, discussions and activities grouped this year under the title: Solidarity in Action!

Reserve your place NOW for the 16th annual Alternatives' Days!!

Dates : 27, 28, 29 August 2010
Place : Camp Papillon de St-Alphonse de Rodriguez

Limited space, reserve now!!
Call: (514) 982-6606 poste 2221

Once again this year the activities will be held in a summer camp, Camp Papillon de St-Alphonse de Rodriguez in the Laurentiens. In addition to the hundreds of activists from here, there will be a dozen or more international activists and will reflect and strategize together on ways to act on important themes such as ecology, human rights and social justice to construct a society we want for us.

Bring your family along! There will be arrangements for daycare services!

Preliminary Program

Three main themes are proposed for intellectual debates towards understanding the issues leading to strategizing actions and ways of your participation.

A. Climate Justice

Following the abject failure of governments to propose a political solution to climatic crisis during the Copenhagen conference of December 2009, Bolivia organized a People's Summit on Climate and Rights of the Earth. From April 20 to 22, 2010 over 35 000 delegates representing social movements, First Nations, NGOs from 146 countries came together during this Summit to discuss ways to save our planet from the catastrophe caused to its environment by the neoliberal markets and the capitalist system.

The next people's summit is scheduled for December this year in Cancun. Moving towards that rendezvous, people and movements all over the world will organize various actions on the issue of climate justice through referendums, popular consultations and tribunals to judge the country, people and governments responsible for destruction of the climate and aggravating climate change. The capitalist system will be on the bench of the accused.

Activities:

1. Opening Panel: From Copenhagen to Cancun: While the governments are sacrificing the planet for profits, people are organizing. In Quebec, a coalition for climate justice is a necessity.

2. Film screening: Petropolis

3. Preparing the International Tribunal for environmental crimes

4. Campaign 1: Europe-Canada Free trade: It smells Tar Sands!

5. Mining Companies: Digging our graves with impunity

Panelists (To be completed): Amir Khadir, Louise Vandelac, Ian Angus, Christophe Aguiton, Georges Lebel and representatives from environment groups in Canada and other countries.

B. Quebec/Canada: Democracy Now!

Since the coming to power of the present Conservative Canadian government we are witnessing intensifying attacks on democratic institutions, practices, rights and liberties. At the national level we are witnessing decreasing transparency on governmental actions, muffling of dissenting voices, ignorance and disrespect for decisions made by international tribunals, growing disrespect for international laws and restrictions on freedom of expression and media. These systematic attacks are aimed at shutting the voices of dissent, difference of opinions and views critical of the Canadian government policies.

While many organizations and people are mobilizing on this issue in Quebec, the government of Charest is preparing to steal the middle class and the poor sections of the society of $3.5 billion which is four times more it is collecting from the big companies ($800 million). Its time to mobilize!

Activities:

1. Opening Panel: No Democracy without Voices

2. Fighting for Public Services

3. Combating the rise of the Christian Right

Panel (To be completed): Louis Roy, Micheline Thibeaudot, Jacques Letourneau, Raphael Canet, Alexa Conradi

C. Movement for Human Dignity

Millions of people the world over are subjected to discrimination and have been deprived a life of dignity. Freedom to be able to live a life of dignity, to be able to choose ways of living and working is a prerequisite to dignified human existence. Among these millions we find the aboriginals, Dalits, bonded laborers, migrant workers colonized people to name a few categories. This is a movement for dignity, freedom, rights, justice and actions for the discriminated of the world with special focus on Palestine and the settler colony of Israel internationally and rights of migrant workers and people of the First Nations in Quebec.

Activities:

1. Opening Panel: Combating New Colonialism

2. BDS Campaigns in Quebec and Canada

3. Mobilization for World Education Forum in Palestine and the WSF-2011 in Dakar

4. Twenty Years after OKA!

5. Migrant workers rights in Quebec

Panel (To be completed): Pierre Beaudet, Franklin Midi, Mireille France Fanon, representatives from CUPW, CJPP, Tadamon, Mustafa Heneway, CSQ, First Nations, etc.

In addition to all these, there will be cultural shows, workshops on rooftop gardens, international internship programs, tools of communication.

Flotilla Raid

Alternatives Information Center — 2010-06-02T17:54:04Z

On the morning of 31 May 2010, the Israeli navy perpetrated a crime against humanity when it attacked the Freedom Flotilla, bound for Gaza, sailing in international waters. On the boats were 750 people from 40 different countries, among them 44 parliamentarians and politicians.

Based on the initial news after the attack, the number killed is 16 and at least 60 are wounded. All the victims are international activists who helped organize this campaign to end Israel's three year siege on Gaza.

This attack against the Freedom Flotilla is an astounding crime in meaning and dimension. It is an attack against unarmed civilian ships. This is a crime and an act of piracy in international waters. It is a clear breach of international laws and agreements. Despite Israel's redeployment from Gaza in 2005, it has continued to impose a comprehensive siege against the 1.5 million people living in Gaza.

The Israeli government would not have the courage to commit such a crime if the international community were brave enough to face Israel's continuous violations of international law, if it had the power and will to force Israel to end its siege and to stop its aggressive actions against the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian people, and if the same international community had the power to take action and enforce the necessary procedures to push Israel to end its
occupation and to implement international resolutions. But this very clear crime against the Freedom Flotilla, which led to international deaths and dozens of injured, comes under the cover and support of the Netanyahu government by the American administration and the EU, and silence from the Arab regimes.

Meanwhile, Israel continues its settlement policy in Jerusalem and its aggression against the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It is the governments of the international community and their political cover which allow Israel to continue its action and aggression as a state above and beyond the law.

The Alternative Information Center (AIC) places complete responsibility with the Israeli government and we request that the international, legal, political and humanitarian bodies move immediately to condemn this crime and to hold Israel accountable for its harsh actions. We also request the immediate lifting of the siege on Gaza so supplies can enter without any conditions.

In this context the AIC also calls for civil society organizations in Israel to move immediately to express their refusal, disgust and condemnation for this crime.

Now is the moment for the international community to raise its voice against these aggressive policies, it is the moment to take immediate political and legal action to hold Israel to account for its crimes, it is the moment to lift the siege against Gaza, it is the moment to force Israel to implement international resolutions, to end the occupation and to recognize the international rights of the Palestinian people. If this does not happen more blood will be shed.

The Alternative Information Center is a Jerusalem-based partner of Alternatives International.

The Alternative Information Center (AIC) is an internationally oriented, progressive, joint Palestinian-Israeli activist organization. It is engaged in dissemination of information, political advocacy, grassroots activism and critical analysis of the Palestinian and Israeli societies as well as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The AIC strives to promote full individual and collective social, economic, political and gender equality, freedom and democracy and a rejection of the ideology and praxis of separation.

NGO MONITOR-ing

Joel Balsam — 2010-06-02T17:54:02Z

An investigation into NGO Monitor's participation in the de-funding of Canadian human rights organizations Kairos and Alternatives.

At the end of August 2009, an Israeli-based non-governmental organization (NGO) called NGO Monitor wrote a letter to the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) identifying 33 Canadian organizations that exemplified “the emergence of an anti-Semitic global movement”. This list included smaller organizations, such as Alternatives and the Canadian Arab Federation, as well as larger ones like Oxfam-Quebec and World Vision Canada. Unfortunately for many of the organizations listed, the weight of NGO Monitor's influence likely played a role in the federal government's decision— via the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)— to in some cases delay renewal of long-standing subsidies and in others cut funding altogether.

NGO Monitor was created in response to the UN World Conference on Racism of 2001 in Durban, South Africa. President of NGO Monitor, Gerald Steinberg, explained in a conference held by the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs (JCPA) that NGOs, especially at Durban, “use the legal system around the world to promote their political agenda – the isolation of Israel through these cases and the branding of Israel as a war criminal”.

As an NGO itself, NGO Monitor is less constrained in this debate than most. Since it is privately funded, it is free of public funding regulations. In his 2005 article “Monitoring the Monitor”, Jewish writer and critic of NGO Monitor Leonard Fein writes that NGO Monitor is “an organization that believes that the best way to defend Israel is to condemn anyone who criticizes it… all NGOs— NGO Monitor no less than Human Rights Watch— have an agenda” and none of them are beyond criticism. NGO Monitor's agenda is formed in part by its mother organization, the JCPA, and in part by its donors, who are primarily American family foundations. Dore Gold, President of the JCPA, is the former advisor to Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu (1st office). He has refuted calling Palestine “occupied” and is, in direct conflict with United States policy, a defender of Israeli settlements.

United Nations Resolution 242, which calls for an abandonment of the “territories occupied” in 1967 has expanded into further condemnations of Israel under international law. In response to these accusations, the JCPA “seeks to present Israel's case” against the international legal criticism of Israel, or “lawfare,” which NGO Monitor says is “the exploitation of courts in democratic countries in order to harass Israeli officials with civil lawsuits and criminal investigations for "war crimes," "crimes against humanity," and other alleged violations of international law”.

NGO Monitor wishes to debate with NGOs and welcomes them to the discussion, as explained in this statement sent to this journalist upon request for an interview. Managing Editor Naftali Belanson specified that this statement be placed in full:

Free speech, along with transparency and accountability, are key elements for a functioning democracy. To promote the informed debate and discussion that are essential to democracy and pluralism, NGO Monitor provides documented information on the activities and funding processes for powerful NGOs. While not taking a position on specific legislation or procedures, NGO Monitor generally supports initiatives that increase transparency and accountability in government funding processes. Attempts to portray our well-documented and detailed research as a threat to free speech are themselves an effort to block free speech and democratic debate, while diverting attention from the substance of NGO Monitor's analyses.

Otherwise put, NGO Monitor conducts content analysis of the websites and public reports of publicly-funded NGOs and submits the reports of their findings to governments. They do not take positions on “specific legislation or procedure”, i.e. international law or regulations placed on NGOs within their own region. Instead, they support “initiatives to increase transparency and accountability in government funding processes”. Initiatives have thus far included the August 2009 submission to the CPCCA, an oft-updated list of NGOs who criticize Israel on NGO Monitor's website and advocacy through private lobbying.

Gerald Steinberg stressed a willingness for an open debate with NGOs when he said: “We do not claim and our agenda is not to prevent NGOs from functioning or to undermine the important role that many NGOs do play in civil society, but we do think that it is important to present ethical and moral principles – nobody gets a free ride.” In Canada at least, the contrary is the rule. NGO Monitor's criticism of specific NGOs and their subsequent demands that CIDA stop supporting these NGOs infers a willful attempt to incapacitate.

The first and most publicized funding cut by CIDA was KAIROS Canada, a social justice organization comprised of 11 church groups, including the Anglican, Mennonite, and United Churches of Canada. Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda, who made the final decision to deny KAIROS' request for funding of $7.1 million over the next 4 years, said of the cut in funding after 35 years of steady subsidization, “tough choices will have to be made”.

KAIROS has opposed the Canadian government on Albertan oil sands development, the Colombian free trade agreement, and its support for Israel's 2008-9 assault on Gaza. NGO Monitor did not feel it necessary to include KAIROS in the 2009 CPCCA submission, but there is an extensive report on the Christian organization's “demonization” of Israel on NGO Monitor's website.

Gerry Barr, President and CEO of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC), which represents over 100 NGOs, said that “KAIROS will just be the first of many rights advocates who when their turn comes will receive their phone call about their lack of fit. Only the silent will qualify.” Critics of the decision to cut KAIROS' funding have also come from the opposition. NDP Leader Jack Layton said this of the funding cut: “It's reprehensible. It reminds me of the things we used to see from the Harris government.”

CPCCA member and Liberal MP Bob Rae called the decision by the Conservative Government “truly shocking.” NDP MP Ed Broadbent said this of the Harper government's policies of cutting the funding of human rights NGOs: “They are bringing what can only be described, it seems to me, as Middle East politics, directly into the heart of the centre. Never was there such interference before.”

In a speech in Israel for the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism, Jason Kenney, Minister of Immigration and ex-officio member of the CPCCA, defended the decision on KAIROS when he said: “We have de-funded organizations, most recently like KAIROS, who are taking a leadership roll in the boycott.” KAIROS has denied participation in the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign and Kenney has provided no proof for his claim.

At the 2009 anti-Semitism conference in Israel, Kenney, a devout Christian, also spoke of the growth of anti-Zionism as a new form of anti-Semitism. He called it “even more dangerous than the old European anti-Semitism". In response, Mary Corkery, Executive Director of KAIROS, said to the Toronto Star: "You cannot label someone anti-Semitic because they criticize a government." She has been vocal in her criticism of the government's “outrageous” decision.

According to Kenney, another reason that KAIROS was de-funded was their support of a Christian-Palestinian NGO called Sabeel, who he said “employs anti-Semitic themes and imagery”. On their website, Sabeel writes that it “does not think anyone, Jews or Palestinians have a particular vocation of suffering or should be stateless”. Despite believing in a two-state solution, Sabeel— with advice from NGO Monitor— has been labeled anti-Semitic by the Conservatives. The NGO Monitor's report on Sabeel quotes Sabeel's president, Naim Ateek, as saying: "Israel is creating Bantustans (homelands, reservations) for the Palestinians and an Israeli form of apartheid that is much worse than what was practiced in South Africa.” The accusation that Israel is creating Bantustans is akin to a statement made in the Guardian on April 19, 2002 by present-day Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff: "When I looked down at the West Bank, at the settlements like Crusader forts occupying the high ground, at the Israeli security cordon along the Jordan river closing off the Palestinian lands from Jordan, I knew I was not looking down at a state or the beginnings of one, but at a Bantustan, one of those pseudo-states created in the dying years of apartheid to keep the African population under control."

Similarly criticized for being “intensely hostile to Israel”, Alternatives' CIDA funding was suspended without notice. Alternatives learned of CIDA's tabled cut through a December 5th, 2009 article in the National Post. Alternatives has received $2.4 million annually from CIDA and is involved in the fight against climate change in Haiti, the rights of women and minorities in Iraq, the access to communication and information technology in the Democratic Republic of Congo, rural development in Afghanistan, and promoting workers rights in Central America, but Alternatives “does not fit with CIDA's current priorities”.

According to The Jewish Tribune, a Canadian weekly, NGO Monitor broke the story first. NGO Monitor's ability to know this information before taxpayers— and even before Alternatives— is “intriguing,” says Feroz Mehdi, Coordinator for Alternatives International, the umbrella organization that includes Alternatives Montreal and Alternatives Quebec along with eight other Alternatives branches worldwide. Due to the frozen, Alternatives' Quebec City office was forced to close its doors.

Alternatives and KAIROS have continued to function and are actively seeking alternative forms of funding. “They haven't stopped us and we're getting stronger,” says Darren Shore, Communications Officer for Alternatives Montreal. He continues, “We have a membership drive that is already producing results. We are joining forces with civil society organizations in Canada to push back against the repressive policies of the federal government. We will continue to encourage participatory citizenship with our events, including the Journées Alternatives and the World Education Forum in Israel/Palestine.”

Joel Balsam is an Alternatives intern and student journalist on Concordia Univeristy's The Link.

Photo: flickr/axe

ART THREAT!!

Ezra Winton — 2010-06-02T17:53:59Z

Here are this month's top stories from Art Threat...

Elvis Costello cancels shows in Israel

“It is a matter of instinct and conscience,” writes internationally celebrated singer-songwriter Elvis Costello in an open letter reflecting on a landmark decision by Costello to cancel planned performances in Israel this summer.

Around the world in recent months a wave of high-profile artists are publicly expressing support for the Palestinian struggle for liberation and in opposition to Israeli apartheid policies against the Palestinian people. Artists globally are responding to the 2005 appeal from Palestinian civil society for a comprehensive campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel rooted in a similar campaign internationally that targeted the apartheid regime in South Africa. Click here to read on...

500 Years of Resistance comic book documents indigenous struggle

The artistic style of Gord Hill is one of a man less obsessed with art than that of a man who desperately needs you to understand the weight of stories which must be told. A self proclaimed warrior and member of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation , Hill has spent a lifetime defending his people and his territory, telling stories through art, writing, carving, and activism. His latest project, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book is a documentation of the fighting spirit and ongoing resistance of the indigenous people of both North and South America. Click here to read on...

The water agenda: an interview with filmmaker Liz Marshall

There has been sudden explosion in documentaries looking at the problems and politics of water. Films like Water Life, Blue Gold, Thirst, Flow, The Water Frontand others have focused their attention towards a contemporary issue facing the whole planet: access to clean water and water sustainability. Liz Marshall's new documentary Water on the Table focuses in even closer, following water rights advocate Maude Barlow as she tirelessly fights, lobbies, talks, and debates her way toward a future where the world will secure accessible, clean and sustainable water resources for all. This is an urgent issue, as urgent as fossil fuels, and thinking otherwise is to dream in the plenitude of the west. Water is running out. Water is being privatized, commodified, bottled and packaged like cream cheese and water is being fought over. Many are already desperately going without and many are sketching out policies that will spell a future of water-as-commodity. Click here to read on...

Giant plastic six-pack rings strangle public sculptures

Last week giant plastic six-pack rings strangled public sculptures around Vancouver. Initiated by the Plastic Pollution Coalition and developed by Vancouver-based ad agency Rethink, this stunt presented downtown commuters with visual protests against the mass consumption of single-use plastic. Click here to read on...

Raspberries for Monsanto Eggplants

GRAIN — 2010-06-02T17:53:57Z

Monsanto's plans to push genetically modified (GM) food crops in Asia ran into a wall on February 9, 2010 when India's Environment Minister put a moratorium on the introduction of a variety of GM brinjal (eggplant) containing Monsanto's patented Bt gene.

China too has been hesitant to approve GM food crops, notably GM rice. It appears that these Asian governments, both outspoken proponents of GM agriculture, are not only feeling the heat from their people's strong resistance to GM food crops but are also being forced to think twice about turning their seed supplies over to Monsanto and the other foreign transnational corporations (TNCs) that control the global GM seed market. What they seem to be saying is, “Yes, we want GM seeds, but we want our public institutions to be involved in their development to safeguard the national interest.” It's a pretty hollow argument, given how “public” research is in bed with corporate interests these days and how removed GM agriculture is from the needs of Asia's farmers. For Asia's small farmers is there really any difference between a national GM crop and a transnational one?

A fuzzy line between public and private in China

In his report imposing a moratorium on Bt brinjal, the Indian Environment Minister referred, amongst other things, specifically to India's lack of a “large-scale publicly funded biotechnology effort in agriculture” that can serve as a countervailing power to Monsanto, and pointed to China's publicly funded programme in GM, which he says is far ahead of India's. 1 The moratorium is thus in part intended to give India time to catch up with the TNCs and its neighbour, and the long-term path still points to GMOs. This was not what the local protests against Bt brinjal across India were about. They were against GM crops per se, not simply Monsanto's version. For the protesters, a strong national biotech programme is not going to shield Indian farmers from corporate profiteering and the other pitfalls of GMOs, as China's example shows.
China's biotech effort goes back to its National High Technology Research and Development Program (“863 Program”), launched in 1986, in which it shifted the orientation of the country's public agricultural research towards the commercialisation and patenting of research results in biotechnology. Through this programme, the Biotechnology Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), developed an insect-resistant Bt gene in the early 1990s, which it inserted into cotton. The rights to the Bt gene were then licensed exclusively to a spin-off company called Biocentury Transgene, which is controlled by the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Group, one of China's largest media and real-estate conglomerates, and Origin Agritech, a Chinese seed and pesticide company, registered in the British Virgin Islands, and whose stock is traded on the NASDAQ. Origin Agritech recently acquired the exclusive licence for a glyphosate-resistant gene developed by CAAS for use in soya beans, maize, cotton, rice and canola, which will compete with Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops.

The big difference between Biocentury Transgene's Bt cotton and Monsanto's Bt cotton, which was commercialised in China in 1997, is the price. With its cheaper seeds, Biocentury Transgene has taken control of 80 per cent of China's Bt cotton seed market, and it is expanding overseas into Vietnam, India, Pakistan and the Philippines. Yet in its dealings with farmers, Biocentury Transgene has been as ruthless as any multinational. According to the company, its “reputation in the seed industry has been built around … its technology licensing and tech fee collection mechanisms, as well as its pioneering actions to enforce intellectual property infringements of its technologies in China.” Its products are no different from those of the foreign multinationals either, as its Bt cotton seeds are causing the same problems for farmers in China as Monsanto's Bt cotton seeds have caused for farmers in India. Researchers have found that the widespread planting of Bt cotton in China is producing dramatic secondary pest outbreaks, increasing the use of pesticides, and saddling farmers with higher costs. Indeed, because of the problems with secondary pests brought about by the switch to Bt cotton, Bt cotton farmers in China were spending, by 2004, as much on pesticides as non-Bt farmers, and at least twice to three times as much on seeds.

Now the focus in China is on GM rice. At the end of 2009, the Chinese Biosafety Committee of the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture announced its approval of GM Bt rice for commercial cultivation. The main variety under consideration was a Bt rice developed by Huazhong Agricultural University (HAU), which has been developing GM rice under the 863 program since 1998. HAU still needs two more certificates from the Chinese authorities before it can bring its rice to market – and there's also the actual process of commercialisation to sort out. The University is more than likely to partner a private company for this last step, and this company will probably be Monsanto. In October 2009, HAU and Monsanto signed a major partnership for the commercialisation of GM crops.

“Monsanto's proven ability to commercialise and market new technology could enable our research to advance from laboratory concepts to products in the world market at a much accelerated pace”, said Professor Qifa Zhang, the scientist at HAU leading the development of its Bt rice.

Partnering to push GM in India

The line between public and private, national and transnational, is just as loose in India. In early May 2010, for instance, seed multinationals, domestic seed companies and the government's National Seeds Corporation joined forces to battle against the Andhra Pradesh State Government's attempt to put a cap on royalties that companies can charge on GM seed as “technology transfer” fees from farmers. All of these players are promoting and selling Bt cotton seeds, and raking in profits even as farmers struggle with a hand-to-mouth existence.

As for Bt brinjal, it has always been a shining example of the public–private partnership model and North–South cooperation advocated by the promoters of GMOs. The project was designed by the US government through a programme funded by USAID and led by Cornell University, called ABSP II. The partners involved include Monsanto's Indian avatar, MAHYCO, 5 which has licensed Monsanto's patented Bt genes to the project, India's Tamil Nadu Agriculture University (TNAU), the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS) in Dharwad, and the Indian Institute of Vegetable Research in Varanasi. The project also extends to Bangladesh, where the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute and the University of the Philippines–Los Baños have already been conducting field trials of Bt brinjal under memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with MAHYCO.

The public–private partnership still leaves the likes of Monsanto very much in control. As can be seen from the Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) between TNAU and MAHYCO of March 2005, the public partners supply the local germplasm, to be freely used, while MAHYCO/Monsanto supplies its transgenes, loaded with patents. When MAHYCO in its laboratory crosses its proprietary insect-tolerant Bt eggplant lines into the local farmers' varieties supplied by TNAU, the resultant progeny becomes the “product” of the company. TNAU gets some limited rights of breeding to adapt the new GM “product” for planting by local farmers, but the agricultural university is barred from using Monsanto's “product” as parental material for the production of commercial hybrids. In effect, through the Bt brinjal project, the private sector gets to tap into the privileged access that the public research institutes have to farmers' varieties, from which it can develop its own GM products; the universities may get either funds or training to pursue fancy biotech research; and the farmers, who were never asked about the research, get to watch from the sidelines as their local varieties are genetically modified, locked up with patents and turned over to a transnational seed company.

What is more, the ABSP II project has always been as much about changing public policies as about developing technology. Tightly linked to this project is the USAID-funded South Asia Biosafety Program (SABP), which is assisting the governments of Bangladesh and India to “streamline” their governance of biotechnology. The Parliament of India is due to consider two proposed pieces of legislation concerning GM that have emerged from the Program: first, a Seed Bill law to allow for the registration and marketing of GM seeds, and a second to set up a three-member biotechnology regulatory authority that can more quickly rubber-stamp GMO approvals. In Bangladesh, the Program hastened the development of a National Institute of Biotechnology Bill, which was tabled before Parliament in February 2010. If adopted these laws will open the door to the approval of many more GM crops.

So too will the changes to the culture of public research that the Bt brinjal project and other international GM cooperation programmes have deliberately fostered. They have facilitated a shift in public research towards partnerships with corporations and the patenting of research results. India, for instance, is developing legislation that would encourage public-sector scientists to apply for intellectual property rights on crop varieties developed through their public research programmes, based on a US model that has been heavily promoted in the country through the ABSP II project and other US-backed activities.

Asia's public agricultural research institutions are metamorphosing into private companies, and their central mandate, to serve their country's farmers, is fast becoming little more than an abstraction.

“Public” versus people's

The participation of public programmes in the push for GM crops is re-igniting a discussion on public research in Asia and bringing forward some fundamental questions. Whose interests are served when public research institutes devote their limited resources to GM crops? Who owns the varieties collected by and held in state agricultural universities and national gene banks? People had assumed that farmers' varieties in the national system would be safe from private companies. Yet, in the case of Bt brinjal, national agricultural universities supply a seed company in bed with Monsanto with local eggplant germplasm, and then, by virtue of an MTA and the insertion of Monsanto's patented Bt gene, that material becomes the company's property! The agriculture university is a mere conduit for Monsanto and other seed giants to take control of farmers' varieties, passing them to companies that have a vested interest in converting the original source of seeds – the farmers – into end-users and continual consumers of their GM products. Small wonder that an organic farmer in the Philippines, at a public forum organised against Bt talong (eggplant) on Earth Day 2010 in Makati City, pertinently asked, “Why aren't our own scientists on our side?”

People's pressure has so far kept GM food crops largely out of farmers' fields in Asia. But people haven't been able to stop GM crops from invading the fields and laboratories of the continent's public research institutions. These public spaces have thus become entry points for a corporate agenda that seeks to destroy the many local varieties that small farmers and their farming cultures have kept alive, which provide the basis for a future food system that can look after people's livelihoods and food needs. It is time to replant these fields, which belong to the people, with the diversity of local varieties that farmers have developed (at times with contributions from public scientists), and to move towards a public–grassroots partnership for research that supports non-GM farming options.

For more information or to show your support, go to the Grain Website.

Photo and article courtesy of GRAIN, a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Their support takes the form of independent research and analysis, networking at local, regional and international levels, and fostering new forms of cooperation and alliance-building. Most of their work is oriented towards, and carried out in, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Another disaster waiting?

Chris Kromm — 2010-06-02T17:53:54Z

Shell running "sister rig" in Gulf nearly identical to ill-fated Deepwater Horizon.

Despite an army of reporters and officials investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, one item has curiously escaped much attention: Shell Oil is running a nearly identical "sister rig" in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, which may have the same design flaws that led to the current unfolding disaster.

The Deepwater Nautilus rig was built just a year after Deepwater Horizon, in the same shipyard for the same company implicated in the April 20th disaster. It's also drilling in the same Mississippi Canyon prospecting area of the Gulf where Horizon, the rig being used by British Petroleum, met its demise.

Horizon and Nautilus were both built in South Korea by Hyandai Heavy Industries for Transocean Ltd., the largest offshore oil drilling contractor in the world. Transocean has its roots in Birmingham, Ala., where it spun off from Sonat, Inc. in 1993. Today — after a dizzying series of mergers and acquisitions— Transocean is incorporated in Switzerland, has locations in 20 countries, and boasts an unparalleled fleet of 136 offshore rigs.

With the state-of-the-art Deepwater rigs, Transocean sought to revolutionize the offshore drilling industry. With shallow water oil exploration seeing diminishing returns — and oil prices still climbing earlier in the decade — Transocean gave oil companies the rigs they needed to drill deeper and further in the ocean to realize energy profits. By 2007, Transocean had a world-leading 48 deep water rigs that it leased to oil companies like British Petroleum and Shell Oil.

Up until two weeks ago, Transocean's deep-water operations in the Gulf of Mexico seemed full of promise. Last September, Offshore magazine reported that Deepwater Horizon, leased by BP, had set a record by striking oil at the Keathley Canyon block in the Gulf of Mexico at 35,055 feet — making it the "deepest well ever drilled by the oil and gas industry." BP lauded the feet as a sign of good things to come:
"These material discoveries together with our industry leading acreage position support the continuing growth of our deepwater Gulf of Mexico business ..."
That optimism went up in smoke with Deepwater Horizon's explosion, calling into question the rest of Transocean's offshore projects — especially Horizon's sister rig, Deepwater Nautilus.

Nautilus is virtually identical to the ill-fated Horizon. Nautilus came first, launched in 2000 and touted to be first in a series of "Fifth Generation Deepwater" rigs that were to lead Transocean's "deeper and further" drilling strategy. Both were made by Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea, and their technical specifications read almost like carbon copies.

Nautilus is leased by Shell Oil, which — like BP with Horizon — aimed its drills in the Mississippi Canyon prospecting area, located in the central region of the Gulf of Mexico. This past March, Shell announced it had "struck black gold" in Mississippi Canyon blocks 391 and 392 — just miles to the west of block 252, where Horizon blew and unleashed its spill.

Nautilus' discovery led David Lawrence, Shell's executive vice president of exploration, to enthuse:
This discovery builds on a successful 2009 exploration program in the Gulf of Mexico, where Shell had discoveries at West Boreas, Vito and Cardamom Deep ... Shell has the technology, the expertise and a skilled, motivated workforce to expand oil and natural gas production in the US and worldwide.

But in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the future may not be so rosy for Shell and Deepwater Nautilus.

Given their nearly identical designs, Nautilus may suffer from the same design flaws that destroyed Horizon. For example, one possible explanation for the April 20 blowout is a failure in the "cementing" process that creates a seal between the pipe and the hole drilled into the ocean floor. Halliburton/KBR has been fingered as the company in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon; right now, Transocean's website merely lists "third party" as being responsible for Deepwater Nautilus' cementing.

It's also not clear whether Deepwater Nautilus, like its companion rig Horizon, lacks an automatic "acoustic trigger," a remote shut-off devise required on rigs in Brazil and Norway that some experts believe could have helped stave the release of gushing oil. The Department of Interior doesn't require acoustic triggers; Sen. Ben Nelson (D-FL) of Florida has asked for a review of the agency's policies for requiring additional back-up measures to cap spills.

Facing South's calls to Transocean and Shell Oil were not returned by the time this story went to press.

Concerns about Nautilus are compounded by recent reports of Transocean's checkered safety and reliability record. As the Wall Street Journal reported this week, Transocean's directors decided to forego executive bonuses in the wake of the deaths of four Transocean rig operators in 2009.

Even absent a Horizon-scale catastrophe, Nautilus has already had its share of dangerous incidents in the perilous world of deep-water drilling. In September 2005, Hurricane Rita pummeled Nautilus, sending the rig and its 45-member crew adrift at sea. Harrowing as that was, it wasn't Nautilus' worst scrape with disaster during hurricane season, as the industry website Rigzone reported at the time:
[Hurricane Rita] is not the first time the Deepwater Nautilus has been on the losing end of encounters with powerful Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. In September of last year Hurricane Ivan tore the rig from its Shell offshore location, one hundred sixty miles south of Mobile, Alabama. The rig was later found slightly damaged some seventy miles from its original drilling location. Three weeks ago Katrina sent the rig on another unplanned and unmanned eighty mile voyage leaving rig mooring lines, anchors and 3,200 feet of marine riser pipe on the ocean floor.

The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season starts June and is expected to have a higher-than-average number of storms.

http://www.southernstudies.org

Chris Kromm is director of the Institute for Southern Studies and publisher of its online magazine, Facing South, where this story originally appeared. www.southernstudies.org

Photo courtesy of Southern Studies.

Karzai Defeats Obama 2-1

Juan Cole — 2010-06-02T17:53:52Z

Afghanistan is already beginning to defeat Barack Obama. He came into office last year clearly hoping to find a way to move Hamid Karzai, the mercurial and ineffectual president of Afghanistan who only controls some 30 percent of the country, out of office in favor of someone more capable as a leader. Perhaps he had in mind the way the US allied with Kurds, Sunnis and other Shiites to dump Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister of Iraq in the first months of 2006. But Karzai fought back with all his considerable local resources, arranging to steal the presidential election of August 2009 and then to behave so extravagantly that he discouraged his only major challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, from even mounting a run-off challenge. The breathtaking boldness of this blatant set of slaps in the face of Washington and other international patrons astonished UN diplomat and former US ambassador Peter Galbraith, who went public with his criticisms of Karzai and got himself summarily fired.

Even as Karzai was stealing the election and shoring up his power by depending on his brothers and on cronies (who have been accused by some high US officials of being a drug cartel), he was continuing to reach out behind the scenes to his primary internal enemies, the old-time mujahidin (Gulbadin Hikmatyar's Islamic Party militia in the Pashtun East and the Haqqani Network of Jalal and Siraj Haqqani) and the Old Taliban of Mulla Omar. The US was opposed to such contacts, and some US military personnel saw Karzai's negotiations with people who were actively attempting to kill American soldiers little short of treasonous.

In contrast, Obama's plan for Afghanistan was a massive counter-insurgency effort, including the adding of tens of thousands of new troops and hard war fighting aimed at taking and holding vast swathes of territory. It is an audacious plan and its chance of success is about 10%. It is more or less opposed by Karzai, who expressed himself lukewarm about the first major demonstration project in Marjah, the success of which is still questionable.

Obama had tried and failed to dislodge Karzai by disparaging him, had opposed Karzai's negotiations with insurgents, and had imposed on the reluctant Karzai and enormous new military occupation of his own power base in the Pashtun West.
Relations got so bad that Karzai threatened to go over to the Taliban.
A few weeks ago in Washington, Obama finally backed down. He feted Karzai and made sure he felt wanted. He acquiesced in Kabul's outreach to the insurgents. He reconfigured his troop escalation as helpful pressure on the guerrillas to force them to the negotiating table.

Karzai mostly won, though he hadn't gotten the hated counter-insurgency plan cancelled and could still see his beloved Qandahar invaded and occupied by the white Christian Westerners this summer. Still, Obama's own plans for Afghanistan lay in tatters as he is forced to face the harsh limits on US capacity to shape a huge, craggy, tribal country half way around the world.

Radio Azadi reports (in Dari Persian) that Afghanistan's independent human rights commission was disappointed that the communiques coming out of the White House and Karzai's office about the meetings in Washington did not foreground the welfare of the actual people of Afghanistan, or human rights in that country, or improvements in the position of women.

For more Informed Comment, go to www.juancole.com

Juan R. I. Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009) and he also recently authored Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Photo by ISAF Public Affairs

Bad Times for the Good Doctor

Hassan Diab Support Committee — 2010-06-02T17:53:46Z

Dr. Hassan Diab is a sociology professor and a law-abiding Canadian citizen of Lebanese descent who lives in Ottawa. Until shortly before October, 2007, Hassan enjoyed an engaged and productive public life.

Hassan is wrongly accused by the French authorities of being responsible for a 1980 bombing near a synagogue on Rue Copernic in Paris. In October 2007, a reporter from the French daily newspaper Le Figaro approached Hassan after his class at the University of Ottawa. The reporter asked Hassan if he was aware that the French authorities believed he was responsible for the 1980 Paris attack. Hassan was astonished by the reporter's question and denied any responsibility, stating that any connection to the attack must be purely coincidental since “Hassan Diab” is a common name.

Thereafter, Hassan noticed that unidentified agents were following him, and someone attempted to break into his residence. He reported these incidents to the Ottawa police, but the intimidating and intrusive surveillance persisted. In spite of this, Hassan remained in Canada and continued his normal activities, including teaching at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. Later, Hassan learned that the agents who were following him were from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The Arrest

On November 13, 2008, the RCMP arrested Hassan in response to a request by France. He was initially denied bail and placed in detention.

Family members, friends, colleagues, and mentors who have known Hassan for many years are completely shocked by the French allegations. They affirm that Dr. Hassan Diab is a peaceful, hardworking, and dedicated academic who has never expressed radical or anti-Semitic views, and who has never been affiliated with a political organization. They fear that Hassan will become another victim of the “War on Terror”.

Hassan's new lawyer successfully appealed the original bail decision, which was quashed on Constitutional grounds. On April 1, 2009, after spending over four and a half months in detention, Hassan was freed on bail under very strict conditions. He lives under virtual house arrest, wears a GPS electronic ankle bracelet, and can only leave his home if accompanied by one of the five sureties who posted more than $250,000 in bail.

In July 2009, Dr. Diab was hired by Carleton University to teach a summer course. After teaching four sessions of the course, Dr. Diab's contract was abruptly terminated by the University administration without any explanation. The termination of Hassan's teaching contract represents a serious violation of the right of an accused person to the presumption of innocence, and the responsibility of a university to protect its autonomy from inappropriate political pressure.

At an evidentiary hearing in December, 2009, Dr. Diab's lawyer drew the court's attention to the fact that the French case relies heavily on unsourced intelligence of unknown and untestable reliability. He informed the court that intelligence experts are prepared to testify about the unsuitability of intelligence as courtroom evidence. In addition, world-renowned handwriting experts are prepared to refute evidence tendered by the French authorities as “demonstrably false”. On December 11, the judge ruled that the defence may call University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach to testify on the issue of intelligence as evidence. The defence may also file reports from all four handwriting experts, and won the right to call any two of these experts to testify at the extradition hearing.

The extradition hearing was scheduled to begin in January 2010. However, on December 18, 2009, the Crown Attorney requested an adjournment of the hearing to review the defence evidence. On May 17, 2010, the extradition hearing (scheduled for mid-June 2010) was thrown into limbo once again when the Crown announced that the French are withdrawing the handwriting evidence after it was discredited by experts for the defence. See Latest News for the most current information on Dr. Diab's case.

In the meantime, Dr. Diab is required to abide by very strict bail conditions, and is unable to find work. The delay in the extradition hearing is adding thousands of dollars to his legal expenses.

Why You Should Be Concerned

The little evidence France claims to have against Hassan is primarily bald, unsourced and conclusory intelligence information that would never be allowed as evidence in a Canadian criminal court. Intelligence is not subject to built-in procedural assurances of reliability and full disclosure, including the ability to confront and cross-examine witnesses. Therefore, the defence cannot demonstrate weaknesses or inaccuracies, and cannot argue against false claims.

Dr. Diab is in a double-bind. In Canada, his opportunities to challenge France's evidence, including intelligence, are extremely limited because an extradition is not a trial. In France, Hassan will find that the same secret intelligence can be used at trial, but once again his opportunities for challenge will be severely restricted; any attempt by the defence to cross-examine witnesses or call exonerating evidence will be looked upon unfavorably by the court. Essentially, neither Canadian nor French judges and prosecutors know the sources of the intelligence information, and there will be no opportunity to probe this material in either jurisdiction.

France has been criticized by human rights organizations for violating internationally recognized due process standards and for running unfair trials. In July 2008, Human Rights Watch issued a report entitled Preempting Justice: Counterterrorism Laws and Procedures in France, that details human rights violations in the French legal system. In practice, the French legal system allows a very loose evidentiary standard and grants sweeping powers and discretion to the examining magistrate (juge d'instruction). Charges can be brought based on evidence that would not withstand scrutiny under an adversarial legal process.

The nature of the allegations against Dr. Diab suggests that intelligence saturating the case comes from Middle Eastern sources. Canadians should ask themselves if they are prepared to accept that a Canadian citizen can be extradited based on information that may be the product of torture. This is particularly disturbing in light of the cases of Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati, Muayyed Nureddin, and Abousfian Abdelrazik, as well as the recent allegations that Canadian troops in Afghanistan handed detainees over to local authorities with the knowledge that they would likely be tortured.

France's botched handwriting analysis and fanciful interpretation of other evidence in Hassan's case carries a distinct odor of incompetence. Dr. Diab's lawyer has shown that French investigators tailored the intelligence in contradictory ways to make it fit the evidence. None of this should instill confidence in the intelligence information.

Shockingly, the Canadian Crown Attorney handling the extradition case seems to agree with France that secret intelligence can be used to extradite a Canadian citizen. However, Canadians should not let their legal principles become compromised by France's apparent indifference to legal and ethical quandaries arising from treating intelligence as evidence in criminal cases. Dr. Diab's case will establish a dangerous legal precedent if a Canadian court allows unsourced intelligence of unknown, untestable reliability to be used to extradite a Canadian citizen.

Speaking in December 2009 on the Carleton Midweek program about the Diab case, Paul Champ, a human rights lawyer with Amnesty International observed, “If the Canadian government and the French government are able to rely on this kind of intelligence information to support an extradition, I think it's yet another step in the erosion of civil liberties that we've been familiar with in Canada and in other countries for a very long time”. Canadians should be deeply troubled by the serious threat this case poses to their rights and freedoms.

To learn more about Hassan Diab's case and what we can do to help, click here.

Text courtesy of the Hassan Diab Support Committee.

Image: flickr/sighthound

Shooting Film, Not Guns

Frédéric Dubois — 2010-06-02T17:53:32Z

The main take-home lesson in the film is that “instead of carrying guns, children can learn to carry cameras,” says Mohammed Chaloob.

On a windy afternoon, two weeks ago, the GDP web documentary HQ was visited by Mohammed Chaloob and Zuhair Al-Jazairy. One is a documentary-film and theatre director, and the other, editor-in-chief the of the Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Irak) press agency, founded by the UNDP and Reuters. They're both from Iraq, visiting Canadian institutions and NGOs that work with advanced media. After visiting the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, local newspapers and many social and cultural groups in and around Montreal, the filmmakers were ready to get some insights into the NFBs expertise in web documentary production and distribution.

They came to the National Film Board to get a deeper understanding of how we developed the GDP multimedia documentary, but they left us feeling as if we had learned as much as they had from the exchange.

We introduced the GDP project by explaining the theme, the team and then showing them four excerpts of the larger project. We showed them Poetic Justice, Rough Road, “The north is suffering” and Song for the New Depression. They asked to watch Poetic Justice twice so as to fully inhale Marjolaine Beauchamp's beautiful spoken work.

Their amazement triggered our own interest even more. And so came our questions to them. Why Canada? “We find it interesting to observe different nationalities living together in this country. We also wanted to see how models can be adapted.”

Al-Jazairy and Chaloob expressed appreciation of how the GDP project was trying to document the many human impacts of the economic crisis as it is happening. “Catching turning points is what interests me. This happened for me when museums started to get looted in Iraq's capital in April 2003,” said Al-Jazairy. The media editor, author of many books and occasional documentary film director had been living in exile in London for a number of years before returning to Baghdad in the aftermath of the US-led invasion.

“I also wanted to document how kids deal with war, and how events had shaped their dreams,” he said, while emphasising the constraints in which he was working – constraints that make our own situation look easy. He related how he had encountered violence and fear soon after his return to his homeland. “My team was captured and then released. It became dangerous. Cameras couldn't be used publicly anymore. People came to the camera to shout and intimidate. We simply couldn't stay in the streets for any longer.” He decided to switch tactics and asked the children of Baghdad to make drawings based on their dreams. Drawings became ersatz material for documentary filmmaking. “Kids drew scenes of war…” Al-Jazairy remembers. Their dreams for the future seem to have been completely evacuated by the present, the war. “Our hope today is to have stability,” he concluded.

On the question whether Iraqis would actually be interested by the web documentary format, Mohammed Chaloob is categorical. “We have low experience with artistic activity online at present.” As one of the main figures in the Nenurta Group for Arts – which works in fiction and documentary film, as well as theatre — he has performed theatre plays in schools. “We reach out. We go see the communities with our creations,” he reflects. The internet is underdeveloped in Iraq and multimedia creations are not yet part of the cultural scene. But it may happen before long, given the recent surge in mobile phone use. “There are loads of stories out there,” Chaloob insists.

Once we had watched GDP photo essays and films together, Chaloob turned his laptop screen towards us and pushed play on a 10 minute fiction. One of his own films, it is testimony to one of the main problems that Iraqi youth are facing today. It's a beautifully crafted piece about 4 youngsters who are continuously exposed to arms, and to gun culture: in their violent education at home, through peer pressure, etc. The sensitive film shows how guns influence kids' imagination. The film's rhythm is established by the many power outages. The main take-home lesson in the film is that “instead of carrying guns, children can learn to carry cameras,” says Chaloob.

“Art is still often a taboo,” explains Al-Jazairy. “This is a culture we need to overcome. Some kids dream of entering the cultural world.”

Link to the original article:
http://gdp.nfb.ca/blog/documentary/%E2%80%9Cinstead-of-carrying-guns-children-learn-to-carry-cameras%E2%80%9D/

"Frédéric Dubois is web coordinator of the GDP interactive documentary http://gdp.nfb.ca"