Alternatives International

Where's the beef?

Michael Ryan Wiseman — 2010-07-01T19:03:14Z

Happy birthday, Canada! And what better way to celebrate than throwing a $1 billion dollar birthday party. Curious, though, that most of it was spent on keeping people away from the festivities and that there were rubber bullets in the goodie-bags.

Curious too that, between bites of caviar-stuffed lobster wrapped in sirloins of Kobe beef braised with gold dust flecked foie gras, we lectured guests on the joys of austerity. I exaggerate a smidge, of course. Opinion without exaggeration is like conservatism without hypocrisy— an impossibility by definition and, if missing, is not nearly as gratifying.

But I digress. Back to the table. Here's some— ahem— food for thought. Food stops thought. Try thinking after a big meal. Name one great thinker who was fat. Epicurus you say? Not with those cheek bones if millennia-old busts are anything to go by. Buddha? Likewise. And even if one were to defer to those pot-bellied statuettes of his, it doesn't count; he was a vegetarian for the most part so I suspect the weight was thyroid related.

Or, some thinkers may have become rotund later in life by dining out on svelte glories past, after the motivation to produce— the infamous lash of hunger— ceased, but the rule holds. Is it a coincidence that those countries now considered to be the most dynamic and innovative, those same countries with politically astute and active populations, consume fewer calories per sitting than those of us from lethargic countries with an apathetic citizenry of glorified herd animals who graze without a thought that runs past the next mouthful?

Is it a coincidence that nothing remotely brilliant has ever come from any international summit with a banquet hall? Therein, Dear Reader, lays my proposition. Withhold food from our leaders. It will both stimulate their minds and reduce our budgets. It may even help them to relate to some of the hardships of the world. No more Angus for Stephen Harper? DING. Global warming cooled and taxes placed on financial transactions. No more bangers and mash for David Cameron? DING. London's markets tethered and, with them, the world's. No more poi for Barack Obama? DING. We transcend to a world of peace.

And I haven't even mentioned the best part yet, my pièce de résistance if you will. DING. DING. DING. Uh-oh, my lunch is ready.

Photo: flickr/ megapickle

A Tale of Two Cities

Richard Poplak — 2010-07-01T19:03:10Z

The FIFA World Cup Finals and the G20 summit may at first glance seem entirely disparate, but both events have had a profound effect on the narratives of their respective cities. Those narratives, at least this week, are linked, and deserve a review.

Earlier this week, I found myself traversing two worlds — both of them familiar, both suddenly upside-down. For years, I've been commuting between Toronto and Johannesburg, which is not quite as bad as the 400 to Barrie during rush hour, but comes a near second. This week, both cities have been in the news, if for very different reasons.

Let's start with Toronto. On a recent Tuesday in June, I sat at a sushi restaurant in the downtown core, staring out at the long line of concrete and chain link barricades that suddenly dominated Wellington Street. I was reminded of Beirut, a city famously divided by such contrivances into segments, sectors, zones — “a house of many mansions,” as Kamil Salibi put it. The effect was profoundly disorienting, ameliorated only by the relative good repair of the surrounding skyscrapers. What struck me was how easy it is to fortify a city, to take command of it from above and afar, to wrest it from its citizenry as if they had no claim on it in the first place. Toronto, like Beirut, was now divided into security zones with varying degrees of access. All it took was the brute force of half a billion bucks — a pittance really, if you think of what it buys you: A major Western city, for a few days.

The twenty visiting luminaries and their vast entourages have accepted our invitation; in return, we owe them protection. Once every eight years, Canada gets to set the agenda at the G20 summit, and this is a not an insignificant forum. (Okay, perhaps it is. Such is the price of eating at the adults' table.) Still, the price tag is a head scratcher, no matter how meticulously the government breaks it down. And as far as I'm concerned, money isn't the worst of it. What, I can't help wondering, is at stake here?

Johannesburg helps answer that question. In order to properly consider the links, I must describe my itinerary of the past several days. It goes like this: New York City to the Billy Bishop airport on Toronto Island. No buses to downtown, because the Royal York Hotel depot is in the main security zone. Cops everywhere. Cab home, drop off old luggage, collect new luggage. Drive along the Gardiner to Pearson International, all the while reading electronic security alerts warning of impending delays and shutdowns. The city wired, on edge. Slower than usual security lines at Pearson. An interminable flight. Land at Oliver Tambo International, Johannesburg. Brace for hell. Instead, at least a hundred customs officials manning their booths, unobtrusive security guards, smiling cops.

Wait a second. Where was I?

As I mentioned, this may at first seem a fatuous comparison. Toronto is hosting twenty world leaders who count their collective enemies in the billions; Johannesburg is the temporary Ellis Island for drunken legions from South America, Europe, and beyond. These World Cup Finals would, however, rate at least an Orange on the old Bush-era alert system. South Africa and its security partners sifted through dozens of terrorist threats. Xenophobic violence against migrant African workers wracked the country two years ago, leaving hundreds dead; Nigerians, who are here in the tens of thousands, bore some of the worst of it. Hooliganism is always a potential blight on these tournaments. And there are scores of South Africans with real grievances against their government, who threatened to use the Cup Finals as a platform by staging strikes and protests.

So where, then, are all the riot cops and heavily armed military junta types carrying AKs? (Chelsea's Stamford Bridge stadium is more fortified during a pre-season friendly than was Soccer City during the Ghana/Germany matchup.) South Africa's ruling ANC government hasn't exactly been above the tinpot tactics. They've cleared the streets of homeless kids and other undesirables by rounding them up and dumping them of the edges of major cities; doubtless, other such stories will out when the hordes have left for home. That said, South Africa's undertrained, underpaid police force (or SAP) is performing admirably, against odds that are resolutely against them. Ontologically speaking, the democratic-era SAP was hamstrung when the old regime cleared out its offices; the force was purged of the apartheid-era brass with millions of man hours of experience, most of which was replaced by inefficient, entitled ANC struggle-istas. (Meet Jackie Selebi. Enough said.)

This was nothing compared to the formidable social impediment that the SAP faces. So many of the people they must police — in the main, the rural and urban poor — went unpoliced during the apartheid era, and the act of policing them now requires compromises that make the SAP both more and less than a police force. That unpoliced vacuum was filled by other elements. They will not go quietly.

South African journalist Jonny Steinberg, in his excellent Thin Blue: The Unwritten Rules of Policing South Africa, puts it this way:

The most important precondition for policing in a democratic society is the consent of the general population to be policed. A people that is policed is one that lives in a condition of civil peace. Collectively, it understands that conflicts do arise, but it regards those as temporary ruptures, not as threats to the underlying order. It accepts… that a state agency must exist to deal with these breaches of the peace. A precondition of democratic policing is that there is a demand for it among the general population.

In other words, democratic policing is less about authority from above, and rather more about the act of being policed. It's a deal we make. For the meantime, and in the context of the Cup Finals, many South Africans have made that deal. (I'm speaking here as much about the wealthy as the poor; contempt for the police is the one South African universal.) In a city as ordinarily violent as Johannesburg, calm, of a sort, now prevails. The road to the stadiums and the fan parks take visitors through areas of the country otherwise untouched by the sheen of the tournament; the consent is thus broader than it is narrow. That SAP are policing Soccer City due to the largesse of South African taxpayers (thanks to a labour scandal within Soccer City's Stadium Management SA, which underpaid its guards, resulting in a strike just days before the first game) may turn out to be a good thing, in as much as paying for anything twice can be considered a positive. Private security guards could not transfer the knowledge they accumulate during these games into an agency of democratic government. A police force can.

Is this temporary consent something that can be leveraged into a larger social transformation? It's too soon to say. Certainly, South Africa's poor aren't thronging into stadiums to watch World Cup games; they don't get to see their smiling martinets in new uniforms. But the police themselves are being recultured, as are certain sections of society. This is how social transformation starts. In increments.

What on earth, you ask, does this have to do with Toronto, a town that could be cast as Johannesburg's flipside? Everything. In light of what we've discussed, perhaps Toronto's inhabitants must now, under the thumb of the summit, urgently consider the fact that they have over-consented to being policed. That they have relinquished certain inviolable rights. That our representatives in Ottawa have misread the idea of policing in a democratic society, no matter how extraordinary the circumstances. That the G20 may leave a lasting legacy, manifest in sound cannons and CCTV cameras and well-trained, easily mobilized riot cops. That this exercise can be equally as transformative for Toronto's police and citizens as the World Cup can be for Johannesburg's.

All this, depending on whether you dig your Foucault or your Rudy Giuliani, may be a good or a bad thing. But we cannot shy away from the fact that we have consented to being policed in a way that does not square with so many of our other values. Protesters' rights notwithstanding, the real democratic issue here is with those of us who call the city home. It's tempting to think of Toronto's current iteration as Stephan Harper's iron-fisted ethos writ in concrete and chain link, but that's bunk. Anyone on Parliament Hill, regardless of affiliation, would have done the same. It's not their fault. It's ours.

Moving forward, in the interests of not repeating this conversation eight years hence when our twenty exalted friends return, what are our options? On the one hand, there's Skype. On the other, we should pause to wonder what else a billion-plus dollars (the G8 and G20 bill combined) might have bought us. How about a purpose built, high-tech conference centre, with a hotel attached, somewhere up north with a workable airport? It could be easily securable, constructed in consultation with the world's best anti-terrorist minds, sport a defined perimeter, and in the interests of pseudo-democracy, a protest area visible from the site. This piece of legacy infrastructure could be public/private, open for business year round. It could even front a real lake. This infinitesimal sliver of Canada is where we would host luminaries from elsewhere. It is the only consent we can afford to part with.

What we can never again consent to in peacetime is our cities coming under lockdown, our streets cut into segments, our neighbourhoods divided into zones. We cannot agree to be barred from our places of commerce, our universities, our democratic institutions. We cannot, ever, consent to live in a house of many mansions.

So, on the one hand, Johannesburg, and a tentative move to something more. And on the other, Toronto, and a slide into something less. It's a slide that we must stay.

Reproduced with kind permission from the fine people at the Walrus

RICHARD POPLAK is a writer, traveller, kibitzer. He is the author of Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-era South Africa (Penguin 2007); and The Sheikh's Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop-Culture in the Muslim World (Penguin, 2009).

Congo's Quest for Liberation Continues

Bahati Ntama Jacques and Beth Tuckey — 2010-07-01T19:03:07Z

Today, at the 50th anniversary of Congo's independence, the country continues to be a source of wealth for the world, yet the Congolese people live in poverty. Like many African nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is suffering under this new era of neocolonialism, where natural resources belong not to those who live on the land but to those with power and access to global markets.

Congo has long been the focus of resource exploitation. The first era of colonization in Africa, beginning in the mid-1880s, was most pronounced in this central African country. Belgium's King Leopold brutalized the population in his quest for rubber and riches, leaving a legacy of natural resource exploitation by white Europeans in the heart of Africa.

The pursuit of true independence and liberation in Congo will continue until foreign nations cease their policies of exploitation.

History of Violence

When Patrice Lumumba began agitating for independence in early 1960, there was great hope that Congolese people would benefit from the resources of their land, lifting the country out of poverty and into an era of prosperity. Instead, after nearly three months in office as Congo's first elected prime minister, Lumumba was deposed in a coup and four months later killed in a plot orchestrated by the Belgian government with the complicity of the United States. Mobutu Sese Seko, a staunch opponent of communism, took power in a CIA-backed coup and became one of Africa's most brutal dictators. He drove Congo — which he named Zaire — into ruin.

In 1996, Rwanda and Uganda invaded Congo and forced Mobutu to flee, while a new leader, Laurent Kabila, rose to power. Since then, eastern Congo has been mired in conflict, overrun by rebel groups and government militias, each of which seeks control of Congo's vast wealth. It's estimated that between 1998 and 2007, 5.4 million people died in DRC as a direct or indirect result of conflict. Meanwhile, the world has come to depend on minerals such as tungsten, tin, and coltan, used in electronics and sophisticated weaponry, which come primarily from the Congo. Western love for the Congo has always been for its resources, never its people, which explains the lack of any genuine interest in helping to build Congo's state capacity.

Lack of transparency or regulation in the mining industry in Congo makes it nearly impossible to prevent the sale of conflict minerals in electronic products. And although many companies have expressed interest in disclosing their supply chain information, tracing which minerals come from the conflict zone in eastern Congo remains a significant challenge.

In the 110th session of Congress, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced the Conflict Minerals Trade Act "to improve transparency and reduce trade in conflict minerals," and Sen. Samuel Brownback (R-KS) introduced the companion Senate legislation "to require annual disclosure to the Securities and Exchange Commission of activities involving columbite-tantalite, cassiterite, and wolframite from the Democratic Republic of Congo." Also in May, Brownback was able to attach a related amendment into the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010, which passed the Senate and is being reconciled with the House version of financial reform. While an admirable start considering the inadequate U.S. government attention paid to Congo, such legislation is only a small part of a more holistic policy shift needed to address the economic colonization of DRC.

America: Part of the Problem?

The United States can do much more to promote true security and prosperity in Congo. However, time and time again the United States has been part of the problem. In 2008, the United States was among a group of nations that negotiated the premature and hasty integration of former rebel forces of the Rwanda-backed rebel group, the National Council for the Defense of the People (CNDP) into the Congolese national army. These Rwandan troops, as part of the national army, today represent a serious threat to sustainable peace in eastern Congo.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-Rwanda relationship continues to be very problematic as far as peace and stability in Congo is concerned. From 2000 to 2009, the United States provided $1.034 billion to Rwanda when its government was occupying large territories in Congo and plundering Congolese resources. While Washington argues that it never intended to aid the Rwandan invasion in the Congo, U.S. financial support possibly helped the Rwandan government secure money within its budget to wage the deadly war.

As a senator, Barack Obama introduced legislation, ultimately signed into law in 2006 by President George W. Bush, that requires the U.S. Secretary of State to "withhold assistance made available under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961…other than humanitarian, peacekeeping, and counterterrorism assistance, for a foreign country if the Secretary determines that the government of the foreign country is taking actions to destabilize the Democratic Republic of the Congo."

But it wasn't the United States, ironically, that took action. Sweden and the Netherlands, after looking at the evidence of Rwandan involvement in the conflict in the Congo made available by a UN panel of experts' report in 2008, threatened to withhold their financial support to Rwanda. This action, which drew international attention to the issue, held the Rwandan government accountable by requesting an immediate withdrawal of its troops from the Congo. Instead of following suit, the United States participated in the misleading and failed integration of former CNDP forces into the Congolese army. So far, the Obama administration shows no sign of implementing the legislation that Sen. Obama worked so hard to promote. The key to the U.S. relationship with Rwanda is rooted in access to Congo's resources.

Congo as Heart

All governments must enact strict laws against the import of products that fuel conflict, use child labor, or otherwise support human rights violations in Africa. Companies should also be forced to pay fines and reparations to communities they have damaged in the creation of their goods.

But at the same time, and equally as important, governments must work to engage Africa in the global economy in a way that encourages human security. Although coltan and tungsten fuel deadly conflict in eastern Congo, they also provide local people with jobs and some means of income. The Congolese government, with the support of the international community, should ensure that those local people reap the true benefits of their labor, which requires strict attention to worker's rights. In this way, Congo and the outside world can partner to advance resource sovereignty and local ownership.

Congo is the heart of Africa. Yet, after 50 years of political independence, it still does not beat on its own. Nor does it sustain the health of other African counties. Lumumba once famously said, "free and liberated people from every corner of the world will always be found at the side of the Congolese." The liberation of Congo — which is a key part of the liberation of all of Africa — requires that people in countries that profit from Congo's wealth stand in solidarity with those who rightfully own it. That means, most importantly, taking action as citizens and pushing governments to create more responsible policies toward central Africa regarding the use of its natural resources.

Reproduced with kind permission from the fine people at Foreign Policy in Focus

Bahati Ntama Jacques, a Congolese national, is policy analyst at the Africa Faith & Justice Network in Washington, DC. Beth Tuckey, former associate director at Africa Faith & Justice Network, is currently an executive intern with Africa Action in Washington, DC. They are both contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus.

ANGER AT BHOPAL JUDGEMENT

Daya Varma — 2010-07-01T19:03:00Z

On December 3, 1984, Bhopal became the site of the world's worst industrial Disaster. The question is: should India entertain hazardous industries at all? If the answer is yes, then what should be done to minimize the chances of disaster? And what should be done to minimize the suffering of the survivors and the families of the dead?

More than 25 years after Bhopal was turned into a city of death on the morning of December 3, 1984, the provincial High Court delivered its judgment on June 7, 2010 convicting former Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and seven others to a maximum of two years in jail. Warren Anderson, now 89 years old and Chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation USA at the time of the disaster in 1984 did not feature in the judgment. He had visited Bhopal soon after the accident and was taken into custody but released after diplomatic intervention, possibly involving the then President of the US Ronald Reagan and the just installed Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. Since then Bhopal activists have been demanding the extradition of Anderson and death by hanging. The light sentence of Indian officials of the Union Carbide and no verdict on Anderson naturally created a fury on the part of the Bhopal disaster survivors, activists, sympathizers of the Bhopal victims and Indian journalists; to paraphrase, “TWO YEARS FOR 20,000 DEATHS!”

Capitalist democracy is a highly developed institution; most of the devices used to deal with various circumstances, including disasters and accidents, have been accepted as legitimate both by the right— for whom they were designed— and by the left whom they fooled. It is based on punitive measures meted out to high officials. In India, the Railway Minister usually resigns after a severe train accident; the Food Minister resigns after famines. These punitive measures spare the system and bypass the main issue. It was therefore to be expected that a demand for the extradition and hanging of Anderson, and life imprisonment of Indian officials of the Union Carbide, and a posthumous verdict against Arjun Singh, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh at the time of the disaster, and Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, would have satisfied the activists and spared them the tedious task of organizing protests and signature campaigns.

On the other hand the Bhopal disaster and everything that followed, including the High Court Verdict, also raises another question or, rather, a set of questions. I have been peripherally involved in the Bhopal issue right from the beginning but my efforts have been directed towards accumulating evidence in support of adverse health effects of the disaster especially on survivors and pregnant women and their fetuses on one hand, and analyzing the possible causes of the disaster on the other hand. All my studies have been published. I even incurred the wrath of Indian activists when I wrote that the deaths in Bhopal could possibly not have happened by hydrogen cyanide because what leaked from the storage tanks was not cyanide and even if all of it got converted into cyanide, it could never the reach minimum concentration of 300 parts per million (ppm) necessary for its lethal effects. In contrast methyl isocyanate (MIC) which actually leaked, can kill at less than 10 parts per million. Cyanide leaves no residual effect if it does not kill but we all know that MIC does— and did. But none of this is the most significant part of the Bhopal disaster. Nor is the leniency of the High Court judgment. Neither two years of imprisonment can be matched with 20,000 deaths, nor can 20 years or life imprisonment, or hanging of all surviving officials including Anderson. Punitive measures have not checked recklessness in the past and would not do so now.

The Bhopal Disaster poses three basic questions. One, should India entertain hazardous industries like the one that was in Bhopal at all? If the answer is yes, then what should be done to minimize the chances of disaster? The disaster having taken place, as it did in Bhopal, what should be done to minimize the suffering of the survivors and the families of the dead?

In my opinion, no country can afford to desist from developing industry, including hazardous industries, to progress and meet the future needs of its population. The former Soviet Union did it. The present China does it. And of course hazardous industries exist in all developed capitalist countries. Approximately 1.4 million tons of hydrogen cyanide are produced annually, of which the USA accounts for 50 percent. Even methyl isocyanate-based plants exist in the USA, Germany and Japan. When the late Chief Minister Arjun Singh, one of the champions for communal harmony in India, lobbied to get Union Carbide to set up its operations in Bhopal he thought he was bringing industry to backward Madhya Pradesh and was being instrumental in producing a pesticide much needed for agricultural production. Indeed such measures did make India food-sufficient— food availability and its equitable distribution is a different issue. I do not think that the Union Carbide plant was of much inferior quality than the one in West Virginia. There were no settlements adjacent to the plant when it was built, though it was much too close to the railway station and the two major hospitals in Bhopal. What was missing in the Union Carbide operation in Bhopal was that it made no provision for the specific condition of India, its work culture, and the commitment of its officials towards safety in the operation of an industry as hazardous as it was. Why should water leak into pipes carrying MIC? I might add that once water reached the MIC tank, what followed could not have been prevented even if all safety features were in operation. In my opinion India, or a foreign establishment in India, should make provisions for establishing a proper safety and operational work culture at all levels and this is true for all hazardous industries, including nuclear power plants and mining industries.

Perhaps the lenient High Court judgment should have aroused stiffer demands for compensation rather than for stiffer penalties. British Petroleum is being forced to commit more than twenty billion dollars to clean up the mess it has created in the Mexican Gulf. Why should India be lenient towards Dow Chemicals, the current owners of Union Carbide?

Union Carbide ceased operations in Bhopal after the disaster but it left hazardous chemicals which have become a part of the ground water. It is going to eventually cause a greater hazard than the gas disaster but at a slower and less noticeable rate.

If the anger against the High Court judgment focused on these issues, one could feel that Bhopal Disaster has taught a useful lesson. Blood for blood is another matter!

Dr Daya Ram Varma is a pharmacology and therapeutics professor based at McGill University. He sits on the board of directors of Alternatives and is a founding member of CERAS (Centre d'Étude et Ressources d'Asie Sud).

Photo: flickr/ obbino

ART THREAT !!!

Ezra Winton — 2010-07-01T19:02:51Z

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

The G20 summer blockbuster
by Ezra Winton

That the hundreds (at last count 900+) of G20 protesters (and random civilians) held in pens at a detention centre in Toronto also happen to be extras in a former movie studio should come as no surprise to those who took part in this summer's biggest blockbuster hit. This production note is but one piece of a larger spectacle of fascism recently carried out in the streets of Toronto... Standing on College street watching a procession of dozens of dark-tinted vans go by full with riot police, we watched as a man walked toward us calmly and was violently seized and dragged away by ten riot police, a scene reminiscent of so many Hollywood films... Read more...

Mobilizing social imagination: Broken City Lab's reconstruction of Windsor
by Michael Lithgow

What do you get when you mix a postindustrial urban mess with a group of artists who want to make it better? In Windsor, the answer is Broken City Lab, a post-avant-garde art project whose object is the city itself and the social relations necessary to transform urban blight into community and prosperity... The idea was to find a new way – other than protest, that is – to use art for social change... Read more...

Greenpeace UK hosts rebrand BP design competition
by Leslie Dreyer

Greenpeace UK is hosting a competition to redesign British Petroleum's logo. Entries are due by June 28th; the winning design will be used as part of their international campaign against the oil company... Read more...

Art Threat is a leading media outlet devoted solely to political art and cultural policy.

Greek Dialectics

Dimitrios Roussopoulos — 2010-07-01T19:02:41Z

‘We are all Greeks' - Percy Bysshe Shelly, from the preface of his lyrical drama Hellas

Having recently spent five wonderful weeks in several parts of Greece, I return to Montreal refreshed. I was often reminded by acquaintances, friends and comrades throughout this turbulent period that this civilization goes back in history for a very long time, and having also survived 400 years of ruthless Turkish occupation, and the first war of national liberation ending in the partial victory of 1831, all this and more are sign posts. Since then the Greeks have had only a few years here and there of liberal democracy, as their history has been dominated by crypto-fascist and authoritarian regimes, Nazi occupation, civil war and dictatorships until, finally, in 1980 the first state socialist government of Andreas Papandreou was elected establishing a republic. On 1 January 2002, Greece became a member of Europe's Monetary Union. The population of the country is slightly over 10 million, with an additional 10 million diaspora living outside of Greece.

Andreas, being a consummate statist, increased the state bureaucracy and payroll by 300,000 during his stay in government. He also introduced strict laws of gender equality that created a new reality in the country. Greece is a contradictory welfare state with a free national daycare programme, a retirement pension programme whereby one can choose a way of life other than wage labour at the age of 53, and yet a 2008 OECD study informs us that Greeks work 2120 hours per year— 690 hours more than German workers. Also of note is a study from ECB, Eurostat 2002-2009 that the Greek public, corporate and household debt is less that of the UK and Germany. (Let us be cautious about cultural comparisons).

The heresy of the Greeks, again.

What has happened in Greece is theft on an epic, though not unfamiliar scale. In Greece, as in North America and Britain, the ordinary people have been told they must repay the debts of the rich and powerful who incurred the debts. Jobs, pensions and public services are to be slashed and burned with profiteers in charge. For the European Union and the IMF, the opportunity presents itself to ‘change the culture' and dismantle the modest social welfare which exists, just as the IMF and the World Bank have ‘structurally adjusted' many other countries.

Greece's 11 per cent debt is no higher than the US. When the new state socialist prime minister George Papandreou (son of Andreas) tried to borrow on the international capital market by issuing government bonds, the speculators went bananas with joy as they drove rates higher and higher. The overall campaign emanating from the markets was effective and the blockage by US corporate rating agencies, which ‘downgraded' Greece to a ‘junk economy' compounded the situation. As we know the same agencies gave triple-A ratings to billions in so-called sub-prime mortgage securities and so precipitated the 2008 meltdown of market capitalism.

Greece is hated for the same reason Yugoslavia had to be physically destroyed. Many Greeks work for the public sector, and the young and the unions comprise a popular alliance that has not been pacified: the colonels' tanks on the campus of the Polytechnic remain a political specter. Such resistance fueled by the anarchists is anathema to Europe's states and banks and is regarded as an obstruction to German capital's need to capture markets.

As soon as I arrived in London I was met with ‘Cheers to the Greeks',' The Greeks Get It' as the glasses of beer and wine clinked to praise the resisters. The ‘junk economy' gives us not only hope in the uprising of ordinary Greeks protesting the ‘bailout' of an economy plunged into debt by a tax-evading corporate rich, but raises the dreaded notion of class war.

It is hardly surprising that Greece is presented as a backwash of a culture cutting corners, the heresy of this people is in the uprising of ordinary people providing an authentic hope unlike that lavished on the power elites. The Greek resistance, which took various forms— and continues— is rarely reported as such but nevertheless has created panic among the plutocracy. So much so that some top European politicians have publicly fingered the market speculators and US rating agencies.

Goldman Sashs and international bankers colluded with the political elite to falsify data and then make billions betting that the Greek economy will collapse. But the Greeks know what to do, in more ways and one. Call a general strike, shut down the center of Athens; they are not afraid of articulating the issues of rich versus poor, oligarchs versus citizens. We are witnessing feudal rape. The Greeks, unlike most, get it. With a city of over 10 daily newspapers of every political tendency, the Greek of today (as in the past) is as Aristotle once noted ‘a political animal'.

But the problem is deeper still, read Dwight Macdonald's classic essay: “The Root is Man”.

Dimitrios Roussopoulos is a Montreal based political and environmental activist, prolific author and editor, and founder of the left-wing publishing house Black Rose Books.
Roussopoulos was also the founder of the journal Our Generation and Ecology Montreal, North America's first municipal green party.

Photo: Flickr/ Nasos3

The G20 faces a crisis with no end in sight

Claude Vaillancourt — 2010-07-01T19:02:35Z

The previous meeting of the G20, last fall in Pittsburgh, ended on a positive note. The closing statement affirmed that G20 countries had done “everything necessary to ensure recovery” and that it “had worked”. Since then, growth has been so weak that it cannot even confront the issue of unemployment.

From that time on, governments have been so laden with debt that merely responding to citizens' demands has been a challenge.

In that sense, the difficulties that Greece is currently facing seem more and more like an exacerbation of a problem faced by various other countries than an exceptional case. The dangerous circumstances that lead this small country to undergo a terrible crisis— problems linked to tax evasion, corruption, banking sector manipulation of numbers and speculation— risk being reapplied at different levels in other countries such as Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland. And with the fall of the Euro and the lagging world economy—being that they are are all connected— Greece is bringing the entire European Union down with it in a domino effect.

The effects suffered from the major economic and financial crisis of 2007-08 have not yet even begun to subside, and now we are being forced to undergo continuous bail-outs of large banks and the consequences of massive debt being used as a pretext to slash public services and social programs. Once again, the G20 has a particularly large task ahead.

Continuous illegitimacy

The G20 was established on a principle of legitimacy that was supposed to make up for the shortcomings of the G8. In other words, rather than just being a meeting of so-called “industrialized” western economic powerhouses, the G20 also brings together emerging nations that have booming economies, such as China, India and Brazil.

However, this new global board of directors, representing three quarters of the world's population, is lacking the majority of the poorest countries, which will lack a voice in the affairs that directly affect them. The G20 has not always been able to credibly establish its legitimacy and, what it more, the politicians it has called upon to solve this financial crisis have turned out to be major disappointments.

The main issue at play during the G20 summit, which has been talked about for some time, is the need for action to be taken against the large banks, which were mainly responsible for the crisis but have come out from the devastation they caused much stronger. There is currently no agreement on what steps to take. The international Monetary Fund (IMF), backed by Europe, is proposing a tax on banks which would put aside funds that would be issued as insurance for the next crisis, largely considered to be inevitable.

Canada has already made public its fierce opposition to this measure. Stephen Harper pretends that our banks behaved well during the crisis and questions penalizing them with a tax. This position is distressing for two reasons. First of all, it is because Canadian banks have not come out of this crisis spotless, as they were also affected by toxic assets they had purchased.

But is it also because the Harper government, a major proponent of deregulation, essentially gained political capital on the back of a heavily regulated sector. In other words, Stephen Harper is hypocritically taking advantage of a policy which he has always opposed.

Robin Hood

Various civil society organizations are proposing a tax on financial transactions, also known as the Robin Hood Tax, which would be a lot more beneficial to society as a whole. It entails a small tax levy (from 0.05% to 0.1%) on all financial transactions (stocks, bonds, derivatives and monetary exchanges) which could in turn bring in between $300 - 1000 million of revenue each year. This tax could also slow down speculation.

The Robin Hood Tax has a number of advantages. The considerable amount of the funds it would bring in would not end up in bankers' already fat pockets. It would also serve to insure all basic services, fight against climate change and resolve countries' debt. This measure is therefore much more useful than a tax on banks, which could have the perverse effect of encouraging speculation even more, by it being seen as a contribution to an insurance policy against financial crises.

It will undoubtedly be a long road before a tax is placed on financial transactions. We should not put too much stock in the forces of apathy, which we witnessed during the Copenhagen summit on climate change, that work to sideline our best ideas. However, we should be weary of the Harper government's nuisance capability which is actively campaigning against all forms of taxation and wants to take advantage of the position as G20 host to block any progress.

Nevertheless, the Robin Hood Tax has more support than ever. Hence, the G20 will be demonstrating its ineffectiveness and contempt of public interest if it flatly rejects such an idea.

Claude Vaillancourt is the co-president of ATTAC-Quebec. ATTAC is the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens.

Translated by Douglas Smith

Photo: flickr/ monkey.grip

From Cochabamba to Cancun

Roger Rashi — 2010-07-01T19:02:28Z

The recent Cochabamba Conference on Climate Change has issued a call to build “a global peoples movement for climate justice.”

A novel feature of this call is that it is supported by progressive countries, mainly those of the ALBA Alliance (Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, and others), as well as by social movements, primarily but not exclusively, from Latin America.

A potential pitfall lies in the danger felt by some social movements that they might lose their autonomy, or worse, become a pawn in a “diplomatic strategy” spun by the countries involved. Many activists and organizations already involved in environmental issues express such distrust, overtly or covertly.

The success of this new alliance depends on a careful consideration— and articulation— of the needs of these two actors: social movements and progressive governments. Already in Cochabamba measures were taken to meet the respective needs of both. Thus the call to mobilize for the United Nations Cancun conference in November 2010 took into account the fact that many movements wanted to build grass-roots national campaigns rather than keep on running from one international conference to the next with meager results to show for all their work.

The proposal to organize a World Referendum on Climate Change has been reformulated to include the possibility of holding popular consultations, a prospect far more realistic in countries where progressive governments are not in power. As for the establishment of an International Tribunal for Climate Justice, it is more than likely that the UN, under the sway of a Security Council dominated by the great powers, will turn a deaf ear to this plea. Hence the addition of a call to launch public opinion tribunals on the model of the 1960's famous International War Crimes Tribunal headed by the renowned philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. This is a much more motivating idea for social activists than a lobbying campaign confined to the UN.

A Quebec Action Plan?

In Quebec, the action plan proposed by the Cochabamba Conference should encourage the building of a grassroots movement that extends far beyond the existing environmental groups and organizations. Like the Bolivian environmental summit, this must seek to involve the trade unions, community groups, the women's movement, progressive organizations and parties— in fact the entire gamut of social and political movements— in a campaign for climate justice. The targets of this movement should be the failed environmental policies of our governments and large corporations, as well as those of the main international organizations.

Stephen Harper - How to save the world from climate change.

It is also necessary to not gloss over the obscenely backward policies of the Stephen Harper government in Canada. The Canadian state is one of the worst international offenders on climate issues. Not only is it one of the key players in scrapping the Kyoto Protocol and engineering the Copenhagen fiasco, but also its national policies are properly labeled catastrophic. According to the respected Montreal daily Le Devoir, Canada, at the end of 2012, will exceed its Kyoto target by no-less than 34.9 percent. This flies in the face of the international treaty endorsed by the Canadian Parliament in December 2004.[1] The Federal government's single-minded determination to proceed with the Alberta Tar Sands, the most polluting industrial project in the world, borders on criminal negligence. The Alberta Tar Sands already account for 29 percent of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, and this is likely to increase as the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and high demand from East Asia spurs further development in Northern Alberta (and Saskatchewan).

As for waging a Quebec campaign for public consultations on climate change, the most realistic approach is the one taken a few years ago to successfully oppose the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas). At that time many trade unions and community groups organized public consultations across Quebec with great mobilizing effect. Furthermore, a question dealing with the Alberta Tar Sands, could have a similar educational and mobilizing result. We must bear in mind that Quebecois citizens were never consulted on this major industrial undertaking and yet suffer the full brunt of its ecological consequences.

A similar tack can be taken on the issue of a public opinion tribunal held across Quebec on crimes against the environment. Stephen Harper and the major corporations involved in the Tar Sands would make great symbolic defendants in an exercise of this type, whether it takes place at an international level or on Canadian soil.

Alternatives Summer Camp:
The Launch of a Quebec Coalition?

A start on this project will begin this summer. The 16th “Journées Alternatives” will be held at Camp Papillon, slightly north of Montreal, from the 27 to 29 August 2010. This three-day Summer Camp, hosted by the international solidarity network Alternatives, promises to be an early test of this Quebec action plan. One of the main themes of the camp will be Climate Justice and the opening panel, entitled ‘From Copenhagen to Cancun,' will feature presentations and discussions on a proposed Quebec Coalition for Climate Justice. Such a coalition would take charge of discussions dealing with organizing public campaigns on popular consultations and climate tribunals.

An impressive list of guest speakers has already been drawn-up for this panel. It includes personalities such as well-known law professor Georges Lebel; Amir Khadir, Québec Solidaire's member of the Quebec National Assembly; Canadian ecosocialist Ian Angus; Christophe Aguiton, a French global justice activist and founder of ATTAC-France; and many others whose names will be released in the coming weeks. It promises to be a great launch to this exciting project of a Quebec Coalition for Climate Justice.

Roger Rashi is a founding member of Québec Solidaire and sits on the party's Working Commission on the Environment. He reported on his April 2010 trip to Bolivia in “Cochabamba Eyewitness: A Great Boost to Ecosocialism.”

Photo: flickr/ Steve Rhodes

World Education Forum in Palestine

Omar Assaf — 2010-07-01T19:02:22Z

We are pleased to inform you that the registration for organizations and self-organized activities for the World Education Forum in Palestine (October 28 - 31) opened on June 25. This event is vitally important in the context of today's world, moreover holding this Forum in Palestine is of powerful symbolic value and of crucial importance for Palestine and people of conscience around the globe.

The World Education Forum in Palestine takes place during a time of on-going occupation of the Palestinian people, the siege of Gaza, and persecution of local and international activists. The brutal attack on the Freedom Flotilla was only the latest event in the escalation of Israeli policies of aggression. The World Education Forum in Palestine, therefore, offers not only a space for people from all over the world to discuss issues relating to education, but participation in the Forum is a concrete act of solidarity with the Palestinian people and resistance to occupation, apartheid, and colonialism.

The WEF activities will be carried out over 4 days, simultaneously organized in Haifa, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Gaza, and Beirut. The program will comprise centrally organized seminars (organized by the National and International Organizing Committees), self-organized activities, expanded activities (interconnections between WEF venues and between WEF venues and the wider world), trips, cultural activities and assemblies.

The activities of the WEF will shed light on pressing social and educational issues and challenges of people struggling for peace and social justice around the world and in Palestine. All activities will be guided by the following thematic axes:

1.Education, arts, culture and identity
2.Education as a tool for emancipating the mind and protecting the environment
3.Ideologies in education
4.Traditional and popular education
5.Education for peace, equality and liberation

We invite all organizations to organize one or more self-organized
activities based on the thematic axes, in a location of choice. We call on all organizations to reflect on:

– Thematic ax(es) your organization wants to focus on
– A title for your self-organized activity and a description
– The location(s) for your activity/activities: Jerusalem, Gaza, Haifa, Ramallah or Beirut
– Type of activity: seminar, workshop, debate, round tables, etc
– Leading and collaborating organizations
– Language of your activity/activities (Arabic and English highly recommended)
– Wish to interlink with other venues or worldwide expanded activities by internet connection

We will inform you about the event structure, fees, logistics, visa
regulations and accommodation very soon. Please visit our website:
www.wef-palestine.org for updates and more information.

Please spread this widely to your contacts.

Omar Assaf is the General Coordinator of the World Education Forum in Palestine