Paul S. Graham

I cringe when I hear folks like Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon use the word “solidarity” in the same breath as “Haiti.” I’m all for solidarity with the Haitian people, but when it is expressed by the likes of Cannon, I gag.

The Haitian disaster relief program is a thinly disguised military operation to secure the country for corporate interests. Sure, some people are getting food and medical attention, but not nearly enough, given the resources and capabilities of the United States and Canada.

Cynthia McKinney, the U.S. Green Party’s 2008 presidential candidate, captures the hypocrisy in an article published today at Global Research, when she writes:

President Obama’s response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most:  food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers.  Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers.  By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working–saving lives and treating the injured.

Obama’s and Harper’s emphasis on a military response makes sense when you review the history of Canada and the U.S. in the region and factor in Haiti’s undeveloped petroleum reserves.

Haiti has been under a military occupation — ostensibly a U.N. program to stabilize the country — since 2004 when the U.S. Marines (with Canadian complicity) kidnapped President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and spirited him out of the country. The lead-up to the coup included years of economic destabilization brought on by IMF-imposed “structural adjustments” and covert CIA support for Aristide’s opponents (who yearned for the good old days when the Tonton Macoutes would keep the masses in line).

Aristide remains popular among the poor majority in Haiti for the reforms he tried to implement. Who knows what could happen in the wake of an earthquake that not only killed hundreds of thousands but also totally destroyed state and international infrastructure and control? The resulting instability offers an opening for Aristide supporters that must cause unease in Washington, Ottawa and corporate boardrooms that benefit from keeping the Haitians down.

Haiti is popularly understood to be the poorest country the Americas, and one of the poorest in the world. More sophisticated measurements can be found here. The fact is, 80 per cent of the population is dirt poor, living on less than $1,000 a year and often, literally, eating dirt. (If you want to see Haitians eating dirt, watch Inside a Failed State – Haiti, a recent film by Journeyman Pictures.)

Haitians are poor, in large measure, because wages are low and labour standards are nonexistent. According to Canada-Haiti Action, the Canadian firm Gildan, with nearly 8000 employees in the textile sector, is the biggest employer in Haiti, after the Haitian government. The Montreal-based company has been accused of relying on sweatshop labour.

While Haitians are poor, the country is resource rich. For example, Majescor Resources Inc., a Canadian mining company, last year partnered with SIMACT, a group of Canadian financiers and Haitian-American developers, to explore for gold and copper in Haiti.

But I doubt that Obama is dispatching the Marines to safeguard the interests of Canadian T-shirt manufacturers and mining companies. More compelling are reports of sizable, undeveloped petroleum reserves. There is credible evidence that Haiti’s oil patch makes Venezuela’s look tiny by comparison. Read Ezili Danto’s superb discussion of this, entitled Oil in Haiti – Economic Reasons for the UN/US occupation, published last October, on OpenSalon.com.

There is a lot to know about Haiti that you won’t find in the mainstream media. Here are some alternative sources I highly recommend:

• Global Research: Crisis and Despair in Haiti
• Coalition Against the Arms Trade: A Very Canadian Coup d’état in Haiti
• Canada-Haiti Action (has recommendations for where to send your financial expressions of solidarity)

Canadians are responding generously and we need to redouble our efforts. However, our governments (Liberal and Conservative) continue to mislead us about the nature of their involvement with Haiti, prior to and following the quake. We can’t let them get away with this.

Haiti earthquake – U.S. aid mission under scrutiny

(Al Jazeera English, Jan. 19, 2009) Thousands of US troops have arrived on the island, trying to offer security and distribute what humanitarian aid there is.

And the UN Security Council is expected to approve the deployment of 3,500 extra UN troops.

But critics say before more security forces arrive, it is medical equipment, nurses and doctors that need to be allowed access to the country if aid efforts can really begin to reach those most in need.

Sebastian Walker reports from Port-au-Prince.

Opponents of profiling are missing the point. Profiling makes a lot of sense. The main problem  is that we are profiling the wrong kinds of people.

Instead of watching out for people who actually have a track record for mass destruction and terrorism, we are directing our efforts against folks who might be pissed off at us because we have bombed them, strip-mined their economies and plundered their futures.

(The fact that almost all people detained at our borders, coincidentally, are brown or black, leads some to conclude our government is racist because it is engaged in “racial profiling.” While this may be true, that is the subject of another post.)

We have, in the words Stephen Harper, used a “long gun registry approach” that criminalizes everyone when we should limit our efforts to catching “the bad guys.”

So, in the interests of air safety and national security, as well as more convenient air travel, here are my suggestions for Canada’s border watch and no-fly lists.

1. Anyone who has ever used or authorized the use of weapons of mass destruction. While it might seem unfair to single them out, this would include Barack Obama, George Bush (father and son), Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Collectively, these fellas have slaughtered millions.

But we shouldn’t stop there. Any current or former head of state who told the his military to kill people would qualify for the list. This would crimp Stephen Harper’s travel schedule, or course, but it would also ensure that Jean Chretien and Paul Martin would have to stay home. I’d let Kim Campbell, John Turner and Joe Clark on the plane, but only because they weren’t in office long enough to do much damage.

2. Anyone who has implemented the decisions of their political masters to engage in the above mentioned mass destruction. This would include cabinet ministers, military commanders at all levels, heads of government departments, and so forth.

3. Anyone who has used, or attempted to use a weapon equivalent in destructive power to that of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underpants (UFAU), which, if you have been following the story, have been deemed by US Justice officials to be a weapon of mass destruction. This means that any military grunt of either gender who has participated in combat loses their opportunity to get on a Canadian plane, or visit Canada. (I guess we should let our grunts come home, soon, today even.)

4. Anyone who benefits from the development, production and sale of weapons of mass destruction (once again, these weapons are defined as being UFAU equivalent.) Now, I’m not arguing that we should outlaw war industries (that’s a subject for another post). I’m just saying that we shouldn’t let these bastards or their products cross international borders.

5. Academics, politicians, religious leaders, editorial writers, journalists, PR flacks, bloggers and anyone else who whores, pimps, shills and otherwise facilitates the climate of fear that promotes our bogus war on terrorism, invasions of other countries and erosion of human rights at home or abroad. You know who you are. Cut up your Aeroplan cards and get into another line of work.

Now, if my modest proposal for air safety and national security were to catch on, it would most certainly have a deleterious impact on the air travel industry, at least in the short term. Many folks who travel by air and cross borders are either war mongers or cannon fodder. However, this is a price I think most folks would be willing to pay for a safer, more secure world.

Under the pretext of fighting al-Qaida, Obama is planning to transform Yemen into another Afghanistan. U.S. Special forces are reportedly in the country, as are British commandos. Expect the “war on terrorism” rhetoric to escalate as America moves more resources into the country to “stabilize” it. A planned international meeting on Yemen hosted by Britain has received the blessing of the UN, offering a political fig leaf that was unavailable to the imperialists until after they had occupied Afghanistan.

There’s no question that Yemen suffers from a lack of stability. But the conflict in the country is not the result of a “growing al-Qaida threat.” Yemenis have not gotten along with each other for a long time. President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s dictator since 1978, has, for decades, been combating a rebellion from the secessionist south and an al-Houthi Zaydi Shi’ite rebellion in the north.

Estimates of al-Qaida strength vary between 100 – 300, but whatever their numbers, they are small and politically insignificant. After they were conveniently linked to the crotch bomber’s flubbed attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day, their presence offered the Americans their opening. In a recent post at Global Research, Tom Burghardt draws together enough threads to argue convincingly that the “intelligence failure” that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the flight with high explosives stitched into his undies was no accident.

Voila! The US had it’s “smoking crotch” and the stage was set for more blatant intervention in Yemen.

For the Americans, it’s all about real estate, and, as in real estate, it’s all about “location, location, location.”

Just prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, the Americans were negotiating with the Taliban government for the rights to construct the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to move Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India, by-passing Russia.

In the case of Yemen, it’s all about oil reserves and oil transportation.

According to F. William Engdahl, in a recent Global Research article, Yemen sits on a oil patch that contains “enough undeveloped oil to fill the oil demand of the entire world for the next fifty years.” Moreover, the “Strait of Bab el-Mandab is a chokepoint between the horn of Africa and the Middle East, and a strategic link between the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean” which, if blocked, “could keep tankers from the Persian Gulf from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa.”

Maps: U.S. Energy Information Administration

In 2006, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an estimated 3.3 million per day barrels flowed through this waterway toward Europe, the United States, and Asia. The majority of traffic, around 2.1 million barrels per day, flows northbound through the Bab el-Mandab to the Suez/Sumed complex.

So, don’t be taken in by all the public hand wringing about “intelligence failures” and the “al-Qaida threat.” Follow da money.

http://www.youtube.com/p/C69158F7232E0D51&hl=en_GB&fs=1

I don’t normally recommend a book before I have finished reading it, but I will this time. Sandy Tolan’s award winning book, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew and the Heart of the Middle East, is a delight. It is the true story of the intimate relationship that developed between two families — one Palestinian and one Israeli — and the house that both lived in, one before and the other after the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians and founding of the state of Israel.

The Lemon Tree, which grew out of a radio documentary Tolan produced in 1998, succeeds on many levels in illuminating our understanding of the political and human dimensions of the decades-long conflict between Palestinians and Jews.

Part of the reason I’m willing to endorse this book before finishing it is that I had the pleasure of hearing and videographing the author when he spoke in Winnipeg last week. He came to Winnipeg to participate in Restorative Justice Week by telling the story of The Lemon Tree in the context of restorative justice.

Rather than report on what I learned about the stony path to peace and justice in the Middle East, I invite you to watch the video and form your own conclusions, one of which, I hope, will be to buy, beg or borrow the book.

http://www.youtube.com/p/1327FA937832145C&hl=en_GB&fs=1

Malalai Joya visited Winnipeg on November 16 and 17 as part of her 2009 cross-country tour to convince Canadians to press for the withdrawal of their troops from Afghanistan.

This feisty woman packed the house at the University of Winnipeg and spoke with passion about the oppression of her people under the combined weight of the Taliban, Hamid Karzai’s warlord drugocracy, and the NATO occupation.

Her message was one not heard in this country. Loosely paraphrased, it is: “Go home! You are making our lives harder!” It is a lesson we must all take to heart.

Malalai Joya was hosted locally by Peace Alliance Winnipeg, with support from the following organizations:

• The Uniter (Mouseland Press Speaker Series)
• Public Service Alliance of Canada (Prairie Region)
• University of Manitoba Students Union
• Project Peacemakers
• Global College Student Advisory Council
• Institute for Womens and Gender Studies, University of Winnipeg
• Winnipeg Labour Council
• Global Justice Committee CUPE Manitoba
• Grassroots Women Manitoba

I shot some video for those who couldn’t make it. It features her speech at Convocation Hall at the University of Winnipeg. The total running time is just under 1 hour 16 minutes.

Useful links

• Malalai Joya’s web site
• Peace Alliance Winnipeg
• Canadian Peace Alliance

November 17, 2009: Afghan MP Malalai Joya is in Winnipeg as a part of her Canadian tour to convince Canadians they must withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.

Afghans, says Joya, must decide what happens in Afghanistan. Foreign intervention must end.

She has a message for the families of Canadian soldiers. She understands their suffering and extends her condolences. Like them, she knows what it is like to lose loved ones in war. But condolences are not enough. She calls upon Canadians to force the Canadian government to end it’s military intervention.

For more information about Malalai Joya’s tour, visit the Canadian Peace Alliance.

Please take some time to remind your member of Parliament that most Canadians want our troops home. If you don’t know who your MP is or how do get in contact, visit the House of Commons MP page.

Malalai Joya has been called the bravest woman in Afghanistan. (I suspect that may be an understatement.) She has repeatedly risked her life to speak out about the violence and poverty brought on by years of occupation and corruption.

In November, she will speak to audiences across Canada about why we must end the war and let the Afghan people decide their own future. This is a message that all Canadians need to hear, especially those who have bought the lie that we’re there for humanitarian purposes.

The Canadian Peace Alliance is co-ordinating the national tour, with local peace groups pitching in across the land. For details, go here.

Peace Alliance Winnipeg is hosting Ms. Joya’s visit to Winnipeg:

Date: Monday, November 16, 2009
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Convocation Hall (located in Wesley Hall, see map), University of Winnipeg

Malalai Joya, 31, is Afghanistan’s youngest member of parliament. She is internationally respected for openly challenging the US/NATO occupation, warlords, and the Taliban.

She spent her childhood in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan, and returned to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where she worked for underground organizations helping women. At a constitutional assembly in Kabul in 2003, she stood up and denounced her country’s powerful NATO-backed warlords. She was twenty-five years old.

She was elected to parliament in 2005 but was suspended in 2007 for criticizing government corruption.

Despite numerous threats and four assassination attempts, Joya actively campaigns at home and abroad for human rights and an end to the war. Her new book,  A Woman Among Warlords: The extraordinary story of an Afghan who dared to raise her voice, is a must read for anyone who wants to understand Afghanistan.

Why Malalai Joya’s visit is important

A majority of Canadians oppose Canada’s military intervention in Afghanistan, but a large number of folks who aren’t normally blood-thirsty militarists and who really ought to know better have bought into the lie that Canadians are there to save Afghan women and children from the bloodthirsty Taliban. For that reason, they support “the mission” and ignore General Hillier’s description of the Canadian Armed Forces, namely: “We’re not the public service of Canada. We’re not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people. ”

Malalai Joya’s visit will provide our well meaning crusaders with an important perspective — that of a young Afghan leader who has stood up to the Taliban and Karzai’s warlord regime and concluded that there is nothing important that differentiates one from the other. Moreover, she’s concluded that the US/NATO war is making matters worse.

She wants our troops out — and she is far from alone in that sentiment. This is a message that Canadians need to hear.

I have no doubt that the meetings will be well attended, but we need to do our part to make sure that Joya’s message isn’t only heard by her supporters.

So, please spread the word, far and wide.

Because we vote every few years in elections we say we live in a democratic country. Yet every day, the economically active among us walk into work and check their democratic rights at the door.

To some extent, the lack of decision-making power in the workplace is ameliorated by union membership and labour legislation. But the fundamental decisions remain with managers, shareholders and owners. HR department-led “respectful workplace” training programs may foster more harmonious human relationships and raise productivity but they do not alter the fundamentally unequal distribution of power.

Undemocratic workplaces are so ubiquitous we rarely stop to question the concept, but we should. The decisions made by unelected, unaccountable employers about investment, production and employment, to name only three important areas, impact directly and often negatively on workers, their families and their communities. While all eyes are on governments and the machinations of politicians, the bosses quietly go about their business, making decisions that shape our lives.

An antidote to the authoritarian workplace is the worker-owned and directed co-operative, but such enterprises are relatively rare. According to the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation, there are only 250 to 300 in the country, most of which are located in Quebec. According to the federal government’s Co-operatives Secretariat, there are 358 worker co-ops with revenues of $474 billion, assets of $325 million and 10,792 employees

Canada should be fertile ground for worker co-ops because our co-op tradition is well established. According to the Co-operatives Secretariat, 8,400 Canadian co-ops employ 152,000 people; four of every ten Canadians (5.9 million) are members of co-operatives that provide financial, retail, or marketing services.

The worker co-op part of the movement got a major boost with the recent announcement that the United Steelworkers and Mondragon will work together to establish manufacturing co-ops in Canada and the US. (see below).

Democracy is too precious to be surrendered to our bosses.  The USW-Mondragon accord is an encouraging development.

Steelworkers Form Collaboration with MONDRAGON, the World’s Largest Worker-Owned Cooperative

PITTSBURGH, October 27, 2009 – The United Steelworkers (USW) and MONDRAGON Internacional, S.A. today announced a framework agreement for collaboration in establishing MONDRAGON cooperatives in the manufacturing sector within the United States and Canada.  The USW and MONDRAGON will work to establish manufacturing cooperatives that adapt collective bargaining principles to the MONDRAGON worker ownership model of “one worker, one vote.”

“We see today’s agreement as a historic first step towards making union co-ops a viable business model that can create good jobs, empower workers, and support communities in the United States and Canada,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard.  “Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollowing out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants.  We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities.”

Josu Ugarte, President of MONDGRAGON Internacional added: “What we are announcing today represents a historic first – combining the world’s largest industrial worker cooperative with one of the world’s most progressive and forward-thinking manufacturing unions to work together so that our combined know-how and complimentary visions can transform manufacturing practices in North America.”

Article continues . . .

Families of Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan can now take comfort in knowing that even if their sons or daughters commit suicide they will receive the very same medal awarded to those killed by enemy fire.

If nothing else, the federal government is proactive. For months now, they have been laying the foundation for Canadian troops to remain in Afghanistan after 2011. The decision to give the “sacrifice medal” to victims of suicide may be a recognition that fighting  a war to prop up corrupt war lords and drug runners is bound to increase suicidal thinking among the troops.

The sacrifice medal is the latest manifestation of Ottawa’s campaign to foster a militaristic cult of human sacrifice and to build support for its failed war in Afghanistan. The proliferation of “yellow ribbon” campaigns and the designation of a part of Highway 401 as a “Highway of Heroes” are other elements.

We can expect more such announcements in the run-up to this year’s Rememberance Day ceremonies.

My heart goes out to our soldiers and their families. No one who goes to war returns whole and healthy. The stresses of combat and the fears of those waiting for the return of loved ones create disease for everyone involved, even if it is not readily apparent.

Whether they “believe in the mission” or not is irrelevant. They are being used as pawns in an imperialist power grab and whether they return physically intact or in a box, they are all human sacrifices to the gods of war and commerce.

I look forward to the day when we honour those who refuse to fight in imperialist wars. While most Canadians agree that we should, for example, shelter American war resisters, our government continues to deport them to the US, where they face harsh punishments for their courageous acts.

The most recent victim of Ottawa’s perverse policy, Rodney Watson, has sought refuge at First United Church on East Hastings Street, in Vancouver. Bravo to the congregation for their courage and willingness to do what our government refuses to do, even after two Parliamentary resolutions in support of war resisters received majority support.

There is currently a private members bill, Bill C-440, in the legislative queue. All of us ought to contact our MPs and urge them to support this bill. But we shouldn’t count on this bill ever becoming law.

Rodney Watson and war resisters everywhere deserve our support. By helping them we are making real contributions to peace and we are sending a clear message to the Harpers of this world that we reject the cult of human sacrifice that they are trying to create.

Barack Obama joins a short list of Nobel Peace Prize recipients whose awards for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict were, to put it in the kindest way, premature. These include:

• 1994: Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority; Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister of Israel; Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel.
• 1950: Ralph Bunche, Professor Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Director of the UN Division of Trusteeship, Acting Mediator in Palestine 1948.

He also keeps company with mass murderer Henry Kissinger, who in 1973, was awarded the prize for negotiating the Vietnam War Peace Accord following America’s sustained attempt to bomb the North Vietnamese back to the stone age.

His Vietnamese co-recipient of the award, Le Duc Tho, declined to accept the prize because his country was not yet at peace. (The war still has not ended for an estimated 3 million Vietnamese who continue to suffer from the effects of Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used by the U.S. in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 that continues to contaminate the soil, water and people of the country.)

It is difficult to take the Peace Prize seriously. Obama’s award, the Nobel committee declares, is “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Tell that to Pakistanis who have to keep an eye on the sky to avoid being murdered in Predator drone attacks. Tell the Afghans; I’m sure they need a chuckle or two as they celebrate the eighth anniversary of the American invasion, also known to Obamaphiles as America’s “war of necessity.”

Obama’s Peace Prize truly is Orwellian:

From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

– George Orwell: “1984”