Category: Uncategorized

An interview with Laura Carlsen, director of the Americas Program of the International Relations Center
by Stefan Christoff

A protest in Oaxaca in 2006. Photo: Pazkual

One of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first major foreign visits after being elected to his first minority government in 2006 was to Latin America and the Caribbean. The trip aimed to promote a Canadian foreign policy focused on establishing “new partnerships in the Americas.”

Canada has aggressively pushed to establish trade agreements in the Americas, and in pursuit of this, signed bilateral trade deals with Peru and Colombia in 2009. Concurrent to the push towards more trade pacts in the Americas, Canada has cut the number of nations receiving bilateral aid through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

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CounterPunch Diary
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

The notion of putting the Bush years on trial has never held allure for President Obama; even less so that of putting Wall Street in the dock. From his lips has always dropped the catechism of uplift and forgiveness, of “moving forward”. He and his advisors had supposed that closing down Guantanamo and issuing a stern denunciation of torture would be sufficient advertisement of the new era; that a few terse reprimands for excessive bonuses for executives would slake the public appetite for retribution on the bankers and tycoons.

On torture, as he approaches the 100-day benchmark, Obama has been forced to change step, in response to public outrage at the chilling stream of memoranda documenting the savageries, and legal justifications for same, ordered and subsequently monitored in minute detail by the Bush high command. Obama’s continuing aversion to any serious calling to account of the sponsors of torture has been evident in his almost daily shifts in position. At the start of this last week he indicated that yes, those okaying the tortures might be legally answerable, that a “Truth Commission” might be the way forward. By Thursday he was backing into that, saying that a commission would “open the door to a protracted, backward-looking discussion” and in the language of his press secretary, “the president determined the concept didn’t seem altogether workable in this case” because of the intense partisan atmosphere built around the issue.

So it’s still not clear whether Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their subordinates will have to endure the soft option of a bipartisan commission of enquiry, or face a special prosecutor, or sit back and watch political momentum flag as the issue devolves into lengthy and possibly closed hearings by the Senate Intelligence Committee. As Republicans have not been slow in pointing out, senior Democrats in Congress were certainly complicit in sanctioning torture as early as 2002. They say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi endorsed waterboarding. She says she did not.

As always, former vice president Cheney has usefully raised the stakes. Did the various tortures, the hundreds of waterboarding sessions, the exposure of naked captives to weeks of intense cold in small concrete boxes, actually make America safer? Cheney snarls on television that they did, thus inviting documented ripostes that this is far from clear, and indeed they contributed nothing of advantage to the national interest.

A serious probe into the way Wall Street did business before the crash and during the bailout is even more politically fraught. Bipartisanship has always been the order of the day when it comes to enthusiastic receipt of campaign donations from the financial services industry, by far the most diligent supplier of funds to Democrats and Republicans alike, not omitting Obama himself, whose campaign accounts overflowed with money from Goldman Sachs and the big Wall Street forms.

But with each fresh billion dollar outlay of bailout money there’s been an uptick in public resentment which is why Speaker of the Nancy Pelosi let it be known last week that she proposes to launch Congressional hearings into Wall Street’s malpractices, along the lines of the famous hearings of the Roosevelt era, conducted by the Senate Banking Committee and led by the committee’s chief counsel, Ferdinand Pecora.

The diligent Pecora, formerly an assistant District Attorney from New York, used his committee’s subpoena power to expose the double dealing and chicanery of Wall Street’s most prominent denizens, among them Richard Whitney, Thomas Lamont and J.P. Morgan himself. His hearings set the stage for the regulatory apparatus set up by Roosevelt and the Democrats, ultimately dismembered in the late 1990s in a bipartisan spirit by Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, working in consort with Republican senator Phil Gramm.

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by BAR Managing Editor Bruce A. Dixon

It’s hardly a surprise any more when politicians redefine their campaign promises out of existence or break them outright. To the astonishment of nobody paying close attention to the trajectory of the Obama presidency the White House quietly admitted yesterday that it had no intention of opening up the wildly unpopular NAFTA, or North American Free Trade Agreement for revision or renegotiation.
Lying is an art practiced by all humans from about the time we master speaking in complete sentences. Hence the smarter we are and the more important the stakes, the more ways there are to lie. For a really clever fellow with lots more bright people on his payroll and an absent-minded press ready to help, the possibilities are endless.
Back in 2003, when Glen Ford and this reporter, then at Black Commentator, interrogated Obama, then a candidate for the US Senate from Illinois he told us he favored “significant renegotiation” at a minimum.

“I think that the current NAFTA regime lacks the worker and environmental protections that are necessary for the long-term prosperity of both America and its trading partners. I would therefore favor, at minimum, a significant renegotiation of NAFTA and the terms of the President’s fast track authority. ”

But that was only when he was questioned directly, and only when he was in a Democratic primary and needed the progressive vote in his home state. The magic of the Obama brand is that since then, the senator, and now the president has rarely been put on the spot in front of his supposed base at a time when he needed their votes more than they needed him.

Keenly aware of massive public disapproval of NAFTA, Obama has, since coming to Washington as a senator in 2004, and in his 2008 presidential campaign, tread a deceptive and hypocritical line, refusing to denounce the investor rights agreement with his own lips, but giving his supporters the impression that he opposes it.
“Bad trade deals like NAFTA hit Ohio harder than most states
Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA”
said one of his campaign mailers in the 2008 Ohio primary.
“Of the two candidates left in the race only Barack Obama has been a consistentl opponent of NAFTA and other bad trade deals…”
says another.

Locked in a death struggle with his Siamese twin Hillary Clinton, Obama had to invent points of differences between himself and his last opponent, even if they were false. Striving mightily to create the impression that he opposed NAFTA in states where it might help him, he denounced Hillary Clinton for supporting it. A equally hypocritical big business Democrat to the core, Hillary tried to put the same move on Obama, but with less success.

In a country where the press actually called candidates and officials to account, neither candidate could have gotten away with this. But this is not that country, and we don’t have that press.

What NAFTA Is.
NAFTA and all the other so-called “free trade agreements” are in fact investor rights agreements. They make businesses operated by international investors substantially immune to local laws and regulations on health, safety, wages, hours, labor rights, antipollution, financial and other practices. They establish secretive extrajudicial courts with no appeal where corporations appoint the judges who can decide in favor of them.

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By Hari Sharma

Dear friends:

We request SANSAD members and friends to join in the May Day Rally, on Friday, May 1.

With some notable exceptions, May Day is honored all around the world as a day of celebration of the struggles and achievements of the working class and their allies. The origins go back to 1886 in Chicago where a general strike took place demanding an eight-hour working day. Police shot down and killed four workers at the McCormick harvesting Machine Co. plant. This led to the famous rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago. A police riot ensued, and many people were killed.

In 1889, at the founding meeting of the Second International (of socialist and labour parties) held in Paris, May 1 was declared as International Worker’s Day, to honour the martyrs of the Haymarket police firings.

Millions of workers and their allies take part in the May Day celebration, all around the world, year after year – to assert their determination and to expess international solidarity of the working people.

The “notable exceptions” are the USA and Canada. Neither the ruling classes nor their trade unions wanted anything to do with international solidarity. They announced their own Labour Days in the month of September. In the USA, May 1 was first declared, in 1921, as “Americanization Day”. In 1958 US Congress passed a law and president Eisenhower proclaimed May 1, 1959 as the first official observance of “Loyalty Day”. Since then every president has issued a proclamation, declaring again and again May 1 as the official Loyalty Day.

While the workers around the world declare their fundamental antagonism against the capitalists – by rallying, singing, shouting slogans and reasserting their right to struggle, the workers in North America are supposed to express their “loyalty” to their bosses.

A May Day celeberation in Vancouver, this coming Friday, is a part of the movement to reclaim the struggling heritage of the workers of the world. See if you can join it.

People before profiteering: expose the roots of the capitalist economic crisis, demand solutions for the working-class!

Announcement

MAY DAY RALLY AND MARCH 2009
In Vancouver
Friday, May 1, 2009
5:00 pm
Start at Vancouver Art Gallery, end at Victory Square

The May Day Organizing Committee invites you to attend:

People before profiteering: expose the roots of the capitalist economic crisis, demand solutions for the working-class!

* Gather at the Vancouver Art Gallery (Robson Street side, between Hornby and Howe) at 5:00 p.m.
* March at 5:30 p.m. to Victory Square (corner of Cambie and East Hastings)

Also featuring EVENING CULTURAL CABARET AND BOOK LAUNCH:
* Rhizome Café (317 East Broadway, near Kingsway) at 7 p.m. The cabaret will feature cultural performances and the launch of a new graphic novel about the history of May Day.

As the impact of the global financial and economic crisis continues to hit workers around the world, it is timely that we commemorate and celebrate International Workers’ Day in the spirit of international solidarity and to foster genuine solidarity amongst all workers, whether they be migrant, immigrant, undocumented, indigenous, or Canadian workers, and all exploited and oppressed sectors in Canadian society.

Advance workers rights in the workplace and in our communities!

End anti-worker attacks on wages, benefits, and security!
An injury to one is an injury to all!

Workers unite to defend the rights of migrant and immigrant workers and to strengthen international solidarity!

For more information, please contact the May Day Organizing Committee c/o
Grassroots Women at 604-682-4451 or the Organizing Centre for Economic and Social Justice at 604-215-2775.

We also welcome endorsements of the May 1 event by organizations.
Please contact us at the numbers above if you wish to endorse our event.

by Michael Parenti

After the overthrow of communist governments in Eastern Europe, capitalism was paraded as the indomitable system that brings prosperity and democracy, the system that would prevail unto the end of history.

The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.

Plutocracy vs. Democracy
Let us consider democracy first. In the United States we hear that capitalism is wedded to democracy, hence the phrase, “capitalist democracies.” In fact, throughout our history there has been a largely antagonistic relationship between democracy and capital concentration. Some eighty years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.

The Constitution itself was fashioned by affluent gentlemen who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to repeatedly warn of the baneful and dangerous leveling effects of democracy. The document they cobbled together was far from democratic, being shackled with checks, vetoes, and requirements for artificial super majorities, a system designed to blunt the impact of popular demands.

In the early days of the Republic the rich and well-born imposed property qualifications for voting and officeholding. They opposed the direct election of candidates (note, their Electoral College is still with us). And for decades they resisted extending the franchise to less favored groups such as propertyless working men, immigrants, racial minorities, and women.

Today conservative forces continue to reject more equitable electoral features such as proportional representation, instant runoff, and publicly funded campaigns. They continue to create barriers to voting, be it through overly severe registration requirements, voter roll purges, inadequate polling accommodations, and electronic voting machines that consistently “malfunction” to the benefit of the more conservative candidates.

At times ruling interests have suppressed radical publications and public protests, resorting to police raids, arrests, and jailings—applied most recently with full force against demonstrators in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the 2008 Republican National Convention.

The conservative plutocracy also seeks to rollback democracy’s social gains, such as public education, affordable housing, health care, collective bargaining, a living wage, safe work conditions, a non-toxic sustainable environment; the right to privacy, the separation of church and state, freedom from compulsory pregnancy, and the right to marry any consenting adult of one’s own choosing.

About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state–with its police, militia, courts, and laws—was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses. From this, Debs concluded that capitalism was not just an economic system but an entire social order, one that rigged the rules of democracy to favor the moneybags.
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Millions of people jobless. Billions of dollars in bailouts. Trillions of dollars in debt. And yet, for the first time in years, more Americans than not say their country is on the right track.

In a sign that Barack Obama has inspired hopes for a brighter future in the first 100 days of his presidency, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows that 48 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the right direction – compared with 44 percent who disagree.

The “right direction” number is up 8 points since February and a remarkable 31 points since October, the month before Obama’s election.

Intensely worried about their personal finances and medical expenses, Americans nonetheless appear realistic about the time Obama might need to turn things around, according to the AP-GfK poll. It shows, as Obama approaches his 100th day in office next Wednesday, most people consider their new president to be a strong, ethical and empathetic leader who is working to change Washington.
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CNN-IBN

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has ordered a probe into the alleged role of Gujarat Chief minister Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat riots.
The apex court has asked the Raghavan Committee to probe Modi’s role and submit its report in the next three months time.

SC has also asked the committee to probe the roles of a cabinet minister in the Modi government, three MLAs, three VHP activists and several IAS and IPS officers as well.

The decision came on a plea filed by the wife of slain ex-MP, Ehsan Jaffri and social activist Teesta Setalvad.

“It’s a huge victory because this is an indication of what we have been saying for almost six years now. We have been asking for an investigation and not presuming people are guilty like the opposite side does. The police had used Modi’s political clout to delay the probe, now the Supreme Court has renewed faith in the justice system by saying at least investigate it,” Teesta Setalvad told CNN-IBN.

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(Submitted by Mukul Dube)

By Rama Lakshmi

GANDHINAGAR, India — On the campaign trail, the renowned classical dancer Mallika Sarabhai walks past a foul-smelling trash heap and a gate adorned with coconuts to enter the maze-like slum where ragpickers in this western Indian city live.

Little girls welcome her with rice grains mixed in auspicious vermilion paste and garland her with hand-spun cotton threads. She squats on the floor and breaks into a folk song, and women in floral saris and colorful glass bangles clap and sing along.

“Other candidates wave at you and go away. Our democracy has room only for leaders, not for people like you and me,” said Sarabhai, 56, a slim, short-haired woman with kohl-rimmed eyes and a red-glitter bindi, the decorative dot worn on the forehead by many Hindu women. “But I have come here as one of you, as your sister.”
Sarabhai, a first-time independent candidate, is running for a lower house seat in Parliament in national elections this month from one of India’s most high-profile constituencies, a state capital that has been polarized along Hindu-Muslim lines since riots in 2002. As a dancer, she has used performing arts for years to challenge social taboos that limit women’s aspirations. In her new political role, she calls herself a “people’s candidate” who is fighting to reclaim the idea of an inclusive and secular India.

Sarabhai eschews grand speeches, microphones, banners and slogans. Instead, she takes notes as people talk about illegally brewed alcohol, bribe-taking policemen, the lack of bathing water and the shortage of women’s toilets in the slums.

Sarabhai, one of a handful of professional people running as independents in the upcoming elections, rejects the standard Indian political appeals to caste, religion and linguistic ethnicity, and speaks of empowering voters to unseat corrupt and ineffective politicians. Her campaign, she said, seeks to reclaim the shrinking space left for ordinary people’s voices in a democracy dominated by political parties that too often rely on mudslinging, muscle-flexing and money power.
Sarabhai’s constituency, Gandhinagar, in the western state of Gujarat, has suffered six bloody bouts of Hindu-Muslim rioting in four decades. The latest was in 2002, when Hindu mobs mounted reprisal attacks against Muslims that left more than 1,000 people dead in the state. Many groups have blamed the state’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for abetting the violence. Later that year, Sarabhai filed a public interest lawsuit against the government in the country’s Supreme Court, earning the wrath of the BJP’s supporters, who have since lampooned her.

“The silence of the city’s middle class toward the violence has been stunning. She is trying to extrude that silence by providing a credible alternative,” said Shiv Viswanathan, a social scientist at the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology in Gandhinagar. “Her fight has a lot of symbolism in this city fractured by violence.”

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DRUG BUST
Alan Cassels

SURELY OUR economic calamity couldn’t have any positive health effects, could it?

As people lose their jobs and watch their assets, retirement savings and homes diminish in value, one might assume that it inevitably means a big negative on the balance sheets of our lives.

Not so fast, I say. Among the pharmaceutical-popping public, recessionary times may indeed have a silver lining. In fact, this recession may be good for both our health and our pocketbooks, especially if it forces us to reassess our frequently thoughtless, overzealous and often un-economical, legal drug habit.

You have to admit that we have been somewhat conditioned by the media to believe that spending less on healthcare means rationing, longer waits and less access to health services. But can throwing less money at the pharmaceutical industry translate into better access and shorter wait times for things that actually count? It could, but I admit such heretical thoughts are based on my perspective that pharmaceuticals really do reside in a special place inside the healthcare world.

For each drug on the market that is truly lifesaving, providing profound benefits and extending the quality and length of our lives, dozens more either don’t deliver the goods or worse, provide the opposite – more harm than benefit. And the money we’re spending on those treatments could be buying less health.

Suffice to say, one of the side effects of these belt-tightening times could be that we spend more energy figuring out what is really essential for people who are truly sick and then making sure the system doesn’t reward prescribing what is unnecessary or harmful. After all, what better time to eliminate fat than when we are collectively facing lean times?

One clue that there is perhaps too much excess in the world of prescription drugs might be found in the way society pays for pharmaceuticals. In Canada, drug coverage operates by the rule of thirds: about a third of our collective pharmaceutical tab is covered by the public purse (in our case, BC Pharmacare). A third is paid for by your private and typically employer-sponsored health benefit program. And finally, a third is paid for out of your own pocket.

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(Submitted by a reader)