Stop the Hogs!

From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 8:00 AM
Subject: Big Brother Is Watching You... ICH / The Times + Comment

EXCERPT "Big Brother is Watching You":

The Government is planning to introduce a giant database that will hold the details of every phone call we have made, every e-mail we have sent and every webpage we have visited in the past 12 months.

This is needed to fight crime and terrorism, the Government claims. The Orwellian nature of this proposal cannot be overstated. However, there is one saving grace for people who fear for their civil liberties. ...the good news then is that we will not be robbed of our privacy by this latest database because it will remain just a pipedream. We taxpayers will, however, be robbed of billions of pounds as the IT consultancies draw up their bids to design and deliver the undeliverable.

END EXCERPT

According to Maude Barlow, in her book "Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America" in the aftermath of 9-11 the Bush administration moved swiftly to implement a host of draconian laws to fight terrorism and demanded that other countries follow suit while urging that the US legislation be used as their template. Governments around the world have complied leading to a growing number of related anti-terrorism laws and measures leading toward the harmonization and integration of security functions on a global scale.

Also according to a report on "The Emergence of a Global infrastructure For Mass Registration And Surveillance" by an international coalition of civil liberties groups, the International Campaign Against Mass Surveillance[ ICAMS], this has led to :
- a rollback of rights, freedoms, and civil liberties
- strengthened repressive regimes
- intrusive and discriminatory measures from national ID cards to no-fly lists
- and governments aggressively using information gathered and shared through electronic systems to crack down on dissent, close borders to refugees and activists and seize and detain people without reasonable grounds.

The ICAMS paper unmasks some 11 myths associated with the strict security impositions:

Myth #1: We are merely being asked to sacrifice some of our privacy and convenience for greater security.
Myth #2: These initiatives facilitate travel..
Myth #3: If one has nothing to hide, one has nothing to worry about
Myth #4: The technology being used is objective and reliable.
Myth #5: Terrorist watch lists are a reliable product of international intelligence cooperation and consensus.
Myth #6: If one is mistakenly caught up in the global surveillance net, one´s government can protect one.
Myth #7: Governments want to implement these systems to protect their citizens from terrorists.
Myth #8: Western democracies are defending democracy and human rights around the world.
Myth #9: These initiatives make us safer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Myth #10: Guaranteeing security is the paramount responsibility of governments.
Myth #11: At least, these initiatives are better than doing nothing.

"[ICAMS White paper The Emergence of a Global infrastructure For mass
registration And surveillance] http://www.i-cams.org/ICAMS1.pdf

This report concludes:

This report has identified infringements of no less than half of the minimum standards contained in the Universal Declaration of Human rights ....... If human rights and civil liberties are to survive into the 21st century, there must be a sea change in political and popular culture. The resistance that has occurred to date is not enough.

Groups and individuals across the whole spectrum of civil society must play a part. The future is in all of our hands.

==================

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e19989.htm
Big Brother Is Watching You...

...but luckily he's overstretched and has underestimated the job of keeping track of us all By Phil Hendren 27/05/08 "The Times" -- 22/05/08 - -
The Government is planning to introduce a giant database that will hold the details of every phone call we have made, every e-mail we have sent and every webpage we have visited in the past 12 months. This is needed to fight crime and terrorism, the Government claims.

The Orwellian nature of this proposal cannot be overstated. However, there is one saving grace for people who fear for their civil liberties. The probability of the project ever seeing the light of day is close to zero. This proposal - like so many grandiose government IT schemes before it - is technologically unfeasible.

The current levels of traffic on the internet alone (including e-mail) would require storage volumes of astronomical proportions - and internet use by the public is still growing rapidly. Meanwhile, the necessary processing capabilities to handle such a relentless torrent of information do not bear thinking about. Modern computer processors are fast, but writing data to disks will always be a serious bottleneck.

Take a quick sample from the London Internet Exchange, the UK's hub and one of world's largest points at which each ISP exchanges traffic. Yearly LINX carries at the very least 365 petabytes of data - that is the equivalent of the contents of about 26 million iPod Nanos that have the capacity to hold nearly 2,000 songs each. There is no commercial technology that is capable of writing at those kinds of speeds.

It's not just writing that would be problematic, but the reading of the data too. It would be immensely difficult to pinpoint in such a massive database an e-mail sent by a particular person at a particular time.

It's all too familiar in large-scale government projects that the technological expectations of civil servants gallop far ahead of reality. The Ministry of Defence's requirements for the Nimrod radar project was a classic example of overspecification. The result was a system that was unable to process data because the technology Whitehall assumed would exist in the future, when the planes would finally take to the skies, simply never materialised. The planes, after hundreds of millions were spent, had to revert to the traditional Awacs system instead. The men who gave us the new NHS database, likewise, severely underestimated operational realities.

The good news is that we will not be robbed of our privacy by this latest database because it will remain just a pipedream. We taxpayers will, however, be robbed of billions of pounds as the IT consultancies draw up their bids to design and deliver the undeliverable.

Phil Hendren is a Unix systems administrator. He blogs at www.dizzythinks.net

From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 9:40 AM
Subject: SPP Video Interview Janet Eaton & Karen O'Donnell with Dave Lewit - Alliance for Democracy, Cambridge, MA April 19, 2008

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 9237420593

Security and Prosperity Partnership -- Interview; Janet Eaton & Karen O'Donnell - 29 min - Apr 19, 2008

Alliance for Democracy - www.sounddemocracy.org

In this interview Janet Eaton provides an overview of the origins, structures and impacts of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), a NAFTA - plus initiative within a 'security' fortress America framework which is being executed, beneath the radar screen of public, Parliamentary and Congressional scrutiny, by executive levels of government with advice from big business.

Impacts discussed include human rights and civil liberties under attack on the 'security' side and downward regulatory harmonization, tar sands and energy implications, NAFTA super corridor impacts, the environment as loser under both NAFTA and the SPP, loss of jobs, and attempts to privatize Mexico's Pemex, among other things, on the so-called prosperity or trade side of the arrangement.

She also discusses the failures of NAFTA upon which the SPP is based, noting the lack of logic in continuing to promote and extend a free market, free trade system when corporate globalization and its mechanisms like free trade agreements have been shown to be flawed and failing. She speaks of a world teetering on the verge of ecosystem collapse, collapse of cheap oil, economic collapse and climate change tipping points all of which have been exacerbated by a global economic system based on unlimited growth, militarism, global trade and fossil fuel. She suggests we must redesign the entire economic system and involve ctizens and NGOs in the process.

Karen O´Donnell, a labour representative and former Massachusetts State representative provides insight into US labor perspectives on the SPP while stressing the need for citizens to speak to their state representatives on issues like the SPP.

Dave Lewit, from the New England branch of the Alliance for Democracy, as interviewer, introduces the 'globalization impact bill' and makes several references to the importance of citizen awareness and action in attempting to transform the system. He concludes "In general I think it falls to 'we the people' here locally to deal with this!"

See also:

http://www.newenglandalliance.org/sn_di ... ?row_ID=27

Everything You Wanted to Know About Globalization, NAFTA, and the "Security & Prosperity Partnership" a power point presentation by Dr. Janet Eaton in support of the 'Globalization Impact Bill, State House, Boston, March 27, 2008. This power point provides SPP references as follows:

SPP References -Canada

1. Council of Canadians Integrate This: Challenging the SPP
http://www.canadians.org/integratethis/

2. Common Frontiers - NAFTA Must be Renegotiated
http://www.commonfrontiers.ca/Single_Page_Docs/
SinglePage_1col_docs/Mar03_08_NAFTA_declaration.html

3. Canadian Labour Congress
http://canadianlabour.ca/search.php?que ... &action=Go

4. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
www.policyalternatives.ca

5. Centre for Research on Globalization
www.globalresearch.ca

6. Green Party of Canada The Security and Prosperity Partnership
http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/docu ... r_look_spp

7. New Democratic Party of Canada http://www.ndp.ca/continentalintegration

NDP launches stop SPP working group
http://www.ndp.ca/page/5823

8. Canadian Action Party http://www.canadianactionparty.ca/home.html

9. Vive le Canada
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/topics (News postings
on Canada-US Relations including the SPP)

John Foster - Beyond NAFTA: The Security and Prosperity Partnership
http://www.canadians.org/DI/documents/N ... Foster.pdf

Global Research Website: Commentary on the SPP and NAU
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... regionId=1

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA)-Living with Uncle
Conference Canada-US Relations in a Time of Empire Check Conf 2003,
recent workshop http://www.policyalternatives.ca/documents/
National_Office_Pubs/2005/living_with_uncle_overview.pdf

National Forum of NGO´s on National Insecurity - Living and Working
Under Empire with background working paper of the same name. Feb.
2005
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/documents/
National_Office_Pubs/2005/national_insecurity.pdf

Council of Canadians (COC) - Crossing the Line Inquiry as well as an
important background document "The Canada We Want -What´s the Big
Idea?" Report March 2005
http://www.canadians.org/DI/issues/cros ... index.html

Sierra Club of Canada Atlantic Chapter
http://www.sierraclub.ca/atlantic/programs/economies/
digbyquarry/Digby_Neck_Hearings_July_07.pdf


SPP References US

Alliance for Democracy
http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/ ... 8-AA.shtml

New England Alliance for Democracy
http://www.newenglandalliance.org/

Alliance for Responsible Trade
http://www.art-us.org/FTAs/NAFTA

Public Citizen Global Trade Watch
http://www.citizen.org/trade/

Economic Policy Institute
http://www.epinet.org/

Global Exchange
http://www.globalexchange.org/

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Trade Observatory
http://www.tradeobservatory.org/
http://www.iatp.org/iatp/commentaries.cfm?refID=102007

Dollars & Sense From NAFTA to the SPP By Katherine Sciacchitano
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/year/2008/

Sierra Club
http://www.sierraclub.org/committees/cac/water/
WaterThreatsNAFTASPPAtlantica.pdf

Texas Corridor Watch
http://www.corridorwatch.org/ttc/index.htm

Judicial Watch
http://www.judicialwatch.org/5979.shtml

From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 11:21 AM
Subject: SPP related - Mexico: Oil privatisation halted due to mass protests

Excerpts:

"The Adelitas have arrived/To defend our oil/Whoever wants to give it to the foreigners/ Will get the shit kicked out of him!" yodelled the brigades of women pouring onto the esplanade of the Mexican senate.

The demonstration was to protest a petroleum privatisation measure President Felipe Calderon insists is not a petroleum privatisation measure - and which he sent onto the Senate for fast-track ratification at the tag end of the session this April.

Inside the small, ornate Senate, leftist legislators aligned in the Broad Progressive Front (FAP), some dressed in white oil workers´ overalls and hard hats, were camped out under pup tents arranged around the podium for the eighth straight night. They paralysed legislative activities and demanded an ample national debate on Calderon´s plans to open up the nationalised petroleum corporation PEMEX to transnational investment.

---------

The appearance of the Adelitas and their male counterparts ("Los Adelitos") is the latest gamble by the left populist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) to monkey wrench the government´s plans to return PEMEX to the contemporary version of the Seven Sisters.

Organised by neighbourhoods and by workplaces, the Adelita brigades are the lineal descendants of the groups of AMLO supporters who came together after the stolen 2006 election in a seven-week sit-in that shut down the capital´s main thoroughfares.....

--------------

Operating in shifts, 13,000 "brigadistas" have been encamped off and on for a week in front of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

-------------------------

The creation of so large a citizens´ army pledged to carry out civil disobedience to prevent the passage of legislation it thinks detrimental to the republic is unprecedented in Mexico´s political history.

End Excerpts

- janet

============================================

Mexico: Oil privatisation halted due to mass protests

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9057

by John Ross Global Research, May 23, 2008
http://counterpunch.org,

"The Adelitas have arrived/To defend our oil/Whoever wants to give it to the foreigners/ Will get the shit kicked out of him!" yodelled the brigades of women pouring onto the esplanade of the Mexican senate.

The demonstration was to protest a petroleum privatisation measure President Felipe Calderon insists is not a petroleum privatisation measure - and which he sent onto the Senate for fast-track ratification at the tag end of the session this April.

Inside the small, ornate Senate, leftist legislators aligned in the Broad Progressive Front (FAP), some dressed in white oil workers´ overalls and hard hats, were camped out under pup tents arranged around the podium for the eighth straight night. They paralysed legislative activities and demanded an ample national debate on Calderon´s plans to open up the nationalised petroleum corporation PEMEX to transnational investment.

Sneak privatisation

The hullabaloo, which has been brewing for months, exploded when rumours circulated that Calderon´s right-wing PAN party and allies in the once-ruling (71 years) PRI had cooked up a secret vote approving the privatisation measure.

Such covert manoeuvring is called an "albazo" or "madruguete´ - a pre-dawn ruse to approve legislation in the dark when there is significant opposition, often behind locked doors and military and police barricades. Seizing the podiums in both houses of congress and the timely arrival of the Adelitas prevented a madruguete and derailed plans to fast-track the privatisation.

Under Calderon´s "energy reform" package, building and operating refineries and pipelines will be opened up to the private sector - 37 out of PEMEX´s 41 divisions would be subject to partial privatisation.

In an analysis anti-privatisers label "catastrophic", which Calderon sent on to congress to back up his initiative, the president pinned salvation of PEMEX on deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that would necessitate the "association" of private capital.

Mexico´s petroleum industry was expropriated from an array of oil companies known collectively as the "Seven Sisters" in March 1938 by then-president Lazaro Cardenas - an act that remains a paragon of revolutionary nationalism throughout Latin America.

But down the decades, PEMEX has subcontracted out important parts of its structure to transnational drillers and service corporations like Halliburton, now its number one subcontractor, that suck billions of dollars in profits from Mexican oil each year.

The appearance of the Adelitas and their male counterparts ("Los Adelitos") is the latest gamble by the left populist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) to monkey wrench the government´s plans to return PEMEX to the contemporary version of the Seven Sisters.

Organised by neighbourhoods and by workplaces, the Adelita brigades are the lineal descendants of the groups of AMLO supporters who came together after the stolen 2006 election in a seven-week sit-in that shut down the capital´s main thoroughfares. At last count, there were 41 registered brigades - 28 Adelitas and 13 Adelitos, about 50,000 citizens in all.

Operating in shifts, 13,000 "brigadistas" have been encamped off and on for a week in front of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

The brigades are named after significant political events - "18th of March", marking the day Cardenas expropriated the oil - or to honor social activists such as Jesus Piedra, the long-disappeared son of left senator Rosario Ibarra. Women warriors like Leona Vicaria and Benita Galeana are similarly remembered.

Citizens´ army

The creation of so large a citizens´ army pledged to carry out civil disobedience to prevent the passage of legislation it thinks detrimental to the republic is unprecedented in Mexico´s political history.

Similar brigades, led by women, have invaded local congresses outside of Mexico City and one band of activists closed Acapulco´s busy airport last week. Shutting down Mexico City´s Benito Juarez International Airport is the Adelitas´ ultimate threat.

The Adelitas, like most of the weapons in AMLO´s arsenal, are drawn from Mexico´s revolutionary history. Las Adelitas were "soldaderas", or women soldiers who fought shoulder to shoulder with the men in Pancho Villa´s "Northern Division" during the 1910-1919 revolution.

With their long skirts, broad sombreros, bandoleers strung across their chests, and toting .22 carbines, the Adelitas were emblematic of the many courageous women who participated in that epic struggle.

AMLO´s crusade has not been confined to one house of congress. On April 8, when Calderon sprung his initiative on the legislature, FAP members stormed the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies while lawmakers were preparing to grant Calderon permission to travel to New Orleans for the April 21-22 summit of the North American Security and Prosperity Agreement. Mexican presidents must solicit congress for permission to travel.

Calderon was eager to attend the summit with the re-privatisation of Mexican oil in hand.

Suddenly, the FAPos unfurled a 60-foot banner that announced Congress had been closed and cast it over the entire presidium - trapping president Ruth Zavaleta in its folds. The ensuing chaos prevented her from calling for a vote on the President´s travel arrangements.

Eight days later, the tribune was still draped in the banner and FAP deputies had chained shut the doors of the chamber and moved the desks of the PAN legislators to the podium to barricade themselves from attempts to take it back.

Zavaleta, a member of AMLO´s Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)but not friendly to him, has called for the use of "public force" to remove the rebel lawmakers.

AMLO is the target of extravagant vitriol delivered by the media, reminiscent of the public lynching he was subjected to during the tumultuous 2006 presidential campaign. TV tyrant Televisa´s coverage of the takeover of congress was so venomous that thousands of Adelitas, wearing bandaleros and wielding facsimile .22s, descended on the conglomerate´s Mexico City headquarters, provoking one prominent PAN politico to label them "paramilitaries".

In violation of constitutional amendments banning "black" political hit pieces, a PAN front group "Better Society, Better Government", is running primetime Televisa spots comparing AMLO to Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet. The Empresorial Coordinating Council, the nation´s elite business federation, takes out full-page ads blasting AMLO for staging a coup d´etat.

PRD divisions

Despite the anti-AMLO media blitz, or perhaps because of it, Lopez Obrador remains the only figure on the Mexican political stage who is able to convoke tens of thousands of supporters, often with virtually no notice.

Three times since March 18, when he kicked off this crusade, AMLO has filled the great Zocalo plaza, the heart of Mexico´s body politic. What makes the turnouts even more impressive is the fact that AMLO has built this massive movement while the PRD has been reducing itself to rubble.

In-fighting since a corrupted March 16 party presidential election has divided the PRD down the middle. The party is roughly split between an activist wing headed by Lopez Obrador and party bureaucrats who see the PRD as an instrument for political and personal advancement. The latter seek to demobilize the Adelitas.

The "Chuchus" (many of their leaders are named Jesus) eschew AMLO´s rallies and sit-ins and instead conduct their own private hunger strikes to protest privatisation. The Chuchus portray themselves as the "reasonable" left and are only too willing to "dialogue" with Calderon -a president Lopez Obrador resolutely refuses to recognise, due to the fraudulent nature of his "victory" in 2006.

Whoever wins, the tussle over the bones of the PRD may be a moot one - after two years of grassroots campaigning, ALMO´s base has grown wider than the PRD´s.

Although Calderon´s scam to fast track privatisation through congress was blunted by the Adelitas and the FAPs, the PAN and the PRI still have plenty of room in which to connive. Now the PRI, seconded by Calderon´s right-wing minions, proposes an uninterrupted 50 day "national" debate to be restricted to the two houses of congress with a congressional vote by mid-summer.

Calderon´s initiative can only pass if at least half of the PRI´s 120-vote delegation goes along with the game. Even if the privatisation measure eventually passes, the legislation is bound to wind up in the Mexican Supreme Court the moment it clears congress.

Meanwhile, AMLO´s people are clamouring for a very different kind of debate, one that would unfold over the next four months and be conducted inside and outside congress in every state and municipality with the prospect of a national referendum to decide the issue - one poll has 62% opposed to the privatisation.

Such grassroots decision-making would be a revolutionary step in the land of the albazo and the madruguete.

Out on the esplanade of the Senate, the Adelitas were shaking their bodies to "La Cumbia del Petrolio". "Are you tired, companeras?" the companera with the bullhorn asked and brigadista Berta Robledo, a nurse about to retire from the National Pediatric Hospital, came to her feet with a loud "No!"

"Sure the sun is hot but so what?", she responded to a gringo reporter´s stupid question, "the sun can´t stop us, the rain can´t stop us, the cold can´t stop us and you know why? Because we are right! We are fighting for our oil and for our country. This is the resistance. We don´t get tired."

[Abridged from http://counterpunch.org, April 28.]
From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #749 7 May 2008.

From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 9:42 AM
Subject: NA's era of limitless integration draws to a welcome close + Ignatieff: a trans-Canada energy highway [Martin G&M June 3 & 2] +

Dear All:

Lawrence Martin's column in the Globe and Mail June 2 on 'the end of the era of limitless North American integration' shows insight and foresight on the realities of deeper integration with the US and provides a refreshing take for those of us who have been critical of deeper integration, of military association with the Bush regime, of corporate globalization, of NAFTA and the SPP.

Comprehensive and diverse analyses bringing to light the flaws and failures of the 'war on terror', of corporate globalization, free market economics, of NAFTA, and the exposure of the secretive SPP during the Montebello Summit followed by the frantic floating of alternative or rebranded ideas for continued deeper integration by the same elites referred to by Martin confirm his savvy in announcing:

a) that the era of wholesale dependency, of endless integration is over, leaving public policy to catch up to the new times, and

b) that the elites would do well to move beyond their dated continentalist urges.

- janet
=======================

Excerpt from Martin's G&M article today on era of endless North American integration drawing to close:

Michael Ignatieff's enthusiasm for a trans-Canada energy corridor will run up against opposition from those, with visions small, who still see Canada as a kind of American substate. In some quarters of this country, a quasi-colonial mindset abides, embraced most stubbornly by our older elites. But they would do well to move beyond their dated continentalist urges........ the new reality is ...the era of wholesale dependency, of endless integration is over, leaving public policy to catch up to the new times.

Militarily, Canada doesn't need the U.S. protective umbrella to the extent it did in the past. Terrorism is a different kind of threat. It isn't about big standing armies, warships and nation-state confrontation. .... For a long time, Canada's colonial heritage fed its dependency mentality. But the country is older, more populated, more confident... the sense of self-doubt and subordination has diminished. Our younger generations .. do not wish to be limited to fortress North America.

We've allowed our major companies and enterprises to be bought up. We do not even look after our own energy security - hence Mr. Ignatieff's idea. But ... the natural run of history is loosening the bonds. The United States is no longer, if it ever was, a model for this country. Canadians have looked on in consternation at the direction of the Bush administration and responded: No, thank you....

The world has evolved, as has Canada, in a way that makes the United States less dominant. On this continent, old-styled bilateralism has seen its heyday. The dynamic is changing too much for it to sustain itself.

fyi-janet
==========================

See:

[1] North America's era of limitless integration draws to a welcome close by Lawrence Martin G&M June 3rd, as well as

[2]Ignatieff has a vision: a trans-Canada energy highway by Lawrence Martin G&M June 2nd

Excerpt

He [Ignatieff] calls the notion that we're a big net exporter of oil in the West and a big net importer in the East "weird." He says it's weird, too, that with foreign supply channels so potentially unstable, there is no talk in Ottawa of creating a national petroleum reserve. He has questions as well about the NAFTA lock-in clause that guarantees levels of U.S. supply from Canada.

Omar Alghabra, the Liberal energy critic, says his colleague is on the right track. It's too gigantic an issue for Canada to just leave to the market, he says. "We have to reduce barriers that prevent Canadian oil from being used by Canadians. We need a national energy strategy."

========================================

[1] North America's era of limitless integration draws to a welcome close

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... M.20080603.
wcomartin03/BNStory/specialComment/home

LAWRENCE MARTIN June 3, 2008 at 7:57 AM EDT

Michael Ignatieff's enthusiasm for a trans-Canada energy corridor will run up against opposition from those, with visions small, who still see Canada as a kind of American substate.

In some quarters of this country, a quasi-colonial mindset abides, embraced most stubbornly by our older elites. But they would do well to move beyond their dated continentalist urges. Frank Sinatra passed away some time ago. There's a new orchard out there. The American century is over.

For most of that century, Canada did well by, and pretty much defined itself in terms of, the United States. But the new reality is that the country doesn't need the neighbour as much as it used to. The era of wholesale dependency, of endless integration is over, leaving public policy to catch up to the new times.

Our exports to the U.S. never stopped rising during the course of the last century. They are now declining. They dropped 5 per cent in the first three months of this year.

The border? Remember John Turner's warning in 1988 about how it would disappear - the election-campaign erasure ad? The opposite is occurring.

It's getting thicker and higher. Rather than free-trade agreements leading to further forms of integration, we now have the opposite - American political leaders talking about trashing NAFTA.

America remains a powerful engine. Never underestimate its resilience.

But it no longer has the global courtyard to itself. Other giants are emerging and that means major alternative markets for Canada that were not there before.

As British power waned early in the last century, Canada moved away from reliance on Britain. As U.S. power wanes early in this century - though it will in no way approximate the British fall - a similar, though more modest, trend could well unfold here.

Economically, though we may not be the energy superpower our Prime Minister suggests, our relative resource riches give us a stronger, more independent status. With oil and gas and water in such demand, Ottawa has leverage vis-à-vis Washington that wasn't there before.

You want to send off alarm bells south of the border? Mention giving China a stake in our oil. Peter Lougheed, as recounted in William Marsden's compelling book, Stupid to the Last Drop, did just that in the company of a member of the U.S. cabinet. "I will never forget," Mr. Lougheed recalls, "the dropped glass by the American secretary."

Militarily, Canada doesn't need the U.S. protective umbrella to the extent it did in the past. Terrorism is a different kind of threat. It isn't about big standing armies, warships and nation-state confrontation. There are no bristling Germanys or Soviet Unions bent on hegemony. To be sure, enemy-obsessed Washington has found, in Iran, a new demon. But Iran has no sizable air force or navy, no nukes, bombers or long-range missiles. If pressed, it could take out a state the size of Denmark.

For a long time, Canada's colonial heritage fed its dependency mentality. But the country is older, more populated, more confident. It has come of age, as the cliché has it, and with maturity, the sense of self-doubt and subordination has diminished. Our younger generations are more outward-looking. They do not wish to be limited to fortress North America.

It isn't as if Ottawa has been pushing hard to move away from the American orbit. Governments have been slow to develop markets with India, China, Brazil. We've allowed our major companies and enterprises to be bought up. We do not even look after our own energy security - hence Mr. Ignatieff's idea. But if not by our own doing, then the natural run of history is loosening the bonds. The United States is no longer, if it ever was, a model for this country.

Canadians have looked on in consternation at the direction of the Bush administration and responded: No, thank you.

The direction could very well change should the Republicans get blown out of office this fall. A new president could undo much of the damage, end the squeeze of paranoid nationalism, restore faith in the American values Canadians used to admire.

But even if that were to happen - and just one terrorist incident would shatter any such hopes - there's little likelihood that the old order would return. The world has evolved, as has Canada, in a way that makes the United States less dominant. On this continent, old-styled bilateralism has seen its heyday. The dynamic is changing too much for it to sustain itself.

<><><><>

[2]Ignatieff has a vision: a trans-Canada energy highway

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... C.20080602.
COMARTIN02/TPStory/?query=Michael+ignatieff+WEST-EASTPIPELINE

LAWRENCE MARTIN lmartin@globeandmail.com June 2, 2008

How much sense does it make that in this energy-abundant country 40 per cent of Canadians are dependent on unstable foreign markets for their oil? How much sense does it make that several pipelines are being built north-south to supply the American market while none are being built west-east to supply the eastern half of the nation? Or that we are one of the only Western countries without a strategic petroleum reserve for crisis situations?

In Canada, NEP now stands for No Energy Policy. Unlike jurisdictions elsewhere, it's pretty much laissez-faire here - even with gas prices shooting out of control and the risk of international market upheavals.

The situation has caught the special focus of Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff who has brought in a group of researchers to help him explore solutions.

"I look at the east-west linkages that tie our country together," he said recently, "and I do wonder whether they are strong enough to offset the north-south flows that dominate our economy. The oil, the natural gas, the hydro - it all flows south. Where is the national grid to share our power, the east-west pipeline to share our oil and to guarantee our energy security as a nation?"

A west-east pipeline is feasible, he says. There may be good arguments about economic viability to counter the notion. "But let's get back to the fundamentals here. An east-west continental railway was recurrently feared to be economically non-viable. But without it we wouldn't have a country."

Mr. Ignatieff stressed that he was not speaking in the context of official Liberal policy. But when he gets focused on a big idea, it often finds a way of translating. He was out early with the "Quebec as nation" idea for the Liberals, as well as a carbon tax to address global warming.

On energy, you can sense, with his railway analogy, the national vision dancing in his head. "This," he said, "is one of the emerging imperatives of public policy - to get a really visionary commitment to strengthening the east-west energy linkages instead of shipping it all south."

In addition to a west-east pipeline from Alberta, he lists other areas where national linkages can be forged. Ontario has power needs that Manitoba could meet with proper new grid connections. Plans for hydroelectricity from the Lower Churchill project in Labrador envisage markets in the Maritimes and the United States. But it would make enormous sense, Mr. Ignatieff says, for Ottawa to work with the players to explore the possibility of getting some of that power piped east-west to Ontario. It would be part of the solution to Ontario's extreme dependence on environmentally damaging, coal-fired electricity generation.

The Liberal deputy leader is aware of the sensitivities. He is no Walter Gordon nationalist, he says, and he is not trying to bring in a new national energy program through the back door. There are, as he recognizes, highly complex matters of provincial jurisdiction, huge capital costs, refining capacities, environmental impacts, and lingering Western rage from the national energy program of almost three decades ago.

"Energy policy in Canada is always a national unity issue. The bottom line is that we must find a way to strengthen our union without setting ablaze the old anger and resentment of Alberta and Saskatchewan in relation to the centralizing designs of the federal government."

He calls the notion that we're a big net exporter of oil in the West and a big net importer in the East "weird." He says it's weird, too, that with foreign supply channels so potentially unstable, there is no talk in Ottawa of creating a national petroleum reserve. He has questions as well about the NAFTA lock-in clause that guarantees levels of U.S. supply from Canada.

Omar Alghabra, the Liberal energy critic, says his colleague is on the right track. It's too gigantic an issue for Canada to just leave to the market, he says. "We have to reduce barriers that prevent Canadian oil from being used by Canadians. We need a national energy strategy."

From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
To: "a renewed Mai-Not" <mai-not@globalproblematique.net>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 2:45 PM
Subject: Bolivia nationalizes hydrocarbon transport company June 3rd

The Bolivian government today nationalized the TR-Holdings company, ... via presidential decree. President Evo Morales issued the decree at a Transredes plant in the city of Santa Cruz.

The takeover of Transredes is one more step in the process of nationalizing the entire hydrocarbons industry, via which the country's income from that line increased by $300 million in 2005 to $1.93 billion last year.

FYI-Janet

=====================

http://grupoapoyo.org/basn/node/309

Tue, 06/03/2008 - 17:26 - tupaj

LA PAZ, June 2.-- The Bolivian government today nationalized the TR-Holdings company, which owns 50% of the stocks of the Transporte de Hidrocarburos Sociedad Anónima (Transredes) company, consolidating the process begun on May 1, 2006, the ABI news agency reported.

Bolivia nationalizes hydrocarbon transport company

TR-Holdings, which was controlled by the Ashmore investment group, was nationalized via presidential decree. President Evo Morales issued the decree at a Transredes plant in the city of Santa Cruz.

The president revealed that the transnational oil corporation had conspired against his government, citing reports that proved the company had maintained contacts with opposition provincial leaders.

This process, via which the state-owned Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB) now controls almost 98% of Transredes property, where the Anglo-Dutch Shell Gas Latin America also had interests, was "transcendental," according to Hydrocarbons Minister Carlos Villegas.

During the implementation of the last decree, President Morales announced that he would continue with the state recuperation of all companies privatized in the 1990s, to fulfill the "clamorous demand of the Bolivian people."

The takeover of Transredes is one more step in the process of nationalizing the entire hydrocarbons industry, via which the country's income from that line increased by $300 million in 2005 to $1.93 billion last year.

Translated by Granma International

----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 5:44 PM
Subject: Fortis CEO threatens blackouts in Belize if rates don't go up [Probe International June 9]

QUOTE: "In his address to Belize Electricity Limited shareholders last month, Fortis CEO Stanley Marshall said a rate increase is needed to ensure the company has the cash to purchase power from neighbouring Mexico. "Without power from Mexico, Belize Electricity Limited will be forced into rotating blackouts," said Marshall. "Immediate action is required."

Fortis is the majority owner of Belize Electricity Limited which can only raise electricity rates after applying for and being awarded a rate increase by Belize´s Public Utilities Commission (PUC). It applied for an increase earlier this year but was turned down.

In 2003, Fortis escaped an injunction to stop construction of the Chalillo dam. Two out of five Privy Council judges wanted the project stopped, saying the dam´s environmental impact assessment, which was paid for by the Canadian International Development Agency, failed to comply with Belize´s Environmental Protection Act, and was "so flawed by important errors about the geology of the site" as to be unacceptable."[/i]


http://www.probeinternational.org/catal ... belize.php

fyi-janet

Fortis Inc. (TSX: FTS) is a St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador based international diversified electric utility holding company. It primarily operates in Canada and the Caribbean. In 2005, it earned a profit of $137.1 million Canadian from revenue of $1.44 billion. [1] Fortis was formed in 1987 when shareholders of the regulated transmission and distribution utility Newfoundland Light & Power Co. voted to form a separate holding company.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortis_Inc.

====================

Press Release by Probe International, June 09, 2008

www.probeinternational.org

Canadian power company threatens blackouts in Belize if rates don't
go up

Fortis CEO Stanley Marshall said a rate increase is needed to ensure the company has the cash to purchase power from neighbouring Mexico.

In his address to Belize Electricity Limited shareholders last month, Fortis CEO Stanley Marshall said a rate increase is needed to ensure the company has the cash to purchase power from neighbouring Mexico.
"Without power from Mexico, Belize Electricity Limited will be forced
into rotating blackouts," said Marshall. "Immediate action is required."

Fortis is the majority owner of Belize Electricity Limited which can only raise electricity rates after applying for and being awarded a rate increase by Belize´s Public Utilities Commission (PUC). It applied for an increase earlier this year but was turned down.

According to CEO Marshall, rising oil prices and the regulator´s decision not to allow a 25 percent rate increase are to blame for putting his company in "financial crisis."

But PUC chairman, John Avery, in an interview with Belize´s Channel 5 News, said the Commission cannot take BEL´s claims about a cash flow crisis seriously and will not allow BEL to pass unreasonable costs onto customers.

Fortis owns 70 percent of Belize Electricity Limited, the country's monopoly buyer and distributor of electricity to nearly 70,000 customers.

In a sweetheart deal, Belize Electricity Limited buys hydropower from another Fortis company, the Belize Electric Company Limited (BECOL) at a rate of 9 US cents per kilowatt-hour, well above the cost of hydro in North American jurisdictions.

BEL complains about cash flow, said Avery, but "they´re freely giving over their cash to BECOL."

BECOL owns and operates the country´s two hydro facilities, Mollejon and Chalillo, that flooded the Macal River Valley.

Critics also say BEL is over-charging for its diesel-fired electricity, paying more than 25 US cents per kilowatt-hour for about ten percent of its total supply.

BEL gets about half its power supply from Mexico for 16 US cents per kilowatt-hour, up from 3 US cents per kilowatt-hour several years ago.

BEL has been awarded successive rate increases from the previous government that was voted out of office earlier this year, largely over its mishandling of utility privatization.

Another factor contributing to BEL´s high costs, the regulator said, is that BEL´s dispatch plan has the company taking more power from expensive sources, such as diesel, even when cheaper sources are available.

The regulator also found that BEL has double billed customers for a $35 million transmission line.

BEL´s profits, meanwhile, have jumped 58 percent in the last two years, from $18.9 million in 2005 to $30 million in 2007 - money that BEL says has gone into capital upgrades around the country.

Following BEL´s objections to the regulator´s decision not to raise rates, the PUC has commissioned an independent expert to review the case and report back no later than June 11th.

According to BEL, BECOL´s third hydro plant, which is expected to come online in 2009, will help reduce its power costs.

In 2003, Fortis escaped an injunction to stop construction of the Chalillo dam. Two out of five Privy Council judges wanted the project stopped, saying the dam´s environmental impact assessment, which was paid for by the Canadian International Development Agency, failed to comply with Belize´s Environmental Protection Act, and was "so flawed by important errors about the geology of the site" as to be unacceptable.

http://www.probeinternational.org/catal ... belize.php

For more information, CONTACT:

Gráinne Ryder, Policy Director, Probe International, Toronto
Phone 416-964-9223, ext. 228

Candy and George Gonzalez, Belize Institute of Environmental Law and Policy BELPO), and We Belizeans Against the Dam (WeBAD) in Cayo (downstream from BECOL´s dams). Phone 501-824-2476

----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 1:09 PM
Subject: NAFTA Growing Resistance & Calls for Renegotiation by Janet M Eaton

Go to:

http://www.stopthehogs.com/pdf/nafta-resistance.pdf

NAFTA Growing Resistance & Calls for Renegotiation & Oversight. A power point presentation by Janet M Eaton, PhD, academic, researcher, activist and free trade critic. June 8, 2008

This 60 slide power point with text, quotes, references and images chronicles the resistance to NAFTA that is rapidly emerging across North America. Civil Society groups, political parties, elected representatives, public policy centres and coalitions in Mexico, Canada and the US, as well as cross border coalitions, are all calling for the renegotiation of NAFTA.

It also documents US State level free trade oversight legislation, federal level promises that have emerged in the Democratic Primaries, and US Federal legislation in the works, including the June 4, 2008 T.R.A.D.E Act, all of which reflect growing public opinion to renegotiate NAFTA and free trade in general.

It is hoped by documenting and exposing the breadth and extent of this movement that citizens and politicians alike will recognize the imperative for action. With the significant evidence of failure of the present `free trade´ system and the extent of resistance highlighted herein, the recalcitrant and reactionary calls of elite proponents of NAFTA, to maintain the status quo, must be challenged.

Links to other power points on Globalization, NAFTA, and the SPP and their impacts are found at the end of this power point.

Please forward for general use in increasing awareness & encouraging
political action !

----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2008 9:36 PM
Subject: Finally a step toward confronting rape in war - UNSC Landmark Resolution June 19 [2 items]

Dear All:

A U.S.-sponsored resolution adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council called sexual violence "a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group." It said the violence "can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security."

It called on parties to conflict to take immediate measures to protect civilians from sexual violence, said such crimes should be excluded from amnesty after conflicts, and warned that the council would consider special measures against parties that commit them when imposing or renewing sanctions.

The resolution also called on S-G Ban Ki moon to...tighten procedures for stopping abuses by U.N. peacekeepers, who have been accused of sexual offenses in several countries. Ban said he was "profoundly committed to a zero-tolerance policy" and would strengthen disciplinary procedures by holding not just individuals but their supervisors accountable. [1]

"This resolution sends a clear message throughout the UN system: rape is a crime that should be prevented and when it´s not, it should be systematically reported and effectively prosecuted," said Marianne Mollmann, women´s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch. [2]

fyi-janet

===============================

[1] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19485901.htm

UN council urges action on sexual violence in war 19 Jun 2008 23:10:29 GMT Source: Reuters
(Adds adoption of resolution)

By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS, June 19 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council demanded on Thursday that warring governments and factions act to halt violence against women, saying rape was no longer just a by-product of war but a military tactic.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who chaired part of the session, told the council the world had now recognized that sexual violence during conflicts went beyond individual victims to affect nations' security and stability.

Echoed by a string of speakers, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the 15-nation council the problem had "reached unspeakable and pandemic proportions in some societies attempting to recover from conflict."

Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, a former U.N. peacekeeping commander, told the meeting: "It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict."

Speakers identified former Yugoslavia, Sudan's Darfur region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Liberia as conflict regions where deliberate sexual violence had occurred on a mass scale.

U.N. officials have said the problem is currently worst in eastern Congo. But a recent survey of 2,000 women and girls in Liberia showed 75 percent had been raped during the West African country's civil war.

A U.S.-sponsored resolution adopted unanimously by the council called sexual violence "a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group."

It said the violence "can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security."

It called on parties to conflict to take immediate measures to protect civilians from sexual violence, said such crimes should be excluded from amnesty after conflicts, and warned that the council would consider special measures against parties that commit them when imposing or renewing sanctions.

ABUSES BY PEACEKEEPERS

The resolution also called on Ban to submit a special report on the issue next year and tighten procedures for stopping abuses by U.N. peacekeepers, who have been accused of sexual offenses in several countries.

Ban said he was "profoundly committed to a zero-tolerance policy" and would strengthen disciplinary procedures by holding not just individuals but their supervisors accountable.

The United States, council president for June, chose sexual violence as the theme of the month's debate on a general issue. As well as Rice, several government ministers replaced ambassadors as their countries' representatives.

Opening the debate, Rice noted there had long been dispute about whether the theme was a security issue and hence something the Security Council was authorized to address.

"I am proud that today we respond to that lingering question with a resounding 'yes'," she said. "This world body now acknowledges that sexual violence in conflict zones is indeed a security concern.

"We affirm that sexual violence profoundly affects not only the health and safety of women but the economic and social stability of their nations."

Rice focused on Myanmar, where she said soldiers regularly raped women and girls as young as 8 years old. Myanmar's envoy, Than Swe, later called the allegations unfounded. "We categorically reject them," he told the council.

Backers of the resolution had said that if the Security Council defined sexual violence as a security matter the text would give peacekeepers the high-level support they needed.

The resolution had been negotiated for weeks between council members and with human rights and women's groups. Diplomats said China and Russia, which both voted in favor, had watered down some language, including on sanctions.

Chinese Deputy Ambassador Liu Zhenmin told the council it should focus on preventing conflicts in the first place and that sexual violence "should not be treated as a stand-alone issue, nor should attention be given to its symptoms only."

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

--------------------------------------------------------

[2] http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/06/19/global19161.htm

UN: Finally, a Step Toward Confronting Rape in War Security Council Takes Action to Identify and Help End Sexual Violence

(New York, June 19, 2008) - The UN Security Council´s new resolution on sexual violence is a historic achievement for a body that has all too often ignored the plight of women and girls in conflict, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch applauds the council for setting out in the resolution a clear path to systematic information-gathering on sexual violence. Until now, the Security Council has asked for information on such violence only in selected cases.

"By finally recognizing that it needs to gather detailed information, the Security Council took a major step toward confronting the grim reality of sexual violence in conflict," said Marianne Mollmann, women´s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch. "And that reality means that every day many women and girls will be raped."

The resolution was initiated by the United States and adopted on June 19, by unanimous vote, after a debate presided over by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the United Nations. Key provisions include a call for concrete benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of policies to prevent sexual violence; the possibility of sanctions against perpetrators of sexual violence; and a directive to the secretary-general of the United Nations to gather information on the prevalence of sexual violence in conflict. The resolution also calls for UN peacekeeping forces to better prepare themselves to protect civilians against sexual violence, and underscores the vital importance of women participating in preventing conflict, maintaining peace and security, and building peace post-conflict. It also calls for better implementation of the UN´s "zero tolerance" policy on sexual exploitation and abuse by UN peacekeeping forces.

"This resolution sends a clear message throughout the UN system: rape is a crime that should be prevented and when it´s not, it should be systematically reported and effectively prosecuted," said Mollmann. "The resolution contains the building blocks for what could finally bridge the gap between good intentions and bad facts. But to have a genuine impact, the Security Council and the United Nations as a whole need to take concrete action."

------- End of forwarded message -------

----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 5:09 AM
Subject: PIPELINE POLITICS Afghanistan & Iraq - wars about oil, not democracy
Compiled by Janet M Eaton June 22

=========================================

As energy economist John Foster, author of the CCPA report "A Pipeline Through a Troubled Land: Afghanistan, Canada, and the New Great Energy Game asks:

Do we want our troops to protect pipelines? U.S. proposals at the NATO Summit in 2006 called for members to protect pipelines and sea lanes. .. Where is the Canadian discussion? When have we had a chance to understand energy security, what it means etc.? [5] ... the impact of the proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline in areas of Afghanistan under Canadian purview has never been seriously debated.".....the security issues remain daunting and the Canadian military could - wittingly or not - become embroiled in a "new great game" over energy security that is playing out in the region. [4]

Following are some references and excerpts on the pipeline politics of Afghanistan and Iraq that reveal that the wars there are all about oil and not democracy - something the Canadian Peace Alliance and others in the peace movement have claimed all along." [1]

1. Canadian Peace Alliance Press Release. "Pipeline politics have always been the real motive for the war in Afghanistan" June 19

2."A PIPELINE THROUGH A TROUBLED LAND: AFGHANISTAN, CANADA, AND THE NEW GREAT ENERGY GAME" by John Foster. CCPA June 19

3. These wars are about oil, not democracy By ERIC MARGOLIS. Toronto Sun June 22

4. Pipeline opens new front in Afghan war Canadian role in Kandahar may heat up as allies agree on U.S.-backed energy route through land-mine zones and Taliban hot spots by SHAWN MCCARTHY G&M June 19

5. Afghanistan's new front: natural gas Globe and Mail Update June 20, 2008 at 2:00 PM EDT Questions from Shawn McCarthy, The Globe and Mail and readers and Answers from John Foster

fyi- janet

-------------------------------------

[1] Further to the Canadian Peace Alliance Press release of June 19.

"Pipeline politics have always been the real motive for the war in Afghanistan"
http://www.acp-cpa.ca/en/PipelinePR.html

.... For years the peace movement has known that the real motives for the invasion of Afghanistan are geopolitical and are about western control of the energy resources of the region.
"The need to build the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline has always been the real motive for US and Western foreign policy towards Afghanistan.....Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has been instrumental in signing deals between Canadian Oil and Gas corporations for pipeline construction projects in the area.

In September 2004, Jean Chrétien went to Turkmenistan to negotiate a deal between Edmonton based Buried Hill Energy and the government of Turkmenistan to develop oil and gas resources the Caspian area. Chrétien also met with the president of Turkmenistan to discuss involvement of Canadian corporations in the Trans-Afghan pipeline. With more than 80 Canadian soldiers and thousands of Afghan civilians dead in a war that is both wrong and a failure, the CPA calls on the government of Canada to respect the wishes of the majority of Canadians and bring the troops home now.

[2] "A PIPELINE THROUGH A TROUBLED LAND: AFGHANISTAN, CANADA, AND THE NEW GREAT ENERGY GAME" by John Foster. June 19
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/docume ... al_Office_
Pubs/2008/A_Pipeline_Through_a_Troubled_Land.pdf

A new report released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) raises serious questions about the impact of a proposed trans- Afghanistan natural gas pipeline on the role of Canadian forces in that war-torn country.
* The proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline will transport approximately 33 billion cubic metres per year of natural gas. ...
* A Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement , signed by representatives of four participating nations on April 25, 2008, committed partners to initiating construction in 20008 supplying gas by 2015.
* ...the on-going conflict has contributed to construction delays. The estimated cost has doubled since 2002 to $7.6million
* US regional ambitions and rivalries with Russian and China include geopolitical manoeuvring for control of energy, into which Canada has been drawn.
* The impact of the TAPI pipeline on Canadian forces must be assessed, given that the proposed pipeline route traverses ..Kandahar province where Canadian forces are attempting to provide ecurity and defeat insurgents.
* Construction of the pipeline could provide important economic development opportunities to the region. But if the project proceeds without a peace agreement that will end the insurgency, the pipeline could exacerbate the ongoing conflict and take the Canadian forces away from other priorities to defend the pipeline.
* Fulfilling the recommendations of the Manley Panel's final report, the Canadian government should provide parliamentarians and the public with more information about the proposed TAPI pipeline and its impact on Canadian policy.

[3] These wars are about oil, not democracy. Toronto Sun June 22, By ERIC MARGOLIS

" Four major western oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total are about to sign U.S.-brokered no-bid contracts to begin exploiting Iraq's oil fields... As former fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was all about oil. The invasion was about SUV's, not democracy.
"Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1,680-km pipeline project expected to cost $8 billion. If completed, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) will export gas and later oil from the Caspian basin to Pakistan's coast where tankers will transport it to the West - the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan, including the cities of Herat and Kandahar....

"Washington disguised its energy geopolitics by claiming the Afghan occupation was to fight "Islamic terrorism," liberate women, build schools and promote democracy. Ironically, the Soviets made exactly the same claims when they occupied Afghanistan from 1979-1989. The Iraq cover story was weapons of mass destruction and democracy. Work will begin on the TAPI once Taliban forces are cleared from the pipeline route by U.S., Canadian and NATO forces. As American analyst Kevin Phillips writes, the U.S. military and its allies have become an "energy protection force."

fyi-janet
------------------------------------

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnis ... olis_Eric/
2008/06/22/pf-5953041.html

June 22, 2008

These wars are about oil, not democracy By ERIC MARGOLIS

PARIS -- The ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally has emerged.

Four major western oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total are about to sign U.S.-brokered no-bid contracts to begin exploiting Iraq's oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three decades ago when he nationalized Iraq's oil industry. The U.S.-installed Baghdad regime is welcoming them back.

Iraq is getting back the same oil companies that used to exploit it when it was a British colony.

As former fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was all about oil. The invasion was about SUV's, not democracy.

Afghanistan just signed a major deal to launch a long-planned, 1,680-km pipeline project expected to cost $8 billion. If completed, the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline (TAPI) will export gas and later oil from the Caspian basin to Pakistan's coast where tankers will transport it to the West.

The Caspian basin located under the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakkstan, holds an estimated 300 trillion cubic feet of gas and 100-200 billion barrels of oil.

Securing the world's last remaining known energy El Dorado is a strategic priority for the western powers.

But there are only two practical ways to get gas and oil out of land-locked Central Asia to the sea: Through Iran, or through Afghanistan to Pakistan. Iran is taboo for Washington. That leaves Pakistan, but to get there, the planned pipeline must cross western Afghanistan, including the cities of Herat and Kandahar.

PIPELINE DEAL

In 1998, the Afghan anti-Communist movement Taliban and a western oil consortium led by the U.S. firm Unocal signed a major pipeline deal. Unocal lavished money and attention on the Taliban, flew a senior delegation to Texas, and hired a minor Afghan official, Hamid Karzai.

Enter Osama bin Laden. He advised the unworldly Taliban leaders to reject the U.S. deal and got them to accept a better offer from an Argentine consortium. Washington was furious and, according to some accounts, threatened the Taliban with war.

In early 2001, six or seven months before 9/11, Washington made the decision to invade Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and install a client regime that would build the energy pipelines. But Washington still kept sending money to the Taliban until four months before 9/11 in an effort to keep it "on side" for possible use in a war against China.

The 9/11 attacks, about which the Taliban knew nothing, supplied the pretext to invade Afghanistan. The initial U.S. operation had the legitimate objective of wiping out Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. But after its 300 members fled to Pakistan, the U.S. stayed on, built bases -- which just happened to be adjacent to the planned pipeline route -- and installed former Unocal "consultant" Hamid Karzai as leader.

Washington disguised its energy geopolitics by claiming the Afghan occupation was to fight "Islamic terrorism," liberate women, build schools and promote democracy. Ironically, the Soviets made exactly the same claims when they occupied Afghanistan from 1979-1989. The Iraq cover story was weapons of mass destruction and democracy.

Work will begin on the TAPI once Taliban forces are cleared from the pipeline route by U.S., Canadian and NATO forces. As American analyst Kevin Phillips writes, the U.S. military and its allies have become an "energy protection force."

ADDED BENEFIT

From Washington's viewpoint, the TAPI deal has the added benefit of scuttling another proposed pipeline project that would have delivered Iranian gas and oil to Pakistan and India.

India's energy needs are expected to triple over the next decade. Delhi, which has its own designs on Afghanistan, is cock-a-hoop over the new pipeline plan.

Russia, by contrast, is grumpy, having hoped to monopolize Central Asian energy exports.

Energy is more important than blood in our modern world. The U.S. is a great power with massive energy needs. Domination of oil is a pillar of America's world power. Let's be realistic. Afghanistan and Iraq are about oil, nothing else.

------------
See also

[4] Pipeline opens new front in Afghan war

Canadian role in Kandahar may heat up as allies agree on U.S.-backed energy route through land-mine zones and Taliban hot spots SHAWN MCCARTHY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail June 19, 2008 at 2:30 AM EDT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.
20080619.wafghanpipeline19/BNStory/specialComment

......Mr. Foster said the Canadian government has long ignored the broader geopolitical aspects of the Afghanistan deployment, even as NATO forces, including Canadian troops, could be called upon to defend the critical energy infrastructure.
"Government efforts to convince Canadians to stay in Afghanistan have been enormous," he says in a report prepared for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives... "But the impact of the proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline in areas of Afghanistan under Canadian purview has never been seriously debated.".....he said the security issues remain daunting and the Canadian military could - wittingly or not - become embroiled in a "new great game" over energy security that is playing out in the region. Acting Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson - who chairs the cabinet committee on Afghanistan - would not comment on the pipeline yesterday. When asked about the project earlier this spring, he said only that Canada wants to see Afghanistan develop a "legitimate and legal economy that can sustain a credible, viable state." ....

----------------
[5] Afghanistan's new front: natural gas
Globe and Mail Update June 20, 2008 at 2:00 PM EDT

Questions from Shawn McCarthy, The Globe and Mail and readers and Answers from John Foster

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... M.20080619.
wpipelinediscussion0619/BNStory/specialComment/home/?pageRequested= all

Mr. Foster, an international energy economist and an expert on the world oil scene, was online earlier today to discuss the Afghan pipeline and his report.

Your questions and Mr. Foster's answers appear at the bottom of this page.
Mr. Foster, an energy economist, was born in London, England, and graduated from Cambridge University in economics and law. . He has 40 years of worldwide experience in energy and international development

Two Q&A Excerpts:

Jason Schmidt, Saskatoon: Are you sure about what you state in your report? A lot of left-wing loonies have been arguing for years, including on the boards here at the G&M, that the whole Afghan mission was a cover to get a pipeline built and had little or nothing to do with 9/11. Your report plays right into their hands, you know.

John Foster: Jason, my report is solid. Check the endnotes. There are 82 of them, mostly hyperlinked.

There may be many reasons for the Afghan mission. The energy issue was not talked about here in Canada, although it was all over Asia and in think tanks in U.S.

I saw an untold story. That's why I wrote the report.

There's pipeline politics involved. The U.S. wants to get some of Turkmenistan's gas going south through Afghanistan or west under the Caspian (rather than via Russia or China).

It's the New Great Game in Central Asia - for control of access to resources and export routes. Official U.S. sources confirm this.

Catherine Wilkie posted this comment on Shawn's original article.
Care to respond?

"It's hard not to feel very cynical about this. So many young lives lost. We certainly are tokens to our petroleum friends."

John Foster: Catherine, I think we need to debate these issues. Do we want our troops to protect pipelines? U.S. proposals at the NATO Summit in 2006 called for members to protect pipelines and sea lanes. No decision was made, but NATO continues to discuss energy security.
Where is the Canadian discussion? When have we had a chance to
understand energy security, what it means etc.? I too regret many young lives lost. I saw this myself at Suez in 1956. And I grew up in London during WWII.

------- End of forwarded message -------

----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 7:30 AM
Subject: NAFTA Bitten by the deal that once fed us. Gordon Laxer says hope for Obama & reopening of NAFTA G&M J23


Gordon Laxer, director of the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta, co-author with John Dillon of the report "Over a Barrel: Exiting from NAFTA's proportionality clause" and a professor of political economy argues:

"None of those assumptions [made when the FTA and NAFTA were negotiated 15 and 20 years ago] now hold. Elsewhere, governments are making plans to drastically cut greenhouse gases, meet the challenge of very expensive gasoline and natural gas, and are preparing for the sudden shut off of fossil fuels.
But, not Canada. The business as usual crowd, led by Stephen Harper's government and the oil transnationals, seems to expect our carbon-burning society to carry on as before.
But we can't. ... Canada can no longer afford to export its remaining supplies of deliverable oil."
Canadians should hope for an Obama presidency and the reopening of NAFTA says Laxer and at the top of the list should be exiting from NAFTA's proportionality clause, the "energy proportionality" straitjacket that mandates that Canada must offer a majority of its oil and gas to the United States, even if Canadians freeze in the dark. . In no other developed country are citizens denied first access to their own resources.

See also
1. Over A Barrel: Exiting from NAFTA´s Proportionality Clause
http://www.ualberta.ca/PARKLAND/researc ... Barrel.pdf
and
2. NAFTA Growing Resistance & Calls for Renegotiation & Oversight - A 60-slide power point presentation by Janet M Eaton, PhD, http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/print/235930172
http://www.stopthehogs.com/pdf/nafta-resistance.pdf

fyi- janet

======================================

NAFTA Bitten by the deal that once fed us.

Canadians should hope for an Obama presidency and the reopening of NAFTA By GORDON LAXER Monday, June 23, 2008 Page A15
Director of the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta

John McCain's visit to Canada on Friday was a preview of just how important the issue of renegotiating the North American free-trade agreement will be in this fall's U.S. presidential election. The prospect of a Barack Obama presidency has sparked a lot of "will he or won't he" worry in Canada. You can feel the fear of the business-as-usual crowd trying to reassure themselves that Mr. Obama won't really reopen NAFTA.

He now says he won't unilaterally withdraw, and that his rhetoric got a little overheated, but Mr. Obama still promises to open up a dialogue on NAFTA. Instead of wringing hands and holding on to the past, Canada should seize the opportunity that renegotiation could bring.

If Mr. Obama wins in November and brings his issues - labour and environment standards - to the table, Canada should prepare its own list. At the top should be getting out of the "energy proportionality" straitjacket that mandates that Canada must offer a majority of its oil and gas to the United States, even if Canadians freeze in the dark. Proportionality is "unique in all of the world's treaties," writes Richard Heinberg, a noted California author on energy. In no other developed country are citizens denied first access to their own resources. "Canada has every reason to repudiate the proportionality clause," Mr. Heinberg continues, "unilaterally and immediately."

Why did Canada agree to proportionality and why is it a bad idea now?

Canada entered the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement and NAFTA 15 or 20 years ago under very different circumstances. Then, it was widely believed that the world had plenty of cheap oil, and there were no limits to ever-increasing energy consumption. Few had heard of the catastrophe of climate change. Pre-Sept. 11, security of energy supplies was on few people's minds.

In the early 1990s, it appeared to make sense for Canada to get virtually guaranteed access to U.S. energy markets and, in return, to give the United States first call on the majority of our seemingly limitless reserves of oil and gas.

None of those assumptions now hold. Elsewhere, governments are making plans to drastically cut greenhouse gases, meet the challenge of very expensive gasoline and natural gas, and are preparing for the sudden shut off of fossil fuels.

But, not Canada. The business as usual crowd, led by Stephen Harper's government and the oil transnationals, seems to expect our carbon-burning society to carry on as before.

We can't. Canada has only 9.3 years left of proven supplies of natural gas at current rates of production. Yet Canada must make 60 per cent of it available for export by NAFTA's proportionality clause.

Albertans are in for a shock. Despite faith in the province's endless resource reserves, Alberta has only 8.1 years left of remaining established supplies of natural gas.

Yet, Alberta recklessly exports half its natural gas, and uses an increasing amount to produce tar-sands oil. Three quarters is exported to the United States.

The Alberta Gas Resources Preservation Act, first enacted in 1949, is supposed to provide security of supply for Albertans of 15 years before natural-gas removals are permitted from the province. It keeps narrowing its definition of which Albertans it will protect. Alberta doesn't enforce its own laws. With less than 10 years of proven supply, Canada is running out of conventional oil.

The tar sands have much oil. But they cannot be produced with as low a carbon footprint as conventional oil. A seemingly unstoppable momentum is gathering in the United States to not buy dirty tar-sands oil. If Mr. Obama becomes president, he would likely shut the borders to it.

So, although Canada has lots of oil, we will increasingly be unable to use most of it. That means stretching out the lifespan of conventional oil by ending exports and seriously cutting domestic consumption. The alternative of increasing imports from unstable OPEC countries is irresponsible. Thus, Canada can no longer afford to export its remaining supplies of deliverable oil.

We should take the opportunity offered by the prospect of an Obama presidency and exit from NAFTA's proportional, mandatory-exporting clause. It may have made sense when we signed it. It doesn't now.

And if you expect Mr. Obama to back off on renegotiating NAFTA as president, think again.

Ohio decided the 2004 presidential election and may do so again this year. His need to win over the white working-class voters in Ohio, who strongly backed Hillary Clinton during the Democratic Party primary and who oppose NAFTA, will likely propel Mr. Obama to renew his pledge this fall.

What had been a fairly minor American story became much louder as Canadian officials tried to scare the Democratic presidential hopefuls into backing off their pledges to reopen NAFTA.

David Emerson, then Canada's Trade Minister, warned that "If you open it [NAFTA] for one or two issues, you cannot avoid reopening it across a range of issues." He added that "Americans' privileged access to Canada's massive oil and gas reserves could be disrupted."

By saying that NAFTA gave the United States a sweet deal on Canadian energy, Mr. Emerson raised the question of whether Canada got a raw deal. By trying to browbeat American politicians into not reopening NAFTA, the Conservatives put renegotiating NAFTA's energy clauses right where it should be - on our agenda.

Canadians should welcome an Obama presidency. It may force us to embrace the future, by regaining control over our own energy.

Gordon Laxer is co-author with John Dillon of the report "Over a Barrel: Exiting from NAFTA's proportionality clause" and a professor of political economy.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 11:29 AM
Subject: Why Reject The SPP? Our Core Values Are Divergent from the US [Part 1] by Janet M Eaton July 2, 2008

Why Reject The SPP? Our Core Values Are Divergent From The US By Janet M Eaton
Contributed by Janet M Eaton on Wednesday, July 02, 2008
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/

Critics of further Canada-US integration have warned that deeper integration in general and the SPP in particular are contrary to our founding myth, historical experiences and the distinct core values that shape us as Canadians and at odds with our public policy values. In other words deeper integration threatens our sovereignty and capacity to continue to craft public policies informed by those values.

Values surveys and consultations have, in recent years, shown that while Canadians have come to see some economic integration with the US as beneficial, we are adamantly opposed to further integration that would compromise our sovereignty, and our capacity to influence our own policies. These surveys also show that the business community has a different value set than the majority of Canadians, values more aligned with the current political and ideological regime in the United States.

Following is Part 1 of 3 sections from "Why Oppose the SPP - Our Canadian Core Values are Widely Divergent from the US ".

The three sections are :
[1] Canadian Core Values - Past
[2] Canadian Core and Public Policy Values- Present
[3] Canadian Business Community Values. Part 2 and 3 to follow..

This text was drafted two years ago as part of a chapter for a book on "Why Oppose the SPP: A Citizens´ Guide" which is now being revived and completed.

-----------------

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/2359 ... hy-reject-
the-spp--our-core-values-are-divergent-from-the-us-
by-janet-m-eaton

"Why Reject the SPP? - Our Core Values are Widely Divergent from the US" [Part 1] by Janet M Eaton, July 1, 2008.

Bruce Chapman in a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives presentation cautions that we should be wary of `Faustian Bargains´ in going down the deep integration road with Uncle Sam and he notes that this is not about moral superiority or anti-Americanism but rather about the values that have shaped and defined us.

"It is simply that we have different values and interests. We want to be able to reaffirm and preserve our founding myths, our historicial experiences, and the values that have shaped and defined us."

Maude Barlow writing in The Canada We Want: What´s the Big Idea reminds us of our origins and how different our narrative is from our neigbours.

"To adopt a policy of deep integration would mean turning our backs on Canadian history, on our own narrative. In order to survive our ancestors created a country on the northern half of the continent of 'sharing for surival' fundamentally different from the American narrative of 'the survival of the fittest.' Generations of Canadians have been linked together across this great land with 'ribbons of interdependence' such as our national social programs, Medicare, out marketing boards, our policies of multiculturalism and bilingualism and the CBC. "

Throughout the 19th and 20th century Canadians historians, philosophers, and authors have elaborated on our cultural context and those myths that define us; however during the past two decades of economic globalization with its shifts to the private sector, de-regulation, free trade agendas, smaller governments , and shrinking social programs, reference to these writings have faded into the background. Now, as the SPP incremental negotiations by stealth continue under the radar screen of public scrutiny, it behooves us to recall these founding myths and to re-acquaint over selves with the unique history which has shaped our values and continues to influence our decisions and choices about the kind of Canada we want - as polls, surveys and citizen engagement initiatives continue to indicate.

Many of the academics, intellectuals and authors who have written about our cultural ethos and mythos have done so within a Canada - US context contrasting the differences between our two countries, just as many of the polls and value surveys on Canada-US integration perspectives are often situated within a convergence versus divergence context. .

Pierre Burton in his book of letters to Americans entitled "Why we Act Like Canadians: A Personal Exploration of our National Character" describes how our founding constitutional narrative of `peace, order and good government´ differed from that of life, liberty and happiness´ enshrined in the US constitution. He offered further comparative insights on how we Canadians were satisfied, as we settled the land, to have RCMP law enforcement officers as representatives, of a government we trusted, looking after us while Americans formed citizens committees when needed to keep the law and order as they moved westward.

Canadian philosopher Leslie Armour in his "The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community" gave us a deeper philosophical understanding of ourselves rooted in a strong social context with communitarian overtures harkening back to early immigrant waves that settled this country.

"Canadian history is marked by common experiences which result from the fact that both the French who came to Quebec and the highland Scots, and immigrants from Eastern Europe, for instance, were generally untouched by enlightenment individualism and so tended to reject the social contract thesis of the American revolution.."

He found that French Canadian philosophers rooted in St Thomas Aquinas and English philosophers influenced by Hegel both found common ground in rejecting ideas of Descartes and Locke and subscribed instead to the idea of knowledge as a property of community, transmitted by tradition and institutions and shared through community. This was in sharp contrast to the individualist world view adopted to the South where knowledge is relative to the knower and tends to be concerned with power to enhance the individual´s well being and to transform nature which is seen as something to be used.

These philosophical differences in knowledge shaped the origins of adult education in Canada as well. Founding members of the Canadian Association for Adult Education were confronted with the dilemma of whether to respond to pressures from the US to join their national adult education association or to found their own unique association.
In the end they chose the latter because their perceptions of purpose and needed structure were grounded in the notions of adult education in the social context with citizenship as part of the foundation for knowledge transmission . This led to the close association of adult education and community development in Canada from the origins in the 1940s up to the implementation of the neo-liberal human resource development business model in the 1990s. The Manifesto for the CAAE is laden with references to the social and communitarian context.

Armour sheds further insight into values of knowledge as it relates to economics :

"If knowledge reveals that the only possible economic arrangement is one in which individuals must be dehumanised and communities must be torn apart by pitting men against each other, then it cannot be knowledge in the sense of a tradition which a community can accept, build on, reflect on, and continue to create."

Political philosopher Bruce Powe in his Canada of Light offers us a further concept of a country forged , from the earliest days to the present age of telecommunications, by the development of communication infrastructure, and strategies i.e those links referred to by Barlow as the `ribbons of interdependence´, that unite us.. He notes that our history differs profoundly from that of the US with its individualistic story, its militarism and commercialism, its violent conquests of space and people, its millenarian sense of `Manifest Destiny´ where creativity and cruelty collide. In Canada, on the other hand he sees a country and people of `light´ which resonate with the principles of Quantum Physics and Relativity, a lightness in our makeup in which we share a common essence with the planets and the stars and a lightness of spirit in a country that exists in sharp contrast to other societies. He argues that our country is in fact a completely original model of what an enlightened polity might be for the 21st century.

Our recently retired Governor General Adrienne Clarkson speaks of how geography and climate, particularly the North, have shaped us and affected the Canadian psyche.

"Our 'vision of the imagination' includes our North, even if we have never gone there. We know the North is there, just above our heads on the map, and in our heads imaginatively. It fulfils and describes that archetypal image which all Canadians have and which they respond to - or try to deny. ... We should glory in our snow and cold. It has rendered us into very hardy people who also have a sense of including and looking after others. It is what helps to give the Canadian spirit its life, its expression, its uniqueness. "

Pierre Burton also alludes to our climate and geography in his Why we Act Like Canadians . Climate, he says, has shaped our history and affected the way we think and act - in other words it has shaped our world view. He also described how geography shaped our pioneer beginnings creating a sombre people.

"Uncle Sam´s frontier conjures up a long line of covered wagons moving westward across the plains while our´s involved crossing an endless expanse of gnarled, grey rock, pocked by millions of gunmetal lakes , with twisted pines, skeletal birches and stunted black spruce where no covered wagon could cross, only strong men sturdy enough to hoist a canoe on their backs or to shoulder a one hundred pound pack."

He was talking about the Canadian Shield which sprawls across six provinces and most of the Northwest Territories, Precambrian rock the oldest in the world, muskeg, mountain barriers, wilderness Canada, the land of little lakes and he says if we are a more solemn people it is partly because the Shield and the wilderness bear down upon us, like a crushing weight.

As Pierre Burton concludes: "We have our own distinct identity and our own way of doing things and part of that identity is our tendency to constant self-examination. It´s not easy to explain to you Americans that we´re not only different but we also like being different and that implies no disrespect to you. "

REFERENCES

Bruce Chapman. "Of independence and Faustian bargains: going down the deep integration road with Uncle Sam." February 2005. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives presentation http://www.policyalternatives.ca/docume ... al_Office_
Pubs/2005/of_independence_and_faustian_bargains.pdf

Maude Barlow. "The Canada We Want. A Citizen´s Alternative to Deep Integration." Revised Edition January 2005.
http://www.canadians.org/DI/documents/T ... e_want.pdf

Pierre Burton. "Why we Act Like Canadians: A Personal Exploration of our National Character". Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. 1983, 6th printing

Leslie Armour. "The Idea of Canada and the Crisis of Community". 1981.

Manifesto for the CAAE
http://weblogs.elearning.ubc.ca/RevitalizingAdEd/
archives/006445.html

Bruce W Powe. "A Canada of Light." Sommerville House. 1997

"Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson Speech on the
Occasion of a Doctor honoris causa from St. Petersburg State Mining
Institute" St. Petersburg, Tuesday, September 30, 2003
http://www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=4025

---- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2008 8:39 AM
Subject: Help shame Harper, Bush and Fukuda for blocking progress on climate change at the G8 !!

Dear All:

I just signed up to endorse, by way of a donation, the Avaaz ad on climate change -- shaming the leaders of Canada, Japan, and the US for blocking progress at the G8 summit happening now in Japan. Please join me in reading more about the ad which will appear in the global Finanical Times newspaper tomorrow, about how effective this kind of ad has been in the past and by clicking on the link below.

As the Avaaz communique below notes:
The vast majority of the world's people want urgent, bold action on climate change -- but here at the G8 summit, three politicians stand in the way. Canada's Harper, Japan's Fukuda, and the United States' Bush are refusing to discuss climate targets for the year 2020.

At the UN climate negotiations in Bali, Harper, Fukuda, and Bush were trying to block any reference to climate targets for the year 2020 -- just as they are now at the G8. But a global uproar turned the tide. Negotiators from the global South rose, one after the next, to demand that the spoilers step aside. Citizen groups in every nation raised their voices -- including 320,000 Avaaz members in the final 72 hours. And a satirical full-page Avaaz ad in the Jakarta Post (a remake of the Titanic movie poster featuring Harper, Bush, and Fukuda) made headlines worldwide. A major Japanese paper later reported that this ad was waved at a top-level Japanese cabinet meeting -- leading to a step forward in Fukuda's climate policy.

Harper faces a difficult election this fall, and climate change is emerging as a key issue. In the US, the campaign to succeed Bush could hinge on climate policy. And Fukuda's political opponents are challenging him sharply on how to confront the climate crisis.

Avaaz has arranged a full-page satirical advert for Tuesday's global Financial Times newspaper, shaming Harper, Fukuda, and Bush for their climate irresponsibility. The paper will be delivered to the hotel rooms of every G8 delegate. Together, we can make it costly and embarrassing enough that these leaders will think twice before squandering another opportunity for climate progress. Click below to make a donation to help cover the cost, and then pass this message along.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/g8_2020_ads/1.php?cl=105803762

all the best,
janet

------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 05:10:58 -0700
From: avaaz@avaaz.org
Subject: G8 climate spoilers ad

Dear friends,

Canada, Japan, and the USA are blocking talks at the G8 on targets to cut climate change by 2020. Donate now toward a full-page Financial Times ad calling for action:

The ad uses the Japanese "Hello Kitty" cartoon to shame them for their childish irresponsibility on climate. Click to see it:

The vast majority of the world's people want urgent, bold action on climate change -- but here at the G8 summit, three politicians stand in the way. Canada's Harper, Japan's Fukuda, and the United States' Bush are refusing to discuss climate targets for the year 2020.

Scientists agree that the next 12 years will make or break our response to the climate crisis. But if the facts haven't grabbed these leaders' attention, something else might: humour.

Avaaz has arranged a full-page satirical advert for Tuesday's global Financial Times newspaper, shaming Harper, Fukuda, and Bush for their climate irresponsibility. The paper will be delivered to the hotel rooms of every G8 delegate. Together, we can make it costly and embarrassing enough that these leaders will think twice before squandering another opportunity for climate progress. Click below to make a donation to help cover the cost, and then pass this message to friends and family!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/g8_2020_ads/1.php?cl=105803762

Why this last-moment push? Our strategy is based on two important
stories--Australia and Bali.[2]

At the UN climate negotiations in Bali, Harper, Fukuda, and Bush were trying to block any reference to climate targets for the year 2020 -- just as they are now at the G8. But a global uproar turned the tide.
Negotiators from the global South rose, one after the next, to demand that the spoilers step aside. Citizen groups in every nation raised their voices -- including 320,000 Avaaz members in the final 72 hours. And a satirical full-page Avaaz ad in the Jakarta Post (a remake of the Titanic movie poster featuring Harper, Bush, and Fukuda) made headlines worldwide. A major Japanese paper later reported that this ad was waved at a top-level Japanese cabinet meeting -- leading to a step forward in Fukuda's climate policy.[3]

The second story, of Australia, shows what happens when humour combines with mass political power.

In Australia, former Prime Minister John Howard was as bad on climate as Harper, Fukuda, and Bush are now. Last fall, he chaired a summit global summit, APEC, where he tried to paint himself as a world leader on climate change. But Avaaz and other groups pushed back -- with stunts, marches, and a terrific parody television spot from our friends at GetUp, exposing Howard's charade and demanding real targets for climate emissions cuts. Climate change emerged as the defining issue of the election -- and when Howard lost, the first action of the new government was to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Harper faces a difficult election this fall, and climate change is emerging as a key issue. In the US, the campaign to succeed Bush could hinge on climate policy. And Fukuda's political opponents are challenging him sharply on how to confront the climate crisis.

In short, Our global efforts now can send political shock waves through all three countries. It's up to us to raise a cry once again. Do now, and spread the word:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/g8_2020_ads/1.php?cl=105803762

We can't always be certain of the results of our actions. But in the face of the climate crisis, it's worth trying everything we can. We make green decisions in our private lives. And when the big public decisions are made, if enough of us stand together -- this time, next time, and every time -- then, one way or another, our message will be heard. Our leaders will change ... or we'll change our leaders.

With hope and determination,Ben, Iain, Alice, Ricken, Paul, Graziela, Pascal, Veronique, Mark, and Milena -- the Avaaz.org team

PS: The climate change ad is one of four full-page ads we're running in the global Financial Times this week, all designed to multiply the impact of member-driven Avaaz campaigns. Look for them in the paper, or find them at http://www.avaaz.org/ads.

PPS: Here are the sources for this alert.

[1] Global and Mail: "Climate-change goals fall short at G8":
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
LAC.20080707.G807/TPStory/ and

AFP: "Climate deadlock seen at G8 despite 'constructive' Bush.":
http://afp.google.com/article/
ALeqM5jP0zW0kW5h1m3Yl7omV7sk34R6hA

[2] See the ads and learn more about the Bali and Australia stories at:
http://www.avaaz.org/climate-victories.

[3] Fukuda announced that Japan would adopt mid-term targets for 2020. That was a major step forward -- except that Fukuda now refuses to include these targets in the G8 negotiations. Moreover, though Fukuda has promised 2020 targets, he hasn't actually set them.

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/09/
japan.climatechange

---------

ABOUT AVAAZ
Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people inform global decision-making. (Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris, Washington DC, and Geneva.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 7:34 AM
Subject: Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion Naomi Klein July 3


Privatizing Iraq´s oil, ensuring global dominance for genetically modified crops, lowering the last of the trade barriers and opening the last of the wildlife refuges... Not so long ago, those goals were pursued through polite trade agreements, under the benign pseudonym "globalization." Now this discredited agenda is forced to ride on the backs of serial crises, selling itself as lifesaving medicine for a world in pain.

This article was first published in The Nation.

fyi-janet

==============================

Received by e-mail from Naomi Klein's Newsletter:
Naomi Klein's Latest Column

Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion by Naomi Klein
July 3, 2008

Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly right-wing media hosts had to prove their populist cred by devoting a portion of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: "disaster capitalism." It usually goes well-until it doesn´t.

For instance, "independent conservative" radio host Jerry Doyle and I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: "I think I have a quick way to bring the prices down," Doyle announced. "We´ve invested $650 billion to liberate a nation of 25 million people. Shouldn´t we just demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the Stinkin´ Lincoln, at rush hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi government.... Why don´t we just take the oil? We´ve invested it liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices coming down in ten days, not ten years."

There were a couple of problems with Doyle´s plan, of course. The first was that he was describing the biggest stickup in world history. The second, that he was too late: "We" are already heisting Iraq´s oil, or at least are on the cusp of doing so.

It´s been ten months since the publication of my book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in which I argue that today´s preferred method of reshaping the world in the interest of multi-national corporations is to systematically exploit the state of fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of great shock and crisis. With the globe being rocked by multiple shocks, this seems like a good time to see how and where the strategy is being applied.

And the disaster capitalists have been busy-from private firefighters already on the scene in Northern California´s wildfires, to land grabs in cyclone-hit Burma, to the housing bill making its way through Congress. The bill contains little in the way of affordable housing, shifts the burden of mortgage default to taxpayers and makes sure that the banks that made bad loans get some payouts. No wonder it is known in the hallways of Congress as "The Credit Suisse Plan," after one of the banks that generously proposed it.

Iraq Disaster: We Broke It, We (Just) Bought It

But these cases of disaster capitalism are amateurish compared with what is unfolding at Iraq´s oil ministry. It started with no-bid service contracts announced for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total (they have yet to be signed but are still on course). Paying multinationals for their technical expertise is not unusual. What is odd is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil service companies-not to the oil majors, whose work is exploring, producing and owning carbon wealth. As London-based oil expert Greg Muttitt points out, the contracts make sense only in the context of reports that the oil majors have insisted on the right of first refusal on subsequent contracts handed out to manage and produce Iraq´s oil fields. In other words, other companies will be free to bid on those future contracts, but these companies will win.

One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of back-room arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oil fields, accounting for around half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq´s oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign firms will keep 75 percent of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25 percent for their Iraqi partners.

That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian states, where achieving majority national control over oil was the defining victory of anti-colonial struggles. According to Muttitt, the assumption until now was that foreign multinationals would be brought in to develop brand-new fields in Iraq-not to take over ones that are already in production and therefore require minimal technical support. "The policy was always to allocate these fields to the Iraq National Oil Company," he told me. This is a total reversal of that policy, giving INOC a mere 25 percent instead of the planned 100 percent.

So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already suffered so much? Ironically, it is Iraq´s suffering-its never-ending crisis-that is the rationale for an arrangement that threatens to drain its treasury of its main source of revenue. The logic goes like this: Iraq´s oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology and the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And Iraq urgently needs to start producing more oil. Why? Again because of the war. The country is shattered, and the billions handed out in no-bid contracts to Western firms have failed to rebuild the country. And that´s where the new no-bid contracts come in: they will raise more money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place that the oil majors must be induced to take the risk of investing. Thus the invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its subsequent pillage.

Several of the architects of the Iraq War no longer even bother to deny that oil was a major motivator. On National Public Radio´s To the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi advisers to the Bush Administration in the lead-up to the invasion, recently described the war as "a strategic move on the part of the United States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the Gulf in order to secure supplies in the future." Chalabi, who served as Iraq´s oil under-secretary and met with the oil majors before the invasion, described this as "a primary objective."

Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. That means that the huge task of rebuilding Iraq´s infrastructure-including its oil infrastructure-is the financial responsibility of Iraq´s invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations. (Recall that Saddam Hussein´s regime paid $9 billion to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion.) Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75 percent of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.

Oil Price Shock: Give Us the Arctic or Never Drive Again

Iraq isn´t the only country in the midst of an oil-related stickup. The Bush Administration is busily using a related crisis-the soaring price of fuel-to revive its dream of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). And of drilling offshore. And in the rock-solid shale of the Green River Basin. "Congress must face a hard reality," said George W. Bush on June 18. "Unless members are willing to accept gas prices at today´s painful levels-or even higher-our nation must produce more oil."

This is the President as Extortionist in Chief, with gas nozzle pointed to the head of his hostage-which happens to be the entire country. Give me ANWR, or everyone has to spend their summer vacations in the backyard. A final stickup from the cowboy President.

Despite the Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less bumper stickers, drilling in ANWR would have little discernible impact on actual global oil supplies, as its advocates well know. The argument that it could nonetheless bring down oil prices is based not on hard economics but on market psychoanalysis: drilling would "send a message" to the oil traders that more oil is on the way, which would cause them to start betting down the price.

Two points follow from this approach. First, trying to psych out hyperactive commodity traders is what passes for governing in the Bush era, even in the midst of a national emergency. Second, it will never work. If there is one thing we can predict from the oil market´s recent behavior, it is that the price is going to keep going up regardless of what new supplies are announced.

Take the massive oil boom under way in Alberta´s notorious tar sands.

The tar sands (sometimes called the oil sands) have the same things going for them as Bush´s proposed drill sites: they are nearby and perfectly secure, since the North American Free Trade Agreement contains a provision barring Canada from cutting off supply to the United States. And with little fanfare, oil from this largely untapped source has been pouring into the market, so much so that Canada is now the largest supplier of oil to the United States, surpassing Saudi Arabia. Between 2005 and 2007, Canada increased its exports to the States by almost 100 million barrels. Yet despite this significant increase in secure supplies, oil prices have been going up the entire time.

What is driving the ANWR push is not facts but pure shock doctrine strategy-the oil crisis has created the conditions in which it is possible to sell a previously unsellable (but highly profitable) policy.

Food Price Shock: Genetic Modification or Starvation

Intimately connected to the price of oil is the global food crisis. Not only do high gas prices drive up food costs but the boom in agrofuels has blurred the line between food and fuel, pushing food growers off their land and encouraging rampant speculation. Several Latin American countries have been pushing to re-examine the push for agrofuels and to have food recognized as a human right, not a mere commodity. United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has other ideas. In the same speech touting the US commitment to emergency food aid, he called on countries to lower their "export restrictions and high tariffs" and eliminate "barriers to use of innovative plant and animal production technologies, including biotechnology."

This was an admittedly more subtle stickup, but the message was clear: impoverished countries had better crack open their agricultural markets to American products and genetically modified seeds, or they could risk having their aid cut off.

Genetically modified crops have emerged as the cure-all for the food crisis, at least according to the World Bank, the European Commission president (time to "bite the bullet") and Prime Minister of Britain Gordon Brown. And, of course, the agribusiness companies. "You cannot today feed the world without genetically modified organisms," Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestlé, told the Financial Times recently. The problem with this argument, at least for now, is that there is no evidence that GMOs increase crop yields, and they often decrease them.

But even if there was a simple key to solving the global food crisis, would we really want it in the hands of the Nestlés and Monsantos? What would it cost us to use it? In recent months Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF have been frenetically buying up patents on so-called "climate ready" seeds-plants that can grow in earth parched from drought and salinated from flooding.

In other words, plants built to survive a future of climate chaos. We already know the lengths Monsanto will go to protect its intellectual property, spying on and suing farmers who dare to save their seeds from one year to the next. We have seen patented AIDS medications fail to treat millions in sub-Saharan Africa. Why would patented "climate ready" crops be any different?

Meanwhile, amid all the talk of exciting new genetic and drilling technologies, the Bush Administration announced a moratorium of up to two years on new solar energy projects on federal lands-due, apparently, to environmental concerns. This is the final frontier for disaster capitalism. Our leaders are failing to invest in technology that will actually prevent a future of climate chaos, choosing instead to work hand in hand with those plotting innovative schemes to profit from the mayhem.

Privatizing Iraq´s oil, ensuring global dominance for genetically modified crops, lowering the last of the trade barriers and opening the last of the wildlife refuges... Not so long ago, those goals were pursued through polite trade agreements, under the benign pseudonym "globalization." Now this discredited agenda is forced to ride on the backs of serial crises, selling itself as lifesaving medicine for a world in pain.

This article was first published in The Nation.

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 7:54 AM
Subject: A global lesson in market failure by Joseph Stiglitz G&M July 8

The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics and the so-called "Washington Consensus" in favour of privatization, liberalization and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.

For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing countries, and the losers are clear: Countries that pursued neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.

Neo-liberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory. Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience. Learning this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now hanging over the global economy. -- Joseph Stiglitz, professor, Columbia University and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics

fyi-janet

=====================================

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20080707.coecon08/BNStory/specialComment/home

A global lesson in market failure JOSEPH STIGLITZ
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail July 7, 2008 at 6:44 PM EDT

The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics and the so-called "Washington Consensus" in favour of privatization, liberalization and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.

For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing countries, and the losers are clear: Countries that pursued neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.

Although neo-liberals do not want to admit it, their ideology also failed another test. No one can claim that financial markets did a stellar job in allocating resources in the late 1990s, with 97 per cent of investments in fibre optics taking years to see any light. But at least that mistake had an unintended benefit: As costs of communication were driven down, India and China became more integrated into the global economy.

But it is hard to see such benefits to the massive misallocation of resources to housing in the United States. The newly constructed homes built for families that could not afford them get trashed and gutted as millions of families are forced out of their homes. In some communities, government has finally stepped in - to remove the remains. In others, the blight spreads. So even those who have been model citizens, borrowing prudently and maintaining their homes, now find that markets have driven down the value of their homes beyond their worst nightmares.

To be sure, there were some short-term benefits from the excess investment in real estate: Some Americans (perhaps only for a few months) enjoyed the pleasures of home ownership and living in a bigger home than they otherwise would have. But at what a cost to themselves and the world economy! Millions will lose their life savings as they lose their homes. And the housing foreclosures have precipitated a global slowdown. There is an increasing consensus on the prognosis: This downturn will be prolonged and widespread.

Nor did markets prepare us well for soaring oil and food prices. Neither sector is an example of free-market economics, but that is partly the point: Free-market rhetoric has been used selectively - embraced when it serves special interests; discarded when it does not.

Perhaps one of the few virtues of George W. Bush's administration is that the gap between rhetoric and reality is narrower than it was under Ronald Reagan. For all Mr. Reagan's free-trade rhetoric, he freely imposed trade restrictions, including the notorious "voluntary" export restraints on automobiles.

Mr. Bush's policies have been worse, but the extent to which he has openly served America's military-industrial complex has been more naked. The only time that the Bush administration turned green was when it came to ethanol subsidies, whose environmental benefits are dubious. Distortions in the energy market (especially through the tax system) continue, and if Mr. Bush could have gotten away with it, matters would have been worse.

This mixture of free-market rhetoric and government intervention has worked particularly badly for developing countries. They were told to stop intervening in agriculture, thereby exposing their farmers to devastating competition from the United States and Europe. Their farmers might have been able to compete with American and European farmers, but they could not compete with American and European Union subsidies. Not surprisingly, investments in agriculture in developing countries faded, and a food gap widened.

Those who promulgated this mistaken advice do not have to worry about carrying malpractice insurance. The costs will be borne by those in developing countries, especially the poor. This year will see a large rise in poverty, especially if we measure it correctly.

Simply put, in a world of plenty, millions in the developing world still cannot afford minimum nutritional requirements. In many countries, increases in food and energy prices will have a particularly devastating effect on the poor, because they constitute a larger share of their expenditures.

The anger around the world is palpable. Speculators, not surprisingly, have borne more than a little of the wrath. The speculators argue: We are not the cause of the problem; we are simply engaged in "price discovery." In other words, discovering - a little late to do much about the problem this year - that there is scarcity.

But that answer is disingenuous. Expectations of rising and volatile prices encourage hundreds of millions of farmers to take precautions. They might make more money if they hoard a little of their grain today and sell it later; and if they do not, they won't be able to afford it if next year's crop is smaller than hoped. A little grain taken off the market by hundreds of millions of farmers around the world adds up.

Defenders of market fundamentalism want to shift the blame from market failure to government failure. One senior Chinese official was quoted as saying that the problem was that the U.S. government should have done more to help low-income Americans with their housing. I agree. But that does not change the facts: U.S. banks mismanaged risk on a colossal scale, with global consequences, while those running these institutions have walked away with billions of dollars in compensation.

Today, there is a mismatch between social and private returns. Unless they are closely aligned, the market system cannot work well.

Neo-liberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory. Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience. Learning this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now hanging over the global economy.

Joseph Stiglitz is a p rofessor at Columbia University and the recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics

Doha is dying: Time to go bilateral
----- Original Message -----
From: "Janet M Eaton" <jmeaton@ns.sympatico.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2008 6:42 AM
Subject: Doha is dying: Time to go bilateral [G&M July 3]

Nearly seven years after the World Trade Organization optimistically launched a new round of talks, its 152 members are making a last-ditch effort to cement a deal. The odds are against them, if only because developed and developing nations are far apart on many issues. If this attempt fails, the deal will go - in the memorable phrase of the Queen's University trade expert Robert Wolfe - "into the old negotiations home" until next summer, at the earliest, when a new American administration is in power. That's the best-case scenario: It could be years before the Doha talks are resuscitated.

Unless a miracle happens, that outcome now appears clear. The parties are grappling with seemingly insurmountable differences in the agriculture and non-agriculture sectors, in trade in services and in the reform of the rules that govern WTO procedures, such as the determination of anti-dumping.

For Canada, which has devoted considerable energy to this round, failure would be a great disappointment. But it would also be an opportunity to put more resources into the pursuit of bilateral pacts, particularly with the European Union, which is finally responding seriously to our tentative approaches

fyi-janet

===============

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20080703.weDoha04/BNStory/specialComment/home

Doha is dying: Time to go bilateral
From Friday's Globe and Mail
July 3, 2008 at 9:45 PM EDT

Nearly seven years after the World Trade Organization optimistically launched a new round of talks, its 152 members are making a last-ditch effort to cement a deal. The odds are against them, if only because developed and developing nations are far apart on many issues. If this attempt fails, the deal will go - in the memorable phrase of the Queen's University trade expert Robert Wolfe - "into the old negotiations home" until next summer, at the earliest, when a new American administration is in power. That's the best-case scenario: It could be years before the Doha talks are resuscitated.

For Canada, which has devoted considerable energy to this round, failure would be a great disappointment. But it would also be an opportunity to put more resources into the pursuit of bilateral pacts, particularly with the European Union, which is finally responding seriously to our tentative approaches. There is no time to lose. As the Competition Policy Review Panel's recent report emphasizes, Canada has fallen behind many other nations in clinching trade and investment deals, although much of our economy depends on exports. The panel advised Ottawa to hustle, setting deadlines, soliciting business input and publicizing benefits. The urgency is
unmistakable.

Ottawa's record is sporadic. Canada has only eight free-trade agreements, including NAFTA and a recently concluded pact with Colombia (see below). Eight negotiations are under way with such nations as Panama and the Dominican Republic. But the talks that could bring the most benefit - the ones to negotiate a trade and investment enhancement agreement with the European Union - were put on hold in May, 2006, because the Doha round was addressing many of the same issues. The EU and Canada decided to wait until the outcome of those WTO talks.

Unless a miracle happens, that outcome now appears clear. The parties are grappling with seemingly insurmountable differences in the agriculture and non-agriculture sectors, in trade in services and in the reform of the rules that govern WTO procedures, such as the determination of anti-dumping. Canadians should not hold their breath.

Meanwhile, in an important Public Policy Forum conference two months ago, experts from Canada and the EU discussed the very real possibility that an agreement between the two parties could emerge before the end of the year. A former diplomat, Marie Bernard-Meunier, pointed out that German leaders pushed for a closer relationship with Canada during their nation's EU presidency, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, intends to continue that effort at a summit in Montreal this fall. If Canada is no longer "a prisoner" of the WTO talks, she added, a treaty would be "an attainable goal." Ottawa should get cracking.