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Don’t Expand NAFTA

The United States is leading the way to another corporate-friendly free-trade agreement, and it’s bringing its NAFTA partners along for the ride.

By Manuel Perez-Rocha and Stuart Trew · IPS · July 26, 2012

The United States recently announced that Canada and Mexico will join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a secretive U.S.-led multinational trade and investment agreement currently being negotiated with eight other countries in the Pacific Rim region.On the other side of the Pacific, Japanese legislators are defecting in droves to try to stop the country’s entry into the negotiations. But the situation is much different in Canada and Mexico, which were admitted to the table with much fanfare during the G20 summit in June. The Japanese response is justifiable, and a recent statement of solidarity against the TPP by North American unions offers a good building block for resisting an agreement that for Mexicans and Canadians amounts to a neoliberal expansion of NAFTA on U.S. President Barack Obama’s terms.Mexico and Canada had been trying to secure a spot at the TPP table for months prior to the G20, and it became a leading story in both countries. Their anxiety played nicely into Obama’s hands, allowing the U.S. trade representative to put humiliating entry conditions on both countries — essentially giving these NAFTA neighbors a second-rate status, or what in Spanish is called convidados de palo (to be invited but without a say). Neither Canada nor Mexico will be able to see any TPP text until they finally join the negotiations in December, following the required 90-day U.S. congressional approval process. Once at the table, they will not be able to make any changes to the finished text or propose any new text in the finished chapters. There is a very real possibility that the existing TPP countries, the United States in particular, will use the following months to fashion a trap for the TPP latecomers.

North American Labor Solidarity

While most media outlets welcomed the NAFTA partners to the TPP table, national labor federations from the United States, Mexico, and Canada were cautious for very good reasons, and it wasn’t just the obviously imbalanced negotiating dynamic. On July 11, the AFL-CIO, the Canadian Labour Congress, and the National Union of Workers (UNT) of Mexico outlined some of those reasons in an important statement of solidarity, which included a vision of what they believe a 21st-centry trade agreement should look like.

The labor unions state that although they “would welcome a TPP that creates good jobs, strengthens protection for fundamental labor rights—such as freedom of association and authentic collective bargaining—protects the environment, and boosts global economic growth and development for all, American, Canadian, and Mexican workers cannot afford another corporate-directed trade agreement.” The joint statement explains that to have any positive effect on the region, “the TPP must break from NAFTA, which imposed a destructive economic model that expands the rights and privileges of multinational corporations at the expense of working families, communities, and the environment.”

The unions conclude that if “the TPP follows the neoliberal model and substitutes corporate interests for national interests, workers in all three countries will continue to pay a high price in the form of suppressed wages, a more difficult organizing environment, and general regulatory erosion, even as large corporations will continue to benefit.” Unfortunately, by all accounts, including leaked TPP chapters and statements from the U.S. trade representative, this is exactly what the Obama administration hopes to achieve through these negotiations.

Expanding Investor Rights

Instead of breaking with NAFTA, the TPP expands it in almost every chapter, from intellectual property rights to “regulatory coherence,” and from rules for increased “competition” in state-owned enterprises to opening government purchases to foreign bidders.

Particularly worrying to Canadians and Mexicans, and not mentioned in the joint statement from North American unions, are the extreme investors’ rights foreseen in the TPP. Under NAFTA, Mexico and Canada continue to be pummeled by investor-state lawsuits from U.S. and Canadian companies, or international firms using their U.S. registration to challenge government measures that can be shown to interfere with profits, even if that interference is not intended. These investment disputes, launched under NAFTA’s Chapter 11 protections, have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in fines or settlements to be paid out from public funds. Two recent cases against Mexico and Canada help describe the problem.

In 2009, two separate NAFTA investment panels established through the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled in favour of U.S. companies Cargill and Corn Products International in their nearly identical cases against a Mexican tax on drinks containing high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sugar alternative. The tax was a means of levelling the playing field for Mexican cane sugar producers, who were having no luck accessing the U.S. market on equal terms to U.S. sugar producers despite NAFTA’s promises of open borders.

Cargill and CPI argued in part that the Mexican tax made soft drinks sweetened with HFCS less competitive on the Mexican market, depriving them of their national treatment rights in NAFTA. The ICSID panels did not agree that the HFCS tax amounted to a form of regulatory expropriation or performance requirement as the firms had also argued, but did agree on the national treatment claim. Cargill was awarded more than $77 million and CPI more than $58 million in damages. In the CPI case, the ICSID panel deprived Mexico of any countermeasures to defend against a one-way inflow of cheap sugar supplements from the United States.

Canada also just lost an important investor-state dispute with Exxon Mobil, which could cost the Canadian government as much as $65 million. At issue were measures requiring offshore oil and gas producers in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador to turn over a portion of their profits to research and development or education and training programs.  A NAFTA investment panel ruled in favor of the company, which claimed that the measures were an illegal performance requirement on the firm. Three Canadian courts had previously upheld the legality of the measures, and the Canadian government had excluded the legislation enforcing the measures from national treatment and other investment protections in NAFTA, making the investment panel ruling extremely perplexing. The frustration is worsened by the fact that Exxon Mobil was the richest company in the world in 2011. Under NAFTA and the TPP, investors have rights but no enforceable responsibilities to the countries in which they are operating.

These are just two local cases amid a myriad of investor lawsuits against countries all over the world. Though the Obama administration recently released a new model Bilateral Investment Treaty, it is almost identical to NAFTA, with only modest safeguards for regulation in the public interest — safeguards that closed-door tribunals are under little obligation to take into account. In fact, the trend globally is for these secret tribunals to rule expansively in the interest of corporations, perhaps as a means of perpetuating the system by making it more attractive to investors. There is simply no justification for reproducing the investor-state dispute regime in the TPP. In fact, NAFTA should be renegotiated to remove investor-state dispute settlement from Chapter 11.

This outcome—removing extreme investment protections from the TPP—is not out of the question. In June of this year, before a negotiating round in San Diego, California, 130 state legislators from all 50 states and Puerto Rico signed a letter to President Obama’s senior trade official warning that they will oppose the deal unless the administration alters its current approach. In the letter they say that “Our experience with NAFTA and other trade deals shows that investor-state dispute settlement is used by large corporations to undermine state and federal laws they don’t like – laws that are fully constitutional, that do not discriminate, and that are needed to protect public health and safety.”

There is also the question of Australia, the one TPP partner refusing to abide by these investment rules. In April 2011, the Australian government released a new trade policy that discontinues the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement in bilateral or regional trade agreements. Despite their second-rate status at the TPP table, Canada and Mexico could eventually help the United States put pressure on Australia and others who doubt the value of these extreme corporate rights. But public pressure might prove strong enough to foil these efforts, as it did when the Multilateral Agreement on Investment was ditched in 1999, followed by the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 2005.

A New FTAA, A New Struggle

With Canada and Mexico joining the TPP, the agreement is looking more and more like a substitute for the FTAA. So it is not surprising that opposition to the TPP is growing as quickly as it did against that former attempt to expand the neoliberal model throughout the Western hemisphere.

The intense secrecy of the TPP negotiations is not helping the Obama administration make its case.In their statement, North American unions “call on our governments to work with us to include in the TPP provisions to ensure strong worker protections, a healthy environment, safe food and products, and the ability to regulate financial and other markets to avoid future global economic crises.” But the truth is that only big business is partaking in consultations, with 600 lobbyists having exclusive passwords to online versions of the negotiating text.

A majority of Democratic representatives (132 out of 191) have expressed that they are “troubled that important policy decisions are being made without full input from Congress.” They have written to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to urge him and his staff to “engage in broader and deeper consultations with members of the full range of committees of Congress whose jurisdiction touches on the wide-ranging issues involved, and to ensure there is ample opportunity for Congress to have input on critical policies that will have broad ramifications for years to come.” In their letter, the representatives also challenge “the lack of transparency of the treaty negotiation process, and the failure of negotiators to meaningfully consult with states on the far-reaching impact of trade agreements on state and local laws, even when binding on our states, is of grave concern to us.”U.S. Senators, for their part, have also sent a letter complaining of the lack of congressional access to the negotiations. What openness and transparency can we in Canada and Mexico expect when the decision to join the TPP, under humiliating conditions, was made without any public consultation?

NAFTA turns 20 years old in 2014. Instead of expanding it through the TPP we must learn from NAFTA’s shortcomings, starting with the historic lack of consultation with unions and producers in the three member countries. It is necessary to correct the imbalances in NAFTA, which as the North American union statement explains enhanced corporate power at the expense of workers and the environment. In particular, we need to categorically reject the investor-state dispute settlement process that has proven so costly, in real terms and with respect to our democratic options in Canada and Mexico. The unions’ statement of solidarity provides a strong foundation for the growing trinational opposition to the TPP in Leesburg, Virginia, and beyond.

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July 26, 2012 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Canada turns blind eye to cluster bomb treaty

By Michael Swan | The Catholic Register | May 16, 2012

Banning cluster bombs but then allowing Canadian pilots to drop them, Canadian soldiers to transport them and Canadian commanding officers to order them into the battlefield makes no sense, says the man who negotiated Canada’s participation in the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Former arms treaty negotiator Earl Turcotte, who led Canada’s effort to negotiate the Convention on Cluster Munitions, is warning Canada has misrepresented its signature on the 2010 treaty by proposing enabling legislation with very wide exceptions.

“It certainly, I think, misrepresents the position that we and other like-minded countries took during the negotiations,” Turcotte told The Catholic Register. “I expect Canada is going to get raked over the coals, and deservedly so at this point.”

Canada signed the international treaty in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 3, 2008 — one of the first nations to do so. It took until April 26 for the government to table legislation that would ratify that signature. According to the Department of Foreign Affairs media relations staff it took more than three years because “Canadian officials needed to finalize the necessary documentation for cabinet’s decision.”

For the sake of interoperability with American forces, the enabling legislation allows Canadian commanders on joint operations with U.S. forces to order American soldiers to use cluster bombs, allows Canadian pilots on secondment with American forces to drop cluster bombs, allows Canadian forces to transport the weapons into the field of battle. While most of the 111 countries that have ratified the treaty have banned investment in companies that produce cluster bombs, Canada has not. The enabling legislation also does not ban transport of cluster munitions through Canadian airspace or territory.

When Turcotte learned the contents of the bill he quit his job with foreign affairs to dedicate his time to persuading Parliament to seriously revise Bill S-10. Turcotte and the NGO Mines Action Canada have launched a petition asking Parliament to “make it clear that no Canadian should ever be involved in the use of cluster munitions for any reason, anywhere, at any time, for anyone.”

Banning cluster bombs, which have killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of civilians and very few soldiers, has been a cause close to the Vatican’s heart. The Holy See was part of a core group of countries that steered the Oslo process which produced the treaty — a role Canada had assumed a decade earlier with the anti-personnel land mines treaty.

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken several times about the immorality of cluster bombs. When the Convention entered into force in 2010, Benedict exhorted all states to comply with the treaty.

“The international community has demonstrated wisdom, foresight and the capacity to pursue a meaningful result in the field of disarmament and international human rights,” he said Aug. 1, 2010. “The logic of peace is stronger than the logic of war, which in every case must have as an insurmountable limit the protection and preservation of the civil population and particularly the most vulnerable people.”

“The moral issue is that if you’ve got a ban, a complete ban, and you’ve signed a treaty that says you support the concept of a complete ban, then how can you morally justify coming back and say ‘Yes, we ban this, but…’ ” said Mines Action Canada executive director Paul Hannon. “You can’t have it both ways. It’s morally ambiguous. You want to ban something and you want to help somebody use it.”

The exceptions in Bill S-10 are based on Article 21 of the Convention — an article that Turcotte himself wrote. Article 21 was intended to allow NATO countries to continue to work with U.S. forces. The United States, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, China and Russia are the major non-signatory states.

“The scope of the exceptions was very narrow,” said John Seibert, executive director of Project Ploughshares, an ecumenical think tank on defence and disarmament issues.

“This is a wide open door… It really defeats the primary purpose of the treaty.”

“The Prohibiting Cluster Munitions Act fully implements Canada’s commitments to the Convention, and strikes a good balance between humanitarian obligations while preserving our national security and defence interests,” the foreign affairs media department told The Catholic Register in an e-mail. “Canada’s position is based on Canada’s own humanitarian and security and defence requirements.”

The media lines from the government are illogical, according to Turcotte.

“This makes no military sense and no moral sense,” he said. “Whether it’s a sin of commission or a sin of omission, when one is using a weapon with full knowledge that it is going to cause extensive collateral damage both at the time of use and also post-conflict because of the high dud rate, then as far as I’m concerned that’s an abrogation of our responsibilities under military law, let alone humanitarian law.”

One academic study found that 98 per cent of all recorded casualties from cluster munitions have been civilians. The Geneva Conventions require soldiers to ensure civilians are not targeted, said Turcotte.

Asked whether cluster munitions are immoral, foreign affairs answered: “They have been used in approximately 34 countries and territories to date, often with devastating impact on civilians due to their wide-area effect and to sub-munitions failing to explode.”

Hannon believes the Department of National Defence never wanted the treaty and won out in interdepartmental lobbying over the enabling legislation.

“Then they just got carried away and started saying not only would clusters be allowed to be used but we would assist in using them. I think they’re playing, they’re twisting around legal definitions and creating a legal pretzel,” Hannon said.

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July 21, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Canadian Senator: ‘Bring Omar Khadr home’

Rehmat’s World | July 16, 2012

Canadian Senator Lt. Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire, (Ret’d) has issued an open petition to Israel-Firster Stephen Harper’s Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to bring former Canadian child soldier, Omar Khadr, from America’s notorious Guantánamo Bay concentration camp to Canada.

“The case of Omar Khadr – a Canadian citizen and former child soldier – is a stain upon our society and shows a blatant disregard for Canada’s obligations under international law,” says Roméo A. Dallaire.

Omar Khadr, who turns 26 this year – was captured in 2002 by America’s Afghan collaborators, Northern Alliance warlords, for killing a US army medic while visiting his parents’ family in Afghanistan at the age of 15. He was first kept at the US detention facility at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan before being transfered to Guantánamo Bay. Omar was tried as “a terrorist” and not a  juvenile prisoner, by a military commission conceived by Israel-Firster former vice-president Dick Cheney and his Zionist advisers.

Omar was sentenced to 40 year in jail via a kangroo trail which was unrelated to any other form of US justice or the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – which specifically recognizes “the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities,” and requires its signatories to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”

Both the US and Canada are signatory to the Optional Protocol. The way Omar has been tortured, humiliated and kept in isolation at Guantánamo Bay for the last ten years and the way Ottawa has abdicated its responsibilities towards him – should be a source of shame for the moral citizens of both countries.

A declassified report prepared by US Department of Defense (DoD) deputy inspector-general in September 2009 – admitted that detainees in custody of the US military were interrogated while drugged with powerful antipsychotic and other medications that “could impair an individual’s ability to provide accurate information“.

Omar’s defense lawyers have asked the federal court to force Vic Toews to make decision as to whether Khadr can return to Canada to serve his remaining sentence.

Just days ago, Marine Col. Jeffrey Colwell, chief defense counsel for military commissions openly chastised Canada for crippling US efforts to enter into plea agreements: If the US “can’t carry through on their end of the bargain, it has a chilling effect on the willingness of others to plead. There was an expectation by all parties involved that Khadr was going to be home last fall. It’s July, and he’s not.”

The pro-Israeli groups have turned Khadr’s case into an Islamophobia war. For example, the Toronto book launch of Omar Khadr, Oh Canada  was met by threats of violence and a demonstration by the the Jewish Defense League, a Jewish militant group which is declared a terrorist group by FBI and known for violence at Canadian Campuses.

Israeli propaganda and hacker website, BlazingCatFur, put the headline: “Vic Toews, Canadian Minister of Public Safety can Block Omar Khadr’s return to Canada by refusing to sign the ‘Prisoner Transfer Agreement’.”

Vic Toews’ parents and grandparents were immigrants from Ukraine.

July 15, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel, Canada ink energy research deal

By Tony Cadwalader | DED | July 6, 2012

In case you missed it, earlier this week Canada and Israel signed a new energy cooperation agreement, according to YnetNews. The deal was inked during Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s visit to Israel last week, the site reported.

“The World Energy Council believes that the recent oil and gas deposits found in Israel’s coastal plains is one of the largest in the world. If estimates of the basin containing up to 250 billion barrels of shale oil prove accurate, Israel will become one of the world’s top-three countries in shale oil resources, behind just the United States and China, the report said.”

Russia has taken a keen interest in Israel lately, and with these discoveries it is likely Russia would offer its help. This would have larger geopolitical ramifications in the region as Turkey’s efforts to block gas production in the region could be rebuffed by Russia, a long time strategic partner. […]

“Gazprom and other Russian companies are also likely to do well in any gas exploration deals developed with the strongly pro-Moscow (and very cash hungry) Greek Cypriot government.

“The stakes are not small: the offshore Levantine Basin (which Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Israel and even Gaza will all have some claim to) is believed to have 120 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and ‘considerable’ oil.  Drillers working in Israeli waters have already identified what look to be 5 billion barrels of recoverable oil in addition to over a trillion cubic feet of gas. (US firms were involved in these finds.) Israel’s undersea gas reserves are currently estimated at about 16 trillion cubic feet and new fields continue to be rapidly found.

“The new Israeli-Russian agreement is part of a conscious strategy by the Israeli government to use its nascent energy wealth to improve its embattled political position. With Italy reeling under the impact of big wrong-way bets on Iran, Rome may also begin to appreciate the value of good ties with a closer and more dependable [sic] neighbor. Another sensible target for Israeli energy diplomacy would be India: the two countries are already close in a number of ways, including trade and military technology, and India is eager to diversify its energy sources.

“Gas is one thing, but potential for huge shale oil reserves under Israel itself, however, is a new twist. According to the World Energy Council, a leading global energy forum with organizations and affiliates in some 93 countries, Israel may have the third largest shale oil reserves in the world: something like 250 billion barrels. (The US and China are both believed to have larger shale oil reserves, with the US believed to have the equivalent of well over 1 trillion barrels of potentially recoverable shale and China having perhaps one third of that amount. Canada’s Athabaskan oil sands reserves may contain the equivalent of 2 trillion of barrels conventional oil, or more than all the conventional oil known to exist in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran combined.) If the estimates of Israeli shale oil are correct, Israel’s gas and shale reserves put its total energy reserves in the Saudi class, though Israel’s energy costs more to extract.”

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July 6, 2012 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Why Jason Kenney getting an award for ‘diversity’ only reinforces discrimination

By David Heap | Rabble| June 23, 2012

Conservative minister Jason Kenney is to receive an award for “diversity” from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in London, Ontario this Sunday. It is hard to say which does more harm to the true values of diversity: the “honouring” organization or the politician being “honoured.”

The JNF covenant reserves the 13 per cent of Israeli land it owns for the exclusive benefit of Jews. It plays the same discriminatory role in the Israeli Lands Authority: together, these two interlocking institutions control 93 per cent of land in Israel, which (with a few short-lease exceptions) is not available to Palestinians. Many of these lands, originally belonging to Palestinians expelled in 1948, were expropriated and then sold to the JNF.

In 1998, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights reported that the “large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and property by the State and the transfer of that property to these agencies constitute an institutionalized form of discrimination because these agencies by definition would deny the use of these properties by non-Jews.”

Segregation and exclusion are incompatible with diversity, but fine with Minister Kenney. Since the robo-call election of 2011, Ottawa Conservatives have pushed through measures that discriminate against migrants and refugees. Last November they completely halted applications for immigration sponsorships of parents and grandparents until 2014.

The JNF creates forests and parks on the ruins of destroyed Palestinian villages to hide the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Canada Park, built on top of the ruins of the Palestinian villages of Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba (deliberately destroyed by Israel in 1967), was funded through Canadian tax-deductible donations to the JNF Canada.

The destruction of the Palestinian villages and the denial of the villagers’ right to return to their homes are grave violations of the 4th Geneva Convention. Former Israeli Knesset member Uri Avnery calls this destruction a “war crime under international law.”

War crimes (even those subsidized through our tax system) do not promote diversity but they are OK with Kenney and other Conservatives, whose unconditional support for Israeli crimes matches their complete disdain for our own national obligations under international humanitarian law. Just last week, they passed Bill C-31, a law that will result in the arbitrary detention, intimidation and re-victimization of highly vulnerable asylum-seekers in Canada, especially women and children. As of next week, refugees in this country will be denied vital medical services by the same Conservative government.

Like Indigenous peoples elsewhere, Palestinians Bedouins in the Negev have been and continue to be dispossessed of their land, their resources and their livelihoods by occupying populations. While countries like Canada move slowly towards reconciliation with aboriginal peoples through land settlements and compensation, funds raised through JNF dinners and Canadian tax deductions contribute to further dispossession of Bedouins and other Palestinians.

Indigenous dispossession does not help foster diversity, but that doesn’t bother Conservatives like Kenney. In April 2012, they pushed through a policy allowing employers pay “temporary” foreign workers up to 15 per cent less than the prevailing local wage.

The JNF’s exclusionary practices and policies in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are not well known in North America, but recently in the U.K. major political party leaders (including the current Prime Minister) have begun distancing themselves from this discriminatory organization.

It is time more Canadians demanded the JNF’s charitable status be revoked – in the name of diversity (and international law), while we work to reverse the damage done to vulnerable migrants by Kenney and other Conservatives.

We may not get any awards for “diversity,” but we will be helping build a more just world for all.

UWO Faculty for Palestine member David Heap is a Steering Committee member of works with community groups including People for Peace and No One is Illegal in London. He gratefully acknowledges help from allies and colleagues in preparing this column.

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June 23, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

On Threats to Israel and Canada

By Kim Petersen | Dissident Voice | June 23rd, 2012

There are people who insist that Israel is an overseas battleship for the United States. What about the relationship between Israel and Canada?

Documents have come to light, through a Queen’s University researcher using the federal access-to-information law, that say Canadian defence minister Peter MacKay told Israel’s top military commander, major-general Gabi Ashkenazi, while in the Middle East, that “a threat to Israel is a threat to Canada.”1

It is nothing new. Mackay’s boss, prime minister Stephen Harper previously stated, “Those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada.”2

First, who is the primary threat in the Middle East? Is Lebanon attacking Israel or is it Israel attacking Lebanon? Is Syria attacking Israel or is it Israel attacking Syria? Is Gaza attacking Israel or is it Israel attacking Gaza? Did Iraq attack Israel or did Israel attack Iraq? Has Iran ever attacked Israel, or is it just Israel that has attacked Iran?

It appears the threat is an Israeli attack on nearby countries, not another Middle Eastern country attacking Israel.

If an attack on Israel is an attack on Canada, then what is an attack by Israel? If Canada is so aligned with Israel, does it then consider that it is in an attack posture along with Israel?

Or is there a semblance of fairness to Canadian foreign policy under the Conservative Party government?3 Would Canada declare that a threat against another Middle Eastern country from Israel is a threat to Canada? Does Canada wish to be a peace-loving country (hardly credible nowadays after its role in the imperialist debacle against Iraq and in war-torn Afghanistan) or will it condone threats and violence by Israel against neighbors?

When talking about threats, is it not important to consider what might be prompting a threat? Would occupation of another state’s territory not be provocative? Is anyone occupying Israeli territory? (Just what is Israeli territory anyway?) How about vice versa? Israel is in longstanding occupation of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. So just who is the threat and who is engaged in provocative behavior?

Former prime minister, Paul Martin, said: “Israel’s values are Canada’s values — shared values — democracy, the rule of law, and the protection of human rights.”4

If Israel’s values are Canada’s values, on democracy is this expressed by Canada’s freezing aid to Palestine after Hamas won the 2006 election? On the rule of law, is this expressed by Israel’s violation of numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions and the 2005 International Court of Justice decision that the apartheid wall must be dismantled from within the West Bank and compensation paid to Palestinians? On the protection of human rights can this exist within an apartheid regime; can it exist under occupation?5

So what exactly are these shared values between Canada and Israel?

Does Canada value becoming an undeclared nuclear power? Will Canada therefore withdraw from the NPT and develop its own nuclear weapons arsenal in line with Israeli values?

Should Canada not then support Iran’s nuclear research since they only do what Israel has done, and even less, and even Canada does nuclear research and sends its uranium to nuclear-armed states?

How does Canada avoid charges of hypocrisy? How does Canada elude charges of bias?

Harper had defended Israel by saying: “But when Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.”

Is there not a moral obligation to take a stand against apartheid, to take a stand against occupation, to take a stand against serial violations of international law, to take a stand against human rights abuses, and to take a stand against warring?

Are Israeli’s values not a threat to any nation state professing respect for human rights and justice?

  1. See Murray Brewster, “Threat to Israel is threat to Canada, MacKay tells Israeli military commander,” The Province, 19 June 2012.
  2. See “Fault Lines – Canada-Israel: The other special relationship,” Al Jazeera.
  3. It does not really matter in Canada’s current political landscape because Canada’s New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party are more-or-less equally obsequious to Israel.
  4. Press Release, “Canadian prime Minister Paul Martin Addresses Delegates at Opening of United Jewish Communities 2005 General Assembly,” UJC.
  5. Visit, for example, the website of B’Tselem — the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories for a glimpse at Israeli activists acknowledge as Israel’s abuse of human rights.

Kim Petersen can be reached at: kim@dissidentvoice.org.

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June 23, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Coordinated Western Campaign to Expel Syrian Envoys

Al-Manar | May 29, 2012

In a coordinated move, Western countries on Tuesday moved to expel Syrian envoys and diplomats “in protest at the massacre of Houla.”

Countries of US, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Canada expelled the diplomats as Belgium summoned the Syrian ambassador.

The United States ordered the expulsion of Syria’s top diplomat.

“We hold the Syrian government responsible for this slaughter of innocent lives,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, informing charge d’affaires Zuheir Jabbour that he had 72 hours to leave the country.

In Paris, President Francois Hollande told journalists that France’s decision to expel Ambassador Lamia Shakkur, which would be formally communicated to her on Tuesday or Wednesday, was “not a unilateral decision by France, but a decision agreed upon with (our) partners.”

In Berlin, national news agency DPA reported that Germany too would expel the Syrian ambassador in protest.

A government source in Britain said the country had also expelled its top Syrian envoy.

“The charge d’affaires is being expelled. The foreign secretary will give more details soon,” the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Syria had already withdrawn its ambassador from London.

“There was a concerted plan between Britain, France and Germany,” said another source, who asked not to be identified.

Rome also took a similar move as its government said in statement: “Ambassador Khaddour Hasan was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and told he was ‘persona non grata’.”
Italy expressed its “indignation for the heinous crimes carried out against the civilian population,” the statement added.

Madrid said it was expelling the Syrian ambassador in protest against the “unacceptable repression by the Syrian regime against its own people”.

“Spain has decided to declare the Syrian ambassador in Spain, Hussam Edin Aala, persona non grata because of the unacceptable repression carried out by the Syrian regime against its own people,” the foreign ministry said.

“Spain has also decided to expel four other members of Syria’s diplomatic mission in Spain,” it added in a statement.

The Netherlands also declared Syria’s ambassador to the country as “persona non-grata”, the Dutch foreign affairs minister said.

“I have decided to declare the Syrian ambassador as a persona non-grata,” Uri Rosenthal said in a statement, adding that “we cannot co-operate with a country headed by such a president,” referring to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Meanwhile, Canada expelled all Syrian diplomats, with its Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said: “Canada and our partners are speaking loudly, with one voice, in saying these Syrian representatives are not welcome in our countries while their masters in Damascus continue to perpetrate their heinous and murderous acts.”

“Today, Canada is expelling all Syrian diplomats remaining in Ottawa. They and their families have five days to leave Canada,” the minister said in a statement.

A Syrian diplomat awaiting passage to Ottawa from Syria will be refused entry into Canada, Baird added.

For its part, Belgium summoned Syria’s ambassador to meet Foreign Minister Didier Reynders later Tuesday.

“The ambassador has been summoned at 1800 hours (1600 GMT),” the minister’s office said.

May 29, 2012 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canadian police arrest 400 in student protest in Montreal

Press TV – May 24, 2012

Canadian police have arrested some 400 people in Montreal in the latest student protest against tuition hikes, police say.

Several thousand demonstrators poured into Montreal’s central square late Wednesday to protest tuition hikes and to denounce a new legislation aimed at ending months of anti-tuition hikes protests.

Police clashed with the demonstrators and arrested nearly 400 protesters.

On Tuesday, tens of thousands of students took to the streets of Montreal to mark the 100th day of protests.

The protesters, carrying red banners and signs, marched through central Montreal to commemorate the day and also voice their opposition to the Quebec provincial government’s new law that would make protests more difficult to organize and impose stiff fines on those who disobey.

Since the law was passed on Friday, daily protests have often turned violent.

Under the new legislation, any individual, who prevents students from entering an educational institution or disrupts classes will be fined between CAD 1,000 and CAD 5,000.

The punishment will rise to between CAD 7,000 and CAD 35,000 for a student leader and to between CAD 25,000 and CAD 125,000 for student federations or unions.

The law also forces regulations to govern student protests, requiring protesters to inform the police of their demonstration plans, including an eight-hour notice for details, such as the itinerary, the duration, and the exact time of the action.

Quebec students have been holding almost daily demonstrations since February in an attempt to show their outrage at the proposed tuition fee rises.

Under the provisional agreement, university fees would increase by CAD 1,780 over seven years or about CAD 254 a year, bringing the total to CAD 4,000 per year. The plan is scheduled to be effective from 2012-13 until 2016-2017 academic years.

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May 24, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

BBC survey: ‘Israel sinks in popularity’

Rehmat’s World | May 17, 2012

On May 10, the BBC released the results of its annual Global survey of world nations and how their influence is viewed by 24,090 participants from 27 nations. The participants were asked to rate the influence of each of 16 nations and the EU as “mostly positive” or “mostly negative”.

According to the survey – Germany received top positive views followed by Britain, Japan and Canada – while Iran received the highest negative views (55%, improved from last years’ 59%), followed by Pakistan (51%), North Korea (50%) and Israel (50%, up from 40% in 2010).

Among EU nations, Spain topped the negative opinion of Israel (74%), followed by Germany (69%), Britain (68%) and France (65%).

The United States, Nigeria and Kenya gave Israel more positive views than the rest of nations surveyed. In Canada, the negative ratings increased from 52% to 59% – while in Australia it went up from 58% to 65%. Israel received the highest negative opinion in Egypt (95%)and Turkey (73%).

The BBC survey paints a darker picture about Israel than the results of a survey conducted by the pro-Israel group, ADL, in March 2012. It revealed that a significant majority of Europeans believe that Jews are more loyal to Israel than the countries they live in.

Israel’s rise in unpopularity confirms Israel’s Reut Institute 2010 report – which warned the Netanyahu government of the ‘delegitimization’ of the Zionist entity.

“There are two main generators of attacks on Israel’s legitimacy. The Resistance Network – which operates on the basis of Islamist ideology and includes Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas; and the Delegitimization Network – which operates in the international arena in order to negate Israel’s right to exist and includes individuals and organizations in the West, which are catalyzed by the radical left,” noted the report.

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May 16, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Shameful Scapegoating of Omar Khadr

By Andy Worthington | 28.4.12

Last week, the Canadian government received a formal request for the return of Omar Khadr from Guantánamo Bay. Julie Carmichael, an aide to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, told the Globe and Mail, “The government of Canada has just received a completed application for the transfer of prisoner Omar Ahmed Khadr. A decision will be made on this file in accordance with Canadian law.”

Khadr, who was seized at the age of 15 after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, accepted a plea deal in his war crimes trial at Guantánamo in October 2010, on the basis that he would serve an eight-year sentence, but with only one year to be served in Guantánamo.

However, as the Globe and Mail described it, the government of Stephen Harper “has been reluctant to accept Mr. Khadr,” and “diplomatic wrangling over his transfer has persisted.” Despite this, as I noted last month, the US government has been putting pressure on the Canadian government, because US officials need other prisoners to be reassured that, if they accept plea deals in exchange for providing evidence against other prisoners, the terms of those plea deals will be honored.

Playing this down, and also playing down Canada’s own responsibility towards Khadr, a Canadian official explained, “The United States basically asked Canada for a diplomatic favor and Canada previously agreed to look at a request of this nature favorably. The US needs to get rid of this guy for their own reasons.” The source added that the Americans were “bending over backwards” to ensure Khadr’s return, and would have to “bend their way around a number of their own rules” to make that happen, and also suggested that Vic Toews had “little choice but to accept Mr. Khadr’s return, which would happen at US expense.”

All of the above was economical with the truth, because Canada’s involvement in accepting the return of Khadr was obviously discussed at the time of the plea deal, and the talk of doing favors is, therefore, designed only to make the Canadian government appear tough.

This is nothing new, as the Canadian government has persistently ignored Khadr’s rights, abandoning him at the age of 15, when officials were supposed to call for his rehabilitation as part of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which both Canada and the US are signatories. Moreover, the Canadian government has done nothing to prevent the kind of racism that has involved a regular outpouring of hostility towards Khadr. This is so out of control that numerous Canadian citizens have decided that it is appropriate to talk of not allowing Khadr to return to Canada, even though he was born in Canada and is a Canadian citizen.

Typical of this was a poll conducted last week on CBC News’s “Your Community Blog,” which asked the question, “Should Omar Khadr be allowed to return to Canada?” as though there was a legal option to prevent his return, when there is not. Fortunately, 53 percent of those who voted said yes, compared to 43 percent who said no, although that is still an alarmingly large minority of Canadian citizens who don’t understand what nationality and citizenship mean, and who also don’t seem to believe that a prison sentence — and any notion of punishment — should be finite.

These voices include journalist and Sun TV host Ezra Levant, who has written an entire hate-filled book about the alleged threat posed by Khadr, but whose approach is “so obsessional that it sometimes seems like a manifestation of clinical mental illness,” as another journalist, Jonathan Kay, recently explained.

Moreover, last Thursday, as the Toronto Sun explained in a news report, Vic Toews conceded that the government would not block Khadr’s return. Some commentators had speculated that the government “was considering using a clause in the International Transfer of Offenders Act to keep … Khadr out of Canada on national security grounds.”

Toews explained, “Under the International Transfer of Offenders Act, he is a Canadian citizen. He is also a Canadian citizen under the Charter which entitles him to come back to Canada, eventually.” He added, “The issue is when does he come back to Canada? That’s a determination I have to make and I haven’t made any decision in that respect yet.”

A decision is expected soon, but in the meantime opponents of Khadr’s return should also reflect that, under Canadian law, he will be “eligible for parole next year after completing one-third of his sentence, and statutory release after completing two-thirds.” Toews pointed out that “it would be up to the National Parole Board to decide when to integrate Khadr back into society.” The Toronto Sun also pointed out that the government was “bracing for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit,” based on the fallout from a Canadian Supreme Court ruling in 2010 — conveniently ignored by the government — which stated unambiguously that Khadr’s rights were violated in US custody.

In defense of Khadr — and providing some necessary humility — the Toronto Star ran an editorial last Thursday, pointing out that “the abuse he has suffered with the complicity of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government and that of its Liberal predecessors has shamed Canada,” adding, “His expected return from Guantánamo Bay, while welcome, does us no great credit either.”

Seeing through the official line about Canada doing the US a favour, the Star noted, “Such is the shabby close to an infamous case in which Ottawa refused to go to bat for one of our own,” and delivered the following verdict on Khadr’s US ordeal:

US President Barack Obama once declared Gitmo a “legal black hole” predicated on a “dangerously flawed legal approach” that “compromised our core values.” Khadr finally buckled to that ugly system in 2010 and surrendered the guilty plea to murder and war crimes that it was designed to elicit. His plea bargain was a “hellish decision” to preclude trial in a sham court and the risk of a life sentence.

The Star also reminded readers that Khadr “was pushed to fight in Afghanistan by his al-Qaida-linked father,” and that US officials “threatened him with gang rape, denied him counsel, deprived him of sleep, and set a precedent by charging him with war crimes as a juvenile.” Also noting that he had “spent far more time behind bars than he would have in Canada, had he been convicted here in a credible court of murder as a young offender,” the Star concluded its pertinent editorial by stating:

[A]s Canada’s allies successfully lobbied to free their nationals from Gitmo, the Harper government wilfully neglected Khadr. It never forcefully protested his mistreatment, criticized his prosecution, or asked for leniency. It took the obtuse view that justice was taking its course. It washed its hands of a young Canadian, leaving him to his fate. It failed a citizen, and disgraced itself.

It is rare, at Guantánamo, for another government to have behaved as appallingly as the US, but in Khadr’s case it has long been clear, to anyone capable of viewing it objectively, that the Canadian government has matched America’s abuse towards Khadr every step of the way, and it is time for this disgraceful situation to be brought to an end.

~

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield.

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April 29, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Orwellian ‘Hate Speech’ laws applied inconsistently in Canada

By Joshua Blakeney | Press TV | Apr 27, 2012

Calgary – Activists and Academics are increasingly questioning the purpose of Canada having ‘hate speech’ laws to criminalize certain forms of speech.

Critics say such laws are applied inconsistently and often serve the interests of powerful groups whilst doing nothing to prevent the tide of Islamophobia that has swept Canada since the disputed events of 9/11.

‘I can tell you that headline wasn’t in Calgary….it could be in the National Post but I can tell you that didn’t originate in Calgary’

That was the response of Rick Hanson, Chief of the Calgary police when confronted by Press TV with a hateful headline claiming that Iraqis worship the devil, printed by one of Canada’s most prominent broadsheet newspapers. The question was prompted after the police chief had given a speech in which he had affirmed his desire to use controversial anti-Hate Crime legislation to stamp out prejudice and discrimination in the city of Calgary. Canada has Hate Speech laws which criminalize certain forms of speech that are deemed to be illegitimate by the Canadian state.

Press TV was interested to discover whether or not Hate Speech laws were being applied consistently in Canada, even to powerful elites who seek to demonize Muslims. The police chief’s response was terse.

Critics say that Hate Speech laws are not applied consistently in Canada as every day we see the mainstream media stigmatizing and dehumanizing Middle Eastern people with impunity. On the other hand those anti-racists who criticize Israel’s policies of genocide and apartheid are finding their freedom of speech to do so increasingly challenged with powerful pro-Israel lobbyists seeking to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

Press TV got in touch with a prestigious Canadian professor and member of the Canadian Islamic Congress who had tried but failed to invoke Canada’s Hate-Speech laws to prosecute a journalist in Canada who had disseminated anti-Islamic conspiracy theories in an article published in a prominent Canadian magazine called MacCleans.

It is clear that Hate Speech laws are controversial. And when such laws are being applied inconsistently and in a politicized or ethnicized manner experts warn that they can only have a negative effect on society.

April 28, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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