Friday, October 26, 2007

USA vs. Iran and Cubazuela

When w.Caesar should be gracefully entering his presidential lame duck status and thinking about who to pardon [whoops, he already got on that with Scooter Libby], he is instead feeding warm, bleeding horse meat to the dogs of war.

From today's Washington Post:

In approving far-reaching, new unilateral sanctions against Iran, President Bush signaled yesterday that he intends to pursue a strategy of gradually escalating financial, diplomatic and political pressure on Tehran, aimed not at starting a new war in the Middle East, his advisers said, but at preventing one. ...With yesterday's actions, which included the long-awaited designations of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, Bush made clear that he is willing to seek such leverage even without the support of his European allies.

I seem to remember the rhetoric in late 2002. Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction and that despite all the OCD midnight rifle barrel cleaning, w.Caesar only wanted peace, until the UN Security Council wouldn't sanction the US invasion plans making him invade with his ethereal Coalition of the Willing instead of Old Europe.

Life is rarely this simple: listen to politicians so that we can believe the opposite of what they say. w.Caesar is good for that.

Moving on to our own hemisphere, w.Caesar can't stand anti-neoliberal, democratically elected leftist governments in Latin America.

Responding to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said that Hugo Chavez is a "threat to regional stability," Venezuelan Vice-President Jorge Rodriguez affirmed that Hugo Chavez is indeed a "tremendous threat" to the "empires of the world," and assured they would continue to be a "greater threat" as time goes on. "Of course he [Chavez] is a threat to the stability of the empires of the world, for those who consider themselves the world police, for those who think they have a right to invade countries and massively murder the population," replied the Venezuelan vice-president to a recent statement made by Robert Gates during a visit to El Salvador. ...

Gates then warned that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was mainly a "threat to the freedom and economic prosperity of the people of Venezuela." According to Gates, Chavez "has been very generous in offering their resources to people around the world, when perhaps these resources could be better used to alleviate some of the economic problems facing the people of Venezuela."


Gates should have said the word "rich" when he called Chavez a "threat to the freedom and economic prosperity of the rich people of Venezuela." Conveniently, Gates ignored all domestic economic and social reform in Venezuela.

I'm not entirely comfortable with Hugo Chavez's desire to have decree power. When he has such legislative support, I'm not sure it's necessary. The USA criticizes Venezuela as being dictatorial, despite its electoral unambiguity compared with Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 and hundreds of other jurisdictions with Republican electoral fraud this decade. Add to this a steaming pile of soft fascism in the USA and we get a sense of US hypocrisy: w.Caesar's signing statements asserting which parts of legislation the executive branch will not obey, and this tasty list of Amnesty International's worries about the land of the free and the home of the brave that sounds quite a bit like Chile after 9.11.1973:
  • Secret detention
  • Enforced disappearance
  • Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
  • Outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment
  • Denial and restriction of habeas corpus
  • Indefinite detention without charge or trial
  • Prolonged incommunicado detention
  • Arbitrary detention
  • Unfair trial procedures
So then yesterday when w.Caesar warned the world that there will be a transition coming in Cuba [presumably when Castro dies], but Cubazuela responded assertively:

"He spoke like an imperialist and a colonialist," said Venezuelan parliamentarian Saul Ortega about Bush's statements. Ortega assured that the reaction to these threats will be increased unity among the people of Latin America. "In response we have to close ranks in defense of the principles of sovereignty and self-determination," he said.

Vice-foreign minister Rodolfo Sanz assured that the United States was making a mistake with their statements towards Cuba and maintained that the "times have changed."

"We aren't going to sit here with our arms crossed before some diabolic adventure," he said. Sanz assured that the Cuban people can count on support from nations like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, among others, stating that "Cuba is not alone."

The boldness of the Latin American political economic agenda in the last decade is a testament to the recovery of economic shock, terror and genocide visited upon them by Milton Friedman and his neoliberal storm troopers over the last 35 years. Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine's final chapter talks about how when people or cultures rebuild their communities and name their oppressors when they recover from shock. This is the spirit in which Cubazuela has responded to w.Caesar's signaling of regime change in Cuba. Let's be honest. The US corporate interests in Cuba are legion. Cuba will become the next Haiti as Canada and the US have squashed hope into desperation there.

Words like diabolic, imperialist, colonialist, sovereignty, self-determination and the simple phrase--times have changed--indicate that a Grenada-style hemispheric military excursion into Cuba will not easily guarantee the Republicans' retention of the White House or a recovery of Congress.

Cuba is indeed not alone. The whole hemisphere is tilted against w.Caesar with the exception of business/media elites and the apolitical or ignorant, RRSP-hoarding, gadget-worshipping [dwindling numbers of the] middle class in NAFTAland and Latin American compradors.

And with the record oil profits that w.Caesar has facilitated as he helped oil pass $80 a barrel, he has ended up funding Venezuela's upgrading of its military.

Back to Naomi Klein, however, to follow her thesis: war is good for corporate profitability and the GDP. Peace impairs economic growth. So it might not even matter to the disaster/conflict capitalists that a war with Iran or Cubazuela is just, desirable or winnable. It's just another opportunity to bankrupt governments and shift public wealth to global corporations.

Luckily the other Naomi [Wolf] and thousands of others including sitdownfortheconstitution.org have started what will hopefully be a 54 week campaign for Americans to steal back their constitution.

The rest of our hemisphere better get on [not off!] our asses and support them in their attempt to stifle w.Caesar's soft fascism before it grows horns and starts sending Blackwater mercenaries into US streets. Oh, I forgot. It is already be too late for that since they've been in New Orleans.

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Thursday, October 04, 2007

Note to TransLink: Your Riders Are Not Customers

I went to the TransLink website just now to search for the word "customer". I found 376 references.

I also have noticed that in recent days a canned announcement pops onto Skytrains regularly asking "Skytrain customers" to not leave their lame faux-news free daily newspapers [Metro, 24] lying all over the trains cluttering them up and creating a slipping hazard for most everyone.

As part of the large trend to commodify all things public and common, riders are no longer riders, we are customers purchasing a service: mass transit. As customers we are told the class of our existence on what used to be public transit.

Now the new TransLink board is being appointed by a gang of mostly business-folk, a board not accountable to the token Council of Mayors who will be "consulted" on decisions. Public money spent by unaccountable directors appointed by mostly business interests.

If you resent being classed as a "public" transit customer instead of a co-owner of a commonly held public "public" transit system, you had better start paying more attention to the Campbell neoLiberal government's agenda to sell us [and everything held in common] down the river.

And it would help to read Naomi Klein's new book to get a primer on the last few decades of rationale behind the premier's manifestation of neoliberal cancer. And if you don't have time to read it all, you can get the 6 minute primer here.

And a few facts to make you wonder just what price we pay for a privatized, deregulated world.

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Psst, Wanna Buy a BC River?

September 30, 2007 is British Columbia Rivers Day!

This is a time to celebrate the role BC rivers has played in the history of our province, from before Europeans came [though we don't really seem to actually care too much about that] until today: British imperialism, economics, recreation, [ecology, yes], etc.

Wouldn't it be great in celebrating BC's rivers that you had the opportunity to, I don't know, buy the water rights in perpetuity for up to $10,000?

If that sounds like a nice way to spend $10k for the chance to make your own electricity plant, you know how to spot a bargain! Well, the government, anyway, sure knows how to offer a bargain...everyone's water at fire sale prices. Then you too can contribute to rolling brownouts, regional blackouts and price gouging just like the fatcats!

Green tags represent many of the 62 current water licenses for power generation or storage. Yell tags represent many of the 350+ pending applications. Red lines indicate parks.

Hurry! The offer doesn't last forever! Once BC rivers have all been bought up, there literally will be none left for you to snatch up. Get on it!

And if you aren't so much in favour of selling our water rights for any price, let alone less than $10,000, they it's time to get involved in stopping the continued privatization of the commons: Citizens for Public Power is a good place to start.

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Thursday, August 09, 2007

The NPA Union-Busters: an Open Letter to Vancouver City Council

If you agree with this posting, I strongly encourage you to email the Vancouver Mayor and City Council with a letter explaining just what you expect of them. Feel free to even copy this letter, sign it and send it to them at mayorandcouncil@city.vancouver.bc.ca which will forward to each of them.

Dear Mayor and Council,

For those of you who have no interest in vindictively punishing your highly valued staff in your 3 unions, I commend you. I encourage you to continue to lobby the others of you, the NPA I assume (correct me if I'm wrong), to bargain fairly.

I don't know if you NPA union-busters are trying to save enough money from wages to pay off the Wilcox consultants or if you just like watching people suffer, but your refusal to meet your workers for more than 5 hours over THE LAST 6 DAYS is abhorrent and offensive to me.

I am ashamed that I live in this wonderful city when our "leaders" sink to this level of crass disrespect for the workers who support our social fabric, the workers you speak so highly of.

Your behaviour will not go unpunished in November 2008 when citizens wielding ballots all over the city will remember each one of you NPA social pariahs.

"Sam's Strike" can only exist with 5 NPA councillors continually supporting him.

17% over 5 years for workers in neighbouring municipalities is a fair settlement. As a citizen of Vancouver I would support those kind of numbers. Pay equity for library workers who suffer from gender discrimination IN THE 21ST CENTURY, IN CANADA, is due. We should be ashamed to delay it any longer.

This is the end of the NPA in Vancouver: your obvious desire to corrode our civil society is your undoing.

Your offense is obscene.

It is time to bargain a contract, not rewind our labour culture to the 19th century. Get to the table and do your job!

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Saturday, January 06, 2007

Privatization and the Creation of Humanity's Prisons

Privatization and the Creation of Humanity’s Prisons

Traditionally defined as the selling off of public assets to the private sector, over the years the term ‘privatization’ has taken on a variety of meanings, none of which leaves a palatable taste in the mouth of the tenderhearted. Take for instance British Columbia, a province redolent with fishes and trees and waters, soon to resemble those hapless African countries ravaged by colonization and forced to sell off everything to international sharks, whose citizens have been left with nothing accept some silver strands of hope and the spirit to fight for anything resembling a sane quality of life. Our salmon runs are being served in body bags to the Scandinavian companies who own BC’s murderous fish-farms, while an accidental dump of 40,000 litres of chemical soda into the Cheakamus by the mismanaged, privately owned CN Rail has turned a river once resembling an emerald-sapphire ribbon into a brown death soup. If that isn’t enough, Terasen gas is soon to be sold off to the Texan company Kinder Morgan Inc., despite the fact that its faulty pipelines have killed hundreds of people.

However, it is not only this well-known type of privatization that is decimating the world, sectioning it off to ill-intentioned stewards in tidy little packages, but a type which literally forces people into sick private pockets, cutting them off from the rest of the world. The best example of this sort can be seen in Palestine, where a hideous concrete wall, ridden with graffiti pleading its abolishment and firing bombs at whomever approaches it before its gates open, twists like a python around Palestinian villages. Severed from 70% of their wells and 45 % of their agricultural land, sorrow and pain swelling within them like broken roses, these Palestinians who cannot even view the sunrise and sunset are bereft of hope. And if Sharon’s purpose of confining Palestinians to 12 % of their traditional land is to reduce suicide bombings, to say he is in for a colossal surprise would be an understatement.

To unearth another case in point of people being forced to remain private from the mainstream, one needn’t look further than Canada, wherein the First Nations have been blotted out from the centre in no less callous ways than those experienced by the Palestinians. Like their Eastern counterpart, they have been deemed invisible and at best a problem to be swept like dust into miniscule pockets of land called reserves. There, the government attempts to appease them with tax exemptions and other monetary recompense, ironically slaughtering their lifelines to true wealth, namely, the forests and fishes and waters, through the traditional form of privatization. The story of the Cheakamus may have faded from the news, but the plight of the Squamish community living there will throb for years to come.

The effects of sectioning resources and humanity off into private spheres of dysfunction are pernicious: war, poverty, and perhaps worst of all, alienation from nature and each other. When we hand over public assets to a select rich few, when we hand over the right to participate in society to only certain individuals, we become fearful of each other. The end result is all of us becoming imprisoned in private worlds behind our locked doors. Armed with emotional and physical weapons lest our fellow human attack or threaten us, we shiver in dark isolation. And for a species that thrives on community and togetherness, that is a true tragedy.

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