The Facts:Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University who is Cherokee/Choctaw has been researching the Star People, and collecting encounters between them and Native Indians for many years. This article shares one of many.
Reflect On:Are we alone? If not, what are the implications when the public becomes fully aware of this? How will it change the way we look at reality? Science? Technology? History?
I recently came across the work of Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, who brings to the field of ufology degrees in history, English, psychology, and educational leadership and a background as a teacher, university professor, junior college and university administrator, licensed therapist and psychologist, and social science researcher. She is a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University and former Director of the Center for Bilingual/Multicultural Education. Dr. Clarke, who is Cherokee/Choctaw, has worked with indigenous people for most of her career, and has some amazing stories to tell.
I first learned about the “Star People” when my grandmother told me the ancient legends of my people. My childhood reality included narratives that traced the origins of the indigenous people of the Americas to Pleiades; stories of little people who intervened in people’s lives; and legends about the magical gift of the DNA of the “Star People” that flowed in the veins of the indigenous tribes of the Earth. I embraced the stories of the celestial visitors who lived among the Indian people as part of my heritage.
In her book, she shares many stories, and one of them comes from a gentleman named Harrison. She writes:
Located in the states of North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, the Northern Plains Indian Tribes have many accounts about UFOs. The story in this chapter is told by a well-respected elder of a Northern Plains tribe. His encounter predates the crash at Roswell. Since I recorded this story, Harrison has passed, but the time I spent with them over the years, changed my life.
Harrison told a story of how his grandfather took him on a spaceship in the summer of 1945. He said he was 12 at the time, and explained how the Army Corps of Engineers came to the reservation around the summer of 1947 to survey the river and surrounding area “for the reservoir.” So originally, there was no reservoir. The Corps confiscated the land and in return gave Harrison’s grandfather a worthless piece of land on the other side of that butte.
I spent every summer on his place from the time I was six years old. Mom and pop both worked for the tribe and they didn’t want me home alone during the summers. So every May I packed two paper bags: one with a change of clothes and the other with books, marbles, and my toy gun. My folks dropped me off to live with Gramps from June to late August. I loved my summers here, even the isolation. I was the only child for miles. I rode horses and herded cattle. Helped with the chores. Whatever I could do. As I got older, there were bigger chores and more responsibility. There was no TV or videos like kids have today. At night Gramps amused me with the ancient myths and legends of our people.
Clarke’s relationship with Harrison grew over the years, and the two of them met when his school district requested her assistance in applying for a federal grant. Harrison was her contact and was responsible for escorting her around the reservation.
She explains, “It took nearly 25 years of visits before Harrison asked me if I believed in Star People.” She replied with a yes, and then he said, “Someone told me you collect stories about the Star People, I find that unusual.”
She replied,
I’ve been collecting stories for a few years. I grew up hearing the ancient stories of the Star People from my grandmother. Everywhere I go, if I am among indigenous people, I ask them about their stories of UFOs and Star People. Perhaps someday I will write a book. I’ve heard some amazing accounts from American Indians.
Harrison then offered to take her to her Grandfathers place, where he shared an incredible story that took place on his Grandfather’s ranch before the Army Corps of Engineers became involved.
He told a story his grandfather told him about a spaceship that crashed on the property. Harrison said:
I saw the ship, I went aboard it. It was a long cylinder about 30 feet wide and 60 feet long. I measured it by pacing it off. Most of it stuck inside a butte, close to the water level. It was well camouflaged. You can’t see the butte now, it was covered by water when the Corps of Engineers flooded the valley creating the reservoir.”
He goes on to explain:
The crash shook the ground so hard that Gramps thought the house was going to collapse. You can still see a crack in the foundation of the log cabin that Gramps said occurred when the spaceship crashed. The horses were so frightened that it took a month to round them up, and even then they were constantly trying to escape. At first, Gramps thought it was an earthquake, but when he cleared, he saw the craft. It hit with such force that only a small section stuck out of the butte, but Gramps not only had a keen eye, he knew this land like the back of his hand. The smallest disturbance caught his attention. For the longest time he sat on the butte watching for any sign of life. He kept a vigil for days. Finally after a week or so, he ventured to the place of impact.”
His grandfather told him that the “star men” who crashed and survived there lived in their craft for approximately 5 months before another ship came and rescued them.
At the time of the crash, the closest ranch to our place was 10 miles away, and as fate would have it those neighbours had moved out of state days before the crash occurred. Gramps delighted in keeping the star men’s presence a secret.
Harrison explained that the first time his grandfather approached them, he did so by taking them an offering of food. They told him they do not eat flesh. He described them as taller than humans, at least 7-8 feet tall and very white. Harrison said:
He described them as being so white that you could almost see inside them. I’m not sure what he meant by that except he said their skin was thin. They had long slender fingers, much longer than humans. Their hair was white. When the sun shined on it, Gramps said it looked like a halo surrounded their heads. He said that sometimes they looked like the angels depicted in the paintings of his bible, except they did not wear gowns. Their eyes, too. He said they changed color depending on the light.
Furthermore, Harrison’s grandfather described to him what they wore:
He was particularly interested in their clothes. They wore a one-piece light green outfit. He told me there were times he saw them wading in the river, and when he approached them their suits were dry. He told me he wished he had a suit like that. When I think of the old man and how he viewed the star visitors, he did his best to describe what he saw. I’m sure if the same thing occurred today, the observers might offer a more sophisticated perspective.
Canada declared a national climate emergency on Monday. The next day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave the greenlight to a massive oil sands pipeline.
The House of Commons, with strong support declared climate change a “real and urgent crisis.” A week before, Justin Trudeau proposed a ban on single-use plastics, which, if implemented, would be the latest in a growing number of bans on plastic that could put multibillion-dollar bets on plastics and petrochemicals by the oil industry at risk.
But Trudeau has never really stood in the way of Canada’s oil industry, despite years of platitudes about addressing climate change. That was clear on June 18, when he gave the approval to the Trans Mountain Expansion (not for the first time), a $4.5 billion twin pipeline that would run along an existing line from Alberta to the Pacific Coast in British Columbia.
The Trans Mountain Expansion is one of a few high-profile pipeline projects that have run into serious trouble. Trudeau first gave the greenlight in 2016, but the project ran aground amid legal challenges from First Nations and environmental groups. Last year, Kinder Morgan, the original owner of the project, headed for the exit, threatening the cancel the project altogether.
Desperate to keep it alive – and the clearest example imaginable of how much the Canadian government depends on the oil industry – Trudeau moved to nationalize the project in mid-2018, buying it off of Kinder Morgan’s hands. A year later, here we are, with Ottawa once again trying to push it forward.
“This isn’t an either/or proposition. It is in Canada’s national interest to protect our environment and invest in tomorrow while making sure people can feed their families today,” Trudeau said on Tuesday. Despite Trudeau’s plea, many see it precisely as an either/or proposition. Faced with a binary choice, Trudeau could either anger the oil industry, or anger First Nations and environmental groups. He chose the former, even though that was mostly expected.
The approval comes as no surprise—the federal government owns the pipeline after all,” Scotiabank’s Rebekah Young wrote in a note. The Canadian government has vowed to build the project with a Crown corporation, then turn it over to private investors or some other company.
But the next step is unclear.
The approval from Trudeau’s government is a “positive step” for the project, but “project execution risk remains elevated,” Goldman Sachs wrote in a note to clients. The investment bank said that while the government plans to begin construction this year, Goldman is not factoring the project into its base-case forecasts, “given prior uncertainty in the outlook of this project.”
“Today’s decision is a positive development for Canada’s western oil sector, but it will have little impact on short term production,” Rebekah Young for Scotiabank said. The expansion will triple the pipeline system’s current capacity, taking it up to 890,000 bpd. “However, with the earliest completion date only by 2022,” Young added.
Still, commencing construction on the project would be seen as a breakthrough for Canada’s oil industry. “We would also anticipate that reaching surety in construction of TMX would provide oil sand producers confidence to commence re-investing in production growth, given the capital constrained budgets most companies are now operating under,” Goldman analysts said. “That said, we continue to see pipeline shortages until at least 2022…and during this period from now until then, see light-heavy differentials wider than pipeline economics.”
The inability to build a new pipeline had diminished production growth in Canada’s oil sands, and could limit output in the long run. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) just released its 2019 Crude Oil Forecast, and lowered its estimate for production growth to 1.44 percent annually through 2035, less than half its prior estimate from 2014. “Pipeline constraints, a lack of market diversity, and inefficient regulations are largely responsible for holding back Canada’s oil sector,” CAPP said.
Oil forecasts aside, the Trans Mountain Expansion will still run into stiff resistance from First Nations and environmental groups. “The Trudeau government does not have the right to put a pipeline through unceded Secwepemc land,” spokeswoman Kanahus Manuel said, according to Reuters. More lawsuits and protests are inevitable.
Moreover, the pipeline needs permits from British Columbia, where the government has opposed the project.
“[T]he project still faces significant political, regulatory, and judicial challenges, and ultimately we see a tremendous amount of execution risk up until the oil starts flowing,” Gavin MacFarlane, a VP with Moody’s Investors Service, said in comments circulated to reporters.
Meanwhile, the other pipeline that could potentially add takeaway capacity from Alberta – Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement – hit another snag. State agencies in Minnesota said on Tuesday that they would not issue permits until a revised environmental review was completed, following a recent court order that said the state had failed to adequately assess the potential impact of an oil spill. In short, permits could be delayed longer than expected.
If Line 3 fails to move forward for any reason, that increases the stakes and importance for the Trans Mountain Expansion as the only route left for new pipeline capacity. And vice versa.
Astronomers turn to teaching Indigenous star stories from around the world
CBC News
Nicole Mortillaro
The northern lights shine over Wood Buffalo National Park during the Thebacha and Wood Buffalo Astronomical Society’s Dark-Sky Festival. (Nicole Mortillaro/CBC)
It’s just after dusk on a cool August night in Wood Buffalo Park in Alberta, roughly 50 kilometres southwest of Fort Smith, N.W.T. For two days and nights, clouds and cool weather have hampered the group of astronomy enthusiasts hoping to enjoy the dark skies and perhaps even catch a display of the northern lights.
It’s the final day of the Thebacha and Wood Buffalo Astronomical Society’s Dark-Sky Festival. and, as if the sky takes pity on the group — made up of amateur astronomers and families with young children — the clouds begin to break up as the sun sets. But there’s one streak that remains in the dark blue sky.
“Keep an eye out,” says Roland Dechesne, a guest speaker and member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. “Could be aurora.”
Salt River First Nation elder Paul Boucher, who is standing nearby, looks skyward. “What? That?” he says. “Yeah. That’s the northern lights.”
Elders David Poitras and Paul Boucher bless the society’s camping area in Pine Lake, Alta. (Nicole Mortillaro/CBC)
The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are a familiar sight in northern skies. But those dancing lights mean much more in many Indigenous cultures.
The recognition of First Nations contributions to science has been on the rise in recent years. In astronomy, instead of teaching constellations and stories from the Greeks and Romans, many Indigenous people are turning to teaching the star stories of the people who have lived on this land for thousands of years.
For the Cree (Salt River First Nation is made up of Cree and Chipewyan) the sight of the dancing lights means spirits are dancing across the sky.
“In the wintertime, when these lights were in the sky most prominently, there was a connection, a connection to alternate realities, to the spirit world,” Wilfred Buck, a science facilitator at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre (MFNERC) says of the northern lights. “And that connection was strong.”
Buck, from Opaskwayak Cree Nation, has a goal: to teach science from an Indigenous perspective, something that he’s been doing for 14 years. He’s a hard man to pin down; for many days of the year, he is traveling, often with his portable planetarium.
Wilfred Buck, a Cree science specialist, brings his planetarium to First Nations communities around Canada.(MFNERC)
When he took the position at MFNERC, he wanted to teach First Nations in science. In an effort to determine the best way to do this, he reached out to the elders who told him he had two ways he could approach it: he could teach it from a Western system and infuse First Nations’ culture into the subject areas or he could do it the opposite way. He opted for the latter.
“The students have to understand … they’ve been educated and told and colonized to think that our people were savages in a bush and surviving and we didn’t know anything,” Buck said. “That’s not true.”
‘Not just quaint little stories’
Buck’s interest in the stars began when he was about five years old.
“I remember sitting on the banks of the river and looking up at that night sky, and wondering … what’s out there and where our place is in it,” he says.
And then it dawned on him: the skies were heavily embedded in his culture.
“Sitting in the sweat lodge, singing these ceremonial songs, partaking in [the] sun dance, partaking in fasting, partaking in ceremonies — a lot of these ceremonial songs are in reference to the stars,” he says. “And all the ceremonies that are done are done in regards to the sun.”
Like Buck, Hilding Neilson wanted to bring Indigenous astronomy to the public. Neilson, who is Mi’kmaw from the Qalipu First Nation in Newfoundland and Labrador, is an assistant professor in the University of Toronto’s department of astronomy and astrophysics. He teaches Indigenous astronomy in his courses.
“I wanted to see more of Indigenous knowledge in classrooms, because we are on Indigenous land,” he says. “Simply put, if we’re going to be here, we should be learning about the peoples whose land we colonized. We should be learning about their knowledge and learning to appreciate that knowledge.”
Buck says most people don’t realize First Nations people had a deep understanding of the sky and even pondered such topics such as cosmology and quantum physics.
One example is the star cluster called the Pleiades or, in Western culture the Seven Sisters. The Cree referred to it as the “hole in the sky.”
“When they’re referring to a hole in the sky, they’re referring to a spatial anomaly. They’re referring to a wormhole, an alternate reality,” Buck says. “They meditated on these things, they dreamed about these things, they debated on these things and they philosophized on these things.”
See an elder explain the Cree traditions around the winter solstice:
What does the winter solstice mean in the Cree tradition?
Elder Wilfred Buck explains how the Cree observe the shortest day and the longest night of the year. 1:00
And it’s time that astronomers and scientists considered Indigenous contributions and their worth, Buck says.
“All these ceremonies and all these so-called mythologies … there’s a depth of knowledge involved. They’re not just quaint little stories. … Every Indigenous culture in the world has that depth of knowledge, that intellectual capacity,” he says. “It’s just that through the colonial process it’s been minimized and it’s been marginalized.”
Neilson says many of the stories have been lost, but he’s happy to see renewed interest in not only telling the stories, but respecting what they have to offer. The worry is that much of it may have already been lost.
“Like every aspect of Indigenous knowledge, we know we have to be very worried about what has been lost and what is unavailable,” Neilson says. “And who knows if we’ll ever get it all back? But preserving it is a big, important part of all this.”
It’s important that no one underestimates the importance stars play in the daily lives of Indigenous people from around the world, Buck says.
“Stars are part of our lives,” Buck says. “Every night they’re out there and my people believe we come from the stars.”
Nicole Mortillaro
Senior Reporter, Science
Nicole has an avid interest in all things science. As an amateur astronomer, Nicole can be found looking up at the night sky appreciating the marvels of our universe. She is the editor of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the author of several books.
“We have a duty to protect what we’ve all been blessed with in British Columbia in regard to the pristine beauty of the environment,” said one First Nations leader. “We will rise to the challenge.”
Naomi Klein✔
This is the problem with drinking the Kool-Aid served by politicians who are masters of progressive symbolism but evade substance. Once in power, they can be counted on to do substantive harm. On climate (and much else) we do not have even 1 more year to waste on these imposters.
The National Energy Board of Canada on Friday recommended approval for the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project. (Photo: Greenpeace)
Indigenous tribes and green campaigners were angered but not surprised Friday when Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) recommended that the government move ahead with its planned expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline—despite acknowledging that the project will negatively affect the environment.
The decision paved the way for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration to increase fossil fuel emissions, endanger wildlife, and threaten the lives and livelihoods of the eight million people who live in the pipeline’s path.
The NEB argued that the pipeline is in the public interest and provided the government with a list of 16 conditions that it must meet as it prepares to expand the 1,150 kilometer (714 mile) pipeline, tripling the amount of oil the tar sands pipeline will carry from Edmonton, Alberta to Burnaby, British Columbia—but critics including Burnaby mayor Mike Hurley argued that the NEB has no intention of protecting the environment or wildlife by enforcing strict regulations on the construction.
“This is the problem with drinking the Kool-Aid served by politicians who are masters of progressive symbolism but evade substance. Once in power, they can be counted on to do substantive harm.” —Naomi Klein
The conditions will not “prevent significant public safety risks and harms to marine life and other environmental impacts,” Hurley told the Vancouver Sun.
The board noted that the Trans Mountain pipeline is likely to have a significant negative impact on the Southern resident orca, whose population in the Salish Sea off the coast of British Columbia is rapidly dwindling; on the Indigenous population in the area, especially in the event of an oil spill; and on the environment, with fossil fuel emissions rising as cargo ships carry the oil after it travels from Edmonton.
Outcry from First Nations and campaigners ensued when the NEB initially approved the project in 2016, and opponents rejoiced last summer when the Federal Court of Appeals temporarily blocked construction. The court argued that Trudeau’s administration and Kinder Morgan, which sold the pipeline to the government for $4.5 billion last year, had not sufficiently considered its effects on Southern orcas and indigenous tribes.
But Friday’s approval—which came after what one campaigner called a rushed process with a “compressed hearing schedule” that allowed for little input from the public—was not unexpected among critics.
“This entire process is a joke,” Peter McCartney of the Wilderness Committee told the Sun. “I don’t think anybody’s surprised to see the NEB green lighting this pipeline—it’s what they were designed to do.”
Kwikwasut’inuxw Haxwa’mis Chief Bob Chamberlin, vice-president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said Trudeau has indicated his government will stop at nothing to complete the project.
“The troubling part for me and First Nations concerned about their water and their territories is the fact that Trudeau has stated this pipeline will be built, full stop. It makes an absolute mockery of the consultation process that was court ordered and has been accomplished today,” Chamberlin told the Sun.
In a press conference, Grand Chief Stewart Philip also said indigenous tribes will not relent in their “deeply entrenched opposition” to the pipeline, which will threaten food sources of the 29 tribes that live in the path of the proposed route.
“We are proud British Columbians and we have a duty to protect what we’ve all been blessed with in British Columbia in regard to the pristine beauty of the environment,” Philip said. “We will rise to the challenge.”
“I understand in British Columbia, this pipeline will provide a way of having an income,” said Noel Purser of the Suquamish Tribe, which joined four other Northwest U.S. tribes in challenging the project in 2013. “But is it worth the potential of a spill, that risk? Is it really worth that? Because that will impact everybody, not just here in British Columbia. It will impact us in Suquamish; it will impact our relatives in Alaska.”
“Once again, Canada’s NEB has sided with short-term Big Oil profits instead of the long-term health of the Pacific Northwest’s people, climate and orcas,” said Marcie Keever of Friends of the Earth. “Shame on Prime Minister Trudeau, his government, and the National Energy Board of Canada for ignoring widespread opposition and serious concerns in favor of this destructive pipeline. Canada’s decision will likely bring about the extinction of the Northwest’s iconic killer whales and drive us further towards the brink of climate chaos.”
Author Naomi Klein argued that the Trans Mountain pipeline project should offer a lesson to voters who have been convinced by politicians who exude “progressive symbolism” while campaigning “but evade substance” when asked how they will initiate a bold, ambitious agenda to protect the planet and human rights.
Paul Watson@wherewarlives
Pipeline Prime Minister @justintrudeau is a serial liar whose phoney energy regulators support sacrificing iconic wildlife in order to expand tar sands exports that fuel catastrophic global warming. He must be stopped for the sake of us all. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-neb-says-trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-in-public-interest-despite/ …
What is happening to Venezuela is a coup d’état and it has nothing to do with democracy, human rights, free and fair elections or international law. The US and Canada represent the antithesis of those values; defying the United Nations Charter and international law by interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela. Their hands are not clean, and their motives are not pure, because their foreign policy objectives everywhere are to promote the interests of their domestic corporations, oligarchs and war profiteers.
In 2017 the US and Canada formed a posse of vigilantes that they named the Lima Group. The members of the Lima Group are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Saint Lucia. Mexico’s newly elected liberal government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has withdrawn from the Lima Group, saying that Mexico follows the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and self-determination in foreign policy. Viva AMLO! The Lima Group makes a mockery out of the United Nations and international law.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Idriss Jazairy specifically condemned the US and Canada for imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela. Jazairy stressed that the economic sanctions are immoral on humanitarian grounds, and they are an illegal attempt to overthrow the internationally recognized sovereign government of Venezuela. On January 31, 2019 the UN released a report that quoted him as saying:
“I am especially concerned to hear reports that these sanctions are aimed at changing the government of Venezuela… Coercion, whether military or economic, must never be used to seek a change in government in a sovereign state. The use of sanctions by outside powers to overthrow an elected government is in violation of all norms of international law…. Economic sanctions are effectively compounding the grave crisis affecting the Venezuelan economy, adding to the damage caused by hyperinflation and the fall in oil prices.”
Former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas, who is also an international expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, said on his website on February 7th the following about the current situation in Venezuela:
“Members of the United Nations are bound by the Charter, articles one and two of which affirm the right of all peoples to determine themselves, the sovereign equality of states, the prohibition of the use of force and of economic or political interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states…… the enormous suffering inflicted on the Venezuelan people by the United States is nothing less than appalling. The economic war against Venezuela, carried out not only by the United States, but also by the Grupo de Lima in clear violation of Chapter 4, Article 19 of the OAS Charter, the financial blockade and the sanctions have demonstrably caused hundreds of deaths directly related to the scarcity of food and medicines resulting from the blockade.”
Zayas also said that what the US, Canada and the mainstream media are doing to Venezuela reminds him of the deliberate disinformation campaign that led to the US, and the “coalitions of the willing” that included Canada anonymously, illegally invading Iraq in 2003, and their destruction of Libya in 2011.
In the case of Libya in 2011, the so-called “no-fly zone” authorized by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was for the intended purpose of bringing about a ceasefire. It specifically forbade any “boots on the ground”, which the US is known to have violated.
The US, Canada and other NATO forces illegally exceeded their UN mandate, and used it as a cover to completely destroy Libya and regime change. It later was learned that the supposed Gaddafi genocide, which the no-fly zone was intended to stop was a hoax. The point is that the US and its junior partners can never be trusted to tell the truth when a lie serves their purposes much better.
Whenever the US and its junior imperial partners resort to pleas of democracy and human rights, an ulterior motive should be assumed. For instance, the little the US and Canada care about democracy, human rights and free elections is shown by their long history of supporting non-democratic governments.
Canada has supported every US regime change project, and the overthrow of democratic governments, which did not conform to their mutual foreign policy objectives. Both countries’ foreign policies prefer corrupt business-centric rightwing repressive governments. Democracy and human rights conflict with the interests and profits of their exploitative and extractive corporations.
Both the US and Canada supported the apartheid government of South Africa right up until the very end; they support the apartheid government of Israel, which is the number one violator of human rights in the world; and they both sell arms and support the most repressive government in the world, Saudi Arabia. Human rights have not been an issue.
The US overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende of Chile, with Canada’s support. Both countries supported the junta regime of Augusto Pinochet, whom was later arrested for crimes against humanity. Both the US and Canada supported the illegitimate coup governments of Haiti in 2004, and in Honduras in 2009. By some estimates, the US (and Canada) support 73% of the dictators in the world. Human rights have not been an issue.
The US and Canada have been trying to overthrow the democratically elected reformist government of Venezuela, known as the Bolivarian Revolution, since 1999. Hugo Chavez’s elections were all certified by the Carter Foundation, the OAS and other legitimate observers. Chavez was elected in free, fair and democratic elections, but that did not matter to the US and Canada. They wanted to overthrow him anyway. Human rights were not an issue.
Democracy, human rights, the right-to-protect, humanitarian interventions and all the other righteous soundbites are just talking points for the US and Canada. They are only used against governments that get in their way, and never used against corrupt business-friendly governments, no matter how oppressive. Paul Jay, a Canadian, who is the editor-in-chief of The Real News Network says that he personally became aware in 2005 of Canada’s involvement in the conspiracy of regime change in Venezuela:
The hypocrisy of US concerns over human rights is on full display in a leaked US State Department memo from Brian Hook to then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The memo is titled “Balancing Interests and Values”. The memo does not mince words about human rights concerns being only a tactic to use against adversaries:
“America’s allies should be supported rather than badgered…. allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries…. We do not look to bolster America’s adversaries overseas; we look to pressure, compete with, and outmaneuver them…. pressing those regimes [adversaries] on human rights is one way to impose costs, apply counter-pressure, and regain the initiative from them strategically.”
Hook continues his memo by giving Tillerson a history lesson on the art of US hypocrisy from 1940 to 2017.
In other words, rightwing dictators, military juntas, ethnic cleansing, fraudulent elections, human rights violations, political prisoners, torture and murder should be treated differently, and better, with compliant allies. Even when adversaries are democratically elected, they should be roasted in order to “extract costs”, according to Hook…. but not because the US cares about people.
There is no serious doubt about the legitimacy of the more than a dozen elections in Venezuela between 1998 to 2013. That did not prevent the US and Canada from “extracting costs”, and trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez anyway. Given the examples of the US and Canada overthrowing the democratically elected governments in Chile, Haiti and Honduras, the objections to Maduro are unbelievable.
In the past few years, there have been a half-dozen certified democratic elections in Venezuela. The real motives for opposing Maduro must be something else. It is obvious what that something else is. The real motives behind the US and Canada are Venezuela’s massive wealth in oil, gas, and other natural resources, such as gold, copper and coltan.
There are also tremendous profits to be had by bringing Venezuela into the Washington Consensus. US and Canadian banks profit from IMF and World Bank loans. The corrupt politicians and oligarchs steal the loans, and then it is the poor that have to repay them, through higher prices for life’s necessities, reduced wages and government-imposed austerity. The privatization of state-owned enterprises at corrupt fire-sale prices enrich oligarchs and corporations tremendously.
The Washington Consensus also forces unequal trade agreements and currency devaluation on poor countries. The resulting lower prices are used to extract natural resources, monocrops and sweatshop produced products for export. Small farmers are driven off the land because they cannot compete with dumped US and Canadian tax-payer highly-subsidized agricultural products, such as corn and wheat. Those that suffer are the local farmers, the poor, landless and indigenous people, who go from subsistence, to poverty, to wage slavery.
The chaotic political situation in Venezuela has been purposely made worse by the US and Canada. Since Venezuela is “cursed” with natural resources, especially oil, its economy has historically gone from boom to bust depending on international oil prices.
It was low oil prices, endemic poverty, gross inequality, and neoliberal economic policies that favored the rich in the 1990’s, which swept Chavez into power in the 1998 election. A majority of the Venezuelan people elected Hugo Chavez and his “Bolivarian Revolution” of rewriting the constitution, increasing participatory democracy, frequent elections, and implementing social programs for the poor. The Carter Center (as well as the OAS)certified the election, and praised Venezuela’s modern voting systems as one of the best in the world:
“Venezuelans voted peacefully, but definitively for change. With more than 96 percent voting for the two candidates who promised to overhaul the system, Venezuelans carried out a peaceful revolution through the ballot box”, said Jimmy Carter’s Foundation upon Chavez’s victory.
The US opposed Chavez regardless of fair and democratic elections. A surprisingly honest 2005 article in the Professional Journal of the US Army explained why the US opposed Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution for economic and geopolitical reasons:
“Since he was elected president in 1998, Chávez has transformed Venezuelan Government and society in what he has termed a Bolivarian revolution. Based on Chávez’s interpretation of the thinking of Venezuelan founding fathers Simón Bolívar and Simón Rodríguez, this revolution brings together a set of ideas that justifies a populist and sometimes authoritarian approach to government, the integration of the military into domestic politics, and a focus on using the state’s resources to serve the poor—the president’s main constituency.”
“Although the Bolivarian revolution is mostly oriented toward domestic politics, it also has an important foreign policy component. Bolivarian foreign policy seeks to defend the revolution in Venezuela; promote a sovereign, autonomous leadership role for Venezuela in Latin America; oppose globalization and neoliberal economic policies; and work toward the emergence of a multipolar world in which U.S. hegemony is checked. The revolution also opposes the war in Iraq and is skeptical of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The United States has worked fruitfully in the past with Venezuela when the country pursued an independent foreign policy, but the last three policies run directly contrary to U.S. foreign policy preferences and inevitably have generated friction between the two countries.” [Emphasis added.] [See Appendix]
Whether it is Chavez or Maduro, the US, Canada and the oligarchs in Venezuela have been trying to kill the Bolivarian Revolution from when it was an infant in the cradle.
The opposition with the support of imperialists have been trying to get rid of the Bolivarian Revolution with every means imaginable. They have tried a US supported military coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. It failed. They tried strikes by the management of the Venezuelan oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela. It failed. They tried a recall election in 2004. It failed. Obama tried economic sanctions in 2015. It failed. The US and Canada tried an economic blockade in 2017. It has failed, as of this article. They tried to assassinate Maduro with a drone. It failed.
In 2018 the opposition boycotted the election. Maduro won by a landslide. He had invited the United Nations to be election observers, but the opposition kept the UN away. Other international observers certified the election. Now the opposition complains about the integrity of the election observers. The opposition is making a circus out of elections. The objections by the oligarchs, the US and Canada that the 2018 elections in Venezuela where fraudulent is itself a fraud. Their objectives are to knowingly “extract costs” that Venezuela can ill afford.
The US chose Canada to be the mouthpiece for the Lima Group, but the coup is being directed by imperial powers in Washington. Canadian politeness is not working, and its imperialism is out of the closet where it has been hiding. As Canadian historian Yves Engler puts it, the US carries the big stick in Latin America, and Canada comes along afterwards with the billy club. Engler is referring to Canadian peacekeeping missions, which he exposes as actually policing and counter insurgency missions. Yves Engler has written dozens of books and articles on Canadian imperialism.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may be fooling some of the people, some of the time. But he is now under attack at home for corruption. His accusers say that he has obstructed justice in the world-wide corruption scandal involving the powerful international Canadian conglomerate SNC-Lavalin. SNC-Lavalin is a mining, energy and engineering company that is typical of the corrupt face of Canadian imperialism.
Trudeau’s conspiracy with Trump to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Venezuela has unmasked Canada as a second-rate imperial power. Upon closer look, Canada has been protecting its oil and mining companies that have been raping Latin American countries, destroying their environment and poisoning their people for decades. Canadian imperialism has to obey its “deep state” too, as Canadian journalist Bruce Livesey puts it:
“Those who believe the oil industry has become a deep state point to how the political elites, whether Liberal, Conservative or NDP — from Justin Trudeau to Stephen Harper to Rachel Notley — go to bat for the industry….”.
Mining companies as well as oil and gas are a big part of Canada’s “deep state”. They control approximately 50 to 70% of the mines in Latin America, and they are not held accountable in Canadian courts for their destruction to the environment and harm to human beings in foreign countries. They dispossess the indigenous people and poor of their land. They hire goons to threaten, attack and murder those that try to form labor unions, or demonstrate about land confiscation and human rights abuses. Honduras is just one example of what happens when a democratically elected leader is overthrow by a US and Canadian-backed coup; Canadian mining companies move in. It is all exposed in the book “Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras”, by Tyler Shipley.
All extractive industries wound the planet. That happens with relatively more impunity abroad, but capitalism inflicts severe harm at home, too. [Canadian Mining Companies in Latin America. Photo Council on Hemispheric Affairs.]
Dispossessing native people of their land and natural resources comes natural to Canada. After all, like the US it was a settler colonial outpost for the British Empire. Both the US and Canada committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of their mutual Indigenous People. They were even allies and coordinated the genocide. According to historian Andrew Graybill:
“….the NorthWest Mounted Police were created and the Texas Rangers renewed and reorganized in the early 1870s specifically to address the pressing ‘native question’ confronting Texas and western Canada, among the few places where bison still roamed after 1870….. both Austin and Ottawa called on their rural police to manage indigenous populations facing societal collapse….by controlling or denying the Natives access to the bison.”
In other words, both the US and Canada collaborated in killing the buffalo to extinction. It was the coup de grâce for the starving “native question”. [This reminds us that the “settler” capitalist states have been morally despicable practically from inception, all propaganda to the contrary.—Ed ]
Mining is one of Canada’s biggest and most powerful and politically influential industries. Canada has approximately 60% of all mining companies in the world. Canadian companies such as Ascendant Copper, Barrick Gold, Kinder Morgan, and TriMetals Mining have operations in Canada, Latin America and elsewhere. They are continuing the ethnic cleansing of the “native question” in Latin America, and at home. (See map and statistics of Canadian Mining in Latin America.)
Canadian mining and natural resource companies are heavy handed when it comes to First Nations at home. TransCanada Corporation recently was in the news because of its pipeline route, which they are trying to put through First Nation’s land in the Wet’suwet’en territory, in northern British Columbia. On a court order, a militarized unit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police broke up a road blockade, which the tribal leaders had put up to keep the pipeline company out of their nation. The Mounties whom lacked jurisdiction arrested 14 tribal leaders on their sovereign land.
During the reign of the British Empire, Canada helped the British put down slave rebellions in the Caribbean. Canada was involved in the slave trade, and slavery was legal in Canada until 1834. The products of slavery, such as cotton and sugar were used for trade and to industrialize Canada. When the British conquered New France, the 1760 declaration of surrender signed in Montreal specifically said:
“The Negroes and panis [aborigines] of both sexes shall remain, in their quality of slaves, in the possession of the French and Canadians to whom they belong; they shall be at liberty to keep them in their service in the colony, or to sell them; and they may also continue to bring them up in the Roman Religion.”
In the 19th century Canadian banking and insurance companies, along with those of the British, monopolized finance in British controlled parts of Latin America. Canada is still financially powerful in the English-speaking Caribbean. For example, the Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and the Royal Bank of Canada, as well as Sun Life Financial are dominate in the Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, and Trinidad. After the decline of the British Empire, Canada assumed its natural role as a second-rate imperial power and junior partner for US imperialism.
In the Lima Group, Canada is the US’s junior partner. The US has the leading role from behind the curtain. To prove it, right on cue at the January 4th meeting of the Lima Group, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pulled the curtain back in a video presentation to the group. Pompeo showed the members who they would have to answer to if they did not vote according to Washington’s wishes. The Lima group obeyed, and voted to politically isolate and economically blockade Venezuela, contrary to international law. Leaving nothing to chance, Pompeo again addressed the group from behind the video curtain at their February 4th meeting in Ottawa.
As Christopher Black wrote in New Eastern Outlook:
“The United States is the principal actor in all this but it has beside it among other flunkey nations, perhaps the worst of them all, Canada, which has been an enthusiastic partner in crime of the United States since the end of the Second World War. We cannot forget its role in the aggression against North Korea, the Soviet Union, China, its secret role in the American aggression against Vietnam, against Iraq, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Haiti, Iran, and the past several years Venezuela.”
Black left out many other imperial crimes of the partners in Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Somalia, Sudan, the Congo, Palestine, Libya, Yemen, etc. The US and Canada are “always there for each other” and stand “shoulder to shoulder” in war and imperialism, in Justin Trudeau’s own words. Even against Cuba!
The current Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland recently referred to Venezuela as being in “Canada’s backyard”. As the SNC-Lavalin case illustrates, the Canadian “backyard” of imperialism also extends to Africa, Asia, the Middle East and former Soviet Union republics, such as Ukraine.
This is not the 19th century. Central America, South America and the Caribbean Islands are not anybody’s back yard. It is insulting, degrading and shows a colonial mentality for the US and Canada to even think about having a backyard.
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David William Pear is a columnist writing on U.S. foreign policy, economic and political issues, human rights and social issues. David is a Senior Contributing Editor of The Greanville Post (TGP) and a prior Senior Editor for OpEdNews (OEN). David has been writing for The Real News Network (TRNN) and other publications for over 10 years. David is a member of Veterans for Peace, Saint Pete (Florida) for Peace, CodePink, and the Palestinian-led non-violent organization International Solidarity Movement.
Featured image: A Hands Off Venezuela protest in London on January 28, 2018. (Socialist Appeal/Flickr).
The original source of this article is Global Research
On January 7th the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) swept into a non-violent checkpoint set up by the Unist’ot’en and Gidimt’en clans of the Wet’suwet’en Nation. Fourteen people were violently arrested in the ambush by the militarized colonial forces. The camp was set up by hereditary leaders to defend the ancestral lands of the Unist’ot’en and other clans from the unwanted incursions of TransCanada and its Coastal Gaslink pipeline. Following the incident Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had the temerity to extol the neoliberal scheme behind the incident as something that is good for the earth. In a speech to supporters he said: “We moved forward on the LNG Canada project, which is the largest private sector investment in Canada’s history, $40-billion, which is going to produce Canadian LNG that will supplant coal in Asia as a power source and do much for the environment.” After being pressed in a radio interview about the brutal raid Trudeau said of the arrests that it is “not an ideal situation, but at the same time, we’re also a country of the rule of law.” Apparently he does not consider Article 10 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to be law. It states: “Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their land or territories.” It may be difficult for ordinary people to choke out hypocritical, ahistorical fallacies without missing a beat, but the Prime Minister has a gift for spouting empty platitudes that fly in the face of reality and he isn’t alone.
There is something familiar about Trudeau’s lamentation on this situation as well as his appeal for the rule of law. This is because neoliberal leaders around the world have used similar justifications for the violence of the corporate state. And while Trudeau has attempted to brand himself a leader on reconciliation with First Nations and for addressing climate change he has demonstrated time after time his true allegiance is to the corporate state. Last year he pledged 4.5 billion dollars of tax payer money to purchase the controversial, badly aging and perpetually leaking Kinder Morgan pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to BC. Protests and a court decision have stymied this for the moment, but in taking this action he has joined a cadre of world leaders who only pay lip service to indigenous concerns, ecological impacts and the science of climate change while steamrolling ahead toward a dystopic future. Of course like any neoliberal politician Trudeau ultimately does the bidding of the fossil fuel industry which works tirelessly behind the scenes writing and directing policy, like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) who has an army of lobbyists that outnumber any other group in Ottawa.
Like the US, Canada is a settler colonial state founded upon the expulsion, ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide of its indigenous population. Its history is drenched in the blood of broken treaties with First Nations and tainted by the cruelties meted out over decades to the present day against indigenous children. And while Canada may now possess more progressive domestic policies than its ruthless neighbor to the south, it is a fallacy that it is a leader when it comes to indigenous rights, protection of the environment and climate change. One look at the Tar Sands is a testament to this. Bigger in area than England, it is the third largest reserve of oil on the planet. So it is of little surprise that those who profit from them the most have enormous sway in the Canadian political process. In addition to their tremendous greenhouse gas emissions the Tar Sands also use gargantuan amounts of fresh water creating massive lakes of poisonous effluent while belching out tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Great swaths of forest and wetlands have been decimated creating a new cancer alley mainly afflicting First Nations in the region. In short, it is a lethal, festering and human inflicted wound on the skin of the earth, so big that it can be seen from space. And Trudeau has fashioned himself to be the charming, boyish face that hides all its hideousness.
Trudeau, like Macron or Merkel, possesses an enormous capacity for doublespeak. He is well known for shedding tears for Canada’s crimes of the past on more than one occasion. Sometimes he genuinely appears to care for people and the environment. Barrack Obama had this gift too. And when comparing actions and policies to words it is easily demonstrated as a trick of optics and branding. Interestingly enough Obama has given several speeches since his presidency for his admirers on Wall Street, imploring them to thank him for making them so much money and turning the US into the world’s biggest oil producer while admitting those policies gave aid to the rise of the far right. It is a kinder face for plutocratic corporatism that may make it seem more palatable to some than the ugly face of fascism espoused by Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro. But we have seen how neoliberal policies are opening the way for these fascist populists so there is no innocent game being played here.
Neoliberal politicians ultimately strip people of their agency by supporting or enacting policies that break down the commons and privatize everything, all while drowning them in sugary bromides and platitudes of meaninglessness. They pay lip service to the plight of the poor, the oppressed, indigenous communities, people of colour, and the living earth itself while they laugh it up at galas done in their honour by the 1%. And in doing so they have paved the way for the rising global fascism we see today. The incident at the Unist’ot’en camp last week may not become Trudeau’s Standing Rock, but it certainly echoes it. The image of tanks, attack dogs and heavily armed police raining tear gas down and firing water cannons at unarmed Native Americans must certainly be in the back of his mind. But no matter what he is thinking, no tears he sheds now will obscure his role in defending an economic and political order that has maintained merciless colonialism, is ravaging the very foundations of democracy and may very well drive the biosphere toward its full scale collapse.
Dreaming is an integral part of Native American’s tradition and spiritual practice.
Since childhood, they teach children to remember their dreams so they can learn to interpret them and use them as spiritual tools for guidance in life.
7 Reasons Why Native Americans Believed Dreaming Is Extremely Important Part Of Life
Native Americans have the following 7 beliefs regarding dreaming:
1. They believe we have 3 souls:
Ego-soul – which is embodied in the breath.
Body-soul – which gives energy to the body and life force during our waking state.
Free-soul – which is the soul that leaves the body during dreams and trances and explores the dream realm alongside the brain, while the other two souls remain attached to the body.
2. The Dream world is equally important as the physical world.
They believe that our mind and body don’t dream anything. Chippewa elder John Thunderbird specifically explains this in the following words:
“Your soul dreams those dreams; not your body, not your mind. Those dreams come true. The soul travels all over the world when you dream.”
3. Our souls can communicate.
They believe we can communicate with other souls, humans and even animals when our soul disconnects from our body and goes into the dream realm.
For them, the dream world is just as real as the physical world.
4. Life is one big dream.
5. The dream world has consequences.
6. We have spirit guides and dreaming is how we contact them.
7. Dreaming is where the soul receives spiritual guidance.
A recent article in the Toronto Star and its accompanying photo bear comment. The reaching hands are not of rioting, starving people grasping for food but of stockbrokers on the trading floor. The article, about protecting individual portfolios, counsels people to know of their options though “the majority of investors have little or no understanding of puts and calls and, in most cases, don’t want to be bothered.” A number of practices keep the public uninformed, including a plethora of neologisms that defy comprehension, lack of transparency, and skewed computations that omit life’s crucial externalities. Economics has been called the “dismal science,” but “abysmal” more fittingly describes its deadly impact on people worldwide.
The Canadian Pension Plan (CPP) is believed by many to represent the caring face of Canada, while it is lauded as the “New Masters of the Universe” and “Maple Revolutionaries” by the OECD, G20, and the World Bank.
“OECD analysts describe these Canadian funds as ‘pioneers in infrastructure investing’ that helped to establish infrastructure as an important and increasingly popular asset class.”1
It is no exaggeration to state that the CPP is “banking on death,” the title of Robin Blackburn’s comprehensive history of pensions. The Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade lists CPP investments in seventy three corporations (and here) supporting Israel’s military/police/surveillance/prison industrial complex. The CPP is also a big investor in nuclear weapons and in Canada’s fossil fuel and mining sectors which are wreaking havoc in indigenous communities worldwide.
The Capitalist System
At its core is the pricing of human life in the capitalist system. George Monbiot succinctly explains it in his article about Britain’s chief economist Nicholas Stern’s influential report on climate change and the economy: Stern calculated that Heathrow airport expansion makes economic sense because it lessens the time that a rich person has to wait for a flight as his time is worth much money, so this wealth far outweighs the monetary loss if many impoverished people die due to aviation’s carbon emissions.
In 2016, private pension assets in OECD countries reached their highest-ever level at over $38-trillion (U.S.). Pension funds are part of a closed political economic system and its facilitating legalities. Representative are the links between the CPP, Imperial Oil, universities and think tanks, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) to “free, prior and informed consent.” While information is essential, particularly for indigenous people subject to land theft and to environmental contaminants, UN declarations are non-binding and unenforceable. Nonetheless, Anglo-Saxon democracies were the last to sign.
The importance of “informed consent” derives from the infamous longitudinal Tuskegee syphilis experiments on Black men who were not informed that they would not be treated for syphilis even though treatments were available. In practice, informed consent has been turned on its head as it is often configured to protect power.
Indigenous consent is obstructed by many loopholes: the state’s claim of eminent domain, the Doctrine of Discovery justifying European expropriation of supposedly “empty” land (terra nullius), a clause of Canada’s Delgamuukw ruling on Aboriginal title that allows the Canadian government to infringe on title under specific circumstances, the Carter doctrine asserting U.S. entitlement to Canadian resources for national security purposes, trade agreements that pre-empt national laws, the Canadian Mining Act which “does not require that the holder of an exploration permit inform property owners of its existence … and that the permit can be acquired via the Internet with a simple click [so] that First Nations, property owners, and municipalities are ever informed or forewarned of the acquisition of a land claim on their land or territory.”2 The Canadian National Energy Board is made up of industry people whose consultations with Indigenous people and the general public are minimal.
CPP investments are also opaque. Private equities have privacy protections, ostensibly to protect trade secrets.
“The CPPIB’s (Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board) private equity team is a blessing to the oil patch. In addition to holding shares in Canada’s largest oil, gas, and coal companies, the most impressive CPPIB contribution to the sector comes from their private equity arm.”
The Canadian Pension Plan is a major investor in Imperial Oil, with its tar sands operations, pipelines, and refineries wreaking destruction on indigenous communities in Canada and abroad. An investigation into the Imperial Oil refinery adjacent to the Aamjiwnaang First Nations in Sarnia, Ontario, just published on May 5th, revealed that it emits ten times more fine particulate matter, seven times more carbon monoxide, and 49 times more sulphur dioxide than the nearby Detroit plant. Imperial Oil owns four facilities within 2 to 7 km from Aamjiwnaang. Forty per cent of Canada’s petrochemical industry surrounds this small community.
The water is so contaminated that it affects endocrine balance: two girls are born for every boy, and the effects on health have been substantiated by medical and legal reports and a charter challenge launched on behalf of the 800 member Aamjiwnaang community. In 2017 Imperial Oil’s flaring caused a five-hour massive explosion. Over 500 incident reports had been filed in 2014 and 2015 for spills and leaks in the Sarnia area: yet only one public warning had been issued through the municipality’s alert system. The government has still not installed an effective monitoring and warning system.
Critical Information is Withheld or Concealed
The Canadian government fired public health physician Dr. John O’Connor for informing the public of rare forms of cancer in Chippewa First Nations communities downstream from the tar sands, nor is it broadcast that preeminent climate scientist James Hansen states that tar sands development means “game over” for the planet. Pam Palmater, indigenous lawyer and Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University, writes of the latest pipeline expansions:
“Trudeau’s approval of the Kinder Morgan expansion is proof – once and for all – that even the most charming leader, with the biggest tears and sincerest sounding apologies, who is ‘absolutely’ committed to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples – can and will ignore those rights in the name of corporate interests every single time.”
Imperial Oil is 69.6% owned by Exxon-Mobil, the corporation associated with Rex Tillerson and with deception of the public about climate change. Oil was discovered in Ontario in 1858, a year before Titusville Pennsylvania, and by 1880 the Imperial Oil Company was producing, distributing, and refining oil. In the 1950s Imperial Oil and smaller companies banded together to lease some 2 million acres in the tar sands and by the early 1960s there were generous, publicly funded incentives and loose regulations to promote extraction. Imperial’s Board of Directors come from Exxon-Mobil, from the conservative C.D. Howe Institute, from executive positions at the major universities. In 1975, the chair of Imperial Oil led other CEOs to form the Business Council on National Issues, now the Canadian Council of Chief Executives with close ties to the Canadian and U.S. governments. In 2014 Exxon published a detailed report that brushed aside concerns about climate change, “saying oil and gas will remain the dominant sources of energy through 2040…”3
The former president and CEO of the CPPIB, Mark Wiseman, was also “bullish on the fossil fuel sector.” Wiseman recently left the CPP to join his wife at BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager. A Code Pink petition states that BlackRock is “making a killing on killing!” with its investments in Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop Grunman, Elbit, and General Dynamics – exactly the same investments as the CPP.
The current head of CPPIB is Heather Munroe-Blum. She is Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University and her directorships include the Association of American Universities, the Conference Board of Canada, Rio Tinto, CGI (oil and gas sector), the Royal Bank of Canada (mining). She is a vocal opponent of the academic boycott of Israeli universities. Her combined pension entitlements gave her the richest package of any university president in Canada at a time when Quebec universities were being asked to absorb $124-million in cuts.
Social Security
The main variables in providing social security have been whether to provide universal or selective coverage, to what degree it should be publicly funded, and the sources of funding. Traditional communities characteristically developed a range of ways to care for their members, whereas nation states came late, if at all, to take on social security, and originally only for selected groups like military men or senior state functionaries. “It was not until the epoch of the French Revolution and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that the first proposals were heard for the paying of pensions as of right to all citizens who had reached an advanced age and were in want.” It was the “unlikely executor of the social legacy of French republicanism … Otto von Bismarck, who established the first universal pension system in 1889.”4 The modest 1935 U.S. Social Security Act provided a minimal benefit. Initially it did not cover non-waged women’s work or Black people. Its strengths were that it was a federal program, that it was comprehensive and not voluntary, and that it had its own autonomous administration.
Despite hopes that social security would be a stepping stone to a socialized society, insufficient benefits necessitated supplementary pensions. From the 1970s, pension fund managers took advantage of the erosion of New Deal protections and of the inflow of capital from abroad,5 and by the 1990s pension funds became a powerful driver of financialization. The trajectory has been from state responsibility for universal benefits at one end, to private pension funds based on individual contributions. In the cases of the Enron and Nortel Network bankruptcies, pensioners took huge losses as their plans were not guaranteed, and money from asset sales were prioritized for paying legal fees, creditors, and fund managers.
The erosion of state responsibility for social security was further exacerbated by the concerted assault on unions, a factor in the decline of cross-border class solidarity. The inclusion of union representatives on pension boards does not effectively change the “fund-first” principle of fiduciary duty that weights profit over social justice and the public interest.6 Not untypical is the case of American and Canadian pension fund investments in Chile’s privately owned water utilities despite a mass social movement within Chile to re-nationalize water.7
Currently, divestment victories are politically significant and a result of public pressure. Unlike corporate shareholders and coop members, contributors to pension plans do not have a vote. System change is urgent: fossil fuel impacts are already transforming ocean circulation, the jet stream, even the stratosphere, and are amplifying positive feedbacks. An adequate social security system at this calamitous time needs to go beyond monetary benefits, to go beyond mere reform, and ensure across national borders housing, food, and healthcare for all. It is intolerable that the knowledge- and morally- compromised few “bank on death” of the majority human population.
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Judith Deutsch is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, and former president of Science for Peace. She is a psychoanalyst in Toronto. She can be reached at judithdeutsch0@gmail.com.
Notes
Kevin Skerrett, “Canada’s Public Pension Funds: The ‘New Masters of the (Neoliberal) Universe’,” in Kevin Skerrett, et al., eds., The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017, p. 122.
Ottawa says it will take financial and legal action to make pipeline happen
CBC News
Cathy Kearney
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, second from left, says opposition to the Kinder Morgan Pipeline expansion is solid and growing. (CBC)
An environmental expert in B.C. says Ottawa may not have sole jurisdiction to push through approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, despite the prime minister’s vow Sunday that the project will proceed.
Jocelyn Stacey, an environmental law professor at the University of British Columbia, said there are jurisdictional questions when it comes to the environment, and the possible effects an expanded pipeline might bring.
Shared jurisdiction
“The environment is shared jurisdiction between the federal government, the provincial government and local governments,” Stacey said.
Trudeau’s vow came after his meeting Sunday with B.C. Premier John Horgan and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, where the prime minister said his government has the authority to ensure the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion proceeds.
Trudeau said he is taking the financial and legislative action needed to make it happen.
The prime minister announced he has instructed his finance minister to begin talks with Kinder Morgan to “remove the uncertainty” hanging over the project, which would nearly triple the flow of oil from Alberta to the Pacific Coast.
It’s been a week since Kinder Morgan announced it was halting all non-essential spending on the project pending reassurance from Ottawa that it will be able to go forward.
The company gave the Trudeau government until the end of May to reassure its investors the pipeline would be built, despite mounting opposition.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, centre, interupted a foreign trip to meet with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, left, and B.C. Premier John Horgan in Ottawa on Sunday. (Canadian Press Photos)
Trudeau’s announcement didn’t sit well with the Union of B.C. Chiefs. Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, who opposes the project, and described Trudeau’s move as a “bail out” for Kinder Morgan.
”Those efforts have been made in the past to simply dismiss and override the concerns of British Columbians, and certainly the concerns of Indigenous peoples,” said Phillip.
“And those stories have always ended badly, and I think the same will apply.”
Phillip praised Premier John Horgan for standing up for British Columbians while trying to protect the environment.
Not everyone had congratulatory words for Horgan. The head of the B.C Business Council says Horgan’s anti-pipeline stance has created “a crisis of confidence,” saying investors are giving up on B.C. and heading to other jurisdictions.
Lawsuits before courts
“He [Horgan] has destabilized the ability in B.C. and in Canada for a small business or a large project to invest with any confidence,” says Greg D’Avignon, the CEO of the B.C Business Council.
Stacey said if the federal government tries to reaffirm its jurisdiction through new legislation, the move may end up being challenged in court, adding that there are still a number of lawsuits opposing the pipeline expansion already before the courts.
“We are still waiting on judgements from the Federal Court of Appeal and from the B.C. Superior court which could have the effect of quashing or cancelling approvals that have already been granted” she said.
Stewart Phillip is Grand Chief of Okanagan Nation and president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs. Serge ‘Otsi’ Simon is Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake.
As the federal and Alberta governments continue to pull their hair out over the B.C. government’s stand against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and tanker project, it’s important to point out, as we’ve been doing for years, that the pipeline company doesn’t have the consent of all First Nations along the route. In fact, many of them are strongly opposed to the project.
Kinder Morgan’s recent announcement that it is stopping all but essential spending proves that its shareholders are starting to understand the degree and depth of the Indigenous-led opposition movement to this pipeline project.
The Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion is made up of 150 Indigenous Nations in Canada and the United States, dozens of which are located along the Kinder Morgan pipeline route, with many of them having launched legal actions against the Kinder Morgan project.
Further, Indigenous Nations are supported by a quickly growing and broad-based network of support from allied Canadians who understand the existential threat that humanity faces from climate change and who are ready to stand up against the injustices still carried out today against Indigenous people.
More than 20,000 people have signed the Coast Protectors pledge to do whatever it takes to stop the pipeline. Thousands took part in a March 10 solidarity rally at the Kinder Morgan gates on Burnaby mountain.
Justin’s Trudeau government has a decision to make. It can cut its losses and realize it simply made a mistake in approving the project. Or the Trudeau government can double down on its current path. But Canadians should be very clear-eyed about what that represents. It represents more than a failure of climate leadership. It means going back to the Stephen Harper days when Canada’s reputation on the climate file was mud.
Importantly, it also means going back to colonial-era relations with Indigenous people. In fact, if the federal government tries to ram through this pipeline, it could mean going back to one of the darkest times in modern Canadian history: the Oka standoff with the Mohawk Nation.
We just witnessed the ugly and shameful crackdown in the United States on the peaceful anti-pipeline protests at Standing Rock.
We don’t believe that’s the Canada that most Canadians want to live in. It would be a cruel joke indeed if, in this era of “reconciliation,” Canada instead repeats the mistakes of the past.s on the same level as Oka.
“The federal government remains steadfast in its support for Trans Mountain.” We don’t really care what the Feds want or don’t want on this. We live here and most of us want to switch our economy from a dinosaur fossil fuel economy to an alternative type of energy. We don’t care what the doofuses in Alberta want. This is not your province. Why don’t you build a pipeline through your territory and into the US? And leave us the hell alone!
We don’t want it, our First Nations people don’t want, and this is our land, not yours Ottawa and Alberta.
Indigenous groups, residents and activists expected to hold mass rally in Burnaby, British Columbia, on Saturday.
The $5bn expansion project aims to get Canadian tar sands oil to new markets in Asia [File: Reuters]
Montreal, Canada – Thousands are expected to march through a city in western Canada in what organisers say may be the largest showing of “clear opposition” to a contentious oil pipeline project in recent memory.
Indigenous activists will be marching on Saturday alongside environmental groups, local residents and other supporters in Burnaby, a town in the province of British Columbia (BC), against plans to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline.
Approved by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016, the expansion would twin the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, operated by Texas-based oil giant Kinder Morgan, which stretches 1,150km from the Alberta tar sands to the coast of BC.
The expansion – which would increase the pipeline’s capacity from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels of oil a day – has faced staunch opposition, especially from indigenous communities.
“There comes a time in your life when you have to stand for something,” said Ta’ah Amy George, a Tsleil Waututh elder and one of the organisers of Saturday’s march, which she said is expected to draw as many as 10,000 people.
The Tseil Wauhtuth (meaning “People of the Inlet”) have lived on lands near the Burrard Inlet in southern BC for tens of thousands of years, George told Al Jazeera.
The federal government remains steadfast in its support for Trans Mountain [File: Reuters]
She said the community fears an oil spill will harm everyone living in the area and the large oil tankers that are expected to come into the inlet to transport oil would destroy local marine life.
“It’s not if there’s a [spill], but when there’s a [spill],” George said.
“Our ancestors protected this inlet and this little piece of land that we got left with. They protected it for us … We’re thinking of our [next] generations: my children and grandchildren and I have great-grandchildren.”
890,000 barrels a day
The $5bn Trans Mountain expansion project aims to get Canadian tar sands oil to new markets in Asia.
Kinder Morgan, the company behind the project, says the pipeline expansion will create short and long-term jobs and increase tax revenues at the provincial, federal and municipal levels.
“We support the right to peacefully and lawfully express opinions and views about our project and we understand that not everyone supports the expansion,” a Trans Mountain spokesperson told Al Jazeera in an email.
“We’re confident we can build and operate this project in a way that respects the values and priorities of Canadians and in respect of the environment.”
Our ancestors protected this inlet and this little piece of land that we got left with. We’re thinking of our [next] generations.
Ta’ah Amy George, a Tsleil Waututh elder and one of the organisers of Saturday’s march
Construction at the Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby began last September, while additional “preparatory work” on the same terminal and the Burnaby Marine terminal – the end point of the pipeline – began earlier this month, the spokesperson said.
“The project will provide the needed transportation capacity for Canada’s resources to access global markets and maximise benefits to all Canadians including local, regional and Aboriginal communities,” the spokesperson added.
But a widespread, indigenous-led movement has mobilised against the project for several years, while environmental groups have also spoken out against the potential ramifications of an oil spill.
“Kinder Morgan wants to bring more than 400 supertankers into the BC harbour every single year,” said Mike Hudema, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace Canada. “If one of those is to have an incident … you’re talking about widespread damage throughout the marine ecosystem,” he told Al Jazeera.
Most of the oil being produced and transported in Canada is called diluted bitumen, which is particularly difficult to clean up because it tends to sink in water, Hudema explained.
He said a spill could “exterminate” the already endangered killer whale population living in the coastal waters and “the damage could be catastrophic and could last for decades, if not longer.”
Most of the oil being produced and transported in Canada is called diluted bitumen [File: Reuters]
Hudema said that over a dozen lawsuits have been filed against the project by First Nations and environmental groups.
“The science is very clear,” he said, “We can’t be building new fossil fuel infrastructure and maintain a climate-safe planet at the same time.”
Provinces divided
While the Trans Mountain pipeline has received the green light from the federal government, it has divided some Canadian provinces.
In late January, the BC government passed new regulations that would make it more difficult to transport oil through the province in an effort “to improve preparedness, response and recovery from potential spills”.
The restrictions would be in place “until the behaviour of spilled bitumen can be better understood and there is certainty regarding the ability to adequately mitigate spills”, the provincial government said in a statement.
The measure was seen as a blow to Trans Mountain and highlighted increasing tensions between BC and Alberta, the province that is home to Canada’s tar sands and supports the project.
The science is very clear. We can’t be building new fossil fuel infrastructure and maintain a climate-safe planet at the same time.
Mike Hudema, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace Canada
Representing the third-largest crude oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, the Canadian tar sands cover over 142,000sq km in northern Alberta.
In 2016, about 2.5 million barrels of crude bitumen were produced daily after an energy-intensive and expensive extraction process, the Alberta Energy Regulator estimated.
While proponents of the Trans Mountain project in Alberta tout its economic impact, the BC government, a coalition between the left-leaning New Democrats and the Green Party, had previously vowed to block its expansion.
Several cities in BC, including Vancouver and Burnaby, have also voiced their opposition to the project.
‘Clear opposition’
Despite the opposition, the federal government has remained steadfast in its support for Trans Mountain.
“Approval of the Trans Mountain Expansion was based on facts, evidence and what was in the national interest,” a spokesperson for Natural Resources Canada, a government ministry, told Al Jazeera.
Ottawa approved the project “subject to 157 legally binding conditions” that “will address potential Indigenous, socio-economic and environmental impacts”, spokesperson Jerri Southcott said in an email.
“Throughout the construction and operation of this project, Indigenous voices will be heard. Their counsel will be sought and their knowledge valued,” Southcott added.
In early February, Prime Minister Trudeau said his government would not be able to meet its commitment to fight climate change or implement a plan to protect oceans from oil spills, without first getting the Trans Mountain project built.
If people think this is something [that] people are going to easily give up on … that’s sadly mistaken. People have drawn a line in the sand and this really is only going to build.
Andrea Harden, energy and climate justice campaigner at The Council of Canadians
“The only way we can get any of those things is if we do all three of those things together,” Trudeau told CBC Radio.
“As I’ve said for a long time, we need to make sure we’re both protecting the environment and growing the economy at the same time.”
Andrea Harden, energy and climate justice campaigner at The Council of Canadians, a progressive non-profit group, accused the Trudeau government of “speaking out of both sides of its mouth”.
On one hand, the prime minister has signed on to the Paris Climate Agreement to combat greenhouse gas emissions, while on the other backing intensive oil and gas projects like the Trans Mountain pipeline, Harden told Al Jazeera.
Science and facts have been ignored “in terms of both this pipeline being out of tune and inconsistent with our [climate] commitments … as well as the very legitimate questions around the safety of shipping diluted bitumen through pipelines”, she said.
She said Saturday’s march is “another manifestation of the clear opposition” to the Trans Mountain pipeline.
“If people think this is something [that] people are going to easily give up on … that’s sadly mistaken,” Harden said. “People have drawn a line in the sand and this really is only going to build.”
Westerners could learn a lot about vascular health from the Tsimane in the Amazon, say researchers who report Bolivian rainforest inhabitants have the world’s lowest levels of age-related hardening of the arteries.
Lancet study shows diet low on processed carbs, saturated fats and active living boost heart health
A study in Friday’s issue of the medical journal The Lancet compares the vascular health of the Tsimane, a forager-horticulturalist population that hunts for wild, lean game, with the arteries of Westerners. (Michael Gurven)
The Tsimane living in the Amazon have the lowest reported levels of age-related hardening of the arteries in the world, say researchers who encourage Westerners to learn from these Bolivian rainforest inhabitants.
Atherosclerosis was thought to be a natural part of aging. Even Egyptian mummies have shown signs of plaque buildup in the arteries.
For the study in Friday’s medical journal The Lancet, cardiologists focused their low-radiation CT scanners on the Tsimane, a forager-horticulturalist population that eats mainly wild, lean game, plantain, rice and maize, and fruits and nuts.
The findings were presented Friday at the American College of Cardiology’s scientific meeting in Washington.
For a U.S. middle-aged man, the chance of having calcium in heart arteries is about equal to his age, and women in the U.S. trail that by 10 years, said study author Dr. Gregory S. Thomas, medical director of the Long Beach Memorial Medical Center in California.
Thomas didn’t believe anthropologists who have worked closely with the Tsimane for nearly 20 years when they told him they suspected Indigenous Brazilians had no age-related atherosclerosis, so researchers designed a study to test it out.
Anthropology Prof. Hillard Kaplan of the University of New Mexico and his team asked 705 adults averaging age 58 to travel for days by boat and SUV out of the rainforest, and get scanned for coronary blockages. They also had their weight, age, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose and inflammation markers checked.
Most Tsimane live too far from a town that has a store to buy sugar or processed foods regularly. (Ben Trumble)
Kaplan said undertaking the study involved fostering a special relationship with the Tsimane over decades.
“They trust us that we really do care about their best interests. Our arrangement with the tribal council is that we provide medical assistance regardless of whether you’re involved in our study.”
Nearly nine in 10 Tsimane had no risk of heart disease (596 of 705 people, or 85 per cent), 13 per cent had low risk and three per cent had moderate or high risk, according to the Lancet study.
Among those 75 or older, nearly two-thirds (31 of 48, or 65 per cent) had almost no risk and eight per cent had moderate or high risk — the lowest recorded levels of coronary artery disease of any population, the researchers said.
Tsimane women typically walk more than 16,000 steps a day. (Courtesy Michael Gurven)
“We’re just thrilled with the results,” Thomas said, given its implications for slowing the progression of atherosclerosis.
Thomas said he was so impressed with the findings that he said even he would start doubling the amount of exercise he does.
Source of pride
The average man in the study does 17,000 steps a day and a woman does 16,000, mostly from walking to farm, hunt, fetch water and parent large families, Thomas said.
The typical American, meanwhile, executes 6,000 steps — the ideal for maximum health benefits is 10,000, he said.
It’s remarkable that the Tsimane’s rate of progression of aging-related atherosclerosis can be so slow in their 80s, Thomas and Kaplan said.
The researchers found the average 80-year-old Tismane has the arteries of an American in his 50s.
“They’re changing slowly, but what we’re seeing is the beginnings of changes in their physiology,” Kaplan said.
About 17 per cent of their diet is wild game, such as peccary (a species of wild pig), monkey, rodents, deer and pheasant-like birds. Another seven per cent of their food intake is freshwater fish, including piranha and large catfish. They get the bulk of their other calories from plants.
While cause of death of Egyptian mummies isn’t clear, heart attacks are rare among Tsimane, said study co-author Michael Gurven, a professor of anthropology at the University of California Santa Barbara.
About seven per cent of the Tsimane diet is freshwater fish. (Jonathan Stieglitz)
“Lifestyle does matter,” Gurven said. “Take the big picture — what are the little things we can do that might make a difference? Some of them aren’t new, like not smoking. That’s a big one. But even in terms of what we eat, if we eliminated soda and eliminated sugar, that could go a long way potentially,” given how saturated fats and processed carbs seem to be dietary culprits for heart disease.
While highly processed foods now make up more than half of the average Canadian family’s food purchases, experts advise urgent changes to fight rising rates of obesity, including cooking wholesome ingredients from scratch with a close eye on portion sizes.
Gurven’s suggestions to squeeze in more physical activity include:
Take the stairs.
Improvise a standing desk.
Cut back on sedentary time.
Cardiologists not involved in the research agree up to 80 per cent of premature heart disease and stroke is preventable through lifestyle behaviours.
The Tsimane enjoy a vibrant culture with improving rates of death and infectious diseases, but often face discrimination for their lifestyle from others in the Bolivian society, the anthropologists said.
“When we present some of these types of findings, the Tsimane take pride in it,” Gurven said.
Canada lacks prevalence data nationally or provincially on atherosclerosis, according to Heart & Stroke, a non-profit charity. Statistics Canada reports more than 1,600 deaths per year from atherosclerosis.
In response to the mummy findings, the British Heart Foundation noted calcified arteries could also be caused by other ailments.
A pipeline leak has spilled about 200,000 litres of oil near Stoughton, Sask. The breach occurred on First Nations land about 140 kilometres southeast of Regina.
Saskatchewan government was notified of pipeline breach on Friday
Doug MacKnight of the province’s Ministry of the Economy said the pipeline is on reserve land belonging to the Ocean Man First Nation. He said it’s not clear how long land reclamation will take. (Radio-Canada)
About 200,000 litres of oil spilled near Stoughton, Sask., last week.
The pipeline breach occurred on First Nations land about 140 kilometres southeast of Regina. The spill covered an approximately 20-metre radius.
Some 200,000 litres of oil has spilled near Stoughton, Sask., the provincial government said Monday. (Government of Saskatchewan)
The provincial government was notified of the spill on Friday evening “as soon as the leak was detected,” a government email said. Media were notified Monday afternoon.
The pipeline was shut down when the breach was discovered, and the spill is fully contained. The source of the leak is not yet known.
The oil did not enter any water sources but covered agricultural land, the email said. The site was described as a low-lying area with a frozen slough.
The spill has not affected air quality or wildlife as of yet, the government said.
Cleanup, led by Calgary-based Tundra Energy Marketing Inc., began on Saturday. As of Monday, 170,000 litres of oil had been recovered, the email said.
Doug MacKnight, assistant deputy minister with the Economy Ministry’s petroleum and natural gas division, said there are multiple pipelines in the area of the leak. Until the site is excavated Wednesday, it will not be known which one is responsible. However, the Tundra-operated pipeline is thought to be the source.
Reclamation work
Chief Connie Big Eagle of the Ocean Man First Nation visited the site last weekend. Representatives from Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada have taken the federal lead in the response.
The spill involved 200 cubic metres of oil, or about 1,260 barrels of oil. (Google Maps)
“The first phase of getting the oil out of there should happen fairly quickly, but how long it’ll take to bring it back, that’s some reclamation work that’s going to have to get done,” MacKnight said.
Typically the company operating the pipeline is required to remediate and reclaim the land back to its original state, MacKnight said. Any compensation would have to be discussed between the federal government, the company operating the pipeline and the band.
The spill comes seven months after a 225,000-litre Husky oil spill, in which some entered the North Saskatchewan River.
It is unclear if there has been an inspection done on the pipeline in recent months, MacKnight said. If there had been any inspection, responsibility would be company’s, he added.
The conflict between capitalism and the environment is the fight of the century. (Image: Flood Wall Street)
In his remarkable study When Corporations Rule the World, David Korten recounts a meeting he attended ahead of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The meeting was led, Korten notes, by indigenous leaders who were anxious about the direction in which global environmental policy was being steered. They were also, quite justifiably, worried about who was doing the steering.
“In the conference’s preparatory meetings,” Korten writes, “corporatists…proposed that to save nature we must put a price on her.”
“Under capitalism, everything is a business opportunity — catastrophes, from tsunamis to wars, are no exception.”
It’s a familiar story: Capitalism, we are often told, can be made green. Incentives can be established. The corporations previously leading the way in pollution, plunder, and exploitation can, with a few adjustments, become the world’s leaders in the development of clean energy and pave the way to a sustainable future.
As is often the case, it is those who have seen up close the harm done by corporate greed who most quickly see through the facade.
“These indigenous leaders recognized that this proposal would accelerate the monopolization by the richest among us of the resources essential to human life,” Korten observed. “Their position was clear and unbending. Earth is our Sacred Mother and she is not for sale. Her care is our sacred responsibility. Her fruits must be equitably and responsibly shared by all.”
This conflict between capitalism and the environment is not, of course, uncharted terrain. Naomi Klein, in her bestselling book This Changes Everything, argues that an economic order predicated on the relentless pursuit of profit is incompatible with a world in which natural resources are used with the necessary care and restraint.
It truly is, as the subtitle of Klein’s book notes, “capitalism versus the climate.” Terrifyingly, capitalism is winning.
Under capitalism, everything is a business opportunity — catastrophes, from tsunamis to wars, are no exception. In fact, as Klein documented in her earlier book The Shock Doctrine, disasters are not viewed by business leaders as problems to be solved; rather, they are seen as circumstances of which they must take advantage.
But capitalism does not merely wait on the sidelines for these opportunities to arise. “An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, ecological or financial,” Klein notes.
Disasters of the kind Klein describes have become commonplace during the neoliberal period, in which markets have been deregulated, public services have been privatized, governments have become unresponsive to the needs of the citizenry, and trade accords have empowered corporations to run roughshod over sovereign nations in pursuit of profit. The exploitation of the global poor in the process is a given — as Arundhati Roy observed in a piece condemning the government of India for sanctioning the displacement of indigenous communities in an effort to clear the way for corporate mining projects, it’s now just “business as usual.”
“The battle lines,” she wrote, “are clearly drawn.”
Similar such cases, in which poor people are seen as disposable and their communities as capitalism’s waste dumps, abound.
In North Texas, the “birthplace of modern hydraulic fracturing,” residents have been suffering the consequences of living near the operations of the oil and gas industry for years — consequences that include, but aren’t limited to, heart problems, breathing troubles, and birth defects.
“I’ve been trying to sell my house,” one resident told the Center for Public Integrity. “I’ve got to get out of here or I’m going to die.”
In 2015, Scientific American reported an unsurprising fact, by now almost a truism: It is the poor, disproportionately poor people of color, who have been forced to bear the brunt of the often devastating ills imposed by fracking. Unsurprising, and far from new: “Residents in these poor counties have been under assault for generations,” Alex Lotorto of Energy Justice said.
The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, has been thoroughly documented, and rightly so. Less prominent has been coverage of East Chicago, Indiana, where for decades residents’ homes have rested on lead-contaminated soil. As the New York Times reported in August, “the companies responsible for the contamination” were sued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009, but this is little comfort for the more than 1,000 people — including over 600 children — now forced to find a new place to live.
It is impossible to quantify the harm done in such circumstances; but, needless to say, those responsible for the harm harbor few qualms about their actions. One executive reportedly said aloud what most already knew was the case: Poor communities are intentionally targeted because they lack the resources to mount effective resistance.
Thankfully, we have seen in recent weeks that this doesn’t have to be the case — that, when the opposition is sufficiently organized, corporate plunder can be obstructed. Though under-reported in mainstream outlets, the fight over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline provides a case in point.
North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux tribe, joined by many other tribes and activists, has for weeks engaged in direct action in response to Energy Transfer Partners’ desire to move forward with the project, arguing that it would place at risk both the water supply and sacred land. State officials have responded with striking intensity.
“In recent weeks, the state has militarized my reservation, with road blocks and license-plate checks, low-flying aircraft and racial profiling of Indians,” wrote David Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. “The local sheriff and the pipeline company have both called our protest ‘unlawful,’ and Gov. Dalrymple has declared a state of emergency.”
Last week, as Common Dreams reported, over twenty protesters were arrested in “a military-style raid” which “interrupted a peaceful prayer ceremony.”
Far from dispiriting, such a vicious response to nonviolent demonstrations of this kind show how threatening organized protest is to corporations and their partners in government; though they claim to fear chaos, disorder, and violence, what corporate forces really fear is mass solidarity expressed through courageous acts of civil disobedience.
“Radical change cannot take place in the absence of mass anti-capitalist movements that recognize the interplay between economic interests and environmental degradation.”
Of course, the protests at Standing Rock are not isolated acts, and they are, as Sarah Jaffe observes, “bigger than one pipeline.”
“We all have similar struggles, where this dependency this world has on fossil fuels is affecting and damaging Mother Earth,” David Archambault II told Jaffe. “It is the indigenous peoples who are standing up with that spirit, that awakening of that spirit and saying, ‘It is time to protect what is precious to us.'”
Never has such action been more necessary.
The science tells us that we have reached a critical moment; as Naomi Klein has argued, “no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.” Researchers agree, and some have joined the call for “radical change” that goes far beyond the agreements reached in Paris.
But such radical change cannot take place in the absence of mass anti-capitalist movements that recognize the interplay between economic interests and environmental degradation. The leaders of the struggle for a sustainable, equitable future will not, therefore, be corporate executives and billionaire philanthropists, with their deep ideological commitments to the economic order that so enriched them and their businesses. Rather, leading the way will be the indigenous communities that have for so long been forced to endure relentless dispossession in the name of business.
As Noam Chomsky has observed, “The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction.” And, he adds, “countries with large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in seeking to preserve the planet.”
If “water is life,” as the Sioux saying goes, an economic system that poisons water for profit is life’s contradiction — it is a system of destruction, a “suicide economy,” that must be dismantled.
“Ultimately, the ‘success’ or otherwise of the Paris climate talks appears unlikely to challenge the fundamental dynamics underlying the climate crisis. Dramatic decarbonisation based around limits upon consumption, economic growth, and corporate influence are not open for discussion,” conclude scholars Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg. “Until this changes, the dominance of corporate capitalism will ensure the continued rapid unraveling of our habitable climate.”
Come on Justin, enough is enough, let’s deal with this once and for all. This is a stain on Canada’s psyche.
Indigenous children in Canada are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than non-Indigenous kids, according to new findings released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Indigenous children in Canada more than twice as likely to live in poverty than non-Indigenous kids
Poverty rates are highest for First Nations kids on reserves in Manitoba at 76 per cent and Saskatchewan at 69 per cent, according to a new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. (Getty Images)
Indigenous children in Canada are more than twice as likely to live in poverty than non-Aboriginal kids, according to new findings released Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The study, which delves into poverty rates on reserves and in the territories as measured by income, documents the dire conditions being experienced by status First Nations children, including 60 per cent of those who live on reserves.
Poverty rates are highest for First Nations kids on reserves in Manitoba at 76 per cent and Saskatchewan at 69 per cent, the study found.
The rates of poverty on-reserve worsened between 2005 and 2010, the researchers found, citing long-standing barriers such as underfunded schools and child welfare services that stand in the way of kids achieving their full potential.
Senior economist David Macdonald, who co-authored the report, said the figures clearly show deplorable rates of child poverty on reserves in Canada.
“One of the interesting things is that despite the fact that we have seen strong economic growth in the 2000s in Alberta in particular, as well as Saskatchewan and Manitoba, we are just not seeing that filter down to the on-reserve level,” he said.
“We are to some degree seeing it trickle down to the off-reserve population … but we are just not seeing the benefits on reserve.”
In order to come up with its figures, the institute updated its findings from a previous report examining child poverty rates based on the 2006 census, using data collected during the 2011 National Household Survey.
“It is important to point out that Statistics Canada reports on poverty rates do not include people who live on a reserve or people living in the territories where roughly half of all Inuit people are located,” the report said.
“Because this data is excluded, official poverty rates in Canada are lower than they would be if these populations were counted. Poverty rates for Indigenous people, especially status First Nations and Inuit, are reported to be much lower than a full count would indicate is truly the case.”
Study co-author Daniel Wilson said he is hopeful measuring and reporting on the problem will help to end “policy-making in a void of information.”
The study also contains immediate suggestions for a poverty reduction plan for reserves including calls to improve direct income support and bolster employment prospects.
“These first steps will not eliminate the enormous gap in circumstance between children in Canada but they may slow or reserve a worsening trend of increasing poverty among First Nations children on reserve,” the report said.
“If we are to restore some hope to communities suffering from a pandemic of adolescent suicide, it is one place to start.”
The Liberal budget tabled in March made substantial investments on housing, clean water and education for First Nations, the study noted, but the bulk of that money is not scheduled to be spent for a few years yet.
“It will take some time to tell whether these initiatives sufficiently combat chronic overcrowding in houses, boil water advisories and substandard schooling,” the report said.
“However, the investment signals a welcome change in approach to Indigenous issues.”
Dozens of isolated indigenous communities in Canada have recently declared states of emergency due to suicide epidemics, unclean water, and a lack of adequate infrastructure.
Amid these crises, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a historic visit last week to Shoal Lake 40, an isolated First Nations reserve that has been without clean water for two decades. It is extremely rare for sitting prime ministers to visit reserves, and the trip, organized with the local chief and council of Shoal Lake 40 in coordination with VICE and the office of the prime minister, will be part of an upcoming VICELAND documentary on the issues plaguing indigenous communities.
Trudeau spent several hours with the residents of Shoal Lake 40 before speaking to VICE News about the government’s complex relationship with First Nations, and what his new Liberal government says it will do to help solve the many problems the communities face.
Read “How VICE Brought Canada’s Prime Minister to a Remote Indigenous Community“ – http://bit.ly/1Y3se9B
Read “Justin Trudeau: ‘We Have Discriminated Against Indigenous Children for Generations'” – http://bit.ly/1SXFaiW
Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins spoke with Al Jazeera about the recent wave of indigenous suicide attempts.
A march and candlelight vigil was held in Attawapiskat after 11 people attempted suicide in a single night [Chris Wattie/Reuters]
The Canadian First Nations community of Attawapiskat declared a state of emergency this month after 11 people tried to kill themselves in a single night, bringing the total number of suicide attempts since September to more than 100.
The spike this month snapped the world’s attention to the tragedy unfolding in the remote coastal community of around 1,500 people in northeastern Ontario. The crisis has since deepened, with another five children reportedly attempting suicide on Friday, leading local MP Charlie Angus to denounce “a spiralling situation that is taking us into unknown territory”.
Although the surge is alarming, the crisis itself is not new. For decades, Attawapiskat and other First Nations communities throughout Canada have experienced high rates of suicide, amid long-standing social problems that include systemic poverty, family violence, educational failures and substance abuse.
Al Jazeera spoke with Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins, who recently visited Attawapiskat, about why life in the community has degenerated to this extent, and what is being done to address the problem.
Al Jazeera: Why has the situation in Attawapiskat escalated to the point where more than 100 people have attempted suicide in a matter of months?
Eric Hoskins: There’s a whole set of circumstances – whether it’s inadequate housing, or a lack of income opportunities, or the massive and continuing negative impact of the residential schools saga – that have all contributed to making this situation that we’re finding today.
We’ve been investing in mental health services, but part of the challenge has been that for the last decade, the level of coordination with our federal partners and the commitment from the federal government has not been what we believe it should have been, so that made it more challenging for us to approach this in a coordinated way.
The resources that we’ve provided to date at all levels of government have been clearly inadequate. We’ve failed the youth in First Nations communities, particularly those in the remote, northern, fly-in communities. And that’s not unique to Ontario – that’s something that we all share nationally as well.
Al Jazeera: When you visited Attawapiskat last week, what was the mood like?
Hoskins: It’s clearly a community in crisis. We heard a cry for help coming from the leadership representing this community.
On the one hand, we saw frontline healthcare workers who were clearly overwhelmed. We found a band council and a local chief who were doing everything they could to manage this enormous challenge and crisis, but they were also clearly exhausted and in desperate need of support.
We spent a few hours with the band council and the local chief, and also with dozens of youth from the community, which was incredibly impactful. We heard from the mother of a 14-year-old girl who tragically took her life last October. It was very moving and very distressing, but it was also incredibly empowering.
It was amazing to hear from the youth, who were obviously in great distress and very anxious and concerned – but despite that, they knew where the community and themselves needed to go. They knew what kinds of support they needed, and mapped out a plan for us that they believed would take the community from a place of hopelessness to a place of hope for the future.
Al Jazeera: What was involved in that plan, and what concrete steps will the province take to help alleviate the fundamental social and economic problems plaguing Attawapiskat?
Hoskins: This is really challenging, and it goes far beyond health – it’s the social determinants of health.
In the immediate short term, we announced $2m in funding, some going to youth supports, and the majority going to a team of 13 health-care workers to deal with this surge and provide immediate support to the individuals, but also their families, who have reached the point where they attempted to take their own lives.
But almost all of our conversations were focused on the medium and long term. It’s become clear that there’s a need for all levels of government and not-for-profit organisations to do a better job of coordinating what we’re doing together so it has a maximum impact.
There’s no question that’s going to require additional resources to deal with everything from access to clean water, to decent housing – because the housing is so inadequate, it’s dilapidated, and there’s mould, and they’re crowded and the windows are boarded up – to education, to income support and revenue sharing. It’s important that First Nations communities be able to benefit from the resource extraction and economic activity that occurs in their areas.
The number one request of youth was to have a youth centre and to have programmes and activities that would help them reconnect with the land and their culture and their history, so we’re looking at that.
Obviously none of this is going to happen overnight, but it’s almost like the stars have aligned, so we have a responsibility to not get caught up in jurisdictional discussions, which have stopped action in the past. We must come together, all of us at all levels, and start to chip away at these seemingly enormous challenges.
Al Jazeera: On the federal side, First Nations representatives have called for a national strategy to combat indigenous suicide. Do you support this proposal, and what would that look like?
Hoskins: I think that’s a great idea. It speaks to the reality that this is regrettably present in First Nations reserves right across this country, particularly in those northern, remote, fly-in reserves. I wholeheartedly support a national strategy to look at this in all its aspects, alongside the social determinants, such as housing and economics.
This is about putting supports in place to prevent young people from the pain being so bad that suicide is something they would actually consider.
Al Jazeera: Considering that the treatment of First Nations communities has been an ongoing problem in Canada for decades, why should anyone be convinced that after the Attawapiskat story fades from the headlines, anything will substantively change?
Hoskins: My perspective on this is that this is such a tremendous moral and ethical and historic obligation. There’s no guarantee that this time will be different, but if those of us who believe we have an opportunity, as well as an obligation, collect that fortitude to move forward, I truly believe we can begin to make the progress that’s so necessary.
But when you look at the conditions, Canada is sixth on the human development index; First Nations communities are number 63. The conditions are so appalling and so inadequate. We have a moral and historic responsibility to address that.
It’s easy to look back at the failure it has been, but it can’t prevent us from trying to find that resolve to hopefully make this time different than the past.
This has really captured Canada’s attention, and I hope it is that catalyst to make us realize not just how serious and in crisis many of the communities are, but to make us finally say we can do this if we work together and bring the resources forward.
On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.
For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to call “New Australians” often choose 26 January, “Australia Day”, to be sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.
It was sunrise on 26 January so many years ago when I stood with Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians and threw wreaths into Sydney Harbour. We had climbed down to one of the perfect sandy coves where others had stood as silhouettes, watching as the ships of Britain’s “First Fleet” dropped anchor on 26 January, 1788. This was the moment the only island continent on earth was taken from its inhabitants; the euphemism was “settled”. It was, wrote Henry Reynolds, one of few honest Australian historians, one of the greatest land grabs in world history. He described the slaughter that followed as “a whispering in our hearts”.
The original Australians are the oldest human presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To justify this fiction, mass murder was ordained. In 1838, the Sydney Monitor reported: “It was resolved to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that quarter.” This referred to the Darug people who lived along the great Hawkesbury River not far from Sydney. With remarkable ingenuity and without guns, they fought an epic resistance that remains almost a national secret. In a land littered with cenotaphs honouring Australia’s settler dead in mostly imperial wars, not one stands for those warriors who fought and fell defending Australia.
This truth has no place in the Australian consciousness. Among settler nations with indigenous populations, apart from a facile “apology” in 2008, only Australia has refused to come to terms with the shame of its colonial past. A Hollywood film, Soldier Blue, in 1970 famously inverted racial stereotypes and gave Americans a glimpse of the genocide in their own mythical “settlement”. Almost half a century later, it is fair to say an equivalent film would never be made in Australia.
In 2014, when my own film, Utopia, which told the story of the Australian genocide, sought a local distributor, I was advised by a luminary in the business: “No way I could distribute this. The audiences wouldn’t accept it.”
He was wrong — up to a point. When Utopia opened in Sydney a few days before 26 January, under the stars on vacant land in an Indigenous inner-city area known as The Block, more than 4,000 people came, the majority non-Indigenous. Many had traveled from right across the continent. Indigenous leaders who had appeared in the film stood in front of the screen and spoke in “language”: their own. Nothing like it had happened before. Yet, there was no press. For the wider community, it did not happen. Australia is a murdochracy, dominated by the ethos of a man who swapped his nationality for the Fox Network in the US.
The star Indigenous AFL footballer Adam Goodes wrote movingly to the Sydney Morning Herald demanding that “the silence is broken”. “Imagine,” he wrote, “watching a film that tells the truth about the terrible injustices committed against your people, a film that reveals how Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit.
“Now imagine how it feels when the people who benefited most from those rapes, those killings and that theft – the people in whose name the oppression was done – turn away in disgust when someone seeks to expose it.”
Goodes himself had already broken a silence when he stood against racist abuse thrown at him and other Indigenous sportspeople. This courageous, talented man retired from football last year as if under a cloud — with, wrote one commentator, “the sporting nation divided about him”. In Australia, it is respectable to be “divided” on opposing racism.
On Australia Day 2016 – Indigenous people prefer Invasion Day or Survival Day – there will be no acknowledgement that Australia’s uniqueness is its first people, along with an ingrained colonial mentality that ought to be an abiding embarrassment in an independent nation. This mentality is expressed in a variety of ways, from unrelenting political grovelling at the knee of a rapacious United States to an almost casual contempt for Indigenous Australians, an echo of “kaffir”- abusing South Africans.
Apartheid runs through Australian society. Within a short flight from Sydney, Indigenous people live the shortest of lives. Men are often dead before they reach 45. They die from Dickensian diseases, such as rheumatic heart disease. Children go blind from trachoma, and deaf from otitis media, diseases of poverty. A doctor told me:
“I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class of the beginning of the industrial revolution.”
The racism that allows this in one of the most privileged societies on earth runs deep. In the 1920s, a “Protector of Aborigines” oversaw the theft of mixed race children with the justification of “breeding out the colour”. Today, record numbers of Indigenous children are removed from their homes and many never see their families again. On 11 February, an inspiring group called Grandmothers Against Removals will lead a march on Federal Parliament in Canberra, demanding the return of the stolen children.
Australia is the envy of European governments now fencing in their once-open borders while beckoning fascism, as in Hungary. Refugees who dare set sail for Australia in overcrowded boats have long been treated as criminals, along with the “smugglers” whose hyped notoriety is used by the Australian media to distract from the immorality and criminality of their own government. The refugees are confined behind barbed wire on average for well over a year, some indefinitely, in barbaric conditions that have led to self-harm, murder, suicide and mental illness. Children have not been spared. An Australian Gulag run by sinister private security firms includes concentration camps on the remote Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru. People often have no idea when they might be freed, if at all.
The Australian military — whose derring-do is the subject of uncritical tomes that fill the shelves of airport bookstalls — has played an important part in “turning back the boats” of refugees fleeing wars, such as in Iraq, launched and prolonged by the Americans and their Australian mercenaries. No irony, let alone responsibility, is acknowledged in this cowardly role.
On this Australia Day, the “pride of the services” will be on display. This pride extends to the Australian Immigration Department, which commits people to its Gulag for “offshore processing”, often arbitrarily, leaving them to grieve and despair and rot. Last week it was announced that Immigration officials had spent $400,000 on medals which they will award their heroic selves. Put out more flags.
On January 26, Indigenous Australians and their supporters will march from The Block in Redfern, Sydney, to the Sydney Town Hall. The march will begin at 10 am.
On Thursday February 11, Grandmothers Against Removals will address a rally in Canberra. This will start at 12 noon at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, then march to Parliament House.
Just wait until the rest of the world realizes that you can sue the US for all the tragedies it has inflicted on the world. There will be a reckoning dear Americans.
In Albuquerque, NM a massive and historic settlement has been awarded to Native American tribes in the sum of $940 million dollars. The settlement, which was announced by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2015 stems from a 1990 lawsuit claiming negligence by the U.S. government.
The negligence incorporated the failure to pay for its housing, education, law and healthcare contracts, amongst others. The suffering by people in tribal lands as a result was considered “not just cruel and wrong, it was illegal,” according to Governor Val Panteah Sr. of the Zuni Pueblo.
It is believed by the tribal leaders that the payout will assist with compensation to those who suffered and will combat other major issues such as alcoholism and unemployment. ABC 7 was told in an interview with President John Yellowbird Steele of the Oglala Sioux tribe that he was satisfied with the settlement, “but in other areas of those treaty obligations we need to work like we did here.”
The settlement is scheduled to be released in the next six months, and is amongst others of historic proportions such as the payout of $3.4 billion to the Blackfoot Tribe, and a billion dollar payout in 2012 over the use of land and oil extraction.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
