Open Letter to UBC Prof. Thomas Maness re: "Active Environmentalism"

www.ingmarlee.com

Ingmar Lee ~ Hi Thomas, You say that you’re an “active environmentalist” so, given my concerns about a lack of environmentalist representation at your upcoming “BC Forum on Forest Economics and Policy” Symposium in Vancouver, and having never encountered you during my years of participation in BC’s environmental movement, I figured I had some research to do. But after an extensive Google search didn’t turn up anything, I wrote back to you to ask for something, anything to demonstrate your environmental activity.

My response embedded within your letter in Green

Well... no answer... and only 5 days till the Symposium, so I’ll just go with what I’ve got.

My research has shown that you are indeed a very busy man, obviously far too busy to answer questions from annoying gnats like me. Nevertheless, here’s what my research has turned up, and, er, well, if you are the “environmental representation” amongst the Logging lackey keynotes at your Symposium, then I stand by my original complaint:

Your interests are clearly with the logging and forest-processing industry, and not with the environment.

Here below, I unpack your letter

On 20/10/06, Thomas Maness wrote:

Hi Ingmar –

I received a copy of your email to the Landwatch Discussion List where you noted that there was not a single environmentalist on our list of speakers. You made a mistake in this observation: you overlooked my name. I have been an active environmentalist since 1968. I am the chair of the organizing committee and will be speaking at the conference.

As far as being an “active” environmentalist, I know hundreds of environmental activists across the province, and have participated in numerous forest protection efforts and environmental discussions for many years, but I’ve never heard of you, nor has anyone I’ve asked ever heard of you, or your colleague, Nicole Robinson. Perhaps you might have done something back in St. Louis where you were born and grew up, or in West Virginia, where you were educated, or even at the University of Weyerhaeus…,er ~Washington where you got your Ph.D. but there’s simply no Google record of anything that appears remotely environmental to me. I’ve searched your listed publications ( click here) but I can’t see anything remotely resembling environmental activism there.

Searching deeper into Google, I see that you are a “Principle Investigator” for the Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN). Here’s a list of your colleagues there:

SFMN BoD Industry Partners:

* Barry Waito (Chair), Louisiana-Pacific Canada Ltd.

* Pat Wearmouth, Weyerhaeuser Company

Partner’s Committee:

* Tim Barker, Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd.

* Jean-Paul Bielech, Manning Diversified Forest Products

* Dave Beck, Ainsworth Lumber Co. Ltd.

* Wendy Crosina, Weyerhaeuser Company

* John Deal (alternate - Jeff Beale), Canfor Inc.

* Margaret Donnelly, Consultant, Louisiana-Pacific Canada Ltd.

* Elston Dzus, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc.

* Alternate for Elston Dzus: Shawn Wasel, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc.

* Tom Hoffman, Tolko Industries Ltd.

* Paul Jeakins, Canadian Forest Products Ltd.

* Gaétan Pelletier, J.D. Irving, Limited

* Paul Poschmann (alternate - Guy Tremblay), Abitibi-Consolidated Inc.

* Jonathan Russell, Millar Western Forest Products Ltd.

* Kari Stuart-Smith, Tembec Inc.

* Steve Viszlai (alternate - Robert Kennett), Tolko Industries Ltd.

* John MacGillivray, Bowater Inc.

Partners:

* Abitibi-Consolidated Inc.

* Ainsworth Lumber Co. Ltd.

* Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc. (Al-Pac)

* Bowater Inc.

* Canadian Forest Products Ltd. (Canfor)

* Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd. (DMI)

* J.D. Irving, Limited (JDI)

* Louisiana-Pacific Canada Ltd. (LP)

* Manning Diversified (MD)

* Tembec Inc.

* Tolko Industries Ltd.

* Weyerhaeuser Company

Sheeesh!!

I think if you come to hear what I have to say you might change your mind. You also missed the name of Nicole Robinson, a Forest Ecologist who is one of the most active environmentalists that I know.

Again, Nicole Robinson is unknown in BC’s environmental activist community. I attempted a Google search of her efforts, but if there’s anything there, it’s buried by other famous “Nicole Robinson” websites.

Nicole is organizing the event and she is working very hard to ensure that the public will get their say.

This is the “public” that will have to pay $75 to get in! Your admission fee for this partially tax-payer funded event ensures that none from the BC environmental activist community are likely to participate. BC’s environmental activist community is flat broke, and there are no generous industry subsidies flowing our way for such luxurious Gala events at opulent Vancouver hotels.

I want you to know that we in the Forum are working very hard to bring positive change to forest policy in British Columbia.

Well the fact that the “BC Forum on Forest Economics and Policy” was established at the UBC Forest Faculty with a generous grant from CANFOR (click here) immediately brings your Forum into disrepute. I won’t even get into the how the former CANFOR CEO David Emerson just ripped off his own Logging industry fellows for a billion dollars, half of which has now been funnelled into the “Re-elect the Republicans” campaign currently going on in the USA. ( click here) I note that you have the swashbuckling TimberWest privateer, Hamish Kerr on your Keynote Speaker’s roster. ( Click here) to read Mr. Kerr’s draconian Neocon solutions for BC’s Public Forests. The fact that TimberWest, which is amongst the most ruthless and voracious forest destroyers in BC, is a major financier of this Symposium immediately brings it into disrepute.

As an environmentalist, I appreciate open mindedness, honesty and frank and open discussion. That’s what the BC Forum is about.

Further, in your capacity as Associate Professor of Forest Economics, Department of Forest Resources Management at UBC, you received a chunk of your $431,000 funding from, who else, Canadian Forest Products Ltd to build a computer model “that will provide a new way for the public to view proposed landscape changes and assess various tradeoffs so that researchers can more accurately determine public preferences toward forested areas” and will provide “a broad picture of how the public determines what it is prepared to trade-off in order to protect forest values they care about.” ( click here)

Searching further, we find that you are a Coordinator of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and are working to promote the use of the latest engineering technology in the automation of wood and wood fiber processing plants. Examples of this technology include robotics, scanning technology, computer applications, and expert systems, for example, to provide more effective and efficient wood processing and conversion systems....

It goes on, and on, but where’s the environmental activism?!

That’s why we have the panel discussion as the main part of the event. Vaughn Palmer will be involving the audience in the discussion, and everyone will have an opportunity to get their message across. Vaughn won’t be asking easy questions.

It would have been a challenge to find a more devoted Neocon logging industry lackey than Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer. If environment is big on your agenda, why not get the only CanWest Global reporter with Green credibility, which is Stephen Hume?

We are also exploring other ways to actively involve the public in this event, so there may be some surprises.

Well, 5 days to go, -you’d better surprise us fast.

It really is time for all of us to take an active role in shaping a new generation of environmentalists that face the realities of our world which is spinning out of control on so many fronts. Very little is accomplished by applying demeaning labels to people because they don’t share your beliefs, instead the task is to develop sound arguments that carry the day. If we can do this we can bring the mainstream into the fight.

“Shaping a New Generation of Environmentalists??!” Is that the “active role” you are taking down there at the UBC Logging department? I worked in the silviculture industry for 21 years all across BC, and I know the UBC logging department spawn which inspected our work. Straight out of school, they went to work for logging companies, and their job was to quantify the value of a patch of forest, to figure out how to rip it out as cheap as possible, and to throw some chemicals and vegetation back at the stumpfield that would get past the infill brush as fast as possible to get that cut-block off the books. That’s what they learned at UBC, and that’s what has justified the ongoing massacre of the forests.

I encourage you and everyone on your mailing list to attend the Forum event and get involved in forest policy. BC’s environmentalist community in the past has done a magnificent job of pointing out the environmental problems we face. It is now time to also deal with economic problems of forest dependent communities and the social ills and inequities that are coincident with the rapid depletion of our environmental capital.

I’m amazed that you can write this with a straight face, given the folks who will be speaking at your Symposium. I’m surprised you don’t have Patrick Moore himself at the podium.

The choices that we face in BC are not easy ones, in fact they are far too easy to oversimplify. Only by understanding a wide range of viewpoints can we develop workable solutions. If you participate in this event you may be assured of one thing. We at the BC Forum will be listening to you.

Best regards,

Thomas Maness

Associate Professor of Forest Economics
Department of Forest Resources Management
University of British Columbia

604.822.2150
thomas.maness@ubc.ca

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With much less than 20% of this Earth’s final intact tracts of (wild, ancient, old-growth, pristine, primaeval -take your pick) forests remaining, the proper, ethical thing for all active environmentalists to be doing, is to work to protect everything that is left from the scourge of commercial extraction, NOW. Period. There are no “sound arguments” that can justify destroying more pristine wilderness anywhere, and no so-called certified logging practice is acceptable any more in such forests.

People like you, and the Logging-Lackey institutions you work for such as UBC, the University of Weyerhaeuser, and the most recently notorious Oregon State University Logging dept.will always continue to find new ways to scam so-called certified low impact logging in our ever-dwindling patches of intact forests. As the forest is exhausted, your efforts are a shot-gun blast further pocking the scattered final refugia tufts which remain.

Cheers, Ingmar

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

David Shipway Unpacks the Online Preamble for the Forum

Quoting the online preamble for this latest forest tenure forum (http://www.bc-forum.org/symposium0611.htm ) as a fuse for more radical ideas in the next generation, here are mine, since it looks like all the usual culprits are still in control:

"The current tenure system in British Columbia has created an industry structure with a dependence on high harvest levels and a focus on being high volume, low cost producers in commodity products. However, forest sector conditions have changed substantially in the last 30 years. BC is no longer a global cost leader as timber quality and piece size decrease over time, environmental costs, once nonexistent, continue to rise, and labor rates cannot compete with those of developing countries. Southern hemisphere plantations are capable of growing high quality timber significantly faster and cheaper than we can, and investment capital is rapidly moving south. "

True, but right off the bat, the Forum needs to think outside this hopeless box! This whole trainwreck starts within the corporate "global competitiveness" paradigm of export trade, built on a manufactured "reality scam" which has been the primary driver and legitimizer of severely overcutting our forests and screwing the workers at the same time. Had we collectively realized that there simply was no "global competition" to the incredible quality of BC's coastal old growth timber, we might have slowed down a few decades ago and made sure that such wood quality that is now almost extinct was actually maintained with long-rotation selection-cutting forestry. Diminished as it is, there's still that opportunity to steer in that direction, instead of competing with Alabama etc. to produce short-rotation junkwood out of the best forest ecosystems in the world, but it requires we at least admit we've been ripped off, that Maximum Sustained Yield and the Liquidation-Conversion project in BC was the wrong way to "manage" forest ecology, and that a radical course correction is needed. Restoration of old-growth qualities will indeed take time and trans-generational commitment, but the alternative industrial scenario of "lawnmower forestry" will just dig the economic and cultural hole we are in much deeper.

At the same time, the public has become more aware that our public forestlands are more than simply an economic asset. They represent vital ecosystems that are both life-sustaining necessities and capital assets that should provide a flow of a variety of timber and non-timber goods and services well into the future.

The usual multi-use platitudes, but since there has been no substantial resolution to outstanding aboriginal land claims, it is a bit illegitimate for the sponsors to call them "our public forestlands" Excuse me, but what about those prior and feduciary tenure obligations?

Clearly the conditions that created the need for the tenure system in the first place have changed, and the system itself is no longer meeting its original stated objectives: "competitive advantages in world markets", "maximum continuity of employment in all phases of the industry" and "stable, settled and prosperous communities".

These colonial objectives have actually become contradictory in a corporate-dominated world of mobile capital, so corporations have simply deconstructed the last two objectives and run amok with the first. Any appurtenancy legislation we once had in BC to contain corporate greed and maintain the 2nd and 3rd objectives has been methodically shredded by successive BC governments, caving in to the old-growth-funded corporate timber lobby as they accepted big campaign donations.

The choices of how we manage this asset will have serious impacts on both current and future generations, and there is widespread public concern about the development of these management policies. Many stakeholders still feel that the answer to the problem is longer tenures or privatization.

The forests on this planet are not just an "asset", as already stated. Widespread public concern seems to have had little effect in liquidating them either, because the public has been methodically stripped of any legitimate power in denying corporate rule. There are answers, but many would find them "economically intolerable". Here we see yet again that tired old rant that the Commons is a "problem" and the solution is Enclosure. It's definitely not if they are given to the same self-serve corporations that have totally destroyed the social contract! A look at how the privatized forests of eastern Vancouver Island have been severely degraded by each new corporate owner proves that this is no panacea. Island Timberlands is hellishly busy liquidating everything MacBlo spared.

However, this must be balanced against the question of whether growing trees on BC forest lands, with the consequent long rotations, would be an investment with a positive net present value? If not, forestry as we know it is unlikely to generate substantial private investment on the land base.

A comment that is hopelessly stuck in short-term stock-market thinking mode! Someone will probably propose hemp plantations. Forests here only grow at about 2 or 3% per annum, so if you are a typical TIMO promising to deliver 10% to your investors, you must conduct a 500% overcut to keep them happy, or they will cut you. The bitter pill is that any real investment in raising the quality and values of our forests would have to be altruistic, a substantial gesture towards the welfare of those yet to be born.

This symposium is designed to bring this issue to forefront and get people working together to look at a new sustainable development strategy that once again ties forests to our inherent values, to the communities where we live, and to a diverse and globally competitive forest sector.

Throw these contradictory phrases together without radical rethinking of the "global competition" scam, and we are simply stuck in a hopeless trap again, along with our Siberian brothers and sisters.

No option should be off the table.

That's potentially good news.

Intensive forest management on high quality coastal sites may provide more stable employment on a smaller land base.

So far, this has meant using the best land to produce artificially-fertilized intensely knotty junkwood plantations for disposable wood products, producing more GHG's and running down the carbon sink in the soils. We desperately need a whole new model!

Small scale privatization on these sites may provide economic incentives for developing a new forest sector from the ashes of the coastal industry.

It could mean an inhabitory ecoforestry that provides communities of forest dwellers with stable modest incomes, but that will require radical tenure and land reform. Considering that we have a whole progression of younger generations that are doomed to being landless by the the current real-estate investment orgy, I would hope that the idea of Crown Woodlots that you can also live on would be considered legitimate tenure reform.

Timber management organizations could possibly manage BC forests for a wider range of values with attendant criteria and indicators, and provide the competitive log market called for in the Peel report. There are good examples from other jurisdictions. These and many other options must be considered and discussed.

In the face of all this mild-mannered talk of tenure diversity, the government over the last 10 years has pulled out all the stops to permit timber corporations to engineer a staggering consolidation and monopolization of ownership and tenure in BC. TIMO's like Timberwest and Brookfield's subsidiaries, who now basically own most of the private AND public forests of Vancouver Island, are part of the problem, not the solution! Their publicly-stated agenda on private forest lands is to liquidate timber assets and convert "suitable" land to real estate. After all, the government DID incinerate the Forest Land Reserve Act recently. Call me paranoid, but the fact that Timberwest is a primary sponsor of this Forum, maybe even helped write this contradictory preamble, sets up another talk-and-log/flog situation, since the chickens are hardly going to pull off a coup in tenure reform while the foxes are all around the room. But don't let that scare you away. The radical voices in this province need to be there, to be heard.

Since things are still sliding downhill in BC's forests, as well as in terms of transgenerational equity, we're at the point where a social revolution in land reform on the scale seen in some Southern hemisphere countries might now be carefully considered. Any real change on the ground seems inextricably tied to resolution of aboriginal land claims, and relocalization by establishing Community Forest Trusts to finally dismantle a defunct corporate-colonial tenure system.

David Shipway

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Why Media Ownership Matters

Amy Goodman and David Goodman

George Bush must have been delighted to learn from a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that 56 percent of Americans still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network — notions that have long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay.

Americans believe these lies not because they are stupid, but because they are good media consumers. Our media have become an echo chamber for those in power. Rather than challenge the fraudulent claims of the Bush administration, we've had a media acting as a conveyor belt for the government's lies.

As the Pentagon has learned, deploying the American media is more powerful than any bomb. The explosive effect is amplified as a few pro-war, pro-government media moguls consolidate their grip over the majority of news outlets. Media monopoly and militarism go hand in hand.

When it comes to issues of war and peace, the results of having a compliant media are as deadly to our democracy as they are to our soldiers. Why do the corporate media cheerlead for war? One answer lies in the corporations themselves — the ones that own the major news outlets.

At the time of the first Persian Gulf War, CBS was owned by Westinghouse and NBC by General Electric. Two of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers owned two of the major networks. Westinghouse and GE made most of the parts for many of the weapons in the Persian Gulf War. It was no surprise, then, that much of the coverage on those networks looked like a military hardware show.

We see reporters in the cockpits of war planes, interviewing pilots about how it feels to be at the controls. We almost never see journalists at the target end, asking people huddled in their homes what it feels like not to know what the next moment will bring.

The media have a responsibility to show the true face of war. It is bloody. It is brutal. Real people die. Women and children are killed. Families are wiped out; villages are razed. If the media would show for one week the same unsanitized images of war that the rest of the world sees, people in the U.S. would say no, that war is not an answer to conflict in the 21st century.
But we don't see the real images of war. We don't need government censors, because we have corporations sanitizing the news. A study released last month by American University's School of Communications revealed that media outlets acknowledged they self-censored their reporting on the Iraq invasion out of concerns about public reaction to graphic images and content.

The media organizations in charge of vetting our images of war have become fewer and bigger — and the news more uniform and gung ho. Six huge corporations now control the major U.S. media: Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (FOX, HarperCollins, New York Post, Weekly Standard, TV Guide, DirecTV and 35 TV stations), General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Universal Pictures and 28 TV stations), Time Warner (AOL, CNN, Warner Bros., Time and its 130-plus magazines), Disney (ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, 10 TV and 72 radio stations), Viacom (CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster and 183 U.S. radio stations), and Bertelsmann (Random House and its more than 120 imprints worldwide, and Gruner + Jahr and its more than 110 magazines in 10 countries).

As Phil Donahue, the former host of MSNBC's highest-rated show who was fired by the network in February 2003 for bringing on anti-war voices, told "Democracy Now!," "We have more [TV] outlets now, but most of them sell the Bowflex machine. The rest of them are Jesus and jewelry. There really isn't diversity in the media anymore. Dissent? Forget about it."

The lack of diversity in ownership helps explain the lack of diversity in the news. When George W. Bush first came to power, the media watchers Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) looked at who appeared on the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC. Ninety-two percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male, and where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, there was even less diversity of opinion on the airwaves. During the critical two weeks before and after Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations where he made his case for war, FAIR found that just three out of 393 sources — fewer than 1 percent — were affiliated with anti-war activism.

Three out of almost 400 interviews. And that was on the "respectable" evening news shows of CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS.

These are not media that are serving a democratic society, where a diversity of views is vital to shaping informed opinions. This is a well-oiled propaganda machine that is repackaging government spin and passing it off as journalism.

For the media moguls, even this parody of political "diversity" is too much. So as Gen. Colin Powell led the war on Iraq, his son, Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led the war on diversity of voices at home.

In the spring of 2003, Michael Powell tried to hand over the airwaves and newspapers to fewer and fewer tycoons by further loosening restrictions on how many media outlets a single company could own. Powell tried to scrap 30-year-old rules that limited the reach of any television network to no more than 35 percent of the national population, and limits on cross-ownership that, for example, prevented newspapers from buying television or radio stations in the same city. The new rules would have allowed a broadcast network to buy up stations that together reached 45 percent of the national population.

The attack on the existing media-ownership rules came from predictable corners: Both Viacom, which owns CBS, and Rupert Murdoch's conservative FOX News Channel were already in violation, and would be forced to sell off stations to come into compliance with the 35-percent limit. The rule change would enable Murdoch to control the airwaves of entire cities. That would be fine with Bush and the Powells, since Murdoch is one of their biggest boosters.

Murdoch declared in February 2003 that George W. Bush "will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn. I'm optimistic it will be the former by a ratio of 2 to 1." Murdoch leaves nothing to chance: His FOX News Channel is doing all it can to help.

It looked like Powell, backed by the Bush White House and with Republican control of Congress, would have no trouble ramming through these historic rule changes. The broadcast industry left nothing to chance: Between 1998 and 2004, broadcasters spent a boggling $249 million lobbying the federal government, including spending $27 million on federal candidates and lawmakers.

This would normally be called bribery. At the FCC, it's just business as usual.

You would think that FCC deregulation, affecting millions of Americans, would get major play in the media. But the national networks knew that if people found out about how one media mogul could own nearly everything you watch, hear and read in a city, there would be revolt. The solution for them was simple: They just didn't cover the issue for a year. The only thing the networks did was to join together — and you thought they were competitors? — in a brief filed with the FCC to call for media deregulation.

And then, something remarkable happened: Media activists — an unlikely coalition of liberals and conservatives — mounted a national campaign to defeat Powell and stop the corporate sell-off. The FCC received 2 million letters and e-mails, most of them opposing the sell-off. The Prometheus Radio Project, a grass-roots media activism group, sued to stop the sale of our airwaves, and won in federal court last June. These are hopeful signals that the days of backroom deals by media titans are numbered.

Powell announced his resignation as chairman of the FCC in January. Arguably the worst FCC chairman in history, Powell led with singular zeal the effort to auction off the public airwaves to the highest corporate bidder. In so doing, he did us all a favor: For a brief moment, he pulled back the covers on the incestuous world of media ownership to expose the corruption and rot for all to see.

Kevin Martin, Bush's newly appointed FCC chairman, will, according to an FCC insider, be even worse than Powell. Leading conservative and right-wing religious groups have been quietly lobbying the White House for Martin to chair the FCC. Martin voted with Powell on key regulations favoring media consolidation, and in addition has been a self-appointed indecency czar. The indecency furor conveniently grabs headlines and pushes for the regulation of content, while Martin and the media moguls plan sweetheart deregulation deals to achieve piecemeal what they couldn't push through all at once. This is the true indecency afflicting media today.

The major media conglomerates are among the most powerful on the planet. The onrush of digital convergence and broadband access in the workplaces and homes of America will radically change the way we work, play and communicate. Fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) from the regional Bells, Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony, bundled services from cable companies, and increased capacity in satellite and wireless technologies will transform the platforms on which we communicate.

Who owns these platforms, what is delivered over them and, fundamentally, in whose interest they work are critical issues before us now. Given the wealth of the media companies and their shrewd donations into our political process, the advocates for the public interest are in far too short a supply.

A blow against media ownership consolidation — now or in the future — will have far-reaching implications, as critical information gains exposure to a caring, active public. Instead of fake reality TV, maybe the media will start to cover the reality of people struggling to get by and of the victories that happen every day in our communities, and in strife-torn regions around the globe.

When people get information, they are empowered. We have to ensure that the airwaves are open for more of that. Our motto at "Democracy Now!" is to break the sound barrier. We call ourselves the exception to the rulers. We believe all media should be.

Amy Goodman, host of the award-winning radio and TV news show "Democracy Now!," and her brother David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother Jones, are authors of "The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them," which was just released in paperback by Hyperion.

© 2005 Seattle Times
Published on Sunday, April 3, 2005 by the Seattle Times

US Army Announces Readiness for Total Military Takeover of America

US Army Announces Readiness for Total Military Takeover of America

Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
October 21, 2006

Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting today that final steps towards a
full Military Dictatorship of the United States have been taken with the US
Army announcing USARNORTH has now reached 'full operational capacity' and is
now ready to:

"Execute homeland defense and defense support of civil authorities missions"
, and "Conduct the Army-to-Army portion of the theater cooperation mission
with Canada and Mexico".

According to these reports, the first of the USANORTH plans for the total
military takeover of the United States, from its few remaining civilian
overseers, rest with a new series of draconian laws recently enacted by
their top Military Leaders and which, among other things, suspends the right
of habeas corpus for Americans, and which the American Military Leaders have
ordered their courts to disallow, and as we can read as reported by the
Washington Post News Service in their article titled "Court Told It Lacks
Power in Detainee Cases", and which says:

"Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week
that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has
formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has
jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by
inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

Beyond those already imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the law
applies to all non-U.S. citizens, including permanent U.S. residents. Habeas
corpus, a Latin term meaning "you have the body," is one of the oldest
principles of English and American law. It requires the government to show a
legal basis for holding a prisoner."

Not being fully explained to the American people, however, are that these
new draconian laws do in fact have a direct impact upon each of them, and as
explained by an American dissident group called The Future of Freedom
Foundation, and which in their article titled "Jose Padilla and the Military
Commissions Act", states:

"Anyone who hoped that U.S. military detention of Americans accused of
terrorism expired with the transfer of American citizen Jose Padilla from
military custody to Justice Department custody have seen their hopes dashed
by the Military Commissions Act that the president signed into law
yesterday. Although the act limits to foreign citizens the use of military
tribunals and the denial of habeas corpus, any person, including American
citizens, can still be labeled and treated as an "unlawful enemy combatant"
in the war on terrorism.

What does that mean for the American people? It means the same thing it did
for Jose Padilla. You'll recall that Padilla was arrested in Chicago for
terrorism and transferred to military custody, where, according to Padilla,
he was tortured and involuntarily injected with drugs.

The government's position is that since the entire world is a battlefield in
which the war on terrorism is being waged, U.S. officials now have the power
to arrest any American suspected of terrorism, place him in military
custody, and subject him to the same "unlawful enemy combatant" treatment
that Padilla received, until the war on terrorism has finally been won, no
matter how long that takes."

More ominously for the American people is their future culpability in these
actions being done in their name by their Military Leaders, and as
articulated by one of the United States most celebrated reporters, Helen
Thomas, and who has said about these horrific new laws:

"President Bush on Tuesday signed the law that legalizes the
administration's shameful treatment of detainees suspected of terrorism. The
same measure also empowers the president to define torture. It's a sad
legacy for America and its already-tarnished world image.

The far-reaching legislation gives Bush the right to decide what constitutes
torture. The president has often said "we do not torture," despite evidence
to the contrary - and photographs from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison as
well. The president also can set guidelines for interrogation of prisoners.
White House spokesman Tony Snow declined to say whether "waterboarding" - in
which detainees are made to feel they are drowning - would be permissible.

Under the new law, the president also has extraordinary powers to designate
who is an illegal enemy combatant, which potentially subjects U.S. citizens
and foreigners to indefinite detention with no power to appeal. Bush is also
allowed to interpret the Geneva Conventions on Humane Treatment of Prisoners
of War.

One of the reasons Bush sought a green light from the lawmakers is "to have
Congress stand with him in the dock," Malinowski added. The military
commissions act is law. And all Americans will be tainted by it."

Helen Thomas' reference to American Military Leaders standing in the 'dock',
which means standing trial for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, rings
ever truer with the decision of the International Committee of the Red Cross
issuing only its second ever in history "concern" regarding the actions of a
warring Nation [the first "concern" issued by the ICRC was in 1944 over the
Nazi German treatment of concentration camp detainees], and which we can
read as reported by the SwissInfo News Service in their article titled "ICRC
"concerned" over US anti-terrorism law", and which says:

"The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern on
Thursday at the United States' tough new anti-terrorism law. The president
of Swiss-run humanitarian body, Jakob Kellenberger, said that there were
questions over its compliance with the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of
war."

To the second part of the USANORTH plan for the unsuspecting American
people, Conduct the Army-to-Army portion of the theater cooperation mission
with Canada and Mexico", we can read from the Council on Foreign Relations
report that first outlined the merger of the independent Nations of the
United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union, and which
says:

"Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in association with the
Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos
Internacionales.

North America is vulnerable on several fronts: the region faces terrorist
and criminal security threats, increased economic competition from abroad,
and uneven economic development at home. In response to these challenges, a
trinational, Independent Task Force on the Future of North America has
developed a roadmap to promote North American security and advance the
well-being of citizens of all three countries.

When the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States met in Texas
recently they underscored the deep ties and shared principles of the three
countries. The Council-sponsored Task Force applauds the announced "Security
and Prosperity Partnership of North America," but proposes a more ambitious
vision of a new community by 2010 and specific recommendations on how to
achieve it."

Also not being understood by the American people are how their young
children are currently being trained to be administrators of this North
American Union, and as we can read as reported by the World Net Daily News
Service in their article titled "N[orth] American students trained for
'merger', and which says:

"In another example of the way the three nations of North America are being
drawn into a federation, or "merger," students from 10 universities in the
U.S., Mexico and Canada are participating annually in a simulated "model
Parliament."

Under the sponsorship of the Canadian based North American Forum on
Integration, students met in the Mexican Senate for five days in May in an
event dubbed "Triumvirate," with organizers declaring "A North American
Parliament is born." A similar event took place in the Canadian Senate in
2005.

The intentions of organizers are clear. "The creation of a North American
parliament, such as the one being simulated by these young people, should be
considered," explained Raymond Chretien, the president of the Triumvirate
and the former Canadian ambassador to both Mexico and the U.S. Participants
discuss draft bills on trade corridors, immigration, provisions of the North
American Free Trade Agreement and produce a daily newspaper called "The
TrilatHerald."

To those dwindling numbers of Americans aware of the total destruction of
their Nation, and way of life, ever harsher measures to destroy all dissent
were outlined to them this past week by their Military Leaders, and as we
can read as reported by these various sources:

As reported by the Reuters News Service in their October 17th article titled
"Web could be terror training camp: Chertoff", and which says, "Disaffected
people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and
potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next
major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff said on Monday. "We now have a capability of someone to radicalize
themselves over the Internet," Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting
of International Association of the Chiefs of Police."

As reported by the CNET News Service in their October 17th article titled
"FBI director wants ISPs to track users", and which says, "FBI Director
Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record
their customers' online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate
over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year."

As reported by an American dissident writer, Chris Floyd, in his October
17th report titled "Sentimental Education: Academia Signs Up for Tracking
Down Dissent", and which says, "Why is the United States government spending
millions of dollars to track down critics of George W. Bush in the press?
And why have major American universities agreed to put this technology of
tyranny into the state's hands?

The Bush administration already has spyware devouring reams of private
information in every direction. It is now paying top universities millions
of dollars to refine this data into actionable intelligence - including the
automated discernment and tracking of dissent against administration
policies and criticism of the president. Bush has openly declared that he
has no intention of obeying privacy laws - or any other laws safeguarding
the Constitutional rights of American citizens - if he doesn't want to."

More interesting, perhaps, than the simultaneous flooding of the American
media this past week with 'frightening' reports on the 'dangers' of the
Internet by the US Military Leaders, was the sensationalist reporting
revolving around an American man posting on the Internet a hoax threat, and
which has resulted in his arrest, and as we can read as reported by the KWTX
News Service in their article titled "Store Clerk Arrested In Stadium Threat
Hoax", and which says:

"A Wisconsin grocery store clerk is under arrest on charges he's behind the
hoax that claimed there would be dirty bomb attacks during this weekend's
NFL games. Jake Brahm surrendered to federal authorities Friday morning, and
was due in a Milwaukee court later in the day. The US Attorney in Newark,
N.J., says Brahm is charged in a sealed criminal complaint."

Russian Intelligence reports on this American 'hoax incident', in our
opinion, have correctly stated that these events are a false flag operation
intended to bring the ever growing American dissident community to heel by
'reminding' them that even a 20-year-old store clerk is not beyond their
reach. We can rightly imagine the fear these events have caused among the
American dissidents as what they are experiencing now we have lived with our
entire lives.

To the greater of these issues, though, remains the fact that the total
destruction of America today has long been planned, and is even now in its
final stages. To the many warning signs put before these American people
there have also been many, and, perhaps, none more chilling then a simple
letter sent from a former US Congressman, Bill Hefner, to a constituent of
his in North Carolina written in 1997, and which says:

"Enclosed is the information you requested pertaining to the Army's policy
and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor program and civilian
prison camps on Army installations.

This information has not yet been published (it is currently at the
printers), however, it has been funded, staffed, and does reflect current
Army policy. I hope you find this information useful."

As the storm clouds continue to gather over these once great American
people, one cannot wonder at their continued insistence to not look up, see
what is coming, and prepare.

© October 21, 2006 EU and US all rights reserved.


http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index956.htm

Negroponte Comes to Canada

U.S. intelligence chief's cover blown in Ottawa
JEFF SALLOT

OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper met yesterday with John Negroponte, the U.S. director of national intelligence, at what was supposed to be a secret meeting to discuss security issues at a time when the two countries are trying to smooth troubled waters in the wake of the Maher Arar affair.

The unannounced meeting in Ottawa took place 11 days after Mr. Harper called President George W. Bush to say Canada was lodging a formal diplomatic protest about the deportation of Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, from the United States to the Middle East, where he was tortured.

Canadian and U.S. officials tried to keep the meeting under wraps, but Mr. Negroponte's cover was blown when reporters spotted him and U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins being escorted to Mr. Harper's Parliament Hill office.

Also attending the meeting were Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States.

Traditionally, visits by cabinet-rank U.S. officials are accompanied by a bit of public fanfare, including an advance announcement by Ottawa. But Mr. Harper's guarded style of government has been characterized by unpublicized federal cabinet meetings and an unannounced visit by the Prime Minister of Haiti. Mr. Harper's office issued a hastily written note about Mr. Negroponte's visit only after journalists began asking why Mr. Bush's top intelligence official was on Parliament Hill. The note, which mistakenly referred to the director of national intelligence as the director of national security, said Mr. Negroponte was making a courtesy call.

"Mr. Negroponte is here on a liaison visit to Canada, as part of a regular exchange regarding security issues between Canada and the U.S.," the note said. "This is an indication of how closely we work together."

The U.S. embassy said Mr. Negroponte was staying for dinner and "touching base" with Canadian officials.

Speaking with reporters on his way to the Prime Minister's Office, Mr. MacKay said he did not know exactly what was on the agenda for the meeting with Mr. Negroponte. "He's meeting with Stockwell Day. He's meeting, I believe, with the Prime Minister just as a courtesy."

The United States has not yet formally responded to Canada's diplomatic protest note on the Arar case, Mr. MacKay said. Mr. Wilson delivered the note to the State Department on Monday.

Last month, a federal commission of inquiry cleared Mr. Arar of any involvement with terrorism. The inquiry also said Washington likely relied on false and inflammatory intelligence reports from the RCMP in its decision to deport Mr. Arar in 2002.

Canada's New Bush-Style Politics

Canada's New Bush-Style Politics

By Richard Fricker

October 14, 2006

As an American journalist visiting my wife’s relatives in Canada, I’ve always been struck by how ardently the country’s political discourse focused on substance – the budget, health care, schools, roads – with little of the cheap theatrics and angry divisiveness of U.S. politics and punditry.

Reading and listening to the Canadian news media during those family trips could be a tad boring, but it also was touching, like remembering your earnest grade-school civics teacher lecturing about the wonders of the American democratic process.

But in my visit this past summer, I noticed that the tone of Canada suddenly had changed. There was a nastier edge to the commentary. There were not so subtle appeals to racism and xenophobia, references to Muslim neighborhoods in Quebec as “Quebecistan” and to Lebanese-Canadians as “Hezbocrats,” a play on the Muslim group Hezbollah.

To someone who has covered U.S. politics for three decades, there was a shock of recognition. Standing out starkly against the bland traditions of Canadian governance was the pugnacious ‘tude of American political combat, wedge issues pounded in with a zeal that put the goal of winning and holding power over everything else.

It was as if a virus that had long infected the people south of the border had overnight jumped containment and spread northward establishing itself in a new host population. But – as I began to study this new phenomenon – it became clear that this infection did not just accidentally break quarantine.

Rather, it was willfully injected into the Canadian body politic by conservative strategists and right-wing media moguls who had studied the modern American model and were seeking to replicate it.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper even brought in Republican advisers, such as political consultant Frank Luntz, to give pointers on how the ruling Conservative Party could become as dominant in Canada as the GOP is in the United States.

Canada had its version of Rupert Murdoch and Fox News in the Asper brothers and their CanWest Global Communications Corp., which owns the National Post, the Montreal Gazette and nine other Canadian newspapers, 25 television outlets and two radio stations.

It was the Montreal Gazette and the National Post that trumpeted the phrase “Quebecistan” after demonstrators in Ottawa and Montreal protested Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon in summer 2006.

Columnist Don MacPherson equated those protests, where some demonstrators waved Hezbollah flags, with pro-terrorism. “It’s finally becoming respectable again to express support for terrorists,” MacPherson wrote on Aug. 8, 2006, in the Montreal Gazette.

Meanwhile, CanWest’s National Post offered up a Canadian version of Ann Coulter in columnist Barbara Kay.

In one of Kay’s columns, she noted that 50,000 Lebanese-Canadians lived in Montreal and added, “We can expect those numbers to swell as Hezbollah-supporting residents of southern Lebanon cash in on their Canadian citizenship and flee to safety.”

Kay denounced Quebec as “the most anti-Israel of the provinces and therefore the most vulnerable to tolerance for Islamist” causes.

“The word would go out to the Islamophere that Quebec was the Londonistan,” Kay wrote. “It won’t if our political class takes its cues from principled Stephen Harper rather than shameless Quebec politicians who led the pro-terrorist rally.”

‘Clone de Bush’

Harper, Canada’s photogenic 47-year-old prime minister, has emerged as the face of modern Canadian conservatism much the way George W. Bush has come to personify right-wing politics in the United States.

Born in Toronto in 1959, Harper moved west to Alberta in 1978 to work in the petroleum industry. Similarly, Bush cut his teeth as a Texas oilman, albeit a failed one.

Much as that oilfield experience shaped Bush’s persona and Texas money fueled the American Right, so too did Alberta and its oil industry influence the political development of Harper and the emergence of modern Canadian conservatism.

Harper earned a bachelor’s degree and his masters in economics from the University of Calgary. By 1985, then in his mid-20s, he had turned to politics, gaining recognition as a bright operative and landing a job as chief aide to a Tory member of Parliament named Jim Hawkes.

But Harper grew disenchanted with the compromising style of Canada’s Tories who – like Prime Minister Brian Mulroney – often worked collaboratively with other political parties in Ottawa to maintain social programs for Canadians. Harper concluded that Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party was too liberal, so he quit it in 1986.

At age 28, Harper was recruited by Preston Manning, the founder of Canada’s Reform Party, and became the party’s chief political officer. Harper ran for the House of Commons against his old mentor, Hawkes, in 1988, losing badly.

But the defeat did not dampen Harper’s political ambitions. He continued to puzzle over how a revamped conservative movement might shake up Canadian politics and ultimately gain power.

For inspiration in building this new brand of Canadian conservatism, Harper looked to Washington, where Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia, was promoting a combative style designed to shatter the longtime Democratic grip on the U.S. House of Representatives. In Gingrich’s view, Republicans had to replace cooperation with confrontation.

In 1993, Harper ran for the House of Commons again, this time aided by a tactic pioneered by U.S. conservatives – having ostensibly independent organizations tear down one’s opponent with large sums of money outside the legal limits on campaign spending.

In this case, a group called the National Citizens Coalition went on the offensive against MP Hawkes, undermining his political support enough so that Harper was able to win the seat in Calgary West.

Harper was learning, too, from conservative spinmeister Frank Luntz, who helped Gingrich draft the “Contract With America,” which became the centerpiece of the Republican victory in the U.S. Congress in 1994. Luntz was a specialist at the take-no-prisoners-style of politics that envisioned permanent conservative control of Washington.

Harper picked up other tips from Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove, such as the importance of transforming the Christian evangelical movement into an activist base for conservative politics.

Harper’s brash conservatism grated on the more populist positions of Manning’s Reform Party, which once rebuked Harper for not standing with the party’s internal policies. For his part, Harper considered Manning too inclined to compromise.

In January 1997, Harper resigned his Reform Party seat in Parliament and went to work as vice president of the National Citizens Coalition, the outside organization that had helped Harper defeat Hawkes in 1993.

Harper soon rose to be the coalition’s president and served notice that the group would become a vehicle for smashing Canada’s political status quo.

In a speech in the United States to a major conservative organization, the Council for National Policy, Harper declared that “Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worse sense of the term, and very proud of it.”

Harper also mocked Canadians as complacent and ill-informed. “If you’re like most Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country,” he told his CNP audience. “Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians.”

Back in Canada, Harper also began ratcheting up the political rhetoric, co-authoring an article referring to Canada’s Liberal government as a “benign dictatorship” held together by incompetence. The article also sought conservative unity and praised the hard-edged right-wing commentary in media outlets owned by mogul Conrad Black.

Harper cobbled together a platform of issues that exploited Canada’s latent social, cultural and economic resentments. He proposed raising the age of sexual consent, permitting more corporal punishment of children, initiating a program similar to school vouchers, and resisting issues that favored French-speaking Quebec.

As this Americanized version of Canadian conservatism took shape, Harper was cribbing, too, from another rising U.S. politician, George W. Bush. Harper said his goal was to tap into a political base “similar to what George Bush tapped.”

New Party

Amid a surge of anti-minority sentiments, Harper merged his operations at the Canadian Conservative Alliance with those of Peter MacKay, the last leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. In 2003, they officially formed the Conservative Party of Canada.

Their timing was perfect. As with the congressional Democrats in the United States a decade earlier, the Canadian Liberal Party found itself beset with corruption allegations and suffering from growing public resentment about high taxes.

In contrast to these tainted Liberals was the fresh-faced Harper at the head of a shiny new movement with powerful backing from right-wing interest groups, neoconservative media outlets and stirred-up social conservatives.

Though Conrad Black’s media empire had collapsed in a financial scandal, some of his properties, such as the National Post, were snapped up by CanWest Global, which shared Black’s staunchly pro-Israeli stance on Middle East affairs.

Harper also brought into play evangelical Protestants, through his membership in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, which opposed gay rights, was staunchly anti-abortion and targeted North Africa’s Muslims for conversion to Christianity.

In 2004, Harper engineered a political breakthrough for the Conservatives in Ontario, boosting their standing in the House of Commons by 25 seats.

This new conservative coalition flexed its muscles again in January 2006, denying the Liberals control of Parliament by claiming 124 seats (out of 308) and putting Harper in position to piece together a coalition government, which he did.

Harper was sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister on Feb. 6, 2006, consolidating right-wing political power across the North American continent. President Bush finally had a likeminded Canadian leader who also shared Washington’s neoconservative doctrine for confronting the Islamic world.

The tone of Canadian political discourse has followed this shift in the government, especially with CanWest media outlets ready to trumpet news that puts the Islamic world in the worst possible light.

For instance, on May 19, 2006, the National Post published a front-page article by expatriate Iranian journalist Amir Taheri, claiming that Iran was enacting legislation that would require color-coded “badges” for Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians.

“Jews would be marked out with a yellow strip of cloth sewn in front of their clothes while Christians will be assigned the colour red” and Zoroastrians would wear blue, Taheri reported in the article distributed by Benador Associates, a public relations firm representing neoconservative writers, such as Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle.

With its obvious Holocaust allusion, Taheri’s story flashed around the world, picked up by the New York Post, Rush Limbaugh and the powerful U.S.-Israeli lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Harper and Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard, who was visiting Canada, joined in denouncing Iran for the purported badge legislation.

However, Taheri’s article turned out to be untrue. The Iranian legislation contained nothing about making religious minorities wear colored badges. After the facts were challenged, the National Post retracted the story and later published an apology.

Media Confrontation

In June 2006, Harper applied another lesson from the U.S. Republican playbook: Even with a supportive right-wing news media protecting your flanks, still pick a fight with the rest of the national news media.

Claiming to be victimized by hostile questions from Parliament Hill reporters, Harper announced that he would favor regional news outlets with interviews, while shunning the supposedly “elitist” national press corps.

“I have trouble believing that a Liberal prime minister would have this problem, but the press gallery at the leadership level has taken an anti-Conservative view,” Harper said, ignoring the role the same journalists had played in highlighting Liberal Party corruption which cleared the way for the Conservative Party victory.

Harper mandated that reporters sign up in advance to ask questions at news conferences and then weeded out journalists considered too liberal, according to Yves Malo, president of the press corps gallery.

Harper’s staff “made it very clear they were taking their cue from the White House,” Malo told me. “They were always telling us how things were done in Washington. The first time we resisted we were called ‘liberals.’ Now, we’re called ‘liberal ideologues.’”

Much as Bush speaks almost exclusively before friendly, well-screened audiences, Harper tends to grant exclusive interviews to CanWest media outlets, Malo said.

Despite the lingering embarrassment over the bogus “colored badge” story, CanWest’s neoconservative attitudes resurfaced in July 2006 when war broke out between Israel and Lebanon.

As Israeli bombers inflicted heavy civilian casualties in Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers, Lebanese-Canadians staged protests demanding that Israel cease its attacks.

Montreal Gazette columnist MacPherson chastised Quebec politicians who attended the rally for not condemning Hezbollah and for not discouraging Hezbollah sympathizers from participating. National Post writer Kay termed the rally “virulently anti-Israel.”

Launched from CanWest’s newspapers, the words “Quebecistan” and “Hezbocrats” were suddenly buzzing through Canada’s public debate.

While this kind of divisive rhetoric is common in the United States and is even encouraged as a way to energize the political base, it marked an escalation of political stridency for Canada.

Some of that fury seems to have subsided since a ceasefire took hold between Lebanon and Israel in late summer. But the larger question remains whether Harper will succeed in transforming Canada into a more belligerent and bellicose nation, much as Bush has done in the United States.

For generations, Canada has prided itself on its well-liked image around the world. It is a nation renowned for sending peacekeepers abroad not occupying armies. Aside from ice hockey and occasional over-indulgence in beer drinking, Canadians are known for their civility, not combativeness.

There is also the possibility that having seen the consequences of right-wing governance in the United States, Canadians will recoil at the thought of losing their pleasant country with its national health insurance and fairly comfortable lifestyle, in favor of the more cut-throat economic system south of the border.

Some analysts suspect, too, that the Bush connection could ultimately hurt Harper, who is sometimes referred to as “un clone de Bush.” With Canadian troops dying in Afghanistan and violence rising in the Middle East, Harper’s coziness with Bush may become a liability as it has been for British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Over the past several months, Harper has seen his popularity decline and the backing of his coalition partners erode. It remains to be seen if Harper’s American-style conservatism can survive – let alone thrive – in Canada.

The Liberal Party – after selecting new leadership in December – is expected to force a new round of elections early in 2007. That election may well turn out to be a test of whether the American brand of conservatism has a future as a political export.



http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/101306c.html

Three Strikes and Stephen Harper is Out

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Though there are myriad reasons Canadians should have a quick end to the public service career of Mr. Harper - his personality, arrogant disregard of both Canadian tradition and sensibilities, and his cosy relationship with the Republican regime to the south leap immediately to mind - three recent “initiatives” are enough to sink the bastardized, remnant Conservative Party, and in so doing turn back too the latest and greatest threat to her sovereign survival Canada has faced yet in four centuries of resistance to American expansionist designs.

www.PEJ.org

Three Strikes and Stephen Harper is Out

C. L. Cook

PEJ News
October 19, 2006

Outside Alberta’s Calgary School, scholars of Canadian history are well aware of Washington’s repeated attempts to consolidate control of the North American continent, fulfilling the original intent of the (in)famous Monroe Doctrine. Canadian prairie farmer, two-time contender for the leadership of the pre-Harper Conservatives, and author of a book chronicling those expansionist efforts, David Orchard records four military invasions of the country, and the constant machinations against all spheres of Canadian life emanating from south of the 49th. This is not the stuff of fantasy, but historical fact.

Orchard was painfully aware of Harper’s Yankee tendencies in matters of economy and social engineering, and made as a condition of ceding his Tory leadership challenge Peter MacKay’s promise he would not allow political congress between Canada’s founding Conservatives and Harper’s hard right Alliance party. Orchard warned all who would listen, but ultimately, his was a voice left largely in the wilderness by an over-concentrated, and disinterested Canadian media. Of course, MacKay broke his promise immediately, enjoining Harper’s Alliance in exchange for a cabinet post and the nebulous illusion Britain’s Mr. Brown knows well; a tacit promise of eventually proving heir apparent to the party’s leadership.

What worried David Orchard’s sleep was soon made real by Harper following his January minority assumption to Sussex Drive; in the scant months since, Stephen Harper has managed to make Canada wholly unrecognizable to many of its citizens; eviscerating vital societal determinants that distinguish the country’s independence, Harper has accepted whole cloth the Republic philosophy ruling, and ruining, the United States these half-dozen horrible years past. In foreign policy, law and order, and on the environment, Ottawa now mirrors Washington perfectly. Like an echo, Harper has, on the strength of an immensely unpopular minority administration, taken it upon himself to “harmonize” the country’s judiciary, military and environmental ethos with the U.S., ostensibly determining an end to Canada’s social democratic experiment.

Striking at the very pillars of the nation, Harper has accelerated efforts begun by his Liberal predecessors to redefine Canada’s foreign policy, not only making it a more conspicuous actor within George W. Bush’s so-named Global War on Terror, but also maintaining a muscular approach in Haitian affairs. Worse, Harper shamelessly sallied forth, pre-empting our good neighbour south, to the front of the line of those nations that would support Israel’s siege and destroy campaign against the civilian inmates of Prison Camp Palestine. He followed that disgrace with equal disdain for justice and human rights, chiming his support for the rogue Jewish State’s obliteration of its neighbour Lebanon this summer. In that instance, Ottawa disregards entirely the criminality of Israel and its masters in Washington, even if it means, as was witnessed in Lebanon, leaving the wanton murder of Canadian citizens unchallenged.

With Afghanistan coming daily to look more and more like Canada’s “Iraq,” combined with Canadian’s long wariness of American imperial aims on this continent and abroad, Stephen Harper is set to inherit the collective backlash of more than a half-decade of wars and occupations just gone by and still going nowhere. Should there be another election, an early winter election, a second winter election in a row, Stephen Harper will find he and his band of diminutive Bushist Republicans vying for re-election on a war and security platform, hoping to sell Canadians on the American prescription that to any but the most determinedly uninformed is clearly a recipe for disaster. And this for Harper, already a little short of originality in his public pronouncements, means standing in front of the Canadian public, as the flagged-coffin ceremonies carry on in the background, repeating word for word George W. Bush’s worn scripts, carefully including all the right “stay the course” platitudes and other too-familiar banalities.

Despite this, Harper seems intent on forcing an early December election, perhaps hoping to shelter the campaign in the shadows of the looming U.S. mid-term elections. The tool to bring this about is a little piece of legislation, introduced in the house, that is so odious the opposition can’t allow it to pass into law. Should Harper take his Clean Air Act to the floor for a vote the opposition must call for a vote of non-confidence, and he and his neophyte colleagues will be finished.

Admitting the political course charted from the Potomac is a proven disaster being something yet beyond imagining in Harper’s Ottawa circles (that obvious and inevitable acceptance pending at some future time) Stephen “Steve” Harper’s enthusiasm for Canada’s engagement in more wars and occupations as directed remains exuberant. As does his ardour for other made in America policies.

Perhaps reflecting his political initiation in Alberta, Harper’s Conservatives are proving as environmentally regressive as their Texan brethren. Under Harper, the new government of Canada has dithered on the old government’s Kyoto commitments, and now seems ready to ditch it entirely. This week, Harper’s presentation of the Clean Air Act confirms it, as with its namesake legislation in the United States, does nothing to address Canada’s contribution to global climate heating, or diminish our massive, and growing levels of CO2 gas emissions. Environmental critics, most notable the prestigious David Suzuki Foundation, blast the act as being, at best, little more than a stalling tactic meant to keep meaningful environmental action on the backburner for another five years. It is in fact legislation so blatantly hypocritical, and ineffectual, parties hoping to bolster their green credentials cannot afford to hold their collective nose and allow it passage.

This is Harper’s gamble: Ram through an energy sector-friendly, anti-environmental package now, while the rival Liberal’s are consumed in a leadership contest that’s becoming nastier by the day, daring them to force an environmental election. But, there’s more smelling about Stephen Harper’s project than just a bad air act.

While Canadians face the prospect of being treated to scientific side-show of an election, the third strike against the nation’s integrity is unfolding in the background. The transformation of Canada’s judiciary has carried on, with little comment from either the press, or the opposition. Most worryingly is the Conservative’s proposed adoption of a “three strike” provision, as in America, that allows endless incarceration for crimes that would otherwise not merit a life sentence. The enactment of three strike laws in the United States has proven a large contributor to that incarceration-crazy country’s burgeoning prison/slave population. Stephen Harper will argue from the stump that Canada needs to import the more draconian American penal measures, precepts and practice to keep us safe. This despite crime trends turning in the opposite direction. It’s an approach guaranteed to balloon the prison system, filling the jails with B.C. potheads, and indigent panhandlers. The subsequently overburdened system will doubtless require privatization.

Just this week past, George W. Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act, (HR 6616) putting the finishing touch on the disintegration of the rule of law that led the West out of the dark age, birthing first the Enlightenment, then the modern democratic state. The Act legalizes everything done contrary to both U.S. and international law by this administration going back to September 11, 2001, and O.K.’s all it may yet do. It is, in effect the final flourish, a stroking into law the lawlessness practiced by this administration from its beginnings.

Stephen Harper will this winter be made to defend his decisions to repeat America’s crime and punishment failures, ally with the torturers of Maher Arar (and uncounted others), and further enjoin the slaughter of innocents in Afghanistan, while turning a blind eye to the atrocities practiced by his friends in Israel, Britain, Australia, and the of course, America. And, should Canada’s supine pressmen find more nerve than so far demonstrated, Stephen, the enthusiastic defender of the abandonment of the ancient right of Habeas Corpus, and all else undone by Washington, must too answer for his determination to abandon the environment in favour of corporate oligarchs.

Should Harper's fatally flawed "Clean Air Act" bill be presented for a vote in the house, Mr. Harper will certainly follow the short-lived administration of Joe Clark, while gaining a degree of contempt it took Brian Mulroney a decade to nurture.



Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, host of the weekly public affairs program, Gorilla Radio, and associate editor for the Atlantic Free Press. You can check out the GR Blog here.

additional source materials:

Globe re: negroponte in Canada:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/
LAC.20061018.NEGROPONTE18/TPStory/National

Globe re: bad air
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/
TPStory/LAC/20061011/IBBITSON11/Columnists/
Columnist?author=John+Ibbitson

Torstar Chantal 3
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&col=
968350116795&c=Article&cid=

1161079748179&call_pageid=968256290204

Torstar
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?
pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=
1161253812411&call_pageid=968332188492

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Climbing Rates Shock Private Elec Customers

Competitive Era Fails to Shrink Electric Bills

New York Times

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Published: October 15, 2006

A decade after competition was introduced in their industries,
long-distance phone rates had fallen by half, air fares by more than a
fourth and trucking rates by a fourth. But a decade after the federal
government opened the business of generating electricity to competition,
the market has produced no such decline.

Instead, more rate increase requests are pending now than ever before,
said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, the
association for the investor-owned utilities that provide about 60
percent of the nation’s power. The investor-owned electric utility
industry published a June report entitled “Why Are Electricity Prices
Increasing?”

About 40 percent of all electricity customers — those in 23 states and
the District of Columbia where new competition was approved — mostly
paid modestly lower prices over the past decade. But those savings were
primarily because states, which continue to have some rate-setting
power, imposed cuts, freezes and caps at the behest of consumer groups
that wanted to insulate customers from any initial price swings.

The last of those rate protections expire next year, and the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission and other federal agencies warn in a draft
report to Congress that “customers may experience rate shock” as
utilities seek to make up for revenue they did not collect during the
period of artificially reduced prices and to cover higher costs of fuel.
They warned that “this rate shock can create public pressure” to turn
back from electricity prices set by the market to prices set by
government regulators.

The disappointing results stem in good part from the fact that a
genuinely competitive market for electricity production has not developed.

Concerned about rising prices, California and five other states have
suspended or delayed transition to the competitive system.

And voters around two California cities, Sacramento and Davis, will
decide next month whether to replace investor-owned utilities with
municipal power in hopes of lowering rates. Drives are under way to
expand public power in Massachusetts. In Portland, Ore., the city
council tried and failed to buy the local utility company.

Electric customers in other states are facing rude surprises.

In Baltimore, an expected 72 percent rate increase in electricity prices
has aroused so much protest that the state legislature met in special
session, where it arranged to phase in the higher costs over several
years. In Illinois, rates are about to rise as much as 55 percent.

The three New York area states opened their electricity markets to
competition, with different results.

In Connecticut, residential electric rates rose up to 27 percent last
year to an average of $128 a month, and are expected to go up as much as
50 percent more in January.

In New Jersey, rates rose up to 13 percent this year, and are poised to
go much higher.

New York residential customers, by contrast, paid an inflation-adjusted
average of 16 percent less in 2004 than in 1996, a state report said. It
is not known how much of that is attributable to government-ordered rate
cuts, but the state benefited from huge increases in power generated by
its nuclear plants and by buying power from New England plants that,
starting next year, may have less electricity to sell to New York.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and five other agencies, in the
draft of the report to Congress, are unable to specify any overall
savings. “It has been difficult,” the report states, “to determine
whether retail prices” in the states that opened to competition “are
higher or lower than they otherwise would have been” under the old system.

Joseph T. Kelliher, the commission chairman, said Friday that eventually
“market discipline will deliver the best prices” and noted that every
administration and Congress since 1978 had pushed the industry toward
competition. He added that the commission recognized a need for
“constant reform of the rules.”

Under the old system, regulated utilities generated electricity and
distributed it to customers. Under the new system, many regulated
utilities only deliver power, which they buy from competing producers
whose prices are not regulated. For example, Consolidated Edison, which
serves the New York City area, once produced almost all the power it
delivered; now it must buy virtually all its electricity from companies
that bought its power plants and from other independent generators.

The goal is for producers to compete to offer electricity at the lowest
price, savings customers money.

Independent power producers, free-market economists and the Clinton
Administration cheered in 1996 when the federal government allowed
states to adopt the new system. The new rules “will benefit the industry
and consumers to the tune of billions of dollars every year,” Elizabeth
A. Moler, then chairwoman of FERC, said at the time. She said the new
rules would “accelerate competition and bring lower prices and more
choices to energy customers.”

But that has not happened. A truly competitive market has never
developed, and, in most areas, the number of power producers is small.
In New Jersey, for example, only six companies produce power, and not
all of them sell to every utility.

Some utilities have decided to buy electricity not from the cheapest
supplier but from one owned by a sister to the utility company, even if
that electricity is more expensive. That has been the case in Ohio.

And if electricity is needed from more than one producer, utilities pay
each one the highest price accepted in the bidding, not the lowest. This
one-price system, adopted by the industry and approved by the federal
government, is intended to encourage investment in new power plants,
which are costlier than older ones.

But critics say that, as in California five years ago in a scandal that
enveloped Enron, the auction system can be manipulated to drive up
prices, with the increases passed on to customers. What is more,
companies that produce electricity can withhold it or limit production
even when demand is at its highest, lifting prices. This happened in
California, and the federal commission has found that it occurred in a
few more instances since then. Critics say that more subtle techniques
to reduce the supply of power are common and that the commission shows
little interest in investigating.

Bryan Lee, a FERC spokesman, said complaints of manipulation are
investigated, but only last year did Congress give the commission the
legal tools to punish manipulators.

Under the new system there have been some big winners — including
Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm — that
figured out that there were huge profits to be made in one area of the
new system.

Such investors have in some cases resold power plants they just bought,
making a large profit. In other cases, investors have bought power
plants from the utilities at what proved to be bargain prices, then sold
the electricity back at much higher prices than it would have cost the
utility to generate the electricity.

Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, said the
supposedly competitive market has been “a complete failure and colossal
waste of time and money.”

He asked the federal commission to revoke competitive pricing in his
state, but the commission dismissed the complaint last Wednesday, saying
the state had not proved its case.

Advocates of moving to the new system say that, in time, the discipline
of the competitive market will mean the best possible prices for
customers. Alfred E. Kahn, the Cornell University economist who led the
fight to deregulate airlines and who, as New York’s chief utility
regulator in the 1970’s, nudged electric utilities toward the new
system, said that he was not troubled by the uneven results so far.

“Change,” Professor Kahn said, “is always messy.”

But some advocates of introducing competition to the electric industry
have soured on the idea. They include the Cato Institute, a leading
promoter of libertarian thought that favors the least possible
regulation and that concluded earlier this year that government and
electric utilities have made such hash of the new system that the whole
effort should be scrapped.

“We recommend total abandonment of restructuring,” Cato said. If the
public rejects a greater embrace of markets, Cato wrote, the next best
choice would be a “return to an updated version of the old” system.

The conflicting results among the many studies of electric prices stand
in contrast to the sharp, unambiguous drops in the prices of telephone
calls, air travel and trucking.

One study by the utility economist Mark L. Fagan, a senior fellow at the
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a consultant to various
businesses who favors a competitive system, found that the new system
often produces better results. He found that in 12 of 18 states that
restructured, prices were lower for industrial customers than they would
have been under the old system. But he also found that prices were
somewhat lower than his model predicted in seven of 27 states that did
not open to competition.

In Virginia, a state that did not move to the new system, a report last
month by the agency that regulates utilities found “no discernible
benefit” to customers in the 16 states that had gone the farthest and
warned that electricity prices in those states “may actually be
increasing faster than for customers in states that did not restructure.”

And Professor Jay Apt, a former astronaut who runs the electricity study
center at Carnegie-Mellon University, found that savings from
introducing competition to sales of electricity to large industrial
customers “are so small that they are not meaningful.”

Regardless of the debate over the effectiveness of the new system,
electricity prices are expected to rise in the next few years for
several reasons apart from any rise in the price of coal, natural gas,
oil, uranium and other fuels.

A study issued in June by the Edison Foundation, which represents
investor-owned utilities concluded that utilities would have to raise
rates to upgrade local distribution systems and to finance long-distance
transmission lines, as well as for new power plants. The study found
that utility profit margins had thinned and financial strength had
weakened. It called for relief in the form of higher rates.

Gorilla Radio for Monday, October 16, 2006

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - This week on GR: Veteran for peace, Mike Ferner and reports from inside Iraq's Red Zone. Tom Rankin and the hijacking of B.C. Hydro. And; Janine Bandcroft brings us up to speed with all that's good to do in and around Victoria this week.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca He also serves as a contributing editor at the progressive web news site: http://www.pej.org. You can check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com

www.PEJ.org

Gorilla Radio for Monday,
October 16, 2006

C. L. Cook

PEJ Radio
Ocotober 15, 2006

Who could have known? Who could have foreseen the disaster Iraq would become before the missiles and bombs fell, before the shock and awe?

The millions marching in the streets of towns and cities across the world knew. Movie stars and lesser artists and political celebrities who were ridiculed and refused air time knew. The myriad organizations, both established and hurriedly cobbled against the impeding attack knew. And, the men who planned and executed this horror knew they would profit it.
More than three and a half years on, and the situation in Iraq is worse now than ever. Mike Ferner is an American peace activist, freelance journalist, and author of the book, ‘Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran for Peace Reports from Iraq.’

Mike Ferner in the first half.

And; Memories of the greatest rip-off perpetrated against the public weal of the young 21st have faded in light of George W. Bush’s titanic criminality since, but British Colombian’s forget the Enron electricity market scam at their peril.

Though George Bush’s ‘Kenny Boy’ Lay may rest in peace, while his lieutenants in the looting spree of California and beyond call cells home, privatized power is still with us, and as then it is casting a greedy eye to B.C.’s market and generating capacity.

Tom Rankin is one British Colombian not prepared to stand by as Premier Campbell and his privateers take the continent’s best run public utility out of the people’s hands.

Tom Rankin and stopping the Hydro hijacking in the second half.

And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of the groovy things to do in and around Victoria this week.

G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.

Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, William Bowles, Vincent Bugliosi, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Juan Cole, David Cromwell, Murray Dobbin, Jon Elmer, Reese Erlich, Anthony Fenton, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Chris Floyd, Connie Fogal, Susan George, Stan Goff, Robert Greenwald, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Diana Johnstone, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Jason Leopold, Jeff Leys, Dave Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Jennifer Loewenstein, Wayne Madsen, Stephen Marshall, Linda McQuaig, George Monbiot, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Kurt Nimmo, David Orchard, Greg Palast, Mike Palecek, Michael Parenti, Robert Parry, Kevin Pina, William Rivers Pitt, Justin Podur, Jack Random, Sheldon Rampton, Paul Craig Roberts, Paul de Rooij, John Ross, Danny Schechter, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Mickey Z., Dave Zirin, and many others.