(2) Russia Targets Oil Pirates in Syria – YouTube
Category: Environment
-
“Global Order” Equals the “New Fascism”
Globalizing “neoliberal” diktats are imposing death and poverty as transnational oligarchies bleed “countries” of their wealth and resources. Western politicians are perception management fronts. “Austerity” = corporate bailouts. Nomenclature is weaponized.
People, the new “wretched of the earth” are increasingly caged, shackled, disappeared, lost at sea. Racism and fascism, outgrowths of fabricated supremacist ideologies, are becoming the “new normal” as socially-oriented, democratic political economies at home and abroad are undermined and destroyed. “Neoliberalism” and democracy run in opposite directions.
The same dystopia that the transnational oligarchy and its Imperial terror forces impose on prey nations is also being imposed on domestic “First World” populations as well-paying jobs are off-shored, healthcare is “privatized”, middle classes evaporate, the public sphere is plundered, regulations that are detrimental to corporate conglomerates are erased, and the masses are disempowered. Vast flows of public monies are transferred to War Inc. which further devastates people and the planet. Root causes of the dystopia are taboo topics. (Mark Taliano, July 19, 2019)
The current “neoliberal” bailed-out “free market” diseconomy, imposed globally by military war crimes, erases nation-state sovereignty and self-determination in favour of supranational totalitarian predation.
Freedom of thought and expression are erased beneath the amorphous predation of this neo-con “global order”. The truth must not emerge, because the truth is entirely toxic to humanity and the habitable planet. Canada’s support for Nazism and al Qaeda are hallmarks of the cancer infecting us. But the cancer must be hidden. This is the new “Nazism”, (cloaked in humanitarianism), but it is arguably far more devastating than the old ”Nazism”.
Hallmarks of the system include decimation and plunder of the public sphere, “privatization” and deregulation, factors which led directly to the 2008/09 crash, the public bailouts of corporate monopolies — including banks[1]and car manufacturing — skyrocketing public debt, and the on-going economic dystopia of precarious employment, off-shoring of well-paying jobs, rising poverty, and increasing wealth concentrated in the and hands of an oligarchic (extreme) minority.
Predation of the public sphere includes the public bailouts of auto manufacturers and banks. But the corporate monopolies know no loyalties, and they are protected by supranational “free” trade agreements. Hence, whereas the Canadian auto industry received almost $4 billion in bailouts[2] in 2009, they are now relocating to cheaper pastures[3]. Civic responsibility and neoliberalism are completely divorced from each other.
Overseas, neoliberalism imposes itself through war and terrorism. Canada and its allies support neo-Nazis[4], al Qaeda and ISIS[5], but the war propaganda and the apparatus of Lies Inc., to which the colonial media, spawn of concentrated media ownership, owes its fidelity, hides the truth to all but the well-informed. War propaganda is the norm, not the exception.
This failed economic model perpetuates itself domestically and globally with vast and increasing inflows of public monies. Hence, the over $32 billion that Canada spends on “Defence” spending to the detriment of spending that addresses real world needs.
Public Accounts of Canada, 2017-2018. Statement of Expenses. Courtesy Tamara Lorincz.
Video: West’s War Against Syria Is Packed in Lies and Deceptions
The “global order” preached by Canada and its allies, is the new Fascism, globalized, parasitical, mass murdering, and mindless.
Canada can remain a vassal to the worst of the worst, relinquishing all of its sovereignty, or it can take steps towards a better future. Leaving NATO would be the first best step.
*
Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.
Notes
[1] Prof. Chossudovsky, “The Banker Bailouts – Michel Chossudovsky on Economics 101” The Corbett Report. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx76RmNpAVM) Accessed 12 April, 2018.
[2] Mark Mike, “How much did the 2009 automotive bailout cost taxpayers?” Taxpayer.com. November 2015. (https://www.taxpayer.com/media/CTF-AutoBailoutReport-2015.pdf) Accessed 4 December, 2018.
[3] Council of Canadians Media Release, “Oshawa Plant Closing Just Another Symptom of Bad Free Trade Agreements, says Council of Canadians.” 28 November, 2018.( https://canadians.org/media/oshawa-plant-closing-just-another-symptom-bad-free-trade-agreements-says-council-canadians?fbclid=IwAR2Kop8Cjp9BmCHJ6xCevKdt_lfbi4_VIfqenqK8accSjJI7yAf9tplmFhg#.XAaP1ZVwzgY.facebook) Accessed 4 December, 2018.
[4] Stephen Lendman, “Ukraine: US-installed Fascist Tyranny in Europe’s Heartland.” Global Research. 4 December, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-us-installed-fascist-tyranny-in-europes-heartland/5661763) Accessed 12 April, 2018.
[5] Mark Taliano, “Empire’s Currency: The Lie.” Global Research. 17 November, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/empires-currency-lie/5660161) Accessed 4 December, 2018.
-
Sovereign Corporations Occupy The Commons
The “Fourth World”, as defined by Anthony J. Hall in The American Empire And The Fourth World, is a sustainable model of globalization that respects cultural, economic, and environmental pluralism, as it embraces globalized democracy, and the rights of self –determination. It represents trajectories towards Life and the rule of law, but needs to be allied with an effective apparatus of enforcement.
The current corporate globalization that is imposing itself on the world contradicts these Life forces. It imposes itself internationally through illegal wars of aggression, fascistic governance at home and abroad, extremism, abrogation of rights and freedoms, denial of self-determination, war, poverty, and death.
An increasingly monolithic and globalized supranational governance is imposing itself through corporate sovereignty deals (inaccurately labelled “trade deals”), supranational dispute tribunals, transnational financial institutions, financial services bundled with predatory Structural Adjustment Programs, and totalitarian, anti-democratic trajectories.
This Orwellian world, that is achieving its ascendancy through stealth, cloaks itself in the language of human rights — free trade agreements, humanitarian interventions — as it denies freedom and humanitarianism, domestically and internationally.
International Financial Institutions enable monopoly monocultures that displace indigenous peoples, and embed asymmetrical economies, when they should be enabling Life forces of biodiversity, and sustainable living.
International laws and agreements are seen as obstacles to overcome, as corporate sovereignty deals drive foreign policies that create and enable compliant proxy dictators who open countries to foreign investment, and mega everything : from mineral extraction, to agribusiness, to tourism.
Predatory business models – often advanced through wars of aggression, are ”free” of proper regulations, and against the will of informed populations, — all for the perceived benefit of international investors, who are further protected by Investor-State Dispute mechanisms embedded in corporate sovereignty agreements.
A recent case in Canada highlights the supremacy of corporations over elected polities:
Janet M Eaton, PhD explains in report entitled,” Digby Neck Quarry Bilcon Case, Tribunal Decision and Dissent” that a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Investor-State Tribunal overturned the decision made by a Canadian Federal Provincial Environmental Joint Review Panel (JRP).
The corporate supremacy over elected polities, as described in her report, underscores the danger of a host of additional corporate sovereignty agreements currently being negotiated behind closed doors:
Trans- Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).
Increasingly, this unsustainable, predatory model of globalization needs to protect itself from those who exercise their rights and freedoms (previously taken for granted), and so police state legislation is being introduced globally to an array of countries that still pretend to be democratic: Canada1, France2, Australia3, the U.S4, the U.K5, Germany6, Italy7 and so on.
As police state measures ramp up, so too does the propaganda, but the propaganda does not restrict itself to concentrated corporate media messaging. Institutions, such as universities — once thought to be the exclusive domain of the public — are increasingly being compromised, and the “market place of ideas” is fast becoming a box store of uniformity with a restrictive, externally-imposed agenda.
Toronto’s Munk School is one such example. In an article entitled, “Neoconning the public”, Anthony Hall explains that,
“(the) Munk School Director must satisfy Peter Munk – and, after his death, the trustees of Munk’s estate – that he or she is meeting predetermined academic and “branding” guidelines. The U of T’s adoption of these conditions sets very unfortunate precedents for the corporate sponsoring of other academic institutions.”
The predatory business model being promoted is exemplified by Barrick Gold, and its founder, Peter Munk, but the model is not atypical. As an example, the same issues and violations occurred at Goldcorp mining operation in Honduras .
A study by MICLA, a research collective at McGill University, Montreal, Canada studied three major concerns as they related to a contested Barrick Gold mining operation in Lagunas Norte, Peru: water, biodiversity, and community relations.
A subsequent study in 2010 found high levels of cadmium, mercury, arsenic, and other heavy metals. Additionally, water was unfit for human consumption or local agriculture – all in this rural region with an already scarce water supply.
The unethical “extractavist” mindset of Barrick Gold and others should be condemned rather than perpetuated in Canada’s Business schools.
Violations of international agreements and declarations such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), International Labour Organization (ILO) contradict notions that Canada’s mining sector, both domestically and internationally, practice sustainable, ethical business practices, and yet it is the influence of this same industry that is insinuating itself into institutions of higher learning and restricting the freedom of ideas and the elaboration of life-enhancing, sustainable business models of development – all imperatives of a Fourth World, sustainable model of globalization that champions unity in pluralism, and alternative models of self-determination.
Totalitarian corporate globalization also drives global war and poverty as imperial wars of aggression are perpetrated (Libya Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria) and the West seeks to appropriate resources, and control new markets.
The Fourth World model of cultural, economic, and biological pluralism, of the rule of law, and of democracy, and freedom are necessary ingredients for a habitable planet, but the continued perpetration of predatory economic models, coupled with the absence of an effective apparatus to enforce international laws and agreements, is imperilling humanity as never before.
-
Book Review of David Ray Griffin’s Unprecedented, Can Civilization Survive The C02 Crisis?
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that human-caused climate change is already responsible for 150,000 deaths annually. If we continue our current trajectories of “business as usual” as our response to climate change, the WHO expects that between 2030 and 2050 climate change will cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year. According to the WHO, the yearly death rate will include, “38 000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48 000 due to diarrhoea, 60 000 due to malaria, and 95 000 due to childhood under nutrition.
Once “tipping points” occur, non-linear changes will emerge, and the death toll will be much higher.
As author David Ray Griffin demonstrates in his book, Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive The CO2 Crisis?, we are facing a constellation of unprecedented, intersecting threats that are leading humanity to increasingly severe catastrophes, and possibly even extinction.
The unprecedented, lethal threats identified by Griffin are these:
Extreme weather
Heat waves
Droughts and wild fires
Storms
Sea level rise
Fresh water shortage
Food shortage
Climate refugees
Climate wars
Ecosystem collapse
Extinction
A closer examination of just one of these threats shows how they are inter-related:
Author Lester Brown explains in “Rising Temperatures Melting Away Global Food Security” that we are losing our “Reservoirs In The Sky” — glaciers and snowpack, and that these reservoirs are melting in all the world’s major mountain ranges.
Melting glaciers and snowpack deliver less water for drinking and agriculture. Once these “reservoirs in the sky” — also called “natural water towers” and “frozen water towers”– are degraded and disappear, food scarcity and drought impacts are amplified. In the winter of 2015, for example, California’s Sierra Nevada snowpack was measured at 25% of its average depth.
“Deglaciation” also contributes to sea level rise and regional hydrological changes. In Western Canada and elsewhere, for example, it impacts freshwater fisheries; once the glaciers are gone, the fisheries will become extinct.
Since deglaciation impacts food and water security, it also contributes to desertification, and this in turn creates “climate refugees”, as people are forced to leave for more habitable locations. A report by the Environmental Justice Foundationclaims that, “on average, 27 million people are displaced by climate and weather-related disasters each year.”
Increased scarcities of food and water, and the growing displacement of peoples due to climate change — and de-glaciation — will likely be casual factors of so-called “water wars” as well.
Our collective response to catastrophic, human-caused climate change, is inadequate on many levels. Griffin argues that our failures and challenges are also “unprecedented”. He shows that the status quo/business-as-usual approach to climate change will accelerate catastrophic consequences, that a “wait and see” attitude would be even more cataclysmic, and that the only reasonable approach is radical change.
Radical change means full scale societal mobilization and the rapid decarbonisation of the economy, all with a view to reducing the global temperature increase by less than 2 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels.
The stakes couldn’t be higher, since we literally face the real prospect of human extinction if we do not radically change our approach now.
Griffin identifies the following unprecedented challenges and failures that are currently preventing radical change:
Climate change denial
Media failure
Political failure
Moral challenges
Religious challenges
Economic challenges
As with the iteration of unprecedented lethal threats, the aforementioned list of challenges and failures share intersecting trajectories as they meet, overlap, and create common ground. Consequently, a closer examination of one failure sheds light with others as well.
The industry of Climate Change/Global Warming Denial, for example, is closely linked to, and sometimes a causative element of, the other challenges and failures.
Despite the fact that the scientific debate is closed, and the scientific consensus is that humans cause global warming, the Climate Change Denial Industry spends vast quantities of money to promote unreasonable doubt about this scientific fact.
ExxonMobil, for example, launders money through organizations, foundations, think tanks etc. to create unreasonable doubt about human-caused global warming.
Increasingly, money is being laundered through Donors Trust. A Greenpeace analysis reveals that Donors Trust has laundered $146 million in climate denial funding from 2002 to 2011.
Corporate media also amplifies disinformation. One particularly effective strategy is a technique called “false balance.” Editors will “balance” science-based global warming articles with articles that deny global warming, with the effect that readers become confused and doubt the scientific reality of human-caused global warming.
Politicians invariably exploit the fabricated confusion and endorse policies that serve the narrow interests of Big Oil. An extreme example of this is the Tea Party movement.
This seemingly grassroots movement endorses policies that align with Big Oil interests — low taxation, high profits, de-regulation. Evidence suggests, moreover, that the movement was created with a view to make it appear like a grassroots movement, when it was actually fabricated by Big Oil to serve Big Profits rather than the interests of those who support the party. The term used to describe the process is “Astroturfing.”
In terms of morality and religious propriety, the use of deceit and subversion to advance a civilization-killing agenda, is repulsive.
It’s also bad for the economy. A 2011 article by Joe Romm, IEA’s Bombshell Warning: We’re Headed Toward 11 degreesF Global Warming and “Delaying Action Is a False Economy” cites the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) assessment of the economic cost of delaying action. “Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”
The complexities of “What is to be done?” to confront our dire circumstances, can be reduced to three momentous actions. First, we need a mass mobilization of people prepared to respond to the global warming emergency. Second, we need to transition immediately and completely to clean energy. And finally, we need to abolish dirty energy.
David Ray Griffin’s extraordinarily comprehensive and well-researched book, Unprecedented, should serve as a foundational guide for our needed mobilization.
-
Fighting back against corporatocracy and Big Monopolies
“Freedom” and “democracy” are useful words, but very bankrupt: useful because they serve to advance imperial/corporate agendas, bankrupt because they are empty vessels perennially co-opted.
When illegal coups are orchestrated to overthrow democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Honduras, Ukraine or elsewhere, the lies of freedom and democracy are seamlessly attached to the criminal acts.
“Freedom” and “democracy” are still cloaking, tacitly or overtly, mass murder and genocide in Iraq, at this moment.
As long as the masses are fooled, conquest and regime change, not democracy and freedom, are enabled and perpetuated. Illegal coups and wars of aggression are about imperial control, setting up puppet dictators and the imposition of neoliberal economic business models for the corporate extensions of the invading nations.
Once the vanquished “host” nation is subjugated, its industries are corporatized and wealth is extracted for the benefit of transnational corporations, corporate elites and local oligarchs. The vanquished nations face corresponding losses of political and economic self-determination, human rights, democracy and freedom. De facto corporate proxy regimes may call themselves democratic, or proclaim freedom, but the words are delusional, even if those being enslaved believe otherwise.
Transnational corporate monopolies are the drivers behind the malaise.
Some of the predominant monopolies, all interrelated and mutually reinforcing, are often prefaced with the adjective “Big.” They include:
– Finance
– Oil
– Military/Industrial Complex
– Media
– Pharmaceuticals
These transnational monopolies metastasize beneath protective umbrellas of secretly negotiated, supranational “free trade” agreements and they exert disproportionate control over political economies throughout the world. Additionally, their leverage is amplified and perpetuated through a matrix of intersecting trajectories that converge to create seamless, reciprocal unions with each other and with elected polities.
One strategy used by the resulting “corporatocracy” to increase its political might is the creation of a culture of “crony capitalism.” In this culture, a “revolving door” is created through which personnel from corporations and government come and go, thus creating a mutually empowering relationship, more responsible to each other, than to the voting public.
Author Tony Hall reveals the inherent conflict of interest created when a “revolving door” exists between industry-funded regulators and Big Oil. In “Oil Consultant Turned Whisleblower Exposes Fracking Crimes In Alberta,” Hall explains that Gerard Protti, the Alberta Energy Regulator’s (AER) current head, is a former executive of EnCana petroleum corporation.
Not only is the industry self-regulated, but the “regulator” himself is a former executive of the industry being regulated. “His conflict of interest,” explains Hall, “is illustrative of a culture of conflict of interest that is transforming the governments of Canada and Alberta into wholly owned subsidiaries of Texas-based and China-based oil and gas companies.”
Big Oil also works hand-in-hand with Big Media. Close links between corporate media and the petroleum industry are detailed in a Vancouver Observer article entitled, “Presentation Suggests Intimate relationship Between Post Media And Oil Industry.”
According to the article, the Canadian Association Of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), a powerful right-wing “think tank,” would provide “thought leadership” for the media outlet and that “topics (would) be directed by CAPP and written by Postmedia.”
In other words, the petroleum industry’s intent in this instance is to control media messaging related to petroleum related topics, thus creating its own platform/infomercial embedded within media that presents itself as “neutral.” Interestingly, one of the first casualties of the proposed “marriage” was environment reporter Mike De Souza.
Corporate media and the military-industrial complex are also welded together. The Military-Industrial-Media complex profits from keeping countries on a war footing, and is complicit in unfathomable misery throughout the world.
War and war preparations serve as a pretext for vast outlays of money from the public to corporations. Consequently, war friendly media barely reported the huge protests against the illegal invasion of Iraq, but it did spin stories about Iraq’s imaginary Weapons Of Mass Destruction, and the imperatives of invasion.
Meanwhile, once the Shock and Awe invasion started, Pentagon inspired nomenclature such as “collateral damage” or “surgical strikes” continued to anesthetize the public to the horrors of the invasion. Over one million died as a result of the carnage of the Second Gulf War, and the death rate is still climbing.
The interlocked military-industrial-media complex is created by the myriad of intersecting connections between the industries. Peter Philips and Mike Huff, in “Truth Emergency: Inside The Military Industrial Media Empire”describe some of these connections:
“Only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the top ten media corporations share board director positions with the major defense contractors including:
– William Kennard: New York Times, Carlyle Group
– Douglas Warner III, GE (NBC), Bechtel
– John Bryson: Disney (ABC), Boeing
– Alwyn Lewis: Disney (ABC), Halliburton
– Douglas McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin.”
Financial monopolies, for the most part overseen by the U.S., are also wedded to the destructive, self-reinforcing web of supranationally protected monopolies. Honduras is a case in point.
Since the U.S. orchestrated coup in 2009, transnational corporations, soon to be further protected beneath the umbrella of the Canada-Honduras Free Trade Agreement, have wreaked havoc on Honduras. Transnational Financing cartels, including the International Monetary Fund, bundle their loans with neoliberal market models, for the profit of foreign investors and Honduran oligarchs. The loans finance cash crops such as African Palm monoculture plantations, and the results are devastating to almost all Hondurans.
The plantations dispossess indigenous small-holder farmers, rob the nation of food sovereignty and destroy indigenous cultures. Since 2009, oligarchs, in concert with illegal proxy dictatorships, have killed 100 campesinos from the Aguan Valle alone — with impunity.
Big Pharma, yet another protected monopoly, also creates misery and desperation throughout the world, and its influences are woven into the fabric of lies and omissions perpetuated by the other monopolies.
Michael McBane, in “Harper Caves In To Big Pharma,” argues “[We] need to take patents out of secret trade agreements and impose conditions that benefit the public interest in exchange for drug monopolies…”
If the suppression of Big Pharma and its ubiquitous messaging were lifted, Canada could also create a National Pharmacare program, which would save Canadians about $10.7 billion per year.
Once freed from the devastating tentacles of the transnational monopolies, Canadians will realize that it’s time to call 911 on the corporatocracy. We might then recapture real democracy and freedom, rather than settle for their bankrupt facsimiles.
-
Fossil fuel economy costs Canada far more jobs than it creates
The current trajectories of Canada’s predominant political economies are increasingly dysfunctional, due in no small part to the fact that we have become, in many respects, a petro state, rather than the much vaunted “Energy Superpower” that we were promised.
A petro-state, as defined by Bruce Campbell, executive director of the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) is “dependent on petroleum for 50 per cent or more of export revenues, 25 per cent or more of GDP, and 25 per cent or more on government revenues.”
While Alberta is not a sovereign nation, it does qualify for “petro-state” status under these criterion. So does Norway. But the differences between the two polities ends there. While Norway manages its resource wealth extraordinarily well, Alberta — and Canada, by extension — does not.
Norway: $656 Billion / Alberta: $16 Billion
One significant difference is savings. Norway has a savings fund, known as a “Sovereign Wealth Fund” which is worth about $656 billion for a population of under 5-million people.
Unlike Canada, Norway’s oil industry generates huge public profits Alberta’s Heritage Trust Fund, on the other hand, is worth a relatively paltry $16.6 billion, for a population of about 3,847,100 people.
The differences in the sizes of these savings funds has far-reaching impacts. As author Terry L. Karl explains in “Understanding The Resource Curse,” a country (such as Norway) that diverts its resource revenue to a savings fund, is necessarily compelled to use its tax base for government funding. Consequently, citizens pay higher taxes, but the politicians represent those who pay the bills (the citizens) rather than representing the insular interests of oil-producing corporations, to the detriment of the public sector, and democracy.
Unlike Norway, Canada, is quite dependent on its resource revenues for government funding. About 40 per cent of Canada’s resource revenues go to Ottawa, and about one third of Alberta’s bills are paid by oil and gas revenues. According to Karl, these differences explain why Alberta’s tax rates are so low, (the lowest personal taxes in Canada) and why its governance is more top down, corporation oriented. As long as taxes are low, people remain relatively disinterested in issues of governance. In the 2008 elections, 60 per cent of eligible voters in Alberta stayed home.
There are other significant problems which are generated by this dependency on resource revenue. One of them is wealth distribution.
Rich get richer from energy wealth
Stephen Leahy explains in “The Bigger Canada’s Energy Sector Gets, The Poorer People Become” that economic markers can be deceiving. Consider statistics for Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is a measure of economic activity. The GDP averaged about $600 billion per year in the ’90s and by 2012 it had increased to $1.7 trillion. On the surface, this seems laudable, but little of the wealth stayed in Canada, and what did stay went to a small percentage of the population. Consequently, income inequality has also increased.
Similarly, our reliance on the boom/bust cycle of resource revenue funding (without setting aside sufficient funds) means that governments habitually overspend. Resource rich Alberta has run a deficit for the last six years running.
This boom/bust revenue model, a hallmark of neoliberal economic theory, impacts the whole country. Safety, environmental, and human rights have become less important; international efforts to address global warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) have been rejected; real science is now seen as an enemy to overcome; and democracy is an inconvenience.
16,000 jobs gained, half a million lost
Our mixed economy is also being decimated. Leahy explains that from 2000-2011, the oil and gas sector created about 16,500 jobs, while, at the same time, Canada lost 520,000 manufacturing jobs.
Much of the manufacturing losses are tied to the rise of the petro-dollar which tends to rise and fall with the price of petroleum. Ten years ago, the Canadian dollar was worth about 65 cents relative to the U.S. dollar. Now both dollars are at about the same level. This parity negatively impacts exports and, therefore, the manufacturing base.
Even Industry Canada acknowledges the problem. Their report notes that between 2002 -2007, from 33-39 per cent of Canadian manufacturing job losses were due to “resource-driven currency appreciation.”
Major banks, think tanks warn against Canada’s economic model
Despite the overarching negatives, including job losses and deficits, trajectories of Canada’s reigning political economies have remained unchanged. Continued on-the-ground realities, however, may force the government’s hand. Sources as varied as the International Energy Agency (IEA), HSBC, the Conference Board of Canada, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are increasingly concerned about Canada’s misdirected obsession with extreme energy extraction.
The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook states that “no more than one third of proven energy reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050.” (Barring the unlikely and exponential growth in carbon capture storage strategies.)
The HSBC Global Research Report (2013) cautions investors about capital intensive extreme resource extraction such as bitumen extraction, and recommends instead low cost companies with a “gas bias.”
Alberta needs more sustainable model: Conference Board
Canada should be promoting green jobs, experts suggest The Conference Board of Canada in an article entitled “Opportunity Lost? Alberta is Facing Short And Long Term Financial Challenges Despite its Oil Wealth” observes that Alberta is facing a $4-billion budget deficit, and recommends a “more sustainable fiscal model.”
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), recognizing the imperatives of transitioning to a low carbon world, is urging nations to slash carbon subsidies, which would drastically slow bitumen extraction developments.
Unlike Norway, Canada’s economic and political self-determination is already curtailed by NAFTA, and by the time Harper’s next suite of corporate empowerment treaties (FIPPA, CETA etc.) are ratified, our ability to determine better political economies will be further hamstrung.
However, despite the restrictions, there still remain some possible alternatives to our current self-defeating political economy.
End subsidies, raise taxes
The Pembina Institute, paralleling views of the IMF, argues that the $1.3 billion in subsidies handed out to the oil and gas industries would be better spent on transitioning to clean energies, as it would create 18,000 more jobs as well as “a healthier economy, and a cleaner environment.”
Meanwhile, Shannon Stunden Bower, Research Director for the Parkland Institute, advises that Alberta needs to raise taxes:
[quote]Alberta could collect nearly $11 billion more in taxes and still remain the country’s lowest tax jurisdiction.[/quote]
Clearly Canada’s economic direction, which is to increase rather than decrease extreme energy extraction, is hitting the wall.
Evidence shouts that we should be transitioning to a low carbon model. Creating a strong Federal Savings Fund, reducing carbon subsidies, and increasing taxes in certain jurisdictions (like Alberta and New Brunswick) would be a start, but we also need more evidence-based policy making, and therefore different governance.
The longer we wait before the inevitable and necessary transitions, the more it will cost.
-
Harper’s Canada Drifts To Extreme Right Christian Fundamentalism As A Driver For Shaping Our Country’s Social And Economic Policies
Canada’s headlong rush to the extreme right of the political spectrum is multi-causal.
While the economic theory of neoliberalism/neoconservatism has been transferring wealth and power upwards in Canada (and throughout much of the world) for over 30 years now, Canada’s current acceleration towards a dystopian cliff can be partly explained by religion.
Canada’s current embrace of Republican-style politics and economic theory has thrust us into the arms of Christian Fundamentalism, which has a strong political constituency in the United States’ Republican party, and now, in the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC).
Author James Hall explains that the CPC political base, which includes the Reform Party and, before that, the Social Credit Party, has a strong Fundamentalist base, similar to the religious base of the Republican party under former U.S president Bush. Further, Hall explains that much of the base is Christian Zionist as well.
The personal belief systems of the CPC politicians may or may not align with the Christian Fundamentalist ideology, but the economic theory of neoliberalism aligns itself with the ideology for purposes other than spiritual.
The Christian Fundamentalist ideology, as described by Chris Hedges in American Fascists, The Christian Right And The War On America, has certain defining characteristics that distinguish it from other religions.
One of the most salient of these differences is the belief that the Bible was meant to be taken literally. It follows from this that the earth is 6,000 years old, that a vengeful God will save believers and punish non-believers, and that God will take care of the earth’s environment.
Politically and socially, biblical literalism enables a binary world view of good and evil, which in turn fosters intolerance for those who live and believe differently. The Christian Right, for example, is intolerant of homosexuality, abortion, “non-believers” (including Muslims), “secular humanists”, and real science.
Seen through this lens, the Harper government’s suppression of real science is understandable, as is its promotion of cataclysmic global warming through the unsustainable development of the Tar Sands and other extractive industries. Why worry about the earth and the environment if God will take care of everything?
In this world view, God protects believers and erases the anxiety of moral choice. Even imperial war crimes are rendered palatable, since the people being murdered are infidels.
The “gospel of prosperity”, as taught by the televangelists, also shows that since a belief in God means “freedom”, believers don’t need unions, human rights, collective bargaining, or other social/public protections. This “gospel” is then exploited by neoliberals who, for selfish motives of personal enrichment, endorse it.
It doesn’t take much imagination to see where this is headed, or to see why the separation of church and state is imperative.
Not only can a government mobilize a huge constituency of voters if it is aligned with the church, but it can also exploit belief systems by creating self-serving legislation that is seemingly endorsed by, in this case, Biblical literalism.
Taken a step further, the hierarchical (male) governance of the Church can be seen as a model for top down, anti-democratic political governance, and ultimately, for totalitarianism, which, Hedges argues, could manifest itself as Christo-fascism.
Canada has most of the symptoms.
-
Force Feeding Us On Genetically Engineered Food – Do You Want To Be One of Monsanto’s Lab Rats?
Monopoly capitalism is a particularly virulent strain of economics which is ascendant in today’s poltical environment of corporate empowerment deals that are robbing us of our economic and political self-determination as a nation.
An icon of this economy is the Monsanto company, which might better be named “Mon Satan”.
Monsanto’s roots are pesticides, with one of its most infamous products being Agent Orange — proclaimed to be “safe” for humans, which ultimately killed or disabled about 900,000people in Vietnam.
Monsanto also claims that its genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) are safe, even though the science of genetically inserting the DNA from one species to another is in its infancy.
Forcing the genes of one species into another is a method of creating a man-made organism for the proclaimed purposes of increasing crop yields by eliminated pests and other “externalities” that might impede crops. The on the ground results of this process, however, have been unpredictable and often toxic, as might be expected when premature scientific hypotheses are used to create products. For example, GMO consumption has been linked to infertility, cancer, autism, Parkinson’s disease, obesity, and diabetes.
There are also unforeseen “externalities” in the fields. So-called Round Up Ready crops contain pesticides in their genetic make-up which makes them resistant to pests, but now “Super bugs” have evolved.
The advent of “super bugs”, means that the industrial agriculture operations must then employ more toxic pesticides, and the toxic cycle continues. Ultimately, soils are depleted, crops lose nutritional value, cattle are impacted, biodiversity is eradicated, and farmers become dependent on Monsanto. Farmers must regularly buy more potent pesticides and herbicides, as well as GMO patented “terminator seeds” (genetically designed to be sterile by the second generation), which must then be re- purchased every year.
The creation of a dependent market means that Monsanto’s profits roll in, while farmers become more and more endebted to their toxic products, which ultimately become Corn Flakes and a myriad of other products sold at grocery stores.
In India, the problem of “debt slavery” related to Monsanto products is so acute, that it has reportedly contributed to the suicides of some 200,000 desolate farmers over the past ten years.
Money is power though, and Monsanto’s profit margins are measured in the billions of dollars per year, and with these monies, the toxic cycle is perpetuated. They have armies of lobbyists, waves of media messaging, their own “tobacco scientists”, and control of institutional findings as a result of their donations, etc. The nexus of this influence, based upon imperfect science, is at once ubiquitous, and imperceptible, to its “target clients”.
The Federal And Drug Agency (FDA), which approves products in the US has basically become a lobby group for Monsanto, as Monsanto scientists become FDA scientists in a revolving door, crony capitalist process. Recent examples of cronyism involving Monsanto would be Michael Taylor of the FDA, and Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, both of whom have had close affiliations with Monsanto.
While many countries have a complete ban on GMO foods, such is not the case in North America. In fact, the corporation’s tentacles are so powerful here, that not only are the products legal, but they are protected by legislation which outlaws the labeling of GMO ingredients on retail food products — Canada and the U.S are the only two countries in the industrialized world burdened with such restrictions.
Fortunately, there is much that can be done at the grassroots level to fight back against the evils of Monsanto’s monopolistic control over what we eat.
Here are some examples:
- buy locally grown food
- buy organic foods
- buy a “Buycott” app for your “i-phone” which allows you to scan products for GMO ingredients
- lobby for labeling
- participate in rallies and demonstrations
An informed population is likely the best defense against the perils of bio-tech companies such as Monsanto, and the webs of deceit that they weave.
The original source of this article is Niagara-At-Large
Copyright Mark Taliano, Niagara-At-Large, 2019.
-
Canada’s Short-Term Profits From Dirty Oil Will Never Cover The Crippling Costs
In his book ‘ Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future’, Andrew Nikiforuk delineates the failings of Canada’s Tar Sands industry in the province of Alberta. What follows is an abridged synopsis of the book and its message. It is an important message to consider at a time when this country’s addiction to short term oil profits is compromising who we are as a nation.
Canada’s headlong rush into the exploitation of the planet’s dirtiest oil is emblematic of how not to exploit what could be a liberating resource.
Instead of transparently controlling and regulating this hydrocarbon as a base for a future low carbon economy, we are being controlled by its siren songs, much as a heroin addict is controlled by the illusory promises of his captor.
Just as the costs of a poorly regulated stock market are huge (witness the crash of 2008), so too are the costs of a poorly regulated petro carbon industry. In the case of the tar sands, however, the costs are much higher. Over time, fiscal economies can find their footing, but the multi-pronged assaults of the tar sands, and the ensuing corruption, won’t heal so easily, if ever.
The physical characteristics of the industry look something like this. First, the resource is not oil. It does not flow of its own accord. It much more approximates a thick, black sand. Transforming this “bitumen” to oil is extremely energy and resource intensive. If the sand is first strip mined, it must then be liquefied using steaming water. If the extraction is by the more difficult in situmethod, a mine must first be drilled, then steam pushed into the bottom, to melt the tar. Either way, it is energy intensive. Unlike the oil that is extracted fromIraq’s killing fields, each barrel of bitumen requires three barrels of water from the Athabaska river. 90% of this water ends up in the world’s largest impoundments of toxic wastes, otherwise known as the “tailings ponds”.
Communities downstream of the leaking “ponds”, such as Fort Chipewyan, have a 30% increase in their cancer rates. It’s unlikely that you’ll see visitors to Fort Chip. drinking anything other than bottled water. If the water was flowing the other way, towards Fort McMurray, it’s certain that the water quality testing would be taken more seriously.
Each day, the tar sands industry burns enough natural gas to heat six millionhomes. And each day, it contributes untold amounts of green house gases to the atmosphere. A barrel of bitumen produces three times as many green-house gases as a barrel of conventional oil.
Air monitoring, conducted by the Fort Air Partnership and Environment Canada is also third rate, with one expert, Donald Blake, explaining that the energy audits “reeked of cover-up and sleight of hand”.
The development regulations governing this industry are as corrupt as the health regulations. The Energy Resources Conservation Board, largely funded by industry, approves almost all development applications submitted by industry (over 95% in 2006). Typically, the board will assess a project’s environmental impact in these words: the project “is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.” The reality is quite different.
When the tar is gone, and the energy companies have left (after a perfunctory “clean-up”), the real costs of “cleaning up” externalities will be left to the public (private profits, externalized losses), and even then it will be an impossible task. Water deficits, coupled with increased average temperatures, will preclude the restoration of many areas to the filtering marshlands that previously existed. That being said, estimates are that an adequate clean up would still cost about two decades worth of royalties.
Some wishfully argue that technological advances will fix everything. Unfortunately, they’re wrong. When energy companies find ways to decrease amounts of C02 produced per barrel of oil, they wipe out those savings by ramping up more oil production, thereby increasing the C02 produced. Economists refer to the phenomenon as the Khazzoom Brooks Postulate. It applies to cars and airplanes as well. Cars are more efficient, but we drive more cars. Airplanes burn 40% less fuel, but the industry has grown by 150%.
There’s even talk of building nuclear reactors to heat the tar, but reducing total energy consumption (and therefore limiting tar sands exploitation) is the only answer. Unfortunately, the governments ofAlbertaandCanadadon’t accept this reality. AndCanadais already the world’s eighth largest emitter of GHG’s.
The economics of the tar sands are also a mess. An average house inFort McMurraycosts about $600,000.00, wages are high, and taxes are low. But theAlbertagovernment is still running a deficit of about $8 billion (2009). Worse yet, the resultant high petro dollar is crippling manufacturing for the rest of the country. One reason given by the London ON Caterpillar plant for its shameful relocation to the U.S was the high Canadian dollar.
The tar sands give new meaning to the phrase “Open for Business”. A 2007 panel, measuring the government’s share of industry oil revenues collected through royalties, found that of ten governments selling oil,Albertaranked last. Venezuelawas first at 89%, whileAlbertacollected a mere 39% of industry oil revenues. To add insult to injury, the federal government is still subsidizing the tar sands. The tar sands are more like an unregulated third world “energy supermarket” than the “energy superpower” being touted by Prime Minister Harper.
Photo by Mark Taliano One day, (hopefully sooner rather than later), extraction of tar sands will stop, and large swaths of the province may well look like a barren moonscape. It was with this in mind that in 1976, formerAlbertapremier Peter Lougheed set up the Heritage Fund, where 30% of non-renewable resource revenue would be dedicated. Unfortunately, subsequent governments stopped contributing to it, and Premier Klein used it as a poorly managed slush fund.
Norway was smarter. They took Lougheed’s idea, set it up with stricter rules, and mandated that 94% of oil revenues would go to the fund. Since 1990,Norway’s fund boasts a healthy balance of $330 billion. The balance ofAlberta’s Heritage Fund is a mere $14 billion.
What, then, is an alternate narrative that might transform this dismal situation into something approaching progressivity? Here are some ideas theCanadashould be considering, and debating (without closure) instead of plunging headlong into further high speed resource exploitation.
Cap production. It should not be dictated by a “laissez faire” market approach.
End fossil fuel subsidies, and divert those funds to alternate energy projects.
Implement a carbon tax, with a 100 percent dividend. (All proceeds to be returned to the public).
Re-establish a Sovereign Fund for petroleum revenues, and increase royalties.
Work towards energy sustainability by decreasing energy imports to Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
Re-localize food production, and buy locally.
Fund a national passenger railway system.
Orient rural and urban planning to low-carbon alternatives such as walkable communities.
Conserve. Introduce a regulatory plan to plugging “fugitive emissions”.
Be proactive. Don’t wait for the government to act. “Power down.”
Re-negotiate NAFTA . It is an impediment to sustainability , not only for Canada, but also for the U.S
Former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed’s advice should be re-considered:
“Slow down; behave like a resource owner, as opposed to a free market anarchist; charge higher royalties; save for the future, and develop only one project at a time so that environmental liabilities can be addressed in a proactive manner.”
Additionally, we would do well to consider Bishop Bouchard’s (diocese of St.Paul, Alberta) advice:
He argued that the project should not be allowed to expand until the “integrity of the Athabaska watershed can be ‘safeguarded,’ the treaty rights of the aboriginal people have been honoured, and the country has developed a plan for alternate energy resources.”
Addendum:
In January, 2012, President Obama rejected a permit to allow the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transfer tar sands bitumen from northernAlbertato Gulf coast refineries.
More recently, U.S Republicans are trying again to force approval of Keystone XL through a pipeline provision in a Highway Bill.
