must-watch video: michael moore to wisconsin protesters: america is not broke

Michael Moore gives the progressive troops in Wisconsin a great boost.

"America is not broke, and neither is Wisconsin. . . . America is awash with wealth, it's just not in your hands." Don't miss this, it's very good.

I wish Moore had mentioned the trillions of dollars the US is spending on the largest military budget in history. But it's still great stuff, and worth watching the whole thing.

Story here on TPM.

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towards a freer internet: eben moglen and the freedom box

One of the more interesting ideas I've encountered at the iSchool is questioning why internet access is controlled through private corporations.

Broadband internet access is now a necessity, but we must pay private, for-profit services for access. From the start, internet access could have been fashioned as a public utility, much the way access to water and electricity is, or - depending on where you live - should be. If our governments were more interested in public access (democracy) than in corporate access (free-market capitalism), it might be. Much as been written and said about this (a sample of the issues can be heard in this debate on NPR); I mention it only to note that the concept was new to me, and immediately made perfect sense.

Expensive monthly fees for broadband access is only one of many roots of the digital divide, the chasm that separates the internet-literate haves from the internet-illiterate have-nots, but it's an important one. The digital divide is often conceived of solely in terms of access, such as in the Wikipedia definition, but many other issues factor into confidence in a digital environment - age, education, job status, gender, language skills, and others.

The idea that internet access should be free from dovetails with our desire to free the internet of censorship and either government or corporate control. Many of us use free platforms like Blogger or Facebook without a second thought as to who controls these applications. When we do think about it, we generally shudder or shake our heads, then go back to the same platforms. That's what we know and that's where our friends - and our information - are. Again, this is a huge topic that I'm not tackling here. But I do want to highlight what one person is suggesting as an alternative.

Meet The Freedom Box.

Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Can’t Find You

By Jim Dwyer [ed note: hooray for Jim Dwyer, excellent progressive writer]

On Tuesday afternoon, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in Washington about the Internet and human liberty, a Columbia law professor in Manhattan, Eben Moglen, was putting together a shopping list to rebuild the Internet — this time, without governments and big companies able to watch every twitch of our fingers.

The list begins with “cheap, small, low-power plug servers,” Mr. Moglen said. “A small device the size of a cellphone charger, running on a low-power chip. You plug it into the wall and forget about it.”

Almost anyone could have one of these tiny servers, which are now produced for limited purposes but could be adapted to a full range of Internet applications, he said.

“They will get very cheap, very quick,” Mr. Moglen said. “They’re $99; they will go to $69. Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29.”

The missing ingredients are software packages, which are available at no cost but have to be made easy to use. “You would have a whole system with privacy and security built in for the civil world we are living in,” he said. “It stores everything you care about.”

Put free software into the little plug server in the wall, and you would have a Freedom Box that would decentralize information and power, Mr. Moglen said. This month, he created the Freedom Box Foundation to organize the software.

“We have to aim our engineering more directly at politics now,” he said. “What has happened in Egypt is enormously inspiring, but the Egyptian state was late to the attempt to control the Net and not ready to be as remorseless as it could have been.”

. . .

In the first days of the personal computer era, many scoffed at the idea that free software could have an important place in the modern world. Today, it is the digital genome for millions of phones, printers, cameras, MP3 players, televisions, the Pentagon, the New York Stock Exchange and the computers that underpin Google’s empire.

This month, Mr. Moglen, who now runs the Software Freedom Law Center, spoke to a convention of 2,000 free-software programmers in Brussels, urging them to get to work on the Freedom Box.

Social networking has changed the balance of political power, he said, “but everything we know about technology tells us that the current forms of social network communication, despite their enormous current value for politics, are also intensely dangerous to use. They are too centralized; they are too vulnerable to state retaliation and control.”

In January, investors were said to have put a value of about $50 billion on Facebook, the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg. If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy.

“It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse,” Mr. Moglen said.

By contrast, with tens of thousands of individual encrypted servers, there would be no one place where a repressive government could find out who was publishing or reading “subversive” material. . . .

The decentralized social network platform Diaspora was conceived in response to an earlier talk by Moglen. Now he's trying to raise half a million dollars to get The Freedom Box off the ground. Read it here.

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herbert and dobbin: where is democracy at home?

It's been a very long time since I posted a column by Bob Herbert. He's an excellent thinker and writer with a difficult beat: the liberal readers of the not-so-liberal New York Times, who he challenges to step outside their comfortable, 10-degrees-left-of-centre box.

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.

In an Op-Ed article in The Times at the end of January, Senator John Kerry said that the Egyptian people “have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.” Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades, democracy itself was put up for sale, and the rich were the only ones who could afford it.

. . . .

I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.”

I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

On the subject of democracy abroad and at home, Canadian Murray Dobbins has some similar thoughts. Canada's democracy issues, however, are more specific: Stephen Harper and his anti-democratic Conservative government. The US's issues are more structural: the collapse of the entire system. That's fortunate for us. We can still fix things.

As tens of millions of Egyptians celebrated their victory over a brutal dictator and began the task of creating democracy, the story from Canada was of democracy going backwards. For five years under Stephen Harper, Canada has been subjected to a systematic erosion of democracy (as I document here). Canada is not Egypt and Harper is no Mubarak, but he is nonetheless a ruthless autocrat in the Canadian context, too often showing contempt for democracy and the aspirations of the people he governs.

It can hardly be surprising that almost alone among western leaders, Stephen Harper was so grudging in his response to the wonderful victory of the Egyptian people. Rather than praise the millions in the street, Harper actually praised Mubarak: “Canada respects President Mubarak’s decision to step down in order to promote peace and stability in the country.” Damning by faint praise?

The day that Mubarak finally resigned to the deafening cheers of a million people in Tahrir (liberation) Square was also the day that another repugnant example of the Harper government’s casual abuse of power was highlighted. This time, it was a scathing ruling against the government from the Speaker of the House, related to Harper’s decision to eliminate funding to the ecumenical development group, KAIROS. It was a fitting coincidence: KAIROS’s funding was cut due to its alleged anti-Israel bias. Harper’s barely disguised opposition to the revolution in Egypt is linked to his blind support of Israel and the recognition that democracy in Egypt is seen as a threat in the Jewish state.

. . . .

Is it simply that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone? In Egypt, years of oppression, brutality, humiliation and the simple lack of any semblance of real government drove the massive support for democracy in the streets. Maybe only the promise of democracy can motivate people in this profound way.

Or have Canadians simply lost faith in democracy as they increasingly lower their expectations of what government can or will do for them? Ultimately we judge democracy by what it delivers — and it used to deliver, and promise, a lot more. Are Canadians more and more just circling the wagons around their individual or family lives, looking for individualist solutions? With wages flat since 1980, 92 per cent of private pension funds in deficit (total $350 billion, almost double the 2003 figure) and holding record levels of debt, this solution must surely look just as bleak as hoping for political change.

Or could it simply be that there are too few venues and opportunities for Canadians to express their dismay at the loss of democracy? After Harper’s second prorogation of Parliament (over the Afghan detainee issue), virtually every political pundit and analyst in the country predicted that no one cared and most couldn’t even pronounce the word. Yet almost overnight (in organizing terms), over 220,000 people signed on to a Facebook page opposing prorogation, and within a few weeks there were simultaneous demonstrations in 61 cities across the country featuring 25,000 people. These were not organized by existing social justice groups or unions (though they came to help) and were as spontaneous as reserved Canadians get. They did care about democracy. They knew — or took the time to find out — what prorogation meant, and they were angry.

This should have been the signal for the Opposition parties to take up the cause, but it wasn’t enough to cut through the cynicism of the political operatives who run the Liberals and the NDP. By their pusillanimous calculations, if an issue doesn’t affect the pocket book (home heating oil), people don’t care. Would hundreds of thousands of people come into the streets if these parties called on them to defend democracy? Probably not. But they might come to the polling booths and rid the country of its own autocrat.

Read more: Bob Herbert, "When Democracy Weakens" and Murray Dobbin, Harper, Autocrat.

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u.s. war on women continues and escalates: planned parenthood under attack

The US war on American women has escalated lately (as opposed to the US war on Afghan and Iraqi women, men and children, which continues at the same torrid pace). Please read below for important information about the US government's attack on Planned Parenthood, and how you can help.

* * * *

Two weeks ago we saw the redundant law-enforcement expression "forcible rape" used to strengthen the Hyde Amendment, which already appears to be iron-clad.

When public outrage forced the woman-haters to retreat from that, they proposed a bill that would allow hospitals to let a woman die rather than perform a medically necessary abortion or even transfer the woman to a facility that would perform one.

Another Republican initiative would redefine the language of the criminal codes of the state of Georgia, with the express purpose of making it more difficult for rape victims to report the crime. From AMERICAblog, quoting the Democrats:

Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin . . . has introduced a bill to change the state's criminal codes so that in "criminal law and criminal procedure" (read: in court), victims of rape, stalking, and family violence could only be referred to as "accusers" until the defendant has been convicted.

Burglary victims are still victims. Assault victims are still victims. Fraud victims are still victims. But if you have the misfortune to suffer a rape, or if you are beaten by a domestic partner, or if you are stalked, Rep. Franklin doesn't think you've been victimized. He says you're an accuser until the courts have determined otherwise.

To diminish a victim's ordeal by branding him/her an accuser essentially questions whether the crime committed against the victim is a crime at all. Robbery, assault, and fraud are all real crimes with real victims, the Republican asserts with this bill.

This must reflect the belief that women falsely accusing men of rape is such a major issue that it requires action on a state-wide level. In reality, rape and sexual assault remain horribly under-reported, especially where the victim knows her assailant.

In Texas - a state with no money and virtually no public services - Governor Rick Perry wants to require sonograms for all abortions, and require the patient to listen to the fetal heartbeat. (This local article about the bill says it would require women to listen to "their baby's heartbeat".) Perry fast-tracked this bill by calling it "emergency legislation".

Ohio is considering a bill that would ban abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which, because of new technology, can occur as early six weeks after conception.

There's a whole bunch more like this. I won't list them all. And we must always remember that laws mandating obstacles to abortion will always disproportionately affect low-income women, as women with the economic means can travel for services. They shouldn't have to, but they can. For working-class and poor women, no such option exists.

While those bits of legislative violence against women happen on a state level, a wider war on women is waged by the US Congress. Right now it focuses on Planned Parenthood, one of the very best - and most necessary - organizations in the US.

An attack on Planned Parenthood is an attack on all low-income women and their children, on teenagers seeking health information, on battered women who need confidential help, on people with no health insurance trying to raise healthy children. An attack on Planned Parenthood is an attack on affordable health care, pregnancy prevention and safer-sex education.

For almost a century, Planned Parenthood has been filling the gap left by the irresponsible, negligent US government. Now, armed with the results of an anti-choice sting operation that managed to catch one irresponsible staff member, Congress is gunning for Planned Parenthood.

Gail Collins of The New York Times sums up the situation in this excellent column.

As if we didn’t have enough wars, the House of Representatives has declared one against Planned Parenthood.

Maybe it's all part of a grand theme. Last month, they voted to repeal the health care law. This month, they're going after an organization that provides millions of women with both family-planning services and basic health medical care, like pap smears and screening for diabetes, breast cancer, cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases.

Our legislative slogan for 2011: Let Them Use Leeches.

“What is more fiscally responsible than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America?” demanded Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, the chief sponsor of a bill to bar the government from directing any money to any organization that provides abortion services.

Planned Parenthood doesn’t use government money to provide abortions; Congress already prohibits that, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. (Another anti-abortion bill that’s coming up for hearing originally proposed changing the wording to “forcible rape,” presumably under the theory that there was a problem with volunteer rape victims. On that matter at least, cooler heads prevailed.)

Planned Parenthood does pay for its own abortion services, though, and that’s what makes them a target. Pence has 154 co-sponsors for his bill. He was helped this week by an anti-abortion group called Live Action, which conducted a sting operation at 12 Planned Parenthood clinics in six states, in an effort to connect the clinic staff to child prostitution.

“Planned Parenthood aids and abets the sexual abuse and prostitution of minors,” announced Lila Rose, the beautiful anti-abortion activist who led the project. The right wing is currently chock-full of stunning women who want to end their gender’s right to control their own bodies. Homely middle-aged men are just going to have to find another sex to push around.

Live Action hired an actor who posed as a pimp and told Planned Parenthood counselors that he might have contracted a sexually transmitted disease from “one of the girls I manage.” He followed up with questions about how to obtain contraceptives and abortions, while indicating that some of his “girls” were under age and illegally in the country.

One counselor, shockingly, gave the “pimp” advice on how to game the system and was summarily fired when the video came out. But the others seem to have answered his questions accurately and flatly. Planned Parenthood says that after the man left, all the counselors — including the one who was fired — reported the conversation to their supervisors, who called the authorities. (One Arizona police department, the organization said, refused to file a report.)

Still, there is no way to look good while providing useful information to a self-proclaimed child molester, even if the cops get called. That, presumably, is why Live Action chose the scenario.

“We have a zero tolerance of nonreporting anything that would endanger a minor,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood. “We do the same thing public hospitals do and public clinics do.”

But here’s the most notable thing about this whole debate: The people trying to put Planned Parenthood out of business do not seem concerned about what would happen to the 1.85 million low-income women who get family-planning help and medical care at the clinics each year. It just doesn’t come up. There’s not even a vague contingency plan.

“I haven’t seen that they want to propose an alternative,” said Richards.

There are tens of millions Americans who oppose abortion because of deeply held moral principles. But they’re attached to a political movement that sometimes seems to have come unmoored from any concern for life after birth.

There is no comparable organization to Planned Parenthood, providing the same kind of services on a national basis. If there were, most of the women eligible for Medicaid-financed family-planning assistance wouldn’t have to go without it. In Texas, which has one of the highest teenage birthrates in the country, only about 20 percent of low-income women get that kind of help. Yet Planned Parenthood is under attack, and the State Legislature has diverted some of its funding to crisis pregnancy centers, which provide no medical care and tend to be staffed by volunteers dedicated to dissuading women from having abortions.

In Washington, the new Republican majority that promised to do great things about jobs, jobs, jobs is preparing for hearings on a bill to make it economically impossible for insurance companies to offer policies that cover abortions. And in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry, faced with an epic budget crisis that’s left the state’s schools and health care services in crisis, has brought out emergency legislation — requiring mandatory sonograms for women considering abortion.

You can sign a letter of support for Planned Parenthood, donate to their foundation, or learn more about what they do.

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q. when is rape not rape? a. never. rape is rape is rape.

Q. What could be worse than being raped and then becoming pregnant?

A. Being forced to carry the pregnancy to term against your will.

In case you haven't seen this yet...

US lawmakers are seeking to redefine rape in an attempt to strengthen already horrendous anti-abortion laws. Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has prohibited the use of federal funds to pay for abortion, except when the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. (Please note: 1976 Hyde, not 2010 Stupak.) This new bipartisan proposal would take away that last bit of protection.

House Republicans wasted no time in declaring their legislative priorities for the 112th Congress. The first: repeal health care for millions of Americans. The second: redefine rape. A day after repealing health care, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, a bill that would not only permanently prohibit some federally funded health-care programs from covering abortions, but would change the language exempting rape and incest from rape to "forcible rape."

By narrowing the Hyde Amendment language, Republicans would exclude the following situations from coverage: women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults. . . .

172 Republicans — including sixteen women — and lone Democrat Rep. Daniel Lipinski (IL), chair of the House Pro-Life Caucus — readily support the new standard.

[UPDATE: The Washington Post issued a correction to point out that Lipinski is not the sole Democrat supporting the bill. As of today, Democratic Reps. Dan Boren (OK), Jerry Costello (IL), Mark Critz (PA), Joe Donnelly (IN), Mike McIntyre (NC), Collin Peterson (MN), Nick Rahall (WV), Mike Ross (AR), and Heath Shuler (NC) are also sponsors.]

"Forcible rape" is a redundancy used in FBI crime statistics to denote that a weapon such as a gun or knife was used by the rapist, or that the victim was beaten in addition to having been raped. It is by far not the only form of rape or sexual assault legally recognized as a criminal act. Rapists can be and are charged for rape where no weapon is present and where no additional violence - other than the rape itself - is present.

The rape of a minor by an adult is always legally rape, regardless of weapon. The use of drugs to facilitate a rape constitutes legal rape. And so on.

We should also acknowledge how this law would punish women not only for being raped, not only for becoming pregnant as a result of that rape, but for being poor. Like most anti-choice and anti-woman laws, this law would disproportionately affect low-income women. Which are disproportionately and rapdily becoming most women in the US.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic Congressperson from Florida, strongly denounced the bill and its sponsors on The Raw Story:

"It is absolutely outrageous," Wasserman Schultz said in an exclusive interview late Monday afternoon. "I consider the proposal of this bill a violent act against women. . . . to suggest that there is some kind of rape that would be okay to force a woman to carry the resulting pregnancy to term, and abandon the principle that has been long held, an exception that has been settled for 30 years, is to me a violent act against women in and of itself," Wasserman Schultz said.

. . . .

The pro-abortion-rights group NARAL lashed out at the measure's backers, calling it "unbelievably cruel and heartless toward survivors of rape and incest."

"We are seeing more and more anti-choice lawmakers who are willing to deny survivors of rape and incest access to abortion care," NARAL president Nancy Keenan told Raw Story. "If they can't block access altogether, they will work around the edges. Rep. Smith's 'Stupak on Steroids' bill is an example of this piecemeal strategy because it seeks to make the narrow exceptions for public funding of abortion care for rape and incest survivors even more restrictive."

Wasserman Schultz also said the bill contradicted the GOP's core political philosophy.

"Even though Republicans say they want government out of our lives, this is the most intrusive governmental act that we've probably seen to date in the personal lives of women," she said.

US readers, please contact your representatives to express your outrage at this bill. Go here: Stop the Attack on Women's Health and Safety: Oppose H.R. 3!.

If you want to help in a more direct way, you can donate to the National Network of Abortions Funds. N-NAF raises money so abortion clinics can serve women regardless of their ability to pay for procedures. A gift to N-NAF is a direct action you can take to help a low-income woman take control of her life.

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webcam: living in the library, dreaming of a more just world

Remember those crazy Canadian kids, living in the library? Well, they're living the DREAM: they've set up shop, and you can watch them here, and they're blogging here.

More on DREAM here.

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tunisia, egypt, who is next? around the globe, revolutions

Revolution is spreading. On the heels of massive protests and demonstrations throughout Europe, Tunisians take back their country, and now Cairo rises up against Mubarak.

This morning the Canadian mainstream media is all agog with a speech out of Washington DC that will change absolutely nothing. CBC Headline: Obama urges people to create brighter future! ( Oh gosh, does he really?!) Meanwhile, much of the world is actually trying to do just that.

It's so exciting! I wish I had time to follow it all more closely. I'm filled with awe and more than a little envy.

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60 million striking indian workers made invisible by mainstream media

Did you know that, earlier this month, 60 million workers in India went on strike? The walk-outs shut down the country's banking, insurance, telecommunications, power and transit industries, among other sectors. One million workers walked out in the banking sector alone!

Millions of workers in India stayed away from work to protest against rising prices, job losses and state asset sales, forcing banks to shut offices in some cities and airlines to cancel flights.

“Persistently high inflation has made life difficult for a common man,” said Gurudas Dasgupta, general secretary at the All India Trade Union Congress. ‘Banking and civil aviation are the worst affected sectors so far.”

Today’s strike, the second in two months, affected business mainly in states ruled by communist parties. Inflation has held near ten percent this year, eroding incomes of almost three quarters of the population who live on less than $2 a day. A nationwide strike in July, called by the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, shut schools and offices and grounded flights.

“The strike is quite widespread” in the states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, said M.K. Pandhe, vice president at the Centre of Indian Trade Unions. “Telecom, insurance, defense, banking, coal, power, port and road transport sectors have been affected.” Pandhe estimates about 60 million workers are on strike.

About one million bank employees in India joined the strike today to protest the central bank’s plan to offer new banking licenses and norms that allow foreign investment in the nation’s lenders, said Vishwas Utagi, secretary of the All India Bank Employees Association, the largest trade union for banking staff in the nation.

What's that you say? You didn't know about this? Neither did I. As my friend who posted this on Facebook said, "Thanks for missing this, Canadian mainstream media".

Little wonder you didn't read about 60 million Indian workers striking, since you probably don't hear much about protracted strikes going on right in your own backyard. A series of union solidarity actions this week were meant to bring attention to a strike at Engineered Coated Products, where more than 80 Steelworkers have been on strike for two years. ECP has instituted massive cuts in wages and benefits, and rather than negotiate in good faith, hired scabs and goons a "private security force" to continue operations.

At the Marxism conference earlier this year, it was thrilling to hear Kostas Katarahiasan, an anti-capitalist activist from Greece - a physician - describe the massive general strikes that shut down his country after austerity measures were announced. How about a 30% cut in wages and pensions, while corporate taxes decrease and VAT (i.e. GST) rises? Union leaders were useless or obstructionist, so the people took matters into their own hands, forming committees, discussing a plan of action, organizing, organizing, organizing - and walking out in huge numbers. (There is audio of this talk here, but I think most people find that an inconvenient format. I am still waiting to get video of this inspiring talk, and will then blog my extensive notes.)

Following those actions in Greece, massive strikes of millions of people have taken place in many European countries, and there is a continent-wide general strike planned for September 29.

Here in North America, we accept these "austerity budgets" like sheep to the slaughter. The glimmer of hope I thought I saw in the anti-prorogation rally and during the G20 are quashed through fear tactics and widespread obedience.

In the US, ordinary working-class people cling to an ideal of individualism, preferring to blame immigrants or the party that is slightly less right-wing - which they call "socialist" - for their problems. Canadians whine about all political parties and take no action of their own - except to excoriate public workers who are desperately trying to preserve quality services and good jobs.

There's another lesson here, one that cannot be learned often enough. Don't look to CBC, Globe and Mail, and CTV to tell you what's happening in the world. Corporate media protects corporate interests.

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this is not a happy day for labour

Sid Ryan, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour:

Today, there are 250,000 fewer full time jobs and 355, 000 more unemployed workers. That’s only half the picture. Thousands of “new” jobs being created are part-time, contract, unstable, unpredictable and low waged. This explosion of precarious work is fast becoming a new normal.

Life is getting a lot tougher since this transfer of wealth and it is getting much more so.

. . . .

Since its inception, the labour movement has always been the key force in society seeking to restore a balance of power – not just for their own members but for all working people. The accomplishments and victories have fundamentally changed millions of lives: Medicare, pensions, weekends, minimum labour standards, social housing, social services are there for the benefit of the overwhelming majority of us and not the elite few.

Our recent and first victory in the campaign to ensure retirement security for all Canadians through an expanded Canada Pension Plan (CPP) is the result of an intense and widespread campaign. Average Canadians joined with us to convince governments that we have a right to a future that enables us, at the end of our work lives, to live in dignity and health. That significant first step now has to be followed up to make sure the CPP cap and contributions are adequate.

As thousands of trade unionists gather across Ontario to celebrate this Labour Day, we renew on our determination to do just that and to restore a balance of power so that the vast majority of Ontarians are able to profit from their work.

Won’t you join us?

Read it here.

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what i'm reading double-header, part one: bright-sided

I didn't have quite the read-a-palooza I was hoping for this summer, but that was inevitable, as I was juggling many pursuits and my concentration is often very limited. Despite that, I did read a small pile of books. I can probably squeeze in one more before school begins, then my next personal reading will be in December.

Most recently, I read two books that I want to blog about: Bright-sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America by Barbara Ehrenreich and This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson. I borrowed both from the library, but I plan to buy the paperbacks when they're issued.

* * * *

Bright-sided is classic Ehrenreich: easy to read, impeccably researched, grounded in personal experience, and an astute commentary on the US political and social milieu. The author's point of departure is her own experience with cancer, when she found herself bombarded with messages not only counseling, but demanding, positive thinking. She found that there was no space to express very natural, justifiable feelings of fear, worry, exhaustion, frustration and physical pain. Instead, there was an unrelenting and omnipresent drive to shame people into repressing those feelings, and - even worse - to blame persistent illness on the sufferer's "bad attitude". With absolutely no evidence to support it, one belief blankets the culture of cancer in the US: positive thinking will heal you. If your treatment isn't working, you must not be thinking positively enough.

From there Ehrenreich examines a culture that seeks to isolate and individualize every misfortune. And why not? If chronically unemployed and under-employed people look at the system that oppresses them, they might band together and work for change. It's far more expedient to preach that our destiny is in our own hands, and underachievers simply haven't tried hard enough - haven't thought positively enough. This meshes perfectly with the American mythology and the dominant culture in the US, so it's a very easy sell.

Ehrenreich ably relates this concept to religion, especially the Prosperity Gospels ("God Wants You To Be Rich!"), corporate culture and an economy destroyed by people who believe wishing will make it so. Being laid off can be an opportunity, but when a corporation lays off thousands of workers and their families tumble into poverty, it's not because of negative thinking. But a culture of individualized positive thinking is not one of collective action.

When I've mentioned this book, many people have asked, "You mean like The Secret?" The Secret is a book, movie and social phenomenon that preaches "everything one wants and needs may be accomplished by only wishing it". Yes, Ehrenreich does include that, but The Secret is only one recent and very popular manifestation of an aspect of US culture that has existed for more than a century. Ehrenreich dates the trend of relentless optimism to Mary Baker Eddy, credited with founding the Christian Science movement, and Norman Vincent Peale, the first person to stake a career on preaching positive thinking.

I disagreed with Ehrenreich on only one point, which she raises briefly in the introduction. She posits that unrealistically positive thinking contributed to both the invasion of Iraq, because the US believed their soldiers would be welcomed as liberators, and to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, because the US imagined itself as impenetrable. I can't buy this. I would say, instead, that the culture of positive thinking made it much easier for the US government to sell the Iraq War to an ignorant public. And as far as 9/11, I don't see any connection at all. Americans live in a dream world, ignorant of most international affairs, and certainly ignorant of the secret workings or non-workings of their country's intelligence and defense systems.

But this was a minor point, raised only in the introduction. If you're interested in this book, I recommend reading the excellent afterward, called "Postscript on Post-Positive Thinking," ahead of the introduction.

As an aside, I was horrified to learn that Martin Seligman, whose research launched the concept of "learned helplessness," and who teaches at my alma mater, is now a franchise hawking positive-thinking, self-help twaddle. He's founded an entire branch of psychology on positive thinking, and he still teaches at Penn!

Ehrenreich is not trying to sell pessimism. She's calling for us to strive for realism - to do the hard work "of trying to see things they way they are". Those of us who are naturally optimistic will arrive at a slightly different picture than those of us with a naturally pessimistic outlook. But both views will have validity, and neither will be delusional. In her afterward, Ehrenreich writes that "positive thinking has been a tool of repression worldwide" and "the threats we face are real and can be vanquished only by shaking off self-absorption and taking action in the world."

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greenwald: what collapsing empire looks like

I'm working on a big post which is taking some time. Meanwhile, this Glenn Greenwald column was posted in comments on this thread, about the poverty-stricken city of Camden, New Jersey, preparing to close its public libraries. I'm digging it out for more exposure.

One of wmtc's themes is the United States' downward spiral into a third-world country, a place where there is only very rich and very poor, where the rich are increasingly defended against all responsibility and inconvenience, and the poor are increasingly left to fend for themselves, with no jobs, no services and few rights: a global empire whose homeland is rotting at the core. My "US regression" tag also refers to the deterioration of democracy into a form of fascism that continues to maintain an appearance of democracy. Greenwald [see original for links]:

What collapsing empire looks like

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds:

Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.

There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including one showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of not being able to afford street lights. Read the article to revel in the details of this widespread misery. Meanwhile, the tiniest sliver of the wealthiest -- the ones who caused these problems in the first place -- continues to thrive. Let's recall what former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson said last year in The Atlantic about what happens in under-developed and developing countries when an elite-caused financial crisis ensues:

Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or -- here's a classic Kremlin bailout technique -- the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk -- at least until the riots grow too large.

The real question is whether the American public is too apathetic and trained into submission for that to ever happen.

UPDATE: It's probably also worth noting this Wall St. Journal article from last month -- with a subheadline warning: "Back to Stone Age" -- which describes how "paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue." Utah is seriously considering eliminating the 12th grade, or making it optional. And it was announced this week that "Camden [New Jersey] is preparing to permanently shut its library system by the end of the year, potentially leaving residents of the impoverished city among the few in the United States unable to borrow a library book free."

Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights -- or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State -- that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability? Anyway, I just wanted to leave everyone with some light and cheerful thoughts as we head into the weekend.

My only quibble with Greenwald is likely rhetorical. There is no question of whether the US public will submit to this. The water is already boiling.

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disaster capitalism is all around us (updated)

We're seeing disaster capitalism all around us, and it scares the hell out of me.

The tiny minority that autocratically makes decisions for the rest of us is using the banking and credit crisis that they created as a vehicle to carry in their right-wing agenda. History shows this will only further weaken the economies they claim to be assisting. That has been proven over and over again. But no matter, because these changes will further their real goals: a crippled public sector, smaller government helping fewer people, and an increase in wealth for the already rich.

I find this "austerity" - the wholesale slashing of public budgets - deeply frightening. People are being told that half their pensions have vanished into thin air. Being told they must survive on half their income. Social welfare benefits like child care and decent pensions, hard won over decades, are decimated in moments.

This is what the G8/G20 summit was about. Little wonder it was accompanied by the biggest show of police strength in Canadian history, as world leaders fear they'll be confronted by the kind of resistance occurring in Greece and in Spain.

If you've read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you can watch videos from the "Shout Out For Global Justice" event that took place at Massey Hall on the eve of the G20 weekend. Rabble has video of almost every speaker. John Hilary, who spoke directly about the economic violence raining down on people all over the globe, is here.

I find the whole "austerity" agenda incredibly scary, frustrating and depressing. It is bad enough to live in a world where labour is socialized but profit is privatized. But the socialization of risk simply outrages me. Free marketeers plunge the global economic system into chaos, then working class and poor people are made to pay for it, either through outright bailouts, as in the US, or by slashing social budgets, as we are seeing all through Europe and will undoubtedly see here, too. (It has been happening in Canada in piecemeal fashion, for many years - not one giant cut but a steady chipping away.) The multi-million dollar bonuses don't stop. CEO salaries don't get slashed. No one pays but the workers and the poor.

I wouldn't feel quite as awful if I saw the potential in Canada for the general strikes and mass uprisings that have been happening in Greece, and now Spain. Or the kind of massive, spontaneous street marches you see in France whenever benefits are threatened. It would still be scary and depressing, but at least I would feel hopeful. But here in North America, we are sheep ready for slaughter.

From The Guardian:

The European right is capitalising on a crisis

Eurozone governments and European authorities are using the economy to justify pushing through rightwing policy changes

One thing should be made clear about the situation in the eurozone economies that is not clear at all if we rely on most of the news reports. This is not a situation where countries face a "dilemma" because they have overspent and piled up too much public debt. They do not face "tough choices" that will force them to cut spending and raise taxes while the economy is weak or in recession, in order to "satisfy financial markets".

What is really going on is that powerful interests within these countries – including Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal – are taking advantage of the situation to make the changes that they want. Perhaps even more importantly, the European authorities – including the European commission, the European central bank and the IMF – who are holding the purse strings of any bailout funds, are even more committed than the national governments to rightwing policy changes. And they are further removed from any accountability to any electorate.

. . . .

Unless the goal is to reduce wages and benefits in the public sector, weaken labour, redistribute income upward and reduce the size of government, then there is no time like the present to push these things through. We have a similar, although not yet as severe political problem, in the United States: deficit hawks are mounting a campaign to cut social security, even though it can make all promised payments for the next 33 years.

Ironically, the people who want to take advantage of the "crisis" in Spain are actually increasing the risk of more serious debt problems, since the debt burden will rise if the economy lapses into recession or years of stagnation because of their fiscal tightening measures. But they are willing to take these risks in order to accomplish their political objectives.

Read it here.

* * * *

In the past week or so, I've read two excellent posts linking the police state outside the G20 summit with the agenda inside it. Now I can't find either one! If this rings a bell for anyone, please send me the link or post it in comments and I will include it in this post. Thanks.

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what i'm reading: little dorrit finally back on the shelf

None of us clearly know to whom or to what we are indebted in this wise, until some marked stop in the whirling wheel of life brings the right perception with it. It comes with sickness, it comes with sorrow, it comes with the loss of the dearly loved, it is one of the most frequent uses of adversity.

Charles Dickens, from Little Dorrit

I've finally finished reading this book. It took forever, as I struggle with making time to read and with my poor concentration. I loved it, because I love reading Dickens - his flood of language, his unerring conscience, the parade of crazy caricatures, the heartbreaking observations, the improbable coincidences, the total overkill.

The novel itself has some serious problems. Threads are left too long unattended, clues overly buried, loose ends tied up too suddenly, too much unwritten action suddenly revealed to force the conclusion. But if you like the lush, dense language, the melodrama, the great heap of characters more broad than deep - if you enter into the spirit of the thing - these faults don't matter. It's still wonderful.

Little Dorrit is a novel about poverty, class and the sins of capitalism. About the suffering caused by secrets and misdirected self-righteousness. About fortune's wheel - reversals of fortune, and who perishes and who withstands them. About, as always in Dickens, bad parents and the ruin they leave in their wake. Little Dorrit is about imprisonment - physical, emotional, spiritual - and true inner freedom, and what that might mean.

Reading Dickens makes me miss studying literature, analyzing it, writing about it, as I did in university and as I might have continued doing if I had followed a different path. But I only miss it in a momentary kind of way, not a deep regretful kind of way. I just see so much in a novel like this and want to spend more time pulling it apart.

* * * *

Now I have to re-read the two plays we're seeing in Stratford this year, which I find really increases my enjoyment of productions of Shakespeare. So between now and July 13, As You Like It and The Tempest are on deck.

After that, I don't know whether I'm up for another novel, or one of the many nonfiction titles crowding my list.

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"drilling, spilling and killing": why we protest, part two

This is the second part of my report on the "Shout Out for Global Justice" event that I attended on Friday, June 25. Part One is here.

* * * *

Next Amy Goodman took the stage. Her first three words were: "Drilling, spilling and killing." These so-called world leaders gathered here for the G20, she said, are not discussing how to fix the world's problems, but how to augment them.

Goodman related a few stories from Democracy Now!'s travels in the US Gulf of Mexico states right after the BP disaster. The fishermen whose lives have been devastated by the explosion, temporarily hired on cleanup crews, were afraid to talk to NPR because they had all been forced to sign hush contracts - forbidding them to speak in exchange for work.

This is why, she said, we need a media covering oil disasters that is not brought to us by energy companies.

Goodman read about the latest Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan. (Two more were announced today.) This brings the number of Canadian forces killed in Afghanistan to 150. Thousands of American soldiers have been killed in that war-for-oil. And the only thing sadder, Goodman said, than knowing those numbers, is not knowing the numbers of Afghans who have been killed.

She mentioned Brock McIntosh, a US Afghanistan veteran who is speaking out against the war there, and the brave veterans, many in uniform - which puts them at great risk for military arrest, court-martial and punishment - who lead peace marches during the 2008 US political conventions. But the public never saw them on mainstream media.

This is why we need a media covering war that is not brought to us by weapons manufacturers.

A media covering the US health care crisis and the piecemeal privatization of Canadian public health care that is not brought to us by insurance companies.

"Two hundred tea-partiers hold a protest," Goodman said, "and their numbers are dwarfed by the number of mainstream media reporters covering the show. 15,000 people participate in the People's Climate Conference in Cochambamba, Bolivia, and 200,000 people crowd the 2010 US Social Forum in Detroit, and no corporate media covers it."

This is why we need a media not brought to us by the same companies who profit from war and globalization and privatization.

Goodman told the story of the arrest and police abuse of herself and her colleagues at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. When she showed her media credentials, a secret service agent ripped them from her neck and confiscated them. One of her colleagues was dragged by her legs, face-down on the street. They were charged with felony offenses. Many in the audience didn't know about this, and they were gasping.

Right now, here in Canada, Goodman said, we are seeing the criminalization of dissent. A billion dollars spent on security means there is a truth they need to contain. She smiled and asked, "A billion dollars to contain all of you?"

* * * *

Leo Gerard spoke next. Gerard is the president of the United Steelworkers, and vice-president of the AFL-CIO. I imagine that for many in the audience, Gerard was the least interesting speaker, but his presence at the event was crucial. It is only through organized labour that workers can succeed in challenging corporate power. Even when workers unite, the battles are dire and desperate. But alone, it is hopeless. And when I say "organized labour," that doesn't have to mean a traditional union, although that may work. Vandana Shiva's farmer's networks are organized labour, too.

Gerard grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, a mining community with deep union roots. The town has been devastated by the mining giant Vale Inco. The mine workers of Sudbury have been on strike a full year. But still, facing so much pressure and loss, they stood strong and overwhelming rejected Vale's latest insulting offer. They have help and support from union leadership and rank-and-file all over Canada and the US, and they set an example for all of us. Gerard acknowledged the Sudbury strikers from the stage and all the union activists in the audience cheered them.

When Vale Inco came to Sudbury, it promised to be part of the community. Instead, it created a social disorder that, no matter what the settlement, will reverberate in the community for generations. And the Canadian government didn't just let this happen, Gerard said. The government made it happen.

He said that right now in Canada, 475,000 people are currently collecting Employment Insurance, but at least that many more have given up looking for work and are ineligible for the narrowly-defined benefits.

He reminded us that all over the US, people lost their homes and their life savings, taxpayers were forced to bailout the financial institutions from the mess they themselves created, and the heads of those companies helped themselves to hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses.

Economic sustainability, Gerard said, means regulation. It means a tax on global financial transactions. It means an end to the idea that we can have either good jobs or a clean environment - for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren, we will have both or we will have neither.

* * * *

After more incredible rhythm music from the Raging Asian Women, John Hilary spoke. Hilary is director of UK-based War on Want. War on Want is an anti-poverty organization that understands that poverty is political. It works in partnership with people in developing countries, campaigning for human rights, and against the root causes of global poverty: inequality and injustice. It works with farmers, factory workers and people living on the margins of society, building networks and communities - not for charity, but for lasting change.

Hilary told us that Canada's image in EU countries has taken a drastic downturn, as former PM Paul Martin travels around lecturing on deficit reduction. How should countries reduce their fiscal deficits? By visiting pain on the poorest sectors of society, through drastic cuts to the social welfare systems.

It took decades to build these public systems so that seniors could live in dignity, children could be cared for while parents worked, and taxes could be used to help people meet their basic needs. And with one stroke of a corporate-government pen, these vital systems are destroyed. To Europeans who care about social justice, "Canada" now means the most regressive and socially unfair economic model.

We're seeing, Hilary said, a kind of macho game among governments to see who can cut the most services. With an emergency budget, the UK saw 25% of its public services cut, 500,000 public-sector jobs eliminated, and the VAT, the most regressive tax that hits working people the hardest, raised yet again.

And it's even worse for countries dependent on the IMF. Latvia saw a full 40% of its public spending cut in order to receive IMF funding. (If you've read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, you know how that works.)

The G8/G20, Hilary said, has declared war on working people and marginalized communities. The bankers get a free ride and we pay for the crisis they caused.

Now, he warned, the Canada/EU free-trade agreement that is being negotiated behind our backs is privatizing sectors of our society that we don't even realize can be traded away: water, health care, indigenous resources.

The G8/G20 is reviving all the failed institutions that caused such poverty and destruction in the 1990s: the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank. The re-emergence of these failed institutions goes to the heart of the illegitimacy of the G8/G20.

Hilary reminded us that the so-called leaders will emerge from their conference saying they will help this country or that need with a few million here and there. "They will dole out little bits of charity and aid. Don't get taken in!"

* * * *

Next came the other speaker, with Vandana Shiva, I was most excited to see, Pablo Solon, the Bolivian ambassador to the UN. In an amusing sidenote, emcee R. H. Thomson mistakenly introduced Solon as the "Bolivian ambassador to the US". Solon reminded us that Bolivia has no ambassador to the US, because they kicked the US embassy out of their country!

Solon was a water warrior; now he is a water warrior ambassador. If you saw the movie "The Corporation," you know something about the stunning victory of the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia over the Bechtel corporation, reversing the unilateral privatization of Bolivia's water supply. I have not yet seen the documentary Blue Gold: World Water Wars but I'm told it's a must.

Solon's present battle - the battle he urges us all to join, the battle the Council of Canadians leads in Canada and Maude Barlow leads in the UN - is to have water declared a human right. We must bring a UN declaration of Water As A Human Right to a vote, and, Solon said, "We must expose those countries who vote against it, as sometimes we must expose vampires."

After the people of Cochabamba kicked Bechtel out of their country, Bechtel sued Bolivia for $30 to $100 million to recover what they said were their losses. After a ten-year court battle in which the people would not surrender, Bechtel was paid damages of one dollar. And they left.

Then the people of Bolivia went on to re-nationalize all the industries that had been privatized: gas, oil, banking. "We re-nationalized our government," Solon said, which brought great cheers. Bolivians created public jobs, raised salaries, restored and increased social benefits. "We can do this," he said, "because we now control the economic power of the country, not the corporations." Before, 82% of the profits of the energy sector went into private hands, and 18% went into the public coffers. Now 18% goes to private hands and 82% is reinvested in the public sector. And do you know what? The companies still see a profit. There is no deficit. There is a surplus.

This is why we must listen to people like Pablo Solon and Vandana Shiva. They bring us living proof that another world is possible.

Solon spoke of the urgency of climate change and establishing "Mother Earth rights," as the people's climate conference in Cochabamba established. "We must recognize," he said, "that there are some things that cannot be commodified."

* * * *

As I said, I had to leave during Naomi Klein's talk and I didn't see Maude Barlow. I heard Barlow was a bit overwhelming and depressing, giving a litany of statistics and not a lot of hope. But I wasn't there. Barlow and everyone from the Council of Canadians deserve heaps of credit for organizing and promoting this incredible evening.

The part of Klein's talk that I did hear outlined how the G20 - which seems to have appeared out of nowhere - was created by Paul Martin, Bill Clinton and Larry Summers in 1999. Three powerful men choosing a few regional players who were friendly to North American interests to help the world's most powerful nations create the conditions that caused the global economic crisis. Summits like the G8 and the G20 are attempts to sideline and marginalize an already-weak United Nations, so these rich, powerful countries can't be outvoted by the world's poor.

Klein also mentioned how weird it is seeing Stephen Harper lecture the world on how to manage their countries, when she's not sure why Harper is allowed to run this country.

Of course we all laugh and applaud, but really. Why?

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"we need g6,000,000,000": why we protest, part one

Sunday morning, the day after.

The day after massive peaceful protests against the G8/G20, after small non-peaceful protests and vandalism, after police-provoked and police-allowed violence.

The day after police violence against peaceful demonstrators - after rubber bullets, pepper spray, baton beatings, bicycles smashing against bodies, pre-dawn raids with guns drawn.

The day after 25,000 people march in the rain in Toronto, carrying signs about women's human rights, the for-profit destruction of the planet, the rights of seniors to live in dignity, the demise of democracy, the rights of indigenous peoples.

The day after, I'm going to change the subject, turn back the clock, just a little.

These are some of my notes from the stellar event called "Shout Out for Global Justice," held at Massey Hall on Friday night. (Held there because the University of Toronto closed down completely and cancelled everything on campus - with three weeks' notice and without paying many of their employees. Union grievances abound.)

Unfortunately, because of transit schedules, I wasn't able to stay for the entire event, so my notes drop off a cliff - I heard only half of Naomi Klein and none of Maude Barlow. But I hope the notes I have will paint a picture of why we must protest the G8/G20, and what is being done to our world in the name of capitalism.

If you don't already know these speakers and the issues they speak and write about, I encourage you to follow links and buy their books and learn, learn, learn.

* * * *

The event was emceed by Canadian actor R. H. Thomson and streamed live via Rabble across Canada, to the US Social Forum in Detroit, and to several different countries. It was kicked off by the Raging Asian Women taiko drummers, who also played after intermission. They were amazing! I was quite smitten.

Thomson said while the G20 so-called leaders are talking about financial deficits, the real leaders are here in Massey Hall, talking about more dire deficits: environmental deficits, social justice deficits, deficits of native rights, water as a human right, media, peace.

The first speaker was Clayton Thomas-Muller of the
Indigenous Environmental Network, organizer of their tar sands campaign for the past 20 years. (I also heard Thomas-Muller speak at the Marxism conference.)

He spoke about Canada's shameful record on native rights - how native lands are exploited for resources while the people on those lands benefit the least - how the great resource wealth of native land is stolen in exchange for environmental degradation, health crises, and a paltry token royalty.

At the same time, leaders of the environmental movement do not necessarily include aboriginal people in their plans and those plans often do not reflect the realities of aboriginal people, people of colour, low-income people and people in other marginalized communities that are disproportionately affected by environmental destruction.

Because of this, the IEN calls for climate justice - the link between the rights of indigenous peoples and the environment.

Thomas-Muller reminded us that his community has a 60,000-year track record of providing green jobs for the community. It will be native people, he said, joining with the labour movement, who will bring down the tar sands. (Also at the Marxism conference, Thomas-Muller gave a separate talk about the tar sands. I wish I had been able to attend, but there's a lot of great info on their website.)

Thomas-Muller was passionate and stirring, calling on us to reject the authority of the G8/G20, and look to the authority of the people, ourselves.

He said: I am here to tell you: you are not sheep. You are wolves.

* * * *

Next Vandana Shiva took the stage. I hope you know Dr. Shiva's work. She is a scientist, philosopher, writer, environmental activist, and global food and farming activist. She is the founder of Navdanya, a network of organic producers that trains farmers in seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture, and helps set up and promote fair trade organic networks in India. I can't really do Navdanya justice in this description. You should go to their website and learn for yourself.

Shiva is a warm, funny, engaging person, and her presence onstage filled me with joy and hope. She said, "You know, I'm actually starting to feel sorry for the G20. Not only are they so boring, they don't even know what they want to do anymore! Not only are we more than them, we are so much more fun!"

When Shiva read about the civil liberties' crackdowns and the noise cannons, she thought, they are really afraid we will be heard. She said in India women use their own sound cannons: they bring out their pots and pans and rolling pins and take to the streets. "And let me tell you, that noise we make has a way of scaring the patriarchs!"

Shiva said that her country, India, is being used to enlarge the nuclear agenda. 200,000 tonnes of uranium, mined on indigenous lands in North America, is being forced on India, as the nuclear industry there balloons to a $15-billion enterprise. The corporations who profit from this have worked out a deal to cap their own liabilities at a ridiculously low level - so, as Shiva said, they can create another Bhopaul and have the legal right to walk away from it. This courtesy of US corporate economist under a Democrat administration, Lawrence Summers.

US international "development" money is now all about biotechnology and profits for Monsanto. It's no coincidence, Shiva said, that the provinces most associated with this "development" have the highest rates of farmer suicides. It's the same pattern being forced on the entire world: the socialization of risks and costs, the privatization of profits. Now even liabilities are socialized, as taxpayers are forced to bail out the corporations from the effects of their own disastrous policies.

And Shiva brings the story full circle: none of this can happen without militarization. Global military budgets are sucking the life out of our needy world. The money must be redirected to reversing climate change, local food production, clean water, global health.

She noted something I had never thought of before: why is it that only these financial and economic meetings bring out the heavy police presence and civil liberties crackdowns? The United Nations represents almost 200 nations, "not just this pathetic 20," but we don't see the thousands of police for the UN.

The police presence at the G20 is both a symptom and a symbol of the militarization of the entire economic structure, where the land of the world's poorest people is being grabbed and exploited by the world's most powerful corporations.

Shiva asked, who is the G8 or the G20 that they presume to speak for us? The United Nations, G198, is much better, but even that is only a start. We need G6-billion. G6,000,000,000. The whole world.

She said, We are here to tell them, there is a world order beyond corporate power.

Part 2: Amy Goodman, Leo Gerard, John Hilary, Pablo Solon.

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get out there and march

The "Shout Out for Global Justice" was amazing and inspiring.

I was especially thrilled to see Vandana Shiva and Pablo Solon. Sure, Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein are great, but you can hear and read them any day of the week. Shiva, Solon, Clayton Thomas-Muller - these were the real treats. People who are showing us that another world is possible, and who are out there creating it right now.

Since I'm off from work this weekend, I hope to write about it tomorrow, but more than that, I hope you'll all be able to see video of the whole event.

Today is the day to take to the streets, to protest the G20 agenda - its entire anti-democratic existence - and the police lockdown of Toronto and Ontario.

The feeder march of the Canadian Peace Alliance begins 12:30 at the US Consulate, the main march begins 1:00 at Queen's Park. Women will lead the way carrying a giant coat hanger, to remind Stephen Harper and his G20 cronies that maternal health includes abortion.

Be there!

Thanks to Dr. Dawg for the pic, via pmoharper.

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debtors prisons! they're not just for dickens anymore!

How fortuitous to see this as I'm reading Dickens' Little Dorrit. The title character of that novel grew up in the Marshalsea Prison, a prison for debtors, and her family was twisted and ruined behind its walls. Dickens is a little dense for most modern readers, but perhaps some judges and state legislators should give it a try.

You committed no crime, but an officer is knocking on your door. More Minnesotans are surprised to find themselves being locked up over debts.

As a sheriff's deputy dumped the contents of Joy Uhlmeyer's purse into a sealed bag, she begged to know why she had just been arrested while driving home to Richfield after an Easter visit with her elderly mother.

No one had an answer. Uhlmeyer spent a sleepless night in a frigid Anoka County holding cell, her hands tucked under her armpits for warmth. Then, handcuffed in a squad car, she was taken to downtown Minneapolis for booking. Finally, after 16 hours in limbo, jail officials fingerprinted Uhlmeyer and explained her offense -- missing a court hearing over an unpaid debt. "They have no right to do this to me," said the 57-year-old patient care advocate, her voice as soft as a whisper. "Not for a stupid credit card."

It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found.

Not every warrant results in an arrest, but in Minnesota many debtors spend up to 48 hours in cells with criminals. Consumer attorneys say such arrests are increasing in many states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Washington, driven by a bad economy, high consumer debt and a growing industry that buys bad debts and employs every means available to collect.

Whether a debtor is locked up depends largely on where the person lives, because enforcement is inconsistent from state to state, and even county to county.

In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man "to indefinite incarceration" until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt.

The story includes links to "What to know: Avoiding warrants," "Top five companies using debt arrest warrants," and "Is jailing debtors the same as debtors jail?" It sounds like something out of SNL. But no. Welcome to 21st Century USA.

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