Canada, dude, you used to be cool!

I have nothing but fond memories of living in Canada: a country of stunningly beautiful landscapes; happy, unassuming, and industrious inhabitants; and a firm adherence to coffee breaks at 16:20. Likewise, my encounters with Canadians around the world have always been positive, just always remember (as with the Scottish, Irish and Welsh) to ask if they are Canadian before assuming their accent means they are American (I still often find it hard to tell the difference!)It is however American (USA) travellers who pay the Canadians the highest of compliments by sewing Canadian flags to their backpacks so as to avoid having insults / rotten fruit / grenades (please select appropriate projectile) thrown at them by locals anxious to expel the gringo invader (see photo below) from their country.

American Tourists....

However, attention Canadians, Americans and all those looking to throw shit at gringos, this is all due to change unless all cool Canadians take drastic action. Canada`s imagine as “the US` “cool northern neighbour” is under threat by a conservative political takeover and a growing tendency to disregard human rights and destroy the environment that is just not… cool.

The environment

After Saudi Arabia, Canada boasts the largest oil reserves in the world which would be bad enough if a big part of this was not locked up in the oil sands of Alberta. Extracting said oil consumes 5 times more energy than conventional methods and leaves vast swaths of pristine wilderness looking more like Tolkein`s Land of Mordor. It was probably such environmental inconveniences that prompted Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper to ridicule the Kyoto accord as “a money-sucking socialist scheme” and vow to battle to defeat it.

Consequently, Canadian delegations have consistently blocked the international community in coming to an agreement in order to tackle climate change. Nationally, Canadian environmental spending has been savagely cut, and Canadian climate scientists are finding themselves gagged from talking to the press while the oil and gas lobby are given free rein to “muddy the waters” through the spread of misinformation.

Human rights

Instead of bringing “economic development and jobs” the Albertan oil sands projects have brought severe problems for local indigenous communities. Traditional hunting lands have been destroyed, rivers poisoned and cases of cancer have increased alarmingly. Furthermore, the Canadian government do not limit human rights abuses to their own backyard. From Guatemala to the Congo, Canadian mining companies have the worst human rights record in the world (involved in four times as many incidents as their Australian and British counterparts) which includes forced displacement, murder and even accusations of supporting genocide.

The Harper administration are not just turning a blind eye to the shameful conduct of Canadian multinationals abroad, they are actively aiding and abetting!

• Bill C-300 would have required extractive companies operating in developing countries to comply with certain international human rights and environmental standards widely accepted by the industry as best practice, however it was defeated in Canadian Parliament in November of last year.
• Despite widespread opposition from both Canadian and Colombian civil society, debate was shut down and a controversial free trade agreement between the two countries was voted in by both Liberal and Conservative MPs on June 14 2011. Little more than lip service is paid to the dire situation for human rights defenders in Colombia.
• Canadian NGOs not in line with conservative ideology have experienced crippling cuts while aid spending is redirected toward programs that facilitate Canadian multinational entrance into foreign markets, whitewash their image and tie development aid to Canadian commercial interests. This means that while Canadian mining corporations are enjoying record profits, Canadian tax payers are paying for their publicity campaigns dressed up as development projects. Burris Devanney describes the process as such; “CIDA’s funding of Canadian NGOs to work in  poor villages under the umbrella of Canadian mining companies is a 19th century throwback that will probably deliver more harm than good and turn poor villages into little neo-colonies or factory towns, with the NGOs serving as paternalistic, if not parasitic, social overseers.”

Oh, Canada!

Now, come on Canada, I can understand the need for many other countries to abuse human rights and destroy the environment. How else are the middle eastern oil states supposed the pay for their giant air-conditioned shopping malls with ski slopes in the middle of the desert? African countries are full of yummy resources that must be exported, the Chinese have to keep their workers in their sweatshops somehow, and the US must continue exporting fabulous free market democracy to an often ungrateful world.

Canadians, however, live in one of the most beautiful countries in the world with a half decent democratic system, workers rights, and no need to maintain any kind of international hegemony. Canada always ranks high in the UN`s human development index and consistently comes top or close in various other quality of life indexes.

Yes, tar sands and international mining may be profitable and pesky human rights and the environment do get in the way of this. But do you really believe more money will make you happier? The choice  to live by ones values and morals is a luxury in a world in which scarcity is the norm. Those lucky enough to live in stability and prosperity have the responsibility to look beyond their own material well-being and build their societies on values, morals and principles.

Since their electoral victory in 2006, the Canadian Conservatives have consistently lied, cheated, stolen, broken the law, defrauded, defamed, and disregarded democracy in order to grab and hold onto power. This shameful charade can no longer be ignored nor tolerated. So Canadians, I urge you to put justice and liberty ahead of pure profit. If not, then investing in little American flags to sew onto your bags when travelling abroad will be necessary (and profitable!).

"simply remove maple leaf and replace with stars and stripes"

Contact the author: robbie_packer@hotmail.com

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Follow the Money: Repression, Collectivization and Progress in Medellín, Colombia.

On a Thursday morning of last month, at 10:30am, Ana Fabricia Cordoba, a land and victims activist from the department of Urabá, North Colombia, was murdered on a bus in Medellín. Ana is the tenth activist this year to be murdered, undoubtedly due to her work demanding the recognition of the human rights of victims of violence and those expelled from their lands.

Being Colombia’s second city with almost 4 million inhabitants, Medellín seems an unlikely scene for a story of rural collectivization. However, it is here in the sprawling slums, where small farmers, dispossessed of their lands, must eke out a living. Hundreds of thousands have come here from the regions of Urabá and Chocó in forced displacements that coincidently begun to increase in scale following the expansion of the African palm oil industry in these regions. They know that only collective action will get them back their lands, yet from poverty, repression and murder this is an uphill struggle; a social movement to which straight forward technical prescriptions cannot, unfortunately, be applied.

According to the Colombian Institute for Rural Development, throughout Colombia, “Small farmers’ land has been invaded and those who remain have been subjected to secret military strategies of intimidation”. Upon displacement they suffer discrimination and further repression, family and community ties are ruptured and life persists in a constant state of insecurity. Any attempt to organize and work together in order to improve, protect or reclaim their land is brutally repressed by both state and non-state actors. Today, numbering almost 5 million,Colombia’s forcibly displaced population equals that ofSudan making these two countries the worst cases of forced displacement in the world.

Despite positive rhetoric, Colombian state discourse and media tar the forcibly displaced with the brush of conflict, implicitly linking them to guerilla or paramilitary groups. The state actively and unfairly criminalizes land activists and what they can’t do within the confines of the law, they leave to paramilitary groups with whom they have proven links. Since the 80s, small farmers’ lands throughoutColombiahave slowly been taken by large landholders with strong links to paramilitary groups. Under the banner of “progress”, the land oligarchy point out high export profits in order to justify their position. In reality, what is actually promoted is a regressive, backward social order in which 1.4% of land owners own 65% of the land.

The fact is that, as well as challenging the economic monopoly on natural resources enjoyed by multinationals, small farmers working successfully together directly threaten the mechanized-monoculture agricultural model which favors unequal ownership patterns and regressive income distribution. Many people find it hard to believe, but small farming is actually more efficient than large-scale agriculture. It goes against our logic but, putting aside sustainability and environmental concerns, the majority of research (including that of the World Bank) clearly indicates an inverse relationship between farm size and efficiency. Furthermore, small farming generates more employment and distributes wealth more evenly, leading to further benefits associated with social equality.

ACA (Campesino Action of Antioquia) is a farmers’ collective that represents peasants who settled in the region of Angelopolis. Previously considered barren by commercial agriculture, by working together, ACA turned this land into one of the most productive areas in the region. However, this wealth drew the attention of paramilitaries who orchestrated a campaign of intimidation and threats that lead to the community’s eventual forced displacement. Confined to the slums of Medellín, ACA are constantly subject to threats and intimidation due to their work. Rather than focusing on capacity building and technological development, ACA must now focus on collectivizing politically in order to reclaim their stolen land.

Collective action, from forming cooperatives to participating in the democratic process and state-run development programs, is a natural human behavior which we have employed, to varying degrees, for millennia in order to survive and prosper. The optimal extent and manner depend upon a complex set of cultural, social, historical and geographic factors best understood by those to whom they are specific.

From grain silos to fertilizer, small farmers know themselves what is best for them, their families and communities. It is high time that well meaning experts stop attempting to hand down prescriptions to ‘cure’ underdevelopment and, instead, look to the crux of the problem and start supporting small farmers throughout the world in taking the individual and collective action necessary to help themselves. This doesn’t mean, of course, that there is no place for advice and consultation; there will always be something we can learn from one another. However, the deluge of prescriptions that has flowed from “The West to the rest” for the past 60 years has failed to deliver a sustainable solution to rural poverty throughout the developing world.

The majority of these prescriptions from development experts effectively place the responsibility for small farmers’ failure to collectivize on the heads of small farmers. However, in light of the violence and repression inColombia, can we really ‘blame’ small farmers for not being able to collectivize and organize effectively? The fact is that recommendations to small farmers on how they should farm their land completely ignore the brutal repression they experience and, furthermore, fall neatly into a long tradition of blaming the poor for the problems of the world.

Rather than studying agricultural practices in far away lands, it would be far more productive to pose a few questions regarding our own societies; where do the weapons come from? Where to the drugs and palm oil from the forcibly acquired lands go? Simple, Follow the money.

As long as we persist in turning a blind eye to the fact that we are a part of the problem there will be nothing we can share with small farmers that will help deliver a sustainable solution to rural poverty. We must use the rights we are lucky enough to enjoy to demand that our governments defend the human rights of small farmers and do everything they can to pressure foreign governments and businesses to do the same. This way, small farmers will be free to link up in whatever way and to whatever degree suits them best in order to improve their livelihoods and confront the challenges of global warming and a rising world population.

In Medellín they demand one thing; respect for their human rights, something worth more than all the advice, models and programs we can muster. Collectivization is, rather than technical, a social process. Being its seedbed, freedom must be cultivated to ensure a natural, bottom-up process best suited to improving livelihoods.

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The Necessary Futility of Charity

Charity work is essential to modern day society, in pretty much every part of the world. Helping people in miserable situations when they are struggling to help themselves is often a life saver, and charitable giving undeniably supports millions of people in the world.

However, despite the dominant view of charity, which sees it as almost automatically ‘good’ because of its nature, looking at it from another angle we can see that perhaps the existence of charity actually stifles people’s ability to bring about the changes necessary to live in a just world.

Lets take an example of charities working in Africa like Comic Relief. While of course it is better that a child has some medicine or a mosquito net instead of not having them and it is better that a village has clean water/a school/ a clinic instead of not having these things, by simply providing them for these communities can this really be described as a ‘good’ thing? After all, those people will now continue to live in poverty but with new mosquito nets to sleep under, or a clinic nearby.

Isn’t it strange that rather than trying to focus on the root cause of what is causing poverty, charities seem intent on merely analysing and treating the symptoms?

As Zizek points out in the video below, surely the proper focus should be on reconstructing society so that poverty and its associated range of miseries cannot exist, rather than covering up our consciences and the symptoms with measures which do not seek to eradicate poverty?

It is clear that the mainstream focus of international development is not to see the end of poverty, the World Bank’s loans are packaged as ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers’ (PRSPs). They are only designed to reduce, not eradicate poverty.

So why is this the case? I would like to put forward the argument that charity in its current existence is merely an accomplice to the system of exploitation that leaves people in the impoverished situations in which they find themselves. In fact it is a legitimisation of that system of exploitation.

Neoliberalism relies on large scale poverty in order to profit from it, think of the cheap labour used to manufacture swathes of consumer goods across the world. Think of the workers on plantations and down mines, working for next to nothing to produce the natural resources from which these goods are made and from which the rich multi-national companies profit.

In order to break free from poverty, people need to break free from the system which results in the rich’s domination over the poor, on national and global levels and this can’t be achieved with the idea of charity as we know it. We need to change a system which forces people to rely on the ‘market’ for their livelihood, rather than patch up the misery that system causes with simple handouts.

A beautiful animation to accompany a Slavoj Zizek talk about the topic of charity as referred to above.

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