Category: Invisible Hand

G20 Toronto 2010 – Agent Provocateurs and A Dystopian Future

July 3, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Inside a security perimeter that cost Canadian taxpayers over a billion dollars, G20 world leaders met to screw over their own most vulnerable populations.

While most of the corporate media focused on burning cop cars and protester “violence” (property damage), others suspected the real crime was what was taking place inside the meeting.

More disturbing than the “smashed windows and burned cop cars,” writes Naomi Klein, are the “smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession”:

How else can we interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.

Meanwhile, outside the perimeter, people who gathered to object were subjected to the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

The fact that the large majority of these protesters were non-violent and within their rights is obscured by the sensational property destruction by black bloc (so called) anarchists.

The actions of the black bloc are then used to justify the broad crackdown on legal dissent, and it is important to note that manifestations of the group have in the past been infiltrated by police agent provocateurs.  This is not conspiracy:  Canadian police have admitted to posing as black bloc protesters in 2007, after they were outed by a union leader on video shot at a protests in Quebec.

This tradition seems to have continued outside the G20 in Toronto, whence video has emerged suggesting black bloc agent provocateurs being protected by the police.  See, as further illustration, also this level-headed photojournalist make the case that the property destroying “anarchists” got a green light from the police:

Setting aside the issue of police agent provocateurs, the experience of some other participants is worth noting.

David Ker Thomson describes his experience and suggests that “Toronto is the World“:

We have seen the future.  This is it.  More troops, more brutality, more police pretending to be protestors and smashing whatever they want at $80/hour, more acceptance from a population that will submit to any limitation on its freedom as long as it can pay someone to make them feel temporarily safe.

And despite the presence of agent provocateurs, he goes on to challenge the bourgeois left for  being scandalized by mere broken glass:

Is there anything more smug than bourgeois people offering to be scandalized by broken glass?  The slightest disintegration of their spectacle unnerves them.  “Violence!” they cry.

…

We’re not fighting a few irritable fat cops with nightsticks anymore.  The wall is impenetrable.  We are losing.  The leaders have floated to the top as scum always does, and we are drowning.

Another participant, Matt Shultz, who was arrested for possession of paint balloons, describes in detail his experience “Inside Torontanamo” and warns of the detention center’s intended effect:

Let me be very clear on this: the point of this exercise was two-fold, first, to traumatize the activists (check), second, to normalize this kind of thing with the cops. And let me also be clear: check. Many, even most of the cops seemed totally fine with it. The casual, collaborative, efficient and impersonal sadism of it was really appealing to some of them and everyone in this country wants to ask themselves if Torontanamo is something they’d like to see more of in Canada because make no mistake, it’s in the planning stages.

And for those who are persuaded by corporate shills that the G20 protesters have no coherent target, try listening to Maude Barlow speak on the issue. And here is some more good coverage.

…and the kissing couple come from this collection of images.

BP

May 10, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

But the latest episode in a sad history of oil operations.  This current disaster will result in several disastrous and long term effects.

Democracy Now covers the important angles of this story – how the government exempted BP from environmental review despite its dismal environmental record, noting its lobbying and greenwashing campaigns as well as its  role in the 1953 overthrow of democracy in  Iran,

Nikolas Kozloff reviews the role of Obama’s secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. (I can’t help but succumb to a flash of schadenfreude for President Centrist since this disaster comes right on the heels of this.) And here is a bit about the Halliburton connection.

One group is mobilizing for a day of protests and calling for the seizure of BP’s assets.

Yes We Can Drill Baby Drill

April 3, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

WGP_Obama_DrillingOn the heels of his pushes for so-called “clean coal” technology and guaranteed loans for nuclear power  plants, President Obama this week decided to reverse a longstanding ban on offshore drilling and “announced an expansive new policy that could put new oil and natural gas platforms in waters along the southern Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and part of Alaska.”

This move by Obama-the-President is to be expected by now insofar as it completely reverses the position of Obama-the-Senator and Obama-the-campaigner. (See for example here, although he did begins to capitulate as the campaign wore on.)

This is the latest latest expression of Obama’s deep seated bipartisanism fetish, which absurdly seeks to curry favor with those “conservatives” who do will not cooperate with him on principle by selling out those progressives who can be taken for granted because they have no principle. But regardless of the political value of the decision, the Economist argues it is bad environmental / engergy policy:

The problem runs deeper than David Roberts’s point (“The impact on oil prices will be ‘insignificant,’ says the Energy Information Administration, and it won’t make America any less dependent on foreign oil, either”). It runs deeper than Frances Beinecke’s point (“Better running cars and more efficient use of existing oil fields can help us make the transition into the 21st century without harming marine life or marine jobs.”) It runs deeper than John Broder and Clifford Krause’s point (“Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t“). The fundamental problem is this: there is a finite amount of fossil fuel. The more of it we find and burn, the more carbon we put into the atmosphere, and the more severe the greenhouse effect becomes. Once the carbon is in the atmosphere, it stays there. If we want to limit climate change, what we have to do, one way or another, is to leave fuels in the ground wherever possible, not find and burn them.

Environmental groups are angry, of course, and kool-aid drinkers are finally waking up:

“Its like a kick in the face” says Jonathan Ruiz of Florida International University.  Jonathan campaigned for Obama for fourteen months, and now he’s livid about today’s announcement by the administration to open half the east coast to offshore drilling.

(By the way, thanks to Stephen Colbert for the title of this post.)

“If anyone has a better [corporate friendly] approach… let me know.”

February 10, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

WGP_better_approach

As a Senator campaigning for the Presidency, Obama called himself “a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.”

Even after being elected Obama admitted, in passing, that single payer would be the only way to insure every U.S. citizen – but moved instead to strike (not-so-secret) deals with big PhRMA and completely drop any challenge to the for-profit, private health “care” system.

This is what makes his recent State of the Union request for “a better approach” to healthcare reform so completely disingenuous:

OBAMA: “If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. I’m eager to see it.”

WGP_better_approach-2Pediatrician Dr. Margaret Flowers took Obama at his word and went to the White House the next day with a letter urging the revival of the idea of  a “single payer” or a “medicare-for-all” system.

The Secret Service turned her away, but she tried to respond to the president’s request again the next day in Baltimore where she was arrested for trespassing.

Congratulations, Dr. Flowers, you are The World’s Got Problems Undersung HeroTM of the Month!

Hear her interviewed by Bill Moyers here.

Haiti

January 14, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

WGP_Haiti_Quake_1Tens of thousands of people, perhaps more, have been killed if the devastating earthquake in Port-au-Prince, where “the sound of screaming is constant.”

Alternet provides links to ten aid organizations if you are motivated to send money.

I would add Artists for Peace and Justice to that list, due to personal connections to some of the organizers.

The Guardian has a rich minute by minute live blog here. (Yesterday’s is here.)

For historical background on the reasons for Haiti’s poverty and weak infrastructure, see this discussion here or this essay here.

Naomi Klien warns that this will be used as another opportunity for disaster capitalism.

For an essay on the U.S. debt to this indebted nation, see here.

The original image of the girl on the right came from the fine photojournalism analysis blog, BagNewsNotes.

COPENHAGEN

November 20, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

CO2 emissions have been increasing since the industrial revolution, and now it seems that the planet’s capability to absorb them is decreasing as well. This increase of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses is leading to a potentially catastrophic rise in global temperatures as much as 6 degrees Celsius global by the end of our century. Among the likely results of this increase in greenhouse gasses are less ice and snow, more flooding, rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions generally.

Increasing numbers of species face extinction, and many among our own species would continue to endure an increasing onslaught of displacement, disease, starvation and war – and all the while U.S. Americans yawn or simply take refuge on thier childish mythologies about a big daddy in the sky who will save them because they are special.

To address this global challenge, 192 nations will convene at COP15, the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen from December7-18.

Environmental leaders and activists outside the gates of the official UN event are organizing their own parallel conference, Klimaforum 09.

A great resource on this is the Guardian’s “Countdown to Copenhagen” page, as well as their Q&A and historical timeline. To watch what is at stake at Copenhagen in cartoon form, click here.

Obama’s has given mixed signals, at best, on what can be hoped for in Copenhagen. Although he personally went there to lobby for a Chicago Olympics, the president of one of the most polluting nations on earth has yet to say whether he’ll even attend the international climate confernece. His absence could derail the meeting, just as it did the UN Conference on Racism earlier this year. He has even talked of postponing any binding agreements until 2010.

To be fair, Obama has a dilemma.  Despite the German Chancellor’s personal plea to the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Senate will not focus on climate legislation until after the Copenhagen meeting. As summarized by the Guardian, this means that if Obama makes an offer there “it could subsequently be rejected in Washington. But if he makes no offer, the deal is likely to crash anyway, and with it hopes of rapidly combating global warming.”

Thus, one of The World’s Problems: global action on climate change is contingent on the despicable corporate whores who constitute the U.S. Senate.

But the political machinations are an abstraction from the actual problems to be addressed in Copenhagen, carbon pollution and the radical challenges that follow from it. NASA scientists have reached some consensus on the upper limit of the amount of carbon pollution consistent with earth civilization: 350 PPM (Parts Per Million), “the most important number on the planet,” according to Bill McKibben, whose 350.orginization coordinated actions all over the world last moth. Video here. Right now we are at 390, way in the red zone.

Meanwhile, James Lovelock, the 90 year old father of the Gaia theory and inventor of the instruments that measures atmospheric CFC’s thinks that it is already too late and that only the few will survive.  The less fatalistic among you might want do something.  A large mobilization is being planned for November 30, the eve of the Copenhagen Conference and the 10th anniversary of the shutdown of the WTO in Seattle.

GOLPISTAS EN HONDURAS, PART II

November 5, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

Since they ousted President Zelaya in a military coup four months ago, the now de facto government in Honduras has suppressed their opponents with arrests and sonic warfare and brutal beatings and assassinations.

They have also officially suspended the rights of free speech and free assembly, and have shut down media that they don’t themselves control. Pro-Coup media have of course continued to operate, with one newspaper literally photoshopping the blood from images of wounded protesters and another delivering images of protesters to the police.

The coup government’s strategy has been to run out the clock until after the elections scheduled for November 29, which they would of course “win” and therefore achieve “legitimacy”.

Meanwhile the Obama administration has largely dithered as the coup government moved to consolidate its power, but under international pressure has managed to negotiate an agreement with the oup government to “restore democracy”, which, according to The Nation’s Greg Grandin, the golpistas explicitly seek to ignore:

Hardliners in the coup government… see a loophole in the accords, which gives the Honduran National Congress the power toapprove or reject Zelaya’s return. And no sooner was the ink dry on the accord than a top Micheletti adviser, Marcia Facusse de Villeda, told Bloomberg News that “Zelaya won’t be restored.” In a barefaced admission that the coup government was trying to buy time, Facusse said that“just by signing this agreement we already have the recognition of the international community for the elections.” Another Micheletti aide,Arturo Corrales, said that since the congress is not in session, no vote on the agreement could be scheduled until “after the elections.”
Grandin goes on to enumerate what rides on even a symbolic restoration of Zalaya to power before the November 29 elections.

Other good resources on this story:

The Real News Network, which has been producing short videos about the conflict since it started; The Guardian UK, which often has compelling slide shows; and Al Jazeera, which has produced a great investigative film about the Honduran crisis for its Fault Lines series, hosted by Avi Lewis.

Lewis questions many of the major local players as well as those people in the street who have lost loved ones in the violence. I highly recommend it: Part 1 and Part 2.

YOUR DIRTY ASS

October 12, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

According to Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), more than 98% of the toilet roll sold in America comes from virgin wood.

“But fluffiness comes at a price,” according to the New York Times:

…millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most large manufacturers rely on them.

This is a largely consumer driven problem, especially in the United States. From the Guardian:

Dave Dixon, a [Kimberly-Clark] spokesman, said toilet paper and tissue from recycled fibre had been on the market for years. If Americans wanted to buy them, they could.

“For bath tissue Americans in particular like the softness and strength that virgin fibres provides,” Dixon said. “It’s the quality and softness the consumers in America have come to expect.”

The L.A. times covers the story here, Alternet here.

To see a slide show of the destruction of the North American Boreal forest by the paper industry, click here.

To see an interactive map of the Earth’s last remaining virgin forests, go here.

You can see the NDRC’s ranking of toilet paper companies here, and Greenpeace’s ranking here.

Or to clean your ass in another way, consider this or this.

G20 PITTSBURG

September 30, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

As the global oligarchs met in Pittsburg to discuss how best to preserve their failed system, local and imported police used aerosol tear-gas hand-grenades, pepper spray, batons and rubber bullets against citizens exercising their by now merely theoretical (and in any case carefully portioned out) right to peaceful assembly.

The porcine mercenaries did not limit themselves to such traditional weapons of authoritarian order, however. In addition, they broke the domestic cherry of a new weapon in the fight against democracy, a weapon previously reserved for Iraqi insurgents or Somali pirates: the Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD.

(This device had previously been on standby, but not used, in New York during the 2004 Republican National Convention and at town hall meetings in San Diego earlier this month.)

Manufactured by the American Technology Corporation, the LRAD projects sound waves in such a way that they become amplified and directional.

Here is an informative clip from a “Future Weapons” episode on Discovery, where LRAD inventor Woody Norris describes the device:

“It is like putting on handcuffs,” he says. “You drop what you’ve got and you cover your ears.”

If that doesn’t work and people keep peacefully marching toward you, you can “flip it into high gear, and the output increases by about 5,000 times per setting of the volume control.”

Which can, you know, blow your eardrums.

“It is like having bullets where you have a volume control,” says the proud inventor.

Video here and here…

And here is a list of some other “crowd control” weapons to watch out for…

And here is another thoughtful take on the Pittsburg G20.

BUT ONE BRAND AMONG MANY…

September 10, 2009: J. Rosencrantz

The cover story of the current issue of Mother Jones has thrown increased attention on the FIJI water corporation’s environmental impact, as well as its political impact on its island nation host.

While investigating the story, their reporter Anna Lenzer was detained by the FIJI police and claims she was threatened with imprisonment and rape. (She is interviewed here.)

The upshot of the story is this: Despite the company’s absurd claim that consuming their product is actually good for the environment, the FIJI Water Corporation runs diesel powered factories that use twice the plastic as most other brands, legitimizes the military dictator ship that gained power in FIJI by coup in 2006, and hides its profits in tax havens while the local Fijian people drink dirty water and suffer from typhoid outbreaks.

While there is no reasonable way to argue that drinking imported water from plastic bottles is environmentally sound, the political issues, to be fair, are more complex.

The Fiji water company itself tries to defend itself here, allowing comments, and Mother Jones is hosting an online debate addressing whether Fiji Water really does legitimize the military dictatorship.

And the context of the 2006 coup and its dictatorship is also complex. Fiji has experienced several coups in the past decade, pitting the Native Methodist majority against the Indian Hindu minority, and the current dictator “Frank” Bainimarama seeks to end what he sees as institutional racism against the minorities as he takes draconian control of the local media. See Bainimarama interviewed here.

Of course, FIJI water is but one brand among many.  All of the bottled water companies are environmentally unsound and they each have their own particular wet regrets as well.

But on the other hand, not all tap water is trustworthy. You don’t even want to bathe in the tap water near the coal companies of West Virginia. Lack of regulation of polluters was a hallmark of the Bush years, and it doesn’t look like Mr. Change is going to do much better.