New US climate target means Canada’s won’t budge

Brett Throop

The Conservative government has one thing to celebrate going into next week’s climate talks in Copenhagen: Obama’s emissions reduction offer.

Last week, along with announcing he would make a brief appearance in Copenhagen, President Obama made an offer to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, was likely pleased to note how close that target is to Canada’s own goal of 20 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020.

“If we do more than the US, we will suffer economic pain for no real environmental gain,” Prentice said earlier this month. “But if we do less, we will risk facing new border barriers into the American market.”

That means if the US adopts a more ambitious target, Canada will likely follow. On the other hand, with a comparable target in the US, Canada could more easily stick to its current target.

That is, if the Conservative government continues to ignore pressure from both at home and abroad to make deeper emissions cuts.

That pressure mounted last week as climate change activists occupied Prentice’s Calgary office and Parliament passed a motion calling for the Conservatives to make deeper cuts. There were also calls for Canada’s membership in the Commonwealth to be suspended for its climate change policy.

“Countries that fail to help [tackle global warming] should be suspended from membership, as are those that breach human rights,” said UK MP and former international development secretary Clare Short.

Why Canada must leave Afghanistan now

‘The bravest woman in Afghanistan’ talks about peace, justice and women’s rights

Haseena Manek

Malalai Joya was just 27 years old when she became the youngest person ever to be elected to Afghanistan’s parliament. That was in 2005. Four years later, she is also an author, a teacher, a peace activist, a women’s rights campaigner and a survivor of multiple assassination attempts.

Joya was recently in Canada to promote her memoir, A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Speak Out, and to appear at numerous peace events across the country.

In May 2007, Joya was suspended from parliament, a result of her relentless criticism of Afghanistan’s corrupt, warlord government. To this day, Joya continues to face death threats, and must sleep in safe houses. She is constantly aware of her enemies, both inside and outside of parliament.

Joya shares these experiences as she meets and engages audiences across Canada. The topic of her speaking tour hits hard, since the first deployment of Canadian troops joined American soldiers in Afghanistan in early 2002. Military leaders still claim that the purpose of the mission is to rebuild Afghanistan, assist development and provide security.

But Joya sees things differently: “These occupation forces, they are victims of the wrong policy of their own government that sent them to a bad, costly war. Democracy will never come by war, by cluster bomb or by the barrel of a gun.”

In May this year, over 150 civilians were killed by US air strikes in Afghanistan; most victims were women and children. Eleven bodies are still missing. In September, another 200 civilians were bombed.

Between NATO air strikes from above and the dangers of warlords and drug lords on the ground, the people of Afghanistan are caught in the middle of a bloody war that is supposedly being waged for their own liberation. At least that’s the line according to NATO leaders, including Stephen Harper.

Joya has also been fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan, from the early days of the Taliban until now. She says: “The situation of women was, without a doubt, the best excuse for the US government to occupy our country—under the banner of women’s rights… But they pushed us from the frying pan into the fire.”

Afghan women face more hardship today than in 2001 when the war began. They have less security, and largely only enjoy human rights on paper. They are the primary victims of NATO’s bombing campaigns, and are often threatened with rape and murder by the warlords.

This is far from the image of women’s rights in Afghanistan peddled by the Canadian government and NATO leaders. For instance, one article on NATO’s website describes a meeting between 13 female members of the Wolesi Jirga (Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament) and NATO officials, citing “the progress made in recent years to integrate Afghan women at all levels of society” and “the current historic political empowerment of women in Afghanistan, with 68 women parliamentarians in the Wolesi Jirga…”

It is true that the percentage of female parliamentarians in Afghanistan is higher than in Canada, but Joya explains how many of these women either support the warlords or have no real power. “Most of them have only a symbolic role… They are just a show-piece.”

During one of Joya’s appearances in Toronto, she asked Canadians for their “helping hand, [their] honest, practical, helping hand.” She went on to say that this helping hand does not mean nearly a decade of foreign occupation, or the farce of democracy in the Afghan government. “There is a huge difference,” says Joya, “between ordinary people and policy-makers […] between the people and their government.” It is the people Joya calls for support, not the military.

“As a great people, as anti-war people, as human beings … [you] should raise [your] voice against the wrong policies of [your] government.”

There are many ways that people in the West can support the people of Afghanistan, and none of them require ammunition, says Joya. International solidarity, educational support and moral support are just three examples of what Afghans need and seek from allies in Canada. In her memoir, after describing three decades of turmoil in Afghanistan, Joya says that the last thing the Afghan people need is more war.

“Education is the key to our emancipation” says Joya. The job of Canadians, she continues, is to learn, to educate themselves and each other, and to become aware of the real situation in Afghanistan.

NATO troops, including Canadian soldiers, are sent to war in the name of democracy, says Joya. But Canadians must recognize that the war in not about democracy, which can only come about through the struggle of the people of Afghanistan themselves.

“The US government, Canada and NATO: they play chess with the destiny of my people… If they left us a little bit in peace, then we would know what to do with our destiny.”

‘Battle of Seattle’ launched anti-capitalist movement

Ten years after historic protests

James Clark, Features and Opinions Editor

On November 30, 1999 tens of thousands of people successfully shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) during the millennial round of trade talks in Seattle, Washington. The protests, now known as the “Battle of Seattle,” marked the emergence of the anti-globalization or anti-capitalist movement, and launched a wave of large-scale protests that targeted trade summits everywhere they met.

Protesters in Seattle came from all over the world, and represented a wide range of struggles.  Indigenous activists protested corporate exploitation of their land and resources. Environmentalists sounded the alarm bell over global warming and climate change. Church groups campaigned to drop the debt in the Global South. Farmers marched against unfair trade policies. Trade unionists resisted plant closures and job cuts. Women’s groups demanded equal pay and better working conditions.

Much to the surprise of those on both sides of the barricades, the protests actually succeeded in shutting down the WTO. The turning point came after days of smaller protests, teach-ins and tactical discussions. On “N30” thousands of activists converged in the downtown core and surrounded the summit site.

City officials were surprised at the number and organization of protesters, who had been planning their mobilization for months. They soon occupied key intersections, blocking delegates from the summit. Riot police responded by firing pepper-spray, tear-gas and rubber bullets at the crowd.

In another part of the city, tens of thousands of trade unionists were just beginning to march in a labour-organized demonstration. Union leaders had planned a march that stayed away from the downtown core, but their members soon broke away and began marching toward the summit.

Rank-and-file union members were inspired by the resistance of the “turtle kids” (young environmental activists), especially in the face of repressive police tactics, and were moved to show their solidarity.

The arrival of thousands of trade unionists in the downtown core proved decisive. The police began to back off, as they realized they were massively out-numbered. Protesters continued to occupy downtown streets, and a carnival-like atmosphere erupted as it became clear that the summit had been shut down.

As hundreds of delegates remained trapped outside the summit, and as tear gas wafted inside, Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper announced: “Those who were arguing they were going to shut the WTO down were, in fact, successful today.”

At Seattle, for the first time in decades, a growing number of movements and struggles began to link their issues together into a broader critique of the overall system. Participants may have represented a wide range of issues, but they all targeted their protest at the WTO, a symbol of global capitalism.

Some protesters called for more regulation, criticizing the “neoliberal excesses” of capitalism, instead of the system itself. Others were more thoroughly anti-capitalist, calling for capitalism to be abolished. Either way, a serious and sustained critique of capitalism followed the Seattle protests, and would have far-reaching consequences for struggles everywhere.

Seattle may have marked the emergence of the anti-globalization or anti-capitalist movement, but it didn’t mark its beginning. For years before Seattle, anti-capitalist sentiment had been growing all over the world.

Just five years after the collapse of “communism” in Eastern Europe, the Zapatistas led an uprising on New Year’s Day in 1994 to resist the creation of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), one of the first major struggles against the neoliberal agenda. In France in 1995, the largest strike-wave since May 1968 halted sweeping neoliberal reforms. In Ontario, one-day general strikes took place in 11 cities across the province, the “Days of Action” against Conservative Premier Mike Harris’ cuts to social services.

Protests like these were a glimpse of an anti-neoliberal sentiment that had been bubbling under the surface, but which burst spectacularly at Seattle. In the months that followed, large-scale protests were organized at trade summits all over the world.

In Windsor, Ontario in June 2000, thousands of people—including members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW)—protested the summit of the Organization of American States (OAS). Nearly a year later, over 80,000 people mobilized in Quebec City during the Summit of the Americas to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Hundreds of people were arrested during the summit, and a record number of tear-gas canisters were fired throughout the city. Months later, support for free trade dropped dramatically all across Canada.

At the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, 300,000 people marched in protest of the death of activist Carlo Giuliani, who was shot dead by the Italian carabinieri. Protests followed in Gothenburg, Melbourne, Washington, Hong Kong—and anywhere else that the forces of neoliberal globalization attempted to meet.

In addition to the protests, anti-capitalism expressed itself through the phenomenon of Social Forums. In January 2001, the first World Social Forum (WSF) took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil—in opposition to the World Economic Forum based in Davos, Switzerland. The WSF spawned local and regional versions, where activists from a variety of movements met to coordinate resistance.

Social forums continue to this day, but with varying degrees of success and popular appeal.

Despite its early successes, the anti-capitalist movement was halted in its tracks on September 11, 2001—but not before laying a foundation for the anti-war movement that would follow it. The politics, organization and experience of anti-capitalism had a tremendous effect on the opposition that developed to George Bush’s “war on terror”—leading to worldwide mass demonstrations in early 2003 that involved millions of people.

In Canada, the anti-G8 protests held in Calgary and Kananaskis, Alberta in July 2002 became an organizing centre for anti-war activists. A new pan-Canadian network of peace groups, infused with the spirit and creativity of anti-capitalism, developed out of Calgary, and renewed the Canadian peace movement. An entire generation of activists emerged from that experience.

The impact of Seattle was also felt in electoral politics. In English Canada, the New Politics Initiative (NPI) emerged as a serious anti-capitalist challenge to the New Democratic Party, winning over 40 per cent support to launch a new radical party at the NDP’s federal convention in Winnipeg in November 2001. The NPI eventually turned its attention to shifting the NDP to the left. It wrapped up a year after Jack Layton replaced Alexa McDonough as NDP leader.

In Quebec, the Union des forces progressistes (UFP) came together in the wake of the mobilizations against the FTAA in Quebec City. Its success laid the groundwork for the creation of a new political party, Québec solidaire, which won its first seat in parliament in provincial elections in December 2008.

The process of radicalization that gained momentum after Seattle has become more widespread in Latin America than anywhere else in the world, and has helped elect radical reformist governments that have thrown up serious resistance to the neoliberal agenda.

Perhaps the most important legacy of the Seattle protests is the shift in the political climate in the last ten years. So many of the issues that were first raised in Seattle have now become widely accepted by the public as common sense—even though political leaders continue to drag their feet.

Climate change is just one example. At one time, most people dismissed climate change as a myth. Today a clear majority support initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming.

The Seattle protests have also contributed to the growing opposition to neoliberalism that reached new heights during the current economic crisis. Even though the movement no longer has the strength or momentum it did ten years ago, it nevertheless continues to influence debates about capitalism, especially as more people consider alternatives to the system.

In the movements themselves, the impact of Seattle remains. Thousands of activists cut their teeth in the anti- capitalist mobilizations that followed Seattle. Many of them continue to organize in other movements. And many of the organizational relationships that were built during and after Seattle—especially the so-called “Teamster-turtle” alliance between trade unionists and environmentalists—have transformed today’s movements. A growing number of trade unionists now work closely with environmentalists to create good, green jobs. Likewise, more and more climate change activists see labour as an ally, not an obstacle.

Although the level of activity among labour never matched the general sentiment of anti-capitalism, trade unionists were nevertheless affected by their contact with the movement.

The current period represents another opportunity for anti-capitalism to reach a wider audience. Despite weak signs of growth, major problems persist in the economy: workers continue to lose their jobs, and workplaces continue to close. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan carry on, with no end in sight. And climate change now poses an even greater threat to humanity, as the planet warms at an even faster pace.

In each of these struggles, more and more activists—like those who were inspired by Seattle—are connecting issues, and linking them to the global economic system. Among them is a growing number who understand that capitalism offers no solutions, that the system itself generates these problems in the first place.

At the moment, this radicalization has not led to widespread action against the system. Resistance, where it exists, remains decentralized, and is so far restricted to mainly defensive struggles.

But the future of anti-capitalism lies in activists like these, and in the potential of their struggles to transform themselves from protests against the effects of global capitalism to a movement against the system itself.

This article originally appeared in the December issue of Socialist Worker, number 513.

Visit Democracy Now! to watch a roundtable discussion about the impact of the Seattle protests and the birth of a movement: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/30/the_battle_of_seattle_10_years

Girls for sale: China’s baby black market

Candice Kung

With 30 crisp $100 bills in her hand, Cathy Wagner was handed a sleeping baby girl who she gently cradled in her arms.  Shortly after the birth of her first son, Wagner was diagnosed with epilepsy, so instead of conceiving another child, she and her husband decided to adopt from an orphanage in China’s Chongqing province in 2006. Even though she was overwhelmed with joy, Wagner had a nagging sense that something wasn’t right. Three years later, Wagner now knows what that feeling was. The mandatory $3,000 she had paid was more than just an orphanage fee. It’s what drives a booming black market where Chinese girls are stolen and trafficked for their high “buying potential.” It’s the tragic irony behind China’s intercountry adoption program.

Historically in China, sons are preferred over daughters. When China implemented their one-child policy in 1971, the number of abandoned females reached crisis proportions in the 1980s and early 1990s. A medical guide to international adoption by Laurie C. Miller estimated that about 15 million baby girls have been abandoned since 1980 in China. Families have to pay exorbitant fines for exceeding China’s family planning quota and sometimes the fees can total from one half to ten times their annual salary.

With state-sponsored orphanages inundated with baby girls, China opened its doors to foreign adoption. The program offered exactly what some Western parents were looking for: young, healthy baby girls whose birth parents were unlikely to complicate the adoption process.

Over the past three years, however, the growing demand for adoption has failed to reduce the number of infants in orphanages. This is because this isn’t the orphanage’s goal. The competition for healthy baby girls between foreign and domestic adoption has turned China’s adoption program into a supply-and-demand-driven market. The lack of healthy infants has prompted orphanages to illicitly buy children from traffickers. They create fraudulent documents of where the babies come from and pass them off as being “abandoned.” The flood of allegedly unwanted daughters has become an exploitative opportunity for orphanages to profit from.

A recent publication in September 2009 by the Los Angeles Times told shocking stories of Chinese babies who were forcefully taken away, kidnapped and even sold by birth parents who were tricked by corrupt family planning officials and traffickers. Distraught birth parents say it’s a fallacy that they don’t love their daughters. They never wanted to give up their children, but they couldn’t afford to pay the fines for breaching China’s policy rule. Although it isn’t necessarily illegal to buy a baby in China, it is illegal to steal or sell a child, and officials don’t have the power to take babies from their parents.

“It’s a nagging, haunting feeling,” says Wagner, who is concerned that the daughter she adopted may have been stolen from her birth parents for the purposes of foreign adoption. After researching more deeply into her daughter’s origins, Wagner compared notes with others and found the adoption paperwork to be very generic and the finder’s name repeated over and over again. Terrified by the fact that family planning could be involved, Wagner says she just hopes that she didn’t create a victim through the whole adoption process.

“It’s concerning because now I recognize that this is a demand-driven industry based on the want of a healthy female,” says Wagner. “All of us request these non-special needs, healthy female children, thinking and buying into this myth that there is an overwhelming abundance and never-ending supply of these children, but the reality is very different. If families in China are losing children or being coerced, and children are going into the program because of the money, then I feel horrible about my role in this.”

Human trafficking is rampant in China, but the link between child trafficking and orphanages only started to emerge in 2003 after police inspected a number of nylon suitcases stacked on the luggage rack of a bus bound for an eastern province. Upon opening, they discovered in total 28 Chinese baby girls. Some were packed three to a suitcase and some died before they could make it to their destination. The youngest was only a few days old.

In 2005, six orphanages in the Hunan province of China were alarmingly found to have matched hundreds of trafficked babies with Western parents between 2002 and 2005. Orphanage directors colluded with traffickers and bought infants for approximately $400 to $558 a piece. Twenty-seven people were arrested, 10 were convicted and intercountry adoptions from Hunan were suspended for several months.

“It really shook the foundation for China’s international program,” says Brian Stuy, an adoptive father of three Chinese girls and the founder of Research-China, an organization based in Utah geared to researching the origins of Chinese adoptees. “Previous to the Hunan scandal, the conventional wisdom was that there were thousands of girls being dropped on the street, that millions of kids needed help,” he said. “Now it appears that not only do the orphanages not have all these children, but that they’re going out and paying people to give up their kids.”

In July 2009, an investigation by the Chinese Southern Metropolis Daily found that over 80 baby girls were confiscated from parents and placed into orphanages for adoption in the province of Guizhou. Victimized parents complained that a local family planning official gave them an ultimatum: give away their daughter or pay fines of about 20,000 yuan.

It’s evident just how lucrative the business of baby buying can be. Given that the adoption fee is  $3,000 per infant, orphanages can easily cash into a million-dollar industry. Orphanages and local family planning officials often split the donation money given by adoptive parents. Money becomes a top priority for them but at the expense of the children’s wellbeing.

Less than 15 per cent of the $3,000 adoption fee makes it to the maintenance of an orphanage. “In all honesty, most of these orphanages make hundreds and thousands of dollars in donations either directly from the adoption program or from donations the families make afterwards. But it seems that very little of those financial resources make it to the care of the kids,” says Stuy who has seen the conditions of the orphanages. He found that the facilities are relatively clean, but the staff is spread thin with about four caregivers in charge of 20 to 30 kids. In poor provinces like Hunan and Guizhou, misuse of the funds is common and orphanages receive only about $80 from the adoption fee of each child.

Wagner was shocked to find out that her daughter’s orphanage depended on a formula donation through a non-governmental organization when it failed to feed the children properly. “The conditions of her orphanage were very poor,” says Wagner, who saw pictures of the orphanage’s interior and saw that there were sometimes two babies to one crib. “I’m sure my daughter did not leave the crib.”

But even after the Hunan scandal, nothing seems to have changed in China’s adoption system. Most of the orphanages involved in baby buying have resurfaced. The Canadian Embassy staff in Beijing has asked the chief of the China Centre of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) to look into the matter. Chinese authorities have agreed to investigate, but in the past they have ignored corruption charges regarding the state-run adoption system.

A number of grassroots organizations have cropped up to help victimized parents search for their missing children. Non-profit organizations such as Gu Er Net (Orphan Net) and Bao Bei Hui Jia (Babies Come Back Home) have created websites allowing parents to post information about lost children.

However, some orphanage officials believe that the baby-buying programs are giving the children an opportunity for a better life in the West. “The belief that children are better off in richer families, I think, is what drives a lot of people to approve of illegal activities such as baby buying,” says Stuy. Since 1990, more than 80,000 Chinese children have been adopted abroad. In Canada, about 1,000 of those children are adopted each year and there are about 30,000 foreign families still waiting for Chinese babies.

When Wagner fell in love with her now four-year-old daughter, she knew she would eventually have to answer to her one day. “It’ll be a hard job to explain this mess to her and I refuse to lie to her,” she says. “I do want her to know who her birth family was. I don’t feel like hiding from that whole factor because when I look at my daughter I can’t help but think about them. I want her to have the truth.”

In the meantime, Wagner would like to see the Canadian government step in to take serious action to reduce the vulnerabilities in intercountry adoptions with China. “Let’s take our time and investigate thoroughly and make sure the rights of the child are protected before we proceed. If we did that, we would probably see a dramatic decrease in the amount of children that come into the country,” says Wagner. “Put the rights of the child first.”

The waiting game

Matthew Kim

It may be justice deferred, but the latest batch of pictures documenting the existence of the Bush torture program will have to wait. And rightly so. Although the delay will temporarily insulate former President George W. Bush and members of his administration from full exposure to the American (and International) judicial systems, it will also fan Western resentment, and so undoubtedly lessen the ammunition spent in Afghanistan, political or otherwise.

Yes, accepting the idea that a functioning institution is sometimes an accommodating one is an odious pill to swallow. Its application is prescribed for places like Afghanistan, where decisions of policy and strategy means balancing evil with a compromise of lesser goods, but also places like Canada where a reticent conservative government refuses to commit fully to a timeline for withdrawal.

With nearly three-thousand soldiers currently stationed in Afghanistan, mostly in Kandahar, Canada is the fifth-largest non-American force deployed behind UK, Germany and France. That whatever progress made in Afghanistan is almost completely authored by these and other international actors present no doubt weighs heavy on the mind of the American president as he conducts a review of American policy in that country. Dutch forces are scheduled to end their participation next year, while a German populace grows increasingly distasteful of its involvement in Afghanistan. Kunduz Governor Mohammed Omar recently commented on the latter trend in an interview with Der Spiegel: “If Germans don’t want to work, it would honestly be better if they left our province.”

It would be reasonable then to speculate that the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan will likely increase. But the question of exactly how many and of what is something to which President Obama—and Mr. Harper—can only level reasoned guesses. Should the new policy strike a balance between the prevailing voices of Gen. McChrystal and Vice President Joe Biden, the number of new troops will hover around 25,000 in the short term with the possibility of more in the future, and the more focused, less ambitious objective of erecting a sustainable Afghan government while minimizing the insurgency’s disruptions will be its mandate. In any event, the number will more than make up for the withdrawl of Dutch forces in 2010 and the scheduled Canadian withdrawal in 2011, but by no means does it guarantee success in Afghanistan. And as long as uncertainty remains the Harper government will have to continue treading a semantic tightrope.

To wit, Foreign Minister Peter Mackay recently observed the mission in Afghanistan is presently “changing,” but failed to describe its mutation. However, he seems to feel it, whatever it is, will necessitate less of a military force in a conventional military role as “reconstruction, development” becomes the future of Canadian participation.

As if to bolster or rebuff Mackay’s comments—it’s hard to tell which—Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Walt Natynczyk stated in an interview with the CBC that “What we do for the Canadian Forces are military missions.” Ergo…

Except the syllogism is unobvious or at least difficult to state. Take, for example, recent statements made, or not made, by spokesperson for the Prime Minister Dimitri Soudas exemplified. When asked about a Canadian withdrawal of soldiers, he refrained from articulating logical sum of a withdrawal—zero—and gave instead a somewhat ambiguous reply saying “I would caution you against saying dozens or hundreds or a thousands, there will be exponentially fewer.”

Soudas’ response illustrates something of a theme of Afghanistan, akin to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, the preponderance of uncertainties, narration possible only in retrospect. Whether an able Afghan government will coalesce under the leadership of Karzai remains to be seen. While corruption and a suspect election, amongst other things, besmirch the president’s name, inactivity looms over crucial matters such as rehabilitation programs for defecting Taliban, electoral reforms, parliament formation, filling of cabinet positions, not to mention the provision of basic services, infrastructure, and clean water to many rural areas. Answers to vital questions, the Afghan National Army’s capability for example, are still in the offing. Will additional American forces in Afghanistan remedy the failings of Kabul? Or is its legitimacy, irreparably damaged, insurmountable? And Pakistan?

The parliamentary motion to withdraw being non-binding makes it possible that a Canadian presence will persist in Afghanistan beyond 2011. Whether they will or not is an uncertainty, and necessarily so as long as our goals remain establishing a functional government for the Afghan people. Indeterminacy, in this case, is a pill we’ll have to swallow.

On December 1, Obama announced his intention to increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan by 30,000. This will raise the total number of American troops to more than 100,000.

Obama’s Goldilocks plan for Afghanistan

James Laxer

Barack Obama got mired in Afghanistan during his campaign for the presidency in 2008. To fend off attacks on him from Hillary Clinton and John McCain that depicted him as a geo-strategic lightweight, Obama talked tough about Afghanistan. To lend credence to his criticism of the US conflict in Iraq, Obama said the war the Americans really had to win was in Afghanistan. To show how unflinching he could be, Obama said he would be prepared to launch attacks on Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, along the Afghan border, even if the government of Pakistan withheld permission for this.

Now, following two months of lengthy consultations with his national security advisers in the Situation Room, the president has come up with his plan to handle the so-called “forgotten” war.

With West Point as his backdrop – the academy from which such legendary figures as Robert E. Lee and Dwight D. Eisenhower graduated – Obama announced what is being depicted as an “extended surge” which will see an additional 30,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan. By the end of May 2010, the American force in that country will total nearly 100,000.

The goal of the surge is to downgrade the Taliban insurgency to the point where a trained and expanded Afghan military can handle the job. By July 2011, Obama pledged, the United States will begin to pull its troops out of Afghanistan.

While the president did not claim that the fight was to transform the Kabul regime into a democracy, he did lay down some performance targets, in the areas of good governance and the fight to rid the country of corruption, that he says that Afghan President Hamid Karzai must meet.

What leaps out of Obama’s speech is that this is not so much a plan to achieve victory in Afghanistan as a scheme to ensure the political health of the US president. It is a Goldilocks plan, not too hot, not too cold, not too big, not too small.

While the planned surge is not as massive as General Stanley A. McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, wanted it to be, it is big enough to fend off Republican critics who are all-too-ready to accuse Obama of endangering American security by risking defeat in Afghanistan. By holding the line at 30,000 troops – additional cost, $30 billion a year instead of $40 billion if McChrystal had had his way – Obama shows that he’s concerned about keeping Washington’s deficit manageable. By announcing a firm date for the beginning of the troop withdrawal, the president is trying to placate Democrats who believe that the war is unwinnable, that America has had enough of war, and the government should spend to combat poverty and homelessness in the United States, instead of wasting money and lives on a forlorn crusade in Central Asia.

The more you look at Obama’s plan, the more evident it is that the White House strategy is designed to suit the American political agenda at home, not the geo-strategic realities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The surge should have its maximum effect by the summer of 2010, just in time to hold off the Republicans in the midterm elections in the autumn of that year. The withdrawal of troops is to begin in July 2011, perfect timing as Obama seeks the re-nomination of his party and the ardent support of Democrats for the presidential election of 2012.

Does anyone in Obama’s inner circle actually believe that the plan will transform Afghanistan into a country that lives under the rule of law, with an effective non-corrupt central government, and a regime that respects the rights of women? Do any of them expect the Afghan army to become an effective fighting force? Probably not.

This porridge is being served up for the American people, not for the people of Afghanistan. Canadians, who have seen their soldiers suffer the highest casualties, per capita, of any NATO country in this war, should avoid this delicacy, and any temptation to continue our mission beyond 2011.

Dyer: Climate change to global chaos

James Burrows, News Editor

“There is a point of no return,” Gwynne Dyer stated in his low casual voice to a packed theatre last month. “At two degrees hotter we lose control.”

Dyer is a world-renowned freelance journalist who has become famous for his investigations into politics and military strategy.

Dyer became interested in climate change after he realized that militaries around the world were becoming interested in the potential geopolitical fallout from catastrophic climate change. His resulting investigation led him to believe that climate change is more serious than is popularly believed. In the lead up to this month’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, he has been on a Canadian tour in an attempt to get people to understand the severity and immediacy of the problem.

“The scientists are really scared. The conversations I had with them generally had an undercurrent of panic.”

An increase of two degrees Celsius in average global temperature is generally regarded by the scientific community as the point where climate change cannot be stopped.

“If the permafrost around the arctic melts,” Dyer warned, there is “enough greenhouse gas stored to double the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.”

“But somewhere north of a two degree Celsius increase in global temperatures above a 1990 baseline, natural processes begin.”

Dyer also believes that it is unlikely that we will be able to stop the globe from heating before we reach that mark. “We are almost certainly going to blow right through that,” remarked Dyer.

Atmospheric concentrations of 450 parts per million (ppm) is generally thought to correlate to a two degree Celsius increase in global temperature. Right now, the planet sits at 390 ppm.  “Before the recession slowed things down we were increasing that by three [ppm] per year…that means we are 20 years away from hitting 450.”

In a previous lecture Dyer did for TVO, he highlighted how much faster climate change is occurring than scientists had previously thought by highlighting the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their predictions regarding arctic summer sea ice.  A 2007 IPCC report suggested that arctic sea ice coverage during the summer months would probably disappear sometime between 2040 and 2060.  The IPCC now believes the sea ice could be gone as soon as 2013. This could result in an even faster increase in global temperatures.

At the end of November, Arctic researcher Dr. David Barber concluded that multi-year ice coverage in the Arctic is already nearly gone. “Unfortunately what we found was that the multi-year [ice] has all but disappeared. What’s left is this remnant, rotten ice.”

Multi-year sea ice currently only covers about 19 per cent of the Arctic basin. This ‘permanent’ ice used to be 10 metres thick and cover 90 per cent of the Arctic.

If runaway climate change occurs then most of the world will starve, Dyer warned, and as few as 500 million people might survive. Most of the world will be unable to grow food and the result will be massive increases in refugee populations.

In a CBC radio episode of Ideas, Gwynne Dyer has an actor outline what Europe might look like in 2046 if there is an increase of 2.8 degrees Celsius.  This increase looks something like this: the collapse of the European Union, the southern part of Italy being taken over by refugees, Northern Italy and Spain developing nuclear weapons and all European countries militarizing their borders with both Italy and Spain planning on blockmailing Northern Europe for more food. And this is only the situation in Europe.

So, concluded Dyer in November, “Generals who think there will be lots of jobs under climate change are right.”

Dyer outlined several military scenarios that he says are already being discussed behind the scenes to control the flow of predicted climate refugees.

In off the record conversations he has had with representatives in the US congress, many have noted that they feel it will be necessary to “close the US/Mexico border in the next 15 or 20 years,” in order to control the significant increase in migrants seeking food.

Currently this border is “purposefully easy to get through,” noted Dyer and only appears closed at official crossing points. But a few kilometers away the large walls and cameras disappear and in their place are only two barbed wire fences, which are patrolled maybe once every four hours.

According to Dyer, the loose security along the Mexico/US border is to supply cheap labour to the agricultural sector and to help stabilize the Mexican state.

“If you want to close the border you will have to kill people. I don’t believe that the US military has a problem with this but they understand consequences. The large Mexican population living in the US will not be happy.”

Dyer was careful to stop short of blaming climate change on capitalism and perpetual economic growth. “Even if I was a Marxist revolutionary, and of course secretly I am,” he remarked, “I don’t think that I want to fight that battle right now.”

Dyer believes that the hope for any climate change lies in the developed western countries supplying the developing world with funding to help countries such as India and China grow their economies through green alternatives. This must be agreed to because the developed world is responsible for climate change. “We did it over the last 200 years. It was not the developing countries.”

“This has to be a winning argument, otherwise it’s not fair,” he stated.

“We must accept that the history matters. People will die rather than accept unfair treatment.” If developed countries can’t accept this argument then “we don’t get a deal,” declared Dyer.

Dyer mentioned nuclear power as a viable energy alternative more than once, and when questioned about his nuclear recommendation, stated, “I don’t think it’s naïve to fight nuclear power, I just don’t think any other options are going to supply you with the energy necessary.” But, he continued, “If there is a split in the green movement then my feeling would be to not go with it.”

For more, including all three episodes of Gwynne Dyer on Ideas, as well as his TVO lecture, visit www.gwynnedyer.com.

Sisters in Spirit lead struggle against violence

Amelia Murphy-Beaudoin

In the last 30 years, there have been at least 520 documented cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada, according to the latest research from the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC).

More than half the cases have occurred since 2000. Over two-thirds of the total number of missing women have been found dead. Twenty-five per cent are still missing. If the same murder and disappearance rate was applied to the general female population in Canada, there would be 18,000 murdered and missing women in the country.

The federal government’s willful ignorance has allowed many of the murders of Aboriginal women to go unsolved. According to NWAC’s research, only 52 per cent have been cleared, compared to a national homicide clearance rate of over 80 per cent.

It’s a national tragedy that Aboriginal women are not a priority for police and public officials. Sadly, when an Aboriginal woman is murdered or disappears, her case does not mobilize the police to act, or the media to report.

Women are more likely to be victims of social and physical abuse because of their gender. This problem is amplified when we talk about Aboriginal women. For example, despite all the public attention on the Robert Pickton murders, we rarely hear that most of his victims were young, Aboriginal women.

It is an appalling double-standard involving racism, stereotypes and discrimination that makes the cases of these women less important. Many of the Aboriginal women who have been murdered or disappeared have had difficult life circumstances. But it is precisely these circumstances that placed them at a much higher risk.

The oppression of Aboriginal people has been a fact for so long that the federal government is fully aware of the myriad of issues affecting their communities. But the government knowingly ignores them. The fact remains, despite the indifference of the federal government, that an Aboriginal person is five times more likely to be murdered than a non-Aboriginal Canadian.

It’s true that alcoholism, drug addiction, and involvement in the sex trade are more common in Aboriginal communities than in the rest of society. There are reasons for these trends. The murder and disappearance of Aboriginal women is the most severe example of the price that First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples are paying for the appalling social conditions in which they are trapped.

Aboriginal communities endure environments that are overcrowded, sometimes contaminated, and usually without adequate basic services such as sewage services or running water. More than one third of Aboriginal people in Canada have, in government jargon, a “core housing need,” meaning their homes do not meet the most basic standards of acceptability. A lower standard of education and levels of unemployment and poverty three times higher than mainstream society are the norm.

Despite this state of desperation, or perhaps because of it, the Aboriginal community has mobilized around the cases of these murdered and missing women.

In the last five years, public attitudes have shifted, giving momentum to the cause. Craig Benjamin, Amnesty International Indigenous rights campaigner, said: “Five years ago, there was a sense that nobody was listening, which isn’t the case anymore.” Calls for a public inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered Aboriginal women have been increasing, along with a growing body of research on the issue, which politicians are content to fund—but only as a substitute to heeding the calls for a national investigation.

Recently, the United Nations asked the Harper government to investigate why hundreds of deaths and disappearances of Aboriginal women remain unsolved.

The pressure is on the federal government to respond to this growing public pressure for accountability and justice, and to demand a thorough investigation of this ongoing horror.

On October 4, 72 Sisters in Spirit vigils took place in 69 communities, up from 11 vigils in 2006, the first year they were held. The vigils honour the lives of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls.

The vigils coincide with a report entitled No More Stolen Sisters from Amnesty International citing a “shocking failure” by the federal government to stop the killing and disappearance of Aboriginal women. There still remains a lack of coordinated action on the federal level. Amnesty International decries the federal government’s “piecemeal approach” to dealing with violence against Aboriginal women, calling for a coordinated, national action plan.

The following is part of a statement that was read out at the Sisters in Spirit vigils from coast to coast:

“The violence experienced by Aboriginal women and girls in Canada is a national tragedy. The disappearance and murder of our Aboriginal sisters is felt nationwide, with countless First Nations, Inuit, and Métis families and communities grappling with the loss of a loved one and struggling to find answers. We are speaking out, as individuals and organizations, because we believe this violence should be of urgent concern to everyone in Canada.

“More than that, this concern must lead to action—action to ensure that the rights and safety of Aboriginal sisters, daughters, mothers and grandmothers are respected and protected.

“Aboriginal women face disproportionate levels and severe forms of violence no matter where they live in Canada. There can be no piecemeal solution to a problem of this scale. Therefore, we are calling on all levels of government to work with Aboriginal women, including the NWAC and other key stakeholders, collaboratively on issues of justice, safety, economic security and the well-being of Aboriginal women and girls.”

NWAC is calling for a national plan of action that recognizes the violence faced by Aboriginal women because they are Aboriginal and because they are women, that ensures effective and unbiased police response, that improves public awareness and accountability, that reduces the risk to Aboriginal women by closing the economic and social gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Canada, and that improves the child welfare system.

It’s time to begin this important work. There have been several recent initiatives undertaken by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the governments of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, among others, that show “concrete acknowledgement” of the specific challenges facing Aboriginal women. This is progress, but it isn’t enough, and it doesn’t excuse the decades of inaction by the federal government.

Recently, under pressure from the Aboriginal communies and advocacy organizations, the RCMP has created a task force to try to solve a portion of the cases of missing and murdered women—the mysterious deaths and disappearances of women along Highway 16.

Yellowhead Highway 16 West, which runs 720 km between Prince George and Prince Rupert, has come to be known as the “Highway of Tears.” Since 1969, that stretch of road has seen 19 women, all but one of whom were Aboriginal, go missing or be found murdered. All of those cases are still unsolved.

Beginning in June 2008, hundreds of people joined a powerful journey called Walk4Justice—trekking from Vancouver to Parliament Hill in Ottawa to press for a public inquiry, and to honour the missing and murdered women of the Highway of Tears.

Canadians should not tolerate the horror of these crimes: more than 520 daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers stolen away from their families, friends, and communities. These women were murdered in our cities and along our highways. As citizens, Aboriginal people are entitled to the same protection as any one else, and their disappearances should be investigated as vigorously as anyone else’s.

Our task is to join and support the struggles led by Aboriginal women in their communities as they resist these massacres. Progressives can play a role in building and expanding solidarity between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to force the government and its agents to take decisive action and to stop the tragedies.

Visit the website of the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC): http://www.nwac-hq.org/en/index.html.

This article originally appeared in Socialist Worker issue 512, November 2009

Student debt? Only in North America

Ontario students now pay the highest tuition in Canada. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Nicole Brewer

When I was strolling through the clothing section of Ryerson’s store, I found a shirt that said “My kids and my money go to Ryerson University.” It had the desired effect, and I giggled silently to myself. This was one of those situations when it’s funny because it’s true. But when you find yourself in thousands of dollars of debt, the truth is that it’s no laughing matter. I am paying almost $6,000 this year in tuition and fees, more than any other first-year student in my program before me, and statistically the education I’m receiving isn’t any better. Any improvement in the curriculum has come from evolution and dedication, not more resources, leaving the hike in tuition unnecessary and unfair.

Maybe it’s just me being old-fashioned, but education really seems like something that should be accessible by ability, not by finances. When the cost of living is combined with tuition and fees, many students simply cannot afford a post-secondary education, whether they meet the requirements or not. A limited number of scholarships are given to those who soar above and beyond the requirements of their institute of choice, but even those scholarships are only given out to a handful of students, and they rarely cover the cost of tuition.

For those students who have to take out loans, the stress of university is increased by the pressure of having a loan gathering interest in the background while you’re busy studying for your ten mid-terms.

Tuition-free universities and colleges are scattered all around Europe in France, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Finland, and Ireland. In South America, Brazil still offers free tuition. Even certain colleges in the United States provide free education, and still tuition fees in Canada rise year after year.

Just five years ago, it cost only $4,800 for the very same program I’m enrolled in today. Some say that tuition costs should rise with inflation, but according to the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), in 2008, tuition fees were almost 1.5 times more expensive than they would have been had they only been increased by inflation since 1995.

A report put out by Statistics Canada on October 20 found that Ontario’s tuition fees are now the highest in the country, despite having the most government funding. The same report showed that students enrolled in undergraduate programs this year faced the same 3.6 per cent increase in tuition fees as they did last year, even though last year there was a 3.5 per cent inflation rise to match the tuition’s rise in cost, compared to this year’s 0.8 per cent decline.

Clearly there is more to the hike in fees than just inflation: two decades ago, 82 per cent of university and college operating funds were covered by public funding from provincial and federal governments, compared to a mere 57 per cent in 2007, as shown in a report from the CFS. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to accuse the Canadian government of squandering our money (it would hardly be fair, since I can hardly keep to a budget for myself, let alone a country), and in a lot of ways we Canadians are doing pretty darn well for ourselves.

What good is it, though, if the post-secondary education we do offer is only available to those who can afford it?

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) recently won a major battle with the government regarding tuition fees: since the mid 90s, Ireland has given university and college students free tuition, and the government was hoping to re-introduce fees. The system which enables free tuition is called the free fees scheme, and taxpayers “pick up the tab” for education, which costs the government nearly $505 million.

Thanks to Ireland’s free fees scheme, participation rates at college and universities have soared, with 72 per cent of people in the country having received post-secondary education.

Free tuition may seem like the perfect solution, but since it’s not foreseeable in the near future, what we need to realize is that a degree doesn’t need to cost $20,000 to be credible. Even in Quebec, tuition fees are almost half what they are in Ontario. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that: “higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.”

And let’s be honest: higher education costing $6,000 per year is not equally accessible to all. Post-secondary education doesn’t need to lower its standards to be right-friendly, just its prices.

Join the movement to drop fees. Contact your student union for more information: info@mycesar.org or volunteer@rsuonline.ca.

H1N1 virus: Another product of capitalism

Thomas Garti examines the role of neoliberalism and the capitalist system in creating the conditions for global pandemics.

A new strain of influenza virus continues to spread around the world, sparking fears of a deadly pandemic. Mainstream accounts paint a contradictory picture combining apathy and apocalypse.

Influenza has always been with us, yet suddenly there is a new hybrid strain. Most seasonal outbreaks are mild, yet in 1918 a pandemic wiped out 50 million people. Most of the current cases are mild, yet it began with a high mortality rate in Mexico. And people continue to die in Canada.

Two dominant responses are forming to explain and deal with this confusion, one blaming the virus and the other blaming those affected. According to an epidemiologist at the US Centre for Disease Control, “influenza is unpredictable. There are so many unanswered questions.

“This is a brand new virus. There’s so much we don’t know about the human infections with this virus.”

The only solution from the medical perspective is to wash our hands while we wait for drug companies to produce antivirals.

Meanwhile, governments initially lashed out at Mexicans. Egypt began slaughtering its entire pig population, and Canada is threatening trade wars with anyone who refuses our pork. China quarantined Mexican nationals, the right-wing in the US is blaming “illegal immigrants,” and Stephen Harper labeled the new virus “Mexican flu.”.

Clearly a different approach is needed to understand this complex and contradictory situation, one which rejects reductionist theories, and empowers people to confront this latest crisis.

Influenza

A hundred and twenty-five years ago, Friedrich Engels published a groundbreaking book, Dialectics of Nature. Building on the evolutionary theories of Darwin, Engels showed that all aspects of nature are interconnected and in a constant state of change, driven by internal contradictions. Humans emerged from nature, and we change it through our collective labour; this, in turn, changes us. At certain points, small quantitative changes can produce qualitative changes—heating water leading to evaporation, mutations leading to new species, or strikes leading to a revolution.

This scientific method of dialectics is a helpful framework to understand influenza, both at the level of the virus and as it relates to society. The virus does not exist in isolation, but is interconnected with humans and animals, using our cells for replication. The virus is internally contradictory because it has no proofreading mechanism for replication, making it incredibly unstable and in a constant state of change—producing new strains by mutating or incorporating genes of the animal it infects.

These changes are usually minor (called antigenic drift), leading to seasonal flu for which humans have an acquired immunity. But occasionally a small change produces a profoundly different strain that humans have never seen (called antigenic shift), and for which our immune systems are not prepared. This can produce a pandemic, but it is not the only factor.

A pandemic is by definition a social event, and cannot be explained purely by virology. The impact of a particular influenza strain is determined by natural and social conditions, which humanity shapes. First, like other evolving species, the success of the resulting strains is determined—or selected for—by material conditions. So under normal conditions, highly lethal strains extinguish their hosts and themselves before they are able to spread.

Secondly, the mortality rate of a pandemic is partially determined by the health of the population affected, and this itself is determined by social and economic conditions.

1918 flu pandemic

Fears of the 1918 flu pandemic are based on not only its horrific death toll but also the perception that it appeared to have come out of nowhere. In 1918 the Journal of the American Medical Association described the dire conditions facing humanity: “The year 1918 has gone: a year momentous as the termination of the most cruel war in the annals of the human race; a year which marked, the end at last for a time, of man’s destruction of man; unfortunately a year in which developed a most fatal infectious disease causing the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings.

“Medical science for four and one-half years devoted itself to putting men on the firing line and keeping them there. Now, it must turn with its whole might to combating the greatest enemy of all—infectious disease.”

It takes great effort to not see a link between these two, but the reductionist view that dominates science—seeing nature existing outside humanity and exerting a one-sided interaction with us—does just that. On the other hand, a dialectical view would see the emergence of the pandemic as a process resulting from the interaction the virus and human society at that time.

An imperialist war forced millions of people, and millions of livestock to feed them, into overcrowded trenches—giving influenza a huge selection of genes to swap, facilitating antigenic shift. Deadly strains that ordinarily would have died out before finding a new host had ample opportunity to infect others and proliferate.

The emerging strain found people weakened by not only four years of world war but also the oppressive conditions of colonialism—half those killed were the poor of India, and the mortality rate of First Nations people in Canada was five times the non-Aboriginal population. The Great War selected for the Great Epidemic.

Avian flu

What industrialized war did for the 1918 flu, industrialized agriculture has done for avian flu—producing episodic outbreaks since 1997. Rapid turnover of millions of chickens selects for viruses that must spread quickly if they are to survive. A high density of chickens maintains deadly strains that would ordinary kill its host before finding another.

The decreasing biodiversity of poultry means a severe strain can wipe out an entire group. The mixture of chicken genes and pig genes—either through a mixture of manure in concentrated factories, or the incorporation of poultry parts into animal feed—increases the chance of antigenic shift.

The world only avoided an Avian influenza pandemic through luck and a massive slaughter of 100 million animals, since the pharmaceutical industry is not interested in unprofitable vaccines. As the World Health Organization’s flu expert stated: “The market has failed here to drive companies into research.”

In the US, government funding for vaccines was diverted into hypothetic threats of bioterror as part of the Iraq War campaign, leaving one official lamenting: “It’s too bad Saddam Hussein’s not behind influenza.” Meanwhile, the only source of Tamiflu, an antiviral to treat the flu, is one Swiss factory owned by pharmaceutical giant Roche, which refuses to relinquish the patent.

Perhaps the drug companies will start to see flu as a growth industry. According to evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald: “We will continue to get severe influenza epidemics in chicken farms so long as the conditions in chicken farms, like the conditions at the Western Front, allow transmission from immobile chickens. This prediction has been confirmed by the lethal outbreaks in Asia and in Mexico. Anyone who dismisses this analysis as speculation does not understand how the scientific process works.”

NAFTA flu

Since the emergence of Avian flu, the global response has focused on studying its genetics, while ignoring conditions that led to it. Now a new influenza epidemic has emerged in Veracruz, near a farm jointly run by the US giant Smithfield Foods. On his blog Farming Pathogens, Professor Robert Wallace explains the cause of “swine flu:” “Pigs have very little to do with how influenza emerges. They didn’t organize themselves into cities of thousands of immuno-compromised pigs. They don’t ship themselves thousands of miles by truck, train or air. Pigs do not naturally fly. The onus must be placed on the decisions we humans made to organize them this way.

“And when we say ‘we’, let’s be clear, we’re talking how agribusinesses have organized pigs and poultry. Although considerable attention is being paid to the role of a particular company in the emergence of the new influenza, and rightfully so, we might better focus on the deregulation that allowed such porcinopolies to grow to the point that whole human communities are pushed off the land pigs now occupy.

“So if we are to impart responsibility where it should lay, North America’s new influenza would be better called the NAFTA flu.”

In addition to its effects on pigs, NAFTA led to an epidemic of poverty, sweatshops, and pollution—conditions that weaken people’s immune systems and contribute to a higher mortality rate.

SARS virus

Canada was founded on epidemics, which combined with colonization to produce genocide. History books speak of “virgin soil epidemics,” attributing the decimation of the First Nations population to their lack of prior exposure to European diseases. But this reductionist view ignores the role played by colonization in weakening immune systems through physical, economic, and cultural violence.

In the past decade, neoliberal policies have produced a series of epidemics. In 2000, seven Canadians in Walkerton died from drinking water contaminated with manure. The Tory government of Mike Harris had cut and contracted out water inspection facilities, laying the groundwork for an epidemic of E. Coli.

In 2003, the SARS virus killed 44 in Toronto. While its emergence was a surprise, its devastating effects were tragically predictable. As a member of the SARS containment team wrote at the time: “It’s been very clear to us that we were going to have to pay for the public health dismantling that has happened under the provincial and municipal governments.”

Last year, an epidemic of Listeria emerged at Maple Leaf Foods. In a refreshing departure from a reductionist view of health, the Canadian Medical Association Journal connected biology with society: “Listeria is the biological agent, cold cuts the vector, but the ultimate cause may be found in risky government decisions… And Listeriosis may be the least of it.

“The same 2007 Cabinet decision that handed self-inspection to the owners of meat plants did the same for operators of animal feed mills and cut back the avian influenza preparedness program.

“Yet bad animal feed led to the epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalitis (mad cow disease), and in an influenza pandemic tens of thousands of Canadians may die.”

Resistance

The latest influenza pandemic is a dramatic reminder that humans and nature are interconnected through our labour. As Engels wrote: “Let us not flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us.

“At every step, we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature—that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.”

The current influenza pandemic might be mild, but it will continue to change. While we have no control over what random mutations influenza makes, we can control the concentration of animals and humans with which it interacts, the conditions that select which strains predominate, the health of those affected, and the availability of vaccines and antivirals.

Influenza is shaped by our interaction with nature, but it appears as an outside force menacing us—against which drugs and hand washing are the only solutions—because we have no control over this interaction.

Instead, it is in the hands of a profit-driven minority maximizing the possibility of a deadly pandemic—cramming a monoculture of animals together to defecate and feed on each other, dismantling public health infrastructure, and denying access to medicine through patent laws.

The recession will exacerbate these trends through increased poverty, cuts to health care, and streamlining of pharmaceutical research. This January, the largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, announced it was laying off 800 of its scientists and narrowing its focus to six diseases, none of them infections.

At home, Harper plans on spending $490 billion on Canada’s military budget, while his government (which includes three members of the Harris government that gave us E. coli) has cut and deregulated food safety infrastructure, giving us Listeria. He supports NAFTA policies that promoted influenza, cut funding from government programs to detect it, and has attempted to scapegoats Mexicans to distract from all this.

But collective struggle can change the world and our relationship with nature. Working-class resistance in Engels’ time won housing and sanitation that reduced epidemics of tuberculosis and cholera. Revolution ended the war in 1918 and dismantled the trenches that influenza had used to incubate.

The Canadian labour movement fought for the establishment of Medicare and continues to fight for national pharmacare. South African activists led a global movement that defeated a pharmaceutical lawsuit against access to generic HIV drugs.

The flu crisis is related to the economic and environmental crises, and they have a common solution: for ordinary people to win democratic control of production, so we can restore our interaction with nature under conscious collective control.

This article first appeared in Socialist Worker issue 506, May 2009:

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