April 15, 2009

April in Review, Part I

Oil and arrests in Colombia, detentions in Canada, and big loans, bailouts and currency swaps continue

by Dominion Staff

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Tamils and their supporters protested in Ottawa on April 7 as part of a larger campaign asking Canada to intervene in the conflict in Sri Lanka. Photo: Said the Lorax CC2.0

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The largest anti-war demonstrations in Canada since 2006 took place in Ottawa as thousands of Tamils and their supporters campaigned to push Canada to support a ceasefire in Sri Lanka.

Approximately 100 people were detained during US-style immigration raids in East Toronto, Leamington, and Bradford/Simcoe County. "These coordinated attacks and arrests show Harper and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's intention to terrorize those they consider the weakest - Tamil, Vietnamese, Laotian, Mexican, Caribbean, Thai, Filipino and Chinese workers simply trying to survive," reads a statement from No One Is Illegal.

The LA Times reported that US citizens have been held for up to seven months and in some cases deported after immigration raids throughout the states.

A gunman opened fire in an immigration services centre in Binghamton, New York. He killed one secretary and 12 people taking US citizenship tests before taking his own life. The victims were from eight different countries, including the gunman himself, who was Vietnamese.

The Secwepemcw people called for a blockade after remains of an ancestor was found during digging for a railway expansion. A decision was later made to instead set up a permanent camp at the site, which is on unceded Secwepemc Territory, between Kamloops and Chase, BC.

Ward Churchill won the wrongful-termination lawsuit that he filed against the University of Colorado after he was fired in 2007. His firing was related in part to a controversial essay entitled "Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens." The jury found that his firing was politically motivated, contrary to what University officials claim. "What's next for me? Reinstatement, of course," said Churchill after leaving the courtroom.

The lawyer representing Shawn Brandt and two other Mohawks being charged by CN Rail for blocking the passage of a train argued in court that the tactic is a justifiable one in order to bring attention to the poverty faced on reserves. "People generally recognize now that the way aboriginal people have been treated in history justifies some unusual protest," said Brandt's lawyer, Peter Rosenthal. "The Ipperwash inquiry spoke to that, and other people are beginning to realize that progressively. Why doesn't CN realize that?"

A 13-month-old Indigenous girl died of pneumonia while under provincial foster care in Hobbema, Alberta. "We knew she was sick. If I had a chance, I would have grabbed her and taken her to the doctor myself," the baby's grandmother told the Edmonton Journal. The baby was apprehended by the province in December.

Demonstrations against Francisco Barrio Terrazas, Mexico's ambassador to Canada, were held in Mexico, Montréal and Ottawa. Hundreds of women were murdered and disappeared under Terrazas' watch when he was mayor of Ciudad Juarez and governor of the state of Chihuahua.

UNITE HERE, a merger of The Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) and Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) which is now one of the most progressive, successful and activist unions in the US, has split along lines of its two presidents. Workers United, a new splinter group under former UNITE President Bruce Raynor, has claimed to have merged with the powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which is subsidizing Workers United's union dues to the tune of $60 million. SEIU, which has a history of launching protracted campaigns focused upon discrediting the leadership of several other unions and then attempting to take over their membership base, has also agreed to pay the legal fees incurred in the split. The most notable legal battle is over Amalgamated Bank of America, the only union-owned bank in the US. "There's never been anything like this in the modern history of labor," says John Wilhelm, the co-president of UNITE HERE and the man who still has the support of two-thirds of UNITE HERE's members.

In Nottingham, England, 114 people were pre-emptively arrested as they prepared to enter a coal-fired power plant owned by E.ON. The arrests mark what may be the "biggest pre-emptive raid on environmental campaigners in UK history," according to The Guardian. E.ON also owns the proposed Kingsnorth Power Plant in Kent, England, where hundreds of activists set up camp last summer demanding that new coal-fired power plants not be built.

Thousands of people protested the G20 meetings in London's financial district. Protesters vandalized the Bank of England and smashed windows and entered the Bank of Scotland. A climate camp was set up near Trafalgar Square, and anti-war demonstrators held actions at the US Embassy.

Police in London murdered Ian Tomlinson when they pushed him from behind. Tomlinson was a newspaper vendor, and was cutting though a G20 protest on his way home from work when he was killed.

A week after its windows were smashed, the Royal Bank of Scotland announced 9,000 layoffs, half of which will be in Britain.

Dissidents shut down the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in Pattaya, Thailand. The action was a prelude for anti-government demonstrations which rocked Bangkok for days, resulting in two deaths. Arrest warrants were issued for 14 people including former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006.

Wiradjuri Traditional Owners and their supporters entered an open-pit mine owned by Barrick Gold in New South Wales, Australia, in order to conduct monitoring and a smoking ceremony. "We asked our supporters to enter the mine site to bear witness to the destruction and document the mine's impact. It is important that Wiradjuri maintain access to our cultural sites," said Neville Chappy Williams, Traditional Owner, Mooka/Kalara United Families within the Wiradjuri Nation. Twenty-eight people were arrested for entering the site.

Barack Obama asked congress to approve an additional US $83.4 billion to fund the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

US soldiers in Afghanistan killed five civilians, and wounded a pregnant woman.

Pakistan-based newspaper The International News reported that during the 60 US drone strikes above Pakistan, 687 civilians have been killed, compared to 14 members of Al Qaeda.

Fourteen peace activists in the US were arrested for protesting the drone attacks outside the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where the warplanes are tested.

People in Waterloo, Ontario, protested an Olympic Torch promotional event held by Coca Cola.

Moldovans struck back against the re-election of Communist Party president Vladimir Voronin with mass demonstrations that ended in the burning of the Parliament buildings in the capital city of Chişinău. Over 300 people were arrested.

The brutal killing of Michael Nestoruk in Vancouver marked the 13th homicide in the city so far this year. Nestoruk was a homeless man with one leg, who was known to panhandle in Vancouver's downtown areas.

Ottawa invented new reasons for Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik to be denied the right to return from Sudan to Montréal. The Harper government claimed in a filing in federal court that Abdelrazik could not fly through the airspace of other UN countries without the permission of those countries, in contradiction to previous UN travel ban exemptions for people on the UN 1267 blacklist of alleged Al Queda supporters. Abdelrazik has never been charged with a crime and has been cleared of wrongdoing by CSIS and the RCMP.

Canwest Global Communications, which owns a large chain of daily newspapers, The National Post, and Global TV, announced a quarterly loss of $1.44 billion. Business analysts declared that the company's shares are essentially worthless.

The office of BC's Minister of Transportation was declared a "global warming crime scene" by activists fighting the Gateway Project in Metro Vancouver. Gateway is a $10 billion project that includes bridge and highway expansions.

The federal government considered a $150 million bailout of Canada's private TV broadcasters, including Canwest, CTVglobemedia and Quebecor. In 2005, CTV paid the International Olympic Committee $90 million dollars to become official broadcaster for the 2010 Games.

Bill C-300 went through a second hour of debate at the House of Commons. The bill would ensure that Canadian mining companies put into practice several of the recommendations made by the National Roundtables on Corporate Social Responsibility and the Canadian Extractive Industry in Developing Countries.

Peter Kent, Canada's Minister of State for the Americas, traveled to Colombia for the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank. Kent also announced that he plans to visit Cuba in the near future.

Canadians took action against the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, in Montréal, Edmonton, Calgary, Sault Sainte Marie, and Kelowna. The deal is currently before parliament.

Colombian railway workers went on strike, forcing Xstrata, the Swiss coal mining giant, to truck thousands of tonnes of coal to port.

Ecopetrol, Colombia's state-owned oil company, announced the discovery of new oil reserves in the department of Putumayo. Suroco, a Calgary-based junior oil company, completed their acquisition of oil producing properties in the same region.

Emilio Basto, a Nasa radio host, was arrested in Santander de Quilichao, Colombia, for carrying subversive materials and inciting violence. He was returning from showing documentaries such as "Sipakapa Is Not For Sale" and "Water, Our Life, Our Hope" to Indigenous villages in the mountains of Cauca.

Argentine government officials and Barrick Gold personnel attempted to enter a mining camp in Peñas Negras, La Rioja. Women who have been blockading the road for two years (allowing Barrick employees and machinery to leave but not to enter) barred the 12 men's entry, who then rammed the barrier with trucks and, when they were unsuccessful at getting through, assaulted the protesting women before descending to the village of Fatima's police station. The community retaliated, surrounding the police station, trapping the men, along with Fatima police, inside.

Members of the US military testified before a Senate committee that they are considering re-opening the closed army base at Vieques, Puerto Rico. The news caused an outcry in Puerto Rico, where mass movements mobilized successfully for the 2003 shutdown of the former army base.

Ecuador sought a $1 billion loan from the government of China, according to Chinese officials. The terms of the deal have yet to be finalized, but it is expected that Ecuador will repay China with crude oil shipments instead of cash.

China and Argentina agreed to a currency swap to the tune of US$10 billion. China is Argentina's second largest trading partner, and the swap is meant to stabilize the Argentine Peso.

Sweden's Parliament legalized same-sex marriage. The Vermont legislature became the first in the US to vote in favour of gay marriage. Iowa's Supreme Court overturned the ban on gay marriage by a vote of 7-0. New York Governor David Paterson's aids announced that he will introduce legislation to legalize same-sex marriage this fortnight.

MacDonald, Dettweiler and Associates, based in Richmond, BC, was named BC's most innovative corporation. The firm manufactures drones currently being used for surveillance in Afghanistan, and 60 per cent of the contracts they fill are for the federal government.

The Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, and National Post ran stories about an April Fools Day report written by Steven Paget, an analyst from First Energy Capital, in which Paget discusses the costs and benefits of a fake water pipeline, called the LOOF pipeline, which Paget invents as traveling from the Great Lakes and Niagara Falls, transporting water to the Athabasca tar sands.

A survey projected a 2.3 per cent drop in men's underwear sales in the United States in 2009. A reliable economic thermometer, sales of men's undies is "pretty much a flat line, it hardly ever changes," NPR's Robert Krulwich said. And according to Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, a dip in sales "is almost always a prescient, forward impression that here comes trouble."

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