"Jeeps"

October 2015 election campaign : Justin Trudeau defends the Conservative government's $15B armoured combat vehicle deal with Saudi Arabia as being just about "jeeps".

Photo at right November 16 2015 : Saudi National Guard moving combat vehicles to Yemen border in November.

Are those our LAVs? Yes they are.

G&M Feb. 22 2016 : Saudis appear to be using Canadian-made combat vehicles against Yemeni rebels

"... a retired Canadian general consulted by The Globe and Mail, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the LAVs being transported to Najran as fighting vehicles made by General Dynamics Land Systems. 

Critics say having Canadian-made arms enmeshed in a conflict that has claimed more than 2,800 civilian lives should prompt Ottawa to rethink the recent $15-billion deal to sell hundreds or thousands more to the Saudis."

Doctors Without Borders MSF reports a third MSF hospital in Yemen bombed by Saudi coalition forces. 

G&M April 12 2016 : Dion quietly approved arms sale to Saudi Arabia in April

From March 21 documents  "...the department of Global Affairs recommended approval of the Saudi export permits because it could help Saudi Arabia wage war in neighbouring Yemen." 

CBC April 12 2016 Stéphane Dion approves export permits for $11B in LAVs to be sent to Saudi Arabia
Documents say past sales have not been linked to violations of civil or political rights in the kingdom

[Global Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion] said he can't block exports unless the armoured vehicles are being used against innocent civilians.
So far, he said, there is no evidence of that.
"Should I become aware of credible information of violations related to this equipment, I will suspend or revoke the permits," he said.

So Global Affairs' "key partner for Canada""using Canadian-made combat vehicles against Yemeni rebels" five months ago isn't sufficient reason not to forge ahead with the deal Dion lied to Canadians about as long as we don't 'become aware' the new LAVs are similarly used in the future. Got it.

CBC April 13 2016 : Justin Trudeau says jobs in southern Ontario are dependent on the Saudi arms deal

And in what will come as a surprise to absolutely no one : 

Reuters April 8 2016 : How Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen has made al Qaeda stronger – and richer

Sunni ways indeed.
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Saturday Update from Mound of Sound : One More Thing About that Saudi Death Wagon Deal
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Pay to Play in BC with LNG and KBR

On Friday March 18, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna signed off on environmental approval for the controversial Woodfibre LNG Project in Howe Sound, saying the project is "not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects". 
By Monday morning, Houston-based KBR had been awarded a multi-phased Front-End Engineering and Design contract for Woodfibre.

Interesting choice. 

KBR describes itself as "a global technology, engineering, procurement and construction company serving the hydrocarbons and government services industries".

You might better remember KBR as Kellogg Brown and Root.  A subsidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton until 2007, KBR was once the single largest US military contractor in Iraq with a hand in building Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and the sole contractor for Bagram base and the $100M US embassy in Afghanistan. 

They were in the news a bit :

2013 : Federal Court Orders U.S. Defense Contractor KBR To Stand Trial in Nepali Human Trafficking Case 

2013 : KBR Secret Indemnity Agreement Signed By Army Chief Tainted In Enron Scandal

2012 : KBR negligent in exposing National Guard soldiers to toxic chemicals in Iraq

2011 : KBR Tries to Convince Judge to Use Iraqi Law in Shower Death of Green Beret

2009 : KBR wins contract despite criminal probe of deaths 

2009 : Kellogg Brown and Root Pleads Guilty to Foreign Bribery Charges, Agrees to Pay $402M Criminal Fine 

2009  Shell companies in Cayman Islands allow KBR to avoid Medicare, Social Security deductions

2008 : SEC Charges Former CEO of Kellogg, Brown & Root, Inc. with Foreign Bribery

2008 : Top Iraq contractor skirts US taxes offshore

I'm sure everything's fine now.

Woodfibre LNG Limited is a subsidiary of Pacific Oil & Gas Limited, in turn part of Singapore-based RGE owned by billionaire tycoon Sukanto Tanoto seen here at left with Christie Clark. One of Mr. Tanoto"s companies has also made news headlines around the world about off shore tax fraud and money-laundering.

The Woodfibre LNG KBR contract announcement was made by Woodfibre "Country Manager and VP" Byng Giraud, described as their "first North American employee." 

Formerly Conservative Resources Minister Gary Lunn's Saanich-Gulf Islands campaign manager in 2008 in what came to be known as Canada's first misleading robocall election, Mr. Giraud's bio  notes he was "on the governing council of the Conservative Party of Canada with Prime Minister Stephen Harper", so naturally Giraud and Woodfibre have supported Christie Clark's BC Liberals however they can :

VO Feb 2015 : BC Liberals sponsored by Woodfibre LNG at swanky fundraiser

"The Clark government’s BC Liberal party was sponsored by Woodfibre LNG at an upscale, private members' fundraiser event on Thursday night.
“We’d like to thank our sponsor tonight, Woodfibre LNG ...

“That treads very close to that thin line between legitimate fundraising and influence peddling ..."

That would be the thin line between a fundraiser held in February 2015 and the next BC election in May 2017. 

Elections BC Political Contributions Tables for 2014/2015  for Mr. Giraud and Woodfibre : 

  

Photo Credit at top : Richard Duncan/Sea-to-Sky.

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Selling the doubleplusgood TPP to Canadians

When she signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal above a NZ casino two months ago, International Trade Minister Chrystia Freetrade was at pains to reassure us that signing it was not the same as ratifying it, and besides there would be conversations with Canadians about it first. 

"Signing does not equal ratifying. Signing is simply a technical step in the process, allowing the TPP text to be tabled in Parliament for consideration and debate before any final decision is made."

Yesterday in Washington DC, PM Justin Trudeau called for "an increasingly integrated North America" and extolled "the investment opportunities for U.S. business on the billions of dollars of infrastructure projects announced in the Liberal budget."
Here's what he said about the TPP :

“In our conversations with Canadians, with industries which are ongoing, there are a lot of people in favour of it and there are a few who have real concerns and we’re looking at understanding and allaying certain fears ...”   

This March 10 presser from the International Trade Committee explains what JT means by "allaying certain fears" :





Second line : "The committee's primary objective is to assess the extent to which the agreement would be in the best interests of Canadians."

So will there be a whole other trade committee to assess the extent to which the TPP is not in the best interests of Canadians?

Because here's what JT's "few who have real concerns" about the global corporate rights pact are concerned about :

TPP opens floodgates to unregulated temporary foreign workers

"The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could see hundreds of thousands of additional temporary foreign workers (TFWs) entering Canada without any consideration of their impact on the local labour market leading to worsening unemployment among Canadian workers, labour groups warn.

The Canadian Workers Advocacy Group(CWAG) points out that 230,000 TFWs enter Canada annually under the labour mobility provisions of existing agreements, and the magnitude of the latest trade deal means that the numbers will increase significantly.

This is on top of the 165,000 TFWs who enter the country on average per year with a positive Labour Market Impact Assessments (LMIA).

CWAG also expressed concern that unlike other trade deals, the TPP includes developing countries such as Vietnam and Peru, and corporations will use the intra-company transfer provisions of the trade agreement to bring in low-wage workers and displace Canadians.

The minimum wage is 65 cents per hour in Vietnam and $1.27 per hour in Peru."

Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich : The New Truth About Free Trade

"I used to believe in trade agreements ...."

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz : "TPP worst trade deal ever" 

"I think what Canada should do is use its influence to begin a renegotiation of TPP to make it an agreement that advances the interests of Canadian citizens and not just the large corporations."

The Star : Joseph Stiglitz told Freeland that Canada should reject the TPP 

Economist Joseph Stiglitz says he has told his “friend,” International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland, that Canada should reject the Trans-Pacific Partnershipbecause it’s a badly flawed trade deal.

The controversial but not-yet-ratified trade agreement could tie the hands of the Trudeau Liberals on two key parts of its agenda — fighting climate change and repairing relations with aboriginal people, the Nobel-winning professor warned Friday.

Stiglitz said he relayed some of his concerns to Freeland personally in January, when the two were attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland."

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Sunni Ways

G&M : Saudis defend human rights record over $15-billion arms deal with Canada  

“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia believes that call[s] for universality of human rights does not mean imposition of principles and values that go against our Islamic values and religion.”

Here in Canada, we don't believe calls for universality of human rights means imposition of principles and values that go against our corporate values and profits religion.


Unreported in Canadian media was last week's "eleventh session of the Canada - Saudi Joint Committee" - see photo above - where the "importance of the private sector in the two countries" was agreed upon.  It's a yearly thing. 

A representative from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development of Canada discussed challenges and difficult times in the region, requiring "the two countries to work together to explore further opportunities for cooperation and economic partnership."

In another Riyadh report on "the importance of this meeting being the first under the new Government of Canada", Trudeau was described as "more open" leading to "hopes for the Saudi business sector and Canadian senior government support in terms of the development of economic cooperation and business partnerships between the two countries."

As Global Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion explained to the Senate a month ago, if we were to cancel the Saudi arms deal : 

"what would surely happen is that the equipment in question would be sold to Saudi Arabia by a less scrupulous country, and the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia would not change one iota."

Meanwhile Steven Chase at the G&M reports on the difficulty of getting any info from Global Affairs on Saudi contracts with three more Canadian *defence* companies.

Plus ça Real Change,  plus c'est la même chose...

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The Doc the Koch Brothers Don't Want You to See

One year ago, Global News pulled "The Koch Connection" by acclaimed Canadian TV producer and investigative journalist Bruce Livesey just days before it went to air. 

Promo material about the Koch brothers' influence in Canada, including an interview with an Alberta cattle rancher an Alberta Fort McKay First Nations negotiator in talks with Koch Oil Sands Operating, was also scrubbed off their site. 

Livesey told his story on Canadaland and was subsequently fired - along with, if memory serves, some members of his production crew.

Now The Real News Network is teaming up with Livesey to get his doc finished and to market. The film exposes how :

"the Kochs’ are waging relentless campaigns to deny climate change and using their wealth to get conservatives elected to office to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and further their corporate interests."

Founded by filmmaker Paul Jay - producer at Fifth Estate and Frontline, creator of the brilliant CBC debate program CounterSpin with host Avi Lewis, and founding chair of Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival -  The Real News Network airs alternative in-depth Canadian content, sans the usual corporate spin. 

Kudos to them for picking up the Canadian slack, and if you want to see this doc made, show it some support here. 

For more from Bruce Livesey, see his work as lead investigative reporter at the National Observer.
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*correction in 2nd sentence*
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Shopping for human rights

 Passed yesterday in the House : 

"That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad."

Liberals and Conservatives - Yes - 229 votes

NDP and Bloc - No - 51 votes

You can see how each MP voted at the link at top or watch them vote here : "Opposition Motion : Israel"

137 Liberals out of 184 voted in favour, 44 Liberals skipped the vote, and only 3 voted against it : Larry Bagnell, Nick Whalen, and Rene Arsenault.

92 Cons voted in favour while 7 skipped the vote.

Elizabeth May last week : "I will not be supporting it, but I want to make it very clear that the Green Party and I personally do not support the BDS movement." She also skipped the vote.

What's this crap about "demonization and delegitimization of Israel"?

Does everyone get that BDS is basically about shopping?

We're talking about making shopping choices to apply pressure to support Palestinian human rights here. 

And now we're being condemned by our government for what we think about making those choices?   Unbelievable.

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Update : Scott Vrooman : Parliamentary debate on Israel boycott misses the point





Real News Network : Brace Batchoun of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East :

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Patrick Martin, Globe & Mail : Parliament votes to reject Israel boycott campaign

Antonia Zerbisias, Al Jazeera : Canada jumps on the anti-BDS bandwagon
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Cons struggle to find their opposition feet

"They're stealing all our best shit," wailed CPC MP Remplestiltskin from her parliamentary selfie twitter account, rattling off all the HarperGov ideas embraced by the Liberals since they formed a majority government in October :

Saudi arms deal - check
TPP signed - check
Return of the F35 bid - check
Keystone XL pipeline - check
Energy east pipeline - check
Voted for C-51 - check
Canadian Wheat Board stays ditched - check
Investor-state dispute mechanism ISDS - check and check
CIRDI mining company catspaw reconfirmed - check
Covered for CSIS in torture cases - check
Voted against all measures for Palestine at the UN - check

"And you just know they're going to vote in favour of our motion condemning BDS in the House next week," she fumed, although she allowed this has in fact always been Justin Trudeau's position. 

"The Conservative Party worked very hard for ten years to remake the Canadian brand and it's like the Liberals stole all our best ideas and stuck their own name on them."

A Liberal source who spoke on background thinks his CPC colleague is over-reacting.
"There's lots of other Con ideas left the official opposition can raise in the House," he said. 
"New wars, for instance. While Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan says Canada could soon join a military coalition to return to Libya, we haven't said we're going to actually bomb any new countries so there's that."

"Look on the bright side," he continued. "Remember 18 months ago when that delegation of Liberal and Conservative MPs and senators went to Jerusalem and sang O Canada at the Canada-Israel Solidarity Rally during Day 23 of Operation Protective Edge? 

Remember how rewarding it felt to be Conservatives and Liberals working together in support of Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians?"

"Sunny ways are here to stay," he quipped. "Better get used to it."

 Rempelstiltskin™ : the Salamander

Greenwald/Fishman @The Intercept : Greatest Threat to Free Speech in the West: Criminalizing Activism Against Israeli Occupation
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Cindy Blackstock

Who knows about love and fairness? Children do.

Racial discrimination against children must no longer be tolerated in Canada.

First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada filed their complaint in 2007. 

Tyee : Scared and Spied On Under Harper, Why Child Advocate Didn't Give Up

Also, while we're at it ... Cindy Blackstock for Governor General of Canada.
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ISDS : Investor-State Dispute Scam

A German documentary on the investor rights in trade agreements - ISDS - now with English subtitles : "Corporations Complain - We Pay".



Canada and Canadian ISDS losses - described as the "gold rush in the ISDS industry" - figure prominently in the film :

"Canada is the only western country that has ever accepted ISDS with the United States. We're actually one of the most sued countries, always by US companies, because we signed one treaty that allowed ISDS with the United States.

And ultimately it only exists because at some point everyone expects the public will have to pay." 

In 1989 not a single lawsuit was filed; by the end of 2014 there were over 600:

"It's a new way to access public money."

The film traces the story of the two Nova Scotia lobster fishermen who fought for five years and successfully turned back US corp Bilcon's bid to build a basalt quarry on environmental grounds, only to have the ISDS tribune rule against them. Bilcon sued for US $300M over future financial loss on a quarry they hadn't even started building. As lobsterman Kemp Stanton remarks :

"If you can make US$300 million and not have to build the quarry, it'd be stupid to build it."    

And because ISDS litigation costs US$4-8 million, New York lawyer Selvyn Siedel brokers deals between "those who want to sue and those who want to invest in such litigation - litigation funders". A whole new industry model with returns of $20M of taxpayer money on an initial $5M investment. US litigation financiers have seen their own profits rise 900% by fuelling more corporations to launch more cases against sovereign governments over domestic policies :

"The litigation funders are the ones greasing the wheels of this system" 

as they did against the easy pickings of Spain and Greece during their financial insolvencies, using shell companies in Luxembourg, phantom mailbox companies with no employees, to sue their own governments for lost profits. 

In Germany, the government of Hamburg gave in to a German corp suing them for $1B through a New York company rather than face the loaded odds of an ISDS tribunal. Liberal Marc Lalonde was president of that ISDS tribunal, working alongside US Republican Larry Craig.

Sylvan Seidel in New York sees a new business opportunity in these lawsuits - bundle them as investment stocks :

"Banks, hedge funds and insurance companies are investing in this growing market. It's like a casino and the party for litigation funders is not over yet. As this grows, more corporations launch cases against governments."

CETA, TPP, TTIP - they're all trojan horse casinos designed to enable the arbitration industry to change laws in sovereign states while bleeding the public purse. 

Good doc.  h/t Murray Dobbin who circulated the link to it last night.

The Osgood Hall law prof featured in the doc wrote a Tyee column last month on the TPP :
Gus Van Harten : Seven Ways TPP Favours Mega-rich Foreign Investors, Not Canadians
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The TPP - a casino where the house always wins

The best part of International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland signing the U.S. corporate rights agreement TPP - the Trans-Pacific Partnership - in Aukland NZ yesterday was that it was done here in this gambling casino, and a casino is where the house always wins.

In her 2012 book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, Freeland explains :

"Trying to slant the rules of the game in your favour isn't an aberration, it is what all businesses seek to do. The difference isn't between having virtuous and villainous business people, it is about whether your society has the right rules and policing able to enforce them."

Of course this 'enforcement' would first entail our government not ditching those 'right rules' or 'policing' just because transnational corporations and their revolving-door crony capitalists within government find them inconvenient.

Justin Trudeau on the campaign trail, October 5 2015 :

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership stands to remove trade barriers, widely expand free trade for Canada, and increase opportunities for our middle class and those working hard to join it.... The government has an obligation to be open and honest about the negotiation process ..."

Then in mid-January Freeland told us :

“The negotiations are finished and for Canadians it’s important to understand that it’s a decision of yes or no..." 

All countries have two years to ratify it, but the treaty comes into force if the United States, Japan and four other countries give their approval.  

“It’s important for us to understand that we don’t have a veto.”

Yesterday she said : "There is a big difference between signing and ratifying", promising negotiations and parliamentary committees and round tables etc, all of which are very nice but none of which are legally binding on the Liberal caucus. 
Now that we've signed off on it however, we are all supposed to pin our hopes on those.


Flashback to the Liberal Convention of 2014 two years ago... 
Guest speaker and TPP advocate, former US Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers is interviewed on stage by Freeland, who introduces him as "a dear friend, teacher, and probably the smartest person I know". Summers, she explains, is there to give the Libs "some great ideas about how to transform Canada and in so doing transform the world." 

Now most of us probably remember Larry Summers as the US bank deregulator - a prominent architect alongside Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin in reversing the 1933 US Glass-Steagall Act, that Depression-era legislation which prevented US banks from turning into the high-risk hedge-fund casinos making wild bets against their own depositors' money they became in the late 2000's. Or we remember him as the $5M hedge fund advisor who made millions in speaking fees from the hedge funds he later helped regulate while advocating tax cuts and no ceiling on CEO pay for stimulus recipients. Or as a Bilderberg Group Steering Committee member.

Whatev.

What I wish is that rather than continue to parrot all that "all middle-class liberals together" shmooze that Summers was selling the Libs two years ago, including airily blowing off the casino bank crisis he helped precipitate, better the Liberals should instead try out what Summers, still a strident TPP advocate, is saying now : 

"First, the era of agreements that achieve freer trade in the classic sense is essentially over. The world’s remaining tariff and quota barriers are small and, where present, less reflections of the triumph of protectionist interests and more a result of deep cultural values. 

What we call trade agreements are in fact agreements on the protection of investments and the achievement of regulatory harmonization...

Concerns that trade agreements may be a means to circumvent traditional procedures for taking up issues ranging from immigration to financial regulation must be taken seriously.

Being pressed down everywhere are middle classes who lack the wherewithal to take advantage of new global markets and do not want to compete with low-cost foreign labor. Our challenge now is less to increase globalization than to make the globalization we have work for our citizens."

Try to keep up with your own hero's rhetoric here, Libs. 



Economix Comix : The TransPacific Partnership and "Free Trade"

Robert Reich takes on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2 minutes 26 seconds

Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz heaps scorn on TPP and TTIP

Paul Krugman on the TPP

Michael Geist : The Trouble with the TPP, Day 1: U.S. Blocks Balancing Objectives   Start here but Geist is up to Day 25 now ....

Press Progress : Bernie Sanders: 
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a "disastrous" deal for the middle-class.

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