The History of Electric Vehicles - The Early Years (1890 - 1930)

From About.com

Between 1832 and 1839 (the exact year is uncertain), Robert Anderson of Scotland invented the first crude electric carriage. A small-scale electric car was designed by Professor Stratingh of Groningen, Holland, and built by his assistant Christopher Becker in 1835. Practical and more successful electric road vehicles were invented by both American Thomas Davenport and Scotsmen Robert Davidson around 1842. Both inventors were the first to use non-rechargeable electric cells. Frenchmen Gaston Plante invented a better storage battery in 1865 and his fellow countrymen Camille Faure improved the storage battery in 1881. This improved-capacity storage battery paved the way for electric vehicles to flourish.

France and Great Britain were the first nations to support the widespread development of electric vehicles in the late 1800s. In 1899, a Belgian built electric racing car called "La Jamais Contente" set a world record for land speed - 68 mph - designed by Camille Jénatzy.

It was not until 1895 that Americans began to devote attention to electric vehicles after an electric tricycle was built by A. L. Ryker and William Morrison built a six-passenger wagon both in 1891. Many innovations followed and interest in motor vehicles increased greatly in the late 1890s and early 1900s. In 1897, the first commercial application was established as a fleet of New York City taxis built by the Electric Carriage and Wagon Company of Philadelphia.

The early electric vehicles, such as the 1902 Wood's Phaeton (top image), were little more than electrified horseless carriages and surreys. The Phaeton had a range of 18 miles, a top speed of 14 mph and cost $2,000. Later in 1916, Woods invented a hybrid car that had both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor.

By the turn of the century, America was prosperous and cars, now available in steam, electric, or gasoline versions, were becoming more popular. The years 1899 and 1900 were the high point of electric cars in America, as they outsold all other types of cars.

Electric vehicles had many advantages over their competitors in the early 1900s. They did not have the vibration, smell, and noise associated with gasoline cars. Changing gears on gasoline cars was the most difficult part of driving, while electric vehicles did not require gear changes. While steam-powered cars also had no gear shifting, they suffered from long start-up times of up to 45 minutes on cold mornings. The steam cars had less range before needing water than an electric's range on a single charge. The only good roads of the period were in town, causing most travel to be local commuting, a perfect situation for electric vehicles, since their range was limited. The electric vehicle was the preferred choice of many because it did not require the manual effort to start, as with the hand crank on gasoline vehicles, and there was no wrestling with a gear shifter.

While basic electric cars cost under $1,000, most early electric vehicles were ornate, massive carriages designed for the upper class. They had fancy interiors, with expensive materials, and averaged $3,000 by 1910. Electric vehicles enjoyed success into the 1920s with production peaking in 1912.

The decline of the electric vehicle was brought about by several major developments:
By the 1920s, America had a better system of roads that now connected cities, bringing with it the need for longer-range vehicles.

The discovery of Texas crude oil reduced the price of gasoline so that it was affordable to the average consumer. The invention of the electric starter by Charles Kettering in 1912 eliminated the need for the hand crank.

The initiation of mass production of internal combustion engine vehicles by Henry Ford made these vehicles widely available and affordable in the $500 to $1,000 price range. By contrast, the price of the less efficiently produced electric vehicles continued to rise. In 1912, an electric roadster sold for $1,750, while a gasoline car sold for $650.



50 Cent, Jay-Z & Oprah Among Celebs Subpoenaed In $900 Mil Lawsuit Against Canada

From HipHop-Universe.com

50 Cent, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Oprah Winfrey are reportedly among over three dozen celebrities who have been subpoenaed to testify in a Detroit producer's $900 million federal lawsuit accusing Canadian border officials of discriminating against rappers and African-Americans.

As SOHH previously reported, Jerome Almon, CEO of Detroit-based label, Murdercap Records, filed the lawsuit in January, claiming that for over a decade he has faced lengthy interrogations and has been consistently turned away when trying to cross the Canadian border. Almon says he is not the only one facing this problem, claiming he shares this experience with a slew of hip-hop's most popular rappers.

Almon's suit blames Canada's alleged prejudice on African Americans and rappers "in an effort to both blame them for the increased gang violence and gun murders in the cities of Toronto and Vancouver."

According to The Detroit Press, Almon subpoenaed black celebrities such as Oprah, Spike Lee and Snoop on Wednesday (August 22) because he wants them to testify about their own problems when trying to enter Canada.

The Detroit CEO has not ended there, also subpoening white celebrities as well, such as Martha Stewart and Paris Hilton, who have both done jail time, to testify about how comparatively easy it is for them to cross the border.

"The Canadian government is dirty, they know it and I know it," Almon told SOHH. "They been caught and now they trying' to figure out how they keep the rest of the rap stars like 50 Cent, Eminem, Jay-Z , etc from suing them too."

Almon feels now is the time for all in hip-hop to pull together, and this is as good a time to start as any. "There is a global war on hip-hop, they blaming us for everything and anything, and we got to stand up right now," he continued. "We got to take our hands out of our pockets and drop our backhand on them."

Almon is not alone in questioning the treatment of rappers hoping to cross the boarder. As SOHH previously reported, during a stop on his 2005 tour, 50 Cent expressed his frustration with Canadian Immigration after key members of G-Unit, including Young Buck and Tony Yayo, were denied entry into the country.

"Somebody got shot the other day and they said it was my fault and didn't want to let me in the country," 50 told a Vancouver crowd. "I was in immigration for about two hours today and I thought about turning back. Young Buck got turned back. And Tony Yayo, Mobb Deep and M.O.P. But I stuck it out...@#*$ the police!"

According to the Detroit Free Press, Canadian officials have denied that they discriminate on the basis of race. Lawrence A. Dubin, a law professor at the University Of Detroit Mercy School Of Law, revealed to the Detroit News that he doubts the celebrities will show up to give depositions in Almon's lawsuit. He also added that the celebrities who receive the subpoenas can seek court orders to overturn them.

"Without being well-versed on the facts of the case, I think that autograph-seekers should not start lining up for the event," Dubin explained. The celebrities' depositions in Almon's lawsuit are scheduled to take place at the Cobo Center in Detroit on September 22. Emails sent to the Canadian immigration office have not been answered at press time.




Bolivia Denounces US Interference

From Prensa Latina

Bolivia's Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramon Quintana, accused the United States on Wednesday of interfering in the process of changes being boosted by the Evo Morales government, and demanded that cooperation must adjust to local standards.

At a press conference, Quintana showed evidence of US interference, saying that Washington's economic assistance is handled discretionally and that the "doors are open" for the US to leave if it does not adjust to local politics.

According to Quintana, of the 130 million dollars that Bolivia received this year, 81 million dollars are "freely available" to the US Embassy in La Paz and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Therefore, he said, 70 percent of that aid is used discretionally, without government control.

Quintana also disclosed the names of people and institutions that receive large sums of money from USAID by concept of consultancy work, which is aimed at interfering in the process of change demanded by the Bolivian people.

The minister questioned the transparency of US collaboration and said that from now on, the US Embassy must comply with Bolivian laws and rules or leave the country.

He made it clear that the government's stance is not aimed at breaking relations with the United States or the collaboration that the country receives, but it is an invitation to Washington to adjust to the norms and guidelines of the Bolivian State.

[Half of Prison Sex Abuses Involve Guards
In prison news, new figures show U.S. prison guards were responsible for more than half of reported cases of rape, sexual harassment and violence in US jails last year. More than sixty-five hundred cases of sexual violence were reported overall, a twenty percent increase over two years. -Democracy Now! Headlines for August 17, 2007]

Women in Prison: A Fact Sheet

From Prison Policy.org

The Issue: Sexual Assault and Misconduct Against Women in Prison
The imbalance of power between inmates and guards involves the use of direct physical force and indirect force based on the prisoners’ total dependency on officers for basic necessities and the guards’ ability to withhold privileges. Some women are coerced into sex for favors such as extra food or personal hygiene products, or to avoid punishment.

• Powerlessness and Humiliation
There are 148,200 women in state and federal prisons. In federal women’s correctional facilities, 70% of guards are male. Records show correctional officials have subjected female inmates to rape, other sexual assault, sexual extortion, and groping during body searches. Male correctional officials watch women undressing, in the shower or the toilet. Male correctional officials retaliate, often brutally, against female inmates who complain about sexual assault and harassment.

• Retaliation and Fear
In many states guards have access to and are encouraged to review the inmates’ personal history files (this includes any record of complaints against themselves or other prison authorities). Guards threaten the prisoner’s children and visitation rights as a means of silencing the women. Guards issue rules-infraction tickets, which extend the woman’s stay in prison if she speaks out. Prisoners who complain are frequently placed in administration segregation.

• Impunity
Ineffective formal procedures, legislation and reporting capacity within U.S. jails and prisons accounts for much of the ongoing sexual abuse of women. In 1997, according to the US Justice Department only 10 prison employees in the entire federal system were disciplined, and only 7 were prosecuted. If a prison official is found guilty, he is often simply transferred (“walked off the yard”) to another facility instead of being fired. The inmate may also be transferred. See also Amnesty International USA’s “The Issue:: Sexual Assault and Misconduct Against Women in Prison”

The Issue: Sentencing and The War on Drugs
A 1997 study by the U.S. Department of Justice found that women were over represented among low level drug offenders who were non-violent, had minimal or no prior criminal history, and were not principal figures in criminal organizations or activities, but nevertheless received sentences similar to “high level” drug offenders under the mandatory sentencing policies. From 1986 to 1996 the number of women sentenced to state prison for drug crimes increased ten-fold.

• According to The Boston Globe, "nearly 26% of the nearly 2000 men and women crowding Massachusetts prisons for drug crimes are first-time offenders…. Worse, nearly three out of four drug traffickers who do get charged in major cases, but agree to forfeit substantial drug money to prosecutors, bargain their way out of the long sentences…. The result: those with no money or information to trade face the hard mandatory sentences."

• From 1986 to 1996, the number of women sentenced to state prison for drug crimes increased from 2,370 to 23,700. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington DC Prisoners in 1997)

• In 1986, 12.0% of women in prison were drug offenders. In 1991, 32.8% of women in prison were incarcerated for drugoffenses. (Women in Prison, Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991. US Department of Justice, March 1994, NCJ 145321) See also Amnesty International USA’s “The Issue: The War on Drugs: The Source of the Explosion”

The Issue: Medical Neglect of Women in US Prisons
Women are often denied essential medical resources and treatments, especially during times of pregnancy and/or chronic and degenerative diseases.

• Failure to refer seriously ill inmates for treatment and delays in treatment
Women inmates suffering from treatable diseases such as asthma, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, cancer, late-term miscarriages, and seizures have little or no access to medical attention, sometimes resulting in death or permanent injury. Instances offailure to deliver life-saving drugs for inmates with HIV/AIDS has also been noted.

• Lack of qualified personnel and resources and use of non-medical staff
There is too few staff to meet physical and mental health needs. This often results in long delays in obtaining medical attention; disrupted and poor quality treatment causing physical deterioration of prisoners with chronic and degenerative diseases, like cancer; overmedication of prisoners with psychotropic drugs; and lack of mental health treatment. The use of non-medical staff to screen requests for treatment is also common.

• Charges for medical attention
In violation of international standards, many prisons/jails charge inmates for medical attention, on the grounds that chargingfor health care services deters prisoners from seeking medical attention for minor matters or because they want to avoid work. In some supermaximum prisons, where prisoners cannot work at all, the US Justice Department has expressed concern that charging prisoners impedes their access to health care.

• Inadequate Reproductive Health Care
In 1994, the National Institute of Corrections stated that provision of gynecological services for women in prison is inadequate. Only half of the state prison systems surveyed offer female-specific services such as mammograms and Pap smears, and often entail a long wait to be seen.

• Shackling During Pregnancy
Shackling of all prisoners, including pregnant prisoners, is policy in federal prisons and the US Marshall Service and exists in almost all state prisons. Shackling during labor may cause complications during delivery such as hemorrhage or decreased fetal heart rate. If a caesarian section is needed, a delay of even 5 minutes may result in permanent brain damage to the baby.

• Lack of treatment for substance abuse
The gap between services available and treatment needs continues to grow. The number of prisoners with histories of drug abuse is growing, but the proportion of prisoners receiving treatment declined from 40% in 1991 to 18% in 1997.

• Lack of Adequate or Appropriate Mental Health Services
48-88% of women inmates experienced sexual or physical abuse before coming to prison, and suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. Very few prison systems provide counseling. Women attempting to access mental health services are routinely given medication without opportunity to undergo psychotherapeutic treatment. See also Amnesty International USA’s “The Issue: Medical Neglect of Women in U.S. Prisons”

The Issue: Discrimination Based On Gender, Race and Sexual Orientation
The growth in incarceration has had its greatest impact on minorities, particularly African Americans. Women are most vulnerable to different forms of discrimination, including sexual harrasment or abuse. Women that do not fit the “norm”, such as lesbians, face increased risk of torture and abuse.. Discrimination Based on Race:

• Over a five-year period, the incarceration rate of African American women increased by 828%. (NAACP LDF Equal Justice Spring 1998.) An African American woman is eight times more likely than a European American woman is to be imprisoned; African American women make up nearly half of the nation’s female prison population, with most serving sentences for nonviolent drug or property related offenses.

• Latina women experience nearly four times the rates of incarceration as European American women.

• State and federal laws mandate minimum sentences for all drug offenders. This eliminates from judges the option of referring first time non-violent offenders to scarce, financially strapped drug treatment, counseling and education programs. The racial disparity revealed by the crack v. powder cocaine sentences insures that more African American women will land in prison. Although 2/3 of crack users are white or Hispanic, defendants convicted of crack cocaine possession in 1994 were 84.5% African American. Crack is the only drug that carries a mandatory prison sentence for first time possession in the federal system.

Discrimination Based On Sexual Orientation:
• Human Rights Watch has documented categories of women who are likely targets for sexual abuse. Perceived or actual sexual orientation is one of four categories that make a female prisoner a more likely target for sexual abuse, as well as a target for retaliation when she reports that abuse.

• If a woman is a lesbian, her criminal defense becomes more challenging. Jurors in the US were polled as to what factors would make them most biased against a defendant, and perceived sexual orientation was chosen as the most likely personal characteristic to bias a juror against a defendant, three times greater than race. (National Law Journal 11/2/98.)

• The case of Robin Lucas depicts how sexual identity may subject a woman to further abuse or torture by a guard. She was placed in a men’s prison where male guards allowed male inmates to rape her. The male guards taunted her about her same sex relationship, saying to her “maybe we can change your mind”. See also Amnesty International USA’s “The Issue: Discrimination Based on Gender, Race and Sexual Orientation” and “The Issue: The Impact on Children of Women in Prison”.

For the report, “Not Part of My Sentence: Violations of the Human Rights Of Women in Custody” and for information onwomen’s human rights, visit the Women’s Human Rights Program at www.amnestyusa.org/women or call (212) 633-4292.




Global Suicide Toll Exceeds War and Murder

By Shaoni Bhattacharya
From NewScientist.com

Suicide kills more people each year than road traffic accidents in most European countries, the World Health Organization is warning. And globally, suicide takes more lives than murder and war put together, says the agency in a call for action.

The death toll from suicide – at almost one million people per year – accounts for half of all violent deaths worldwide, says the WHO. “Estimates suggest fatalities could rise to 1.5 million by 2020,” the agency warned on Wednesday.

"Suicide is a tragic global public health problem,” says Catherine Le Galès-Camus, WHO’s assistant director general for non-communicable diseases and mental health. “There is an urgent need for coordinated and intensified global action to prevent this needless toll."

The WHO is holding a meeting of experts in Geneva, Switzerland, to address suicide prevention ahead of its “World Suicide Prevention Day” on Friday.

"It's important to realise that suicide is preventable," points out Lars Mehlum, president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention. "And that having access to the means of suicide is both an important risk factor and determinant of suicide."

Muslim Countries
The number of suicides in most European countries exceeds the number of annual traffic fatalities, says the WHO. In 2001, the global toll from suicide was greater than the 500,000 deaths from homicide and the 230,000 deaths from war combined.

And an estimated 10 to 20 million people survive failed suicide attempts each year, resulting in injury, hospitalisation and trauma, says the agency. However, the ultimate extent of the problem is unknown as full reliable data is unavailable.

The highest suicide rates are found in Eastern Europe, says WHO, whereas people in Latin America, Muslim countries and a few Asian nations are least likely to die by their own hand.

Suicide rates tend to increase with age but “there has recently been an alarming worldwide increase in suicidal behaviours amongst young people aged 15 to 25”, warns WHO. Men also successfully commit suicide more than women – with the exception of rural China and parts of India.

Blister packs
The most common methods for committing suicide include swallowing pesticides, using firearms and overdosing on painkillers. Curbing access to these methods is a crucial factor in preventing suicide.

“One recent breakthrough was the move by many pharmaceutical companies to market painkillers in blister packs rather than more easily accessible bottles, which had a significant impact on their use as a suicide method,” says WHO.

High self-esteem and social “connectedness” can protect against suicide. Psychosocial interventions based on these and appropriate treatment of mental disorders has cut suicides among people at risk in countries such as the UK and Finland, says WHO.




Ten Things You Need To Know About Propaganda

By Nancy Snow
From Third World Traveler

1 - Truth is not the absence of propaganda; propaganda thrives in presenting different kinds of truth, including half truths, incomplete truths, limited truths, out of context truths. Modern propaganda is most effective when it presents information as accurately as possible. The Big Lie or Tall Tale is the most ineffective propaganda.

2 - Propaganda is not so much designed to change opinions so much as reinforce existing opinions, prejudices, attitudes. The most successful propaganda will lead people to action or inaction through reinforcement of what people already believe to be true.

3 - Education is not necessarily the best protection against propaganda. Intellectuals and "the educated" are the most vulnerable to propaganda campaigns because they (1) tend to absorb the most information (including secondhand information, hearsay, rumors, and unverifiable information); (2) are compelled to have an opinion on matters of the day and thus expose themselves more to others' opinions and propaganda campaigns; and (3) consider themselves above the influence of propaganda, thereby making themselves more susceptible to propaganda.

4 - What makes the study of propaganda so problematic is that it is generally regarded as the study of the darker side of our nature; the study of their evil versus our good. Those whom we consider evil thrive in propaganda, while we spread only the truth. The best way to study propaganda is to separate one's ethical judgments from the phenomenon itself. Propaganda thrives and exists, for ethical and unethical purposes.

5 - Propaganda seeks to modify public opinion, particularly to make people conform to the point of view of the propagandist. In this respect, any propaganda is a form of manipulation, to adapt an individual to a particular activity.

6 - Modern forms of communication, including mass media, are instruments of propaganda. Without the monopoly concentration of mass media, there can be no modern propaganda. For propaganda to thrive, the media must remain concentrated, news agencies and services must be limited, the press must be under central command, and radio, film, and television monopolies must pervade.

7 - One must become aware of propaganda, its limitations, its strengths, its influence, and its persuasive qualities, if one is to master it. To say that one is free of the influence of propaganda is a sure sign of its pervasive existence in society.

8 - Modern propaganda began in the United States in the early 20th Century. During World War I, the mass media were integrated with public relations and advertising methods to advocate and maintain support for war. The Creel Committee established the first American publicity campaign to spread and disseminate the gospel of the American way to all corners of the globe.

9 - In the United States, private commercial propaganda is as important to notions of democracy as governmental propaganda. Commercial appeals to the people through advertising, which plays on irrational fantasies and impulses, are some of the most pervasive forms of propaganda in existence today.

10 - Propaganda in a democracy establishes truth in the sense that it creates "true believers" who are as ideologically committed to the democratic progress as others are ideologically committed to its control. The perpetuation of democratic ideals and beliefs in the face of concentrated power in propaganda institutions (media, political institutions) is a triumph of propaganda in modern American society.

Solar Stocks Boom in 2005 -- But It Is Just the Beginning

By Peter Lynch
From RenewableEnergyAccess.com
2006

For the most part, 2005 was a mediocre year for the stock market. The market mostly went sideways to nowhere and was generally a boring year for most stock market investors. The Dow Jones was down 0.61%, the S&P 500 was up 3% and the NASDAQ was up 1.37% for the year.

But quietly in the background, 2005 may also have been the beginning of a "bright," new and very promising trend. More solar-related companies became public companies both in the U.S. and in Germany and as a result the renewable/solar industry sector gained a much needed higher profile with the American investing public. This is an important trend, because for many years the solar industry has been very much of a cottage industry, with little attention being paid to it and money invested in it. However, as we all know, once people start to invest their hard earned money into an industry, they pay much more serious attention to that industry and what it is doing. All of which is good for the industry and good for the future of our planet.

There are not many companies that are public, whose primary business is in one of the renewable energy areas: biomass (ethanol, bio-diesel), hydropower, solar electric (photovoltaics), solar thermal, wind power, geothermal, fuel cells and other "green" areas. But more and more of these companies are starting to show up on investors' "radar" screens and they are beginning to get a following on Wall Street.

Below is a comparison of the 2005 performance of seven solar related public companies and one "clean energy" exchange-traded fund (ETF) that trade on major U.S. markets and whose primary business is renewable energy verses a number of indices that are commonly used in the financial press. These companies and the ETF are listed in alphabetical order, followed by their stock market trading symbol and their percentage gain in 2005:

Distributed Energy Systems Corporation (DESC) + 160%
DayStar Technologies, Inc. (DSTI) + 336%
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (ENER) + 160%
Evergreen Solar Inc. (ESLR) + 213%
Powershares Wilderhill Clean Energy Fund (PBW) + 19.5%
Spire Corporation (SPIR) + 120%
Sunpower Corporation (SPWR) +34%
Suntech Power Holdings (STP) +32%

Average Gain for U.S. solar stocks in 2005 = 134%
Average Gain for three Indexes in 2005 = 1.25%

As you can see from the numbers, there was nothing "lackluster" about solar related stocks in 2005. They clearly and substantially outperformed all the comparative indices. Admittedly, there are only a small number of stocks and they are almost totally focused in the Photovoltaics sector of the industry, but it is certainly a beginning and a "stellar" beginning at that. Their growth has slowed down in the first half of 2006 and they are currently in the midst of a corrective stage, but they are still substantially outperforming the major indices since the beginning of 2005.

There are two things that are important to understand regarding investing in the current renewable energy industry:

Just the Beginning
This is "just the beginning" of the birth of the renewable energy industry. The renewable energy industry is at the same stage now as the automobile industry was in 1900. We are seeing the first few companies becoming public and we will see hundreds more over the next decades. It will be an exciting time for investors and there will be plenty of opportunity for investors to make money and also help the environment, which is a welcome change from fossil fuel dominated energy sector of today.

High Volatility
At this early stage of development there will be plenty of volatility in this sector until it becomes a more mature industry. Investors must carefully select their entry points and be patient. This sector is NOT for the faint of heart. An investor has to be careful to only invest a portion of their portfolio, which they have designated for "higher risk" investments. These will be the stocks that you can make the most money on, but also the ones you could lose the most on. Risk and reward have always been intrinsically linked and this is no exception.

With this increased profile for the renewable energy industry, hopefully will come a greater knowledge and awareness on the part of the American public and thereafter more positive action and attention directed at the most critical topics of our lifetime - Global Warming, our insane and growing dependence on foreign oil and a range of other related problems that can, in the long term, only be addressed by a massive scale up of renewable energy technologies of all forms.

About the author...
J. Peter Lynch has worked for 29 years as a Wall Street analyst, an independent equity analyst and private investor, and a merchant banker to small emerging technology companies. He has been actively involved in following developments in the renewable energy sector since 1977 and is regarded as an expert in this area. He is currently an investment banker and financial/technology consultant to a number of companies. He can be reached via e-mail at Solarjpl@aol.com.




Are Canadians Contravening the Global Ban on Anti-Personnel Landmines?

By Richard Sanders
From Open Concept

Because of its investments in corporations linked to the manufacture of anti-personnel landmines, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) may be contravening the global treaty to ban these weapons. Despite this, Liberal MP and chair of the Parliamentary Committee for Defence and Veterans Affairs, David Pratt, defended CPP investments in war industries saying that critics are opening themselves to ridicule.

The community paper Nepean This Week (circulation 43,000) ran a front-page article on November 21, 2003, about CPP investments in military contractors. The article was based on research recently published by the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT). COAT’s report, “Operation Embedded Complicity: Canada, Playing its Part in the Business of War” reveals that Canadians are unwittingly being forced to invest their retirement savings in many of the world's leading producers of major weapons systems.

Included among CPP investments are corporations making a variety of anti-personnel cluster munitions, incendiary bombs, field artillery weapons and cruise missiles, as well the prime contractors that build dozens of U.S. fighter, attack and bomber aircraft, warships, armoured vehicles, missile launchers and battle tanks. All of these weapons and “delivery systems,” were used in the latest U.S.-led war against Iraq, a war that Canadians generally opposed and the Canadian government is supposed to have boycotted.

CPP investments even include the world’s highest-ranking weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, which still produces components for CBU-89 “Gator” anti-personnel landmines. This weapon, and other anti-personnel landmines, has been banned by 100 countries, thanks in part to well-publicised, highly-praised efforts by Mr. Pratt’s Liberal Party.

In the Nepean This Week article, Nepean-Carleton's Liberal MP, David Pratt, defended CPP investments in the world's biggest war-related industries. Mr. Pratt, chair of the Parliamentary standing committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs was reported to have "said these defence firms are legitimate corporations as worthy of investment as any other.

'Is anybody suggesting that we not have an army?' he said. 'If so then fine, but they’re leaving themselves open to ridicule.'
Recent events have proven that North America needs a military, and 'people who think otherwise are completely irresponsible.'”

Pratt's comments are a facile attempt to create a "red herring" to deflect attention away from the embarrassing fact that millions of Canadians are being coerced by their government to invest in the world’s top weapons industries, and profit from a war that they did not support. Contrary to Mr. Pratt’s comments this, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not Canada should have an army. Investing the retirement savings of Canadians in U.S. corporations that build dozens of the world’s deadliest war machines for exclusive use by the U.S. military has rather more to do with providing the Pentagon with the high-tech tools it needs to wage U.S. wars abroad.

There Oughta be a Law! Investing in Anti-Personnel Landmines, and worse.
Current CPP investments in Lockheed Martin -- the world's biggest weapons manufacturer -- have a market value of about $5.5 million. Lockheed Martin sold almost US$100 billion worth of military equipment to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) between 1996 and 2002. It has been the number one contractor to the U.S. DoD every year since 1996.

Lockheed Martin currently has contracts with the U.S. Air Force to produce Wind Corrected Munitions Dispensers (WCMD) for CBU-89 "Gator" anti-personnel landmines. These WCMDs are specifically designed to enhance the accurate emplacement of anti-personnel minefields by “free-fall” cluster bombs dropped from U.S. fighter/attack and bomber aircraft.

Each of these 1000-pound “Gator” Cluster Bomb Units (CBUs) contains 72 anti-tank and 22 anti-personnel landmines. According to a military think tank website (www.globalsecurity.org) this weapon uses a “fragmenting case warhead triggered by trip wires.” Each CBU-89 quickly scatters its 94 landmines over a 200 by 650 metre area.

These bombs are dropped from at least six different kinds of U.S. warplanes: A-10 “Warthog,” B-52 “Stratofortress,” B-1B “Lancer,” B-2 “Spirit,” F-15 “Eagle” and the F-16 “Fighting Falcon.” These are among the deadliest weapons delivery systems ever produced. They "deliver" a bewildering variety of weapons with far greater destructive capabilities than this one landmine.

We should not be surprised to learn that the Canada Pension Plan has invested in the U.S. prime contractors that are responsible for producing five of the six warplanes that “deliver” CBU-89 anti-personnel landmines: Rockwell (B-1B), Northrop Grumman (B-2), Boeing (B-52 and F-15) and Lockheed Martin (F-16). (The sixth warplane, the A-10 “Warthog,” was built by Fairchild Republic, a company that cannot receive CPP investments because it no longer exists.)

Lockheed Martin is also known to have helped produce three other types of anti-personnel landmines, including the:
(1) Area Denial Anti-personnel Mine (ADAM) (“delivered” by 155mm howitzers),
(2) M74 (delivered by a Ground Emplaced Mine Scattering System, which is simply a trailer pulled by a truck or Armoured Personnel Carrier) and
(3) CBU-78 (like the CBU-89, this “dumb bomb” is airdropped from U.S. warplanes).
For more data on landmine producers see Human Rights Watch website.
For more on weapons delivery systems and their prime contractors see the Federation of American Scientists’ website.

The fact that Canadians are being induced to invest in Lockheed Martin may mean that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and even Canada’s Liberal government, are contravening the Global Landmines Treaty. By forcing Canadians to invest in and profit from Lockheed Martin, the Liberal government is breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of this highly-acclaimed international treaty which is now part of Canadian law.

The general obligation of the landmine treaty states:
"(1) Each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances
a) To use anti-personnel mines;
b) To develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, anti-personnel mines;
c) To assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Convention."

The Liberal Party gained tremendous public admiration and respect for its promotion of this treaty. It is therefore extremely hypocritical that the Liberal government is forcibly collecting money from Canadians to invest in a company that is still involved in the production of technology designed specifically for these abhorrent weapons.

A search of the daily listing of U.S. government contracts shows that about $340 has been awarded to Lockheed Martin, since mid-2000, for production of the WCMD system. The most recent contract, for $40,952,447, announced June 7, 2003, can be viewed here.

“Solicitation notices” for these contracts are also listed in the FedBizOpps (FBO) archives. A solicitation notice to produce $63 million worth of "Extended Range-WCMDs" was posted on October 4, 2002. In April 2003, this contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin. It was estimated that this particular contract would last 36 months, i.e., until October 2005.

CPP investments also included other companies linked to the production of anti-personnel landmines. In fact, in 2003 the CPPIB held shares -- with a combined market value of $160 million -- in four other top U.S. weapons manufacturers that are known to have produced anti-personnel (AP) landmines. These corporations are General Electric, Raytheon, Texas Instruments and Rockwell.

Here are some details about these companies, the types of AP landmines they have produced and the market value of CPP investments in these companies this year:
General Electric Company (Fairfield, CT)
AP landmine types: TS-50 and VAR-40
CPP public equity investments listed by CPPIB (as of Sept. 30, 2003):
General Electric Company $137,326,000

Raytheon (Lexington, MA)
AP landmine types: Gator BLU-92/B
CPP public equity investments listed by CPPIB (as of Sept. 30, 2003):
Raytheon $2,940,000

Texas Instruments, through its subsidiary Unitrode (Merrimack, NH)
AP landmine types: Volcano M87, BLU-92/B Gator
CPP public equity investments listed by CPPIB (as of Sept. 30, 2003):
Texas Instruments $17,059,000

Rockwell, through its subsidiary Allen-Bradley (El Paso, TX)
AP landmine types: Volcano M87, Gator BLU-92/B
CPP public equity investments listed by CPPIB (as of June 30, 2003):
Rockwell Automation $1,154,000
Rockwell Collins $1,176,000
(A listing of the market values of CPP investments in foreign corporations, as of Sept. 30, 2003, can be seen the CPPIB website.

Isn't this a Conflict of Interest?
Mr. Pratt, as the Liberal MP responsible for chairing the Parliamentary standing committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs is required to perform his duties without even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Mr. Pratt's riding of Nepean-Carleton -- now part of the amalgamated City of Ottawa -- is home to dozens of high-tech military exporters. It appears that Mr. Pratt, and his political party, may be beholden to a special interest group known as military manufacturers.

Perhaps the largest of the military industries in Mr. Pratt’s riding is located in Bells Corners, namely General Dynamics Canada, formerly known as Computing Devices Canada.

In 2002, General Dynamics Canada is documented by Elections Canada as having donated at least $1,000 to the Liberal Party. Between 1993 and 2001, the Liberal Party received at least $66,991 from General Dynamics Canada’s precursor, Computing Devices Canada (CDC). To be fair it should be noted that CDC is also known to have donated at least $30,000 to the Progressive Conservatives, Reform and Alliance Parties combined. It is not known whether the actual total of these corporate donations was higher than these amounts that are publicly disclosed by Elections Canada. Unfortunately, we may never know the real value of these donations because there are several significant loopholes that allow legally permit secret donations to political parties.
(Source: http://www.elections.ca)

General Dynamics Canada produces hardware that is largely destined for export to U.S. military markets. For instance, it has made various high-tech, electronic components for U.S. battle tanks (M1, M2/M3), armoured vehicles (LAV III), field artillery weapons (M109), warplanes (MRA4) and other major weapons delivery systems. Computing Devices Canada had similar weapons contracts and is known to have also manufactured components for U.S. cruise missiles.

General Dynamics Canada is a subsidiary of U.S. weapons giant General Dynamics, which sold about US$30 billion dollars worth of hardware to the U.S. Department of Defense between 1996 and 2002. (See U.S. Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, http://www.dior.whs.mil)

Thanks to the Canada Pension Plan, Canadians are compelled to invest more than $4 million of their retirement savings in this top U.S. military corporation, which is the world’s sixth largest military contractor.

Not surprisingly, the flow of money between this Nepean-based military company and the Liberal government goes both ways. Industry Canada gave about $29.5 million in corporate handouts to Computing Devices Canada between 1982 and 1997, before it was acquired by General Dynamics Canada.

On the surface at least, this all constitutes the appearance of a conflict of interest. Canadian politicians are receiving vast amounts of money for their election campaign war chests from military corporations that later receive even greater amounts of money through government grants. Military industries in Mr. Pratt’s riding have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the governing party and receive not only large government grants but also investments from millions of Canadians through compulsory government-linked pension funds. When questioned about these funds, Mr. Pratt sidestepped the issue and belittled those who have the temerity to raise such unsettling questions about why his government allows the CPPIB to invest their money in war-related industries, like anti-personnel landmine manufacturers, that are widely perceived as immoral and perhaps even illegal.

Inside Heathrow's Protest Camp: A Battle to Save The World

By Johann Hari
From The Independent
2007

If you happen to be passing through Hatton Cross this weekend, you will see a swollen army of police officers equipped with weapons and video cameras and peeved expressions. They will greet you at the entrance to the Tube stations, to the airport, and on every corner, and they will probably film your face as you walk by. They are ready and raring to use the new anti-terror laws. So you might wonder - has Osama bin Laden been spotted in the vicinity?

No. A legion of environmentalists, committed to non-violent direct action, have erected an array of marquees and wind turbines and compost toilets in an empty field. As I spent this week with them, I discovered they have one purpose: to urge us to listen to the world's scientists and cut back on our greenhouse gas emissions - before we descend into climate chaos we cannot reverse and may not survive.

Alice James is sitting outside the bright white Children's Tent in the makeshift protest-city that has risen in an empty field next to Heathrow. The 26-year-old is a PhD student in atmospheric physics and she is watching her son bounce merrily on a trampoline as she explains, "We are trying to say to the people over there" - she points at Heathrow - "Do you know the connection between your flight and the hurricanes and the floods and the droughts we are seeing intensify across the world? Do you care?" She is drowned out by the roar of a cheap flight far above. Sitting later in my leaking tent, watching the Climate Camp bustle by, it seems like a surreal splicing of Glastonbury, a science seminar, and the civil rights movement. On every corner, people are discussing the nature of the warming world we are rapidly bringing to boiling point.

At one end, Mayer Hillman, the 76-year-old climate-change campaigner, is saying to a crowd: "We are on a trajectory towards the extinction of life on earth. In the main, people have done this unwittingly, so it can be excused. But now we know what we are doing, and it cannot be excused."

Further along, hundreds more are discussing how Britain can claw back its emissions, whether it's through a new, much better coach network or a Europe-wide electrical super-grid. These "unemployed layabouts" and "stupid hippies" (copyright Talksport Radio) must be the most scientifically qualified protesters in history, with every other person seemingly a science graduate.

I recognise an undercover journalist from a right-wing newspaper. "This is terrible!" he says "I've been sent to find stories about drug-addicted layabouts and they're all nice people with PhDs."

An impromptu barbershop quartet dressed as air stewards has formed. "Your exits are here, here, here and here," sings one. "Unfortunately, there are no exits from the planet." The next day, this is reported in the right-wing press with the headline: "Protesters dress as pilots to raid airports."

The contrast between the actual camp in here and the media camp Out There - the one ferverishly imagined by a press that is shut out - is often this bizarre. Ben Healey from the camp's media team tells me: "The press has been fair on the whole but unfortunately it has been infiltrated by a militant fringe led by the Evening Standard and some unsavoury elements have piled in behind them." I keep hearing on the radio about "militants flooding in" to the camp, and try to figure out who they are exactly. The hippies who have brought big bunny rabbits and chickens along? The big guy with the shaved head who starts quoting Gandhi at me?

Perhaps 83-year-old Ethel Bull is The Militant. Leaning on her walking stick, she says to me, "I'm going to be made homeless [if they build a third runway] and I want to know why. Where do you go when you're 83?"

She is one of the legion of locals from the surrounding villages of Sipson, Harlington and Harmondsworth who have embraced the camp as one of the last ways to save their homes. Derby Bahia, a mechanic, enthuses: "It's fantastic. I've never seen anything so wonderful in my life. The only thing I'm worried about is the police. Why don't they go and find some murderers instead?"

Linda McCutcheon, in her 60s, looks out across the village and says, "If this runway goes ahead, 41 years of my life will be under concrete. My children were born in that house there. I live there. My first family home is just beyond there. All gone."

Small teams of protesters - "affinity groups" - are already spreading out from the camp to protest at the Department for Transport and to block the private jets of the super-rich at Biggin Hill and Northolt private airports. But on Wednesday, we all gather in the biggest marquee to decide on the target for the main demonstration this weekend.

All the decisions here are made by consensus: we decide them collectively and carry them out collectively. There are a slew of deserving targets submitted for discussion: the offices of Heathrow's operator, BAA, which has tried to have this protest declared illegal; the building for the new ecocidal disaster of Terminal Five; the garden of Sir Clive Solely, the former Labour MP who became campaign director of Heathrow Future; a carbon offset company to punish them for the keep-on-flying myths they peddle, and more.

Everybody takes the decision with thoughtful seriousness, offering complex and media-savvy reasons for each one that we then break into smaller groups to discuss. From speaker to speaker, there is a plain commitment to never use violence against people: as protester Richard George puts it, "The only thing we are armed with is the peer-reviewed science."

There seems to be a general agreement, too, that The Enemy here is BAA, the airline industry and the Government's current policies. Time and again, speakers stress they don't want to target passengers. A few people cavil at that. One says: "If you're sitting in a drought in Africa caused by global warming, you'd find it a bit odd that we don't want to even delay Mrs Jones by a few hours to make our point on their behalf." Most people shake their heads and say disrupting passengers will play into the hands of the camp's enemies.

Scattered across the meetings that follow, the camp seems confident enough in its shared goals to express a few disagreements. There is a division between people who believe the solutions have to come largely from governments imposing carbon rationing and investing in large renewable infrastructure projects, and more anarchist-minded protesters who think this is authoritarian and makes the protesters too complicit in existing power structures.

Bemused at being attacked as pro-government, Mayer Hillman says to one anarchist: "You go down to Heathrow airport and tell them you want to build an anarchist grassroots society from the bottom up, now will you please give up your flight? They'll tell you to fuck off."

Everyone agrees, though, that we must not use violence against human beings. Yet the police seem determined to use anti-terror laws sold to the public with the promise they would only be used against wannabe suicide bombers. On Tuesday night, a battalion of 40 officers turned up at the camp with full riot gear - and a cavalcade of ambulances - demanding entry. The protesters stood in front of them in the rain, folded their arms, and chanted: "Out! Out!" After hours of staring angrily, the police finally shambled out.

Not every act of police over-reaction has been rebuffed so successfully. When a group of the campers went out to join up with a march by local residents, the police swooped and surrounded them, forcing them on to a bizarre march to Heathrow and back sandwiched between police vans. Katie Smith, 25, who works as a home help for the elderly, had a banner reading "Camp for Climate Action" seized. When she asked what was illegal about it, the officer snapped, "You could do anything with a banner like that." She asked where she could get it back, and they said she could go to the police station in Heathrow airport - which the protesters are banned from entering. As I gape at this, I have to shake myself and remember: we are the ones on the side of almost all the world's scientists, and we are only exercising our democratic right to protest.

When I see the police seizing bags and thrusting cameras into the faces of these peaceful people, I keep comparing it in my mind to the policing of fuel protests back in 2000. A group of truckers, enraged that their God-given right to burn cheap oil was being infringed by mildly green taxes, brought Britain to a standstill. Supermarket shelves emptied; people began to panic. Through it all, the police did nothing, treating the barricaders like mildly naughty children. The very newspapers now damning direct action as "undemocratic" and "disgusting" cheered them on. So according to the police and the right-wing press, protesting to speed up global warming is fine, even if it causes food shortages; but protest to halt global warming and you become a mini Bin Laden.

Standing not far from these police vans, environmental campaigner George Monbiot summarises the stakes to a pensive crowd. He quotes from a scientific paper by Nasa's Professor James Hansen, which says that the last time the world warmed by 2-3 degrees C in such a short time, the world's major ice sheets collapsed very quickly - and sea levels rose by 25 metres. "If that happens again," he says, "it would inundate the areas where 60 per cent of human beings live." The assembled Climate Camp listens to this statistic with a sad but unsurprised revulsion.

By gathering here, we have shown that at least a few thousand people are sane enough to wave and shout as the ice-sheets fall - even if the rest of the world strolls silently by into a shiny new jetplane to Hell.



A Healthy Dose of Sicko
Michael Moore Talks Sicko, Heath Care, Edutainment, Cuba

By Tim Ryan
From Rotten Tomatoes
2007

There isn't much middle ground on Michael Moore; his bromide-laden documentaries have earned him both an enthusiastic following from many on the left and unvarnished vitriol from much of the right. But as divisive as Moore's films can be, they've also been remarkable successful with audiences and critics. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the highest-grossing doc of all time, and "Bowling for Columbine" won Moore an Oscar for best documentary. With "Sicko" (which opened Friday in New York, and made a remarkable $70,000 on one screen), Moore turns his sights on the American health care system. Specifically, he posits that universal health care in Canada, France, and the U.K. offers both a greater level of service, general satisfaction, and fewer serious, potentially grievous problems than does America's privatized model. "Sicko" generated its share of controversy because of its last segment, during which Moore took a group of afflicted 9/11 workers to Cuba for health care. Some have accused Moore of whitewashing Castro's human rights violations, and the U.S. Treasury department has investigated the trip to determine if it violated the U.S. embargo with Cuba. But Moore defends his stop in Havana, saying the U.S. should be doing more to help the ailing, especially those it considers its heroes. Moore spoke with journalists at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival shortly after the film's premiere, discussing balancing facts with entertainment, reforming the American system, and Americans' thinking when it comes to universal health care.

Michael Moore: I'd first like to start by saying something that I became aware of in the last 24 hours. Yesterday the New York Post reported that the Bush administration is now investigating the 9/11 rescue workers who we took to Guantanamo Bay, and that they're not just going to just come after me. Again, I'm taking this from the New York Post, so take that for what it's worth. But if what the Post is saying is true, I was just kind of stunned that they would go after these rescue workers. The reporter in the story pointed out that that they went there for medical treatment, and the Department of Treasure spokesperson said, "We don't issue licenses to Cuba for medical treatment." I just think it's really shameful on the part of the Bush Administration. Go after me, go after the film, but leave these people alone, these are individuals that the government has already refused to help. To go after them because they want to get help makes absolutely no sense.

Q: What inroads had you made with officials at Guantanamo? Had you talked to anyone or made any arrangements? Were they expecting you to arrive?

Moore: We first approached the Bush administration last October wanting to go down there, and they kept stalling and putting us off. Finally by March, six months later, we decided, it's already legal for us to go down as journalists, [so] that's what we're gonna do. You don't need a license if you're doing any journalism work or whatever. So we went legally, according to what the law says. They did not know we were coming that day.

Q: The sequence where the 9/11 rescue workers get medical treatment from Cuba, and all the doctors are smiling very pleasantly -- did it ever cross your mind that you were essentially making a great marketing piece for dictatorship?

Moore: After we were turned away at Guantanamo Bay, we would have gone to wherever our government was holding detainees. That was the purpose of the trip: to show the same medical care that we're given to Al Qaeda detainees. No more, no less. So if the naval base had been in Italy or Spain or Australia or the Philippines -- if we'd been turned away -- that's where we would have taken 9/11 workers to see what kind of health care we could get. It's just an accident that it was in Cuba. We didn't make the decision. The Bush Administration made the decision to keep the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The health care they were given by the Cuban doctors was the health care received by the Cuban people. You see they don't have a private room: four to a room. This isn't just me saying this, all the health care organizations in the world have documented that the Cuban health care system is a very good system and it's probably the best [health care system] in the third world. The EMT volunteer was there and she told this story to us last week. She stayed there longer than we did. I wanted to find out if the team was doing this because the cameras were on. So she snuck out of her hospital room, checked in, walked up to a different woman than the one she checked in with, and said, "I'm an American of Puerto Rican descent." She walked up to one of those intake desks just as you see in the film. She said they treated her exactly as they had the rest of the patients. Of course, anytime the camera's on, people behave differently. I think that should just be a given. Anytime you see a documentary, when the camera is on people are aware. But with the patients we interviewed and with the time we were on the floor, we only saw patients, no reporters, and they care they were given was incredible. You can interview these 911 health care workers and they'll tell you how grateful they were for the health care they received.

Q: You didn't really point out the cultural and sociological difference with America. You didn't point out that you'd be drowning your taxes in order to underwrite so much for health care. Why don't you address this?

Moore: I do address it in the film, but I don't say we're "drowning in taxes." Americans don't want to pay taxes and I don't blame Americans for not wanting to pay taxes because what is the result? You pay taxes and still you can't even get a pothole fixed. Nothing works. That's why we don't want the government running our health care. In France or Britain they actually see some tangible results for the money they pay in taxes and I think that's what the big difference is. And if Americans actually saw tangible results with the amount of taxes they paid they might be willing to pay more. What you're suggesting is true: We Americans will have to restructure our thinking, share and stand in line a little. And if it means sharing and standing in line so that everyone is covered? Are we willing to do that? No! "I don't want to stand in line. I want it now!" I don't think that mentality has done us well and I think we need to learn to share and start behaving. The Americans like to refer to the States as a Christian country, and I'd like to see that. The closer to that we are the better off we'll be.

Q: You oversimplify some things, sometimes for entertainment purposes. That does make you open to more mainstream critics who see you as telling incomplete truths. You know that will happen so why do you choose to make your films this way?

Moore: I'm making a movie. I have a 90 to 120 minute time-frame. What you call oversimplification I call a rocking good way to tell a story that leaves no one bored and wanting more at the end of the movie. That's my goal

Q: You go from focusing on health care to breaking the stereotypes Americans have about their country, which was wild and imaginative. One of the stereotypes you displayed that doctors in Europe were not poor, struggling, doctors -- unlike those in America. I was wondering if you were deliberately appealing to American values and the bourgeois lifestyle?

Moore: Upper middle class. I say, at the beginning of the film that this film is not primarily going to deal with the poor, that I wanted to talk to you middle class American who thinks everything is hunky-dory here. When I went to these other countries I deliberately showed people who make similar amounts of money. My sister is a schoolteacher in San Diego; she makes $52,000 a year. $1,000 a week times four is $4,000 a month. I'm trying to appeal to American middle class audiences, showing them middle class households. It's not a poor hospital. I did this because I want to show the American people where they are in this. I went to London, Ontario, not the bad section of Vancouver, and that was a choice I made, because I decided in the beginning this would not be from the point of view of the people I'd be championing or whatever. I think it's enough to say we have over 50 million people who don't have health insurance and that is patently wrong and you don't have to watch a two hour movie about that.

Q: Do you have any immediate and realistic solutions for the United States problems that could be implemented immediately?

Moore: One thing we really need to do is get the money out of politics and reform so that these pharmaceutical companies and health insurance companies can't buy our congress. If we took the money out we'd have a better chance of getting the bills passed and begin a pre-universal, not-for-profit health care. I have a list of sites on my web site. I have a list of organizations I encourage people to hook up with and bills for congress. I hope people will become active participants and do something about this. Sometimes I feel I'm in a position and I should try to initiate some engagement. I don't really think that's my role to do that and something gets lost in this whole discussion about the film and the festival. I'm a filmmaker and I seldom get to talk about being a filmmaker, making films or what I think about films. Instead, I'm asked political questions and I'm only equipped to answer the questions so far. I try to put into my films some things I feel, but I wasn't kidding when I said I wasn't writing a book. I'm very careful about the facts in my film -- I'm careful they're accurate and correct. If I say, "There's nearly 50 million people without health care," that's a fact. You have to trust that's a fact. But if I say, "I think part of health insurance should be eliminated," that's a conclusion I've reached through the facts I've found. If I said things that were wrong, trust me, people could come at me from all direction but they don't because things I state as truth are true and things I state as opinions are mine. So the only way these critics can come at me is for the opinions I express or by confusing the opinions for facts.

Q: In terms of process, not factual information, did you consider Hillary Clinton and the battle with the AMA that has been going long. Perhaps that's something you initially considered --

Moore: I initially had a whole thing with Roosevelt and Truman. The AMA has been opposed to national health insurance long before Hillary. They were opposed to social security and Medicare. The doctors did not want free health care for the elderly and they bought Medicaid and didn't want free health care for the poor. Doctors have been on the wrong side of this issue for a long time. They supported HMOs at first because they got the goods from the insurance companies who told them they would make more money in managed care. They didn't realize the insurance companies were a lot smarter than the doctors. Again, the doctors are demoralized.

Q: There's the old saying that "anecdote is not evidence." When you're making a film, do you think intellectually about balancing human stories with analysis or is the process more instinctive than that? Do you have a roadmap, or do things just happen?

Moore: It doesn't just happen. I don't think it's enough to just show these anecdotes in my film and have them play as fact. What I make sure to do is anything anecdotal in the film -- fingers sawed off, fingers put back on -- that's there because it's based on evidence. The things about the Canadian health care system, in an emergency like that they're going to take care of you well and they'll take care of you right there. Other things, like a knee or hip replacement or liposuction, stuff that's not life threatening but just better for you, that takes a little while longer because any time you decide to share a pie, wouldn't it be nicer if the ones who are hungrier get fed first?

Q: It was mentioned before that our country pays a lot in taxes and the other nations like France or Germany who have nationalized health care, they don't have as many billions of dollars going towards the military. Did you feel that was something you couldn't address in the film?

Moore: Yes. Somebody, one of the senators from Ohio, he won't take the congressional health insurance. His stance is that he won't take federal health care until it is offered to all Americans. The $100 billion a year we're sending in Iraq would cover those 50 million without health care for three to five years. So clearly, as he says, "If we've got the money to kill people, we've got the money to heal them." I know that sounds a little reckless because it would put us into debt. But, you know, just like you get a paycheck in France, you get a paycheck here. The federal tax in France is 10 percent. That covers the infrastructure, the military and all the basic things the federal government takes care of. Then on your pay stub you have your tax for college, health care, daycare and they list it so every week you see what your money is going towards. The show of waste that goes on in health insurance companies: [just think] if you eliminate the 25 percent they spend on administrative costs. Medicaid spends three percent on administrative costs. Canada spends 1.7 percent of the budget on the bureaucracy that runs the Canadian Health system. 1.7 percent! AETNA, Blue Cross, Humana, they spend anywhere between 18 to 25 percent on their health care costs. The myth is [that] privatization is better and less expensive. If this were in the hands of the government it would be reliable. If you don't believe me just as your parents, parents if their social security check comes at the same time every month. It does: via the crappy US mail! My guess is it comes on the same day, and ask them if they have a problem getting their social security money. It's there for them every month. It's a good system. They give millions of dollars every month to millions of senior citizens. And it works. Just because it's the government doesn't mean it has to be Amtrak.

Q: How many people do you have helping you gather all the clips, facts and figures? You have a lot of reporting in your film.

Moore: I have five or six field producers and senior producers. I have four researchers and four in the archiving department. Then I have four independent veterans who are not on staff, who go through the film and two teams of lawyers who go through the film. Then they hire another firm. And the insurance company who insures the film also sends people to look through the film. All the people are fully insured and have the absolute best coverage AETNA offers: zero deductible, dental, eye and as good as they can get in the US these days.

Q: You're originally from Canada?

Moore: No, but thank you. My grandfather came from there. I have family there.

Q: Have you ever considered relocating?

Moore: Yes. When I was in high school, during the draft, my friends and I would make these dry runs over the blue river. Of course I wouldn't consider living anyplace other than America. I'm an American. I'd rather bring France to us. We'll bring these Canadians to us if we have to kicking and screaming! And maybe it won't be hard since they leave their doors unlocked.

Q: What is the next issue you want to make a film about?

Moore: I got asked that question here in Cannes three years ago and I made a mistake saying "the health care system" and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies started issuing these medals to employees and told them not to talk to me. I made a hotline with a note: "If you see Michael Moore at this or any location and want to talk to him, please call%u2026" The LA Times did a story on it. There was some kind of a training session with a psychological profiler to train their employees how to deal with me if I came at them with a camera. So they hired this guy to profile me and it said "try to get him off the subject by talking to him about Detroit sports team or complimenting him on his recent weight loss." I thought, "This is genius! It will absolutely work!" It's hard enough for me to get in anywhere but as I said, it's hard not to get in because these people were screwing around, getting ready for me! But, about the subject: the subject matter has been researched and we don't need any help, but thank you!

DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE SECURITY AND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT?

From New Socialist

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was founded in March 2005 at a summit of the Heads of State of Canada, the US, and Mexico. SPP is not an official treaty; it is not an official law; rather, it is being presented as a vague ‘diaologue based on shared values’. Therefore it has been able to escape any public scrutiny and will never be debated in the House of Commons.

The North American Forum sponsored one of the various secretive meetings in Sept 2006 in Banff Springs. When asked by the media if he was in attendance, Stockwell Day refused to confirm he was there, but said that even if he was, it was a “private” meeting that he would not comment on. Another instance of this secrecy was revealed during hearings of the Commons International Trade Committee into the SPP in 2007. Gordon Laxer, head of Alberta’s Parkland Institute, was testifying on the energy implications of the SPP, when Committee Chair Conservative MP Leon Benoit, demanded that Laxer halt his “irrelevant” testimony. The Committee members overruled Benoit—who then promptly (and illegally) adjourned the meeting and stomped out.

The SPP is a NAFTA-plus-Homeland-Security model. The founding premise of the SPP is that an agenda of economic free trade and national security will result in human prosperity. Yet we know that the so-called “prosperity” of previous free trade agreements such as NAFTA have onlybrought corporate prosperity, with increasing rates of poverty and displacement for the majority of people.

“If we succeed with Mexico in North America, then it becomes much easier to have a Free Trade Area of the Americas, because the rest of Latin America will see that free trade has actually been an avenue to the first world. If we fail in Mexico, I don’t think we’re likely to succeed anywhere else in Latin America or, for that matter, in the developing world.”- Robert Pastor, America and the World at a Council of Foreign Relations Colloquim

WHO IS BEHIND THE SPP?
“No item – not Canadian water, not Mexican oil, not American anti-dumping laws – “is off the table”; rather, contentious or intractable issues will simply require more time to ripen politically.” – Leaked Minutes of a 2004 meeting of the Task Force on the Future of North America The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) was launched as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in June 2006. It is the only formal advisory board to the SPP and is made up of 30 corporate leaders from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico with ten advisors from each of the SPP signatory states.

Minutes from a January 10, 2006 tri-national “Public-Private Sector
Dialogue on the Security and Prosperity Partnership” reveal exactly why the NACC was created – to “engage substantively and pragmatically on trade and security issues without undue deference to political sensitivities.” A September 13, 2006 story in Maclean’s magazine describes NACC as a “cherrypicked group of executives who were whisked to Cancun in March by the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and asked to come up with a plan for taking North American integration beyond NAFTA.”

The NACC has become the concrete reality emerging from proposals by corporate think-tanks such the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Consejo Mexicano De Asuntos Internacionels (COMEXI) to have a trilateral corporate body which would advise the three governments on issues ranging from military integration to securing energy resources to controlling migration.

In Canada, the CCE is a CEO organization whose corporations administer in excess of C$2.1 trillion in assets. In January 2003, CCCE launched its North American Security and Prosperity Initiative to increase investment and capital flows, integrate security agreements and military defence, and expedited means of resource (oil, natural gas, water, forest products) extraction. This has essentially become the template for the SPP.

In short, the NACC, representing private corporate interests, has been “institutionalized” as a policy-making body, thus formalizing and deepening the existing patterns of influence that corporations already have.

Harper appointed the Canadian membership of the NACC in June 2006: Dominic D’Alessandro (Manulife Financial); Paul Desmarais, Jr. (Power Corporation of Canada); David Ganong (Ganong Bros. Limited); Richard George (Suncor Energy Inc.); Hunter Harrison (CN); Linda Hasenfratz (Linamar Corporation); Michael Sabia (Bell Canada Enterprises); Jim Shepherd (Canfor Corporation); Annette Verschuren (The Home Depot); and Rick Waugh (Scotiabank).

WHAT ARE FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS ALL ABOUT?
“Free trade” is an oft-touted term whose consequences are rarely fully understood. Free trade agreements include steps to further privatization, service cuts, and corporate tax breaks. “Barriers to trade” such as public services, labour standards, and health and environmental regulations are eliminated. Fifty-one of the world’s top 100 economies are corporations.

Since the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 1985, wage growth in Canada has been almost flat and the majority of jobs are un-unionized and part time. Since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994, the bottom 20% of Canadian families saw their incomes fall by 7.6%, while the top 20% saw their incomes rise by 16.8%. In 2004, the average earnings of the richest 10% of Canada’s families raising children was 82 times that earned by the
poorest 10% of Canada’s families. This is despite the fact that that most households are clocking in almost 200 hours more than nine years ago.

Similarly in the US, according to Forbes Magazine, the largest employer is Wal-Mart, whose average wage is $7.50 per hour.

In Mexico, the number of Mexicans living in severe poverty has grown by four million since NAFTA and the real value of the minimum wage has dropped by 23%. The costs of environmental degradation have amounted to 10% of the annual GDP. With the rise in agribusiness, more than 50,000 Mexican farmers are expelled from their lands annually. Many of these 1.5 million displaced Mexican farmers have migrated to North America to work in low-paying sectors such as construction, agriculture and factories. “Corporate globalization for us is colonization continued without any letup.” – Sharon Venne, Cree lawyer.

WHAT IS THE WAR ON TERROR ALL ABOUT?
The “War on Terror” and the beefed-up national security apparatus has exacerbated insecurity and brought terror on the lives of millions of people locally and globally through immigrant raids, border militarization, foreign troop occupations, and repression of civil liberties and resistance movements. A September 2006 report in The Independent found that the “War on Terror” has “directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees, and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth.”

The threat of terrorism has created a sense of its own inevitability and we take for granted that the quickest and most effective way of responding is to be “better safe than sorry’. Evan Sycamnias has written that “these instituted ways of doing things create their own ‘regime of truth’ which simultaneously shores up the institutional structure and closes off any fundamental questions which might undermine it.”The ever-expanding security apparatus is less about protecting society than it is about creating a culture of fear in the context of the War on Terrorism.

Throughout Canada’s history, “national security” has functioned to legitimize a series of exclusionary policies that have targeted racialized “non-citizens”, communists, socialists, as well as First Nations and black activists, and sexual minorities. In particular, “national security” concerns have had a direct impact on Canadian immigration policies and have been used as a tool of immigration control by creating a discourse of the threat “outsiders” pose to the Canadian nation.

WHAT IS THE SPP SPECIFICALLY ABOUT?
“SPP has three fundamental objectives.to create more advantageous conditions for transnational corporations and remove remaining barriers to the flow of capital and crossborder production within the framework of NAFTA. It wants to secure access to natural resources, especially oil. And it wants to create a regional security plan based on “pushing its borders out” into a security perimeter that includes Mexico and Canada.”- Laura Carlsen, International Relations Centre.

The aim of the SPP is to harmonize over 300 common areas of legislation and regulations, including:

– Integration of military and police training exercises, cooperation on law enforcement, and the expansion of The North American Aerospace Defense Command into a into a joint naval and land Defense Command.

– Bulk transfers of water, particularly from Canada to the US. For example, the North American Water and Power Authority would redirect water from British Columbia and the Yukon to a huge crater in the Rocky Mountains inn the U.S. side.

– Privatization of Mexico’s nationalized oil sector; and fivefold increase in tar sands production in Alberta, which is actively opposed by the Lubicon, Dene, Mikisew Cree and other indigenous communities. The tar sands are already the largest contributor to the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and surrounding indigenous communities have documented high cancer rates.

– In 2001, without legislative or public debate, Deputy Prime Minister John Manley and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge signed the Smart Border Declaration, which includes adoption of coordinated border surveillance technologies with major contracts provided to military suppliers, and development of a North American Border Pass. Other initiatives to militarize the border include fly-overs of the border by U.S. helicopters and the $101-million plan to arm Canadian border guards.

– Coordination of no-fly lists. The recent implementation of the Canadian fly-list “Passenger Protect” has raised serious privacy and civil liberties concerns. The U.S. no-fly list has grown to half a million names.

– Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency began a field trial of biometrics in October 2006 despite widespread rejection of their use. The Canadian Advance Technology Alliance Biometrics Group is predicting that the biometric “market” would rise to US $2.6-billion by 2006.

- Integration of refugee policies. The Safe Third Country Agreement, implemented in December 2004 between the US and Canada, has resulted in at least a 40% decrease in refugee applications in Canada. Under the United States-Mexico “Voluntary Repatriation Program” more than 35,000 persons have already been deported.

– Expansion of temporary worker programs. Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program is seen as the ‘model’ to implement, despite widespread documented abuse in this program including being tied to the employer who “imports” them; facing deportation if they assert their rights; and exploitative working conditions including low wages and long hours with no overtime pay.

– Harmonization of health and environmental regulations to lower standards and an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol.

– NAFTA Superhighway, a several hundred metres corridor ncluding rail lines and pipelines from Mexico to the Canadian border.Transportation companies such as CN Rail have much to gain; in Western Canada alone CN plans to invest nearly C$350 million in track infrastructure. Historically and currently, CN Rail has been the target of various blockades by indigenous communities active in the legitimate defence of their land and livelihood against the project of Canada’s ‘nation-building’ and resource extraction.

IN DEPTH: THE TAR SANDS IN ALBERTA
The Athabasca oil sands are one of the world’s largest petroleum resource basins. Oil sand operations currently produce around one million barrels a day. For Suncor- one the corporations on the NACC- that means gross revenue from oil sands of nearly $6 million a day. By 2015, according to industry forecasts, the oil sands will account for at least one-fourth of North America’s oil production, expected to produce 3 million barrels a day by 2015.

The oil sands mines have become the largest contributor to Canada’s increase in greenhouse gas emissions and environmental organizations are calling for a moratorium on the growth of the mines. To extract one barrel of oil, corporations mine 2 to 4 tonnes of tar sands and burn 250 cubic feet of natural gas; then burn another 500 cubic feet of gas to upgrade bitumen into synthetic oil; use 2 to 4 1/2 barrels of water; and release 2 times as much CO2 as conventional oil production. Alberta accounts for about 40% of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Six of the top 10 emitters in the country are based in Calgary, including TransAlta, Syncrude Canada Ltd., Suncor Energy Inc. and Petro-Canada. Furthermore, the oil sand mines are being carved out of Canada’s vast Boreal forest, a continental swath of timber and wetlands that ecologists say helps reduce global warming.

Yet the SPP calls for a fivefold increase in tar sands production in
Alberta and an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol since the oil sands are a clear violation of Kyoto commitments. Plans and procedures for the tar sands extraction are originating in a SPP tar sands working group that has been meeting outside of regular government activity, without any public input, and brings together oil giants CEOs and government officials.

Companies exploiting the tar sands are calling for the expansion of the temporary foreign worker program as a means of securing hyper-exploitable labour that will ensure higher profits. Foreign worker programs across North America have documented widespread abuse, including being tied to the employer who “imports” them; facing deportation if they assert their rights; and exploitative working conditions including low wages and long hours with no overtime pay. In April 2007, for example, two migrants workers died and four others critically injured at an oil sands project run by run by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. The Alberta Federation of Labour reported that the workers who called to report the accident to the union subsequently had their cellphones confiscated. At the February 2007 SPP meeting in Ottawa, executives from the Canadian and Mexican Oil & Gas industries laid a framework to encourage their governments to put in place a guestworker program for Mexican workers to labour in Canada’s oilsands.

Indigenous communities around the tarsands, including the Lubicon, Dene, Mikisew Cree, have been actively opposing the projects. The Dehcho First Nations has been opposing the 1,200-kilometre Mackenzie Valley pipeline and industrial development on their unceded traditional territories. The Mikisew Cree have decided to formally oppose oil sands development because of their concern over the industry’s overuse of water drawn from the Athabasca River. The Lubicon Nation has also seen their traditional lands overrun by massive oil and gas exploitation which has destroyed traditional lands and ways of life. The Lubicon Nation has been seeking a land rights settlement with the federal and provincial governments for years, yet corporate development has continued unabated. The Lubicon Nation estimates that over $13 billion in oil and gas resources have been taken from Lubicon Traditional Territory since oil and gas exploitation began 26 years ago. Native residents of Fort Chipewyan, a village of 1,200 on the shores of Lake Athabasca, have experienced abnormally high rates of rare cancers. Recently, the alarming levels of toxic chemicals in the air, water and soil near Sarnia Ontario- where crude oil is refined- were exposed when it was found that these chemicals were likely contributing to the skewed gender balance in the Aamjiwnaang First Nations reserve near Sarnia.

IN DEPTH: THE NORTH AMERICAN SECURITY PERIMETER
Plans for a common security perimeter include:

– Integration of military and police training exercises and cooperation on law enforcement.

– Redesign of armed forces for combat overseas. Cooperation in global wars and occupations are part of the “forward defense” strategy of the security perimeter.

– Expansion of The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) into a multiservice joint naval and land Defense Command. – The Smart Border Declaration passed without legislative or public debate in 2001 by Deputy Prime Minister John Manley and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. This 30-point plan includes harmonization of border security technologies and increased border militarization.

– Increased border enforcement against Mexican migrants at the US-Mexico border and ‘sealing’ of the southern Mexico border with Guatemala and Belize through Plan Sur. This measure had the effect of “displacing” tasks of the U.S. southern border to southern Mexico. – Militarization of the border including fly-overs of the border by U.S. helicopters and the $101-million plan to arm Canadian border guards.

-A North American Border Pass with biometric identifiers: the Canadian government has began a field trial of biometrics in October 2006 despite widespread rejection of their use.

– Coordination of no-fly lists and passenger surveillance systems.
Transport Canada’s no-fly list, which as already raised serious privacy and civil liberties concerns, will merge with the US list, which contains almost 500,000 names.

– Harmonized immigration and refugee regimes: the Safe Third Country Agreement, implemented in December 2004 between the US and Canada, has resulted in at least a 40% decrease in refugee applications in Canada. This ‘virtual’ border wall disallows migrants arriving at the Canadian border if they have travelled through the United States by land. The countries have also launched a pilot project to share information on refugee and asylum claimants based on a comparison of fingerprint records.

– Increased deportations: under the United States-Mexico
“Voluntary Repatriation Program” more than 35,000 persons have already been deported.

Immigrants and workers of colour face specific threats under the new internal security regime. A US State Department regulation prohibits workers in the aerospace industry born in one of 19 ‘enemy’ countries from working on US defence contracts. Despite human rights laws in Quebec and Canada, twenty-four workers at Bell Helicopter of Montreal were removed from their positions. The case of one worker, Mr Jaime Vargas, born in Venezuela, is being taken up by the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations.

The expansion of security initiatives and infrastructure comes with a great benefit to private industry and the role of the private sector in this expansion was highlighted as one of the priorities of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) at its Trilateral Private Sector meeting of August 2006. In September 2006, the U.S. component of the NACC released its final recommendations. In its recommendations on security issues, the body wrote that “As 85% of the United States’ critical infrastructure is owned or operated by the private sector, it is vital to our economic and national security that business is actively involved in the formulation of homeland security policies”.

Within weeks of the 9/11, the chairman of the Cornell Corporations, based in Texas, told stock analysts, “it’s clear since September 11 there is a heightened focus on detention, more people are going to get caught. I would say that is positive. The federal businesses are the best business for us since September 11th.” On Sept. 21 2006, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced that a consortium headed by the Chicago-based Boeing Company had won a multi-billion dollar contract to install sensors and radars along the U.S. border. Similarly in Canada, the Canadian Advance Technology Alliance (CATA) has predicted that “the North American biometric market could expand ten-fold in the next five years, rising to US $2.6-billion by 2006”.

IN DEPTH: LABOUR MOBILITY
A central feature of the current phase of corporate globalization is the increased mobility of capital aided through free trade agreements, as evident through the goals of the SPP. This increased mobility of capital is driven by and in turn supports a drive towards increased labor flexibility as a way of ensuring a cheap devalued labour to increase profits. Labour flexibility is achieved through attacking labor laws and employing contract, part-time, and temporary labour. This phenomenon has been termed the “Walmart-ization” of labour and has meant the disappearance of secure jobs. Not surprisingly, this type of work is
mostly filled by (im)migrant and non-status workers.

Temporary migrant workers allow for capital interests to have access to cheap labour that exists under precarious conditions, the most severe of which is the condition of being deportable. The condition of being deportable assures the ability to super-exploit and to dispose of migrant workforce without consequences. Given their unstable legal status, the government and businesses are able to exercise control through denial of basic rights and access to social services afforded to citizens. They also maintain the sanctity of the fortified national security apparatus by legalizing the ‘foreign-ness’ of migrant workers, thus continuing to render them as ‘undesirable outsiders’.

The SPP has called for the expansion of guest workers programs that will bring in more migrant workers instead of immigrant workers with full permanent residency rights. The number of foreign workers in B.C. has doubled over the past three years and the Alberta Federation of Labour is reporting that Alberta has become one of the first provinces to bring in more people as temporary foreign workers than through the immigration system.

Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program is seen as the model for migrant worker programs under the SPP, despite the fact that widespread abuse has been documented. Common problems include low wages, long hours with no overtime pay, unsafe working conditions and crowded and unhealthy accommodations. Migrant farm workers are frequently paid less than Canadian counterparts, in violation of their employment agreement. Many migrant farm workers are required to work with pesticides without proper training or safety equipment. Accommodations may be attached to greenhouses; creating problems of dampness and seepage of chemicals and pesticides. Some employers retain passports, health cards, social insurance cards, and work permits. The workers’ complaints are rarely heard or addressed by their employers or the Mexican consulate and workers can and have been sent home for filing complaints. Therefore such programs are inherently designed to provide employers and corporations with a pool of exploitable labour- without the right to unionize or to assert their rights.

The deepest hypocrisy and irony of temporary foreign worker programs is that those who are often to migrate to work in these programs are displaced from their own lands and their own jobs through these very free trade agreements such as NAFTA and SPP. For example, as part of its inclusion in NAFTA in 1994, Mexico was forced to adjust its constitution’s Article 27, which guaranteed rights to communal lands (ejidos). A symbolic illustration of NAFTA’s effects is the fate of Mexican corn: the Mexican government was forced to eliminate subsidies to corn, meanwhile corn produced in the US remained subsidized, thus making it cheaper to buy US corn inside Mexico than Mexican corn. Over 1.5 million Mexican farmers who subsequently lost their farms migrated North to work in low-paying sectors and maquila factories. Wages among California’s 700,000 farm workers, half of whom are undocumented, is approximately $6.75 an hour.

Therefore, on the one hand, Canadian government supports international agreements that allow for the free movement of capital and business across the globe and such capitalist relocation has created huge areas of poverty giving people no choice but to migrate in the face of poverty, war and militarization. Yet, on the other hand, while businesses are free to move across borders to find thriving economic conditions, free trade and border agreements deny people the same type of free movement.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:
The real face of SPP is to further an agenda of corporate free trade, border militarization, criminalization of migration, privatization and theft of indigenous land and resources, repression in the name of national security, impoverishment and displacement, and cooperation in war and occupation. SPP is a direct continuation of the colonialist and capitalist politics that perpetuate and accelerate the carnage, pillage, and destruction of the planet.

Contact the various companies that make up the NACC and tell them you do not support their participation in the NACC. Advise them that will no longer be their customers unless they publicly announce that they will not participate in the NACC.

Let your political representatives know that you do not support the SPP.

Tell your friends and family about the SPP.

Contact us to find out more information or to get involved:
noii-van@resist.ca or call 778-552-2099. We are organizing pickets, boycotts, and actions against the corporations involved in NACC; raising public awareness on the issue; and building momentum towards the continental days of action August 19-21 when Bush, Harper, and Calderon will meet in Montebello, Quebec for a SPP Summit.
Bush-Harper-Calderon Securing corporate Profits and Prosperity for the rich!


SPP Agent Provocateur Cops Caught Red Handed Attempting To Incite Violence
Boots give Away Undercover Cops As Real Protesters Expose Criminality

By Steve Watson
From Infowars.net
2007

Peaceful protestors at the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit in Montebello have captured sensational video of hired agent provocateurs attempting to incite rioting and turn the protest violent, only to encounter brave resistance from real protest leaders.

A video, posted on YouTube, shows three young men, their faces masked by bandannas, mingling Monday with protesters in front of a line of police in riot gear. At least one of the masked men is holding a rock in his hand, reports the Canadian Press.

The three are confronted by protest organizer Dave Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada. Coles makes it clear the masked men are not welcome among his group of protesters, whom he describes as mainly grandparents. He urges them to leave and find their own protest location.

Notice how the "anarchists" begin to become uncomfortable when Coles and others accuse them of really being cops, while pulling at their face masks. They are seen to edge closer to the uniformed police and engage in some form of discussion. The police then let them pass through their line with very little resistance and "arrest" them in what is plainly a total charade.

More damning proof that the radicals were in fact cops was revealed with the release of photographs of the incident which show that the anarchists have exactly the same footwear on as the cops. On the soles of their boots are yellow triangles, exactly the same as on the boots of a police officer kneeling beside the men. While some have said the marks could represent Canadian Safety Industry seals, it seems very coincidental when placed in context with the way the rioters were "subdued". To compound the evidence, police have stated that only 4 protestors in total have been arrested and charged, two of them being women. Veteran protest organizers have confirmed the identity of the four as genuine protesters.

So what happened to the rock wielding anarchists? The few radical protestors at the summit have provided police with the pretext to use rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray on peaceful protestors. Neither the RCMP nor the Surete du Quebec would comment on the video or even discuss generally whether they ever use the tactic of employing agents provocateurs, however it has been common practice at previous protests for authorities to employ police or special forces to intentionally infiltrate peaceful protests and cause violence.

In Seattle in 1999 at the World Trade Organisation meeting, the authorities declared a state of emergency, imposed curfews and resorted to nothing short of police state tactics in response to a small minority of hostile black bloc hooligans. In his film Police State 2, Alex Jones covered the fact that the police allowed the black bloc to run riot in downtown Seattle while they concentrated on preventing the movement of peaceful protestors. The film presents evidence that the left-wing anarchist groups are actually controlled by the state and used to demonize peaceful protesters.

At WTO protests in Genoa 2001 a protestor was killed after being shot in the head and run over twice by a police vehicle. The Italian Carabinere also later beat on peaceful protestors as they slept, and even tortured some, at the Diaz School. It later emerged that the police fabricated evidence against the protesters, claiming they were anarchist rioters, to justify their actions. Some Carabiniere officials have since come forward to say they knew of infiltration of the black bloc anarchists, that fellow officers acted as agent provocateurs.

At the Free Trade Area of Americas protests in Miami in late November 2003, more provocateuring was evident. The United Steelworkers of America, calling for a congressional investigation, stated that the police intentionally caused violence and arrested and charged hundreds of peaceful protestors. The USWA suggested that billions of dollars supposedly slated for Iraq reconstruction funds are actually being used to subsidize ‘homeland repression’ in America.

Canadian Prime Minister Harper's description of protestors at the SPP summit as "sad" along with President Bush's latest comments that critics of the SPP are peddling conspiracy theories, in spite of the the fact that heads of unions, law experts and House Representatives are deeply concerned over the program's agenda, are indications of how much of a threat they see peaceful protesters and outspoken critics to be.

The globalist elite have demonstratively used provocateuring to demonize all demonstrators attempting to expose their criminality, the SPP summit is the latest in a long list of examples.