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Enforce the Precautionary principle: genetically engineered foods, including the Terminator gene, should be banned
Posted by: joan.Russow on http://PEJ.org Wednesday, December 06, 2006 - 10:27 AM

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Enforce the Precautionary principle: genetically engineered foods, including the Terminator gene, should be banned PEJnews- Joan Russow (PhD) Global Compliance Research Project

To be consistent with the precautionary principle, the Campaign for the Banning of the Terminator Gene must include the banning of all genetically engineered food and crops. The precautionary principle is a principle of international common law and as such must be incorporated into the statutory provisions of each state.

Pej.org

Canada should not be mimicking the US in its disregard for the precautionary principle. In 2002 the night-long debate on the precautionary principle at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Canada was obsequiously following the US in the gutting of the applicability of the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle, as a principle of international customary law, must override all statututory law, and not be subsumed as one component of risk assessment. The precautionary principle has been formulated internationally through the years, from its preliminary form at the Conference on Humans and the Environment in Stockholm (UNCHE) in1972, to its reformulation at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio in 1992. At UNCED, the precautionary principle was adopted in the Rio Declaration, and the precautionary principle was an integral part of the Convention on Biological Diversity and of the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The precautionary principle has contained the following elements: where there is a threat of environmental degradation, (of loss of biodiversity, of climate change, of harm to human health), lack of full scientific certainty shall (or should) not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent the threat.

If the precautionary principle had been applied, all forms of genetically engineered foods and crops would never have been tested, approved, and released. At least since 1997, there has been sufficient scientific evidence to justify evoking the precautionary principle and calling for an immediate ban of all genetically engineered food and crops.
Unfortunately, the Canadian Federal government, especially the Health Protection Branch and the Food Inspection Branch, have been negligent in permitting (i) the trials of genetically engineered crops since 1988, (ii) the sale of genetically engineered seeds, genetically engineered foods such as tomatoes, corn, potatoes, squash, canola and soy since 1994, (iii) the approval and release in 1996.

Unfortunately, consumer groups have treated the issue of genetically engineered foods and crops as solely a right to choose issue, and have lobbied internationally through the International Consumers Association and National Consumers Association for nothing more than the labeling of genetically engineered foods and crops.
Labeling does not address the equity and the environmental issues and it does not communicate the urgency of the issue. It is all very well for those who can afford to buy organic food to affirm the right to know, but not everyone can afford to buy organic food. Also, with genetic drift, it is possible that a wide range of organic crops could be contaminated with genetically engineered produce.

What is more surprising is how Canadian environmental and other activists groups have been so cautious about calling for the outright banning of genetically engineered foods and crops. When all the activists groups were united in calling for the banning of rBST, and for the banning of GE wheat, both rBST and GE wheat were banned. Many groups have been reluctant to call for a complete ban because so many farmers in Canada and elsewhere had already planted GE crops. Perhaps it was because of the concern for the farmers already involved with planting GE crops, or it was because of a flawed interpretation of free trade agreements, that there was this reluctance.

As a result of these groups being willing to just call for labeling and not banning, there still remain other genetically engineered crops permeating the market. If only, in Canada when these groups were part of the consultation process in 1993, they had raised the red flag across Canada, and called for banning, Canadians would have been a GE-free state.
At international conferences such as the Biodevastation I Conference in St. Louis in July 1998, and Biodevastation II in Delhi, March 1999, representatives of environmental organizations, health groups, scientists and activists met to discuss actions against genetically engineered foods and crops. At both these international conferences I worked with others on a Declaration and a Resolution calling for the banning of genetically engineered foods and crops. The Declaration was endorsed in the plenary in principle at the Biodevastation I conference (See annex), and the following Resolution was signed by all but two participants at the Biodevastation II Conference.

BIODEVASTATION II GLOBAL RESOLUTION CALLING FOR BANNING OF GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS AND CROPS:

(i) A global ban on genetically engineered foods and crops;
(ii) A global ban on the patenting of life forms;
(iii) An end to the exploitation of the knowledge of farmers, peasants and indigenous peoples;
(iv) A global support program for promoting organic agriculture and other forms of ecological farming, and institute a fair and just transition program for affected farmers and communities.

We are living in a wake of corporate/government/university/ negligence from previous harmful substances that were once deemed safe for human health and the environment. Given the unattended consequences of genetically engineered foods and crops, and the global commitment to the precautionary principle, it becomes imperative to institute a complete ban on genetically engineered foods and crops. There is sufficient emerging scientific evidence to justify the banning and the immediate removal of the GE food off the grocery shelves and a global ban to prohibit all further export of genetically engineered foods and crops.

ANNEX: ST. LOUIS BIODEVASTATION DECLARATION:
From the July 17 -19, 1998, International Biodevastation I Conference, St. Louis, USA.
Proposed by Joan Russow, (Global Compliance Research Project), approved in principle in the plenary.
Updated with input from Dr Mae-Wan Ho at the Biodevastation II Conference held in Delhi, March 9/10, 1999:

TO BAN GENETICALLY ENGINEERED FOODS AND CROPS, THE HUMAN GENOME DIVERSITY PROJECT, TERMINATOR GENE AND EXPLOITATION OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES FOR PRIVATE PROFIT;
TO INSTITUTE A FAIR AND JUST TRANSITION PROGRAM FOR AFFECTED FARMERS AND COMMUNITIES:

MINDFUL THAT THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE affirms that where there is a threat to human health or to the environment, the lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent the threat. The precautionary principle has long been a tenet of international customary law and, as such, is required to be integrated into state law.

THE REVERSE ONUS PRINCIPLE means that where there is a reasonable apprehension that a process or product may pose a significant threat to human health or to the environment, the onus of proof is on the proponent to establish that the product or process is safe, and serves demonstrable public needs, rather than on the opponents to demonstrate harm. Many nations have also undertaken to adhere to this principle.

THE PREVENTION OF DISASTERS PRINCIPLE affirms that extreme care should be taken to prevent consequences that are likely to be unexpected, possibly long-term, and thus difficult to determine through tests. At recent international conferences, the member states of the United Nations have committed themselves to observe the Prevention of Disasters Principle, including both natural and human-caused (anthropogenic) disasters.

THE PREVENTION OF TRANSFER TO OTHER STATES OF HARMFUL SUBSTANCES ensures that substances and activities that are harmful to human health or that cause environmental destruction will not be transferred to other states.

THE PREVENTION OF ACTIVITIES THAT ARE CULTURALLY INAPPROPRIATE PRINCIPLE ensures that nothing shall be done on the lands of indigenous peoples that would cause environmental harm or be culturally inappropriate.

THE INTERGENERATIONAL EQUITY PRINCIPLE ensures the rights of future generations and the right of a child to a safe environment.

THE NUREMBERG PRINCIPLE holds that citizens are morally obliged to act to oppose unjust laws and unjust state actions.

These principles have been endorsed by the member states of the United Nations. Many governments have disregarded these principles in giving uncritical support to corporations engaged in genetic experimentation and in promoting genetic engineering in agribusiness applications.

AFFIRMING THAT: The introduction of genetically modified substances is an irresponsible experiment being conducted on the entire planet, with little or no research into its effects on the environment or human health. Genetically modified organisms are by definition new life forms which, if released into the natural environment, may well have unanticipated synergistic interactions with an unlimited range of existing organisms. The introduced genes have the potential to spread out of control, both by cross-pollination to related species and horizontal transfer to unrelated species. For instance, pollen from crops carrying the terminator gene - the gene that renders the seed from a crop infertile - may disperse and infect crops in other fields, also rendering them infertile. There are also well-founded concerns about the unintended effects of introducing foreign genetic material into organisms which are ingested by humans, which may include toxins and allergens.

The introduction of new organisms has potential ramifications which are complex, long-term and unpredictable. The prevention of anthropogenic disasters must surely include avoiding the introduction of new procedures and substances with such far-reaching ramifications, especially where neither the benefits nor the needs for them are yet proven. These complex ramifications may be difficult or impossible to assess with sufficient certainty to justify production.

NOTING THAT: there is new evidence of hazards: herbicide-resistant transgenes have spread to wild relatives by cross-pollination in both oilseed rape and sugar beet (Brookes, 1999), creating many species of potential superweeds. One study shows that transgenes may be up to 30 times more likely to escape than the plant's own genes, (Bergelson, J, Purrington, B and Wichmann, G, 1998). Bt-toxins engineered into a wide range of transgenic plants already released into the environment may build up in the soil and have devastating impacts on pollinators and other beneficial insects (Crecchi,C and Stotzky, G, 1998).
Serious doubts over the safety of transgenic foods are raised by new revelations on the results of animal feeding experiments. Potatoes engineered with snowdrop lectin fed to rats caused highly significant reduction in width of many organs, impairment of immunological responsiveness and signs suggestive of viral infection, (Leake, C. and Fraser, L (1999).
Research from the Netherlands show that antibiotic-resistant marker genes from genetically engineered bacteria at a substantial frequency of 10-7 in an artificial gut, (MacKenzie, D. 1999).
There is sufficient concern about genetically engineered foods and sufficient anticipatory scientific concern about the possible interaction of genetically engineered crops with existing organisms to justify the banning of genetically modified foods and crops. It is possible that no test could be devised that would be comprehensive enough to demonstrate the safety of introducing genetically modified organisms, because of the complexities which can arise from their interaction with existing organisms.

CONCERNED THAT: Government representatives at the recent meeting of the Codex Alementarius in Ottawa ignored citizens' calls for urgent action to label existing genetically engineered foods, and to extend the Codex Alementarius' terms of reference to include a call for banning genetically engineered foods. The representatives of the Codex Alementarius had the unique opportunity to finally demonstrate that the global community is prepared to prevent future generations from being exposed to the effects of present negligence. In addition, the Global Community failed to negotiate a Biosafety Protocol.

WE ARE FURTHER CONCERNED THAT: universities have entered into substantive contracts with agribusiness companies involved with genetically engineered foods, and that many agribusiness companies have been exploiting indigenous peoples' knowledge of esoteric organisms and their medicinal effects.

AND WE REJECT : The myth perpetuated by Monsanto and the Biotechnology industry that the world cannot be fed without genetic engineering, and that small farmers do not feed the world;
WHILE a considerable percentage of the world's known biodiversity is located in developing countries, any effective mechanism for the protection of and reward for the local custodians of these genetic resources is being stalled by northern, industrialized nations.

THEREFORE, WE CALL UPON:
The United Nations to call upon member states of the United Nations:
(a) to act immediately to call for the implementation of existing International declarations, conventions, covenants, treaties on human rights and the environment to support the cancellation of the human genome diversity project, the patenting of seeds, and all further commercial exploitation of indigenous peoples and of the knowledge of indigenous peoples;
(b) to prevent, under the Convention on Biological Diversity (i) the transfer of all genetically modified organisms, and (ii) the development of pesticide resistant crops;
(c) to immediately halt the harvesting of genetic material of indigenous peoples and to demand that these efforts be replaced with international dedication to preserving the existence of indigenous peoples and their culture;
(d) to prevent "bioprospecting" - exploiting and patenting the knowledge of indigenous peoples;
(e) to not defeat the purpose of the Convention on Biological Diversity by failing to invoke the precautionary principle to justify the banning of the production of genetically engineered foods and crops;
(f) to recognize that conservation of Biodiversity is antithetical to the development and altering through genetic engineering;
(g) to prevent, under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the transfer of all genetically modified organisms;
(h) to call for an immediate moratorium on research, development, release, and movement of genetically engineered foods and crops, including those modified for producting industrial chemical and pharmaceutical products.

XENOTRANPLANTATION RESEARCH AND EXPLOITATION, HUMAN EMBRYO RESEARCH AND EXPLOITATION AND HUMAN CLONING:
* to prevent under the Convention on Biological Diversity the development of pesticide-resistant crops;
* to ban genetically engineered foods and immediately remove all genetically engineered foods from the food distribution system;
* to institute an immediate ban on genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone, and endorse the campaign to rid rBGH from school milk (passed in plenary);
* to keep forests, farms and food safe, and to oppose the genetic engineering of all plants and animals (passed in plenary);
* to abolish patents of genetic sequences and living organisms in the form of "intellectual property rights" (passed in plenary);
* to stop the National Violence Initiative Project (U.S.), and to immediately halt the drugging of black and latino children in the name of their supposed "genetic predisposition" to committing crimes because neither behaviour nor intelligence is racially or genetically determined (passed in plenary);
* to disband the Human Genome Diversity Project and end the colonization of the genes of indigenous people (passed in plenary);
* to immediately cease the administration of experimental and genetically engineered drugs to prisoners, people living on American Indian reservations, and people in so-called "third world" countries (passed in plenary);
* to ban "terminator" seed technology and patents, and to immediately cease all "terminator" tests and ban its application (passed in plenary);
* to encourage smaller-scaled organic farming, local food systems, home-scale gardening, and ecosystem restoration, and to oppose the consolidation of corporate and monocrop farming and their reliance on genetic engineering and toxic herbicides and insecticides (passed in plenary);
* to urge the Grameen bank to discontinue all further "partnerships" with Monsanto and its affiliated corporations;
* to discontinue all financial support for agribusiness, and to financially support and promote organic agriculture;
* to ensure that the designation of "organic" does not include genetically engineered food, irradiated food or related practices;
* to prevent the transfer to other states, particularly developing states, of substances and activities that cause environmental degradation or that are harmful to human health, and to recognize that compliance with this principle from the Rio Declaration would entail the prevention of transfer of genetically modified organisms;
* to implement the 1986 UN resolution to ensure that the use of scientific technology is in peace and for the benefit of humanity;
* to guarantee the farmers the right to produce seeds and to recognize this as a human right in fulfilling the guaranteed right to food;
* to call upon states to implement the right of citizens to organically grown, affordable, accessible food;
* to ensure that citizens are fed clean, nutritional, organically grown food before food is authorized for export;
* to condemn the conversion of sensitive ecosystems for ranches and cattle production;
* to condemn the round table approach to decision-making that compromises ethics, that fosters and condones conflict of interest, undermines principle and leads to the lowest common denominator;
* to act on the commitment made in 1972 to eliminate the production of weapons of mass destruction;
* to endorse October 15 as the eve of World Food Day as the Global Days of Action against genetically engineered food, and subsequent Global Days of Action against genetically engineered foods and crops.

The impacts of uranium mining on indigenous communities.
Heather Tufts
The climate change debate positions nuclear power as a partial solution to carbon emissions according to some scientists and politicians. Uranium mining speculation lacks comprehensive health and safety regulations while the ethics of Canadian exported uranium, which can lead to depleted uranium used in zones of war, needs greater scrutiny. Abandoned uranium mines and the subsequent hazards experienced in forgotten communities have been virtually ignored in Canada leading to tragic, unmitigated circumstances.

During the mining era the Dene of Deline, mostly men worked as labourers and as coolies carrying gunny sacks of radioactive uranium ore and concentrates on the transportation route. Waste from both radium and uranium mines were dumped directly into the lake and used as landfill. Port Radium was owned and operated by a Canadian crown corporation but uranium ore and concentrates were extracted, milled and sold to the US Government for the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during the Second World War.
The mine initially operated under the emergency regulations of the War Measures Act. The circumstances and time-line mean that retroactive mitigation and compensation are an enormous legal challenge and decades later the Dene continue to pay a high price in environmental and health effects. No warnings were issued at the time about the hazardous and toxic nature of these ores and so people took no precautions regarding their drinking water or their traditional foods.
In 1975 young men from Deline were sent to work in the tunnels on a Government training program without masks for radon gas exposure. In 1997 ten young men were sent with only two hours of training to clean up "hot spots" of radioactive soil in Sawmill Bay without shower or decontamination facilities. Once again the Dene people of Deline were not informed of these hazardous exposures but recent information mean that they now live in constant fear of their contaminated land, water, animals with ongoing concerns about their health and survival.
Deline is known as the “village of widows’ because most of the men who worked as labourers in the mines have died of some form of cancer. The widows, who are traditional women, were left to raise their families without husbands and breadwinners. As a result they became dependent on welfare and relied on the young men who remained in the community to help supply them with their traditional foods. The women are struggling and the village is seeing the first generation of young men in the history of the Dene to grow up without the guidance and teachings of their grandfathers, fathers and uncles. This unfulfilled tradition threatens
the cultural and spiritual survival of the only community on the Great Bear Lake.

T'Sou-ke First Nation Innovation and Demonstration Solar Project
Posted by: rycroft on http://PEJ.org Sunday, March 29, 2009 - 10:35 PM

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T'Sou-ke First Nation Innovation and Demonstration Solar Project: Harnessing the Sun to Produce Clean Renewable Energy and Economic Self-Sufficiency, Sooke, BC
PEJ News - Rycroft - In a spectacular marriage of traditional values and state of the art technology, the T'Sou-ke First Nation on Vancouver Island has already become BC's most-solar-powered intensive community. As the first phase of a five-year plan designed to end the community's dependence on fossil fuels, the T'Sou-ke Nation is installing solar panels to pre heat hot water and photovoltaic panels to create clean electricity to power potentially large savings as hydro prices spike. In the process the Nation is creating much-needed skills in a new fast growing industry.

tsoukenation.com

T'Sou-ke is truly a Solar Community. The whole community has contributed to the vision and is participating in the implementation; much of the work is being done by community members who are training as solar technicians. The innovative, culturally appropriate training program has produced 9 certified solar installers. The installation of solar hot water panels on the first 25 houses will be complete by the end of March. Then there is BC's largest photovoltaic solar array demonstrating three models most likely to be needed by on and off grid First Nations.
T'Sou-ke Nation leaders intend that the project, named "Sum-SHA-Thut", the Sencoten term for "sunshine", will lead to many benefits for First Nations:

* Provide a demonstration site to inspire remote and diesel dependent communities to "kick the tire" and learn about solar power, First Nation to Nation.
* Bring about a drastic reduction in fossil fuel emissions and improve the health of First Nations people by reducing particulates that cause asthma and other pollution-linked diseases;
* Create sustainable "green-collar" jobs in communities hard-hit by the loss of job in forestry, fisheries and building trades;
* Help set the stage for Canadian First Nations to become leaders in renewable energy solutions.
"For most of our history, First Nations were rooted in the traditions of sustainable living and respect for the land," says T'Sou-ke Chief Gordon Planes, "and the Sum-SHA-Thut project is the first step in achieving energy self-sufficiency once again."
"Starting with support from the Innovative Clean Energy Fund, T'Sou-ke Nation is making a real community success of their solar energy project," adds Small Business, Technology and Economic Development Minister Ida Chong, who will flip the switch to bring the photovoltaic system online at a ceremony at the T'Sou-ke First Nation this morning. "Energy
self-sufficiency - a contemporary objective linked to T'Sou-ke Nation's deep cultural connection to the natural environment, will play a vital role in supporting future economic opportunities," says Minister Chong.
Chief Planes says that the T'Sou-ke Nation will share its knowledge and help empower First Nations to lead the way to a sustainable future for their own communities and the community at large. To that end, the T'Sou-ke Nation is sponsoring a Solar Gathering on Saturday July 11th 2009 and will invite interested First Nations and other communities to attend and learn about the effectiveness of the technology and gain insights into the financing of the project.
"It will be consistent with our Longhouse ideals," says Chief Planes. "We are giving this information away free of charge to show how sustainability can be achieved once again, using the power of the sun, wind and sea".
"T'Sou-ke is a proving ground for community-wide, solar hot water and demonstrates a sustainable alternative to diesel for remote First Nations communities" said Joe Thwaites from Taylor Munro of his partnership with T'Sou-ke First Nation on The Sum-SHA-Thut demonstration project.
"The customized training program that graduates 9 trainee today breaks ground by teaching based on an "oral-tradition" approach which respects culture and harnesses the diverse skills of the community as both teachers and learners" said Donna Morton of First Power -- a hybrid business and non-profit project -- dedicated to supporting First Nation energy autonomy.
'This is a very interesting Photovoltaic (PV) project as it demonstrates 3 different configurations of PV systems for remote as well as on grid small communities in a BC type of climate" said Sia Vojdani from Unity Integration, Project Manager PV.
"BC leads Canada with over 1000 people employed in the solar industry. The province has many growing companies like Victoria's Home Energy Solutions and Burnaby's Day4 Energy working hard to make solar mainstream. We are pleased to see the Provincial Government support the solar industry and this showcase for solar systems on homes and buildings. The clear message is that Solar has a legitimate place as part of BC's clean energy future." said David Egles from HES Home Energy Solutions Ltd, responsible for the solar electric system design and integration into the T'Sou-ke Nation buildings.
"Day4 is pleased that its industry leading technology is being implemented in T'sou-ke First Nation's project. We have been a supporter since the project began." said John MacDonald, CEO. "Coincidently this is the largest installation of our solar power products in BC to date."

Several federal and provincial governments have contributed finance to this scheme as have many business and non-profit groups, all of whom will be represented at the T'Sou-ke Solar Gathering.
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Information:
To interview any of the participants or for more details on the program and the summer T'Sou-ke Solar Gathering, please contact:
Andrew Moore
Solar Community Program Manager
T'Sou-ke Nation
250 642 3957
andrew@tsoukenation.com

Letter from President Evo Morales to Indigenous Peoples: NATURE, FORESTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ARE NOT FOR SALE
Posted by: heathertufts on http://PEJ.org Monday, October 11, 2010 - 01:11 PM

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Letter from President Evo Morales to Indigenous Peoples: NATURE, FORESTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES ARE NOT FOR SALE

Indigenous brothers of the world:

I am deeply concerned by attempts to use indigenous leaders and groups to promote the commodification of nature, and in particular of forests through the establishment of the mechanism known as REDD (Reduction Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation). Worldwide, an expanse of forest and rainforest equivalent to 36,000 football fields disappears each day. Each year, 13 million hectares of forest and rainforest are lost. At this rate, the forests will disappear by the end of this century.

http://pwccc.wordpress.com

Forests and rainforests are the Earth’s largest source of biodiversity. If deforestation continues, thousands of species of animals and plants will be lost forever. More than three quarters of accessible fresh water has its source in forested areas, hence the worsening of water quality when forests deteriorate. Forests provide protection from flooding, erosion and natural disasters. They provide timber and other materials. Forests are a source of natural medicines and many curative substances that have yet to be discovered. Forests are the atmosphere’s lungs. Of the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions occurring throughout the world, 18% are caused by deforestation.
It is absolutely essential that we stop the destruction of our Mother Earth.
In the current process of negotiations on climate change, all parties recognize that it is essential to avoid deforestation and forest degradation. However, to achieve this, some propose the commodification of forests based on the false notion that only what has a price and an owner can be taken care of and conserved.
Their proposal is to consider only one of the functions of forests, which is their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, and, based on this function, to issue “certificates”, “credits” or “carbon rights” that can be sold on the carbon market. This way, companies in the North can choose between reducing their emissions or buying cheap “REDD certificates” in the countries of the South. For example, instead of spending $40 or $50 to reduce emissions by one ton of carbon dioxide in a “developed country,” a company could choose to buy a “REDD certificate” in a “developing country” for just for $10 or $20, and thus could say that they have reduced their emissions.
Through this mechanism, developed countries will pass off their emissions reduction obligations to developing countries. The South will once again finance the North, because companies in the North will save a lot of money by buying “certified” carbon from Southern forests.
But not only will the North have cheated in their commitments to reducing emissions, but they will also have initiated the process of commodifying nature – beginning with forests. Forests will come to have a price tag based on the amount of carbon dioxide they are able to absorb. The “credit” or “carbon right” which certifies that capacity to absorb carbon dioxide will be bought and sold worldwide like any other commodity. To ensure that nobody affects the property of those who bought those “REDD certificates,” a series of restrictions will be put into place that will interfere with the sovereign right of countries and indigenous peoples over their forests and rainforests. In this way, we will begin a new chapter in the privatization of nature which will extend to water, biodiversity and what they call “environmental services.”
While we assert that capitalism is the cause of global warming and the destruction of forests, rainforests and Mother Earth, they seek to expand capitalism to the commodification of nature through the so-called “green economy.”
To get support for this proposal to commodify nature, some financial institutions, governments, NGOs, foundations, “experts” and intermediary or broker companies are offering a percentage of the “benefits” to indigenous peoples and communities living in native forests and rainforests.
Nature, forests and indigenous peoples are not for sale.
For centuries, indigenous peoples have conserved and preserved natural forests and rainforests. For us, forests are not objects, not things you can put a price on and privatize. We cannot accept that native forests and rainforests be reduced to a quantity of carbon. Nor can we accept that native forests be confused with plantations of one or two species of trees. The forest is our home, a big home where plants, animals, water, soil, clean air and human beings coexist.
It is essential that all countries around the world work together to avoid deforestation and forest degradation. Developed countries have an obligation and it is part of their climate and environmental debt toward developing countries, to contribute financially to the preservation of forests, but not through their commodification. There are many ways of supporting and financing developing countries, indigenous peoples and local communities that do contribute to the preservation of forests.
Developed countries spend tens of times more public resources on defense, security and war than on climate change. Even during the financial crisis, many have maintained and increased military spending. It is inadmissible that, by taking advantage of the needs of communities and the ambitions of some leaders and indigenous “experts,” some would attempt to involve indigenous peoples in the commodification of nature.
All mechanisms designed to protect forests and rainforests should guarantee the rights and the participation of indigenous peoples, but indigenous participation in REDD does not mean that we can accept that a price be put on forests and rainforests and negotiated through the global carbon market.
Indigenous brothers, let us not be fooled. Some say the carbon market mechanism in REDD will be voluntary, meaning that whomever wants to sell and buy will be able to do so, and whomever does not want to may stand aside. We cannot accept that, with our consent, a mechanism is created under which some are allowed to sell Mother Earth while others sit idly by.
In the face of reductionist and mercantilist views of forests and rainforests, indigenous peoples, together with the peasants and social movements of the world, must fight to defend the proposals that emerged of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth:
1) Integrated management of native forests and rainforests from a perspective that considers not just their function as carbon sinks, but all their functions and potentials, that avoid confusing forests with plantations.
2) Respect for the sovereignty of developing countries in their integral management of forests.
3) Full compliance with the Rights of Indigenous Peoples established by the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, and other international instruments; recognition of and respect for indigenous territories; revalorization and implementation of indigenous knowledge for the preservation of forests; the participation and management of forests and rainforests by indigenous peoples.
4) The provision of funding by developed countries to developing countries and indigenous peoples to support integral forest management, as part of the payment of their climate and environmental debt. No establishment of any carbon market mechanisms or “incentives” that may lead to the commodification of forests and rainforests.
5) Recognition of the rights of Mother Earth, which includes forests, rainforests, and all their components. To restore of harmony with Mother Earth is not by putting a price on nature, but by recognizing that human beings are not the only living things that have the right to life and to reproduce, that Nature also has a right to life and to regenerate itself, and that without Mother Earth, humans cannot live.
Indigenous brothers, together with our peasant brothers and the social movements of the world, we must mobilize so that the conclusions of Cochabamba are adopted in Cancun. We must promote a forest-related actions mechanism based on these five principles, while always maintaining unity among indigenous peoples and sustaining the principles of respect for Mother Earth, which for centuries we have preserved and inherited from our ancestors.
EVO MORALES AYMA
President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia

Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste
Dec 27 2005

NYT - Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner -Months of research by the New York Times reveals that the giant American mining corporation, Freeport-McMoRan, has paid the Indonesian Armed Forces to act as its private security force to protect its huge mine in Papua (atop the world's largest gold reserve) from the local population, and to deter environmental protests. To further sabotage protests, the company has hacked into the emails of a number of environmental groups.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - The closest most people will ever get to remote Papua, or the operations of Freeport-McMoRan, is a computer tour using Google Earth to swoop down over the rain forests and glacier-capped mountains where the American company mines the world's largest gold reserve.

With a few taps on a keyboard, satellite images quickly reveal the deepening spiral that Freeport has bored out of its Grasberg mine as it pursues a virtually bottomless store of gold hidden inside. They also show a spreading soot-colored bruise of almost a billion tons of mine waste that the New Orleans-based company has dumped directly into a jungle river of what had been one of the world's last untouched landscapes.

What is far harder to discern is the intricate web of political and military ties that have helped shield Freeport from the rising pressures that other gold miners have faced to clean up their practices. Only lightly touched by a scant regulatory regime, and cloaked in the protection of the military, Freeport has managed to maintain a nearly impenetrable redoubt on the easternmost Indonesian province as it taps one of the country's richest assets.

Months of investigation by The New York Times revealed a level of contacts and financial support to the military not fully disclosed by Freeport, despite years of requests by shareholders concerned about potential violations of American laws and the company's relations with a military whose human rights record is so blighted that the United States severed ties for a dozen years until November.
Company records obtained by The Times show that from 1998 through 2004, Freeport gave military and police generals, colonels, majors and captains, and military units, nearly $20 million. Individual commanders received tens of thousands of dollars, in one case up to $150,000, according to the documents. They were provided by an individual close to Freeport and confirmed as authentic by current and former employees.
Freeport said in a written response to The Times that it had "taken appropriate steps" in accordance with American and Indonesian laws to provide a secure working environment for its more than 18,000 employees and contract workers.

"There is no alternative to our reliance on the Indonesian military and police in this regard," the company said. "The need for this security, the support provided for such security, and the procedures governing such support, as well as decisions regarding our relationships with the Indonesian government and its security institutions, are ordinary business activities."

While mining and natural resource companies sometimes contribute to the costs to foreign governments in securing their operations, payments to individual officers raise questions of bribes, said several people interviewed by The Times, including a former Indonesian attorney general, who said it was illegal under Indonesian law for officers to accept direct payments.
The Times's investigation also found that, according to one current and two former company officials who helped set up a covert program, Freeport intercepted e-mail messages to spy on its environmental opponents. Freeport declined to comment.
More than 30 current and former Freeport employees and consultants were interviewed over the past several months for this article. Very few would speak for attribution, saying they feared the company's retribution.
Freeport's support of the military is one measure of its extraordinary working environment. In the 1960's, when Freeport entered Papua, its explorers were among the very first outsiders ever encountered by local tribesmen swathed only in penis gourds and armed with bows and arrows.
Since then, Freeport has built what amounts to an entirely new society and economy, all of its own making. Where nary a road existed, Freeport, with the help of the San Francisco-based construction company Bechtel, built virtually every stitch of infrastructure over impossible terrain in engineering feats that it boasts are unparalleled on the planet.
That history, Papua's extreme remoteness and the company's long ties to the Indonesian government have given Freeport exceptional sway over a 21st-century version of the old company town, built on a scale unique even by the standards of modern mega-mining.
"If any operation like this was put forward now, it wouldn't be allowed," said Witoro Soelarno, a senior investigator at the Department of Energy and Mineral Resources, who has visited the mine many times. "But now the operation exists, and many people depend on it."

Statement of SRSG Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy on the occasion of the trial of Omar Khadr before the Guantanamo Military Commission
Posted by: joan.Russow on http://PEJ.org Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 07:02 PM

Statement of SRSG Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy on the occasion of the trial of Omar Khadr before the Guantanamo Military Commission
New York, 10 August 2010 - "Today the trial of Omar Khadr begins before the Guantanamo Military Commission. Omar was fifteen years old when he allegedly threw a grenade that killed an American soldier. Subsequently he was sent to Guantanamo where he has been detained for almost eight years.

Reported today on CBC National

All of us interested in the welfare of children, including my colleague Anthony Lake, the Executive Director of UNICEF have argued against children under the age of eighteen being tried for war crimes. The statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) makes it clear that no one under 18 will be tried for war crimes, and prosecutors in other international tribunals have used their discretion not to prosecute children. Since World War II, no child has been prosecuted for a war crime. Child soldiers must be treated primarily as victims and alternative procedures should be in place aimed at rehabilitation or restorative justice.
Even if Omar Khadr were to be tried in a national jurisdiction, juvenile justice standards are clear; children should not be tried before military tribunals.
The Omar Khadr case will set a precedent that may endanger the status of child soldiers all over the world. Over the last decade the international community has worked together to protect children in armed conflict. The United States and Canada have led the way in creating and implementing these norms. Without their support we would not have been able to persuade the Security Council to create a Working Group on children and armed conflict nor be able to release thousands of child soldiers around the world. I urge both governments to come to a mutually acceptable solution on the future of Omar Khadr that would prevent him from being convicted of a war crime that he allegedly committed when he was child."
For further information, please contact: Timothy La Rose, Communications Officer, Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict - +1 917-346-3404 - larose@un.org
Muriel Gschwend, Associate Communications Officer, Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict +1 917-367-3562 - gschwend@un.org

http://www.un.org/children/confict http://www.twitter.com/childreninwar

Governor General Rt HON Michaelle Jean seriously erred four times; now the new Governor General Rt David Johnston has the opportunity to reverse the errors
Posted by: joan.Russow on http://PEJ.org Saturday, October 02, 2010 - 09:26 AM

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Governor General Rt HON Michaelle Jean seriously erred four times; now the new Governor General Rt David Johnston has the opportunity to reverse the errors
Joan Russow, Ph.D. - Global Compliance Research Project - Governor General David Johnston must invoke Article V of letters Patent to remove Harper, and impugned Conservative MPs from Parliament.

How long will Canadians be prepared for the sake of avoiding an election to allow an unethical government, which has engaged in fraudulent practices, evasive techniques, and unscrupulous actions, to govern? How much longer will compliant Governor Generals support such practices, techniques and actions?

While much has been written about how the former Governor General erred in proroguing Parliament which resulted in Harper's evading a confidence vote, not enough has been written about her erring in dissolving Parliamegt in 2008 and about Harper's potential act of criminal negligence. By dissoving Parliament and allowing an election she caused the dissolution of the Parliament Committee on Ethics and Access to Information that was investigating the fraudulant funding scheme used by 65 Conservatives in the 2006 election

GOVERNOR GENERAL MME JEAN MISUSED TWO OF HER POWERS UNDER ARTICLE VI

THE GOVERNOR GENERAL, UNDER ARTICLE VI, OF THE LETTERS PATENT HAS INCORRECTLY PERFORMED HER RESIDUAL ROLE OF DISSOLVING AND PROROGUING PARLIAMENT;

VI. "AND WE DO FURTHER AUTHORIZE AND EMPOWER OUR GOVERNOR GENERAL TO EXERCISE ALL POWERS LAWFULLY BELONGING TO US IN RESPECT OF SUMMONING, PROROGUING OR DISSOLVING THE PARLIAMENT OF CANADA."

No other country, other than established dictatorships, would tolerate Harper's abuse of power; in the 2006 election, he fraudulently engaged in an in-and-out funding scheme that was in violation of the Elections Act; when he and his party were called to account before the Parliamentary Committee on Ethics, he advised the 67 elected representatives that were involved in the scheme not to appear, and then stepped down as Prime Minister and called upon the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and grant an election,. Consequently the Parliamentary Ethics Committee was dissolved. When faced with a non-confidence vote, he called upon the compliant Governor General to prorogue Parliament which she did, even when there was an opportunity to call upon a coalition representing the majority of elected representatives to govern. Now to evade a full investigation he wants to prorogue Parliament and bring about the dissolution of the committee investigating Canada's complicity in the violation of the Convention Against Torture.

Not only has he demonstrated the fundamental constitutional flaws in Canada but he has also caused Canada to become an international pariah; from his failure to adopt in 2007 the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to his abysmal record on the issue of climate change, and his disregard for Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture.

GOVERNOR GENERAL MUST CORRECTLY USE RESIDUAL POWERS UNDER ARTICLE V OF HER LETTERS PATENT.

It is now time to exercise correctly her residual power under Article V.

"AND WE DO FURTHER AUTHORIZE AND EMPOWER OUR GOVERNOR GENERAL, SO FAR AS WE LAWFULLY MAY, UPON SUFFICIENT CAUSE TO HIM APPEARING, TO REMOVE FROM HIS OFFICE, OR TO SUSPEND FROM THE EXERCISE OF THE SAME, ANY PERSON EXERCISING ANY OFFICE WITHIN CANADA, UNDER OR BY VIRTUE OF ANY COMMISSION OR WARRANT GRANTED, OR WHICH MAY BE GRANTED, BY US IN OUR NAME OR UNDER OUR AUTHORITY."

There is sufficient cause - gross negligence and election fraud - to remove Harper and other Conservative MPs, for impugned actions, from office.

GROSS OR CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE

(i) Climate change

At Copenhagen, Canada was finally on the map; it was clear in Table 1 of Annex Commitments in the so-called Copenhagen Accord that Canada had used the 2006 now 2005] base-LINE, agenda.

At the COP 15 Conference, Harper, as Prime Minister, under the Canadian Constitution can enter into a legally binding agreement. At COP 15, he ignored all the new emerging scientific evidence that was presented, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) about the consequences from climate change being increasingly more serious than anticipated in the IPCC 2007 report which was based on 2004 and 2005 data. Even though at several times his minority government had been urged by the other Opposition Parties to agree to a commitment by Canada to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 25% below 1990 levels, he refused to change his announced commitment to 20% below 2006 levels (3% below 1990 levels). His failure to act responsibly on the urgent issue of climate change demonstrated gross negligence.

In fact, Bill Rees, in his article "Is Canada Guilty of Climate Negligence?" refers to the applicable sections in Criminal Law which could indicate that Canada could be guilty of negligence.

Canadian common law provides useful guidance. Environmental negligence suits focus on compensation for loss caused by unreasonable conduct that damages legally protected interests. Unreasonable conduct means doing something that a prudent or reasonable person would not do, or failing to do something that a reasonable person would do. The plaintiff must establish certain key elements of the tort cause in fact and proximate cause, damages, legal duty, and breach of the standard of care. Note that fault may be found even in the case of unintended harm if it stems from unreasonable conduct.

The Criminal Code (Section 219) is even clearer that lack of intent to harm is no defence if damage results from conscious acts performed in careless disregard for others: Â½"Everyone is criminally negligent who (a) in doing anything, or (b) in omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do, shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other personsâ€¦" (where "duty" means a duty imposed by law). Significantly, Section 222(5)(b) states that "a person commits homicide when, directly or indirectly, by any means, he causes the death of a human being, by being negligent" (emphasis added).â€¦

(ii) Geneva Conventions and Convention Against Torture

There has been sufficient evidence of torture to justify a full investigation into CanadasÂ¹s practice of transferring prisoners to Afghan prisons. By ignoring the numerous reports the Canadian Government has been an accomplice to the violation of the Convention Against Torture.

BACKGROUND TO 2006 FRAUDULENT ELECTION EXPENSES

Background from 2008 and the dissolution of the Ethics Committee because the Governor General granted Harper an election

Dysfunctional Parliament: Harper must step down

In 2008 Harper's rationale for calling the election was that Parliament was dysfunctional. He deemed that Parliament was dysfunctional because the three opposition parties representing over 66% of the electorate disagreed with his policies. He had presumed that he would be successful in obtaining a majority and thus his policies would then be implemented. While he increased the number of Conservative members he failed to attain a majority government, and thus the Parliament is still dysfunctional. If the dysfunctionality of a minority government was the reason for going to the polls then when he obtained another minority government equally dysfunctional - he should have stepped down and called upon the Governor General to form a Coalition Government. But he didn 't. Why?

Was there another reason for calling a quick election? Was it that with an election there would be the dissolution of the Parliamentary Ethics Committee that was investigating the Conservative violation of the Elections Act in the 2006 election? Serious questions arise about the condoning of potentially fraudulent election practices, the reneging of responsibility by the Governor General; the disregarding, by the media, of this issue during the election; and the legitimacy of Harper speaking on behalf of Canada with less than 40% support of the population..

DELIBERATIONS OF THE PARLIAMENTARY ETHICS COMMITTEE IN THE HEARINGS IN AUGUST, 2008

There is not doubt that the public interest would certainly be served by exposing the fraudulent practice used by the Conservatives in the 2006 election. On August 14, 2008, at the Parliamentary Committee, it was revealed that there is sufficient evidence that this practice occurred and that the practice was condoned by the Conservative Party. One Conservative witness even referred to the scheme as being a creative fund-raising scheme benefiting in the long-

WITNESSES: Chantal Proulx and Don Beardall from the Office of the Public Prosecution of Canada.

PAT MARTIN from the NDP raised a serious question about the potential that the case before the Office of the Public Prosecution might not even be resolved before the next election (either before, in 2008, or on the fixed election date in 2009), and that the Conservatives could even adopt the same in-and-out scheme.

CONSERVATIVES TRANSFERRED NOT JUST FUNDS BUT EXPENSES

WITNESS: Mark Mayrand, Chief Electoral Officer

In response to questions asked by various opposition members, Mark Mayrand confirmed that the transfer of funds from the Central Campaign to the Riding Associations, is permitted. What is not permitted is the transfer of expenses of the local candidates campaign.

When asked if he had determined if this practice had occurred with other parties during the 2006 election, Marc Mayrand responded: No.

CONSERVATIVES EXCEEDED THEIR NATIONAL SPENDING LIMITS BY TRANSFERRING FUNDS TO THE RIDING ASSOCIATIONS.

It was pointed out by a Committee member that by passing on expenses to local ridings the Conservative National Election Campaign superseded its national spending limits by 1.3 million.

It was also noted that political parties benefit in a number of ways such as issuing tax receipts for donations with tax benefits of up to 76%, paying $1.75 per vote, and providing rebates, of 60% of election expenses, for candidates receiving 10% of the vote.

Marc Mayrand indicated that in cases where the expenses were under investigation, rebates had not been made. This point was not clear; it is possible that rebates were made before the investigation was undertaken, and it was not clear whether or not an investigation would result in the re-imbursement of the rebate.

CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATES AND OFFICIAL AGENTS WERE WILLING TO SIGN A FALSE EXPENSE FORM

Official agents and candidates both sign off and attest that the expenses occurred in the local campaign are at fair market value. Both the Conservative candidates and their agents who are under investigation apparently signed the required documents even though they knew that the expenses were not incurred locally by their campaigns.

CONSERVATIVE PARTY DID NOT COMPLY WITH THE ADVERTISING REQUIREMENTS OF FAIR MARKET VALUE

It was pointed out that in three adjacent ridings in Toronto, the same ads were recorded, by the Conservative candidates, as costing a different amount. The implications of this are that the expenses were accounted for in relation to the range of spending limits for the candidates.

CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATES PROBABLY WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THE NATIONAL ADS WOULD HAVE BENEFITED THE LOCAL CANDIDATES.
Richard Nadeau, Bloc MP, made the distinction between pooling of resources to collectively benefit the candidates, and the practice of in-and-out national campaign ads. Marc Mayrand responded that "it must be sure that it benefits the candidatesâ€¦" and that "I am not satisfied that all the expenses claimed were of benefit to the candidates.â€¦"

CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATES AND AGENTS WERE NOT APPRISED OF THE REGULATION UNDER THE ELECTIONS ACT

Ricard Nadeau also raised the issue of the need for proper training of candidates and their agents so that this Conservative practice would never happen again. He proposed that Elections Canada should do this across the country.

Marc Mayrand responded that "we hold training sessions regularly throughout the country." He cited the problem of late selection of agents at election time, and that the agents are already overwhelmed.

He neglected to mention that there are meetings, of representatives of the registered parties at the Elections Canada office in Ottawa, and that this issue could be raised at that time and all party riding headquarters apprised of the regulation related to expenses.

CONSERVATIVES MIGHT BE EMBROILED IN ALL LEVELS OF TAX EVASION BECAUSE OF THE SCHEME
Marcel Proulx raised the issue of discrepancy in provincial taxes and that the taxes were not applied before the assessment of GST. This might indicate a problem with the invoices submitted by Retail Media, the agent acting for the National Conservative Ad Campaign.

Conservative members of the Committee continually raise issues related to process, rather than recognizing that it is clear that the Conservatives did engage in a widespread way in at least 67 ridings, that this practice was against the Elections Act, and that the Conservatives benefited unfairly in the 2006 election from this practice.

SUBSEQUENT HARPER¹S CONTEMPT OF THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
On November 19, 2009 Colvin, a Canadian diplomat in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, testified, before the special meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, that he tried repeatedly to raise concerns with senior military and government officials, about the treatment of Afghan detainees, but his concerns were ignored.
In his testimony he challenged the position of the Harper government that no evidence existed of abuse of prisoners captured by Canada. He also indicated that Canada had taken far more prisoners than other NATO countries.
The Harper government had been requested by Parliament to release documents, which they did, but in redacted form. Harper and the Conservatives were concerned about the implications of this investigations, and Harper called the Governor General and asked her to prorogue Parliament until March 3, which she did.
Parliament had been scheduled to resume on January 25, 2010, so the Liberals and the NDPs returned to work, and on February 3, the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, investigating the treatment of Afghan detainees, resumed to meet informally, and heard testimony from Constitutional lawyers on various options available to the Opposition for procuring necessary unredacted documents. At the informal meeting, Errol Mendez, an expert in Constitutional Law, indicated that there was a possibility of demonstrating that the Harper government could be in contempt of Parliament.
Following the informal meeting, the NDP's foreign affairs critic, Dewar, said that he would send a letter, requesting the release of the documents, to the Minister of Justice, and if the Minister denied the request, he would advocate proceeding with an allegation of Contempt of Parliament. Bob Rea, the Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic, also was considering the option of an allegation of Contempt of Parliament. Claude Bachand. Bloc Foreign Affairs critic, even referred to Canada as being a Banana Republic, and said that the Bloc was considering a number of options including allegation of Contempt of Parliament.

TIME FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL TO INVOKE ARTICLE V AND REMOVE HARPER AND THE CONSERVATIVES INVOLVED IN THE FRAUDULENT FUNDING SCHEME, FROM OFFICE FOR NEGLIGENCE AND FRAUD

Canadians must be prepared to no longer tolerate an unethical government which has engaged in fraudulent practices, evasive techniques, and unscrupulous actions, to govern. How much longer will a compliant Governor General support such practices, techniques and actions?

The former Governor General has erred thrice in dissolving and proroguing Parliament, (under Article VI) of his Letters Patent. Now the new governor must correctly use his residual powers under Article V to remove Harper and the Conservative MPs benefiting from 2006 in-and-out funding, from office for criminal negligence and for election fraud.

Harper's Conservatives have shown contempt for Parliament, including for majority votes, Parliamentary Committees, officers of Parliament, and international law.

Dirty Money: Canada Pension Plan Invests In War
Posted by: Events on http://PEJ.org Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 07:58 PM

Dirty Money: Canada Pension Plan Invests In War
Through the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), millions of working Canadians are now being forced to invest their retirement savings in the top four prime contractors for Star Wars "Missile Defense", namely Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and TRW (owned by Northop Grumman).

This material is from issue #55 of Press for Conversion!, magazine of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT). This 46-page issue is entitled: "Missile Defense: Trojan Horse for the Weaponization of Space."
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/55/55.htm

Image via WikipediaGet a copy ===>

By Richard Sanders, Editor, Press for Conversion! and coordinator, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT).

Through the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), millions of working Canadians are now being forced to invest their retirement savings in the top four prime contractors for Star Wars "Missile Defense", namely Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and TRW (owned by Northop Grumman).

These four corporations are estimated to have received about 60% to 70% of all the contracts for so called "Missile Defense." All four rank within the top five U.S. weapons contractors. CPP investments in the "Big Four" were worth about $20 million dollars as of September 30, 2004 (the latest figures available from CPP Investment Board, CPPIB).

Canadians have also been forced to invest in at least five other companies known to have received major contracts for so called "Missile Defense" between 2002 and 2004. When these are added to CPP shares in the "Big Four," CPP investments in "missile defense" corporations currently totals just over $36 million. (This is, by no means, a complete listing of CPP investments in "missile defense"-linked corporations.)

CPP Investments in America's Top Ten Military Industries

The CPPIB has invested $360 million in nine of America's top ten war industries. The U.S. Department of Defense reports that these nine corporations received $80 Billion in U.S. military contracts during 2003 alone. They received about a quarter of a Trillion dollars in U.S. military contracts between 2000 and 2003.

Eighty-seven percent ($315 million) of CPP's shares in these top ten U.S. war industries are invested in one company, General Electric. In 2003, GE was America's 8th largest weapons contractor. It received almost $8 billion in U.S. military contracts between 2000 and 2003.

=================================================

For more information on the U.S. war industries in which the CPP is investing, you can refer to these other articles and tables from the current issue of COAT's Press for Conversion! magazine (#55):

The Big Four:

[The following four articles provide background information on the each of the top four "missile defense" contractors.]

Lockheed Martin

Boeing

Raytheon

TRW

=================================================

Real Rogues: The Big Four Corporate Criminals

This article summarizes many examples of criminal activity committed by each of the "Big Four" contractors for "missile defense," including: foreign corrupt practices, bribery, fraud, deception, overcharging, defective parts, labour transgressions, contract violations, spying, theft and false claims.

=================================================

Article on CPP investments in "Missile Defense" and Two Detailed Tables:

Two Detailed Tables:
(1) The Top Ten U.S. Military Contractors
This table shows the value of U.S. military contracts -- in billions of U.S. dollars -- between 2000 and 2003, the companies" rankings during each of those years and the most recent data on CPP investments in each corporation.

(2) Political Contributions and Lobbying Expenditures from America's Top Ten Military Contractors
This table shows Political Action Committee contributions by each corporation (2000, 2002, 2004), "soft money" contributions (2000, 2002) and lobbying expenditures (2000).

=================================================

Some CPP Investments in Contractors for so called "Missile Defense," 2002-2004

Boeing 10,452,000
Honeywell 4,891,000
Computer Sciences Corp. 4,816,000
Northop Grumman (TRW) 4,578,000
Raytheon 3,995,000
Lockheed Martin 3,311,000
General Dynamics 3,330,000
Qwest 554,000
Harris Corp. 236,000
Total 36,163,000

Sources: This data was compiled by cross-referencing data from:
(1) Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Public Equity in Non-Canadian Companies Holdings (Sept. 30, 2004):
and

(2) News items and contract awards listed in "Star Wars Contracts," 2002-2004, from Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space:

Canada Pension Plan Investments in theTop Ten U.S. Weapons Manufacturers

Top Ten Prime Contractors CPP Investments
(2003) (Sept. 30, 2004)
(1) Lockheed Martin 3,311,000
(2) Boeing 10,452,000
(3) Northrop Grumman 4,578,000
(4) General Dynamics 3,330,000
(5) Raytheon 3,995,000
(6) United Technologies 8,254,000
(7) Halliburton 7,068,000
(8) General Electric 315,386,000
(9) Science Applications
International Corp. --
(10) Computer Sciences 4,816,000

Total $361,190,000

Sources:

(1) Rankings of Top Ten Prime Military Contractors for 2003 (i.e., most recent data available):
Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information, Operations and Reports:

(2) CPP Investment Board, Public Equity in Non-Canadian Companies Holdings, Sept. 30, 2004. (i.e., most recent data available):

All of the above data was published in issue #55 of Press for Conversion!, magazine of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT). This 46-page magazine, entitled: "Missile Defense: Trojan Horse for the Weaponization of Space," is now available:

More information on CPP investments in Canada's war industries:

The October 2003, issue of Press for Conversion! (#52) called "Operation Embedded Complicity: Canada, Playing our Part in the Business of War" reveals the extent to which Canada is deeply embedded in the U.S. "war machine." The Canada Pension Plan invests in America's biggest war industries, including the prime U.S. contractors for major weapons and their "delivery systems" used in the latest Iraq war. This issue lists one hundred Canadian companies that have provided parts and services for 36 major weapons delivery systems used in Iraq. The magazine also provides details on billions of dollars worth of Canadian government's donations to Canadian military industries. At the same time, Canadian military industries have donated millions to the Liberal and Conservative parties.

Copies of this issue and other back issues, are still available here:

From: Richard Sanders Domestic Terrorism: USA vs Veterans and the First Amendment
Posted by: Captain on http://PEJ.org Monday, April 11, 2005 - 10:36 AM

Domestic Terrorism: USA vs. Veterans and the First Amendment by Dave Lindorff, This Can't be Happening.net
"There are a whole range of free speech and assembly incidents where the federal government is becoming quick on the trigger," says Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of The Center for Constitutional Rights

The post 9/11 era has accelerated a trend not just toward pressure on First Amendment freedoms but toward proactive attacks on free-speech rights. Formerly sleepy federal agencies with police functions have been folded into the new Department of Homeland Security, where the focus is the so-called War on Terror. That militant mentality, coupled with unprecedented approval for preemptive action, threatens to create a new class of potential terrorists among our own citizens.

Meet Kenneth Tennant, a 46-year-old disabled Army veteran who learned that expressing frustrations to the Veterans Administration can mean an early morning knock on the door, arrest at the hands of Homeland Security agents, and a night in the can.

Tennant left the Army in 1989 with a disabling disease called fibromyalgia, reminiscent of Gulf War syndrome. (He attributes it to vaccines administered to him as a combat medic trainee). His disease causes joint and muscle problems and a general malaise, determined by the VA back in 1995 to be service-connected, though Tennant was classified as just 10 percent disabled. As his ailment progressed, it became hard for him to work full time, and he pressed to be reclassified as more severely disabled. After battling the VA for nearly a decade, in 2003, he finally won a ruling declaring him to be 40 percent disabled. But Tennant wasn?t satisfied. He felt the ruling should be retroactive, at least until 1995.

Another ignored vet

For the past three years, the frustrated Bettendorf, Iowa resident and part-time chiropractor, like many an ignored vet, did verbal battle with the regional office of the VA in Des Moines, making phone calls to officials and sending letters ... sometimes even to officials? homes if he could locate them (and in one case to a VA employee?s spouse).
Last August, he apparently sent one too many sets of letters ... this time a photocopied flier that featured an image of a finger-pointing Uncle Sam saying, "I lied about Vets benefits?" followed by a list of charges linking the VA and the military to a spate of diseases allegedly caused by vaccines.

Over the next several weeks Tennant was contacted several times by Steven Familo, an agent of the Federal Protective Service, an agency that formerly was part of the General Services Administration charged with protecting federal property, but which is now part of Homeland Security. Familio warned Tennant he was being investigated. Then on Nov. 5, 2004, at 8:15 in the morning, Tennant heard a banging on the door of his home and opened it to find Familo, another FPS agent, and two local Bettendorf police officers on the porch demanding that he "step outside."

They told him that he was under arrest. With his six and eight-year old children crying inside and his wife throwing up in distress, he says federal agents ordered him to put his hands on his head and then to bend over--a painful exercise for him with his disease. "They were yelling at me like I was a violent criminal and like I was being uncooperative," he recalls.

Tennant was handcuffed and driven several hours away to the Polk County jail in Des Moines, where he was locked up for 12 hours while his wife struggled to raise bail money. While there, he was charged with a low-level misdemeanor that ordinarily does not entail arrest, but which is usually, according to Bettendorf Police Chief Phil Reddington, handled with a citation and a summons for an appearance in traffic court. Wil Calvey, the special agent in charge at the FPS regional office in Des Moines, states that Tennant at no time made any threats to VA officials. "He was annoying and harassing them," he says.

"More proactive"

As he told the Quad City Times a day after the arrest, the FPS, since 9/11, is taking a "more proactive" response to such cases. "We are trying to nip these things in the bud rather than let them escalate into a greater problem," he told the paper. "When you let things go, and people are not punished, they get worse and you have an increased chance of an incident where someone is injured or killed."

Asked when writing letters and making phone calls crosses the line from being legitimate First-Amendment expression and the constitutionally protected right to seek redress of grievances and becomes a crime or a threat of violence and death, he said, "That's hard for me to answer."

Jeffrey Fogel, legal director at the New York based Center for Constitutional Rights, says the last few years have seen a marked increase in federal efforts to silence people like Tennant. "There are a whole range of free speech and assembly incidents where the federal government is becoming quick on the trigger," he says.

At the Republican National Convention in New York last August, the Secret Service pressed local police to do preventive arrests, he notes, for example arresting everyone who wandered into Herald Square after undercover police heard that there were plans to do a sit-down protest in the square. "They were arresting people before they did anything, on the mere suspicion that they might be planning to participate in a protest," he says.

Similarly, the Secret Service has been instructing local police at the scene of presidential or vice presidential public appearances to establish remote fenced-in "free speech zones" for protesters and to remove and arrest those who try to stand with presidential backers along the route of a presidential caravan. "They?re using a new federal ordinance that allows the Secret Service to set up `restrictive zones' around presidential visits," says Fogel. "But then they interpret the regulations to permit presidential supporters to be inside the zone, while excluding and arresting protesters or opponents of the president who are inside it."

Such practices are not limited to the president or to Republicans. Boston police set up a fenced in "protest zone" for protests during the Democratic Convention last year, too, without protest from Democratic Party officials. ?I'm sure some people genuinely fear terrorism and violence," says Fogel, "but I also think this new proactive approach is really an excuse to prevent criticism of public officials and government policies."

"Illegitimate complaint" leads to arrest

Carl Rusnok, director of communications for the central region of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of Homeland Security, says Tennant was arrested in part because his complaints were considered by the VA to be illegitimate. "If he had a legitimate complaint, he could probably have written 100 letters," he says. Rusnok also argues that Tennant "didn?t make use of the avenues of complaint that were available to him, like writing his congressman."

In fact, Tennant says he complained not just to his own Congressional representative, Jim Nussle, but also to other members of the Iowa delegation ... to no avail. "They blew me off," he says. Asked for a comment on his case, a spokeswoman for Rep. Nussle, who represents Bettendorf, said the congressman couldn't comment "for legal and privacy reasons."

"They clearly could have issued him a citation," says Bob Rigg, who heads the Drake University legal clinic in Des Moines. "Arresting him on this charge was a terrible waste of police resources. The government was very aggressive here, and it seems clear they were trying to send him a message."

Tennant, who was found guilty in late February by a traffic court judge in a hearing at which he had no attorney, and who is still awaiting sentencing, says he sees the whole incident as an effort to silence him." This is an act of domestic terrorism," he says.

Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba
Posted by: joan.Russow on http://PEJ.org Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - 10:46 AM

Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba

Summary In its resolution 64/6, entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”, the General Assembly requested the Secretary-General, in consultation with the appropriate organs and agencies of the United Nations system, to prepare a report on the implementation of the resolution in the light of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law and to submit it to the Assembly at its sixty-fifth session.

The present report reproduces the replies of Governments and bodies of theUnited Nations system to the request of the Secretary-General for information on the matter.

The vote, held for the 14th consecutive year, was on a resolution calling for Washington to lift the U.S. trade, financial and travel embargo, particularly its provisions on penalizing foreign firms.
UPDATE; 194 VOTED YES AND Voting “no” were the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands.

The present report reproduces the replies of Governments and bodies of theUnited Nations system to the request of the Secretary-General for information on the matter.

I Introduction;

Pursuant to that request, in a note verbale dated 6 April 2010, the Secretary- General invited Governments and organs and agencies of the United Nations system to provide him with any information they might wish to contribute to the preparation of his report. A further note verbale was sent on 1 June 2010.

The present report reproduces the replies from Governments and organs and agencies of the United Nations that had been received as at 9 July 2010. Replies received after that date will be reproduced in addenda to the present report.

FOR THE FULL DOCUMENT HERE IS THE LINK http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/65/83&Lang=E

Lisbon -NATO Summit; NATO must be disbanded for violating international law and norms
Posted by: joan.Russow on http://PEJ.org Friday, November 19, 2010 - 07:22 AM

Lisbon -NATO Summit; NATO must be disbanded for violating international law and norms
-November 2010- Joan Russow Global Compliance Research Project
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NATO a belligerant institution of members with military budgets rising to over 1.5 trillion dollars per annum is contibuting to not only to destabilizing the global community but also to major greenbouse gas emissions.When the globe is in a state of emergency because of climate change, NATO's consumption of fossil fuels is criminally negligent.

NATO, must be Disbanded for Contributing to the Scourge of War, and For Defying Peremptory Norms

While, President Obama is calling for world without nuclear weapons, NATO has even convinced members that the permission to keep nuclear weapons in Europe may be a pre-requisite for having a say in NATO.

NATO is a provocative, dangerous institution that has perpetuated the scourge of war, and conflict through both its existence and its expansion. The NATO states collectively spend approximately 70\% of the current 1.473 trillion global military budget.

World Military Spending: http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

NATO must be disbanded for the following reasons:

NATO States collectively spend 70\% of the estimated $1.473 trillion global annual military budget in contravention of years of international commitments to reallocate military expenses;

* NATO has condoned the possession of nuclear weapons by "friendly statesÂ², but has been willing to entertain strikes on the nuclear facilities of "NATO-designed rogue states" and risk the release of radiation;

*NATO, through its engaging in numerous military interventions and occupations such as Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, has contributed to and condoned, rather than prevented the scourge of war in defiance of the principal objective of the Charter of the United Nations;

*NATO has not abandoned the option of a "first use of nuclear weapons policy", has failed to act on its undertaking under the General Assembly Resolution entitled the Condemnation of Nuclear War A/RES/38/75, 1983 "to condemn the formulation, propounding, dissemination and propaganda of political and military doctrines and concepts intended to provide 'legitimacy' for the first use of nuclear weapons and in general to justify the 'admissibility' of unleashing nuclear war (2, Condemnation of Nuclear War General Assembly Resolution A/RES/38/75, 1983;

* NATO has been using depleted uranium [the effect of which in part is similar to that of a nuclear weapon], has failed to act on its undertaking to deem "that the use of nuclear weapons would be a violation of the Charter of the United Nations and a crime against humanityÂ², ( Resolutions 1653 (XVI) of 24 November, 1961, 33/71 B of 14 December, 1978, 34/83 G of 11 December, 1979, 35/152 D of 12 December, 1980 and 36/92 I of 9 December, 1981;

*NATO, through using depleted uranium, which could be deemed to have the effect of a nuclear weapon, has disregarded the decision of the International Court of Justice that the use or the threat to use nuclear weapons is contrary to International humanitarian law (World Court Project, 1996);

*NATO has violated the Geneva Protocols on prohibited weapons;

*NATO has undermined the United Nations through contributing to the failure (i) to discharge obligations under International Conventions, Treaties, and Covenants, (ii) to act through Commitments made under Conference Action Plans and (iii) to fulfill expectations created through General Assembly Resolutions;
*NATO has condoned the misinterpretation of Article 51 - self-defence- in the Charter of the United Nations in its support for the invasion of a sovereign state, and has used the pretext of "human security" and "humanitarian intervention" and "preemptive/preventive" aggression to justify the invasion and occupation of other states;

*NATO has continually ignored Chapter VI - Peaceful Resolution of Disputes, of the Charter of the United Nations, and the provision in Chapter VI to take disputes to the International Court of Justice;

*NATO has failed to act on the commitment made under the Platform of Action of the UN Conference of Women To [Encourage diplomacy, [preventive diplomacy,] negotiation and peaceful settlement of disputes in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, in particular Article 2, paragraphs 3 and 4] (Art. 147 b., Advance Draft, Platform of Action, UN Conference on Women, May 15);

*NATO has failed to discharge its obligations under the Convention entitled (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Geneva, 1949) to protect "persons taking no active part in the hostilitiesÂ²;

* NATO has violated the Convention Against Torture;

* NATO has failed to discharge its obligations under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights to "prohibit any propaganda of war", Article 20, and to "prohibit any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence (Article 20 -2);

* NATO has failed to fulfill the undertaking under the General Assembly Resolution entitled the Declaration on the Use of Scientific and Technological Progress in the Interests of Peace and for the Benefit of Humanity, 1975) to prevent scientific and technological achievements entailing dangers for the civil and political rights of the individual or of the group and for human dignity;

* NATO has failed to discharge its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child to ensure respect for the rules of international humanitarian law relevant to the child in armed conflict (Art. 18, Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989);

* NATO campaign has failed to fulfill the expectation under the General Assembly Resolution, entitled "Effects of Atomic Radiation" to prevent harmful effects on present and future generations, resulting from the levels of radiation to which man humans are exposed;

*NATO has failed to discharge its obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity to prevent the loss or reduction of biodiversity in a region rich in biodiversity, and has contributed to irreversible environmental devastation;

*NATO has failed to act on a commitment to eliminate the production of weapons of mass destruction at the United Nations Conference on Humans and the Environment (UNCHE, 1972) [through its continued support for the mining and distribution of uranium both for civil nuclear reactors and for nuclear weapons];

*NATO has failed to act on its undertaking under numerous UN General Assembly Resolutions such as the General Assembly Resolution in 1981, to reduce the military budget and to reallocate the funds thus saved to economic and social development, particularly for the benefit of developing countries;

*NATO has engaged in war games such as Exercise Trident Fury, which have been a flagrant display of militarism and which flaunt the norm related to the prohibition of the propaganda of war under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.

While, on April 4, 2009, the NATO state leaders were poised to celebrate the 60th Anniversary Conference of NATO in Strasbourg and Baden Baden, the majority of states of the United Nations would probably be more inclined to celebrate the demise of NATO.

See Disband NATO petition : http://www.petitiononline.com/z9m2x3nb/petition.html

Dick Cheneyâ€™s message has been received: Saudi Arabia and Israel prepare for Nuclear War while Iran tries to broker peace
Posted by: chycho on http://PEJ.org Saturday, April 12, 2008 - 10:17 AM

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Dick Cheneyâ€™s message has been received: Saudi Arabia and Israel prepare for Nuclear War while Iran tries to broker peace

PEJ News - chycho - Dick Cheney wrapped up his tour of the Middle East in March and it appears that he has accomplished his main objective: to prepare his allies for the proliferation of war.

While the general consensus from most news sources is that â€œCheney has not made meaningful headwayâ€, reading between the lines tells a different story. The misinterpretation of what Mr. Cheneyâ€™s mission has accomplished begins with the assumption that the vice president of the United States, representing those in control of the largest Military-Industrial Complex (video 59:05) in the world, is willing to negotiate with sworn enemies for peace.

If peace was the object of Cheneyâ€™s tour, then why are Saudi Arabia and Israel preparing for Nuclear War? Why did violence in Iraq increase, requiring an Iranian brokered peace deal? Was the â€œincident in the Strait of Hormuzâ€ just a mistake? Is Iranian military buildup along the border continuing? Why is the US deploying a nuclear sub to the Persian Gulf and beefing up itâ€™s navy off the coast of Syria and Lebanon? All of this on the heals of Admiral William Fallonâ€™s resignation! So many coincidences and so few answers from our leaders.

So what can we concluded from all this? I believe the following two maps showing the location of US military bases in the Middle East and existing and proposed oil and gas pipelines should answer our questions.

See Global research article below

click map to enlarge - source

click map to enlarge - source

That was simple enough, but what would an attack on Iran mean for the world? The following are just a few of the consequences:

The boundaries that we see on world maps marking the territories of countries are just what we see - lines on a piece of paper. Iranians are not confined to lines drawn by European powers decades ago. Iranians live not only in Iran but also, en masse, in all the countries in the region. Certain parts of Iranâ€™s neighbors even speak dialects of Farsi. So if the United States bombs Iran, since there is no way they have any intentions of invading, they would be declaring war on parts of every country surrounding Iran. This would mean that the United States would be at war with every country in the region since civil war would breakout in all the US installed puppet regimes. This could explain why the United States has created a new map of the Middle East.

source

Not only are Iranians spread out in the region, they are also living, en masse, in the rest of the world. The Iranian Diaspora Population map shows that approximately 2.5 million live in the US alone, 700,000 in the Canada, 300,000 in the UK, and 2 million in India. If a war breakouts between the US and Iran then what transpired with the internment of Japanese Americans and Canadians during World War II would become a distant memory and a travesty that will be repeated. Unfortunately it appears that the United States is prepared for this scenario, since it has already built 800 FEMA prison camps which are fully operational and ready to receive prisoners.

A question does come to mind however; will a nation of Christians and non-Muslims be able to prevent genocide during this World War? I personally doubt it, because the threat from those who are of Middle Eastern descent will be a real one that Western governments will exploit.

source
If the United States attacks Iran, then Iran could stop exporting oil and/or â€œget tough and close down all oil-tanker traffic that comes within range of (its) missilesâ€“which would mean little or no oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or the smaller Gulf statesâ€. This is a very likely scenario, but what exactly does â€œglobal oil rationing, industrial shutdowns, and the end of the present economic eraâ€ mean? One way to fully understand the impact of such an event is to look at Africa. The population of Africa at the present is approximately 1 billion. According to a recent presentation at a United Nations conference, it is estimated that â€œnearly 75% of the continent could come to rely on some sort of food aid by 2025â€. If there is â€œglobal oil rationingâ€ then it is safe to assume that feeding Africans would become a low priority operation for the rest of the world. This could mean that 750 million people could starve to death in Africa.
Just to put things into perspective, making sure that it is fully understood what the impact of an attack on Iran really means, consider this. The United States has already stated that they will use nuclear weapons in an aerial bombardment campaign against Iran. Since the creation of the atomic bomb, it has been accepted that once nuclear weapons are used again in any war, then they will continue to be used until there is no one left to kill. As the saying goes, you do not bring a knife to a gunfight, so once a nuclear weapon has been used on any country then that country and its people have a right to use unclear weapons in retaliation. Albert Einstein once said, â€œI know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stonesâ€. I personally hope that we will not fulfill Einsteinâ€™s prophecy.

This is what Dick Cheneyâ€™s visit to the Middle East has accomplished: bringing us one step closer to terminal nuclear war.

Note: Less we forget, thanks to courageous American Airmen, we were lucky enough to avert a nuclear catastrophe which, reportedly, Dick Cheney had orchestrated in last years Nuclear B-52 incident. If we will be lucky enough to prevent such an event this time around is anyoneâ€™s guess.

Plans for Redrawing the Middle East: The Project for a “New Middle East”

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Global Research, November 18, 2006

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“Hegemony is as old as Mankind…” -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor

The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”

This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Oil Terminal in the Eastern Mediterranean. The term and conceptualization of the “New Middle East,” was subsequently heralded by the U.S. Secretary of State and the Israeli Prime Minister at the height of the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon. Prime Minister Olmert and Secretary Rice had informed the international media that a project for a “New Middle East” was being launched from Lebanon.

This announcement was a confirmation of an Anglo-American-Israeli “military roadmap” in the Middle East. This project, which has been in the planning stages for several years, consists in creating an arc of instability, chaos, and violence extending from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria to Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Iran, and the borders of NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

The “New Middle East” project was introduced publicly by Washington and Tel Aviv with the expectation that Lebanon would be the pressure point for realigning the whole Middle East and thereby unleashing the forces of “constructive chaos.” This “constructive chaos” --which generates conditions of violence and warfare throughout the region-- would in turn be used so that the United States, Britain, and Israel could redraw the map of the Middle East in accordance with their geo-strategic needs and objectives.

New Middle East Map

Secretary Condoleezza Rice stated during a press conference that “[w]hat we’re seeing here [in regards to the destruction of Lebanon and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon], in a sense, is the growing—the ‘birth pangs’—of a ‘New Middle East’ and whatever we do we [meaning the United States] have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the New Middle East [and] not going back to the old one.”¹ Secretary Rice was immediately criticized for her statements both within Lebanon and internationally for expressing indifference to the suffering of an entire nation, which was being bombed indiscriminately by the Israeli Air Force.

The Anglo-American Military Roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech on the "New Middle East" had set the stage. The Israeli attacks on Lebanon --which had been fully endorsed by Washington and London-- have further compromised and validated the existence of the geo-strategic objectives of the United States, Britain, and Israel. According to Professor Mark Levine the “neo-liberal globalizers and neo-conservatives, and ultimately the Bush Administration, would latch on to creative destruction as a way of describing the process by which they hoped to create their new world orders,” and that “creative destruction [in] the United States was, in the words of neo-conservative philosopher and Bush adviser Michael Ledeen, ‘an awesome revolutionary force’ for (…) creative destruction…”²

Anglo-American occupied Iraq, particularly Iraqi Kurdistan, seems to be the preparatory ground for the balkanization (division) and finlandization (pacification) of the Middle East. Already the legislative framework, under the Iraqi Parliament and the name of Iraqi federalization, for the partition of Iraq into three portions is being drawn out. (See map below)

Moreover, the Anglo-American military roadmap appears to be vying an entry into Central Asia via the Middle East. The Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are stepping stones for extending U.S. influence into the former Soviet Union and the ex-Soviet Republics of Central Asia. The Middle East is to some extent the southern tier of Central Asia. Central Asia in turn is also termed as “Russia’s Southern Tier” or the Russian “Near Abroad.”

Many Russian and Central Asian scholars, military planners, strategists, security advisors, economists, and politicians consider Central Asia (“Russia’s Southern Tier”) to be the vulnerable and “soft under-belly” of the Russian Federation.³

It should be noted that in his book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. National Security Advisor, alluded to the modern Middle East as a control lever of an area he, Brzezinski, calls the Eurasian Balkans. The Eurasian Balkans consists of the Caucasus (Georgia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Armenia) and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan) and to some extent both Iran and Turkey. Iran and Turkey both form the northernmost tiers of the Middle East (excluding the Caucasus⁴) that edge into Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The Map of the “New Middle East”

A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the “New Middle East.”

MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST

Note: The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy. (Map Copyright Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006).

Although the map does not officially reflect Pentagon doctrine, it has been used in a training program at NATO's Defense College for senior military officers. This map, as well as other similar maps, has most probably been used at the National War Academy as well as in military planning circles.

This map of the “New Middle East” seems to be based on several other maps, including older maps of potential boundaries in the Middle East extending back to the era of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and World War I. This map is showcased and presented as the brainchild of retired Lieutenant-Colonel (U.S. Army) Ralph Peters, who believes the redesigned borders contained in the map will fundamentally solve the problems of the contemporary Middle East.

The map of the “New Middle East” was a key element in the retired Lieutenant-Colonel’s book, Never Quit the Fight, which was released to the public on July 10, 2006. This map of a redrawn Middle East was also published, under the title of Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look, in the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal with commentary from Ralph Peters.⁵

It should be noted that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters was last posted to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, within the U.S. Defence Department, and has been one of the Pentagon’s foremost authors with numerous essays on strategy for military journals and U.S. foreign policy.

It has been written that Ralph Peters’ “four previous books on strategy have been highly influential in government and military circles,” but one can be pardoned for asking if in fact quite the opposite could be taking place. Could it be Lieutenant-Colonel Peters is revealing and putting forward what Washington D.C. and its strategic planners have anticipated for the Middle East?

The concept of a redrawn Middle East has been presented as a “humanitarian” and “righteous” arrangement that would benefit the people(s) of the Middle East and its peripheral regions. According to Ralph Peter’s:

International borders are never completely just. But the degree of injustice they inflict upon those whom frontiers force together or separate makes an enormous difference — often the difference between freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, the rule of law and terrorism, or even peace and war.
The most arbitrary and distorted borders in the world are in Africa and the Middle East. Drawn by self-interested Europeans (who have had sufficient trouble defining their own frontiers), Africa’s borders continue to provoke the deaths of millions of local inhabitants. But the unjust borders in the Middle East — to borrow from Churchill — generate more trouble than can be consumed locally.
While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam, but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.
Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant "cheated" population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia [Muslims], but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.
Yet, for all the injustices the borders re-imagined here leave unaddressed, without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.
Even those who abhor the topic of altering borders would be well-served to engage in an exercise that attempts to conceive a fairer, if still imperfect, amendment of national boundaries between the Bosphorus and the Indus. Accepting that international statecraft has never developed effective tools — short of war — for readjusting faulty borders, a mental effort to grasp the Middle East’s “organic” frontiers nonetheless helps us understand the extent of the difficulties we face and will continue to face. We are dealing with colossal, man-made deformities that will not stop generating hatred and violence until they are corrected. ⁶^{(emphasis added)}

"Necessary Pain"

Besides believing that there is “cultural stagnation” in the Middle East, it must be noted that Ralph Peters admits that his propositions are “draconian” in nature, but he insists that they are necessary pains for the people of the Middle East. This view of necessary pain and suffering is in startling parallel to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s belief that the devastation of Lebanon by the Israeli military was a necessary pain or “birth pang” in order to create the “New Middle East” that Washington, London, and Tel Aviv envision.

Moreover, it is worth noting that the subject of the Armenian Genocide is being politicized and stimulated in Europe to offend Turkey.⁷

The overhaul, dismantlement, and reassembly of the nation-states of the Middle East have been packaged as a solution to the hostilities in the Middle East, but this is categorically misleading, false, and fictitious. The advocates of a “New Middle East” and redrawn boundaries in the region avoid and fail to candidly depict the roots of the problems and conflicts in the contemporary Middle East. What the media does not acknowledge is the fact that almost all major conflicts afflicting the Middle East are the consequence of overlapping Anglo-American-Israeli agendas.

Many of the problems affecting the contemporary Middle East are the result of the deliberate aggravation of pre-existing regional tensions. Sectarian division, ethnic tension and internal violence have been traditionally exploited by the United States and Britain in various parts of the globe including Africa, Latin America, the Balkans, and the Middle East. Iraq is just one of many examples of the Anglo-American strategy of “divide and conquer.” Other examples are Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Caucasus, and Afghanistan.

Amongst the problems in the contemporary Middle East is the lack of genuine democracy which U.S. and British foreign policy has actually been deliberately obstructing. Western-style "Democracy" has been a requirement only for those Middle Eastern states which do not conform to Washington's political demands. Invariably, it constitutes a pretext for confrontation. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan are examples of undemocratic states that the United States has no problems with because they are firmly alligned within the Anglo-American orbit or sphere.

Additionally, the United States has deliberately blocked or displaced genuine democratic movements in the Middle East from Iran in 1953 (where a U.S./U.K. sponsored coup was staged against the democratic government of Prime Minister Mossadegh) to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, the Arab Sheikdoms, and Jordan where the Anglo-American alliance supports military control, absolutists, and dictators in one form or another. The latest example of this is Palestine.

The Turkish Protest at NATO’s Military College in Rome

Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters’ map of the “New Middle East” has sparked angry reactions in Turkey. According to Turkish press releases on September 15, 2006 the map of the “New Middle East” was displayed in NATO’s Military College in Rome, Italy. It was additionally reported that Turkish officers were immediately outraged by the presentation of a portioned and segmented Turkey.⁸ The map received some form of approval from the U.S. National War Academy before it was unveiled in front of NATO officers in Rome.

The Turkish Chief of Staff, General Buyukanit, contacted the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, and protested the event and the exhibition of the redrawn map of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.⁹ Furthermore the Pentagon has gone out of its way to assure Turkey that the map does not reflect official U.S. policy and objectives in the region, but this seems to be conflicting with Anglo-American actions in the Middle East and NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan.

Is there a Connection between Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Eurasian Balkans” and the “New Middle East” Project?

The following are important excerpts and passages from former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives. Brzezinski also states that both Turkey and Iran, the two most powerful states of the “Eurasian Balkans,” located on its southern tier, are “potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts [balkanization],” and that, “If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable.”¹⁰

It seems that a divided and balkanized Iraq would be the best means of accomplishing this. Taking what we know from the White House's own admissions; there is a belief that “creative destruction and chaos” in the Middle East are beneficial assets to reshaping the Middle East, creating the “New Middle East,” and furthering the Anglo-American roadmap in the Middle East and Central Asia:

In Europe, the Word “Balkans” conjures up images of ethnic conflicts and great-power regional rivalries. Eurasia, too, has its “Balkans,” but the Eurasian Balkans are much larger, more populated, even more religiously and ethnically heterogenous. They are located within that large geographic oblong that demarcates the central zone of global instability (...) that embraces portions of southeastern Europe, Central Asia and parts of South Asia [Pakistan, Kashmir, Western India], the Persian Gulf area, and the Middle East.
The Eurasian Balkans form the inner core of that large oblong (…) they differ from its outer zone in one particularly significant way: they are a power vacuum. Although most of the states located in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East are also unstable, American power is that region’s [meaning the Middle East’s] ultimate arbiter. The unstable region in the outer zone is thus an area of single power hegemony and is tempered by that hegemony. In contrast, the Eurasian Balkans are truly reminiscent of the older, more familiar Balkans of southeastern Europe: not only are its political entities unstable but they tempt and invite the intrusion of more powerful neighbors, each of whom is determined to oppose the region’s domination by another. It is this familiar combination of a power vacuum and power suction that justifies the appellation “Eurasian Balkans.”
The traditional Balkans represented a potential geopolitical prize in the struggle for European supremacy. The Eurasian Balkans, astride the inevitably emerging transportation network meant to link more directly Eurasia’s richest and most industrious western and eastern extremities, are also geopolitically significant. Moreover, they are of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely, Russia, Turkey, and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold.
The world’s energy consumption is bound to vastly increase over the next two or three decades. Estimates by the U.S. Department of Energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia’s economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy, and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.
Access to that resource and sharing in its potential wealth represent objectives that stir national ambitions, motivate corporate interests, rekindle historical claims, revive imperial aspirations, and fuel international rivalries. The situation is made all the more volatile by the fact that the region is not only a power vacuum but is also internally unstable.
(…)
The Eurasian Balkans include nine countries that one way or another fit the foregoing description, with two others as potential candidates. The nine are Kazakstan [alternative and official spelling of Kazakhstan] , Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia—all of them formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union—as well as Afghanistan.
The potential additions to the list are Turkey and Iran, both of them much more politically and economically viable, both active contestants for regional influence within the Eurasian Balkans, and thus both significant geo-strategic players in the region. At the same time, both are potentially vulnerable to internal ethnic conflicts. If either or both of them were to be destabilized, the internal problems of the region would become unmanageable, while efforts to restrain regional domination by Russia could even become futile. ¹¹
^{(emphasis added)}

Redrawing the Middle East

The Middle East, in some regards, is a striking parallel to the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe during the years leading up the First World War. In the wake of the the First World War the borders of the Balkans and Central-Eastern Europe were redrawn. This region experienced a period of upheaval, violence and conflict, before and after World War I, which was the direct result of foreign economic interests and interference.

The reasons behind the First World War are more sinister than the standard school-book explanation, the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo. Economic factors were the real motivation for the large-scale war in 1914.

Norman Dodd, a former Wall Street banker and investigator for the U.S. Congress, who examined U.S. tax-exempt foundations, confirmed in a 1982 interview that those powerful individuals who from behind the scenes controlled the finances, policies, and government of the United States had in fact also planned U.S. involvement in a war, which would contribute to entrenching their grip on power.

The following testimonial is from the transcript of Norman Dodd's interview with G. Edward Griffin;

We are now at the year 1908, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations. And, in that year, the trustees meeting, for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion. And the question is this: Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to humanity, than war. So then, in 1909, they raise the second question, and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?
Well, I doubt, at that time, if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the people of this country [the United States], than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows [wars] in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were. And finally, they answer that question as follows: we must control the State Department.

And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? They answer it by saying, we must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective. Then, time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I. At that time, they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly. And finally, of course, the war is over.

At that time, their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914, when World War I broke out.
^{(emphasis added)}

The redrawing and partition of the Middle East from the Eastern Mediterranean shores of Lebanon and Syria to Anatolia (Asia Minor), Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and the Iranian Plateau responds to broad economic, strategic and military objectives, which are part of a longstanding Anglo-American and Israeli agenda in the region.
The Middle East has been conditioned by outside forces into a powder keg that is ready to explode with the right trigger, possibly the launching of Anglo-American and/or Israeli air raids against Iran and Syria. A wider war in the Middle East could result in redrawn borders that are strategically advantageous to Anglo-American interests and Israel.

NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan has been successfully divided, all but in name. Animosity has been inseminated in the Levant, where a Palestinian civil war is being nurtured and divisions in Lebanon agitated. The Eastern Mediterranean has been successfully militarized by NATO. Syria and Iran continue to be demonized by the Western media, with a view to justifying a military agenda. In turn, the Western media has fed, on a daily basis, incorrect and biased notions that the populations of Iraq cannot co-exist and that the conflict is not a war of occupation but a "civil war" characterised by domestic strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
Attempts at intentionally creating animosity between the different ethno-cultural and religious groups of the Middle East have been systematic. In fact, they are part of a carefully designed covert intelligence agenda.

Even more ominous, many Middle Eastern governments, such as that of Saudi Arabia, are assisting Washington in fomenting divisions between Middle Eastern populations. The ultimate objective is to weaken the resistance movement against foreign occupation through a "divide and conquer strategy" which serves Anglo-American and Israeli interests in the broader region.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is in an independent writer based in Ottawa specializing in Middle Eastern and Central Asian affairs. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

¹ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Special Briefing on the Travel to the Middle East and Europe of Secretary Condoleezza Rice (Press Conference, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C., July 21, 2006).

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/69331.htm

² Professor Mark LeVine, The New Creative Destruction, Asia Times, August 22, 2006.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH22Ak01.html

³ Professor Andrej Kreutz, The Geopolitics of post-Soviet Russia and the Middle East, Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ) (Washington, D.C.: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, January 2002).

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2501/is_1_24/ai_93458168/pg_1

⁴ The Caucasus or Caucasia can be considered as part of the Middle East or as a separate region

⁵ Lieutenant-Colonel (retired) Ralph Peters, Blood borders: How a better Middle East would look, Armed Forces Journal (AFJ), June 2006.

http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Crispian Balmer, French MPs back Armenia genocide bill, Turkey angry, Reuters, October 12, 2006.

James McConalogue, French against Turks: Talking about Armenian Genocide, The Brussels Journal, October 10, 2006.

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1585

⁸ Suleyman Kurt, Carved-up Map of Turkey at NATO Prompts U.S. Apology, Zaman (Turkey), September 29, 2006.

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=international&alt=&hn=36919

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geo-strategic Imperatives (New York City: Basic Books, 1997).

http://www.perseusbooksgroup.com/basic/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465027261

¹¹ Ibid.

Related Global Research articles on the March to War in the Middle East
US naval war games off the Iranian coastline: A provocation which could lead to War? 2006-10-24

"Cold War Shivers:" War Preparations in the Middle East and Central Asia 2006-10-06

The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean 2006-10-01

The March to War: Iran Preparing for US Air Attacks 2006-09-21

The Next Phase of the Middle East War 2006-09-04

Baluchistan and the Coming Iran War 2006-09-01

British Troops Mobilizing on the Iranian Border 2006-08-30

Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats 2006-08-24

Beating the Drums of War: US Troop Build-up: Army & Marines authorize "Involuntary Conscription" 2006-08-23

Iranian War Games: Exercises, Tests, and Drills or Preparation and Mobilization for War? 2006-08-21

Triple Alliance:" The US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon 2006-08-06
The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil 2006-07-26
Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust? 2006-02-22
The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War 2006-02-17
Nuclear War against Iran 2006-01-03
Israeli Bombings could lead to Escalation of Middle East War 2006-07-15
Iran: Next Target of US Military Aggression 2005-05-01
Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran 2005-05-01

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