Canadian imperialism - Military Coups are Good for Canadian Business

18 posts / 0 new

Fri, 2011-03-18 12:37

N.Beltov

Military Coups are good for Canadian business: the Canada-Honduras Free Trade Agreement

Todd Gordon, author of the recently released "Imperialist Canada" has an article about the kind of trade deals that the Harper regime is seeking to implement.

Todd Gordon wrote:
Last week Canadian negotiators met with their Honduran counterparts in Tegucigalpa to discuss a free trade agreement (FTA). Negotiators from the two countries last met in Ottawa in December. According to the Honduran press, an agreement is close to being completed. This marks an alarming development in the efforts of the Canadian state and multinational corporations to deepen their relations with Honduras following the military coup of June 28, 2009.

Fri, 2011-03-18 13:43

Noah_Scape

This should be an eye opener for anyone who thinks Canada is innocent of the abuses we have seen in American Imperialism.

A few Canadian mining companies are involved in Central and South America - Pacific Rim Corp. is one that keeps coming up. Their support of military coups and removal of elected governments in several S.A. nations is repaid by granting Pacific Rim mining permits. Pacific Rim gets away with serious environmental abuses too.

Quote: "the mining operations of the Canadian firm Pacific Rim corp. in El Salvador, where prominant locals activists opposed to the mine have been assassinated, apparently with government and police approval because there is little investigation into the murders."

Here are some other examples -

El Salvador and Canadian mining firm Pacific Rim corp. - http://www.narconews.com/Issue64/article4074.html

Columbia FTA with Canada [2010] - http://tinyurl.com/yaoqyqj

http://tinyurl.com/yaoqyqj
Quotes:
"The key provisions of the deal relate to the security of Canadian investments in the mining and oil and gas sector."

"the deal before Parliament would increase the chances that Canadian companies invested in agriculture, mining and resource extraction in sensitive areas will be doing business with murderers, drug traffickers and arms smugglers"

And, a 2010 thread at Rabble last year on the Canada Columbia FTA:

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/cdn-columbia...

Sat, 2011-03-19 14:05

humanity4all

It is quite apt in history how forms of imperialism eventually come back to haunt societies that are imperialisric. In other words, what you "give out" comes back at you. Or put in another way, "the empire strikes back". Therefore, since this part of the world is the biggest producer of uranium, it is only quite fitting that most of the radiation coming from Japan, slowly makes its way back to its origins!

Well done canadians!

Sat, 2011-03-19 15:15

M. Spector M. Spector's picture

[url=http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye/2011/02/imperial-canada]Podcast of Todd Gordon's remarks at the launch of his book.[/url]

[url=http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2010/05/05/canada%e2%80%99s-imperialist-pr...'s imperialist project: Capital and power in Canadian foreign policy[/url] by Todd Gordon

[url=http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/433.php]Canadian Imperialism Stumbles Onwards[/url] by Todd Gordon

[url=http://rabble.ca/babble/babble-book-lounge/black-book-canadian-foreign-p... Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy[/url]

[url=http://www.kwantlen.bc.ca/__shared/assets/Burgess_Canada2834.pdf]Canada: Imperialist or Imperialized?[/url]

[url=http://www.zcommunications.org/canadian-capital-in-asia-by-harsha-walia]... Capital in Asia[/url]

[url=http://www.zcommunications.org/canada-for-anti-imperialists-by-justin-po... for Anti-Imperialists[/url]

[url=http://www.newsocialist.org/magazine/41/article01.html]War and Imperialism, Canadian-style[/url]

[url=http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/paper-2003/kellogg.pdf]After Left Nationalism: The Future of Canadian Political Economy[/url]

[url=http://socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet046.html]Canada and World Order After the Wreckage[/url]

[url=http://www.zcommunications.org/ngos-and-imperialism-by-yves-engler][Cana... NGOs and Imperialism[/url]

Sat, 2011-03-19 15:45

WilderMore

humanity4all wrote:
Or put in another way, "the empire strikes back".

Well done canadians!

Or in a Star Trek universe, the Ferengi thirty-fourth Rule of Acquisition is "War is good for business" followed by the thirty-fifth rule "Peace is good for business".

Sat, 2011-03-19 16:05

milo204

In other words, when you're not in control you want to start a war. When you're in control you want peace.

It's obvious why we pursue these policies. There's no way a stable democratic south america will allow countries like canada/US/EU/etc to pillage their resources for pennies on the dollar. It's much more profitable to have a client state that will give away their resources in exchange for power or wads of cash in the hands of the few.

If these countries are actually democratic they might get the unacceptable notion that it is their own people who should benefit from their countries resources....

Sat, 2011-03-19 17:56

PraetorianFour

WilderMore wrote:
humanity4all wrote:
Or put in another way, "the empire strikes back".

Well done canadians!

Or in a Star Trek universe, the Ferengi thirty-fourth Rule of Acquisition is "War is good for business" followed by the thirty-fifth rule "Peace is good for business".

Ya there is no profit in peace. Lots of profit in war. Surprising? no not really.

Sat, 2011-03-19 17:57

Fidel

Ya when the Yanks own our oil and gas and electricity, and most of Canada's manufacturing and 30 some odd other sectors of the economy, and Canadian banks financing two-thirds of 1200+ US takeovers of Canadian corporations and valuable crown assets since 1985, a few lonely Canadian oligarchs are forced to go foraging into Latin America for cheap mineral wealth and slave labour. It's like a few buzzards and crows forced off their own road kill by American eagles and some chickenhawks.

Sat, 2011-03-19 18:02

Fidel

"Canadian imperialism", that's a good one. It's more like doing our colonial administrative duty to help out Uncle Sam with keeping the colonies down and on their knees in Latin America. Steve HArper, Paulie Pockets, Brian Baloney, Jean Chretien: all colonial administrators to the vicious empire. To refer to any of them as imperial rulers is a bad joke. They are just not that important.

Sat, 2011-03-19 23:34

#10

I give Chretien a bit of credit for keeping us out of Iraq. If Harper would have been in power back then he would have begged to have Canadians on the front line and perhaps even brought in conscription -- the level of hysteria at the time being high enough that he might have thought he could get away with it.

Sun, 2011-03-20 00:35

#11

M. Spector M. Spector's picture

ov wrote:

I give Chretien a bit of credit for keeping us out of Iraq.

Quote:

National myths die hard. And few Canadian myths are more entrenched than the notion of this country as a peacekeeper, free from the militarism and imperialism of the US. Yet this image is a wild fantasy that obscures some ugly truths. [b]Take Canadian participation in the war on Iraq, for instance. While many in Canada believed that this country's armed forces were not part of the war, the reality was different.[/b] Twenty-five military planners from Canada were active members of the US military's central command (CENTCOM) in Qatar, the body that planned and oversaw the assault on Iraq. About 1300 military personnel on three Canadian warships provided protection for US aircraft carriers from which much of the air war was launched. Canada also had 31 troops inside Iraq working with US and British forces, including ten Canadian pilots who participated in the aerial bombing of Iraq. On top of all this, the Canadian government allowed US aircraft bound for the Persian Gulf to refuel and change crews in Newfoundland. So, however questionable his motives, when [b]US ambassador Paul Cellucci claimed that Canada was offering more support to the war in Iraq than all but three or four nations[/b], he was right. In addition to this direct military involvement, Canadian business is a major producer of equipment for the US war machine. Canadian firms export almost $3 billion worth of military hardware to the US every year. Canadian-built simulators, flight management systems, data networks and computer equipment guided US helicopters, stealth bombers, fighter jets, armoured vehicles and ships used in the attack on Iraq. Not surprisingly, Canada's business elite came out loudly in favour of the war. This is not because the Canadian business class is a mere puppet of US capitalists, as some commentators suggest. On the contrary, the business class in Canada represents a powerful and well-organized section of international capitalism which profits from imperialist undertakings of its own.

War and Imperialism, Canadian-style - from my reading list at #3 above.

Sun, 2011-03-20 01:13

#12

Spector, I knew about our covert involvement and have no delusions about our role as "peace keeper." Especially now that Harper is taking his marching orders from the same neo-con advisors that have been behind the scenes south of the party for the past few dedades. This neo-con establishment is closely aligned with "the business class in Canada represents a powerful and well-organized section of international capitalism which profits from imperialist undertakings of its own." It's illegal to make quips about who makes up major sections of this group but lets just say that they aren't Muslims.

Chretian, however, didn't give them the vocal support that would would have given the moral credibility that they were looking for. Canada did have a reputation for integrety at one point, but I don't know when that died.

Sun, 2011-03-20 01:46

#13

M. Spector M. Spector's picture

Canada's reputation for "integrity", if it ever existed, was entirely undeserved.

Sun, 2011-03-20 08:02

#14

humanity4all

Therefore, in consideration with above comments... If democracy is what we are seeing in Iraq and freedom is what women are now experiencing in Afghanistan, why do canadians not want the same for their citizens?

To give a local example. If civilisation is what europeans brought to the Peoples of canada, living here for tens of thousands of years, than why are all canadians not governed by the indian act?

Sun, 2011-03-20 08:35

#15

Slumberjack

humanity4all wrote:
Therefore, in consideration with above comments... If democracy is what we are seeing in Iraq and freedom is what women are now experiencing in Afghanistan, why do canadians not want the same for their citizens?

Because Canadians tend to look upon themselves as a higher form in whichever context is in play at the moment. If we're participating in the act of bringing freedom and democracy to other places, and what ends up being delivered bears a striking similarity to what was removed, then we just chalk it up to the reality as we know it that they're simply not ready for the full on levels of freedom that we enjoy, that these things are incremental, or that they have to develop into it just like we did. And when the brutality of what we delivered can no longer be ignored, then we fall back on the 'our son of a bitch' argument. We have an excuse for everything, even down to last one which says that everything is permissible to protect our way of live. Essentially this is what the Americans are working from at the moment. But we certainly don't want what we're providing. That's the export version.

Sun, 2011-03-20 17:14

#16

Noah_Scape

How can people resist the tyranny of "corporate-government imperialism"? What can you do when the state police force takes the side of the corporation?

- Community organised resistance forces is how these Mexicans are doing it. Local activism is "on site", so it cannot be ignored the way national or state laws and regulations are.

Quote:

"After state police massacred 39 campesinos in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero in 1995, community members decided to start their own police force comprised of volunteers. In 1998, in addition to patrolling and detaining suspected criminals, the communities began their own justice and community reeducation program to deal with offenders. Now they are using their community power to resist transnational mining companies invading their land and communities"

Link> http://upsidedownworld.org/main/

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And, if you hurry you can catch the wine and cheese reception at the Left Forum in NYC this weekend [March 19 20 2011] -

The annual Left Forum is taking place in New York City at Pace University from March 18 - 20.

This forum will be discussing the "relationship of government and social movements in Honduras, Bolivia, Venezuela and Argentina"

Quote:
"It will look at the debates surrounding the decision of The National People's Resistance Front of Honduras leadership to participate in the electoral process, and will examine how this decision will affect the relationship between the resistance movement and the de facto government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa. It will discuss social movements in Bolivia and their current relationship with the Evo Morales government, particularly in areas related to the gas industry and indigenous issues. In Argentina, the discussion will focus on the relationship between social movements and the Nestor Kirchner government. The panel will also look at how people in the US can stand in solidarity with these movements."

Link> http://tinyurl.com/48vaqq3

Sun, 2011-03-20 21:23

#17

N.Beltov

What you're describing in Mexico is "dual power". This is an essential part of any revolutionary transformation of a repressive regime.

It would be great if such "dual power" ideas could inspire Canadians to police themselves, for example, being disgusted and unwilling any longer to trust the racist police in Canada. And of course in so doing we would, all, honour FN peoples in this country and their lengthy struggles for justice. Something long overdue. Oh yeah.

Mon, 2011-03-21 00:06

#18

trippie

Candain Unemplyment rate is officially at around 10%. Nothings going to change here until lthat number goes higher.