Why Ethical Oil’s Deceptive ‘Women’s Rights’ Defense of Tar Sands is Insulting and Wrong

Why Ethical Oil’s Deceptive ‘Women’s Rights’ Defense of Tar Sands is Insulting and Wrong

 

Published by , October 27th, 2011 Canada , Climate Justice , Greenwashing , Impacted Communities , Oil , Politics , Tar Sands2 Comments

Cross posted from DeSmogBlog.com written by Emma Pullman

EthicalOil.org’s new spokesperson, Kathryn Marshall, authored an insulting piece this week on the Huffington Post titled“Care About Women’s Rights? Support Ethical Oil”. Marshall’s piece is a response to the October 11 article by Maryam Adrangi at It’s Getting Hot In Here.  Adrangi argues that the underlying motive of the “ethical oil” campaign is to deflect negative attention from the tar sands, not to actually engage in a conversation about women’s liberation.

“If women’s rights were of genuine concern to EthicalOil.org” writes Adrangi, “then there would be a conversation about the impacts that tar sands extraction has on women”.

You’ll notice that Marshall’s attempted rebuttal fails to actually address the substantive criticisms made in Adrangi’s piece – Marshall never mentions the impacts of Alberta’s tar sands development on women, but instead repeats the same arguments and general hand-waving that sparked Adrangi’s criticism of EthicalOil.org’s conservative pundits in the first place.

Marshall’s promotion of tar sands oil is framed around a central argument that if we care about women’s rights then we must support tar sands expansion, and by extension the Keystone XL pipeline, because Canadian women fare far better than women in petrocracies, such as Saudi Arabia.  But Marshall’s argument doesn’t hold up to scrutiny for three major reasons.

The first is that increasing tar sands output will not hurt the Saudi sheiks’ coffers. TransCanada’s own research proves that the Keystone XL pipeline was never meant to decrease our reliance on foreign oil, just to keep Gulf Coast refineries at capacity. As global demand for oil keeps going up, a marginal shift in Canadian and US consumption will be offset by growing demand from other countries, keeping prices high and continuing to enrich the oppressive Saudi regime. Expanding the tar sands just buys Saudi Arabia a bit more time to profit before we are compelled to shift away from oil addiction towards a clean energy future – the real ‘ethical’ choice.

This leads to the second major flaw in Ethicaloil.org’s argument: it presents the reader with a false choice. Marshall’s bait-and-switch suggests that we must make a choice between “conflict oil” and “ethical oil”. On the contrary, you can simultaneously support women’s rights and oppose Alberta’s tar sands. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, to say the least. If we really want to hurt the regimes of oppressive petrocracies, then the wise choice is to end our addiction to fossil fuels and move rapidly towards a clean energy economy, setting a model that the rest of the world can follow. EthicalOil.org’s entire line of reasoning is a diversionary tactic designed to obscure this hard reality. It’s a red herring, and a dangerous one at that.

Third, Marshall’s emotional appeal tells readers that because women’s rights are worse in petrocracries, then we needn’t concern ourselves with what’s happening in Canada. In Canada, we have female mayors and premiers. We are a liberal democratic nation that respects human rights. I agree that the plight of women in many petrocracies is grave, but that does not mean that the plight of many women in Canada deserves less consideration from Canadians.

We can and should engage in critical discussions on women’s rights in Canada. And tar sands expansion forces us to explore some of these issues head-on.

In Alberta’s tar sands region in particular, rates of sexual violence towards women have increased and women working in the industry have reported sexual harassment and gender discrimination. With expansion of the tar sands industry, instances of domestic violence in Fort McMurray have spiralled upwards, and few women have safe places to go, forcing many to return home to their abusers.

Instead of pretending that expanding the tar sands will somehow help women in Saudi Arabia, let’s talk about how we can help Canadian women impacted right here at home by tar sands expansion.

Marshall boldly demands to know where Canadian women’s groups have been in speaking out against Saudi women’s oppression. Did she ever think to ask these groups? I did. For one, Jan Slakov, the National Secretary for Canadian Voices of Women for Peace, the organization that Marshall attacks in her piece, told me,

“The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace has worked to support women’s rights and well-being, not just in Canada, but around the world. Groups have raised funds to support programs in countires where women face systematic human rights abuses. We also work at the international level to support women’s rights through the UN.”

As a Women’s Studies graduate, Marshall should know that Canadian women’s rights groups are engaged in this fight directly. Instead, Marshall, while claiming to be an advocate of women’s rights, erases the history of the women’s rights movement in Canada and its work in global solidarity with women living under oppressive regimes. I can’t speak for women’s groups, but I think it’s telling that we haven’t heard any credible organizations supporting EthicalOil.org’s message. I suspect they see right through EthicalOil.org’s insincere issue hijacking.

Slakov notes that women’s organizations are engaged in promoting a clean energy future while advocating women’s rights. She told DeSmogBlog:

“We recognize that extreme weather events associated with climate change disproportionately affect women, especially in the world’s poorest countries.  This is one of the many reasons why we feel it is essential that Canada do its part to cut GHG emissions to the earth’s atmosphere.”

Marshall’s attempts to disparage Canadian women’s rights groups proves Maryam Adrangi’s point: “When we get attention, they get defensive and they look silly.”

And what else frankly looks silly is Kathryn Marshall’s connections to the oil lobby. Marshall learned her pro-oil talking points as an intern with the fossil fuel-funded Fraser Institute. Their internship program is funded in part by oil and gas money, including Gwyn Morgan of Encana and R.J. Pirie of Sabre Energy. Until July 2009, Marshall worked as Fraser’sDevelopment Manager and raised over $125,000 to promote pro-oil, free market thinking.

Given this, it’s clear whose interests she’s chiefly representing, and it isn’t women’s rights. It’s the oil industry and its status quo profiteering without regard to the impacts of pollution on our planet, our familes and especially our women.

Ethicaloil.org,  if you really care about women’s rights, how about engaging in a real discussion of the impacts of the tar sands on First Nations communities and women? Prove you’re engaged in the advancement of women’s rights by joining the conversation about how to actually challenge oppressive Saudi sheiks —through a transition to a clean energy future.

Emma Pullman is a Vancouver-based researcher, writer and campaigner. She holds a Master’s degree in Political Science, and spent three years working within the provincial and federal governments in research and policy development. In addition to her DeSmogBlog work, Emma sits on the board of TEDxVancouver, and is a Communications Advisor with Leadnow.

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(Un)Ethical Oil’s New Sexist Public Relations Push

Published by , November 7th, 2011 global warming 

Given recent major actions opposing the tar sands in Washington, D.C. and Ottawa, it seems that increased pressure on the Alberta Tar Sands has held oil lobbyists’ feet to the fire.  EthicalOil.org, a site devoted to advancing the ideas of right-wing pundits such as Ezra Levant who has popularized the term ‘ethical oil’ to refer to tar sands bitumen (aka “dirty oil”), has begun using women’s liberation struggles to justify continued extraction and expansion of tar sands oil.

The premise is that supporting “conflict oil” from Saudi Arabia would prop up a regime that is oppressive to women. The underlying motive, however, is not to talk about women’s rights, but rather to deflect negative attention from the tar sands.

If women’s rights were ever of genuine concern to EthicalOil.org (and all the individuals that make it possible such as Ezra Levant, Alykhan Velshi, Kathryn Marshall, and their corporate oil profiteers) then there would be conversation about the impacts that all oil, even oil that some may call “ethical” (while most call dirty), extraction has on women.

Women working in the Alberta oil industry have reported sexual harrassment, gender discrimination, and unequal pay; and the tar sands boom has been coupled with increased rates of sexual violence whether they work in the industry or not. This gender-based discrimination makes the highest paying jobs less accessible to women and, with skyrocketing housing costs, makes affordable housing less accessible as well.

Furthermore, the premise is based on a problematic and delusional sense of Canadian nationalism and superiority in which Canada is socially advanced and civilized.

EthicalOil.org says that “every barrel of Ethical Oil that replaces a barrel of conflict oil is a good thing,” saying that getting oil from Saudi Arabia props up a regime that oppresses women. Simultaneously, EthicalOil.org avoids recognizing that purchasing “ethical oil” props up the Harper government which also oppresses women.

The premise of ‘ethical oil’ is that because Canada’s political regime is more ‘ethical’ than that of other oil producing states, then canada’s oil must therefore be “ethical” in comparison to oil from countries such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

Oil from these places is, by contrast, “conflict oil.”



Democracy Canadian-style Part II: At home

Special—”French Canadians are generally pre-French-revolution immigrant stock. Similarly Anglo-Canadians were against the American revolution (a merchants’ revolt against the crown). The downside of this is Canada’s enduring colonial mentality, and the constant reassertion of conservative elites (Confederation, Borden, Mulroney, Harper) and kowtowing to the Britain/ US imperial center…”
Written by Eric Walberg Эрик Вальберг إيريك ولبر    Wednesday, 27 February 2013 16:51 PDF Print E-mail
Saul argues that Canada was ‘founded’ as a modern nation not in 1867 but in 1701 with the Great Peace of Montreal between New France and 40 First Nations of North America. This treaty, achieved through negotiations according to Native American diplomatic custom, was meant to end ethnic conflicts. From then on, negotiation would trump direct conflict and the French would agree to act as arbiters during conflicts between signatory tribes. The paradigm is a confederation of tribes, consensus, the Aboriginal circle, “eating from a common bowl”. The treaty is still valid and recognized as such by the Native American tribes involved. French Canadians are generally pre-French-revolution immigrant stock. Similarly Anglo-Canadians were against the American revolution (a merchants’ revolt against the crown). The downside of this is Canada’s enduring colonial mentality, and the constant reassertion of conservative elites (Confederation, Borden, Mulroney, Harper) and kowtowing to the Britain/ US imperial center. (Diefenbaker was the one exception, defying US empire over stationing nuclear weapons on Canadian soil, and he was shafted by US do-gooder JFK and our own do-good Nobel Peacenik Lester Pearson.) 

Sadly, this contradiction in Canada’s conservative colonial heritage has meant that the thread of continuity from the days when natives counted (it was their land which the whites wanted to expropriate, albeit peacefully) has now officially snapped, as Bill C-45, and the political and media campaign against the native resistance shows. 

Natives face not only official pressure to give up their rights, but they face abuse, even by those who are supposed to protect them. The residential education programs, intended to forcibly assimilate native children by wiping out their languages and traditions and replacing them with modern (or rather ‘postmodern’) education, was exposed in recent years, even eliciting an official apology from Prime Minister Harper himself. Most recently Canada’s national police force stands accused of sexually abusing aboriginal women and girls in British Columbia, Human Rights Watch has revealed. 

The Idle No More protest movement, spearheaded by native activists, and joined by other Canadians who are opposed to the Conservatives’ agenda, is making alliances with similar groups in the US who are opposed to the neoliberal agenda. At the “Forward on Climate” march in February in Washington DC, Chief Jacqueline Thomas of the Saikuz First Nation warned that the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline will not only threaten indigenous communities living in its path, but the myriad of ecosystems that it will invade (the equivalent of the empire’s military invasions around the world). “When we take care of the land, the land [takes] care of us,” she pleaded.

Canadian pitbull

Harper is counting on Canada’s past do-good reputation to see it through in its new, hardnosed role as imperial pitbull. “Canada remains in a very special place in the world. We are the one major developed country that no one thinks has any responsibility for the [financial] crisis. We’re the one country in the room everybody would like to be,” he boasted at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009. The other G20 nations “would like to be an advanced developed economy with all the benefits that conveys to its citizens and at the same time not have been the source, or have any of the domestic problems, that created this crisis. We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.”

Harper should read a less tendentious history book. Canada is the colonial success story par excellence, and continues to be. In most colonies (for example, India), a small number of Europeans ruled over much larger Indigenous populations. In order to make profits from a colony, Europeans needed the labor of the people they had conquered to amass profit.

Colonialism in Canada was different. Here it took the form of settler colonialism (other states with this type of colonialism include the USA, Australia and Israel). “Settler colonialism took place where European settlers settled permanently on Indigenous lands, aggressively seized those lands from Indigenous peoples and eventually greatly outnumbered Indigenous populations,” writes analyst David Camfield. It destroyed the organic cultures that grew out of relationships with those lands, and, ultimately, eliminating those Indigenous societies.

What’s left of the natives, with their very different way of life, ended up tangled up in the legal system, desperately them trying to keep their original treaties alive, though these treaties, with their many vague loop-holes, have in any case proved threadbare over time. And watch out for retribution. Native spokesperson Cindy Blackstock, who has spent more than five years trying to hold Ottawa accountable for a funding gap on the welfare of aboriginal children on reserves, found herself hounded by government surveillance intended to discredit her, as recently confirmed by a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal statement.

Similarly, (white) Canadians who run afoul of the neocolonial role Canada plays abroad have been burned. Gary Peters, an Australian national based in Canada, was found complicit in “crimes against humanity”, and Cyndy Vanier — of involvement in organized crime and falsification of documents, for helping deposed Libyan president Gaddafi’s son, Saadi Gaddafi, flee Libya in 2011.

Canada has graduated as the consummate colonial success story, and has now moved smoothly into its postmodern role as ‘supporter of human rights’ — not by promoting disinterested NGOs and providing lots of funding, but via invasion, exploitation and/or subterfuge at home and abroad. This should come as no surprise, where the indicator for success in economics and politics is not fairness and consensus, but profit and engineered majority-rule. 

Canada’s own democratic traditions have been trampled time and again by Harper, who prorogued Parliament twice, becoming the first prime minister ever to be found guilty of contempt of parliament, and flagrantly ignores freedom of speech by muzzling senior bureaucrats, withholding and altering documents, and launching personal attacks on whistleblowers. There is an ongoing investigation into voting fraud perpetrated by the Conservatives in the last election.

That this reality continues to be touted as Canada’s success story is a sorry commentary on our postmodern reality, where truth is in the eyes of the beholder, and public opinion is in any case shaped by ‘them that controls the words’.

This is the continuation of Democracy Canadian-style Part I: Abroad


OpEds | Canada-Syria: White dominions, brown colonies

By Eric Walberg
[Note: See below our addendum with a historical note on Syria’s national hero, Gen. Yusuf al-‘Azma]

syr-French-Mandate_of_Syria

When first arriving in Lebanon, the French were received as liberators by the Christian community, but as they were entering Syria they were faced with a strong resistance. The mandate region was subdivided into six states. They were the states of Damascus (1920), Aleppo (1920), Alawites (1920), Jabal Druze (1921), the autonomous Sanjak of Alexandretta (1921) (modern-day Hatay), and the State of Greater Lebanon (1920) which became later the modern country of Lebanon. The drawing of those states was based in part on the sectarian make up on the ground in Syria. However, nearly all the Syrian sects were hostile to the French mandate and to the division it created. This was best demonstrated by the numerous revolts that the French encountered in all of the Syrian states. Maronite Christians of Mount Lebanon, on the other hand, were a community with a dream of independence that was being realized under the French; therefore, Greater Lebanon was the exception to the newly formed states.  It took France three years from 1920 to 1923 to hold full control over Syria and to quell all the insurgencies that broke out, notably in the Alawite territories, Mount Druze and Aleppo. (Source: Wikipedia)

France and Britain have begun to circle Syria like vultures (my apologies to vultures, who politely wait for their prey to die). They plan to save Syria from chemical bombs – a surreal replay of Suez 1956, where France and Britain cooked up a pretext to invade Egypt with the US posing as the more restrained gang member, not to mention Iraq 2003, when they reversed their roles.

Meanwhile, Canada sings on demand for its US-Israeli sponsors. The Canadian government solemnly announced this week it is ready — if asked by NATO — to deploy the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit, which handles chemical, biological and radioactive attacks. Canada will also send a Disaster Assistance Response Team to provide clean water in Syrians, as well as engineers and staff who can help set up a field hospital. A friendly navy frigate is already offshore.

Once again Prime Minister Stephen Harper plays his supporting role in the NATO-scripted drama unfolding in the Middle East. He takes “the threat of chemical weapons in Syria very seriously”, but demurs on whether Canada will send CF-18 fighter jets over Syria, as it did in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone, or put combat troops on the ground. He has not yet given the current opposition coalition, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), his blessing, although US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally recognized the opposition at a Friends of Syria summit in Morocco on Wednesday, joining the Euro crowd.

The Canadian government has no foreign policy anymore, doing exactly as it is told by its Israeli advisers, so the reason for Harper’s coyness must be found there. Israel itself is in a quandary about Syria.

Israeli policy during the past three decades has following the divide-and-conquer Yinon Doctrine, playing various forces among its Arab neighbors against each other — Maronite and Orthodox Christian, Sunni and Shia Muslim, Druze, etc — in order to keep the Middle East weak and unstable.

In Syria, that even meant quietly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood during its ill-fated uprising in 1981, not because Israel wanted an Islamist Syria, but to keep the Syrian government off-balance. The secular and nationalist Baathist regime, together with Egypt, fought a war with Israel in 1967. These secular governments were the big threat, and it was only natural to try and cripple the regimes of Egypt and Syria, even if that meant working with Islamists.

Today, the West is eagerly arming the SNC, where Islamists predominate, even as Israel and Canada dawdle. How can this be?

The explanation is simple. As Kissinger said of Iraq and Iran during their war in the 1980s, “A pity they both can’t lose.” Or Truman when the Germans invaded Russia 22 June 1941: “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible.” Not only is Egypt now rediscovering its Islamic, very anti-Zionist roots, making Egyptian Islamists the main enemy, but there is no guarantee the SNC will defeat the Syrian army, and unlike far away France, Britain and the US, Israel must live chock-a-block with whoever is in Damascus — and Cairo — when the mustard gas clears.

Ha, ha. Only joking. What about the chemical weapons threat? Syria is one of the few countries that has not signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). (Israel has signed but not ratified it.) But Assad has made it clear he will not approve their use on civilians. Saddam Hussein’s example is proof enough of the madness of that. The real worry over WMDs is that whatever supplies the Syrian government has could soon fall into the hands of the western-backed rebels, in particular, al-Nusrah Front (aka, al-Qaeda in Iraq).

However, who can blame Assad if he drops a few on invading Brits, French, and yes Americans? It would be a perfect way to ‘celebrate’ the centenary of WWI, where holier-than-thou Germany, Britain and France pioneered their use, despite having signed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 banning them. Britain used chlorine against the Germans in 1915 but the wind blew back on the British trenches — a case of ‘friendly gas’. The US took their use to new heights in Vietnam with Agent Orange. Only the one-time US ally Saddam Hussein was ever brought to justice for using them. The US and Russia still have stockpiles (not to mention nuclear and biological weapons), despite their obligation under the CWC to destroy them all.

The Syrians would get special satisfaction from gassing the French, who carved up and invaded Syria in 1920. Syria was promised France by Britain as its reward for the 1.7 million French who died in the WWI bloodbath that killed 16 million (Britain lost ‘less than’ a million). The only ‘positive’ outcome for the Allies was the destruction and occupation of the Ottoman Caliphate and the creation of a Jewish state there.

This was an outrageous betrayal of the Arabs, who had arguably tipped the balance in WWI — at great loss — in Britain’s favor, on the promise of post-war independence. But, as the Spanish say, ‘You don’t dance with the devil; he dances with you.” Britain wanted Iraq for its oil and Palestine for a Jewish state, “the hill citadel of Jerusalem” according to geopolitical theorist Halford Mackinder — the last link in the British empire. With a wink and a nod from Britain, France invaded Syria in 1920 and crushed a heroic uprising in 1925–1927, killing thousands. Greater Syria was divided into southern Turkey, French-occupied Lebanon/ Syria, and British-occupied Jordan/ Palestine.

It was not till 1946 that the French were finally booted out — kicking and screaming. Post-WWII Syrian politics is a litany of coups, egged on by the US, until the army and socialist Baathists finally settled on Hafiz al-Assad in 1971. Trying to pick up the pieces after the brutal French occupation and living next door to permanent nightmare Israel are not conducive to the charade of western-style pluralism, so the subsequent harsh dictatorship of Assad I and the new-improved Assad II are not surprising. The SNC alternative has no prospects for ruling a united Syria. Syria’s future under the SNC is already being played out in Iraq, though Assad is far more popular and sensible than Saddam Hussein, and his demise will take down much of the Syria social order with him.

This is fine from an Israeli point of view as long as the Islamists are kept busy fighting their coalition ‘allies’ within the SNC. But if the Islamists dominate in the SNC, and if the power vacuum allows al-Qaeda to take root (it already has), this could be a problem for Israel. Look what happened to the Islamists in Gaza, where they surged and triumphed in elections in 2006 and remain strong. Israel has only to look south to Egypt to see how a revolutionary coalition can turn into an Islamic government which is not nearly as pliable as the secular dictatorship it replaced. This is what keeps many Israelis rooting for Assad.

When France was colonizing Syria a century ago, Canada was already the great colonial success story as a ‘white dominion’, and was allowed to join the ranks of the imperial rich, unlike Syria et al. (Lawrence ‘of Arabia’ lobbied Churchill to create a united Arab British mandate as the first ‘brown dominion’, with no success.)

As a former colony of both France and Britain, the loyal ‘white dominion’ of yesteryear, Canada may look like the perfect intermediary today: ‘Be nice and you too can graduate from colony to dominion.’ However, the flip side of white dominion status is that, like Israel or South Africa, you have built your society on the bones of the ‘brown’ natives. So it is not surprising that this week, even as Harper was toying with recognizing the SNC (who cares?), he faces ongoing protests over government neglect of Canada’s First Nations.

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began a hunger strike in Ottawa charging the government with “marginalizing our political leadership, along with the enforced segregation of our people so that our rich heritage can be wiped out and the great bounty contained in our traditional lands be made available for exploitation by large multi-national companies.” But Canada’s First Nations — what’s left of them — can thank their lucky stars they weren’t born in the ‘brown colonies’ of the Middle East.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Walberg is author of Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games http://claritypress.com/Walberg.html You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/
A version of this appeared at http://www.presstv.com/detail/2012/12/14/278033/white-dominions-brown-colonies/http://www.presstv.com/detail/2012/12/14/278033/white-dominions-brown-colonies/

________________
ADDENDUM

The great and largely unknown hero Yusuf al-‘Azma
Where’s Hollywood when we need it?

Yusuf_Al_Azma

Postmortems: Ohio and an Attempt to Cheat the Vote?

Wherein our senior contributing editor conjures up some explanations for the surprising Ohio outcome, “counterscript” to many seasoned observers…

By Steve Jonas  
Nov. 7, 2012

First, let me say, I was wrong in my prediction for the Presidential Election (1).  For the record, I said: “It is becoming increasingly apparent that Mitt Romney will win the Presidency. He appears to be ahead in the popular vote. Whether he will actually also finish ahead of the President in the electoral vote count seems to be becoming immaterial. First, there seems to be on the GOP side a campaign getting underway to challenge any Obama electoral vote victory (given that Romney indeed would have a substantial lead in the popular vote). It would bring pressure, both public and private, on the electors to not vote as they were chosen to do, but rather to “recognize the popular will” (as if Republicans do that in any other circumstance).”

Then I went on to say: “Second, there is increasing evidence that a massive vote-count cheating operation has already been organized in some of the key ‘battleground’ states (2-7) like Ohio, which Bush won in 2004 by cheating. (The Ohio Secretary of State, in charge of the ballot counting, just happened to be the Chair of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.) If this strategy were to be successful, and could withstand the challenges that the Obama Campaign might or might not mount against it, that would make the first plan superfluous.”

Let me modify that.  The President did win the popular vote, by about 1.6 million votes.  (The polls aren’t slanted to the GOP, are they?  Nah.  Couldn’t be.)  But on the second point, I think that there was evidence of an attempt being made to cheat in Ohio (as the GOP clearly did in 2004 and likely did in 2000 (2-7).  On Tuesday evening, sometime around 11PM EST, after all of the networks, including Fox, called Ohio for Obama, I just happened to switch to Fox. And there was “independent” “analyst,” a chubbier Karl Rove (the $240 million man) saying “hold on there. I’ve got the Ohio Secretary of State’s website up and he says that the vote difference is only 20-plus [yes, that was 20 votes, count ‘em] for Obama. And there is a huge number of Republican votes outstanding.” This of course is the Ohio Secretary of State who, following in Ken Blackwell’s footsteps (Blackwell being the man who supervised the 2004 voting while at the same time being the Ohio State Chair for Bush/Cheney), did his darnedest to suppress the minority vote in Ohio, an attempt that was openly hailed on racist grounds by at least one GOP county chair (8).

It happens that there was no such thing as the virtual tie that Rove had claimed to exist (except as it was apparently being presented on the website of the Ohio Secretary of State).  The other networks, and indeed Fox itself, had Obama ahead by about 20,000 votes at the time.  Nevertheless, Rove’s claim got Fox to pause, and so did CNN and MSNBC (I checked).  The latter two did not say why they were pulling back, at least a bit. However, shortly thereafter, Fox sent one of their anchors to their “decision desk,” the home of their numbers crunchers, when Rove was still holding onto his “Sec. of State says 20 votes” story.  They held firmly to their count that Obama was actually 20,000 votes ahead and to their projection that he would win Ohio.  Nevertheless, a scheduled Romney appearance, apparently planned for a concession speech, was delayed. Then by about 11:30 all the networks went back to their call of Ohio for Obama. And anyway, by that time Fox was then showing Obama with a 290 electoral vote total, so even without Ohio’s 20, he still had won.

So what might have happened in that half hour or so that the projection of Ohio for Obama had been at least partially called back (reminding one of similar episodes in the 2000 and 2004 elections)?  My guess is that someone may have tried to get the cheat machine going in Ohio and couldn’t. We will never know if such an episode actually happened.  However, it happens that one well-informed colleague of mine had told me several days before the election that the left-wing web organization Anonymous had gotten into the Ohio vote-counting computers, was prepared to hack any changed results, and had made their intention known privately.  An attempt to implement the scheme may have been tried anyway, and then it was found not to be successful. Your guess is as good as mine. We’ll never know.

But Rove had seemed so confident when he called a halt to calling the election for Obama.  Maybe it was Obama’s getting to 270 without Ohio (and as we now know Virginia went for Obama [!] so even if Ohio had been cheated over to Romney it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway) that caused the operation to be halted, if indeed there had been one.  If this hypothetical is correct, someone then made the call to Romney, said “sorry Mitt, we couldn’t do it even though Tagg is a part-owner of the machines,” the concession speech was made, and it was all over.

My friend who told me about the Anonymous counter-hacking operation penned this post-script:

“Romney’s refusal to concede [at first] raised the specter of Bush’s refusal in 2000 – and we well know the machinations that motivated that one. Clearly, you read [the situation] correctly – they were in the throes of orchestrating a hacked election in OH for the second time – the first being 2004. With Romney’s son and 45 former employees (former in name only) holding the titles to a massive bloc of voting machines in OH – they must have considered the capability and viability of rigging this one, too.  Romney’s very hesitant and even reticent concession must now be explained and totally in original context – the calling of the state of OH that precipitated the calling of the US presidential election for his opponent – while he and his surrogates held the keys and the codes to a vast array of electronic voting machines in the crucial state of OH.”

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if anyone raises questions about the incident and, if a response is made, what the answer might be.

STEVE JONAS, MD, author of more than 30 books and hundreds of essays on political and cultural topics, is a senior contributing editor to The Greanville Post, Buzzflash and other leading progressive venues. His sleeper futuristic classic, The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022, is slated for republication by Punto Press in the Spring of 2013. 

2. Bello, G., Fitrakis, B., and Wasserman, H., “Does the Romney Family Now Own Your e-Vote?” Friday, 19 October 2012 The Free Press, http://truth-out.org/news/item/12204-does-the-romney-family-now-own-your-e-vote.

3. Campbell, D.G. and James, C., “NSA Analyst Proves GOP Is Stealing Elections,”
http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-proves-gop-is-stealing-elections/article20598.html

4. Charnin, R., “Updated Daily: Presidential True Vote/Election Fraud Forecast Model,
Oct. 31, 2012, http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/update-daily-presidential-true-voteelection-fraud-forecast-model/

5. itobin53, “Romney family buys voting machines through Bain Capital investment,” Oct 19, 2012, Select Media, http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/13221476-romney-family-buys-voting-machines-through-bain-capital-investment.

6. Daily Kos, “Anonymous gives warning to Karl Rove,” Oct. 28, 2012, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/28/1151819/-Anonymous-gives-warning-to-Karl-Rove.

7.  Chin, L., “Has the Election already been Stolen for Romney/Ryan?” Global Research, October 30, 2012,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/has-the-election-already-been-stolen-for-romneyryan/5310166.

8.   Shen, A., “Ohio GOP Election Board Member: Our Voting Process Shouldn’t Accommodate Black Voters,” Think Progress.org, Election 2012, Aug 19, 2012, http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/19/711551/gop-election-board-member-admits-he-canceled-weekend-voting-in-ohio-to-suppress-the-black-vote/?mobile=nc

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Je me souviens: I’ll remember the Quebec student strike

By Nadim Fetaih, ROAR Magazine
Originally reported on August 18, 2012

“I will remember all that happened here; I will remember what we are capable of; I will learn from past mistakes; and I will push for a better future…”

After months of militancy in the streets of Montréal, the student strikers now must face off with their biggest foe yet. Yes, the SPVM (Montréal Police) and the SQ (Provincial Police) were known for their brutality against any protester. And yes, there have been major sacrifices by the students, including three of them losing an eye and one being bludgeoned to the point of going comatose. But the hardest force to fight against the student strike has shown its ugly face — the electoral process; the system’s innate ability to take the fight from the streets and use it as a political strong point.

We have seen cases like this before in Canada, the health care struggle being the most infamous. The Liberals took away the accomplishment of the people in the streets and used it for their own political gain. History books look back seeing the Liberals as those who pushed for the healthcare we all love, ensuring their own victory for years to come, and diminishing the power that comes from radical mobilization in the streets. Once again, we see the same technique being used in Montréal and Québec.

This system is a difficult one to fight. It does not drown out anti-systemic action, but rather incorporates the fight into a political selling point. The movement then dies, believing that the victory was in the acceptance of popular beliefs of the people by the system. But where is the victory if the memory of said victory is forever on the side of the system which was against the epoch of the people in the first place? Once this is done, it is not you who has changed the system, but the system which has changed the views of your actions and thus all that you are.

Currently, there is a provincial election — called at the most opportune time by the political elite to dismantle the solidarity of the students. For the past week there have been votes in every University and Cegep in Québec to see if the student population will continue its strike or await the results of the election. If Charest is elected once again, the strike will erupt like never before. But, the much larger possibility is that another party, the PQ, will win based on its mandate to freeze tuition fees. This could harm the movement beyond repair for some time- a movement whose original strike mandate was that they would not stop striking until the possibility of free tuition was perceived on the horizon.

To many people, the possibility of allowing others to continue the fight is a beautiful act. They can go back to school. They can avoid further injuries and serious psychological issues from the consistent police brutality. The hope of our representative democracy is one that many non-radicalized students still aspire to. But this hope comes with a loss of understanding of the larger implications of this student strike. When battles occurred, people — young and old — would lean out of their balcony and yell “get those fuckers!” to those fighting against the police. It would give courage to those going into all-out war. This is a courage that cannot come from any other source aside from the solidarity and mutual aid of the people. It shows that this is not just a student problem but a problem in society as a whole. To take the fight out of the hands of the strikers and their supporters now is to destroy that very connection.

Yesterday, August 17th, a group of us Ontarians travelled from one Cegep to the next showing our support to all those who are voting to continue the strike. Our sign says it all; “Etudiants Ontariens en solidarité avec la grève”, or “Ontario students in solidarity with the strike”. We get the nods of approval, thumb ups, and the occasional fist of solidarity from passers-by, but as we wait and sit for the General Assemblies to finish, our anxiousness fills the air. Small, half-hearted conversations break out in order to cover the deafening silence as time itself seems to slow down. The clouds and chilled temperature epitomizes the emotions felt by all the supporters outside the Cegeps. It seems Montréal is the only stronghold of schools still willing to continue the strike. The rest of Québec has all voted against continuing the strike — at least until the end of the elections.

But still we wait with hope and solidarity in our hearts. This is a major battle for the students and their supporters, but no matter what happens in the coming weeks there is one thing that I know for sure: je me souviens — I will remember. This small sentence is on every license plate in Québec and now more than ever it will be a reminder of the necessity to remember the power the students held in the streets and the possibility of change from the people.

August 17, 3:48 PM (15:48)

The long wait is over.

The strike mandate will not be renewed by the most militant Cegep in Montréal — the last stronghold of the student strike of all the Cegeps. Cheers and clapping erupted when the votes were counted, but there was a sense of despair for all supporters who were hoping they could continue. It seemed that the threats and intimidation tactics by the police, government, and administration won the vote — the latest of which was an e-mail from the administration threatening to fail students who went on strike.

The universities are still currently on strike and will be back in school on the 27th, but this is a major blow to the student movement that had brought with it hope and inspiration to a country which seemed to have none. There are rumours that at least one of the universities may re-vote on the strike mandate after they return. This may very well be the beginning of the end of the student movement branded with the now infamous ‘carré rouge’, or red square.

Our heads hung low at hearing this news. Holding back tears, I couldn’t help but feel like I had just witnessed a death. It is truly a sad day. But, there are still lessons to be learnt — something I believe we must all understand in order to continue forward.

This movement was a reactionary movement from the get-go, so the beginning may have been the end of this beautiful revolutionary moment. The provincial government had implemented a tuition hike of 75 percent within three years, and while there has been a growth in mobilization beforehand, and a long history of student strikes, this was the main reason that much of the students took to the streets.

This, coupled with a fascist law which would see any protester arrested with massive fees for striking and possible jail time, made it become a very defensively militant movement, especially once this special law was passed in May. To crush it, then, was a simple task: get rid of the tuition hike and call an election to give the opportunity to change the face of the system (a brilliant move, if I can say so myself).

So what can we learn from this? It’s simple: a reactionary movement will die the instant the action which provoked its emergence is taken back. The people will be appeased and the ‘normalcy’ of the system can be re-implemented. The only thing we can take from this is that we need to be proactive in our mobilization and direct action. Rather than mobilizing after a decision by the elite, we need to take to the streets before things get worse.

Though it may sound simple, this is an incredibly difficult task. Many people will not risk their lives, future, and livelihoods for what is yet to come. Most will onnly take the streets in reaction to a clearly perceived and immediately experienced problem. And, of course, this is understandable. Yet we need to be blatant and give examples of moments in which the power of the people actually has changed things. Québec is, once again, the perfect example.

Yes, the the students of Québec could have kept fighting, with public support and mobilization at all-time highs; they could easily have achieved free education for all and continued fighting for workers, migrants, and the general population afterwards. But they were still able to get rid of a nefarious policy and change the course of government simply by showing up in massive numbers and forcing the elite to listen. They were heard. They were feared. You can see this simply by the creation of the special law banning protest. This is a victory, no one can deny that.

The next step, in Canada especially, is for the mobilization of students outside of Québec through a simple platform: “look what Québec could do; let us do the same and achieve greatness!” The demand needs to be radical — free education for all! — but Québec has shown that it is possible. The student protesters achieved a victory on their original demand, and we can too. It will be difficult, especially with the strike nearing its end, but it is doable.

This struggle has become about much more than the students of Québec alone. This is more than just another student movement. We owe it to the ideals and successes of this movement, and all those who have injured themselves participating in it, to stand up.

Je me souviens. I will remember all that has happened here. I will remember all that we are capable of. I will learn from the mistakes of the past and I will push for a better future. This is the lesson we all must learn. Here in Canada. In North America. And the world.

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