Who Will Rule?
Citizen movements are proving that we can take on corporate power, and together build a future that works for all life.

By Michael Marx and Marjorie Kelly
From Yes! Magazine
2007

Corporate power lies behind nearly every major problem we face—from stagnant wages and unaffordable health care to overconsumption and global warming. In some cases, it is the cause of the problem; in other cases, corporate power is a barrier to system-wide solutions. This dominance of corporate power is so pervasive, it has come to seem inevitable. We take it so much for granted, we fail to see it. Yet it is preventing solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our time. With global warming a massive threat to our planet and a majority of U.S. citizens wanting action, why is the U.S. government so slow to address it? In large part because corporations use lobbying and campaign finance to constrain meaningful headway.

Why are jobs moving overseas, depressing wages at home, and leaving growing numbers under- or unemployed? In large part because trade treaties drafted in corporate-dominated back rooms have changed the rules of the global economy, allowing globalization to massively accelerate on corporation-friendly terms, at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment.

Why are unions declining and benefits disappearing? In large part because corporate power vastly overshadows the power of labor and governments, and corporations play one region off against another, busting unions to hold down labor costs while boosting profits, fueling a massive run-up in the stock market.

Why were electricity, the savings and loan industry, and other critical industries deregulated, contributing to major debacles whose costs are borne by the public? In large part because free market theory, enabled by campaign contributions and lobbying, seduced elected officials into trusting the marketplace to regulate itself.

With all this happening, why do we not read more about the pervasiveness of corporate power? In large part because even the “Fourth Estate,” our media establishment, is majority owned by a handful of mega-corporations.

Big corporations have become de facto governments, and the ethic that dominates corporations has come to dominate society. Maximizing profits, holding down wages, and externalizing costs onto the environment become the central dynamics for the entire economy and virtually the entire society. What gets lost is the public good, the sense that life is about more than consumption, and the understanding that markets cannot manage all aspects of the social order. What gets lost as well is the original purpose of corporations, which was to serve the public good.

A Movement for the Public Good
The solution is to bring corporations back under citizen control and in service to the public good. The main components of such a movement already exist—including organized labor, environmentalists, religious activists, shareholder activists, students, farmers, consumer advocates, health activists, and community-based organizations.

We've seen the power of ordinary people working together on the streets of Seattle in 1999, challenging the World Trade Organization. We've seen them achieve impressive results curbing sweatshop abuses, limiting tobacco advertising, challenging predatory lending practices at home and abroad, and protecting millions of acres of forests, to name just a few successes.

We've also seen the growth of community-friendly economic designs like worker-owned enterprises, co-ops, and land trusts that, by design, put human and environmental well-being first.

Focus on Corporate Power
Each of these movements advocates for healthy communities, for a moral economy, and for the common good. If they acted together, they would possess enormous collective power. But as yet there is no whole, only disconnected parts. Despite many achievements, the gap in power between corporations and democratic forces has widened enormously in recent decades.

Activists and citizens are beginning to turn this around. We can build on this work. But if we are to close the gap in power, our strategies must evolve. We need to dream bigger, to speak with one voice across issue sectors, and to act more strategically. We need to focus less on symptoms of corporate abuse and more on the underlying cause—excessive corporate power. We must recognize that ultimately our struggle is for power. It is not just to make corporations more responsible, but to make them our servants, in much the same way that elected officials are public servants.

We need what the movement now lacks: a coherent vision of the role we want corporations to play in our society and a strategy for achieving that vision. It's about putting We the People back in charge of our future, rather than the robotic behemoths that set their sights on short-term growth and high profits, regardless of the consequences.

The streams of many small movements must flow together into a single river, creating a global movement to bring corporations back under the control of citizens and their elected governments. The urgent need for unified action impelled a small group of organizations to initiate a long-term Strategic Corporate Initiative (SCI), of which we are a part.

A Way Forward
Over the past 18 months, the SCI team interviewed dozens of colleagues and progressive business executives to develop a coherent, long-term strategy to rein in corporations. Three major strategic tracks emerged:

1. We need to restore democracy and rebuild countervailing forces that can control corporate power.
At the community level, this means elevating the rights of local municipalities over corporations. Communities should have the right to determine what companies will do business within their jurisdiction, and to establish requirements like living wage standards and environmental safeguards.

At the national level, restoring democracy means separating corporations and state. Corporations and the wealthy should no longer be allowed to dominate the electoral and legislative processes.

At the international level, the task is to create agreements and institutions that make social, environmental, and human rights an integral part of global economic rules.

2. We need to severely restrain the realms in which for-profit corporations operate.
Most extractive industries (fishing, oil, coal, mining, timber) take wealth from the ecological commons while paying only symbolic amounts to governments and leaving behind damaged ecosystems and depleted resources. The solution is to develop strong institutions that have ownership rights over common wealth. When commons are scarce or threatened, we need to limit use, assign property rights to trusts or public authorities, and charge market prices to users. With clear legal boundaries and management systems, the conflict over the commons shifts from a lopsided negotiation between powerful global corporations and an outgunned public sector, to a dispute resolved by deference to the common good.

3. We need to redesign the corporation itself, as well as the market system in which corporations operate.
Companies' internal dynamics currently function like a furnace with a dial that can only be turned up. All the internal feedback loops say faster, higher, more short-term profits. And maximizing short-term profits leads to layoffs, fighting unions, demanding government subsidies, and escalating consumerist strains on the ecosystem.

To prevent overheating, the system needs consistent input from non-financial stakeholders, so that demands for profit can be balanced with the rights and needs of employees, the community, and the environment.

To end “short-termism,” company incentives—including executive pay—should be tied to measurements of how well the company serves the common good. Stock options that inflate executive pay should be outlawed or redesigned. Speculative short-term trading in stock should be taxed at significantly higher rates than long-term investments. Companies should be rated on their labor, environmental, and community records, with governments using their financial power—through taxes, purchasing, investing, and subsidies—to reward the good guys and stigmatize the bad guys.

At the same time, we need to celebrate and encourage alternative corporate designs, such as for-benefit corporations, community-owned cooperatives, trusts, and employee-owned companies.

The paths outlined here do not represent impossibilities. With a citizens' movement, we could turn these musings into reality in 20 years.

Building a Global Citizens' Movement
How can we change laws regulating corporate behavior when corporations dominate the political process? The answer is that change begins with the people, not their government. It always has. Civil society organizations and communities can align their interests to produce a wave that government leaders must either surf upon or drown within.

The people control the vital issue of legitimacy, and no system can long stand that loses its legitimacy, as fallen despots of the 20th century have demonstrated. Corporations have already lost much of their moral legitimacy. Business Week in 2002 found that more than four out of five people believed corporations were too powerful. A national poll by Lake, Snell, Perry, and Mermin two years ago concluded that over three-quarters of Americans distrust CEOs and blame them for the loss of jobs. An international poll by Globe Scan recently found corporations far behind NGOs in public trust.

Trigger events lie ahead that will create further openings for change. We can expect to see new global warming catastrophes, unaffordable energy price spikes, and new corporate scandals. We can capitalize on these openings if we can help people connect the dots—making the link, for example, between excessive CEO pay, companies' short-term focus, and the inability of the private sector to manage long-term problems like the energy crisis and global warming.

We also need conceptual frames that link various movements together into a common effort. Currently our economy is dominated by a Market Fundamentalism frame, based on the belief that when self-interest is set free, Adam Smith's “invisible hand” will create prosperity for all. Also dominant is the Private Property frame, which justifies actions by executives and shareholders to exploit workers, communities, and the environment in order to maximize the value of stockholder and executive “property” in share ownership.

We can advance new frames. “Moral Economy,” for example, is a frame that puts the firing of thousands of employees and simultaneous awarding of multimillion-dollar bonuses to executives in a moral context. Suggested by Fred Block of the Longview Institute, the Moral Economy frame invites the introduction of new system forces into market dynamics in order to protect the moral order, and to counteract the amoral, short-term, self-interested behavior promoted by Market Fundamentalism.

Within the overarching framework of a Moral Economy, other frameworks like Community and the Commons challenge the supremacy of individualism and self-interest in the Market Fundamentalism frame. Community well-being becomes the standard by which business practices are judged, and communities themselves the arbiters of whether standards are met. The Commons represents our shared property and wealth, which is not to be exploited for the selfish benefit of the few.

Imagine ... Responsible companies protect the environment as though there is a tomorrow, and they view worker knowledge and company's reputation in the communities where they operate as their greatest assets.

New conceptual frames, trigger events, a crisis of legitimacy—elements like these can serve to help build a citizens' movement. But we cannot simply wait for this movement to form spontaneously. At the international level, we need regional organizations to come together to agree on overarching priorities. At the national level, we likewise need discussions that forge strategic priorities. At the community level, we need to create a network of municipalities working together to challenge corporate rights, to promote alternative business forms, and to inventory and claim our common wealth assets. Communities can also take the lead in creating public financing of campaigns, and in tying procurement and investment policies to corporate social ratings.

The idea is not that people will drop their issues and adopt new ones, but that we can learn to do both at once. We can knit ourselves into a single movement by adopting common frames and by integrating strategic common priorities into existing campaigns. For example, campaigns covering any issues from the environment to living wages could demand that targeted companies end all involvement in political campaigns.

As individuals, we can relegate our identities as consumers and investors to secondary status, elevating to first place our identities as citizens and members of families and communities, people with a stewardship responsibility for the natural world and with moral obligations to one another. We can stop buying the story that government is inefficient and wasteful, grasping that the real issue is how corporations and money dominate government. We can stop thinking that the solution is more Democrats in power, and realize it is more democracy.

The transformative changes we need will not be on any party's agenda until a citizens' movement puts them there. It's up to us to build that movement. By joining together—by taking on the common structural impediments that block progress—we can make it possible for all of us to achieve the variety of goals we're currently struggling for.

How would reducing the underlying power of corporations affect today's issue campaigns? Ending corporate campaign contributions and political advertising would benefit a great many public interest causes. How often in recent years have initiatives to protect forests, increase recycling, provide healthcare coverage, and raise minimum wages been defeated by corporations who outspent their civil society opponents by a ratio of over 30 to one? We've all witnessed elected leaders move to the political center once they started receiving a steady flow of corporate contributions.

Likewise, if we could reduce the 13,000 registered corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C. and end the revolving door between government regulators and corporations, would a handful of companies be allowed to own the lion's share of our media? Would savings and loan, energy, transportation, and tobacco companies still have been de- or unregulated? Would oil and coal companies still drive our national energy policy?

Imagine ...
Imagine what it might be like in 20 years if our efforts are successful and people could once again govern themselves. A line would be carefully drawn between corporations and the state, reducing financial influence over elections and lawmaking, making possible a whole new generation of progressive elected officials committed to social transformation.

In 20 years, imagine that the institutions of the global economy are overhauled so that labor and environmental issues are integrated into trade policies, and impoverished nations are freed from unpayable international debts. Trade and investment rules promote fair exchange, and national governments have the policy space to support social and environmental goals at home. Transnational corporations that take destructive action are held accountable in a World Court for Corporate Crimes.

In 20 years, imagine community self-governance has become the new norm. No longer can companies open new stores in communities where they are unwanted, or play communities off one another to extract illegitimate public subsidies. We value and protect our precious common wealth, from ecological commons like air, water, fisheries, and seeds, to cultural commons like music and science.

In 20 years, imagine that it is a violation of fiduciary responsibility for corporations to pay CEOs obscene amounts, or to aggressively fight unions and lobby against environmental safeguards. Responsible companies protect the environment as though there is a tomorrow, and they view worker knowledge and company's reputation in the communities where they operate as their greatest assets. Imagine such companies receive preferential treatment in government purchasing, taxation and investment policies, while irresponsible companies find themselves barred from government contracts.

Imagine we have a new national policy to make employee ownership as widespread as home ownership is today. And alternative company designs—like cooperatives and new, for-benefit companies—grow and flourish. Imagine, in other words, that We the People are able to reclaim our economy and society from corporate control. Daring to dream that such a turn of events is possible—and charting the path to get there—is a critical challenge of our new century.

Michael Marx is director of Corporate Ethics International (CEI) in Portland, Oregon. Marjorie Kelly is with the Tellus Institute in Boston and the author of The Divine Right of Capital. They are part of the Strategic Corporate Initiative, a group unifying efforts to curtail corporate power, and igniting change toward a more humane, sustainable democratic society and economy.


The Sham of Nuclear Power
Patrick Moore's Deadly Con Game

By Harvey Wasserman
From CounterPunch
2007

Vermont, like too many other places with nuke reactors, was recently disgraced by an industry-sponsored visit from Patrick Moore, who claims to be a "founder" of Greenpeace, and who is out selling nuclear power as a "green" technology. The two claims are roughly equal in the baldness of their falsehood.

But the impacts of the lies about Vermont Yankee---like so many other reactors---are far more serious. Vermont is now at a crossroads in its energy and environmental future. The reactor is old and infirm. Every day it operates heightens the odds on a major accident.

In a world beset by terror, there is no more vulnerable target than an aged reactor like Vermont Yankee. Its core is laden with builtup radiation accumulated over the decades. Its environs are stacked with supremely radioactive spent fuel. Its elderly core and containment are among the most fragile that exist.

Despite industry claims, VY's high-level nuke waste is going nowhere. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Edward McGaffigan has told the New York Times he believes the Yucca Mountain waste repository cannot open for at least another 17-20 years, if ever. At current production levels, it will by then require yet another repository at least that size to handle the spent fuel that will by then be stacked at reactors like VY. In short: the dry casks stacked at Vermont Yankee comprise what amounts to a permanent high level nuke dump, on the shores of the Connecticut River.

The Better Business Bureau recently recommended that the Nuclear Energy Institute pull its advertising that claims atomic reactors are clean and nonpolluting. The NEI is an industry front group. The BBB says that reactors cause thermal pollution in their outtake pipes and cooling towers, and also create substantial amounts of greenhouse gases in uranium production. In short, the Better Business Bureau has punctured the industry's claim the Vermont Yankee and other reactors are any kind of solution for climate chaos. The idea that VY is a "green" facility is utter nonsense.

Indeed, all nuclear power plants produce huge quantities of global warming gases as they are wrapped up in the mining of the uranium ore that goes into the fuel, and in the milling of that ore into fuel rods. The American West is littered with gargantuan piles of mill tailings that pour thousands of curies of radioactive radon into the atmosphere.

Fabricating fuel rods is one of the most electricity-intensive industries on earth, consuming millions of tons of coal in the process, emitting untold quantities of greenhouse gases. The radioactive emissions from the plants themselves also unbalance the atmosphere, and the heat they dump into the air and water directly heats the planet.

The alleged "renaissance" of nuclear power is nothing more than heavily funded industry hype. Wall Street financiers are not lining up to invest in these dinosaurs, and numerous utility executives have publicly doubted the wisdom of building them.

One reason is the explosive take-off of the renewable energy industry. Wind power is now very substantially cheaper than nukes. The production of photovoltaic cells, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, can barely meet demand. Investments in biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are soaring, as are those in the cheapest form of recovered energy, increased efficiency. Shutting VY would open Vermont to the revolution that is reshaping the future. Keeping it open locks Vermont into a sorry past.

Nuclear power is a 50-year experiment that has failed. Extending the operations of Vermont Yankee will only leave the state with more radioactive waste, a Connecticut River increasingly threatened by heat and radioactive emissions, and an increasingly radioactive relic despoiling the region. Nukes cannot compete in the market, and would all cease to operate overnight if the huge subsidy of federal liability insurance was removed.

It is fitting, therefore, that the industry has insulted Vermont by sending in a spokesman of the caliber of Patrick Moore. Moore has claimed for years to be a founder of Greenpeace, an exaggeration of his actual role. Moore sailed on the first Greenpeace campaign, but he did not actually found the organization. According to Dorothy Stowe, an American Quaker, who immigrated to Canada in 1966 and founded Greenpeace with her husband Irving Stowe and other Canadian pacifists and ecologists, "Technically, Patrick Moore cannot be described as a founder of Greenpeace. He was there in early stages with a lot of others. But what he is doing now is unconscionable."

In "Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World," author Rex Weyler writes "Greenpeace was founded by Quakers Dorothy and Irving Stowe, Marie and Jim Bohlen, and journalists Ben Metcalfe, Dorothy Metcalfe, and Bob Hunter. This group organized the first campaign to sail a boat into the U.S. nuclear test zone on Amchitka Island in the Bering Sea.

"Canadian ecologist and carpenter Bill Darnell coined the name "Greenpeace" in February 1970. A year later, Moore wrote to the organization, applying for a crew position on the boat and was accepted."

Moore wrote his letter on March 16, 1971, two years after the group was founded, describing himself as a graduate student "in the field of resource ecology." Clearly, then, Moore was not a founder of Greenpeace. Founders don't write letters applying to join. After the Stowes, Metcalfes and Bob Hunter left the organization, Moore briefly served as president, from 1977 to 1979. Former members recall that his bullyism nearly scuttled Greenpeace. He launched an internal lawsuit against his rivals in other Greenpeace offices, was replaced as president in 1979, and eventually drummed out of the organization as a troublemaker.

According to Steve Sawyer, who still works with Greenpeace in Amsterdam, "Moore harbored hopes of regaining his throne. Those hopes were dashed when he was chucked off the board in 1985." Moore started a fish farm, but did not succeed. He then did public relations for the Canadian forestry industry, absurdly defending massive clearcuts as an ecologically viable logging practice.

In a newspaper column in 1993, authentic Greenpeace founder Bob Hunter, called Moore "The Judas of the ecology movement." According to Hunter, Moore "burned off his old buddies because of his hubris. He was always a Green Tory at heart."

Moore says he is the "head scientist" of his public relations firm, but has never published a peer-reviewed scientific study. Moore exaggerates his role in Greenpeace and his credentials as a scientist to serve as a public relations hack for hire.

Moore now gets big money defending the indefensible, posing as a reformed environmentalist who has seen the light ... any light he is paid to see. He has hyped genetically modified crops, PVCs, and brominated flame retardants. He has soft-pedaled dioxins and toxic mine tailings dumped by Newmont mines into Indonesia bays.

Now he wants to sell Vermont on its nuke power plant. In exchange for a paycheck, he portrays Three Mile Island as a "success story." But if a melt-down turned Vermont Yankee into a TMI-type, billion-dollar liability, would he pitch in his pitch man's paychecks to help you underwrite this "success?"

Years ago, when he worked for Greenpeace, Moore wrote: "Nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devices that man has ever created. Their construction and proliferation is the most irresponsible, in fact the most criminal, act ever to have taken place on this planet."

Greenpeace agrees. The "revival" of nuke power is a hype being perpetrated by phony experts. Wall Street is not exactly lining up to invest in a failed technology with fifty years of proven failure. Vermont Yankee must be shut, dismantled and buried. Closing it now will narrow the burden of its permanent waste dump and open the door on the booming revolution in the real energy of the future: renewables and efficiency.

Harvey Wasserman, senior advisor to Greenpeace USA since 1990, is author of "Solartopia: Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030,"





Media Bully
As the head of one of Canada’s largest media companies, Canwest CEO Leonard Asper is bullying Canadians into submission.

By Sean Condon
From Adbusters
2008

On a bright summer afternoon last June, Mordecai Briemberg picked up 50 copies of a fake Vancouver Sun that were lying on a table in Vancouver’s downtown library. Inside the four-page newspaper, the 69-year-old Palestinian activist found satirical articles about how Israel’s military occupation had brought “civilization” to the West Bank, and how an academic study proved that “the truth” is inherently biased against Israel. With writers named “Cyn Sorsheep” (Censorship) and sources like Dr. Ig Norance, an article featured a bogus quote from Canwest CEO Leonard Asper, whose family company owns the Sun.

“This confirms my suspicion that the Truth is fanatically anti-Israel, and vindicates our vigilance in managing the Truth about Israel’s activities in all our converged media assets,” it jokingly quoted Asper as saying.

The fake Vancouver Sun was a rather innocuous jab at the blatantly pro-Israeli reporting in Vancouver’s major daily and the rest of the newspapers, magazines and television stations owned by Canwest, Canada’s largest media company. Articles in Canwest newspapers, especially the National Post, routinely blame Palestinian militants for Israeli air strikes or paint heroic portraits of Israeli civilians fending off Palestinian rocket attacks.

Amused by the parody, Briemberg took the copies back to his Vancouver suburb and passed them out so that others could share in the laugh. Canwest, however, didn’t find it as funny. The next day the real Vancouver Sun ran a story about how 12,000 fake editions had taken advantage of the paper’s brand and, even though Sun publisher Kevin Bent admitted there had been few reader complaints, promised legal action.

Few actually expected anything would happen. Campus newspapers, the alternative press and activists have been putting together mock versions of their daily papers for decades. Most famously, when Allan Fotheringham published a Vancouver Son for his student paper in 1954, the Sun offered him a job. (Fotheringham would go on to become one of the country’s most famed columnists.) That a large multinational company like Canwest, which has more than 10,000 employees and $2.87 billion in annual revenue, would attack some small-scale activists over a prank seemed absurd.

But when Canwest launched its lawsuit in December, Briemberg was shocked to discover that not only was Goliath hunting down David, but that he was being sued for creating and publishing the paper. In fact, aside from the printers, he was the only person named in the suit. For Briemberg, who runs a Canadian-Palestinian support website and hosts a radio show on a local cooperative radio show, this was a clear attempt by Canwest to chill its critics.

“It’s an effort to silence and intimidate people from exposing the Israeli state policies that snatch lives, lands and homes from Palestinians,” says Briemberg. “Not only won’t Canwest allow any other commentary in their papers, they’ll actively try to shut down anyone that doesn’t agree with them.”

As the heads of Canwest, Leonard Asper and his brother David have developed a reputation for being thin-skinned, litigious bullies who interfere with their newspaper’s editorial content, openly mock their journalists and routinely threaten critics with lawsuits. What makes the Aspers so perilous is that Canwest has so much power in shaping the country’s public discourse.

“I think they’re Canada’s most dangerous media company,” says Marc Edge, author of Asper Nation. “It’s dangerous to allow any company so much control over the public mind, especially when the proprietors of the company have shown no compunction in wielding that power in favor of their political agenda. I think it’s very unwise of Canadians to allow this situation to continue.”

Started as a single television station in 1974 by Izzy Asper, a tax lawyer and politician from Winnipeg who died in 2003, Canwest now owns one of Canada’s two national papers, 10 major market dailies, 23 smaller market daily, weekly and community papers and one of the country’s biggest television stations, as well as 13 specialty channels in partnership with Goldman Sachs. In Vancouver, Canwest owns both daily newspapers, the biggest television station and the majority of the community papers, making the city the most media concentrated city in North America. Outside of Canada, it owns The New Republic magazine, Australia’s TEN Television Network and radio stations in England and Turkey.

As the patriarch of the Asper clan, Izzy carefully built his company by taking advantage of government opportunities while breaking Canadian content rules. With his sons Leonard and David in tow, the Aspers swallowed a competing company, Western International Communications (WIC), through a lengthy and acrimonious lawsuit and turned their Global television network into a national broadcaster. But it wasn’t until they bought Conrad Black’s newspaper empire in 2000 that the Aspers became a dominant force in the country.

With most of the country’s papers in their hands, the Aspers ordered their newspapers to run “national editorials” written from the Canwest head office in Winnipeg. Already upset that their paper was forced to run an editorial that appeared to condone the assassination of Yasser Arafat, reporters at the Montreal Gazette protested with a byline strike. David Asper, now Canwest’s executive vice-president, denounced the protest as “childish.” Journalists who continued with the strike were told they would be suspended or fired.

The following year, the Aspers continued to roll by firing Ottawa Citizen publisher Russell Mills for running a story exposing Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s shady business deals. Izzy Asper was a strong Chrétien supporter and David Asper had publicly criticized the Canadian media for being too hard on the Liberal prime minister. Other Canwest columnists who wrote anti-Chrétien articles were let go. While the Aspers insisted they were exercising their right as proprietors, journalists at their papers quickly got the message that dissent would be met with dismissal.

“The Aspers have put a chill on debate,” says Steve Anderson, national coordinator for the Campaign For Democratic Media. “And because they control so much of the media industry, it limits what information we have available to us. Canwest has pushed Canada’s media system to the edge.”

As columnists and reporters got dropped, Canwest journalists now self-censor in order to survive. A number of reporters at the Vancouver Sun have privately admitted that the newsroom has become an abusive environment and are too scared to speak out. An unprecedented number have become so despondent they have gone on stress leave. And because the Aspers have such a tight grip on Vancouver’s mediascape, journalists have little option but to keep quiet and wait for retirement.

By the time Izzy Asper died in 2003, Leonard Asper had not only inherited his father’s leadership, but also his bellicosity. Although Canwest papers would get caught switching mention of Middle East “militants” in Reuters newswire to “terrorists,” Leonard accused most of the Canadian media of being biased against Israel. While National Post journalists would defended their right to alter Reuters articles, Asper ripped into Neil Macdonald, a foreign correspondent for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation who regularly reports on the misery caused by Israeli military strikes, by implying the reporter was anti-Semitic.

“I expect more bullying, more bombast, more ideological, anti-journalistic nonsense,” responded Macdonald in a 2003 Globe and Mail article. “I used to work for the newspapers they now own. Several of my ex-colleagues, still there, tell me they find the Aspers’ approach to journalism an embarrassment. But they cannot speak publicly. Thank heavens I can.”

Last January, Canwest continued its combative war when it launched a lawsuit against the The Tyee, an online magazine, for running an article lamenting the loss of two political cartoonists from Canwest’s other Vancouver daily paper, the Province. Canwest is now suing the magazine and the writer for libel. However, the lawsuit appears to have less to do with setting the record straight than it does about quashing rivals. The article was written by longtime Asper foe Rafe Mair and The Tyee is run by a former Vancouver Sun editor-turned-critic, David Beers.

But after eight years of torment, it appears as though the Aspers’ domineering days may be in trouble. Having already sold off a number of its holdings, Canwest is still saddled with $2.6 billion in debt and is hemorrhaging profits as television and print advertising revenue rapidly migrates to the internet. After purchasing specialty network Alliance Atlantis for $2.3 billion, Canwest cut 200 television jobs last year and offered buyouts to dozens of print reporters, while threatening further layoffs. The axe wielding has not only crippled current journalists, but demoralized an entire generation of young reporters. John Miller, a professor of journalism at Ryerson University, says students who interned at the Edmonton Journal last year came back disillusioned with the profession because of the amount of bitterness in the newsroom.

For young reporters, there isn’t much reprieve in journalism schools either, with many students complaining that the schools have become factories for the mainstream media. With government funding drying up, universities and colleges have had to turn to corporations for financial support, giving companies like Canwest – which donated $500,000 to the University of British Columbia’s school of journalism – direct influence over the country’s education system. Now students must come to terms with Canwest’s questionable ethics in the classroom before they even get to the newsroom.

If they ever do make it to a Canwest newsroom, young journalists will find empty desks and depressed reporters. They will work for thinned newspapers and sparse television stations that endorse right-wing policies and do little community coverage. In short, they will work for a corporation that cares more about profits than the public interest.

For the past decade, the Aspers have pursued an aggressive neo-conservative agenda and silenced, purged and intimidated their critics into submission. Canwest has put a black mark on journalism and has been a destructive force to Canadian democracy. Until this bully is cut down to size, it will continue to run roughshod over the country’s media. It’s time for the Canadian public to stand up and reclaim the integrity of its public discourse.

Join the fight!
As big corporations continue to beat up on Canada’s media, Canadians are beginning to fight back. Here’s how you can get involved:

Support Adbusters’ legal battle: Adbusters is challenging two Canadian broadcasters for refusing to run our public service announcements. We need moral and financial support to keep this case going.

Support indy media: Read alternative weeklies. Buy independent magazines. Listen to campus and community radio. Watch public television. Shut off the corporate press.

Be the Media: Participate in citizen journalism websites. Start your own zine or blog. Volunteer at your the cooperative radio station. Learn how to be
a journalist.




The Price of Profits

By Zachary Hurwitz
From Cultural Survival Quarterly
2008

The Initiative for the Regional Integration of Infrastructure in South America is the latest and largest in a series of bank-financed schemes to bring "development" to the Amazon Basin—and more trouble to the region's indigenous communities.

Launched in 2000 by all 12 South American governments with funding from major international finance institutions, the Initiative for the Regional Integration of Infrastructure in South America (IIRS) is a development scheme of biblical proportions. It includes almost 350 major projects, including highways, dams, pipelines, and ports. The cumulative effect of these projects will be opening up new areas of the Amazon Basin to large-scale, export- oriented agriculture and energy extraction.

That, of course, is exactly why the governments want to pursue these projects, but for indigenous peoples of the region, these kinds of infrastructure megaprojects in the Amazon Basin have always led to poverty, displacement, exposure to diseases, cultural erosion, physical threats, and violent conflicts.

To get a sense of how indigenous peoples feel about these projects, I spoke with indigenous representatives in Peru and Brazil about the Interoceanica Sur Highway and the Madeira Hidrovia Complex waterway project. Their comments appear below.

The Interoceanica Sur highway in Madre de Dios, Peru, is one of the 31 first-stage IIRSA projects that are programmed for completion by the year 2010. The road is financed by the Andean Development Corporation, the Brazilian National Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Peruvian government and is currently under construction. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the entire Peruvian Amazon is now opened to bidding from oil companies around the world, including Hunt Oil of Texas, which has acquired the concession for block 76, almost entirely superimposed upon the recently created Reserva Comunal Amarakaeri, which is an indigenous reserve.

In an interview in Puerto Maldonado, Julio Cusurichi, the 2007 Goldman Environmental Prize winner and representative of the Federación Nativa de Madre de Dios (FENAMAD), told of the impacts of IIRSA’s Interoceanica Sur highway, expansion of agribusiness, and increased oil extraction for the indigenous peoples of the Madre de Dios region of Peru.

Zachary Hurwitz: Julio, talk to me about the Interoceanica Highway. How is it going to affect the indigenous peoples of the province of Madre de Dios?

Julio Cusurichi: The issue of the Interoceanica for indigenous people is going to be a threat more than a benefit, because the Interoceanica cannot be separated from its larger context, which is IIRSA. And IIRSA contains projects for the entire Amazon basin. But the Interoceanica particularly worries us as indigenous people. One problem is that the regional populations are simply uninformed about the projects. Very few people have any idea of the effects that this Interoceanica highway is going to bring.

One important point is the matter of legal security of indigenous territories. If we don’t guarantee juridical security for our lands, we will be exposed to large waves of migration that will enter through this road with the objective of obtaining lands. So if our regional and national governments don’t have a vision of how to guarantee the rights of the territories of indigenous people, we’re going to have a serious threat.

The other important point is environmental impacts. We have learned that in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Interoceanica, only a few areas are considered. They’ve created a barrier of 1.8 miles from the road to prevent environmental impacts, but the impacts won’t be felt only in those 1.8 miles. Environmental impacts are felt at a regional level. We’re very worried about this matter.

If this highway project doesn’t come with other packages to minimize its impacts, then we’re looking at a much larger problem. The ecological-economic zonification of Madre de Dios hasn’t been finished. In terms of agriculture, specifically cattle ranching, a lot of people have already acquired land titles. If the remaining land titles are not dealt with, it’s going to be very worrisome. We at FENAMAD have led the discussion and debate on this issue, and now there is an alliance of federations here in Madre de Dios that is working to present our observations on the Environmental Impact Assessment. The minister of transport gave us a 15-day period, and in this period we presented a technical report making observations on the impact of the highway. We hope that our observations will be incorporated into the EIA for the benefit of the region.

The Interoceanica project is going to benefit large agricultural interests, not local populations. Local populations are not prepared economically to benefit from the highway, and there’s been no interest from the national or regional government to give us at least a few incentives to prepare us for the highway. If the government doesn’t promote a sustainable vision for our region, what we’re going to see are large trucks passing through here, big businesses from the Brazilian side. There they have a broad vision of expanding spaces for soy cultivation, which is going to affect indigenous peoples, riverside communities, and rural communities. So this is only a capitalistic vision, not a vision that will help the poor populations of our country.

Which indigenous peoples have not yet had their territories demarcated?

For example, the Masenawa from Puerto Azul have not had their lands demarcated yet, and some extensions of territories are still pending, including those of the Arasaire, Diamante, Boca Inambari, and Pilar. We need to focus first on these land titles and then work on other matters if we can. If we don’t guarantee security for indigenous peoples in the law, it will cause a big problem, because in the occidental vision land titles that were issued earlier are calculated to be very small. They didn’t include the integrity of the territory, they didn’t include even where we hunted, the land we used in our daily activities. They would say to us, “Let’s see, there are 40 ‘indios’ here, multiplied by 20 hectares,” and get the total from that. The first land titles did not originate from an indigenous vision. Only the most recent land titles have improved because we’ve pushed for a vision of territory that’s integral.

Explain to me Peruvian president Alan Garcia’s new law of colonization of the Amazon.

We’ve been informed that there is a new proposal for an executive law that would allow the government to begin a colonization project with agricultural and industrial ends. For the Amazon, this is a threat, because we already live here, we already exist here, so what lands are they going to colonize? This could mean land invasions, conflicts between agricultural interests and indigenous people, so this proposal for new law worries us, and we’ve rejected it through the Alliance of Federations here in Madre de Dios. Surely it’s another indication that Alan Garcia is seeking to secure large territories for the benefit of some investors. If this is the case, it worries us very much, and I think that Alan Garcia is going to have a response from organized civil society, that says that we want to do things how we see them, not how he sees them. I think this will help Alan Garcia to reorient his policies to respond not to large business interests but to the populations that elected him.

Are you worried that if and when the Interoceanica is completed, soy production will begin to invade Madre de Dios?

Not only will soy invade, there will also be a lot of migration. Through the highway, all of a sudden we’re going to see a lot of investors enter and buy up a lot of territory, a lot of agricultural zones. We’re going to come to a point where we depend on one large landowner who has a lot of hectares, and we won’t have any alternatives to offer. What will happen is that we’ll fall into the hands of the investors. Many small farmers, castañeros [Brazil-nut gatherers], small loggers, are going to lose their rights, because they won’t be able to offer products or negotiate, and this will cause chaos. The regional government isn’t taking this into account, and they don’t have any vision of how this highway will benefit the communities through sustainable activities, for example ecotourism. We cannot compete with Brazil’s economic industries. We’re already working in ecotourism in some native communities here in Madre de Dios. So the question is how to reinforce these initiatives, how to transform some specific products to add value. We have forest resources; are we going to sell raw timber, or should we put a factory here to add value, search for international markets, and not fall into the same old patterns?

We should already be debating this, but the regional governments are asleep. Social organizations are knocking on their door so they can at least wake up and see how to really get a regional economy going here in Madre de Dios.

So the Interoceanica highway may bring benefits?

Yes, if it comes with other social packages, as I mentioned. But if the Interoceanica comes on its own, and the population can’t discuss it, debate it, and propose some economic steps that are more in accord with our reality, it’s going to be more harmful for us. But if there is a desire to discuss which activities should be promoted, if there are resources to assure legal security for indigenous lands, and to mitigate environmental impacts, so that we as social organizations can monitor the environmental impacts, then yes. So with this active participation in the affected zones, I think we can at least mitigate the impacts of the highway. The project was created from above, it’s being carried out as a national policy; and if it’s carried out without considering all of the points I’ve indicated to you, 10 years from now we’ll be talking about very great chaos, and I hope to be alive to show you what’s happened. I think at least my people will still exist, and we will always be adding these matters into the debate.

How Can You Celebrate on the Land Where Your Relatives are Buried?

The Madeira Hidrovia Complex is one of the most controversial projects included in the Initiative for the Regional Integration of Infrastructure of South America. The Hidrovia plans include the construction of five hydroelectric dams (two in Bolivia and three in Brazil) along the Madeira river, to facilitate transporting soy from the southern city of Porto Velho to Manaus for export.

For the Parintintin of western Brazil, who depend on the river for their livelihood and culture, the hydroelectric dams proposed by the Madeira complex are a serious threat. As cacique (chief) Domingos Parintintin points out, mining and logging already exert tremendous pressure on their territory. Hydroelectric dams would offer even more pressure, cutting river water levels, which would threaten the availability and health of fish, as well as the Parintintin agricultural plots, which depend on the river’s natural cycles of flooding to restore soil fertility. There would also be increased competition for land and resources, as migrants move in to work in construction and agriculture. Here, Domingos discusses the challenges the Parintintin face.

For our people, the drought of 2005 exacerbated the contamination here in the Madeira River region. Most times we don’t know what contaminants are dumped in the river, and Brazilian citizens don’t know anything about this. We see mining a lot, and Amazônia is drying up. We saw 50 tons of fish die in the Madeira in 2005. And we need to fish in order to live. Today the question of mining affects everyone. For the cities that like to eat fish, it comes down to this: mining will make them unable to eat fish. It doesn’t cause problems only for us, but for all the Brazilians who live off of this fish.

There are also a lot of illegal loggers. Two years ago many loggers came from the Trans-Amazon Highway; there were 10 or 20 trucks transporting wood night and day. And this even after prosecution from IBAMA [the Brazilian Institute for Environment and Renewable Resources] and from the federal government. Here in Amazônia, we see that this doesn’t matter; IBAMA’s presence is very thin. They need to improve, a lot, because if it keeps going this way, in a couple of years, our people are not going to have any more nature, we’re not going to see any more forest, only destroyed land. If there is standing forest, it will be because of indigenous people, because we preserve our lands. Even so, in our way of thinking, in the future we’re going to have problems because people want to invade our land, and how are we going to accept that?

Land Preservation
We’re better off than other indigenous peoples because we have officially demarcated indigenous areas, but other indigenous peoples are suffering a lot from the question of mining, logging invasions, and fishing, and this makes our people very sad. Our people understand; we’ve learned, we watch television, and we know that the most important land is Amazônia in Brazil. We know that in Amazônia there is still forest and nature. In other states, there isn’t any more left; it’s all deforested. So the place that is facing the most conflict is Amazônia.

We ourselves prosecute invasions of our land, but we need the government to place FUNAI prosecutors in our villages [FUNAI is the Brazilian agency that protects indigenous groups]. We know the government created FUNAI, they created IBAMA, the INCRA[the National Institute for Agrarian Reform], so we want to work together to preserve our indigenous lands. We support them, but we also need the support of the government, we need the government to look at what’s happening. This is 2007; it’s time for things to be different. The government threw a party to celebrate the 500th birthday of Brazil, but we’re against that. Because today you go to any land in Amazônia, and our close relatives, brothers, parents, they’re all buried on that land. How can you celebrate on the land where your relatives are buried?

First Contact and Population
The first contact with our people was in 1946. I’m from the generation of the 1970s on; I’m more recent. Our people depend now on many of the things from this contact. Since contact, our people learned to use clothing, entered school, and learned to speak Portuguese, and all of this brought some things that were good, but also brought some things that are bad. Our people want to continue in our ways, preserving our lands, our culture, preserving against invasions, to continue speaking our language. We don’t accept anyone on our lands without our permission; people might bring something in that we don’t expect. Everyone who enters our land has to communicate with FUNAI, which represents our indigenous population.

Our people, the Parintintin, have a population of around 400 people. We have three villages: Traira, Pupunha, and Canavial, and two indigenous reserves, Nove de Janeiro and Ipixuna. We have relatives in other ethnicities, for example the Arientinpais (1,000 people), the Pirahã (700 people), and the Jiahui (more or less 400 people), all in this region. The ethnicities here in the municipality of Humaitá, where we live, are the Parintintin, the Tenharim, the Jiahui, the Torá, the Apurinã, the Mura, and the Pirahã.

At the time of contact in 1946, there were about 4,000 Parintintin. After contact, there was the invasion of the Trans-Amazon Highway, in the year 1960. Curt Nimuendajú, an ethnologist, calculated that in the decade of the 1940s there were 50,000 indigenous people in this area. The population today is only 20 percent of what it used to be. There are peoples like the Juma, which, from a population of 400, have been reduced to only 6 Juma now living.

From an original population of 4,000, we came to have only 120 after the Trans-Amazon was built. And now we’re beginning to grow again. This is related to the period of the the last rubber boom, which was during the Second World War. This was a period when a lot of people entered the Amazon from outside, and from this contact came the majority of illnesses that caused the reduction of our people.

Our people, from the time of contact, have seen more illnesses appear—more and more. Our people never knew about these things, and we’re very worried about the kinds of illnesses that are appearing. It makes us very sad. It’s a problem that is happening throughout Brazil, not only with us, but also with other indigenous populations. For us, there’s no way to resolve this problem. For our people these illnesses are new, and today we have a problem with the government, with FUNASA, the body that attends to indigenous health. FUNASA is on our lands to see what illnesses they can combat, but each time it’s more from one day to the next. Today the problem with the government is that we need to preserve indigenous health on our own.

Our people, in the area of health, we have our own traditions. We make remedies ourselves. We have a part of our culture that knows which medicine to use, which medicines cure, and we pass this on to our people who conserve this knowledge. For example, if you have a bruise, or a cut, we know which treatment to use to cure it. We have remedies for everything. We never give up our culture.

Indigenous Education
In education, we have a fundamental cycle from first to fourth grade, and fifth to eighth. We have professors, seven indigenous professors, preserving our education. We have adult classes, and two of our indigenous health workers are educators. We have a professor who is already bilingual; he gives classes in both our language and Portuguese. Beyond that we have professors who teach in Portuguese. And we have traditional professors. My mother is one and my father is another, who only teach about our culture. They’re not hired, they’re professors from the root of our people.

Cultural Change
Beyond this, we never let go of our culture. For example, we never give up our traditional clothing. Our people are advancing, but they don’t know how to do everything. We don’t know how to do everything at the beginning of something new, but we’re advancing. There are some things about our culture that I can’t speak about, because they are secrets. This goes for other people too. Truthfully, for us as Parintintin, from the time of contact to today, our vision has changed. Today, our people are much more like Brazilians. To us, our people have failed in some parts of our culture. There are things that are changing our own culture as indigenous people. We speak two languages. In the case of my village, we speak our own language and Portuguese. But we never give up our culture. I’m not an enemy of Brazil, I’m an indigenous man, but the question of land invasions, the question of mining, the question of illegal logging, hunting, fishing, all of this comes back to our people; it causes a problem, a very serious problem.

Zachary Hurwitz is a graduate student at the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. He also is an organizer for the environmental human rights organization Amazon Watch, and belongs to the Brazil Strategy Network. He recently traveled up the Madeira River from Manaus to Porto Velho, Brasil, and visited the site of the proposed Santo Antônio hydroelectric dam.