The Venezuelan-Russia-USA Dance

We should all be noting a few things about escalating dance between the USA and Venezuela.

A few months ago, after 58 years of being a part of the larger US Second Fleet, the USA reconstituted its Fourth Fleet to enhance its presence in its traditional sphere of influence: Latin America, perhaps the most successful political opposition to the USA’s imperial positions of late, with an electoral machine opposing US hegemony virtually consistently.

And as much as Venezuela is increasing its trade relations with China, the next economic superpower after the USA economically implodes, Chavez has been talking with Russia about getting technology to become the third South American country to develop nuclear energy capacity, while working on joint naval operations with Russia.

Hawks in the USA spins this as reminiscent of one to three generations ago of the Russian Bear infiltrating the USA’s sphere of influence, the sphere itself being an inherently arrogant and imperialist assertion. The Soviet Union’s involvement in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America freaked out the USA during the Cold War. Russian-Venezuelan cooperation on the military and nuclear energy has the potential to either provoke an increasingly desperate and declining empire to rash actions, or more hopefully, to let the increasingly more introspective and protectionist USA know that just because they are part of the Americas doesn’t mean they’re in charge.

And unlike the first 9/11 in Chile in 1973 where the Americans coordinated a coup of the democratically elected government and installed Pinochet, the hemisphere won’t go quietly.

How Many More Wars Do You Want, Anyway?

Pick a number, then vote McCain:

Some context:

Sarah Palin said two things which can be pegs for an attack ad of this kind:

1. War with Russia could happen over the Georgia conflict

2. Soldiers going to Iraq are fighting the people who killed thousands of Americans on Sept. 11.

The End of Globalization–Can You Smell it Yet?

A few years ago I was sitting in the pub at Simon Fraser University with the usual suspects…a gang of mostly political science graduate and undergraduate students for our weekly 4-hour lunch consisting of political debate and movie reviews.

I can’t remember the details but I had just been learning about peak oil. Petrochemicals have a large role in the fertilizers that enable the population of the industrialized [OECD, minority] world to eat food to the degree that supports our massive population. Apparently there was something in Harpers about that some time ago. I’m still scared to read it.

And since most of us at the lunch were generally political economists, we often discussed how to derail the global trade regime: IMF/WB/WTO. Since Hugo Chavez has spayed and neutered the IMF by paying off most of Latin America’s loans to it and since the WTO Doha “Development” (sic) round of negotiations has stalled leading to neoliberal defections toward regional trade initiatives, the regime may be collapsing on its own, thank you very much.

But one thing came up that day at lunch when I was trying to address how to cripple neoliberal globalization, and that was how peak oil will make prohibitive the costs of transporting materials around the world to be processed by workers in jobs outsourced from the industrialized world into products shipped to us in containers on those big boats. The economics of it all depends on a price of oil that is not quite so high as today’s $135/barrel. Or not even so high as the $70 barrel 2 years ago [yes, the cost of a barrel of oil has doubled in the last 24 months].

When peak oil grabs us by the throat and prices rise, the global supply chain will become less cost effective. Our runners and bananas will begin to have costs that assert them as the luxuries they really are. Economics will become more local, both in food from bioregions, but also products and services.

One friend at lunch that day said they’d just find another way to power the big boats. Nuclear power perhaps. Or maybe clean (sic) coal. Ok, he didn’t mention clean coal, but both it and atomic manipulation are somewhat impractical for varying reasons.

So we’re left with the end of globalization that comes not from policy decisions based on educating the populace to demand our representatives (sic) alter the global trade regime. It comes from the end of cheap fossil fuels.

My friend’s nuclear answer sounded plausible, but I had a hard time being truly swayed by its possibility.

So yesterday I read at Report on Business [see below] that I was on the right track.

And while the piece mentions that NAFTA could encourage outsourcing to Mexico instead of Asia, and by implication that a fully mercantilist, protectionist Canada may not be imminent, our latest globalization prime minister did recently scuttle a deal to sell off MDA’s Radarsat to an American firm. In the end, realists are realists.

And while we may not all be ready to go out and buy our yurts and embrace a bioregional lifestyle outside of metropolitan centres, we are one step closer. And if oil hits $200/barrel this Christmas, we’ll have to re-assess the situation with a little more intensity.

Oil’s cargo cushion

MARCUS GEE

May 27, 2008 at 8:53 PM EDT

The soaring cost of fuel is whittling away at the cheap-labour advantage enjoyed by Asian exporters, giving Canadian firms a welcome edge in their fight to win back business from Asian competitors.

Two bank economists argue in a report released Tuesday that because of higher fuel costs, shipping a standard 40-foot container from Shanghai to the east coast of North America now costs $8,000 (U.S.), up from $3,000 in 2000 when oil was just $20 a barrel.

That higher cost is passed on to North American consumers, making goods from China and other Asian places more costly compared to the offerings of domestic North American producers.

Some Canadian manufacturers are already noticing the effect.

High fuel costs are expected to have a dramatic impact on trade patterns, as businesses look for supplies closer to home

“It’s helped us because it’s harder for the Asians and others to ship over here,” said Barry Zekelman, chief executive officer of Atlas Tube Inc. of Harrow, Ont.

He said that after taking 30 to 40 per cent of the North American market for some steel tubing products, the Chinese have now “virtually disappeared” – partly, though not exclusively, because of the costs of transporting a heavy product such as steel across the Pacific.

Jeffrey Rubin and Benjamin Tal of CIBC World Markets Inc. say higher oil prices are reversing the world-is-flat effect, in which lower trade barriers and new technologies like the Internet made it cheaper to move goods and services from developing Asia to the markets of the rich world.

“In a world of triple-digit oil prices, distance costs money,” they write. “And while trade liberalization and technology may have flattened the world, rising transport prices will once again make it rounder.”

Mr. Rubin and Mr. Tal say the steel sector is a prime example of the world-is-round effect.

Chinese steel exports to the United States are falling by more than 20 per cent year over year. China’s costs have risen because Chinese producers have to bring in their iron ore from faraway places such as Australia and Brazil, then ship the finished steel to the United States. As a result, U.S. steel producers actually have an advantage over Chinese rivals.

“Rising transport costs have already more than offset China’s otherwise slim cost advantage, giving U.S. steel a competitive advantage in its own market for the first time in over a decade,” the economists write.

They say higher transport costs are affecting other “freight-intensive” sectors such as furniture and industrial machinery, too. These goods now account for 42 per cent of total Chinese exports to the United States, down from 52 per cent in 2004.

In fact, if oil prices had not risen so quickly and transport costs had not soared so dramatically, growth in Chinese exports since 2004 would have been 30 per cent stronger than the actual figure.

Of course, the rising cost of goods from China is hardly happy news for many Canadian companies that source parts from Chinese factories, sell imported goods from China or have their products assembled by Chinese workers.

They suggest that “instead of finding cheap labour half way around the world, the key will be to find the cheapest labour force within reasonable shipping distance of your market.”

While Canadian companies could benefit, the bigger winner will be Mexico, they say. “Look for Mexico’s maquiladora plants to get another chance at bat when it comes to supplying the North American market,” they write.

Shipping costs to and from Asia have risen so much that they have eclipsed tariffs as a barrier to global trade, Mr. Rubin and Mr. Tal say, calling the cost of moving goods “the largest barrier to global trade today.”

“In fact,” they say, “in tariff-equivalent terms, the explosion in global transport costs has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”

When oil was $20 a barrel, transport costs were equivalent to a 3-per-cent tariff rate; now it’s above 9 per cent.

Aggravating the problem is the fact that modern new container ships travel faster than old bulk carriers and so use up more fuel, doubling fuel consumption per unit of freight over the past 15 years.

“This is an environment in which shipping from the Pacific Rim may not make sense any more,” Mr. Tal said in an interview.

“If you’re thinking, ‘maybe we should bring in a container from China,’ you should think again.”

Putting Race on the Table

It has been a rather busy Saturday for the issue of racial and cultural awareness. Below is a notification of two significant events next month regarding a more progressive cultural awareness in our very white [but not really] community.

When I think about race and politics I look at BC’s legislature and our nation’s House of Parliament and see an unjustifiable abundance of white men.

I think about two StatsCan reports over the last several years that hit the front page of Vancouver’s daily papers describing how in just under 10 years, white people in Canada will dip below 50% of our population. Short of putting racial and gender quotas into our legislatures, I don’t see how that will stop over 50% of our legislators from continuing to be white men…unless, of course, there is an intentional, pro-active cultural dialogue about what representation really means. And we can’t have that unless we put race on the table and not in a tokenist or affirmative action sense.

So as well as the events below, I received by email today this notice from the OECD, that grand promoter of corporate neo-feudalism and neoliberal homogenized globalization. In it we read that the OECD thinks that “OECD governments need to do more to help immigrants integrate and make better use of their skills.” They are, of course, right. They are also, of course, wrong.

While OECD countries are domestically xenophobic about letting “them” exercise “their” vocations “here” because “they” may have learned to become brain surgeons or engineers in dodgy “overseas” “schools,” we who are already running the OECD nations are also eager to shore up our national crises of declining birth rates and the threat of not being able to support the rapidly aging boomers–many of whom are the white men in legislatures who represent the corporate white men who run things around here.

The flip side is that while a generation ago Canadians were worried about the brain drain to the USA as all our “best” professionals and such gravitated to the great Horatio Alger-land of the USA, leaving us unable to perform our needed brain surgery and bridge building. But thanks to neoliberal globalization, Canada has also become a destination for brains to drain to–and that doesn’t even count our strong dollar. Except we don’t always use those brains. There used to be two Croatian engineers who delivered pizza at a nearby pizza restaurant. We’ve all met these folks…or maybe we haven’t all met them, which might be part of the problem.

So many Canadians are really not in a position to interact with the vocationally dispossessed that we lure here. And the sociologists have a myriad of explanations for this, but for now, let’s just say that this is something we need to put on the table–and fast.

And if we can shake our minds out of our heady stupor of the fast approaching Olympics surreal spectacle/corporate greed-fest to truly examine the cultural makeup of “Canada” for the next generation or so, we’ll see that white men in power need to face the very real fact that we aren’t in charge. We can hang on to it and functionally disempower other groups, or we can figure out that narcissistic xenophobia is just fear of emasculation. And a future of Canada with healthy cultural interaction is not really an emasculation threat at all–unless you think you, as a white man, have something personal to be ashamed of. And if that’s the case, maybe you have it coming.

And while the OECD piece goes on about how “the better targeted immigration policies are, the more successful integration will be. This in turn will help reduce the risk of political backlash against immigrants,” the enlightened of us who are now ready to face our cultural inter-subjectivity need to realize that it’s not about marketing and luring the “right” people “here.” It’s about putting it on the table and seeing how a new Canada should be structured based on the reality that we are.

And if you can’t handle that, then it’s you who has the problem.

See you in March!

* mark your calenders for March 1 and March 21 . please forward. *

A series of events to commemorate March 21 International Day for the
Elimination of Racism. March 21 marks the anniversary of the 1960
Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa when police opened fire on hundreds
of South Africans protesting against Apartheid’s passbook laws, killing 67
and wounding 186…

STRUGGLES AGAINST RACISM ARE NOT OVER!

*** March 1st: An evening of film, speakers, spoken word, and more ***

Award winning film CONTINUOUS JOURNEY; opening talk by critically
acclaimed writer and activist LEE MARACLE; spoken word and poetry from
inspiring community members SADHU BINNING, RITA WONG, and RAUL GATICA

——————————
SATURDAY MARCH 1
FOOD @ 4:30 PM
Multipurpose Room (2nd floor), Bonsor Community Centre
6550 Bonsor Avenue (1 block east of Metrotown Skytrain Station)

Pay what you can.
Wheel chair accessible. Bus tickets available
Childcare on site (pls call 604 220 0451 to register)
——————————-

* To mark the 100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the racist and exclusionary
Continuous Journey Rule passed in 1908 we are screening the highly
acclaimed and award-winning film “Continuous Journey”.

The Kamagata Maru entered the port of Vancouver in 1914. On board were 376
immigrants, who for two months, lived like prisoners, threatened by famine
and disease as the ship was refused permission to land with scores of
people, media, and government calling for “White Canada Forever.” The
incident marks a dark chapter in Canada’s immigration history and
contributed to the growing anti-colonial sentiment in India. The film,
which required eight years of research, is solidly documented, packed with
archival material, and resonates powerfully with contemporary events.

* Talk by LEE MARACLE: Lee is of Salish and Cree ancestry, and a member of
the Stó:lô Nation. She is a gifted orator and the author of critically
acclaimed “Ravensong”, “I am Woman”, “Bobbi Lee-Indian Rebel”, “Daughters
are Forever” and the poetry collection “Bentbox”. She has been an active
member of the Red Power Movement and Liberation Support Movement and her
writings reflect her efforts against racism, sexism, and white cultural
and colonial domination.

* Poetry by SADHU BINNING (Punjabi, English). Sadhu is at the forefront of
Punjabi/English diasporic writing with dozens of poetry collections, books
of fiction, and plays. He edited a literary monthly Watno Dur; co-edited a
quarterly Watan; and is a a founding member of Vancouver Sath, a theatre
collective. Nearly all his poems reflect on the legacy of the Komagatamaru
and other struggles of Indian immigrants agaist racism and labour
exploitation such as the farmworkers in BC.

* Poetry by RITA WONG. Rita is the author of monkeypuzzle and forage. Her
poems have appeared in anthologies such as Ribsauce: a CD/Anthology of
Words by Women, The Common Sky: Canadian Writers Against the War, and
Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry, and more. Her work investigates the
intersections between decolonization, social justice, gender,
racialization, labour, migration, and contemporary poetics. She was a
founding member of Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation (DARE).

* Poetry by RAUL GATICA (Spanish, English). Raul is a member in exile of
the Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-RFM), an
indigenous community organization in Oaxaca, Mexico. His struggles embody
those of indigenous self-determination, against neoliberalism affecting
people of the Global South, and of a refugee to North America.

MARCH AGAINST RACISM!

Join us on March 21, International Day for the Elimination of Racism, to
show our communities collective strength in challenging ongoing racism.
Canadian multiculturalism is not enough!

//////////////////////////////////////
COMMUNITY MARCH
Friday March 21 at 1 pm
(Good Friday Holiday)
Meet at Clark Park on Commercial Drive and 14th
//////////////////////////////////////

==> Bring your children and family.
==> There will be food, water and snacks during the march.
==> Rest vehicles will accompany the march.
==> All welcome!

For centuries, communities have led countless courageous struggles against
racism and the many ways in which it manifests itself in our daily lives.
Although many would like to believe that racism no longer exists, we are
reclaiming the tradition of anti-racist marches to reveal the ugly truth
about the worsening reality of racism both locally and globally. Join us
on March 21 to celebrate the dignity, strength, and resilience of our
communities!

- End individual and institutional racism, racial violence, and racial
profiling!
- Stop the theft of indigenous lands!
- End all racist wars and occupations!
- Stop the deportations now!
- Living wages, healthcare, education, and housing for all!

[[[ Events organized and supported by a community network including No
One Is Illegal, Indigenous Action Movement, Komagata Maru Heritage
Foundation, Canadian Arab Federation, John Graham Support, Siraat
Collective, Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity
Society, DTES Elders Council, SIKLAB - Overseas Filipino Workers
Organization, Anniversaries of Change, International Indigenous Youth
Conference Secretariat, Canadian Muslim Union, Asian Society for the
Intervention of AIDS, Justicia for Migrant Workers, Al-Awda Vancouver,
Salaam Vancouver, Iranian Federation of Refugees, Cafe Rebelde Coalition,
VIRSA, Latin American Connexions, Hogans Alley Memorial Project, Filipino
Nurses Support Group, La Surda Latin American Collective, Indigenous Free
School, Canadian Network for Democratic Nepal, Canada Palestine
Association, Group of Relatives and Friends of Political Prisoners in
Mexico, South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, Consejo Indigena
Popular de Oaxaca Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-Vancouver), Chetna Dalit
Association, Philippine Women Centre of BC, Coalition of South Asian Women
Against Violence, Vancouver Status of Women, The North Shore Women's
Centre, Battered Women Support Services, Friends of Women in the Middle
East Society, Women Against Violence Against Women, Canadian Union of
Postal Workers, Hospital Employees Union, Industrial Workers of the World,
SFU Teaching Support Staff Union, Vancouver District Labour Council,
Canadian Union of Public Employees - Local 1004, Gallery Gachet, Rhizome
Cafe, New World Theatre, Colouring Book Project, UBC Realities of Race,
SFU Public Interest Research Group, BC Committee for Human Rights in the
Philippines, StopWar.ca, Anti Poverty Committee, Politics Re-Spun,
Building Bridges to Chiapas, Alliance of People's Health, International
Solidarity Movement Vancouver, Vancouver District Labour Council Young
Workers Committee, Filipino-Canadian Youth Alliance ]]]

Logical Absurdities: Only Anti-Government Sentiments Are Political

So, US Iraqi war veterans who oppose the political mission, though presumably they support the troops [themselves, their comrades and friends], aren’t allowed to march in a Veterans Day Parade in Long Beach.

“They do not fit the spirit of the parade,” she said. “The spirit being one of gratitude for what the veterans have done. We do not want groups of a political nature, advocating the troops’ withdrawal from Iraq.” Parade coordinators work hard to keep the event free from politics.

This is the absurd double standard that plagues people cursed with an inability to understand paradoxes.

I remember the early 1990s and how hard it was to make it through the relativist paradox of elements of post-modernism. As an early post-modern zealot, I rejected absolute truths because I rejected any truth as being able to be absolute. I was trying to embrace that concept while rejecting the arguments that have supported the human misery that resulted from absolute truths: white supremacy, genocide in the Americas, heterosexism, two millennia of imperial Christianity.

But at the same time, there is the relativist paradox that rejecting absolutes is itself an absolute.

This inability to contend with the modernist-postmodernist tension shows up in the “support our troops” nonsense, whereby anyone who rejects Canada’s presence in Afghanistan doesn’t support the troops, even though the troops didn’t make the politician send them there.

It also shows up in the more single-minded culture in the USA. If you oppose the government, you are being political. Yet it is not a political act to support it. So a Veterans Day parade is for apolitical people.

It also shows up in this surreal Flickr group, America, America!

It is hard to fathom:

About AMERICA, AMERICA! 1200+ members & growing! **** WE ARE NOW A GROUP OF 1200+ MEMBERS! AWESOME! YAY! WOW!
GOD BLESS AMERICA, AMERICA! THANKS TO ALL OF OUR MEMBERS, OUR FAMILY!
****************************************************************************************
OUR PERMANENT THREAD IS FLAG DAY, PLEASE ALL MEMBERS POST ALL PHOTOS OF OLD GLORY IN THE “FLAG DAY” THREAD! We are building the biggest best collection of American Flag photos on Flickr!! Let’s do it together!!
****************************************************************************************
THESE THREADS ARE CURRENTLY OPEN FOR POSTING:
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL,
MY HOMETOWN;
SPORTS STORIES;
SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER!
PLANES, TRAINS AND MOTOR VEHICLES
FLAG DAY (PERMANENT THREAD)
Anyone who posts in any thread receives a special award and will be eligible for front page exposure!

GROUP RULES: NEW RULE, POSTING LIMIT IN POOL 1O PER DAY! Any pictures, photoart, digital art that depicts the good and positive things about America or any place that loves freedom! Photos and photoart that depict patriotism, the spirit of America, family life, and that which shows the ways God has Blessed America and the world. Please *NO POLITICS OF ANY KIND*, *NO CAMPAIGN PHOTOS FOR ANY PARTY*! NO AMERICA BASHING, NO rude or BAD LANGUAGE, and NO nudes. This is a wholesome family oriented group about America and the people who make her the greatest nation in the world.
If you have a gripe about something, write a letter to the editor at your local newspaper -THIS is NOT a forum for anger. Thanks and enjoy! Fantartsy AKA JJ

IMPORTANT NOTICE: ANYONE who blocks administrators will be banned from the group and all their photos WILL BE REMOVED!JJ/ administrator

GROUP MOTTO: FOR THOSE WHO LIVE IN OR LOVE THE IDEALS OF FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE FOR WHICH AMERICA STANDS. Thanks to each and every member for making this a great AMERICAN group! JJ and all the administrators and helpers!

Beyond the planes, trains and motor vehicles fossil fuel worshiping, the philosophy of the group is similarly blind to the reality that they themselves are expressing a political view of supporting the government, an act they ban by definition. I remember in the 1980s Bruce Springsteen said blind faith in your leaders or in anything will get you killed.

The good and positive things about America or any place that loves freedom, however that is defined by the group leaders. Patriotism, the spirit of America, family life [defined again I suspect by the group leaders], how God has blessed America and the world [again, defined by the group leaders]. No politics of any kind shows they have no sense that their whole group is a political expression of rigid, uncritical conformity with the government line.

And yes, America is the greatest nation in the world. I’m always wondering what criteria people use to say that. Constant overt and covert invasions and subversion of other countries for over two centuries? Largest military expenditure? Only country to use nuclear weapons on civilians? Economic imperialist supporting multi-national corporations creating global feudalism with half the world’s 6.6 billion people in the world dying on less than $2/day?

Anger and “gripe” belong in newspapers. And while they have the right to have Flickr group that shows blind support of America’s junta, saying they brook nothing political is just silly.

They also say this for a current event:

fantartsy (a group admin) says:
04 Nov 07 – YAY!!1000+ members!!** .VETERANS’ DAY THREAD, open for 2 weeks only! Post a photo of the veteran you want to honor> ANYONE FROM ANY COUNTRY may post in this “special” thread!OPEN NOW! JJ/admns

I suspect that if Iraq Veterans Against the War members try to post pictures of events that are critical of the policy in Iraq, those pictures will be removed.