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Category: Oil, Gas, Coal, Pipelines

  • Held to Ransom: Colonial Pipeline and the Vulnerabilities of Critical Infrastructure

    It should be making officials in the White House tremble.  Critical infrastructure supplying 45% of the East Coast’s diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, left at the mercy of a ransomware operation executed on May 6.  In the process, 100 GB of data of Colonial Pipeline was seized and encrypted on computers and servers.  The next day, those behind the operation demanded a ransom, or the material would be leaked.

    The consequences are telling.  The operator, taken offline to enable an investigation to be conducted by US cybersecurity firm Mandiant; fuel left stranded at refineries in Texas; a spike in fuel prices at the pump – up six cents per gallon on the week to $2.967 per gallon of unleaded gasoline.  “Unless they sort it out by Tuesday,” warned oil market analyst Gaurav Sharma, “they’re in big trouble.”  The impact would be felt first in Atlanta, then Tennessee, perpetuating a domino effect to New York. “This is the largest impact on the energy system in the United States we’ve seen from a cyberattack, full stop,” opined Rob Lee of the cybersecurity firm Dragos.

    The company, in unconvincing tones, issued a statement that it was “continuing to work with third-party cybersecurity experts, law enforcement, and other federal agencies to restore pipeline operations quickly and safely.”  President Joe Biden rushed to calm fears that this had compromised fuel security.  “The agencies across the government have acted quickly to mitigate any impact on our fuel supply.” The deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies Anne Neuberger waffled to the press that the Biden administration was “taking a multi-pronged and whole-of-government response to this incident and to ransomware overall.”

    On May 9, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration within the Department of Transportation issued a temporary hours of service exemption for motor carriers and drivers “transporting gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined petroleum products” across affected States.

    Finding the culprit in such operations is almost boringly predictable.  The Kremlin tends to get top billing on the list of accused, but on this occasion interest centred on DarkSide rather than President Vladimir Putin.  “I’m gonna be meeting with President Putin,” promised Biden, “and so far there is no evidence, based on our intelligence people, that Russia is involved.”  That did not mean that Russian officials were to be spared scrutiny.  There was “evidence that the actors’ ransomware is in Russia – they have some responsibility to deal with this.”  DarkSide, in other words, is being singled out as a bold and enterprising Russian cybercrime outfit, going where even intelligence operatives fear to tread.  Out in that jungle of compromised cybersecurity, money is to be made.

    DarkSide is cybercrime with a professional face, pirates and buccaneers of the internet with some understanding of public relations.  They court the press when they need to.  They even operate with a code of conduct in mind.  And they are experienced.  “Our goal is to make money and not creating problems for society,” lamented the group after the operation.  “We do not participate in geopolitics, do not see need to tie us with a defined government and look for… our motives.”  The firm claimed ignorance that one of its affiliates had taken it upon themselves to target Colonial.  “From today, we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences in the future.”

    This event has revealingly exposed the state of poorly protected critical infrastructure run by private companies.  “When those companies are attacked,” remarked deputy national security advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, “they serve as the first line of defence, and we depend on the effectiveness of their defences.”

    As security analyst Richard Stiennon described it, the decision to shut down the pipeline showed that Colonial understood the risks.  “On the other hand, it shows that Colonial does not have 100% confidence in their operational systems’ cybersecurity defenses.”  Colonial was doing its best to sound competent, stating that it “proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat.”

    A less generous reading of this is that the company never genuinely appreciated those risks, given inadequate backup systems or forking out funds for software with fewer vulnerabilities.  The company had effectively issued an open invitation to be targeted, despite warnings made in early 2020 by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that a ransomware attack on a US-based natural gas compression facility had taken place.

    The provider has done little in terms of clearing the air on how it will deal with the ransom threat.  “Colonial is a private company and we’ll defer information regarding their decision on paying a ransom to them,” stated the less than helpful Neuberger.  Neuberger also spoke of the “troubling trend … of targeting companies who have insurance and may be richer targets”.  More had to be done to “determine what we do in addition to actively disrupting infrastructure and holding perpetrators accountable, to ensure we are not encouraging the rise of ransomware.”

    The Biden administration is currently drafting an executive order that will create new digital safety regulations applicable to federal agencies and contractors who develop software for the government.  Those developing the software would have to be compliant with adequate security safeguards.  A layer of investigative bureaucracy is also contemplated: a cybersecurity incident review board.

    At the very least, optimists in the field will see some value in having glaring faults in security systems exposed, even if it pertains to critical infrastructure.  Cyber extortionists can be turned into constructive citizens, identifying vulnerabilities – for a price.  A better option for corporate management and the boardroom would be to listen to the IT crowd.

    This article was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2021 at 7:18am and is filed under Cyber attacks, Cybersecurity, Oil, Gas, Coal, Pipelines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Held to Ransom: Colonial Pipeline and the Vulnerabilities of Critical Infrastructure

    It should be making officials in the White House tremble.  Critical infrastructure supplying 45% of the East Coast’s diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, left at the mercy of a ransomware operation executed on May 6.  In the process, 100 GB of data of Colonial Pipeline was seized and encrypted on computers and servers.  The next day, those behind the operation demanded a ransom, or the material would be leaked.

    The consequences are telling.  The operator, taken offline to enable an investigation to be conducted by US cybersecurity firm Mandiant; fuel left stranded at refineries in Texas; a spike in fuel prices at the pump – up six cents per gallon on the week to $2.967 per gallon of unleaded gasoline.  “Unless they sort it out by Tuesday,” warned oil market analyst Gaurav Sharma, “they’re in big trouble.”  The impact would be felt first in Atlanta, then Tennessee, perpetuating a domino effect to New York. “This is the largest impact on the energy system in the United States we’ve seen from a cyberattack, full stop,” opined Rob Lee of the cybersecurity firm Dragos.

    The company, in unconvincing tones, issued a statement that it was “continuing to work with third-party cybersecurity experts, law enforcement, and other federal agencies to restore pipeline operations quickly and safely.”  President Joe Biden rushed to calm fears that this had compromised fuel security.  “The agencies across the government have acted quickly to mitigate any impact on our fuel supply.” The deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies Anne Neuberger waffled to the press that the Biden administration was “taking a multi-pronged and whole-of-government response to this incident and to ransomware overall.”

    On May 9, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration within the Department of Transportation issued a temporary hours of service exemption for motor carriers and drivers “transporting gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other refined petroleum products” across affected States.

    Finding the culprit in such operations is almost boringly predictable.  The Kremlin tends to get top billing on the list of accused, but on this occasion interest centred on DarkSide rather than President Vladimir Putin.  “I’m gonna be meeting with President Putin,” promised Biden, “and so far there is no evidence, based on our intelligence people, that Russia is involved.”  That did not mean that Russian officials were to be spared scrutiny.  There was “evidence that the actors’ ransomware is in Russia – they have some responsibility to deal with this.”  DarkSide, in other words, is being singled out as a bold and enterprising Russian cybercrime outfit, going where even intelligence operatives fear to tread.  Out in that jungle of compromised cybersecurity, money is to be made.

    DarkSide is cybercrime with a professional face, pirates and buccaneers of the internet with some understanding of public relations.  They court the press when they need to.  They even operate with a code of conduct in mind.  And they are experienced.  “Our goal is to make money and not creating problems for society,” lamented the group after the operation.  “We do not participate in geopolitics, do not see need to tie us with a defined government and look for… our motives.”  The firm claimed ignorance that one of its affiliates had taken it upon themselves to target Colonial.  “From today, we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences in the future.”

    This event has revealingly exposed the state of poorly protected critical infrastructure run by private companies.  “When those companies are attacked,” remarked deputy national security advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, “they serve as the first line of defence, and we depend on the effectiveness of their defences.”

    As security analyst Richard Stiennon described it, the decision to shut down the pipeline showed that Colonial understood the risks.  “On the other hand, it shows that Colonial does not have 100% confidence in their operational systems’ cybersecurity defenses.”  Colonial was doing its best to sound competent, stating that it “proactively took certain systems offline to contain the threat.”

    A less generous reading of this is that the company never genuinely appreciated those risks, given inadequate backup systems or forking out funds for software with fewer vulnerabilities.  The company had effectively issued an open invitation to be targeted, despite warnings made in early 2020 by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that a ransomware attack on a US-based natural gas compression facility had taken place.

    The provider has done little in terms of clearing the air on how it will deal with the ransom threat.  “Colonial is a private company and we’ll defer information regarding their decision on paying a ransom to them,” stated the less than helpful Neuberger.  Neuberger also spoke of the “troubling trend … of targeting companies who have insurance and may be richer targets”.  More had to be done to “determine what we do in addition to actively disrupting infrastructure and holding perpetrators accountable, to ensure we are not encouraging the rise of ransomware.”

    The Biden administration is currently drafting an executive order that will create new digital safety regulations applicable to federal agencies and contractors who develop software for the government.  Those developing the software would have to be compliant with adequate security safeguards.  A layer of investigative bureaucracy is also contemplated: a cybersecurity incident review board.

    At the very least, optimists in the field will see some value in having glaring faults in security systems exposed, even if it pertains to critical infrastructure.  Cyber extortionists can be turned into constructive citizens, identifying vulnerabilities – for a price.  A better option for corporate management and the boardroom would be to listen to the IT crowd.

    The post Held to Ransom: Colonial Pipeline and the Vulnerabilities of Critical Infrastructure first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • What Would a Deep Green New Deal Look Like?

    The Green New Deal has attracted perhaps the greatest attention of any proposal for decades. It would guarantee Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, student loan forgiveness and propose the largest economic growth in human history to address unemployment and climate change.

    But the last of these hits a stumbling block. Creation of all forms of energy contributes to the destruction of nature and human life. It is possible to increase the global quality of life at the same time we reduce the use of fossil fuels and other sources of energy.  Therefore, a “deep” GND would focus on energy reduction, otherwise known as energy conservation. Decreasing total energy use is a prerequisite for securing human existence.

    Recognizing True Dangers

    Fossil fuel (FF) dangers are well-known and include the destruction of Life via global heating. FF problems also include land grabs from indigenous peoples, farmers, and communities throughout the world as well as the poisoning of air from burning and destruction of terrestrial and aquatic life from spills. But those who focus on climate change tend to minimize very real danger of other types of energy production.  A first step in developing a genuine GND is to acknowledge the destructive potential of “alternative energy” (AltE).

    Nuclear power (nukes). Though dangers of nuclear disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are horrific, problems with the rest of its life cycle are often glossed over.  Mining, milling, and transporting radioactive material to supply nukes with fuel and “dispose” of it exposes entire communities to poisoning that results in a variety of cancers.  Though operation of nukes produces few greenhouse gases (GHGs), enormous quantities are released during production of steel, cement and other materials for building nuclear plants.  They must be located next to water (for cooling), which means their discharge of hot water is an attack on aquatic life.  Radioactive waste from nukes, kept in caskets for 30-50 years, threatens to poison humanity not for decades or centuries, but for millennia (or eternity), which makes nukes at least as dangerous as FFs.  Inclusion of nuclear power as part of a GND is not the slightest bit green.  The only way to address nuclear power is how to abolish it as rapidly as possible while causing the least harm to those who depend on it for energy and income.

    Solar power requires manufacturing processes with chemicals which are highly toxic to those who work with them.  Even before production begins, many different minerals must be mined and processed, which endangers workers and communities while destroying wildlife habitat.  Additional minerals must be obtained for batteries.  Once solar systems are used, they are discarded into large toxic dumps.  Though few GHGs are created during use of solar panels, large amounts are created during their life cycle.

    Wind power creates its own syndrome of nerve-wracking vibrations for those living next to “wind farms,” along with even larger issues with disposal of 160-foot blades.  Like solar farms, wind farms undermine ecosystems where they are located.  The life cycle of wind power includes toxic radioactive elements to produce circular rotation of blades.

    Hydro-power from dams hurts terrestrial as well as aquatic life by altering the flow of river water.  Dams undermine communities whose culture center around water and animals.  Dams destroy farms.  They exacerbate international conflicts when rivers flow through multiple countries, threaten the lives of construction workers, and result in collapses which can kill over 100,000 people at a time.

    Several problems run through multiple AltE systems:

    • Despite claims of “zero emissions,” every type of AltE requires large amounts of FFs during their life cycle;
    • Every type of AltE is deeply intertwined with attacks on civil liberties, land grabs from indigenous communities, and/or murders of Earth defenders;
    • Many have cost overruns which undermine the budgets of communities tricked into financing them.
    • Transmission lines require additional land grabs, squashing of citizen and community rights, and increased species extinctions; and,
    • Since the most available resources (such as uranium for nukes, sunny land for solar arrays, mountain tops for wind farms, rivers for dams) are used first, each level of expansion requires a greater level of resource use than the previous one, which means the harvesting of AltE is increasingly harmful as time goes by.

    Taking into account the extreme problems of the life cycle of every type of energy extraction leads to the following requirements for a genuine GND: Nuclear energy must be halted as quickly and as safely as possible with employment replacement.  FF extraction should be dramatically reduced immediately (perhaps by 70-90% of 2020 levels) and be reduced 5-10% annually for the next 10 years thereafter.  Rather than being increased, extraction for other forms of energy should be reduced (perhaps 2-5% annually).

    Since honesty requires recognition that every form of energy becomes more destructive with time, the critical question for a deep GND is: “How do we reduce energy use while increasing employment and the necessities of life?”

    The Naming of Things

    But before exploring how to increase employment while reducing production, it is necessary to clean up some greenwashing language that has become common in recent years.

    Decades ago, Barry Commoner used the phrase “linguistic detoxification” to describe the way corporations come up with a word or phrase to hide the true nature of an ecological obscenity.  One of the best examples is the nuclear industry’s term “spent fuel rods” which implies that, once used, fuel rods are not radioactive, when, in fact, they are so deadly that they must be guarded for eternity.  An accurate term would be “irradiated fuel rods.”

    Perhaps the classic example is the way agribusiness came up with “biosolids” for renaming animal sewage sludge containing dioxin, asbestos, lead, and DDT.  As John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton describe in Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (1995), industry persuaded the Environmental Protection Agency to reclassify hazardous animal waste to “Class A fertilizer” biosolids so they could be dumped on fields where food is grown.

    Rather than preserving traditions of early environmentalists, many current proponents of AltE use the terms “clean” and “renewable” to describe energy which is neither.  AltE is not “clean” due to the many GHG emissions throughout the life cycle of all types of energy in addition to assaults on ecosystems and human health.  Though the sun, wind and river power may be eternal, products that must be mined are very much exhaustible, meaning that no form of AltE is renewable.

    An honest GND would never refer to AltE as either “clean” or “renewable.”  Such a GND proposal would advocate the reduction of FFs but would not suggest a goal 0% of FFs by such-and-such a date because it is unattainable.  Every type of AltE requires FFs.  While it may be possible to produce some steel and some cement by AltE, it is impossible to produce massive quantities of energy for the entire world with AltE.  Instead, a genuine GND would explain that the only form of clean energy is less energy and specify ways to use less energy while improving the quality of life.

    A genuine GND would never imply that FFs are the only source of monstrously negative effects.  Privileging AltE corporations over FF corporations is stating that environmental problems will be solved by choosing one clique of capitalists over another.  This means that (a) if FFs should be nationalized, then all mining, milling and manufacturing processes to produced materials needed for AltE should be nationalized; and, (b) if FFs should remain in the ground, then all components for operating nuclear plants, dams, solar facilities and wind farms should also remain in the ground.

    A Shorter Work Week for All

    The greatest contradiction in current versions of the GND is advocating environmental improvement while having the most massive increase in production the world has ever seen.  These two goals are completely irreconcilable.  A progressive GND would address this enigma via shortening the work week, which would reduce environmental damage by using less energy.

    It is quite odd that versions of the GND call for Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, Student Loan Forgiveness-for-All; but none of them suggest a Shorter-Work-Week-for-All.  The absence of this old progressive demand could be due to the incorrect neoliberal assumption that the best way to solve unemployment is via increased production.

    Increased production of goods cannot create a long-term increase in employment. (It was WW II and not Roosevelt’s New Deal that consistently increased employment.)  US production increased 300-fold from 1913 to 2013.  If employment had increased at the same pace, everyone would be working at dozens of jobs today.

    Unemployment increases from recent economic disruptions like the 2008 financial crisis and Covid in 2020 were due to the inability to shift work from some areas of the economy to others.  A planned shrinking of the economy would require including the entire workforce in deciding to shift from negative to positive employment.

    As the work week is reduced, every group of workers should evaluate what it does, how labor is organized, and how jobs should be redefined so that full employment is preserved.  The only part of this idea which is novel is making changes democratically – job categories continuously change, with some types of work shrinking (or disappearing entirely) and other types of work expanding or coming into existence.  Just as economic growth does not guarantee increases in employment, economic shrinking need not worsen unemployment if the work week is shortened.

    However, a shorter work week will not accomplish environmental goals if it is accompanied by an “intensification of labor” (such as requiring workers at Amazon to handle more packages per hour or increasing class size for teachers).  This means that a genuine GND requires workers’ forming strong unions which have a central role in determining what is produced as well as working conditions.

    Producing According to Need Instead of According to Profit

    If a core part of a GND becomes a shorter work week (without speed-up), the question naturally arises: “Will lowering the amount of production result in people going without basic necessities of life?”  It is important to understand that production for profit causes the manufacture of goods that have no part of improving our lives.

    Current versions of the GND are based on the neoliberal assumption that the best way to provide for necessities of life is through increased payments for purchases (ie, market economics).  A progressive GND would advocate that the best way to provide the necessities of life is by guaranteeing them as human rights.  This is often referred so as replacing individual wages with “social wages.”  For example, the neoliberal approach to healthcare is offering medical insurance while a progressive approach is to offer medical care directly (without giving a cut to insurance companies). Likewise, a neoliberal GND would offer cash for food, housing, transportation, education and other necessities while a progressive GND would provide them directly to people.  Green economics must be based on making dollar amounts less important by replacing individual wages with social wages.

    Current versions of the GND seek to provide necessities by increasing the quantity of products rather than focusing on creating things that are useful, reliable and durable. A massive increase in production is an unnecessary attack on ecosystems when there is already much more production than required to provide essentials for everyone on the planet.  Needs are not being met because of production which …

    • … is negative, including war materials, police forces and production which destroys farmland and habitat (all of which should be reduced immediately);
    • … is wasteful, which includes both (a) playthings of the richest 1%, and (b) things which many of us are forced to buy for survival and getting to work, the most notable being cars;
    • … requires unnecessary processing and transportation, the most notable example being food which is processed to lose nutritional value, packaged to absurd levels, and shipped over 1000 miles before being consumed; and,
    • … involves planned obsolescence, including design to fall apart or go out of style.

    One important aspect of reducing production is often ignored.  Each product manufactured must have a repairability index.  At a minimum, criteria for the index should include (a) availability of technical documents to aid in repair, (b) ease of disassembly, (c) availability of spare parts, (d) price of spare parts, and (e) repair issues specific to the class of products. The index should become a basis for strengthening production requirements each year.  A durablility index should similarly be developed and strengthened annually.  Since those who do the labor of manufacturing products are more likely than owners or stockholders to attain knowledge of how to make commodities that are more reliable and durable, they must have the right to make their knowledge public without repercussions from management.

    There will always be differences of opinion regarding what is needed versus what is merely desired.  A progressive GND should state how those decisions would be made.  A major cause of unnecessary production is that decisions concerning what to manufacture and standards for creating them are made by investors and corporate bosses rather than community residents and workers manufacturing them.  A genuine GND would confront problems regarding what is produced by involving all citizens in economic decisions, and not merely the richest.

    Reparations!

    Perhaps the issue which is least likely to be linked to the GND is reparations to poor communities in Africa, Latin America, and Asia who have been victims of Western imperialism for 500 years.  This connection forces us to ask: “Since most minerals necessary for AltE lie in poor countries, will rich countries continue to plunder their resources, exterminate what remains of indigenous cultures, force inhabitants to work for a pittance, jail and kill those who resist, destroy farmland, and leave the country a toxic wasteland for generations to come?”

    For example, plans to massively expand electric vehicles (EVs) undermine the vastly more sustainable approach of urban redesign for walkable/cyclable communities.  Plans would result in manufacturing EVs for the rich world while poor and working class communities would suffer from the extraction of lithium, cobalt and dozens of other materials required for these cars.

    Africa may be the most mineral-rich continent.  In addition to cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for EVs, Mali is the source of 75% of the uranium for French nukes, Zambia is mined for copper for AltE and hundreds of other minerals are taken from dozens of African countries.

    If there are to be agreements involving corporations seeking minerals for AltE, who will those agreements be with?  Will the agreements be between the ultra-rich owners of the Western empire and its puppet governments?  Or, will extraction agreements be with villages and communities which will be most affected by removal of minerals for the production of energy?

    Discussions of relationships between rich and poor countries make much of having “free, prior and informed consent” prior to an extraction project.  Such an agreement is far from reality because (a) corporate and governmental bodies are so mired in corruption that they contaminate bodies which define and judge the meaning of “free, prior and informed,” (b) no prediction of the effects of extraction can be “informed” since it is impossible to know what the interaction of the multitude of physical, chemical, biological and ecological factors will be prior to extraction taking place, and (c) affected communities are typically bullied into accepting extraction because they fear that families will die from starvation, lack of medical care or unemployment if they do not do so.  Thus, the following are essential components of a socially just GND:

    • Reparations which are sufficient to eliminate poverty must be paid prior to signing extraction agreements; and,
    • Every community must have the right to terminate an extraction agreement at any stage of the project.

    This is where the other meaning of “deep” comes in.  When people hear “deep green,” they often think of how industrial activity deeply affects ecosystems.  “Deep” can also refer to having a deep respect for poor communities whose lives are most affected by extraction.  Respect is not deep if it is unwilling to accept an answer of “No” to a request for exorbitant, profit-gouging extraction.  Peoples across the world may decide that since they have received so little for so long, it may be time for rich countries to share the wealth they have stolen and dig up new wealth much, much more slowly.

    A New Green Culture

    Just to make sure that it is clear and not forgotten, the fundamental question regarding extraction of material needed for AltE is: “Will rich countries continue to plunder minerals underneath or adjacent to poor communities at a rate that corporations decide?  Will they expect poor communities to be satisfied with a vague promise that, for the very first time, great things will happen after the plundering?  Or should reparations be fully paid for past and current plundering, with poor communities deciding how much extraction they will allow and at what speed?”

    Essential for building a New Green World is the creation of a New Green Culture which asks all of the billions of people on the planet to share their ideas for obtaining the necessities of life while using less energy.  Such a culture would aim for one idea to spark to many ideas, all of which strive more toward living together than on inventing energy-guzzling gadgets.

    In order to build a New Green Culture which puts the sharing of wealth above personal greed, several things that must happen:

    1. To bring billions of people out of economic misery, every country should establish a maximum income which is a multiple of the minimum income, with that multiple being voted on (no less than every five years) by all living in the country.
    2. Every country should establish a maximum wealth which is a multiple of the minimum wealth, with that multiple being voted on (no less than every five years) by all living in the country.
    3. Global reparations, including sharing wealth and technological know-how between rich and poor countries, is essential for overcoming past and ongoing effects of imperialism. Establishing maximum incomes and maximum wealth possession within countries must be quickly followed by establishing such maximum levels between countries.

    A core problem of current versions of the GND is that they propose to solve employment, social justice and energy problems with increased production, which is not necessary to solve any of these.  Attempts to solve problems by increasing wealth feeds into the corporate culture of greed and become a barrier to creation of a New Green Culture.  Increasing production beyond what is necessary increases environmental problems that threaten the Earth.  It tells those who are already rich that they should grab more, more and more.  It tells those who are not rich that happiness depends upon the possession of objects.  The survival of Humanity depends on the building of a green culture that prizes sharing above all else.

    (A webinar at 7 pm CT on May 5, 2021 on “Envisioning a Greener New Deal” will explore concerns with alternative energy, the need for global reparations and ask how to create a better world while using much less energy.  Email the address of the author below for details.)

    The post What Would a Deep Green New Deal Look Like? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • What Would a Deep Green New Deal Look Like?

    The Green New Deal has attracted perhaps the greatest attention of any proposal for decades. It would guarantee Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, student loan forgiveness and propose the largest economic growth in human history to address unemployment and climate change.

    But the last of these hits a stumbling block. Creation of all forms of energy contributes to the destruction of nature and human life. It is possible to increase the global quality of life at the same time we reduce the use of fossil fuels and other sources of energy.  Therefore, a “deep” GND would focus on energy reduction, otherwise known as energy conservation. Decreasing total energy use is a prerequisite for securing human existence.

    Recognizing True Dangers

    Fossil fuel (FF) dangers are well-known and include the destruction of Life via global heating. FF problems also include land grabs from indigenous peoples, farmers, and communities throughout the world as well as the poisoning of air from burning and destruction of terrestrial and aquatic life from spills. But those who focus on climate change tend to minimize very real danger of other types of energy production.  A first step in developing a genuine GND is to acknowledge the destructive potential of “alternative energy” (AltE).

    Nuclear power (nukes). Though dangers of nuclear disasters such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are horrific, problems with the rest of its life cycle are often glossed over.  Mining, milling, and transporting radioactive material to supply nukes with fuel and “dispose” of it exposes entire communities to poisoning that results in a variety of cancers.  Though operation of nukes produces few greenhouse gases (GHGs), enormous quantities are released during production of steel, cement and other materials for building nuclear plants.  They must be located next to water (for cooling), which means their discharge of hot water is an attack on aquatic life.  Radioactive waste from nukes, kept in caskets for 30-50 years, threatens to poison humanity not for decades or centuries, but for millennia (or eternity), which makes nukes at least as dangerous as FFs.  Inclusion of nuclear power as part of a GND is not the slightest bit green.  The only way to address nuclear power is how to abolish it as rapidly as possible while causing the least harm to those who depend on it for energy and income.

    Solar power requires manufacturing processes with chemicals which are highly toxic to those who work with them.  Even before production begins, many different minerals must be mined and processed, which endangers workers and communities while destroying wildlife habitat.  Additional minerals must be obtained for batteries.  Once solar systems are used, they are discarded into large toxic dumps.  Though few GHGs are created during use of solar panels, large amounts are created during their life cycle.

    Wind power creates its own syndrome of nerve-wracking vibrations for those living next to “wind farms,” along with even larger issues with disposal of 160-foot blades.  Like solar farms, wind farms undermine ecosystems where they are located.  The life cycle of wind power includes toxic radioactive elements to produce circular rotation of blades.

    Hydro-power from dams hurts terrestrial as well as aquatic life by altering the flow of river water.  Dams undermine communities whose culture center around water and animals.  Dams destroy farms.  They exacerbate international conflicts when rivers flow through multiple countries, threaten the lives of construction workers, and result in collapses which can kill over 100,000 people at a time.

    Several problems run through multiple AltE systems:

    • Despite claims of “zero emissions,” every type of AltE requires large amounts of FFs during their life cycle;
    • Every type of AltE is deeply intertwined with attacks on civil liberties, land grabs from indigenous communities, and/or murders of Earth defenders;
    • Many have cost overruns which undermine the budgets of communities tricked into financing them.
    • Transmission lines require additional land grabs, squashing of citizen and community rights, and increased species extinctions; and,
    • Since the most available resources (such as uranium for nukes, sunny land for solar arrays, mountain tops for wind farms, rivers for dams) are used first, each level of expansion requires a greater level of resource use than the previous one, which means the harvesting of AltE is increasingly harmful as time goes by.

    Taking into account the extreme problems of the life cycle of every type of energy extraction leads to the following requirements for a genuine GND: Nuclear energy must be halted as quickly and as safely as possible with employment replacement.  FF extraction should be dramatically reduced immediately (perhaps by 70-90% of 2020 levels) and be reduced 5-10% annually for the next 10 years thereafter.  Rather than being increased, extraction for other forms of energy should be reduced (perhaps 2-5% annually).

    Since honesty requires recognition that every form of energy becomes more destructive with time, the critical question for a deep GND is: “How do we reduce energy use while increasing employment and the necessities of life?”

    The Naming of Things

    But before exploring how to increase employment while reducing production, it is necessary to clean up some greenwashing language that has become common in recent years.

    Decades ago, Barry Commoner used the phrase “linguistic detoxification” to describe the way corporations come up with a word or phrase to hide the true nature of an ecological obscenity.  One of the best examples is the nuclear industry’s term “spent fuel rods” which implies that, once used, fuel rods are not radioactive, when, in fact, they are so deadly that they must be guarded for eternity.  An accurate term would be “irradiated fuel rods.”

    Perhaps the classic example is the way agribusiness came up with “biosolids” for renaming animal sewage sludge containing dioxin, asbestos, lead, and DDT.  As John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton describe in Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (1995), industry persuaded the Environmental Protection Agency to reclassify hazardous animal waste to “Class A fertilizer” biosolids so they could be dumped on fields where food is grown.

    Rather than preserving traditions of early environmentalists, many current proponents of AltE use the terms “clean” and “renewable” to describe energy which is neither.  AltE is not “clean” due to the many GHG emissions throughout the life cycle of all types of energy in addition to assaults on ecosystems and human health.  Though the sun, wind and river power may be eternal, products that must be mined are very much exhaustible, meaning that no form of AltE is renewable.

    An honest GND would never refer to AltE as either “clean” or “renewable.”  Such a GND proposal would advocate the reduction of FFs but would not suggest a goal 0% of FFs by such-and-such a date because it is unattainable.  Every type of AltE requires FFs.  While it may be possible to produce some steel and some cement by AltE, it is impossible to produce massive quantities of energy for the entire world with AltE.  Instead, a genuine GND would explain that the only form of clean energy is less energy and specify ways to use less energy while improving the quality of life.

    A genuine GND would never imply that FFs are the only source of monstrously negative effects.  Privileging AltE corporations over FF corporations is stating that environmental problems will be solved by choosing one clique of capitalists over another.  This means that (a) if FFs should be nationalized, then all mining, milling and manufacturing processes to produced materials needed for AltE should be nationalized; and, (b) if FFs should remain in the ground, then all components for operating nuclear plants, dams, solar facilities and wind farms should also remain in the ground.

    A Shorter Work Week for All

    The greatest contradiction in current versions of the GND is advocating environmental improvement while having the most massive increase in production the world has ever seen.  These two goals are completely irreconcilable.  A progressive GND would address this enigma via shortening the work week, which would reduce environmental damage by using less energy.

    It is quite odd that versions of the GND call for Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, Student Loan Forgiveness-for-All; but none of them suggest a Shorter-Work-Week-for-All.  The absence of this old progressive demand could be due to the incorrect neoliberal assumption that the best way to solve unemployment is via increased production.

    Increased production of goods cannot create a long-term increase in employment. (It was WW II and not Roosevelt’s New Deal that consistently increased employment.)  US production increased 300-fold from 1913 to 2013.  If employment had increased at the same pace, everyone would be working at dozens of jobs today.

    Unemployment increases from recent economic disruptions like the 2008 financial crisis and Covid in 2020 were due to the inability to shift work from some areas of the economy to others.  A planned shrinking of the economy would require including the entire workforce in deciding to shift from negative to positive employment.

    As the work week is reduced, every group of workers should evaluate what it does, how labor is organized, and how jobs should be redefined so that full employment is preserved.  The only part of this idea which is novel is making changes democratically – job categories continuously change, with some types of work shrinking (or disappearing entirely) and other types of work expanding or coming into existence.  Just as economic growth does not guarantee increases in employment, economic shrinking need not worsen unemployment if the work week is shortened.

    However, a shorter work week will not accomplish environmental goals if it is accompanied by an “intensification of labor” (such as requiring workers at Amazon to handle more packages per hour or increasing class size for teachers).  This means that a genuine GND requires workers’ forming strong unions which have a central role in determining what is produced as well as working conditions.

    Producing According to Need Instead of According to Profit

    If a core part of a GND becomes a shorter work week (without speed-up), the question naturally arises: “Will lowering the amount of production result in people going without basic necessities of life?”  It is important to understand that production for profit causes the manufacture of goods that have no part of improving our lives.

    Current versions of the GND are based on the neoliberal assumption that the best way to provide for necessities of life is through increased payments for purchases (ie, market economics).  A progressive GND would advocate that the best way to provide the necessities of life is by guaranteeing them as human rights.  This is often referred so as replacing individual wages with “social wages.”  For example, the neoliberal approach to healthcare is offering medical insurance while a progressive approach is to offer medical care directly (without giving a cut to insurance companies). Likewise, a neoliberal GND would offer cash for food, housing, transportation, education and other necessities while a progressive GND would provide them directly to people.  Green economics must be based on making dollar amounts less important by replacing individual wages with social wages.

    Current versions of the GND seek to provide necessities by increasing the quantity of products rather than focusing on creating things that are useful, reliable and durable. A massive increase in production is an unnecessary attack on ecosystems when there is already much more production than required to provide essentials for everyone on the planet.  Needs are not being met because of production which …

    • … is negative, including war materials, police forces and production which destroys farmland and habitat (all of which should be reduced immediately);
    • … is wasteful, which includes both (a) playthings of the richest 1%, and (b) things which many of us are forced to buy for survival and getting to work, the most notable being cars;
    • … requires unnecessary processing and transportation, the most notable example being food which is processed to lose nutritional value, packaged to absurd levels, and shipped over 1000 miles before being consumed; and,
    • … involves planned obsolescence, including design to fall apart or go out of style.

    One important aspect of reducing production is often ignored.  Each product manufactured must have a repairability index.  At a minimum, criteria for the index should include (a) availability of technical documents to aid in repair, (b) ease of disassembly, (c) availability of spare parts, (d) price of spare parts, and (e) repair issues specific to the class of products. The index should become a basis for strengthening production requirements each year.  A durablility index should similarly be developed and strengthened annually.  Since those who do the labor of manufacturing products are more likely than owners or stockholders to attain knowledge of how to make commodities that are more reliable and durable, they must have the right to make their knowledge public without repercussions from management.

    There will always be differences of opinion regarding what is needed versus what is merely desired.  A progressive GND should state how those decisions would be made.  A major cause of unnecessary production is that decisions concerning what to manufacture and standards for creating them are made by investors and corporate bosses rather than community residents and workers manufacturing them.  A genuine GND would confront problems regarding what is produced by involving all citizens in economic decisions, and not merely the richest.

    Reparations!

    Perhaps the issue which is least likely to be linked to the GND is reparations to poor communities in Africa, Latin America, and Asia who have been victims of Western imperialism for 500 years.  This connection forces us to ask: “Since most minerals necessary for AltE lie in poor countries, will rich countries continue to plunder their resources, exterminate what remains of indigenous cultures, force inhabitants to work for a pittance, jail and kill those who resist, destroy farmland, and leave the country a toxic wasteland for generations to come?”

    For example, plans to massively expand electric vehicles (EVs) undermine the vastly more sustainable approach of urban redesign for walkable/cyclable communities.  Plans would result in manufacturing EVs for the rich world while poor and working class communities would suffer from the extraction of lithium, cobalt and dozens of other materials required for these cars.

    Africa may be the most mineral-rich continent.  In addition to cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for EVs, Mali is the source of 75% of the uranium for French nukes, Zambia is mined for copper for AltE and hundreds of other minerals are taken from dozens of African countries.

    If there are to be agreements involving corporations seeking minerals for AltE, who will those agreements be with?  Will the agreements be between the ultra-rich owners of the Western empire and its puppet governments?  Or, will extraction agreements be with villages and communities which will be most affected by removal of minerals for the production of energy?

    Discussions of relationships between rich and poor countries make much of having “free, prior and informed consent” prior to an extraction project.  Such an agreement is far from reality because (a) corporate and governmental bodies are so mired in corruption that they contaminate bodies which define and judge the meaning of “free, prior and informed,” (b) no prediction of the effects of extraction can be “informed” since it is impossible to know what the interaction of the multitude of physical, chemical, biological and ecological factors will be prior to extraction taking place, and (c) affected communities are typically bullied into accepting extraction because they fear that families will die from starvation, lack of medical care or unemployment if they do not do so.  Thus, the following are essential components of a socially just GND:

    • Reparations which are sufficient to eliminate poverty must be paid prior to signing extraction agreements; and,
    • Every community must have the right to terminate an extraction agreement at any stage of the project.

    This is where the other meaning of “deep” comes in.  When people hear “deep green,” they often think of how industrial activity deeply affects ecosystems.  “Deep” can also refer to having a deep respect for poor communities whose lives are most affected by extraction.  Respect is not deep if it is unwilling to accept an answer of “No” to a request for exorbitant, profit-gouging extraction.  Peoples across the world may decide that since they have received so little for so long, it may be time for rich countries to share the wealth they have stolen and dig up new wealth much, much more slowly.

    A New Green Culture

    Just to make sure that it is clear and not forgotten, the fundamental question regarding extraction of material needed for AltE is: “Will rich countries continue to plunder minerals underneath or adjacent to poor communities at a rate that corporations decide?  Will they expect poor communities to be satisfied with a vague promise that, for the very first time, great things will happen after the plundering?  Or should reparations be fully paid for past and current plundering, with poor communities deciding how much extraction they will allow and at what speed?”

    Essential for building a New Green World is the creation of a New Green Culture which asks all of the billions of people on the planet to share their ideas for obtaining the necessities of life while using less energy.  Such a culture would aim for one idea to spark to many ideas, all of which strive more toward living together than on inventing energy-guzzling gadgets.

    In order to build a New Green Culture which puts the sharing of wealth above personal greed, several things that must happen:

    1. To bring billions of people out of economic misery, every country should establish a maximum income which is a multiple of the minimum income, with that multiple being voted on (no less than every five years) by all living in the country.
    2. Every country should establish a maximum wealth which is a multiple of the minimum wealth, with that multiple being voted on (no less than every five years) by all living in the country.
    3. Global reparations, including sharing wealth and technological know-how between rich and poor countries, is essential for overcoming past and ongoing effects of imperialism. Establishing maximum incomes and maximum wealth possession within countries must be quickly followed by establishing such maximum levels between countries.

    A core problem of current versions of the GND is that they propose to solve employment, social justice and energy problems with increased production, which is not necessary to solve any of these.  Attempts to solve problems by increasing wealth feeds into the corporate culture of greed and become a barrier to creation of a New Green Culture.  Increasing production beyond what is necessary increases environmental problems that threaten the Earth.  It tells those who are already rich that they should grab more, more and more.  It tells those who are not rich that happiness depends upon the possession of objects.  The survival of Humanity depends on the building of a green culture that prizes sharing above all else.

    (A webinar at 7 pm CT on May 5, 2021 on “Envisioning a Greener New Deal” will explore concerns with alternative energy, the need for global reparations and ask how to create a better world while using much less energy.  Email the address of the author below for details.)

    This article was posted on Saturday, May 1st, 2021 at 8:21pm and is filed under Green New Deal, Nuclear Energy, Oil, Gas, Coal, Pipelines, Renewables.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Windigo Disease of Resource Capitalism and Global Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples

    This is a version of a speech given outside the headquarters of ReconAfrica in Vancouver BC on Water Day — March 22, 2021.

    We are on stolen CSḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) land and what is happening here today, the assault of Indigenous peoples and the invasion of their territories by Canada, its corporations and economic elites is also happening to the San people in Southern Africa. In a recent petition by activists we have learned that: “ReconAfrica has been given permission to drill for fossil fuels in the Kavango basin between Namibia and Botswana and the Kalahari Desert extending to the south eastern banks of the Okavango River and Delta. This area includes numerous areas of international significance, but for the San indigenous people who live there this is their sacred and ancestral ‘homeland’. The San people are the rightful current inhabitants and have been the custodians of this land for thousands of years. They have never been consulted, nor have they given their consent to any entities to prospect for oil and gas in their lands. By pursuing oil and gas development in the are the governments of Botswana and Namibia, and the Southern African region contravene their commitments to various international declarations an agreements as well as their own national laws. The oil and gas drilling operations will ruin roads, damage Indigenous livelihoods, deplete water resources and negatively impact biodiversity within the precious region. The Kavango Basin, which includes the Okavango Delta, lies beneath one of Africa’s most biodiverse habitats. It is home to a myriad of bird and megafauna species—including the largest herd of African elephants and African wild do populations—as well as many other threatened and endangered species. Potential impacts to local people and ecosystems include: massive water resource depletion, human induced earthquakes, disruption of avian species communication, breeding and nesting.”

    Sounds familiar? This is because it is.

    San hunter-gatherers walking across the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. (Courtesy of L.K. Marshall and L.J. Marshall. Copyright President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum #2001.29.390.)

    The struggles of the San people connect with the struggles of Indigenous peoples here in settler Canada. We should remember that despite the fact that we are separated by different colonial contexts and most importantly by continents and oceans the history of colonization in the two continents is very similar even though the trajectories are different; and what happens here also happens there. Because in a globalized world we are all interconnected and what we do here has a violent impact there. As Ina-Maria Shikongo, a climate activist from Namibia states: “The problem with this whole deal is we can really see what is happening all around the globe, it is a total take over of the oil industries of the last reserves of the green spaces that we have. They don’t care about the people, the animals, nothing! They just care about the money. We can all see that the weather patterns are changing drastically and we are still talking about digging up fossil fuels when we should stop.”

    ReconAfrica is a Canadian-US corporation whose headquarters are based here in so-called Vancouver, that is on stolen land. And I can’t help it but notice the irony that this Canadian company on stolen land is set to seize the land of the San people in Southern Africa. The theft might affect different peoples but bears the same racist and colonial violence. The theft follows the same patterns of white supremacy and environmental racism that has devastated First Peoples and their sacred territories around the globe.

    ReconAfrica does not come out of the blue. It continues the early legacies of racist colonialism and racial capitalism, systems that are 500 years old but have now mutated into resource capitalism spurred by oil and gas corporations and new forms of land grabs. The very country this company operates from, (Canada), is itself a petro-state, that often behaves as a corporation and has a violent and non-consensual relationship with its own Indigenous peoples. Canada consistently props up the mining and fossil fuel industries and together state and industry break treaties, invade Indigenous territories without their consent and often with the help of militarized police and the criminal justice system, pillage their lands, criminalize land defenders and throw them in prisons. By displacing them from their land, Canada and its corporations systematically destroy their cultural and food systems and subject Indigenous communities into abject poverty, homelessness, and food and water insecurity, all in the name of profit. Canadian companies either wreck the homes of Indigenous peoples here domestically or the homes of First Peoples there, internationally. The game and the pattern are the same: there is no corner of the earth and no people that resource capitalism will not ravage.

    Let there be no mistake: ReconAfrica is an extension of the colonial project that began in Europe 500 years ago and has morphed today into local and global extractivism. Since the emergence of capitalism in the 16th century European extractivism intensified and ran rampant during colonialism through the extraction of materials such as minerals, gold, silver, timber, furs, fish an so on. Naomi Klein tells us that before Canada became a nation it was an extractivist company, the Hudson Bay Company trafficking in furs, and pelts. Recon’s greed for oil follows in the footsteps of the Hudson Bay Company. Through Recon the Canadian model of unbridled extraction and devastation of ancestral Indigenous land and livelihoods is being now exported from this continent to the African continent and the ransacking of its First Peoples, the San people.

    And like the Hudson Bay Company, ReconAfrica is genocidal: it is a symptom of toxic colonial land grabs that some commentators link to the industrial genocide of Indigenous peoples. Original peoples across the globe have experienced genocide since the moment the European colonizers arrived uninvited on their territories. By pillaging their land, reducing it to commodities whose goal was to flow into and eventually industrialize Europe, the violent eviction and systematic extermination of Indigenous peoples became the very foundation of the wealth of Europe and settler states such as Canada. Indigenous peoples not only lost their land and thus their sustenance, and their livelihoods, they impoverished, relocated into reserves, starved, and their children were abducted, abused and experimented upon in residential schools to be assimilated in settler society and their cultures to be ethnically cleansed. Their communities are still experiencing profound poverty, higher rates of incarceration, addiction and suicide, and lack of fundamental human rights such as access to health, education and clean drinking water. As Jason Hickel has forcefully claimed in The Divide the Western world including Canada are the developed and industrialized First World that they are today because they have methodically and brutally de-industrialized and underdevelop the rest of the world.

    In other words, their industry and wealth are not some sign of good luck or ingenuity or innovation owed to European and Western superior genes of civilization; rather it was built on the violence of colonialism and stolen from Indigenous peoples. Western industrial “progress” has been made on the backs of First peoples and what is happening today to the San people is an iteration of that earlier colonial and genocidal project. It is fair to say that the economic prosperity of Canada and its corporations depends on the racist violence that is about to be inflicted onto the San people. And it is also fair to say that ReconAfrica’s money is nothing but blood money. And it is also fair to say that some prosper on the death of others and the destruction of their homes. And it is also fair to say that our energy greed is built on the devastation of people, lives, homes, ecosystems, the planet. I don’t know what you call Recon but to me they sound like parasites and scavengers of lives in pursuit of profit.

    In fact, ReconAfrica is guilty of environmental injustice that is racist, white supremacist and colonial. In “Let Them Drown: The Violence of Othering in a Warming World,” Naomi Klein argues that environmental injustice is also directly connected to environmental racism through the process of othering of sacrificial and disposable people. For ReconAfrica and the political and local elites of Namibia and Botswana the San people are not people but just obstacles to their drilling goals and so called economic development of these countries. Their land and entire rich ecosystems are simply impediments and the groundwater, the aquifiers, the endangered species are nothing but hindrance to the oil and gas that lie beneath.

    Recon and economic elites have so dehumanized and othered the San people and their land that they do not count and therefore they can be removed or poisoned, or pillaged or destroyed. Who cares if the groundwater is contaminated through the drilling and mining operations? Who cares if this impacts the health and food security of the San people? Economic development and profit matter more than Indigenous peoples’ lives. As Klein further reminds us othering is also directly connected to notions of racial and civilizational superiority because in order to have other and disposable people you need to have people and cultures that they count so little for their exploiters that they deserve sacrifice for the ever expanding energy needs of the Global North. And in contrast, you need to have people that see themselves as superior, as uniquely human and thus deserving of having it all, excessive lifestyles at the expense of those other thought of as subhuman.

    Our economic elites think of our culture as superior because we are developed; we arrogantly call ourselves the “developed world,” and we call the cultures we ravage and dehumanize “underdeveloped,” “not yet advanced,” “primitive savages” that just sit on oil and precious metals used for our laptops and electronic devices. And we arrogantly think that all we need to do is remove them to get to that black gold. In the early colonization of the so-called Americas, Indigenous peoples often were completely shocked to see the deranged behaviour of the Spaniards lusting after gold. And there is an urban legend that tells the story of how some Original peoples of this continent thought of gold as the “excrement of the devil.” Who would have thought that Recon continues the legacy of the Spanish conquistadores in its frenzied greed after the excrement of the devil we now call black gold, oil.

    Klein also cautions us that toxic colonialism justifies the sacrifice of people and dispossession of land through virulent intellectual theories that Western culture has harnessed to legitimize their destruction. Colonialism has always been aided by scientific racism and its cousin, Social Darwinism, theories that are fraught with racist ideas about the superiority of Northern races destined to rule weak Southern races economically, politically, culturally. Again we might want to remember that we call Northern cultures “developed” and Southern cultures “under- or un- developed.” And we keep saying to ourselves the patronizing and self-serving myth: “They do not know their own good, they can’t understand the wealth they sit on and if only they let us develop them. This is also called the “White man’s burden” that the Northern nations have to bring civilization in the form of economic prosperity to Southern peoples living in the dark ages. We are the advance and they are the barbaric.

    But my friends, I know of no other barbarism than the one Western economic elites inflict in devastating the home of First peoples, driving the climate crisis and destroying the planet. The eviction of the San people is a barbarity and those who do it are the barbarians and the savages. The climate crisis is a barbarity, not progress, and certainly not civilization. The collapse of the planet is a barbarity and those who are responsible for it are criminal and genocidal. Our economic institutions, our corporations and our economic elites are driving us all to destruction; not development. They are a threat to all Indigenous peoples across the globe and the existential annihilation of all life on this planet. I call them profiteers of death.

    As Bay Street depicts the Kavango Basin (green patch)


    What is happening in the Kavango basin is not just outright racism. It is also the story of commodity frontiers and capitalist expansion and is an extension of the colonial principle of the “doctrine of discovery” or in the words of some commentators “the doctrine of Native genocide.” You may know that when Europeans arrived here they thought of it as empty land that they had just discovered. Of course, what is really arrogant and foolish about it is that “you can’t discover something that is already the home of Indigenous peoples living here.” For Europeans the doctrine of “Discovery” served to remove the Original people to settle on their land, commodify it, exploit it and eventually degrade it, cut down its forests, toxify its watersheds, poison the soil, overfish it, kill its buffalo, endanger and eclipse multiple species. Here in so-called British Columbia, settler culture is wiping out the salmon along with countless plant and non-human animals. But I’m digressing. The doctrine of discovery serves the capitalist desire for a never ending expansion and growth. As land is being exhausted in one place and its peoples are driven out, “new” land needs to be “discovered and thus occupied.”

    Today the global capitalist economy and financial markets of which Recon is a symptom continue to “discover new land” to grab. They might not call these “discovered territories” but they have invented highly elaborate euphemisms that mean exactly the same thing. They now call “discovered land” “new market opportunities” or “land investments” or “economic development.” We must see these new terms for what they are: “the emperor has no clothes” because the naked truth is that the global empire we call capitalism continues to treat the entire world as a frontier of conquest and terra nullius, or empty land to satisfy larger economic interests that are specifically located in the Global North. And that entails genocide of traditional peoples that live on those lands.

    The truth of the matter is that African countries since colonization were “discovered” by European powers only to be harnessed to the global economy and serve as the economic satellites of the Global North. African countries have always been used as exporters of raw materials including human enslaved labour to Europe and later its colonies and even later what we call the Global North. In parallel, African nations have been importers of manufactured products from the North. This condensed history of unequal economic relationships mired in brutal exploitation must not also omit the violent legacy of the slave trade in which millions of Africans were abducted from their ancestral homelands to work in what is euphemistically called plantations—but were actual death camps—in the American continent and industrialize its economy. And there we have it again: the enslavement of humans that gave rise to the economic prosperity of this continent is not separate from the enslavement of land and nature through the extraction of energy and raw materials for the enrichment of corporate elites in the Global North.

    African American scholar, Cedric Robinson calls this phenomenon racial capitalism. This is an economic system that on the one hand was built on the exploitation of the free labour of African people who were once Indigenous to the African continent; and on the other racial capitalism thrives on the genocide of First peoples in the American continent that are displaced from their ancestral homelands. Racial capitalism is also a system that treats the world as a storehouse of endless commodities or commodity frontier ever expanding to amass more land. As Robinson suggests, capitalism “emerged within the European feudal order and flowered in the cultural soil of a Western civilization already thoroughly infused with racialism and racial hierarchies about superior people and inferior others whose land and labour can therefore be exploited. Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of racial capitalism dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and Indigenous genocide.” Within this context, we can clearly see how ReconAfrica is a symptom of a larger disease: that of racial capitalism.

    Let there be no mistake: when you treat the world and its Original Peoples as a frontier of conquest you establish with the earth an exploitative relationship based on ever expanding places to commodify and people to remove or enslave. And when that place is exhausted and its populations ethically cleansed the search begins again for another place, another frontier and another people to dispossess so long that your degradation of the “new” land and your crimes against the communities you displace remain invisible to energy consumers in the Global North. Out of sight, out of mind, none of us need to worry where did this energy or coltan for our electronic devices came from.

    We see the logic of the frontier of conquest not just in the Kavango basin but here closer to home and the way domestic companies including the Crown corporation of TMX and foreign corporations have been stealing Indigenous land, breaking their treaties, dispossessing them from their territories, and fuelling the climate crisis, we are all subjected to today.

    Windigo by Norval Morrisseau

    Ojibwe activist and scholar Winona LaDuke calls this form of greed the Windigo disease: In Anishinaabe tradition understanding the need to avoid a culture of commodification, domination, exploitation, greed, consumption, and destruction of the planet is guided by the Windigo teachings. The Windigo is a cannibalistic being that is cursed with an overwhelming hunger that can never be satisfied, no matter how much it consumes. The Windigo wanders the Earth, destroys whatever it finds in its path, in an agonizing and unending quest for satisfaction, an unending quest for more land to pillage and more people to destroy in the name of profit and greed. ReconAfrica is Windigo. TMX is Windigo. Coastal Gas Link is Windigo. Line 3 is Windigo. Barrick Gold is Windigo. Enbridge is Windigo. Imperial Metals is Windigo. Anvil Mining Limited is Windigo. Suncor is Windigo. Teck Resources is Windigo. Canada and its extractivist economy are Windigo.

    While Indigenous peoples across the globe have been treating the land as our sacred home corporations such as Recon have been treating it as a frontier of conquest. Unfortunately, we are running against severe ecological limits: this is called climate crisis and the collapse of living ecosystems as well as the extermination of Indigenous peoples across the world.

    We denounce ReconAfrica and its crimes against the San people and the land. We denounce Recon’s environmental racism. We denounce the Canadian government’s complicity in allowing this company to exploit and potentially destroy million acres of the Kalahari Desert. We will resist along the San people who are the rightful custodians of their land against the Windigo disease called ReconAfrica. We will remain unwaveringly committed to Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island and their fierce resistance that began 500 years ago and still continues strong till they slain all the snakes of pipelines, and the Windigo of corporate greed in this continent and defend their land.

    The post The Windigo Disease of Resource Capitalism and Global Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Windigo Disease of Resource Capitalism and Global Dispossession of Indigenous Peoples

    This is a version of a speech given outside the headquarters of ReconAfrica in Vancouver BC on Water Day — March 22, 2021.

    We are on stolen CSḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) land and what is happening here today, the assault of Indigenous peoples and the invasion of their territories by Canada, its corporations and economic elites is also happening to the San people in Southern Africa. In a recent petition by activists we have learned that: “ReconAfrica has been given permission to drill for fossil fuels in the Kavango basin between Namibia and Botswana and the Kalahari Desert extending to the south eastern banks of the Okavango River and Delta. This area includes numerous areas of international significance, but for the San indigenous people who live there this is their sacred and ancestral ‘homeland’. The San people are the rightful current inhabitants and have been the custodians of this land for thousands of years. They have never been consulted, nor have they given their consent to any entities to prospect for oil and gas in their lands. By pursuing oil and gas development in the are the governments of Botswana and Namibia, and the Southern African region contravene their commitments to various international declarations an agreements as well as their own national laws. The oil and gas drilling operations will ruin roads, damage Indigenous livelihoods, deplete water resources and negatively impact biodiversity within the precious region. The Kavango Basin, which includes the Okavango Delta, lies beneath one of Africa’s most biodiverse habitats. It is home to a myriad of bird and megafauna species—including the largest herd of African elephants and African wild do populations—as well as many other threatened and endangered species. Potential impacts to local people and ecosystems include: massive water resource depletion, human induced earthquakes, disruption of avian species communication, breeding and nesting.”

    Sounds familiar? This is because it is.

    San hunter-gatherers walking across the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa. (Courtesy of L.K. Marshall and L.J. Marshall. Copyright President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum #2001.29.390.)

    The struggles of the San people connect with the struggles of Indigenous peoples here in settler Canada. We should remember that despite the fact that we are separated by different colonial contexts and most importantly by continents and oceans the history of colonization in the two continents is very similar even though the trajectories are different; and what happens here also happens there. Because in a globalized world we are all interconnected and what we do here has a violent impact there. As Ina-Maria Shikongo, a climate activist from Namibia states: “The problem with this whole deal is we can really see what is happening all around the globe, it is a total take over of the oil industries of the last reserves of the green spaces that we have. They don’t care about the people, the animals, nothing! They just care about the money. We can all see that the weather patterns are changing drastically and we are still talking about digging up fossil fuels when we should stop.”

    ReconAfrica is a Canadian-US corporation whose headquarters are based here in so-called Vancouver, that is on stolen land. And I can’t help it but notice the irony that this Canadian company on stolen land is set to seize the land of the San people in Southern Africa. The theft might affect different peoples but bears the same racist and colonial violence. The theft follows the same patterns of white supremacy and environmental racism that has devastated First Peoples and their sacred territories around the globe.

    ReconAfrica does not come out of the blue. It continues the early legacies of racist colonialism and racial capitalism, systems that are 500 years old but have now mutated into resource capitalism spurred by oil and gas corporations and new forms of land grabs. The very country this company operates from, (Canada), is itself a petro-state, that often behaves as a corporation and has a violent and non-consensual relationship with its own Indigenous peoples. Canada consistently props up the mining and fossil fuel industries and together state and industry break treaties, invade Indigenous territories without their consent and often with the help of militarized police and the criminal justice system, pillage their lands, criminalize land defenders and throw them in prisons. By displacing them from their land, Canada and its corporations systematically destroy their cultural and food systems and subject Indigenous communities into abject poverty, homelessness, and food and water insecurity, all in the name of profit. Canadian companies either wreck the homes of Indigenous peoples here domestically or the homes of First Peoples there, internationally. The game and the pattern are the same: there is no corner of the earth and no people that resource capitalism will not ravage.

    Let there be no mistake: ReconAfrica is an extension of the colonial project that began in Europe 500 years ago and has morphed today into local and global extractivism. Since the emergence of capitalism in the 16th century European extractivism intensified and ran rampant during colonialism through the extraction of materials such as minerals, gold, silver, timber, furs, fish an so on. Naomi Klein tells us that before Canada became a nation it was an extractivist company, the Hudson Bay Company trafficking in furs, and pelts. Recon’s greed for oil follows in the footsteps of the Hudson Bay Company. Through Recon the Canadian model of unbridled extraction and devastation of ancestral Indigenous land and livelihoods is being now exported from this continent to the African continent and the ransacking of its First Peoples, the San people.

    And like the Hudson Bay Company, ReconAfrica is genocidal: it is a symptom of toxic colonial land grabs that some commentators link to the industrial genocide of Indigenous peoples. Original peoples across the globe have experienced genocide since the moment the European colonizers arrived uninvited on their territories. By pillaging their land, reducing it to commodities whose goal was to flow into and eventually industrialize Europe, the violent eviction and systematic extermination of Indigenous peoples became the very foundation of the wealth of Europe and settler states such as Canada. Indigenous peoples not only lost their land and thus their sustenance, and their livelihoods, they impoverished, relocated into reserves, starved, and their children were abducted, abused and experimented upon in residential schools to be assimilated in settler society and their cultures to be ethnically cleansed. Their communities are still experiencing profound poverty, higher rates of incarceration, addiction and suicide, and lack of fundamental human rights such as access to health, education and clean drinking water. As Jason Hickel has forcefully claimed in The Divide the Western world including Canada are the developed and industrialized First World that they are today because they have methodically and brutally de-industrialized and underdevelop the rest of the world.

    In other words, their industry and wealth are not some sign of good luck or ingenuity or innovation owed to European and Western superior genes of civilization; rather it was built on the violence of colonialism and stolen from Indigenous peoples. Western industrial “progress” has been made on the backs of First peoples and what is happening today to the San people is an iteration of that earlier colonial and genocidal project. It is fair to say that the economic prosperity of Canada and its corporations depends on the racist violence that is about to be inflicted onto the San people. And it is also fair to say that ReconAfrica’s money is nothing but blood money. And it is also fair to say that some prosper on the death of others and the destruction of their homes. And it is also fair to say that our energy greed is built on the devastation of people, lives, homes, ecosystems, the planet. I don’t know what you call Recon but to me they sound like parasites and scavengers of lives in pursuit of profit.

    In fact, ReconAfrica is guilty of environmental injustice that is racist, white supremacist and colonial. In “Let Them Drown: The Violence of Othering in a Warming World,” Naomi Klein argues that environmental injustice is also directly connected to environmental racism through the process of othering of sacrificial and disposable people. For ReconAfrica and the political and local elites of Namibia and Botswana the San people are not people but just obstacles to their drilling goals and so called economic development of these countries. Their land and entire rich ecosystems are simply impediments and the groundwater, the aquifiers, the endangered species are nothing but hindrance to the oil and gas that lie beneath.

    Recon and economic elites have so dehumanized and othered the San people and their land that they do not count and therefore they can be removed or poisoned, or pillaged or destroyed. Who cares if the groundwater is contaminated through the drilling and mining operations? Who cares if this impacts the health and food security of the San people? Economic development and profit matter more than Indigenous peoples’ lives. As Klein further reminds us othering is also directly connected to notions of racial and civilizational superiority because in order to have other and disposable people you need to have people and cultures that they count so little for their exploiters that they deserve sacrifice for the ever expanding energy needs of the Global North. And in contrast, you need to have people that see themselves as superior, as uniquely human and thus deserving of having it all, excessive lifestyles at the expense of those other thought of as subhuman.

    Our economic elites think of our culture as superior because we are developed; we arrogantly call ourselves the “developed world,” and we call the cultures we ravage and dehumanize “underdeveloped,” “not yet advanced,” “primitive savages” that just sit on oil and precious metals used for our laptops and electronic devices. And we arrogantly think that all we need to do is remove them to get to that black gold. In the early colonization of the so-called Americas, Indigenous peoples often were completely shocked to see the deranged behaviour of the Spaniards lusting after gold. And there is an urban legend that tells the story of how some Original peoples of this continent thought of gold as the “excrement of the devil.” Who would have thought that Recon continues the legacy of the Spanish conquistadores in its frenzied greed after the excrement of the devil we now call black gold, oil.

    Klein also cautions us that toxic colonialism justifies the sacrifice of people and dispossession of land through virulent intellectual theories that Western culture has harnessed to legitimize their destruction. Colonialism has always been aided by scientific racism and its cousin, Social Darwinism, theories that are fraught with racist ideas about the superiority of Northern races destined to rule weak Southern races economically, politically, culturally. Again we might want to remember that we call Northern cultures “developed” and Southern cultures “under- or un- developed.” And we keep saying to ourselves the patronizing and self-serving myth: “They do not know their own good, they can’t understand the wealth they sit on and if only they let us develop them. This is also called the “White man’s burden” that the Northern nations have to bring civilization in the form of economic prosperity to Southern peoples living in the dark ages. We are the advance and they are the barbaric.

    But my friends, I know of no other barbarism than the one Western economic elites inflict in devastating the home of First peoples, driving the climate crisis and destroying the planet. The eviction of the San people is a barbarity and those who do it are the barbarians and the savages. The climate crisis is a barbarity, not progress, and certainly not civilization. The collapse of the planet is a barbarity and those who are responsible for it are criminal and genocidal. Our economic institutions, our corporations and our economic elites are driving us all to destruction; not development. They are a threat to all Indigenous peoples across the globe and the existential annihilation of all life on this planet. I call them profiteers of death.

    As Bay Street depicts the Kavango Basin (green patch)

    What is happening in the Kavango basin is not just outright racism. It is also the story of commodity frontiers and capitalist expansion and is an extension of the colonial principle of the “doctrine of discovery” or in the words of some commentators “the doctrine of Native genocide.” You may know that when Europeans arrived here they thought of it as empty land that they had just discovered. Of course, what is really arrogant and foolish about it is that “you can’t discover something that is already the home of Indigenous peoples living here.” For Europeans the doctrine of “Discovery” served to remove the Original people to settle on their land, commodify it, exploit it and eventually degrade it, cut down its forests, toxify its watersheds, poison the soil, overfish it, kill its buffalo, endanger and eclipse multiple species. Here in so-called British Columbia, settler culture is wiping out the salmon along with countless plant and non-human animals. But I’m digressing. The doctrine of discovery serves the capitalist desire for a never ending expansion and growth. As land is being exhausted in one place and its peoples are driven out, “new” land needs to be “discovered and thus occupied.”

    Today the global capitalist economy and financial markets of which Recon is a symptom continue to “discover new land” to grab. They might not call these “discovered territories” but they have invented highly elaborate euphemisms that mean exactly the same thing. They now call “discovered land” “new market opportunities” or “land investments” or “economic development.” We must see these new terms for what they are: “the emperor has no clothes” because the naked truth is that the global empire we call capitalism continues to treat the entire world as a frontier of conquest and terra nullius, or empty land to satisfy larger economic interests that are specifically located in the Global North. And that entails genocide of traditional peoples that live on those lands.

    The truth of the matter is that African countries since colonization were “discovered” by European powers only to be harnessed to the global economy and serve as the economic satellites of the Global North. African countries have always been used as exporters of raw materials including human enslaved labour to Europe and later its colonies and even later what we call the Global North. In parallel, African nations have been importers of manufactured products from the North. This condensed history of unequal economic relationships mired in brutal exploitation must not also omit the violent legacy of the slave trade in which millions of Africans were abducted from their ancestral homelands to work in what is euphemistically called plantations—but were actual death camps—in the American continent and industrialize its economy. And there we have it again: the enslavement of humans that gave rise to the economic prosperity of this continent is not separate from the enslavement of land and nature through the extraction of energy and raw materials for the enrichment of corporate elites in the Global North.

    African American scholar, Cedric Robinson calls this phenomenon racial capitalism. This is an economic system that on the one hand was built on the exploitation of the free labour of African people who were once Indigenous to the African continent; and on the other racial capitalism thrives on the genocide of First peoples in the American continent that are displaced from their ancestral homelands. Racial capitalism is also a system that treats the world as a storehouse of endless commodities or commodity frontier ever expanding to amass more land. As Robinson suggests, capitalism “emerged within the European feudal order and flowered in the cultural soil of a Western civilization already thoroughly infused with racialism and racial hierarchies about superior people and inferior others whose land and labour can therefore be exploited. Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of racial capitalism dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and Indigenous genocide.” Within this context, we can clearly see how ReconAfrica is a symptom of a larger disease: that of racial capitalism.

    Let there be no mistake: when you treat the world and its Original Peoples as a frontier of conquest you establish with the earth an exploitative relationship based on ever expanding places to commodify and people to remove or enslave. And when that place is exhausted and its populations ethically cleansed the search begins again for another place, another frontier and another people to dispossess so long that your degradation of the “new” land and your crimes against the communities you displace remain invisible to energy consumers in the Global North. Out of sight, out of mind, none of us need to worry where did this energy or coltan for our electronic devices came from.

    We see the logic of the frontier of conquest not just in the Kavango basin but here closer to home and the way domestic companies including the Crown corporation of TMX and foreign corporations have been stealing Indigenous land, breaking their treaties, dispossessing them from their territories, and fuelling the climate crisis, we are all subjected to today.

    Windigo by Norval Morrisseau

    Ojibwe activist and scholar Winona LaDuke calls this form of greed the Windigo disease: In Anishinaabe tradition understanding the need to avoid a culture of commodification, domination, exploitation, greed, consumption, and destruction of the planet is guided by the Windigo teachings. The Windigo is a cannibalistic being that is cursed with an overwhelming hunger that can never be satisfied, no matter how much it consumes. The Windigo wanders the Earth, destroys whatever it finds in its path, in an agonizing and unending quest for satisfaction, an unending quest for more land to pillage and more people to destroy in the name of profit and greed. ReconAfrica is Windigo. TMX is Windigo. Coastal Gas Link is Windigo. Line 3 is Windigo. Barrick Gold is Windigo. Enbridge is Windigo. Imperial Metals is Windigo. Anvil Mining Limited is Windigo. Suncor is Windigo. Teck Resources is Windigo. Canada and its extractivist economy are Windigo.

    While Indigenous peoples across the globe have been treating the land as our sacred home corporations such as Recon have been treating it as a frontier of conquest. Unfortunately, we are running against severe ecological limits: this is called climate crisis and the collapse of living ecosystems as well as the extermination of Indigenous peoples across the world.

    We denounce ReconAfrica and its crimes against the San people and the land. We denounce Recon’s environmental racism. We denounce the Canadian government’s complicity in allowing this company to exploit and potentially destroy million acres of the Kalahari Desert. We will resist along the San people who are the rightful custodians of their land against the Windigo disease called ReconAfrica. We will remain unwaveringly committed to Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island and their fierce resistance that began 500 years ago and still continues strong till they slain all the snakes of pipelines, and the Windigo of corporate greed in this continent and defend their land.

    Litsa Chatzivasileiou is a sessional instructor at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia and teaches critical race, Indigenous, diaspora and gender studies. Read other articles by Litsa.

    This article was posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2021 at 9:08am and is filed under Botswana, Canada, Capitalism, Colonialism, Culture, Environment, Genocide, Namibia, Oil, Gas, Coal, Pipelines, Original Peoples, Racism, Resistance, Turtle Island.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Sells Millions of Barrels of Seized Iranian Oil

    Need an idea for a side hustle? Put sanctions on a country, pirate its oil exports, then sell it! That’s what the US did with a million barrels of Iranian oil.

    The post US Sells Millions of Barrels of Seized Iranian Oil first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US Sells Millions of Barrels of Seized Iranian Oil

    American side hustle

    by RT / February 13th, 2021

    Need an idea for a side hustle? Put sanctions on a country, pirate its oil exports, then sell it! That’s what the US did with a million barrels of Iranian oil.

    This article was posted on Saturday, February 13th, 2021 at 9:12am and is filed under Crimes against Peace, International Court of Justice, Iran, Oil, Gas, Coal, Pipelines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Are We Not All in Search of Tomorrow

    Oswaldo Terreros (Ecuador), Mural para la Universidad Superior de las Artes (‘Mural for the University of the Arts’), 2012.

    Oswaldo Terreros (Ecuador), Mural para la Universidad Superior de las Artes (‘Mural for the University of the Arts’), 2012.

    In 2019, 613 million Indians voted to appoint their representatives to the Indian parliament (Lok Sabha). During the election campaign, the political parties spent Rs. 60,000 crores (around US $8 billion), 45% of which was spent by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the governing party; the BJP won 37% of the vote, which translated into 303 of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha. A year later, a massive $14 billion was spent on the US presidential and congressional elections, with the winning Democrat Party dominating the spending. These are massive amounts of money, whose grip on the democratic process is quite clear by now. Is it possible to talk about ‘democracy’ without being candid about the erosion of the democratic spirit by this avalanche of money?

    Money floods the system, eats into the loyalties of politicians, corrupts the institutions of civil society, and shapes the narratives of the media. It matters that the dominant classes in our world own the main communications outlets and that these outlets shape the way people decipher the world around us. Although the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression’ (Article 19), the plain fact is that the concentration of the media in the hands of a few corporate entities circumscribes the freedom to ‘impart information and ideas through any media’. For this reason, Reporters Without Borders has an ongoing Media Ownership Monitor that traces the consolidation of the media held by corporate power, which in turn drives a political agenda within existing systems of government.

    Paul Guiragossian (Lebanon), La Lutte de l’Existence (‘The Struggle of Existence’), 1988

    Paul Guiragossian (Lebanon), La Lutte de l’Existence (‘The Struggle of Existence’), 1988

    Aijaz Ahmad, Senior Fellow at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, argues that extreme right political projects find it possible to drive their agenda through democratic institutions, since the political structures in these countries – from the United States to India – have seen a considerable erosion of their democratic content. As Ahmad explains, the extreme right in countries such as the United States and India does not challenge the constitutional, liberal democratic form, but garrottes formal institutions by transforming society ‘in all domains of culture, religion, and civilisation’.

    In Latin America, the extreme right has used every weapon to delegitimise its adversaries, including using perfectly good laws against corruption in a malicious way to target leaders of the left. This is a strategy called ‘lawfare’, where the law is used – often without evidence – to oust democratically-elected leaders of the left or to prevent them from running for office. Lawfare was used to remove Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya in 2009, Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo in 2012, and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff in 2016; these leaders were all victims of judicial coup d’états. Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was denied the right to run for the presidency in 2018 by a lawsuit of no merit whatsoever amidst predictions in all polls that he would win. Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner faced a series of cases beginning in 2016, all of which prevented her from running again in 2019 (she is now the vice president, a testament to her popularity in the country).

    Emiliano di Cavalcanti (Brazil), Sonhos do carnaval (‘Dreams of Carnaval’), 1955.

    Emiliano di Cavalcanti (Brazil), Sonhos do carnaval (‘Dreams of Carnaval’), 1955.

    In Ecuador, the oligarchy used the techniques of the guerra jurídica (‘legal war’) to delegitimise the entire left, especially former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017). Correa was accused of bribery – with the bizarre notion of ‘psychic influence’ (influjo psíquico) at the root of the case. He was handed down an eight-year sentence which prevented him from running for office in Ecuador.

    Why was Correa anathema to both Ecuador’s dominant class and to the United States? The Citizens’ Revolution that Correa led passed a progressive constitution in 2008, which put the principle of ‘good living’ (buen vivir in Spanish and sumak kawsay in Quechua) at its heart. Government investment to strengthen social and economic rights came alongside a crackdown on corporate (including multinational) corruption. Oil revenue was not parked in foreign banks, but used to invest in education, health care, roads, and other basic infrastructure. From Ecuador’s population of 17 million, nearly 2 million people were lifted out of poverty in the Correa years.

    Correa’s government was an aberration to the multinational firms – such as the US-based oil company Chevron – and to the Ecuadorian oligarchy. Chevron’s dangerous case for compensation against Ecuador, brought forward before Correa took office, was nonetheless fiercely resisted by Correa’s government. The Dirty Hand (Mano Negra) campaign put enormous international pressure against Chevron, which worked closely with the US embassy in Quito and the US government to undermine Correa and his campaign against the oil giant.


    Legendary musician Roger Waters talks to me about Chevron’s mischief in Ecuador

    Not only did they want Correa out, but they wanted all the leftists – called Correistas by shorthand – out as well. Lenín Moreno, who was once close to Correa, ascended to the presidency in 2017, switched sides, became the main instrument for fragmenting the Ecuadorian left, and delivered Ecuador back to its elites and to the United States. Moreno’s government gutted the public sector by defunding education and health care, withdrawing labour and housing rights, attempting to sell off Ecuador’s refinery, and deregulating parts of the financial system. Collapsed oil prices that led to cuts in oil subsidies, a hefty loan from the International Monetary Fund at the cost of austerity measures, and mismanagement of the pandemic battered Moreno’s legitimacy. A consequence of these policies has been Ecuador’s appalling response to the pandemic, which includes accusations of the deliberate undercounting of as many as 20,000 COVID-19 deaths.

    Firoz Mahmud (Bangladesh), Ouponibeshik/Porouponibeshik (‘Colonial/Postcolonial’), 2017.

    Firoz Mahmud (Bangladesh), Ouponibeshik/Porouponibeshik (‘Colonial/Postcolonial’), 2017.

    To ingratiate himself to the United States, Moreno ejected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Ecuador’s London embassy, arrested computer programmer and privacy activist Ola Bini on a concocted case, and launched a frontal attack against the Correistas. The political organisation of the Correistas was broken up, its leaders arrested, and any attempt to regroup for elections denied. Once such as example is the Social Compromise Force or Fuerza Compromiso Social platform, which the Correistas used  to run for local elections in 2019; this platform was then banned in 2020. A February 2018 referendum was barrelled through the country, allowing the government to destroy the democratic structures of the National Electoral Council (CNE), the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Judiciary Council, the attorney general, the comptroller general, and others. Democracy was hollowed out.

    A month before the 7 February 2021 presidential election, it appeared clear that in a fair election the candidate of the left, Andrés Arauz Galarza, would prevail. A range of pollsters suggested that Arauz would win in the first round with over the threshold of 40%. Arauz (age 35) is an attractive candidate with not a whiff of corruption or incompetence around him for his decade of service in the Central Bank and as a minister in the last two turbulent years of Correa’s government. When Correa left office, Arauz went to Mexico to pursue a PhD at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The oligarchy has used every means to block his victory.

    Gulnara Kasmalieva and Murat Djumaliev (Kyrgyzstan), Shadows, 1999.

    Gulnara Kasmalieva and Murat Djumaliev (Kyrgyzstan), Shadows, 1999.

    On 14 January, the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) provided Ecuador with a loan of $2.8 billion to be used to pay off Ecuador’s debt to China and to ensure that Ecuador pledge to break commercial ties with China. Knowing that Arauz might win, the US and the oligarchy of Ecuador decided to tie the Andean country to an arrangement that could suffocate any progressive government. Formed in 2018, the DFC developed a project called América Crece or ‘Growth in the Americas’, whose entire policy framework aims to edge out Chinese business from the American hemisphere. Quito has since signed up for Washington’s ‘Clean Network’, a US State Department project to force countries to build telecommunications networks without a Chinese telecom provider involved in them. This particularly applies to the high-speed fifth generation (5G) networks. Ecuador joined the Clean Network in November 2020, which opened the door for the DFC loan.

    Correa drew in $5 billion from Chinese banks to enhance Ecuador’s infrastructure (particularly for the construction of hydroelectric dams); Ecuador’s total external debt is $52 billion. Moreno and the United States have painted the Chinese funds as a ‘debt trap’, although there is no evidence that the Chinese banks have been anything but accommodating. Over the last six months of 2020, Chinese banks have been willing to put loan payments on hold until 2022 (this includes a delay on the repayment of the $474 million loan to the Export-Import Bank of China and the $417 million loan to the China Development Bank). Ecuador’s Finance Ministry says that, for now, the plan is for repayment to start in March 2022 and to end by 2029. Moreno took to Twitter to announce these two delays. There were no aggressive measures taken by these two banks nor from any other Chinese financial entity.

    Essentially, the DFC loan attempts to sabotage an Arauz presidency. This US-imposed conflict against China in Latin America is part of a broader assault. On 30 January, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research held a seminar alongside Instituto Simón Bolívar, ALBA Social Movimientos, and the No Cold War platform to reflect on the Latin American battlefield of this hybrid war.


    The speakers included Alicia Castro (Argentina), Eduardo Regaldo Florido (Cuba), João Pedro Stedile (Brazil), Ricardo Menéndez (Venezuela), Monica Bruckmann (Peru/Brazil), Ambassador Li Baorong (China), and Fernando Haddad (Brazil).

    Despite the hollowing out of democracy, elections remain one front in the political contest, and in that contest, the left fights to summon a democratic spirit. Perhaps poetry is the best way to articulate the texture of this conflict. Out of Ecuador’s rich tradition of emancipatory thinking came the writer and communist Jorge Enrique Adoum. Here’s a part of his powerful poem, Fugaz retorno (‘Fleeting Return’):

    And we ran, like two runaways,
    to the hard shore where stars
    came apart. Fishermen told us
    of successive victories in nearby provinces.
    And our feet got wet with a spray of dawn,
    full of roots that were ours and the world’s.

    ‘When is happiness?’, the poet asks. Tomorrow. Are we not all in search of tomorrow?

    The post Are We Not All in Search of Tomorrow first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Are We Not All in Search of Tomorrow

    Firoz Mahmud (Bangladesh), Ouponibeshik/Porouponibeshik (‘Colonial/Postcolonial’), 2017.

    To ingratiate himself to the United States, Moreno ejected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Ecuador’s London embassy, arrested computer programmer and privacy activist Ola Bini on a concocted case, and launched a frontal attack against the Correistas. The political organisation of the Correistas was broken up, its leaders arrested, and any attempt to regroup for elections denied. Once such as example is the Social Compromise Force or Fuerza Compromiso Social platform, which the Correistas used  to run for local elections in 2019; this platform was then banned in 2020. A February 2018 referendum was barrelled through the country, allowing the government to destroy the democratic structures of the National Electoral Council (CNE), the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Judiciary Council, the attorney general, the comptroller general, and others. Democracy was hollowed out.

    A month before the 7 February 2021 presidential election, it appeared clear that in a fair election the candidate of the left, Andrés Arauz Galarza, would prevail. A range of pollsters suggested that Arauz would win in the first round with over the threshold of 40%. Arauz (age 35) is an attractive candidate with not a whiff of corruption or incompetence around him for his decade of service in the Central Bank and as a minister in the last two turbulent years of Correa’s government. When Correa left office, Arauz went to Mexico to pursue a PhD at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The oligarchy has used every means to block his victory.

    Gulnara Kasmalieva and Murat Djumaliev (Kyrgyzstan), Shadows, 1999.

    On 14 January, the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) provided Ecuador with a loan of $2.8 billion to be used to pay off Ecuador’s debt to China and to ensure that Ecuador pledge to break commercial ties with China. Knowing that Arauz might win, the US and the oligarchy of Ecuador decided to tie the Andean country to an arrangement that could suffocate any progressive government. Formed in 2018, the DFC developed a project called América Crece or ‘Growth in the Americas’, whose entire policy framework aims to edge out Chinese business from the American hemisphere. Quito has since signed up for Washington’s ‘Clean Network’, a US State Department project to force countries to build telecommunications networks without a Chinese telecom provider involved in them. This particularly applies to the high-speed fifth generation (5G) networks. Ecuador joined the Clean Network in November 2020, which opened the door for the DFC loan.

    Correa drew in $5 billion from Chinese banks to enhance Ecuador’s infrastructure (particularly for the construction of hydroelectric dams); Ecuador’s total external debt is $52 billion. Moreno and the United States have painted the Chinese funds as a ‘debt trap’, although there is no evidence that the Chinese banks have been anything but accommodating. Over the last six months of 2020, Chinese banks have been willing to put loan payments on hold until 2022 (this includes a delay on the repayment of the $474 million loan to the Export-Import Bank of China and the $417 million loan to the China Development Bank). Ecuador’s Finance Ministry says that, for now, the plan is for repayment to start in March 2022 and to end by 2029. Moreno took to Twitter to announce these two delays. There were no aggressive measures taken by these two banks nor from any other Chinese financial entity.

    Essentially, the DFC loan attempts to sabotage an Arauz presidency. This US-imposed conflict against China in Latin America is part of a broader assault. On 30 January, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research held a seminar alongside Instituto Simón Bolívar, ALBA Social Movimientos, and the No Cold War platform to reflect on the Latin American battlefield of this hybrid war.



    The speakers included Alicia Castro (Argentina), Eduardo Regaldo Florido (Cuba), João Pedro Stedile (Brazil), Ricardo Menéndez (Venezuela), Monica Bruckmann (Peru/Brazil), Ambassador Li Baorong (China), and Fernando Haddad (Brazil).

    Despite the hollowing out of democracy, elections remain one front in the political contest, and in that contest, the left fights to summon a democratic spirit. Perhaps poetry is the best way to articulate the texture of this conflict. Out of Ecuador’s rich tradition of emancipatory thinking came the writer and communist Jorge Enrique Adoum. Here’s a part of his powerful poem, Fugaz retorno (‘Fleeting Return’):

    And we ran, like two runaways,
    to the hard shore where stars
    came apart. Fishermen told us
    of successive victories in nearby provinces.
    And our feet got wet with a spray of dawn,
    full of roots that were ours and the world’s.

    ‘When is happiness?’, the poet asks. Tomorrow. Are we not all in search of tomorrow?

    This article was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2021 at 4:35pm and is filed under Ecuador, Finance, Human Rights, India, Oil, Gas, Coal, Pipelines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.