Category Archives: world news

Labour tensions ‘result from workers’ real wages falling’

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Note: The declining real wages, crippling debt burdens of Canadians, and the continuing struggles of the small business man to achieve profits is not only a problem in Canada, as this next story illustrates from South Africa; yet South African firms (large corporations and multinationals) are now among the most profitable in the world. Sounds familar….right?

August 26 2013    By Ann Crotty    http://www.iol.co.za

Johannesburg – Two decades of declining real wages despite increases in productivity and crippling debt burdens were some of the reasons behind the heightened tensions in the current bargaining season, labour analysts said at a seminar last week.

In recent weeks media headlines have been dominated by reports of workers making “reckless” demands in wage negotiations and of strikes and pending strikes. Another major story of recent weeks has focused on the disappointing results from JSE-listed retailers, who are struggling to grow profits in the face of weak consumer demand.

The two sets of stories are, of course, intimately connected. It is one story told from two perspectives – that of workers across the economy and of investors in retail companies.

Workers are demanding above-inflation increases because they are unable to survive on their current wages – they have run out of cash and increasingly they are running out of the ability to access even the extremely expensive debt provided by unsecured lenders. The evidence, as investors in the retail sector will confirm, is that they have run out of money for consumer goods, even for the most basic of goods such as food.

At a seminar convened by the Progressive Economics Network to discuss labour productivity and the need for higher wages, Niall Reddy, a researcher with the Alternative Information Development Centre, dismissed the charge that high wage demands were “greedy” or “reckless”. Reddy said they represented “a rebellion against two decades of declining livelihoods and a challenge to the economic structures of unequal, profit-led growth”.

He pointed out that Statistics SA’s household survey revealed that most workers experienced virtually no improvement in real wages from 1997 to 2011. The median real salary for a formal sector worker in 2011 was R3 800 a month, the same as it was in 1997.

However, real wages of the top 10 percent of earners increased from R11 670 to R15 500 over this period. “The data show that the 22.7 percent increase in the formal sector average wage over the last 15 years was entirely due to increases for the top earners, which is confirmed by numerous firm-level studies that show the ‘high wage’ distortion to be largely due to bloated salaries for managerial staff.”

Reddy pointed out that the insistence by corporate executives that companies could not afford decent wages should be seen in the context of reports that South African firms were now among the most profitable in the world. He said trade unions would have to align themselves with the social anger that has been caused by the lack of decent wages “or fall victim to it, as the example of the National Union of Mineworkers shows”.

Roger Etkind of the Learning Company told the conference that workers consistently lost out by bargaining for pay increases linked to the consumer price index (CPI) because the inflation rate experienced by workers, which had a much higher proportion of items such as food and transport, was considerably higher than the official CPI inflation rate.

As was evident from last year’s tragic events in Marikana, heavy debt burdens and the crippling impact of garnishee orders was also referred to as a factor behind the high wage demands. The audience, which included trade unionists and labour advisers, questioned why Cosatu had not made sufficient effort to push the issue of garnishee orders. Requiring employers to audit garnishee orders was an issue that should be placed on the bargaining table, one delegate suggested.

Trenton Elsley of the Labour Research Service told the delegates that despite the adversarial nature of the current bargaining season, workers did not want to strike. “There is a specific dynamic playing out in the mining sector and it’s not just inter-union rivalry,” Elsley told Business Report, adding: “In other sectors workers don’t really want to strike, they are too stretched but they have expectations and want results from their unions.” Elsley said the media had focused on a few high-profile strikes.

Neil Coleman, the strategies co-ordinator at Cosatu, told the seminar a national minimum wage should be a key element of a “coherent wage and incomes policy”. The union movement was calling for “legislated comprehensive sectoral bargaining to improve on the national minimum wage floor”. A national minimum wage would create a basic wage floor below which no one could fall, said Coleman, pointing out that having one national minimum wage was preferable to having many sectoral minimum wages. One of the many advantages was that because of its simplicity every worker would be aware of his or her rights.

Coleman said the current bargaining was happening “in the context of unprecedented attacks on the bargaining system by employers and free market ideologues and the fight back against the increase in the farm workers’ minimum wage”.

Coleman argued that the “apartheid wage structure” had not been fundamentally altered, with the majority of black workers, particularly in the private sector, “continuing to live in poverty”. – Business Report

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): The Terrible Plutocratic Plan

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By David Swanson    Global Research, July 22, 2013   http://www.globalresearch.ca

Thanks to Michael Feikema and Doug Hendren for inviting me.  Like most of you I do not spend my life studying trade agreements, but the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is disturbing enough to make me devote a little time to it, and I hope you will do the same and get your neighbors to do the same and get them to get their friends to do the same — as soon as possible.

I spend most of my time reading and writing about war and peace.  I’m in the middle of writing a book about the possibility and need to abolish war and militarism.  I hate to take a break from that.  But if we think trade and militarism are separate topics we’re fooling ourselves.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a big fan of the supposed wonders of the hidden hand of the market economy says, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the U.S. Air Force F-15.  And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

Of course, there’s nothing hidden about that fist.  The TPP is planned to include the United States, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam, with Japan expected to be added this month, and with the ability to expand to any other Pacific nation even after the treaty is created — if it is created.  The U.S. military works closely with the militaries of all of those nations, encourages their militarization, and keeps its own troops in most of them.  The U.S. military is currently building up its presence in the Pacific — including even in Vietnam, where McDonald’s also opened its first store this week.  In a presidential debate last year President Obama described the TPP as part of a strategy to counter China and exert U.S. influence in Asia, the same rationale behind the naval base on Jeju Island and all the rest of the military build up around China’s borders.  In this year’s State of the Union, Obama said the TPP and an agreement with the European Union were priorities for him this year.

There is also, of course, nothing hidden about the hand of corporate trade agreements.  These are not agreements aimed at maximizing competition by preventing monopolies.  These are very lengthy and detailed agreements that include protection and expansion of monopolies.  Rather than relying on the magic of the marketplace, a corporate trade agreement relies on the influence of lobbyists.  Just as the corruption of the military industrial complex helps explain a global military buildup in the absence of a national enemy — I mean an enemy that is a nation, not a handful of criminals who ought to be indicted and prosecuted rather than blown up along with whoever’s nearby — so, too, the corporate ownership of our government explains our government’s trade policies.

What is hidden, in another sense, is the detailed negotiated text of the proposed TPP treaty.  Some 600 corporate advisors are helping the U.S. government write the text.  Some of these advisors come from those benevolent, public-interest firms known as Monsanto, the Bank of America, Chevron, and ExxonMobil.  The rest of us are shut out.  The government gathers up our every communication, but we aren’t allowed to see what it’s doing in our name.  We don’t influence the text and we don’t get to see it.  Some courageous person or persons willing to risk charges of aiding the enemy (even if there is no enemy) has made parts of what is in the TPP known.

I dealt with corporate trade agreements a little when I worked as press secretary for Dennis Kucinich for President in 2004.  Basically my job was to tell any media outlet that would listen that we were going to end wars, create single-payer healthcare, and abolish NAFTA.  But mostly we were going to end wars.  I remember in the 2008 campaign, a whole bunch of Democratic primary candidates lined up on a stage for a huge labor-organized debate in a football stadium.  Kucinich said he would abolish NAFTA, get out of the WTO, and create bilateral trade agreements with nations, agreements that left in place protections for workers, consumers, and the environment.  The applause suggested most people there agreed.  But every other one of the candidates refused to say they would end NAFTA.  Instead, every one of them, including Barack Obama, said they would re-negotiate NAFTA to fix it by adding in the protections it was missing.  Most of them, of course, didn’t get elected.  The one who did seems to have had a change of plans.  The TPP has been under negotiation for 5 years.

A year and a half ago, some of us were living in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., and there was another camp just over in McPhearson Square, and the Occupy Movement had gone national through corporate television and newspapers.  A Senate committee was holding a hearing on new corporate trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and Korea.  After the lobbyists got their seats, there were a few left for the public, and I took one.  The senators were discussing how they would mitigate the damage of what they were about to support.  They planned to try to help find jobs for some of the people they would throw out of work.  I thought I should point out to them that they could just leave everybody in their current jobs.  I was hoping they would realize that on their own.  I didn’t want to be rude and interrupt.  But it seemed an important enough point.  So I spoke up.  And they arrested me.

Then the senators discussed Korean and U.S. tariffs on beef.  A woman in the audience spoke up and asked why we couldn’t just leave the Korean beef in Korea and the U.S. beef in the United States instead of shipping beef both ways across the ocean.  They arrested her.  They arrested everybody who said anything.  In the first year of the previous agreement made with Korea, U.S. exports to Korea fell 10% and the U.S. trade deficit with Korea rose 37%.  The same sort of results are likely with a new one.

On the plus side, Congress was kept safe from interruptions.  The charges carried some months in jail, as I recall.  Four of us made deals in court that kept us out of jail but banned us from Capitol Hill for 6 months.  In the next courtroom over, some friends were convicted of speaking out against torture when some committee chairman hadn’t asked them to.  And straight across the hall, that same day, another friend was told she’d completed her probation for having interrupted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Capitol, a punishment imposed even though Netanyahu had thanked her for speaking and bragged about how she’d have been treated worse in Iran — although the assault she suffered in the U.S. Capitol put her in a neck brace.

The First Amendment is not doing much better than the Fourth Amendment these days.  I know that some of you will say nobody should interrupt anyone.  How would I like to be interrupted myself? Et cetera.  But how much has the corporate media that dominates our communications system, and does so with our subsidies, told us about the Trans-Pacific Partnership?  Unless we can organize enough of these meetings, someone is going to have to interrupt someone to get the word out.

Maybe the first thing I would interrupt a super bowl or a state of the union to tell people about the TPP is that it creates corporate nationhood.  This is something I started to focus on after interviewing Lacey Kohlmoos of Public Citizen on my radio show.  Public Citizen has a website set up at ExposeTheTPP.org.  Another coalition has created FlushTheTPP.org.  Another is at CitizensTrade.org.  And then there’s a cross-border effort to organize against the TPP at TPPxborder.org.  You can find pretty much everything I have to say, and much more, at those websites.  You can sign up and get involved with ongoing campaigns as things develop at those websites.

Many of us have heard of corporate personhood.  Corporations have been given the Constitutional rights of persons by U.S. courts over the past 40 years, including the right to spend money on elections.  By corporate nationhood I mean the bestowing of the rights of nations on corporations.  The TPP, drafts of which have been leaked to Public Citizen, has 29 chapters, only five of which — according to Public Citizen’s thinking — deal with trade.  The others deal with things like food safety, internet freedom, medicine costs, job off-shoring, and financial regulation.  Treaties, according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, are — together with the Constitution itself — the supreme law of the land.  So U.S. laws would have to be made to comply with the TPP’s rules.

The United States is party to treaties banning war and torture.  Some treaties are treated more like helpful suggestions than the supreme law of the land.  That would not be the case with the TPP.  Our federal and state and local governments would have to obey the TPP.  And if they didn’t, corporations could force them to.  A corporation could take the U.S. government or other nations’ governments to court (or rather, a special tribunal) and overturn their laws.  That’s corporate nationhood.  A bunch of corporate lawyers would make their case to a tribunal made up of three corporate lawyers taking a break from themselves arguing such cases in order to rule on some of them.  These three lawyers would answer to no electorate and be bound by no precedents.  There would be no appeals process.  They would be empowered to order any amount of compensation whatsoever, to be paid to corporations by tax payers.

So, if the United States has a healthcare policy or an environmental or workplace policy or a banking or internet or other public policy that a few corporate lawyers can convince three other corporate lawyers fails to comply with the TPP, the policy will be overturned, the law rewritten, and compensation ordered to be paid by the public treasury to the corporations that suffered from having to provide healthcare or from having to refrain from poisoning a river, or whatever.  We don’t know all of the details — I’ll get to some of them shortly.  But this framework is an outrage no matter what they turn out to be.  And it’s an expansion of something already being tried under existing corporate trade agreements.

ExposeTheTPP.org says: “Tribunals have already ordered governments to pay over $3.5 billion in investor-state cases under existing U.S. agreements.  This includes payments over toxic bans, land-use policies, forestry rules and more.  More than $14.7 billion remain in pending claims under U.S. agreements alone.  Even when governments win, they often must pay for the tribunals’ costs and legal fees, which average $8 million per case.  The TPP would expand the scope of policies that could be attacked.

“The proposed TPP foreign investor privileges would provide foreign firms greater ‘rights’ than those afforded to domestic firms. This includes a ‘right’ to not have expectations frustrated by a change in government policy. Claiming such radical privileges, foreign corporations have launched investor-state cases against a broad array of environmental, energy, consumer health, toxics, water, mining and other non-trade domestic policies that they allege undermine their ‘expected future profits.’

“Some of the investor-state attacks now underway are:

Chevron trying to evade liability for its Ecuadorian Amazon toxic contamination;

Phillip Morris attacking Australia’s cigarette labeling policy;

Eli Lilly attacking Canada’s drug patent policy; and

European firms attacking Egypt’s post-revolution minimum wage increase and South Africa’s post-Apartheid affirmative action law.”

Corporate trade agreements like the TPP don’t impose something as dangerous as corporate nationhood as part of the cost of some other benefit.  These agreements have no clear upside, unless it’s inexpensive, poorly made products that poorly paid people can afford to buy.  Most destructive public policies are justified by jobs.  We’ll chop down that forest for jobs.  We’ll build a bigger military for jobs.  We’ll mine coal for jobs.  We’ll concentrate wealth beyond medieval levels for jobs.  But corporate trade agreements eliminate, or at least export, jobs.

The United States had about 20 million manufacturing jobs before NAFTA, and lost about 5 million of them, including the closure of more than 60,000 facilities.  Imports have soared while the growth of exports has slowed.  Millions of service jobs have been offshored too, of course.  The TPP is referred to by those who have seen drafts of it (and you can read some draft chapters online) as NAFTA on steroids.  It expands on NAFTA’s policies.  The TPP would provide special benefits to, and eliminate risks for, companies that offshore jobs.  Vietnam’s wages are even lower than China’s.  An average day’s wage in China is $4.11.  In Vietnam it’s $2.75.

The TPP will push U.S. wages downward.  And if NAFTA’s impact on Mexico is any guide, the TPP won’t end up being seen as beneficial to Vietnam either, especially when some other country decides that it can pay workers even less than Vietnam does.

The TPP will also move U.S. government contracting jobs to foreign companies by banning buy-American procurement policies.  The ability of U.S. firms to bid on government contracts in the other participating countries will not begin to balance this out.  And in every country involved, the foreign companies will be less accountable to the people whose money is being spent.  Also banned will be preferential treatment for sweat-free businesses, minority-owned businesses, women-owned, or environmentally-friendly businesses.  Not only does the TPP make corporations into governments, but it also makes governments into corporations, requiring that they work purely to maximize profits — although the profits are for the corporations.

The TPP doesn’t end there.  When it comes to food safety and workplace safety and other consumer or environmental protections, an agreement like this could require that all nations enforce a high standard, even the highest standard of any of the nations, or a higher standard than any nation now meets — after all, the agreement would create an even playing field for all and ought to be seen as an opportunity to collectively raise the standards.  The TPP, as drafted, does just the opposite.  It would require the United States to import meat and poultry that doesn’t meet U.S. safety standards.  Any U.S. food safety rule on pesticides, labeling, or additives that is higher than international standards could be challenged as an “illegal trade barrier.”  Malaysia and Vietnam are big seafood exporters.  High levels of contaminants have been found in Vietnam’s seafood.  (I can’t imagine why!)  The FDA only inspects 1% of imported seafood now.  Local seafood producers struggle as it is.  The pollution involved in shipping seafood around the globe probably won’t work wonders for future seafood either.  And don’t imagine we’ll all just buy local and “vote with our wallets.”  The TPP will impose limits on labeling where food comes from, labeling GMO foods, labeling foods dolphin-safe, etc.  You won’t know where your food comes from or how it was produced unless you grow it or buy it from a neighbor who grew it.  But the odds will be stacked even more heavily against the small farmer if the TPP is enacted.

Once everyone’s gotten good and sick by eating TPP food, just wait to see what the TPP does to healthcare.  Corporations with national rights will be able to overturn domestic patent and drug-pricing laws.  The big drug companies will be able to raise prices with extended monopolies over drugs and over surgical procedures.  People in need of inexpensive generic drugs will be denied them, and many of those people will die.  The TPP, in the end, may turn out to be more deadly than any war.  The TPP would threaten provisions included in Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ health programs to make medicines more affordable.  Foreign corporations will also be able to challenge laws on toxics, zoning, cigarettes, alcohol, public health, and the environment — anything that they could claim might cost them profits.  NAFTA doesn’t go as far as the TPP, but these things are already happening under it.  ExposeTheTPP.org says: “Canada lifted a ban on a gasoline additive already banned in the U.S. as a suspected carcinogen after an investor attack by Ethyl Corporation under NAFTA. It also paid the firm $13 million and published a formal statement that the chemical was not hazardous.”

Under the TPP, the United States could increase its exports of so-called natural gas, and that will mean more fracking.  And laws to protect the environment, including the human beings, where the fracking is done could be challenged by corporations as limiting their future profits.  The same problems arise with tar sands.  Even under existing corporate trade agreements, governments have already paid over $3 billion to foreign corporations, and over 85% of that has been the result of challenges to oil, mining, gas, and other environmental and natural resource policies.  This includes payments by the governments of Mexico and Canada to U.S. fossil fuel corporations.

The United States has been growing accustomed to secret laws.  The PATRIOT Act, for example, according to numerous members of Congress, has been secretly “reinterpreted” to mean things radically at odds with and worse than what the words of the bill — horrible as they were — meant.  The TPP could become public, and bits of it keep leaking out, but it outdoes the PATRIOT Act in size and breadth.  It would rewrite laws.  It would even put in place laws very intentionally rejected by Congress following a very public process.

Last year there was a big struggle over SOPA, a bill that was marketed as copyright protection but ultimately rejected as internet censorship — following a great deal of public, and even some corporate, pressure.  According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU, the TPP would largely recreate SOPA while no one’s watching.  Unless, of course, we start watching.  Under the TPP, internet service providers will be able to monitor user activity, remove internet content, and prevent certain people from accessing certain content.  Downloading a song could be treated the same as a large-scale for-profit copyright violation.  The TPP would impose copyright protections for 120 years for corporate-created content.  Breaking digital locks (and no, I don’t really know what those are) for legitimate purposes, such as using Linux or accessing closed captioning for the deaf or audio-supported content for the blind could result in fines.

Then there are the laws that we dream our government might enact that the TPP would prevent, such as reasonable regulation of Wall Street.  Under the TPP a government could not ban the toxic derivatives and other risky financial “products” that helped crash the economy.  A firewall could not be put back in place between different types of financial institutions.  Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, arguing that it prevented economic crashes for a half century from the 30s through the 80s. The TPP would forbid it.  A huge movement that I’ve been working with wants to impose a Robin Hood tax, a tax on financial transactions.  Some nations’ governments have begun to agree.  The TPP would forbid it.  If our government creates and then abides by the TPP it will be asked for more bankster bailouts.  If it creates and does not abide by the TPP, corporate tribunals will make it pay the bailouts as punishment for imposing regulations.  Our government is doing this to itself because it is broken.  Elections are broken.  Communications are broken.  Secrecy is out of control.  Whistleblowers are persecuted.  Bribery is institutionalized.  Parties have replaced branches.  And a culture of shortsighted greed and subservience has supplanted anything resembling statesmanship.

The TPP will, as the flyer for this event stated:

§  Prevent effective regulation of Wall Street

§  Trade good-paying careers for sweatshop labor

§  Destroy family farms

§  Accelerate global warming in the name of profits

§  Keep the public in the dark

§  Place corporate rights above our national sovereignty

§  Crush our ability to support local economies

§  Weaken and undermine democracy at home and abroad

President Obama wants to fast-track the TPP.  Industry groups this week have been demanding that Congress approve fast-tracking.  Corporate trade agreements are not treated as treaties requiring a two-thirds vote in the Senate.  Rather, they are treated as requiring a simple majority in both houses.  If Congress allows fast-tracking, that means the thing can’t be amended.  And it can’t be filibustered.  It must be simply voted on as is, with the most horrible bits included along with the only moderately horrible parts.  Most Congress Members had no time to read the PATRIOT Act before they voted on it, and of course the public had not seen it.  Congress has not seen the TPP yet either.  There are three chapters in the draft text that no one has leaked even the titles of.

Fast-track authority expired in 2007 and Congress refused to renew it.  Urging Congress to continue rejecting fast-track could be part of a comprehensive campaign aimed at getting Congress to take itself seriously, a campaign that might include repeal of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force which essentially handed war powers over to the president.  Regardless, stopping fast track would help stop the TPP.  And it wouldn’t stop decent trade agreements that can withstand the light of day.  There have been over 500 trade agreements created since 1974, and fast track has been used for only 16 of the worst ones.

As a candidate, Obama said he would replace fast track and make sure that Congress played a strong and informed role in trade agreements. Now he’s seeking fast track.  If he gets it, the TPP will become likely in every gory detail.

The TPP can be stopped.  Others have been since NAFTA passed, including the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which failed following huge public protests.  In the case of the FTAA, the negotiation documents were made public.  Not this time.  But FlushTheTPP.org offers these words of encouragement:

“Since the ‘Battle in Seattle,’ the World Trade Organization has had an impossible time moving forward, as was seen in the failure of the Millennial and Doha Rounds of the WTO. We also stopped the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. And at least 14 other corporate trade agreements have not been completedbecause of widespread public opposition. This is hopeful news, and together we can stop the TPP also, which will be a tremendous victory for the people against transnational corporate power!”

FlushTheTPP.org has a map where you can find or create actions around the country.  Groups are encouraged to hold TPP Tuesdays, dedicating Tuesdays to educational or nonviolent resistance events.  In August, when Congress Members are expected to be in their districts and senators in their states.  We should bird-dog them, lobby them, meet with them, interview them, pressure them, protest them, until they agree to make the TPP public and to stop fast track.  Former US Trade Representative Ron Kirk has said that if the contents of this agreement were known it could not be signed because it would be so unpopular.

The Backbone Campaign, online at BackboneCampaign.org, has great ideas for props and banners and puppets.  They’ve even been holding training camps, teaching things like action planning, light projection, song and dance flash mobs, guerilla theatre, fundraising, giant banner construction and deployment — including with helium balloons, blockades, rappelling, etc.  I recommend contacting them or organizing a similar effort.

Maybe TPP opposition can be a catalyst for a resurgence of Occupy Harrisonburg and Occupy Everywhere.  We are going to have to get organized and we are going to have to occupy.  We need to keep moving the money out of the big banks.  We need to advance worker ownership and community power.  We need to become independent of the outrageously corrupt political party that we’re supposed to hate and the outrageously corrupt political party that we’re supposed to like.  We need to stop cheering when President Obama gives speeches opposing his own policies.  I can’t recall once demanding that President Bush give a speech.  We always wanted something more substantive than that.

There are places to get involved:

http://ExposeTheTPP.org

http://FlushTheTPP.org

http://CitizensTrade.org

http://TPPxborder.org

Also, at RootsAction.org, where I work, there is a page at which 20,000 people have already emailed Congress and the president against the TPP, and you should too.  Make your voice heard here.

This free trade agreement is not free and not about trade, and we’re definitely not in agreement!

Canadian organizations issue open letter to demand action on Russia’s antigay laws

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by Craig Takeuchi on Aug 23, 2013 http://www.straight.com

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Over 100 Canadian organizations have signed an open letter demanding action on Russia’s antigay legislation. (For more on this story, see this article.)

Here is a copy of the letter.

SPEAK OUT AGAINST HATE, STAND UP FOR HUMAN RIGHTS:
AN OPEN LETTER FROM CANADIAN ORGANIZATIONS REGARDING HOMOPHOBIA IN RUSSIA AND THE SOCHI 2014 WINTER OLYMPICS AND PARALYMPICS

August 22, 2013

CALL FOR ACTION BY THE:

GOVERNMENT OF CANADA
The Right Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada
The Hon. John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada
The Hon. Bal Gosal, Minister of State for Sports of Canada
The Hon. Chris Alexander, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration of Canada

INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE & INTERNATIONAL PARALYMPIC COMMITTEE
Mr. Jacques Rogge, President, International Olympic Committee
Sir Philip Craven, President, International Paralympic Committee
CANADIAN OLYMPIC COMMITTEE & CANADIAN PARALYMPIC COMMITTEE
Mr. Marcel Aubut, President, Canadian Olympic Committee
Mr. Gaétan Tardif, President, Canadian Paralympic Committee

SOCHI 2014 MEDIA BROADCASTER
Mr. Hubert Lacroix, President, CBC/Radio-Canada

SOCHI 2014 CORPORATE SPONSORS
Mr. Muhtar Kent, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Coca-Cola Company
Mr. Thierry Breton, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Atos
Mr. Andrew N. Liveris, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dow
Mr. Jeff Immelt, Chief Executive Officer, GE
Mr. Don Thompson, President and CEO, McDonalds
Mr. Stephen Urquhart, President and CEO, Omega
Mr. Kazuhiro Tsuga, President, Panasonic
Mr. A.G. Lafley, Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer, P&G
Mr. Oh-Hyun Kwan, Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Samsung
Mr. Charles Scharf, Chief Executive Officer, VISA

Dear Sirs:

We, the undersigned Canadian civil society organizations, call upon you to stand against the rising tide of hate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Russia, by taking the actions listed below. We are deeply troubled by the ongoing and intensifying attacks against LGBT, not least those led and encouraged by President Vladimir Putin and the federal Parliament (Duma). These actions include, most recently, the unanimous adoption of a federal law banning the distribution of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” (Federal Law № 135-FZ of June 29, 2013).

This law means LGBT people risk prosecution simply for exercising their freedom of expression and association, as does anyone who defends the human rights of LGBT people or even mentions the existence of LGBT people in an approving fashion. Attending an LGBT event could be illegal. Challenging the harassment or assault of LGBT students in a school or declaring that it’s perfectly legitimate to be LGBT could amount to “gay propaganda” under the wording of the law.

Individuals can be fined up to 100,000 rubles (about US$ 3000) for using the media or Internet to “promote non-traditional relations.” Organizations can be fined up to 1 million roubles (about US$ 30,000) and closed down for up to 90 days. The law authorizes police officers to arrest foreign nationals they suspect of being LGBT or “pro-gay” and jail them for up to 15 days before expelling them from the country. Russian officials have already arrested gay foreigners.

There have been other recent legislative and physical assaults on LGBT people in Russia. Moscow’s city government has banned Pride parades for 100 years, which the European Court of Human Rights has declared violates the European Convention on Human Rights. As a precedent for the federal law recently adopted by the Duma, the city of St. Petersburg has enacted a ban on “homosexual propaganda,” as have numerous regions. Russia has also banned adoption of children by any parents from nations that grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The latest “anti-propaganda” law is part of a much broader, ongoing attack to shut down civil society, including a series of laws that violate freedoms of assembly, association, expression and information, not just for LGBT people but for a whole range of communities and human rights defenders. Homophobia is another weapon being deployed in a broader effort to stifle a free, open, democratic society. Targeting a group to be scapegoated is aimed at weakening any civil society opposition and
maintaining control.

Such legislative hate-mongering does indeed foment further abuses. Anti-LGBT violence is rampant and worsening in Russia. Earlier this summer, a violent mob attacked a small group of LGBT rights demonstrators in St. Petersburg. LGBT youth and adults are being assaulted and tortured by thugs who then broadcast video recordings of these attacks online. So far, Russian authorities have turned a blind eye to such hate crimes, even though some perpetrators are easily identifiable. In a recent incident, two attackers savagely beat a man, crushing his ribs, sodomizing him with beer bottles and attempting to burn him alive, after they learned of his sexual identity. They declared that it was their “patriotic duty to kill a gay man.”

Twenty years ago, at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, Russia joined with other countries in declaring that the protection and promotion of human rights “is the first responsibility of Governments.” Yet in this climate of state-sponsored hatred and violence, Russia will host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi in February 2014. The Russian government’s active persecution of LGBT people flies in the face of not just international human rights law but the ostensible spirit of the Olympic Games. The international community, those countries and organizations participating in the Games, and those corporations profiting from the Games, cannot stand idly by in the face of state sponsored terror against millions of its own people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender and against their partners, families, friends and loved ones.

Therefore, in solidarity with our LGBT brothers and sisters in Russia, we call upon the Government of Canada, the International and Canadian Olympic Committees, as well as corporate sponsors and media broadcasters of the Sochi Winter Olympics, to take action as follows:

• The Government of Canada should:

  1. continue to speak out publicly against Russia’s anti-gay legislation and homophobic and transphobic violence being visited upon LGBT people in Russia, and continue to communicate its objections directly to Russian authorities at the highest levels;
  2. add the sponsors of anti-LGBT legislation in Russia to the list of those banned from obtaining visas to enter Canada;
  3. identify opportunities to proactively support LGBT rights advocates in Russia in defending basic human rights;
  4. oppose the “traditional values” resolution being advanced by Russia at the UN, which is a patent attempt to cloak bigotry and hate in the legitimacy of a Human Rights Council resolution; and
  5. use this opportunity to publicly announce its commitment to ongoing support for the UN’s recently launched “Free and Equal” initiative for LGBT rights.

• The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Paralympic Committee (IPC) should:

  1. host Pride House in Sochi during the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics;
  2. speak out during the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games against anti-LGBT violence and against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, including legislative discrimination such as Russia’s; and
  3. include explicit reference in their respective Charters to discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity as incompatible with the Olympic and Paralympic Movements, as is already done with grounds such as race, gender and religion. (We note and welcome that the Paralympic Movement has already included sexual orientation.)

• The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Canadian Paralympic Committee (CPC) have authority over Canada’s representation at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The leadership and athletic delegations of the COC and CPC should:

  1. publicly and privately support, without reservation, any individual athletes, whether they identify as LGBT or not, who choose to use their opportunities at the Games (e.g., when accepting medals) to display their support for the rights of LGBT people;
  2. issue a statement condemning homophobic laws and anti-LGBT violence in Russia;
  3. participate visibly as the Canadian delegation in the Sochi Winter Pride events being organized by Russian LGBT activists;
  4. offer to join the IOC and IPC in hosting Pride House at the Games; and
  5. use the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games to visibly support LGBT human rights as a country delegation.

• Corporate sponsors of the Sochi Games, including the top 10 sponsors named above, should:

  1. publicly state their opposition to Russia’s homophobic legislation and anti-LGBT violence in Russia;
  2. withdraw their sponsorship of the Games unless the Russian government abolishes the “anti-propaganda law” and guarantees freedom of expression, association, assembly and information, including for LGBT people; and
  3. publicly redirect a significant portion of those sponsorship funds, through independent foundations and multilateral initiatives, to support the defense and promotion of LGBT rights, and human rights more broadly, in Russia.

• The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), as exclusive Canadian broadcaster of the Sochi Games, should:

  • commit to reporting, before, during and after the Sochi Games, on human rights abuses in Russia, including against LGBT people, other minorities and political dissidents targeted by the Russian government.

ENDORSED BY:
Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network
AIDS ACTION NOW!
ARC International
Egale Canada

Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC)
ACCM (AIDS Community Care Montreal)
Action Canada for Population and Development (ACPD)
Action positive VIH/sida
African and Caribbean Council on HIV/AIDS in Ontario (ACCHO)
AIDS Committee of Guelph & Wellington County
AIDS Committee of Newfoundland & Labrador
AIDS Committee of Ottawa
AIDS Committee of Simcoe County
AIDS New Brunswick, Inc.
AIDS Saint John
AIDS Vancouver Island
AIDS-Free World
BC Civil Liberties Association
BC Coalition of People with Disabilities
Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP)
Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies
Brockville Pride, Fight Homophobia & Transphobia in Brockville
CACTUS Montréal
Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN)
Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange
Canadian Anthropology Society
Canadian Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (CANAC)
Canadian Association of University Teachers
Canadian Federation for Sexual Health
Canadian Harm Reduction Network
Canadian Labour Congress
Canadian Public Health Association
Canadian Treatment Action Council (CTAC)
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
Canadian Working Group on HIV and Rehabilitation (CWGHR)
Canadians United against Discrimination at the 2014 Sochi Olympics
Casey House Hospice
CAW Canada
Central Alberta AIDS Network Society
Centre for Inquiry Canada
COCQ-SIDA (Coalition des organismes communautaires québécois de lutte contre le sida)
Dream Bridge Exchange
Equal Marriage For Same-Sex Couples
Equitas – International Centre for Human Rights Education
Feminist Alliance in Solidarity for Sex Workers’ Rights
FIRST Decriminalize Sex Work
Gerald and Maas
Grandmothers Advocacy Network (GRAN)
HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario
HIV North Society
HIV/AIDS Regional Services
ICASO
Institute for International Women’s RightsManitoba Inc.
Inter Pares
Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development (ICAD)
Jer’s Vision
Lucky Iron Fish Project
M.A.IN.S. (Mouvement d’Aide et d’INformation Sida)
Méta d’Âme
Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Northern HIV and Health Education Society
Nova Scotia Rainbow Action Project (NSRAP)
Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy
Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL)
Ontario HIV Treatment Network
Ontario Humanist Society
OPSEU Rainbow Alliance
Our City of Colours
Out On The Shelf
Pacific AIDS Network
Parksville/Qualicum KAIROS
Peel HIV/AIDS Network
PFLAG Canada
PFLAG Canada, Brockville
PFLAG Canada, Durham region
Portail VIH/sida du Québec
Positive Living Society of British Columbia
Pride Toronto
Queer Ontario
Rainbow Health Network
Reclaim Our Democratic Canada
REZO, health and well-being of gay and bisexual men
Saskatchewan Public Health Association
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Conference of the Canadian Bar AssociationStella, l’amie de Maimie
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO)
The Fort McMurray LGBTQmunity
The Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington County
The McLeod Group
The Toronto Sisters, Abbey of the Divine Wood
The United Church of Canada
Toronto PFLAG, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
Toronto Queer Arts Festival
Toronto Queer West Arts Centre
Unit for Critical Research in Health (UCRH), School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa
United Steelworkers
University of Guelph
University of Ottawa Research Chair in Forensic Nursing
Vancouver AIDS Society
Vancouver Island Persons Living with HIV/AIDS Society (VPWAS)
Vanier Community Service Centre
West Coast Women’s Legal Education & Action Fund (West Coast LEAF)
Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund
WorldPride 2014 Human Rights Conference
YouthCO HIV & Hep C Society

You can follow Craig Takeuchi on Twitter at twitter.com/cinecraig. You can also follow the Straight’s LGBT coverage on Twitter at twitter.com/StraightLGBT.

Report: 19th Round of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) Negotiations in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei

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From: http://keionline.org/

Submitted by Krista Cox on 22. August 2013 – 21:14

The 19th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) began this week in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. Although this round just started yesterday, it is evident that there are many differences between this round and previous rounds.

First, the meeting started with an overlapping TPP ministerial meeting where the Trade Ministers of the various countries met for two days to (presumably) discuss the TPP, efforts moving forward, and outstanding or controversial issues. It has been reported that not all countries’ trade ministers were able to attend, and I have heard that Australia, Chile and Peru’s trade ministers are not here (but that a deputy or other person has attended instead).

These meetings, like the rest of the TPP, have been secretive.

A large number of press, nearly all member of the Japanese media, were camped out in the lobby of the negotiating venue yesterday, eagerly awaiting the emergence of any trade minister from behind the closed off areas. Any time a trade minister walked out of the room yesterday, they were instantly bombarded by cameras and press but refused to comment even when asked very open questions such as “Would you like to say anything about the TPP?”

The logistics of this round have been much more difficult and the venue seems more inaccessible than previous rounds. There is a feeling that this venue is a bit isolated.

Although stakeholders are allowed in the lobby of the International Convention Centre (ICC) — I note that there was one prior round, the December 2012 round in Auckland, New Zealand where stakeholders were prohibited even from the lobby or common areas of the convention center, so perhaps we should be thankful not to be locked out this time — the venue itself is quite far from the hotels, shops, or restaurants.

This has made it difficult to meet for lunch with the negotiators as there are no restaurants in walking distance from the ICC. Ordinarily, stakeholders are able to make appointments to meet negotiators over breakfast, lunch or dinner. This time, however, while there is some food catered to the venue that food (as well as the area where it is being served) is reserved for negotiators only and stakeholders are not allowed to even purchase the food. I learned that there is a cafe here, but was closed when I tried to get food yesterday.

Lunch and dinner meetings have become more complicated, as well, given the near isolation of the negotiation venue in relation to the rest of the city. There does not appear to be many hotels that are close to each other and negotiators are scattered in hotels far and wide across the city. Taxis are quite expensive in Brunei (a literally 5 minute taxi ride from the airport to my hotel was $20 BND) and also difficult to find. Some stakeholders have reported paying $25 BND (approximately $20 USD) from their hotel to the negotiating venue, costing $40USD round trip each day. It is therefore difficult to find a convenient meeting spot and find the time to meet when the hotels are not close to the venue.

Meeting after the negotiating day is done may also be difficult for some delegations because while they have their own shuttle buses to transport them from the venue to their hotels, they may get left behind if they stay too long after the day supposedly ends. From the stakeholder perspective, it makes meetings more difficult and I can only imagine that this situation is not particularly convenient for the negotiators as they meet bilaterally or for delegation meetings (as many negotiators even within the same delegation are not located within the same hotel). With regard to the IP negotiators, for example, out of the eleven countries I know that there are at least five hotels that the delegations are staying at, none of which are walkable or convenient to each other. They may well be spread across even more hotels, as well, that I am not aware of. Hosting side events or luncheons, something that stakeholders have done at many previous rounds, is obviously made more difficult. The closest possible venue to host such a side event is close to 30 minutes away by walking, making it basically impossible to have the event and reasonably expect the negotiators to come.

With regard to the stakeholder engagement day, there are also substantial changes. Initially, we were told that there would be no tables and no presentations, a huge change from any of the previous rounds. At the last minute, and with just two days of notice, we were told that we could register to make presentations. However, the presentations are limited to 7 minutes each, less than half of the 15 minutes we have been traditionally allotted at the most recent TPP rounds, and quite a bit less than the 20 minutes allotted at some early rounds. It is obviously difficult to give a presentation when only allotted a 7 minute speaking slot.

The location of the stakeholder engagement day is at the Empire Hotel, about 30 km away and according to google maps a 35 minute drive from the ICC negotiating venue. It is quite far from many of the hotels that negotiators are staying at, and some countries have indicated that they do not know how they will get to the stakeholder presentations because they are so far away. Some hotels do have private transportation that can be used for a fee, but at least one hotel has said that they do not transit to the Empire Hotel. Not only do they have to get to the Empire Hotel by the start of the stakeholder day (which begins at 8:30 am), but they must ensure their ability to return to the ICC for negotiations afterward.

I asked one of the organizers whether they would be arranging for buses or transportation to and from the Empire Hotel and was told that they were not. I then asked again, clarifying that I was inquiring only about transportation for the negotiators and not for stakeholders, and was again told that no transportation arrangements were being made to/from the Empire Hotel. It is therefore up to the negotiators to ensure that they can get to and from the stakeholder venue, located 35 minutes away by car.

Everyone seems to be waiting for direction and answers from the trade ministers as to what will be happening going forward, when the next meetings may be for outstanding chapters, whether this is indeed the last full round, and what will happen at the APEC meeting in October.