Yves Engler

The Top 10 things you don’t know about Canada’s most famous statesman, Lester B. Pearson

10 Asked in Parliament, he refused to call for Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.

9. He had Canada deliver weapons to the French to put down the Algerian and Vietnamese independence movements.

8. The Kennedy administration helped Pearson win his first minority government.

7. He incited individuals to destroy a peace group after it called for the outlawing of nuclear weapons.

6. Pearson backed the CIA coups in Iran and Guatemala.

5. He described the formation of NATO, not peacekeeping, as the “most important thing I participated in.”

4. Pearson threatened to quit as external affairs minister if Canada failed to deploy ground troops to Korea.

3. He agreed to have Canada’s representatives to the International Control Commission for Vietnam spy for the US and deliver their bombing threats to the North.

2. The world’s leading intellectual, Noam Chomsky, considers Lester Pearson a war criminal.

1. Stephen Harper’s foreign policy resembles that of Pearson more than any Liberal would ever admit.

Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping — The Truth May Hurt, published by Fernwood, is now available for sale at Turning the Tide Books.

Pro-Israel politicians regularly claim their position is a defense of the Jewish community. Its rare when they say their goal is to mobilize those who believe a Jewish “return” to the Middle East will hasten end times or that Israel is a prized ally as a heavily militarized “white” outpost near much of the world’s oil.

Last Fall Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines investigated Stephan Harper’s one-sided support for Israel. Widely disseminated in pro-Palestinian circles, the Avi Lewis narrated TV program effectively highlighted the divide between Canada’s pro-Israel government and growing grassroots support for Palestinians. But, by focusing entirely on Jewish organizations, Fault Lines left the viewer with the impression that Harper’s pro-Israel policy is simply designed to placate the mainstream Jewish community.

Many Canadian supporters of the Palestinian cause seem to support this view that Harper’s over-the-top support for Israel is driven by ethnic politics. But the numbers don’t add up.

First of all, there are about three times as many Muslim and Arab Canadians as Jews. Just over one per cent of the population in the 2006 census, 315,120 Canadians, identified their origin as Jewish, either alone or combined with another ethnicity (the actual number of Jews is slightly higher but religion is counted every other census). Jews were the 25th largest group defined by ethnic origin, and only in a handful of electoral ridings are they a significant minority of the electorate. Of these ridings, just a couple have competitive races.

While it’s true that Jews have high levels of political engagement, are well represented in positions of influence and are a relatively prosperous minority group, the importance of supporting Israel can easily be exaggerated. In fact, historic voting patterns suggest few Canadian Jews vote based on Ottawa’s policy towards Israel. While this may have shifted slightly in the most recent election, historically there is actually an inverse correlation between pro-Israel governments and Jewish support. Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien, for instance, garnered more support from the Jewish community than Brian Mulroney. Yet Mulroney was more supportive of Israel than Trudeau and Chretien.

The truth is pro-Israel Jewish lobbyists appear influential because they operate within a favourable political climate. They are pushing against an open door. How much power they really have can be seen when they confront an important source of power. There have been two major instances when that has taken place.

In 1979, at the instigation of Israeli PM Menachem Begin, short-lived Conservative Prime Minister Joe Clark announced plans to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, effectively recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the city. Arab threats of economic sanction pushed the CEOs of Bell Canada, Royal Bank, ATCO and Bombardier, which all had important contracts in the region, to lobby Clark against making the move. An embarrassed federal government backtracked, more worried about an important sector of corporate power than the pro-Israel Jewish lobby.

Similarly, in 1956, when Israel invaded Egypt along with Britain and France, Canada helped undermine the aggressors, by siding with the U.S. Fearing the invasion would add to Moscow’s prestige in a geo-strategically important region, Washington opposed it. Moreover, the rising world hegemon wanted to tell London and Paris that there was a new master in the Middle East. In helping to establish a U.N. peacekeeping force to relieve the foreign troops, Ottawa chose to side with Washington, not the pro-Israel Jewish lobby.

Rather than “Jewish votes” Harper’s “Israel no matter what” policy has more to do with mobilizing his rightwing, evangelical base on an issue (unlike abortion) that the government believes has limited electoral downside. While a cross section of Protestants has long supported Zionism, backing is particularly strong among evangelicals who believe Jews need to “return” to the Middle East to hasten the second coming of Jesus and the Apocalypse.

A year ago B’nai Brith’s Jewish Tribune reported on a Conservative MP’s speech to a major Christian Zionist event in Toronto. “Jeff Watson, Conservative MP for Essex, delivered greetings from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The creation of the state of Israel fulfills God’s promise in Deuteronomy to gather the Jewish people from all corners of the world, he said.”

About 10 per cent of Canadians identify themselves as evangelicals (including a number of cabinet ministers). The president of the rightwing Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, Joseph Ben-Ami, explains, “The Jewish community in Canada is 380,000 strong; the evangelical community is 3.5 million. The real support base for Israel is Christians.”

In addition to mobilizing some evangelicals and Jews, Harper’s affinity for Israel is also motivated by that country’s militarism. Conservative leaders are impressed by the large political, cultural and economic role Israel’s military plays in the country’s affairs. In recent years Canada-Israel military ties have grown rapidly with both countries top generals and defence ministers visiting each other’s countries. At the same time there has been an increase in weapons sharing and relations between arms manufacturers in the two countries have grown considerably. (For details see Kole Kilibarda’s Canadian and Israeli Defense —Industrial and Homeland Security Ties: An Analysis).

Historically, Canadian support for Israel has largely mirrored different governments’ relations to the U.S. Empire. The federal governments most enthralled to Washington, Mulroney and Harper for instance, have been Israel’s biggest cheerleaders. Canadian policy towards the Middle East has generally been designed to enable U.S. imperial designs on a strategic part of the planet. And Ottawa’s longstanding support for Israel has been based on the idea that it is a valuable Western military outpost.

External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson, a staunch supporter of Israel and leading foreign policy decision-maker for decades, explained this thinking in a 1952 memo to cabinet: “With the whole Arab world in a state of internal unrest and in the grip of mounting anti-western hysteria, Israel is beginning to emerge as the only stable element in the whole Middle East area.” Pearson went on to explain how “Israel may assume an important role in Western defence as the southern pivot of current plans for the defence” of the eastern Mediterranean.

Politically, culturally and economically dependent on North America and Europe, Israel is a dependable Western imperial outpost in the heart of the (oil-producing) Middle East.

Due to its Jewish/’White’ supremacist character Israeli society is overwhelmingly in opposition to its neighbours, heightening its geopolitical reliability. In all other U.S.-backed Middle Eastern countries, for instance, the population wants their government to have less to do with Washington while Israelis want closer ties.

Recent developments in Colombia may help illustrate this point. For most of the past decade Colombian President Alvaro Uribe acted as a U.S.-backed bulwark against the rising tide of support for a left-leaning Latin American integration that was sweeping South America. But, recent events suggest this dynamic may be coming to an end with Uribe’s successor, Juan Manuel Santos. Colombians simply have too much in common with their neighbours (be it language, history, culture) so the new government has begun to reorient the country’s regional policy against Washington’s wishes. Colombians “South American character” makes them unreliable long-term allies.

In contrast Israeli’s European and North American colonial character is seen to make them reliable.

The power of empire has tilted Ottawa towards Israel and until there is a significant source of power in Canada (or internationally) backing the Palestinians it is likely to stay that way. Social justice, humanism and morality rarely motivate Canadian foreign policy. Instead, power is what drives foreign affairs and Palestinians have never had much of it.

Long under Ottoman rule, then British control after World War I, the Palestinians were an oppressed and relatively powerless people. Palestinians also had the misfortune of living on land claimed by a predominantly European political movement: Zionism.

Historically, Ottawa has sided with colonial powers and opposed national liberation struggles. Canada opposed calls for the withdrawal of Dutch troops from Indonesia in the late 1940s. For decades Canada supported British colonialism in Africa while throughout the late 1950s it sided with France against the Algerian liberation movement. Into the 1970s, Ottawa backed Portugal as it waged a colonial war against the people of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau. It took decades of struggle within Canada — and a shift in the international climate — for Ottawa to withdraw its backing for the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Considering this history, it’s not surprising that Ottawa opposes the Palestinian national liberation struggle. To focus on the Jewish lobby is to downplay Canada’s broader pro-colonial, pro-empire foreign policy. It is a mistake to view Ottawa’s support for Israel in isolation. That support should not be divorced from a wider foreign-policy discussion. The Palestinian solidarity movement needs to make its critique of Canadian foreign-policy more explicit.

We should “de-ethnicize” the conflict. This is not an Arab or Jewish issue but rather one of global importance about basic human dignity.

This article first appeared in Canadian Dimension.

Last Friday activists and artists were celebrating PARK(ing) Day in hundreds of cities around the world.

Begun in San Francisco six years ago the aim of the annual event is “to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “‘PARK(ing)’ spaces: temporary public places.” Organizers generally add benches or fake grass to pieces of public property usually taken up by a private car. Some are more adventurous, filling spots with ping-pong tables, basketball hoops or even a knitted garden in a PARK.

Incredibly, PARK(ing) Day participants often find themselves contravening the law, even when they fill the meter. In many cities only a motorized vehicle is allowed to occupy a parking space unless the city has granted a special permit.

PARK(ing) Day successfully draws attention to a topic that receives little in the way of social commentary. Beyond the seemingly endless quest for an empty spot, parking is rarely discussed, yet it shapes urban environments. Parked 95 percent of the time, personal cars require a huge amount of storage space and whether on the exurban fringe or downtown, parking blight is a plague upon the land.

“Perhaps nothing has made American cities less memorable,” write John Jakle and Keith Sculle in Lots of Parking. “Parking lots have eaten away cities in the United States like moths devouring a lace wedding gown,” chimes in Mark Childs.

History reinforces his vivid imagery. In the first half of the century, many charming centers were stripped of their character as historic buildings were razed to make way for surface parking. In 1910, for instance, Detroit’s Cadillac Square met its end and became a giant parking lot.  “All across the United States,” write Jakle and Sculle, “especially in county seat towns with court house squares, public space was systematically diverted to parking, thus eroding traditional open space in favor of auto storage.”

No great city has an abundance of parking. At least, that was the conclusion of Better Neighborhoods, a study by the San Francisco planning department, which described places like Joe DiMaggio’s childhood neighborhood of North Beach as a dying breed:

If we had to rebuild a place like North Beach under today’s [government imposed] parking requirements, as much as a third of the space where people live would be given up for parking. We would lose much of the street-life — the shops and cafes, the vendors and the stoops — that make areas like North Beach vibrant and interesting. We don’t build places like these today because we require so much parking. There are plenty of examples of the kinds of buildings our parking requirements result in. We just need to imagine a city composed entirely of these buildings, and ask ourselves if this is the kind of city we want in the future.

Contrary to orthodox planning, great streets do well without “enough” parking. In the vibrant central district of Carmel, California for instance, off-street parking is prohibited. Similarly, Boston, New York and San Francisco limit parking downtown (though they require it everywhere else).

In 1923, Columbus, Ohio, became the first city to make off-street parking mandatory for all new apartment buildings. Twenty-five years later, 185 cities had introduced parking requirements for land uses ranging from hospitals and theatres to office buildings and houses. “By 1960,” Jakle and Sculle explain, “nearly every large American city included parking requirements in its zoning program not just for tall buildings but for all buildings.” Even Houston — a city without zoning — requires off-street parking for every imaginable land use (restaurants, shops, apartments and more).

In many counties, five parking spaces — about 1,500 square feet — are required for every 1,000 square feet of shop or restaurant floor space. In one especially arduous stipulation, Montgomery County, Maryland, required funeral parlors to provide 83 parking spaces (24,900 square feet) per 1,000 square feet of floor area. Perhaps that explains the high cost of dying.

Divorce Your Car author Katie Alvord reflects upon the priorities of a California city that required 2.8 public library books per thousand residents and 2.2 parking spaces for every housing unit; a 4,000 unit development with an average of 2.7 people per unit would need 30 new library books and 8,800 parking spaces (2,640,000 square feet). This could be why more people seem to know the make and model of a car than the capital of the neighboring state.

Unlike most zoning ordinances that simply prohibit something, parking requirements are proscriptive: They tell developers exactly what to do. No city bans the construction of apartments with one bedroom or bathroom. Many, however, ban the construction of apartments with only one parking spot. Converting buildings to different uses is difficult in places with supercharged parking requirements. In many cities, a new business simply cannot move into a building that formerly housed an operation with lower parking requirements without adding more spaces (or obtaining a variance).

Extensive parking requirements have reduced many architects to designing buildings around parking laws. “Form follows parking requirements,” laments parking guru, Donald Shoup. This was already the case in 1948 Los Angeles, when the Journal of American Institute of Planners noted that, “in many cases, the number of garage spaces actually control the number of dwelling units which could be accommodated on a lot.”

Since all units, irrespective of size, are generally required to have a parking spot, apartments have become larger and more expensive. The financial and logistical burden created by parking requirements restricts the rooming supply. “Zoning requires a home for every car, but ignores homeless people,” writes Shoup. “By increasing the cost of housing, parking requirements make the real homelessness problem even worse.”

Mandatory parking is almost always “free” (the law sometimes stipulates that it must be). In Los Angeles, for example, commercial and office spaces must provide at least three free parking spaces for every 1,000 square feet. Even when zoning laws don’t mandate free parking, the saturated “market” creates an expectation that parking will be free.

Would there be any need for parking requirements if people were willing to pay? Wouldn’t profit-oriented businesses sell as much parking as they could charge for? Yet, drivers park free for 99 percent of all car trips. “It is no doubt ironic,” quipped German auto historian, Wolfgang Zuckermann, “that the motorcar, superstar of the capitalist system, expects to live rent-free.”

The push for subsidized parking began in the 1910s and 20s. Cities across the USA began devoting tens of millions of dollars to widen streets and cut down trees to increase parking space. Today it’s hard to find a street without space for curb parking, which Shoup argues, “may be the most costly subsidy Americans cities provide for most of their citizens.”

The cost of “free” parking is almost always hidden. Be it at Wal-Mart, McDonalds or a hospital, the free parking that lurks in the backyard of almost all private enterprise is buried in product prices.

“Seemingly, everyone but the motorist pays for parking,” lament Jakle and Sculle. The cost of “free” parking is astronomical. In 2002, for instance, the total subsidy for off-street parking in the USA was between $127 billion and $374 billion. Shoup argues that, “The cost of all parking spaces in the U.S. exceeds the value of all cars and may even exceed the value of all roads.”

The financial and social costs of automobile storage are enormous. PARK(ing) Day helps shine a spotlight on this little discussed topic.

To participate in next year’s events go to parkingday.org

The more cars in a community the worse it is for poor people, especially those in debt.

A recent Wall Street Journal article titled “In Debt Collecting, Location Matters” reveals how companies trying to collect overdue bills can “shop around for the best places to bring their claims.”

The article details what debt collectors look for when choosing a small claims court; the ability to pursue as much of a debtor’s assets as possible, a sympathetic judge and, get this, a car-dominated landscape. The WSJ explains, “Decatur Township [an Indianapolis suburb] has become the preferred courthouse for lawyers who collect soured debt on behalf of medical providers, according to Pam Ricker, who has managed the court’s operations for more than 25 years. The township has no hospitals. Ms. Ricker says a lack of public transportation discourages many defendants from showing up in court, resulting in automatic wins for debt collectors.”

Somewhere along the way debt collectors realized that people who can’t afford to pay their medical bills are more likely to be car-less and thus less able to attend a small claims court far from any bus service. Apparently, these soulless debt collectors care little that those without a vehicle are probably less able to pay their medical bills.

Of course, Decatur Township’s medical collection gambit is an extreme example of how a car-dominated landscape exacerbates inequities, but private car transport also places a greater financial burden on lower income folks in many other ways.

All other forms of land transportation are much more accessible. Shoes, a bike, or a metro pass are cheaper than a car, which costs on average $8,500 to own and operate annually.

Though they drive less, lower income folks are more likely to live on heavily trafficked streets/neighborhoods. Increased car noise and pollution leads to various ills, including higher rates of asthma and cancer. The car contributes to ill health in other ways. As an important means for the wealthy to assert social dominance, the private car heightens cultural inequities and inequality is an increasingly recognized negative health determinant.

The private car has made it possible for the wealthier to live far from the poor (or anyone else without an automobile). Partly to keep out poor people and black folks, suburban counties such as Decatur Township have failed to invest in public transit. In Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism & New Routes to Equity Robert Bullard describes how resistance to “urban” infiltration constrained the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) to serving two of the Atlanta region’s ten counties. When Cobb County voted against joining MARTA the unofficial slogan was “Stop Atlanta.” And so, MARTA is filled with lines that bypass wealthy suburban areas or terminate at their boundaries.

Travelling across the U.S. by Greyhound bus to research an ‘anti-car road trip story’ we experienced what appeared to be race/class-inspired transit planning. In the suburbs of New Orleans buses ended their routes abruptly at the edge of municipalities as if the asphalt itself had run out. Less subtle than this relay race bus tag, some highways are made in ways that block buses. In New York, for instance, the overpasses on the Jones Beach Parkway from Manhattan to Long Island were built deliberately low to stop busses from passing beneath and reaching the beaches.

The desire to avoid living with or near blacks stimulated much of U.S. suburban expansion. Although largely understood as a post-Interstate Highway system phenomenon, the white exodus from the city began earlier. The most famous example is the meticulously planned suburb of Levittown, Long Island. In 1953 it had a population of 70,000 — all of whom were white.

In many places the movement of better off whites from the city has diminished the property taxes required to fund social services such as schools, libraries and community centers. Spatial separation enabled by the automobile strengthens the disadvantages of race and class in other ways. Jobs are increasingly located on the outskirts, which is disadvantageous to low-income car-less individuals who often cannot reach these jobs by public transit. People of color are hardest hit since they are less likely to own a car and twice as likely to utilize non-automotive modes of transport.

While increasing inequities the private car also shields drivers from “undesirables”. When we were in Portland an Oregonian columnist writing about street youth shared a reader’s letter detailing the lengths he went to avoid the homeless. In the morning he entered work through the underground parking. At lunch he eschewed the nearby restaurants and slipped into his car to avoid panhandlers. Finally, he used the parkade exit to avoid street people on his way home from work. “Many of us, myself included,” a businessman from Northeast Portland e-mailed the paper, “drive garage (home) to garage (downtown) to garage (home) and never leave the building because of this [street youth] problem. …It’s easier just not to deal with it.”

For the well-to-do, private cars have long been a way to avoid social problems. The automobile’s capacity to create social distance en route appealed to early car buyers. Prominent auto historian, James J. Flink, remarked, “the automobile seemed to proponents of the innovation, to afford a simple solution to some of the more formidable problems of American life associated with the emergence of an urban industrial society.”

Overwhelmed by capitalist culture and enmeshed with unions tied to automobile production, socialist parties and movements have largely failed to challenge car-oriented transport for exacerbating inequities. Much the same could be said for an environmental movement highly dependent on rich philanthropists.

We need to face the truth. By design, urban areas liberated from the danger, pollution and ecological devastation of the private automobile enjoy both heightened quality of life and equality of residents.

Getting rid of our private automobile-dominated transportation system should be a priority for all those who believe in social equality and saving our environment.

By Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi

Recently the McGill Daily and Concordia University’s The Link covered their back page with end of semester advertisements for the 2011 Kia Soul. Above a picture of the small SUV reads: “Like it and Win. Grad [Facebook] Contest.”

These two nonprofit, Left student papers are not alone in promoting this unhealthy, lethal, inefficient and utterly unsustainable mode of transportation. Across the globe newspapers of all types are filled with odes to the private car. For every new vehicle sold today $630 is spent on advertising. In newspapers and magazines, on TV and radio, car ads are overwhelming. Moving beyond traditional car-drenched media the Wall Street Journal noted that, “car companies have been among the most aggressive marketers in trying out new advertising tactics.” Whether you’re at a party, online, at the mall, playing videogames, at the movies or even writing checks, there is an endless promotion of both brand names and automobility. Car advertisers have conquered nearly every sphere of human consciousness.

Cadillac developed a subtle “influencer” campaign where vehicles were loaned to CEOs, doctors and other distinguished individuals. For its part, Honda took a more blue-collar approach to selling cars. The company’s PR department dispatched a team to pump gas at service stations, pass out popcorn at movie theatres and offer aid in supermarket parking lots. These individuals all wore the company logo and could usually be found close to a car with the slogan “Helpful Honda.” Nissan came up with a more novel strategy. To promote the Altima, they deliberately ‘lost’ 20,000 key rings in bars, concert halls and sports arenas in seven major U.S. cities. Each ring had three keys and a tag that declared: “If found please do not return.” The Altima “has intelligent key with push-button ignition and I no longer need these.” A second tag was labeled “gas card” and offered the finder the chance to enter a competition with prizes ranging from free gas to a six-month subscription to Vibe magazine. This innovative marketing strategy followed on the heels of a campaign that hired actors to stand up in movie theatres and talk back to Nissan Altima commercial

The automobile’s new 30-second spot is definitely the videogame. To promote its 2010 GTI hatchback Volkswagen created an iPhone and iPod Touch game. The game allowed players to send messages to competitors on Twitter and post videos of the game to YouTube. Volvo’s S40 model enjoyed so much advertising success from Microsoft’s ‘Rally Sport Challenge Two’ that the company used clips from the game to create a TV ad. Another example is the Dodge Caliber, which made paid appearances in Ghost Recon, Crackdown and custom made four videogames for its launch. Nissan, too, worked with Sony/EA to release a downloadable video game to coincide with the launch of its GTR racecar. Similarly, Chrysler and Activision executives collaborated on American Wasteland, where 3D Jeep vehicles appear an average of 23 times every 20 minutes.

Most major auto companies have executives based in Los Angeles because new models increasingly rely on branded entertainment. Advertising Age summarized the industry’s position: “Automakers: Every car needs a movie.”

Released in July 2007, Transformers was a dream come true for GM. Bumblebee is a Chevy Camaro, Jazz a Pontiac Solstice, Ratchet a Hummer H2, Ironhide a GMC TopKick truck and Stockade a Cadillac Escalade. A number of other GM “car-actors” swept up supporting roles as well. Bob Kraut, GM’s director of brand marketing and advertising, was understandably pleased with the film. “The content is very good,” said Kraut. “The cars are integral to the story. They generate attention. It’s a story of good vs. evil. Our cars are the good guys.”

While bigger and better roles go to the car, the real action takes place behind the scenes. Be it a change in dialogue or camera angle, auto companies have taken an increasingly hands on approach to product placement. Some changes are subtle. In The Forgotten, for instance, Volvo slipped a line into the protagonist’s dialogue, identifying the brand as her car of choice. Other changes are less subtle. After a scene with an Audi was cut from Ironman the car company’s multi-million dollar marketing campaign with the movie was thrown into doubt. “The solution: run a drawn out shot of an Audi Q7 sports utility vehicle being saved by Ironman, complete with a sustained full frontal of Audi’s 4-ring logo.”

Car companies are aware of the silver screen’s value and part with big bucks for permanent spots. Aston Martin paid $35 million to unseat BMW as the official car of James Bond. In a massive agreement with Universal Studios and NBC, Volkswagen spent an estimated $200 million to see its products in Universal Films and on NBC television.

Today’s car ads manipulate nearly every value, emotion and human desire. Be it safety, speed, security, rebellion, the status quo, environmentalism, serenity or the defiance of nature. There is no place the industry won’t go.

The automakers omnipresent advertising explains the private car’s immense cultural standing. Those of us who want a landscape more amenable to pedestrians, cyclists and trolley riders must challenge the promotion of a product many times more damaging than cigarettes. As with tobacco, car advertising should be steadily eliminated (and immediately appropriated). The dominant media, ad agencies and car-makers will no doubt resist bitterly so let’s build momentum towards this end by prodding media outlets with ethical advertising guidelines (campus newspapers, green groups etc.) to immediately ban car ads.

Yves and Bianca are currently on tour for the release of their book Stop Sign— Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay

By Yves Engler

After a deadly earthquake rocked Haiti 15 months ago, most Canadians worried about uncovering those trapped, getting survivors water and connecting family members. But in the halls of power, it seems they were concerned about something very different.

According to internal documents examined by the Canadian Press this month, Canadian officials feared a post-earthquake power vacuum could lead to a “popular uprising”. Obtained through access-to-information legislation, one briefing note marked “Secret” explains, “Political fragility has increased the risks of a popular uprising, and has fed the rumour that ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently in exile in South Africa, wants to organize a return to power.” The documents also explain the importance of strengthening the Haitian authorities ability “to contain the risks of a popular uprising.”

To police Haiti’s traumatized and suffering population 2,000 Canadian troops were deployed (alongside 10,000 American soldiers). At the same time several Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Teams in cities across the country were readied but never sent because, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon noted, “the government had opted to send Canadian Armed Forces instead.”

The files uncovered by the Canadian Press go to the heart (or lack thereof) of Canadian foreign-policy decision-making. Almost always strategic thinking, not compassion, motivates policy. One is hard-pressed to find an instance where compassion was more warranted than post-earthquake Haiti.

The files also tell us a great deal about Ottawa’s relationship to the hemisphere’s most impoverished nation: Canadian officials think they run the place. And they are right.

Since hosting the Jan. 2003 round-table meeting dubbed the Ottawa Initiative on Haiti, Canada has been a dominant player in Haitian life. At that meeting high level U.S., Canadian and French officials discussed overthrowing elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, putting the country under international trusteeship and resurrecting Haiti’s dreaded military. Thirteen months after the Ottawa Initiative meeting Aristide had been pushed out and a quasi UN trusteeship had begun.

Since that time the Haitian National Police has been heavily militarized and the winner of the recent presidential elections, Michel Martelly, plans to divert scarce state resources to re-creating the military.

Canada helped the right-wing Martelly rise to office (with about 16 per cent of voters support, since the election was largely boycotted). Canada put up $6 million for elections that excluded Haiti’s most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, from participating. After the first round, our representatives on an Organization of American States Mission helped force the candidate the electoral council had in second place, Jude Celestin, out of the runoff. The Center for Economic and Policy Research explained, “The international community, led by the U.S., France, and Canada, has been intensifying the pressure on the Haitian government to allow presidential candidate Michel Martelly to proceed to the second round of elections instead of [ruling party candidate] Jude Celestin.” Some Haitian officials had their U.S. visas revoked and there were threats that aid would be cut off if Martelly’s vote total wasn’t increased as per the OAS recommendation.

Half of the electoral council agreed to the OAS changes, but half didn’t. The second round was unconstitutional, noted Haïti Liberté, as “only four of the eight-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) have voted to proceed with the second round, one short of the five necessary. Furthermore, the first round results have not been published in the journal of record, Le Moniteur, and President Préval has not officially convoked Haitians to vote, both constitutional requirements.”

The absurdity of the whole affair did not stop the Canadian government from supporting the elections and official election monitors from this country gave a thumbs-up to this farcical exercise in “democracy”. Describing the fraudulent nature of the elections, Haiti Progrès explained “the form of democracy that Washington, Paris and Ottawa want to impose on us is becoming a reality.”

One reason for this intense political interest in Haiti is the interest of Canadian investors. Canadian banks are among the very few foreign operators in Port-au-Prince and Montreal-based Gildan, one of the world’s biggest blank t-shirt makers, was the second largest employer (after the state) before the earthquake. The mining sector is almost entirely Canadian with many companies entering the country over the past few years. One Vancouver-based company, Eurasian Minerals, acquired prospecting licenses that cover approximately 10 percent of Haiti’s land mass.

To protect these foreign investors and the one percent of Haitians who own half of the country’s wealth, a 10,000-strong UN military force has been occupying the country for seven years. In a bitter irony, soldiers from one of the poorest countries in Asia, Nepal, gave Haiti a disease that thrives in impoverished societies, which lack adequate public sanitation and health systems. In October a new deployment of Nepalese troops brought a strain of cholera to Haiti that has left 5,000 dead and hundreds of thousands more ill. According to the British medical journal the Lancet, up to 800,000 Haitians will contract cholera this year.

The back story to this affair has gone largely unreported. The waste company managing the UN base, Sanco Enterprises S.A., disposed the fecal matter from the Nepalese troops into pits that seeped into the Artibonite River. Locals drank from the river, which is how the first Haitians got infected with cholera.

It’s hard to imagine a company working for the UN in Canada disposing of sewage in such a manner. But, then again the UN occupation force doesn’t much value Haitian life. The same could be said for the Canadian government.

Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay by Yves Engler and Bianca Mugyenyi, 2011, co-published by RED Publishing and Fernwood Publishing, 259 pages, ISBN 9781552663844 (paper), $20, Scheduled for release May, 2011

Reviewed by Richa

The authors, who are based in Canada and do not have driver licenses, use a bus trip to various USA cities as a jumping-off place to look critically at the effects of cars on ourselves and our environment. Calling our car-dominated transportation system “irritating, irrational, irresponsible and increasingly inhuman”, they show how cars take precedence over people and our environment physically, conceptually, even spiritually.

A great deal of up-to-date and well-referenced information is often interesting, disturbing, enlightening. Moreover, it is presented in an engaging way, wrapped into an often funny or ironic personal narrative of the authors’ experiences as they travel.

The first of two parts addresses pollution and global warming, inefficiency and expense, using sex and other means for ubiquitous car advertising, deaths and diseases and serious injuries not only from crashes but from many aspects of car manufacture, use, and disposal, cars’ contribution to sprawl and a divided society, the car as a spiritual icon, and more.

The second part looks at the larger capitalist system and how it is intimately intertwined with cars; how gross inefficiency becomes “efficient” from a capitalist standpoint. That includes advertising and media, corporate and political power, and a brief look at the huge car subsidies. It ends with a call to action with some specific suggestions.

As one who has done some transport research, organizing, education, and advocacy, I am impressed by how well Mugyenyi and Engler have put their information together. Their ideas are clear but without dogmatism; they are open to and understanding of where people are at.

For instance — especially at this time of a sophisticated corporate attack on most working people — they state that employment must be taken into account, though they then note that mass transit employs more people than does road-building.

They also affirm that those who still drive can and should have a major voice in how we move to a more sustainable transport system. They recognize that the problems are systemic, making it difficult to do without a car the way things are now.

That said, I particularly appreciate seeing such a work from the perspective of others who choose not to drive; that is unusual in the USA and Canada, especially among researchers.

Stop Signs will both educate and entertain you; it is well worth the price and the time.

By Yves Engler

Would Stephen Harper attack Libya simply to justify spending tens of billions of dollars on F-35 fighter jets? Perhaps. But, add on doing it for major Canadian investors, reinforcing his “principled” foreign policy rhetoric and reasserting western control over a region in flux, and you pretty much have the range of reasons why a half dozen CF-18s four other military aircraft and naval frigate are currently engaged in combat 10,000 km away from Canadian soil.

Over the past few months the Conservative’s plan to buy 65 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets has become a serious political headache. A recent poll showed 68 per cent of Canadians — including a majority of Conservative supporters — agreed that “now is not a good time” to spend between $16 and $29 billion on these controversial single-engine jets. So, sending Canadian military aircraft to enforce a UN “no-fly zone” in Libya provides an opportunity to soften opposition to the F-35 purchase, an issue bound to be a hot topic in the election campaign that formally began Saturday. Most critics of the F-35 purchase — from the NDP’s Michael Byers to Project Ploughshares Ernie Regehr to Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae — support the “humanitarian” mission in Libya. With these and other liberal interventionists supporting a bombing campaign in North Africa, Harper can more easily justify spending nearly $1,000 per Canadian on the best fighter jets money can buy. (Québec housing group, FRAPRU, claims the cost of a single F-35 equals 6,400 social housing units.)

Conveniently, the right-wing press has already begun to connect the dots in support of the Harper government. An Ottawa Citizen headline read, “Libya shows why Canada needs jets,” while a Sun Media chain commentary explained, “enforcing a ‘no-fly’ zone to shut down a dictator is an expeditionary air operation. Is that something Canadians want to be able to do in the future? If yes, you need an F-35, expensive or not.”

Over the past five years, the Conservatives have further militarized Canadian foreign policy. Military spending is at its highest level since World War II — the Harper government expanded Canada’s role in the occupation of Afghanistan, claimed that Russia is planning to attack and sent 2,000 troops to police Haitians after a devastating earthquake.

The Conservatives draw significant support from the military as well as its associated companies and culture. To get us in the fighting spirit, for instance, the Canadian Forces released onboard video footage of a CF-18 destroying a ground target in Libya.

But there is more to it than pleasing the Great White North’s version of the military-industrial complex. On March 21, The Financial Times reported that western oil companies were worried that if Gaddafi defeated the rebels in the east of Libya he would nationalize their operations out of anger at the west’s duplicity. Presumably, this includes Suncor, Canada’s second largest corporation, which signed a multi-billion dollar 30-year oil concession with Libya in 2008.

Home to the second largest amount of Canadian investment in Africa, instability in Libya has put a couple billion dollars worth of this country’s corporate investment in jeopardy. Dru Oja Jay, editor of the Dominion and a candidate for the Mountain Equipment Co-op Board of Directors, notes “Canadian investors are legitimately worried about what’s going to happen to the $1 billion signing bonus Suncor paid out to the Libyan government, or whether SNC-Lavalin is going to recoup its investments in the country, which is home to 10 per cent of its workforce.”And these are some of this country’s most powerful corporations. Embassymagazine includes both Suncor and SNC-Lavalin’s CEOs among the nine most influential business executives in determining Canadian foreign policy.

Unlike Egypt or Tunisia, the Conservatives denounced Gaddafi’s repression at the beginning of the Libyan uprising. This is partly because Gaddafi has never been on great terms with much of the West, even if there have been warmer relations in recent years. Also, the Conservatives were widely derided for supporting Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and (to a lesser extent) Ben-Ali in Tunisia to the bitter end. So Libya gave Harper an opportunity to re-affirm his “principled” foreign policy rhetoric.

Beyond wanting to appear on the side of human rights and democracy, another element motivating the military intervention in Libya is the desire to influence the revolutions in bordering states Tunisia and Egypt, which are still in flux. Controlling Libya gives the West another point of leverage over developments in those countries. Bombing Libya tells democratic forces in the region that the west is prepared to use force to assert itself (as does tacit support for the Saudi military intervention in Bahrain).

Recent developments in Libya are a reminder that if you give the western decision-makers an interventionist inch they take an imperial mile. In principle trying to stop Gaddafi from massacring people in eastern Libya is a good thing. But, the “no-fly zone” immediately became a license to bomb Libyan tanks, Gaddafi’s compound and other targets in coordination with rebel attacks. On March 22, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon claimed the UN resolution allowed for “boots on the ground.”

Beyond the inevitable death and destruction in Libya, the security council resolution further undermines state sovereignty, which provides the weakest states with some protection from the most powerful. This is the main reason why many Latin American and African countries have opposed the intervention.

Finally, let’s put the current moral outrage in perspective. A little over two years ago Israel launched a 22-day onslaught against Gaza that left some 1,400 people, mostly civilians, dead. There, the power imbalance between the two sides was much greater and the aggrieved population had been under the boot of the attacking force for as long as Gaddafi has ruled. Yet there was no talk of imposing a no-fly zone over Gaza. In fact, the Harper government cheered Israel on.

To garner positive attention, car manufacturers have penetrated nearly every known form of communication. Ever read a book about cars? It was probably financed by the industry. Automakers have also funded films, architects and urban planners. But, the industry’s main influence within the media is its reach into the newsroom.

Last week Detroit News auto critic, Scott Burgess, resigned after a “Chrysler dealer complained about his review of the Chrysler 200 — the centerpiece of the company’s ‘Imported from Detroit’ advertising campaign.” According to the New York Times business section, “After the article appeared in the print edition Burgess was directed by editors to amend the online version of his story.”

Dependent on advertising for most of its revenue, the Detroit News must be responsive to the auto industry. As much as one-in-seven advertising dollars come from car companies. At $18 billion a year, auto advertisers in the U.S. spend twice the next industry, retail. Not for nothing has it been said that Sunday papers are car advertisements surrounded by casual journalism.

As a result, automakers are a powerhouse of colossal proportions in their dealings with the media. Former New York Times Detroit Bureau chief, Keith Bradsher, explained in High and Mighty, “Top auto executives hold frequent, off-the-record meetings with the nation’s leading publishers and editors, enjoying a level of access that most politicians can only dream of.”

In the early 1970s, controversy erupted as Congress deliberated on new safety standards. During this debate the New York Times ran stories that were, in the words of a former staff member, “more or less put together by the advertisers.” New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger admitted that if the auto industry’s position on safety and auto pollution were not presented, it “would affect the advertising.” As the source of 18 percent of newspaper ad revenue, the automakers called in favours to successfully push back against seatbelt and air bag laws.

It’s not just targeted political fights where the auto industry cashes in. They have a preferred media climate. “Taming the mediascape for an environment conducive to profit,” writes Naomi Klein in No Logo, “the auto industry are averse to controversy of any kind. Take Chrysler for instance; up until 1997, when Chrysler placed an ad it demanded that it be ‘alerted in advance of any and all editorial content that encompasses sexual, political, social issues or any editorial that might be construed as provocative or offensive.” Chrysler also requested advanced notice of negative car editorials and many monthly magazines admit to giving automakers a heads-up (and the opportunity to pull ads) if an unfavourable article is forthcoming.

So, what happens when the automotive industry is not portrayed in all its shining glory? The LA Times knows. After printing a story in April 2005 calling for the dismissal of GM’s CEO, Rick Wagoner, the auto company immediately yanked all advertising from the paper. Reflecting on this incident, The New York Times business section noted that the auto industry “has been embroiled perhaps more than any other in ad controversies.” They cited three recent cases where advertising was pulled due to unpopular editorial decisions: GM pulled its ads from all Ziff-Davis magazines after Car and Driver printed an unflattering review of the Opel-Kadett model — running a photo of the car in a junkyard; auto dealers organized a four-month boycott after the San Jose Mercury News published, “A Car Buyer’s Guide to Sanity,” which offered negotiating tips to counter aggressive sales tactics; Chrysler withdrew its ads from Car and Driver after it published a photo essay displaying the carnage when a Dodge hit a cow at 60 miles per hour during a testdrive in Mexico.

Even Sierra magazine suffered the wrath of the auto industry in the mid 1990s. After failing to block a Sierra article criticizing the fuel economy of SUVs, automakers withdrew all SUV ads — seven percent of the magazine’s gross revenue. (Early on SUVs were promoted as a way to return to the countryside, hence the association with Sierra). This prompted the head of Sierra’s advertisement department to quit in disgust.

The automakers have been playing hardball with the media for a long time. Roy Chapin, founder and chairman of the Hudson Motor Company, said that in 1910 “the Chicago Tribune would not mention the name of any motor car in its columns.” As a result, Chapin noted, “the dealers in Chicago simultaneously withdrew their advertising from the Chicago Tribune. In a mighty short space of time that paper woke up and promised to do almost anything if they could get the advertising, and since that time they have been very decent in their attitude.”

The automotive industry’s approach to the media is summed up by GM’s executive director of advertising and media operations, Betsy Lazar: “It’s clear to us that our ads are less effective in a negative editorial environment. It is as simple as that. We actually have research in the auto magazine category that supports that notion. In some categories, in broadcast news, for example, it is the norm to be notified of a breaking negative story. If time permits, we will be notified by the network ‘there is a negative story tonight. Would you like to move your ads out?’ And we will say, ‘Absolutely.’”

This helps to explain why the corporate media has been so enthralled by the personal car.

Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler’s Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the road to Economic, Social and Environmental Decay will be released in April. Anyone interested in organizing a talk as part of a North America wide book tour beginning in May please e-mail: yvesengler@hotmail.com