Oil, Gas, and Canada-Colombia Free Trade

Here’s my latest, which I did for the North American Congress on Latin America. This piece is a bit of a follow up on the testimony I gave before the Standing Committee on International Trade shortly before Canadian parliamentarians (with a few exceptions) decided in the name of outdated and oft disproven “facts” about the benefits of “free trade”(but in the interests of transnational corporations, a few of which are mentioned below) that it would be best to go ahead and sign a deal with the most brutal government in South America. Sigh.

Oil, Gas, and Canada-Colombia Free Trade

Aug 11 2010

Canada has been involved in oil and gas in Colombia since the 1920s, when the Canadian-based International Petroleum Corporation (IPC), then a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, owned Tropical Oil and the Andian Pipeline Company. When ownership of these companies was due to revert back to the Colombian state in 1951(concessions at the time were for 30 years), IPC feared that it was going to lose both companies. So the foreign company tricked the Colombian government into believing that Andian was a separate company from Tropical, even though they shared the same parent company. These shenanigans earned Andian National a new concession, who then established its new head office in Canada until the 1970s.

A new free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia and the strong presence of Canadian companies in Colombia’s oil and gas sector indicates that the Colombian government no longer has to be tricked into handing over its natural resources to Canadian corporations. Instead, it will continue to do so willingly, in the name of increasing foreign direct investment.

Reportback from AMC & interview with Alex Hundert

Dear readers,

Just a quick update with a few pieces I’ve been working on. Things have been a little slow lately as I’ve been finishing my thesis and doing some coursework in order to complete my Master in Journalism at UBC. More on that later…

First, a report back from the Allied Media Conference that I prepared for the Dominion. Here’s the crux of it: “Organizers and participants made direct links between the need for alternative and radical media and broader social and economic issues including capitalism, police violence, prisons, environmental destruction, ableism, and gendered and racialized violence, to name a few. These links were made possible by a holistic approach to reclaiming media that went far beyond the idea of “media democracy” into the realm of “media justice.” To date, there is no equivalent to the AMC in Canada.”

Second, an interview with Alex Hundert, one of the 17 people facing serious charges stemming from his activism related to anti-G20 resistance. Alex had lots of amazing things to say during our interview, and I was so inspired by his courage and resolve. Here’s something I found particularly interesting about what Alex said: “For every person that they are pulling out of the movement, to the extent that they’re able to do that through criminalizing and incarcerating us, there are several people to take our place.”

The Canada-Colombia Oil and Gas Connection, Canada and Plan Mexico, and the Toronto Declaration

Hey folks,

I figured I might as well share a couple of pieces I’ve worked on over the past little while.

First, my testimony before the Standing Committee on International Trade on the Canada Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The deal has passed now, and many witnesses including Indigenous Colombians and Afro-Colombians were never given the opportunity to speak. I spoke mostly about Calgary based oil and gas companies and their connection to the politicos pushing the deal. After I gave the testimony, riot police broke up a strike in the south of Colombia, and I adapted it to write this piece. It is an absolute shame that the Canadian government has signed a deal with the Uribe/Santos regime that will likely enable the U.S. government to pass a similar agreement, which will mean more Colombians murdered, disappeared, tortured and displaced for profit.

Second, a talk I gave yesterday evening about Canada’s evolving relationship to Mexico. It touches on Canada’s hypocrisy regarding visas for Mexicans, Felipe Calderón’s recent meetings with Stephen Harper, mining, biofuels, and climate change policy, as well as resistance and our hopes for survival.

Finally, I wrote a quick analysis piece on the Toronto Declaration, the final document of the G-20. If you second guessed why folks were in the streets to resist the G-20, have a look.

G-20 Resistance Round-up

Here’s a piece I co-produced with Franklin López. It was featured on Monday, June 28th on Democracy Now!

Text from Vancouver Media Co-op:

Canadian police have arrested over 900 people in Toronto in a police crackdown on protests at the G20 summit. Riot police used batons, plastic bullets and tear gas for the first time in the city’s history. More than 19,000 security personnel were deployed in Toronto, and a nearly four-mile-long security wall was erected around the G20 summit site at the Toronto Convention Center. The security price tag for the summit is estimated at around $1 billion. Franklin Lopez & Dawn Paley of the Vancouver Media Co-op filed this report from the streets of Toronto.

The Honduran Business Elite One Year After the Coup

Here’s a piece I just completed for the North American Congress on Latin America.

The first anniversary of the June 28, 2009 military coup in Honduras might just slide under the international radar, timed as it is right after the Honduran national team kicks off at the World Cup.

The Honduran business community could hardly have planned it better themselves.

Take Rafael Ferrari, for example. He is one of the owners of the country’s best professional soccer team, Club Olimpia Deportiva, a team that has contributed more players than any other to the national soccer team, Selección de Honduras, and thus closely identified with the players competing for Honduras’s honor in the World Cup competition. Ferrari also owns nine television stations and 11 radio stations, as well as various U.S. fast food chains, like Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins. These days, he’s on center stage as the president of the Honduran Football Federation.

Where’s the Movement at the G-20 in Toronto?

After a wonderful time at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, where we met lots of radical media makers and did a presentation about the Vancouver Media Co-op, I’m in Toronto covering the lead up to the G20 Summit. Instead of focusing on events, like marches, as disconnected from longer term organizing, I’m putting my energy towards exploring some of the issues that are coming up from the streets.

I kicked off Monday with a piece called Toronto Police Don’t Deserve a Free Ride, which busts the myth that police brutality is only an issue during the police state-esque overkill of a huge economic summit like the G20.

Yesterday, I did a piece called NGOs join Presidents Behind G20 Fence, which looks at the history of NGOs that receive state funding in the context of movement organizing, and applies some of that history to what’s happening in the run up to this weekend’s events.

I’m posting to the Toronto Media Co-op and also collaborating with Franklin López on a TV piece that will come out next week.

Much ado about the Boreal Forest

Over the past week or so I’ve been working on a series of reports about the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, a deal announced between 9 ENGOs and 21 logging companies that purports to cover forested lands from NWT to Newfoundland. The deal has received little critical attention in the media, with the exception of pieces appearing on the Vancouver Media Co-op and the Dominion.

Last week on the VMC I posted a story called Boreal Forest Conflicts far from Over, which described some of the early criticisms of the deal. The next day, a reader sent in a leaked fax of the still unreleased Boreal Forest Agreement, which we posted.

Over the long weekend, I read through the full 71 page agreement, and produced an analysis piece, called The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement Reconsidered.

Unfinished business: Sweatshops, oligarchs and the fear of a new constitution in Honduras

My latest, in Briarpatch’s May/June 2010 edition.

By Dawn Paley
Briarpatch Magazine
May/June 2010

For the last 10 years, Juana López Nuñez (not her real name) has spent most of her waking hours making T-shirts for the Canadian company Gildan Activewear at the company’s San Miguel factory in Honduras.

Today, at age 44, she has little use of her arms and experiences constant pain in her shoulders, neck and hands. She takes painkillers throughout the day, and has had one surgery, which didn’t ease the chronic tendonitis that keeps her up at night.

“I thought that when I started to work for a company, it would make life better. I didn’t realize that I was going to get injured,” she says, holding back tears. López is a single mother of five children, including a 10-year-old daughter who helps her with housework. She makes the equivalent of $47.50 a week.

López isn’t the only Gildan employee who is facing troubles at the workplace. “The others don’t want to talk. They are scared and they don’t say anything,” said López. “They are scared to talk to the management because they think they will get fired or get a lower grade of pay,” she said.

Maquila (sweatshop) workers are one segment of the Honduran population whose already difficult lives have gotten more so since the military coup last year.

Robert Hackett’s Reformist Radicalism

I’ve decided to post an essay I wrote about Professor Robert Hackett’s vision of interactions of radical democrats and the media as part of the Master of Journalism program at the University of British Columbia. Robert Hackett’s Reformist Radicalism and the Democratic Deficit in UK and US media was written in January 2010.

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Dowload the PDF here

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Read the whole essay by clicking

Interview: Climate Justice Organizing in Mexico

An interview I did while in Chiapas in March about how grassroots groups in Mexico are preparing for COP-16.

This piece first appeared in Upside Down World, March 30, 2010.

This November, Mexico will play host to the follow up to the Copenhagen climate talks. Activists around the country are already preparing for the 16th Conference of Parties summit, which will take place in Cancun.

I spoke with Gustavo Castro Soto, an activist, agitator and organizer based in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas. Though he has decades of environmental organizing under his belt, Castro hasn’t cashed in on his credibility to take a plush job. He remains a dedicated grassroots organizer whose first commitment is to communities. Castro is a founding member of Otros Mundos, an NGO that works on popular education and developing alternatives to capitalism, as well as with the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA). He’s one of many who plan to be in the streets in Cancun, so I caught up with him after a long workday in San Cristobal de las Casas to ask him about how he sees climate organizing playing out in Mexico over the next eight months.

On the possibilities of COP 16 in Cancun…

“We are convinced that after 16 sessions of COP, things are not going to change. Governments and corporations have done everything possible to not make commitments, rather, they’ve looked for a way to sort out all of the demands and difficulties and incorporating new legislation and new ideas to continue doing the same thing, including making a business out of the climate change they’re generating.