A Good Idea?

By Brent Erickson
From Postmodern Times
2007

"Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western Civilization and his answer was 'Maybe it would be a good idea.', and you can say the same for capitalism, 'Maybe it would be a good idea.', we've never had anything remotely resembling it and the reason we don't have it is the powerful would never permit it. They know very well if capitalist institutions were established it would destroy the economy in no time. Therefore they insist on a powerful state which intervenes to protect them from the ravages of the market." -Noam Chomsky 2004

Western Civilization is not capitalist? That can't be correct. Everybody knows that America is the world-wide example of the so called Free Market, the polar opposite to Communism. The U.S exports Capitalism through "Economic Globalization". That is what we're told isn't it? From billboards for Forbes Magazine proudly reading, "Capitalism served fresh daily.", to critiques of the economic system by Author Michael Parenti proclaiming "Capitalism is the problem!" the word is regularly used.

Though it is true that the western economic model does have capitalist features to it, many Americans and Canadians do benefit little if any from the billions spent by their governments every year and are left to "fend for themselves". However, with a closer look at how our economic system actually functions it becomes clear that "Free Market Capitalism" is an incorrect label to give the prevailing economic system in North America.

J.K Galbraith, the legendary Canadian-American economist addresses the issue of the free market in his 1966 BBC Reith Lecture "The New Industrial State". "I have under-taken to show in these lectures, that the modern industrial society, or that part of it which is composed of the large corporation is in all essentials a planned economy...Now, I'm not arguing that market influences are entirely excluded from effects on [economic] decisions. Economics as it exists, rather than how it is taught, has very few pure cases...But the notion that the consumer is a sovereign influence in the economy that all decisions begin with him is a pure case that will not do, or it will serve only those who wish to believe in fairy tales."

Government Spending
One way that our economic system is not "Free" is that direct government spending is a huge part of our overall economy. From schools, libraries, and arts funding to military, police and business subsidies, the state is there.

If the government were to cut taxes radically and slash state intervention in the economy, leaving what is now government funded to the open market, our society would be quite different.

But wait a minute, hasn't the government been "privatizing" services, and "cutting the pork of Big Government" for years? While since the early 1980's, the government has been "privatizing" certain sectors of society like Medicare, and slashing funding to Aboriginal people, Women's groups and the Environment, they have been increasing funding to others, like Police and Military, and Business.

Ronald Reagan is a symbol of so called free market ideology. He slashed welfare to the poor and spoke often of his belief in free markets. Noam Chomsky notes that Reagan had granted more import relief to U.S. industry than any of his predecessors in more than half a century; in fact, more than all predecessors combined. Market discipline, writes Chomsky is; "...for you but not for me, unless the 'playing field' happens to be tilted in my favor, typically as a result of large-scale state intervention. It’s hard to find another theme so dominant in the economic history of the past three centuries...Another chapter of the story includes the huge transfer of public funds to private power, often under the traditional guise of "security." Without such extreme measures of market interference, it is doubtful that the U.S. automotive, steel, machine tool, semiconductor industries, and others, would have survived Japanese competition or been able to forge ahead in emerging technologies, with broad effects through the economy."

"Corporate Welfare"
"Corporate Welfare" is a term (said to be first coined by Ralph Nader in 1956) usually used to describe direct government subsidies of for-profit Corporations, but it is more than that. "Corporate Welfare" is, writes Nader, "...the enormous and myriad subsidies, bailouts, giveaways, tax loopholes, debt revocations, loan guarantees, discounted insurance and other benefits conferred by government on business...Corporate welfare programs siphon funds from appropriate public investments, subsidize companies ripping minerals from federal lands, enable pharmaceutical companies to gouge consumers, perpetuate anti-competitive oligopolistic markets, injure our national security, and weaken our democracy."

Corporate welfare is nothing new. Both Canada and the U.S would not be the countries they are today without massive state subsides. Giveaways of public land is one of the oldest forms of corporate welfare. The U.S National Mineral Act of 1866 gave millions of acres of prime land to mining companies for free. Railroad corporations received over 100 million acres of land, and millions of dollars in federal subsidies for rail construction. Meanwhile, the signed commitments made to Native people, to honor land treaties, remain unrealized to this day.

U.S congressman Bernie Sanders questions the wisdom of the current economic model of systemic corporate welfare. "This country has a $6 trillion national debt, a growing deficit and is borrowing money from the Social Security Trust Fund in order to fund government services. We can no longer afford to provide over $125 billion every year in corporate welfare - tax breaks, subsidies and other wasteful spending - that goes to some of the largest, most profitable corporations in America. One of the most egregious forms of corporate welfare can be found at a little known federal agency called the Export-Import Bank, an institution that has a budget of about $1 billion a year and the capability of putting at risk some $15.5 billion in loan guarantees annually. At a time when the government is under-funding veterans' needs, education, health care, housing and many other vital services, over 80% of the subsidies distributed by the Export-Import Bank goes to Fortune 500 corporations. Among the companies that receive taxpayer support from the Ex-Im are Enron, Boeing, Halliburton, Mobil Oil, IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, FedEx, General Motors, Raytheon, and United Technologies."

The Impact of Corporate Welfare is felt not only by the domestic population, who are footing the bill for our economic system, but the effect on developing countries is even more severe. The subsidies the governments of the U.S and Canada give to corporations lower the price of goods worldwide, making it almost impossible for producers in developing countries to compete with the North Americans, driving small business out of production. This is an important aspect of what is misleadingly called "Free Trade".

In India, there has been an epidemic of suicides by farmers, over the past ten years. Author, physicist and ecologist Vandana Shiva blames the western economic system for destroying the lives of her countrymen. "Indian farmers had never committed suicide on a large scale, it's something totally new, it's linked to the last decade of 'Globalization', and 'Trade Liberalization', under a corporate driven economy...A few weeks ago [Nov,2006] I was in Punjab, 2,800 widows of farmer suicides, have lost their land, are having to bring up children as landless workers on others land, and yet the system does not respond to it because there is only one response. Get Monsanto out of the seed sector, they are part of this Genocide, and ensure that WTO (World Trade Organization) rules are not bringing down the prices of agriculture produce in the U.S, in Canada, in India, and allow trade to be honest. I don't think we need to talk about 'free trade' and 'fair trade' we need to talk about honest trade. Todays trade system, especially in agriculture, is dishonest and this dishonesty has become a war against farmers, it's become a Genocide "

"True Cost Accounting"
Despite the fact technologies exist to replace the fossil fuel engine, oil and automobiles play a huge roll in modern industrial society. It has been said that alternatives to oil are not cost effective, but once the true cost of oil subsides are revealed, renewable technologies make even more sense. The price not only of direct subsidies, but of costs transferred to governments or to the public is calculated in what has been called "True Cost Accounting".

According to Adbusters magazine, "True cost is such a revolutionary idea because in a true cost market place every product tells the ecological truth. The Price tag of an automobile would include the pollution it causes over its lifetime, the building and maintaining of roads, the medical costs of accidents and the noise and degradation caused by urban sprawl, the traffic policing and military protection of oil fields and supply lines, plus the real but hard-to- estimate cost to future generations of oil depletion and climate change...The [U.S] National Defense Council Foundation Estimates that the Pentagon spends $49.1 billion a year preserving access to Persian Gulf oil, an amount equal to adding $1.17 to the cost of a gallon of gasoline. And that before the U.S invaded Iraq."

The Ontario Medical Association, (“The Illness Costs of Air Pollution Ontario” June 2000) estimates that air pollution costs Ontario's twelve million residents over $1 billion per year in hospital admissions, emergency room visits and worker absenteeism. Private insurers hit by climate change costs released a report in 2001 demonstrating that more frequent tropical cyclones, loss of land, as a result of rising sea levels, and damage to fishing stocks, agriculture and water supplies, amounted to an annual bill of over $300 billion.

The government and the public are there to accommodate the oil and automobile corporations, paying the "externalities" created from this ecologically devastating form of transport, money that could be spent on sustainable development. But if you do drive, consider yourself a capitalist, and like to pay your own way, I'm sure the government will gladly accept a cheque.

"[Have you ever wondered] what would it cost to drive if the price tag of gas included air pollution, road construction and maintenance; property taxes lost from land cleared for freeways; free parking paid for by taxes; noise and vibration damage to structures; protection of petroleum supply lines; sprawl and loss of transportation options; auto accidents; and congestion? A number of researchers have tried to answer this question. John Holtzclaw of the Sierra Club, "America's Autos on Welfare", profiled eight studies that, when averaged, estimated the true price of gas at $6.05 a gallon. As for vehicles, transportation analyst Todd Litman [“Transportation Costs & Benefits,”] June 2004 has calculated that the external costs of driving would add $42,363 to the sticker price of a shiny new car, based on a 12.5 year lifespan.", (from Adbusters).

Jobs and Taxes
It is common to hear argued that although the public are footing the bill for the so-called capitalists, at least the corporations are providing jobs and paying taxes. Unfortunately, even though large corporations are good at making money, they are less successful at providing jobs. In 2005, revenues for the Fortune 500, the five hundred most profitable corporations in the U.S, were over $9 trillion or over 73 percent of U.S. GDP. Soon Fortune 500 revenues are expected even to surpass the total economic output of the United States. If the Fortune 500 constituted a nation, their economy would be larger than the economies of Japan, the UK, Germany and France combined. However the percentage of Americans employed by Fortune 500 companies has steadily dropped from 20 percent of the workforce in 1980 to less than 9 percent today.

According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business,(CFIB) "Seventy-five per cent of all businesses in Canada employ fewer than five employees and almost 60 per cent of employed Canadians work for a small or medium-sized business." In America "About three quarters of all U.S. business firms have no payroll." Reports the U.S Census Bureau. "Most are self-employed persons operating unincorporated businesses." Despite the fact that most of the citizens in North America are employed by small business, or the state itself, the government continues to bow to the pressure of large corporations to pay, what should be, their expenses or to subsidize them directly. This is a systematic violation of the free market.

As for paying taxes, the AFL-CLO reports, "Nearly one-third of the nation’s largest and most profitable corporations paid no federal income tax between 2001 and 2003—yet still received billions of dollars in tax rebates, according to a new study.

'Corporate Income Taxes in the Bush Years', released by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, finds 82 of 275 companies CTJ examined enjoyed at least one year in 2001–2003 in which they paid no federal income taxes yet received billions of dollars in outright tax rebates. In 2003 alone, 46 of the companies paid no federal income taxes and in some cases, received tax rebates.

The tax burden in north America is shouldered primarily by the middle class, who must work to live and do not enjoy protection from the market as corporations do. As Cassandra Q. Butts writes in a 2004 article, "The Corporate Tax Dodge" for The Center for American Progress; "The news that more than 60 percent of U.S. corporations failed to pay any federal taxes from 1996 through 2000 when corporate profits were soaring and that corporate tax receipts had fallen to just 7.4 percent of overall federal tax revenue in 2003 – the lowest since 1983 and the second-lowest rate since 1934 – is an outrage. But it should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to national tax policy over the past few years."

Consider Argentina
If you think that North America has been privatized, and that the state is not very involved in economics, or that more privatization would help our society, consider the case of Argentina. As Noam Chomsky noted recently, "Argentina was the poster child for the IMF, (International Monetary Fund) and following IMF rules, lead to the worst economic disaster in its history. It totally collapsed, then violating IMF rules radically, they pulled out of it and have had rapid growth."

Naomi Klein, award winning Canadian Author and Filmmaker, recently produced a film about Argentina entitled "The Take". She warns that true capitalist polices can lead to disaster. "Argentina, had adopted all the same polices that we've just been talking about in Iraq, the attacks on the state, the privatization of absolutely everything. Argentina is the most privatized country I've ever seen, even the street signs are sponsored, they are sponsored by Master Card, I mean nothing has not been sold in this country. The results were an absolute disaster because they created a capitalist wild west and money was just able to travel, just flee the country. $40 Billion left the country in cash, in the two weeks before the economic crisis, and so people responded in this amazing way...workers who were told 'O.k you're fired, your factory's closing, were moving it somewhere cheaper.', they just refused to leave. We actually wanted to call the movie, 'Rage for the Machines' because what they were saying was, 'You can leave, but we're going to keep the machines and keep them running,', and they turned these factories into democratically run workers co-operatives."

Alternative Economic Systems
Proponents of the current economic model, that has by now affected every nation on earth, will tell you they are conservative and pragmatic, that there is "no alternative" to their seemingly unjust system. Fortunately for Canada, since 1994 the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, (CCPA) has produced an Alternative Federal Budget(AFB), demonstrating "that governments budgets can be created in a way that is both fiscally and socially responsible...The CCPA has coordinated the AFB with the participation and support of researchers, activists and leadership from a broad spectrum of civil society organizations representing millions of Canadians". Judy Randall is coordinator of the 2006 Alternative Federal Budget for the CCPA. "Our budget adds up, it is balanced - it has no increase in overall net taxes. But unlike Mr. Harper and Mr. Flaherty we do not believe every problem can be solved with a tax cut. We start from the premise that this government has an unparalleled opportunity to help move Canada forward and create better lives for all Canadians.", from the CCPA Monitor.

Although it seems there is no way to combat economic injustice and inequity, people around the world are defying the odds. From Venezuela, to Spain, Kibbutz's in Israel, to micro-credits in Bangladesh, large societies and small communities are all rejecting "Neo-Liberalism" and are living proof that a better world is possible.

Ode magazine journalist Stephan Herrera traveled to the Himalayan nation of Bhutan, ("Zen and the Art of Happiness" Nov. 2005) to discover that even "developing nations" can prosper, when people come before profits. "Today the vast majority of Bhutan’s hard currency comes from ecotourism and hydro power-generated electricity. Its economy is one of the fastest growing in Asia. And the political structure is peacefully making the transition from monarchy to a kind of Asian-style democracy—at the king’s behest. King Wangchuk created a novel development plan three decades ago, early on mandating that his country’s success be judged in part by the degree to which it makes the Bhutanese citizenry happy. Yes, happy. In Bhutan, happiness is a measuring stick by which all aspects of modernization are judged. The King believes that gross national happiness (GNH) is more important than the widely used measure of economic well-being, gross national product (GNP)...the four 'pillars' of GNH—environmental conservation, socio-economic development, culture, and good governance, have just been enshrined in the country’s first constitution as the guiding principles of the government’s contract with its people."

E.F Schumacher was an internationally influential economic thinker, according to The Times Literary Supplement, his book "Small Is Beautiful" is among the 100 most influential books published since World War II. Adbusters, in a feature titled "The Revolutionaries" points out, "Schumacher coined the term 'Buddhist Economics' to describe the opposite of the Western economic model [one that didn’t allow governments to finance corporate domination, but instead invested in renewable resources to benefit society]. For those who questioned what Buddhism had to do with economics, Schumacher replied, 'Economics without Buddhism, i.e., without spiritual, human and ecological values, is like sex without love.'".


Turning on Canada’s Tap

By Tony Clarke
From Canadian Dimension
2006

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper sat down with President George W. Bush in their first White House meeting on July 6, one of the “unmentionable” items on their agenda may well have been the question of bulk water exports from Canada. After all, Bush himself raised the issue back in July, 2001, when he talked “off the cuff” to reporters about growing water shortages in his home state of Texas and elsewhere in the country, saying he would like to begin negotiations with Ottawa on water exports from Canada. In Texas, he said, “water is more valuable than oil.” “A lot of people don’t need it, but when you head south and west, we need it,” Bush declared, adding that he “looked forward” to discussing the matter with then-prime minister Jean Chretien.

At the time, the reaction from Canadian officials was swift and blunt. “We’re absolutely not going to export water, period,” proclaimed David Anderson, then Canada’s environment minister. Anderson’s comment reflected what seems to be a general public consensus that water should not be treated like other natural resources (like oil, natural gas, minerals, timber, etc.), as a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market to U.S. customers. After Anderson’s reaction, the issue seemed to fade from the news headlines until former U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci revived the issue in the early stages of the 2005-06 federal election.

The question now is whether Canada’s new PM is willing to put water on the table in negotiating a new relationship with the United States. Although Harper’s specific views on water exports are not known, he has called for more “economic and security integration” with the U.S., highlighting the need for a continental energy strategy that would include “a range of other natural resources.” As a new era of Canada-U.S. relations opens up, Canadians would do well to take a closer look at the forces moving behind the scenes to turn on the taps for massive water exports to the United States.

The Growing American Thirst
Today, the largest world’s largest economic and military superpower is facing the problem of acute water shortages within its own borders. Twenty-one per cent of farmland irrigation in the U.S. comes from pumping groundwater at rates that exceed the water’s ability to recharge. In effect, this means those aquifers that are the country’s source of freshwater are rapidly being depleted and are drying up. The lethal combination of severe droughts and dried-up wells has become the plague of many U.S. farmers. Every year, now, it is estimated that more than U.S. $400 billion is lost in America’s farmlands because of the depletion of aquifers. A prime example is the Ogallala aquifer, one of the world’s most famous underground bodies of water, which is being depleted at a rate 14 times faster than nature can restore it.

In California, the major aquifers are also drying up. With the Colorado River strained to the limit, the water table under California’s San Joaquin Valley has dropped nearly ten meters in some areas during the past fifty years. In the state’s Central Valley, overuse of underground water supplies has resulted in a loss of over forty per cent of the combined storage capacity of all the human-made reservoirs in California. The desert regions of the American southwest — Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico — largely barren of water, continue to experience population growth. In Bush’s home state of Texas, water scarcity is also approaching a critical stage, where cities like El Paso are expected to be dried up by 2030. Moving further into the American Midwest, Chicago and Milwaukee could also be facing severe water shortages. The huge sandstone aquifer underlying the Illinois-Wisconsin border, which supplies these two major cities with their water supplies, is currently overtaxed and may well be depleted in the near future, say scientists, unless there are significant reductions in groundwater withdrawals.

In short, the U.S. is becoming more and more thirsty, even as it reaches the danger point of running out of its own freshwater sources. When the U.S. government surveyed the fifty states of the Union in 2003, it found that more than two-thirds predicted they would face water shortages in one form or another over the next ten years. And the U.S. government appears unprepared to confront this impending water crisis. In June, 2004, the National Academies of Science and the U.S. Geological Survey reported that Washington is ill-prepared to deal with water shortages emerging across the country.

Water-Rich Canada?
As the U.S. water crisis intensifies, one quick-fix solution is to tap into what is perceived to be Canada’s considerable water wealth. According to this scenario, Canada is a giant green sponge full of freshwater lakes and rivers — a massive reservoir of water that can be tapped to serve the insatiable thirst of people and industries in urban America. Globally speaking, Canada is ranked fourth in the world in terms of surface sources of freshwater — lakes, rivers and glaciers. All it would take is the construction of a network of new dams, reservoirs, canals, tunnels, pipelines and supertankers to transport water in bulk form from Canada to the United States.

The largest freshwater system on the planet is, of course, the Great Lakes lying between Canada and the United States, which contain no less than twenty per cent of the world’s freshwater. But the Great Lakes have also been a dumping ground for industrial wastes, contaminating much of the lake water and ground water in the region. Indeed, the International Joint Commission declared in its 2000 Final Report on the Protection of Waters in the Great Lakes, that there is no surplus water in the Great Lakes and emphatically warned against any new diversions. Moreover, scientists are now warning that drought patterns are returning to the prairies, as river systems like the South Saskatchewan, Old Man, Peace and Athabasca show signs of drying up. And these re-emerging drought patterns are bound to intensify with global warming. Already, the glacier that feeds Alberta’s Bow River is melting so quickly that there may be no water left in it fifty years from now.

Although there is no doubt that Canada is blessed by nature’s endowment with numerous freshwater lakes and rivers, it should also be noted that sixty per cent of our rivers flow north into Hudson’s Bay and the Arctic region. As a result, sixty per cent of Canada’s freshwater flows in the opposite direction of the U.S. and is largely inaccessible. Even so, say politicians, engineers and economists on both sides of the border, there are ways of overcoming these obstacles through new technologies and investment.

Mega Export Schemes
Over the past four decades, a series of mega-diversion schemes have been planned for massive bulk water transfers from Canada to the U.S. In retrospect, these megaprojects can be categorized in terms of three major water corridors. Western Corridor: The centerpiece of the western water corridor flowing from Canada to the U.S. is the North American Water and Power Alliance. NAWAPA was originally designed to bring bulk water from Alaska and northern British Columbia for delivery to 35 U.S. states. By building a series of large dams, the northward flow of the Yukon, Peace, Liard and a host of other rivers (Tanana, Copper, Skeena, Bella Coola, Dean, Chilcotin, and Fraser) would be reversed to move southward and pumped into the Rocky Mountain Trench, where the water would be trapped in a giant reservoir approximately 800 kilometres long. A canal would then be built to take the water southward into Washington State, where it would be channeled through existing canals and pipelines to supply freshwater for customers in 35 states. The annual volume of water to be diverted through the NAWAPA project is estimated to be roughly equivalent to the average total yearly discharge of the entire St. Lawrence River system.

Central Corridor: Another water corridor consists of a series of water-diversion schemes proposed from the Northwest Territories through the prairies to the U.S. In 1968, the Washington State Resource Center developed plans for the Central North American Water Project (CeNAWAP). The plan calls for a series of canals and pumping stations linking Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake in the N.W.T. to Lake Athabaska and Lake Winnipeg and then to the Great Lakes for bulk water exports to the U.S. A variation on the CeNAWAP is the Kuiper Diversion Scheme, which proposes to link the major western rivers into a mega-diversion scheme involving the Mackenzie, Peace, Athabasca, North Saskatchewan, Nelson and Churchill river systems.

Eastern Corridor: The principal eastern water corridor is known as the Great Recycling and Northern Development (GRAND) Canal. As originally conceived, the GRAND Canal plans called for the damming and rerouting of northern river systems in Quebec in order to bring freshwater through canals down into the Great Lakes, whence it would be flushed into the American Midwest. A dike would be built across James Bay at its mouth at Hudson Bay (whose natural flow is northward), thereby turning the bay into a giant, 30,000-square-mile reservoir of freshwater from the twenty rivers that flow into it. Through a system of dikes, canals, dams, power plants and locks, the water would then be diverted from the reservoir and rerouted southward down a 167-mile canal at a rate of about 282,000 litres per second into two of the Great Lakes —Superior and Huron. From there, the water would be flushed through canals into markets in both the American Midwest and Sun Belt.

There are, of course, multiple reasons why none of these massive water corridors have been built in the intervening decades since they were first proposed. One reason is that America’s thirst has been temporarily quenched by internal bulk water transfers within the U.S. A second reason is the problem of securing sufficient capital to pay for highly expensive bulk water export schemes like those described above, and whether this should come from private or public investment. A third reason may also have been the need for new or improved engineering technologies required for some of the more geographically challenging projects.

Yet, underlying all these reasons is the question of political will. According to opinion polls, most Canadians remain skeptical about selling our water to the U.S. In a 2002 survey conducted by the Centre for Research and Information on Canada, 69 per cent were opposed to bulk water exports. Three years before this poll was taken, the House of Commons actually passed a motion (introduced by the New Democrats) calling on the federal government to ban the export of water. In response, the Liberal government of the day refused to issue a ban on water exports, contending it would contravene Canada’s obligations under NAFTA and, instead, worked with the provinces to develop a Canada-wide Water Accord aimed at discouraging bulk water exports. Yet, precisely because of NAFTA, which prohibits countries from putting a ban or quota on the exports of their natural resources, the water accord is largely ineffective.

Which brings us back to Stephen Harper. Will he and his government be the ones who finally muster the political will to give Washington the green light and permit bulk water takings? Is this the price that Harper is prepared to pay, on behalf of Canadians, to seal a new grand bargain with the U.S., just as Brian Mulroney did when he gave away Canada’s energy resources in the eleventh hour of the free-trade negotiations?

Pay To Be Saved: The Future of Disaster Response

By Naomi Klein
From NoLogo.org
2006

The Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box. This, apparently, is the lesson learned from the government’s calamitous response to Hurricane Katrina: Businesses do disaster better.

“It’s all going to be private enterprise before it’s over,” Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for Tropical Storm Ernesto, said in April. “They’ve got the expertise. They’ve got the resources.”

But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it’s time to take a look at where the privatization of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead.

The first step was the government’s abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter).

We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent (a New York Times columnist even suggested handing FEMA over to Wal-Mart).

But the honeymoon doesn't last long. “Where has all the money gone?” ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditures for these private contractors.

Largely under the public radar, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction of a privatized disaster-response infrastructure: the Shaw Group’s new state-of-the-art Baton Rouge headquarters, Bechtel’s battalions of earthmoving equipment, Blackwater USA’s 6,000-acre campus in North Carolina (complete with paramilitary training camp and 6,000-foot runway). I call it the Disaster Capitalism Complex. Whatever you might need in a serious crunch, these contractors can provide it: generators, water tanks, cots, port-a-potties, mobile homes, communications systems, helicopters, medicine, men with guns.

This state-within-a-state has been built almost exclusively with money from public contracts, including the training of its staff (overwhelmingly former civil servants, politicians and soldiers). Yet it is all privately owned; taxpayers have absolutely no control over it or claim to it. So far, that reality hasn’t sunk in because when these companies are getting their bills paid by government contracts, the Disaster Capitalism Complex provides its services to the public free of charge.

But here’s the catch: The U.S. government is going broke, in no small part thanks to this kind of loony spending. The national debt is $8-trillion; the federal budget deficit is at least $260-billion. That means that sooner rather than later, the contracts are going to dry up. And no one knows this better than the companies themselves. Ralph Sheridan, chief executive of Good Harbor Partners, one of hundreds of new counter-terrorism companies, explains that “expenditures by governments are episodic and come in bubbles.” Insiders call it the “homeland security bubble.”

When it bursts, firms such as Bechtel, Fluor and Blackwater will lose their primary revenue stream. They will still have all their high-tech gear giving them the ability to respond to disasters— while the government will have let that precious skill whither away—but now they will rent back the tax-funded infrastructure at whatever price they choose.

Here’s a snapshot of what could be in store in the not-too-distant future: helicopter rides off of rooftops in flooded cities ($5,000 a pop, $7,000 for families, pets included), bottled water and “meals ready to eat” ($50 per person, steep, but that’s supply and demand) and a cot in a shelter with a portable shower (show us your biometric ID—developed on a lucrative Homeland Security contract—and we’ll track you down later with the bill. Don’t worry, we have ways: spying has been outsourced too).

The model, of course, is the U.S. healthcare system, in which the wealthy can access best-in-class treatment in spa-like environments while 46-million Americans lack health insurance. As emergency-response, the model is already at work in the global AIDS pandemic: private-sector prowess helped produce lifesaving drugs (with heavy public subsidies), then set prices so high that the vast majority of the world’s infected cannot afford treatment.

If that is the corporate world’s track record on slow-motion disasters, why should we expect different values to govern fast-moving disasters, like hurricanes or even terrorist attacks? It’s worth remembering that as Israeli bombs pummeled Lebanon not so long ago, the U.S. government initially tried to charge its citizens for the cost of their own evacuations. And of course anyone without a Western passport in Lebanon had no hope of rescue.

One year ago, New Orleans’ working-class and poor citizens were stranded on their rooftops waiting for help that never came, while those who could pay their way escaped to safety. The country’s political leaders claim it was all some terrible mistake, a breakdown in communication that is being fixed. Their solution is to go even further down the catastrophic road of "private-sector solutions."

Unless a radical change of course is demanded, New Orleans will prove to be a glimpse of a dystopic future, a future of disaster apartheid in which the wealthy are saved and everyone else is left behind.

Naomi Klein’s book on disaster capitalism will be published in spring 2007. A shorter version of this piece appeared in the LA Times.

Polluted Water Hits First Nations, but Doesn’t Stop There

By Judy Da Silva
From Canadian Dimension
2006

Grassy Narrows First Nation gets a boil-water advisory from the Medical Services Environmental Health Worker for Treaty #3 First Nations. My first thought was: “I thought we were safe.” To say the least, it’s very inconvenient to boil water for two minutes to kill any bacteria that live in it. But if we do not boil the water, the elders, infants and children, and weak adults are susceptible to severe stomach cramps, diarrhea and/or vomiting.

Two years ago, Kashechewan First Nation, a remote northern Ontario community, was in the headlines for E. coli in their water. The mainstream media gave them lots of coverage for a while, showing photos of rashes on little babies’ arms, stomachs and legs, and on some adults, too. In my mind I assumed that Keshechewan First Nation was too far away ever to touch our lives — that these people were way up north and had to live in severe Third World conditions. Not us in Treaty #3 traditional territory — the land of 10,000 freshwater lakes. I felt we would never run into that problem. We are so close to urban centres — Kenora, an hour away, and Winnipeg, three hours away. This is the land of pristine lakes and streams, and we call it paradise!

Jody, Technical Services Officer of Bimose Tribal Council, says that, of the eleven Treaty #3 reserves they serve, five have new water plants. The rest have water plants from 1995 or later. Each water plant was built in accordance with standards in the year it was built. But since Indian reserves are under the federal jurisdiction, this also means federal water-quality standards — which are lower than provincial standards.

John Hummel is a longtime grassroots activist who lives in Nelson, British Columbia, in a 100-year-old stone cottage. John has been one of my mentors for the past six years. One of the things he disclosed to me is that one quarter (150) of over 600 First Nations communities across Canada live downstream from paper mills and mines. The Fraser River alone has ninety First Nations communities situated beside it. Is there a connection, here, as to why First Nations people suffer in epidemic proportions from Type 2 Diabetes? John was able to find numerous research papers done in Australia that showed Aborigines suffering from Type 2 Diabetes and its link to dioxin furans. Mostly, dioxin furans come from mill, mine and incinerator smokestacks, and there is a fallout zone on the land and water that surrounds such companies. Sometimes the fall-out zone is on the other side of the world, because of how our planet’s wind currents pick up dust and carry it around the world. To check out John Hummel’s “Research for Health” Project, go to www.isn.net/~network/kahnawake.html.

Water is part of the processing of many products in industry. These industries are the main polluters in the world, and they are a major reason why the water has become undrinkable and the air has become unbreathable. The Weyerhaeuser Paper Mill in Dryden Ontario is located approximately 200 kilometres upstream from Grassy Narrows First Nation on the English Wabigoon River system. Environment Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) website lists the chemicals that are dumped into this river system from the Weyerhaeuser mill. The list includes 31 chemicals: ammonia: 128.441 tonnes; methanol: 123.062 tonnes; phenanthrene: 89.656 kilograms; phosphorus: 44.161 tonnes; sulfuric acid: 7.031 tonnes — just to name a few. Air-contaminant substances include carbon monoxide: 1249.591 tonnes; oxides of nitorogen: 789.256 tonnes; volatile organic compounds (VOCs): 160.619 tonnes (these are three of the seven air contaminants listed). One ecologist has described this as a “toxic soup” that is being dumped into the water. Imagine the First Nations people that live downstream from that toxic soup. What kind of ailments do they get as a result? The ecologist said some of the chemicals might evaporate, but as they join together in the water, they become chemically joined and can form new chemicals. Imagine what this means for the ninety First Nations that live along the Fraser River. All these people become exposed to these chemicals by way of the water, fish, plants and air.

Three years ago I told a group of people at Winnipeg’s Mondragón Bookstore and Coffeehouse that it was not normal to buy a bottle of water. We human beings are so adaptive that we do not fuss much about buying a “cool” brand of water. Somehow, society is in a state of water-drinking metamorphosis. Remember the day the water did not smell like chlorine? When the term “E. coli” was rare? Today, we go the wholesale stores and buy cases of water (plain or flavoured) or get those 19-litre jugs. It has become a normal part of our lives. The pollution does not stop at First Nations communities; it continues onward to all societies that live by the watersheds. So, where are all the voices to stop this disintegration of human health?

In December, 2002, the residents of Grassy Narrows First Nation decided to stop logging trucks from entering their traditional territory. We had completed three contaminant studies, and had found high levels of mercury in the fish and forty times the acceptable levels of mercury in an otter. We always knew there was a reason why women were miscarrying, why three children had brain tumours, the high incidence of thyroid disease, the Type 2 Diabetes, the cancers and the seizures in children. To put it simply, there is a silent war out there, and it does not only happen on Indian reserves. It is happening all around us. If we do not stop this desecration of humankind and our planet, then we will not survive as a healthy species in the next twenty years.

I imagine all the living planets in the universe as I look up at the stars, and I often wonder if those living beings out there are as stupid as us. We know we are polluting the water. We know we are destroying the air, the plants, the animals, ourselves and the future generations, and yet we continue on with our lifestyles.

Shooting the Messenger is a War Crime

By Amy Goodman
From The Seattle Post Intelligencer.com
2006

The Committee to Protect Journalists recently released its 2006 report on threats to journalists. Iraq is by far the deadliest place for the fourth year in a row, with 32 journalists killed this year. Sad to say, the violence follows a trend that started with the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

When you step off the elevator at the Reuters news offices in Washington, D.C., you see a large book sitting on a wooden stand. Each entry describes a Reuters journalist killed in the line of duty.

Such as Taras Protsyuk. The veteran Ukrainian cameraman was killed on April 8, 2003, the day before the U.S. seized Baghdad. Protsyuk was on the balcony of the Palestine Hotel when a U.S. tank positioned itself on the al-Jumhuriyah bridge and, as people watched in horror, unleashed a round into the side of the building. The hotel was known for housing hundreds of unembedded reporters. Protsyuk was killed instantly. Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish network Telecinco, was filming from the balcony below. He was also killed.

The difference between the responses by the mainstream media in the United States versus Europe was stunning. While in this country there was hardly a peep of protest, Spanish journalists engaged in a one-day strike. From the elite journalists down to the technicians, they laid down their cables, cameras and pens.

They refused to record the words of then-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush in supporting the war. When Aznar came into parliament, they piled their equipment at the front of the room and turned their backs on him. Photographers refused to take his picture and instead held up a photo of their slain colleague. At a news conference in Madrid with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Spanish reporters walked out in protest. Later, hundreds of journalists, camera people and technicians marched on the U.S. embassy in Madrid, chanting "Murderer, murderer."

About four hours before the U.S. military opened fire on the Palestine Hotel, a U.S. warplane strafed Al-Jazeera's Baghdad office. Reporter Tareq Ayyoub was on the roof. He died almost instantly.

When interviewed after his death, Ayyoub's wife, Dima, said: "Hate breeds hate. The United States said they were doing this to rout out terrorism. Who is engaged in terrorism now?" This summer, she sued the U.S. government.

The family of Jose Couso has also taken action. They know the names of the three U.S. servicemen who fired on the Palestine Hotel. On Dec. 5, 2006, the Spanish Supreme Court said the men could be tried in Spanish courts, opening the possibility for indictments against the U.S. soldiers.

The military response to the journalists' deaths? Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria "Torie" Clarke, who has since become a news consultant for CNN and ABC, said at the time that Baghdad "is not a safe place. They should not be there."

David Schlesinger, global managing editor of Reuters, said: "It seems in my interactions with the U.S. military -- to paraphrase, basically -- if you are not embedded, we cannot do anything to protect you. Journalists need to be accorded the rights under the Geneva Convention, of civilians not to be shot at willy-nilly, not to be harassed in doing their professional jobs."

The U.N. Security Council agrees. On Dec. 23, it passed a unanimous resolution insisting on the protection of journalists in conflict zones.

More than 120 reporters and other media workers have been killed in Iraq since the invasion. In August 2003, Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana was filming outside Abu Ghraib prison when a machine-gun bullet tore through his chest. The Pentagon said the soldiers had "engaged a cameraman."

Not long before his death, Dana won the International Press Freedom Award. "We carry a gift," he said. "We film and we show the world what is going on. We are not part of the conflict." In receiving his award, Dana reflected, "Words and images are a public trust, and for this reason I will continue with my work regardless of the hardships and even if it costs me my life."

But it shouldn't have. The Pentagon should adopt the U.N. standard and send a clear message to its ranks: Shooting the messenger is a war crime that will not be tolerated.

Most Americans don't know Canada is their Biggest Oil Supplier

From CBC.ca

A new poll suggests the vast majority of Americans are unaware that Canada is the largest foreign supplier of crude oil to the U.S.

The Canadian American Business Council (CABC) — which represents some of the biggest private sector companies in both countries — said its survey of 1,000 Americans found that only four per cent of respondents thought Canada was the country that provided them with more oil than anyone else.

Canada is the biggest foreign supplier of oil and natural gas to the U.S.

The survey also found that 41 per cent of Americans asked would support replacing oil from unstable areas of the world with oil from Canada "even if doing so resulted in higher prices for U.S. consumers."

"The findings suggest a foundation of American public support for meaningful initiatives to expand Canadian energy supplies to the U.S.," said CABC chairman Randoph Dove in a statement.

"As more and more Americans recognize Canada as a secure source of energy resources, this support should only increase," he said.

The release of this poll came just as energy-rich Alberta launched a massive lobbying effort in Washington to get across its message that Canada — and especially Alberta — has a stable and secure supply of oil that it's eager to sell the U.S.

Exhibits about Alberta and its vast oil sands deposits occupy a prominent place in this year's Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington.

That's drawn criticism from an environmental lobby group, the National Resources Defence Council, which says the industry and government-sponsored exhibits at the festival make no mention of the "devastating environmental consequences" the council says oil sands mining creates.

The survey was conducted by Vitale & Associates, who interviewed 1,000 people from June 13 to 15. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.



Missing Bees Create a Buzz

Whole colonies are vanishing across the country

By Maurice Possley
From The Chicago Tribune
2007

The disappearance and deaths of millions of honeybees in nearly half of the nation's states is a mystery seemingly befitting an episode of "CSI" and is threatening an estimated $14 billion in crops that rely on pollination.

In an inconspicuous office suite here—the home of Bee Alert Technology Inc.—scientists are feverishly working to solve an entomological mystery: What happened to tens of thousands of honeybee colonies in at least 24 states?

These are crime scenes without bodies. Beekeepers have been opening hives and instead of finding thriving colonies with as many as 60,000 bees, they find an apian ghost town.

"It's called Colony Collapse Disorder," said Jerry Bromenshenk, a University of Montana professor and head of Bee Alert who has studied honeybees for more than three decades. "We don't know that it's a disease, we don't know if it's due to management practices by beekeepers. There are so many variables. We can't yet find a common denominator."

This baffling situation has sent shock waves through the agriculture industry nationwide, particularly almond growers in California, where 80 percent of the world's almonds are produced. The growers rely on pollination by bees.

While the U.S. honey-production industry generates more than $150 million annually, honeybees' pollination of crops is valued at about $14 billion a year, according to a Cornell University study. Beekeepers truck billions of bees to orchards and farms to pollinate crops including apples, grapes, cucumbers, cauliflower, cherries and almonds.

About three decades ago, S.E. McGregor, an apiculturist from Arizona, estimated that one-third of what is eaten by humans is a direct result of the work of honeybees. Bromenshenk suspects that today McGregor's words are an understatement.

On Thursday, a U.S. Department of Agriculture subcommittee on horticulture and organic agriculture is scheduled to conduct a public hearing on the collapse of honeybee colonies. Bromenshenk says the panel will consider the need for money for immediate research, future funding for a sustained examination and whether to set aside money to compensate beekeepers who have been virtually wiped out.

Just when this phenomenon began is hard to pin down, Bromenshenk said, because the reporting of problems is not organized. He said he first went to Florida late last year to investigate a report of empty hives, but as the problem has gained notoriety , more and more reports have emerged.

Bromenshenk is part of a national task force attempting to figure out why bees leave their hives and don't return. He recently returned from California with thousands of dead bees that he suspects were in colonies in the midst of collapsing.

Those bees have been turned over to Dave Wick, whose company, BVS Inc. of Stevensville, Mont., conducts biological screening in an attempt to determine whether an as-yet-unidentified virus is responsible for the mass disappearance.

"We are … trying to figure out the unknown," Wick said in an interview. "This is a devastating situation. If every honeybee disappeared tomorrow, we would still have produce in our markets—it just wouldn't come from the United States."

Bromenshenk's addition to the team studying the bees' disappearance was prompted by the significant research he has conducted at the university as well as the company that spun off from that work.

The firm has learned how to train bees to perform a variety of tasks, including sniffing out poisons, a skill that can be applied to such things as land mine detection or use of chemicals in a terrorist attack. Bromenshenk said the company has discovered how to train a bee in less than a day to identify things by smell or by sight.

While Illinois is not on the list of states where Colony Collapse Disorder has been discovered, Steve Chard, an apiary inspection supervisor with the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said this past week that one possible case has been reported by a beekeeping hobbyist in Decatur who lost nine colonies.

"It's too early to tell for the most part because the weather is just starting to warm up enough to open up hives," Chard said. "We do have one suspected case from Decatur and samples have been sent to the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] for testing. There's no conclusive evidence."

In Michigan, Terry Klein, vice president of the Michigan Beekeepers Association and a commercial beekeeper, said reports of huge losses are beginning to filter in.

"One beekeeper started with 1,500 hives and had only 500 colonies left," Klein said. "Over three or four more weeks, he lost 70 percent of those."

Klein, of St. Charles, Mich., said he lost 80 percent of his bees, but he blames bad weather and mites.

"It's a hard thing to pin down," he said. "You can't autopsy the bodies if they are gone. I am concerned about my survival."

Bromenshenk said that beekeeping largely hasn't changed in more than a century and that the reports coming in don't point to a single cause. "It doesn't appear to be related to poor practices or to those who are organic or those who are not organic," he said.

He suspects that the phenomenon has occurred before, but because reporting practices were not as sophisticated and because the problems have been more publicized, more and more credible reports are being made. He said something similar wiped out millions of bees in Texas, Louisiana and several other Southern states about 50 years ago, but the cause never was determined.

The company is seeking reports from any affected beekeepers at a Web site, www.beesurvey.com. More than 400 reports have been filed, but Bromenshenk hopes to get 10 times that number.

"We don't know if this is something new or if it's cyclic," Bromenshenk said. "It is amazing that millions of bees have disappeared across the U.S."

"We've got to figure this out this time," he said. "We've had beekeepers tell us they are going out of business. The public forgets what a critical role bees play in pollination. This is devastating."

It's Still About Oil in Iraq

A centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's report is its advocacy for securing foreign companies' long-term access to Iraqi oil fields.

By Antonia Juhasz
From The Los Angeles Times
2006

While the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.

The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.

It's spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise" and to "encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies." This recommendation would turn Iraq's nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.

This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.

The U.S. State Department's Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting between December 2002 and April 2003, also said that Iraq "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war." Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract called a production-sharing agreement. These agreements are preferred by the oil industry but rejected by all the top oil producers in the Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the companies than the governments. The Heritage Foundation also released a report in March 2003 calling for the full privatization of Iraq's oil sector. One representative of the foundation, Edwin Meese III, is a member of the Iraq Study Group. Another, James J. Carafano, assisted in the study group's work.

For any degree of oil privatization to take place, and for it to apply to all the country's oil fields, Iraq has to amend its constitution and pass a new national oil law. The constitution is ambiguous as to whether control over future revenues from as-yet-undeveloped oil fields should be shared among its provinces or held and distributed by the central government.

This is a crucial issue, with trillions of dollars at stake, because only 17 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields have been developed. Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of the constitution to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Recommendation No. 28 calls for putting control of Iraq's oil revenues in the hands of the central government. Recommendation No. 63 also calls on the U.S. government to "provide technical assistance to the Iraqi government to prepare a draft oil law."

This last step is already underway. The Bush administration hired the consultancy firm BearingPoint more than a year ago to advise the Iraqi Oil Ministry on drafting and passing a new national oil law.

Plans for this new law were first made public at a news conference in late 2004 in Washington. Flanked by State Department officials, Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (who is now vice president) explained how this law would open Iraq's oil industry to private foreign investment. This, in turn, would be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies." The law would implement production-sharing agreements.

Much to the deep frustration of the U.S. government and American oil companies, that law has still not been passed.

In July, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced in Baghdad that oil executives told him that their companies would not enter Iraq without passage of the new oil law. Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that U.S. oil companies considered passage of the new oil law more important than increased security when deciding whether to go into business in Iraq.

The Iraq Study Group report states that continuing military, political and economic support is contingent upon Iraq's government meeting certain undefined "milestones." It's apparent that these milestones are embedded in the report itself.

Further, the Iraq Study Group would commit U.S. troops to Iraq for several more years to, among other duties, provide security for Iraq's oil infrastructure. Finally, the report unequivocally declares that the 79 total recommendations "are comprehensive and need to be implemented in a coordinated fashion. They should not be separated or carried out in isolation."

All told, the Iraq Study Group has simply made the case for extending the war until foreign oil companies — presumably American ones — have guaranteed legal access to all of Iraq's oil fields and until they are assured the best legal and financial terms possible.

We can thank the Iraq Study Group for making its case publicly. It is now our turn to decide if we wish to spill more blood for oil.


Meet Canada The Global Arms Dealer

By Stephen James-Kerr
From ZNet
2003

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." -Dwight D Eisenhower

When Americans think of Canadians these days, it's usually as the laid back folks who sat out the war on Iraq. Our national myth is 'Canada the peacekeeper,' but it's a myth, not a fact.

The facts are hard to mythologize. The Canadian government was the fourth largest contributor to the attack on Iraq after Australia, ahead of most members of Bush's 'coalition of the willing,' who offered only moral support. Canada topped Colin Powell's list of countries who didn't want their names mentioned while they helped Uncle Sam take over Iraq.

While many Americans were cursing Canadian 'non-participation' three Canadian warships equipped with surface to air missiles and anti-submarine capability were escorting the US fleet that fired Tomahawk missiles at innocent Iraqis. Our government calls this mission Operation Apollo, insisting that these ships are deployed in the 'war on terrorism.' Not a shot has been fired at a Canadian ship.

While some US peace activists were praising Canada's 'bold stance' ten Canadian soldiers were manning AWACS radar aircraft, directing those missiles to their targets. No reports of any terrorists killed in Iraq.

While 6457 Iraqi civilians had been killed as of May 23rd according to www.iraqbodycount.net Canadian officers continued to sit in the air conditioned offices of CENTCOM in Doha Qatar, deep in the logistical details of escorting American ships, and planning for war.

While Canadians slept, US troop transport planes carried the invading army silently over our heads thanks to the Canadian government's offer of over-flight privileges and refueling to the US Air Force at Gander airport. US military doctrine describes refueling as the "key" to us global airpower. This reporter's request for a full accounting of these over-flights was refused by the Canadian Department of National Defence.

When US Marines left their posts in Afghanistan for the Iraqi front, 1000 Canadian soldiers spelled them off, taking up the 'war on terror' in military engagements which are kept secret from the Canadian public. Next year Canada will take over command of the Afghan occupation.

While Canadians, who supported their government's decision to 'sit out the war' protested US imperialism in small towns like Cobourg Ontario and Moosejaw Saskatchewan, 30 odd Canadian soldiers were quietly serving 'on exchange' with US and UK invasion forces in Iraq. One young Canadian soldier died.

The Canadian government has tried desperately to paint the blood red reality of Canadian imperialism in teal blue. In response to Bush's 48 hour deadline for Saddam Hussein and his sons to leave Baghdad or die, Canada's Foreign Minister, Bill Graham declared that "Clearly I very much welcomed his (Bush's) reference to the United Nations, and clearly the President has demonstrated a willingness to work within the international system to date." This is how Graham described Bush's threat to invade a UN member state based on forged documents, for the profit of the oil and construction companies that put Bush in office. Graham was only dipping from the Prime Ministerial whitewash bucket.

"Mr. Speaker, We have always made clear that Canada will require the approval of the Security Council if we were to participate in (a) military campaign. Over the last few weeks the Security Council has been unable to agree on a new resolution authorizing military action. Canada worked very hard to find a compromise to bridge the gap in the Security Council. Unfortunately (emphasis mine) we were not successful. If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate." Such were the assurances of Graham's boss, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to the House of Commons, on March 17.

Graham reinforced the message with the press the next day. "We require a clear United Nations mandate if the use of force is to be used to resolve potential conflicts between states," said Graham with his trademark poker face.

That 'requirement' is becoming harder to justify to Canada's growing arms industry, and to the politicians like Graham who are now openly beholden to it. Thus the desperate and contradictory Iraq policy of the Federal Liberal government, caught between the Canadian public, which overwhelmingly opposed the attack on Iraq, and the Canadian military industrial complex which profited from it.

Canadian foreign policy publicly postures for peace while pimping for private profit. In its self contradictory editorial of May 7, the Toronto Star, which opposed the attack on Iraq, rationalized the recently revealed Liberal government support for US National Missile Defence (NMD) because it "relies on conventional, non-nuclear rockets based on the ground to shoot down enemy missiles." The Star, itself an unofficial organ of the governing Federal Liberal Party had to acknowledge that "Canada has no credible enemy, and no immediate need for missile defence," but still urged participation, "in Canada's interest."

What The Star left out was the exact nature of that interest, the great taboo of Canadian journalism. According to the Canadian Defence Industries Association, (CDIA) "Under the existing conditions, Canada can expect, at a minimum, about $270 million in NMD-related exports over the next 15 years. With appropriate levels of Government and industry action, (emphasis mine) there is a potential for that to increase to more than $1 billion in exports."

CDIA figures show that Canadian 'defence' industry revenues grew 35% between 1998 and 2000, far outpacing growth of the rest of the economy, which grew at approximately 3%. Canada's 'defence' market grew from $3.7 billion in 1998 to $4.08 billion in 2000, up 22.6%. Exports to the USA grew by 17% from just under a billion to $1.25 billion. And our arms exports to the rest of the world grew a staggering 75% in the same period from $798 million to $1.5 billion.

Meet the Canada you never knew, the global arms dealer with a heart of gold.

Most Canadians don't know that much of the Canadian arms trade is guaranteed by the Canadian government through the Canadian Commercial Corporation (www.ccc.ca) and other government agencies. Our ignorance is the result of a total failure by the media to report basic facts about the Canadian arms economy.

The CCC, "Canada's export contracting agency" does more than $1.2 billion in business annually, approximately 70% of it weapons, weapons components and services to the Pentagon and NASA, just in case 'force must be used to resolve conflicts between states.' Making weapons is big business in this country. Canada's defence industry accounts for 650 firms, and 57,000 direct jobs, says the CCC, while the Canadian Defence Industries Association puts the figure at 1,559 firms. CDIA employment numbers roughly match those of the CCC. The Canadian defence industry sells about $5 billion dollars of goods and services per year, half of which are exported. Though weapons account for just over 1% of economic output, it is one of the most heavily subsidized and protected sectors of the Canadian economy. This reflects the political importance of arms, and their role as a bargaining chip in Canada US relations for the Canadian elite. It is also a reflection of the connection between militarism, imperialism and Canada's need to force weaker states to accept heavily subsidized Canadian exports.

Canada's hospitals are collapsing, public schools are being closed, and the ranks of our homeless increase, but weapons exporters take shelter from the economic storm under the Canadian flag.

"For Canadian Exporters, CCC wraps the Canadian flag around their proposal, providing a government-backed guarantee of contract performance," says the CCC. We go all the way for the USA.

The US Department of Defence takes care of friends like Canada, who treat their flag with such reverence. "All purchases from Canada over U.S. $100,000 must be contracted through the Canadian Commercial Corporation," according to the Defence Production and Sharing Agreement, in effect since 1956. Dealing through the CCC means that Canadian companies get treated not just like American firms, but one better. They are exempted from US Federal cost accounting standards and from import taxation, as well as parts of the Buy American Act.

Canadian taxpayers pick up the tab. The CCC is a Crown Corporation, wholly owned by the Canadian people, managed by our government. Thus when Canada "becomes the prime contractor," for the US Department of Defence, as it is whenever a Canadian firm makes a sale greater than $100,000 Cad to the Pentagon, Canadian citizens are underwriting the American Empire.

But it's a well kept secret. When the Canadian government reports its arms exports each year, sales to the US military are not included. The Canadian economy is uniquely dependent on exports. In 1993 total Canadian exports were valued at approximately $176 billion dollars, but by 2000 exports increased to approximately $400 billion according to Statistics Canada, or nearly half of the output of the entire economy. In comparison, China, with 37 times the Canadian population, exported only 20% more goods and services than Canada in 2002. The USA is the world's largest single exporter, but exports account for only 11% of the US economy. Canadians export more per capita than any other nation on earth, yet this wealth is concentrated in only a few hands.

Only 5 firms account for 20% of total exports, and 100 firms account for more than 50%, with US trade accounting for 85%, according to the Canadian government. Thus it should come as no surprise that catering to big businesses that export to the USA is what the Canadian government is politically committed to. Compare how the CCC helps Canadian weapons exporters with how the Canadian government treats people.

If you own a small electronics firm that has never sold a circuit to the Pentagon before, have no fear of economic hard times. The CCC will assist your sale to a foreign government at every step of the way, from contract negotiation, to providing a letter of introduction and support which "carries the weight of the Government of Canada."

Got cash-flow problems? Over one million Canadian children live in low income households according to the Canadian government's own records, but poor kids don't export missile components. For weapons exporters the CCC has a Progress Payment Plan which provides a line of credit up to two million Canadian dollars to companies with insufficient working capital to fulfill an export contract. Canadian exporters sold $69 million dollars worth of goods using this subsidy in 2001.

All the major Canadian Banks provide lines of credit for the CCC. The Canadian people sign the contracts, and we write the cheques, for buyers and sellers alike. But if you are an unemployed Canadian in need of financial assistance, the Canadian government's attitude is 'Get a job.' During the 1990's, the Federal Liberal government tightened up restrictions on Unemployment Insurance. In 1989, 53% of unemployed Ontarians received UI benefits. By 1997, only 25% of the unemployed were eligible according to the Ontario Federation of Labour. The Liberal government cut more than $ 45 billion dollars from the employment fund between 1993 and 2001. In a typical year, the Feds take in $5 billion more in unemployment premiums than they pay out. They've been sitting on the surplus, but the Liberals won't raise benefit rates, or let more unemployed workers into the system. The Canadian Labour Congress has documented that one million Canadian workers have paid UI premiums from their paycheques, but are unable to collect UI when they are out of a job. "It's a scam," says the CLC.

It's not the only one. If you own a small business that does not sell weapons or export to foreign governments, you are on a tight budget. Throughout the 1990's Canada's chartered banks tightened up credit availability to small business and individuals. The Canadian Community Reinvestment Coalition, a broad grouping including the Canadian Labour Congress and Canada's largest NGO the Council of Canadians with over 100,000 members, have criticized the banks for attempting to hide their lending statistics. (http://www.cancrc.org/) Whereas in the USA, banks are obliged to track how many loans are granted or rejected by gender, race income level and other stats, Canadian banks keep this data under wraps.

If you are a Canadian university student, you already know the banks, because they keep calling you for money. In 1998 the Liberal government took away the rights of students to declare bankruptcy if they default on student loans. Nearly half of students who apply for financial assistance in Canada are disqualified, according to the Canadian Federation of Students, Canada's national student union which has been calling for a tuition freeze for years. From 1990 to 2000, the average undergraduate tuition fee rose from $1,500 to $3,500.

While Canadians got cut off, Canadian weapons makers cut deals. Here are a fraction of the weapons systems Canada sold with the help of the CCC and a small army of bureaucrats.

Bombardier, a corporation whose board is peppered with powerful Liberals including the Prime Minister's son in law, got the deal with US Army TACOM to build transportable bridges, for the next time the US Army needs to cross the Rubicon.

A bridge without a Light Armoured Vehicle to drive across it would be like a Canadian Cabinet Minister without a needy relative.

LAVs driven by US Marines across the long Iraqi supply lines were largely made in Canada, by GM Defence in London Ontario. "With CCC's export sales and contract management assistance, GM has accumulated worldwide LAV sales of more than $2.5 billion. About two-thirds of the company's production is exported," says the CCC. Saudi Arabia is also a good customer for Canadian LAVs.

Pivotal Power in Nova Scotia makes uninterruptible power systems, batteries and other gear, some of which can be found aboard the US Navy's DDG-51 Burke-class destroyers. This is the platform from which the Mk 41 Tomahawk missile was fired at Iraqis.

CPI Canada has been dealing with the Canadian Commercial Corporation for 45 years. CPI is "the world's leading design, development and manufacturing specialist of microwave and millimeter wave tubes and complex electronic equipment for communications and medical applications," according to the CCC. CPI does $35 million dollars of business per year, and 98% of that is exported. Today, when the U.S. Army's Communications and Electronics Command (CECOM) is in need of a good Klystron, they come to CPI.

Winnipeg based Bristol Aerospace is busy making everything from missiles, to the M1 Abrams Tank engine housing, and the targeting systems for the Patriot missile.

CAE Systems manufactures flight simulators used to train US Air Force Apache helicopter pilots. When the missiles hit their targets, it's thanks in part to Canadian ingenuity. For Canadian capitalists at least, the weapons business is not a waste of time, resources and human labour. In 1998, Canada, thanks to the CCC was the 66th biggest defence contractor to the US Department of Defence, ahead of big American firms Mitretek and Honeywell. The results are profitable for Canadian weapons system makers. "CCC flies the Canadian flag and we benefit from standing under it," says one happy corporate Vice President.

Once the profits start flowing, it's impossible for Canadian capitalists to 'just say no' to war. They're hooked and looking for a fix. The Canadian Commercial Corporation is encouraging Canadian companies to participate in the $200 billion dollar Joint Strike Fighter programme, and has set up an entire team of government bureaucrats to make sure Canadian firms get in on the lucrative global arms race. They are drawn from a tangled web of state agencies, all dedicated to corporate welfare.

Team Canada Inc. is the high level government lobbying agency led by the Prime Minister, and his 'team' of ten provincial Premiers. Jean Chrétien loads up on frequent flier miles while on business junkets to China, Africa and other locations to have his picture taken while Canadian CEOs sign multi-million dollar contracts.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) at used to be two separate ministries. The Liberal Party brought them together immediately after coming to power in 1993, and DFAIT has led the drive to put Canadian corporate profit at the heart of our foreign policy ever since. DFAIT's mission is "…advancing Canada's interests abroad." These interests are indistinguishable from the corporate interest. "It is in Canada's interest to pursue deeper integration with American defence industry while looking for niches in the emerging transatlantic defence market," according to DFAIT. Amnesty has condemned Canada for exporting arms to repressive governments which abuse human rights, including Israel, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. When DFAIT promotes arms deals, how credible is 'Canada the peacemaker'? Check out DFAIT's website and see for yourself, then go to check out how the DFAIT helps Canadian companies cash in on the lucrative business of Iraqi reconstruction. DFAIT and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham is the bland public face of Canadian imperialism.

Export Development Canada (http://www.edc.ca/) has been criticized by Probe International for its tendency to award export development grants and loans to benefit Canadian companies owned by paid up Liberal party donors. EDC is also pushing weapons. "EDC helps absorb risk on behalf of exporters, beyond what is possible by other financial intermediaries," according to its sister corporation, the CCC. Probe International isn't impressed. "As a result EDC makes otherwise uneconomic investments proceed. It has become clear that a number of the larger EDC-supported projects are socially and environmentally destructive." The EDC uses 'vendor financing' - loaning Canadian taxpayer dollars to foreign customers in order to purchase Canadian subsidized weapons and nuclear technology that nobody really needs. Four billion dollars of EDC financing has allowed China, India, Pakistan and South Korea to purchase CANDU nuclear reactors. Normally if your customer can't afford to buy your product you go out of business, but Ottawa is busy promoting failure, while distributing nuclear technology to belligerent governments.

"Industry Canada ( http://www.ic.gc.ca/ ) works with Canadians throughout the economy to improve conditions for investment, improve Canada's innovation performance, increase Canada's share of global trade and build a fair, efficient and competitive marketplace," according to Industry Canada. Given the record of the EDC, this self-description seems barely credible. Industry Canada works with corporations to deregulate and privatize the economy using over 150 programs, many of them pure corporate welfare. See http://www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.nsf/icPages/Programs#IC for details.

There is no end to the largely invisible bureaucracy that supports business in Canada where the social welfare system has been mythologized in order to cover up its near destruction by the growing corporate welfare system. Because Canada is a regional nation, with disparate populations concentrated in a few isolated capital cities, Provincial governments, alone or in blocks also have their overlapping trade promoting bureaucracies. Ontario Exports Inc, the Alberta Economic Development, the Atlantic Opportunity Fund are only three.

Throw in the Canadian Defence Industries Association, the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, Nav Canada which runs Canadian Air Navigation Services and the Canadian chartered banks, and you have a family portrait of the Canadian military industrial complex, minus the more than one thousand children produced by this orgy of state subsidy - the Canadian companies that make the weapons and reap the profits, but who choose to remain anonymous from the public which finances their otherwise uneconomic and socially destructive operations.

But the real nature of the family business is getting harder to hide from the kids. At the bringing of May, a split opened up in the Liberal government over the next big foray into the arms business, Canadian government support for the Star Wars system, a US project to provide a missile shield from behind which the USA could launch a nuclear strike. Cabinet Ministers like Herb Dahliwa (Dhaliwal.H@parl.gc.ca ), and MPs like John Godfrey, (Godfrey.J@parl.gc.ca ) and others on the left wing of the Liberal backbench spoke out against their own government's stated intentions. The caucus was also split along similar lines over Canadian participation in the war. Fearing his caucus more than American wrath, the Prime Minister put the missile defence decision on hold, then switched gears to promote the decriminalization of marijuana possession.

Somebody forgot to tell Chrétien the sixties ended a long time ago. Today's peace movement is addicted to political protest, not pot. With an unprecedented number of Canadians mobilized against the war on Iraq, there is a growing movement to expose Canadian arms makers and the effects of the weapons they produce. At the forefront of this activity are a number of groups, including the Canadian Peace Alliance, the New Democratic Party, Science for Peace, and Toronto Homes not Bombs.

Sid Lacombe is with the Canadian Peace Alliance. The CPA has launched a national campaign to keep Canada out of National Missile Defence. "Star Wars represents a new arms race," says Lacombe. It's another escalation of military spending. This is money that should be going into healthcare, education and housing."

Lacombe's schedule is busy. "The next step is to educate the Canadian public and step up our activity. We have hundreds of petitions filled out, and we are distributing them across the country." The Liberal purple haze may blow over quickly. Lacombe says "It's very urgent. They are beginning discussions with the Americans this week. Bill Graham says that missile defence is Canada's 'insurance policy.'"

Having paid the premiums for years, Canadians are now starting to read the fine print, and they do not like what they see. Groups across Canada are planning actions in the coming weeks and months that target corporate war profiteers. In Montreal one group is offering a bus tour of local weapons makers. Direct actions are being planned in Toronto. The 'insurance policy' might protect Canadian corporate profits in the short term, but the increasing dependence of Canadian industry on arms exports exposes the Canadian business elite to increasing risks from an angry public armed with the ugly truth about Canada the global weapons dealer.

* all figures are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. At the time of this writing, the Canadian dollar was rapidly rising against the US dollar, at .7430 US cents to the Canadian dollar.

The author, Stephen James Kerr stephen.kerr@sympatico.ca is an investigative journalist in Toronto, and the co-host of Newspeak on CIUT 89.5 FM www.ciut.fm .

What you can do:

Write to Canada's Minster of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham at Graham.B@parl.gc.ca and Canada's 'Defence' Minister, John McCallum at McCallum.J@parl.gc.ca and tell them you want Canada to stay out of Star Wars. Please send a copy of your letter to the Canadian Peace Alliance at cpa@web.ca .

For more information see:

Ploughshares Canada at www.ploughshares.ca for weapons sales to USA.

Amnesty International criticizes Canada for weapons sales to repressive governments

Canadian small arms may have killed protestors in Papua New Guinea

Canadian weapons exports to Saudi Arabia

Export of Military Goods from Canada 2001 (not including USA)

Canada exports $26 million in weapons to Indonesia

WOMEN AND FOOD SECURITY

From FAO Focus

Women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world's food production, yet their key role as food producers and providers and their critical contribution to household food security is only now becoming recognized.

FAO studies confirm that while women are the mainstay of small-scale agriculture, farm labour force and day-to-day family subsistence, they have more difficulties than men in gaining access to resources such as land and credit and productivity enhancing inputs and services.

Food security, in fact, has been defined by FAO not only in terms of access to and availability of food, but also in terms of resource distribution to produce food and purchasing power to buy food where it is not produced. Given women's crucial role in food production and provision, any set of strategies for sustainable food security must address their limited access to productive resources.

Women's limited access to resources and their insufficient purchasing power are products of a series of interrelated social, economic and cultural factors that force them into a subordinate role, to the detriment of their own development and that of society as a whole.

The international initiatives and efforts developed, especially since the 1975 World Conference on Women in Mexico, have contributed to a greater recognition of women's key participation in rural and other domains of development. However, much remains to be done.

The gender division of labour
The major constraint to the effective recognition of women's actual roles and responsibilities in agriculture is the scarcity of gender-disaggregated data available to technicians, planners, and policy-makers.

Therefore, the first step towards women's empowerment and full participation in rural development and food security strategies is the collection and analysis of gender disaggregated data to understand role differences in food and cash crop production as well as men's and women's differential managerial and financial control over production, storage and marketing of agricultural products.

In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, microlevel studies have shown that women play a crucial role in many aspects of crop production. While men are often responsible for land clearing, burning and ploughing, women specialize in weeding, transplanting, post-harvest work and, in some areas, land preparation, and both take part in seeding and harvesting.

Moreover, women in sub-Saharan Africa and the Near East play a major role in household animal-production enterprises, where they tend to have the primary responsibility for the husbandry of small animals and ruminants, but also take care of large-animal systems, herding, providing water and feed, cleaning stalls and milking. In all types of animal-production systems, women have a predominant role in processing, particularly milk products and are commonly responsible for their marketing.

In many countries women are also responsible for fishing in shallow waters and in coastal lagoons, producing secondary crops, gathering food and fuelwood, processing, storing and preparing family food and for fetching water for the family.

Nature of women's work
In most rural areas, the most time-consuming activities of women are fetching water and fuelwood. Widespread deforestation and desertification mean that these tasks are becoming more burdensome and are preventing rural women from devoting more time to their productive and income-generating tasks.

In some cases, women also pass part of the burden of these activities to their children, usually female children. Relieving women from such drudgery as fetching water and fuelwood and food processing would allow them to have more time for productive work and would enable their children to attend school. Thus development interventions to reduce women's workload can significantly enhance their contribution to household food security.

The provision of water supplies; the introduction of light transport facilities to carry fuelwood, farm produce and other loads; the introduction of labour saving agricultural tools; and the introduction of grinding mills and other crop processing equipment are crucial means of freeing women's time. Such technologies not only create possibilities for women to enter into more income-generating activities, but also help in reducing their stress and in improving the health and nutrition of women and children.


Female-headed households
The number of female-headed households is increasing significantly in rural areas in many developing countries as rural men migrate due to the lack of employment and other income-generating opportunities. In sub-Saharan Africa, 31 percent of rural households are headed by women, while in Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia, women head 17 percent and 14 percent, respectively. While there are different types of female-headed households, in almost all countries female-headed households are concentrated among the poorer strata of society and often have lower incomes than male-headed households.

The problems of female-headed households in rural areas vary according to their degree of access to productive resources. FAO has identified, for example, the potential consequences of the absence of male labour both in terms of declining yields and outputs or shifts in production toward less nutritious crops requiring less labour and in terms of increased reliance on child labour which, in turn, has further implications for the family and for the human capital of the country. Therefore, in these cases women's access to labour-saving technology is of particular importance.

Access to resources
Despite their role as the backbone of food production and provision for family consumption in developing countries, women remain limited in their access to critical resources and services. While in most developing countries, both men and women farmers do not have access to adequate resources, women's access is even more limited due to cultural, traditional and sociological factors. Accurate information about men's and women's relative access to, and control over, resources is crucial in the development of food security strategies.

Access to land. Not even 2 percent of land is owned by women, while the proportion of female heads of household continues to grow. Land reform programmes together with the break-up of communal landholdings have led to the transfer of exclusive land rights to males as heads of households which ignores both the existence of female-headed households and the rights of married women to a joint share.

Access to credit. For the countries where information is available, only 10 percent of credit allowances are extended to women, mainly because national legislation and customary law do not allow them to share land property rights along with their husbands or because female heads of household are excluded from land entitlement schemes and consequently cannot provide the collateral required by lending institutions.

Access to agricultural inputs. Women's access to technological inputs such as improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides is limited as they are frequently not reached by extension services and are rarely members of cooperatives, which often distribute government-subsidized inputs to small farmers. In addition, they often lack the cash income needed to purchase inputs even when they are subsidized.

Access to education, training and extension services. Two-thirds of the one billion illiterate in the world are women and girls. Available figures show that only 5 percent of extension services have been addressed to rural women, while no more than 15 percent of the world's extension agents are women. In addition, most of the extension services are focused on cash crops rather than food and subsistence crops, which are the primary concern of women farmers and the key to food security.

Access to decision-making. Given the traditionally limited role of women in decision-making processes at the household, village and national levels in most cultures, their needs, interests and constraints are often not reflected in policy-making processes and laws which are important for poverty reduction, food security and environmental sustainability. The causes of women's exclusion from decision-making processes are closely linked to their additional reproductive roles and their household workload, which account for an important share of their time.

Access to research and appropriate technology. Women have little access to the benefits of research and innovation, especially in the domain of food crops, which in spite of ensuring food security at the household and community levels, have a low priority in crop improvement research. In addition, women farmers' roles and needs are often ignored when devising technology that may cause labour displacement or increased workload.

Women's need for income
Research in Africa, Asia and Latin America has found that improvements in household food security and nutrition are associated with women's access to income and their role in household decisions on expenditure as women tend to spend a significantly higher proportion of their income than men on food for the family.

Women's wage income from farm and non-farm employment and from other income-generating opportunities is of particular importance for landless and near-landless rural households.

Women's purchasing power may not only be used to buy food and other basic assets for themselves and their families, but also to pay for the inputs used in food production. Since food crops are consumed, the inputs for these have to be provided from income earned in other agricultural enterprises or non-farm income-generating activities.

Thus, to improve food production for the household, greater priority has to be given to increasing women's participation in market production as well as other income-generating ventures.

Sustainable food security: requirements for a new era
The understanding of food security has evolved over the years through increasingly integrated attention to the social, gender, environmental, technical and economic dimensions of the problem. The challenge for the future will be to pursue a concrete attainment of equity in access to resources by women to produce food, and purchasing power to buy food, where it is not produced thereby enhancing their potential to generate food security.

Specific policy measures are required to address the constraints facing women farmers and to give special consideration to the needs of female heads of households. FAO has recommended that such measures aim to:

ensure that women have the same opportunities as men to own land;

facilitate women's access to agricultural services tailoring such services to their needs;

encourage the production of food crops through the use of incentives;
promote the adoption of appropriate inputs and technology to free up women's time for income-producing activities;

improve the nutritional status of women and children;

provide better employment and income-earning opportunities;

promote women's organizations;

review and re-orient government policies to ensure that the problems that constrain the role of women in food security are addressed.