Canadian Terror: A Review of a New Radio Documentary on the Canadian Mining Industry

by Bryan Doherty
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

You want to know the names of those “waging global terror”? The new audio documentary, Path of Destruction: Canadian Mining Companies Around the World, from Asad Ismi and Kristen Schwartz, shows us we can start a list with the names of mining companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Canadian mining’s path of destruction isn’t limited to Canada. As these companies spread throughout the world, they apply the tried-and-true practices they developed in this country to be the top players in a global money game that thieves, pollutes, terrorizes and kills.

With perfect clarity, Ismi and Schwartz demonstrate how Canadian mining capital brings misery and devastation with it wherever it goes. In Sudbury, Ontario, the Canadian mining industry has worked hand-in-hand with the government and courts to steal the land from its indigenous people. In the documentary we hear from Chief Petahtegoose of the Whitefish Lake First Nation, not only about the theft of their land, but how those mines have poisoned the water in the area, polluted the air and contaminated the soil. The Chief’s own words link this devastation to the earlier devastation inflicted on his people by diseases such as smallpox spread by early European settlers. The genocide of indigenous people, started by the settling of this country, continues with the theft and destruction of their land.

Sudbury’s not the only place with minerals though. And when Canadian mining went looking for more earth to tear up and lives to ruin, they brought with them the support of their government and years of brutal know-how. Following the destructive path of Canadian mining in the Ismi and Schwartz documentary is to bear witness to a rampage where nothing stands in the way of profit.

When Canadian mining expanded internationally and met with resistance, it proved itself capable of sinking to almost unbelievable depths. These businessmen went about the business of instigating and fuelling brutal conflict and warfare in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guatemala, among others. Massacre, forced displacement, torture, assassination, and intimidation became the ‘business model’ of Canadian mining companies’ (such as Inco and Barrick Gold) expansion to the global south.

When European and American-backed paramilitaries or armies weren’t available to do their dirty work, mining relied on the support of courts and politicians to clear the way for them. The Canadian government has worked diligently on their mining friends’ behalf. Through the Canadian courts at home and its embassies abroad, the mining industry’s interests have been well protected, to the detriment of those who work the mines or live anywhere near them. Environmental and labour protections are scrapped or ignored, leaving the companies free to pillage the land and destroy the health of their workers. Corporate taxes are erased to the degree that a Manitoba-based mining company recently paid taxes to the Canadian government for the first time in 75 years.

Path of Destruction illustrates that savage crimes against humanity and environmental devastation are not the exception, but the rule, when the Canadian mining industry is concerned. Ismi and Schwartz’s spectacular documentary not only demonstrate the abhorrent crimes of the mining industry but also the ways in which their imperialist and genocidal crimes can be successfully challenged. In Canada, Native communities are at the forefront of resistance to murder and theft perpetrated by Canadian mining capital. Likewise, successful popular movements have led resistance to mining’s incursions all over the south, resulting in progressive defeats of capital’s aims in favour of the well-being and wealth of workers and indigenous peoples. The closing words of Edward Gudoy are a healthy prescription for the cancer spread by Canadian mining: “At the end of the day, it’s about workers taking control of the resources – including the natural resources – including the economy of the country – this is the bottom line. In the north and south.”

Myths for Profit: New Film on Canadian Imperialism

by N. Zahra Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

This past March, Amy Miller and Boban Chaldovich, founders of Wide Open Exposure, a Montreal-based production team, released their debut documentary, Myths for Profit. The hour-long film is an important introduction to Canadian imperialism. In a short time, it introduces its audience to Canada’s role in ‘industries of war and peace,’ leaving them wanting to explore each facet of the documentary in greater detail. Filmmaker Amy Miller points out that throughout her years of research, she came across many examples of Canadian Imperialism. The film does a good job of picking particularly salient examples that the audience might have some degree of familiarity with and going into particular details to help bust the myth of Canada as the eternal peacemaker.

Through diverse interviews and case studies, the 60-minute documentary unveils the specific interests and profits made by certain corporations, individuals and governmental and non-governmental agencies within Canada. The documentary covers the three myths of Canadian identity: ‘Canada as a peacemaking nation,’ ‘Canada’s military purpose [as] defense,’ and ‘Canada’s aid [as] helping people around the world.’

In addition to the informative interviews from varying perspectives, the film also has a lot of archival footage as well as a clever and funny cartoon exploring the history and role of NATO in various conflicts throughout the world.

Wide Open Exposure is a particularly unique production team in that it is made up of social justice organizers and independent media activists. It is their mission to work with grassroots organizations and educational organizations such as BASICS to provide resources for political education. We look forward to any future projects.

5 Years of Occupation in Haiti

by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan
Basics Issue #13 (Apr/May 2009)

The end of February marked the fifth anniversary of the Canadian, American and French backed coup in Haiti. It was the country’s 35th coup, the second against the popular President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the first carried out directly by foreign soldiers, including American Marines and Canada’s Joint Task Force II. It would be the latest interlude in Haiti’s sad history of constant interference and intervention from foreign powers working in collusion with Haiti’s tiny and corrupt elite. It would violently derail the remarkable popular movement of Haiti’s poor majority which had organized itself in the streets, in the fields and in the churches into a formidable democratic force. This grassroots movement demanded an end to their social and political exclusion, and had given Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas Party an indisputable mandate, with a massive 75% share of the vote in the 2000 elections.

After deposing the President, the “international community” dismantled Haiti’s entire government structure and removed thousands of elected officials from every region of the country. The United Nations Security Council officially sanctioned the illegal intervention, and then consolidated the coup with the deployment of a United Nations military occupation and endorsement of a brutal foreign-imposed dictatorship for two years.

Today, Haiti remains administratively, economically and militarily occupied. The five coup years have served to culminate years of American and international financial institution economic policy impositions that have maintained Haiti as a low-wage, export-friendly, most open world economy providing profitable business and resource extraction opportunities for foreign investors. The coup has resulted in thousands killed, raped, displaced, imprisoned and exiled; a political and social setback of decades; termination of every one of Aristide’s progressive social programs; a crippled economy; and increased poverty, misery and hopelessness.

The storms in the fall of 2007 exposed the perilous state of Haiti under foreign domination, when with more money coming into the country, the international community was incapable or unwilling to even come close to reinstating the disaster relief programs in place under Aristide. The networks and offices of Aristide’s Civil Protection Committees were attacked after the coup, and committee officials were killed, arrested or driven into hiding. The fall-out from the lack of preparation for the expected hurricanes was 1000 people killed, several thousand displaced, destruction of the season’s entire harvest and an aggregated loss to agriculture and infrastructure of 900 million dollars, representing the largest disaster to take place in Haiti for more than 100 years! The Haitian government complained that it became impossible to coordinate relief efforts among the numerous and disconnected NGOs (non-government agencies) who control all of the foreign aid coming into Haiti. Incredibly, the Haitian government was unable to access some 197 million dollars for relief from its own Central Bank because the funds had been placed in U.S. financial markets without the consultation of the Haitian parliament!

So while the international community marked the 5th anniversary of the coup with promises to stay their disastrous course in Haiti, the fatigued but defiant popular movements filled the streets with thousands and thousands of people (as they have consistently done since 2004).Their demands? Release all political prisoners; end the neoliberal policies and associated occupation; end the repression against Lavalas; and return the exiled President Jean Bertrand Aristide. It is a course that Haiti’s poor majority has not altered for five years, and one with which people in Canada need to stand in solidarity!

Canadian Appointed Governor of Kandahar

by Justin Panos
Basics Issue #12 (Jan/Feb 2009)

British Columbia resident Tooryalai Wesa was recently chosen to be the governor of Kandahar province in Afghanistan where most of the Canadian armed forces are based. Wesa, a 58-year old agricultural expert, claims that he can tackle the social ills and violence that has plagued this dangerous region. “I always wanted to be the bridge between two of my home countries, Afghanistan and Canada,” Wesa told the CBC.

Born in Kandahar City, Wesa studied Agriculture in Kabul, Beirut, and Nebraska before obtaining his PhD from the University of British Columbia. Wesa was minister of higher education in Kabul in 1989-1990 for eight months. He has been living in Canada since 1995. Despite his background, many dispute the legitimacy of this appointment.

Residents have expressed concerns over the qualifications of a man who has been out of the country for over 10 years. They feel that he will not represent their interests as he will be working primarily with other appointed officials and reconstruction ‘experts’ rather than working with the people to address their needs. Furthermore, Wesa was selected by Hamid Karzai, the current President of Afghanistan and his childhood friend. Karzai himself was initially appointed, not elected to serve the people and did not enjoy popular support outside of Kabul. It is said that he only won the 2004 election because of endorsement by George W. Bush, the backing of the US army and other occupation forces, and official media smear campaigns against his opponents. His campaign was partially funded by his younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, believed to be a key player in the heroin trade.

The legitimacy of any elections or governing officials in a country under the occupation of NATO forces and the Canadian army needs to be seriously called into question.

The fact that Hamid Karzai, himself appointed with U.S. backing, needed to install a Canadian citizen to govern Kandahar should be a sign to Canadians that the corrupt officials running Afghanistan are not running the country in the interests of the Afghan people, but in the interests of the occupation forces.

Canadian Imperialism’s Support for Israel’s War on Gaza

by Steve da Silva Basics Issue #12 (Jan/Feb 2009)

As Basics Issue #12 was going to print, nearly a 1000 Palestinians in Gaza had already been slaughtered by Israel, with well over four thousand injured and some 25,000 displaced. Three hundred counted among the dead were innocent children.

Israel - one of today’s most barbaric states, second only to the United States - would not last long in the international system without the ongoing diplomatic and military support of Western imperialist powers. And it’s for this reason that Canadians, should be turning their attention to where they live if they want to help bring an end to the carnage in Gaza.

The Canadian government has been one of the most staunch supporters of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza to date. On January 6, 2009, former Global Television news anchor and current Thornhill Member of Parliament and minister of state for Foreign Affairs Peter Kent said that ““Hamas bears a terrible responsibility for this and for the wider deepening humanitarian tragedy”, thus blaming the Palestinians for Israel’s attacks against them. Canadians may recall how back in 2006 Stephen Harper himself expressed the same degree of support for Israeli state terrorism when he referred to Israel’s 33-day rampage against Lebanon as a “measured response” to the alleged kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah.

Then, on January 12, 2009, as the 47-member UN Human Rights Council voted 33-to-1 in favour of condemning Israel’s illegal and barbaric war on Gaza (with 13 abstentions – all by European Union countries), Canada was the lone voice opposing the condemnation of Israel.
Meanwhile, the new federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has been trumpeting the same degree of support for Israel: “Canada has to support the right of a democratic country [Israel] to defend itself.” Evidently, the only rights Ignatieff is concerned with is the right of one of the most militarized countries in the world to obliterate the existence of a people to whom democracy has been completely denied. The fact that Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people in 2006 and that Canada was the first country in the world to refuse recognition to Hamas appears to Ignatieff to be no contradiction in his thinking.

Meanwhile, the NDP’s Jack Layton has opportunistically played both sides by stating that “The continuing airstrikes by Israel on civilians in the Gaza strip and the ongoing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians are serving to compound the existing civilian disaster and further harm chances for a negotiated peace.” Such a position is a cop-out because it completely ignores the fact that Israel has maintained a life-crippling blockade on Gaza since the election of Hamas in 2006, and that calls for Hamas to end missile strikes into Israel need to also address the economic warfare against Gaza.

Canadians who want to help the people of Gaza – in addition to appealing to the direct calls for solidarity and aid that are coming directly from the Palestinians – need to begin seriously challenging Canadian imperialism from here at home. The apartheid state of Israel would not be able to survive without the support of countries like U.S., Canada, and EU members. If we really want to make a difference for the people of Gaza, Canadians need to start finding ways to mobilize themselves independent of these forces for real structural changes in Canada’s domestic and foreign policies.

Harper Gov’t Approves $490 billion in New Military Spending

by Hassan Reyes
Basics Issue #10 (Aug/Sep 2008)

While our public facilities are either crumbling or becoming privatized as a result of a lack of government funding, such as with education, health care, social housing, social assistance, and public transit, Harper and the Federal Conservative government released a 20 year plan to give almost half a trillion dollars to the military. Clearly, there’s no shortage of funds laying around in the Federal public purse.

The 20-year plan will boost the defence budget every year starting in 2011 until it reaches $30 billion a year in 2027-28.

The funding also includes:
• $20 billion for new aircraft, tanks and ships;
• $15 billion in transport planes, trucks and helicopters that had been purchased earlier; and
• $250 billion to recruit 70,000 regular and 30,000 reserve force personnel.

The hundreds of billions for recruitment should signal that plans are underway to start aggressive military recruitment campaigns directed at the youth, in likely similar fashion as is done in the United States. Using education as the carrot, war mongers offer tuition payments for post-secondary school as a means to get our kids to register with the military. Most of these young people never make it back from their “tours of duty” to make use of their education.

The plan focused heavily on ‘responding to terrorist attacks’, ‘leading major international operations for an extended period’ and ‘deploying personnel to international crises’. Combined with money to maintain the ability to conduct continental operations through the North American Aerospace Defence Command its obvious that Harper and his government are very interested in increasing Canada’s involvement in the US-led ‘War on Terror’.

The Liberals for their part only complained that these were not new announcements, which confirms that they are indeed spineless lapdogs serving the people who want to spend our money and send our kids to die for other people’s wealth.

Canadian Occupation of Afghanistan Another 10 Years?

Canadian PM Stephen Harper with his
Afghan puppet President Hamid Karzai



Troubled by their inability to defeat the Afghan resistance to a foreign occupation, last October 2007 the Canadian government set up a commission to “review” Canada’s role in Afghanistan. The Conservative government chose the prominent Liberal, John Manley, to head up the commission. The report called for the extension of the occupation, alongside calls for more troops and more weapons and equipment. With extra troops and weapons, the report says the war can be won “in less than ten years”. Just because the pro-war Conservatives and Liberals are saying that they're going to extend the occupation to at least 2011 shouldn’t have us thinking that it’s going to end by then. How many times have we heard over the last 7 years that the Canadian military will be out in “2005”... “2007”... “2009”... and now 2011?

The truth of Afghanistan today is that the once-hated Taliban is growing in popularity in the face of the brutal foreign military occupation and the corrupt puppet government of Hamid Karzai.

Little do Canadians know that Karzai’s government operates under a narrow and harsh interpretation of Islamic law under which many people are suffering. The effects of this theocratic dictatorship is demonstrated by the recent condemnation to death of a 23-year-old journalist/student Pervez Kambaksh for downloading an article about women and Islam So while Western politicians rant on about religious fundamentalism and the “war on terror”, it is they who installed and maintain the criminal and fundamentalist regime of Hamid Karzai. But the Karzai government and NATO forces know that they can buy out the corrupt and opportunist leaders of the Taliban, as they have in the past. Indeed, the occupying forces have already begun encouraging Karzai to negotiate with the Taliban. Whatever comes of these “peace efforts”, the people of Afghanistan will continue to suffer under occupation.

And what about all this talk of human rights? Today in Afghanistan, many marriages are contracted between older men and underage girls by extremely impoverished and desperate parents. Women are frequently killed and shot with no consequences. The former Women’s Affairs Minister of Afghanistan Sima Simar was dismissed from parliament for “blasphemy against Islam” because she referred to Karzai’s government as a rubber stamp democracy.

Furthermore, a recent report by the UN indicates that violence against women has doubled since the US/Canadian invasion. Suraya Subhrang, a member of the committee that released the UN report comments that "in spite of six years of international rhetoric on the emancipation of Afghan women, there has been no real change in the lives of millions of women".

And what about Canada’s record on torture? It is well documented that the Canadian government has continuously outsourced torture to its puppets in the Afghan, police and military forces.

Much is said about ‘progress’ and ‘victory’ in Afghanistan by the Canadian government; but we should be particularly worried about what is not being said. Exact numbers of Afghan casualties are not reported. And when casualties are reported, the victims are referred to as “Taliban supporters”.

Canadians should not be fooled by the politicians. What is undeniable is that the human rights situation in Afghanistan is worse today than it ever was under the Taliban. Consequently, the Afghan people are in insurgency, and the Taliban is appearing as the lesser of evils. However, progressive left-wing movements, like the Maoist Communist Party of Afghanistan – who also fought against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s – are also growing in support.

So while the politicians go on stirring fear amongst Canadians of what would happen if the troops withdrew from Afghanistan, Canadians should know that the Afghan people have resisted and defeated many occupations in the past, including the British and the Soviets. They will likely do the same to the Americans and Canadians.

The majority of working-class Canadians should cheer the prospects of the Canadian military being chased out of Afghanistan by a people's war. Maybe then Canadians can regain our crumbling healthcare, education, and public transportation systems.

On the Ground in Afghanistan

Fresh from a fact finding mission, Mike Skinner and Hamayon Ragstar of the Afghanistan-Canada Research Group share the results of their investigation.

Their most immediate impression was how little had changed for common Afghanis since the fall of the Taliban. “People had held out hope for some progressive change and now that hope has dissipated over the past 6 years because the changes have not occurred... Karazai’s government has given some power to the non-Pashtun ethnic peoples of Afghanistan and has opened up power-sharing to diferent parties. But it still rules on behalf of the traditional rulers of Afghanistan, it still rules under sharia law, which causes many problems for Afghani women, it is in many ways worse then the Taliban because it is that much more corrupt. This government is supported by the Americans and Canadians, but run by Afghani warlords - a grouping which includes Karazai himself - and by bureaucrats and by drug lords.”

Meanwhile, the much-hyed development component of the mission had done little to meet the needs of the local population. “…the military and development agencies actually work hand in hand in the same base going out and working together.” This means that development projects were only built on the considerations of the military mission overseeing the project. An interviewee had showed Skinner a high school for girls in Bamiyam, built by a New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction team. This school was built outside of the town, close to the base and is a 16 km walking round trip for the girls to get to and from school. Bamiyam is a town with severe winters and these girls will be stuck with this long miserable hike all winter. The decision was arbitrarily made by the military command of the region and neither the girls nor the town gain any beneit as they were not consulted nor considered.

Canadian International Development Agencies (CIDA)’s projects are no better. “In the aid development industry we’re spending a lot of money and no one is following where that money is going. In fact, [a report was just released] saying that CIDA funds were not making their way to Afghanistan. It’s quite a controversial matter.” Skinner continued to say that he saw one CIDA project which was obviously not in use as it was closed and windows were shattered.

There are concerns about how Afghanistan’s resources are going to be used by various transnational corporations that are now involved, “Afghanistan…has some very rich mining resources that are partly unexplored and unexploited. I’m sure that Canadian mining companies would love to get in there and get their hands on it... This is one of those side beneits that while we’re there [we can] make some money by developing those mines.”

The major worry that both Skinner and Ragstar have is in the numbers of civilian casualties in this war. Skinner told us that “on a daily, or almost daily basis, there were news reports of civilian deaths and by far the greater number of those casualties were caused by Western forces in a number of diferent ways, [including] blindly iring into a crowd or the many cases of air attacks that don’t hit the right target.” As Ragstar put it “in the context of Afghanistan, the biggest warlords are the coalition forces... who are killing the people with much more sophisticated modern weapons then the Afghani warlords have access to.”

In addition to those killed directly by NATO troops are the hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced by the military operations of the occupation forces. “The Canadian military is involved in search and destroy missions, as part of a counter-insurgency war. The military will go to a village and tell people to evacuate their village within 24 hours or be killed. After the people have led, the forces come in, searching for weapons and explosives, but since it is unsafe to go into any building, they simply destroy the homes, farm buildings and wells. The populace is left homeless and jobless, becoming refugees- this is the humanitarianism of the Canadian military?”

So what can be done? The first thing to do is to recognize that “as long as our military is in place we’re creating the environment to encourage more recruits for the Taliban, we are angering so many people that we are making recruits.” We must to ask questions, investigate Canada’s role in the world, the actions that this war. We must pull the troops out now!

Harper in Colombia: Free Trade Coming Ahead of Human Rights

The Para-Political scandal in Colombia is one good reason why Canada should not have a free trade accord with Colombia.

The para-political scandal is the current outrage engulfing Colombian politics. In February, the foreign minister was forced to resign after the arrest of her brother, a senator in Colombia's congress, due to their ties to one of the heads of a paramilitary group. In April, Senator Gustavo Petro, of Polo Democrático Alternativo, the new alternative political party in Colombia, exposed the web of relationships between the death squads and members of the President's party as well senators from different parties, including liberal members of congress.

In the early 1980's, the bigger land-owners of Colombia formed the "United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia" (AUC), a paramilitary organization, in response to the local farmers who had been organizing and protecting themselves from the excessive exploitation and greed of those very huge land-owners. Using the AUC, the big landowners have seized more than 26,000 square miles from local farmers, killing tens of thousands in the process and displacing thousands more. These paramilitary thugs of the AUC have murdered community and union organizers as well as any villagers who have resisted. This has meant that after the Sudan, Colombia has the second highest number of internal refugees.

The scandal is the first fully visible example of the complex but ‘legitimized’ relations between the Colombian state- its institutions as well as its political parties- and the right wing paramilitary death squads that have been internally attacking the population. The AUC and its sister organizations have received the benediction and protection of important politicos in Colombia. For example, Senator Petro revealed that President Uribe, as governor of the Antioquia State, held meetings with top-ranking paramilitary leaders on a nightly basis in his gubernatorial compound, handing over lists of suspected organizers. The para-politico scandal has also shown how relentless multi-national corporations are in acquiring their profits. For example, Del Monte and Chiquita have been caught buying paramilitary ‘protection’, hiring death squads to brutally suppress its workers. Furthermore, last year in 2006, the year of Uribe’s reelection, 77 union organizers have been ‘disappeared’ and all are presumed to be assassinated.

Why does Canada do nothing while Colombian blood drenches Colombian soil? Is it perhaps because Canadian companies are profiting from this blood? Imperial Oil through its multi-national parent company, ExxonMobil, sells gas to Canada and Colombia, as well as owning gas interests in both countries. Various Canadian banks do business in Colombia. As well, mining companies such as Cerejon, exports coal from Colombia for use in Eastern Canadian power plants. Canadian food importing businesses bring in cheap in-demand, out-of-season or tropical fruits, vegetables and other staples, such as bananas, papayas and coffee. All these Canadian multi-nationals use Colombian natural resources and labour-power for their benefit.

Additionally, although US Democrats had pushed for a free trade deal with Colombia and helped the Colombian state acquire funding for the paramilitaries, it now looks like the Democrats are withdrawing their support for this corrupt regime, as they may now block the passage of the free trade accord between the US and Colombia. For the workers of Colombia, the failure of the free trade accord means that they will not face more cuts to whatever current meager social programs are in existence.

However, on June 7, it was announced that Canada is seeking to firm up a free trade agreement with Colombia because of the impending loss of the US and Colombian free trade accord. Also with Prime Minister Harper’s jaunt to the US’ closest allies of the South America --Colombia, Peru and Brazil (with a possible stop-over in Haiti, a country that is still a horrible skeleton in the Canadian closet), our concern is that President Uribe’s corruption is going to be re-enforced with Canadian resources: money, trade and military. Therefore, we need to decide if we will allow Canada to further profit off of the pain of Colombian workers. A free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia will not improve Colombian lives; it will only increase Colombia’s painful exploitation and weaken Canadian labour.

NATO Poisoning Afghanistan with Uranium!

After decades of war, drought, poverty, and oppression, the Afghani people have endured almost every calamity known to human kind. Now independent researchers have uncovered a new horror in Afghanistan, this one brought by NATO occupation forces that include 2,500 Canadians: Depleted Uranium (DU).
Depleted Uranium is a toxic and radioactive waste, a residue leftover from the enrichment of natural uranium for use in nuclear reactors and bombs. DU is 67% denser than lead and is much prized by the military for use in its weaponry. DU warheads, rather than flattening on impact, actually get sharper as they punch through the protective armor of an enemy tank or bunker. Once it has penetrated the target it explodes into a cloud of flaming plasma and dust, flash-frying everything and everyone inside the structure. Even worse, this radioactive dust is not consumed by the explosion. Once released into the environment, it is impossible to clean up. With a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years, it will keep on killing and causing disease. Forever.
Carried by the wind, it spreads to contaminate the soil, crops, and water of the surrounding area. Inhaled or ingested by humans and other animals, it damages DNA causing a variety of horrifying health effects, including various forms of cancer, immune disorders, internal organ damage, and extreme birth defects. The effects grow worse as time goes on as chronic exposure passes genetic damage on to future generations. There is no treatment and no cure for uranium exposure.
In 2003 scientists from the Uranium Medical Research Center studied urine samples from Afghan civilians from six different sites around the country. Every sample taken had uranium levels 400 to 2000% higher than normal. A UMRC reported that the “field team was shocked by the breadth of public health impacts coincident with the bombing. Without exception, at every bomb site investigated, people are ill. A significant portion of the civilian population presents symptoms consistent with internal contamination by uranium.”
The effects this is having on the population are obvious to the residents. Jooma Khan, a grandfather in Laghman province was quoted by an interviewer: “After the Americans destroyed our village and killed many of us, we also lost our houses and have nothing to eat. However, we would have endured these miseries and even accepted them, if the Americans had not sentenced us all to death. When I saw my deformed grandson, I realized that my hopes of the future have vanished for good... I know we are part of the invisible genocide brought on us by America, a silent death from which I know we will not escape.”
While the Canadian military claims to have eliminated DU from its munitions, the Canadian forces are fully integrated into NATO occupation forces. When Canadian troops call in air strikes during combat operations the bombs dropped come from American planes using DU ordinance. Canada must stop contributing to this ongoing war crime and pull its troops out now!

Canada’s Role in Afghanistan

Stephen Harper’s government is desperately trying to justify the war in Afghanistan, claiming that we are in Afghanistan to “defend our national interests, ensure Canadian leadership in world affairs, and help Afghanistan rebuild” (presumably by destroying it more?). As usual the corporate media bombards us daily with reassurances that Canada should remain in Afghanistan and that it is playing a noble role. The truth could not be further from those claims.

In reality neither Canada, nor the other invading NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Alliance) powers are wanted in Afghanistan. The Afghani people have expressed their discontent through continued resistance in the countryside and multiple uprisings in Kabul, triggered by abuses by foreign soldiers and the fact that Canada is helping prop up a puppet warlord drug regime. These uprisings have been violently repressed by the U.S., Canada and other foreign powers.

This war represents Canada’s participation in George W. Bush’s “war on terror”. Pretensions of rendering humanitarian services are a secondary window dressing to what is in fact a combat mission. Canadian troops are being sent to Afghanistan in order to free up American soldiers for the continuing war in Iraq. The U.S. government considers Afghanistan important because it has sought for years to build key oil pipelines from neighbouring Turkmenistan (part of the Caspian Sea Basin which is estimated to contain as much oil as Saudi Arabia) through Afghanistan. Picking up on this Harper is cynically throwing away more Afghani and Canadian lives to angle for a piece of that market for Canadian based oil and gas companies.

To complete this aim, Canada and other powers are propping up an unpopular puppet leader in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul and attempting to expand this colonial government by recruiting drug warlords in the countryside. The thugs of these warlords are then referred to here in the press as the “Afghan Security Forces”. All for oil pipelines and the continued foreign occupation of Iraq, Stephen Harper is willing to sacrifice the lives of countless thousands in this escalating role as an unwanted occupying power in collaboration with George W. Bush.

Harper’s claims that Canada must not back down from its commitments are cynical and wholly unbelievable, as he had no problem canceling the popular commitment to both the national childcare program and Kyoto. In reality there was no commitment from the Canadian people to this war. We were never consulted. The Liberals and now the Conservatives have simply thrown us into this mess without one iota of public consultation and the NDP has voted to stay as well. It’s fallen to us to raise our voices: Canadian troops out of Afghanistan now!