CounterVortex

OIL SHOCK REDUX

Is OPEC the Real Cartel —or the Transnationals?

by Vilosh Vinograd, WW4 Report

At its Vienna summit, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided Feb. 1 against pumping more oil—in an open rebuff to Washington at a time when fears of a world economic downturn are adding to concern over rising prices. In defense of its decision, the 13-nation cartel said that global supplies are adequate and that speculation and geopolitical jitters—not oil availability—are setting prices. It also actually cited the impending downturn as a reason to put less oil on the market. “In view of the current situation, coupled with the projected economic slowdown…current OPEC production is sufficient to meet expected demand for the first quarter of the year,” read the official statement from the summit.

OPEC president Chakib Khelil of Algeria told reporters that US economic conditions “will probably have some impact on demand.” In the prelude to the summit, Iran’s oil minister, Gholam Hussein Nozari, told reporters: “we think there should be cutting in production.”

President Bush, meanwhile, led the lobbying for an output increase. “Everyone is fully aware that having a reliable and steady and predictable supply of oil is a benefit to the global economy,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto in response to OPEC’s announcement. “We hope that they understand that their decisions on oil production have a real impact on the economy,” he said.

Including Iraq, which is not under quotas, total OPEC output is estimated at about 31.5 million barrels a day—about 40% of daily world demand, believed to be around 85.5 million barrels. The formal “OPEC-12” (minus Iraq) output ceiling is around 30 million barrels a day. (AP, Feb. 1)

Oil prices hit a symbolically cataclysmic $100 a barrel over the new year, and Bloomberg wrote that the “fastest-growing bet” on the New York Mercantile Exchange in is that the price of crude will double to $200 a barrel by the end of the year.

Petroleum prices have tripled over the last five years, with gasoline prices reaching record heights last summer. But for all the hand-wringing and exhortations to OPEC, these are unprecedentedly good times for the transnational oil companies.

ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly listed company, has reported a record-breaking $40.6 billion in net profits for 2007—up from $39.5 billion in 2006, which was the largest annual profit for any US company in history. (Money Times, Feb. 3)

Geopolitics, not Geology

The theorists of “Peak Oil” foresee an imminent end to the exorbitant profits and petroleum profligacy on which North American society is predicated. It is true that Exxon’s profits in the third quarter last year were 10% lower than the same period a year earlier—which was attributed to rising prices at the gas pump finally taking an impact on consumption.

It is also true that the remaining new fields that the majors are finding are are in hard-to-reach places—like the bottom of the sea, where drilling and pumping costs far more than it does on land.

But the most significant reality is that the oil fields the transnationals do control account for only about 6% of the world’s known reserves. State-owned companies such as Saudi Aramco and the National Iranian Oil Company have the rest—and, with oil costs above $90 a barrel, they are increasingly independent of investment from the globe-spanning majors. (SF Chronicle, Feb. 1)

Only 34% of global production is directly controlled by the trans-nationals, and terms for the exploitation of state-owned resources have been getting less favorable for the last generation. As Le Monde Diplomatique noted last March:

Under the traditional concession, companies owned the oil fields. But since the 1970s that model has disappeared outside the United States and a few European countries such as Britain, the Netherlands and Norway. Elsewhere, in Colombia, Thailand and the Gulf, the last contracts that granted concessions before the great wave of nationalisations during the 1970s have ended or are about to end. In Abu Dhabi, the authorities have already notified the majors that three concessions, due to expire in 2014 and 2018, will not be renewed.

And the state oil companies are generally only accepting the trans-nationals as 40% partners. The most significant reversal of this trend would be the Iraq oil law, which would open the country’s undeveloped fields (the big majority) to private investment on favorable terms. But, as Le Monde notes, Washington committed a “miscalculation” in thinking it could easily push this through Iraq’s parliament: “[T]he US had no difficulty in rewriting the occupied country’s constitution to suit itself, but all its attempts to overturn the 1972 law that nationalised oil and revert to a system of concessions have so far failed.”

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips abandoned their heavy crude oil projects in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt last year rather than cede majority ownership and operating control to the state-owned oil company PDVSA.

In an editorial in its Jan. 5 issue—just as oil was hitting $100 a barrel—The Economist wrote, “Oil keeps getting more expensive—but not because it is running out.” Instead, the magazine which is considered sacred guardian of the neoliberal order blamed “peak nationalism.”

“Oil is now almost five times more expensive than it was at the beginning of 2002,” The Economist noted.

It would be natural to assume that ever increasing price reflects ever greater scarcity. And so it does, in a sense. Booming bits of the world, such as China, India and the Middle East have seen demand for oil grow with their economies. Meanwhile, Western oil firms, in particular, are struggling to produce any more of the stuff than they did two or three years ago. That has left little spare production capacity and, in America at least, dwindling stocks. Every time a tempest brews in the Gulf of Mexico or dark clouds appear on the political horizon in the Middle East, jittery markets have pushed prices higher. This week, it was a cold snap in America and turmoil in Nigeria that helped the price reach three figures.

No wonder, then, that the phrase “peak oil” has been gaining ground even faster than the oil price. With each extra dollar, the conviction grows that the planet has been wrung dry and will never be able to satisfy the thirst of a busy world.

But The Economist places the blame with “geography, not geology.”

Yet the fact that not enough oil is coming out of the ground does not mean not enough of it is there… For one thing, oil producers have tied their own hands. During the 1980s and 1990s, when the price was low and so were profits, they pared back hiring and investment to a minimum. Many ancillary firms that built rigs or collected seismic data shut up shop. Now oil firms want to increase their output again, they do not have the staff or equipment they need.

Worse, nowadays, new oil tends to be found in relatively inaccessible spots or in more unwieldy forms. That adds to the cost of extracting oil, because more engineers and more complex machinery are needed to exploit it—but the end of easy oil is a far remove from the jeremiads of peak-oilers. The gooey tar-sands of Canada contain almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Eventually, universities will churn out more geologists and shipyards more offshore platforms, though it will take a long time to make up for two decades of underinvestment.

Finally, The Economist cuts to the chase—revealing that the real answer lies in neither geology nor geography, but geopolitics:

The biggest impediment is political. Governments in almost all oil-rich countries, from Ecuador to Kazakhstan, are trying to win a greater share of the industry’s bumper profits. That is natural enough, but they often deter private investment or exclude it altogether. The world’s oil supply would increase markedly if Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell had freer access to Russia, Venezuela and Iran. In short, the world is facing not peak oil, but a pinnacle of nationalism.

So The Economist backs up the conventional wisdom that the oil majors want what is best for humanity, that consumer needs are best served by the “free (read: unregulated) market,” and that the roots of the crisis lie with efforts by countries in the global south to reclaim sovereign control over the resources under their own soil.

This is, of course, a recipe for endless war. Not only is rolling back the wave of oil nationalizations a long-standing goal of the transnationals and their allies going back at least to the CIA-backed Iranian coup of 1953, but there are pressing geostrategic concerns related to the long-term preservation of US global hegemony.

As far back as 1992, the Pentagon “Defense Planning Guide” drawn up by Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby stated that the US must “discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” The oil resources of the Persian Gulf were recognized as critical to this aim: “In the Middle East and Southwest Asia, our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the region and preserve US and Western access to the region’s oil.”

In this light, the fact that Beijing’s national company PetroChina is rapidly gaining on Exxon as the world’s largest oil company takes on a significance far beyond mere commercial competition. “Access to oil” ultimately means access to military power, so what is really at issue here is control of oil as a key to global power.

Last November, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, after meeting in Beijing with his counterpart, Gen. Cao Gangchuan, told a news conference he had raised “the uncertainty over China’s military modernization and the need for greater transparency to allay international concerns.” In its coverage of the meeting, the New York Times precisely echoed the language of the 1992 Defense Planning Guide: “Pentagon officials describe China as a ‘peer competitor’…” An analysis on the visit in the newspaper quoted Michael J. Green of the Center for Strategic and International Studies saying, “If you are sitting in the Pentagon, China is a potential peer competitor.”

Understand this, and the reckless, criminal adventure in Iraq becomes at least comprehensible. So does the war drive against Iran, whose growing sway over the Shi’ite-dominated Baghdad regime could render the US “victory” in Iraq horrifically Phyrric. So too becomes the mutual Sudan-Chad proxy war—in which a government with PetroChina contracts and one with Exxon contracts sponsor guerilla movements on each others’ territory. The destabilization campaign against the Hugo Chávez regime in Venezuela comes into focus as a struggle over ancillary but still globally significant oil reserves in the traditional US “backyard.” The popular notion that the West’s contest with OPEC is fundamentally about securing low oil prices on behalf of consumers dematerializes like a mirage.

Oil industry insiders understand that there is actually a strong tendency in exactly the other direction. OPEC needs to keep prices under control to assure their dominance of “market share,” while Western governments and transnationals need high prices in order to line up the investment and political will to expand production to areas beyond OPEC’s control—from Alaska to the Caspian Basin.

The Public Strikes Back?

There are signs of a public backlash to the oil majors’ free ride now that the Bush administration enters its endgame. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights is calling for Congressional action to bring unregulated energy markets under public control. “Exxon is making more than $75,000 a minute around the clock on crude oil prices that are at unjustifiable levels,” read their press release. “Oil companies have opposed legislation to regulate electronic energy trading, even as they deflect blame by pointing to such markets as the reason for crude oil prices that remain above $90 a barrel… Exxon’s $40.6 billion annual profit and Chevron’s $17.1 billion come at the cost of an economy tipping into recession… While Exxon makes the largest corporate profit by any corporation, ever, families pay $60 and more for a gas station fill-up and Northeasterners are shelling out more than $2,000 on average for heating oil.”

“The 2007 profit of just the three U.S.-based major oil companies comes to $70 billion,” said FTCR research director Judy Dugan, research director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan FTCR. “Yet Americans are deeper in consumer debt than ever in large part for high energy costs.” (FTCR, Feb. 1)

Tyson Slocum of Public Citizen, wrote in a September 2006 report, “Hot Profits and Global Warming: How Oil Companies Hurt Consumers and the Environment”:

The high prices we are now paying are simply feeding oil company profits and are not being invested in sustainable energy solutions. Since January 2005, the largest five oil companies—ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips—spent $112 billion buying back their own stock and paying dividends, and have an extra $59.5 billion in cash, while their investment in renewable energy pales in comparison. For example, BP, the so-called renewable energy leader, in 2005 posted $38.4 billion in stock buybacks, dividend payments and cash, but plans to invest two percent of that amount on solar, wind, natural gas and hydrogen energy.

And this despite an aggressive ad campaign emphasizing BP’s supposed commitment to renewable energy, a new logo that looks like a pretty green flower, and the dropping of the word “petroleum” from all advertising—except for the catch-phrase “beyond petroleum.” Of course, BP remains fundamentally an oil company, and still officially stands for British Petroleum. In fact, Public Citizen finds, the oil majors are doing their best to keep alternativesoff the market:

Under the current market framework, oil companies aren’t making the investments necessary to solve our addiction to oil and never will. With $1 trillion in assets tied up in extracting, refining and marketing oil, their business model will squeeze the last cent of profit out of that sunk capital for as long as possible. The oil industry’s significant presence on Capitol Hill ensures that the government does not threaten their monopoly over energy supply through funding of alternatives to oil. For example, energy legislation signed by President Bush in August 2005 provides $5 billion in new financial subsidies to oil companies.

And FTCR’s Dugan says the 2007 energy bill didn’t do much better, failing to include any provision to recoup some $14 billion in oil company tax subsidies over five years. “The major oil companies’ incredible profits, boosted by multibillion-dollar tax subsidies to the industry, are ultimately clobbering taxpayers,” she said Dugan. “Given the rising federal debt, today’s babies will still be paying the Exxon tab.”

Iraq and the GWOT: It’s the Oil, Stupid!

Bush may have been sincere in his exhortations to OPEC to boost production and thereby lower prices. High prices may now be costing the administration and its oil industry friends more than is deemed acceptable. But in any case, the fundamental thing at this stage of the game is no longer the price of oil but control of oil. Mohammed Mossadeq’s nationalization of Iran’s oil in 1952 was the first major assault on Western control of oil. It was turned around with the following year’s CIA coup. The 1956 Suez crisis briefly interrupted oil flows from the Middle East and affected prices, but posed no challenge to Western control. The founding of OPEC in 1960 was a first step towards reasserting sovereign control of oil, but the fields still largely remained in private Western hands even if host governments would now dictate production levels in a coordinated manner so as to influence prices.

The 1969 coup d’etat in Libya brought the radical Col. Moammar Qadaffi to power and led to first the nationalization of Libya’s oil and then the imposition of production-sharing agreements on terms favorable to the host government. Analyst James Akins writing in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, called the Libyan demands of 1970 “a flash of lightening in a summer sky.” But far worse was yet to come with the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

As Israel’s tanks rolled into the Sinai, Iraq nationalized the Exxon and Mobil holdings in the Basra oil fields and launched a drive for a full Arab embargo of the US. “Radical” regimes like Iraq and Libya won over “conservative” ones like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf mini-states. The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), an independent body within OPEC, was formed—and the embargo was on. In December, the price shot up to a then-unprecedented $11.65 per barrel (not adjusted for inflation)—an increase of 468% over the price in 1970. For the first time, producing nations had used the “oil weapon” as a lever of influence against the West. The first “oil shock”—then known as the “energy crisis”—was a wake-up call for consumers, governments and transnationals alike.

Then, as now, oil company profits went through the roof. As long lines formed at gas stations across the USA, Exxon’s profits went up 29%; Mobil’s 22%; and Texaco’s 23%. But fearing loss of control, the transnationals pressured the White House to cede to Arab demands. The major shareholders in Aramco (the Saudi-based Arabian American Oil Company, then consisting of Exxon, Mobil, Texaco and Chevron) sent a memorandum to President Nixon warning of dire consequences if the US did not halt aid to Israel.

While demonization of the Arabs was widespread in the US media, the oil companies were also a target of public ire. In 1974, executives were called to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, where James Allen, Democrat of Alabama, posed the question: “Would it be improper to ask if the oil companies are enjoying a feast in the midst of famine?” Litigation was also launched against the oil majors, but they had made little progress when OPEC decided to boost production again in 1975, leveling off prices—the war now long over, and maintenance of market share emerging as an imperative in response to Capitol Hill talk of “energy independence.”

The US Strategic Reserves and UN International Energy Agency were established in response to the crisis. But these measures failed to prevent the next “oil shock” when the Iranian Revolution toppled the Shah in 1979. The price per barrel more than doubled between 1979 and 1981, and prices at the pump jumped 150%. The combined net earnings of Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Gulf and Texaco increased by 70% between 1978 and 1979, while 1980 was the most lucrative year in the oil industry’s history up to that point. The US and its Gulf allies gave former rival Iraq a “green light” to invade Iran and cut the ayatollahs down to size.

In the Reagan-era Pax Americana, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states kept the price low so as to undermine the struggling Iranian regime. But now even conservative allies of the West were asserting oil sovereignty. 1980 saw the Saudi regime’s nationalization of Aramco—a tipping point in fast-eroding Western control of global oil.

The subsequent generation was one of both retreat and consolidation for the transnationals. Even as their control over global oil contracted, they retrenched their forces internally. The “Seven Sisters” of the 1970s (Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Gulf, Texaco, BP and Shell, by their contemporary names) are now four, following the mergers of Mobil with Exxon, and Gulf and Texaco with Chevron—or perhaps five, if we consider ConocoPhillips as having joined their ranks.

Oil prices dropped in the weeks after 9-11, even as theories mounted that the US invasion of Afghanistan was aimed at encircling the Caspian Basin oil reserves. But some observers recognized even then that the real struggle was over the Persian Gulf reserves, the most strategic on the planet by far. On Oct. 18, 2001, Michael Klare wrote in The Nation:

The geopolitical dimensions of the war are somewhat hard to discern because the initial fighting is taking place in Afghanistan, a place of little intrinsic interest to the United States, and because our principal adversary, bin Laden, has no apparent interest in material concerns. But this is deceptive, because the true center of the conflict is Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan (or Palestine), and because bin Laden’s ultimate objectives include the imposition of a new Saudi government, which in turn would control the single most valuable geopolitical prize on the face of the earth: Saudi Arabia’s vast oil deposits, representing one-fourth of the world’s known petroleum reserves.

Klare stated, rather obviously: “A Saudi regime controlled by Osama bin Laden could be expected to sever all ties with US oil companies and to adopt new policies regarding the production of oil and the distribution of the country’s oil wealth—moves that would have potentially devastating consequences for the US, and indeed the world, economy. The United States, of course, is fighting to prevent this from happening.”

With the invasion of Iraq—which sits on nearly half the Persian Gulf reserves—it was correctly perceived that the struggle for the planet’s most critical reserves was truly underway, and the third oil shock arrived. The price has escalated along with the level of insurgent violence ever since. The Great Fear driving the prices ever higher is that the US could lose control of Iraq, the conflagration could generally engulf the Middle East, and that Iran or jihadist elements far more intransigent than Saddam Hussein could emerge as new masters of the Gulf reserves.

An effective anti-war position must entail deconstructing the propaganda of “national security” on the oil question, and breaking with the illusion that elite concerns and consumer concerns coincide. Iraq and its various “sideshows” such as Afghanistan are the battlegrounds in a strategic struggle for control of oil as the foundation of continued US global dominance (or “primacy,” in the argot of wonkdom). This struggle will not mean lower oil prices for US citizens—but their sons and daughters dying on foreign shores, fueling Islamist terrorism and hatred of the US in a relentless vicious cycle.

—-

RESOURCES

Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org

FTCR press release via
Fox Business, Feb. 1

Public Citizen Energy Program
http://www.citizen.org/cmep

OPEC: No boost in oil output
AP, Feb. 1

Exxon gains from Soaring Oil Prices, beats own Record
Money Times, Feb. 3

Big Oil has trouble finding new fields
San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 1

The oil price: Peak nationalism
The Economist, Jan. 3

Hydrocarbon Nationalism
by Jean-Pierre Séréni
Le Monde Diplomatique, March 2007

The Geopolitics of War
by Michael Klare
The Nation, Oct. 18, 2001

See also:

IRAQ: EXPOSING THE CORPORATE AGENDA
by Antonia Juhasz, Oil Change International
WW4 Report, November 2007
/node/4611

PEAK OIL AND NATIONAL SECURITY
A Critique of Energy Alternatives
by George Caffentzis
WW4 Report, September 2005
/node/1027

From our weblog:

Oil: $200 a barrel by year’s end?
WW4 Report, Jan. 27, 2008
/node/4986

China emerges as “peer competitor” —in race for global oil
WW4 Report, Nov. 8, 2007
/node/4649

Consumers get revenge on Exxon …a little
WW4 Report, Nov 2, 2007
/node/4621

Specter of “hydrocarbon nationalism” drives Iraq war
WW4 Report, March 27, 2007
/node/3453

Exxon quits Venezuela
WW4 Report, June 27, 2007
/node/4136

From our archive:

Petro-oligarchs wage shadow war
WW4 Report, Dec. 22, 2001
/static/13.html#shadows2

——————-

Special to World War 4 Report, Feb. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingOIL SHOCK REDUX 

DOWNWINDERS CATCH THE DRIFT

Survivors of Cold War Nuclear Testing Say No to Revived Weapons Program

by Lisa Mullenneaux

They have heard it all before. Residents near the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles from Las Vegas, call themselves “downwinders” because they disproportionately suffer from cancers, leukemia, and other fallout-related illnesses. They know the government’s deceit carries a deadly payload. That’s why in 2006 when the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) announced a test of 700 tons of explosive (50 times the power of our largest conventional weapon), anti-nuclear groups in four states and the Shoshone Nation gave DOE a blast of their own.

Downwinders didn’t share DTRA head James Tegnelia’s euphoria that the test, code-named Divine Strake, would send contaminated dirt sky high. “I don’t want to sound glib here,” Tegnelia told reporters, “but it is the first time in Nevada that you’ll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons.” In February 2007 the agency cancelled Divine Strake, replacing it with plans for “smaller blasts” aimed at underground enemy targets.

Small or large blasts, what downwinders fear is the Bush administration’s aggressive pursuit of new nuclear weapons and renewal of underground tests, banned since 1992. They have reason to be wary. In 2002 Bush accelerated the Doomsday Clock by reneging on an agreement with Putin to destroy 4,000 nuclear warheads, and rejecting the Anti-Ballistic Missile and Comprehensive Test Ban treaties. In 2003 Congress reopened the door to research and development of low-yield nuclear arms by repealing the Spratt-Furse ban, but has since balked at funding more ambitious programs like the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators (“bunker busters”). Undaunted, the Bush White House this year requested $88 million for “Reliable Replacement Warheads” to upgrade the existing nuclear arsenal. Just in case those warheads need to be tested, an “enhanced” Nevada Test Site—cost: $25 million—will be ready.

“I remember my father telling me about how people in southern Utah would watch the sky light up from the nuclear tests in Nevada,” says Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), “and how they supported the program because they were strong patriots, who believed in their country and trusted their government.” Neither Matheson nor his neighbors trust the Bush administration’s assurances that funding new nuclear weapons won’t lead to testing them nor that underground testing is foolproof. Why should they? According to the Department of Energy’s 1996 report, radioactive material escaped from 433 underground tests between 1961 and 1992. In 2004, Matheson introduced the Safety for Americans from Nuclear Weapons Testing Act, that would require health and safety assessments prior to tests, Congress to authorize those tests, and independent radiation monitoring.

Downwinders in Nevada and Utah heard and read the Atomic Energy Commission’s (and later DOE’s) insistence “there is no danger” for 47 years, often in the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. Not until 1980 did Congress admit what downwinders already knew: the danger of radiation was “not only disregarded but actually suppressed,” as a House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations concluded.

In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but for many victims and their families it was too late. A total of 928 above- and below-ground nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site between 1951 and 1992 and 21 subcritical nuclear weapons tests since 1997, most recently in February 2006. Though the site has been renamed an “Environmental Research Park” by the DOW, it’s not a park you would want to picnic in. Soil at the site and for miles around is contaminated with radioactive material—which is why downwinders want to ban all tests.

Says Preston “Jay” Truman, who heads Downwinders, a Salt Lake City-based organization of those who were exposed to radioactive fallout: “Back in the ’50s, we were given a booklet on the first day of kindergarten that read, ‘You people who live near the test site are, in a very real sense, active participants in this nation’s testing program.’ We had no idea then how much we were at risk, but in opposing Divine Strake, we showed how much we have learned since then. When DOE refused to allow public hearings on the project, we held our own hearings. The government got 11,000 comments.”

Another Downwinder, Salt Lake City journalist and cancer survivor Mary Dickson premiered her play this year about the effects of radiation poisoning called “Exposed.” “I like to think the people do have power so I can go on thinking this fighting we do matters,” Dickson says. But sweet as the Divine Strake victory was, the Downwinders know they are fighting a Goliath in the weapons industry.

Some of those fighting Goliath lost family members who worked on the construction of test sites. Beverly Aleck’s husband Nick helped drill the mile-deep pit for the Cannikin test on Alaska’s Amchitka Island in 1971; four years later, he died of myelogenous leukemia. Aleck, an Aleut, has waged war with the DOE ever since to open the records and begin a health monitoring program for Amchitka workers. When the Alaska District Council of Laborers of the AFL-CIO investigated in the early ’90s, at Aleck’s insistence, the DOE claimed none of the workers had been exposed to radiation. They later admitted that exposure records and dosimeter badges had been lost.

Amchitka was the site of three large underground nuclear tests, including Cannikin, the most powerful nuclear explosion the US ever detonated. To allay fierce public opposition, then AEC chairman James Schlesinger claimed, “The site was selected—and I underscore the point—because of the virtually zero likelihood of any damage.” But the AEC already knew from Nevada tests there was no guarantee that radiation released by the blasts could be safely contained underground. In fact, research by Greenpeace and the DOE show it began to leak almost immediately. Amchitka remains the only national wildlife refuge chosen to test bombs.

Environmentalists, the Deptartment of the Interior, and the Auke Tribe all failed to save Amchitka or to change a pattern of military secrecy established years earlier in the Pacific. When Bikinians and others in the Marshall Islands were relocated starting in 1946, they were never told their homelands would be unsafe for 30,000 years. They were never told they would be used as guinea pigs in their new locations so the US military could better understand radiation poisoning. After many small tests, in 1954 the US exploded a hydrogen bomb, code-named BRAVO, and islanders experienced fallout over 7,000 square miles. Its gruesome results are cancers and malformed children called “jellyfish babies.” Darlene Keju-Johnson, a public health official born on Ebeye Island, has dedicated her life to interviewing Marshallese women and exposing their fear of ever bearing normal children. “They know they’ll be dying out soon. They are dying now—slowly.”

Russian women fear the same birth deformities as the Marshallese because of fallout from nuclear tests and accidents like Chernobyl. A 2005 conference organized to mark the 51st anniversary of the first hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll allowed survivors to compare the patterns of secrecy that led to their radiation exposure, including still-classified government documents. “The reason the exposure [at Chernobyl] was so bad,” said Dr. Lyudmyla Porokhnyak, “is that we were lied to all the time.” After Chernobyl in 1986 and the BRAVO nuclear test in 1954, Russia and the US denied health risks and delayed evacuating residents. Fallout continues to be treated by US officials as the inevitable price for military superiority.

After President Bush’s Star Wars speech on May 1, 2001, when he argued that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) could no longer guarantee our national security, companies began getting orders for fallout shelters for the first time since the Cold War. This year Huntsville, Alabama, dusted off its civil defense manual and announced plans to create a fallout shelter in an abandoned mine large enough for 20,000 people. Fighting the Red Menace during the 1950s was a bonanza for companies that sold pre-fab shelters, protective clothing, first-aid kits, disposable toilets, and books with titles like How to Have a Baby in a Bomb Shelter and America Under Attack! But while Eisenhower and Kennedy wanted nuclear preparedness they didn’t want national panic. An issue of Life, September 1961, devoted to the importance of fallout shelters, advised taking hot tea and aspirin for radiation sickness. “You can recover from a mild case of radiation sickness just as you can recover from a cold it’s not contagious. It loses its deadliness rapidly.”

Created in 1951, the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) was a shill for the weapons industry, designed to convince Americans they could survive a nuclear war by, among other things, ducking under a “sturdy table.” Its mascot was Bert the Turtle, who taught kids with a catchy jingle to “duck and cover” when the air raid siren sounded. Serious treatment of fallout, as in the film “On the Beach,” was condemned by the FCDA “because it produced a feeling of utter hopelessness, thus undermining efforts to encourage preparedness.” More entertaining were films like Mickey Rooney’s The Atomic Kid (1952) and Them! (1954) that exploited bizarre effects of genetic mutations.

Though scientists knew more than the public about radiation, their level of ignorance is astounding based on what we know today. As described by Gerard J. DeGroot in The Bomb: A Life, visitors were allowed into the Trinity site at Alagomordo, NM, in 1946 to collect Trinitite—the glassy substance of melted sand created by the blast—and local shops sold it as souvenirs. In September 1945, more than a thousand US servicemen were sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to help reconstruction. They were given no protective clothing, dosimeter badges, nor any precautionary advice. Meanwhile back in the US, secret experiments were being conducted in hospitals and prisons to study the effects of radiation on human beings. When the details of the experiments were released, the son of one of the women injected with bomb grade plutonium said: “I was over there fighting Germans who were conducting these horrific medical experiments. At the same time, my own country was conducting them on my mother.”

Part of the military’s pattern of secrecy is to use “nukespeak,” words that sanitize the horror of nuclear war: “collateral damage” for human death, “low-use segment of the population” for expendable downwinders. It speaks of “clean bombs” that release a bigger bang but less radiation than “dirty bombs,” calls the MX missile (Peacekeeper) a “damage limitation weapon,” speaks of a “limited nuclear war.” It justifies nuclear weapons research as “science-based stockpile stewardship.” Aware of US commitment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” the Bush administration speaks covertly about its own testing plans while decrying those of other nations.

Pushing in 2003 for funds to research a new generation of mini-nukes, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was careful to insist the Pentagon wanted to study them, “not to develop, not to deploy, not to use” them. From a low of $3.4 billion in 1995, US spending on nuclear weapons rose to $6.5 billion in 2004, far surpassing average yearly spending during the Cold War. “All the saber-rattling leads me to fear that they might try to resume testing,” says Nevada State Senator Dina Titus, who has written extensively on the state’s history of weapons testing. “We won the arms race, so why are we starting it again?”

No wonder downwinders are protesting—they’re catching the drift. And why should we worry? Because if studies by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) and National Cancer Institute are correct, we are all downwinders, exposed to radioactive fallout carried thousands of miles and lodged in food chains. Downwinders in Nevada are like canaries in the mine. They know what reactivating the Nevada Test Site means to them and their families or to having the nation’s nuclear waste dumped at Yucca Mountain. Chip Ward, who lives near the Nevada Test Site, writes, “Once again in a new age of nuclear testing, American citizens will be the first victims of our own weapons. We will live with uncertainty and doubt while waiting for the results of our own military folly to unfold in our tissues, our blood, our chromosomes, and our bones.”

RESOURCES

Downwinders
http://www.downwinders.org/

Shundahai Network
http://www.shundahai.org/yucca_mt.html

Defense Threat Reduction Agency
www.dtra.mil/

REFERENCES

Pentagon Plans Gigantic Explosion at Nevada Site, Reuters, March 30, 2006
http://forum.grasscity.com/general/88583-pentagon-plans-gigantic-explosion-nevada-site.html

Scientists Say Planned Blast a Part of Nuclear Testing
The Las Vegas Sun, April 6, 2006
Online at CommonDreams
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0406-06.htm

Experts: Divine Strake ‘mushroom cloud’ could have sickened many
The Las Vegas Sun, June 27, 2007, from AP
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2007/jun/27/062710103.html

The Spratt-Furse Law on Mini-Nuke Development
Union of Concerned Scientists, May 2003
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/the-sprattfurse-law-on-mininuke-development.html

Bush Speech on Missile Defence, Nuclear Reductions, May 1, 2001
Online at the Acronym Institute
http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd56/56bush.htm

The Low-Use Segment
Idaho’s downwinders got their hearing. But are their voices being heard?
by Nicholas Collias, Boise Weekly, Nov. 17, 2004
http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A2656

See also:

RESISTING THE NEW EURO-MISSILES
Czech Dissidents Stand Up Again—This Time to the Pentagon!
by Gwendolyn Albert,
WW4 REPORT, June 2007
/node/3977

NUCLEAR AGENDA 2005
Bush Charts New Generation of Warheads
by Chesley Hicksby Gwendolyn Albert,
WW4 REPORT, March 2005
/node/271

From our weblog:

“Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight
WW4REPORT, Jan. 18, 2007
/node/3062

——————-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingDOWNWINDERS CATCH THE DRIFT 

AGAINST U.S. AGGRESSION; AGAINST THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

Iranian Left-Opposition Activist Azar Majedi Says No to Both

by Riposte Laique

Azar Majedi is founder of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iran, and a veteran of a generation of struggle against dictatorial regimes—first against the Shah, and then against the Islamic Republic. Forced to flee the country in 1982, Majedi has continued her activities in exile in Europe. She now produces programs in Farsi and English on New Channel TV, an independent satellite station broadcasting into Iran, which can also be seen on the Internet. Her weekly program “No to Political Islam” is a critical voice for secularism and women’s rights. She also publishes the journal Reflections, and is a leading member of the Worker-communist Party of Iran. She lives in England with her three children. This interview first ran in the French progressive journal Riposte Laique.

The interview was published just as Britain’s Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB) has drawn up a “code of conduct” on “civic responsibility” and tolerance for Muslims in the UK. Dissidents in the Muslim community protest that MINAB—which emerged from a Home Office taskforce on extremism in the wake of the 2005 London Underground attacks—is a male-dominated body which has failed to sufficiently emphasize women’s rights and dignity. Taking a stronger stance, avowedly secular critics such as Majedi and Riposte Laique view talk of “multiculturalism” and “tolerance” as too often a cloak for oppression and protecting privilege. At the same time, they oppose the culture of Islamophobia as paradoxically fueling Islamist reaction. They are especially critical of elements in the British left—including the Socialist Workers Party (UK), a leading force in the Stop the War Coalition—for failing to make this critical distinction.

Would you say that the British have become aware of the danger of multiculturalists’ policies since the London terrorist attacks?

Azar Majedi: It is difficult to judge the British public opinion, as it is usually the media that makes and shapes the public opinion. As far as the British political arena is concerned, I must say no, it has not changed. The British government continues the policy of appeasement of the so-called “Moslem leaders,” whom to my opinion, are self appointed. Consulting with these religious men, in order to “win the hearts of Muslim community,” is British government’s key policy.

Unfortunately, an atmosphere of mistrust has developed between the so-called Muslim community and the general public. The Muslim community feels isolated and discriminated against. It has been stigmatized. This is the negative effect of the present tension In the eyes of some, whoever considers themselves Muslim, has their origin in the region associated with Islam, or looks “Muslim” is considered a terrorist suspect. This attitude deepens the tension and friction in the society and deepens the existing separation.

On the left, perhaps with a good intention—to fight racism and stigmatization of Muslim community, the general mood is to support the Islamist movement, the veil, gender apartheid, and all the Islamic values which are deeply reactionary, discriminative and misogynist. This is very wrong. This is in effect racism—to say that gender apartheid and discrimination is OK for the “Muslim.” This is in fact a double standard.

We should first and foremost distinguish between “ordinary Muslims” and the Islamist movement. Second, we should feel free to criticize Islam just as we feel free to criticize any other religion, ideology or set of beliefs. However, part of the left movement does not distinguish between these categories and accepts the self-appointed Muslim leaders’ proclamations. The Islamist movement is not the representative of Muslim, is not the representatives of Palestinians’ or Iraqi people’s grief. This should be stressed.

I believe we need a healthy debate. We need to criticize Islam and the Islamist movement and at the same time fight racism, stigmatization and defend individual rights. Since the tragic events of September 11, many civil liberties have been eroded in the society, in the name of security. We should try and reverse this tide.

Has the Trotskyite SWP distanced itself from the Islamic fundamentalists or does it carry on openly in public with them as it did at the 2005 Social European Forum in London?

Azar Majedi: I must admit that I do not follow this party’s actions closely. As far as I know SWP has not changed its policy towards the Islamists. I believe they still fully support this reactionary and terrorist movement.

What’s your opinion about [London Mayor] Ken Livingstone’s Big Mosque project?

Azar Majedi: I am totally against it. We don’t need more mosques. There are already too many of them. What we need is better and more schools for the children and youth in the Muslim community, a better and better-funded education for them, more leisure centers and sports facilities. Much more funds have to be poured into these communities to improve the social environment. These mosques are the place for brainwashing of the children and the youth. Usually the underprivileged and marginalized youth are drawn into these mosques and are being fed by hatred and reactionary and misogynist values. It is proven that some of these mosques, for example the Finsbury, have been used to [indoctrinate] terrorists. We should also be aware that Islamist governments, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, are behind such monumental projects. This is quite telling about the goals for building such monuments.

You are hostile to Iran’s ayatollahs. What’s your stand concerning the war threats relayed by [French Foreign Minister Bernard] Kouchner?

Azar Majedi: Yes, I am a staunch enemy of the Islamic Regime in Iran. This is a brutal regime that has executed more than hundred thousand people. It is a brutal dictatorship that oppresses the people and it is misogynist to its bones. I have been fighting this regime from the day it came to power.

Having said that, I must add that I am totally against the war. Military attack will be a catastrophe. It is the people in Iran and the region who will suffer as a result of this war. This, to my opinion, is a war of terrorists. There are two poles of terrorism, state terrorism and Islamic terrorism, which are inflaming this war. Such a war has no positive result for humanity, for peace, or for the people of Iran and the region.

This war will strengthen the Islamic regime, just as the Iraq war strengthened the Islamists and Islamic regime of Iran, just as the war in Lebanon strengthened Hezbollah and the Islamic movement. As soon as the threat of war becomes imminent, the Islamic regime will make more restrictions for the people. It would brutally crush any sign of discontentment. It will execute people even more mercilessly.

The war will also be an environmental catastrophe. Attacking the nuclear sites will mean a nuclear hell in the region. I am totally against the war. We should try and stop this war. It will create a chaotic situation, a black scenario, which will only be a breeding place for terrorism. Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon—the future for Iran will be if not more disastrous, just as catastrophic.

We must take the volatile political situation in Iran into consideration. People in Iran are resisting this regime. There is a great protest movement in Iran—workers’, women’s rights and youth movements against Islamic restriction and for cultural freedom. There is a significant secular movement in Iran. The war will have devastating effects on these popular and progressive movements. I believe our slogan should be “No to the war and no to the Islamic regime!” International left and progressive movements must support these movements in Iran

We should also expose America’s war-mongering propaganda. I should add that dismantling the Islamic regime’s nuclear power is a pure misrepresentation of the war’s aim, just like the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a pure lie. The American government has been defeated in Iraq. To win back its position as the bully of the world it needs another war. The Islamic regime was the actual winner in Iraq. By attacking Iran, the US will show the world it still has the muscles to fight this regime, to attack any country, or do whatever it so pleases to, for that matter.

How did you react when you heard about the Vosges case? [Concerning Yvette “Fanny” Truchelut, hostel owner in Vosges who was fined 8,000 euros for demanding that two female Muslim boarders remove their headscarves in the public rooms of the establishment.] Do you think that forbidding the headscarf altogether is the best solution to the headscarf offensive throughout Europe?

Azar Majedi: This is a complex issue. I must first state that I am against the veil. I believe that the veil is the tool and symbol of women’s oppression and enslavement. Moreover, nowadays the veil has become the banner of the Islamist movement. Many women both in the west and in the Middle East and North Africa wear the veil as a political gesture. American aggression, the wars in Iraq and Lebanon and America’s full-fledged support of Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians have motivated many young women to wear the veil as a sign of protest against the US and the West’s policies.

I have been fighting against the veil and have tried to expose its nature. Moreover, I am for banning the veil for underage girls. I think no child should be forced to wear the veil. A child has no religion. It is the parent’s religion that is forced upon them. The veil restricts greatly the physical and mental development of a child, and must be banned. I am also in favor of banning the burqa in all circumstances.

However I do not believe that other forms of the veil should be banned for adult women, except in public institutions and schools, as the French law has prescribed. I believe more than would be restricting individual rights of citizens to freedom of clothing and religion.

I believe a complete ban on the veil will have more negative effects than positive ones and will create a negative backlash which will damage our goals for a free and secular society, and for the freedom and equality of women. Instead of a total ban on the veil, we should campaign strongly against the veil, the Islamic movement and American aggression. We should expose both poles of terrorism to open up the eyes and minds of those women who have “freely” chosen the veil as political manifestation. The Islamic movement is trying to portray itself as the liberator of the people in the Middle East, the Palestinians, and the Iraqis. This is a big lie. We have to expose that. We need to fight against the Islamists and their banner the veil in the ideological and political sphere as well.

——

RESOURCES

Azar Majedi
http://www.azarmajedi.com/

Organization for Women’s Liberation in Iran (OWLI)
http://azadizan.com/

New Channel TV
http://www.newchannel.tv/

Worker-communist Party of Iran
http://www.wpiran.org/

Riposte Laique
http://www.ripostelaique.com

REFERENCES

France renews threats against Iran
Press TV, Iran, Nov. 18, 2007
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=31590&sectionid=351020104

The battle over mosque reform
BBC, Nov 29, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7118503.stm

Watchdog for UK mosques launches
BBC, June 27, 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5120338.stm

See also:

IRAN: STATE STILL STONES WOMEN
by Assieh Amini, Stop Stoning Forever Campaign
WW4 REPORT, August 2007
/node/4281

From our weblog:

Free women activists in Iran
WW4 REPORT, Nov. 20, 2007
/node/4686

UK Class War bashes “leftist” Hezbollah cheerleaders
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 2, 2006
/node/2407

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingAGAINST U.S. AGGRESSION; AGAINST THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC 

FLASHPOINT IN THE FLATHEAD

US-Canada War Looms Over Energy, Water

by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report

Washington’s new tensions with its northern neighbor and largest trading partner appear to be over perceived Canadian reticence to support US imperial adventures in the Middle East. But the vast resources of Canada itself—made more critical both by instability in the energy-rich Mideast and by shortages of such basic commodities as water brought on by climate change—may be providing a long-term source of conflict between the two giants of North America. While on the economic front all talk is currently of integration and falling trade barriers, battles are already being waged by the grassroots both sides of the border against resource plunder and mega-development schemes. These could eventually mean war between the two longtime allies if a populist government comes to power in Ottawa and tries to turn off the spigot of south-bound resources—and the Pentagon has already drawn up plans for this contingency. Rumbles are already being felt in such unlikely places as the rolling farmlands of upstate New York, the grizzly-haunted pine forests of Montana’s wild Flathead Valley, the windswept high plains of northern Alberta, and the remote passages of the Arctic Sea.

Middle East Oil Wars and the Northwest Passage

This summer, global warming for the first time opened the long-sought Northwest Passage, as area covered by sea ice in the Arctic shrank to its lowest level since satellite measurements began 30 years ago. The normally ice-bound passage was now navigable to commercial ship traffic—and will likely become more so in the years to come. A new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research finds that the Arctic Ocean could become nearly devoid of ice during summer as early as 2040.

A navigable route between the Atlantic and Pacific as an artery for trade and resource exploitation had been sought for centuries, and was the elusive goad of the Lewis & Clark expedition. Now that it has been opened—if inadvertently—it will mean easier access to the Arctic and its resources, including oil. Ironically, it could thereby exacerbate global warming. It will likely also exacerbate the geopolitical struggle over the far north. Russian authorities have already announced they will open new ports on the Arctic Sea as major petroleum hubs for the 21st century.

This development comes just as Canada has been asserting sovereignty over Northwest Passage—in an unsubtle message to Washington.

The US Navy has for years sent its nuclear submarines under the ice through the Arctic Sea passage—a route that passes hundreds of Canadian islands, through straits as narrow as 20 kilometers. But when Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in Ottawa last year, he immediately announced it must stop. The US said no dice.

Parliamentary Secretary Jason Kenney said: “Any foreign government should ask permission before entering our territorial waters.” Sean McCormack of the US State department retorted: “We believe it is an international strait. It’s a longstanding policy of the US government.”

Ottawa announced it was dispatching troops to the Arctic to assert tis sovereignty claim: up to 52 soldiers in five snowmobile patrols to cover 4,500 kilometers, building airstrips on the sea ice, installing electronic sensing equipment, and laying the groundwork for two High Arctic bases. Harper’s government also proposed to build a new deep-water port for three armed icebreakers on the Arctic Sea.

Ottawa’s rift with Washington has been little abated by the switch from a Liberal to Conservative government last year. Canada has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan under NATO command—where they have sustained more than 70 fatalities, including one in a “friendly fire” incident when Canadian positions were strafed by US jets in Kandahar last September, leaving dozens more wounded. But Ottawa has declined to join Washington’s “coalition of the willing” in Iraq. And Canada is considering withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, according to an interim report by the Canadian Senate committee on national security and defense. The report demands more money for the operation and a bigger commitment from other NATO countries within a year. If these demands are not met, Ottawa should reconsider its mission, the head of the Senate committee Colin Kenny said upon release of the report. He asked: “Are Canadians willing to commit themselves to decades of involvement in Afghanistan, which could cost hundreds of Canadian lives and billions of dollars with no guarantee of ending up with anything like the kind of society that makes sense to us?”

President Bush angered some northern neighbors this February when his speech calling for an all-out allied effort against the Taliban failed to mention Canada. Bush singled out for praise the UK, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Turkey, Greece and Iceland. While the Foreign Affairs ministry was conciliatory (“I’m certain it’s just, maybe, a little error,” said Minister Peter MacKay), opposition leaders were far less sanguine. “Maybe with Harper leading Canada, he thinks it’s become the 51st American state,” said Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe. “That might explain it.”

In 2005, Liberal PM Paul Martin declined to participate in the missile defense system the US is building for North America. “This is our airspace, we’re a sovereign nation and you don’t intrude on a sovereign nation’s airspace without seeking permission,” Martin said. Paul Cellucci, the outgoing US Ambassador to Canada, saying he was “perplexed” by the decision, made clear that the US would not respect Canadian airspace in the event of an attack: “We simply cannot understand why Canada would in effect give up its sovereignty—its seat at the table—to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming towards Canada.”

A joint US-Canadian “Americas Command” proposed by the Pentagon after 9-11 has also failed to come into fruition, with Ottawa accusing Ambassador Cellucci of undue pressure on Canada to raise its defense budget.

Pressure from below was definitely felt in Ottawa in these matters—and especially from Canada’s increasingly restive First Nations. For over six months in 2001, the Dene Suline Indians of Cold Lake, Alberta, reoccupied their traditional territory at the Primrose Lake Air Weapons Range in protest of the NATO bombing of their territory. The Dene established a camp at the main entrance of the weapons range, accusing the Canadian government of illegally holding the land in violation of an expired 20-year lease—with Dene burial sites, and hunting and fishing grounds destroyed by daily bombing practice runs, and the Dene reduced to poverty in their own land, with alarmingly high rates of alcoholism and suicide. In June 2001, the Dene Suline also blocked an Alberta Energy Corporation (AEC) access road in the area and established a camp there, re-asserting their title to their homelands under the 1997 Delgamuukw Canadian Supreme Court decision, which affirmed the inherent rights of Native peoples. AEC is exploiting oil in the area, and has access to the Weapons Range, while the Dene do not.

In July 2007, First Nations activists held protests across Canada over the Canada Day holiday weekend in a National Day of Action against the Conservative government emphasizing land claims and other disputes. In Ontario, camouflage-clad Mohawks, some reportedly armed, blocked Highway 401 between Belleville and Napanee for more than 10 hours June 29 and also halted passenger and freight train service along the Canadian National Railway’s busiest corridor. Rail service between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa was shut for several hours.

Energy Wars

On the face of it, tensions notwithstanding, the trajectory since NAFTA has been all towards integration—in both the economic and military spheres.

This August, Harper, Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon met in Montebello, Quebec, for a third session on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP, or ASPAN in Spanish), an agreement increasing military and police cooperation between the three NAFTA partners. About 5,000 protesters, some dressed as clowns or guerrilla fighters, chanted “Bush go home!” near the Chateau Montebello, where the three leaders were meeting. Riot police, used tear gas, pepper spray and club to drive the protesters back at the gates.

In June, several were arrested at a protest in Halifax, Nova Scotia, against a conference to promote the “Atlantica” free trade zone proposal, with police using pepper spray and electric stun- guns. The Atlantica project, officially known as the International Northeast Economic Region (AINER), envisions new ports, transmission lines and superhighways to integrate Canada’s Maritime provinces with New England and upstate New York.

Massive new energy transfers are already planned—and are meeting local opposition both sides of the border.

The US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman Oct. 3 finalized designation of two controversial Mid-Atlantic Area National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor. Canadian power developers had been awaiting the Washington’s approval to supersede almost unanimous New York and Pennsylvania state and local objections to the corridors. The move was immediately protested by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. “This designation will allow the federal government to pre-empt New York’s legitimate oversight and process for reviewing and siting transmission projects within our state borders,” Spitzer said in a statement.

Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Secretary of Energy has the power to designate National Corridors, under which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) can issue permits for new transmission facilities over the heads of state and local authorities.

At immediate issue is the New York Regional Interconnect (NYRI), a proposed 190-mile 1,200-megawatt line of 130-foot pylons linking Marcy to New Windsor, NY, following the Delaware Valley, to deliver Canadian power to the New York City metropolitan area. NYRI Inc., which proposes to build the lines, is a secretive group of private investors headed by a Canadian entrepreneur, Richard Muddiman. Much of the right-of-ways for the line are to be seized by eminent domain. NYRI Inc. has threatened to sue New York State over legislation signed by outgoing Gov. George Pataki last year limiting NYRI’s use of eminent domain.

When the Marcy Line, the first major link between the New York and Canadian grids, was built in the 1970s following the first big thrust of hydro-electric development in northern Quebec, there were angry protests—especially at the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation straddling the New York-Canadian border of the St. Lawrence River, where Indians blockaded construction equipment. But critics point out that the NYRI would cut far closer to towns and homes than the Marcy Line did.

Also at issue in the Corridor is a plan by Allegheny Power of Pennsylvania to build a 37-mile line through the west of the state, delivering power from its coal-fired generators to out-of-state markets.

The Energy Department additionally approved a Southwest Area National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor, which will allow a 230-mile transmission line to connect Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant to the California grid—over the veto of Arizona state authorities.

But it is in the northern Rockies of Montana and British Columbia that acrimony over planned energy transfers and resource exploitation have resulted in a government surveillance scandal—and alarmingly bellicose cross-border rhetorical sniping by local politicians.

Surveillance Scandal Hits the Heartland

A front-page story by reporter Jessie McQuillan in the Oct. 11 issue of Montana’s weekly Missoula Independent reveals that members of the Alberta Energy Utility Board (EUB) this year hired four private investigators who infiltrated meetings and eavesdropped on conversations of landowners and their attorneys as they discussed opposition to proposed new international transmission lines in the region.

The project in question is a new Calgary-Edmonton line proposed by Altalink, Canada’s largest electricity transmission company. Altalink says the new transmission capacity is needed to supply Calgary’s power in coming years, but critics believe the line—to be built with taxpayer money but owned entirely by Altalink—would be used primarily to export power to the United States. Opponents have teamed up with other landowners who are organizing against another transmission line—proposed by Montana Alberta Tie Limited (MATL)—that would link Lethbridge, Alberta, to Great Falls, providing the first Canadian link to the Montana grid and a possible connection to the Altalink line.

Landowners had suspected that someone was spying on them during numerous hearings in spring 2007, but both Altalink and the EUB denied it. Finally, activists obtained documents under Canada’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP) that revealed that a private EUB investigator posing as a concerned landowner had (at least) joined a conference call between Albertans and Montanans opposed to the Altalink project.

One of the legitimate callers, Katrina Martin, who lives on a farm near Dutton, MT, along MATL’s proposed route, told the Independent: “The fact that a quasi-judicial agency would hire agents to do intelligence gathering on citizens engaged in an open, public process is scary and appalling. Obviously that board has decided who the enemy is, and that the people who have audacity to question these issues should be infiltrated and spied upon.”

Joe Anglin, president of the 800-member Lavesta Area Group in Alberta that’s fighting Altalink’s proposal, is among those who filed for the documents under the FOIP. He told the Independent: “We knew they were infiltrating our group from the beginning because we knew everyone in our group… in the middle of a bunch of grandmothers sat some 300-pound ex-RCMP-looking guy eating all the cookies!”

The EUB insists it hired the spies to help ensure security at tense public meetings—at one of which an elderly woman swung (and missed) at an EUB commissioner. But two separate investigations by the Canadian government concluded the EUB’s actions were illegal and “repulsive.” In September, the scandal resulted in the appointment of a new EUB chairman, William Tilleman, and the disbanding of the agency’s security unit. But farmers say EUB commissioners themselves should be held accountable—and on Sept. 30 chairman Tilleman announced it was voiding all the proceedings on the Altalink line. The review process that began in 2004 will start fresh once Altalink reapplies to construct the project.

“This EUB decision is the equivalent of granting a mistrial,” Tilleman said in a statement. “Albertans must be confident that this Board acts fairly, responsibly and in the public interest. Mistakes have been made on this file, and I believe the only way to re-establish public confidence is to go back to square one on this process.”

Hearings on the MATL line, meanwhile, opened in October at Lethbridge, Alberta—attended by wary activists from the local Citizens for Responsible Power Transmission. Said Lethbridge llama rancher Margaret Lewis: “It will be very difficult for us going into this hearing to forget what happened and to believe we’re having a fair hearing.”

And there will be plenty of opportunities for more such political battles in the years to come if the continental energy planners get their way. Energy giant TransCanada is planning a new massive series of power lines collectively known as NorthernLights, to facilitate future power transfers. The NorthernLights project envisions three new 3,000-megawatt arteries: one linking Montana to Los Angeles across the Rockies, a second stretching from northern Alberta down the West Coast to California, and a third connecting the oilfields of northeast Wyoming to Las Vegas, with possible extensions to LA and Phoenix.

While the MATL is being built ostensibly to export wind power, Canada’s vast hydrocarbon resources play explicitly into the NorthernLights plan—despite the boast on its website of “environmentally attractive” electricity. The Alberta leg of the NorthernLights project would start in the oil sands boomtown of Fort McMurray. Planned massive expansion of Canadian hydrocarbon exploitation provides another source of trans-border tension.

The Battle for the Flathead

Canada is the USA’s largest foreign supplier of energy. In 2006 Canada exported south 2.3 million barrels per day of oil and petroleum products (11% of U.S. supply); 3.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (16% of US supply); and 41.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity (1% of US supply).

The biggest chunk of Canada’s energy resources sit directly north of Montana, in Alberta—including 80% of its natural gas and the bulk of its crude supply. The crude, sunk deep in the tar sands below northern Alberta’s subarctic boreal forests, were long considered too difficult and expensive to access. But recent soaring oil prices have changed this.

The tar sands contain a thick substance called bitumen—a mix of oil, sand, water and clay—and the northern forests of Alberta are being rapidly razed to get at it. The process means scooping up two tons of tar sands for every barrel of oil that will finally be produced. The process also requires two to three barrels of clean water for each extracted barrel of bitumen, which then must be further refined. Much of the water needed for bitumen extraction is being drained from the Athabasca River. Alberta’s Pembina Institute boasts that oil sands production more than doubled to 1.1 million barrels per day between 1995 and 2004. The Alberta government anticipates oil sands production will grow to three million barrels per day by 2020 and five million barrels per day by 2030.

While development of the oil sands centers in Alberta’s far north, Montana’s Gov. Brian Schweitzer has proposed a series of seven new bitumen refineries for the state to process the imports.

Additionally, where coal is concerned, Alberta’s new thrust of energy development is sparking yet another cross-border imbroglio. Gov. Schweitzer himself is aggressively pushing a big expansion of the coal industry within Montana’s borders, but a proposed new coal mine just above the Montana line in Alberta is causing controversy—because of its proximity to Glacier National Park, and potential impact on a scenic river that flows south into US territory.

US and Canadian officials met this October in Paris to discuss how the international park on their border could be protected from a proposed coal mine nearby. Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park was designated by the UN as a World Heritage site in 1995. The mine, proposed by Canada’s Cline Mining Co., would be north of Montana’s Glacier National Park, which abuts Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, where the province meets British Columbia. The two parks make up the international park—and topped the agenda at the World Heritage Convention that convened in Paris Oct. 24-25.

Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester have urged that Washington work to add Waterton-Glacier to the UN’s list of endangered World Heritage Sites. Of some 850 World Heritage Sites, about 30 are classified as endangered. In a letter to the US Interior Department on the matter, Baucus and Tester said the mining could “contaminate one of the park’s most pristine rivers, destroy the habitat of endangered species, and compromise the natural character that makes the peace park a world treasure.”

Locals are especially worried about the impacts of the mining on the Flathead River, which flows from British Columbia into Montana. The wild Flathead Valley lies adjacent to Glacier National Park on the west. South of the park it broadens to make up the heartland of the Flathead Indian Reservation, which protects some of the USA’s last native bison range. South of the reservation, the Flathead meets the Clark Fork River, a tributary of the Columbia.

Cline Mining is currently seeking British Columbia’s approval for a mountaintop mine just above the headwaters of the Flathead’s North Fork. The mine would produce an annual 2 million tons of coal per year, to be shipped to China.

Cline is nearly done with the first step in British Columbia’s permitting process, outlining the issues that have to be addressed in a formal application. The state of Montana, the US Interior Department, State Department and Environmental Protection Agency have all commented, voicing concerns about potential downstream impacts—but “most of the comments were not included in the [permit] document,” according to Rich Moy, chairman of the nonprofit Flathead Basin Commission. That omission prompted Montana’s Gov. Schweitzer to draft a letter to the Canadian government calling for a more extensive environmental assessment.

Meanwhile, the grassroots is mobilizing. The towns of Whitefish, MT, and Fernie, BC, are currently considering a joint resolution urging Gov. Schweitzer and BC Premier Gordon Campbell to meet and discuss “trans-boundary issues”—specifically, potential threat to the Flathead River by coal-mining upstream in Canada.

There are indications other, bigger corporate players could be following Cline into the Flathead. This year, BP opened an office in Fernie, with an eye towards exploring for oil and coal in the valley.

In February 2007, British Columbia’s top mining minister Bill Bennet stepped down amid outrage at his anti-American sentiments—and Montanans who had been negotiating with the province over the controversial coal project were openly happy to see him go. “Mr. Bennett’s resignation may clear the way for a more constructive government-to-government discussion,” said Whitefish state senator Dan Weinberg, whose district adjoins Bennett’s, with only the international boundary separating the two.

In January, Bennett, a provincial lawmaker and who then held the Cabinet-level post of BC minister for mining, received an e-mail from a Fernie constituent, Maarten Hart—a veterinarian, hunter and president of the local Rod and Gun Club—who expressed concern about the coal project, charging that the BC government “bows to the almighty dollar and faces east three times each day (not to Mecca, but to Wall Street.)”

Bennett shot back cybernetically: “Let me be very direct with you, as you were with me. It is my understanding that you are an American, so I don’t give a shit what your opinion is on Canada or Canadian residents.”

Bennett’s response focused on the fact that Hart, as a “landed immigrant,” was once a US citizen. He called Hart a “fool,” “dumb” and a “self-inflated, pompous, American know-it-all.” Bennett wrote he was “not about to take that kind of bullshit from someone who, for all I know, is up here as an American spy who is actually interested in helping the US create a park in the Flathead.”

When news of the e-mail was leaked to the Vancouver Sun, Bennett resigned his Cabinet post. Premier Campbell called Bennett’s e-mail “unacceptable,” and even Bennett admitted it was “stupid and wrong,” attributed his “earthy” response to a rough life of bar brawls and knife fights, and of never finishing high school. But Hart responded that Bennett’s tirade was inappropriate—especially “for a man who is charged with representing sensitive mining and environmental negotiations with Americans.”

Bennett has championed the proposed mine, and repeatedly launched verbal assaults on lawmakers—including Sen. Baucus, who he once said was not welcome in Canada. Weinberg—who went camping in the contested wilderness last summer with a group of Canadian lawmakers—put a positive spin on the flame-out, saying he remained encouraged that “we have a great deal more in common than we have disagreements.”

He insisted that recent meetings between Montana and BC officials “showed that an overwhelming majority of local residents agree that the transboundary Flathead Valley is a great place that should not be mined.”

But the incident betrays the passions that can be unleashed when fortunes are to be made. And the conflict is likely to be even more impassioned when the resource in question is one which is necessary for life itself: water.

Water Wars

Water levels in the Great Lakes, a key artery for cross-border trade, are dramatically falling, with Lake Ontario about seven inches below where it was a year ago and levels in all five below long-term averages. For every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons. As a result, more ships are needed, adding millions of dollars to shipping companies’ operating costs, experts in maritime commerce estimate.

The International Joint Commission, which advises the US and Canada on water resources, is conducting a $17 million, five-year study to determine whether the shrinking of the Great Lakes is a result of climate change.

With almost a third of the Southeast now covered by an “exceptional” drought—the worst drought category—the notion of trans-border water transfers from Canada is likely to be floated once again. This idea, a perennial of Western water-brokers and engineering giants, has for decades been dismissed as technically unworkable—only to be revived in times of water crisis.

In July 2001, President Bush told reporters the United States would be interested in piping Canadian water down to the thirsty Southwestern states and that he would raise the issue with then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien at the upcoming G8 Summit in Genoa. The Canadian government immediately responded by insisting bulk exports of water from Canada weren’t on the table.

The Council of Canadians, which has led the campaign against water exports with the support of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Canadian Environmental Law Association, expressed outrage at Bush’s statement. The Council’s chair Maude Barlow accused Chretien of being willing “turn the tap”—despite his denial. “Canadians wanted bulk exports banned and the Liberals are opening the floodgates,” she charged.

Judy Darcy, CUPE’s national president, raised the prospect of a mass privatization of Canada’s water resources. “What is more fundamental to democracy than control over the water we drink?” she asked. “Access for all Canadians to a basic source of life is what’s at stake. Multinational corporations are trying to privatize water services in hundreds of Canadian municipalities and turn our water resources into an export commodity. They can’t buy the air we breathe, so now they want to buy and control the water we drink. What we are saying is simple: No water for profit.”

Journalist Philip Lee, in a series on the global water crisis for the Ottawa Citizen, noted that several Canadian politicians continued to openly push for water exports. A company called McCurdy Enterprises was seeking to export 49 billion liters of water a year from Newfoundland’s Gisborne Lake—with the support of the province’s Premier Roger Grimes

A California company, Sun Belt Water Inc., took Canada to court to force British Columbia to sell bulk water to the US, and claimed millions of dollars in damages for the business it says it has lost through Canada’s refusal to adhere to what it claims are the terms of NAFTA.

The great-grandfather of such proposals was the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA), designed by the Southern California engineering firm Parsons in cooperation with the provincial utility BC Hydro in the 1960s. NAWAPA called for reversing the flow of British Columbia’s Fraser River and diverting it into the Columbia system, and thence via a series of tunnels and canals to California and the Southwest.

An eastern branch of the scheme was devised in the ’70s by then-Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, whose massive James Bay hydro-electric complex was then under development. Bourassa’s proposal, dubbed the GRAND (Great Replenishment and Northern Development) Canal, called for damming the mouth of James Bay—a vast southern inlet of Hudson Bay, 100 miles across—and turning it into a giant fresh-water reservoir, fed by the rivers that Hydro-Quebec was already damming for power to be exported to the US Northeast. The GRAND Canal would divert the James Bay water into the Great Lakes, and thence (via a miracle of mega-engineering) into the Missouri River and points west.

The conventional wisdom is that the tide has turned against such hubristic schemes. In 1998 when Ontario granted the private Nova Group approval to export millions of liters of Lake Superior water by tanker to Asia, there was an immediate outcry on both sides of the border. The following year, the Canadian government announced a water export prohibition policy, introducing amendments to the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act to bar bulk-water removal from the Great Lakes.

The Canadian and US governments asked the International Joint Commission—established by the Boundary Water Treaty of 1909—to prepare a report on the bulk exports issue. After holding public hearings, the commission’s report recommended that governments “should not permit any new proposal for removal of water from the Great Lakes Basin to proceed unless the proponent can demonstrate that the removal would not endanger the integrity of the Great Lakes Basin.” The commission said there should be “no net loss” of water from the lakes—and argued that the era of major water diversions and transfers had passed, with dams across the American West being dismantled in the interests of ecological restoration.

The NAWAPA idea was kept alive by such fringe organizations as the far-right Lyndon LaRouche cult. But Bush’s 2002 comments indicate the resiliency of the concept in the corridors of power.

Another ominous sign is the revival of mega-scale hydro-electric development in northern Quebec—the so-called “James Bay II” project. The first series of hydro-dams on the rivers feeding James Bay under Bourassa in the 1970s provided the power for export to Con Edison and other Northeast utilities that necessitated construction of the Marcy Line. When Bourassa returned to power in 1984, he immediately announced the next phase of development, which called for damming all the remaining rivers flowing into James Bay, and lined up new contracts with Con Ed for the provincial utility Hydro-Quebec. As Bourassa’s book Power From the North made clear, his envisioned next phase would be the GRAND Canal project.

But the contracts were canceled (before the “grace period” ran out) in 1991 following an activist campaign both sides of the border. This was undertaken in solidarity with the Cree and Inuit indigenous inhabitants of the James Bay region, whose traditional lands were inundated in phase one of the project. The Cree had signed on to the first phase in return for economic benefits after the Canadian courts had ruled they could not stop the project, and the provincial government claimed that agreement also covered phase two. The Cree disagreed; the campaign was launched, the contracts axed, and James Bay II put on hold. Now Quebec, under Premier Jean Charest, has announced a downsized version of James Bay II, which calls for diverting the flow of the Rupert River a hundred miles north into the system of phase-one hydro-dams already built on the Eastmain River. While the Cree Grand Council has signed off on the project, the proposal has bitterly divided the Cree nation.

Meanwhile, the already-existing dams and reservoirs conceived as arteries of NAWAPA are sources of cross-border conflict. Lake Koocanusa, behind the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Libby Dam on the Kootenai River, a Columbia tributary, straddles the BC-Montana border, and was envisioned by NAWAPA’s architects as a key link in their ultra-ambitious scheme. The Kootenai is the next major river to the west of the Flathead, some 50 miles away over the Salish and Whitefish mountains—and also a source of US-Canada tension.

The Columbia River Treaty, negotiated to apportion waters to be affected by the Libby Dam in 1960, had already expired when the dam came online in 1975. Now, with environmentalists demanding sufficient water levels downstream to maintain threatened trout species, British Columbia has complained about insufficient water in the north end of the lake. BC Hydro has even threatened to divert the Kootenai River (spelled Kootenay in Canada) over the divide at Canal Flats into the Lake Columbia, the source of the Columbia River proper—which would leave Lake Koocanusa, the Kootenai and the Libby Dam dry.

Since the signing of NAFTA, Canadian energy exports to the US cannot fall below 1993 levels. Does that include water? Legal scholars argue that once any Canadian water is exported south, it would become a commodity subject to the provisions of the trade agreement. NAFTA guarantees equal access to natural resources on either side of the US-Canadian line. So once the faucet is turned on, it may be impossible to turn it off: it could be a treaty violation and cause for war.

Once infrastructure—and therefore subsistence and survival in a highly organized society—is dependent on imported water, Canadian water resources become a US national security issue. Whether it is oil, electricity or water, any future Canadian effort to re-assert sovereign control over resources could be challenged by Washington as NAFTA-illegal—and, ultimately, a casus belli.

Real Wars

The Canadian press has already reported secret Pentagon contingency plans to use upstate New York’s Ft. Drum as a springboard for a US invasion of Quebec. Details were also revealed in the Washington Post of Dec. 30, 2005, in an article amusingly entitled “Raiding the Icebox.” It revealed a 94-page document called “Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan—Red,” with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. The document calls for a Naval force to capture the port of Halifax, blockade Vancouver and secure the Great Lakes, while a land invasion starts by seizing the Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls. Army columns are then to advance on three fronts—marching up the shores of Lake Champlain to take Montreal, and across the Great Plains to take the railroad center at Winnipeg and the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with Great Britain. In the 1920s, US military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). Military theorists imagined a conflict between the US (Blue) and UK over international trade: “The war aim of RED in a war with BLUE is conceived to be the definite elimination of BLUE as an important economic and commercial rival.”

Since then, the plan has been repeatedly updated to changing political circumstances—most recently to a War on Terrorism context.

A 2002 study by a Toronto think-tank, the C.D. Howe Institute, warned that the US could use the military to seal the Canadian border if officials fear national security is threatened by loose Canadian immigration policy and policing. Said military historian J.L. Granatstein, author of the report: “Although terrorism poses a real threat, it is not the most serious crisis. The danger lies in wearing blinkers about the United States when it is in a vengeful, anxious mood… The United States is deadly serious about homeland defense. The Americans will act, alone if necessary.”

The US has already deployed specially-trained customs agents to detect explosives and unconventional weapons at Canada’s three busiest ports: Halifax, Montreal, and Vancouver—an unprecedented undertaking that media accounts openly said “would have been unthinkable prior to Sept. 11.” US troops have been assigned to northern border posts, and military helicopters patrol what was once hailed as the world’s longest undefended border.

Canadian intelligence services warn that at least 50 international terrorist groups—from al-Qaeda to Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers—operate in Canadian cities, and officials on both sides of the border now warn Canada is unprepared. “Montreal has a large multiethnic population into which it is easy for North Africans and other Muslims to disappear, but the real attraction is its location right on the Great Satan’s doorstep,” said David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and now chief of consulting firm Insignis Strategic Research. “Until Canada deals with an out-of-control immigration and refugee situation, the situation will deteriorate. We are heavily penetrated…forcing [the US] to take ever more defensive measures at the northern border.”

But as in Afghanistan and Iraq—where the facade of opposing “terrorism” and “weapons of mass destruction” has crumbled to reveal a naked grab for strategic oil reserves—designs on Canada’s vast natural resources may be the real imperative that underlies the tensions, militarization and war plans.

——

RESOURCES

Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
http://www.spp.gov/

Atlantica
http://www.atlantica.org/

Stop the Power Lines
Citizen opposition to the Mid-Atlantic Area National Corridor
http://www.stopthepowerlines.com/

Say No to NYRI
http://www.sayno2nyri.com/

NYRI
http://www.nyri.us

MATL
http://www.matl.ca/

Altalink
http://www.altalink.ca/

NorthernLights
http://www.transcanada.com/company/northernlights.html

Flathead Basin Commission
http://www.flatheadbasincommission.org

International Joint Commission
http://www.ijc.org/

Pembina Institute
http://www.pembina.org/

CD Howe Institute
http://www.cdhowe.org/index.cfm

LaRouche-ite Schiller Institute on NAWAPA
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html

REFERENCES

Abrupt Ice Retreat Could Produce Ice-Free Arctic Summers by 2040
Geophysical Research Letters, December 12, 2006
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/arctic.shtml

Power play by feds has Spitzer unhappy
Albany Times-Union, Oct. 6, 2007
http://timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?storyID=627841&newsdate=10/23/2007&BCCode=MBTA

Feds approve controversial power corridor
Pike County Courier, PA, Oct. 4, 2007
http://www.strausnews.com/articles/2007/10/06/pike_county_courier/news/1.txt

US rule jolts power line foes
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oct. 3, 2007
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07276/822430-55.stm

Feds, state at odds over California-Arizona transmission line
Business Journal of Phoenix, Oct. 2, 2007
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2007/10/01/daily28.html

Behind the Blackout
Thanks to deregulation, Queens merely a pawn in the utilities’ board game
by Bill Weinberg, Village Voice, Aug. 8, 2006
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0632,weinberg,74118,5.html

Power Surge:
How a government spying scandal and Alberta’s energy boom hit home in Montana
by Jessie McQuillan, The Missoula Independent, Oct. 11, 2007
http://www.missoulanews.com/index.cfm…

US and Canada to discuss coal mine near Waterton-Glacier Int’l Peace Park
Canadian Press, Oct 2, 2007
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jdvAXr1JOtloG1uQYKc1AvQg1ccg

US, Canada to discuss Glacier-area coal projects
The Missoulian, Oct. 3, 2007
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/10/03/news/mtregional/news08.txt

Whitefish-Fernie resolution would call for coal summit
Whitefish Pilot, MT, Oct. 11, 2007
http://www.whitefishpilot.com/articles/2007/10/11/news/news03.txt

Battle line on the northern border
High Country News, May 9, 2007
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=17022

Inch by Inch, Great Lakes Shrink, and Cargo Carriers Face Losses
New York Times, Oct. 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/nyregion/22oswego.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Cost, not emotion, likely to kill export idea
by Philip Lee, The Ottawa Citizen, Aug. 16, 2001
Online at EnvironmentProbe
http://www.environmentprobe.org/EnviroProbe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=2422

Raiding the Icebox
Behind Its Warm Front, the United States Made Cold Calculations to Subdue Canada
by Peter Carlson, Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901412.html

See also:

QUEBEC: PROTESTS ROCK NAFTA SECURITY SUMMIT
As Reports Reveal Free Trade’s Empty Promise
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
WW4 REPORT, September 2007
/node/4365

HYDRO-COLONIALISM ADVANCES IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH
Cree Nation Divided Over James Bay Mega-Project
by Bill Weinberg, Indian Country Today
WW4 REPORT, June 2007
/node/3980

THE QUEENS BLACKOUTS: KENNETH LAY’S REVENGE?
by Bill Weinberg
WW4 REPORT, August 2006
/node/2258

From our weblog:

Canadians march against Afghan mission
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 29, 2007
/node/4595#comment-307474

Ecology scapegoated in Southern California disaster
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 25, 2007
/node/4586

Montana to Kurdistan: global oil prices react
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 18, 2007
/node/4577

Global warming opens Northwest Passage
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 16, 2007
/node/4431

NAFTA security summit held in Ottawa
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 25, 2007
/node/3230

Canada reaches sovereignty deal with Cree nation
WW4 REPORT, July 17, 2007
/node/4235

Canada: Mohawks block roads, rail lines in National Day of Action
WW4 REPORT, July 3, 2007
/node/4172

Native nations protest US-Canada border restrictions
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 16, 2007
/node/3156

Canada to withdraw from Afghanistan?
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 16, 2007
/node/3153

Montana flashpoint for looming US-Canada war
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 15, 2007
/node/3150

Afghanistan: thousands displaced in Kandahar fighting
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 7, 2006
/node/2435

Canada asserts sovereignty over Northwest Passage
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 24, 2006
/node/1650

From our archive:

Chretien waffles on “Star Wars” participation
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 16, 2002
/static/64.html#canadian1

Ottawa-DC sniping slows military integration
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 9, 2002
/static/63.html#canada1

Alberta Indians resist NATO
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 9, 2002
/static/63.html#canada8

Who’s next: Canada?
WW4 REPORT, June 23, 2002
/static/39.html#who’snext6

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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Nov. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

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