American Thuggery

By almost any metric, the United States is a rogue nation. The depth of its depraved thuggery was recently made evident to the world:

A resolution to encourage breastfeeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly.

Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

American officials sought to water down the resolution by removing language that called on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” and another passage that called on policy-makers to restrict the promotion of food products many experts say can have deleterious effects on young children.

Then the U.S. delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula manufacturers, upended the deliberations.

Captured by neoliberal forces, the once admired country resorted to mafia-like extortion to try to get its way:

Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the measure, was the first to find itself in the cross hairs.

The Americans were blunt: If Ecuador refused to drop the resolution, Washington would unleash punishing trade measures and withdraw crucial military aid. The Ecuadorean government quickly acquiesced.

Health advocates frantically sought another sponsor for the resolution, but none could be found as sundry countries cowered before the American behemoth. Then in a turn that amply demonstrates the inversion the world is currently experiencing, an unlikely ally came to the rescue:

It was the Russians who ultimately stepped in to introduce the measure — and the Americans did not threaten them.

The move to thwart maternal health benefits is part of a much larger pattern of strong-arm tactics from a nation clearly unmoored from moral underpinnings:

The Americans also sought, unsuccessfully, to thwart a WHO effort aimed at helping poor countries obtain access to life-saving medicines. Washington, supporting the pharmaceutical industry, has long resisted calls to modify patent laws as a way of increasing drug availability in the developing world, but health advocates say the Trump administration has ratcheted up its opposition to such efforts.

God bless America? Not on your life.

When Is A Scab Not A Scab?

When (s)he is a 'replacement worker'.

I have always loved the word 'scab'. A fitting description of strikebreakers, it is a word that conjures up ugly imagery, imagery quite appropriate for those who act without integrity by engaging in strikebreaking behaviour, which are essentially shameless public declarations of individual extollment of the self over the collective good. There can be few lower forms of human than scabs.



During his time as Ontario Premier, Bob Rae passed legislation that banned these scourges, legislation that was repealed when Mike Harris, devoid of any semblance of integrity, became the next premier. Tellingly, subsequent Liberal governments were quite happy to continue his neoliberal labour view. Scabs therefore are alive and well in Ontario.

And yet, despite the fact that we live in a time when collective-bargaining rights are under regular assault by scabs and their enablers, the word itself seems to have disappeared from our lexicon. The euphemism, replacement workers, is an anodyne that attempts to conceal the ugliness of the act of strikebreaking. One is reminded of Orwell's observations about the insidious use of euphemisms:

Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.

Tamper with the language and you tamper with the reality.

Take a look at the following article, about an ongoing strike at a Goderich salt mine.

A rural community is rallying around salt mine workers who have been embroiled in a strike since April, a disagreement that has involved wooden pallet barricades, demonstrations and busloads of replacement workers.

The workers at the Goderich mine have been off the job since April 27.

Unifor Local 16-O represents the workers, and alleges Compass Minerals has been flying in replacement workers from New Brunswick to break the strike while demanding concessions that include mandatory overtime, reduced benefits and a weakening of contracting-out provisions.

In a letter to the community on June 28, Compass Minerals said it has used contractors to produce salt to fill long-term orders, and had little choice to do so in a competitive market.

The strike ramped up when workers blockaded an access road to the mining site this past week to express their frustration over the use of replacement workers. Photos posted on Unifor Canada’s Twitter showed wooden pallets stacked high in a barricade on the road. Videos also showed Unifor national president Jerry Dias walking out the replacement workers from the mine as onlookers chanted “Don’t come back!”

Representatives from local Unifor unions across the country have rallied at the picket line with the Goderich workers and flooded social media with solidarity. Lana Payne, Unifor Atlantic Regional Director, shared an open letter on Twitter that had been written to Laura Araneda, CEO of Vic Drilling, the company Payne says has been allegedly flying the replacement workers from New Brunswick to the Goderich mine.

“By crossing the strike line and doing the work of striking miners, Laura Araneda’s replacement workers are undermining the bargaining power of fellow miners,” she wrote. “The fact is, there is always somebody willing to do your job for a lower wage in more dangerous conditions.

Now do a quick reread, this time replacing the term replacement workers with scabs.

You can see how language choices have a great impact on how we perceive things.

Perhaps the ugly reality about scabs is best reflected by Unifor national president Jerry Dias:

“Crossing a picket line is shameful behaviour that cannot be tolerated,” ... no job is worth stealing food from another worker’s family.”

I close with a video that should leave anyone who has ever crossed a picket line feeling deep, deep shame.

Calling All Steadfast Canadians

Being pro-Canadian instead of complacent and meek in the face of American tariff oppression can take many forms. Perhaps the strongest expressions of how we feel are to be found in our purchase and travel choices.

Tim Harper reports that many are making those choices:

If Canadians are, in a typically understated way, spending their vacation dollars at home, taking a few extra moments at the grocery store to determine where that ketchup was made or buying Ontario rather than California wines, a national statement is being made this summer.

While technically not a boycott, it is a means of condemnng the Trump administration and its mistreatment of traditional American allies.

It is not a boycott to decide to holiday in New Brunswick rather than Maine.

If I decide to forego an annual baseball and beach jaunt to the U.S., or as TVO’s Steve Paikin wrote, the U.S. doesn’t deserve his money, or Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson or NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh courteously decline an invitation to a July 4th party thrown by the U.S. ambassador in Ottawa, we are not bringing the White House to its knees.

Nobody shouted their decisions from the barricades. We’re not boycotting. We are making individual decisions.

Increasing numbers are making those individual decisions:

A Nanos Research poll published by The Globe and Mail Thursday showed 73 per cent of respondents were “likely or somewhat likely” to stop or cut back travel to the U.S.

Another 72 per cent said they were “likely or somewhat likely” to stop buying American products and 68 per cent said they were “likely or somewhat likely” to stop purchasing goods from U.S. retailers.

Others are taking even stronger measures. Martin and Carole Lajeunesse, co-owners of a restaurant in Quebec, decided that national integrity needs strong expression:

Martin ... suggested they pull the American wines from their menu. They asked the server who runs the restaurant’s Facebook page to post a notice, and she wrote, in French, “In solidarity with our Canadian jobs, LaLa Bistro suspends the sale of wines from the United States for an indefinite period of time.”

And the resistance is spreading:

Many Canadians who’ve had it with Trump just crave a chance to do something, almost anything. For instance, in Halton Hills—a collection of communities northwest of Toronto that adds up to a municipality of 61,000 people—the town council voted unanimously for a resolution to “encourage residents and businesses with the town to become knowledgeable about the origin of the products and services that they purchase [and] consider avoiding the purchase of U.S. products where substitutes are reasonably available.”

Individual empowerment is not just a lofty ideal. Everyone can realize it:

In Ottawa, labour lawyer Scott Chamberlain ... on a recent grocery trip for his family, ... found himself standing in front of a display of oranges from the U.S. and others from Morocco, so he picked the Moroccan produce, then decided to see if he could buy an entirely “Trump-free” grocery cart. “It wasn’t out of anger . . . it was more out of solidarity,” he says. “I was really proud that people set politics aside to put a common front together to support Canadians. It was an attack on all of us.”

Chamberlain has altered his travel plans, too. He has family in the Maritimes whom he visits three to four times a year, but now instead of driving through New England, his family will stay in Quebec and New Brunswick hotels.

Merideth Broughton, a paramedic living an hour north of Calgary in Torrington, Alta., has made the same decision. She had planned to travel throughout the U.S. Midwest with her dog Scout this summer:

But between the trade tariffs and the horror of detained migrant children, Broughton just won’t do it. “I can’t in good conscience contribute to that economy or that government,” she says. Instead, she and Scout will stick to the Badlands of southern Alberta and wander through Saskatchewan to visit friends and family.

Want to get in on the action? Here are two videos that may help inform your choices:

An Encouraging Development

Is momentum building? Let us hope so. As the following video explains, major restaurant brands are planning to ban plastic straws. (I suggest you turn off the sound in the following, as the overly-dramatic music is a bit much}:

To Go, Or Not To Go

I have written elsewhere on this blog about the decision I and others have made to boycott travel to the U.S. as long as Donald Trump and his peculiar brand of madness hold sway. I am happy to report that Steve Paikin has come to the same decision:

[I]t’s been a Paikin family tradition for many years to travel to the U.S. for a baseball road trip with my dad and as many of my kids as can attend. We’ve done Boston, Cleveland, New York , Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and others.

We’re not going to do it this year.

....when President Donald Trump began slapping tariffs on Canadian goods for reasons of “national security,” it felt wrong. It was an intellectually dishonest move. How could the country that fought alongside the U.S. in World War II, in Korea, and in Afghanistan be a national-security threat? It makes no sense.

Even most Americans seem to recognize how misguided the tariffs are, given the negative impact they’re having on innumerable U.S.-based businesses. And when I saw the federal Liberal government and the incoming Progressive Conservative provincial government speak as one on the stupidity of this policy (with the support of all other major parties), I thought: Okay, that’s it.

America, you just don’t deserve our money.

Even though as individuals we may doubt we have much influence, money, as they say, talks:

We will not spend hundreds of dollars on your baseball tickets. We will not spend hundreds of dollars on your restaurants and hotels. We will not spend hundreds of dollars on your gas. We will not spend hundreds of dollars at museums or at the theatre. We will not spend hundreds of dollars on souvenirs and gifts.

I think it’s time I looked at product labels of all kinds much more carefully. California wines? Not anymore. I’ll try some local brands, from Niagara-on-the-Lake or Prince Edward County. And maybe I should make the extra effort to purchase groceries at local farmers’ markets rather than buy American brand-name stuff at the supermarket.

On a personal note, since Trump imposed those absurd and insulting tariffs on us, I have decided (reluctantly) to extend my boycott to bourbon, (there's no liquor like it) and will instead begin exploring some of our Canadian whiskies. As well, although it is impossible to avoid American goods, I am trying as much as possible to purchase Canadian.

In light of the deteriorating connection to our southern neigbours, we must ask ourselves a fundamental question:

Do we regard ourselves simply as citizens of a globalized world, or does being Canadian still mean something to us? Your answer will no doubt tell you whether taking a stand against what the U.S. now represents is a worthwhile endeavour.

UPDATED: It Can Be Done

"Where there's a will, there's a way," my mother always said. The question is,"Does that will exist?"

These two videos offer a glimmer of hope:





UPDATE: If you crave even more good news about a ban that, if enacted, will improve the health of coral reefs, click here.

Happy Canada Day

Vive la difference!