Will We Be Putting Our Leaders on Trial?

An aboriginal claim hits the United Nations tomorrow. It is brought by Australia's Torres Strait Islanders. A coastal group facing devastating sea level rise, they contend that their government and, by implication, every government, owes its people a fundamental duty to ensure a livable environment.

...the Australians’ argument is the first to seek the weight of the United Nations behind such a climate claim, and it could set a precedent for how the populations most vulnerable to the effects of global warming can seek redress under international law.

It is also the first time that the Australian government — which has failed to meet emissions reduction targets and continues to approve embattled coal mine projects — has faced climate change litigation that asserts a human rights violation. The claimants call on the country to help fund sea walls and other infrastructure that might save the Torres Strait Islands, which have a population of about 4,500, and to meet the emissions targets set under the Paris climate agreement.

If successful, the case “would really break new ground internationally,” said John Knox, a professor of international law at Wake Forest University and a former special rapporteur on human rights and the environment to the United Nations.

A fundamental duty to ensure, i.e. safeguard, a livable environment. You might think that goes without saying. On the other hand, if you're part of the fossil energy economy you might find such a claim outlandish - as long as you're getting yours.

A livable future as a fundamental human right. There's an idea that is long overdue.

Chris Hedges on "Murdering the Wretched of the Earth"

There's a reason the Muslim poor flock to radical Islam, several reasons in fact.  They've been discussed at length before but Chris Hedges, in light of the massacres ongoing in Egypt, recaps:

Radical Islam is the last refuge of the Muslim poor. The mandated five prayers a day give the only real structure to the lives of impoverished believers. The careful rituals of washing before prayers in the mosque, the strict moral code that prohibits alcohol, along with the understanding that life has an ultimate purpose and meaning, keep hundreds of millions of destitute Muslims from despair. The fundamentalist ideology that rises from oppression is rigid and unforgiving. It radically splits the world into black and white, good and evil, apostates and believers. It is bigoted and cruel to women, Jews, Christians and secularists, along with gays and lesbians. But at the same time it offers to those on the very bottom of society a final refuge and hope. The massacres of hundreds of believers in the streets of Cairo signal not only an assault against a religious ideology, not only a return to the brutal police state of Hosni Mubarak, but the start of a holy war that will turn Egypt and other poor regions of the globe into a caldron of blood and suffering. 

The only way to break the hold of radical Islam is to give followers of the movement a stake in the wider economy, the possibility of a life where the future is not dominated by grinding poverty, repression and hopelessness. If you live in the sprawling slums of Cairo or the refugee camps in Gaza or the concrete hovels in New Delhi, every avenue of escape is closed. You cannot get an education. You cannot get a job. You do not have the resources to marry. You cannot challenge the domination of the economy by the oligarchs and the generals. The only way left for you to affirm yourself is to become a martyr, or shahid. Then you will get what you cannot get in life—a brief moment of fame and glory. And while what will take place in Egypt will be defined as a religious war, and the acts of violence by the insurgents who will rise from the bloodied squares of Cairo will be defined as terrorism, the engine for this chaos is not religion but the collapsing global economy, a world where the wretched of the earth are to be subjugated and starved or shot. The lines of battle are being drawn in Egypt and across the globe. Adli Mansour, the titular president appointed by the military dictator of Egypt, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, has imposed a military-led government, a curfew and a state of emergency. It will not be lifted soon.

He's right.   We support those who created the conditions of despair for the masses, who drive them into the arms of radical extremists, and then we dehumanize them, the better to prepare for their slaughter.  As Hedges points out, again correctly, this is only just getting started.

What is happening in Egypt is a precursor to a wider global war between the world’s elites and the world’s poor, a war caused by diminishing resources, chronic unemployment and underemployment, declining crop yields caused by climate change, overpopulation and rising food prices.

The belief systems the oppressed embrace can be intolerant, but these belief systems are a response to the injustice, state violence and cruelty inflicted on them by the global elites. Our enemy is not radical Islam. It is global capitalism. It is a world where the wretched of the earth are forced to bow before the dictates of the marketplace, where children go hungry as global corporate elites siphon away the world’s wealth and natural resources and where our troops and U.S.-backed militaries carry out massacres on city streets. Egypt offers a window into the coming dystopia. The wars of survival will mark the final stage of human habitation of the planet. And if you want to know what they will look like, visit any city morgue in Cairo.   

A Liberal Take on Air Canada and Canada Post

"The right to bargain collectively with an employer enhances the human dignity, liberty and autonomy of workers by giving them the opportunity to influence the establishment of workplace rules and thereby gain some control over a major aspect of their lives, namely their work... Collective bargaining is not simply an instrument for pursuing external ends…rather [it] is intrinsically valuable as an experience in self-government... Collective bargaining permits workers to achieve a form of workplace democracy and to ensure the rule of law in the workplace. Workers gain a voice to influence the establishment of rules that control a major aspect of their lives."

 

-  Facilities Subsector Bargaining Association v. British Columbia

Supreme Court of Canada, 2007 

The Harper government is moving to force striking Air Canada workers back to work with justifications as plausible as the Reichstag Fire and now they've got the same in store for striking Canada Post employees.

Canada once honoured its commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23 of which acknowledges the right to organize trade unions as a fundamental human right. 

Apparently Harper's thuggish corporatism now trumps even universal, fundamental human rights.  Harper and the greasy minds that follow him will, of course, argue that they're not impeding the right to organize trade unions.  No, indeed, all they're doing is cutting the legs off those unions once they seek to invoke collective bargaining.

Fiends.

The Right to Survival

The impacts of climate change are sparking a debate on just what is a "human right"?

Some nations want adequate supply of potable freshwater declared a human right.   Not surprisingly that's something supported by countries with severe freshwater threats and dismissed by nations particularly well water-endowed, such as our very own.

India is now debating whether food should be a right guaranteed to all of its people.   For India that's not a rhetorical debate.   As pointed out in a New York Times article, India's eight poorest states have more people living in poverty than Africa's 26 poorest countries.

For the governing Indian National Congress Party, which has staked its political fortunes on appealing to the poor, this persistent inability to make government work for [the poor] ...has set off an ideological debate over a question that once would have been unthinkable in India: Should the country begin to unshackle the poor from the inefficient, decades-old government food distribution system and try something radical, like simply giving out food coupons, or cash?



The rethinking is being prodded by a potentially sweeping proposal that has divided the Congress Party. Its president, Sonia Gandhi, is pushing to create a constitutional right to food and expand the existing entitlement so that every Indian family would qualify for a monthly 77-pound bag of grain, sugar and kerosene. Such entitlements have helped the Congress Party win votes, especially in rural areas.

These are largely internal debates now but, as our reaction to the water question clearly shows, there's a growing sense of unease among the "haves" to future demands from the "have nots."   Do not doubt for a minute that, in a world where the burden of seven billion mouths to feed has already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet's renewable resources, that faint whisper of calls for redistribution and equitable allocations, is bound to turn into a clamour.  It's just a matter of time.   And that's when we'll see just what kind of people we Canadians really are.

O'Connor Holds Kabul To A High Standard, Really He Does, He Even Says So.

Our slouch of a defence minister, Gordo O'Connor, has raced to Afghanistan after being caught asleep at the wheel (again), this time on the detainee issue.

Obviously not having a clue what he was talking about, O'Connor told the Commons that the detainees were fine because he would've heard from the Red Cross if they weren't. This veteran military man, a retired brigadier no less, had no idea how the Red Cross works.

So Harpo told Gordo to get his camos pressed and get his sorry ass to Kandahar and to be sure to wipe next time before he flushes. Here's what Galloping Gord told reporters when he arrived in Afghanistan. "I want to look the man in the eyes and I want to confirm that they are going to do what they say they're going to do"

Hey Gord, while you're at it, how about you take a few minutes to confirm that you're going to do what you say you're doing. It'd be a good start.

"We use the term detainee abuse but there's no proof that there is any detainee abuse," Mr. O'Connor said. "But it's an important factor because we hold the Afghan government to a high standard."

If he wants proof of detainee abuse, he should contact the US State Department which has issued its own proof of torture and disappearance of prisoners who fall into Afghan custody. As for the "high standard" bull crap, has this loser even figured out that control of this government has come into the hands of murderous warlords, drug barons and common thugs?