Sandra Finley

2015-09-24 Urgent action needed to combat online (“cyber”) violence against women and girls, UN report

 Anti-SLAPP & SLAPP, Corporate & Individual manipulation of Justice system, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Peace or Violence  No Responses »
Aug 152016
 

RELATED POSTING:

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Urgent action needed to combat online (“cyber”)  violence against women and girls, UN report

http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2015/9/cyber-violence-report-press-release

Millions affected globally, but most countries still failing to effectively address growing problem

(Revised / updated on 12 October 2015)

A new report released today by the United Nations Broadband Commission reveals that almost three quarters of women online have been exposed to some form of cyber violence, and urges governments and industry to work harder and more effectively together to better protect the growing number of women and girls who are victims of online threats and harassment.

The paper notes that despite the rapidly growing number of women experiencing online violence, only 26 percent of law enforcement agencies in the 86 countries surveyed are taking appropriate action.

Entitled ‘Combatting Online Violence Against Women & Girls: A Worldwide Wake-Up Call’, the paper was released earlier today at an event at United Nations Headquarters in New York by the Commission’s Working Group on Gender, which is co-Chaired by UNDP Administrator, Helen Clark, and UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Working Group members, which also include representatives from the tech sector and civil society, hope the paper will mobilize the public and private sectors to establish concrete strategies aimed at stemming the rising tide of online violence against women. Without concerted global action to curb the various escalating forms of online violence, an unprecedented surge of ‘cyber violence against women and girls (cyber VAWG)’ could run rampant and significantly impede the uptake of broadband by women everywhere. The paper notes that cyber VAWG already exists in many forms, including online harassment, public shaming, the desire to inflict physical harm, sexual assaults, murders and induced suicides.

The rapid spread of the Internet means that effective legal and social controls of online anti-social and criminal behaviours continue to be an immense challenge. And in the age of the social Internet and ‘anywhere, anytime’ mobile access, cyber violence can strike at any time, and can relentlessly follow its targets everywhere they go.

“In this paper we’re arguing that complacency and failure to address and solve cyber violence could significantly impede the uptake of broadband services by girls and women worldwide,” said ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, who serves as co-Vice Chair of the Broadband Commission, alongside UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova. “The Net is an amazing resource for personal empowerment, and we need to ensure that as many girls and women as possible benefit from the amazing possibilities it offers.”

 

Key findings of the paper include:

Women in the age range of 18 to 24 are uniquely likely to experience stalking and sexual harassment in addition to physical threats.

One in five female Internet users live in countries where harassment and abuse of women online is extremely unlikely to be punished.

In many countries women are reluctant to report their victimization for fear of social repercussions.

Cyber VAWG puts a premium on emotional bandwidth, personal and workplace time, financial resources and missed wages.

 

“Violence against women and girls is never acceptable anywhere, no matter whether it is committed on the streets, in the home, or on the information highway,” said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark. “To achieve sustainable development for all, we must build a world where women and girls can live their lives free of violence and fulfil their potential as valued and equal members of society.”

“Online violence has subverted the original positive promise of the internet’s freedoms and in too many circumstances has made it a chilling space that permits anonymous cruelty and facilitates harmful acts towards women and girls,” said UN Women’s Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. We want to reclaim and expand the opportunities it offers. That means recognizing the scale and depth of the damage being done – and taking strong, concerted steps to call it – and stop it.  Abuse online is still abuse, with potency and very real consequences.”

The paper presents a set of Key Recommendations, proposing a global framework based around three ‘S’s – Sensitization, Safeguards and Sanctions.

  • Sensitization – Preventing cyber VAWG through training, learning, campaigning and community development to promote changes in in social attitudes and behavior.
  • Safeguards – Implementing oversight and maintaining a responsible internet infrastructure through technical solutions and more informed customer care practices
  • Sanctions – Develop and uphold laws, regulations and governance mechanisms to deter perpetrators from committing these acts.

The paper argues that rigorous oversight and enforcement of rules banning cyber VAWG on the Internet will be an essential foundation stone if the Internet is to become a safe, respectful and empowering space for women and girls, and, by extension, for boys and men.

 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/broadbandcommission

 

 

 

2016-07-28 Canadian company sold armoured vehicles to South Sudan: UN Report, Globe & Mail

 Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Aug 152016
 

I am impressed by the G&M’s work on this issue.    Kudos to journalist Geoffrey York.

At the G&M page:   short video, Stephane Dion’s  (Minister Responsible) reply to Reporter’s questions.   Rubbish.

Also, links to related articles.

– – – – – – –  – – – – – – —

by  Geoffrey York

JOHANNESBURG — The Globe and Mail

Last updated

A Canadian-owned company sold more than 170 armoured vehicles to South Sudan’s military in the midst of a brutal civil war, a United Nations report says.  Some of the vehicles were later observed in heavy combat zones, according to a separate report by an arms-control advocacy group.

Human-rights observers, including UN experts, have documented how South Sudan’s army has engaged in massacres, rapes, looting, arbitrary arrests and a scorched-earth strategy against civilians since warfare erupted in December, 2013. Tens of thousands have died in the violence since then, making it one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts.

The armoured vehicles sold to South Sudan were manufactured by Canadian-owned Streit Group at a factory in the United Arab Emirates, a UN expert panel said in a report submitted to the Security Council earlier this year.

A Globe investigation over the past 18 months has documented Canada’s sales of arms overseas to countries with poor human-rights records, including a $15-billion deal to sell weaponized armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia.

In April, The Globe reported that a UN panel accused Streit Group of violating an international arms embargo on Libya in 2012 by selling armoured vehicles to the country without obtaining advance approval from a UN sanctions committee.

Streit Group, founded in Ontario in the 1990s and owned by Canadian businessman Guerman Goutorov, describes itself as “the world’s leading manufacturer of armoured vehicles.”

A spokesman for Canada’s Global Affairs department said this week that the federal government “takes seriously” the issue of arms exports, but he described Streit’s sale of armoured vehicles to South Sudan as a transaction between that country and the UAE, since the vehicles were manufactured in a UAE factory.

When arms equipment is manufactured outside Canada, even if the company is Canadian-owned, the federal government considers those sales to be outside the jurisdiction of Canada’s export controls. Critics have called this a “loophole” that should be closed. Canadian diplomats in UAE have described Streit as a Canadian company.

The UN expert panel, established by the Security Council to monitor the UN sanctions against those responsible for the South Sudan conflict, says Streit sold 173 Typhoon and Cougar armoured personnel carriers in 2014 to South Sudan’s national army, known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

The panel said the armoured vehicles from Streit Group belong to the SPLA, but were imported and maintained by Crown Automobiles, a company owned by Obac William Olawo, a South Sudan businessman with close connections to South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir.

The panel gave no details on the army’s use of the vehicles. But a separate report, by U.S-based research and advocacy group Control Arms, described how the SPLA used 50 Cougar and Typhoon armoured personnel carriers that it obtained from Streit Group’s UAE factory between 2012 and 2014 for $9-million (U.S.).

“Both the Cougar and Typhoon APCs were subsequently observed in different locations within South Sudan between May and December, 2014, including in areas of Unity State where the conflict has been intense,” the group said in a report.

South Sudan’s purchase of armoured vehicles from Streit Group was also confirmed in a separate database maintained by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, although this database cited a smaller number, 45 vehicles, acquired from 2012 to 2014.

Streit Group did not respond to e-mailed questions from The Globe and Mail. But its website includes the address of a Streit Group sales office in South Sudan, and it has told defence-industry media that it has sold armoured vehicles to South Sudan.

Last year, the U.S. government imposed a $3.5-million (U.S.) fine on companies affiliated with Streit Group and two of its corporate officers because of nine unlicensed sales of armoured vehicles to foreign countries from Streit factories in the United States.

Arms exports to South Sudan could also be a violation of the international Arms Trade Treaty, approved by the UN General Assembly in 2013 and ratified or signed by 133 countries since then. The treaty would ban the export of weapons to specific countries if the weapons could be used for serious human-rights violations.

A public-opinion poll this month found widespread concern in Canada about the sale of weapons to human-rights violators.

Canada has never signed the treaty. The government announced last month that it will sign it next year, but it also said the signing won’t lead to any change in Canada’s existing rules.

Atrocities and war crimes by all sides in the South Sudan conflict have been well-documented since the war began in 2013. An inquiry by the African Union, for example, found that the government and rebels had committed massacres, rapes, beheadings, ethnic cleansing, forced cannibalism and other atrocities.

The UN expert panel, describing a government offensive in Unity State last year, said the SPLA and its allies “continue to implement their scorched-earth strategy, with egregious human-rights abuses, massive forced population displacements, the systematic destruction of livelihoods and food crops and the raiding of cattle.”

The panel added: “The ultimate objective of the government offensive appears to be to render communal life unviable, leaving the population with nothing.”

Because of the human-rights abuses, Canada and the United States have already imposed sanctions on specific individuals in South Sudan who are blamed for the conflict.

“Estimates of casualties due to the conflict range from 10,000 to 40,000 people and are possibly much higher, and over 1.5 million have been displaced internally or as refugees,” Global Affairs says on its website in explanation of the Canadian sanctions on the South Sudanese individuals.

South Sudan was strongly supported by the United States and Canada in 2011 when it became the world’s newest independent country. But since then the country has spiralled into political chaos and ethnic conflict.

A new eruption of bloodshed this month in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, has sparked renewed demands for an arms embargo. More than 300 people were killed in several days of heavy fighting between forces loyal to President Kiir and the forces of his rival, Riek Machar. Civilian neighbourhoods were shelled, and shells hit UN compounds where civilians took shelter.

On July 11, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the UN Security Council to impose an immediate arms embargo on South Sudan. Dozens of human-rights groups, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, have made the same demand.

“Rarely has a country squandered so much promise, so quickly,” Mr. Ban said in a statement. “What kind of leadership is it that resorts to deadly weapons and identity politics, time and again? Failed leadership.”

Follow Geoffrey York on Twitter: @geoffreyyork   

2016-08-12 Our Greatest National Security Threat? Perpetual War, by William Astore – – retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) TomDispatch

 Peace or Violence  No Responses »
Aug 122016
 

Why military dissent is not an oxymoron

by  William Astore

To quote former President Eisenhower, who as supreme commander of Allied forces in World War II had learned something of the true nature of war, “Only Americans can hurt America.” (Photo: Joseph Holmes / Flickr)

 

The United States is now engaged in perpetual war with victory nowhere in sight. Iraq is chaotic and scarred. So, too, is Libya. Syria barely exists. After 15 years, “progress” in Afghanistan has proven eminently reversible as efforts to rollback recent Taliban gains continue to falter. The Islamic State may be fracturing, but its various franchises are finding new and horrifying ways to replicate themselves and lash out. Having spent trillions of dollars on war with such sorry results, it’s a wonder that key figures in the U.S. military or officials in any other part of America’s colossal national security state and the military-industrial complex (“the Complex” for short) haven’t spoken out forcefully and critically about the disasters on their watch.

Yet they have remained remarkably mum when it comes to the obvious. Such a blanket silence can’t simply be attributed to the war-loving nature of the U.S. military. Sure, its warriors and warfighters always define themselves as battle-ready, but the troops themselves don’t pick the fights. Nor is it simply attributable to the Complex’s love of power and profit, though its members are hardly eager to push back against government decisions that feed the bottom line. To understand the silence of the military in particular in the face of a visible crisis of war-making, you shouldn’t assume that, from private to general, its members don’t have complicated, often highly critical feelings about what’s going on. The real question is: Why they don’t ever express them publicly?

 

“Perpetual war is a far greater threat to democracy in our country than ISIS, Russia, or any other external threat you want to mention.”

To understand that silence means grasping all the intertwined personal, emotional, and institutional reasons why few in the military or the rest of the national security state ever speak out critically on policies that may disturb them and with which they may privately disagree. I should know, because like so many others I learned to silence my doubts during my career in the military.

 

My Very Own “Star Wars” Moment

As a young Air Force lieutenant at the tail end of the Cold War, I found myself working on something I loathed: the militarization of space. The Air Force had scheduled a test of an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile to be launched at high altitude from an F-15 fighter jet. The missile was designed to streak into low earth orbit to strike at the satellites of enemy powers. The Soviets were rumored to have their own ASAT capability and this was our answer. If the Soviets had a capability, Americans had to have the same — or better. We called it “deterrence.”

Ever since I was a kid, weaned on old episodes of “Star Trek,” I’d seen space as “the final frontier,” a better place than conflict-ridden Earth, a place where anything was possible — maybe even peace. As far as I was concerned, the last thing we needed was to militarize that frontier. Yet there I was in 1986 working in the Space Surveillance Center in Cheyenne Mountain in support of a test that, if it worked, would have helped turn space into yet another war zone.

It won’t surprise you to learn that, despite my feelings, which couldn’t have been stronger, I didn’t speak up against the test. Not a peep. I kept my critical thoughts and doubts to myself. I told myself that I was doing my duty, that it wasn’t my place to question decisions made at high levels in the administration of then-President Ronald Reagan. You can’t have a disciplined and orderly military if troops challenge every decision, can you? Orders are to be obeyed, right? Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die — especially since we were then at war with the Soviets, even if that war fell under the label of “cold.”

So I buried my misgivings about facilitating a future shooting war in orbit. I remember, in fact, hoping that the ASAT test would go well and that I’d be seen as effective at my job. And in this I think I was probably pretty typical of military people, then and now.

The F-15 ASAT program was eventually cancelled, but not before it taught me a lesson that’s obvious only in retrospect: mission priorities and military imperatives in such a hierarchical situation are powerful factors in suppressing morality and critical thinking. It’s so much easier, so much more “natural,” to do one’s job and conform rather than speak out and buck a system that’s not made for the public expression of dissenting views. After all, a military with an ethos of “we’re all volunteers, so suck it up — or get out” is well suited to inhibiting dissent, as its creators intended.

To those who’ve been exposed to hierarchical, authority-heavy institutions, that lesson will undoubtedly come as no surprise. Heck, I grew up Catholic and joined the military, so I know something about the pressures to conform within such institutions. In the Church, you learn — or at least you did in my day — that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, and the “old guard” priests and nuns I encountered were more than ready to encourage that fear. In the military, you learn from day one of basic training that it’s best to put up and shut up. No grumbling in the ranks. No quibbling. Yes, sir; no, sir; no excuse, sir. Cooperate and graduate. That conformist mentality is difficult to challenge or change, no matter your subsequent rank or position.

There’s a sensible reason for all this. You can’t herd cats, nor can you make a cohesive military unit out of them. In life and death situations, obedience and discipline are vital to rapid action.

As true as that may be, however, America doesn’t need more obedience: it needs more dissent. Not only among its citizens but within its military —

maybe there especially.

 

Unfortunately, in the post-9/11 era, we’ve exalted and essentially worshipped the military as “our greatest national treasure” (the words of former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta at the recent Democratic convention). The military has, in fact, become so crucial to Washington that aspiring civilian commanders-in-chief like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump lean on retired generals to anoint them as qualified for the job. (For Trump, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn did the honors; for Hillary, General John Allen.)

The Pentagon has, in a very real sense, become America’s national cathedral. If we’re going to continue to worship at it, we should at least ask for some minimal level of honesty from its priests. In militarized America, the question of the moment is how to encourage such honesty.

Call it patriotic dissent. By “dissent” I mean honest talk from those who should know best about the hazards and horrors of perpetual war, about how poorly those conflicts have gone and are going. We desperately need to encourage informed critics and skeptics within the military and the Complex to speak their minds in a way that moves the national needle away from incessant bombing and perpetual war.

Yet to do so, we must first understand the obstacles involved. It’s obvious, for example, that a government which has launched a war against whistleblowers, wielding the World War I-era Espionage Act against them and locking away Chelsea Manning for a veritable lifetime in a maximum security prison, isn’t likely to suddenly encourage more critical thinking and public expression inside the national security state. But much else stands in the way of the rest of us hearing a little critical speech from the “fourth branch” of government.

 

Seven Reasons Why It’s So Hard to Break Ranks  

 

As a start, it’s hard for outsiders to imagine just how difficult it is to break ranks when you’re in the military. So many pressures combine to squelch dissent — everything from feelings of loyalty and patriotism to careerist concerns and worries about punishment. I wasn’t immune from such pressures, which is why my story is fairly typical. As I’ve said, I had my criticisms of the military, but I didn’t begin to air them until 2007, two years after I’d retired.

Why the delay? I can offer explanations but no excuses. Unless you’ve been in the military, you have little idea how all-enveloping and all-consuming such a life can be. In a strange way, it may be the closest thing to true socialism in America: base housing provided and tied to your rank, government doctors and “socialized” medicine for all, education for your children in base schools, and worship at the base chapel; in other words, a remarkably insular life, intensified when troops are assigned to “Little Americas” abroad (bases like Ramstein in Germany). For Star Trek: The Next Generation fans, think of Ramstein and similar bases around the world as the Borg cubes of American life — places where you’re automatically assimilated into the collective. In such a hive life, resistance is all but futile.

This effect is only intensified by the tribalism of war. Unit cohesion, encouraged at all times, reaches a fever pitch under fire as the mission (and keeping your buddies and yourself alive) becomes all-consuming. Staring at the business end of an AK-47 is hardly conducive to reflective, critical thinking, nor should it be.

 

Leaving military insularity, unit loyalty, and the pressure of combat aside, however, here are seven other factors I’ve witnessed, which combine to inhibit dissent within military circles.

  1. Careerism and ambition: The U.S. military no longer has potentially recalcitrant draftees — it has “volunteers.” Yesteryear’s draftees were sometimes skeptics; many just wanted to endure their years in the military and get out. Today’s volunteers are usually believers; most want to excel. Getting a reputation for critical comments or other forms of outspokenness generally means not being rewarded with fast promotions and plum assignments. Career-oriented troops quickly learn that it’s better to fail upwards quietly than to impale yourself on your sword while expressing honest opinions. If you don’t believe me, ask all those overly decorated generals of our failed wars you see on TV.

 

  1. Future careerism and ambition: What to do when you leave the military? Civilian job options are often quite limited. Many troops realize that they will be able to double or triple their pay, however, if they go to work for a defense contractor, serving as a military consultant or adviser overseas. Why endanger lucrative prospects (or even your security clearance, which could be worth tens of thousands of dollars to you and firms looking to hire you) by earning a reputation for being “difficult”?

 

  1. Lack of diversity: The U.S. military is not blue and red and purple America writ small; it’s a selective sampling of the country that has already winnowed out most of the doubters and rebels. This is, of course, by design. After Vietnam, the high command was determinednever to have such a wave of dissent within the ranks again and in this (unlike so much else) they succeeded. Think about it: between “warriors” and citizen-soldiers, who is more likely to be tractable and remain silent?

 

  1. A belief that you can effect change by working quietly from within the system: Call it the Harold K. Johnson effect. Johnson was an Army general during the Vietnam War who considered resigning in protest over what he saw as a lost cause. He decided against it, wagering that he could better effect change while still wearing four stars, a decision he later came deeply to regret. The truth is that the system has time-tested ways of neutralizing internal dissent, burying it, or channeling it and so rendering it harmless.

 

  1. The constant valorization of the military: Ever since 9/11, the gushing pro-military rhetoric of presidents and other politicians has undoubtedly served to quiet honest doubts within the military. If the president and Congress think you’re the best military ever, a force for human liberation, America’s greatest national treasure, who are you to disagree, Private Schmuckatelli?

 

America used to think differently. Our founders considered a standing army to be a pernicious threat to democracy. Until World War II, they generally preferred isolationism to imperialism, though of course many were eager to take land from Native Americans and Mexicans while double-crossing Cubans, Filipinos, and other peoples when it came to their independence. If you doubt that, just read War is a Racket by Smedley Butler, a Marine general in the early decades of the last century and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor. In the present context, think of it this way: democracies should see a standing military as a necessary evil, and military spending as a regressive tax on civilization — as President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously did when he compared such spending to humanity being crucified on a cross of iron.

 

Chanting constant hosannas to the troops and telling them they’re the greatest ever — remember the outcry against Muhammad Ali when, with significantly more cause, he boasted that he was the greatest? — may make our military feel good, but it won’t help them see their flaws, nor us as a nation see ours.

 

  1. Loss of the respect of peers: Dissent is lonely. It’s been more than a decade since my retirement and I still hesitate to write articles like this. (It’s never fun getting hate mail from people who think you’re un-American for daring to criticize any aspect of the military.) Small wonder that critics choose to keep their own counsel while they’re in the service.

 

  1. Even when you leave the military, you never truly leave: I haven’t been on a military base in years. I haven’t donned a uniform since my retirement ceremony in 2005. Yet occasionally someone will call me “colonel.” It’s always a reminder that I’m still “in.” I may have left the military behind, but it never left me behind. I can still snap to attention, render a proper salute, recite my officer’s oath from memory.

 

In short, I’m not a former but a retired officer. My uniform may be gathering dust in the basement, but I haven’t forgotten how it made me feel when I wore it. I don’t think any of us who have served ever do. That strong sense of belonging, that emotional bond, makes you think twice before speaking out. Or at least that’s been my experience. Even as I call for more honesty within our military, more bracing dissent, I have to admit that I still feel a residual sense of hesitation. Make of that what you will.

Bonus Reason: Troops are sometimes reluctant to speak out because they doubt Americans will listen, or if they do, empathize and understand. It’s one thing to vent your frustrations in private among friends on your military base or at the local VFW hall among other veterans. It’s quite another to talk to outsiders. War’s sacrifices and horrors are especially difficult to convey and often traumatic to relive. Nevertheless, as a country, we need to find ways to encourage veterans to speak out and we also need to teach ourselves how to listen — truly listen — no matter the harshness of what they describe or how disturbed what they actually have to say may make us feel.

 

Encouraging Our Troops to Speak More Freely

 

Perpetual war is a far greater threat to democracy in our country than ISIS, Russia, or any other external threat you want to mention. To again quote former President Eisenhower, who as supreme commander of Allied forces in World War II had learned something of the true nature of war, “Only Americans can hurt America.”

The military and the entire apparatus of the burgeoning national security state should exist for a single purpose: to defend the country — that is, to safeguard the Constitution and our rights, liberties, and freedoms. When it does that, it’s doing its job, and deserves praise (but never worship). When it doesn’t, it should be criticized, reformed, even rebuilt from the ground up (and in more modest, less imperial fashion).

But this process is unlikely to begin as long as our leaders continue to wage war without end and we the people continue to shout “Amen!” whenever the Pentagon asks for more weapons and money for war. To heal our increasingly fractured democracy, we need to empower liberty and nurture integrity within the institution that Americans say they trust the most: the U.S. military. Dissenting voices must be encouraged and dissenting thoughts empowered in the service of rejecting the very idea of war without end.

Some will doubtless claim that encouraging patriotic dissent within the military can only weaken its combat effectiveness, endangering our national security. But when, I wonder, did it become wise for a democracy to emulate Sparta? And when is it ever possible to be perfectly secure?

 

© 2016 TomDispatch.com

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, is a TomDispatch regular. He welcomes reader comments at wjastore@gmail.com. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Astore discusses the difficulty of speaking one’s mind in the military, click here, or download it to your iPod here.

2016-08-12 How to Break the Power of Money, by David Korten. YES! Magazine

 Economy / Political Economy, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category)  No Responses »
Aug 122016
 

We can refuse to accept the pervasive, but false, claims that money is wealth and a growing GDP improves the lives of all.

by David Korten

“Money is just a number, an accounting chit we accept in exchange for things of real value because we have been conditioned to do so almost from birth,” David Korten writes. (Photo: yuoak/iStock)

Our current political chaos has a simple explanation. The economic system is driving environmental collapse, economic desperation, political corruption, and financial instability. And it isn’t working for the vast majority of people.

It serves mainly the interests of a financial oligarchy that in the United States dominates the establishment wings of both the Republican and Democratic parties. So voters are rebelling against those wings of both parties—and for good reason.

As a society we confront a simple truth. An economic system based on the false idea that money is wealth—and the false promise that maximizing financial returns to the holders of financial assets will maximize the well-being of all—inevitably does exactly what it is designed to do:

 

  1. Those who have financial assets and benefit from Wall Street’s financial games get steadily richer and more powerful.

 

  1. The winners use the power of their financial assets to buy political favor and to hold government hostage by threatening to move jobs and tax revenue to friendlier states and countries.

 

  1. The winners then use this political power to extract public subsidies, avoid taxes, and externalize environmental, labor, health, and safety costs to further increase their financial returns and buy more political power.

 

This results in a vicious cycle of an ever greater concentration of wealth and power in the hands of those who demonstrate the least regard for the health and well-being of others and the living Earth, on which all depend. Fewer and fewer people have more and more power and society pays the price.

A different result requires a different system, and the leadership for change is coming, as it must, from those for whom the current system does not work.

 

Awareness of system failure is widespread and growing.

Awareness of system failure is widespread and growing. We see it in the rebellion against the establishment wings of the major political parties. We see it as previously competing social movements join forces to articulate and actualize a common vision of a new economy. We see it in varied and widely dispersed local citizen initiatives quietly rebuilding the relationships of caring communities. We see it in millions of defectors from consumerism, who by choice or necessity are living more simply.

Analysis of the sources of the system failure, however, rarely goes beyond vague references to capitalism, neoliberalism, Wall Street, and immigrants.

Most of us have been conditioned by corporate media and economics education—along with the basic fact that we need money to buy the things we need or want—to accept the pervasive, but false, claims that money is wealth and a growing GDP improves the lives of all.

It rarely occurs to us to challenge these claims in our own thinking or in conversations with friends and colleagues. So they persist and allow the corporate establishment to limit the economic policy debate to options that sustain its power.

To build a truly coherent movement with the necessary strength to replace the failed system with one designed and managed to self-organize toward a world that works for all, we must challenge its bogus claims as logical and practical fallacies. And simultaneously affirm the self-evident truth that:

 

We are living beings born of and nurtured by a living Earth. Life exists—can exist—only in living communities that self-organize to create the conditions essential to life’s existence. Money is just a number, an accounting chit we accept in exchange for things of real value because we have been conditioned to do so almost from birth.

 

We who work for peace, justice, and sustainability have the ultimate advantage. Truth is on our side. And the deepest truths, those on which our common future depends, live in the human heart. Let us each speak the truth in our own heart so that others may recognize and speak the truth in theirs. Together we will change the human story.

  • – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

This article was written for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensee

Dr. David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, president of the Living Economies Forum, and a member of the Club of Rome. He holds MBA and PhD degrees from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School.

2016-08-07 Local Residents Force Monsanto to Tear Down GMO Seed Plant in Argentina, from Sustainable Pulse.

 Empowerment, Freedom of Speech. (Remove some wrong postings from category), Genetically Modified  No Responses »
Aug 092016
 

Monsanto have announced that they will dismantle their half-built multi-million dollar GMO seed plant in Malvinas, Argentina, following protests from local citizens over the past 3 years.

malvinas 2

Local Malvinas citizens and GMO Free campaigners from across Argentina forced Monsanto to stop the construction of their GMO seed plant in 2014, through well-coordinated protests at the construction site.

Sources from the head office of Monsanto in Latin America told local Argentinian media that the decision has been made to dismantle the controversial seed plant; the unnamed Monsanto spokesman stated; “The plant was designed to treat 3.5 million hectares of maize, however last year only 2.5 million hectares were sown.” Thus, he stated added “an investment of almost 1500 million makes no sense.”

The Monsanto spokesman also conceded that the local pressure and blockade of the construction site by Malvinas residents and environmentalists had been a factor in the company’s decision.

Several lawsuits have been filed against Monsanto over the illegality of the Malvinas construction permit and the environmental impacts of the project. These lawsuits are ongoing.

Sofia Gatica, one of the leaders of the blockade in Malvinas, told Inf’OGM that “It’s been almost three years that Monsanto has not been able to put a brick or a wire at the construction site… The company is leaving the field but does not yet recognize its defeat in this battle. We talked with those who have to dismantle what remains. We remain on alert and continue blocking, waiting to see what will happen. We want the site to now be devoted to organic and sustainable agriculture.”

2016-08-10 Julian Assange files appeal on UN ruling

 Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis  No Responses »
Aug 092016
 

http://www.news.com.au/world/europe/julian-assange-files-appeal-on-un-ruling/news-story/2a1d3427775a27dbc8c6029e475eedad

APNews Corp Australia Network

 

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange has filed an appeal in a Swedish court over the ruling by a United Nations working group that his confinement inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London amounted to arbitrary detention.

The UN panel called on the Swedish and British authorities earlier this year to end the Australian’s “deprivation of liberty”, respect his physical integrity and freedom of movement, and afford him the right to compensation.

In May, a Stockholm district court upheld an arrest warrant against Assange, who is wanted for questioning in Sweden over a sex allegation, which he denies.

Julian Assange #embassycat. Picture: Twitter/@EmbassyCat

Julian Assange #embassycat. Picture: Twitter/@EmbassyCatSource:Supplied

He fears being taken to the United States to be quizzed over the activities of WikiLeaks if he goes to Sweden.

Assange filed an appeal at Sweden’s Court of Appeal of Svea on Tuesday, arguing that Sweden must comply with the UN group’s findings that his deprivation of liberty was unlawful and that Sweden must release and compensate him for the harm caused.

A representative of Assange’s legal team said on Tuesday: “The proceedings will test whether Sweden complies with its binding treaty obligations and whether it acts in good faith under the UN human rights system.”

WikiLeaks pointed out that the FBI and US Department of Justice informed a federal court in the United States that “prosecutive efforts” remain under way against WikiLeaks.

The alleged offences include espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage, electronic terrorism and general conspiracy.

Last week WikiLeaks released 20,000 emails showing election “rigging” in the US democratic primary process, leading to a number of resignations of senior executives.

Assange has been confined to the Ecuadorean embassy in London since July 2012, when he sought asylum to avoid extradition.

 

2016-08-01 The doctor who beat big tobacco. Responsible investing. Disinvestment. Comprehensive article. The Guardian.

 Empowerment, Health  No Responses »
Aug 082016
 

When Dr Bronwyn King discovered her pension fund was investing in the cigarette companies that were killing her cancer patients, she was staggered. And she knew she had to act

by Gideon Haigh

Monday 1 August 2016

 

On Good Friday this year, Dr Bronwyn King and her husband were staying with her parents in the quiet coastal town of Torquay in Victoria, Australia. They started watching a movie – although King, as she often is, was only half-there, busily pecking at her laptop.

“AXA – news …” said the subject line of the email from a French insurance executive. “In confidentiality,” it read: “we have decided to divest tobacco … If you can, let’s discuss further. Thanks for your help.” King felt momentarily giddy. It was six years since she had sent the first of tens of thousands of hopeful, courteous but determined emails with such ends in mind. She had already persuaded 35 Australian superannuation funds, as Australians call their private pension funds, controlling nearly half the total funds under management to shun tobacco. AXA, the world’s second biggest insurer, was her greatest success yet. But she passed up a celebratory glass of wine: there was work to do, on the details and timing of the announcement. When her family turned in, they left King, as they often do, at her laptop.

Two months later at Geneva’s plush Beau Rivage Hotel, King looked out over a sea of faces, mostly delegates gathered for the World Health Assembly, and introduced her “new best friend”, AXA boss Thomas Buberl. AXA, he said, would forthwith sell €200m of tobacco stocks: there was applause. It would also, he added, run down €1.6bn of tobacco corporate bonds. There was a hush. Had he just said billion?

In an old war, a new front had opened. Tobacco kills six million people a year: the McKinsey Global Institute deems it humankind’s greatest self-generated social burden, ahead even of war and terrorism. Yet as an issue, observes King’s colleague Clare Payne, it has receded in public consciousness: “There’s this tendency for people to think: ‘Oh we’re done with tobacco, aren’t we? Everyone knows. It’s just a choice thing for people now.’ When we’re actually in an epidemic – history’s first epidemic of a non-communicable disease.”

To restore it to the headlines, then, is no mean feat. “She’s a star,” says Cary Adams, CEO of the Union for International Cancer Control, who just over a year ago put King in charge of the Global Task Force for Tobacco Divestment. It’s not a mantle that rests easily with King. All the 41-year-old oncologist at Melbourne’s Epworth Healthcare feels she’s done is take to heart her hippocratic oath, especially the injunction to “do no harm”.

Into her mid-20s, King’s career had seemed mapped out. At Fintona Girls’ School in the Melbourne suburb of Balwyn, she had been a star junior swimmer, thriving on the daily pre-dawn starts and unrelenting competition, climaxing in medals at national championships and a victory in the Pier-to-Pub, a famous open water race in Australia. On completing medical studies in 1999, she became an Australian swimming team doctor, and weighed up specialising in sports medicine and paediatrics.

In February 2001, however, King began three months as a radiation oncology resident in the lung cancer unit of Peter MacCallum Cancer hospital. She was, she confesses, a reluctant conscript. Radiation oncology, which uses giant linear accelerators to beat back advancing cancers, is a technically and emotionally challenging field of medicine, undertaken underground for the containment of its x-ray emissions, dedicated chiefly to the very sick. And sickest of all are smokers.

For King it was an education. The five-year survival rate after diagnosis for lung cancer is 15%: her job was largely to alleviate its acute associated sufferings. Most people have an image of lung cancer sufferers propped in bed subsiding gently, maybe with a bit of a cough, possibly on oxygen. The reality is very different. In a fifth of cases, for example, lung cancer metastasises to the brain, inducing paralysis and loss of cognitive function: the patient, literally, loses their mind. Death can come violently too. One morning King arrived to find the corner of a ward absent not only its bedclothes but its curtains and furnishings. The night before a patient had essentially drowned in her own blood from a burst vessel, drenching staff in her death throes. In the room were three other terrified patients who had heard the whole thing.

Almost every interaction bore witness in some way to tobacco’s toll. Taking a history from a new female patient one day, King asked her age. “I’m 43,” the woman replied. “I’m getting quite old.” It transpired that her whole immediate family had died in their 40s from smoking-related cancers. “I had this overwhelming sense of the impact of tobacco,” King recalls. “The public did not know what was going on. They didn’t know because I was a doctor and I hadn’t known. Until I worked there. I started to wish I had a television camera with me, so people could see what I was seeing.”

I’m a doctor. Doctors aren’t good with money. Most of us don’t even really like talking about it

Bronwyn King

But so much was out of sight for a reason – to which King was first introduced by an older patient who beckoned her from his bed, looked around furtively, and whispered: “This is because of the smoking, isn’t it?” When she said it probably was, he nodded and looked away. Here were lung cancer’s little-acknowledged secondary symptoms: disgrace and shame. Where families could be relied on to rally around sufferers from breast and prostate cancer, tension surrounded those with tobacco-related illness, who were perceived as having brought cancer on themselves. This has been an unforeseen impact of the public health campaign to scare smokers straight: in a recent survey, 30% of Australians agreed with the sentiment that lung cancer patients were less deserving of sympathy than other cancer patients. “Lung cancer has become the syphilis of the 21st century,” says the head of Peter MacCallum’s lung cancer unit, Professor David Ball. “Patients are regarded as victims of their own lack of self-control. Whereas they’re actually victims of a concerted and successful campaign by the tobacco industry to turn them into addicts.”

It was Ball, a fixture at Peter Mac since 1973, who became King’s lodestar. He instilled an environment of kindness and hope. Young doctors, says Ball, can feel overwhelmed: “I’ve had people in training in this specialty who’ve eventually been reduced to tears, saying they can’t go on. They want all their patients to get better. Life’s not like that.” He encourages them to think differently:

For a doctor, lung cancer sufferers are tremendously rewarding to work with. They don’t come in saying: ‘Why me? I’m pissed off. Why aren’t you working harder to find a cure?’ They come in feeling ashamed. When you reassure them that you want to make their life as good as it can be, they’re immensely grateful. Because they tend to stay long periods, you get to know them as people too. And you’re at that very serious time of life, where the questions are deep and philosophical, and existential concerns come to the fore.

Those questions resonated with King. “People say that if you don’t know what you want to do before you work with David, you will afterwards,” she says. “He was the first doctor I really wanted to be – a great teacher, a great colleague, interested in everyone and everything. In that three months, I got to know patients, I got to know families, I worked with an inspiring medical team, I felt so privileged, and it changed me forever.” She dug in for what became the seven-year haul towards adding FRANZCR – Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists – to her postnominals. After a couple of years she was joined in this pursuit, and in her life, by Dr Mark Shaw, a quietly-spoken New Zealander whom she met at Geelong’s Andrew Love Cancer Centre and married. Yet her life-change remained incomplete until she and her husband emerged from their high-stakes, high-stress discipline to do something of utmost normality – buy a house.

King calls it “the story”; maybe it should be “The Story.” It’s how she prefaces most presentations – if ever time precludes it, she feels regretful. “It explains everything, really,” she says. “Sometimes I apologise to audiences for having told it so often. But people always come up afterwards and say: ‘I love that story’.”

The scenario, a conversation about her finances with a consultant from superannuation fund Health Super in the Peter MacCallum cafeteria in March 2010, could hardly have been more prosaic. In fact, King was standing to leave when a final question crossed her mind: was she meant to specify how she wanted her money invested? No need, said the consultant: her money, as it is with 75% of Australians, was in the “default option”.

 Dr Bronwyn King at the Epworth radiation oncology department in Melbourne, Australia.

Dr Bronwyn King at the Epworth radiation oncology department in Melbourne, Australia. Photograph: Meredith O’Shea for the Guardian

King asked about the alternatives. Oh, came the reply, there was a “greenie option”, involving no investment in mining, alcohol or tobacco. The answer brought her up short. “Does that mean I’m currently investing in tobacco?” she asked. Well yes, the consultant replied: “Everyone is.” King sat back down.

These were stocks whose product was being condemned and restricted by every government round the country

Michael Dwyer

It was worse. Two weeks later the consultant confirmed that four of the five biggest holdings in the international component of Health Super’s default option were tobacco-related: British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Swedish Match. King shared this exposure with the overwhelming majority of Peter Mac’s 2,500 staff members. “We’re a dedicated cancer hospital,” she recalls. “There was nowhere else this could have mattered more. The idea that all of us, the doctors, the nurses, the occupational therapists, the speech pathologists, were invested in tobacco companies … well, it had to be fixed.” King’s concerns were immediately shared by Peter Mac’s CEO, Craig Bennett, who accompanied her to a meeting with members of Health Super’s executive and investment team.

The response was cordial but bemused. “It was strange for a financial institution to be approached by members about these issues,” King recalls. “Mainly they were surprised.” A “good-natured” discussion ensued. Other factors then conspired to relegate tobacco to a back burner: Health Super commenced a merger with Sydney-based First State Super. In the hiatus, King started educating herself. Australian super funds had only between 0.5 and 1.3% of their assets in tobacco. But in a $2tn pool, that was still in the region of $10bn. The seven biggest funds with health professionals as members all offered “greenie” opt-outs, designated “sustainable”, “ethical” or “socially responsible”. But four of these actually had money in tobacco.

After a year’s to-and-fro with Health Super, King finally got in front of its board, flanked by Craig Bennett and David Ball, punctuating her PowerPoint presentation with knockout statistics: that someone in the world dies from tobacco use every eight seconds; that these include 15,000 Australians a year; that no substance takes a steeper toll of lives and years lost.

King was nervous and exhilarated: “I was presenting to all these people from a world I knew nothing about sitting next to the man who knows everything [Ball].” She was also shortly to take maternity leave: “I thought: ‘If this doesn’t work, it’s probably going nowhere.’” But the response was gratifying: “I could also tell by the end of that meeting we had a lot of friends.” The impression deepened at the first instance of what would be a recurrent experience, when a director trailed her to the lift. “Just so you know,” the director said, “my mother died of lung cancer. Thank you for doing this.”

About to fold, Health Super’s board bequeathed the issue to its new parent. First State Super CEO Michael Dwyer is an unusual boss – inspired by visiting Timor-Leste in 2000, he co-founded Australia for UNHCR, which raises funds for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He sensed a problem it might be prudent to get ahead of: a group with 40% of its members in health services that had $170m invested in tobacco was bound to hear more about it.

Like other super funds, First State Super was required to observe the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act, binding trustees at all times to act in members’ best interests, which has tended to be interpreted by law in a narrowly financial sense. But at this point, another statute made its presence felt: tobacco share prices were hit by, among other things, the proclamation of Australia’s Tobacco Plain Packaging Act in 2011. “I could tell the board that these were stocks whose product was being condemned and restricted by every government round the country,” says Dwyer. “They had no redeeming feature. As Bronwyn says: ‘There’s no such thing as a safe cigarette.’” In July 2012, CEO and doctor put their names to a press release declaring First State Super the first Australian superannuation fund to renounce tobacco; six months later HESTA, whom King had also courted, followed suit. And though the process had taken two years, she was used to long hauls. “I started thinking,” she says, “if they could do it, why not others?”

Superannuation conferences can be dry affairs. So when Dwyer started dropping King into programmes through 2013 and 2014, her presence and message quickly gained a following. Grabbing audiences with The Story, she did not let go. “I’ve never seen anyone network like Bronwyn,” says Michael Baldwin, CEO of the Funds Executive Association, an industry group whose conference she addressed in June 2013. “It’s a skill I wish I had. People love dealing with her.” She distributed a business card bearing the rubric Tobacco Free Portfolios, featuring a logo designed online for $300 transfiguring the ribbon that is a cancer remembrance’s best-known symbol into a cigarette. She piled up cards she collected and studiously emailed the addressees, politely petitioning to meet directors, trustees and investment managers – even just to “have a coffee”.

Those meetings regularly begat further meetings, and also elicited personal confidences. In any group of five people she sat down with, King found, at least one person would be harbouring a story about how tobacco-related illness had touched their lives; down the track, two chairmen would recuse themselves from votes about their funds’ tobacco exposures, fearful of emotion clouding their corporate decision making.

Pregnant through some of this time with a second child, King found that her most incisive pitch was illuminating the tobacco industry’s exploitation of the young. The average age at which Australian smokers take the habit up, 15 years and nine months, is actually high by world standards. Globally it’s estimated that 80-100,000 children start smoking every day – so much for the notion of smoking being based on mature, fully-informed choice. What’s more, according to the International Labour Organisation, up to 60% of the 33 million engaged in tobacco farming worldwide are under 16. To those who challenged that tobacco stocks were historically good performers, King had a brisk rejoinder: “If a business can live with six million deaths and externalising €2tn in health costs a year while employing mainly children, then it probably won’t find it difficult making money. All it has to do is adjust its moral compass.”

King was careful, all the same, not to scold. After all, much of this information was new to her too – and as a medical practitioner she might have been expected to know it. In fact, as she realised, medicine has historically been divided between clinicians like herself, who treat people, and public health specialists, concerned with society. So she sought out the likes of Professor Simon Chapman at University of Sydney and Professor Mike Daube from Curtin University, whose experiences in tobacco control stretched back to the 1970s. They were impressed. “I get a lot of approaches from people with crackpot ideas,” says Chapman. “Bronwyn immediately struck me as different – someone highly intelligent, very organised, and street smart. Not to mention engaging and vivacious in an area that’s stereotyped as deadly earnest and tinged with moralism.”

Says the wryly humorous Daube: “She’s such a deeply unpleasant person, isn’t she?”

While the tone of King’s campaign came naturally, she was shrewd enough to understand it as an attribute. She shrank from calling herself an “activist”; she was simply an “oncologist”. She denied hers was a “cause”; she spoke instead of pursuing her “interest”. She did not regard financial institutions as “targets”; instead she was seeking “partners”. She respected confidentiality, avoided confrontation, declined to court the media, and drew on her own experience as exemplifying the involuntary nature of much tobacco investment, which had its institutional counterparts. “I presented to one fund that took sustainability very seriously,” King recalls. “They had a ‘sustainable investment’ option. I looked into it. They chose their international shares via the Dow Jones sustainability index – a best of sector index which BAT [British American Tobacco] is part of … The board members of this super fund were … well, they felt tricked. Before I got home I had an email from their CEO saying: ‘We’ve issued a comprehensive tobacco free mandate across our portfolio.’”

By mid-2014, King’s initial epiphany had become almost all-consuming. A dozen funds had divested more than $A1bn of tobacco stocks. With two small boys, she was not sleeping much anyway, but she was enjoying herself. Tobacco Free Portfolios was winning support not only from business leaders but Australian politicians of all stripes: Liberal health minister Sussan Ley, former Labor health minister Nicola Roxon, the Greens’ Richard Di Natale and independent Andrew Wilkie all recorded video testimonials. Papers were being invited for the forthcoming biennial World Cancer Conference, which the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) happened to be staging in Melbourne. When King impulsively submitted an abstract, she had her first glimpse of the world of global tobacco control, and an opportunity to spread The Story. It cast its now-familiar spell.

The only time King falters in making the case for Tobacco Free Portfolios is in making the case for herself. And four and a half years after starting, she remained a one-woman band paying for things on her credit card. “I’m a doctor,” she says. “Doctors aren’t good with money. Most of us don’t even really like talking about it.” Introduced to the UICC boss, Cary Adams, she started talking about how much more she could do in Australia if she could afford it – just a little money to cover expenses. “You know,” said Adams, “you’re not thinking big enough.”

Adams is a former banker: prior to this role, he had been chief operating officer of Lloyds TSB. Maybe it was time his new community started talking to his old industry. Unbeknownst to King, the UICC every two years takes a local project to a “global platform”. They were shortly to do it again. “Leave this with me,” Adams said. “I’ve got big plans.”

There had been such plans before. Under the anti-tobacco sun, little is outright new. In the UK, activists had eyeballed the City as far back as the 1970s, buying single shares in tobacco companies so as to lob questions at annual meetings. After one, Mike Daube recalls, he was taken aside by Rothmans chairman Lord Pritchard, who offered to fund the protest campaign of his choice … providing it had nothing to do with tobacco.

Lots of companies flourish their social responsibility credentials. They’re good for business

Richard Daveney, Northwestern University

Divestment was trialled in the US in the 1980s, partly inspired by the boycott of companies invested in apartheid South Africa. Activists first cajoled the American Medical Association into urging medical schools to withdraw from tobacco funds. In the 1990s several universities and state pension funds followed suit. But efforts petered out after 1998’s Master Settlement Agreement (in which 46 states settled healthcare lawsuits with the four biggest US tobacco companies), which perversely aligned the interests of big tobacco and state legislatures dependent on them for future funds. And opinion remains divided on the efficacy of divestment. “As long as another investor buys what a university, pension fund, or a health insurer sells,”, says leading anti-tobacco authority Professor Alan Blum, of the University of Alabama, “there’s no net loss of investor confidence in the stock or capital in the company’s coffers.”

Anything attached to what’s conventionally abbreviated as CSR (corporate social responsibility) and ESG (environment, social, governance) also raises fiduciary questions. Does a manager of funds owe clients anything other than maximum returns? Is socially responsible investment even possible? In the 1990s, Philip Morris ran a stealth campaign against “social investing”, relying on an oft-cited 1980 paper by two distinguished American law professors. In “Social Investing and the Law of Trusts”, John Langbein and Richard Posner argued, in the context of disinvestment in South Africa, that “the trustee who sacrifices the beneficiary’s financial well-being for another object breaches both his duty of loyalty to the beneficiary and his duty of prudence in investment”; Langbein was subsequently employed by Philip Morris as a consultant.

Has the position changed? Professor Richard Daveney of Northeastern University, another veteran of the anti-tobacco movement, thinks so: “The Chicago School position argued by Milton Friedman is that the corporation has only one objective, which is greed, or shareholder return. Which means that any organisation doing socially responsible investing can get away with it only if is a complete fraud… and does not cost the company a penny. But nobody argues that any more. Lots of companies flourish their social responsibility credentials. They’re good for business. And there are business judgment rules which offer a board of directors a large amount of leeway.”

If you invest in tobacco, you are part of that killing machine

Princess Dina Mired

Two multilateral instruments have further widened that leeway. Ten years ago, after consultation with a group of big institutional investors, the United Nations laid out six “Principles of Responsible Investment”: there are today 1,500 signatories. The principles are aspirational and non-binding, but the first articulates a departure from circumscribed conceptions of fiduciary duty: “We will incorporate ESG issues into our ownership policies and practices.” And while UN PRI does not single out tobacco, another UN treaty does: in force since 2005, the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has been signed by 180 countries, representing 89%of the world’s population. The framework is exacting and comprehensive, committing governments to a wide variety of risk minimization measures, taxes, regulations and prohibitions – including on investment. Article 5.3 specifies that “no branch of government, including local government, should have any financial interest or investment in the tobacco industry.” So far, only three countries have complied: New Zealand since 2007, Norway since 2009, Australia since 2013. Some even seem unaware of it, and not just the usual delinquents: the UK is presently rolling local government pension funds including their tobacco investments into seven sovereign wealth funds.

So divestment, says public health specialist Simon Chapman, has a different context, as well as a broader purpose. “The standard critique that someone sells then someone else buys misses the symbolic importance of building the rank odour around the industry,” he says. “That odour already exists in the health and medical professions and in the general population – when we poll them, we even get it from smokers. Building that consciousness among people making financial decisions furthers that delegitimisation.” Investment in tobacco, argues King, is a devil’s bargain. “When you invest in a company, you want that company to thrive, don’t you?” she says. “But do you really want big tobacco to thrive?”

Like a lung cancer, tobacco is also metastasizing as a public health issue. When the UICC appointed Tobacco Free Portfolios to run its global divestment initiative in March 2015, Adams appointed to its as chair a darling of the anti-cancer movement. Since her son’s diagnosis with leukaemia 20 years ago, Princess Dina Mired has dedicated her life to improving cancer treatments in Jordan: she is director-general of the Amman foundation of the King Hussein Cancer Center, her country’s largest.

Introduced to King, Princess Dina loved The Story: “It was one person seeing something shameful and deciding to do something about it, by herself, knocking on doors, showing commitment and never giving up.” More than that, she sensed the need for a form of tobacco control aimed at supply rather than demand. It is poorer countries, with weaker public health consciousness, that will chiefly bear tobacco’s brunt: the World Health Organisation estimates that by 2030 they will account for four in five tobacco-related deaths. The reasons are not far to seek.

“As countries like Australia, the US and Canada have been increasing regulation and hiking up prices, tobacco companies have made extra efforts in the Middle East and Africa,” she says. “Since the Arab Spring, we are a stressed-out population, and we are game … They [tobacco companies] are zooming on our youth in a really big way.” Today more than a third of Jordanians smoke and the proportion is growing: the crop of tobacco-related cancers being sown prelude a bitter harvest. “And if you invest in tobacco,” she adds, “you are part of that killing machine.”

Heading a Global Task Force, King still had unfinished business in Australia. But she now had a helper. Lawyer Clare Payne worked at Macquarie Bank for 11 years before founding an initiative called the Banking and Finance Oath: an attempt to popularise for finance industry professionals a code of practice akin to the hippocratic oath. So when she and King watched each other speak consecutively at a responsible investment conference in November 2014, they felt a natural kinship. “Bron’s achieved more than most people have in20 years of responsible investment,” says Payne. “She’s got more than engagement. She’s got action.” Payne joined Tobacco Free Portfolios as “chief operating officer”, even though her “office” was a cleared out built-in wardrobe in the Sydney cottage she shares with her young daughter.

 

Boards now faced two advocates, Payne with her corporate experience perhaps slightly steelier. Where King was always sunnily optimistic, Payne groaned inwardly at counterarguments trotted out, like a board chair who couldn’t see a problem with tobacco because an uncle had smoked till he was 95, not to mention the familiar slippery slope fallacies. “I remember one day this American saying to me: ‘Let me just play devil’s advocate here… ,’” says Payne. “And I thought: ‘Really? Aren’t we beyond that now? Unless it’s your view. Otherwise we’re just proceeding from a silly starting point.’” To Payne, the problem was straightforward: it was persuading the powerful to heed the people. “Australian society accepts tobacco control,” she says. “They don’t want their children to smoke. If they smoke themselves, they want to stop. They want fewer people to die. Governments want better health outcomes. Funds should reflect that.”

King, meanwhile, was pondering how to replicate across the world her Australian system. She tapped her “partners” for contacts and introductions, never failing to follow up the faintest lead. She would start days in oncology at Epworth Healthcare with two sheets of paper: her patient schedule, and her Tobacco Free Portfolios to-do list. The patients came first, their needs acute, their questions poignantly familiar. “‘How long?’” says King. “That’s what they all want to know. ‘My daughter’s getting married. Will I make it?’ ‘My daughter’s having a baby in January. Will I live to see it?’ ‘My son’s graduating next year. Will I be able to go?’”

 

Of time, she was constantly reminded, there was never enough. So any minute before, between or after patientcare was an opportunity to make a phonecall, send an email, or dash into the central business district. Nights steadily became Skype marathons. One evening her husband walked in with a cup of tea suggesting she take a break. “Quick, close the door!” she exclaimed. “I’m about to talk to Kuwait!” King laughs: “He looked at me and it was, like, ‘Who are you?’ He thought I’d lost the plot.”

Extending the filaments of her network also involved serious travel. In July 2015, King made her first trips to Washington and New York. In September, she took in a Principles of Responsible Investment conference in London and visited the World Health Organisation in Geneva. In November she travelled to Istanbul for the World Cancer Leaders summit, and swung on to London for a first look at the City.

Engagement with the tobacco industry is futile. Positive influence is impossible

Anonymous investor

Where doors were now open in Australia, they were only tentatively ajar in the UK. Big tobacco and City merchant banks align snugly. Rock star fund manager Neil Woodford has made a fortune from tobacco stocks for his eponymous investment boutique, explaining that clients expect him to “exercise an investment judgment” not a “moral judgment”. King notes: “The influence of companies like BAT and Imperial Brands is enormous.”

A roundtable for 20 investment professionals at the Whitechapel offices of Principles of Responsible Investment, a UN-supported NGO, became an eye-opening realtime experiment in City attitudes.

One guy, a very senior leader in UK finance, was quite difficult,” said King. “He just kept saying: ‘Our approach is to engage with the tobacco companies. We engage with the industry.’ He was getting very fired up, and I just had to hold my ground. Finally I said: ‘I understand engagement is a useful tool, and it’s important to be a good steward of capital. But this is the exception. Engagement with the tobacco industry is futile. Positive influence is impossible. There’s not one example in all the history of engagement leading to fewer deaths.”

Of course, this was very uncomfortable for him. Suddenly, out of the blue, this other guy whom I’d not met says: ‘We’re getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty here. What about the big vision? Isn’t this industry just killing six million people a year and we’re part of it if we’re investing in it?”

The interjector, Dawid Konotey-Ahulu, had arrived at the last minute, without particularly high expectations: “I assumed it would be a run-of-the-mill discourse on the dangers of tobacco and the virtues of shunning it.” Now he was excited. A former Merrill Lynch banker, Konotey-Ahulu has for the last decade run an investment and risk management consultancy for pension funds, Redington. King reminded him of a popular business concept: the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG, coined by Jim Collins in his 1994 management bestseller Built to Last. Since the roundtable, he has become Tobacco Free Portfolios’ City adviser, including on the recruitment of a new London representative, Dr Rachel Melsom. “We are living in an era where ‘Do the Right Thing!’ is increasingly the guiding principle, and pension funds, by and large, want to do the right thing,” says Konotey-Ahulu. “It will not surprise me if in the near future, several large pension funds elect to disinvest from intrinsically harmful assets such as tobacco.” They now have an example.

On 28 February, after months of planning, King landed in London on her first European mission: 12 days, six countries, 45 meetings, with pension funds, insurers, sovereign wealth funds and health leaders. She had pursued every introduction, cadged every favour on offer. To her excitement, not one approach had been rebuffed. To her further excitement, she had arranged to spend the weekend in Paris with friends, the De Viennes, for whom in 1997 she had worked as an au pair. Then, unable to help herself, she asked round her Australian business “partners” with whom in France it might be worth meeting. The CEO of a major funds management business connected her with AXA.

So it was that six years after that meeting in her hospital’s cafeteria, King sat across a luncheon table at Café Chic on Rue du Faubourg from Sylvain Vanston, the 44-year-old responsible for the company’s corporate social responsibility initiatives. A year earlier Vanston had been instrumental in AXA’s ceasing to invest in coal; but since agreeing to meet, he had been musing that this was the first red flag ever raised about a vastly more significant killer. “Tobacco has been a problem for health, but it has not been a problem for investors,” he observes. “When I met Bronwyn, she immediately started putting together the pieces of the puzzle that we hadn’t.’

In King’s telling, that puzzle of tobacco’s unique iniquity has four pieces. Can the product be used safely? No: zero is the only safe number of cigarettes. Can an investor have a positive influence on the tobacco industry? No: the risks are indivisible from the product. Is the problem huge? Yes: the WHO forecasts a billion tobacco-related deaths in the 21st century. Is there a UN treaty? Yes: the WHO’s convention on tobacco control has sought to limit tobacco usage for more than a decade. A concluding pith: would you set up an industry now knowing that in the next year it would kill six million people and cost the health care system €2tn? Vanston was taken aback: “I thought I knew about tobacco, but in reality I’d missed important facts.” Did she have all this written down, he asked? King fished a Tobacco Free Portfolios information kit from her bag. That night she rang Payne. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this,’ she said.

Likewise Vanston. This was a far bigger deal than coal: four times the size of investment, and entailing not insignificant financial sacrifices. But AXA’s incoming CEO Buberl had been promoting a redesign of its health business, arguing that insurance must change from being a payer of bills to a helper of clients toward healthier life choices incurring fewer health costs. And if AXA wanted clients to forswear tobacco, it could hardly do otherwise. Besides, Buberl observes, the calculus has changed: “Once, lung cancer meant a quick death. As treatment has improved and lives have been prolonged, it has gone from being a lethal to a chronic illness, and costs are exploding. It’s a simple equation – the social, medical and taxation consequences of smoking have grown considerably worse.”

Vanston was commissioned to present to Buberl’s management team; King, now back in Melbourne after whirling through Geneva, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo, contributed by email. Back at work at the Epworth, preparing prognoses, counselling patients about their survival chances, she messaged Vanston just before his presentation, three weeks after their single meeting: “Good luck with your speech. Just imagine that you have every oncologist and every patient who has suffered from tobacco standing right beside you.” His CEO actually needed little convincing. “Decisions take longer when they’re ambiguous,” says Buberl. “There is nothing ambiguous about tobacco.”

Nor, it must be said, is there anything ambiguous about the money tobacco makes. It is a high cash-flow, low-volatility business – a classic defensive stock pick in times when they are scarce. Yet no industry could exercise so dark an allure – something accentuated by the profile of smokers, skewed increasingly towards the poor, the young, and, frankly, the darker-skinned and further away.

It is a problem of a magnitude that occasionally dismays King, although never for long. “I’m an optimist,” she says. “Some people I’ve met have been unconvinced by the arguments. Others have said ‘Oh it’s a bit early’ or ‘Can you come back with more information?’ But I’ve watched literally dozens of people move from that position of initial resistance, to thinking ours is a reasonable position, to being completely convinced and ringing up a few months later asking: ‘Is there anything I can do?’ I never hear ‘no’ as ‘never’; I hear it as ‘not yet’.” Since AXA, she has had contact with a score of European financial institutions: one sovereign wealth fund has already divested, although is yet to announce its decision. King’s travel schedule for the rest of the year looks unsparing, and she is resigned to forgoing sleep because of it. “But if I knew what I know and did nothing,” she says, “I couldn’t sleep at all.”

2016-08-05 Aviation major Lockheed Martin has offered to shift its production line for F-16 fighter jets to India in partnership with a local company (Deccan Herald, south India)

 Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Aug 042016
 

Two articles from the Deccan Herald (India).

  1. Lockheed Martin wants to close down its original production in Fort Worth in Texas

 

New Delhi

IAF

Aviation major Lockheed Martin has offered to shift its production line for F-16 fighter jets to India in partnership with a local company.

The US firm said it wants to close down its original production in Fort Worth in Texas, which has produced more than 3,600 F-16s so far, and create a major industrial facility in India to continue with the production. Lockheed Martin, however, seeks a ‘significant’ order from the Indian Air Force (IAF) as a part of the package deal on the switch, company officials said here.

Besides supplying the military jets to the IAF, the Indian production line will also be used as a hub to export the jets, Randall L Howard, who heads the Lockheed Martin’s F-16 Business Development programme said here on Thursday.

The proposal comes months after US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said they will encourage their respective defence industries to develop new partnerships in the cutting edge technology projects.

“Both the sides have agreed to encourage their respective defence industries to develop new partnerships in the pursuit of a range of cutting edge projects. In support of the Make in India initiative, the US shared two proposals to bolster India’s suite of fighter aircraft for consideration,” a joint statement issued after the Carter-Parrikar meeting in April stated.

Lockheed’s competitor Boeing and European firm Saab too proposed to set up aircraft production facilities in India. None of them, however, suggested closing down an existing production line.

One of the conditions from Lockheed is to have an order from the IAF, which needs more fighter jets because of its dwindling squadron strength.

While the IAF needed 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft, the government cancelled that tender and decided to order 36 Rafale fighter jets from the French firm Dassault Aviation.

As its MiG squadrons are being phased out, the IAF had time and again stated its requirement to have more fighter jets to prepare for a two front war scenario.

Lockheed seeks to complete its F-16 order book by the end of 2017 and waits for the US government’s decision to know where the next aircraft have to be delivered. The target schedule for that order may be around 2021.

As officials from both the sides discuss the proposal, the company looks at a potential order of around 200 aircraft— 100 each for the IAF and for export — to create the planned industrial base in India.
DH News Service

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Make India defence production hub, says NITI Aayog member

Bengaluru, Aug 5, 2016, DHNS

V K Saraswat. DH Photo

NITI Aayog member V K Saraswat on Thursday called upon stakeholders in the defence electronics sector to transform India to be the centre of the fourth wave in defence manufacturing.

Delivering the inaugural speech at the DEFTRONICS 2016, the flagship defence electronics event organised by the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association (IESA) in association with Nasscom, Saraswat said the defence manufacturing shift globally has seen the Wave 1 from the US to Japan.

“The Wave 2 was witnessed from Japan to Europe and the Wave 3 from South East Asia to China. I want the Wave 4 to be from China to India,” he added. Saraswat also unveiled the Defence Electronics and System Design Policy Recommendations report brought out by the IESA and Nasscom along with global strategy consulting firm Roland Bergerand.

The report estimates that the aeronautics and defence electronics market for India is estimated to be in the range between $70 billion and $72 billion in the next 10-12 years. Almost $53 billion to $54 billion comes from electronics spend as a part of platforms.

“This indicates immense potential as there exists a significant gap between supply and demand. Though India is considered as a ‘soft power’ in the space, we are yet to witness a single Indian company that develops strong end-to-end aerospace and defence software solutions,” he said.

The former Chief Scientific Adviser to the Indian Minister of Defence and Director General of DRDO said this has compelled India to keep depending on foreign companies. “The only option for Indian electronics component companies is to target strategic electronics (defence) industry, and we should act now. We need to understand that the return on investments in the defence electronics industry in India is long-term and the players need to have a long-term view,” he said.

Speaking at the event, Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar said India is required to keep pace with the innovation happening across the globe and need to start providing a stimulus to companies in the defence electronics domain.

“Hence, it is really important for us to create an arrangement for technology transfer with more advanced nations and the role of the government will be significant. They should create an environment for the domestic players to cross-pollinate knowledge and technologies with other countries,” he said.

Commenting on the occasion, IESA President M N Vidyashankar said India is the seventh largest aeronautics and defence market globally and is still dependent on imports to fulfil defence needs.

 

2016-08-08 inveterate liar evidence. And, I do not accept that this is the best we can do for a system of justice.

 X1B Postings  No Responses »
Aug 032016
 

TO SCHARFSTEIN,  AUG 3, 2016   inveterate

RE DEFENCE.  INVETERATE LIAR 

 

From: Sandra Flnley Sent: August 8, 2016 2:37 PM To: ‘Samuel Edmondson’; ‘Sandra Finley’  Cc: ‘Chelsey Kuspira’; ‘Grant Scharfstein’

Subject: RE: Ashu Solo Clarity re defence

 

Hi Samuel,

Just in case  it’s been lost in the details:

I can be successfully defended in a court of law, as long as there is clarity about the fact that Ashu is an inveterate liar.

It’s easy to show that he is.

Three examples of my own, below.

The email thread with John Gormley is another clear example (Ashu’s claim that John stole something from Zeller’s).

  1. Ashu says that the Green Party found against me.  Not true.

The Green Party (GP) issued a draft decision that was not in my favour, it was based on Ashu’s input.   All I had to do was to provide the GP with copies of the actual emails that showed the dates.  (Ashu sent the emails to more than one person;  there is back-up proof.)

The cause-and-effect relationship claimed by Ashu did not exist.   He had manipulated the information he submitted.    I was quickly found to be innocent of the charges by Ashu.

I will search for copies of the exchanges.   (INSERT:  Posted)

(Need I repeat that I was interviewed by 3 Police Departments and found to be innocent of his charges?)

2.   The same is true of almost everything else.   In a more recent email he says that I posted information when we were vetting his candidacy to run for political office.   He claims a cause-and-effect relationship, that I was posting and defaming him then, before I left Saskatoon.  But again, all I have to do is to provide the actual dates of the postings.  It’s part of the log data.    It shows that I did not post them at the time of vetting;  I posted NOTHING about him,  until after he had been relentlessly after me.   I started posting near Christmas, 2013,  in case I would need his emails to defend myself in future, AND it was ALL under password protection.   I posted the emails re the vetting sometime in 2014.   I can look up the dates.

3.   There’s what?  a hundred emails from him that claim I harass him.   But he cannot produce evidence of even one such action by me, not one email, f/b or twitter communication.    Because I have not harassed him.  As I say, he is an inveterate liar.   I will search for the email he sent to a number of people asking them for derogatory emails I sent to them about him.   I presume he sent it because he needs evidence that he doesn’t have. (Nor does it exist.)

In conclusion,   it is routine for Ashu to tell lies.

He has harassed and told lies, wasted the time of 3 Police Departments, of a Health Authority, of the Green Party, has made people frightened of him, has cyber-bullied young women, and is now using the Justice System to try and bankrupt me for standing up to him.

/Sandra

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

From: Sandra Flnley Sent: August 3, 2016 10:16 PM To: ‘Samuel Edmondson’; ‘Sandra Finley’  Cc: ‘Chelsey Kuspira’; ‘Grant Scharfstein’

Subject: RE: Ashu Solo Repl;y to LFC cross-claim, etc

 

Hi Samuel,

  1. A question.   RE:  “The Court application” initiated by Ashu, what would it say?
  2. UPDATE:   Andrew MacQuorqodale, co-owner of LFC telephoned.   (He just concluded 2 weeks in heavy negotiations and apologized for delay in responding).

Andrew suggested that we work together and both settle with Ashu in order to contain my costs, and based on his prior experience with such things.  He would return to me the money held in trust, to be applied to the costs.  I don’t know whether his phone call arose out of conversation he might have had with Paul, who you’ve been unable to reach.

I remain reluctant to proceed with settlement.   But I told him I would give consideration to his suggestion.

3.  RE:  DEFENCE TO CROSS-CLAIM.   Could wording along the following line be used?

The defendant wishes to respond to the cross-claim from LFC with these words:    

Should I, Sandra Finley, be found not guilty of the charges Ashu Solo has made against me, there will be no basis for his charges against LFC, co-defendant.   

For almost three years Ashu Solo has harassed my business contacts, friends, and colleagues.  But the actions are ultimately directed against me.  I can prove that I am not guilty of the charges. 

Loosefoot’s cross-claim is based on something that has not happened, and which there is no basis to believe will happen.  I paid Loosefoot’s legal costs up to date on December 31st, after conversing directly with Loosefoot.  

I understand that trained professionals would view the cross-claim as a form of insurance “in case” the justice system finds against me, or in case the legal bills become too much for me.  But most importantly, in case the justice system does not award reimbursement of the costs of defending myself against someone who is using the threat of the cost of the justice system as a tool of intimidation and coercion. 

It is right that I should value and protect my relationships.   Ultimately, that is what life consists of.  The eccentricities of legal process should not create adversarial relationships where none have existed.  Conventional defence to the cross-claim would involve hair-splitting what words mean,  and an abdication of my loyalty to people who have only been good to me.  It is my job to protect myself and my community against Ashu Solo, not against LFC.     

I have benefited from the services of LFC for more than 5.5 years.  Their service has always been prompt, professional, helpful, courteous, and supportive of my work.  

They came highly recommended:

From: littlepurplefirefly@gmail.com  On Behalf Of Glen Pavelich Sent: December 16, 2010 8:00 AM To: Sandra Finley <sabest1@sasktel.net> Subject: Re: Cost of web hosting – 

I would look at LFC hosting. www.lfchosting.com.  They are second to none for customer service, and are based out of Regina.  I know these guys very well by now because I transferred most of my “sasktel’ freespace clients to their server.  I wouldn’t settle for Sasktel site wizard… Sasktel is not customer service friendly AT ALL.  You will be very happy with LFC I guarantee it.

I did my job in my volunteer capacity with the Green Party, by forwarding a complaint from a young woman who was being mercilessly cyber-bullied by Ashu Solo.  The complaint was forwarded through the proper channels, to be dealt with at arms’ length.  Ashu then shifted his harassment to me.   

I understand I must reply to the cross-claim in order to proceed.  

This is my reply.  

4.  FYI, Samuel.   After conversation with Office of Deputy Minister of Justice and with Sask Law Reform,

I will be submitting documentation and a proposal to both within the next 3 weeks.   I do not accept that this is the best we can do for a system of justice.

/Sandra

2016-07-27 Census Lockheed Martin: Statistics Canada makes a shrewd power grab – while it can. National Post, Kevin Libin

 Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys  No Responses »
Aug 012016
 

August 1 update:  see appended note I sent to the Reporter, Kevin Libin.    And his appreciated reply.

I removed the copy of his article from this posting (I would have had to pay $250).   To view the article,  please copy and insert into your search engine:

Statistics Canada makes a shrewd power grab – while it can.  National Post, Kevin Libin 

Should that not work, there is a back-up copy at  http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=17213

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

INFORMATION SENT TO KEVIN LIBIN

From: Sandra Finley   Sent: August 1, 2016 1:46 PM   To: Kevin Libin    Subject: RE: Your article on StatsCan

 

Dear Kevin Libin,

 

I appreciated StatsCan “… shrewd power grab”.

 

I draw to your attention:

 

  1.  Wording:   THE CHARTER RIGHT TO PRIVACY OF PERSONAL INFORMATION, CANADA:

“In fostering the underlying values of dignity, integrity and autonomy, it is fitting that s. 8 of the Charter

should seek to protect a biographical core of personal information which individuals in a free and democratic society

would wish to maintain and control from dissemination to the state.” 

2.    Mandatory long form census, submitted to Minister Navdeep Bains   (Click on the link)  

(The opposition to what is happening at StatsCan began in 2003, when the role of Lockheed Martin Corp (with sub-contractor IBM) at StatsCan became known.)

3.   Does Lockheed Martin Corp have a role in the 2016 Census?  

(Comprehensive argument against long form census, includes links to letters sent to other Ministers Responsible. Plus Prime Minister J Trudeau’s strong statements in support of Charter Rights.)

4.    Consider: StatsCan has ONE master data base on citizens. Your name is on your record. Censuses are once every 5 years.   But Surveys are being conducted relentlessly. StatsCan tells citizens that Surveys are mandatory (“It is the law”) (which it isn’t).   A citizen hired a lawyer (Nov 2015) to challenge StatsCan’s harassment; StatsCan backed down, long enough to stop the court case.

See     Surveys are Mandatory then Voluntary then Mandatory, along with “The Law” on Surveys

 

Please feel free to use the information.    A general page re StatsCan/Lockheed Martin with links is at:   http://sandrafinley.ca/?page_id=70

If there are questions I might answer, please call.

I hope you don’t mind:   I added your article to the file.

Thank-you. (?!)

Sandra Finley

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –  – –

REPLY FROM KEVIN LIBIN

From: Libin, Kevin  klibin@nationalpost.com   Sent: August 4, 2016 9:54 AM   To: Sandra Finley  Subject: Re: Your article on StatsCan

 

Thanks. I recall that the one recent case of a citizen being tried for refusing the census was protesting the Lockheed Martin link. That isn’t my issue, but I respect her right to decline (and yours) for any reason you choose. Feel free to add the article to any personal files. Just be sure not to publicly reprint it without my employer’s express permission.

Take care

K

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