When police arrested Anthony Graber for speeding on his motorbike, the 25-year-old probably did not see himself as an advocate for police accountability in the age of new media.

But Graber, a sergeant with the Maryland Air National Guard, is now facing 16 years in prison, not for dangerous driving, but for a Youtube video he posted after receiving a speeding ticket.

The video, filmed with a camera mounted on Graber's motorcycle helmet designed to record biking stunts rather than police abuse, shows a plain clothes officer jumping out of an unmarked car and pointing a pistol at the motorcyclist.

It does not portray the policeman in a positive light.

After he posted the video on Youtube, police raided Graber's home, seized computers and put him in jail.

"The case is critical to the protection of democracy because I don't think you can have a free country in which public officials are able to criminally prosecute people who film what they are doing," David Rocah, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in Maryland who is representing Graber, said.

Wiretapping

Even though he had never been arrested before, Graber is being charged with illegal wiretapping and could face 16 years in jail.

"This is about shielding the policeman, a public servant, from journalistic scrutiny," Steve Rendall, a media analyst with Freedom and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), told Al Jazeera.

The arrest happened in April and the trial is expected to begin later this year.

Rocah said his client "was charged under the wiretapping statute which prohibits taping oral communications without consent".

The statute, which does not mention video recording, is not supposed to apply to "conversations in a colloquial context, but in a private context" Rocah told Al Jazeera.

The encounter happened on a public street and, according to Rocah, police officers - public officials tasked with protecting the public interest - should not be able to hide behind such rules to avoid scrutiny.

"The value of documenting what is happening cannot be over-stated," he said.

Threat to privacy?

Supporters of the crack-down on filming police argue that citizen journalists pose a threat to privacy.

That is the logic Joseph Cassily, the prosecutor handling Graber's case, is likely to make at the trial.

In media interviews, Cassily presented a scenario where police stopped someone on suspicion of drinking and driving, asking for a breath test, and a random passerby filmed the encounter, putting it on the internet without consent from the driver or the officer.

"Is there some interest in protecting private individuals who may be having a conversation with the police? Yes," Rendall said.

"But in the end, I think that is out-weighed by the public's right to know."

"[Furthermore] you can't walk through Washington Square [a public space in New York] without being in the view of dozens of video cameras run by the police."

Recording ban

The wiretapping statute which bans "secret" recording of private conversations is legislated by the state of Maryland, not the US federal government.

Other US states, including Florida, Illinois and Massachusetts, have used similar laws against citizen journalists.

In 2007, police in Florida arrested Carlos Miller, after the journalist photographed the arrest of a woman.

"They [police] told me to leave the area, saying it was a 'private matter' and I said 'this is a public road'. They escorted me across the street and told me to keep moving. I had the right to be there and kept taking photos. They arrested me," Miller said.

He was charged with a series of misdemeanors and like many Americans arrested for filming police, Miller was eventually acquitted in court.

The arrest prompted the reporter to start the blog Photography is Not a Crimewhere he has documented more than eight similar incidents.

But the idea of winning court battles against journalists may not be the reason security forces prosecute journalists with wiretapping laws and other methods.

Intimidating journalists

"The whole reason for these laws is to intimidate people from filming," Rendall said.

And attempts to intimidate journalists into putting down their cameras reach far beyond the US.

In February the UK's Guardian newspaper ran the headline "Photographer films his own 'anti-terror' arrest" for a story and video about a man who was held by police for eight hours after taking pictures of Christmas celebrations in the small town of Accrington.

Rocah points to the example of the post-election protests in Iran. "The regime completely shut down the traditional media," he said.

"It was citizens' video posted on the web that allowed the world to see what was happening."

Barack Obama, the US president, went so far as to ask Twitter to hold-off on a maintenance operation because the social networking site was playing an important role in the protests.

Police assault

The most prominent US example of a citizen journalist filming police was arguably the case of Rodney King, a black man in Los Angeles who was assaulted by several police officers. His beating was filmed by a citizen standing at a nearby gas station.

Without video evidence, King, a convicted felon, may have stood little chance testifying against police officers in court.

But the video of King's beating flashed across news screens and helped spark the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which left more than 50 people dead and caused about $1bn in property damage.

The dynamics of video-tapping have fundamentally changed since then.

"I think that technology is making the issue [of arrests] arise with increasing frequency because the ability to record is more widely distributed than it ever has been," Rocah said.

The civil liberties lawyer, who believes the wiretapping law is unconstitutional and will eventually be struck down, says he is confident his client will be found not guilty.

Broader trends

But even if he is, this case is indicative of broader trends in media, and consequently, the exercise of power.

As technology outpaces the abilities of states to control the flow of information, governments in the US and beyond are cracking down on independent journalists.

"In the past, freedom of the press only really belonged to those who owned newspapers, TV stations or other major outlets," Miller said.

Now information is more diffuse; history easier to record and technology easier to afford.

Direct evidence, including video of police abuses, is the easiest way to hold the powerful to account. And that may be exactly why security forces do not want to be caught on tape.

Sanjay Verma was only five months old when a cloud of poison gas killed his parents and five siblings in Bhopal, India, as they slept in their beds.

His parents and siblings were among some 3,500 people who died immediately after the December 1984 gas leak while more than 15,000 others perished from the lingering effects of the world's worst industrial disaster.

On Monday, a court in Bhopal found seven ex-employees of the Indian unit of Union Carbide, the US company that owned the chemical plant, guilty of "causing death by negligence".

They were sentenced to two years in jail, a penalty similar to those handed out for deadly traffic accidents, and ordered to pay fines of $2,100 each.

But for Verma, the victory provides little comfort, as Warren Anderson, Union Carbide's former CEO, did not show up for court.

"In a sense I was lucky," Verma said. "I was too young to see the bodies in the streets. I was lucky I didn't know my parents."

Monday's ruling was the result of a court battle that dragged on for 23 years and came after Mohan P Tiwari, the chief judicial magistrate, reviewed testimony from 178 prosecution witnesses and the contents of 3,008 documents.

The convicted parties will likely appeal the verdict in India's supreme court.

But the case against company officials is just one of several ongoing court battles surrounding the Bhopal disaster, which according to Indian government records, affected 578,000 people.

More than 25 years later, many are still grappling with its effects.

"About 30,000 people are still drinking contaminated water," Karuna Nundy, a human rights lawyer in New Delhi who is representing victims on a pro-bono basis, said.

Nundy is arguing a separate case before India's supreme court, trying to get better medical care for Bhopal's victims.

"These are poor people who have no option but to drink the toxic water, even though they know how dangerous it is.

"There are children who have been born with chromosomal defects, who have terrible health care."

When the 25 tonnes of toxic methylisocyanate gas leaked from a storage tank, drifting into the streets of Bhopal and the homes of its 1.5 million residents, Nundy said "all six of the most important safety measures failed".

"The siren that should have gone off to warn the surrounding populations did not go off."

Union Carbide built the plant, which Nundy said had been leaking toxins into the local water supply and soil since 1977, in a densely populated urban area, despite the advice of its own experts.

On December 7, 1984, days after the disaster, Indian officials arrested Warren Anderson, but he was released on bail and allowed to return to the US.

Victims like Verma are enraged by the decision to allow Anderson to leave the country, but Nundy speculates that the Indian government may have feared that keeping him imprisoned would have discouraged foreign investment in the country.

In 1989, Union Carbide paid a $470mn settlement to the Indian government. But because the number of victims was so high, rights activists say each one received just about $1,000.

Union Carbide divested its stake in its Indian division in 1994 and a message on the company's website says that it, and former chairman Anderson, "worked diligently to provide aid to the victims and set up a process to resolve their claims".

It also attributes the gas leak to an act of sabotage.

But rights activists and lawyers say the claim is absurd and that it has been disproven in various courts.

Dow Chemical paid $12bn to acquire Union Carbide in 2001 and denies that it holds responsibility for the Bhopal disaster. Dow Chemical's India division did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for an interview.

Bhopal survivors launched a class action lawsuit against Union Carbide in the US in 1999.

During court hearings in New York in 2002, internal Union Carbide documents were disclosed, showing the company was using "unproven technology" at its Bhopal plant.

But, the company did not use this "unproven technology" in its US operations.

In separate US litigation in 2002, Dow Chemical set aside $2.2bn to compensate American workers who were exposed to asbestos at Union Carbide operations, leading rights activists to accuse the company of attaching greater value to the lives of Americans than those of Indians.

In June 2009, Bhopal survivors secured the signatures of 27 members of the US congress, who wrote a letter to Dow Chemical asking the company to clean up toxic waste from the site.

"We request that Dow ensures that a representative appears in the ongoing legal cases in India regarding Bhopal, that Dow meets the demands of the survivors for medical and economic rehabilitation, and cleans up the soil and groundwater contamination in and around the factory site," the politicians wrote in the letter to Dow Chemical's CEO.

However, the company did not comply with these requests and survivors continue to fight court battles in India over rehabilitation and clean up.

"The toxic waste case is now before the high court of Madhya Pradesh [the state where Bhopal is located]," Nundy said.

"I am also arguing a case in which the supreme court is directing better medical care for the victims of the gas leak."

After a series of delays and procedural issues, US litigation around the Bhopal disaster continues in a New York court.

Despite Monday's guilty verdict, litigation surrounding the disaster will continue in other Indian courts.

Rights activists, however, worry that the Indian government and foreign multinationals will go on with business as usual.

As India's economy grows quickly, the country has announced plans for a series of new nuclear power plants.

In May 2010, Bhopal survivors filed a right-to-information request with the Indian government, asking how it would deal with a nuclear accident.

According to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, the Indian government plans to cap corporate liability at $100m with the next $400m to deal with potential nuclear disasters coming from Indian taxpayers.

Nundy said the government continues to send the wrong message - "we'll set a cap for you and we'll have the taxpayer pay for it" - to foreign companies doing business in India.

As Bhopal victims like Verma wait for the next round of litigation in the wake of this verdict, some Indian lawyers are pushing for structural changes in how the country does business with multinational corporations.

"If you have a lax regulatory system, as you do in many third world countries, then there is a race to the bottom because adherence to health and safety standards is not enforced," Nundy said.

"There is less of a deterrent effect on companies to take safety seriously, to protect Indian lives. We need the same rule of law for everybody."

The 19th century French philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon once referred to laws as spider webs for the rich and chains for the poor. For many of the victims, those words prevail.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/2010/07/201072302826665260.html

When Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visited Vietnam on Thursday she extolled the country's "unlimited potential" and strong trade relations with the US. But the words must have rung hollow for Ngyuen Ngoc Phuong, who has seen his potential destroyed by American chemical poisoning.

Phuong, 19, was born long after the US cut and run from the Vietnam war, evacuating its last remaining personnel by helicopter from the roof of its Saigon embassy in 1975.

But the results of that war, which officially ended 35 years ago, affect every aspect of Phuong's life.

The young man has severe physical deformities, and like an estimated three million Vietnamese, he suffers from exposure to Agent Orange, a toxic chemical US forces sprayed during the war to defoliate the dense jungles Viet Cong rebels used for cover.

In its manufacture, the chemical was contaminated with TCDD, or dioxin, "the most toxic substance known to humans", according to an investigation in the journal Science.

Dangers known

In his book Agent Orange on Trial published by Harvard University Press, Peter Schuck reported that companies who manufactured the defoliant knew "as early as 1952" that deadly dioxin had contaminated the chemical.

Between 1962 and 1971, the US military sprayed an estimated 80 million litres of Agent Orange and other herbicides on Vietnam, the journal Nature reported in 2003.

"I met one family of victims with four blinded children, no eyes - period," Dr Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, a Vietnamese researcher, said in a 2007 interview.

In a now declassified report for the US department of veterans affairs, Admiral ER Zumwalt Jr wrote that Dow Chemical and other manufacturers knew Agent Orange exposure could cause "general organ toxicity" and "other systematic problems" as early as 1964.

These and other studies show that the American military, and the chemical companies who serviced it, were well aware of the dangers posed by the chemicals on the general population.

On this front, Agent Orange elucidates an alarming trend in modern warfare, particularly counter-insurgency fighting: civilians and the environment tend to be main casualties.

Brutality clearly defined World War I and II and previous conflicts between standing armies, but soldiers usually made up the majority of the dead.

Poisoning civilians

From the jungles of Vietnam to the plains of Sudan, Iraq's cities to the Afghan mountains, civilians now bear the highest cost for wars not of their making.

"In Vietnam it was chemical [weapons] ... Agent Orange and napalm," Len Aldis, secretary of the Britain-Vietnam friendship society,told Al Jazeera.

"In Iraq, Kosovo, [and] Afghanistan the US, UK and Nato have used depleted uranium, cluster weapons ... and drones that are controlled from military bases in the US."

These conflicts tend to continue even after the wars officially end.

"We did a number of soil samples and followed [dioxin contamination from Agent Orange spraying] though the food chain into ponds, to fish, into ducks and then into humans. We found it in children who had been born long after the war ended," Dr Wayne Dwernychuck, who led the first team of western scientists to study the long-term affects of sprayingin Vietnam, said in an interview.

"We concluded the only way they could be contaminated is through food and nursing," he said, referencing his 1994 study.

Former US military bases including Bien Hoa, Phu Cat and the infamous Danang are the worst sites of present day contamination.

"We have been working with Vietnam for about nine years to try to remedy the effects of Agent Orange," Clinton said at a press conference in Hanoi.

Since 2007, the US congress has appropriated $9m to help Vietnam clean up contaminated areas and for related health activities, or an amount roughly equal to the cost of 12 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

'Wounds still remain'

In June, a joint panel of US and Vietnamese policymakers, citizens and scientists estimated the cost of a proper clean-up and rehabilitation for the sick at $300m.
Despite public pressure, Vietnamese victims were unable to win justice in US courts [AFP]

"The war is over but the wounds from the war still remain in many areas of Vietnam," Nguyen Van Son, a member of Vietnam's National Assembly, said during the report's launch in Hanoi.

Vietnamese civilians are not the only ones suffering from exposure. Veterans in the US, Canada and beyond also have historieswith the chemicals.

In 1984, US veterans reached an out-of-court settlement for $180m with companies who produced the chemicals, including Monsanto and Dow Chemical.

Remarkably, Dow maintains that there is no evidence to link Agent Orange to illnesses from US veterans and Vietnamese civilians.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM),the pre-eminent scientific authority in the US when it comes to setting government policy, links exposure to a raft of conditions including cancers, diabetes and spina bifida.

Like their American counterparts, Vietnamese victims have tried to gain justice in US courts, but after a series of cases, the US supreme court refused to hear their case in 2009.

However, American conservatives were some of the first to recognise the moral quagmire around giving pensions and other benefits to US veterans and not Vietnamese civilians, even though both groups were poisoned by the American government and the companies who provided it with chemicals.

'Difficult to rationalise'

It is "difficult to rationalise why [American] Vietnam vets are compensated for Agent Orange exposure but Vietnamese civilians shouldn't be," Steve Milloy, a scholar at the Cato institute, wrote in a commentary for Fox News.

During her visit, Clinton criticised Vietnam for jailing rights activists and censoring the internet and urged the single party, nominally communist state to "strengthen its commitment to human rights".

However, in the broader schema of rights, Vietnam's transgressions against courageous lawyers and journalists seem positively minor compared to three million destroyed lives: children born missing eyes, grossly elongated heads or misshapen legs where their arms ought to be.

As world leaders gather in Canada for the G8 and G20 meetings, they are divided on what is to be done about the global economy, with debates over banking reform and stimulus spending taking centre stage.

On stimulus spending, initially everyone wanted to borrow to make sure the great recession did not become another great depression.

Today, Europe wants to cut, while America and China want to spend.

Jan Randolph, head of Sovereign Risk Country Intelligence at Global Insight, said the US worries that leading economies will "collectively withdraw these supports too soon there could be an economic relapse, just like what happened in the 1930s that extended the great depression."

When to spend and how much? These are not new debates.

Politicians in the great depression of the 1930s and the stag-flation period in the 1970s fought elections on these very questions.

Academics and economists have been arguing about this stuff, without pause, since the depression.

But today’s G8 show-down reverses a general trend in economic history.
Obama wants governments to stimulate economic growth [AFP]

Typically, the US preached rugged individualism and power for private business over government spending.

Europe is known for embracing the welfare state.

But this new recession is a game changer.

At its core, the transatlantic divide on stimulus spending looks like a battle between Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes, with the US and Europe reversing their traditional roles.

Friedman, an American economist based at the University of Chicago, believed that governments should not interfere in financial markets.

His views have come to define the policies advocated by much of the American right, although massive public spending on the military does not seem contradictory to this crowd.

Keynes, an Englishman based at Cambridge University, argued that governments should borrow money to finance growth in times of economic contraction.

In the great depression, Keynes' views became policy, with governments, particularly Roosevelt's America and Hitler's Germany, making massive investments in infrastructure, and later in war, to kick start their economies.

Keynes may have won the first battle. But in debates over stimulus spending this time around, he may lose the final war in favour of Friedman's public austerity and market orientated shock-therapy.

That is because governments today seem more likely to respond to bond traders than the people who elect them.

Voters generally support social services and state spending for job creation, while the markets favour austerity.

And, there is a spectre haunting Europe: the spectre of an angry bond market forcing a Greek style meltdown in sovereign debt.

The US is not so fearful of incurring wrath from the electronic hoard of bond traders because the US dollar still acts as the world's reserve currency.

If a country wants to buy oil or other commodities, they usually make the transactions in US dollars.

This, in part, allows the US government to borrow at low interest rates.

Policy makers in London, Paris and Berlin fear that international bond traders will not be so kind to Europe.

That is why Germany, the continent's biggest economy, has committed to budget cuts of $98bn over the next four years, and the French government also wants to pursue conservative fiscal measures to reduce existing debts.

The UK announced significant spending reductions this week, including a planned $16bn reduction in the national welfare bill and a rise in goods tax by 2.5 per cent

The transatlantic divide continues when it comes to bank taxes.

But on this issue, the roles are reversed, with Europe taking a position associated with state intervention and the US opposing it.

Germany and France have expressed support for some kind of a banking tax, although the exact details are unclear.

The US, despite its touted financial reform package negotiated on Friday, does not want serious new taxes on the financial sector

Stamp out Poverty, a coalition of trade unions and development organisations in the UK, is pushing for a global transaction tax or what they call a "Robin Hood tax".

"Since the Pittsburgh [G20] summit, the whole thing has been opened up from 'shall we tax the banking sector' to 'how should we tax the banking sector'", David Hillman, the group's coordinator, told Al Jazeera.

"The Robin Hood tax campaign favours a transaction tax and it is extremely difficult to avoid because it is automated, for selling bonds, derivatives or foreign exchange. Once you try to tax profits, bankers can move to tax havens," Hillman said.

European leaders have said that a global transaction tax needs to be investigated.

The US and Canada oppose such a policy.

"The banks caused the crises, there should be some pay-back. We need to make sure that there aren't as many jobs lost and [that] are we going to meet our climate change [obligations]," the campaigner said.

Despite all this tax talk, two of the largest US based hedge funds, the Citadel Investment Group and the Blackstone Group, people who have the most to lose from a transaction tax, refused interview requests.

It seems these organisations, whose destabilising, speculative activities are almost universally loathed, want the whole transaction debate to just go away.

That seems unlikely. But a global deal on a new financial tax at the G8 or G20 is even more doubtful.

Regardless of what the G8 leaders decide, thousands will gather to protest.

The poorly named "anti-globalisation movement" had its coming out party in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1999.

The world has changed a lot since then.

Like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the WTO was seen as an instrument of western economic imperialism, preaching a 'do as we say, not as we do' logic to the global south.

And, while some protesters take credit for undermining the WTO's hegemony, the real threat to the organisation came from changing dynamics in global power.

The WTO's push for increased influence and scope collapsed after negotiations in Doha, Qatar and Cancun, Mexico, but not because of protests.

Rather, divides between the weakening north and a more confident south meant that the status quo was untenable.

The US and Europe preached open markets and an end to protectionism while massively subsidising agricultural products, steel and other politically connected industries.

Delegates from the south, particularly emerging giants India and Brazil, said "no deal".

Despite the growing political clout of emerging economies, much of the anti-globalisation movement sees international affairs in a unipolar framework: arguing that the US and Europe exploit the economies of poorer nations for their own benefit in a neo-colonial fashion.

This exploitation remains true, in some sectors at some times.

But the west's general influence is slipping and new alliances are being built.

In 1999, protesters chanted "another world is possible".

Today, after the relative failure of the WTO, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and China's sustained rise, it seems like another world is here, compared to the one that existed in 1999.

This new world, however, may not be the one that demonstrators wanted to see.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

As football fans celebrate the World Cup, thousands of children, some no more than six years old, toil in difficult conditions for low wages sewing footballs, a new report says.

Most of the so-called little hands stitching footballs are in Pakistan, India, China and Thailand, the International Labour Rights Forum (ILRF), a Washington D.C. based advocacy group, said.

The World Cup organiser, Fifa, has a policy banning child labour at factories which produce its official balls.

However, an investigation by the ILRF, which focused on Fifa's supply chain in Pakistan, found that the policy against child labour was little more than paper.

"The existence of child labour and other labour abusive practices were found to varying degrees in all four Fifa licensed supply chains" that the group studied in Pakistan, the ILRF said in a June 7 report.

The ILRF criticised Fifa's social responsibility programmes because they do not address "low wages, unpaid overtime and occupational safety hazards".

On its website, Fifa said that it "is fully aware of fair employment issues and pays special attention to them, and particularly to that of child labour”.

“Child labour is a complex socio-political phenomenon and as such, it is extremely difficult to combat,” Fifa said.

In China, the largest exporter of footballs to the US, most production takes place in factories. Some workers have complained of unsafe conditions and forced overtime.

In Pakistan and India, most footballs are stitched by casual workers who work in cottage industries, rather than official factories.

The ILRF report interviewed 218 workers in Sialkot, the hub of Pakistan's football industry, and found that 70 per cent worked on a casual basis.

Casual employment makes it difficult for groups like Fifa to monitor labour conditions. It also means workers are ineligible for benefits, health-care and, in some cases, government mandated labour law.

More than half of the workers in Sialkot said they earned less than the official minimum wage of $73.8 per month.

Bahaar, a 30 year old worker, said he is paid a piece rate for each ball he stitches, and earns $44.28 per month, 40 per cent less than the national minimum wage, while his basic monthly expenses are $162.
Child laborers often cannot play with the footballs the sew [AFP]

A worker like Bahaar will earn about 59 cents for sewing a ball that sells for $50 in the US or Europe, so profit margins are high for contract bosses, factory owners and the multinational companies who purchase the balls.

The CEO of Nike, the US based sportswear giant, earned $3,950,000 in 2009, while an Indian football sewer earned about $600.

Female workers in Pakistan say gender discrimination is prevalent, as their wages are generally lower than their male counterparts. Some women complain of losing their contracts or jobs after becoming pregnant.

In a positive note, most workers who were interviewed in Pakistan said they consider their workplaces safe.

Consumers in the US imported more than $11m worth of soccer balls from Pakistan in 2009.

Malika, another Pakistani worker interviewed by the ILRF, said she began working in a soccer ball factory at age five.

When the factory tried to strip her monthly salary in favour of contract employment, Malika and other women protested. The factory fired her. She fought her employer in labour court, and won back-pay, but was not rehired and lost medical benefits.

She became sick and spent her entire life savings on treatment at a private hospital and is now heavily in debt after taking a loan to pay for her daughter's school fees.

Nike, who is sponsoring ten World Cup football teams, says it is trying to clean up abusive practices among its suppliers.

The company "has been working to change how factories in Pakistan pay for soccer balls to shift the industry from a piece-goods system to a wage-based system," a company spokesman said.

Adidas, a major World Cup sponsor, said it "believes that factory wages should always meet basic needs and provide for reasonable savings and expenditure".

While individual workers like Malika do not have a choice but to start working as children, the policy of keeping children stitching soccer balls, rather than going to school, does not make long-term economic sense.

And while some of the worst child labour abuses have been curtailed since public uproar focused on the issue in the 1990s, many workers, children and adults, still have no hope of saving for an education and cannot afford basic necessities.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has estimated that the global cost of eliminating child labour is outweighed by the economic benefits.

The initial upfront cost for eliminating child labour "is far less than the $10 trillion that were allocated to save banks in the US and UK alone during the current economic crisis", the ILO reports.

Globally, child labour has decreased by an estimated three per cent in the last four years, the ILO estimates.

Still, 215 million children worldwide have to work to survive, with 115 million exposed to hazardous work, the ILO has said.

Earlier this month, Wiebo Ludwig was questioned for several hours about the bombings of six gas pipelines in northern Alberta and B.C. Chris Arsenault is an independent journalist who has been following the pipeline bombings. He talks about what this new development may mean for this case.

Chris Arsenault

VANCOUVER, Oct 20 (IPS) - The provincial government in Alberta, Canada is threatening to unleash its counterterrorism plan if activists continue using civil disobedience to protest the tar sands, Canada's fastest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

In recent weeks, Greenpeace has staged three daring protests inside tar sands mines, temporarily shutting down parts of the world's largest energy project. On Oct. 3 and 4, activists blocked construction of an upgrader needed to refine heavy tar sands oil, belonging to Shell in Ft. Saskatchewan, Alberta.

Civil disobedience from Greenpeace, leading to 37 arrests, has enraged Alberta's conservative government. "We're coddling people who are breaking the law," complained Premier Ed Stelmach during a media scrum in early October.

"Premier Stelmach's public suggestion that he will use the 'force of the law to deal with these people' confirms his lack of knowledge of the limits of his authority and the clear rule that our system of justice cannot be interfered with or manipulated for political reasons," responded Brian Beresh, the defence lawyer representing arrested activists, at a news conference in Edmonton.

Legal scholars, including University of Alberta law professor Sanjiv Anand and Tom Engel of the Criminal Trial Lawyers Association, have criticised the provincial government for attempting to politicise legal proceedings.

"We're going to be working very closely with industry and our solicitor general will be reviewing all of the guidelines we have in place," said a visibly irritated Premier Stelmach in early October.

Fred Lindsay, the solicitor general, went a step further, suggesting the province might use its counterterrorism plan against future protests.

"I think there is an agenda in linking Greenpeace to concerns about terrorism," Bruce Cox, the executive director of Greenpeace Canada, told IPS. Cox is being charged with mischief and faces a fine of more than 5,000 dollars for his participation in the civil disobedience.

The recent campaign began on Sep. 15, when 25 Greenpeace activists snuck into Shell's Albian sands mine in northern Alberta, chaining themselves to a three-storey high dump truck and hanging huge banners to coincide with meetings between Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington.

Shell officials temporarily shut down the site. Shell was targeted again in early October at its Ft. Saskatchewan upgrader.

On Sep. 30, activists canoed down the Athabasca River into a tar sands facility operated by Suncor. They blocked a conveyer belt which moves heavy oil, causing a temporary shutdown of Canada's second largest oil sands mine. Suncor didn't respond to repeated requests for comment from IPS.

Canada's tar sands will singlehandedly produce more greenhouse gas emissions than Denmark, Ireland, Austria or Portugal by 2020 if the development continues expanding at its current rate, according to a recent report written by award-winning business reporter Andrew Nikiforuk. The tar sands already spew more greenhouse gas emissions than Estonia or Lithuania.

"Companies in the tar sands are secondary to our goal. Our message was aimed at international leaders, along with the prime minister in Canada," Cox told IPS.

"We are going to continue to get our message out to an international audience, with a focus now on [climate change negotiations in] Copenhagen in mid-December," he said.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made headlines across Canada in September when he stated that the tar sands should be shut down.

While recent civil disobedience raises the stakes in Alberta itself, the main battles surrounding the tar sands will be fought during international forums like Copenhagen and in Washington, as U.S. consumers receive the lion's share of tar sands imports.

California and Oregon have already passed low carbon fuel standard laws, which effectively prohibit the importation of tar sands oil. That worries some energy lobbyists in the U.S.

"Our economy is completely dependent on fossil fuels," said Michael Whatley from the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a pro-tar sands lobby group representing the transportation industry and oil producers based in Houston, Texas.

"If you start taking oil based products off the table before alternatives are ready for prime time, then you are going to have catastrophic impacts for the economy," Whately told IPS.

The CEA has been meeting with U.S. politicians, lobbying against low carbon fuel standards and writing op-eds in support of the tar sands.

"Does Canadian oil have more carbon in it than oil from the Middle East? No. Does gasoline derived from Canadian oil emit more carbon dioxide than gasoline from Middle East oil? Nope." wrote David Holt, the executive director of CEA, in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner.

These numbers contradict the standard scientific consensus and they are at odds with what tar sands companies themselves are saying. Shell, for example, says burning tar sands oil creates five to 15 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional crude.

Michael Whatley couldn't directly comment on how CEA came to such conclusions or why their numbers vastly differ from basic scientific norms for calibrating emissions. The pro-tar sands lobbyist believes the environmental movement has had "a tremendous head-start" in the battle for hearts and minds but he is feeling "very upbeat" from talking to U.S. consumers and politicians about the alleged benefits of tar sands crude.

Back in Alberta, the provincial government's approach to recent civil disobedience has rattled legal scholars, but Greenpeace's David Cox isn't particularly surprised. "They [Alberta's government] are unflinching boosters for dirty tar sands oil, they invest tax dollars in selling it worldwide," said Cox.

(END/2009)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50025
Chris Arsenault

VANCOUVER, Jan 18 (IPS) - Looking increasingly desperate after a 15-month-long hunt for a saboteur who has blown up six natural gas installations in northern Canada, police arrested an outspoken oil industry critic and then set him free a day later without pressing charges.

Wiebo Ludwig, an evangelical preacher jailed in 2000 for a series of attacks on the oil industry in Alberta, was arrested on Jan. 8 and charged with extortion in connection with recent sabotage.

After 24 hours in jail, including a 10-hour interrogation by a top police officer, Ludwig was released without charge. He did not return calls from IPS requesting comment.

The catch and release of the high-profile activist and convicted saboteur adds another twist to a bizarre saga, which began Oct. 12, 2008 with the bombing of a pipeline operated by EnCana, North America's largest natural gas company.

At a press conference last July, police labeled the attacks "eco-terrorism" after the Dawson Creek Daily News received a handwritten letter, allegedly from the bomber, demanding that EnCana cease operations in area.

"Return the land to what it was before you came every last bit of it... before things get a lot worse for you and your terrorist pals in the oil and gas business," read the letter, which was posted on the website of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team tasked with investigating the sabotage.

"We are confident after reviewing all of the information that is in our possession that we arrested the right person, for the right reasons and at the right time," Insp. Tim Shields told reporters on Jan. 12, after Ludwig was released without charge, as more than 100 officers continued to search for evidence on the Ludwig family's sprawling farm.

"That police would make an announcement like that in the face of the Crown [prosecutor] saying there isn't enough evidence to go to trial is troubling," said David Eby, a lawyer with the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

"It is challenging when the police make an announcement of guilt or innocence before someone has been tried and convicted, especially in an issue like this when the community is sensitive and has spoken out against policing tactics," Eby told IPS.

Police are treating people in northern British Columbia "like they're Taliban suspects", according to veteran environment reporter Andrew Nikiforuk.

Police have demanded DNA from residents under Canada's counter-terrorism act, barged into homes, interrogated husbands and wives in separate rooms and publicly accused local businesspeople of being the bomber in crowded restaurants. The BC Civil Liberties Association has received several complaints about aggressive policing tactics, says Eby.

Throughout the investigation, police, company officials and local politicians have claimed their top priority is the safety of local residents, which the bomber is jeopardising.

Tim Ewert, an organic farmer living near bombed pipelines, doesn't believe those claims in light of recent events.

"On Nov. 22 [2009] we smelled gas on our property, EnCana's devices to pick up the leak didn't work and around 15 families had to self-evacuate the area," Ewert told IPS.

Sour gas, or hydrogen sulfide, is extremely deadly - concentrations of 500 parts per million can be fatal. The Nov. 22 leak is not linked to sabotage.

"This leak probably released thousands of times more gas than what has been released by the bombings," said Ewert, adding that police and politicians are not speaking out against the incident, even though it was potentially more dangerous than so-called acts of terrorism.

In statements to the media, EnCana denied that its safety mechanisms failed.

Paul Joosse, a sociologist at the University of Alberta who studies radical environmental movements, thinks the nature of sour gas has exacerbated conflicts between farmers and industry in the region.

"It [sour gas infrastructure] is being put where people live and where children go to school; that really raises the stakes," Joosse told IPS.

The Oil and Gas Commission (OGC), the provincial body tasked with regulating the industry, promised to release a report on the leak on Jan. 11 with a public meeting scheduled for Jan. 13. The report was not released and the commission cancelled the meeting, citing the ongoing police investigation of Wiebo Ludwig.

Local residents speculate that the OGC, EnCana and the police are working in cahoots to stall the release of a report, which could raise unwanted questions about the industry's safety practices and the nature of gas extraction in the region as a whole.

"In many cases people feel that they haven't been given a proper say in how things develop and they feel – rightly - that they are stakeholders who should have a say," Joosse told IPS.

Tim Ewert says his neighbours are equally worried about recent sour gas leaks but are afraid to speak out, fearing police harassment.

When asked why the authorities decided to arrest and then release Ludwig at this particular time, Joosse said: "It looks like police are going and shaking different trees."

The police "may have decided this was the last chance before the Olympics to have so many officers available [to investigate the bombings]," Joosse told IPS.

The Vancouver Olympics, requisitioning some 7,000 police, 4,500 troops and 5,000 private security guards under a security budget in excess of 900 million dollars, begin on Feb. 12.

"From their perspective, it would be really great to have a charge and an arrest prior to the games," said Joosse.

Today, that hope seems unlikely.

(END/2010)

Chris Arsenault* - IPS/TerraViva

VANCOUVER, Canada, Dec 8 (IPS) - With or without a binding deal at the climate talks in Copenhagen this month, it seems the world may have to cut its oil consumption, as emerging geological and economic trends limit the availability and affordability of petroleum.

Back in the 1970s, Saudi Arabia's flamboyant oil minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani articulated what has become conventional wisdom for policymakers around the planet: ''The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.''

Today, an increasing chorus of voices is challenging that prediction. While the world isn't running out of oil in any absolute sense, a daunting picture on the availability and thus affordability of supply compared with expected demand increases is beginning to emerge.

"In 2015, the world's consumption of oil will likely be closing in on 100 million barrels per day, roughly 22 percent higher than the current level - which is a relatively high annual growth for the oil industry," states a briefing marked "confidential" from Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), obtained by IPS a Freedom of Information Request.

The censored briefings, created in collaboration with other Canadian government agencies, paint a troubling picture of future energy security that has recently been corroborated by other sources.

In 2005, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Paris-based multinational information centre created after the 1973 energy crises, predicted that world oil production could rise to 120 million barrels per day by 2030, up from 85 million bpd in 2008.

The IEA "was forced to reduce" its predictions on possible world supply "to 116 million and then 105 million last year," according to a senior official in the organisation, who spoke with the Guardian newspaper in early November on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. Department of Energy, through its International Energy Outlook (IEO), has also been quietly scaling down its numbers on possible supply. In 2007, the agency predicted that the world would be able to pump 107.2 million barrels per day in 2030. In summer 2009, it drastically reduced its supply predictions to 93.1 million barrels per day.

In its latest forecast, released Nov. 10, the IEA predicted that world oil supply would hit 105 million barrels per day by 2030. Even with those figures, which many analysts, including some inside the IEA, consider overly optimistic, there is likely to be a shortfall of some 11 million barrels per day by 2030.

"Every year we lose four million barrels a day [of production due to depletion]," said Jeff Rubin, the former chief economist with CIBC World Markets.

"Over the next five years, we are going to have to find 20 million barrels a day of new production, just so that we can [continue to] consume what we consume today," Rubin told IPS in June.

Rubin is a believer in the peak oil theory - the idea that oil production will reach a maximum point and then fall fairly sharply as demand outpaces possible supply.

M. King Hubbert, a geologist with Shell oil in the United States, correctly predicted that U.S. domestic oil production would peak in the 1970s.

"Shell isn't a believer in the peak oil theory," said company spokesperson Janet Annesley during a 2008 interview with IPS at the company's Calgary office tower.

Other multinational oil companies, however, are beginning to disagree with the current position of Shell, M. King Hubbert's former employer.

Gasoline and transportation oil can be manufactured from coal and other petroleum sources, meaning the world will not run out in any absolute sense, but the costs - both economic and environmental - will be far higher than conventional crude.

"Groups and individuals speaking out about forthcoming world oil supply challenges are frequently stereotyped as a fringe element with little knowledge about the oil industry," said the Sweden-based Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas in a Nov. 24 news release. "But their warnings are increasingly supported by some surprising allies: senior petroleum industry officials, consultants and analysts."

Christophe de Margerie, CEO of Total SA, Europe's third largest oil company, believes the world will never be able to produce more than 89 million barrels per day.

ConocoPhillips' chief executive Jim Mulva told a conference in London last month that he doubted producers would be able to meet long-term oil demand. Both oil executives challenged IEA predictions.

The senior IEA official who blew the whistle on the organisation's tendency to overstate supply says the group is manipulating data in order to placate financial markets.

"Many inside the organisation (IEA) believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 million to 95 million barrels a day would be impossible, but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further," a senior IEA official told the Guardian.

According to the confidential RCMP documents, "[censored]... a market psychology of fear will continue to place a 'geopolitical premium' on crude oil, keeping prices for oil products higher than market fundamentals along would dictate."

It is this fear that the IEA is trying to placate. However, many believe a binding deal at Copenhagen seems like a more reasonable approach to reduce oil dependency than the current policy of fudging the numbers.

(END/2009)

Chris Arsenault interviews MALALAI JOYA, author and Afghan parliamentarian

VANCOUVER, Canada, Nov 20 (IPS) - In the aftermath of national elections widely condemned as fraudulent, the United States and its allies are wondering what to do about Afghanistan.

Malalai Joya, an Afghan parliamentarian deemed "the bravest women in Afghanistan" by the BBC, has some unsolicited advice for Gen. Stanley McChrystal and other U.S. commanders. "They must leave my country today, it is much better than tomorrow," she said.

McChrystal is reportedly advising the Barack Obama administration to send 40,000 more troops into Afghanistan, on top of some 68,000 already in the country.

"They say a civil war will happen [if the foreigners leave]," said Joya between sips of green tea, "but nobody talks about today's civil war."

The Afghan conflict claimed 1,000 civilian lives in the first half of 2009, a 24-percent increase from the previous year, according to the Human Rights Unit of the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA). October 2009 was the bloodiest month for U.S. troops during eight years of war.

Joya is the youngest woman ever elected to Afghanistan's parliament. An unflinching critic of both foreign occupation and Taliban-style fundamentalism, she has escaped five separate assassination attempts.

"I'm a little tired," she confessed as we sat down in a hotel restaurant, "but we must be tireless."

Joya spoke with IPS Canada correspondent Chris Arsenault prior to the Vancouver launch of her memoir, "A Woman Among Warlords: the Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice".

IPS: In the West, the standard debate on Afghanistan goes something like this: If foreign troops leave, the Taliban will return to power, girls won't go to school and the country will become a launching pad for extremist attacks around the world. How do you respond to this?

MALALAI JOYA: Democracy never comes from war, from the barrel of the gun, from cluster bombs. Liberation never comes from occupation. After the 9/11 tragedy, the U.S. and its allies pushed us from the frying pan into the fire. They replaced the Taliban with Northern Alliance fundamentalists who are a photocopy of the Taliban.

They occupied our country in the name of women's rights, but today the situation for women is as catastrophic as under the Taliban. The only difference is that all these crimes are happening under the name of democracy, freedom, human rights, and women rights. Women's rights can't be donated from abroad or forced at gunpoint.

They [occupying forces] say if troops leave, the Taliban will eat us. But they are supporting the Taliban today, supporting warlords. Both of them are eating us. To fight against one enemy is easier than two. We are between two enemies [the occupiers and the extremists].

IPS: The New York Times recently reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai's brother and a well-known drug trafficker, has been on the CIA's payroll for years. Foreign troops indirectly fund the Taliban by paying them to protect supply routes, according to The Nation. Do average people in Afghanistan talk about this sort of collusion?

MJ: People know very well. Many others, including Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who ran for president in the election, their bums are on the lap of the CIA. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [another warlord] is said to be using his old CIA-generated [drug] trafficking network to fund the current insurgency.

If [Canadian Prime Minister Stephen] Harper is honest, why is he silent in supporting this mafia system? These people are criminals; but with suits and ties they are in power.

If this [CIA funding war-lords] isn't bad enough, [President Karzai] appointed Izzatullah Wasifi as Afghanistan's anti-corruption chief [in 2007]. Wasifi is a convicted drug trafficker who spent almost four years in Nevada state prison for selling heroin, but he was an old friend of the Karzai family. As Afghans often say, "Karzai assigned a rabbit to take care of the carrot."

IPS: In March 2001, Rahmatullah Hashimi a top aide to then Taliban leader Mullah Omar, reportedly met officials in Washington to discuss the proposed Trans-Afghan Pipeline or TAP, which would carry natural gas from Central Asia through Afghanistan to India, bypassing U.S. adversaries Iran and Russia. Negotiations between the U.S. and Taliban broke down over a dispute over transit fees, according to Asia Times reporter Pepe Escobar. How important are Central Asian energy reserves in motivating the current occupation?

MJ: They occupied my country because of geopolitical aims: Afghanistan is in the heart of Asia. China and Russia are becoming more powerful and the U.S. doesn't want that. Afghanistan is a good transit point to easily access the gas and oil resources of Central Asia. The superpower is using and occupying our country as part of a big chess game. Afghanistan has many other natural resources: China recently successfully bid billions of dollars for the right to exploit our copper deposits, estimated to be worth 88 billion dollars.

IPS: Canadians and some Europeans pride themselves for not formally invading Iraq. While touring these NATO countries with your new book, how does this sentiment strike you?

MJ: When your government says the war in Iraq is a bad war and the one in Afghanistan is good, you should ask them the difference.

The war in Afghanistan has fostered terrorism, even though the stated goal is to fight it. The biggest beneficiaries of the conflict have been extremist groups who take advantage of legitimate grievances against NATO.

I send condolences to those Canadian moms who lost their sons and daughters in Afghanistan under the name of the so-called war on terror. They are the ones who must put pressure on the government; change their fears and sorrows to strength and raise their voices against this war crime. They themselves are victims of wrong policies of their government.

(END/2009)

Oil Crisis was a Peak into the Future
Former CIBC Chief Economist predicts end of globalization, promotes local food
by CHRIS ARSENAULT

Jeff Rubin doesn't fit the typical profile of an interview subject for The Dominion. For more than a decade, he was Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets, one of Canada's largest investment banks. Rubin recently broke ranks with the financial crowd to publish his book, Why Your World is About to get a Whole Lot Smaller. The man once touted as Canada's top economist now predicts the end of globalization because of triple-digit oil prices.

"The same economics that compelled the mass exodus of manufacturing abroad will compel [the] return [of manufacturing to North America] because distance will cost money," he says between sips of San Pellegrino, as we watch container ships move through Vancouver harbour. This end point isn't far away; Rubin predicts that a barrel of oil will hit US $225 by 2012.

Forecasting the price of oil, or anything for that matter, has long been considered a fool's game. And plenty of respected analysts think the former CIBC guru has gone over the top. But, when it comes to looking into the crystal ball of global capitalism, Rubin has a far better track record than most other pin-striped sages. In 2000, Rubin correctly predicted that oil would top $50 per barrel by 2005. And in 2005 he got it right again, forecasting prices would top $100 per barrel in 2007.

The basis of Rubin's predictions—the peak oil theory—is nothing new. However, according to his analysis of oil markets, humanity is going to hit the wall a lot sooner than previously expected. Rubin spoke with journalist Chris Arsenault at the posh Fairmont Hotel on Vancouver's waterfront, before beginning the US leg of his book tour.

The Dominion: Some analysts estimate that 25 per cent of the world's hydrocarbons are located in the Arctic and will soon be open to exploitation due, ironically, to global warming. Won't this new supply nullify the severity of price rises?

Jeff Rubin: The stuff in the Arctic is a drop in the bucket. You are losing sight of what the Cambridge Energy Research Associates and Exxon don't tell you about. They hold big press conferences to talk about, 'Oh we just discovered the Jack Field—10,000 feet under the hurricane-ravaged waters of the Gulf of Mexico, isn't that fantastic.'

They don't hold press conferences [to announce], 'See this field here? It has been producing for 50 years. It's about to run dry.'

Every year we lose four million barrels a day [of production due to depletion]. Over the next five years, we are going to have to find 20 million barrels a day of new production, just so that we can [continue to] consume what we consume today.

The Canadian tar sands have become a major new source of crude; Canada is now the number one foreign exporter to the US. Won't these massive, unconventional reserves around Fort McMurray offset depletion from older fields in Mexico or Saudi Arabia?

The attractiveness of Fort McMurray is not just what is under the ground; it's where it is [located]. In Fort McMurray, all Exxon has to do is sponsor a minor hockey team and they are 'good corporate citizens.' In most places in the world, they're starting to believe oil and natural gas resources should be owned and operated by the state. The world has already gotten a lot smaller for Exxon. Outside of Canada, the US and a handful of other countries, it is the state companies who control access to hydrocarbon resources.

As far as Fort McMurray, there are 165 billion barrels of oil trapped in those sands. To produce one barrel of synthetic oil, you have to burn 1,400 cubic feet of natural gas, schlep two tons of sand [and] pollute 250 gallons of water. The very prices that will be needed to bring that oil out of the ground are the same prices that will take you off the road. Sure, at $200 a barrel of oil, we can produce four million barrels per day out of Fort McMurray. But, at $200 for a barrel of oil, you are talking seven dollars for a gallon of gasoline.

At what point does the price of oil make export-driven globalization untenable?

The model as we know it peaked in 2007. If we measure globalization by the percentage of world GDP that is an export or an import, 2007 will mark the peak of a past age.

You are going to see less and less container ships. All of those containers are about one thing: a wage ark. Moving your factory from someplace where you pay folks 30 bucks an hour to somewhere where you pay folks 30 bucks a week is great, if it's just about wages.

But what moves those container ships is oil. At $150 to $200 per barrel, the wage ark becomes penny wise and a pound foolish because what you save on a wage bill you more than spend on bunker fuel.

If free markets worked as the economics textbooks say they should, high oil prices would lead companies to invest in green technologies. Why aren't we seeing viable alternatives to petroleum?

It is all a question of time. Higher prices will light the path. And I am sure in 20, 25 years we will have new fuel technologies.

Unfortunately, our rendezvous with triple-digit oil prices isn't in 25 years, it's in 12 months. We have to figure out a way of engineering our economy and our lives to use less energy.

If the market can't create viable alternative energy technologies, what role do governments have in ending fossil-fuel dependency?

I don't believe in government, I believe in the market, I believe in prices. I believe prices will show us what to do. Sure, we need to be more efficient. But the emphasis has to be on conservation, so peak oil doesn't have to equal peak GDP.

Couldn't increased energy efficiency make up for shortfalls in production?

We think that efficiency leads to conservation, but history has shown that is not what happens.

The average engine today is 30 per cent more efficient than the engines produced before the OPEC oil shocks [of the 1970s]. Yet, the average [North American] vehicle consumes just as much gasoline in the course of a year.

Back in the 1970s, we [North Americans] used to drive about 9,000 miles a year; now we drive 12,000. Back in the 1970s, we weren't living in the far-flung suburbs. All those gains in efficiency have led us to, ever more efficiently, consume more and more oil.

How will triple-digit oil prices affect politics?

The US steel workers should be at the forefront, arguing to Obama for a price on carbon emissions. I think you'll find that when unions go through the math, Archie Bunker is going to get into bed with Al Gore.

We [North America] can produce a ton of steel and emit one-third less CO2 than steel producers in a developing country like China. Right now, that is totally irrelevant. There is no price advantage to [producing with less greenhouse gas emissions], so it doesn't flow to the bottom line and it doesn't affect where steel jobs are. But, if you are one-third more efficient, you want the price of emissions to be as high as possible—the higher the price of emissions, the greater the economic advantage.

By putting a price on carbon emissions and making our trading partners pay the same price, going green is going to bring jobs home instead of sending them away.

Won't those proposed duties, either though a carbon tax or a cap and trade system, come into conflict with World Trade Organization rules?

I would argue that is a market failure. The only reason that those steel plants went to China in the first place is because we didn't put a price on carbon emissions. In an efficient, functioning market we would have allocated resources much differently.

The carbon-spewing industries of the world should not be in the places that have the cheapest labour, but rather in places [with] the cleanest technologies. That's not where these industries are located today.

You don't seem too upset about globalization coming to an end.

I don't think this story has to be as apocalyptic as peak oil is usually displayed. It is apocalyptic if we insist on having the lifestyles we had when oil was cheap and abundant, if we insist on commuting 40 miles back and forth to work in our SUVs and importing steel from China and flatscreen TVs from Korea or Taiwan.

But I'm hopeful. I'm not hopeful because of governments; I'm an economist, I believe in prices.

I understand that there are folk who have already adopted the local paradigm for cultural or ecological reasons. But whether you think that way or not, you are going that way for the very simple fact that you won't be able to afford any other way.

When gas is seven dollars a gallon, no one is going to have to buy my book to know what to do. Folks are going to get off the road because they can't afford to drive. When there is no bus to get on, they will get their politician's attention. Why are we bailing out Detroit when 50 million vehicles are likely to head off the road in the next ten years? We should be investing in public transit, not cars.

It's now widely accepted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was primarily about oil. Just ask former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. A lot of analysts are predicting a violent scramble for the last remaining resources. Where do you think these conflicts might happen?

Let's understand that when we are talking about hydrocarbons, we aren't just talking about moving cars or powering container ships. We are talking about food. Modern agriculture is really the massive transformation of hydrocarbons into food [through] fertilizer, irrigation and mechanization. If you look at arable land under cultivation, it hasn't grown in the last 10 to 15 years. All the increases in world food production have come from increasing the yield per acre. All of those increases have come about by adding more fertilizer to the land and using more tractors.

The real challenge is: does peak oil equal peak food? If there are going to be wars, I suggest that will be the fault line.

Take countries like Saudi Arabia; they are buying land in Pakistan and Africa to grow food. The countries that rent the land? None of that food is going to their populations. What happens when their population starts to starve and they see their land being used to grow food for people in other countries? Is that a sustainable model?

Are you growing a garden?

[Laughs] No, but where I live [in Toronto], and a lot of places, have artisanal food stalls every weekend. It's organic food, basically grown around [the local area] and it's happening more and more.

At first, [organic local food markets] might be a yuppie thing to do. But soon it's going to be mainstream because that's going be the only kind of food we can afford to eat. That is going to mean changes to our diet. When I was a kid, there were no blueberries and raspberries in January; we are going to have to go back to local diets.

Chris Arsenault*

DAWSON CREEK, British Columbia, Aug 30 (IPS) - The once serene road to Tim and Linda Ewert's organic farm near Tomslake in northeastern British Columbia has become a mess of dust clouds, drilling rigs and hordes of pick-up trucks as the area transforms into the newest frontier of Canada's natural gas boom.

Someone, or a group of people, is unhappy with area's petroleum-fuelled transformation. In the last year, six attacks have blown up pipelines near the Ewert's farm, drawing attention to a region rarely discussed by Canada's urban chattering classes.

"Use your excessive earnings to install green energy alternatives instead," wrote the alleged bomber in a Jul. 15 letter, the most recent communique. "That can be negotiated here but there will be no negotiation with you on fossil fuel activities."

"The pace of the development hit us like a tsunami," said Tim Ewert, an organic farmer living near Tomslake.

"There were never any baseline studies done on air or water. They never checked to see what size or how deep the local aquifers were before starting the whole drilling programme," Ewert told IPS over hot coffee and hand-rolled cigarettes at his family farmhouse.

The lack of baseline data makes it difficult, if not impossible, to analyse the cumulative impacts of gas activity.

"We counted 82 trucks pass the house one day before noon," said Woody Ewert, Tim's son, who came into the house fresh from plowing the fields.

"The amount of dust that traffic generates on our gravel road is incredible. Our lawn would look like we were in a fog bank but it was just dust," Woody told IPS.

Farmers in the area frequently complain about excessive noise, dust, bullying from company land agents, environmental contamination and other irritants from the gas industry.

"It's like the Wild West out here," said Ken Vause, a farmer who says unlicensed land agents from a gas company are hounding him into accepting a sour gas pipeline on one of his fields that could pose harm and hurt the land's value.

"I don't condone what this person [the bomber] is doing," said Rick Koechl, a junior high school teacher living some 40 minutes from the bombed sites. "But at least it's bringing attention to the situation up here. We've had legal organisations help us with this fight, but that's not very sexy, is it?"

Koechl thinks new wells producing dangerous sour gas, which is contaminated with hydrogen sulfide, should have to be at least one kilometre from people's homes. He also wants the companies to stop flaring sour gas as the wasteful process creates carbon disulfide, a neural toxin, and other dangerous by-products.

"We have people in the neighbourhood who work in the industry, but they fought alongside us to keep companies at a reasonable distance," said Koechl. "They know how dangerous this stuff [sour gas] is."

While several gas companies operate in the region, the bomber has exclusively targeted EnCana. That company has been a better neighbour to the Ewerts than other firms, says Tim.

"We've put together a programne called 'courtesy matters' to deal with some of the nuisance issues residents have complained about," says EnCana's Brian Liverse. The company also sponsors plenty of charitable organisations in the area, including hospital associations; minor sports teams, youth groups, and the Salvation Army.

Farmers like Ewert and Koechl think the provincial government refuses to enact fair environmental legislation because it is dependent on gas revenue. Woody Ewert thinks British Columbia should double the royalties it charges gas companies.

"When I'm my dad's age, I'd like to be able to burn gas. At the rate we're going, there won't be a drop left," Woody Ewert told IPS.

"The B.C. government has some excellent programmes to stimulate their economy and oil and gas activity in the area," said EnCana's Liverse, noting that drilling rigs are moving to B.C. from neighbouring Alberta, the traditional heart of Canada's petroleum industry.

Alberta's environmental regulations are notoriously lax. An article in the Journal of Environmental Management argues that the province is a "first world jurisdiction" with a "third world analogue" in its treatment of the oil industry. That companies would move across the border in part because they find the political climate more favourable is troubling, say the Ewerts.

Attacks near Tomslake aren't the first case of high-profile sabotage against Canadian sour gas pipelines. On Apr. 20, 2000 an Alberta court convicted Wiebo Ludwig, a farmer and preacher, of bombing gas wells owned Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. (AEC). Ludwig claimed his wife miscarried a child because of sour gas exposure.

During their investigation of Ludwig and his associates, police admitted to blowing up a gas well themselves in order gain credibility for an informant. In 2002, AEC merged with PanCanadian to form EnCana, initially valued at 30 billion dollars. EnCana reps refused to comment on what, if anything, the company learned from the Ludwig saga.

In Alberta alone there were "more than 160 incidents of sabotage" against resource industries (oil, gas, hydro and forestry) between 1997-1999 causing "millions of dollars in damages", according to documents released to IPS from a freedom of information request to CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

The heavily censored documents did not provide figures for 21st century sabotage. Sources familiar with the issue say the numbers are far higher than 160 incidents.

While sabotage against EnCana has drawn significant attention to northeastern British Columbia, residents say the government is still listening to industry at their expense. Even Tom Flanagan, a conservative professor at the University of Calgary, the brain trust of Canada's petroleum industry, thinks grievances from farmers may be legitimate.

"My wife thinks so, she grew up in rural Alberta and says oil companies don't give farmers a fair shake," Flanagan told IPS.

*This is the second of a two-part series on the sabotage of gas pipelines in Northern Canada, and the impacts of energy development in the region.

(END/2009)

Chris Arsenault*

POUCE COUPE, British Columbia, Aug 27 (IPS) - North America's largest natural gas corporation hopes a one-million-dollar bounty will take down the saboteur who is blowing up their pipelines in northern Canada.

Since October 2008, six controlled explosions have rocked sour gas pipelines operated by EnCana energy around the Tomslake area in the province of British Columbia. EnCana's reward is thought to be the largest in Canadian history.

While Calgary-based EnCana is the largest player in the area, a boom in unconventional gas extraction has transformed the rolling hills and sleepy farmland in this sparely populated region to a bustling hub of activity.

"We really ramped things up in 2003," Encana spokesperson Brian Liverse told IPS during an interview at the company's field office.

The corporation has several hundred wells in British Columbia, and between 150 and 200 in the area facing sabotage, says Liverse.

Much of the region's gas is sour, or contaminated with hydrogen sulfide, a "highly toxic gas" which can cause death within a few breaths, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

"The gas rigs are like Christmas trees, they just dot the landscape," said Lyman Clark, the mayor of Pouce Coupe, the village nearest to attacked sites.

On Jul. 15, days after the most recent attack, the Dawson Creek Daily News received a handwritten letter, allegedly from the bomber, demanding that EnCana cease operations in area.

"Return the land to what it was before you came every last bit of it… before things get a lot worse for you and your terrorist pals in the oil and gas business," wrote the bomber.

In a rare move, the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET), a mix of top law enforcement officials tasked with investigating the attacks, have posted the bomber's handwritten letters on their website.

At least 250 members of INSET - including masked men with high-powered machine guns and a sniper flown back directly from Afghanistan - have descended on the Peace River region of northeastern British Columbia.

In the Jul. 15 letter, the saboteur promised to suspend attacks for three months so "We can all take a summer vacation including your security personnel and the RCMP who have not helped you to date anyway."

EnCana admits to hiring private security, but Brian Liverse wouldn't say how many or what kind of agents the company is employing.

The point of the attacks was "to let you [EnCana and the rest of the gas industry] know that you are indeed vulnerable, [and] can be rendered helpless despite your megafunds, your political influence, craftiness, and deceit," wrote the alleged bomber.

World demand for natural gas is expected to climb 51 percent by 2030 and British Columbia's provincial government, which owns subsurface petroleum rights, is pushing hard for increased investment. Since 2000, companies have drilled more than 10,000 oil and gas wells in the region.

In 2008, the province reaped a record 2.7 billion dollars from selling natural gas drilling rights. But as sour gas lines cut into fields of canola, companies flare toxic chemicals lighting up the night sky with an eerie glow, and trucks kick up dust on previously tranquil dirt roads, some local residents say increased production is coming at their expense.

"Billions of dollars leave our community every year, yet our elders have to travel to Vancouver when they get sick," said Cliff Calliou, Chief of the Kelly Lake First Nation, an indigenous community of some 500 residents 30 minutes from the bombed sites.

Industry's incursions are "changing the way of life in the community, our hunting, trapping, berry picking - even just going camping," Calliou told IPS during an interview at Kelly Lake's community centre, where several dozen residents attended a conference on strategies for dealing with the petroleum industry.

Despite the region's oil wealth, many houses in Kelly Lake are ramshackle trailers.

Unlike other native groups, there is no official treaty between Kelly Lake and the Canadian government. Natives say the gas is being stolen from unceded land and have launched a 5.2-billion-dollar claim for recompense.

After the first attacks last fall, police and media speculated - without evidence - that the bomber came from the Kelly Lake First Nation. "They [police] threw two people in jail with no charges," Calliou told IPS. He describes police actions in the community as a "witch hunt".

Natives aren't the only ones claiming police harassment. Members of INSET loudly accused local businessman Dennis MacLennan of being the bomber as he sat in a diner. The public accusations have severely impacted his business, according to media reports.

Police also accused 76-year-old Regina Mortensen, a grandmother recovering from hip surgery, of sabotaging the pipelines.

Police spokesperson Rob Vermeulen refused to comment on specific allegations of abuse. "One of our goals is to eliminate persons of interest and we can only do that by talking to people," Vermeulen told IPS. Some residents complain they have been interviewed more than four times.

At a July press conference, police accused the saboteur of "terrorising these communities of Pouce Coupe and Dawson Creek" and labeled the attacks "eco-terrorism".

But the mayor of Pouce Coupe, an ardent supporter of the gas industry, doesn't see it that way.

"I have discussed this [sabotage] with some pipeline workers," Mayor Lyman Clark told IPS at the village's office. "One just frankly told me 'I am more afraid of the bears.' "

Accessing gas in northern British Columbia isn't easy or cheap compared with other jurisdictions. Companies use a technique called horizontal drilling where rigs dig down around 2.3 kilometres and then sideways for another 2 kms, according to EnCana's Brian Liverse.

Geologically, Canada is at a disadvantage compared to other petroleum producers, but companies value political stability. That, more than anything, is what the bomber is attacking. And the companies are scared.

*This is the first of a two-part series on the sabotage of gas pipelines in Northern Canada, and the impacts of energy development in the region.

(END/2009)

The United States first used the chemical components of Agent Orange in the late 1940s, mostly for agricultural purposes. In the late 50s and 60s, Canadian government departments such as National Defence routinely sprayed Agent Orange across CFB Gagetown. During this period, Dow Chemical, the principal manufacturer of 2,4,5-T, the most dangerous component of Agent Orange, affixed the following warning to each can of defoliant produced for domestic use in the United States: "Do not contaminate irrigation ditches or water used for domestic purposes. Caution. May cause skin irritation. Avoid contact with eyes, skin and clothing. Keep out of reach of children."

Canadian sprayers working for the Department of National Defence and private contractors say they did not get these basic warnings. "We were told this stuff was safe enough to drink," recalls Ken Dobbie, who, as a 19-year-old in 1966, worked a government-financed summer job clearing defoliant-soaked brush at Gagetown. "We handled this stuff [defoliated brush] with our bare hands. We were stripped to the waist because of the heat. It wiped across our bodies all the time." Officials responsible for the safety of soldiers ignored clear warnings from Dow Chemical, hardly a group of weak-kneed environmentalists, on how to "safely" use its product.

With no protective equipment, Ken Dobbie spent six weeks on the base working with defoliants, repeating the routine of clearing Agent Orange soaked brush every day, until August 1966. The sickness began that December. Today, Dobbie suffers from brain atrophy, neurological disorders, thyroid growths, toxic hepatitis, blood disorders, relative polysciemia, type 2 diabetes and other ailments. "These diseases don't run in my family, there is no genetic history on either side," says Dobbie, who is president of the Agent Orange Association of Canada, one of two prominent citizens' advocacy groups representing soldiers and civilians affected by spraying programs.

"I've been sick for 39 years. I have a host of different disorders," says Dobbie, who's in his late 50s and takes nine different kinds of medications, including a daily dose of Demerol because of "constant pain." Dr. Robert West, Dobbie's family physician, told the CBC that his patient has no family history of these diseases or conditions like drug use or alcoholism that could explain them. Instead, Dr. West believes Dobbie's symptoms point to chemical exposure and "would suggest an immediate exposure to something."

Ken Dobbie is now a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that former sprayers have launched against the government for its negligent use of chemical defoliants at the base. "The military and government have consistently tried to frame this as an issue affecting a small group of service people," he says. "Through all those years, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people were affected."

Many of these people now live in other parts of the country or the world, meaning that this is a national issue rather than just a provincial problem. During the time that Dobbie was spraying in the 1960s, U.S. Government scientists were well aware of dioxin contamination and other dangers associated with Agent Orange.

According to Dr. James Clary, a former U.S. government scientist with the Chemical Weapons branch at Eglin, Florida, "When we [military scientists] initiated the herbicide program in the 1960's, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the "military" formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the "civilian" version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the "enemy," none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide.

Postscript

In the winter of 2007, I was a guest of the Government of Vietnam at an Agent Orange victims conference in Ho Chi Minh City. Signs of America's wartime defoliation campaign could still be seen around the hyper-capitalist bustle of the city once called Saigon. Children with limbs that were neither arms nor legs hustled for spare change near tourist destinations. A beggar near my hotel, a deformed bald woman, wore the tell-tale signs of dioxin exposure. Her badly rashed skin peeled and literally rotted in the concrete heat. Despite multiple attempts by the Vietnamese to seek justice and reparations in U.S. courts, justice has been denied. As Princeton international
law professor emeritus Richard Falk notes, "a victorious state or a state with geopolitical clout [read the United States] tends to be exempted from any accountability for its environmentally destructive wartime policies."

Average Vietnamese, unlike Canadians, are keenly aware of their country's history with Agent Orange. On a break from the Agent Orange conference, I was drinking thick coffee sweetened with carnation milk with my translator, an accomplished young foreign correspondent with one of Vietnam's largest newspapers. He turned to me with a perplexed look when the conversation came to a pause. He could not understand how the Government of Canada could spray its own people. Vietnam was still suffering, he said, but Canada had not been at war when our tragedy happened. My translator, who had covered the war in Lebanon and other conflicts, simply could not wrap his head around Canada's history with Agent Orange.

During his announcement of the compensation package, Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson told veterans and civilians that "we may never know what really happened with Agent Orange."

On this matter, at this time, Thompson is partially correct. There are still many unanswered questions. But much is clear. By 1964, at the latest, the Canadian government had informationthat its workers were spraying dangerous chemicals. If the federal government and the Department of National Defence did not know this, they should have. Regardless of who knew what, or when, it is clear that the chemicals were applied in such a way as to create unnecessarily negative health and environmental hazards. Spray plane operators should have taken better care not to poison farm land near the base.

Private contractors working for the DND should have, at the very least, required their workers to follow the manufacturers' directions when they applied the defoliants. Workers and soldiers should have been provided with proper protective equipment by their private bosses and higher-ranking officers, as the manufacturers explicitly stated.

Clearly, young people who sprayed the chemicals for both private contractors and the DND should not have been told that Agent Orange was safe enough to drink. "We were never told how dangerous this was," says Wayne Cardinal. "We were never told."

The Government of Canada, guided by the logic of the free market's hidden hand, negated its most basic responsibilities in safeguarding human and environmental health. The desire to cheaply spray problems away speaks to larger issues in advanced capitalist nations: the illusion of technological progress entwined with the broader economic super-structure pushes the marvels of science and human ingenuity into developing dangerous quick fixes like Agent Orange. The government invested in technology that saved money while destroying lives. And, unfortunately, this is a mistake that we as a society have yet to learn from.

The Canadian government should not have invited American scientists from Fort Detrick to spray Agent Purple at the base when that chemical had been banned for use in the war against the Viet Cong. It is likely that more facts will be found during the class-action lawsuit, and perhaps some more definitive answers for thousands of sick veterans and civilians will follow. However, knowingly or unknowingly, it is a fact that the Government of Canada, through the Department of National Defence, sprayed its own people with Agent Orange. This should be remembered as a national tragedy

Chris Arsenault

VANCOUVER, Canada, Jun 1 (IPS) - A report from one of the world’s top energy consultancies says oil production in Canada’s tar sands could see a five-fold increase by 2035.

"The oil sands have moved from the fringe to the center of energy supply," notes the report "Growth in the Canadian Oil Sands: Finding a New Balance" released by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) on May 18.

Environmentalists and some aboriginal groups want the oil sands to stay on the fringes because extracting heavy oil produces more greenhouse gas emissions than convention crude.

Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) issued a report titled "The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs Climate Change" on May 22 arguing that both the negative environmental impacts and benefits to U.S. energy security from Canada’s tar sands are overstated.

"Smart regulation can place a fair and reasonable price on the oil sands’ greenhouse gas emissions, providing the right incentive to reduce them," said Michael Levi, an author of the CFR report.

Levi told IPS that lifecycle green house gas emmissions from the tar sands are 17 percent worse than conventional U.S. oil imports. Environmentalists dispute this claim, stating oil production from the tar sands is at least three times worse than conventional oil.

"The development of Canadian oil sands encapsulates the complexities that the world faces on energy, environment and security," said IHS CERA chairman Daniel Yergin in a statement.

Yergin won a Pulitzer award for his book "The Prize", a history of the oil industry. CERA did not respond to interview requests from IPS.

Oil today accounts for 35 percent of global energy supply - the largest share of any form of energy. In 2008, world oil demand was 85.2 million barrels per day. CERA estimates global oil demand in 2035 could range from 97 million barrels per day (mbd) to 113 mbd.

If the global economy stays in recession or a slow growth scenario, production from Canada’s tar sands will reach about 2.3 million barrels per day by 2035, an increase of about 1 million barrels a day from present levels, according to CERA.

In 2008, Canada supplied the U.S. with 19 percent of its oil imports. That number could rise to 37 percent by 2035, according to CERA.

The dependency on oil exports to the U.S. worries Gordon Laxer, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta. "We need 21st century public interest ownership [of oil reserves]," said Laxer.

Laxer told IPS that relying on exports to the U.S. rather than the domestic market puts Canada in a weak position if there is a supply crisis. Unlike the U.S., Canada does not maintain a strategic petroleum reserve.

In contrast to Canada’s private ownership structure, the vast majority of world oil reserves are controlled by government-owned companies which can, in theory, use oil wealth to finance national development, according to Laxer.

While arguing for a price on carbon emissions, the CFR report is not concerned with other environmental problems, including water contamination.

"Local impacts are not the concern of U.S. policy makers," Levi told IPS.

Environmentalists say that exponential increases in water extraction from the Athabasca River could destabilise the North American water cycle.

Most water used in tar sands extraction is not returned to the natural water system. Instead, wastewater containing toxins is dumped into what the industry calls tailings ponds.

Staten Island, New York could fit inside the tailings pond operated by Syncrude, the largest tar sands consortium, according to CERA’s report.

"It takes a huge amount of energy just to melt the tar sands and then you have to use a huge quantity of water: that's a cost which has to be internalised [by industry]," said environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki.

"Right now the oil industry is getting away scot-free," Suzuki told IPS.

The CFR report supports adding a cost or externality to carbon emissions. The report guesses that a carbon price of 20 dollars per tonne of CO2 equivalent - roughly what prices have averaged in the European Union's Emission Trading Scheme - would add only 2.21 dollars per barrel of additional production costs to the oil sands.

"The U.S. will have a large market for emissions, Canada will benefit from that stability," the CFR’s Michael Levi told IPS, extolling the benefits of a carbon pricing system which is being debated by legislators on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. Environmentalists say these cost estimates for carbon are too low to stop runaway climate change, a scenario many scientists argue could destroy life on Earth as we know it.

CERA maintains a list of the world’s top 15 countries that have the potential to increase oil production over the next decade. Canada ranks fourth on this list. Brazil is the only other country in the Western Hemisphere to make CERA’s list.

Critics of CERA’s methodology say this accounting neglects Venezuela’s massive and virtually untapped heavy oil reserves in the Orinoco belt.

(END/2009)