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Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XCIV–‘Representative’ Democracy: A Ruse To Convince Citizens That They Have Agency In Their Society

April 5, 2024

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XCIV

January 29, 2023 (original posting date)

Monte Alban, Mexico. (1988) Photo by author.

‘Representative’ Democracy: A Ruse To Convince Citizens That They Have Agency In Their Society

A friend recently posted on my FB timeline the link to an article about the plans of our provincial government in opening up sections of Ontario’s Greenbelt[1] to housing development and the legal action against this that is being contemplated by one of Ontario’s many First Nations communities.

He asked me the following: “I wonder how many people who vote for Doug Ford will give this some thought the next time they do a routine land acknowledgement?”

My comment on the issue:

I think the truth of the matter is that the vast/significant majority of people will not think about this issue.

The human tendency to defer/obey ‘authority’ results in most people believing the propaganda/marketing of the government.

Most citizens believe when they are informed governments are ‘consultative’, a ‘social service’, and acting on behalf of it citizens — something constantly reiterated in today’s mainstream/legacy media.

For most, what the politicians say is gospel, especially if they’re the ones they voted for.

Government consultation is a ruse, regardless of party. It is for all intents and purposes a public relations stunt to give the impression that the average person has influence or impact upon decision-making and policies, and that government is responsive to citizen input.

Can you imagine the stress created by the cognitive dissonance of holding the notion that you have agency via consultation or the ballot box but also recognising that your ‘representatives’ are the public face of a ruling caste that doesn’t truly give a shit about you but is primarily motivated by a desire to control/expand the wealth-generation/extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and thus positions of power and prestige.

Most (all?) would rather deny/rationalise away the latter belief and hold on to the former one. Living with a lie is much easier and comforting than living with the significantly problematic truth that governments are in place to represent and protect the ruling caste in society — not the hoi polloi.

If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers). Encouraging others to read my work is also much appreciated.

[1] See this.

First Nations Pipeline Protest: 14 Land Protectors Arrested as Canadian Police Raid Indigenous Camp

January 9, 2019

First Nations Pipeline Protest: 14 Land Protectors Arrested as Canadian Police Raid Indigenous Camp

In Canada, armed forces raided native Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia Monday, with at least 14 arrests being reported. Land defenders faced off with Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the police breached two checkpoints set up to keep pipeline workers out of protected territory. Indigenous leaders are reportedly being blocked from their territory. TransCanada Corporation has been seeking entry into indigenous territory, where they are planning to build the massive $4.7 billion Coastal GasLink pipeline. Land protectors from First Nations clans set up two encampments where they had been physically blocking entry to TransCanada workers.

We speak with Karla Tait, a member of the Unist’ot’en House Group of the Gilseyhu Clan. She’s the mental wellness manager for the Northern Region with the First Nations Health Authority, serving the 54 First Nations in Northern British Columbia. Dr. Tait is also the director of clinical programming for the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In Canada, armed forces raided native Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia Monday, with at least 14 arrests being reported. Land defenders faced off with Royal Canadian Mounted Police as the officers breached two checkpoints set up to keep pipeline workers out of protected territory. Indigenous leaders are reportedly being blocked from their territory.

WET’SUWET’EN LAND DEFENDER: The Wet’suwet’en have won rights and title to their lands. We did not hurt anyone. The hereditary chiefs say, “No, you cannot go through our lands.” And under your law, the authority is them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

First Nations Celebrate Win Against Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion

August 31, 2018

First Nations Celebrate Win Against Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion

Here’s how indigenous leaders pulled together a grassroots movement to resist the pipeline expansion.

A Federal Court of Appeal on Thursday struck down the Canadian government’s approval of the ‪Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion, halting construction of the 1,150-kilometer project indefinitely.

The expansion would have tripled capacity of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline, allowing it to ship up to 890,000 barrels of bitumen oil every day from Alberta’s tar sands to a terminal in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The court decision cited the Trudeau government’s failure to consult with Canada’s First Nations, specifically the government’s insufficient treatment of oral traditional evidence, lack of sufficient time given in the consultation process for affected groups to inform themselves well enough to participate, and failure to consult about the environmental assessment.

The court decision cited the Trudeau government’s failure to consult with Canada’s First Nations.

The decision comes after months of indigenous-led opposition to the pipeline. Efforts suffered a big blow back in May, when the Canadian government announced it would purchase the project for $4.5 billion when Kinder Morgan struggled to fund the expansion.

“Without question today is a day of celebration,” said Grand Chief Stewart Philip of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs in an interview posted on Facebook. “But also it’s a day that we must reflect on our journey up to this point in our opposition to the Kinder Morgan Trans mountain expansion project. And I’d like to take this opportunity to thank that massive infrastructure that was pulled together in terms of grassroots people, indigenous leadership, and rank-and-file British Columbians and Canadians.”

Here’s what that leadership has looked like.

Coast protectors

In British Columbia, indigenous coast protectors led direct actions of allies, environmental activists, and local residents to stop pipeline expansion. Over 200 people have been arrested in direct actions over the past several months.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada’s Indigenous Bands Rise Up Against a Tar Sands Pipeline

December 7, 2015

Canada’s Indigenous Bands Rise Up Against a Tar Sands Pipeline

TransCanada, the company behind the now-defunct Keystone XL, is proposing another pipeline that would ship Alberta tar sands oil to Canada’s Atlantic coast. But fierce opposition from First Nation communities could derail this controversial project.

Sitting in his office on the outskirts of Montreal, Serge Otis Simon, council chief of the Kanastake — a band of Mohawks — is clear about what might happen if the proposed Energy East Pipeline is routed through the band’s land, in spite of their opposition. “The Warrior Society are men whose duty is given by creation to protect the land, people, and community,” he told me, describing a group of Mohawks who go by that name. “I can’t think of a more honorable way to be killed than standing in the way of that pipeline.”

The rhetoric may be extreme, but it reflects the passions surrounding the debate over oil and gas pipelines in Canada. And it may well not be hyperbole. The Kanastake, after all, are the First Nations band that rose in armed revolt against Quebec and the federal government in 1980 over a developer’s efforts to build a golf course and condominium complex on a burial site in a sacred pine grove next to their reserve. The two-and-a-half month standoff ended when the Kanastake surrendered to police.

350.org

Cree activist Clayton Thomas-Muller, shown at a Keystone XL protest last January, is organizing First Nations opposition to the Energy East Pipeline.

Now that President Obama has shot down the contentious Keystone XL Pipeline — which would have transported oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast — the spotlight is turning to Energy East. Proposed by TransCanada, the same company behind Keystone XL, the Energy East Pipeline is the next most likely conduit for what is known as unconventional crude. It would run from Alberta nearly 3,000 miles east to ports in Atlantic Canada, snaking across territory claimed by some 150 First Nations groups.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

RCMP planning mass arrests at pipeline protest camp, northern B.C chiefs fear

August 29, 2015

RCMP planning mass arrests at pipeline protest camp, northern B.C chiefs fear

RCMP say they are just working to keep the peace

A dispute over energy projects and aboriginal rights is heating up at a pipeline protest camp in northern B.C. where First Nations leaders fear police are planning mass arrests.

Since 2009, Wet’suwet’en people, activists and environmentalists have been building a remote camp in northern B.C. to block several major pipeline projects. They include:

Chevron’s Pacific Trail Pipeline.
Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project.
Shell’s TransCanada Coastal GasLink pipeline project.

Shell plans to build a 650-kilometre pipeline from B.C.’s gas-fracking region to a proposed LNG site in Kitimat.

Spokeswoman Shela Shapiro told CBC News the company supports the right to peaceful protest, but called the RCMP after Unist’ot’en protesters prevented workers from using a public road on Thursday.

The camp is about a two-hour drive southwest of Houston, B.C. on rough forest roads.

Shapiro said Unist’ot’en protesters have told TransCanada staff to leave the area “on a number of occasions.”

Yesterday afternoon, the Unist’ot’en Camp posted a message on its Facebook page.

“Coastal Gaslink crews showed up at Chisolm checkpoint. Threatened checkpoint crew that a police report will be filed as they do not have consent to enter the territory.”

‘Non-violent occupation’

Shapiro told CBC that TransCanada is “absolutely willing” to work with camp leaders, saying the company has made more than 90 attempts to speak with the hereditary chief and Unist’ot’en spokesperson.

The Unist’ot’en camp calls itself a “non-violent occupation” of traditional aboriginal land. Unist’ot’en camp protesters routinely stop traffic on remote forest service roads near the camp and turn back oil and gas crews.

Companies trying to use the area say they’re trying to use public roads to access Crown land, and some have ferried their crews to nearby worksites by helicopter.

Now, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs says top RCMP officials have told them a major police crackdown is imminent.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Syncrude bird deaths, Nexen pipeline spill show oilsands’ degradation of ecosystem: First Nation

August 9, 2015

Syncrude bird deaths, Nexen pipeline spill show oilsands’ degradation of ecosystem: First Nation

‘Something is seriously wrong,’ says Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation

The recent bird deaths at a Syncrude oilsands facility in northern Alberta along with last month’s Nexen Energy pipeline spill — one of the biggest in the province’s history — show the need for better oversight, a local First Nation says.

Alberta pipelines: 6 major oil spills in recent history

“In less than one month, we have seen two major events that clearly demonstrate that something is seriously wrong,” said Allan Adam, chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), in a news release. “These incidents, and the countless more seen in recent past, are contributing to the degradation of the local ecosystems and the treaty and aboriginal rights of nations in the region.”

Alberta’s energy regulator said 30 blue herons died earlier this week at the Mildred Lake Facility north of Fort McMurray, Alta. An investigation into what caused the birds to die is still underway.

Bob Curran, a spokesman for the agency, says a Syncrude worker found one of the heron Wednesday. The animal was alive but had to be euthanized. After the company searched the area, they found the rest of the birds dead in a run-off pond.

“We have seen irreparable damages to the environment and now death of a species that is listed with special concern,” said Adam.

Adam is correct that the fannini subspecies of the great blue heron is listed as a species of “special concern” under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, but they mostly reside on the B.C. coast. According to the Canadian Wildlife Federation’s Hinterland Who’s Who website, the overall great blue heron population is healthy, and scientists estimate there are tens of thousands of the bird in Canada.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

As Site C Breaks Ground, Linked Union Declares Opposition

August 1, 2015

As Site C Breaks Ground, Linked Union Declares Opposition

BCGEU cites First Nation infringement and loss of habitat in motion against controversial dam.

The union representing many British Columbia government workers has taken a position against building the Site C dam, a project some of its members are working on and that other unions support.

“This was a membership driven motion,” said Stephanie Smith, the president of the B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union. “We have 68,000 members and there is a diversity of interests.”

Smith said the motion was brought forward by the union’s environment committee and passed unanimously. There was no debate even though Smith invited discussion, she said.

A statement from the union said it opposes building the dam because it is not needed, it will cause a loss of habitat, it infringes First Nations’ hunting and fishing rights, productive agricultural lands will be lost and it fails the economic test of “providing a lasting net benefit to British Columbians.”

First proposed some 30 years ago, Site C is to be the third of a series of dams on the Peace River and will flood an 83-kilometre long stretch of the river to generate 1,100 megawatt hours of electricity, enough to power 450,000 homes per year.

The provincial government approved the $8.8-billion BC Hydro project in Dec. 2014 and announced it intended to start construction this summer.

BC Hydro spokesperson Kevin Aquino confirmed project construction has begun, and will ramp up over the summer. ”Security has mobilized to [the] site and some initial clearing activities on the north bank of the dam site area are underway,” he said, adding gates and signage have been installed.

Several First Nations and local landowners have filed lawsuits trying to stop BC Hydro from building the dam.

Publicly owned asset

BCGEU members have been involved in the planning and approval of the project. Within B.C.’s energy and mines ministry, about half a dozen members are currently working on the Site C file, a ministry spokesperson confirmed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nine Months After Polley Breach, Alaskans Seek Compensation Guarantee from BC

May 31, 2015

Nine Months After Polley Breach, Alaskans Seek Compensation Guarantee from BC

Proposed northern BC mines ‘source of great angst in Juneau.’

Earlier this month, Heather Hardcastle, a commercial fisherwoman from Juneau, Alaska met in Williams Lake, B.C. with members of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation. They shared a meal of wild Alaskan salmon that Hardcastle brought as a symbolic gesture: This fish was a reminder of all there was to lose.

After lunch, Hardcastle and her team of Alaska visitors boarded a helicopter and flew 25 minutes away to the site of the Mount Polley accident, the scene of a massive breach last August of its mine waste dam near the town of Likely, B.C.

The breach released millions of cubic metres of contaminated water into Quesnel Lake, which feeds into the Fraser River.

Nine months later, Jacinda Mack, a Xatsull woman from the Soda Creek reserve and one of many residents living near the path of the spill, invited the Alaskans to Williams Lake to see firsthand the main effect of that accident.

On the Fraser River, contamination from the mine breachthreatened the run of Sockeye salmon that spawns in Quesnel Lake.

“We saw where [Mack] was raised, and where they used to fish on the Fraser where people fished for thousands of years, and they’re not fishing there anymore. It’s heartbreaking,” Hardcastle said. “It’s a stunning and gorgeous area but it was just so sad. It feels selfish to be thinking about us and our water, but it lit a fire under me. We have to do something.”

It was an eye-opening sight to Hardcastle, who lives and works in southeast Alaska, downstream from a number of open-pit mines located in northwest B.C., with more under construction and opening soon.

Hardcastle grew up in the 1970s, during which time her parents fought the B.C. Tulsequah Chief mine, located 65 kilometres north of Juneau, Alaska, which leaked acid mine drainage in 1957 and still hasn’t been cleaned up. The polluted Tulsequah River empties into the salmon-rich Taku River.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Petronas Hoping To Buy First Nations Tribes’ Support For $1 Billion

May 11, 2015

Petronas Hoping To Buy First Nations Tribes’ Support For $1 Billion

Petronas is willing to pony up nearly $1 billion to secure the support of First Nations tribes in western Canada for its natural gas export project. The Malaysian state-owned oil company is offering C$1.15 billion (USD$950 million) to the Lax Kw’alaams tribe in order to build an LNG export facility at the Prince Rupert port.

The offer would consist of annual payments over 40 years. For example, Petronas would pay over $12 million in the first year, with payments rising by 1 to 5 percent annually (depending on production), culminating in a $50 million payment in the 40th year. Also, tribe members would have a sort of preferred status for open jobs at the Petronas’ Pacific Northwest LNG facility. The offeramounts to about $320,000 per person. The Lax Kw’alaams tribe will vote on the offer in May.

The tribes argue the price is hardly exorbitant. When one considers it will be spread over 40 years and the project will result in large land use impacts on local communities, the $1 billion is a fair price. “This will be a real game-changer for many First Nations in terms of how they can build their future,” John Rustad, the Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation Minister in British Columbia, told the Globe and Mail in an interview on April 30.

Interestingly, it could create a new benchmark for major fossil fuel projects on indigenous lands. For other projects to move forward, affected tribes could use the pending offer for the Lax Kw’alaams as leverage.

The big offer from Petronas is somewhat of an afterthought for the C$36 billion proposal. That steep price tag has forced a rethink within the Malaysian company. In December 2014, Petronas decided to put off a final investment decision, hesitating to commit that much money to an LNG export project during a period in which LNG markets are not doing so well.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

No Wealth, No Justice in $1 Billion LNG Offer to First Nation Band

May 10, 2015

No Wealth, No Justice in $1 Billion LNG Offer to First Nation Band

Here’s why Lax Kw’alaams still side with the salmon.

Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian theologian and writer known for his work among the poor and the excluded, is credited with coining a phrase that is as true as any you’ll ever hear: ”The opposite of poverty is not wealth — it is justice.”

It is a phrase that has also been attributed to Bryan Stevenson, founder of America’s Equal Justice Initiative and a man Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called, without qualification, ”America’s Nelson Mandela.”

Regardless of the provenance of the expression, it is the potency of the underlying idea that should be freighted into the unseemly scramble to unlock northern British Columbia’s dangerously exaggerated liquefied natural gas (LNG) bonanza, especially now that some coastal First Nations are bellying up to the pipe to get their overdue share of Canada’s resource riches.

To read reports emanating from the mouth of the Skeena River, the energy sector thinks it has finally cracked the nut on how to successfully partner with First Nations people who, inconveniently, stand afore a variety of proposed LNG plants and pipeline deals. These aboriginal people have rights along the planned pipeline routes, and also at tidewater, where Canada is trying to unstopper our oil and gas supplies so the Chinese can drain off our energy sovereignty like so much bilge water.

Industry’s latest poster child is the Lax Kw’alaams Band, whose main village at Port Simpson is situated on the coast north of Prince Rupert, where the waters of the Skeena and the Nass rivers mingle and nurse some of the finest wild salmon populations left on the planet.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

NEW CANADIAN COUNTERTERRORISM LAW THREATENS ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS

March 30, 2015

NEW CANADIAN COUNTERTERRORISM LAW THREATENS ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS

Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, who campaigns for environmental protection on behalf of indigenous First Nations in Canada, wasn’t surprised when, in 2012, she found out that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been keeping tabs on her. The Toronto Star that year obtained documents showing that federal police had monitored private meetings held between her coalition and local environmental groups.

Now she just laughs when asked whether she’s comforted by assurances from government officials that new surveillance and policing powers outlined under a proposed Canadian Anti-Terror Law wouldn’t be aimed at peaceful protesters.

The passage of the terrorism bill would represent a new “open season on First Nations who are speaking out,” she says.

Across Canada, police surveillance and intervention have long been a reality for groups working to stop development of fossil fuel extraction, including pipeline construction and fracking. The sense that somebody’s watching is part of the price Thomas-Flurer, of the Saik’uz nation, has paid for coordinating the Yinka Dene Alliance, a coalition of six First Nations in British Columbia that have banned the passage of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline through their territory.

The coalition is part of a movement that has slowed the development of the pipeline, which would carry more than 500,000 barrels per day of crude from landlocked Alberta’s oil sands to a port on Canada’s west coast, so much so that a recent CBC News article questioned whether the project was “being quietly shelved.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Kinder Morgan Begins Survey Work On Burnaby Mountain As Protests Continue

November 22, 2014

Kinder Morgan Begins Survey Work On Burnaby Mountain As Protests Continue.

BURNABY, B.C. – First Nations vowed to stand in unity with protesters as police kept up arrests Friday in a Metro Vancouver conservation area where crews resumed survey work for the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.

Shortly after activists announced they would do whatever it takes to stymie the project, a group began marching up Burnaby Mountain in the pouring rain.

More arrests quickly followed.

Charlene Aleck, a Tsleil-Waututh councillor, told a gathering of protesters at the base of the mountain that members of her First Nations band would join the actions aimed at protecting their homeland and waters.

“For the Tsleil-Waututh nation, it is our sacred obligation,” she said to a cheering crowd. “In our shared opposition to Kinder Morgan, we are many people paddling one canoe. Our united opposition and the sum of our collective voices will ensure this pipeline is never built.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XCIV

Transcript

‘Non-violent occupation’

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