The Obama Administration objected to the move by Israel that discriminates against American citizens of Palestinian origin. However, there has been no protest from Ottawa even though Time magazine and the Israeli daily Haaretz ran lengthy articles focusing on a Palestinian Canadian businessmen harmed by this new policy. A few weeks ago the Globe and Mail reported that “Although some of the most high-profile cases of individuals being turned away involve Canadian citizens, the Harper government has, so far, made no protest.”

This silence bolsters claims by some commentators that under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, Canada has become (at least diplomatically) the most pro-Israel country in the world. Israeli officials concur. After meeting Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, four other Conservative ministers and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in July 2009, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has openly called for the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel, commented:

“It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days. Members both of the coalition and the opposition are loyal friends to us, both with regard to their worldview and their estimation of the situation in everything related to the Middle East, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Somalia. No other country in the world has demonstrated such full understanding of us.”

Two days after Harper won a minority government in January 2006, Hamas won Canadian-monitored and facilitated legislative elections. Quickly after assuming power Harper made Canada the first country (after Israel) to cut its assistance to the Palestinian Authority. The aid cutoff, which was designed to sow division within Palestinian society, had devastating social effects.

Ostensibly, the aid cutoff was due to Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel. Yet, Canada has not severed relations with Likud-led Israeli governments, which do not recognize the Palestinians’ right to a state. Harper explained, “Future assistance to any new Palestinian government will be reviewed against that government’s commitment to the principles of nonviolence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations.” But support for Israel was never made contingent on “nonviolence” or an end to settlement construction.

In March 2007, Palestinian political factions representing more than 90 percent of the Palestinian Legislative Council established a unity government. Still, the Conservatives shunned the new government all the while claiming to speak regularly (like the Israelis) with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. When the unity government’s Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti traveled to Ottawa on a global peace tour, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay refused to meet him. Barghouti, who represents a secular party, explained at the time, “I think the Canadian government is the only government that is taking such a position, except for Israel.” Barghouti had already met the foreign ministers of Sweden and Norway, the Secretary-general of the United Nations and then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

However, once Hamas officials were ousted from the Palestinian Authority (PA), Ottawa restarted diplomatic relations and financial support. “The Government of Canada welcomes the leadership of President Abbas and Prime Minister [Salam] Fayyad in establishing a government that Canada and the rest of the international community can work with,” explained MacKay after the unity government’s collapse in mid-2007 and the appointment of a new government in Ramallah. “In light of the new Palestinian government’s commitment to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, and in recognition of the opportunity for a renewal of peace efforts, Canada will provide assistance to the new Palestinian government.”

With Palestinian society divided and a more compliant authority in control of the West Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency contributed $8 million “in direct support to the new government.” Part of this aid was directed towards creating a Palestinian police force “to ensure that the PA maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas,” as Canadian ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was quoted by the Canadian Jewish News. US Lt. General Keith Dayton, in charge of organizing the Palestinian force, never admitted that he was strengthening Fatah against Hamas but to justify his program Dayton argued that Iran and Syria funded and armed Hamas. Bolstering Fatah to counteract the growing strength of Hamas was the impetus for Dayton’s mission. However, the broader aim is to build a force to patrol Israel’s occupation, a fact Dayton does little to dispel.

In January 2007, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay offered an immediate $1.2 million for Dayton’s mission. A fifth of Dayton’s initial staff was comprised of Canadians, and during a press conference with MacKay in Jerusalem Condoleezza Rice said Dayton “has a Canadian counterpart with whom he works very closely.” Two years later, Dayton’s military training force in the West Bank reportedly included nine Canadians, 16 Americans, three Brits and one Turk.

In June 2008, a Harper government press release announced, “Canada is a strong supporter of Palestinian security system reform, particularly through our contribution to the mission of Lt. General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator, and to the European Union Police Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support.”

Canada’s contribution to the Dayton mission was part of a $300 million “aid” package that began in December 2007. According to the government agency Public Safety Canada, “a significant component [of the $300 million will be] devoted to security, including policing and public order capacity-building. This five year commitment will go towards the creation of a democratic, accountable, and viable Palestinian state that lives in peace and security alongside Israel.”

But does anything close to a “viable Palestinian state” exist? Is Israel allowing it to be created? Growing Jewish-only settlements, Israeli bypass roads and the apartheid barrier all make a Palestinian state far from realistic in the short to medium term. Yet Canadian officials act as if Israel is working toward a Palestinian state.

In Gaza, Israel’s occupation has turned into a blockade. For 27 months, Israel has reduced food and medicine from entering the tiny coastal territory to a fraction of what is needed by the besieged population. Yet, the Harper government has refused any criticism of the siege. Canada was the only country at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to vote against a January 2008 resolution that called for “urgent international action to put an immediate end to Israel’s siege of Gaza.” It was adopted by 30 votes with 15 abstentions.

Instead, the Conservative government has been quick to congratulate Israel for any small pause in its blockade. In January 2009 International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda proclaimed that “We commend Israel’s decision to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance [to Gaza] through a temporary ceasefire.” A day after Oda’s announcement, Israeli forces fired on a UN convoy during a ceasefire, killing a Palestinian aid worker. There was no follow-up statement from Oda condemning Israel’s actions.

Compared to Ottawa’s cheerleading, most of the world was hostile to Israel’s attacks on Gaza last winter. In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel’s ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel didn’t need to worry since Ottawa was prepared to help out. “Israel’s interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy,” explained the Jerusalem Post (Ottawa had been “doing this for Israel in Cuba” since 1973). In August 2009, the Canadian embassy in Caracas also began providing visas to Venezuelans traveling to Israel.

For defining Canadian policy as “we support Israel no matter what it does,” B’Nai Brith International bestowed Harper with its Presidential Gold Medallion for Humanitarianism. The first ever Canadian to receive the award, Harper joined former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, and US Presidents John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman. For its part, the Canadian Jewish Congress gave Harper its “prestigious Saul Hayes Human Rights award, named for a former CJC executive director, the first time it’s been given to a sitting PM.”

Despite the government’s strident support for Israel, grassroots opposition to that country’s policy has never been greater. Recent protests against the Toronto International Film Festival’s spotlight on Tel Aviv were a major setback to Israeli public relations efforts. The festival embarrassment followed massive demonstrations against Israel’s assault on Gaza, when many cities across the country witnessed their largest ever Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.

Alongside displays of opposition to specific Israeli policy, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign is growing. Many social groups such as Independent Jewish Voices and Quebec’s most active student Federation, ASSE, have joined the BDS movement, as have a number of unions, including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Ontario), the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the teachers Federation in Quebec. Social movements in Canada have never been more critical of Israel.

If you answer the latter, take your place alongside the Harper government and other sectors of the political elite that attack a largely historic form of oppression to advance a present day pro-imperial foreign-policy and anti-immigrant/anti-aboriginal domestic agenda.

Despite a loud chorus claiming otherwise, anti-Semitism is a mere fig leaf of its former oppressive character. Six decades ago “none is too many” was the order of the day in Ottawa, which rejected Jewish refugees escaping Nazi concentration camps. This hostile anti-semitic climate continued into the 1950s with institutions such as McGill University in Montreal imposing quotas on Jewish students. But Christianity’s decline, combined with a rise in antiracist politics has significantly undercut anti-Semitism as a social force in Canada.

Today, Jews are largely seen as white people. Canada’s Jewish community is well represented among institutions of influence in this country and there is very little in terms of structural racism against Jews (which is not to say there isn’t significant cultural stereotyping, which must be challenged). But in an inversion of reality, the more anti-Semitism declines as a social force the more it concerns the political elite.

Why?

As a way to silence critics of Israel, of course. More generally, the Conservatives, supported by the Jewish establishment, allege anti-Semitism to advance a broadly pro-empire foreign-policy.

In April 2009, Harper explained: “we are very concerned that, around the world, anti-Semitism is growing in volume and acceptance.” A month later, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister (formerly Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity) Jason Kenney told a European audience, “peaceful and pluralistic Canada sees signs that this evil [anti-Semitism] is newly resurgent.” Then, in a statement bordering on Holocaust denial, he added, “I also very acutely understand the nature of the new anti-Semitism, and I think it’s even more dangerous than the old European anti-Semitism.”

There have been few similar proclamations about racism directed towards First Nations, Blacks or any other group in Canada. A Canadian Newsstand search for Jason Kenney Islamophobia; Jason Kenney racism against Blacks; Jason Kenney missing Native/Aboriginal women brings up nothing of substance. On the other hand, a search of Jason Kenney and anti-Semitism elicited dozens of articles, including many strong comments from the Minister.

The Conservatives, which get few Jewish votes but are close with its right-wing establishment, have used the politics of anti-Semitism to crowd out action regarding more oppressive forms of bigotry. Despite the fact that Muslims and Blacks are more likely to be targeted, “Jewish organizations have received 84 per cent of the funding announcements under a federal program that provides security for groups at risk of being attacked in hate crimes,” reported the Canadian Press three weeks ago. “Forty-six of the 55 projects funded by Ottawa since February 2008 belonged to Jewish community groups.”

At the level of international diplomacy the Harper government’s cries of anti-Semitism are a transparent attempt to silence critics of Israeli crimes. But there is more to it. The accusations of anti-Semitism are a way to advance a broader right-wing foreign-policy agenda.

Beyond defending Israel, there are a number of recent instances where anti-Semitism has been used by Canadian politicians to advance ‘white’ or imperial policies. Last April, Virginie Levesque, a spokesperson for the Canadian Embassy in Venezuela, accused socialist oriented president Hugo Chavez of anti-Semitism. “The Canadian Embassy has encouraged and continues to encourage the Venezuelan government to follow through on its commitment to reject and combat anti-Semitism and to do its utmost to ensure the security of the Jewish community and its religious and cultural centers.”

That same month, two Liberal MPs presented a petition to the House of Commons claiming an increase in state-backed anti-Semitism in Venezuela. Former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said Venezuela has seen a “delegitimization from the president on down of the Jewish people and Israel.” These unsubstantiated accusations of anti-Semitism are designed to further demonize a government that threatens North American capitalist/geopolitical interests.

Additionally, Canada was the first country to withdraw from last April’s World Conference against Racism in Geneva. Defending Israel was part of the Harper government’s motivation for pulling out of the conference; they also had little interest in discussing the dispossession of First Nations, colonialism or the African slave trade. An “anti-Semitic anti-West hate fest dressed up as anti-racism conference” is how one unnamed Canadian official described the meeting.

Claiming the conference was anti-Semitic was the only politically palatable justification for withdrawing. In fact, Israel was barely on the agenda as Naomi Klein describes in this month’s Harper’s magazine. She points out how pro-Israel groups effectively undermined extensive efforts by (largely) black activists to force the international community to define colonialism and the slave trade as crimes against humanity. “Perhaps the best way to describe the convergence of interests in Geneva is to say that pro Israel groups succeeded in convincing 10 governments to boycott a conference that they never wanted to come to anyway.”

It’s particularly ironic that the Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister has been the most fervent proponent of anti-Semitism politics. Claims of anti-Semitism do not in any way challenge white supremacy, something a multiculturalism minister should take on.

Harper gave Jason Kenney, the most right wing member of his cabinet, the immigration and multiculturalism portfolio. Is that because the Conservative party’s (anti-Aboriginal, anti-immigrant) base opposes multiculturalism? Does the focus on claims of “racism” against white Jews simply offer a convenient cover for continued white supremacy?

Even a close observer of the Canadian press would know almost nothing about the ongoing demonstrations, blockades and work stoppages calling for the return of elected President Manuel Zelaya. Since Zelaya was overthrown by the military on June 28 the majority of teachers in Honduras have been on strike. Recently, health workers, air traffic controllers and taxi drivers have also taken job action against the coup. In response the military sent troops to oversee airports and hospitals across the country.

For more than a week protesters from all corners of the country walked 20 km a day and on Tuesday tens of thousands of demonstrators converged on the country’s two biggest cities, San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. These demonstrations prompted the de facto regime to reimpose a curfew in the capital, which had been in effect in the weeks after the coup.

This resistance — taking place under the threat of military repression — has gone almost entirely unreported by leading Canadian media. So has Canada’s tacit support for the coup.

Last Tuesday the ousted Honduran Foreign Affairs Minister told TeleSur that Canada and the US were providing “oxygen” to the military government. Picked up by numerous Spanish language newspapers, Patricia Rodas called on Canada and the US to suspend aid to the de facto regime.

During an official visit to Mexico with Zelaya last week, Rodas asked Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who was about to meet Harper and Obama, to lobby Ottawa and Washington on their behalf. “We are asking [Calderon] to be an intermediary for our people with the powerful countries of the world, for example, the US and at this moment Canada, which have lines of military and economic support with Honduras.”

To my knowledge, no Canadian media reported Rodas’ comments. Nor did any Canadian media mention that Canada’s ambassador to Costa Rica, Neil Reeder, met coup officials in Tegucigalpa last week. The Canadian media has also ignored the fact that Canada is the only major donor to Honduras yet to sever any aid to the military government.

Latin American (and to a lesser extent US) media have covered Ottawa’s tacit support for the coup more closely than the Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen and most of the rest of the Canadian media. When Zelaya tried to fly into Tegucigalpa a week after the coup Canada’s minister for the Americas, Peter Kent, told the Organization of American the “time is not right” for a return. The New York Times ran two different articles that mentioned Canada’s anti-Zelaya position while Bloomberg published another. Many Latin American news agencies also printed stories about the Conservative government’s position, however, the Canadian media was uninterested.

A few weeks later Zelaya attempted to cross into Honduras by land from Nicaragua. Kent once again criticized this move. “Canada’s Kent Says Zelaya Should Wait Before Return to Honduras,” read a July 20 Bloomberg headline. A July 25 right-wing Honduran newspaper blared: “Canadá pide a Zelaya no entrar al país hasta llegar a un acuerdo” (Canada asks Zelaya not to enter the country until there’s a negotiated solution).

After publishing a number of articles about Ottawa’s position in the hours and days after the coup, Mexican news agency Notimex did a piece that summarized something this author wrote for rabble.ca. Then on July 26, Notimex wrote about the Canadian Council for International Cooperation’s demand that Ottawa take a more firm position against the coup. Both of these articles were published (at least online) by a number of major Spanish-language newspapers.

Finally, a month after the coup there was a small breakthrough into Canada’s dominant media. A sympathetic producer at CBC radio’s The Current provided space for Graham Russell from Rights Action, a Canadian group with a long history in Honduras, to criticize Ottawa’s handling of the coup. Unfortunately, Russell’s succinct comments were followed by the CBC interviewer’s kid gloves treatment of Minister Peter Kent. Still, the next day the Canadian Press revealed that Ottawa refused to exclude Honduras from its Military Training Assistance Program, a program rabble.ca reported on days after the coup.

Uninterested in the Conservative government’s machinations, the Canadian media is even less concerned with the corporations that may be influencing Ottawa’s policy towards Honduras. Rights Action has uncovered highly credible information that Vancouver-based Goldcorp provided buses to the capital, Tegucigalpa, and cash to former employees who rallied in support of the coup. As far as I can tell, the Halifax Chronicle Herald is the only major Canadian media outlet that has mentioned this connection between the world’s second biggest gold producer and the coup.

Under pressure from the Maquila Solidarity Network, two weeks ago Nike, Gap, and another US-based apparel company operating in Honduras released a statement calling for the restoration of democracy. With half of its operations in the country Montréal-based Gildan activewear, the world’s largest blank T-shirt maker, refused to sign this statement. According to company spokesperson Genevieve Gosselin, Gildan employs more than 11,000 people in Honduras. Without a high-profile brand name Gildan is particularly dependent on producing T-shirts and socks at the lowest cost possible and presumably the company opposed Zelaya’s move to increase the minimum wage by 60% at the start of the year. Has Gildan actively supported the coup like Goldcorp? It is hard to know since there has yet to be any serious investigation of the company’s recent activities in the country.

The Canadian media’s coverage of the coup demonstrates the importance of independent media. We need to support news outlets willing to challenge the powerful.

Despite the threat of military violence, hundreds of thousands of Hondurans have marched, gone on strike and blocked highways to reverse the coup. Almost every country and major institution in the world has condemned the coup. But the Canadian government seems to support it.

Foreign Affairs remained silent in the hours after Zelaya was kidnapped by the military. Eight hours after Zelaya’s ouster a Foreign Affairs spokesperson told Notimex news agency that Canada had ‘no comment’ regarding the coup. It was not until late in the evening, after basically every country in the hemisphere denounced the coup, that Ottawa finally did so.

Canada, reported Notimex, was the only country in the hemisphere that did not explicitly call for Zelaya’s return to power. Unlike the World Bank and European Union, Ottawa has not announced plans to suspend aid to Honduras, which is the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central America. Nor has Ottawa mentioned whether it will exclude the Honduran military from its Military Training Assistance Program.

At a special Organization of American States meeting a week after the coup, Canada’s minister for the Americas, Peter Kent called for Zelaya to delay his planned return to the country claiming the “time is not right.” On Sunday, after the coup government refused to consider the return of Zelaya as proposed by mediator Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, Kent again called on the elected president not to reenter his country. “A return to Honduras prior to a negotiated resolution is strongly discouraged.”

Kent has yet to denounce the coup government for killing peaceful protesters and arresting thousands, but he did respond to Zelaya’s recent comment that Hondurans had the right to “insurrection” against an illegitimate government. On Sunday Kent said, “we call on all parties to condemn any and all incitement to violence in this ongoing crisis.”

This was just Kent’s most recent attack against Zelaya. At the special OAS meeting two weeks ago Kent said “there has to be an appreciation of the events that led up to the coup,” blaming Zelaya for clashes with the army, Supreme Court and Congress. Before the coup Kent criticized Zelaya’s plan for a non-binding public poll on whether to hold consultations to reopen the constitution. “We have concerns with the government of Honduras,” he said in early June. “There are elections coming up this year and we are watching very carefully the behaviour of the government and what seems to be an attempt to amend the constitution to allow consecutive presidencies.”

This is parroting the U.S. (and Honduran) neo-conservative argument that an elected president can be made illegitimate if he consults with the population as to whether or not it wishes to change the constitution. If this were to stand, then Hondurans would forever be captive to a constitution written by a right-wing, military-backed government.

Ottawa’s hostility is likely motivated by particular corporate interests and Zelaya’s support for the social transformation taking place across Latin America.

From 1996-2006 Canadian companies were the second-biggest investors in Honduras. Zelaya’s move earlier this year to raise the minimum wage by 60% could not have gone down well with the world’s biggest blank T-shirt maker, Montréal-based Gildan, which employs thousands of Hondurans.

Likewise, announcing that no new mining concessions would be granted during his term could not have made Zelaya popular with Canada’s powerful mining sector, which has some 1,300 properties in Latin America. An interesting note in this regard is that Vancouver-based, Goldcorp Inc., which runs a controversial open pit, cyanide-leeching gold mine in the country, provided buses to the capital, Tegucigalpa, and cash to former employees who rallied in support of the coup, according Rights Action.

More broadly, the Harper government opposes Zelaya’s gravitation toward the countries leading the push toward a more united Latin America. A year ago Honduras joined the Venezuelan led ALBA, Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our Americas, which is a fast growing response to North American domination of the region.

Canadian corporations, with more than $100 billion invested per year in Latin America, cannot be pleased.

Since touring South America two years ago, Harper has worked to stunt the region’s growing rejection of capitalism and U.S. dependence. In March Harper referred to the far right Colombian government as a valuable “ally” in a hemisphere full of “real serious enemies and opponents.” And after answering questions regarding Venezuela in April he said, “I don’t take any of these rogue states lightly.”

The recent announcement that Canada would shift ‘aid’ from Africa to Latin America is part of an attempt to slow the region’s transformation. The region’s most pro-capitalist governments, in Colombia and Peru, will benefit from this increased aid as will regional civil society groups whose views most closely align to Ottawa’s.

Supporting the coup in Honduras is a continuation of this policy; an attempt by Ottawa to block Latin America’s leftward shift.

I would answer that Canada participated in the coup as a way to make good with Washington, especially after (officially) declining the Bush administration’s invitation (order) to join the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq.

It is also worth noting that at the start of 2003 the Haitian minimum wage was 36 Gourdes ($1) a day, which was nearly doubled to 70 Gourdes by the Aristide government. Of course, this was opposed by domestic and international capital, but especially Canadian capital. The largest blank T-shirt maker in the world, Montreal-based Gildan Activewear employs up to 5,000 people in Port-au-Prince’s assembly sector. Most of Gildan’s work is subcontracted to Andy Apaid, who was the leader of the Group 184 domestic “civil society” that opposed Aristide’s government.

It is also clear that some Canadian mining companies saw better opportunities in a post-Aristide government (A recent Toronto Star article explained, “Another Canadian-backed company recently resumed prospecting in Haiti after abandoning its claims a decade ago. Steve Lachapelle — a Quebec lawyer who is now chair of the board of the company, called St. Genevieve Haiti — says employees were threatened at gunpoint by partisans of ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.”).

Another reason for the intervention came out of the contempt, heightened during the country’s 200-year anniversary of independence, directed at Haiti ever since the country’s revolution dealt a crushing blow to slavery and white supremacy. The threat of a good example — particularly worrisome for the powers that be, since Haiti is so poor — contributed to the motivation for the coup. Aristide was perceived as a barrier to a thorough implementation of the neo-liberal agenda. The attitude seems to have been, “If we can’t force our way in Haiti, where can we?”

But, I was never entirely satisfied with my answers. That was one motivation for spending hundreds of hours over the past year in the McGill University library researching the history of Canadian foreign policy. So, why did Canada help overthrow the elected Haitian government? Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Historically, countries’ foreign affairs were mostly about “projecting force” in a hostile world. This meant the use of power (military or economic) for protection or to gain advantage. In the modern era, the “advantage” to be gained and then protected was capitalist entitlement, the ability to make a profit. In other words, foreign affairs have mostly been about asserting and protecting the “rights” of a country’s wealth owners.

The Canadian government, from its beginning, was part of the command and control apparatus of the world economic system. At first, Canada served as an arm of the British Empire, but, given the country’s location, quickly became intertwined with the USA. Canada’s role over the past five decades, as assigned by the dominant power, has typically been some sort of “policing” operation, usually called peacekeeping. Since Canada has primarily been a “policing” rather than “military” power one must look to the language of policing to discover the motivations for our Haitian policy.

Over the past decade there has been much discussion of something called “pulling our weight” in external affairs. In laymen’s terms this means spending more of the country’s resources on defending and expanding the ability to make a profit around the world, for Canadian capitalists in particular, but also for the system in general. While the less sophisticated neoconservatives have simply called for more military spending and a pro-US foreign policy, the more liberal Canadian supporters of capitalism have been busy creating an ideological mask, called the “responsibility to protect” that will accomplish the same end.

The “responsibility to protect” is essentially a justification for imperialism using the dialect of policing instead of the old language of empire and militarism. It says there are “failed states” that must be overthrown because they do not provide adequately for their own citizens and because they threaten world order. This is the international equivalent of the “zero tolerance” (also called the “broken window”) strategy of the New York City police department. The policy is to aggressively go after petty crimes in order to create an environment that discourages more serious law breaking. In the same fashion, the international community should go after “failed states” that do not directly threaten other countries by invasion but only create an environment where “crime” may thrive.

(Noam Chomsky has used the Mafia analogy to explain the less sophisticated, older imperialist version of this policy. Any and all challenges, even minor ones, must be met with violence until “order” is established. The “responsibility to protect” differs in form but not in substance.)

The coup in Haiti was a Canadian-managed experiment in the use of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine. Aristide was overthrown precisely because Haiti is so unimportant to the world economic system and because cracking down on it is the international economic equivalent of the New York City police cracking down on graffiti writers. Once again Haiti was an example to the rest of the world, a message from the world’s rich and powerful.

The question to answer now is what next? And one can only hope that history will not be our guide. The first Haitian revolution was the earliest and most successful challenge to the entitlement of capitalist wealth owners in the era of slavery. In the late 1700s Haiti was home to some of the most brutal large-scale labour exploitation the world has ever seen. Stolen and shipped from Africa, nearly half a million slaves worked under horrific conditions as the “property” of approximately ten thousand white landowners and a few thousand property owners of mixed race. Up to 40 percent of France’s GDP came from Haiti in the mid 1700s. The profitability of Haiti’s sugar plantations was that era’s equivalent of Middle East oil.

The slave revolution from which Haiti was born was a rejection of the capitalist system as it then existed. But the country never found its way to an alternative economic system. Instead, within three years of independence the lighter-skinned plantation owners overthrew and murdered the country’s liberation hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines (the French having killed the famous revolutionary, Tousaint Louverture, prior to independence). Excluded from international commerce by the world’s capitalists, and facing threats of invasion, Haiti promised to repay its former exploiters. In 1825 Haiti agreed to pay $21 billion (in 2004 dollars) to compensate French slaveholders for their loss of property (land and now free Haitians). The price for its reintegration into the world economic system was extremely high.

Foreign powers, especially Germany, France and the US, repeatedly sent gunboats into Haitian waters. The most common reason was to press Haiti to pay debts (often to businesses from these countries) it was unable to afford. In one instance, US marines secretly entered Port-au-Prince and took the national treasury. The 1915 US invasion/occupation of Haiti was partly about forcing the country to repay its debt. And during that occupation, the US took over Haiti’s independence debt to France, which was not finally repaid until 1947. The Haitian state became dependent on foreign governments, autocratic and extremely repressive, because its primary role was ensuring the repayment of debt.

Once again the Haitian people and government are being forced along an economic path dictated by the world’s economic elite and I fear the result will be the same as before. Of the $1.2 billion in “aid” for Haiti announced at a Washington donors’ conference in July 2004, more than half was loans, which Haitians must repay. Haitians will have to repay this money even though they did not choose the Gerard Latortue regime that got most of the money, the US, France and Canada did. Much like compensating French slaveholders Haitians will (literally) be paying for the coup in the years to come. Already, under the thumb of Haiti’s debt holders and a foreign occupation, the elected government of Rene Preval is privatizing the last of Haiti’s state-owned companies.

Supporters of capitalism sometimes argue, incredibly, that Haiti’s impoverishment is a result of the country’s lack of capitalism. But, as even a short visit to Haiti quickly demonstrates, the country has no shortage of entrepreneurs or a willingness to work. Rather, a study of history reveals that the economic system commonly called capitalism has only ever been interested in profiting from the super exploitation of the vast majority of Haitians and ignoring their humanity.

Please write 500 words answering each of three of the following questions.

1) Do people really feel better when their elected government is destroyed by democracy promotion rather than subversion?

2) Should it be called “aid” or “aiding and abetting” when you give a country weapons of mass destruction?

3) Why is it called a non-governmental organization (NGO) when it gets most of its funding from governments?

4) Why do progressive people, who think privatized medical and social welfare services are a right wing plot in their own wealthy countries, donate money to organizations that replace government-run services in poor countries?

5) Are some major Western non-governmental organizations really just an arm of imperialism?

Bonus marks will be awarded if you answer all five.

Facing the reality that most development NGOs are heavily reliant on Western government “aid,” which is usually directed towards countries of geopolitical importance to the captains of capitalism, may be unpleasant for some “progressives,” but it is true nonetheless.

A major principle of Canadian foreign aid, for example, has been that where the USA wields the big stick, Canada carries a police baton and offers a carrot. The major recipient of Canadian aid in 1999/2000 was the former Yugoslavia; Iraq and Afghanistan were top two recipients in 2003/2004; today Afghanistan and Haiti are Nos. 1 and 2. The intervention-equals-aid principle also exists for other western countries.

Post-coup Haiti has been a bonanza for Canadian (mostly Quebec-based) NGOs. They have received tens of millions of dollars from the Canadian government. Montreal-based Alternatives, usually on the left of the NGO world, is but one example. With no operations in Haiti before 2004, the post-coup influx of Canadian “aid” dollars was too good an opportunity to pass up. The Haiti file was given to an Alternatives employee who was having difficulty finding money for his Africa dossier. Canadian imperialism showed a definite preference for Haiti and rewarded Alternatives when it obliged. (Alternatives also made its way to Afghanistan)

According to the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) website, Alternatives has received $2.1 million for work in Haiti over the past couple of years. Coincidentally, Alternatives has parroted the neoconservative narrative about Haiti. Their guest speaker on Haiti at the recent Quebec Social Forum was Chavanne Jean-Baptiste, an advisor for right-wing business candidate, Charles Henry-Baker’s failed presidential campaign. (It has been alleged that Baptiste’s organization provided support to the ex-military who lead the armed assault against the elected government in February 2004.) Alternatives’ other main Haitian invitee was Rene Colbert, editor of AlterPresse, who told this author in a private conversation there was no coup in February 2004 since Jean Bertrand Aristide was never elected.

Many of the other Canadian NGOs that benefited from the coup called for Aristide’s overthrow. The Concertation Pour Haiti (CPH), an informal group of half a dozen NGOs, branded Aristide a “tyrant,” his government a “dictatorship,” and a “regime of terror”; in mid-February 2004, CPH called for Aristide’s removal. This demand was made at the same time CIA-trained thugs swept across the country to oust Aristide.

Quebec (and Haitian) NGOs’ hysterical opposition to Aristide was certainly influenced by the politics of their government donors. An understanding that intervention would lead to increased aid also likely influenced it. The 1994 US invasion, which restored Aristide to office, created a boom for development NGOs in Haiti (making it the world leader in NGOs per square kilometer, according to some). Yet, securing financing became more difficult as international funding was curtailed along with foreign troops (and US police trainers) in the late 1990s and with the “intransigent” Aristide’s 2000 election. Not until Aristide was gone, and a post-coup government installed by the USA, France and Canada, did the aid spigot once again turn back on for Canadian and Haitian NGOs.

Haiti was not unique. In another part of the world, many NGOs supported “humanitarian intervention.” In her book, Fools’ Crusade, Diana Johnstone decries NGO support for Western imperialism in the former Yugoslavia. She points out: “When, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo, military intervention leads to an international protectorate, Western NGOs are granted a prominent role in local administration and receive a large share of public and private donations.” (Fools’ Crusade, Page 13)

Of course imperialism is not only about military intervention. In Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony, William I. Robinson argues that “democracy promotion” is an important aspect of modern imperialism. It’s a change in US foreign policy from “earlier strategies to contain social and political mobilization through a focus on control of the state and governmental apparatus” to a process in which “the United States and local elites thoroughly penetrate civil society, and from therein, assure control over popular mobilization and mass movements . . . ”

The colored revolutions in Eastern Europe are high-profile recent examples of “democracy promotion” at the service of western aims. In Haiti, as well, a variety of NGOs were funded to promote the US and Canadian version of democracy. Politics Without Sovereignty explains: “From 1998, USAID and DFID [the UK’s Department For International Development], among others, began to systematically subcontract to international NGOs including CARE, ActionAid, Save the Children, Oxfam, and Concern International to ‘build civil society capacity.’”

According to a recent Vancouver Sun article, nearly a fifth of the Canadian International Development Agency’s budget, some $600 million, is now spent on initiatives directed towards “promoting democracy.” Last October CIDA established an Office of Democratic Governance. Of course, the US is the largest democracy promotion donor with the National Endowment for Democracy at the forefront. Its Democracy Projects Database coordinates 6,000 projects worldwide.

The economic and social sides of imperialism also benefit NGOs. The neoliberalism pushed by the IMF, World Bank, USAID, CIDA etc. breeds NGOs. As structurally adjusted states withdraw social services, NGOs flood in.

Take Ghana, for instance. Since the late 1980s, a series of structural adjustment programs have diminished the state’s role in the economy. The donors that push neoliberalism argue that while reforms may bring with them social ills, their aid and NGOs will help to resolve these side effects. Back in the late 1980s, the former president of CIDA, Margaret Catley-Carlson, explained to the Ghanaians: “We know that if you take on this [IMF] program of reform it will cost you. Your food prices are going to shoot up, and in the urban areas that is going to be very destabilizing. So we will put in some food aid [likely administered by NGOs] and help you out over this very difficult period.”

The process of withdrawing the state has resulted in ever-growing dependence. With a hint of pride, Jeanine Cudmore, an employee of the CIDA-funded Social Enterprise Development Foundation, recently told the Montreal Gazette that in northern Ghana “the government relies on NGOs.”

When the US returned Aristide to office in 1994, it was on condition that he implement an economic agenda focused on further downsizing the state. International creditors argued that the flipside of this government downsizing would be increased aid, particularly to private sector NGOs. This “aid” money was to be channeled towards projects such as schools and hospitals run by private (usually non-profit) NGOs.

A CIDA report released in 2005 stated that by 2004, “non-governmental actors [for-profit and not-for-profit] provided almost 80 percent of [Haiti’s] basic services.” While an NGO-run school may be better than no school at all, a cluster of privately run schools is not an ideal development model. Canada’s development agency has admitted as much. According to CIDA, “Supporting non-governmental actors contributed to the creation of parallel systems of service delivery. … In Haiti’s case, these actors [NGOs] were used as a way to circumvent the frustration of working with the government … this contributed to the establishment of parallel systems of service delivery, eroding legitimacy, capacity and will of the state to deliver key services.”

NGOs are significant beneficiaries of modern imperialism: They soften the edges of neoliberalism, while democracy promotion and military interventions alike bring a windfall of contracts. Perhaps the question to be asked is: Are development NGOs compatible with real democracy?

In Canada and many other countries, most people, including all of those who are on the left, oppose private health clinics, seeing them as a threat to our universal, government-run systems of medical care. People everywhere see public schools as an important part of democracy. Citizens in all First

World countries demand social services provided by their governments.

Yet the “development” model favored in the Third World for the past two decades involves destroying government services and handing them over to NGOs that willingly participate in this undermining of democracy

If you see anything progressive about that, you’ll get a failing grade in the test above.

Of course he didn’t mention if the Iraqi mothers whose children have been shot by mercenaries (unaccountable to any law) feel that way on discovering the bullets originate from a Canadian company.

The company’s eagerness to point out their heritage is a strategy that milks Canadians’ deep-seated perception of this country’s altruism. Numerous studies demonstrate that Canadians’ self-appraisal of their country’s foreign policy is the highest in the world.

But do the facts fit our self-image?

It is well known that Canada participated militarily in the Boer War, First World War, Second World War, Korean War, first Gulf War, bombing of Serbia and the war in Afghanistan. What is less well known is that Canada did so without facing a serious threat of invasion and that none of these wars were morally justifiable. (WWII may have been justifiable after the fact, but
Canadian motives for participating were not a high-minded struggle against anti-semitism or fascism. In a summer 1937 meeting with Hitler, Prime Minister McKenzie King lauded the Nazi’s support for the Fascists in Spain and during the war the Canadian government had a “none is too many” policy on immigration for fleeing European Jews.) Canada’s entry into the first three wars was more or less automatic because this country was part of the British Empire. We joined the last four conflicts because, quite frankly, Canada had become part of the U.S. Empire.

Many of us cite peacekeeping as a great Canadian endeavor. Canada and the Early Cold War, a book financed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, lays the myth of benevolent peacekeeping to rest. “The more extreme version of this myth, which makes Lester Pearson [the founder of peacekeeping] into Herbert Evatt raging against Great Power dominance and transforms Canada’s peacekeeping into neutralism or even pacifism, receives no support in the
DCER [documents on Canadian external relations].” Through peacekeeping, Canada was fighting the Western world’s Cold War “by other means.”

Aid is probably the most benevolent aspect of Canadian foreign policy. Yet, an important principle of Canadian aid is that where the US kills, Canada provides aid. Canadian aid expanded drastically in South Vietnam during the American War. More recently, the three major recipients of Canadian aid are Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti. In Haiti, that aid was used to help overthrow
an elected government and then legitimate the brutal 26-month coup regime.

Geopolitics has always been the primary reason for disbursing Canadian aid. In the wake of the Chinese revolution, Canada began its first significant [non–European] allocation of foreign aid through the Colombo plan. The man in charge of Canada’s participation in the plan, Nik Cavell, explained the rationale behind the plan. Communism “has made a great inroad in Asia … and is busy day and night softening up, and preparing, other populations ready for the day when they too can be made satellites of an ever-growing world of terrible totalitarian slavery of the human mind and body.”

If some of India and Pakistan’s post-colonial population had not set their sights on a communist solution to their troubles –- with the possibility of Soviet or Chinese assistance — Canada probably would not have been willing to provide aid. The Colombo plan was then extended to Commonwealth Africa and the Caribbean amidst fears the British Empire’s old territories would fall under the influence of the communist bloc.

A 1969 background paper for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) summarizes the rationale of Canadian aid. “To establish within recipient countries those political attitudes or commitments, military alliances or military bases that would assist Canada or Canada’s western allies to maintain a reasonably stable and secure international political
system. Through this objective, Canada’s aid programs would serve not only to help increase Canada’s influence within the developing world, but also within the western alliance.”

The second motivation driving Canadian aid is to advance capitalist interests. Initially all Canadian aid was tied, meaning that the money had to be spent on Canadian-produced goods or services. Even after four decades of criticism half of all Canadian aid is still tied. Additionally, many of the projects funded are chosen because they benefit Canadian corporate interests. A boon to Canadian-owned hotels and airlines, Canadian aid has been used to build airports throughout the Caribbean. And, by the late 1980s, aid became a way to coerce developing countries to adopt structural adjustment programs.

The third motivation behind Canadian aid is domestic: It aims to weaken the Quebec sovereignty movement and social movements generally across the country. In the late 1960s, Canada began to expand its aid to francophone nations as a way to placate Quebec nationalists. Prior to this, Canadian aid was focused on the recently decolonized former British colonies. The aid to the Francophonie was designed to convince Quebec nationalists that the Canadian government was sympathetic to francophone culture. Quebec’s large number of CIDA-funded international non-governmental organizations (and the jobs they provide, especially to young people) is a testament to the federal government’s policy of tying Quebecers to its overall aid objectives.

Of course, state funding for social/political organizations always has an element of co-optation. In the case of international assistance, the federal government would prefer activists join the Canadian University Services Overseas and go teach somewhere in Africa then organize to oppose the capitalist system at home. It’s a way of directing activists towards issues the government finds less politically sensitive as well as making them dependent on the federal government.

The other motivations behind Canadian aid are to feed the hungry, to build schools and other infrastructure, and to help people climb out of poverty. Unfortunately, these motivations are less acted upon than the ones cited above. That is because there are powerful actors in business and government who make sure their interests are satisfied before all others.

Unfortunately, most of us have, so far, paid more attention to the words than to the deeds of our governments and corporations. Only when the vast majority of Canadians pay attention to the reality of foreign affairs and demand altruistic aid, real international co-operation, benevolent peacekeeping instead of militarism, and the rule of law instead of an empire’s might, will these things happen.

A little reported on New England Journal of Medicine study from a few months back concluded that 19,000 people die from preventable infections acquired during the insertion of catheters.

But shock, worry and amazement won’t help answer the question; what makes the hospital environment a major killer? While some medical infections will always occur, through aggressive cleanliness campaigns several European countries have all but eliminated MRSA, one of the most deadly hospital acquired diseases. The New England Journal of Medicine study reports that catheter related blood stream infections dropped 66% with some minor changes (including rigorous hand-washing, thorough cleaning of the skin around catheters, and wearing sterile masks, gowns and gloves as well as removing catheters from patients as soon as possible and avoiding inserting catheters in the groin area). According to a 2004 Canadian survey published in the American Journal of Infection Control, up to half of all hospital-acquired infections were found to be preventable if infection control procedures were adequate. And a similar six-year old American study concluded that up to 75 percent of deadly infections caught in hospitals could be avoided by doctors and nurses using better washing techniques. (Studies show that over half of the time physicians fail to clean their hands before treating patients and that 65 percent of physicians and other medical professionals go more than a week without washing their lab coat.)

Nevertheless, it is wrong to simply blame front-line medical workers for these unnecessary infections. Data shows that successful behavioral change is contingent upon vigilant supervisors who put in place adequate preventive measures and demand proper cleaning practices. As well, understanding management, a culture of respect, proper staffing levels, ongoing education programs and proper shift scheduling have all been shown to improve the health and safety of hospitals — for both patients and workers. (“By nearly doubling cleaning staff hours on one ward,” US News and World Report explains, “a hospital in Dorchester reduced the spread of MRSA by nearly 90 percent.”)

The biggest barrier to improvement, however, is our economic system, which focuses on cures and technology because that’s where the biggest, quickest profits can be found. Pfizer isn’t likely to fund studies that look into the role hand-washing plays in hospital-acquired infections since they don’t see a profit in doing so. Billions of dollars are spent annually on the development of new drugs and medical technologies, but little is spent on basic hospital infection control — even though this would save a greater number of lives — because there has been little economic incentive to do so. Some company makes a profit when a new MRI machine is purchased, but the bottom line that benefits from better hand-washing techniques is only measured in lives.

It has taken a public outcry just to get some states to force hospitals to track and report hospital acquired infections. But, unlike restaurants and cruise ships, the body that inspects and accredits US hospitals, Joint Commission, does not measure cleanliness.An over-reliance on the profit motive outside the hospital door also causes infection-control problems. More than 70 per cent of hospital-acquired infections are resistant to at least one common antibiotic. Infections resistant to antibiotics significantly increase the chance of death.

This increase in deadly multi-resistant viruses is, in large part, attributable to our overuse of antibiotics, which is connected to drug companies’ bottom lines. Doctors, faced with patients demanding quick cures, and encouraged by a pharmaceutical industry that spends tens of billions on advertising, over-prescribe antibiotics. “Prescribing antibiotics has become so common that many doctors literally are just phoning it in,” a recent USA TODAY article explains.

According to an analysis of 1.5 million insurance claims for antibiotic prescriptions in 2004, 40% of people who filled an antibiotic prescription had not seen a doctor in at least a month. Without seeing the patient, how can doctors determine whether their symptoms were the result of a viral infection — which don’t respond to antibiotics — or a bacterial infection that do. This over-prescription of antibiotics increases the growth of multi-resistant organisms.

And in the case of the Clostridium difficile superbug, which has killed many hospital patients over the past few years, antibiotics perturb the bacterial flora in the intestine. This opens the door to the super-bug. (One study found, according to the Times of London, that “reducing the number of prescriptions for broad–spectrum antibiotics [which kill a wide range of bacteria] from about 53 per 1000 admissions to 17 per 1000 caused the number of cases of C difficile to fall by two thirds.”) Additionally, half of all antibiotics sold each year are used on animals, according to New Scientist. Industrial farmers give their animals constant low doses of these drugs to treat infection but also as a growth hormone. The administration of low doses is especially problematic since it becomes a feeding ground for organisms to mutate. Data shows a strong correlation between increased use of antibiotics on animals and the emergence of resistant strains in the animal population with mirrored increases amongst people.

To end this practice, the European Union recently banned antibiotic growth promoters. Washington and Ottawa, kowtowing to the animal industry, have done little. Hospitals can be much safer and healthier places. Tens of thousands of lives can be saved if real health outcomes can be given priority over profit-making opportunities.