TO FRACK OLD WELLS INSTEAD OF RECLAMATION

Oilsands group pledges to spend $16.5B on carbon capture project by 2030

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

Oct 14, 2022

Canada's biggest oilsands companies say they will spend $16.5 billion before 2030 on a massive proposed carbon capture and storage facility that is the centrepiece of their net-zero-by-2050 pledge.

The Pathways Alliance, a consortium of the country's six largest oilsands companies, said Friday it will also spend an additional $7.6 billion on other emissions reductions projects, for a total of around $24.1 billion.

The announcement comes as Canada's oil and gas industry has been under fire from environmental groups who say not enough of the record profits being reaped this year due to sky-high oil prices are being funneled into decarbonization.

Last month, a report from environmental think-tank the Pembina Institute said Canada's oil and gas sector is estimated to earn a profit of $152 billion in 2022 due to the war in Ukraine and the resulting commodity price boom. The report criticized the industry for not moving faster to meet its climate commitments in light of its windfall profits.

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has also said he wants to see more details from industry on what it is doing with its profits to achieve its emissions-reduction targets.

"If they don't make those investments while they're making record-level profits, then when would it be a good time for them to make those investments?" Guilbeault said in a September interview. "If not now, then I don't know when.''

The Pathways Alliance has not yet made a final investment decision on the project, which would capture CO2 emissions from more than 20 oilsands facilities in northern Alberta and store them safely underground, delivering an estimated 10 million tonnes of emissions reductions per year.

But it says it has already completed pre-engineering work and is consulting with Indigenous communities along the route of the proposed 400-km pipeline that would carry captured CO2 to the storage hub. The group says it has also completed nine carbon capture feasibility studies involving member companies at oil sands sites.

Earlier this year, the federal government announced an investment tax credit for carbon capture and storage (CCS) that will enable companies to claim a tax credit of up to 60 per cent for direct air capture projects and 50 per cent for all other eligible carbon capture projects. A 37.5 per cent tax credit is available for investment in equipment for carbon transportation, storage and use.

But oilsands CEOs have said more government support will be necessary to make the building and operating of such expensive, cutting-edge technology economical.

“A CCS project of this size is a huge undertaking that requires significant up-front work and a strong partnership between industry and government to proceed,” said Kendall Dilling, president of Pathways Alliance, in a news release.

The industry has also said the government's overall targets for the oil and gas sector are unrealistic. While the Pathways Alliance has said it believes it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from production by 22 million tonnes by 2030 — an approximate 30 per cent reduction from current levels — the federal government wants Canada's oilpatch to reduce by 42 per cent below 2019 levels. 

That would bring total emissions from the sector to 110 million tonnes by 2030, down from 191 million tonnes in 2019. They haven't been that low in more than three decades.

“We continue to work with the federal and Alberta governments to ensure Canada’s co-funding programs and regulatory environment for CCS are globally competitive and that emissions reduction targets for our industry are realistic and achievable," Dilling said Friday.

“In parallel, we’re progressing work to make sure we’re ready to make an investment decision and start building as soon as the necessary financial and regulatory conditions are in place.”

The Pathways Alliance is made up of member companies Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Cenovus Energy Inc., ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial Oil Ltd., MEG Energy Corp., and Suncor Energy Inc.

The group says it plans to apply for regulatory approval for its CO2 transportation line and storage network in late 2023. It says it could begin injecting carbon as early as 2026

U$ Voters Support Investigating Death of Palestinian-American Journalist

In May, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was tragically killed while covering Israeli military raids in the West Bank. Although the Israeli military initially said that she was killed by militant fire, they are now admitting there is a high likelihood that an Israeli soldier hit her by mistake.

This summer, lawmakers in Congress introduced an amendment to require the FBI and State Department to investigate Abu Akleh’s killing. Specifically, the investigation would help identify the origins of the weapon used to kill her.

A recent poll by Data for Progress finds 71 percent of voters support investigating Abu Akleh’s death, including 80 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Independents, and 66 percent of Republicans.




The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist simply doing her job, sets a dangerous precedent for free speech on the global stage. It’s essential that a full investigation is properly conducted. There is clearly bipartisan support for discovering the truth about Abu Akleh’s death.


Sabrina Jacobs is a digital fellow at Data for Progress.

Survey Methodology

From July 8 to 11, 2022, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,330 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.

Will Alex Jones’s $1 billion penalty curb the conspiracy industry?

Mike Bebernes

·Senior Editor

Sat, October 15, 2022 

“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.

What’s happening

The far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered by a jury to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to the families of eight children killed during the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., for promoting the lie that the massacre was a hoax.

The Infowars founder had spent years claiming on his popular radio show that the shooting, which killed 20 first-graders and six educators, was staged by “crisis actors.” During the defamation trial in Waterbury, Conn., parents of the victims detailed how those allegations led to persistent harassment, online abuse and death threats from Jones’s listeners. The jury ruled that Jones must pay a total of $965 million in varying amounts to 15 individuals.

This is the second major penalty Jones has incurred for his lies about Sandy Hook. In August, he was ordered to pay $45 million to two other parents by a jury in Austin, Texas. A third trial, also in Texas, is expected to be held later this year.

Conspiracies about Sandy Hook are just one form of the extraordinary lies that Jones has peddled throughout his career. Over the years, he built a massive following for his radio show — which has allowed him to turn Infowars into a company that at one point was estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Although Jones is the most recognizable — and probably the most bombastic — public conspiracist, he is far from the only person to have used fantastical claims for personal notoriety and financial gain. While most stop short of warning about goblins and gay frogs, online spaces and the broader public discourse are rife with people engaging in absurd accusations of the kind Jones has made.

Why there’s debate

It’s not clear what the enormous financial penalty will mean for Jones personally and for Infowars’ future as a business. It’s even more difficult to predict how the judgment will affect the broader industry of conspiracist voices in media and politics.

Some observers are hopeful that the jaw-dropping amount Jones is being ordered to pay will make other far-right fabulists think twice about the claims they make, especially once people targeted by their accusations see the legal precedent that's been set. They add that the ruling also changes the financial incentives of the conspiracy industry, since businesses looking to profit from stirring up outrage now have to factor in the risk of crippling legal penalties.

Others are less optimistic. They say Jones has helped to build a genre of media so widespread that it can easily live on and thrive without him. Some argue that the facts of the case show how extreme the wild assertions must be before any real punishment is meted out to the people making them. Many on the left also say that conspiratorial thinking is now so deeply ingrained in mainstream conservative media and the Republican Party that fantastical lies will be an everyday part of political discourse, no matter what happens to Jones and his contemporaries.

What’s next

Jones’s lawyer told the media he plans to appeal the jury’s decision, which could delay the final resolution of the case for months or more. If that appeal fails, it would allow the families and their representatives to begin the lengthy, painstaking process of unraveling Jones’s finances to determine how much of his money they can collect.

Perspectives

The risk of a billion-dollar penalty will make some people think twice about spreading lies

“When they have to actually start paying out billion-dollar judgments, when they’re going to be chased for the rest of their lives. … I just wonder are we finally getting to a point where there are consequences to abhorrent actions and abhorrent words?” — Joe Scarborough, MSNBC

Jones is just one person in a massive movement

“In the ongoing struggle to defend truth in our distressed society he’s almost an aside. His departure would make barely a ripple in the roiling sea of misinformation threatening the health and well-being of our democracy.” — Editorial, Houston Chronicle

There’s still plenty of profit to be made in the conspiracy industry

“Jones flourished in the right’s growing alternative reality bubble, where he could drive the political narrative. Instead of being shunned or marginalized, Jones found that lying was a lucrative business model that leads to celebrity and political clout. And it’s naïve to think that will change now.” — Charlie Sykes, Bulwark

The business of conspiracy mongering just got a lot less appealing

“Sometimes in the marketplace, people without a soul will treat wrongdoing as a simple math problem: risk versus reward. Without the hammer of punitive damages, those with deeper pockets … may do the math and choose wrongdoing if the potential profit outweighs the financial liability risk. The threat of punitive damages restrains that impulse.” — Dana Hall McCain, AL.com

People like Jones will thrive as long as there’s an audience for their lies

“He tapped a mine of millions of followers. He profited though willing advertisers. Many will now likely drift off in search of other conspirators. Some will cling to Jones out of some depraved loyalty. Alex Jones proved there is profit in the Big Lie. Eventually, even such untruths have trouble hiding in the light of a courtroom. But it’s become easy to cloak lies in the labyrinth of the internet without consequences.” — Editorial, CT Insider

The decision won’t kill the conspiracy industry, but it still counts as progress

“There are limits to how far a business model based on defamation can go. Alex Jones probably is not a big enough fish that making an example of him will have much salutary effect, but putting a real price on lying for a living is still a baby step in the right direction.” — Kevin D. Williamson, National Review

Jones has showed the extreme lengths people can go before they’re punished

“Even if Mr. Jones’s career is ruined, his legacy of brazen, unrepentant dishonesty will live on — strengthened, in some ways, by the knowledge of exactly how far you can push a lie before consequences kick in.” — Kevin Roose, New York Times

It’s a bad sign that only the courts are able to hold people like Jones accountable

“If the kind of common ground that enables us to engage with reality can be defended only by legal coercion, we are in a dangerous place.” — Tom Chatfield, Guardian

Conspiracies are now a core element of the GOP worldview

“The Republican Party spent decades arguing that government was corrupt, if not illegitimate, and grew increasingly reliant on right-wing media for the party’s messaging. So, it took very little effort to tip over into the world of wild conspiracies — especially once, with the election of Trump, Republicans realized there would be no price to pay for doing so. The last few years have suggested that the bill is coming due. … That hasn’t yet curbed the party’s conspiracy-mongering, though.” — Nicole Hemmer, CNN

Jones and his ilk will only go away when the companies that prop them up are held accountable

“What happened with Sandy Hook poured salt into the most devastating wound a parent could receive. But it is a byproduct of how we allow the internet to operate. The problem stretches further than Jones. Legal accountability must also be imposed on Big Tech.” — Editorial, Dallas Morning News

Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images, Getty Images

Economist Kotlikoff to Newsmax: We Should 'Live With Inflation,' Not 'Kill' Economy

By Charles Kim    |   Saturday, 15 October 2022 

Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff told Newsmax Thursday that inflation gains momentum and gets into people's heads, but it should be something we "live with" instead of using the Federal Reserve or government to try to fix it while destroying the economy.

"I think inflation is largely psychological. If it gets going, for policy reasons, for non-policy reasons, it's gets into people's heads," Kotlikoff said during "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" Thursday. "We have 33 million businesses out there who are setting prices. It's not [Federal Reserve Chairman] Jerome Powell, or [former Treasury Secretary] Larry Summers, or President [Joe] Biden. So inflation is now into people's heads, that they have to keep up with it."

He said that some companies are raising prices to pay their workers more and that we should live with it and adjust to it so prices come down gradually, rather than enacting policies and interest rate hikes that could destroy the overall economy.

"I think we should start thinking about living with inflation, high inflation, and letting it gradually come down, rather than trying to kill the economy, which is what former Secretary Summers would like to do."

Kotlikoff said that Summers would want Powell to raise interest rates like former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker did in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when rates jumped to as much as 20%.

"The economy [during that time] produced a 10% unemployment [rate], that's not very smart, to tell you the truth," he said. "That's not what we need."

Kotlikoff said that it took a while for the rate of inflation to go down during those times, including people getting the idea inflation was here to stay out of their heads.

"I think what we need to do is, first of all, you talked about indexing Social Security benefits; that's happening once a year," he said. "We should be adjusting every month, so the people are not behind the eight ball and losing money through the course of the year. In terms of purchasing power, we should be adjusting the tax system so that it's not taxing nominal capital gains and nominal asset income."

He also said the government should talk with the 33 million businesses to develop a plan for raising prices at a lower rate that declines from year to year until inflation is under control.

"This is what [former President] John Kennedy did with steel companies," he said. "When he took office, they were trying to jack up prices 3%, I believe. He got them together in a room and yelled at them, and they walked out of the room and publicly told everybody they weren't going to take the price hike."

ANTI-IMPERIALISM IS ANTI-WAR

We Need More Military Veterans in Congress Who Oppose the “Forever Wars”

Congress desperately needs more representatives from working-class backgrounds, including those who are military veterans. Unfortunately, most veterans currently serving in Congress are foreign policy hawks who want to keep the war machine running.

Right-wing Arkansas senator Tom Cotton — a veteran — flashes a "V sign" at a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on the US Army's Defense Authorization Request for fiscal year 2023 on May 5, 2022. (Tom Brenner / Getty Images)

BYSTEVE EARLY AND SUZANNE GORDON

JACOBIN
10.15.2022

At the beginning of this midterm election year, we received an urgent fundraising appeal from US representative Jake Auchincloss, a centrist Democrat from Massachusetts. The email message informed us that, as a former Marine officer in Afghanistan, Auchincloss “saw firsthand the futility of the Forever Wars.”

All good so far. But then, on behalf of a Democratic Party–funded group called VoteVets, Auchincloss bemoaned the fact that what’s missing in electoral politics today “is people who have seen these conflicts firsthand.” As a result, he noted, “we are at an all-time low of veterans serving in Congress since World War II.” According to Auchincloss, “this trend hurts all of us, not just our troops — because veterans offer a unique perspective in Congress and are able to work together to get things done while sticking to our principles.”

“Our nation is at a critical impasse,” Auchincloss warned. “We have to decide who leads. Those who will defend our democracy above all else or Trump sycophants who have never served anything beside their own self-interest their entire lives.”

We could certainly do with more veterans in Congress “who saw firsthand the futility of the Forever Wars.” The halls of power in the United States are shockingly devoid of representatives from working-class backgrounds, many of whom are veterans. But as the 2022 election cycle reaches its final stage, it’s time for a reality check on Auchincloss’s fanciful account of how veterans inherently function on Capitol Hill — and for a reminder that some of the best-known “Trump sycophants” running for office this fall are ex-military officers who did “see conflicts firsthand,” but are now campaigning under the MAGA flag.
Defenders of Democracy?

As we document in our new book about veterans’ affairs, military laurels are no guarantee that so-called “service candidates,” once elected, will be any more effective or trustworthy than other politicians who never enlisted. Wearing a uniform and swearing allegiance to the Constitution in the past are no reliable gauge of a veteran’s current commitment to “defend our democracy.”

For incumbent members of Congress, “working together to get things done” primarily takes the form of rubber-stamping ever-bigger Pentagon budgets, backing US military intervention abroad, and favoring privatization of veterans’ health care — a bipartisan project that threatens nine million mainly poor or working-class patients served by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). And in January 2021, even after the storming of the Capitol by a Trump-incited mob, thirty-five Republican veterans voted against certifying Joe Biden as his successor.Often, the supposedly ‘unique perspective’ of most GOP veterans is no different from that of other right-wing paranoids in Washington.

Often, the supposedly “unique perspective” of most GOP veterans is no different from that of other right-wing paranoids in Washington who lack military backgrounds. For example, Ronny Jackson, Donald Trump’s White House doctor who retired from the Navy as an admiral to run for Congress two years ago, believes that his previous presidential patient, Barack Obama, is a “Deep State traitor” who “weaponized the highest levels of our government to spy on President Trump” and deserved to be prosecuted for it. One of Jackson’s House colleagues from Texas is former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw. He has teamed up with Republican senator Ted Cruz, a non-veteran, to expose the Pentagon’s alleged “woke ideology.”

Meanwhile, Crenshaw has demonstrated his standard-brand fiscal conservativism. Earlier this year, he joined thirty-five other veterans and current members of the National Guard or Reserves in a House vote against expanding eligibility for post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to fellow members of the Guard and Reserves (because it would cost $1.9 billion over the next decade). More recently, because of similar objections to federal spending, two Republican veterans in the Senate — Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Ernst of Iowa — cast an initial vote against the PACT Act, which allocates $280 billion to assist veterans suffering from burn-pit-related ailments and other past toxic exposures.

It was also the Harvard-educated Cotton, you might recall, who urged Trump to deploy federal troops against Black Lives Matters protestors in 2020 “to restore order in our streets.” On Twitter, the former Army captain called for “no quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters” — orders which on a real battlefield would be considered a war crime if applied to enemy combatants attempting to surrender.
Venture Capitalists and Conspiracy Theorists

On the ballot this fall, and eager to join Cotton and co., are former Army general Don Bolduc and well-known ex-Marine J. D. Vance. They’re seeking US Senate seats from New Hampshire and Ohio, respectively. Along with 120 other retired generals and admirals, Bolduc signed a letter declaring that Trump won the 2020 election (a stance he is now retreating from after having “done a lot of research on this”). Among Bolduc’s bold ideas is abolishing direct election of US Senators (after he becomes one, of course). Author of the poor-bashing Hillbilly Elegy and a venture capitalist, Vance plans to help veterans and their families by privatizing Social Security, a cause favored by his former boss and biggest single financial booster, the right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel.

Retrograde attitudes toward women and/or paramilitary cosplay have made other Republican veterans — like Eric Greitens in Missouri, J. R. Majewski in Ohio, and Alek Skarlatos in Oregon — less electable. A disgraced former governor, forced to resign four years ago after a sexual assault scandal, Greitens made a failed comeback in his state’s Republican senatorial primary this summer. The ex-Navy SEAL lost after airing a controversial campaign video in which he appeared as a gun-toting member of a camo-clad squad breaking down the door of a private home in search of “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only).


A challenger to House Democrat Marcy Kaptur, Majewski is a conspiracy theorist who attended the January 6, 2021 election protest at the Capitol in the company of a QAnon blogger. He was so disgusted with Joe Biden’s handling of the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan six months later that he declared himself ready to “suit up and go back to Afghanistan tonight and give my best to save those Americans who were abandoned.” If Majewski actually had any post-9/11 combat experience, as he has claimed on other occasions, he would have been playing the veteran card in politics with a stronger hand. Instead, he is now being denounced (and mocked) for “stolen valor” — a mortal sin among veterans — because the closest he got to a combat zone was loading and unloading planes at an Air Force base in Qatar.
A Legion of Honor Member

In Oregon, two-time Republican House candidate Alek Skarlatos has no such need to embellish his record in the Oregon National Guard or afterward. On his way home from Afghanistan in 2015, he helped thwart a terrorist attack on a train in France, as depicted later in Clint Eastwood’s action film, The 15:17 to Paris. President Barack Obama awarded Skarlatos the US Army’s Soldiers Medal; in France, he was inducted into the National Order of the Legion of Honor. Capitalizing on his celebrity persona (which included playing himself in Eastwood’s film), Skarlatos mounted a serious 2020 challenge to Democrat Peter DeFazio, the longest serving veteran in Congress.

This year, DeFazio retired rather than stood for reelection, so Skarlatos is running again. Recently, he has taken flak for comments he made while promoting Eastwood’s film. On a podcast called Drinkin’ Bros, he criticized the appearance of female residents of Roseburg, Oregon, where he lives, and joked with the host about women being choked during sexual encounters with men. His campaign had to issue an apology in which Skarlatos acknowledged being “disappointed” with himself for “comments made as a twenty-four-year old who just left the Army.”

Elsewhere in Oregon, former Green Beret Joe Kent has managed to avoid such slipups so far because, as the New York Times notes, he is “one of the most polished of the MAGA candidates.” Forty-two-year old Kent got into the general election ballot by polishing off Republican House member Jamie Herrera Beutler, one of only seven House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment for inciting the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Kent became a single father of two children when his wife, a Navy intelligence officer, was killed in Syria by an ISIS suicide bomber. In a recent debate, he told voters: “I served for this country for over twenty years. Did eleven combat deployments. Lost many friends. Lost my late wife because our ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — consistently lied to the American people to keep us engaged in wars abroad. That is why I have a skepticism of our federal government.”

Unfortunately, Kent’s “skepticism” extends to federal officials like Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who he believes should face criminal charges for the “scam that is COVID.” (Unvaccinated himself, Kent argues that the COVID-19 vaccine is a form of “experimental gene therapy.”) He also favors criminal prosecution of defense secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley for botching the 2021 US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. And if Republicans regain control of the House with him among them next year, Kent wants to impeach Vice President Kamala Harris because she was “one of the lead fundraisers” for Antifa and Black Lives Matter during protest activity two years ago.
An Anti-War Alternative?

In the summer of 2020, when Trump was close to invoking the Insurrection Act and ordering federal troops to suppress Black Lives Matter protests, Democratic congressman Ruben Gallego of Arizona was among those veterans in the House who strongly opposed any use of the US military against civilians. In a public query to Milley, Gallego demanded to know whether he intended “to obey illegal orders from the president?” Gallego, a former Marine, is a Pentagon spending critic and one of the only combat veterans in Congress who also signed a pledge to “End The Forever War,” promoted by the progressive veterans group Common Defense. Its supporters are now working to secure Gallego’s reelection so he can mount a strong challenge to Senator Kyrsten Sinema in the 2024 Arizona Democratic senatorial primary.

Other than Gallego, however, there “really isn’t any veteran in Congress yet who is close to being part of the progressive wing of the Democratic caucus,” according to one former Common Defense staffer. With few exceptions, veterans running as Democrats in swing districts and even in blue state safe seats have been reliably hawkish and “pro–military-industrial complex,” he says. One of them is New Jersey Democratic representative Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and US Naval Academy graduate, who has berated her colleagues in the House for not believing “in muscular foreign policy and muscular national defense like I do,” and has authorized military budgets even bigger than what the Pentagon itself requests.

In July 2020, another VoteVets favorite — former Army Ranger and Bronze Star–winner Jason Crow, a Democratic representative from Colorado — worked with Republican super-hawk Liz Cheney to slow the pace of the Trump administration’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. A year later, Crow was more receptive to Biden’s “decision to finally bring our longest war to an end,” although he criticized Afghan refugee evacuation planning by the White House. Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat who did four tours of duty as a Marine officer in Iraq, called that withdrawal a “disaster.”To find a veteran willing to question the military-industrial complex, one has to look outside the two major parties in this election cycle.

To find a veteran willing to question the military-industrial complex, one has to look outside the two major parties in this election cycle. His name is Matt Hoh, a former Marine with a very impressive resume, who can be found campaigning for North Carolina’s open US Senate seat as a Green Party anti-war candidate against Democrat Cheri Beasley, a former state supreme court justice, and a Trump-backed Republican, Congressman Ted Budd.

The national Democratic Party invested heavily in a failed legal effort to keep Hoh off the ballot. He’s been excluded from debates and ignored in national press coverage of the race. But Hoh is daring to say what needs to be said: a much smaller military budget wouldn’t just promote peace abroad; it would be good for millions of US workers in need of a better life.

Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon are coauthors of the new book Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends, and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs, from Duke University Press.

Eugene V. Debs: Socialism Will Free Workers From Private Tyranny

BY EUGENE DEBS

For the great labor leader Eugene Debs, socialism and freedom went hand in hand. In a 1920 article entitled “The Genius of Freedom,” reprinted here for the first time, he explained that socialism would free workers from the bonds of their capitalist masters.

Eugene Debs in 1920: “Freedom in Socialism is the one thing worth striving for. Without freedom civilization will crumble and hope die.” 

Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

JACOBIN
10.15.2022

The twentieth century, according to the prophecy of Victor Hugo, is to be the century of humanity.

In all the procession of the centuries gone, not one was for humanity. From the first, tyranny has flourished; the few have ruled, the many have served; the parasite has worn the purple of power, while honest labor has lived in poverty and died in despair.

But the eternal years, the centuries yet to come, are for humanity, and out of the misery of the past will rise the civilization of the future. The present time will witness the culmination of slavery in the crash of despotism and the rise of the worldwide democracy, freedom, and brotherhood.

Viewed today from any any intelligent standpoint the outlook of the Socialist movement is full of promise — to the capitalist, of struggle and defeat; to the worker of coming freedom.

It is the break of dawn upon the horizon of human destiny, and it has no limitations but the walls of the universe

.

Members of the Socialist-led Southern Tenant Farmers Union at an outdoor meeting in September 1937. (Kheel Center/ Flickr)

We know that Socialism is necessary to the emancipation of the Working Class and to the true happiness of all classes and that its historic mission is that of a conquering movement. We know that day by day, nourished by the misery and vitalized by the aspirations of the workers, the area of its activity widens, it grows in strength and increases its mental and moral grasp, and when the final hour of Capitalism and wage slavery strikes, the Socialist movement, the greatest in all history — great enough to embrace the human race — will crown the struggles of centuries with victory and proclaim freedom to all mankind.

The Capitalist system has separated labor from ownership and reduced the workers to a condition of wage slavery. They throng the labor market eager and anxious to find a purchaser who will buy their labor power.

Under the Capitalist system a small part of the people are capitalists and the vast mass workers.

The capitalists get the profit, grow rich, live in palaces, ride in yachts and automobiles, gamble at Monte Carlo, drink champagne, choose judges, buy editors, corrupt politics, build universities, endow libraries, preach morals, get the gout, and bequeath the earth to their lineal descendants.

To speak of freedom in such a system is a mockery; to surrender is a crime.

Steelworkers by Winold Reiss (circa 1919). The four-panel composition shows two scenes: steel workers on a beam and walking with lunch buckets. (Library of Congress)

The workers work early and late, in heat and cold, they sweat and groan and bleed and die — the steel billets they make are caskets. They build the mills and all the machinery; they man the plant and the thing of stone and steel begins to throb. They live in cottages just this side of hovels, where gaunt famine walks with despair and “Les Miserables” leer and mock at civilization. When the mills shut down, they are out of work and out of food and out of home; and when old age steals away their vigor and the step is no longer agile, nor the sinew strong, nor the hand quick; when the frame begins to quake and quiver and the eye to grow dim, and they are no longer fit as labor power to make profit for the masters, they are pushed aside into the human drift that empties into the gulf of despair and death.

The swarms of vagrants, tramps, outcasts, paupers, thieves, gamblers, pickpockets, suicides, confidence men, fallen women, consumptives, idiots, dwarfed children; the disease, poverty, insanity and crime rampant in every land where Capitalism rules[;] rise up and cry out against it, and hush to silence all the pleas of its mercenaries and strike the knell of its doom.

Freedom in Socialism is the one thing worth striving for. Without freedom civilization will crumble and hope die.

Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) was a union leader and socialist.

Chomsky: 20 Years After Iraq War Vote, US Continues to Flout International Law

Thousands of people gathered to protest the impending war against Iraq in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, January 18, 2003.

NIKKI KAHN / MCT / TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE / GETTY IMAGES

BY C.J. Polychroniou,

Truthout October 15, 2022

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. congressional vote to authorize the deadly war on Iraq, which according to some estimates, killed between 800,000 and 1.3 million people. In the exclusive interview for Truthout that follows, Noam Chomsky shares his thoughts on the causes and ramifications of this appalling crime against humanity.

Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the department of linguistics and philosophy at MIT and laureate professor of linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. One of the world’s most-cited scholars and a public intellectual regarded by millions of people as a national and international treasure, Chomsky has published more than 150 books in linguistics, political and social thought, political economy, media studies, U.S. foreign policy and world affairs. His latest books are The Secrets of Words (with Andrea Moro; MIT Press, 2022); The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power (with Vijay Prashad; The New Press, 2022); and The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (with C.J. Polychroniou; Haymarket Books, 2021).

C.J. Polychroniou: Noam, 20 years ago, the U.S. Congress authorized the invasion of Iraq despite massive opposition to such an undertaking. Several leading Democratic senators ended up supporting the war authorization, including Joe Biden. For both historical and future purposes, what were the causes and ramifications of the Iraq war?

Noam Chomsky: There are many kinds of support, ranging from outright to tacit. The latter includes those who regard it as a mistake but no more than that — a “strategic blunder,” as in Obama’s retrospective judgment. There were Nazi generals who opposed Hitler’s major decisions as strategic blunders. We don’t regard them as opponents of Nazi aggression. The same with regard to Russian generals who opposed the invasion of Afghanistan as a mistake, as many did.

If we can ever rise to the level of applying to ourselves the standards we rightly apply to others, then we will recognize that there has been little principled opposition to the Iraq War in high places, including the government and the political class. Much as in the case of the Vietnam War and other major crimes.

There was, of course, strong popular opposition. Characteristic was my own experience at MIT. Students demanded that we suspend classes so that they could participate in the huge public protests before the war was officially launched — something new in the history of imperialism — later meeting in a downtown church to discuss the impending crime and what it portended.

Much the same was true worldwide, so much so that Donald Rumsfeld came out with his famous distinction between Old and New Europe. Old Europe are the traditional democracies, old-fashioned fuddy-duddies who we Americans can disregard because they are mired in boring concepts like international law, sovereign rights, and other outdated nonsense.

New Europe in contrast are the good guys: a few former Russian satellites who tow Washington’s line, and one western democracy, Spain, where Prime Minister Aznar went along with Washington, disregarding close to 100 percent of public opinion. He was rewarded by being invited to join Bush and Blair as they announced the invasion.

The distinction reflects our traditional deep concern for democracy.

It will be interesting to see if Bush and Blair are interviewed on this auspicious occasion. Bush was interviewed on the 20th anniversary of his invasion of Afghanistan, another act of criminal aggression that was overwhelmingly opposed by international opinion contrary to many claims, matters we have discussed before. He was interviewed by the Washington Post — in the Style section, where he was portrayed as a lovable goofy grandpa playing with his grandchildren and showing off his portraits of famous people he had met.

There was an official reason for the U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq, the “single question,” as it was called from on high: Will Iraq terminate its nuclear weapons programs?

International inspectors had questioned whether there were such programs and asked for more time to investigate, but were dismissed. The U.S. and its U.K. lackey were aiming for blood. A few months later the “single question” was answered, the wrong way. We may recall the amusing skit that Bush performed, looking under the table, “No not there,” maybe in the closet, etc. All to hilarious laughter, though not in the streets of Baghdad.

The wrong answer required a change of course. It was suddenly discovered that the reason for the invasion was not the “single question,” but rather our fervent wish to bring the blessings of democracy to Iraq. One leading Middle East scholar broke ranks and described what took place, Augustus Richard Norton, who wrote that “As fantasies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were unmasked, the Bush administration increasingly stressed the democratic transformation of Iraq, and scholars jumped on the democratization bandwagon.” As did the loyal media and commentariat, as usual.

They did have some support in Iraq. A Gallup poll found that some Iraqis also leaped on the bandwagon: One percent felt that the goal of the invasion was to bring democracy to Iraq, 5 percent thought the goal was “to assist the Iraqi people.” Most of the rest assumed that the goal was to take control of Iraq’s resources and to reorganize the Middle East in U.S. and Israeli interests — the “conspiracy theory” derided by rational Westerners, who understand that Washington and London would have been just as dedicated to the “liberation of Iraq” if its resources happened to be lettuce and pickles and the center of fossil fuel production was in the South Pacific.

By November 2007, when the U.S. sought a Status of Forces Agreement, the Bush administration came clean and stated the obvious: It demanded privileged access for Western energy companies to Iraqi fossil fuel resources and the right to establish U.S. military bases in Iraq. The demands were endorsed by Bush in a “signing statement” the following January. The Iraqi parliament refused.

The ramifications of the invasion were multiple. Iraq has been devastated. What had been in many ways the most advanced country in the Arab world is a miserable wreck. The invasion incited ethnic (Shia-Sunni) conflict that had not existed before, now tearing not only the country but the whole region apart. ISIS emerged from the wreckage, almost taking over the country when the army trained and armed by the U.S. fled at the sight of jihadis in pickup trucks waving rifles. They were stopped just short of Baghdad by Iranian-backed militias. And on, and on.

But none of this is a problem for the lovable goofy grandpa or the educated classes in the U.S. who now admire him as a serious statesman, called upon to orate about world affairs.

The reaction is much like that of Zbigniew Brzezinski, when asked about his boast to have drawn the Russians into Afghanistan and his support for the U.S. effort to prolong the war and to block UN efforts to negotiate Russian withdrawal. It was a wonderful success, Brzezinski explained to the naïve questioners. It achieved the goal of severely harming the U.S.S.R. he (dubiously) claimed, while conceding that it left a few “agitated Muslims,” not to speak of a million cadavers and a ruined country.

Or like Jimmy Carter, who assured us that we owe “no debt” to the Vietnamese because “the destruction was mutual.”

It is all too easy to continue. From a position of supreme power, with a loyal intellectual community, little is beyond reach.

The 2003 Iraq invasion was as criminal an act as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But the reaction on the part of the Western community was very different than it has been in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. No sanctions were imposed against the U.S., no freezing of the assets of U.S. oligarchs, no demands that the U.S. be suspended from the UN Security Council. Your comments on this matter?

Comment is hardly needed. The worst crime since World War II was the long U.S. war against Indochina. No censure of the U.S. could be contemplated. It was well understood at the UN that if the horrendous crimes were so much as discussed, the U.S. would simply dismantle the offending institution. The West righteously condemns Putin’s annexations and calls for punishment of this reincarnation of Hitler, but scarcely dares to utter a chirp of protest when the U.S. authorizes Israel’s illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights and Greater Jerusalem, and Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara. The list is long. The reasons are clear.

When the operative rules of world order are violated, reaction is swift. A clear illustration was when the World Court condemned the Holy State [the U.S.] for international terrorism (in legalese, “unlawful use of force”) in 1986, ordered it to terminate the crimes and pay substantial reparations to the victim (Nicaragua). Washington reacted by escalating the crimes. The press dismissed the judgment as worthless because the court is a “hostile forum” (according to the New York Times), as proven by its judgment against the U.S. The whole matter has been effectively wiped out of history, including the fact that the U.S. is now the only state to have rejected a World Court decision — of course with total impunity.

It’s an old story that “Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.” The maxim holds with particular force in the international domain, where the Godfather rules supreme.

By now the contempt for international law — except as a weapon against enemies — is barely concealed. It is reframed as the demand for a “rules-based international order” (where the Godfather sets the rules) to supersede the archaic UN-based international order, which bars U.S. foreign policy.

What would have happened if Congress had refused to go along with the Bush administration’s plan to invade Iraq?

One Republican voted against the war resolution (Chafee). Democrats were split (29-21). If Congress had refused to go along, the Bush administration would have had to find other means to achieve the goals that Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz and other hawks had laid out fairly clearly.

Many such means are available: sabotage, subversion, provoking (or manufacturing) some incident that could be used as a pretext for “retaliation.” Or simply extending the brutal sanctions regime that was devastating the population. We may recall that both of the distinguished international diplomats who administered Clinton’s program (via the UN) resigned in protest, condemning it as “genocidal.” The second, Hans von Sponeck, wrote an extremely illuminating book spelling out the impact in detail, A Different Kind of War. There was no need for an official ban of what is arguably the most important book on the build-up to the criminal invasion, and on the U.S. sanctions weapon generally. Silent conformity sufficed. That might have crushed the population sufficiently as to call for “humanitarian intervention.”

It is well to remember that there are no limits to cynicism if conformity and obedience prevail.

‘Don’t Look Back’: Refugee, plant worker writes of survival

By STEPHEN GROVES

Achut Deng, a refugee from South Sudan, poses in her home in Sioux Falls, S.D., on Sept. 17, 2022, before the release of her memoir, “Don’t Look Back.” Deng shared her experience of being sickened with COVID-19 alongside hundreds of her coworkers at a pork processing plant. She shares her story of fleeing massacres and surviving a refugee story in her book. (AP Photo/Stephen Groves)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — As Achut Deng lay in her apartment bedroom in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, sickened alongside hundreds of her co-workers at a South Dakota meatpacking plant, she worried she was going to die.

It wasn’t the first time she felt the imminent threat of death.

Her childhood, shattered by war in South Sudan, had been filled with it. But as she focused on building a new life for her family — filled with long hours at the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant — she kept those traumatic memories to herself.

In the spring of 2020, however, she spoke out to tell of the fear gripping the Sioux Falls workforce, adding to pressure that prodded the plant to implement new safety protocols that helped protect Deng and her colleagues.

Now, Deng is telling her whole story — from fleeing massacres to the trauma she experienced as a refugee in the United States — through a memoir that she hopes will bring awareness of both the hardships, as well as the healing, for refugees.

Deng’s book for young adults, co-authored with Keely Hutton, draws its name from the words Deng’s grandmother uttered as they fled when their village came under attack: “Don’t Look Back.”

For decades, she followed that advice to survive. The book details her grandmother’s sacrifice to literally shield Deng from bullets during a 1991 massacre, to a refugee journey where a deadly river, a snake bite and malaria all nearly killed her. And even after arriving in the U.S., Deng writes, she suffered sexual abuse from a male guardian as well as accompanying suicidal thoughts.

“I’m tired of being strong. I’m done being embarrassed. I’m done being ashamed of what I’ve been through,” Deng, now 37, told The Associated Press in an interview at her home in Sioux Falls.

For years, she quietly kept her story buried beneath her work at the plant, a side hustle of catering sambusa and caring for her three sons.

“There’s a reason why I created this busy schedule — because I don’t want to have time to myself so that I can think of the past,” she said.

The hard work allowed Deng to achieve the life she dreamed of when she came to the U.S. as a teenager. She saved for a down payment on a home, paid for family vacations and even sponsored her parents’ immigration to America.

When COVID-19 infections spread among Deng’s colleagues, however, her dreams came under attack once again. Sickened by the virus, she worried her sons would find her body and be left with only the stories others told about her. Deng was still haunted by finding that her own grandmother had been struck and killed by the bullets that might have hit Deng during that 1991 massacre.

“I found myself at the very lowest point again,” Deng recounted.

In the past, she had quietly focused on survival. This time, she spoke out. Deng appeared twice on the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast.

The cover of Achut Deng’s memoir, co-authored with Keely Hutton, is illustrated with the face of a girl overlaid by the night sky in Sioux Falls, S.D., on Sept. 17, 2022. Deng says it captures her feelings of being both wounded and fearless after surviving the trauma of her youth. The book was published in October. (AP Photo/Stephen Groves)

She described in compelling detail the suffering and fear among her colleagues — many of them immigrants — as the pork processing plant became one of the country’s worst hotspots for infections in the spring of 2020. Four of her colleagues died after being infected.

Many workers at the time worried about the consequences of speaking with reporters, but Deng says she was only describing her own experience and that she does not blame Smithfield for the coronavirus. She says the plant requires hard work, but Smithfield also provides the wages, benefits and a schedule that allow a single mother to provide for her family.

When a publicist at Macmillan Publishing heard Deng on the podcast, it sparked talks that led to the memoir. Deng wrote the book with Hutton, her co-author, in between working 12-hour shifts at Smithfield and ferrying her sons to school. She often slept just four hours between her overnight job as a supervisor and video calls with Hutton.

Delving into the trauma of her past was difficult, Deng said, and required therapy sessions.

Then, every Sunday, when Deng had a day off, she would sit with her sons around their dining table and read the draft of the latest chapter.

“We cry together; we talk about it; then we put it behind; then we start the new week,” Deng said.

She hopes that readers will come to understand refugees have their lives upended and are traumatized by forces beyond their control, but show incredible resilience by choosing to come to the U.S. She described the book’s cover, illustrated with the face of a girl overlaid by a night sky, as capturing her feelings at publication.

“She’s wounded but fearless,” Deng said. “You can see the pain in her eye. But she’s not afraid.”

___

Follow Stephen Groves on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stephengroves

Apple store workers in Oklahoma City vote to unionize with the Communications Workers of America

In this Saturday, March 14, 2020 file photo, an Apple logo adorns the facade of the downtown Brooklyn Apple store in New York. Workers at an Apple store in Oklahoma City voted to unionize, marking the second unionized

By Brad Matthews - The Washington Times - Saturday, October 15, 2022


Workers at an Apple store in Oklahoma City voted Friday evening to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, the second such store to do so.

An Apple store location in Towson, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb, unionized with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) in June.

That success, along with similar unionization efforts at stores like Starbucks, motivated organizers at the OKC Apple store.

“The thing that really did it for us was seeing our peers at other Apple stores, our peers with Starbucks and other companies start to demand better for themselves,” organizer Kevin Herrera told Reuters.

All but seven of the store’s eligible employees voted, with 88 out of 95 participating. Of those 88, 56 voted to join the union, while 32 voted against.

Union organizers expected a margin broadly along those lines.

“We felt like we had the majority support, and as long as people got out and cast their vote, we would win,” organizer Leigha Briscoe told CNN.

Communications Workers of America (CWA) Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens told CNBC that “The Penn Square Apple retail workers are an amazing addition to our growing labor movement, and we are thrilled to welcome them as CWA members.”

The union will not become official until the National Labor Relations Board certifies the results, after which the store’s collective bargaining process with Apple will begin.

For its part, Apple demurred in its statement regarding the new union, preferring not to directly address the results.

“We believe the open, direct and collaborative relationship we have with our valued team members is the best way to provide an excellent experience for our customers, and for our teams. We’re proud to provide our team members with strong compensation and exceptional benefits,” Apple said, according to CNN.

In regards to benefits, Apple informed the Towson location before the OKC vote that they would have to collectively bargain for new benefits Apple introduces to other stores going forward.

IAM told Bloomberg they remain committed to the negotiating process with Apple.

“We are urging Apple to negotiate in good faith so we can reach an agreement over the next few weeks,” IAM said.

Canada leading, not lagging, global green energy transition, but more to do: Freeland
Yesterday 

WASHINGTON — Canada is leading, not lagging, the global energy shift in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Friday, dismissing the notion that her recent call to arms was aimed in part at her own government.


Canada leading, not lagging, global green energy transition, but more to do: Freeland

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Freeland raised eyebrows this week with a sweeping state-of-affairs speech in D.C. that urged democracies to spend more "domestic political capital" to ease a growing energy crisis — a message some observers say Ottawa itself should take to heart.

To the contrary, Canada is in high gear when it comes to kick-starting green energy projects, Freeland insisted, citing federal investments in the country's critical-minerals sector and the net-zero components of the Strategic Innovation Fund as examples.

The effort, she said, dates back to 2015, when the Liberals introduced a price on carbon, runs through the renegotiated North American trade deal and touches on the Biden administration's newly passed Inflation Reduction Act.

"What I wanted to do first and foremost is say to the world, 'Look, Canada gets it. This is what we are doing,'" Freeland told a news conference as she wrapped up a week at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings.

Key to that effort, she said, is putting government policies and investment in place and attracting more private capital into those projects — and if her speech Tuesday has that effect, so much the better.

"I don't want in any way to suggest Canada's behind — if anything, I think Canada is really in the lead on so many issues here. But we have to do even more," Freeland continued.

"Climate change is real. And climate action is a huge economic and industrial project. It's going to require significant investment — public, private, Canadian, international — and it's going to require us to build a lot of stuff."

That strategy will continue to include liquid natural gas, she added, describing it as an "important transition fuel," not only to countries in Europe feeling the impact of the war in Ukraine but also in the developing world, where there are fewer alternatives to coal.

Critics say Canada has been a laggard in building the facilities to export liquid natural gas, or LNG — most recently when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau answered Germany's pleas for more by suggesting such projects made little business sense.

"(LNG) will be an important contributor to the green transition in the world and to providing energy security for our partners," Freeland said. "As the prime minister said over the summer, we will always be looking at economically viable LNG projects."

On Tuesday, Freeland used a speaking engagement at the D.C.-based Brookings Institution to urge democratic countries to confront the hard economic truths of the war in Ukraine and join forces in forging a new path forward.

The reality, she said, is that the modern-day dangers of autocratic regimes like Russia and China will not vanish with Russia's defeat in Ukraine, and it's long past time that the "non-geographic West" find a way to end the world's dependence on "petro-tyrants" like Vladimir Putin.

She sang the virtues of "friend-shoring" — a term coined this past summer by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to describe fortified, climate-friendly, shock-resistant supply chains that rely mainly on like-minded neighbours and allies.

On Friday, she pointed again to the example of the big-budget climate, health and tax package Congress passed over the summer, a measure that originally included electric-vehicle incentives that could have crippled Canada's auto sector.

The version President Joe Biden signed into law included Canadian-made vehicles, and also required eligible cars and trucks to have batteries containing critical minerals from countries with which the U.S. has trade deals, of which Canada is one.

At the same time, though, she welcomes Canada and the U.S. competing with each other when it comes to attracting foreign investment for green energy and carbon-capture projects.

"There is nothing wrong with — indeed, a lot very good about — a healthy competition among the world's economies, to say, 'You know what, I want to do the green transition best and fastest,'" she said.

"Canada is definitely up for that."

Freeland also reiterated Friday her call for Russia to be kicked out of the G20, but she stopped short of offering any specific Canadian measures to expedite that process, or any details on whether the effort is moving forward.

She said she spoke directly to Russia's representatives who were among the ministers and central bank governors — the "firefighters" in attendance at the IMF and World Bank meetings this week.

"The arsonist has no place in a meeting of the firefighters."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 14, 2022.

James McCarten, The Canadian Press

Mélanie Joly pushes LNG ties in Japan and South Korea, amid North Korea missiles

Yesterday 

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says Canada is set to become a major energy supplier for Japan and South Korea.


Mélanie Joly pushes LNG ties in Japan and South Korea, amid North Korea missiles© Provided by The Canadian Press

On a visit to both countries this week, Joly said she found a growing appetite for liquefied natural gas from Canada beyond a looming megaproject.

A major export terminal is set to open in 2025 in Kitimat, B.C., with Japanese and Korean companies holding a 20 per cent stake.

"We will become a major supplier of key energy for them, starting in 2025," Joly said in a Thursday interview from Seoul.

"There is a lot of interest for all of us to go even further."

Joly said these types of projects will help Canada shore up energy security in the region, where China and Russia have been growing increasingly assertive.

"Japan and Korea were already very close to Canada, but it is now in Canada's interest more than ever, that they be best of friends," she said.

"We know that there's a lot of instability in the world, and when that's the case, Canada reaches out to the world to create more stability."

Joly said a series of missiles that North Korea launched over Japan this month loomed large in her talks with local officials and the Canadian navy.

She visited HMCS Vancouver, which is undertaking exercises to monitor sanctions on North Korea "in view of their reckless actions," Joly said. That often means monitoring ships that stop near each other, to see whether goods or fuel are being transferred.

In September, the Vancouver sailed through the Taiwan Strait alongside a U.S. warship to demonstrate Canada's position that the area near mainland China counts as international waters.

Joly's visit also touched on existing work to make more Canadian critical minerals available for Asian firms building electric vehicles and parts.

In Tokyo, she co-launched formal talks aimed at having Canada and Japan share military intelligence.

Joly's weeklong visit wraps up Saturday. She said the intent is to build on close ties with allies ahead of an Indo-Pacific strategy that should outline Ottawa's approach to dealing with China.

"The goal right now is to lay the foundation for the strategy," she said.

Joly has previously said that a major summit the Chinese Communist Party is holding next week will help inform Canada's Indo-Pacific strategy, which she has promised to release by the end of this year.

Opposition parties have argued the strategy is long overdue, and business groups say they need Ottawa to clarify the regions and industries where it wants closer ties, and which countries Canada deems to be riskier.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2022.

Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press