'I WILL TALK TO JOE ABOUT IT'

Barack Obama reveals it was a 'mistake' to not give Dolly Parton the Presidential Medal of Freedom

By BRIAN GALLAGHER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 2 December 2020

Barack Obama handed out 123 Presidential Medals of Freedom during his eight-year tenure as President, though he admitted it was a 'mistake' to not give one to Dolly Parton.

Parton, 74, made headlines last month when it was revealed that her $1 million donation helped fund the research that ultimately lead to Moderna's vaccine.

While Obama's 123 Presidental Medals of Freedom is the most ever handed out since the award was established in 1963, Obama admitted on A Late Show With Stephen Colbert that he should have given her one. 

Mistake: Barack Obama handed out 123 Presidential Medals of Freedom during his eight-year tenure as President, though he admitted it was a 'mistake' to not give one to Dolly Parton


Donation: Parton, 74, made headlines last month when it was revealed that her $1 million donation helped fund the research that ultimately lead to Moderna's vaccine

Obama, 59, took part in a recurring segment of Colbert's, where he asks his guests questions he doesn't think they've ever been asked before.

When Colbert asked Obama, 'How does Dolly Parton not have a Presidential Medal of Freedom,' the former President seemed taken aback.

'That was a mistake. I'm shocked,' Obama said, when Colbert began to joke, 'Looking back on the eight years, do you realize that's the mistake you made?'

Segment: Obama, 59, took part in a recurring segment of Colbert's, where he asks his guests questions he doesn't think they've ever been asked before


Taken aback: When Colbert asked Obama, 'How does Dolly Parton not have a Presidential Medal of Freedom,' the former President seemed taken aback

Obama added, 'Actually, that was a screw-up. I'm surprised. I think I assumed that she had already got one, and that was incorrect.'

He added that, 'she deserves one. I'll call Biden,' referring to President-Elect Joe Biden, his former Vice President.

It's possible Parton could be one of Biden's first Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients when he takes office in 2021.

Screw-up: Obama added, 'Actually, that was a screw-up. I'm surprised. I think I assumed that she had already got one, and that was incorrect.

Calling Biden: He added that, 'she deserves one. I'll call Biden,' referring to President-Elect Joe Biden, his former Vice President

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was first established by President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The medal is awarded to those who have provided an, 'especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.'

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is one of the highest awards given to civilians of the United States, along with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Medal: The Presidential Medal of Freedom was first established by President John F. Kennedy in 1963

Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University back in April, just weeks after COVID-19 was officially declared a worldwide pandemic.

Those funds helped contribute to Moderna's vaccine, which has reported to be upwards of 94.5% effective in combating COVID-19.

The country singer revealed in an interview she was, 'a very proud girl today to know I had anything at all to do with something that's going to help us through this crazy pandemic.'

Donation: Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University back in April, just weeks after COVID-19 was officially declared a worldwide pandemic

Vaccine: Those funds helped contribute to Moderna's vaccine, which has reported to be upwards of 94.5% effective in combating COVID-19

Proud: The country singer revealed in an interview she was, 'a very proud girl today to know I had anything at all to do with something that's going to help us through this crazy pandemic'

President Obama Answers "Questions We're Pretty Sure Barack Obama Has Never Been Asked Before" - YouTube

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CANADA 

Grocery’s long war: Part II
Workers at grocery chains across Canada have seen their world replaced by a low-wage, low-benefit, part-time reality

Dan Darrah and Doug Nesbitt / November 25, 2020 CANADIAN DIMENSION
LABOUR

A group of Dominion employees block the entrance to the parking lot as they strike at the Blackmarsh Road location in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Photo by Andrew Waterman/The Telegram.

In part one of this series, we explored how good jobs turned bad in the grocery sector as a result of a country-wide corporate attack. By replacing full-timers with part-timers, smashing benefits, and flattening wages, retailers across Canada redefined the sector in the 1980s and 1990s. Workers fought back, but found themselves disadvantaged by the scale of the attack and the long historical tendency toward “business unionism” within the labour movement. The story picks up in the 2000s, where grocery’s long war continues.

“Everybody fought for everybody else.”

Following the corporate attacks of the 1980s and 1990s, and their attending defeats, grocery workers across the country ended the century in a workplace radically different from the one that existed several decades earlier. Workers who spent years making careers at supermarkets watched as their former world unraveled in a few short years and was replaced by a new low-wage, low-benefit, part-time reality.

By the new millennium, these labour practices were the bedrock of the sector’s business structure. It is now so deeply entrenched that the idea of decent work at the big, profitable supermarket chains seems hard to imagine. To many in the business, it’s even harder to imagine that life with decent wages and benefits ever existed at all.

Luckily, grocery workers have not given up the fight. New blood, mounting grievances, and a determination to extract concessions from employers have led to significant battles. Some of them have been very successful, like the 2013 Superstore strike in Alberta.

Within grocery workers’ unions, there have been examples of membership training, reforms to promote democracy, and rank-and-file militancy. Although these proved promising, grocery work is still far from winning back the modest standards of the past. Grocery unions are still fighting company by company, and province by province, against a cartel of corporations spanning the continent.


Striking Dominion workers at the Loblaw Distribution Centre in St. John’s. Photo by Unifor Local 597/Facebook.


Local 597 hits the picket line

“Our police have been reduced to doing the bidding of billionaires,” wrote Unifor rep Sharon Walsh after the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary (RNC) showed up at grocery worker picket lines this summer. “This is public funds protecting billionaires assets against minimum wage [workers].”

In Newfoundland, a grocery strike at Loblaw-owned Dominion stores disrupted business as usual. Walking off the job on August 22, grocery workers spent 12 weeks on the picket lines in a brutal fight for full-time work and the restoration of $2/hour pandemic pay. The cartel of big grocery corporations suspended this special provision in June.

The strike demonstrated incredible tenacity—perhaps the most among any recent grocery strike. The workers were taking on Loblaws, the largest grocery corporation in the country, and its owner, Galen Weston Jr., the third-wealthiest Canadian. During the COVID-19 crisis, these workers were the first to take on Canada’s largest food distributor and its bosses.

As the strike dragged on, workers turned up the heat. Pickets began spreading out, targeting other Loblaws-owned banners like No Frills. They also organized secondary pickets at a subsidiary Weston bakery and distribution centres in different parts of the country, like the massive Loblaws warehouse in Ajax, Ontario.

Secondary picketing cost the company big money, emptied some store shelves, and raised the strike’s profile. It was then that the RNC volunteered their services to the corporation. Despite not having an injunction, police leapt at the union-busting opportunity, and showed up at the secondary picket lines threatening arrests.

With the police threatening violence, workers were told by union leadership to err on the side of safety and head home. They didn’t. They marched to police headquarters and protested.

After another visit from the police a few days later, a mediator got involved. It became clear that Loblaws, known for its hard-headedness and cutthroat commitment to remaining “competitive,” had no intention of budging. The union agreed to put a “final offer” to the membership, and voting began on the weekend of November 7, lasting through to the following week. That same week, the company announced that it beat their profit expectations for the third quarter of 2020 (July-September).

On November 13, the result of the vote was released. To the dismay of many members, workers voted to ratify the contract and the strike was over for almost no gain. The local even acknowledged a feeling of defeat. For example, there are reports that 22 of the 60 full-time job cuts have been restored, but those who lost full-time hours must reapply. Others have reported getting a gift card to Dominion stores as part of the settlement. An anonymous source relayed that, per Canada Revenue Agency rules, the gift cards will be treated as taxable income.

As yet, Unifor and Loblaw have not released the vote numbers. A source inside the union told Canadian Dimension that both the employer and union plan to continue withholding the results for the foreseeable future. Another source mentioned that the company—and it is unclear whether this is occurring at the corporate level, or just among individual stores—has discouraged talk about the strike on social media and in the workplace, including to customers.

Workers speak out

In interviews with Canadian Dimension, Unifor members spoke about the strike and the lessons that might be learned for grocery workers and the wider labour movement.

Brittany*, a Dominion worker, offered some insight. At her store, a perfect storm of full time job cuts, attacks on seniority, and the elimination of pandemic pay pushed workers to strike at the expiry of their contract. Another important factor was the company’s cavalier use of “part-time” classification, an infamous practice in the Loblaw playbook.

“A lot of people were fed up by then,” she says, “because part-timers [were] working forty-plus hours a week, [and there were] less full-time people. I think that was the last straw, plus the wages.”

By keeping part-timers under 40 hours a week, the company can maintain production levels at a significantly lower cost.

The picket lines operated 24/7, and Brittany observed the majority of workers were actually students and young people. “There’s a lot of students in our store, or people who got second jobs, or [are] in university,” she says. “But [mostly] everybody was up for the fight and walking the picket line and showing support.”

“I think that brought us a lot closer together as a group with the students and the older people, the full-time. It definitely brought us all together.”

Beyond Dominion workers, Newfoundland’s Fight for $15 campaigners and members of other unions joined strikers on the picket line. The broader community stepped up, too, supplying the strikers with coffee and homemade food.

“Up to the very end,” Brittany says, “it was going great. I think we were getting a lot of support. We were standing our ground. We were doing secondary picket lines.”

Then the vote happened.

“There’s definitely, I’d say, a majority of people at my location [that] was actually very upset about it, because we did not expect to be back to work yet,” she continues. “With that contract, we definitely were surprised when we heard that there was a majority [that] wanted to go back to work and accept the contract.”

Brittany says that she and her coworkers remain curious about the results, but that information is being kept secret by the company and union.

In any case, the strike demonstrated the power of solidarity between part-time and full-time workers. For what lessons she might have gleaned from the strike, Brittany says: “A lot of people actually [came] together and [showed] support for each other, and you know what, on our picket line everybody fought for everybody else.”

“You gotta be positive no matter what.”

The strike also showed the advantages of secondary picketing. Brittany observes that the secondary pickets in Newfoundland “definitely made an impact. It definitely opened a lot of people’s eyes of the community and staff that worked there.”

Secondary pickets are known for their disruptive power. It’s why they’re considered illegal in many provinces and subject to injunctions.

Another Dominion worker, Shannon*, had similar observations. “Sorry,” she says midway through the conversation, “I’m feisty. I was one that wanted to stay and fight.” Like Brittany, Shannon also finds herself frustrated about the results being kept secret. “We have a right to know,” she says. “But the union is not giving it to us.”

Other workers feel the same, she says—some even feel the desire for a recount, or to have the Labour Relations Board intervene and review the vote.

After the company made their final offer, Shannon felt they had hit a standstill. Union leadership offered no real plan forward, she says, noting that she and others felt like they had “gave up on us.”

“They said the company wasn’t budging and we couldn’t keep going to court.”

Talking about strategy, Shannon says, “I think we should’ve stayed on the secondary picket lines. But we were told we couldn’t keep going to court for injunctions.” Asked how she might respond to that argument, she says, “We pay enough in union dues for those costs and many more.” She also noted that some secondary picket lines, like the one at the Weston bakery, were not subject to injunctions.


Unifor Local 597 workers are joined by members of 15 and Fairness Newfoundland and Labrador during a demonstration at the Loblaw Distribution Centre, August 27, 2020. Photo by Unifor Local 597/Twitter.

Upping disruption: The power of secondary picketing

Shayne Fields, incoming president of Oshawa-based Unifor Local 222, worked at the Loblaw distribution centre in Ajax and helped organize one of the secondary pickets outside of Newfoundland. The centre employs just over a thousand unionized workers, with a total staff of 1,300. Most workers are young and work three shifts around the clock. The warehouse only shuts down on Christmas Day.

“We were fed up with Loblaws in general,” says Fields. He suggests that no matter where you live in Canada, “the Loblaws business model seems to be the same.” Their bargaining approach, he notes, is brutal and uncompromising. It takes a lot for the corporation to even take notice.

“You’re dealing with the same people, the same mindset,” says Fields. “I’ve done three sets of negotiations with them, and I know what the workers in Newfoundland were up against.”

When Unifor union leaders like Fields began discussing how to help the strikers, they knew they had to take action outside of Newfoundland and Labrador. Because the business done in the province is only a fraction of what is done in Ontario, the national union realized they had to “put pressure on other areas.” Disrupting business in Ontario could really hurt the corporation. They landed on a secondary picket as a tactic. Workers still went to work at the distribution centre that day, but no product left the premises.

Fields says bluntly: “We show the strength of the union when we withdraw our labour and we shut them down.”

In the near future, Fields thinks more battles in the grocery sector are possible. “More people are staying home,” he says. “The shopping bags are getting bigger. I don’t think the workers are gonna stand for it much longer. Nor should they.” As contracts begin expiring across the country in the next year, the likelihood of job actions elsewhere will likely increase.

But for grocery workers to win, it may not be enough anymore to just walk off the job. Secondary pickets and disruption of supply lines and production is a critical weapon.

As a result, most of these tactics are untried or used in a very limited, cautious way. For example, it was several weeks into the Dominion strike before secondary picket lines were set up. In any case, it will clearly take such actions and sacrifices to bring the corporations back to the bargaining table—and even more to extract concessions and dismantle the unacceptable status quo.

Thinking long-term about young workers

Despite how the Dominion strike ended, the grocery sector remains an enormous source of potential for the labour movement beyond the pandemic. Figuring out how to make certain potential advantages real is a challenge for grocery workers and their unions. An important consideration, which the Dominion strike foregrounded, is the role of young workers.

Like many retail settings, grocery stores are populated by workers in their teens, twenties and those well into their thirties. As Fields points out, this is the case with distribution centres, too. In stores, young workers are sometimes full-time, but more often they are part-time. Many often work what are essentially full-time hours across multiple jobs. In big urban centres, many young workers are racialized. Most are very aware of how difficult it is to make a living on the wages and hours the employers choose to provide.

However, unlike other retail workplaces, young grocery workers experience remarkably high levels of union representation. The big players in the industry are widely unionized. This means the potential for training and organizing young workers is more readily available than in the other industries dominated by young people—such as clothing retail, restaurants and fast food, and service centres.

Young workers may be in the union, but they are hugely overrepresented in part-time positions, meaning they are often paid less for the same work as full-timers, and are often neglected at the bargaining table. They often experience the all-too-familiar grift of being scheduled (as was the case at Brittany’s store) over 30 hours a week but still classified as part-time. Two-tier wages and contracts, as well as these conniving classification tactics, divide the workplace and damage unity.

Just as the grocery cartel executed a long-term strategy of part-timing jobs and ramming through two-tier contracts to drive down labour costs, the future for the labour movement in grocery requires a long-term strategy of combating two-tier contracts with a struggle for equal pay.

Engaging young workers, bringing workers into the fold and building worker power across age, gender, and racial lines. This necessitates building bridges between part-timers and full-timers. The Dominion strike showed unity is possible when there’s a common cause.
Historic attacks and an historic strike

The Dominion strike is the latest in the grocery industry’s 30-year offensive against workers. Not even during a global pandemic—when grocery workers were downright essential to the functioning of Canadian society—could the hugely profitable grocery corporations stomach pandemic pay for more than three months.

Beneath their cruel decision to rescind pandemic pay, there’s a core reality to be understood: the big grocers have had it on their own terms, and have had it very good, for a long time. Their billionaire owners have built palatial homes abroad with their head-turning profits, and can count on federal and provincial support on a whim.

Pandemic pay was just scratching the surface, but the Dominion grocery workers struck at the heart of the problem. The fight for an alternative to the decades-long corporate assault is long overdue. Achieving this is naturally a complicated question. At a minimum, we know it will require an ambitious program of organizing the sector’s workforce and solidarity actions from the broader labour movement. And it will require drive and sacrifice—which Newfoundland’s grocery workers showed in spades.

Winning will also likely require the use of disruptive tactics. Grocers like Loblaw don’t fight fair, and, as demonstrated in the first part of this series, grocery workers and their unions stand to lose when the fight minimizes this reality, falling back on the same tactics or embracing concessionary bargaining. This time around, Unifor members in Newfoundland and on secondary picket lines did begin to break out of these practices. Building on that ingenuity in the future might change the course for workers.

There is much more that can be said about the important and strategic location of grocery workers in the overall architecture of the economy. On a basic level, the pandemic proved how critical grocery workers are in keeping society going. But if one takes the analysis further, it’s obvious how much leverage they truly have: through coordinated action, workers could grind the country to a halt. It’s important to remember that this commonly unionized sector is also represented—overwhelmingly so—by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), whose members in grocery are waging the same battles.

Connecting struggles, and showing up for each other’s fights, is a clear way to flex collective strength and win a better deal for all grocery workers. But this realization of workers’ power also means union members across the country getting organized and taking action in their own workplaces, too, fighting whatever new business models bosses try to impose.

Names has been changed to protect the anonymity of the interviewees.

Dan Darrah is a writer and editor living in Toronto.

Doug Nesbitt is a historian, union organizer and researcher. He is co-founder and editor of Rankandfile.ca, and lives in Kingston, Ontario

Parliamentarians unite to block NDP wealth tax supported by supermajority of Canadians

More than three-quarters of Canadians support a tax on the very wealthy

Christo Aivalis / November 17, 2020 CANADIAN DIMENSION


Illustration by Canadian Dimension

Yesterday was an indictment of Canadian politics. The Liberal Party, Conservative Party, and Bloc Québécois united to oppose a New Democratic Party motion which would have created a one percent tax on an individual’s wealth over $20 million. It would have also provided for an excess profits tax aimed at those who have enriched themselves while millions of Canadians suffer during the COVID-19 pandemic. These three parties (the Greens voted in favour) all opposed this common-sense motion even though the vast majority of Canadians support taxing billionaires and multi-millionaires on their obscene wealth.

As noted by NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and MPs like Peter Julian, Canada is a society riddled with inequality, and while the coronavirus did not create such disparity between the rich and the rest, it has exacerbated it. As Singh put it:
To pay for the programs, the help that people need… it should not be families, and people, and workers, and small businesses who have struggled… It should be those who have profited off the pandemic, it should be the ultra-wealthy that contribute their fair share.

Indeed, the most wealthy and powerful Canadians have gotten richer during the pandemic, even as regular people face poverty and uncertainty. It is a given that, if we want to build a better Canada out of the ashes of this crisis—and if we want to address glaring omissions in our social safety net like pharmacare and dental care—then asking the very wealthiest to pay their fair share is a logical starting point. And nearly all Canadians agree with this approach.

As noted in recent polling, 76 percent of Canadians support the NDP’s one percent wealth tax plan, with a near majority (48 percent) strongly supporting it. More impressively, however, is how support is universally strong across party lines. Unsurprisingly, 91 percent of NDP voters support such a plan, but so do 70 percent of Conservatives (in fact, only 17 percent of Conservative voters actively oppose it). With every party giving at least two-thirds majority support to the idea of taxing wealth, why is it that not a single MP from Canada’s three biggest caucuses stood with the NDP on the motion? Why would the Liberals, Conservatives, and Bloc brazenly disregard the will of their supporters?

Put simply, it is because those parties do not exist to reflect the will of the population, nor even their own base, but rather the interests of the rich, wealthy, and well-connected. Even going back to the days following the 2019 federal election, Abacus Data polled Canadians about policies the Liberals might implement with the support of the NDP alone (given that those two parties form a majority of the seats in the current minority parliament). What they found was not only a similar (77 percent) level of support for a wealth tax and closing tax loopholes, but majority support for the entirety of the NDP’s key platform pieces. Policies like electoral reform had a slim majority of support (54 percent), while eliminating student loan interest, building 500,000 affordable housing units, dental care, pharmacare, and a Green New Deal had support ranging from 64 to 78 percent. For all but one of these policies, Conservative supporters also gave majority support

The @NDP proposed a new tax on the super rich and pandemic profiteers like Amazon and Walmart.
292 of the people’s representatives voted against it. https://t.co/RhaVfSKejK— simon black (@_SimonBlack) November 16, 2020


Clearly, the Liberals and Conservatives—the only two parties to ever form government at the federal level—require the support of regular Canadians to rule and wield power. But once in power, the will of those regular Canadians goes by the wayside more often than not. There are many reasons for this. One is the nature of our first-past-the-post system, which can give near autocratic levels of power to one political party for five years with as little as 35 to 40 percent of the vote. This system also breeds negative voting, where the vast majority of Liberal and Conservative voters are actually voting to prevent something rather than achieve it, according to a recent Angus Reid survey of the 2019 election. This means that while these parties upon victory claim a broad mandate to implement their platform, in reality their power is derived from a popular revulsion to the other principal party. In many ways, Canadians are trapped by this state of affairs.

But even under a proportional system where the NDP and Greens would have a bigger say within Parliament, it is still possible that the Liberals and Conservatives would hold a majority of seats and votes between them, even if reduced in both counts. Canadians must realize that whatever the promises of these parties during elections to represent hardworking middle class families, they govern on behalf of the richest Canadians, and the most powerful multinational corporations.





It should be said in closing that, if anything, the NDP’s wealth and excess tax proposals are too modest. While the one percent tax starts at a lower level of wealth than that proposed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the United States, their provisions raise the wealth tax gradually on the uber wealthy who hold hundreds of millions and billions of dollars. Sanders’ wealth tax, for example, would tax all wealth above $1 billion at a minimum of five percent. Sanders, along with Senators Ed Markey and Kirsten Gillibrand, also released a 60 percent excess profits proposal that is more detailed than the one tabled by the NDP. The point here is that the NDP plan was already a compromise designed to work with the neoliberal capitalist parties on a basis that would have ironclad support from the voters of those parties. And they still rejected it.

Canadians like to pride themselves on having a government that is progressive and responsive to their needs. But as long as 90 percent of Parliament votes against policies supported by 76 percent of Canadians, that can’t be the case. There are no shortcuts: if Canadians want a government that taxes the rich—who have profited handsomely while many suffer—to pay for the basic necessities all Canadians deserve, they must lend their vote to parties that will deliver. That will never happen under a Conservative or Liberal government, or with the Bloc holding a substantial amount of Quebec seats.

Christo Aivalis is political writer and commentator with a PhD in History. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, and Passage. He can be found daily on YouTube.

Canada should release Meng Wanzhou

—and pursue an independent foreign policy

John Price and Margaret McGregor / November 23, 2020 CANADIAN DIMENSION


Illustration by Canadian Dimension

The current hearings on the extradition of Meng Wanzhou are a tangled web of legal arguments that obscure a simple truth: the Canadian government is enabling a witch hunt on the part of a right-wing Trump administration against a Chinese capitalist rival—the telecommunications giant, Huawei.

This is putting Canada in the crosshairs of the US and China, aligning us closer than ever to wayward American foreign policy, and jeopardizing the safety and security of all.

We are adding our voices to the growing campaign to demand an end to the extradition process and release Meng.

Why?

For those who have not followed the case, Meng Wanzhou is the Huawei executive who was arrested at the Vancouver airport on December 1, 2018 in response to an extradition request from the US charging her with fraud for violating sanctions against Iran.

From the outset the case seemed far-fetched and part of the Trump administration’s anti-China campaign, and we hesitated to speak out. Meng is a rich and powerful figure, vice-chair of one of the largest corporations in the world, engaged in a tit-for-tat battle with US corporations. Why get involved?

Meng also owns luxury properties in Vancouver, an emblematic target for those who indiscriminately blame “the Chinese” for the city’s housing crisis, setting the stage for the Sinophobic racism associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Then the Chinese government arrested Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig on charges of allegedly “endangering state security.” Suddenly, we entered into an ‘us vs. them’ scenario, and a destructive discourse on hostage taking.

As anti-war and social justice activists who have built long-term friendships with people in China, we refuse to be caught in the crosshairs of those who would recklessly demonize an emerging economic superpower.

The growing chorus of voices demanding the release of Meng has prompted us to take a closer look at what’s been going on, particularly in the extradition hearings currently taking place in the BC Supreme Court.

And we don’t like what we see.

The US charges seem hardly supportable given that Canada does not have sanctions against Iran and the alleged crimes took place in Hong Kong, not in Canada or the US.

So how did we get here?

Canada’s Justice Holmes and the Iran sanctions

In 2015, the Obama administration waived any sanctions aimed at Iran as part of an international agreement that saw Iran limit its nuclear development program in exchange for the withdrawal of sanctions. However, when Trump assumed power, he unilaterally withdrew from the deal and re-imposed sanctions against Iran to the astonishment of most countries and the United Nations.

The Canadian government did not follow Trump’s lead and has not imposed sanctions against Iran. The decision to arrest Meng and subject her to the extradition hearings now taking place should have been a non-starter since the allegation, breaking US sanctions, is not a crime in Canada.

Meng’s lawyers have argued exactly that. In response, the judge in the extradition hearings, Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes, has shifted the focus of the deliberations away from Iran. In a ruling on the importance of Canada not having sanctions (United States v. Meng, BCSC 2020, 785), Justice Holmes came to the curious conclusion that, though she recognized that US sanction laws are not part of Canadian law, “they are also not fundamentally contrary to Canadian values as in the way that slavery laws would be, for example.”

Justice Holmes’ historical reference to slavery laws as the bottom line in Canadian values is breathtaking. It sets a bar so low that it belittles the long history of struggle for justice in this country, not to mention the fight for an independent Canadian foreign policy.

In a letter beseeching the Canadian government to release Meng, 17 prominent Canadians including former justice minister Alan Rock, former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, and former NDP leader Ed Broadbent stated that releasing Meng would not be the first time that Canada has parted ways with the US, “including on much more momentous issues, such as refusing to join in their invasion of Iraq.”

Having participated in 2003 with hundreds of thousands of other people across Canada and in Quebec in demonstrations against the proposed invasion of Iraq, we agree that it was a momentous occasion, one that reflects how Canadians value their independence despite the country being allied with the US. The failure of Justice Holmes to recognize that Canadian non-participation in sanctions against Iran is—like our refusal to join in the invasion of Iraq—an integral part of Canadian values is distressing.

Meng Wanzhou is the deputy chair of the board and chief financial officer of telecom giant and China’s largest privately held company, Huawei, founded by her father Ren Zhengfei. Photo by Matti Blume.

An illegal interrogation and arrest?

Upon accepting the US extradition request, Canada’s Department of Justice and the RCMP obtained a warrant for the “immediate arrest” of Meng for December 1, 2018 when she was scheduled to pass through Vancouver on her way to Mexico.

But instead of arresting Meng, Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) officers detained and interrogated her for over two hours, telling her the scrutiny was necessary to enter Canada–even though Meng was en route to Mexico.

Knowing that Meng would soon be arrested but failing to disclose this to her, CBSA agents seized her goods including her phones. When asked to surrender the pass codes for the devices she did so, but only after being assured it was part of immigration procedure.

A CBSA officer then wrote the pass codes in his notebook and on a separate piece of paper that was then inserted with the telephones in a designated bag. An RCMP officer’s notes from that day indicate that the seizure and placement in mylar bags was “as per FBI request.”

After detaining and grilling Meng for two hours, the CBSA suspended their interrogation, led Meng to another room, and RCMP officers arrested her. They read Meng her rights and took her to jail. The CBSA then handed the phones and passcodes over to the RCMP.

According to the notes of an RCMP officer introduced as evidence, another officer, Brett Chang subsequently emailed the serial numbers of the devices, SIM cards and international mobile identity numbers to the FBI. Chang initially denied that he had done this but now, after seeking legal advice, he is refusing to testify in court.

There is more. CBSA officers admitted that they, together with RCMP officers, schemed to delay the arrest and oblige her to go through immigration screening, supposedly because the CBSA had its own suspicions that Meng represented a “national security” risk.

Meng had entered the country 52 times without a problem yet somehow, on this particular trip with the RCMP waiting with an arrest warrant in their pocket, the CBSA suddenly discovered Meng was a national security risk?

The CBSA admitted in court that not “one iota” of evidence of her being a national security risk was found during their screening. And now Scott Kirkland, the CBSA agent has admitted that handing over Meng’s personal security codes to the RCMP was improper, that it was “heart-wrenching to realize I made that mistake.”

The hearings reveal a judiciary obliged to denigrate Canadian law, and law enforcement agencies bending the rules, if not breaking them, to find evidence for a Trump administration that, even now on its way out, is seriously considering bombing Iran according to the New York Times. This has shades of Iraq in 2003 when the US, without sanction from the UN, invaded that country because the Bush administration believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. As we now know, there were no such weapons, and US intelligence had made it up.

50 years ago, Justin Trudeau’s father was prime minister and he had the foresight to open diplomatic relations with China. He believed in keeping US foreign policy at arm’s length. As China’s power in the world grows, Pierre Trudeau’s approach is all the more relevant as the US government strives to do what George Bush did prior to the invasion of Iraq—bypass the UN and divide the world into “coalition of the willing” against an “axis of evil.”

Canadians rejected that approach then and we should do the same today. Justin Trudeau, however, does not seem to get that. That is why Canadian protests surrounding the Meng affair are growing.

Protests growing

Nearly a year ago, former prime minister Jean Chrétien called for an end to the Meng extradition to facilitate the release of Kovrig and Spavor. Now, many others are doing the same.

Vina Nadjibulla, the spouse of Michael Kovrig, took matters into her own hands this summer and called for the release of Meng. She, with former minister of justice Rock and former supreme court justice Louise Arbour, commissioned a legal opinion by Edward Greenspan that details how Canada’s minister of justice would be fully within his legal rights to intervene at any time to release Meng.

“The Minister of Justice, acting in that capacity, should immediately accept the responsibility under the Extradition Act and exercise the authority he has under that statute to end the Meng extradition proceeding,” states the letter signed by Rock, Arbour as well as a 17 others including Broadbent and Axworthy.

In July, the Green Party of Canada echoed the sentiments of that letter. Their parliamentary leader, Elizabeth May, argued that the US has abused Canada’s friendship, trust and the extradition treaty. “It’s time for the Canadian government to stand up to the US administration and demand that it drop the criminal charges and extradition request against Meng so that we can release her,” she stated in a press release.

A month later, the Globe and Mail reported that over 100 former Canadian diplomats had also called on Trudeau to stop extradition proceedings against Meng, allow her to return to China, and arrange a swap for Kovrig and Spavor.

Professor Charles Burton, considered a hawk on China, complained that he was not contacted to sign the letter even though he did a stint at Canada’s embassy in Beijing. He argues that to end the extradition would embolden China.

This view is contested by others such as professor emerita Wendy Dobson, one of the 19 signatories to the letter to Justin Trudeau and author of Living with China: A Middle Power Finds Its Way.

Now, MP Niki Ashton has sponsored a parliamentary petition calling for Meng’s release. A national day of action to back up the demand is planned for December 1.

With Trump on his way out, there is no time like the present to break the impasse by ending the extradition hearings and releasing Meng. This does not in any way imply aligning ourselves with the Chinese government. It is a message that we will not be bullied—full stop.

To do otherwise is to allow the world to be cleaved into hostile camps and to court disaster in the face of the two global crises of our time: the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergency.

John Price is professor emeritus of transpacific history at the University of Victoria and author of Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific and A Woman in Between: Searching for Dr. Victoria Chung.

Margaret McGregor is a family physician in Vancouver. She lived in Beijing for two years as part of the first Canada-China student exchange (1973-1975).

The COVID-19 vaccine and its discontents
Canada’s vaccine strategy and approach to global health puts private profit over human need

Jennifer Cole / December 2, 2020  CANADIAN DIMENSION

The global race for a COVID-19 vaccine is nearing an end, with more than 200 treatments either developed or in the works. Despite massive levels of public funding to support the research, Big Pharma stands to make record profits. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

On November 6, the prime minister, together with Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, confirmed that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer had developed a COVID-19 vaccine. Ten days later, American biotechnology company Moderna announced its vaccine was 94 percent effective against the virus.

This was followed by the release of encouraging preliminary results by British drug maker AstraZeneca of its experimental COVID shot. All three, if approved by Health Canada, could be available in the early part of next year.

That’s where the good news ends.

Dr. Tam has warned that there will be a limited vaccine supply to begin with. This will increase as production picks up, but she wasn’t pulling any punches.

“While that supply will continue to increase over time,” she said, “it does mean that federal, provincial and territorial governments will have to make important decisions about how to use the initial vaccine supply.”

In an ideal world, Canada would not be dependent upon companies like Pfizer or Moderna to manufacture a vaccine at scale. Indeed, once upon a time, Canada was less beholden to the dictates of private manufacturers taking advantage of a global health emergency to charge monopoly prices.

In the 1950s, Toronto’s Connaught Labs helped develop a vaccine against polio, and played an important role in the global eradication of smallpox. The lab was profitable throughout its history, but was eventually sold off to French giant Sanofi Pasteur during Brian Mulroney’s program of privatization in the 1990s.

In Montreal, the Institut Armand Frappier manufactured a multitude of vaccines including one for tuberculosis. It was later sold to British multinational GlaxoSmithKline.

Both of these facilities were unique because their focus was on human need, not profit.

Imagine if they were still around today. With their robust manufacturing capacity, Canada’s vaccine deployment could rapidly focus on protecting the most vulnerable. Under the current model, we hang our hopes on a pharmaceutical industry that is often unwilling to intervene when the situation is insufficiently profitable.

Instead, the federal government’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), founded to research and obtain COVID-19 vaccines, has produced a report with recommendations on who will eventually receive the coveted early doses.

Along with providing its own recommendations, NACI conducted internal surveys among stakeholders including the Public Health Agency of Canada, as well as the general population. Canada’s COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring Study (COSMO Canada), in collaboration with the Public Opinion Research Team within the Privy Council Office, collected data from 2,000 Canadians asking who they felt should get the first vaccines. Angus Reid polled 1,500 Canadians asking the same question.

There was a consensus.

No Canadian will disagree that elders in long term care be among the first group to receive the vaccine. This is only right considering all they have endured over the past year. After that there’s agreement that health care workers, persons over 65 and those with underlying health issues be inoculated.

NACI recommends vulnerable groups such as the unhoused and Indigenous populations who have limited access to health care or live in remote communities should also be among the early recipients. Subsequently, vaccines would be available for those deemed necessary to the running of the country.

To help determine who is classed as “essential,” Public Safety Canada has compiled a document titled “Guidance on Essential Services and Functions in Canada During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” It lists those considered indispensable to keeping Canada chugging along and includes first responders, postal workers, teachers, grocery store workers, and politicians.

The advisory committee is also tasked with vaccine procurement. To restart economies in haste governments are aiming for herd immunity as the holy grail. When enough people have built up resistance to COVID-19 through inoculation the theory is that this could suppress the pandemic altogether.

Many estimates conclude that between 60 to 70 percent of the population need to achieve herd immunity for it to be effective, but this is contingent upon how much the virus is being transmitted—the “R value,” or reproduction rate.

This all sounds fair enough, but on the international stage, Canada’s coordination with other wealthy jurisdictions including the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Australia shows that we are moving away from global solidarity towards what has been called “vaccine nationalism.”

Last week, at a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, the world’s wealthiest nations—including Canada—opposed waiving intellectual property rules for COVID-19 vaccines until the end of the pandemic. By refusing to temporarily lift patent protections, WTO members have ensured that pharmaceutical corporations like Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca will retain “control over key decisions including who gets the vaccines, when they get them, how much they get, and how much they pay.”

Without the ability to dictate what private manufacturers can charge for a new vaccine, we allow the pursuit of profit to triumph over human need. This threatens to exacerbate existing inequalities and disparities between the Global South and Global North.

In a recent interview on the CBC’s Sunday Edition, Matthew Herder, director of the Public Health Law Institute at Dalhousie University, said “We need different incentives, different reward structures to encourage companies and university researchers to develop vaccines to address these kinds of health problems… Patent rights don’t correspond to public health needs. They correspond to things that you can get predictable returns in the marketplace for.”

The confluence of vaccine nationalism and the privileging of private profit over human need calls for a radical change in our approach to public (and global) health.

One way to solve Canada’s domestic production woes is to develop a bold and ambitious industrial strategy that brings the public and private sectors together to build plants and labs to undertake vital research for the public good. This would enable the government to step in under certain circumstances to streamline production, distribution and administration of needed medications and vaccines. Such a model would move us away from simply commercializing the most profitable or expedient scientific discoveries towards an ecosystem that privileges knowledge production to respond to major social, economic and health challenges.

While universities and publicly funded labs across Canada are doing groundbreaking research, they are currently dependent upon pharmaceutical companies to co-ordinate large clinical trials, get regulatory approval in multiple countries and manufacture vaccines. The search for an Ebola cure exemplifies this.

In the early 2000s, government researchers discovered an effective Ebola vaccine at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg where it sat and gathered dust without any private sector interest. It was only when the virus became a nightly news story that pharmaceutical giant Merck took interest, saw its profit potential, got approval and started mass producing a treatment.

There has also been publicly funded Canadian research on coronavirus vaccines since the SARS outbreak of 2003, but similarly little interest from the pharmaceutical giants.

Indeed, without domestic vaccine production capabilities Canada will remain behind the proverbial eight ball. What’s more, as long as we pledge our support for a global power hierarchy in which poorer nations are asked to “take the leftovers,” the international community will be less prepared for future pandemics and outbreaks.

In a perfect world, rapid inoculation would be available to all nations, rich or poor, and free at the point of delivery. Yet, nothing about this virus, nor the dictates of global capital, is fair or equitable—even the cure.

Jennifer Cole is a Vancouver based writer with a BA in history from Simon Fraser University.

Elliot Page’s Wife, Emma Portner, Calls Him a True Gift 

After He Shared That He’s Trans

“Shine on sweet E. Love you so much,” she wrote. 😭❤️

by STARR BOWENBANK COSMOPOLITAN DEC 2, 2020


GETTY IMAGES

Elliot Page shared that he is trans yesterday in a letter posted on Twitter and Instagram.
His wife, Emma Portner, shared her joy at Elliot’s coming out and called him a gift.

Yesterday was a major day for Juno and Umbrella Academy star Elliot Page—in a moving letter posted to his Twitter and Instagram accounts, he shared that he is trans, his name is Elliot, and he goes by “he” and “they” pronouns.

“Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot. I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life. I feel overwhelming gratitude for the incredible people who have supported me along this journey. I can’t begin to express how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self. I’ve been endlessly inspired by so many in the trans community. Thank you for your courage, your generosity and ceaselessly working to make this world a more inclusive and compassionate place. I will offer whatever support I can and continue to strive for a more loving and equal society.”

After Elliot received an outpouring of support from celebrity friends and fans alike, his wife—New York City–based dance teacher Emma Portner—took to Instagram to share how proud she is of her man for being his most authentic self.

“I am so proud of @ElliotPage. Trans, queer, and non-binary people are a gift to this world. I also ask for patience & privacy but that you join me in the fervent support of trans life every single day. Elliot’s existence is a gift in and of itself. Shine on sweet E. Love you so much,” she wrote along with a screenshot of his letter.

Much love to Elliot and Emma in this incredibly special time in their relationship!

This content is imported from Instagram. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

CRYPTO LIBERTARIAN ECONOMICS

Why Ethereum and Bitcoin Are Very Different Investments
Dec 3, 2020 

Ethereum art(CoinDesk archives)

Muyao Shen

Why Ethereum and Bitcoin Are Very Different Investments

Those new to crypto, such as the institutional investors recently buying into bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative, might now be looking around for the next big thing.

With the long-anticipated arrival of phase 0 of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade launching on Dec. 1, that could be the network’s native token, ether (ETH). But analysts say ether should be judged on its own merits and not as a bitcoin replacement.

“I’ve always thought this digital asset space is huge – and it’s not just bitcoin – because there are going to be different applications for different things,” Raoul Pal, CEO and co-founder of financial media group Real Vision, said in Real Vision’s documentary “Ethereum – An Investigation,” which was released on Nov. 30. “I think of the two [bitcoin and ether] as having a very nice combined asset allocation.”

For Pal, an early bitcoin investor, the rationale seems even more plausible these days: As bitcoin’s price hits a new all-time high, the number one cryptocurrency by market capitalization is now more expensive and thus potentially a riskier bet for new investors.

It can be expected investors are looking for a new opportunity in crypto at affordable prices. Given that ether is trading roughly 59% below its all-time high of $1,432.88, it is tempting to believe there’s a bargain to be had. What’s more, the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade to increase the network’s scalability, security and energy efficiency has generated a lot of hype.

Read more: Investment Giant AllianceBernstein Now Says Bitcoin Has Role in Investors’ Portfolios

However, at least for now, analysts and traders who spoke with CoinDesk don’t think ether will replace the FOMO over bitcoin.

“For institutional investors, they are buying BTC for the digital gold narrative,” Ryan Watkins, senior research analyst at Messari, told CoinDesk. “ETH just isn’t in that conversation yet.”

Ether “benefits from spillover and likely has more conversation around it from crypto-natives,” Vishal Shah, founder of derivatives exchange Alpha5, told CoinDesk. “For the uninitiated, [it is] hard to see how bitcoin is not the sole on-ramp.”

Weakening correlation between bitcoin and ether

Some analysts say that as more institutions pour money into bitcoin and push up its price, ether and other cryptocurrencies will gradually decouple from bitcoin.

Indeed, while bitcoin this week logged a record high price, ether isn’t even close to its all-time high of $1,448.18. Data from CoinDesk shows the 90-day correlation coefficient between the prices of the top two cryptocurrencies, while still strong, has gradually weakened a bit since the summer from as high as 0.93 to nearly 0.7 at the beginning of December.



Source: CoinDesk Research

“The thing about correlation is it can disappear at any time,” Ashwath Balakrishnan, research analyst at digital asset research firm Delphi Digital, told CoinDesk. “In that case, you want to understand the core fundamentals of what you hold because if you hold ether as a proxy [to your] bitcoin exposure, and [when] prices decouple, you are now exposed to something very different.”

Bitcoin has been used by many investors this year as a hedge against a drop in the purchasing power of U.S. dollars. Ether is considered the currency of “the world computer,” which aims to build an ecosystem of decentralized applications.

The close historical correlation between bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may be due to how tiny the digital-asset ecosystem is relative to the global economy. The total market capitalization of crypto assets is estimated at $562 billion, a mere 1.7% of the S&P 500 stock index’s combined market cap of $32.2 trillion. With almost every crypto asset built on different fundamentals, non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies may be trending with bitcoin prices simply because the nascent market is still so small and insular.

Read more: Volume Surge Brings 25% Turnover to ‘CoinDesk 20’

Correlation data doesn’t tell the whole story. Prices may move in tandem but the degree to which that happens is another matter. When the explosive decentralized finance (DeFi) boom hit the market during the summer, ether’s price rallied to its highest in more than two years because most DeFi projects are built on the Ethereum blockchain. At the time, bitcoin was struggling to break a similar two-year record.

What Ethereum 2.0 could mean for investors

The market will have to wait and see what kind of real impact the ongoing Ethereum upgrade could have on its native currency because the final phase of the process is scheduled to be completed in 2023. But a major fundamental upgrade on the network underpinning ether could lead its price to move on its own fundamentals, instead of merely following bitcoin’s price.


“The heart of ETH 2.0, which makes the entire system possible, is ether,” according to a report by Messari. “ETH will not only be Ethereum’s native store of value asset and fuel for transactions, but will also be Ethereum’s ultimate source of security from its role in the [proof-of-stake] system.”

Thus, while bitcoin can be seen as somewhere between a store of value and a commodity on the “asset superclass triangle,” ether could ultimately become the first asset to be a combination of all three classes of assets: capital assets, commodities and stores of value.

“When ether’s price starts to be driven by its own catalysts, holding it as a proxy to having BTC exposure will not work as expected,” Balakrishnan added.

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DISCLOSURE

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

CRIMINAL CYBER-CAPITALI$M

Stolen Bitcoin worth $100 Million Moved from Bitfinex

Author: Sherlock Gomes
Last Updated: 02 December 2020

About $100 million in Bitcoin, stolen from crypto exchange Bitfinex, were recently moved by the hackers. The total funds stolen in 2016 are now worth $2.3 billion. This is the first time since August that the stolen funds have moved.

Unknown hackers move the coins

Funds stolen from the crypto exchange Bitfinex move occasionally. On Monday, the unknown hackers moved around 5,000 Bitcoins from 14 wallets. The exact figure is 5045.48 coins worth around $98.3 million. These Bitcoins haven’t moved from the wallets since the 2016 hack.

The exchange was hacked in 2016 after its multi-signature wallets faced issues. Several users lost their Bitcoin even after using 2-factor authentication. The hack caused the price of Bitcoin to drop by 20% from $600 to $400. Bitfinex had to offer a 36% haircut to all their customers following the hack. They were also given a BFX token that could be redeemed for shares in its parent company iFinex.

The Bitcoin stolen from the exchange is worth $2.3 billion according to current prices. In August, the hackers moved stolen coins worth $5.6 million.

Awakening of Bitcoin

Some Bitcoin wallets have been sleeping with Bitcoin for years. When Bitcoins from these wallets move, it is called ‘awakening.’ Some of this Bitcoin is also “Satoshi-era” which means that it was mined when Satoshi Nakamoto had not gone in hiding.

While such a big movement of Bitcoin is not uncommon, Monday’s shifting is connected to hacking. Bitfinex has even offered a $400 million reward to anyone who can help it contact the hackers. The exchange noted at the time,

“This incident is a dark chapter in our exchange’s history, and we are pleased to offer this reward as further evidence of our determination to obtain the lost property.”

The exchange even offered hackers to keep 25% of the stolen funds, offering 5% to anyone connecting with the hackers. The identity of the hackers is not known to date.