By Macdonald Stainsby, July 14, 2008

For much of the last year, many of the anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian forces across Canada have started to work towards converging many of the bigger issues to take place in 2010 into a larger whole.

Some of the issues included are: The 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, the next round of Security and Prosperity Partnership [SPP] negotiations to be held within Canada-- and the G8 Summit to be held in Ontario all during that same year. On many different levels these issues interlink and have an inherent connection with one another. Some of them, more than others. Here I wish to make the case that what belongs as a major thread through all of these discussions is often absent among those of us trying to make these larger connections coherent in our organizing.

Here I will specifically focus on making a connection for the 2010 Games resistance, the SPP and the Albertan Tar Sands as another central organizing point.

An interview with South Korean activist Dopehead Zo, by Sarah Lazare, Marina Sitrin, David Solnit and Asha Colazione.

The anti-G8 mobilizations have been bringing together inspiring organizers and activists from all over the world. Japanese precarious temp workers, calling themselves “Freeters”, South Korean anti-military base organizers, Spanish media activists, Farm workers from Via Campesina, Australian human rights activists, German direct action organizers, and many others from North America, Asia, and Europe, have all come together to share stories, struggles, ideas, and to network and plan actions. At The Counter G8 International Forum in Tokyo, we met one organizer whose story is so compelling we needed to share it as soon as possible. The following is a selected transcription of our conversation.

Emergency Exit Collective, Bristol, Mayday, 2008

zero

The authors of this document are a collection of activists, scholars, and writers currently based in the United States and Western Europe who have gotten to know and work with each other in the movement against capitalist globalization. We’re writing this at the request of some members of No! G8 Action Japan, who asked us for a broad strategic analysis of the state of struggle as we see it, and particularly, of the role of the G8, what it represents, the dangers and opportunities that may lie hidden in the moment. It is in no sense programmatic. Mainly, it is an attempt to develop tools that we hope will be helpful for organizers, or for anyone engaged in the struggle against global capital.

I

It is our condition as human beings that we produce our lives in common.

II

Canada-Colombia FTA: When Democracy Gets in the Way, Just Sign It, eh?
By: Michèal Ó Tuathail
http://canadacolombiaproject.blogspot.com/2008/06/canada-colombia-fta-when-democracy-gets.html

On June 7 2008, less than one year after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the beginning of bilateral free trade talks with Colombia, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade announced the conclusion of negotiations.

While the US-Colombia free trade agreement has been stalled in the US, due mainly to the grave human rights situation in Colombia and, some say, a US election campaign, Canada has offered transnational capital an opening through the back door.

Canada-style, eh?

"The Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to open up opportunities for Canadian business in the Americas and around the world," stated the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade David Emerson, revealing the true beneficiaries of this agreement. Emerson went on to note that "the free trade agreement will expand Canada-Colombia trade and investment, and will help solidify ongoing efforts by the Government of Colombia to create a more prosperous, equitable and secure democracy."

from http://inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/precarious-labor-a-feminist-viewpoint/
In the Middle of the Whirlwind, an intervention in to the movement

Precarious work is a central concept in movement discussions of the capitalist reorganization of work and class relations in today’s global economy. Silvia Federici analyzes the potential and limits of this concept as an analytic and organizational tool. She claims reproductive labor is a hidden continent of work and struggle the movement must recognize in its political work, if it is to address the key questions we face in organizing for an alternative to capitalist society. How do we struggle over reproductive labor without destroying ourselves, and our communities? How do we create a self-reproducing movement? How do we overcome the sexual, racial, and generational hierarchies built upon the wage?

This lecture took place on October 28th 2006 at Bluestockings Radical Bookstore in New York City, 172 Allen Street as part of the “This is Forever: From Inquiry to Refusal Discussion Series. “

Written by Ramor Ryan

"The Epic Struggle for Another Oaxaca Has Not Finished," says David Venegas.

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake." - Stephen Daedalus, in Ulysses, James Joyce 1922

Oaxaca City, Mexico, May 15 - Midnight in Oaxaca, and walking around the historic center, it's almost as if nothing had ever happened here. The bourgeoisie sit around under the colonial arches in the long stretch of French-style outdoor cafes lining the central plaza. Aside from being beset by a small army of ambulant trinket vendors and beggars, the well-heeled citizens sipping cappuccinos seem very at ease with the world. A few late night tourists wander about the pleasant old streets under the starry sky, and the industrious hum of the sultry cosmopolitan city invokes an eternal calm.

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ROUNDTABLE ON G8 RESISTANCE
Perspectives for the Next Phase of
Global Anti-Capitalist Uprisings

Moderated by Kriss Sol (Amsterdam);
with Hanne Jobst (Germany), Sabu & Go
(Japan), Miranda (Italy), and Jaggi
Singh (Canada)

The G8 is more than a place where neoliberal
trade agreements are authored. It is also a
space where the legitimacy of global governance

By Harsha Walia and Cynthia Oka, from Left Turn

As it quietly turns into official policy, the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” (SPP) agreement mixes the neoliberalism of NAFTA with the repression of homeland security. Harsha Walia and Cynthia Oka outline the main features of this emerging framework and its consequences for people in the region.

The SPP was founded in March 2005 at a summit of the heads of state of Canada, the US, and Mexico with the backing of powerful lobby groups including the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. Robert Pastor, co-chairman of the CFR, wrote an influential book in 2001, Toward a North American Community, where he laid the foundations for the SPP through the idea of “North American institutions.” In January 2003, CCCE released its North American Security and Prosperity Initiative which essentially became the template for the SPP.