« Charter cities »: new corporate jargon… for same old colonization

Charter Cities in Honduras: A Proposal to Expand Canadian Colonialism

from Dawn, at Vancouver Mediacoop

The Globe and Mail really outdid themselves today. With the help of a writer named Jeremy Torobin, they took their journalism to the level of the commentary they once specialized in courtesy of Christy Blatchford (who is now at the National Post).

The article in question is called « How ‘charter cities’ could lift the global economy. » Hint: replace « charter city » with « colony » and you’re 99 per cent of the way to understanding the concept.

Torobin relies on a report by the Macdonald Laurier Institute (MLI), a 16-page document filled with sweeping generalizations and assertions, backed up by 10 piddly footnotes. But don’t worry, because as Torobin deftly points out:

The authors back up their arguments with research, such as a statistic that people who move to places with better rules than in the ones they’ve left behind can earn wages which are three to seven times higher.

Whoa, wait a sec, hang on… They back their arguments up with research and a statistic!? ZOMG.

Upon closer inspection, the report isn’t peer reviewed, and a disclaimer from MLI assures readers that the authors have worked independently and are solely responsible for the content. Oh, and the authors are both involved in a « non-profit » pushing the idea of new urban colonies (ahem, charter cities) all around the world.

Doesn’t stop Torobin from presenting the conclusions in the report, which he calls « intriguing, » as fact. He writes:

Prof. Romer was in Ottawa Wednesday pushing his concept of “charter cities,” essentially locales created from scratch in the developing world where reform-minded people could migrate and be governed under a broad set of evenly applied rules that, in theory, could remake norms across the country. If it worked, the “political risk” that is the chief impediment to foreign investment in so many poor countries would be significantly reduced, paving the way for money to pour in. Also, in theory, similar charter cities would start to pop up as people see what’s gone on in the first one and want to replicate it. Eventually, entire regions could be adopting new rules and norms established in the initial charter cities, dramatically improving the quality of more and more people’s lives.

Yes, that’s right. One urban colony (charter city) at at time, entire countries could be re-made into urban oases based on rules and foreign direct investment. But wait, it gets better.

According to Paul Romer and his pal Brandon Fuller, the NYU urbanization academics and colony boosters who penned the report, Canada is especially well suited to run a new colony, ahem, charter city in Honduras. The idea has been approved by Honduras’ congress (which, it is worth remembering, came about via illegitimate elections following a coup d’etat in 2009), and is known there as a « special economic region » or RED. Back to the report:

The RCMP, perhaps in partnership with another respected policing authority such as the Carabineros de Chile, could greatly enhance security and quality of life in the RED by establishing a presence in the zone – training police officers and holding officers accountable for modern standards of service and conduct in policing.

An example of "dysfunctional systems of rules and enforcement that keep people from reaching their true potential", amiright, MLI?

Yea, you read that right. Sorry if you just lost your lunch. The idea here is to bring in two national police forces whose origins are in the decimation and repression of Indigenous peoples and put them to work in a new colony.

I can’t bring myself to go into more detail about this pathetically colonial initiative. It’s all there. Read the report yourself (if you have the urge to get angry and scoff at the same time).

As for the Globe’s pitiful attempt at « journalism » on this one, after following along on this colonial fairy tale Torobin takes the time to note « Cynics might dismiss the whole concept as a starry-eyed mix of idealism, paternalism, even imperialism. » True to the tradition of Blatchfordian-Canadian-colonialist journalism, he doesn’t appear to have spoken to a critic, or even played devil’s advocate for a moment to understand what could possibly be wrong with this proposal.

I think it could be argued that this initiative has more to do with controlling migration and resistance movements than anything else. Miriam Miranda, a Garifuna leader, said recently of RED that « it is difficult to get information, but it is evident that we’re faced with the maximum expression of the loss of sovereignty. »

I look foward to more critical analysis of this proposal, but I have no illusions of finding it in the mainstream media. After all, it is already clear the old media dinosaurs want us all to go extinct along with them.

From the same source article:

(…) the biggest obstacle to growth and development in the world is not a shortage of money, but rather poorly functioning institutions, such as the police, the courts and public administration, or what the authors call “the dysfunctional systems of rules and enforcement that keep people from reaching their true potential.”

The charter city concept circumvents dysfunctional systems of rules by allowing a city to operate independently under a new system of rules in a reform zone.

How « charter cities » could transform the developping world

Interview with Honduras Indigenous leader Salvador Zuniga

Honduras is burning: an eyewitness report

And you thought the Fukushima nuke disaster was over?

Actually it’s worse than ever…. so is the manipulation in the mainstream media:

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Goldcorp Canada and the coup in Honduras: from disaster capitalism to the disaster of capitalism

Todd Gordon and Jeffery R. Webber interview Carlos Danilo Amador, General Secretary of the Regional Environmental Committee of the Valle de Siria, about Canadian Mining and resistance in Honduras.

Jeffery R. Webber/Todd Gordon: We’re here in Tegucigalpa, Honduras (January 26). Can you give us your name and position in your organization?

Carlos Danilo Amador: My name is Carlos Danilo Amador. I am the General Secretary of the Regional Environmental Committee of the Valle de Siria, a region in Honduras.

RW/TG: For the Canadian audience, can you tell us in general terms, first, the role of the Canadian mining industry in Honduras, and second, the resistance that has emerged in the country in response to the activities of Canadian mining companies?

CDA: In the case of Valle de Siria, where the Canadian mining company Goldcorp is active, the company has essentially come to destroy our natural resources, to divide families in our communities. Valle de Siria is a community in which people lived off of agriculture and raising animals before the arrival of Goldcorp. Once Goldcorp became active in Valle de Siria, through the project of San Martín, all of this [agriculture and farming] went under.

It is in this sense that the presence of Canadian mining companies in Honduras, and specifically in this case of Valle de Siria, has caused massive damage to the population and the natural resources. It’s hardly obvious that Canadian capital has come to develop our communities; instead, they have caused enormous damage.

It’s a question of Canadian transnational capital operating in our territories and lacking respect for the dignity of the men and women who live in Valle de Siria.

These companies create a false image of what they want to do in our territories – hiding the fact that they disrespect the dignity of our peoples, disrespect our human rights, impose cultures that are not ours, and rob our natural resources.

All of this is in order to strengthen the economic interests of Canadian transnationals.

In synthesis, we can say that the presence of Canadian mining companies has brought destruction and death to our community.

Read the rest of the interview here

Capitalizing on hurricane devastation

The answer begins with Canada’s reaction to the last crisis in Honduras.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch swept through much of Central America and especially ravaged Honduras, where thousands of people were killed and millions were displaced. Already the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Honduras was now struck with over $3 billion in damages, a loss of social services such as schools, hospitals and road systems. Seventy per cent of its agricultural crops were destroyed. Nothing so devastating had ever hit Honduras.

Canada was quick to respond to the cries for help following Hurricane Mitch, with a ‘long-term development plan’. Canada offered $100 million over four years for reconstruction projects. These grandiose aid packages made Canada look like a savior. However, attached to this assistance was the introduction of over 40 Canadian companies to Honduras to assess opportunities for investment. This hurricane offered a strategic economic opportunity for Canadian investment in Honduras.

The Canadian government, as it officially stated this year, considers mineral extraction by Canadian mining companies one of the best ways to « create new economic opportunities in the developing world ». Shortly after Hurricane Mitch weakened the Honduran state, Canada and the United States joined to establish the National Association of Metal Mining of Honduras (ANAMINH), through which they were able to rewrite the General Mining Law. This law provides foreign mining companies with lifelong concessions, tax breaks and subsurface land rights for « rational resource exploitation ».

 

‘We have lost everything’

« They crave gold like hungry swine, » Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano has written of multinational mining firms. I thought of those words on a recent drive through the open pit San Andres mining project, recently sold by the Canadian company Yamana Gold to another Canadian company, Aura Minerales. When I’d finished my tour, I was convinced the social, economic, environmental and health costs of open pit mining practices far outweigh the supposed benefits, and that the resource exploitation practiced by certain Canadian companies is anything but rational.

I got chills driving through the abandoned village of San Andres. What were once homes and schools had been bulldozed into mounds of crushed adobe and rock. Where ancient pine trees stood, there now were deep craters, accessible by the nicest highways I had seen in Honduras.

But a local resident at the end of one of those roads told me: « We have lost everything. » The mine had displaced him from his home, and he was now without clean water to drink or fertile land to sow.

In February 2003, nearly five hundred gallons of cyanide spilled into the Rio Lara, killing 18,000 fish. The mine in San Andres uses more water in one hour than an average Honduran family uses in one year. In that same year, mining companies earned $44.4 million, while the average income per capita in Honduras in 2004 was just $1,126USD.

Zelaya’s anti-mining stance: payment due

As the man at the end of the road tried to explain to me, mining is not development for people who live around these mines. He speaks for thousands of others — a base of support aligned with the ousted President Zelaya. In 2006, Zelaya decided to cancel all future mining concessions in Honduras.

 (another move from the Zelaya gov’t that Goldcorp and its Canadian « partners » didn’t like)

Which would appear to explain, at least in large part, why Canada stands virtually alone in the hemisphere in supporting the Honduran military’s ousting of Zelaya. The Canadian government, and its friends in the mining industry, are using the coup as an opportunity to plant their feet deeper into the Honduran ground.

Read the rest of the article here

International Call to Halt Criminalization of Environment Defenders in Honduras