Canadian group not dealing with major free expression issues

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), a non-profit organization I worked with for 14 years, is one of dozens of groups from around the world that celebrated the importance of an unencumbered media on World Press Freedom Day May 3.

CJFE has an almost 30 year history of carrying out vital press freedom work throughout the developing world with its own programs and, in particular, through the creation and operation of the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), a worldwide network of 88 groups. Working with other groups, lives have been saved and entire nations of people have gained the right to express themselves.

The group has just published its most elaborate ever, 46-page Free Expression in Canada Review. The report addresses a number of important issues, such as access to information, digital surveillance, and the failure to protect the country's whistleblowers. The Review should result in more people becoming involved in CJFE, which is important.

But with this anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, I feel it's important to explain how CJFE comes up short when addressing the free expression problems we face here in Canada.

It's not only in developing countries where journalists lack rights. In fact, Canada is facing its greatest public information crisis in many years.

It is true that mainstream journalism is adversely affected by the economic downturn and the loss of millions of dollars in advertising revenues to Internet-based companies. But this is not what I'm referring to.

Flaherty's Legacy: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The unexpected, shocking death of Jim Flaherty, the Conservative Party of Canada’s only finance minister until his retirement less than a month ago, has resulted in hundreds of tributes for his commitment to public life and praise from those in business and conservative circles who approved of his financial and economic policies.

Flaherty, who was only 64, was devoted to his family and one of the most popular Members of Parliament. And while his life achievements and humanity should be praised, it also needs to be said that during his time in the federal government his policies severely discriminated against the vast majority of Canadians.

Flaherty had control of Canada’s purse strings during a period that led to a situation where, by 2012, the 86 wealthiest residents held the same amount of wealth as the bottom 11.4 million Canadians combined. Lagging wages have led many Canadians to take on record-high debt as they try to keep up with increasing costs.

In fairness, it’s impossible to assess Flaherty’s legacy as finance minister without factoring in that Prime Minister Stephen Harper kept him on a short leash. Harper, a rabid neoliberal, no doubt put forward a number of the Conservatives’ most anti-social policies. The two argued, but it’s safe to say that Flaherty lost more battles than he won.

With apologies to Clint Eastwood, the Flaherty/Harper contributions to the economic life of the country can be broken into three main areas: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Guest Blog By Murray Dobbin

From Nick Fillmore: This week I am re-printing a "must read" column by Murray Dobbin, a leading journalist and social activist for the past 40 years. This excellent article gets to the bottom of what the NDP needs to do to be an effective, progressive force in this country.

Here's a Big Idea:
Transform Capitalism

By Murray Dobbin
The notion of 'big ideas' periodically raises its head in Canadian politics and I recently criticized the NDP for

Murray Dobbin

taking a good idea -- a national day of action -- and wasting it on, well, small ideas. Specifically I suggested that the party's focus on excessive interest rates and other charges effectively redefined citizens as consumers, something that Stephen Harper's Conservatives have been doing for eight years.

In response to the criticism, the party's deputy leader Megan Leslie wrote a response, claiming that the NDP had big ideas "in spades" and that she was proud of them. It is unusual for the NDP to engage its critics on the left outside the party and it is a positive sign -- as are days of actions and national town halls. Engaging people outside the four-week period of elections is critical to the NDP's future success.

'One Big World Campaign' needed to challenge power of right wing

(Note from Nick of One Big Campaign: Please take a couple of minutes to read about this new global initiative and give us your feedback. Is it time for massive international campaigns to take on greedy corporations and right-wing governments? We would like Canadians to be involved. By the way, I won’t be doing very many blogs for a while as I will be working on this project.)

If you are like me, you are tired of seeing greedy right-wing companies and governments destroy the things we value in Canada and world – our once pristine environment, ‘real’ free trade not corporate-controlled trade, scientific research, and most important, our democracy.

Unfortunately, it is now obvious that the tactics we’ve been using are not strong enough to stop these powerful right-wing forces. We win a battle here and there – say against fracking or in support of LGBTQ rights – but year after year, we keep losing the war.

The right wing has too much money and too much power. And if they are not stopped, who is to say they’re not going to destroy much of the planet? That’s the path they’re on.

So, over the past weeks a number of progressive-minded people in a few countries have been wondering what could be done to better challenge and even defeat these self-serving corporations and governments.

WE'D LIKE YOUR FEEDBACK - SEE BELOW

There is a huge open space internationally – and in Canada - waiting for the right project to come along and capture people’s imagination.

Starting in February, groups working in several countries are going to start building something the right wing does not have – a massive, global, loosely-knit network of networks, organizations and people who are determined to engage in large-scale campaigns to take back what the right has “stolen” from the rest of us.

Avoiding the next financial train wreck

(Part 6 in a series)
Back in 2006, into 2007, too-big-to-fail superbanks, complacent governments and boosterish business media ignored the few economists who predicted there would be a financial crisis. Today, governments lack the will or the legal weapons to control the greed endemic to elite bank culture.

Given the persistence of that culture in big banks, I am not at all optimistic that we will avoid another, even more serious, financial collapse in the not-so-distant future.

To prepare for that day -- and perhaps avoid it altogether -- we need to reduce the power of big banks, weakening their grip on society’s financial resources, and challenging their support for destructive, neo-liberal economic policies.

Ordinary people and public-interest organizations have to do two things: First, we must demand that our governments crack down on reckless, corrupt bankers and protect our money in the process.

Second, we have to take matters into our own hands, rewarding and inventing independent financial systems that we can trust and control.

Should Account-holders pay for High-Flying Bankers' Misdeeds?

(Part 5 of a series)
When the next big financial crisis hits the world economy, and Canadian banks are in distress -- as they were  during the 2008 financial crisis -- the bank-using public will have plenty to worry about.

As we saw earlier in this series, it’s hard to trust banks to protect our savings and investments when so many of them have been exposed behaving unethically, gambling extravagantly on exotic financial instruments, and even engaging in fraudulent activities.

Last week, U.S. regulators adopted the new Volcker rule, which bars American banks from several forms of conflict of interest, including trading securities for their own account, or owning hedge or private-equity funds.

It, and similar new laws in Europe, will help, but they will not stop big banks and rogue investors that are determined to gamble and carry out illegal activities.

Meanwhile, governments themselves are the source of an altogether new threat to our bank accounts that Canadians should watch very carefully. Many, including the Harper Conservatives, are eyeing a new mechanism for rescuing banks whose rash behaviour gets them in trouble. It’s called the “bail in.”

How banks play Russian Roulette with our financial security

(Part 4 of a series)
The next major threat to Canadian and international financial systems is very likely to come from reckless investors gambling with derivatives, the dangerous betting vehicles that contributed to the 2008 collapse of financial services firm Lehman Brothers and the start of the Great Recession.

Used properly, simple derivatives (literally: a financial asset that "derives" its value from that of an underlying asset) can reduce the risk of some financial transactions. To use a simple example, they can help bakers guarantee what price they’ll have to pay for wheat two years from now. (Click here for an explanation on how derivatives work.)

But big-money gamblers can invest in any of a number of highly risky, extremely complicated kinds of derivatives for purely speculative purposes. When this happens, derivatives are just a form of very dangerous, virtually no-limit, betting.

The problem is that derivatives can blow up!

The problem is that derivatives can blow up. Two former JPMorgan Chase employees are facing criminal charges related to a derivatives trading scandal last year in London that cost the bank $6.2 billion -- enough money to run the City of Vancouver for more than five years. The traders also tried to hide losses from investors and federal regulators.

Cocky JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon dismissed  its $6.2-billion loss as "a complete tempest in a teapot." Nonetheless, the image of the bank has suffered in the wake of the outrageous caper.

Hair-trigger derivatives, along with laissez-faire deregulation, greed, and poor homeownership policies in the United States, caused the 2008 economic crisis.

GREED & FRAUD... setting us up for another crash

(Part 3 of a series)
Are you ready for the Western world’s economy to crash -- again?

More banks will go under. Many tens of thousands of people will again be thrown out of work. Billions of dollars in "investments" will disappear into thin air.

I believe it’s not a question of “if” financial markets and the economy will crash again, but “when.”

Boom and bust economies are features of unfettered capitalism. There have been more than 20  major international and national economic collapses since the early 20th century.

But now the threat of a nuclear-scale financial implosion is more likely than just an economic downturn or a mere correction.

Many of the big investment banks that caused the near-meltdown in 2007-08 -- well known firms such as JPMorgan Chase and Barclays Bank -- are now more deeply involved than ever in dangerous, aggressive, and even often unethical and/or fraudulent activities.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner, warns  that “a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven, as always, by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy -- or at least the economies of Europe and America, where these ideas continue to flourish.”

Out-of-control banks challenge governments for power & economic might

(Part 2 of a series)
Giant banks are the most powerful institutions in in the world – in many ways as powerful economically and politically as the biggest governments. Unfortunately, the banks frequently use their power in ways that damage the economy and hurt folks living around the world.

Two prominent research projects carried out in recent years paint a picture of a ruthless banking and financial sector powerful enough to dictate the nature of key parts of the world’s economy and challenge the strongest politicians.

Research carried out by three Swiss economists reveals the links and structure the giant financial institutions dominate and use to their advantage.

The researchers looked at 30-million “economic actors” around the globe. Their remarkable research found  that a group of 147 trans-national corporations (TNCs) controlled nearly 40 per cent of the economic value of all TNCs in the world. More shockingly, financial institutions make up 75 per cent of the organizations at the core of this powerful group: what the researchers call, a “super entity.”

Are our banks really safe?

The world banking system could come crashing down around our heads again – even worse than in 2008. Giant banks apparently learned very little from the earlier collapse. Many of them are carrying on the same overly risky and even illegal activities that led to the earlier crisis.  (Part 1 of a series)

If Canada’s banking regulations are not substantially toughened by the time the next global financial crisis hits – yes, there will be another crisis – our Big Six banks may very well find themselves in serious trouble. Again.

The public is almost entirely unaware that our banking system, with just a couple of wrong moves or some bad luck, could go into a tailspin at any time. And when the next serious setback occurs, we could end up suffering even more than in 2008-2010.

Throughout the Great Recession, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the financial community managed to keep secret the fact that our largest banks were in financial difficulty. Had people known the reality, they might have wanted their money back.