MAKING THE DEADLY CONNECTIONS IN TORONTO

I am at the airport in Toronto and it is snowing outside.  The previous two days here it was quite warm.

I began my talk last night at the University of Toronto by saying that everywhere I go these days people talk about how their weather is messed up.  The corporate war on the planet is being felt.

I spoke along with Richard Sanders who works for the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade in Ottawa.  His talk was about the myths that exist inside the Canadian peace movement about their country. Instead of being the neutral peacekeepers they like to pretend to be, Canada has been a loyal NATO 'partner' along with the US in the attacks and occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and more.  Canada played a key military role in the ouster of the democratically elected Aristide government in Haiti.

He also showed how some "progressive NGO's" in Canada get money from the government and then promote the "responsibility to protect" (R2P) mantra that is increasingly used by US-NATO to justify military intervention and occupation.

Sanders also reported on Canada's growing role as 'partner' in US weapons manufacturing as they make many of the high-tech parts for the Pentagon's war machine, including military space systems.

In my talk I reminded the audience that Canada has appropriated $25 billion for building new warships (the largest military appropriation in Canadian history).  These armed combat vessels, being built at the Irving shipyard in Halifax, Nova Scotia (with the help of Lockheed Martin), will be used in the Arctic as the US-NATO juggernaut challenges Russia for dominance in that region.

At the end of March Maine's Sen. Angus King (Independent) took a ride on a US Navy nuclear submarine under the melting Arctic ice.  King reported that 40% of the ice in the Arctic has already melted away and that this accelerating process will allow the extraction of oil and natural gas by the fossil fuel corporations.

Also on that same sub ride was New York Times colmnist Thomas Friedman who later reported that Admiral Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations, told him, "We need to be sure that our sensors, weapons and people are proficient in this part of the world," so that we can "own the undersea domain and get anywhere there."

What they wish to "own" includes 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids.  This is all spelled out in a new document called the "US Navy Arctic Roadmap: 2014-2030".

In other words the Pentagon has a plan to serve as the primary resource extraction service for corporate globalization.  And if that means even more conflict with Russia (which has the largest Arctic border) then so be it.

So as we are connecting the dots between growing militarism and climate change the whole Arctic zone issue should now be included in the equation.