Anarchists Engage with G20 Issues

A great deal of attention has been paid recently to the preparation for the G20 summit next weekend in Toronto. But while the event has been a boon for the troubled artificial lake industry, not everyone will be so pleased with the assembled world leaders. From labour unions to environmentalists to indigenous rights groups, protestors are expected in the thousands. The greatest security concern however, remains the kind of anti-capitalism and anarchist groups which made the Seattle WTO summit of 1999 so memorable. The same kind will be in attendance during the Toronto summit; the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance (SOAR) and FFFC Ottawa, which was responsible for the firebombing of an Ottawa bank after hours on May 18^th, have both announced they’ll be at the event.

Yet Mike Bakunin, who recently left SOAR to establish a sister branch in Rivière Ouest (Manitoba) with a more awesome acronym, claims that these groups don’t just advocate violence. “For those who think that anarchists are just about chaos and firebombing, that’s not the case. Groups like FFFC Ottawa give the rest of us a bad name – we can actually engage with the issues as well as anyone. Now obviously the summit will be focusing on economic and financial matters, so we think that we can best get our message across if we zero in on those issues as well. It’s hard to convey…

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A Primer to Economic Regional Integration in Africa

“Africa could rightly be described as the major theatre of contemporary cases of shared sovereignty.”[1]

It is the hope of many African leaders that greater cohesion in African trade will lead to more firm patterns of national development. Formalizing the international trade sector within Africa could lead to greater national tax revenues, a freer exchange of ideas, labour and technology across borders, the stabilization of regional agricultural and natural resource markets, and greater cooperation over shared infrastructure projects such as the creation of highways, waterways development, and even the deployment of green technology such as wind energy projects.[2]

While more flamboyant African leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi stress the need for pan-African unity (Gaddafi even calling for a United States of Africa), smaller regional unification bodies are already active. Most Westerners might be surprised that much of West Africa, the nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), already has a unified currency between fifteen nations. Since its creation by treaty in 1993, ECOWAS trade commissioners from a diverse array of fields attempt to integrate trans-national policies on social affairs, water resources, energy, and security matters. Just as NATO intervenes in foreign conflicts, when civil unrest unfolds in member states, such as recently in Guinea, ECOWAS applies strong diplomatic and military pressure to uphold the rule of law.

The East African Community (EAC) was first launched in 1967, but was then…

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Global financial tax – taxation in the next generation?

The hot topic on the minds of world leaders is the potential for a global tax on financial transactions.  The idea seems to have emerged from the French, who saw the tax as a potential way to generate financial development aid. The tax would be a form of Tobin tax, although instead of being at stabilization of a currency, the primary goal would be to raise international funds to deal with crises.

The idea was subsequently picked up by UK PM Gordon Brown and presented to the G20 at their meeting in St Andrews, Scotland on Nov 7th.  Brown presented the tax as an instrument to fund future bank bailouts.  Moreover, he sees the tax as increasing accountability in the financial sector.   However, the idea was not received as well as had been hoped.  The USA has rejected the idea, and Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty also came out against the tax.

While things looked dismal for the tax proposal following the G20, it seems that at least as far as the US is concerned, the idea in principle may still be kicking around Congress.  U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spoken out in favor of a similar proposal, affectionately named the Wall Street tax, from which funds would be used for job-creating legislation sought to be passed in December.  The Democratic proposals are citing nearly a $150 billion per…

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