Two Challenges: G20 summit context

• Notes from outside the fence: Challenging corporate media messaging by Kate Milberry.
  

An excerpt:

Since when did exercising our democratic rights to free speech, including political dissent, to freedom of association and freedom of assembly automatically translate into a threat, a radical anarchist? The threat, of course is real. But it is not a threat to the safety of the general public, as is constantly intoned by the corporate media. The threat presented by political agitation is to the status quo, to “business as usual,” to the governing elite who are, arguably, out of touch with the average citizen.

Why is exercising citizenship and practicing democracy (participating in the political process) now automatically associated with violent, dangerous, *gasp* anarchist behaviour? The idea of democracy being limited to voting day is ludicrous and reflects the sorry state of things, even in prosperous, “first world” countries like Canada.

• Challenging Toronto’s corporate security walls by Harsha Walia and Stefan Christoff
  

An excerpt:

Montreal-based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin has been awarded the contract for the construction and conceptualization of the militarization of downtown Toronto. SNC-Lavalin’s history is global in reach and politically fascinating as a corporation that has quickly moved to seek global contracts in occupied lands with minimal public controversy.

In 2004 SNC Technologies, a subsidiary, secured a deal to manufacture 300-500 million bullets for the U.S. military in the months after the Bush administration launched the “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq. Protests in Toronto targeted SNC-Lavalin’s annual general meeting in 2005, bringing attention to the role of Canadian corporations in the U.S. occupation of Iraq. In 2006, SNC-Lavalin dropped the bullet-making division as public critique towards the Iraq arm contract compounded.

SNC-Lavalin is also the largest Canadian private contractor in Afghanistan, working in close co-ordination with the Canadian military in Kandahar. With hundreds of employees in the country, SNC-Lavalin works to develop infrastructure that normalizes the reality of a NATO-lead military occupation, under which torture, poverty, and violence have come to shape contemporary life for many Afghans.