Polynerd

If you pay attention to Twitter, Facebook or are the kind of person that gets regular emails from the likes of the Wildrose Party or those lovely Ethical Oil folks you’ve been informed about the latest outrage perpetrated against Alberta. For the rest of us, let me clue you in, it’s bananas.

We’re not talking about the Hollaback Girl kind of bananas, we’re talking actual bananas, specifically the Chiquita kind.

You see Chiquita Brands International (NYSE : CBQ) recently had the temerity to send out a press release saying that they would work with ForestEthics to eliminate the use of oil sands oil in the shipping of their product.

This kind of announcement is part of a wider strategy by the NRDC and ForestEthics to put pressure on oil sands companies by organizing boycotts of oil sands oil and the refineries that process it. This announcement follows their success with Walgreens, Gap, Levi-Strauss and Timberland.

This is right out of the Greenpeace playbook. You can chain yourself to a thousand pieces of heavy equipment in the bush but you don’t get something like the Boreal Forest Agreement signed unless you’ve scared the bejesus out of large publicly traded companies by going after the buying habits of their fellow corporate citizens.

The pro-oil sands camp, led by the Ethical Oil people, are leading a counter-boycott of Chiquita products. You might not know this about me but I am a big fan of the ethical oil argument, or more precisely their solution. I’d like nothing better than to have point of origin labeling on every single product that uses any kind of hydrocarbon.

Of course, the ethical oil crowd doesn’t actually push for that, mostly BECAUSE IT WOULD BE INCREDIBLY COSTLY AND NEAR IMPOSSIBLE. Their argument boils down to a don’t-look-at-my-right-hand-while-my-left-hand-palms-your-wallet piece of rhetorical trickery. They’ve even organized one of those just-press-here form letter sites where you can register your outrage with an email inbox at Chiquita that never gets checked.

Of course, the fun doesn’t stop there. Edmonton’s favourite cabinet minister, Rona Ambrose, is publicly supporting a Chiquita boycott. Danielle Smith has also promised to never eat another banana until this outrage is corrected. 

Not that Chiquita isn’t a company that shouldn’t be boycotted. Disregard this ol’ oil sands imbroglio for the moment and know that the term banana republic was invented to describe what Chiquita (or rather the United Fruit Company, their corporate forebears) did to Central and South America. When they were making the mold for rapacious, colonial multinational corporations, it started with United Fruit.

It was an eventual United Fruit Company president, Samuel Zemurray that overthrew the government of Honduras because he didn’t like how much customs tax he was paying. United Fruit was such a hilariously rotten company that one of the most corrupt politicians in American history, Louisiana governor Huey Long, loudly denounced Samuel Zemurray publicly in the US Senate for his involvement in Central America. Heck, Pablo Neruda even wrote a whole poem about the United Fruit Company.

Chiquita also used dibromochloropropane (DBCP) as a pesticide. This particular pesticide had the nasty habit of causing serious damage to the testicles of banana plantation workers, often rendering them sterile. It continued to be used in Central and South America after the EPA banned its use in the US in 1979.

Even more recently Chiquita was fined $25 million by the US government after they admitted in federal court that the company paid Colombian terrorists to protect employees at its most profitable banana-growing operation. That after an explosive Cincinatti Enquirer article that charged the company with mistreating the workers on its Central American plantations, polluting the environment, allowing cocaine to be brought to the United States on its ships, bribing foreign officials, evading foreign nations' laws on land ownership, forcibly preventing its workers from unionizing, and a host of other misdeeds.

It was United Fruit that convinced John Foster Dulles and the American government that overthrowing the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 was a good idea. It wasn’t the best idea for Guatemala but United Fruit did save a couple of dollars on appropriated uncultivated land and the institution of an eight-hour workday.

AMUSING SIDENOTE: It was the CIA’s intervention in Guatemala that turned Ernesto “Che” Guevara into a revolutionary as he was in Guatemala at the time. After escaping Guatemala he ended up in Mexico where he met one Fidel Castro. It was their collaboration in Cuba that ended up costing United Fruit their Cuban sugar plantations.

Of course it’s not like oil industry should be left out of the conversation when it comes to unethical foreign activies. It was the corporate antecedent to British Petroleum, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company that convinced the same John Foster Dulles to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953. After the CIA backed coup the oil industry in Iran, which propped up the murderous regime of the Shah until 1979, was divided between BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Total. All of those companies but one (Chevron) have operations in Alberta’s oil sands.

It’s an odd set of circumstances that brings us to this point today. If there was any one industry that would know a venal, one-commodity regime when it saw one, it would be Chiquita. And here they are, appealing to the San Francisco set and working with groups like ForestEthics to green their image. Funny stuff.

Where you learn what I'm reading

Suncor's involvement in Syria finally ends. Frankly it's embarrassing that it was EU sanctions that forced their hand http://ow.ly/7VJ52

Chris Turner's latest on the Great Bear Rainforest and Northern Gateway for Edmonton based literary rag Eighteen Bridges. Get comfortable for this one, it's a long read - http://goo.gl/2lWAl 

Growth, debt and the World Bank by the the awesome that is Herman Daly - http://ow.ly/7ULWR

The Dirty Secrets About Toxic Chemicals Lurking in Common Cleaners http://ow.ly/7UEtH - You really should be mixing your own cleaners by now.

Solid journalism from a scary case in the USA - http://ow.ly/7TgO7 Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details...

The chairman of the Coal Association of Canada has been accused of insider trading by the Alberta Securities Commission http://ow.ly/7TfYV

This is what happens Larry. Canada's prisons becoming warehouses for mentally ill: http://j.mp/tAriuL 

Heart melting. Science lab dogs set their paws on grass for the first time - http://ow.ly/7R0qi

Who knew Joe Oliver was going to be so good at mobilizing Canada's environmental movement. http://ow.ly/7QX8q

Wherein the city of Edmonton's economist embarrasses himself with some "advanced research methodology" http://ow.ly/7PQjq

The Talus Dome is the perfect metaphor for Edmonton

Where else could you experience “world class” public art at 60 km/h from the comfort of your own private vehicle?

If you’re not familiar with the Talus Dome it caused a bit of a stir recently when Edmonton Journal columnist David Staples lavished praise on the project while local artist and sculptor Ryan McCourt blasted the whole thing.

It’s irrelevant whether you think the Talus Dome is transcendent sculpture or derivative rabbit poop, let’s examine just how Edmonton’s most ambitious piece of public art ended up next to an on-ramp.

The Talus Dome is Edmonton’s latest experience with its Percent for Art Policy. Adopted by city council 1991, the latest incarnation of the policy was passed by city council in March of 2010(PDF). It diverts one per cent of qualifying construction budgets to the building of approved public art. These installations are then to be displayed within or in close proximity to publicly accessible municipal property in highly visible areas.

According to the city, this policy exists to:

-improve the livability and attractiveness of Edmonton
-increase public awareness and appreciation of the arts
-stimulate the growth of the arts and arts-related business
-use public art to help meet urban design objectives of municipal developments
-encourage public art in private developments through example.
-build a Civic Art Collection.
-establish a process for the procurement and display of art within new and existing publicly accessible municipal properties.
- establish an Art Bank to hold funds for the conservation of public artworks in the Civic Art Collection and for education and outreach about the Civic Art Collection.

Admirable goals to be sure and this much copied policy can be found all over the world, from Toronto to Western Australia. It’s not a bad idea but like most things it’s all in the execution. And the execution here is lacking.

The people involved in this project apparently felt that the right hand side of your view as you take the on-ramp from Fox Drive to Whitemud was lacking and really needed a $600,000 mound of giant steelies to beef it up. It’s drive-by art and it’s a tragic waste of resources.

Driving is one of the most complex acts that humans regularly engage in. When you’re behind the wheel you are bombarded with sensory data and expected to make split-second, life and death decisions with an instrument that weighs thousands of pounds. Adding art appreciation to the list of things to do behind the wheel is simply not a responsible act.

With the policy stating that the art in question only needs to be on publicly accessible lands and be highly visible it’s confusing that such a terrible site was chosen. Yes, the budget for the project came from the Quesnel bridge upgrade but why place public art in a place that no one could meaningfully experience?

Place the Talus Dome in an area that needs beautification and already has foot traffic. Put it in the drastically and sadly underused Library Plaza, the proposed pocket park at 102 Ave and 105 Street, the Armature in the Quarters or in West Rossdale. I have read the policies in question. I can find nothing about siting the art near the project where the budget comes from. It only says that the art needs to be on municipal land and that it be highly visible. If I’m wrong on this point, please correct me.

Jump, you trout! (Photo: City of Calgary)

As an aside, Edmontion isn’t alone when it comes to bad drive-by art. Head down the QE2 to experience jumping trout embedded into aretaining wall (PDF) at Glenmore Trail and Elbow Drive or the barbed wire motif at Crowchild and Sarcee Trail (PDF).

Public art is an expression of the community’s soul. It is a way to thoughtfully and temporarily break free from the ever-present buzz of advertising, cell phones and our endlessly dissected and packaged lives. We must have the patience and foresight as a city to not only create art but to experience it as well. You can’t meaningfully appreciate art in a car.