Socialist Worker 510

www.socialist.ca

$2 no. 510 September 2009

Filthy rich want to cut your pay s n o i s n e p d n a s b o j e v a s o t k c a b Fight s f f o y a l d n a s t u c , s n o i s s e c n o c t s Resi

In late July, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada declared the recession over. Economists continue to tout the end of the economic crisis, alluding to the recovery that is just around the next corner. But is this really the case?

One year ago, economic commentators described capitalism as being on the verge of collapse, yet today, because governments all over the globe pumped billions of dollars into the system, catastrophe has apparently been averted.

The banks, the main architects of the crisis, were given massive bailouts in order to temporarily stabilize the system. A new report from the

Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) found that the CEOs of the 20 financial industry firms that received the largest bailouts were paid 430 times more than the average worker.

World leaders are now caught in an economic trap. The economic stabilization from “fiscal stimulus” packages—the injection of public money into the economy—while seemingly successful, is only temporary. Governments are now faced with growing debts, which could potentially drag the economy down again.

While economists debate whether the recovery will be “U” or “V”shaped, many fear the recovery will look more like a “W”, indicating a

rocky road to recovery.

Politicians, economists and bosses will look, once again, to workers to carry the burden of the debt through wage cuts, massive concessions and slashed social spending.

Despite the so-called economic recovery, attacks on workers continue to intensify. Unemployment has reached an 11-year high and bosses are seeking concession contracts from workers—seniority, pensions, sick benefits and wages. Striking workers are facing lockouts, firings and threats of scab labour to replace unionized workers.

Corporations like Cadillac Fairview, Zellers, US Steel, Vale Inco and the

entire auto sector have been unleashing a series of offensive attacks on workers. This onslaught has been met with a solidarity response not seen in a long time. Growing bitterness and anger caused by the economic crisis is at the centre of the revival of working class struggle.

Trade unionists have banded together and coordinated strike support at picket lines, a a key tactic argued for at the historic Stewards’ Assembly in May of this year. This coordinated response of rank-and-file workers is key to resisting the ongoing attempts to make workers pay for capitalism’s crisis while CEOs run off with millions in bonuses.

Afghan elections a sham under occupation by paul stevenson The top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has finished his review of the war and, not surprisingly, has decided there needs to be a change in strategic direction for NATO forces.

There have been dozens of these reviews written by various commissions for the last few years and each time they reach the same conclusions: the war is not going well for the West, it’s the Afghan people’s fault and more NATO troops are needed.

This new review was purposely situated

during ballot counting for the Afghan presidential election. The election was supposed to be a showcase for the new democratic institutions that the West is building in Afghanistan.

Instead, it has been riddled with numerous allegations of fraud.

The electoral complaints commission has received more than 2,000 complaints about vote-rigging, voter exclusion, intimidation and fraud from all over the country. Final results will not be released until the commission investigates all major fraud allegations.

With the legitimacy of the election called into question, there is a fear within NATO that a close and fraudulent vote will cause

even more dissatisfaction with the new government and could lead to more people joining the resistance to the NATO-supported government.

Most Afghans saw little reason to vote at all. It is impossible to know what percentage of eligible voters cast a ballot, mainly because there are no census figures for the Afghan population, but international observers say the turnout was low.

The Afghan people believe that NATO already rigged the election and since they have seen no progress under the occupation for the past eight years, there was little incentive to get out and vote.

The main challenger to Hamid Karzai, Dr Abdullah Abdullah has gained credibility for being a vocal critic of Karzai and for his calls for NATO to withdraw from the country. However, he is also tied to sections of the drug lords that rule the Afghan parliament.

The great fear for the West is that Abdullah becomes a figurehead for a renewed resistance. He has warned of potential conflict if the fraudulent elections stand.

New strategic reviews and elections mean little. After the votes have been counted, the dominant political reality for the Afghan people will continue to be life under a brutal NATO occupation and endless war.

Students & economic crisis » page 5 l Workers fightback » page 6-7 Soldiers say ‘no’ to war » page 3 l Zellers workers strike » page 12

CIVIL RIGHTS

Justice for Suaad Hagi Mohamud by james clark Suaad Hagi Mohamud, 31, the Canadian woman stranded in Kenya for three months after Canadian authorities branded her an impostor, has now successfully returned to Canada.

Mohamud arrived at Pearson Airport in Toronto on August 15, welcomed by a cheering crowd of supporters. On August 21, Mohamud announced her plans to sue the Canadian government for $2.5 million.

Mohamud was detained in Kenya before boarding a KLM flight back to Canada.

Airline officials claimed her passport photo didn’t match her identity. Canadian consular officials refused to help Mohamud who presented a dozen pieces of identification. She was later arrested and held in a Kenyan jail for eight days.

Only after Mohamud presented DNA proof of her identity did the government respond. Stephen Harper’s government remained silent for weeks, ignoring Mohamud’s pleas for help. Public pressure has now exposed the Tories’ intransigence, and their differential treatment of Canadian citizens abroad.

Mahjoub on hunger strike by jessica squires As of late August, Mohammad Mahjoub had been on hunger strike for over 80 days.

After being “released” on strict house arrest with severe conditions in 2007, Mahjoub eventually asked to be returned to detention because of the stress the conditions planced on his family. For instance, CBSA officers walked in on his wife during a miscarriage and his children were not allowed to be alone with him in the house.

Mahjoub began the strike in protest of his treatment as the only detainee in the Kingston Immigration holding Centre, “Guantamo North”. He has experienced religious persecution and has been given rotten food to eat.

NDP MP Bill Siksay has intervened on Mahjoub’s behalf, asking the government to appoint the prison ombudsman as having independent jurisdiction over Mahjoub’s complaints instead of CBSA.

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NOVA SCOTIA

Black and white Nova Scotians protest against police racism by stephen ellis Racial harassment of black youth by the police continues to be a serious problem in Nova Scotia.

Fortunately, Nova Scotians aren’t taking it lying down.

Recently, C.J. Hamilton and Chris Whynder, two Auburn Drive High School students, led a 50-person, multiracial march that included a stop at the Halifax Regional Police headquarters. They carried a banner through the north end of Halifax that read “Education Not Incarceration.”

The event was organized by

the Black Independence Network Nova Scotia (BINNS) to protest the criminalization of black youth by the local police and the justice system.

BINNS has cited numerous recent examples of racism in the Halifax region, including expulsions of black youth from local high schools, as well as a racial harassment incident at the Dartmouth Sportsplex.

In each of these cases, many black youth were summarily rounded up and sent to the police station. On May 1, riot police arrested 14 black youths at Auburn Drive after a school-

yard argument. In a later incident at Cole Harbour, three youths were arrested following a series of fights at the school.

“The black community has come to unfortunately expect it,” said Isaac Saney, one of the protest organizers. “It’s part of being black in Nova Scotian society.”

According to one youth, the most recent police intervention was an overblown response to a minor argument between two students during a fire drill. “It was worked out by the time the police started swinging bats and spraying

pepper spray,” he said. According to organizers, police targeted black students during the incident, “insulting cultural hairstyles” and yelling, “get the fuck back; look at that little bitch with his ugly braids.”

David Sparks, founder of the Martin Luther King Project Association of Nova Scotia, envisioned the march as the beginning of a new movement for social change. “The NDP government provides a new opportunity,” he said.

“We must challenge Darrell Dexter to eradicate racism and hold the legislature accountable.”

PRO-CHOICE

Government won’t appeal abortion ruling The New Brunswick provincial government says it will not appeal a court decision giving Dr. Henry Morgentaler the right to sue the province to pay for abortions at his Fredericton clinic.

Zellers distribution centre workers, who have been locked-out for not accepting massive wage and benefit cuts, blockade the centre entrance in Scarborough. For more information about their fight, see ‘Workers fight back’, page 12.

Morgentaler’s campaign to get clinic abortions publicly funded will move forward with a court case. He is arguing that abortions performed in his New Brunswick clinic must be funded by medicare.

New Brunswick is the only province in Canada that does not pay for abortions in free-standing clinics. It costs up to $750 for this procedure at the Morgentaler clinic.

Currently, the New Brunswick government only pays for abortions deemed “medically necessary” by two doctors, and only if the procedure is performed in a hospital setting.

The majority of abortions in NB are now performed at the Morgentaler clinic. Accessing a funded hospital abortion is next to impossible for women with no doctor, or an antichoice doctor. A recent survey indicated that 27 per cent of patients at the Morgentaler Clinic went there because they could not obtain written consent of two doctors.

It is time that Section 84-20 of the Medical Services Payment Act be immediately repealed to give New Brunswick women the same rights as women in other parts of Canada: a publicly funded abortion whether performed in a hospital or a clinic.

KI First Nation confronts Platinex

Clinics exempt from new law

by peter hogarth

The Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nations, a remote community north of Thunder Bay, is warning mining giant Platinex to respect their sovereignty and halt plans to resume operations in KI territory.

Platinex announced that the company plans to return to the Big Trout Lake Property.

However, KI Council refuses to sit down with Platinex

and is planning to peacefully protest the company’s activities. Council is counting on the provincial government to step in and intervene. “The province has not called one meeting on this controversy since last year,” says Chief Donny Morris, “that is a bad sign.”

In March 2008, Morris and several others were jailed for their part in a blockade which stopped Platinex’s access to their traditional lands after the provincial govern-

ment unilaterally gave the company mining exploration permits.

Following the arrests, KI made a submission to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) regarding the fact that Ontario did not recognize their Aboriginal and Treaty Rights and jailed the Chief and Council for asserting their rights by stopping mining exploration in the area.

Now, Morris and Council

Attawapiskat demands respect for First Nation rights by amelia murphy-beauboin The Attawapiskat First Nation, a remote community on the west coast of James Bay, has been fighting for a safe community for more than ten years. The government has largely ignored their struggle, but residents of Attawapiskat will not give up the fight.

The children of Attawapiskat are facing yet another year in portables on top of a massively contaminated site, while the government continues to stall on a ten year old promise of a new, safe school. Many of these children are now homeless due to a sewage crisis in the community. The Chief and Council were forced to conduct evacuations at

2 Socialist Worker September 2009

their own expense because the government refused to acknowledge their state of emergency. There is no current timeframe for when the residents will be able to return home.

Attawapiskat residents have recently staged a traffic blockage on highway 11, as well as demonstrations on Parliament Hill, and at the De Beers Canada office in Toronto. They are expressing their mounting frustration over an unequal distribution of profit generated from a diamond mine constructed

by De Beers Canada on traditional Attawapiskat lands.

Construction of Victor mine began in 2006 after the Attawapiskat community voted and ratified an

Impact Benefit Agreement.

Attawapiskat First Nation continues to live in poverty, while the wealth of the De Beers Victor mine is not reaching the community.

The leadership of the Attawapiskat First Nation demands that the federal and provincial governments and De Beers Canada meet with the community immediately to address the housing crisis, the water and sewage crisis, the standard of education and the profound poverty in the community.

In the face of extreme adversity, the community of Attawapiskat is unyielding in their struggle, raising their voices over the government’s cries of economic crisis, demanding to be heard.

are urging the Ontario Government to cancel contracts with Platinex and make efforts to resolve the conflict. In a letter to Dalton McGuinty, Morris calls on the government to halt mining activities in the area and genuinely engage with the KI regarding their Aboriginal and treaty rights or risk having a repeat of last year’s blockade.

The KI people are looking for equal partnership, revenue sharing and a say in what goes on in their territory.

US war resister faces deportation Rodney Watson who served in the Iraq War and fled to Canada after being stoplossed and ordered to serve another one-year tour after fulfilling his contract, has been given a deportation order.

The removal date is September 11, the Friday before Parliament resumes.

This demonstrates the Tory government’s refusal to respect and implement the motion passed twice by the House of Commons calling on the government to allow resisters to stay in Canada and in spite of a letter from all three opposition immigration critics asking that Harper not use the period of the parliamentary recess to disregard the expressed will of the House of Commons.

For more information, visit www.resisters.ca.

Under pressure from women’s groups and doctors, Quebec Health Minister Yves Bolduc has exempted abortion clinics from Bill C-34, a new law regulating surgical procedures in private clinics.

A number of abortion clinics, including one founded in 1969 by Henry Morgentaler, had threatened to close upon learning about the new law which would have required costly and unnecessary construction of hospital-like operating rooms in those clinics.

Mr. Bolduc dismissed criticism that Bill C-34 was an indirect attempt to restrict access to abortion. But it took a strong response from the prochoice movement, and calls for his resignation, for him to revise the bill so that abortion clinics would be exempt.

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Next paper deadline: Wednesday, September 23

SRI LANKA

INTERNATIONAL

Journalist sentenced to 20 years An ethnic Tamil journalist, J.S. Tissainayagam, has been sentenced to 20 years of hard labour by the Colombo High Court for writing articles critical of the government’s treatment of Tamil civilians.

Between 2006 and 2007, Tissainayagam wrote a series of articles accusing the Sri Lankan government of withholding food and other essential items from Tamilmajority areas. He became the first journalist to be convicted under the country’s Prevention of Terrorism Act. “J.S. Tissainayagam is one of those and should never have been imprisoned... Sri Lankans have the right to be informed about what is happening on their island,” said Jean-Francois Julliard, secretary-general of the Paris-based press rights group Reporters Without Borders.

Teenagers seek out a living picking through rubbish on a landfill site near Kabul. Western promises of “reconstruction” have amounted to nothing for the millions still facing desperate poverty in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

PHOTO: GUY SMALLMAN

Soldiers say ‘no’ to the war in Afghanistan, refuse deployment by paul stevenson There is a growing movement of NATO soldiers refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. This has become an important part of the movement to bring the troops home now.

In the UK, Lance Corporal Joe Glenton has refused to deploy to Afghanistan and is facing a court martial for his views. At his first hearing on August 3, Glenton argued that the war in Afghanistan is both illegal and immoral, and therefore his refusal is consistent with international law. His next hearing date is set for September 4.

In a letter written to UK Prime

Minister Gordon Brown, Glenton states that he believes the best qualities of UK soldiers and of the Afghan people are their “robustness, humour, utter determination and unwillingness to take a step backwards,” which means that the war will continue to be a stalemate.

“It is these qualities, on both sides, which I fear will continue to cause a state of attrition. These will only lead to more heartbreak within both our societies,” Glenton continues.

He goes on to attack one of the major justifications for the war: to save the West from terrorist attack.

“The war in Afghanistan is not reducing the terrorist risk, far from improving Afghan lives it is bringing

death and devastation to their country. Britain has no business there,” writes Glenton.

Similarly, former-US army specialist Victor Agosto has also refused deployment to Afghanistan, saying “there is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect.”

Stop-loss

After serving his tour in Iraq, Agosto assumed his duty to the US army was finished, but he became yet another victim of the “stop-loss” program and was ordered to Afghanistan. He considered his options and

Truck bombings belie claims of peace in Iraq by jonathon hodge In the early morning hours of August 19, over two tonnes of explosives in truck bombs ripped through the Iraqi foreign and finance ministry buildings close to the fortified “green zone”.

With over 100 dead and 585 wounded, a lot more than American wishes for security went up in smoke and fire.

The coordinated attack was the deadliest in the country in 18 months. This attack puts a serious dent in the claims of the US-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki that the situation has improved.

The bombing shows that people are not safe in spite of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi police and military, as well as 130,000 US troops in the country.

It also undermines the prime minister’s greatest asset heading into a fall campaign for January elections, namely a record low level of violence.

Al-Maliki’s new troubles will hurt more than his own career. The US has supported him and helped him foster a non-sectarian image.

In return, they have someone

Former-US President Bush and Iraq President Al-Maliki

who is fervently pro-US and whom they think can keep Iran at a safe distance.

Al-Maliki’s Shia allies have fled in the wake of the attacks, leaving him to try to cobble together a new coalition amidst accusations of incompetence and corruption.

The coalition would almost have to include the larger Sunni parties; none of who enjoy broad support, tainted as they are by decades of influence within Saddam Hussein’s ruling apparatus.

Further, senior security officers were implicated in a violent bank robbery of a government-owned bank in mid-July that killed eight guards. This further eroded the

public’s perceptions of the new government as being fundamentally different from the old Ba’athist regime.

The bombings occurred within weeks of US troops ceding control of cities to the Iraqi security forces.

These attacks have undermined citizen’s confidence in Al-Maliki’s government and show that the Bush “surge” strategy has failed.

This is important for the Pentagon as PR flacks are gearing up for a fall “offensive” in Washington to convince the Obama administration to pursue a similar strategy in Afghanistan.

With security in Iraq compromised, the US’ man weakened, and a pro-Iranian coalition emerging to contest elections, 130,000 US soldiers cooling their heels in Iraq while Afghanistan gets worse, and an economy bleeding jobs months after things have supposedly stabilized in America, the situation would seem to call for a fresh perspective in Washington.

Unfortunately, given Obama’s meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old approach to foreign affairs, Iraqis (and Afghans) will not see positive change anytime soon.

joined Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). He plans to support the campaigns of other soldiers refusing the war on moral grounds. In an interview with Democracy Now! he stated, “we’re just killing people and spreading suffering with no real justification.”

During the Vietnam War, thousands of soldiers resisted the draft, refused deployment and deserted from the US military. That struggle was one of the main reasons why the war in Vietnam ended.

As the war continues to drag on in Afghanistan, we will see more soldiers following their conscience and working to end the brutal occupation.

Khadr >>page 12

Just recently, Mohammed Jawad was repatriated. Like Khadr, he was accused of hurling a grenade at US troops, but a US military judge threw out his coerced confession.

Also like Khadr, he says he was beaten and deprived of sleep.

Unlike Khadr, he was helped by his government.

Stephen Harper’s government has consistently failed to stand up for its citizens, particularly when those citizens are Arab, Muslim or people of colour. Worse than that, it has actually participated or been complicit in the false imprisonment, detention and sometimes torture of Canadians, in cases such as those of Abdelrazik, Maher Arar and the recent case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud, who was thrown into a Kenyan jail on the false claim of a Canadian consular official that she was an impostor.

Omar Khadr has suffered for far too long in a prison that US President Barack Obama has vowed to close for its flagrant human rights abuses.

It is the duty of Stephen Harper and his government to bring Khadr home and it is one we must force the Conservatives to carry out by the power of public pressure, in spite of their incredible reluctance to do the right thing.

Real story in the Lockerbie bombing

On Wednesday, December 21, 1988, Pan Am flight 103, flying from London to New York City, was over the Scottish town of Lockerbie when a bomb exploded on board. All 259 people aboard were killed, as well as 11 people living in the town below.

The investigation into this crime has always been influenced more by the politics of imperialism than the evidence left amongst the wreckage.

Initially, Syria was blamed. When Syria’s help was needed in the first US-led war against Iraq, suddenly it was Libyan terrorists who were responsible.

When the UK and the US were willing to lift sanctions against Libya, one of the conditions was that Libya hand over Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi to be tried for planting the bomb.

He was convicted in 2001.

The key evidence against him: a fragment of a circuit board allegedly from the bomb was found on the ground in Lockerbie in April 1989, or in June, August, October or November 1990 depending on which version of events you follow.

The two key witnesses were both paid by the US for their testimony. The court dismissed the testimony of one witness and many of the conflicting statements made by the other were never provided to the defence.

In July, Al Megrahi, who is dying of cancer, was released on compassionate grounds, on the condition that he drop his appeal of the conviction.

The real reason he was released is the fear of what would be revealed during his appeal. He was prepared to present evidence that was deliberately withheld from his trial: newly revealed memos from the US Defence Intelligence Agency that discount Libya’s involvement, and new witnesses showing that the fragment of circuit board could not have survived such an explosion.

September 2009 Socialist Worker 3

TALKING MARXISM

INTERNATIONAL

Abbie Bakan

Capitalism: where’s the value?

The recent economic crisis has renewed attention on the limits of the capitalist system. Karl Marx developed a political economy that sharply exposed the inherent weaknesses of capitalism, even as it was acclaimed as the highest achievement of humanity in the mid-19th century. At the core of Marx’s analysis was an explanation of the law of value.

The law of value identifies human labour as the key source of wealth in capitalist production. This is a radical idea, because it exposes the myth that “productivity” is an abstract fact. For Marx, productivity is a reflection of a social relationship between labourers and employers, or capitalists. Capitalism, whether in a period of contraction (recession) or expansion (growth), relies on the labour of the mass of the population in order to survive.

Employment rates fluctuate up and down, but all new wealth produced in the system relies on the interaction of workers with capital.

Not the first

Marx was not the first to develop the idea of the law of value. In fact, it can be traced as far back as Aristotle, who Marx credits in Capital for the discovery. It was also advanced by liberal political economists like Adam Smith.

What was different in Marx’s analysis was an understanding of the immense power this discovery implied for the working class. Workers can bring the system to a halt by withdrawing their labour. And once Marx exposed the secret of capitalism as an idea that could be used to suggest its deepest limitation and Achilles heel, the notion of the law of value fell into disrepute in mainstream economics.

As Paul Kellogg has summarized in a study of the difference between Marx and Aristotle regarding the law of value: “[O]nce given a revolutionary edge by Marx’s pen, it became theoria non grata. Through an analysis showing labour-power as the source of wealth, Marx developed a strategy of the rebellion of the proletarians, a revolution to bring to power that class … and dispossess those who in capitalist society command its wealth-creation. The labour theory of value, so ‘bourgeois’ and respectable in the hands of an Adam Smith, had now become the intellectual underpinning for a strategy of working class revolution.”

Not the only

Labour power, while key, is not the only source of wealth that Marx identified. The other is nature. Marx understood that the capitalist class depended upon harnessing the vast resources of the earth, largely by seizing land, in order to ensure a mass of workers who had no means to survive.

Historically accessible to people collectively in the “commons” or unchartered by borders, land became a commodity that could be parcelled, bought and sold in capitalist society. Globally, land was also a huge source of wealth that was contested by militarized states, where indigenous peoples were conquered and ethnically cleansed, and where slave migrant labour and settlements were used to ensure capitalist production and enormous profits.

For Marx, the labour theory of value therefore involves a social relationship between the two great classes that are continually created and re-created in the capitalist production cycle. These are workers, who are driven from access to land as a source of subsistence, and compelled to sell their labour power to owners of capital in order to survive; and capitalists, who monopolize all the land and resources and thereby monopolize the means of production that generates profit.

Unstable

The law of value is a central element of what Marx considered the general laws of motion of the capitalist system. This system, at its core, is unstable, because it relies on a basic contradiction.

Capitalism can only expand if it exploits the labour power of workers, who produce all new value (that is, value not obtained by looting natural resources). But capitalists compete against each other, and in striving to expand profit, they replace workers with technology and machines to lower costs. As the capitalist system becomes more successful, the source of its success, the working class, becomes a relatively smaller factor in the production process.

Over the long term, Marx identified that the rate of profit—the relationship of costs invested to new money earned by the capitalist—tends to decline. The very foundation of the capitalist system is based on this contradiction.

This condition has resulted over the centuries, and in different countries and contexts, in a tendency for capitalism to face serious crises, followed by restructuring where some units of the system decline. Then a period of growth re-emerges, but over time another crisis follows, creating an endemic cycle of booms and slumps.

Even in the growth periods, exploitation continues to be at the heart of the capitalist system. The labour theory of value as Marx understood it has proven to be a very useful analytical lens. The only way to really eliminate the tendency to crisis in the system, for which workers always pay even though they are not its cause, is to replace the system itself with one motivated by production for human need, and not corporate greed.

4 Socialist Worker September 2009

The Democratic Party of Japan wins a historic victory in general election, ending a half-century of almost LDP rule.

Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s new president, appears on the covers of numerous newspapers.

Japan’s general election shows historic demand for change

by Jamie Allinson On August 30, the general election in Japan delivered a landslide victory for the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and an unprecedented defeat for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled the country almost continuously for 50 years.

The DPJ won 308 lower house seats to the LDP’s 119.

The DPJ was voted in on the hopes of millions of people who were abandoned by the previous government.

Many hope the new government will deliver free education and support for unemployed workers.

The landslide reflects the impact of the world capitalist crisis on Japan— GDP has shrunk at an annual rate of 14.2 per cent. Recent reports have suggested a small recovery in the Japanese economy but exports, vital to the Japanese economy, are around 35 per cent low-

Racial-profiling snags Bollywood star by jonathon hodge Bollywood superstar and Indian cultural icon Shahrukh Khan was detained at Newark International Airport on August 14 and held for over two hours without being allowed so much as a single phone call.

In spite of his protests of being a major film star, and vouched for by dozens of Indian and Pakistani travellers present at the time, Khan was held by border officials for questioning due to his “suspicious name”.

Khan is an extremely common name in the Indian sub-continent, and while the actor’s protestations had no effect on the border guards. Khan is known to well over a billion people worldwide. “I was really hassled because my name is Khan,” he said. “The couple of hours of interrogation wanting to know if I know anyone in America while all around people were vouching for me from India and Pakistan.”

Since the story broke, it has been featured on the Daily Show and California governor (and ex-actor) Arnold Schwarzenegger has invited Khan to dinner by way of an apology. In what could only be serendipitous irony, Khan was in the US promoting his latest film, My Name is Khan, which explores the racial-profiling of Muslims after 9/11.

er than last year and unemployment remains the highest it has ever been.

Unemployment

Before the recession around one third of the workforce, mostly young people, were on temporary contracts earning less than the equivalent of about $900 a month.

Hundreds of thousands of these workers have now had their contracts ended without notice. Unemployment has had a terrible effect on these young people.

On New Year’s Day this year, homeless workers set up a camp in Tokyo’s Hibiya Park to expose the impact of the recession.

But the LDP defeat has deeper roots.

The so-called “1955 system”, left behind after the US occupation, linked together the LDP, big corporations and rural bosses in a network of corruption.

The entire system was designed to keep out left-wing opposition, and it worked.

Workers’ movements were defeated in the 1950s and 1960s and the student uprising of the late 1960s was brutally crushed.

So expectations are high—the DPJ is supported by some trade unions and NGOs and has some better policies.

For example, it may stop Japan refuelling US planes bound for Afghanistan, but the party also includes people who want to abolish Japan’s pacifist constitution.

Left wing parties’ results were static—the social democratic Socialist Party kept its seven seats and the Communist Party kept its nine.

A new “community union” helped set up the protest of homeless workers in Tokyo. Temporary, female and foreign workers in particular have begun to join this union. After the election, these people may be wondering how real change can come in Japan. © Socialist Worker (UK)

Shed no tears for the SPP by paul kellogg Finally it has been publicly (if quietly) acknowledged that the so-called “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” (SPP) is no more.

Stuart Trew of the Council of Canadians drew our attention to the obituary, visible on a trip to the SPP website (www.spp.gov) where, on the first page, it says “This website is an archive for SPP documents and will not be updated.”

In August 2007, thousands demonstrated in Ottawa and Montebello, Quebec, against the SPP summit. The anti-SPP movement rightly identified that the SPP was trying to codify the neoliberal assault on social services, wages and the environment, an assault that has been a hallmark of governments in the West since the 1980s.

The public admission of the end on the SPP website is very welcome, and can serve as the partnership’s formal obituary.

But the truth is, rigor mortis set in quite a while ago. In an extraordinary article, published in The Globe and Mail in October 2007, long-time Globe columnist John Ibbitson declared that, according to the Trilateral Commission, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) “is defunct”.

This was a transparent admission of failure from the very top of the capitalist system. The Trilateral Commission,

Three Amigos: Harper, Calderón and Obama

founded in 1973 by one of the biggest of the big capitalists—David Rockefeller—along with longtime adviser to US imperialism, Zbigniew Brzezinski—has been an important think-tank for world capitalism for more than 30 years.

Ibbitson said at the time that the reported demise of the SPP “is very bad news.” He is wrong. It is a sign of confusion and disorientation at the very centres of power in the leading capitalist countries of our hemisphere­—the US and Canada.

There is an old Russian proverb— fish rots from the head. The smell of this rot in the context of the current recession is a retreat from regional neoliberal trade deals to reactionary “Buy American” and “Buy Canadian” protectionism.

S

tudents, while seldom mentioned in the tally of casualties from the recession, are being made to pay for a crisis they did not create.

Suffering incredible job losses, students continue to be among the hardest hit by the recession. Statistics Canada reports that the unemployment rate for students aged 15 to 24 rose to 21 per cent this July, shattering previously recorded highs. Over 150,000 more students couldn’t find work in July 2009 compared to 2008.

Despite increasing unemployment, government funding for the Canada Summer Jobs Program—a federal program that funds not-for-profit organizations, public-sector employers and small businesses to hire students for summer jobs—remains at the same levels as in 2006.

According to Katherine GirouxBougard, national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), “Students unable to find work this summer will be forced to take on more debt and may be unable to afford to return to school this fall… Summer jobs are not a luxury; they pay the bills.”

A recent Ipsos-Reid survey shows that 80 per cent of students plan to work during the coming year. Almost three-quarters of those surveyed emphasized that finding work is essential to being able to continue their education. The same number of respondents said that working would have a negative effect on their studies.

In Ontario, the province with the second highest fees in the country (almost $1,000 over the national average), Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) applications have risen 5.7 per cent for colleges and 4.6 per cent for universities. In a province where Premier Dalton McGuinty has been touting the virtues of “knowledge-based” jobs that will be able to transform the economy and create prosperity for Ontario, per capita funding for post-secondary education is dead last in Canada.

With 70 per cent of new jobs requiring some form of postsecondary education, the prohibitive costs of higher education are making these “knowledge-based” jobs out of reach for more and more people.

Stu dents and the economic crisis

Cuts to education

Post-secondary administrators across Canada say that the global economic crisis will lead to cuts in everything from staffing levels to scholarships.

At Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, there are plans to slash more than $30 million from the budget.

The plan, which calls for a reduction of nearly 16 per cent over three years, will likely mean reducing scholarships and bursaries, and firing some salaried positions. This means students will be paying more money for less service and will have to take on further debt to do so.

Tuition fees and student debt are already at record levels. Earlier this year student loan debt owed to the federal government surpassed $13 billion for the first time in Canadian history. Tuition fees are currently the single largest expense for most college and university students, as average fees are roughly $5,000 per year and are set to increase in six provinces this fall.

“By increasing tuition fees in a time of economic crisis, provincial governments are failing students,” said Giroux-Bougard. “We need a national strategy to deal with increasing tuition fees. With no increases in funding for the Canada Summer Jobs Program and no commitment to reduce tuition fees or increase funding for grants, students are wondering why they have been left out of the government’s stimulus plans.”

In addition to rising tuition fees, a steady decline of provincial and federal funding for education over the last two decades has resulted in higher “user fees,” auxiliary fees outside of tuition.

Students fight back

Students across the world have been victimized by a system that has shifted the burden of paying for a deep financial crisis onto their shoulders.

The global economic crisis has produced massive layoffs, gutted pensions, forced people into the streets, and exposed the faulty premises and inequity upon which the capitalist system is based, writes Peter Hogarth

‘Students are being made to pay for a crisis they did not create’

In response, universities and schools have seen fight-backs that point out the inequities of massive youth unemployment, skyrocketing student debt and the high costs of education.

In 2008, thousands of Greek university students resisted the recognition of private colleges dictated by European Union law. These mobilizations fed into larger demonstrations and strikes which shook Athens and the rest of the country. Reacting to police brutality and the shooting death of a teenage boy, tens of thousands took to the streets to voice their dissent—not only against this one instance of police brutality, but also in protest of a system that puts profit and property before people.

These protests were met with more violence by police. In response, even more people backed the students.

School teachers and students and college and university professors walked out of classes to join university students in the streets. When the Greek government awarded the banks billions in bailout money, the protesters chanted: “They give money to the bankers and bullets to the youth.”

The wave of strikes and demonstrations revealed a widespread anger amongst young people and students. It also revealed their capacity to organize, as students formed assemblies to vote on resolutions and networks that could be drawn into action swiftly.

In 2009, student mobilizations have continued across the globe. Iranian students have been instrumental in

organizing and initiating protests demanding democracy following the disputed election for president. Italy, Spain and Ireland have also seen an upsurge in student struggles this year.

Occupations

In Britain, a wave of student occupations and demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Gaza swept the campuses. Protests expanded to oppose the privatization of education and, at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), to support cleaning staff that had been deported and detained.

In the United States, students at Hampshire College in Massachusetts launched a campaign that successfully forced the school to divest from six corporations that supported and profited from Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.

In Los Angeles, students from five high schools walked out of class to protest teacher layoffs.

Universities across California have seen students and staff come together to demonstrate against massive budget cuts that represent a near full-on assault against public education and social services.

At the University of Vermont, students occupied administration buildings in opposition to budget cuts and layoffs.

In Illinois, members of the Campus Antiwar Network (CAN), Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and socialist students scored a huge vic-

tory when they joined forces to protest the CIA, forcing the cancellation of its recruitment session at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

These are but a few international examples of the resistance mounted by students and the victories that can be won.

Here in Canada, we have seen the amazing mobilization of students from the Tamil community, which brought tens of thousands of people to the streets to highlight the genocidal campaign of the Sri Lankan government. Canadian students have been actively campaigning against war and occupation, hikes in tuition fees and sexual assault, and for Palestinian human rights and a woman’s righ to choose. There is a desire for change in students, and it is a force to be reckoned with.

Drop fees campaign

In Ontario, students are currently preparing for the November 5 day of action to Drop Fees, part of the Campaign for a Poverty-Free Ontario.

This represents another opportunity for students and their allies to highlight the contradictions of a system that bails out bankers and corporations while forcing students deeper and deeper into debt and facing record levels of unemployment.

The role of students is vital in the fight against capitalism and, as we have seen, can be the spark that ignites the fuse for broader struggles against the entire system.

September 2009 Socialist Worker 5

“My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.”

– Mother Jones, American labour and community organizer, and socialist

W

orkers during the Great Depression faced a similar situation to workers today when the crisis of capitalism was downloaded onto them through mass unemployment and attacks on working conditions and wages. Although the Great Depression began in 1929, it would not be until the mid-1930s that working class struggles began to have an impact and push back the assault of the employers.

The reasons for this were, in part, the swiftness of the development of the crisis and its continual deepening through the beginning of the 1930s. Between 1929 and 1933, unemployment went from 1.5 to 12.8 million in the US. In Canada, the GDP declined by 42 per cent and 30 per cent of all workers were unemployed during the same period.

Another factor was the lack of strong working class organizations. The craft unions of the period were not willing to fight for workers’ demands, preferring to seek out accommodations with employers. Despite this, struggles did develop that would eventually transform the face of the labour movement.

Critical to these developing struggles was a leadership that could put forward the ideas that would ignite action and bring masses of people into struggle. Building solidarity became the key element.

Throughout the 1930s, it was mainly socialists in the Communist Party and smaller Trotskyist organizations that would provide this leadership. Although the Communist Party was very sectarian in this period, it had a policy of organizing the unemployed, women and black workers. Unemployed Councils were set-up to fight evictions, occupy relief offices and organize hunger marches. In 1931, the Communist Party organized a nationwide unemployment march that mobilized hundreds of thousands.

Among those who were still employed, the attacks on wages and conditions were severe. Without strong leadership from the craft unions, many workers struck spontaneously, often facing the brutality of the police. Despite the violence, rank-and-file activity on the ground pushed up craft union numbers in the early 1930s from dozens to hundreds by 1933. Key to these struggles was the organization of strike committees within workplaces that could coordinate and communicate among rank and file workers.

WORKERS’ STRU FROM 1930 TO

Workers during the Great Depression were faced with severe hardships as the econom Mass unemployment, evictions and hunger forced ordinary people into desparate circu wave of fightbacks. Today, workers are facing a similar situation. Pam Johnson hi their efforts to control all West Coast shipping during the strike. It lasted 83 days, trigged a four-day general strike in San Francisco, and led to the unionization of all of the West Coast ports of the US.

1934 strike

“We felt we had a good chance to be the fuse that could ignite a spirit of solidarity.”

–Toledo Auto-lite strike organizer

The tide turned dramatically in the US in 1934 when financial markets began to improve and the new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, enacted a law guaranteeing the right to collective bargaining. Although it was intended only as a sop to labour, it provided a spark to the pent-up frustration that ignited a strike wave involving 1.5 million workers in 2,000 strikes.

Most critically, the nature of the strikes shifted. Three strikes in 1934—Toledo Auto-lite, Minneapolis Teamsters and San Francisco longshore workers—would provide new strategies for the labour movement. In all three strikes, a common tactic was to build solidarity beyond the strikers’ themselves, to gain support from other workers and the community at large.

In Toledo, unemployed workers picketed with strikers and overwhelmed police who were attempting to break the picket lines. In Minneapolis, workers from different sectors and members of the community participated in the strike and took over control of the city, providing necessary services through a strike committee.

In San Francisco, other unions supported the strike by longshore workers’ who coordinated 6 Socialist Worker September 2009

1930s fightback in Canada

‘Employers are using the crisis to unleash an attack on workers’ wages and benefits’

The Great Depression was equally severe in Canada and workers faced brutal attacks by employers and inaction from government. In the early 30’s there were strikes by loggers in Newfoundland and the West, women workers in the needle trades in Toronto, and even young workers, such as pin-boys (bowling pin setters) and caddies. In 1937, autoworkers in Oshawa fed up with wage reductions and line speedups, struck General Motors. This strike paved the way for the industrial unionism that would transform the labour movement in Canada.

The Communist Party members organized men in relief camps because the government refused to provide support for single, unemployed men. Protests against horrible conditions in the camps led to the now famous On To Ottawa trek in 1935, a massive march across Canada by the unemployed that started in Vancouver.

When the march reached Regina, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett offered to meet the leaders. The marchers remained in Regina and the leaders went to Ottawa. At the meeting Bennett, instead of negotiating, accused the leaders of being radicals. Seeing the intransigence of the government, the leaders returned to Regina and held a meeting attended by 1500 marchers

and townspeople. The RCMP launched a surprise attack which turned into a riot as people fended off the assault and fought back. In the aftermath, the Trek did not continue, but the political reverberations brought down the Bennett government and galvanized public opinion about the situation in relief camps. The Trekkers demands were eventually met and the wheels were set in motion for social and welfare reforms.

Workers struggles today

The current economic crisis is being compared to the great depression. Even during the socalled “recovery” that we have entered, thousands of jobs are being lost and predictions are that job loss will continue. While unemployment increases, the Harper government is refusing to expand Employment Insurance benefits. Employers are using the crisis to unleash attacks on workers’ wages and benefits.

In the past year, we have also seen the return to the kinds of rank-and-file militancy and solidarity that existed in the 1930s. Last fall, workers at Republic Door and Window in Chicago occupied their workplace and picketed bailout recipient, Bank of America (a creditor to the employer) and won severance and vacation pay.

A wave of plant occupations is currently happening in the UK, including the recent occupation of wind turbine factory, Vestas, where the labour movement and environmentalists are fighting together for green jobs. This summer South Korean car workers occupied their

GREEN JOBS

Right: Woolworths strike. Left: On-to-Ottawa Trek.

Below: 1930s hunger march.

Workers fight back to save good, green jobs Timeline of Vestas wind turbine workers’ fight for their jobs

by KIM McAULEY April 28: 600 Vestas wind turbine factory workers are told they will be losing their jobs and their plant will be closing in the town of Newport on the Isle of Wight, UK. The news devastates workers, their families and the community. This despite the company pocketing $10.8 million in taxpayers money for research and making $1 billion in profits last year.

When hired, workers had been told Vestas was setting up permanent shop.

They, their families and the community planned their lives around this new prosperity—it enabled them to get mortgages, car loans and start families.

July 3: Trades council meeting held and attended by many Vestas workers, where the idea of an occupation is raised.

July 12: more than 50 activists gathered 500 signatures on a petition in just a few hours and held a rally in Newport town square revealing mass public support and building confidence in the workers for a fightback.

TRUGGLES TO TODAY

mic crisis was unduly placed upon their shoulders. umstances. But out of the struggle of the 1930s rose a ighlights workers struggles from the 1930s to today. plant to defend jobs and thousands of South African workers struck for a week winning a 13 per cent pay increase.

In Canada, non-unionized workers at Progressive Mouldings Products occupied and won demands for severance and vacation pay.

Workers at the Toronto Dominon Centre in Toronto are continuing to fight for their jobs after being locked out and terminated by buildingowner Cadillac Fairview. BC forestry workers have launched a national campaign to fight against the attacks on their jobs.

Toronto city workers, in the largest strike in Toronto history, pushed back concessions and a wage freeze championed by the “pro-labour” mayor, David Miller, and an anti-union barrage in the media. A critical factor in this victory was the solidarity between the two locals involved, CUPE Locals 416 and 79, representing outside and inside workers.

Although their issues were not the same, the locals went on strike together and in the end they settled together. Another factor in the victory was solidarity from other unions both, private and public, and from the community. Private sector unions like the Steelworkers organized support rallies and community members showed their support through signs and line visits.

This solidarity gave confidence to Toronto strikers to stand their ground against harsh criticism. Only a small percentage crossed the picket line during the weeks of the strike.

The message again and again from trade union leaders who spoke at rallies was that workers should not be made to pay for an economic crisis they did not cause.

This was also the message of an historic stewards assembly that happened in Toronto in May 2009. Over 1,200 shop stewards and union activists came together and pledged solidarity for workers struggles.

Building the muscles of solidarity within the trade union movement and with communities will be critical to fight against the employers’ attacks and government inaction in this economic downturn just as it was in the last Great Depression.

July 20: 25 Vestas workers occupy the Newport Vestas plant in protest at plant closure and job loss.

July 27: 25 Vestas workers occupy the managers’ offices. More than 100 picketers gather in support outside, defying police and throwing food to workers July 29: Victory for workers: while Vestas bosses seek injunction in court to remove the occupiers, workers—hungry and faced with the lose of their “redundancy” money—hold a vote and decide to stay.

The court grants the workers a minimum of five more days of occupation. The case is adjourned until August 4.

July 30: Another victory in the struggle: bosses bring food to workers, a strong signal they feel the pressure, know their position is tenuous and need to demonstrate concern.

Over 300 people come to evening rally.

July 31: More than 400 people march from Newport town centre to the plant in support of the workers. The crowd chants “one hot meal” demanding that the bosses feed the workers.

August 1: Picketers surge forward and bang on the fence, demanding proper food for the occupiers. Bosses capitulate and send in a hot meal.

Occupation enters second week, activists shift focus to build as much solidarity as possible. Supporters set up camp outside the factory, home for a coalition of labour, socialist and environmental activists.

August 4: Vestas wins the injunction to evict the workers. Workers decide the fight is not over and stay.

August 7: Occupation ends when bailiffs enter factory to enforce eviction order. Hundreds of supporters outside the factory give the workers a hero’s welcome and workers vow to fight on.

It emerges in talks that the government offered a number of rescue deals to save the plant but Vestas refused each one.

This despite New Labour ministries stating they would not intervene. Vestas workers and supporters call for pressure on the government to act. Vestas claims the UK has very favourable wind conditions, but blames the current market size and in particular the local planning processes for onshore wind farms as the obstacles to wind power development in the UK. August 11: Around 70 people attend a “Fight for the Right to Work” public meeting with Vestas and Johnny Walker workers

employed by Diageo in Glasgow. Vestas worker Richard Chandler gets a standing ovation for speaking of the need to fight for jobs and not take cuts and closures lying down.

Diageo workers, travelling from Kilmarnock following a local “Fight for the Right to Work” meeting, said they would intensify the campaign to force the company to stand down. Maggie Farrel, an unemployed teacher; Duncan Smith, Chair of Edinburgh City Unison in his personal capacity and Brian Christopher from the “Fight for the Right to Work” committee also spoke, reflecting the breadth of attacks being faced and the possibilities for resistance.

Workers discuss various disputes and how they can win action in their own workplaces.

One worker states the meeting was “very inspiring and I hope it encourages other workers to fight back… and not be afraid to take on the employer and the system”.

After the event Richard Chandler states: “I was inspired by the meeting. I didn’t know what to expect at first, but listening to other people fighting their own fights shows you that you’re not alone, even if you feel downtrodden all the time in your job. I want to work and my colleagues want to work. We know we need to fight for the right to work.”

Brian Christopher focused on action, stating “Now is the time to fight back. Lets build a network across Glasgow and Britain which has the power to push back the agenda of the bosses in favour of decent jobs, public services and education. Let’s fill coach after coach for the Labour Party demonstration in Brighton on 27 September.”

August 12: National Day of Action: People in 25 towns and cities across Britain organize solidarity meetings, rallies, leaflettings and protests across the country. Vestas issues a two-page press release stating: “Vestas has today confirmed it will cease blade production activities at the company’s sites on the Isle of Wight and in Southampton, UK resulting in 425 employees today being dismissed as redundant” and goes on to state: “at the same time Vestas is investing in a significant production base in the US.” Ole Borup Jakobsen, Vestas President, reveals his true self claiming in the same breath “this commercial decision was absolutely necessary to secure Vestas competitiveness” but then stating “minimizing the impact on employees has been our first and foremost priority”. The people know he can’t have it both ways and detect his real priority as protecting his corporate bonus, leaving the folks in Newport to eat cake. Resistance increases.

Hundreds of people take to the streets on the Isle of Wight. Approximately 100 activists cover the Island visiting the town centres of Newport, Cowes, Ryde and Sandown, gathering thousands of signatures on a petition to save the factory. Another 100 come together for a rally and march around the second Vestas factory in Cowes, which is the site of an ongoing rooftop protest.

Despite the eviction of workers from the occupation at the Vestas plant in Newport, the campaign is gathering momentum.

Workers appear that haven’t been to any of the previous rallies. In Oxford, around 30 people attend a solidarity protest called by the Oxford and District Trades Council. They hand out leaflets, petition and collect money for the campaign.

The workers have organized a committee to co-ordinate the continuing campaign and have called another national day of action for September 9.

The resistance has huge momentum and continues to grow. Spread the word to other socialists, labourers and climate change activists to pay attention to this fightback. It points the way forward in the fight for good jobs, green jobs and is a big part of the puzzle in stopping climate change. It’s also a fantastic educational example about labour struggles, how they change those involved in the struggle and how they change our society for the better.

September 2009 Socialist Worker 7

COMMENT CANADIAN ARCTIC

Tories invade the North One hundred years after the North Pole was supposedly “discovered” by British explorer and colonizer Robert Perry, today’s colonizers are still exploiting the North.

A veritable invasion of the North by federal cabinet members, including Stephen Harper and Tony Clement, took place in August. But all they did was re-announce money already committed in earlier budget statements. The Northern Economic Development money was announced in June.

Meanwhile, teen suicide among men in the Arctic is 40 times higher than elsewhere in Canada, and 70 per cent of Inuit live in overcrowded conditions.

The two homeless boys whose image was broadcast across the country in advance of Harper’s visit are not unusual; nor is their plight new. Homelessness in the North has been significant for decades.

Ignatieff quickly followed Harper, announcing in Yellowknife his party’s intention to spend even more in the North than Harper, whilst emphasizing that spending had to be “affordable”.

Meanwhile, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) criticized Harper’s program for being limited to only Nunavut, while there are four regions—Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut and the Inuvialuit region of the NWT—in Inuit Nunangat (Inuit Regions of Canada), represented by the ITK. The agreement that led to the creation of a quasiindependent Nunavut left control of natural resources in Federal government hands. The Inuit people have more negotiation rights over some parts of their resources than others, but the control is still Federal.

Behind the federal government rhetoric lurks an ugly truth: Harper and his cronies, and the Liberals as well, value the North only for its natural resources.

ANTI-WAR

Anti-war movement has shifted terms of debate The anti-war movement in Canada has largely been vindicated. In the wake of the Afghan election, pundits and commentators all over the political spectrum are now discussing Canada’s mission in Afghanistan on terms set by the anti-war movement.

Many of the arguments that anti-war activists raised years ago—and which were often dismissed out of hand—are now taken for granted by all sides of the debate.

It is now widely recognized that Afghanistan’s parliament includes warlords and drug lords. The mainstream media has recently reported on the central role of Hamid Karzai’s brother (a regional governor) in the country’s drug trade.

The scale of corruption and graft in the Afghan government is also no longer a well-kept secret, as millions in aid dollars continue to go missing.

Even NATO admits that the Taliban controls over 70 per cent of the country, and that the mission is at risk of failure. Aid organizations and human rights groups point out that Afghans are worse off today than in 2001, before the invasion began.

But shifting the terms of debate is not the same as winning it. Pro-war cheerleaders in Canada might reluctantly acknowledge the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, but they continue to argue that Canada must stay—and extend its current mission past 2011. Pundits who once ignored the worsening conditions in Afghanistan now cite them as reason to support the war.

The anti-war movement must take advantage of the improving terrain for anti-war debate, and prevent it from descending into a tactical discussion about which kind of military intervention works best. There is no military solution for Afghanistan, which is why the troops must come home now. More of the same won’t make things better.

NDP

More support needed for Party’s union base Workers across the country are currently faced with one of the most severe economic crises of their time. The ruling class is trying to make us pay for the economic crisis through wage cuts, layoffs and concession contracts.

While solidarity for striking workers has been building between unions, the NDP has remained relatively absent on the picket lines.

This is not to say that NDP MPs and MPPs have not made important appearances in support of striking and locked-out workers on the lines. They have. But at the recent federal NDP policy convention in Halifax, NS there was a lack of focus on supporting the party’s union base in the context of an economic crisis.

With the Liberals, under the leadership of Michael Ignatieff, sliding more and more to the right, the focus of the NDP seems to be concentrated on gaining the centre vote and becoming an electable party.

There is little sign that supporting the fightback against the employer offensive is a central party priority. The NDP has an opportunity to revive the party’s roots of challenging the unjust system by standing side-by-side with workers in struggle. The question is whether they will act on it.

8 Socialist Worker September 2009

People vs profit in U.S. health care debate Virginia Rodino writes about Barack Obama’s proposal to introduce a

public insurance scheme and the debates that have erupted across the country

O

vershadowing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the health care reform debate is raging in the halls of the US Congress and town halls across cities big and small in the United States.

Fifty million Americans are without health insurance, and 25 million are underinsured. The millions of recently laid-off workers will add to those numbers. Medical bills cause more than half of personal bankruptcies in the US. When the uninsured and under-insured need desperate medical care, they flood the emergency rooms in crisis, often seeking care for problems that could have been prevented.

The Big Three in the US auto industry are collapsing, in part, due to extraordinary health care expenses, as they compete with companies in countries that provide universal health care. Many CEOs from every industry are for universal health care. A 2008 report published by The Annals of Internal Medicine found that the majority of physicians in the US are in favor of a national health insurance system.

Yet, while putting forward no defined plan of his own, Obama has encouraged the political allies of the insurance, pharmaceuticals and hospital industries to present their own plans in the guise of “reform”.

Divisions

Obama’s shifts to the right are causing divisions within the Democratic Party. Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have just written a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, criticizing her for saying a public option is not a central element to comprehensive reform.

Senior ranking Member of the Black Congressional Caucus, John Conyers, proclaimed that as long as “the corporate health care people” dominate the discussion, “you are going to have some sad version of the same crap you were supposed to be fixing in the first place.”

Conyers has been trying to gain support for HR 676, a bill that would cover every American by simply expanding medicare to cover everyone.

Recently, however, Obama removed both the single payer and the public

option reform from the table.

Single-payer health insurance operates by arranging the payment of services to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers from a single source established and managed by government.

The government can manage the fund directly or as a publicly owned and regulated agency. US Medicare and Medicaid functions through a single-payer system.

“Single payer” refers to funding and does not imply a socialized system.

In December 2007, the American College of Physicians compared US health care with other countries’, and found “single-payer systems generally have the advantage of being more equitable, with lower administrative costs than systems using private health insurance, lower per capita health care expenditures, high levels of consumer and patient satisfaction.”

And what about socialism?

A socialized medical system is one in which all health personnel and health facilities, including doctors and hospitals, work for the government and draw salaries from the government.

For all the right-wing hoopla against socialized medicine, detractors conveniently forget that the US Veterans Administration health care system is a pure form of socialized medicine because it is owned, operated and financed by the government.

Meanwhile, “astroturf” organizing by the healthcare industry’s public relations firms are causing havoc and disruption to the town hall meetings being organized all over the country

by Democratic members of Congress.

Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck and insurance industry-funded groups are encouraging people to disrupt these meetings. A number of the confrontations have become violent.

Racism

What is clear in the messaging of the right-wing protesters is that much of the resentment is not over health care reform. It is about once again capitalizing on the fear of the working class who are suffering from enormous cutbacks, joblessness and homelessness—and who stand to

continue to lose more in the near future during the economic crisis.

So the right wing is not directing these masses of workers to attack the president’s policies, but to attack instead the president himself. The attacks are based on opinions of morality rather than politics. And the attacks are racially charged.

But not only is the president being attacked on racial grounds, but the millions of immigrants and people of color are being targeted by right-wing vitriol. Scapegoated as the reason for the joblessness and cutbacks, immigrant workers who would gain from universal health care remain easy targets in the right’s war on health care reform.

The “astroturf” organizing is a highly financed effort to undermine not only health care reform, but to undermine any ability for the Obama administration to succeed in pushing a more progressive agenda. If Obama fails on passing health care reform, the legitimacy of his entire “Agenda for Change” would be in serious doubt.

Litmus test

Health care reform is the litmus test of the entire nation’s ability to make a decision based on people’s needs as opposed to corporate profit. A failure here would make any other progressive changes very difficult indeed.

But Obama is going down the path that Democrats consistently drive down. In an effort to win bipartisan support, and still beholden to corporate demands, proposed plans from the administration are increasingly watered-down.

Workers are coming together in these town hall meetings and in other actions and pushing for real reform.

Levelheaded citizenry increasingly outnumbers the right wing and health care advocates who continue to question elected leaders about a single payer system, and there are growing splits in the Democratic Party.

Recently, Kiefer Sutherland publicly reminded the country about his family ties and his support for a Canada-style health care system. There is growing recognition that this fight is symbolic of a larger people’s agenda, and that the stakes are high for us, and for the future of the entire country.

LEFT JAB

REVIEWS

John Bell

With friends like these…

“Global warming means more people will die from the heat. Sea levels will rise, and there’ll be more malaria, starvation and poverty.

Concern has been great, but humanity has done very little that will actually prevent these outcomes.

Carbon emissions have kept increasing, despite repeated promises of cuts.”

District 9 looks at how we treat the aliens among us Film H District 9 H Directed by Neill Blomkamp H Starring Sharlto Copley H Reviewed by Kim Koyama District 9 is one of the rare summer blockbusters with some depth.

It is a fantastical account of aliens visiting Earth, beginning 28 years ago when a giant ship appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa.

Rather than bringing a race of superior intellect and technology, hell-bent on our destruction, the alien ship hovers dormant over Johannesburg until humans cut their way in, finding over a million sickly inhabitants. Thus begins a ground-based resettlement effort, which creates a refugee camp within the city— District 9 (D-9).

It is at this point that the film shows its brilliance. The writers have a heyday illustrating the human tendency toward bigotry and racism. Treatment of the aliens is both comical and disturbing. Historical footage shows the aliens being settled into a camp, which quickly becomes a slum, surrounded by barbed wire. Interviews with Johannesburg’s human residents reveal the discomfort with, and hatred of, immigrants and resentment that “our” tax dollars are being spent on others (a timely issue, in the

midst of the current debate over universal health care in the US). “Experts” add a dispassionate overview of how badly things transpired, 20:20 in hindsight.

That the film is set in South Africa is refreshing, and fitting, as humans call for the segregation of the aliens.

Apartheid-style signs appear, warning that aliens are not welcome in certain areas. While the majority of the human population invents and uses a derogatory term to refer to the aliens, the documentary footage is even complete with a minority of human activists staging a rally calling for their fair treatment. As tensions escalate, the government plans to relocate the entire alien community to a new camp far away from the city.

They do so through a private company, Multi-National United (MNU), the company originally contracted to police D-9. MNU deploys a private army fronted by bureaucrat Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley). Riding the line between amusing and disturbing are the MNU’s attempts to obtain signed consent forms from each alien in order to carry out the relocation, and the revela-

tion that the MNU intends to any means necessary to obtain the signatures.

Spoiler alert

It is during one of these home visits that Wikus is accidentally infected with an alien substance and the action begins.

His body begins to transform into that of an alien… and the film transforms into a desperate chase, an action shoot-’emup in which Wikus and an alien companion attempt to escape to the ship in the sky and thwart an MNU plot to use Wikus’ body and DNA to activate superior alien weaponry.

District 9’s twists keep us guessing to the end and the action is engrossing, but the film’s ingenuity got lost in the action. The immigration and prison camp parallels to our real history are completely relevant to current wars around the world. It is when Wikus starts to become an alien that District 9 forces us to consider our own prejudices and human rights atrocities. But we haven’t the time to really think through the implications, as we are too busy shielding ourselves from the rapid-fire, graphic violence.

Black Book exposes Canadian imperial ambitions Book H Black Book on Canadian Foreign Policy H By Yves Engler H Reviewed by Jonathon Hodge Yves Engler’s Black Book on Canadian Foreign Policy certainly lives up to its name. Reading like a litany of government meddling and gross social injustice, the Black Book could easily be mistaken for the history of a major imperial power.

The history of our own government is exposed as something considerably less virtuous than the myths of peacekeeping that Canadian officials would like us all to believe.

Engler has dug up dirt on Canada’s foreign affairs in virtually every corner of the globe. Each chapter covers a specific part of the world, exposing Canada’s nefarious actions from their beginnings, often in the 19th or early 20th century right up to 2009.

Of particular note is Engler’s section covering Iraq. While Canadians rightly take pride in forcing our government

to stand down when the US and other countries invaded in March 2003, Engler points out that the Canadian government has supported the invasion and occupation in a host of different ways.

By allowing US troop planes to refuel in Newfoundland, by having Canadian strategic staff assisting with the air war planning through the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), by keeping Canadian officers on exchange with UK and US units during the invasion (at a time when other countries’ exchange officers were recalled), and by training a new Iraqi police force in the years following the invasion, Canadian elites support US war in Iraq.

Engler also highlights the centrality of Canada-US relations when considering Afghanistan. Canadian business leaders, the author points out, are heavily invested in war industries, as well as nat-

ural resources, and both sectors stand to gain billions of dollars through the stabilization and eventual development of Afghanistan.

The Black Book quite rightly places Canadian foreign policy history in the context of global imperialism; Canadian elites have consistently allied themselves to whatever dominant Western imperial master ruled the day. The author also rightly argues that Canadian business has its own related but distinct agenda in the regions in which it operates.

But the author’s conclusions, in a section entitled “Fixing the problem”, while providing some useful ideas that would be wonderful if implemented, do not ultimately target the imperial system as the problem, and this fine book is weaker as a result. Worth studying nonetheless, but one would do well to read modern works on imperialism along side it.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. The problem is that this is the lead paragraph from an essay recently published in The Globe and Mail, penned by Bjorn Lomborg.

In case you are unfamiliar with Lomborg, he is a longtime climate change “skeptic” and author of two widely promoted books: The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (2002), and Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (2007).

How could this be coming from the darling of those— from the Bush White House to the Fraser Institute—who would deny the existence of climate change, or downplay its disastrous potential?

Is this the same Lomborg who has been a thorn in the side of activists and climate scientists for years?

There has been an evolution in Lomborg’s arguments, to be sure, and it parallels the growth of the unshakeable consensus among serious scientists that climate change is real, is caused largely by human activity, and will lead to global disaster if left unchecked.

His first book, the Skeptical Environmentalist, attacked that consensus and questioned its scientific assumptions. The book was riddled with factual distortions and scientific errors.

Journals like New Scientist and Scientific American devoted much space to demolishing the scientific bases of his arguments.

Lomborg and his admirers responded by saying he is the victim of a new scientific McCarthyism, a witch-hunt against a lone voice of reason and moderation.

So, in Cool It and subsequent essays like the one in The Globe and Mail he begins by saying: I’m not a climate change denier; we’re all friends here.

And now that we’re friends, Lomborg goes on to tell us that bad as it is, global warming can be handled quickly, easily and, best of all, cheaply.

“Much of the policy debate remains focused on cutting carbon, but there are many ways to go about repairing the global climate. Our choices will result in different outcomes and different costs.”

Putting a cap on, and eventually eliminating carbon emissions, he argues, will disrupt the economic status quo and cost a lot of money. And he’s right.

But instead of honestly comparing that to the far more disruptive and vastly more expensive results of not doing so—as was acknowledged in the important Stern Report commissioned by the British government—Lomborg looks around for a quick and dirty solution to a dirty problem: climate engineering.

He cites a “groundbreaking” new report by economists Eric Bickel and Lee Lane that touts the wonders of Solar Radia-

tion Management (SRM).

SRM schemes boil down to putting stuff into the upper atmosphere to reflect solar generated heat away from earth, before it gets trapped by greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane. The stuff ranges from water vapour to sulfur dioxide and soot.

Our friend Lomborg especially likes the “marine cloud whitening” method because it only “augments” a natural process. He endorses Bickel and Lane’s vision of, “1,900 unmanned ships spraying sea-water mist into the air to thicken clouds. The total cost would be about $9 billion, and the benefits of preventing the temperature increase would add up to $20 trillion. That is the equivalent of doing $2,000 worth of good with every dollar spent.”

Impeccable logic, and cheap too. All that stands in the way is “public perception”, shaped by the vast army of “environmental lobbyists”.

What’s my “perception”?

I think the idea of pumping a lot of stuff into the atmosphere to cancel out the effect of the other stuff we already pumped into the atmosphere is absurd.

It is an outright lie to say scientists refuse to study SRM schemes. There is a formidable body of research, conveniently ignored by Lomborg, Bickel and Lane, on the environmental downside to these plans–breakdown of the ozone layer, increasing acidification of oceans, changing weather and rainfall patterns, to name a few. All these would result in terrible costs, both in human suffering and economic disruption that are also ignored by our friends.

Bickel and Lane were recruited by Lomborg to work for an organization he heads in his native Denmark, called the Climate Consensus Centre.

Lee Lane was borrowed from the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think-tank specializing in climate change denial. It is heavily funded by the oil and gas industry.

Lomborg’s tours are organized and promoted by the Fraser Institute, a registered charity in Canada that has received substantial funding from Exxon-Mobil for its staunch denial of climate change.

He has also received awards and support from neoliberal, right-wing groups like the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They, like his own Climate Consensus Centre, are directly funded in part by the fossil fuel industry.

The bottom line of all Lomborg’s work is that we can go on burning fossil fuels for energy. First he said the results were not so bad. Now he admits things are bad, but argues that real alternatives are too expensive, so why not fall back on absurd inventions instead?

As we head into the next round of climate change negotiations this winter in Copenhagen, there is one thing we can count on: the corporate media will regularly trot out Lomborg, Bickel and Lane to tell us to “cool it”. Don’t buy it. If ever there was a crucial time to get hot and bothered about climate change, this is it.

With friends like these guys, the Earth doesn’t need enemies.

September 2009 Socialist Worker 9

WHERE WE STAND

international socialist events

The dead-end of capitalism

TORONTO

The capitalist system is based on violence, oppression and brutal exploitation. It creates hunger beside plenty. It kills the earth itself with pollution and unsustainable extraction of natural resources. Capitalism leads to imperialism and war. Saving ourselves and the planet depends on finding an alternative.

Distric meetings

Every Tuesday at 6pm International Student Centre, 33 St. George info: torontosocialists@ gmail.com All welcome

Socialism and workers’ power

UofT IS club meeting

Any alternative to capitalism must involve replacing the system from the bottom up through radical collective action. Central to that struggle is the workplace, where capitalism reaps its profits off our backs.

Capitalist monopolies control the earth’s resources, but workers everywhere actually create the wealth. A new socialist society can only be constructed when workers collectively seize control of that wealth and plan its production and distribution to satisfy human needs, not corporate profits—to respect the environment, not pollute and destroy it.

Thurs, Sept 10, 5pm Robarts cafeteria Organized by the UofT International Students Club

Solidarity café: students and workers: unite and fight

Tues, Sept 15, 7:30pm Hart House Café info: international. students@utoronto.ca Organized by the UofT International Students Club

Reform and revolution

Every day, there are battles between exploited and exploiter, oppressor and oppressed, to reform the system—to improve living conditions. These struggles are crucial in the fight for a new world. To further these struggles, we work within the trade unions and orient to building a rank and file movement that strengthens workers’ unity and solidarity.

But the fight for reforms will not, in itself, bring about fundamental social change. The present system cannot be fixed or reformed as NDP and many trade union leaders say. It has to be overthrown. That will require the mass action of workers themselves.

Elections and democracy

Elections can be an opportunity to give voice to the struggle for social change. But under capitalism, they can’t change the system. The structures of the present parliament, army, police and judiciary developed under capitalism and are designed to protect the ruling class against the workers. These structures cannot be simply taken over and used by the working class. The working class needs real democracy, and that requires an entirely different kind of state—a workers’ state based upon councils of workers’ delegates.

Internationalism

The struggle for socialism is part of a worldwide struggle. We campaign for solidarity with workers in other countries. We oppose everything which turns workers from one country against those from other countries.

We support all genuine national liberation movements.

The 1917 revolution in Russia was an inspiration for the oppressed everywhere. But it was defeated when workers’ revolutions elsewhere were defeated. A Stalinist counterrevolution which killed millions created a new form of capitalist exploitation based on state ownership and control. In Eastern Europe, China and other countries a similar system was later established by Stalinist, not socialist parties. We support the struggle of workers in these countries against both private and state capitalism.

Canada, Quebec, Aboriginal Peoples

Canada is not a “colony” of the United States, but an imperialist country in its own right that participates in the exploitation of much of the world. The Canadian state was founded through the repression of the Aboriginal peoples and the people of Quebec.

We support the struggles for self-determination of Quebec and Aboriginal peoples up to and including the right to independence.

Socialists in Quebec, and in all oppressed nations, work towards giving the struggle against national oppression an internationalist and working class content.

Oppression

Within capitalist society different groups suffer from specific forms of oppression. Attacks on oppressed groups are used to divide workers and weaken solidarity. We oppose racism and imperialism. We oppose all immigration controls. We support the right of people of colour and other oppressed groups to organize in their own defence. We are for real social, economic and political equality for women.

We are for an end to all forms of discrimination and homophobia against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people. We oppose discrimination on the basis of religion, ability and age.

The Revolutionary Party

To achieve socialism the leading activists in the working class have to be organized into a revolutionary socialist party. The party must be a party of action, and it must be democratic. We are an organization of activists committed to helping in the construction of such a party through ongoing activity in the mass organizations of the working class and in the daily struggles of workers and the oppressed.

If these ideas make sense to you, help us in this project, and join the International Socialists.

10 Socialist Worker September 2009

Forgotten Socialists: the story of Russia’s Inter-District Committee, 1911-1917

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall by paul kellogg

August 23, 1989 Hungary, then part of the Russian-dominated Eastern Bloc, opened up its border with Austria. Thousands of East German workers poured across the newly opened border, through Austria and finally into West Berlin.

The pressure of this movement of millions in the fight for democracy and freedom ended with the November 1989 physical destruction of the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin.

When that wall came down, a new era in world politics began.

Before these momentous events, one theme dominated world politics—the competition between the United States and the then-USSR— the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (which dissolved in 1991).

This rivalry was labeled the “Cold War” because it did not erupt into a “Hot War” as did the rivalry between Germany and Great Britain, a rivalry that was at the core of the charnel houses of World War I and World War II. But whether “cold” or “hot”, it was terrifying. Three generations grew up in the shadow of the bomb, feeling the threat of a nuclear confrontation between the West (led by Washington) and the East (led by Moscow) as an ever-present possibility.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall symbolized the collapse of the Bloc, which supported Moscow and the end of the Cold War. The end of the Soviet Bloc saw authoritarian regimes dissolve, first in Eastern Europe, then in Lech Walesa, founder of Solidarnosc.

Russia itself. A movement which began with the great working class uprising in Poland in the early 1980s, creating the ten millionstrong union, Solidarność, had by 1989 been able to push aside the authoritarian Stalinist Communist Party and take governmental office.

East Germany, like Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, had been run as a one-party state since being incorporated into the Russian sphere of influence after World War II. The wall itself had been erected in 1961 to prevent East German workers escaping to the West. Its fall was a direct result of the democratization movements that were happening elsewhere in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the rest of Eastern Europe.

Solidarnosc

Solidarnosc began as a campaign for democracy and the right to vote.

Socialists are always campaigning for an increase in rights and political freedoms. Socialists have always historically identified with mass workers’ movements such as the one represented by Solidarnosc.

But Russia and its East European satellite states called themselves “communist”. Liberal politicians and theorists had argued that the Cold War was a contest between capitalism in the West and communism in the East, and many on the left agreed. So in the wake of the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of these “communist” states, the confusion in much of the left was total. Accepting that these regimes were, in some way, socialist, post-capitalist or “workers’ states” drove many on the left

into despair at what they saw as the victory of the market over the state.

Instead of joining in the celebrations, and dancing on the fallen wall, many on the left looked on in horror.

There was a triumphalism on the right, as theorists like Francis Fukuyama talked about the “end of history”. The argument was pounded home that 1989 proved the superiority of the market and capitalism over the state and socialism.

There was just one problem— the regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe might have been dominated by the state, but they were in no way socialist.

State capitalism

Socialism is not about state power, but about the power of the working class and the oppressed. It is not about the suppression of democracy, but about the extension of democracy from the state to the economy.

We need to not just elect members of parliament once every few years, but to elect our bosses, our administrators, our judges. The key institution of socialism is not the concentration camp (as it seemed to be in Russia) but the workers’ council—the institution of mass working class democracy and accountability.

Russia had seen viable workers’ councils for a few months after the revolution of 1917. But these had quickly disappeared in the cauldron of civil war, imperialist blockade and resulting starvation.

The regime which emerged under the leadership of Joseph Stalin in no way resembled the hopes and dreams of those who toppled the Czar in 1917. It was not socialist, but state capitalist.

At the end of World War II, when Russian troops occupied much of Eastern Europe, they installed regimes modeled on their own. These regimes had the label “communist”. But like Russia they were best understood as state capitalist— an economy run by the state, enmeshed in competition with the rest of world capitalism through the mechanism of the arms race.

Those on the left who understood this, those of us who had said “neither Washington nor Moscow”, had supported the great Polish uprising led by Solidarność and had joined in the celebrations when the wall fell.

In the next few issues, we will explore how this theory—the theory of state capitalism— allowed the left to understand the events of 1989, and plot a way forward into the 1990s.

Next issue: the legacy of empire.

Sat, Sept 12 4:00pm Speaker: Paul Kellogg.

Cost: $10 - $20 (sliding scale, includes vegatarian-friendly BBQ) info: papedanforth @gmail.com Organized by the Pape-Danforth IS

One-day conference: The crisis is theirs, the solutions are ours

Sat, Sept 26, 1pm-6pm International Student Centre, 33 St. George info: international. students@utoronto.ca Organized by the UofT International Students Club

VICTORIA

Fundraising dinner & fall events planner

Sat, Sept 12, 5:30pm info: 250-385-3934 Organized by the Victoria IS

peace & justice events VANCOUVER Rally in support of Coast Plaza workers

Fri, Sept 11, 5 pm Coast Coal Harbour Hotel Hastings & Bute Organized by UNITE HERE local 40

TORONTO

Labour Day parade

Mon, Sept 7, 9:30am University & Dundas info: www.labourcouncil.ca Organized by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council

Toronto Palestine Film Festival Sept 26 to Oct 2 info: www.tpff.ca

Israel/Palestine: freedom of speech – freedom to teach Fri, Oct 16 - Sat, Oct 17 Steelworkers Hall 25 Cecil St Speakers: Javier Davila, Denis Rancourt & Sherene Razack info: freedomtoteach. registration@yahoo.com

Good Green Jobs for All Conference

Sat, Nov 7, 8am - 6pm Allstream Building, CNE at the Princes’ Gate info: www.labourcouncil.

Organized by the Good Jobs for All Coalition

You can find the I.S. in: Toronto, Ottawa, Gatineau, Vancouver, Victoria, Montreal, London, St. Catharines, Mississauga, Scarborough, Halifax, Belleville & Kingston e: iscanada@on.aibn.com t: 416.924.9042 w: www.socialist.ca For more event listings, visit www.socialist.ca.

reports@socialist.ca HEALTH CARE

by IAN BEECHING The BC government’s throne speech on August 25 outlined what will be massive cuts to health care, a wage freeze on the public sector and a shifting of taxes onto workers through the creation of a regressive sales tax.

Health Minister Kevin Falcon told health authorities to cut $360 million from their budgets, resulting in cutting or postponing elective surgeries and diagnostic procedures.

The BC Liberals are cutting $1 million in grants to community organizations for seniors’ day programs and $450,000 from programs to assist isolated seniors, as well as $450,000 to mental health and addiction grants to support community programs, including supports to victim of abuse.

The creation of a “harmonized sales tax” (HST) combines GST and PST saving business’ millions while adding tax to things such as household utilities, vitamins, over-the-counter drugs, taxis, restaurant meals and haircuts, hitting seniors and low income families the hardest.

Agencies that run long-term care homes say the HST will increase their costs by more than $10 million, resulting in service cuts.

All this comes as a slap in the face to the people of BC when the provincial government plans to spend $7 million a month to send 14,000 paid bureaucrats from Victoria to assist the Olympics. Workers should not suffer for the errors of the elite. The solution to budget deficits due to the economic crisis is to tax those who created the current crisis, the capitalists.

BRING MAKHTAL HOME In early August, Canadian citizen Bashir Makhtal was sentenced to life in an Ethiopian prison on terrorism charges. His family and supporters waited in vain for the Harper government to act, as it repeatedly promised to bring Makhtal home.

In 2006, fleeing violence from the invading Ethiopian army, Mahktal was one of almost 100 foreign nationals arrested and accused by Ethiopia of belonging to fundamentalist Islamic terror organizations. Makhtal was held in military prison without access to lawyers or embassy officials for more than a year. He is being persecuted because he is the grandson of a founding member of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which Ethiopia considers a terrorist group.

The Free Bashir Makhtal Coalition has organized demonstrations and letter writing, and MP John Baird (and MP Jason Kenney before him) met with the Somali community several times without result.

The government must stop telling Makhtal’s family to wait, and take decisive action to force Ethiopia to return Bashir Makhtal to Canada immediately.

TD CENTRE LOCKOUT

TD Centre worker talks about fight for good jobs Sixty-one workers at the Toronto Dominion Centre (owned by Cadillac Fairview) were locked out in June and terminated in July. Socialist Worker spoke with Steve, steward of the TD Centre group engineers (CEP Local 2003), about the ongoing fight for their jobs.

Can you give an update on the situation facing the 61 workers locked out and terminated by Cadillac Fairview (CF)?

We have pretty much saturated the tenants with our message. We have supporters among them who provide us with encouragement and copies of the latest CF tenant communiqués. We respond and fill in information that is often left out to allow people to draw their own conclusions.

We are now reaching out to other groups and unions to communicate our struggle.

The response has been fantastic. They regularly offer their valuable time, knowledge, resources and spiritual support. The very important teacher components (the actual stakeholders of Cadillac Fairview) have responded in a way you could only dream of—immediately recognizing the issues, then strong and united condemnation.

Response from retired teachers has been great and feedback so far is that they are interested in sitting in on the upcoming Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) hearings.

What tactics is Cadillac Fairview using to intimidate or divide workers?

The company continues to videotape the picket lines and remaining CF workers have been told to stay away, not communicate, return phone calls or e-mails.

About a month ago, a tenant from the TD Centre (the company he worked for had a business relationship with CF) expressed to CF management his opinion about how they had treated their workers. His complaint was forwarded back to his employer and he was fired.

Being locked-out by the company (without pay) works to create division. It has been very hard financially for the workers, and many have had to reduce attendance at the picket line because of the need to find other work to make ends meet.

What is the mood on the picket line and what has been the role of solidarity?

The mood on the picket line is one of determination and waiting for justice through

the OLRB. With regards to solidarity, when other groups or individuals visit the picket line, it boosts spirits and morale. One person participating for an hour can make the day of those on the line.

How can people help?

Please drop by the picket line (at 66 Wellington Street West, one block north of Union Station) and see what it is all about.

Speak with your local teachers or their district representatives and discuss your opinions about the situation, they are concerned and they will listen.

I want to make one thing perfectly clear: Cadillac Fairview does not appear to care or feel that they need to explain or answer to anyone. However, as consumers, please make it known to their tenants (office and retail) that your business decisions may reflect their choice of the people they choose to have business relationships with, (CF as a landlord).

This includes the TD Bank, Cadillac Fairview’s largest tenant at the Toronto Dominion Centre. Many of these workers have decades of service at the TD Centre site and have been deeply hurt that the TD Bank has remained silent about the injustice served to them.

SUDBURY STEELWORKERS RESIST SCAB LABOUR Since July 12, 3,100 members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6500 have been on strike in Sudbury against mining giant Vale Inco. Recently, the company announced plans to use scab labour.

“A decision has been made to resume partial production,” said Vale Inco vice-president John Pollesel. “Training of selected employees is beginning to facilitate the process and help us to continue supplying customers, generating cash flow and providing meaningful employment for staff.”

There is a strong history of struggle at Inco, including an eight and-a-half month strike in 1978-79 that was the biggest walkout in Canadian history. But this is the first time that the company—recently taken over by Brazil-

MONTREAL WORKERS

ian conglomerate Vale SA— has tried to use scab labour to break a strike.

Steelworkers have vowed to fight back. “If Vale Inco wants to produce in Sudbury then the right way to do that is get back to the bargaining table,” said USW Ontario director Wayne Fraser. “They better get their hands off our mills, smelters and refineries.

“People are angry right now… and that anger is just below the surface right now and every little thing that (Vale does), every little bit of arrogance that they demonstrate, boils that stuff up to the surface, and at some point it will blow up.

“If they think they’re going to keep us out on the picket line while they try to produce our product, they better think again. We’ll use every

tactic we possibly know to stop them from doing any production.”

The union is also demanding the Harper government make public the deal that allowed the foreign takeover at Inco. At the same time, Steelworkers are building bonds of solidarity with Brazilian trade unions.

“The action plans that we are developing are more than a temporary alliance. We are building an ongoing friendship and working relationship that will serve us well beyond the victory of this strike,” said Myles Sullivan, representative of Local 6500.

“They can help us and we can help them, and in the end we will benefit each other and the communities and members we represent.”

For more information, visit www.FairDealNow.ca.

US STEEL LOCKOUT

by JESSE McLAREN

by MICHELLE ROBIDOUX

Following on the Toronto City workers strike, Montreal city workers staged their first strike in 18 years, demanding higher wages and less subcontracting.

On August 31, 5,000 Montreal city workers held a oneday strike on the second anniversary of their being without a contract. Workers are members of CUPE Local 301, representing a variety of public services. The city uses private subcontractors for snow removal and water treatment, and has been stalling negotiations with unionized workers. The last offer was in June when the city proposed $100 million less than what workers are demanding.

The 1,000 workers at the Nanticoke plant of US Steel have been locked out since August 4. Before their contract expired July 31, the union had asked for a oneyear extension of the contract, freezing wages and benefits until the economic outlook got better.

But management demanded sweeping concessions on wages, pensions and vacation and locked them out.

Billy Ferguson, president of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 8782 at Lake Erie works, said: “We’ve never seen this level of aggression from a company.”

The company has turned

the Nanticoke plant into what workers call “Guantanamo North”, with parabolic microphones, a huge security presence and blast barriers at the entrance. But workers are fighting back.

As one locked out worker said at a recent solidarity rally at the Lake Erie plant, “Take it or leave it are not words that I understand.”

Workers fought hard to stop concessions when former Stelco was in CCAA protection. To have new owner US Steel come back for more cuts is a slap in the face. As the lockout drags on, solidarity from across the labour movement will be key to pushing back against this corporate bully.

STICKING WITH THE UNION

Carolyn Egan

Labour solidarity growing

T

he recent municipal worker strike in the City of Toronto garnered an outpouring of solidarity from unions across the public and private sectors. This type of support has not been seen in recent years when workers have struck against intransigent employers.

Garbage dumpsites and city offices across Toronto saw actions from CUPW, CAW, CUPE, the Steelworkers, the building trades and others.

At first, there seemed to be a reticence to show concrete support. Unions had supported Mayor Miller and many of the city councillors, and the media was whipping up antiunion sentiment. But the solidarity began to build.

Almost everyday there were unionized workers from other affiliates on the picket lines. This along with the dedication of the 24,000 strikers led to a successful fightback against a concessions contract.

The change in mood can be traced back to the role of activists at the Toronto and York Region Labour Council. Starting with the successful campaign for a $10 Minimum Wage, the Good Jobs For All Conference, which attracted over a thousand delegates both organized and unorganized, the “Fix EI” campaign, and the fight for Good Green jobs, workers were once again on the move.

Last spring, the historic Stewards’ Assembly brought out over 1,600 union activists pledging to taken on the anti-worker agenda, and refusing to be used as scapegoats by governments and corporations in the economic recession.

Solidarity

One of the central issues of the assembly was the pledge to provide solidarity for workers on strike.

It is no coincidence that workers, in both the public and private sectors, are being confronted with concession contracts.

Demands for significant rollbacks in wages,

two-tiered health plans, removal of sick benefits and the cutting of defined pensions plans are appearing on bargaining tables across the country.

Because of the renewal of activism and the coming together in campaigns and assemblies, workers in Toronto have taken seriously the pledge of solidarity. Locked-out CEP workers at the TD Centre in downtown Toronto were on the lines for the city strikers, that support was returned during the strike and is continuing today.

Other unions such as the Steelworkers, CUPE, SEIU, OPSEU and UNITE-HERE have called solidarity rallies at the TD Centre supporting the locked out CEP workers.

Recently, Steelworkers protested outside the Vale Inco corporate offices against the demands for concessions at mines in Sudbury and Voisey Bay where over 3,000 workers are walking the line.

Fair deal now

They then marched to the TD Centre chanting, “Who makes the wealth.

We make the wealth. No concessions. Fair Deal Now!” The CEP workers have been buoyed by the support and their resolve is strong even though the company has now terminated them bringing in contract workers.

Trade unionists have been out regularly on the lines at a CAW strike at a Zellers warehouse. Before a “Fix EI” rally at the federal minister’s office in Simcoe, a bus load of Toronto Steelworkers rallied at the lock out line at US Steel in Nanticoke where over 1,000 Steelworkers are again fighting a concessions contract.

Though the overall strike levels are still low, workers are standing up and fighting back against concessions, and a renewed solidarity is bringing other workers to their side. A spirit of militancy is growing and the stronger it gets the greater the possibility that workers can fight back and win against the employers’ assaults.

Join the International Socialists Mail: P.O. Box 339, Station E, Toronto, ON M6H 4E3 E-mail: membership@socialist.ca / Tel: 416.972.6391

Name: Address: City/Province: Phone: E-mail:

September 2009 Socialist Worker 11

Site 41 victory

Simcoe community shows how grassroots resistance can win by peter hogarth

On August 26, the hard work of First Nations people, local residents, farmers, environmentalists and student activists paid off when Simcoe County Council voted heavily in favour of a moratorium on construction of the landfill at Site 41, which is located above a major source of fresh water.

Thanks to incredible mobilizations from local people and allies to pressure Simcoe County Council into action, the motion put forward by Tiny Township Mayor Peggy Breckenridge and seconded by New Tecumseth Mayor Mike MacEachern, passed 22-10. That represents an 86 per cent vote in favour of a moratorium and a serious win for democracy and the environment.

The Alliston Aquifer feeds a large portion of Southern Ontario and, according to the UN, is home to the world’s

purest water. Opponents of Site 41 have been trying to block its construction since it was first proposed more than 20 years ago.

The vote for a moratorium is an impressive victory, not just for the community around Site 41, but for all of us, because it has shown how grassroots campaigns can pressure elected officials and produce results.

This achievement comes after a lengthy legal battle, 110-day blockade of the site, decades of opposition and a solidarity campaign that drew support from a diverse group, including local and national environmental organizations, First Nations communities, church groups, national unions, peace groups, student unions, farmers and local residents.

The united stance of these groups forced many councillors to rethink their position on Site 41 since the 2007 decision to approve construc-

tion. Mike MacEachern, one of eight councilors to change his vote, was quoted in the Barrie Advance as saying “we need to be absolutely sure what we’re doing doesn’t affect future generations. There is new information and we need to critically evaluate it.”

During the blockade and recent protests, 16 arrests were reported and the county filed a civil suit for $160,000 against two women who own property adjacent to Site 41 for allowing people access to their land in order to protest.

Following the daylong talks and successful vote for a moratorium on August 25, the suit was dropped against the two women.

Adjala-Tosorontio Deputy Mayor Doug Little will be proposing a motion to the September meeting of county council to permanently close down Dump Site 41.

Workers fight back, blockade Zellers distribution centre by peter hogarth The more than 300 Zellers Scarborough distribution centre workers, who have been lockedout for not accepting massive wage and benefit cuts, have amped up their fight.

Responding to management’s refusal to bargain, the workers have blockaded three entrances to a Brampton distribution centre, allowing no one through since August 18. This escalation of tactics has come as management refuses to bargain beyond anything outside of their initial proposal.

On August 17, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) management walked-out after less than three

hours of negotiation in response to initiatives brought forth by the distribution workers’ bargaining team.

The workers, members of Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) Local 100, have been asked to accept $8 an hour wage reductions, cuts to vacations and aggressive severance language that nearly eliminates seniority rights. These tactics were foreshadowed by the purchase of the HBC nearly a year ago by American company NRDC Equity Partners, which has a history of attacking workers’ rights and demanding severe wage cuts.

Stephen Moses, Local 100 unit chair and an employee of over 20 years, asserted that NRDC Equity Partners “has little regard for workers

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in Canada or the United States” and “they should take the time to study the labour movement in Canada and study the relationship that we have spent many years cultivating with the company and hopefully something positive can come out of that.”

However, Moses continues, “we are faced with a situation where they are trying to bully us at the table.”

The employees, whose average years of service range from nine to 26 years, have moved their protest to the Brampton distribution centre, where the work they were doing has been transferred, to raise public awareness and force HBC back to the bargaining table.

Moses said he and his fellow workers are trying to send the message that nothing can come out of HBC’s refusal to bargain but further disruption. HBC has obtained an injunction against the protest, but Moses emphasizes that “our intention is not to hurt Zellers in anyway, this is how we pay our bills, our taxes and this is how we send our kids to school and day care.

“What we hope to achieve is public awareness, we ask the public to make that call to head office or any Zellers store and make their voices heard. Let them know this is not the way to deal with employees.”

The fight of Local 100 is hauntingly similar to the 61 Toronto Dominion Centre workers who are fighting for their jobs after being locked out and fired by owners CadillacFairview for resisting massive benefit rollbacks and 25 per cent wage cuts. In that dispute, a dedicated campaign from the locked out workers has ignited support from several unions.

This summer has seen massive attacks on workers, but it has also shown that solidarity can win. The fightback of Zellers workers is an example of workers’ power in the face of aggressive demands for concessions.

Defend civil liberties, bring Khadr home by faline bobier Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced that his government will challenge the decision made in the Federal Court of Appeal ordering Harper to seek the return of Omar Khadr to Canada.

Harper’s appeal is a last ditch effort to have Khadr prosecuted in the US. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon released a statement recently outlining Ottawa’s reasons for seeking the appeal to Canada’s highest court. The government will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn two lower court rulings that state Ottawa must ask Washington to release Mr. Khadr from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and hand him over to Canadian authorities.

Khadr was arrested in Afghanistan when he was only 15 years old for allegedly throwing a hand grenade and killing a US soldier. He is now 22 and has spent seven years languishing in the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison.

Khadr was repeatedly tortured while in confinement, something the Canadian government was well aware of at the time.

After years in solitary confine-

ment, Omar Khadr is now being held with other detainees. His Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney, describes the area as a “cage,” where his client is chained to the floor. Mr. Edney has said that Khadr is blind in one eye and is slowly losing sight in the other.

Prison officials have denied requests for glasses for security reasons.

As a recent Toronto Star editorial points out: “Canadian officials clearly breached Khadr’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms right to life, liberty and security of the person, and to not be put to cruel and unusual treatment when they interviewed him at Gitmo, and shared what they gleaned with US officials.

“Federal Court Justice James O’Reilly rightly ruled on April 23 that the Canadians were complicit—knowing full well that Khadr was a minor without consular assistance, legal counsel or family contact, and had been ‘subject to serious mistreatment,’ including sleep deprivation, to get him to talk.”

Under the Charter clause granting “remedy” when rights are infringed, O’Reilly ruled that Ottawa had an obligation to at least request that Khadr be shipped home where his rights would be respected.

Against these profound Charter concerns, Ottawa argues that it has unfettered discretion to decide whether and when to seek the return of a citizen held abroad under its right to conduct foreign affairs.

Shamefully, Canada is the only US ally not to seek repatriation of its own people. Even war-torn Afghanistan goes to bat for its detainees.

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