Socialist Worker 513

www.socialist.ca

no. 513 December 2009

CANADA THE WORST CLIMATE OFFENDER PHOTO: Greenpeace/Eamon MacMahon

THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE

TEN YEARS ON Page 5

GUILTY OF WRECKING THE PLANET

Québec solidaire breakthrough Page 2 Michelle Robidoux covers the recent convention

War and environmental destruction Page 3 Andrea Peloso on the devastation of war

Indigenous struggles Pages 6&7 Valerie Lannon and Jessica Squires begin a 3-part series on the history of Canada

20 years after the Montreal massacre Page 10 Faline Bobier on violence against women

WE NEED REAL ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE NOW by john bell As world leaders and scientists gather in Copenhagen to try and hammer out a new treaty to rein in climate change, Stephen Harper and the Canadian delegation will continue to sabotage the process.

The jig is up for Harper—the whole world is pointing at Canada as a major contributor to greenhouse gas pollution, and the Harper government as the most backwards, obstructive regime on earth.

At the recent Commonwealth Conference environmental NGOs, leaders from developing nations

and even Queen Elizabeth blasted the Tory regime for its foot dragging.

Some even raised a call to expel Canada from the Commonwealth on the grounds that its environmental policies equal an attack on the basic human rights of millions.

In Africa, Commonwealth nations are already facing drought and dangerous drops in food production.

Island and coastal nations see rising sea levels and creeping salination of water needed for humans, animals and crops. Some countries face complete inundation.

UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon didn’t mince words: “Many

countries, developed and developing countries, have come out with ambitious targets. Canada is going to soon chair the G8 and therefore it is only natural that Canada should come out with ambitious midterm targets as soon as possible.”

At home, polls reveal that three out of four Canadians are ashamed of their country’s environmental record. Even in Harper’s Alberta bastion, 65 per cent said it is “embarrassing that we are not doing more to curb emissions.”

In the lead up to Copenhagen, Canadian people are acting to pressure Harper: thousands have rallied

and marched in the streets; youth activists disrupted a do-nothing parliament demanding action; sitins have occupied the offices of Tory MPs Rona Ambrose, Jim Flaherty, Gary Lunn and Jim Prentice; Greenpeace activists have repeatedly disrupted tar sands operations.

Harper and his ministers mouth enviro-platitudes, but refuse to set any hard targets for emission reduction. They say they are spending billions of dollars on the problem, but continue to throw that money at research on carbon capture and storage technology that is decades (if ever) away from implementation.

>>page 2

Canada guilty of torture in Afghanistan Page 12 Paul Stevenson on the growing Tory scandal

Green economy Page 12 Pam Johnson on the green jobs conference

CPMA No. 58554253-99 ISSN No. 0836-7094 $1 or $2 at newsstands

Iraq War resister wins new hearing

Workers scapegoated for H1N1

by christine beckermann

by jesse mclaren

A recent court victory provides new arguments in support of the case of US Iraq War resisters seeking asylum in Canada.

Governments and media are scapegoating workers for the H1N1 pandemic instead of fighting the flu with good jobs and health care funding.

In November, the Federal Court ruled that the Immigration and Refugee Board made errors in its decision denying refugee status to Bethany Smith (aka Skyler James) and the Board must rehear Smith’s claim.

Smith is a lesbian and described the daily humiliation and threats that she experienced in the military. The Federal Court’s ruling noted the “evidence suggesting unequal treatment for homosexuals before courtmartials” as a factor which the IRB failed to consider.

The ruling also dealt with more general issues, including the lack of independence of the court-martial process. These arguments may help bolster the claims of all US war resisters who are applying for refugee status in Canada.

As these court cases play out, war resister Rodney Watson remains in Sanctuary at the First United Church in Vancouver. Rev. Ric Matthews said “the government’s decision to deport Rodney is unjust and sanctuary interrupts this process while we continue to work to find a more just outcome.”

Early in 2010, a Private Member’s Bill in support of war resisters will move to second reading in the House of Commons. If passed, Bill C-440 will give legal weight to the motions passed in the House which call on the government to allow US Iraq war resisters to stay in Canada. A campaign is gearing up to support C-440.

For more information, visit www.letthemstay.ca.

New hijab for sports A Montreal designer has created a hijab that is appropriate for sports activities.

In 2007, a Muslim girl was banned from playing soccer because she wore a hijab. Later, five Muslims were denied entry at a taekwondo tournament for the same reason.

Elham Seyed Javad, a recent graduate of the University of Montreal’s School of Industrial Design, was outraged at the events and decided to use her design skills to make a change, reports The Star.

“I was so distressed when I learned about it. Your beliefs shouldn’t prevent you from playing sports,” said Javad.

Javad set out to meet the taekwondo team at the Muslim Community Centre of Montreal and researched various sports played by women with and without a hijab. Then, as part of a university requirement, she designed a new piece of sportswear.

The 26-year-old designer created a hooded shirt, with an opening in the neck that gives access to the hair.

The new sports hijab was successfully worn by young athletes at a martial arts tournament in November.

Françoise David, Amir Khadir (left) and Québec solidaire leadership at convention.

PHOTO: MICHELLE ROBIDOUX

Québec solidaire convention breakthrough unifies the left by michelle robidoux

As Québec Solidaire headed into its convention in November, expectation and trepidation jostled with each other in the minds of delegates.

As a very young left party, with Amir Khadir as their only Member in the National Assembly, QS faces huge odds in trying to make a lasting breakthrough on the Quebec political landscape.

Yet the convention showed that the process of bringing together the various strands of the left in Québec is alive and well. Founded in February 2006, QS had to push back developing a program, having to fight two election campaigns in a short period of time.

Convention aimed to formulate the first part of a program for the party. The themes they set out to develop programmatic positions on were ambitious, including the national question and “laïcité” (roughly, “secularism”).

Socialist Worker spoke to Matt Jones, a member of QS in the Mercier riding and of the collectif Socialisme international within QS, about the outcome of the convention.

The resolution adopted on the national question states that QS supports sovereignty or independence. What was important about the discussion on this question?

This is the fruit of a long process, a process that was delayed for two years. It took that amount of time to digest what was behind all the reso-

lutions, in terms of carrying on the united front of the party.

That is what pulled through in the end, the desire to work together. At the same time, the positions that were adopted are both radical and could satisfy everyone. From the outside it’s not obvious why that position is different from the others, but it links in the radical “indépendantistes”, a large part of whom are the far left, with something that is just more broad.

It’s one thing to put together a united front around criticism of the system; it’s a whole other thing to keep that united front around very concrete demands. To actually find this position—it’s the big dividing line in the Canadian state, it’s a big demarca-

tion in the left—it required a lot of skill. But it’s also fundamental because without a clear position on this question, it is hard to intervene in Québec. This is especially important in forming alliances in the labour movement, where a huge section of the labour movement supports independence. That is what is keeping them tied to the PQ. People are suspicious of the idea of sovereignty because of how it was used by the PQ. But some of the debates here are very important: independence is associated with the radical left. A lot of people who were arguing for independence as a more radical position, had to also use “sovereignty”.

Tory MPs’ vile comments by nadine mackinnon Remarks made by two Conservative MPs in late November reveal the governing Conservative Party’s true colours once again.

Nova Scotia Conservative MP Gerald Keddy blamed unemployed Nova Scotians for the employment of seasonal migrant labour in the province.

Saying Nova Scotians refuse to work on Christmas tree farms, Keddy referred to the unemployed as “those no-good bastards sitting on the sidewalk in Halifax that can’t get work” in an article in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald on November 17.

That same week, Saskatoon MP and former pastor Maurice Vellacott issued a lengthy press release commending Saskatoon doctors for the reduction in abortion services.

The release went on to state “Pro-life feminists have also come to see abortion as part of a male agenda to have women more sexually available. With widespread abortion access, the male partner has come to think that he can blame the woman if she chooses not to have an abortion after an unplanned pregnancy.”

No matter how hard they try to hide it, this is the real misogynist face of the Tories.

What QS does with this position on the national question is key. Without a position like this, it can’t move the left project forward. But within that, we would argue that it isn’t the priority. How we organize is key.

What has the process of developing a position on secularism been like?

The position was brought up two years ago in the context of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. Initially a lot of the left who are very tied to French left, had a gut reaction of simply “defending secularism”, buying into the terms of debate that the right was trying to use.

But two years of quite serious discussion on this, including the QS intervention in the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, consultations, writing up a position paper, public statements that were made, really undermined that simplistic defense of “secularism” and helped a layer of people to adopt good positions.

The Fédération des femmes du Québec moved quite far in their positions, and also sections of the labour movement.

The position QS adopted is mostly really good. It has rhetorical flaws—for example, opposing “proselytizing”. They are concessions to the more “secularist” currents of the party, but they don’t have any weight in terms of how the party will act. The position is strategically oriented to making a progressive intervention.

Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation wins right to harvest, sell fish by amelia murphy-beaudoin

On November 3, the British Columbia Supreme Court ruled in favour of a group of Vancouver Island First Nations, collectively known as the Nuu-chahnulth First Nations and their right to harvest and sell all species of fish found within its territories.

This ruling is a victory, even though the right is not unrestricted and must

2 Socialist Worker December 2009

be negotiated with BC and Canada over the next two years.

Cliff Atleo, president of the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations, said in a statement “we have been stewards of our ocean resources for hundreds of generations and the government of Canada was wrong to push us aside in their attempts to prohibit our access to the sea resources our people depend upon.”

The Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations filed a writ of summons against the province of BC and the federal government in 2003 after years of treaty negotiations broke down.

They filed the litigation to have their rights to sea resources realized and respected, arguing that more than one hundred years of regulations by Canada diminished Nuu-chah-nulth access to sea resources

and forced them out of the West Coast fishery.

“First the government said we didn’t need much land because we were ocean-going peoples, then they took away our access to those ocean resources,” said Atleo.

First Nations people everywhere are demanding to be heard. It is the duty of all people to acknowledge their struggles and stand with them in solidarity.

When H1N1 flu first emerged last April, Stephen Harper labeled it “Mexican flu”, blaming the workers who were the first victims of the pandemic that emerged from corporate factory farms.

Then the media blamed striking Toronto city workers for H1N1 deaths, when these workers were standing up for good jobs that keep our city clean and safe.

Now the BC Liberal government has used the pretext of the pandemic to force an end to a paramedic’s strike.

Overworked and underpaid paramedics were on strike (but forced to maintain operations under essential services laws) for seven months, fighting to improve health care.

But with growing corporate concern over the impact of strikes on the upcoming Olympics, the BC government used the pretext of H1N1 to force an end to the strike.

It’s time to place the blame for H1N1 where it lays— corporate factory farms, health care under fundin, and BigPharma monopoly over medicines. And it’s time to support workers fighting for good jobs and health care.

Copenhagen >>continued from page 1 Their priority in not to take action on climate change, but to deflect growing demands to shut down the Alberta tar sands, the biggest, dirtiest industrial project on earth.

Their plan for the economy in not to invest in good green jobs in sustainable industry, but to gouge all the petro-profit they can from the tar sands, and damn the consequences.

Harper’s idea of security is not to work towards a world of greater environmental justice and peace, but to spend billions on militarism and mega-prisons.

To be clear: no developed nations have taken strong enough action on climate change, and no national leaders have a plan that goes beyond tinkering with the bankrupt and discredited system called capitalism. But Canada under Harper is the worst of a bad lot.

Whatever treaty comes out of Copenhagen is not an end in itself but another nail in capitalism’s coffin, a tool to help us fight for a better, healthier planet.

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PALESTINE

‘WAR ON TERROR’

Section of illegal wall destroyed by peter hogarth On the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Palestinian and international solidarity activists pulled down a section of a barrier in the al-Amari refugee camp in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

War is an environmental disaster by andrea peloso Official records of US oil use do not include the consumption of oil by the US Army in the Iraq War.

Military use is in addition to the 400 million gallons of fuel that the country consumes each day. Yet the use of oil in war trumps all players in the current race towards runaway global warming.

According to professor and author Barry Sanders: “The United States leads the world in oil consumption, using approximately 20.6 million

barrels of oil daily. While the United States represents about five per cent of the world population—it consumes a quarter of the world’s oil… If the military used fuel in the same proportion as the entire civilian population … then we could expect it to consume about 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

We know it consumes at least something in the order of ten times that figure.”

War is the largest contributor to global warming.

Peace is a necessary solution to global warming. War is ten times as

responsible for global warming as the average American person whose own quality of life dwindles economically and ecologically as the war continues.

Iraqi citizens have suffered horribly from the violence and radiation.

All beings have become casualties of the Iraq War, and all fuel based wars.

Living things will suffer the “weapon of mass destruction”, which is war itself when global warming comes home to roost.

Peace activists and ecologists know that the Iraq War is a war about oil; a war to continue the North American

power system as it is. Maintaining the status quo is an illusion; oil is non-renewable, oil fields are in decline, and oil is the energy enabler of our consumer based economy.

War is a symptom of the consumption and waste that exceeds the biophysical capacity of the earth and its people. It is a tool to prop up the illusion of unlimited financial growth in the reality of a finite world. The time is ripe for peace and ecology movements to support one another in ending the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

U.S. troop surge will deepen crisis in Afghanistan by salmaan abdul hamid khan and g. francis hodge Using George Bush’s tactics of invoking 9/11 and the threat of more attacks on US soil, president Barack Obama announced his troop surge for the Afghanistan war.

In a speech on December 1 at the US Military Academy in West Point, he announced an escalation policy that will commit 30,000 more US troops to the war. This will bring to 100,000 the total number of American troops involved, three times the number committed when Obama was elected. An additional 5,000 to 10,000 soldiers have been pledged by other NATO members.

Obama promised that a troop withdrawal would begin by July 2011 at

which time the US would hand over security matters to the Afghan Security Forces (ASF).

However, White House officials were quick to qualify the commitment to a withdrawal, saying that the “pace and process” of any such move would depend on security conditions at the time.

Which means if NATO is still losing, the troops won’t withdraw. The success of any intention to “Afghanize” the war is also extremely unlikely. The number of available ASF troops is as low as 50,000, and one in four soldiers deserts or goes AWOL .

As the number of NATO troops has risen, so has the resistance. The insurgents have been able to rally not only opposition to the violence of the occupying forces, but nationalist feeling

against foreign invaders. A further influx of foreign soldiers will only exacerbate these dynamics, contributing to the political legitimacy of the Taliban insurgency among regular Afghans.

Not only will more soldiers bring more destruction, but the confused political approach of the NATO powers is creating growing resentment. The recent proposal to appoint a supreme US official responsible both for the direct delivery of aid and the coordination of Western diplomatic and military efforts in Afghanistan, an official who would act independently of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, looks a great deal like the appointment of a colonial governor for the country. This can only add to the appeal of the insurgents.

Nor is blanket support for Karzai a

On November 5, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an army psychiatrist, walked into a Fort Hood “Soldier Readiness Center” and opened fire. When it was over, 13 people were dead and another 30 were wounded.

This was remarkably similar to a shooting that took place at a US military hospital in Baghdad this past May when Sgt. John Russell opened fire and killed five of his fellow soldiers.

The main difference was not the numbers killed. It was that Russell didn’t have a “Muslim” name, as Hasan’s name was widely described in the media.

This was followed immediately

by speculation that what happened was an act of “Islamic terrorism”.

President Obama added fuel to the fire in a speech during a memorial at Fort Hood: “No faith justifies these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor.”

Never mind the hypocrisy of making this statement while commanding 200,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. If Hasan’s act was merely the result of his faith, how to explain the widespread interpersonal violence and self-harm in the US military? For instance, a 2007 CBS News investigation into military suicides found: “Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the

war on terror... had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age.”

And according to a July 28 article in the Washington Post, the rate of homicides amongst veterans from the Fourth Infantry Division’s Fourth Brigade were 114 times higher than the rate amongst the general population in Colorado Springs, where they are stationed stateside.

“During their deployment, some [Fourth Brigade] soldiers killed civilians at random—in some cases at point-blank range—used banned stun guns on captives, pushed people off bridges, loaded weapons with illegal hollow-point

BDS campaign growing by peter hogarth

tenable policy. Karzai is set to take on a second five-year term as Afghanistan’s president. The “re-elected” president was responsible for rigging the recent presidential elections in August through intimidation and fraud. He is widely alleged to have ties with warlords and drug cartels. His brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is not only the richest man in the country, but a major drug trafficker with connections to the CIA. Militarily, Obama’s new troop surge will only fuel the insurgency it is meant to combat. Politically, the US and its NATO allies are trapped in a duel losing policy of lukewarm support for the irredeemably corrupt Karzai on the one hand, and the creation of an imperial pro-consul on the other. Neither approach will succeed.

Fort Hood, Obama and Islamophobia by shawn whitney

Israeli troops fired tear gas at the crowd of 50 protesters who celebrated by throwing stones over the wall, hoisting Palestinian flags and setting tires on fire.

The protest came following a similar event three days earlier in the West Bank village of Nilin, where Palestinian youths toppled a section of the 20-foot-high wall.

Israel began construction of the wall in 2000, justifying it as a safety precaution. The wall will be 700 kilometers long when completed.

Palestinians see the wall as a grab for West Bank land by the Israeli government.

The International Court of Justice has ruled that the barrier is illegal and should be taken down. Protests of the wall’s construction have become regular Friday events.

The international community is becoming increasingly aware and increasingly critical of Israeli policy, as the horror of the occupation is laid bare.

These acts of resistance, aimed directly at the physical barriers to freedom for Palestine, target Israel’s flagrant violations of international law and highlight the broad, indiscriminate violence of Israeli occupation.

bullets, abused drugs and occasionally mutilated the bodies of Iraqis…”

The war is causing widespread psychological damage to US troops. According to a 2008 Rand Study, quoted by Dahr Jamail in an article about the high levels of suicide and PTSD at Fort Hood, “Nearly 20 per cent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan—300,000 in all—report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment.”

In the context of these easily discovered facts, Hasan is not out of the ordinary at all, but is part of a general trend in a military at war.

The boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) campaign is a call to civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and divestment initiatives against Israel, similar to those levied against Apartheid South Africa.

Since the campaign’s launch in 2005, BDS initiatives have been multiplying all over the world in diverse areas of industry, culture and academia.

Recently, the British Federation of Trade Unions, representing over six and-a-half million workers, announced a campaign to boycott Israeli products. Trade unions in South Africa, Ireland, France, Scotland, Canada and Norway have all supported BDS campaigns of their own.

The governments of Norway and Britain have been pressured into terminating military contracts with Israel. Britain revoked several licenses to sell weapons parts to Israel, and Norway sold off its shares in defence contractors Elbit Systems Ltd. Students across Europe, Canada and the US have initiated campus-based BDS campaigns.

In addition, the New Orleans Middle East Film Festival has become the first US institution to join the cultural boycott of Israel.

The BDS campaign has logged a string of victories, highlighting the complicity of companies in the occupation of Palestine. Building and strengthening a global BDS movement is vital.

December 2009 Socialist Worker 3

TALKING MARXISM

INTERNATIONAL

Abbie Bakan

Capitalism vs. the planet The best of contemporary Marxist theory is advancing a powerful critique of capitalism’s destructive relationship to nature and the resources of the planet.

For example, John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review, is a well known environmental sociologist. In Marx’s Ecology, he demonstrates how Karl Marx was an early opponent of capitalism’s destruction of the planet’s resources.

The language used in 19th century Europe was not always the same as environmental terms today, but the concepts were identical. Referring to the relationship between “people and the planet” as one between “man and nature”, Marx challenged the way capitalism turned common land into private property.

Peasants

Marx wrote about how peasants in the wine-growing district of Moselle in the Rhineland were once able to access wood from the forest for fuel. But in the 1830s, they were accused of stealing trees that were now deemed to be privately owned.

Between 1830 and 1837, in the district surrounding Marx’s home town of Trier, wood theft charges, including charges for dead wood, constituted 97 per cent of all thefts. In all of Prussia in 1836, offences associated with forest, hunting and pasturelands accounted for 77 per cent of all prosecutions.

Marx saw this as an indication of the contradictory nature of bourgeois law. It was based on the rights of private property and the state, where common natural resources, particularly land, were appropriated from the common people by a small, elite ruling class.

The appropriated land was then used as a means to criminalize the poor and extract rent. The new landless class was impoverished, with the poverty itself created by the appropriation of the land. In order to live, the landless peasants would return to the appropriators as capitalists, and work for wages just to survive. This marked the birth of the new working classes of Europe.

But the value of a Marxist analysis goes beyond abstract theory. It also points to the contradictory nature of the system and offers a guide to radical change.

At the same time as capitalism depends upon this massive destructive capacity, it also relies on nature and human labour as the only sources of wealth.

Organizing to take back the world’s resources from corporate capitalism becomes a realistic vision. And, though this is not an easy task, we have seen some encouraging examples.

Bolivia

Take the experience of Bolivia. In 1998, the World Bank notified the Bolivian government that it would only guarantee a US $25 million loan to re-finance water services in the city of Cochabamba if the local government sold its public water utility to the private sector, and if the costs were passed on to consumers.

The compliant government agreed, and control over the Cochabamba water utility was handed over to Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of the giant US construction and water corporation, Bechtel.

Water rates skyrocketed by nearly 35 per cent.

But the people of Cochabamba fought back. They formed a coalition, where the leading representatives were trained in collective mass organizing through their unions.

They took to the streets in the tens of thousands, striking for control of water for four straight days in January 2000. They faced massive military repression, and a 17-year old boy was killed. But the people stayed united and forced the government, and Bechtel, to back down.

Oscar Olivera

A spokesperson for the Coalition for the Defence of Water and Life, Oscar Olivera, became a recognized leader in the international movement for global justice.

This author had the privilege of hearing Olivera speak in Washington, DC in April 2000, the first time he had left his homeland.

Oscar Olivera addressed 1,500 listeners who were part of a mass protest against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings held in the US capital city: “I work in a shoe factory. I’m from Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. We are a poor country. We own nothing. We don’t own our oil wells, our roads, our finances, our airports. All we had left was our air and our water. When they were going to sell our water, in my village we carried out a struggle to make sure the water stays as ours….

“This small poor people, unified, was able to fight off this giant as David did Goliath. We think perhaps our struggle could be an inspiration for people all over the world. That’s why I am here today. And we also ask for your support and solidarity for our challenges in Bolivia.”

The Bolivian “water wars” became a symbolic turning point, followed by a similar movement against the privatization of natural gas. Both were part of the movement that led to the election of President Evo Morales, who took office in 2006.

This movement still has a long way to go to stave off the destructive force of capitalism as it threatens to privatize and poison natural resources. But the health of the planet has benefited from this type of resistance. And if Marx were alive, he’d be smiling.

4 Socialist Worker December 2009

Bangladeshi workers rise up On October 31, hundreds of workers, mostly women, arrived at the gates of the Nippon Garment Factory in Tongi, Bangladesh to work and receive the wages owed to them.

They were met by police blocking the entrance and a note on the gate informing them that the factory was shut until November 29 because of the “global recession”.

The notice also asked workers to collect their wages on Nov-

ember 10, though arrears were already three months late. The workers tried to force their way into the factory but the police attacked with batons. Workers and locals from the surrounding slum areas joined the protest; the crowd grew to several thousand and moved to block the main highway.

Hundreds of police and paramilitary forces intervened. Police began shooting teargas and live rounds at the workers who erected

barricades. Two workers were killed, and a thousand people were injured.

When they do get paid, Bangladeshi workers on the minimum wage receive fifteen cents (US) per hour. Following the clashes in Tongi, the Bangladesh government is considering supporting the establishment of unions in the garment industry.

Workers everywhere are rising up. Similar struggles are taking place all over the world.

U.S. sells out the Honduran resistance by rebecca granovsky-larsen Alarming reports are surfacing from Honduran human rights groups that military forces are preparing to frame members of the anti-coup resistance by fabricating disruptions in order to justify mass elections crackdowns.

Ominously, the Honduran Ministry of Health has issued an emergency communiqué advising Hospital Directors to have all medical personnel on call 24 hours a day from November 19 to December 4, stockpiling medicines and postponing all elective surgeries.

In the lead up to elections, leaked military documents indicate plans to

use paramilitary units to create a fictitious “Armed Command of the Resistance”, to justify massacres against unarmed social movements. For exposing the plans, human rights defenders have been charged with “defamation” and with “impeding the elections”.

The United States has rewarded Roberto Micheletti’s intransigent coup regime and betrayed the resistance movement by recognizing Honduras sham elections without the restoration of President Manuel Zelaya. On November 8, the Honduran newspaper El Heraldo published an article saying that “calls against the election process on November 29 will not go unpunished.”

The US and the right wing govern-

Tamils rally for justice by ritch whyman Over a thousand people rallied outside the Sri Lankan consulate in Toronto on November 21 to protest the Sri Lankan government’s treatment of Tamils.

This was the first rally called by Canadians Concerned About Sri Lanka, a broad coalition of organizations in Toronto. The rally was important, as there had not been a large rally against Sri Lanka’s abuses since the summer.

Contingents from UFCW, HERE, CUPW, USWA, SEIU and CEP all were at the rally to bring solidarity to the Tamil community.

Demands of the demonstration were for the end of repression and abuse of the Tamil minority; that the Sri Lankan government open up the camps where hundreds of thousands of Tamils have been forced to live since the summer to aid organizations and the media; and that Tamils be able to leave these camps and return to their homes.

The Commonwealth of Nations has blocked Sri Lanka from hosting the next meeting of Commonwealth leaders in protest of the state’s military

repression of the Tamil population.

While Sri Lanka is being shamed internationally for their human rights abuses, the Canadian government refuses to fast track the claims of 76 Tamil refugees who landed in Vancouver last month. They are still being held in detention by immigration officials.

The government has worked with the Sri Lankan consulate to try and smear these refugees, claiming they are tied to the Tamil Tigers, a banned organization in Canada.

The arrival of the refugees has been used to increase attacks on members of the Tamil community in Canada. A well-known Tamil actor who spoke at Maveerer Nal (Tamil Heroes remembrance day) to over 3,000 youth was forced to leave the country for making a speech which called for a renewal of the struggle by Tamil people against the Sri Lankan government.

Only ongoing rallies and mass protests will push the Canadian state to break ties with Sri Lankan.

For more information, visit www.canadiansconcerned.ca and www.canadiantamilcongress.ca.

ments of Panama and Colombia are the only states recognizing the sham elections. The European Union, the Rio Group, the UN, UnaSur and the OEA will not recognize or monitor the elections.

The Canadian government is officially waiting to see how the election transpires, which is why it is critical that people contact their MPs to encourage the government not to recognize the elections.

Over 100 candidates have withdrawn from the elections and President Manuel Zelaya remains in the Brazilian Embassy, unwilling to legitimize the elections.

Meanwhile the regime has threatened anyone encouraging a boycott.

Switzerland’s racists get a boost In a referendum vote at the end of November, 57 per cent of Swiss voters voted for a racist ban on the construction of minarets on mosques. This is the latest victory for far right parties across Europe.

The right is deflecting the fear and uncertainty of the economic crisis from the system responsible, onto minorities.

This Islamophobia is more than hateful words and limits to basic freedoms, it is also producing violence. Before the referendum the main mosque in Geneva was vandalized, and cobblestones were thrown at it, damaging a mosaic.

The referendum over minarets was initiated by the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which forced a vote after collecting 100,000 signatures from eligible citizens. The SVP holds the most seats in parliament and is part of the coalition government. In 2007 it ran an anti-immigrant campaign saying “criminal foreigners” should be kicked out.

O

n November 30, 1999 tens of thousands of people successfully shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) during the millennial round of trade talks in Seattle, Washington.

The protests, now known as the “Battle of Seattle”, marked the emergence of the anti-globalization or anti-capitalist movement, and launched a wave of large-scale protests that targeted trade summits everywhere they met.

Protesters in Seattle came from all over the world, and represented a wide range of struggles. Indigenous activists protested corporate exploitation of their land and resources. Environmentalists sounded the alarm bell over global warming and climate change.

Church groups campaigned to drop the debt in the Global South. Farmers marched against unfair trade policies.

Trade unionists resisted plant closures and job cuts. Women’s groups demanded equal pay and better working conditions.

Much to the surprise of those on both sides of the barricades, the protests actually succeeded in shutting down the WTO. The turning point came after days of smaller protests, teach-ins and tactical discussions. On “N30” thousands of activists converged in the downtown core and surrounded the summit site.

City officials were surprised at the number and organization of protesters, who had been planning their mobilization for months. They soon occupied key intersections, blocking delegates from the summit. Riot police responded by firing pepper-spray, tear-gas and rubber bullets at the crowd.

In another part of the city, tens of thousands of trade unionists were just beginning to march in a labour-organized demonstration. Union leaders had planned a march that stayed away from the downtown core, but their members soon broke away and began marching toward the summit.

Rank-and-file union members were inspired by the resistance of the “turtle kids” (young environmental activists), especially in the face of repressive police tactics, and were moved to show their solidarity.

The arrival of thousands of trade unionists in the downtown core proved decisive. The police began to back off, as they realized they were massively out-numbered. Protesters continued to occupy downtown streets, and a carnival-like atmosphere erupted as it became clear that the summit had been shut down.

As hundreds of delegates remained trapped outside the summit, and as tear gas wafted inside, Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper announced: “Those who were arguing they were going to shut the WTO down were, in fact, successful today.”

At Seattle, for the first time in decades, a growing number of movements and struggles began to link their issues together into a broader critique of the overall system. Participants may have represented a wide range of issues, but they all targeted their protest at the WTO, a symbol of global capitalism.

Some protesters called for more regulation, criticizing the “neoliberal excesses” of capitalism, instead of the system itself. Others were more thoroughly anti-capitalist, calling for capitalism to be abolished. Either way, a serious and sustained critique of capitalism followed the Seattle protests, and would have far-reaching consequences for struggles everywhere.

THE BATTLE OF SEATTLE James Clark looks at the 1999 protests that shut down the World Trade Organization and at the legacy of the anti-capitalist movement during the “Days of Action” against Conservative Premier Mike Harris’ cuts to social services.

Protests like these were a glimpse of an anti-neoliberal sentiment that had been bubbling under the surface, but which burst spectacularly at Seattle. In the months that followed, large-scale protests were organized at trade summits all over the world.

In Windsor, Ontario in June 2000, thousands of people—including members of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW)—protested the summit of the Organization of American States (OAS).

Nearly a year later, over 80,000 people mobilized in Quebec City during the Summit of the Americas to protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Hundreds of people were arrested during the summit, and a record number of tear-gas canisters were fired throughout the city. Months later, support for free trade dropped dramatically all across Canada.

At the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, 300,000 people marched in protest of the death of activist Carlo Giuliani, who was shot dead by the Italian Carabinieri.

Protests followed in Gothenburg, Melbourne, Washington, Hong Kong—and anywhere else that the forces of neoliberal globalization attempted to meet.

World Social Forums

Anti-globalization

Seattle may have marked the emergence of the anti-globalization or anti-capitalist movement, but it didn’t mark its beginning. For years before Seattle, anticapitalist sentiment had been growing all over the world.

Just five years after the collapse of “communism” in Eastern Europe, the Zapatistas, an indigenous group from southern Mexico, led an uprising on New Year’s Day in 1994 to resist the creation of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), one of the first major struggles against the neoliberal agenda. In France in 1995, the largest strike-wave since May 1968 halted sweeping neoliberal reforms. In Ontario, one-day general strikes took place in 11 cities across the province,

‘The police began to back off, as they realized they were massively out-numbered’

In addition to the protests, anti-capitalism expressed itself through the phenomenon of Social Forums. In January 2001, the first World Social Forum (WSF) took place in Porto Alegre, Brazil—in opposition to the World Economic Forum based in Davos, Switzerland. The WSF spawned local and regional versions, where activists from a variety of movements met to coordinate resistance.

Social forums continue to this day, but with varying degrees of success and popular appeal.

Despite its early successes, the anticapitalist movement was halted in its tracks on September 11, 2001—but not before laying a foundation for the antiwar movement that would follow it. The politics, organization and experience of anti-capitalism had a tremendous effect on the opposition that developed to George Bush’s “war on terror”—leading to worldwide mass demonstrations

in early 2003 that involved millions of people.

In Canada, the anti-G8 protests held in Calgary and Kananaskis, Alberta in July 2002 became an organizing centre for anti-war activists. A new pan-Canadian network of peace groups, infused with the spirit and creativity of anti-capitalism, developed out of Calgary, and renewed the Canadian peace movement. An entire generation of activists emerged from that experience.

New Politics Initiative

The impact of Seattle was also felt in electoral politics. In English Canada, the New Politics Initiative (NPI) emerged as a serious anti-capitalist challenge to the New Democratic Party, winning over 40 per cent support to launch a new radical party at the NDP’s federal convention in Winnipeg in November 2001. The NPI eventually turned its attention to shifting the NDP to the left. It wrapped up a year after Jack Layton replaced Alexa McDonough as NDP leader.

In Quebec, the Union des forces progressistes (UFP) came together in the wake of the mobilizations against the FTAA in Quebec City. Its success laid the groundwork for the creation of a new political party, Québec solidaire, which won its first seat in parliament in provincial elections in December 2008.

The process of radicalization that gained momentum after Seattle has become more widespread in Latin America than anywhere else in the world, and has helped elect radical reformist governments that have thrown up serious resistance to the neoliberal agenda.

Perhaps the most important legacy of the Seattle protests is the shift in the political climate in the last ten years. So many of the issues that were first raised in Seattle have now become widely accepted by the public as common sense—even though political leaders continue to drag their feet.

Climate change is just one example.

At one time, most people dismissed climate change as a myth. Today a clear majority support initiatives to reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming.

The Seattle protests have also contributed to the growing opposition to neoliberalism that reached new heights during the current economic crisis. Even

though the movement no longer has the strength or momentum it did ten years ago, it nevertheless continues to influence debates about capitalism, especially as more people consider alternatives to the system.

In the movements themselves, the impact of Seattle remains. Thousands of activists cut their teeth in the anticapitalist mobilizations that followed Seattle. Many of them continue to organize in other movements. And many of the organizational relationships that were built during and after Seattle—especially the so-called “Teamster-turtle” alliance between trade unionists and environmentalists—have transformed today’s movements. A growing number of trade unionists now work closely with environmentalists to create good, green jobs. Likewise, more and more climate change activists see labour as an ally, not an obstacle.

Although the level of activity among labour never matched the general sentiment of anti-capitalism, trade unionists were nevertheless affected by their contact with the movement.

The current period represents another opportunity for anti-capitalism to reach a wider audience. Despite weak signs of growth, major problems persist in the economy: workers continue to lose their jobs, and workplaces continue to close.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan carry on, with no end in sight. And climate change now poses an even greater threat to humanity, as the planet warms at an even faster pace.

In each of these struggles, more and more activists—like those who were inspired by Seattle—are connecting issues, and linking them to the global economic system. Among them is a growing number who understand that capitalism offers no solutions, that the system itself generates these problems in the first place.

At the moment, this radicalization has not led to widespread action against the system. Resistance, where it exists, remains decentralized, and is so far restricted to mainly defensive struggles.

But the future of anti-capitalism lies in activists like these, and in the potential of their struggles to transform themselves from protests against the effects of global capitalism to a movement against the system itself.

December 2009 Socialist Worker 5

A PEOPLE’S HIST

INDIGENOUS STRUGGLES I

Valerie Lannon and Jessica Squires begin a three-part series of a people’s history of Canada by Canada and First Nations people to expose what Harper seeks to hide: at best, paternalistic racis At the recent meeting of the G20 in Pittsburgh, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a shocking claim: “We are one of the most stable regimes in history ... We are unique in that regard,” he said, boasting of more than 150 years of ‘untroubled’ parliamentary democracy.

“We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.”

Either Harper is monumentally ignorant of history or he is a monumental liar. Either way, even a casual look at Canada’s past reveals a sorry history of imperial violence, conquest and cultural genocide.

Colonialism

The relationship between, first, the colonizing regimes of Europe and, later, Canada, and indigenous peoples has changed over time. But it has been marked throughout its history by a colonization that has always been linked to capitalism— first, the early days of primitive accumulation that set the stage, and then the exploitation of a continent for the growing capitalist economies of Britain and France. Today the continued colonization of indigenous peoples in what is called the Americas is an essential part of the capitalist economy.

The earliest contact between European explorers and North American indigenous people was part of an overarching pattern of searching for, and claiming as their own, natural resources from all corners of the globe, whether inhabited or not.

In the East, China and India were subjugated to the needs of a burgeoning capitalism by opium and naval wars; in the West, the American continent was laid waste more slowly, but in many ways more effectively, and its peoples slowly disenfranchised, subjugated, and killed through the fur trade, proxy wars, disease, and forced assimilation.

Through all of it, indigenous people resisted. Today, indigenous movements and their allies across the continent insist on selfdetermination.

The earliest relationships between Europeans and the original inhabitants of this continent were centred on trade. The influence of European trade changed the relationships between Aboriginal groups immeasurably.

For instance, the Iroquois confederacy had a pre-existing trade network. They competed with the Huron in a trade of agrarian products for the products of the hunt.

The Iroquois made alliances with the British, who gave them guns.

The Huron made alliances with the French, who would only give guns to those who converted to Catholicism.

Religion was intrinsically linked to the trade relationships. Catholics were bent on converting Aboriginal people, while Protestants viewed them at first as a people beyond the reach of God. These religious ideas underpinned European ideas about the indigenous peoples, seeing 6 Socialist Worker December 2009

them as either savages in need of civilization or as less than human.

Imperialism

‘Today, indigenous movements and their allies across the continent insist on selfdetermination’

When the French and British waged war with each other over control of the colonized world’s resources, the trade alliances took on a military character. The Iroquois, for example, nearly wiped out the Huron. The remnants of the Huron either were absorbed into the Iroquois confederacy or moved east to the region now known as Quebec City. Such impacts were a repeated pattern across the continent.

The very existence of “Canada” is owed to Aboriginal people.

Without the nation-to-nation alliance between the Iroquois confederacy and Britain, the war of 1812 would surely have been lost. Chief Joseph Brant, his people and their descendants were granted all the land in the watershed of the Grand River in what is now southwestern Ontario. Today, the struggle in the town of Caledonia stems from the fact that title to this land was never given up by the Iroquois.

After the War of 1812 at least temporarily settled the question of which imperial power controlled what part of North America, the attention of colonial settlers and administrators turned to “rationalizing” the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown. Nation-to-nation alliances were gone, replaced by racism and oppressive colonialism.

Between 1815 and 1876 a series of colonial administrators conducted “studies” of the organization of “Indian Affairs” and the

“Indian Department”. Correspondence among colonizers and missionaries shows that Aboriginal peoples become a problem to be solved. Entitlements due to individuals by virtue of treaty relationships were expensive and difficult to manage.

Administrators suggested that money could be saved by encouraging indigenous people to settle in one place and through a method of counting the “resident Indians” and “non-resident Indians” to determine who was and was not entitled to “presents” (a legal term meaning a payment of clothing and supplies as set out in a treaty).

All listed resident and non-resident Indians were entitled to payments, but it would be far easier to manage if individuals could be enticed to settle on individual land holdings. The collectivist approach to land management used for centuries by many Aboriginal groups was seen as uncivilized; Aboriginal men should be encouraged to become landowners, in keeping with capitalist notions of individual “freedom” and private property.

Unsurprisingly these ideas were resisted by Aboriginal people.

Forced assimilation

The shift in thinking is illustrated by legislative changes. The Act for the Protection of the Indians in Upper Canada, passed in 1839, was replaced by the Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of Indian Tribes in this Province, and to Amend the Laws Relating to Indians (known as the Gradual Civilization Act) in 1857.

The law required the mandatory “enfranchisement” of any adult male Aboriginal person seen as civilized enough, that is, somewhat educated, and debt-free. He would “no longer be deemed an Indian” but would be a regular British subject. Voluntary enfranchisement was also possible.

Enfranchisement carried with it the possibility of a parcel of up to fifty acres of land and a sum of money, but did not guarantee a right to vote. By accepting the land and money enfranchised people would “forego all claim to any further share in the lands or moneys then belonging to or reserved for the use of [their] tribe, and cease to have a voice in the proceedings thereof.”

Education was also seen as a means of “raising up” the Aboriginal people. The education reformer Egerton Ryerson, who saw education in general as a means for pacifying a growing working class, also thought educating the “Indians” would help in their civilization.

His report of 1847 was the model for the Residential Schools system

TORY OF CANADA

IN CANADA

looking at the history of conflict between sm, and at worst, naked genocide.

Residential school students

First Nations’ identity, culture and status Indigenous peoples in Canada, often referred to as Aboriginal Peoples, are made up of three broad groupings: First Nations, Inuit and Métis.

The term “Indian” still has legal meaning under the federal Indian Act, but is not otherwise in widespread use, although some Aboriginal people use the term in referring to themselves.

First Nations is a term often used interchangeably with the term “band”, which also has legal meaning under the Act. There are over 600 First Nations in Canada, mostly located in Ontario and British Columbia, comprising almost 1.2 million people. There are very high populations in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Quebec as well.

Inuit people live throughout most of the Canadian Arctic and subarctic, mostly in the territory of Nunavut (“our land”). The Constitution Act of 1982 recognized the Inuit as a distinctive group, who are neither First Nations nor Métis.

Métis are descended from the marriages of First Nations people with (mainly French) European settlers. There are 300,000 Métis people in Canada.

All three groupings of indigenous peoples face different issues in their fight against oppression and for self-determination.

For instance the legal definition of Métis remains vague, and whether Métis can win treaty-like entitlements similar to those won by First Nations people depends to some extent on how similar they are to First Nations— specifically, if they can be proved to have inhabited and used a specific area of land.

‘Status’

There is a rough similarity to the issues facing indigenous people living off reserve.

At the same time it should be remembered that the so-called “status” of an indigenous person is wholly dependent on colonial laws and rules. The membership or non-membership

of individuals in bands or First Nations, and Aboriginal resistance to that process, has been highly politicized since early in the nineteenth century.

Indian and Northern Affairs Canada lists of who has status, then and now, were used as tools to subjugate and force indigenous people to live in ways consistent with European notions of “civilization”.

For instance, by encouraging them to stop being nomadic (that is, to stand still and be counted), to identify in European-style family groupings and to live in relationships to the land more akin to Western notion of ownership than of the shared custody more consistent with indigenous culture.

It should also be kept in mind that, since there are hundreds of distinct indigenous cultures in what is called “Canada”, there is no way to generalize about Aboriginal identity, expectations, orientation towards the Canadian state, or other questions of strategy or tactics.

Marx and Lenin: politics of liberation The revolutionaries Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin wrote extensively about self-determination of oppressed nations.

Marx wrote that a nation that oppresses another cannot be free, and Lenin argued that nations oppressed by imperialism have the right to self-determination.

Socialists distinguish between the nationalism of oppressors and the nationalism of the oppressed. Because we are internationalists we argue for full equality between nations.

Marx applied these ideas to slavery in the Southern US, arguing that working-class emancipation could not be accomplished

without destroying slavery. “Labour in the white skin can never free itself as long as labour in the

black skin is branded,” he argued in his monumental work Capital.

Lenin compared the right of self-determination to the right of divorce. He argued that equality cannot exist while women are legally bound to their husbands.

Workers’ unity and a force that can overthrow capitalism and oppression in all forms cannot be built without workers in an imperialist or oppressor country supporting the right of self-determination of the oppressed nation.

Solidarity with First Nations’ struggles is not an act of charity.

It is an essential component of our self-emancipation.

Today’s struggles for self-determination whose legacy of cultural genocide is well-known.

Throughout this period, at first missionaries and then the crown set aside land in reserve for the exclusive use of Aboriginal groups.

Legislation was passed to “protect” the land from White settler encroachment, at the same time entrenching Crown control over the use, sale, lease, and right of way for rail and road on reserve lands.

Indian Act

The Indian Act of 1876 took things a step further with the prohibition of such cultural practices as the potlatch. This was the annual ceremony of feasting and sharing wealth, designed to redress any growing inequality among the people. Such practices were poison to the colonial conquerors, who used naked violence in attempts to end them.

The Act also further centralized power on reserves in the hands of White Indian Agents, and imposed a model of band governance that resulted in deep political divisions among members of individual First Nations that are today the source of many of the challenges to more unified struggle.

What were promised as self-governing territories were turned into back-country prisons. The only escape was to assimilate.

Resistance

The following 134 years have seen resistance, both open and clandestine, result in the survival of many Aboriginal languages, as well as oral history traditions, and some legislative victories.

In 1951 the Indian Act was changed to delete the clauses banning cultural practices and to allow Aboriginal people the right to hire lawyers, opening the door for the issuance of land claims. These changes marked the consolidation of yet another approach to the governance of Aboriginal matters.

Assimilation was no longer the official policy, but neither was selfdetermination.

In 1982 the Charter of Rights and a new Constitution of Canada was created that entrenched Aboriginal right to self-government. The implementation of these newly recognized (but arguably always-existing) rights has become the new site of struggle between First Nations, Inuit and Métis with few resources, in legal struggles for entitlements and the right to govern themselves, against the nearly infinite resources of the Federal government.

The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development sees its role as evolving towards its own elimination, but because of the centuries-long attitude of the government that Aboriginal peoples are like children in need of education and discipline, that goal seems remote.

Meanwhile, Aboriginal groups resist in various ways and forms, winning small victories, sometimes with the help of non-Aboriginal allies. These victories are essential parts of the overall struggle for social justice in Canada and the Americas, because without justice for Aboriginal peoples the rest of us can never claim freedom for ourselves.

Indigenous peoples divide today’s struggles into three general categories: litigation; negotiation; and assertion. More than one of these strategies can be used at the same time.

Some of the most successful fights that have been won by indigenous people have been achieved through litigation in the court system. One need look no further than such landmark judicial decisions as Delgamuukw where the Supreme Court recognized Aboriginal lands title over much of BC, the Marshall victory in Nova Scotia for fishing rights, and Métis victories in Ontario for hunting rights.

But court cases are very expensive and lengthy. So, for smaller communities, as is the case with many First Nations, the costs are prohibitive. That is why, for instance, in BC where the average population of a First Nation is 350, there has been a hope that the so-called modern treaty process would provide some form of justice.

But this hope has been dashed repeatedly as the BC and federal governments have turned negotiation into yet another lengthy and ultimately expensive proposition for participating First Nations (the Nations have to repay 80 per cent of the costs incurred during negotiations out of their eventual treaty settlement). In the meantime, the BC government hands over forests, fisheries and mining rights to large corporations for their profit on traditional

Dudley George

First Nations’ territories.

Assertion, the practice of asserting rights, can take the form of blockades and occupations, with the best known examples from the 1990s including Oka in Quebec, and Gustafsen Lake in BC, which witnessed the largest use of police force in Canadian history. The 1990s killing of Dudley George at Ipperwash Ontario undoubtedly contributed to the anger of and later (at least partial) victory by the Six Nations in Caledonia following occupation of land there.

Assertion is the option chosen

by Aboriginal groups and communities who feel that their rights are beyond question and not subject to the law or courts of the colonizers.

Also there is a risk, especially with litigation, that bad precedents may be set that may be irreversible.

Solidarity

Across all of these types of struggles, the key for non-indigenous people is to show solidarity.

Sometimes this seems tricky.

When, for example, the members of an indigenous community do

not support what they consider to be a conservative position being taken by their “leadership”.

Non-Aboriginal allies can feel as if they are being pressed to take sides with one group of Aboriginal people against another.

Each situation has to be analyzed individually. The key is to build relationships over time with indigenous communities.

The stronger these relationships the easier it is to figure out how best to extend solidarity. But encouraging other social justice groups—student groups, unions, faith groups and many others— to be visible and vocal in their solidarity too will always be an essential piece of being an ally.

There have been some great examples of solidarity in recent years: for example, the presence of various unions at Caledonia; the partnership of unions, faith groups and First Nations in BC to reject the referendum process initiated by the Campbell government; as well as numerous recent examples of joint work to combat environmental degradation.

Today, the potential for united action is greater than ever, as northern indigenous communities face the brunt of climate change, as all indigenous people feel the disproportionate crush of the economic crisis, and as indigenous people face continued inequality in health care as evident in the government’s response to swine flu—sending body bags but not enough hand sanitizers to remote communities in Manitoba.

December 2009 Socialist Worker 7

OBITUARY CLIMATE CRISIS

We have the power to save the planet Humanity is faced with one of the largest crises in history—catastrophic climate change. Faced with the utter failure of world leaders to address the problem, many people fear it may be too late to stop the destruction of the planet. However, history shows that we have the power to bring about massive, revolutionary change— the change that is desperately needed to save the planet.

The majority of climate scientists agree that we have at most ten years to fundamentally alter the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, Harper’s Conservative government is doing everything in its power to undermine any hopes of an effective climate treaty emerging from the UN climate talks in Copenhagen.

George Monbiot, respected environmentalist and Guardian journalist, writes: “Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada... Canada now threatens the well-being of the world.” He stressed the impact of the ongoing exploitation of the Alberta tar sands, one of the most environmentally devastating activities on Earth. The tar sands are both second largest oil deposit and the biggest opencast mining operation in the world. Refining the tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil.

At the recent APEC meeting in Singapore, Harper was doubtful that the Copenhagen climate talks will produce any effective treaty, stating that it would be “impossible” to control worldwide greenhouse gas emissions unless the world’s biggest emitters—referring to India and China—sign onto the deal.

Harper pointing the finger at developing nations is simply an excuse for industrialized nations not to set serious and binding emission targets.

While China has overtaken the US as the world’s biggest polluter, the US and Canada still emit far more carbon per person. Not to mention, a large proportion of China’s emissions are actually caused by Western multination corporations operating in both China and India. It is unjust and hypocritical to demand that poorer countries bear the brunt of reductions simply because they are industrializing later than the West.

In fact, today’s climate crisis was caused by the developed nations of the world. They should not be allowed to make the world’s poor pay the price for the climate crisis.

Capitalism lies at the heart of the problem, both in creating the crisis and blocking meaningful solutions. A central feature of capitalism is the drive to accumulate profit. The ever-increasing use of resources, including the extraction of raw materials from the environment to fuel new means of expanding production, aims only at profit, not meeting human need. Under capitalism, corporations and governments steadfastly resist any changes that may eat into profits.

But capitalism also provides the world’s population with a way of solving the crisis. As Marx pointed out, capitalism “undermines the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.” But it also brings the majority of us together in workplaces. It is in this collective process of production that workers can potentially organize to push for change— through strikes, sitdowns, plant occupations and protest.

The tension between capitalists’ pursuit of profits and the needs of workers to defend not only their conditions of life has the potential to bring about resistance from below and open people up to the possibility of revolutionary change.

This is by no means automatic. Workers’ consciousness— their understanding of the world and of their power to change it—shifts under different circumstances. The ecological and economic crises are leading many millions of people to question the logic of the system. It is here, and through their own experience of struggle, that workers can begin to picture a society that puts the interest of people and the planet before profit.

ANTI-WAR

War is torture: bring the troops home now In 2006, the NDP took a bold position in calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Today, the NDP seems to be taking a softer position, despite increased public support for the troops-out position.

The Conservative government faces the biggest crisis in years because of the scandal involving the transfer of Afghan detainees to torture. Popular sentiment and the Harper government’s positions on war and climate change could not be further apart. The NDP should seize the moment and use every opportunity to raise their call for Canadian troops to withdraw immediately from Afghanistan.

President Obama has now become a war president by giving into NATO pressure, increasing the number of US troops to Afghanistan by 30,000 and shattering the hopes of millions of Americans.

A motion for a judicial inquiry into the torture scandal is not enough. The majority of Canadians—even more than in 2006—disapprove of the war. It’s time for the NDP to re-affirm its widely-supported position and amplify the call by Afghan MP Malalai Joya (see page 12) to put an end to this disastrous war.

8 Socialist Worker December 2009

Chris Harman: activist, teacher, writer and comrade Chantal Sundaram pays tribute to Chris Harman’s life and ideas Chris Harman was a revolutionary who devoted his life to building the UK sister organization of the Canadian International Socialists, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

He was editor of the quarterly journal International Socialism, and for many years editor of the British version of Socialist Worker newspaper.

He died suddenly of a heart attack in Cairo on the night of November 6.

Born in 1942, Chris joined the Socialist Review Group—predecessor to the International Socialists (IS), which became the SWP—as a schoolboy in Watford. After studying at Leeds University between 1962 and 1965, he went on to pursue doctoral research at the London School of Economics (LSE). The LSE became the storm centre of the student movement in Britain, and Chris became a leading student activist and abandoned his academic career.

For the rest of his life he worked as a full-time revolutionary, initially as editor of International Socialism and journalist on Socialist Worker.

Chris edited Socialist Worker in 1975-7 and then again between 1982 and 2004. Finally, he returned to edit the International Socialism journal.

“Party and Class,” written in 1968, helped navigate what seems like an irreconcilable contradiction, but isn’t: the reality of both spontaneous struggle and the need to shape it.

1968: The Fire Last Time

Chris Harman (circled) played a crucial role in the struggles at the LSE in late 1960s.

State capitalism

Like the IS in Canada, the SWP was founded on an understanding of Stalinism as state-run capitalism rather than any form of socialism.

Chris developed this analysis further in his first book, Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe (1974, republished as Class Struggles in Eastern Europe) and again in Poland: Crisis of State Capitalism (1976-77), and finally by revealing the “step sideways” from state capitalism to private capitalism in The Storm Breaks (1990).

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Chris’ writings contributed immensely to explaining why socialists should not be saddened by this development. That was in fact the very year I became a socialist, and Chris’ writings were a part of that process for me—and no doubt for others.

His groundbreaking study of the German Revolution of 1918-23 (The Lost Revolution, 1982) influenced many young revolutionaries, including myself, who were inspired by the German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg but knew little about the real experience of this revolution and its relationship to the Russian Revolution of 1917. His essay

Chris’ first-hand account of the period of struggle in the late 1960s and early 1970s in The Fire Last Time (1988) is a unique resource for students and workers inspired by that history today. In A People’s History of the World (1999), he takes on an even more sweeping scope than Howard Zinn, and through a Marxist lens.

For so many socialists around the world, including Canada, Chris’ writing provided a constant source of ideas and a sure guide to action when the path was not always clear before us.

The Prophet and the Proletariat (1994) was a pioneering Marxist study of political Islam that helped lay the theoretical foundation for the critical and pivotal role the International Socialists in Canada have been able to play in challenging Islamophobia in the wake of 9/11. His book Explaining the Crisis (1983) was foundational for a generation of revolutionaries grappling with capitalism’s return to crisis after the long boom, and with the difficulties of reckoning with a downturn in workers’ struggles.

Zombie Capitalism

‘For so many socialists around the world, Chris’ writings provided a constant source of ideas and a sure guide to action when the path was not always clear before us’

The excitement with which people have responded to Chris’ latest book, Zombie Capitalism, published earlier this year, reveals what an incredible debt we owe him for helping to arm a new generation of revolutionaries with an analysis of the key questions of our time.

Personally, I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Harman recently, at the founding conference of France’s New Anti-Capitalist Party in Paris in February of this year. Although he spoke no French, he was there to witness the event and introduced me to a variety of people involved in building and supporting a new, broadbased revolutionary party in France.

For me, it is a fitting memory of someone who represented the best of the experience of 1968, when France led the way in a watershed year of struggle that redefined the political landscape.

Most importantly, 1968 created a generation of revolutionaries, a few of whom kept its lessons alive for those of us who came later, and for this we are grateful beyond words.

LEFT JAB

REVIEWS

John Bell

Harper to new immigrants: welcome to the madhouse

2012 and climate change: off screen, real disaster looms Film H 2012 H Directed by Roland Emmerich H Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet and Chiwetel Ejiofor H Reviewed by Jesse McLaren The disaster movie 2012 appeals to our fears about climate change, but through amazing visuals gets the audience to identify with elites who would rather watch the vast majority of humanity perish than give up their power.

While the director’s previous disaster movie was about the dangers of global warming, 2012 retreats into mysticism and pseudo-science. Though still appealing to people’s fears about climate change, the plot locates global warming as a combination of ancient prophecy and solar flares.

More than this, ecological crisis is presented as a discrete event to be survived, not as a process to be averted or changed.

While the audience is pulled in by a disaster similar to global warming, the starting premise is that it is something inevitable, about which people can do nothing but run.

This is obviously the point of disaster movies, but when millions are mobilizing against corporations and states that are destroying the planet, 2012 turns re-

ality on its head and presents the earth itself as the enemy, and the elites of the world as our only salvation.

This is only the beginning of the movie and its problems. When a scientist tells G8 leaders of looming catastrophe, their solution is to keep it secret from everyone else, use cheap Chinese labour to build arcs to withstand the waves, and sell limited tickets to billionaires.

It’s survival of the richest.

Here the familiar right-wing argument about “limited resources”—usually used to justify cuts to social services—is taken to the extreme, where the vast majority of humanity must die, and die horribly, so that a few may survive.

This would certainly be the approach of those in power in an acute disaster, but the danger of the movie is how it mobilizes the audience to identify with the interests and strategy of our rulers. The special effects are breathtaking (though disaster movie fans have been disappointed that so many scenes were taken from other movies) but the problem is how the

scale of ecological collapse is used to justify indifference to human suffering.

The director wipes out vast swathes of humanity, and seems to take particular pleasure in toppling religious structures and communities trying to seek a collective solution through their faith. The movie’s attack on collective solutions also comes through a systematic killing of all individuals showing signs of altruism, the message being that only the most self-centered will survive.

Not only do ordinary people have no positive role in preventing or dealing with catastrophe, they are presented as obstacles. Pursued by the crumbling earth, John Cusack and his family use his private vehicle to dodge their fellow citizens—dying en masse—in their quest to find the arcs.

To top it off, the movie also kills all elderly people in some sick argument about utilitarianism, and the only comic relief comes in the form of racist stereotypes.

This movie is a disaster.

Canadian Labour International Film Festival a success by kim koyama

Toronto has become a city of film festivals. We have festivals focusing solely on documentaries, on the LGBT community, and many on specific ethnic communities. And now we have the Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLiFF).

The struggles of workers—which involve working conditions, workers’ rights, health and safety, sexism, and racism, just for starters—can be found in all corners of the world.

While the details may differ, workers can learn from the triumphs and defeats of others, whether on the other side of the world or in a neighbouring town.

And aside from travelling and seeing the evidence with one’s own eyes, nothing is more effective than film to educate, raise awareness, and serve as a rallying cry to support one another.

The inaugural CLiFF kicked off with Six Weeks of Solidarity, about the 1919 Winnipeg general strike. This short film documented an important part of Canada’s history and, sadly, what governments and big business will do to try to stifle dissent, protests, and strikes.

This film was appropriately followed

by Hold the Line, about the 2009 CUPE

strike in Windsor and the current attack on pensions.

Another standout was Poor No More, dealing with issues of minimum wage, maternity leave, sick days, and the proof that a better world is possible. Poor No More compared the situation in Canada with that of Ireland and Sweden.

Another newly completed film shown at the fest was the feature length You, Me & the SPP: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule. Aside from dissecting this important issue and showing its negative impact on democracy and human rights, this film covers the use at Montebello of police agent provocateurs—something that should be fresh in the memories and provoke outrage among all Canadians.

Other Canadian films included: Los Mexicanos: The Struggle for Justice of Patricia Perez (migrant farm workers in Quebec); 24 Days in Brooks (a successful strike at Canada’s largest meatpacking plant by a largely immigrant workforce); Justice for All? (low-income workers and a woefully inadequate legal aid system); and Dear John (documenting the impacts on a small city as it loses its main industry).

CLiFF’s international coverage included films from Palestine and Israel,

the US, Indonesia, Pakistan and more.

Perhaps most disturbing was Who Killed Chea Vichea? A film documenting the murder of a champion of the Cambodian labour movement, whose death seemed to have been a warning and deterrent to a labour-friendly political party by the corrupt ruling party, and the framing of two innocent men to appease an international outcry over the murder.

On a happier note, CLiFF’s audienceaward winner was Tanaka-san will not do Calisthenics, about a Tokyo man who was fired for refusing to take part in daily morning exercises in his office.

During the film, Tanaka invites viewers to visit him. Some of the viewers of this film at the festival are planning to do just that, to help his case by lodging complaints with his former employer.

All the films were free and followed by audience discussion. CLiFF’s founder, Frank Saptel, a dedicated board of directors, and a small body of volunteers have created a significant and successful event. Aside from the week-long event in Toronto, the inaugural fest is truly panCanadian, traveling to more than 50 cities in every province, and even in one location in the US. For more information, visit the festival website at www.labourfilms.ca.

There he sat at the Commonwealth Conference, while speaker after speaker— including the Queen— slammed his environmental policies. Stephen Harper tried to play it cool, smiling for the cameras with all the warmth and charm of Darth Vader.

But face it, when the Queen of England outflanks you to the left, you are officially, certifiably, a right-wing ratbag.

I mean Tory knobs like MP Gerald Keddy, who went on a rant about the unemployed because he had to resort to migrant labour to harvest his Christmas tree farm. Keddy called them “all those no-good bastards sitting on the sidewalk in Halifax that can’t get work.”

Not only did they turn down his offer to live in a hut and work for minimum wage, but they missed their chance to bring Christmas joy to all the good little girls and boys.

Keddy was forced to apologize. After all, the “no-good bastard” rate in Halifax consistently ran about 10 per cent before the economy went in the crapper, and there just aren’t that many Christmas trees. If only we could invent another annual holiday celebrated by killing a tree­—murder a maple for Canada Day—we could get those bums off the street.

You might recall Keddy made headlines a few months back, for pioneering the deployment of economic stimulus funds by way of giant cardboard novelty cheques with the Tory logo on them. We can all sleep well knowing our tax dollars help Keddy buy votes in his riding.

Then there is Tory MP Maurice Vellacott from Saskatoon who applauded local doctors for restricting access to abortion services. He told the press that abortion is “part of a male agenda to have women more sexually available.” The report didn’t mention if there were any other safe, legal medical procedures he was happy to see taken from Saskatchewan women.

Vellacott is just one Tory among many, busy rewriting our nation’s history. Who knew all those crusading women who led the fight for abortion rights through the 1970s and ‘80s were just puppets in the hands of horny men?

Despite our repeated refusal to grant them the mandate of a parliamentary majority, Canada is being remade in the image of Harper, Keddy, Vellacott and the rest of the Tories.

Re-writing history

Harper and his Immigration Minister Jason Kenney have literally rewritten our history, or at least the history lesson that new immigrants have to study to pass their citizenship test.

Gone are references to the Canadian “tradition” of neutrality, diplomacy and peacekeeping in the former new immigrants handbook.

Instead there is long lesson about Canada’s glorious military history, starting with the jolly imperialist slaughter that was WWI. Repeated is the old nonsense about how Canada didn’t truly become a nation until its military “victory” at the battle of Vimy Ridge.

Nothing like over 10,000 casualties (a third of the Canadian force) in an afternoon to put you on the map.

Conveniently left out are some other interesting historical tidbits from our WWI history; like how correspondence from the trenches reveal the Germans to be a poor third on the list of enemies, after the inescapable lice and our own pampered, upper-class officers; or like how Canadian Forces repeatedly mutinied over poor food and conditions, and after being left in miserable camps for months after the end of the war.

It seems that Canadian rulers were concerned that returning soldiers would bring back the plague of Bolshevism, contracted from their Russian comrades in arms. In fact, that’s just what happened, leading to the great labour struggles of 1919, epitomized by the Winnipeg General Strike (an event oddly omitted from Harper’s history lesson).

As Shakespeare (who even Harper must admit was not Canadian) wrote: “Past is prologue”. Inclusion of happy war stories from a sanitized past prepares acceptance for militaristic adventures in the present and future.

So Afghanistan becomes a peacekeeping mission, not a war for oil, not a senseless occupation wasting our blood and treasure, and not a human rights nightmare where Canadian military and civilian officials knowingly participate in the torture of innocent civilians.

Environment

Gone too is that tedious section from the old book called “Protecting the Environment– Sustainable Development”, and no wonder. It contained non-Tory ideas such as: “The Canadian government is committed to the goal of sustainable development, which means economic growth that is environmentally sound.”

Instead, Alberta’s “oil sands” do rate a mention or two.

And references to “multiculturalism” seem to have been left on the cutting room floor. There is a list of Canadian “heroes” and sports stars, but nary a mention of Maher Arar or other victims of the rabid “war on terror”.

The immigrant’s handbook extols Canada’s democracy and freedoms. Just a few days ago Amy Goodman, US journalist and host of the widely respected radio program Democracy Now! was detained for hours and intimidated at the Canadian border, for fear she might say something negative about the forthcoming Olympic Games.

In the past, new immigrants often chose Canada as a haven from war and environmental destruction. The new and improved, Harperized Canada promises war without end, and a growing reputation as the world’s worst environmental citizen.

Maybe Harper and Kenney hope they read only Tory-sanctioned literature, like their guidebook and the National Post, and not any real newspapers. If they do, and try to reconcile the guidebook’s happy talk with an increasingly ugly reality, they might think they’ve stumbled into a madhouse.

December 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.

Socialism for the 21st Century

One-day conference Sat, Jan 30, 12pm University of Toronto Info: 416-972-6391 Organized by the UofT International Socialists Club

Socialism and workers’ power

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.

peace & justice events TORONTO

December 6 massacre candlelight vigil

Sun, Dec 6, 6pm Philosopher’s Walk at Bloor and Avenue

2010: Year of resistance by our Indigenous Nations

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 December 2009

20 years since the Montreal massacre

Violence against women is still with us today by faline bobier

It has been 20 years since the Montreal Massacre, December 6, 1989, when Marc Lépine entered an engineering class at L’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, separated the women from the men, and then murdered 14 women with a semi-automatic rifle.

Lépine, in addition to killing the young engineering students, had a “hit list” of an additional 19 women he identified as feminists, including the first female fire-fighter in Quebec, the first female police captain, a president of a trade union, a sports radio host, the immigration minister at the time, a prominent journalist, as well as a transition house worker.

The massacre, rather than being just a random attack by a madman, was an expression of attitudes toward women that are still with us today.

A continuing reality

Robert Pickton—charged with 27 counts of first-degree murder of sex workers in Vancouver—should serve as a constant reminder of the seriousness of violence against women.

There are over 500 missing Aboriginal women across Canada.

Between 1961 and 2004 there were 873 spousal homicides in Canada in which the chargeable suspect committed suicide. Ninety-seven per cent of those killed were women. The majority of victims of spousal violence continue to be females, accounting for 83 per cent of victims. Spousal violence is twice as common between current partners (legally married or common-law) as ex-partners.

Accounting for nearly two-thirds of offences, common assault was the most frequent type of spousal violence according to police-reported data, followed by major assault, uttering threats and criminal harassment or stalking.

Results from the 2008 Transition Home Survey (THS) indicate that admissions of women and children to the 569 shelters across Canada exceeded 101,000 during the 12-month period from April 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008. While about one-quarter of the women were in shelters for reasons such as housing or addiction problems, three-quarters were there to escape an abusive situation.

Similar to previous years, the 2008

THS indicates that about two-thirds (65 per cent) of all women in shelters (regardless of whether or not escaping physical abuse was the primary reason for their stay) were there to escape psychological abuse, while more than half had fled physical violence (55 per cent).

Over 2,200 women who used shelters to escape abuse had children.

About 70 per cent of these women brought their dependent children with them to the shelter. Of the nearly 2,900 children accompanying mothers fleeing abuse to shelters, more than two-thirds (69 per cent) were under the age of 10.

Recently, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched a Network of Men Leaders to act as role models in the global campaign to end the “pandemic” of violence against women.

Ban said it is unacceptable that about 70 per cent of women experience some form of physical or sexual violence from men—“the majority from their husbands, intimate partners or someone they know.”

At least 700,000 women are sold into prostitution a year. Violence against women ranks as the fourth leading cause of premature death in the world, ranking behind only disease, hunger and war.

Despite this worldwide recognition, there is a continuing gap between political commitment and adequate resources. A recent poll commissioned

by Amnesty International in the UK revealed shocking ignorance about the experience and extent of violence against women. The number of recorded rapes in the UK totalled over 12,000 in the year 2004-5—and estimates suggest only 15 per cent of rapes are even reported.

We are clearly not living in a society that respects women and girls.

‘Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has unapologetically attacked Canadian women’s fight for equality’

In the same survey more than a quarter of people interviewed held that the woman is at least partly responsible for being raped if she was wearing “revealing clothing” or was drunk.

Stephen Harper

On the political level, especially with the current federal government, we can see the need not just to remember the dead, but to fight for equality for the living.

Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has unapologetically attacked Canadian women’s fight for equality. In fact, the mandate for Status of Women Canada (SWC) has been drastically changed under the Harper government, with the word “equality” being removed and replaced with “participation”.

Harper and his government maintain that fighting for women’s equality is no longer necessary. Funding to Status of Women was cut by 40 per cent, with the terms and conditions once used by equality-seeking women’s groups changed to prevent funding going to groups for lobbying, advocacy or research.

Although women make up slightly more than half of all voters in Canada, women are far from equally represented in Parliament. Not to mention that when women do gain access to these very male dominated spaces, they can be openly referred to by sexist and derogatory names by the likes of Defence Minister Peter MacKay— apparently without repercussions.

Women’s movement

In the 1970s, trade unions developed policies on sexual harassment and domestic violence, legitimizing discussion and establishing that women had a right to go to work free from fear and abuse. The labour movement also fought for paid maternity leave, abortion rights and pay equity policies. This represented a big step forward in the fight for women’s equality.

The statistics reported in this article are only the tip of the iceberg.

Women’s oppression is a continuing reality 20 years since the Montreal massacre. Today we still need to ask the question: “How can we end violence against women?”

Next issue: “Can we win a world free of sexual violence?”

Holiday Sale! 20% off! Dec. 12&19, 12-3pm

RESISTANCE PRESS BOOK ROOM

427 Bloor Street West, suite 202, Toronto | 416.972.6391

Sat, Dec 5, 7pm Bird Carnegie Reading room, Victoria College 95 Charles St W Speakers: Alaina Tom & Sharon Sanchez Organized by the Women’s Coordinating Committee Chile-Canada

Canada’s first 9/11 rendition to torture: An evening to mark International Human Rights Day

Wed, Dec 9, 7:15pm Steelworker Hall, 25 Cecil St Speakers: Benamar Benatta, Marina Nemat & Nicole Chrolavicius Organized by Amnesty International, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, Toronto Action for Social Change, and the Centre for Integrated AntiRacism Studies (OISE)

OTTAWA

Confronting the ‘war on terror’: No security without human rights

Thurs, Dec 10, 7pm Ottawa Public Library 120 Metcalfe Speakers: Denis Lemelin, Roch Tassé & Mike Larsen Organized by Ottawa Center NDP, ROCG & NO WAR-PAIX

Vigil for a real deal to stop climate change

Sat, Dec 12, 6pm Human Rights Monument at Elgin and Laurier

Planet First People First Seal the deal in Copenhagen

Sat Dec 12 3pm Earth Sciences Bldg 33 Willcocks St University of Toronto Indoor rally with LIVE FEED from Copenhagen; speakers; music; video and more Organized by the Toronto Climate Campaign

torontoclimatecampaign.org

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 CF61 UPDATE

STICKING WITH THE UNION

DROP FEES RALLY

Carolyn Egan

by steve craig

The CF61, in their fight to reinstate their jobs, is continuing to build solidarity with organized labour and apply increasing pressure on Cadillac Fairview, as they await the hearing dates and the corporation’s final disclosure of documents before the Labour Relations Board.

The group of 61 workers at Toronto’s Dominion Centre, who were illegally locked out and fired by Cadillac Fairview, has found incredible support from other groups in the labour movement, as all seem to recognize the issues being faced as their own.

The November 12 CUPE rally was a major success with representatives from almost every Ontario union united behind the CF61. The CF61 picket line also received exposure and support as the OFL convention met in late November. Hundreds of OFL delegates marched from the Sheraton Hotel to the Toronto Dominion Centre and without warning shut down the parking entrances to the building, raising the profile and level of fightback on the picket line.

Calls for solidarity from the CF61 have been met with enthusiasm and action that is putting public pressure on Cadillac Fairview.

Cadillac Fairview’s business partners at the Toronto Dominion Centre are now being asked to support the workers and examine their own social responsibility and code of conduct policies. The stakes are high as they realize that their companies’ reputations are being impacted by the actions of those they work with.

uoft sessionals by chantal sundaram Over 1,000 sessional faculty who perform 30 per cent of the teaching at the University of Toronto—members of CUPE Local 3902—ratified a deal made in the eleventh hour before a strike deadline in November.

The key issues were job security, wages and professional support. Sessional faculty must reapply for jobs each term and are grossly underpaid. These teachers, most of whom have PhDs, must also conduct research to remain current in their teaching field at their own expense at Canada’s wealthiest university.

The bargaining campaign used the slogan “Not all your ‘professors’ are Professors” and highlighted the casualization of university teaching, which has only increased as tuition fees have skyrocketed at UofT and across Canada.

The near-strike resulted in a deal that includes the beginnings of job security for long-serving sessionals, a new fund to offset professional expenses and academic conference travel, and wage increases to the majority of 3, 3 and 3.3 per cent.

The support of UofT students, other campus trade unions, and full-time faculty was key, as was NDP support and a solidarity picket by Toronto Steelworkers in front of the UofT Administration building during negotiations.

Workers face ‘jobless recovery’

November 5 – Students across Ontario rally to demand a drop in tuition fees as part of the Poverty-Free Ontario campaign. PHOTO: CHARLOTTE IRELAND

STUDENT PROTEST COULD SAVE DISABILITY PROGRAM

by PETER HOGARTH and MELISSA GRAHAM Organized opposition from students forced University of Toronto administration to offer a contract extension to the head of the Disability Studies program.

The decision not to extend the contract of renowned Disability Studies educator Dr. Rod Michalko, with no plans

CN STRIKE ENDS

by JESSE McLAREN On December 2, striking CN locomotive engineers reached a tentative deal to end a threeday strike.

The engineers, members of the Teamsters, have been without a contract since December 21, 2008 and undergoing mediator-assisted negotiations. But the company unilaterally imposed a 1.5 per cent wage increase and 500 miles per month increase in distance caps.

This would require some engineers to work seven days a week with no time off, and also cause layoffs.

The company was trying to use non-union staff to keep the trains going while they hoped for the government to put an end to the strike.

VALE INCO STRIKE

to replace him, meant the effective removal of a Disability Studies program at the University of Toronto. Michalko has been a professor at UofT for the past three years and has given students the opportunity to study disability as a sociopolitical phenomenon through critical inquiry, lecture and discussion.

However, a prompt response from students opposing the

OFL CONVENTION CUPE’s Sid Ryan and USW’s Marie Kelly were acclaimed respectively as Presidentelect and Secretary-Treasurer-elect at the Ontario Federation of Labour’s tenth biennial convention that took place from November 23 to 27 at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto.

Over 1,000 delegates came together to discuss resolutions on a wide-range of issues, including the need to fight back against attacks on public sector workers, to develop a comprehensive good green jobs strategy, and to build meaningful solidarity between unions and between labour and community.

About $100,000 was raised for unions on strike or lock-out, and throughout

the week a number of solidarity actions took place: supporting the SEIU “justice for janitors” campaign, supporting the CF61 workers, rallying against the corporate headquarters of Vale Inco and celebrating Sheraton Centre workers (members of UNITE HERE Local 75) winning subsidized transit passes— a true green jobs victory.

The most moving keynote addresses came from Afghan MP Malalai Joya calling for foreign troops to be withdrawn, and members of the Attawapaskat First Nation denouncing the federal government’s failure to build a proper school facility after their old one was contaminated by an oil spill 30 years ago.

HUNGER STRIKER HOSPITALIZED

by Jesse mclaren

by Amelia murphy-beaudoin

As the strike by 3,500 Sudbury steelworkers enters its sixth month, solidarity continues to grow.

Locally, the strike against mining giant Vale Inco has produced legal battles. Admitting it is losing $7 million a day because of the strike, Vale Inco is suing United Steelworkers Local 6500 and 19 for picket line delays. Meanwhile, the union has taken the company to the Ontario Labour Relations Board over Vale Inco’s use of office workers to do the jobs of striking miners.

Globally, Inco workers have launched an international campaign that has generated solidarity messages from miners in Brazil, Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia.

According to Ken Neumann, USW’s National Director for Canada, “Our battle is receiving global support and our campaign against Vale’s aggression is gaining momentum as we build alliances with working people and communities on every continent.”

Mohammad Mahjoub, who has been detained for over nine years at “Guantanamo North” without charge under a security certificate, was hospitalized in Kingston on November 26, on the 179th day of a liquids-only hunger strike.

Weeks before the hospitalization, medical

For more information, visit www.fairdealnow.ca.

cuts quickly made UofT renege and extend a contract offer to Michalko. Although this is a huge victory for students, the program’s future remains in jeopardy.

With UofT administration attempting to push through cuts to staff and resources to Disability Studies and the Arts and Science program, it is evident how important it is for students to organize resistance.

professionals sounded the alarm, warning Minister of Public Safety Peter van Loan that, “we have serious reasons to believe that Mr. Mahjoub will die or, at minimum, be permanently impaired if he remains on hunger strike much longer”. Despite these urgent warnings, the government has not taken action.

LIBRARY WORKERS RATIFY COLLECTIVE AGREEMENT

by Jonathon hodge After weeks of public activity and months of negotiations, members of CUPE Local 4948 ratified a new collective agreement that sees gains in secure full-time employment and new benefits for part-time employees.

At a time when Toronto municipal workers struck this past summer to fight back concessions, Toronto Public Library (TPL) workers initiated a public campaign to organize popular support for secure full-time jobs across the library system. That campaign saw tangible results, bringing pressure on the employ-

er, through letters, emails and public information pickets at libraries across the city. Combined with strong bargaining, the TPL board settled with four days of negotiations remaining before the strike deadline.

The agreement sees contracting back in of custodial staff, significant improvements in the conditions of one division of employees, as well as language that secures union members rights in the event of organization-wide changes in service hours.

The lessons of effective organization, galvanizing public support and a strong strike mandate will not be lost of workers members in the future.

As I walked into the Steelworker Hall a few weeks ago, I ran into a plant union president who had just gotten the news: his workplace was shutting down. He was visibly upset and had a look of disbelief on his face. “You never think it’s going to happen to you”, he said.

I’ve shaken too many hands of men and women who have gone through the same. Almost 50 workplaces in the Toronto Steelworkers have shutdown in the past few years.

More members will now be added to the list of over 6,500 who have joined the ranks of the unemployed.

The union has a Job Action Centre where laid-off workers can go to apply for retraining programs, get resumés written up, take computer training courses and take advantage of a whole range of other support services.

As important as it is, it is still only a band-aid solution to a much larger problem.

Unemployment

Jobs are not easy to come by with the official unemployment rate at 10 per cent in Toronto and the unofficial rate probably somewhere around 20 per cent. The manufacturing sector has been ravaged and good paying jobs are a thing of the past for most of these women and men.

Unemployment Insurance (EI), which was a hard-won gain of the labour movement, has also been gutted over the years. The number of weeks needed to qualify has increased, and the amount and length of benefits has decreased.

Both Liberal and Conservative governments have seen the surplus in EI as there for the taking, ruthlessly increasing the suffering of those who are out of work.

The federal government has callously left the working class out

to dry during this recession, making only minor adjustments to a seriously flawed program in response to cross country protests.

They are now talking about a recovery with “green shoots”. However, for the working class in this country, if there is any recovery at all, it’s “a jobless recovery”. The ranks of the unemployed are continuing to grow, and more and more are getting their lay-off notices.

Fightback

Unfortunately, the level of working class fightback has been low, with notable exceptions such as the municipal strike in Toronto and the Vale Inco miners who have been out since July in a tough fight against concessions.

Over 1,000 US Steelworkers have also been locked-out for months because they would not accept clawbacks.

But there have been no large-scale fightbacks, and although groups like the Progressive Moulded Plastics workers outside of Toronto barricaded their plant for days, and a number Steel and CAW plants have had occupations, there have been no sustained actions against the employers or the federal or provincial governments.

Groups like “Workers without Jobs”, which was formed by laid-off Steelworkers, has joined with others in fighting for EI reforms. They have been involved in a number of rallies and demonstrations. Recently, meetings have taken place between representatives of unions in Ontario and Quebec hoping to ramp-up the fight around EI and spark a larger pan-Canadian fightback.

This is an issue that won’t go away. Labour leaders have to give leadership on a “Fix EI” campaign that would have resonance across the country.

Join the International Socialists Name: Address: City/Province: Phone: E-mail: Mail: P.O. Box 339, Station E, Toronto, ON M6H 4E3 E-mail: membership@socialist.ca / Tel: 416.972.6391 December 2009 Socialist Worker 11

TORTURE COVER-UP HARPER’S SHAME by paul stevenson The Harper government is complicit in war crimes.

The testimony of Canadian diplomat to Afghanistan Richard Colvin, has exposed that the Tories not only knew about the torture of Afghan detainees but that they explicitly told him to cover up the allegations.

The parliamentary inquiry will descend into who-knewwhat-and-when accusations, with the Conservatives using every trick to ensure the paper trail is not exposed.

There is no credibility to the assertion that the memos didn’t circulate to the Conservative Cabinet ministers, but it will be difficult to get to the bottom of this through an inquiry where the ruling party has the ability to block the evidence in the name of national security.

However, the question remains: how could the Conservatives not have known torture was widespread in Afghanistan?

Peter MacKay has repeatedly said that they have not received credible evidence of torture. There have been hundreds of reports from the Red Cross, Amnesty International, the Afghan Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Watch and the Law School at NYU, which have all documented pervasive abuse of Afghan civilians.

The Tories must have known about these reports. They would have had to bury their collective heads in the sand to miss these facts.

They obviously knew about some of the torture or they would not have highlighted their revised detainee trans-

fer agreement so extensively when it was signed. Unfortunately, this revised agreement has done nothing to stop the torture of detainees.

According to the Red Cross, it can take weeks before they are informed that a transfer has taken place under the new agreement.

This is mainly due to an inefficient and bureaucratic arrangement requiring that multiple departments authorize the transfer information before it is sent to the Red Cross.

A lot can happen in a matter of a few weeks. Indeed, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission has detailed the abuse of detainees and they say that despite transfer agreements (the Dutch and British also have them in place) more than 98.5 per cent of detainees are still being tortured.

Many of those being tortured are innocent people.

Even the Afghan jailers themselves say that they never really know if someone detained is Taliban or simply a farmer caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The widespread use of torture by the Afghan government was confirmed by Afghan MP Malalai Joya during her recent speaking tour across Canada. Joya spoke of the preponderence of warlords and human rights abusers in Karzai’s parliament, saying, “Torture, drug trafficking, the continued rule of warlords and fundamentalists—these are the only things that this war has brought Afghans.”

The only way to ensure that Canada doesn’t continue to send innocent Afghans to torture is to bring the troops home now.

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MALALAI JOYA SPEAKS OUT Malalai Joya speaks to a crowd of 600 in Toronto.

PHOTO: CHARLOTTE IRELAND

‘Democracy never comes by occupation’ by paul stevenson Former Afghan MP and anti-war activist Malalai Joya has wrapped up a cross-Canada tour.

Malalai was able to speak to more than 6,000 people in 15 events over 16 days. On top of that she gave a number of high profile interviews and met with dozens of politicians, senators, MPs and city councilors during her trip.

Malalai has brought a new life to the anti-war movement in Canada and through her new book

A Woman Among Warlords has been able to clarify the situation in Afghanistan under the thumb of the NATO supported warlordled government.

The myths that surround the war in Afghanistan— that we are there for democracy and women’s rights—are laid bare when she is able to describe the horrendous situation for most average Afghans.

Women still live under the rule of a “photocopy” of the Taliban. Poverty and oppression are made worse as the warlords and the

Taliban get stronger with each new deployment of NATO troops.

One particularly poignant moment was when Malalai spoke to the 1,000 assembled delegates at the Ontario Federation of Labour convention and described the devastation in her hometown when two Canadian-made bombs were dropped killing 150 civilians. The cries of shame from the audience brought home the real impact of Canada’s war.

With Barack Obama announcing that tens of

thousands more troops will be sent to Afghanistan, we in Canada will have to multiply our efforts to end Canadian support for this tragedy. Malalai has made a huge impact on developing the movement required to do just that.

“Having spoken to big public meetings in cities right across this country, it is clear that the Canadian people are fed up with their government’s policy in Afghanistan. Let’s raise our voices together to end this unjust and devastating war.”

Green jobs conference inspires hundreds by pam johnson Over 650 trade unionists, environmentalists, social justice activists and young people gathered in Toronto November 7 to discuss their vision for creating a green economy.

The organizers, the Good Jobs For All Coalition, are a broad labour-community alliance formed a year ago to fight for workers’ rights in the wake of the economic crisis. The coalition decided to address the threat of climate change that has seen so little movement from our politicians and the Harper government.

The enduring message at the conference was that crises of the environment and the economy are not separate issues

that can be addressed in isolation. Rather, both can be solved by creating a sustainable green economy with good jobs, lifting people out of poverty.

Conference speaker Peter Tabuns, Toronto MPP and former Executive Director of Greenpeace, cited a recent study that said up to one million trades jobs could be created if every home in Canada was retrofitted to make it more energy efficient.

Rosemarie Powell, Assistant Executive Director of the Jane-Finch Family and Community Centre said “it is employment that is viable, that allows every family to sustain themselves and that contributes significantly to protecting the environment.”

Powell brought a number

of youth to the conference who have been participating in a Green Anti-Poverty Coalition and other initiatives in their neighbourhood.

Inclusion and environmental justice was a theme that featured prominently throughout the conference.

Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network called for people “to deepen our understanding of how industrialization has damaged our relationship to the earth as well as the systems of oppression that have kept us from coming together, such as race, class and gender power dynamics.”

John Cartwright, President of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council emphasized how the collective effort of commun-

ity and trade union activists has already brought results, “we brought together an amazing coalition of youth, immigrant, and community organizations and others to force the Ontario government to raise the minimum wage 28 per cent over three years.”

The conference is a model for the kind of organizing across many sectors that will be required to transform the economy.

This transformation would not only create a green economy. It would also challenge the foundations of capitalism that have created the economic and environmental disasters that we face today.

For more information, visit www.goodjobsforall.ca.