Socialist Worker 521

www.socialist.ca

$2 no. 521 August 2010

Documents reveal horror in Afghanistan

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW

by JOHN BELL

THE RELEASE of US military documents at the end of July reveals the brutality of the war and occupation in Afghanistan.

The over 91,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports expose indiscriminate killings, murder of civilians at checkpoints, in the streets, in their homes and on protests against the occupation.

Documents also detail a secret “black” unit of special forces that hunts down suspected Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial; the increased use of the deadly Reaper drones; the shooting of unarmed civilians; and put the amount the US has spent on the war at $300 billion.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. It will take months to sift through the thousands of pages.

The NATO powers and their Afghan figurehead, Hamid Karzai, emerged from a July conference in Kabul calling for an extension of the war and occupation until 2014.

Kabul is supposed to be the NATO stronghold in Afganistan, but insurgent rocket attacks disrupted Karzai’s opening address and forced the airport to close, preventing some NATO delegates from arriving in time.

Violence and insurgent attacks have risen sharply. The number of IED attacks is up 97 per cent over last year. Assassinations of Afghan officials collaborating with NATO are up 45 per cent.

Barack Obama and his supporters claim that things have changed since he became US president last year. But this is a cruel lie. The slaughter in Afghanistan is getting worse, not better.

The sacking of military commanders—US General Stanley McChrystal for open disrespect towards Obama’s leadership, Canadian Brigadier General Daniel Menard for

improper sexual behaviour—reveals confusion and broken morale that goes to the top.

Karzai boasts he will be ready to assume control of security by 2014.

In reality his government, such as it is, is riddled with corruption. He wouldn’t last long without NATO troops to prop him up.

Although Stephen Harper and his Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon are sticking to the script, repeating that 2011 is their withdrawal date, they are content to let others prepare the ground for continuing Canada’s military misadventure to

2014, in a new disguise.

Liberal spokesman Bob Rae calls for Canadian troops to remain beyond 2011. “[T]he Liberal Party has made it clear that we support a continuing non-combat commitment by Canada as part of the broad UN effort to sustain a stable, effective government in Afghanistan. This commitment can include a role in training the Afghan army and police, as well as support for other institutions of government…”

The fact that insurgents could attack the conference in the capital reveals that the Taliban enjoys massive support among the civilian population. In such circumstances, all forms of occupation must involve combat and casualties.

And in hushed voices, NATO leaders admit that even the 2014 exit date is pure fiction. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after the conference: “We will not leave Afghanistan until we know for sure that the Afghans can take care of their own security.”

No real exit strategy. No clearly defined goals or objectives to justify the war. And through it all the insurgency grows stronger militarily and politically. There is only one rational response to this horrific disaster: bring the troops home now.

Ontario Liberals trying rob workers to pay for corporate tax cuts

by PETER HOGARTH The Ontario government wants workers to pay to reduce the deficit and subsidize corporate profits.

With its deficit projected at $21.3 billion, the Liberal government’s March budget focused on debt reduction. The McGuinty Liberals decided to put essential public transit expansion on hold

and cut food assistance to the disabled, as well as impose a two-year wage freeze on 350,000 non-unionized public sector workers. Now the government wants to extend the freeze to unionized workers as well.

In July at a meeting with Ontario’s labour leaders, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan unveiled an austerity program designed to place the burden of

paying for Ontario’s deficit on the backs of the province’s public sector. The government’s austerity plan, which intends to cut public sector salaries by the rate of inflation, is the government’s response to international calls for fiscal conservancy by G20 leaders following the June Summit.

Wage growth is already lagging behind inflation, as Ontario saw a 1.6 per cent growth in

inflation while the average wage rose only 0.8 per cent over the past year. The Ontario government’s attempt to freeze public sector wages for two years at 0 per cent will only widen the gap between inflation and pay, resulting in a significant reduction in real wages for workers of the province.

>>page 2

S ’ E P O R EU F O R E SUMM E C N A T S I RES 7 & 6 s e g a P

Harper prepares for more war Page 3 Bradley Hughes on the recent massive military spending

Thai government crackdown Page 4 Edward Roué on the fight for democracy

Strategy, tactics & resistance Page 5 Ritch Whyman on the fight against Harper’s austerity measures

Building union solidarity Page 11 Carolyn Egan on the critical fight to save pensions

Analyzing the global economy Page 8 Are we heading for a double-dip recession?

Gulf of Oil Page 10 Melissa Graham covers BP’s Russian roulette with our planet

CPMA No. 58554253-99 ISSN No. 0836-7094

G20 UPDATE

HST fight continues in BC

Greenpeace activists are occupying Enbridge’s office in downtown Vancouver, demanding the pipeline giant withdraw its Northern Gateway Pipelines application. The action comes two days after an Enbridge pipeline running from Griffith, Ind. to Sarnia, Ont. spilled more than three million litres of crude oil into a creek leading to the Kalamazoo River in southwest Michigan. PHOTO: GREENPEACE / TANYA ROSS

Protesters still face charges

by IAN BEECHING

by AMELIA MURPHY-BEAUDOIN

Combining GST and PST, the HST shifts the tax burden onto consumers adding tax to things such as household utilities, vitamins, over-the-counter drugs, taxis, restaurant meals and haircuts, hitting seniors and low income families the hardest.

OVER 1,100 people were arrested at the G20 in Toronto—the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

Most were released without being charged after being held in deplorable conditions at a temporary jail set up for protesters. The G20 arrests were illegal and unconstitutional because police did not have reasonable grounds that those arrested had committed a crime or were planning to do so.

Police aggressively arrested peaceful protesters, bystanders and journalists while they allowed the streets of Toronto to burn.

Several passersby who were arrested spoke publicly about their experience, stating that they weren’t protesters before, but as a result of the police actions, they are protesters now.

People were arrested for breaking fake laws (ie.

That anyone within 5 meters of the security fence that refused to show ID would be arrested), and even the charges were fake in most cases, mysteriously disappearing shortly after the G20.

Over 300 people still face criminal prosecutions, and most have been released on bail ranging from $5,000 to $140,000 with strict conditions.

We need to continue to build solidarity and support for those who still face charges, and those who have been traumatized by police brutality. We must continue to mobilize resistance in our communities.

For more information, visit www.movementdefence.org.

Police targetted Québecois

by JESSICA SQUIRES ON JULY 13, Québec solidaire MNA Amir Khadir paid half of the $10,000 bail for Québec-based activist Jaggi Singh.

Singh was an organizer of transportation and housing for the G20 protests in Toronto in June. He is one of dozens of Québeckers targeted by police.

Police pulled cars over that had Québec license plates and harassed drivers and passengers. In one case, police told the drivers and passengers they were tired of Quebeckers “coming to Toronto and ruining our city”.

On June 27, over 50 activists from Québec were scooped up in an earlymorning raid on the offices of the University of Toronto graduate student union.

As many as two-thirds to three-quarters of the hundreds of activists from Québec may have been arrested; more details are still becoming clear.

This targeting is likely occurring because the last time there was such a successful mobilization in Canada against globalization, with tens of thousands of people marching, it was in Québec City against the FTAA.

Build the fight against the tar sands’ toxic Enbridge pipeline

by VALERIE LANNON THERE IS growing potential for unity and solidarity in the form of opposition to the proposed Enbridge company’s $4.5 billion “Northern Gateway” pipeline that would carry oil from Alberta’s tar sands to BC’s coast.

This opposition can easily combine demands for indigenous justice with environmental rights for all.

And the current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico makes

this opposition all the more timely.

The leading edge of this opposition by First Nations was demonstrated at a summit in June this year organized by the Wet’suwet’en First Nation in BC. The meeting attracted 200 people from ten First Nations.

“This energy summit was a reminder that the tar sands affects us all… we can only protect our lands and waters if we stand together,” said Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief Alphonse Gagnon.

He said the risks of the project are too high, citing the impact of a pipeline spill. The 1,170 km pipeline would carry oil from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat for export to the US western seaboard and to Asia.

At the energy summit, First Nations near the Alberta tar sands expressed concerns over cancer in their community, and representatives of coast First Nations voiced concerns over oil tanker traffic.

“The tycoons expect to

further spread the tar sands poison, putting their lavish desires before our lifestyles and our culture,” said Guujaaw, president of the Council of the Haida Nation.

The summit coincided with protests organized to voice opposition to the Enbridge pipeline as well as to a natural gas project by Kinder Morgan, a North American transportation company that plans to transport natural gas from Alberta to BC using CN Rail lines.

Barrier Lake First Nations blockade turns back Tories

by JOHN BELL

ON JULY 22, protesters from the Barrier Lake Algonquin First Nation set up a road blockade to keep officials from the Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs out of their community.

The bureaucrats were coming to implement the decision of the Tory government to impose Western-style band council elections on a community that doesn’t want them.

2 Socialist Worker August 2010

Barrier Lake is located in Québec, about 300 km due north of Ottawa.

The majority of Barrier Lake Algonquin prefer to follow a traditional form of local self-governance.

Leadership is chosen from people who live in the community and stay connected to the land, so that decisions regarding resource extraction put a priority on the long-term health of the land.

Indian Affairs Minister wants to impose a system that will divide and

weaken the community, clearing the way for the mining industry to get its hands on local resources.

“The Canadian government is trying to forcibly assimilate our customs so they can sever our connection to the land, which is at the heart of our governance system,” says Tony Wawatie, a community spokesperson.

“They don’t want to deal with a strong leadership, selected by community members

who live on the land, that demands that the federal and Québec governments implement the outstanding agreements regarding the exploitation of our lands and resources.”

The peaceful blockade of the access road to their community succeeded in turning back the Indian Affairs officials and their Québec Provincial Police escort.

Activists are monitoring traffic and will be ready to reform the blockade if officials return.

Fight for public services and better wages >>continued from page 1 The 2008 financial crisis, one of the worst in history, was only prevented by governments taking on the enormous private debt of their banks.

Canada was no different, where the federal government bought up $75 billion in bad debt from Canadian chartered banks.

The deficit was created by using public money to bail out banks, not fund employment insurance, expand public transit or fund green jobs. Now the people of Ontario are being called on to pay yet again.

While politicians talk of “belt-tightening” and “making sacrifices” in this time of bulging deficits,

the Ontario government has pushed through corporate tax cuts that will equal $4.6 billion and help to rank Canada as the country with the lowest corporate tax rates in the world.

Under Dwight Duncan’s proposal, a part-time social worker making $20,000 a year in a group home will sacrifice an extra $400 a year to reduce the deficit, while an RBC investment banker making $12 million won’t pay a penny.

The people that deliver our valuable public services are under fire to finance the profits of corporate millionaires.

In its quest to cut, the provincial government is zeroing in on workers in

the education, civil service and health care sectors.

Hundreds of lay-offs are planned in the Ontario public services and hundreds more are planned for the province’s hospitals, which had their funding cut this past year with many facilities facing severe funding shortfalls and closures.

Private sector

The call for public sector wage restraint is having effects on the private sector as well. Private employers are taking the opportunity to demand wage restraints and threaten lay-offs, gaining confidence from the government’s commitment to cutting pay.

A debt-reduction program that relies on underfunding public services,

cutting taxable income and increasing the profit margin of private corporations in the hopes that some benefits will trickle down to ordinary people is a recipe for disaster. It will reduce living standards, squander tax revenue and threaten the long-term health of Ontario’s public services (which Dalton McGuinty has already threatened to sell-off to reduce the deficit).

The Ontario government is trying to make ordinary working people pay for an economic crisis made by the politicians and the bankers. It’s time the rich pay for the crisis they created. We must continue the fight for the public services and wages that we deserve.

In BC, the new tax will give businesses a $2 billion tax break. Agencies that run long-term care homes say HST will increase their costs by more than $10 million, resulting in service cuts. The HST will also add thousands of dollars to the already outrageous cost of buying a house.

Over 6,500 canvassers covered the province in an attempt to gain support for an anti-HST petition over the last several months. The petition has been supported by the right and the left of the political spectrum with endorsers ranging from former right wing BC Premier Bill Vander Zalm to the NDP. Petitions totalling an estimated 700,000 signatures were delivered to Elections BC the day before the HST came into effect on July 1. If successful the legislature will either vote on the proposal to rescind the tax or there will be a referendum next year.

CSIS under fire, again

by JAMES CLARK CANADA’S SPY agency has come under fire again, this time for comments made

by CSIS head Richard Fadden who alleged in a CBC interview in June that Canadian leaders are under the sway of foreign governments.

The NDP and Bloc Québécois called for Fadden to resign, saying his comments smeared elected officials of Chinese descent, and have created a Cold War-type mentality that treats all Chinese-Canadians with suspicion. Although Fadden didn’t name any one country, critics interpreted his comments as targeting China. Conservative critics have rushed to Fadden’s defence, fuelling anti-Chinese sentiment.

The recent controversy is only the latest to hit CSIS, which continues to operate with little or no oversight.

The agency has been widely criticized for accusing Arabs and Muslims living in Canada of supporting terrorist activity, while numerous federal court rulings have revealed these allegations to be false and baseless.

Socialist Worker e-mail: reports@socialist.ca web: www.socialist.ca letters: letters@socialist.ca reviews: reviews@socialist.ca listings: listings@socialist.ca phone: 416.972.6391 All correspondence to: Socialist Worker P.O. Box 339, Station E Toronto, ON M6H 4E3 Published every four weeks in Toronto by the International Socialists.

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Harper defies court, abandons Omar Khadr

INTERNATIONAL

CANADIAN CITIZEN Omar Khadr’s rights continue to be violated as he remains in Guantánamo Bay prison while Harper’s Tories continue to do nothing about it.

NATO attack kills 52 civilians

by SALMAAN ABDUL HAMID KHAN JUST DAYS before the release of US army documents detailing unreported killings, the Afghan government blamed NATO forces for killing 52 civilians in Helmand province.

Survivors of the attack accuse NATO forces of a deliberate air strike.

“The foreign forces could see us,” Haji Abdul Ghafar told The Guardian. “We were not in any hideouts.

The Americans can see tiny things on the ground, but they could not see us.

I think they bombed us on purpose.”

While the leaked documents shed some light on previously unreported civilian deaths, they place the death toll at a mere 369 between January 2004 and December 2009.

This is a gross underestimate.

In January of this year, a United Nations report found that 2,412 civilians were killed in 2008-9.

And a report by the Afghan Rights Monitor (ARM) found that 1,074 Afghan civilians have been killed and over 1,500 wounded in the last six months alone.

These numbers show a slight increase in the number of civilian casualties when compared to the same period last year. ARM describes itself as “an independent Afghan rights watchdog, monitoring human rights violations across Afghanistan.”

According to the organization’s report, 661 or 60 per cent of civilian deaths for this period are attributed to the “insurgents”, whose use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and suicide bombings have inflicted the most damage.

210 civilian deaths were caused

by US and NATO forces as a result of either “indiscriminate and allegedly deliberate shooting”; aerial strikes on villages and homes; or night raids and other “counter-insurgency” operations.

Approximately 108 civilian deaths were the responsibility of the Afghan army, police and militias. The report also attributes the remaining 95 civilian casualties to either private security firms such as Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, or to the “unknown”.

The report notes that “most international security firms operate in an opaque environment” and that “it is extremely difficult to monitor, investigate and verify security incidents and civilian casualties resulting from their activities.”

Insecurity and civilian mortality in Afghanistan have been higher these past six months than in any other period since the start of this war. This shows that the deployment of an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanistan, which President Obama promised would “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” the Taliban, has done little to create stability and security.

Instead, it has resulted in an increase in conflict, violence and insecurity in the country. The Obama administration’s new “counter insurgency strategy”, one aimed at winning the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan population, while systematically eliminating the Taliban, has proven to be a failure. NATO forces are still struggling to control parts of the Helmand province, where they launched “Operation Moshtarak” back in February.

Operation Moshtarak was intended to act as a precursor to a final assault on the Taliban in their “spiritual capital”—Kandahar province. Adjacent to Helmand, Kandahar is the second most populous region in Afghanistan; home to nearly one million Afghans.

With civilian mortality and insecurity at their highest since the start of the war, it is troubling to imagine what threats face ordinary Afghans

as NATO forces prepare for what the National Post has termed “the most decisive battle in the Afghan War”.

Originally scheduled to begin by the end of June, the Kandahar offensive has been put off until the fall or until NATO forces can successfully crush an increasingly popular resistance in much smaller Helmand Province.

With files from Socialist Worker UK.

Harper prepares for more war

by BRADLEY HUGHES THE TORIES plan to spend $18 billion on death and destruction.

In late July, Minister of National Defence Peter MacKay announced that the government would purchase 65 new F-35 Lightning II planes produced by Lockheed Martin.

These planes are a product of the American Joint Strike fighter program, which the Liberal government joined in the 1990s.

The planes will cost $9 billion and maintenance costs will double that amount.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has said that a Liberal government would put the contract on “hold” to review the options, but he would not rule out buying the planes.

The new planes are designed to carry many weapons, including cluster bombs, 1,000-pound and 2,000-pound bombs, several types

of cruise missiles and Gatling guns.

The 2,000-pound bombs can produce a crater 15 metres across and over 11 metres deep. These bombs will kill everyone in a circle almost three quarters of a kilometre across.

Cluster bombs are large bombs filled with over 200 smaller bombs.

In actual use, many of the smaller bombs do not explode, leaving the equivalent of unmarked mine fields.

The cruise missiles can travel up to 200 km to their targets and can carry either cluster bombs or two stage 1,000-pound or 1,300pound bombs where the first stage explodes through concrete or earth and the second stage explodes inside the building. The Gatling guns have four barrels and can fire over 3,000 shots per minute.

There is no need to waste billions on weapons of mass destruction.

More ‘peacekeepers’ means more chaos in Somalia

by FARID OMAR IN EARLY July, two suicide bombings killed 74 people in Kampala, Uganda. Uganda has troops in Somalia. Somalia’s insurgent Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the bombings. In response, African Union (AU) officials are proposing the deployment of up to 20,000 more African troops to Somalia.

These troops may include Ethiopian forces, whose twoyear military invasion in 2007 to

2009 led to over 20,000 Somali deaths. Since 1993, Somalia has suffered under successive, US-led military interventions, and all have resulted in massive civilian losses and mass displacement.

Most recently, an internal AU memo has confirmed the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas by AU’s “peacekeepers”.

As a result, the Somali people overwhelmingly oppose any form of military intervention.

More troops in Somalia would

only embolden extremists and plunge the country into deeper chaos. The US’s preferred choice for Somalia is the loose alliance of the unpopular Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the Ethiopian-backed Ahlusunna Waljamaca militia and deposed warlords who are only united in their opposition to Al-Shabab.

Even if Al-Shabab is ousted from its strongholds, the ensuing power struggle between these reactionary US allies would

unleash another cycle of death, destruction and displacement.

The Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) that came into power in 2006 restored peace and stability throughout South-Central Somalia. This shows that Somalis have the ability to institute a homegrown solution to their security crisis.

There can be no military solution to the Somali crisis.

A Somali controlled, negotiated and peaceful settlement to the conflict is the only hope.

Khadr, who was captured at age 15 by US soldiers in Afghanistan in 2002, faces an unfair trial by military commission at Guantánamo.

Canada has refused to request his repatriation despite court rulings that his rights have been violated. On July 5, a Canadian Federal Court judge ordered the Canadian authorities to propose remedies for these violations within seven days.

The Harper government appealed the verdict, knowing that, with Khadr’s trial set to begin in August, it has successfully run out the clock on justice for Khadr.

Initially, Khadr stated he would boycott the trial, saying, “I’m going to get 30 years no matter what.”

However, he is now willing to have his military-appointed lawyer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jon Jackson, defend him in court.

“Omar Khadr continues to be the victim in this case. I never envisioned a scenario in my career as an Army lawyer that would require me to defend a child-soldier against war crimes charges levied by the United States. I always believed we were better than that,” stated Jackson.

A psychiatrist and psychologist for the defence found that Khadr was traumatized and testimony from his interrogators in May revealed Khadr had been threatened with gang rape to force his co-operation.

Amnesty International is urging people to write letters calling on the Canadian government to demand the immediate repatriation of Omar Khadr and to call on the US to abandon military commission proceedings against him.

For more information, visit www.amnesty.ca.

Michigan oil spill sticks to Enbridge AN OIL pipeline owned by Calgary’s Enbridge Energy has ruptured in southern Michigan, dumping over 800,000 gallons of crude into the Kalamazoo River.

Michigan officials say Enbridge’s response to the spill was slow and “wholly inadequate”.

The spill has ravaged animal life in and around the river, and people are warned to stay clear because of high concentrations of carcinogenic benzene in the air.

Every day the pipeline brings about 8 million gallons of crude, originating in Alberta’s tar sands, to refineries in Sarnia.

The spill comes just as tar sands producers and pipeline companies like Enbridge and TransCanada are pushing Alberta synthetic crude as a “safer” alternative to deep-water off-shore drilling.

Enbridge has proposed building the Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to ports in BC and the Keystone XL pipeline that will take tar sands crude to refineries on the US Gulf Coast. The latest spill will fuel opposition to these expensive, dangerous and unnecessary mega-projects.

August 2010 Socialist Worker 3

TALKING MARXISM

INTERNATIONAL

Abbie Bakan

Violence: what do socialists say?

IN THE aftermath of the G20 Summit hosted at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Toronto, discussions have followed about the lessons for all those who oppose the capitalist agenda of the summit leaders.

One issue relates to “violence”. What do socialists say about this?

A starting point for socialists is that the terrain of debate about violence has not been set by the anti-capitalist movement. Instead, those who defend the capitalist agenda of the G20 were quick off the mark to condemn the “violence” that accompanied some limited property damage.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, speaking to the press on June 26, condemned the “criminal destruction of property”, referring to “windows broken, and police cars burned”, and indicated that “members of the mob” were going to be “removed from our streets”.

Blair was intent to “restore the rule of law”. Over 1,000 arrests later, he held to his promise.

But what is the rule of law? Generally in liberal capitalist societies, “violence” against property is condemned with far more passion than violence against human life.

The full force of the law can be brought against an individual—or apparently 1,000 individuals—for ostensibly damaging a building or a car. But clearly, the repression was planned well in advance, indicated by the over $1-billion budget.

As the “Toronto Call”—a statement which collected over 1,500 signatories within days of circulation, calling for an independent inquiry and the resignation of Chief Blair—notes: “The police response to the protests against the G8/ G20 in Toronto was the largest mass arrest in Canadian history, surpassing the 1993 Clayoquot Sound logging blockade. It constituted the most far-reaching single assault on political rights in the Canadian state since the War Measures Act of 1970. This response fits the pattern of militarized policing at global summits, which consistently produce mass arrests. It also builds on long histories of police brutality in this city and across Canada, particularly aimed at people of colour, indigenous peoples, and poor communities… Police stocked up on—and paraded before the media—weapons ranging from sound cannons that can cause permanent hearing loss, to water cannons, tear gas, riot gear, and other devices”.

Capitalist morality

No persons were harmed as a result of the protests, but the damage to property provoked a moral panic and the claimed excuse for an unprecedented wave of repression.

There are many lessons from the socialist tradition that mark this pattern. The Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky had the opportunity to challenge the US liberal educator John Dewey regarding issues of morality and violence, in his text, Their Morals and Ours: “The ruling class forces its ends upon society and habituates it into considering all those means which contradict its ends as immoral. That is the chief function of official morality.”

When it comes to violence against people, however, where is the morality? Where is the concern to protect the public from violence?

One of the arrested, a person of colour who is deaf, was repeatedly denied an ASL interpreter. This was despite pleas from an interpreter present at the arrest to have the opportunity to explain why he found himself suddenly in hand cuffs—even as signing with his hands would provide his only opportunity to communicate.

Systemic violence

In daily conditions of capitalist “democracy”, violence that threatens human life is rarely criminalized.

The deaths of thousands of innocent Afghanis are not considered the result of violence when they occur at the hands of uniformed soldiers on the order of capitalist states like Canada, the US or the UK. This sort of violence is considered patriotism.

Violence against women is commonly considered to be within the law. Prior to 1983, in Canada rape within marriage was not even a legal offence.

Indigenous women are so commonly the subjects of extreme violence in Canada that that Amnesty International issued a full report on the subject in 2004, titled Stolen Sisters. The report documents not only the extent of cases of sexual and physical violence, but also the failure of the legal system to address such cases.

Other acts of violence occur every day at the workplaces managed by corporate capitalism.

The US has one of the most well documented histories of industrial violence in the world, but every country with a culture of corporate profit shows the same pattern.

Historically, trade unions were violently repressed—a condition that continues in many countries in the world today.

Strategy

Because capitalism is such a violent system, socialists have debated the role of violence—in all its dimensions—for as long as capitalism has existed. Another aspect of the current discussions is the role of individual acts of destruction in protests against summits like the G20.

There are important issues to be considered among the anti-capitalist forces about how to advance an effective movement and build capacity among wider forces.

Defence of those detained and charged by an organized repressive, and violent, capitalist state remains the first order of business. But socialists also need to take seriously the question of tactical choices and long-term strategy to transform the system once and for all.

4 Socialist Worker August 2010

Coalition lays ground for potential attack on Iran

by G. FRANCIS HODGE A GROUP of prominent international law scholars and former politicians have come together to increase international pressure on Iran.

On July 14, The Responsibility to Prevent Coalition released the document The Danger of a Nuclear, Genocidal and Rights-Violating Iran: The Responsibility to Prevent Petition. The Coalition includes three former Prime Ministers of Canada, several Canadian former MPs and sixteen Canadian academics specializing in law. They call for increased sanctions against Iran, helping to pave the way for a possible military strike.

The central claim of the report is that statements regarding the State of Israel and the Jewish people made by various Iranian leaders, including current President Ahmadinejad, former President Rafsanjani and Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, constitute incitement to genocide, illegal under the Genocide Convention of the United Nations. Further, the document argues that the pursuit of nuclear weapons by Iran constitutes a legal intent to secure the capability to commit that genocide.

If one accepts this argument, any

state signatory to the convention is legally obliged to act against Iran. Irwin Cotler, who chairs the Coalition and was Justice Minister and Attorney-General in the Liberal government of Jean Chretien, told The Globe and Mail that “States have a legal obligation to prevent Iran from carrying through with its deadly course of action. This is not just a policy option, but an international legal obligation.”

Accusations of genocide

The argument the Coalition makes, however, is nonsense. The report repeatedly cites the examples of genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia and Sudan as cautionary examples. Never mentioned is the fact that in each of these examples, genocide was perpetrated by one part of a population against its very own neighbours in the same state and locality. Iran and Israel are two completely separate states with over 1,500 km between Tehran and Jerusalem and there are at least two other countries between them.

If the Iranian state were indeed bent on genocide against the Jewish people, then what of the Jewish community within its own borders? The document argues that the anti-Zionist rhetoric of Iran’s leaders amounts to “segregating

Thai government continues crackdown on protesters

by EDWARD ROUÉ THAI AUTHORITIES announced on July 6 the renewal of emergency laws invoked during the unrest of recent months, which centered on the struggle of the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), commonly called the “redshirts” because of the colours they wear to identify themselves.

While the state of emergency will be permitted to expire in five of Thailand’s provinces, it will be renewed for an additional three months in Bangkok as well as in 18 provinces concentrated mostly in the rural north, which is the historical and demographic heartland of the UDD movement.

These laws prohibit public gatherings of more than five people and give police the power to detain individuals for up to 30 days without charging them. This measure was used to suppress democratic dissent in the runup to July 25 by-elections, in which at least one redshirt activist, who has been detained on terrorism charges,

was a candidate. The ruling party won, with a low turnout, although the redshirts did poll 8 per cent despite the fact their candidate was in jail.

The measures also represent an escalation in the undemocratic means by which Thailand continues to oppress its working class and peasantry. Since the 2006 military coup against Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the ruling class has resorted to ever more naked forms of control.

Any development which promises to redress the massive inequalities in Thai society must be stopped— whether it is the top-down administration of a bourgeois populist like Shinawatra, whose health care reforms drew the ire of the Bangkok bourgeoisie, and a grassroots movement like the UDD which ‘‘threatens’’ to make Thailand a more just and equitable country from below.

The by-election results show that the demands for reform are not over.

These struggles will need to continue if the repression is to be stopped and real reforms introduced that can improve Thai daily lives.

these intended victims (Jews) from the Iranian population.” However, the Iranian state is doing nothing of the sort. In a widely published article of May 2009, Israeli peace activist and former soldier Uri Avnery pointed out that there is a Jewish community thriving within Iran itself “whose members are refusing to emigrate, [and] is living there comfortably enough. It enjoys religious freedom and has a representative in parliament.”

The Coalition document consciously conflates the state of Israel with the Jewish people, claiming that to criticize the state is to delegitimize the people. Sharp criticisms of the right of Israel to exist as a state in its current form (criticisms that are common across the Muslim and Arab worlds) are misrepresented as part of a conscious process of dehumanization and delegitimization of the Jews as a people and thus as a precursor to mass murder.

Amnon Rubenstein, a professor of law and former Israeli politician as well as a member of the Coalition, was unusually blunt in describing the real purpose of the proposed sanctions. He told The Globe and Mail, “First, they can embolden the opposition in Iran. Second, they can prepare the ground for the possibility of military attack.”

Oil spill in China Twin explosions in an oil storage depot in the northern Chinese port city Dalian on July 16 has led to 1,500 tonnes of crude oil leaking into the Yellow River, spurring a firestorm that burned for 15 hours and claimed the life of at least one clean-up worker.

While the Chinese mobilized an impressive array of local fishing boats to assist with the clean-up, those workers were woefully ill-equipped for the job. They lacked basic gear like rubber gloves and filter masks, and many were using plastic bags, straw mats, and even chop sticks to try and retrieve the crude.

More recently, the government has deployed 23 tonnes of oil-eating bacteria in an attempt to break down the spill. Such efforts harken back to the gory days of the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989, when “bioremediation” was used.

The state has presented it as a solution to the crisis, but the process can take years. In the meantime, fishing in the region has been banned for the rest of the summer as 10,000 shellfish farms have been contaminated, and dozens of miles of coastline are befouled and abandoned.

L

arge-scale mobilizations to protest summits like the G20 are important because they provide an opportunity to involve people beyond the ranks of those already active.

The widespread media coverage of the G20 helps bring the issues to a mass audience. And the fact that the policies of the G20 affect so many people means that they unite a diverse range of movements.

As a result, a mass demonstration against the G20 can often be greater than the sum of its parts.

We saw this during the “People First!” action on June 26, which brought together the labour movement, environmental campaigners, maternal health advocates, antiwar activists and so on.

Although mobilizations like these are often “one-off” events, they still help organize different struggles into one movement, and allow people just beginning to radicalize to get active. Whether seen on TV or witnessed by passersby, these actions demonstrate that there is widespread opposition to the effects of neoliberalism. This can often develop into opposition to the system itself.

Mass action

On its own, a mass demonstration may hinder the implementation of certain policies, but it can’t stop capitalism in its tracks. What matters is their ability to galvanize and mobilize opposition to the system. For socialists, they provide a crucial opportunity to expand the movement, maintain momentum and break down barriers between struggles that often remain isolated. In short, they help forge new bonds of solidarity.

That’s why we mobilized against the G20—not because we think capitalism will grind to a halt if the summit is disrupted or shut down.

Summits are attempts to overcome divisions between ruling classes in various nation states. What they can’t achieve through global agreements, they try through regional agreements. What they can’t achieve regionally, they try bi-laterally. Basically, summits are where the world’s largest economies compete with each other for a better deal for themselves.

This doesn’t mean we can’t wrest reforms from world leaders.

Without protest, it would be even harder to win reforms or prevent more damaging policies from being implemented. In this context, the main objective of mobilizing for the G20 should be to broaden the left and build the movements.

Goals, strategy & tactics

What tactics we use should flow from this objective. It’s not the summit itself that matters, but the ability to draw large numbers into action. To determine a tactic before determining the larger strategic objective elevates tactics into principles.

It also robs the movement of any tactical flexibility. Tactics are the tools we use to bring about a result. Good sense suggests that we first discuss the desired outcome or goals, then the strategy to get there, and finally what tactics would best deliver the outcome.

So what about “diversity of tactics” and the Black Bloc?

Their actions in Toronto mirror tactics used elsewhere. Regardless of their intent, the tactics and politics of the Black Bloc are inherently elitist and counter-productive. In fact, they mirror the critique of reformism shared by many on the left. The NDP says, vote for us, and we’ll do it for you (in Parliament). The Black Bloc says, in essence, the same thing: we’ll make the revolution for you.

At best, the tactics of the Black Bloc are based on the mistaken idea that high-profile attacks on property and the police will create a spark to encourage others to resist capitalism. At worst, they are based on a rampant individualistic

Members of the Black Bloc march along Queen Stree West during the “People First!” rally.

(PHOTO: CHARLOTTE IRELAND)

STRATEGY, TACTICS & RESISTANCE The G20 protests in Toronto have provoked a debate about strateg y and tactics. Ritch Whyman draws some lessons, as the movements defend civil liberties, and prepare to resist Harper’s austerity measures.

‘Capitalism won’t fall because of a few broken windows. To get rid of capitalism, we need to be prepared to work with anyone who is only just beginning to radicalize.’

sense of rage, and the entitlement to express it regardless of the consequences for others. The Black Bloc ends up imposing on others its anti-authoritarian politics during its actions.

The tactics and politics of the Black Bloc leave its members prone to being manipulated by the state. During almost every summit protest, police and others (in Genoa, it was Italian fascists) infiltrate or form their own blocs to engage in provocations. The politics of secrecy, unannounced plans and attempts at a militaristic approach to demonstrations make such infiltrations easier.

Police repression

These tactics also open the door to the justification of further police repression. Some argue that the state doesn’t need justification for repression. But if the state didn’t need justification for repression, it would simply smash strikes and jail trade unionists with impunity.

Capitalism isn’t a democratic system, but it still relies on the façade of political rights to maintain the illusion that liberal democracy is the freest system.

The reality is that most people oppose police brutality and believe we are living in a democracy.

Therefore, when the police go on a rampage, they need an excuse to do it. If they didn’t need an excuse, we wouldn’t have a “war on drugs”— it would be called what it is: a war on the poor.

What’s radical?

Others argue that we have to support these tactics because they are “radical”. But what does radical really mean? Some say that Black Bloc tactics hurt capitalism because of the economic disruption they cause.

The reality is that the Tamil community created much more economic disruption with its nonviolent occupation of the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto on May 2009. Likewise, Sudbury workers who valiantly fought Vale Inco did much more to disrupt the economy than a thousand Black Bloc actions ever could.

For socialists, radical means building workers’ confidence and raising their consciousness to fight back—not just at work, but in solidarity with others. Radical means

developing a sense of mass power, organizing based on a strategy to move others into struggle and winning them to fight back collectively—beyond the individualization of society.

Radical means going to the roots of the system—not trashing its symbols.

In this light, it is much more radical to organize a union at a Starbucks, or to build the confidence of your co-workers to fight homophobia, or to defend women’s rights, than it is to smash a window.

Black Bloc tactics might inspire passive support from those who already don’t like the police. But the majority of people don’t agree with these actions, nor have the confidence to engage in them. Instead of building confidence, these actions generally produce confusion and allow the state to justify its repression and billion-dollar “security” expenditures.

Outside an already radicalized minority of people, these tactics don’t build the confidence of large numbers of people to fight capitalism. At best, they leave the impression that the fight against capitalism can only be carried out by a heroic minority. At worst, they leave people worrying about going to demonstrations.

If a tactic doesn’t build workers’ confidence to resist, it doesn’t really challenge capitalism in any meaningful way. That said, socialists must always defend the right of workers and oppressed communities to self-defence. The response from the left to the riots in Toronto after the Rodney King verdict is a good example: many defended the outrage at both the racism of the “justice system” and the police violence against King. It was a justifiable rage against a system of racism, but it wasn’t necessarily an effective strategy to defeat it.

Capitalism won’t fall because of a few broken windows. To get rid of capitalism, we need to be prepared to work with anyone who is only just beginning to radicalize. This means relating to people who do not necessarily support radical ideas at the moment, but who might be won to those ideas in future struggles. On these terms, it is clear that the Black Bloc has alienated far more people than it has won.

Civil liberties

The same debate about tactics is now underway in response to police repression during the G20, with some claiming the demand for civil liberties is not radical enough, and similar critiques of the “People First!” demonstration. Again, the point is that the demand to defend civil liberties has brought thousands of new people into activity, and exposed the scale of police and state repression, just as the “People First!” demonstration mobilized thousands of working people and their allies.

The role of socialists and anyone who wants to get rid of capitalism is not to denounce these actions, but to help build them— working alongside workers who may believe that capitalism can be reformed, and arguing for the need to move struggles beyond just the demonstration.

There are no short-cuts to getting rid of capitalism. Building workers’ confidence to resist Harper’s coming austerity measures will take organization, patience and debate.

The key task for socialists is to take advantage of the growing anger at police repression, at the billions wasted on fighter jets and at Harper’s “law-and-order” agenda.

In short: to help workers radicalize and become involved in their own struggles. A revolutionary movement must demonstrate that it’s not only necessary, but possible, to win large numbers of people to challenge capitalism.

But to do so means having the theoretical clarity to make the best tactical choices—ones that build the confidence of others to resist.

August 2010 Socialist Worker 5

EUROPE’S SU RESISTANCE AGAI

R

ead the business press—talk of economic recovery is for chumps. Most economists consider the recently touted “good news” as a lull in the economic storm. The consensus is we are in for a “double dip” recession. The real questions are: how soon, and how bad?

Even while Harper, Obama, Cameron, Merkel and the rest of the G20 leaders were smiling for their photo-op, they were unable to reach agreement about how to deal with the economic downturn.

Investment banker John Hussman told the Financial Post: “In short, my concerns about the economy and financial markets are escalating quickly. Given the already vulnerable condition of the US economy, a second phase of weakness would most likely contribute to already troubling levels of mortgage delinquency and foreclosure, and could be expected to push the unemployment rate toward 12 per cent.”

Bankers and business barons fret over the inability of the US economy to drag the rest of the world back to prosperity. Hopes that emerging economies like China, India and Brazil could replace the US as the dynamo of the world economic order look more and more like grasping at straws.

It is the countries of the European Union that reveal most vividly both the rot at the centre of the system, and the brutal solutions corporate and political leaders employ to preserve their power. The so-called “Greek contagion” has spread through Italy, Spain, France and now Britain.

For Canadian workers, what is happening in Europe is a glimpse of the future. It is only a matter of time (after the next election no doubt) before similar cuts come our way.

In Spain, the response of the Socialist Party government of José Zapatero was typical. He imposed a 5 per cent across the board wage cut for public sector workers. He cut 6 billion euros from planned public sector investment, slashed 1.2 billion euros from transfers to regional and municipal governments, cut foreign aid, cancelled child support payments, froze pensions and raised prices of drugs in the public health plan.

Throughout the euro-zone, the twin attacks focus on public workers and public services. Yet the banks will get their bailouts, the rich will keep their tax cuts and the corporations will rake in their profits.

In Britain, austerity cuts contained in the budget tabled by the new Tory-led coalition government of David Cameron show the ruling class strategy: cut wages, slash pension, chop public education funding and privatize services like health care.

Education

First on the block was planned rebuilding of 700 crumbling public schools in Britain’s cities. Shereen, an east London student reacted to news that her school, with cracked ceilings and walls and poor venti6 Socialist Worker August 2010

GREECE

FRANCE

As the economic crisis continues to deepen, the response by governments and bosses is the same: make workers pay. But workers across Europe are refusing to give in.

John Bell and Peter Hogarth look at the current situation and the inspiring demonstrations of resistance. lation, would not be repaired: “If we’d had our school rebuilt it would have shown that someone cares about us.”

She’s on to something: an estimated 4 million British children, one in three­, live in poverty.

Health care

‘Across Europe, it is not spoiled workers who take and expect too much—it is greed of the elite’

About 80 per cent of Britain’s National Health spending is being directed away from public health providers to private companies.

This is the biggest health care privatization move in British history.

Cameron’s Tories try to describe these health “reforms” as increased democracy, taking power away from “faceless bureaucrats” and “decentralizing” services.

In reality, multi-national corporations are rushing in to take advantage. The Financial Times newspaper happily reports that private profits diverted from NHS budget “could grow at least tenfold from its current £50 million a year”.

Look for more health procedures and services to be struck from the public system, more user fees, and more people unable to afford the cost of health care. “These proposals have nothing at all to do with patient care, and everything to do with the needs of big business,” says Gill George, a health worker and member of the Unite public service union.

Pensions

What a difference a few words make. Britain’s Pensions minister Steve Webb announced that pri-

vate sector pension providers will hitherto pay increases based on the Consumer Price Index rather than the presently used Retail Price Index.

For over five million pensioners that means a real cut. Over 20 years, a retired worker drawing a £5,000 pension will lose £10,367.

For insurance companies it is a bonanza: £100 billion more profit, according to accounting firm KPMG. The knives are out for public pensions as well. A new “independent” report (written by a corporate think-tank) charges that public service pensions could bankrupt the country. The tactic is to drive a wedge between public and private sector workers and retirees.

In fact, Britain pays out £4.1 billion each year to pensioners. At the same time it hands over £10 billion worth of tax cuts to the richest one per cent of Britain’s population.

The great divide

Tory and corporate propaganda maintain that workers have had it too easy for too long, and that the gravy train must end. But there is no end in sight for the corporate elite’s good times.

In 2009, wages rose by £2 billion. Too much say the bosses and their Tory friends. Yet during the same year, corporate profits rose by £24 billion.

The richest 1 per cent of Britons own 21 per cent of the wealth. The bottom 50 per cent own just 6 per cent of the wealth.

How did that tiny elite get so

rich? When Margaret Thatcher took power in 1979, the richest 1 per cent took in 4.17 per cent of Britain’s total annual income. Their share has risen steadily ever since, through economic ups and downs, so that now they take 12.57 per cent of all income each year.

And while they take a greater share of the wealth, they pay less and less tax. Simply restoring corporate taxation to the rates in place 1997, when Tony Blair’s New Labour came to power, would put an addition £18 billion in public coffers.

And returning the rate of income tax on the richest 1 per cent to the levels of the Thatcher era would bring in and additional £19 billion.

Every year about £100 billion in tax is simply not collected, either because the super-rich don’t declare their real income, or because they just don’t pay. It is difficult to audit them and collect the outstanding amounts when about 25,000 tax and revenue workers have been laid off in recent years.

In Britain, and all across Europe, it is not spoiled workers who take and expect too much.

It is greed of the elite, and the corporations that are sucking the economy dry. Last year, £1.4 trillion was handed to British banks, in handouts and cheap loans.

Now the sick, pensioners, students and all workers are being bled to pay for it. But opposition is rising. Just as economic crisis seems to spread across borders, so does the resistance.

SUMMER OF AINST AUSTERITY SPAIN

BRITAIN

T

he solutions on offer from the ruling class seem to be the same across the board: cut public spending, reduce the public sector and balance budgets on the backs of workers. However, the working class has its own answers to the crisis. Across Europe, coalitions of resistance are forming, and we are seeing the beginnings of what could be a massive fightback mounted against the ruling class and their austerity plans.

Ideas are changing in the struggle against austerity and debates are raging on the left as to what is next. Rebellion—an anti-capitalist coalition—is challenging the existing order, arguing that the unions should use the dynamic of the general strikes to prepare for all-out strikes and raise demands for nationalizating the banks, freezing the debt and breaking the discipline of the EU.

Spain

Greece

Greece is leading the way. Day after day of general strikes have brought the nation to near stand-stills and have begun to form cracks in the façade protecting the logic of global capitalism.

As Greek Socialist Panos Garganas reported in Socialist Review, “anti-capitalism is becoming a household idea in Greece and the left needs to build on this.”

Demonstrations against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union (EU) plans for a massive austerity and structural adjustment package—the kind that have decimated economies and livelihoods in the developing world—have drawn over half a million people in the streets of Athens to challenge parliament. Greece used to be the country where the EU was the most popular, but the debt crisis and EU response has changed all that.

The prevailing ideas of the ruling class are prevailing no more; a recent VPRC poll for the internet TV channel TVXS showed that 71 per cent of Greeks mistrust the EU. Two out of three people want cuts in military spending and an impressive 32 per cent support the idea that Greece should stop debt and interest payments to bondholders.

‘Day after day of general strikes in Greece have brought the nation to near stand-stills’

Workers in other countries are heeding the example of Greece and forming fighting coalitions to take on the ruling class offensive against jobs, pensions and public spending. Faced with a program that would cut social spending (already the lowest in Western Europe), while leaving funding intact for the Catholic church and Spanish troops in Afghanistan, the two main union federations in Spain held a protest on May 20 and a one-day public sector strike on June 8.

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE) promised to go ahead with a €15 billion austerity package. In response, the General Union of Workers (UGT) promised “maximum punishment for the government” and both UGT and Workers’ Commissions have declared their intention to call an all-out general strike on September 29 to coincide with a European-wide day of action against the cuts.

France

The French working class has already reacted fiercely to attacks on working conditions. On June 24, France was paralyzed by a general strike in opposition to a government decision to raise the age of retirement from 60 to 62. The strike call was put out by the eight major trade unions and the day saw 200 demonstrations across the coun-

try with some two million participants. Rail and air services were severely disrupted, and schools, post offices and government buildings were closed. Postal workers, hospital staff and other public sector workers were joined by private sector workers in the march against President Sarkozy’s plans.

Christine Poupin of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA), a broad coalition party of the anti-capitalist left in France, affirmed that the government attacks have shocked workers into action. The economic crisis necessitates a more urgent response and there is a need to mobilize to stop plants, block roads and shutdown production.

Addressing a 1000-strong crowd at the Socialist Worker Party’s Marxism conference in London, Poupin emphasized the contradictions of capitalism laid bare in this crisis. “Are we responsible for the crisis? The massive debt has not been used to create jobs, they have financed policies that benefit the wealthy.”

But despite these contradictions, change won’t happen on its own.

As Poupin argued, we must organize the fightback: “We must organize to improve wages, stop redundancies, redistribute wealth, reduce work time, create jobs and connect with the environmental movement to advocate for public ownership of energy production.”

Building on the success of June’s general strike and a May 1 demonstration that drew 395,000 to the streets, trade unions and activists are planning their own general strike to coincide with the September 29 European day of action.

Italy, Portugal, Britain

The response to austerity has been similar across Europe.

Workers in Italy poured onto the streets during a general strike organized by the CGIL union fed-

eration in late June. Private sector workers, including airport staff, train and bus drivers, as well as about 130,000 electricity, gas and water workers, took four hours of strike action and metal workers struck all day against the policies of right-wing Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Public sector workers, such as teachers, civil servants and others walked off the job for the whole day. 50,000 marched in Milan, while 100,000 rallied in Bologna.

July 8 saw a general strike in Portugal. Railway workers led the day of action against government spending cuts to reduce the country’s debt. The strike shut down urban rail lines, affected steel, electrical and chemical industries and demonstrators marched through many cities.

In Britain too, workers and socialists are working to build fighting coalitions to combat the cutters’ agenda. The Right to Work campaign is building for a massive demonstration against the Tory Party conference to be held on October 3.

The summer of resistance looks poised to continue well into the autumn months, building industrial action and solidarity across Europe.

Build the resistance

The tasks of socialists in this period is obvious: build workers’ confidence that they are not responsible for this crisis and they should not pay for it.

Activists on the left everywhere must prepare for an onslaught on the standards of living of workers and the most marginalized and be prepared to counter the logic of capitalism that can find billions for war, global summits and jet fighters, but insists on the necessity of cutting the meager spending allocated to the bulk of ordinary people.

August 2010 Socialist Worker 7

ECONOMY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Tory racist agenda disguised as ‘fairness’ STEPHEN HARPER’S Tory government is launching a review of equity hiring policies, often referred to as “affirmative action”, in the public service.

“While we support diversity in the public service, we want to ensure that no Canadian is barred from opportunities in the public service based on race or ethnicity,” Treasury Board President Stockwell Day said in a press release.

Sounds fair, doesn’t it? Harper, Day and Immigration Minister Jason Kenny are all quick to drop the word “fairness” into their statements, but their rhetoric is a smokescreen for racism.

The review was prompted by a complaint from Sara Landiault of Kemptville, Ontario who says she was told her application for a public service job was rejected because she was white.

(It is purely coincidental that Landriault is a vocal Tory supporter, “President” [her use of quotation marks] of the self-created National Family Childcare Association, a platform to attack daycare funding as some socialist plot.

And it is only slightly inconvenient that Landriault has advocated for special recognition of skills acquired through home schooling for stay-at-home moms returning to the workforce—a form of affirmative action.)

Harper’s idea of “fairness” is predicated on the idea that everyone in Canadian society is equal—that race, national origin, differing ability, religion, sex or sexual orientation have no bearing on success in hiring, education, housing, etc.

If that were true, diversity in the workplace, the boardroom and the political arena would reflect the proportional makeup of our population.

But every study has proved the opposite. Even today, with equity programs in place in public hiring, white males predominate at he top of the ladder.

In 2001, Toronto researcher Grace Edward Galabuzi produced a groundbreaking study of how racialized groups fared in our economy. His findings are encapsulated in the title: Canada’s Creeping Economic Apartheid.

Visible minorities, even those whose families have been in Canada for decades, are disproportionately concentrated in low-paying jobs, are crowded in sub-standard housing, achieve lower educational standards and are too often among the unemployed.

Galabuzi’s research was based on facts and figures often published by StatsCan, based on census information. No wonder Harper wants to scrap the census.

Now, almost a decade later, little has changed. Even with employment equity programs in place, giving priority to the differently abled, visible minorities, etc., the numbers of these people in the workplace are far below their proportion of the population.

The 2006 census (there’s that dirty word again) reports that visible minorities make up 16.2 per cent of the Canadian population (far higher in major urban centres). Yet 2009 figures show they represent only 9.8 per cent of the federal workforce. And as with women, the higher you go in the hierarchy, the lower those numbers are.

The fact is we need to strengthen equity hiring programs, not cut them.

Harper, Day and Kenny want to preserve the myth that “real” Canadian culture is white and Western European, and that all others are interlopers, no matter how many generations their families have been here.

Scrapping the census, rewriting the immigration rules, withdrawing support for gay pride events, cutting human rights tribunals, and now talk of ending equity hiring: if the Tory bigots get their way, Canada will start to look like Arizona North.

UNITY IN STRUGGLE

Stand united against austerity and Islamophobia AT A TIME when the ruling class consensus is to launch attacks on the living standards of working people, we cannot afford to be divided by prejudice.

The recent vote by the French parliament to ban fullface veils serves to further stoke Islamophobia and divide workers in the fight against austerity measures being sought by the French elite. The same elite that is seeking to smash workers’ pensions and extend working hours saw fit to outlaw an article of clothing worn by less than one tenth of one per cent of French Muslim women.

Attacks on the veil in the popular press and long disquisitions by leading politicians serve to produce a debate where none existed before, shifting discussion away from the actions of the elite and onto the shoulders of a tiny, albeit identifiable minority. This is a classic example of divide-each-to-rule-all, and workers stand to lose, and lose mightily, should we fall prey to such distractions.

Governments in France, the US, Britain, Canada and elsewhere are united in making workers pay for the crisis of their creation. They need us divided and squabbling (or worse) amongst ourselves, chasing phantom enemies, in order to prosecute their plans. We must stand united and keep our eyes on the real enemy. Those seeking to devastate workers lives are not Muslim women religious dress. They are the elites in Parliament Hill, on Bay Street, and in the corner offices.

8 Socialist Worker August 2010

Are we heading for a double-dip recession?

“THE ECONOMY is still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

All the booster rockets for getting us beyond it are failing.”

These are the words of Robert Reich, the US labor secretary. The fragile recovery in the US, the world’s biggest economy, is faltering.

Reich goes on to say, “Home sales are down. Retail sales are down. Factory orders in May suffered their biggest tumble since March of last year.”

There are eight million fewer jobs in the US than three years ago, before the crisis hit.

The risk of the world economy entering a new recession—a “double dip”—is very high.

The falls in world output and trade in the six months that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in October 2008 mirrored the scale of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

But government bailouts of the banking system and boosting state spending acted to restart the world economy after its heart attack and prop up demand.

This averted a 30s-style collapse, but left states with huge budget deficits.

The sharp fall in tax revenues brought on by the recession itself didn’t help.

Now the spending packages are either running out, as in the US, or are being replaced with harsh austerity packages, as is the case across Europe.

Governments hope “rebuilding their finances” will insulate them from the at-

tacks by market speculators that led to the spiralling crisis in Greece.

And they hope that, although cutting spending will hit domestic demand, they will be able to export their way out of crisis.

the system, stopping it from restoring itself to “health”.

Any new crisis would expose the remaining weaknesses inside the financial system.

Tendencies

Europe’s banking system has massive debts. French, German and British banks are heavily exposed to the southern European economies of Greece, Portugal and Spain, for example.

It is far from clear that state intervention would work a second time if a new round of massive bank bailouts is required.

Most of the ammunition has already been fired. State debts have shot up and interest rates are next to zero.

The economic downturn, with weak growth and the constant threat of a renewed plunge into recession across the system, is likely to last a long time.

But it will also be punctuated by sudden crises erupting, as in Greece, where the “double dip” is already a reality.

Such crises lead to more splits at the top of society as our rulers desperately try to find a way out.

They are having a fierce row about how fast and hard to cut spending.

Such splits in turn undermine their ideological grip over the rest of society.

The task for socialists is not to be paralyzed by the crisis but to shape the resistance to it.

Yet it is impossible for every major economy to do that at the same time.

Who would be buying the exports? As we have seen, in the US, often the “consumer of last resort”, sales are down.

The underlying cause of the crisis is the sustained low level of profits throughout the system since the 1970s.

Central banks, encouraged by governments, have pumped cheap credit into the world economy to ensure tendencies to recession were staved off.

The result has been a succession of financial bubbles, the latest in “subprime” mortgage lending.

The enormous debts built up now act as a huge drag, weighing the system down.

As Marx pointed out, capitalism can resolve a crisis by allowing surviving firms to pick up bankrupt firms for far less than their value.

A crisis also drives down the cost of raw materials and labour as wages fall, allowing more profitable production to resume.

State intervention may have held off a second Great Depression for now, but it also prevented this kind of purge of

Downturn

© Socialist Worker UK

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LEFT JAB

REVIEWS

John Bell

Census meets climate change: the long and short of it

Auto workers sitting on car seats inside a GM factory in Flint during 1937 UAW sit-down strike

2010 is on track to become the hottest year in recorded history.

BOOK

Occupy! provides an answer to austerity Occupy! A Short History of Workers’ Occupations Written by Dave Sherry Reviewed by Peter Hogarth IN 1937, during the incredible wave of factory occupations that swept the US, Leon Trotsky noted, “sit-down strikes go beyond the limits of normal capitalist procedure. Independent of the demands of the strikers, temporary seizure of the factories deals a blow to capitalist property. Every sit-down poses in a practical manner the question of who is the boss of the factory, the capitalist or the worker?”

Dave Sherry’s book Occupy! A Short History of Workers’ Occupations looks at the recent history of workplace occupations and not only takes us on a wonderful trip down revolutionary memory lane but also analyzes the factors that led to the success or failure of the campaigns. In so doing, he demonstrates the revolutionary implications of occupations and their practical importance in the struggle for socialism.

Occupations skirt anti-union laws and other obstacles. They prevent scabbing and lock-outs, and make bosses more reluctant to resort to strikebreaking tactics because workers are

in control of millions of dollars worth of equipment and infrastructure.

Occupying a workplace puts bosses on the defensive and makes businessas-usual impossible. They heighten morale, empower workers and challenge the idea that the workplace belongs to the boss, as workers have meetings independent of union officials and gain greater solidarity.

Occupations can become a focal point for the media, drawing support from other workers and the broader community. While often started over defensive battles, such as wage cuts or lay-offs, occupations can quickly inspire others and spread, moving from a defensive local fight to a wider offensive against the employers and the government.

In short, occupations work. One of the greatest strengths of Sherry’s book is that it is an easily digestible call-toaction that cites historical examples that attest to the sit-down strike’s effectiveness.

The incredible stories include Italian workers shutting down factories, seizing control of whole cities and beating back Nazi incursion; French factory occupations that spread like wildfire and reduced the French bosses and the state to shambles; a general strike in San Francisco; the occupation of Flint auto

factories and their pitched battles with police; the general strikes in France in 1968 which saw the participation of 10 million; and many others. After reading this history, a few things become clear.

First, throughout the many examples of rank-and-file resistance, it was most often the work of union bureaucrats or Communist Party officials, not bosses or the government, who stifled the revolutionary potential of strike waves.

Time and time again, these left-wing leaders used the strikes as bargaining chips while seeking to maintain the status quo and collaborate with the ruling class.

However, Sherry emphasizes the important role that revolutionary socialists have played historically and must continue to play in preparing and shaping workers’ struggle. Nothing is automatic and socialists must argue for workers’ self-organization and resistance, and advocate for tactics that can win.

As Sherry admits, “this short history of workplace occupations is written to encourage more occupations and to show that when workers act in this way they begin to sense their collective capacity, not just to win local battles, but to challenge the system and change the world.” Austerity budget?

Good luck.

FILM

Inception, a thriller that makes you think Inception Written & directed by Christopher Nolan Starring Leonardo DiCaprio & Ellen Page Reviewed by John Bell There is nothing overtly “political” about Christopher Nolan’s outstanding new film Inception. But there is more than one way to be political.

Inception is profoundly political in the most basic sense: it is about relationships between people, most importantly the relationship between the filmmaker and the viewer.

We are introduced to a team of adventurer/thieves led by master thief Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

The team operates in an arena of unreality: they create a dream world, introduce a corporate target into that dream and trick the executive into revealing his business secrets.

There are rules in the dream world, like the rules of physics in our world, which can either wake the dreamers

up or leave them to wander in fantasy forever.

Cobb is on the run, unable to return to his home and children, and when the job that opens the movie’s action goes wrong he is left in an even more precarious position. He is headed toward a nightmare of loneliness and regret.

He is given one last chance—not to steal information from a billionaire’s subconscious, but to plant the seed of a new idea in the subject. In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, this would be mere cliché, the “last big score” that motivates so many thieves in so many films. But Nolan deftly mixes cliché with novelty, the recognizable with the mysterious. The result is a film that not only demands your full attention but also makes you want to give it.

The essential member of Cobb’s team is Ariadne, a brilliant young architect recruited to create a series of mazes within which the induced dream takes place, played by Ellen Page. Like the Ariadne of Greek mythology who helps guide the hero Theseus through the impenetrable maze

of the Minotaur, Nolan’s Ariadne is the viewer’s guide into and out of the maze of his story.

As the new recruit, she discovers the rules of the game as we do. And she is the only team member who is party to Cobb’s secret past. She is the one who gives him his most important guidance, and it is through her that the viewer is brought to the film’s resolution.

I’ve tried to tread lightly over plot points and story here, so as not to spoil any of the movie’s wonderful twists and turns. But it doesn’t spoil anything to say that this is, at one level, a film about filmmaking. Nolan is the architect enabled by billionaire movie corporations to create his story, his maze.

And where a lesser director would be content to manipulate our responses, Nolan lets us think our way out.

Nolan uses the touchstones of movie cliché and myth to create a film that feels completely original. He reveals a profound respect for his audience along the way. Isn’t that what is exhilaratingly political about all good art?

The extreme weather was lucky for me, enjoying a freakishly warm week at a Northern Ontario cottage at the end of June, but far from lucky for millions sweltering around the world.

Not lucky for the record number of drowning victims in northern Russia, attempting to escape a heat wave and drought.

Not lucky for droughtstricken farmers in South Asia where essential monsoon rain failed to track inland.

Not lucky for farmers on Canada’s prairies, where record spring rainfall drowned crops.

Not lucky for polar ice caps which continue to shrink at record rates.

The trend is undeniable.

Global climate is changing, and not for the better. Eleven of the 13 hottest years on record occurred in the last century. This year is on track to shatter all records. March 2010 was the warmest on record, with much of Canada experiencing average temperatures 4 to 5 degrees Celsius above normal (data compiled by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

June was likewise the hottest global June on record.

In fact, the last time a month was below the 20th century average temperature Madonna was singing “Like a Virgin”, the Breakfast Club was sticking it to the Man, and the unforgettable Frank Miller was Tory Premier of Ontario: February 1985.

Census

What does climate change have to do with Statistics Canada’s vaunted long-form census?

Funny you should ask. The answer lies in the phantasmagoric realm of Stephen Harper’s imagination.

Oh sure, I know many of you will reply that the man with the mighty minority is utterly devoid of imagination. You might point to the dead fish eyes, the rigor mortis smile, the Ward Cleaver fashion sense or the iron-fisted control he wields over his minions.

I say this is a carefully crafted façade, designed to protect the sensitive imagination that lurks within.

Evidence of Harper’s rich dream-life abounds. His approach to both climate change and the census is proof.

Harper hates facts.

Harper loves fantasy.

The census long form is all about gathering facts. Statistics Canada takes all the facts and analyses them, providing information for various levels of government and institutions. Trends are spotted, needs are assessed, plans are made, funds are allocated, all based on a bedrock of facts—that is how any rational government would proceed.

Here’s an example: StatsCan reports that the Canadian crime rate fell by 3 per cent in 2009; this continues a trend that has seen the crime rate fall by 19 per cent since 1999. Property crime led the decline, and even crimes of

violence fell slightly. The most significant increase in criminal behaviours were in impaired driving (up 3 per cent) and crimes involving firearms.

A rational, fact-based government policy would see a gradual reduction in funding to police and prisons.

A reallocation of funding to address alcoholism and keep drunk drivers off the roads, and to control the use of guns would make sense.

That is too prosaic for our imaginative Prime Minister.

Instead, he has created a rich fantasy world of crime and punishment worthy of any Hollywood blockbuster. Scrap the long gun registry (over the objections of the chiefs of Canada’s police forces) and build more prisons!

Stephen Harper imagines a world of violence and crime, of excitement and danger, and bases his policies on his imagination instead of boring old StatsCan facts.

So why not scrap the census. Scrap StatsCan too, while we’re at it.

Shredding facts

Which brings me back to climate change.

All discussions of global warming in Canada boil down, sooner or later, to the tar sands. The facts are— nasty old facts again—that Alberta tar sands developments are the worst source of pollution in the nation.

As tar sands emissions fire up climate change, alpine glaciers that are the source of Alberta’s rivers are shrinking.

The process of extracting the tar from the sands uses between two and four barrels of water for every barrel of oil. Wastewater is unfit to be returned to the rivers, and held in vast tailing ponds.

A parliamentary panel was convened to study the issue of water use in the tar sands region. At the end of June, while Harper was living his dream of crushing all our rights and liberties during the G20, the Standing Committee of Environment and Sustainable Development decided to scrap their planned report on tar sands water use.

The Tories and Liberals on the committee even agreed to shred all the drafts of the final report. To find out more about this interesting turn of events, check out Andrew Nikiforuk’s important article in The Tyee (http://bit.ly/d7i2jr).

Suffice it to say, the facts the Committee uncovered were clearly at odds with Harper’s dream to turn Canada into a latter-day petro-power (a dream he shares with fellow romantic Michael Ignatieff).

All the serious science agrees that climate change is a crisis threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions.

But Harper is as anti-science as was George W. Bush.

If the science doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, just ignore the science.

When in doubt, scrap the facts and hold fast to the fantasy. Science is out, ideology—the sum total of Harper’s imaginary world—rules the day. What a great way to run a country, an economy and a world.

And that’s the fact, Jack.

August 2010 Socialist Worker 9

WHERE WE STAND

Bruce Power plant

The dead-end of capitalism

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.

What does it mean to be a revolutionary today?

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.

One day conference Bahen Centre 40 St. George St University of Toronto Sunday, August 29 10am-4:30pm Opening plenary Capitalist crisis and the relevance of Marxism Workshops •the centrality of the working class •strategy & tactics •reform & revolution •oppression & exploitation •the environment •the struggle for national liberation

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 August 2010

international socialist events

Closing plenary Being a revolutionary today

Canada—world’s worst climate offender

by JASON GANNON Since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, commentators have questioned whether BP’s role in the spill has caused irreparable damage to Britain’s reputation.

Indeed, even US President Barack Obama has repeatedly referred to the company as “British Petroleum”—a name it hasn’t used since 1998—perhaps in a bid to deflect criticism towards another country despite the fact that 39 per cent of BP is owned by American investors.

It’s easy to criticize others—and no doubt, when it comes to the likes of corporate criminals like BP, it’s justified. But when examining Canada’s environmental record, it’s time we noticed the plank in our own eye.

Canada, more than any country in the past decade, has worked to undermine any meaningful global agreement on climate change. At the 2007 UN climate change sum-

mit in Bali, the Canadian delegation was received with a chorus of well-deserved boos.

The reception in 2009 at the Copenhagen summit was no warmer as Prime Minister Stephen Harper once again sabotaged real action on climate change. Canada is one of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, and the traditional excuses for inaction—our cold climate and large geographical size—simply don’t add up when you consider our impressive access to renewable resources.

The BP oil disaster is a major wakeup call for many, and the toxic tar sands should be as well. Why then are some looking to nuclear power as a safer alternative?

Names like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island should remind us that the record is clear: nuclear power is an accident waiting to happen.

If Bruce Power gets its way, that accident could be happening in a lake near you. The recent

announcement that the company wants to transport radioactive waste to Sweden by shipping it on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River has provoked outrage. The potential for disaster looms large.

While the catastrophe in the Gulf has captured world headlines, another spill, this one on the St. Lawrence Seaway, has recently shown the significant ecological damage that nautical accidents can cause.

On July 13, a ship owned by CSL, the family company of former Prime Minister Paul Martin, leaked almost 200 tonnes of fuel into the water, affecting approximately 3 km of shoreline and covering numerous birds with a slick. It wasn’t even an oil tanker, but a ship carrying wheat.

Now just imagine the long-term impact if a serious nautical accident happened with radioactive waste. Does that sound like a safer alternative? It shouldn’t, unless you’re a cockroach.

BP seepage secrecy: the latest mystery from the Gulf of Oil

by MELISSA GRAHAM

Soon to be former-PB CEO, Tony Hayward

One company controlling the fate of our entire planet. It sounds like the theme of a bad science fiction novel, but in the past four months it’s been all too true.

Since April, BP has been working to clean up the worst oil spill the world has ever seen, but the mainstream media seems to care more about the economic impacts of this tragedy than the effectiveness of the corporation’s methods.

Recently, this has become apparent with the discovery of seepage 3 km from the well. BP is claiming this seepage is from a different well site completely unrelated to the disaster, but why should we believe it? The company has lied time and again about the extent of the oil being dumped into our water supply through the Gulf of Mexico. With BP’s stocks plummeting, it is in the

best interest of its finances to hide another scandal.

Damage to the well would mean that BP would need to reopen the cap, allowing more oil to spill into the Gulf. If the seepage is coming from the damaged well and the pressure is not removed, methane and oil could be seeping through the bedrock of the seafloor causing unprecedented dam-

age that would be very difficult, if not impossible, to fix.

Meanwhile, ecosystems in the Gulf continue to be destroyed, as well as the livelihoods of people who live on its shores.

The cap was originally intended to test the integrity of the well, to figure out if it could withstand repairs. Now BP hopes to keep this cap in place until the relief well is completed and then seal off the leak with drilling, mud and cement. This plan sounds all too similar to the last attempts plug up the well, which failed miserably.

In this whole mess, the only thing that seems clear is that BP, a company that has already proven itself to put its profit margin ahead of the lives of others, has now been allowed to play Russian roulette with our planet and use the media in a tragic game of misdirection. Look closely, our future is at stake.

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Russian Revolution & the 21st century: Lessons for revolutionaries today – study series Bahen Centre 40 St. George St. University of Toronto

•Stalinism & state capitalism Tues, Aug 3, 6pm Speaker: Faline Bobier •Deflected permanent revolution: liberation movements in the developing world Tues, Aug 17, 6pm Speaker: Pam Johnson Info: www.socialist.ca Tel: 416.972.6391 Organized by the UofT International Socialists

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reports@socialist.ca MONTREAL LOCKOUT

by PETER HOGARTH A FIVE-DAY lockout of dockworkers began the morning of July 19 paralyzed cargo processing at the port of Montreal. It jammed supply routes to eastern Canada and the northeastern US.

The lockout came unexpectedly as CUPE Local 375 and the employer had met the previous day and made plans to continue ongoing contract negotiations during the week.

Roughly 900 members of Local 375 have been without a contract since December 31, 2008. The dispute centres on terms of the expired collective agreement that deal with wage security.

Dockworkers are paid full time wages to be on standby 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But the employers association wants to put an end to that and on June 27 they cut loose the 169 longshoremen with the least seniority.

The employer said the lockout was ordered in response to dockworkers deliberate slowing down the loading and unloading of ships and refusal to work overtime. These pressure tactics from the workers came in response to the attacks on the 169. The tactics were effective, forcing the employers association to rehire the 169 laid off dockworkers to cover the work.

The lockout only served to show how crucial to the economy these workers are.

Contract negotiations have resumed.

PUBLIC SERVICES WHEN IT comes to involving people in the fight against privatization, neighbourhoods like Rexdale are usually left out.

The community is in the northwest corner of Metro Toronto; the majority of the population is from racialized communities, and it has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the region.

But over 200 ignored the threat of rain on July 24, and turned out for a Town Hall meeting calling for protection and better funding for municipal public services.

The event was jointly sponsored by Communities Organizing for Responsible Development, Social Planning Toronto, and the Good Jobs For All coalition. Information and activity tables were set up by many of the unions that represent Toronto’s public and private sector workers.

Speeches from community organizers discussed that when services like transportation, education and welfare are threatened with cuts and privatization, it is communities like Rexdale that are hardest hit.

The community is fighting back against proposals to shut down local schools.

It takes over 90 minutes to reach the downtown core by transit, and news that Ontario’s Liberal government has reneged on a promise to fund Toronto’s “Transit City” plan means proposed rapid transit extensions to the area could be axed.

Future Town Halls are being planned for Malvern and Scarborough.

STICKING WITH THE UNION

UFCW

Loblaws workers ready to check out with strike vote Build the fightback Carolyn Egan

WORKERS AT Loblaws, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), delivered a massive 97 per cent strike vote to counter the corporation’s cutback demands.

The UFCW represents 30,000 grocery workers across Ontario, in Loblaws, Zehr’s, Fortinos, Great Food and Real Canadian SuperStores outlets.

Loblaws is demanding a 25 per cent roll-back of employee wages and benefits. This is what the corporation calls “operational

flexibility”. They complain they can’t compete with non-union competitors like Wal-Mart.

As well as a grocery retailer, Loblaws is Canada’s largest food distribution company.

It recently reported a slight drop in earnings, due not to a drop in business but to corporate investments in new computer systems.

In fact, its revenues actually rose 1.2 per cent to $7.3 billion for the previous year.

The food giant plans to spend another $1 billion in the coming year on IT sys-

tems: these including computerized checkouts the help put store workers out of a job, and just-in-time inventory controls that will enable them to lay off warehouse workers.

Loblaws VP of public relations, Julija Hunter, has declared that 2011 will be “a watershed year”, and she’s right. For the corporation, that means breaking the union. For the union, that means standing firm and fighting to save jobs and living wages.

Negotiations continue with a mediator.

CITY COUNCIL VOTES TO KEEP TORONTO HYDRO PUBLIC On July 6, Toronto City Council voted overwhelmingly (30 to 6) to oppose the privatization of Toronto Hydro.

The motion was brought forward by councillor and mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone in response to recommendations from the city’s finance staff to privatize the public utility.

The motion read: “Toronto City Council unequivocally indicate(s) that as Toronto Hydro is a necessary instrument to achieve Toronto’s environmental, economic development and financial objectives, it is not

in the public interest to sell all or any part of it.”

Pantalone is one candidate for mayor who is unequivocally opposed to privatization.

Right-winger Rocco Rossi calls for the sale of public assets like Hydro. Councillor Rob Ford says he doesn’t think Hydro needs to be sold to solve the city’s financial problems, but hasn’t ruled it out.

The motion will not be binding on a new City Council and Mayor, to be elected October 25, but the strong vote reflects the fact that, when polled, 66 per cent of

Torontonians oppose privatization of crucial services.

“As this council nears the end of its term, it has sent a powerful message to those who will be elected on October 25, including our new mayor,” said John Camilleri, president of CUPE Local One, which represents Hydro workers.

Keeping Toronto Hydro in public hands is a crucial part of creating a sustainable future, and campaigns are underway to have Hydro lead the way to installing solar panels on the roofs of publicly-owned buildings.

CASINO REGINA WORKERS’ STRIKE

by PAM JOHNSON CASINO REGINA workers, members of PSAC, are getting the first taste of Premier Brad Wall’s austerity plan for the public sector in Saskatchewan.

They are taking on government-owned Saskatchewan Gaming Corporation.

They have been on strike since June 3 when the government walked away from the bargaining table after workers refused benefit concessions and a wage increase

SEARS LOCKOUT ON JULY 14, members of United Steelworkers (USW) local 9537 and supporters held a rally and information picket outside a Sears store in Hamilton.

Sears has locked them out and hired scab labour in their place. Picketers called on consumers to boycott the store.

The 500 employees have been locked out of the Vaughn distribution centre after Sears Canada refused to continue bargaining. Sears wants to make drastic changes to workers’ living conditions, trying to cut pensions, benefits and vacation time.

USW representative Terry Bea says, “Sears wants to impose a contract that would give the company the right to unilaterally and arbitrarily change every aspect of our compensation and other working conditions.”

This rally was the first of many this summer that will be targeting Sears stores across Canada in a nationwide boycott campaign.

that will not meet the rising cost of living.

These workers have been joined on the picket line by food service workers, members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), who struck in solidarity just before their own contract was up.

The workforce includes many single mothers and is 50 per cent aboriginal. Hours are long, including nights and weekends. Workers are asking for family leave and night shift premiums.

Strikers know they are the first public sector workers to face Premier Wall’s austerity measures and that their struggle will determine the course of contract negotiations for other workers. The strikers have vowed to stand strong and push back government attacks.

Picket captain, Chris Matchett, citing the militant history of labour struggles in Saskatchewan and the legacy of Tommy Douglas, said, “We will stay here as long as it takes.”

CANADIAN BOAT TO GAZA

Campaign to bring aid to Gaza IN JULY, a campaign was launched to raise funds to send a Canadian ship and crew to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, and to challenge the ongoing economic blockade by Israel.

In Toronto, the Steelworkers Hall hosted a packed meeting to hear Shiv Hever, an economist with the Jerusalem-based Alternative Information Centre, discuss the blockade and occupation of the Palestinian territory of Gaza by Israel.

Other meetings and fundraising events are planned for cities across Canada and Quebec.

Hever explained how Israel’s blockade had undermined the livelihoods of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, making aid from outside essentian, including both humanitarian and development aid.

Organizers of the campaign issued an open letter stating their goals: “The blockade of Gaza goes two ways. Vital building materials and other supplies are banned from entering Gaza and all exports from Gaza are also denied.

“As we plan to carry aid into Gaza, we also aim to carry exports, even symbolic, out of Gaza, thus asserting the right of Palestinians in Gaza to trade with the world, rather than be at the mercy of international aid.”

The goal is to raise $300,000 for the cost of the boat and crew (not including aid cargo). Organizers plan to approach prominent Canadians to travel with the boat, to serve as witnesses.

For more information, to endorse the campaign or to donate, visit www.canadaboatgaza.org.

to save pensions

A tremendous opportunity was missed during the Vale Inco strike to rally workers across Ontario and the entire country to support the workers who fought heroically to save their pensions.

It seems inevitable that the members of Local 1005, which has a militant tradition and a strong rank-and-file, will soon face either a lock-out or a strike on the same issues.

This time the labour movement must be there shoulder-to-shoulder with these workers.

There is no doubt that if industrial workers lose their fight to maintain the defined pension plan, the next attacks will be against the public sector.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper led the campaign for deficit-cutting at the G20 Summit in June, and Ontario Premier Dalton McGinty has made it clear that the public sector in Ontario is being asked for significant concessions.

AFTER ALMOST 12 months on the picket line, the 3,000 strikers at Vale Inco in Sudbury, who had put up a courageous fight against a powerful multi-national, bit the bullet and voted to accept a concession contract.

In then end, 75 per cent of workers voted to go back to work, but there is still tremendous anger at both the company and the union leadership.

One of the key questions in the strike was Vale’s demand to give up the defined pension plan for new hires.

This is a question that is being raised more and more frequently in contract negotiations.

A thousand workers at US Steel’s Lake Erie works were locked-out almost as long and—although not single scab crossed the line—workers agreed, after a bitter fight, to the same concession.

Pensions

While workers at both locals are maintaining their own pensions plans, they were fighting for workers of the future who they believe deserve the right to a retirement with dignity.

The fight at Vale should have been a line in the sand for the labour movement as a whole.

The attacks could have been fought with large mobilizations across the province with both the private and public sector unions prioritizing the fight for pensions.

Profitable companies are grinding down workers, demanding more and more rollbacks. They are using the argument of the economic crisis and the need to become more competitive. This is being played out on the backs of workers across the globe.

The members of United Steelworkers Local 1005 are currently in contract negotiations with US Steel in Hamilton.

Once again, the defined pension plan is a major issue. But here, the company is also demanding an end to pension indexing for over 8,000 retirees.

Solidarity needed

When the steelworkers in Hamilton are forced to walk the line, it must be a signal to every union that they must commit the resources to mount a major fightback to defend their rights.

All workers—both industrial and public sector—must stand together and provide the solidarity necessary to push back against these attacks.

We have seen workers in Greece who are under a massive assault fighting back and rallying the broader community with them. The same is happening to varying degrees in othercountries around the world. Canada is no exception.

There is a strong labour tradition in this country where workplace action has brought the many gains that workers have won over the years.

When United Steelworker Local 1005 starts walking the line, it is up to every labour activist to walk with them, and demand that the trade union leadership mount a militant fightback that can win.

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

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August 2010 Socialist Worker 11

G20’S REPRESSION PART OF PLAN FOR AUSTERITY

by PAUL STEVENSON There were a few things lost in the G20 coverage of burning police cars and the media focus on black bloc antics. One was the mobilization of more than 25,000 people marching for human needs, workers rights, maternal health, environmental protection and peace.

The other was the primary outcome of the G20 meetings in Toronto. The G20 agreed to massive cuts in government spending over the next two years. Specifically, it was agreed that every G20 nation must cut government deficits in half by 2013.

The massive scale of the cuts is obvious. For the US, a 50 per cent reduction means cuts of roughly $800 billion—or about the same amount as the Pentagon’s yearly budget. The austerity measures will mean slashing spending on government programs, health and education, and the gutting of regulatory agencies.

Governments will try to find ways to make up short falls with reduced service and user fees, which disproportionately affect the poorest in society.

Some economists have already raised alarm bells about the new austerity plan.

Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times sees the austerity plans as a recipe for a “double dip” recession. The cuts and job losses will reduce the ability of people to spend, forcing the economy further downward.

But why would they advocate an austerity plan that will cause more crisis in the future. It seems absurd that governments would continue a path to destruction. To un-

A handful of the 12,000 police who were on guard during the G20 Summit. (PHOTO: CHARLOTTE IRELAND)

derstand this we need to look at the nature of the state under capitalism.

The state

The state is not a benign entity designed to mitigate the worst excesses of capitalism, as many would have you believe. The state exists to benefit business and the banks at the expense of working people. When those workers get out of line—the state is there to trample them into submission. It is the “executive committee of the bourgeoisie”— not a real democracy.

Every right we currently have has been the result

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of struggle by the working class. The rights to demonstrate and assemble, for free speech and so forth, have all been won through fights against the capitalist class and the state.

In the lead up to the summit, there was a daily parade of propaganda from the Toronto police, showing off new weapons that they would be using against the demonstrators and stories of violent protests that needed to be stopped by any means.

They were hoping to stop people from coming to the demonstrations. It didn’t work.

On June 26, 25,000 people marched to call on the G20 to end this insanity and to build an economy for people not profit. The police response included the largest mass arrests in Canadian history—with more than 1,000 people including journalists, lawyers and passersby arrested for no reason.

Governments in Canada and throughout the world know that the austerity programs agreed to at the Toronto summit will result in fightback. Ultimately they know that this is a recipe for dozens more Greeces and they want to be prepared.

The gauntlet has been thrown down and in Canada the G20 was a test case for how willing people are to allow their civil liberties to be suspended when the shit really hits the fan.

We have not seen the generalized anger become a force on the streets such as we have seen in Greece, but the possibility exists in many other European countries. The cuts which are already coming down will further enflame the class antagonisms.

We don’t yet know what form the resistance will take in Canada. Over the past couple of years we have seen

some great fights but they have largely been defensive struggles, to hold onto a pension here and to stop a two tiered wage package there, but each strike sows the seeds of potential further fightback.

We need, wherever possible, to link the fights together as we did during the G20 with maternal health contingents and Vale INCO strikers leading the march.

For socialists we need to find opportunities to build solidarity where fights are occurring and to use every means to disseminate ideas about how to change the world for the better.

IRAQ WAR RESISTERS

Legal victory gives momentum for political solution

by JESSE McLAREN A FEDERAL Court of Appeal decision in favour of US Iraq War resister Jeremy Hinzman is a temporary legal victory, and gives momentum to Bill C-440 that would provide a political solution for all war resisters.

In a unanimous decision in July, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that an immigration officer’s decision against Hinzman was “significantly flawed” because the officer did not take into consideration his “strong moral and religious beliefs” against participating in war.

Hinzman was the first US Iraq War resister to seek refuge in Canada, and has

been living and working in Toronto along with his wife, Nga Nguyen, and son, Liam, since 2004. In 2008 they had a daughter, Meghan.

A majority of Canadians shared Jeremy’s opposition to the Iraq War, and through the anti-war movement prevented Canada from sending troops. This anti-war sentiment has continued as support for US Iraq War resisters, and pressure on Parliament to twice vote to let war resisters stay.

But the minority Harper government has ignored the will of Parliament, and immigration minister Jason Kenney has prejudiced immigration decisions by labelling war resisters “bogus refugees”.

As a result, war resisters as a group are not allowed to stay as they were a generation ago, and their individual applications to stay have been systematically denied.

But the tide is turning.

While the HinzmanNguyen family’s quest for sanctuary is far from over, their application to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds now goes back for reconsideration by a new immigration officer. The Federal Court of Appeal’s decision strengthens their application and the applications of all other war resisters.

This legal victory gives momentum to Bill C-440, which comes up for vote

this fall. Introduced by Liberal MP Gerrard Kennedy and seconded by NDP MP Bill Siksay, the bill would provide a political solution for all resisters by letting them apply for permanent residence.

Bill C-440 will not be easily won. The same mass pressure that enshrined majority opinion in government policy towards the Iraq War is required to win sanctuary for those soldiers resisting the Iraq War. Harper wants to undermine today’s anti-war movement, and erase the legacy of activism against the Vietnam War, but we have a chance to stop him.

For more information, visit www.letthemstay.ca