Socialist Worker 519

www.socialist.ca

DON’T LET CAPITALISM WRECK OUR FUTURE lShame Harper, resist the attacks lAll out against the G20 on June 26 IN THE third week of June, the rulers of the world—who have plunged the planet into economic crisis, endless war, and ecological catastrophe—will descend on Toronto to further their agenda. We need to greet them with mass resistance.

They are the war criminals occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and arming Israel, while wasting $1 billion on walls, police, and sonic weapons to keep us out. They are the Greedy 8 who bailed out the banks and corporations, while imposing harsh austerity measures to make us pay for their crisis.

They are the rulers who brought us the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the devastating tar sands, while ignoring calls for good green jobs for all.

Resistance is growing by the day. From Sudbury to Greece, workers around the world are beginning to stand up against austerity measures. Energy from the Cochabamba climate conference is focusing on Harper’s role in destroying the planet.

A wave of protest against the Tories’ anti-choice agenda exposed the fact that they ignored CIDA’s recommendation to include abortion in his maternal health plan. The massacre of humanitarian activists bringing aid to Gaza sparked outrage across Canada and around the world against Israel’s crimes and Harper’s complicity, adding to the simmering mood over torture in Afghanistan.

June 26 will be an opportunity to unite all these movements and focus them on our government.

The fight for jobs and global justice and against climate change are linked, and it is in the interestes of all working class people to mobilize to tell the G20 that we want a different kind of world. All out on June 26 against the G20!

$2 no. 519 June 2010

RADICAL ROOTS OF PRIDE Christine Beckermann looks back at the history of gay liberation Page 5

A planet to save A world to win Pages 6&7 Workers fighting back against ecological and economic crises

South Africa’s football fiasco Page 4 Jay Gannon on the politics of the world cup

Crimes of the greedy G20 Page 12 Peter Hogarth and Paul Stevenson cover the record of the rich

Blackwater connection Page 3 Derrick O’Keefe looks behind whose training Canadian Forces

Boycott Arizona Page 4 Jessica Squires on the racist state assault

Fight against Vale Inco grows Page 11 Jesse McLaren on increasing militancy

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

Federal budget fails Aboriginal people

Unions defy government, hire Abdelrazik

Pro-choice activists stage a die-in in front of Tory Minister Bev Oda’s office

by AMELIA MURPHY-BEAUDOIN

by PETER HOGARTH

AS ANOTHER 62 names are added to the list of Aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in the last 30 years, the federal government cut funding to the organization that works to bring these cases to light.

This is what solidarity looks like. In a move that defies the orders of the federal government, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) has hired Abousfian Abdelrazik to work for one week.

Sisters In Spirit has uncovered 582 cases, and their research has confirmed that Aboriginal women are the most at-risk group for violence in Canada. Over the past five years, Sisters In Spirit has researched these cases, investigated who these women are, and why they have gone missing or been murdered.

The federal government’s willful ignorance has allowed many of the murders of Aboriginal women to go unsolved. It’s a national tragedy that Aboriginal women are not a priority for police and public officials, and it’s deplorable that Harper’s government has decided to take another step away from the plight of Aboriginal people in Canada.

The $10 million in funding that was promised to Sisters In Spirit was to be geared to such community programs as housing, services for survivors of violence and improved education for police to understand Aboriginal issues.

The federal budget utterly failed Aboriginal people. It failed in many aspects: completely disregarding whole segments of the population, ignoring key poverty issues, not making any meaningful investment in renewable energy, failing to live up to its own job creation promises, implementing no measures to address record high tuition fees and student debt, and spitefully denying funding to Pride Toronto.

Protesting salmon farms

by VALERIE LANNON MAY 8 saw a magnificent display of force when over 4,000 people crowded on to the BC legislature lawns to protest fish farms, which are killing BC’s stock of wild salmon.

The protest marked the largest action on the streets in a struggle over a decade old, one that has brought together First Nations, environmentalists, and parts of the fishing and tourism industries.

The protest was the culmination of a 500km walk from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to Victoria, initiated by biologist and activist Alexandra Morton, with widespread support. The beginning of the walk from Port McNeill was honoured in a ceremony led by Namgis Chief Bill Cranmer.

Another First Nations spokesperson, Fred Speck of the Gwawaenuk Tribe, noted “I think there’s a real sense of urgency” because salmon are a traditional food source and fishing them is a way of life.

People are urged to call on the government and salmon farming companies to move all fish farms into closed containments, where they will not harm wild salmon.

You can also help by insisting on wild salmon when you purchase salmon at the supermarket or in a restaurant.

2 Socialist Worker June 2010

Abortion rights activists protest anti-choice Tories

by ALEX THOMSON and SHAWN MUNRO Pro-choice activists are pushing back on the Harper government’s recent attacks on abortion rights.

In Halifax, on April 24, members of the Feminist League for Agitation and Propaganda (FLAP) protested a fundraising dinner of the Campaign Life Coalition. Dressed

in evening costume, the FLAP activists played their own version of the “Duck, Duck, Goose” game called “Safe Abortion, Safe Abortion, Dead” outside the venue.

On May 13, an annual anti-choice parade in Ottawa was met with hundreds of protesters in front of Ottawa’s Human Rights memorial defending this most basic human

right. Carrying signs reading “my body my choice” and chanting for the end of sexism, activists stood united against the mob.

Then the Bowmanville riding office of Tory Minister of International Development Bev Oda became the scene of two separate protests. On May 14, activists picketed the riding office playing a form of “Whack-A-Mole”

using inflatable pool toys to represent development groups, which had lost funding.

The very next day, a group of pro-choice and labour activists—including OFL president Sid Ryan— staged a die-in at the same location in solidarity with the many women in developing countries who die each year from lack of access to safe abortion.

Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen whose name remains on a United Nations Security Council watch list has had his civil rights trampled by the Canadian government.

His name was placed on the watch list in 2006, while he was visiting family members in Sudan. Despite being cleared by both the RCMP and CSIS in late 2007, his name continues to be on the watch list. This means that Abdelrazik is barred from air travel and paid work and has had his assets frozen.

The Canadian government’s official position is that Abdelrazik’s name should be removed from the list, but has refused to take the steps needed to clear his name.

Pride censorship triggers Iraq War resister bill moves closer to passing wave of protest

by AMELIA MURPHY-BEAUDOIN

FOR THE first time ever, Pride Toronto, bowing to pressure from pro-censorship lobbyists, has banned a group from marching in the Trans march, the Dyke march and the Pride parade.

Pride Toronto’s board of directors directly targeted Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), voting to ban both the group itself and the words “Israeli Apartheid”.

Ironically, this year’s Pride theme is “You are welcome”.

Pride Toronto started as a protest movement in 1981 as a grassroots movement, with no federal funding, corporate sponsors or endorsement from the city.

The community knew that Toronto Pride wasn’t only an excuse to party, but a statement that we’re here, and we’re queer, and we march because pride is political.

There have been huge gains for LGBTQ people in Canada. It’s an opportunity to stand in solidarity with other people around the world who face oppression, particularly Palestinian LGBTQ people.

The decision to censor

pride has provoked a wave of protest. On May 27, eight organizers of the first Pride event in Toronto in 1981 issued an open letter denouncing the censorship: “Solidarity with all struggles against oppression has been a crucial part of the history of Pride.”

Then, Dr. Alan Li turned down his appointment as Grand Marshal, stating: “Pride’s choice to take preemptive step to censor our own communities’ voices and concerns in response to political and corporate pressure shows a lack of backbone to stand up for principles of inclusiveness and anti-oppression”.

Then Jane Farrow turned revoked her acceptance as Honoured Dyke, challenging the arguments around censorship: “I, like many people, do not feel ‘safer’ or ‘included’ by any decision to limit political speech. Quite the opposite. As history shows, suppressing people’s right to express and explore political difference leads to some very dark and dangerous places.”

These words and actions will give confidence to QuAIA and their supporters to defy the ban.

First Nations protest HST THE ONTARIO Government’s HST plans have provoked anger and action from First Nations people.

The Federal and Provincial governments are ignoring the treaties which exempt First Nations people from paying taxes; implementation of the HST will do away with the point-of-sale PST exemption, which is a treaty right.

Aboriginal people in Canada already face

funding shortfalls, and the HST issue has heightened anger. As a result, travellers passing through Garden River First Nation territory in northern Ontario will need to pay a toll. Signs were recently posted along the trans-Canada highway advertising the tolls, which will likely be implemented sometime this summer if the government does not exempt First Nations from the HST.

by JONATHON HODGE ON MAY 25, Bill C-440 began second reading in Parliament.

A bill presented on the strength of two majority motions passed over the last two years, Bill C-440, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, will allow US Iraq War resisters to apply for permanent resident status in Canada if passed.

The campaign in support of these men and women has been lobbying MPs for months in support of the bill. Thousands of postcards have been signed urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to support the bill.

But prorogation last year means that Second Reading will only resume in September at the earliest. In the meantime, many war resisters face the threat of deportation.

On the same day the bill

began Second Reading, the Federal Court of Appeal was packed out with supporters of US war resister Jeremy Hinzman, who was appealing a decision in his request to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Like other war resisters, Jeremy has few legal options left to win asylum in Canada. The campaign for a political solution is therefore critical to ensuring that the Conservative government does not deport resisters. Already, two Iraq war resisters have been deported to the US, where they have been court-martialed and sentenced to lengthy terms in prison.

The majority of Canadians— and the majority of MPs—support letting Iraq War resisters stay. Over the summer, we need to keep building support for Bill C-440 and be prepared to hit the streets should any deportation orders come down.

BC city to enact living wage policy

by BRADLEY HUGHES AT THE end of April, the City Council in New Westminster, BC passed a motion to enact a living wage policy for all city workers and workers of any contractor working on city premises.

The motion passed due to the efforts of the Living Wage for Families campaign headed up by the BC branch of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

The campaign also includes several unions and the New Westminster and Vancouver Labour Councils.

According to the city’s website, “Living wage is a term used to describe the minimum hourly wage necessary for a family of four

with two working parents working full-time to pay for food, shelter, support the healthy development of their children, escape financial stress and participate in their community.” In New Westminster that is currently $16.74 per hour.

The provincial minimum wage is a shameful $8 an hour, and new workers can be paid a $6 “training wage”.

The living wage policy will not change city workers wages, who, thanks to their participation in their union, are already paid above this rate. It will affect the wages that contractors to the city have to pay. It also sends a clear message across the province and the country that workers deserve to be paid a living wage.

The decision by the CLC to hire Abdelrazik is a direct challenge to the federal government and its sanctions which prevent Abdelrazik from seeking employment.

Hassan Yussuff, the CLC’s secretary-treasurer stated that “the UN’s watch list relies on questionable intelligence and the use of racial profiling, as well as guilt by association. This casts an unjust shadow over entire sections of the population.”

Abdelrazik, a machinist by trade, will also be hired for a day by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC).

This sanctions-busting decision by the unions is important for both the labour movement and the fight for civil liberties, as it is a strong display of unity against a Harper government that has consistently attacked working people and Muslim and racialized people.

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War crime trial continues abuse of Khadr

‘WAR ON TERROR’

CANADIAN CITIZEN Omar Khadr’s pre-trial hearings recently concluded. The hearings will determine if statements Khadr made to interrogators should be excluded as products of torture.

Over eight years ago, the Canadian was gravely wounded and captured as a 15-year-old in Afghanistan.

Khadr has spent almost one-third of his life in prison.

Prosecutors accuse the young Canadian of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier.

Canadian Forces being trained by notorious Blackwater mercenaries

by DERRICK O’KEEFE BLACKWATER IS the world’s most notorious mercenary company, run by Erik Prince, an extremist and Islamaphobe who has been accused by former employees of being on a “crusade” to “rid the world of Muslims”.

Blackwater’s hired killers operate outside of the normal “rules of engagement”, let alone the Geneva Convention against torture and other war crimes.

Despite being exposed for murdering Iraqi civilians, the company continues to provide a variety of services to the US occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and their incursions into Pakistan. Blackwater has recently “rebranded”, in an attempt to escape some of their bad press, changing their name to Xe Services LLC. So it should be of great concern

to all Canadians that Erik Prince has singled out Canada’s work in Afghanistan for praise. US investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, secretly recorded Prince earlier this year: “… At one point during his speech, Erik Prince stops after he had been bashing some NATO countries ... he singled-out Canada as a positive example of a force that was doing a good job in Afghanistan…”

Last month, the Vancouver Sun reported that Blackwater is training Canadian Forces: “The National Defence Department has spent more than $6-million having its troops trained by the controversial Blackwater security company, whose own employees have been accused of needlessly killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, documents show. The department sent a succession of personnel to Blackwater’s Moyock, NC, training

compound from 2005 to as recently as April 2009, some of them learning tactics for working in dangerous settings, records obtained through access-to-information legislation indicate. The work continued even after the US State Department cancelled its pricey security contract with the company in Iraq amid mounting criticism of Blackwater’s actions.”

Torture scandal

Incredibly, the connection to Blackwater was first reported in 2007.

This story should be at the top of the nightly news in Canada but instead it has dropped out of sight. Especially given the ongoing torture scandal involving Afghan prisoners, this connection with Blackwater is deeply disturbing. It reflects the Canadian military’s increasing integration with not only the US military, but also the growing industry

of private military contractors. Private contractors now outnumber the close to 100,000 NATO troops occupying Afghanistan.

In his speech, Erik Prince called the Afghans’ resisting NATO “barbarians”, reminiscent of former head of the CF Rick Hillier’s describing Afghans opposed to NATO as “murderers and scumbags”. This is isn’t just inflammatory rhetoric, it’s Islamophobia—the type of blatant racism that helps to justify war and empire.

In addition to calling for all Canadian troops to be withdrawn immediately from Afghanistan, we should all be demanding assurances that no Canadian Forces will receive training from Blackwater or other mercenary companies.

Derrick O’Keefe is a Vancouver-based writer and co-chair of the Canadian Peace Alliance.

Canada to occupy Panjwaii, once again

by SALMAAN ABDUL HAMID KHAN THIS SUMMER a Canadian led offensive will once again occupy the Afghanistan district of Panjwaii.

Situated in the “spiritual capital” of the Taliban, Kandahar’s Panjwaii district, characterized by a jumbled collection of villages, has long served as a battle ground for the occupying Canadian Forces.

Located just 35 kilometres west of Kandahar City, the Panjwaii District witnessed its heaviest fighting in 2006 when Canadian-led NATO and Afghan troops launched a two-phase assault on Taliban guerrilla forces.

Both operations failed to produce results as the Taliban simply “slipped back in” after the occupying forces had finished flattening Afghan villages and homes. Over 90 Afghan civilians lost their lives as NATO troops bombarded villages with mortars, and to this date, the Panjwaii district alone has claimed the lives of 32 Canadian soldiers.

Operation Moshtarak

The Canadian led operation in Panjwaii this summer is part of a US-led NATO offensive in Kandahar province. Called Operation Moshtarak, it was launched in February 2010, and

was the first operation following the Obama’s troop surge and “new counter insurgency strategy”. This summer’s offensive will be the largest of its kind since the start of the Afghan war.

As part of the invasion plan, occupying NATO forces hope to drive out the Taliban from surrounding dis-

tricts including Panjwaii, and clear the way for a final battle in Kandahar city.

Lt.–Gen. Marc Lessard of the Canadian Forces stated “the goal for Canada in the offensive will be to turn fence-sitters into government supporters, and turn Taliban supporters at-least into fence-sitters.”

Carnage in Afghanistan continues to climb

by BRADLEY HUGHES IN AFGHANISTAN, the resistance to NATO occupation is increasing. So, too, are the deaths.

During the month of May,a suicide attack against NATO troops killed a high ranking Canadian soldier, Colonel Geoff Parker, five US soldiers and 12 Afghans in the capital of Kabul. The deaths of the US soldiers has brought the death toll to over 1,000.

Canada has sent 145 of its soldiers to their graves so far in this war.

Hours later, the Taliban launched an attack on NATO’s

Bagram Air Base. At least seven Taliban fighters were killed, nine NATO troops were wounded and one US mercenary was killed.

The Taliban says at least 20 suicide bombers took part in the overnight attack.

The attacks came one week after Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah announced plans for a spring offensive against the Afghan government and NATO in an interview with Al Jazeera. He spoke of 6,000 “Taliban mujahidin,” and access to new anti-aircraft weapons for use against NATO planes and helicopters.

However, a survey carried out by the US army’s own social science program, the Human Terrain System (HTS), shows that the population in Kandahar province currently trusts the Taliban more than they do the corrupt government or NATO.

Sentiment

Furthermore, a March 2010 survey carried out by the International Council for Security Development (ICOS) following the launch of operation Moshtarak in the neighbouring Helmand province, which too was carried out under the banner of winning “hearts and minds”, revealed that “over 61 per cent of the 400 surveyed residents in Marjah feel more negative about NATO forces than before the military offensive.”

The same survey also found that 71 per cent of those surveyed “want NATO forces to leave.”

Meanwhile, news of the upcoming battle in the Kandahar province has instilled fear in local residents who believe that the NATO offensive will “accomplish little more than fuel more violence.”

So far this year, 202 NATO soldiers have died in Afghanistan, as compared to 520 NATO troops in all of 2009, the deadliest year so far for the occupying forces.

Army interrogator, Damien Corsetti was known as “The Monster” at the US prison in Bagram, described Khadr as a 15-year-old “kid with three holes in his body, a bunch of shrapnel in his face,” detained in “one of the worst places on Earth”.

Fresh from lifesaving surgery in 2002, Khadr was interrogated while he lay on a stretcher. Screams from other prisoners filled the air. Interrogators threatened death by anal rape. He was hooded and chained, with his arms high, inside a cage. Khadr was not warned that his statements could be used against him. He had no lawyer, no access to a judge, no contact with anyone with his interests at heart.

Canada participated in the abuse. It turned over the fruits of its own interrogations of Khadr to the prosecution, and, to this day, has not requested Khadr’s return.

UN reports on US secret jails

by FAVA ZAHARUK A MAJOR UN report reveals US secret detention policies, which “might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity”.

Journalist Anand Gopal has revealed a vast network of secret prisons connected to the global “war on terror”.

These prisons are run by US Special Forces that are not bound by NATO’s stricter rules of engagement.

Obama claims the prison on the Bagram base in Afghanistan and other larger detention centres are “cleaning up their act” but only to transfer prisoners to field prisons. Most notably, “the black jail”, which is located at the Bagram air base itself. The Red Cross does not have access to these secret jails. They operate without transparency or accountability.

Common illegal techniques used in these prisons are water-boarding, beatings with metal bars, naked exposure in cold weather and dog attacks.

Afghans are captured in night raids and often held for three or four months of torture before release with a letter of apology after being wrongfully accused. Night raids are the most unpopular practice among Afghans, even more so than air strikes. They are seen as a major affront to the culture and thus Afghan opinion of the US is at an all time low.

June 2010 Socialist Worker 3

TALKING MARXISM

INTERNATIONAL

Abbie Bakan

Trading in on apartheid

World Cup stadium construction workers strike for higher wages in Soweto, South Africa.

From May 23 to 27, Ontario’s Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty led a mission to Israel, accompanied by Economic Development Minister Sandra Pupatello, along with other Liberal MPPs and business officials.

The trip intended to open doors for increased trade, especially in the “life sciences” sector.

McGuinty was be the first Ontario premier to visit Israel since 1998, when Tory Mike Harris led a similar mission.

Arranged in the wake of Israel’s relentless war on Gaza, and of the heels of the Ontario Legislature’s shameful condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) in February of this year, the visit indicates a dangerous liaison.

The trip will ensure that Ontario corporations get in on the profits from Israel’s booming apartheid economy. And it will show that Ontario is a player in Israel’s attempt to “re-brand” its criminal image, as the ongoing atrocities against the indigenous Palestinian population are subject to more open challenge.

Trade

Trade between Ontario and Israel increased 86 per cent between 2004 and 2008, totaling $1.1 billion.

McGuinty has termed Israel’s recent economic advance “a miracle of innovation and innovative capacity.”

For Israel, war and apartheid are good for business.

As Naomi Klein wrote in The Shock Doctrine, the post 9/11 global increase in racial profiling has been a boost to manufacture and export for Israeli industry. Israel’s economic boom is tightly linked to the military and security sectors, where testing is done on the local Palestinian population prior to seeking international export markets.

Security systems are a major growth area for Israeli capitalism, refined in erecting barriers, surveillance techniques, and systems of regulation and control designed to limit and monitor Palestinian access to Israeli occupied land, roads, schools, hospitals and services.

A detailed study by Israeli scholar Neve Gordon, prepared for the Queen’s University surveillance project, confirms the pattern: “There is no dispute that many of Israel’s homegrown technological skills were honed inside secret military labs and that military research has given Israel a clear lead in vital aspects of telecommunications and software technology.”

However, the particular appeal of Israel’s market goes further. Israel’s export strategy is largely based on the claim that domestic “experience”, particularly in issues related to homeland security, render the country’s technological sector particularly advanced. As Gordon puts the case: “…[T]he Israeli experience in fighting terror is attractive not only because Israelis manage to kill ‘terrorists’ (the militaristic worldview), but also because killing terrorists is not necessarily adverse to neoliberal economic objectives, and actually advances them....

This attraction stems from the sense (real or perceived) that fighting terrorism through methods of homeland security, that include suspending due process in many areas of the criminal justice system, including torture, the right to a speedy trial, the freedom from arbitrary police searches, and the prohibition against indefinite incarceration and incognito detentions (to mention a few methods) does not conflict with democratic values.”

Occupation

Israel has made a recent priority of military production and related research and development. But this trend is not new, dating back to 1967 and the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

McGuinty’s trip took him to the West Bank, where the aim shifts, apparently, to strengthening “Palestinian governance, education, small business creation and community development.” But where, then, is the call for reparations for Gaza’s devastation, or for support for the United Nations’ Goldstone Report that condemns Israel’s war crimes?

The trip, not surprisingly, is celebrated by MPP Peter Shurman. He is the author of the private member’s bill that threatened academic freedom by condemning IAW. But Shurman, a Tory oppositionist, cautions that McGuinty could botch the opportunities for trade, with his “reverse Midas touch”. The reference is to a January 2010 deal signed by Ontario for a $7 billion wind and solar development accord with Samsung and Korea Electric Power Corporation. It included an “economic and development” clause that will effectively subsidize exports by $437 million over the life of the accord.

It would be reasonable for social justice activists to expect considerably more opposition from the social democratic left. This won’t be heard from NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo. Not only did she vote in support of the bill condemning IAW, in April she also spoke at a Queen’s Park Israeli flag-raising event celebrating Israeli “independence”.

In fact the events of 1948 resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian people, referred to in Palestine as the Nakba, or catastrophe.

Rather than condemning McGuinty’s planned excursion, DiNovo cited Biblical text, and said she is looking forward to the day when she “can go see Israel for myself and kiss that ground that is sacred to all of us”.

The apartheid system that separates legally-defined “Jewish” nationals from indigenous Arab Palestinians has proven to be very profitable. It will be up to the grassroots anti-apartheid movement to condemn this mission, and to send a message that working people in Ontario will not be pitted against Palestinians fighting for their lives and livelihoods.

4 Socialist Worker June 2010

FIFA: South Africa’s football fiasco

by JAY GANNON A LOT has changed in South Africa since it last captured the imagination of billions. Apartheid has fallen, the country is no longer a target of boycotts and sanctions, and yet for many, conditions have scarcely changed at all.

Widespread poverty, de facto segregation in social and economic life, and forced relocations remain a reality as an era of neoliberal rule has displaced one of legalized racism. The nation’s Gini coefficient number of 0.679, a statistical measurement of income inequality, rates South Africa as the most unequal society on the planet.

This summer, when South Africa hosts the 2010 FIFA World Cup, will the attention of a new global audience somehow mark the “arrival” of South Africa and a new era of prosperity, as politicians and organizers have claimed?

The answer lies in events off the soccer pitch. While most are focused on the considerable athleticism and skills of top players like Messi, Kaká and Rooney, the bully behaviour of FIFA and the South African government has truly been de-

serving of a red card.

FIFA has exacting standards for its World Cup events that make Olympic excesses seem modest by comparison.

South Africa’s government has acted the enthusiastic overachiever—building a series of new state-of-the-art stadiums where simply renovating existing ones, while itself of questionable merit in a nation where many gather drinking water from puddles, would have sufficed. In the process, spending has bloated to billions—money that could have been invested in much needed housing, nutrition, clean drinking water, and health care.

Overspending

There may be short term gains for a wealthy few, but the long term economic effects of such practices are disastrous.

Similar practices—overspending in the 2004 Summer Olympics—played a significant part in the current Greek crisis.

One of the most notorious of the new white elephant venues has been Mbombela Stadium. A school located on the site was relocated. Classes now take place in poorly ventilated metal shipping containers. Fainting is commonplace.

Municipal politician Jimmy Mohlala,

looking to expose shady deals between Stadium contractors and politicians connected to the ruling ANC party, was killed by an assassin’s bullet. Killings of other whistleblowers have since followed, against a backdrop of widespread forced relocations of the poor and homeless.

It’s not bad news for everyone, however. The World Cup is an advertiser’s dream, attracting billions of eyes to an elite clientele of global corporate sponsors. FIFA, obsessively protective of their brand, have pushed the South African government to warn the many street vendors who make their living selling merchandise outside of stadiums that they must be located at least a kilometre away—and that anyone caught selling products with the words “World Cup” or even “2010” on them will be thrown in jail.

When the games kick off on June 11, Spain is considered favourite to win, with many observers also predicting victory for perennial powerhouse Brazil. Elsewhere, however, the victors have been predetermined—FIFA, rich contractors, corrupt politicians and big advertisers— while poor and working class people get tackled before they ever get a chance to touch the ball.

Boycott building against Arizona’s racist law

by JESSICA SQUIRES

The state of Arizona has launched an assault on immigrants with the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act. The measure, ostensibly to stem illegal immigration, has been widely criticized and protested. Boycotts of Arizona have been organized, including one by Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland.

The act makes it a misdemeanor for a non-citizen to be in Arizona without carrying federal registration documents, and cracks down on anyone helping illegal immigrants. The law calls for police

to demand documentation from people to ascertain whether or not they are undocumented. A citizen can sue police they see not harassing suspected immigrants.

What this means is that the law enforces racial profiling. There have been protests in opposition to the law in over 70 cities, including rallies of 50,000 people on May Day. Hi-hop artists have cancelled concerts, and students have protested.

Sports teams have been a particular target of boycotts. The World Boxing Council, based in Mexico City, has said it will not schedule matches in the state. The Arizona basketball team, the Phoenix Suns,

wore their “Los Suns” uniforms (normally used for the league’s “Noche Latina” program) in a playoff game to show their support for Arizona’s Latino community.

And sports columnists have called for boycotts of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team, in solidarity with Diamondback players Juan Guitterez, Gerardo Parra and Rodrigo Lopez, who would be targeted under this law.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, has signed another racist measure, to ban ethnic studies in Arizona schools. It will shut down Latino-centric schooling, and will also affect specialized courses in African American and Native American studies.

Coalition a bitter pill for UK workers Nazi BNP shut out

by JESSICA SQUIRES TO PEOPLE in Canada it may ring familiar, but the people of the UK are getting their first taste in decades of a minority government in the wake of the May general election—and the taste is bitter.

Tory leader David Cameron has struck a power-sharing deal with Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats. Anyone romantically hoping the Lib-Dems would prove a viable progressive alternative has had their hopes dashed.

Coalition plans include “accelerated” action on the deficit, with £6 billion of cuts this year; a spending review on government departments, which will mean more cuts and attacks on public sector workers; and a reduction in child trust funds and child tax credits.

Measures ostensibly aimed to crack down on irresponsible corporate behaviour are cosmetic. Capped with a commitment to nuclear power, attacks on immigration and no real movement on the war, this coalition spells disaster for working people. The coalition will preside over the deepest cuts in recent UK history on the backs of workers, the poor and students.

In Canada, some pundits have begun speculating on coalition governments again. There, as here, the minority winner—and now the coalition—has no mandate. And there, as here during the abortive attempt at a coalition last year, the Lib-Dems, like our NDP, were willing to sell themselves out for power.

The lesson is clear: when you enter a coalition with corporate parties, workers suffer.

by MARK L. THOMAS THE FASCIST British National Party (BNP) suffered two hammer blows in their top target seat of Barking, east London.

Nazi leader Nick Griffin decisively failed to become the first Nazi elected to parliament. Griffin grabbed 6,620 votes while Labour’s Margaret Hodge won 24,628. Then the BNP base on Barking and Dagenham council shattered. The BNP boasts that it could take control of its first council turned to dust as all 12 BNP councillors were overwhelmingly voted out.

The argument that the BNP are not a normal party, but a Nazi party that had to be stopped was decisively won among the majority of people. © Socialist Worker (UK)

T

his summer will mark the 30th anniversary of the Pride Day celebrations in Toronto. For young people who may be heading out to their first Pride, it would be easy to think that the history of the struggle for LGBT rights has been an onward and upward advance of rational ideas over bigotry and hatred; that through reasoned argument, society and the state have come to accept the case for equal rights.

In fact, the struggle for queer rights has been a struggle with advances and setbacks, and the politics at the heart of the struggle at different periods have been critical.

While there is an early and vibrant history of people fighting for equality for homosexuals that was developed primarily in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these struggles came to an end with the rise of fascism and Stalinism in the 1930s.

Even after the defeat of Nazi Germany, there was a conservative climate in many countries epitomized

by McCarthyism in the US. This climate meant that groups that formed around gay equality in this period, such as the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, tended to be very cautious in their outlook and focused on education and gaining respectability.

It took the social upheaval sparked by the black civil rights movement to start to break through this conservative climate and it was at the height of the student, antiwar, women’s liberation and black power movements that the modern gay rights movement burst onto the scene.

There are two major events that mark the start of the modern fight for gay liberation in Canada. The riots which took place at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City on June 28, 1969 set off a radical movement for gay liberation in the US which had impacts in Canada, Europe and other countries around the world. And the bathhouse raids in Toronto in February 1981 brought the fight for gay rights militantly into the streets here.

Stonewall

The police raid which took place at the Stonewall bar was nothing unusual. Raids were a regular feature at gay bars at the time. In the preceding three weeks, five other New York bars had been raided. These raids generally created more fear than resistance.

But what turned Stonewall into a touchstone for a new movement was the reaction of the patrons that night. Police were used to violent confrontations with students, blacks, antiwar and other protesters, but they expected gays and lesbians to just submit to the humiliation and harassment of the raids.

Instead, the patrons who were kicked out of the bar that night, many of whom were involved in the antiwar or other movements at the time, started to fight back. Rey “Sylvia Lee” Rivera, a drag queen who was at Stonewall the night of the riot described what happened: “I don’t know if it was the customers or if it was the police, but that night everything just clicked.

Everybody was like, ‘Why the fuck are we doing all this for? Why should we be chastised? Why do we have to pay the Mafia all this kind of money to drink in a lousy fuckin’ bar? And still be harassed by the police?’ It didn’t make any sense. The people at them bars, especially at the Stonewall, were all involved in other movements. And everybody was like, ‘We got to do our thing. We’re gonna go for it!’

“When they ushered us out, they very nicely put us out the door.

There we were standing across the street... But why? Everybody’s looking at each other. Suddenly the nickels, dimes, pennies and quarters started flying. ‘You already got your payoff and here’s some more!’”

Rivera described the riot as

1969 and 1972, the GLF was an influential force, and grew to more than 80 chapters across the United States and abroad.

The GLF in the UK produced a manifesto in 1971 which talked about how gay people are oppressed, beginning with the family, through schools, the church, media, employment and on and on. The first aim in the manifesto was “to rid society of the gender-role system which is at the root of our oppression.” This would be done in alliance with the fight for women’s liberation.

The politics of the new gay liberation movement were completely intertwined with the politics of the broader left at the time.

In Canada the gay rights movement was very active in the decade following Stonewall, from the first gay rights march which saw 100 people rally in Ottawa in 1971, to the fight against antigay bigot Anita Bryant’s visit to Toronto, to the defence of members of the Body Politic collective after they were charged under obscenity laws for printing an article called “Men Loving Boys Loving Men”.

Bathhouse raids

THE RADICAL ROOTS OF PRIDE

As Pride Toronto bans Queers Against Apartheid from this year’s march, Christine Beckermann looks back on the radical roots of the struggle for gay liberation, and how the rights we have today didn’t come without a fight beautiful and exciting. “I’m out there being a revolutionary for everybody else, and now it’s time to do it for my own people”.

Liberation movement

‘The responses to the Stonewall and bathhouse raids reflected a movement and a community that had had enough’

The police were completely caught off guard and forced to retreat back into the Stonewall bar. The Tactical Patrol Force was called in to control the mob, which was now using a parking meter as a battering ram.

As the patrol force advanced, the crowd did not disperse, but instead doubled back and reformed behind the riot police. For the next several nights, the crowd would return in ever increasing numbers, handing out leaflets and rallying themselves. By the end of the weekend, the Stonewall bar was burnt out, but the modern gay liberation movement was born.

After the riots, an informal committee of people from Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Soci-

ety met to organize a march which drew out somewhere between 500 and 2,000 protestors. The march committee started holding meetings and decided that they needed a name for themselves. Martha Shelley, a lesbian activist who was part of the committee, isn’t sure who came up with the name Gay Liberation Front, but remembers pounding her fist on the table and yelling in exultation, “That’s it!

We’re the Gay Liberation Front!”

Shelley says “GLF was it because it was like the National Liberation front of North Vietnam—the Vietcong. They were like David fighting against Goliath, fighting for their nation and for the liberation of their people. We were all against the war, at least all of us in GLF.” The GLF was not only dedicated to gay rights, but also to the broader social ideals which dominated the 1960s, including peace, equality and economic justice. Between

But the key event that brought the LGBT movement in Canada massively into the streets came in February 1981 when police raided four gay bathhouses in downtown Toronto, arresting nearly 268 men and charging them under the “bawdy house” section of the criminal code. It was the largest mass arrest in Canada since the October Crisis in 1970.

People who were arrested that night described the brutality and violence of the police. People were physically assaulted and verbally abused by homophobic cops.

After a group of men had been corralled into the showers in one bathhouse, a cop remarked that it was too bad that the pipes in the shower room couldn’t be hooked up with gas instead of water, harking back to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. George Hislop, a leader in the gay rights movement at the time, described the behaviour of the police as “gestapo-like” and the police destruction of the establishments was so bad that one of them never reopened.

The arrests had an immediate effect, politicizing and galvanizing the gay rights movement here.

The night after the arrest, over 3,000 people joined in a protest on Yonge Street which marched down to 52 Division, chanting “Fuck You 52”. The march then moved on to Queen’s Park to protest the Conservative government’s inaction on updating the Human Rights code to include sexual orientation.

Participants in the march described the anger and intensity of the crowd. When the police tried to block protestors from turning onto Dundas Street to march to 52 Division, protestors swarmed through. And when a streetcar tried to push through the march, protesters began pushing it and rocking it, breaking a window before the driver finally decided to stay put.

Two weeks later, another march was held, this time drawing 5,000 people. And on March 6, a Gay Freedom Rally was held, effectively becoming Toronto’s first pride event.

The responses to the Stonewall and bathhouse raids reflected a movement and a community that had had enough, and that was no longer willing to sit back. People’s anger and frustration poured into the streets, and into a new movement which would pave the way for many of the rights which we have today.

These rights have not come easily, and this history of ordinary people who were inspired by other groups fighting against oppression, and who saw their liberation as being part of a larger struggle, should not be lost or sanitized out of Pride.

This article first appeared on Rabble.ca.

June 2010 Socialist Worker 5

A PLANET T A WORLD TO As the two major crises of the world today—ecological and economic—continue to deepen, people around the world question the roots. Capitalism and its endless pursuit of profits is threatening to destroy us. However, people around the world are fighting back: from the general strikes shaking Europe to the Cochabamba climate conference, workers have the power to transform the world

I

t’s hard to grasp the awesome scale of the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. It is definitely the US’s biggest ever environmental disaster— and by some estimates may be the worst in world history.

Oil firm BP and the US government first claimed that a “mere” 1,000 barrels (160,000 litres) a day have poured into the ocean.

Then they increased the guess to 5,000 barrels a day. They now say it is 17,000. But some scientists believe the amount could be 60,000 or 70,000 barrels, making it by the far the worst oil disaster ever.

The region’s fishing industry will be destroyed. The full effect of the spill on fish, birds and marine mammals will not be known for generations.

Oil is pouring into the deep currents of a semi-enclosed sea, poisoning the water and depriving it of oxygen so that entire classes of marine species are at risk of annihilation.

It is as if an underwater bomb has struck the Gulf of Mexico, causing some damage on the surface but destroying the living creatures below. And most of the methods to deal with this disaster have made it worse.

The reason for the different estimates on how much oil has leaked is money. Under the US Clean Water Act, BP could be fined up to $4,500 for every barrel of oil gushing into the Gulf. If its lower estimates are accepted it will save BP millions of dollars.

So it was not just arrogance that led Tony Hayward, the boss of BP, to claim, “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

BP won’t even say how much oil it thinks is in the field it was exploring. It claims this is commercially sensitive information.

Cause

The April 20 explosion happened because BP was in a hurry to seal off the oil well so it could move the rig to another drilling location. Eleven workers died as a result.

The cause of the oil spill is simple—the pursuit of profit at all costs.

BP has tried to pin the blame on the survivors of the disaster. But the real culprit was the firm’s cost-cutting.

The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig came after the well was capped with a cheap type of casing, produced by Halliburton. BP rushed as it was leasing the rig for half a million dollars a day.

Rig chief mechanic Douglas H Brown told a US investigation that BP was constantly pushing for work to be speeded up.

6 Socialist Worker June 2010

BP, which has boasted of its success in boosting oil production in the gulf, has a sordid history when it comes to safety. BP has known of the problems with rigs’ safety preventer valves for ten years—but wouldn’t spend the money to fix the problem.

Last October it was fined $87 million for failing to correct safety problems discovered after a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers at BP’s Texas City refinery.

Like every other oil company, BP has also sought a blanket exemption from requirements that it conduct an environmental impact assessment for each new offshore well it drills.

BP and its subcontractors were able to drill because the US government, under George Bush and then Barack Obama, encouraged them.

Obama has been critical of his predecessor’s environmental policies and promised to place fresh emphasis on developing alternative fuels—but nothing changed.

In 2009 BP, spent nearly $16 million on lobbying the US government—and the leases for offshore drilling in the Gulf kept flowing.

Oil drives the global capitalist economy, and the competition for this “black gold” breeds conflict and corruption.

A handful of massive corporations and producer countries control the industry, backed to the hilt by powerful states—and they are willing to organize coups and wars in the pursuit of profit and power.

Even on its very best day, the oil industry is a series of violent, toxic horrors. Drilling, shipping, refining and burning oil is destroying the planet—at the local level through poisoned air and water, and globally by fuelling climate change.

The scale of the catastrophe is prompting some newspapers to call it “Obama’s Katrina”.

In Canada, off the coast of Newfoundland in the Orphan Basin, Chevron Corp. is drilling under 2,600 metres of water, a record depth in Canadian waters. This rig is 1,100 metres deeper than the Deepwater Horizon.

Despite the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and high-risks involved with drilling under tremendous pressures at that depth, provinical and federal bodies have given Chevron the go-ahead.

Economic crisis

As John Bellamy Foster writes, “Today, the sickness of both environment and economy—and the fact that the common cause is to be

found in the capitalist mode of production—can no longer be doubted.” Capitalism destroys the natural system it relies on—it takes resources from a finite world and pumps waste, in the form of pollution, back into its resource base, thereby destroying it.

At the same time, the economic crisis threatens workers livelihoods as governments and institutions continue to make us pay for the crisis we did not create. The fight back currently spreading across Europe offers us a glimpse of how ordinary workers can change the system.

Greek workers are at the forefront of resistance to the world’s rulers’ plans to make ordinary people suffer for capitalism’s crisis. The country’s government is pushing though vicious austerity measures at the behest of the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“The majority of people are not responsible for this debt. People understand that it’s not the problem with Greece. It’s global capitalism that is the problem. Because they lose their profits and they have hit the people for these problems.

The fact is wages in Greece are very low,” said Kostas Katarachias, member of the General Council of

the Federation of Hospital Doctors Unions of Greece.

The Greek working class is leading the way, refusing to pay for the crisis and recently launched its fifth general strike on May 27. Its power has repeatedly paralyzed the country as hundreds of thousands strike.

Resistance spreads

This mood of resistance has also spread across Europe as other governments push forward austerity measures to deal with national debts.

The British protests against cuts on June 22 will be part of a cross‑European fightback. There are moves towards a day of coordinated strikes and demonstrations across the continent.

Portuguese workers took to the streets of the capital, Lisbon, on May 29 to protest against the minority Socialist Party government’s plans for wage and job cuts. The General Union of Workers claims around 300,000 people joined the demonstration.

They marched with placards and banners reading, “Stop the rise in unemployment”, “No to austerity” and “Those responsible for the crisis should pay for it.”

Portugal’s union leaders say the rally last weekend was only the first

TO SAVE O WIN

Thousands take to the streets to protest the 2009 G20 summit in London, England

Fight back against crimes of the G20

by PETER HOGARTH and PAUL STEVENSON

WHEN THE G20 comes together in Toronto at the end of June, they will face a broad coalition of resistance.

And with good cause. The G20 is comprised of the leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations who have been party to crimes against the planet and its people, terrorizing the world’s most vulnerable with their institutions and policies.

The G20 constitutes the political leadership of the most powerful countries in the world. These are the countries that relate to the big financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). These are the same organizations that, through structural adjustment and predatory aid and lending, have kept developing countries systematically poor.

The backing of G20 countries has forced countries such as Haiti, Ghana, El Salvador and others, to open essential services to privatization and foreign ownership, devalue currencies, cut public spending and other conditions in exchange for loans disguised as “aid,” leaving countries unable to pay, dependent on selling their resources and labour for the lowest possible price to foreign companies.

Is it any wonder that G20 promises of eliminating poverty have been at best, broken promises or, more earnestly outright lies?

Climate crisis step in protest at an austerity plan including tax rises and a freeze on civil service workers’ pay. “It’s a stage of a continuous struggle that will intensify,” said Armenio Carlos, a member of the union’s national leadership committee.

“We’re leaving all options open, including calling a national general strike.” Three days earlier, up to one million French workers took part in some 90 demonstrations across the country against an increase in the age at which workers receive their pensions.

Italy’s six-million strong CGIL union announced a nationwide stoppage for June 25 to be preceded by protest rallies around the country two weeks earlier.

Bankers increased the pressure on the Spanish Socialist Party after the credit ratings agency Fitch raised fears that the government might not be able to meet future debt repayments, causing markets to tumble.

But this has only increased support from workers for resistance. A public sector strike is set for June 8, and private sector unions are discussing joining in.

Romanian workers, facing 25 per cent public sector pay cuts, have launched their biggest strikes and protests for 20 years. Hundreds of

thousands struck and tens of thousands marched on June 1.

Change

In order to save the planet from climate catastrophe, we need to build a broad, radical movement that includes environmentalists, students, socialists, indigenous peoples and ordinary people—workers, unionized and non-unionized.

Any solution to the climate crisis must have both workers and indigenous peoples at the centre of the battle.

It must be rooted in people’s material reality. This means jobs. Millions of jobs in the new industries that will be needed to build and install the wind turbines and the solar panels, retrofitting existing buildings and homes, assembling new energy-efficient cars, buses and trains.

It also means honouring and respecting First Nations land treaties.

We have to continue to fight for unity in the movement and ensure that communities that have traditionally not been part of the movement speak for themselves.

The global climate movement is building and gaining strength. The Cochabamba climate conference in April radicalized the sentiment, but the key is to link the environmental and labour fight backs. Together,

we have the potential to transform the world.

This is a big task, but make no mistake—we have the power to do it. We are the majority. The corporations, the bosses may own the wheels of capitalism, but we turn them—and we can bring them to a standstill.

When Marx and Engels studied capitalism they recognized its inherent contradiction: it brings together large numbers of workers in giant factories and workplaces, creating the very force that can transform society—it produces its own “gravediggers”.

As we have seen in Greece, without workers, power stations do not generate electricity, factories do not make products, raw materials are not mined, collected and distributed, cities are not cleaned, students are not educated, trains and buses do not move. It may not always feel like we have power, but we have an immense amount as a class.

History has demonstrated when we act collectively we can withhold our labour and bring capitalism to a grinding stop, threatening the profits of the bosses.

With files from Simon Basketter, Socialist Worker (UK), Charlotte Ireland and Rabble.ca.

With catastrophic climate change a looming scientific reality, Harper and the rest of the G20, the world’s foremost greenhouse gas emitters, have left the environment absent from this summit’s agenda. This is the same group that signed onto that completely unrealistic, weak, non-binding accord at the UN Copenhagen climate summit.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants climate change on the agenda and wants Canada to play a leadership role in promoting environmental protection at the summit. However, Harper has already affirmed that the G20’s schedule will be mainly focused on the global economy, leaving little time for the environment.

‘The G20 accounts for 95 per cent of global arms production and 98.5 per cent of global nuclear stockpiles’

Harper appears to be in like-minded company. Russia’s chief negotiator has said that his country’s position on the environment mirrors Canada. Brazil, China and India have all issued statements implying that they would not be discussing climate change outside of the UN. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has rescinded his pledge to align his country with others seeking a strong global mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The summit of G20 nations will most certainly be focused on stabilizing the global economy in the face of massive debt and deficit. History suggests that the leaders of the G20’s answers will be to socialize the losses of capitalism for the benefits of banks and corporations. Bailouts for the rich and austerity measures for workers will certainly be on offer.

No doubt the G20 leaders will contrive a message to the people telling them that there is no money available for social programs and that we all must tighten our belts. These austerity measures will be deemed necessary to pay of the soaring debts that the advanced capitalist countries are accruing.

This is a farce—the money is there.

What they fail to mention is how much money the G20 continues to spend on the military.

Military spending

In total, the G20 spent $1.3 trillion on the military in 2009 or 87 per cent of global military spending. That number is increasing yearly, particularly because of the massive costs of maintaining the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The G20 also accounts for 95 per cent of global arms production and 98.5 per cent of global nuclear stockpiles.

In Canada, the Harper government is continuing with plans to increase Canada’s war budget to $30 billion a year by 2015. The increases make Canada the 13th largest military spender in the world.

These numbers are even more disgusting when compared with what that money could be used for. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, an annual investment of $30 billion could build a program to provide adequate food for the more than 800,000 people who are malnourished and the UN says that $70 billion a year could provide basic and secondary education to every child on the planet.

At last year’s G20 summit, the architects of the Greek austerity measures met and set the stage for the attacks on Greek workers. At this year’s summit, we have to take a page from the magnificent Greek resistance and fight back against the greedy 20.

June 2010 Socialist Worker 7

COMMENT

Jessica Squires

Defend women’s right to choose

Imperialism behind Israeli attacks THE LARGER context for Israel’s state terrorism is US imperialism.

For decades, it has used Israel and Arab dictators to maintain control of the oil-rich region. Now a declining economy has led the US to increase the use of its military.

But the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq triggered mass resistance that has so far prevented the spread of “regime change” to Syria, Iran and beyond. In response, the US organized two proxy wars in 2006—the Israeli assault on Lebanon and the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia—but these were resisted as well. Alongside military resistance, anti-imperialist forces have gained political representation across the region: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.

Frustrated by the failures to spread “regime change” and furious that democracy has empowered anti-imperialists, the US has turned to more violence— fomenting civil war in Iraq and Palestine, and unleashing their Israeli pit bull on Palestine and its supporters.

Now economic crisis is exacerbating the military quagmires and leading to more war. The war in Afghanistan is spreading to Pakistan, the war in Iraq threatens to spill over into Iran and now Israel is attacking anyone approaching by water.

Complicity

Harper has been complicit in this recent history. In 2006, he made Canada the first country in the world to cut humanitarian aid

WHAT WE THINK to Gaza, while defending Israeli massacres in Lebanon as a “a measured response”.

In 2009 Harper was silent on massacres in Gaza, and as Israeli forces were murdering civilians on the international aid convey, Harper was welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Harper’s support for Israel is part of his broader imperialist agenda—which includes extending the occupation of Afghanistan and deporting US Iraq War resisters to jail in the US. Harper’s attacks abroad have paralleled attacks at home. All funding has been cut from the Canadian Arab Federation, the Christian human rights organization KAIROS, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for their support for Palestinian human rights.

While allowing Islamophobic Ann Coulter into the country, the government delayed the visa to Palestinian MP Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, and banned British anti-war MP George Galloway. Meanwhile, both provincial and federal Tories have put forward motions condemning the student-led Israeli Apartheid Week. (IAW).

But Harper’s attacks on funding and free speech are from a position of weakness. In 2003, the anti-war movement prevented Canada from joining the Iraq War, against Harper’s wishes. In

2006, Harper’s defence of Israeli massacres in Lebanon generated a backlash that drained Tory support.

In 2008 and 2009, the anti-war movement won Parliamentary motions in support of US Iraq War resisters—despite Tory opposition—and is pushing on Bill C-440 that would win refuge for war resisters.

Anti-war movement

Harper knows the power of the anti-war movement. In 2008 he only clung onto minority rule through an election campaign based on concessions—including promising to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2011, and admitting his support for the Iraq War was “absolutely an error”. Then at the end of last year, Harper only escaped opposition to the Afghan detainee scandal by proroguing Parliament for the second time in two years.

Israel and the Arab dictatorships that support it only exist because of the backing of Western imperialism. As movements across the region directly resist these terror states, activists in the West have a responsibility to challenge our own governments who are ultimately responsible. By removing our government’s boot from the throat of the Arab world, we open up space for occupied people to liberate themselves.

The next opportunity will be the G8/G20 protests in Canada, where the anti-war movement can hit back at Harper’s Achilles heel, thereby weakening one of Israel’s staunchest supporters.

G8/G20 SUMMIT

Bank bombing a gift to Stephen Harper IN THE lead-up to the G8/ G20 summit in Toronto, Tories, police and security forces of all kinds could not have asked for a greater gift than fire bombing an Ottawa RBC branch.

The stunt will justify the massive police presence we can expect to face at the G8/G20 protests, and dissuade many who should be taking part in these protests to stay home.

An unknown group calling itself FFFC-Ottawa has claimed responsibility and promised to be in Toronto in June. They justify the attack as an act of solidarity with First Nations struggles, citing RBC’s participation in the winter Olympic games and deep investment in the Alberta tar sands.

The bombing was followed by a brief but effective statement from the Indigenous Environ8 Socialist Worker June 2010

mental Network, which has been building an effective national and international campaign to shut the tar sands down. By clearly restating its own strategy, it effectively reputes the bombing: “First Nations in Canada’s tar sands have been waging an effective, transparent non-violent campaign against RBC and their dirty investments. The Indigenous Environmental Networks supports strategic non-violent direct action that is lead by impacted communities.”

As socialists we condemn actions like the bank bombing, not because of “violence”, but because such conspiratorial tactics as this grow from a profound contempt for the ability to win working people to our struggle.

These criticisms are not new.

Responding to a similar event in 1850, Karl Marx wrote: “For

them the only condition for revolution is the adequate preparation of their conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution and are characterized by exactly the same chaotic thinking and blinkered obsessions as the alchemists of old.

“They leap at inventions which are supposed to work revolutionary miracles: incendiary bombs, destructive devices of magic effect, revolts which are expected to be all the more miraculous and astonishing in effect as their basis is less rational.”

There are a few who cheer such stunts, and more who refuse to openly criticize them due to respect for “diversity of tactics”. Nonsense. Tactics that strengthen the repressive hand of the state, and demobilize and disrespect our movement need to be thrown out for good.

Bill 94, the Quebec government’s attack on Muslim women wearing the niqab, has handed the right-wing (and some sections of the left) outside Québec further “proof” of Québec’s backwardness on integration.

But this story is really one of Islamophobia and of a desperate Québec government responding to the populist pressure of an equally desperate PQ. Bill 94 was ostensibly a response to media frenzy around the case of Naema Ahmed, an Egyptian immigrant who was expelled from a government-sponsored French class for refusing to remove her niqab (face covering). Her expulsion was based on the spurious idea that one cannot teach a language without seeing the face of the person being taught—an idea that is patently ridiculous. Would it follow that a blind person cannot teach a language?

At the time, Québec’s immigration minister, Yolande James, could not have been more disgusting: “There is no ambiguity about this question.... If you want to [attend] our classes, if you want to integrate into Québec society, here are our values.

We want to see your face.”

The sad fact is that by excluding immigrant women from French language courses, the Charest government is also promoting the further erosion of French already begun by funding cuts to those programs.

European bans

Internationally, this type of racist rhetoric mirrors current campaigns in European countries such as France, Belgium and Italy to ban full veils from entire countries in the name of security, secularism, national identity or feminism in various combinations.

In mid-March, the government followed this with a ridiculous restriction on non-existent religious instruction in daycares.

Then, on March 24, the Liberals tabled Bill 94: a bill that, while never satisfying the most orthodox secularists, attempts to do so by attacking a tiny minority of Muslim women.

If passed, the Bill will require public servants and service users to uncover their faces as a “normal practice”. It states that should “security, communication or identification warrant it,” then accommodation of the face covering is to be denied. No other type of accommodation is specifically mentioned. This is an attack on Muslim women, and critics fear a slippery slope.

Already, the Mayor of Saguenay, well-known for intervening in favour of preserving Catholic prayers at city council meetings, has now publicly called for a full ban of the niqab and the burqa from all public spaces.

And the Bill has the support of Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

Where is this Bill, and the rhetoric surrounding it, coming from?

Catholic Church

Politics in Québec is influenced by the French left, whose positioning on Islamophobia has both weakened their ability to

fight xenophobia and to oppose war; and by a history of resistance to the Catholic Church.

It’s no accident that many of the most forward-thinking Québeckers are in the younger generations who have no memory of the Church’s stranglehold on culture and freedom of expression.

But at the same time, examples of Catholic Church attacks on rights continue even today in mid-May Cardinal Ouellet spoke in favour of criminalizing abortion, with no exceptions. Incidents like this reinforce the mistaken notion that defending women’s rights implies opposing religion in general.

As a result, the left in Quebec has been mostly paralyzed or openly supportive of this response to the Naema Ahmed case and to Bill 94.

But these are not examples, as the media and some on the left outside of Québec would have it, of Québec’s supposedly racist culture. Québec society is not inherently racist.

This debate is about politics. It is the expression of a desperate Liberal government taking a populist tack to distract people from its attacks on workers; backed by a weak opposition in the PQ, who have seized on the idea of an ethnic identity for Québec; coupled with a twisted interpretation of secularism, to bolster their failing popularity.

And it is supported by leaders of the two major parties of Canada’s Parliament.

Again, this mirrors international examples: Sarkozy in France has promoted a national debate on identity to deflect attention from the economic crisis.

Attacks

Bill 94 is designed to deflect attention from government attacks on public services and on workers, and to avoid any further debate on secularism by creating a consensus against a small minority.

There is no denying the frenzy of Islamophobic triumphalism—and anti-Québec chauvinism—seizing the internet over the niqab.

Right-wing newspaper editors crow over Québec’s racism while immigrants in the rest of Canada can’t get jobs, Muslims are targeted as potential terrorists, and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney attacks immigrants and refugees with racist bills and laws.

The evidence could not be clearer that this, like all other forms of Islamophobia, feeds racism and bolsters the case for imperialist wars.

At its core this issue is about a woman’s right to choose.

There is a breathtaking irony in Québec’s National Assembly unanimously supporting a motion defending women’s right to choose abortion, at almost exactly the same time as it seeks to deny a woman’s right to choose what she wears.

A woman’s right to choose to wear whatever she wants must be protected. And women’s rights are not protected by attacking religion, but rather by attacking the system that perpetuates both Islamophobia and sexism and uses them to justify wars—and that’s capitalism.

LEFT JAB

REVIEWS

John Bell

BP and the corporate charm offensive THE ENVIRONMENTAL disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico offers many instructive lessons for corporations in the oil industry and beyond. In the public interest, I will compile them here.

Bringing revolution to high school Film H The Trotsky H Starring Jay Baruchel and Emily Hampshire H Written and directed by Jacob Tierney H Reviewed by Jonathon Hodge A teen-finding-his-voice story where the central character believes he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky promises to be delightful. And it is.

Leon Bronstein is no ordinary teen.

Raised in a wealthy Montreal family, he gains notoriety (and gets sent by his father to public school) by leading the workers at his father’s packing company in a hunger strike. Once at public school—for the first time in his life— he immediately finds the student union and is horrified to see that it has no executive or legislative powers. It has no power at all, except to organize the school dance.

Undaunted, Leon takes what’s given him and organizes. The union has no theme for the dance so he suggests social justice. Students take to the idea by the hundreds; the scene of dozens of high school kids dressed up as revolutionary workers, Zapatistas, black panthers, and one trio as “Animal Farm” is worth the price of admission alone. Leon uses the opportunity to petition the students to form a real union.

Such activities, not surprisingly, earn

the ire of the principal and vice-principal, who are trying to make over the place as some sort of business school Shangri-la. At the meeting of the school board—to which the students must “bully” their way in—Leon threatens a city-wide walkout, should the board not give students a say in their education.

While students do walk, he learns a hard lesson in organizing; politics needs leadership. The students walk out, and then hang out on the lawn playing hacky sack, without any sense of what to do next.

Leon and his friends up the ante once more. The scene of his friends finding their own political voice brought cheers from the audience— the student council treasurer challenging his friends to think what school would be like “if it didn’t suck”, and “it has a better chance of doing that, if we do something about it.” The narrative is pushed along by amusing references to Trotsky’s life, and how Leon expects all those things “right down to the ice pick” to happen to him.

This film is not without its prob-

lems. The principal—the villain—is cast to bear an uncanny resemblance to Lenin. It’s funny, especially the scene at the high school dance where he stands beside a massive poster of the man, but the un-stated point is that there was a divide between the two revolutionaries and there was not. Further to that, Leon launches a coup d’état, effectively hoping to galvanize the students to action through the heroic deeds of a few vanguardists (or one, as he gets his friends out of harm’s way first).

Such action was never a part of Trotsky’s approach. Lastly, Leon’s father and he reconcile through the giving of Mao’s little red book—in Chinese, so hopefully you can’t read it—which Leon is pleased with. Trotsky had grievous political differences with Mao. See this film. Not for those details, but for the awesomeness of teen rebellion and self-awareness coming through collective struggle for a voice and for something better. Channelling the great revolutionary may not be so far off the mark after all.

Marxism and ecology

Pamphlet H Marxism and Ecology: capitalism, socialism and the future of the planet H By Martin Empson H Reviewed by Erin Doiron-Hartle Marxism and Ecology reviews Marx and Engels’ ideas on the relationship humans have with nature and surveys the repercussions of climate change.

It discusses the myth of overpopulation, sustainability, and how we should go about the change needed to better the environment and our society; along with what will occur if no change forthcoming.

Empson connects the words of Marx and Engels with modern science and historical research to give a provocative account of how we got to where we are today. He explains that humans have always impacted the Earth, though it has only been in the last 500 years that our actions have done severe, lasting damage to the planet.

The switch of production from meeting people’s needs to making profit has accelerated climate change, which is threatening the wellbeing of all Earth’s creatures, for “the limits of production are determined not by the number of hungry bellies but by the number of purses able to buy and to pay.”

Our home, with its vast natural wealth, sustains all life forms; our

planet is now viewed merely as an object for exploitation. Today, shortterm profits are a bigger priority than long-term sustainability, while the burden of change is placed on those who leave the smallest carbon footprint; individuals are daily bombarded with messages and ads telling them to “go green.”

Though change in the lives of everyday people would be no bad thing, Empson argues that the major change has to come from the multinationals and the companies that create outrageous amounts of

waste and pollution daily.

This pamphlet shows the validity of Marx’s writings and predictions written 150 years ago, and calls for a socialist revolution to “restore the ‘metabolic rift’ between humans and the natural world.” I appreciate the notion that change is possible, though unlikely, under capitalism and that more needs to be done for the planet and our longevity.

We need to wrestle away the power of the capitalist class, and return it to the majority. We must move away from non-renewable resources, production needs to have long-term goals, the concept and infrastructure of cities needs to be radically changed, and agriculture needs to be increased and used to feed the hungry.

Overall, I found the read to be a very insightful look at Marx and Engels’ views on the environment and I fully agree that more needs to be done now to save our world from the drastic effects of unhindered climate change. How we will take power from those that are abusing our planet and our fellow humans remains the central challenge.

The first thing you have to do when your rig blows up and your well is spewing enough oil to contaminate an entire sea is to go on a public relations offensive.

Getting hold of the language describing the event is crucial.

Call it a “spill” or a “leak”. Avoid terms like gusher, geyser, underwater oil volcano or “Oilmaggedon” (as coined on The Daily Show).

BP CEO Tony Hayward knows this lesson well. “We will only win this if we can win the hearts and minds of the local community,” Hayward told the Financial Times. “It’s a big challenge.’’

You can meet that challenge by underestimating the size of the disaster. For the first two weeks BP insisted that 1,000 barrels of crude per day was spewing out. Then they upped it to 5,000.

Don’t pay any attention to independent researchers who reckon that 70,000 barrels per day is fouling the Gulf.

That allows a CEO like Tony to tell the press: “I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.”

In order to bring the right blend of contrition and steadfast resolve you must keep your CEO healthy and happy. Hayward is reaching out to politicians at the state and national levels. He has received a reassuring text message from BP’s board of directors telling him he isn’t being fired. He is on the phone to his fellow oil corporation executives. “I’ve actually got some good friends through this,’’ Hayward explained. This kind of glass-half-full-ofoil thinking is just what Gulf Coast hearts and minds need to hear.

Keeping a straight face while describing a series of crackpot ideas to stop the leak is an all-important skill. The concrete dome, the mini dome or “top hat” and especially the “junk shot” (trying to inject an artery-clogging mixture of chopped up rubber tires and golf balls into the pipe) are all so laughable that selling them to the press requires hours of practice.

Anything is preferable to admitting you have no idea how to stop it. To do that would force you to admit that the very idea of extracting oil from sources a mile beneath the sea, from an environment entirely alien to human activity, is utterly insane from the get-go.

‘Solutions’

Since the problem is utterly insane, utterly insane solutions begin to sound good. So flood the Gulf with toxic chemicals to disperse the oil—in an odd coincidence, chemicals patented and manufactured by BP—and don’t worry that the “cure” may be more damaging to the environment than the problem.

Remember, your media friends are essential for winning over those hearts and minds, and they are willing to believe (at least publicly) any piece of bullshit you tell them.

Take for example BP’s major “success”, inserting a thin tube into the oil volcano—I mean “leak”—so it can siphon oil into tankers waiting at the surface. The media unanimously declared that BP has “turned the corner”, is “making progress, and is “optimistic”.

Try this at home: plug your bathtub and turn on both taps full blast until it floods your apartment. Then take a straw and start sucking water, spitting each mouthful into a waiting bucket. Then when your irate downstairs neighbours pound on your door, you can show them the bucket full that didn’t come down on their heads. If you can convince them this constitutes some sort of “success” you may have what it takes to be an oil industry CEO. Relying on your politician friends for support is next on the agenda. In BP’s case, it means promising to cover everybody’s expenses, knowing full well that US federal law caps corporate liability at $75 million. US (and Canadian) lawmakers have made sure that mining and petroleum corporations cannot be seriously held accountable for the environmentally hazardous or toxic messes they leave in their wake. Goodness, how could any business make a profit if they had to do that?

Now, some are demanding that the law be changed and the limit be raised to $10 billion. Remember, you have contributed millions of dollars to the campaigns of many politicians—BP spent $16 million lobbying the US government in 2009 alone—who will go to bat for you.

Profits

And even if the cap is raised to $10 billion—no biggie. Remember that BP’s profit for the first quarter of 2010 alone was $5.6 billion. And while it won’t make shareholders happy, remind them that $10 billion is still far less than the real cost of cleaning up the mess and compensating those along the Gulf coast who lose their livelihoods.

As Hayward knows, it never hurts to cast yourself as the victim.

“What the hell did we do to deserve this?” he asked his fellow BP executives.

And when self-pity fails, there is always finger-pointing and deflecting blame. BP reminds us that other mega-corporations are part of the equation: Halliburton (synonymous with corporate evil, cue the Dick Cheney joke); and Swiss-based Transocean (never trust a deep-sea exploitation company based in a land-locked country).

And when all else fails, take a tip from Texas Governor Rick Perry and blame God: “From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented.”

We know God must exist, because the old prankster caused the oil rig to blow up just when BP’s executive in charge of Gulf drilling, David Rainey was on board to celebrate BP’s super safety record (thankfully Rainey was not among the 11 killed by the blast).

There you have it, CEOs of tomorrow: lie, underestimate the problem, overestimate your “solution”, and if it all goes south, blame God. Then get back to work and drill, baby, drill. It’s all about the charm offensive. Emphasis on the last word.

June 2010 Socialist Worker 9

WHERE WE STAND

international socialist events

The dead-end of capitalism

TORONTO

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

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

Socialism and workers’ power

•Prelude to revolution: reformism, war & the collapse of the 2nd International Tues, June 8, 6pm Speaker: Michelle Robidoux

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.

•Red October 1917: coup or popular uprising?

Tues, June 22, 6pm Speaker: Peter Hogarth •How the Russian Revolution won Tues, July 6, 6pm Speaker: Jesse McLaren

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 June 2010

•Did Lenin lead to Stalin?

Tues July 20, 6pm Speaker: Amelia MurphyBeaudoin •Stalinism & state capitalism Tues, Aug 3, 6pm Speaker: Faline Bobier

PREPARING FOR THE G8/G20 SUMMIT

How the G8 discovered its inner neoliberalism

by PAUL KELLOGG AS THE G8 and G20 prepare to meet in June in Ontario, we are assured that this represents a chance to “manage” the world economy—to navigate our way out of the Great Recession.

But the history of “collective management” of the world economy by institutions like the G8 and the G20 should give us no reassurance.

The truth is the biggest capitalist powers have only reluctantly been pushed into having to cooperate with anything resembling “collective management” of the world economy. At every step, they have dragged their heels at anything that might impede the autonomy of their own national capitalist classes.

First, the G8 and G20 are not actually formal organizations at all. They are the continuation of a series of annual informal meetings of financial officials from the biggest economies in the world.

Transformation

In 1973, the first big post-war recession broke out—the so-called first “oil shock”. The next year, the United States, in partial recognition of its declining role in the world system, called together an informal meeting of high-level financial officials from the five big Western capitalist powers—the US, Japan, West Germany, Britain and France. The next year this became the “G6” when Italy joined the club and then the G7 when Canada came in. This “G7” morphed into the G8 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the admission of Russia to these informal annual talks.

There is nothing democratic about the G8 or its predecessors. The G8 is a club in which, just as in a big poker tournament, you have to have put down a big stake to get to the table.

At one level, these groupings represent the continuation of a tradition, by the biggest powers in the world, of trying to avoid any kind of democratic control over their actions.

The United Nations General As-

sembly is an institution unique in history, where virtually every country has voice and vote. From its inception at the end of World War II, for good or ill, it became the embodiment of hopes for a more accountable international system. All the big powers participate, but the General Assembly is nevertheless trumped by the 15-member Security Council, with its five permanent members (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China— the five victors of World War II) holding, and using, veto power.

Even the restricted accountability of the UN was too uncomfortable for the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. showed a pronounced preference for the exclusively western (i.e. nonRussian) OECD—the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—set up in 1948 to oversee the rebuilding of Western Europe through the Marshall Plan. The move to create the G5/6/7/8 reflects the fact that even the 32-member OECD provides too much scrutiny of the actions of the world’s biggest powers.

Institutions

The evolution of the policies of these “collective” institutions has its own lessons.

The key institutions of those established in the wake of the Second World War were the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank—examined in previous issues of this paper.

The complete name of the World Bank is the “International Bank for Reconstruction and Development”.

Today, it is primarily known for its focus on the Global South, and its long commitment to forcing structural adjustment, with attendant cutbacks and attacks on the public sector, in exchange for assistance with debt payments.

But this was not always the case.

The focus of these institutions at their inception was the reconstruction of the battered economies of Western Europe. Symbolized by the Marshall Plan, this reconstruction of key Global North states had nothing to do with

the core elements of structural adjustment—cutting taxes, slashing public sector spending, privatizing state enterprises and attacking wages.

If anything, the IMF, World Bank and other “collective” institutions of post-war capitalism were indifferent to these things. The focus was on creating an economic bulwark against the competition of the Soviet Union—and the efforts at reconstruction in Western Europe corresponded to an expansion, not a contraction, of the welfare state.

It was only when they turned their attention to the Global South, principally during the debt crisis of the 1980s, that these institutions discovered “neo-liberalism”. The shock therapy for which all of them became prophets left a trail of misery from Bolivia to Rwanda to the ex-Soviet Union.

But as the G8 and G20 gather this month, workers in the Global North should look closely at this shock therapy. The workers of Greece, on the front lines of the current offensive by international capital, are fighting back against this kind of structural adjustment once reserved for countries like Bolivia. What the IMF/World Bank and G8 practiced in Bolivia will be implemented in Greece through a restructuring involving the IMF working with the European Central Bank (ECB).

The cuts in pensions, elimination of holiday pay, and slashing of public sector jobs that are being visited upon the workers of Greece, Spain, Italy and the rest of Europe, involve an approach to “managing” economic crisis very familiar to the poorest economies of the world.

The lessons are clear. First, we cannot leave the management of the world economy to the self-interested Global North powers that rule the world’s rich economies.

Second, solidarity with the struggles in the Global South is a practical, not just an ethical question. What the Great Powers are perfecting there today, are the instruments they will bring to bear on us tomorrow.

OPEN SATURDAYS, 12-3pm

RESISTANCE PRESS BOOK ROOM

427 Bloor Street West, suite 202, Toronto | 416.972.6391

•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

OTTAWA

Ideas to change the world – study series Royal Oak Laurier 161 Laurier near King Edward University of Ottawa

•Socialism Sat, Jun 12, 1:30pm Readings: Hal Draper’s Two Souls of Socialism http://bit.ly/djMfqU Marx & Engels’ Socialism, Utopian and Scientific http://bit.ly/fkr7 •Marxist economics Sat, June 26, 1:30pm Readings: Marx’s Wage Labour & Capital http://bit.ly/6VD2pD Joseph Choonara’s Unravelling Capitalism Info: www.socialist.ca Organized by the UofO International Socialists

VANCOUVER

Weekly meetings

Wednesdays, 7pm Info: vancouver.socialists@ gmail.com Tel: 604-765-2580

peace & justice events TORONTO

2010 People’s Summit June 18 - 20 Ryerson University Info: www.peoples summit2010.ca

Shout out for global justice

Fri, June 25, 6pm Speakers: Maude Barlow, Leo Gerard, Amy Goodman, John Hilary, Naomi Klein, Vandana Shiva, Pablo Solon & Clayton Thomas-Muller New location: Massey Hall 60 Simcoe Street Cost: $14 for members, $20 for non-members Info: www.canadians.org Organized by the Council of Canadians

You can find the I.S. in: Toronto, Ottawa, Gatineau, Vancouver, Victoria, Montreal, London, St. Catharines, Mississauga, Scarborough, Halifax, Belleville & Kingston e: iscanada@on.aibn.com t: 416.972.6391 w: www.socialist.ca For more event listings, visit www.socialist.ca.

reports@socialist.ca BILL 94

STICKING WITH THE UNION

OPSEU

Rally against AGO workers ratify collective agreement Carolyn Egan Islamophobia Tell the G20 we won’t pay SOCIALIST WORKER’s would have been the first of the intrinsic power that

by FAVA ZAHARUK

APPROXIMATELY 300 people gathered on May 18 in Toronto to demonstrate their opposition to Bill 94, the Quebec bill that would deny public services, employment, education and healthcare to Muslim women who wear the niqab (face veil).

People held signs reading, “the government has no place in the closets of the nation” and “Bill 94 sanctions discrimination”.

The No Bill 94 Coalition is made up of concerned individuals, organizations and grassroots movements that are demanding that the proposed Bill 94 be withdrawn immediately.

At a press conference earlier in the day, Amanda Dale of the Barbra Schlifer clinic said “This Bill opens two things: the possibility of exclusion of public service as well as invites a climate of violence. It gives licence to feelings of discrimination which allows those people a lead to go in a direction that Canada does not want to go in.”

STEELWORKERS

Fight grows against Vale

by JESSE McLAREN AS THE strike against Vale Inco heads into its eleventh month, solidarity and rank-and-file militancy are showing the way forward.

There is growing solidarity in the United Steelworker fight against mining giant Vale Inco. Recently, Laurentian University discovered space it rented to Vale was being used to train scabs and pulled the space.

CUPE donated $75,000 to local 6500 in Sudbury, and OSSTF donated $4,000.

Rank-and-file workers have also taken initiative.

On May 7, the day after the last round of mediated

Amelia Murphy-Beaudoin interviews Dan Naccarato, a member of OPSEU Local 535, which represents workers at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

How have the negotiations gone? What have the contentious issues been?

The main issues that we were bargaining for was stronger language in our collective agreement that would make it difficult for the AGO to lay off workers or contract out AGO work, and establishing new language that would preserve fulltime jobs at the AGO and allow part-time workers who work the equivalent of fulltime hours to start receiving equivalent full-time compensation and benefits.

Our Local voted in favour of ratifying a new 2-year collective agreement on May 27 after narrowly averting what

You’ve had some solidarity from other groups.

Describe something that sticks out in your mind the most.

The show of support from our brothers and sisters from other unions and pro-labour organizations was both heartwarming and galvanizing, and was a huge factor in forcing the company to become more serious in meeting our demands. It was a testament

a strong labour movement possesses.

The picket on May 19 was attended by about 200 people; not only were we joined by members of other OPSEU Locals, but also the OPSEU Greater Toronto Area Council, the Canadian Auto Workers Union, the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, the United Steelworkers Union, and a large contingent of members from the International Socialists.

We also received letters of support from a number of community artists and activists.

This solidarity really fired up our membership and I think it made a lot of our members realize that this was not just a statement or a symbol of our own labour situation at the AGO, but one that extends to the broader labour force throughout the city and province.

CAW

Workers strike to protect pensions

by AMELIA MURPHY-BEAUDOIN

CAW Local 222 is striking against St. Mary’s Cement plant in Bowmanville, Ontario.

The employer wants to change the worker’s pension plan from a defined benefit plan with a fixed level of benefits to a defined contribution plan. A defined con-

tribution plan would invest the worker’s pensions in the stock markets, which could mean lower benefits on retirement.

CAW represents approximately 100 workers at the cement plant. Workers have been on strike for 11 weeks.

Stand with these workers and fight back against the ongoing attacks on workers

rights and pensions.

We n e e d t o e x p o s e through education and acts of solidarity that the employer’s tactic of placing the economic recession on the shoulders of workers will not be tolerated.

Worker are on the picket line 24/4, one block south of Highway 401 on Waverley Road in Bowmanville.

UNITED STEELWORKERS

Locked-out Sears workers reject latest offer

by JOHN ANKENMAN APPROXIMATELY 500 members of United Steelworkers Local 9537, locked-out by Sears Canada since April 1, have rejected the company’s latest contract.

Sears is demanding significant concessions from workers, including a rewriting of the collective agree-

SEIU

Massey Centre workers strike

by PAM JOHNSON

talks broke off, members of USW Local 6500 and their supporters blockaded roads leading to two of Vale’s scab operations, and refused to clear despite a court order.

But the following day the union leadership wrapped up the protests in favour of more labour hearings.

Vale workers will be joining the protests at the G20 summit in Toronto on June 26. Already three buses have been booked. This fight is a fight for every one of us. If Vale workers win, it will boost the confidence of every worker to stand up against attempts to make workers pay for the crisis.

strike in AGO history just days earlier.

The agreement addresses a number of the main issues that we brought to the bargaining table. Part-timers who were previously only allowed to work up to 24 hours per week can now work as much as 35 hours a week, and will be offered full-time status if they work an average of 28 hours weekly for a whole calendar year.

“4 CENTS is not a deal!”

This is the per hour increase Massey Centre workers are being offered after a ten year wage freeze.

A year of negotiations has gone nowhere and these workers are striking for a fair wage increase. The strikers, members of SEIU, work at the Massey Centre, a residential and service centre for teenage single mothers and their babies.

Massey Centre receives most of its funding from the Ontario Government.

Flat-lined budgets and growing need for services has created a deficit.

Management, rather than pressuring the government to provide the needed funds, is forcing the shortfall onto the backs of the workers.

Visit the picket line at 1102 Broadview Avenue.

ment articles dealing with pensions, health care benefits and vacation accruement.

The company wants to simplify the current language dealing with these basic conditions of employment by replacing it with “as per company policy”, which could be changed at any time.

New language would give Sears the “unilateral right to change terms and conditions of employment as they see fit, when it sees fit,” said USW Staff Representative Terry Bea.

Meanwhile, Sears has turned a profit of more than $240 million over the last two years.

Sears utilized their onetime right under Ontario law forcing workers to vote on the latest offer. On May 28, 85 per cent of workers voting and 60 per cent voted to reject it.

A campaign to alert the public of Sears’ disgraceful behavior has started. The union is asking us to boycott Sears until the company realizes it should treat its employees fairly.

UNITE HERE

Carleton staff and students support food service union drive CARLETON UNIVERSITY staff and students have united to support a unionization drive led by campus food service workers.

Food service at Carleton is privatized and run by the multinational Aramark, a company specializing in managing food service on campuses, prisons, and mobile workcamps in Iraq and the tar sands.

When the company found out over a third of their workers had signed union cards they launched an aggressive anti-union campaign—sending threatening letters attached to pay cheques and publicly giving early

layoffs to workplace organizers.

While the union UNITE HERE has filed charges for unfair labour practices, the organizing committee is not waiting for a victory from the courts.

Rather, they have initiated an aggressive political campaign to stop the intimidation campaign.

Campus allies are distribute stickers saying “Aramark let your workers speak free from fear” to Aramark customers, while a coalition of students and workers unions has begun pressuring Carleton’s President Runte to guarantee card check neutrality to Aramark Carleton workers.

for the bosses’ crisis

THE G20 will soon be descending upon Toronto.

The leading capitalist economies are coming together to decide the fate of the peoples of the world.

The reverberations of the “great recession” are still being keenly felt, in spite of the claims that we are seeing the green shoots of a recovery.

Manufacturing plants are still closing, unemployment is still high and vicious attacks on benefits, such as the defined pension plan, are commonplace in the private sector.

US Steel and Vale Inco are two obvious examples.

Profitable companies are trying to rollback hard won gains of the past and are putting tremendous pressure on their work force.

The neoliberal agenda, which was discredited in the financial meltdown, is still the ideological touchstone for governments. We are seeing a massive attack on the public sector globally.

Working people are being made to pay the price through cuts in jobs and services.

Resistance

This is provoking a militant response. We have seen the workers of Greece going out in general strike after general strike. Public sector workers are being expected to take a 30 per cent wage cut and more.

The leaders of the European Union are scrambling because they have no solution to the crisis but to solve it on the backs of working people. On May 29, 300,000 workers in Portugal marched in the streets protesting similar attacks.

The working class and the poor are not accepting their assigned role. They are not prepared to allow the crisis to be solved on their backs. Obviously, there is real unevenness from country to country and workplace to workplace.

The desperation of working people can move to the

right as well as the left, as we are seeing with the support for the British National Party (a far right-wing party), or it can cause a sense of hopelessness that we can not fight back and win.

A call has gone out from both the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario Federation of Labour for unions to mobilize for the G20.

A major rally and march is scheduled for Saturday, June 26 under the banner: People First! We Deserve Better! We must build on this official call and do all that we can to bring large numbers out on the day.

The city is being militarized with sonic cannons, cameras and over $1 billion is being spent on security.

The University of Toronto is shutting down its entire St. George campus, moving students out of residences and forcing the move of a major indoor forum being planned by the Council of Canadians with speakers such as Vandana Shiva, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Maude Barlow and the president of the United Steelworkers, Leo Gerard.

Media appears to be trying to scare people from participating in events talking about the violence that always accompanies such international gatherings. We must not let this to deter large numbers from gathering and putting an alternate message forward.

The June 26 march and rally is going to led by women bringing forward the message that any G20 maternal health policy must include abortion. This is of course in response to the Harper Conservative government’s attempt to remove access to abortion from the initiative. This has created a firestorm in this country with the majority opposing the federal governments views.

This is our opportunity in Canada to show that we are joining with workers worldwide opposing the ongoing assaults on our jobs and our services. All out June 26!

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

Name: Address: City/Province: Phone: E-mail: June 2010 Socialist Worker 11

‘This must become a turning point in lifting siege of Gaza’

by JESSE McLAREN IN THE midst of Prime Minister Stephen Harper welcoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel massacred international solidarity activists bringing humanitarian aid to the besieged city of Gaza.

This is only the latest in a series of escalating acts of terror, in which Harper is complicit.

In an attempt to break the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, 750 people from 40 countries—including 35 international politicians—organized a peaceful humanitarian convey called the Freedom Flotilla.

Israel defended their illegal blockade with another violation of international law. Early in the morning of May 31, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) stormed the aid convey in international waters, armed with guns, stun grenades and tear gas. They killed between ten and 20 people, injured more than 50, and took everyone hostage.

Kevin Ovenden witnessed a fellow humanitarian shot to death “An Israeli soldier shot him in the middle of the forehead. It blew off the back of his skull and he died. I was on the second deck. A man standing a metre in front of me was shot in the leg, the man to the right of me in the abdomen.

There was pandemonium and terror.”

Terror state

This massacre and violation of international law is the latest in a long an escalating pattern of Israeli acts of terror.

More than 60 years ago, Israel was founded on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and since then has maintained an illegal and violent

Over a thousand march through downtown Toronto in less than ten hours notice against the Israeli act of terror against the aid flotilla (PHOTO: CHARLOTTE IRELAND)

occupation. Since 2002, Israel has been building an illegal apartheid wall that deepens its control over the lives of Palestinians.

Since 2006, Israel has added a savage blockade of Gaza, with the support of Western powers and Arab dictatorships, especially Egypt.

Then, in 2009, Israel invaded the open-air prison they created in Gaza, and massacred more than 1,300.

But Palestinians have continued to resist Israeli occupation and have inspired resistance movements around the world. In response, Israel has

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turned to attacking solidarity movements. In 2003, an Israeli bulldozer crushed the body of US activist Rachel Corrie, and in 2006 Israel bombarded Lebanon to attack Hizbollah, a resistance movement that supports Palestine.

But still solidarity with Palestine has continued to grow.

In a desperate—and futile—attempt to smash solidarity, Israel has now

massacred international supporters in international waters.

This produced an instant outpouring of anger around the world, with thousands protesting across Canada, the US, Europe and the Arab world—where protests in Egypt forced the government to open the Raffah border. These emergency demonstrations were followed by

another round of protest on June 5.

Harper’s complicity

Prime Minister Harper claimed he “deeply regrets this action, the loss of life and the injuries that occurred”, but he has been complicit with Israel’s crimes—cutting humanitarian aid to Gaza and defending Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon in 2006, being si-

lent on Israeli massacres in Gaza in 2009, welcoming Prime Minister Netanyahu as international activists were being killed.

In addition, the Harper government has waged a fierce war at home against those who support Palestinian human rights (see page 8).

According to Ovenden:” “They attacked with lethal force to terrorise the movement for the end of the siege of Gaza and the wider movement of solidarity with Palestine. They used violence to instill terror for political ends. This is the definition of terrorism.

“But they failed. The people aboard, their families and the people who donated to the €20 million aid, are not afraid—neither are those in the wider movement.

“This must become a turning point in the lifting of the siege and an end to the policies pursued by governments in relation to Israel.

“Israel has completely isolated itself. Around the world we must redouble our efforts and commit to action to end the siege. This is a political opportunity in which big advances can be made.”

We must build pressure on our own government and its complicity with these war crimes. The blood of Palestinians and their supporters is on Harper’s hands, and he must be held to account.

The G20 protests will be an important opportunity to challenge all the governments— especially our own—who provide the military, economic, and political support upon which Israel depends.

Thai red shirt resistance continues

by IAN BEECHING and NINA WOLFE AFTER EIGHT weeks of pro-democracy protests in which hundreds of thousands of mostly poor farmers and workers have been demanding fair elections, a government crackdown has killed at least 85 and wounded hundreds.

The Thai Military launched an attack on the pro-democracy red shirt movement on May 19, firing live rounds at mostly unarmed protesters.

Amongst the dead were Italian freelance photographer Fabio Polenghi and a Canadian freelance journalist Chandler Vandergrift who was seriously wounded in a grenade blast.

Protesters sought sanctuary in a temple at the heart of the red shirt camp in Bangkok, which came under police siege resulting in numerous injuries and deaths.

Inside, women and children begged for UN protection

while the UN contemplates giving the Thai government a seat on its Human Rights Committee.

In an attempt to end the conflict, red shirt leaders turned themselves in. In response, protesters unwilling to surrender set fire to banks, government buildings and shopping malls, burning down a total of more than two dozen buildings. TV reports show government troops being beaten back in the northeast of the country where the red shirt movement has a strong base in the rural poor.

Red shirts have attempted to defend themselves from the state brutality with mostly home-made weapons. The Thai government has labelled their self-defence as acts of terrorism.

Red shirts have been calling on their followers to rise up, comparing them to “prai,” or serfs, who must rise up against the

“ammat,” the aristocracy.

The government of Abhisit Vejjajiva has justified the crackdown and countless murders to protect the Monarchy, relying on the crude labels of the pro-democracy militants as terrorists.

Seh Daeng, rebel general, and supporter of the ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, was assassinated on May 17. He had joined the side of the protesters and been ambushing the military, preventing assaults on unarmed protesters.

Seh Daeng and his soldiers prevented the military from cracking down on protesters prior to his death. With Daeng’s passing, the movement for democracy in Thailand has lost an important ally.

Although the Reds are temporarily leaderless with Thaksin in exile and most other key figures in police custody following last week’s crackdown, there have been several small protests and the government

has reluctantly approved a rally that is planned for May 30 with an estimated 20,000 people.

Despite the government’s censorship of various forms of media, red shirt radio stations remain on the air, but are only allowed to play music. However, the owner of 89.25 FM plays “inspirational” songs to let listeners know the fight continues.

Defiantly flying a red flag outside a radical red shirt radio station shut down by government censors, one former travel agent stated “We used to fight for Thaksin, now it’s beyond Thaksin.

You’ll see our tactics after the curfew is over. Guerrilla warfare already happens every night in Bangkok.”

The fight for democracy in Thailand is going beyond mere calls for fair elections.

The red shirts of Thailand are fighting back and in so doing, demonstrating the power of mass collective action.