Socialist Worker 522

www.socialist.ca

$2 no. 522 September 2010

Support public sector workers as they

DEFEND PUBLIC SERVICES

by AMELIA MURPHY-BEAUDOIN

IN THE next few months, hundreds of contract negotiations are set to begin in Ontario’s broader public sector, mainly with workers in social services and health care occupations.

These workers are not caught in the Compensation Restraint Act, which was part of the government’s 2010 budget. This act immediately froze the wages of non-bargaining employees in the Ontario public sector for the next two years. This wage freeze actually amounts to a wage cut after taking inflation into account.

G20 leaders agreed they would cut their deficits in half by 2013, and it was immediately apparent that Harper would meet this goal through an austerity campaign targeting the public sector.

In order to meet the fiscal goal imposed on

the provinces, the Ontario Government is trying to change the way upcoming contracts are negotiated so that they can impose the wage freeze more broadly through framework agreements.

They have initiated a “consultation” process designed to convince several public service unions to forfeit their right to strike and sit at a central bargaining table in which the government would act as a facilitator to address monetary demands such as wages, benefits, and pensions.

All of the unions from the first phase of consultations walked away from the table, refusing to accept that workers wages are to blame for the current economic situation. There are two more phases of consultations coming up.

Bargaining in this era should address the demand for more public investment in social services rather than tax cuts for corporations.

Based on their expected profits of $20 billion in 2010, Canada’s Big Six banks will see

Terror arrestees must be treated as innocent until proven guilty

by JESSICA SQUIRES & CHANTAL SUNDARAM THE ARREST of three Muslim men in Ottawa in late August caused the usual onslaught of Islamophobic attacks in the mainstream press. Once again, as with previous high-profile cases, the timing is suspect.

Like the first major Canadian terror sweep targeting Muslims in August 2004—Project Thread— these arrests come on the eve of another 9/11 anniversary.

In 2004, the Canadian government was anxious to prove its allegiance to the US and to the so-called “war on terror”

after refusing to join the 2003 assault on Iraq. Those arrests, which never led to charges but to deportations of more than 20 Pakistani visa students, occurred in the lead-up to a Parliamentary review of the sunset clauses on the anti-terror laws fast-tracked in the wake of 9/11.

As we approach the ten-year anniversary, 9/11 is used more than ever to stoke rabid Islamophobia in the US. And now those who run Canada have something to prove not only to the US but to Canadians. This makes the timing of arrests even more suspect.

>>page 2

their Ontario corporate income taxes fall by at least $200 million this year alone. The McGuinty government has declared increases in taxes on corporations, the banks, and the rich are “off limits”.

Although union leaders have stepped away from the government “consultations” to date, McGuinty has kept the door open to deals until the end of September. Public sector workers need to keep the pressure on their union leaders to not sign away workers’ right to bargain and strike for fair deals and to maintain public services.

To broaden public support, we need to make the connections between the political and economic concerns of the providers and the users of public services.

The fight for public sector jobs and services was highlighted at this year’s Labour Day march in Toronto with the slogan “defend public services”.

All out against scabs in Brantford THE LABOUR movement is calling for unity to stop scab labour at Brantford’s Engineered Coated Products (ECP), where 84 Steelworkers have been walking the picket line for two years.

“We are asking the labour movement to start bringing in workers to this picket line on September 15, 16 and 17,” said Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan.

“We will continue to hit them week after week until they come to the negotiating table.

We will shut this factory down.

We’ve got to raise the temperature and stop these scabs from crossing the picket line. And we

need other unions across the province prepared to step in, because there will be injunctions. We need to be ready to have a confrontation if it comes to that.”

Representatives from CLC, CUPE, CAW, USW and the NDP, who are all pushing for antiscab legislation, joined Ryan’s call for unity and solidarity.

As workers across the country are facing the oncoming austerity measures, now is the time to step-up the fightback.

Every fight, big or small, has to be viewed as another blow against the bosses’ agenda.

ECP is located at 369 Elgin Street in Brantford.

The lifeblood of capitalism

Pages 6&7 Iraq War far from over Page 3 Paul Stevenson on the mission’s change of name

Are we equal?

Page 5 Judith Orr on the evolution of sexism

General strike shakes South Africa Page 11 1.3 million workers strike for better wages

Disability: a revolutionary concept Page 9 Melissa Graham on pop culture’s use and perception of disability

Harper’s prison agenda Page 2 Jay Gannon on the Tory government’s corporate connections

France’s blood debt to Haiti Page 4 Haiti still faces huge ‘independence’ debt

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

G20 ARRESTS

Charges dropped for many, others await trial

by AMELIA MURPHY-BEAUDOIN A GROUP of 303 people charged with G20-related offences were in court August 23, making it the largest mass court appearance in Toronto history.

Many who were summoned travelled from Montreal only to be told that their cases would be put over until October. Seventyfive people had all charges dropped as the police and the courts acknowledged there was no evidence with which to charge them.

Many people were offered settlements through the court diversion process, in which the defendant makes a “donation” of $25 to $100 to a charity to have their charges dropped. Most refused the diversion, insisting their case be heard in court so they can expose the shoddy evidence.

Seventeen people pegged as ringleaders are still awaiting their day in court, one person is still in jail and 16 people are under house arrest with the most severe restrictions that the courts are allowed to impose—limitations usually reserved for murderers.

The police are facing a lawsuit on behalf of 800 people seeking $45 million in damages for all those wrongfully arrested, detained, imprisoned or held by police during the G20 Summit.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

JUSTICE

Harper’s corporate prison agenda

by JAY GANNON WHEN THE statistics don’t match the ideological position you’ve taken, what should you do?

For most of us, it means that it’s time to re-evaluate our position. If you’re a Conservative, you might simply prefer to throw out the stats in favor of lies and damned lies. Their recent threats to scrap the long-form census are only part of this strategy of deception.

Harper and the Tories like to push what is frequently mislabelled a “tough on crime” approach, despite the fact that it’s anything but tough on domestic war criminals, corporate polluters or human rights abusers.

Part of that approach is an increased commitment to prison construction. In the US, this has been so pervasive that it has led some criminologists and economists to refer to a “prison-industrial complex”. Quite simply, huge companies profit from contracts to construct and maintain correctional facilities while the public foots the bill.

It’s an approach that notorious Tory MP Stockwell Day would like to introduce here. His comments about a supposed rise in unreported crime were made in an attempt to justify spending on a series of mega-jails.

Perhaps he proposes that people should be locked up without charges? Don’t laugh, it’s already happening—enter

the words “Canadian Security Certificate” into your search engine of choice and see what comes up.

Pay no attention to the fact that the statistic Stockwell cites simply doesn’t exist and that crime rates (with the notable exception of whitecollar crime) have been on the decline for almost 20 years. There has been a 17 per cent drop in the past decade alone, according to Statistics Canada. But statistics don’t matter, remember?

Only the “truth” matters, as determined by Harper’s Ministry of truth.

Their so-called Truth in Sentencing Act will, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, double the costs spent on corrections

to $9.5 billion over the next five years, at a time when social spending and crime prevention budgets have been slashed.

Even if crime were increasing, spending more on jails is the wrong approach.

It does little to prevent crime, and disproportionately affects youth, minorities and the poor—in Manitoba, 69 per cent of inmates are of Aboriginal descent, and yet they’re 12 per cent of the province’s population.

US child advocate Paul Kelly put it best: “Fighting crime by building more jails is like fighting cancer by building more cemeteries.” Instead, let’s put the corporate prison agenda six feet under, where it belongs.

ABDULLAH KHADR, brother of Omar Khadr, who was indicted in the US on terrorism charges, was released from jail after a Canadian judge refused to extradite him on August 4.

On August 31, the federal government announced it will appeal the decision.

Khadr had been held in Canada since his arrest in December 2005. US officials accused him of purchasing weapons for al-Qaida, and based their charges in part on a statement he made in Pakistan to the FBI and Canadian police.

Abdullah Khadr’s lawyers argued that the statement was the result of torture, and the judge in his case agreed, calling it “manifestly unreliable”.

Canadian judges rarely deny extradition requests from the US. Christopher Speyer, the judge, called his ruling “a remedy of last resort,” and held that Abdullah Khadr was illegally detained and interrogated.

Victory for civil liberties

by JESSICA SQUIRES

Terror arrests Continued from page 1.

The minority Harper government is waging an argument to extend the Afghan mission to 2014, against the clear will of Canadians in poll after poll.

Just as fraught are plans to spend up to $18 billion on F-35 fighter jets in one of the biggest military equipment purchases in Canadian history.

The feds are torn between resurrecting a fake humanitarian argument to bolster the Afghan invasion, and keeping a finger on the easy trigger of “homegrown terror”. The last Canadian terror sweep, the Toronto 18, was provoked by a police agent and then forced into a round of plea bargains that produced little evidence of actual guilt. And yet, it accomplished its main goal: distrust of Canadian-born Muslims, now targeted again under the racist rubric of “Project Samossa”.

This time, even the number of arrests remains vague. One arrestee is known as outspoken on civil liberties; two are connected because they raised money for Pakistan earthquake relief playing ball hockey in the same league. A former electrical engineering student is connected to owning circuit boards. This information is being released to the media to emphasize suspicion while evading any presumption of innocence or due process.

But, ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the men are guilty or innocent. What matters is that this is another attempt to bolster support for an unpopular war and distract from a failing economy.

Its success will depend not on the evidence that emerges from the investigation, but on the confidence to challenge the unjust war drive that feeds it.

Government to appeal Abdullah Khadr ruling

June 3, 2008—US Iraq War resisters in the House of Commons during the passing of the first motion calling on the government to allow them to stay.

Iraq war resisters face critical moment in fight for asylum

by JESSE McLAREN THE MINORITY Harper government is trying to criminalize US Iraq War resisters in the lead up to Parliament’s vote on Bill C-440.

Recently, the Harper government issued an Operational Bulletin instructing immigration officers to notify their superiors and seek guidance on war resister cases, as desertion is a crime and war

resisters may be inadmissible.

This not only criminalizes US Iraq War resisters for siding with Canadians against the war, but it flies in the face of two parliamentary motions supporting war resisters, a Federal Court of Appeal decision siding with war resisters, and the upcoming second reading of Bill C-440.

Having lost public opinion long ago on this issue, facing a turning tide in the courts and

a potential defeat with Bill C-440, the Harper government has resorted to political interference in immigration hearings and a propaganda war to derail the bill.

But the Iraq War is the crime, not those who refused to participate. Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney wanted Canada to join the war, but were prevented by the peace movement. Now they’re taking their revenge by criminaliz-

ing war resisters, rehabilitating the Iraq War, and erasing the legacy of resistance to the Vietnam War. Bill C-440, which comes up for second reading on September 27, and a vote likely held on September 29, is critical to win asylum for US Iraq War resisters, reaffirm Canadian opposition to the Iraq War, and continue the peace movement’s legacy.

For more information, visit www.letthemstay.ca.

Saskatchewan First Nations fight for Treaty rights

by VALERIE LANNON FROM AUGUST 9 to 15, the Treaty Four First Nations Resource Council occupied land at the Porcupine Plain Provincial Forest in Saskatchewan. The Council is made up of bands from the surrounding region.

Yellowquill First Nation Chief Larry Cachene has called the Premier of Saskatchewan numerous times to discuss concerns, but has received no response.

2 Socialist Worker September 2010

“There are maps that show the province’s intention of opening up the area for mineral exploration and extraction. We want the government to know that the traditional land is vital to us,” says Chief Cachene.

“We still use the land for hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering and spiritual purposes. The provincial government is restricting little pieces of land for park purposes and traditional uses, the remainder of the

land is being explored and extracted.”

The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan.

FSIN Vice Chief Lyle Whitefish wants the alienation of ancestral territories located within the Porcupine Provincial Forest stopped.

Industry continues to extract the region’s natural resources without adequately consulting First

Nations who have inherent rights to the region. Vice Chief Whitefish is calling on these regions to receive protection status as they are home to numerous First Nation sacred sites and burial grounds.

The Federation is committed to honouring the spirit and intent of Treaty, as well as the promotion, protection and implementation of the Treaty promises that were made more than a century ago.

IN JULY, a Federal Court judge affirmed that evidence gleaned from torture is not admissible in security certificate proceedings, and that CSIS’ policy of “not knowingly” using such evidence is not enough.

The judge ruled that CSIS does not have an “effective mechanism” for ensuring it will not rely on evidence obtained by torture, and that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe some of the information against Mohammad Mahjoub was obtained through torture and is therefore inadmissible.

Coming from gains secured by civil liberties movements during the Iacobucci and Arar inquiries, it means limits are finally being placed on some kinds of “intelligence” being used as evidence in judicial proceedings in Canada. It could impact other immigration cases and high-profile proceedings against people arrested under anti-terrorism laws.

The judge ordered a review of all government information against Mahjoub.

Coupled with the Supreme Court ruling, also in July, that compensation can be awarded by courts for Charter breaches by the crown, this ruling is a significant victory for civil liberties.

This fall is expected to raise the profile of security certificates once again as courts rule on the reasonableness of Mohamed Harkat’s certificate.

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ISRAEL/PALESTINE

INTERNATIONAL

Israeli settlers killed as talks commence

by BRADLEY HUGHES JUST BEFORE talks resumed between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, four settlers were killed in the occupied West Bank.

End to ‘combat’ operations in Iraq nothing but a name change

by PAUL STEVENSON WHILE THE withdrawal of the last US “combat” brigade in Iraq is being heralded as the official end to the war, the occupation continues under a different name.

Named “Operation New Dawn”, the new occupation will look much the same as the old. There are still 50,000 US troops in Iraq. The new US embassy compound covers more than 100 acres and the US State Department says it will maintain a private army of 7,000 security guards in the country.

The US wants to provide a façade of independence for Iraq but they have no interest in giving up the spoils of the war launched in 2003.

The sheer size of the “civilian” contingents that will remain—as many as 1,000 diplomats at the em-

bassy alone—show that the US will exert as much control as possible in the new Iraq.

After seven years of occupation, life for the Iraqi people has not improved. More than 80 per cent still have no regular electricity. Only 50 per cent have access to drinking water and outside Baghdad that number falls to 20 per cent. Sewage treatment is non-existent in most of the country meaning that raw sewage is spilled into the Tigris and Euphrates, further poisoning this crucial water supply.

Health care is still way behind where it was in 2003. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Iraq had 34,000 doctors in 2000 but more than half left after the invasion. Hunger and disease are rampant with more than 50 per cent of the population living in what Oxfam

International calls “extreme poverty”.

Almost 3 million people remain internally displaced. The $53 billion in aid given to Iraq has largely disappeared into the coffers of foreign companies and corrupt officials.

Civilians are hurt and killed regularly, and there has been a spike in violence over the last months. In a one-week span from August 14 to 21, 156 Iraqis were killed and 341 were wounded in more than a dozen separate attacks. In 2009, 3,000 civilians were killed. In comparison, 2,400 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year.

Political instability and the failure to reach an agreement for a coalition government will make the sectarian tensions in Iraq worse. The occupation has divided the country into sectarian enclaves which battle with each

other for scarce resources and control of areas that were religiously and ethnically mixed before the invasion.

According to the New York Times, the commander of one of the remaining US brigades, Colonel Malcolm Frost, recently wrote to his soldiers’ families: “We will move around Iraq fully protected in armored Strykers and other armored vehicles, wearing full body armor, and fully loaded with ammunition to deal with the enemy if/when they raise their head in anger against us.”

The US government is doing all it can to re-write the story of the Iraq War. They want us to forget that it was based on lies and they want us to forget that one million people lost their lives. For the Iraqi people, this “new dawn” will bring no new hope or better prospects for the future.

Private accused of leaking documents remains in prison

by SHAWN MUNRO AS ACTIVISTS, journalists and academics continue to sift through the thousands of Afghan war documents posted on the whistleblower website Wikileaks, Private Bradley Manning remains locked up.

Manning was charged with releasing a classified video to Wikileaks.

The footage shows US soldiers using mounted machine guns to kill dozens of Iraqi civilians.

Authorities also accuse Manning of being the source for all of the 91,000 classified documents published Wikileaks in July, but no of-

ficial charges have been laid against him for this.

Manning is currently being held in solitary confinement under the charge of releasing classified information.

He could be punished by life in prison. Some, like Republican Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, accuse Manning of treason and demand that he be executed.

Among the hundreds of thousands of pages found in the Wikileaks package, the reports have revealed 144 cases of undisclosed incidents where occupying coalition forces have killed Afghan civilians.

The documents also mention Task Force 373, a secret Black Ops organ-

ization designed to hunt down and kill or detain Afghan fighters without trial. The Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) is a “kill or capture” list of over 2,000 names of Taliban leaders and supporters that may never face a day in court.

Support for Manning has been building. In Quantico, where Manning is being held, more than a hundred people came to a rally at the Marine Corps base. Another rally of hundreds was held in Oklahoma, the capital of Manning’s home state.

Courage to Resist has raised over $30,000 for Manning’s defence. And an international day of action is being planned to raise support for Manning.

In a recent Washington Post article, Daniel Ellsberg stated he identified greatly with Manning, and that he has not seen a disclosure of classified information of this size since his own leaking of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971. The Pentagon papers exposed the lies and brutality of the Vietnam War along with the bombings of Cambodia and Laos.

Much like the war in Vietnam, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan is a story of violence, murder and deceptions. As Bradley Manning sits awaiting a punishment founded on hypocrisy, the anti-war movement must move forward to protect the rights of war resisters and to end the war.

Prime Minister’s Office leaks Afghanistan plans

by PAUL STEVENSON Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Tory government, knowing how unpopular the war has become, is looking for a way to sugarcoat a new extension.

In August, the Globe and Mail obtained a draft power point presentation from the Prime Minister’s Office outlining Canada’s post2011 role in Afghanistan.

The short document was seen as proof that Harper plans to

remove Canadian troops next year.

The presentation outlines the “need” to maintain a civilian presence to prevent the re-emergence of Afghanistan as a “haven for terrorists”. To do that, Ottawa proposes another $600 million for development and training of Afghan security forces.

After nine years and more than $20 billion spent by Canada, Afghanistan is more dangerous than it was at the beginning of the war. Another $600 million will not

make any difference.

This ploy is nothing but a smokescreen for a new extension.

There is no possibility of Canadian foreign aid workers or troop trainers being in a non-combat role.

The resistance holds most of the country and is willing to attack foreign police and aid workers as was proven with the killing of 10 International Assistance Mission workers in early August.

The militarization of aid will en-

sure the continuation of attacks as any foreign presence will be seen as part of the occupation.

The scant details give the government leeway to alter this plan. Over the next months the Tories will make confusing and sometimes contradictory statements in the hope that Canadians will start to ignore the war.

We must cut through the lies and expose Canada’s continued commitment to this brutal war.

Hamas has claimed responsibility for the attack.

There are hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the occupied territory.

Under pressure from the US, the Palestine Authority (PA) dropped its condition that Israel cease building settlements before talks began on September 2.

In response to the attack, the PA has carried out the largest mass arrests ever in the West Bank, rounding up 300 people with links to Hamas.

This is clearly intended to disrupt opposition to the talks. Over 700 prominent Palestinians in the West Bank have signed a statement opposing the talks.

Israel’s insistence in maintaining the settlements, and continuing control over the PA, combined with threats from the US and Arab nations to withdraw financial support, show that no real negotiations are intended.

Once again, Palestinians will be expected to leave control of their lives and lands in the hands of an aggressive occupier.

Israel threatens to deport Palestinian children

by JONATHON HODGE “THE GOVERNMENT’s decision is that Israel should minimize the number of foreign workers in Israel.

It is nothing against those 1,200 children—the decision is against the illegal workers who think getting pregnant gives them permission to stay here,” said a spokesperson for Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai.

Yishai has demanded that the Israeli-born children of undocumented migrant workers be deported. Israeli policy forbids migrant workers from having children in Israel, and also rescinds their work permits if they marry.

These rules are justified in order to “preserve the Jewish character of the country.”

In the same interview, Yishai echoed the infamous anti-Semites of history by remarking that migrant workers bring with them “a profusion of diseases” to the country.

In response, an opposition MK (member of Israeli Parliament) called Yishai an “archaic racist”, which must amount to the most clear-headed assessment of a politician in a generation.

Resistance to the measure has also been boiling up in the streets, with demonstrations of thousands of people in Tel Aviv. A governmental committee agreed with the protesters, reporting in May that most of the threatened children should be naturalized.

September 2010 Socialist Worker 3

INTERNATIONAL

France urged to repay Haiti’s ‘independence’ debt

by PAUL KELLOGG

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE

THE FRENCH government is threatening legal action against a group calling itself Committee for the Reimbursement of the Indemnity Money from Haiti (CRIME), after the group faked a press conference announcing France’s intention to repay $21 billion extorted from Haiti between 1825 and 1944.

Victory as Prop 8 overruled

In his classic The Black Jacobins, Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James documented Haiti’s long history as a slave colony where Africans were worked to death.

In the late 18th century the island that today incorporates Haiti and the Dominican Republic, was home to the French colony San Domingue and the Spanish colony San Domingo. C.L.R. James describes the latter as “the most profitable colony the world had ever known.”

France’s trade with this colony amounted to twothirds of all France’s trade, and amounted to more than twice the value of all the trade from all of Britain’s colonies combined. This extraordinary wealth was entirely the product of a system of the most brutal slave labour.

Independence

Haiti (then Saint Domingue) won its independence in 1804, after a bloody 12-year revolution and civil war led

by Toussaint L’Ouverture (who died in a French prison before independence was achieved).

The United States—itself depending massively on slave labour in its southern plantations—reacted to Haiti as they today react to Cuba, and severely restricted trade with the new republic.

In 1825 France sent gunboats to the island country to enforce “compensation” for lost French property. That “property” was human beings—the slaves who had fought for their own freedom.

A desperate Haitian government, literally with a gun to its head, agreed to pay France 150 million

by ADRIEN RIEL & PAM JOHNSON OPPONENTS OF same-sex marriage were dealt a severe blow in August.

Francs—10 times Haiti’s economy, and twice what the US paid France in 1803 for the Louisiana Purchase, which contained many times more land. The debt, worth about $21 billion in current dollars, was paid off in the 1940s. Current aid comes nowhere close to this amount.

Coup d’état

In 2003 and 2004, then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide raised the issue of the $21 billion. His answer was the coup d’état, (supported by the United States, France and Canada) which removed him from office.

The rich country France should acknowledge its crimes from the era of slavery, and repay the $21 billion immediately.

An open letter to French president Nicholas Sarkozy, signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, is demanding that the French government spend its resources addressing the issue of the “Independence debt”, rather than the trivial matter of the fake press announcement.

To read the open letter, visit www.tinyurl.com/2eo455g

Wyclef Jean no friend of Haiti’s rebuilding

by MOHAMMAD ALI AUMEER

ON AUGUST 5, musician Wyclef Jean announced his candidacy for the upcoming Haitian presidential elections in November.

Jean, founder of the scandal-ridden charity Yele Haiti, proclaimed “it’s going to be necessary to embrace the energy of [Haiti’s] people, to unite around a common goal of moving ahead together.”

On August 18, Haiti’s Electoral Council disqualified the Grammy-winning artist for not meeting the basic requirement of being a resident for a minimum of five years prior to the election. After some posturing, on August 23 Jean “conceded,” stating “there is no one who can tell me to stop my work in Haiti….”

These words appear welcome—until examined more critically. In reality, Jean’s

Wyclef Jean

intentions for Haiti are to “make it a neo-colony for a reconstructed tourist industry and a pool of cheap labor for US factories,” as Charlie Hinton of San Franciscobased Haiti Action Committee told Haiti Liberte editor Kim Ives.

Jean is just as concerned with the interests of the Haitian elite today as he was in 2004, when he supported the coup initiated by Canada, France and the US against then-President Jean

Bertrand-Aristide. Later, he called for the Haitian people to quell their resistance against the occupying UN forces.

Before his disqualification, Jean told Esquire that Haiti would need to build “an open system that doesn’t stop [the Haitian elite] from making money, that will work for them, if only because what they’re making could double, triple.”

Jean’s words ring hollow for Haitian activists, trade unionists and their North American allies who have been fighting for Haiti’s renewal since long before the January 2010 earthquake—and long before Jean’s limited, and recently amplified level of political engagement.

Imperialism is not new to Haiti, and the fight against it will continue regardless of the face with which it is presented.

Roma face persecution, deportation from France

by SHAWN MUNRO IN THE long tradition of blaming and persecuting poor immigrants for everything immoral, France has begun deporting Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants en masse from its borders.

President Sarkozy and the French ruling elite have stepped up their efforts to criminalize the Roma population living in France, accusing the predominantly poor Roma of illegal trafficking, and

exploiting children for crime, prostitution and begging.

This recent attack on the Roma has resulted in a wave of mass deportations, forcing the Roma back to immense poverty in their countries of origin. Nearly 600 Roma have been forced out of France since Sarkozy’s push in July, with another 300 Roma camps (roughly 700 individuals) scheduled to be raided

by French authorities and more deportations

4 Socialist Worker September 2010

to follow.

France has already deported more than 8,000 Roma this year, despite

Roma surrounded by police

European law and a challenge by the Romanian government.

However, many groups and organizations have defended the Roma and their right to make a better life for their families.

The Archbishop of Paris and the EU’s Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding have openly criticized Sarkozy’s policies, joining with nearly half the French population who support letting the Roma stay in France.

Much like the treat-

ment of Tamils here in Canada, the Sarkozy government has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to racism.

By collectively punishing the Roma, France has set up a scapegoat to rationalize discrimination, and ultimately, to create divisions in the working class.

As activists for human dignity, we must combat these racist attacks at every turn and fight for the rights of everyone to live wherever they see fit.

Judge Vaughn Walker of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the California Marriage Protection Act, “Prop 8”, violated gay and lesbian due process and equalprotection rights under the US Constitution.

The ruling stated, “proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.” This is the first challenge to a state law on same-sex marriage.

In his ruling Judge Walker found that same-sex couples were as likely as heterosexual couples to be good parents, and, that contrary to right-wing ideology, people can not choose their sexual orientation.

These “findings of fact” will be used by the appellate court as the legal basis on which to adjudicate an appeal. Proponents of Prop 8 will find these difficult to overturn because only trial courts may make findings of fact and appellate courts may overturn them only if they are grossly inaccurate.

Judge Walker was condemned by the right as “an activist judge over-ruling seven million voters.” But seven million people can’t take away a basic human right from the minority.

Judge Walker made this plain by stating in his decision, that “fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote.”

Following this ruling California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reiterated his support for gay marriage and the Obama White House sent out a statement of opposition to Prop 8 as “divisive and discriminatory”.

Legal scholars said the decision has wide implications for nearly 40 states with laws against same-sex marriage on their books, making it more difficult to defend those measures in court on the basis of moral grounds or social tradition.

The ruling is a major milestone in the struggle for equality. However, an appeals court has upheld the marriage ban until December when an appeal will be heard.

Gays and lesbians have been discriminated against for too long. It’s time to stop telling people who to love, how to live, and let them make those choices for themselves.

ARE WE EQUAL? Over the past century, women fought and won huge advances in society, but are we equal now? Women’s bodies continue to be objectified and there is still a wide gap in incomes.

Here, Judith Orr looks at the evolution of sexism and what is required to fight it.

W

omen have it all, or so we are told.

The battle for equality has been won and when women’s bodies are used to sell things, or a lap dancing club opens on the corner of your street, don’t fret, that’s not sexism, it’s just ironic.

What’s it like in this wonderful world where we have won equality?

Yes, we can run companies, head schools, sit as judges or members of parliament—jobs that were, until only a couple of generations ago, barred to women by law or custom.

We can have children when and if we choose, and being unmarried is no longer seen as a curse. Our lives have been completely transformed from a time when women had to fight even to get the right to vote.

All these are important gains.

But the reality is only very few women run companies, sit as judges and members of parliament. In Canada, the 2008 general election brought the proportion of women in the House of Commons to a mere 22 per cent.

Instead, more women are fighting to get off the “sticky floor” of low pay than are bumping up against the “glass ceiling” of corporate promotion.

In Canada, the average pay gap between men and women is approximately 20 per cent, one of the highest gender gaps among 30 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The average pay gap between men and women who have attended university is 18.4 per cent, up from 12.2 per cent in 1991.

So don’t believe the hype, despite all the many gains we have won, women still face discrimination in every part of their lives.

So there is nothing ironic about today’s sexism—whether it’s beauty pageants for toddlers, pole dancing being sold a healthy exercise or the relentless barrage of images of women as sex objects.

We are facing plain old-fashioned sexism but now it has an added twist—it is being sold to us as empowering, as liberating. Writer Ariel Levy called this new sexism “raunch culture”, and others describe it as the “pornification of popular culture”.

as well be put on a shelf with a price tag.

Karl Marx talked about how capitalism turns intrinsic parts of our humanity, for example the ability to labour, into something alien, something that must be bought and sold, and in the end comes to control us.

This even happens to something as private and personal to us as our sexuality. It can be distorted and shaped by the values of the society in which we live—so in capitalism we see sexual liberation turned in to its opposite.

Why does this happen?

How has this happened?

The struggles of the 1960s won many gains but capitalism wasn’t overthrown. And capitalism has an amazing ability to absorb even fundamental challenges to the way it works.

So women did win, among many other gains, acceptance of their right to assert themselves in their sexual lives, to make their own choices. Today the “new” sexism reflects and has absorbed the history and language of those struggles for women to be more than mere objects for the enjoyment of others, apparently all the better to continue that very process.

So if we object to strip clubs and porn we are told we are prudes, that we should be comfortable with our sexuality. As if being comfortable with women taking off their clothes for money could in any way be a measure of being liberated.

This is sexual liberation as seen through the prism of a system driven solely by profit. Our bodies are treated as nothing more than commodities. It’s degrading; we might

‘We are facing plain old-fashioned sexism, but now it has an added twist—it is being sold to us as empowering, as liberating’

Some people argue that women are treated differently because of basic biological differences, which define us and can’t be challenged.

Everyone will have heard the classic justifications for women not being capable of certain jobs: women are not hard-wired for science; they don’t have the competitive drive for business. Instead, they are naturally good with child rearing and homemaking, while men’s biology leads them to be the hunters, the breadwinners.

Indeed, some feminists subscribe to a version of these determinist views, regularly paraded as science.

One feminist business journalist explained the financial crisis in terms of male testosterone writing: “there was not the cooperative thinking there would be in a female environment, there would have been a natural tendency for a woman to say, ‘Let’s take the longer-term view.’”

Women have a “caring mindset, a nurturing mindset”.

It is true more women should be represented in all jobs and institutions. But not because their biology automatically makes them more progressive, or more fair. Plenty of women who have made it to the top show this to be a myth; war-mongers Condoleeza Rice and Margaret Thatcher come to mind.

When in power, women, just like

men, act according to their class instincts not their hormones.

Socialists reject determinist explanations. We know that even today, in a world where anyone who challenges gender stereotypes is treated as an aberration, women can be scientists and men can be great with children Of course we are all different, but we have to examine the impact of the socialization we experience from the moment we are born. Depending on your gender, certain behaviours, attributes and values are rewarded and encouraged while others punished.

Think about what the possibilities would be for all of us to be able to express ourselves and live our lives if we did not have the huge crushing weight of expectations and society’s structures to squeeze us into boxes marked pink fairy princess or power ranger.

The roots to women’s oppression and gender roles do not lie in our biology. In fact, for most of human history women were not oppressed or treated as second-class citizens.

Class society

Women’s oppression originated in a moment in history when for the first time defined classes arose in settled communities. Ownership and passing on of private property became a feature of these new class societies and so monogamy, to ensure true “inheritors” to wealth, and the establishment of the family as an institution became critical.

Of course thousands of years later the family is very different but it has proved to be an extraordinarily resilient structure. It is still the way that the majority of us are brought up and for many it is a happy nurturing experience, but it is important also to see the wider role it plays.

Living in the nuclear family can atomize people, encourage them to see their problems as being rooted under their own roof and not in wider society. For the rich, women are

trophy wives, their role is to provide an “heir and spare”. For the rest of us, the family is the place where the next generation of workers is brought up and looked after at minimal expense to the state.

The family is eulogized everywhere. Marriage magazines are big business and a newborn baby is the accessory of choice for celebrities.

There is a desire to perpetuate the idea that women’s real role is still the home and hearth, even though this is in direct contradiction to the reality of women’s lives today. Women are almost 50 per cent of the workforce and the majority of adult women work outside the home.

This reality, while it does mean that women suffer a double burden, means women are now a permanent part of the working class.

For socialists, class is not just another form of discrimination, we see the working class as a unique social force in society with the potential power to challenge the priorities of the bosses, bankers and politicians.

This means women are not just victims but can be class fighters.

We don’t look to others to bring us liberation, this is about how we can emancipate ourselves.

We may experience oppression most profoundly as individuals, but we are best placed to challenge it as part of a collective and through the process of struggles, great and small. Through struggle people’s ideas about how the world works get challenged.

So we must fight every manifestation of oppression, whether it’s sexist posters or unequal pay, but to permanently eradicate inequality we will have to uproot the whole rotten system that created the oppression in the first place and replace it with a very different society, a socialist society with women’s liberation at its heart.

Judith Orr is a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party in the UK, a sister organization of the International Socialists.

September 2010 Socialist Worker 5

Extracting it poisons our rivers and oceans, and lays waste to our forests and farms. Burning it fouls our air and threatens the very climate we rely on for our survival. Wars are fought to control it. War machines have an unquenchable thirst for it. A few make billions buying and selling it.

The rest of us pay, and pay, and pay. We are told we can’t live without it.

Oil is the lifeblood of capitalism. Here are four glimpses of oil’s impact on our world: the man-made disaster of climate change; war for oil; the cold-war jockeying of super powers to control reserves; and the looming showdown between corporations and a growing alliance of First Nations and environmentalists over reckless plans to market the tar sands’ dirty oil.

ENBRIDGE

Pipelines, tankers, spills and pollution

by BRADLEY HUGHES ENBRIDGE HAS been piping oil since starting in Alberta in 1949. It owns over 13,500 km of pipelines, and now it wants to pipe tar sands’ oil to the coast of BC to load on tanker ships.

If they aren’t stopped, the Enbridge pipeline will ship up to a million barrels of oil a day west from Alberta to waiting tanker ships on the coast. A second pipeline will ship 200,000 barrels a day of condensate from ships east to Alberta. Condensate is a mixture of chemicals used to dilute tar sands’ oil so it can be moved by pipeline.

Around 225 tankers will travel the BC coast each year to deliver condensate and pick up oil.

Some of these tankers will have a capacity of two million barrels of oil or condensate. These ships have twice the volume of the Exxon Valdez.

The Dogwood Initiative estimates that this traffic will result in “a marine crude oil spill of over 1,000 barrels about every 5 years, and a major oil spill of over 10,000 barrels about every 12 years.”

That doesn’t factor in leaks and spills from the pipeline on land.

Enbridge has a long record of spills. Between 1999 and 2008, Enbridge’s operations experienced 610 spills. In late July, their pipeline in Michigan spilt four million litres of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River, polluting 56 km of it.

Not all tar sands crude would go to the west coast. Enbridge 6 Socialist Worker September 2010

also wants to build and run new pipelines taking oil south to the US, to refineries as far south as Texas. Their plans, not coincidently, include much of the new pipeline being built on First Nations land.

In August, reacting to Enbridge’s Michigan spill and poor operational safety record, US regulators turned down the Enbridge pipeline. Unfortunately, the setback may only be temporary, and does not turn back all of the dirty tar sands oil.

Resistance

There is widespread opposition to Enbridge’s plan. First Nations along the proposed pipeline route and all along the coast of BC

are working together to stop the pipeline.

The Coastal First Nations has stated, “in upholding our ancestral laws, rights, and responsibilities, we declare that oil tankers carrying crude oil from Alberta tar sands will not be allowed to transit our lands and waters.”

First Nations in the interior are just as adamant. Tsayu Chief Namoks (John Ridsdale) stated: “Enbridge’s Northern Gateways Pipeline Project not only poses a serious threat to environmental integrity of five Wet’suwet’en House territories, but it also fails to recognize Wet’suwet’en title to these territories has never been ceded, surrendered or in any way relinquished.”

Wet’suwet’en elders delivered a “No Trespass” order to Enbridge executives at a public meeting in Smithers.

NDP MPs have introduced private member’s bills that would ban oil tanker traffic along the BC coast, and the BC Fed also support a moratorium. Polls show that up to 80 per cent of British Columbians oppose having the dangerous mega-tankers in their waters.

In July, Greenpeace activists briefly occupied Enbridge’s Vancouver office. Throughout August rallies have been held in towns and cities across BC, opposing the plan. The campaign against the pipeline/tanker plan is picking up momentum.

For more information, visit www.coastalfirstnations.ca, www.pipeupagainstenbridge.ca, www.notankers.ca and www.greenpeace.org.

‘WAR ON TERROR’

War for oil, oil for war

by JOHN BELL TODAY’S WARS are fought to control strategic commodities.

No commodity is as strategically crucial as oil.

The War in Iraq was fought for oil. Plans to invade Iraq and take control of its oil reserves were hatched as soon as George W. Bush was in the White House, long before 9/11 provided the excuse.

In his memoirs, Alan Greenspan, who virtually ran the US economy for over a decade, wrote: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

Despite Obama’s declarations to the contrary, the war and occupation of Iraq has not ended, as tens of thousands of US soldiers remain to guarantee the flow of crude.

While Afghanistan has no oil reserves, its position as a potential pipeline route for Central Asian oil flowing to the west makes it a strategic jewel. This would undermine economic and military competitors in Russia and China.

Harper and the rest will use any pretext to justify their war, will disguise their occupation as “peacekeeping” and “nation building”, but control of oil is the real prize.

Part of why oil is so strategically essential is the global war industry’s insatiable thirst for crude. Consider this description of the US military found in Crude: the Story of Oil by Sonia Shah (quote thanks to the website Climate and Capitalism): “The US military consumes about 85 million barrels of oil a year, making it the biggest single consumer of fuel in the country and perhaps the world…

“The Army employed sixty thousand soldiers solely for the purpose of providing petroleum, oil, and lubricants to its war ma-

chines, which have themselves become increasingly fuel-heavy.

The sixty-eight-ton Abrams tank, for instance, burns through a gallon of fuel for every half mile.

With its inefficient, 1960s-era engine, the Abrams tank burns twelve gallons of fuel an hour just idling.

“So much time and money is spent fueling the American fighting machines that, according to the head of the Army Materiel Command, a gallon of fuel delivered to the US military in action can ultimately cost up to $400 a gallon. Indeed, 70 per cent of the weight of all the soldiers, vehicles, and weapons of the entire US Army is pure fuel.”

The arms industry, with about $1 trillion annual sales, is in a morbid embrace with the oil industry and government, with executives and politicians moving freely from one to another. No figure epitomizes this three-cornered dance better than former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Around the world millions suffer and die from a perverse interplay of wars for oil and oil for wars.

TALKING MARXISM

Abbie Bakan

Violence and non-violence ACTS OF individual violence are often presented as more militant than other forms of protest. But in the history of resistance, the key issue is not the degree of violence but the level of mass involvement from below.

In some contexts mass non-violent movements have been the most effective in enacting change, both in winning reforms and in revolutionary transformation.

An earlier generation of activists—the “New Left”, or “the 1968 generation”—also debated the role of violence in revolutionary tactics and strategy.

The movement emerged in the shadow of the arms race, when the prospect of global nuclear war seemed a daily threat.

Violent repression was understood to be part of the standard tool box used by ruling classes, west and east, at home and abroad, to silence dissent and preserve the status quo. Support for national liberation movements, including people’s armies in the global south, or Third World, was a defining feature of the New Left.

Fanon

CLIMATE CRISIS

Fossil fuels, climate change and greenwashing

by MICHELLE WINTER 2010 IS the hottest year on record.

This year has seen some of the most dramatic oil and climate change related events to date. After Copenhagen’s failure, 2010 is shouting a strident wake-up call to policy makers.

A quick re-cap of 2010 climaterelated events: January to March: Glaciers reported melting at faster rate than suspected.

Record temperatures recorded in Solomon Islands, February 1, 36.1C (97F) and Ascension Island, 25 March, 34.9C (94.8F).

April & May: Canadians pressure politicians to pass Bill C-311 (Climate Change Accountability Act) but it is an embarrassment considering Canada’s behaviour in UN negotiations, and widely viewed as inadequate. BP’s oilrig explodes, millions of litres of oil pour into the Gulf of Mexico–damage is inestimable.

June: Over 25,000 people rally peacefully to demand basic human rights at

the G20 meetings in Toronto, including green jobs and energy, a healthy environment and an end to fossil fuels.

July: Tory and Liberal MPs on the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development conspire to kill an extensive report on tar sands impacts on water, and destroy all draft copies of report.

August: Heat waves cause catastrophic fires across Russia, killing at least 50 people and costing the country’s economy an estimated US $15 billion.

More than one million hectares of forests are destroyed.

Floods ravage southern Pakistan.

The UN reports the number of people affected in the crisis will exceed the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake combined. The floods result from changing monsoon patterns, as predicted by climate change models.

Associated Press captures a fire tornado in Brazil on video.

Record temperatures have been recorded in over 27 countries around

the world.

A new study reveals the Athabaska River is polluted with toxic carcinogens and heavy metals, leaking from tar sands holding ponds.

The final days of August see hurricanes Danielle and Earl build in the Atlantic Ocean while the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) launches a multi-million dollar PR campaign to greenwash the oil industry. General Electric celebrates its highest sales ever of air conditioners. Reports predict one of the mildest winters on record and accelerated melting of the Arctic ice cap.

Despite all this, policy makers continue to subsidize oil (and nuclear) rather than alternatives like solar, wind, geothermal, building retrofits and mass public transportation.

Propping up capitalism is not the solution, but implementing these alternatives are good remedies to climate change’s worst impacts. They are safer and cheaper than nuclear or offshore drilling projects and provide local, safe, good, green jobs.

POLITICS

China and the US in a Cold War for oil

by JONATHON HODGE IT WAS big news recently when China officially passed the US in total energy consumption. The Middle Kingdom consumed an equivalent of 2.265 billion tons of oil compared to the US at 2.169 billion tons, according to the International Energy Agency.

The make-up of this consumption profile was a combination of oil, gas, coal, solar, wind and nuclear power.

These statistics are alarming, but also misleading. China is quite sensitive to its reputation as world’s largest polluter and immediately rejected the assessment as unsound, citing its own data that showed total consumption lagging slightly behind the US. Beijing rightly points out that the US still far and away leads the world in per capita consumption, having something less than one quarter of

China’s total population.

It is also the case that China leads the world in efforts to produce carbon neutral energy, producing and deploying a majority of solar panels and wind turbines worldwide. Also, the Chinese state spends over $34 billion (US) on clean-fuel projects in 2009, compared to only $18.6 billion (US) in the US. This only partly offsets the huge amount of coal China burns every year, more than three times US usage, at over 1.5 billion tonnes.

But these numbers hide something deeper—the emergence of an oil competitor to the US. After WWII, US interests by-and-large dictated world energy policy, by virtue of the massive weight of its economy combined with its overwhelming military capabilities. Today, the Pentagon continues to outspend the globe militarily, but the US no longer dominates the world economy as it once did.

China is heavily invested in oil and gas projects in central Asia, South America, Africa and the Middle East.

The US has used the opportunity presented by 9/11 to build military bases in several former Soviet republics that surround China’s western borders, combined with a major war in a Chinese neighbour, Afghanistan.

China and Iran have negotiated multi-billion dollar energy deals in spite of US opposition. Finally, China and India have been negotiating to settle past differences and renew strong relations.

Such independent and oppositional action by a contending state would have been unthinkable a generation ago. But today, China is emerging as a medium-term strategic threat to US interests; interests which, as the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan has shown, the US elite will not give up quietly.

Frantz Fanon, a revolutionary theorist and activist in the Algerian war of independence, stressed the significance of armed revolt against France’s military occupation. Fanon’s first chapter in his classic work, The Wretched of the Earth, entitled “Concerning Violence”, is a scathing exposé of the daily repression and subjugation that accompanied colonial rule. It is also an argument for the liberating capacity of armed self-defence, in the context of the mass movement of colonial subjects in a war of national liberation.

“The violence which has ruled over the ordering of the colonial world, which has ceaselessly drummed the rhythm for the destruction of native social forms and broken up without reserve the systems of reference of the economy, the customs of dress and external life, that same violence will be claimed and taken over by the native at the moment when, deciding to embody history in his own person, he surges into the forbidden quarters.”

The US war on Vietnam further exposed the violence of the world capitalist system.

In 1965, following a long period of aerial bombing, the US escalated the ground war by deploying over 200,000 troops between March and December. A decade of aggressive military attacks followed, including massacres of villages, napalm bombing and environmental destruction through the use of Agent Orange.

The resistance to the Vietnam War was based in the country’s mass armed resistance, led by the Vietnamese National Liberation Front (NLF).

Recognition of the right to armed self-defense among the poor peasant masses of Algeria and Vietnam against western imperialism was widely recognized in the movement, largely among students in France and the US. But those who joined the movement in their tens of thousands were largely attracted to the mass, non-violent protests on the campuses and on the streets. Working people, often the parents of the young radical activists, came to join the movement in various ways, including through trade union rank and file action in solidarity actions.

Black Panthers

Violence was also a question in the civil rights movement in the US. In the segregated cities, police brutality against black youth was common. The Black Panthers protected black neighbourhoods through armed self-defence patrols.

But another wing of the civil rights movement relied on non-violent mass protests even in the face of overwhelming police repression.

The movement was inspired by a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat to a white man in March of 1955. The case was closely followed by a Christian minister, Martin Luther King. In December of that year, Rosa Parks, a member of King’s church, refused to move from her seat on a Montgomery bus to allow a white man to sit down in the crowded bus. She faced arrest, but her action was the spark to mass movement organized in her defense.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, a mass movement of black Americans who refused to ride on segregated buses, organized a protest that lasted 385 days.

Dozens faced arrests, physical assaults, and King saw his house fire bombed. But the movement was ultimately successful, and inspired over a decade of struggle for black civil rights.

Capitalism today

Capitalism today remains a repressive and violent system.

Recognition of this basic imbalance of power is essential to all discussions of anti-capitalist tactics. But the forces of resistance in any given context vary. Tactics and strategies of resistance need to be mindful of these specific conditions.

Significant reforms regarding basic rights have been won since the era of the New Left, largely the result of earlier mobilizations. Many who oppose injustices in the system today look to various forms of non-violent action, including trade union activities, electoral participation, or involvement in social movement organizations to express their opposition to the system.

Any discussions of the role of violence as a form of protest need to consider the impact and outcome with a view to reaching out to this layer of activists.

Resistance to capitalism, to be effective, needs to develop the capacity of ordinary working people and students to challenge the system. This is where real power to transform society lies.

September 2010 Socialist Worker 7

OPINION RACISM

Racist scapegoating rears its ugly head RACIST ATTACKS and scapegoating do not take place in a political vacuum. When looking at the rise in Islamophobia and anti-immigrant incidents, context is everything.

As British activist Tariq Ali writes, “Islamophobia is something that has been artificially engendered, especially in the Western world, against what is regarded as the new enemy...

Islamophobia in the US grew very strong after 9/11.”

This form of racism has been used as a tool to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Muslims throughout the world have been demonized to make the “war on terror” into a war against “evil”.

Such posturing also serves to create a climate of fear and helps keep people perpetually worried and suspicious of a specific group.

The ongoing hysteria over the proposed Islamic cultural centre in lower Manhattan near New York’s Ground Zero is a case-in-point. This has resulted in a wave of Islamophobia across the US. A New York City taxi driver was stabbed multiple times by a drunken passenger in an anti-Muslim attack. Islamic centres in several cities the US have been vandalized, including one mosque in Madera, California in which signs reading, “No temple for the God of terrorism at Ground Zero” and “Wake up America, the enemy is here” were left outside the centre.

The “terror” arrests that took place in Ottawa at the end of August have unleashed a frenzy of Islamophobic attacks in the mainstream press, with an automatic rush to judge.

Racism is used by the ruling class to divide and rule workers by blaming an easily identifiable “other”. This becomes particularly acute in times of economic crisis. It is no surprise that during this current economic meltdown we have seen a rise in racism throughout Europe, the US and Canada.

Politicians wishing to deflect anger away from their own failures try to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment and speak of the need to close our borders. This was seen recently with the treatment of Tamils fleeing war-torn Sri Lanka and Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford’s anti-immigrant declaration that, “it’s more important that we take care of the people now, before we start bringing in more.”

At every turn, it is important to expose such rhetoric for what it is: racist scapegoating. The first step to combat this divisive ruling class tactic is to speak out against all racism, and stand in solidarity against people being targeted. It is through a united struggle that people’s ideas cannot only be challenged, but changed.

QUÉBEC PUBLIC SECTOR

Québec workers must fight THE FRONT commun (Common front) has negotiated a wage decrease for 475,000 public sector workers in Québec.

The Front commun is a coalition of public sector unions including everybody except the Fédération autonome des enseignants—teachers in Montréal, Laval, Bas-Laurentides, Granby (east of Montreal) and Outaouais.

In late spring at a common bargaining table with the Charest government, the Front Commun agreed in principle to a deal. If ratified, it would limit wage increases to .5 per cent, .75 per cent, 1 per cent, 1.75 per cent, and 2 per cent, in the next five years (cumulatively 6.13 per cent).

An additional 1 per cent increase is promised at the end of the deal to account for inflation, making it about a 7 per cent increase. Inflation was 8.3 per cent over the last five years, and is likely to increase by an additional one or two per cent in the next five.

The deal must be voted on by each union before it is ratified for each union. For instance, the nurses could decide to vote it down, while the FTQ could agree to it.

The government has also offered an additional increase if economic recovery takes place. However, the numbers show how cynical this offer really is.

If GDP grows by 8.3 per cent in the first two years, then an additional wage increase of half of one per cent will be forthcoming. For subsequent years, the targets are 12.7 per cent cumulative in the third year and 17 per cent in year four, with 1.5 per cent wage increases for those years respectively.

However these targets are wildly optimistic. Before the crisis, growth of GDP in Québec was between 1 per cent and 2.8 per cent annually.

It was precisely to preserve their wages and to keep pace with private sector wages that members of the Front commun mobilized, demonstrated and sought strike votes last year. But the coalition has squandered the mobilization.

Demonstrations of 75,000 Front commun workers in March and 15,000 autonomous teachers’ union members in June show there is a will to fight. The Fédération autonome de l’enseignement (FAE) has come out against the deal, which could impact on the front commun unions.

The next round of employer attacks on workers, widely expected to focus on the public sector, must be opposed.

A network of grassroots rank-and-file members of unions is now growing through Québec solidaire and other left networks, to oppose the agreement. Dozens have so far signed a statement against the deal.

8 Socialist Worker September 2010

Obama, two years on With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still raging, Guantánamo Bay remains open and a worsening economic crisis, Obama has not lived up to his promises. Virginia Rodino assesses the past two years and looks ahead to the future of the US. IT WAS an inauspicious beginning for any US President—leadership over two wars, a global economic crisis already more than a year in the making and a crumbling domestic infrastructure.

In spite of this, however, the election of Barack Obama in late-2008 was greeted with almost unequivocal praise all over the world. Obama received a massive international welcome and a free pass from many progressives, even as he made commitments to a protracted war in Afghanistan-Pakistan and noticeably retreated from his position supporting Palestinian rights.

His honeymoon period was lengthy and seemed unassailable. Promises for health care reform, the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a commitment to withdraw US troops from Iraq and close Camp X-Ray at Guantánamo Bay, as well as his brilliant electoral campaign and simply how smooth and intelligent he seemed after eight years of George W. Bush, enabled a long period of high approval ratings.

However, as the US nears the midpoint of Obama’s first term, critics of the president on the political Left have been largely proven right. Two years after his election victory, the story of Obama’s administration is the story of promises not kept.

‘No, we won’t’

The Asia Times reported on August 5, “seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by September 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge on Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain [at least] until the end of 2011.”

In late June, The New York Times noted that, “stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.”

And Ezra Klein, policy analyst at the Washington Post, argued in May of last year that EFCA would not have

the votes, no matter what the Obama administration might say to try to placate the labour movement. He observed that not only has the White House demanded big compromises from organized labour, but it has offered very little in return.

Klein, among others, has remarked that the White House has yet to fight on behalf of the trade union movement.

This failure to do anything for an important section of his electoral base is not only bad politics, but is invariably bad for American workers.

In addition, Obama’s too-little-toolate response to the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, coupled with his lacklustre participation in the Copenhagen climate change talks, dashed expectations that he would emerge as an international advocate of effective solutions to the enormous environmental crisis facing the world.

From Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantánamo Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, Obama has let down all those people whose hopes were raised by his galvanic election campaign of 2008.

forts to reform the financial sector, with 53 per cent disapproving.

Even health care reform, nominally the biggest accomplishment of this administration and a purported selling point for the fall midterm elections, isn’t a plus. Overall, only 43 per cent approve of Obama’s handling of health care, while 51 per cent do not.

It appears that the strongest appeal the administration has at the moment among US voters is in the conduct of the failing war in Afghanistan, but even this is cold comfort. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 61 per cent believe that “eliminating the threat from terrorists operating from Afghanistan is a worthwhile goal for American troops to fight and possibly die for.” Though a majority of Americans still approve of Obama’s handling of the war, a deep pessimism prevails among the US public about the chances of winning it.

When asked if it is even possible to achieve stability in Afghanistan and the region, only 33 per cent of those surveyed said yes.

Declining support

The challenge in the US right now is to turn these sentiments into action, action that can compel the Obama administration to change direction. Students on US university campuses have struck, both in solidarity with workers and in support of accessibility to education. There have been demonstrations against the bonuses paid to executives at the bankrupt (and bailed out) insurance giant AIG, and workers staged a sit-down strike in December when their factory in Chicago was closed.

People are trying to organize to fight. An anti-war conference in Albany, NY, in July drew 750 organizers from around the country. Organizers of the US Social Forum in Detroit reported 15,000 delegates to the over 1,200 meetings held there in June. This indicates some of the potential for an alternative that exists in the US. And it is this sort of organizing that is necessary to mobilize the sentiment that Obama galvanized two years ago with his slogan “yes, we can”.

The political cost of those broken promises is now being felt in the White House. Nearly six in 10 Americans disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the spill, while two-thirds said he has not been tough enough on BP, according to a poll published in Politics Daily in June.

That same month, Newsweek magazine reported that solid majorities from its latest poll disapproved of the way the president is handling almost every major challenge confronting his administration. This is a complete reversal from a year ago.

According to Newsweek, in 2009 only 41 per cent disapproved of Obama’s economic leadership; that number has now risen to 58 per cent. A mere 27 per cent felt negatively about the president’s command in Iraq; today, 51 per cent disapprove. A whopping 60 per cent don’t like the way Obama is grappling with the Gulf oil spill, and a majority of Americans are critical of his ef-

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LEFT JAB

ARTS

John Bell

Stephen Harper: anarchist Stephen Harper may be head of the Government of Canada, but it has become clear that his secret agenda is to dismantle the Canadian state. Stephen Harper is an anarchist.

Lady GaGa’s Paparazzi music video

POP CULTURE

Disability: a revolutionary concept Lady GaGa Reviewed Melissa Graham PERCEPTIVE CONSUMERS of mass culture have witnessed an interesting trend in recent years regarding the use and perception of disabilities.

Examples include Lady GaGa’s Paparazzi music video, in which the performer becomes disabled through the actions of her boyfriend, and the uses of disability on the television show Glee.

Although these portrayals are much healthier than in the past, they still serve to send a message that the ideal person with a disability is one who can hide their disability well enough to meet norms of productivity.

The social condition of disability is not new. This label has been used through oppressive social conditions, and exercised through the production of goods and services, to leave many people with disabilities unemployed or underemployed against their will. These nonconforming bodies are deemed less or not employable by those who own the means of production.

The above examples are two of many such cases in which non-disabled actors have portrayed disabilities. The performances are noteworthy because the difference is seen as acceptable only as long as it is temporary, or it fits within other social constructions of disability—white, heterosexual and/or socially awkward.

Other socially acceptable portrayals of disability can be seen in the media as well, such as the well-muscled acceptable disabled man, or the woman in business attire working in an office building. Disability becomes something to compensate for so as to be a productive worker, rather than a different state of being.

Despite some social shifts, body politics still exist within capitalism; people’s impairments are seen to add to the cost of production. Often these perceived expenses are “compensated” for by paying lower wages to workers with disabilities. This is evident in various employment programs in Toronto and elsewhere that are supposedly designed for people with disabilities, but in reality serve as a source of cheap labour for companies like Walmart. These initiatives also serve to re-

mind people that their worth in a capitalist economy has much more to do with their perceived labour power than their actual skills or education.

These reminders are in legislation currently being developed in Ontario.

By allowing those with power to determine the priority for accessibility standards, the disability movement has begun to set a standard that defines the most productive person with a disability as a working one in line with the demands of capitalist economics, regardless of other roles that person may wish for (parent, student, or simply a healthy member of the community).

The concept of disablement had to be devised by capitalism to limit the scope of permissible notions of work.

Allowing any flexibility to workers to include those with disabilities has the potential to undermine capitalism by allowing the possibility of alternatives.

If we turn this around, we can see people with disabilities as key to revolutionizing the way productivity is perceived, but only so long as we can build solidarity with their struggles for access.

Lady GaGa’s portrayal, while a welcome change from the past, still leaves much to be desired and fought for.

DOCUMENTARY

Countdown misses the mark Countdown to Zero Written & directed by Lucy Walker Reviewed by Jonathon Hodge COUNTDOWN TO ZERO is neither as bad as people have said it is, nor as good as it really needs to be. By refusing to ask the uncomfortable but obvious questions, this documentary fails to motivate people to action as it should do.

The film has a promising premise­— the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world and the relative ease with which such weapons could bring about the destruction of all human society.

It is indeed a frightening prospect, and such a film pushed as “from those who brought you An Inconvenient Truth” should deliver a powerful indictment of the nuclear energy industry and the policies and practices of governments that have allowed us to reach this point.

The problem is clear from the beginning: a montage of terrorist attacks around the world over the last 15 years, narrated by an ominous voice: “al-Qaida is determined to acquire nuclear weapons and is willing

to use them.” So the message is not: nukes are awful, planet-killing disasters waiting to happen, but rather: be afraid of the terrorists.

Such a theme misses the point. All those interviewed are either US security experts, or former heads of state of nuclear powers. That is, they are people with a structural bias against seeing the problem for what it is. The issue facing the world is not the possibility of a ramshackle “terrorist” network (no matter how well-financed and organized) building or acquiring an atomic bomb.

The central issue is that the imperial ambitions of the cold-war powers left a legacy of nuclear destructive capacity that continues to exist.

Those imperial ambitions continue to wreck havoc in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine and elsewhere; far more havoc than Osama bin-Laden could ever hope to achieve.

While the film does spend a fair amount of time highlighting the US’ history of nuclear accidents, including losing a B-52 over North Carolina in the 1960s and its depositing two nukes in the countryside (only a single switch stopped the bombs going off), it at no time condemns the

possession of such weapons by powerful countries, nor the imperial motivations that fuelled the drive to acquire such devises.

It also bookends this useful elaboration of folly with too much language and imagery of the terrorist or national “other” as the threat. In doing so, the film leaves the impression of “us” (white Westerners) as reasonable and responsible masters of nuclear weapons, and “them” as the dangerous incompetents and miscreants bent on planetary destruction.

Such a poor shaping and presentation of the material makes the ending contradictory. Useful recommendations are impressed upon the screen, but absent a clear denunciation from the film, the uninitiated viewer is left feeling like such recommendations have little hope of implementation.

The film concludes by interviewing regular people from nuclear-armed countries around the world. It asks them all, “How many weapons should ‘we’ have?” The universal response is, NONE. Clearly, ordinary people know better than the experts blinded by their imperial allegiances and for that matter the filmmaker herself.

Most people believe, especially after the G20 protests, that all anarchists have a monochromatic (black) fashion sense, a penchant for wearing bandanas over their mouths and listen to horrid music by bands like Against All Authority, Severed Head of State and Kronstadt Uprising (my personal favourite for sentimental reasons).

Doesn’t seem to describe Our Glorious Leader at all, does it? But let’s take a closer look.

Harper’s fashion sense does run to the monochromatic, just substitute grey for the cliché anarcho-black. The occasional baby-blue cardigan is just to confuse you during election campaigns.

I can’t say I’ve ever noticed Harper with a bandana over his insincere, sociopath’s smile. He does, however, have a well-documented predilection for gagging his ministers and MPs. Perhaps Harper is into bondage fetishism rather than anarchism, but I see no reason why Our Glorious Leader can’t indulge in both.

We may never know what Harper listens to in the privacy of his own iPod, but judging by what we know of his appreciation of the arts they must be horrible indeed.

The state

But external trappings and entertainment choices are not what define the anarchist. That is reserved for their attitude toward “the state”. As it says on Wikipedia (so you know it has to be true): “Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy.”

As a socialist, I long for the day when “the state”, as it is constituted under capitalism, is struck down and replaced by a truly democratic form of government. As democratic decisionmaking spreads and deepens the state “withers away”, as old Mr. Marx once put it.

Anarchists have no patience for this withering away business– they want to smash the state and they want to smash it now!

Furthermore, again in the words of Wiki, anarchism “seeks to diminish or even abolish authority in the conduct of human relations.”

When it comes to wanting to smash the state and questioning authority, nobody does it better than Stephen Harper.

Look no further than his habit of proroguing parliament.

Most of us had no idea what the word meant before Harper used the parliamentary trick to shut down the government in 2008. The parliamentary shutdown allowed him to kick the very shaky legs out from under an opposition coalition to vote his minority government out of office.

He enjoyed proroguing parliament so much he used the same trick a year later, shutting down our democracy—such as it is–for over two months. Cynics said he did it to avoid the Afghan detainee scandal; the charitable said he did it so we could all take two months off to enjoy the Winter Olympics.

In fact these were practice runs for his master plan to smash the Canadian state entirely.

If there are any lingering doubts about Harper’s anarchic plan, don’t forget his oft-repeated promise to scrap the Senate. Unable to go the whole hog, he did the next best thing: he appointed Mike Duffy to the Upper Chamber.

Authority

But it is in his refusal to accept authority that Harper’s anarchic alter ego reveals itself most fully. Witness the long line of authority figures—experts in their fields perhaps but authority figures nonetheless— whom Harper has cast out: Pat Storgan was Veterans Ombudsman until he started to speak out on how badly military vets are treated. He is an authority, and Afghan vet himself.

Harper’s fellow anarchist, Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn (one of many anarchists known to come from Québec) denied that Strogan was fired. Blackburn’s coded message reveals another anarchist is being parachuted in: “A new person arrives with new ideas, they see things with a new perspective.”

Linda Keen was head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, ostensibly fired for bucking Harper by shutting down a nuclear reactor producing medical isotopes.

She said she had pleaded for money to repair the old, unsafe reactor but the Tories wouldn’t pay. Of course the real reason she had to go was that she was an expert on nuclear safety–down with authority!

Paul Kennedy, in charge of investigating complaints against the RCMP, made the mistake of doing just that. He had to go.

Peter Tinsley was head of the Military Police Complaints Commission. He actually used his authority to examine the Harper government’s role in torturing Afghan detainees.

It was his investigation that brought ex-Diplomat Richard Colvin and his scandalous revelations to national attention. Such authority must be questioned, indeed must be overthrown. Tinsley is out.

RCMP Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak used his authority to support a planned registry of firearms. He had to be shut up. So what if the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police agrees with him.

The final, damning evidence of Harper’s anarchism is his scrapping the Census. Harper calls on us all to question the authority of facts and figures. It is only a baby step from “Smash the Statistic” to “Smash the State”.

Enough goofing around.

I sincerely apologize to all the anarchists out there for pretending Harper is one of their number. Anarchists don’t promise to build new “superjails” even as the crime rate falls. Anarchists don’t spend $16 billion on fighter jets. Anarchists don’t plan their whole economy around the dirtiest, most destructive commodity we know, fossil fuels.

You’ll notice Harper is only underfunding and attacking those parts of the state that— even weakly—look out for our safety, health and welfare. He is dedicated to paring it down to the core that is essential to the increasingly embattled class he represents: the state consists of special bodies of armed men, of the means of repression and coercion.

That is the state Harper embraces.

September 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.

Harper’s attacks at home and abroad

Thurs, Sept 16, 7pm Bahen Centre 40 St George St Info: international.socialists @utoronto.ca Organized by the UofT IS club

Socialism and workers’ power

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

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

Disaster capitalism: Pakistan floods

Sun, Sept 19, 6pm Speaker: Jesse McLaren & Ayesha Adhami Info: 416.972.6391 A Socialist Worker fundraiser organized by the Toronto West IS branch

Rebel’s guide to Marx: What is Marxism and is it relevant today?

Reform and revolution

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

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

Elections and democracy

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

Internationalism

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

We support all genuine national liberation movements.

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

Canada, Quebec, Aboriginal Peoples

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

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

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

Oppression

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

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

The Revolutionary Party

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

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

10 Socialist Worker September 2010

Wed, Sept 22, 2pm

How we can stop capitalism from killing the planet?

Over 75,000 people took to the streets of Montreal on March 20, 2010 to fight for fair wages

Wed, Sept 29, 2pm

Wage freeze: first salvo in G20 austerity

by IAN BEECHING IN THE wake of the G8/G20 Summits, the true cost of the world economic crisis is evident. Unable to buy their way out with trillions of dollars in bank bailouts, the wealthiest governments in the world have pledged to maintain the profits of the elite by making workers and the poor foot the bill.

Leading the drive for austerity at the G20 Summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper made his position clear: cut social services while spending $16 billion on new fighter jets. The purchase will push Canadian military spending to its highest rate since World War Two. Meanwhile, unemployment sits at 7.9 per cent.

Trillions of dollars have been spent in order for the world’s largest banks to regain profitability. As public debts are used to finance private profits, banks are once again comfortable in demanding austerity from their governments. The response by the G20 has been to turn on the most vulnerable.

As an illustration of the pettiness of cutting, in British Columbia, funding for contraceptives for people on welfare and disability and the $75 dollar monthly shelter allowance for the homeless have both been cut. This nickel-and-diming of the poor is appalling, considering that by next year the Canadian Federation of Students projects that British Columbia will earn more money from student tuition fees than from taxes on corporations.

Capitalist system

The financial crisis reveals the fault lines in the capitalist system, as accumulation of capital has combined with diminishing profits.

Currently, approximately 30 per cent of China’s industrial capacity is unused. Many prominent economists, such as Paul Krugman, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake because it will further reduce the purchasing power of consumers when goods are already sitting in the warehouses.

Considering that one in every six Americans has taken a wage cut because of the recession and the aver-

age British household will earn an estimated $4,500 less annually by 2017, it is unlikely that some of the largest markets will be able to consume what is needed for long-term recovery.

Russia plans to cut 20 per cent of state employees; Ireland has cut public sector wages by 22 per cent; similar cuts are expected in Greece, along with a 55 per cent cut in pensions. Germany, the largest economy in Europe, has announced $100 billion in cuts. Driving wages and public sector spending down will only increase the instability already obvious in the system.

In Canada, public sector workers are faced with a government that is demanding wage freezes. In Ontario, the liberal government has imposed a wage freeze on non-union public sector workers in the name of reducing a $21 billion deficit by an estimated $750 million per year. Public sector unionized workers have rejected similar attempts.

Corporate taxes

Meanwhile, Ontario is reducing corporate tax by $4.6 billion. Fred Hahn, president of CUPE Ontario, made his union’s position clear: “The shortfall was never caused by people’s wages.

The shortfall was caused by a global economic meltdown that workers in the province had nothing to do with.”

In Quebec, Bill 142/Law C-43 imposed wage freezes on public sector workers and effectively putting an end to pay equity while threatening draconian repercussions for labour actions. This meant a 4 per cent decline in real wages. In response, unions put aside their differences and formed a Front commun representing some 475,000 workers. The main demands were to reverse the 4 per cent wage loss, as well as some modest new gains.

Sadly, the Front commun failed to join forces with the broader movement against this year’s budget cuts and capitulated to the government’s final offer, which fell far short of the union’s demands.

In BC, there has been a 10 year freeze on the minimum wage, making it the lowest in the country. When adjusting for cost of living, a Vancou-

ver worker making $8 an hour would have to make an additional $5.21 an hour to match the next lowest minimum wage of St. John’s, Newfoundland. In addition, many young workers are forced to work at the $6 hourly training wage.

With consumer prices rising an average 1.98 per cent a year since 2000 and the introduction of new taxes in some provinces, wage freezes actually translate into wage cuts.

In the last 10 years, Canada has seen a 21.6 per cent increase in the price of consumer goods such as food, shelter, furniture, clothing, transportation and recreation, according to the Bank of Canada.

Beyond the immediate loss of purchasing power, the wage freeze demand is a steep one. Because future salary increases and pension savings will be based on these wages that have not been raised for anywhere from two to seven years, by forcing workers to accept wage freezes in the short-term, employers are ensuring that that all subsequent raises will be smaller than they could have been.

Essentially, wage freezes demand that workers accept a pay cut for the rest of their careers.

To make the situation worse, it was recently reported by Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney that Canadians have the worst debt to income ratio of 20 member states in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In addition, household savings rate in Canada ($2.80 on every $100 dollars of household income) is less than half that of the US ($6.40 on every $100).

The solution to economic crisis cannot be to drive wages and social spending down to produce more useless crap our environment could desperately do without. A real solution involves making those responsible for the crises pay. The government of Iceland fell early in the crisis to a popular movement. Hundreds of thousands have been marching and striking across Europe in defiance of their governments. In Canada we must join the international movement pushing to counter the logic of big banks and government, lest we suffer in silence.

OPEN SATURDAYS, 12-3pm

RESISTANCE PRESS BOOK ROOM

427 Bloor Street West, suite 202, Toronto | 416.972.6391

Bahen Centre 40 St George St Info: international.socialists @utoronto.ca Organized by the UofT IS club

Striking against the cuts: Lessons from the Mike Harris years

Fri, Oct 1, 7pm Speakers: Pam Joyner & Ali Awali Asteria Restaurant 679 Danforth Ave Info: papedanforth@ gmail.com Organized by the Pape/ Danforth IS branch

OTTAWA

Disaster capitalism

Thurs, Sept 9, 7pm Speaker: Jesse McLaren Lamoureux Hall, rm 360 Info: gosocialists@yahoo.ca Organized by the UofO IS club

VANCOUVER

A people’s history of oil

Wed, Sept 22, 1:30pm Langara College, rm C509 100 W 49th Ave Info: vancouver.socialists@ gmail.com Organized by the Vancouver IS branch

Info tabling & organizing meeting

Wednesdays, 12:30pm Info: vancouver.socialists@ gmail.com Organized by the Vancouver IS branch

peace & justice events TORONTO

Film screening: ‘Howard Zinn: You can’t be neutral on a moving train’

Wed, Sept 8, 7pm Speakers: Naomi Klein & Iraq War resisters Bloor Cinema 506 Bloor St W Info: www.resisters.ca Organized by the War Resisters Support Campaign

Climate reality

Wed, Sept 15, 7pm Speakers: James Hansen, Naomi Klein & Clayton Thomas-Muller MacMillan Theatre 80 Queen’s Pk Info: www.scienceforpeace.ca

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 NFLD VALE STRIKE

by JESSE McLAREN THIRTEEN MONTHS into a strike against mining giant Vale, 200 miners at Voisey’s Bay need solidarity.

In July, 3,000 workers in Sudbury and Port Colbourne ended a year-long strike against Vale by reluctantly signing a concessions contract.

According to steelworker Patrick Veinot, “Nobody voted for that contract, they voted to go back to work.”

With the strike in Ontario over and scab labour operating at its Labrador site, Vale is dragging on the Voisey’s Bay strike in an attempt to get even deeper concessions. But Darren Cove, president of the striking United Steelworker Local 9508, said the membership has told the bargaining committee to hold out “as long as it takes.”

Solidarity is key. Newfoundland and Labrador labour leaders—from the federation of labour, CUPE, PSAC, and the association of public and private employees—recently gathered to discuss a plan of action, but no details have been released.

For more information, visit www.fairdealnow.ca.

BA STRIKE

Strike action sets standard for aviation workers

by PETER HOGARTH OFFICIALS FROM British Airways (BA) and the Unite union announced August 16 that they had reached a settlement.

The deal, which could set the standard for aviation workers, reflects the power that flight staff has in shutting down some of the largest airports in the world.

In November, BA boss Willie Walsh imposed job cuts on the crew and then offered a concessions contract. The BA crew refused to take it, and 7,000 took strike action in defence of their working conditions and for the reinstatement of fired crew.

Cabin crew voted 85 per cent against a previous deal put forward by management, sending a clear statement that they would not be bribed to accept attacks on their jobs. Now BA has offered the flight crew double what they had originally offered with no strings attached, as well as a lump sum payment of £500 ($820 CAD).

BA aviation workers will be voting on whether to accept the agreement.

Meanwhile, thousands of BA check-in workers and other ground staff have started voting on whether to accept a contract including 500 voluntary job losses and a one-year pay freeze.

Hopefully the pressure exerted by flight crew will show the way forward for the ground staff, as they too can bring traffic at Heathrow to a halt.

1.3 MILLION WORKERS STRIKE FOR WAGE INCREASE

General strike shakes South Africa

by JESSE McLAREN INDEFINITE STRIKE action

by South African public sector workers has ignited a general strike against the government’s attempt to make workers pay for the recession.

South African workers used general strikes to bring down Apartheid 16 years ago, but it was replaced with a neoliberal regime that has kept millions in poverty.

The country that exports gold and diamonds, and recently spent billions on the World Cup, can’t provide jobs, housing, and a living wage for its people.

Now workers are turning once again to their collective power, to strike back against the recession. A stream of workers resistance over the summer has become a torrent of activity.

Strike action won 10 per cent wage increases for rail and port workers in May, power utility workers in June, coal workers in July, and 31,000 autoworkers in August.

Then in the middle of August, 1.3 million public sector workers began indefinite strike, demanding an 8.6 per

cent wage increase (inflation is 4.2 per cent) and a greater housing allowance.

According to Mzwandile Makwayiba, one of the leaders of South Africa’s biggest public sector union, Nehawu. “In South Africa there are two kinds of people— those with money and those without. Those without are the vast majority. Unaffordable housing, poverty wages and sky-high inflation are crippling workers.

“We are struggling to survive—that is why we are on strike. As workers we know we only have two weapons— our unity, which we must not allow to be splintered, and our ability to fight.”

Unity on the picket lines was accompanied by unity on the streets, as 400,000 strik-

ers joined marches across the country. Resistance then spread to produce a general strike of two million workers, as miners and others withdrew their labour.

The spread of an economic strike has raised political questions. Two years ago the labour movement supported the election of Jacob Zuma as president, with the hopes that he could provide an alternative leadership to the African National Congress that has ruled since the fall of Apartheid.

But instead, like governments around the world, he has tried to make workers pay for the recession. Zuma has used the army, police, and courts in an attempt to break the strike.

According to Lebo, a teacher in Johannesburg, “Zuma says we are selfish.

But the government found money for the World Cup and for big pay increases for MPs. It can afford to pay us a living wage.”

The strikers remain determined, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions has vowed to continue the strike “until such time that the employer accedes to the demands of the workers.”

CUPW SPEAKS OUT AGAINST ISRAELI MAIL BAN TO GAZA

by TERRY THEAKSTON FOLLOWING ISRAEL Post’s suspension of mail delivery to Gaza, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) are urging people who wish to send mail to Gaza to get their mail onto the Canadian boat bound for the blockaded Palestinian territory.

“As postal workers, we know very well that cutting off mail creates suffering and hardship for people, who are isolated from their

BC LOGGING CAMP

by BRADLEY HUGHES BC FEDERATION of Labour (BC Fed) President Jim Sinclair described the conditions at the camp as “a story that seems from another century.”

Khaira Enterprises workcamp at Bluewater Creek, 40 km west of Golden, was shut down on July 21 after reports of a fire during a fire ban.

Upon investigation it was discovered that the workers were given stream water to drink, nothing for lunch, unrefrigerated chicken for supper, no toilet facilities, no money, no medical treatment and no transportation to leave.

In addition they were subject to physical and verbal abuse, including death threats, and racism.

BC Fed is calling for Khaira Enterprises to be shut down and an investigation by the BC government into how such conditions could go undetected. The government should also make sure the workers receive the wages they are owed.

loved ones,” said Denis Lemelin, National President of CUPW. “How many more abuses will the people of Gaza have to endure?”

CUPW took an official stand on the issue at a national union convention in the spring of 2008.

“We are heartened by the growing international response to Israel’s cruel treatment of the Palestinian people,” said Lemelin. “We stand in solidarity with all efforts to break the blockade and end the indignities imposed on the Palestinian people by the state of Israel.”

Numerous organizations are working together to endorse a Canadian boat to Gaza in the autumn. Others,

including Independent Jewish Voices, have supported the idea of getting mail onto the boat.

“The Canadian Boat to Gaza is eager to carry mail to Gaza if the ban is not lifted soon,” said Sandra Ruch, spokesperson for the Canadian Boat to Gaza.

“We will make every effort to deliver any mail we get to the postal authorities in Gaza. We ask senders to limit mail they send us to unsealed postcards of greeting and support to loved ones keeping in mind that it, as well as the rest of our cargo, may end up in Israeli hands if our boat is pirated.”

For more information, visit www.canadaboatgaza.org.

CUPW PRESIDENT SENDS LETTER TO POLICE CHIEF FOLLOWING THE G20 Summit protests in Toronto, CUPW President Denis Lemelin sent a letter to Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair condemning the police use of force and mass arrest of peaceful protesters. Below is a re-print of the letter: Dear Chief of Police William Blair, I am writing to you on behalf of the 54,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers to address several points: 1) At some time during the G8/G20 protests on June 26, 2010, members of your police force confiscated at least two CUPW flags. This confiscation was improper. CUPW is asking you to immediately return these flags.

2) CUPW is incensed that members of the Toronto police force acted in a repressive

manner towards the G8/ G20 demonstrators. This includes “preventative arrests”, the unnecessary use of excessive force, and failure to provide assistance to injured demonstrators. CUPW finds these actions disturbing and undemocratic.

3) CUPW is angry that people are still jailed for “conspiracy”. We understand from our reading of Canadian labour history, that conspiracy charges have been used to prevent workers from taking steps to better their wages and working conditions.

Conspiracy charges are an excuse to deny our rights to protest.

In conclusion, I am asking you to return the Canadian Union of Postal Workers flags.

Yours truly, Denis Lemelin, CUPW National President

STICKING WITH THE UNION

Carolyn Egan

Sears workers stand strong against concessions

Locked-out Sears warehouse workers

THE SEARS Warehouse workers in Vaughan, Ontario have been locked out for almost five months. They have been fighting back against a concession contract and have held firm, rejecting the company’s latest offer in May.

A boycott has been called and the locked-out Steelworkers have been leafleting Sears outlets across the Toronto and Hamilton areas.

Other union members have joined them, and groups such as the Steelworker Toronto Area Council have put on solidarity barbecues.

There have been a number of high profile pickets of the Sears outlet at the Eaton’s Centre in downtown Toronto. Busloads of locked-out workers have been making their presence known, but it’s an uphill battle.

Sears is a large conglomerate employing over 30,000 people and these 500 workers are the only component that is unionized.

Attempts have been made to organize other facilities, but without success.

There are six other scabbed workplaces in the province and the labour movement has to mobilize to shut them down, making a strong statement that workers in this province will not stand for this violation of their rights.

Brantford

ECP, another Steelworker plant, has been on strike for two years in Brantford, Ontario. A rally and solidarity conference was held recently and a call has gone out from the Ontario Federation of Labour to shut the plant down on September 15, 16 and 17.

Buses will be coming in from across the province. It is to be the start of a major campaign to support striking

and locked-out workers, demanding anti-scab legislation from the province.

Other provinces such as Quebec and British Columbia have such legislation, as did Ontario, until the Conservative government of Mike Harris repealed it in one of its neo-liberal attacks.

This type of mass mobilization must continue. The Sears Warehouse should be next on the list for a threeday, or longer, shutdown.

These actions should be kept up so that management is unable to maintain production, knowing that they could be closed down at any time. There should be a regular rotation of mass pickets at scabbed plants until companies understand that they can’t run during a strike or lock out.

Public sector

There are many battles taking place in this province including the Liberal government’s attacks on public sector workers. Unions are walking away from the table and it looks like there may be a real fightback to defend public services and workers rights in the public sector.

United Steelworkers Local 1005 in Hamilton is in tough negotiations with US Steel. The defined pension plan is a major issue.

This is a politically active and very militant local.

They went through a tough fight against concessions a number of years ago, which they won and are prepared for a strong fightback now.

Fights like these are going on across the globe as governments and corporations try to ride out the economic crisis on the backs of workers and the poor. As someone said as they watched the general strikes in Greece, “it’s time that the global working class learned Greek!”

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September 2010 Socialist Worker 11

WAR WORSENS FLOOD DISASTER IN PAKISTAN

by JESSE MCLAREN & AYESHA ADHAMI

THE MASSIVE floods in Pakistan that affect 20 million people are far from a random “natural disaster”. Rather, they are a predictable result of global warming, capitalist development and USbacked war.

There have been 12 major floods in Pakistan since 1973, and three years ago the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of worse floods to come due to global warming. The current floods that have inundated one fifth of the country have displaced over 4 million people, killed 2,000 people and partially or totally destroyed 722,000 homes.

This disaster is not simply a product of record monsoon rainfall. Pakistan has already been ravaged by the effects of being an ally and party to the “war on terror” that the US and Canada continue to wage on its neighbour, Afghanistan.

For the past nine years, Pakistan has absorbed almost three million Afghan refugees, has been repeatedly bombed by US drones and has focused its domestic agenda and finances to prioritize the war.

In 2008, Pakistan’s inflation rate hit 25 per cent, making it virtually impossible for millions of poverty-stricken citizens to feed themselves or their families.

In addition, profit-driven “development”—the likes of which have also been seen in Iraq and Afghanistan—are decimating what’s left of Pakistan’s resources and infrastructure. According to Riaz Ahmed, a socialist based in Karachi: “Cities like Mianwali and Charsadda have been allowed to drown in order to save dams and hydroelectric stations.

“Even before the monsoon flooding, military installations have been saved, while entire

PHOTO: UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

villages have been submerged because budget cuts have meant the loss of vital riverbank defences. And forests and jungles have been plundered by millionaire-owned timber businesses.

“This has created soil erosion and the destruction of natural defenses that can prevent flooding. Local and national governments have awarded the contracts for this kind of work, knowing the dangers.”

Rescue-workers are unable to reach 600,000 people in the Swat valley where, last year, the Pakistani military launched a war against resistance movements, trying to clear a path for the US to its bases in Afghanistan. Obama has followed up with continual drone attacks.

These destroyed bridges and roads, and displaced vast numbers into refugee camps.

Now the war is undermining relief efforts. In the first

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few days of flooding, Pakistani President Asif Zardari was in Britain, pledging continued support for the war in Afghanistan.

Three children were seriously wounded after finding an unexploded homemade bomb that was moved by the flood waters.

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), “Areas that may once have been considered free of weapons can easily be re-contaminated when mines and unexploded ordnance are carried into them by floodwaters.”

The Asian Human Rights Commission also issued a statement on August 20 condemning the deliberate breach of the Jamali Bypass by the

Pakistani military, which diverted floodwaters to destroy the town of Dera Allahyar and save the Shahbaz Airbase.

Though denied by the current Pakistani administration, the airbase was “leased” to the US for war on terror operations by former President General Pervez Musharraf in 2001, and has been under US control since.

Despite the epic proportions of this current disaster, the US Air Force has repeatedly denied the use of the base for relief support. The coordinator of Pakistan’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Centre, Dr Jahanzeb Aurakzai, was quoted as saying that “… foreign health teams could not

start relief operations in remote areas because there are no airstrips close to several areas…”

On August 23, The Baltimore Chronicle underscored the hypocrisy of the US’ $150 aid donation to Pakistan, by pointing out that $92 million would be used for security rather than humanitarian efforts.

The news organization quoted Senator John Kerry (Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman) as saying, “The objective is humanitarian, but obviously there is a national security interest. We do not want additional jihadis, extremists, coming out of a crisis.”

Despite being a partner that has suffered greatly for its

loyalty to the US in the “war on terror”, even in its’ most vulnerable moment, Pakistan remains mired in suspicion and mistrust, unable to secure more than a pittance of support from its biggest ally. Even “humanitarian” countries like Canada have only offered token support.

It is no surprise that the same countries spreading war in the region are refusing to contribute meaningfully to the UN’s appeal for $460 million in aid to Pakistan’s relief effort, yet they continue spending without restraint on military pursuits—the US gives $1 billion in aid to Pakistan’s military and the Harper government recently promised $18 million on fighter jets.

This duplicity is not lost on Pakistanis; since mid-August, citizens around the country have been protesting against the US, the global paucity of aid, and their feelings of being used, and forgotten.

Pakistanis have repeatedly demonstrated resilience in the harshest of conditions.

Beyond this latest disaster and the urgency for immediate humanitarian aid, Pakistanis need, want and continue to work for more meaningful change. Including an end to the “war on terror”; the development of a domesticfocused political and socio-economic infrastructure including access to education, training and job development and programs for the alleviation of poverty, particularly in rural areas; freedom from the cycle of debt and debt relief that continue to burden the country; and the development of eco-policies, safeguards, education and practices to help Pakistanis live greener and combat climate change.

It’s a long road ahead.

Tamil refugees fleeing violence, met by racism

by BRADLEY HUGHES IN THE middle of August a ship carrying 492 Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka arrived on Vancouver Island. Unlike nearly all other refugee claimants, all 492 refugees were immediately imprisoned.

The Tory government has accused these refugees of being terrorists, human smugglers and “queuejumpers” trying to take advantage of Canada’s generous refugee system.

All of these lies are to distract us from the very real terror of Tory government policies in Canada and abroad.

In a press release from the Canadian Tamil Congress, immigration lawyer Barbara Jackman notes, that: “labelling the newcomers as Tamil Tigers before their histories are even known is irresponsible. It only fosters anger among Canadians. It twists reality. There is no reason

to believe that these Tamils are anything other than victims of persecution in Sri Lanka, as the thousands of Tamils who arrived before them were.

“People do not choose to be born in a country which persecutes them.

But they can choose a safe haven, because countries like Canada have opened their borders and promised to protect refugees who make it to our shores.”

The Tamil refugees are fleeing the continued violence and human rights abuses that are widespread in Sri Lanka after the central government won the decades-long civil war.

The UN estimates 7,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final few months of the war. The government was responsible for shelling civilians, bombing food distribution centres and attacking hospitals.

Over 80,000 Tamils remain in detention camps

and the Sri Lankan police are accused of routinely using torture. Two opposition MPs have been beaten by police and the government has deported NGO staff from the majority Tamil areas of the country.

The proper way to file a refugee claim is to arrive unannounced in Canada and to file the claim. When fleeing an island nation, like Sri Lanka, on board a ship is the easiest way to do that.

Canada only accepts around 20,000 refugee claimants a year, and the Tories have increased the number of denied cases and deportations.

Globally, Canada contributes to creating refugees through war and support for governments, such as Sri Lanka’s, that have been responsible for the murder and displacement of large numbers of people. However, Canada only accepts a tiny fraction of them.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there were 45 million people forcibly displaced by conflict and persecution in 2009. That includes 15.2 million refugees. Nearly all the rest are internally displaced persons.

In 2009, the top three counties of origin of refugees were, in order, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

The countries that had the largest number of refugee claimants in 2009 were, in order, South Africa, Malaysia and the UK. The largest ratio of refugeesto-population in 2009 was in Jordan, Syria and Montenegro, Canada ranks 27th. In terms of number of refugees-to-land-area Canada ranks 82nd.

It is time to counter the Tory racism and scapegoating and welcome more refugees to Canada and to facilitate their arrival.