People's Voice August 1-31, 2006

Ottawa must condemn Israeli aggression

     The Communist Party of Canada condemned Israel's "wanton aggression" in Gaza and Lebanon, and demanded that the Harper federal government join the vast majority of the international community in criticizing Israel's escalating military actions.

     "The re-occupation of Gaza; the menacing intrusion into Jordanian airspace; and now the full-scale attack by air, sea and land on Lebanon: all of these Israeli actions over the past two weeks are absolutely unjustified under international law. No state has the right to use force against another country without the agreement of the UN Security Council," said the July 14 statement from the CPC's Central Executive Committee.

     "The murder of innocent civilians and the wholesale destruction of bridges, utilities and other infrastructure are not just unwarranted provocations - this type of collective punishment is a war crime committed by the State of Israel, the actions of a `rogue state' out of step with world opinion which favours a just, negotiated peace in the region."

     The statement also denounced the Canadian government's reaction to the mounting crisis.

     "Since Israeli aggression began in late June, Foreign Minister Peter MacKay has heaped all responsibility for the current crisis onto the shoulders of the Palestinian resistance, while remaining completely silent about Israeli attacks. PM Stephen Harper went even further in London on July 13, calling the Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon `a measured response'.

     "Such one-sided apologetics for Israel's bullying, war-like behaviour are appalling and wholly irresponsible. At this critical moment when the whole region is on the razor's edge of all-out war, Ottawa's pronouncements are giving moral encouragement to the Israeli government to continue and even escalate its military aggression.

     "Harper's extreme pro-Israeli position is binding Canada ever more firmly to the aggressive and dangerous foreign policy of the US Bush administration. Canadians should be deeply concerned about this government's disgraceful unilateral revision of Canada's foreign policy in this region.

     "Instead, Canada must demand that the Olmert government agree without delay to an immediate ceasefire to stop the bombing and artillery at once, and stop the senseless slaughter of civilians and the starvation of children. The siege of Gaza must be lifted and commercial crossings opened to allow an uninterrupted supply of food, medicines and fuel to the Palestinian population of the Gaza strip who are threatened with a humanitarian disaster.

     "The excuse which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is using to justify this aggression - the capture and detention of some Israeli soldiers by the Palestinian resistance and Hezbollah fighters - is a feeble and hypocritical pretext. The `retaliation' has been totally disproportionate and reveals Israel's well-known penchant for aggression on its neighbouring countries. Furthermore, Israel's attempt to paint itself as a victim which is forced to defend itself is farcical, given that the IDF routinely detains and tortures Palestinians (including innocent civilians) in the Occupied Territories, carries out `extra-judicial' assassinations of activists, and destroys homes, clinics and schools.

     "Successive Israeli governments have refused to recognize the national rights of the Palestinian people to a viable, independent state on the territories illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. For years, it humiliated the fledgling government of the Palestinian Authority, keeping President Yassir Arafat a virtual prisoner in his compound. Now, Israel is trying to completely strangle the newly elected Hamas government. It has ruled out any further peace negotiations, and has brazenly declared its right to unilaterally determine the final borders - an Orwellian turn-of-phrase meaning the permanent annexation of Palestinian lands into `Greater Israel'.

     "If history has taught us anything, it is that repression, aggression and war will never subdue a restless people who have every right to resist occupation and to demand self-determination. If Israel wants to stop the Palestinian resistance, it has only to implement countless UN resolutions demanding that it end - once and for all - its illegal occupation of all territories, including East Jerusalem, seized in the 1967 war, and recognize and develop cooperative relations with a truly independent and sovereign Palestinian state. This is the only just solution that can guarantee genuine and enduring peace in the region.

     "The Communist Party is working across Canada to mobilize broad, urgent and powerful opposition to the Harper government's position and to build solidarity with the Palestinian and other peoples of the Middle East targeted by the dangerous escalation of aggression by Israel."

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The destruction of Lebanon continues

(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)

By Kimball Cariou

AS ISRAEL CONTINUES its military destruction of Lebanon with the encouragement of the Bush Administration, international protests are becoming louder by the day. Over the July 22-23 weekend, thousands of Canadians rallied against the aggression, with the biggest demonstrations in Toronto and Montreal.

     United Nations relief coordinator Jan Egeland has described the devastation caused by Israeli airstrikes in Beirut as "horrific" and "a violation of humanitarian law."

    "The whole thing has to stop. It's no natural disaster, but a man-made crisis, " Egeland said as the bombing campaign by the Israel Air Force continued on July 23.

     Egeland also criticised Israel's actions which have already killed at least 372 people in Lebanon. The Israeli military response has been "disproportionate, when to my thinking one third of the wounded and killed are women and children, then it clearly goes far beyond responding to armed groups," he said.

     During the same period Hezbollah has killed 34 Israelis, including 15 civilians who died in rocket attacks on towns and cities in northern Israel. At least 600,000 people have now been displaced by the fighting, according to the World Health Organisation.

     Egeland's comments came as he toured ruins in Beirut left by devastating Israeli air raids on residential areas. He spoke during a visit to the Haret Hreik district of Beirut where Israeli air raids had struck just hours before, destroying a headquarters of Hezbollah.

     "It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses ... It makes it a violation of humanitarian law," Egeland told journalists. He said it was hard to distinguish between military and civilian targets in the predominantly Shia Muslim neighbourhood.

     The UN official was in the region ahead of international appeal for over $100 million in emergency aid for Lebanon. He planned to travel to Israel for further discussions on opening aid corridors. Israel has said it will allow aid in through Beirut's port, but it will be difficult for it to reach the people who need it as roads, bridges and trucks have been targeted by the Israeli air force.

     Egeland also expressed alarm over the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territory amid the Israeli offensive there. Palestinian society is in "in its gravest hour of need in many years. We need a more effective relief effort there and we need Israel to enable the relief effort more effectively," he said.

     On the same day, Lebanon's Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah on July 12, in a cross-border raid which also killed eight Israeli soldiers, were safe. "The Israeli soldiers are in good health and in a safe place," Salloukh told reporters, and called for a third party or friendly country to engage in mediation.

     Hezbollah has agreed that the Lebanese government could negotiate an exchange of prisoners with the Israelis. Israel is holding three Lebanese and hundreds of Palestinians in its prisons, but has ruled out a prisoner swap.

     Well-known freeland journalist Dahr Jamail reported on July 23 that "Much of Beirut is a devastated city, infrastructure in many areas lies in a shambles after the Israeli bombing. But the Lebanese are also just feeling devastated."

     "Does our country not have the right to move forward like other democracies," Jamail was told by Nidal Mothman, a 35-year-old taxi driver in downtown Beirut. "We hate the American government for giving the green light for the Israelis to bomb us back to the stone age.... How many Hezbollah have they killed. Maybe just a few, while they've killed over 350 Lebanese civilians. What kind of war are they waging against my country?"

     A few days earlier, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora told reporters that his country has been torn to shreds. "Can the international community stand by while such callous retribution by the state of Israel is inflicted on us?"

     Siniora accused Israel of massacring Lebanese civilians and attempting to destroy everything that allows the country to stay alive.

     As he spoke, the humanitarian crisis continued to worsen by the hour. At least 64 bridges have been bombed and many roads are cut by the bombing, hindering transportation of food and aid supplies. Israel has even knocked Lebanese media off the air, claiming that TV and radio stations are used by Hezbollah.

     Jamail noted that other Israeli targets have included the country's largest milk factory, a food factory, two pharmaceutical plants, water treatment centres, power plants, grain silos, a Greek Orthodox Church, hospitals and an ambulance convoy. Southern Beirut has been hit hard, with entire buildings brought to the ground by Israeli air raids.

     On Saturday, after meeting with members from a United Nations team who had just returned from the region, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice told reporters that the situation in Lebanon was part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East", and said that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire.

     As Dahr Jamail reports, not many people in Beirut are able to see it that way: "Suthir Amalat carrying her child in one arm as she bought water to take home for emergencies said she was preparing for everything to worsen. `We are angry at Hezbollah for starting this catastrophe, but even more angry at the Israelis for destroying all of Lebanon,' she said. `And America, who we thought was our friend, clearly now supports the Israeli destruction of our country.'"

     The US has rejected the idea of an immediate ceasefire saying it would produce a "false promise" that would allow Hezbollah to survive and attack Israel in the future. Many international observers stress that this policy amounts to giving Israel a free hand to destroy much of Lebanon, in effect holding the country's entire population hostage.

     Aljazeera news agency reports that Lebanese government sources say that Saudi Arabia will soon suggest a series of measures to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to solve the crisis. The Saudi proposal will include a comprehensive ceasefire, exchange of prisoners, a solution to Shebaa Farms issue, and withdrawal of Hezbollah from borders with Israel. Meanwhile, foreign ministers from around the world are due to hold an emergency meeting in Rome on July 26 to discuss the crisis.

     As People's Voice went to press on July 25, the latest news was that Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz has said his government would support the deployment of NATO forces. After talks in Jerusalem with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Peretz said Israel was supporting the move "due to the weakness of the Lebanese army."

     Should that scenario unfold, it would give the U.S. and its closest European allies an even stronger foothold on the ground in the Middle East. Far from stabilizing the region, this would almost certainly have the opposite effect, escalating violence to the levels seen daily in Iraq, and possibly sparking outright war involving other neighbouring countries.

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Harper's wooden threats - Editorial

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LGBT school equality gains - Editorial

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Hiroshima - the largest terrorist act in history

(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)

By Darrell Rankin

HUMANITY WILL FOREVER remember how hostilities ended in the Asia-Pacific theatre of the Second World War, because on August 6, 1945 the United States used an atomic bomb to kill more than 80,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan, a number that increased to 200,000 by 1950 because of the continuing effects of radiation.

     Rivalries between the U.S., Japan and European empires were the cause of the "Asia-Pacific" war, which broke out when Japan attacked Hawaii, a U.S. possession, in December 1941. Japan's government, a military dictatorship nominally headed by an emperor, had banned the Japanese Communist Party since its formation in 1922, crushed democratic dissent and pursued an aggressive foreign policy. (Canada's Conservative government banned the Communist Party here in 1931, preceding Hitler's ban on the German Communist Party in 1933.)

     By 1941 Japan had occupied and committed serious war crimes in much of coastal China, Korea, French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia), and Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). Rival imperialist powers were guilty of similar atrocities. Despite early victories, Japan was a defeated empire in 1945. Japan's oil stocks were gone and its naval fleet was destroyed. Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan's greatest ally, had surrendered in May.

     Japan's government communicated its desire for peace in June, 1945 to Sweden, Switzerland and the Soviet Union, requesting only that the emperor be kept as head of state, a condition allowed after Japan's surrender.

     Despite these facts, many people still believe U.S. President Harry Truman's lie for using the atomic weapon. On August 9, 1945, Truman said "We have used (the atomic bomb) to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans." But when Truman first heard that an atom bomb had destroyed Hiroshima City, he had no noble aim. He simply said "This is the greatest thing in history."

     Instead of avoiding further casualties, U.S. political leaders used Hiroshima to signal their aim to achieve world domination. Three days later they repeated this barbaric and racist crime on Nagasaki City, Japan. Rather than trying the bomb on a less-populated area of Japan, Truman killed over 300,000 people, mainly civilians.

     Since 1945, U.S. imperialism has led the nuclear arms race, imposing a terrible danger on humanity and all life on earth. It has consistently opposed proposals to ban nuclear weapons. For example, the 1946 U.S. "Baruch plan" set out unacceptable conditions for achieving nuclear disarmament, such as a seven-year monopoly on U.S. possession of the weapon and removing veto power from the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

     The United States used nuclear weapons after the War as a strategic threat to dominate world politics and to crush revolutionary and democratic movements. The terrifying threat of nuclear weapons and other U.S. military inventions such as intercontinental missiles created a burdensome arms race with the Soviet Union for much of the post-War period.

     Despite the fact that a new capitalist class has overthrown socialism in the former Soviet Union in the largest act of robbery and privatization in world history, the U.S. is still creating deadlier ways to dominate the earth. The far-right Bush administration's latest creation is the so-called "war on terror," wrongly used to justify endless aggressions around the world - a permanent state of war where it is only a matter of time before the U.S. actually uses a nuclear weapon.

     Nuclear weapons are still at the core of U.S. imperialism's political strategy and military doctrine. The U.S. has a nuclear weapons "first strike" doctrine, a doctrine shared by Canada and other U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. By contrast, the Soviet Union had pledged never to be the first in a conflict to use nuclear weapons.

     The U.S. leads all other imperialist countries in arming itself, carrying out foreign aggressions and occupations, and preparing for a world-scale war against Russia and China. The U.S.-India nuclear pact and U.S. military bases in Central Asia all bring the military threat closer to China and Russia. The U.S. military budget of over $455 billion is more than the combined total of the next 32 largest military spenders.

     The dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1991 removed a vital block to imperialism's use of military might to impose global domination. The Soviet Union's leading role in the defeat of fascism in the Second World War and its popular and principled foreign policy led to great achievements in arms control and disarmament and restrictions on war as a tool of foreign policy.

     Imperialism is ignoring virtually all these achievements, including a ban on space weapons, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons to new countries, test bans for nuclear weapons, and the obligation of countries with nuclear weapons to disarm.

     Most alarmingly, the U.S. is acting in open defiance of the United Nations Charter which bans war as an unrestricted tool of foreign policy, the most important progressive and democratic legacy of the Second World War. The U.N. Security Council authorized few recent U.S.-led wars, and all violated the Charter - Panama (1989), Iraq (1991, 2003), Yugoslavia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), and Haiti (2004).

     This list suggests that imperialism is at the stage of using war to impose corporate globalisation by violent means. It is using war to crush so-called "failed" governments and people's movements that resist global corporate rule, promoting the plunder of oil and other resources in weaker countries.

     But U.S. imperialism is preparing to use far more of its huge military potential, making plans to weaponize space, adopting the doctrine of "preventive war" and lowering thresholds for the use of nuclear weapons. All these developments signal that the U.S. is preparing for far greater wars than those already underway.

     Catastrophes like Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti will continue to mount in number and severity unless imperialism is blocked. Imperialism has caused enough recent death and destruction to justify its replacement by a socialist society many times over. But for the moment imperialism has the historic initiative, especially since the setbacks to socialism in the 1990s.

     Our main effort today must be to unite people and nations against imperialist aggressions and militarism as a whole. This can be accomplished through the mobilization of the world's peoples against imperialism with the aim of preventing war, ending occupations, and achieving general disarmament, especially abolishing nuclear weapons.

     (Darrell Rankin is the chair of the Communist Party of Canada's Peace and Disarmament Commission.)

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The CLC, CUPE Ontario, Peace and Solidarity

(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)

By Sam Hammond

NOTHING POPS OUT of a vacuum. Every hour of every day the wordsmiths and pundits of capital bombard the unprotected public with seemingly unexplained and unreasoned attacks against the boundless evil that seeks to destroy our goodness and purity. We are in a permanent life and death struggle with terrorism. Us and them.

     When the vacuum is abandoned, we get historical info and plot that justifies the present... a view of history through the prism of imperialism. How many movies have been made that show the ancient slave society of Greece, or more so the imperialist slave empire of Rome, as civilized societies surrounded by barbarians? In the modern view, Rome falls to the barbarians whose names are still used to vilify: Huns, Goths and Vandals.

     Every empire, every imperialist, has had to wage war against so-called terrorism. What did the Romans call the slave army of Spartacus? What did the British imperialists call the liberation fighters in their colonies? What did the Fascists of modern Europe call all the partisans? Has anyone viewed a Hollywood movie where the poor American intruders are outnumbered and brutalized by indigenous people, where a military victory bought with great sacrifice against superior weapons is called a massacre? Where the heroism and sacrifice of native fighters protecting women, children and elders is trivialized as criminal murder? In this lunatic mosaic the victims are the guilty. The purveyors of mass terror, of chemical death and weapons of destruction, are portrayed as the guardians of life.

     Whose life? In this class based nightmare that question must be posed and answered. Whose society is protected and whose is scheduled for annihilation? The most prominent mouthpiece of German Fascism, Goebbels, pointed out that it was necessary for Nazi historical interpretation to capture all the folk heroes of the past and identify them with fascist ideology.

     Apparently the struggle for control of the present requires a struggle to capture the past. To control the interpretation of the past is to maintain control of the present, so partisan ideology has a future. But ideology is really class consciousness raised to the level of a program that requires organizational form for implementation. Shazaam, presto: political parties. Politics and class. Past, present and future.

     We could go back to the emergence of the first exploiting societies, to make the point that with the emergence of classes, diametrically opposed class interests developed. The antagonistic differences between exploiters and exploited have fuelled class consciousness that has risen to the level of ideology. Ideology has a class base, ideology is partisan.

     If the modern capitalists had to defeat the feudal lords to gain control, they still historically see them as parents. They claim the right of inheritance, the right to exploit.

     Who does the modern working class relate to historically? This is an important question, more important than we sometimes appreciate because ideology, like everything in this universe, has a past, a present and a future. If capital knows its parents, then we must know ours. Knowledge of our past will help us resist in the present, to overcome in the future. Still in the consciousness of the most advanced elements of the working class and of the trade union movement, is the memory of previous times, of our predecessors, not theirs.

     Prior to the industrial revolution, when capitalism was still young, the accumulation of capital proceeded at the expense of the rural population, of conquered and colonized people, and of indigenous peoples everywhere. The land clearances, the creation of propertyless masses with no means of subsistence, the creation of cheap urban labour, the rape and plunder of entire continents, is the pre-industrial, pre-proletarian memory of the toiling masses that parented all working class people. The people were not passive in this brutality. Their defenders, their resistors are still our folk heroes.

     The process is still playing out as the catalyst of all solidarity movements. The modern trade union movement is not an historical observer. It is the product of the past, connected at the umbilical chord. The knowledge of what created us, the consciousness in the craniums of the victims of their resistance against being herded into urban industrial life, was the basis of early labour organization. That is why the early labourites were almost always some kind of socialists. Searching perhaps, crude perhaps, but nevertheless armed with the consciousness of self, of the difference between us and them, of the difference in our needs and their plans for us. Knowledge that the algebra of class struggle demands their downfall and our liberation.

     There have been many ups and downs, surges and relapses in this struggle to maintain historical consciousness. At the worst of times, some of us have been briefly and temporarily recruited to a capitalist agenda against our own interests; at other times we have stood heroically against them. This is the nature of the attack and counter attack of political struggle. The working class fights always with elements of struggle and acquiescence in its midst. What elements are dominant predicts our future - slave or free, pawns or knights.

     So history can also be viewed through the prism of the toiling masses. Slaves, serfs, share croppers, industrial proletariat. In short the entire class of modern wage workers using their own historical prism to view the continuum of struggle against exploiters - the culture of resistance.

     In this environment, some very sharp struggles are taking place. Rather than direct confrontations, they are oblique expressions of solidarity and unity. Summed up and thrown into the world political map, they are a trumpet blast condemning imperialism and war.

     The Canadian Labour Congress declaration on the so-called war in Afghanistan, the unequivocal demand to bring Canada's troops home and get out of the US war machine, is vastly important. No MP or political party has had the fortitude or ideology to say this in parliament as well as the CLC. It is important for all progressive people and particularly trade unionists to support the CLC position and use it to strengthen the peace movement, to move labour and the peace movement into an even closer harmony.

     The Canadian Union of Public Employees (Ontario) has been under withering fire from the apologists and perpetrators of imperialist Middle East policy, from agents of the Israeli state, the Canadian Zionist lobby and the media distributors of misinformation and malice. Why? Because CUPE Ontario passed a necessary and unflinching resolution against the state of Israel's barbaric treatment of the Palestinian people.

     It's a good resolution, completely in tune with years of United Nations resolutions, and with the condemnation of Israeli policy by the American Association of Jurists, the Swiss Foreign Ministry, the Toronto Conference of the United Church of Canada, the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadians, Jewish Women to End the Occupation and many others, including Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.

     In a lesser skirmish the southern Ontario media, particularly CHCH-TV in Hamilton, attacked Local 1005 Steelworkers Union and CAW for support of the Six Nations at Caledonia. The attack, whether local or on an international or Canada-wide basis, has the same ring. Labour should address the day to day needs of their members and stay out of international affairs or local issues that have nothing to do with collective bargaining.

     Really? Observe the capitalist press and the Zionist lobby screaming foul and pretending to champion the needs and rights of union members. They do this without convention, vote or mandate.

     The fact that labour policy is set in meetings, conferences and conventions whose democratic nature will never be matched by any capitalist institution, including the parliament of Canada, is important. But even this is not the essence of the issue. The fact is that by disassociating with imperialist militarism and condemning the aggression and murder resulting from it, by standing in solidarity with people fighting these same issues at ground level, by fighting to keep our working class on the side of peace and solidarity with oppressed people, the most advanced elements of labour are in concert with what created us historically and true to our history, our present challenges and future solutions. If our unions acquiesce with capital externally, they will in time acquiesce with capital internally. The McCarthyite era is a good example of this, when acquiescence with capitalism seriously betrayed the interests of workers and their quality of life.

     I applaud the stance of the CLC on peace and war. I applaud the stubborn resolution of CUPE Ontario. I applaud the smaller local expressions of solidarity. Support on these issues is vital and deserving. Those who break ranks and criticize resistance, those who straddle the fence, those who stand passively in the face of criminal inhumanity, should not ever be allowed the mantle of leadership in the labour movement. They are not on our side, they don't carry our interests. They are suspect.

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Guelph citizens in solidarity with Six Nations

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Final settlement in Election Act case

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Profits up, workers suffer

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Solidarity with Aboriginal nations and youth!

(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)

Statement from the Young Communist League of Canada, July 2006

Across the state of Canada this summer, Aboriginal peoples including youth have been fighting hard battles for their rights. Most have gone unreported by the corporate media. The Young Communist League stands in solidarity with the struggles of Aboriginal nations and youth, including First Nations and the Metis, and urges all other progressives to do so as well.

     In northern British Columbia, the citizens from more than a dozen small communities along the over seven hundred kilometers of "the Highway of Tears" (Yellowhead Highway 16) have united this summer, again demanding an end to the killings of young, female and almost entirely aboriginal hitchhikers.

     There names are Tamara Chipman, 22; Lana Derrick, 19; Ramona Wilson, 15; Delhine Nikal, 15; Roxanna Thiara, 15; Aleisha Germaine, 15; Deena Lyn Braem, 17; and Nicole Hoar, 25.

     It wasn't until the probable rape and murder of Nicole Hoar (the only non-aboriginal) that the Highway became a national news story. There is a long history of police brutality and neglect towards Aboriginal peoples, including in BC where First Nations land remain largely un-treatied and totally un-surrendered.

     The lack of attention and a solution to these murders exposes the racist, sexist and class-bias of the state and the ruling class, who seem to have a completely different level of concern when it comes to arrests at First Nations road blockades as well as picket lines, non-violent protests.

     In Manitoba, the Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation initiated a railway blockade to force the Canadian government to establish a reasonable time-frame for settlement of land claims, "and send a message to the federal government and all Canadians that resource wealth of our lands are what supports every Canadian."

     In a statement, Chief Terry Nelson said: "We still have 77% unemployment. We are denied any recognition of our right to lease our 3 million acres of traditional lands and each year we receive less and less funding. It took us 125 years to get Treaty Land Entitlement recognized. Eight years we have waited to have our TLE land converted and still we have to wait, but it took the white farmers only 26 days to get an Order in Council taking our 12 sections of reservation lands away."

     The ruling class and the Canadian state have for centuries stolen Aboriginal territories, in Anishinabe and across Canada. There are over 600 Aboriginal land disputes currently registered between First Nations and the Canadian Government. The Government addresses about six every year, and the implementation time averages about ten years. Figure out the math.

     In Ontario, the inquiry continues into the assassination of Dudley George, an Ojibwa activist at Ipperwash on the territory of the Stoney Creek band. George, un-armed, was killed on Sept. 6, 1995, by three dum-dum bullets shot by the Ontario Provincial Police. He was in his thirties. The inquiry, which took eight years of struggle to convene, will probably end this Fall.

     Despite the flagrantness of this murderous criminal act by the state, the corporate media spent the vast majority of their time talking about the question: did former Ontario Premier Mike Harris say "fuck" when ordering an attack on the First Nations protestors? As George's brother, Pierre George, who was a guest of honour from the Canadian delegation at the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students, told delegates from around the world, we must not allow Dudley's death to be forgotten.

     At the root of these struggles is the national oppression of Aboriginal people. In reality, Canada is a state composed of many nations, upon which was superimposed a set of colonial boundaries called provinces. Aboriginal peoples of Canada, both the First Nations and the Metis, are nations. They have the right to self-determination, or sovereignty. This can be exercised in three ways: separation, autonomy, or a confederal republic built on an equal voluntary partnership of nations, each of which is guaranteed the constitutional right to secede if it so desires.

     The Communists demand emergency action to improve living conditions, employment, health and housing of Aboriginal peoples. Remove vestiges of colonialism from all federal legislation! Act now for just settlement of Aboriginal land claims, including natural resource-sharing agreements.

     Fundamentally, we demand the drafting and adoption of a new, democratic constitution based on an equal and voluntary partnership of the Aboriginal peoples, Quebec, and English-speaking Canada, recognizing the national rights of Aboriginal peoples and Quebec to self-determination, up to and including secession.

     Like the legal right to divorce for individuals, the legal right to secede for nations provides a real and genuine basis to achieve an equal, voluntary partnership free of coercion, free of oppression. It is the right to secede and the right to divorce which help to level the playing field in unequal and involuntary unions, and which provide the right to exit in the event that an equal and voluntary union is impossible to achieve.

     It is true that in today's conditions, the breakup of Canada would serve the interests of transnational (especially U.S.) capital, which would welcome unfettered control of this country's resource wealth. The best policy for working people is to demand a renewed confederation, based on an equal and voluntary partnership of the nations within Canada. The path to such renewal is currently blocked by Anglo-Canadian chauvinism.

     In today's age with imperialism's agenda of war and capitalist globalization, only a united and powerful social movement, with labour at its core, could repel the neo-liberal corporate assault, and then mount a counter-offensive for a democratic, people's agenda. For youth and students, who have been and will be victimized by capitalism's assaults, the stakes are high.

     In Caledonia, Ontario, Six Nations protesters boldly occupied the Douglas Creek Estates subdivision and solidarity was expressed by many in the trade union movement as well as youth and students, including members of the Young Communist League and the Communist Party. Youth must continue to combat the chauvinist forces that only benefit the ruling class, who would decry principled solidarity as a "distraction," "a lost battle," or somehow "neo-colonial."

     All youth and students must support Aboriginal national struggles for self-determination! Youth of the dominant, oppressing English-speaking Canada face a hard reality: a nation that oppresses another forges its own chains.

     Now is the time for Canadian youth and students to express solidarity with the struggles of Aboriginal youth. As the YCL organizes towards its re-activating Convention in 2007, we commit ourselves to joint action with Aboriginal youth and to strive and begin to learn how overcome the chauvinism that characterizes the relations of Aboriginal-Canadian progressives. In the fights for peace, jobs, better wages, free tuition and accessible education, we share a common enemy - the ruling class.

     Divided, the youth and students, as well as the working class and all people in the Canadian state has a lot to lose. United, another world, another country, and another future is possible!

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Mexicans demand vote recount

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What's Left

(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)

VANCOUVER, BC

Multi-Union Pride Events - Dyke March, Saturday, Aug. 5, meet with Labour Dyke Contingent 11:30 am at McSpadden Park (4th & Victoria), 12 noon march to Grandview Park (Commercial Dr.). Pride Parade union contingent gathers 11 am, Sunday, Aug. 6. For meeting point & info contact Victor, velkins@shaw.ca .

StopWar.ca meetings - to plan anti-war actions and Oct. 28 protest against Canadian occupation in Afghanistan, 5:30 pm, Aug. 9 and 23, Maritime Labour Centre, 111 Victoria Drive. See stopwar.ca for info.

Left Film Night - 7 pm , Sunday, August 27, at the Dogwood Centre, 706 Clark Drive. Free admission, donations welcome, call 604-255-2041 for details.

CALGARY, AB

YCL school on Marxism - August, date and location TBA. Info:alberta@ycl-ljc.ca

WINNIPEG MB

Hiroshima Day Lantern ceremony - Sunday, Aug. 6, with speakers for abolition of nuclear weapons. Location will be one of two pools at the Manitoba Legislature (Memorial Park or by the Louis Riel statue - to be announced). Info: Peace Alliance Winnipeg 792-3371.

HAMILTON, ON

YCL School on Marxism - August, date and location TBA. For details, email ycl_ontario@ycl-ljc.ca

TORONTO, ON

Rally against occupation of Palestine - every Friday, 5-6 pm, picket at the Israeli Consulate at Avenue Road/Bloor West. Organized by Jewish Women Against the Occupation and Coalition for Just Peace in Palestine.

MONTREAL, QC

Young Communist League School - Sept. 1-4, on Marxism and building the youth and student movements in Quebec. Info: quebec@ycl-ljc.ca

Vigil against occupation of Palestine - Every Friday, noon to 1 pm, at Israeli Consulate, corner of Peel and Rene Levesque. For info: Palestinians and Jews United, 961-3928.

REDS ON THE WEB
http://www.communist-party.ca

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Protests build across Canada and around the world

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Vancouver Labour Council opposes Israeli aggression

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CUPE president urges Harper to call for ceasefire

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"The Fifth Day of the aggression"

Statement of the Political Bureau of the Lebanese Communist Party, July 17, 2006

Since the start of the aggression our party has defined its position and stance as being at the head of those opposing with all possible means the aggression and the expected invasion.

This aggression is a part of the Zionist-American plan for the region and is furthermore an act of aggression undertaken with international permission and cover, in particular that of the United States of America, which is using the Security Council and the United Nations as tools with which to exert pressure and control. The aggression also bases itself on compliance and collusion by official Arab regimes and takes advantage of the current atmosphere of political division inside Lebanon.

The aggression is continuing and expanding to cover several regions. It focuses particularly on the infrastructure and on inflicting human civilian losses and igniting fires in many places, aiming thereby to apply psychological pressure on the resistance on the one hand, and to try to raise the volume of criticism and objection to the resistance on the other. This approach takes advantage of the general political atmosphere and of the stances taken by some of those in authority and by some political forces. The material losses are great, as are the human losses. Despite that, there is steadfastness, particularly in the south.

Despite the steadfastness - that has so far been seen in the strike on the Zionist warship off Beirut, the attacks on the cities and villages of Galilee, and the infliction of human losses in the ranks of the enemy causing Israel to fail to achieve sensitive military goals that would have raised the morale of its population and army - despite all this there is an international effort involving the United Nations, Europe, and France under US pressure aimed at securing political benefits from the aggression, such as the implementation of UN Resolution 1559, by holding negotiations and bringing in Israeli and international stipulations under the cover of the continued military operations.

In the event that this effort fails - and we believe that it will fail because of the high ceiling of conditions set by the Americans and Israelis, in particular their requirement that Hizballah must be broken up and its role completely ended which is their first step towards delivering a defeat or at least a major blow to the Syrian-Iranian axis - so far it appears that if an agreement on a cease-fire is reached that would be in the interests of the resistance and would be a type of defeat for Israel, which cannot now bear such a thing. Therefore we believe that the military operation will be relatively prolonged and could spread outside Lebanon's borders, in which case we could be faced with wholly different developments and trajectories that cannot now be predicted.

In any case, after 12 July the country has entered a whole new stage, the direction of which will emerge in the light of the outcome of the fighting. In case the resistance continues to be steadfast and Israel fails to achieve its aims, the country will enter a new equilibrium in which the side linked with the Syrian-Iranian axis will be in the position of greater strength, and Syria and Iran will once again have greater influence on political developments in Lebanon, while the other side shrinks back. In case the opposite occurs, the battle will be transformed into an internal struggle on the premise that the reason for such a Lebanese defeat would be the position of the internal enemy - something that would impel the country towards a new civil war as struggle erupts among sectarian groups trying to improve their shares of the confessional political system which would have been upset as a result of the results of the war and the attempts of certain sectarian groups inside the country to benefit from a Lebanese defeat.

On the basis of this assessment and in the interests [of] safeguarding our country, we believe that the fundamental task is to confront the aggression with a comprehensive, cohesive patriotic stance, a stance that reinforces national unity. As a part of this the Lebanese authorities must not make any political concessions to the current and direct international pressures, while not hesitating to carry out rescue and aid operations. That is for their part. At the same time other internal political forces must refrain from advancing certain issues that the aggressor and his allies use for their benefit. They must direct political rhetoric at reinforcing steadfastness and resistance and frustrating the aims of the enemy. The steadfastness and resistance of the Lebanese people can change the balance of forces, and we propose the convening of a national meeting under this slogan.

This is the primary task that the leadership of the party has been working to realize and for which a series of Political contacts have taken place: between Nabih Berri - Michel Aoun - the Progressive Socialist Party - Bahiyatal-Hariri - Salim al-Hoss.

The Party has also taken part in some of the meetings that were held on the initiative of other parties - al-Hoss, for example. It also has contacts for the sake of solidarity with political parties and forces outside the country. Solidarity declarations have been issued and actions have been organized in Greece, France, Bahrain, Canada, India, Italy, Spain, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, and Britain.

Party organizations in the South are taking part, within their capabilities, in strengthening steadfastness and resistance.

The Party is taking part in a campaign to bring aid via political and private organizations, in Beirut and the districts.

What is need now:

To confront the aggression with all available means.
To increase the intensity of internal political work through activities, in particular in the areas not under threat.
To take part everywhere in the campaign to provide all appropriate and suitable forms of aid.
To intensify political work in the Party through general meetings and gatherings.
To have a fundraising campaign to support the steadfastness of our organizations and to cover the requirements of work.

The Political Bureau of the Lebanese Communist Party, Beirut, 17 July 2006.

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WFTU solidarity message: we are firmly on your side!

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Grupo Mexico fires La Caridad copper mine workers

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Cuban workers reject US plan

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Support the struggle of Greek students!

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Thousands march for exiled Aristide in Port-au-Prince

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Alliance demands to defend Medicare

Campaigning daily to monitor, expose and challenge every step taken that would weaken our public health care system;
Working together to develop a national campaign to make public health care a major issue leading up to the next federal and provincial elections;
Reaching out to engage our own members, youth, seniors, faith groups, anti-poverty groups, new Canadians, women's groups, aboriginal peoples and others in the fight to save public health care; and
Working through the Canadian Health Coalition, provincial health coalitions and with our allies in Quebec.

Signed by:

Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions;
Canadian Health Coalition;
Canadian Labour Congress;
Canadian Union of Public Employees;
Communication, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada;
Council of Canadians;
National Automobile, Aerospace, Transportation and General Workers Union of Canada (CAW);
National Union of Public and General Employees;
Ontario Health Coalition;
Public Service Alliance of Canada;
Service Employees International Union;
United Steelworkers

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How the bomb killed

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August 1-31, 2006 Volume 14 - Number 14 $1

August 1-31, 2006
Volume 14 - Number 14
$1