The Canadian Labour Congress has entered into the debate over Ottawa's reference to the Supreme Court on the legality of Quebec's right to secede. In a Feb. 17 statement, the CLC's Executive Council reaffirmed its "longstanding support for the right of the people of Quebec to self-determination on the basis of a generally accepted, fair, open and democratic process."

CLC President Bob White said the Supreme Court should turn back this "misguided reference" to the political arena. White correctly pointed out that the federal government is "going down a very dangerous road... This legal action takes us away from finding a solution and into emotionally-charged territory. This is a decision for the people of Quebec to make."

The Executive statement referred to the "growing sense which cuts across political lines, that this use of the Supreme Court is simply wrong. Inside Quebec itself, the reference has galvanized opposition from both sovereignists and federalists alike."

The CLC position is important for at least two reasons. First, it should help make Canadians understand that all the legal hair- splitting in the world will not make Quebeckers change their view that they are a nation within the Canadian state, with the right of self-determination. Federalist politicians in Quebec have spoken out against the Supreme Court reference, not to "betray Canada," but because this reflects the overwhelming majority opinion in Quebec.

Second, while we wish the CLC had spoken out sooner, its statement is a welcome antidote to big-nation chauvinism in "English-speaking" Canada. Those who back the Calgary Declaration go in the wrong direction, lamely calling Quebec a "unique society" rather than a nation, and supporting dangerous moves to download all federal powers and responsibilities. The CLC's position helps open the door to stronger working class unity against our real enemy - the corporate powers which would destroy Canada for the sake of higher profits. We hope the statement will be used to build support for its logical conclusion: that the never-ending constitutional crisis can only be resolved with the full democratic involvement of all who live in Canada, through full recognition of the national rights of the First Nations and Quebec.

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No Gulf War, Lift the Sanctions!
- by Hassan Husseini, Toronto

"1,2,3,4, we don't want your racist war", "No blood for Oil" and "Hands off Iraq" are some of the anti-war chants being heard across the country. Thousands of people are actively showing their opposition to a new wave of US imperialist aggression against the people of Iraq. While an immediate bombing attack seems less likely in the wake of UN Secretary General Koffi Annan's mission to Baghdad, U.S., British, Canadian, and other military forces remain in the region, poised for action, and the devastating sanctions against Iraq remain in place.

Anti-war coalitions have sprung up with the aim of mobilizing the vast number of Canadians who oppose Canada's support for this war, just like seven years ago when the first "Gulf Slaughter" was committed with the Mulroney government's active support and participation.

While the imperialist aims of the planned aggression are still the same, much has changed since 1991. Washington is more isolated this time around, for the first time since the crisis began when Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2nd, 1990. With the active support of only a handful of its first coalition partners, including Israel, Britain, Canada and Australia, the USA finds itself increasingly alone in its self-appointed role as the world's policeman. Close US allies in the region, such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, have all either denied the use of their country for launching any attacks against Iraq, or rejected this military operation describing it as "a blow against justice" and "state terrorism".

In other parts of the region, opposition to the planned assault was more direct. Thousands of people took to the streets of Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the Occupied Territories, clashing with riot police or with the Israeli army. Opposition to US (and Canadian) policy in the region stems from what the people see as a hypocritical double standard: brutal enforcement of UN resolutions on an Arab country, while the state of Israel, which is in violation of 69 UN Security Council resolutions, gets military and financial support.

The majority of the people in the Arab countries, including in Iraq, do not support the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein and his brutal actions against any internal opposition, but they are even more opposed to the imperialist hegemony of the United States and its western allies. These same forces armed the Iraqi regime to the teeth, and supported Saddam Hussein's eight-year war against Iran and his brutal crackdown on the democratic opposition, particularly the Iraqi Communist Party.

In a Feb. 20 news release, the ICP stated that "While stressing that the dictatorship's policy and exploits are the cause behind our people's tragedies and the dangers threatening their existence, our Party points out that the question of overthrowing the dictatorial regime is an internal matter which only concerns our people, and no one has the right to act on their behalf in this respect."

Despite the fact that Kofi Annan, General Secretary of the United Nations, has brokered an agreement with Iraq on Feb. 23, the United States maintains that it reserves the right to bomb Iraq, whether or not other UN Security Council members agree to this course of action. Feeling growing international pressure, the USA is trying to impose an agreement on the Security Council allowing it to use unilateral military action without first seeking the approval of the UN.

The US plan for war against Iraq is eagerly supported by the Chretien Liberals and the other right wing parties in Parliament, under the pretext of upholding international law. Yet they know this action is not sanctioned by the UN or its Security Council. The actions of the United States against Iraq today are similar to past covert CIA operations and open wars, such as the overthrow of Guatemala's government in 1954, the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, the Vietnam War, the invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989. Canada's work for securing a treaty to ban all land mines, was washed away the minute the Liberals supported the US administration in its war effort, including the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons against a country and a people that have suffered over a million casualties as a result of the sanctions imposed after the 1991 war.

The threat to the people of Iraq and the region is very real, even in light of the Annan agreement with Iraq. The sanctions themselves are a form of war that must be opposed by all progressives across Canada and the world. The call for stopping the US drive to war (and our government's support) must be accompanied by the call to lift the sanctions against Iraq immediately, and also by support for a just and comprehensive solution to the central problem in the Middle East: the Arab-Israeli conflict.

(Hassan Husseini is the Central Organizer
of the Communist Party of Canada)

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Women Wage War against Workfare
-by Helen Kennedy

Cuts to social assistance payments, a massive restructuring which disqualifies huge sectors of the unemployed and disabled, and the introduction of workfare, have been the pillars of the Mike Harris war on women in Ontario.

Last fall, anti-poverty activists fought an intensive campaign against Bill 142, the Social Assistance Reform Act. Queen's Park was the site of many demonstrations and an impressive occupation of Minster of Community and Social Services Janet Ecker's office. Despite this militant opposition, the Bill was finally passed in November 1997.

In Toronto, the fightback movement has since been revitalized. A January meeting called by the Metro Network for Social Justice to coordinate the fightback, attracted a standing-room-only crowd. Over one hundred activists, most of them women, from a wide variety of communities and groups and a strong representation from labour, came together to develop an action plan to resist the implementation of workfare and to fight the attack on women and the poor.

Workgroups were convened to discuss the various aspects of fighting the legislation. One group focused on welfare and workfare organizing, including developing a campaign to organize workfare workers. Program delivery issues were discussed by another group, which proposed focusing work on municipal councils and developing a campaign to fight the privatization of social service delivery. (Anderson Consulting, the recipient of a $200 million contract to assist in the restructuring of social services in the province, has already been the target of two militant demonstrations and occupations.)

The final group looked at civil liberty issues involved in fighting the legislation. The Social Assistance Reform Act violates many basic human rights: the right to a job, the right to housing, the right to be treated with dignity, the right to privacy. It was agreed that the campaign should focus on the human rights violations, with educational material, and timely demonstrations that are linked with corporate targets like the Royal Bank, which has a vested corporate interest in the fingerprinting of welfare recipients.

Women make up the majority of adult welfare recipients, so they have the most to lose from the implementation of workfare. It's no coincidence that women are also the big losers in the massive public sector restructuring taking place across Ontario. At a time when good public sector, unionized and female dominated jobs are being lost, the final safety net, designed to save women from hitting bottom, is being torn apart. And the tragic irony is that Mike Harris has every intention of filling many of those public sector jobs remaining with workfare workers.

While the Tories may prefer women to be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen (and moonlighting as unpaid childcare and long term health care providers), women have drawn a line across the ceramic. We will not go back and we definitely will not back down! How Does Bill 142 affect Women?

Bill 142 forces women to work for their welfare cheque or risk losing their benefits. Women with children will be expected to participate in mandatory workfare placements. They will receive a minimal allowance to cover childcare costs - informal unlicenced care will be the only option.

In a workplace, women are the most at risk of sexual and racial harassment. Under new work for welfare legislation, women will not be offered protection from any form of harassment. If women fight back, the immediate consequence could be the loss of their workfare placement - and the loss of their welfare cheque. Women can be cut off benefits for leaving or being fired from a workfare placement. In addition to being exempt from the Human Rights Act, women on workfare will not be covered by the Employment Standards or the new Workers Compensation Act.

To add insult to injury, women will also not have the right to appeal most decisions. If allowed to appeal, women may be forced to pay back any benefits they have received. Payback of benefits is also the intent of new rules for women who are lucky enough to have some equity in their own home. Under the new law, they may be forced to place a lien on their house as a condition of eligibility.

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Abortion Rights:
Celebrate the Victory; Keep Up the Struggle

Canadian women recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the striking down of Canada's anti-abortion law. This statement was issued by the Women's Commission of the Communist Party of Canada:

Many women's lives in Canada have been saved since Canada's abortion law was struck down by the Supreme Court a decade ago. Prior to that, women with unwanted pregnancies often turned to desperate measures, such as unsafe or self-induced methods which endangered their lives, because safe therapeutic abortions were not made available to them by governments and male dominated medical institutions in Canada. The Women's Commission of the Communist Party of Canada applauds the progress made in the past ten years, which has brought women one step closer to truly having control over their own bodies and futures through safe, accessible, and publicly funded abortions.

At the same time, the CPC Women's Commission laments the fact that access to abortion services is still a major problem for women in provinces where those services are non-existent due to the refusal of provincial governments to allocate the resources for health facilities to establish them. Even in those provinces where abortion is legal and publicly-funded, the pro-corporate, anti- women governments are steadily diminishing the rights and quality of life for women through the cuts to, and then the privatization of health care, education and other social services. We must not be blind to the fact that the legal, safe, accessible and publicly-funded abortion program is in danger. In addition to this, the anti-choice movement, driven by the Far Right continues to resort to violent and terrorist tactics.

Internationally, every year an estimated 20 million women resort to unsafe, illegal abortions due to laws against the use of contraceptives and the inaccessibility of safe abortion services. In Latin America alone, for example, unsafe abortions are the leading cause of death for women between the ages of 15 to 49. The death toll from these clandestine procedures range from 70,000 to 200,000 globally each year.

The Women's Commission of the Communist Party of Canada stands proudly with our comrades and our sister allies against capitalism and patriarchy, in Canada and internationally, which deny women the rights for full equality and the full self-determination of their own bodies and futures. The CPC Women's Commission commits itself to establishing a system where economic and social justice reign and where women's lives are valued and celebrated.

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Women Unite for Jobs and Social Justice!
-an IWD Message from the Women's Commission
of the Communist Party of Canada

We come together again this year to celebrate International Women's Day, at a time when women are at the forefront of the struggle for the people's agenda across this country and around the world.

Women speaking at the Jan. 28 Canadian Federation of Students rally in Toronto pointed to the twin towers of the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank, reminding students that Paul Martin had just been screwed by two of his best capitalist friends. While right-wing governments, both on the federal and provincial levels, are bending over backwards to do the bidding of the CEO's of the richest corporations, the ground swell of opposition is intensifying. Corporations are gobbling each other up in the frenetic drive for more and more profits. The resultant job loss, privatization, increased pressure to reduce working conditions place enormous pressure on women and women's programs.

But at the same time the intensification of corporate greed creates ideal conditions to expose the failures of the capitalist system. The fight for jobs and the fight to preserve our social programs are being resisted, and individual women and women's organizations like NAC are linking the struggle for women's rights with the struggle against capitalism.

Women are continuing to feel and bear the pressure of this period of intense corporate concentration. The wage gap continues to grow in real terms. Pay equity is under attack. Women's unpaid, unrecognized workloads in reproductive, household, community and social work is drastically increasing. More and more of us have to scramble for ourselves and our families in the face of brutal and targeted cuts to the few programs available to women. Unemployment for women is rising; many who have jobs are stuck doing the "fill in" casual and seasonal work or hold more than one part-time job with long hours, no overtime pay, benefits, or union protection. Women are increasingly exploited to swell employer profits. Where the public sector is under attack across this country, women will be the big losers.

Public funding for health care has been reduced. Hospitals are being closed, notably the internationally renowned Women's College Hospital in Toronto which specializes in women's health care needs. There hasn't been a decrease in violence against women while right-wing politicians are slashing funding to women's shelters, rape crisis centres and other facilities and programs.

We also mark the 10th Anniversary of the end of Canada's anti-abortion law, and celebrate the fact that abortion is now legal in some provinces. However, it still remains inaccessible in others. Women who have the money must travel to a province where they can get safe treatment, while most who cannot afford it are either trapped in unwanted pregnancies or are forced to resort to unsafe and even fatal back-alley abortions. Choice is the issue here. The new attack on women's right to choose is not being conducted on "moral" grounds. Provincial governments are now attacking publicly-funded abortions as a drain on our health care system. Women are being used as scapegoats in order to drive the corporate agenda right through the heart of universal health care.

Statistics show that over 1/3 of the families living under the poverty level are headed by single parents, the majority of whom are women. The recent token benefits (ie, the Canada Child Tax Benefit) fall short of alleviating the problem of poverty, let alone eradicating it. The enormous pressure on governments by the corporate sector is also resulting in massive losses of thousands and thousands of public sector jobs. These were good union jobs, with good benefits and a significant portion of women. Many of these jobs will be turned over to the private sector, at lower wages, without sick time or family time that is so essential for women in the workplace.

On many fronts, women are at the forefront of the struggle today. Thousands of women hit the streets during the teachers strike in Ontario and exposed the government's plans to rip apart public education. The fight against hospital closures, welfare cuts and tuition hikes are other sectors where women play leading roles in the fightback. In the labour movement, women are struggling to unionize and remain unionized, especially in the public sector and the service industries.

Across this country, women are standing up and demanding:

• The immediate implementation of a national child care program
• Preservation and full-funding for our social programs, health care, pensions, unemployment insurance, housing, women's programs, reinstatement of CAP
• The creation of decent jobs with benefits, including family sick days
• A legislated shorter work week with no loss in take-home pay
• Ban on compulsory overtime
• Earlier retirement (without penalty)
• The expansion of public services and a moratorium on the privatization of public services
• Maintain and increase public funding for safe accessible abortion clinics

International Solidarity Now!

Internationally, women have been most affected by neo-liberalist policies such as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment as well as reactionary forces. We must continue to extend our solidarity with our sisters around the world. In Algeria and Afghanistan women are facing daily repression and violence. In Iraq, as we speak, women are protesting the next violent attack in a US imperialist war, as well as resisting their own regime's brutal policies against its own people. We must also not forget our sisters in Cuba as they continue to struggle for socialism and against the illegal US blockade in the face of increasing pressure internationally.

We must continue the fight for a truly just society where women's oppression, exploitation and objectification are eradicated at every level. Let's celebrate International Women's Day and the gains we have achieved as we revitalize and rejuvenate our powerful movement.

Unite against patriarchy and capitalism!
Unite for jobs and social justice!
Unite for socialism!

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March 19-22: Speak Out Against The MAI!
-by Kimball Cariou

The tide may be turning in the battle to stop the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. It now appears likely that the April 27 deadline to conclude the MAI negotiations will not be met, forcing yet another delay for the "charter of rights for the transnational corporations".

Here in Canada, the popular outcry against the deal is becoming impossible even for the federal Liberals to ignore. A number of provincial and territorial governments have now called on Ottawa to delay the deal or pull out of negotiations (see page 9), and more municipalities are doing the same.

Federal cabinet ministers have put a brave face on the delay, claiming that it will give them more time to convince the provinces and the Canadian people about the "benefits" of the deal. But clearly, the bogged-down negotiations in Paris give the world-wide campaign against the MAI a golden opportunity to keep building and to kill the deal for good.

This month, a Canada-wide "Speak Out Against the MAI" will take place March 19-22, coinciding with the next round of high- level talks in Paris. Dozens of organizations will take part, by signing declarations against the MAI, and then delivering them to the offices of Liberal MPs on March 19 and 20. In Vancouver, for example, the action will take place on "Fryday", March 19, at the office of Liberal cabinet minister Hedy Fry. Copies of the declaration will also be presented at the Liberal Party convention taking place at that time in Ottawa.

Led by the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Labour Congress, the March blitz has already been endorsed by over 40 national organizations, ranging alphabetically from the Association of Canadian Publishers to the Writers Union of Canada. In-between are most major trade unions, a number of church groups, the Canadian Federation of Students, the National Farmers Union, NAC, Greenpeace, and many more.

The national office for the Speak Out campaign can be reached by fax at (613)233-6776, or by e-mail at:
mai@canadians.org
The Council of Canadians has a toll-free contact number: 1-800-387- 7177, and the CLC can be called at (613)526-7404. Campaign materials are also posted on the Internet at: http://www.web.net/coc

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May Day - Ontario Style!
-P.V. Ontario Bureau

St. Catharines will kick off May Day 1998 Ontario style, as host to the tenth in the series of Days of Action called by the Ontario Federation of Labour. The announcement was made at a Feb. 20 news conference at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in St. Catharines. The Hotel Dieu is slated to be closed by the Hospital Restructuring Committee, whose recommendations the Tories have heeded to shut down hospitals. The closures have resulted in chaos and trauma in hospitals and especially emergency rooms across the province.

Wayne Samuelson, newly elected OFL President, was joined at the news conference by the co-chairs of the St. Catharines Day of Action: Ed Gould, President of the St. Catharines and District Labour Council, and Linda Rogers, Co-Chair of the Golden Horseshoe Social Action Committee. "The policies of the Harris government have relentlessly hammered this part of Ontario," said Gould. "Factories closed, decent jobs and some of the area's most needy people are being punished simply because they are poor."

"So many basic services that people need to live have been taken away," stated Rogers, "that the elderly, the disabled and children are suffering. All that we hear from Queen's Park is that we should expect more pain in the coming months as the provincial government dumps all of its responsibilities onto towns and cities across the province. We've had enough!"

The enormously successful Days of Action began in London in December 1995. Hamilton, Kitchener, Peterborough, Toronto, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, North Bay, and Windsor all have been the sites of work stoppages combining the power of organized labour with the strength of community social justice coalitions.

The Day of Action in St. Catharines will take place on May 1, the international day of celebration for working people. Labour and social justice coalitions will also be gearing up for a Province-wide Day of Action called by the OFL for next October. Town Hall meetings will be held in 25 communities across Ontario starting in April, as the first step in the mobilization campaign for the province wide strike. Meeting dates have already been set in many communities. To find out when the town hall meeting is scheduled in your area, call the OFL at 1-800-668-9138.

Labour and social justice activists must get plugged into the campaign as soon as possible. To be a success, every community must be organizing and stressing the importance of the work stoppage. Labour and democratic movements can organize to hit the Tories where they can be hurt " in their corporate backers' pocketbooks!

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Legal Action Delays Welfare Privacy Attack
-by People's Voice Vancouver Bureau

Faced with a court action and a rising chorus of protests, B.C.'s Ministry of Human Resources (MHR) has temporarily stopped forcing social assistance recipients to sign "consent forms" giving the ministry sweeping investigation powers. The ministry announced Feb. 20 that the new forms are "under review" because of concerns raised by many citizens. About 75,000 of the forms were mailed out to recipients in January, the latest step in the province's political campaign against so-called "welfare fraud."

The legal action was launched earlier, by Elwyn Patterson on behalf of the Vancouver-based Marginalized Workers Action League. MWAL was in court on Feb. 23, as lawyer Harry Rankin argued that the form violates the Privacy Act and the privacy rights guaranteed in the Charter of Rights.

Rankin also said the document amounts to an "extortion form." He pointed out in court that "consent" is far from voluntary, since recipients who do not sign face the loss of their benefits.

MHR already requires recipients to sign forms giving the ministry access to bank accounts, income tax information, and auto insurance. The new form authorises MHR bureaucrats to obtain information from a breathtaking range of new sources - other government departments, to cheque cashing services, landlords, employers, and the police forces of Canada or any other country.

At the government's request, the judge granted a one-week delay in the case, which the crown's lawyer said would give MHR time to finish its review of the consent form. In the meantime, current social assistance recipients are not required to sign, but MHR insists that new applicants must do so. Rankin argued that this violates the rights of new applicants, but the judge ruled against him on the grounds that the legal action was on behalf of a current recipient, not a new applicant. Rankin said he would immediately seek to return to court on behalf of a new applicant forced to sign the form.

MWAL members were busy during mid-February speaking to social assistance recipients to explain their rights, including the right not to sign the form. Earlier in the month, about 100 participants in a meeting called by End Legislative Poverty said they would rather burn the forms than sign them.

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One More Reason Not to Bomb Iraq
-by Rick Collier, Calgary

Most of the discussion about whether or not Saddam Hussein and his people should be bombed into submission circulates around a variety of political and economic considerations. Some of the excuses are, for example, that Hussein is a Hitler with intentions of (at least) regional domination, and must be stopped; that the Iraqis have stockpiled huge numbers of very destructive chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons, and such stockpiling cannot be allowed (as if no other nation were doing anything remotely similar!); that Saddam has not obeyed the dictates of the UN and must be brought to heel; that Iraq controls huge amounts of oil and in order to control that oil the Western nations must control Iraq.

For some, these justifications for an attack on Iraq are more or less persuasive.

However, none of these points takes the long, historical view, which reveals just how frequently and terribly and easily we sacrifice irreplaceable aspects of our collective lives for immediate, short-term, and short-sighted gain. To explain this point I have to digress into a bit of history and geography.

Iraq is a nation whose borders contain virtually all of what once was known as Mesopotamia, or, if you will, "the land between the two rivers". These rivers were the Tigris and Euphrates, and, as most school children know, the flood plains between the two were the cradle of Western civilization. It was here that (at least in the West) agriculture began, the domestication of animals proceeded apace, the invention of writing took place, and the city-state arose, with all its advantages of culture, religion, and art, and with all its disadvantages of patriarchy, militarism, and slavery.

In effect, civilization as represented by archaeological remains stretches back in this region some 15,000 years. One need only mention a few of the cultures and cities that once existed in this area to get some sense of the rich depth and range of history contained within this rather small space: Sumeria (with its cities of Eridu, Uruk, Ur, Mippur, and Kish); Babylonia (with its cities of Babylon and Tell Harmal); Assyria (with its cities of Ashur, Nineveh, Nimrud, and Khorsabad).

There are also remnants of other civilizations: the Parthians, the Medians, the Scythians, the later Persians, the Macedonians (who, under Alexander the Great, established beachheads of Hellenic culture reaching into India), the Mongols (under Tamerlane), and the Ottoman Empire. Some students of the Old Testament place the location of the fabled Garden of Eden in the fertile lands of Mesopotamia. Undoubtedly this is a veiled reference by the nomadic tribes of the early Semites to the area considered (at least by legend) to be where Western recorded history began.

Now, why is this important? For most people, the remains of these civilizations are only so many dried bricks, broken pots, and rusty arrowheads; so what if they are blown to pieces in a bombing raid?

Well, the fact of the matter is that to the trained archaeological observer these bricks, shards, blades, and beads reveal the story of how human civilization in the Middle East evolved over a very extensive period of time; they tell us who we were and what we became. In a very real sense, much of the Western world, which now dominates a considerable portion of the planet, derived historically from these ancient cultures: we are their descendants. Just as we cannot understand who we are as individuals without understanding who our parents, ancestors, and formative cultural contexts were, so we cannot fathom the drives, motives, goals, and hidden engines that power our civilization today without understanding where we came from. It is not enough, for example, to blame Western imperialism, capitalism, racism, and sexism on economics alone: these postures have also grown, at least in part, from seeds planted long, long ago in our history.

The point, then, is the following: since a huge number of Mesopotamian archaeological remains have yet to be discovered, much less thoroughly examined, virtually every time a bomb is dropped on Iraq - no matter where - artifacts of some sort, perhaps partially unearthed, perhaps still buried, are damaged or destroyed. This loss is inestimable since what is destroyed is completely unrecoverable.

With each bomb we lose a little more of our history, a little more of who we are, a little more of our ability to understand ourselves, and, as a result, we lose a little more of our capacity to bring about a humane, just, and compassionate future where war (and the bombing runs it inevitably includes) has been eradicated.

It is not at all simplistic to see in this utter disregard for the physical remnants of millennia of human activity an exact analogy for capitalism itself. Just as the military wing of capitalism will, with uncaring ignorance, destroy the precious archaeological records of our collective history for the sake of humiliating a disobedient tyrant, so does it destroy present-day cultures, oppress the working class, and ravage the biosphere without any consideration for the future other than maximizing its short-term profits.

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Ultra-right Escalates Its Attacks
-by David Lethbridge

Last year it became evident that a new tactic was being hatched by the extreme right. Anti-fascists and anti-racists had been chalking up successes in publicly exposing far-right organizations, shutting down their meetings, and, in a few cases, getting them fired from their jobs. It was clear that the far-right would counter-attack on several fronts.

One such front involves dragging anti-racists into court and suing them. The first case was brought by the Council on Public Affairs against myself, as director of the Salmon Arm Coalition Against Racism. The CPA claims they were "maliciously libelled" when their activity in selling and reproducing racist and fascist literature was exposed.

And then Alan Dutton, the chief researcher for the Canadian Anti-racism Education and Research Society, was sued for suggesting that a Vancouver radio station was following a racist agenda by hosting a number of fascists over its airwaves. And then Warren Kinsella, author of Web of ate, was sued by Roger Rocan, a Victoria extremist, for simply stating that he as expelled from the Reform Party because his views were too far to the right.

Now it is Malcolm Ross's turn. The former New Brunswick teacher, author of several antisemitic and Holocaust-denial books, was fired because of his activities. In 1996, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld his removal from the classroom, describing him as "a notorious antisemite." The current lawsuit stems from 1993, when the New Brunswick Teachers Association (NBTA) held a professional development day, including a session on the Holocaust and on prejudice in the classroom. Josh Beutel gave a slide-show presentation of his editorial cartoons, several of which depicted Malcolm Ross, who sued the NBTA and Mr. Beutel.

Significantly, Doug Christie, the far-right ideologue and political leader, is acting as the lawyer for the plaintiff in each of these cases.

Will the far-right succeed in this new tactic? None of these lawsuits have yet reached the judgement stage, so it is too early to know. Certainly the far-right expects to win. If they do, they could stand to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars. One way or another, that cash would end up funding a movement of hatred against non-whites, but also against Jews, women, homosexuals, socialists, and Communists - all the usual targets of fascism.

Interestingly, in the cases currently before the courts, they have chosen to go before a judge, not a jury. There is nothing defendants can do about that; it's the plaintiff's call, and Doug Christie's decision as their lawyer. Why would they want just a judge? First, there's a good chance that a jury of ordinary people would see through these racists and fascists in a flash and decide the issue based on sheer disgust with the plaintiffs. And second, because most judges, unfortunately, don't know much about the extreme-right in Canada.

Yes, they could win, and that would be a tragedy for all working people. But should they lose, their credibility will be destroyed, their ability to defend themselves will be damaged, and their organizational integrity will be compromised. A series of losses in the courts could hurt them far more than they suspect.

On another front, Paul Fromm appears to be mounting another series of offensives. Still smarting from his firing by the Peel Board of Education and the effective shutting down of several meetings and conferences of his organization - the so-called "Canadian Association for Free Expression" - by a coalition of anti-fascists and anti-racists, he has thrown his weight behind his friends in the anti-semitic Council on Public Affairs, going so far as to refer to its leader as a "patriotic activist."

In the most recent edition of his Free Speech Monitor, Fromm makes the truly lunatic claim that there is "an unholy alliance (of) the Communist Party and the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith"! Such rubbish hardly requires denial, but it is interesting to note that the old Nazi lie of the Jewish-Bolshevik Conspiracy never dies among the far right. Indeed, they loudly proclaim it at every opportunity.

Fromm's new evidence to support the Great Conspiracy is to claim that the Communist Party of Canada is "bankrolling" the financial defence of the defendant in the Council on Public Affairs lawsuit. According to Fromm, lawyer Doug Christie "extracted" this admission from the defendant on the stand. Since I happen to be the defendant, I am in a position to know what a lie this. No such admission was never extracted because it is not true. But then, lies are the common currency of the far right.

Of greater concern is a letter recently received by a college librarian. According to sources, Fromm was attempting to get all university and college libraries in B.C. to subscribe to his various publications. It is not known whether such letters were received by college librarians in other provinces, or by public libraries.

This attempt to reach out to libraries is part and parcel of Fromm's on-going strategy to propagandize ultra-right ideology as widely as possible. Alongside the Free Speech Monitor, Fromm has now added the Canadian Immigration Hotline Newsletter to his Internet web-page. This new page guides interested readers to the "Canada First Immigration Reform Committee," another of Fromm's many organizations. (Those with a historical bent may recall that "America First" was a pro-Nazi organization in the USA during the 1930s.)

There are those who maintain that the strength of the ultra-right has peaked and passed. This is not true. The far-right is as strong and as edicated to its anti-working class goals as ever. Many of its strategies remain the same. Some of its tactics have changed. They have learned, and learned well, how to mainstream their ideology. The use of lawsuits, of "libel chill," is an entirely new tactic. And their renewed attempts to spread their poison through encouraging libraries to lend them a hand, and to build new Internet sites to whip up the anti-immigrant hysteria that has served the European far-right so well, should give anyone pause who thinks the danger of fascism has dissolved.

NOTE: As we go to press, police authorities in France and England are arresting neo-Nazis and attempting to shut down their Internet sites. Police in both countries have noticed that these fascist groups all have web pages on Bernard Klatt's Internet service provider in Oliver, BC. Klatt's site is the host of many of the largest white supremacist and fascist groups in Canada.

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Violence Mars Indian Election Campaign
-by B. Prasant, P.V. correspondent in India

The arid plains of Bihar are lit up with the uncertain flames of torches. Screams rend the air as men and horses get speared down. Lips curl with rage. Unblinking eyes stare with fiery passion at the enemy. Green banners unfurl with majestic grace from the opposing ranks of men destined to die or to triumph. The year is 1530. The Shi'ite Mughal imperial brigades are bent on making an example out of the rebellious Shi'ite vassals of the Madhepura region.

History has a cunning way of repeating itself. The thin veil of the morning fog is yet to dissipate in the tropical sun. Suddenly, bands of armed men, faces covered in swathes of dirty rags, surge ahead before our very eyes. The aim is to take control of as many polling centres as possible before voters form the inevitable queue.

From the other side of the political divide, equally determined and nervous men rush out from behind a cluster of huts. Shots ring out. Screams are heard. And both warring groups unfurl the green banner which both the Janata Dal and its breakaway faction, the Rashtriya Janata Dal maintain as their party colours.

The battle suddenly ends. Men flee, dropping hand-guns, automatic rifles, even sub-machine guns. Machetes are swung with deadly effect by the pursuing gangs. One more polling booth captured, the Janata Dal chieftains relax. Their faithful troopers sprawl on the dry stubble left following the harvest of winter crops. Some clean and oil their firearms, in view of the two dozen Indian and foreign journalists who stand stupefied at what has unfolded before them on Feb. 16th, the first day of the Lok Sabha polls. Here in Madhepura, Janata Dal president Sharad Yadav is locked in a fight with the former party chief, Laloo Prasad Yadav, who now leads the breakaway faction. The encounter left 12 dead and more than 100 wounded; 23 later died in the poorly-equipped nearby health centres.

The Madhepura pattern was repeated in nearly all 54 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, and in the 85 in nearby Uttar Pradesh. In places like Lucknow (where Atal Behari Vajpayi of the right-wing BJP is the "star" attraction) and Ghazipur, the BJP adopted a two-pronged strategy. First, it used the police, para-military forces and civil guards, against the forces of the main opposition candidate, Mulayam Singh Yadav of the United Front constituent party Samajwadi Dal. Second, hundreds of thousands of BJP cadres simply surrounded villages and townships inhabited by the lower-castes and the dalits who support the casteist Samajwadi Party, forcing them to stay put during the polling hours.

Listening to campaign speeches in early February by Samajwadi Dal leaders left no doubt in our minds as to their idea of "secularism." They harped on the theme of "little or no importance" of class in the Indian context, compared to the "age-old" compulsions of caste and sub-caste. Mulayam Singh, in particular, kept reminding rural voters that if the BJP was the greatest threat to the dalits - whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian - the "cheap, class-based rhetoric of the anti-religious Communists must never be underestimated." He repeatedly called on the people of Uttar Pradesh to ensure that the Samajwadi Dal, not the combined Left, emerged as the biggest constituent group of the UF after the elections.

The campaign of the BJP received a boost on Feb. 14 when a series of bomb blasts left 70 dead and more than 300 injured in Coimbattore, where BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani was to speak. Blaming the Dravida Munnetra Kazaghan (DMK)-run government of Tamil Nadu for "a deliberate lapse of security," the BJP mounted a full- scale attack on the United Front for "harbouring forces of separatism and secession within its ranks" (the DMK).

The BJP election manifesto speaks about the "holy task" of building a Hindu temple on the site of the mosque destroyed by its cadres in 1992, sparking off massive communal riots, and calls for a "uniform civil code of law" to eliminate constitutional rights of Muslims. The BJP's attempt to present a "softer" image was embarrassed by an article on the party's website speaking of their close ties with the semi-fascist, anti-Muslim RSS. Just as shocking, the manifesto expresses "firm determination" for a defence programme including nuclear weapons.

The Congress manifesto rehashes the Rao government's record during its rambling half-a-decade of misrule, speaking of the "Congress record" and the "dire need" of liberalising the economy. It also makes a series of serio-comic apologies for misdeeds such as the assault on the Sikh temple at Amritsar in 1984, the compromise that allowed the BJP to destroy the mosque at Ayyodhya in 1992, and the anti-Sikh riots that claimed more than 10,000 victims in the wake of the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

The "star" Congress campaigner, Sonia Gandhi, toured the country addressing meetings willed with the curious and the nostalgic. Speaking Hindi in a hollow monotone from a written text, Sonia underlined the political bankruptcy of the Congress, the 113- year old party which ruled India for 45 years.

The manifesto of the United Front was a replica of its Common Minimum Programme from the 1996 election (made public after the results had been declared). Internal dissensions and splits, especially over the ephemeral issue of who would be selected as prime minister in the event of victory, have handicapped the UF this time. All the more so, as the Janata Dal, once the crystallizing focus of the Front, has divided into antagonistic groupings.

Finally, we come to the Left, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the smaller Communist Party. In conjunction with other Left parties, they form the largest group within the United Front. However, the best the Left can hope for this time around is between 65 and 75 seats in the 543-seat Lok Sabha.

Still, the Left Manifesto has raised several very important issues that affect the basics of India's national development.

Left Manisfesto

Secularism

• Separate religion and politics.
• Protect the basic rights of religious practice.
• Refer the Ayyodhya dispute to the Supreme Court.

Federalism

• Adequate economic and political powers to be devolved to the states and below.
• Further coordination among states.
• Restrict arbitrary dismissals of elected state governments.

Economic Reforms

• Implement land reforms and increase investment in agriculture.
• Defend the rights of the working class.
• Strengthen the state sector in industry and finances.
• Improve the public distribution system.
• Broaden the basis of direct taxes.

Social Reforms

• Increase spending on education and public health.
• Make housing a basic right and employment a fundamental right.
• End gender discrimination.
• Adopt a two-children per couple policy.
• End all forms of social exploitation and caste discrimination.
• Protect the rights of minorities.
• Implement a viable environment policy.

Democracy

• Electoral reforms such as:
• • -proportional representation,
  • -election spending limits,
  • -anti-defection laws.
• Stronger anti-corruption moves.
• Implement the Ombudsman Act and a Right to Information Act.

The left has campaigned vigorously for stronger representation in Parliament, for the re-election of the UF. However, pragmatism has urged the Left not to rule out any kind of post-electoral understanding with the secular forces, including the Congress, to keep the communal and anti-national BJP out of office. We await the verdict of the people.

Editor's note:
Voting in Indian national elections is spread across several weeks.

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