1) TIME TO END THE INEQUALITY OF NATIONS

Statement by the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada

     The Communist Party of Canada welcomes the "Declaration of Commitment ‑ First Nations: Working Towards Fundamental Change", which was signed on January 23, as a major advance in the historic struggle towards full and genuine equality of all the nations within the Canadian state. We pledge to work side by side with all progressive and democratic movements in Canada to help make the principles contained in this Declaration a  reality, and to overcome the impact of centuries of racist oppression which began with the European colonization of the western hemisphere.

     The Declaration has been achieved through the collective resistance of the Aboriginal peoples, who have never surrendered their demands that nation‑to‑nation treaties signed with the British Crown must be fully respected and honoured, and that traditional indigenous territories which have never been ceded to the Canadian state (such as most of British Columbia) must be respected as the lands of their original inhabitants. These demands have been at the heart of the powerful Idle No More movement, challenging the concept that the capitalist state and the transnational corporations have an unfettered right to ignore the treaties and to exploit and despoil the environment and all the natural resources within the borders of Canada. We salute the inspiring actions of Chief Theresa Spence of Attawapiskat First Nation, Raymond Robinson of Cross Lake, Manitoba, Jean Sock of Elsipogtog, New Brunswick and other fasters in recent weeks,whose courage and commitment have helped to make this Declaration possible.

     At this point, the Declaration is a statement of intent, signed by the Assembly of First Nations, the Native Women's Association of Canada, and the caucuses of the two largest opposition parties in Parliament.

     The Declaration calls for concrete action on many of the immediate problems of poverty and inequality faced by First Nations across Canada. But more fundamentally, it would also commit the Crown, Federal Governments, Provincial Governments and all First Nations to discuss outstanding Treaty and non‑treaty issues on a Nation‑to‑Nation basis, which is truly a historic statement.

     These issues include resource sharing, sustainable environmental policies, a comprehensive review of Bills C‑38 and C‑45, guarantees that all federal legislation has the free, prior and informed consent of First Nations where inherent and Treaty rights are affected, an equitable fiscal relationship between First Nations and Canada, the removal of arbitrary funding caps, a public inquiry on violence against Indigenous Women, equity in capital construction and funding of First Nation schools, additional funding support for First Nation languages, and full implementation of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

     It is an unfortunate political reality that the federal Conservative government under PM Harper still stubbornly refuses to accept the national rights of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Just as the Harper Tories used every possible dirty trick to turn Canadians against Idle No More and Chief Spence, they will continue to sabotage every attempt to achieve the goals of the Declaration of Commitment, such as offering token promises of improvements while simultaneously attempting to slander and divide the First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples.

     Despite this, the fact that the caucuses of the two largest opposition parties have signed the Declaration is an important indication that the old "status quo" of Confederation ‑ the view that Canada is nothing more than the structure of the federal and provincial governments ‑ is an unacceptable relic of the colonial past. This concept argues that the Canadian state should be eternally based on constitutional agreements, undemocratically settled among a handful of 19th Century white, male politicians. In fact, these arrangements were simply meant to facilitate the drive by ruling elites for maximum power and profits.

     As the long‑time leader of the Communist Party of Canada, Tim Buck, said during his 1931 trial on sedition charges, the Canadian state was founded on the theft of indigenous lands, and the exploitation of immigrant labour. The "nation‑building" project of the Anglo‑Canadian ruling elite came at the expense of the indigenous peoples displaced by the genocidal policies of the ruling class.

     Similarly, the national rights of the Québecois, Acadiens, and Métis were also trampled by Confederation. When it suited their purposes, the domestic ruling elite willingly sold out the sovereignty of the peoples of Canada in return for a share of the profits from integrating the country into the U.S. imperialist war machine. The so‑called "free trade" agreements imposed by Conservative and Liberal governments in recent decades threaten to extinguish any meaningful exercise of political and economic sovereignty within Canada, including by Aboriginal nations.

     The time has arrived to demand a new Canada. Ending the oppression and inequality of nations within the Canadian state will require unity of the working class of all nations against the corporate ruling elite. Unity to achieve the goals of the Declaration of Commitment will be a key element of efforts to create a broad and powerful people's movement to reverse the negative impact of capitalist domination since the time of Confederation. In stating our solidarity with the Declaration of Commitment, the Communist Party of Canada will continue to make this struggle a central strategic aim of our call for a People's Coalition to block the neoliberal agenda and win policies to put people and nature before profits.

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2) OVER 30,000 RALLY AT ONTARIO LIBERAL CONVENTION

www.ofl.ca

     Over 30,000 protesters descended on Maple Leaf Gardens on January 26 as Liberal Party delegates prepared to elect the next Premier of Ontario. Coming from every corner of the province and every walk of life, the protest marked the largest opposition the party has faced since forming government in 2003.

     "We are here to tell the new Premier of Ontario that you cannot lead this province unless fairness, equality and workers' rights are central to your economic strategy," said OFL President Sid Ryan to a thronging crowd at Toronto's Allan Gardens. "Today's rally is a testament to the Liberals' largest opposition - the people of Ontario."

     In total, 131 buses travelled from every corner of the province to join thousands of protesters who arrived at the rally in droves by foot, transit and car. More than 100 community groups and labour unions converged outside the Ontario Liberal Leadership Convention to protest cut to social programs and the cancellation of workers' rights.

     "Austerity hasn't worked! By attacking good jobs and social programs, the Liberals have played right into the interests of a corporate sector that helped to create Ontario's deficit in the first place," said Ryan. "Banks and corporations are siphoning billions in tax breaks from the Ontario treasury while the rest of us are being left behind."

     A report released last fall by 90 community and labour groups showed that Ontario is leading the race to the bottom. Poverty rates in Ontario are rising faster than the rest of the country and social program funding lags shamefully behind the other ten provinces. As a result, the incomes of 40 percent of Ontario's families have stagnated or fallen over the last ten years while one in seven children live in poverty.

     "We are demanding a new path for Ontario that includes an industrial strategy rooted in job creation, respect for workers' rights and a balanced approach to balancing the budget. Struggling Ontarians need a raise in social assistance rates and everyone deserves a living wage," said Ryan. "Sooner or later, the new Premier will have to seek election from the people of Ontario. So, today we are delivering their wake‑up call."

     When the third round of balloting was finished, the Liberal winner Kathleen Wynne, who "must meet the challenges left by her predecessor head on," said the OFL, calling on the new premier to tackle Ontario's growing inequality and protect workers' rights.

     "Kathleen Wynne was elected Premier amid the largest public protest her party has seen since forming government eight years ago," said Ryan. "It will be a big challenge for her to lead if she doesn't act quickly to repair the damage done to our communities by cutting social programs and suspending workers' rights."

     "We are calling on Premier Wynne to begin governing Ontario with the people of Ontario. Struggling families cannot continue to be the only ones making sacrifices during tough economic times while banks and corporations siphon billions of dollars from the public treasury due to a decade of corporate tax cuts.

     "It is time for a fair and balanced approach to balancing the budget. Ontarians need an industrial strategy that promotes job creation. We need labour law reform that protects workers' rights to join a union and negotiate collectively with their employer. We need social program funding that pulls our hospitals, schools and universities out of last place. We need a poverty reduction plan that increases social assistance rates and provides a living wage for everyone. Most of all, we need fair taxation for banks and corporations and everyone earning over 250,000. The economy can't recover unless everyone recovers."

     Ryan said he hoped for a new approach to governance in addition to new policies: "Progress requires genuine consultation and cooperation. Over a million workers in this province are hoping that Premier Wynne will open up a new dialogue with working people - one founded in respect for our rights and respect for our communities."

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3) B.C. LIBERALS PLAN MAJOR GIVEAWAY TO FOREST CORPORATIONS

PV Vancouver Bureau

     A prominent B.C. resource analyst says that Christy Clark's Liberals plan to use the upcoming short session of the Legislature to make fundamental changes to provincial forestry policies.

     Writing in The Province newspaper, Ben Parfitt says the government plans to introduce a two‑paragraph bill which would allow the cabinet to grant forest companies de facto private control over public forestlands.

     Currently, private companies enjoy rights to log set volumes of trees on public forestlands. The change would give companies dramatically expanded powers over "vast semi‑private fiefdoms."

     The proposed new bill is expected as the government faces mounting criticism over a forest‑health crisis, due to decades of over‑cutting and an unprecedented mountain pine beetle attack. Numerous sawmills have closed, creating hardships for many coastal, interior and northern communities. Major sawmills in Burns Lake and Prince George have been shut down by explosions and deadly fires.

     Now. leaked documents indicate that the province is revisiting a controversial "rollover" idea first raised 25 years ago by the Socred government.

     At the time, the NDP opposition called the plan "privatization on a massive scale" and the biggest giveaway in the history of BC. Faced with a storm of protests, the plan was dropped.

     Parfitt writes that the 1980s policy is the one now being contemplated by the government. That was the message from Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Steve Thomson, in a letter last September to Steve Zika, CEO of Hampton Affiliates, which owns the destroyed Burns Lake mill.

     If the new legislation passes, the provincial cabinet could grant forest companies the rights to roll over volume‑based forest licences into area‑based Tree Farm Licences, or TFLs.

     TFLs give corporations secure rights of access to publicly owned trees. The new legislation would massively expand Tree Farm Licenses, far beyond the current limited numbers.

     TFL lands still remain publicly owned, and the government still collects timber‑cutting ("stumpage") fees from the logging companies. But the TFL rules make it very difficult for the province to take back control of such lands without expensive compensation payouts.

     The government may argue that granting Hampton a TFL would give the company the assurance it needs to build a new mill in Burns Lake. But this move opens the door to a rapid expansion of corporate power over public forestlands. Major forest companies like Canfor, West Fraser and Tolko could gain unprecedented control, without having to make any investments along the lines of what Hampton proposes.

     For decades, forest companies have claimed that TFLs provide the security they need to invest in "renewing" forests. But the record shows that companies have historically made the minimal reforestation investments required by law, regardless of licensing arrangements.

     Worse, writes Parfitt, "TFLs become tradable or sellable assets. If the right corporate suitor comes along, say a pension fund that has zero interest in maintaining sawmills, let alone building desperately needed value‑added facilities like furniture plants, so be it."

     Yet this change could be legislated with no chance for any public response, warns Parfitt, who is a resource‑policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He urges the Liberals to delay implementation to give the public time to digest the implications. Or, he suggests, the NDP Opposition could signal that the bill would be immediately repealed if it becomes the government this spring.

     Communist Party of BC candidates in the May 14 election will be campaigning for major changes to provincial forest policy, including a ban on job-killing exports of raw logs, and repeal of the Liberal plans for expansion of TFLs.

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4) FOR-PROFIT HOSPITAL GOES BROKE; TAXPAYERS ON HOOK

     A Calgary for‑profit hospital, once touted as "a beacon of hope for medical entrepreneurs", has declared bankruptcy, leaving hundreds of people waiting for hip and knee surgeries. Alberta taxpayers will have to pick up the pieces.

     As Calgary journalist Gillian Steward wrote in the Toronto Star, "for years, critics predicted that this experiment in privatized health care would prove unreliable and expensive. But no one imagined a scenario in which publicly funded Alberta Health Services would go to court in a bid to keep the lights on over the operating tables in an investor‑owned hospital. No one imagined that AHS would be paying receivership fees in order to keep the doors open. But this is, in fact, what has happened because Calgary's public health‑care system is so reliant on private partners."

     HRC was a focal point of the Alberta Conservative government's health‑care strategies. Passed in 2000, the Health Care Protection Act gave private surgical clinics the ability to keep patients overnight. The change allowed HRC to perform surgeries that had previously been permitted only in public hospitals.

     As Steward explains, HRC catered mostly to clients of Workers' Compensation, but the clinic could not survive without lucrative contracts from the publicly funded health‑care system.

     The Klein government had closed three public hospitals in Calgary to cut spending, causing a shortage of operating theatres. HRC had taken over part of one closed hospital, and lobbied cabinet ministers and the local health authority to secure contracts to provide surgeries for patients who could not be accommodated in the public hospital system.

     In 2004, the regional health authority awarded HRC a two‑year contract worth $20 million for the provision of 2,500 hip and knee surgeries. The health authority paid HRC 10 percent more than the cost of surgeries done in a public hospital, but claimed it had little choice.

     Now making money, HRC expanded into expensive space in a new development. But the private clinic was soon defaulting on payments, and eventually declared bankruptcy.

     Alberta Health Services went to court in an attempt to save HRC, since without the private clinic there are not enough operating theatres to accommodate all the patients scheduled for surgery.

     Meanwhile in British Columbia, some patients are suing the provincial government for reimbursement of fees they paid to private clinics for surgeries normally covered by medicare.

     Steward calls this "another trip to the courts that will cost the taxpayer plenty and divert even more money away from health care."

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5) BIG FIRMS HOARD TAX CUTS WHILE ECONOMY DRAGS

By Tom Sandborn, thetyee.ca

     Cuts in the tax rates for Canadian big business, promoted as powerful stimuli to economic growth, are not delivering on promised improvements in jobs and productivity, according to a study released by the Canadian Labour Congress on Jan. 30.

     Despite business tax cuts by Liberals and Conservatives since 2000, and expectations that tax relief would lead to more jobs and productivity, the study suggests the main impacts of the cuts have been to jack up executive salaries and fatten hoards of "dead money" in company coffers.

     According to the CLC, "... cuts in corporate income tax have contributed to a significant increase in cash reserves held by corporations, delivered higher compensation to CEOs, cost Canadians billions in lower than expected government revenues, led to a higher federal deficit and debt, and cuts to public services."

     Under the new business tax regime, since 2000 federal corporate tax rates have plummeted from 28 per cent to 15 per cent. Corporate Tax Freedom Day, the date by which businesses have earned what they will pay in taxes that year, came two days earlier this year, on Jan. 30. In contrast, Tax Freedom Day for individuals, as tracked by the Fraser Institute came on June 11 last year.

     According to Statistics Canada, the cash reserves of non‑financial corporations in Canada increased by $72 billion in 2011, from $503 billion in cash reserves by the end of 2010 to $575 billion by the end of 2011. (Financial companies are excluded from this measure because the nature of their businesses means that they regularly hold large cash reserves.)

     Charles Lammam, a tax and budget policy director at the Fraser Institute, disagrees with the CLC conclusions.

     "The economic research is clear," Lammam told the Tyee by phone from the Institute's Vancouver offices. "Lower tax rates on business lead to higher levels of investment, more expansion and more jobs."

     Lammam disputes the CLC contention that business cash reserves represent unproductive hoarding. He pointed out that the current level of economic uncertainty may mean that new investments are being delayed. He also dismissed the contrast between corporate and individual tax freedom dates, saying that in the end corporate taxes are paid by individuals as well, albeit indirectly.

     Seth Klein, director of the B.C. offices of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and author, most recently of "Progressive Tax Options for BC," disputes Lammam's arguments.

     "It is true enough that in the end individuals pay for corporate taxes, but almost always the tax paid is at reduced capital gains rates. And a lot of corporate profit flows to offshore investors and escapes Canadian taxation. We still need to be taxing corporations and I think the evidence is clear, as our research shows in B.C., that tax cuts to business do not deliver a stronger economy. We've seen provincial business tax rates cut from 16.5 per cent to 10 per cent since 2000 here, and it has done little to help the province's economy by delivering more investments."

     Tom Sandborn covers labour and health policy matters for the Tyee online.

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6) BETRAYING PEOPLE'S MOVEMENTS

People's Voice Editorial

     The announcement by NDP leader Thomas Mulcair that his party is "very open" to a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with the European Union is a betrayal of the movements resisting the "free trade" blitz to allow corporations to shift investments freely across borders. Trade unions, environmentalists, the Council of Canadians, and others have raised serious warnings about CETA. This anti‑sovereignty deal would open up public services to further privatization, undermine the power of local governments, weaken environmental protections, and accelerate the neoliberal attack by big capital and right‑wing governments.

     Mulcair does add that transnational capital should not get everything it demands in CETA: just most of it. His view echoes the social democratic parties in Europe, which are mildly critical of neoliberal policies... until they take office. These parties reject socialist alternatives and agree that capitalism is the only possible form of human society.

     Perhaps even worse, Mulcair supports investment deals with "people (in the EU) who evolve in a similar universe to ourselves," unlike people in China. His breathtaking racism is amplified by the claim that Europe and Canada have "advanced" laws on human rights, the environment, and labour practices. What about indigenous peoples whose treaty rights are ignored, workers whose collective agreements are shredded by bosses and governments, or peasants whose lands are destroyed by resource corporations based in Europe, Canada, and the US?

     Of course, the Harper Tories represent the most dangerous big business threat to the interests of working people in Canada. But an NDP government which refused to challenge the agenda of big capital would do little to improve our lives. What`s really needed is a broad and powerful People`s Coalition, capable of fighting for a truly progressive agenda, both in the streets and inside Parliament.

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7) A SALUTE TO STALINGRAD

People's Voice Editorial

     This month marks the 70th anniversary of one of the most important battles in history. On February 2, 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad to the Soviet Red Army, the beginning of the end for Hitler's "thousand year reich". Five months of ferocious fighting had cost the Hitler war machine over 800,000 casualties and vast quantities of aircraft, tanks and artillery. Defending the strategically crucial city cost the Red Army over a million casualties, plus thousands of civilians. But there were no more fascist victories on the eastern front, and the drive to Berlin was under way.

     For millions of citizens of the former USSR, Stalingrad is remembered as the turning point in the life and death struggle against Nazi occupation. Those who deny the world‑historic nature of the 1917 socialist revolution should recall that the Great Patriotic War of 1941‑45 was won under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Unlike most of the European capitalist countries which surrendered to Hitler fascism, the Soviet people fought back with enormous loyalty to their homeland and their socialist way of life.

     We must never forget that 27 million Soviet citizens died in the Second World War. The Soviet Union played the main part in the defeat of fascism, and its heroic example inspired huge post‑war struggles for trade union rights, democratic freedoms, and liberation from colonialism. The victory at Stalingrad literally opened the way for decades of progressive gains for the working class in Canada and other capitalist countries. For all these reasons, progressives must always condemn the lie that communism is a "totalitarian" ideology. The truth is that the red flag of the working class and human freedom was raised at Stalingrad by the Soviet Army, against the most monstrous capitalist regime in history.

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8) THE ATTAWAPISKAT AUDIT ‑ ANOTHER HARPER PLOY

By Jean Kenyon

     Chief Theresa Spence of the northern Ontario First Nation community of Attawapiskat won widespread sympathy from Canadians when she embarked on a hunger strike in December, over the Harper government's assault on Aboriginal treaty rights and underfunding of basic services on reserves. Who could forget the painful pictures from last winter, of families living in uninsulated shacks in the deep‑freeze climate of the James Bay shore?

     Many of us therefore considered it a victory for Chief Spence when Prime Minister Harper agreed he would meet with her on Jan 11.      But it soon became apparent that Harper hadn't blinked, but was up to his usual shrewd political tricks. For on Jan. 8 the Conservative government "leaked" an audit it had ordered of Attawapiskat's books, and the results appeared damaging to Chief Spence. It was enough to satisfy Harper's redneck base, while sowing doubt and confusion among average Canadians.

     But many important facts about the audit didn't make it into the mainstream media. Here are some of those facts, as I've learned them from reliable on‑line sources.

     1. There was no finding of any fraud or misuse of funds, only that the paperwork wasn't done to the government's satisfaction.

     2. The period audited was 2006‑2011, and Spence did not become Chief until 2010. Attawapiskat was under co‑management all that time, and audited financial statements were posted on its web site every year. And according to the Indian Act, all capital expenditures by bands must be approved by the Ministry!

     3. The former Auditor‑General of Canada, Sheila Fraser, wrote in her final report in 2011, that "a heavy reporting burden is put on First Nations," and the endless paperwork is often completely ignored anyway by federal agencies.

     4. There isn't any federal legislation governing the delivery of health and education, for example, on reserves ‑ or the standards to be met or who delivers these services. In other words, there isn't any framework of accountability on the federal side! Yet the bands' spending is micromanaged by the feds.

     5. Of course the biggest finding of the Auditor‑General was that services on reserves are chronically underfunded. Each tiny band must negotiate with the feds every couple of years for money for basic services, then they must set up their own staffing arrangements to provide the services.

     How many villages ‑ anywhere ‑ would have the skill and the clout to secure enough money, and deliver a wide range of services, and track every dollar spent (which itself takes a lot of paid staff time)? And how much more difficult to do all this in a harsh environment, where, for example, building materials must be brought in by ice road, and where generations of unresolved social problems persist, resulting from the many traumas of colonialism? The mind boggles at the heavy burden placed on a small band!

     6. The amount in question ‑ I've heard $90 million to $100 million ‑ sounds like a lot of money, until you consider two things. It was spent over five years, and it had to provide ALL the services that the federal, provincial, and municipal governments combined provide to you and me.

     Say it was $100 million, which is $20 million each year. Add $4.4 million from the provincial government, and the band had less than $25 million per year. For Attawapiskat's on-reserve population of 1600 people, plus some spending for another 1200 members who currently live off-reserve, that's in the range of $10,000 per person per year, for all education, health, social services, housing, infrastructure, and necessary government staff. $10,000 per person per year falls far short of basic needs.

     I crunched some numbers the other day. How much is spent per capita by all levels of government in a year, for people living in a typical Ontario city? Adding it all up, I arrived at a total of $21,700 for the city where I live. Give or take a little for variations among municipalities, and we still have well over twice as much spending per capita in a modern Canadian city than per person on a reserve.

     Keep that figure in mind the next time you see heartbreaking pictures of tarpaper shacks and despairing children.

     The federal government would have us believe that it is being very generous to First Peoples. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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9) THE FERAL RICH

For too long we've problematised the poor and overlooked the wealthy. It's time to turn the tables, argues Vanessa Baird, in this article from the Morning Star.

     Now here's a puzzle. The world economy is in a fix. Most people are getting poorer. Household income is down by more than five percent on last year. That's the global average; in some countries it's much worse. We need 80 million new jobs to get us back to pre‑crash employment levels. And the progress on reducing world hunger has stalled, leaving one in seven people without enough to eat.

     But for one group of people life just gets better, no matter where they live. Known as HNWIs - High Net Worth Individuals - this global elites' fortunes just keep rising.

     In the past year, the 400 richest Americans have seen their wealth grow by US$200 billion [all amounts in US dollars] - enough to provide every student in the country with free education. During the same period, the 1,000 richest Britons have watched their fortunes swell to record levels, to $667 billion. India's ultra‑rich increased in number by 30 percent in 2012.

     How did we get here? How did members of this new plutocracy manage to peel themselves off from the rest of humanity, to feed off the crisis?

     But first: let's have a look at who they might be. Meet Carlos Slim Helu, the richest man in the world. A Mexican telecoms tycoon, the portly 72‑year‑old is worth $69 billion. Young Carlos was just 12 when he bought his first shares in a bank. He invested heavily during Mexico's 1982 financial crisis, buying into a wide variety of interests, including tobacco. But it was the privatisation of the state telephone utility that really made his fortune. It is said (though he denies this) that his close links with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) government secured him an effective monopoly, regardless of which party is in power. Today, Slim has so many business interests that it is said you cannot spend a day in Mexico without putting money in his pocket.

     Meet Australian mining heiress Gina Rinehart, aged 58. The world's richest woman (worth $28 billion), she suggests that poor people should "spend less time in the pub" and that the minimum wage should be reduced. She funds climate sceptics and is now trying to use her growing share in the Australian media to fight against carbon cuts.

     Slim and Rinehart share the billionaire cachet with around 1,200 individuals in the world today. Beneath them is a legion of millionaires, now numbering around 29 million. Their wealth comes from various sources. Around a third of the super‑rich have inherited it. Two‑thirds are described as "self‑made". A fair number are maths graduates who have gone into IT and software development. Few are complete rags‑to‑riches cases; most have comfortable backgrounds and university educations. Financiers are disproportionately well represented among the wealthiest.

Many of the rich have been busy augmenting their wealth through the services of hedge fund operators and private equity wizards.

     New York City's Upper East Side is now home to a lot of people, many aged under 40, who are making $20 or $30 million a year from their hedge funds, reports business journalist Chrystia Freeland in her eye‑popping book Plutocrats: the rise of the new global super rich.

     But, naturally, maintaining the super‑rich lifestyle has certain requirements, as Egyptian telecom billionaire Naguib Sawaris explained to Freeland. "To cover the fringe benefits, the plane, the boat, it takes a billion."

     Luxury goods and services are in high demand. A London domestic service agency, Bespoke Bureau, placed 430 British‑trained butlers last year, catering in particular to demand from Russia, China and the Middle East.

     It may come as no surprise that many of the rich do not actually feel wealthy.

     Economist Angus Deaton has shown that the richer you are the more covetous you become. Millionaires control 40 percent of the world's wealth. But Fidelity, a consultancy firm that regularly surveys millionaires, finds that whatever their wealth, they generally say they need double that amount. A recent survey of 1,000 millionaires, with an average net worth of $3 million, revealed that a quarter felt they needed an extra $5 million to feel wealthy.

How it's happened

    To find the origins of today's feral incarnation of wealth we have to go back to the 1980s.

     Free market policies were embraced by conservative governments on both sides of the Atlantic which cut through regulation, privatised state utilities and opened up new business opportunities. While most wages grew at a sluggish pace, top executive pay started to race ahead.

     New laws eroded union power, while globalisation enabled transnational corporations to outsource production to the country that offered the cheapest, usually non‑unionised, labour.

Profit margins grew, benefiting shareholders and business owners. This was accompanied by fierce cuts in tax paid by both corporations and high earners.

     But the most important factor was the decision to deregulate financial markets, taken initially in New York and London. Pay scales in the finance sector went through the roof, bonus culture went wild, greed was good. As we now know, it was a house of cards.

The political response to the 2008 financial crisis - first to bail out banks, then to cut public spending - has produced the crowning irony of our times: those who made the mess have come out virtually unscathed while the rest of us are being punished.

     Even government efforts to stimulate growth have lined the pockets of the already prosperous by pushing up share prices and other assets. In Britain, the richest households were $561,000 better off as a result of the Bank of England's quantitative easing program; the average increase for the poorest households was $1,900.

How do they spend it?

     A few goods and services catering for the seriously rich:

Customised 18‑carat solid gold mobile phone from Aesir Copenhagen, designed by Yves Beher: $60,000

Night in the Royal Penthouse of the Hotel President Wilson, Geneva: $85,000

Meal for two at New York's Masa restaurant: $1,500

Crocodile‑skin umbrella: $55,000

Small private jet hire: $9,000 per hour

Mediterranean holiday at Royal Villa, Grand Resort, Lagonisi, Greece: $48,000 a night

Green, orange, and black Renova coloured toilet paper: $20

Penthouse on the New York's Upper East Side: starting price $60 million

Trophy hunting in Namibia: $16,000 (one giraffe, mounting and shipping extra)

Crystal ErgoRapido vacuum cleaner (with 3,730 Swarovski crystals): $18,993

Louis Vuitton skateboard: $8,250

Little Gold 24‑carat gold vibrator (silent and waterproof): $325

Diamond encrusted bluetooth headset: $50,000

Tub of Harrods Posh Instant noodles: $43

Luxury frisbee: $305

Virgin Galactic space trip (per person): $283,000

     The rich can afford to speculate with high‑risk, high‑return investments. If they are prepared to touch the toxic‑looking stuff, the rewards can be thrilling. Vulture funds, for example, buy up debts from entities that are weak, or on the edge of default, at knockdown prices. Dart Management, registered in the Cayman Islands, made a killing on Greek debt it bought at just 35 percent of the nominal price but which was paid back by the Greek people at a much higher value.

     The crime scene is strewn with clues. Exhibit number one: the $150 million mustered by the British financial services industry to lobby politicians and regulators when the Barclays Libor rate-fixing scandal was provoking renewed calls for tougher rules. Exhibit two: the $355 million the US finance industry spent on political lobbying in Washington in 2012, second only to the health industry lobby.

     Politicians and regulators still persist in arguing in favour of light‑touch self‑regulation, saying that otherwise the high-finance "talent" will leave their jurisdictions, with a resulting loss in tax revenue. The same argument is used in support of low taxes on corporations and high earners. The corporate rich, especially those linked to finance, have governments in their pockets. To compound the problem, many in government are themselves millionaires and have close links to the industry.

     This crisis has many victims, including democracy. British writer and commentator George Monbiot is not exaggerating when he describes the state we are in as one akin to "totalitarian capitalism".

     "Rich people are successful and that's good for society"

Underpinning all this is an enduring set of beliefs about the acquisition of wealth. For some, especially those who remember the Cold War, the amassing of personal fortune is synonymous with political freedom. Others simply believe that "rich people deserve their wealth". Some 60% of Australians surveyed said they agreed with this statement, as did 58% of North Americans. British people were not so sure - at 45% - while only 16% of Russians and 9% of Greeks concurred with the statement.

     It is said that "rich people create jobs". Nick Hanauer, a wealthy entrepreneur who founded the online advertising company aQuantive and then sold it to Microsoft for $6 billion, thinks the idea is absurd. For him it's like saying "squirrels create evolution". Even if entrepreneurs or investors establish and build companies that eventually employ thousands of people, it is the customers and a healthy economic system surrounding the firm that create the jobs, not the owners.

     Current reality is undermining the idea that the rich are "wealth creators" who add to the economy in a way that benefits society at large. In booming India, for example, many of the country's new millionaires are not software developers or manufacturing innovators, but what economists call "rent‑seekers". Their predominant sources of income are land, natural resources and government contracts or licences. Rather than create something new, they use contacts and cronyism to get a bigger slice of a pre‑existing pie.

     It turns out that the rich are actually doing more harm than good. London is rapidly pricing out locals. Homeless people can be seen laying out their cardboard in the doorways of Mayfair's elegant Regency houses. There is a housing crisis partly due to shortage and recession - a million builders are jobless. But there's another reason. The city's real estate has become the number one haven for rich international investors, who are buying almost 60 percent of properties valued at $3.2 million or more. These buildings are often left empty for months on end but harsh new laws have made squatting an imprisonable offence. Local councils, meanwhile, are breaking up communities and shifting their poorer residents to other cities, which may be hundreds of kilometres away.

     What's happening in London is symptomatic of the distortions created by runaway wealth and overheated property values.

     Thousands of kilometres away in Peru is another casualty of feral capitalism. Gold is a prize commodity in times of trouble - and mining is bringing fat returns for corporations, investors and purchasers. Peasants have been shot as they protested against gold and other precious‑metal mining projects that are poisoning their water and polluting their land.

     The rich, says French writer Hervé Kempf, are quite literally destroying the earth. With their investments in oil and mining, the new global oligarchs are making the planet uninhabitable. And, like Gina Rinehart, they are using their clout to block the changes desperately needed to tackle climate change.

What next?

    When young rioters rampaged the streets of British cities 18 months ago, many received harsh prison sentences. Media reports at the time used the words "feral" and "underclass" to describe them.

     But one commentator, Peter Oborne of the usually conservative Daily Telegraph, pointed to another group of people that had "forgotten they have duties as well as rights," the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington, who had been nurturing "an almost universal culture of selfishness and greed".

     There are signs, though, that some natural political allies of the rich - and some rich people themselves - are feeling increasingly uneasy. The perversity of the current situation and its egregious unfairness is damaging capitalism, they say. They are reminded of Marx's prediction about capitalism having within it the seeds of its own destruction.

     There are even indications of tensions between the millionaires and the billionaires - the latter having become so much richer, so much faster, than the mere millionaires who are struggling to keep up. Equality is a buzz word that has entered all spheres now - including elite gatherings of business and world leaders at the World Economic Forum and in the pages of The Economist. Widening inequality is seen as a danger, a source of social unrest that disrupts the workings of capitalism.

     This is where hope lies: in disruption from below. Today's inequality is the result of years of deliberate action to crush unions, drive down wages and create a self‑serving elite of plutocrats. Mouthing nice words about greater equality is not enough. It has to come with serious redistribution of wealth and a dismantling of the institutions and practices that are perpetuating privilege and inequality. What the young British rioters of 2011 were doing was redistribution in action, but without discipline or a political framework. When Uncut protesters occupy Starbucks coffee shops and turn them into creches - because that's the kind of thing that's being cut when the coffee giant dodges its taxes - it's smart and appropriate and wins public support. When 800 council workers in Caerphilly, Wales, walk out in protest at a 30 percent hike in pay for their bosses, it shows a significant shift in focus.

     The mobilisation around corporate greed and aggressive tax avoidance in various parts of the world is revealing a long list of culprits - Apple, General Electric, Vodafone, Starbucks, Google, Amazon, PepsiCo, Goldman Sachs, Facebook - and generating widespread feelings of anger and revulsion. The mood has changed. In Greece, a country where tax avoidance was previously the social norm, the journalist who was put on trial for revealing the names of 2,000 high level tax dodgers is viewed as a hero by the people.

     This coming year will see more austerity measures, as governments try to convince the people that the national deficit is their fault and they must pay for it with their jobs and their public services and their pension and their savings. They may encounter more resistance than they expect. Remember, the political class, like the rich, are in the minority. The plutocracy, and those in power who do their bidding, need the co‑operation of the 99 percent, even if they think and behave as if they don't. They detach themselves from the rest of humanity at their peril. And we ignore them - or accept their hideously distorting power - at ours.

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10) THE WORKERS' FLAG: IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM THE PAST

Raising the Workers' Flag: The Workers' Unity League of Canada, 1930-1936, by Stephen L. Endicott, University of Toronto Press, ISBN 978-1-4426-1226-6, 442 pp. paperback (including 104 pages of notes, bibliography and index), plus 48 pages of photos. Review by Kimball Cariou

     Thousands of books are published every year in Canada. Perhaps a few hundred focus on Canadian history, and a much smaller fraction examine the struggles and stories of the working class. Even fewer shed valuable new light on the labour movement.

     Stephen Endicott's new book, Raising the Workers' Flag, stands out among this handful, both for the significance of its topic, and for the author's vivid depiction of the activists who built the Workers' Unity League during the Dirty Thirties.

     The passage of many decades, and the deaths of most of the WUL labour militants, have tended to over-simplify debates and discussions on the left over the role of this unique organization. All too often, these debates revolve around one question: was the Communist Party of Canada correct to push for the WUL's affiliates to re-enter the main bodies of the labour movement, or should the Communists have tried to maintain the WUL as a separate, revolutionary trade union movement?

     During those years, the Communist Party was the most important revolutionary force in Canada, especially within the trade union movement. So the author provides a tremendous service by presenting the stories of many key figures in the Communist movement of the 1920s and '30s, the men and women who spearheaded the party's early organizing efforts among the working class.

     As Endicott's vast research (including his studies of new archival material) makes crystal clear, reactionary critics are dead wrong to claim that such activities were "dictated" by the Comintern or the Moscow-based Red International of Labour Unions, to which the WUL was affiliated. Both of these bodies exercised overall leadership for the communist parties and the "red" unions, but the relationship was actually far more complex.

     Endicott relates how Canadian representatives in Moscow, like Stewart Smith and Leslie Morris, for example, shared the knowledge and views of revolutionary trade unionists in Canada with their counterparts at the RILU, helping to shape communist strategies in a common global direction. Naturally, the views of the Soviet trade unions and larger communist-led labour bodies carried more weight than those of Canada. But it would be a gross over-simplification to argue that the decisions to form "revolutionary" trade union centres (such as the WUL), or later to reintegrate these unions into the wider labour federations in the capitalist countries were "imposed" from above. There were sharp debates over such strategic shifts, but the decisions were carried out mainly because they made sense to labour leaders and activists on the ground in Canada, not because of a signature in Moscow.

     From the terrain of the Canadian labour and communist movements in the 1920s, Endicott moves to a series of chapters detailing the organizing campaigns by WUL unions across the country. These ranged from bitterly-fought strikes by coal miners and hard rock miners, to organizing drives among needle trades workers, woodworkers, and other brutally exploited sections of the working class. One of the most significant contributions of the WUL was the fight to organize the unemployed, especially the Relief Camp Workers Union which sparked the On to Ottawa Trek of 1935. Each of these historic struggles is presented in careful detail, giving the reader an understanding of the problems faced by the WUL in its efforts to lift the working class from sporadic acts of rebellion towards coordinated campaigns for progressive reforms, against the domination of big capital.

     One of the most interesting chapters deals with women's status in the workplace and in the wider social realm. Many powerful women leaders emerged in the WUL, not just famed figures like Annie Buller and Becky Buhay, but dozens more who led strikes and campaigns in specific industries and cities. Although the post-war era saw a concerted drive to push working women back into the kitchens, the WUL helped to change the thinking of millions of women (and men) about gender roles in capitalist society. This shift was an underlying factor in the organization of women in the public sector which took off in the 1950s, and the emergence of women's liberation movements in subsequent decades.

     By 1935 some 40,000 workers were members of WUL-affiliated unions, becoming an important factor in labour and social issues across Canada. But at the same time, the working class on an international scale grasped the need to build wider unity against the threat of fascism. The decision was made at the RILU level to formalize a process which was already taking shape in many capitalist countries, towards integrating the "red" unions into federations mainly led by reformists.

     Endicott's conclusion is that "in retrospect, the decision by the Workers' Unity League to merge its unions with the AFL unions at this moment in history was a tactical error, since a new, dramatic, more progressive development was in the offing", referring to what became the Committee of Industrial Organizations in the U.S.

     Perhaps, but Tom Ewen and other WUL leaders had to act on the knowledge they possessed, rather than what they could not foresee. What is beyond question is that the WUL did more to change the course of Canadian history in six short years than most labour federations before or since accomplished through decades of "business union" or even "social union" strategies. There is much to learn from this book, not just about our past, but especially about the "class struggle" unionism that workers desperately need today.

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11) MONTREAL CARTOON EXHIBIT OF GERARDO HERNANDEZ

By the Comité Fabio Di Celmo pour les 5 of the Table de concertation de solidarité Québec‑Cuba

      Over 100 people came to an exhibition/meeting jointly organized on January 24 by the Montreal branch of the CSN (one of the largest Quebec unions) and the Comité Fabio Di Celmo. The goal was to build support for the freedom of the Cuban Five as part of the worldwide effort.

     Dominique Daigneault, General Secretary of the Conseil central du Montréal métropolitain (CCMM‑CSN), the sponsor of the event, said that she was moved to see so many people, despite record-breaking close to minus 40 degrees temperatures.

     She explained to the standing-room only crowd how the CSN has been supporting Cuba for a long time, and specifically the Cuban Five in the struggle against their unjust imprisonment. The case represents a major injustice, she said, and so justice must be rendered by allowing the truth to be known.

     After the meeting, Daigneault signed the letter containing the signatures of close to 150 Quebec personalities who are in favour of the Cuban Five's liberation.

     Her introduction was followed by a musical interlude and a screening of the video "The Bird and the Prisoner." American actor Danny Glover outlined Gerardo's incredible outreach to save a newborn orphaned bird that had wandered into his prison. This ongoing action, we saw, won the support of the prison population.

     Next to speak was the Consul General of the Republic of Cuba in Montreal, Alain Gonzalez. Through his personal story, he vividly brought to light the terror carried out by the U.S. The Cuban people are accustomed to peace and security, which has on many occasions been fractured by U.S.‑led terrorist actions against Cuba. As a young student, he learned through the experience of these actions, such as the Havana hotel bombings in the late 1990s in which Fabio Di Celmo, an Italian citizen residing in Montreal, was killed.

     It is precisely this type of activity that the Cuban Five were intent on stopping by infiltrating terrorist groups in Miami. Alain Gonzalez is now a young diplomat in Montreal. He pointed out the double punishment carried out by U.S. authorities against Gerardo, who, in addition to serving two concurrent life terms plus 15 years, has been forbidden to receive a single visit from his wife, Adriana Pérez.   

     Montreal writer and journalist Arnold August, representing the Comité Fabio Di Celmo, read a message sent to the gathering by Gerardo Hernandez, in his own name and in the names of Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and René Gonzalez:      "Brothers and sisters, Words cannot express how deeply I appreciate the effort ... to make this exhibition a reality in the important city of Montreal. It is my understanding that all the promotion, explanations of my work and even this letter have been translated into French for the very first time.

     "It has been humbling to me how many countries these cartoons have been shown in, because they were not made with the idea that someday they would be displayed all together in an art exhibit. As some of you know, I spend a great deal of my time responding to hundreds of solidarity letters and I do this work lacking the material and appropriate conditions of a real artist. I am an art aficionado who draws cartoons out of a necessity to express myself in a certain way. This necessity comes from a desire to send out a message to our people or to express my perspective before different events, such as the birthday of someone we admire or the death of a friend.

     "Someone once said that `humour liberates' (and if nobody did say that, I will say it now) and for me it is something that `gets us out' for at least a few moments from behind the walls where we have been unjustly imprisoned for almost 15 years. The Cuban Five have been expressing themselves through humour ‑ in this case ‑ or by painting and poetry in the case of Tony, and ‑ although less known ‑ in the paintings of Fernando and the poetry of Ramon and René.

     "On behalf of all of us, I want to thank you for being here today and for the solidarity that it represents in our struggle for justice. We know that the key to our inevitable freedom lives in that solidarity that continues to grow worldwide.

     "Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

     "Gerardo Hernandez, Victorville Penitentiary, California,

January 20, 2013"

     This was greeted by loud applause by the audience, visibly moved by his words. Plasticized copies of the message were presented to the Cuban Consul General and the representatives of the CSN and Comité Fabio Di Celmo.

     Arnold August then asked, "What more can we do to further the struggle to free the Cuban Five?" In addition to picket lines in front of the U.S. consulate in Montreal, held on the second Thursday of each month since May 2007, an important activity is being organized in Washington D.C. by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five.

     These "Days of Action for the Cuban 5" will take place from May 30 to June 5, 2013. The highlight will be a demonstration in front of the White House on June 1 to demand that President Obama use his constitutional right to pardon the Cuban Five and allow them to return home to Cuba and their families.

     August, in the name of the Comité, called on all those present to participate in building a delegation from Quebec to go to Washington. After the meeting, many people indicated their interest. The success of a delegation to Washington will be, in part, a direct result of Gerardo's message that touched the soul of the participants. From their cells, the Cuban Five inspire people all over the world, demonstrating their combination of immense courage and sincere humanism.

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12) EGYPTIAN COMMUNISTS BACK ANTI-REGIME PROTESTS

     As this issue of People's Voice goes to press, sharp political struggles continue in Egypt, where the democratic and progressive goals of the uprising against the Mubarak regime are under pressure by the Morsi government.

     The Egyptian Communist Party, which was finally able to function legally after the 2011 uprising, issued a statement on Jan. 31, titled "Continuing the Revolutionary Struggle against Opportunism and Forces of the Fascist Religious Right."

     The Party reconfirms that it will to struggle "within the ranks of the poor, workers, peasants and all the toilers of the Egyptian people, in the heart of which are the revolutionary free youth... and within the ranks of the true revolutionaries who are demanding to complete the march of the revolution until achieving its demands for which it started (Freedom ‑ Dignity ‑ Social Justice)."

     The Communists are taking part in demonstrations, including the huge February 1 rally in Cairo, to oppose the Muslim Brotherhood regime, and to demand early presidential elections and action to achieve the goals of the revolution.

     They oppose calls for "dialogues" with reactionary forces which are responsible for the bloodshed in the streets, and for the new constitution which enshrines social and religious discrimination and robs the working class and the poor of their right to health, education and housing.

     The Egyptian regime, the Communists stress, is responsible for violence, arrests, kidnappings and killings of revolutionaries, and for the economic, social, political and security deterioration of the situation in the country. For this reason, the Party opposes opportunist attempts to save the authority of the ruling class, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is "a brutal authority of a fascist and authoritarian type."

     The statement calls on all civil forces and supporters of the revolution to unite around the demands for "freedom, dignity, social justice, and retribution for the blood of the martyrs."

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13) A TERRIBLE NORMALITY

By Michael Parenti

     Through much of history the abnormal has been the norm. This is a paradox to which we should attend. Aberrations, so plentiful as to form a terrible normality of their own, descend upon us with frightful consistency.

     The number of massacres in history, for instance, are almost more than we can record. There was the New World holocaust, consisting of the extermination of indigenous Native American peoples throughout the western hemisphere, extending over four centuries or more, continuing into recent times in the Amazon region.

     There were the centuries of heartless slavery in the Americas and elsewhere, followed by a full century of lynch mob rule and Jim Crow segregation in the United States, and today the numerous killings and incarcerations of Black youth by law enforcement agencies.

     Let us not forget the extermination of some 200,000 Filipinos by the U.S. military at the beginning of the twentieth century, the genocidal massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks in 1915, and the mass killings of African peoples by the western colonists, including the 63,000 Herero victims in German Southwest Africa in 1904, and the brutalization and enslavement of millions in the Belgian Congo from the late 1880s until emancipation in 1960 ‑ followed by years of neocolonial free‑market exploitation and repression in what was Mobutu's Zaire.

     French colonizers killed some 150,000 Algerians. Later on, several million souls perished in Angola and Mozambique along with an estimated five million in the merciless region now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

     The twentieth century gave us ‑ among other horrors ‑ more than sixteen million lost and twenty million wounded or mutilated in World War I, followed by the estimated 62 million to 78 million killed in World War II, including some 24 million Soviet military personnel and civilians, 5.8 million European Jews, and taken together: several million Serbs, Poles, Roma, homosexuals, and a score of other nationalities.

     In the decades after World War II, many, if not most, massacres and wars have been openly or covertly sponsored by the U.S. national security state. This includes the two million or so left dead or missing in Vietnam, along with 250,000 Cambodians, 100,000 Laotians, and 58,000 Americans.

     Today in much of Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East there are "smaller" wars, replete with atrocities of all sorts. Central America, Colombia, Rwanda and other places too numerous to list, suffered the massacres and death‑squad exterminations of hundreds of thousands, a constancy of violent horrors. In Mexico a "war on drugs" has taken 70,000 lives with 8,000 missing.

     There was the slaughter of more than half a million socialistic or democratic nationalist Indonesians by the U.S.‑supported Indonesian military in 1965, eventually followed by the extermination of 100,000 East Timorese by that same U.S.‑backed military.

     Consider the 78‑days of NATO's aerial destruction of Yugoslavia complete with depleted uranium, and the bombings and invasion of Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Western Pakistan, Afghanistan, and now the devastating war of attrition brokered against Syria. And as I write (early 2013), the U.S.-sponsored sanctions against Iran are seeding severe hardship for the civilian population of that country.

     All the above amounts to a very incomplete listing of the world's violent and ugly injustice. A comprehensive inventory would fill volumes. How do we record the countless other life‑searing abuses: the many millions who survive wars and massacres but remain forever broken in body and spirit, left to a lifetime of suffering and pitiless privation, refugees without sufficient food or medical supplies or water and sanitation services in countries like Syria, Haiti, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Mali.

     Think of the millions of women and children around the world and across the centuries who have been trafficked in unspeakable ways, and the millions upon millions trapped in exploitative toil, be they slaves, indentured servants, or underpaid labourers. The number of impoverished is now growing at a faster rate than the world's population. Add to that the countless acts of repression, incarceration, torture, and other criminal abuses that beat upon the human spirit throughout the world day by day.

     Let us not overlook the ubiquitous corporate corruption and massive financial swindles, the plundering of natural resources and industrial poisoning of whole regions, the forceful dislocation of entire populations, the continuing catastrophes of Chernobyl and Fukushima and other impending disasters awaiting numerous aging nuclear reactors.

     The world's dreadful aberrations are so commonplace and unrelenting that they lose their edge and we become inured to the horror of it all. "Who today remembers the Armenians?" Hitler is quoted as having said while plotting his "final solution" for the Jews. Who today remembers the Iraqis and the death and destruction done to them on a grand scale by the U.S. invasion of their lands? William Blum reminds us that more than half the Iraq population is either dead, wounded, traumatized, imprisoned, displaced, or exiled, while their environment is saturated with depleted uranium (from U.S. weaponry) inflicting horrific birth defects.

     What is to be made of all this? First, we must not ascribe these aberrations to happenstance, innocent confusion, and unintended consequences. Nor should we believe the usual rationales about spreading democracy, fighting terrorism, providing humanitarian rescue, protecting U.S. national interests and other such rallying cries promulgated by ruling elites and their mouthpieces.

     The repetitious patterns of atrocity and violence are so persistent as to invite the suspicion that they usually serve real interests; they are structural not incidental. All this destruction and slaughter has greatly profited those plutocrats who pursue economic expansion, resource acquisition, territorial dominion, and financial accumulation.

     Ruling interests are well served by their superiority in firepower and striking force. Violence is what we are talking about here, not just the wild and wanton type but the persistent and well‑organized kind. As a political resource, violence is the instrument of ultimate authority. Violence allows for the conquest of entire lands and the riches they contain, while keeping displaced labourers and other slaves in harness.

     The plutocratic rulers find it necessary to misuse or exterminate restive multitudes, to let them starve while the fruits of their land and the sweat of their labor enrich privileged coteries.

     Thus we had a profit‑driven imperial rule that helped precipitate the great famine in northern China, 1876‑1879, resulting in the death of some thirteen million. At about that same time the Madras famine in India took the lives of as many as twelve million while the colonial forces grew ever richer. And thirty years earlier, the great potato famine in Ireland led to about one million deaths, with another desperate million emigrating from their homeland. Nothing accidental about this: while the Irish starved, their English landlords exported shiploads of Irish grain and livestock to England and elsewhere at considerable profit to themselves.

     These occurrences must be seen as something more than just historic abnormalities floating aimlessly in time and space, driven only by overweening impulse or happenstance. It is not enough to condemn monstrous events and bad times, we also must try to understand them. They must be contextualized in the larger framework of historical social relations.

     The dominant socio‑economic system today is free‑market capitalism (in all its variations). Along with its unrelenting imperial terrorism, free‑market capitalism provides "normal abnormalities" from within its own dynamic, creating scarcity and maldistributed excess, filled with duplication, waste, overproduction, frightening environmental destruction, and varieties of financial crises, bringing swollen rewards to a select few and continual hardship to multitudes.

     Economic crises are not exceptional; they are the standing operational mode of the capitalist system. Once again, the irrational is the norm. Consider U.S. free‑market history: after the American Revolution, there were the debtor rebellions of the late 1780s, the panic of 1792, the recession of 1809 (lasting several years), the panics of 1819 and 1837, and recessions and crashes through much of the rest of that century. The serious recession of 1893 continued for more than a decade.

     After the industrial underemployment of 1900 to 1915 came the agrarian depression of the 1920s ‑ hidden behind what became known to us as "the Jazz Age," followed by a horrendous crash and the Great Depression of 1929‑1942. All through the twentieth century we had wars, recessions, inflation, labor struggles, high unemployment ‑ hardly a year that would be considered "normal" in any pleasant sense. An extended normal period would itself have been an abnormality. The free market is by design inherently unstable in every aspect other than wealth accumulation for the select few.

     What we are witnessing is not an irrational output from a basically rational society but the converse: the "rational" (to be expected) output of a fundamentally irrational system. Does this mean these horrors are inescapable? No, they are not made of supernatural forces. They are produced by plutocratic greed and deception.

     So, if the aberrant is the norm and the horrific is chronic, then we in our fightback should give less attention to the idiosyncratic and more to the systemic. Wars, massacres and recessions help to increase capital concentration, monopolize markets and natural resources, and destroy labor organizations and popular transformative resistance.

     The brutish vagaries of plutocracy are not the product of particular personalities but of systemic interests. President George W. Bush was ridiculed for misusing words, but his empire-building and stripping of government services and regulations revealed a keen devotion to ruling‑class interests. Likewise, President Barack Obama is not spineless. He is hypocritical but not confused. He is (by his own description) an erstwhile "liberal Republican," or as I would put it, a faithful servant of corporate America.

     Our various leaders are well informed, not deluded. They come from different regions and different families, and have different personalities, yet they pursue pretty much the same policies on behalf of the same plutocracy.

     So it is not enough to denounce atrocities and wars, we also must understand who propagates them and who benefits. We have to ask why violence and deception are constant ingredients. 

     Unintended consequences and other oddities do arise in worldly affairs but we also must take account of interest‑driven rational intentions. More often than not, the aberrations ‑ be they wars, market crashes, famines, individual assassinations or mass killings ‑ take shape because those at the top are pursuing gainful expropriation. Many may suffer and perish but somebody somewhere is benefiting boundlessly.

     Knowing your enemies and what they are capable of doing is the first step toward effective opposition. The world becomes less of a horrific puzzlement. We can only resist these global (and local) perpetrators when we see who they are and what they are doing to us and our sacred environment.

     Democratic victories, however small and partial they be, must be embraced. But the people must not be satisfied with tinseled favours offered by smooth leaders. We need to strive in every way possible for the revolutionary unravelling, a revolution of organized consciousness striking at the empire's heart with the full force of democracy, the kind of irresistible upsurge that seems to come from nowhere while carrying everything before it.

     Michael Parenti is the author of The Face of Imperialism and numerous other books. For further information, visit www.michaelparenti.org.

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14) PV FUND DRIVE KICKS OFF MARCH 1

     The annual People's Voice Press Fund Drive will officially begin on March 1. That's when subscribers will start to receive our appeal in the mail. Some generous donations have begun to arrive in advance, such as a contribution of $300 from our good friends at La Trova Nuestra, which holds a monthly Latin American pena at the CSE in Vancouver.

     As usual for the past several years, our 2013 target will be $50,000, which we met last year thanks to some significant and very welcome December contributions.

     This time there's an interesting twist to the campaign. We need to find ways to raise extra funds this year, and to speed up the pace of the Fund Drive, without putting too much of a burden on our supporters. A very generous supporter has offered to help by contributing an extra $100 to People's Voice for every donation of at least $300 which arrives during the month of March. So when you get your appeal letter in the mail, think carefully and act quickly. If you can show your solidarity by sending any donation immediately, it would be a great assistance to our perennial cash flow situation. And if you can make your cheque for $300 or more, PV will get $100 extra to help us upgrade our equipment and make other improvements.

     Thanks in advance from our Editorial Board, and we look forward to a successful and speedier Fund Drive in 2013!

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