People's Voice November 16-30 , 2006

Smoke and mirrors at over-budget P3 hospital

(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 173 West Ave. North, Hamilton, ON, L8L 5C7.)

PV Health Reporter

WITH MUCH pomp and circumstance, Ontario's second P3 privatized hospital, the new Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre (ROH), opened its doors in October. But an independent economist, as well as the Ottawa and Ontario Health Coalitions, say the truth about the building is being covered up with fudged numbers.

     "Not only did the McGuinty government offend basic democratic principles by breaking its promise to stop the P3 hospitals and build them publicly, it is now compounding the offence by engaging in a disingenuous public relations campaign to cover up the true extent and costs of privatization ," said Dora Jeffries, co-chair of the Ontario Health Coalition (OHC).

     Economist Hugh Mackenzie found that the privatized set-up is costing $88 million more than public financing, over the life of the project. This makes the Royal Ottawa Hospital 41% more expensive than necessary, Mackenzie stated.

     "My review of the figures shows that the interest rate of the private companies is 250 basis points higher than if the province funded the hospital... In addition, a significant cost of $8.1 million [over 5 percent] has gone to consultants and lawyers just to draft up the P3 documentation... Millions will be siphoned out of the provincial budget that could have gone to doctors, nurses, hospital service and beds," he noted in a Health Coalition release.

     Mackenzie also calculated that the hospital cost is far higher than the McGuinty government's claim of $132 million. That sum is in fact only the amount borrowed by the Healthcare Infrastructure Company of Canada (the private for-profit multinational consortium that is building ROH). Actually, the deal includes an extra $15 million in capital provided by the consortium. The real total is thus $147 million.

     "We were told repeatedly by government and hospital officials that the new hospital would cost $100 million," said Marlene Rivier, president of Local 479 of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, who works at the hospital and is also co-chair of the Ottawa Health Coalition. Costs at Ontario's first P3 hospital in Brampton, she pointed out, jumped from $350 million to $550 million, while the hospital size shrunk.

     "The Royal Ottawa Hospital is still not complete and has some serious design flaws and safety problems," Rivier stated. In an interview with CBC, Rivier said rooms in the building have too many obstacles between staff work space and exits, and that is a safety hazard. To illustrate, she described an incident two years ago where a patient held a worker in an office at knifepoint for several hours.

     Rivier and the health coalition have been turning up the pressure to make the ROH project public for several years. In the fall of 2003, the Ottawa Citizen reported that the hospital was to be complete by fall 2005, at a total cost of $100 million. At that time, ROH stated bringing the project back into the public system would cost $10 million in penalties to the consortium. But it was later forced to reduce this figure to only $2 million, per information filed in court.

     Like the Brampton P3 Hospital, the new Royal Ottawa was built by the Healthcare Infrastructure Company of Canada. This consortium consists of 50 percent ownership by Carillion Canada Inc., as well as construction firm EllisDon and Borealis Infrastructure (which uses capital primarily from Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System or OMERS). It was the second main bidder for the Abbotsford P3, until it voluntarily stepped out.

     Carillion Canada Inc. is owned by Carillion Plc, which specializes in the privatization of public services and P3 hospital projects in the UK. The company is behind the consortium that built the notorious Swindon private hospital, which cost $720 million - more than double the original estimate of $330 million. Add in annual payments and the final tab for Swindon is $1.05 billion over the 30-year contract.

     According to research by the National Union of Public Government Employees, the new Swindon has 80 fewer beds than the hospital it replaced. Almost immediately after opening, all beds were full, surgeries were cancelled and hospital administrators were spreading the word not to refer patients because there was no more room to examine them.

     One patient, Tony Collins, was contacted by the Guinness Book of World Records after he was left waiting on a trolley at Swindon for 60 hours. His record was soon shattered by another patient who was left on a trolley for 144 hours! The government had to spend $27 million more for a new 27-bed ward at the private hospital.

     Carillion Plc is also facing serious labour strife in the UK. Unions are fighting against poor pay (about $9.60 an hour) and terrible working conditions that are the hallmark of support services in Carillion Plc hospitals. The company was recently fined more than $160,000 by the British government for health and safety violations that resulted in two serious workplace accidents.

     "First we shape our buildings, then our buildings shape us," Premier Dalton McGuinty pronounced in his opening ceremonies speech at the Royal Ottawa, quoting the great imperialist bigot Winston Churchill. Certainly McGuinty's P3 privatization policy has dangerously warped the building into a financial fiasco.

     The capitalist class McGuinty speaks for hopes a sophisticated scheme of secrecy will allow their state to proceed with that agenda, capture the flag and win more profits, more P3 hospitals, and even greater privatization and union busting. The working class and its allies can and must expose this lie, showing how the drive for mega-profits in P3 deals has already shoved aside budgets and deadlines. Otherwise, these buildings really will shape us, our future, and not the least our health.

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Can we block Harper's "Social Conservative" gamble?

(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 173 West Ave. North, Hamilton, ON, L8L 5C7.)

By Dave McKee

THE WORD AMONG government circles is that Stephen Harper's handlers are determined that he "not be another Joe Clark." The reference is to the last federal Tory minority government, and to what Conservative Party strategists see as "the great failed opportunity" - Clark chose to govern from a minority position rather than use his narrow 1979 election victory to implement sweeping conservative reforms.

     Harper, on the other hand, is betting that Canadians are more socially conservative and will accept a greater shift to the right in governance and public policy than is commonly believed. It is a gamble that Harper should be losing, but he has been able to push through his agenda in spite of public opposition, due to the lack of a strong fightback.

     Although the Conservatives have yet to pass a single bill all the way through Parliament, and current opinion polls suggest their term in office could be a short one, they have moved swiftly to reshape current and future parliaments in their image.

     Foreign policy has been brought sharply in line with the United States, as demonstrated by Canada being the first state to stop funds for the Palestinian people after the election of the Hamas government. Government spending has been drastically reoriented away from social programs and toward tax cuts, debt reduction and a massive $40 billion military buildup.

     Productivity will likely be a centrepiece of the next throne speech, and the government will use that theme as political cover for a sweeping rewrite of corporate tax policy as well as extensive rollbacks of government regulation of industry.

     Alongside these shifts in government finance and policy, the Conservatives have launched a comprehensive ideological campaign. According to a government source who spoke to People's Voice, "one of Harper's priorities is to attack and kneecap any potential [extraparliamentary] opposition.

     "One of the government's first actions was to release details of a damaging audit of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, and this allowed them to paint aboriginal people generally as unreliable and incapable of managing their own affairs. They used this as an opportunity to validate the decision to scrap the Kelowna Accord and breed racism among the Canadian public, with the net effect of weakening and dividing the aboriginal peoples' lobby."

     The government accomplished similar goals through a 40% cut to the Status of Women budget, changes in funding rules to prohibit advocacy from women's organizations, and the elimination of the Court Challenges Program. "Basically," the source said, "if you're not white, patriarchal and Christian, you're not going to see yourself reflected in the Conservatives' vision of Canada."

     While they are busily cutting off potential opposition movements, the Conservatives are also building up their own grassroots power base.

     Intimate government interaction with right-wing non-government organizations affords those groups a hand in shaping public policy, and enables them to vastly increase their profile, expertise and funding. Members of the Conservatives' "backdoor cabinet" include REAL Women, B'nai Brith, Focus on the Family, Institute for Canadian Values and Canada Family Action Coalition.

     Until recently, some of these organizations seemed marginal. Now, they are key players in Ottawa and fundamental pillars in Stephen Harper's "broad coalition of conservative ideas."

     Confronting this coalition, and reversing their right-wing restructuring, requires more than a simple change of government in the next election. History suggests that the Liberals would campaign against, and then embrace, implement and extend Conservative reforms. While the opposition parties have displayed some resistance to Harper, particularly over childcare and the war in Afghanistan, overall it has been uneven and cautious.

     Reversing Harper's attacks will require massive political will that can only be generated by a vast mobilization of social forces. Such a broad-based, coordinated fightback is not yet in the works, and time is running short. There are, however, examples of struggles around key issues which indicate how a larger movement could be built.

     Childcare advocates and their allies worked feverishly to save the national daycare strategy, and when the government trashed the program they wasted no time in reorienting their campaign strategy in an effort to keep the issue alive in the public mind.

     The peace movement, united within the Canadian Peace Alliance, is perhaps the brightest spot in the opposition to the Harper agenda. Following the election, the CPA maintained a high level of activity and has been able to focus public discontent on the government's foreign policy.

     The October 28 Canada-wide Day of Action against the Canada's occupation of Afghanistan was the product of a call by the peace movement, labour and the Canadian Islamic Congress. With the active support of many other organizations, the mobilization resulted in 37 actions in communities across the country, and is one example of how unity in action could develop into a coordinated opposition.

     Other potential fightback forces, though, have faltered. For several years, since the demise of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, there has been no broad pan-Canada women's organization. The environmental movement is broad and has a relatively high profile, but its political focus remains uneven. The key weakness of the opposition movement, though, is the labour movement, which alone has the organizational and economic capacity to stimulate and lead a fightback.

     As in Ontario following the election of the Mike Harris Conservatives, the labour movement emerged from the federal election divided and ill prepared to confront Harper's assault. Despite solid policy statements, and strong links with social movements across the country, the Canadian Labour Congress has not initiated an extra-parliamentary mobilization against the Conservative government. The question for many working people is: how do we move labour into action?

     One place to start, says Action Caucus chair Helen Kennedy, is with union locals sending resolutions to the CLC calling for a fightback organizing effort. "In the 1980's, the fight against free trade blossomed because of the Action Canada Network's activist labour-community solidarity. We need that kind of organization now and the group to make it happen is the CLC."

     But with many unions transformed into staff-driven organizations, Kennedy cautions against a top-down approach. "What is key, what will drive and sustain a fightback down the road past the next election, is that workers take ownership over their unions and make them more militant. We need to build the Action Caucus in every union local and at all levels of the union movement, and those caucuses need to make real connections with social movements in their communities."

     Sid Lacombe, coordinator of the Canadian Peace Alliance, agrees. "Playing at the top isn't really sustainable. You need to build at the base, and to do that you need to focus on action." Following this line, the CPA has developed networks with groups in communities that are targetted by right-wing policies.

     "Communities that are isolated are organizing very quickly to defend themselves," says Lacombe, "but the stakes are very high for them so when you're talking solidarity they need the active kind, not just resolutions."

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Students mourn the death of affordable education

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The "Big Mac" Import threat - Editorial

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The nations in Canada - Editorial

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Income Trust "crackdown" - A Hallowe'en trick?

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Thousands demand: Troops Out Now!

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Britain's climate shift: too little, too late?

(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 173 West Ave. North, Hamilton, ON, L8L 5C7.)

By Kimball Cariou

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific assessment predicted severe consequences if global warming continued unabated. At the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment and Development, Cuban President Fidel Castro warned that global warming would bring flooding of coastal areas, more frequent dangerous storms, the spread of diseases, and threats to agriculture.

     Meanwhile, the top circles of global capitalism were in denial. Even today, in the face of imminent catastrophe, their proposed remedies are insufficient.

     In the wake of a new report by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, the British government has begun to break with its U.S. ally over the issue of climate change. Canada, however, has gone backwards under Stephen Harper's Tories.

     Stern's report says that failure to tackle climate change could push world temperatures up by a catastrophic 5 degrees Celsius over the next century, causing severe floods and harsh droughts and uprooting as many as 200 million people. Contradicting the Bush and Harper administrations, Stern says that the benefits of creating a global low-carbon economy would massively outweigh the economic and human costs of global warming. A global recession could cut between 5% and 20% from the world's wealth, he estimates, while the net benefits of taking immediate action to combat climate change are pegged at $2.5 trillion.

     Stern says that an investment of about 1% of annual global GDP over the next 50 years should stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at the equivalent of 500-550 parts per million of carbon dioxide, 25% above current levels, which he regards as "high but acceptable".

     Climate change risks causing economic consequences, says Stern, "on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century". He forecasts huge disruption to African economies in particular as drought hits food production; up to a billion people losing water supplies as mountain glaciers disappear; hundreds of millions losing their homes and land to sea level rise; and potentially big increases in damage from hurricanes. The economic cost of failing to act could approach $4 trillion by the end of the century, he says.

     While major climate change is inevitable, Stern says, the worst could be prevented if global emissions can be stabilised within 20 years and then reduced by around 2% per year. "What we do in the next 10 or 20 years can have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of the century and in the next."

     He places the primary responsibility for cutting greenhouse gas emissions lies with the rich industrialised countries, which produce most of the world's emissions.

     "The Stern review ... has demolished the last remaining argument for inaction in the face of climate change," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at the launch of the report, commissioned by his government in 2005. "We know now urgent action will prevent catastrophe, and investment in preventing it now will pay us back many times."

     Britain calls for a post-Kyoto Protocol framework that would include the United States - the biggest producer of greenhouse gases - as well as major developing countries such as China and India. President Bush pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol - which obliges 35 rich nations to cut carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels - claiming that it would reduce employment.

     "The Stern Review is a wake-up call to the world," said Hans Verolme, a climate change expert for the environmental group WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund). The WWF is urging U.N. climate talks in Nairobi this month to produce a clear plan for extending the Kyoto agreement beyond 2012.

     But many environmental experts are critical of Stern's overall approach, and of his recommendation to "harness the power of markets" through a global carbon trading system. UK Finance Minister Gordon Brown proposes a new European Union target for emissions reductions of 30 percent by 2020 and 60 percent by 2050, and expansion of an existing carbon trading scheme to cover more than half of emissions. The EU scheme sets overall limits for carbon emissions, but allows businesses to trade their quotas to other countries.

     Writing in the UK Guardian, environment expert Jeremy Leggett responded with these thoughts:

     "It strikes me as increasingly strange that economists persist with measurements in GDP. GDP includes the economic activity associated with cleaning up Exxon's oil spills and the spillages from slurry pits left by mountain-top coal mining in the Appalachians. It includes all those legal fees for the lawyers chasing down possible criminal charges against BP over exploding refineries and leaking pipelines... When are we going to see an economic assessment of the damage unmitigated global warming will do to the natural capital we will need if we are to fashion a survivable future?"

     Leggett says the Stern report understates the crisis: "We know that global warming is melting the Greenland ice cap fast. We know that water is pouring down crevasses in the interior of the sheet. We know that this water will lubricate the base of the sheet. If that sheet slides off the continent into the ocean, global sea level will rise by about 7 meters. Goodbye coastal plains - which is where virtually the entire world economy does business, if we discount a few ski resorts and the like. That one impact stands to cause something more than a global recession."

     Commenting on emissions trading schemes, Greenpeace UK spokesperson Charlie Kronick said "the only way a carbon market works is if there's a rigorous cap, otherwise it just makes money for carbon traders without addressing the problem. One test for Blair's successor will be what he or she pushes that cap to be."

     Meanwhile, Canada's federal Environment Minister, Rona Ambrose, argues that there is "no clear basis" for trying to achieve Canada's target of a six percent emissions reduction by 2012.

     Instead, her government's new "Clean Air Act" calls for years of consultations with industry. Instead of reducing total greenhouse gases, it calls for "intensity based" emission cuts - a buzzword loved by the energy corporations. The only target date set by the Act is 2050 - by which time the damage will be done. As David Suzuki says (see page 5), the helpful minor initiatives contained in the Act are "completely buried under an avalanche of nothingness."

     In response, we can only work to ensure that Ambrose's Tories are buried under an avalanche of anti-Tory votes, and to pressure the next federal government to take real action on this crisis.

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Israeli peace groups condemn siege of Gaza

(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2006 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 173 West Ave. North, Hamilton, ON, L8L 5C7.)

By Kimball Cariou

HIDDEN FROM the view of North Americans, the crisis in Gaza has reached emergency levels - inadequate water, electricity, and medicine; widespread hunger, poverty, and unemployment; schools and other services out of operation; and constant bombardments and attacks by the Israeli Defence Forces. Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip is made worse by the sanctions imposed by the international community, shamefully including Canada.

     As Patrick Seale wrote in the International Herald Tribune (Oct. 27, 2006), "Israel has killed 2,300 Gazans over the past six years, including 300 in the four months since an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, was captured in a cross-border raid by Palestinian fighters on June 25. The wounded can be counted in the tens of thousands. Most of the casualties are civilians, many of them children. The killing continues on a daily basis - by tank and sniper fire, by air and sea bombardment, and by undercover teams in civilian clothes sent into Arab territory to ambush and murder."

     The community of peace organizations in Israel have recently joined together in a coordinated, major campaign to end the siege of Gaza and to call upon Israel to embark upon negotiations with the Palestinian representatives.

     This campaign was initiated by the Coalition of Women for Peace with its nine member organizations in Israel, including MachsomWatch, Bat Shalom and New Profile. Other active organizers include Anarchists Against the Wall, Gush Shalom, Hadash (the electoral alliance led by the Communist Party of Israel), High School Seniors draft refusers, Rabbis for Human Rights, University Student Coalition, and Yesh Gvul.

     Throughout November and into early December, peace groups in Israel will circulate flyers, stickers and posters, publish ads, and hold teach-ins with films, witnesses, journalists, and residents of Gaza. Vigils and demonstrations will be held at the offices of Prime Minister Olmert and selected Knesset members, and at the embassies of the European Union and other countries. A special Knesset conference will hear reports from Palestinians, human rights organizations, and journalists. There are plans for a mass rally on December 2 in Tel Aviv, combined with solidarity events around the world.

     Palestinians are currently experiencing what the World Bank calls the worst economic depression in modern history, as international sanctions devastate an already weakened economy.

     The Palestinian Authority (PA) is highly dependent on two sources of income. The first is annual aid package from Western donors of about $1 billion per year (in 2005, according to the World Bank, donors gave $1.3 billion in humanitarian and emergency, developmental and budgetary assistance, much of it now suspended). The second is a monthly transfer by Israel of $55 million in customs and tax revenues that it collects for the PA; this critical source of revenue is totally suspended. In fact, Israel is now withholding close to half a billion dollars in Palestinian revenue that is desperately needed in Gaza.

     The combined impact of the almost unabated closure and the ongoing economic boycott has resulted in unemployment that now approaches 40 percent in Gaza (compared to less than 12 percent in 1999). Palestinian workers from Gaza have not been allowed into Israel since March 12, 2006. The Karni crossing, through which commercial supplies enter Gaza, has been closed for much of this year, with estimated daily losses of over $500,000. Gaza's primary market and all entry and exit points have been virtually sealed since June 25, when Israel's latest military campaign in Gaza began. Compounding this are agricultural losses amounting to an estimated $1.2 billion for both Gaza and the West Bank over the last six years.

     By April 2006, 79 percent of Gazan households were living in poverty (compared to less than 30 percent in 2000), a figure that has since increased, driving many into hunger.

     In Israel's daily Ha'aretz newspaper on October 4, Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist living and working in the Occupied Territories, wrote the following:

     "These are the steps in the experiment: Imprison (since 1991); remove the prisoners' usual means of livelihood; seal off all outlets to the outside world, nearly hermetically; destroy existing means of livelihood by preventing the entry of raw materials and the marketing of goods and produce; prevent the regular entry of medicines and hospital supplies; do not bring in fresh food for weeks on end; prevent, for years, the entry of relatives, professionals, friends and others, and allow thousands of people - the sick, heads of families, professionals, children - to be stuck for weeks at the locked gates of the Gaza Strip's only entry/exit.

     "Steal hundreds of millions of dollars (customs and tax revenues collected by Israel that belong to the Palestinian treasury), so as to force the nonpayment of the already low salaries of most government employees for months; present the firing of homemade Qassam rockets as a strategic threat that can only be stopped by harming women, children and the old; fire on crowded residential neighbourhoods from the air and the ground; destroy orchards, groves and fields.

     "Dispatch planes to frighten the population with sonic booms; destroy the new power plant and force the residents of the closed-off Strip to live without electricity for most of the day for a period of four months, which will most likely turn into a full year - in other words, a year without refrigeration, electric fans, television, lights to study and read by; force them to get by without a regular supply of water, which is dependent on the electricity supply.

     "It is the good old Israeli experiment called `put them into a pressure cooker and see what happens,' and this is one of the reasons why this is not an internal Palestinian matter."

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"It is important that young people join our cause"

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What's Left

VANCOUVER, BC

Palestinian Film Series - Fridays at 7 pm, Palestine Community Centre, 1874 Kingsway, $5 students/seniors, $7 adults.

Nov. 17: A Caged Bird’s Song, My Very Private Map and Canadian premiere of Missing Gaza, with special guest director Sobhi al Zobaidi.

Gran Peña Comida - social to celebrate the Cuban Revolution, Sat., Nov. 25, doors at 6 pm, tickets $15, at Chilean Coop, 3390 School Ave. Slide show, performers, fish dinner and refreshments, presented by Peña Folklorica LatinoAmericana and Semana Cultural de Latino Soy.

StopWar.ca meetings - to plan anti-war actions, next at 5:30 pm, Nov. 22, Maritime Labour Centre, 111 Victoria Drive. See stopwar.ca for info.

"Medicare Works!" Town hall meeting - Wed., Nov. 15, 7 pm, AANZA Club, 3 West 8th Ave. (at Ontario St.). See article on page 4 for details

VDLC Labour Tour to China - report and slide show, Friday, Nov. 17, 7:30 pm, Maritime Labour Centre conference room, 1880 Triumph

Community Discussion on Migrant labour - Sat., Nov. 18, 1-4 pm, 451 Powell St., light lunch served, children welcome, English-Spanish translation. For information, contact no One Is Illegal, noii-van@resist.ca or 778-840-2009

Fundraising Dinner - Sunday, Nov. 26, 5:30 pm, for the Patrick Newton Memorial Scholarship at Bir Zeit University in Palestine, and to celebrate the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinians, admission $25, reserve in advance: call 604-676-3611.

BURLINGTON, ON

Protest Canada's #1 War profiteer - Mon., Nov. 20, 12 noon, at L-3 Wescam, 649 North Service Road. Gather 9:30 am for rally preparation, at East Plains United Church, 375 Plains Rd. E. Call 416-651-5800 or 905-525-9140 ext. 26026 for info or rides. Organized by Homes Not Bombs and others.

TORONTO, ON

Defending Medicare, Ontario Health Coalition forum - Friday, Dec. 1, 7 pm, St. Andrew’s Church (King and Simcoe Streets), with Maude Barlow, Naomi Klein, and Natalie Mehra. Info: 416-441-2502.

National Housing Day Car Rally - Wed., Nov. 22, 10:30 am, car rally to mark National Housing Day and the homelessness disaster, for location and other details email tdrc@tdrc.net.

Picket of Canada Pension Plan HQ - Wed., Dec. 13, 5-6 pm, 1 Queen Street East (at Yonge), to protest CPP investment in militarist and unethical corporations, contact ACT for the Earth, 647-438-7068.

MONTREAL, QC

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

OTTAWA, ON

Ottawa's First Annual March for TransEquality - Sun., Nov. 19, 2 pm, gather at Human Rights Monument (corner Elgin/Lisgar), march to Parliament Hill Eternal Flame.

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

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"Medicare Works!" Town hall meetings

Kingston, ON - Wed, Nov. 15, 7-9 pm, rm 201 Kingston Hall, Queens University.

Vancouver, BC - Wed., Nov. 15, 7 pm, at the ANZA Club, 3 West 8th Avenue, with Dr. Robert Wollard, Canadian Doctors for Medicare; Diana Gibson, Parkland Institute; Will McMartin, Tyee Columnist and political commentator.

Courtenay/Comox, BC - Thursday, Nov. 16, 7 pm, Florence Filberg Centre, Rotary Room 411 Anderton Street.

Cornwall, ON - Thursday, Nov. 16, 6:30-8:30 pm, Cornwall Library, 45 Second St. E.

Saskatoon, SK - Friday, Nov. 17, 7 pm, SaskTel Lecture Room in the Mall, Royal University Hospital.

Whitehorse, YUKON - Sat. Nov. 18, 7 pm, Whitehorse United Church, Main Street.

Ottawa, ON - Monday, Nov. 20, 7-9 pm, Ottawa Library, 120 Metcalfe St.

Sudbury, ON - Tuesday, Nov. 21, 7-9 pm, Finlandia Village Nursing Home, 233 4th Ave.

Sault Ste. Marie, ON - Wed., Nov. 22, 7-9 pm, Auditorium, Algoma University.

Thunder Bay, ON - Thursday, Nov. 23, 7-9 pm, Public Library Auditorium, 285 Red River Road.

Peterborough, ON - Thursday, Nov. 23, 7-9 pm, Evinrude Centre, 911 Monaghan Rd.

Kenora, ON - Sat., Nov. 25, 11:30 am-2:30 pm, Rotary Meeting Room, Recreational Centre, 200 5th St. South.

Sioux Lookout ON - Sunday, Nov. 26, Nishnawbe-Gamik Friendship Centre, 52 King St.

Brantford, ON - Monday, Nov. 27, 7-9 pm, Polish Alliance Hall, 126 Albion St.

St. Catharines, ON - Tuesday, Nov. 28, 7-9 pm, Russell Avenue Community Centre, 1008 Russell Ave.

Parry Sound, ON - Tuesday, Nov. 28, 7-9 pm, West Parry Sound District Museum, 18 George St.

London, ON - Wed., Nov. 29, 7-9 pm, Legion, Br. 263, 499 Hill St.

Kitchener, ON - Thursday, Nov. 30, 7-9 pm, Kitchener Public Library, 85 Queen St. N.

Toronto ON - Friday, Dec. 1, 7-9 pm, St. Andrew's Church, 73 Simcoe St. Featuring: Maude Barlow National Chairperson, Council of Canadians; Naomi Klein, journalist & author; Ana Gladys, El Salvadoran Solidarity; Natalie Mehra, Director, Ontario Health Coalition ($20 per ticket).

Hamilton, ON - Monday, Dec. 4, 7-9 pm, Lakelands Centre, 180 Van Wagner's Beach Rd.

Scarborough, ON - Tuesday, Dec. 5, 5-8 pm, Malvern Library, 30 Sewells Rd.

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Put the Communist Party on your holiday gift list

A donation to the Communist Party is the best gift you can give for Peace this holiday season.

The Communist Party is campaigning to stop the war in Iraq, to pull our forces out of Afghanistan and Haiti, and to win an independent Canadian foreign policy of peace and disarmament. We stand in solidarity with workers resisting the corporate attack on wages and working conditions, and with the crucial battle to defend Medicare.

You can help the CPC spread this message with a tax creditable donation, that will generate a tax rebate of 75% on the first $400 donated, a further 50% on the next $350, and another 33.3% on the next $550 donated.

Your donation of $400 will cost you just $100, because Revenue Canada will grant you a political tax credit of $300 when you file your taxes next spring.
Your donation of $750 will cost you $275, with a political tax credit of $475.
Your donation of $1000 will cost $441.65, with a political tax credit of $558.35.

Your donation can help extend the Communist Party's struggles for peace, jobs, democracy and sovereignty long after you've been reimbursed by Revenue Canada. Tax credits ensure that your donation will stretch to three times its face value!

Help us reach young workers and trade unionists, Aboriginal peoples, new Canadians, women, students and seniors, with the message that a better world is possible - and necessary!

Any donation, from $50 (costing you just $12.50) to $5,000 (costing you $3,108), will strengthen the Communist Party's campaigns for Peace, Progress and Socialism.

Send donations to: CPC, 290A Danforth Ave., Toronto, ON, M4K 1N6. For more information, call the Party's central office at 416-469-2446)

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Paris airport revokes access for Muslim workers

Unions have highlighted the case of Hassane Tariqui, a French citizen of Moroccan origin, who supervises cleaners inside passenger planes. Tariqui received a notice in September saying that his "attitude" and "personal behaviour" posed a risk to airport security. The notice did not elaborate further. Tariqui has been employed for 16 years and says he has not even been a devout Muslim, although he has made a pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Mecca.

The affected workers are all employees of contractors at the airport. Once they lose their security clearance, these workers are likely to lose their jobs as they will not have access to the security areas.

Some of the unions representing airport workers have threatened to go on strike over the issue of religious discrimination against Muslims. The action sprang from a book published by a French politician, Philippe de Villiers, who claimed that some of the living places of staff in the airport vicinity have secret prayer rooms. Unofficial prayer areas in the airport have since been closed down.

(EarthTimes. org)

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Lower wages for disabled Israelis

Israeli employers can now pay workers with disabilities as little as one-third of the minimum wage, based on their work ability. The new regulations, which took effect this month, were supposedly intended to encourage the employment of disabled people, but leaders of disabled groups are objecting to the changes.

''It's saying we're worth less than other people," said Yoav Krime, a disabled movement spokesperson. "There are also people without disabilities whose productivity is low yet nobody suggests reducing their minimum wage."

Approved by the Knesset four years ago, the regulations stipulate that a disabled person may ask the Industry, Trade and Employment Ministry for a permit to earn less than the legal minimum pay rates. The disabled person's pay would be determined according to work ability, and set at one-third, half, three-quarters or all of the minimum wage.

The companies that operate the program will be obliged to provide information about the workers' progress, and the ministry intends to add professional training to improve their earning ability. Occupational psychologists and occupational therapists will carry out the diagnoses at the work place. ''The program's opponents say it is easy to manipulate workers who are afraid to lose their jobs, particularly when there are so few jobs available for disabled people. The Israel Human Rights Center for Peoples With Disabilities, which supported the ordinances at the time, fears that employers will use the loophole in the minimum wage law. They promise to help workers who feel discriminated against, or whose employer forces them to ask for a lower rate.

(Haaretz newspaper)

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Labour movement continues to develop in China

By Scott Marshall, People's Weekly World Newspaper

The Communist Party of China has just ended its annual Central Committee meeting, vowing to rebuild and renew its public health system and other social safety nets. It also emphasized efforts to improve education and raise the living standards for workers while narrowing the income gap between city and countryside.

This is valuable context for considering the far-reaching new labour legislation now being debated in China. New labour laws will greatly enhance the power of unions to negotiate and enforce labour contracts, and significantly increase penalties and fines for companies not complying with Chinese labour law on wages, hours and working conditions.

New laws would also give workers added protections and rights in forming a union and make it harder for workers to be laid off or fired. Current Chinese labour law says that if even one worker in a workplace asks for a union then it must be recognized by the employer - somewhat stronger than the card check neutrality now being fought for by U.S. labour.)

The transnational corporations in China are howling. The New York Times reports, "Some of the world's big companies have expressed concern that the new rules would revive some aspects of socialism and borrow too heavily from labour law in union-friendly countries like France and Germany." The Times goes on to describe how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and big companies are "waging an intense lobbying campaign" to try to scuttle the law.

When the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China (CPC) began the process of "opening up" economically and allowing private foreign investment in the 1980s, they realized the process would bring with it problems. How to deal with these problems has been a constant debate in China all along.

As large transnationals opened operations, one key problem was how ill-prepared Chinese unions were to deal with large capitalist corporations. General Motors, Boeing, Wal-Mart, Kodak and many others came to China for cheap labour and a huge new market. In short, to reap extra profits.

Several years ago the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) began discussion about how best to respond and change in the face of these new employers whose main interest was giant profits, not the common good of society and the working class. Most of these foreign owned companies brought with them the usual capitalist hostility to labour unions and a bag of anti-worker tricks and practices to get around labour law.

Wal-Mart was the poster boy for such ruthless anti-union, anti-worker cutthroat policies. Wal-Mart celebrated 10 years in China this past August, 10 years of Wal-Mart making it clear that it did not intend to honor Chinese labour law. It took the ACFTU several years of intense struggle to force Wal-Mart to recognize and bargain with the union. This campaign included working closely with the CPC and local governments to protect Wal-Mart workers from retaliation and firings for union activity. Just this month the ACFTU announced victory, with unions recognized at all 62 Wal-Mart stores in China.

The ACFTU focused on Wal-Mart precisely because of its worldwide anti-union reputation. The new labour law and the campaign to organize Wal-Mart are two sides of the union federation's adjustment and change to better fight for workers.

From the CPC Central Committee meeting it seems clear that China is beginning to see raising the standards of living for workers as the beginning of a shift from export-driven economic growth to consumer- and domestic-driven growth. In other words, raising the living standards of workers raises the domestic demand for goods and services.

For the ACFTU this means not only strengthening the unions but also, given the profiteering nature of the capitalist transnationals, adopting more class struggle forms of unionism. This strategy will continue and develop. The ACFTU already notes that since the victory at Wal-Mart, new unions have been established at some 200 other foreign companies. Now the federation's strategy is to target foreign companies it considers to be the most anti-union. At the top of their list is Kodak, Dell and Taiwan's Foxconn Electronics. They plan to double the number of unions in foreign-owned companies by the end of the year.

This important shift in Chinese unions should also go a long way in opening doors with U.S. labour for building international solidarity against the transnationals.

(Scott Marshall is chair of the Labour Commission of the Communist Party USA.)

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Anti-Australian feeling bubbling in East Timor

From The Guardian, weekly newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia

While supposed "gang warfare" has flared again in Dili, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports that anti-Australian sentiments are growing on the streets.

One complaint is that Australia has refused to place its military forces under the control of the United Nations command, indicating that the Australian Government is attempting to push its own agenda aimed at interfering in the elections due to be held in the first part of 2007. The head of East Timor's armed forces, Brigadier-General Taur Matan Ruak, has called for an investigation into the role played by Australian forces over the last six months. Their presence has failed to resolve the crisis and in the last outbreak of violence as many as 10 people were killed and others wounded.

Brigadier-General Ruak who, for about 25 years, fought Indonesian occupation as the military leader of Falantil, reports that East Timor's armed forces, confined to barracks by the Australian forces, have "become prisoners in their own country". He claims that on two occasions he was stopped by Australian troops to check his credentials despite him having complete freedom of movement in Dili.

He claimed that Dili had become a "cowboy" city with several military commanders giving conflicting orders - one presumably the Australian forces and the other the UN commanded forces.

The present upsurge in the Dili conflict may well be a diversion from Brigadier General Ruak's call for an investigation, with its implication of interference and one-sidedness in Australia's conduct over the last six months, and his statement that the East Timorese armed forces holed up in their barracks might break-out to resume their duties.

The newly appointed commander of the Australian forces, Brigadier Mal Rerden, was quick to claim that there are no valid complaints against his soldiers and that the Australian forces have operated in a professional, neutral and impartial manner. He played down the anti-Australian feeling while claiming that it was being orchestrated by those who had their "own agenda".

Rerden's claims conform neatly with the campaign of lies and misinformation waged against the former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri by Australian government leaders and the media. The Australian forces may be "professional" but they are certainly not "neutral" or "impartial".

The UN investigation into the events in Dili earlier this year reported that there was no evidence of any criminal activity by Mari Alkatiri. The report's harshest reference is that he failed to use his authority to denounce the transfer of security sector weapons to civilians, a claim that is said to have been received by the UN Commission of inquiry and acknowledged as "credible information".

The report criticises President Xanada Guamao who showed little "respect for institutional channels" and did not act to restrain "Major Alfredo Reinado and the men who comprised his group and are reasonable suspected of having committed crimes against life and the person". Reinado deserted from the East Timorese army and formed the nucleus of the movement against Mari Alkatiri.

Behind the conspiracy and coup against Mari Alkatiri is the issue of oil and East Timor's international relations. Alkatiri stood up to Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer over the proportion of oil royalties due to East Timor.

The East Timor government is reported to have been considering building a pipeline with Chinese help, and invited 500 Cuban doctors to assist in building a health system where none existed before. There is also talk of Sinopec (Singapore) building an oil refinery in East Timor which cuts across the Australia/US and Japanese plans for an oil refinery in Darwin. These heretical ideas are the real reasons for the occupation of East Timor by Australian troops and the refusal to place them under UN command.

Lora Horta (the son of Ramos Horta) writing in Asia Times, said that "Alkatira has implemented foreign policy overtly confrontational to the West. His decision to hire nearly 500 Cuban doctors despite strong objections from the US Ambassador, was highly controversial. . ."

The real line-up of forces and the intentions of the Australian military are are revealed again in an article by John Pilger in the New Statesman. He writes that when the Australian contingent first arrived "an Australian brigadier flew by helicopter straight to the headquarters of the rebel leader, Major Alfredo Reinado - not to arrest him for attempting to overthrow a democratically elected Prime Minister but to greet him warmly. Like the other rebels, Reinado had been trained in Canberra."

To some extent the Australian government has succeeded not only in deposing Mari Alkatiri as the Prime minister but in having its own placeman, Ramos Horta, take over this position. Horta is at present making a visit to the Pope who he intends to invite to East Timor, no doubt, just in time to influence the outcome of next year's election. East Timor is a strongly Catholic country.

However, the East Timorese people stood up courageously against the Indonesian occupation and later took part in the UN supervised vote for independence, despite the terror imposed by the Indonesian military forces. They may not be so easily misled or come to tamely accept a new colonial occupation, the imposition of a foreign directed government or the seizure of the country's rich resources of oil and gas, which is the intention of the Australian, US and Japanese colonialists.

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International Campaign in Defence of Peace and Democracy in Iran

Joint statement by forty international Communist and Workers' Parties, initiated by the Tudeh Party of Iran. The Communist Party of Canada is among the signatories.

The threat of war and conflict is dominating life in the Middle East. The US, the EU and their NATO allies use war and military coercion as their main tools to subjugate their opponents.

The disagreements between the US administration and the Iranian regime over Iran's nuclear industry have masked a sharp deterioration in the situation of political freedoms and human rights in Iran.

We have noticed that in recent months as the tone of the US language towards Iran has become more hostile, the violations of human rights have intensified. The trade union movement has been attacked and a number of independent publications have been closed down, the student movement has been attacked and coerced, and leading intellectuals and personalities have been arrested.

We the undersigned parties and organizations condemn the US threats against Iran and declare our opposition to any interference in the internal affairs of Iran. We believe that the disputes between the two countries should be resolved diplomatically and on the basis of the UN Charter.

We call on the Iranian regime to respect the human and democratic rights of its citizens and abide by the UN conventions on human rights and its obligations under international treaties. We call for the release of all political prisoners.

We condemn the threat of war and declare our support for all efforts to promote peace and genuine disarmament in the Middle East.

Signed by:

Party of Democracy and Socialism - Algeria;
Communist Party of Austria;
Democratic Progressive Tribune - Bahrain;
National Liberation Front - Bahrain;
Communist Party of Bangladesh;
Communist Party of Belgium;
Workers Party of Belgium
Communist Party of Canada;
Communist Party of Catalonia;
Communist Party of Chile;
Communist Party of Colombia;
AKEL - Cyprus;
Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia - Czech Republic;
Communist Party in Denmark;
Communist Party of France;
Communist Party of Finland;
Communist Party of Germany;
Communist Party of Greece;
Communist Party of Ireland;
Party of Communists of Italy;
Communist Party of India;
Tudeh Party of Iran;
Communist Party of Iraq;
Communist Party of Israel;
Communist Party of Luxembourg;
Party of Communists of Mexico;
New Communist Party of Netherlands;
Communist Party of Norway;
Young Communist League of Norway
Communist Party of Poland;
Portuguese Communist Party;
Party of Independence and Labour - Senegal;
Communist Party of Spain;
Communist Party of Peoples of Spain;
Communist Party of Sudan;
Communist Party of Sweden;
Communist Party of Syria;
Attajdid Movement - Tunisia;
Communist Party of Turkey;
Communist Party USA.

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Readers should catch this fire

Catch a Fire, starring Tim Robbins and Derek Luke, directed by Philip Noyce
Film Review by Mauricio Martinez

The meaning of the title Catch The Fire isn't immediately apparent; the phrase is never mentioned in the movie. But the idea harkens back to an old metaphor for rebellion - the ancient Greek legend of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to the mortals.

In his doctoral thesis, Karl Marx quotes Prometheus, who said "'tis better to be chained to a rock than bound to the service of Zeus," and called him "the noblest of saints and martyrs in the calendar of philosophy."

The English poet William Blake, writing in the late eighteenth century, and inspired by the Maroons of Jamaica and Suriname who fought a guerrilla war in the jungle against the plantation owners, referenced Prometheus in his poem Tyger Tyger:

"Tyger Tyger, burning bright/
In the forests of the night,
On what wings dare he aspire?/
What the hand, dare seize the fire?"

The more immediate reference, however, is to the album Catch a Fire, by Bob Marley and the Wailers. The song "Slave Driver" features this lyric:

"Oh slave driver, the table is turn (catch a fire)/
Catch a fire, so you can get burn."

This thriller, set in Apartheid-era South Africa, follows Nic Vos (played by Tim Robbins), an Afrikaner policeman and head of an anti-terrorism squad, and Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke), a young worker accused of planting a bomb in the mine where he works.

The two men, although on opposite sides of the colour-line, seem at first to be quite similar. Both are family men, both do as they are told, and both seem to have an interest in maintaining the status quo: Nic, because he if white, and Patrick, because he has managed to do well under the current conditions as a foreman.

But after Patrick is falsely accused of an attack at the mine, he, his friends, and his wife are imprisoned and tortured for something none of them had anything to do with. Patrick decides to go underground to fight the Apartheid system. He goes to Mozambique to train with the African National Congress, becoming exactly the person Vos had originally accused him of being.

The screenplay was written by Shawn Slovo (Captain Correlli's Mandolin), the daughter of the late South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, to whom the film is also dedicated. Slovo figures as a character in the film, as a tough, no-nonsense leader who helps Patrick plan an attack on the very mine where he used to work.

Catch a Fire does an excellent job of giving the viewer the look and feel of its place and time, from the picture of Castro on the wall of the ANC headquarters, to the spliced documentary footage and Bob Marley on the radio. In every place and every moment, from the men's home lives to the prisons, training camps and interrogation rooms, you get the feeling of a country experiencing a real civil war. Vox and the South African security apparatus follow Patrick's every move, manipulating his friends and family to turn on him, closing in ever more tightly on his movements. Yet we sense that even if Patrick fails, his cause will ultimately win, because Vox and his associates create what they are fighting against.

You should certainly catch this fire, because if you look closely, you can see why, in Nelson Mandela's words, "there are many Africans who, today, tend to equate freedom with Communism."

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Oaxaca bleeds, but does not give up

By Emile Schepers, People's Weekly World newspaper

On Oct. 29, the rightist lame duck president of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quezada, sent in 4,000 Federal Protective Police armed with tanks, helicopters, water cannons and high powered rifles to clear the southern city of Oaxaca (population about 275,000) of the protesters who have held it since May.

The state of Oaxaca is one of the poorest in Mexico and is getting poorer. Teachers are badly underpaid and have carried out actions demanding pay hikes for several successive years. This year, when the teacher protests started in May, the state governor, Ulisis Ruiz Ortiz of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), sent in armed police to dislodge the protesters instead of negotiating, leading to the injury of many protesters.

Ruiz is a typical old-style PRI political boss widely suspected of corruption, including rigging elections, springing his own brother, accused of drug crimes, from jail, and diverting state government funds to help the electoral campaign of this year’s PRI presidential candidate. Even worse, there are accusations that his thugs have murdered political opponents in several parts of Oaxaca state.

So the dislodgement of the protesters in the spring caused the cup of popular anger with Ruiz to run over. Numerous labor, indigenous, community and social action groups, integrated into APPO, the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, added their demands to those of the teachers, as well as now demanding that Ruiz resign or be removed.

APPO forces set up barricades in Oaxaca city, disrupting tourism. APPO began to receive support from all quarters of Mexico, including “The Other Campaign” of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, which consists of an extra-electoral national campaign against the neoliberal policies of the Fox government.

After the presidential elections in July, there were massive protests in Mexico City and elsewhere against the rigging of the elections by the Fox government and the right (including Fox’s National Action Party, PAN, and the formerly ruling PRI). As the Oaxaca face-off continued, and with reports of the killing of more than a dozen APPO supporters during the summer, tensions mounted, as did national support for APPO.

On Oct. 26, Fox’s interior secretary, Carlos Abascal, appeared to have negotiated an agreement with the teachers, giving them most of what they demanded in exchange for returning to class this week. Yet the next day APPO supporters manning barricades were assaulted by a group of 200 PRI thugs, who opened fire and killed at least three people, including a New York Indymedia reporter, Brad Will. So the struggle at the barricades continued, and the teachers did not return to class.

For the last several weeks, there were fears of federal intervention, fears that materialized on Oct. 29. The Federal Protective Police has a bad reputation for repressive activities in other parts of Mexico. Though some thought the police force might just interpose itself between the APPO and PRI forces, all such hopes were quickly dashed. It became clear that the police mandate was to clear away the demonstrators and their barricades and return the city to “normalcy and order.”

APPO supporters knew they could not engage in armed struggle with the heavily armed police (one slogan was “We can’t deal with their weapons, but they can’t deal with our ideas”). Yet civil disobedience continued, with shoving matches between protesters and police, and the possible deaths of several more protesters.

At least 50 APPO activists have been arrested. The main square, or Zocalo, of Oaxaca city was cleared, and protesters retreated to the university campus where they continued to control the radio broadcasts for a while. As of writing, the police control public spaces in Oaxaca but APPO protests are still going on in a mobile form.

Support for APPO is being organized all over Mexico by the Party of the Mexican Communists, the Zapatistas and other groups. Protests are being organized against Mexican consulates all over the United States. Belatedly, the Mexican Senate has asked Ruiz to reconsider an earlier refusal to resign. This resolution was supported by even some of Ruiz’s fellow PRI members.

The protests will continue and spread, because they arise from the fact that the neoliberal development model pushed by Fox and his PRI predecessors has caused the continuing impoverishment of the mass of the Mexican people, who have their backs to the wall.

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November 16-30, 2006 Volume 14 - Number 20 $1

November 16-30, 2006
Volume 14 - Number 20
$1