Articles by dave

By Ava McDougall*
Briarpatch Magazine
August 2008

*Author’s note: With the exception of Jason Devine and Bonnie Collins, all anti-racist activists quoted in this article have been given pseudonyms. The writer’s name has also been changed. The reason for this should be obvious: neo-Nazis are dangerous, and those who organize to stop them put themselves at risk.

Even more dangerous than neo-Nazis, though, is the prospect that the actions of a few extremists could distract attention from the systemic discrimination and violence that indigenous peoples, people of colour and queer people (to name just a few of our society’s marginalized groups) encounter every day.

Blatant racism may infuriate or disgust us, but so too should elevated rates of poverty, violence, and poor health among members of oppressed groups-the real-world consequences of systemic racism and discrimination. Neo-Nazi organizing in our communities demands our attention, but so do these more subtle but far more widespread manifestations of racism.

Jason Devine and his fiancée Bonnie Collins live with their four sons, ages three to nine, in a cluttered townhouse on a quiet side street in Calgary. Both Devine and Collins are active members of the Communist Party of Canada and Anti-Racist Action (Calgary). On February 12, 2008, while the boys slept upstairs, Devine heard a crash and saw a flash outside his kitchen window. He knew immediately that someone had thrown a firebomb at his house.

Luckily, the Molotov cocktail was poorly constructed and most of the gas burned up in the air between the back fence and the corner of the wall it struck. No one was hurt and property damage was minimal, but the message was clear, at least to Devine and Collins. Their anti-racist organizing had drawn the ire of local racist skinheads.

According to media reports at the time, the police suspected neo-Nazis in both this and another firebombing that occurred earlier the same day in another part of Calgary. Though no one has yet been charged, Devine is convinced the attack was undertaken by members of the Aryan Guard, a white supremacist group that had recently set up in Calgary.

To Devine, the only surprise about the attack was that it was so long in coming. “I’ve been waiting for it since Western Canada For Us.”

Western Canada For Us (2004)

Founded in 2004 by Glenn Bahr and Peter Kouba, Western Canada For Us was an Alberta-based group founded on the ideology of white nationalism, which the white nationalist website Stormfront defines as “protecting” white people from being “snubbed” by “burdensome racial preference schemes in hiring, racial preference schemes in university admissions, racial preference schemes in government contracting and small business loans.” White nationalists commonly place blame for any social ills (crime, unemployment, poverty) on non-whites. They blame Jewish conspiracies for controlling government, the media and educational institutions, and they are also generally disdainful of queer people, people with disabilities, and leftists. While they claim to be “proud, not prejudiced,” posts made by Bahr to online forums make this assertion hard to believe: according to Bahr, First Nations people are “vermin” and all homosexuals’ lives should be “terminated.”

Western Canada For Us was very active during the few months it existed. Between January and May 2004, members organized a meeting in Red Deer, which was attended by notable neo-Nazis Paul Fromm and Melissa Guille. They also held a rally in support of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel and operated a popular website and forum. However, all was not well within the organization. Power struggles split the group and Bahr became the target of an aggressive campaign initiated by Anti-Racist Action (Calgary). After being exposed as a neo-Nazi to his neighbours and employers in early March, 2004, Bahr lost his apartment and job in Red Deer and moved to Edmonton. In May 2004, police raided his home and seized numerous items bearing Nazi symbols, including two computers that were hosting the Western Canada For Us website. This seizure effectively dissolved the group, after which Bahr moved back to his parents’ home in Langley, B.C., to await his 2005 trial for promoting hatred and a 2006 appearance before the Canadian Human Rights Commission. This commission found Bahr and Western Canada For Us guilty of violating the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibition against distributing hate propaganda through the Internet. Each was fined $5,000 and ordered to cease the discriminatory practice.

Because Devine was the public spokesperson for Anti-Racist Action (Calgary) and was named as the group’s “leader” on white nationalist websites (even though Anti-Racist Action is non-hierarchical), he was an obvious target. Anti-Racist Action (Calgary) had not only cost Bahr his home, livelihood and freedom, but had also shut down a white supremacist group that seemed to be gaining ground. Devine’s name and image were familiar to racist organizers, so it was a fearful time for him. “I’d wear my winter coat in the summer with the hood pulled up. The cops would look at me weird, but whatever. I didn’t want [the racists] to recognize me and follow me home.”

After the dissolution of Western Canada For Us, things got pretty quiet-at least until late 2006. That’s when the Aryan Guard marched into town.

“The rally was met with fierce resistance, with approximately 200 anti-racist demonstrators pursuing a few dozen Aryan Guard members and supporters through downtown Calgary.”

The Aryan Guard (2006-present)

Living in Kitchener, Ontario, Aryan Guard founder Kyle McKee and his roommate Nathan Touchette gained notoriety by flying a Nazi flag outside of their apartment. In April 2005, upon hearing the two men were interested in moving to Alberta to take advantage of the hot economy and labour shortage, Calgary mayor Dave Bronconnier told them to “stay home.” They didn’t.

The Aryan Guard formed as a group in late 2006, primarily recruiting and organizing via the Internet. Founders McKee and Dallas Price put out calls to fellow Calgarians on white nationalist websites like Stormfront and held their first meeting on March 21, 2007, a date widely known as the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that has also been declared “White Pride World Wide Day” by white supremacists. The next time the group came together was April 20, 2007, when they celebrated Hitler’s birthday with dinner, drinks and a swastika-shaped birthday cake.

Since then, members of the Aryan Guard have put up posters, handed out leaflets and responded to anti-racist rallies with their own protests. They hold regular meetings and continue to use the Internet to recruit and organize. Their numbers, judging by public appearances, have grown from approximately 15 in October 2007 to 40 in March 2008. The Aryan Guard uniform-shaved heads, jackboots, tattoos, swastika and SS T-shirts-is becoming a fairly common sight around Calgary.

“A year ago, it would be rare to see these neo-Nazis walking around,” says “Bernard,” an anti-racist activist from Calgary. “Now you can find them on buses and trains, in parks and at bars. They’re all over the place now and their numbers are growing.”

The Aryan Guard organized their first public protest in August 2007 as a counter-protest to an anti-racist march. Since then, they have organized a demonstration against Muslim women’s right to wear head coverings when voting and a “White Pride World Wide” rally in March 2008. The rally was met with fierce resistance, with approximately 200 anti-racist demonstrators pursuing a few dozen Aryan Guard members and supporters through downtown Calgary. Heavy police presence ensured that the confrontation didn’t escalate beyond a heated screaming match.

The Aryan Guard’s mandate is based on the “14 words,” a phrase coined by David Lane in the 1980s while he was serving a 190-year sentence for racketeering, conspiracy and the 1984 murder of journalist Alan Berg. The “14 words” read “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” The group claims to be family-oriented and opposed to violence and illegal activities. They say that they are “White Pride,” not “White Power.”

Anti-racists don’t buy it, though. “White Pride is clearly and solely a euphemism for hatred,” Devine says. Their website “is completely disingenuous. They say they’re non-violent, but they pose with weapons. These people have violent tendencies, at the very least.”

Bernard agrees. “I would classify them as racist terrorists. They use fear tactics to spread their political beliefs.”

If videos posted on the Anti-Racist Canada blog are any indication of the kind of non-violent family values the Aryan Guard espouses, Devine and Bernard have a right to be skeptical. In a profanity-laced diatribe, Aryan Guard member Jason Harley explains that multiculturalism is like putting a red sock “representing the communists” and a blue sock “representing the Jews” into a washing machine with a white load of laundry. “Everything turns fucking fruity and purple and fucking gay. Fucking retarded. There you go. Fucking white supremacy.” In another video, two Aryan Guard members fight bare-chested in the snow on a quiet residential street.

“”It had never happened before that people were being jumped for the colour of their skin. I pretty much stopped going downtown. It didn’t feel like my hometown anymore.”

The Final Solution (1989-92)

Intimidation and violence by racists is nothing new to Alberta. The province has a history with the Ku Klux Klan that dates back to the 1920s. Neo-Nazi skinheads, their rhetoric and their uniforms are not new, either.

Between 1989 and 1992, a group of skinheads calling itself the Final Solution (referring to the Nazi plan to exterminate the European Jewish population during World War II) moved into Edmonton and brought with it a culture of fear and violence.

“They seemed to appear overnight,” says “James,” a former member of the Anti-Fascist League, which was active in combatting the spread of racist propaganda and violence at the time. “A couple of them landed in Edmonton and next thing you knew there were 15 to 20.”

“They were quiet at first,” he adds. “I think they came to Edmonton because there was no history [of skinhead activity] here and they were getting run out of other towns. I think they probably told themselves that no one was paying attention so they didn’t want to fuck it up. But you get a few drinks in them and they’re a pack of rabid wolves. If they were out drinking and someone of a different colour looked at them the wrong way, that was it.”

According to James, once Daniel Sims arrived in town and Terry Long started funding the group sometime in 1989, it became a movement. They began actively recruiting, organizing and distributing propaganda. Sims and Long are infamous in white supremacist and anti-racist circles alike. Sims was one of two neo-Nazi skinheads who brutally attacked journalist Keith Rutherford on his doorstep in 1990, leaving him blinded in one eye, while Long was the leader of the Aryan Nations in Canada and a father figure to many young skinheads, allegedly providing money, training and literature for their membership drives and campaigns. Long was brought before the Alberta Human Rights Commission in 1991. When served with a notice of claim on behalf of Rutherford, he skipped the province and went into hiding-first in California, then in B.C.

“One thing that’s important is how it changed the city,” James says. “It had never happened before that people were being jumped for the colour of their skin. I pretty much stopped going downtown. It didn’t feel like my hometown anymore. I had never felt unsafe before, but it really split the community.”

In an effort to clear their city, anti-racist organizers launched a three-pronged campaign. According to “Jean-Claude,” a long-time anti-racist activist, “We had three main focuses. One, know as much as possible about them. Two, make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. Three, target substitution.”

The tactics Jean-Claude refers to have been used by Anti-Racist Action organizers since the early 1980s. Using the information they’ve gathered, anti-racist organizers let the leaders’ co-workers, schoolmates, neighbours and friends know about the person’s racist beliefs and activities through posters, flyers and phone calls. Then they try to make themselves the focal point of the group’s frustration. As Jean-Claude puts it, “get the racists focused on us instead of random taxi drivers.”

“Back then, you could find out whose name was on, say, the phone bill,” says James, referring to the days before PINs and security questions. “You could phone EdTel and say you were so-and-so and you were moving to Vancouver tomorrow so could they cut off your phone service-and EdTel would.”

The climax of the campaign happened in the summer of 1990 when about 50 anti-racists gathered in downtown Edmonton to blanket the city centre with posters. Within a few minutes, however, police seized their supplies. So they got on their walkie-talkies and decided to gather again.

“We were standing around wondering what to do,” says James. We had all these people and we were all riled up. Then someone said, ‘Let’s go to their house!’ So, we appointed a couple of spokespeople, gave everyone else instructions not to shout or say anything, and went over” to a popular white supremacist hangout known as the “Skin Bin,” the downtown home of several Final Solution skinheads.

According to James, the anti-racists gathered on the sidewalk while the neo-Nazi skinheads levelled shotguns and made it very clear what would happen if the anti-racists set foot on their property. The spokespeople and neo-Nazis argued, but James said it was a calm exchange. In the end, the anti-racists’ main point was made. Racists weren’t at all welcome in Edmonton.

“It took about a year,” says James. “When they did leave, though, they left pretty quick. They must have realized that they could get their asses kicked to Vancouver and back. Between that and their electricity, water and phone being cut off, I think they were getting uncomfortable.”

“‘We had three main focuses. One, know as much as possible about them. Two, make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. Three, target substitution.’

The shelf life of a neo-Nazi

It’s widely agreed that most neo-Nazi skinheads are youth. Even the most cursory investigation of the membership of groups like the Aryan Guard and its predecessors supports this perception. McKee, for instance, is 23 years old. Most other Aryan Guard members and supporters are under 30.

“A lot of them were from less-than-ideal situations,” says James, referring to the Final Solution skinheads he encountered. “They were introduced by kids their own age, but groomed by older men-father figures who were drastically missing from their lives.”

Jean-Claude is quick to point out that perhaps the reason that most of the members of the Aryan Guard are so young is that “the average ‘shelf life’ of a neo-Nazi is one to three years.”

“Harry,” who was heavily involved in the punk and skinhead scene during the Final Solution era and friendly with many of the skinheads, agrees. “The ones who were really hard into it either moved away or were thrown into jail.”

Daniel Sims is perhaps a perfect example. Once the most prominent Final Solution skinhead and, according to James, “one of the few who scared me because he was a lifer,” Sims has spent several years in prison in both Canada and the U.S. Sims has recently disavowed his involvement with neo-Nazi skinheads in television and magazine interviews.

As Sims puts it, “they put themselves on the fringes of society by choice.” This isolation from the mainstream coupled with aggressive anti-racist campaigns seems to cause young recruits to eventually burn out or bow out, particularly when key members are imprisoned or forced to move due to hostile conditions.

What‘s next?

Since the March 21, 2008, rally, the Aryan Guard has been fairly quiet, but members are still active on Stormfront and there has been talk of creating an Edmonton branch of the Aryan Guard. Meanwhile, anti-racists across Alberta are putting their heads together on how to drive the new crop of white supremacists out of their province. They are exchanging information and keeping each other abreast of developments in their respective cities.

“Leaving them alone is not an option,” says Devine. “We can’t just sit around and wait for the police, because essentially the police’s hands are tied. It’s not a crime to hate Jews or Blacks or whatever. Until you say ‘Jews are all evil and need to be killed,’ it’s not a hate crime. Until they break the law, it’s our job to alert the community.”

“We show up to let them know that we’re watching them and that the community doesn’t have to be afraid,” he says.

Devine’s community isn’t alone. Cities across Canada, in fact, are affected by white supremacist groups. Saskatchewan is home to the Brotherhood of the Klan and the Saskatchewan Aryan Nations. Ontario has the Canadian Heritage Alliance and the Northern Alliance. Stormfront members come from every corner of the country. Members of these groups know each other, attend each other’s events and move from city to city. Calgary is just the most recent gathering place, largely due to economic and political conditions.

“Alberta is generally pretty right-wing,” says Bernard. “On top of that, there’s the boom, so it makes it a hotbed for anyone trying to make money, which includes neo-Nazis.”

If anti-racists have their way, though, the neo-Nazis won’t stay in Alberta for long. Unfortunately, that means they may soon be attempting to regroup in your community. Anti-racist activists believe that if you maintain a vigilant anti-racist stance, they won’t stay for long.

Ava McDougall is a freelance writer and activist based in Alberta. She has several publication credits under her real name, but this is her first-and hopefully last-published under this pseudonym. Due to personal safety concerns, that’s all the information she’s willing to provide.

This is very frightening. On a related note, Canada Post is set to formally withdraw from the Publications Assistance Program (a key support for small media like Briarpatch) in April 2009, and plans to introduce “distance-related pricing” (meaning it will cost us more to send a magazine to Halifax or Toronto than to Saskatoon) in January. The detrimental impact of such changes on the diversity of Canada’s already sparse media environment cannot be overstated. Please take whatever actions you deem appropriate.
-DOM

High-stakes secret review of Canada Post

by Denis Lemelin
Rabble.ca
July 7, 2008

“The fact that the government is not holding public hearings and is proceeding at a breakneck pace with its review suggests that it is not really interested in hearing from the real owners and stakeholders of our post office – the public.”

Over the next few months, our Conservative federal government is conducting a review that will determine the future of universal, public postal service in our country. This review is pretty much a secret review, and it could be bad news for good people.

The government’s review will look at three very basic and important questions: What postal services should people receive? Who should provide them? And should Canada Post continue to have an exclusive privilege to handle addressed letters, or should the letter market be open to competition?

Anyone who thinks that a little competition never hurt anyone might want to take a closer look at how our postal system actually works. Canada Post has an exclusive privilege to handle letters so that it is able to generate enough money to provide affordable postal service to everyone, no matter where they live.

While the exclusive privilege isn’t often discussed, most people seem to like what it does. In fact, 91 per cent of respondents to an Angus Reid poll said universal postal service at a uniform rate is one of the really great things about Canada Post.

Unfortunately, our popular and egalitarian one-price-goes-anywhere service could disappear. If the government decides to eliminate our post office’s exclusive privilege as a result of its review, Canada Post would almost certainly face a downward spiral. Private sector competitors would focus on profitable areas and services, leaving unprofitable parts to our public post office. With fewer profits, Canada Post would find it increasingly difficult – and eventually impossible - to provide uniform and affordable service, especially in rural and remote parts of the county.

Even though the Conservative government’s review could change the very nature of our postal system, the Tories are not planning on holding public hearings or doing much to publicize their examination of Canada Post. They have issued a media release asking for submissions by September 2, 2008. Their advisory panel is contacting “major stakeholders.”

The fact that the government is not holding public hearings and is proceeding at a breakneck pace with its review suggests that it is not really interested in hearing from the real owners and stakeholders of our post office – the public.

It is also disturbing that the chair of the review has written a book, entitled The Politics of Postal Transformation, that recommends that the federal government eliminate the exclusive privilege. Aside from the obvious, it is disturbing because the few countries that have fully removed their post office’s exclusive privilege or monopoly on letters have suffered. They now have fewer jobs, less service and higher postal rates for people and small businesses.

As is, our basic postage rate currently ranks as one of the lowest in the industrial world. Letter mail is secure, cheap, on time 96.1 per cent of the time and delivered to everyone at a single price. In a recent national poll, Canada Post surpassed the CBC and the Supreme Court as the most trusted federal institution in Canada.

This is not to say that our post office is perfect. But it is worth noting that it will be difficult for Canada Post to improve service if the government eliminates the mechanism that funds public postal service – the exclusive privilege.

If you like your secure, trusted, affordable and universal postal service and think the federal government is trying to fix something that isn’t broken, contact the Canada Post Strategic Review at 330 Sparks Street Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0N5, and speak your mind by September 2, 2008.

You might want to express concerns about post office closures. Last time the Conservatives were in office, they closed about 1,500 rural post offices before being stopped by public outrage and an election defeat. Don’t forget to mention that a speedy review without public hearings is hardly a democratic way to decide the fate of our publicly owned post office.

Denis Lemelin is the president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

By Mike Krebs
Socialist Voice
June 29, 2008

Mike Krebs is an Indigenous activist in Vancouver and a contributing editor of Socialist Voice. Related Reading: Roots and Revolutionary Dynamics of Indigenous Struggles in Canada

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.” -Duncan Campbell Scott, head of the Department of Indian Affairs and founder of the residential school system, 1920

On June 11, 2008, Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada and leader of the Conservative Party, issued an “apology” for the residential school system that over 150,000 Indigenous children were forced through. The hype before and after the statement was enormous, with extensive coverage in all major media.

This event had a strong emotional and psychological impact on Indigenous survivors of residential schools all across Canada, who suffered attempted forced assimilation as well as countless acts of violence, rape, and abuse. Descendents of those subjected to this system were equally affected. People packed into community halls and similar venues on June 11 for what was bound to be an emotionally triggering day for survivors, regardless of their view towards the meaning of the “apology.” Some survivors reportedly felt that the statement was a step forward, while many were highly critical.

In trying to understand the responses of Indigenous people across Canada to this “apology,” it is first important to address what it did not do. It must be judged in terms of the ability of Indigenous people to move forward in the process of true healing, not just from the effects of the residential school system, but from the entire process of Canadian colonialism. In this framework, the deficiencies of the “apology” are much greater than any positive impact it could have.

A crime of genocide

“I don’t want to hear it. You know, you might as well send the janitor up to apologize…if it’s just empty words or a nicely written text.” - Michael Cachagee, survivor of Shingwauk Indian Residential School[1]

If there is one thing that Mr. Harper’s “apology” provided that could be considered groundbreaking or new, it’s the idea that there can be crimes without criminals.

You would think offering an “apology” means taking some sort of accountability for the residential school system. But Harper’s statement acknowledges that what happened is a “mistake” without dealing with it as a crime, and without any sense of any individual accountability for it. It views the residential school system as only a mistake.

No discussion of the residential school system can be meaningful without acknowledging that this was an act of genocide. For those who value the importance of international law and the United Nations convention of genocide, let’s look at the UN definition itself as outlined in the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1948″:

“Article 2. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Arguably all five of these criteria apply to the residential school system and other aspects of the Canadian government’s colonization of Indigenous people. And there can be no argument that parts (b) and (e) apply, as a number of Indigenous writers have pointed out.[2] It is important to note that guilt for this crime lies not only with the individuals who committed specific crimes against Indigenous people (i.e. sexual assault, physical violence, forced removal), but also with those who enacted the entire policy.

So even though Harper apologized for the residential schools as a “system,” it doesn’t absolve individuals who participated in the numerous criminal acts they committed. Yet, that is what Harper’s statement attempts to do by apologizing on behalf of “all Canadians,” deceptively hiding behind the false logic that “nobody is guilty if everyone is.”

This is similar to some of the ideas discussed by Cherokee activist and academic Andrea Smith in Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Smith uses Carol Adam’s concept of the “absent referent” in exploring various aspects of sexual violence against Indigenous women, as well as how this concept recurs throughout Western society, mythology, and history. One example is that of the “battered” woman, which makes women “the inherent victims of battering. The batterer is rendered invisible and thus the absent referent”.[3]

A similar tool of deception is at work in not only the “apology,” but the entire approach of the Canadian government in its “solutions” to the residential school issue. Aside from notorious cases like that of the Archbishop Hubert O’Connor,[4] and others who can be easily tarred as “bad people who did bad things,” in Harper’s statement the perpetrator of the crimes against residential school survivors has no tangible face, almost no concrete existence.

FULL ARTICLE

“Canada’s negative productivity growth under the Harper government has its roots in a deeper, longer-term trend: our emerging role as resource supplier to other, more advanced economies, and the abandonment by policy-makers of the pro-active tools that (until 1984) helped us boost productivity and diversify our economy.”
-Jim Stanford

“Over the past decade, union organizing in Canada has fallen off the map. The organizing of new union members has hit record fifty-year lows of 40,000 or so in over the past few years, less than a third of what is required if unions even want to tread water and keep up with employment growth. As a result, today only fifteen percent of those in private sector across Canada have union representation and protection. And with fewer members, there are of course, fewer resources for organizing.”
-John Peters

Briarpatch Magazine invites contributions to our November 2008 issue on the state of the Canadian labour movement. We are looking for feature articles, provocative essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, reviews, interviews, profiles, poetry, humour, and artwork that explores the issues surrounding the efforts of working people to gain and maintain some modicum of control over their lives, and their struggles for secure work and work with dignity.

Possible topics could include (but are by no means limited to):

• migrant workers in the tar sands;
• organizing the service sector;
• prospects for Canada’s manufacturing industry;
• “hewers of wood, drawers of water once more?”: labour rights and the resource boom;
• the Saskatchewan government’s attack on workers’ rights;
• the labour movement and the environment;
• international solidarity campaigns;
• the Canada/Colombia free trade agreement;
• John Cartwright’s “Action Agenda”;
• the labour movement and party politics;
• change and renewal within labour movement structures.

Queries are due by July 15, 2008. If your query is accepted; first drafts are due by August 15, 2008. Your query should outline what ground your contribution will cover, give an estimated word count, and indicate your relevant experience or background in writing about the issue. Please provide a brief writing sample.

Please review our submission guidelines before submitting. Send your queries/submissions to editor AT briarpatchmagazine DOT com.

We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active involvement), and cannot guarantee publication. We pay for the articles we publish, but not well.

By John Peters
Socialist Project
E-Bulletin No. 114
June 17, 2008

There is always something unsettling about people who say one thing and do another. There is for one thing the hypocrisy. Then, there is the uncertainty.

It only takes a few disappointments to sow the seeds of doubt about whether you can ever trust a person’s judgement again or whether you can ever expect them to fulfill their responsibilities in the future.

These problems become even greater when those in leadership positions engage in such ’shambolic’ efforts that involve saying much and doing little, while rejecting all criticism. Couple this with trying to shut down any hints of debate or questioning of decisions or strategies, and what you end up with is a sort of variation on the ‘Emperor has no clothes’ fable.

All these problems were very much in evidence at the recent Canadian Labour Congress Convention in Toronto (May 26-30, 2008) and all of these problems raise serious red flags about the state of the Canadian labour movement today. But in a variation of the story, there was something even more staged and more malevolent about the Congress - more an event of the ‘Leader has no clothes, but I dare anyone to say anything about it.’

Even though there were many good resolutions dealing with renewing organizing, fighting privatization, establishing a national pharmacare program, and protecting and renewing good, unionized manufacturing jobs, there was very little to suggest that the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) would play any effective role in pushing these policies forward.

Many of the final CLC resolutions suggested nothing more than future meetings with union staff to discuss options. Others only broached the importance of raising issues. Few detailed how a campaign would actually be launched. None made the promise that any money would be devoted to these causes.

Even more worrisome was that in the floor debates, there was a good deal of evidence that the CLC and many in leadership positions were more interested in trying to shut down discussion and shut down the kind of activism necessary to move progressive ideas forward, rather than trying to stir passions, raise public awareness, and mobilize workers across Canada.

The Canadian Labour Congress - Yesterday and Today

Outside of organized labour, the Canadian Labour Congress is a generally unknown entity to most Canadians. Established in 1956, its basic functions were to operate as a central public communication body for labour, lobby government behind the scenes, conduct research, and help educate workers in local and provincial labour councils across Canada.

The CLC was also established as the key fundraising arm and supporter for the NDP, something it continued to do until 2003, when federal financing laws cut at labour donations, while leaving large loopholes for corporate donations through individual and diffuse political action committees.

The CLC had a number of useful secondary functions. Among the most effective was organizing new members where it was most difficult to do so and where unions had less influence. Also important was the role the CLC played in the mid-1970s helping coordinate and organize a national general strike against wage and price controls, as well as strikes against inadequate economic policy and draconian public sector legislation.

Today, the CLC is a much more circumscribed organization, and it has more often than not accommodated to liberal market political reforms instead of actively trying to change them for the better.

The CLC no longer organizes workers, nor does it provide financing or political direction for union members across the country. Over the past ten years, under the leadership of Ken Georgetti, public campaigns have taken a backseat to attempts at lobbying parliamentary committees and house members to change a select few pieces of legislation. Attempts at organizing national strikes or national demonstrations have all but vanished.

To its credit, many of the CLC’s researchers do produce some of the best material on labour markets and economics around. But little of this material makes its way to members, and to the general public. It is almost wholly invisible.

‘Unions Now More than Ever?’

These changes have not been for the better, and it showed at the most recent convention in Toronto.

Ostensibly organized around the theme, ‘Unions! Now More than Ever!,’ on major debates, national union leaders were often missing. On other issues like national pharmacare or workers’ centres for agricultural workers, leaders and staff alike were busier with their Blackberries than with the events unfolding on the convention floor. Throughout the entire convention, most staff complained miserably that the congress was a complete waste of time, and left at the earliest possible time or for any modestly convenient reason.

The CLC also made nothing more than a blip in Canada’s biggest media market over an entire week - a mention in the National Post no less that Ken Georgetti was re-elected as president. This is more than a bit odd for a central labour body that claims to represent some three million unionized workers across Canada, with annual revenues of twenty million and a good-sized staff, and more than a few employed in communications and media relations.

Even more troubling were the actions of the three-time incumbent CLC President Ken Georgetti, who again ran uncontested for the president’s job. Whenever the debate took a turn Georgetti disliked, the speaker’s microphone was cut off. Whenever attempts were made to amend resolutions, he conveniently forgot all procedures for doing so. Whenever, questions began to be raised, he would move to cut off debate. Georgetti acted more like a leader under threat of an unseen conspiracy than the head of a democratic union organization.

For a labour leader, whose job it is to inspire and educate members, his performance was a curious mix - think Stéphane Dion channelling Mike Harris. It was hardly a demonstration of confident and assured leadership, and hardly a presentation of vision and charisma that most rational union delegates would think worthy of re-election for a fourth time.

Still, there were highlights. Laudable speeches by some of the most powerful and respected voices in labour such as by Paul Forder of the Canadian Auto Workers on organizing and the need for solidarity, toughmindedness and the will required for unions and the labour movement to grow in a way that benefits all, raised everyone to their feet.

Sid Ryan of the Canadian Union of Public Employees also perked up everyone’s ears with his speech about strikes and the right to strike, and how unions have had to use this basic tool of collective action, time and again to win the most minor as well as most major of gains, often in the face of police, repression, and arrest.

Also noteworthy was the Canadian Labour Congress giving Dr. Henry Morgentaler its highest honour, the Award for Outstanding Service to Humanity, for his contribution to the cause of equality and choice in reproductive rights for women. Less praiseworthy was the way in how the CLC handed out the award - in complete media lockdown that effectively barred any wider public comment or discussion.

Labour’s Problems

But if the week long convention did little to leave an impression that the current generation of leaders is up to the task of revitalizing unions, in discussions with workers and staff around the country, at least something of a picture is emerging in people’s minds of key problems facing the labour movement that have to be tackled now.

Chief among these is the growth in cheap labour. Today, across Canada, only fifty-four percent of jobs are full-time and full-year, and more than forty percent of all jobs can be classified as ‘low-wage’ - this includes part-time, temporary, and contract employment, as well as workers making less than fifty percent of the median wage. As disturbing are the forty-three hundred temp agencies currently set up in Canada, many of which employ people well below baseline employment standards of wages, hours, and basic benefits.

There are also now hundreds of thousands of workers on temporary work permits - all without the right to unionize. These workers are typically unprotected by basic employment standards, and the vast majority have little protection against accidents or sickness, and no access to any social programs - like health and unemployment assistance - despite paying taxes and EI premiums.

The second biggest problem facing the labour movement is closely related: the decline in union organizing and the failure of unions to adequately deal with increasingly restrictive, neoliberal legislation.

Over the past decade, union organizing in Canada has fallen off the map. The organizing of new union members has hit record fifty-year lows of 40,000 or so in over the past few years, less than a third of what is required if unions even want to tread water and keep up with employment growth. As a result, today only fifteen percent of those in private sector across Canada have union representation and protection. And with fewer members, there are of course, fewer resources for organizing.

A few workers and staff are beginning to realize the depth of the problem, and also the fact that as their unions decline, so too do their prospects for better wages and better deals from governments. But how to make this shift in resources and staff is a key political question, and one not easily answered because of the internal barriers internal many union activists face.

A third problem follows from this: political impasse: the lack of fresh thinking and the turn by many union leaders and staff to partnership deals with employers, usually based on giving concessions at the bargaining table in return for tissue-thin employer promises for jobs.

These problems have been prevalent throughout private sector industrial unions over the past few decades, but have been given even more prominence of late by the Canadian Auto Workers and their unprecedented deal with Frank Stronach and Magna auto parts.

In signing a deal that relinquishes the right to strike, bars the union from educating new members, and prevents the union from bargaining on workplace issues, the CAW has essentially ceded the tools needed for unions to improve wages and working conditions at Magna, and undercut any hope that future Magna agreements will lead to improvements elsewhere in Magna or in the auto parts sector.

More disquieting still is the very strong possibility that CAW’s Magna deal will set the new benchmark for all industrial employers, who will use the deal to seek more concessions from workers in everything from manufacturing to mining, transport to long-term care.

And when this isn’t enough, as GM showed last week, it is very easy indeed to pressure governments into coughing up millions of dollars, and then simply pocket the cash when you shut down a plant, saving millions in wages and capital costs.

Finally, the Canadian labour movement faces a fourth problem: the reality that workers deal with inside their own unions today of undemocratic structures and bureaucratic obstacles. These pose huge difficulties to overcome before any progressive action can be taken.

A common occurrence, for example, is that union leaders are opting for partnership deals with employers rather than effective mobilization and fight back strategies. More and more often, to sell these deals, union staff and leaders now regularly resort to fear tactics in their attempts to force through acceptance, telling members that unless they accept concessions they will lose their jobs. Globalization - the tale is commonly told - is the ogre in the room, and it brooks no dissent.

When this fails to convince, union leaders then move on to limiting debate at microphones, councils, and meetings, and all the while cutting education programs, and having staff ‘weed out the bad apples’ of those who speak out from union activities. These are tactics that are not all that different from what was in evidence throughout last week’s CLC convention.

Younger workers especially are beginning to realize that the undemocratic practice of shutting down debate solves nothing. At convention after union convention over the past few years, whether in the public or private sector you can meet young, energized, men and women interested in turning around their unions, and widening the public arena for debate and discussion on alternative mobilizing and organizing strategies.

This is a cause for optimism. For despite the extent of problems that many workers talk privately about, the fact remains that recognition is the first step towards dealing with the problems. It is also the case that when enough people want to do something to better, sooner or later a critical mass emerges to force the issues home.

An Action Agenda

John Cartwright might be one such labour leader who can provide a reason to think a better day might yet come to pass. Prior to the CLC convention, Cartwright - President of the Toronto and York District Labour Council - criss-crossed the country talking about the need for a new ‘Action Agenda.’

Recognizing the need for a plan that workers can get behind, Cartwright spoke eloquently of the need for real commitments to organizing, public campaigns to stop privatization, and the need for organized labour to lead rather than follow the debate for environmental sustainability.

His was an articulate and stirring message that can and should provide a starting point for debate. But it is also an agenda that too few have heard about and that many in the upper levels of the labour movement find challenging. It will also require many more to join in. Unfortunately, Cartwright had little impact in getting current union leadership to make real commitments to work for solutions at the CLC.

An agenda for change is more necessary than ever today. But what any agenda for change also requires is a template for how to make reforms within unions themselves as well as within union bodies like the CLC. In the long-run, it will not be enough to simply organize new members and launch more public campaigns. Rather what will be most important are the kinds of unions and the kinds of political party that workers and young activists can build and lead.

Throughout the post-war period, the growth of unions depended on strong parties of the left as well as unions expanding the number of political and educational opportunities so that workers could apply their learning for the collective good. Social equality depended on unions and left parties keeping capital in check and improving public services that benefited all. Political success depended on hard work, cooperation, and basic strategic focus.

In theory, these political principles are still easily enough learned and agreed to. In practice, as the CLC convention so painfully demonstrated, they face innumerable obstacles. In the problems lie the solutions. One can only hope that those who want change in the Canadian labour movement can find the solutions in time.

Yet, as the old fable and a good deal of recent history reminds us, a start might be made simply by speaking up - because as more than a few leaders have discovered, it has often only taken a comment and some further activist organizing to start the ball rolling for political reform.

John Peters is a political scientist at Laurentian University. He is currently writing about labour market deregulation in North America and Western Europe, and its impacts on unions and jobs. He can be reached at jpeters@laurentian.ca.

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Why Iraq won’t be South Korea
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
June 20, 2008

The United States invasion of Iraq then takes on an even broader meaning. Not only does it constitute an attempt to control the global oil spigot and hence the global economy though domination over the Middle East. It also constitutes a powerful US military bridgehead on the Eurasian land mass which … yields it a powerful geostrategic position in Eurasia with at least the potentiality to disrupt any consolidation of an Eurasian power that could indeed be the next step in that endless accumulation of political power that must always accompany the equally endless accumulation of capital.
- David Harvey, The New Imperialism, 2003

WASHINGTON - Everyone remembers the George W Bush “Mission Accomplished” victory speech on board of an aircraft carrier off the San Diego coast in the spring of 2003. Over five years - and a trillion dollars - later, Bush’s last stand is to force a neo-colonial Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) under Iraqi throats by the end of July, acquire the right to go on “war on terror” mode in Iraq forever, declare victory and thus win - finally - his war, now opposed by a striking majority of Americans.

Call it “occupation forever”. But there’s one glitch: Iraqis are not falling for it.

I need your oil so bad
Flash back to September 2001. The neo-conservatives wanted their “new Pearl Harbor” really bad - something they had virtually implored for via the Project for a New American Century. They got it on September 11, 2001. Then the short anti-Taliban war in Afghanistan turned out to be a sort of test drive for Iraq. Echoing astute past observations by Hannah Arendt, US nationalism and imperialism was coupled with racism (towards Arabs and Islam).

And the invasion of Iraq was finally conceptualized as a “demonstration project” - the push to create in the Mesopotamian sands a US-style, wealthy consumer society, a demilitarized client state under benign US protection. Better yet, a 21st century version of the South Korean “tiger” miracle - engineered by US military-technological power.

But it all went way beyond Iraq as a new South Korea. David Harvey, the brilliant Oxford-educated American geographer who proposes, in his own words, long-term geopolitical analysis based on “historical-geographical materialism”, wrote in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq offered “a vital strategic bridgehead … on the Eurasian land mass that just happens to be the center of production of the oil that currently fuels (and will continue to fuel for at least the next 50 years) not only the global economy but also every large military machine that dares to oppose that of the United States.”

An empire of military bases and control of oil fields. These two crucial “benchmarks”, applied to Iraq, are what’s left of that alliance between the neo-cons and the Christian Right which took over the US government with an imperial project of military rule over global oil resources. Now it’s twilight time; and no wonder the Bush administration has come out with all guns blazing. Without a new, US Big Oil-friendly Iraqi oil law, and without a SOFA, US$3 trillion - according to Joseph Stiglitz’s and Linda Bilmes’ book - will have been spent for nothing.

However, on Thursday, the New York Times reported that Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP were in the final stages of negotiations on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization by Saddam Hussein.

They are reportedly in negotiations with the Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields. Should the deals go through, they would lay the foundation for the first commercial work for major Western companies in Iraq since the American invasion in 2003. It is expected that Iraq’s output could increase to about 3 million barrels a day from its current 2.5 million.

Initially, the Bush administration wanted no less than 58 permanent US bases in Iraq. There are already 30 in place. It doesn’t matter that on April 8, US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had said the US “will not establish permanent bases in Iraq and we anticipate that it will expressly foreswear them”.

The Bush administration’s ploy essentially amounts to turning over legal control of US bases to a client regime. Heavy pressure is the name of the game. To convince the Iraqis, the Bush administration is holding no less than $50 billion of Iraqi money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Other “subtle” forms of pressure also apply. The Iraqis wanted to sell oil in euros as well as in dollars. The Bush administration issued its fatwa - and it’s a “no”.

This shady deal the Bush administration wants so badly is a SOFA only in theory. In fact, it’s a smokescreen. Under US law, it would have to be submitted to the senate. The Bush administration wants to totally bypass the senate.

And the deal is not about Iraq either. It’s essentially about Iran - as in the neo-con 2003 mantra “real men go to Tehran”. That’s the meaning of the Bush administration demand, according to Iraqi lawmakers, of “the right … to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country it considers a threat to its national security.”

The Bush administration wants to totally control Iraqi airspace. The Bush administration wants to employ US firepower without approval from the “sovereign” Iraqi government. The Bush administration wants immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for all American troops and even dozens of thousands of contractors - most of them Blackwater-style mercenaries. The US Army simply cannot function properly without these privatized warriors.

Were a deal to be reached under the current terms - the deadline remains July 31 - nothing would be easier for the Bush administration than to accuse Iran of interfering in Iraq - as it is already doing non stop - and then attack Iran under the “legal” cover of this SOFA.

The Bush administration also would have a hard time getting the US Congress to explicitly approve an attack on Iran. So why not use the Iraqi Parliament instead? No wonder scores of Iraqi parliamentarians, Sunni and Shi’ite alike, fear the deal is basically a cover to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran. Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, went to Tehran and solemnly promised that Iraq would not be used as a US base for an attack on Iran.

Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Maliki that Iraqis have to “think of a solution to free” themselves from US power. Not surprisingly, Khamenei advised Maliki not to sign the deal. Maliki, for his part, reassured the Iranians in no uncertain terms Iraq is not an arena for a deadly US-Iran Armageddon.

FULL ARTICLE

By Todd Gordon
The Bullet #112
SocialistProject.ca

What’s the monetary value of a Colombian trade unionist’s life? As it turns out, it depends on how many are killed in a given year since the potential fines the Colombian government will have to pay as penalty under its free trade agreement (FTA) with Canada whenever a union activist is killed is capped at $15 million. If this sounds like a sick joke I apologize, but this is in effect what the Canadian government actually negotiated.

On June 7th, Canada proudly proclaimed that it had successfully concluded its trade deal with the human rights-troubled Andean country. Negotiated with an efficiency that must make the Bush administration - whose own trade agreement with Colombia has stalled because of Congressional opposition - jealous, the deal was concluded less than a year after negotiations began.

With four Canadian cabinet ministers visiting Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and other members of his cabinet between July 2007 and February 2008, it’s clear the Harper Tories had made the trade deal a major priority despite Colombia’s appalling human rights record (see, for example, my article on Canada and Colombia). As new Foreign Affairs minister (and ex-Liberal), David Emerson, declared, “The Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to open up opportunities for Canadian business in the Americas and around the world.”

The agreement, which still hasn’t been made public, will now undergo a legal review by Canadian and Colombian lawyers. After the review is completed, it’ll be brought to the House of Commons for ratification, which should not be a problem for the Tories despite their minority government since the Liberals have said they’ll support it if it contains language on human rights. It does - but I’ll come back to that in a moment.

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Squeezing the American Dream

A review of The Big Squeeze: Tough times for the American worker

By Nicholas von Hoffman, Truthdig
June 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/87405/

You may be surprised to learn that the pleasant person from FedEx Ground delivering your package owns the truck which he or she has parked in front of your house. FedEx Ground drivers, you will find out in Steven Greenhouse’s The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, are not FedEx employees.

They are what are called independent contractors, although it demands no little effort to discern what about their position is independent. If they do not do what they are told, their contracts are abrogated forthwith. They are required to buy their own truck with 60 monthly installments of $781.12, which comes to $46,867.20. Plus there is a final kicker payment of $8,000, all of which adds up to a grand total of almost $55,000. On top of this, as an independent business person, the driver must bear the costs of insurance, maintenance, fuel, repairs and the fee for the FedEx uniform rental.

FedEx Ground drivers who want to take vacations must hire their own replacements to cover the routes while they are gone. If a FedEx Ground independent contractor can afford it, he should take a vacation because the hours are long, the work is hard and the compensation is less than princely. A driver will take home between $25,000 and $35,000 a year.

One of the strengths of Greenhouse’s book is that it puts the meat of specificity on the bones of labor statistics. The Big Squeeze is salted with interviews and biographies of people in dozens of occupations. It is instructive to read the statistics concerning highly trained people losing their jobs to people in low-wage countries, but the numbers take on painful significance when you are introduced to an electrical engineer named Myra Bronstein, working for Watchmark, a Bellevue, Wash., firm which develops software used by cell phone companies.

One day Bronstein and 17 of her colleagues got an e-mail asking them to report to Watchmark’s boardroom the following morning. As Myra and the other quality assurance engineers gathered in the boardroom, the director of human resources began giving out large manila envelopes. Once everyone was there, Myra recalled, “The head of HR said, ‘Unfortunately, we’re having layoffs, and you’re in the room because you’re being impacted by the layoffs.’” The 18 engineers were dumbstruck, but the head of human resources pressed on. “‘Your replacements,’” she continued, “‘are flying in from India, and you’re expected to train them if you are going to receive severance.’”

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In the spirit of our Settler Treaty Card subvertisement and our general penchant for small-print satire…

Starting from the belief that all Canadians bear a responsibility to work for justice in indigenous/settler relations, Briarpatch assesses the sorry state of this troubled relationship and the emerging prospects for change. From examining the genocidal legacy of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools policy to seeking an antidote to teen suicide in the Mohawk cultural resurgence in Tyendinaga, Briarpatch calls for indigenous and settler activists alike to make common cause in the struggle to decolonize this land.

Cover illustration by Angela Sterritt. To subscribe or order a copy of this issue, call 1-866-431-5777 or visit our secure online shop. Read the rest of this entry »