----- Original Message ----- From: Communist Party of Canada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 3:26 PM Subject: PEOPLE'S VOICE -- October 16-31, 2000 PEOPLE'S VOICE ON-LINE ARTICLES FROM THE COMMUNIST PRESS IN CANADA (The selected articles below are from the October 16-31/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.) __________________________________________________________________ In this Issue: 1/ Editorial: WHO ARE THE WAR CRIMINALS? 2/ LIBERAL EI REFORMS GREATLY EXAGGERATED 3/ CPC CONDEMNS TERROR AGAINST PALESTINIANS 4/ STOCKWELL DAY GETS MILKED IN KITCHENER 5/ EUSTACE MULLINS: US FASCIST IN CANADA 6/ BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN HITS SUPERIOR POULTRY SALES 7/ ABORIGINAL RAFTERS FINISH HISTORIC JOURNEY *********************************************************************** 1/ Editorial: WHO ARE THE WAR CRIMINALS? YET AGAIN, US/NATO military and political power has backed domestic opposition groups in ousting a so-called "enemy government" from office. Today the tragic game is played out in Yugoslavia. But the number of countries where imperialism has acted in a similar fashion is high. Since the Second World War, the list includes Iran, Guatemala, Guyana, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua and many more, not least the European socialist countries a decade ago. None of these countries was a utopia, including Yugoslavia. But those who cheer the overthrow of Milosevic are way off the mark. The fact is, having bribed countless politicians and rigged dozens of phoney "elections," Washington and its allies care absolutely nothing about corruption or voter fraud. What imperialism does care about is making the world safe and profitable for the huge transnational corporations which dominate the global economy. For several years, the Yugoslav Federal Republic enraged the imperialist powers by refusing to play by the rules set up by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. For that "crime," the Serbian people and Milosevic were demonized by the Western media, bombed for eleven weeks, and blockaded by NATO. Thanks to tens of millions of dollars in Western funds, the Yugoslav opposition parties were finally able to take power this month, even though the left parties won a majority in the Sept. 24 parliamentary elections. What's ahead now for Yugoslavia? We can safely predict that "loans" from the IMF and World Bank will be provided to "rebuild" the country. In other words, Yugoslavia will become heavily indebted to the same Western powers which have just destroyed its economy. As the experience of other countries in eastern Europe shows, the working people of Yugoslavia will face many years of mass unemployment and extreme poverty, with a small elite of wealthy gangsters controlling the country. More than likely, the Federation will be broken up into smaller chunks by NATO. Yes, we agree that war criminals should be brought to justice. They live in Washington, London, Bonn and Ottawa, among other NATO capitals. The politicians and generals responsible for killing thousands of Yugoslavs (and Iraqis!) should be tried for their crimes. In the coming federal election, voters should tackle the Liberals and every other candidate on this vital issue! *************************** 2/ LIBERAL EI REFORMS GREATLY EXAGGERATED CHANGES TO THE Employment Insurance system announced Sept. 28 by the federal government will do nothing to improve the chances of workers to receive EI payments, warns the Canadian Labour Congress. The "reforms" include four main proposals. One is the elimination of the "Intensity Rule," which imposes lower benefits on workers forced to apply for EI on a regular or annual basis due to lack of jobs. Having campaigned against this rule, the CLC has welcomed the change. The other proposals include some minor changes for parents re-entering the labour market, adjustments of clawbacks, and a government takeover of powers from the EI Commission, reducing the participation of labour and other sectors. None of the proposals does anything to correct the main problem with the current system - the majority of unemployed workers are prevented from qualifying for benefits by an arbitrary and unpredictable set of formulas. Since the Mulroney Tories began undermining unemployment insurance over a decade ago, the percentage of jobless workers eligible for benefits has fallen from over 80% to just one-third. One result of this shift has been a huge financial ripoff by the federal government, which has sucked billions of dollars out of the EI Fund into its general revenues. This trend is one of the key factors in the recent budget surpluses announced by Finance Minister Paul Martin, at the expense of the unemployed and their communities across Canada. Rather than being reversed, this form of theft continues to speed up. For the first time this year, the majority of EI revenue from workers and employers will go to the government's general revenues rather than to the unemployed. As the CLC points out, this means in reality that jobless workers are subsidizing the presidents of Canada's hugely profitable banks. A recent study by the Congress predicts that while $7.1 billion will go towards benefits for laid-off and jobless workers this year, an even larger $7.8 billion will flow out of the EI Fund into general revenues. The federal Liberals are busy debating how much of the resulting budget surplus will go towards tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals. In the corporate media, the recent EI changes have been called a Liberal handout to "seasonal workers" in Atlantic Canada. Such terms are questionable, since there are only "seasonal jobs," while most workers prefer stable, year-round employment. But even more to the point, the truth is that not a single extra jobless worker, in seasonal or other industries, will qualify for benefits under the new amendments. And while the Liberal spin-doctors are busy claiming that the changes will help Atlantic Canada, the fact is that seasonal employment is not limited to any geographical area. The CLC points out that three-quarters of the EI payments to workers in seasonal jobs go to claimants in Ontario, Alberta, BC and Quebec. "Under the guise of reform, the government has simply removed one truly odious measure cutting benefit rates and modified another clawing back benefits," says CLC President Ken Georgetti. "Both penalized seasonal workers for repeated layoff. The Liberals have in fact helped stigmatize the unemployed, perpetuating the myth that seasonal workers control their own hiring and layoff! "These changes to the EI program fail to deal with the true needs of jobless workers and their families," according to Georgetti. "They correct only some of the inequities plaguing those who do qualify. There is nothing there for the multitude who contribute to the plan, yet never qualify when they are in need. The fundamental problem remains that two-thirds of the unemployed do not qualify for benefits, period. For these women and men, this 'reform' means nothing." ********************* 3/ CPC CONDEMNS TERROR AGAINST PALESTINIANS Statement by the Central Executive Committee CPC Oct. 2, 2000 THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA denounces the latest aggression by Israel which has caused over 65 deaths and thousands of wounded among Palestinian women, men and children. These continued attacks have only proven that the Zionist regime in Israel is far from genuinely committed to the pursuit of a just peace in the region. The clearly provocative visit of the leader of the right-wing Likud Party, Ariel Sharon, to the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount, was the spark that lit the flame of occupied Palestinians increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress towards a just peace. The calculated and cynical use of deadly force by the Israeli military, with the tacit support of US imperialism, to terrorize the Palestinian population in the occupied territories is a monstrous crime, and cannot be tolerated by the international community. The CPC deplores the actions and atrocities being committed by the Israeli army, most notably, the cold-blooded execution of children like Muhammad Al-Duraa and the others whose faces were not caught on tape. Military might cannot be an acceptable replacement for negotiation to resolve this long-festering conflict and build a lasting peace. The Communist Party of Canada reaffirms its solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination and independence. The Communist Party of Canada supports a just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which must culminate in the creation of an independent Palestinian state. This can only happen when Israeli occupying forces withdraw from all occupied territories, including occupied East Jerusalem, as directed by UN Resolution 242. This must also include the release of all political prisoners and the implementation of the "Right of Return" of the Palestinian people who were dispossessed and forced from their land and homes since 1948. We call on all progressive forces in Canada to condemn the atrocities committed by Israeli occupation forces, and to call for a just and peaceful solution now. ********************** 4/ STOCKWELL DAY GETS MILKED IN KITCHENER KITCHENER, Ontario - Stockwell Day chose Kitchener to launch the Alliance's right wing, anti-people, election platform on Oct. 5. He received a welcome that he did not expect! He was met by protesters, both inside and outside the pre-election rally, held at the Conestoga College Recreation Centre. Outside were about 30 protesters from the Kitchener-Waterloo chapters of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Anti-Racist Action, Food Not Bombs, as well as several individuals who came on their own initiative. Protesters stood their ground, despite being harassed by Alliance party goons sent out to intimidate them. A firm message was delivered to Alliance party members and their leaders that they were not welcome in Kitchener. Inside, several protesters managed to slip into the "invitation only" rally, which had been kept a closely guarded secret. One protester, University of Waterloo student Julian Ichim, managed to infiltrate the tight security and well orchestrated media show. He was actually seated right in front of Day by security people, after they removed several elderly Alliance supporters to fill the front row seats with youth, so the media would get the false image that the Alliance is a party of youth! Ichim was picked by Alliance security people, because of his short hair and his neatly dressed, clean cut image. Just the kind of youthful, but "respectable" look they sought to portray to the media! A few seconds after Day emerged from the centre of a Canadian flag to address his crowd of followers, Ichim leaped up and drenched Day with two containers of chocolate milk. Ichim was immediately grabbed by two burly Alliance goons. While they held him, a third, paid goon came up and punched him repeatedly. They only stopped beating him when they realized that it was all being captured on video, by national news media! Icham was able to temporarily escape the building, chased by the news media who were followed closely by 10 or 12 Alliance goons. In the Rec Centre parking lot, Icham stopped and was quickly surrounded by the media. A second incident almost took place as the Alliance goons tried to force their way through the media mob to prevent Ichim from speaking. Ichim did get his message out. When asked why he did it, he said he acted because the Alliance was on record as being anti-labour, homophobic, and anti-immigrant. He denounced their plans to privatize hospitals and cut funding to universities, and accused them of making war on the poor. Moments later, Ichim was arrested by waiting police. He was held for several hours and has been charged with assault. So far, police have declined to press charges of assault against the Alliance goons who beat Icham. Despite the beating being caught on video, with parts of it being broadcast on national TV, Waterloo Regional Police claimed they didn't yet have enough evidence to lay charges. (This eyewitness story was sent in by a Kitchener-area reader of People's Voice. We encourage other readers across the country to send in your reports from the campaign trail!) ******************* 5/ EUSTACE MULLINS: US FASCIST IN CANADA "Anti-Fascist Resistance" column, by David Lethbridge ON AUGUST 6 AND 7, US fascist Eustace Mullins, of Staunton, Virginia, spoke in Salmon Arm, BC, as the "surprise guest speaker" at a conference of the Preferred Network. Mullins has a notorious history going back fifty years. In the early 1950s, he was a member of the New York-based National Renaissance Party, the successor of the Socialist Reich Party which campaigned to release Nazi war criminals, and maintained contacts with neo-fascist parties in the USA, Canada, and elsewhere. Later in the 1950s, Mullins worked for Senator Joseph McCarthy in the campaign to demonize communists and other progressives and destroy their organizations. In the 1980s and '90s, Mullins served as a contributing editor to the Christian Vanguard, a publication edited by the former information officer of the American Nazi Party, James K. Warner. The Vanguard is the periodical of the Christian Defense League, a Louisiana-based organization which combines elements of Nazi-fascism and the white racist Christian Identity religion. The neo-Nazi Aryan Nations has published Mullins' books, and Mullins has spoken at numerous Identity conferences, along with such notables as ex-KKK leader, David Duke. In the late 1990s, Mullins began to speak at meetings of the militia movement. Last year, the Preferred Network's (PN) internet site was shut down when it was exposed that PN was selling numerous materials deemed to be hate propaganda by Customs and Excise Prohibited Importations Unit. Among these materials were works by Mullins. The Curse of Canaan, a Mullins title sold by PN, asserts that Jews and people of colour were forever cursed by God; in open advocacy of genocide, it states that "God's command" is that white people should "exterminate" them. Shortly after its closure, the PN website reappeared at a different location and continues to sell Mullins' books and videotapes. Mullins' participation in the August PN conference was also exposed, with subsequent press coverage. A spokesperson for PN claimed in the local media that the theme of the conference was "truth and freedom," and that there had been no anti-semitic content in the Mullins sessions. However, when the spokesperson was later contacted, and it was put to her that Mullins had gone so far as to write that Jews drink human blood, she said, "What Mullins writes is damn well true!" When asked whether she believed the same thing, she said, quite forcefully, "I believe that. I know that it is a fact. I know that it is true!" Pressed on what she thought about Mullins' denial of the Nazi Holocaust, she claimed, "The Nazis were not behind the killing of the Jews, they didn't do it. The Nazis were not responsible. It was the Jews who ran the camps and they killed their own people. But the ones who did the killing, they weren't really Jews, they were just hiding behind the name Jews. They were really Khazars." (It is a staple among many sectors of contemporary fascism that most Jews are descendants of the feudal Russo-Turkish kingdom of Khazaria, many of whose people converted to Judaism. On these spurious grounds, anti-semities can then deny their anti-semitism by claiming that the Jews are not Semites.) Mullins is not new to the region. In 1989, and again in 1992, he spoke in the Okanagan. In 1991, he attended a conference in Calgary, along with neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel, anti-semite James Keegstra, and militia advocate Bo Gritz. In his 1992 speech at Eileen Pressler's Council on Public Affairs conference, Mullins revealed the depths of his racial hatred when he said: "The US government has been breeding negroes since the Civil War. But they have know idea what to do with them. They don't realize you're supposed to sell them." Mullins recent appearance in central BC raises important issues for the antifascist movement. It is frequently claimed today that fascist organizing and recruiting in North America has stalled, even that it is no longer of importance. This is not true. Neo-fascism in the contemporary period is undergoing a variety of permutations, and is manifesting itself in new and different formations, often making it more difficult to combat. But it is worth considering that if such a major and important fascist as Eustace Mullins is appearing in one small town and might easily have gone unnoticed how many other communities, across the country, are being infected by these hatemongers, who so quickly appear and disappear, their presence all too often unreported and unknown? ************************* 6/ BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN HITS SUPERIOR POULTRY SALES THE CONSUMER BOYCOTT by striking Superior Poultry workers won an important victory in September, when four Costco stores in the Lower Mainland decided to stop selling chicken produced by scab workers. The Costco stores in Vancouver, Burnaby, Port Coquitlam and Abbotsford had been selling virtually all of the output from Superior's Coquitlam plant, under the Valley Farms label. Other Costco stores in Surrey and Richmond sold Sunrise and Lilydale poultry products, both from union/UFCW plants. After a leafleting campaign, the four offending stores finally agreed to stop doing business with Superior Poultry, where 225 members of UFCW Local 1518 have been on strike for a first contract since July 23. "This is an important win for our union members Costco backed down after they realized we weren't going away," said Local 1518 President Brooke Sundin. "Our goal throughout our relationship with Superior Poultry has been to sit down and negotiate a fair first collective agreement. The company has consistently demonstrated contempt for the rights of its workers to have a collective agreement that's what resulted in the leafleting campaign with the company's customers. And we have only just begun." UFCW Local 1518 won a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 1999 that upholds the right to distribute leaflets, an important tool for galvanizing public support. The striking workers also have the backing of the BC Federation of Labour and other unions, in what has been called one of the ugliest labour disputes in recent BC history. But true to past form, the strongly anti-union company has continued its campaign of disinformation against the union. Local 1518 reports that instead of negotiating in good faith, the company keeps attacking the union and its members, persists in violating the labour relations code, perpetuates racist stereotypes (while calling the union "racist") and maintains a goon squad which it refers to as "videographers." Conservative estimates place the cost of the company's tactics so far at $400,000$500,000. As reported in the Sept. 16-30 People's Voice, the issues at the heart of this battle include forced overtime, wages and benefits that are far below industry standards, and random and unjust discipline and punishments - all factors which led the poultry workers to organize into a union. ****************** 7/ ABORIGINAL RAFTERS FINISH HISTORIC JOURNEY EXHAUSTED BUT GALVANIZED by their unique experience, over 40 Aboriginal women arrived by raft in New Westminster and Vancouver on Sept. 25. Their two-week "Journey for Justice" down the Fraser River was one of the most exciting among the hundreds of World March of Women events this fall across Canada. Sixteen women took part in the entire rafting trip, which began on Sept. 11 in Prince George, with dozens more taking in parts of the journey. The first Aboriginal president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Terri Brown, joined the rafters at Lilooet in the Fraser Canyon. Along the river, the rafters stopped in a number of Aboriginal communities, holding public meetings and private gatherings on the issues around violence against Aboriginal women. A statement from the Aboriginal Women's Action Network (AWAN) midway through the journey pointed out "two startling realizations" learned along the way. One is that "the severity of atrocities committed against Aboriginal women" has changed little in recent decades; and second, that the Journey for Justice is a continuation of anti-violence work initiated many years ago by Aboriginal grandmothers and great-grandmothers. A typical story of the journey came in Quesnel, where the rafters were greeted by Geneva Irwin, chief of the Red Bluff First Nation, and Doreen Patrick, chief of the Nazko First Nation. They spoke about the local case of an Aboriginal woman who was severely beaten, sexually assaulted, and thrown into the Fraser River. The Aboriginal community had to hold a rally to force the police to pay attention to the case, which remains unsolved. Other women told the rafters of the consequences of taking a stand against violence within their own communities. A woman chief from the Sugar Cane Band has introduced a policy which provides support to women and children victims of violence, and which requires the offenders to leave the community. Her efforts have met resistance, reflecting the fact that in many cases, Aboriginal women have been forced to flee to urban or off-reserve areas to escape such situations. These experiences drew attention to AWAN's concerns about the "restorative justice" programs that are being introduced across Canada, since these programs leave violent offenders in the same communities as their less-powerful female victims. "Our primary objective is to ensure that Aboriginal women's voices become integral to policies and program development," according to AWAN's Fay Blaney, one of the key organizers of the journey. The two stops on the journey's last day included a jubilant rally at New Westminster Quay, and a more subdued final gathering later that afternoon on Musqueam territory in south Vancouver. In an emotional ceremony at Musqueam, the sixteen women who made the entire journey were given special recognition, followed by the other women who had joined later. Participants came from a wide range of First Nations across Canada, including the Natooten, Cree, Tsilhquot'in, Stl'atl'imx, Ilomalco, Anishnawbe, Metis, Sec Wepemc, Statlium, Gitskan, Yale First Nation, Haisla, Mohawk, Nuu Chah Nulth, Cheam and other Coast Salish Nations.
