5) RESISTANCE GROWING TO BC LIBERAL CUTS 6) MAC-PAP MONUMENT CEREMONY IN OTTAWA 7) RESISTING STATE FASCISM: IMPERIALIST TACTICS AND IDEOLOGY FROM PANAMA TO AFGHANISTAN 5) RESISTANCE GROWING TO BC LIBERAL CUTS PV Vancouver Bureau SEVERAL PROMISING SIGNALS indicate public resistance to the Campbell Liberal government’s massive attacks on social programs. On Oct. 16, over 800 trade unionists packed a hall near the provincial legislature in Victoria, to tell the Liberals to back off their plans to cut thousands of public sector jobs. And on Sept. 30, more than 700 seniors, community activists, union members and health care experts gathered in Burnaby to challenge the government’s plans to cut Pharmacare benefits. “I didn’t vote for this and I don’t know anyone who did,” Carlie Redwood, of the Persons With AIDS Society told the Sept. 30 meeting. “I need medication every day just to stay alive. I shouldn’t have to chose between eating and buying the medication I need.” Organized by the B.C. Health Coalition, the meeting occurred on the last day of the government’s month-long review of Pharmacare. Only a handful of organizations, including the pharmaceutical industry, were invited to submit their views to the government. Campbell and health minister Colin Hansen have both declared the Pharmacare program fiscally unsustainable and suggested benefits could be reduced through user fees, means testing, eliminating reference-based pricing, delisting drugs or a combination of all four. In fact, the B.C. Pharmacare system delivers per capita drug costs 20 percent below the national average and 40 percent below Ontario, UBC health policy expert Dr. Bob Evans told the meeting. Study after study has demonstrated that any shift of payment from public. Pharmacare to private fees means those who need drugs won’t get them and overall costs will rise, Evans said. The province’s largest seniors organization had to demand an invitation to submit its views and then was ordered to reply in less than three weeks, said Rudy Lawrence, president of the Council of Senior Citizens’ Organizations. “That’s garbage. As an accountant I have a lot of problems with a government that gets into power and cuts taxes, then says, ‘Gee, we don’t have enough for essential services like health.’“ “We’re being told that the one way Pharmacare costs can be reduced is to target seniors, women and single moms who are on income assistance,” Caryn Duncan, of the Vancouver Women’s Health Collective, told the meeting. Yet studies have shown that such cuts actually drive up costs and illness. “It does not save lives, it costs lives and money.” Dr. Margaret MacGregor, of the Mid-Main Health Clinic, predicted that hospitalizations for heart failure will increase if access to heart medication is reduced through user fees. “Patients will be more likely to be hospitalized, face institutionalization in nursing homes and more likely to die as a result of chronic conditions that are poorly controlled.” Hundreds at the meeting signed a petition calling on Victoria to extend the consultation deadline to March 31, 2002; to strengthen the current reference-based drug program and to work with Ottawa for a national Pharmacare program. Copies of the petition are available from the BC Federation of Labour, tel. 604-430-1421. ************************ 6) MAC-PAP MOMUMENT CEREMONY IN OTTAWA ABOUT 300 PEOPLE attended the unveiling ceremony on October 20 for the Monument to the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion and the Canadian Volunteers of the International Brigades in Spain (1936-1939), near the Rideau River in Ottawa. Jules Paivio, president of the Association of Veterans and Friends of the Mac-Paps, and Gov.-Gen. Adrienne Clarkson honoured the idealism of the veterans, of whom about a dozen survive. The five-metre figure is mounted on a concrete pedestal bearing a memorial plaque which reads, “From 1936 to 1939, 1,546 Canadians left families, jobs and country to help the Spanish people defend democracy against the rise of fascism. “As part of the legendary International Brigades, a world-wide volunteer force from fifty-three countries, the Canadians were organized into the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. It was named after the leaders of the 1837 rebellions against injustice in Upper and Lower Canada. Despite suffering heavy losses, may of the survivors went on to continue the fight by serving in the Canadian armed forces in WWII. “In their Promethean struggle for liberty, democracy and social justice, the Mac-Paps fought courageously for their ideals without thought of reward or fame. “This monument was made possible by the generous donations of the Canadian people through the Association of Veterans and Friends of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion.” Near the figure is a semi-circle wall containing panels on which the names of 1,546 volunteers have been inscribed. Along the top of the wall is an excerpt from the speech given by Dolores Ibarruri - La Pasionaria - to the assembled Brigadistas in Barcelona in 1938 as the brigades were disbanded: “You can go proudly. You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy, solidarity and universality. We shall not forget you, and when the olive tree of peace puts forth its leaves again ... come back! And all of you will find the love and gratitude of the whole Spanish people who, now and in the future, will cry out with all their hearts: Long live the heroes of the International Brigades...” Close to $115,000 was raised for the monument, including from the Canadian Labour Congress, NUPGE, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, the Finnish Organization of Canada, the Federation of Russian Canadians, Workers Benevolent Association, Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (U.S.), locals of Firefighters, Postal Workers, CUPE, HEU, labour councils (Kamloops, Nanaimo/Duncan, Oxford, Powell River, Prince Rupert, Quesnel, Sushwap-Columbia, Squamish), and members, clubs and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada, among others. To make a charitable donation to the “Mackenzie-Papineau Memorial Fund,” send your contribution to 25 Waxham Rd., Toronto ON, M9W 3L4. For information, call (416)744-0690. ******************* 7) RESISTING STATE FASCISM: IMPERIALIST TACTICS AND IDEOLOGY FROM PANAMA TO AFGHANISTAN “Anti-Fascist Resistance” column by David Lethbridge SOMETIMES IT JUST slips out. The carefully engineered facade, prepared by advertising agencies, media experts, and speechwriters educated at the best of schools, cracks wide open. The “benign and caring” face of contemporary capitalism disappears, replaced by the ugly reality within. So it was with Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy, leader of the G8, and ally of President George W. Bush in the new “War on Terrorism.” The ultra-conservative billionaire, backed by a political coalition that includes such neo-fascist parties as the National Alliance and the Northern League, let his true colours show recently when he said: “We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and - in contrast with Islamic countries - respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its values the understanding of diversity and tolerance.” “The West,” he said, “will continue to conquer peoples, like it conquered Communism, even if it means war with another civilization, the Islamic one, stuck where it was 1,400 years ago.” Mussolini must have been chuckling in his grave. Bush is more careful, although barely so. The ideology that accompanies the expansion of US capital, and the wars of US imperialism, is the intertwining of white supremacy, Christian supremacy, and anti-communism. This poisonous ideology finds its most open expression in the “opinion columns” of the mainstream mass media. New York Times columnist Ann Coulter put it that “this is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack.... We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Margaret Wente, columnist for the respected Globe and Mail, echoed both Bush and Chrétien when she noted that the “common civilization” of the Western world, a “tolerant and peaceable society” believing in “human decency and the rule of law,” was utterly in contradiction to “the killers’ world” which “advocates mass slaughter,” and is soaked in “blood revenge and sacred jihad.” War with such non-people is therefore, “just and necessary.” All of US imperialism’s recent wars have tended to follow a certain pattern. But perhaps the most obvious parallel to the new “War on Terrorism” is the 1989 war against Panama. Billed as the opening salvo of an intensified “War on Drugs,” that war’s main target was the capture or assassination of President Manuel Noriega, a long-time US state and CIA asset. Noriega was a key player in supporting the US-led right-wing Nicaraguan contras and the Salvadoran death squads. As long ago as 1960 he was channelling information to the CIA about left-wing students and other socialist elements. But Noriega had begun to balk at the idea of Panama as simply an extension of US territory. As such he had to be removed. But just as certainly, however, Noriega was involved in wide-scale drug trafficking. The impact of illegal drug use was and is a serious problem in the US, and so the cover story, the “War on Drugs” went down well with the US population, especially with its white, middle-class segment. The current “War on Terrorism” reveals the same pattern. Terrorism is a serious issue; it serves its purpose as a jingoistic rallying cry, and an excuse for extensive war. But, as in the case of Noriega, Osama bin Laden has been a long-time asset of US foreign policy. Bin Laden and the mujahadeen were central in the US-financed overthrow of the secular and socialist-minded previous government of Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a key player in the Carter presidency, is on record as saying that the US engaged in a secret operation to ensure that the Soviet Union would enter Afghanistan to support the socialist government, and that the inevitable result would be the defeat of the Soviet forces, the establishment of the repressive and feudal regime, and the spread of extreme fundamentalist Islamic forces. Like Noriega, and like Saddam Hussein and other repressive former allies of the US, bin Laden has long outlived his value. Today’s “War on Terrorism” provides a dual purpose: the elimination of a former ally, without having to explain to Americans why their government would employ such allies in the first place; and the expansion of US economic and military domination into another corner of the world. Yet, as far as the US state is concerned, all this must be hidden under the cover of “humanitarianism,” and the necessity of eliminating “the global terrorist threat.” Revelation of the hard truths behind the war machine is “disloyal,” and all dissent must be silenced and crushed. New laws to ensure this silence have either been approved, or are on their way, in the US, Britain, and Canada. And so, a significant factor in the fascist direction of US state policy is the increasing attempt, often largely successful, to lie about the facts. Despite an effort to call it a police action, the invasion of Panama was the single largest US military operation since the Vietnam war. It was in no sense “a surgical strike.” Civilian neighbourhoods, particularly poor neighbourhoods, were carpet-bombed. Three weeks after the invasion, the State Department claimed that there were only 200 civilian casualties. In reality there were over 2,000 civilian deaths, thousands more wounded, 20,000 left homeless, and several thousand “detained.” This consistent denial of casualties became a hallmark of US military actions in Iraq and in Yugoslavia. It is now being repeated in Afghanistan. It is only possible to hide the truth about civilian casualties if the media is kept from the scene of combat. Media reporting on Vietnam and on the US-led contra invasions in Nicaragua and El Salvador, while mixed, was at least partially responsible for the growth of domestic and international disenchantment with US war policy. But media reporting on Panama was largely restricted to the uncritical parroting of state and military press releases and news conferences. This pattern was intensified in the Iraq and Yugoslav wars and continues in coverage of the Afghan war. Indeed, the deliberate manipulation of the news is a key factor in the fascist psychological operations of the US government just as it was, in another key, in Nazi Germany. The war against Panama was a turning point in the tactics and ideology of US imperialism. The parallels with the war against Afghanistan are neither coincidence nor fuel for absurd conspiracy theories. It is simply that the US state was learning how to make war more palatable, more patriotic, and more useful for their own purposes, while discouraging effective anti-war dissent. The final, and perhaps most grotesque parallel, has to do with the US leadership itself. President George Bush, Sr. was unpopular; his approval ratings were low. But the war in Panama changed all that. As ABC News put it on January 31, 1990, Bush Sr. went from “a wimp to a world-class leader.” Never has the phrase “like father, like son” carried more chilling resonance.
