ONDY Stands With Hamilton Steelworkers

Members of the Ontario New Democratic Youth (ONDY) showed their solidarity with Hamilton steelworkers Sunday evening when they joined picket lines outside a local U.S. Steel plant that had locked out hundreds of its employees after their union refused company-ordered pension cuts.


Youth delegates came straight from the 2010 ONDY Convention, which had seen a marked policy shift to the left as attendees embraced the street-level organizing of the Toronto Young New Democrats. Almost immediately, the new ONDY executive team illustrated their activist approach by dispatching representatives to the Wilcox Street steel mill in support of the United Steelworkers.

With white banner in tow proclaiming their group’s dedication to “socialism and freedom”, ONDY activists arrived on the scene in high spirits, singing “Solidarity Forever” and joining the crowd of 400 workers and their supporters. Company security struggled in vain to close the gates while police looked on, as a dozen ONDY representatives mingled with the workers in a sea of union flags and homemade signs.

Tension had been steadily rising in the days and weeks beforehand as U.S. Steel pressured Local 1005 USW into accepting changes to its pension system.

Management had two key demands: an end to the indexing of pension payments for the plant’s 9000 retired workers, and cancelling the existing pension plan for all new employees by replacing it with a defined contribution retirement savings plan. U.S. Steel claims its austerity measures are necessary to keep the Hamilton plant competitive, but union leaders accuse the company of sowing discord between younger and older workers in a cynical divide-and-conquer strategy.

“They’re trying to incite the younger workers,” said Local 1005 president Rolf Gerstenberger, “to get them to attack the pensioners and to say, ‘we don’t care what happens to the pensioners, nothing to do with us, we’re just worried about our jobs.’ So this is very deliberate on their part.

“They want to see if the younger workers will grovel, if they’ll submit, if they’ll be scared. They’ll do the Chicken Little routine and then they figure they’ll have control of the plant for the next generation. We’re calling on the younger workers, especially, to step up and to take their position and to fight like we did 30 years ago,” he said, referring to the 1981 Stelco strike.

Gerstenberger’s emphasis on young workers was a perfect fit for the ONDY delegation. Picketing workers expressed appreciation for the presence of dedicated young activists in their fight against corporate greed.

Elected representatives of the New Democratic Party were also out in full force, including NDP MPs Dave Christopherson (Hamilton Centre), Chris Charlton (Hamilton Mountain), Wayne Marston (Hamilton East – Stoney Creek) and MPP Paul Miller (Hamilton East – Stoney Creek).

“You cannot be a Hamiltonian working person and not be outraged by what’s going on here,” said Christopherson, a former president of CAW Local 525, in an impassioned speech to assembled workers.

“What happens to a retiree that enters into a period [of high inflation] with no protection whatsoever?” he demanded. “What’s the purchasing power of that pension? What’s the quality of their life? Why is that an issue here, when we’ve got so many people who’ve already worked a lifetime and they deserve that damn pension!”

The ONDY delegation remained at the gates for hours until the crowd finally began to disperse, leaving picketing to volunteers who signed up for 4-hour shifts.

As the lockout drags on into the indefinite future, those workers will form the front line of Local 1005’s defence, but they will not be alone. In this difficult struggle, Hamilton steelworkers and their families can count on the loyal and active support of the new ONDY – an energetic and growing organization.

Ontario New Democratic Youth "Fightback" at 2010 Convention

It's been quite a while since my last post, so a few updates may be in order. During the summer, in an amusing turn of events, I was hired as editor of The Garrison, Canadian Forces Base Kingston's community newspaper. My career as a paid propagandist was destined to be shortlived, however, when - days before my probation ended - the base commander made the unceremonious decision to cancel the newspaper. In August I was laid off and destroyed my car in an accident, but these unfortunate events left me more determined than ever to fulfill my dream of moving to Toronto and getting involved with Canadian Marxist groups. At the end of October, I moved to North York with a few thousand dollars in my bank account and endeavoured to find a job during the few months for which I could afford rent.

Following my arrival in the city, I met with representatives of Fightback, who offer what I consider this country's best political analysis. They suggested that I attend the 2010 Ontario New Democratic Youth (ONDY) Convention that weekend in Hamilton, which promised a large presence by Fightback loyalists and their associated group the Toronto Young New Democrats (TYND). In an act of scandalous red-baiting reminiscent of the McCarthy era, the TYND had recently had their charter removed for the apparent crime of "allegiance with Fightback". To my delight, a large and vocal contingent of fellow sympathizers were more than ready to challenge the rightist elements of the party at the convention.


A full write-up of the weekend's political trajectory is available here. True to the article's title, the weekend was indeed an "historic win for the Left". My initial skepticism towards the idea of associating with the NDP - which had largely abandoned any real adherence to socialism in theory or action - dissipated when I saw the immense passion and radical activism of the youth at ONDYCon. Indeed, the more radical elements of the convention largely outnumbered the "moderates". The division was evident in the list of proposed resolutions and amendments we debated over the weekend. All of the most interesting ideas in that document originated in the TYND and Fightback, and addressed real issues of concern to workers and youth: free education, universal dental care, the effects of the G20, a call to fight police brutality, and the further development of the NDP as a mass movement encompassing socialist, anti-war, anti-globalization, feminist, anti-racist, and other ideologies. All other resolutions, suggested by the more moderate elements, were of a fairly dull and bureaucratic nature (e.g. raising the youth age limit from 26 to 30).

As something of an NDP newbie, I was not altogether up to speed on the constitutional debates that periodically erupted over the weekend, but even I could see the sharp divide visible from the beginning between supporters and opponents of Fightback and the TYND. The Toronto-based group had been de-charted without even the courtesy of seeing the charges laid out against them. In addition, their official show trial took place in an "in camera" session, meaning a closed-door meeting with no observers and no records kept. Only days before the convention, an anonymous e-mail was sent out that warned of a "Trotskyist takeover" of ONDY. Whoever was behind that red-baiting, anti-democratic tripe was presumably an insider, since they evidently had access to the official mailing list.

Throughout the weekend, delegates sympathetic to that anti-communist view engaged with Fightback loyalists in a battle for the heart and soul of the party. In the end, every one of the resolutions championed by the TYND and debated at the convention passed with flying colours. New drama came during during the run-up to voting for the new executive team, during which a constitutional drama unfolded in real time. The crucial question was whether only established party members could vote, or if those who had joined at the convention itself could be permitted a voice. Representatives of the NDP Socialist Caucus, including Barry Weisleder, derided such measures as stalling tactics. I had personally encountered similar measures when I was almost denied membership at the registration table on Friday evening, only to have the executive ultimately revert to previous policies.


The final vote was a triumphant victory that helped take ONDY to the left, as all preferred candidates of the Slate for a Democratic and Activist ONDY rode to victory on the coattails of widespread sympathy for Fightback and the TYND. As its first order of business, the new, ethnically and sexually diverse ONDY executive team voted to re-charter TYND - a massive repudiation of the bureaucracy's anti-democratic intimidation strategy. Their provocative move will almost certainly invite retaliation from the party leadership, but what form such reprisals take remains to be seen. Their second move was to order a delegation to support Hamilton steelworkers locked outside their plant, a report of which I have written above for official purposes.

For me, the ONDY convention was a revelation on both a personal and political level. While in Kingston my Marxist agitation was largely a solitary effort, in Hamilton I was bowled over by the passion, intelligence and dedication of the individuals around me. I met some incredible people and realized for the first time how much of an appetite for radical change existed among Canadian youth alienated from conventional politics. TYND had proven itself such a smashing success in organizing by appealing to the real concerns of working class youth that even the rightist party leadership felt compelled to admit its recruiting success. And in-between the spirited political debate, there was also some good old-fashioned partying. It was the best weekend I've had in a long time. Now the hangover begins. But whatever heavy-handed tactics the party leadership responds with, this vital political youth movement has only just begun to make its influence felt.

In The Belly of the Beast: My G20 Experience

It had been, I felt, a productive day of protest. Thousands of people had defied the rain on this gray Saturday, June 26, 2010 to vent their rage against the global corporate elite as its leading representatives met in Toronto for the G20 summit. My friends and I took advantage of a free bus ride offered in Kingston by the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) to make our way to the T-dot that weekend, and what I had seen so far had left me deeply moved. The sheer size of the turnout was impressive, especially given the poor weather, and seeing so many passionate activists engaged in that most basic and essential of democratic activities - grassroots protest - was a powerful rebuttal to any suspicions I might have had that the Canadian public was too lethargic to get out in the streets and make its voice heard.



True, there had been some worrying signs after the masses assembled in Queen's Park and peacefully marched down University Avenue. We had seen a young man with his hand over an eye, blood running down his face, as his comrades ushered him through the crowd and cried out for a medic. Maybe he got in a cop's face, we thought. Eventually the protesters found themselves blocked off by a line of police at Queen Street East. The 5-0, decked out from head to toe in their latest quasi-fascist militarized police togs, shields raised and batons ready, may have been an intimidating presence, were it not for a crowd that refused to let itself be intimidated. A drum circle directly in front of the line provided a defiant flow of tribal beats; animal rights activists defended the sanctity of all life on this planet while I got my picture taken with a girl dressed up as a giant gray seal (a moment recorded for a TV update on Global News). When the cops took a menacing step forward, a girl cried out, "Sit down! They can't move us back if we're sitting down!" I grabbed my friend's megaphone and further spurred the crowd on to a sit-down protest - "the easiest form of protest", I declared - and the police were stopped in their tracks.


We experienced one unsettling moment when the police were ordered to don their gas masks. "Put on your bandanas!" yelled people in the crowd. As one officer perched high and aimed his riot gun menacingly at the protesters, we saw signs of tear gas in the air behind us. Yet for this afternoon, on this particular street, the crowd seemed safe for the time being. After a while, my friends and I decided to grab a bite at a Vietnamese restaurant and eventually found our way to Kensington Market, where we rented a room at a backpackers' hostel. Taking a breather, we switched on the TV for an update on how the Canadian media was reporting what we had just seen.

There was zero resemblance between the two narratives. What the CBC News Network, like the others, aired over and over was a single shot of a police car burning, sandwiched in-between footage of black-clad protesters smashing in the windows of banks and a Starbucks. There was no reporting whatsoever on what the protesters had actually been saying - i.e. what they were protesting against, or the myriad progressive solutions they put forth. Rather, there was a generic focus on "violent protesters", alarmism over the "anarchists" that had apparently swarmed the city, and an overall narrative that purported to offer all the necessary justification for Stephen Harper's $1.3 billion in security costs.


From this moment on, the dominant voices of the Canadian establishment completely submerged the voices of the protesters and drowned them in a sea of media-inspired agitation over the anarchist mob. I had seen members of the so-called Black Bloc as we filed out of Queen's Park: a wave of young people clad completely in black walking past me with bandanas covering their faces. It quickly became apparent that these people represented the outer boundaries of protest tactics - willing to go where the larger mass of people did not. The majority of the marchers I saw wielded a more subtly effective weapon: words. Chants of "peaceful protest" and "this is what democracy looks like" interspersed with "this is what a police state looks like" made clear the protesters' essentially Gandhian approach while maintaining a full-blooded stance of anger at the corporate elites who have plundered and poisoned our planet, destroyed the Canadian manufacturing base, pushed for bloody wars of imperial conquest all while relentlessly punishing the poor for the crimes of the wealthy bankers who crashed the world economy.



The most telling quote I heard the whole weekend came from an older gentleman beside me who faced down the line of police at University and Queen and asked a question as simple as it was profound: "What are you afraid of?" he demanded to know.

The answer, if you want it, is right here. But to summarize: the massive turnout of the police and tightening of the security apparatus was not simply about protecting the delicate ears of the G20 leaders. Rather, it was a dress rehearsal for the suppression of working class revolt by the Canadian capitalist elite, which fears the legitimate rage of a population facing long-term unemployment, endless war and looming ecological disaster. In this powder keg atmosphere, the corporate-financial elite is determined to hang on to its remaining privileges and power by any means necessary, including (as that formulation inevitably does) naked physical force.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to find something very fishy in Black Bloc protesters managing to set multiple police cars on fire and break store windows in a city virtually under martial law, with over 5000 police officers patrolling downtown Toronto alone. I walked those city streets myself and you could not walk more than 25 metres without passing a cop. The idea that police would leave squad cars alone in this environment is difficult to believe, and leaves open the possibility that the Black Bloc was infiltrated by police provocateurs who incited and/or led the destruction of property in order to justify a brutal crackdown on the protesters. Such a suggestion is not fantasy; there is well-documented precedent for just such infiltration. After the images of the burning cars and broken windows were broadcast ad nauseum to a clueless Canadian TV audience, with newscasters squeezing the word "violence" as frequently as possible within allotted time frames, the picture of the protest as anarchist war zone was complete, and for the rest of the weekend police had a convenient excuse for any repressive measures they wished to enact.

My friends and I would learn that firsthand the next day.

We largely stayed out of the protest scene on Saturday night; with intermittent rain and a general cluelessness as to where the main action was, we caught the patron saint of independent media, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, at Trinity St. Paul's United Church. She was promoting her new book, Breaking The Sound Barrier, but also reporting on the G20 protests for the show. As a matter of fact, we passed her on University Avenue during the afternoon march; she seemed in a rush, but asked if we would attend her lecture that night. Full of wit and stories of her reporting adventures, Goodman eloquently put forward the case for a media that does not merely kowtow to the powerful, but performs the heavy investigative lifting that makes the Fourth Estate such a crucial pillar of democracy in popular lore.

On Sunday, after a brief lunch at vegan restaurant Urban Herbivore, we headed to Queen's Park in expectation of a protest similar in size to yesterday's. However, we found that the crowds had thinned out considerably. We first came across the anti-Zionist Jews fiercely denouncing the state of Israel; amusingly, other protesters soon set up a sign directly next to them admonishing passers-by to "support the state of Israel against Hamas".


But that was part of the protest's charm as we saw it; divergent groups (albeit with a broader progressive unity than apparent in this example) coming together to protest the corporatist policies of the G20 and the Canadian state. It seemed like democracy at its finest. While there were no large protests at Queen's Park this day, we did sit down with members of the Zeitgeist Movement sitting on the grass next to the Earthians. Like most of the protesters I talked to, they were well-read, passionate yet friendly and laidback individuals. I interviewed Lawrence, a member of the Zeitgeist Movement (far right in picture below).


The Zeitgeist Movement, he explained, is a non-political social movement advocating technological salvation for humanity by building on the foundational similarities between cultures to develop a more sustainable economic model. He held that the technology already exists to create a higher standard of living for all, but is held captive by our current monetary system which subordinates such visions to a more base pursuit of profit and raw materials.

We have the means to make sure that wars don’t happen. What are the barriers to that? A lot of it is because of resource scarcity. So you see wars happen over areas that are very resource-rich. What needs to happen is that all the resources of the planet need to be declared the common heritage of all the world’s people. The Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm of something called the Venus Project, and the Venus Project is what’s putting forward these standards. It is the total redesign of the culture, talking about technologically unifying the globe. If we just update our thinking, and update the knowledge of the population as to the potential of our present-day technology to free us from boring and monotonous, socially offensive labour that you’re required to perform in order to feed and house yourself...we live in a society now where we’re wage slaves, essentially economic slaves. You know, a slave, you’re required to feed and house a slave. But an economic slave is required to feed and house themselves.

Impressed by his summary of the evils of capitalism, I told him that we had a lot in common and went into my usual argument about how socialism was the answer to humanity's problems. While he agreed with some of what I said, he intriguingly explained his opposition to my ideas by declaring that socialism didn't go far enough:

The one thing about socialism that is the same as capitalism, that’s the same as anything - free enterprise system, the same as fascism - is that they all operate within a monetary system [...] Money is really a root to a lot of large-scale problems. If you cannot get paid to do a job...I mean, 70% of non-violent crime is either drug-related or monetary-related, or related to money in some way.

We’re looking at unifying everyone. The problem with socialism is that it’s not radical enough. It’s radical, but it’s not radical enough. And when I say radical enough, I mean, when we’re talking about means of production or workers’ government, there doesn’t need to be that. The technology exists today to free everyone from food production, to free everyone from fabrication of homes and things like that. The technology today is incredible, and we’re able to do this.

So I understand where a socialist is coming from, where they’re like, “we want the people in power, we want a government of the people.” People not profits, that’s totally admirable. But is that possible in a monetary system? Greed and corruption are inherent in any sort of...when money is involved, when money is the reason for acquisition, incentive and exchange, especially incentive, especially incentive, when your incentive is to make money, then that comes first before [the] common good of [the] people.

After our chat with these interesting folks, my friends and I decided to head on down to where the action was. I made the decision to turn left onto a crosswalk, and didn't really perceive the danger of the cops on the traffic island until they said, "we're searching your bags." Note that was not a request. Anxious to avoid any legal trouble since I started a new job that requires a security clearance, I submitted to the search along with my two friends, one of whom had walked right into the lion's den. When the cops searched his bag, they found Ziploc bags filled with flour and paint that he had intended to pass out to protesters (telling them to add water) as a non-violent means of countering repressive crowd control by splashing the cops and making them look silly - in his words, "street theatre".


Barely seconds after the cops opened his bag, my friend was under arrest, in handcuffs and soon led into the back of a police van. The entire story of his imprisonment at "Torontanamo" is viewable here, but the gist is that his experience was rife with subtle forms of psychological torture. Those arrested were kept cuffed even when they were locked in a cage; they were denied food and water for long periods of time; forced to sleep on a cold concrete floor; he told of a couple 17/18-year-old girls who had been in lock-up for thirty hours without being allowed to call for legal aid. He was eventually processed, and the end charges were unbelievable. While the arresting officers had talked of a mischief charge, my friend is now accused of carrying dangerous weapons and looking at a six-month jail sentence. In a blatant violation of his Charter rights, he is banned from attending any future protests due to the bail conditions he agreed to in order to get released. No matter what you think of my friend's plan (and even he seems to think it was pretty stupid now), the threatened punishment in this case is grossly disproportional to the alleged crime. Although job considerations prevented me from acting in solidarity at his moment of arrest - although the only likely scenario would be my getting arrested too - I am fully supportive of him as he prepares to battle these outrageous charges.

Understandably, he describes his weekend as "cataclysmic", and it's hard to argue with that assessment. The weekend was full of innocent (and not-so-innocent) bystanders being arrested, harassed, or beaten by cops. The McGuinty government's cynical use of the 1939 Public Works Protection Act to radically expand police powers, which they attempted to slip past the media before it turned up on the e-laws website, is a useful gauge of this government's contempt for the people it claims to represent, as well as the intent of the police to go as far as they cared to go in harassing people. Although the law claimed people could be searched or arrested for not having ID within 5 metres of the perimeter fences, my experience on Sunday confirmed that in fact the police were exercising this power indiscriminately throughout the entire city. Following my friend's arrest, my remaining companion and I were searched on at least three more occasions that afternoon. On the initial search, police confiscated our ear plugs and bandanas - i.e., the only things we had to protect ourselves against crowd control devices like the LRAD sonic weapons and tear gas. No self-defense against the Canadian police state could be countenanced, it seemed.


Despite all the police violence and harassment, there remains one word I use to describe my experience of the G20: inspiring. Being stuck in small-town Kingston, it's hard to get across my excitement upon seeing thousands and thousands of committed activists all around me, whether labour groups like the PSAC, environmentalists such as Greenpeace ("There is no planet B" being one of my favourite signs), peaceniks, communists - in essence, all the groups that the media and mainstream discourse works hard to erase from the picture. They were all there in full force, daring to face down the militarized might of the capitalist state in order to reclaim democracy for the people (a sadly relevant distinction). I was inspired by the heartfelt dedication of the masses. Although I happened to see, believe it or not, a couple of Tea Party activists with an American flag - not to mention an old lady carrying a sign "Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged" - this was not that twisted parody of a popular uprising. Rather, it was from people smart enough to know who there real enemies were, and that higher level of awareness brought hope to me when I was beginning to drown in hopelessness for the future of humanity.

Along with the representatives of labour, environmentalists and youth - including the Ontario Federation of Labour, the Canadian Labour Congress and Greenpeace - I was stunned by the level of class consciousness and organized socialist resistance. Red banners and pictures of Karl Marx abounded, along with signs that said "Down with capitalism - long live socialism!" I marched with the Marxists, the Trotskyists, the Maoists and sampled party literature that was handed out to me on the street. For me, the novelty of seeing committed Marxists around me was enough, as I had grown used to the near-solitude of spreading that secular gospel in a small town like Kingston.


At one point early on, I talked to Adil Ahmed, representative of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq in Canada. He discussed the work of Iranian communist Mansoor Hekmat, and his reasons for being in Toronto reflected the heart of the anti-capitalist movement. "We came here to protest this summit, of course," he said, "this summit for the capitalist system. They came here to save the capitalist system, of course. And we are here to protect the people, that is, the worker class. This summit is against workers and poor people around the world, and we came here to say no to your policy, no to your system [...] Socialism is the only solution for humanity."


As I heard the union groups around me singing "Solidarity Forever", I drank in the populism. Adil came from an older tradition than I, but his doctrine of socialist internationalism was precisely my ideological cup of tea. Where before I had despaired of the future for organized political action by the working class in Canada, now I knew there were millions of people out there willing to fight for justice in the face of corporate enslavement. The overwhelming task that now faces us is the unity of the working class as it enters this new era of unadulterated class struggle. With his description of the solidarity of workers across national borders, Adil brought out my inner optimist.

We are here. It doesn't matter what kind of peoples, what languages they speak. We're all together here to say no to capitalism. We are stronger [than the elites], of course. We are 90% of the people, they are 5% of the people of the world. If we unite, we can do everything we want - if we do. If we unite, we can do anything. That's why we are here.

All photos by Andréa Prins.

This World is Going to Hell...How to Stop It

That hoary old cliché, “the world is going to hell in a handbasket”, seems truer every day. Wake up this morning and you can read about the ongoing worst environmental disaster in human history, a gushing torrent of crude oil destroying not only one of the world’s most diverse wildlife preserves, but the economy and way of life for millions of Gulf state residents. You can read about Sergeant James Patrick Macneil, 28, the latest Canadian soldier to die in our pointless imperial war in Afghanistan. Closer to home, we see that the federal government is getting its money’s worth out of the $1 billion it squandered on security for the G20 summit in Toronto. Pepper spray, LRAD sonic weaponry, plastic bullets, and now, we get word that they will indeed be breaking out the water cannons. Yes, free speech is alive and well in the Great White North, as you can tell by the ominous police presence that surrounds any hint of spontaneity or protest. But it’s not just here that speaking out about injustice can get you tossed in a jail cell. The Supreme Court of the United States just voted 6-3 to severely restrict First Amendment rights by declaring that verbal support for non-violent, lawful activity is equivalent to giving material aid to terrorists. Jimmy Carter better be careful the next time he monitors elections in Lebanon. Finally, I just looked up at the TV to see that Canada has placed additional sanctions on Iran, the pariah state that absorbs all the collective wrath of the wealthiest nations on earth on behalf of oil companies and the military-industrial complex. I’ve said what I wanted to say about the ongoing propaganda campaign to depict this weak nation - which has fully complied with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, unlike other countries which refused to even sign it - as some kind of sinister threat to world peace. Unfortunately, the Money Boyz control the flow of information and they are fixated on regime change in Iran. Which, of course, has nothing to do with oil.


It’s bad enough to read all this bad news. But what’s far, far worse is watching the media trot out, day after day, the same people who are responsible for these disasters and injustices, who profit from them, who keep them going, to defend the actions of the elite, block any positive changes, and shower blame on the victims of their criminal policies. Of course, it’s hard to beat the American media elite for sheer tone deafness. Jabba the Hutt lashed out at the poor again on his radio show the other day, literally ridiculing children who go hungry and depend on school lunches to obtain sufficient nutrients. Fat man Rush, who likely hasn’t seen his toes since his last Vietnam deferment, suggested they could just look in the fridge for ding-dongs, and if not, there's always the dumpster. There is literally no difference, save a couple centuries, between his despicable "advice" and Marie Antoninette suggesting that the solution for starving French peasants is to “let them eat cake.”

Then there is the ever-more extreme backwaters of the American far right, which gets nuttier by the day to the corporate media’s delight. Sharron Angle brought out an old Republican standby – denigrating the poor and unemployed as “deadbeats” determined to stay on welfare. The meme was echoed by Fox News talking heads, who rubbed salt in the wounds of the 1.2 million Americans whose unemployment benefits just ran out by declaring that they spend most of the money on junk food, beer, cable TV and comic books anyway. Also, Tea Party favourite Dr. Rand Paul insisted that the unemployed are just afraid to get their hands dirty and need to start doing lousy jobs, but that didn’t stop him from defending high pay for medical practitioners. Doctors, he declared, “deserve to earn a comfortable living.” As Digby declared, isn’t it funny how those advocating “tough love” austerity policies are never in danger of being affected either way?

I despair for humanity. The only real solution for the problems that plague the world today, from foreign wars to ecological disaster to extreme inequality, is socialism, the democratic control of society’s resources and the means of production on behalf of the working class. But such a proposal is unthinkable to the corporate overlords that control our society and the information that reaches the masses. They actively fight it through their politicians and their media, but there’s only so much they can do to control an enraged population faced with long-term unemployment and governments they correctly feel do not represent them. More dangerous is when they take that legitimate rage and deploy it against powerless targets like unions, the poor and minorities, through the help of bought-and-paid for demagogues like Glenn Beck or whoever his Canadian equivalent will be on the just-announced Sun TV News Channel. And the scariest part is that it seems to work.

No matter how bad things get, the broad masses appear equally unable to imagine alternatives to the status quo, despite their much-hyped exasperation with it. Elections across the world have repeatedly returned to power the same bourgeois political parties, all with the same deranged, nonsensical neo-Hooverist prescriptions for the global economy: austerity, cutting spending, and reining in the deficit, because what matters is continued profits for banks, not the devastation which prolonged unemployment continues to wreak on working people. And yet the people just keep voting them back in. Britain elects Conservative David Cameron. Germany throws in its lot with Angela Merkel and the free market-worshipping Free Democratic Party. No matter how much bad press Stephen Harper gets, Canadians remain enslaved to the Conservative-Liberal big business duopoly while the NDP runs from any thoughts of socialism. American primary voters backed corporate whores like Blue Dog “Democrat” Blanche Lincoln (D-AK), the senator from Wal-Mart, simply because Obama endorsed her. They also rejected progressive voices like Marcy Winograd in California. It seems there’s only one direction for working-class politics in America to go – further and further right.

Part of the problem is that there is no strong, organized working class movement in any of these countries that can find representation in government. Traditional social-democratic parties are a joke, having been completely enslaved to neoliberal dogma years ago. All will embrace the austerity policies that make the working class pay for the banksters’ crimes (see: France’s Socialist Party, the British Labour Party). The decades-long demonization of Marxist ideas during the Cold War has ensured that the most powerful theoretical tool for understanding the current economic crisis goes ignored by the masses that would most benefit from that knowledge.


The Canadian citizen who wishes to take a Marxist approach to the political struggle has a range of choices, none of them all that appealing. The Communist Party of Canada is the second-oldest political party in the country after the Liberals, yet its historical associations with Stalinism have left it on the political fringe. The party membership has aged to the point where it cannot represent an active, youthful political movement. As good as the People’s Voice newspaper is, its writers retain a 1930s view of the working class and revel in archaic terminology. Whatever the party’s policies, its unwillingness to confront the legacy of Stalinism or adopt the internationalist approach of Leon Trotsky means it will remain glued to the Soviet past. To take a coldly realistic view of the situation, it is highly unlikely that any party with the word “Communist” in its name will be able to avoid the totalitarian connotations of historical Communist parties led by Stalin and Mao, with their gross crimes against humanity. That fact also condemns the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), which ran out of steam around the time it fixated on Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha as its anti-revisionist model.

The Socialist Equality Party (Canada), which I’ve written about before, seems to have by far the best platform of any leftist party. Its policies are Trotskyist in nature and internationalist in scope, which in my mind points the way forward for the proletariat: the unity of workers across borders against their exploiters in the parasitic corporate-financial class. Unfortunately, my early enthusiasm for the SEP has waned somewhat after discovering how little infrastructure the party has in Canada – in my experience, basically none. The SEP’s Canadian office does not even have a phone number or e-mail address, and there’s little realistic hope for a party with such a laughable lack of organization. Short of spreading the word through social media and registering the SEP as an official political party, it remains very much a movement in theory only.

That leaves the New Democratic Party. I was made aware via Facebook that there is in fact an NDP Socialist Caucus. I completely agree with the Caucus’ policies and their general direction, i.e. the only way the NDP can survive as a relevant party is by moving to the left. Canada already has a centre-left bourgeois party: the Liberals. The NDP need to reclaim the ideological high ground by drawing on their roots with Tommy Douglas and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which declared its intention to work until capitalism was eradicated. While the NDP leadership is considerably to the right of its rank and file, its existence as a major political party with representatives in Parliament gives it a clout that no other Canadian party to the left of the Liberals can boast. For now, with the SEP little more than a publishing organization, there seems to be little alternative to pushing for the adoption of socialist principles within the NDP. Ontario party leader Andrea Horwath has indicated her openness to this approach, suggesting an NDP where members need not “check their socialism at the door.”

The political element is an important part of the class struggle, but any real progress is years away and will not affect the underlying dynamic of Canadian politics today, nor the subservience of our politicians to the interests of transnational capital. For the moment, the only course of action is mass organization, demonstrating on the streets in defiance of our government’s corporatist polices. I call for this tactic regularly, but too often it remains purely abstract and theoretical, with no real-world lynchpin.

Well, the opportunity arrives this weekend as the G20 congregates in Toronto. The Harper government’s monstrous waste of $1 billion for security, not to mention the overall tone of media reports promoting new weapons the police seem keen to use, indicate that the state is fully prepared to use violence as a means of crushing dissent. That fact in itself is not surprising, but the media’s approach suggests they will pin any blame on protesters. The use of police provocateurs to justify a crackdown is not out of the question. The decisive factor is, will the citizenry allow itself to be intimidated? Or will it make its presence and concerns known to a nationwide, nay, worldwide audience? Will it refuse to submit to the bludgeoning force of the modern police state?

I’ll be in Toronto this weekend to answer in the affirmative. So should you. Make your voice heard!

Worst Comparison Ever

Democratic Congressman Charlie Rangel declared that Hamas is today's Soviet Union. Just in terms of geography alone, that comparison is ludicrous. But it was par for the course at a Times Square press conference held the other day by Democrats who demanded that survivors of Israel's flotilla attack be prevented from entering the United States, calling them "terrorists" for good measure. Former progressive hero Anthony Weiner also went out of his way to illustrate the appropriateness of his last name by continuing his bid to become AIPAC's new golden boy. I guess there really is no crime Israel can commit without its Congressional servants falling over each other to justify it. Sad.

Squeezing Iran

More news on the continued demonization of Iran emerged yesterday, as the UN Security Council voted to impose yet another round of sanctions against Tehran for its alleged “refusal to bring its nuclear program into compliance with international inspection”, as The Globe and Mail put it. The Globe reported on the sanctions with all the asterisk-plagued “objectivity” you would expect from the voice of Bay Street, even as Washington (interesting, that) bureau writer Paul Koring was unable to mask the massive hypocrisy viz a viz the United States and Israel:

“There is no double standard at play here,” Mr. Obama said, although he did not directly address critics who argue Washington turns a blind eye to Israeli’s clandestine nuclear arsenal while attempting to prevent Tehran from building one.

Clearly, no double standard at all. But wait...there’s more!

The sanctions will likely worsen the already grim state of Iranian-American relations and could be the death knell of Mr. Obama’s as yet unrequited offer to extend the hand of friendship to the regime in Tehran. Mr. Obama nevertheless voiced hope that relations with Tehran could still improve.

“These sanctions do not close the door on diplomacy,” he said. “We would like nothing more than to reach the day when the Iranian government fulfills its international obligations – a day when these sanctions are lifted, previous sanctions are lifted, and the Iranian people can finally fulfill the greatness of the Iranian nation."

In other words, regime change. So let me get this straight: the same president who spent his first 18 months in office fellating AIPAC by maintaining the American elite’s single-minded focus on escalating tensions with Iran, relentlessly criticizing that country at every conceivable opportunity, insisting that “all options” are still “on the table”, and finally, refusing an arrangement brokered by Turkey and Brazil that would have shipped Iran’s enriched uranium abroad for reprocessing – in essence, an agreement made in good faith with Iran that would have solved the nuclear dispute and satisfied declared American demands – and we’re supposed to believe that Obama extended a hand of friendship to Tehran? An offer which remains “unrequited”?

The stench of political cynicism here is unbearable. It’s clear that the United States never had any real interest in negotiations with Iran. Don’t be fooled by Obama’s gentler rhetorical approach compared to Bush/Cheney, his occasional references to the greatness of the Iran people, etc. Nothing has changed. The goal of Western elites has been and always will be regime change, creating a more pliable Iranian government that will open the country up to foreign investment – if necessary by suppressing its native population in the manner of the Shah prior to the 1979 revolution.

In that manner, Obama never seriously considered Iranian diplomatic overtures, nor has he ceased the relentless manner in which the U.S. aims to bludgeon that country into submission, either through diplomatic sanctions or military force. That capitulation to elite interests has been there from the very start of his presidency, and his so-called offers of negotiation have always been insincere, his compliments always backhanded. In his inauguration speech, Obama declared:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

No single sentence better illustrates the hypocritical, cynical policy of the United States towards Iran. First, we have denunciations of corruption and the heavy-handed silencing of dissent – as if the American government has not fully tolerated and even propped up such regimes when it serves their own interests, as if dissent from Beltway conventional wisdom is not rigorously silenced (ask Helen Thomas). It’s all there – the faux democratic posturing, the laughable implication that American politicians do not “cling to power through corruption”, and finally, the projecting of American aggression onto that of its targeted enemy nation. Iran has repeatedly extended its diplomatic hand to America over the past decade – witness its 2003 overture to the U.S. after the invasion of Iraq, which would have satisfied American demands, but which the Bush administration arrogantly slapped away. Likewise, this year's deal with Turkey and Brazil would have satisfied the supposed demands of the “international community” regarding Iran’s nuclear program. But that agreement was never seriously entertained by the U.S. government, which has one goal and one goal only: regime change.

It is the United States, not Iran, which refuses to unclench its fist. The latest round of UN sanctions are merely the latest evidence of its characteristic imperial aggression.

Propaganda, Inc.: The Dawn of "Fox News North"

The Globe and Mail is reporting that Quebec billionaire Pierre Karl Péladeau has plans to create a new, right-leaning 24-hour cable news channel in Canada modeled on the success of Fox News south of the border. I shouldn’t have to explain how serious this is, or how dangerous. But it’s my blog, so I will.

Canadian media today is more concentrated than it’s ever been, with a handful of corporate monopolies controlling virtually everything we see, read or hear. CanWest Global controls Global Television as well as such conservative-leaning national newspapers as the Vancouver Sun, the National Post, and the Ottawa Citizen (essentially Canada’s version of the Washington Post, that paper employs odious chickenhawk David Warren as a regular columnist). The CBC reported in 2004 that CanWest papers had been ordered to change the words in Associated Press stories from “insurgents” and “militants” to “terrorists”, a perfect example of its propensity to embrace conservative memes.

Next up is CTVglobemedia, which includes both the CTV television division and the leading national daily, The Globe and Mail. Broadly “centrist” in their political orientation, these sources offer a fairly conventional pro-business viewpoint.

Finally, there is Quebecor, the communications empire that controls Sun Media, which publishes national tabloids in Toronto, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Montreal, etc., as well as local papers like Fort McMurray Today and the London Free Press. It also bought out Osprey Media, which owns the Kingston Whig-Standard, my hometown paper where I briefly worked as an intern in 2009.

Prior to today’s announcement, I knew little of Péladeau’s political leanings, although as the head of a major corporation I could assume that they were broadly conservative. Now that I know this billionaire CEO plans to establish a conservative cable news network in Canada, that fact – as well as Quebecor being the nation’s preeminent tabloid publisher – establishes once and for all his true status: Pierre Karl Péladeau is the Rupert Murdoch of Canada.

The precedent established by Murdoch’s vast media holdings is well-established. Trashy conservative dailies like the New York Post are now a mere sideshow compared to Murdoch’s main contribution in the Slow Death of American Journalism: Fox News, the right-wing propaganda network that has had a devastating effect on public discourse in the United States. The effect of Fox News on the collective American intelligence are well-known by now and the statistics speak for themselves. Substantial numbers of American citizens still believe Saddam Hussein played a role in 9/11, yet the numbers among Fox News viewers are even higher.

Where American media had previously served elite interests primarily by omitting certain stories and playing up others (check Noam Chomsky’s Thought Control in Democratic Societies for an illustration of this phenomenon in the case of Nicaragua during the 1980s), Fox News represented a crossing of the right-wing Rubicon. Despite the ingenious pretense of objectivity via its “fair and balanced” slogan – "How could this be propaganda? They just said they’re fair and balanced! – Fox set a new low for the corporate American press corps, which slavishly followed in its footsteps. The network trafficked in blatant lies, demonization of opponents, skewering of the facts to fit a predetermined narrative, and mindless partisan hackery that, following the election of Barack Obama, rapidly began to descend into subtle and not-so-subtle racism, alarmist pandering to right-wing militia movements, and, in general, the most well-managed, effective, outright dangerous propaganda since the heyday of Joseph Goebbels.

Alongside the deliberate disinformation and fact-challenged demagogues like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, the network also embraced the most shallow elements of standard corporate news and cranked them up to 11. Fox provides a non-stop flow of pneumatic blonde “news babes”, delights in stories centred around sex while its anchors feign outrage, and more than any of its competitors, revels in making itself the story: Bill O’Reilly and Beck regularly document their ongoing controversies with other public figures and replay clips from their own shows. It never occurs to them to ask the question: what about the actual news?

This is not what we need to see in Canada. A conservative cable news channel will only skew public discourse further on terms favourable to wealthy Canadian elites. The intelligence of the public at large will only decline, and it’ll be much harder for us to look down on misinformed Americans when we have our own source of disinformation. Canadian media is already corporate-friendly and “centrist” enough as it is. The CBC, while government-owned, rarely airs controversial stories about the war in Afghanistan. Like CTV or Global, unless faced with an unavoidably tragic story such as the death of a Canadian soldier (always justified as part of our neverending struggle to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Afghanistan), they prefer feel-good stories such as the opening of a Tim Horton’s in Kandahar. A conservative Canadian news channel will only amplify this unfortunate tendency.

The prospect of “Fox News North” is horrifying and underscores the need for greater funding of independent media that will offer Canadian citizens more direct and representative control over our national conversation.