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May Day celebrated in Toronto
by Christian Whittall
The Free Times Cafe was packed to the
gills on the evening of Saturday, May 1, for Toronto’s 24th Annual
Socialist May Day Celebration. The lively, convivial atmosphere may
have seemed in sharp contrast to the rather dire-sounding theme for
this year: “Eco-Socialism or Extinction”. But what was really on
display was great hope and excitement for the first of these two
alternatives.
Jorge Soberon, Cuba’s consul general in
Toronto spoke about challenges facing his country and its militant
resolve in the face of them. He deflated the wishful thinking of Cuba’s
enemies that the revolution would die with Fidel, citing the vast
resource represented by the country’s young generation.
The Venezuela consul general in
Toronto, Mirna Quero de Peña, sent a written statement that was read
aloud by emcee Elizabeth Byce. De Peña emphasized that the
environmental crisis we are facing is an economic rather than a
technological one.
B.C. Holmes of the Toronto Haiti Action
Committee talked about her visit to the subsequently earthquake-ravaged
nation on the anniversary of its independence, Jan. 1 of this year.
“Haiti needs solidarity, not charity,” she insisted. Vice president of
the Canadian Arab Federation Ali Mallah spoke next, also giving voice
to revolutionary sentiments overseas, especially in the Middle East.
With a more local perspective, Ontario
Coalition Against Poverty member Leslie Wood celebrated the noisy
optimism and numerical strength of the No One Is Illegal march held
earlier that day (with several hundred participants)—defiant in the
face of the province’s inhumane cut to welfare spending in the middle
of a recession.
Finally, Socialist Action Federal
Secretary Barry Weisleder drew all these threads together in a “State
of the Revolution” address. The evening was rounded out by a line-up of
performers, leaving the crowd infused with rebellion and hope.
War Crimes & Scandals Aplenty
by Barry Weisleder
At the risk of being found in contempt
of Parliament, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority
government still refuses to release documents pertaining to the torture
of detainees handed over by Canadian forces to Afghan authorities. If
House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken backs the parliamentary order,
the Justice Department may take the issue to the Supreme Court, which
will buy the Tories some time.
But time doesn’t appear to be on their
side. Despite assiduous, side-door efforts to re-open the debate and
extend the 2011 date for removal of troops from the war of occupation,
a series of scandals have conspired against Harper and company.
First, there are persistently surfacing
torture allegations. Ahmadshah Malgari, 37, an Ottawa resident who
volunteered to work for Canadian military intelligence in Afghanistan,
made three claims before a Commons committee in mid-April:
1) In August 2007 a Canadian soldier
illegally shot an unarmed Afghan in the head and, to cover this crime,
troops panicked and arrested innocent people. (Chief of defense staff
General Walter Natynczyk denied this.)
2) Military intelligence officers
deliberately handed over “uncooperative” prisoners to Afghanistan’s
notorious National Directorate of Security, knowing they were likely to
be tortured.
3) Canadian troops arrested far too
many Afghans with no links to the insurgency. Malgarai interviewed such
people, including a 90-year-old man who could barely walk. There has
been no official denial of the latter two allegations.
Then there was the revelation that,
among NATO allies, the Canadian army led the pack with 163 prisoner
transfers, followed by Britain with 93, the Netherlands 10, and Denmark
one. The U.S. has its own system for dealing with captives.
To deflect mild Western criticism of
Afghan puppet-government corruption and brutality, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai threatened to join the Taliban. His outburst cast a deeper
pall over the imperialists’ promise to bring democracy and civilization
to the region as they ready for the anticipated summer offensive of
national resistance fighters.
Ironically, the scandal over alleged
influence peddling by ex-Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, and the dubious
behaviour of his wife, ex-Tory Cabinet member Helena Guergis, might
have seemed like a welcome distraction from the unpopular war in Asia
and from the persisting woes of the so-called Great Recession. Except
that it isn’t. It highlights the government’s toxic secrecy, duplicity,
and arrogance, and it makes extension of the war a more problematic
sell-job.
Not to be lost in the fog of
scandal-wracked Ottawa are maneuvers to keep Canadian police and other
security personnel in Afghanistan, backing the corrupt regime of drug
lords, past the 2011 troop pull-out time—or to transfer troops to Congo
or Haiti or elsewhere to secure corporate resource extraction
interests. Vigilance by activists, alongside demands for full
disclosure by Ottawa, are key at this turning point.
If only the antiwar movement would get
back into the streets to seal the deal for peace now.
Harper Sets a Corporate Table for
Summits
by Barry Weisleder
The big issues on the agenda for the G8
and G20 Summits in Huntsville and Toronto in June include climate
change, nuclear weapons, Afghanistan, and the state of the world
economy. Poverty, hunger, and disease as a function of capitalist
economic crisis and growing inequality will likely take a distant back
seat to government deficit and debt reduction.
Just to make sure that the rich are not
made to pay, even in the slightest way, for the crisis their system
caused and their actions aggravated, the Conservative federal
government in Ottawa is campaigning aggressively to block a proposal
for a speculation tax and an excess-profits tax on financial
institutions.
This is an old idea, first posited by
the English economist John Maynard Keynes in 1936, and by American
economist James Tobin in 1972. It is backed today by British P.M.
Gordon Brown and the International Monetary Fund; even U.S. President
Barack Obama is edging towards such a tax to pay for bank bailouts.
These facts are clues that the FAT (Financial Activities Tax) will not
go nearly far enough—and moreover, that it is designed to help
stabilize the system of the fat cats rather than help working people.
But it goes way too far for the likes
of Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Prime Minister Stephen
Harper. “No Canadian taxpayer money has to be put into our system,”
Flaherty told The Canadian Press on April 20. While Canadian banks were
not hit as hard by the global meltdown in 2008, the country didn’t
escape unscathed. Quebec’s giant Caisse de depot et placement, which
manages the province’s pension fund plan, was burned by its investments
in risky securities, as were private holders of asset-backed commercial
paper. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan lost $19.5 billion since the
end of 2007.
And now deficits resulting from
shrinking revenues, in large part caused by cuts to corporate taxes,
are being cited by governments as a reason to slash services and jobs,
freeze workers’ wages, and further reduce corporation taxes. So,
wouldn’t a Tobin Tax go well now?
Socialists are not opposed. But we
insist that to eradicate (not just alleviate) poverty, hunger, and
disease, and to convert industry and homes to green energy technologies
(to save our global habitat), it will be necessary to expropriate the
banks and big business. Democratically elected councils of workers and
consumers will know how to invest the fabulous wealth of such
institutions in the interest of the majority, once and for all.
In the meantime, let’s get ready to hit
the streets and alternative venues for the Peoples’ Summit and protest
actions in Toronto during the week leading up to June 28.
Children a G-8 ‘Priority’?
by Barry Weisleder
While child and maternal health is
supposed to be a top priority at the G8 Summit in June, host Prime
Minister Stephen Harper will have a tough time reconciling his federal
budget with his public relations spin.
Ottawa’s budget freeze on foreign
development aid after this year is in tune with Tory and business
priorities to reduce the deficit, notwithstanding uninterrupted annual
increases for the military.
Meanwhile, the tragic deaths of
millions of children globally, from easily preventable diseases,
proceeds at a staggering pace. Some 8.8 million children still die
annually before they reach the age of five, according to World Vision
Canada. That is 24,000 children per day. Seventeen per minute.
At the same time, 500,000 mothers die
annually in childbirth or from other pregnancy-related causes.
A $10 bed net can protect a child from
malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Access to nutritious foods can be provided
at little cost. Diarrhea kills 1.5 million children annually. It is
easily treated, as is malaria. Child blindness, too common in the
underdeveloped world, can be prevented by just two vitamin A pills per
year, at a cost of four cents.
Today the world spends $49 billion
(U.S.) on pet food every year. If half of that amount were added to
current spending on maternal and child health, the child death rate
could be cut nearly in half.
If the big business politicians who run
the G8 and G20 were forced to tax the rich and abolish military
spending, humanity would have taken a big step toward solving our major
problems.
TD Moves Into Florida
by Barry Weisleder
While most of us have been trying to
cope with the ongoing ‘Great Recession’, Canadian bankers have been
busy with their own expansion plans. Showing that Canada’s banks
weathered the crash better than their American counterparts, TD Bank
(formerly the Toronto-Dominion) bought three insolvent Florida banks to
establish its retail presence in the U.S. southeast.
TD’s purchase of Riverside National
Bank of North Florida, First Federal Bank of North Florida, and
AmericanFirst Bank is a low-risk venture since the U.S. Federal Deposit
Insurance Corp. agreed to share 50 per cent of the loan losses up to
specific thresholds at each bank, beyond which the FDIC would handle 80
per cent.
TD is getting 69 new branches in
Florida, bringing its total there to 103. It already has a major
presence in New England and New York, and owns 40 per cent of TD
Ameritrade, a discount brokerage based in the U.S. Midwest.
One elite’s loss is another’s gain.
That’s why we call it inter-imperialist rivalry, sometimes the stuff of
wars. But this one is still well under control as high-finance
operators make the average Jill and Jack pay the price in lost homes,
jobs, and pensions.
Meanwhile, as bank profits in Canada
soar, and corporate taxes decline, consumer debt is rising fast. In
Canada, disposable income growth has been going down, and in the year
ended last February, household debt went up more than three times
faster than income growth. Canadians have seen their liabilities rising
twice as fast as their assets over the past two years—despite the
rebound in stock valuations and the recent surge in home prices.
“Canadian consumer fundamentals are
weaker than they have been in almost 15 years,” reported CIBC economist
Benjamin Tal on April 1. When will the next bubble burst, and who will
pay the price?
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