This Issue’s Enemy of the People: Coun. George Mammoliti

In an ongoing feature, Basics will single out those special people who deserve recognition for having gone out of their way to show their contempt for the working class. Not just your ordinary jackasses - these are Enemies of the People!

Former NDP Provincial politician turned Liberal City Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti has really done it this time.

In response to a recent bout of shootings near Jane and Sheppard (not even the area that he represents), Mammoliti made statements to media calling for the Armed Forces to be called in to combat “terrorists”, referencing local gang youth.

Before he was a loud-mouth right-wing politician, Mammoliti was actually a landscaper for social housing in Toronto. As a politician however, Mammoliti has often championed the hard-line ‘law and order’ causes calling for families (with or without children) to be kicked out Community Housing if someone is thought to be selling drugs while he was a Parliamentary Assistant on drugs, and rallying support for extending the contract of the much-hated ex-Police Chief, Julian Fantino. This past year, he called for a ‘red light district’ (ie. prostitution centre) to be set up on the Toronto Islands demonstrating that he has neither a sense for irony or hypocrisy. Mammoliti has also been noted for the amount of donations received from corporations and developers, particularly over $70 000 raised in 2003 for his election campaign - even though no one was even running against him.

Normally, his misspending of working peoples money and jack-ass comments wouldn’t warrant him being given the label of enemy of the people. However, now with his suggestions to bring war to our streets to battle youth he has clearly shown himself to be not only stupid, but dangerous. Congratulations Mr. Mammoliti, you are an enemy of the people.  

Anti-Terrorist Fence in Owen Sound?!?

Your tax dollars at work: a chain-link and barbed wire fence to stop terrorist infiltration of Owen Sound.

How far will the federal government go to make people afraid of ‘terrorism’? All the way to Owen Sound from the looks of it.
The Canadian Government has build a 2 metre high, 60 metre long barb-wired fence along the east harbour wall of Owen Sound - much to the surprise of the local City government.
The Mayor and City Council of Owen Sound have written a letter of complaint to Harper. During a recent council meeting, Mayor Ruth Lovell called the fence “a big disgrace”.
The federal government is justifying putting up the fence as a way to ‘keep out terrorists’. Why terrorists would want to attack Owen Sound - a Georgian Bay city of 21,753 that only welcomes an international ship once every few years - was left unexplained.
According to Transport Canada, more than $930 million has been spent on such “marine security enhancements”.
This sort of ridiculous act would be hilarious if it wasn’t for the fact that the government uses this sort of fear mongering to keep Canada involved in the bogus ‘War on Terror’.

Gov’t Starts to Return Park

Return of Ipperwash, stolen from First Nations for WWII army base, starts 12 years after the police murder of Dudley George.

The provincial government announced on December 20 that they will start to return Ipperwash Provincial Park to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations. The park was the site of the Ipperwash crisis that culminated in the police murder of First Nations activist Dudley George.

The First Nations have been struggling for decades to see the return of their ancestral lands that include a sacred burial ground.

In 1942, the government used the War Measures Act to steal the land from the First Nations and turn it into a military base to train soldiers before they went off to fight in Europe. The government promised to return the land when no longer needed for military purposes.
In 1995, after years of pressuring the government, the First Nations moved to reclaim their stolen land. 35 First Nations people moved on to the park, at the time lying unused as it had been abandoned by the military.

The provincial government responded with violence, sending in the riot squad backed by a heavily armed Tactical Response Unit to evict the unarmed First Nations. The police opened fire, wounding two and killing Dudley George. (The officer who killed George with a sniper rifle was convicted of criminal negligence but received only two years of community service. The OPP gave him an estimated payoff of one million dollars and a lucrative job in the private sector.)

The George family welcomed the announcement. “I think he would be pleased. He paid the ultimate price and is not here to enjoy,” said his brother Sam at a recent press conference.
While the announcement is a good first start, it does not immediately return the land to the First Nations. For now the park will be “co-managed” by a joint committee of representatives from the government and the Chippewas of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nations, in consultation with “community members”. No mention was made on who’s wishes would come first in case of disagreement, or exactly when full control would be passed over - only that it would be “a matter of time”.

People of all nations in Canada must keep a close watch on the government of Ontario to demand that they do not cheat the First Nations yet again. 66 years is long enough! Give the land back!

CAW/Magna Deal: A Historic Sell-Out

Deal between union and company may increase wages, but at what cost?

The continued existence of independent and democratic workers’ unions, the traditional form of workers organized power, has been thrown into question as a result of the recent deal struck between the Canadian Autoworkers (CAW) and Magna International. The so-called “Framework for Fairness” as announced by CAW President Buzz Hargrove and Frank Stronach, CEO of Magna, strips away many of the rights that working people have fought for centuries to achieve.
The “Framework for Fairness” eliminates shop stewards - union members democratically elected by their coworkers to represent them in their dealings with management. In their place are “employee advocates,” who are assessed by a “fairness committee” made up of equal numbers of representatives from management and labour. Rank and file workers can not vote on these positions, taking away their right to elect their own representatives. Even worse, these so-called “employee advocates” are prohibited from viewing themselves as representatives of the union or employees.
According to the new deal, workers are even denied the right to directly elect the leaders of their own local union. Without independent, democratic representation in the workplace, workers’ interests are kept in line with bosses’ priorities. The obvious result is a silencing of workers’ voices and a rebirth of the company union controlled and infiltrated by management, that workers fought tirelessly against in the 1920s and finally eliminated in the 1930s. The removal of shop stewards has huge implications for building any sort of authentic workers movement and mobilizing the membership which is the real source of union power.
Arguably, the most shocking and disturbing element of the CAW/Magna agreement is that it permanently gives up the right to strike. The possibility of removing one’s labour is the one single bargaining chip that workers have in their dealings with management and is the source of workers’ power. Without the right to strike, workers are completely vulnerable to the whims of management and have no grounds on which to take a stand, weakening their position in an already unequal relationship. One thing we can be sure of is that workers in all sectors of the economy will face tougher negotiations at the bargaining table as the CAW/Magna deal has set a precedent that this is acceptable practice.
As working people, it is time to ask ourselves what kind of representation we want in the workplace and whether today’s unions are fulfilling their obligations to us. Unions are made up of workers and therefore, belong to us. In an economic climate where workers are up against multinational corporations and low-paid, part-time, temporary employment has become normal, independent organizations for workers is more important than ever. We must demanding accountability from our union leadership and reject leaders who fail to fight for our interests and sell us out to the bosses. Making concessions to management and sacrificing hard-won rights for workers is a dangerous game that is difficult to stop once it has begun.
There is a lot of anger amongst workers in the CAW surrounding the Magna deal. Hopefully they will be able to effectively channel that anger and take back their union.  

Migrante-Ontario Launched in Toronto

Organizers vow to fight for and defend the rights of Filipino migrant workers.

Migrante-Ontario, an alliance of Filipino migrant organizations in Ontario, was officially launched in Toronto this November. Migrante-Ontario is a chapter of Migrante International, a global alliance of more than 100 overseas Filipino organizations in 22 countries. Members of Migrante-Ontario include: DAMAYAN Migrant Education and Resource Center, United Filipinos for Nationalism and Democracy (UFiND), AWARE/GABAY, Philippine Advocacy Through Arts Canada (PATAC), Pilipinong Migrante Sa Canada (PMSC)-Ottawa, Migrant Workers Family Resource Center-Hamilton, UKPC-Toronto, and Siklab-Ontario. Since its launching, initiatives have been put forward for the formation of a Migrante Ontario Youth Collective.
Migrante-Ontario believes it is part of the Filipino people’s movement for national liberation and democracy. Migrante organizes Filipinos overseas and their families back home. Migrante’s mission is to continuously uphold and defend the rights and welfare of Filipino migrants and their families.
The need for organizing Filipinos abroad has become urgent since the 1980s due to the Philippine Government’s Labour Export Policy (LEP). The LEP is part and parcel of the government’s counterinsurgency strategy as the biggest safety valve to the country’s crisis. The over 10 million Filipinos now abroad would otherwise be at home un- or underemployed and not sending remittances to relatives also un- or underemployed. Neither would the billions of dollars remitted every year be circulating in the economy to provide work for others. The other elements of this counterinsurgency strategy include massive foreign borrowing and militarization of the country.
For their part, receiving countries like Canada rarely protect the rights of the migrants they so assiduously exploit. Police violence, non-enforcement of employment standards, and restrictive visas are just some of the many weapons used against Filipino migrants.
In its brief existence, Migrant Ontario is already at the forefront of Filipino migrants struggles. Migrante Ontario is seeking cooperation with local Canadian and other migrant organizations. A major task of Migrante Ontario is to mobilize other migrant organizations in Canada to assist in the formation of an anti-imperialist International Migrants Alliance (IMA). The first IMA assembly is set for May 2008 in Malaysia.  

Feds Sabotage Bali Climate Conference

The Canadian state = the planet’s 4th biggest problem

An annual report and Canada’s recent performance at a UN climate conference ranks it the fourth worst country in efforts to end climate change. The damning report came from Germanwatch, a European environmental NGO that rated Canada 4th worst in terms of efforts to stop climate change (out of 56 countries evaluated).

The Report came as representatives from over 180 countries attended a UN climate conference held in Bali, Indonesia during December. The conference took place to negotiate a greenhouse gas emission reduction plan that would follow Kyoto once the accord ends in 2012. The Kyoto protocol was ratified in 1997, and included a collective agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 5% bellow 1990 levels by 2012, but because of its weakness, it failed even in this week goal.

The Bali conference ended with a vague plan, including an agreement that rich nations need to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 20-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Throughout the conference, Canada, represented by environment minister John Baird and his team of negotiators sided with the US and Japan in trying to block the passing of this goal. Canada also attempted to force strict carbon limits on China and other developing nations - despite the fact that these countries bear almost no responsibility for causing global warming, and (in the case of China) have a per-capita emission level 5 times lower than Canada. Many feel that Canada and the U.S. are pushing these carbon limits in order to challenge the competitive threat of Chinese capitalism to Western interests.

The G-8 (The US, Canada, Japan, the U.K, Germany, France, Italy and Russia) emit around half of the globe’s annual carbon dioxide emissions – the most significant greenhouse gas that causes global warming- despite representing less than 11% of the world’s population. It is the rich that own the huge oil, energy and industrial corporations within those 8 countries that are the greatest contributors to climate change and are not only doing the least to prevent it, but are actively trying to thwart efforts to stop it.

According to most recent calculations, Canada emits around 639 million (well over half a billion) tonnes of carbon dioxide per year - making it the 7th biggest polluter of CO2 in the world. The shameful stance of John Baird at the climate conference must be condemned by all Canadians as a crime against the people of the world and the planet. It is part of the consistent anti-environmental policies implemented by various administrations: from the Liberal’s dramatic rising of emission levels, to the current Conservative’s destructive position. True environmental change can only come from governments that do not put corporate interests ahead of the people. 

The Great Employment Insurance Rip-Off

EI surplus stands at $54 billion while most workers can’t collect from program they paid for.

by J.D. Benjamin

The history and purpose of Employment Insurance is pretty straight forward. After decades of struggle and frequently violent opposition by the government, workers won a major concession - a federal insurance program that would support workers when they were out of work.

Over the last 40 years, the EI program has been gradually clawed back. Starting in 1994 with the Liberals and continuing with the Conservatives, the government turned EI into a scam to rip workers off for $2 billion on average per year. Last year, the government collected $16.8 billion in contributions but only handed out $14.1 billion to jobless workers. Overall, the EI surplus has ballooned to $54 billion.

The government uses two main tactics to keep the money pouring in:

The first is to make sure most workers can not use the program in the first place. 78 percent of workers in Toronto who lose their jobs do not qualify for EI. Temp workers, part timers, anyone who worked less than 665 hours in the previous year can not collect, no matter how much they may have paid into the program. This comes down hardest on the workers who need the program the most - single moms, new immigrants, youth, or other workers who can’t find stable, full time jobs.

The second tactic is to make the program as useless as possible for those few workers that do qualify. The program only covers 55% of previous wages - starvation levels for workers who were low waged to begin with - with an maximum payment of $423 a week.

The first EI payment also takes six weeks to be issued - potentially two rent payments missed, eviction and homelessness. Anyone who access Ontario Works while they wait for EI to kick in will find the money taken off their next EI cheque, usually leaving them with only $30. This puts them right back where they started - having to choose between paying the rent or feeding the kids.

The program does not actually cover workers until they find a new job - once your time limit is up, you’re cut off, even if they have paid more into the system than they have taken out.
So were has all this extra money gone? The additional outrage is that there is no government account with $54 billion dollars in it, just waiting to be used for the benefit of the working class. Instead, the money has been dumped into the federal government’s general revenue, to be spent on whatever the feds want. Chretien and Martin spent it on debt repayment, while Harper spent it on the military and occupying Afghanistan.

In other words, when (not if) the economy goes bust and large numbers of workers get laid off, the money will not be there to keep them from falling into poverty. The money will be sitting in the accounts of the big banks, arms manufacturers, and the corrupt puppet government of Hamid Karzai and his cronies.

With a federal election coming, the politicians are forced to pretend to care about the plight of working people. Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion called poverty in Canada “an immense human tragedy” - ignoring the fact that it was his party’s EI policies that helped increase the poverty level. The Conservatives railed against the surplus while in opposition but did nothing once in power. The NDP has complained, but done nothing to mobilise working people to fight back. All parties need to have their feet held to the fire until workers get an EI that works for them!

The Name of the Country is Nandigram

People’s resistance to displacement in West Bengal captures the attention of all India and the world.

In the quiet rural area of Nandigram, in West Bengal India, there has been a struggle that reflects the dreams and aspirations of an entire nation. In the last year the villagers of Nandigram have resisted the neo-liberal onslaught with their bodies and lives, and have embarrassed the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM led Left Front in India and around the world. In 2006 the land of Nandigram was sold under a Special Economic Zone act to the Salim Group of Indonesia to build a chemical hub. This would result in the deprivation of land and livelihood for thousands of villagers. Sumit Chowdhury, an independent activist who had been involved in the Nandigram movement, said that the sale of the land was actually done by the Salim Group for their client DOW Chemicals. The sale of this land has been disputed and referred to as a ‘rumor’ by supporters of the ruling-party - the CPIM.

In December 2006 the people of Nandigram, fearing the loss of their lands and livelihoods, organized 41 village committees called the Bhumi Ucched Protirodh Committee (Committee Against Land Acquisition) or BUPC, to resist the sale. The BUPC then declared the area a ‘liberated zone’. On 3rd January 2007 a land the Haldia Development Authority, a State body, put up acquisition notice. This was accompanied by a lathi-charge by the police, which gave rise to a mass upsurge. Sumit Chowdhury said that 80% of people in Nandigaram supported the mass upsurge against the police, which resulted in the police having to flee the area.

On 14th March the CPIM, determined to re-capture the land and restore their authority in the area, sent approximately 2000 police officers accompanied by an armed and trained group of CPM members. The village committees heard of the upcoming surge of forces into the area assembled approximately 2000 villagers to resist them. The police attempted to occupy the area by shooting at the assembled villagers, resulting in 14 deaths. The villagers assembled included women as well as men, and even some children. Suma Ghosh, a student at Delhi University and part of a fact-finding team in the area, told us that women have been instrumental in organizing the resistance in Nandigram and have formed an organization called the Mathangiri Mataila Somithi (MMS). Vanessa, a student from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and also a part of the fact-finding team, told me that the MMS has a lot of ‘feminist potential’ and had been using their organization to help resolve family disputes and intervene in domestic abuse.

On 16th March 30,000 villagers recaptured part of the area. Since then there have been repeated attacks by the police forces to recapture the entire area, which has resulted in dozens of unarmed villagers being killed. This included a rally held by protestors on the 9th November 2007 which resulted in the harassment and beating of 800-900 people. The CPM having effectively ‘recaptured’ Nandigram has been harassing the villagers despite the fact that the CPM led West Bengal State government has declared that the land will not be sold. Even reporters and fact-finding teams that have entered the area have been harassed and attacked by the CPM cadre in the area. However, the BUPC is re-organizing and there is a great likelihood that there will be more violence as the people of Nandigram attempt to ensure that their lands and livelihoods are safe in their own hands through the restoration of Nandigram as a ‘liberated zone’.

Nandigram, like many areas around the country had been allocated for ‘development’ under the SEZ act. And like many areas they have resisted the sale of their land and the destruction of their livelihoods. I was repeatedly told by activists and common people alike that the focus of this article should not be on the atrocities that have occurred there, rather I should focus on the people’s brave resistance. Out of the terror and harassment that the people of Nandigram have had to endure at the hands of the CPM there springs forth a dream of a new future in which land will belong to the tiller and there will be freedom from patriarchy and imperialism. Nandigram is not just the name of a village, but is the name of the whole country.

Somali People Resist Attacks

Somalis at home and abroad struggle for independence.

Towards the end of 2006, US-backed Ethiopian force rolled into Somalia to overthrow the popular Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The UIC had restored peace and security in much of southern Somalia during their brief reign of power. The illegal Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia, with the installation of a puppet government, marks a new phase of US imperialism in Somalia.

Somalia has endured a long history of foreign domination, both at the hands of European colonial powers and the US. During the colonial era, Somalia was curved up into five territories; Italian Somaliland in the south, British Somaliland in the north, French Somaliland in Djbouti, Ogaden (Western Somalia), annexed to Ethiopia and the Northern Frontier Division (NFD), ceded to Kenya.

In 1960, European colonizers were eventually defeated when Somalia attained its national independence. In the early 1980s US imperialism gradually took hold in Somalia as the US administration propped up the military dictatorship of Mohamed Siad Barre through financial aid and the massive transfer of weapons. Working in collusion with Barre, US destabilization in this era was aimed at suppressing and dividing the Somali people, thereby making Washington directly responsible for state collapse in Somalia.

The primary objective of the US in Somalia is access to Somalia’s untapped but massive oil reserves and vast uranium deposits. In geopolitical terms, Somalia is strategically located where the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea converge. It oversees the daily passage of oil tankers that go through the Suez Canal, while its close proximity to the Middle East and Sudan makes it an ideal territory to launch US military attacks against the perceived “Islamist threat” in the region. Worse still, the US plans to use the strategic town of Berbera as the base of its newly launched ‘AFRICOM’ (Africa Command), an American military scheme aimed at the militarizing the entire African continent.

Just as the Somali people rallied hard to defeat the US occupation of 1993 during the so-called “Operation Restore Hope”, Somali resistance to the Ethiopian occupation has been unrelenting and fierce. All the while, the humanitarian crisis in Somalia worsens: hundreds of thousands of Somalis have been displaced by the Ethiopian army, while the Western corporate press completely ignores the issue.

Abroad, Somalis have begun to wage their own peaceful resistance. On November 16, the Somali Canadian Diaspora Alliance (SDA) of Toronto organized a demo outside the U.S. embassy, attended by at least 200. This demo came at a time when a large umbrella organization of progressive Somali Diaspora organizations from across Canada and the U.S. was formed. The mandate of the new organization, known as Somali Cause, is to demand an immediate end to the Ethiopian occupation and war crimes, promote an all inclusive national reconciliation process, and call for the establishment of an International War Crimes Tribunal for Somalia. The main objective of all these pro-people Somali organizations is to forge a united front to peacefully free Somalia from occupation and oppression, and to bring lasting liberation and real democracy to the Somali people.

Falling Dollar, Falling Empire?

Losing status as world’s reserve currency spells big trouble for American Empire, good news for peoples in rest of the world.

It’s not often that a Brazilian super model reveals the approaching collapse of an empire. Such was the case when Gisele Bundchen - one of the richest models in the world - insisted that her $30 million dollar fees for the first half of 2007 be paid not in American dollars - but in euros.
Bundchen isn’t the only one wary of the dollar. Over the last few years the dollar has been slowly losing ground to the euro. With the sub-prime mortgage crisis, tremendous trade imbalances, and two grinding wars, the American Empire is starting to show its cracks.
But it is not so much the value of the dollar as the role that the dollar plays in the global economy that has kept the US dominant for the last several decades. Since 1970, when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, the US has been able to do something that no other country on Earth can do - finance its debts by just printing more money. Every other country that has done the same has immediately faced hyper-inflation. For example, after WWI, Germany paid off its war debts by printing more money - so Germans started using the soon worthless currency to burn instead of firewood.
This doesn’t happen to the US because most oil producing countries are dominated by the US and conduct all their oil sales in dollars. Want to buy some oil from Saudi Arabia? You’ll need dollars. This forces other countries to buy massive amounts of dollars and accept dollars when they sell their exports to the US. This keeps the dollar artificially high and allows the US to support a massive trade imbalance that hit a record monthly high of $68.13 billion in October (The US has not exported more than it imported since 1975!). The inflation then gets put on to people outside the US when they pay higher prices for their commodities - a hidden tax on the people of the world to fund the wars and consumerism of the American Empire.
Once the dollar loses its status as the worlds’ reserve currency, inflation will explode in the US and their 737 foreign military bases would be unaffordable - something the US has been desperate to avoid. Saddam Hussein switched Iraqi oil sales to the euro. After the US bombed, invaded and occupied Iraq, the oil accounts were switched back to dollars. In 2002, the CIA backed a failed coup against the democratically elected government of Venezuela after that country’s ambassador to Russia spoke of switching to the euro for their oil sales. More recently, when Iran stated that they would start using the euro or the yen for their oil sales, the White House started a campaign to launch a war against Iran, using the same false propaganda that was used to justify the war against Iraq. The US would sooner kill millions of people through its wars than lose the tool that allows them to dominate the global economy. But as the saying goes: Todays’ empire, tomorrows’ ashes!