The victim, who is from Pelham Park, Toronto, has asked to remain anonymous because of his fear of a violent reprisal at the hands of the Toronto Police Services because of his decision to speak out.

For more details, see Radio Basics show from June 1, 2009, for a live interview with Shak. alongside Salma Al-Nadhir, whose brother was senselessly murdered by Toronto police on October 31, 2007. The show can be accessed from the BASICS Free Community Newsletter wesbite.

On Wednesday May 13, 2009, some-time between 9:50pm and 10:00pm, I was beat up by an officer of the law for telling other people in my neighborhood that the police were coming around.

I was with my friends in my neighbor-hood courtyard when I saw police driving around. I decided to warn some people by saying “6up” and the police heard me.

At that point, I started to make my way to a corner store after I had told the others that the police were around the

area, and the police suddenly grabbed me off my bike, dragged me to a gate at a storage facility and brutally beat me up while ordering me that I should never alert anyone when the police are around, saying “When we come around you should never alert anyone.” They beat me and choked me, making it hard for me to speak or breathe. The whole right side of my face was made swollen, busting my lip, making it swollen, and also giving me bruises on my back, my chin and my neck, as well as a bloodshot (right) eye

leaving me with not a single space in my eye that is white.

After they beat me up they asked my age and other info and let me go. I tried to ride my bike home but I fell off and fell to the ground. A friend had to carry me home. After that we called the police and two officers came to my door and left after the male officer told the female offi-cer something in her ear. While they were leaving, a friend of mine and his mother asked the two officers if they were going to speak to my mother and then the male officer replied with a negative word (FU) to the mother and left immediately.

Ever since then I’ve been trying to get as much people to support me in finding these men and to support me along the way. I’m trying my best to go through this situation and keeping my confidence that I will find these men who did this to me.

My right side of my face still hurts and my eye is still red - some could even say that my eye makes me look inhuman.

by Michael RedThe horrors now facing more than

300,000 Tamils held in prison camps in northern Sri Lanka is deeply rooted in imperialism. Ever since the British colonial regime vacated the country in 1948, war and oppression have plagued the peoples of Sri Lanka. Following in the footsteps of Dutch and Portuguese colonialists, the British ruled Sri Lanka ac-cording to divide and rule policy. Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim people who had previously lived interdependently for thousands of years were pitted against one another throughout the Crown’s rule. When the Sinhalese majority took power upon independence, the first

measure the new government initiated was stripping Hill Country Tamils of their citizenship. At the time, Hill Country Tamils were the most exploited of all Sri Lanka’s peoples – they were indentured labourers originally from India who har-vested the country’s tea for world export markets. These Tamils had a tradition of organizing and fighting back and they often worked in coordination with Sin-halese Marxists and peasants. Therefore, the Sinhalese government’s first move was decidedly based on ethnic and class oppression.

As the government moved to com-pletely marginalize all Tamils, by making Sri Lanka a Sinhala Buddhist state which denied Tamils entrance into universities

and public sector jobs, Tamils began a rich tradition of struggle based on ethnic, class and caste empowerment. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of Tamils in the North and East of Sri Lanka engaged in a variety of organized civil disobedience, political education, and militant struggle. Many of the early militant groups embraced Marxism and the struggle as a whole was largely against Sinhalese impe-rialism. Courageous Tamil feminists campaigned against war mongering and rape. The government responded with ruthless oppression and instigated murderous race riots against Tamils on at least three occa-sions. The regime in

Imperialism and the Genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka

“Providing indePendent media that encourages meaningful discussion on the issues facing working class communities.” Basics #14, June/July 2009

» continued, pg. 4

» continued, pg. 2

IranIans rIse Up agaInsT

IslamIc DIcTaTorshIp

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BasIcsFREE COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER

In this Issue...local (P.2):•Witnesses to Police Brutality in Pelham Park• T.O.’s City Workers Resist Concessions• The Struggles and Lessons of the Tamil-Canadian MobilizationsProvincial (P.3):• Analysis of the New Auto Sector• The Underfunding of Legal Aid• The HST - Another Gov’t Tax Grab•Anti-Native Militia Forming in CaledoniaimPerialism and resistance in south and central asia (P.4-5):• NATO Massacre in Afghanistan• Obama’s War in Pakistan• A Look at the Revolution in India• Will India Invade Nepal?federal (P.6):• A Look at the Live-in Caregiver Program• Mohawks Fight the Arming of CDN Border Agents at Akwesasneinternational (P.7):• North Korea and Western Imperialism•Analysis of the West’s Role in the “Rwandan Genocide” - 15 Years On• Filipinos Rally Against Constitu-tional Changescultural (P.8):•The May 1st Movement Reclaims May Day in Toronto

Young Victim of Police Terror in Pelham Park Speaks Out A first-person narrative of police terror in our city by a 14-year-old victim, Shak.

» for eyewitness accounts and analysis, see pg. 2

Support the City Workers Strike by Farshad Azadian

Toronto City Workers, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) locals 79 and 416, made a strong statement that they will not accept any concessions in their ongoing bargaining with the City of Toronto.

On June 22nd, the Toronto City Workers walked off the job after their employer – the City – refused to give a dignified contract and instead insisted on forcing workers to take concessions. The strike action comes a month after the 18,000 city employees represented by local 79 voted 90% in favor of a strike mandate, and where 6,000 “outdoor” workers rep-resented by local 416 voted 89% in favor of a strike mandate.

These unions represent workers in a variety of sectors, from recreation centre workers to garbage collectors. One of the major points of dispute is the fact that the city has thus far demanded that workers take concessions in sick benefits and job

BASICS is a community organizing project that requires your involvement to continue to grow. We the people will never see a media that speaks honestly about our interests until we the people build that media ourselves! Whatever your struggle, whatever your issue, contact us:

email: basics.canada@gmail.com Website: http://basicsnewsletter.blogspot.com/

17 May 2009: A Sri Lankan Army soldier seen walking among the debris of a devastated war zone that saw some 20,000 Tamil civilians slaughtered.

saT, aUgUsT 15 pelham parK

see BacK page

security, issues that city employees are justifiably refusing to budge on. The trend to reverse the many hard-earned gains and rights of working class people is being seen across Canada, and these workers are making an important stand against that trend.

At a time when billions of our tax dollar money is being squandered by the politicians of various parties to bail out the bankers and the big auto companies, it is absolutely unforgivable that working people are facing con-stant attacks on their ability to live with dignity.

Undoubtedly, in the weeks and perhaps days after the strike begins, we will see immense pres-sure and even repression against the strikers. The recent academic workers strike at York University showed us how the police and the courts were used by the employer and the government to attack workers. Four members of the York University CUPE local 3903 were brutally arrested by cops,

and the 85-day strike was put down through union-busting “back-to-work” legislation. City Workers should be prepared to play hardball should these anti-worker tactics be employed once again to repress their very legitimate concerns.

Many of these city workers live and serve in our communities, and in the event of a worker strike forced by the employer, it is important that we sup-port and even come out to the picket lines that will be seen across our com-munities in the spirit of working class solidarity.

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LocaL Basics #14, June/July 2009

The last couple of months have been a turbulent time for Toronto and its Tamil community with constant mass mobiliza-tions; the successful subversion of the police force’s violence tactics of repres-sion; large scale marches and occupa-tions from Parliament Hill to downtown Toronto; the mass media’s failure to effec-tively represent the community’s mes-sage; a courageous highway blockade led by students and youth as an attempt to get the attention of Canadians in the midst of a genocide; the revelation of the ugly face of the Canadian state’s and media’s racism; and, finally, the failure of the Canadian and international political establishment to take any effective action to prevent the mass murder of 20,000 Tamil civilians.

A mere eight months ago, the Tamil community would never have imagined that they would be in a situation where the LTTE’s (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam a.k.a. the Tamil Tigers) armed resis-tance would be broken, leaving 300,000 Tamil civilians defenseless and trapped in concentration camps. More shocking to the Tamil community has been the role of the international community, whose ambiguous demands for “human rights” some Tamils had bought into over the Tamil Tiger’s unambiguous call for nation-al liberation. For its part, the “international community” is not free of culpability. The United Nations and western states, while decrying the armed tactics of the Tamil Tigers, ignored the Sri Lankan state’s mass slaughter of Tamil civilians and even actively helped the Sri Lankan state to cover up casualty figures. The Tamil community has now awoken to and is adjusting to the reality that fair-weather friends shouldn’t be relied on and new allies need to be found along common

lines of resisting oppression.

Now the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle must take on the difficult task of transforming itself, but there is hope to be found in history. This will be the second great transformation of the struggle, the first since it moved from a non-violent, Gandhian strategy to an armed resistance movement in the 1970s and ‘80s. Except this time, unlike then, the Tamil communi-ty has reached a consensus and a level of solidarity never before seen. Tamils must not be swayed by the Sri Lankan state and its collaborators, who are already trying to break the solidarity of the Tamil community by sowing confusion. The Tamil community and its leaders must not lose their commitment to breaking the occupation of Tamil Eelam, the release of hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in concentrations, and the libera-tion of all minorities on the island called, at least for now, Sri Lanka.

Tamil Canadians: A Community Transforming Itself and Its Freedom Struggle by Pragash Pio

«CITY WOrker STrIke COnT’d from PG.1

eYeWITneSSeS TO THe POLICe TerrOr In PeLHAM PArkStatement by Michael Godelia

It was Wednesday, May 13, 2009 between the time of 9:40pm – 10:00pm and we were standing by the fence by Pelham Avenue when two guys were looking through the fence towards my friend’s house. Then Shak told my friend’s cousin that “2 guys were look-ing at her house through the fence.” So she was swearing at them to move from the fence. So they moved. Then Shak was riding his bike on Osler going to the store for his mom. That’s when the undercovers grabbed him off his bike. Meanwhile there were uniform officers already at the scene distracting us from what really was happening. He was ask-ing personal information about us. Later when I told them that my friend was grabbed by the two undercover officers, they were oblivious to the situation. So my brother and Tyty ran over to see what was going on with Shak and they did not see him or his bike. All they saw was the undercover officers. So they came back and waited for a few minutes and then we saw Shak riding on his bike and he fell to the ground and the undercov-ers were just watching him. Then my brother picked him up and took him to his house and the undercovers drove off. The cops who were on the scene came

to Shak’s house, they looked at him and decided not to phone for an ambulance. When my friend Tyty and his mom asked the officers if they were going to speak to the mother they replied “F*** THE MOTHER” and left. Then the ambulance came two hours later to pick up Shak.

Statement by Tyshawn F.I am writing a statement about my

friend Shak and the night he was beat up by the police.

It was Wednesday, May 13, 2009 sometime between 9:00pm – 10:00pm and we were playing games outside when Shak saw a bunch of police and told others to be careful. After that he was going to the store for his mom and at the time and me and others heard him scream but two officers were distracting us. So a while after we didn’t see anything so me and my friend went to see what was going on and I saw a fist go down while two others were just standing around so I went home to call my mom but by the time we got back we saw one of my friends carrying him to his house. So after a while the police that were distracting us came to Shak’s house and left. Then me and my mom tried to stop them and asked if they were going to talk to the mother and the male officers said ‘f*** the mother’.

Toronto’s Biggest Gang by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan & E. Jamal Chang More police brutality not the solution to violence in our communities

Staff at the St. Lawrence Community Centre are on strike as of June 22nd, along with 24,000 other city workers.

On Friday, May 22, 2009, tens of thousands of Tamils from the GTA rallied at Queen’s Park for a candlelight vigil. Unlike the country-wide media coverage Tamils received for taking over the Gardiner expressway, the massive vigil attracted little attention from the corporate media.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the supposed ‘gang war’ in some of Toronto’s poorest neighbourhoods. Over 12 people have been murdered and more than 50 shot in the west-end since January alone; including a 14 year-old youth gunned down on Scarlett Road, and a 5 year-old girl who survived a stray bullet to the chest at Lawrence and Weston. City politicians, corporate media reporters, and so-called “commu-nity organizations” have been discussing the conditions in and solutions for the largely black and brown areas experienc-ing the violence. But the commentaries and proposals have been flawed, and even racist, since they have ignored the role of the state in both causing and cre-ating the conditions that cause violence in the first place. So the project now being enforced on the city’s poor and racialized communities as a solution to gun violence is the boosting and backing up of what could be described as this city’s largest gang: the Toronto Police.

Any honest discussion about the violence in low-income communities in Toronto and elsewhere must acknowl-edge that police brutality is routine and systematic. It is experienced daily; it is cold, calculated, raw, and at times, homi-cidal. Because of this, many residents of these communities approach the police with fear, and at times even frustration and anger.

The story of Shak featured in this issue is just one example of violence the Toron-to Police are well known for, brutality that escapes both the media lens and any public accountability. Shak’s only “crime” was informing his neighbours that suspi-cious men (police) were lurking in their backyard. For this the cops pulled Shak off his bike, dragged him out of sight and violently beat him so badly that he later

fell unconscious. He is in grade nine. Only one week after that brutal attack, the Toronto Sun released information about 2 black youth in Richmond Hill who were nearly beaten to death by eight masked York cops in September. The cops had broken into their hotel room and tazered them 24 times, leaving one of the youth unconscious and nearly blind in one eye.

Police Brutality in its most extreme form, murder, also takes place in this city regularly. Most notably, 17-year old Alwy Al-Nadhir who was murdered on Hallow-een night 2007 and Byron Debassige on February 16, 2008.

These acts of violence don’t only affect their direct victims, but are used to terror-ize, contain, oppress and silence whole communities. Even families who have the courage to speak out are confronted with a state that uses every means - from the media, to the court system, to the corrupt SIU - to cover up for and justify police brutality.

In this way, the police are agents of the very activities they claim to act against: their fists bruise, their batons smash, and their guns kill. Amidst a worsening econ-omy, poor housing conditions, gentrifica-tion, and an unhealthy relationship with police forces, how can we expect to see any real changes in our communities? When the school system isolates, and expels our youth, when the economy leaves them with no opportunities, and when our neighbourhoods are flooded with weapons and drugs, what is to be excepted other than a rise in crime?

The only solution is to come together and unite in our neighbourhoods, to mobilize so we can end the violence ourselves, whether caused in our com-munities, or from the hands of those employed “serve and protect”.

ProvinciaL

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Basics #14, June/July 2009

The new Auto Sector: A Historic defeat for the Working-Class by Herman Rosenfeld

For a more in-depth analysis, see Rosen-feld’s June 2009 article “The North American Auto Industry in Crisis” in Monthly Review, available online.

In the past couple of months, there have been important changes to the auto sector in Canada and the US. The restruc-turing of GM and Chrysler was engineered by the U.S.. Its goal was to transform them into competitors with the Japanese-owned “transplants” (Honda and Toyota), lean and mean profit-making machines with weak (or no) unions, in the spirit of neoliberalism. A key element of the new situation is the historic defeat of the auto unions (the American UAW and the Cana-dian CAW), signaling a further decline in the living and working conditions of the working class as a whole.

The Obama administration started a process of “structured” bankruptcies in order to drive the restructuring of Chrysler and GM. This raised a bigger political issue of the legitimacy, role and purpose of state aid to the auto corporations.

The Obama administration provided a process for the possible longer-term sur-vival of these companies in a hyper-com-petitive market which included: selection of a group of Wall Street-based financial types to oversee the corporations’ transfor-mation; pressure on bondholders (owners of GM and Chrysler debt) to reduce their claims; attacks on the rights of workers (by demanding massive wage and benefit concessions); and requirements that each of these corporations close plants, layoff workers and reorganize themselves so as to dramatically reduce costs. By appealing to the public in defense of “taxpayers’”, U.S. and Canadian leaders appear as reason-able stewards of public resources.

By limiting the claims of the bondhold-ers, the Obama administration was acting in the interests of the entire U.S. bourgeois class. The attack on the unions was the centerpiece of the strategy. Most impor-tant, Obama, Harper and McGuinty all demanded that the unions match the cost structure of the non-union transplants. This was accepted without question by both the UAW and CAW. It signaled a mas-sive give-back of incomes, working condi-tions, time off and benefits. During the entire process of restructuring, there was no union-organized resistance, other than a series of CAW demonstrations demand-

ing protection of retiree pensions. These attacks have crippled both of

these unions and dramatically reduced their credibility. The UAW is now the custodian of a significant chunk of GM stock – but it can only be used to pay for the health care benefits of retirees. The CAW has little independence from its auto employers and has lost any claims to be a fighting union

The role of the state in both the U.S. and Canada is also a matter of some contro-versy. The huge loans that these govern-ments have given - and will continue to give to the companies - have been trans-lated into share ownership in the latter. On paper, the U.S. government owns 60% and the Canadian governments will own 12.5% of GM. Hard right-wing political and economic interests in Canada and the U.S. (Republicans and right-wing Tories) denounced this as “buying jobs”, and as contributing to future government defi-cits. Mainstream politicians defend the aid as necessary to protect against massive job loss. Industrial relations enthusiasts are excited about “worker ownership and participation.”

Socialists look at the situation differently. Just because the U.S. and Canadian states own stock in GM and Chrysler, doesn’t mean that they have effectively “national-ized” them. In fact, government stock ownership in this instance is nothing more than a way of leveraging the loans and temporarily enforcing the rules of the neo-liberal marketplace, until and if (and there is no guarantee) these corporations are able to operate on their own. Obama and others have openly admitted to this.

And, in another sense, it couldn’t really be otherwise, given the nature of the capi-talist state. The government is committed to the operation of such a marketplace and does not have – and does not want – the capacity to run a company, let alone an entire economic sector. Owning one company could never transform the sector, anyhow. What’s needed is to regu-late the amount of autos being produced and social ownership of the entire sector, including all of the assemblers, parts pro-ducers, energy resources and mass transit. Perhaps the nationalization of the parts sector – a central repository of productive capacity – would be a good start.

At first glance, it sounds reasonable enough. Take two sales taxes, the 5% GST and 8% PST, and combine them together into a single 13% Harmonized Sales Tax, or HST. Seems fair, doesn’t it?

Turns out, it’s a massive cash grab by the provincial government. After July 2010, working people will see an 8% increase in the cost of a whole host of goods and services that previ-ously were not included in the PST, including gasoline, utilities, home phone, TV and internet services, hair cuts, used cars, vitamins, meals under $4, train, plane and taxi fares, and more.

Like all taxes on consumption, this will place the greatest tax burden on the working class. The province is promising to issue rebate cheques - the first

of which will be issued conveniently right before the next election - but the amounts are unlikely to come even close to offsetting the additional costs. Demand of Dalton McGuinty and all Ontario provincial legislators that they stop trying to balance their budgets on the backs of the most vulnerable and hardest working people in our society!

The HST Tax: Another Gov’t Cash Grab by J.D. Benjamin

Ontario’s Criminal Injustice System by Kabir Joshi-VijayanThe province’s criminal defense coun-

sels are refusing to take on future homi-cide and guns and gangs cases. They say it is in desperate protest to the province’s severe underfunding of legal aid which results in pronounced disparity in the courtroom between the defense and government prosecution. Major reports have verified serious systematic prob-lems arising from the resource deficient legal aid program, including wrongful convictions and excessively long prison sentences. In addition to the already insufficient pay rates, defense lawyers say that the strict pay caps per case is a set up for failure. The more work done for clients on legal aid, the more money the representing lawyer loses.

Legal Aid Ontario is a government funded nonprofit corporation estab-lished 40 years ago to supposedly provide free legal services to the poor in order to meet the requirements of the Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms prescribing equal justice for all. However,

the eligibility rules are so restrictive that only the extremely poor ever qualify (those earning $15,000 a year or less). That means a vast majority of people unable to afford legal representa-tion are effectively shut out from the justice system. In addition, not all legal problems are covered, including certain criminal charges and employment problems. When a case is accepted, there is a woe-fully low limit to the amount of money allotted – meaning a woefully low limit to the amount of justice afforded the poor.

The president of the Criminal Lawyers Association, Frank Addario says that the drastic decision to refuse taking serious criminal cases is an effort to “pull back the curtain” on a problem they have been “hiding for the government for two

decades”. But that raises the troubling question of why criminal lawyers were concealing such a serious breach of the

rule of law and judicial fairness in the first place.

The reality is that inequity in the legal system goes beyond the issue of criminal law (civil legal aid is also in

crisis and includes family law, immigrant and refugee law and poverty law issues). There are attacks on poor and racialized people at almost every point in the inaccessible Ontario justice system, and is a grievous problem in every province of Canada. Poor and racialized people are more likely to be picked up by and brutalized by police, denied bail, appear in court (without the constitutional right of representation) and go to jail. The underfunding of the legal aid program follows a pattern of sabotage through

underfunding of all social programs for the poor and working class; and it coincides with massive funding to prosecution and court services, and for specialized police units such as the Guns and Gangs Task Force (with its legacy of racism, violence and false-arrests). In fact 85% of all criminal justice funding is directed at policing and corrections, showing the government prioritizes sending people into the prison system, rather than giving them justice.

Despite the dedicated work of some excellent lawyers and some significant wins, putting more money into a sys-tematically corrupted legal aid system will not change things significantly. The overriding problems remain excessive and discriminatory police practices and the huge proportion of defendants who continue to go unrepresented in Ontario Courts (with or without an adequately funded legal aid program). These are advocacy issues that the Criminal Law-yers Association has yet to challenge.

“There are attacks on poor and racialzed people at almost every point in the inaccessible Ontario justice system. “

Anti-native Militia to be Formed in Caledoniaby Steve da SilvaIn early 2006, the Haudenoshaunee

(“Iroquois”) people of the Grand River Territory began a reclamation struggle to halt the “Douglas Creek Estates” housing development on the outskirts of Caledonia, Ontario, which was being constructed on their unceded lands. Since then, people from Six Nations have continued organizing and have blocked over $2 billion worth of other “developments” in other parts of Six Nations territory, particularly in nearby Brantford, Ontario.

Over this period, the Canadian gov-ernment has demonstrated that it has no interest in expediting the resolution of its hundreds of outstanding land claims cross the country, and certainly not those of Six Nations, and this has left the people of Six Nations, and the Canadians living alongside them, extremely frustrated.

As a result, some non-Native resi-dents of Caledonia have at times over the last three years gravitated towards the calls and rallies of anti-native, white supremacist, and even neo-Nazi forces. And now, some of these

forces are calling for the formation of a Caledonia militia to police the natives directly,

Doug Fleming, one of the militia’s initiators, wrote on June 14, 2009 that “Due to the ongoing reality that the OPP refuses to enforce the Criminal Code with regards to people’s prop-erty rights I am forming the Caledonia Militia to ensure that the criminal code is upheld in Haldimand County.” Flem-ing conveniently omits the fact that the owners of the land in question in Haldimand County are the people of Six Nations, who are the true title-holders of the 950,000-acre Haldimand tract that runs through southwestern Ontario. Today, the people of Six Nations control only about 5% of that original tract. The conflict between white working-class settlers and natives stems from the fact that the Canadian government permitted the sell-off of land that it had no right to.

Such a move by anti-Native forces signals a major escalation in regard to the conflict at Six Nations. On June 23 at 7 p.m., a meeting is being held at the Lion’s Hall in Cayuga to found this

» continued, pg. 8

iMPeriaLisM and revoLution in south and centraL asia

4

Obama’s regime Signals destabilization and All-Out War for Pakistan by N. Zahra

« SrI LAnkA And IMPerIALISM, cont’d from PG.1

Basics #14, June/July 2009

by Mike BritoIndian Professor Arindam Chaudhuri

recently said the following regarding the Naxalites in India: “These Naxalites in India are there to stay and grow. Mark my words, the day is not far when they will rule a grand majority of India. These 200 districts will become 400 in no time, and inch to-wards more… And as long as India’s crony capitalism and heartless journey towards being a slave of the rich continues, long will live the Naxalite movement in India.”

Across almost half of India, revolution-ary Maoist organizations work with some of the most oppressed people in the country. Unlike the revisionist communist parties that participate in Indian elections and hold seats in parliament, the Maoists have chosen to organize a people’s war and have been redistributing land back to the people through force. In a recent interview, Koteshwar Rao, a member of the political bureau of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), described some of their work in villages as follows:

“We play very diverse roles. Because they have lost faith in the administration, villagers approach us with their day-to-day problems. We deal with the villagers with a lot of compassion and kindness, which is why they love and protect us. We also work for women’s liberation. There are many women who are tortured by their (parents) in-law, husbands or parents. But they cannot protest because they are dependent on them. We fight for liberation of such women. Many oppressed women have joined us in our struggle across the country.”

There are various Maoist par-ties and revolutionary communist groups in India, known to the Indian state as ‘Naxalites’. Maoists are are ac-tive in several Indian states including Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. In 2007, the Prime Minister of India, Manmo-han Singh called the Naxalites the most serious security threat to the future of the Indian state. The state Singh was talking about was the one controlled by reactionaries and the classes that depend on foreign imperialism for their survival.

Government estimates claim that the Maoists control one fifth of all of India’s forests and are active in

160 of 604 administrative districts in India. Several of the Maoist groups, including the Communist Party of India (Maoist), have been classified as terrorists by the govern-ment of India, and this past February the central government launched coordinated counter-insurgency operations across many of the states where Naxalites work with people. The state and rich landown-ers have also mobilized death squads to fight the Naxalites and terrorize their base of support among the people. One of these anti-Naxalite groups is the Salwa Judum, a vigilante group built up with the help of the Indian state to hunt down and kill rebels. In the state of Chhattisgarh, the Indian state has carried out a scorched earth policy in certain regions and then has forcefully recruited people from the refugee camps to join the fascist Salwa Judum forces.

The word Naxalite comes from a village in West Bengal state, Naxalbari, where members of the Communist Party of India led an uprising on May 25, 1967. One of the main leaders of this uprising was Charu Majumdar, who was important in the spread of Maoist ideas in India. The uprising began after a local peasant was at-tacked by landowner thugs. In retaliation, landowners were attacked and violence escalated. This uprising was suppressed, as would the other uprisings led by Maoists in India that followed. But this was just the beginning of the Maoist revolution in India.

Four decades later, India’s Maoist revolu-tion has grown to encompass one third of India. That day when the Maoists “will rule a grand majority of India” may be sooner than imperialism suspects...

The naxalites and Maoists of India: “The day is not far when they will rule a grand majority of India”

The coming to power of Barack Obama, while making some jubilant, has others asking questions, especially in South Asia. Obama’s Paki-stan Strategy is rooted in the U.S.’s ‘War on Terror.’ Accord-ing to Obama’s National Security Advisor, General James Jones, the American ‘strategy now starts with…[an] attainable goal which is to disrupt, dismantle, and prevent al-Qaida from being able to operate in its safe havens – not only al-Qaida, but all forms of terrorism that would seek to destabilize our countries….’ He goes on to say, ‘Our strategy focuses more inten-sively on Pakistan than in the past, and this is normal, because it’s a newer problem.’

It is not difficult to see that Obama’s wider strategy for Pakistan has some par-allels to the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq. It is a strategy aimed at extend-ing U.S. imperialism first through military operations and destruction of any existing social and economic infrastructure, only to be replaced by ‘reconstruction’ efforts that will afford lucrative contracts for rebuilding to large economic monopolies.

As Gen. James Jones reiterated on behalf of Obama, ‘a campaign against extrem-ism will not succeed with bullets or bombs alone. As a part of this strategy, we’ll devote significantly more resources to the civilian efforts in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The President will submit a budget that includes indispensable investments in our State Department and foreign assistance programs. These investments relieve the burden on our troops and contribute directly to our safety and security [sic].’

According to the U.S. Agency for Inter-national Development (USAID) fact sheet on the emergency situation in Pakistan, as of May 27, 2009, there are approximately 2.7 million internally displaced persons in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. NWFP is where military opera-tions are concentrated and where the Tal-iban is said to have strong influence.

Under intense pressure from the U.S. and other imperialist countries such as Britain, Pakistan cancelled a peace deal that they had concluded with the Tal-iban and intensified military operations. There were concerns over the provision

in the deal for the use of Sharia law and its impact on Pakistani women. U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said of the deal that Pakistan posed a ‘mortal threat’ to the world by abdicating to the Taliban. Con-cern for the rights of women being used as a justification for imperialist war is not a new strategy of American imperialism. It is reminiscent of U.S. policy in Iraq.

The first phase of the American strategy of building a Pakistani client state is of course to use the new Pakistani leader-ship and the Pakistani military to carry out offensives against the Taliban. The military continues to attack Taliban strongholds from the air, and using artillery and mor-tars has caused widespread destruction and a mounting toll of civilian casualties. Mingora, the district capital of the Swat Valley, which is still under Taliban control, has been a main target of the army’s opera-tions. Troops have seized key positions around the town, all exit roads have been sealed and electricity, water and gas sup-plies have been cut off.

In addition, the U.S. is carrying out drone attacks in Pakistan. However, this strategy is backfiring as U.S. Army Chief in Pakistan, David Kilcullen has pointed out. He noted that these U.S. actions are highly unpopu-lar amongst the civilian population and are leading to the mounting of hostile feel-ings amongst Pakistani citizens toward the U.S.

There is no possibility that the U.S. strat-egy for Pakistan will lead to the betterment of conditions for Pakistanis. If the U.S.’s Pakistan Strategy plays out according to plan, Pakistan will turn into another U.S. “reconstruction” project like the devastated and shattered occupied Iraq.

The innocent victims of the Pakistani state’s war on its own people line up for rations in Marden, Pakistan on May 8 af-ter extensive military operations in the Swat Valley. More than 2 million have been displaced by the war.

Colombo also turned their guns against two attempted revolutions in the South, resulting in the murder of more than 50,000 Sinhalese peasants and youth.

Following the anti-Tamil pogroms of 1983, the war moved into a new phase. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) emerged as an exclusively nationalist army fighting for national liberation while Marxist and feminist voices were largely silenced. The state embraced neo-liberal-ism, increased military spending to more than 20% of the GDP, and formalized a constant stream of arms from Britain, China, the Czech Republic, Israel, the United States, and Canada. For example, the Chrétien government supplied the Sri Lankan government with Bell helicopters

that were used to bomb Tamil villages in the North and East. More recently, the Harper government increased small arms sales to Sri Lanka following the designa-tion of the LTTE as a terrorist organization.

During the so-called ceasefire periods throughout the war, foreign powers have played a more direct role in oppressing Tamils. In 1988, the Indian Peace Keeping Forces committed countless atrocities in the North, including murder, rape and torture. Finally, during the recent war in the Vanni, as thousands of Tamils were slaughtered by daily aerial bombing and artillery fire, the Western world turned a blind eye to the contemporary tragedy unfolding in Sri Lanka.

Over the last 25 years, the war be-tween the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE has cost as many as 100,000 lives and resulted in the internal displace-ment of more than half a million people. The modern legacy of imperialism here is extremely complex. The state is now abusively using “anti-imperialist” rhetoric to actually keep humanitarian aid and independent observers out of the prison camps, where torture, rape, murder, disap-pearances and starvation are occurring daily. Meanwhile, imperialist states such as China and Russia came to the support of Colombo’s racist war against the Tamil people.

So what can be done in such a desper-ate, seemingly hopeless situation? The

answer can be found by remembering that despite decades of imperialism, there are thousands of progressive activists who have survived the war in Sri Lanka. They continue to struggle in Sri Lanka and they live right here with us in Toronto. Existing on the margins of society here in Canada, there are Tamils who have dedicated their lives to struggling against the racist oppression of the Sri Lankan state and the exploitation of the West. In Sri Lanka itself, there are many Sinhalese workers and activists who refuse to buy into the fascist communalism of the state. It is these people we desperately need to reach out to, to learn from and to act in solidar-ity with, before their voices are silenced forever.

iMPeriaLisM and revoLution in south and centraL asia

nATO’s May 5 Massacre at Bala Baluk nato Kills as Many civilians in one day as canadian troops have Been Killed in 7 Years by Justin Panos

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On May 5th, 2009, between 127 and 147 Afghan civilians were killed in one of the deadliest bombings of NATO’s war and occupation of Afghanistan. Red Cross spokesperson Jessica Barry confirms that among the dead were many women and children. The bomb-ings took place in Bala Baluk within the Farah province of western Afghanistan. An entire family of thirteen perished, including a father and worker of the Afghan Red Crescent—a community-based arm of the International Com-mittee of the Red Cross. The magnitude of death resulting from this bombing is only outdone by the horror of the first bombs dropped in October 2001, when between 3100 and 3600 civilians were immediately killed.

Most of the village elders used trac-tors to maneuver the dead bodies into mass graves. One elder, Hajji Issa Khan, informed the Guardian newspaper that “In this operation there were 127 peo-ple killed. I can tell you exactly because my driver was carrying those…people to the center of town and he came and told me that he carried 127 people” (quoted in the Guardian 5/6/2009). Ab-dul Basir Khairkhah, a member of the provincial government’s investigating team said that he collected 147 names of those who were instantly destroyed by the attack. Discrepancies in the body count have occurred because, as the elder Kahn recalls “It was difficult to count because they were in very bad shape. Some had no legs”. Reuters newswire simply accounts for “truck-loads of dead bodies” (5/9/2009). Since the bombings, anti-US protest has been ceaseless in the area.

The bombings were carried out by U.S. 2nd Marines Special Operations Battalion India Com-pany, MSOC-I. Accord-ing to commanding officer Maj. Wu, “Our overall mission is to increase the credibility of the government of the Islamic Republic

of Afghanistan in the eyes of the local nationals”. Such a mandate is blatantly contradicted by the actions of the com-pany in their bombing of Bala Baluk.

Following his January inauguration, President Obama diverted 17,000 US troops from the Iraq war theatre into Afghanistan. This “surge” of troops has only led to increased bloodshed and turmoil for the Afghan civilians. One researcher posits that 54 to 56 civilians die per month, in contrast to 46 to 57 per month during the first half of 2008. When the data is broken down further, the highest percentage of deaths are women and children, which lead many to conclude that “US/NATO forces are assaulting domestic or home spaces” (Herold, 2009).

In further contrast to Maj. Wu’s statements, the major combat opera-tions of the United States, Canada, and NATO has only lead to a resurgence of the Taliban, their merger with Pakistani Taliban along the puzzling borderland between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and an increase in Taliban control from 54% of Afghanistan to 72%, according to the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS, 2008).

Canada’s participation in this occu-pation amounts to collusion and sup-port for war crimes. The amount killed in the May 5th, 2009 massacre instantly outnumbers the total amount of Cana-dians killed in over 7 years. Hillary Clin-ton’s “deep, deep regrets” are simply not enough. No world will be livable until all nations are free of foreign military and economic occupation. Oppose Canada and NATO’s barbaric assault on the people of Afghanistan!

Basics #14, June/July 2009

by Derek Rosin Back in 2000, Nepali Maoist leader

Prachanda was blunt when talking about the future of the growing revo-lutionary movement in his country: “Ultimately, we will have to fight with the Indian army.” Prachanda said this when he was an underground revolu-tionary leading a guerilla war and was speaking of Nepal as a base area for the world revolution. He was right-fully concerned that India would not accept a new, revolutionary state on their northern border and would try to crush it by force if necessary.

Today, as the Nepali Maoists maneuver against the Nepali ruling classes in a complicated legal-po-litical process, they have moderated some of their public proclamations, but there is little reason to suggest that their ultimate goal of being part of a growing world revolution has changed. Enemies of revolution in South Asia have not forgotten this either.

An ominous sign of this threat came in early June when Indian troops encroached on Nepali land in the Terai region near Dang. Reports from Nepal are that the Indian troops committed atrocities that spurred 6000 villagers to flee the area. This is a serious development.

India is no stranger to such intrigues. They provoked war with China in 1962 in an attempt to destabilize the then-revolutionary communist country. In 1987 they sent troops to fight the LTTE in Sri Lanka before being forced out in 1990 after a series of embarrassing defeats against guerilla fighters in rugged terrain.

A full-scale Indian invasion allied with the old Nepali ruling classes would be a huge risk for those opposed to the Maoists. It is true that there is a real possibility that they could succeed and drown the revolution in blood. Conversely, invasion could mean uniting the overwhelming majority of Ne-palis under Maoist leadership on a patriotic basis. It could also mean

an escalated war in which Indian Maoist forces, who are numerous and gaining in strength, intertwine with the fighting in Nepal and intensify the conflict into a much wider regional war.

Despite these dangers, India may be willing to risk the dangers of inva-sion. Regardless of all the noise about the growing Indian economy, the country remains home to hundreds of millions of bitterly poor peasants and is a checker board of oppressed nationalities. A genuine revolutionary society in Nepal would be a tremen-dous inspiration to the majority of Indians who have no realistic hope of benefiting from the country’s economic boom. More importantly, it could greatly help India’s self-de-scribed number one internal security threat: the aforementioned Indian Maoist guerillas.

As the Maoists in Nepal continue to unite growing numbers of Nepalis around their program, and further isolate the representatives of the old system, the options available to the ruling classes to halt the revolution are becoming narrower. And so the dangerous reality is that military inva-sion by India, once highly unlikely, is now a real possibility.

Is India plotting an invasion of nepal?

The Iranian People: “death to the dictatorship” by Farshad Azadian On Sunday, June 12th, results from the

Iranian “elections” showed an overwhelm-ing victory for Ahmadinejad. That same day in Tehran, hundreds of thousands of Iranians hit up the streets to express their opposition to the election process, followed by protests in the major cities of Esfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad and Rasht, among others.

Unexpectedly, the uprisings were met with fierce state repression at the hands of Basij thugs and the police. Recent reports indicate that during the first week of protests dozens of protestors have been killed, that universities and homes have been raided and that the Islamic regime has mobilized tanks into Tehran.

Corporate mainstream coverage of the post-election turmoil has framed

the uprisings as largely resulting from people’s loyalty to Moussavi, the opposi-tion candidate. What is often left out is that both Moussavi and Ahmadinejad are representatives of different factions of the same repressive and reactionary ruling class, and that Moussavi has a long bloody history of involvement within the ruling Islamic fascist establishment. Re-gardless of Moussavi’s politics, the power struggle between the two candidates has provided an outlet for opposition to the Islamic Regime as a whole, after 30 years of intense repression of women, working class people, students, and, in particular, revolutionary activists.

Of particular concern to the Iranian people is the way that imperialist coun-tries may intervene in the current situa-tion, taking advantage of the social unrest.

For years, the West has threatened sanctions against Iran (and imposed some) and has openly displayed aggression. At the same time, much of the mainstream media has por-trayed the Iranian protesters as being in support of the West, and perhaps even desiring intervention.

Instead, most Iranians are in opposition to the US and other imperialist powers, as they have not forgotten the bloody history of US and British intervention in the country.

The movement in Iran continues to

grow and mature, with labour activists be-ginning to play a prominent role through organized walkouts, work slowdowns and statements of condemnation towards the Islamic regime. Our solidarity must lie with the radical youth, workers and women’s movements in Iran that have openly and militantly challenged the Islamic dictator-ship.

Militant youth attack a building controlled by the Fascist Basij Paramilitary Forces. the Basij are responsble for much of the killing that has occurred since the uprisings began on June 13.

The demographics of Afghan Civilians killed by US/nATO Actions during Obama’s Presidency (Jan. 21 – April 19, 2009)

Source: Derived from the Afghan Victim Memorial Project data base

Men 43-45 25.1%Women 13 7.4%Children 60 35.3%Undetermined 54-57 31.6%Total... 173-178 100.0%

As part of a national plan regarding border security to be put in place by 2016, the Canadian government insists on arming all Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) agents, even at their controversial post within the sovereign Mohawk territory of Akwesasne. After months of respectful communication opposing the arming with 9mm guns of the very same CBSA agents who have been accused of years of docu-mented cases of harassment and racial profiling, the community of Akwesanse set a deadline of midnight Sunday May 31st for a resolution to the conflict.

The government of Canada respond-ed to the deadline by presenting the community with an ultimatum shortly before midnight to accept either the arming of the CBSA or else face the immediate closure - by police! not the community! - of the two bridges and international border. The 400 or so Akwesasne community members immediately responded to the ultima-tum with the same united position they have maintained for months: NO GUNS FOR CBSA IN AKWESASNE!

On June 11th, dubbed “National Reconciliation Day” to commemo-rate the one-year anniversary of the

Government of Canada’s official apol-ogy to First Nations for the residential school system, Akwesasne community residents Khristy Sawatis and Dwayne David were arrested by Cornwall police. Both have since been released and continue to actively denounce the well-documented harassment and racial profiling of Akwesasne residents by CBSA, police and judicial authorities.

The Gov-ernment of Canada and Assembly of First Nations (AFN) marked the one-year anniversary of the apology, orga-nizing activities on Parliament Hill for the so-called “National Reconciliation Day.” The irony of the name was not lost on the community, considering both the timing of the arrests and of the fact

that Canada has still not directly con-tacted the community of Akwesasne or even the federally-recognized Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (MCA).

Around the same time as David’s detention, while addressing the crowd gathered in Ottawa, MCA Grand Chief Tim Thomson publicly accused Federal

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan of being “a liar” for claiming to have carried out “consul-tations” with the com-munity

of Akwesasne about the government’s plan to arm the Canadian Border Ser-vices Agency’s employees in unceded Mohawk territory. This plan has been called a “declaration of war” by MCA Chief Larry King and many others in

Akwesasne.

“They can’t give them guns on their hips and expect us not to do anything about it. You don’t fight with some-body your whole life and then give them a gun,” said Stacey Boots, who was released from police custody on Monday, June 15th after his violent arrest at the Skyway bridge blockade, carried out a week before in Tyendinaga to support Akwesasne. “It’s inevitable that someone’s going to get shot.”

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has not backed down from his position: “They’ll have to accept armed border officers there. What we’re looking at is a potential long closing, and as a result we are right now examining the long term viability of that particular port of entry... and that includes moving it.”

“We’re our own country. There’s Canada. There’s the States. This is Indian Country,” an Akwesasne community member concluded, echoing the words of the majority of residents. “Leave it alone. This is our land.”

Sandra Cuffe is a freelance journalist, photog-rapher and contributing member of the Dominion Newspaper Cooperative who has been embedded in the Mohawk community of Akwesasne since June 1st. For more information, see her blog: http://akwesasnecounterspin.dpress.com

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FederaL

ruby dhalla - Just the Tip of the Iceberg

A Short History of Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program, and Why it Must Change by Philip BrownRuby Dhalla — beautiful, charismatic,

articulate, media hound, successful pro-fessional, a star candidate handpicked by former Prime Minister Paul Martin – she seemed destined for the Liberal Party political stratosphere when suddenly she found her political career at risk because of allegations by caregivers Magdalene Gordo and Richelyn Tongson that they had been abused while working as live-in caregivers for Dhalla and her family. At once, the Dhalla found herself in the odd position of being left to fend for herself sans Liberal Party shock troops! Why so?

The context is Canada’s restrictive immi-gration system. Unwelcome but needed workers are constantly being imported into Canada through oppressive tempo-rary worker programs, such as Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP). Those in the LCP must complete 24 months work out of an inflexible 36-month period. Work is counted by days rather than

actual hours. Furthermore, the visa is employer specific. All other work is forbid-den without a new visa from Immigration Canada and its three months plus regular processing times. Third, you have to live-in your boss’s house. Thus, those in the LCP are subjected to the round the clock gaze and demands of their employer. Of course, though caregivers pay into all of Canada’s social programs, Immigration Canada looks poorly upon any sign you might not be completely self-supporting. Afterwards, you have to pass a second medical. Get sick in Canada? Too bad! Only after all these hoops can you spon-sor your family and ends years of family separation and loneliness.

The problems of the LCP first reached mass public attention in October 2007 with the murder of live-in care-giver Jocelyn Dulnuan in her employer’s house. It was repeated at a higher level with the case of Juana Tejada who

despite fulfilling her work requirements was first denied landed status due to having become ill with cancer while work-ing in Canada. Migrante Ontario, with Juana Tejada in the forefront, and the help of the Steelworkers union, spearheaded a campaign for Tejada’s status. Tejada was victorious for her status but sadly Juana Tejada succumbed to cancer before seeing the full goal of the campaign real-ized: A Juana Tejada law removing the second medical requirement for those in the LCP. This law is now being recom-mended by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigra-tion.

For all these reasons, Migrante Ontario and other organizations, echoing the wishes of 85 percent of Filipinos in Canada, have been campaigning for changes to the LCP to remove these oppressive conditions.

By April 2009, due to mounting pres-sure from the Filipino community and the broader Canadian public, the previously ambivalent Ontario Labour Minister, Peter Fonseca, promised to deliver to provincial parliament a bill regulating these agen-cies.

At a public meeting on April 25, Fon-seca and Ontario Education Minister Kath-leen Wynne egged on caregivers present to disclose their problems. There, Gordo and Tongson came out with their accusa-tions against Dhalla. Two weeks later, an article in the Star appeared covering the case of Gordo and Tongson and it seems nothing had been done in the interim. Out flew accusations of special treatment for the powerful.

Of course, the Tories jumped into the fray to unseat Dhalla from her closely won

riding and to divert the issue from real changes to the LCP. With support for the Conservatives dropping and a stronger Liberal leadership in Ignatieff, Dhalla has been left to fend for herself. She quickly resigned from her job as Youth and Mul-ticulturalism critic in order to, ostensibly, defend herself.

The crux of the matter is that the alle-gations against Dhalla involve two levels of government and three types of statute. It is true that they involve violations of the provincial employment Standards Act and Fonseca has also been put on the defensive for apparently having done little since having heard the case. They also involve violations of tax law, and more significantly of immigration law, of which Kenny is the Federal Minister responsible. What fewer people know is that Kenny had also known of the allegations almost as early as Fonseca and he too has given little evidence of doing anything other than trying to focus all the media glare on Fonseca and Dhalla.

The campaign to make changes to the LCP continues: On June 10, 2009 a Commons committee that heard from Dhalla and the former caregivers involved released a report “… recommend[ing] that … the provincial and federal govern-ments investigate the allegations of the former live-in caregivers in the Dhalla residence and take measures as appro-priate.” The very same day, a House of Commons committee tabled a report rec-ommending that caregivers be granted permanent resident status upon their arrival in Canada but subject to conditions that would be lifted after completing 24 months of work within a 36-month period. So the struggle continues…

A declaration of War: The Arming of Canadian border Agents in Mohawk territory by Sandra Cuffe

Basics #14, June/July 2009

A Mohawk Unity flag covers a “Welcome to Canada” sign at the site of the border crossing blockade in Akwesasne - which is unceded Mohawk territory.

Juana Tejada (b.1969-d.2009) will be remembered by many of her compatriots in the Filipino migrant community, and by many others, for her valiant struggle against the injustices of Canada’s Live-In Caregiver Program.

internationaL

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Basics #14, June/July 2009

Filipinos rally Against Charter Change Move to amend constitution seen as another power-grab by Arroyo regime. by J.D. Benjamin

People’s organizations across the Philip-pines and around the world are outraged by the Philippines Congress passing of Resolution 1109, leg-islation that paves the way for the Congress to convene itself as a Constituent Assembly to change the Con-stitution without the participation of the Senate.

Charter change, refered to in the Philip-pines as Cha-cha, is widely unpopular as it is seen as a power-grab by current Presi-dent Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Her leadership so far has been marked by widespread human rights abuses and corruption scandals, including the murder of almost 1,000 legal mass activists. Once she is out of office, she will lose her immunity from prosecution, so she is desperate to erase the term limits set by the current constitution.

Opposition congressmen attempted to block the motion, but the legislation was rammed through by President Arroyo’s allies in a late-night session. “Tonight is a night of ignominy,” said Gabriela Women’s Partylist Rep. Luz Ilagan. “We witnessed the tyranny of numbers.”

Another troubling element of Cha-cha is the proposal to add the word “responsible” into the clause granting freedom of speech

and expression. This would grant the state wide latitude in deciding what kind of speech was “irresponsible” and to stifle

opponents of the govern-ment.

Cha-cha would also further undermine Philip-pine sovereignty and sell out the country to for-eigners as it would delete the 60 percent domestic ownership clause in the current constitution. Fili-pinos would lose control over their public utilites, natural resources and domestic industries. As the Cordilleras Peoples Alliance said in a recent statement, “Clearly, Cha-cha paves the way for the 100 percent foreign ownership of lands and resources in the country, further marginalizing Fili-pinos from utilizing these

resources. In the Cordillera, ‘cha-cha’ would further displace indigenous peoples from their lands as foreign corporations intensify the plunder of the remaining lands and resources of indigenous peoples.”

A variety of people’s organizations have pledged to block Cha-cha by taking to the streets, with protest rallies planned to take place across the country. “The people are not stupid,” said Bayan secretary general Renato M. Reyes, Jr. “They can see the real intent of the railroaded resolution. They will not stand to have Gloria stay in power indefinitely.”

dPrk defends Its Sovereignity by J.D. Benjamin interference of Western powers caused crisis of the two Koreas.

In recent years, it has become fashion-able for the ruling-classes of the West, and their servants in politics and academia, to distort the story of the conflict in Rwanda in order to develop the neocolonial atti-tude that the West has the moral author-ity to invade any place on the globe, at any time, in order to “protect” Third World peoples from themselves, a doctrine they have officially labeled the “Responsibility to Protect”. One of the greatest cham-pions of this doctrine in its early years was none other than Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff.

By presenting the Rwandan geno-cide as a tragedy that could have been prevented by Western intervention, not only have imperialist states built up a humanitarian cover for future acts of foreign aggression – such as in Somalia and Sudan – they have also written over the history of their own role in catalyzing the Rwandan civil war and the genocidal onslaught that ensued in the Great Lakes Region of Africa after 1994.

Let’s revisit some of the basic facts of this history to illustrate just how instru-mental Western imperialism has been in these conflicts.

In 1986, the U.S.-backed National Resistance Army in Uganda, under the leadership of Yoweri Museveni, came to power. Under this regime, Uganda would go on to become the World Bank and IMF’s model African state for its rigorous implementation of the socially-destruc-tive Structural Adjustment Policies. Next, in September 1990, the U.S. would use Uganda as a staging ground for the inva-sion of Rwanda, which at the time was a country firmly in the sphere of French imperialism. Within two and a half years of the invasion of Rwanda by part of the Ugandan army – now calling itself the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), led by CIA-trained Paul Kagame – almost a million ethnic Hutu Rwandans were displaced by the RPF in northern Rwanda and tens of thousands had been killed.

When the Rwandan government at-tempted to repel the invasion and arrest collaborators with the occupation it was denounced by the “international com-munity” for human rights abuses. With diplomatic pressure building up from (non-French) imperialist states, the Rwan-dan government under the Presidency of Habyarimana buckled under interna-tional pressure and signed the Arusha Accords of July 1992 – a peace agreement that would legitimize and entrench the brutal occupation of Kagame’s RPF.

Year by year leading up to 1994, the brutal and unpopular RPF, backed by its

friends in Washington and Ottawa, was consolidating its power in Rwanda. Then came the fateful day on April 6, 1994, when President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down by the RPF, igniting what we have come to know as the “Rwandan genocide”.

What the Western media has depicted to us about the three months that fol-lowed April 6 is a period of genocidal reprisal led by machete-wielding ethnic-Hutu “genocidaires” against poor and defenseless Tutsis. Show trials around the world have been established to exclu-sively try “Hutu extremists” for their role in this 100-day period, including right here in Canada with the recent trial and conviction of Desiré Munyaneza in Mon-tréal. However, that Kagame’s RPF was responsible for a great share of the deaths during this period, if not the majority and mostly Hutu, is an inconvenient truth for those forces interested in maintaining a certain slant on the “Rwandan genocide” narrative. And that Paul Kagame, along with Uganda’s President Yoweri Musaveni, proceeded to establish their occupation of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and have killed millions upon millions more is also conveniently papered over in imperialism’s narratives about Rwanda.

When the Tutsi-dominated RPF prevailed in the Rwandan civil war in July 1994 and brought the “Rwandan genocide” to an end, the stage was only just being set for the real genocide. With Western imperialism now firmly in control of its two client states in Rwanda and Uganda, these two client states made their move into one of the most resource-rich regions on the planet: the eastern region of the DRC.

The Ugandan and Rwandan invasions of the eastern region of the DRC in 1996 and 1998, along with their constant interference in the region ever since, have triggered the deaths of some 6,000,000 Congolese. And when they weren’t di-rectly occupying and ravaging the region, Uganda and Rwanda were supporting their proxy forces to do it for them, such as the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, formerly led by Gen. Laurent Nkunda.

There is no doubt that the long-term project of Western imperialism in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, via its Rwandan and Ugandan client states, has been and will continue to be the plunder of the DRC’s precious and highly strate-gic natural resources. That millions of lives have been taken means little to the imperialists who profit magnificently from the plunder, and should clearly dem-onstrate to regular people that Western governments not only do not care about humanitarian disasters - in fact, they are the cause of them!

We must expose the “Responsibility to Protect” arguments for what they really are – neocolonialist trash – and demand an end to the plunder of the DRC, the repatriation of Africa’s stolen wealth, and justice for the remaining victims of West-ern imperialist genocide.

No to neocolonialism and imperialism!Reject the ‘Responsibility to Protect’!

Africa for Africans Now!

15 Years On, the ‘rwandan Genocide’ Continues to kill by Steve da Silva Western Imperialism’s Genocide in the Great Lakes region of Africa

The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) successfully tested a second nuclear device in an under-ground detonation last month, follow-ing shortly after a test of a ballistic mis-sile in April. The U.S. has responded by attempting to whip up anti-DPRK sentiment and demanding the right to board North Korean cargo ships sail-ing in international waters.

The interference of the imperialist powers has repeatedly destabilized the Korean region. After WWII, Korean desires to decide the future of their country without outside interfer-ence were brushed aside. American troops occupied the southern region and reinstated many of the former Japanese colonial rulers to power and created a U.S. puppet government - a move widely hated by the Korean people. When the Koreans in the north attempted to retake their coun-try from the puppet regime the impe-rialists (including Canada) invaded, killing between 1.5 and 3 million civil-ians in the ensuing Korean War. To this day, the U.S. still has 28,500 military troops in South Korea and 50,000 in Japan and has repeatedly interfered in the internal affairs of the two Koreas and continues to threaten North Korea

with military annihilation.

Refusing to surrender their sover-eignty, the North Koreans have been forced to increase their defensive capabilities, including the testing of nuclear weapons and long range missiles. This is not an unreasonable move, given the recent actions of the same imperialists that claim to be defending “the peace and secu-rity of the world” as Obama said in a recent press conference. After all, it was not the DPRK that invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, kill-ing more than a million of civilians in the process. It was not the DPRK that dropped nuclear bombs on the civil-ian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII. If the United State wants to get rid of nuclear weapons, they should look first to their own arsenal of 9,400 warheads - enough bombs to end all life on Earth several times over. They should also look at their ally Israel, who is known to possess nucle-ar weapons and is actively threaten-ing their neighbours. The DPRK has invaded no one and deserves the same right to peaceful coexistence and non-interference as any other country.

The proposed constitutional changes in the Philippines, referred to as “Cha-cha””, will allow for greater foreign ownership over the country’s resources and may allow the murderous Arroyo regime to extend its term in office.

Since the late 1980s, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and rwandan President Paul kagame have commanded the slaughter of anywhere from 6-10 million people in Central Africa for the sake of the resource interests of Western imperialism.

On the 1st of May every year, workers around the world take to the streets in a show of force and celebration of workers’ resistance. For over a century, major cities have been witness to what our bosses and politicians spend much of the year trying to keep from view – the work-ing class, strong and united. Though you’d never know it living in Toronto, people just like us all around the world on May Day stand in defiance of all those that would like nothing more than working class people at each others’ throats. We aren’t talk-ing about “Labour Day” here. Labour Day – the official, state-sanctioned holiday that falls on the first Monday of every September – is nothing but

an off brand bootleg holiday that politicians and bosses threw our way so we can take the kids to the park. May Day, on the other hand, is our day of solidarity. It’s ours, and we’re taking it back.

This year, the May 1st Movement set out take May Day back. We may not have taken the streets this May Day, but we did fly our colours. We packed the Steelworkers’ Hall on Cecil Street that Friday night. Work-ers from all corners of the world, now living in Toronto, gathered to share with one another. Power-ful speakers from Tamil Eelam, the Philippines, Latin America, Nepal and many working-class organiza-tions right here in Toronto took to the stage and listed off the victories of their people and organizations - victories won through struggle and resistance, not begging for charity.

Amazing performers did more than entertain the crowd. They took that small stage and showed everyone in that workers hall what art looks like when it grows from strong people that aren’t ever going to give up the fight for justice.

Not one person took the stage to complain about how they’ve been victimized. Not one song about how hard life is. There was no need. Everyone in that room knew what it was to get screwed over. No one there ever thought life was easy. We weren’t there to make each other feel better about all the struggles in our lives. We were there to show each other that all these different

struggles are really just one struggle with many parts. While parents from different movements discussed the work they’re engaged in, their children danced to performers. While the FMLN’s election victory in El Sal-vador was being talked about from the stage, Tamil youth were spread-ing awareness on the floor about their mobilizations in Toronto and the genocide in Sri Lanka. While we celebrated, we organized. When we talked about our own struggles, we talked about the struggle for libera-tion of all working people.

May Day is for workers. Not just an auto worker or postal worker. Not just a white guy with a hardhat and steel toed boots. From shop floors to hotel hallways, from behind a drill-press to behind a sewing machine, whether with citizenship or without, we are all workers. May Day is our day and it’s about time we started acting like it. Next May Day, Toronto we will properly join the millions around the world – in the streets and with no more excuses. What are you doing next May Day?

cuLturaLBasics #14, June/July 2009

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Our day The May 1st Movement (M1M) Reclaims May Day in Toronto by Bryan Doherty

«AnTI-nATIVe MILITIA continued from PG.3.

militia.There is evidence that Fleming

and other anti-native organizers in Caledonia, such as Gary McHale, receive substantial support from local developers and real-estate interests. At a time when workers in Canada are experiencing attacks on their economic

and social interests on all fronts, the institutionaliza-tion of racism and settler chauvinism in the form of an anti-native militia will be a serious political blow to the interests of working-class people, especially in one of the most rapidly deindustri-alizing regions of Canada.

The way forward must be to unite our class and resist attempts to have us divided through racism. The real enemies of working people are not the native peoples of

the land, nor the Canadians who have settled on indige-nous territories, but the past

colonial landlords and the current capi-talists who benefit from the ongoing theft of people’s lands and resources.

Let’s stop the formation of this militia and start organizing against our real enemies: the bourgeois class and its repressive arm, the Canadian state.

doug Fleming, who is leading the initiative to create a mili-tia in Caledonia, is shown here on the left holding an effigy of what is presumably a native Mohawk warrior.