By Heatscore

On Wednesday, March 25^th a small group of us set out for the UCC building at the University of Western Ontario to protest the school’s decision to allow members of the Canadian military to use the space as part of their ongoing and seemingly insatiable effort to recruit our nation’s young adults into the armed forces. In the middle of the building’s high-volume foyer, the Canadian Forces had set up shop, nestled in between tables advertising jobs with Service Canada and the RCMP. Directly across from them, two uniformed police officers stood watch in front of a table laid out with propaganda advertising the “rewarding and challenging” careers available with the London Police department. Armed with several flats of corrugated cardboard and some thick black sharpies purchased for the occasion from the University book store, our group headed for a booth at the nearby Spoke tavern to begin constructing some signs and to discuss strategy. The two rows of recruitment booths had been arranged so as to form a tight corridor down the center of the hallway, and the area was packed tight with students, offering little room for direct engagement by the members of our group.

After we finished with the signs, we decided to split up into smaller groups. A few of us went out front and taped a large sign that read “UWO ? Recruitment Zone” to a prominent pillar in between the doors of the building’s main entrance. A second group set up signs in front of the second set of doors to the building, and established itself there in the building’s antechamber to directly engage students coming in and out of the UCC. This ended up being a good idea, as the spot’s high-traffic location allowed them to talk to quite a few people, to answer questions and discus the notion of campus recruitment drives with several interested onlookers.

While a couple of us went up to engage the military recruiters directly, several others took signs and stood directly at the front entrance of the corridor of recruitment booths, effectively blocking off traffic and establishing a visible presence to a growing number of intrigued students – many of whom were eating a late lunch at the building’s adjoining food court.

After about ten minutes of this, the recruiters figured that they’d had enough, and began packing up their table – their colleagues at the RCMP table having done so five minutes earlier.

While the grunts packed up their leaflets and bumper stickers, those of us who were not still stationed in the room’s antechamber picked up signs and joined the others standing in front of the recruitment booths, where we remained until the military recruiters had left the premises. At this point, several university students made their way over to us from the food court to voice their support for our protest, and a handful of passers-by asked how they could get involved with any future actions. We thanked them for their support and encouraged them to join us the next time the Canadian Military should deign to send their representatives to proselytize at UWO, telling them that “If they come back, you can be sure that we will be here.”

For some, unions are simply organisations that allow workers to pursue their self-interests; unions allow for a particular workforce to fight for better wages, benefits and a shorter workweek et cetera. For others (radicals of different sorts), unions are an apparatus for workers to overthrow the capitalist system and establish a political and economic system based on, and coming out of workers’ control. That is, the actual workers will be making the decisions about where services, energy, labour, funding and goods will be distributed and not investors, managers and owners.
Regardless of what the conceived “purpose” of unions may be, they often function as a democratic force in society. In fact they are one of the only ways in which people can influence corporate and state power in liberal democratic societies (the type we live in).  Therefore, if there are a lack of unions in society, there is generally a lack of democracy. Without unions, ordinary people are not able to voice their dissent and interests in a powerful way to create constructive change in society and the workplace.
When managers, owners, and investors, have complete control in the workplace the workers are forced to deal with the conditions layed out for them. Workers find it hard to influence their working environment to more suitable conditions and have no say in how the business will be operated.  Without unions workers have to walk on eggshells to not upset the employer which otherwise runs the risk of them losing their job.
After WW2 a large effort was carried out to make people despise and even fear unions through film, television and other medias. There was also wide scale repression such as the Red Scare. This is all a natural effect of the contradictions within capitalism; it is in the interest of the owners and managers of society to exclude the masses from the decision-making process allowing for wealth and power to remain in their favour.  On the other hand it is the interests of the masses to control their own lives and seek out their own interests. Because the elite will always take opportunities to exploit workers we need unions.
The process of the elites of putting the people in their place, in all its different forms, is called class war. In this day and age unions in many ways are weaker than they were and, in general they are losing this war. Maybe it is time to step up, get organized and fight back -this time to win!

Down with the rich!

All power to the people!

“Proudhon and Bakunin, the two founders of anarchism, were anxious not to lay down a rigid pattern of society prematurely.  They wanted to leave the self-management associations the widest choice in this matter…. they stressed that in the ideal system of their choice ‘labor would produce more than enough for all’ and that ‘bourgeois’ norms of remuneration could only be replaced by specifically ‘communist’ norms when the era of abundance had set in, and not before.  In 1884 Malatesta, drafting the program for a projected anarchist international, admitted that communism could be brought about immediately only in a very limited number of areas and, “for the rest,” collectivism would have to be accepted ‘for a transitional period’ (Daniel Guerin, Anarchism).

Anarchism is usually considered to be a radical left-wing ideology, and reflects anti-authoritarian interpretations of communism, collectivism, syndicalism or participatory economics. The central tendency of anarchism is represented by communist anarchism. Since the nineteenth century, the term “libertarianism” has often been used as a synonym for anarchism and was used almost exclusively in this sense until the 1970s in the United States; its use, as a term for anarchism is especially common outside the U.S.
Anarchist Communists propose that the freest form of social organisation would be a society composed of self-governing communes with collective use of the means of production, organized by direct democracy, and connected to other communes through federation.

Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. Anarcho-syndicalists view labour unions as a potential force for revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the State with a new society democratically self-managed by workers. Anarcho-syndicalists seek to abolish the wage system, regarding it as “wage slavery,” the state and private ownership of the means of production, which they believe lead to class divisions. Anarcho-syndicalism remains a popular and active school of anarchism today and has many supporters as well as many currently active organisations. Anarcho-syndicalist trade unionists differ on anarchist economic arrangements from a collectivist anarchism type economic system to an anarcho-communist economic system.
Anarcho-syndicalist trade unionists differ on economic arrangements from a collectivist system to an anarcho-communist system. * my change.

The basic principles of anarcho-syndicalism are workers’ solidarity, direct action, and workers’ self-management. Workers’ solidarity means that anarcho-syndicalists believe all workers, no matter what their gender or ethnic group, are in a similar situation in regard to their bosses which is inherent in the class structure. Furthermore, it means that, in a capitalist system, any gains or losses made by some workers from or to bosses will eventually affect all workers. Therefore, to liberate themselves, all workers must support one another in the class conflict which they commonly experience. Anarcho-syndicalists believe that only direct action – that is, action concentrated on directly attaining a goal, as opposed to indirect action, such as electing a representative to a government position – will allow workers to liberate themselves. Moreover, anarcho-syndicalists believe that workers’ organisations – the organisations that struggle against the wage system, and which, in anarcho-syndicalist theory, will eventually form the basis of a new society – should be self-managing.

In his article ‘Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism’, Rudolf Rocker points out that the anarcho-syndicalist union has a dual purpose, “1. To enforce the demands of the producers for the safeguarding and raising of their standard of living; 2. To acquaint the workers with the technical management of production and economic life in general and prepare them to take the socio-economic organism into their own hands and shape it according to socialist principles.” In short, laying the foundations of the new society “within the shell of the old.”
Up to the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, anarcho-syndicalist unions and organisations were the dominant actors in the revolutionary left.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), although not explicitly anarcho-syndicalist, were informed by developments in the broader revolutionary syndicalist milieu at the turn of the twentieth-century. At its founding congress in 1905, influential members with strong anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist sympathies like Thomas J. Haggerty, William Trautmann, and Lucy Parsons contributed to the union’s overall revolutionary syndicalist orientation. Lucy Parsons, in particular, was a veteran anarchist union organsier in Chicago from a previous generation, having participated in the struggle for the 8-hour day in Chicago and subsequent series of events which came to be known as the Haymarket Affair in 1886.

In ‘The General Strike for Industrial Freedom’, Ralph Chaplin states “the ultimate aim of the General Strike as regards wages is to give to each producer the full product of his labor. The demand for better wages becomes revolutionary only when it is coupled with the demand that the exploitation of labor must cease.”

Anarcho Syndicalism Flag

Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement which shares an affinity with organising in the tradition of Dielo Truda’s ‘Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists’. The Platform came from the experiences of Russian anarchists in the 1917 October Revolution, which led eventually to the victory of Bolsheviks over the Anarchists and other like-minded groups. The Platform attempts to explain and address the failure of the anarchist movement during the Russian Revolution.

The platform argues “we have vital need of an organization which, having attracted most of the participants in the anarchist movement, would establish a common tactical and political line for anarchism and thereby serve as a guide for the whole movement”. The pamphlet is an analysis of the basic anarchist beliefs, a vision of an anarchist society, and recommendations as to how an anarchist organization should be structured.

The Platform has 4 key organisational features which distinguish it from the rest of the anarchist movement. They are:

* Tactical Unity – “A common tactical line in the movement is of decisive importance for the existence of the organisation and the whole movement: it avoids the disastrous effect of several tactics opposing each other; it concentrates the forces of the movement; and gives them a common direction leading to a fixed objective.”
* Theoretical Unity - “Theory represents the force which directs the activity of persons and organisations along a defined path towards a determined goal. Naturally it should be common to all the persons and organisations adhering to the General Union. All activity by the General Union, both overall and in its details, should be in perfect concord with the theoretical principles professed by the union.”
* Collective Responsibility - “The practice of acting on one’s personal responsibility should be decisively condemned and rejected in the ranks of the anarchist movement. The areas of revolutionary life, social and political, are above all profoundly collective by nature. Social revolutionary activity in these areas cannot be based on the personal responsibility of individual militants.”
* Federalism - “Against centralism, anarchism has always professed and defended the principle of federalism, which reconciles the independence and initiative of individuals and the organisation with service to the common cause.”

Today the Platformist group Common Cause exists in Ontario, operating the radical website:

linchpin.ca

Emma Goldman writes that she is “interested in the constructive work our comrades in Catalonia are doing, the socialising of the land, organization of the industries. They may not be permitted to do so for long. But if they should be defeated they will yet have shown the first example in history of how revolutions should be made.”

“I think it is the first time in history that such stress is being laid on the superior importance of running the machinery of economic and social life as is being done here. And this is by the much maligned, chaotic Anarchists, who supposedly have ‘no program’ and whose philosophy is bent on destruction and ruin.”

The more radical elements of the CNT-FAI (Spanish Anarchist Federation) were not satisfied with electoral politics. In the months after the Popular Front’s rise to power, strikes, demonstrations, and rebellions broke out throughout Spain. The CNT’s national congress in May 1936 had an overtly revolutionary tone. Among the topics discussed were sexual freedom, plans for agrarian communes, and the elimination of social hierarchy.

Much of Spain’s economy was put under worker control; in anarchist strongholds like Catalonia, the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in areas with heavy socialist influence. Factories were run by worker committees, and agrarian areas became collectivized and run as libertarian communes. Even places like hotels, barbershops, and restaurants were collectivized and managed by their workers. George Orwell describes a scene in Aragon during this time period, in his book, Homage to Catalonia:

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life–snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.–had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.

The anarchist held areas were run according to the basic principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” In some places, money was entirely eliminated, to be replaced with vouchers. Under this system, goods were often up to a quarter of their previous cost.

Despite the critics clamoring for maximum efficiency, anarchic communes often produced more than before the collectivization. The newly liberated zones worked on entirely libertarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any sort of bureaucracy. (It should be noted that the CNT-FAI leadership was at this time not nearly as radical as the rank and file members responsible for these sweeping changes.)

In addition to the economic revolution, there was a spirit of cultural revolution. Oppressive traditions were done away with. For instance, women were allowed to have abortions, and the idea of “free love” became popular. In many ways, this spirit of cultural liberation was similar to that of the “New Left” movements of the 1960s.

All in all the Spanish Revolution will continue to inspire future generations of radicals around the world. Revolutionaries today must learn from the accomplishments and failures of revolutions past to enhance our ability to transcend oppressive elements in society and build the world that we desire and will soon demand!

1) The Paris Commune- In spring of 1871, born out of the loss of the Franco-Prussian War and the simmering discontent amongst workers, since at least the 1830s. Defiant Parisians organized from the Central Committee of the National Guard system set up to defend the city. This group spread in popularity and soon took control of the city, with local assemblies, and a radical social agenda. Many progressive efforts were undertaken. They were smashed with extreme violence by the state.

2) Israeli Kibbutzum-is a unique rural community; a society dedicated to mutual aid and social justice; a socioeconomic system based on the principle of joint ownership of property, equality and cooperation of production, consumption and education; the fulfillment of the idea “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”; a home for those who have chosen it.

3) Anarcho-Syndicalists (Spanish Civil War)-In the anarchist-controlled areas, Aragon and Catalonia, in addition to the temporary military success, there was a vast social revolution in which the workers and the peasants collectivised land and industry, and set up councils parallel to the paralyzed Republican government. This revolution was opposed by both the Soviet-supported communists, who ultimately took their orders from Stalin’s politburo (which feared a loss of control), and the Social Democratic Republicans (who worried about the loss of civil property rights). The agrarian collectives had considerable success despite opposition and lack of resources, as Franco had already captured lands with some of the richest natural resources. Much of this is recounted in Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia”.

4) General Strike- Seattle- February 6 to February 11, 1919, was a general work stoppage by over 65,000 individuals in the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington.  Paranoia that the strike had been organized by foreign anarchists and communists, or that it shared their goals, helped lead to the Red Scare of 1919 and 1920. A cooperative body made up of rank and file workers from all the striking locals was formed during the strike, called the General Strike Committee. It acted as a “virtual counter-government for the city” (Brecher), somewhat akin to 1871’s Paris Commune. The workers in the Committee organized to provide essential services for the people of Seattle during the work stoppage. Army veterans created an alternative to the police in order to keep the peace. The “Labor War Veteran’s Guard,” as it was called, forbade the use of force and did not carry weapons; it was policy “to use persuasion only.” As it happened, peacekeeping was unnecessary: not a single arrest was made by traditional police forces in actions related to the strike, and general arrests dropped to less than half of normal. Major General John F. Morrison, stationed in Seattle, claimed that he had never seen “a city so quiet and orderly.”  The threat of massive violence eventually brought this experiment to an end.

They inspired the general strike in May 1919, where35,000 Winnipeggers walked off the job in May 1919, in what came to be known as the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919. The government defeated the strike through arrests, deportation and violence. The strike ended in June of 1919, with the reading of the Riot Act and the death of two strikers and injuring at least 30 others, and was known as Bloody Saturday. The lasting effect was a polarized population. One of the leaders of the strike, J.S. Woodsworth, went on to found Canada’s first socialist party, the CCF, which would later become the New Democratic Party.

5) Sandinista Nicaragua-The Sandinistas inherited a country in ruins with a debt of 1.6 billion dollars (US), an estimated 50,000 war dead, 600,000 homeless, and a devastated economic infrastructure.

The dominant rebel leaders who controlled the FSLN such as Daniel Ortega were strongly authoritarian Marxist. However, the new junta initially contained a broad spectrum of ideologies. Upon assuming power, its political platform included the following:

* Nationalization of property owned by the Somozas and their collaborators.
* Land reform.
* Improved rural and urban working conditions.
* Free unionization for all workers, both urban and rural.
* Control of living costs, especially basic necessities (food, clothing, and medicine).
* Improved public services, housing conditions, education (mandatory, free through high school; schools available to the whole national population; national literacy campaign).
* Nationalization and protection of natural resources, including mines.
* Abolition of torture, political assassination and the death penalty.
* Protection of democratic liberties (freedom of expression, political organization and association, and religion; return of political exiles).
* Free, non-aligned foreign policy and relations.
* Alternative energy programs

- Notably absent from this list are such traditionally fundamental “Marxist” views (actually Leninist, Maoist, or Stalinist) as the discouragement of religious organizations, a one-party state, and the subsumption of all labor organizations, labor leadership, and political leadership into some form of “soviet” (or an organizational/political analogue, e.g. the Maoist Red Guard). In addition, the early FSLN concerned itself with such non-”Marxist” (in the traditional sense) platforms such as the right to free unionization, the protections of free speech, free and independent political organization, the free practice of religion, and a remarkably prescient environmental concern, all of which signaled that the FSLN — at least in its initial manifestation — shared little with traditional Marxism.

6) Fair Trade- an organized social movement which promotes standards for international labour, environmentalism, and social policy in areas related to production of Fairtrade labeled and unlabelled goods. The movement focuses in particular on exports from developing countries to developed countries.

Fair trade’s strategic intent is to deliberately work with marginalised producers and workers in order to help them move from a position of vulnerability to security and economic self-sufficiency. It also aims at empowering them to become stakeholders in their own organizations and actively play a wider role in the global arena to achieve greater equity in international trade.

7) World Social Forum- (WSF) is an annual meeting held by members of the anti-globalization movement to coordinate world campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies, and inform each other about movements from around the world and their issues. There were many parallel workshops, including, for example the Life After Capitalism workshop, which proposed focussed discussion on non-communist, non-capitalist, participative possibilities for different aspects of social, political, economic, communication structures. One famous speaker was famed American linguistic author Noam Chomsky

8 ) Participatory Economics-(Parecon)- a proposed economic system that uses participatory decision making as an economic mechanism to guide the allocation of resources and consumption in a given society. Proposed as an alternative to contemporary capitalist market economies and also an alternative to centrally planned socialism or coordinatorism, it is described as “an anarchistic economic vision” parecon is only meant to address an alternative economic theory and that it must be accompanied by equally important alternative visions in the fields of politics, culture and kinship. Stephen R. Shalom has begun work on a participatory political vision he calls “parpolity”. Elements of anarchism in the field of politics, polyculturalism in the field of culture, and feminism in the field of family and gender relations are also discussed by the authors as being possible foundations for future alternative visions in these other spheres of society.
Advocates of Parecon say the intention is that the four main ingredients of parecon be implemented with a minimum of hierarchy and a maximum of transparency in all discussions and decision making. This model is designed to eliminate secrecy in economic decision making, and instead encouraging friendly cooperation and mutual support.

The capitalist system is sinking and it is crucial that we find life boats immediately. Forget about Obama changing anything, we don’t have time to wait for his false hope, we need real change and real action now. We need to redevelop our social skills and group together in our communities and find ways to provide for each other’s needs now. As the financial system crashes under the weight of its own fraud, the ability of nations to maintain social control and provide for their populations will dry up.

This is why it is incredibly important that we all unlearn the unsustainable lifestyles that we’ve come to expect as ‘standard’ and develop our own sustainable autonomous communities.

If we are isolated when this pyramid scam comes crashing down on us we’ll have no chance of pulling through, so we need to organize now. We need to think of what it would take to live outside of capitalism and the state because we will soon be forced to. It is on us to make that a change for the better. We need food. Food is a human right, and there is more than enough to feed everyone, the problem is what we eat and how we distribute it. We can’t rely on food shipped from halfway around the world, we need to be able to provide food for our communities IN our communities. We need community gardens everywhere, and we need to learn how to cook with local ingredients. We need to reclaim monoculture industrial farms and replace them with permaculture communities.

For those not familiar with permaculture I recommend looking it up. Here is a tiny introduction;

“Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies.”

Look around your neighbourhood for a community garden, if there isn’t one take the initiative and start one up and invite your friends and neighbours to join you. By taking initiative in your community you will get connected to it and feel less isolated by our individualistic society. We need more community and spaces where we can connect. Disconnected people are disempowered, and the most important thing we need to do is empower ourselves by connecting and sharing our lives and experiences with others. There is power in numbers. We should do everything we can to live in collective houses, work on collective projects, and share our lives with others. The more people we develop positive relationships with the bigger our collective projects can become, and the more realistic it will be for us to realize our dreams. We don’t need more junk. Consumerism is a force of destruction that is ravaging our earth. We must stop buying their garbage and stop working so much to pay for it. We really don’t need even three quarters of the consumer products we spend money on. Our over-consumption leads to a ridiculous amount of trash, and a general feeling that everything is disposable. Instead of fixing the things we have, we throw them out and by new things. Most goods that get thrown out can be easily fixed, and there are people in our communities that know how to repair and refurbish these things.

So let’s stop producing more shit and start fixing the stuff already out there. There are more than enough cars, TV’s, furniture, clothes, and other products out there that we really don’t need to produce anything new. We can learn to make due with what we’ve already got, and fix it as it breaks. Or we can just learn how to make our own things as we need them, and not be so dependent on industrialized society. The less we need to depend on experts and specialists for our necessities of life, the freer we’ll be. We need to become the masters of our own existence. We need to learn alternative medicine, and replace pharmaceuticals with common herbal remedies that we can cultivate in our own bio-regions. We need our own wells and water-purification systems. We need our own sustainable sources of heat and energy, and we need to drastically reduce the amount of energy we consume as well. We need to develop our own forms of community-oriented justice and alternatives to jails and cops. We need to dismantle the military-industrial-complex, the military as an institution, and all weapons. We need to detoxify the earth. We need to create the world we want to live in. But we need to do these things soon.

The world is yours; save it or watch it die. The time is now; because tomorrow may be too late. Can we live without capitalism? Yes we can. Can we live without nation-states? Yes we can. Can we build a brighter future? Yes we can.

Darius Mirshahi

I think what I’m about to say may not make me the most well-liked person here today, but I think it’s something that needs to be said none-the-less. All that I ask is that you hear me out when I say: We’ve failed. I’m going to let this sink in for a second here… we’ve failed. By we I mean the anti-war movement, in London, across Canada, and across the world, and by failed I mean as of last Thursday, the House of Commons passed a bill that will extend the occupation of Afghanistan until 2011. There wasn’t even any substantial opposition to the bill; both the Conservatives and the Liberals voted to extend the occupation, while the NDP and most of the Bloc MPs voted against it. The bill was passed with 198 votes in favour, 77 votes against.

So as I stand up here, there’s a billion different currents running through my body and mind. On one hand I’m disapointed; disapointed that despite our best efforts –and I truly believe we tried our hardest–, the occupation of Afghanistan goes on. I’m angry; angry that we, the ordinary people of Canada, have been betrayed by a ruling party that is shaping foreign policy against our wishes on an extremely narrow mandate and I’m angry that the “opposition”, and I use the term loosely, is more concerned about saving themselves from an embarassing election defeat than complying to the wishes of every-day Canadians such as ourselves. And I’m tired; tired of failing.

I’m sure I’m not the only person that’s tired of the same-old-same-old. However, in order to move forward it’s about time we started levying some serious self-criticisms at our movement. Why haven’t we been successful? What are we doing wrong? What are we doing right? As much as it seems to be common sense to ask these questions, they aren’t being asked. Instead we’re making the same mistakes that the anti-war movement has been making for fourty years. To be sure, the war in Afghanistan will end –all things do. That’s not good enough; we want the war to end on our terms. We won’t see that unless we radically reorient our movement.

One of the biggest hurtles I see right now is our dependance on the House of Commons. To give you an idea of just how ridiculous affairs have gotten in there, I’m going to read an excerpt from an email I received from Liberal MP Glenn Pearson of London North-Centre. Even though I’m sure that most of you –those of you that sent out emails to the Liberals anyway– got the same message as a response for your efforts, I’d like you to bear with me for a moment while I read some of it out. I think it’s tragically funny; tragic in that as I’m reading this out, we’ve seen a war being waged in Iraq for more than five years. Tragic in that as I’m reading this, Afghan civilians are dying as a result of a brutal occupation that’s being carried out in our names. Tragic in that American imperialism –backed by the Canadian government and military– continues to reign unchecked across the globe. And funny in that he expects us to believe what he wrote in this email.

Glenn Pearson writes:

Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, many would agree that the political and cultural position of Afghan women has improved substantially. The recently adopted Afghan constitution states that “the citizens of Afghanistan - whether man or woman- have equal rights and duties before the law”. So far, women have been allowed to return back to work, the government no longer forces them to wear the all covering burqa, and they even have been appointed to prominent positions in the government.

There’s something I’d like to ask Mr. Pearson. Who are the “many” that would agree “that the political and cultural position of Afghan women has improved substantially”? Certainly not Women’s World, who as early as 2004 were reporting that the situation in Afghanistan for women had not changed, but may have been in fact getting worse. Certainly not Malalai Joya, a former MP in the Afghan parliament, who after denouncing the criminals that our military is propping up, was threatened with cries of “RAPE HER” eminating from her fellow MPs. Certainly not the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan –Afghanistan’s oldest women’s group– who have continued to call for legitimate democracy, women’s rights, and an end to the foreign occupation of Afghanistan. Sadly, the “many” that Mr. Pearson refers to seems to be devoid of a very crucial group in this matter; the women of Afghanistan themselves.

There’s something more sinister at work here, and I hope that if it hasn’t dawned already, it’s beginning to. The reason Mr.Pearson refers to this anonymous “many”, without anything specific, is because the “many” doesn’t exist. The “many” is a fabrication created by the Liberals and siezed on by the Conservatives in order to justify the continued occupation of Afghanistan. And Mr. Pearson knows this! This blatant spread of disinformation, these blatant lies –none of it restricted to Mr.Pearson by the way, but rather found in the entire ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberals– are not the characteristics of a functioning democracy. I don’t know what we have right now, but I know if the concerns of Canadians were being listened to we wouldn’t see our healthcare being eroded away, and we certainly wouldn’t see the continuation of the occupation of Afghanistan. The sad fact of the matter is that I don’t think any of us were really surprised when the Liberals voted to continue the occupation; somewhere along the line the House of Commons became closed to the voices of average Canadians –the working class–, and we’re just beginning to awaken to this fact now.

So where do we go from here? Some would suggest that we focus our efforts on electing the “right people” in order to take our country back from the top-down. Electing the “right” people isn’t the issue; the fact that we have elected wonderful people like Irene Mathysson, and yet we still face this gross betrayal of democracy shows that this isn’t a problem of individuals, but rather a problem of the system. The “right people” won’t fix things for us; we have to fix this ourselves, and the only way we can do that is by instituting a system that causes the wrong people to do the right things.

If you’ll humour me, I’d like to make an analogy to perhaps send some of this directly home. If you see somebody getting mugged, you don’t disarm the robber only to hand the weapon back to him a minute later and ask him to play nice this time. It just doesn’t make sense; he’s already proven himself to be, given the right tools, untrustworthy and dangerous. But that’s exactly what we’ve been doing! Time and time again we have handed the House of Commons the weapon and asked them to play nice. Time and time again they have ignored the demands of Canadians.

What we need to do is to transform the anti-war movement into not being just an anti-war movement, but also into a self-empowerment movement. We need to go from a movement of petitioners –constantly handing the weapon back to the House of Commons and asking them to play nice– , into a movement of people ready to directly act against the very foundations of war. We need to make it so that not only are the majority of Canadians against the continued occupation, but we also need to actively hamper the ability of the powers-that-be to continue the occupation! This can take the form of what I’m involved in with SNARL and what Counter-Styker is involved with at the UWO –directly removing those that would wage war in our names from our institutions. We can take a page from the books of the brave people of the Port of Tacoma in Washington, who attempt to stop soldiers and equipment from shipping to Iraq by blocking roads with barricades and their bodies. We can take a page from the ILWU, who on May 1st –International Workers’ Day– will be going on strike and shutting down ports across the US in order to protest the Iraq war. In short we need to be proactive in our stand against the Empire.

Self-empowerment is two-fold though. Not only is self-empowerment action, but self-empowerment is grass-roots democracy. Self-empowerment is deciding our own affairs as a community– not having our affairs decided by bureaucrats sitting 100s of kilometres away. To this end, I’d like to make a plug for the London Project for a Participatory Society, or the LPPS. The LPPS is a burgeoning organization that is comitted to taking our city, and by extention our world, back from those that have expropriated it from us. The LPPS is just one of many grass-roots organizations springing up across all of North America because people are getting sick of the same-old-same-old. We want something new, we want something better.

If you remember earlier, I was talking about a billion different currents that were flowing through me. There was one I didn’t mention; hope. I’m hopeful because I believe every cloud has a silver lining. I’m hopeful because I believe we can take the lessons that we’ve learned from past failures, and turn them into future successes. Over 100 years ago, a great man wrote that we “have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win”. I believe this to be as true today as it was 100 years ago. Let’s break our chains, take our world back, and stop war once and for all. Let’s end it.

Martin Schoots-McAlpine

Counter-Stryker is a group focused on issues of military research at UWO and at Canadian universities generally. Its name refers to the Stryker Light Armored Vehicle, produced by the General Dynamics factory in London Ontario for sale to the US, Canadian and Saudi Arabian military. The UWO Faculty of Engineering currently has a major research contract to assist in the making of the Stryker LAV.  Counter-Stryker has been formed to express our concerns over this project and others like it. We aim not so much to change university policy about conducting military research as to speak directly to those who are, or may become, involved in such projects. By opening a discussion of the ethics and politics of assisting in weapons-manufacture for regimes waging illegal wars and/or with a record of human rights abuse, we hope to encourage students and faculty to refuse involvement in, or to defect from, such work. We aim also to show companies such as General Dynamics that the price of campus involvement is open, critical public discussion of their activities.

counter-stryker.blogspot.com

A very detailed talk on the cause of the current world financial crisis that starts off by explaining the background economics in an easy to understand manner, moves on to the role the war and other events apart from the sub-prime crash played and concludes with a look at what opportunities have been created for anarchist by this sequence of events. The discussion afterwards concentrates on the specifics of the situation in Ireland where the meeting was recorded.

Talk was given by Paul Bowman to a Workers Solidarity Movement meeting in Dublin on Oct. 1st, 2008.