Click the Cover to see the articles for this issue (12).

*Art work by Dan Denomy

“The economic crisis gripping Canada and the world is wreaking havoc in the lives of individuals and households, neighbourhoods, and communities”- Rev. David Giuliano

A crisis may be an unstable and dangerous social situation, in political, social, economic, military affairs, or a large-scale environmental event, especially one involving an impending abrupt change. Poverty is a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, and or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life. When poverty afflicts large numbers of people it becomes a social crisis.

An economic crisis is a sharp transition to a recession. In the absence of a job when a person needs one, it can be difficult to meet financial obligations such as purchasing food to feed oneself and one’s family, and paying one’s bills; failure to make mortgage payments or to pay rent may lead to homelessness through foreclosure or eviction.

“Money it’s a crime, Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie” -Pink Floyd ‘Money’

Marx would certainly relish pointing out how flaws inherent in capitalism led to the current crisis. Marx would no doubt point to this crisis as a perfect instance of when capitalism looks like “the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells.” Despite the depth of our current predicament, Marx would have no illusions that economic catastrophe would itself bring about change. He knew very well that capitalism, by its nature, breeds and fosters social isolation. The resulting social isolation creates passivity in the face of personal crises, from factory layoffs to home foreclosures. So, too, does this isolation impede communities of active, informed citizens from coming together to take up radical alternatives to capitalism.

“I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States” Peter Schiff (best known for having predicted the economic crisis of 2008)

The Problem-Reaction-Solution formula, also known as Order out of Chaos, has been used in some form for thousands of years. The use of this formula by various governments, groups, & individuals is a historical fact & can’t be denied. In its basic form, it consists of using a fictional or real event, such a crisis, to bring about radical change. It is usually employed when the change to be brought about is controversial and/or disliked. This often includes a type of framing called a False Flag Operation. See ‘The Reichstag Fire’ and ‘Operation Northwoods’. This formula can be used for political, civilian, religious, or business means. Warfare, crime, terrorism, drugs, the environment, disease, & the economy can all be instruments for crisis creation.

“Only a crisis - real or perceived - produces real change.” -Milton Friedman

Particular occupations and aristocratic individuals such as the police, security guards, military personnel’s, etc are almost always described with romanticized words such as loyal, trustworthy, heroic, and can even take on a godly perspective due to media and other advertising sources.  But if you spend much of your time walking in downtown London like I do, you may not perceive such warm and loving actions from these individuals who assume authority because of their occupation.
A few months ago I was walking down Dundas street where two officers were patrolling the street on foot.  As a line up of cars were stopped at a red light the two officers walked up to a car (which was stopped at the red light) opened the door and roughly removed a aboriginal man from his car and continued to search his body in the middle of the street while his wife and child sat in the car watching.  Now to me, this could not have been a domestic or emergency situation considering the police were on foot.  Not only was the aboriginal man publically humiliated, but he was forcefully removed from his car and disrespected.  The car was not pulled over so this created a dangerous traffic jam which could have easily lead to a fatal situation for the high school students who were just released from their school day.
Just this week when I entered the Galleria mall a security guard approached a African American man who was crouching down while making a call on a payphone.  The security guard told the man to stand up and when the man refused he was then threatened by the security guard to be removed from the mall.  The man continued to defend himself arguing that his legs were tired from walking all morning.  While this man was harassed by security guard for several minutes 3 people stood by to watch without defending the man so I got involved.  As I attempted to defend the man who looked as though he was trying to complete a business call I was told that my opinion did not matter and to leave.
In both of these situations neither of the two men who were being disrespected by authority figures were being loud, violent, or creating chaos in their circumstance.  So I ask you this Londoners:  Do you ever witness minorities, people of colour, or immigrants being disrespected, or deprived of their rights in this city?  How are woman and their opinions viewed and dealt with?  Should authority figures be able to forcefully remove you from an environment?  What is the real motivation for the individuals which fill these authoritative occupations?  If you see someone being treated unfairly do you get involved? Why or why not?  Once a uniform is off, do these individuals still own their power?  Is it possible that these authority figures are so bored with their job that they create unnecessary situations?

By: A Concerned Individual

By Adam Szymanski

The political leaders of the First World will be the first to admit that the world’s economy is in a state of crisis. They mourn the economy’s downturn and fight for its resurgence. This should comes as no surprise, since they represent the class of people who benefit from capitalism’s exploited human labour and natural resources. We must remember that an economic crisis is merely a crisis of consumerism, a crisis of greed, and a crisis of unjust power.

While the ruling elite attempt to reinvigorate the very economic system which degrades humans, animals, and the earth alike, we must seize the opportunity created by this instability in the governing economic and political system of the ruling class. This moment in history is an opportunity for the re-education of the masses, and consequently,  the liberation of the masses.

Only when the masses understand, accept, and act on the knowledge that their eyes are blindfolded by the media’s proliferation of government propaganda, and their hands and feet are shackled by the injustices of wage labour, can revolution ever be possible.

Along with the economic crisis comes the crisis of the printing press, rendering the internet an increasingly essential tool in our struggle to re-educate. May we, the workers, students, Native peoples, and revolutionaries pick up our pens and document the injustices we have seen and experienced in the name of economic security.

Yet no book ever written, and no pamphlet ever published has emancipated humanity. Only through direct personal action, and a united community of revolutionaries can our aims be achieved.

Now is the time to seize the car factories left abandoned by the scurrying capitalists. Let us grow our own food and feed our own families on the fertile earth found underneath their parking lots. Let us use their machines to produce our own clothes. Let us use their buildings for shelter, because what is theirs, it truly ours, as it was obtained through the institutionalization of injustice.

Freedom, bread and roses is what we have to win. Blindfolds and shackles are all we have to lose.

By Heatscore

In a recent visit to London’s downtown core, I was somewhat surprised by the sight of the Galleria Mall, flush from its recent $25 million face-lift.  The new renovations, auspiciously geared towards reinforcing the building’s image as a combination workplace/shopping environment came complete with a new corporate moniker, prominently featured on the building’s fancy new glass facade: Citi Plaza.
The rebranding effort was part of an agreement between the Canadian Commercial Workers Industry Pension Plan (CCWIPP), which owns the building, and its monolithic new corporate tenant, Citi Cards Canada (a subsidiary of Citigroup Inc).  As part of the lease agreement on its new 800 employee, 114,000 sq. ft. call centre facility, Citigroup demanded that the building be renamed in its image.
For those who don’t know, Citigroup is America’s largest bank.  In addition to being a massive international banking conglomerate, it is also heavily implicated in the roots of the current worldwide financial debacle.  Using a convoluted maze of speculative financial instruments, Citigroup heavily inflated their earning reports by lending out billions of dollars in the form of sub-prime mortgages before bundling them together and selling them to hedge funds and foreign banks as a toxic mess of debt-riddled securities.  When the shit hit the fan in 2008, Citi was left holding the bag on billions of dollars of worthless assets, and the United States taxpayer was called in to bail them out.
To date, Citigroup has been bailed out on three separate occasions by the US Treasury Department.  This includes $45 billion in capital injections, nearly $300 billion in federal guarantees on outstanding loans and the conversion of $25 billion in preferred stock into common shares.  The company posted a record loss of $27.7 billion in 2008, and with further losses expected in 2009, some analysts are predicting that the financial goliath might need to be restructured in order to maintain some semblance of solvency.  When a group of ten major U.S. banks was recently cleared by the Obama administration to begin paying back the $68 billion lent to them under the TARP bailout (in order to escape government caps on executive salaries), Citigroup was ostensibly absent from the list.  The credit rating scores of Citigroup’s various subsidiaries have been dropping steadily for months, with its various Citibank divisions recording mounting credit card losses as more and more Americans find themselves unable to pay their credit card bills.  In fact, Citigroup’s main interest in its new London incarnation stems from its use as a location to house call centre agents for its ever-growing credit collection needs.
Perhaps the cheerleaders of the downtown revitalization effort that applaud the shrewd maneuvering of Citi Plaza GM Lucas Blois are right when they point to the many employees Citi has brought into the Galleria, and the ripple effect that such an increase can have on local merchants – on the plus side, since many of these jobs center around debt collection, they are likely much more secure than those found in other less viable Citi subsidiaries.  Be that as it may, the accompanying reality of the situation is that what is being billed by our mayor as a “positive step toward fulfilling our downtown revitalization plan for a thriving, bustling and attractive downtown streetscape” is really nothing more than the rebranding of the Galleria into the shiny new mascot of an internationally reviled financial black hole.

By Darius Mirshahi

This past April Fools Day, the leaders of the G20 nations met in London, England to come up with solutions to the financial crisis they’ve created in collaboration with the worlds banking elite. It was Barack Obama’s first overseas trip, and instead of open arms he was met with violent protests and signs that read “Yes we can overthrow the government” and “We are your crisis.”

In Britain, and many other nations around the world, people are beginning to see through the false hope of the Obama administration and rejecting him as just another puppet of his partners on Wall Street. People everywhere are waking up to the fact that all of our political leaders are powerless, and that the real rulers of the world are those who control capital. The major financial institutions and transnational corporations are really the ones who hold power over our lives and use their power to control our governments.

Obama was given more campaign money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate in history, and immediately after being elected he repaid them with trillion dollar bail-outs. In the UK, the Royal Bank of Scotland had to be bought out by British taxpayers after it nearly went bankrupt by gambling away everything in risky investments.

The former CEO of this bank was not charged with anything, instead he was given several millions of dollars in bonuses and pensions out of tax payers money, while unemployment skyrockets, and thousands of people’s homes are repossessed by these same banks. His name is Fred Goodwin, and his mansion and Mercedes were recently vandalized. Anger at the banks and financial elite in the UK is reaching unprecedented levels, and the threat of serious social unrest is growing daily.

People are out of work, out of a pension and many have lost their homes, while the government of Britain continues to spend billions on a war that most Brits disagree with. The government has also failed to take any serious action on climate change, which has infuriated many environmentalists and driven thousands to take serious direct actions against airports, coal plants and other ecological catastrophes.

All of these currents have merged into a mass movement against the current world order. In preparation for the G20 summit in London, thousands of posters urging people to ‘Storm the Banks’ were circulated by ‘G20 meltdown’, and storm the banks they did.
Even with every single London cop on duty, tens of thousands took to the streets and clashed with riot police, pushing back their line, then anarchists smashed the windows of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and stormed inside to destroy their computers and light fires. Police cars were also targeted and disabled, as the crowds cheered.

They shut down the climate exchange building and created a massive climate camp by setting up hundreds of tents in the middle of the road, riot police later violently attempted to remove them. As usual cops used, what I see as, excessive force against protesters, shooting CS gas, pepper-spray, and cracking heads with batons. Many victims of this police brutality chose to defend themselves by throwing back bottles, swinging poles, and tearing off police helmets, and knocking over police officers.

Street battles continued into the night, and banks continued being targeted by their angry victims. From London to Greece, France to Iceland, resistance to economic slavery is spreading. Revolution spreads like wildfire, and the sparks are everywhere. People are angry for very good reason. Those who seek profit at the expense of the well being of common people and the environment are about to face a real crisis; it is us.

By -the Voice of Treason

We are currently facing a convergence of crises, all developing in front of us like a nightmare from which we can’t collectively wake. The crisis in the capitalist system hangs above all mere workers, students and ordinary people, threatening our health and welfare. The environmental degradation, pollution and pillaging of resources has reached levels that pose serious threats to future generations. Peak Oil  looms on our horizon. The limited nature of much of our resources has precipitated resource wars, and will likely instigate more. The rising tensions around the world are largely class conflicts, as the gap between rich and poor grows exponentially. Co-ops are once again emerging as a practical alternative to more lay-offs. Workers everywhere are beginning to ask questions such as : Why do we have to get fired? Why can’t we fire the boss? Why is the bank allowed to drive our company under while getting billions of dollars of our money? What is in store for us next?

The Conservative government’s goal in this recession is clear: exploit the scale of the crisis and the fear and uncertainty it’s instilled in people to intensify an agenda it and business leaders would otherwise have to approach more modestly. The attack on autoworkers is a good example of this; the expansion of capitalism into indigenous territories is as well.

The BAILOUTS were staight-up class warfare, shifting massive quantities of public funds into private hands. The obscene rescue of Wall St., while everyday people do without, represents an attack on the working class. “Too Big to Fail” implies that the rest of us are “too small too save”. The right-wing claims of ’socialism’ are just untrue. Socialism is egalitarian. This closer to Mussolini’s version of fascism.

Crisis of climate change is imminent. If we accept that, then we should be talking about retooling a transportation industry not just saving a car company. We can re-employ the auto workers and help save the environmental future for our children. A good example of this type of restructuring is America during the Second World War. The car companies were reluctant, but after pushing by interests including the UAW, a war effort refashioning was undertaken. Rapid conversion of automobile factories into production of war goods like planes, tanks, and armaments was done in about 8 months. It will take political will to make it happen. This must include the mass of workers.

Schiff’s appearances on the Conservative-dominated stock shows and indeed all the free-market, screw-the-middle-class blowhards routinely laughed at him as he tried to bring some reality to their petty world. Things were terrible and nothing their cheerleading could do would change any of it … as we’ve seen.

There is a long tradition of evading militarism in the US by heading north to Canada. Going back to the American Revolution and the War of 1812, some chose the alternative here. And we accepted around fifty thousand of them during the Viet Nam war. Most Canadians take pride in that. The situation is a little different today.

Canada has signed on to international argeements that make it an obligation for soldiers to refuse orders judged to be illegal. This came out of the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War. This was a response to many Germans who claimed to have been “only following orders”. The United States assaulted and occupied Iraq without the consent of the UN Security Council. In doing so they violated the same body of laws they accused Iraq of breaching.

Jeremy Hinzman was the first American Iraq war resister to seek refuge in Canada. Since then many others have joined him here realizing that were they to stay in the United States, they would be punished for their moral, political and religious beliefs. Many were disillusioned by the barbarity of the occupation.

In the last 11 months Parliament has twice voted for an end to these deportations. Our government has also been directed by the majority of MPs to establish a program to facilitate permanent resident status for Iraq war resisters. Many public opinion polls over the last couple of years consistently show roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of respondents are for allowing them to stay as well. Despite these democratic expressions of the will of the majority of Canadians, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney refuses to take action to accept Iraq war resisters’ requests to stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

This begs the question ‘Why?’. Why would our minority government not follow the will of either Parliament or the public that they represent? Is this how democracy is served in Canada? Or is this how Washington is served?

iconoclastmedia presents:

A Panel Discussion on:

‘The Question of War Resisters in Canada‘
Featuring a Panel of:
Prof David Heap- London War Resisters Support Campaign
Wendy Goldsmith- People for Peace
Anthony Verberckmoes- Anti-War Organization of London
Ed Corrigan- Citizenship and Immigration Law Specialist
Alex Balch- Fanshawe Social Justice Club
American War Resisters in London

Saturday June 27th @ 1pm
Stevenson-Hunt Room Central Library

iconoclastmedia.net/category/war-2/war-resisters

resisters.ca londonresisters.ca

geocities.com/awol.london edcorrigan.ca