Dispatches from the American terror state

There is a profound irony to the persistence and acceptance of the notion that the United States is somehow a "free" country whose citizens and residents do not have to worry about state terror or to "live in fear".


When on September 12  "An unidentified gunman shot and killed five people in a series of shootings on Wednesday in Southern California before taking his own life" the county sheriff said “This is the new normal, if you look across the country”. 

No question. Though not really all that new.

Perpetual violence has long been a norm, especially when directed at people from racialized or marginalized communities.

Many of the victims have been killed by the armed wing of the state, the police.

Between January 1, 2017 and June 20, 2018, American cops killed 1,506 people. Despite representing only 13.4% of the population African Americans were at least 21.58% of those killed.

These numbers are far in excess of police killings - actual or proportional - in any other "developed democracies". As just one example Germany, with a population of 82 million, had just 14 killings by police in all of 2017 versus 987 in the land of the free.

If you are not getting killed by the cops, your fellow Americans will oblige. In just one 48 hour period this past week the headlines read "Gunman wounds 4 in Pennsylvania court building lobby, is killed by police" and "Woman kills 3 before fatally shooting herself at Rite Aid distribution center in Maryland, officials say". The only remarkable aspect to this commonplace American news was that one of these mass shootings involved a woman shooter, an occurrence that is extremely rare.

Approximately 17,250 Americans will be murdered in 2018, and over 12,000 of the murders will be committed by a gun. "The U.S. gun homicide rate is 25 times that of other high-income countries." In excess of 21,000 Americans will commit suicide using a gun while the "U.S. gun suicide rate is eight times that of other high-income countries".

The American terror state has more than one way to ruin your life or kill you though. Thanks to a political class beholden to business interests and grotesque libertarian narratives, Americans remain the only people in a developed nation without some type of system of universal health care.

This leads to such awful spectacles as that of a "6-year-old selling lemonade to help with mom's chemotherapy" in Texas. As of May, 2018, the "number of uninsured adults between the ages of 19 and 64 rose to 15.5 percent in March 2018, up from 12.7 percent in 2016. An estimated 4 million people lost individual coverage during that period"

Of course, many millions of Americans are a pay check or two away from destitution or no medical insurance, living in a state of perpetual financial anxiety. In 2017 a survey by the US Federal Reserve found that "Some 44% of people said they could not cover an unexpected $400 emergency expense or would rely on borrowing or selling something to do so".

Further, some "50.8 million households or 43 percent of households can’t afford a basic monthly budget for housing, food, transportation, child care, health care and a monthly smartphone bill". 

This is nearly HALF of all American households.

40.6 million people in the United States live in poverty. 

"According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States." In what is seen as the wealthiest nation in the world.

This has countless ripple effects. "Infant mortality rates in the US exceed those in all other developed countries and in many less developed countries, suggesting political factors may contribute".   It also means that "Americans lead shorter and less healthy lives than people in other high-income countries" and "the largest share of the American health disadvantage is likely to be borne by the poor and least educated, who have much higher rates of disease and death than their counterparts in Europe".

Meanwhile American business interests have been so successful in destroying the rights of workers and in creating neo-feudal "right to work" and " at-will employment" anti-union states that you can have a situation where "Employers can fire employees who evacuated for hurricane in North Carolina". And some employers did.

In these states "private-sector employees can be fired for any reason – or no reason at all", leaving workers in a place where the guillotine is always over their heads.

Unsurprisingly, given this, "Americans are piling on debt way faster than the economy is growing"

Remember none of these things are "tragedies" or somehow random events. They are directly the result of choices made by the American state and its officials and representatives right or "left". The consequence of the destruction of the very temporary post-war "social compromise". The creation of a political, intellectual and business class that wanted to ensure the permanent disenfranchisement, debasement and disempowerment of working people, the marginalized, the racialized and people living in poverty.

Daily violence, death and suffering rising out of the ashes of a class war that the corporations and wealthy have, for now, unequivocally won.

The Struggle for National Liberation in Africa, World Peace Council 1975

Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project

See the end of this post for details on the project.

Leaflet: The Struggle for National Liberation in Africa, World Peace Council 1975

This leaflet looks at the situation of the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist struggle in Africa in 1975 from the point of view of the World Peace Council. We have looked at the WPC on the Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project before including with What is the World Peace Council, 1975. 

Much of the leaflet is focused on the apartheid regime in South Africa and the support this racist and fascist regime received from the United States, England, France, NATO and Israel at the time. The leaflet also was released against the backdrop of the collapse of Portuguese fascism and Portuguese colonialism after the Carnation Revolution. We looked at a document of the Carnation Revolution recently with Portugal Freedom Year One 1926 - 1975, Ministry of Mass Communication.

(Click on images to enlarge)

When The Left Chapter began part of what I wanted to do on the blog was to show and highlight vintage public leftist election/political leaflets and booklets. While many of these have been offered with commentary to date, a very large collection of hundreds of them from several different sources remains and to preserve these often quite rare documents we will be posting them on a regular (almost daily) basis now often without or with minimal commentary so that people may have access to them as quickly as possible as an historical resource. 

While these will all be leaflets from a variety of different leftist viewpoints and countries, they are being posted as an historical/study resource and the views or opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or blogger.

All of these posts (as well as posts made to date) will be listed on the page:Vintage Communist/Socialist Leaflets (which is still being updated with past posts).


If you have any public, vintage leaflets or booklets you would like to contribute to this project please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com

Military spending: As wasteful as it is dangerous

From 1984 at the height of the Cold War -- when the Reagan Administration was pursuing an extraordinarily aggressive and violent imperialist agenda centred around death squads, support of military dictatorships, the Star Wars initiative and military spending -- this cartoon reminds us just what is lost by this. The CUPE newsletter of the period that it is taken from talked about how military spending is "as wasteful as it is dangerous".

While it has long been a fundamental myth of American imperialism and its legions of media apologists that American military spending is defensive and meant to protect "freedom" and "democracy", the lie is put to that by the very fact that the US spends as much on its military as the next eight largest national military budgets combined!  At a projected $824.6 billion for 2017-2018, the US spends more annually on "defence" now than the entire world did in 1984.

Yet, despite all the claims, these increases in spending and the military adventurism it results in has never made the world a remotely safer place.

Quite the opposite.

As Michael Parenti put it:

Far from being reluctantly propelled into hostilities by popular war fever, leaders incite that fever in order to gather support for their war policies. Thereby do they attempt to distract the public from pressing domestic matters, serve the overseas interests of U.S. investors, justify gargantuan military budgets, and present themselves as great leaders.

Imagine, though, what could be done for schools, hospitals and health care, fighting poverty, building housing and on and on and on with even a serious fraction of that $824.6 billion.

Canada -- long an enthusiastic lapdog that is generally keen to please its American masters -- capitulated to pressure from the Trump Administration and our Liberal government plans to increase the military budget by 70% from $18.9 billion to $32.7 billion annually by 2026-27. The Conservatives want to see even more spending and after the Liberal announcement NDP  defence critic Randall Garrison said the increases were not coming soon enough!

That $13.8 billion (never mind the base $18.9 billion)  extra annually could fund a lot of programs and initiatives that would help a lot of Canadians in direct, meaningful, real world ways. 

Remember that the next time a federal politician tries yet again to claim we "just don't have the money" to fight poverty, homelessness and other injustices, or pitches an austerity, "belt-tightening" agenda.

Facts to Combat Job Discrimination - 2nd UE National Conference on Problems of Working Women May 15 - 16, 1954

Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project

See the end of this post for details on the project.

Leaflet: Facts to Combat Job Discrimination - 2nd UE National Conference on Problems of Working Women May 15 - 16, 1954

 This is a fascinating piece of North American and US social and labour history that flowed from a United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) conference in 1954. It looks at the union's efforts to combat discrimination against women in the workplace both in terms of jobs and wages. It also pays special attention to the issues confronting black women in the workforce especially in the context of the times. 

It shows that myths and excuses used to discriminate against women in the workforce were highly beneficial to the corporations noting the "staggering total of FIVE BILLION FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS IN EXTRA PROFITS that employers make out of their discriminatory exploitation of women". (Emphasis in the original). 

It also notes the always present effort of capitalists to divide workers as when "Employers seek to escape their responsibility for layoffs by setting worker against worker on the basis of age, color and sex." 

Interestingly the UE document calls out some other unions at the time for "playing the bosses' game" by agreeing to discriminatory contract clauses as well as with sexist ideas about women workers generally. 

Finally, among many important stats, note the incredible levels of institutionalized wage discrimination in the United States in 1954 with black women making an average of $517 a year, white women an average of $1,339, black men $1,784, and white men $3,255. 

(Click on images to enlarge) 

When The Left Chapter began part of what I wanted to do on the blog was to show and highlight vintage public leftist election/political leaflets and booklets. While many of these have been offered with commentary to date, a very large collection of hundreds of them from several different sources remains and to preserve these often quite rare documents we will be posting them on a regular (almost daily) basis now often without or with minimal commentary so that people may have access to them as quickly as possible as an historical resource. 

While these will all be leaflets from a variety of different leftist viewpoints and countries, they are being posted as an historical/study resource and the views or opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or blogger.

All of these posts (as well as posts made to date) will be listed on the page: Vintage Communist/Socialist Leaflets (which is still being updated with past posts).


If you have any public, vintage leaflets or booklets you would like to contribute to this project please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com

Is 'strategic voting' for Clinton actually strategic?

Electoral map as of Sept.29th via The Economist

Is strategic voting for Hillary Clinton actually strategic?

I have written before about why I feel that leftists should "not buy into mainstream narratives about voting" and should reject "lesser of evil" narratives in all cases. (And this article did also, in part, touch on the question above).

But, as the election in the United States nears, more-and-more commentators and activists faced by the possibility of a Trump presidency are calling, yet again, for voting for a Democrat, Hillary Clinton, "strategically" in order to allegedly stop him. This includes commentators that I greatly respect like Shaun King, who has penned what is perhaps the best article calling for voting to stop Trump I have read to date, even though he is a columnist for a New York newspaper in a state where doing so is totally unnecessary, a point to which I will return.

If you are a person who actually thinks Clinton winning would be a good thing for the world and the United States, or if you are delusional enough to believe that, somehow, this time electing an avowed neo-liberal and imperialist Democrat to the highest office in the land will bring a better result than all the other times, then you really need read no further.

The dismal, reactionary and violent records of the Democrats, Obama and Clinton are there for all to see and we have looked at them in articles on this blog like There is no socialist case for supporting Hillary Clinton, An American Horror Story -- Clinton vs Trump and Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism. Those who try to claim she will be a force fighting for human rights and women's rights internationally might want to read Michael Howard's Whitewashing Hillary: When Lena Dunham and Her Celebrity Ilk Become Dangerous which very effectively demolishes any such inane assertions.

But if you are a leftist or radical who knows that Clinton is terrible but feel that there are, ultimately, 'only two choices' for President and that Trump must be defeated -- even setting aside for the moment whether this is the correct approach morally -- you need to examine whether this is the best approach tactically from a left-wing POV instead of advocating voting for Stein, Gloria La Riva, or others, for building a new party or for simply not voting at all and conscientiously rejecting the whole sham.

For, if you are advocating a 'strategic vote' for Clinton across-the-board without reservation as to where the voter lives, it means that you are advocating for voting for her when in most cases it will make no difference at all.

Having been bombarded by decades of liberal and Democratic Party propaganda to the contrary -- as well as the falsehood that Nader's voters were responsible for George Bush getting elected in 2000 -- it is hard for many to wrap their minds around this as it is assumed that the choice really is Clinton vs. Trump everywhere. But the US President is not directly elected by the popular vote, they are elected by how people vote on a state-by-state basis.

This makes a very, very large difference to where and when 'strategic' 'lesser-of-evil' voting for Clinton actually matters at all and whether the arguments of its advocates make any sense at all.

According to the latest polls and the electoral map put together by The Economist for example, there are only 12 states that are seriously "in play" and a closer examination shows that some of these are more "in play" than others. Meanwhile, the polling website FiveThirtyEight has fewer states being "in play".

But, let us be conservative and go with former breakdown. That means that while in 12 states voting for Clinton and against Trump might actually matter, in 38 states it will not.

This includes New York, home of the Daily News that Shaun King writes for, for example, which both websites list as basically certain to vote for and deliver its 29 electoral college votes to Clinton. According to the FiveThirtyEight her chances of winning New York are 99.2%. She is 99.6% likely to carry the biggest prize of all, California.

On the flip-side, Trump is basically certain to win states like Texas and Oklahoma.

In none of these states, or any of the others currently not seriously in play, does the 'strategic voting' position hold up at all. In these states, to be clear, advocating voting for Hillary Clinton is simply that, advocating voting for Hillary Clinton. It will have no impact on the presidential race's outcome and simply means voting for a candidate you apparently don't really support or believe in.

To date I have yet to hear a coherent argument as to the efficacy of getting behind the Democratic candidate or a reactionary imperialist like Clinton to "stop Trump" in states like these where voting for her will do nothing to accomplish this!

Even if you sincerely believe that Trump is an existential threat, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that you cannot call for 'strategic voting' in the handful of states where it will matter while calling for rejecting both candidates and their politics in the 38 plus states where it won't.

I think we need to stop pretending. When activists and commentators make blanket calls to vote for politicians like Clinton as the 'lesser-of-evils' even when such votes will not have an impact on the outcome, they enable and empower a narrative that has directly inhibited and prevented the emergence of a left-wing alternative to the Democrats.

They play into the false dichotomy the Democrats depend on to browbeat and terrify people into voting for their terrible candidates election cycle after election cycle.

This helps with nothing other than maintaining the status quo.

See also: Rejecting the lesser evil -- Why you should not buy into mainstream narratives about voting

See also: Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism

It was not the American military that fought for democracy and justice. The people -- and people like Kaepernick -- did that.

No American soldier in decades has died for anyone's rights or for "democracy".

Period.

This is a total crock and an American fantasy.

I get that people feel they have to defend (or more often of course attack) NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick by wrapping themselves in the flag he implicitly, if not explicitly, rejected and that they want to do the whole "soldiers died so he could make this protest" bullshit, but that is all it is.

Bullshit.

American soldiers since WWII have not died fighting for freedom or democracy at all. They have most often died in imperial adventures that had little or nothing to do with either of these things or that directly undermined them both at home and abroad.

While the cause in WWII was just due to the staggering evil of the Nazis, the US was still a segregationist country that only entered the struggle reluctantly. In no other war in American history aside from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, which both occurred on American soil, was an American military fighting to protect the democratic rights or civil rights of the American people in anyway.

In the years since 9-11 many died in grotesque and illegal actions like the invasion of Iraq which had no justification of any kind and that had NOTHING whatsoever to do with anyone's "freedom".

Kaepernick's protest was about the ongoing murder of blacks and others by the American police.

It was about the impunity with which these authorities act. An impunity backed by the very governmental authority the US military represents.

The American national anthem has just as much to do with the fact that American Presidents and politicians sent so many young people to die trying to suppress liberation movements in places like Vietnam or by dealing death by drones or air strikes, as it does with any notions of "liberty".

In fact, it was never soldiers who were in the front lines fighting for modern American democracy.

Never.

That courageous role was actually taken up by trade unionists, civil rights activists, feminists, socialists and millions of ordinary and extraordinary Americans who were brutalized, killed, beaten, intimidated and jailed as they fought their way along the long road to freedom and equality that remains unfulfilled.

They did not not fight and die on foreign shores, they fought and died in places like Mississippi, New York, Selma, Ferguson, Baltimore and every other place where freedom had to be wrested piece by tiny piece from the forces of the American government and where they still do today.

Malcolm X. Rosa Parks. Martin Luther King. These were freedom fighters.

These were the kinds of people who really died for democracy and equality.

Not soldiers.

It is the oldest lie -- that imprisons so many of us -- that somehow the military in countries like the United States has been a defender of justice and democracy when the opposite has almost always been the case.

Remember that every single one of the reactionaries who attack a protest like Kaepernick's would have and continues to oppose all actions for real equality and justice in the United States.

Remember that all of the hard fought battles for freedom were won on the streets of the United States by those who stood up against injustice.

Never by the soldiers who were in many cases sent to stop them.

Remember that the very same right-wingers who insist on perpetuating this myth and lie about the military are the same kinds of people who opposed civil rights and equality for women, the racialized and the marginalized in 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and today.

They have opposed them every single step of the way and continue to. They have never supported the cause of civil rights and equality -- except perhaps in the faintest of token words when forced to -- and they never will.

They will always oppose these rights.

And part of the way they will do so is with this fundamental lie at the heart of all the lies that it was by the actions of the military that democracy and freedom were won and not by the sacrifices of the people.

Don't believe the lie.

Freedom and democracy in the United States and in every other country on Earth were won, insofar as they exist, by the actions of courageous people in the streets, churches and assembly halls who said "No More" and who stood up and were counted even at the cost of their own lives or personal safety.

Soldiers did not do anything to allow this to happen and we damn and insult the memories of the women and men who really died for our as yet unrealized liberation when we claim otherwise.

Freedom and equality will come some day. I believe that.

But it will not be thanks in anyway to the guns and bombs of government soldiers.

It will be due to those like Colin Kaepernick who stood up and were counted when it mattered and no matter the cost to themselves.

See also: Black Lives Matter is right -- The police are the oppressor

See also: You cannot 'discriminate' against the police. They are agents of discrimination.

Obama, Trudeau & Clinton -- Feeling good about the lies of liberalism

Do you remember this moment?

That time when newly minted President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for absolutely nothing other than having won an election in the wake of the George Bush apparent catastrophe and for having given nice speeches about "hope", closing down Guantanamo and supposedly taking the US in a new direction that would be a departure from the death dealing of the past.

So how did that all work out?

Obama has presided over a blood drenched administration whose foreign policy has not only been about the projection of American might, violence and imperialism, but that has also actually increased the numbers of victims of indiscriminate drone attacks and that has turned the world again into a playground and cemetery for America's ambitions and failed projects predicated on utterly bankrupt claims -- still believed by a credulous media, public, and peculiar brand of liberal and even at times left apologist -- of fighting somehow for justice, freedom, democracy or some other ideal that American backed coups in places liberals do not care about like Honduras put the lie to.

Whether he actually said "I am really good at killing people" or not, he is really good at killing people.

He is an eloquent murderer, But a murderer none the less.

You would not at all sense this with the rivers of Obama love flowing as his term in office winds down.

Even from leftists.

At times it is if they lived through a different 8 years without Libya, Syria, ISIS, Honduras and countless other examples of American imperialist adventurism and its consequences. At times it is actually like people think he has a domestic record worth praising, though it is staggeringly hard to find anything to praise other than from the perspective that McCain or Romney would have been "worse".

One must suppose the now ongoing and profound falsification of his murderous history in office serves to help justify supporting the certain to be murderous and domestically vile Clinton regime to come.

A history and future, of course, that will at least in the short term primarily kill people we don't know or seem to be concerned with.

We are in a dangerous stage in western civilization where liberalism and those who become its useful idiots -- either permanently or supposedly temporarily for "lesser of evil" reasons -- are willing to play a game where it is the image that trumps the actuality.  A game where it is the fake and entirely token gestures of  talking about"inclusion" or "equality" or of bemoaning impending disasters like climate change that count while doing nothing meaningful to actually stop them.

Or at least not doing anything that would be even slightly inconvenient to a North American rapacious lifestyle in any real way. .

The liberal has become the person who will admit that the evils they actually don't really want to combat do exist, and then feel that by that admission alone they have accomplished something.

After Obama's two terms, is the world any safer? Has anything really been done to tackle massive inequality and corporate power in the United States? Is the planet any better off?

We all know the answers, and none of them are good.

And so it is with the perfect, vacuous Canadian counterpoint to Obama who emerged in the shirtless form of perpetual glad-hander Justin Trudeau whose notion of remaking society is confined to acknowledging that society exists, has a bunch of problems Conservatives won't admit, and that showing up unexpectedly at weddings makes people feel good.

It is the feeling good that is the key point. It felt good to believe that Obama would be the bringer of peace just as it feels good now to think Trudeau has truly transformed Canada or that Clinton will suddenly prove to be something other than what she always has.

It makes sense that people are finding a way to feel good for supporting what they really know will change little and that will consciously try to avoid changing anything of any systemic meaning.

By voting for Trudeau, Obama or now Clinton, the good feelings can blossom -- as you know you have surely stopped that which was worse -- even as the poverty, oppression, bombings, colonialism, imperialism and environmental degradation continues unabated. It even expands.

Liberalism is an assault on workers, the marginalized and racialized, women and those living in poverty that represents capitalist violence with the thinnest veil of a human face.

Obama and Trudeau are a perfect representation of denial in the face of collapse. They make supporting ugliness seem sanctimoniously beneficial. They grant a middle class satisfaction  to those who voted for them to be smug in the certainty of having made a statement without the statement impacting them personally in anyway whatsoever.

It is, in fact, the easiest of statements to make.

The vicious killer Obama is leaving the grand stage of the US Presidency. Clinton has lined up to take his place.

Now we all supposedly have to fall into place, as always, due to the threat from the right/Trump/insert excuse.

We must  remember that when we buy into this sad logic, when the drones bomb down, when the democratic governments are overthrown, when the workers are sold out again to trade deals and capital, and when things actually stay as bad or get worse than they are now for women, the marginalized and racialized and for people in the rest of the world (they do actually matter) under the extended liberal regime to come -- it is not just that we compromised, we did the easy and the personally comfortable thing for a North American to do.

We will have voted for a set of self-justifying middle-class lies brought to us by charming, charismatic or simply convenient dealers of misery, poverty and death.

But they give good speeches. They say nice stuff. They use stirring phrases. They talk about important things.

And some of them even look good carrying a surfboard.

See also: An American Horror Story -- Clinton vs Trump

See also: There is no socialist case for supporting Hillary Clinton

America Beyond -- Bernie Sanders fights to make the "impossible" possible (with campaign video)

We have all heard it from politicians and governments -- even allegedly progressive ones -- countless times. They tell us that things like free university tuition, universal pharmacare or dental care, comprehensive anti-poverty programs and any number of other initiatives that would dramatically improve the lives of millions and millions of Americans and North Americans are "not possible"

We "can't afford it". It is not "realistic". It "will never happen". We have to "pragmatic".

In fact, at times, it seems our politics and our progressive politics is all about lowering expectations and limiting the possible.

Even though we can afford billions and billions to bail out Wall St. or finance wars and the military industrial complex, the money and governmental will to fund the initiatives that would transform our society for the better for everyone are somehow out of reach.


But part of what has made the Bernie Sanders campaign so electrifying is that he does not seem to accept that. He knows its not true.


One of his key platform planks is to make university tuition free for all Americans.

It can be done. And it has the power to change the futures of millions of people.

Sanders, again, is saying things that no one has been willing to say for a generation or more, and saying them in powerful, important and deeply moving ways.

America Beyond. A better future is possible.

“Being able to have a college education transformed my view of what I can be in this world. It shouldn't just be a small group of people who get access to that kind of experience. Every American, regardless of their income, should have access to a college education.” - Troy LaRaviere, Award-Winning Chicago School Principal

See also: Tenemos Familias -- The Bernie Sanders campaign ad that stands up against racist economic exploitation

See also: It's Not Over -- Bernie Sanders releases campaign ad unlike any you have ever seen

Defeating the Harper Conservatives -- The peace movement and the federal election

by Dave McKee, Canadian Peace Congress President

The 2015 federal election is a critical opportunity for the people of Canada to defeat the Harper Conservative government and its reactionary, pro-war agenda. It is important that the peace movements in Canada begin work now to play a strong role in shaping the public policy debate.

Foreign policy matters do not normally play a defining role in Canadian federal elections, and it appears that this election may be one of the rare cases in which issues of peace, security, militarism and international policy are an important part of the public debate.

The Harper government itself has tried to maintain a high public profile for certain aspects of its foreign policy, under the recurring pretext of fighting terrorism at home (through Bill C-51) and abroad (through the expanding war in Iraq and Syria.) This is partly an effort to shore up the Conservatives’ political base. It is also an attempt to draw public attention away from the ongoing and deepening economic crisis, which has attracted increasing public anger to the Harper Tories, and toward foreign policy issues, where the Conservatives can differentiate themselves from opposition parties whose positions generally present weak alternatives.

Of course, the two issues of economic crisis and war are closely related and should not be counter-posed to one another. The Canadian Peace Congress put it this way at our 2011 Convention:

As the global, systemic economic crisis continues and deepens, competition for resources, markets, influence and profits has grown much more fierce and desperate. Capitalist governments have moved quickly to attack social and labour rights and impose severe austerity measures that will impoverish and marginalize masses of working people, at the same time that they are prosecuting wars and increasing military budgets.

The role of the peace movement is to draw attention to this relationship, to highlight the disastrous foreign policy record of the Harper Tories, and to identify the danger of continuing those policies. In the process, we must project the importance of a new, independent foreign policy of peace, international cooperation and solidarity. And we must insist that such a new foreign policy will work hand-in-hand with progressive, democratic domestic policies that serve the needs of the majority of the people in Canada.

Among peace and progressive groups, there are different proposals for how to approach the federal election. Some argue that the singular focus should be on defeating the Harper government. Others argue the broad foreign and military policies of the main parties are so similar that the tasks before the peace movement lie far beyond the scope of a single election.

The Canadian Peace Congress takes a different approach, one that includes both the immediate goals and the necessity of fundamental policy change. Our two-part proposal is that the Harper Conservatives must be defeated, and also that we need to build a mass movement that demands of all governments a foreign policy of peace.

It is very true that the main arena for peace and anti-war activism is “extra-parliamentary” – in workplaces, communities, schools and the streets. This is where we encounter interested, engaged people whose commitment and energy provides the backbone for the kind of mass movement we need to build. A strong and united movement, in action, can project a peace program for Canada that no government can afford to ignore or distort.

At the same time, however, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has pursued the most aggressive and dangerous foreign and military policies in memory. Under the Harper Conservative government:

• Canadian military spending has soared, so that Canada is now the sixth largest military spender among NATO’s 28 members, and the 16th largest military spender globally.
• Canada has deeply embedded its foreign policies into those of the United States and NATO, to the extent that key economic policy is dictated by the military priorities of NATO and the US.
• Canada has promoted foreign intervention and participated in wars of aggression against sovereign states, including Libya, Syria, North Korea, Yemen, Brazil, Honduras, Venezuela and Ukraine.

Will defeating the Conservatives bring about a fundamental change in foreign policy? No, it won’t.

But it will remove the biggest immediate barrier to that change. Defeating Harper is key.

The Canadian Peace Congress Executive is developing the strategy for its federal election campaign, which will be launched soon.

Elements of the campaign will likely include:

• Window signs with messages that highlight the Harper government’s record on war and militarism and call on people to “vote for peace”
• A series of fact sheets and videos about foreign policy, militarism and war, and the importance of these issues in this election
• A speaking and organizing tour, to local groups across Canada, to draw together activists and identify ways cooperate in an effort to get foreign policy into the election discussion

We invite all members, supporters and friends to help with this campaign. If you want to get involved, or have ideas to share, please let us know.


‪#‎timeforpeace‬

This piece originally appeared in the Canadian Peace Bulletin, vol 2 no 1. It is reprinted here with permission.

Dave McKee is the Canadian Peace Congress President

You can find out more about the Canadian Peace Congress at www.canadianpeacecongress.ca 

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