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An "Unpriviliged Combatant"

posted by Linchpin

By Brandon Gray

It is not often that white people in imperialist countries like Canada get to know the individual names and faces of the people their government kills and maims. The Vietnam War is remembered as tragic because of the near 60,000 American lives lost, whereas the three to six million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians killed remain long forgotten, if ever known at all. Omar Khadr, a fifteen year old Canadian citizen of Afghan origin is a rare exception to this rule, and the fact that he was convicted for war crimes offers a fitting example of the type of justice found under the jackboot of Anglo-American imperialism.

Though he should have qualified as a child soldier under international law, on October 31st Omar was sentenced to forty years incarceration, thereby becoming the youngest person ever convicted of war crimes in the history of the United States. His trial by a special military tribunal was as farcical as it was tragic. Under the terms of a plea deal, he will only serve one more year in Guantanamo Bay (for a total of eight years), before being transferred to Canadian custody - where it is possible that he could soon be released under special conditions. And so there you have the perverse form of justice mustered by the imperialist military court: a backhanded recognition that they did not have a case coupled with an abject willingness to squander years more of young Omar’s life, barring some formal pretense of an admission for their media to work with. Make no mistake, Omar Khadr pled guilty to spying, murder, and terrorism in return for a shot at escaping the nightmare that is the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

On 27 July 2002 U.S. Special Forces and Afghan militia members attacked a farming compound in Afghanistan in which Omar was staying under the guardianship of his father. Aerial bombing destroyed the building, killing nearly everyone inside, blinding Omar and half burying him under rubble. It is within this context that Army prosecutors claim Omar threw a grenade that killed one of the attack team members, Sgt. Christopher Speer. Several soldiers’ testimonies critically contradicted the prosecution's case by noting the existence of another, older man that survived the airstrike. To be sure, Omar had been shot three times and lay unarmed and dying when he was taken into U.S. custody.

Omar was taken to Bagram Prison and interrogated by Sgt. Joshua Claus. Claus was later...

Rethinking the role of race in the modern Tea Party Movement

posted by Linchpin

By Khalil Tian Shahyd

The rapid rise of the Tea Party Movement has fueled ongoing debate about the potential influence of the movement on American public policy and politics. The movement’s appeal and almost exclusive attraction to working class white voters has also caused many to question the role that race has played in its emergence and in sustaining its anger. However, much of the discussion on the role of race in the TPM tends to get lost in two perspectives; 1.) to outright deny or downplay the influence of race in the movement’s political goals altogether; which is made possible by the charges of the second perspective that, 2.) limits itself to a catalogue list of racist actions, political slogans and associations that can be charged against individuals, Tea Party leaders and organizations [1].

Missing from the discussion is a real analysis of the role that race plays in framing our national political economic and historical narrative that can explain why public policies to limit the redistributive functions of government are the focus of conservative political groups in the form of “smaller government” advocacy. Indeed, the modern Tea Party can be said to have gotten its initial inspiration from CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s outburst on the floor of the Chicago stock exchange in which he blamed the federal government for giving subsidies to “subprime” mortgage holders who “were making bad economic decisions” [2]. Santelli claimed that he would organize a Chicago Tea Party against President Obama’s plans to provide support to homeowners facing foreclosure. Of course, “subprime” became quickly coded by race and has been associated almost completely with homeowners of colour, whose experiences with foreclosure and mortgage debt had to be made somehow different and distinct from the experience of “mainstream” white American households - who were morally superior and thus more deserving of public sympathy.

The resulting global economic downturn has only prolonged the anxiety, even as the crisis spread around the world. Yet, while the U.S. is generally recognized as the model for liberal capitalism, it is social democratic Europe that has recently gone through their own political wave of right wing ascendency, partly caused by demographic shifts under increasing immigration from former colonies where the most severe fiscal...

Farm workers, “dis is not slavery/ just poverty / speaking to democracy”

posted by Linchpin

By Ajamu Nangwaya

i am a H2 worka
pickin apple inna florida
i am a H2 worka
hopin dat tings will be betta
suh don’t tek mi fi granted and pass mi
like is only cane and apple yu si
don’t tek it fi joke and run mi
den sen to mi govament fi more a wi
dis is not slavery
just poverty
talking to democracy

- Excerpt from the poem H2 Worka by Mutabaruka

Mutabaruka, the renowned Jamaican dub poet, accurately captures the lament and pain of migrant farm workers who labour in Ontario and the rest of Canada. These offshore workers come from Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines and other Third World areas.

Over the Thanksgiving long weekend in Canada, we enjoyed the bountiful harvest from the farms in this country and the United States in the company of friends and relatives. We probably shared stories of success, challenges and plans for the future.

But did we reflect on the people who made that food possible? No, I am not referring to those mythic and stoic farmers of Canadian legends. I am hinting at the migrant farm workers whose sweat, tears, lives and broken and injured bodies went into producing the cheap food that we all enjoy in the great North that is supposedly fair, strong and free.

I am also referring to the over 25,000 migrant workers in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Program (SAWP) from Mexico and the Caribbean who spend up to eight months per year on farms across Canada. Migrant workers from Thailand, Philippines, Guatemala and Honduras are also finding themselves on these same farms and fields through the Temporary Foreign Workers Program for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training (TFWP), which is even more exploitive. These off-shore workers contribute to the valuable, but exploited work that makes possible the $10 billion in annual income from the farm sector in Ontario.

When Mutabaruka rhymed: “don’t tek it fi joke and run mi / den sen to mi govament fi more a wi”, he is speaking about a sad and disgraceful reality in Canada. When migrant agricultural workers complain about their condition of work, they may be sent home at their own expense and without an appeal process to contest their expulsion.

Many Third World governments are in cahoots with this system of exploitation. They are dependent on the foreign exchange earned from these...

It's the class struggle, stupid!

posted by Linchpin

Organized labour’s confused response to the McGuinty Liberal’s attack on Ontario’s working-class

By Ajamu Nangwaya and Alex Diceanu

Organized labour in Ontario will continue to put forth a weak and ineffective response to attacks from the ruling class as long as it continues to ignore the reality of class struggle. A perfect example is its current response to a proposed two-year wage-freeze that the Dalton McGuinty-led Ontario government plans on imposing on unionized public sector workers. The provincial Liberals would like to save $750 million per year from a wage freeze, so as to help manage the $19.3 billion budget deficit. Readers need not be reminded that this deficit is the result of the risky financial speculations of the captains of finance, industry and commerce that created the Great Recession of 2008.

But it is the 710,000 unionized members of the working class and 350,000 non-unionized managers and other employees who draw pay cheques from the government[1] and the users of state-provided services (and private sector workers) who are being asked to bear the burden of paying for the actions of the corporate sector. At the same time as this attempt to take income from the pockets of government workers, the McGuinty Liberals’ have granted a $4.6 billion tax-cut to the business sector.

The leader of the Ontario New Democrats, Andrea Howarth, has signaled her support for public sector workers’ acceptance of a pay cut. She asserts, "I'm quite sure when they get to the bargaining table they will do their part like everyone else does ... there is a collective bargaining process that has to be respected."[2] Wow! Who said that the working-class needs enemies with “friends” like the New Democratic Party (NDP) and its leader Andrea Horwarth?

However, it is the tame and even puzzling reaction of some of Ontario’s major labour leaders that should be of concern to workers in the public sector. The government called labour leaders and employers from the broader public sector to “consultation” talks on the wage freeze on July 19, 2010. Coming out of the talks, this was what CUPE-Ontario president Fred Hahn had to say, “This is not like the early ’90s, this is not about sharing the pain. That’s all just not true”.[3] He was referring to former NDP premier Bob Rae’s unilateral opening of public sector...

Comments posted by Linchpin

Awesome, what date? Was that in response to Solidarity with the Toronto 900 rallies organized across the country

Thank you! in response to Solidarity with the Toronto 900 rallies organized across the country

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