Afghans to Obama: End the Occupation -- An interview with an Afghan women's rights activist
By Sonali Kolhatkar, from Z-Net, November 30, 2008.

President Elect Barack Obama wants to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan. But the US/NATO occupation is less popular than ever. Eman, an Afghan woman's rights activist with RAWA tells Uprising host, Sonali Kolhatkar, that Obama must end the occupation. RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, is the oldest women's political organization in Afghanistan, struggling non-violently against foreign occupations and religious fundamentalism for more than 30 years.

Sonali Kolhatkar: Many on the American left are celebrating the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the US. But while he has pledged to end the Iraq war, he has also promised to increase troops in Afghanistan. What is your opinion of Barack Obama and his stated policy on Afghanistan?

Dan Crow

Precarious employment is one of the hallmarks of what is euphemistically called “the new economy.” It has deep roots in the university sector. Recent decades have seen a move away from full-time secure jobs for academic workers, toward reliance on part-time, contingent, relatively low wage jobs. As a cost-savings measure, and as a way to provide flexibility in operations, universities rely on part-time teaching staff to increasing degrees. In some instances, more than half of all undergraduate teaching in Canada (but also in university systems across Europe) is done by part-timers.

Contingent academic workers, numbering in the tens of thousands in Ontario alone, find themselves in a situation where they have to apply for their jobs as often as every four months, with no guarantee that the work they rely on will be offered. Many have found themselves in this situation for more than 20 years, with an increasingly large cohort joining them each year, proving that there is indeed company in misery. Furthermore, despite the fact that many contingent academic workers have nominally high hourly wages, many live in poverty because of limits on the ability to work. For example, academic work is primarily seasonal work, with very little offered in the spring and summer months.

From Zapagringo-- http://zapagringo.blogspot.com/2008/11/revolution-evolution-in-21st-century.html

I really hope that you find some way to to read the piece below, Grace Lee Boggs' new introduction to "Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century" penned by her and the late James Boggs in the late 1970s. Sit here and read it, or cut and paste and print it out... whichever you choose, please consider ordering the 2008 re-print, which has been re-titled "Revolution and Evolution in the Twenty First Century", at the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership's on-line bookstore here. That might be the most convenient way to read this intro - and certainly the one that most supports those whose labor has created this powerful work :-)

Podcast To The Working Class: Scott McWhinnie and The Labour Show
By Derek Blackadder, from Our Times, October-November 2008.

Most days Scott McWhinnie can be found doing his electrician's job at the University of Guelph, roaming the southern Ontario campus doing urgent repairs and general maintenance. Sometimes, if you're a trade unionist in the strip along Ontario's 401 highway west of Toronto, you may hear McWhinnie's bass lines in the music of Rebel Girl, the band he's part of. It specializes in Wobblie tunes at union gigs.

McWhinnie, a member of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 1334, also has other, more conventional, pastimes, though he puts them to unconventional use. "I also play golf to annoy elitist corporate types. My people invented it so it's in the blood," he says with a chuckle, referring to his father, who grew up in Scotland.

"My father grew up in a mining village but became an auto mechanic, which was his ticket out," says McWhinnie. "My mother was the youngest of 10 in a family of tenant farmers. These origins imbued me with a working-class sensibility that is a part of me at a genetic level. It gets passed on."

Celebrate People's History and Build Popular Power on January 20, 2009

We call on all anarchists, horizontalists, autonomists, anti-capitalists, anti-authoritarians, and others organizing a world from below to bring our best creative spirits to the project of a "Celebrate People's History and Build Popular Power" bloc on January 20, 2009, in Washington, DC -- or in your hometown, if you can't make it.

As people striving toward a nonhierarchical society, yes, we can -- and should -- be rigorously critical of Barack Obama. It goes without saying that we want a world without presidents; we want worlds of our own constituting via directly democratic structures, not states. But not all heads of state are alike, and if we fail to recognize both the historical meaning and power of this particular moment, we will ensure our own irrelevance.

We can -- and should -- also be in critical solidarity with people who have been violently marginalized, who see in the Obama campaign the possibility of their own agency. The inauguration affords a unique space for us to stand with a diverse group of activists inspired by Obama, many new to political organizing, even as we maintain our views on the limits of change from above.

Adam Hanieh

The current global economic crisis has all the earmarks of an epoch-defining event. Mainstream economists – not usually known for their exaggerated language – now openly employ phrases like 'systemic meltdown' and 'peering into the abyss.' On October 29, for example, Martin Wolf, one of the top financial commentators of the Financial Times, warned that the crisis portends "mass bankruptcy," "soaring unemployment" and a "catastrophe" that threatens "the legitimacy of the open market economy itself... the danger remains huge and time is short."

There is little doubt that this crisis is already having a devastating impact on heavily-indebted American households. But one of the striking characteristics of analysis to date – by both the left and the mainstream media – is the almost exclusive focus on the wealthy countries of North America, Europe and East Asia. From foreclosures in California to the bankruptcy of Iceland, the impact of financial collapse is rarely examined beyond the advanced capitalist core.

Speakers include:

* Kelly Fritsch on Upping the Anti. Kelly is on the editorial collective of Upping the Anti. She is also a PhD student and an active member of CUPE 3903 at York University.

* Clare O'Conner on “An ‘unshakable’ bond?: Canada's support for Israel." Clare is a student at York University and an editor of Upping the Anti.

* Dave Bleakney on "Smashing the Wall: Labour and Palestine. How the labour movement is overcoming years of silence and where we go from here." Dave is the national union representative for education (anglophone) for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. He was at the founding convergence of Peoples Global Action and has been active in many Latin American solidarity struggles. He is a recipient of the Commemorative Medal of Che Guevara from Cuba.

Music by Dave Bleakney. Dave will also be performing songs of social justice. Dave started out as a New Brunswick folk punker and now is as comfortable with a string quartet as with high decibel ear splitting feedback...

Thursday Dec. 11th, 7pm, 4th Floor Resource Centre of St. Andrew's Place, 111 Larch Street. This is a wheelchair accessible location.

Copies of UTA #7 will be available for $5 each. For more information or for childcare or travel subsidization contact Gary at 523-2205 or at gkinsman@laurentian.ca
On Upping the Anti also go to: www.uppingtheanti.org

Starting Nov 6, 2008, CUPE 3903, the union representing contract faculty, teaching and research assistants at York University in Toronto, Canada, went on an all-out legal strike. Significant issues include wage increase corresponding with cost of living increase, funding guarantees for graduate students (who also form significant number of workers at York U), improved working conditions (which mean improved learning conditions for students), and job security for contract faculty (some of whom have been teaching for several years on a sessional basis, carrying 1.5-2 times the load of the permanent faculty at 50-75% of the cost for YorkU). Find a summary of all outstanding issues at http://cupe3903.tao.ca.

The issues are obviously significant for the workers at York University to strike over. Their significance goes beyond York U however. These are issues facing non-permanent teaching and research workers in all universities, who are estimated to carry 40-60% of the workload at low exploitative wages and benefits, in poor working conditions and without any job security. This is the reality of labour in higher education institutions functioning as for-profit corporations (as is York U) governed by BoDs composed of representatives of other corporations.

by Sherry Wolf

In the wake of Barack Obama's historic victory, a false and reactionary narrative has emerged that blames Black voters for the gay marriage ban that passed by a 52 to 48 percent margin in California.

While Florida and Arizona also passed same-sex marriage bans, the vote for Prop 8 in the politically progressive state of California is widely attributed to the enormous surge of Black voters, 70 percent of whom approved the ban reversing the state's May 2008 Supreme Court decision allowing lesbians and gays to marry. The exit polls showed that 53 percent of Latinos voted for the ban, as well as around 49 percent of white voters.

The state's Black population, however, is 6.2 percent, and it accounted for 10 percent of the overall vote. In other words, blaming African Americans for the referendum's passage ignores 90 percent of the vote.

It also ignores recent history. To judge from social research, had there been an unapologetically pro-civil rights campaign, there was the prospect of a different outcome.

The most comprehensive study of Black attitudes toward homosexuality, which combines 31 national surveys from 1973 to 2000, came to a fascinating conclusion. Georgia State University researchers found that "Blacks appear to be more likely than whites both to see homosexuality as wrong and to favor gay-rights laws."

David Graeber, Interactivist

We seem to have reached an impasse. Capitalism as we know it appears to be coming apart. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. Organized resistance appears scattered and incoherent; the global justice movement a shadow of its former self. There is good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism will no longer exist: for the simple reason that it’s impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet. Faced with the prospect, the knee-jerk reaction—even of “progressives”—is, often, fear, to cling to capitalism because they simply can’t imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even worse.

The first question we should be asking is: How did this happen? Is it normal for human beings to be unable to imagine what a better world would even be like?

Ontario farm workers can join unions, court rules
by Tracey Tyler, from The Toronto Star, November 17, 2008.

Farm workers across the province have won the right to join unions.

In a 3-0 decision today, the Ontario Court of Appeal struck down sections of the Agricultural Employees Protection Act, which prevent farm workers from engaging in collective bargaining.

The court said the legislation violates agricultural employees' rights to freedom of association under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and gave the Ontario government 12 months to rewrite the law.

While most Ontario workers have had the right to join unions since 1943, farm employees have been excluded from the mainstream labour relations regime because agriculture has been considered unique - sensitive to time and weather concerns, and the need to ensure that food production is not disrupted by a strike.

The Ontario Federation of Agriculture, a farmers' lobby group that intervened in the case, warned that many family farms could not survive if confronted with union demands.

From Narcosphere
Posted by Kristin Bricker - November 10, 2008 at 8:26 pm On the morning of November 9, a group led by a man who is alleged to have been involved in the 1997 Acteal massacre chased a family of adherents to the Zapatista's Other Campaign off of the land where they've lived since 1973.

The confrontation started when the group began work to construct a road through land occupied by adherents to the Zapatista’s Other Campaign in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. The adherents consider the construction of the road to be a pretext to evict them because the construction crew was accompanied by surveyors who came to measure the property’s boundaries, ostensibly in order to sell the land. The land the adherents occupy is legally federal property and a protected zone because the Utrilla mansion, officially a historical monument, is located there. However, the property is registered with the Zapatistas’ Good Government Council in Oventik.

OCAP demands immediate end to the settlements on Palestinian land, calls
for building real affordable housing in Toronto

Today, as part of the International Week Against Israel's Apartheid Wall,
the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has erected a reinforced
cement wall in front of the Toronto building '50 On the Park' at 50
Portland St. (Bathurst and King) owned by wealthy real estate developer
Leviev-Boymelgreen. Leviev-Boymelgreen is a developer in Toronto and
Brooklyn and also builds illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied
Palestine.

By building Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Boymelgreen is
committing war crimes under International Law. Boymelgreen is expanding
the illegal settlement of Mod'in Illit that is built on the land of the
West Bank Palestinian village of Bil'in. 60% of Bil'in's land has been
stolen by Israel in the expansion of settlements and by the building of
the separation Wall. Bil'in is a village that is being strangled - made
into an open air prison surrounded by settlements, Occupation forces and
military, and enclosed by Israel's Apartheid Wall. This is a system of
colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people which has gone
on for 60 years.

In Toronto and New York, Boymelgreen builds luxury condos in the place of
real affordable housing, displacing poor and low-income people from our

by Joseph A. Massad
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007
444 pages, $35 hardcover.
from: www.solidarity-us.org/node/1962.

THE ISSUE OF same-sex sexualities in the Arab world is a political and intellectual minefield, and more so since 9/11 than before. In a bizarre twist, neoconservatives and other rightists who were hostile for decades to the lesbian/gay movement(1) have repackaged themselves as defenders of oppressed Arab women and gays. Responses from the left have been divided.

When international human rights or LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) groups have issued alerts lately about persecution of Middle Eastern LGBT people (most often in Iran), some anti-imperialist gays have denounced the critics for contributing to the Republicans' (and some prominent Democrats') war drive. Others, closer to the politics of Against the Current, have insisted on the importance both of opposition to U.S. intervention and of solidarity with LGBTs.

The arguments have rarely shown much knowledge of the sexual cultures of the Arab world, however, or included much analysis of how imperialism and sexuality interact. Overcoming this lack of understanding is a crucial and urgent task.

The following media release and letter were obtained from an email list.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 13, 2008

National Gathering of Indigenous Peoples Challenge Harper Government in Winnipeg

Winnipeg—Grassroots activists, elders, and elected leaders from First Nations fighting for self-determination and protection of land and resource rights presented a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the Conservative Party's national policy conference in Winnipeg today. The Indigenous spokespeople have come to Winnipeg from communities across Canada to form a network dedicated to fighting for recognition of and respect for Indigenous rights, and deliver their message to Prime Minister Harper.

"Canada, along with the United States and New Zealand, is one of three countries that have voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We call on Canada to join the vast majority of nations who have adopted this declaration," said Art Manuel, of the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade.

Songs of Hurt, Rage and Resistance: Zach is Back
By Lorenzo Wolff, from CounterPunch, November 14, 2008.

Zach De la Rocha and Jon Theodore have made an album that’s so good it hurts. In fact let me rephrase that. They’ve made an album that’s good enough to hurt. You can feel the pain and anger in every note, every sound, every breath.

Sonically, One Day As A Lion is not a departure from Theodore or De La Rocha’s previous projects. Theodore’s drums could just as well fit into a later Mars Volta album and Zach De La Rocha sounds like he could still be singing for Rage Against the Machine. This is not a criticism, but rather a compliment. It’s an incredible feat that 8 years after Rage Against the Machine, Zach De La Rocha is still has the gift of being brutally truthful and genuinely angry. Theodore has managed to stay fresh conceptually and, if anything, has cultivated the driving energy of his earlier work. One factor that is brand new is De La Rocha’s synth playing. His long, sustained, distorted tones compliment his vocals perfectly, giving the record a foundation that makes Theodore’s syncopation and odd time signatures possible.

Life threatening decision to close Halifax shelter gets direct action response
by Asaf Rashid, from The Dominion Weblogs, November 8, 2008.

On Monday November 3rd, Halifax Coalition Against Poverty (HCAP) members and supporters occupied the Halifax office of Nova Scotia Department of Community Services (DCS) for deciding not to fund Pendleton Place, a “harm reduction” shelter located in the basement of St. Patrick’s Church in Halifax. The closure was a move that one local housing activist, Paul O'Hara, described as a “life and death” decision gone the wrong way, and many more have made clear there will be a high risk of serious injury or death on the streets of Halifax this winter as a consequence.

“As long as DCS will commit poor people in our community to death, HCAP will refuse to allow business as usual within the Department.", stated HCAP as the action was underway

Loren Goldner, from Interactivist

“There will be periods of 30 years which will pass with the seeming importance of a single day, and single days with the importance of 30 years.” (old Marxist maxim)

(Note: To avoid reinventing the wheel, and under the pressure of recent epochal events, I have used fragments of other texts I have written in the past few years, making up no more than 15-20% of the following article. I ask the reader’s forbearance for any annoyance.)

Given the fascination of the events of the past 14 months of “credit crunch”, many people (myself included) have sometimes tended to neglect the “deeper” sources of this crisis in production and reproduction. Analysis of a credit crisis has now become almost banal in the mainstream media. But as Marxists we know that there is rarely, if ever, a “pure” credit crisis without a deeper dimension in the material reproduction process (1).

We recall Hegel’s three stages of the introduction of a new idea: 1) total silence and indifference 2) great hostility and denunciation 3) “that’s what we’ve always believed”

A Statement from Solidarity

MILLIONS OF AMERICANS see the election of Barack Obama as a referendum on white supremacy and today we join in their celebration. The racist campaigns launched against Obama, conducted sometimes in coded language and other times in inflammatory accusations, turned out to be amazingly unsuccessful. Yet the 2008 election also represents a dual reality that is important for socialists and activists for peace and social justice to grasp.

For tens of millions of Black Americans, seeing a United States president-elect who’s Black – and even more important, for their children to see a Black president – is a huge symbolic stride towards full citizenship and liberation. Perhaps no event since that legendary night in 1938, when Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling, has there been such a magic moment of celebration for the Black community; only in this case they weren’t simply spectators but participants in the victory.

Two Ways to Be a Nation: Struggle for control of the "trillion-dollar Sudbury basin"
by Shailagh Keaney, from The Dominion, November 6, 2008.

ATIKAMEKSHENG ANISHNAWBEK–In May of this year, the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek (Whitefish Lake) First Nation launched a land claim alleging that the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850 has been violated by the Canadian and Ontario governments.

According to the Treaty, the reserve lands were to be "a tract of land [...] contained between two rivers called Whitefish River and Wanabitaseke seven miles inland."

The boundaries of the original treaty lands extend around almost all of Greater Sudbury up to Wanaitei Lake and past Dowling, halfway between Nairn and Espanola. The line cuts off half of Killarney Provincial Park and slices across territory just above Alban and the French River - 250,000 acres in total. However, when the land was surveyed by Crown officials 35 years later, the reserve was only a fifth of its agreed-upon size.

Since then, settler communities and industry have been set up on the remaining treaty lands. Railroads and mining operations have been established, and have extracted nickel, ore and minerals from the ground over the past 107 years.

President Obama: Change the world can believe in?
by Sunera Thobani, from Rabble, November 3, 2008.

As the widely anticipated election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States grows closer, the priorities that will shape the early days of his Administration require critical attention.

With the banking system still in crisis and financial markets on a volatile rollercoaster, the pressure will be great for a President Obama to focus on domestic issues. But the new Administration will also be saddled with the increasingly unpopular War on Terror. How will Obama deliver on his promise of change to Americans, as well as those around the world who have greeted his candidacy with such enthusiasm?

The election campaigns have demonstrated Americans are more concerned about their houses, retirement savings, jobs, healthcare and education than they are about international issues, and Obama has successfully distanced himself from the deregulation promoted by the Bush Administration. But it will be critical for Obama to likewise detach his Administration from the disastrous Bush foreign policy.

Three steps could signal a clear break with the past: ending the Afghan war, closing down Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and prosecuting war crimes.

Homosexual men have significantly lower personal incomes than heterosexual individuals
from e! Science News, October 29, 2008.

A new study in the Canadian Journal of Economics provides the first evidence on sexual orientation and economic outcomes in Canada. The study found that gay men have 12 percent lower personal incomes and lesbians have 15 percent higher personal incomes than heterosexual men and women. Christopher S. Carpenter of The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California Irvine used data from the Canadian Community Health Survey which includes standard demographic questions as well as self-reports on sexual orientation.

Like previous patterns found in the U.S. and the U.K., results show that gay men have significantly lower personal incomes than similarly situated straight individuals, while lesbians have significantly higher personal incomes than straight women.

THE ECONOMY GOES INTO CRISIS

We are watching the greatest financial crisis since 1929 unfold before our
eyes. Even if they manage to shore up their system for the moment, there
is no doubt that a serious international downturn in the economy is
getting underway. As this situation begins to impact the lives of our
families and communities, we must understand and prepare to deal with what
the crisis will mean to us:

1.Financial bailout for the rich: Governments everywhere have responded to
the crisis of financial institutions by pouring hundreds and hundreds of
billions of dollars into various bail-out packages for the rich. For
years, they have been telling us no money exists for decent wages, proper
housing, schools or health care and, certainly, no money to ensure that
poor people on assistance can pay the rent and eat properly. Now we see
that this was all a lie. When the banks and corporations are in trouble,
a Niagara Falls of public money suddenly becomes available to them. Don’t
tell us, when we lose our jobs and can’t pay our rent or put food on the
table, that ‘we can’t spend our way out of a recession’. Government must
start spending for us as they have for corporate interests.

2.Get ready for ordinary people to feel the crunch: This downturn is
unfolding in a context where EI and welfare systems have been cut back

Migrant workers reap bitter harvest in Ontario: Women in particular find themselves vulnerable to violence and intimidation
by Evelyn Encalada Grez, Toronto Star, October 28, 2008.

I had to pick up Laura at the apple farm with two police officers. We left the farm in such haste that Laura's belongings were scattered in various plastic bags.

It was a rescue mission more reminiscent of a crime scene. She could not leave without lovingly saying goodbye to each of the women with whom she had shared that awful crammed bunkhouse.

When she was ready, she turned to me and said: "Let's go." We walked together, Laura on crutches and in much pain, tears flowing down her face, tears that quickly became contagious.

The tall, white, male police officers were shocked. They had no clue that migrant women lived and worked in their community, let alone what some had to go through to earn a living producing food that ended up on our kitchen tables. One of the officers said "apples are never going to taste the same again."

Laura's crime was to have been injured at work. She lost her balance, fell off a tractor and her legs were crushed by its wheels. As soon as she regained consciousness after her first surgery, an official from the Mexican consulate in Toronto started harassing her.