The deceptive Tory retreat on the elections bill, and the corporate media's sleeping pill

Yesterday the Conservative Party announced changes to their reactionary elections legislation. Here Darrell Rankin, leader of the CPC Manitoba, calls for continued mobilization and action in a message to Manitoba activists. This note has been edited.

By Darrell Rankin,
Special to Rebel Youth

We need to challenge the media spin that the Tory amendments address our real concerns.

I've looked at the amendments. The Tories are trying to appear they are listening.

But they are still mutilating the principle of one-person, one vote. They have backed down on allowing the winning party to appoint officials who count the ballots. (This may have come back to bite them in 2015.) But the main problem is not fixed.

Perhaps hundreds of thousands of Canadians will still be disenfranchised, most of them people who do not support the parties of big business -- Aboriginal people, women and seniors, the poor and disabled, youth and students.

Video: Call for solidarity with the struggle in Elsipogtog

Open letter by
Darrell Rankin

The Aboriginal peoples in Canada have never given up fighting for their full national rights and stolen lands. They continue to feel the full weight of the racist, non-Aboriginal State through police violence, incarceration, discrimination in health and education, jobs and so on.

The police act with the encouragement of the Capitalist State authorities. The State in Canada embodies the interests of the giant corporations who own Canada and its resources. The State expresses the views of the financial and industrial oligarchy, a few hundred extremely wealthy families.

For three years, the Mi'kmaw Aboriginal people in New Brunswick have asked for consultation with the government about the extraction of natural gas from their land by means of "fracking," with no result.

Update about Kimberly Rivera & family

By Darrell Rankin

Many of you protested last year to block the Harper Conservatives from deporting Kimberly Rivera and her family to the U.S. We demanded that the family be welcomed as heroes and citizens of Canada, to no avail.

You may have already heard yesterday's sad news: Kimberly Rivera was sentenced to ten months in a military prison. Her four children are ripped from her arms for the "crime" of being brave, noble and just.

Our predictions about a conviction and harsh sentence came true. Once again, the Harper Conservatives have been exposed as supporters of George Bush's war of torture and occupation against Iraq.

We must increase our efforts keep resisters to unjust wars in Canada. We need to change Ottawa's policy, or change Ottawa!

I urge you to write your MP, letters to the editor and raise this issue in groups (anti-war, labour, faith, student, etc) where you are active. The issue cannot be ignored or Canada will be molded in the uncaring image of Stephen Harper. We will be slaves building his pyramid.

Many news outlets have carried the story, so I'll give just one link, here.

Here is a sample letter sent to news outlets in the prairie provinces, as a letter or op-ed:

Dear Editor,
Re: US Deserter Sentenced (April 30). Despite a 19,000-name petition and an appeal by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Harper Conservatives deported Kimberly Rivera last year to face a court martial and certain imprisonment. Kimberly refused to fight a horrifying, unjust and illegal war. The Conservatives labeled this brave mother of four a "bogus" refugee and a common criminal.
        The Conservatives say deserters are unwelcome in Canada because the U.S. now has an all-volunteer army, unlike during the Vietnam War. However, it makes no difference if a soldier volunteers. Any soldier must resist illegal orders according to the Geneva Conventions. To their dismay, Nazis war criminals discovered "following orders" was not a defence. Harper, Obama and Kimberly's judge support Nazi justice.
         Stephen Harper needs to answer: Which side won WW2? And why is he still fighting torture-lover George Bush's bloody war in Iraq? Deserters from illegal wars ought to be welcome in Canada citizens and heroes. Stephen Harper's government should be ashamed of ripping Kimberly's children from her arms.

We are talking in the KRICC executive about having another big war resister tour across Canada by Joshua, Alexina and family this fall. We'd like to hear your suggestions and any offers of help.

For the Keep Resisters in Canada Campaign.

On Valentines - solidarity with missing and murdered Aboriginal women

Rebel Youth has received this commentary about the crisis of missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada. We are reprinting it also in the context of the build-up to International Women's Day 2013.

By Darrel Rankin, CPC Manitoba

On this day of action for murdered and missing Aboriginal women in Canada, we are circulating yesterday's report from Human Rights Watch on the issue (read the report summary here).

It focuses on B.C., but the brutal racist and sexist realities are no different in this part of Canada, reported and unreported. (For example, see this "Letter from a Grandmother" we ran in the past - RY eds.)

This is a systemic problem, connected to the oppression of both women and Aboriginal nations in Canada by the dominant, English-speaking nation and Quebec, a nation which itself is in an unequal union with the non-Aboriginal "rest of Canada." Like war, the inequality of nations is an inherent part of capitalism in its late stage of development.

Solving the problem will require fundamental social change, curbing and ultimately ending the immense power of the corporate elite who benefit from all forms of discrimination and inequality, dividing working people and creating pools of super-exploited labour that drag all wages down.

(Extra: Read the YCL solidarity statement on the Sisters in Spirt campaign from 2011)

In serious denial, the largest oppressor nation (or its political, corporate class) doesn't have a name for itself, because it refuses to recognize the genocidal crimes it continues to commit. It calls itself "Canada," claiming we have a "multi-cultural" society with no other real nations, except Quebec which Harper recognized because it is an equal opportunity oppressor of Aboriginal nations. Je me souviens Oka.

Human Rights Watch is playing a useful role by helping expose the crude police state Aboriginal peoples are resisting in Canada, although I disagree with the role it has played in other parts of the world. (About HRW's role elsewhere, see for example here or here.)

The Aboriginal rights struggle requires the full solidarity of Labour and other popular movements. May Aboriginal nations win full rights and equality, and soon.



Links and related reports (with thanks to Eagle Watch):

• Full report
• Press release re-printed on Rebel Youth
• BBC report - RCMP 'discriminates against and abuses' First Nations women 
• Harper brushes off calls for inquiry into violence against Aboriginal women
• Documents show Attawapiskat gets 0.5% share of annual diamond revenues