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Prevent Nuclear War Canadians For Peace and Socialism Box 168 Slocan BC V0G 2CO 1 250 355 2669 Dear Friends We have been receiving a lot of material from good sources and earnest commentary about many causes from a lot of people we pay attention to with interest and respect. Here is a small partial response to some big issues that are being discussed, offered in the full knowledge that we are a modest voice engaged like everybody else, in attempting to understand our time and to make a contribution to the cause of peace human survival and progress. We are not scholars and make no claim to have any deeper knowledge of events than that of others. One brief email doesn’t cut it, yet there is an imperative for everyone to state a position on what they believe to be primary at this time. This is ours. Silence is not an option. The world is on the verge of another major US-NATO instigated war of regime change in the Middle East and our federal government is actively involved in promoting it. That reality must trump all other issues at the moment since it has the potential of igniting a regional conflict in which the use of nuclear weapons is clearly a possibility. http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=645 The demonization of Iran and Syria in the media at the active instigation of unelected shills operating out of the PMO, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Defence, is the means being used by the Harper Conservative Government to befuddle and nullify the instinctive belief of most Canadians that reject more war as the answer to any of our problems, foreign or domestic. The war solution is a minority solution of a separate corporate interest that makes profit from war. It has never been the preferred option of workers, farmers, pensioners and all who rely on wages and hard work to live. Working people are one and are always the victims of war. We harbour no animosity to our brothers and sisters in Iran or Syria. We express our solidarity with their struggles for a better life, that are not dissimilar to our own, in the firm belief that their problems cannot be solved by NATO regime change war. Foreign intervention will impose a foreign solution on the people of Syria and Iran and deprive them of their right to determine their own destiny.  The Syrian and Iranian people are capable of solving their own problems without the help of our Prime Minister. The last time we looked we could find no evidence of gratuitous advice from the leaders of Iran or Syria ordering Prime Minister Harper to step down forthwith so Canadians can govern themselves according to the precepts of Prime Minister Harper’s political opponents. Fear mongering has gone viral. Iran we are told is on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons and as soon as it does it will unleash them against everyone. All rational peace loving people are opposed to nuclear proliferation. Canada is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. So is Iran. China has called for according the same right to Iran as enjoyed by other signatories to the peace use of nuclear energy. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012%5C02%5C17%5Cstory_17-2-2012_pg14_5 Canada has a developed nuclear industry and utilizes nuclear power for peaceful purposes. That is not an exclusive right that is a universal right. At the same time Canada exports uranium to other countries. Iran is not telling the Canadian government daily not to dare to produce nuclear weapons and to stop supplying the raw material to those countries such as the USA that do. Iran seems to accept Canada’s declaration that it is a nuclear weapons free country and has no interest in producing such weapons and restricts its use of nuclear energy to peaceful purposes. That is what Iran asserts it is doing. John Baird, Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay, mired in the CF35 boondoggle and without a shred of credibility on that file, seek to convince Canadians that they know best when someone is truthful or a liar. It is becoming a bit rich even for the main stream media to accept such unctuous double standards that pour out daily from the PMO. Whether Iran is truthful or not is a small part of the matter. The real question is from where does the threat of nuclear war emanate today? Which states are likely to instigate it? The obvious answer is those states that possess nuclear weapons in abundance and have the technical capability of delivering them now to target. Iran does not have that capability nor does North Korea. At a moment when the leading nuclear powers between them have about 14,000 nuclear war heads and the capability of their delivery to almost any point on the planet and when Israel has at a minimum a hundred nuclear war heads within striking distance of its neighbours, and when there is only one country in the world, the USA that has ever used nuclear weapons on civilian populations and retains a first strike nuclear doctrine as the core of its military policy, is it not ludicrous and presumptuous in the extreme for our apoplectic Foreign Minister to identify Iran as the only mortal threat to world peace? The US-NATO-Israeli cabal want Iranian oil, just as they wanted Iraqi and Libyan oil. Period! And this criminal enterprise risks the peace of the world to get it. The connection between NATO wars of regime change and appropriation of the oil resources of other nations is obvious to everyone except those who out of fear or self interest wish to be deceived. There are Canadians that have the courage to sweep aside media hysteria and tell the simple truth. The Codir website seems to provide factual and credible information on events unfolding between the G7 NATO-Israeli plans to attack Iran, and the left progressive forces inside Iran and globally that are struggling for peace and attempting to avoid what can escalate to a massive regional war and the use of nuclear weapons. Yves Engler is a knowledgeable source of information about Canadian foreign policy. His work, “The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy” should be at hand for all advocates of an independent Canadian foreign policy of peace. The most credible analytical source in our view is Global Research. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29234 The World Peace Council statement on the Middle East is a must read and should be circulated widely. http://www.solidnet.org/world-peace-council/2579-wpc-statement-on-the-situation-in-the-middle-east-en The current tour of Canada by Dave McKee the President of the Canadian Peace Congress will be a significant contribution to a strengthening of the anti-imperialist pro-peace forces in Canada. See the above attachment for dates. A regular visit to the Canadian Peace Congress website will keep all informed about the Congress and WPC statements and activities. www.CanadianPeaceCongress.ca  For those no longer intimidated by the cold-war a daily visit to www.solidnet.org will keep one aware of what is happening in the International Communist and Workers Parties of the world. We also recommend www.northstarcompass.org for a Canadian view of events in Russia. The role of China in international affairs is transformative of all international and economic relations. It deserves special study because it is a dual power state in which the struggle between socialism and capitalism is not historically resolved. However until we can be convinced otherwise, we believe it is incorrect to define China as an imperialist state of the same type as the G7. History has not decided that matter as yet. The Chinese people will have something to say on that score. At the same time, as China exports capital it exploits working people of other states. Basic internationalism requires every committed labour militant to act in solidarity with those who are the victims of capitalist oppression regardless from where it emanates. While China is exporting capital and seeks natural resources, we see no evidence that it seeks to achieve its development goals by military threats or waging world war. At the same time there is little doubt that it will defend itself and its claim to Taiwan and what it considers its territorial waters and integrity. What renders the analysis more complex is the fact that China is also extending trade benefits to newly emerging economies in South America including Cuba and Venezuela. China casting the veto in the UN Security Council for the first time in a long time against US plans for regime change war in Syria is to be welcomed. The petty bourgeois radicalized left, motivated at the outset of the Chinese revolution by anti-Sovietism, has over the decades had an inconsistent China policy ranging from hysterical anti-communism, and later support for the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan feudal despotism. The other extreme was uncritical idealizing of what was a difficult and revolutionary path by China to independence and world prominence. We are where we are today. China is rising and has been identified by US imperialism as its main strategic rival. What concerns CPS is the need to openly discuss and develop a consistent internationalist stance towards China-Canada relations based on what is in the best interests of Canadian and Chinese workers and the cause of peace. That will take work and cannot be developed in the framework of anti-communism that was imposed on organized labour by its right-wing leaders during the cold-war. To cling to that outmoded analysis is just what the Conservative government wants. Canada-China relations has its own history. It falls in the realm of non-belligerence and mutual self interest in the area of trade but corrupted by anti-communism in the realm of foreign policy that continues to this day. The trip to China by the Harper Conservative Government was dictated by Canadian finance capital and its strategic profit and inter-capitalist competitive goals for power and influence in Asia. It speaks to a rising appetite among some circles of finance capital for a more assertive imperial role for Canada. Harper, a bit player on the international stage, received his marching orders from big oil and high finance and he winced, marched, and put his pathetic claims to ideological purity in his back pocket. Quite the volte face. However when the chips are down Canada’s elites are unlikely as yet to break with Washington’s designation of China as its principal rising competitor. As the international working class forges its own understanding of what a principled class approach to international relations entails, the tasks of the peace and progressive forces of Canada are clear. The utmost vigilance must be shown towards the foreign policy of the Harper Government and its successor towards China. All uncritical support for the US imperialist strategic goal of destroying China by nuclear encirclement, military threats and war must be opposed. We have made some preliminary comments on that problem, far from definitive or conclusive but our stance to now can be viewed at http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=644 www.FocusOnSocialism.ca concentrates on Canadian foreign and domestic policy. Our recent reading of the capitalist press tells us that there is a growing criticism of the duplicitous double standard of the Harper Government’s foreign and domestic policy beginning to appear in the Globe and Mail and other mass media. Such criticism is weak and indicative of divisions occurring among the ruling elites. It will grow in the lead up to the next federal election. It is an indication that the global economic crisis is far from over and that the upcoming Flaherty budget will be an anti-labour, anti-working class, anti-people, big-business austerity wage cutting program dictated by the IMF, the World Bank on behalf of Canada’s elites of wealth and privilege. The timidity of the NDP top leadership and the muzzling of its substantial Parliamentary opposition at this critical time is in our view deliberate and being orchestrated by the David Mulchair camp and its pro-Zionist backers in the NDP leadership race. The NDP’s weak kneed pro-NATO and pro-Israeli foreign policy stance is fatal for its parliamentary ambitions. Canada doesn’t need another Conservative Party with a pretty face. Timidity on foreign policy issues weakens the NDP’s effectiveness on domestic issues affecting wage and salary earners and the majority of Canadians dependent on publicly funded and universal health care and pensions. http://www.focusonsocialism.ca/random.asp?ID=646 The Harper Conservative Government has no peace policy it only has a pro-NATO war policy. If the NDP opposition doesn’t have the courage to expose that fact and enunciate a new foreign policy of peace, it is incumbent on the entire left, without exception to do so. The NDP should get no free pass on a flawed foreign policy. The cynical detachment of the Harper Government from its active participation in NATO atrocities in Libya and now possibly Syria and Iran cannot be the stance of the NDP, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Green Party and the many well motivated environmental and social activist coalitions in our country. These movements also have to declare where they stand on foreign and domestic policy. The fiction that the Canadian government has a supportable humanitarian foreign policy but an unsupportable anti-social domestic policy is political opportunism plain and simple. Fawning before the Conservative government’s plans to participate in the next US-NATO regime change war in Syria or Iran guts the left progressive forces and weakens the supportable stance of organized labour in its struggles for jobs, trade union rights, rising wages and lifting all boats. The source of the weakness of mobilizing a united and powerful popular resistance to G7 NATO wars and an effective anti-monopoly labour strategy at home, continues to be the open and tacit support accorded by social reformism to imperialism, in the mistaken belief that imperialists can by exposure, be persuaded to be less imperialist. When has that happened? Our definition of imperialism is the merger of finance capital with the military industrial complex now dominated by privately owned and controlled energy financiers and the banks that manage the whole cabal. Today that complex seeks to rule more openly without the inconvenience of Parliament. Up against the belief of Canadians in democracy, the imperial power seeks to render Parliament strictly formal. It does that by making decisions of peace and war and energy acquisition at NATO headquarters in Brussels and fiscal monetary and social policies at the IMF and the World Bank. Then these policies are imposed on Parliament by an orchestrated chorus of Flahertys’, MacKays’, Harpers’ and Bairds’ declaring anyone that opposes them as being unpatriotic, soft on terrorism or with the pornographers. Such sophistry is what passes for politics in our country today. Media pundits, malleable academics make a comfortable living out of spreading such pap. The entire left suffers from talking to itself instead of directly to the Canadian people who in their majority want peace, arms reductions, nuclear disarmament and resolving international disputes by negotiations. Canadians want to keep and further develop what they have worked so hard for since WW2. Social programs for all. Labour rights. Care for children and pensioners. Protection for our beautiful country’s natural heritage. Friendship and cooperation and mutual support among all of our people from Quebec, Canada, all First Nations and new arrivals. The Harper Government is a crude divide and rule political apparatus. It insists that it can do whatever it wants because it has a Parliamentary majority. No it can’t. It can only do what it wants so long as the Canadian people allow it. The real Parliament is about 33 million strong. It will have its say, Conservative majority or not. Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism |