CP of Canada, PEOPLE'S VOICE - Issue of OCTOBER 16-31, 2019

10/17/19 2:21 PM

• Canada, Communist Party of Canada En North America Communist and workers' parties

The following articles are from the October 16-31, 2019, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.

1. Federal Election Coverage: Housing is a Right!
2. Organizing against precarity: Academic workers
3. Where has labour been during this federal election campaign?
4. Canada’s Minister of War: Time to dump Freeland and her hawkish policies
5. ‘Army of Lovers’ shuts down far-right march in Toronto
6. Iran: from sanctions to solidarity (Interview with Mohammad Omidvar)
7. Anti-imperialism and solidarity
8. Urgent: Peace Action Needed
9. ‘Anti-communism will not pass!’
10. Clear need for intervention
11. The Real Venezuela: Dignified, Indivisible and Truthful

Federal Election Coverage: Housing is a right!

According to the 2016 Census, 1.7 million households across Canada – 13% of the total – live in what the government refers to as “core housing need.” This term is applied to situations in which people spend more than 30% of household income on housing that is inadequate (crowded or in need of major repair).  With an average household size of about 2.4, this means that over 4 million people cannot afford adequate housing.Notably, figures for core housing need do not include homeless people, who have been estimated to number as many as 300,000 in Canada.

By far, the highest level of core housing need isin Nunavut, with over 36% of the territorial population. The proportion also jumps significantly in urban centres – in Toronto, for example, nearly 20% of the population is living in core housing need.

So, what’s behind this housing crisis? There are two key factors: supply of affordable units and soaring costs.

To be sure, there is a lot of housing being built in Canada. Information from Statistics Canada shows that total investment in building residential housing last year was over $121 billion. This figure increased in each of the previous five years and is a whopping 26% higher than in 2013. In virtually all areas of the country, it seems, residential housing is being built and rebuilt. The problem is that it is too expensive.

According to Industry Canada statistics from 2017, the profit margin for residential housing construction corporations is 33%. Furthermore, 80% of housing corporations make a profit – residential housing is a very profitable and reliable place for capital to concentrate. Based on that date, it is reasonable to assume that roughly $40 billion in corporate profits were made off residential housing construction in 2018 alone. This is just the profit from building – it doesn’t include money made by landowners through rent or resale.

With all this profit built in, it’s no wonder that housing costshave skyrocketed in virtually all areas of the country. In January, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Toronto was $2300 per month. In Vancouver, it was just over $2100, in Montreal it was $1500 and in Ottawa it was $1300. These numbers are increasing and increasing fast.

The average cost of a home, across Canada, is around $500,000. A purchase on this scale involves a mortgage cost of nearly $2000 monthly and requires an estimated $110,000 annual income, more than double the average household income of $47,000.Here, again, the prices increase dramatically in urban centres – the average cost of a home in Toronto is around $800,000 and over $1,000,000 in Vancouver.

A study published in July by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) examined the 36 metropolitan areas in Canada and found that 31 of them “have no neighbourhoods where a two-bedroom apartment – the most common type – is affordable for a minimum wage worker.” In Vancouver and Toronto, there is not a single neighbourhoodin which a full-time minimum wage worker could afford an apartment without spending more than 30% of their earnings. The CCPA calculated that “in Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area, a minimum wage worker would have to work 112 or 96 hours a week, respectively, to afford a two-bedroom apartment—84 or 79 hours a week, respectively, for an average one bedroom.”

During this election, and for a long time prior, there has been a lot of talk about “affordable” housing. But there’s very little discussion of what exactly is meant by affordable. In most cases, politicians and industry representatives use the term to mean housing costs that are at or below market. But this is a moving target, and one that is rising at a much faster rate than people’s incomes. In Ontario, for example, housing costs increased by 24% between 2016 and 2017, a trend that is present in other areas of the country.

The market-based notionof affordability is the one that is used by all the mainstream political parties –Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Greens. However, this definition is a false one as it deliberately avoids relating the cost of housing to the income of the person buying it – surely any useful concept of affordability needs to take this relationship into account.

How to resolve this?

Clearly, a lot depends on taking profit out of housing. For the past 3 decades, governments at the federal and provincial levels were happy to get out of the housing industry and rely, with different amounts of coaxing and incentives, on the private sector to provide affordable housing. And for 3 decades, all people have seen is dwindling supply, increasing costs and huge private profits,leading right into the current crisis.

Liz Rowley, leader of the Communist Party of Canada, has been campaigning for a federal housing program that is based on public ownership and delivery of social housing. “If housing is, indeed, a human right then it must be treated as a public utility and provided on the basis of need. Taking profit out of the mix allows for costs to decrease to a truly affordable level.”

That brings back the issue of affordability - if it is not pinned to market prices, then what is the benchmark? For the government it’s 30% of household income, the financial cutoff for core housing need. For Rowley and the Communist Party, that’s still too high. “We demand rent rollbacks and strong rent control legislation so that nobody has to pay more than 20% of their income on housing.”

This means a huge increase in Rent-Geared-to-Income (RGI) housing units, which place the specific needs and condition of each individual household above other considerations.

There are specific groups whose housing needs are especially dire and require special attention. Indigenous communities often have desperate shortages and the housing that exists is often in very poor condition. The Assembly of First Nations developed the First Nations National Housing and Infrastructure Strategyto confront the housing crisis experienced by First Nations people living on and off reserve. The strategy document clearly connects housing with Indigenous sovereignty: “First Nations care and control of housing and infrastructure is the guiding principle.”

Attention also needs to be paid, urgently, to building safe and accessible emergency shelters and transitional housing. Too often, politicians have taken the view that it is better to build homes for homeless people than to build emergency shelters. In doing so, they sacrifice the lives of hundreds of homeless people who will die on the streets while they wait for housing to be built. The reason shelters are constantly pushed off the priority list is simple – they don’t make money, whereas housing does.

Business journalists like to write about the “housing bubble” and speculate how investors can shield themselves – or even benefit – when it bursts. But they ignore the fact that for millions, the bubble holds necessities more basic than investments, and it has already burst.

The basic needs of all human beings are food, clothing and shelter. The degree to which housing has been commodified in Canada, the amount of profit that is extracted out of this basic human need, is a clear indictment of capitalism. We are well past the point of realizing that the private sector cannot provide housing; there is an unquestioning need for decisive government intervention.

The fight for socialized housing and legislated rent rollbacks brings the working class into direct conflict with huge and powerful corporations, who will not easily yield their cash cow. It is a long-term struggle that is already being fought in communities across Canada, but that needs coordination and structure. This is a demand that needs to be taken up by the entire labour movement, during elections and beyond.

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Organizing against precarity: Academic workers

Think of academic work and you probably have an image of a professor, snuggled in a cardigan in a charmingly cluttered office enjoying a glass of brandy while pontificating through a well-paid tenured position and into a lucrative pension.

Think of precariously employed workers and you probably have the image of a young personslogging it out in a non-unionized, non-professional job that pays minimum wage.

Both images are very misleading.

The trend toward increasing precarity in work has infected virtually all sectors of the economy and affects all strata of the working class – from minimum waged to well-paid, from young worker to working senior, from unskilled positions to highly specialized ones. One area that has undergone a drastic shift towards precarity is academic work.

Past president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) James Compton noted in 2017 that contract academic staff “are paid a fraction of the salaries of their regular academic staff colleagues, they work mostly on short-term teaching-only contracts, and struggle to maintain a research profile while putting in extremely long hours. And their numbers are growing…In Canada the data on university contract academic staff is poor, but we know their ranks are swelling. And in the college system the numbers are even higher. There are no languid conversations over cigars and brandy in the faculty lounge for them. They are too busy and anxious.”

In 2018, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) conducted a study of academic work in Ontario. It found that the number of precariously employed academic workers in the province has doubled over the last 20 years; currently 53% of post-secondary workers are in this position. In addition to increasing proportion of temporary and contract positions in virtually all job categories, the report noted that jobs with high rates of precarity (especially research assistants and teaching assistants) have dramatically risen in number while those with less precarity (such as librarians) have decreased.

Stuart Ryan is a retired union representative with CUPE 4600, representing teaching assistants and contract faculty at Carleton University in Ottawa. He notes that 70% of first-year courses at the university are taught by contract sessional lecturers. “Sessional lecturing used to be seen as a stepping-stone to full-time academic employment. But as the university cut back on full-time positions, sessional lecturing became a career for a huge number of academic workers.And it’s a career rooted in precarity.”

Ryan says that it is not uncommon to find contract instructors who have to work at multiple institutions in order to make ends meet. “They’re sometimes referred to as ‘Roads Scholars.’ I know people who travel back and forth between Kingston and Ottawa all through the week, working contract positions in both locations.”

Universities and employment websitesroutinely exaggerate TA earnings, by calculating an average hourly rate and then applying that to full-time hours. In fact, the pay is low – very low. At Carleton, according to the CUPE 4600 contract, a TA working a regular position for the full academic session made $10,843 last year; their counterparts at York University, with one of the strongest contracts in the sector, made just over $15,000.

Sessional lecturer and contract faculty rates are not much better. At York they earn less than $18,000 per academic session, and at Carleton just under $15,000.

A special factor influencing precarity in academic work is the way that many of the jobs are structured and perceived. Teaching assistant positions, or TAships, are typically offered to graduate students in master’s or PhD programs and are connected to their studies. The university generally views a TAship as a form of scholarship, while the TA invariably views it as a job. Research assistant positions are often divided between those that are related to a student’s area of study and those that are not, with the former typically considered academic and the latter categorized as administrative or program support.Furthermore, employers segregate research assistants whose work is funded out of university budgets from those whose work is funded by external grants. Such divisions and nuances tend to blur the lines of labour relations. Chantelle Spicer, a graduate student at Simon Fraser University and a TA active in the Teaching Support Staff Union (TSSU), says that the universities have pushed this “arbitrary divide” precisely to weaken workers and unions.

The combined academic and employment elements have a negative impact on the individual worker. Spicer notes,“I often have to prioritize my work as a TA to get grading done and respond to student need, while pushing aside my own graduate research and class requirements. Recent trends in higher education show that universities are increasingly relying on the teaching of adjuncts and graduate students. This means that the university is able to pay me less (as a student worker) to teach, shifting the real cost of education in many ways onto me and my experiences as a student and worker.”

Jaime Reyes, PhD student at Western University, agrees. As past president of Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC)Local 610, representing teaching assistants and postdoctoral associates at Western, he saw first-hand the effects ofintegrated academic and employment pressures among TAs.“Universities all talk increasingly about mental health on campus. But they don’t talk about the health effects onTAs of having to go to food banks because they don’t make enough money, or of worrying that their workload will prevent them from finishing their degree program before their employment contract expires.” Reyes feels that the poverty and precarity of academic work have made many students feel ashamed that they chose to pursue a graduate degree.

Precarious employment tends to reinforce and reproduce patterns of oppression, like racism and sexism, and academic work is no different. Ryan, Spicer and Reyes all note that one of the key examples of this is the treatment of international students.

As government funding to post-secondary education has fallen, the institutions have looked to international students as an easy source of lots of money. These students’ tuition fees are huge, as high as $40,000 per year at some universities, and many depend on academic work. Reyes says that international students need to provide the Canadian government with proof that they have funding for their studies, so they rely heavily on TAships to provide that. “But when they arrive,” he says, “they realize that this is not funding that they receive in a lump sum, but a wage they will be paid over the session. Almost immediately, they have a financial crisis; many go straight to the food bank.”

Spicer notes that international students in the TSSU tend to be much more timid about union activism, even though they are among the most hard hit by precarity. “There is a perceived threat of deportation, which the university is happy to perpetuate, that undermines union activism. Really, international students experience a whole other level of precarity.”

Reyes agrees, pointing out that this is especially noticeable during bargaining. “Since international students have to demonstrate to the government that they have funding, they worry that anything that jeopardizes that funding – like a strike –also jeopardizes their status in the country.” He feels that the plight of international students represents “a layering of precarity of work and precarity of status, one that reflects the treatment of migrant workers in other sectors.”

In response to this deepening precarity, academic workers are fighting back.

First, they are organizing. On many campuses, TAs have been unionized for decades; over time, these unions have been reaching out to organize contract faculty and research assistants.Part of these campaigns is outreach to students, to build active connections with efforts to improve post-secondary education. In 2016, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) organized 20,000 part-time support staff at colleges in the province, in what the union called “the largest organizing drive in Canadian history.”

In addition to organizing, academic workers are showing a willingness to strike for progressive demands. Two years ago, college faculty in Ontario struck province-wide; two of the key demands were increasing the ratio of full-time to contract faculty from 70:30 to 50:50, and increased job security for contract and part-time faculty. While the union was legislated back to work, the won significant victories against the growth of precarious work. Last year, contract instructors and TAs at York University struck against the university’s effort to minimize the conversion of contract positions to full-time and its arbitrary funding model changes that would eliminate 800 positions. That strike lasted 143 days and became the longest strike in the post-secondary sector in Canadian history.

For Spicer, this growth in organizing and militancy reflects a deepening understanding of the class nature of academic work. “Many graduate students don’t expect to join a union, because there’s a disconnect between the individual ‘life of the mind’ and collective social struggles. Yet, as people become more integrated into academic work, they recognize that the university is a corporatized industry that is guided by neoliberalism. In the process, they realize that class struggle and the life of the mind are deeply connected.”

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Where has labour been during this federal election campaign?

Dave McKee

During my second year of university, I was exposed for the first time to mass, extra-parliamentary political campaigning. 

It was the fall of 1988, and the “Free Trade Election” was on. Of course, the main electoral contenders had lots to say about the free trade deal between Canada and the United States (FTA) – the Mulroney Conservatives championed it, the Turner Liberals hated it, and the Broadbent NDP opposed it – but the lasting images and memories for me were from a different source.

The FTA had been signed a year earlier, in October 1987, and mass opposition had already coalesced around a country-wide organizational structure called the Pro-Canada Network (PCN). The PCN united many progressive organizations and groups opposed to free trade – the Council of Canadians, the National Farmers Union, the National Anti-Poverty Organization, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the Assembly of First Nations, as well as churches, peace organizations and more. It had weaker engagement with progressive movements in Quebec – the name certainly didn’t help – but it was connected to the Coalition Québecoised’opposition au libre-échange.

The financial and organizational backbone of the PCN was the trade union movement in English-speaking Canada, the Canadian Labour Congress and its main affiliates. With labour as the engine, the network was able to organize a number of Canada-wide assemblies where member groups, including provincial networks, drew up strategy plans for defeating the FTA. These plans included a sustained, multi-phase campaign beginning a year prior to the federal election and continuing through until after the vote.

This effort produced dozens upon dozens of protests in communities across the country, demonstrations at the Canada-US border, marches, lawn sign campaigns, and a massive public education effort. The mainstream newspapers could not help but publish stories and photos of protestors dogging Brian Mulroney throughout the election. The PCN campaign was a key factor in swinging public opinion from majority support for free trade in 1987 to majority opposed a year later.

Bob White’s speech to the 1988 convention of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union is considered one of the great speeches made in this country. The then-president of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) President Bob White described the FTA in clear class terms, with working class interests in stark opposition to those of corporations. White explicitly supported public intervention in the economy, albeit on a limited basis, and called on workers to defeat both free trade and the economic forces behind it.

The PCN had its limitations. It was solidly a protest movement, united and clear in its opposition to free trade but less so in its projection of specific policy demands. Its nationalist rhetoric may have been a useful organizational vehicle in English-speaking Canada, but it weakened its ability to engage other nations in the country, particularly Québec, and project a clear class analysis to the working class. There were constant suspicions and “turf wars” between the member groups. There was no use of the political strike weapon. These challenges, and others, are still present today.

However, from the standpoint of the 2019 federal election campaign, the Pro-Canada Network campaign looks absolutely glorious.

The Canadian Labour Congress, which represents more than 3 million workers, seems to have confined itself to a website campaign about “fairness for everyone.” There is no mention anywhere of public intervention in the economy – the CLC’s “fairness” will apparently be achieved through public investment in private enterprise. There is not even a call for an expanded universal public pension plan, a demand the CLC (timidly) campaigned for in 2016.

Instead of rallies and protests, the CLC offers up a two-line “petition” on its website. Rather than demanding government intervention on behalf of working people, the CLC hosts “Election Debate Watch Parties.”

It’s the same liberalized class collaborationist message that the CLC put out during the NAFTA renegotiation. Then, instead of mobilizing working people against corporate trade deals, the CLC participated in the Liberal’s NAFTA Advisory Council and called for side deals without even questioning whether remaining in NAFTA was good for workers.

And we can’t look to the CAW for any history-making speeches about class struggle. That union’s successor, Unifor, appears to have completely adopted a “lesser evilism” tactic in this election, calling for a Liberal vote in order to block the Conservatives. Astonishingly, Unifor invited Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland to address its convention in August. That these were the only politicians invited to speak is an indication of how deeply Liberal politics (including, in the case of Freeland, right-wing Liberal politics) have penetrated the largest private sector union in Canada.

The union’s campaign demands mirror those of the CLC and are similarly timid, focused around public investment in private corporations in order to provide jobs.

Here, again, nothing about public ownership and intervention in the economy, nothing about pensions, and nothing about mass mobilization. The only events Unifor seems interested in organizing are canvass blitzes for Liberal candidates.

It’s a sad situation. In an election where there is so much at stake – the threat of a new global recession, the growing danger of war and fascism, and a climate crisis that demands real action – we need the labour movement to step up with radical policies and organizational militancy. Yes, there are divisions within the trade union movement, but a mass campaign based on working class political demands would provide a class struggle basis for rebuilding unity.

Instead, we get the deafening silence of opportunism and business unionism.

This cannot continue – progressive trade unionists, in both the grassroots and in leading positions, will continue to organize and press for labour militancy based on class struggle positions. Those leaders who sit on their hands, and who try to sit on the hands of the entire working class, need be defeated.

Labour’s mass, extra-parliamentary political campaigning is too important to be left back in 1988.

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Canada’s Minister of War: Time to dump Freeland and her hawkish policies

Drew Garvie

In 2015, the Trudeau Liberals ran on a vague anti-war platform that emphasized peacekeeping. However, the last four years have seen an escalation in militarism and Canada’s involvement in US-led regime change attempts around the world. These efforts have been led by one of Trudeau’s cabinet stars,Chrystia Freeland, who has proven herself to be a hardline hawk.

Two years after Freeland was promoted to Minister of Foreign Affairs in early 2017, a dispatch to Washington from the US embassy in Ottawa was made public that revealed how much the United States appreciated her appointment.

The dispatch, titled “Canada Adopts ‘America First’ Foreign Policy,”says Freeland was promoted “in large part because of her strong U.S. contacts,” and that her “number one priority” was working closely with Washington. Conservative foreign affairs critic Peter Kent was also excited and said he hoped Freeland did not soften her stance.

Not everyone was as enthusiastic as Washington and Kent. Some in Canada’s peace movement had been paying close attention to Freeland’s ties to the coup government in Ukraine that came to power in 2014. Alex Boykowich, a Ukrainian-Canadian member of the Communist Party of Canada, researched the archives of Freeland’s grandfather Michael Chomiak. He found clear evidence that Chomiak was a Nazi propagandist during the war who edited a newspaper in Poland with grotesque anti-Semitic editorials and praise for the Ukrainian Waffen SS division. The newspaper itself was founded after the Nazis stole the press from a Jewish publisher who was sent to die in a death camp.

The Canadian corporate media eventually published this information, but the chorus of “Freeland can’t be blamed for the sins of her grandfather” quickly became the dominant narrative. In fact, Freeland had known the full truth of her grandfather for at least twenty years since she helped edit a paper about his past in 1996. After the information was made public, she again tried to bury the story by alleging that it was part of a “Russian disinformation” campaign. The Canadian government expelled a Russian diplomat who did try and publicize the truth. Freeland still has not acknowledged her grandfather’s crimes.

This story is relevant today. The Trudeau administration has imposed several rounds of harsh sanctions on Russia, sent Canadian troops to NATO missions in the Baltics on Russia’s borders, and provided military training to the Ukrainian military. In 2018, Canadian military officials were photographed with the fascist Azov Battalion, which the UN had connected to war crimes. In August, Canada’s Ambassador to Ukraine spoke at a ceremony to honour Nazi collaborator, unveiling a new monument at the edge of a cemetery holding the remains of 1,200 murdered Jews. “It’s like putting a monument to the killers on the top of the graves of their victims,” said an official from the Ukrainian Jewish Committee in Kiev.

Freeland’s contact with Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy can also be seen in a new light. He came to Ottawa in 2016 to warn Canada against resuming regular diplomatic relations with Russia. Freeland has met with him several times, and he has also met with Trudeau and Minister Sajjan. In the 1990s, Parubiy was a co-founder of the Social Nationalist Party (Svoboda), modeled on the Nazi Party, in Ukraine. Criminal proceedings have been launched against Parubiy over his leading role in the Odessa Trade Union House massacre in 2014, when fascist forces set fire to trade union offices with fifty trade unionists and communists trapped inside who were burned alive. In May, Freeland met with him and proudly posted a photo of them together on her Facebook page: “[we] discussed the role that Canadian election monitors played in Ukraine’s presidential elections and will play again parliamentary elections later this year. Canada stands with Ukraine and its vibrant democracy!”

In addition to worsening tensions with Russia,Freeland has also seen Canada’s relations with China go into free-fall, especially after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US government. While Canada does not officially recognize the US sanctions on Iran that Wanzhou is charged with circumventing, Freeland and Trudeau were only too happy to agree to her arrest. Trump declared this was helpful in his trade war with China, while Freeland and Trudeau hid behind the “rule of law” and said that this was not a political decision. Siding with the US in its ongoing trade war with China has led to schisms in the Liberal party itself and has drawn Canada into the conflict with China.

Perhaps the most high-profile of Freeland’s war-mongering is her leading role in the attempted coup in Venezuela. Over the last two years Freeland has patiently and persistently worked with the US to organize the Venezuelan opposition, right-wing governments in the Americas, and imperialist countries in order to strangle Venezuelan sovereignty and self-determination.

In 2017, Canada was key in bringing together the “Lima Group,” a meeting of countries outside recognized international organizations that included 12 right-wing governments. One of their key demands was for presidential elections in Venezuela. But when the Venezuelan government called the 2018 presidential elections, Freeland and the Lima Group, as well as sections of the opposition, declared them illegitimate before they took place. Freeland made sure Venezuelans in Canada were not able to vote by refusing polling stations at the consulates and embassy, an anti-democratic maneuver that no other country attempted. 250 observers from sixty countries including the former presidents of Spain and Ecuador, and labour and church organizations from Canada, confirmed that the election was fair and transparent, and that President Nicolas Maduro had been re-elected.

By not recognizing the elections, Canada and the US set the stage to impose a president that they selected. The Associated Press reported early this year that Freeland’s work was crucial to Juan Guaido’s attempt to seize power: “Playing a key role behind the scenes was Lima Group member Canada, whose Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke to Guaido the night before Maduro’s swearing-in ceremony to offer her government’s support should he confront the socialist leader.”

Throughout the attempted coup Freeland’s close partnership with Pompeo, Bolton, Abrams and Trump lent Canada’s name to a campaign of aggression which risked an illegal invasion by the US. This could have, and still could, result in mass bloodshed in that country, similar to what we have seen in Iraq where more than a million people have diedover the last fifteen years.

In 2017, Freeland announced Canadian sanctions on over one hundred Venezuelan officials. International sanctions, mainly those of the US, are a form of collective punishment that are estimated to have caused the deaths of more than 40,000 Venezuelans in 2018. The economic situation in Venezuela is getting worse thanks to even more economic terrorism inflicted by the US in the course of the latest coup attempt this year.

Freeland’s use of sanctions is not restricted to Venezuela and Russia. Increased sanctions on Syria were implemented soon after Freeland took over as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and this year the progressive government of Nicaragua became a new target of Canadian sanctions. Even where the Liberals promised to normalize relations in 2015 there has been a move towards a more hawkish posture, as in the case of Iran.

Liberal interventionists claim that Freeland is a staunch defender of human rights and that these policies are a demonstration of Canadian leadership globally. However, Freeland has very little to say about the crimes being committed by the Colombian state where social movement leaders are murdered every week, or Brazil where the ultra-right Bolsanaro government threatens the LGBTIQ community and Indigenous peoples. Global Affairs Canada is silent about Honduras where an uprising is underway against a president who stole the 2017 elections.

In late 2017, Freeland sided with the US and Israel in opposing a resolution, backed by 176 countries, in support of Palestinian statehood. In 2018, after the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem and Israeli snipers shot more than 2,000 unarmed people in Gaza, Freeland appeared with Netanyahu to say that “Canada's commitment to Israel's security is unwavering and ironclad.”

The Liberal government also has to answer for its support for Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in a horrendous war in Yemen. The UN has said that the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is “the worst in the world” with an estimated 24 million people in need of assistance and protection, and famine threatening hundreds of thousands. InSeptember, Yemen’s Houthi rebels released footage showing captured Canadian-made light armoured vehicles, indicating clearly that the armoured vehicles exported to Saudi Arabia through Trudeau’s approval of a Harper-era deal are being used in this bloody war. The Liberal government was forced to launch a review of the arms contract after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia in 2018. There has been no update on this review and human rights organizations have written a letter to Trudeau saying that this has brought “the sincerity of the effort into question.”

The hypocrisy of Canadian foreign policy under Freeland and the Trudeau Liberals cannot be explained by a love of human rights or humanitarianism. Their policies can only be explained by Canadian business interests, especially mining and arms deals, and their ever-closer alliance with an increasingly belligerent US government.

The world cannot afford another four years of Chrystia Freeland and neither can Canada. The Trudeau government’s pledge to raise military spending by 73% over the next eight years, prompted by Trump’s request to NATO countries to pay up, will result in deeper austerity and suffering at home and more war abroad. Freeland represents the worst the Liberal Party has in the way of war mongers and she must be defeated as a step towards winning an independent foreign policy of peace and disarmament.

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‘Army of Lovers’ shuts down far-right march in Toronto

Andrew Kesik

LGBTQ activists and allies sent out a strong message against fascism, homophobia and transphobia on September 28. Community members rallied at Toronto's St. James Park in an act of unity and defense against a planned "Christian Positive Space" march through the Church and Wellesley village. Activists gathered on the lawn beside St. James Cathedral before noon and marched down to Wellington Street to block the hate group from marching.

The "Christian Positive Space" group has known ties to white supremacists and fascists, including members of PEGIDA. They planned to march along the entirety of Church Street, which would have taken them directly through the heart of Toronto's LGBTQ community. The group is connected to the June 4 arrest of David Lynn, a street preacher who antagonized residents in the Village just as Pride month had kicked off.

A formidable crowd of a couple hundred stood in the pouring rain and proudly proclaimed their opposition to hate. Activists and allies were needed for an indefinite period of time until the "Christian Positive Space" left. Community members handed out snacks and played music to keep up the camaraderie as the crowd drowned out the hate group with messages of unity and solidarity. A parallel event was held at Barbara Hall Park, where community leaders and city officials spoke.

After over four hours the hate group fell back, and protest marshals led the crowd back up Church Street to a sit-in. The fascists then attempted to march a parallel route on Yonge Street. A smaller contingent of anti-fascists followed along to block the group from moving forward, and an overwhelming number of police officers were deployed as a standoff ensued at Yonge and AdelaideStreets. It was not until around 7 PM that the "Christian Positive Space" group finally dispersed.

The rally was organized by the 519 Community Centre's Army of Lovers and other community activists, who had also led workshops on protest safety and civil rights in the days preceding the event.

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Iran: from sanctions to solidarity

Interview with Mohammad Omidvar, Tudeh Party of Iran

PV: There is a sharp escalation in the aggression against Iran, particularly from the US government of Donald Trump. What are some of the reasons behind this escalation?

Mohammad Omidvar: It is clear that following the decision of the Trump administration in May 2018 – a decision taken despite global appeals, including by the UN – to take the USA out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran, there was a significant increase in the tension in the Middle East as well as in the threat of a devastating new war in the region. Trump’s policy towards the Middle East and the Iran is different from that of Obama. Obama’s administration was working towards implementing their “Great Middle East Plan” and had lukewarm relations with Israel and Saudi Arabia which are well documented.  Trump’s approach to massive arms sales to the Saudi regime and expanding arms trade with the Arab governments of the Persian Gulf (part of the “America First” policy supporting these regimes’ atrocities in Yemen and elsewhere), and its close relation with the Israeli government and the support it provides for the racist and expansionists policies pursued by the Netanyahu government, form some of the key features of the new USA administration.

The imposition of severe economic sanctions by the Trump administration on our country – which most of all hurt the ordinary and already long-suffering people of Iran – and the increased US military presence in the Persian Gulf as well as recent attacks on Aramco Oil installations in Saudi Arabia has created a seriously dangerous situation in our region which could erupt into destructive military conflict. 

Our Central Committee, in a statement in May, emphasized the reality that warmongers on both sides believe that war and military conflict can bring about significant financial and political benefits for them. In the United States, the bankrupt and right-wing government of Trump – currently facing the spectre of possible impeachment – and his advisers, who are preparing for the 2020 presidential election, could contemplate that a limited military engagement with the Iranian regime might have a positive effect in appeasing the sentiment of the nationalist, white-supremacist and ultra-right-wing forces of the United States that make up Trump’s main social base, thus paving the way for his re-election. Also, the regional allies of the Trump administration, including the reactionary and brutal Bin Salman regime in Saudi Arabia, US-backed states in the Persian Gulf and the racist government of Israel, are clamouring for a US military strike against Iran so as to impose their regional domination and hegemony. As has been reported many times, the Saudi government has agreed to cover the cost of such a dangerous military adventure in the region.

What can you tell us about the impact of the sanctions on the Iranian people? How are the people and people's movements responding to this situation?

The economic sanctions have had a devasting impact on the lives of ordinary people in Iran. Shortages of goods, particularly medicine and also raw material and spare parts for many production outlets; the free fall of Iran’s currency against the dollar over the last year (represented by an increase from 3000 tomans to 14,000 tomans against the dollar over this period); and the destructive privatization, and anti-people economic policies of the Iranian regime, have meant that our country is experiencing a very serious crisis. Over the past year we have witnessed widespread industrial actions in the country – in particular, the Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Complex, the National Steel Industry in Ahvaz, and the HEPCO strike demanding overdue wages, better working conditions and returning these industries to public sector ownership.

It is also worth mentioning that, according to US officials, Iran’s oil production and sales have been reduced from 2.8 million barrels a day to just 700 thousand barrels a day in an economy heavily reliant on its oil revenue. 

Several European countries have criticized the US for its actions, such as unilaterally withdrawing from the JCPOA nuclear agreement, but does that mean these countries are opposed to an overall imperialist policy of aggression against Iran?

It is true that the EU countries, who along with Russia and China were the other signatories to the JCPOA, disagreed with Trump’s approach to withdraw from the agreement and expressed this disagreement openly. However, we are very clear that EU countries – especially the UK, France and Germany as imperialist forces – will not have our country or people’s interests at heart and will toe the line dictated by US imperialism. The recent joint statement of the aforementioned three countries accusing Iran of organizing the attack on the Aramco facility in Saudi Arabia, in line with Mike Pompeo’s statement and without providing any proof, is a good example. Our party believes that Iran should exploit any disagreement between the US and EU to further reduce the impact of sanctions and the threat of war. The Iranian regime should not abandon JCPOA but insist and work towards forcing the US to return to the agreement. 

Can you comment on the role that working-class internationalism plays in blocking the drive to war against Iran, as well as in supporting the struggle of the Iranian people within their country?

Our experience tells us that the internationalist support from the working-class movement across the world for the struggle of the Iranian people is very important indeed. The recent statement of more than 70 communist and working-class parties, including the Communist Party of Canada, had a major national and international impact and was widely welcomed by the progressives inside and outside the country.

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Anti-imperialism and solidarity

Jamshid Amadi

The mantra that my enemy’s enemy is my friend can have some mileage and as a starting point in assessing our attitude towards any given regime may not be bad place to begin. However, it is a dangerous principle to apply too rigidly because, in many circumstances, the complexities beneath the surface require a more nuanced response. Very little in international politics is strictly black and white.

This is particularly the case when considering the position of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the attitude that the left should adopt towards the regime.

There can be no doubt that the basis of the 1979 revolution was a progressive one.The Shah’s power base was the British and United States oil corporations who had installed him in power in 1953, in an MI6 and CIA backed coup against the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The administration under Mossadegh had initiated a process of nationalizing the oil industry and had kicked out British contractors.

While the Shah was able to create a relatively prosperous middle class on the back of oil and gas revenues, the lot of Iranian workers was one of low pay, uncertain employment and widespread poverty.

Protests began at least two years before the revolution in February 1979, with workers defying the authorities and taking to the streets. Their demands focused upon an end to the repressive regime of the Shah and calls for a system based upon democracy and social justice.

That the demands of the working class and the left also chimed with those of the clergy ensured that the base of the national democratic revolution, which saw the overthrow of the Shah, was a broad and popular one.

Internally, however, the war with Iraq which began in 1980 was the means by which the clergy consolidated its power inside Iran. Calls to unite the nation against the Iraqi invader went hand in hand with attacks upon the left, which resulted in imprisonment, torture and exile for many.

While the initial demands of the national democratic revolution in 1979, for peace, social justice and democracy were undoubtedly anti-imperialist in character there is nothing to commend the subsequent theocratic takeover of all levers of power by the reactionary clergy.

The record of the regime on human rights, social justice and equality is nothing short of appalling and has been rightly condemned by solidarity organizations around the world. The unjust imprisonment, torture and execution of trade union activists, women and the political opposition continues unabated.

While brute force has been the stock in trade of the theocratic dictatorship of the Islamic Republic the regime has not survived for 40 years without employing a certain amount of guile. It has positioned itself in direct opposition to US allies in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia; supported Syrian President Bashir al-Assad against external Western intervention; and supported Houthi rebels in Yemen, resisting the onslaught of the Western-armed Saudi coalition.

However, while chanting anti-Western slogans, the Islamic Republic remains desperate to attract Western investment to prop up its ailing economy. The nuclear deal signed in 2015 with the US, EU and China was an opportunity to open up the economy for exploitation through the lifting of sanctions. The reneging on that deal by the Trump administration in the US has plunged the Iranian economy into a tailspin.

The task for the left in the West is not to find justifications for supporting the Iranian regime as some kind of anti-imperialist bastion. On the contrary, as in the time of the Shah, it is the Iranian people feeling the brunt of the repressive policies of the regime who need international support and solidarity.

As the situation inside the country becomes more volatile there can be no doubt that the West will seek to impose a solution. It is not beyond the bounds of the West to go the route explored in Syria and look to create a Free Iranian Army as a conduit for cash and weapons.

This would spell disaster for the Iranian people. Having been thwarted in their national democratic desires once already the left should not be complicit in the Iranian people being thwarted again. The future and fate of Iran should be in the hands of its people, without Western political or military interference.

[Edited for length and republished from Morning Star (UK)]

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Urgent: Peace Action Needed

Ed Lehman

Despite efforts by the peace movement the discussion of peace in this election has been quite limited. International affairs are not on the list of topics for all candidates’ debates and are certainly not at the center of discussion on the talk shows. There was more discussion of peace during the 2015 election.

The commercial media has been covering the environmental rallies. However, there has been no coverage of the relationship between the struggle to save the planet from climate catastrophe and the struggle to save the planet from war. There seems to be little recognition that a nuclear war involving either or both the United States of America and Russia would exterminate all life on earth. There also has been very little discussion that the resources needed for a Green New Deal must come from the military budgets – that it is not possible to decarbonize without demilitarizing.

Since 9/11 five hundred thousand people have been killed by the United States in endless wars. Canada was not critical of the war-making of the Obama administration, and is also not critical of the war-making of the Trump administration. Despite the early promises following the 2015 federal election, this government has not been acting for peace. The defence policy review of the Trudeau government gave it the opportunity to change course, to adopt a foreign policy of peace and friendship with people around the globe. However, it did just the opposite, listening to the demands of the military lobbyists who echo the demands of the Pentagon and the White House. The new policy adopted was neither “new” or based on “defence.” It was based on aggressiveness, more war, and “America First” policy. Consequently, Canada’s military budget has been increased considerably, at the same time that the environmental budget was frozen.

September 26 was the International Day for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Most of the world’s nations indicated support for the treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Canada should have done so too.

October 6 - 13 is observed as Keep Space for Peace Week. Andrew Scheer, the Conservative leader, declared on May 7 that as Prime Minister he would have Canada join the US ballistic missile “defence” system. The BMD system is based on the idea that the US and its allies could start and win a nuclear war. By joining the US ballistic missile system Canada would be contributing towards a more dangerous world.

Canada should be acting for peace in the world. Canada should be using its diplomats to contribute to peace-making not war-making.

Canada should stop selling weapons of war.

Canada should withdraw from military missions in Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and Latvia. Canada should stop supporting “regime-change” wars. Canada should respect the sovereignty of all countries, whether the US leadership, or Canadian mining companies, like their policies or not.

Canada should adopt a “Made in Canada” foreign policy that is independent of the US. Canada should withdraw from NATO and NORAD.

Canada should cut its military budget by 75% and use the saved money to make war on poverty, homelessness, racism, and climate change.

Canada should contribute to peace in the world, urgently. As the young people chanted around the world on September 27, “There is no planet B!”

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'Anti-communism will not pass!'

Communists condemn European Parliament’s anti-communist resolution

With files from International Communist Press

On September 19, the European Parliament approved a blatantly ahistorical and provocative resolution entitled "The importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe" and signed by the political groups of the People's Party, Social Democrats, Liberals, Greens and Conservative Reformists. The text attempts to equate communism with fascism and erase the Soviet Union's contribution to the defeat of the latter. The resolution has been denounced and harshly criticized by Communist parties throughout Europe.

The European Communist Initiative denounced the anti-communist resolution and the escalation of anti-communism planned by the EU. The Initiative statement criticized the identification of communism with fascism, which has the effect of exonerating fascists and their actions and undermining the popular struggles. The slander that socialism equates to fascism, according to the statement, is revealed by the fact that fascism is born and bred of capitalism, whose economic basis is the power of monopolies that only socialism overthrows. Against the resolution's argument that the Soviet Union and the Red Army were allies with Nazi Germany, the Initiative stated, “Hitler's allies and collaborators were actually the monopolies that paved the way for him, which today are supported by the EU as well as a series of bourgeois governments in European countries.” The Initiative statement observes that the EU resolution distorts history by naming the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as the cause of the outbreak of World War II. In doing so itignores the fact that the real prelude to war was Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia, which had been permitted by the Munich Pact between Britain, France, Italy and Nazi Germany. The Munich Pact was in existence for a year before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The European Communist Initiative called for a halt to all persecutions of Communists, bans on Communist Parties, and destructions of monuments.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) noted thatthe purpose of the anti-communist resolution was to legalize the ban on communist parties and communist symbols imposed bya number of EU members, including the Baltic states and the Visegrad Group of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.The KKE also referenced the decisive contribution of the Soviet Union to smashing fascism, and the “incalculable sacrifices of the communists who led the heroic resistance movement against the Nazi yoke.” The Greek partycondemned the generalized criminalization and persecution of communist ideology, identifying this as a means to attack progressive forces and weaken their resistance. The KKE concluded, “The European Parliament proves to be a flag-bearer of anti-communism, which is the official ideology of the EU, a forerunner and a necessary complement to the harsh anti-popular policy it imposes together with bourgeois governments in its member states. History has been irrevocably written by the peoples’ struggles, and the apologists for capital and capitalist barbarity will not rewrite it with resolutions.”

Members of the European Parliament from the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) stressed that the anti-communist resolution is also anti-democratic, and they denounced the effort to absolve fascism and criminalize“the communist ideal and project.” According to the PCP press release, the resolution amounts to minimizing and justifying the crimes of Nazi-fascism, while silencing the collusive responsibilities of the great capitalist powers who paved the way to World War II in their hope that the Nazis would defeat socialism in the USSR. The PCP MEPs claimed the resolution erases the role that communists played in the struggle against fascist oppression, as in Portugal, or the role that communists continue to play in advancing democratic rights, and the political, economic, social and cultural rights of workers and peoples. Emphasizing that the EU is in the service of big capital, the PCP noted that the EU itself reinforces militaristic and repressive measures against labour and democratic rights and national sovereignty. In so doing, the EU “encourages the policies that lay at the root of the upsurge of extreme-right and fascistic forces.”

In Cyprus, the Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL) underlined the fact that the EU resolution mentions the various European governments that have criminalized communist ideology and activity, while these same governments are praising Nazi collaborators and leading the way in xenophobia and authoritarianism. The AKEL projects that the ruling powers in Europe are preparing the ground for fascism by reproducing the "theory of the two extremes," as they did 80 years ago. The policies of these ruling powers are generating tens of millions of unemployed, poor and destitute across the continent; in order to weaken resistance, they have decided to uproot from Europe the ideas, actions, history and visions of communists and the Left.

Ástor García, Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain (PCTE), wrote an open letter addressing Pedro Sánchez, leader of the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), who supported the resolution in the European Parliament. García criticized the alleged struggle against “totalitarianism,” noting that it isapretext for criminalizing “the only ideology that has truly put up against the ropes the capitalist dominance.” García accused Sánchez of “spitting on the tombs of the thousands and thousands of communists who gave their life in the struggle against Hitler, Mussolini and their allies, who shed their blood in the partisan struggle, in the Red Army or in concentration camps to eradicate once and for all that killer beast Nazi-fascism.” The Spanish Communist leader warned that Sánchez and others who supported the resolution are promoting a narrative “that benefits the same ones who gave carte blanche to Hitler and Mussolini, to those who created them.”

In France, seven communist organizations issued a common declaration condemning the European Parliament deputies who declare themselves “guarantors of European democracy.” They reminded France’s right-wing politicians of the words Charles De Gaulle pronounced in 1946:“The French know that Soviet Russia played the principal role in their liberation.”The common declaration accused social democratic and liberal ecologist politicians of hypocrisy, saying that they are destroying political pluralism under the cover of “anti-totalitarianism.”The French communists called upon all real democrats in European countries to unite against the continental anticommunist purge. They warned that the resolution is a tool for the EU to implement widespread regressive social policies, and for NATO to justify its military aggression against the people of Russia.

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Clear need for intervention

Editorial

Throughout this election campaign, this newspaper has tried to provide deeper insight into some of the key issues and project some of the radical solutions that are needed to confront them from a working-class perspective.

While there are no easy answers, a few things should be abundantly clear.

First, every one of the issues that has captured public attention over the past several weeks is rooted in capitalism, with its built-in inequality and expansionist drive for profits.

The climate crisis that threatens the entire world has been precipitated by carbon emissions, something world leaders have been aware of for three decades. In 1992 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) called for action to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” But instead of meaningful intervention, governments like Canada’s payed lip service to environmental concerns and facilitated the massive expansion of ecologically disastrous but highly profitable projects like the tar sands. The oil and gas corporations are laughing all the way to the bank.

Military spending has spurred a new arms race, combined with escalating aggression, and has brought the world to brink of regional and global war. Canada’s military budget is scheduled to increase by a whopping 74%, fueling the war danger and fleecing badly needed funds away from health, education, and social and environmental programs. But this militarism and the risks it brings are required by dominant capitalist centres, as they scramble to divide and re-divide the world in a desperate and dangerous rush for profits, markets and resources, at one another’s expense. The people of the world will suffer, but capital will continue to accumulate.

And so, too, with the gender wage gap, the growth of precarious work, the housing crisis, and the privatization of health care. All of these issues emerge from the capitalist drive for profit.

The second thing that is clear is that governments consistently and powerfully intervene in the economy, in order to help capitalism reproduce itself.

In addition to the military budget, the overwhelming bulk of which is directly dedicated to protecting capitalist trade interests, we can see the extent of government intervention in the tar sands. Justin Trudeau’s decision to purchase the Trans Mountain Pipeline for $4.5 billion was based entirely on the needs of private energy corporations. The TMX extension crashed on the rocks of Indigenous sovereign rights, and there was nothing left that the Kinder Morgan corporation could do. The only entity that has the capacity to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land – or, in this case, of any meaningful control over their land – is the Canadian government, and that’s exactly what it did.

In the case of housing, the Liberals’ “National Housing Strategy” amounts to nothing more than $40 billion worth of public funding to guarantee the mortgages of first-time home buyers. It’s a plan to spend billions of public dollars to facilitate exorbitant household debt levels, to line the pockets of the banks and the housing corporations.

The third observation is that none of these crises will be resolved if the working class doesn’t mobilize around its own demands and insist on government intervention to deliver them.

This sounds obvious, but for most people it’s not. How many times have we heard that publicly-owned industries are inefficient? Or that publicly-owned housing is not viable? Or that laws requiring pay and employment are bad for business?It’s an ideological assault that is designed to weaken and disarm the opposition to neoliberalism and austerity.

Working people know the challenges we face, and we know what solutions we need. We have to constantly demand government intervention for our class interests. We need to do it before elections, during elections, and after elections.

And if governments refuse to act, then we need to defeat them.

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The Real Venezuela: Dignified, Indivisible and Truthful

Nino Pagliccia

All those wondering who is in charge in Venezuela, should stop reading the biased and confusing corporate media and should look at who represents the country at the United Nations. The UN is not a perfect institution, but it is one that is clear on the issue of membership despite powerful attempts at obfuscating that clarity.

Much media effort has been put into creating the illusion that the legitimate Venezuela is the one “ruled” by a self-appointed (read, unelected) interim (read, for an undefined term) president who presides with no army, no cabinet, no judicial and no recognized congress. His name is hardly recognized in Venezuela were it not for the unrelenting promotion by his major supporter, the United States government.

As we are still grappling with an old geopolitical world model that has left us with divided regions and countries, North vs. South, East vs. West, and Western vs. the rest, now we can add a new type of division, Real vs. Virtual. The “virtual” illusionary Venezuela defined above has no territory that controls, and its supporters have a programmatic agenda that is only based on negating, ignoring and disregarding the reality that surrounds them in the hope that it will go away.

At the UN General Assembly last September there was no ambiguity. The legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was represented by its Vice President Delcy Rodriguez despite a reported attempt to prevent her from addressing the 74th UNGA. Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Ron, and Venezuela’s Ambassador to the UN Samuel Moncada were also part of the Venezuelan delegation. 

An undetermined group of delegates walked out of the hall as Rodriguez approached the podium to give her speech. The simultaneous action showed a deliberate intent and possibly prior agreement. More importantly, to a keen observer it showed contempt not against the speaker, as suggested, but against the ideal of an institution that is supposed to be a forum for voicing official positions, disagreements, reclamations and ideologies for the whole world to hear, consider and build upon.

Those delegates were free to walk out, and we know that eventually they will end up reading Rodriguez’s speech. However, in the context of the United Nations this was more a statement that they did not accept the spirit of the UN Charter and opted to temporarily exclude themselves from that institution. In doing so, they negated, ignored and disregarded the reality and legitimacy of the United Nations. They superimposed their attitude towards Venezuela on the institution of the UN.

In contrast, Delcy Rodriguez made reference to the UN as the “sacred enclosure for public international law” and recognized the UN as the space for direct communication without the mediation of compromised media. During her speech she invoked several times the UN Charter by affirming that the unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) imposed by the US on several nations are against the Charter. They are indeed. Only “between 2015 and 2019 the US government has imposed more than 350 unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela” including individuals and institutions.

Delcy Rodriguez is a powerful communicator. She has been instrumental in defending Venezuela as the country’s representative at the OAS against the repeated attempts of the organization’s Secretary General to condemn Venezuela for violating the Democratic Charter. Her solid and convincing arguments prevented a majority vote against Venezuela, albeit unwittingly forcing the creation of the “Lima Group” as a splinter group of that body.

Eventually, Venezuela decided to withdraw from the OAS, but the government has consistently defended and abided to the charters of all the international bodies to which it belongs. It has become a trademark of the Venezuelan delegates to flag the organization’s Charter whenever they refer to it. In fact, Rodriguez, flagging the UN Charter booklet in her right hand, made her final point, “Venezuela asks for an investigation over all the infamous violations of the UN Charter by the United States.”

In her speech, Rodriguez effectively addressed the US financial system as the root cause of induced economic crisis in the world: “There is a new kind of terror or state terrorism imposed on people, that does not use bombs but banks and financial institutions that can simply reach for a key on the keyboard in our digital era.It is the [US] Treasury Department, the Economic Pentagon, that militarizes the international relations…to impose regime changes.” She added that between 2015 and 2018 Venezuela has lost $130 billion that could have been used to satisfy the needs of the population through the “Bolivarian socialist model.”

The Venezuelan Vice President addressed all major issues that affect the Bolivarian socialist model, but perhaps she achieved the greatest score in credibility when she convincingly refuted the accusations of Colombian President Ivan Duque that Nicolas Maduro was directly responsible for his “support for criminal and narco-terrorist groups operating in Venezuela to attack Colombia.” To make his point Duque produced photo “evidence” during his speech at the UNGA. The photos were immediately proven to be taken in Colombia instead. The abrupt dismissal of the Colombian intelligence chief who provided the photos fully confirms one of a long history of lies to discredit the Maduro government.

As Rodriguez said, Venezuela is “dignified and indivisible.” We believe that what distinguishes the real Venezuela from its imaginary illusion created by the US are precisely those qualities, in addition to being truthful.

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