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February 7, 2011 - No. 15 .
In
Memoriam
Gerald
Robert
Smith
"Smitty"
September 22, 1936 - January 26,
2011
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In Memoriam
• Gerald Robert
Smith
Egypt
• The Egyptian People Are Fighting for Genuine
Regime Change
• Role of Egyptian Military -
Jamilé Ghaddar
• Egyptian Women Stand Second to None
• Canada-Wide Actions in Support of Egyptian
People
• Concerning the Democracy Movement Erupting in
Egypt and Other Arab Countries - Nathan J. Freeman
• Statement from Protesters at Tahrir Square to
Egyptian People
In Memoriam
Gerald Robert Smith
"Smitty"
- September 22, 1936 - January 26, 2011 -
With a heavy heart, CPC(M-L) informs you that Bob Smith,
"Smitty," passed away on January 26.
Smitty was born in Nova Scotia on September 22, 1936.
Like so many young people of his generation, he left Nova Scotia in
1955 to look for work. He came to Hamilton and at 19 years of age he
started working for Stelco in the Tin Mill where he worked for 37
years. Even though he retired
in 1993, Smitty never retired from looking after the concerns of the
workers and the affairs of his union. In 2003 when his union, USW Local
1005,
started holding Thursday meetings to involve the workers in discussing
how to respond to the demands Stelco was making for concessions, Smitty
was one of the first pensioners
to join. When Stelco filed for bankruptcy protection
under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act on January 29,
2004, Smitty took up the call for "Real Justice, Not Justice Farley."
At the 2004 Labour Day Parade in
Hamilton, he dressed up as Judge Farley to re-enact the fraudulent
court proceedings on a float. He
attended every Thursday meeting without fail and participated in every
court action during Stelco's fraudulent bankruptcy protection. He held
the Local 1005 flags at all the union solidarity actions.
 Talking to Smitty regarding
what he thought was so
important about the stand of Local 1005, without hesitation he said he
supported the stand against secret negotiations and for the independent
politics of the workers. During this period he joined the work of
CPC(M-L), especially the work to assist
the youth to organize for political renewal. He called on his fellow
steelworkers to do so as well. He attended CPC(M-L)'s youth camps on
two occasions, in August 2004 and August 2005, and also went with the
youth to Cuba in 2006 to attend a meeting against attempts to form a
Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Members of CPC(M-L) who were fortunate to work with
Smitty and especially the youth will remember him for his fidelity to
the cause of his fellow workers and his confidence that the youth would
lift this banner and carry it forward.
CPC(M-L) expresses its deepest condolences to Smitty's
family and friends. We express our profound appreciation for the spirit
he represented and his contribution to the Party as a member since 2004.
Egypt
The Egyptian People Are Fighting
for Genuine Regime Change
TML sends its militant greetings to the
heroic Egyptian people, who have stood their ground for 15 days
demanding much needed regime change in their country. Despite violence,
intimidation, arrests and torture, the Egyptian people have refused to
back down from their just demand that the regime of President Hosni
Mubarak in its
entirety step
down. It is a life and death
issue for the Egyptian people that the Egyptian state be made to serve
them and not Anglo-Zionist
imperialism. Will the Egyptian
government continue to be a pawn for foreign interests, including its
infamous role of working hand-in-hand with Israel to maintain the
criminal blockade against Gaza and the humiliation this represents for
the
Egyptian people? Or will it be a state that sides with the just
national movements of the Middle East and world's peoples against
Anglo-Zionist imperialism, one that uses
its material and human resources for the well-being of the people?
A battle for a new Egypt rages behind the calls for Mubarak to resign
and his attempt to placate the people by saying that
all will be solved in the September election. It is a battle between
the people with their aspiration for the
new and the reactionary forces doing everything
possible to maintain Egypt's status as a U.S. client state.
Tahrir Square, Cairo,
Egypt: unprecendented mass demonstrations are taking place across Egypt.From Prime Minister Stephen
Harper to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, the Canadian
government has issued various
statements calling for non-violence, a peaceful transition, order and
even dialogue. The government's purported dedication
to democracy and freedom of expression is endlessly reiterated by the
monopoly media, as
if the Harper government is genuinely interested in the affirmation of
these rights for
the Egyptian people, when they do not even afford Canadians such
possibilities. The U.S. and many European states sing a similar song.
Canadians should not be fooled by such high-sounding statements
whose only aim is to hide the real role being played by Anglo-Zionist
imperialism, with Canada in tow.
Statements by Canada and these countries, with their long history of
supporting the illegitimate Mubarak military regime, which claim
concern for the democratic rights of the Egyptian people are to fool
the gullible. They are but self-serving posturing to
divert from what is really taking place and what the situation demands.
By presenting violence as the issue and calling for
calm, they divert from the violence committed by the Mubarak regime
against the Egyptian people. The government has organized contingents
of so-called pro-Mubarak demonstrators (read "hired thugs") to
attack people. News agencies report that at least 300
people have been killed, with thousands illegally detained and many
tortured, although these are conservative figures given the level of
repression and the difficulty of obtaining accurate information in this
situation. All this is taking place while Canada, the U.S.
and others caution against any violence being committed. Were they
genuinely concerned for peace, they would unequivocally denounce the
violence of the government in its illegitimate
attempts to block the people from exercising their democratic rights,
including their right to dissent, freedom of expression and assembly.
These hypocritical calls for civility and orderly
transition also aim to divert this democratic struggle into a
pro/anti-Mubarak issue. However, Mubarak is not the fundamental issue,
nor is he seen as such by the Egyptian people. It is clear to all
that the people are denouncing the whole regime in Egypt. The Egyptian
democratic movement recognizes that if Mubarak remains in power until
the September election, the status quo will reign. The election will
only give rise to another U.S. client government and their henchman is
already being groomed, namely the newly appointed Vice-President Omar
Suleiman. He is head of the
security services and deeply linked to all the machinations of
Anglo-Zionist imperialists in Egypt. In this manner, the imperialists
hope that while some details may change in the elections, no genuine
change will take place. When they speak of transition they mean
simply that they want the appearance of change,
while in fact the same forces remain in power. This is the same bid
they made in Tunisia, allowing the people to remove Bin Ali but
maintaining the status quo in the government. The same forces in power
under Bin Ali's rule are in control of the government today, hence
the Tunisian people keep fighting for
change.
 Thus the Egyptian people
are
calling for the entire regime to step down and for a transitional
government to be constituted. They have pointed out that the current
government has no right to decide what takes place. Since it is the
target of the people's movement, it has no legitimacy to
decide how the people's democratic aspirations will be realized.
TML salutes the Egyptian people and their
refusal to be cowed or be diverted from their aim. The imperialists
will not give up on Egypt easily. Along with Saudi
Arabia and Jordan, Mubarak's regime in Egypt has been one of its main
stalwarts in the Middle East for the
past 40 years. Yet the Egyptian people are not to
be underestimated. Their proud revolutionary history includes their
historic battles against British colonialism, which led to the
liberation of Egypt and the rise to power of the peoples' hero Abdul
Nasser.
These are the people that led the nationalist movements of
the region and earned their place of honour
amongst the fighting forces of the world. This is the Egypt struggling
to be reborn on a new basis for the 21st century. No diversionary talk
of the imperialists can change the will of the Egyptian people to
realize this new Egypt nor the indomitable striving of the peoples of
the Middle East for independence, democracy
and the affirmation of rights.
Role of Egyptian Military
- Jamilé Ghaddar -
Modern U.S. tanks are
deployed by the Egyptian military against protestors in Cairo.
The revolutionary movement unfolding in Egypt represents
all sectors of the society, including the unions, professionals,
diverse political parties, farmers
and the unemployed, with the youth in the forefront. They stand as one,
united in the struggle for
a new Egypt. Against this united front, the Anglo-Zionist
imperialists and the Egyptian regime and its armed forces are
fighting tooth and nail to divert the movement from realizing its aim.
What role is the Egyptian military playing in these events? Some claim
that its role is unclear while others declare the army as neutral. Some
Anglo-Zionist pundits, especially in the
monopoly media, have even gone so far as to claim that the people are
friendly towards the military: a protestor somewhere is said to have
hugged a soldier, while the head of the military supposedly joined the
protestors during one demonstration.
It must be stated unequivocally that the Egyptian
military is a pawn of the Anglo-Zionist agenda in Egypt and that there
has been an intentional policy of
creating doubt about this simple fact. In the face of the
disinformation about the role of the military, it is important to keep
in mind that the Egyptian military was reconstituted by the U.S. in
1979. Since then, the army has been
financed to the tune of billions of dollars by the U.S. Despite this,
concerted efforts by the U.S. seek to divert attention from this
obvious
direct relationship between the army and
the imperialists. While the police have been executing the regime's
violent,
repressive measures against the people, the military is
posturing as friendly, reasonable, a partner for dialogue, a cautioner
for calm and orderly transition. Why is this?
The strategy is simple: the army stays "neutral" in
these events so that it can be in a good position to intervene at an
opportune time to maintain the status quo. The imperialists have
already realized that Mubarak is finished; he can no longer be the face
of their client state in Egypt. They are trying wholeheartedly
(and failing) to convince the Egyptian people that if Mubarak goes then
they have realized their aim for change. If the army is seen as a
defender of Mubarak, it will be committing political suicide and go the
way of Mubarak himself. Instead, they have opted for a tired old ploy
that is sure to fail: to present the
military as neutral, gain the trust of the people and be seen
as a legitimate player by the international community. Then, once
Mubarak is gone, the entire regime collapses or at some other
opportune moment, the army will take over in the name of the people
while in fact the same imperialist agenda
would reign in Egypt and the people's movement will be blocked.
Their first attempt to pave
the way for the
military to intervene has so far failed. This involved the Egyptian
regime
withdrawing the repressive police from the streets and unleashing
thousands of hired thugs, including former police officers imprisoned
for corruption and crimes against the people. These organized gangs,
dubbed pro-Mubarak protestors by the monopoly media, attacked
demonstrators
in the most vicious and brutal ways. The hope was that the
demonstrators would react with all-out violence and vengefulness,
making it possible to demonize the protestors as violent and
extremist, then voilà,
the military would have an excuse to intervene between
the two violent "sides." Similarly, the Anglo-Zionist imperialist
states would then have some basis to defend whatever the Egyptian
regime and military decided to do in order to stop the alleged
violence. It would also ultimately justify the position of the army,
which has begun cautioning that now is the time for people to go home
or chaos will ensue. The plan so far has failed
due to the acumen of the revolutionary forces. Outside of pure
self-defense, the millions of protestors have not fallen into this
trap. They have refused to take the bait and are maintaining the
restrained, peaceful character of the mass actions.
 The role of the army will
become increasingly obvious
for all to see as the time for Mubarak's inevitable departure nears.
Already, the military is shifting its discourse. For instance, on
February 4, for the first time the Minister of Defense, Mohamed Tantawi
and an army spokesperson addressed the demonstrations
demanding that the people empty the streets because their actions are
destroying Egypt as a country. Certainly, the piper is now playing a
different tune.
The reactionary forces would have us believe that while
the police are bad, the military is good and the hired thugs are
pro-Mubarak Egyptians. They would have us believe that under a military
dictatorship -- i.e., Egypt is ruled by the military due to the State
of Emergency declared by Mubarak 30 years ago
-- it is possible for the military to be neutral. The military, the
police and the government are one entity -- the power arrangement
established by the imperialists so that Egypt is a pawn for their
interests. Overall, this is the play, these are the players, but the
Egyptian people are a factor in the unfolding events that
cannot be underestimated and they are playing for keeps.
Egyptian Women Stand Second to None
Canada-Wide Actions in Support of Egyptian People
Toronto
Vancouver
Concerning the Democracy Movement
Erupting in Egypt and
Other Arab Countries
- Nathan J. Freeman -
Since January 25, a powerful movement for the democratic
renewal of Egyptian society has exploded across that country. The most
determined demonstrations have been taking place on a round-the-clock
basis inside Liberation ("Tahrir") Square in central Cairo. Throughout
the
drama
currently unfolding before the eyes
of the entire world, the United States has been gambling desperately
with the future of the present generation about to enter the ranks of
the working class and middle strata in Egypt. This is seen in the
brazen manner that it has been touting itself as the world's greatest
defender of democracy and modernity.
This posture of the U.S. empire builders is aimed at
blocking people from grasping the truth from the facts unfolding in
front of their eyes. The truth is that the "democracy" to which U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. President Barack Obama and all
their allies are committed stands utterly opposed
to the demands being put forward throughout the country by the forces
of the youth, workers and women waging the struggle for genuine
democracy and nation-building that serves the Egyptian people. Indeed
all the forces of darkest reaction on the world scale -- and, by the
way, with or without Mubarak -- are determined
to exterminate the progressive movement of the Egyptian working class
and people.
 This democracy movement has
shaken the Cairo regime to
the point of compelling President Mubarak to name military intelligence
chief Omar Suleiman as vice-president, and Ahmed Shafiq as prime
minister. As of Thursday February 3, Mubarak continued to reject all
calls to leave. In public addresses to his
countrymen and interviews with U.S. media, he sounded like Louis XVI in
revolutionary France more than two centuries ago declaring
"après moi, le déluge" as he continued to claim that the
country will dissolve in chaos and anarchy the moment he steps down.
Meanwhile, among the concessions and promised
"reforms" announced by the leaders of the "new" team at the helm,
Vice-President Suleiman called for "dialogue" with all the opposition
groups now demanding the departure of Mubarak, and reassured the public
that their sons and daughters coming out in their millions to partake
in the democracy movement would
not be attacked by the state security forces and would enjoy the
protection of the armed forces from any attempts by terrorist gangs to
turn the pro-democracy demonstrations into a bloodbath. At the same
time, without admitting the regime's organizing and paid employment of
these gangs, Prime Minister Shafiq
actually apologized in the government's name for the attacks unleashed
during the night of Wednesday February 2 against the pro-democracy
forces occupying Freedom Square. The unity of the governing oligarchy
meanwhile continued to shake and shatter as various former government
ministers were forbidden
to leave the country and had their financial assets frozen pending
corruption investigations.
Regardless of these cosmetic shifts and changes, it has
proven impossible to conceal the essence of the vice-presidential and
prime-ministerial appointments: the military dictatorship Mubarak has
fashioned is being maintained and extended. Suleiman and Shafiq
themselves come from the top levels of the same
armed forces hierarchy as Mubarak. Through its ranks, Mubarak himself
rose to the pinnacle of Egyptian politics 30 years ago following the
assassination of President Anwar Sadat. While fending off the
democratic movement's insistent demand that Mubarak step down, the
Egyptian oligarchy and the topmost levels
of the armed forces of the regime have been in continuous negotiations
with the U.S. The parties to these discussions include: President
Barack Obama; designated persons from the U.S. armed forces starting
with
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Chief
of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces
(who was cloistered in the Pentagon for almost a week before returning
to
Cairo on January 29); and the current and past U.S. ambassadors to
Egypt, among others.
The public around the world are able to watch the events
in Freedom Square live around the clock on Al Jazeera television and
other networks taking Al Jazeera's signal. Throughout these dramatic
events, the media have been compelled to remind people repeatedly of
the "sensitive" relationship between the Mubarak
regime, the United States government and the State of Israel. Egypt has
had a peace treaty with Tel Aviv since 1979 that has facilitated the
ongoing Israeli occupation and suppression of the Palestinian
territories. As the country in charge of the Suez Canal, through which
8-10 per cent of world shipborne traffic travels,
Egypt extracts $1.5 billion in U.S. "aid" annually -- $1.3 billion of
which is military "aid" second only to U.S. military "aid" to the State
of Israel.
There are a number of features of the Egyptian people's
democracy movement that decisively overturn key stereotypes carefully
crafted over the last couple of decades by the U.S. empire-builders.
Most dramatically, the U.S. and the European Union have been caught on
the one hand hailing the movement for
democracy while on the other hand, with the entire world watching,
working overtime to save the Mubarak-led oligarchy from its inevitable
fate at the hands of its own people. The development of this mass
movement -- which was not anticipated by the Obama regime or any of its
"allies" -- has raised a spectre
in which the most reactionary and fascist-minded forces on the world
scale have been compelled to bare their teeth and openly attack that
movement with all means -- ideological, political, economic and
military -- at their disposal.
Earlier in this decade, during the presidency of George
W. Bush, the U.S. empire-builders became past masters at sponsoring and
engineering "democratic" so-called "coloured revolutions" by
reactionary anti-social criminal elements in parts of the former Soviet
Union like Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania etc.
At the turn of the millennium, the U.S. empire builders were similarly
interfering in the name of "democracy" in the lives and futures of the
peoples of former Yugoslavia. The U.S. empire builders had become
incredibly puffed up about their invincibility, going so far as to
declare the "end of history" as they supported
all the internal forces in eastern Europe and the Gorbachev regime
tearing down -- in the name of "democracy" -- the remains of the Soviet
order then prevailing in those countries.
Various elements have been attempting to characterize
the movement that has been erupting at this time in Egypt, Tunisia,
Yemen, Jordan and Algeria relative to this earlier anti-communist
pro-democracy movement in eastern Europe in 1989-1991. Especially
facile comparisons are being touted in the monopoly
media between the fix in which the Mubarak regime now finds itself and
the disappearance of the East German state following the fall of the
Berlin Wall in November 1989. In this connection, the U.S. leftist
intellectual Noam Chomsky published an op-ed piece at the Truthout
website on February 2, whose title
copies Al Jazeera's headline that "the Arab world is on fire." The most
remarkable feature of this lengthy piece is the manner in which Prof.
Chomsky manages to notice all kinds of superficial similarities and
differences without ever noticing that the very "democracy" that was
the cri-de coeur of the
empire-builders in 1989-91 is what they are now doing everything to
pervert and subvert in the Middle East during 2011. Indeed: precisely
what has the empire builders and their left-sloganeers now shaking in
their boots is the evident fact that the peoples of Egypt and the other
regions in ferment at this moment
across the Arab world are grasping the wheel of history in their own
hands and are turning it against the will of the empire-builders.
Should we be surprised?
Twenty years ago, Comrade Hardial Bains, founder and
leader of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), pointed out
in his work Communism 1989-1991 that: "The battle lines drawn
in 1917 [at the time of the Great October Socialist Revolution in
Russia] remain the same, but the forms
in which the battles are fought will be different. The consequences of
this change have already been seen in 1989-91, when the slogans put
forward by the various forces did not quite match their character. The
right wing called for democracy, its sworn enemy. The working people
called for the rule of the new forces,
which could only go against their own interests. Soon the real
character of all the forces will reveal itself. While it is true that
no force can act in the old way, it is also true that no force can hide
its true character." (pp. 41-42)
The President's Promises and the Bloody Events of
Wednesday, February 2
- Statement from the Protesters at
Cairo's Tahrir Square
to the Egyptian People, February 3, 2011 -
 We the protesters who have
currently been in a sit-in at
Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo since January 25, 2011, strongly
condemn the brutal attack carried out by the governing National
Democratic Party's (NDP) mercenaries at our location on Wednesday,
February 2, under the guise of a "rally" in support
of President Mubarak. This attack has continued on Thursday, February
3. We regret that some young people have joined these thugs and
criminals, whom the NDP is accustomed to hiring during elections, to
march them off after spreading several falsehoods circulated by the
regime's media about us and our goals.
These goals that aim at changing the political system into one that
guarantees freedom, dignity and social justice to all citizens are also
the goals of the youth. Therefore we want to clarify the following.
Firstly, we are a group of young Muslim and Christian
Egyptians; the overwhelming majority of us does not belong to political
parties and have no previous political activism. Our movement involves
the elderly and children, peasants, workers, professionals, students
and pensioners. Our movement cannot be
classified as "paid for" or "directed by" a limited few because it has
attracted millions who responded to its call of removing the regime.
People joined us last Tuesday in Cairo and other governorates in a
scene that witnessed not one case of violence, assault on property or
harassment of anyone.
Secondly, our movement is accused of being funded from
abroad, supported by the United States, as being instigated by Hamas,
as under the leadership of the president of the National Assembly for
change (Mohamed El-Baradei) and, last but not least, as directed by the
Muslim Brotherhood. Many accusations
like these prove to be false. The protesters are all Egyptians who have
clear and specific national objectives. The protesters have no weapons
or foreign equipment as claimed by instigators. The broad positive
response of the people to our movement's goals reveals that these are
the goals of the Egyptian masses in
general, not any internal or external faction or entity.
Thirdly, the regime and its paid media falsely blame us,
young demonstrators, for the tension and instability in the streets of
Egypt in recent days and therefore damaging our nation's interests and
security. Our answer to them is: It is not the peaceful protesters who
released the criminal offenders from prison
onto the unguarded streets to practise looting and plundering. It is
not the peaceful protesters who have imposed a curfew starting at 3.00
pm. It is not the peaceful protesters who have stopped the work in
banks, bakeries and gas stations. When the protesters organised the
one-million demonstration it came up in
the most magnificent and organised form and ended peacefully. It is not
the protesters who killed 300 people, some with live ammunition, and
wounding more than 2,000 people in the last few days.
Fourthly, President Mubarak came out on Tuesday
to announce that he will not stand in the upcoming
presidential election and that he will modify two articles in the
Constitution, and engage in dialogue with the opposition. However, the
State media has attacked us when we refused his "concession"
and decided to go on with our movement. Our demand that Mubarak steps
down immediately is not a personal matter, but we have clear reasons
for it which include:
1. His promise not to run again is not new. He promised
when he came to power in 1981 that he would not run for more than two
legislatures but he continued for more than 30 years.
2. His speech did not [present any guarantee] for not
nominating his son "Gamal," who remains until now a member of the
ruling party, and can stand for election that will not be under
judicial supervision since he ignored any reference to the amendment of
Article 88 of the Constitution.
3. He also considered our movement a "plot directed by a
force" that works against the interests of the nation as if responding
to the demands of the public is a "shame" or "humiliation."
4. As regards to his promise of conducting a dialogue
with the opposition, we know how many times over the past years the
regime claimed this and ended up with enforcing the narrow interests of
the Mubarak State and the few people who control it.
And the events of Wednesday proved our stand is
vindicated. While the President was giving his promises, the leaders of
his regime were organising (along with paid thugs and wanted criminals
equipped with swords, knives and Molotov cocktails) a brutal plot to
attack us in Tahrir Square. Those thugs and criminals
were accompanied by NDP members who fired machine guns on unarmed
protesters who were trapped on the square, killing at least seven and
wounding hundreds of us critically. This was done in order to end our
peaceful national popular movement and preserve the status quo.
Our movement is Egyptian -- Our movement is legitimate
-- Our movement is continuing.
The Youth of the Tahrir Square Sit-In
February 3, 2011
11:30 am
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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