Topic
In Iran, Afghanistan, Gaza, repressed unionists deserve Canadian solidarity.
Iranian leader Ahmadinejad: no friend to workers.
Today is May Day, the holiday most of the world marks as international workers' day. North Americans call it Labour Day and celebrate it on the first Monday in September, usually without much of a thought about its meaning, but it's the same holiday.
Long tarnished by Stalinist appropriation and armoured parades in Moscow and Beijing, and lately fashionable with earnestly dyspeptic anti-globalization protesters, May Day is nonetheless a traditional, official workers' holiday in such noticeably non-totalitarian countries as India, Sweden, Brazil and New Zealand. In Los Angeles last year, the Chamber of Commerce joined May Day marchers in the common cause of immigration reform.
May Day was first intended to commemorate a bloody labour war in Chicago in May 1886, but Labour Day actually began in Canada. It came out of an historic printers' strike in Toronto, in 1872. There's a circuitous history involved in all this, but May Day and Labour Day arose from the same uncomplicated basis of working-class unity. A fair day's pay for an honest day's work. What we want for ourselves we demand for all. Any saboteur of this common purpose is a scab.
This is raw, unambiguous and unsophisticated language, but its moral clarity is the basis of progressive internationalism. It is universal in purpose and global in ambition, and it is the bedrock beneath the fight for free trade unions, the eight-hour day, safe working conditions and proper labour law. This isn't just the dusty antiquarian stuff of maudlin labour ballads. These are still life-and-death struggles in much of the world today.
In search of solidarity
If this means nothing to you, it could be that you're just too busy enjoying the fruits of victories won by people who fought these battles for you a long time ago. But if you thought that it's still the old bedrock principles of international workers' solidarity that rally the Canadian labour movement to the cause of, say, Palestinian, Israeli, Iranian or Afghan workers, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Dig as deep as you want, you'll be lucky to find much of it.
Nowadays, Canada's union officials are just as likely to be engaged in highbrow apologetics for the worst enemies of the world's bravest workers. It's commonplace now to happen upon union officials at rallies where everyone's shouting slogans that give courage and comfort to despotic regimes that distinguish themselves by busting unions, jailing union organizers and lynching strikers.
It should come as no surprise that in North America, May Day is now more commonly known as the distress call that goes out from the bridge of a sinking ship. Several recent events have brought this sad irony into rather sharp focus for me.
Just the other day, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and several other worldwide labour federations issued an alert to unions around the world, warning that the approach of May Day in Iran meant the country's trade unionists were facing especially grave peril. After last year's May Day protests, scores of Iranian union leaders were fired from their jobs, sentenced to lengthy jail terms and publicly flogged. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's police thugs have begun yet another wave of arrests in recent weeks.
You'd think that Canadian trade unionists would have been at the vanguard of a massive response to ITUC's appeal. After all, the historic 1872 Toronto printers' strike was waged against laws that banned free trade unions, and these are precisely the kinds of laws the Tehran regime is using right now to persecute trade unionists in that country. These are laws that even the Tory Prime Minister John A. Macdonald called "barbarous" when he agreed to the Toronto strikers' demands for their full repeal.
I can't say I've noticed any great throngs of CLC-affiliated union members massing down Granville Street in Vancouver or Danforth Avenue in Toronto to show the world they stand in solidarity with their Iranian brothers and sisters.
Ahmadinejad and his 'press'
The ITUC appeal came just a couple of days after I'd had a rather nasty personal encounter with Zahra Jamal, a Vancouver journalist who works for Tehran's government-run Press TV. I'd refused to consent to an interview, recalling the brave Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi who was beaten to death by government thugs after taking photographs of a student protest in Tehran in 2003.
Press TV is a holocaust-denial broadcasting service. It's as slick as the CBC. After I expressed the view that Press TV's bosses should rot in hell for eternity, Jamal threatened to report my sauciness to the faculty where I'm engaged as an adjunct at the University of British Columbia. This is just funny.
What is not so funny is that Press TV is the direct function of a Khomeinist crackdown that involved the firing of hundreds of Iranian journalists and the shuttering of dozens of Iranian newspapers and magazines. Last year, the Association of Iranian Journalists was arbitrarily dissolved by Ahmadinejad's officials. By any proper standard, Press TV is a nasty little racket and a masquerade, and its journalists are scabs.
You'd think Canadian trade unionists would have been proud that Canada was the first country to announce its decision to boycott the obscene "Durban II" process that recently concluded in Geneva. But this principled position actually made the Canadian Labour Congress positively angry.
To nobody's great surprise, President Ahmadinejad's star-attraction speech in Geneva ended up being what French president Nicolas Sarkozy later called "an intolerable appeal for racist hatred." The speech was in fact just more of Ahmadinejad's usual anti-semitic rubbish. Eight countries were already boycotting the event, but the speech was enough to prompt delegates from another 24 countries to walk out.
The response of the 11-member Canadian Labour Congress delegation in Geneva was to agree that anti-semitism is bad, and then denounce Ahmadinejad's detractors and dismiss their anti-semitism complaints as mere alarums and a "pretext" for avoiding the things the CLC wanted to talk about. It was all just a concoction dreamed up by "a cynical alliance among Western nations to avoid addressing the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the human rights of Palestinian people, and the expropriation of the land and resources of indigenous peoples across the world."
A plea for international support
It would be unfair and wrong to leave the impression that such dizziness and the charade of "anti-war" activism are all that remain in Canada of the grand traditions of progressive internationalism.
Last year, the CLC' s Mehdi Kouhestaninejad tried with all his might to roust some solidarity for our Iranian brothers and sisters, among whom he says the big debate is about why "leftists outside Iran, is staying by the Iranian government by their actions." There were a few protest letters from Canadian unions, and there was a dismal little protest at Queen's Park, but at least Kouhestaninejad tried.
While CLC president Ken Georgetti flinches and sneers at Canada's efforts in Afghanistan and ennobles the counter-revolutionary thugs who plague that country as the "Afghan resistance movement," he's not exactly a representative sampling of what's happening out there. The group Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan has raised millions of dollars across Canada to pay decent wages for Afghan schoolteachers. There's nothing particularly complicated about the idea. What we want for ourselves, we demand for all.
CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan is well known for his notion that the way to peace in the Middle East is to single out Israeli scholars at Canadian universities and kick them off campus unless they sign some sort of loyalty oath. Less known is that thousands of CUPE members have risen in protest against Ryan's posturing, and three CUPE locals have disaffiliated from the union over it.
Even more heartening is the emerging rank-and-file response in Canada to a "new global movement" established by senior Australian, British and American labour leaders. Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine was recently established to "challenge the apologists for Hamas and Hizbollah in the labour movement." The aim is to help strengthen the horribly strained relationship between the Israeli Labour Federation (Histadrut) and the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU).
One Voice needs more voices
This will require much harder work than making union-hall speeches that deliberately employ such words as ovens, blitzkrieg, holocaust and genocide in order to slag off Israel. It will mean actually doing real work. It will also mean having the courage to notice that while it may be popular in union circles to call Hamas the "legitimate government" in Gaza, the work of Palestinian union organizers has been made rather difficult since the Hamas takeover. The PGTFU has had its offices seized. Its general secretary has barely survived three attempts on his life. The federation's deputy general secretary has had rockets fired into his home and bombs detonated under his union offices.
There is also a very real "anti-war" movement among Palestinians and Israelis that is desperate for support among rank-and-file Canadians. It's called One Voice, and its activists are pledged to peaceful negotiations and a Palestinian state flourishing alongside Israel. More than 332,000 Israelis and more than 296,000 Palestinians have signed up for this work. A recent One Voice public opinion poll shows that an overwhelming majority of both Israelis and Palestinians want exactly the same thing as One Voice does.
What all these inscrutable, fractious and perfectly ordinary people want, in places like Iran, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, is no more or less than what we all want. It's a fair day's pay for an honest day's work, the rule of proper laws, and some peace and quiet. Any saboteur of this common purpose is a scab.
What we want for ourselves we should demand for all.
Related Tyee stories:
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Tieleman
4 years ago
Glavin avoids Karzai problems again
My friend Terry Glavin makes some good points - and then avoids some obvious ones when dealing with Afghanistan.
I encourage all Tyee readers to click the link in Terry's piece where he denounces the Canadian Labour Congress and my friend Ken Georgetti for allegedly "ennobling counter revolutionary thugs" as the "Afghan resistance movement".
Terry neglects to mention that Georgetti is quoting Afghanistan's brave woman legislator Malalai Joya or that he is not referring to the Taliban or that Georgetti's complaints are about the warlords, druglords and other criminals in the current Hamid Karzai government.
That would be the same Karzai government Canada and other western nations are supporting that recently wanted to apply Sharia law to the Shiite community - including the legalize rape of wives by husbands - law which Barack Obama said was "abhorrent."
Only international condemnation forced the "review" of the law.
And this comes from our ally, the guy we are keeping in power with billions of military might and the lives of Canadian soldiers.
But it's easier to pontificate than to admit there's a big problem with our mission in Afghanistan.
Terry's call to defend trade unionists everywhere is welcome and appropriate - in that I can completely agree.
Bill Tieleman
http://billtieleman.blogspot.com/
reader
4 years ago
May Day
Very good piece. I'm glad Glavin is here to remind us that conventional wisdom, even leftist conventional wisdom, is open to challenge. I wish he'd write more often for The Tyee, which occasionally comes off sounding a bit predictable. Glavin consistently provides us with a hint of a debate that should be but for the most part is not taking place among progressives.
SP
eugene68
4 years ago
May Day coverage
Is this semi coherent diatribe really a good way to honour May Day? Surely there are some demonstrations or labour celebrations going on today which could have been highlighted, rather than giving space to this anti anti-war rant. Also, hasn't Glavin basically written this same article half a dozen times in the past couple of years?
IranianDude
4 years ago
Pro Israel propaganda disguised as labour day rant
Galvin cannot possibly resist not brining up his love for the apartheid state of Israel in every "article" he writes.
Seriously, could there be a more incoherent take on workers struggles than this one?
eugene68
4 years ago
also noteworthy
...That the pro-war argument for Afghanistan has to ignore voices of Afghan women like Malalai Joya. At least he provided the link, so we could read that excellent statement from the CLC and Georgetti.
dorothy
4 years ago
Let there be light
‘..the big debate is about why "leftists outside Iran, is staying by the Iranian government by their actions." ‘
I can solve the hotly debated problem: We are seeing an application of the somewhat simplistic and frequently downright disastrous thinking that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
How so? Well, Ahmadinejad slams western decadent establishment. Western decadent establishment is enemy no.1 for the leftists, ergo Ahmadinejad is a friend. Of course, it becomes downright comical when one notes the fact that Canadian organised labour includes among it ranks not a few people we could count as full-fledged yuppies – in other words, edging dangerously close to being members of western decadent establishment! In fact, in union halls, we are seeing a deal of self-loathing or each-other-loathing if you will, austere asssertions that we really have no right to tread this Earth, live the way we do, be who we are, an endless lineup of mea culpas; if one doesn’t join in, somewhere in the background can be heard rattling of chains and a faint screeching of the hinges of the iron maiden…
It is clear the only worthy people are hungry and miserable and live elsewhere. I will quote my countryman Soren Kierkegaard: Every man must thereby think according to his capability…
So you see, it has nothing to do with standing by anyone here. That is not half as much fun as taking somebody down. One, as brother Glavin says, requires real work, the other one just mob mentality.
And could we please dispense with the stupid claim of ‘legalized rape’? The law lays an obligation on the women to put out every four days. Too bad the guys need the law to establish that. Is there any other kind of marriage? Maybe they both need counselling more than anything!
worried
4 years ago
Terry Glavin
As usual, Terry Glavin skews any criticism against Isreal as unfair and borderline rabid and crazy. Please read Commondreams.org for far better coverage on why Isreal is being accused of war crimes--they used white phosphorus and cluster bombs on civilian populations and targeted hospitals and schools. They currently will not allow in cement so that Palestinians can rebuild their homes. In Canada, the Jewish Defense League kept out a peace activist member of the British parliament by calling him a security risk for bringing ambulances, food and medical supplies to Gaza. Coop Radio also has many interviews with people who are very knowledgeable about what is really going on for Palestinians under Isreali Occupation.
peasant43
4 years ago
Holy Crap
Maybe we should heed the distress of Unionists here, if there are any left, before we worry about saving the world.
asher
4 years ago
National Endowment for Democracy
I would honestly like to know if Terry Glavin is working on a National Endowment for Democracy project.
Jeffrey J.
4 years ago
Glavin's Bias Obvious
You have to give Mr. Glavin credit for one thing: all his articles lead to the same issue, the fear of world Moslem domination. And because I so much enjoyed his earlier work (The Last Great Sea), I have a certain fondness for his contribution to critical thinking. Having said that....Mr. Glavin's fears are simply ill-founded, and appear to be based more on a personal animus than on the facts.
Conflating labour day and the importance of socialism with the civil strife facing Moslem countries is a non sequitur. There is almost no historical relationship between the two and his effort to connect them in this essay is really reaching.
The real issue he wants to discuss is this: to what degree do impoverished Moslem countries and their attendant authoritarian rulers pose a threat? To answer this, one must compare their size and influence to other countries, like the US with its 735 military bases world wide. Or with US backed 'client states' like Israel, Saudi Arabia, (Canada?), Pakistan and Indonesia. All of these regimes have been involved in far worse behavior as regards civil rights, anit-unionization, bombing and killing people, invading other countries and list goes on and on.
Yes, impoverished Moslem countries are authoritarian and undemocratic, a reading of the excellent Al Jazeera by Hugh Miles explain exactly how bad those regimes are. But the real question remains: how did they get that way; who deposed their democratically elected parties; who is making things worse. And unfortunately, all of those roads lead back to the US and its brute foreign policy and its client states. Sadly. One day I hope this dynamic will change.
dorothy
4 years ago
Hmm, excusez, but
It seems to me that the 'connecting' is not done by Mr. Glavin, but by Monsieur Ahmadinjad. If there is no connection, why does he and his regime bother to harry labor leaders? Or, are you going to tell me that somehow this is not the Islamic drawer pulled out, but some other political compartment in action? Then I would suggest you have not understood how Theocracy works: There is no separation between Sex, Religion and Politics, it is all the same ball of wax. In Western democracies we call that kind of mix-up unsavory and a whole lot of other ugly names. Even a devout Roman Catholic like Paul Martin knew Canada for a 'secular state', when the chips were down.
As for 'how they got that way', the answer is they always were. Democratic tradition in those communities have always been a congregation of warlords, an Althing if you will. The Loya Jirga certainly fits that definition. Democracy, as in ancient Iceland, never included the thralls, those not in charge of their own lives, and the landless. There may have been places where an overlay of western-style setup was briefly in place, but grafted on as it were, it never took hold. Democracy grows out of the home soil, or it wilts. Canadais an interesting hybrid in that sense; We have not foguht for our freedom and eqiality on our own soil, but it seems we have done so in other quarters, at least for the principles. In my younger days, this was know as 'neo-colonianism', and in a sense it is. That doen's necessarily mean it is wrong, and that the colonized cannot benefit. But we have to watch whom the grail serves.
The 'connection', by the way is easy: Labor leaders are commies, and commies are Jews, or at least the original ones were, and Ahamdinejad hates Jews, ergo he must hate labor leaders. Why labor in this country and the West in general do not show solidarity I have accounted for in the above.
eugene68
4 years ago
In other words...
The problem is that Terry Glavin appears to be increasingly motivated by Islamophobia.
For someone who writes in the CanWest papers article that attack anyone who is critical of Israel or the war, Glavin should be careful who he is calling a scab. Will Zahra Jamal and Press TV have a chance to give their side of the story?
dorothy
4 years ago
And so here we are...
Islamophobia.
There is that word.
Fear of Islam, or of its adherents. Is there any reason for such fear?
Let’s see. I have my religion, the one my ancestors followed. I am Ok with it; it works for me. Your religion, whatever it is, supposedly works for you. As long as your practice of your religion does not infringe on my rights and freedoms, I am OK with your choice. If there are elements in your religious practice, which go against my preferences and ethics and ‘taste’, I will simply look the other way, for your choice is your choice.
But wait. Now you are looking at what I do with my religion. You are deciding that ACCORDING TO YOUR RULES, My religion is some kind of heresy, or wrongful, or ‘sin’. Not only are you criticising me out loud and even calling me names, not just for my religion, but for many customs my ancestors have been following since forever, and which I, too, am following. You are also taking action. Persecuting me, sometimes on my own ancestral turf, where you are a guest or newcomer, who has now turned into an intruder and aggressor. If you are strong enough, you will take over, by fair means or foul, and rewrite the rules so I can no longer freely follow my religion, but will have the choice of either converting to yours, or lead a precarious existence, taxed extra, having lost privileges of equality, constantly under the gun – your gun, as you are believing yourself superior and the sole owner of the sole truth. If you can do this to me, you will. History has seen you do it, and you openly declare this intent today as well, whenever and wherever you think yourself in a position of strength.
Islamophobia???
IranianDude
4 years ago
Defending genoide in Israel yet worrying about workers?
Come now!
Anyone who defends genocidal regime of Israel should be mocked, looked down and ignored on principle.
Glavin is irrelevant.
IranianDude
4 years ago
The good news is that
CanWest in going down the drain and Glavin types will have a hard time finding avenues to defend the ONLY APARTHEID STATE ON THE PLANET.
CanWest slow demise is giving me orgrasmic Schadenfreude!
dorothy
4 years ago
Eh??
"..genocidal regime of Israel.."
- If there is such a thing, I haven't heard anyone defending it here, and so it does not belong in this discussion!
"..orgrasmic Schadenfreude!"
This kind I have never heard of, and being a dedicated student of all kinds of schadenfreude for many yaears, I would sure like to include this one in my knowledge base! Would you oblige me?
biscotti
4 years ago
Name calling or arguments & facts?
Dorothy, according to Wikipedia, "Schadenfreude" means "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others," but in this case, applying the German expression to a Jewish owned media chain and adding "orgasmic" gives it another spin. Sheesh.
So IranianDude, are you saying people shouldn't support groups like One Voice? Are you saying the repression of workers in Iran is ok, because you hate Terry Glavin's point of view about Israel?
You say he is "incoherent" and "irrelevant", but you haven't refuted anything he has said about supporting Iranian workers' rights.
IranianDude
4 years ago
Biscotin what I am saying
is that I get extreme pleasure to see CanWest, the mouthpiece for genocidal regime of Israel, going out of business that they shouldn't have been in the first place which means these folks won't have avenues to defend a terrorist country that kills in excess of 1600 innocent people in less than two weeks.
Iranian worker rights? Glavin couldn't care less about Iran's worker rights! he's only interested in defending Israel's terrorist actions.
dorothy
4 years ago
Here is the line in the sand, brother!
"..Iranian worker rights? Glavin couldn't care less about Iran's worker rights! he's only interested in defending Israel's terrorist actions."
This, my friend, is outright libel, if you cannot substantiate it. I expect you to either do so, or else withdraw it.
IranianDude
4 years ago
Dorothy
Thanks Dorothy.
Rereading what I wrote I realized I wrote unfairly. Obviously Galvin wouldn't write about workers if he was not interested in it. So apologies to all ...
It's just that we're losing the game against Chicago!!!!
Back to the game ...
biscotti
4 years ago
Pleasure from pain?
Iraniandude, I don't read Canwest papers, and I don't defend their lousy news coverage, but why derive pleasure from anyone's misfortunes? What about the workers in Canwest plants that might lose their jobs?
How will we ever heal this world if we focus on "Schadenfreude" and personal hatreds instead of *systems* of oppression?
btw you still haven't said anything to refute what Terry Glavin is saying about the situation for Iranian workers. It gives the impression you support the regime's actions or just don't care. Want to explain your position?
dorothy
4 years ago
So true
"..It's just that we're losing the game against Chicago!!!!"
Yeah, although technically in ain't over till it's over, it does look like today is going to suck for a true Canuck!
Frith, Brother!
IranianDude
4 years ago
6-3!
Sad but true.
spartikus
4 years ago
I'd like to call attention...
...to this condemnation of the kidnapping of Iranian trade unionist Mansour Osanloo on the CLC website.
It seems the CLC and Ken Georgetti are, in fact, concerned about the plight of workers in Iran.
dorothy
4 years ago
Thanks for the reference
Good on Mr. Georgetti! He is obviously still one of the better heads in labor leader ranks.
biscotti
4 years ago
taking action
Odd that the Mansour Osanloo is not listed in current CLC campaigns (http://canadianlabour.ca/en/campaigns).
Couldn't find any campaign links on the CLC site for rank and filers to follow up on, but posted on Terry Glavin's blog are Amnesty International's pages http://tinyurl.com/cuqcep and http://tinyurl.com/cqzvxg if anyone wants to write the authorities.
straightshooter
4 years ago
Terry Glavin
Hi Terry
You're an intelligent guy and a pretty good writer. Given the vast amount of documented historical analysis by internatially respected scholars and easily accessible coverage of events on the ground, it is utterly beyond me how you can continue to be an apologist for Israel. I respectfully suggest that you do some serious research on the subject. As the Canadian Jewish Congress was shocked to learn through a nationwide survey two years ago, the more Canadians learn about the Israel/Palestinian conflict, the more pro-Palestinian they become.
It's a new world Terry - the truth can no longer be suppressed.
Arbor
4 years ago
Terry Glavin
So good for a change to read a sensible account of a small portion of the problems in the Middle East without Israel being blamed for all these problems....I do not understand why so many, seemingly educated commentators, seem so unwilling to blame the Palestinians and their brother Arabs for even a portion of the problems.....the Israelis have made many efforts to achieve peace, it seems that it's neighbours cannot agree amongst themselves on any issue...doesn't that say something? Why do not those critical of Israel go to some of these neighbouring countries and try to raise the issue of free speech, of labour unions, of woman's rights, and, see what will happen. I'm still waiting for word of Ms. Geisbrecht (sp.?) who went to 'help' those in Afghanistan...what have they done with her?
straightshooter
4 years ago
Reply to Arbor
Arbor
A quick reality check: As repeatedly declared by the UN Security Council, the US State Department as well as the International Court of Justice in its 2004 ruling, the Palestinians are the occupied, Israel is the occupier; the Palestinians are the dispossessed, Israel is the ethnic-cleanser; the Palestinians are the oppressed, Israel is the oppressor. As I said to Glavin in a previous post, it's a new world. You and your ilk who blame the victims can no longer get away with it. Apart from having no case in law, history or morality, you are also complicit in the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinians that are meticulously documented by recognized international human rights groups, including Israel's B'Tselem.
Yammer
4 years ago
Can't bomb people into human rights
That was the lesson of the last war, I think.
Solidarity through workers *is* actually an excellent vehicle to hasten necessary regime changes in the theofascist parts of the world. Anything short of occupying them by force.
As for the criticism of Israel vs the criticism for Iran: come on. You know why Israel seems to be held to a higher standard? Because it is. We expect more. We expect very little from the theofascists. We should expect nothing from them. They are terrible regimes and we should help them fall.
From the outside.