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Issue #9 of Upping the Anti is being launched in Toronto at the
Concord Cafe, 937 Bloor St. West (at Bloor and Ossington) on Thursday Nov 19th, 2009.

If you would like to receive a hard copy of the journal or to distribute the journal in your community or through organizations that you are involved with, please email uppingtheanti@gmail.com so that we can add you to our list of local distributors. We are selling single copies for $10 including postage. If you want 5 or more copies for distribution, the journal is $5 per copy, and we'll cover the postage. Journal articles and PDF files will be uploaded to the website in a staggered process over the next few months.

Our mailing address where you can send your $10 in well concealed envelope for a copy of the journal is: Upping the Anti, 998 Bloor St. West, P.O. Box 10571, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6H 4H9. You can also pay via PayPal or credit card. If you live in the US or elsewhere, please order our journal through AK Press as it costs us too much to mail it to you from Canada. Please continue reading this post for the full table of contents of this issue and the introduction to this issue.

Racism and the Censorship of "Gay Imperialism"
by Aren Aizura, from MR Zine, October 23, 2009.

Dear friends,

Over the last few years a number of timely publications have illuminated the connections between gender and sexuality, the War on Terror and racialisation. One of these is Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality, edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake and published by Raw Nerve Books in 2008. An edited collection examining intersections between race and sexuality in the United Kingdom, Out of Place joins Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages as a key contribution to this debate. Alongside other contributions in Out of Place, the chapter "Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the War on Terror", by Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem pointed to the continuing deployment of queerness as a symbol of "freedom" to rationalise the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and future wars in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to rationalise restrictive and racist immigration policies in "Western" or "liberal" nations. "Gay Imperialism" uses the work of activist Peter Tatchell, founder of Outrage!, as an example of how white gay activists can become complicit with this agenda by painting Islam as inherently homophobic and misogynist, and appointing themselves as the saviours of non-white queers.

Please Endorse This Statement

Justice and Freedom for John Moore is a committee supporting an innocent indigenous man's struggle for justice and freedom in Canada. We are asking organizations and prominent individuals from across Canada to endorse this statement supporting John's demand for a review of his unjust second degree murder conviction:

Really Harper, Canada has no history of colonialism?
by Harsha Walia, from The Vancouver Sun, September 28, 2009.

"We also have no history of colonialism..." – Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

On the heels of a massive exercise of U.S. police repression against G8 protestors, including use of a wartime sonic acoustic weapon also being utilized in Iraq, Stephen Harper made the above declaration during a press conference in Pittsburgh where it was announced that Canada would be hosting the next G20 meeting in 2010.

Perhaps Harper and I are not on the same page – is colonialism not defined as the practice and processes of domination, control, and forced subjugation of one people to another? As most bluntly stated by Duncan Campbell Scott, Head of the Department of Indian Affairs in the 1920’s: “Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question.”

Hamas is not al-Qaida
by Anas Altikriti, from The Guardian, September 21, 2009. (Link from HW.)

The New Statesman's interview with Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, was one of the most significant interviews with the leading figure in a movement that has been demonised and excommunicated by most of the western world and its media. The fact that Meshal realises that his words will be scrutinised by his allies and supporters as closely as his adversaries confirms that he speaks of the official position of Hamas on a number of crucial issues which the pro-Israel propaganda apparatus has managed to manipulate for so long.

An Open Letter to the Toronto International Film Festival:

September 2, 2009

As members of the Canadian and international film, culture and media arts communities, we are deeply disturbed by the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to host a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv. We protest that TIFF, whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine.

In 2008, the Israeli government and Canadian partners Sidney Greenberg of Astral Media, David Asper of Canwest Global Communications and Joel Reitman of MIJO Corporation launched “Brand Israel,” a million dollar media and advertising campaign aimed at changing Canadian perceptions of Israel. Brand Israel would take the focus off Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and its aggressive wars, and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture. An article in Canadian Jewish News quotes Israeli consul general Amir Gissin as saying that Toronto would be the test city for a promotion that could then be deployed around the world. According to Gissin, the culmination of the campaign would be a major Israeli presence at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. (Andy Levy-Alzenkopf, “Brand Israel set to launch in GTA,” Canadian Jewish News, August 28, 2008.)

Residents claim eviction is Olympics-related
from CBC News, September 4, 2009.

Residents of a vermin-infested hotel in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside say their landlord is trying to evict them to make room for Olympic business.

On Aug. 24, management sent a letter to residents asking them to agree to move out of the 28-room Golden Crown Hotel by the end of September.

Paulina Walton said she was told in person the next day.

"He says, 'You guys are evicted.' I said, 'For what?' He goes, 'Everyone's evicted in the building. We're shutting down the doors,'" she said Friday.

At the time, Walton refused.

"I said, 'There's no way. I can't do that. There's no place for us to go. We're going to be on the streets. No!'

"I'm on disability too, and I can't be on the street," she said.

The hotel's owner was unavailable for comment, but the letter said the eviction was necessary to address health concerns associated with the pests. It also promised that once the repairs were done, tenants would be allowed to move back in without a rent increase.

Still, homeless advocates such as Kim Kerr, executive director of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, don't believe it.

by Dave Zirin, August 27, 2009

If you aspire to be a star woman athlete but have no aspirations to appear in Playboy’s Women of the Olympics issue, you are far better off being from South Africa than the United States. The Western media’s handling of the story of Caster Semenya, the gold-medal-winning 18-year-old South African runner, has been at best simplistic and at worst repellent. In a salacious, drooling tone, “Is she really a he?” is the extent of their curiosity. On various radio shows, I’ve been asked, “Why does she talk like a man?” No one defines what “a man” is supposed to talk like. Or, “Do you think she’s really a dude? Is this a Crying Game thing?” I’ve heard it all this week, and most of the questions say far more about the insecurities of the questioners than about Semenya’s situation.

Turtle Island Re-Emergent
by Stewart Steinhauer, from The Dominion, August 28, 2009.

KUTENAI TERRITORY, TURTLE ISLAND—The genocide of Indigenous Peoples inside the territories claimed by Canada doesn’t end until Canada de-colonizes. As Jean-Paul Sartre recognized when he focused the intellectual power of european philosophy onto the subject of european colonization, colonialism equals genocide. As long as the fair folk of the Canadian State have a colonial relationship with the territorial Indigenous Peoples, then the genocide continues. Canadians left, right and center do not actively advocate genocide. However, there exists an unconscious denial of what Canadians conveniently do not have to witness at close range, thanks to several centuries of apartheid social organization.

If your own suffering does not serve to unite you with the suffering of others, if your own imprisonment does not join you with others in prison, if you in your smallness remain alone, then your pain will have been for naught.

On the evening of August 1st in Tel Aviv, someone entered a youth group meeting at a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community center and opened fire, killing two people and injuring many more, some critically.

We mourn the loss of those killed and injured, and are outraged by this homophobic violence. As people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and/or queer (LGBTQ), we empathize with the pain, fear, and rage that friends, loved ones, and communities are experiencing. We are heartened that people all over the world are coming together to mourn these deaths and to stand against the violence and hatred that caused them. May this loss compel us towards greater justice, compassion and humanity!

August, 21 2009 By Neve Gordon

An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it's the only way to save his country.

Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who also endorses cosmetics produced in the occupied territories. Clearly, the campaign to use the kind of tactics that helped put an end to the practice of apartheid in South Africa is gaining many followers around the world.

Not surprisingly, many Israelis -- even peaceniks -- aren't signing on. A global boycott can't help but contain echoes of anti-Semitism. It also brings up questions of a double standard (why not boycott China for its egregious violations of human rights?) and the seemingly contradictory position of approving a boycott of one's own nation.

It is indeed not a simple matter for me as an Israeli citizen to call on foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens to suspend cooperation with Israel. But today, as I watch my two boys playing in the yard, I am convinced that it is the only way that Israel can be saved from itself.

Re/Mapping Identity, Culture, & Colonial Discourse
Ali Mustafa

“He who controls the present, controls the past.
He who controls the past, controls the future.”

— George Orwell

- A New Spin on a Pivotal Period -
Type Books, Between the Lines Books, and Paradigm Publishers invite
you to help celebrate two groundbreaking books on the Sixties

Friday, September 4th, 2009
7:00 pm
Type Books
883 Queen Street West
Toronto

Join the editors and contributors of New World Coming: The Sixties
and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, as well as Tom Hayden,
social activist, legislator, educator, and author of The Long
Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama for a book signing and discussion.

For more information:
Between the Lines
416.535.9914
info@btlbooks.com

Type Books
416.366.8973
info@typebooks.ca

By Nisreen & Dayna

While we all are shocked by the shooting attack
at the gay youth center in Tel-Aviv last week,
that as result of it 2 young people lost their
lives, Palestinian lesbians and gays need to face
both the homophobic street and the racist leaders
of the Israeli gay community who refuse to give
the stage for Palestinian speakers, neither for
former member of Knesset Issam Machool, nor for
representative of Aswat - Palestinian gay women
group base in Haifa. For the organizers and by
their words "they can't go as far as this"!!!!

What do they mean by "going as far as this"?!!!!

While in the world the legend of the democratic
country of the middle east keep announce its
jingles regard its tolerant city Tel Aviv that
provide a shelter of the Palestinian gays running
from their society and families, The Palestinian
gay community and supporters are excluded in
purpose from public events specifically from the
solidarity anti homophobic demonstration held
yesterday in Rabin Square.

Although the stage was full of politicians, few
of them are known as homophobic once, the
majority of the gay community in Israel believe
their struggle has nothing to do with "politics",
this is what explains the instant need for
"social peace", that a gay activists and victim
of the attack talked about, distinguish from the

Nickel, Neoliberalism, and Nationalism
by Scott Neigh, from Linchpin.ca, August 1, 2009.

More than 3300 employees of mining giant Vale Inco are on strike in Sudbury, Ontario, and in other Canadian communities to defend decades' worth of gains. Beyond that, the strike by members of Locals 6500 and 6200 of the United Steel Workers of America also raise important questions about how unions orient themselves towards their communities and towards the nation-states in which their members live.

There are a number of "very provocative issues for the men" in the company's demands, according to a 21-year veteran of Inco's transportation division who requested to remain anonymous when interviewed at a picket line in the Sudbury community of Copper Cliff.* He pointed out, "There's absolutely no monetary raise in this contract" and no expectation by the members that there would be one, given the low price of nickel and the state of the global economy.

However, he said, "We're not going to go back thirty years." He pointed to hard-won victories in past strikes, including the massive one in 1978-79 -- "My dad went on strike for 9 months... They fought real hard for this thing." Key issues include pensions, seniority rights and what is called the "nickel bonus."

Sacked workers resort to sit-ins
by Martin Shankleman , from BBC News, August 7, 2009.

The sleepy town of Newport on the Isle of Wight is a world away from the bustling south Korean city of Pyeongtaek.

But they have one thing in common: both have been the sites of high-profile factory sit-ins.

The workers occupying the Vestas turbine factory on the Isle of Wight were no doubt surprised when they received a message of solidarity from South Korean strikers, who had seized control of the main car plant of Ssangyong Motors near Seoul.

The Korean protesters use more vivid language than their English counterparts to explain their occupation, warning, "Dismissal is murder and we are struggling to stop this murderous act."

Yet the tactics of the two groups are the same - to embarrass the management and put pressure on the company to force a change of heart.

The protests are part of a growing trend around the world of workers taking matters into their own hands to fight their case.

Taking to rooftops

Sit-ins had become largely unheard-of in recent years in the UK, until the Visteon car parts firm declared itself bankrupt in March this year.

Hundreds of employees staged rooftop protests at the company's plants in West Belfast and Essex and refused to come down.

Socialism as the New Black Bogeyman: Red-Baiting and Racism
by Tim Wise, from CounterPunch, August 11, 2009.

Throughout the first six months of his administration, President Obama--perhaps one of the most politically cautious leaders in contemporary history--has been routinely portrayed as a radical by his opponents on the far-right. In particular, persons who have apparently never actually studied Marxism (or if they did, managed to somehow find therein support for such things as bailing out banks and elite corporations) contend that Obama is indeed a socialist. Reducing all government action other than war-making to part of a larger socialist conspiracy, the right contends that health care reform is socialist, capping greenhouse gas emissions is socialist, even providing incentives for driving fuel efficient cars is socialist. That the right insists upon Obama's radical-left credentials, even as they push an Obama=Hitler meme (something they apparently think is fair, since, after all the Nazis were National Socialists, albeit the kind who routinely murdered the genuine article) only speaks to the special brand of crazy currently in vogue among the nation's reactionary forces.

As real socialists laugh at these clumsily made broadsides, and as scholars of actual socialist theory try and explain the absurdity of the analogies being drawn by conservative commentators, a key point seems to have been missed, and it is this point that best explains what the red-baiting is actually about.

Matthew Flisfeder, The Bullet, Socialist Project.

After six months of contract negotiations with the City of Toronto, union members of CUPE locals 79 (representing inside workers) and 416 (representing outside workers) went on strike on June 22nd, 2009. Twenty-four thousand city workers walked off the job to fight demands from ‘cash-strapped’ city management, which is asking city workers to make concessions in their new contract. The top issues in this strike are job security, seniority, and the highly contested issue regarding the banking of sick days that can be cashed out upon retirement. The strike has caused a ‘disruption’ to several municipal services in Toronto, the most visible of which is the cessation of residential garbage pickup.

Within the first week of the strike, the city announced that it would be opening 19 different ‘drop off’ sites for residential trash. These sites were then set up in various public parks across the city. The decision to use local public parks as (what are effectively) garbage dump sites has sparked anger amongst residents who are in an uproar about the whole situation, confused about which side to ‘blame’: the city or the union.

Žižek, Petras and others misunderstand the struggle
By Saeed Rahnema

The electoral coup and the subsequent uprising and suppression of the revolting voters in Iran have prompted all sorts of analyses in Western media from both the Right and the Left. The Right, mostly inspired by the neo-con ideology and reactionary perspectives, dreams of the re-creation of the Shah’s Iran, looks for pro-American/pro-Israeli allies among the disgruntled Iranian public, and seeks an Eastern European type velvet revolution.

As there is very little substance to these analyses, they are hardly worth much critical review; and one cannot expect them to try to understand the complexities of Iranian politics and society.

By Francesca Fiorentini, Left Turn

*Pachamama = Mother Earth in Aymara and Quechua

“It is no accident that most of the remaining natural resources are on indigenous land. First the white world destroys their own environment, then they come asking for the last pieces of land they have put us on, the earth we have protected.”

—Luis Macas
former president of The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador

On April17, in the city Port of Spain of Trinidad and Tobago, thirty-four well-groomed heads of state smiled and posed for pictures, all but one dressed in suit, tie, or a tasteful skirt as apart of the 5th Summit of the Americas. The one happened to be Aymara Indian President Evo Morales. He and his navy native print coat were perhaps as close as the summit got to representing the millions of indigenous peoples living and struggling in the Americas. Coming together under the slogan “Securing our Citizens’ Future by Promoting Human Prosperity, Energy, Security and Environmental Sustainability” the summit mentioned indigenous peoples a few times in passing; something about ‘voluntary’ corporate responsibility when dealing with native ‘groups.’

Sam Gindin

Public sector strikes are frustrating to both the public and the strikers. The public is upset with losing daily services they have come to depend on, while the strikers are upset with the apparent lack of respect for the work they do. Though the attitudes of the public may not be decisive, they are increasingly a key factor in the outcome of strikes. A recent newspaper headline, referring to one of the leaders of the current strike of Toronto civic workers, captured the extent to which at present, public opinion – though angry at both sides – stands decidedly against the union: “Is Mark Ferguson the most hated man in Toronto?” (Toronto Star, July 20, 2009).

The issue in the strike is basically that the City is facing a financial squeeze while the workers have stubbornly refused to see this problem resolved at their expense. That financial deficit, it is clear enough, reflects two events that go beyond the current negotiations. First, for some time now provincial and federal governments have shifted programs and costs to the municipalities without a corresponding shift in revenue. Second, the current financial crisis has spread to the overall economy with major impacts on the budgets of all municipalities, including Toronto.

By Hans Bennett, Upsidedownworld.org, July, 16 2009

Book: Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History, By: Grubacic, Andrej, Lynd, Staughton

On January 1, 1994, the now-infamous North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. That same day, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), rose up and launched a military offensive that occupied towns throughout the state of Chiapas, in Mexico. The EZLN, or "Zapatistas" had been covertly organizing for many years, but they specifically chose the day of NAFTA's implementation for their public rebellion.

Shawn Hattingh. Monthly Review Zine

July 17, 2009

About 75 people on welfare and members of the Ontario Coalition Against
Poverty went to Mayor David Miller's office in City Hall today to demand
that people be issued their benefits that they city is illegally
withholding because of the strike.

“We waited outside the Mayor's office for over an hour but the city
refused to even send someone out to speak to us. Eventually we delivered
about 35 forms for the special diet by sliding them through a crack in
Miller's glass doors,” Said one member.

The City says that it will only deal with "emergency" situations for
people on welfare. This means that the City is refusing to process most
new benefits for people on assistance and has frozen people's cheques.
Not having enough to eat because you can't get your special diet is an
emergency but Miller doesn't think so. Right any now, people cannot
access the special diet - money people desperately need to be able to buy
groceries.

There is also a large number of people who are homeless or who are moving
who cannot get last month's rent and risk losing apartments they have
lined up. There are even people who have found jobs since the strike
began who cannot get money to get to work and risk losing their jobs
because of it. One person we spoke to was simply told not to cash his

By Sonali Kolhatkar and Mariam Rawi, July 11, 2009.

Years ago, following the initial military success of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the temporary fall of the Taliban, the people of Afghanistan were promised that the occupying armies would rebuild the country and improve life for the Afghan people.

Today, eight years after the U.S. entered Kabul, there are still piles of garbage in the streets. There is no running water. There is only intermittent electricity in the cities, and none in the countryside. Afghans live under the constant threat of military violence.

The U.S. invasion has been a failure, and increasing the U.S. troop presence will not undo the destruction the war has brought to the daily lives of Afghans.

As humanitarians and as feminists, it is the welfare of the civilian population in Afghanistan that concerns us most deeply. That is why it was so discouraging to learn that the Feminist Majority Foundation has lent its good name -- and the good name of feminism in general -- to advocate for further troop escalation and war.

On its foundation Web site, the first stated objective of the Feminist Majority Foundation's "Campaign for Afghan Women and Girls" is to "expand peacekeeping forces."

Jeff Noonan

Negotiations are scheduled to resume on Thursday, July 9th, between Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 82 (outside workers) and Local 543 (inside workers) and the City of Windsor. Local 82 has been on strike since April 15th. Local 543 joined the picket lines a few days later. The strike continued much longer than anyone on either side anticipated and has been exacerbated by charges filed by CUPE with the Ontario Labour Relations Board alleging bad faith bargaining on the part of the City in relation to a media-leak that occurred in mid-June. The strike is an instance (rare in the current climate) of workers’ struggling for a political principle rather than immediate wage demands. As such, it has much to teach but also reveals complex challenges that both the labour movement and the Canadian Left will have to meet in the near future.

The Issues

They Believe that the Capitalist System is the Origin of Injustice

by Hermann Bellinghausen, La Jornada, Wednesday, July 8, 2009
translated for Narco News by Kristin Bricker

Caracol of Morelia, Chiapas, June 22. In bringing to a close the American Meeting Against Impunity on Sunday night, the Zapatista Good Government Council (JBG in its Spanish initials) from the Tzotz Choj region argued that Plan Merida [also known as the Merida Initiative or Plan Mexico] isn't against organized crime, but rather an instrument to "jail, torture, and disappear" those who fight for their rights.

In front of participants from 15 American nations and observers from another couple of European countries, the JBG summed up the problem of impunity, discussed here over the past two days, where the capitalist system was unanimously identified as the origin of the injustices that devastate the world.

"The government of 'Pelipe' Calderon [as it is pronounced here because there is no 'f' sound in tzotzil nor in tzeltal] and his master, the president of the United States, are 'pocused' on Plan Merida, which they say will do away with drug crimes. But it's not really what they say it is in the media. In reality, it is to harass, jail, torture, and disappear the people who organize to defend their rights."

By Michael Hardt, July 6th, 2009

[Contribution to the Reimagining Society Project hosted by ZCommunications]

A central task for reimagining society today is to develop an alternative management of the common wealth we share. In this essay I want to explore two distinct but related domains of the common. On the one hand, the common refers to the earth and all of its ecosystems, including the atmosphere, the oceans and rivers, and the forests, as well as all the forms of life that interact with them. The common, on the other hand, also refers to the products of human labor and creativity that we share, such as ideas, knowledges, images, codes, affects, social relationships, and the like. These common goods, I will argue, are becoming increasingly central in capitalist production -- a fact that has a series of important consequences for efforts to maintain or reform the capitalist system as well as projects to resist or overthrow it. As first approximations you could call these two realms the ecological common and the social and economic common or the natural and the artificial common, although these categories quickly prove insufficient.

Canada & Honduras
By Yves Engler, from Z-Net, July 06, 2009.

Hostility to the military coup in Honduras is increasing. So is the Harper government's isolation on the issue.

At Saturday's special meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) Canada's minister for the Americas, Peter Kent, recommended that ousted President Manuel Zelaya delay his planned return to the country. Kent said the "time is not right" prompting Zelaya to respond dryly: "I could delay until January 27 [2010]" when his term ends. Kent added that it was important to take into account the context in which the military overthrew Zelaya, particularly whether he had violated the Constitution.

Along with three Latin American heads of states, Zelaya tried to return to Honduras on Sunday. But the military blocked his plane from landing and kept a 100,000 plus supporters at bay. In doing so the military killed two protesters and wounded at least 30. On CTV Kent blamed Zelaya for the violence.