February 25, 2015

Picket tomorrow against Harper’s so-called anti-terror bill

A picket has been organized against the Conservative Party’s misnamed anti-terror bill:

Shelly Glover, MP’s office
Thursday, Feb. 26, 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
213 St. Mary’s Road (near Traverse)

All groups are welcome, including to speak and co-sponsor.

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Harper’s legislation will enable the RCMP and CSIS to crack down on all resistance in Canada, against democratic and workers’ struggles.

There is no “balance” in the bill. It gives free reign to the government’s security apparatus at the same time it attacks Canadians’ rights and freedoms.

There is no evidence that the government needs to give such power to secret, actually political police. Historically, such legislation has always been used once passed:  to outlaw socialist parties (1918), crush the Winnipeg General Strike (1919), outlaw the Communist Party (1931, two years before Germany and Japan, and 1939), and imprison hundreds of innocent people during the FLQ crisis.

As found by the Royal Commission on Certain Activities of the RCMP (1977), even without such laws the police carried out serious criminal activities against progressive organizations, including the Communist Party, many of which remain unpublished and secret to this day.

So it can safely be said, the bill is unnecessary and is intended to create fear and conformity among Canadians with the Conservative Party’s definition of terrorism.

The Communist Party is wholly opposed to terrorism as a tactic in the mass struggles for democracy and socialism, but the Conservative government is using this bill to instill fear in the general public and to draw attention away from its own pro-terror policies such as bombing Yugoslavia and Libya, helping Ukraine’s pro-Nazi regime which is terrorizing its population and banning the Communist Party there, and deporting U.S. military veterans who are opposed to war crimes to serve lengthy sentences in U.S. military prisons – pursuing a pro-war crime agenda.

The Communist Party completely rejects the idea that this bill is needed to counter so-called “eco-terrorism” or the serious, false charge against Aboriginal rights activists that they are terrorists. The proven use of agents provocateurs in anti-globalization protests by police shows who are the real criminals.

The bill targets the resistance to corporate control of Canada.

The bill’s first target is the international unity of working people, Arab and non-Arab, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Russian and non-Russian.

Who are the Conservative party’s targets-of-choice, the targets of RCMP wrongdoing, jailings and outright banning since the beginning of mercantile and settler colonialism, the Red River Resistance and the Winnipeg General Strike?

Politically, it is socialist parties, especially the Communist Party which supports the resistance against corporate influence and domination and works to build the international unity of working people and oppressed nations (outlawed 3 times).

In terms of the people’s resistance, it is the trade union movement and oppressed nations, Aboriginal peoples and Quebec’s movement for self-determination and equality.

The anti-terror legislation is certain to broaden the dirty tricks, secret police wrongdoing and repression.

That is why the Communist Party in Winnipeg will hold a picket to protest the new bill this week.

Everyone is invited to bring their signs and messages of resistance.

Vive la resistance,
Penner-Bethune Club, Communist Party of Canada

Information: Darrell Rankin (204) 792-3371