[antiwar-van] Canada Out of Afghanistan! June 21 Emergency Picket and Appeal to the Antiwar Movement in Canada.

[shannon bundock]

*** Please forward widely ***

Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO) invites
you to an emergency action:

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‘Peacekeeper’ or ‘Terrorist Killer’? 
NO TO HILLIER’S RACIST WAR MONGERING!
CANADA OUT OF AFGHANISTAN!
CANADA OUT OF HAITI!
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR INDIGENOUS NATIONS IN CANADA!

Emergency picket against intensified war in
Afghanistan and against the new Canadian war drive:

Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre (1070 W. Georgia St)
Thursday July 21
3pm – 4:30pm
and 
Thursday July 28
3pm – 4:30pm

Picket line with speakers from Indigenous, Middle
Eastern, Muslim, student, activist and academic
communities

Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO)
www.mawovancouver.org
info at mawovancouver.org
604-322-1764

-----------------------------

CANADA’S “PEACEKEEPER” MASK DROPS – 
THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT IN CANADA MUST ACT NOW!
An appeal to all progressive people and organizations
in Canada:

On Thursday July 14th the new Canadian Chief of
Defense Staff, General Rick Hillier fired off the
opening guns of the new Canadian war drive. His
announcement that 2,000 more Canadian troops will be
sent to Afghanistan by February of next year to “be
able to kill people” was not the beginning of the
shift to the right of Canadian imperialist policy but
it was significant in exposing the unanimity of the
government of Canada’s brazen racist war mongering.
Hillier’s words signalled a clear shift from the
typical strategy of the government of Canada, which
has managed, until now, to cleverly cloak its
imperialist actions in the language of “peacekeeping”.

Really, Hillier has done us in the anti-war /
anti-occupation movement in Canada a favor with his
clarity of words. He explained better than most
anti-war groups in Canada have managed to that “We’re
not the public service of Canada, we’re not just
another department. We are the Canadian Forces and our
job is to be able to kill people.” And not just to
kill anybody
 Hillier further explained just what the
approach of the Canadian Forces has been in
Afghanistan, even before he took command of the NATO
forces occupying the country. He was quoted in the
Globe and Mail as saying, “These are detestable
murderers and scumbags, I’ll tell you that right up
front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our
society, they detest our liberties.” And “We’re not
going to let those radical murderers and killers rob
from others and certainly we’re not going to let them
rob from Canada.”

The entirety of Canada’s imperialist strategy is
contained in Hillier’s words. The anti-war movement
and all poor, working and oppressed people in Canada
must hear them as a grim prophesy of the dark days to
come. What exactly are the “radical murderers and
killers” in Afghanistan – now (thanks to the
occupation forces) the poorest country in Asia – able
to “rob from Canada”? The only position Canada has
that is threatened by the struggling Afghan people is
the position of the Canadian military occupying their
country. It should be clear to us in the anti-war
movement that the “detestable murderers” in
Afghanistan are there courtesy of the NATO occupation.
These are the forces that have lowered the Afghan life
expectancy by four and a half years from 2003 to 2004.

For people in Canada, the “risky business” is not
whether or not further troop deployment to Afghanistan
might spur terrorist attacks within Canadian borders,
it is that the shift to the right in regards to
Canadian imperialist policy and action is being taken
by ALL major political parties in Canada across the
board. Hillier’s comments should have elicited outrage
from at least some major politicians on the grounds
that his statements were racist, war mongering
promises of death and destruction in the name of
Canadian imperialist interests. Instead, his
statements were defended by the leaders of all major
political parties:

Conservative Party: “Conservative MP Gordon O'Connor
said Gen. Hillier ‘speaks like a soldier, not a
diplomat. He's starting to give the public an idea
that the troops are about to go in a dangerous area
and he's trying to explain why they're going there in
the pursuit of terrorists,’ “ – Globe and Mail, July
16 2005

Liberal Party: "General Hillier is not only a top
soldier, he is a soldier who has served in
Afghanistan," Paul Martin said Friday in Nova Scotia.
"The point he is simply making is we are at war with
terrorism and we're not going to let them win."  -
Canadian Press, July 16 2005

 New Democratic Party: “Controlled anger, given what's
happened, is an appropriate response," NDP Leader Jack
Layton said. "We have a very committed, level-headed
head of our armed forces, who isn't afraid to express
the passion that underlies the mission that front-line
personnel are going to be taking on. A bit of strong
language in the circumstances, I don't find that to be
wrong." – Globe and Mail, July 16 2005 

----------------------
CANADIAN IMPERIALISM MUST BE CONFRONTED NOW!
----------------------

All people in Canada must realize that it is not only
political blindness to ignore the wars and occupations
that Canada is carrying out; to ignore the imperialist
policies and actions of the government of Canada would
mean unforgivably irresponsible complicity with the
Canadian imperialist war drive. We are now living in a
Canada that has dropped away its mask of “peace” in
order to continue a hard shift to the right,
unfettered by the government’s public relations
illusions. This shift has been a long time in coming.

When the US began its war drive in Iraq, the
government of Canada began its shift into gear of the
era of war and occupation by quietly sending almost
2,000 troops to Afghanistan for a “humanitarian peace
keeping mission.” When Hillier took command of the
NATO mission in Afghanistan it was billed as a
transference of “Canadian values” to the
reconstruction efforts. The government and media did
not mention that practically all aid monies had been
withdrawn and all reconstruction promises called off.
They did not comment on the collapse of all
infrastructure in Afghanistan, the almost absolute
lack of employment, the climbing death rates of Afghan
people, the lack of potable water, the complete
suppression of women’s rights or the shaky deals drawn
up between the imperialist phoney-puppet government of
Hamid Karzai in Kabul and the warlords that run the
majority of the country. However, they lost no time in
exploiting the deaths of two Canadian soldiers in
Afghanistan to double the Canadian military budget.

Canada’s imperialist strategy unfolded further to view
through February 2004’s invasion of Haiti. Following a
plan drafted in Canada the year before, Canada, the US
and France overthrew Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s
first democratically elected president in history, and
replaced him with the puppet government of Gerard
Latorture. Flexing Canadian imperialist interests over
the rights and interests of the Haitian people, the
occupying forces quickly killed Aristide’s labour and
literacy laws and airlifted in Canadian sweatshops.
The opening of the Latin American front in the era of
war and occupation has since been reinforced with a
colonial police force / deathsquad trained by the
colonial experts – the RCMP.

Of course, none of this is really new. The foundation
of Canada is the theft of Indigenous land and
resources that make up all of the territory of Canada.
This land has been stolen through the same methods
that Canada is now using in Haiti and Afghanistan;
through the genocide of entire Indigenous nations, the
murder of millions of Indigenous people and the
criminalization of Indigenous cultures and
communities. This colonial theft continues alongside
the imperialist actions in Haiti and Afghanistan in
Skwelkwek’welt, Cheam, Grassy Narrows, Burnt Church
and Indigenous territory all throughout Canada.

We can thank Hillier for laying the Canadian
imperialist agenda on the table for us all to read
plainly, but we must take his words and throw them
back in the faces of the entire government of Canada
and its ruling class. While his words illuminate the
long standing policies, politics and strategy of the
Canadian government, they are the promise of the
murder and plunder of oppressed nations and they mark
the beginning of a terrible era of war and occupation
that knows no bounds in the fight to maintain Canada’s
powerful country position in the face of an
international economy in crisis.

The implications of Hillier’s proclamations are huge.
They call for an immediate escalation of war in
Afghanistan and, additionally, for the deployment of
100 armoured vehicles to the Sudan. These “missions”
require not only a deep investment in military budget
and Canadian Forces recruitment, but a political
campaign of the entire government of Canada to shift
the consciousness of people in Canada to accept that
“our job is to kill people” to accomplish Canada’s
imperialist agenda. This means an escalation of the
racist propaganda that Hillier threw out unopposed by
any major politician that the opponents of Canadian
imperialism are “terrorists”, “scumbags” and
“murderers”. 

Hillier’s statement must be a call to action for the
anti-war movement and all progressive people in
Canada. We must identify and organize against the
occupation of Afghanistan as Canada’s Iraq. We must
meet the racist and warmongering propaganda blow for
blow and take up a campaign against Canadian war and
occupation seriously, dedicated and without
hesitation. We must struggle and organize against the
coming Canadian war machine as though the lives of
millions of people and the future of the world hang in
the balance – because they do.

------------------------------

Join Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO)
for a picket against the Canadian war drive: 

‘Peacekeeper’ or ‘Terrorist Killer’? 
NO TO HILLIER’S RACIST WAR MONGERING!
CANADA OUT OF AFGHANISTAN!
CANADA OUT OF HAITI!
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR INDIGENOUS NATIONS IN CANADA!

Canadian Forces Recruiting Centre (1070 W. Georgia St)
Thursday July 21
3pm - 4:30pm
and 
Thursday July 28
3pm – 4:30pm

Picket line with speakers from Indigenous, Middle
Eastern, Muslim, student, activist and academic
communities

Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO)
www.mawovancouver.org
info at mawovancouver.org
604-322-1764

----------------------------- 



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