Preparing a new International: ‘Anti-imperialism should be the common element that brings us all together’

From Socialist Voice, May 1, 2010

A LeftViews interview with Julio Chávez
Julio Chávez is a member of the international committee of the congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which is charged with drafting a specific plan of action to form a new socialist international. He was interviewed by Kiraz Janicke and Federico Fuentes.

The interview was originally published in Venezuelanalysis.com under the title “The First Socialist International of the 21st Century.” It has been edited for Socialist Voice by Richard Fidler.

The proposal that President Hugo Chávez made regarding the formation of a Fifth Socialist International has attracted a lot of attention at a global level. We’re interested in your point of view, as a delegate and member of the International Committee of the Congress of the PSUV: Why propose a Fifth International and what is the importance of this proposal?

I believe that the proposal launched by President Hugo Chávez – to raise at this time a global debate on the historical relevance of the need; to call on all parties, movements and leftist and anti-imperialist currents in the world to have a full discussion – is based on the characterization and in-depth analysis of the crisis of global capitalism. This leads unquestionably to the conclusion that the only way to overcome the cyclical crisis of world capitalism is, in fact, by proposing a model or a path that is completely different from the neoliberal model, the predatory model, of capitalism. There is no alternative other than the path of transition to socialism.

We believe that discussion of a transitional program – a great debate – should be happening this year in Caracas due to the role that Venezuela is playing as the epicentre of the great transformations that have occurred since the beginning of this century, and which have motivated and enthused the peoples of our America, and also because of the leading role that Venezuela and President Hugo Chávez are playing at the global level.

We think it is necessary as well because of the aggressive policy of U.S. imperialism toward Venezuela: the installation of military bases, reactivation of the Fourth Fleet, and the media campaign of attacks and insults against both the revolutionary process and the leader of this process. For all these reasons, we believe it is appropriate to call for an organization which would have Caracas as the epicentre; for a great global debate about the need to advance on a proposal to overcome the contradiction between capital and labour.

The only option, the only alternative we see as viable, feasible as a historical project of life, is precisely the path towards socialism.

We believe, therefore – drawing on the experiences and our assessments of the four previous internationals, which had Europe as their epicentre precisely because of the industrial revolution and the great contradictions expressed in the context of rapidly growing capitalism, and which led to its highest stage, imperialism – that all these contradictions have been transferred to Latin America, and have created in Venezuela the conditions, the features, to make a call of this nature.

I repeat, it must become an organization that is permanent in nature, that is able to summon all the parties of the Left, social movements, prominent individuals and historical currents of thought. And not just specifically those raising the historical project of socialism; anti-imperialism should be the common element that brings us all together.

Of course we don’t just want one more event, one more conference. We’re making this call not just in order to open a discussion, a debate, to produce a document, but to actually set minimum agreements, to adopt a minimum transitional program, a policy of developing in all the five continents, based on the analysis of the current situation, a characterization of each particular region. We want to consider expeditiously the transition towards a model that overcomes the contradictions of capital and labour.

Why is anti-imperialism being proposed as the common element and not just socialism?

We say that this call has to have a broad character. It is possible that in some countries, such as in the Middle East, there are organizations and movements fighting against some expressions of imperialism and international Zionism as such but that are not socialist in essence, in the programmatic sense. But, undoubtedly, they are fighting imperialism.

That’s why we say that it could be that in some Islamic countries that do not have socialism as an ideological element – for example the case of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, which is anti-imperialist – that this element will be an element that will summon as many parties, organizations, movements in the world to join the battle, the confrontation with imperialism.

As well as all those who defend a model based on the world view of indigenous people, and the principles and approaches of scientific socialism, elements of regional and Bolivarian thought, the ideas of Mariátegui, of Martí, the tree of the three roots in Venezuela,[see note - editor] and all those who are part of a historical, philosophical current that defends the claims accumulated through many years of struggle by the peoples in this part of the world.

From this anti-imperialist perspective, this vision informed by the experience of the historical struggles of indigenous peoples, it is possible to summon as many parties, movements, and currents in the world, let us repeat, for a wide-ranging debate, a full discussion, and to agree on a plan, a minimum transitional program, to move concretely towards a socialist project at a world level.

An anti-imperialist project is the only way at this juncture, faced with the cyclical crisis of capitalism. Capitalism is not going to collapse by itself, but is in a process of readjustment, of realignment, of looking for the possibility of a second wind. We believe that at this juncture it is possible to consider an alternative, but it must be global and anti-imperialist.

There is a core document that we have been discussing within the congress, in the international committee of the PSUV congress. A document in which we have assessed and taken stock of what the four previous socialist internationals signified, the context in which they were called, of the proposals, the achievements that they made. And in view of the historical relevance, the policy of aggression against the Bolivarian revolution, and the processes of transformation that have been occurring in other countries, we believe it is possible to produce a document that contains all those elements.

We have even talked about the definition of the historical subject – those who are making the call, and the social movements, currents and parties in different continents and different countries who are engaged in a common struggle with us, which is the struggle against imperialism.

Therefore, we believe that through this approach and, of course, discussing the objectives of this call for a Fifth International – or as we also call it, the First Socialist International of the 21st Century, because there are some discussions with the Communist Party comrades who do not recognize the Fourth International, but we say it is not a question of numbers, but in any case it would be the first Socialist International of this century. And under these assumptions, by seeking to broaden the programmatic base, the doctrinal principles, with an agenda of topics to discuss, a program to develop, it will be possible to go beyond simply producing a document, and to produce an agreement that is expressed in very concrete policies, recognizing the reality of each continent, of each country, and this effort should lead to the articulation of a powerful global movement to allow us to move forward.

We can move forward on a debate, a discussion about what things we can agree on, opening the possibility that within the meeting there will also be a debate on the whole mechanism of coordination, of integration, beyond governments, because this is not a government event, we are talking about parties, movements, to develop an international policy which has internationalism as a spearhead of counter-hegemonic confrontation.

I think it is possible to discuss all these aspects in Venezuela, and we can then come out of it with a minimum program, a minimum plan of work, again, respecting differences, allowing us to develop a policy around different continents that would have a permanent basis, so that we have the possibility of regular meetings at a continental or regional level, to evaluate the progress of things, but it should also be binding for all organizations, movements and parties that make this call.

Here you have touched on a subject that historically has always been complicated, that is, the difference between diplomatic relations of governments and the relations of parties, particularly when some of these parties are also in government, like the PSUV, which was created following the call made by a head of state. This issue has been raised, for example, in relation to other governments with which Venezuela maintains good diplomatic relations but that are far from being socialist, where one understands that the State should have diplomatic relations, but where left-wing forces who may be interested in participating [in the Fifth International] are part of the opposition to these governments.

I think that right now we are having a very interesting debate in the ideological congress of the party. Remember that, three years ago, we had a founding congress and this is the first ideological congress. Coincidentally, we are right now finishing the discussion and debate about the programmatic basis for a party which is conceived for the transition to socialism. We are discussing the values, principles, statutes, and clearly we have been discussing and distinguishing that one thing is the government’s foreign policy and another thing is the international politics of the PSUV.

I think we’re making a clear conceptualization of these two positions where, undoubtedly, there are levels of convergence because we believe that the PSUV should be a space, a scenario where policy is discussed in order to be executed precisely at the level of government, in this case in ministries to which international issues apply, of course with the participation, the approval of President Chávez, who is leading the State’s foreign policy and is at the same time the party president.

There are things the government and our embassies cannot say, but the PSUV is more likely to express positions from an ideological point of view and this has been a large part of the discussion that has occurred in the national congress.

So I think we’re making good progress in differentiating the foreign policy of the government and the party, understanding the peculiarity that in this case the president is the president of the nation and, at the same time, the party president.

We have been careful not to get involved in discussions within other countries, to not take positions on issues which are up to the peoples of those countries and their governments to take.

But in any case, the PSUV is proposing to design, to elaborate a policy, an offensive that allows us to establish contacts at the global level with those organizations and social movements that have been doing solidarity work with Venezuela, which have been supportive of the efforts and initiatives taken by the Bolivarian revolution, with the achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution, and this is giving us a chance to come together and network with many movements, with many parties and organizations in the world that share the historical project of socialism, the historical project to overcome the contradiction between capital and labour.

We believe we have made great strides in this need to differentiate what is the government’s foreign policy and what is the party’s international politics. Internationalism is enshrined in the statutes in the values and principles, because this is not a party that is thinking only about the transition that is happening in Venezuela.

We are talking about a party that has to assume internationalism, solidarity and to develop the necessary initiatives in terms of confronting imperialism and strengthening policy coordination with those parties, movements and organizations that defend anti-imperialist struggle.

I think we have made significant progress there. We do not believe that at this moment, just as we are finishing the first ideological congress of the party, that we have the party that we want, but undoubtedly, we have advanced, we have taken very strong steps towards building this powerful instrument within which we can discuss and debate the major issues, major policies, major decisions to advance the transition to socialism.

Has the document drafted by the commission been approved already or is it still under discussion?

The international commission was charged with the responsibility of drawing up a document. The document is circulating internally within the party; it is in the hands of the national leadership and, of course, has been raised for the consideration of the president of the party.

The document is circulating and there have been some comments, and when the president authorizes it, that is the basic document that will be released to encourage and motivate the discussion on the historical relevance and the need to summon all the parties and movements across the world that struggle against imperialism and for the construction of a socialist project.

Obviously, in a revolutionary situation, things cannot simply be determined by a calendar, particularly in the context of the offensive that imperialism has launched in recent months, but is there an idea, at least, of when the founding of the Fifth International will be?

Indeed there is a whole plan of different phases that has been submitted for consideration, where it has been proposed to call meetings at a regional or continental level, to create promotional teams, with a strategy for disseminating information so that it can be built from the bottom up.

It is anticipated that all these elements, the creation of an information system, making all the communicational elements that the revolution has been using, all these tools, all these resources, available to the revolution and parties worldwide, will be part of this plan by phases.

There is also the idea of holding various meetings, where there is even the possibility that our delegations will travel to other continents, other countries to discuss, to motivate, to create the conditions for starting to debate the issue.

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Editor’s note: “The tree of the three roots in Venezuela” is expression peculiar to Chavismo. This appears to be a reference to Simón Bolívar, Simón Rodriguez and Ezequiel Zamora, respectively the founding indendence leader of Venezuela, a 19th century educator, and the liberal leader of the Federalists in the Federal War of 1859-1863.

Remembering Michel Chartrand

Michel Chartrand, an outstanding leader of the Quebec labour, nationalist, socialist and social justice movements, died on April 12 at the age of 93.

A multitude of Québécois worked with Michel in the causes that marked his long life, and the Quebec media this week are full of tributes to his contributions. Translated below is an older tribute by 110 well-known activists, published on the occasion of his 90^th birthday, that summarizes some of the key events of his life. It is followed by some personal memories of my own.

In praise of a passionate defender of the workers

[Le Devoir, November 18, 2006]

Next December 20, Michel Chartrand will celebrate his 90^th birthday. One of the very few public personalities to have never deviated from his ideals, this exceptional fighter has for 70 years participated in all the memorable events in Quebec’s history. He has become an integral part of those events since he has been on the line of fire in all the major social and political battles, starting in the mid-1930s. For example, during the Fifties, in the “Grande Noirceur” [the dark days of Duplessis], he acted as a spearhead of the trade-union movement, which was the real opposition to Duplessism and opened the way to the Quiet Revolution. Chartrand personally paid the price, being jailed no fewer than seven times in the course of the hard-fought conflicts that marked that period, the best known of which were those in Asbestos and Murdochville.

The fate he suffered then gave a foretaste of the troubles he would later have with the legal system and the many further jailings — including his detention for four months under the War Measures Act decreed by the Trudeau government during the October Crisis of 1970. His trial — like that of all the 300 or so other persons unjustly jailed at that time — ended in a dismissal of the charges.

A political man

Michel has been predominantly a political man. Throughout his life, he has concerned himself with public issues and spoken abundantly about them. “Everything is political”, he loves to say. But this patriarch of the Quebec left has consistently scorned the traditional parties, which in his view seek only power without real change.

In the first part of his public life, he was deeply involved in the adventure of the reformist nationalist parties of the Thirties and Forties — Action Libérale Nationale and the Bloc Populaire — precursors of the contemporary sovereigntist formations, the Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois.

As his thinking radicalized he opted for more marginal parties. In the Fifties he succeeded Thérèse Casgrain as leader of the Parti Social-Démocrate, the Quebec wing of Tommy Douglas’s Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). And in the early Sixties he was the founding president of the Parti Socialiste du Québec (PSQ), while Jean Lesage’s “Equipe du tonnerre” [“thunder team”, the All-Star Liberal cabinet] ruled in Quebec City.

Michel was an independentist from the very beginning, but he never supported the Parti Québécois, criticizing it as overly centrist for his taste and denouncing some of its neoliberal policies. However, that did not prevent him from occasionally supporting progressive PQ candidates.

Pillar of the trade-union movement

Driven out of the CTCC, the CSN’s predecessor,[1] by its then secretary general, Jean Marchand — one of the three “doves” who, with Trudeau and Gérard Pelletier headed off to Ottawa in 1965 to “put Quebec back in its place” — Chartrand went back to practicing his trade as a printer for ten years.

But it was as president of the Montréal Central Council of the CSN, from 1968 to 1978, that Michel gave his full measure as a man of action and an orator. He became one of the pillars of the Quebec union movement, which he helped to transform into an instrument of struggle.

He was also the keenest enthusiast of the innovative orientation adopted by the union central, which sought to add to the traditional mission of trade-unionism — the negotiation of collective agreements, referred to as the “first front” — a “second front”. This was expressed, for example, in the Central Council’s involvement in various social and political causes, such as

– the defense of the rights of tenants and assistance to injured workers;

– the founding of a popular newspaper, the weekly Québec-Presse;

– the establishment of superstore food co-operatives (Cooprix);

– support to the Front d’Action Politique (FRAP), the first progressive party to oppose Jean Drapeau, the autocratic mayor of Montréal;

– the successful campaign to abolish the private hunting and fishing clubs, which earned Chartrand yet another stay behind bars;

– and, above all, the practice of international solidarity with the Centre international de solidarité ouvrière (CISO), founded by the late Roberto Quévillon, and the Québec-Palestine and Québec-Chile committees.

Return to the co-operative movement

Following his withdrawal from full-time union activity, in the late Seventies, Chartrand returned to one of his first loves, the co-operative movement, and he devoted himself primarily to his duties as chairman of the board of directors of the Caisse populaire des syndicats nationaux [the CSN’s credit union].

Still tireless, in the mid-1980s he established the FATA [Foundation to assist injured workers], where he spent several years working with such valued collaborators as Roch Banville, Émile Boudreau and Claude Pételle, all of them now deceased.

When he was over 80 years old, Michel launched a campaign in favour of establishing a “citizenship income”. For several months he criss-crossed Quebec holding dozens of meetings to publicize the manifesto he had written on this topic. He even made a lengthy stop-over in Jonquière, during the 1998 elections, to run against the then premier Lucien Bouchard, as a spokesperson for the Rassemblement pour l’alternative progressiste (RAP – Coalition for a progressive alternative), one of the predecessors of Québec solidaire. His slogan was “Zero poverty through a citizenship income”, which contrasted with the controversial “Zero Deficit” of the PQ government.

Sixty years after his activism in Catholic Action movements (following a spell as a Trappist monk at Oka), he was smitten with the same ideal of social justice, and had the same horror at injustice. Paradoxically, he became a nationalist while he was a monk. “Nationalism,” he explains, “is the precondition to an opening toward the world.”

The idealist

In 1993, after 51 years of marriage, Michel suffered the painful loss of his companion Simonne Monet. Canon Lionel Groulx, who married them and baptized their seven children, described them in 1942 as “two young idealists whose fates will be joined forever”. He could not have said it better. Even if, in their quest for greater social justice, Simonne and Michel chose the difficult road of financial insecurity and adversities of all kinds, they always supported each other as two inseparable accomplices.

This very incomplete overview will, we hope, have the merit of acquainting the younger generation of some of the accomplishments of an exceptional personality, thirsting for justice, who has devoted his life to the defense of the most disadvantaged in our society.

Some have been overly critical of his mood swings, his aggressiveness, his verbal violence, his utopian projects; but no one has ever been able to dispute his loyalty to the people, his idealism, his authenticity, his patriotism and his attachment to the French language. His many friends, among whom we wish to include ourselves, have had the privilege of discovering what lies hidden beneath the armour of the public figure. They can testify to the generosity and sensitivity of the man, his literary culture, his love of art, his profound humanism and even . . . his insolent language.

On the eve of his 90 years, therefore, we express the wish that this majestic oak will prolong for several years yet his peaceful retirement in the family home in Richelieu with his companion Colette Legendre. Long live Michel Chartrand, our young ninety-year-old!

[The list of the 110 signatories can be found at the conclusion of the French text.]

My memories of Michel

As a high school student in Toronto who had joined the CCF in 1958, I was vaguely aware of Michel Chartrand as the leader of the Quebec wing of the party. He seemed a lonely but heroic figure, combatting the forces of darkness in what most of Canada saw as “priest-ridden Quebec”.

But he had a major impact at the founding convention of the New Democratic Party in Ottawa in 1961, which occurred just as Quebec’s Quiet Revolution was getting under way. There, along with Gérard Picard of the CTCC, Michel headed a delegation of some 300 from Quebec who were inspired by the effort to build a new party of the left in Canada, more solidly based in the labour movement than the CCF. They fought successfully to get the new labour party to recognize, as part of its founding program, that Quebec was a distinct nation with the right of self-determination. It was not an easy victory; in a widely publicized gesture, Eugene Forsey, then research director of the Canadian Labour Congress, quit the NDP on the floor of the convention in anger at this decision. (Trudeau later made Forsey a Liberal senator.)

These differences persisted after the convention, and in 1962 the new party forces in Quebec split, most of the Anglophone leaders — such as philosopher Charles Taylor and Professor Michael Oliver (who was federal NDP President) — refusing to accept the majority decision at the new party’s orientation convention to build the party in Quebec as an autonomous Québécois partner of the Canadian NDP. The largely Francophone component went on to found the Parti socialiste du Québec (PSQ), independent of the NDP but not running against it in federal elections. In November 1963, as a student recently arrived in Montréal, I attended the PSQ’s founding convention in Quebec City, where Michel Chartrand was elected president of the party.

The PSQ, as it turned out, was somewhat ahead of its time. Although it was sympathetic to Quebec independence — its 1966 program called for an “État Libre du Québec”, a free Quebec, in “association with Anglophone Canada” — it was outflanked in the growing nationalist milieu by the Rassemblement pour l’indépendance nationale (RIN). In 1967 dissident Liberal cabinet minister René Lévesque adopted the associate-states formula and went on to found the Parti québécois shortly thereafter. The RIN dissolved into the PQ. These developments effectively undercut the PSQ and — lacking significant support in the unions — it soon disappeared.

Michel’s involvement with the CCF, NDP and PSQ reflected his profound conviction that the workers’ movement could not confine itself to collective bargaining and on-the-job representation but must strive to replace capitalism with a socialist society, through working to achieve a government of and for the working people. Thus it jarred me this week to read, in the CSN leadership’s tribute to Michel, the statement: “With the death of this outstanding trade-unionist, there comes to an end an entire epoch during which union action was inspired by anarcho-syndicalism.” Michel was anything but an anarchist. The CSN statement reflects not his views but the narrow concept of trade unionism as little more than economic struggle over wages and “benefits” that is held by the union bureaucracy.

Michel’s Québécois nationalism was internationalist to the core, informed by a profound sense of solidarity with the oppressed everywhere. He was an “altermondialiste” — an opponent of capitalist globalization — long before the term became fashionable in progressive circles. In 1964, shortly after the founding of the PSQ, he spent almost a month touring revolutionary Cuba. When I interviewed him upon his return, he told me Cuba had “a government which works for the people”, and he discussed frankly and sympathetically the difficulties confronted by the Cubans and their innovative efforts to overcome them. The interview also illustrates Michel’s appreciation of artistic accomplishment as he observed it in Cuba, as well as his sense of humour and his keen anti-imperialism. In later years he was active in building solidarity with Allende’s Chile and the Palestinians.

Although best known as a trade-union activist and politician, Michel was self-educated as a typographer. After he was fired as a CTCC organizer by Jean Marchand, he built a sizeable printshop, managed as a worker-owned cooperative, in the basement of the large A-frame house he and his wife Simonne Monet-Chartrand inhabited with their seven children. One evening, the Cuban consul in Montréal, Julia Gonzalez, and I visited them at their home in Longeuil, a suburb of Montréal on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river, and Michel took great pride in demonstrating to us the modern typesetting and printing equipment in the shop. His shop, Les presses sociales, was where many of the left and labour publications were printed during the 1960s, each bearing the CSN union label.

Around that time, the League for Socialist Action, a Trotskyist organization headquartered in Toronto, decided to establish its own printshop. Ross Dowson, the LSA’s national secretary, asked if I could enlist Michel’s help in checking out the operational capability of a second-hand Verityper for sale in Montréal. Michel readily agreed and one of his workers spent an entire afternoon with me putting this equipment through its paces; she recommended its purchase.

A further encounter with Michel was in 1971, when I was living in Toronto. It was shortly after the War Measures crisis. He came to Toronto along with his lawyer Robert Lemieux — both had been arrested during the army occupation of Quebec — and spoke eloquently, in English, to a huge and appreciative audience at the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall about the repression and the situation in Quebec. Later that year, Michel was active in the Front Commun pour la Défense de la Langue Française, a broad coalition of nationalist and left organizations that organized some mass demonstrations in favour of making French the official language of Quebec; this was the beginning of the radicalizing wave of actions that swept through Quebec not long after the Trudeau government’s war measures.

Michel was an enthusiastic supporter of left regroupment and initiatives to build a new left party in Quebec. Although in his mid 80s, he attended the 2003 founding convention of the Union des forces progressistes (UFP), a forerunner of Québec solidaire. And at the recent convention of Québec solidaire, in late November 2009, we listened attentively as Paul Cliche, a founder of the FRAP in 1970, brought Michel’s greetings to the delegates.

Michel Chartrand was best known to many as a colourful speaker — “un homme de parole”. His speeches were powerful because they spoke to real injustice, and many are collected in a volume published by his biographer Fernand Foisy.[2] He had a remarkable ability to arouse an audience with both anger and humour in denunciations of capitalist exploitation and oppression, while articulating an alternative vision of another, possible Quebec of solidarity and emancipation. He fought with courage and principle. He shall long be remembered with affection and gratitude for his remarkable contribution to our struggles.

CSN Archives

At a demonstration of the Front Commun pour la Défense de la Langue Française. Left to right: Alain Beiner (Ligue Socialiste Ouvrière), Michel Chartrand, Robert Lemieux, Raymond Lemieux (leader of the Saint-Léonard language struggle), and Pierre Bourgault (former RIN leader).

– Richard Fidler

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[1] CTCC – Confédération des travailleurs catholiques du Canada; CSN – Confédération des syndicats nationaux.

[2] Michel Chartrand: Les Dires d’un Homme de Parole (Lanctôt Éditeur, 1997). See also Michel Chartrand: Les Voies d’un Homme de Parole (Lanctôt Éditeur, 1999) and Michel Chartrand: La Colère du Juste (Lanctôt Éditeur, 2003), also by Fernand Foisy, the latter being a biography of Chartrand’s life between 1968 and 2003.

Quebec Government Joins Campaign Against Muslims and Other Minorities

This article was first published in Socialist Voice, April 11, 2010

by Richard Fidler
With its Bill 94, introduced last month in the Quebec National Assembly, the Liberal government has joined the crusade against Muslims and other minorities. The bill would deny government-funded health care, education and child care services to all whose clothing prevents disclosure of their face, and would bar them from government and public-service employment.

The bill patently targets a tiny number of Muslim women who wear niqabs (which limit facial visibility to their eyes) or burqas (which totally conceal the face). However, as an initial limitation on universality of public services and equal job opportunities, the government’s action has encouraged the loud voices calling for a ban on the hijab or scarf worn by thousands of Muslim women, as well as further dress code restrictions that would affect the rights of other religious and cultural minorities to jobs and services.

The bill is already being termed the “Naïma law” in reference to a Muslim immigrant of Egyptian origin, Naïma Amed, who was recently expelled by the government from French-language classes she was taking in order to practice her profession as a pharmacist. Amed, who wears a niqab, was told repeatedly and insistently to remove it — although she had lowered her veil many times, to be photographed for her student identification card and then on numerous occasions in class at the request of the teacher and despite the presence of the male students. Expelled from one language school, she was studying at another when the immigration ministry found out and interrupted her during an exam to expel her.

The case was widely publicized — and very inaccurately reported — in the Quebec Francophone media. Although Muslim organizations report that at most a couple dozen women among the 200,000 Muslims in Quebec wear the niqab or burqa — the human rights commission recently reported that out of 146,000 people served in provincial health insurance board offices in 2008-09, 10 were veiled — Naïma Amed’s ordeal fueled the growing debate in Quebec over “reasonable accommodation” of minority cultural practices. A Manifesto for a Pluralist Quebec, advocating an “open secularism” that respects freedom of conscience in a context of state neutrality, was countered recently by a Declaration of Intellectuals for Secularism calling for a ban on all personal displays of “religious signs” such as the Muslim hijab in public institutions. The self-proclaimed “intellectuals” who signed it include prominent nationalist politicians, academics and trade unionists.

Bill 94 is draconian in its provisions. Montreal Gazette columnist Don Macpherson asks whether it could be “invoked to refuse emergency medical treatment in a non-life-threatening situation to an injured woman wearing a niqab? Or to bar a girl from publicly-funded schools if she starts to wear the face veil when she reaches puberty, as some Muslim women do?” That, he says, is “what Premier Jean Charest and his justice minister, Kathleen Weil, have implied is the intent of the bill.”

Macpherson notes that the bill

“would establish a ‘general practice’ that during ‘the delivery of services’ by a public employee to an individual, both would have to ‘show their face.’ This practice would apply even when it is not necessary for security reasons or identification purposes. So a niqabi, as women wearing Muslim face veils are called, who requests an income-tax form at a government service counter could be turned away. And the bill provides no specific exceptions for emergencies.”

The bill says an “adaptation” of the practice could be made if “dictated by the right to equality” under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. But, as Macpherson notes,

“The Quebec Charter recognizes a right to assistance only for someone ‘whose life is in peril.’ And Bill 94 would take precedence over every law and regulation other than the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights. But, as its title says, the bill would establish only ‘guidelines.’ It would be up to each department, body, or institution to ensure compliance. So the bill could be interpreted differently from one school board to another. The court system could be clogged with challenges.”

The Official Opposition in the National Assembly, the Parti Québécois, has denounced Charest’s bill and calls for a blanket ban on public employment or delivery of publicly-funded services to anyone wearing a symbol of his or her religious belief. This would conceivably cover not only hijabs, niqabs and burqas but Christian crucifixes, Jewish kippahs and Sikh kirpans.

In fact, the kirpan — a ceremonial dagger worn concealed in the clothing of a Sikh male — was the symbol at issue in a 2006 Supreme Court of Canada judgment that was widely attacked by hard-line secularists in Quebec. When Gurbaj Singh Multani was pulled out of a French-language school because he was wearing a kirpan, he had to enrol in an English private school. When the court upheld his right to wear the kirpan, he greeted its ruling as a sign that young Sikhs could now attend French school and become integrated into Quebec society — a right the school’s decision had denied him. The parallels with Naïma Amed’s case are striking.

(Incidentally, Bill 94’s legislative sponsor, Attorney General Kathleen Weil, forged her legal career as counsel for Alliance Quebec, a federally-funded Anglophone lobby group that fought tooth and nail against Quebec’s popular Charter of the French Language, a.k.a. “Bill 101”.)

It was precisely the need to find ways to accommodate minority religious and cultural practices as a means of integrating them into Quebec society, in which French is the common language of public discourse, that has fostered the concept of “open secularism”. The concept was embraced by the government-appointed Bouchard-Taylor commission on accommodation practices, which recommended in its 2008 report that there be no such ban on the display of religious signs other than for “state agents in a position of authority” such as judges and police officers. A commission official, Pierre Bosset, recently told the newspaper Le Devoir that their recommendation had been directly inspired by a brief to the commission from the Bloc Québécois, the pro-sovereignty party in the federal Parliament.

The Bloc’s parliamentary leader, Pierre Paquette, has told Le Devoir that its position remains the same; it is the PQ, which took a similar stance with the B-T commission, that has now changed its position. The PQ claims to advocate “la laïcité tout court” (plain secularism), although it recently voted with the other parties to retain the giant crucifix hanging in the legislature. None of the major parties opposes property and other tax breaks for the churches, including the Catholic church that bars women from the priesthood.

The federal leaders of the Conservatives and Liberals support Bill 94. A spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper says it “makes sense”. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff says it is a “good Canadian balance”.

What about Québec solidaire, Quebec’s new left-wing party? At its convention last November, QS delegates voted by a substantial majority for a resolution favouring a “model of secularism” that combined neutrality of public institutions with individual freedom to express or display one’s own convictions. And they opposed dress codes that would restrict access to public services or employment, subject to exceptions for religious signs “used as instruments of proselytism”, interfering with a “duty of discretion” or violating safety or job performance standards.

How, then, is one to explain the qualified support for Bill 94 expressed by Amir Khadir, Québec solidaire’s lone MNA? In a statement posted on the party’s web site, Khadir says the government “has taken a step toward establishing guidelines on accommodation, which comes down to explicitly interpreting the notion of accommodation.” He says “it is reasonable, for example, to prohibit those holding positions of authority, such as police officers, judges or other peace officers, from wearing religious signs”. And he calls on the government to be “more active in ensuring equality of men and women when that equality is threatened by religious fundamentalisms.”

Religious “fundamentalists” are what the government claims it is attacking, when in reality it is the right of minorities to dress according to their religious beliefs. Niqabs and burqas are not in themselves evidence of fundamentalism. True, for many of us, they are symbols of patriarchy and women’s oppression. But for some Muslim women they are simply an integral expression of their private religious belief. In fact, the government’s bill does not “interpret the notion of accommodation”; it recognizes no right to accommodation. Instead, it limits the rights of some Québécois to jobs and services. It does not even mention religion — no doubt in an attempt to immunize it legally and constitutionally as a violation of religious freedom. Any why not allow cops and judges to wear insignia of their religious beliefs; wouldn’t that be more transparent than fostering the illusion that they are neutral in such matters?

Let us hope that the members of Québec solidaire will challenge and correct Khadir’s initial reaction to the bill, which now goes to public debate as it wends it way through the legislative process.

Let me conclude with some quotations from a hard-hitting comment by Sheetal Pathak in the McGill Daily. Her article bears careful reading:

“Why do we want to ban the niqab? It is at least partly because many consider it a symbol of patriarchy. Apparently we think we live in a post-feminist utopia where only the niqab and practices of “other” cultures are symbols of patriarchy. Marriage is a symbol of patriarchy. You know the part where the father gives away the bride, because she used to belong to her father, but now she belongs to the groom? It’s a symbol of an ancient and current practice of what Gayle Rubin called the traffic in women. So, let’s ban marriage! Any takers? No? Hmm.

“Furthermore, feminism and women’s liberation is about choice. Empowerment is about choice. Let’s say it again, folks, CHOICE. It is her body, and her choice how to dress it. In no way is it legitimate for anyone to question her decisions. She should not have to explain her reasons.”

Referring to Naïma Amed’s frustrated efforts to learn French, Pathak notes: “After being expelled from CEGEP St. Laurent, she did not give up; she found herself another French class in which to enrol. Subsequently, when denied again, she filed a human rights complaint against the province. These are not the actions of someone who is isolated or unwilling to integrate in Quebec society.” Yet “Quebec officials and politicians, the people who speak for us, refused to allow her to participate in Quebec society — all because of an over-politicized piece of cloth. All in all, wearing a niqab seems to be a tough gig….”

Tough gig, indeed. And Bill 94 will make it that much tougher, as well as fueling the mounting crusade against immigrants and minorities.

Why the Parti Québécois expelled SPQ Libre

A five-year long attempt to reform the Parti Québécois as an independentist and “social-democratic” party ended abruptly on March 13 when the PQ’s national executive decided not to renew recognition of its left-wing “political club” as an authorized grouping with the party. The decision, which effectively expelled Syndicalistes et Progressistes pour un Québec Libre (SPQ Libre)[1] from the party, was promptly approved by the PQ’s conference of constituency presidents.
The PQ leadership’s move coincided with a weekend symposium sponsored by the party on the theme of reorienting Québécois toward individual enrichment in place of collective enrichment — part of an ongoing campaign to win the hearts and votes of disaffected followers of Action Démocratique du Québec. The far-right ADQ, which the PQ replaced as Official Opposition in the December 2008 general election, has since slipped catastrophically in opinion polls and now ranks just below the left-wing party, Québec solidaire.
In 2005 the PQ had amended its statutes to allow SPQ Libre to join the party as an officially recognized “club”. Party leaders, including former Premier Bernard Landry, hoped to use SPQ Libre to forestall support for Québec solidaire, which was then being formed through a fusion of left-wing organizations. SPQ Libre member Monique Richard, former president of the CSQ, was elected President of the Parti Québécois and later elected as a PQ candidate to the National Assembly. Other prominent SPQ Libre members included Vivian Barbot, former president of the Quebec Women’s Federation (FFQ) and later a Bloc Québécois MP; former PQ minister Robert Dean; and Marc Laviolette, former president of the CSN (and current SPQ Libre president).
The PQ leadership’s surprise decision to expel SPQ Libre may have been provoked by the latter’s publication on the eve of the party symposium of a major document entitled (in translation) “To grow rich sustainably is to grow rich collectively”. It argued that Quebec’s enormous achievements toward overcoming its historic development lag within Canada had been achieved since the 1960s through state action in the interests of the Quebec nation collectively, and that this — not individual profit-seeking — should continue to be the trajectory and hallmark of a sovereign Quebec. The document said the only other option, which it described as “the federalist approach” — but was clearly the direction being mapped by PQ leader Pauline Marois and her executive — was to “lighten the tax burden of the better-off while crossing our fingers [in the hope] that the monies released would not go the path of tax havens but be reinvested in Quebec.”
The group’s expulsion sent a clear signal to the media, the ADQ, and the PQ membership and potential funding sources that such talk was no longer acceptable within the party.
Québec solidaire a lifeline?
But it also raised a new question as to where the now-homeless SPQ-Libre and its supporters might find a lodging. Québec solidaire was quick to respond with a statement issued March 14 by QS leaders Amir Khadir and Françoise David. They linked the expulsion of SPQ-Libre to the pressure on the PQ of the looming confrontation between the government and the Common Front of public-sector unions, whose contracts expire at the end of March. David noted that PQ leader Marois had recently criticized the Common Front wage demands as “somewhat high”. The PQ, said David, equated wealth creation with the abandonment of social justice, “the necessary ingredient of collective prosperity”.
“To defend the public sector union members, to press for recognition of the work done by health-care personnel and an end to their impoverishment, would displease our economic élite,” said Khadir. “The PQ desperately lacks the necessary political courage to stand up to these powerful interests.”
Journalist Paul Cliche, a QS member and long-time left activist — he led the Front d’Action Populaire, or FRAP, a municipal party that challenged the electoral machine of Montréal Mayor Jean Drapeau in the early 1970s — issued his own statement: SPQ Libre members could “console themselves, for there is another sovereigntist party, one resolutely progressive and turned toward the future, which is ready to welcome them — Welcome to Québec solidaire, comrades....” And indeed, the existence of SPQ Libre, with its orientation to working within the PQ, has been an ever-present reminder of the incomplete nature of the left regroupment process that gave birth to Québec solidaire.
SPQ Libre clings to PQ
However, a QS-SPQ Libre fusion, while it would help give Québec solidaire a stronger presence and influence within the labour movement, is not on the immediate agenda. In a statement issued March 18, SPQ Libre leaders declared their intention to continue working as individual members within the PQ and urged their supporters to get elected to PQ constituency executives and become delegates to the party’s next convention, in 2011. The statement holds out the hope that the party membership will somehow challenge and reverse the leadership’s rightward turn.
A parallel statement issued on the same date by SPQ Libre said that as an independent organization its “mandate” would expand, action within the PQ now being only one component. And in an act of pure hubris, it appealed “to independentists, progressives and trade unionists, whether members of the PQ or Québec solidaire or without a party” ... “to join our ranks”!
These statements, notwithstanding their defiant tone, confirm the hopelessness of the SPQ Libre strategy. As they relate, the group had complied with the PQ registration and filing requirements; its members had been “good soldiers”, running as PQ candidates in elections, publicly voting in favour of the party’s election platforms, loyally attempting to advance their positions within the party structures. Where they spoke out independently, as in newspaper articles published in their name, it had been to support strikes, oppose the war in Afghanistan, criticize cutbacks in healthcare, etc. — “current matters that are not contentious within the PQ, at least we hope so”.
In party debates, they had achieved “more victories than defeats” — winning party support for a resolution on nationalization of wind-power generation (soon disavowed by the party leader), another resolution to make French the sole language of instruction in the publicly funded junior colleges, proposals in favour of electrification of urban and inter-urban transportation, etc., while suffering defeat on such issues as ending government subsidies to private schools, or a proposal to allow a referendum on popular initiative, independently of government policy.[2]
But they had been accused of conducting their debates publicly instead of confining them to the party’s institutions. Fair enough, said SPQ Libre, but “it is hard to develop coherent thinking in two-minute interventions in the Constituency Presidents Council or the National Council, which meet only twice a year and where we had only one and two delegates, respectively.” And SPQ Libre was seldom invited to participate in party consultations. Furthermore, there was no attempt to use the new technologies to facilitate internal debate. “By new technologies, we don’t mean Twitter [which is offered on the PQ website]. Sorry, we’re willing to be concise, but 140 characters, that’s not enough for us!”
And now, despite all the efforts of SPQ Libre, the PQ seemed determined to “appease Capital”. Why was Pauline Marois questioning the wage demands of the Common Front? “We deplore the absence of any reference to the union movement in the new PQ discourse.... Any use of the words “ouvrier”, “travailleur” or “populaire” seems to be banished. Understandably, the existence of a political club including the word “syndicalistes” in its title could grate on some ears.”
More hope in the Bloc?
In short (although SPQ Libre does not say so), the Parti Québécois is what its left critics have long maintained: a bourgeois party, wholly committed to upholding capitalism, incapable of envisaging any reforms that might offer a perspective beyond the narrow horizon of neoliberalism. The PQ’s fundamental raison d’être is to use the resources of a “sovereign” state to enhance the standing and wealth of a narrow class of homespun Quebec capitalists who themselves are inextricably tied through investments and outlook to the economic and social system that oppresses the majority of Québécois. This party cannot be the vehicle for a truly independent and progressive Quebec.
It may be that many of SPQ Libre’s original members had already drawn that lesson. Although it boasted an initial membership of about 800, the group was down to some 400 or so by this year, and had just filed a list of 313 party members’ names with the PQ while promising a dozen more to follow. Québec solidaire already includes some former SPQ Libre members, and can hope for more in the future. Other members have simply been absorbed by the Parti Québécois; for example, Monique Richard, the former president of SPQ Libre and now a PQ MNA, did not oppose the club’s expulsion.
While continuing to hold individual memberships in the PQ, the SPQ Libre leadership seems to hold out greater hope for the federal Bloc Québécois, judging by a major article in the March issue of the monthly journal L’aut’journal. Pierre Dubuc, who doubles as the journal’s editor and SPQ Libre secretary, used the occasion of the Bloc’s 20^th anniversary since its founding to score some points against the PQ leadership and to outline an optimistic perspective of a new rise in the Quebec independence movement in response to trends within the Canadian federal state. Dubuc praised the Bloc as a party more conscious of the federalist threat to Quebec than its sister party in Quebec City, the PQ, attributing this firmness in part to the presence of leading trade union figures in its parliamentary deputation. Dubuc is a talented journalist and a perceptive observer of Quebec and Canadian politics with a remarkable facility to articulate the historical perspective that informs the Quebec independence project, and his article, which I have translated below, merits careful reading.
There is one notable omission, however, in Dubuc’s comparison of the Bloc with the PQ. As I explained in a previous post, while the PQ is waging an Islamophobic campaign for a complete ban on public service employment and provision of government-funded services to anyone wearing conspicuous symbols of their religious faith (such as the hijab or Muslim headscarf), the Bloc supports what it terms “open secularism” and is more receptive to accommodation of public displays of the beliefs of religious and ethnic minorities. Dubuc’s L’aut’journal, however, has itself been conducting a retrograde Islamophobic campaign of its own. Louise Mailloux, a regular columnist in the journal, has written many articles not only attacking “reasonable accommodation” of minority religious beliefs, and in particular Muslims, but viciously attacking Québec solidaire leader Françoise David for her party’s support of “open secularism”.
Differences of this nature, on an important question of principle, could prove a major if not insuperable obstacle — at least in the short run — to a fusion between SPQ Libre and Québec solidaire.
-- Richard Fidler


Bloc Québécois celebrates 20 years of resistance
by Pierre Dubuc
“We are resisting Canada’s attempts to reduce Quebec to the rank of a province like the others. That’s what we are: resisters! That’s what a great Québécois, a great sovereigntist — Pierre Vadeboncoeur — said about the Bloc, and he was a thousand times right. For the time being, we are resisters. But yesterday’s resisters will be tomorrow’s winners.”
With these words Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc Québécois, closed the party’s General Council meeting held on the occasion of the Bloc’s 20th anniversary. It is the use of this beautiful expression, “resisters”, which admirably describes the role played by the Bloc in Ottawa, that has offended [Foreign Affairs Minister] Lawrence Cannon, [Opposition Liberal leader] Michael Ignatieff and other leading lights among the federalists.
The use of the word “resister” no doubt reminded them too much of these words — “Tonight, here and throughout my journey, I found myself in an atmosphere similar to that of the Liberation” — pronounced by General de Gaulle on the balcony of [Montreal’s] City Hall before his famous cry: “Vive le Quebec libre”, Long Live Free Quebec.
The then Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, and today’s politicians, do not like to be compared to an army of occupation. But they’re as thick as thieves when it comes to multiplying the legal and constitutional obstacles to Quebec’s accession to national independence.
What’s more, following the 1995 referendum, Stephen Harper tabled a bill advocating partition of Quebec’s territory in the event of a victory of the sovereigntist camp. As for Michael Ignatieff, he greeted the imposition of the War Measures Act by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1970 and says the Québécois should rejoice at the British Conquest because it brought them democracy.
Who is naive enough to believe that these habitués of dirty tricks — the 1995 “love-in”, the sponsorship scandal, etc. — would not be tempted by a power grab should the Yes side win in a coming referendum? As the old adage goes, “It’s always the dominant class that puts the bayonet on the agenda.”
To prevent possible excesses along these lines, we have only one response: the broadest possible mass mobilization. And the only real organizational base in a position to orchestrate such a deployment is the trade-union movement. This was demonstrated anew on March 20, with the demonstration of 75,000 people of the Common Front in the streets of Montreal.
Is it the ongoing association with the hard-line federalists in Ottawa? Is it because they have a close view of the workings of the federal machine? Whatever it is, the Bloc Québécois seems to have a better grasp of this elementary fact in our liberation struggle than its sister party in Quebec City. Its trajectory since its founding 20 years ago is remarkable in this regard. From a nationalist coalition of Conservative MPs — remember, the Bloc is a split from the Progressive Conservative Party — it has evolved into a nationalist party in which the social-democratic forces are strongly represented.
The Bloc and its leader have woven some tight links with the trade-union movement, and a fair number of its MPs come from it — in addition to Gilles Duceppe himself, there are the likes of Pierre Paquette, Luc Desnoyers, Francine Lalonde and Yves Lessard. And it does not seem that this proximity with the union movement has been a millstone; the Bloc has won all six elections in which it has participated.

The Bloc’s presence in Ottawa has placed a log-jam in Canadian politics, preventing the formation of a majority government. For decades Liberals and Conservatives succeeded each other in office, the Conservatives allying with Quebec nationalists in order to succeed. It was only with the support of Maurice Duplessis that John Diefenbaker was able to form a majority government, and Brian Mulroney could not have been elected without the assistance of René Lévesque when he exchanged sovereignty for the “beau risque”.

Stephen Harper thought he could repeat the exploit with his recognition of the Québécois nation and granting Quebec a seat at UNESCO, but that was without taking into account the presence of the Bloc Québécois.
Today, Liberals and Conservatives alike know they can no longer hope to make enough gains in Quebec to form a majority government. So what is to be done? They think they have found the magic recipe in the overhaul of the electoral map. In the last three Throne speeches, Stephen Harper has promised legislation along these lines, but without ever following through. For now.
This week the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation, linked to the University of Toronto, published a study on the distortions of the electoral map that passed almost unnoticed in the Francophone press but attracted much comment in the Anglophone press.
Canada’s demographic evolution has produced serious distortions in the fundamental principle of any democracy, representation by population. The provinces of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, whose populations have grown rapidly over recent decades, are under-represented in the House of Commons. In fact, according to the Mowat Centre, 61% of the Canadian population are under-represented at Ottawa.
Since two provisions of the Canadian Constitution provide that a province cannot have fewer MPs than Senators or fewer seats than it had in 1985, the solution involves adding MPs in the provinces where the population has increased. According to the calculations of the Mowat Centre, to comply with the principle of representation by population it would be necessary to add 11 seats in Ontario, 4 in British Columbia and 3 in Alberta. Ontario has already demanded 21 additional seats on the basis of other calculations.
Irrespective of the exact number of additional MPs granted to these three provinces, it will be sufficient to allow the formation of a majority government without Quebec.
The overhaul of the electoral map has not yet taken place, but the Liberals, the Conservatives and the entire federalist political class are already functioning as if it was a fait accompli. Quebec was absent from the Throne speech and the budget speech, just as it was at the Olympic Games in Vancouver.
Once Quebec has become aware of its marginalization within Canada — the inevitable result of losing its demographic weight, which is irreversible in the short term — you can bet that this will provoke a shock wave as powerful as the one provoked in the late 1960s by the discovery of the decline of French in Quebec as a result of the fall in the Francophone birthrate and the anglicization of the Allophones that produced the riots in Saint-Léonard and the adoption of several language laws prior to the enactment of the Charter of the French Language!
Of course, some voices will be raised to beg for recognition of a special status for Quebec. The voices of those who have already forgotten the rejection of the minimum conditions in the Meech Lake Accord. The voices of those who will not understand that English Canada is no longer prepared to make concessions to Quebec.
After the Conquest, only our demographic weight obliged England to make concessions in the form of the Quebec Act of 1774, to prevent Quebec from joining in the American Revolution. Later, it was only our numerical weight that made Canada a federation instead of a unitary state. Now that this obstacle has been lifted in part, Canada can be built without and even against Quebec.
We have already had the proof of this in two votes on a matter of crucial importance: the extension of the mission in Afghanistan. Is there anything more important in politics than war and peace? Quebec, through its parliamentary representatives in Ottawa, voted in the majority against. But that did not prevent Canada from being at war, from sending its soldiers — including those from Quebec — into combat, from spending billions of dollars on weapons, almost a quarter of it from the pockets of the Québécois.
As Gilles Duceppe was saying, thanks to the Bloc Québécois Quebec resists Canada’s attempts to reduce Quebec to the rank of a province like the others. And we take this 20th anniversary as the occasion to pay tribute to the work accomplished by the Bloc and its leader. But it is obvious that nothing will stop the federal steamroller if we do not put the question of national independence on the agenda, as quickly as possible.
Translated from L’aut’journal, March 26, 2010

---

[1] The name translates freely as Trade-unionists and progressives for a Free Québec.
[2] An op-ed article in Le Devoir by Jean Baribeau, the SPQ Libre treasurer, however, presented a different balance sheet. The group, he said, had “sparked many debates, had some successes and suffered many defeats”.

Quebec government bows to witch-hunt against immigrants and cultural minorities

With its Bill 94, introduced last week in the Quebec National Assembly, the Liberal government has joined the crusade against Muslims and other minorities. The bill would deny government-funded health care, education and child care services to all whose clothing prevents disclosure of their face, and would bar them from government and public-service employment.

The bill patently targets a tiny number of Muslim women who wear niqabs (which limit facial visibility to their eyes) or burqas (which totally conceal the face). However, as an initial limitation on universality of public services and equal job opportunities, the government’s action has encouraged the loud voices calling for a ban on the hijab or scarf worn by thousands of Muslim women, as well as further dress code restrictions that would affect the rights of other religious and cultural minorities to jobs and services.

The bill is already being termed the “Naïma law” in reference to a Muslim immigrant of Egyptian origin, Naïma Amed, who was recently expelled by the government from French-language classes she was taking in order to practice her profession as a pharmacist. Amed, who wears a niqab, was told repeatedly and insistently to remove it — although she had lowered her veil many times, to be photographed for her student identification card and then on numerous occasions in class at the request of the teacher and despite the presence of the male students. Expelled from one language school, she was studying at another when the immigration ministry found out and interrupted her during an exam to expel her.

The case was widely publicized — and very inaccurately reported — in the Quebec Francophone media. Although Muslim organizations report that at most a couple dozen women among the 200,000 Muslims in Quebec wear the niqab or burqa — the human rights commission recently reported that out of 146,000 people served in provincial health insurance board offices in 2008-09, 10 were veiled — Naïma Amed’s ordeal fueled the growing debate in Quebec over “reasonable accommodation” of minority cultural practices. A Manifesto for a Pluralist Quebec, advocating an “open secularism” that respects freedom of conscience in a context of state neutrality, was countered recently by a Declaration of Intellectuals for Secularism calling for a ban on all personal displays of “religious signs” such as the Muslim hijab in public institutions. The self-proclaimed “intellectuals” who signed it include prominent nationalist politicians, academics and trade unionists.

Bill 94 is draconian in its provisions. Montreal Gazette columnist Don Macpherson asks whether it could be “invoked to refuse emergency medical treatment in a non-life-threatening situation to an injured woman wearing a niqab? Or to bar a girl from publicly-funded schools if she starts to wear the face veil when she reaches puberty, as some Muslim women do?” That, he says, is “what Premier Jean Charest and his justice minister, Kathleen Weil, have implied is the intent of the bill.”

Macpherson notes that the bill

“would establish a ‘general practice’ that during ‘the delivery of services’ by a public employee to an individual, both would have to ‘show their face.’ This practice would apply even when it is not necessary for security reasons or identification purposes. So a niqabi, as women wearing Muslim face veils are called, who requests an income-tax form at a government service counter could be turned away. And the bill provides no specific exceptions for emergencies.”

The bill says an “adaptation” of the practice could be made if “dictated by the right to equality” under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. But, as Macpherson notes,

“The Quebec Charter recognizes a right to assistance only for someone ‘whose life is in peril.’ And Bill 94 would take precedence over every law and regulation other than the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights. But, as its title says, the bill would establish only ‘guidelines.’ It would be up to each department, body, or institution to ensure compliance. So the bill could be interpreted differently from one school board to another. The court system could be clogged with challenges.”

The Official Opposition in the National Assembly, the Parti Québécois, has denounced Charest’s bill and calls for a blanket ban on public employment or delivery of publicly-funded services to anyone wearing a symbol of his or her religious belief. This would conceivably cover not only hijabs, niqabs and burqas but Christian crucifixes, Jewish kippahs and Sikh kirpans.

In fact, the kirpan — a ceremonial dagger worn concealed in the clothing of a Sikh male — was the symbol at issue in a 2006 Supreme Court of Canada judgment that was widely attacked by hard-line secularists in Quebec. When Gurbaj Singh Multani was pulled out of a French-language school because he was wearing a kirpan, he had to enrol in an English private school. When the court upheld his right to wear the kirpan, he greeted its ruling as a sign that young Sikhs could now attend French school and become integrated into Quebec society — a right the school’s decision had denied him. The parallels with Naïma Amed’s case are striking.

(Incidentally, Bill 94’s legislative sponsor, Attorney General Kathleen Weil, forged her legal career as counsel for Alliance Quebec, a federally-funded Anglophone lobby group that fought tooth and nail against Quebec’s popular Charter of the French Language, a.k.a. “Bill 101”.)

It was precisely the need to find ways to accommodate minority religious and cultural practices as a means of integrating them into Quebec society, in which French is the common language of public discourse, that has fostered the concept of “open secularism”. The concept was embraced by the government-appointed Bouchard-Taylor commission on accommodation practices, which recommended in its 2008 report that there be no such ban on the display of religious signs other than for “state agents in a position of authority” such as judges and police officers. A commission official, Pierre Bosset, recently told the newspaper Le Devoir that their recommendation had been directly inspired by a brief to the commission from the Bloc Québécois, the pro-sovereignty party in the federal Parliament. The Bloc’s parliamentary leader, Pierre Paquette, has told Le Devoir that its position remains the same; it is the PQ, which took a similar stance with the B-T commission, that has now changed its position. The PQ claims to advocate “la laïcité tout court” (plain secularism), although it recently voted with the other parties to retain the giant crucifix hanging in the legislature. None of the major parties opposes property and other tax breaks for the churches, including the Catholic church that bars women from the priesthood.

The federal leaders of the Conservatives and Liberals support Bill 94. A spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper says it “makes sense”. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff says it is a “good Canadian balance”.

What about Québec solidaire, Quebec’s new left-wing party? At its convention last November, QS delegates voted by a substantial majority for a resolution favouring a “model of secularism” that combined neutrality of public institutions with individual freedom to express or display one’s own convictions. And they opposed dress codes that would restrict access to public services or employment, subject to exceptions for religious signs “used as instruments of proselytism”, interfering with a “duty of discretion” or violating safety or job performance standards.

How, then, is one to explain the qualified support for Bill 94 expressed by Amir Khadir, Québec solidaire’s lone MNA? In a statement posted on the party’s web site, Khadir says the government “has taken a step toward establishing guidelines on accommodation, which comes down to explicitly interpreting the notion of accommodation.” He says “it is reasonable, for example, to prohibit those holding positions of authority, such as police officers, judges or other peace officers, from wearing religious signs”. And he calls on the government to be “more active in ensuring equality of men and women when that equality is threatened by religious fundamentalisms.”

Religious “fundamentalists” are what the government claims it is attacking, when in reality it is the right of minorities to dress according to their religious beliefs. Niqabs and burqas are not in themselves evidence of fundamentalism. True, for many of us, they are symbols of patriarchy and women’s oppression. But for some Muslim women they are simply an integral expression of their private religious belief. In fact, the government’s bill does not “interpret the notion of accommodation”; it recognizes no right to accommodation. Instead, it limits the rights of some Québécois to jobs and services. It does not even mention religion — no doubt in an attempt to immunize it legally and constitutionally as a violation of religious freedom. Any why not allow cops and judges to wear insignia of their religious beliefs; wouldn’t that be more transparent than fostering the illusion that they are neutral in such matters?

Let us hope that the members of Québec solidaire will challenge and correct Khadir’s initial reaction to the bill, which now goes to public debate as it wends it way through the legislative process.

Let me conclude with some quotations from a hard-hitting comment by Sheetal Pathak in the McGill Daily. Her article bears careful reading:

“Why do we want to ban the niqab? It is at least partly because many consider it a symbol of patriarchy. Apparently we think we live in a post-feminist utopia where only the niqab and practices of “other” cultures are symbols of patriarchy. Marriage is a symbol of patriarchy. You know the part where the father gives away the bride, because she used to belong to her father, but now she belongs to the groom? It’s a symbol of an ancient and current practice of what Gayle Rubin called the traffic in women. So, let’s ban marriage! Any takers? No? Hmm.

“Furthermore, feminism and women’s liberation is about choice. Empowerment is about choice. Let’s say it again, folks, CHOICE. It is her body, and her choice how to dress it. In no way is it legitimate for anyone to question her decisions. She should not have to explain her reasons."

Referring to Naïma Amed’s frustrated efforts to learn French, Pathak notes: “After being expelled from CEGEP St. Laurent, she did not give up; she found herself another French class in which to enrol. Subsequently, when denied again, she filed a human rights complaint against the province. These are not the actions of someone who is isolated or unwilling to integrate in Quebec society.” Yet “Quebec officials and politicians, the people who speak for us, refused to allow her to participate in Quebec society — all because of an over-politicized piece of cloth. All in all, wearing a niqab seems to be a tough gig....”

Tough gig, indeed. And Bill 94 will make it that much tougher, as well as fueling the mounting crusade against immigrants and minorities.

-- Richard Fidler

Profs protest university scholarship program promoting Canadian military

Congratulations to the 16 professors at the University of Regina who have sent a letter to the university’s president Vianne Timmons saying it should withdraw from the program known as “Project Hero”. The program, an initiative of Rick Hillier, a retired general, offers free tuition to the children of dead Canadian soldiers. Hillier, as Chief of the Defense Staff, was notorious for his war-mongering propaganda about killing Afghan resistance “scumbags”. In addition to the thousands of Afghans killed by Canadian forces, close to 140 Canadian soldiers have died in that country, and thousands more have been permanently disabled physically or mentally.

According to the Globe & Mail, “Several universities have signed onto the program, including Memorial University in Newfoundland and the universities of Ottawa, Windsor and Calgary. The University of Regina announced earlier this month that it would provide the scholarship starting in September.”

The professors’ letter says Project Hero is “a glorification of Canadian imperialism in Afghanistan and elsewhere.” Instead of “privileging the children of deceased Canadian soldiers,” it says, “we suggest that our administration demand all levels of government provide funding sufficient for universal qualified access to post-secondary education.”

The professors’ action has been met, predictably, by a storm of criticism in the corporate media and denunciation by the Royal Canadian Legion, which purports to speak for military veterans.

The Globe quotes political science prof Joyce Green, who signed the letter: The program “conflates heroism with the death of individuals who are in the military service and we think that the death of individuals is always a tragic matter, but we think that heroism is something different,” Ms. Green said.

“When you attach heroism to the deaths of the military, it makes it very difficult, maybe impossible for us to talk about what’s going on, what the nature of our military engagement is. In other words, it shrinks the space for democratic discussion and criticism of military policy in Canada and in the university.”

Few media outlets have actually published the text of the letter. Here it is:

Dear President Timmons:

We write to you as concerned faculty members of the University of Regina, to urge you to withdraw our university immediately from participation in the “Project Hero” scholarship program. This program, which waives tuition and course fees, and provides $1,000 per year to “dependents of Canadian Forces personnel deceased while serving with an active mission”, is a glorification of Canadian imperialism in Afghanistan and elsewhere. We do not want our university associated with the political impulse to unquestioning glorification of military action.

“Project Hero” is the brainchild of Kevin Reed, a 42-year-old honorary lieutenant-colonel of an army reserve unit in southwestern Ontario, who has said publicly he was inspired by the work of retired Canadian General Rick Hillier. General Hillier, one of the most controversial figures in the recent military history of this country, was the first to introduce “Project Hero” at a Canadian post-secondary institution, just after he took up the post as Chancellor of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Since then, a number of other public Canadian universities have come on board.

In our view, support for “Project Hero” represents a dangerous cultural turn. It associates “heroism” with the act of military intervention. It erases the space for critical discussion of military policy and practices. In signing on to “Project Hero”, the university is implicated in the disturbing construction of the war in Afghanistan by Western military- and state-elites as the “good war” of our epoch. We insist that our university not be connected with the increasing militarization of Canadian society and politics.

The majority of young adults in Canada find it increasingly difficult to pay for their education. If they do make it to university, they rack up massive student debts which burden them for years. Instead of privileging the children of deceased Canadian soldiers, we suggest that our administration demand all levels of government provide funding sufficient for universal qualified access to post-secondary education.

The University of Regina has always been closely tied to our Saskatchewan community, and the strategic plan, mâmawohkamâtowin, means "co-operation; working together towards common goals". We do not think that “Project Hero” is a common goal chosen by those of us who work in the University; it is not drawn from the values of this institution. We think it is incompatible with our understanding of the role of public education, or with decisions made by a process of collegial governance.

In addition to withdrawing from “Project Hero”, we think the issues we raise should be publicly debated. We are calling on the U of R administration to hold a public forum on the war in Afghanistan, and Canadian imperialism more generally, at which the issues we raise can be debated. This forum should be open to all; it should take place this semester, before exams, as “Project Hero” is set to start at U of R in September 2010.

To summarize, we are calling for:

(1) The immediate withdrawal of our university from “Project Hero”.

(2) An institutional deployment of public pressure on both orders of government to provide immediate funding sufficient for universal access to post-secondary education.

(3) A public forum on the war in Afghanistan and Canadian imperialism more generally to be held this semester before exams begin.

Signatures:

Joyce Green, Department of Political Science

J.F. Conway, Department of Sociology and Social Studies

George Buri, Department of History

Emily Eaton, Department of Geography

Jeffery R. Webber, Department of Political Science

David Webster, International Studies

Annette Desmarais, International Studies

Darlene Juschka, Women’s and Gender Studies and Religious Studies

Meredith Rogers Cherland, Faculty of Education

Garson Hunter, Social Work

John W. Warnock, Department of Sociology and Social Studies

William Arnal, Department of Religious Studies

Leesa Streifler, Department of Visual Arts

Carol Schick, Faculty of Education

Ken Montgomery, Faculty of Education

André Magnan, Department of Sociology and Social Studies"

UPDATE: Since I posted this report, I have received the following note:

The 15 signatories are under serious attack by the far right calling on the administration for their jobs (four of are non-tenured). Saskatchewan's federal member of parliament is demanding that they publicly apologize, and the premier of the province, Brad Wall, has denounced them.

The signatories of the letter are asking that you distribute this letter and call for solidarity far and wide so as to generate letters and campaigns of support for resistance to expressions of Canadian imperialism on campus and the 15's right to freedom of expression.

To express solidarity please send letters of support for the Regina 15, and against Project Hero and Canadian imperialism, to University of Regina President Vianne Timmons, Vianne.Timmons@uregina.ca and Vice-President Academic, Gary Boire, Gary.Boire@uregina.ca.

Please send a copy of the letters to jeffery.webber@uregina.ca.

Thank you, and solidarity,

Supporter of the Regina 15

Examples of news coverage, criticism, and threats of attacks against the Regina 15:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2010/03/25/sk-wall-scholarship-1003.html

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/spar+over/2727636/story.html

http://www.leaderpost.com/professors+against+Project+Hero+scholarship+dependents+fallen+soldiers/2722393/story.htmlhttp://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/27/413704.aspxhttp://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/project-hero/#clip281584

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/project-hero/#clip281318

'Free speech' hypocrisy over Ann Coulter

I didn't attend the protests over US right-wing shock jock Ann Coulter's meeting at University of Ottawa on Tuesday night -- I was at the book launch for the new Canadian edition of Ian Angus's book, The Global Fight for Climate Justice (congratulations, Ian) -- but I wonder if there isn't an important lesson for the left in the public uproar over "free speech" that has erupted in the wake of Coulter's cancellation of her appearance.

Briefly, for those who haven't seen the extensive coverage in the Canadian press, Coulter was invited by the campus Conservative club to address a public meeting as part of her three-city tour sponsored by the ultraright "International Free Press Society". This society is headed by Ezra Levant, a former Tory MP who once republished the infamous Danish anti-Mohammed cartoons in an obscure on-line publication. Angered by reports of Coulter's racist, Islamophobic, homophobic and just plain reactionary views -- she's a commentator on Fox News -- the University student union moved to prohibit posters advertising the meeting and called on the university to ban Coulter's appearance. A Facebook group was formed to urge readers to attend and disrupt the talk, but also to sign a petition "to ban Ann Coulter from our campus". It was publicized by, among others, the International Socialists.

The University did not ban the meeting, but its vice-president academic and provost, François Houle, sent Coulter an email warning her that under Canada's criminal and defamation laws she should be mindful not to make herself liable for "promoting hatred" against an "identifiable group". Whatever his intentions -- the letter could, on its face, be construed as sound legal advice -- Houle's message, not the criminal legislation itself, was seized on by a range of right-wing commentators as an infringement of "free speech". In this polarized atmosphere, between one and two thousand students showed up to protest Coulter's speech, most of them unable to make their way into the meeting room which could accommodate only 400. Coulter's organizers then cancelled her appearance, citing "security" concerns. Student federation president Seamus Wolfe was exultant: "I'm proud students came together to prevent Ann Coulter -- someone who has constantly waded well into the territory of hate speech -- from using a public institution as a soapbox to spread her vile message," he was reported as saying.

The right wing lost no time in turning the incident into an attack on the left and progressive causes, all in the name of "free speech". Typical is the lead editorial in today's Ottawa Citizen, entitled "Mob rules at the U of O". It cites "the spectacle at the University of Ottawa" as an example of the "thuggery of student activists... a growing problem at Canadian campuses". As examples of what it termed "totalitarianism on Canadian campuses", the editorial cited a protest at Montréal's Concordia University that "prevented Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking", and alleged harassment of "pro-life student groups". And, of course, the recent week of activities on the city's campuses sponsored by Students Against Israeli Apartheid was mentioned -- although in the editorial's version, "no one threatened to assault the organizers or disrupt the event." In fact, last year the administration at Carleton University banned the poster advertising that event, and university and government officials across Canada have harassed students and others who are critical of Israel.

These "free speech" protests are sheer hypocrisy. Where was the Ottawa Citizen, or all the other right-wing defenders of "free speech", when British MP George Galloway was banned by the government from entering Canada for an antiwar speaking tour? Or just last week, when Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti was denied a visa to attend anti-Zionist events in Canada? Or the recent government funding cuts to church groups and rights organizations that have assisted Palestinians or been critical of Israel's policies? As Globe & Mail columnist Lawrence Martin notes today (in an exception to most of the news coverage of the U of O incident), for the Tory government, "freedom of expression depends on the type of expression". It's OK for an Ann Coulter. But not for many others, including government officials and whistle-blowing civil servants who don't toe the government's line. Martin cited a whole series of such incidents. The Coulter incident, in fact, gave the real censors of free speech and transparency a pretext to pass themselves off as democrats when the reality is quite otherwise.

I think it was inspiring to find so many students willing to protest the views of Coulter and her Conservative friends. But, for what it's worth, I think the student union and its supporters should have given more thought to the message they wished to convey. The same student leaders have in recent years had to fight for their right to speak out on the campuses and elsewhere in opposition to Israeli Apartheid and in defense of other progressive causes. Why should they place themselves in a position to be portrayed as opponents of the free speech of others? It is one thing to protest the content of Coulter's message, another to call on the university or other authorities to ban her meeting. An effective protest might have included, in addition to the protest outside, an organized attempt to ensure critical attendance at the meeting, where her views could be confronted and challenged.

And we need to be wary of legal restrictions on speech such as the "hate propaganda" provisions in the Criminal Code. More often than not, they will be used against the left, not the right. Hate-propaganda bans give the state further weapons in criminalizing dissent -- as we see when the likes of Jason Kenney, Canada's Immigration minister, threaten to use it against the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

-- Richard Fidler

Solidarity in Action with the Palestinians: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions

 

March 1-7, the Sixth Annual Israeli Apartheid Week will be held around the globe.

Since it was first launched in 2005, IAW has grown to become one of the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar. Last year, more than 40 cities around the world participated in the week's activities, which took place in the wake of Israel's brutal assault against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. IAW continues to grow with new cities joining this year.

IAW 2010 takes place following a year of incredible successes for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement on the global level. Lectures, films, and actions will highlight some of theses successes along with the many injustices that continue to make BDS so crucial in the battle to end Israeli Apartheid. Speakers and full programme for each city will be available soon.

For details on the actions planned in many cities, click on http://apartheidweek.org/.

For an account of the achievements of the campaign to date, and suggestions for the steps ahead, see “Palestine Solidarity Victories Alarm Pro-Israel Lobby” and “Next Steps for the Palestinian Solidarity Movement”.

The BDS campaign has been met by a vicious reaction from Zionist and pro-imperialist circles, including leading figures in the Canadian government and all parties in Parliament. Not to be outdone, the Ontario legislature voted February 25, with all-party support, to denounce Israeli Apartheid Week. Predictably, press reports highlighted the support for the motion by the NDP representative, Cheri DiNovo. Support by the NDP and many trade-union officials is highly valued by these reactionary circles.

In sharp contrast to the NDP, the new left-wing party Québec solidaire, at its November 2009 convention, voted unanimously to support the BDS campaign. And the February-March 2010 issue of the popular Quebec magazine À Bâbord !, which is generally sympathetic to Québec solidaire, carried the following article, entitled “Boycott d’Israël (BDS): Réflexions sur la campagne palestinienne”. My translation.

Boycott of Israel (BDS): Thoughts on the Palestinian campaign

by Fabienne Preséntey

member of Independent Jewish Voices (Canada)[1]

Launched in 2005, the call by more than 150 organizations of Palestinian civil society for a campaign of “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) is shaking an Israeli society immured in its refusal to confront more than 60 years of life built on lies erected around a founding vision proclaiming “A land without people for a people without land”.

The BDS campaign defies the anti-Arab and Islamophobic Western propaganda that permeates North American and European economic and geopolitical positions. This propaganda implies that Israel is a “watch-dog” for their interests in the Middle East — a role that Israel has agreed to play since 1948.

Despite the realities — the flouting of the human rights of the Palestinians, the non-compliance with international law, the fanaticism of the messianic colonists — the BDS campaign arouses uneasiness, anger and accusations of anti-Semitism. A campaign to boycott Israel represents a choice that is hard to accept in Western countries, for the Palestinian campaign challenges the foundations of two major myths of victimization, in that it urges us (1) to act against some Jews, the archetypal victimized people of the 20^th century, and to break with 60 years of Western guilt related to their massacre; (2) to dare to consider the Palestinian people not as a grouping of exemplary victims but as a people who are capable of gaining control over their fate.

The BDS campaign is a Palestinian act of refusal of resignation. An attempt to innovate in action, it demonstrates the capacity of the Palestinian people to take control of their own affairs, outside of the existing political authorities, and to send an unequivocal message to the State of Israel. It also demonstrates that over the long term no people accepts domination, occupation and colonization.

Apartheid, Israel and the BDS campaign

Israel is not South Africa. Unlike South African apartheid, the Zionist movement did not foresee the establishment of Bantustans for the Palestinian Arabs. Its objective was the creation of an exclusively Jewish state, a national homeland without an Arab presence. But it is no accident that the State of Israel today includes the attributes of an apartheid state, albeit with some particular features that differentiate it from the South African model. The similarities are clear in Israeli-style “structural separation”:

1. two countries conceptualized as “European states” in non-European settings, the latter viewed as inferior;

2. two states founded on inequality of rights based on ethnic identity reinforced by the legal apparatus and discriminatory political practices;

3. two states in which military force is essential in securing colonization, occupation and social and territorial segregation.

The BDS campaign collides not only with the historical construct aimed at overcoming the memory of the prior occupation of the territory by the Arabs, but also with the thesis that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash between two national movements of equal legitimacy. It is threatening, for its objective is quite clear: to force Israel to comply with international law. Moreover, it brings hope to the Palestinian people, as was the case during the boycott against South African apartheid.

The BDS campaign aims to win recognition of the fundamental individual and collective rights of the Palestinians, putting an end to the occupation and colonization of their territory. The discriminatory dimensions of Israeli policies are “ignored” by the majority of Israelis and disguised in the Jewish communities around the world. Today in Israel, a majority of the population does not perceive itself as colonizers or as an occupying nation.

The BDS campaign is necessary for it is ONE way to resist the highly sophisticated public relations campaign conducted by the Israeli government and world Jewish organizations to counter the negative images of the war and occupation. As Naomi Klein notes:

“The Israeli government openly uses culture as a military tool.... So the foreign ministry launched a campaign called "Israel Beyond the Conflict," which involves using culture, film, books, the arts, tourism and academia to create all kinds of alliances between Western countries and the state of Israel, and to promote the image of a normal, happy country, rather than an aggressive occupying power.... We are dealing with a state strategy to co-opt all of that to make a brutal occupation more palatable.”[2]

Finally, let us note that the BDS campaign is not aimed at Israelis but at a state that systematically violates international law, and fails to comply with the Geneva conventions or the countless agreements signed over the last 60 years. Issued by Palestinian civil society and supported by the movement against the Israeli occupation, it urges us to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict otherwise than through our old eyeglasses fogged by ancient fears and dogmas.

“No Israeli who claims to support the rights of the Palestinian people can reasonably turn his or her back to this campaign; having stated for years that ‘armed struggle is not the right option,’ it would be over the top for those Israeli militants to seek to discredit this BDS strategy. On the contrary, we should all join the campaign to ‘Boycott from within’.’... That is the least we can do, and it is the least we must do.” – Michel Warschawski, Founder of the Alternative Information Center

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[1] “Jewish Conference Votes to Support Boycott of Israel”, http://tinyurl.com/mz57rr.

[2] Naomi Klein, “Naomi Klein Shows You Can Boycott Israel Without Cutting Off Dialogue Over Palestine”, http://www.alternet.org/story/142341/?page=entire.