More than 100 foreign delegates that represent 79 communist and workers’ parties from 61 countries of the world, from all continents are expected to take part in the procedures of the 13^th international Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties which will be hosted by the KKE in Athens on 9-11 December 2011.

The global Occupy Movement swept across Toronto on the weekend of 15th October. For five weeks, protesters engaged in daily protests, coordinated around the St. James Park encampment, until the police-enforced eviction on 23rd November 2011. What lessons can be drawn from the experience?

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The historian J.A. Getty, one of the most respected authorities on Soviet history, remarked of the Stalin-era:

“For no other period or topic have historians been so eager to write and accept history-by-anecdote. Grand analytical generalizations have come from second-hand bits of overheard corridor gossip. Prison camp stories (‘My friend met Bukharin’s wife in a camp and she said…’) have become primary sources on central political decision making. The need to generalize from isolated and unverified particulars has transformed rumours into sources and has equated repetition of stories with confirmation. Indeed, the leading expert on the Great Purges has written that ‘truth can thus only percolate in the form of hearsay’ and that ‘basically the best though not infallible sources is rumour.’ As long as the unexplored classes of sources include archival and press material, it is neither safe nor necessary to rely on rumour or anecdote.”

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Since coming to power in 2006, the Harper government has aggressively pursued a "law and order" agenda, criminalizing social issues and turning the struggles of the Canadian people for their rights into law and order matters. Ever larger numbers of people, including minority, aboriginal and poor youth are targeted as criminals and terrorists under the pretext that they are a threat to the "safety and security" of Canadians, while their demands that society provide their rights with a guarantee go unheeded. This is a social problem that requires a social solution. According to the Smart Justice Network, in the last five years alone, those being remanded (held in jail because they are denied bail or cannot afford bail) until their trial, has increased 40 per cent, with many of these youth under the age of 30. Statistics Canada reports that in 2008/09, more than 52 per cent of youth in custody were held in remand. In other words, they have not been found guilty of anything, but are still imprisoned.

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