TO THE LEADERS OF THE PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION PARTIES IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
June 2nd 2011
Don Currie Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism (CPS)
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
Phone: 250 355 2669
www.FocusOnSocialism.ca
No All-Party Parliamentary Support for Prime Minister Harper’s US -NATO War on Libya!
The US-NATO war of terror against Libya is designed to send a message to all of the people of the Middle East and Africa that governments and movements of the people that lack the approval of US-NATO potentates such as Prime Minister Harper will face murderous punishment, using the most advanced weaponry.
The US-NATO war on Libya is poised to enter a new and more dangerous phase with the deployment of massive US-NATO sea, air and land forces . A land invasion is planned. Canadian armed forces will be part of this aggression. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25081
The leaders of the US-NATO North Atlantic-Euro alliance, calling themselves the “international community”, presume to set the international standard of governance for all countries of the world. Those who don’t abide by that standard will be militarily attacked.
Leaders lacking the approval of the US-NATO overlords are routinely demonized and assassinated. Governments are overthrown and replaced, civilians killed, their homes, their schools, their hospitals, their environment destroyed at will. Leaders and Governments that defy the US-NATO overlords and attempt to dispose of their own oil and other resources, build economies that suit their needs, conduct their internal affairs as they see fit, without first seeking the approval of US-G8-NATO potentates are bombed into the dark ages. In essence, that is the foreign policy of the Conservative Government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
A majority of Canadians have not decided that Prime Minister Harper’s foreign policy has their support. Recent polls suggest otherwise. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/05/31/pol-environics-poll.html. Even many Conservatives do not support US-NATO aggression.
The collusion among all of the parties during the federal election to mute foreign policy debate made it difficult for Canadians to voice their opinion on these crucial issues. Failure to discuss foreign policy helped Prime Minister Harper win a majority.
Given the opportunity to express their opinion it is doubtful if the current war policy of the Conservative Government would be supported by a majority of Canadians. Canadian public opinion has time and again supported a foreign policy of peace and diplomacy, not war and propaganda. http://yvesengler.com/2011/03/29/why-canada-attacked-libya/
It is time to say, that there are principles that are greater than upholding convenient UN Resolutions that are simply contrivances of the G8 powers to do an end run around the principles of the UN Charter. Resolutions that permit the most powerful armed states in the world to launch pre-emptive war against small weaker states is still an international crime that is not absolved because it is sanctioned by a UN Security Council resolution.
Libya is a member state of the UN. Libya poses no threat nor done any harm to Canadians. UN Resolution 1973 ostensibly to protect Libyan civilians has been super-ceded by the US –NATO doctrine of regime change, a device to overthrow any government unwilling to live on its knees. The reward for the US-NATO aggressors is to possess and divide up the Libyan oil fields as booty.
Prime Minister Harper has placed the strategic goals of the USA above the peace and security of Canada and its people. Canadian Government participation in NATO serial wars in Central Asia, the Middle East and now North Africa will bring Canada and its people to harm.
The Harper Conservative Government chooses war as the first option of its foreign and military policy. Prime Minister Harper has no peace policy, no policies of diplomacy. Prime Minister Harper rejects out of hand all proposals for cease fire, third party mediation, any policy except the NATO strategy of shock and awe war and regime change.
The Harper Conservative Government, not satisfied with participation in one foreign war of aggression now seeks to involve Canada, its armed forces and its youth in others. The USA has targeted Iran, Syria and North Korea as countries having governments it seeks to overthrow. Cuba is another. The Harper Doctrine is to provide knee jerk uncritical support to any US instigated war.
Such a failure of policy cannot continue to be supported.
Continuation of the US-NATO war against Libya will further inflame regional and global tensions and ignite further conflicts.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has returned from the G8 demanding all MP’s rubber stamp an open-ended NATO war of aggression and regime change against the sovereign state of Libya. Prime Minister Harper expects all-party Parliamentary approval to continue Canadian Armed Forces bombing of Tripoli until Muammar Qaddafi is dead, Libya is in ruins, and a rebel government in waiting in Washington is installed on the rubble in Tripoli. The NATO mission will then be completed and the Libyan oil fields can be divided among the big oil investors of the G8 states.
Prime Minister Harper asserts there is no international role for Canada to play except by Canadian CF18’s continuing to drop hundreds more laser guided bombs on Libya, killing Libyan citizens, men women and children, and destroying the vital civilian infrastructure that provided them with one of the highest standards of living in North Africa.
All party endorsement of the Harper Conservative government policy of support for NATO serial wars of regime change would be an admission of failure on the part of all of the opposition parties and that they also have abandoned any pretense of an independent Canadian foreign policy of peace.
It is time to end this abject support for US-NATO wars.
No All Party Support for Prime Minister Harper’s War Policy! Canada Out of Afghanistan! Out of Libya!
Left Turn Canada!
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Now What?
The Way I See It!
November 24, 2010
Lenin and Catastrophe!
For left progressives who wish only to bring honour to the name revolutionary, now would be a good time to re-read V.I. Lenin’s “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It”, Volume 25 of Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers 1964.
Written in the period September 14-20th 1917 following the overthrow of the Czarist regime, during the period of the Kerensky bourgeois government and as Russia hurtled towards the October Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin in his exemplary style, kept pace with events, unfailingly guiding the proletarian revolutionary forces towards the victorious socialist revolution.
The work is full of illuminating insights for today’s revolutionaries who consider tailing events to be unworthy and the worst of all opportunist mistakes during a period of economic crisis and war.
Tailism is a Marxist term for after the fact brilliance of insight into events posing as leadership.
The internet is full of such insight usually from a gaggle of academia playing their favorite game of “gotcha” polemics, competing with each other as to who can shout the loudest and with clever panache calling upon the capitalists to reform themselves. Or Else!
Or Else What?
After the fact brilliance of insight has many geniuses today none of which help the working class to advance its cause that much as class conscious workers shrug their shoulders and say: “Yah! I know that…NOW WHAT?”
NOW WHAT INDEED!
NOW WHAT must be answered even if the answer is not provided as fully today as Lenin, in his day answered that question.
The worst failing of tailism is its impotence. Tailism obviates the hard work of organization reducing the working class to accept denunciation in place of organized struggle. Finance capital shrugs off denunciation as detritus. The only exposure it fears is that which leads to overwhelming public censure and mass action culminating in its loss of freedom.
Unlike Russia in 1917 Canada in 2010 is not yet in a revolutionary situation. Nor is it in a period of rest and calm. The Canadian economy and political system is in the midst of developing crisis phenomena that will not mechanistically self-correct. The public is urged by media hype and silver tongued capitalist shills to passively accept that the economic and political pendulum will swing from neo-con right to liberal- reformist “ left” if only we wait for it to happen.
The class struggle underway in Canada is no different in essence from France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Iceland or any number of G20 states where mass labour actions are underway. The process everywhere is dialectical not mechanistic and it will not self-correct in the interests of the working people without mass public and organized intervention led by organized labour.
The struggles of today are not about going back to where we were, which was never so hot in any case, but to go forward to something new not as yet fully clear that improves the conditions of life for working people.
WHERE TO START?
If one reads Lenin’s “The Impending Catastrophe” and lays down the work and leaves it with only one thought, that thought should be Lenin’s statement that monopoly capitalism is imperialism and that state monopoly capitalism is imperialism in the 20th Century.
The Canadian organized labour movement is late in completely accepting that truth. It is late because its social reformist leadership doesn’t believe that Lenin’s definition is true. The socialist reformist leadership clings to the illusion that capitalism in the 21st Century is still capable of progressive development.
Social reformism is wrong. Being wrong in the past on this matter could mask labour’s exploited status and for a privileged section relative full employment and rising wages was possible because the capitalist system was expanding and labour got the crumbs. That is not the situation today. Today the capitalist economy cannot expand universally but only in selected areas where finance capital seeks maximum profit, summed up as the energy sector, speculative rentier capital and militarism and war.
So investment decisions can continue in preferred sectors of the economy it chooses, and without accountability to the nation for the consequences, finance capital rejects the very idea of restrictions on any of its freedoms. While insisting on unrestricted rights to invest where it pleases, at the same time finance capital insists the state imposes restrictions on labour to give up wage gains, accept worsened working conditions, give up pension benefits, agree to privatization of universal social programs, and surrender hard won democratic rights to organize, bargain and defend the industries and communities they have built.
To paraphrase Lenin, when he called upon the workers to continue the revolutionary process and advance to socialism, he warned that to stop at the period of the bourgeois democratic revolution meant – to accept controls and labour for the working class, freedom and idleness for the rich. Lenin counseled that the rich do not allow themselves to be controlled and consider freedom to be their unlimited right to impose controls on others.
It is not only OK to fight to reverse the equation and for workers to put controls on finance capital. It has become the burning question of our time.
When the Lenin’s definition that state monopoly capitalism is imperialism and the form of capitalism in the 21st Century is grasped fully, all possibilities will be open to the people to put monopoly under control in the only way that really counts – to restrict finance capital freedom of action and subordinate it to the interests of the nation and the vast majority who create the wealth of this place we call Canada.
What could be more democratic than that?
To Be Continued…
Next…
The Banks – Not a Public Industry – The Private Back Room of State Monopoly Capital.
Left Turn Canada!
November 24, 2010
Lenin and Catastrophe!
For left progressives who wish only to bring honour to the name revolutionary, now would be a good time to re-read V.I. Lenin’s “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It”, Volume 25 of Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers 1964.
Written in the period September 14-20th 1917 following the overthrow of the Czarist regime, during the period of the Kerensky bourgeois government and as Russia hurtled towards the October Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin in his exemplary style, kept pace with events, unfailingly guiding the proletarian revolutionary forces towards the victorious socialist revolution.
The work is full of illuminating insights for today’s revolutionaries who consider tailing events to be unworthy and the worst of all opportunist mistakes during a period of economic crisis and war.
Tailism is a Marxist term for after the fact brilliance of insight into events posing as leadership.
The internet is full of such insight usually from a gaggle of academia playing their favorite game of “gotcha” polemics, competing with each other as to who can shout the loudest and with clever panache calling upon the capitalists to reform themselves. Or Else!
Or Else What?
After the fact brilliance of insight has many geniuses today none of which help the working class to advance its cause that much as class conscious workers shrug their shoulders and say: “Yah! I know that…NOW WHAT?”
NOW WHAT INDEED!
NOW WHAT must be answered even if the answer is not provided as fully today as Lenin, in his day answered that question.
The worst failing of tailism is its impotence. Tailism obviates the hard work of organization reducing the working class to accept denunciation in place of organized struggle. Finance capital shrugs off denunciation as detritus. The only exposure it fears is that which leads to overwhelming public censure and mass action culminating in its loss of freedom.
Unlike Russia in 1917 Canada in 2010 is not yet in a revolutionary situation. Nor is it in a period of rest and calm. The Canadian economy and political system is in the midst of developing crisis phenomena that will not mechanistically self-correct. The public is urged by media hype and silver tongued capitalist shills to passively accept that the economic and political pendulum will swing from neo-con right to liberal- reformist “ left” if only we wait for it to happen.
The class struggle underway in Canada is no different in essence from France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Iceland or any number of G20 states where mass labour actions are underway. The process everywhere is dialectical not mechanistic and it will not self-correct in the interests of the working people without mass public and organized intervention led by organized labour.
The struggles of today are not about going back to where we were, which was never so hot in any case, but to go forward to something new not as yet fully clear that improves the conditions of life for working people.
WHERE TO START?
If one reads Lenin’s “The Impending Catastrophe” and lays down the work and leaves it with only one thought, that thought should be Lenin’s statement that monopoly capitalism is imperialism and that state monopoly capitalism is imperialism in the 20th Century.
The Canadian organized labour movement is late in completely accepting that truth. It is late because its social reformist leadership doesn’t believe that Lenin’s definition is true. The socialist reformist leadership clings to the illusion that capitalism in the 21st Century is still capable of progressive development.
Social reformism is wrong. Being wrong in the past on this matter could mask labour’s exploited status and for a privileged section relative full employment and rising wages was possible because the capitalist system was expanding and labour got the crumbs. That is not the situation today. Today the capitalist economy cannot expand universally but only in selected areas where finance capital seeks maximum profit, summed up as the energy sector, speculative rentier capital and militarism and war.
So investment decisions can continue in preferred sectors of the economy it chooses, and without accountability to the nation for the consequences, finance capital rejects the very idea of restrictions on any of its freedoms. While insisting on unrestricted rights to invest where it pleases, at the same time finance capital insists the state imposes restrictions on labour to give up wage gains, accept worsened working conditions, give up pension benefits, agree to privatization of universal social programs, and surrender hard won democratic rights to organize, bargain and defend the industries and communities they have built.
To paraphrase Lenin, when he called upon the workers to continue the revolutionary process and advance to socialism, he warned that to stop at the period of the bourgeois democratic revolution meant – to accept controls and labour for the working class, freedom and idleness for the rich. Lenin counseled that the rich do not allow themselves to be controlled and consider freedom to be their unlimited right to impose controls on others.
It is not only OK to fight to reverse the equation and for workers to put controls on finance capital. It has become the burning question of our time.
When the Lenin’s definition that state monopoly capitalism is imperialism and the form of capitalism in the 21st Century is grasped fully, all possibilities will be open to the people to put monopoly under control in the only way that really counts – to restrict finance capital freedom of action and subordinate it to the interests of the nation and the vast majority who create the wealth of this place we call Canada.
What could be more democratic than that?
To Be Continued…
Next…
The Banks – Not a Public Industry – The Private Back Room of State Monopoly Capital.
Left Turn Canada!
Monday, November 22, 2010
Prime Minister Harper Subverts Parliament
The Way I See It!
Don Currie, Editor Focus on Socialism
Good Jobs, Reduced CO2 Emissions - Without Shutting Down the Energy Sector
November 22, 2010
The Conservative Senate has killed an NDP sponsored Bill on climate change to protect maximum profits of big foreign and domestic oil and gas investors and shareholders. Every Senator that voted to kill the bill should be compelled to disclose their personal investments in big oil.
The Senators voted for something even more important than killing the NDP Bill. The unelected Conservative dominated Senate veto of an NDP Bill on climate change, passed by the elected members of Parliament last May, was a political act by the minority Stephen Harper Conservative Government to strengthen extra-parliamentary corporate rule of the people of Canada. Senate hearings were certain to expose the corporate connection to the Harper government.
The NDP Bill alarmed big foreign and domestic oil investors and their corporate shareholders that their privileged position in the state and the backrooms of the Conservative Government was being challenged by the elected Parliament of Canada.
The NDP Bill would, in practice have imposed emission guidelines on big oil and compelled them to divert some of their exorbitant profits to reducing CO2 emissions. When the choice is between corporate profits and a clean environment, the Harper Government has made it clear on many occasions that it upholds the primacy of maximum corporate profit over the needs of the people of Canada.
Prime Minister Harper not only killed a bill, he killed a democratic principle of majority rule.
The subverting of Parliamentary democracy is no small matter. Even more sinister is the statement by the Prime Minister Harper that he killed the NDP Bill in the economic interests of Canadian workers and their jobs. Harper was speaking directly to workers employed in the energy industry. Harper is saying to the people who labour in the energy sector that their only choice is between jobs and a clean environment.
The Prime Minister is fear mongering. The people of Canada can have both good jobs and drastically reduced green house gas emissions, without shutting down the energy sector. To do that, the energy sector must be publicly owned and controlled with big oil monopolies placed under the control of the people and compelled to operate on the basis of the best scientific and technical practices possible.
Harper operates on the corporate principle, espoused by the extreme right wing in Canadian politics that the only responsibility a corporation has is to its shareholders. That principle overrides all others in capitalist society. The tyranny of a handful of wealthy shareholders over the interests of the entire country remains unchallenged in the Parliamentary debate on the issue because all of the Parliamentary parties including the opposition parties do not challenge that capitalist principle.
The principle is obsolete because the system that upholds it is also obsolete. A government is required that will enact plans to expand the economy, take action to reduce green house gas emissions in the only way possible, at the expense of a parasitical class of investors and shareholders whose only allegiance is to maximum profit.
The only type of government that can do that is one that places the interests of the workers and their families first guaranteeing both full employment and a clean environment.
Left Turn Canada!
Don Currie, Editor Focus on Socialism
Good Jobs, Reduced CO2 Emissions - Without Shutting Down the Energy Sector
November 22, 2010
The Conservative Senate has killed an NDP sponsored Bill on climate change to protect maximum profits of big foreign and domestic oil and gas investors and shareholders. Every Senator that voted to kill the bill should be compelled to disclose their personal investments in big oil.
The Senators voted for something even more important than killing the NDP Bill. The unelected Conservative dominated Senate veto of an NDP Bill on climate change, passed by the elected members of Parliament last May, was a political act by the minority Stephen Harper Conservative Government to strengthen extra-parliamentary corporate rule of the people of Canada. Senate hearings were certain to expose the corporate connection to the Harper government.
The NDP Bill alarmed big foreign and domestic oil investors and their corporate shareholders that their privileged position in the state and the backrooms of the Conservative Government was being challenged by the elected Parliament of Canada.
The NDP Bill would, in practice have imposed emission guidelines on big oil and compelled them to divert some of their exorbitant profits to reducing CO2 emissions. When the choice is between corporate profits and a clean environment, the Harper Government has made it clear on many occasions that it upholds the primacy of maximum corporate profit over the needs of the people of Canada.
Prime Minister Harper not only killed a bill, he killed a democratic principle of majority rule.
The subverting of Parliamentary democracy is no small matter. Even more sinister is the statement by the Prime Minister Harper that he killed the NDP Bill in the economic interests of Canadian workers and their jobs. Harper was speaking directly to workers employed in the energy industry. Harper is saying to the people who labour in the energy sector that their only choice is between jobs and a clean environment.
The Prime Minister is fear mongering. The people of Canada can have both good jobs and drastically reduced green house gas emissions, without shutting down the energy sector. To do that, the energy sector must be publicly owned and controlled with big oil monopolies placed under the control of the people and compelled to operate on the basis of the best scientific and technical practices possible.
Harper operates on the corporate principle, espoused by the extreme right wing in Canadian politics that the only responsibility a corporation has is to its shareholders. That principle overrides all others in capitalist society. The tyranny of a handful of wealthy shareholders over the interests of the entire country remains unchallenged in the Parliamentary debate on the issue because all of the Parliamentary parties including the opposition parties do not challenge that capitalist principle.
The principle is obsolete because the system that upholds it is also obsolete. A government is required that will enact plans to expand the economy, take action to reduce green house gas emissions in the only way possible, at the expense of a parasitical class of investors and shareholders whose only allegiance is to maximum profit.
The only type of government that can do that is one that places the interests of the workers and their families first guaranteeing both full employment and a clean environment.
Left Turn Canada!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Response To Gary Keenan email to Bob Rae
Dear Friends
Sometimes an email is particularly illuminating and prompts thoughts not to be denied…Since this is the era of the great internet discourse, when one can speak to the world not sure if anyone is listening, some thoughts, with apologies to no one…
Gary Keenan, I find, to be among the most trenchant and consistent voices for the just cause of the Palestinian people. I don’t know who he is but in my books he is a straight shooter…If you are not on his list serve you may want to consider joining.
Keenan has caused me to reflect on liberal-democracy that holy of holies…that big tent where every scoundrel that ever was loves to hid and huddle in self-righteousness…wearing reinforced leather pants to straddle the fence…
In this open letter Keenan exposes one of the most objectionable of all of the Israeli apologists in Canada, that unctuous liberal-democrat, Bob Rae (the former Ontario NDP “friend of labour”). Rae along with the likes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (another social democratic “friend of labour” and architect of the Bush war in Iraq), Hillary Clinton US Secretary of State another liberal-democrat and women’s rights advocate no less– (so long as the women are not Gazan), Lawrence Cannon, another “democrat”, formerly a Liberal, who jumped to the Conservatives and now as Foreign Minister works with another liberal-democratic luminary Irwin Cotler as loyal Canadian MP’s no less, promoting the anti-Palestinian policy of the Israeli Government inside the Parliament of Canada.
The liberal-democratic NDP Federal Parliamentary Caucus and its advisors, cowed by ex-banker Thomas Mulchair, another liberal democrat, joined with Prime Minister Harper a neo-con in an unseemly pillorying and bullying of NDP MP Libby Davies, one of the few remaining brave voices in the NDP caucus who dares to speak publicly in defense of the just cause of the Palestinian people. Libby Davies rose from the ranks of people’s struggles in East Vancouver and deepened her conviction about justice as a candidate of COPE. She has been to Gaza twice.
Jack Layton’s timidity and complicity in all of this sordid Liberal-Conservative deference to the rogue behavior of the State of Israel, following the Israeli military attack in international waters on the Gaza Flotilla, during which many unarmed people were summarily executed by Israeli commandos, just because they were acting in solidarity with the people of Gaza, should be cause for an immediate NDP leadership review. Layton has gone too far this time…In my view he has nowhere to go but out…
As it stands now, Layton by falling to his knees, begging the Israeli Ambassador and the Israeli Parliamentary lobby’s forgiveness for NDP MP’s presuming to have a point of view different from that of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, is not only unseemly and demeaning, it hasn’t won a single vote among the pro-Israeli supporters in Canada. Harper has all of those votes. What has been lost, irrevocably, are NDP votes among labour, peace and genuinely democratic voters who are not afraid to denounce Israeli state terror when they see it and expect the NDP Caucus to do likewise.
Probe a little deeper in all of this amoral liberal democratic politics and one will find that most of the aforementioned Canadian liberal-democrats, including Liberal Irwin Cotler, the Harper Conservatives and at least one member of the NDP Caucus all together supporting the anti-Communist “Tribute to Liberty” project. This is the group of Canadian WW2 revanchists, that laments the defeat of Hitler and disparages the role of the red Army in defeating Nazism in WW2 and seeks to write the Soviet Union out of the history of WW2.
We leave it to the pro-Israeli lobbyists to explain their association with the modern day inheritors of the legacy of those forces who in WW2 collaborated with Hitler, and were complicit in assisting the SS to round up Jews for Nazi death camp mass murder along with millions of other anti-fascists. How ironic that one of Bob Rae’s relatives was a victim of Hitler’s corporate death industry and now lies buried in Buchenwald…as are other brave Canadians who died there at the hands of the SS along with the German and Internationalist Communist hero, Ernst Thalmann. How ironic indeed…
When Hitler enacted his anti-communist laws upon coming to power with the blessing of the British Government and began interning and murdering Communists, the first front-line opponents of fascism, many of whom had fought in Spain against Franco, these brave people were condemned by Nazi judges, under Nazi laws of the day that defined them as “terrorists” and “criminals”.
Many at the time who knew better remained silent, keeping a low profile and because they were good respectable liberal-democrats and of course, against “terrorism” believed they were safe from Hitler’s goons. One fact that deserves mentioning is that some social democratic labour leaders of that time approached Hitler and offered to cease opposing his policies if their unions would remain unscathed. Hitler played along, just long enough to come to power and then promptly banned all independent trade union activity, confiscated their property, jailed their leaders and to set up fake Nazi unions.
Fast forward to 2010. Today, in Poland, promoted in the west as a country suitably cleansed of its Communist past and now an acceptable liberal-democratic state, a loyal member of NATO, taking its que from Hitler has enacted legislation banning all Communist symbols. The EU Parliament has considered other such anti-communist legislation. A wave of anti-communism is spreading throughout Europe.
Failure to connect the dots, as the saying goes, is always fatal for democracy. The line that connects all right-wing extremist forces and factions today, many masquerading as opponents of “terrorism” all converge on anti-communism, the very last refuge of a scoundrel. The youth of today cannot yet be expected to know that.
Bob Rae has no excuse…
Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
_____________________________________
From: Gary Keenan [mailto:garydkeenan@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 1:35 PM
To: Gary Keenan
Subject: Reply to MP Bob Rae: "Regarding the situation in Gaza"
--- On Tue, 6/29/10, Gary Keenan wrote:
From: Gary Keenan
Subject: Re: Regarding the situation in Gaza
To: Rae.B@parl.gc.ca
Received: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 12:34 PM
Mr. Rae et al.
What a feeble unprincipled response!! You write: "As a Party, we believe that the basis of this peace must be a safe and secure Israel that is recognized by and living side-by-side in peace with a viable Palestinian state. It must also include a full resolution of the many complex issues affecting this region. Ultimately, the best way to resolve the conflict is direct negotiation between the parties, with the assistance of the international community."
Which particular "Israel" is to be "recognized" by the Palestinians? "Israel" as recommended by the 1947 Partition Plan, or perhaps "Israel" within the 1949 cease-fire boundaries, or then again, maybe an "Israel" that includes Palestinian and other Arab lands it still illegally occupies as a result of the war it launched on 5 June 1967? In short, how do you expect the Palestinians to recognize a country that does not recognize itself, i.e,. define its borders in accordance with international law and binding UNSC resolutions, including Resolution 242?
You refer to the necessity of "direct negotiations between the parties, with the assistance of the international community." Since when has an occupied people been obligated to negotiate an end to occupation with its illegal/belligerent occupier? We did not expect occupied France to negotiate with Germany during WWII. Nor did we insist that occupied Kuwait negotiate with Iraq in 1991.
Instead of all of this gutless pro-Israel lobby pandering bafflegab, the Liberal Party should be demanding forthrightly that Israel comply with international law and withdraw unconditionally from all lands it has occupied since 5 June 1967. (Any adjustments to borders must be minor and mutually agreed to.)
Having meticulously researched the matter, I can assure you that there is no provision in international law that enables Israel to violate it with impunity. By "international law," I am referring primarily to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which came about as a result of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, including the systematic slaughter of six million Jews.
I regret to say that the position the Liberal Party takes on the Israel/Palestinian-Arab conflict forces one to conclude that it has in effect abandoned hard-won international law, that the 60 plus million people who perished in WWII did so for nothing.
Your position on the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Arabs which is only marginally better than that of the Harper government, is cowardly, does nothing to bring peace to the region, has a negative effect on Canada's international standing and our real geopolitical interests in the 21st century and for what should be obvious reasons, ill serves Canadian Jews.
In conclusion, I remind you that as recent surveys attest, the views of average Canadians are in conflict with those of the Liberal Party. They want Canada to take a principled position based on humanitarian law that supports the legitimate rights of the Palestinians who are the occupied, the oppressed, the dispossessed, not one that kow tows to Israel, the occupier, oppressor and victimizer.
I look forward to your prompt reply.
Sincerely,
Gary Keenan
________________________________________
From: "Rae.B@parl.gc.ca"
To: garydkeenan@yahoo.com
Sent: Tue, June 29, 2010 11:17:14 AM
Subject: Regarding the situation in Gaza
Thank you for your e-mail regarding the situation in Gaza.
Both Mr. Rae and the Liberal Party share your concerns about this conflict and the suffering and loss of life on all sides.
Following the recent ceasefire, Mr. Rae and fellow members of the Liberal Party continue to stand with the international community in its efforts to build a lasting peace in this region. As a Party, we believe that the basis of this peace must be a safe and secure Israel that is recognized by and living side-by-side in peace with a viable Palestinian state. It must also include a full resolution of the many complex issues affecting this region. Ultimately, the best way to resolve the conflict is direct negotiation between the parties, with the assistance of the international community.
The Liberal Party’s position reflects our long-standing commitment to peace, stability, justice and human rights in the Middle East. It also recognizes Canada’s proud humanitarian reputation. In the aftermath of this conflict, we must engage with the international community, which the Harper Government has largely failed to do, in order to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches those who need it and to help restore the communities that have been affected by the conflict.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your views on this important issue.
Sincerely,
Susan Humphrey
Special Assistant
Office of the Hon. Bob Rae, MP for Toronto Centre
(613) 992-5234
Sometimes an email is particularly illuminating and prompts thoughts not to be denied…Since this is the era of the great internet discourse, when one can speak to the world not sure if anyone is listening, some thoughts, with apologies to no one…
Gary Keenan, I find, to be among the most trenchant and consistent voices for the just cause of the Palestinian people. I don’t know who he is but in my books he is a straight shooter…If you are not on his list serve you may want to consider joining.
Keenan has caused me to reflect on liberal-democracy that holy of holies…that big tent where every scoundrel that ever was loves to hid and huddle in self-righteousness…wearing reinforced leather pants to straddle the fence…
In this open letter Keenan exposes one of the most objectionable of all of the Israeli apologists in Canada, that unctuous liberal-democrat, Bob Rae (the former Ontario NDP “friend of labour”). Rae along with the likes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (another social democratic “friend of labour” and architect of the Bush war in Iraq), Hillary Clinton US Secretary of State another liberal-democrat and women’s rights advocate no less– (so long as the women are not Gazan), Lawrence Cannon, another “democrat”, formerly a Liberal, who jumped to the Conservatives and now as Foreign Minister works with another liberal-democratic luminary Irwin Cotler as loyal Canadian MP’s no less, promoting the anti-Palestinian policy of the Israeli Government inside the Parliament of Canada.
The liberal-democratic NDP Federal Parliamentary Caucus and its advisors, cowed by ex-banker Thomas Mulchair, another liberal democrat, joined with Prime Minister Harper a neo-con in an unseemly pillorying and bullying of NDP MP Libby Davies, one of the few remaining brave voices in the NDP caucus who dares to speak publicly in defense of the just cause of the Palestinian people. Libby Davies rose from the ranks of people’s struggles in East Vancouver and deepened her conviction about justice as a candidate of COPE. She has been to Gaza twice.
Jack Layton’s timidity and complicity in all of this sordid Liberal-Conservative deference to the rogue behavior of the State of Israel, following the Israeli military attack in international waters on the Gaza Flotilla, during which many unarmed people were summarily executed by Israeli commandos, just because they were acting in solidarity with the people of Gaza, should be cause for an immediate NDP leadership review. Layton has gone too far this time…In my view he has nowhere to go but out…
As it stands now, Layton by falling to his knees, begging the Israeli Ambassador and the Israeli Parliamentary lobby’s forgiveness for NDP MP’s presuming to have a point of view different from that of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, is not only unseemly and demeaning, it hasn’t won a single vote among the pro-Israeli supporters in Canada. Harper has all of those votes. What has been lost, irrevocably, are NDP votes among labour, peace and genuinely democratic voters who are not afraid to denounce Israeli state terror when they see it and expect the NDP Caucus to do likewise.
Probe a little deeper in all of this amoral liberal democratic politics and one will find that most of the aforementioned Canadian liberal-democrats, including Liberal Irwin Cotler, the Harper Conservatives and at least one member of the NDP Caucus all together supporting the anti-Communist “Tribute to Liberty” project. This is the group of Canadian WW2 revanchists, that laments the defeat of Hitler and disparages the role of the red Army in defeating Nazism in WW2 and seeks to write the Soviet Union out of the history of WW2.
We leave it to the pro-Israeli lobbyists to explain their association with the modern day inheritors of the legacy of those forces who in WW2 collaborated with Hitler, and were complicit in assisting the SS to round up Jews for Nazi death camp mass murder along with millions of other anti-fascists. How ironic that one of Bob Rae’s relatives was a victim of Hitler’s corporate death industry and now lies buried in Buchenwald…as are other brave Canadians who died there at the hands of the SS along with the German and Internationalist Communist hero, Ernst Thalmann. How ironic indeed…
When Hitler enacted his anti-communist laws upon coming to power with the blessing of the British Government and began interning and murdering Communists, the first front-line opponents of fascism, many of whom had fought in Spain against Franco, these brave people were condemned by Nazi judges, under Nazi laws of the day that defined them as “terrorists” and “criminals”.
Many at the time who knew better remained silent, keeping a low profile and because they were good respectable liberal-democrats and of course, against “terrorism” believed they were safe from Hitler’s goons. One fact that deserves mentioning is that some social democratic labour leaders of that time approached Hitler and offered to cease opposing his policies if their unions would remain unscathed. Hitler played along, just long enough to come to power and then promptly banned all independent trade union activity, confiscated their property, jailed their leaders and to set up fake Nazi unions.
Fast forward to 2010. Today, in Poland, promoted in the west as a country suitably cleansed of its Communist past and now an acceptable liberal-democratic state, a loyal member of NATO, taking its que from Hitler has enacted legislation banning all Communist symbols. The EU Parliament has considered other such anti-communist legislation. A wave of anti-communism is spreading throughout Europe.
Failure to connect the dots, as the saying goes, is always fatal for democracy. The line that connects all right-wing extremist forces and factions today, many masquerading as opponents of “terrorism” all converge on anti-communism, the very last refuge of a scoundrel. The youth of today cannot yet be expected to know that.
Bob Rae has no excuse…
Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
_____________________________________
From: Gary Keenan [mailto:garydkeenan@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 1:35 PM
To: Gary Keenan
Subject: Reply to MP Bob Rae: "Regarding the situation in Gaza"
--- On Tue, 6/29/10, Gary Keenan
From: Gary Keenan
Subject: Re: Regarding the situation in Gaza
To: Rae.B@parl.gc.ca
Received: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 12:34 PM
Mr. Rae et al.
What a feeble unprincipled response!! You write: "As a Party, we believe that the basis of this peace must be a safe and secure Israel that is recognized by and living side-by-side in peace with a viable Palestinian state. It must also include a full resolution of the many complex issues affecting this region. Ultimately, the best way to resolve the conflict is direct negotiation between the parties, with the assistance of the international community."
Which particular "Israel" is to be "recognized" by the Palestinians? "Israel" as recommended by the 1947 Partition Plan, or perhaps "Israel" within the 1949 cease-fire boundaries, or then again, maybe an "Israel" that includes Palestinian and other Arab lands it still illegally occupies as a result of the war it launched on 5 June 1967? In short, how do you expect the Palestinians to recognize a country that does not recognize itself, i.e,. define its borders in accordance with international law and binding UNSC resolutions, including Resolution 242?
You refer to the necessity of "direct negotiations between the parties, with the assistance of the international community." Since when has an occupied people been obligated to negotiate an end to occupation with its illegal/belligerent occupier? We did not expect occupied France to negotiate with Germany during WWII. Nor did we insist that occupied Kuwait negotiate with Iraq in 1991.
Instead of all of this gutless pro-Israel lobby pandering bafflegab, the Liberal Party should be demanding forthrightly that Israel comply with international law and withdraw unconditionally from all lands it has occupied since 5 June 1967. (Any adjustments to borders must be minor and mutually agreed to.)
Having meticulously researched the matter, I can assure you that there is no provision in international law that enables Israel to violate it with impunity. By "international law," I am referring primarily to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which came about as a result of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, including the systematic slaughter of six million Jews.
I regret to say that the position the Liberal Party takes on the Israel/Palestinian-Arab conflict forces one to conclude that it has in effect abandoned hard-won international law, that the 60 plus million people who perished in WWII did so for nothing.
Your position on the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Arabs which is only marginally better than that of the Harper government, is cowardly, does nothing to bring peace to the region, has a negative effect on Canada's international standing and our real geopolitical interests in the 21st century and for what should be obvious reasons, ill serves Canadian Jews.
In conclusion, I remind you that as recent surveys attest, the views of average Canadians are in conflict with those of the Liberal Party. They want Canada to take a principled position based on humanitarian law that supports the legitimate rights of the Palestinians who are the occupied, the oppressed, the dispossessed, not one that kow tows to Israel, the occupier, oppressor and victimizer.
I look forward to your prompt reply.
Sincerely,
Gary Keenan
________________________________________
From: "Rae.B@parl.gc.ca"
To: garydkeenan@yahoo.com
Sent: Tue, June 29, 2010 11:17:14 AM
Subject: Regarding the situation in Gaza
Thank you for your e-mail regarding the situation in Gaza.
Both Mr. Rae and the Liberal Party share your concerns about this conflict and the suffering and loss of life on all sides.
Following the recent ceasefire, Mr. Rae and fellow members of the Liberal Party continue to stand with the international community in its efforts to build a lasting peace in this region. As a Party, we believe that the basis of this peace must be a safe and secure Israel that is recognized by and living side-by-side in peace with a viable Palestinian state. It must also include a full resolution of the many complex issues affecting this region. Ultimately, the best way to resolve the conflict is direct negotiation between the parties, with the assistance of the international community.
The Liberal Party’s position reflects our long-standing commitment to peace, stability, justice and human rights in the Middle East. It also recognizes Canada’s proud humanitarian reputation. In the aftermath of this conflict, we must engage with the international community, which the Harper Government has largely failed to do, in order to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches those who need it and to help restore the communities that have been affected by the conflict.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your views on this important issue.
Sincerely,
Susan Humphrey
Special Assistant
Office of the Hon. Bob Rae, MP for Toronto Centre
(613) 992-5234
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Canadian Banks and the Canadian Economy – The Big Hoax Prime Minister Harper Will Foist on the G8 and G20
Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty are going to the G8 and G20 meetings June 25-27, 2010 claiming their policies have saved the Canadian economy from the global recession and have done so without giving a penny of public money to Canadian Banks.
Prime Minister Harper’s unctuous speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos Switzerland last January 28th 2010 dripping with praise for Canadian Banks laid out the Conservative Party corporate line that Harper will take first to the G8/G20 and then into the next federal election. The Prime Minister invites the Canadian electorate to believe that when privately owned banks are profitable so is the overall Canadian economy.The privately owned and controlled corporate media propaganda machine has dutifully promoted that message ever since.
The banks are thriving racking up record profits … but Stats Can for May reports over 8% of Canadian workers are still out of work. Most job growth has been in the low paid services sector. The 55 year old and over age category led by women workers is the group Stats claims is finding work.
The Stats Can report for May suggests that many middle aged women are being forced back to work to keep working class households going as laid off spouses seek work. Women in this age group, married and single traditionally have been in out of the work force as they raise families. A large group of partially employed women now confront sparse retirement income. Many are compelled to go back to work to try and build up CPP benefits as they approach retirement age. Most in this situation re-enter the work force lacking skills and are employed in low wage service jobs without benefits. The plight of middle aged women who have been denied the opportunity to a full education and economic independence now confront poverty in their old age proving once again that formal equality before the law is hallow if the actual second class status of women in the real economy continues.
Youth employment in the age group 14 to 25 has worsened. Youth unemployment at 7% is evidence of a stagnant economy. The largest group workers, men and women are in the age category 25 and over comprising 15.6 million of the total work force of 18.5 million. Seven and half percent of men in this category are unemployed. Women according to Stats Can in this age group are fully employed.
The Stats Can report will be news to the Canadian Labour Congress who in April 2010 released its own estimate of unemployment and linked it to the increasing difficulty of unemployed workers to get employment insurance.
While 1.4 million wage earners are out of work, at the other end of the scale a small group of wealth and privilege, the parasitical class that lives sumptuously from the labour of Canadian workers, revel in the fact that fewer employed people work harder and longer and produce the same or more of the use values and commodities Canadians and the world needs. As the Federal Government stimulus package winds down the situation will undoubtedly worsen bearing down even more heavily on the employed work force.
In spite of chronic mass unemployment Canadian GDP is actually growing. Productivity and wealth creation potential of the Canadian working people is remarkable evidenced by the fact that fewer produce more. If the unemployed were fully engaged in the economy productivity would rise even faster and higher. There would be more funds for expanding social programs and providing as the Canadian Labour Congress is demanding, a decent retirement benefit for all without exception. The struggle over who will control CPP, the beneficiaries or the finance capitalist elites is far from over. The investor classes covet the fund and will not end their efforts to get their hands on it.
Don Drummond, one of the more enlightened bourgeois economists, recently retired from his post as a top executive with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce claims that the Canadian economy is only producing at 79% of its potential. An advocate of full employment as the road to increased productivity, Drummond’s thesis should be read by all who buy the line that a low wage economy with a high rate of unemployment spurs productivity.
Drummond is no friend of labour and has been a faithful servant of the banking establishment. His view of Canadian economic development is simply more representative of that section of Canadian finance capital that is still interested in making profit out of the expansion of the home market in addition to selling out Canadian resources to the highest bidder.
Equating Bank profiteering to overall economic recovery is a capitalist view of capitalist economics not a working class view of capitalist economics.
It is pure hoakum that Canadian banks never received a Conservative Government aid package. What is true in Finance Minister Flaherty’s boast is this : The Canadian Banks didn’t need an aid package but got one anyway.
The Harper-Flaherty shell game, that moved about $200 billion to the service of the banks that didn’t need it and that created a smooth and seamless method for the banks to borrow public money from the CMHC fund and then lend it back to the government at a handsome profit is well documented. One of the best of these many exposures was by Michael Chossudovsky of Global Research. His paper on the subject is basic reading for labour and militant. As an aside it is the view of this observer, that Chossudovsky on all counts is way ahead of the CCPA Monitor and yet seems to be underutilized by the left progressive press.
What is even more than troubling, incomprehensible, is why the organized labour movement and the NDP, in particular its Parliamentary caucus is unable to stay on message about the corporate-banking collusion with the inner-cabinet of the Harper government and in particular the contacts maintained between the government and its appointed non-elected corporate advisory committee. The NDP and the CLC are called upon to relentlessly and publicly expose the fact that Harper is a crony of big business and revels in that role.
For decades, the Communists have been exposing what they define as a merger of finance capital and the state, or state monopoly capitalism, as the prevailing form of governing in the present era of capitalist development and calling for a united struggle to replace it with a new form of governance, a worker led democratic state of the working people. That strategic goal is dependent on a waging a public, relentless, inspired, contemporary rise in class-revolutionary consciousness on the left.
The form that opportunism among the Communists takes today is the belief that someone else will do it…!
Left Turn Canada.
Prime Minister Harper’s unctuous speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos Switzerland last January 28th 2010 dripping with praise for Canadian Banks laid out the Conservative Party corporate line that Harper will take first to the G8/G20 and then into the next federal election. The Prime Minister invites the Canadian electorate to believe that when privately owned banks are profitable so is the overall Canadian economy.The privately owned and controlled corporate media propaganda machine has dutifully promoted that message ever since.
The banks are thriving racking up record profits … but Stats Can for May reports over 8% of Canadian workers are still out of work. Most job growth has been in the low paid services sector. The 55 year old and over age category led by women workers is the group Stats claims is finding work.
The Stats Can report for May suggests that many middle aged women are being forced back to work to keep working class households going as laid off spouses seek work. Women in this age group, married and single traditionally have been in out of the work force as they raise families. A large group of partially employed women now confront sparse retirement income. Many are compelled to go back to work to try and build up CPP benefits as they approach retirement age. Most in this situation re-enter the work force lacking skills and are employed in low wage service jobs without benefits. The plight of middle aged women who have been denied the opportunity to a full education and economic independence now confront poverty in their old age proving once again that formal equality before the law is hallow if the actual second class status of women in the real economy continues.
Youth employment in the age group 14 to 25 has worsened. Youth unemployment at 7% is evidence of a stagnant economy. The largest group workers, men and women are in the age category 25 and over comprising 15.6 million of the total work force of 18.5 million. Seven and half percent of men in this category are unemployed. Women according to Stats Can in this age group are fully employed.
The Stats Can report will be news to the Canadian Labour Congress who in April 2010 released its own estimate of unemployment and linked it to the increasing difficulty of unemployed workers to get employment insurance.
While 1.4 million wage earners are out of work, at the other end of the scale a small group of wealth and privilege, the parasitical class that lives sumptuously from the labour of Canadian workers, revel in the fact that fewer employed people work harder and longer and produce the same or more of the use values and commodities Canadians and the world needs. As the Federal Government stimulus package winds down the situation will undoubtedly worsen bearing down even more heavily on the employed work force.
In spite of chronic mass unemployment Canadian GDP is actually growing. Productivity and wealth creation potential of the Canadian working people is remarkable evidenced by the fact that fewer produce more. If the unemployed were fully engaged in the economy productivity would rise even faster and higher. There would be more funds for expanding social programs and providing as the Canadian Labour Congress is demanding, a decent retirement benefit for all without exception. The struggle over who will control CPP, the beneficiaries or the finance capitalist elites is far from over. The investor classes covet the fund and will not end their efforts to get their hands on it.
Don Drummond, one of the more enlightened bourgeois economists, recently retired from his post as a top executive with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce claims that the Canadian economy is only producing at 79% of its potential. An advocate of full employment as the road to increased productivity, Drummond’s thesis should be read by all who buy the line that a low wage economy with a high rate of unemployment spurs productivity.
Drummond is no friend of labour and has been a faithful servant of the banking establishment. His view of Canadian economic development is simply more representative of that section of Canadian finance capital that is still interested in making profit out of the expansion of the home market in addition to selling out Canadian resources to the highest bidder.
Equating Bank profiteering to overall economic recovery is a capitalist view of capitalist economics not a working class view of capitalist economics.
It is pure hoakum that Canadian banks never received a Conservative Government aid package. What is true in Finance Minister Flaherty’s boast is this : The Canadian Banks didn’t need an aid package but got one anyway.
The Harper-Flaherty shell game, that moved about $200 billion to the service of the banks that didn’t need it and that created a smooth and seamless method for the banks to borrow public money from the CMHC fund and then lend it back to the government at a handsome profit is well documented. One of the best of these many exposures was by Michael Chossudovsky of Global Research. His paper on the subject is basic reading for labour and militant. As an aside it is the view of this observer, that Chossudovsky on all counts is way ahead of the CCPA Monitor and yet seems to be underutilized by the left progressive press.
What is even more than troubling, incomprehensible, is why the organized labour movement and the NDP, in particular its Parliamentary caucus is unable to stay on message about the corporate-banking collusion with the inner-cabinet of the Harper government and in particular the contacts maintained between the government and its appointed non-elected corporate advisory committee. The NDP and the CLC are called upon to relentlessly and publicly expose the fact that Harper is a crony of big business and revels in that role.
For decades, the Communists have been exposing what they define as a merger of finance capital and the state, or state monopoly capitalism, as the prevailing form of governing in the present era of capitalist development and calling for a united struggle to replace it with a new form of governance, a worker led democratic state of the working people. That strategic goal is dependent on a waging a public, relentless, inspired, contemporary rise in class-revolutionary consciousness on the left.
The form that opportunism among the Communists takes today is the belief that someone else will do it…!
Left Turn Canada.
Friday, September 18, 2009
An Open Letter to Jack Layton, Leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP)
Dear Mr. Layton
The Harper Conservative Government is a minority government of wealth and privilege. The first priority of Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty during the current global economic crisis has been to ensure that investor classes that live parasitically from corporate, bank, energy and arms profiteering are protected first. These are the interests that form the political support base of the Conservative Party.
The Harper Conservative Government has no record of protecting wage earners thrown out of work and onto the streets. Where is that record?
The Conservatives beginning with Brain Mulroney are the party and government that undermined the unemployment insurance system, turned it over to general revenue where it was plundered and used for everything except insuring the lost earnings of the unemployed.
Canada’s unemployment insurance benefits are far below the OECD average tied for last with Great Britain. To suggest as you and your advisors are doing, that by giving this discredited minority right wing government NDP Parliamentary support, you can charm and inveigle Prime Minister Harper to act in the interests of the unemployed is illusory.
There is one issue confronting Canada and its people in any confidence vote arising in the House of Commons in the days ahead. That issue is the overriding urgency of dealing a crushing defeat to the right wing Harper Government and to rid the country of its poisonous affect on democracy.
The majority of Canadians have never supported the right wing extremism represented by Prime Minister Harper. A direct and unambiguous rejection of its policies accords with what most Canadians want.
We call upon you to go over the heads of your clever advisors, over the heads of Parliamentary in-fighting and go directly to the labour movement, the peace movement, the environmental movement and Canadian electorate with a simple statement of unequivocal opposition to Conservative rule.
No NDP support for the right-wing Harper Conservatives.
Don Currie, Chair,
Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Dear Mr. Layton
The Harper Conservative Government is a minority government of wealth and privilege. The first priority of Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty during the current global economic crisis has been to ensure that investor classes that live parasitically from corporate, bank, energy and arms profiteering are protected first. These are the interests that form the political support base of the Conservative Party.
The Harper Conservative Government has no record of protecting wage earners thrown out of work and onto the streets. Where is that record?
The Conservatives beginning with Brain Mulroney are the party and government that undermined the unemployment insurance system, turned it over to general revenue where it was plundered and used for everything except insuring the lost earnings of the unemployed.
Canada’s unemployment insurance benefits are far below the OECD average tied for last with Great Britain. To suggest as you and your advisors are doing, that by giving this discredited minority right wing government NDP Parliamentary support, you can charm and inveigle Prime Minister Harper to act in the interests of the unemployed is illusory.
There is one issue confronting Canada and its people in any confidence vote arising in the House of Commons in the days ahead. That issue is the overriding urgency of dealing a crushing defeat to the right wing Harper Government and to rid the country of its poisonous affect on democracy.
The majority of Canadians have never supported the right wing extremism represented by Prime Minister Harper. A direct and unambiguous rejection of its policies accords with what most Canadians want.
We call upon you to go over the heads of your clever advisors, over the heads of Parliamentary in-fighting and go directly to the labour movement, the peace movement, the environmental movement and Canadian electorate with a simple statement of unequivocal opposition to Conservative rule.
No NDP support for the right-wing Harper Conservatives.
Don Currie, Chair,
Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Fidel and Health Care for the People
Dear Friends of Peace and Socialism
Upon reading the latest Reflection by Fidel Castro Ruz : http://solidnet.org/cgi-bin/agent?news/021cuba8sep09.doc on the cowardice and duplicity of the Dutch company Philips in reneging since 2006 on its obligations to supply Cuba and Venezuela with advanced medical equipment, by cravenly caving into pressure from first the Clinton, then Bush and now apparently the Obama administration, it helps to put into perspective the real essence of the public debate and struggle under way in the United States over health care. The struggle has become clouded in liberal and right wing extremist rhetoric and reeks with hypocrisy.
The Obama government is posing as an advocate of a humane and improved health care system for citizens of the USA while at the same time perpetuating long standing US imperialist policy of interference in the attempts of the Cuban and Venezuelan people to solve their health care needs. The policy is causing untold damage to people in these countries in need of health care by denying them high tech diagnostic equipment. President Obama is responsible for hurting the men, women, children and youth of Venezuela. The same interests that seek to deny the people of Venezuela medical equipment are the same interests that attack the Canadian health care system. To say otherwise is the worst possible kind of opportunist evasion.
How then can we consider Obama or any liberal-democrat would be reformer to be a reliable advocate of a truly human health care system? One cannot have a reactionary foreign policy and a progressive domestic policy. What is important is to advance and fight for the type of health care system we need, instead of taking sides with one or the other of a losing proposition.
Fidel’s expose underlines once more, the consistency of all of the governments of the United States from the end of WW2 to now to react with hate and envy at any and all attempts of other peoples to take paths of development that do not have the approval of US Presidents and the powerful imperialist interests they so faithfully serve. Rest assured the US imperialists disapprove of the Canadian public health care system with the same hatred as they express for the Cuban and Venezuelan system.
As a Communist I find it unacceptable, for left progressives anywhere to give uncritical support to Obama without exposing his unforgiveable complicity in perpetuating long standing US imperialist foreign and domestic policy. Obama seeks to change the image of US imperialism not its essence.
There can be no real advance for the people of the USA or the America’s and that includes Canada, and for that matter the world until US imperialism is defeated. That must be said first as we undertake struggles to wrest reforms from this monstrous system we know as capitalism in the imperialist era. In fact that is why we undertake them. There can be no health care advance for the people of the USA until there is a public health care system in which for profit health care is excluded entirely. A private-public mixed health care system is a private for profit system that attempts to profit out of the public purse and the personal wages, savings and incomes of working people. A retreat from public health care in Canada to a private public mix is being promoted everyday by profiteers, many US health care, drug and supply giants who seek to destroy the Canadian system. They are the same interests that hate socialist Cuba and Venezuela and seek to deny their people needed equipment.
As I read material emanating from the left progressive forces in the USA, much of which is useful and informative, I am more and more struck by what seems to me to be a delusionary, self absorbed, rosy and uncritical view of the line of the Obama administration that is retreating in confusion everyday under a right wing onslaught from the hopes of the people of the USA that brought it to power. To continue to deliberately evade that reality seems to me to be laying the basis and objectively supports what the right wing is striving for, a major political defeat for the left, democratic, labour and people’s movements.
As we Canadians confront a possible federal election, it is up to the conscious progressive left and in the first place the Communists, to go to the people with a program that begins with saying the obvious, capitalism is incapable of meeting their expectations for full employment, health, decent housing, and a truly human life. We fight for reforms to make things better but we do not cover up the fact that we do so with the aim of overthrowing and defeating the system of capitalism that is the cause of the misery of economic depression and war.
No other forces on the left are saying that convincingly. No other task is more important.
Don Currie
Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Upon reading the latest Reflection by Fidel Castro Ruz : http://solidnet.org/cgi-bin/agent?news/021cuba8sep09.doc on the cowardice and duplicity of the Dutch company Philips in reneging since 2006 on its obligations to supply Cuba and Venezuela with advanced medical equipment, by cravenly caving into pressure from first the Clinton, then Bush and now apparently the Obama administration, it helps to put into perspective the real essence of the public debate and struggle under way in the United States over health care. The struggle has become clouded in liberal and right wing extremist rhetoric and reeks with hypocrisy.
The Obama government is posing as an advocate of a humane and improved health care system for citizens of the USA while at the same time perpetuating long standing US imperialist policy of interference in the attempts of the Cuban and Venezuelan people to solve their health care needs. The policy is causing untold damage to people in these countries in need of health care by denying them high tech diagnostic equipment. President Obama is responsible for hurting the men, women, children and youth of Venezuela. The same interests that seek to deny the people of Venezuela medical equipment are the same interests that attack the Canadian health care system. To say otherwise is the worst possible kind of opportunist evasion.
How then can we consider Obama or any liberal-democrat would be reformer to be a reliable advocate of a truly human health care system? One cannot have a reactionary foreign policy and a progressive domestic policy. What is important is to advance and fight for the type of health care system we need, instead of taking sides with one or the other of a losing proposition.
Fidel’s expose underlines once more, the consistency of all of the governments of the United States from the end of WW2 to now to react with hate and envy at any and all attempts of other peoples to take paths of development that do not have the approval of US Presidents and the powerful imperialist interests they so faithfully serve. Rest assured the US imperialists disapprove of the Canadian public health care system with the same hatred as they express for the Cuban and Venezuelan system.
As a Communist I find it unacceptable, for left progressives anywhere to give uncritical support to Obama without exposing his unforgiveable complicity in perpetuating long standing US imperialist foreign and domestic policy. Obama seeks to change the image of US imperialism not its essence.
There can be no real advance for the people of the USA or the America’s and that includes Canada, and for that matter the world until US imperialism is defeated. That must be said first as we undertake struggles to wrest reforms from this monstrous system we know as capitalism in the imperialist era. In fact that is why we undertake them. There can be no health care advance for the people of the USA until there is a public health care system in which for profit health care is excluded entirely. A private-public mixed health care system is a private for profit system that attempts to profit out of the public purse and the personal wages, savings and incomes of working people. A retreat from public health care in Canada to a private public mix is being promoted everyday by profiteers, many US health care, drug and supply giants who seek to destroy the Canadian system. They are the same interests that hate socialist Cuba and Venezuela and seek to deny their people needed equipment.
As I read material emanating from the left progressive forces in the USA, much of which is useful and informative, I am more and more struck by what seems to me to be a delusionary, self absorbed, rosy and uncritical view of the line of the Obama administration that is retreating in confusion everyday under a right wing onslaught from the hopes of the people of the USA that brought it to power. To continue to deliberately evade that reality seems to me to be laying the basis and objectively supports what the right wing is striving for, a major political defeat for the left, democratic, labour and people’s movements.
As we Canadians confront a possible federal election, it is up to the conscious progressive left and in the first place the Communists, to go to the people with a program that begins with saying the obvious, capitalism is incapable of meeting their expectations for full employment, health, decent housing, and a truly human life. We fight for reforms to make things better but we do not cover up the fact that we do so with the aim of overthrowing and defeating the system of capitalism that is the cause of the misery of economic depression and war.
No other forces on the left are saying that convincingly. No other task is more important.
Don Currie
Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Sunday, April 05, 2009
NATO's 60th Anniversary - WW2 Canadian Vet Speaks Out
Guest Blog
John Beeching is Honorary Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
He is a veteran of WW2 and a life long activist for peace and socialism. Below are John’s comments on the 60th Anniversary of NATO.
NATO 60 year celebration
Today CBC news announced in a report on NATO that that it was NATO 60 year celebration. 60 Years to protect the profits of the rich is nothing to celebrate. Not when in this year 2009 millions are out of work or being laid-off while most in the third world countries are existing on a pittance.
NATO was not created to protect the world people or any country from attack. It was created to protect the world from communism and establish globalization led by the United States of America. The result is that millions on millions are living on substandard conditions.
Soviet Union Unaffected by the Great Depression
While the capitalist world was in the grip of mass unemployment and class warfare, the Soviet Union, by 1929 a mere 12 years into the building of socialism was unaffected by the Great Depression gripping the entire capitalist world. The Soviet Government, after a bitter struggle to defeat US and British interventionist forces attempting to restore the old hated Czarist regime, had embarked on an ambitious plan to electrify the country, modernize agriculture and construct new industries. The Soviet Union provided work for all and implemented universal free education and health care. The homeless were being housed. Collective and state farming methods rapidly made the country self-sufficient in food and agricultural products
John Beeching is Honorary Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
He is a veteran of WW2 and a life long activist for peace and socialism. Below are John’s comments on the 60th Anniversary of NATO.
NATO 60 year celebration
Today CBC news announced in a report on NATO that that it was NATO 60 year celebration. 60 Years to protect the profits of the rich is nothing to celebrate. Not when in this year 2009 millions are out of work or being laid-off while most in the third world countries are existing on a pittance.
NATO was not created to protect the world people or any country from attack. It was created to protect the world from communism and establish globalization led by the United States of America. The result is that millions on millions are living on substandard conditions.
Soviet Union Unaffected by the Great Depression
While the capitalist world was in the grip of mass unemployment and class warfare, the Soviet Union, by 1929 a mere 12 years into the building of socialism was unaffected by the Great Depression gripping the entire capitalist world. The Soviet Government, after a bitter struggle to defeat US and British interventionist forces attempting to restore the old hated Czarist regime, had embarked on an ambitious plan to electrify the country, modernize agriculture and construct new industries. The Soviet Union provided work for all and implemented universal free education and health care. The homeless were being housed. Collective and state farming methods rapidly made the country self-sufficient in food and agricultural products
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Use Canadian Clean Hydro Electrical Power for Canadian Needs!
Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail business writer, broke a story on December 30th reporting that Hydro Quebec is negotiating with two New England states for the first long term export of Quebec hydro electrical power to the USA in two decades. The 20 year sweet deal for US consumers requires approval of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). No mention was made of any Canadian approvals.
The deal will require two private US power utilities to invest $700 million (U.S.) to build a transmission line from a substation in Sherbrooke Quebec to New Hampshire USA where clean Quebec hydro power will be distributed through the New England power grid to provide non-polluting Canadian generated electrical power to Boston USA.
Ontario, desperately in need of clean power and anticipating imports of Quebec Hydro power, planned to build a transmission line from Quebec to Ontario. Slowness of the McGuity Liberals to conclude a deal on the project between Canada’s two largest and most industrialized provinces means the line may now be used to transmit Quebec hydro power through Ontario to the USA leaving Ontario out in the cold.
The plan to export large volumes of clean Quebec hydro electrical power to the USA occurs at a time when Canadian environmentalists are demanding that Ontario seek alternatives to its reliance on coal fired and expensive nuclear generated electrical power.
US environmentalists are calling for boycotts of energy imports produced from the Alberta Tar Sands. Nothing like having it both ways, use clean Canadian hydro power (No Buy American ban on this commodity) to meet President Obama’s targets for clean energy while at the same time damning Tar Sands production that employ Canadian workers.
Canadian environmentalists need to reassess. So long as Canadian energy is considered an exportable commodity instead of a national resource needed to serve the common good, neither Canadian jobs nor the environment can be protected.
The answer is obvious! Nationalize all Canadian energy and do it now! Develop east west hydro electric grids and construct east west natural gas and oil pipelines with up graders and refineries in Canada to process the products. That is real stimulus and job creation.
A new energy policy is needed to serve Canadian needs first. Then we can talk about exporting surpluses to the USA.
Left Turn Canada!
The deal will require two private US power utilities to invest $700 million (U.S.) to build a transmission line from a substation in Sherbrooke Quebec to New Hampshire USA where clean Quebec hydro power will be distributed through the New England power grid to provide non-polluting Canadian generated electrical power to Boston USA.
Ontario, desperately in need of clean power and anticipating imports of Quebec Hydro power, planned to build a transmission line from Quebec to Ontario. Slowness of the McGuity Liberals to conclude a deal on the project between Canada’s two largest and most industrialized provinces means the line may now be used to transmit Quebec hydro power through Ontario to the USA leaving Ontario out in the cold.
The plan to export large volumes of clean Quebec hydro electrical power to the USA occurs at a time when Canadian environmentalists are demanding that Ontario seek alternatives to its reliance on coal fired and expensive nuclear generated electrical power.
US environmentalists are calling for boycotts of energy imports produced from the Alberta Tar Sands. Nothing like having it both ways, use clean Canadian hydro power (No Buy American ban on this commodity) to meet President Obama’s targets for clean energy while at the same time damning Tar Sands production that employ Canadian workers.
Canadian environmentalists need to reassess. So long as Canadian energy is considered an exportable commodity instead of a national resource needed to serve the common good, neither Canadian jobs nor the environment can be protected.
The answer is obvious! Nationalize all Canadian energy and do it now! Develop east west hydro electric grids and construct east west natural gas and oil pipelines with up graders and refineries in Canada to process the products. That is real stimulus and job creation.
A new energy policy is needed to serve Canadian needs first. Then we can talk about exporting surpluses to the USA.
Left Turn Canada!
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Prime Minister Harper Preaches to the Converted
Don Currie, Editor, Focus on Socialism
March 10, 2009.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s speech before a big business crowd in Mississauga Brampton Ontario on March 10th re-stated his government’s pledge that the interests of wealth and privilege will continue to come first as the country slides into depression, and the working class and the unemployed are welcome to go along for the ride. He was heartily applauded by the partisan audience.
As he was speaking to the upscale crowd, GM workers and retirees with their backs against the wall were being urged by their union leadership to vote in favour of a roll back in wages and pensions to keep GM in business and a shrinking work force temporarily employed to produce cars that most people can’t afford to buy.
Meanwhile in the House of Commons, the Liberals and the NDP chided Finance Minister Flaherty for not admitting the economic situation for wage earners was dire, as though the Conservative minister really cared. The Conservative finance minister is content to rebut all criticism of his failed policies for working people by claiming that Canada is hostage to the financial melt down in the USA. Flaherty claims that until US banks start lending there is nothing to be done. Finger pointing is a safe bet for Flaherty and a convenient way of dealing with any future failure as the US economy continues to slide with no bottom in sight. Even as Flaherty was speaking in the House Ben Bernanke, head of the US Federal Reserve Board characterized the economic debacle as worse than the Great Depression.
At the same time Minister Flaherty boasts that Canada is the envy of the G20 because the Canadian chartered banks aren’t failing and are well capitalized unlike US banks. Canadian banks are all reporting quarterly profits in spite of the real economy tanking. What’s up? Bank profits and unemployment are rising at the same time! Minister Flaherty is mute about rising bank profits and a disintegrating real economy. He says nothing about this obvious anomaly because he worked for this outcome.
The Finance Minister was instrumental in backstopping the banks with $200 billion of government guarantees long before there was any talk in Parliament about a stimulus budget for workers and communities. Flaherty knows that the banks don’t have to lend to the real economy to make profit. They are doing fine on spreads between a falling Bank of Canada rate, high interest credit cards, safe mortgages and loans (the government removed the toxic debt and burdened CMHC with it) to preferred lenders that really don’t need the money anyway. Canadian Banks got their Harper Government “stimulus” up front last October after President Bush convened the G20 and all present agreed to pump 2% of GDP into the economy. Do the math. Two percent of $1.3 trillion GDP is about $260 billion; $200 billion for the banks and the rest for a “stimulus” budget that has within in lots of room for big business insiders to do very well. Flaherty only presented the budget to Parliament after it was vetted by a blue ribbon big business committee.
The actual amount of stimulus that will reach workers and communities is dubious. There is no reason for the opposition parties to rubber stamp it. There is stimulus and then there is talk of stimulus. The opposition charges that the budget is entangled with a number of Conservative plans having nothing to do with infrastructure funding. Environmentalists are concerned about the removal of restrictions on industrial development on inland waterways. Women workers are angry about the budget endorsing pay equity discrimination. The budget is not user-friendly compelling small communities to come up with co-pay money they don’t have and foisting P3’s on infrastructure projects that private investor abuse. Flaherty is bullying the Senate and the opposition to rush through the budget, before the people realize what is really in it. The Conservatives do not want the public to look too closely at the budget (all 300 plus pages of it) for fear of what they might find there. The Conservatives have stuffed the budget with barbs and hooks and at the same time, as a side show, are attempting to slip through the Finance Committee a $3 billion no strings attached pork barrel.
The Canadian people are paying a heavy price for the failure of the faint-hearted Ignatieff Liberals recoiling in fear from joining with the NDP and the Bloc to administer a crushing defeat to the Harper Conservatives when they had the chance. The Liberal and Conservative back room brain trusts held their noses, gave each other a little “upper class hug” and signaled to the Bay Street, Calgary Petroleum Club, the Irving Empire, the Montreal and Vancouver investor groups, and the TSX, that as much as they find each other distasteful, when the chips are down they will unite against any threat of organized labour and the movements of the people gaining a position of influence over Parliament.
The academic-intellectual left advice to labour to be “more clever and persuasive” in pleading with capitalism to reform itself is not helpful. An article in the last issue of CCPA Monitor suggesting to their 10,000 readership that progressives should support pleading for a place at the corporate table as a means of democratizing capitalist decisions is typical. Likewise, the Lakeland Institute, correctly lambasting the Stelmach government for funneling $5 billion to the oil investors continues to fail to demand nationalization the whole energy sector as the way to end its privileged position in the economy. The entire gamut of left academia remains timid and mute about the ruinous influence on the economy of $492 billion over 20 years allocated by the Canada First Defense Policy of the Harper Conservatives.
The G20 finance ministers will be meeting next week in preparation for their April Summit. The global depression is much worse than Flaherty and Harper are prepared to admit. The Conservatives are going to the G20 with one eye on the event and the other on their political base. That base doesn’t include organized labour. Flaherty and Harper will be coming back to Canada after the G20 to sell the plans of the IMF, the World Bank and G7. They will confront at the meeting a brawl among the USA, the EU, as they confront the rising power of China, Brazil, India.
Now is the time for organized labour to send a message to the Government that Canadians will not accept any plans of international finance capital that require the working class and the farmers to make more concessions to save the profit system.
Organized labour and the left-progressives confront a challenge. Either continue to support one of the alternatives offered by the Liberals or the Conservatives, fronting for corporate and banking capital, or begin the difficult task of organizing now around an independent program of economic development for Canada.
What is happening to the autoworkers, forced into concessions and condemned to long term unemployment is a template for what the employers will be demanding from steel, forestry, transportation, the energy sector and what remains of manufacturing. Following employer attacks on the productive sector workers there will be pressures on the civil service and the entire service industry for wage rollbacks and benefits concessions.
Labour needs its own summit! Relying on the banking and corporate elites to plan our future is a mugs game. Labour can and must lead the country!
Left Turn Canada!
March 10, 2009.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s speech before a big business crowd in Mississauga Brampton Ontario on March 10th re-stated his government’s pledge that the interests of wealth and privilege will continue to come first as the country slides into depression, and the working class and the unemployed are welcome to go along for the ride. He was heartily applauded by the partisan audience.
As he was speaking to the upscale crowd, GM workers and retirees with their backs against the wall were being urged by their union leadership to vote in favour of a roll back in wages and pensions to keep GM in business and a shrinking work force temporarily employed to produce cars that most people can’t afford to buy.
Meanwhile in the House of Commons, the Liberals and the NDP chided Finance Minister Flaherty for not admitting the economic situation for wage earners was dire, as though the Conservative minister really cared. The Conservative finance minister is content to rebut all criticism of his failed policies for working people by claiming that Canada is hostage to the financial melt down in the USA. Flaherty claims that until US banks start lending there is nothing to be done. Finger pointing is a safe bet for Flaherty and a convenient way of dealing with any future failure as the US economy continues to slide with no bottom in sight. Even as Flaherty was speaking in the House Ben Bernanke, head of the US Federal Reserve Board characterized the economic debacle as worse than the Great Depression.
At the same time Minister Flaherty boasts that Canada is the envy of the G20 because the Canadian chartered banks aren’t failing and are well capitalized unlike US banks. Canadian banks are all reporting quarterly profits in spite of the real economy tanking. What’s up? Bank profits and unemployment are rising at the same time! Minister Flaherty is mute about rising bank profits and a disintegrating real economy. He says nothing about this obvious anomaly because he worked for this outcome.
The Finance Minister was instrumental in backstopping the banks with $200 billion of government guarantees long before there was any talk in Parliament about a stimulus budget for workers and communities. Flaherty knows that the banks don’t have to lend to the real economy to make profit. They are doing fine on spreads between a falling Bank of Canada rate, high interest credit cards, safe mortgages and loans (the government removed the toxic debt and burdened CMHC with it) to preferred lenders that really don’t need the money anyway. Canadian Banks got their Harper Government “stimulus” up front last October after President Bush convened the G20 and all present agreed to pump 2% of GDP into the economy. Do the math. Two percent of $1.3 trillion GDP is about $260 billion; $200 billion for the banks and the rest for a “stimulus” budget that has within in lots of room for big business insiders to do very well. Flaherty only presented the budget to Parliament after it was vetted by a blue ribbon big business committee.
The actual amount of stimulus that will reach workers and communities is dubious. There is no reason for the opposition parties to rubber stamp it. There is stimulus and then there is talk of stimulus. The opposition charges that the budget is entangled with a number of Conservative plans having nothing to do with infrastructure funding. Environmentalists are concerned about the removal of restrictions on industrial development on inland waterways. Women workers are angry about the budget endorsing pay equity discrimination. The budget is not user-friendly compelling small communities to come up with co-pay money they don’t have and foisting P3’s on infrastructure projects that private investor abuse. Flaherty is bullying the Senate and the opposition to rush through the budget, before the people realize what is really in it. The Conservatives do not want the public to look too closely at the budget (all 300 plus pages of it) for fear of what they might find there. The Conservatives have stuffed the budget with barbs and hooks and at the same time, as a side show, are attempting to slip through the Finance Committee a $3 billion no strings attached pork barrel.
The Canadian people are paying a heavy price for the failure of the faint-hearted Ignatieff Liberals recoiling in fear from joining with the NDP and the Bloc to administer a crushing defeat to the Harper Conservatives when they had the chance. The Liberal and Conservative back room brain trusts held their noses, gave each other a little “upper class hug” and signaled to the Bay Street, Calgary Petroleum Club, the Irving Empire, the Montreal and Vancouver investor groups, and the TSX, that as much as they find each other distasteful, when the chips are down they will unite against any threat of organized labour and the movements of the people gaining a position of influence over Parliament.
The academic-intellectual left advice to labour to be “more clever and persuasive” in pleading with capitalism to reform itself is not helpful. An article in the last issue of CCPA Monitor suggesting to their 10,000 readership that progressives should support pleading for a place at the corporate table as a means of democratizing capitalist decisions is typical. Likewise, the Lakeland Institute, correctly lambasting the Stelmach government for funneling $5 billion to the oil investors continues to fail to demand nationalization the whole energy sector as the way to end its privileged position in the economy. The entire gamut of left academia remains timid and mute about the ruinous influence on the economy of $492 billion over 20 years allocated by the Canada First Defense Policy of the Harper Conservatives.
The G20 finance ministers will be meeting next week in preparation for their April Summit. The global depression is much worse than Flaherty and Harper are prepared to admit. The Conservatives are going to the G20 with one eye on the event and the other on their political base. That base doesn’t include organized labour. Flaherty and Harper will be coming back to Canada after the G20 to sell the plans of the IMF, the World Bank and G7. They will confront at the meeting a brawl among the USA, the EU, as they confront the rising power of China, Brazil, India.
Now is the time for organized labour to send a message to the Government that Canadians will not accept any plans of international finance capital that require the working class and the farmers to make more concessions to save the profit system.
Organized labour and the left-progressives confront a challenge. Either continue to support one of the alternatives offered by the Liberals or the Conservatives, fronting for corporate and banking capital, or begin the difficult task of organizing now around an independent program of economic development for Canada.
What is happening to the autoworkers, forced into concessions and condemned to long term unemployment is a template for what the employers will be demanding from steel, forestry, transportation, the energy sector and what remains of manufacturing. Following employer attacks on the productive sector workers there will be pressures on the civil service and the entire service industry for wage rollbacks and benefits concessions.
Labour needs its own summit! Relying on the banking and corporate elites to plan our future is a mugs game. Labour can and must lead the country!
Left Turn Canada!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
