The Coalition!
Majority Government Prepared to Govern - Or Timorous Prop for a Lame Duck Minority Harper Government?
When will the Liberal NDP Coalition begin to act like a majority government poised to take power on behalf of the disenfranchised 62% majority?
Michael Ignatieff is lapsing into his familiar and comfortable role as an academic advisor to the rich and powerful instead of a Coalition Prime Minister prepared to take power on behalf of the people of Canada.
Coalition inaction is breathing life into a gasping Harper Minority Government instead of preparing to deal it a crushing defeat on January 27th.
Liberal establishment meddling, behind the backs of its coalition partners and more egregious, the 62% majority that supports it, has paved the way for the appointment by Finance Minister Flaherty of a non-elected big business Economic Council that will have a greater say over the federal budget than the 162 elected coalition MP’s.
There is not a single labour representative to be seen among Jim Flaherty’s gold plated luminaries. It is doubtful if any self-respecting labour leader would want to be associated with such capitalist glitterati.
Flaherty has recruited former B.C. finance minister Carole Taylor, James D. Irving from the New Brunswick Irving Empire, James A. Pattison, applauded in corporate circles for his singular ruthless pursuit of wealth, University of Calgary professor Jack Mintz, who is the former president and CEO of the right wing C.D. Howe Institute and a frequent columnist for Can West Financial Post and Montreal financier Paul Desmarais of Power Corporation, a major behind the scenes player in the selection of Canadian Prime Ministers from Trudeau and Mulroney to Chretien and Martin.
Organized Labour must appoint its own Economic Council and a shadow cabinet of working people representing the 62% majority and outline a democratic people’s economic program for Canada.
There are many honest left-labour economists that have no other agenda than what is in the best interests of working people as the country slides into depression. The people need their help. The Coalition Policy Accord is a good start. Use it, develop it, publicize it, fight for it…
Left Turn Canada!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Monday, December 08, 2008
Liberal Establishment Politicians Come to the Aid of Conservative Prime Minister Harper to Scuttle the Coalition Policy Accord.
Right wing Liberal grandee John Manley is helping Prime Minister Stephen
Harper wreck the NDP-Liberal-Bloc Coalition. (Globe and Mail December 5, 2008)
John Manley is a right-wing corporate establishment lawyer, a former Finance Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister. Manley helped Prime Minister Harper condemn Canadian soldiers to another two years of bloody combat in the US-NATO war in Afghanistan.
Manley is a close associate of Paul Martin. Martin as Finance Minister from 1993 to 2002 rang up massive federal surpluses that were returned to big business in a series of tax cuts while systematically capping and rolling back funding for unemployment insurance and social programs.
Today’s media is reporting that Liberal Scott Brisson, a Martin protégé is working behind the scenes with the hapless Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to cut and paste a Lib Con budget for presentation to Parliament on January 27th . Their aim is to scuttle the Policy Accord signed by Layton, Dion and Duceppe and replace it with a conservative right wing budget with a liberal face.
Michael Ignatieff, true to himself is seizing upon the confusion and disarray in Liberal ranks to sink “his friend Bob Rae” by-pass the Liberal rank and file and propel himself into the leadership of the Liberal Party.
Such are the morals and ethics of Liberal establishment politicians who in a heart beat betray the coalition documents they just signed and turn their backs on the hardships confronting the working people and the unemployed.
The NDP and organized labour and the left must publicly condemn the establishment Liberal betrayal of the coalition policy accord and call upon the 161 MP’s from all opposition parties to renew the pledge given to the 62% of Canadians who support them that they will act together to defeat Harper on January 27th. and implement the policy accord.
The coalition policy accord falls far short of what the working class needs and much more will have to be fought for.
What are the supportable points of the NDP-Liberal-Bloc policy accord? What does the economic stimulus package of the policy accord say?
NDP-Liberal-Bloc Economic Stimulus Package
The top priority of the new Government is an economic stimulus package designed to boost the domestic economy beginning with (but not limited to):
Accelerating existing infrastructure funding and substantial new investments, including municipal and inter-provincial projects (such as
transit, clean energy, water, corridors and gateways). This would certainly include addressing the urgent infrastructure needs of First Nations, Métis and Inuit;
Housing construction and retrofitting; and
Investing in key sector strategies (like manufacturing, forestry and automotive) designed to create and save jobs, with any aid contingent on a plan to transform these industries and return them to profitability and sustainability.
Rapid Support for those affected by the Economic Crisis
The new Government is committed to ensuring that the federal government has the appropriate programs in place to assist those most affected by the economic crisis so that all citizens will be in a position to fully participate in the economic recovery to follow, including the following measures:
Facilitate skills training to help ensure Canadian workers are properly equipped to keep pace with the rapidly changing economy, while respecting provincial jurisdiction and existing agreements;
Amend the current law establishing a new crown corporation for employment insurance in order to guarantee that all revenue from EI premiums provides benefits and training for workers. Eliminate the current two week waiting period;
Lower the minimum required RRIF withdrawal for 2008 by 50 per cent;
Reform bankruptcy and insolvency laws to better protect pensions; and
Implement an income support program for older workers who have lost their jobs in order to help them make the transition from work to receiving retirement benefits.
Other Priorities to Stimulate the Economy
Support for culture, including the cancellation of budget cuts announced by the Conservative government.
Support for Canadian Wheat Board and Supply Management
Immigration Reform
Reinstate regional development agency funding to non-profit economic development organizations.
Families
As finances permit, we are committed to moving forward with improved child benefits and an early learning and childcare program in partnership with each province, and respectful of their role and jurisdiction, including the possibility to opt out with full compensation.
Working with our North American Partners
We will work with our North American Partners to pursue a North American cap-and-trade market with absolute emission targets, using 1990 as the base year.
Layton, Dion and Duceppe put their signatures to the above.
The Manley-Harper collaboration works for another type of coalition – a right wing majority Parliamentary coalition working on behalf of finance capital.
Canadian workers have had experience with a Conservative Government in power during a depression. When an unemployed delegation in 1935 went to Ottawa seeking help, Conservative Prime Minister Iron Heel Bennett replied that he would not subsidize idleness.
The Harper Reform-Alliance-Conservatives are the true inheritors of Iron Heel Bennett’s legacy. A Conservative Government in power during a depression in the 21st Century is the wrong Government for the working class, the farmers, the unemployed and oppressed.
Support the Coalition! Support the Coalition Economic Stimulus Package.
On January 27th. defeat the Harper Conservatives.
Left Turn Canada!
Harper wreck the NDP-Liberal-Bloc Coalition. (Globe and Mail December 5, 2008)
John Manley is a right-wing corporate establishment lawyer, a former Finance Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister. Manley helped Prime Minister Harper condemn Canadian soldiers to another two years of bloody combat in the US-NATO war in Afghanistan.
Manley is a close associate of Paul Martin. Martin as Finance Minister from 1993 to 2002 rang up massive federal surpluses that were returned to big business in a series of tax cuts while systematically capping and rolling back funding for unemployment insurance and social programs.
Today’s media is reporting that Liberal Scott Brisson, a Martin protégé is working behind the scenes with the hapless Conservative Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to cut and paste a Lib Con budget for presentation to Parliament on January 27th . Their aim is to scuttle the Policy Accord signed by Layton, Dion and Duceppe and replace it with a conservative right wing budget with a liberal face.
Michael Ignatieff, true to himself is seizing upon the confusion and disarray in Liberal ranks to sink “his friend Bob Rae” by-pass the Liberal rank and file and propel himself into the leadership of the Liberal Party.
Such are the morals and ethics of Liberal establishment politicians who in a heart beat betray the coalition documents they just signed and turn their backs on the hardships confronting the working people and the unemployed.
The NDP and organized labour and the left must publicly condemn the establishment Liberal betrayal of the coalition policy accord and call upon the 161 MP’s from all opposition parties to renew the pledge given to the 62% of Canadians who support them that they will act together to defeat Harper on January 27th. and implement the policy accord.
The coalition policy accord falls far short of what the working class needs and much more will have to be fought for.
What are the supportable points of the NDP-Liberal-Bloc policy accord? What does the economic stimulus package of the policy accord say?
NDP-Liberal-Bloc Economic Stimulus Package
The top priority of the new Government is an economic stimulus package designed to boost the domestic economy beginning with (but not limited to):
Accelerating existing infrastructure funding and substantial new investments, including municipal and inter-provincial projects (such as
transit, clean energy, water, corridors and gateways). This would certainly include addressing the urgent infrastructure needs of First Nations, Métis and Inuit;
Housing construction and retrofitting; and
Investing in key sector strategies (like manufacturing, forestry and automotive) designed to create and save jobs, with any aid contingent on a plan to transform these industries and return them to profitability and sustainability.
Rapid Support for those affected by the Economic Crisis
The new Government is committed to ensuring that the federal government has the appropriate programs in place to assist those most affected by the economic crisis so that all citizens will be in a position to fully participate in the economic recovery to follow, including the following measures:
Facilitate skills training to help ensure Canadian workers are properly equipped to keep pace with the rapidly changing economy, while respecting provincial jurisdiction and existing agreements;
Amend the current law establishing a new crown corporation for employment insurance in order to guarantee that all revenue from EI premiums provides benefits and training for workers. Eliminate the current two week waiting period;
Lower the minimum required RRIF withdrawal for 2008 by 50 per cent;
Reform bankruptcy and insolvency laws to better protect pensions; and
Implement an income support program for older workers who have lost their jobs in order to help them make the transition from work to receiving retirement benefits.
Other Priorities to Stimulate the Economy
Support for culture, including the cancellation of budget cuts announced by the Conservative government.
Support for Canadian Wheat Board and Supply Management
Immigration Reform
Reinstate regional development agency funding to non-profit economic development organizations.
Families
As finances permit, we are committed to moving forward with improved child benefits and an early learning and childcare program in partnership with each province, and respectful of their role and jurisdiction, including the possibility to opt out with full compensation.
Working with our North American Partners
We will work with our North American Partners to pursue a North American cap-and-trade market with absolute emission targets, using 1990 as the base year.
Layton, Dion and Duceppe put their signatures to the above.
The Manley-Harper collaboration works for another type of coalition – a right wing majority Parliamentary coalition working on behalf of finance capital.
Canadian workers have had experience with a Conservative Government in power during a depression. When an unemployed delegation in 1935 went to Ottawa seeking help, Conservative Prime Minister Iron Heel Bennett replied that he would not subsidize idleness.
The Harper Reform-Alliance-Conservatives are the true inheritors of Iron Heel Bennett’s legacy. A Conservative Government in power during a depression in the 21st Century is the wrong Government for the working class, the farmers, the unemployed and oppressed.
Support the Coalition! Support the Coalition Economic Stimulus Package.
On January 27th. defeat the Harper Conservatives.
Left Turn Canada!
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Stop the Extreme Right Coup – Labour Wants In!
An arcane remnant of Canada’s colonial past has been used by Prime Minister Harper to legitimatize a far right coup to padlock Parliament and keep the cause of labour out of national politics.
Political trends representing the far right, the ultra-left, and the most despicable of all, condescending centrist evasion, have joined together to oppose the formation of a Parliamentary coalition of a majority of liberal and social democratic MP’s. Objectively these trends fear any opening to political power that might open up in Parliament that will accord to the working class, the unemployed and working farmers a say over the economic affairs of state.
Prime Minister Harper “locked the doors” on Parliament to ensure that in an economic crisis rapidly assuming Great Depression proportions, a non-elected cabal of banks and corporate insiders will continue to have exclusive say over how the wealth of the nation will be apportioned. They are supported by a small class of wealth and privilege accustomed to entitlement of the best the capitalist system has to offer and determined to keep it all for their private pleasure.
The Harper coup has reactivated the extreme right wing Reform-Alliance base of bigotry and division that democratic Canadians have rejected time and again. It has been kept alive by a cabal of extremist right wing professors at the University of Calgary political science department, the Fraser Institute and media hacks that serve US-Canadian oil and investor elites of Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. Their minions include a motley crew of right wing talk show hosts inciting a network of western separatist and US style religious right wing groups with hot button non-issues.
All of this political noise, refined into pap by the likes of CTV’s Mike Duffy and his little band of self-promoting pundits covers up a far right economic and political agenda that will be embedded and concealed in the January 26th Harper-Flaherty Budget.
The budget will have nothing to do with the needs of labour and job creation. The Harper Conservatives will appear to move to the centre on economic policy but continue to rule from the extreme right. The non-sectarian left must start to warn workers of the craft and guile the budget will contain and call upon the coalition to defeat it.
The betrayals of a democratic electoral coalition are already beginning to appear from frightened Liberal and NDP personalities. The Rae, Ignatieff, Leblanc road show is prepared to cash in on the coalition to strengthen their leadership bids. Stephane Dion’s foolish statements that if Harper made “huge concessions” he would consider them confirm the popular belief that the man is out of touch and in the best interests of all should leave the scene.
The splits and divisions appearing in the coalition are not surprising. How to cope with them is the issue. The “told you so crowd” who talk lots and do little are already preparing their bleak analysis.
The non-sectarian left must avoid barren politics. The fact is politics is being embraced by the majority and passing out of the control of pundits. That is what is new in this crisis. It marks the beginning of the end of passivity.
The rank and file among all of the coalition parties, most of whom are working people, have expectations of success and they have a right to demand that those who forged this alliance keep it together and make it work.
Those of us on the non-sectarian left who are familiar with betrayal need to be vigilant. Even if the coalition in its present form is betrayed and destroyed, the necessity to rebuild it into a stronger more durable form will remain.
There are enough committed forces in the three coalition parties, supported by the Greens, organized labour the non-sectarian left and the rest of the popular democratic movements to justify a real effort to make it work in the next election. The threat of a Harper majority should energize everyone.
The leading role of organized labour in this process is decisive. What the far right fears above all else is any expression of independent and united political action by the left and organized labour in determining the destiny of the country. That is precisely what the left must work for.
Left Turn Canada!
Political trends representing the far right, the ultra-left, and the most despicable of all, condescending centrist evasion, have joined together to oppose the formation of a Parliamentary coalition of a majority of liberal and social democratic MP’s. Objectively these trends fear any opening to political power that might open up in Parliament that will accord to the working class, the unemployed and working farmers a say over the economic affairs of state.
Prime Minister Harper “locked the doors” on Parliament to ensure that in an economic crisis rapidly assuming Great Depression proportions, a non-elected cabal of banks and corporate insiders will continue to have exclusive say over how the wealth of the nation will be apportioned. They are supported by a small class of wealth and privilege accustomed to entitlement of the best the capitalist system has to offer and determined to keep it all for their private pleasure.
The Harper coup has reactivated the extreme right wing Reform-Alliance base of bigotry and division that democratic Canadians have rejected time and again. It has been kept alive by a cabal of extremist right wing professors at the University of Calgary political science department, the Fraser Institute and media hacks that serve US-Canadian oil and investor elites of Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. Their minions include a motley crew of right wing talk show hosts inciting a network of western separatist and US style religious right wing groups with hot button non-issues.
All of this political noise, refined into pap by the likes of CTV’s Mike Duffy and his little band of self-promoting pundits covers up a far right economic and political agenda that will be embedded and concealed in the January 26th Harper-Flaherty Budget.
The budget will have nothing to do with the needs of labour and job creation. The Harper Conservatives will appear to move to the centre on economic policy but continue to rule from the extreme right. The non-sectarian left must start to warn workers of the craft and guile the budget will contain and call upon the coalition to defeat it.
The betrayals of a democratic electoral coalition are already beginning to appear from frightened Liberal and NDP personalities. The Rae, Ignatieff, Leblanc road show is prepared to cash in on the coalition to strengthen their leadership bids. Stephane Dion’s foolish statements that if Harper made “huge concessions” he would consider them confirm the popular belief that the man is out of touch and in the best interests of all should leave the scene.
The splits and divisions appearing in the coalition are not surprising. How to cope with them is the issue. The “told you so crowd” who talk lots and do little are already preparing their bleak analysis.
The non-sectarian left must avoid barren politics. The fact is politics is being embraced by the majority and passing out of the control of pundits. That is what is new in this crisis. It marks the beginning of the end of passivity.
The rank and file among all of the coalition parties, most of whom are working people, have expectations of success and they have a right to demand that those who forged this alliance keep it together and make it work.
Those of us on the non-sectarian left who are familiar with betrayal need to be vigilant. Even if the coalition in its present form is betrayed and destroyed, the necessity to rebuild it into a stronger more durable form will remain.
There are enough committed forces in the three coalition parties, supported by the Greens, organized labour the non-sectarian left and the rest of the popular democratic movements to justify a real effort to make it work in the next election. The threat of a Harper majority should energize everyone.
The leading role of organized labour in this process is decisive. What the far right fears above all else is any expression of independent and united political action by the left and organized labour in determining the destiny of the country. That is precisely what the left must work for.
Left Turn Canada!
Monday, December 01, 2008
Defeat the Harper Conservatives. Support the CLC Sponsored Thursday December 4th Rallies for a Coalition Government
A major Parliamentary crisis is underway resulting from the most serious economic crisis since the Dirty Thirties. The country is being momentarily polarized around a liberal social democratic coalition and far right political reaction. A major struggle for Parliamentary democracy is underway.
The main danger at the moment is for the left democratic forces to miss the opportunity to defeat the autocratic Harper Government. It won’t be easy. Prime Minister Harper and his right wing supporters are in panic mode. This week leading up to December 8th and a non-confidence vote in the House of Commons, the Conservative Party will conduct an unprecedented media disinformation campaign reminiscent of the darkest days of McArthyism. Prime Minister Harper will resort to the most desperate measures to stay in power.
No progress in our country can be made while a minority Conservative government is in power. They have inflicted serious hardship on the people. They are the wrong party to have in power during an economic crisis. The time to discuss the problems that will arise with a coalition government is after Harper is ousted.
The Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Peace Alliance, the Council of Canadians and the coalition parties will conduct rallies on Thursday December 4th in support of the coalition accord signed today in Ottawa by the leaders of the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois.
Phone your local labour council to find out where the local rally will be held.
Left Turn Canada!
The main danger at the moment is for the left democratic forces to miss the opportunity to defeat the autocratic Harper Government. It won’t be easy. Prime Minister Harper and his right wing supporters are in panic mode. This week leading up to December 8th and a non-confidence vote in the House of Commons, the Conservative Party will conduct an unprecedented media disinformation campaign reminiscent of the darkest days of McArthyism. Prime Minister Harper will resort to the most desperate measures to stay in power.
No progress in our country can be made while a minority Conservative government is in power. They have inflicted serious hardship on the people. They are the wrong party to have in power during an economic crisis. The time to discuss the problems that will arise with a coalition government is after Harper is ousted.
The Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Peace Alliance, the Council of Canadians and the coalition parties will conduct rallies on Thursday December 4th in support of the coalition accord signed today in Ottawa by the leaders of the Liberal Party, the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Quebecois.
Phone your local labour council to find out where the local rally will be held.
Left Turn Canada!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
A Moment of Opportunity for the Left and Organized Labour
Finance Flaherty’s economic update had two goals; one to cover up the Harper Government’s responsibility for the crisis and the other to use government fiscal policy to assist the banks and the corporate sector to profit from it.
Flaherty failed utterly on the first, but hasn’t given up on the second. Budget cuts and restraints were imposed on transfers to the provinces, while no strings attached public money will continue to flow to private banks and financial institutions. Massive military spending on the US-NATO war in Afghanistan is to continue.
Neo-con deficit abstinence and deregulation is no longer the hallmark of Conservative economic virtue. In fact it never was. Harper copied the George W. Bush deficit and deregulation policy to militarize and give speculative investors free reign in Canada. Without the slightest embarassment Flaherty is now ready to engage in illicit deficit sin because the Conservatives blew a $13.7 billion surplus on war and corporate tax cuts and has no where to go but into deficit. Now after three years of de-regulation Flaherty wants to re-regulate.
Budget deficits aren't sinful. On whose behalf will deficit be incurred determines its virtue? Avoidance of deficit by the Conservatives is the rhtetoric used cut spending on people’s needs. They have renamed deficit “budget restraint” to enact attacks on labour.
Under cover of “budget restraint” Flaherty announced the Harper Government will eliminate the right to strike for public sector workers, impose a wage freeze on the civil service, (a signal to the private sector to do the same), halt and roll back pay equity gains for women workers and eliminate the $1.75 per vote that helps smaller parties to participate in federal elections.
The opposition parties all attacked the government as though they had a joint caucus prior to the debate. Surprisingly the NDP muted its attacks on the Liberals and the Bloc did the same. Scott Brisson for the Liberals, Gilles Duceppe for the Bloc and Jack Layton and Thomas Mulchair for the NDP between them said what had to be said. All pointedly continue to avoid comment on the disastrous and costly war in Afghanistan.
Now what?
The opposition parties are temporarily on the same page regarding the urgency of the need for massive government stimulus package to get the economy moving. All have stated they will vote against the Government. The chattering classes and the media are speculating about a coalition government not another election.
This is a moment of opportunity for the left and organized labour to come forward with its own plan for the working people. A Parliamentary coalition government can make sense as a short term answer to a long term problem.
If that is to happen, labour must convene its own Parliament and layout now its minimum demands. If that were done, labour could establish its terms of support for a Parliamentary coalition and just possibly make it work for the people.
Left Turn Canada!
Flaherty failed utterly on the first, but hasn’t given up on the second. Budget cuts and restraints were imposed on transfers to the provinces, while no strings attached public money will continue to flow to private banks and financial institutions. Massive military spending on the US-NATO war in Afghanistan is to continue.
Neo-con deficit abstinence and deregulation is no longer the hallmark of Conservative economic virtue. In fact it never was. Harper copied the George W. Bush deficit and deregulation policy to militarize and give speculative investors free reign in Canada. Without the slightest embarassment Flaherty is now ready to engage in illicit deficit sin because the Conservatives blew a $13.7 billion surplus on war and corporate tax cuts and has no where to go but into deficit. Now after three years of de-regulation Flaherty wants to re-regulate.
Budget deficits aren't sinful. On whose behalf will deficit be incurred determines its virtue? Avoidance of deficit by the Conservatives is the rhtetoric used cut spending on people’s needs. They have renamed deficit “budget restraint” to enact attacks on labour.
Under cover of “budget restraint” Flaherty announced the Harper Government will eliminate the right to strike for public sector workers, impose a wage freeze on the civil service, (a signal to the private sector to do the same), halt and roll back pay equity gains for women workers and eliminate the $1.75 per vote that helps smaller parties to participate in federal elections.
The opposition parties all attacked the government as though they had a joint caucus prior to the debate. Surprisingly the NDP muted its attacks on the Liberals and the Bloc did the same. Scott Brisson for the Liberals, Gilles Duceppe for the Bloc and Jack Layton and Thomas Mulchair for the NDP between them said what had to be said. All pointedly continue to avoid comment on the disastrous and costly war in Afghanistan.
Now what?
The opposition parties are temporarily on the same page regarding the urgency of the need for massive government stimulus package to get the economy moving. All have stated they will vote against the Government. The chattering classes and the media are speculating about a coalition government not another election.
This is a moment of opportunity for the left and organized labour to come forward with its own plan for the working people. A Parliamentary coalition government can make sense as a short term answer to a long term problem.
If that is to happen, labour must convene its own Parliament and layout now its minimum demands. If that were done, labour could establish its terms of support for a Parliamentary coalition and just possibly make it work for the people.
Left Turn Canada!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Bob Rae's "Out the Other Side"
The media is reporting the Liberal leadership race as though it mattered.
Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff and Dominic LeBlanc are talking over the heads of the people to Bay Street pleading with finance capital to be given a second chance “and this time we promise to get it right … much farther right.”
Too late…the right bower is all sewn up by the Harper Conservatives at the moment.
Rae, trivializing his anti-labor record as NDP Premier of Ontario promised that if elected Liberal leader he will “use that experience” to lead the country through the current economic crisis and “out the other side.”
The Ontario Labour movement knows well what the “other side” is as Rae envisions it. Labour experienced it when Rae was Premier and imposed the burden of an economic downturn on public employees. Unabashedly Rae wants organized labour to follow him once again, alluding to sacrifices unions will be expected to make to help him help big business get out of the debt crisis mess they have created.
The “other side” is more capitalism. The “other side” is a capitalism much the same as it is now, only leaner, meaner and a more exploitive capitalism that will continue to leave behind it hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers and their families permanently displaced from the workforce.
Rae said he is going this week to explain his epiphany and vision to Bay Street. Where else would he go since he has no audience among organized labour and the working people for his warmed over neo-liberal pap.
What Rae didn’t say should concern workers and farmers. He didn’t speak about the growing militarization of the Canadian economy, energy sell-out to the USA, the de-industrialization of the country, boom and bust market capitalism and the contraction of all democratic and civil rights and freedoms after decades of neo-liberal and neo-con rule.
What Rae, Ignatieff and LeBlanc can’t ignore is that the whole country is to the left of all of the opposition parties…and the gap is widening.
As a matter of fact, the working class is to the left of the “left”, and that is what the Communists and leaders of the popular movements of the people need to study and act upon.
Let Turn Canada!
Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff and Dominic LeBlanc are talking over the heads of the people to Bay Street pleading with finance capital to be given a second chance “and this time we promise to get it right … much farther right.”
Too late…the right bower is all sewn up by the Harper Conservatives at the moment.
Rae, trivializing his anti-labor record as NDP Premier of Ontario promised that if elected Liberal leader he will “use that experience” to lead the country through the current economic crisis and “out the other side.”
The Ontario Labour movement knows well what the “other side” is as Rae envisions it. Labour experienced it when Rae was Premier and imposed the burden of an economic downturn on public employees. Unabashedly Rae wants organized labour to follow him once again, alluding to sacrifices unions will be expected to make to help him help big business get out of the debt crisis mess they have created.
The “other side” is more capitalism. The “other side” is a capitalism much the same as it is now, only leaner, meaner and a more exploitive capitalism that will continue to leave behind it hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers and their families permanently displaced from the workforce.
Rae said he is going this week to explain his epiphany and vision to Bay Street. Where else would he go since he has no audience among organized labour and the working people for his warmed over neo-liberal pap.
What Rae didn’t say should concern workers and farmers. He didn’t speak about the growing militarization of the Canadian economy, energy sell-out to the USA, the de-industrialization of the country, boom and bust market capitalism and the contraction of all democratic and civil rights and freedoms after decades of neo-liberal and neo-con rule.
What Rae, Ignatieff and LeBlanc can’t ignore is that the whole country is to the left of all of the opposition parties…and the gap is widening.
As a matter of fact, the working class is to the left of the “left”, and that is what the Communists and leaders of the popular movements of the people need to study and act upon.
Let Turn Canada!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
The 143rd Speech from the Throne - “Economic Renewal” for Whom?”
Prime Minister Harper has crafted the Speech from the Throne to forestall consideration of any proposals for economic “renewal” not designed to protect banking and corporate wealth first. No sooner had Governor General Michaëlle Jean stepped down from the regal dais, right on cue, Premier Stelmach of Alberta announced a freeze on royalty payments for the big oil companies.
The throne speech ignored the needs of labour. The Prime Minister remained mute on the urgency of expanding the EI system, freezing mortgage payments of unemployed workers and protecting pensions of the retired. An immediate start on a government funded low costs housing construction program and urban and rural infrastructure programs which could ease the impact of the crisis on the working people was off the table.
The speech selected all of the proposals of the November 10th first minister meeting and the November 15th G20 meeting that strengthen the global banking system and continue the discredited neo-liberal stratagems of privatization deregulation and decentralization. The speech refloated the discredited corporate cap and trade “environmental” strategy that rewards the energy giants for polluting.
The speech calls for a freeze on government spending which means less money for health care and social programs to alleviate poverty. The speech promotes P3’s, support for the Alberta-BC and SPP backed trade investment and labour mobility (TILMA) the latter, a plan to drive down wages and labour standards to the lowest common denominator. For the farmers Harper promised to proceed with the scuttling of the Canadian Wheat Board.
Prime Minister Harper dares the opposition to question escalating military spending brazenly restating his government’s plan to carry forward, in the midst of a depression a 20 year $482 billion plan to revamp all three branches of the armed forces. The speech pledges to continue Canada’s support for US-NATO wars of interference and the Bush Doctrine of the so-called “right to intervene”. Harper is floating the idea with a new name, “new non-partisan democratic agency”. More ominously the Conservative Government plans to table a National Security Statement. Every time the Conservative Government mentions “security” it results in a loss of civil and democratic rights.
The Speech from the Throne is in essence a reactionary appeal for big business class “solidarity” against the victims of the coming depression, the working people of Canada.
What the opposition may or may not do in the debate on the speech from the throne is not yet clear. Next comes Finance Minister Flaherty’s economic update next week as the economy sinks daily deeper into recession. The initial statements of Dion, Layton and Duceppe are not encouraging.
The idea of bringing down the Harper government and forming a reform coalition government to implement a genuine program on behalf of labour and the farmers, and all people who must labour to live, seems to be beyond their imagination.
Left Turn Canada!
The throne speech ignored the needs of labour. The Prime Minister remained mute on the urgency of expanding the EI system, freezing mortgage payments of unemployed workers and protecting pensions of the retired. An immediate start on a government funded low costs housing construction program and urban and rural infrastructure programs which could ease the impact of the crisis on the working people was off the table.
The speech selected all of the proposals of the November 10th first minister meeting and the November 15th G20 meeting that strengthen the global banking system and continue the discredited neo-liberal stratagems of privatization deregulation and decentralization. The speech refloated the discredited corporate cap and trade “environmental” strategy that rewards the energy giants for polluting.
The speech calls for a freeze on government spending which means less money for health care and social programs to alleviate poverty. The speech promotes P3’s, support for the Alberta-BC and SPP backed trade investment and labour mobility (TILMA) the latter, a plan to drive down wages and labour standards to the lowest common denominator. For the farmers Harper promised to proceed with the scuttling of the Canadian Wheat Board.
Prime Minister Harper dares the opposition to question escalating military spending brazenly restating his government’s plan to carry forward, in the midst of a depression a 20 year $482 billion plan to revamp all three branches of the armed forces. The speech pledges to continue Canada’s support for US-NATO wars of interference and the Bush Doctrine of the so-called “right to intervene”. Harper is floating the idea with a new name, “new non-partisan democratic agency”. More ominously the Conservative Government plans to table a National Security Statement. Every time the Conservative Government mentions “security” it results in a loss of civil and democratic rights.
The Speech from the Throne is in essence a reactionary appeal for big business class “solidarity” against the victims of the coming depression, the working people of Canada.
What the opposition may or may not do in the debate on the speech from the throne is not yet clear. Next comes Finance Minister Flaherty’s economic update next week as the economy sinks daily deeper into recession. The initial statements of Dion, Layton and Duceppe are not encouraging.
The idea of bringing down the Harper government and forming a reform coalition government to implement a genuine program on behalf of labour and the farmers, and all people who must labour to live, seems to be beyond their imagination.
Left Turn Canada!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
The Cause of Peace Deserves Careful Analysis. A Response to Obama Bashing!
Recently a number of FOS readers active in the peace movement asked for my comment on postings by an assortment of Canadian and US “left” commentators attacking President elect Barack Obama. Here is my response…
Dear Friends
Thank you for asking for my opinion on this important debate. I apologize for the length of my reply but you have caused me to think how best to answer. I am not good at sound bites and believe we need the time to think and discuss things at greater length. The cause of peace deserves careful analysis and comment.
First of all I do not subscribe to the view of COAT on this matter at this time. They do good and useful work for peace but for a Canadian peace organization to mobilize Canadian public opinion against the outcome of a US election and its President elect is presumptuous and not useful to our cause right now. I think we need a deeper analysis and a more considered and sober approach. What do I mean by that?
The US election was more about the movement that brought Barack Obama to power than the President-elect himself.
There was a powerful element of popular, grass roots support for the candidates of the Democratic Party Presidential nomination that Obama during the campaign succeeded in uniting behind his candidacy. He did that by speaking more directly to the real problems caused by war and economic depression confronting the people of the USA and their deep conviction that matters had to change. Those were genuine issues and contrast sharply with the Bush era and its open advocacy of the US Century and its drive for unilateral control of the world under the bogus "war on terrorism".
Has Obama abandoned the cause of US imperialism and global domination? That is unlikely and it is unrealistic to expect him to do that or frame our discussion around whether he will or he won't.
What is completely reasonable to consider is that given internal US politics and the unfolding world economic crisis he will find it impossible to completely ignore the peace movement and the expectations of the people of the USA for a withdrawal from Iraq. It is one thing to have no illusions about Obama as COAT advises. It is quite another to predict and actually work for a negative outcome of his Presidency before he has assumed office.
It would be more useful to conduct a campaign to bring pressure on Obama to honor his election promises, not predict he won't even before he has taken office.
What Obama will do with his presidency is not completely predictable and not even entirely in his hands. We need to keep in mind that US voters still accorded the Republican Candidate John McCain 48% of the popular vote. The Republican Party will not remain idle and they will be campaigning hard to erase the expectations of the people of the USA for peace and progress in their country.
What are some of the obvious things we in the Canadian peace movement may want to say and that should be said soberly and without hyperbole about the US election?
It is reasonable to observe that it is impossible given the political and economic reality of the US class, electoral and governmental system for anyone who isn't well integrated in that system at the highest levels and extremely rich or have access to wealth to become president. That by the way is true of our country as well.
Obama comes to the Presidency with baggage. The matter cannot be left at that and be considered the last word. What US president hasn't arrived on the scene without baggage and that goes for Canadian Prime Ministers as well?
It is remarkable considering endemic racism in the USA that a well placed African American candidate, with or without baggage, was elected president of the USA.
It is not so important what COAT thinks about that outcome as what the African American citizens of the USA think about that outcome.
We in Canada need to think carefully about expressing views and mobilizing campaigns that would be viewed by African Americans as questioning their wisdom and support for Obama. They are quite capable of deciding whether or not he will measure up to their expectations.
We in Canada have experienced US interference in our elections and we didn't like it and neither will Americans.
As a retired worker I take a slightly different view of the election of Obama which I do not disparage in its importance to the struggle against racism in the USA.
As a worker I await the day when a worker, man or woman, and I have known many that qualify, can aspire to become Prime Minister of Canada or President of the USA.. The closest the US ever came to taking seriously a genuine labour-peace candidate for President and who by the way had an unblemished record of struggle for the common people, was the great socialist Eugene Debs. He ran for President on a labour ticket and garnered a million votes at the turn of the century. Henry Wallace another impassioned labour peace candidate after WW2 put up a serious battle for the common people but fell far short of election. That is something for the future.
It is also a reality of US politics that once elected it is difficult for any president to completely ignore the movement (electoral base) that brought him or her to power.
US Presidencies are always establishment presidencies but given certain conditions it sometimes becomes possible depending on the real balance of political forces in the country to make some headway on peace and on behalf of workers and the poor. That possibility cannot be discounted by serious activists for peace.
Such was the case in the 1930's with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who defied some of the wealthiest and most powerful financial capitalist interests of the USA and enacted some badly needed economic reforms for labour and the poor. That possibility cannot be ruled out with Obama in power. Neither is it a guarantee.
When it happened in the USA in the 1930's it resulted from the mass struggles of the people led by labour against the terrible conditions brought on by the Great Depression. The great merit of FDR is that he had the courage to actually do something. That era needs to be restudied in the light of today's economic depression.
George Bush II on the other hand was in power during a long period of economic expansion in the USA. He was openly beholden to the neo-con religious right and on a deeper level to the powerful oil interests and the military industrial complex and all of those who parasitically were making billions out of war and preparations for war.
It is regrettable that US citizens, including some workers, saw their economic interests tied to militarism and unbridled capitalist speculation. They voted for Republican Presidents for a long time, disguising their support with patriotic flag waving but with a definite economic interest in doing so.That is regrettable but that fact can't be ignored. That by the way is also true of our country where many mask their economic interest with patriotic fervor.
Obama has been brought to power by a different electoral base, and under a different set of objective circumstances. Most of his electoral base is amongst those who have been excluded from benefitting from war and suffer directly the economic hardships it has brought to the American people and in particular the youth both African American and white, who have been its special victims. There is strong expression of the desire for peace in the election of Obama.
What prevents any President in the USA from acting swiftly on the question of peace is an overarching reality of the US economy. We need to keep in mind that there is evidence that 40% of the US economy is directly or indirectly dependent on militarism and active wars. It is by far the main cause of the lack of public funds for basic governmental needs that has created a dire situation for many US states and municipalities that can't pay for state and local services as basic as public education, health care and infrastructure. The State of California, one of the richest in the union, has gone to the federal treasury for a state loan to fund its obligations. Military spending is also a major if not the major contributor to environmental damage and certainly a major factor in global warming. That fact is not spoken of enough by the environmental movement.
Whether Obama will have the courage to cut arms spending, withdraw from Iraq, shut down some of the 800 US military bases world wide, withdraw its military to its own borders and live within its own means is an open question. I count myself among those that are skeptical and consider it unlikely for that to happen quickly during the Obama Presidency. That outcome will take time and a maturity of political and economic factors that will result in another big upsurge of popular pressure from the people of the USA.
Another reality is the fact that the Democratic Party is far from united. Within the Democratic electoral base are also well to do and some very rich US interests who have been excluded from power by the Republican insiders and who now want in. These interests have not prospered as they would have liked out of US wars, foreign investments like the small group of Republican insiders. They were not the main beneficiaries of the sub-prime bubble. They are more interested in making up for lost time than solving the great issues of peace and economic reform on the minds of the millions who voted for Obama.
There is already a struggle underway inside the Democratic Party for positions of influence. I did not see a single prominent civil rights or labour leader on the platform at Obama's first press conference. That is a portent. There is not doubt that there is movement inside the Democratic Party to subvert its peace and reform wing. How Obama will cope with that is not known at this time. If the people of the USA want his Presidency to live up to their expectations they will have to fight for it, and we should do nothing that will make their struggle more difficult.
Any US Presidency is a hot bed of patronage. It cannot be forgotten that President Bush elevated political cronyism to unprecedented heights. It still is the main feature of US politics. Bush in the dying days of his Presidency continues that practice.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and The Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke and before him Allen Greenspan were the Republican architects of deregulation and neo-liberalism that enabled insider cronies to use derivatives and hedge funds (betting with stocks they don't own and money they don't have) to cause trading in these bogus instruments to reach the astronomical amounts, many times global GDP.
What upheld the whole system were US working people using their hard earned incomes to pay their mortgages. When the economy declined and millions defaulted the whole system of sub-prime instruments collapsed causing a world wide global recession. It caused a world wide recession because banks around the world were buying and selling these worthless securities on the advice of US investment houses and of course on the advice of Allan Greenspan.
I was alarmed to read today in the Globe and Mail that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board was heavily involved in backing hedge fund trading which may yet, seriously harm our public pensions. CPP is the money of Canadian working people deposited there in trust, since 1966 in the belief that it was secure and not to be used for speculation. The creation of the CPP Investment Board changed all that and now a cloud hangs over our pensions.
Does all of this mean that nothing can be achieved during the Obama Presidency? No I don't subscribe to such an extreme view. I believe much can be achieved but it will involve unrelenting popular democratic pressure to ensure that it happens. Next weekend the G20 will meet in Washington at Bush's invitation. Harper and Flaherty are going there and all bets are off as to what they will do at the meeting. I will be so bold as to predict they will continue to ally themselves with the US administration believing that Canada's destiny is tied to the USA.
Harper will now try and re-invent himself and he will cause great embarrassment to us all as he obsequiously ingratiates himself with Obama hoping we will all forget his past admirations and support for Bush.
Canadian peace demands something better than that from our Government. It demands that we distance our country from US-NATO wars, from militarism, the $482 billion arms budget to be squandered in the next twenty years. It means getting out of NAFTA and SPP. That is what we should demand be discussed with the new President of the USA.
We do not need to rely solely on the US market to prosper. Other countries are finding new markets in a new world. We have everything we need in Canada, resources capital, a productive and well educated workforce and the world is waiting to trade with us. That is why we need to consider an entirely new relationship with the world, not dependent on what is happening in the USA.
Harper is so implicated in submissive behavior to the USA he is not the Prime Minister that can be trusted to do it. That is why it is important for the peace movement to take an interest in federal politics and advance our own program for peaceful development of our country. The preoccupation with US politics is unavoidable but our destiny is in Canada and its future. That is my concept of what peace means.
There is much more to be said, and thank you for asking. Please feel free to share this discussion with anyone you may think would be interested.
Dear Friends
Thank you for asking for my opinion on this important debate. I apologize for the length of my reply but you have caused me to think how best to answer. I am not good at sound bites and believe we need the time to think and discuss things at greater length. The cause of peace deserves careful analysis and comment.
First of all I do not subscribe to the view of COAT on this matter at this time. They do good and useful work for peace but for a Canadian peace organization to mobilize Canadian public opinion against the outcome of a US election and its President elect is presumptuous and not useful to our cause right now. I think we need a deeper analysis and a more considered and sober approach. What do I mean by that?
The US election was more about the movement that brought Barack Obama to power than the President-elect himself.
There was a powerful element of popular, grass roots support for the candidates of the Democratic Party Presidential nomination that Obama during the campaign succeeded in uniting behind his candidacy. He did that by speaking more directly to the real problems caused by war and economic depression confronting the people of the USA and their deep conviction that matters had to change. Those were genuine issues and contrast sharply with the Bush era and its open advocacy of the US Century and its drive for unilateral control of the world under the bogus "war on terrorism".
Has Obama abandoned the cause of US imperialism and global domination? That is unlikely and it is unrealistic to expect him to do that or frame our discussion around whether he will or he won't.
What is completely reasonable to consider is that given internal US politics and the unfolding world economic crisis he will find it impossible to completely ignore the peace movement and the expectations of the people of the USA for a withdrawal from Iraq. It is one thing to have no illusions about Obama as COAT advises. It is quite another to predict and actually work for a negative outcome of his Presidency before he has assumed office.
It would be more useful to conduct a campaign to bring pressure on Obama to honor his election promises, not predict he won't even before he has taken office.
What Obama will do with his presidency is not completely predictable and not even entirely in his hands. We need to keep in mind that US voters still accorded the Republican Candidate John McCain 48% of the popular vote. The Republican Party will not remain idle and they will be campaigning hard to erase the expectations of the people of the USA for peace and progress in their country.
What are some of the obvious things we in the Canadian peace movement may want to say and that should be said soberly and without hyperbole about the US election?
It is reasonable to observe that it is impossible given the political and economic reality of the US class, electoral and governmental system for anyone who isn't well integrated in that system at the highest levels and extremely rich or have access to wealth to become president. That by the way is true of our country as well.
Obama comes to the Presidency with baggage. The matter cannot be left at that and be considered the last word. What US president hasn't arrived on the scene without baggage and that goes for Canadian Prime Ministers as well?
It is remarkable considering endemic racism in the USA that a well placed African American candidate, with or without baggage, was elected president of the USA.
It is not so important what COAT thinks about that outcome as what the African American citizens of the USA think about that outcome.
We in Canada need to think carefully about expressing views and mobilizing campaigns that would be viewed by African Americans as questioning their wisdom and support for Obama. They are quite capable of deciding whether or not he will measure up to their expectations.
We in Canada have experienced US interference in our elections and we didn't like it and neither will Americans.
As a retired worker I take a slightly different view of the election of Obama which I do not disparage in its importance to the struggle against racism in the USA.
As a worker I await the day when a worker, man or woman, and I have known many that qualify, can aspire to become Prime Minister of Canada or President of the USA.. The closest the US ever came to taking seriously a genuine labour-peace candidate for President and who by the way had an unblemished record of struggle for the common people, was the great socialist Eugene Debs. He ran for President on a labour ticket and garnered a million votes at the turn of the century. Henry Wallace another impassioned labour peace candidate after WW2 put up a serious battle for the common people but fell far short of election. That is something for the future.
It is also a reality of US politics that once elected it is difficult for any president to completely ignore the movement (electoral base) that brought him or her to power.
US Presidencies are always establishment presidencies but given certain conditions it sometimes becomes possible depending on the real balance of political forces in the country to make some headway on peace and on behalf of workers and the poor. That possibility cannot be discounted by serious activists for peace.
Such was the case in the 1930's with the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who defied some of the wealthiest and most powerful financial capitalist interests of the USA and enacted some badly needed economic reforms for labour and the poor. That possibility cannot be ruled out with Obama in power. Neither is it a guarantee.
When it happened in the USA in the 1930's it resulted from the mass struggles of the people led by labour against the terrible conditions brought on by the Great Depression. The great merit of FDR is that he had the courage to actually do something. That era needs to be restudied in the light of today's economic depression.
George Bush II on the other hand was in power during a long period of economic expansion in the USA. He was openly beholden to the neo-con religious right and on a deeper level to the powerful oil interests and the military industrial complex and all of those who parasitically were making billions out of war and preparations for war.
It is regrettable that US citizens, including some workers, saw their economic interests tied to militarism and unbridled capitalist speculation. They voted for Republican Presidents for a long time, disguising their support with patriotic flag waving but with a definite economic interest in doing so.That is regrettable but that fact can't be ignored. That by the way is also true of our country where many mask their economic interest with patriotic fervor.
Obama has been brought to power by a different electoral base, and under a different set of objective circumstances. Most of his electoral base is amongst those who have been excluded from benefitting from war and suffer directly the economic hardships it has brought to the American people and in particular the youth both African American and white, who have been its special victims. There is strong expression of the desire for peace in the election of Obama.
What prevents any President in the USA from acting swiftly on the question of peace is an overarching reality of the US economy. We need to keep in mind that there is evidence that 40% of the US economy is directly or indirectly dependent on militarism and active wars. It is by far the main cause of the lack of public funds for basic governmental needs that has created a dire situation for many US states and municipalities that can't pay for state and local services as basic as public education, health care and infrastructure. The State of California, one of the richest in the union, has gone to the federal treasury for a state loan to fund its obligations. Military spending is also a major if not the major contributor to environmental damage and certainly a major factor in global warming. That fact is not spoken of enough by the environmental movement.
Whether Obama will have the courage to cut arms spending, withdraw from Iraq, shut down some of the 800 US military bases world wide, withdraw its military to its own borders and live within its own means is an open question. I count myself among those that are skeptical and consider it unlikely for that to happen quickly during the Obama Presidency. That outcome will take time and a maturity of political and economic factors that will result in another big upsurge of popular pressure from the people of the USA.
Another reality is the fact that the Democratic Party is far from united. Within the Democratic electoral base are also well to do and some very rich US interests who have been excluded from power by the Republican insiders and who now want in. These interests have not prospered as they would have liked out of US wars, foreign investments like the small group of Republican insiders. They were not the main beneficiaries of the sub-prime bubble. They are more interested in making up for lost time than solving the great issues of peace and economic reform on the minds of the millions who voted for Obama.
There is already a struggle underway inside the Democratic Party for positions of influence. I did not see a single prominent civil rights or labour leader on the platform at Obama's first press conference. That is a portent. There is not doubt that there is movement inside the Democratic Party to subvert its peace and reform wing. How Obama will cope with that is not known at this time. If the people of the USA want his Presidency to live up to their expectations they will have to fight for it, and we should do nothing that will make their struggle more difficult.
Any US Presidency is a hot bed of patronage. It cannot be forgotten that President Bush elevated political cronyism to unprecedented heights. It still is the main feature of US politics. Bush in the dying days of his Presidency continues that practice.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and The Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke and before him Allen Greenspan were the Republican architects of deregulation and neo-liberalism that enabled insider cronies to use derivatives and hedge funds (betting with stocks they don't own and money they don't have) to cause trading in these bogus instruments to reach the astronomical amounts, many times global GDP.
What upheld the whole system were US working people using their hard earned incomes to pay their mortgages. When the economy declined and millions defaulted the whole system of sub-prime instruments collapsed causing a world wide global recession. It caused a world wide recession because banks around the world were buying and selling these worthless securities on the advice of US investment houses and of course on the advice of Allan Greenspan.
I was alarmed to read today in the Globe and Mail that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board was heavily involved in backing hedge fund trading which may yet, seriously harm our public pensions. CPP is the money of Canadian working people deposited there in trust, since 1966 in the belief that it was secure and not to be used for speculation. The creation of the CPP Investment Board changed all that and now a cloud hangs over our pensions.
Does all of this mean that nothing can be achieved during the Obama Presidency? No I don't subscribe to such an extreme view. I believe much can be achieved but it will involve unrelenting popular democratic pressure to ensure that it happens. Next weekend the G20 will meet in Washington at Bush's invitation. Harper and Flaherty are going there and all bets are off as to what they will do at the meeting. I will be so bold as to predict they will continue to ally themselves with the US administration believing that Canada's destiny is tied to the USA.
Harper will now try and re-invent himself and he will cause great embarrassment to us all as he obsequiously ingratiates himself with Obama hoping we will all forget his past admirations and support for Bush.
Canadian peace demands something better than that from our Government. It demands that we distance our country from US-NATO wars, from militarism, the $482 billion arms budget to be squandered in the next twenty years. It means getting out of NAFTA and SPP. That is what we should demand be discussed with the new President of the USA.
We do not need to rely solely on the US market to prosper. Other countries are finding new markets in a new world. We have everything we need in Canada, resources capital, a productive and well educated workforce and the world is waiting to trade with us. That is why we need to consider an entirely new relationship with the world, not dependent on what is happening in the USA.
Harper is so implicated in submissive behavior to the USA he is not the Prime Minister that can be trusted to do it. That is why it is important for the peace movement to take an interest in federal politics and advance our own program for peaceful development of our country. The preoccupation with US politics is unavoidable but our destiny is in Canada and its future. That is my concept of what peace means.
There is much more to be said, and thank you for asking. Please feel free to share this discussion with anyone you may think would be interested.
Capitalism and Racketeering 101
President George Bush in the lead up to the G20 meeting in Washington on November 16th grandiloquently lauded his defunct administration’s disastrous war on terror and made-in-USA global economic melt down. His speech came with a warning: Don't disturb capitalism.
Bush said: "In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed, exploitation and failure. It is true that this crisis included failures, by leaders and borrowers, by financial firms, by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system."
Bush of course is right. The crisis is not a failure of the free market system. It functioned superbly, just as it is designed to do, to rip off and exploit workers and the poor and transfer the stolen wealth to the wealthy and powerful elites of the world. Capitalism 101!
Bush delivered his remarks with his trademark smirk and swagger in the full knowledge his insider cronies were listening and appreciated the in-joke that they had just put another one over on the capitalist world. The routine is; first create chaos in the system and then pass legislation to make the taxpayers pay for the mess so it can be done all over again. Global racketeering 101!
Right on cue Finance Minister Flaherty supported Bush on all counts stating; "The open market system did not fail in this crisis. However, some forgot Adam Smith’s maxim that the invisible hand needs to be supported by an appropriate legal and regulatory framework.”
There was a regulatory framework; the artful handiwork of Allan Greenspan former Chair of the US Federal Reserve and Henry Paulson former CEO of Lehman Brothers and now U.S. Treasury Secretary who actively promoted changes in the rules of the US Securities Exchange Commission that permitted investment insiders without oversight to trade quasi-legal derivatives and hedge funds, (betting with borrowed stocks and leveraged money) many times global GDP.
The global Ponzi scheme was promoted globally enmeshing Canadian banks and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. Underpinning the whole stratagem was the hard work of the U.S. people attempting to buy homes they were encouraged to purchase at sub-prime rates. When working class families confronted high rates of interest, hidden like time bombs inside the sub-prime contract, millions couldn’t pay. Many others who could pay lost their jobs. The whole system began to crumble.
What is the penalty for global insider investor racketeering? Capitalist governments that give billions from the public purse to the same investors and banks so they can do it all over again.
Left Turn Canada!
Bush said: "In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right are equating the free enterprise system with greed, exploitation and failure. It is true that this crisis included failures, by leaders and borrowers, by financial firms, by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system."
Bush of course is right. The crisis is not a failure of the free market system. It functioned superbly, just as it is designed to do, to rip off and exploit workers and the poor and transfer the stolen wealth to the wealthy and powerful elites of the world. Capitalism 101!
Bush delivered his remarks with his trademark smirk and swagger in the full knowledge his insider cronies were listening and appreciated the in-joke that they had just put another one over on the capitalist world. The routine is; first create chaos in the system and then pass legislation to make the taxpayers pay for the mess so it can be done all over again. Global racketeering 101!
Right on cue Finance Minister Flaherty supported Bush on all counts stating; "The open market system did not fail in this crisis. However, some forgot Adam Smith’s maxim that the invisible hand needs to be supported by an appropriate legal and regulatory framework.”
There was a regulatory framework; the artful handiwork of Allan Greenspan former Chair of the US Federal Reserve and Henry Paulson former CEO of Lehman Brothers and now U.S. Treasury Secretary who actively promoted changes in the rules of the US Securities Exchange Commission that permitted investment insiders without oversight to trade quasi-legal derivatives and hedge funds, (betting with borrowed stocks and leveraged money) many times global GDP.
The global Ponzi scheme was promoted globally enmeshing Canadian banks and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. Underpinning the whole stratagem was the hard work of the U.S. people attempting to buy homes they were encouraged to purchase at sub-prime rates. When working class families confronted high rates of interest, hidden like time bombs inside the sub-prime contract, millions couldn’t pay. Many others who could pay lost their jobs. The whole system began to crumble.
What is the penalty for global insider investor racketeering? Capitalist governments that give billions from the public purse to the same investors and banks so they can do it all over again.
Left Turn Canada!
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Keep Canada Out of the US Bar Room Brawl
Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on the eve of the G20 meeting in Washington next weekend have no mandate to support the plan of US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced today that rewards insider cronies of the Bush Administration for plunging the world economy into chaos and crisis.
Paulson is shoveling $700 billion of US taxpayer’s money directly to the banks, near banks and their own private insurance company AIG, and then pleads with them to give it back to cash starved US industries. They won’t. The money is not intended for job creating industries such as auto, or to keep working class families confronting foreclosure in their homes.
The $700 billion will be used to bolster the strength of the last three major US banks and investment houses left standing, U.S. global financial giants Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, the latter the former employer of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. These favoured mega banks are being shored up with taxpayer’s money in an attempt to bully all US private capital to join in a bar room brawl with the EU and British Banks and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) that are openly challenging US dominance and control of the world capitalist financial system.
What is totally missing from Paulson’s report is the ruinous affect on the global economy of the ongoing squandering of the US treasury on US-NATO wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fortune Magazine last January estimated the total cost of the “war on terror” (Iraq) to average about $100 billion per year or a total of $500 billion to that date. The US War Resistors League places the total closer to $200 billion per year out of a total US military expenditure for 2009 of $965 billion. The war is consuming about 1 to 2% of US GDP and if it continues for a decade may reach 5% when overall total US GDP is likely to contract. The CIA Fact Book puts US GDP for 2007 at $13.78 trillion.
The Harper Conservative Government has no mandate to continue to tie Canada to this US economic boat anchor. Prime Minister Harper has no mandate to use Canada’s wealth and resources as a powder monkey for US imperialism. The Harper Government has no mandate to place at risk the wealth and welfare of Canadians in an inter-imperialist brawl that will break out at the G20 next week.
Canadians have the right to demand a made-in-Canada solution to our economic future and end our dependence on a shrinking crisis ridden US economy.
Canada has everything it needs to create jobs, provide capital and to produce cheap energy for economic expansion and to produce goods needed for the home and international markets. The way forward for Canada is independence of economic development and the establishment a new relationship with the world, free of the domination and control of US imperialism. If Harper won’t do it – it is time for the left to discuss the kind of government that will.
Left Turn Canada!
Paulson is shoveling $700 billion of US taxpayer’s money directly to the banks, near banks and their own private insurance company AIG, and then pleads with them to give it back to cash starved US industries. They won’t. The money is not intended for job creating industries such as auto, or to keep working class families confronting foreclosure in their homes.
The $700 billion will be used to bolster the strength of the last three major US banks and investment houses left standing, U.S. global financial giants Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, the latter the former employer of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. These favoured mega banks are being shored up with taxpayer’s money in an attempt to bully all US private capital to join in a bar room brawl with the EU and British Banks and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) that are openly challenging US dominance and control of the world capitalist financial system.
What is totally missing from Paulson’s report is the ruinous affect on the global economy of the ongoing squandering of the US treasury on US-NATO wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fortune Magazine last January estimated the total cost of the “war on terror” (Iraq) to average about $100 billion per year or a total of $500 billion to that date. The US War Resistors League places the total closer to $200 billion per year out of a total US military expenditure for 2009 of $965 billion. The war is consuming about 1 to 2% of US GDP and if it continues for a decade may reach 5% when overall total US GDP is likely to contract. The CIA Fact Book puts US GDP for 2007 at $13.78 trillion.
The Harper Conservative Government has no mandate to continue to tie Canada to this US economic boat anchor. Prime Minister Harper has no mandate to use Canada’s wealth and resources as a powder monkey for US imperialism. The Harper Government has no mandate to place at risk the wealth and welfare of Canadians in an inter-imperialist brawl that will break out at the G20 next week.
Canadians have the right to demand a made-in-Canada solution to our economic future and end our dependence on a shrinking crisis ridden US economy.
Canada has everything it needs to create jobs, provide capital and to produce cheap energy for economic expansion and to produce goods needed for the home and international markets. The way forward for Canada is independence of economic development and the establishment a new relationship with the world, free of the domination and control of US imperialism. If Harper won’t do it – it is time for the left to discuss the kind of government that will.
Left Turn Canada!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
What Is Peace?
On Remembrance Day
November 11, 2008
To Fight for Peace is to Fight for Life
I was recently asked by a peace activist in Nelson to contribute my definition of peace to a compendium of definitions she was collecting.
As we observe on this day, in solemn ceremonies everywhere our indictment of unjust wars, for what it is worth, my definition of peace.
What is Peace?
Peace is the restraint imposed on aggressive imperialism by the organized political and social actions of the vast majority of humankind as they realize that the basic necessities of life and human happiness can only be achieved in a society that eradicates all of the causes of war.
Peace is neither a sentiment nor a plea to reason. If it were we would have it. Peace is the unavoidable struggle for human existence. To fight for peace is to fight for life. Peace is the objective condition necessary for the existence of human life and in today’s world, of all life.
Don Currie
November 11, 2008
To Fight for Peace is to Fight for Life
I was recently asked by a peace activist in Nelson to contribute my definition of peace to a compendium of definitions she was collecting.
As we observe on this day, in solemn ceremonies everywhere our indictment of unjust wars, for what it is worth, my definition of peace.
What is Peace?
Peace is the restraint imposed on aggressive imperialism by the organized political and social actions of the vast majority of humankind as they realize that the basic necessities of life and human happiness can only be achieved in a society that eradicates all of the causes of war.
Peace is neither a sentiment nor a plea to reason. If it were we would have it. Peace is the unavoidable struggle for human existence. To fight for peace is to fight for life. Peace is the objective condition necessary for the existence of human life and in today’s world, of all life.
Don Currie
Monday, November 10, 2008
United We Fall!
The G20 Meeting next week - United We Fall!
Today the first in a series of Federal Provincial first ministers meetings on the global economic crisis concluded in Ottawa, remarkable for its complete failure to give clear direction to the minority Harper Conservative Government on the eve of G20 meeting in Washington next week. Ed Stelmach of Alberta didn’t even show up.
The Provincial premier’s abandonment of their collective responsibility to the people of Canada gives Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty, what they want, a free hand. Their options include lining up with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and lame duck President Bush, the BRIC, (Brazil, Russia, India and China), President Sarkozy of France representing the EU, or British Prime Minister Gordon Brown representing British Banks. It could be any of the above because Prime Minister Harper has no unique plan to protect Canadians.
As far as Finance Minister Flaherty is concerned, his work is done. Canadian banks cleared out $25 billion of mortgage debt from the books and transferred it to Canada Mortgage (the taxpayers) without any requirement imposed on the banks to begin lending to stimulate the economy. Pensioners, unemployed, cash strapped governments and companies are “on their own.” Case closed.
Then why bother going to the G20? It was formed in 1999 and accounts for 85% of global production. Members are the seven major industrialized countries, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and the United States, plus Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the European Union.
Harper and Flaherty have to go because 2008 is not 1999. The capitalist world has changed. Brazil’s finance minister, Guido Mantega asserts that major industrial countries had zero growth in the past year and emerging economies such as Brazil, China, Russia, India, grew by 6.1%. Emerging economies account for 75% of global economic growth.
To underline the point, a $700 billion U.S. Government bail out package is being used to create “three colossal U.S. global financial giants” Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs positioning the U.S. to compete with the EU and other G20 competitors. The reorganized U.S. banking system was brokered by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a Wall Street enforcer going back to the days of Richard Nixon and you guessed it, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
The Paulson bailout rewards “Crony Capitalism’s” insiders. The Paulson bail out is not aimed at stopping the thievery of US workers pensions or put the 6.1% of US citizens out of work back to work. It is aimed at perpetuating and accelerating more plunder of the U.S. treasury (another $14 billion was transferred today to AIG the U.S. cashed strapped banking insurance company) before President elect Obama takes over on January 20th. 2009 and is handed the mess.
In contrast to the U.S. policy of rewarding the sub-prime criminals, China announced yesterday it had invested $586 billion, about 18% of its GDP into protecting its economy that will be spent on low-rent housing, infrastructure in rural areas as well as roads, airports and railways. It will also provide low interest loans to cashed strapped companies. China has a GDP of $3.3 trillion with a growth rate of around 7%. The investment is projected to boost China’s growth rate by another 2% next year to maintain its status as the fourth largest economy in the world. The effect of China’s action was an immediate upturn in global markets that helped stabilize metal and oil prices.
If the first minister’s meeting in Ottawa had done the same, agree to invest 18% of Canada’s GDP to stimulate the Canadian economy that would set aside a national recovery fund of about $280 billion Cdn. That figure is a little more than half of what the federal government will spend on U.S.-NATO wars and militarizing the Canadian economy over the next twenty years.
An opportunity has been missed. The first ministers have failed the Canadian people. Instead of putting Canadian interests first, they have allowed Harper and Flaherty to engage in what is certain to be an inter-imperialist brawl between the EU and the USA with the non-belligerent states attempting to come up with a workable plan. Depending on Harper and Flaherty to support a plan favourable to Canadian workers and farmers is wishful thinking.
All bets are off. If you are inclined to make one, bet on Harper supporting whatever U.S. cockamamie plan is floated next.
Left Turn Canada!
Today the first in a series of Federal Provincial first ministers meetings on the global economic crisis concluded in Ottawa, remarkable for its complete failure to give clear direction to the minority Harper Conservative Government on the eve of G20 meeting in Washington next week. Ed Stelmach of Alberta didn’t even show up.
The Provincial premier’s abandonment of their collective responsibility to the people of Canada gives Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty, what they want, a free hand. Their options include lining up with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and lame duck President Bush, the BRIC, (Brazil, Russia, India and China), President Sarkozy of France representing the EU, or British Prime Minister Gordon Brown representing British Banks. It could be any of the above because Prime Minister Harper has no unique plan to protect Canadians.
As far as Finance Minister Flaherty is concerned, his work is done. Canadian banks cleared out $25 billion of mortgage debt from the books and transferred it to Canada Mortgage (the taxpayers) without any requirement imposed on the banks to begin lending to stimulate the economy. Pensioners, unemployed, cash strapped governments and companies are “on their own.” Case closed.
Then why bother going to the G20? It was formed in 1999 and accounts for 85% of global production. Members are the seven major industrialized countries, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and the United States, plus Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey and the European Union.
Harper and Flaherty have to go because 2008 is not 1999. The capitalist world has changed. Brazil’s finance minister, Guido Mantega asserts that major industrial countries had zero growth in the past year and emerging economies such as Brazil, China, Russia, India, grew by 6.1%. Emerging economies account for 75% of global economic growth.
To underline the point, a $700 billion U.S. Government bail out package is being used to create “three colossal U.S. global financial giants” Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs positioning the U.S. to compete with the EU and other G20 competitors. The reorganized U.S. banking system was brokered by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a Wall Street enforcer going back to the days of Richard Nixon and you guessed it, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs.
The Paulson bailout rewards “Crony Capitalism’s” insiders. The Paulson bail out is not aimed at stopping the thievery of US workers pensions or put the 6.1% of US citizens out of work back to work. It is aimed at perpetuating and accelerating more plunder of the U.S. treasury (another $14 billion was transferred today to AIG the U.S. cashed strapped banking insurance company) before President elect Obama takes over on January 20th. 2009 and is handed the mess.
In contrast to the U.S. policy of rewarding the sub-prime criminals, China announced yesterday it had invested $586 billion, about 18% of its GDP into protecting its economy that will be spent on low-rent housing, infrastructure in rural areas as well as roads, airports and railways. It will also provide low interest loans to cashed strapped companies. China has a GDP of $3.3 trillion with a growth rate of around 7%. The investment is projected to boost China’s growth rate by another 2% next year to maintain its status as the fourth largest economy in the world. The effect of China’s action was an immediate upturn in global markets that helped stabilize metal and oil prices.
If the first minister’s meeting in Ottawa had done the same, agree to invest 18% of Canada’s GDP to stimulate the Canadian economy that would set aside a national recovery fund of about $280 billion Cdn. That figure is a little more than half of what the federal government will spend on U.S.-NATO wars and militarizing the Canadian economy over the next twenty years.
An opportunity has been missed. The first ministers have failed the Canadian people. Instead of putting Canadian interests first, they have allowed Harper and Flaherty to engage in what is certain to be an inter-imperialist brawl between the EU and the USA with the non-belligerent states attempting to come up with a workable plan. Depending on Harper and Flaherty to support a plan favourable to Canadian workers and farmers is wishful thinking.
All bets are off. If you are inclined to make one, bet on Harper supporting whatever U.S. cockamamie plan is floated next.
Left Turn Canada!
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Left Right and Centre
Jack Layton speaking this morning to Ontarian NDP’ers said bank bailouts cost each person in the world $582 and called for at least that much to be spent by the Harper Government on protecting the jobs and pensions of Canadian working class families. Layton staked out the NDP’s Parliamentary plan of economic stimulus including cancelling Harper’s corporate tax cuts and spending instead on low cost housing, research and development, trades training and infrastructure renewal including public transit. Layton demanded that workers have full access to their own money in the EI fund. He called for protection of workers pension funds and warned about government tampering with the Canada Pension Plan Funds in its February report. He reiterated the NDP’s position on climate change to make polluters pay through a hard limit cap and trade program and to clean up the tar sands. Nothing was said about the $200 million per month squander on the war in Afghanistan.
In contrast yesterday the Globe and Mail reported the “grass roots” Conservatives will demand less government and more privatization of health care at their policy convention in Winnipeg next weekend.
Also in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Paul Adams a former parliamentary correspondent and now teaching Journalism at Carleton University rails against the “fallacy” of a united “left wing alternative” in or out of Parliament. The piece is a thinly disguised response to Professor John Ryan of Winnipeg and his call for a left of centre coalition in an October 29th article in Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10742
What is missing in all of this? The organized labour movement!
Layton appeals for Harper to respect the 63% of Canadians that voted against him and work with the opposition parties on a united approach to solving the economic downturn.
What would give greater meaning to that appeal is thousands of Canadian workers and their families demonstrating at the Winnipeg Conservative Policy Convention next weekend and tens of thousands on Parliament Hill on the Opening of Parliament outlining organized labour’s plan for Canada.
Let Turn Canada!
In contrast yesterday the Globe and Mail reported the “grass roots” Conservatives will demand less government and more privatization of health care at their policy convention in Winnipeg next weekend.
Also in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Paul Adams a former parliamentary correspondent and now teaching Journalism at Carleton University rails against the “fallacy” of a united “left wing alternative” in or out of Parliament. The piece is a thinly disguised response to Professor John Ryan of Winnipeg and his call for a left of centre coalition in an October 29th article in Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10742
What is missing in all of this? The organized labour movement!
Layton appeals for Harper to respect the 63% of Canadians that voted against him and work with the opposition parties on a united approach to solving the economic downturn.
What would give greater meaning to that appeal is thousands of Canadian workers and their families demonstrating at the Winnipeg Conservative Policy Convention next weekend and tens of thousands on Parliament Hill on the Opening of Parliament outlining organized labour’s plan for Canada.
Let Turn Canada!
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Wait and See or Organize and Fight
Barack Obama has had his first press conference as President elect. All Canadian media commentators are preaching a wait and see approach. While President elect Obama has to put up with the Bush administration until January before acting, Canadians don’t.
The preoccupation of the media with the internal situation in the USA is a plea to Canadians to allow Prime Minister Harper to defer solutions to our urgent problems until Barack Obama and his advisors tells him what they will permit him to do.
No government in the world is sitting and waiting to see what the next US administration will allow them to do with such timorous and demeaning servility as our own. That also goes for the opposition parties as well.
The challenge confronting Canadian workers and farmers is not to allow a minority government to hide behind the latest “US love in” as an excuse for doing nothing.
Inaction is not an option for labour and working people as they lose their jobs in the tens of thousands.
There is a made-in-Canada solution to re-start the economy, end de-industrialization and stop the sell out of our dwindling energy resources. The problem is to organize a people’s movement that will fight for it.
The dignity of our country and its survival as an independent country depends on it.
The preoccupation of the media with the internal situation in the USA is a plea to Canadians to allow Prime Minister Harper to defer solutions to our urgent problems until Barack Obama and his advisors tells him what they will permit him to do.
No government in the world is sitting and waiting to see what the next US administration will allow them to do with such timorous and demeaning servility as our own. That also goes for the opposition parties as well.
The challenge confronting Canadian workers and farmers is not to allow a minority government to hide behind the latest “US love in” as an excuse for doing nothing.
Inaction is not an option for labour and working people as they lose their jobs in the tens of thousands.
There is a made-in-Canada solution to re-start the economy, end de-industrialization and stop the sell out of our dwindling energy resources. The problem is to organize a people’s movement that will fight for it.
The dignity of our country and its survival as an independent country depends on it.
Friday, November 07, 2008
A "Made-for-Canada" Economic Plan
Prime Minister Harper, Stephane Dion, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe are huddled with their advisors transfixed as they await President elect Barack Obama’s first press conference this afternoon and his “made-for-USA” plan to make Canada and the world pay for the Bush administration’s war-induced world economic melt down.
Finance Minister Flaherty is praying that Obama will say something, anything; that will help him explain to Canadians why the Harper Government has no “made-for-Canada” economic plan to save Canadian jobs.
There is no sign that Dion, Layton and Duceppe have even talked about a united opposition plan for a “made-in-Canada” economic plan to protect Canada from the plan of U.S. finance capital to off-load its problems on the world. Their “we are all in this together” approach is an admission of political impotence and bankruptcy.
The news out of GM and Ford today and the economic bad news reported in the Edmonton Journal about looming job loss in the energy sector, challenges organized labour and the left to do what the Harper Government and a paralyzed opposition won’t do – act on behalf of the Canadian working class.
In the first place that means to organize labour led community committees to save Canadian industry.
Finance Minister Flaherty is praying that Obama will say something, anything; that will help him explain to Canadians why the Harper Government has no “made-for-Canada” economic plan to save Canadian jobs.
There is no sign that Dion, Layton and Duceppe have even talked about a united opposition plan for a “made-in-Canada” economic plan to protect Canada from the plan of U.S. finance capital to off-load its problems on the world. Their “we are all in this together” approach is an admission of political impotence and bankruptcy.
The news out of GM and Ford today and the economic bad news reported in the Edmonton Journal about looming job loss in the energy sector, challenges organized labour and the left to do what the Harper Government and a paralyzed opposition won’t do – act on behalf of the Canadian working class.
In the first place that means to organize labour led community committees to save Canadian industry.
- What has been built in Canada, what has been paid for by Canadians stays in Canada.
- No dismantling of Canadian production facilities for shipment to the USA.
- Nationalize energy and use it in Canada first to fuel Canadian industry and manufacturing.
- No public funds for private banks.
- Working class family income loss trumps Canadian investor losses.
Left Turn Canada!
Thursday, November 06, 2008
The 44th President of the USA
The Way I See It
Don Currie Chair CPS
By electing Barack Obama their 44th President, the people of the USA, as is their inalienable right, are determining their own destiny. It is not yet clear if in voting for a program of change, if that change includes recognition and support of the inalienable right of other peoples to do likewise.
Will an Obama Government greet with grace and equanimity, the pronouncements of other peoples that they also love their country and believe they also live “in the best country in the world” and also insist on saying so and doing so without the permission or interference of US imperialism?
In the appeals for unity and reconciliation expressed in both the concession speech of Senator McCain and the victory speech of President elect Obama it is not clear if those appeals are for a long overdue retreat from empire and acceptance by the people of the USA of the necessity to live as others do, within their own borders and within their own means, or whether the appeal for unity is around a new, revised and perhaps less belligerent version of US imperial destiny.
While the former is the business of the people of the USA the latter is the business of the people of the world.
Don Currie Chair CPS
By electing Barack Obama their 44th President, the people of the USA, as is their inalienable right, are determining their own destiny. It is not yet clear if in voting for a program of change, if that change includes recognition and support of the inalienable right of other peoples to do likewise.
Will an Obama Government greet with grace and equanimity, the pronouncements of other peoples that they also love their country and believe they also live “in the best country in the world” and also insist on saying so and doing so without the permission or interference of US imperialism?
In the appeals for unity and reconciliation expressed in both the concession speech of Senator McCain and the victory speech of President elect Obama it is not clear if those appeals are for a long overdue retreat from empire and acceptance by the people of the USA of the necessity to live as others do, within their own borders and within their own means, or whether the appeal for unity is around a new, revised and perhaps less belligerent version of US imperial destiny.
While the former is the business of the people of the USA the latter is the business of the people of the world.
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