Defeat Harper and Move On!
After debasing Parliament, expressing contempt for the majority of Canadians who do not support their policies, the Harper Minority Conservatives are now pleading for a second chance. Their repentance is phony.
Following the throne speech, initial statements by Michael Ignatieff, Liberal leader and Liberal war horse Ralph Goodale, were remarkable and contemptible showing that they may betray the NDP-Liberal Coalition and prop up a lame duck Conservative Prime Minister.
There is no basis for a national consensus under a Conservative Prime Minister. Unity can only be built around progressive economic and social programs. It can never be built on reaction and backwardness.
The Harper government needs to be swept aside for reasons that go beyond the budget. The Harper Conservatives are unrepentant far right neo-cons. They are incapable of redemption. Their time is up.
Under the Conservatives Canada has declined on all vital benchmarks. Canada has less jobs, less science, less arts, less mass participation in sports, recreation. Fewer youth can go to university and post secondary education. There is more homelessness; more poverty, less optimism and more despair.
The Harper Conservative Government is fundamentally a neo-con government of the Thatcher-Reagan-Mulroney-Bush ilk: after all the others have been consigned to the rubbish heap of history, Harper lingers on – now his time has come.
Neo-cons are slaves to the capitalist free market. They are anti-labour. Neo-cons are for privatizing the public health care system and using pension funds for private investment. They are for the militarization of the economy. They are anti-science. They oppose regulation of banks, markets, health, and all forms of industry.
Neo-cons are against pay equity for women. They oppose the legitimate demands of first nations and aboriginal people’s for the redress of all outstanding land claims and rights. They are against single desk marketing and work to abolish the Wheat Board. Neo-cons oppose universal child care. They oppose universal unemployment insurance for all. They oppose public housing. They believe in punishing the addicted and imprisoning adolescents. They are intolerant of racial minorities, immigrants and attempt to challenge the separation of church and state. They are against the CBC and all public broadcasting. They are contemptuous of creative artists, writers, public sports and recreation for all. They are penny pinching and mean and they should not be in power.
Throw them out!
Left Turn Canada!
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
President Obama and Real Change
Don Currie, Chair CPS
The litmus test for the international working class and all oppressed people as to whether or not the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the USA represents real change will be revealed in the months and years ahead in his government’s attitude to the struggles of the people of other countries that choose a path of economic and political development different from that prevailing in the USA.
Will the Obama Government greet with grace and equanimity, the declaration of other peoples that they also love their country and believe they also live “in the best country in the world” and insist on doing so without the permission or interference of US imperialism?
The people of the USA as is their inalienable right are determining their own destiny. It is not yet clear if in voting for real change, if that change includes recognition and support for the right of other peoples to do likewise.
In the appeals for unity and reconciliation expressed in both the concession speech of Senator McCain and the victory and inaugural speeches of President Obama it is not clear if those appeals are for a graceful and 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 imperialist destiny.
While the former is the business of the people of the USA the latter is the business of the people of the world.
That is not a small consideration for Canadians who will inevitably be compelled out of economic necessity to call for a recasting of any and all agreements with US finance capital that limit Canadian sovereignty, restrict Canadian independent economic development and interfere with Canadian sovereign ownership and control of its own resources. Most revealing will be the attitude of the Obama Government to the majority opinion of Canadians as expressed in the last federal election to end to Canadian participation in the US-NATO war of aggression in Afghanistan.
Nothing that is said here should be understood to mean that Canadians do not also confront the urgent need to denounce and break with the imperialist ambitions of our own state monopoly rulers and its interference in the internal affairs of the peoples of other countries.
The challenge confronting the Canadian people is the same as people of the USA, whether we will permit our state monopoly ruling class to continue to pursue its imperialist ambitions at the expense of our dignity and at the expense of other peoples or whether we will use our own resources and ingenuity to overcome the process of deindustrialization that threatens our economy with ruin.
That issue becomes the only principled basis for the unity the working classes of North America, an anti-imperialist unity that will be understood and greeted by all the oppressed people of the world suffering from the curse of underdevelopment, poverty and oppression imposed on them by all of the leading imperialist states.
Left Turn Canada!
The litmus test for the international working class and all oppressed people as to whether or not the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the USA represents real change will be revealed in the months and years ahead in his government’s attitude to the struggles of the people of other countries that choose a path of economic and political development different from that prevailing in the USA.
Will the Obama Government greet with grace and equanimity, the declaration of other peoples that they also love their country and believe they also live “in the best country in the world” and insist on doing so without the permission or interference of US imperialism?
The people of the USA as is their inalienable right are determining their own destiny. It is not yet clear if in voting for real change, if that change includes recognition and support for the right of other peoples to do likewise.
In the appeals for unity and reconciliation expressed in both the concession speech of Senator McCain and the victory and inaugural speeches of President Obama it is not clear if those appeals are for a graceful and 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 imperialist destiny.
While the former is the business of the people of the USA the latter is the business of the people of the world.
That is not a small consideration for Canadians who will inevitably be compelled out of economic necessity to call for a recasting of any and all agreements with US finance capital that limit Canadian sovereignty, restrict Canadian independent economic development and interfere with Canadian sovereign ownership and control of its own resources. Most revealing will be the attitude of the Obama Government to the majority opinion of Canadians as expressed in the last federal election to end to Canadian participation in the US-NATO war of aggression in Afghanistan.
Nothing that is said here should be understood to mean that Canadians do not also confront the urgent need to denounce and break with the imperialist ambitions of our own state monopoly rulers and its interference in the internal affairs of the peoples of other countries.
The challenge confronting the Canadian people is the same as people of the USA, whether we will permit our state monopoly ruling class to continue to pursue its imperialist ambitions at the expense of our dignity and at the expense of other peoples or whether we will use our own resources and ingenuity to overcome the process of deindustrialization that threatens our economy with ruin.
That issue becomes the only principled basis for the unity the working classes of North America, an anti-imperialist unity that will be understood and greeted by all the oppressed people of the world suffering from the curse of underdevelopment, poverty and oppression imposed on them by all of the leading imperialist states.
Left Turn Canada!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
An Open Letter to All Members of Parliament
Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
1 250 355 2669
Email: editor@focusonsocialism.ca
Website: www.focusonsocialism.ca
January 20, 2009
Canada is the first country US President Barack Obama will visit following his January 20th Inauguration.
Canadians will be watching closely to see if during President Obama’s visit, there is a single Canadian political leader that will have the courage to publicly repudiate the long record of collusion of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government with the President George W. Bush Administration’s policies of pre-emptive war and regime change.
President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada will be the opportunity for all Members of Parliament to call for a new direction in Canadian US relations based on the restoration of Canadian sovereignty lost during the long bleak years of the Bush Republican-Harper Conservative collaboration.
The opportunity has been presented to the Liberal, NDP and Bloc coalition to publicly enunciate a new direction for US-Canadian foreign, military, economic and political relations that can begin by disengaging Canada from the ruinous affects of membership in NAFTA, SPP, NORTHCOM and NATO and to align Canada with people’s progressive movements in the USA and around the world that seek peace and economic development that provides full employment, affordable housing, food, public medical care and education, child care and pensions for the millions that do not now have such basic needs.
It is important that the leader of the official opposition be sent a message. If Michael Ignatieff leader of the Liberal Party of Canada intends to become Prime Minister it can only be as the Prime Minister of the majority of Canadians that have consistently rejected the Conservative Party. Anything less, risks more years of minority Conservative government rule.
Should Mr. Ignatieff continue to equivocate, there is nothing preventing the NDP and the Bloc, leaders of organized labour, the peace movement, democratic and patriotic organizations of the Canadian people from speaking out resolutely for Canadian independence from US imperialist oversight.
In welcoming President Obama the left democratic peace and progressive movements are called upon to restate some fundamental truths for the benefit of the new incoming Barack Obama US administration and those in Canada who will greet him in our name.
Canadians are a sovereign people. From coast to coast to coast including the far arctic, all of the nations that inhabit this land, all those who labour in its economy, all those who contribute to its accomplishments, all those who value and seek to conserve its vast natural resources, its grandeur, wilderness and natural beauty, all those who believe in the youth and in their right to a future, all those who dream and fight for peace and justice for all people of the planet, all those who do not live in envy of anyone; the people of Canada who call this place our home and native land will decide its destiny.
Left Turn Canada!
Don Currie Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0
1 250 355 2669
Email: editor@focusonsocialism.ca
Website: www.focusonsocialism.ca
January 20, 2009
Canada is the first country US President Barack Obama will visit following his January 20th Inauguration.
Canadians will be watching closely to see if during President Obama’s visit, there is a single Canadian political leader that will have the courage to publicly repudiate the long record of collusion of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government with the President George W. Bush Administration’s policies of pre-emptive war and regime change.
President Barack Obama’s visit to Canada will be the opportunity for all Members of Parliament to call for a new direction in Canadian US relations based on the restoration of Canadian sovereignty lost during the long bleak years of the Bush Republican-Harper Conservative collaboration.
The opportunity has been presented to the Liberal, NDP and Bloc coalition to publicly enunciate a new direction for US-Canadian foreign, military, economic and political relations that can begin by disengaging Canada from the ruinous affects of membership in NAFTA, SPP, NORTHCOM and NATO and to align Canada with people’s progressive movements in the USA and around the world that seek peace and economic development that provides full employment, affordable housing, food, public medical care and education, child care and pensions for the millions that do not now have such basic needs.
It is important that the leader of the official opposition be sent a message. If Michael Ignatieff leader of the Liberal Party of Canada intends to become Prime Minister it can only be as the Prime Minister of the majority of Canadians that have consistently rejected the Conservative Party. Anything less, risks more years of minority Conservative government rule.
Should Mr. Ignatieff continue to equivocate, there is nothing preventing the NDP and the Bloc, leaders of organized labour, the peace movement, democratic and patriotic organizations of the Canadian people from speaking out resolutely for Canadian independence from US imperialist oversight.
In welcoming President Obama the left democratic peace and progressive movements are called upon to restate some fundamental truths for the benefit of the new incoming Barack Obama US administration and those in Canada who will greet him in our name.
Canadians are a sovereign people. From coast to coast to coast including the far arctic, all of the nations that inhabit this land, all those who labour in its economy, all those who contribute to its accomplishments, all those who value and seek to conserve its vast natural resources, its grandeur, wilderness and natural beauty, all those who believe in the youth and in their right to a future, all those who dream and fight for peace and justice for all people of the planet, all those who do not live in envy of anyone; the people of Canada who call this place our home and native land will decide its destiny.
Left Turn Canada!
Don Currie Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism
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