The Way I See It!
November 24, 2010
Lenin and Catastrophe!
For left progressives who wish only to bring honour to the name revolutionary, now would be a good time to re-read V.I. Lenin’s “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It”, Volume 25 of Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers 1964.
Written in the period September 14-20th 1917 following the overthrow of the Czarist regime, during the period of the Kerensky bourgeois government and as Russia hurtled towards the October Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin in his exemplary style, kept pace with events, unfailingly guiding the proletarian revolutionary forces towards the victorious socialist revolution.
The work is full of illuminating insights for today’s revolutionaries who consider tailing events to be unworthy and the worst of all opportunist mistakes during a period of economic crisis and war.
Tailism is a Marxist term for after the fact brilliance of insight into events posing as leadership.
The internet is full of such insight usually from a gaggle of academia playing their favorite game of “gotcha” polemics, competing with each other as to who can shout the loudest and with clever panache calling upon the capitalists to reform themselves. Or Else!
Or Else What?
After the fact brilliance of insight has many geniuses today none of which help the working class to advance its cause that much as class conscious workers shrug their shoulders and say: “Yah! I know that…NOW WHAT?”
NOW WHAT INDEED!
NOW WHAT must be answered even if the answer is not provided as fully today as Lenin, in his day answered that question.
The worst failing of tailism is its impotence. Tailism obviates the hard work of organization reducing the working class to accept denunciation in place of organized struggle. Finance capital shrugs off denunciation as detritus. The only exposure it fears is that which leads to overwhelming public censure and mass action culminating in its loss of freedom.
Unlike Russia in 1917 Canada in 2010 is not yet in a revolutionary situation. Nor is it in a period of rest and calm. The Canadian economy and political system is in the midst of developing crisis phenomena that will not mechanistically self-correct. The public is urged by media hype and silver tongued capitalist shills to passively accept that the economic and political pendulum will swing from neo-con right to liberal- reformist “ left” if only we wait for it to happen.
The class struggle underway in Canada is no different in essence from France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Iceland or any number of G20 states where mass labour actions are underway. The process everywhere is dialectical not mechanistic and it will not self-correct in the interests of the working people without mass public and organized intervention led by organized labour.
The struggles of today are not about going back to where we were, which was never so hot in any case, but to go forward to something new not as yet fully clear that improves the conditions of life for working people.
WHERE TO START?
If one reads Lenin’s “The Impending Catastrophe” and lays down the work and leaves it with only one thought, that thought should be Lenin’s statement that monopoly capitalism is imperialism and that state monopoly capitalism is imperialism in the 20th Century.
The Canadian organized labour movement is late in completely accepting that truth. It is late because its social reformist leadership doesn’t believe that Lenin’s definition is true. The socialist reformist leadership clings to the illusion that capitalism in the 21st Century is still capable of progressive development.
Social reformism is wrong. Being wrong in the past on this matter could mask labour’s exploited status and for a privileged section relative full employment and rising wages was possible because the capitalist system was expanding and labour got the crumbs. That is not the situation today. Today the capitalist economy cannot expand universally but only in selected areas where finance capital seeks maximum profit, summed up as the energy sector, speculative rentier capital and militarism and war.
So investment decisions can continue in preferred sectors of the economy it chooses, and without accountability to the nation for the consequences, finance capital rejects the very idea of restrictions on any of its freedoms. While insisting on unrestricted rights to invest where it pleases, at the same time finance capital insists the state imposes restrictions on labour to give up wage gains, accept worsened working conditions, give up pension benefits, agree to privatization of universal social programs, and surrender hard won democratic rights to organize, bargain and defend the industries and communities they have built.
To paraphrase Lenin, when he called upon the workers to continue the revolutionary process and advance to socialism, he warned that to stop at the period of the bourgeois democratic revolution meant – to accept controls and labour for the working class, freedom and idleness for the rich. Lenin counseled that the rich do not allow themselves to be controlled and consider freedom to be their unlimited right to impose controls on others.
It is not only OK to fight to reverse the equation and for workers to put controls on finance capital. It has become the burning question of our time.
When the Lenin’s definition that state monopoly capitalism is imperialism and the form of capitalism in the 21st Century is grasped fully, all possibilities will be open to the people to put monopoly under control in the only way that really counts – to restrict finance capital freedom of action and subordinate it to the interests of the nation and the vast majority who create the wealth of this place we call Canada.
What could be more democratic than that?
To Be Continued…
Next…
The Banks – Not a Public Industry – The Private Back Room of State Monopoly Capital.
Left Turn Canada!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Prime Minister Harper Subverts Parliament
The Way I See It!
Don Currie, Editor Focus on Socialism
Good Jobs, Reduced CO2 Emissions - Without Shutting Down the Energy Sector
November 22, 2010
The Conservative Senate has killed an NDP sponsored Bill on climate change to protect maximum profits of big foreign and domestic oil and gas investors and shareholders. Every Senator that voted to kill the bill should be compelled to disclose their personal investments in big oil.
The Senators voted for something even more important than killing the NDP Bill. The unelected Conservative dominated Senate veto of an NDP Bill on climate change, passed by the elected members of Parliament last May, was a political act by the minority Stephen Harper Conservative Government to strengthen extra-parliamentary corporate rule of the people of Canada. Senate hearings were certain to expose the corporate connection to the Harper government.
The NDP Bill alarmed big foreign and domestic oil investors and their corporate shareholders that their privileged position in the state and the backrooms of the Conservative Government was being challenged by the elected Parliament of Canada.
The NDP Bill would, in practice have imposed emission guidelines on big oil and compelled them to divert some of their exorbitant profits to reducing CO2 emissions. When the choice is between corporate profits and a clean environment, the Harper Government has made it clear on many occasions that it upholds the primacy of maximum corporate profit over the needs of the people of Canada.
Prime Minister Harper not only killed a bill, he killed a democratic principle of majority rule.
The subverting of Parliamentary democracy is no small matter. Even more sinister is the statement by the Prime Minister Harper that he killed the NDP Bill in the economic interests of Canadian workers and their jobs. Harper was speaking directly to workers employed in the energy industry. Harper is saying to the people who labour in the energy sector that their only choice is between jobs and a clean environment.
The Prime Minister is fear mongering. The people of Canada can have both good jobs and drastically reduced green house gas emissions, without shutting down the energy sector. To do that, the energy sector must be publicly owned and controlled with big oil monopolies placed under the control of the people and compelled to operate on the basis of the best scientific and technical practices possible.
Harper operates on the corporate principle, espoused by the extreme right wing in Canadian politics that the only responsibility a corporation has is to its shareholders. That principle overrides all others in capitalist society. The tyranny of a handful of wealthy shareholders over the interests of the entire country remains unchallenged in the Parliamentary debate on the issue because all of the Parliamentary parties including the opposition parties do not challenge that capitalist principle.
The principle is obsolete because the system that upholds it is also obsolete. A government is required that will enact plans to expand the economy, take action to reduce green house gas emissions in the only way possible, at the expense of a parasitical class of investors and shareholders whose only allegiance is to maximum profit.
The only type of government that can do that is one that places the interests of the workers and their families first guaranteeing both full employment and a clean environment.
Left Turn Canada!
Don Currie, Editor Focus on Socialism
Good Jobs, Reduced CO2 Emissions - Without Shutting Down the Energy Sector
November 22, 2010
The Conservative Senate has killed an NDP sponsored Bill on climate change to protect maximum profits of big foreign and domestic oil and gas investors and shareholders. Every Senator that voted to kill the bill should be compelled to disclose their personal investments in big oil.
The Senators voted for something even more important than killing the NDP Bill. The unelected Conservative dominated Senate veto of an NDP Bill on climate change, passed by the elected members of Parliament last May, was a political act by the minority Stephen Harper Conservative Government to strengthen extra-parliamentary corporate rule of the people of Canada. Senate hearings were certain to expose the corporate connection to the Harper government.
The NDP Bill alarmed big foreign and domestic oil investors and their corporate shareholders that their privileged position in the state and the backrooms of the Conservative Government was being challenged by the elected Parliament of Canada.
The NDP Bill would, in practice have imposed emission guidelines on big oil and compelled them to divert some of their exorbitant profits to reducing CO2 emissions. When the choice is between corporate profits and a clean environment, the Harper Government has made it clear on many occasions that it upholds the primacy of maximum corporate profit over the needs of the people of Canada.
Prime Minister Harper not only killed a bill, he killed a democratic principle of majority rule.
The subverting of Parliamentary democracy is no small matter. Even more sinister is the statement by the Prime Minister Harper that he killed the NDP Bill in the economic interests of Canadian workers and their jobs. Harper was speaking directly to workers employed in the energy industry. Harper is saying to the people who labour in the energy sector that their only choice is between jobs and a clean environment.
The Prime Minister is fear mongering. The people of Canada can have both good jobs and drastically reduced green house gas emissions, without shutting down the energy sector. To do that, the energy sector must be publicly owned and controlled with big oil monopolies placed under the control of the people and compelled to operate on the basis of the best scientific and technical practices possible.
Harper operates on the corporate principle, espoused by the extreme right wing in Canadian politics that the only responsibility a corporation has is to its shareholders. That principle overrides all others in capitalist society. The tyranny of a handful of wealthy shareholders over the interests of the entire country remains unchallenged in the Parliamentary debate on the issue because all of the Parliamentary parties including the opposition parties do not challenge that capitalist principle.
The principle is obsolete because the system that upholds it is also obsolete. A government is required that will enact plans to expand the economy, take action to reduce green house gas emissions in the only way possible, at the expense of a parasitical class of investors and shareholders whose only allegiance is to maximum profit.
The only type of government that can do that is one that places the interests of the workers and their families first guaranteeing both full employment and a clean environment.
Left Turn Canada!
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Response To Gary Keenan email to Bob Rae
Dear Friends
Sometimes an email is particularly illuminating and prompts thoughts not to be denied…Since this is the era of the great internet discourse, when one can speak to the world not sure if anyone is listening, some thoughts, with apologies to no one…
Gary Keenan, I find, to be among the most trenchant and consistent voices for the just cause of the Palestinian people. I don’t know who he is but in my books he is a straight shooter…If you are not on his list serve you may want to consider joining.
Keenan has caused me to reflect on liberal-democracy that holy of holies…that big tent where every scoundrel that ever was loves to hid and huddle in self-righteousness…wearing reinforced leather pants to straddle the fence…
In this open letter Keenan exposes one of the most objectionable of all of the Israeli apologists in Canada, that unctuous liberal-democrat, Bob Rae (the former Ontario NDP “friend of labour”). Rae along with the likes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (another social democratic “friend of labour” and architect of the Bush war in Iraq), Hillary Clinton US Secretary of State another liberal-democrat and women’s rights advocate no less– (so long as the women are not Gazan), Lawrence Cannon, another “democrat”, formerly a Liberal, who jumped to the Conservatives and now as Foreign Minister works with another liberal-democratic luminary Irwin Cotler as loyal Canadian MP’s no less, promoting the anti-Palestinian policy of the Israeli Government inside the Parliament of Canada.
The liberal-democratic NDP Federal Parliamentary Caucus and its advisors, cowed by ex-banker Thomas Mulchair, another liberal democrat, joined with Prime Minister Harper a neo-con in an unseemly pillorying and bullying of NDP MP Libby Davies, one of the few remaining brave voices in the NDP caucus who dares to speak publicly in defense of the just cause of the Palestinian people. Libby Davies rose from the ranks of people’s struggles in East Vancouver and deepened her conviction about justice as a candidate of COPE. She has been to Gaza twice.
Jack Layton’s timidity and complicity in all of this sordid Liberal-Conservative deference to the rogue behavior of the State of Israel, following the Israeli military attack in international waters on the Gaza Flotilla, during which many unarmed people were summarily executed by Israeli commandos, just because they were acting in solidarity with the people of Gaza, should be cause for an immediate NDP leadership review. Layton has gone too far this time…In my view he has nowhere to go but out…
As it stands now, Layton by falling to his knees, begging the Israeli Ambassador and the Israeli Parliamentary lobby’s forgiveness for NDP MP’s presuming to have a point of view different from that of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, is not only unseemly and demeaning, it hasn’t won a single vote among the pro-Israeli supporters in Canada. Harper has all of those votes. What has been lost, irrevocably, are NDP votes among labour, peace and genuinely democratic voters who are not afraid to denounce Israeli state terror when they see it and expect the NDP Caucus to do likewise.
Probe a little deeper in all of this amoral liberal democratic politics and one will find that most of the aforementioned Canadian liberal-democrats, including Liberal Irwin Cotler, the Harper Conservatives and at least one member of the NDP Caucus all together supporting the anti-Communist “Tribute to Liberty” project. This is the group of Canadian WW2 revanchists, that laments the defeat of Hitler and disparages the role of the red Army in defeating Nazism in WW2 and seeks to write the Soviet Union out of the history of WW2.
We leave it to the pro-Israeli lobbyists to explain their association with the modern day inheritors of the legacy of those forces who in WW2 collaborated with Hitler, and were complicit in assisting the SS to round up Jews for Nazi death camp mass murder along with millions of other anti-fascists. How ironic that one of Bob Rae’s relatives was a victim of Hitler’s corporate death industry and now lies buried in Buchenwald…as are other brave Canadians who died there at the hands of the SS along with the German and Internationalist Communist hero, Ernst Thalmann. How ironic indeed…
When Hitler enacted his anti-communist laws upon coming to power with the blessing of the British Government and began interning and murdering Communists, the first front-line opponents of fascism, many of whom had fought in Spain against Franco, these brave people were condemned by Nazi judges, under Nazi laws of the day that defined them as “terrorists” and “criminals”.
Many at the time who knew better remained silent, keeping a low profile and because they were good respectable liberal-democrats and of course, against “terrorism” believed they were safe from Hitler’s goons. One fact that deserves mentioning is that some social democratic labour leaders of that time approached Hitler and offered to cease opposing his policies if their unions would remain unscathed. Hitler played along, just long enough to come to power and then promptly banned all independent trade union activity, confiscated their property, jailed their leaders and to set up fake Nazi unions.
Fast forward to 2010. Today, in Poland, promoted in the west as a country suitably cleansed of its Communist past and now an acceptable liberal-democratic state, a loyal member of NATO, taking its que from Hitler has enacted legislation banning all Communist symbols. The EU Parliament has considered other such anti-communist legislation. A wave of anti-communism is spreading throughout Europe.
Failure to connect the dots, as the saying goes, is always fatal for democracy. The line that connects all right-wing extremist forces and factions today, many masquerading as opponents of “terrorism” all converge on anti-communism, the very last refuge of a scoundrel. The youth of today cannot yet be expected to know that.
Bob Rae has no excuse…
Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
_____________________________________
From: Gary Keenan [mailto:garydkeenan@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 1:35 PM
To: Gary Keenan
Subject: Reply to MP Bob Rae: "Regarding the situation in Gaza"
--- On Tue, 6/29/10, Gary Keenan wrote:
From: Gary Keenan
Subject: Re: Regarding the situation in Gaza
To: Rae.B@parl.gc.ca
Received: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 12:34 PM
Mr. Rae et al.
What a feeble unprincipled response!! You write: "As a Party, we believe that the basis of this peace must be a safe and secure Israel that is recognized by and living side-by-side in peace with a viable Palestinian state. It must also include a full resolution of the many complex issues affecting this region. Ultimately, the best way to resolve the conflict is direct negotiation between the parties, with the assistance of the international community."
Which particular "Israel" is to be "recognized" by the Palestinians? "Israel" as recommended by the 1947 Partition Plan, or perhaps "Israel" within the 1949 cease-fire boundaries, or then again, maybe an "Israel" that includes Palestinian and other Arab lands it still illegally occupies as a result of the war it launched on 5 June 1967? In short, how do you expect the Palestinians to recognize a country that does not recognize itself, i.e,. define its borders in accordance with international law and binding UNSC resolutions, including Resolution 242?
You refer to the necessity of "direct negotiations between the parties, with the assistance of the international community." Since when has an occupied people been obligated to negotiate an end to occupation with its illegal/belligerent occupier? We did not expect occupied France to negotiate with Germany during WWII. Nor did we insist that occupied Kuwait negotiate with Iraq in 1991.
Instead of all of this gutless pro-Israel lobby pandering bafflegab, the Liberal Party should be demanding forthrightly that Israel comply with international law and withdraw unconditionally from all lands it has occupied since 5 June 1967. (Any adjustments to borders must be minor and mutually agreed to.)
Having meticulously researched the matter, I can assure you that there is no provision in international law that enables Israel to violate it with impunity. By "international law," I am referring primarily to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which came about as a result of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, including the systematic slaughter of six million Jews.
I regret to say that the position the Liberal Party takes on the Israel/Palestinian-Arab conflict forces one to conclude that it has in effect abandoned hard-won international law, that the 60 plus million people who perished in WWII did so for nothing.
Your position on the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Arabs which is only marginally better than that of the Harper government, is cowardly, does nothing to bring peace to the region, has a negative effect on Canada's international standing and our real geopolitical interests in the 21st century and for what should be obvious reasons, ill serves Canadian Jews.
In conclusion, I remind you that as recent surveys attest, the views of average Canadians are in conflict with those of the Liberal Party. They want Canada to take a principled position based on humanitarian law that supports the legitimate rights of the Palestinians who are the occupied, the oppressed, the dispossessed, not one that kow tows to Israel, the occupier, oppressor and victimizer.
I look forward to your prompt reply.
Sincerely,
Gary Keenan
________________________________________
From: "Rae.B@parl.gc.ca"
To: garydkeenan@yahoo.com
Sent: Tue, June 29, 2010 11:17:14 AM
Subject: Regarding the situation in Gaza
Thank you for your e-mail regarding the situation in Gaza.
Both Mr. Rae and the Liberal Party share your concerns about this conflict and the suffering and loss of life on all sides.
Following the recent ceasefire, Mr. Rae and fellow members of the Liberal Party continue to stand with the international community in its efforts to build a lasting peace in this region. As a Party, we believe that the basis of this peace must be a safe and secure Israel that is recognized by and living side-by-side in peace with a viable Palestinian state. It must also include a full resolution of the many complex issues affecting this region. Ultimately, the best way to resolve the conflict is direct negotiation between the parties, with the assistance of the international community.
The Liberal Party’s position reflects our long-standing commitment to peace, stability, justice and human rights in the Middle East. It also recognizes Canada’s proud humanitarian reputation. In the aftermath of this conflict, we must engage with the international community, which the Harper Government has largely failed to do, in order to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches those who need it and to help restore the communities that have been affected by the conflict.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your views on this important issue.
Sincerely,
Susan Humphrey
Special Assistant
Office of the Hon. Bob Rae, MP for Toronto Centre
(613) 992-5234
Sometimes an email is particularly illuminating and prompts thoughts not to be denied…Since this is the era of the great internet discourse, when one can speak to the world not sure if anyone is listening, some thoughts, with apologies to no one…
Gary Keenan, I find, to be among the most trenchant and consistent voices for the just cause of the Palestinian people. I don’t know who he is but in my books he is a straight shooter…If you are not on his list serve you may want to consider joining.
Keenan has caused me to reflect on liberal-democracy that holy of holies…that big tent where every scoundrel that ever was loves to hid and huddle in self-righteousness…wearing reinforced leather pants to straddle the fence…
In this open letter Keenan exposes one of the most objectionable of all of the Israeli apologists in Canada, that unctuous liberal-democrat, Bob Rae (the former Ontario NDP “friend of labour”). Rae along with the likes of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (another social democratic “friend of labour” and architect of the Bush war in Iraq), Hillary Clinton US Secretary of State another liberal-democrat and women’s rights advocate no less– (so long as the women are not Gazan), Lawrence Cannon, another “democrat”, formerly a Liberal, who jumped to the Conservatives and now as Foreign Minister works with another liberal-democratic luminary Irwin Cotler as loyal Canadian MP’s no less, promoting the anti-Palestinian policy of the Israeli Government inside the Parliament of Canada.
The liberal-democratic NDP Federal Parliamentary Caucus and its advisors, cowed by ex-banker Thomas Mulchair, another liberal democrat, joined with Prime Minister Harper a neo-con in an unseemly pillorying and bullying of NDP MP Libby Davies, one of the few remaining brave voices in the NDP caucus who dares to speak publicly in defense of the just cause of the Palestinian people. Libby Davies rose from the ranks of people’s struggles in East Vancouver and deepened her conviction about justice as a candidate of COPE. She has been to Gaza twice.
Jack Layton’s timidity and complicity in all of this sordid Liberal-Conservative deference to the rogue behavior of the State of Israel, following the Israeli military attack in international waters on the Gaza Flotilla, during which many unarmed people were summarily executed by Israeli commandos, just because they were acting in solidarity with the people of Gaza, should be cause for an immediate NDP leadership review. Layton has gone too far this time…In my view he has nowhere to go but out…
As it stands now, Layton by falling to his knees, begging the Israeli Ambassador and the Israeli Parliamentary lobby’s forgiveness for NDP MP’s presuming to have a point of view different from that of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, is not only unseemly and demeaning, it hasn’t won a single vote among the pro-Israeli supporters in Canada. Harper has all of those votes. What has been lost, irrevocably, are NDP votes among labour, peace and genuinely democratic voters who are not afraid to denounce Israeli state terror when they see it and expect the NDP Caucus to do likewise.
Probe a little deeper in all of this amoral liberal democratic politics and one will find that most of the aforementioned Canadian liberal-democrats, including Liberal Irwin Cotler, the Harper Conservatives and at least one member of the NDP Caucus all together supporting the anti-Communist “Tribute to Liberty” project. This is the group of Canadian WW2 revanchists, that laments the defeat of Hitler and disparages the role of the red Army in defeating Nazism in WW2 and seeks to write the Soviet Union out of the history of WW2.
We leave it to the pro-Israeli lobbyists to explain their association with the modern day inheritors of the legacy of those forces who in WW2 collaborated with Hitler, and were complicit in assisting the SS to round up Jews for Nazi death camp mass murder along with millions of other anti-fascists. How ironic that one of Bob Rae’s relatives was a victim of Hitler’s corporate death industry and now lies buried in Buchenwald…as are other brave Canadians who died there at the hands of the SS along with the German and Internationalist Communist hero, Ernst Thalmann. How ironic indeed…
When Hitler enacted his anti-communist laws upon coming to power with the blessing of the British Government and began interning and murdering Communists, the first front-line opponents of fascism, many of whom had fought in Spain against Franco, these brave people were condemned by Nazi judges, under Nazi laws of the day that defined them as “terrorists” and “criminals”.
Many at the time who knew better remained silent, keeping a low profile and because they were good respectable liberal-democrats and of course, against “terrorism” believed they were safe from Hitler’s goons. One fact that deserves mentioning is that some social democratic labour leaders of that time approached Hitler and offered to cease opposing his policies if their unions would remain unscathed. Hitler played along, just long enough to come to power and then promptly banned all independent trade union activity, confiscated their property, jailed their leaders and to set up fake Nazi unions.
Fast forward to 2010. Today, in Poland, promoted in the west as a country suitably cleansed of its Communist past and now an acceptable liberal-democratic state, a loyal member of NATO, taking its que from Hitler has enacted legislation banning all Communist symbols. The EU Parliament has considered other such anti-communist legislation. A wave of anti-communism is spreading throughout Europe.
Failure to connect the dots, as the saying goes, is always fatal for democracy. The line that connects all right-wing extremist forces and factions today, many masquerading as opponents of “terrorism” all converge on anti-communism, the very last refuge of a scoundrel. The youth of today cannot yet be expected to know that.
Bob Rae has no excuse…
Don Currie, Chair Canadians for Peace and Socialism
_____________________________________
From: Gary Keenan [mailto:garydkeenan@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 1:35 PM
To: Gary Keenan
Subject: Reply to MP Bob Rae: "Regarding the situation in Gaza"
--- On Tue, 6/29/10, Gary Keenan
From: Gary Keenan
Subject: Re: Regarding the situation in Gaza
To: Rae.B@parl.gc.ca
Received: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 12:34 PM
Mr. Rae et al.
What a feeble unprincipled response!! You write: "As a Party, we believe that the basis of this peace must be a safe and secure Israel that is recognized by and living side-by-side in peace with a viable Palestinian state. It must also include a full resolution of the many complex issues affecting this region. Ultimately, the best way to resolve the conflict is direct negotiation between the parties, with the assistance of the international community."
Which particular "Israel" is to be "recognized" by the Palestinians? "Israel" as recommended by the 1947 Partition Plan, or perhaps "Israel" within the 1949 cease-fire boundaries, or then again, maybe an "Israel" that includes Palestinian and other Arab lands it still illegally occupies as a result of the war it launched on 5 June 1967? In short, how do you expect the Palestinians to recognize a country that does not recognize itself, i.e,. define its borders in accordance with international law and binding UNSC resolutions, including Resolution 242?
You refer to the necessity of "direct negotiations between the parties, with the assistance of the international community." Since when has an occupied people been obligated to negotiate an end to occupation with its illegal/belligerent occupier? We did not expect occupied France to negotiate with Germany during WWII. Nor did we insist that occupied Kuwait negotiate with Iraq in 1991.
Instead of all of this gutless pro-Israel lobby pandering bafflegab, the Liberal Party should be demanding forthrightly that Israel comply with international law and withdraw unconditionally from all lands it has occupied since 5 June 1967. (Any adjustments to borders must be minor and mutually agreed to.)
Having meticulously researched the matter, I can assure you that there is no provision in international law that enables Israel to violate it with impunity. By "international law," I am referring primarily to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which came about as a result of the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, including the systematic slaughter of six million Jews.
I regret to say that the position the Liberal Party takes on the Israel/Palestinian-Arab conflict forces one to conclude that it has in effect abandoned hard-won international law, that the 60 plus million people who perished in WWII did so for nothing.
Your position on the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Arabs which is only marginally better than that of the Harper government, is cowardly, does nothing to bring peace to the region, has a negative effect on Canada's international standing and our real geopolitical interests in the 21st century and for what should be obvious reasons, ill serves Canadian Jews.
In conclusion, I remind you that as recent surveys attest, the views of average Canadians are in conflict with those of the Liberal Party. They want Canada to take a principled position based on humanitarian law that supports the legitimate rights of the Palestinians who are the occupied, the oppressed, the dispossessed, not one that kow tows to Israel, the occupier, oppressor and victimizer.
I look forward to your prompt reply.
Sincerely,
Gary Keenan
________________________________________
From: "Rae.B@parl.gc.ca"
To: garydkeenan@yahoo.com
Sent: Tue, June 29, 2010 11:17:14 AM
Subject: Regarding the situation in Gaza
Thank you for your e-mail regarding the situation in Gaza.
Both Mr. Rae and the Liberal Party share your concerns about this conflict and the suffering and loss of life on all sides.
Following the recent ceasefire, Mr. Rae and fellow members of the Liberal Party continue to stand with the international community in its efforts to build a lasting peace in this region. As a Party, we believe that the basis of this peace must be a safe and secure Israel that is recognized by and living side-by-side in peace with a viable Palestinian state. It must also include a full resolution of the many complex issues affecting this region. Ultimately, the best way to resolve the conflict is direct negotiation between the parties, with the assistance of the international community.
The Liberal Party’s position reflects our long-standing commitment to peace, stability, justice and human rights in the Middle East. It also recognizes Canada’s proud humanitarian reputation. In the aftermath of this conflict, we must engage with the international community, which the Harper Government has largely failed to do, in order to ensure that humanitarian assistance reaches those who need it and to help restore the communities that have been affected by the conflict.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your views on this important issue.
Sincerely,
Susan Humphrey
Special Assistant
Office of the Hon. Bob Rae, MP for Toronto Centre
(613) 992-5234
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Canadian Banks and the Canadian Economy – The Big Hoax Prime Minister Harper Will Foist on the G8 and G20
Prime Minister Harper and Finance Minister Flaherty are going to the G8 and G20 meetings June 25-27, 2010 claiming their policies have saved the Canadian economy from the global recession and have done so without giving a penny of public money to Canadian Banks.
Prime Minister Harper’s unctuous speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos Switzerland last January 28th 2010 dripping with praise for Canadian Banks laid out the Conservative Party corporate line that Harper will take first to the G8/G20 and then into the next federal election. The Prime Minister invites the Canadian electorate to believe that when privately owned banks are profitable so is the overall Canadian economy.The privately owned and controlled corporate media propaganda machine has dutifully promoted that message ever since.
The banks are thriving racking up record profits … but Stats Can for May reports over 8% of Canadian workers are still out of work. Most job growth has been in the low paid services sector. The 55 year old and over age category led by women workers is the group Stats claims is finding work.
The Stats Can report for May suggests that many middle aged women are being forced back to work to keep working class households going as laid off spouses seek work. Women in this age group, married and single traditionally have been in out of the work force as they raise families. A large group of partially employed women now confront sparse retirement income. Many are compelled to go back to work to try and build up CPP benefits as they approach retirement age. Most in this situation re-enter the work force lacking skills and are employed in low wage service jobs without benefits. The plight of middle aged women who have been denied the opportunity to a full education and economic independence now confront poverty in their old age proving once again that formal equality before the law is hallow if the actual second class status of women in the real economy continues.
Youth employment in the age group 14 to 25 has worsened. Youth unemployment at 7% is evidence of a stagnant economy. The largest group workers, men and women are in the age category 25 and over comprising 15.6 million of the total work force of 18.5 million. Seven and half percent of men in this category are unemployed. Women according to Stats Can in this age group are fully employed.
The Stats Can report will be news to the Canadian Labour Congress who in April 2010 released its own estimate of unemployment and linked it to the increasing difficulty of unemployed workers to get employment insurance.
While 1.4 million wage earners are out of work, at the other end of the scale a small group of wealth and privilege, the parasitical class that lives sumptuously from the labour of Canadian workers, revel in the fact that fewer employed people work harder and longer and produce the same or more of the use values and commodities Canadians and the world needs. As the Federal Government stimulus package winds down the situation will undoubtedly worsen bearing down even more heavily on the employed work force.
In spite of chronic mass unemployment Canadian GDP is actually growing. Productivity and wealth creation potential of the Canadian working people is remarkable evidenced by the fact that fewer produce more. If the unemployed were fully engaged in the economy productivity would rise even faster and higher. There would be more funds for expanding social programs and providing as the Canadian Labour Congress is demanding, a decent retirement benefit for all without exception. The struggle over who will control CPP, the beneficiaries or the finance capitalist elites is far from over. The investor classes covet the fund and will not end their efforts to get their hands on it.
Don Drummond, one of the more enlightened bourgeois economists, recently retired from his post as a top executive with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce claims that the Canadian economy is only producing at 79% of its potential. An advocate of full employment as the road to increased productivity, Drummond’s thesis should be read by all who buy the line that a low wage economy with a high rate of unemployment spurs productivity.
Drummond is no friend of labour and has been a faithful servant of the banking establishment. His view of Canadian economic development is simply more representative of that section of Canadian finance capital that is still interested in making profit out of the expansion of the home market in addition to selling out Canadian resources to the highest bidder.
Equating Bank profiteering to overall economic recovery is a capitalist view of capitalist economics not a working class view of capitalist economics.
It is pure hoakum that Canadian banks never received a Conservative Government aid package. What is true in Finance Minister Flaherty’s boast is this : The Canadian Banks didn’t need an aid package but got one anyway.
The Harper-Flaherty shell game, that moved about $200 billion to the service of the banks that didn’t need it and that created a smooth and seamless method for the banks to borrow public money from the CMHC fund and then lend it back to the government at a handsome profit is well documented. One of the best of these many exposures was by Michael Chossudovsky of Global Research. His paper on the subject is basic reading for labour and militant. As an aside it is the view of this observer, that Chossudovsky on all counts is way ahead of the CCPA Monitor and yet seems to be underutilized by the left progressive press.
What is even more than troubling, incomprehensible, is why the organized labour movement and the NDP, in particular its Parliamentary caucus is unable to stay on message about the corporate-banking collusion with the inner-cabinet of the Harper government and in particular the contacts maintained between the government and its appointed non-elected corporate advisory committee. The NDP and the CLC are called upon to relentlessly and publicly expose the fact that Harper is a crony of big business and revels in that role.
For decades, the Communists have been exposing what they define as a merger of finance capital and the state, or state monopoly capitalism, as the prevailing form of governing in the present era of capitalist development and calling for a united struggle to replace it with a new form of governance, a worker led democratic state of the working people. That strategic goal is dependent on a waging a public, relentless, inspired, contemporary rise in class-revolutionary consciousness on the left.
The form that opportunism among the Communists takes today is the belief that someone else will do it…!
Left Turn Canada.
Prime Minister Harper’s unctuous speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos Switzerland last January 28th 2010 dripping with praise for Canadian Banks laid out the Conservative Party corporate line that Harper will take first to the G8/G20 and then into the next federal election. The Prime Minister invites the Canadian electorate to believe that when privately owned banks are profitable so is the overall Canadian economy.The privately owned and controlled corporate media propaganda machine has dutifully promoted that message ever since.
The banks are thriving racking up record profits … but Stats Can for May reports over 8% of Canadian workers are still out of work. Most job growth has been in the low paid services sector. The 55 year old and over age category led by women workers is the group Stats claims is finding work.
The Stats Can report for May suggests that many middle aged women are being forced back to work to keep working class households going as laid off spouses seek work. Women in this age group, married and single traditionally have been in out of the work force as they raise families. A large group of partially employed women now confront sparse retirement income. Many are compelled to go back to work to try and build up CPP benefits as they approach retirement age. Most in this situation re-enter the work force lacking skills and are employed in low wage service jobs without benefits. The plight of middle aged women who have been denied the opportunity to a full education and economic independence now confront poverty in their old age proving once again that formal equality before the law is hallow if the actual second class status of women in the real economy continues.
Youth employment in the age group 14 to 25 has worsened. Youth unemployment at 7% is evidence of a stagnant economy. The largest group workers, men and women are in the age category 25 and over comprising 15.6 million of the total work force of 18.5 million. Seven and half percent of men in this category are unemployed. Women according to Stats Can in this age group are fully employed.
The Stats Can report will be news to the Canadian Labour Congress who in April 2010 released its own estimate of unemployment and linked it to the increasing difficulty of unemployed workers to get employment insurance.
While 1.4 million wage earners are out of work, at the other end of the scale a small group of wealth and privilege, the parasitical class that lives sumptuously from the labour of Canadian workers, revel in the fact that fewer employed people work harder and longer and produce the same or more of the use values and commodities Canadians and the world needs. As the Federal Government stimulus package winds down the situation will undoubtedly worsen bearing down even more heavily on the employed work force.
In spite of chronic mass unemployment Canadian GDP is actually growing. Productivity and wealth creation potential of the Canadian working people is remarkable evidenced by the fact that fewer produce more. If the unemployed were fully engaged in the economy productivity would rise even faster and higher. There would be more funds for expanding social programs and providing as the Canadian Labour Congress is demanding, a decent retirement benefit for all without exception. The struggle over who will control CPP, the beneficiaries or the finance capitalist elites is far from over. The investor classes covet the fund and will not end their efforts to get their hands on it.
Don Drummond, one of the more enlightened bourgeois economists, recently retired from his post as a top executive with Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce claims that the Canadian economy is only producing at 79% of its potential. An advocate of full employment as the road to increased productivity, Drummond’s thesis should be read by all who buy the line that a low wage economy with a high rate of unemployment spurs productivity.
Drummond is no friend of labour and has been a faithful servant of the banking establishment. His view of Canadian economic development is simply more representative of that section of Canadian finance capital that is still interested in making profit out of the expansion of the home market in addition to selling out Canadian resources to the highest bidder.
Equating Bank profiteering to overall economic recovery is a capitalist view of capitalist economics not a working class view of capitalist economics.
It is pure hoakum that Canadian banks never received a Conservative Government aid package. What is true in Finance Minister Flaherty’s boast is this : The Canadian Banks didn’t need an aid package but got one anyway.
The Harper-Flaherty shell game, that moved about $200 billion to the service of the banks that didn’t need it and that created a smooth and seamless method for the banks to borrow public money from the CMHC fund and then lend it back to the government at a handsome profit is well documented. One of the best of these many exposures was by Michael Chossudovsky of Global Research. His paper on the subject is basic reading for labour and militant. As an aside it is the view of this observer, that Chossudovsky on all counts is way ahead of the CCPA Monitor and yet seems to be underutilized by the left progressive press.
What is even more than troubling, incomprehensible, is why the organized labour movement and the NDP, in particular its Parliamentary caucus is unable to stay on message about the corporate-banking collusion with the inner-cabinet of the Harper government and in particular the contacts maintained between the government and its appointed non-elected corporate advisory committee. The NDP and the CLC are called upon to relentlessly and publicly expose the fact that Harper is a crony of big business and revels in that role.
For decades, the Communists have been exposing what they define as a merger of finance capital and the state, or state monopoly capitalism, as the prevailing form of governing in the present era of capitalist development and calling for a united struggle to replace it with a new form of governance, a worker led democratic state of the working people. That strategic goal is dependent on a waging a public, relentless, inspired, contemporary rise in class-revolutionary consciousness on the left.
The form that opportunism among the Communists takes today is the belief that someone else will do it…!
Left Turn Canada.
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