Defend Canada Post Employees and Uphold Canadian and World Health Organisation (WHO) Health Guidelines - Part 1

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Two Regina Canada Post employees have been disciplined for refusing to deliver Epoch Times a publication they deem to be racist and flouts Health Canada and WHO efforts to eradicate the new corona virus.

It is not the first time the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has objected to being compelled to deliver such material. Many Canadians have also objected to receiving Epoch Times in their mailboxes.

In April 2020 the Federal Government ordered CUPW workers to deliver the anti-communist anti-China publication and dismissed the union’s concerns that Epoch Times editorialized that the origin of the new corona virus was a plot by the Communist Party of China.  

Eight months later CUPW’s concerns have been vindicated by the facts as the corona virus is now the number one pre-occupation of Federal and Provincial government health agencies.

Health Minister Hajdu and Provincial Government health authorities and front-line health workers and their unions have repeatedly condemned irresponsible loose talk as damaging to their efforts to save lives.

The anti-communist, anti-China Epoch Times, lavishly produced and distributed in the USA and delivered by Canada Post all over Canada, in its latest issue continues to describe the new corona virus pandemic as a Communist Party of China virus.

Having a choice of standing with its own Minister of Health, CUPW and front-line health workers, the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal Government, Privy Council Office, Justice, Labour and Public Services Ministers stand in support of Epoch Times.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) is defending the workers under the terms of their collective agreement.

The issue is not free speech which CUPW upholds. The issue is Canada Post bias and Federal Government Sinophobia that undermines the country-wide effort to save lives.

Concerned Canadians and in the first place the CLC and all of its affiliates must act to defend the CUPW workers.   Jagmeet Singh and all NDP MP’s and MLA’s must side with CUPW and Canadian Health professionals working tirelessly to save Canadian lives.

Next: US-CSIS obtrusion in a Canadian health emergency.

World Economic Forum, NATO and the CBC

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The addresses at the World Economic Forum (WEF) by Xi Jinping Chairman of the People’s Republic of China and Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, are barely mentioned by the publicly funded CBC or the privately owned and controlled corporate mass media.

While ignoring important statements by leaders of two permanent member states of the UN Security Council, bearing on the peace and security of all Canadians, the CBC gives, to anti-Putin poster boy Alexei Navalny and NATO chief, Jan Stoltenberg.

CBC’s Moscow correspondent Chris Brown, routinely reports on the Navalny farce as the most important news Canadians should hear about Russia and President Putin. Often his dispatches are elbowed aside for more lurid Russophobic Associated Press reporting. The faceless CBC gatekeepers who bowdlerize journalists reports for conformance with the western propaganda playbook do it of course to ensure all reporting complies with CBC journalistic standards.

Today, CBC’s Murry Brewster filed a report that Canada's top military commander Admiral Art McDonald attended a virtual NATO meeting with NATO counterparts. Brewster also reports on a warm and fuzzy talk between US President Joe Biden and NATO chief Jan Stoltenberg. The NATO chief then announced he will “present recommendations on how to equip NATO for the future when allied leaders meet in Brussels later this year. He underlined that he wants NATO to take on a more global approach and work closely with democracies in the Asia-Pacific region.” (my emphasis DC).

Then Brewster adds, just in case his ill-informed readers didn’t know; “The North Atlantic alliance, which was founded to counter Soviet expansionism in Europe, has increasingly over the last few years grappled with the rise of a more assertive China on the world stage.” (my italics DC).

“Soviet expansionism” and “assertive China” are tossed off as factual reporting with nary a concern for corroboration. 

The key words in Brewster’s report quoting Stoltenberg that should set off alarm bells for organized labour, the peace movement and the NDP are: “…on how to equip NATO for the future.”

Equipping NATO for the future will cost the Canadian government and the Canadian people a lot of tax dollars. How much was not revealed by Admiral Art McDonald because it is a NATO secret kept from Canadians and apparently the CBC.

What those few words by Stoltenberg mean for Canadian working-class families is less money from the public treasury for people’s needs. It means more flowing to defense procurement to equip Canadian armed forces for deployment to Asia to confront China.

Prime Minister Trudeau has repeatedly stated that the defense budget will not be cut. That is double talk for the assurance that it can rise to pay for Canadian involvement in the NORAD BMD scheme, F35 purchases and now to fund a NATO pivot to Asia to provoke China.

What the CBC won’t do, report objectively on the policies of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, the honest peace forces must do.

The World Economic Forum addresses of Xi and Putin reveal no interest in engaging in a new cold war.  Both decried world of sanctions and unilateralism as counterproductive to mutually beneficial economic growth, trade normalisation and combatting the global threats of the new corona virus pandemic and global warming.

The theme of both addresses was an appeal to abandon great power ambitions and work for a future of peace and mutual cooperation, normalcy in international relations based on the reality that the world comprises many economic models and evolved cultures and achievements all of which deserve respect and without which there can be no future for humankind.

The Peace Forces

Everyone has the choice of not being informed and clinging to outmoded phobias and prejudices.  Such lazy brain attitudes are just what the war planners count on.

The speeches of the leaders of China and Russia at the virtual World Economic Forum offer the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal Government the opportunity to re-evaluate Canadian military, foreign, trade and diplomatic policies and take a bold step towards lessening of global tensions and reduce the danger of nuclear war.

It is the purpose of the peace movement not to wait in vain for them to do it, and to go to the Canadian people and organize their support for a new foreign policy of peace and nuclear disarmament.

The Great Rehash – Part 2

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The Working Class Can Answer Each WEF Agenda Item in Its Own Interests

Below is the January 2021 WEF agenda couched in classless liberal language. Each agenda item deserves a ringing militant working-class reply which should be sent to the Canadian participants.

Monday 25 January: Designing cohesive, sustainable and resilient economic systems

The agenda item speaks of economic “systems”.  There are only two economic systems today.  One capitalist and other socialist.  Neither are static.  Capitalism is in historic decline and socialism in historical ascendency.  Only the latter has the ability to design the economy in the interests of the vast majority, those who labour and create all wealth.  The WEF agenda item is an admission that capitalism is not cohesive sustainable and resilient otherwise why discuss such deficiencies.

If the organizers of the WEF forum had the courage they would state the agenda item as a question; “can capitalism be redesigned to be cohesive sustainable and resilient and in whose interest?”  Capitalism has been redesigned, reformed, reworked, reconfigured and always in the interest of its oligarchs and monopoly power.  In all of its configurations from state monopoly capitalism and its most extreme form, fascism, to all variants of bourgeois democratic economies, it remains the same system of exploitation of wage labour for profit.  To be redesigned, concessions must be wrung from monopoly and its governments and to do that the working class must have its own program that leads to socialism.

Tuesday 26 January: Driving responsible industry transformation and growth

The struggle to transform industry responsibly to ensure its growth cries out for definition.

Industry in capitalism is privately owned and merged with banking and private investor capital. Each capitalist state such as Canada that has arrived at the imperialist stage of its development upholds as a sacred right and freedom the buying and selling of industry on the international market as any other commodity distorting national economic development as it suits oligarchic investor interests. The sacrifice of entire economic regions and Canadian communities is the result.  There is no responsibility to the people of Canada that any capitalist investor, domestic or foreign recognizes.  Their “nation” is the global market and their loyalty is to maximum profit.

Industry to be transformed must be in the hands of the people who created it and then it can be planned to grow to serve the needs of society. That is when society can be said to be civil.

Wednesday 27 January: Enhancing stewardship of our global commons

The stewardship of the global commons is an invitation to a discussion of why people’s sovereignty and the principle of the right of nations to self determination and choosing its own path of economic development including the control of the development or non-development of its own natural resources is considered by finance capital to be barrier to profiteering from the exploitation of the planet, the oceans and outer space. The WEF absolves the representatives of capital of any such accountability.

Canada is a G7 NATO member state of the United Nations and its finance capitalist class has never voluntarily respected much less acknowledged any limitations on its exploitation of Canada’s resources or the resources of the planet. The history of successive Canadian governments from its colonial beginnings to the present time is a history of reorganizing the commons, by force, into private property and where that was not done to consider the commons, known in Canada as Crown Lands, to be open to the penetration of private capital as a right.

The WEP agenda item demands a discussion of the restraints and limitations to be placed on investor capital and above all its use of military threats and interventions that accompany its goals to seize and exploit natural resources of sovereign states, the oceans and outer space. The agenda item also must include a discussion of international agreements regarding the Artic  and Antarctic and  the 1963 UN Declaration banning the stationing of nuclear weapons in outer space.  The appearance of arrogant nouveau riche billionaires such as Elon Musk who declare private capital is not bound by international treaties has resulted in an international discussion of the need to reinforce the provisions of the 1963 UN Treaty.  The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea  as well as implementing the Paris Agreements on global warming cry out for a discussion as to which states and private investors routinely violate and ignore the welfare and sustainability of the “commons” and to insist they be held accountable.

Thursday 28 January: Harnessing the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The transformative effect of new technologies and science integrated with production can lift up all of impoverished humanity and quickly. The WEF speaks eloquently about this but has no answer as to why it isn’t happening.

Science and technology are categories of human activity present in all class societies that profoundly effect the growth of the productive forces. The WEF defining the effects of the discoveries of the digital era as a Fourth Industrial Revolution is specious. Science and technology under the system of capitalism regularly outpaces the ability of capitalist governments to control its anti-social effects because the “geniuses of high finance” appropriate such developments and subvert it to the service of maximum profit.

To harness the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution means to “Put Monopoly Under Control” [i] Politically it means to reject passivity and to organize mass intervention by the working class and its organizations by advancing demands for public ownership and control of domestic and foreign corporate power and subordinating it to a defined national democratic plan that serves the people’s interest and accords with the principle that the people will not be the victims of science and technology but its rightful beneficiaries.

Friday 29 January: Advancing global and regional cooperation

Global and regional cooperation is relevant to the extent that it is based on the principle and practice of peace, respect for sovereignty and political independence of states and their right to choose their own path of political and economic development as the only firm basis for friendly relations between nations.

There are historical precedents and ample experience for such a vision of human relations. In the modern era it was carried to its highest point in the anti-fascist alliance of states, led by the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain and which after great sacrifice defeated Hitlerism and laid the basis for the most advanced expression of the will of humanity for global peace and security, the founding of the United Nations, the adoption of its Charter and all of the provisions and agencies that were devised to uphold it.

The cold war competition during the post WW2 period between the US-NATO alliance and the alliance of the Soviet Union and European Socialist states was defined at various stages as peaceful coexistence, détente, and relaxation of tensions.  It described the actions of diametrically opposed social systems interacting without world nuclear war and deciding all economic relations by competition, and all political differences by negotiations.

A discussion of regional and global cooperation today is in the context of rising and declining economic powers, the imperialist USA in decline and socialist China in ascendancy. Global realignment is the reality of our time arising from the centrifugal political developments compelling all lesser developed states to be attracted or repelled by either pole.

Global and regional cooperation is not recognized by contending finance capitalist investor classes. Such interests do not subscribe to any form of global or regional cooperation that is based on any consideration other than the supremacy of financial and military power to impose its will.  What is recognized and practiced is the formation of competitive trading blocs, military alliances, competition for global and regional economic and political supremacy and to consider all opposition to such power as manifestations of unacceptable restraint on the export of capital.

The supremacy of international finance capital over all economic development in the modern era is an anachronism and the struggle to oppose it and overcome it has risen to the top of all agendas of any international forum, capitalist or working class. 

It is the purpose of the organizers of the WEF to evade the essence of that struggle and to divest it of any sense of historical materialist reality.

It is the task of Marxism and all of its consistent adherents to engage in that struggle and to uphold its vision of a new and better world, socialism.

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[i] “Put Monopoly Under Control” was a publication of the Communist Party in 1964 authored by its Chairman Tim Buck that addressed the advent of computer-controlled automation and its impact on workers in Canada. It is a prototype of what a proletarian response to the effects of science and technology should be today.

Where Buck refers to the advent of computer-controlled automation, the reader can substitute the 21^st century definitions for the current stage of the scientific technological advances that the WEF has dubbed a fourth industrial revolution. Note: (when Buck wrote the pamphlet in 1964 there was a total of 700 computers installed in Canada)

With foresight what Buck wrote 57 years ago resonates today. Here are some excerpts.

“Revolutionary changes are taking place in industry. The ultimate expression of this change is automation, which is going to have revolutionary effects in the years immediately ahead.

“The fundamental thing about automation is that the techniques becoming available will mean completely different production facilities and processes from those we know. It is not simply a super-imposition of automation on a process now done by people. It will be a completely different manufacturing, etc. process.

 “To grasp the social implications of this new industrial revolution we must keep in mind that it combines all the accumulated knowledge of the mechanics of automatic machinery, along with entirely new possibilities created by the application of science in industry. It includes harnessing of electronics to production – electronic operations with continuous, unwinking inspection of products.

 “It includes the dramatic revolution in chemistry with its new synthetic materials which can be made, literally to order, many of them coming into being as finished products with no need for machining or fabricating.

 “When all of the possibilities opened up by all this are brought together under the direction of computers, the result is modern magic. In a sense it justifies the claim of the designers of automated production lines that they do not simple “use” the modern computer to control the machines, they “teach” it to run the machines and keep them adjusted.” 

The reader may say: “So what, many at the time were saying what Buck said.”

The response must be as always, what are the conclusions that are presented by those who share the same observations of science and technological advances?

Here is what Tim Buck concluded from the incontrovertible facts of the “industrial revolution” extending from the 1960’s to 2021. 

“The manufacturing industry has become the biggest users of computers. This confronts the working class with the question “What can be done right now?” The measures that must be fought for now to protect even the most elementary interests of the workers affected by automation and the communities in which they live, go beyond purely economic demands such as shorter hours, higher wages and such, indispensable though they are.

“Working people should put forward a demand for democratic public control of the introduction of automation and public responsibility for its effects upon those who are displaced by it. The exact form in which democratic public control will be exercised depends upon a number of factors., but it must include as a major participant representatives of the organized labour movement…

 “The speed at which automation is being introduced makes its public control a matter of urgency. People must not permit the monopolies to turn this wonderful application of science into a curse. We must act to ensure that its great potentialities are utilized to enrich society as a whole…

 “In conditions prevailing today (1964 Ed.) the battle to establish democratic public control of the introduction of automation is an indispensable part of the process through which, in struggles to defend the hard-won gains of previous years, the working people will train themselves to be masters of public affairs, capable not only of intervening in but of managing the affairs of country and so become its new and really democratic leaders.”

The Great Rehash – Part 1

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The World Economic Forum (WEP) January  –  May 2021

Each meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is preceded by a massive media campaign that it is historically significant.  The January-May 2021 meetings are touted as a “great reset”  of the global capitalist economy following the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of a “Fourth Industrial Revolution”

The WEF 2021 meetings could more accurately be described as a great rehash of 21^st century state monopoly capitalism (imperialism) [i]  which, since 1971, when the WEF was formed, has been in a perpetual state of recurring regime change wars and depressions.  

For 50 years the WEF has been meeting to sustain and ostensibly reform global capitalism and devise theories and mechanisms to perpetuate its dominance over all forms of evolving economies and in particular socialism. 

A dense web of WEF global corporations, capitalist politicians, intellectual and scientific forum participants, meet in secret and at stage managed public forums are devoted to maintaining a frontierless global playing field for cosmopolitan finance capital to engage in ruthless competition for economic and political supremacy.

Consideration of the consequences for billions who live in poverty or respect for the sovereignty and economic, political and territorial independence of states is token.

The WEF has degenerated from the days of the Canadian idealist Maurice Strong into a 21^st century glitterati of jaded acolytes of global capitalism including royalty and bankers such as Mark Carney the former Governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.

By Invitation Only - Labour Reformism

The “by invitation only” WEF meetings exclude the revolutionary movements of peace and socialism, anti-monopoly resistance, Marxist class struggle unions such as the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) representing the aspirations of millions of working class, urban and rural wage labour.

Tolerated non-Marxist international labour organizations, the ILO-ITUC and its leaders who carry the theories of the 1919 US founder of the ILO, labour faker Samuel Gompers, faithfully and enthusiastically into the 21^st century, will be accorded second row seats and allowed as panelists to present their reforms.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)  and the International Labour Organization (ILO) call for a “new social contract ” (ITUC), “A Century Declaration for the Future of Work” (ILO) that harmonizes nicely with the “great reset”.

The ILO declares in its June 2019 Document Declaration for the Future of Work that “labour is not a commodity” avoiding the essence of Marx’s explanation that “labour power is a commodity”.

Labour power is defined by Marx, Chapter VI paragraph 2, Das Capital.

“By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.” (our italics)

It is labour power that is purchased by the owner of capital in exchange for wages and put to work for a defined period of time where it creates a value greater than the wages paid which is then realized in the market and privately appropriated by the capitalist as surplus value, profit.  Whether by deceit or ignorance the leaders of the ILO and the ITUC ignore Marx’s scientific discovery of the source of profit in capitalism because to do away with “labour power as a commodity” requires the overthrow of capitalism and the system of the private ownership of the means of production, the system of the social production of wealth and its private appropriation.  The WEF is where the “friends of labour” attend to plead with capitalists to be less capitalist and to “please” share a little more with the working class.

The ILO support for capitalism is clearly stated in its Declaration for the Future of Work described in section II A (ix);

“…supporting the role of the private sector as a principal source of economic growth and job creation by promoting an enabling environment for entrepreneurship and sustainable enterprises, in particular micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as cooperatives and the social and solidarity economy, in order to generate decent work, productive employment and improved living standards for all;”

Concealing Truth for Maximum Profit

The WEF exists to conceal the objective truth, that capitalism at its imperialist stage has long since ceased to have any contribution to make to progressive human development.  The WEF postulates the impossible, that capitalism can be managed and reconfigured to serve humanity while the operation of its fundamental law, the pursuit of maximum profit prevails.

The agenda of the WEF treats the social breakdown everywhere evident in all developed and developing capitalist states as a baffling surprise attributable to an apparent random destructiveness of advances in science and technology, dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution.  The task according to the WEF is to control this randomness and manage it more equitably and leave the system of capitalism intact.

That contradiction is a recurring theme in all WEF meetings.  Examples abound.

Consider the cynically artful speech of former French President Nicholas Sarkozy and the cringe worthy speech of Prime Minister Harper at the 2010 WEF to the unctuous speeches of PM Justin Trudeau at the 2016 and 2018 WEF forums and the delusional utterances of President Donald Trump at the 2018 WEF Forum.

Setting aside the narrow opportunist and self serving domestic political motivations for the speeches, they are barren and cowardly for what they do not say.

50 Years of Regime Change and War

The WEF has been convened for 50 years in the midst of US-NATO imperialist wars of regime change. It has met in the midst of recurring capitalist cyclical recessions and depressions that have shattered the lives of hundreds of millions, caused massive migrations of the poor and desperate to escape war, famine and misery.  The WEF has convened in the midst of the wanton waste and abuse by imperialist investor classes of the resources of the planet.  The WEF has met as the sovereignty and economic independence of entire countries was destroyed by US-NATO regime change wars and the heritage, treasures and social achievements of their people was plundered.

Meeting in the midst of the crimes of imperialism all the WEF has ever achieved is to lament such devaluing of humanity by adjusting the language of its musings as a sop to its victims.

Such adjustments include defining regime change war to overthrow sovereign states and appropriate resources as “the duty to protect”.  Canada’s Lloyd Axworthy a former Liberal Minister of Foreign Affairs is the innovator of the fiction and the term Duty to Protect(D2P).

Lester B. Pearson, a Liberal Prime Minister is credited with providing NATO, the Anglo-US-Canada gendarme accompanying finance capital exports, with a “social” mission, in an attempt to portray NATO as a benign force for peace and for the gullible to believe, an alternative UN.  No Canadian government Liberal or Conservative or any opposition Parliamentary party including the NDP has ever contradicted Pearson’s thesis or opposed NATO’s aggressive doctrines including its most sinister doctrine, the first strike use of nuclear weapons. 

The WEF convened and deliberated during the US-NATO initiated Gulf Wars, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the NATO bombing of Belgrade using depleted uranium bombs during which Canadian pilots dropped 10% of the ordnance.  The WEF met during the “New American Century” Bush-Kissinger “coalition of the willing” war on Iraq and the ongoing US war in Afghanistan where the US-NATO coalition has been waging war for 20 years.   The WEF met during the US-NATO overthrow of the Gaddafi Libyan government, the drone wars of President Obama and Vice President Biden and Donald Trump who authorized countless CIA intrigues and assassinations of heads of state and ministers.  The perpetrators of such crimes were applauded as they took to the podiums of the WEF to engage in discussions about “social problems” detached from their responsibility of risking nuclear war.

WEF and the Sub-Prime Mortgage Crisis

The WEF met during the US sub-prime crisis that ruined tens of millions of US home owners. The resulting global carnage led to G7-IMF bank bailouts, imposing on the working class neo-liberal austerity wage freeze doctrines to prop up “too big to fail” banks and a tottering stock market.  

The Harper Government allowed US sub prime giants to enter Canada to rob Canadians and did nothing to curb home grown sub prime crooks even as their greed threatened the mortgage system.   Only after CIBC and Harper’s more-savvy Finance Minister Jim Flaherty raised the alarm was anything done. The five Canadian banks seized the opportunity and received a multi-billion-dollar bailout whether they needed it or not and put $74CDN billion on their books by shifting bank mortgage risk indebtedness to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).  

Canadians desperate for decent low-cost housing today must demand the Trudeau Freeland Liberals return CMHC to its original purpose as supplier of low interest mortgage loans for working class families, cooperative and public housing initiatives.

What happened in Canada also happened in all G7-NATO states and was greeted with equanimity by the WEF as another inexplicable free market “happening” necessitating saving big banks that were deemed too big to fail.  The WEF at its 2008-2009 deliberations  in which the University of Toronto Rotman School of Business played a role with elegant language and artful tables in the final analysis offering nothing of substance except to advise capitalists to be “more competitive.”  Being “more competitive” in worker’s language means to impose austerity, lower wages and intensify labour at the point of production and for government to spend less on social needs.  And that is what was done.

Military Spending and Ignoring the Threat of Nuclear War

The WEF has been vocal in elevating awareness of the threat of global warming, solvable given global peace, while ignoring the threat of nuclear war that assures human extinction.  Not a single G7-NATO-EU head of state appearing at the WEF has ever dared address capitalism’s responsibility for the development and use of atomic weapons on civilian populations. 

The Trudeau-Freeland Liberal Government’s refusal to join the 50 signatory states of the UN Treaty On the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is indefensible.  

Nor has a single notable at a WEF meeting dared to address the need for massive reduction in arms spending if any of the social inequities the WEF laments are ever to be solved.  Today as Canadians descend into joblessness and lower standards of living the media is full of reports of unconscionable corruption and waste at the highest levels of Department of National Defense procurement spending on jet aircraft and naval vessels.

Applying Sanctions and Blockades in the Name of Human Rights

The WEF has convened and filled volumes of advice to overcome regional underdevelopment while remaining silent about the illegal use by the US and its allies of military and financial power to impose and enforce sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, China, Palestine, Iran and Syria.

While PM Justin Trudeau and then Minister of Foreign Affairs and now Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland extoled the rights of women at the 2018 WEF forum the Liberal Government in collaboration with the Trump administration of the USA concocted the Lima Group and imposed brutal sanctions on Venezuela falling most heavily on women and children and the health and medical needs of their people.

As the Trudeau-Freeland Liberal Government organizes sanctions against socialist states it sells armaments to Saudi Arabia that has been given a respectable leading role by the WEF even as the feudal regime conducts a genocidal war against Yemen and jails its human rights activists.

The only departure from Canadian Government lock step collaboration with US financial and military support for Israel was the Trudeau Government’s belated support for UN resolutions condemning Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.  It came after years of upholding the obsequious Harper Conservative Government pandering to Israel and as part of the failed effort of the Trudeau Liberals to win a seat on the Security Council of the UN.

The WEF has an archive of good intentions about the justice of the Palestinian cause but in practice has limited its discussions to behind-the-scenes schemes that leave the Israeli occupation and its genocidal policies towards Gaza intact.  The General Secretary of the UN speaking before Jordanian Royalty at a WEF forum in 2019 briefly mentioned the plight of Palestinian refugees while hastening to the feel-good issue of global warming.

COVID-19 – Profiting at the Expense of the People

The WEF Forums in January and May will overflow with concern about the global COVID-19 pandemic.  The WEF presenters will attempt to take credit for its eradication.  That is why it is a mistake, and not a small one, to become obsessed with the notion that the present COVID-19 virus global health emergency is a unique conspiracy of a special type concocted by a sinister cabal to subvert all of ‘civil society’.   Such an analysis is diversionary and ahistorical.  Since when has capitalism ever been civil or lacked conspiracies to mask its essential predation?  That is what capitalism is and what capitalists do.  It is important to pay attention to the trusted statements of Cuban leaders who in spite of US blockades and sanctions know something about universal public health care.

WEF is Not About the Working Class

The WEF agenda of the virtual meeting from January 25^th to January 29^th is a continuation of the long record of deceit and failure of the WEF, each meeting claiming to confront some global emergency.  The agenda of the January 2021 virtual meeting of the WEF is about how capitalism can survive another “emergency” causing massive social and economic breakdown of its own making.

The agenda is not intended to be read by the unemployed, the impoverished and the sick because it is not about them.

It is not enough for class conscious working class and peace activists to expose and denounce the motivations of finance capital and the organizations they dominate.  It is our duty to also identify the resistance to it and provide answers to the path of struggle that will lead to its defeat and moreover to carry that struggle into the forums of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum.

Next: The Great Rehash – Part 2, The Working Class has Its Own Answers

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[i] Tax in Kind and Rungs in the Ladder of Capitalism

In his work, Tax In Kind, obligatory reading for any worker that who wants to know about the difficulties of consolidating the victory of worker’s power in Russian after WW1, Lenin made reference to another of his famous works, “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It” 1917. Lenin was arguing passionately and patiently for the workers and peasants to understand the importance of a revival of state capitalism to bring about a revival of large-scale industry and to transform Russia from a peasant economy to an industrialized socialist economy. The quote that follows is from Volume 32 Collected Works page 336.

We provide Lenin’s quote in full so as not to lose the significance of the idea that Lenin presented to the Bolsheviks and the workers and peasants of Russia in April 21, 1921 and that continues to have profound significance for our struggles today. Lenin counseled;

“In order to convince the reader that this is not the first time I have given this “high” appreciation of state capitalism and that I gave it before the Bolsheviks seized power, I take the liberty of quoting the following passage from my pamphlet, The Impending Catastrophe and How To Combat It, written in September 1917.

“Try to substitute the Junker-capitalist state for the landowner-capitalist state, a revolutionary-democratic state. ie., a state which in a revolutionary way abolishes all privileges and does not fear to introduce the fullest democracy in a revolutionary way. You will find that, given a really revolutionary-democratic state, state monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step…towards socialism…

“For socialism is merely the next step forward from state- monopoly capitalist monopoly…

“State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs.” Pages 27 and 28. (our emphasis and italics DC)

Is what Lenin said in 1917 not an accurate statement of the stage at which the Canadian economy has evolved to in 2021? We live in a state monopoly capitalist state which is the complete preparation for socialism. It is this historical truth that the WEF and all of its participants seek by all means to avoid.

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No All Party Parliamentary Support for NATO War On Libya

TO THE LEADERS OF THE PARLIAMENTARY OPPOSITION PARTIES IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

June 2nd 2011

Don Currie Chair, Canadians for Peace and Socialism (CPS)
Box 168 Slocan BC
V0G 2C0

Phone: 250 355 2669

www.FocusOnSocialism.ca

No All-Party Parliamentary Support for Prime Minister Harper’s US -NATO War on Libya!

The US-NATO war of terror against Libya is designed to send a message to all of the people of the Middle East and Africa that governments and movements of the people that lack the approval of US-NATO potentates such as Prime Minister Harper will face murderous punishment, using the most advanced weaponry.

The US-NATO war on Libya is poised to enter a new and more dangerous phase with the deployment of massive US-NATO sea, air and land forces . A land invasion is planned. Canadian armed forces will be part of this aggression. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25081

The leaders of the US-NATO North Atlantic-Euro alliance, calling themselves the “international community”, presume to set the international standard of governance for all countries of the world. Those who don’t abide by that standard will be militarily attacked.

Leaders lacking the approval of the US-NATO overlords are routinely demonized and assassinated. Governments are overthrown and replaced, civilians killed, their homes, their schools, their hospitals, their environment destroyed at will. Leaders and Governments that defy the US-NATO overlords and attempt to dispose of their own oil and other resources, build economies that suit their needs, conduct their internal affairs as they see fit, without first seeking the approval of US-G8-NATO potentates are bombed into the dark ages. In essence, that is the foreign policy of the Conservative Government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

A majority of Canadians have not decided that Prime Minister Harper’s foreign policy has their support. Recent polls suggest otherwise. http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/05/31/pol-environics-poll.html. Even many Conservatives do not support US-NATO aggression.

The collusion among all of the parties during the federal election to mute foreign policy debate made it difficult for Canadians to voice their opinion on these crucial issues. Failure to discuss foreign policy helped Prime Minister Harper win a majority.

Given the opportunity to express their opinion it is doubtful if the current war policy of the Conservative Government would be supported by a majority of Canadians. Canadian public opinion has time and again supported a foreign policy of peace and diplomacy, not war and propaganda. http://yvesengler.com/2011/03/29/why-canada-attacked-libya/

It is time to say, that there are principles that are greater than upholding convenient UN Resolutions that are simply contrivances of the G8 powers to do an end run around the principles of the UN Charter. Resolutions that permit the most powerful armed states in the world to launch pre-emptive war against small weaker states is still an international crime that is not absolved because it is sanctioned by a UN Security Council resolution.

Libya is a member state of the UN. Libya poses no threat nor done any harm to Canadians. UN Resolution 1973 ostensibly to protect Libyan civilians has been super-ceded by the US –NATO doctrine of regime change, a device to overthrow any government unwilling to live on its knees. The reward for the US-NATO aggressors is to possess and divide up the Libyan oil fields as booty.

Prime Minister Harper has placed the strategic goals of the USA above the peace and security of Canada and its people. Canadian Government participation in NATO serial wars in Central Asia, the Middle East and now North Africa will bring Canada and its people to harm.

The Harper Conservative Government chooses war as the first option of its foreign and military policy. Prime Minister Harper has no peace policy, no policies of diplomacy. Prime Minister Harper rejects out of hand all proposals for cease fire, third party mediation, any policy except the NATO strategy of shock and awe war and regime change.

The Harper Conservative Government, not satisfied with participation in one foreign war of aggression now seeks to involve Canada, its armed forces and its youth in others. The USA has targeted Iran, Syria and North Korea as countries having governments it seeks to overthrow. Cuba is another. The Harper Doctrine is to provide knee jerk uncritical support to any US instigated war.

Such a failure of policy cannot continue to be supported.

Continuation of the US-NATO war against Libya will further inflame regional and global tensions and ignite further conflicts.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has returned from the G8 demanding all MP’s rubber stamp an open-ended NATO war of aggression and regime change against the sovereign state of Libya. Prime Minister Harper expects all-party Parliamentary approval to continue Canadian Armed Forces bombing of Tripoli until Muammar Qaddafi is dead, Libya is in ruins, and a rebel government in waiting in Washington is installed on the rubble in Tripoli. The NATO mission will then be completed and the Libyan oil fields can be divided among the big oil investors of the G8 states.

Prime Minister Harper asserts there is no international role for Canada to play except by Canadian CF18’s continuing to drop hundreds more laser guided bombs on Libya, killing Libyan citizens, men women and children, and destroying the vital civilian infrastructure that provided them with one of the highest standards of living in North Africa.

All party endorsement of the Harper Conservative government policy of support for NATO serial wars of regime change would be an admission of failure on the part of all of the opposition parties and that they also have abandoned any pretense of an independent Canadian foreign policy of peace.

It is time to end this abject support for US-NATO wars.

No All Party Support for Prime Minister Harper’s War Policy! Canada Out of Afghanistan! Out of Libya!

Left Turn Canada!

Now What?

The Way I See It!

November 24, 2010

Lenin and Catastrophe!

For left progressives who wish only to bring honour to the name revolutionary, now would be a good time to re-read V.I. Lenin’s “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It”, Volume 25 of Lenin’s Collected Works, Progress Publishers 1964.

Written in the period September 14-20th 1917 following the overthrow of the Czarist regime, during the period of the Kerensky bourgeois government and as Russia hurtled towards the October Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin in his exemplary style, kept pace with events, unfailingly guiding the proletarian revolutionary forces towards the victorious socialist revolution.

The work is full of illuminating insights for today’s revolutionaries who consider tailing events to be unworthy and the worst of all opportunist mistakes during a period of economic crisis and war.

Tailism is a Marxist term for after the fact brilliance of insight into events posing as leadership.

The internet is full of such insight usually from a gaggle of academia playing their favorite game of “gotcha” polemics, competing with each other as to who can shout the loudest and with clever panache calling upon the capitalists to reform themselves. Or Else!

Or Else What?

After the fact brilliance of insight has many geniuses today none of which help the working class to advance its cause that much as class conscious workers shrug their shoulders and say: “Yah! I know that…NOW WHAT?”

NOW WHAT INDEED!

NOW WHAT must be answered even if the answer is not provided as fully today as Lenin, in his day answered that question.

The worst failing of tailism is its impotence. Tailism obviates the hard work of organization reducing the working class to accept denunciation in place of organized struggle. Finance capital shrugs off denunciation as detritus. The only exposure it fears is that which leads to overwhelming public censure and mass action culminating in its loss of freedom.

Unlike Russia in 1917 Canada in 2010 is not yet in a revolutionary situation. Nor is it in a period of rest and calm. The Canadian economy and political system is in the midst of developing crisis phenomena that will not mechanistically self-correct. The public is urged by media hype and silver tongued capitalist shills to passively accept that the economic and political pendulum will swing from neo-con right to liberal- reformist “ left” if only we wait for it to happen.

The class struggle underway in Canada is no different in essence from France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Iceland or any number of G20 states where mass labour actions are underway. The process everywhere is dialectical not mechanistic and it will not self-correct in the interests of the working people without mass public and organized intervention led by organized labour.

The struggles of today are not about going back to where we were, which was never so hot in any case, but to go forward to something new not as yet fully clear that improves the conditions of life for working people.

WHERE TO START?

If one reads Lenin’s “The Impending Catastrophe” and lays down the work and leaves it with only one thought, that thought should be Lenin’s statement that monopoly capitalism is imperialism and that state monopoly capitalism is imperialism in the 20th Century.

The Canadian organized labour movement is late in completely accepting that truth. It is late because its social reformist leadership doesn’t believe that Lenin’s definition is true. The socialist reformist leadership clings to the illusion that capitalism in the 21st Century is still capable of progressive development.

Social reformism is wrong. Being wrong in the past on this matter could mask labour’s exploited status and for a privileged section relative full employment and rising wages was possible because the capitalist system was expanding and labour got the crumbs. That is not the situation today. Today the capitalist economy cannot expand universally but only in selected areas where finance capital seeks maximum profit, summed up as the energy sector, speculative rentier capital and militarism and war.

So investment decisions can continue in preferred sectors of the economy it chooses, and without accountability to the nation for the consequences, finance capital rejects the very idea of restrictions on any of its freedoms. While insisting on unrestricted rights to invest where it pleases, at the same time finance capital insists the state imposes restrictions on labour to give up wage gains, accept worsened working conditions, give up pension benefits, agree to privatization of universal social programs, and surrender hard won democratic rights to organize, bargain and defend the industries and communities they have built.

To paraphrase Lenin, when he called upon the workers to continue the revolutionary process and advance to socialism, he warned that to stop at the period of the bourgeois democratic revolution meant – to accept controls and labour for the working class, freedom and idleness for the rich. Lenin counseled that the rich do not allow themselves to be controlled and consider freedom to be their unlimited right to impose controls on others.

It is not only OK to fight to reverse the equation and for workers to put controls on finance capital. It has become the burning question of our time.

When the Lenin’s definition that state monopoly capitalism is imperialism and the form of capitalism in the 21st Century is grasped fully, all possibilities will be open to the people to put monopoly under control in the only way that really counts – to restrict finance capital freedom of action and subordinate it to the interests of the nation and the vast majority who create the wealth of this place we call Canada.

What could be more democratic than that?

To Be Continued…

Next…
The Banks – Not a Public Industry – The Private Back Room of State Monopoly Capital.

Left Turn Canada!

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!

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

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.