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Date |
Author |
Title ISSN 1923-7871 |
| 409. |
August 29, 2010 |
Jordy Cummings |
The Class Struggle in Vaughan: The Sears Lockout and USW |
| In the last week of July 2010, workers of United Steelworkers Local 9537, who have been locked out of their workplace and on the picket-lines for nearly five months, found a big pile of shit sitting right smack-dab by their picket-line outside of a warehouse in Vaughan, just north of Toronto. |
| 408. |
August 26, 2010 |
Ryan Katz-Rosene |
Whatever It Takes: Protecting the Tar Sands, Protecting Capitalism |
| Something is rotten in the province of Alberta! And it's not just the tar sands. It's the way political and corporate elites do whatever it takes to extinguish potential threats to the bituminous megaproject. The attempt to protect the tar sands from criticism can be framed as a part of a broader effort to protect the 'rights' of private interests to profit from bitumen production. |
| 407. |
August 25, 2010 |
Tim Kennelly |
Afghanistan Crisis Deepens: U.S., Canada and NATO Threaten to Extend War |
| On March 13, 2008, Canada's Parliament voted to extend the country's military 'mission' in Afghanistan to July 2011. The motion by the minority Conservative government was supported by the opposition Liberals. The warmakers correctly estimated that fixing an exit date would deflect mounting opposition to the war among the Canadian public and buy time for Canada's continued participation. |
| 406. |
August 24, 2010 |
Roger Rashi |
After A Highly Successful Year, Quebec Solidaire Starts Debate On Program |
| In the past year Amir Khadir, Québec Solidaire's first elected MNA, has become one of Quebec's most popular personalities. He has won plaudits from all observers and more importantly, from the public for his performance in and out of the Quebec parliament. |
| 405. |
August 23, 2010 |
Patrick Bond |
South African Public Sector Strike Highlights Society's Contradictions |
| The two major civil service unions on strike against the South African government vow to intensify pressure in coming days, in a struggle pitting a million members of the middle and lower ranks of society against a confident government leadership fresh from hosting the FIFA World Cup. |
| 404. |
August 20, 2010 |
Federico Fuentes; Jeffery R. Webber |
Two Takes on the Bolivian Uprising in Potosi |
| The Andean countries in Latin America have been at the centre of attempts to form anti-neoliberal political alliances and put on the agenda a 21st century socialism. Bolivia has formed an important crucible for these struggles. |
| 403. |
August 19, 2010 |
|
France Must Repay Historic Debt to Haiti! |
| Below is an English translation of an open letter to the French government published in the August 16 French daily Libération, concerning the $21-billion (current dollar equivalent) extorted by France from Haiti from 1825 to 1944. This was the 'independence debt' that France imposed on Haiti as a condition for diplomatic and trade relations, under threat of military intervention. |
| 402. |
August 17, 2010 |
Snehal Shingavi |
Pakistan: From Natural Disaster to Social Catastrophe |
| The floods which have devastated huge areas of Pakistan may be an act of nature, but the worsening humanitarian crisis that followed is a direct result of the failures of Pakistan's venal leaders -- and the impact of the U.S. 'war on terror.' |
| 401. |
August 8, 2010 |
Roger Annis |
Canada's Failed Aid to Haiti |
| The six month mark after Haiti's January 12 earthquake saw a flurry of news reports in Canada and around the world. The depictions of the harsh conditions still prevailing for most earthquake victims took many people by surprise. |
| 400. |
August 6, 2010 |
Herman Rosenfeld and Carlo Fanelli |
A New Type of Political Organization?: The Greater Toronto Workers' Assembly |
| At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the Left around the world is undergoing reformation. As the Great Recession has vividly demonstrated, more than three decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded many of the significant gains won in the immediate decades following World War II. |
| 399. |
August 5, 2010 |
Jeffery R. Webber |
Colombia and Venezuela Rattle Their Sabres: Uribe's Parting Shot |
| Outgoing Colombian President, Álvaro Uribe, dropped a figurative bomb in the Andes on Thursday, July 22, just weeks before the scheduled inauguration of President-elect Juan Manuel Santos, Uribe's former Defence Minister. At the behest of Bogotá, an extraordinary session of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) was convened to hear Colombia's accusations. |
| 398. |
August 3, 2010 |
An Interview with Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, and Greg Albo |
Capitalist Crisis, Radical Renewal? |
| The cause of the crisis was certainly related to competition in the financial sector. But that competition was to some extent the product of state regulation. The American financial system is certainly the most regulated financial system in the world, and probably in history, if you measure it in terms of the number of pieces of legislation, the number of regulatory agencies, and the massive amounts of regulation to which finance is subject. |
| 397. |
July 29, 2010 |
Doug Henwood |
Jonesing for a Slump? Austerity in the Face of Weakness |
| Having successfully avoided depression through a massive, largely coordinated, stimulus program, the world bourgeoisie now looks ready to reverse it - some because they think it a success, and others because they think it was a failure. This is a very dangerous business. |
| 396. |
July 25, 2010 |
David Mandel |
Fighting Austerity? The Public Sector and the Common Front in Quebec |
| The previous round of negotiations in Quebec between the rightwing provincial Liberal government of Jean Charest and the public sector unions in 2005 was ended abruptly by the adoption of a special law that unilaterally imposed wages and conditions on the workers, while providing draconian penalties for any disturbance to the normal functioning of public institutions. |
| 395. |
July 23, 2010 |
Scott Neigh |
One Day Longer? The Vale-Inco Strike Comes to a Close |
| On July 7 and 8, 2010, striking members of United Steel Workers Local 6500 in Sudbury, Ontario, voted 75% in favour of a contract that ended a bitter strike against transnational mining giant Vale Inco. The 3300 strikers had been on the picket lines for almost one year. |
| 394. |
July 22, 2010 |
Interview with Pedro Eusse |
The Labour Movement and Socialist Struggle in Venezuela Today |
| In mid-June, 2010, we met with Pedro Eusse, National Secretary of the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) and part of the provisional executive committee of the labour confederation, UNT. Revolutionary figures from times past stared down at us from the paintings hung on the walls in the office of the PCV in central Caracas. |
| 393. |
July 20, 2010 |
Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin |
No Time for Public Sector Austerity |
| The 2007-08 financial crash was, in terms of its global impact, the greatest in history. It was only prevented from immediately triggering another Great Depression by governments in so many countries taking on the enormous private debt of their banks. |
| 392. |
July 17, 2010 |
Carl Davidson |
Envisioning the Future, Fanning the Flames |
| 15,000 Attend Detroit Social Forum: High-Energy Gathering Fires Up A New Generation of Activists in U.S. Left and Social Movements |
| 391. |
July 13, 2010 |
Interview with Marlon Santi |
Indigenous Struggle, Ecology, and Capitalist Resource Extraction in Ecuador |
| On July 5, I sat down with Marlon Santi, President of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), in his office in Quito. We discussed the increasing contradictions between the demands of the indigenous movement, on the one hand, around water rights and anti-mining resistance, and the positions of the government of Rafael Correa, on the other, which has labelled indigenous resistance to large-scale mining and oil exploitation as 'terrorism and sabotage.' |
| 390. |
July 12, 2010 |
Pablo Solon |
From Water Wars to the Fight for Climate Justice |
| Bolivia's UN ambassador, Pablo Solon, gave this talk to the Shout Out for Global Justice, sponsored by the Council of Canadians and attended by nearly 3,000 people on June 25 in Toronto, during the ten days of protests against the G20 meeting. |
| 389. |
July 11, 2010 |
John S. Saul |
Mozambique: Not Then But Now |
| I first knew Mozambique through close contact in Dar es Salaam with FRELIMO in the early and difficult years -- the 1960s and the first-half of 1970s -- of its armed liberation struggle. Then Mozambique was seeking both to unite itself and to find political and military purchase against an intransigent and arrogant Portuguese colonialism. |
| 388. |
July 10, 2010 |
|
The Right to Dissent: Day of Action For Civil Liberties |
| During the G20 Summit in Toronto on June 26 and 27, 2010, more than $1.2-billion was spent on a reported 20,000 police and security officers, a 5-metre fence, and new weapons designed to stifle dissent and silence public opposition. |
| 387. |
July 9, 2010 |
Roger Annis |
Tax Revolt Destabilizes Government in British Columbia |
| What were they thinking? Mere days after its re-election in May 2009, the Liberal Party government of British Columbia announced a new consumption tax that took effect on July 1, 2010 and will fleece an estimated $1.9-billion from taxpayer pockets in the first year. It hadn't breathed a word of the tax during the election campaign, except to deny it was considering it. |
| 386. |
July 8, 2010 |
Paul Jay |
Who Commanded the G20 Commander? |
| It's time for the Prime Minister to take responsibility for the G20 fiasco. -- A room filled with police officers stare at pulsing screens; feeds from 85 cameras cover most of Toronto's downtown core. This was the command centre for the G20 Integrated Security Unit (there was another ISU command centre in Barrie). In charge was the RCMP Chief Supt. Alphonse MacNeil. |
| 385. |
July 7, 2010 |
Hugo Radice |
Britain's Austerity Budget: A Class Act |
| Following the inconclusive outcome of the British general election on May 6th, the 'centrist' Liberal Democratic Party decided to turn sharply to the right by agreeing to join the Tories in a coalition government. In the run-up to the election, the Tories had argued strongly that Britain faced the prospect of a fiscal crisis unless the government's deficit was brought down further and faster than the outgoing Labour government intended. |
| 384. |
July 6, 2010 |
Alan Sears |
G20 Protests: Fighting Back Against the Police State |
| On Monday, June 28, a large and boisterous demonstration of about 2500 people that snaked through the streets of Toronto continued the movement to rid this city of the police state regime that took over during the G20 summit. The leaders of the G20 had gone. As expected, their gathering had focussed on finding new ways to restore corporate profits by taking it out of the workers and the poor. But the movement against the police state regime and the G8/G20 agenda is continuing. |
| 383. |
July 5, 2010 |
Euan Gibb |
Massey Workers Fight for Their Rights |
| Now that the G20 has left town, let's get down to talking about the reality of maternal health in the City of Toronto. Workers at the Massey Centre for Women are entering their 11th week on a picket line. Throughout this strike, the 66 members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1 Canada have proved themselves to be courageous, dedicated and clear-minded. They are also passionate advocates for the young women that they work with. |
| 382. |
July 4, 2010 |
Interview with Wilder Marcano |
Communal Power in Caracas |
| We caught up with Wilder Marcano, director of the network of Comunas in Caracas, on the morning of June 18, 2010. He talked with us just before addressing a crowd of a few hundred representatives of different comunas from around the capital who had gathered in the offices of the Ministry of Popular Power for the Communes and Social Welfare to discuss a whole series of issues related to building popular power from below in the poorest barrios. |
| 381. |
July 3, 2010 |
Ritch Whyman |
In the Aftermath of the G20: Reflections on Strategy, Tactics and Militancy |
| The events at the Saturday G20 demonstration in Toronto last week have provoked a series of responses already. This article is not meant to review the events of the day itself, but to look at the questions raised by the demonstrations and tactics used for the left. |
| 380. |
July 2, 2010 |
Justin Podur |
The G20 Debacle |
| Hosting the G20 in Toronto was the first of a series of political gambles by the Conservative Canadian government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. At a time when U.S. President Barack Obama, leader of the world's greatest debtor nation, was seeking additional stimulus money and therefore deficit financing, Harper's Conservative Finance Minister and delegate to the G20, Jim Flaherty, was advocating austerity. |
| 379. |
June 30, 2010 |
Interview with Lidice Navas |
'To Have and To Be': Building a Socialist-Feminist Economy in Venezuela |
| A long-time revolutionary activist, Lidice Navas is an important socialist-feminist leader within the PSUV and a candidate for the Latin American parliament, among her many other responsibilities. We met her at the Women's Development Bank in Caracas on June 18, 2010 to talk about her vision of socialism, the accomplishments of the Bolivarian process so far, and what remains to be done. |
| 378. |
June 29, 2010 |
Anita Ogurlu |
"A Taste of South in the Global North" - Demonizing Democracy in Canada |
| They never 'opened fire' but by Canadian standards the public got a shock - a well-thought out theatrical performance - Southern style! 'This only happens in places like Mexico,' one protester told me. Helicopters circling the city 24 hours a day, snipers on roof tops, the liberal use of pepper gas... |
| 377. |
June 27, 2010 |
Socialist Project |
The Mass Arrests, the Security State and the Toronto G20 Summit |
| The massive police presence in Toronto over this week has been officially justified on the basis of protecting the leaders of the G8 and G20 countries meeting in Huntsville and Toronto. We were told that the creation of the fenced-in fortress, the massive mobilization of police (estimates ranging from 10-20,000) from across Canada, and even the passing of a secret law on policing... |
| 376. |
June 26, 2010 |
Roger Annis |
British Columbia's Fossil Fuel Superpower Ambitions |
| The province of Alberta is well known as a climate-destroying behemoth. The tar sands developments in the north of that province are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. |
| 375. |
June 23, 2010 |
Vijay Prashad |
Global Bonapartism: The G20 and the Planet |
| When the Finance Ministers of the Advanced States set up the G7 in 1974-75, their tongues quivered with the taste of centuries of power. The Soviet Union had begun its plummet into obsolescence. |
| 374. |
June 21, 2010 |
Interview with Gustavo Martinez |
Workers' Control and the Contradictions of the Bolivarian Process |
| On June 10, 2010 we caught up with Gustavo Martinez, a union leader in the worker-controlled, nationalized coffee company, Fama de America, in Caracas, Venezuela. The company has 350 workers at the national level, with two separate plants... |
| 373. |
June 18, 2010 |
Socialist Project; Sean Smith |
The G20, Capitalism and Austerity |
| The Group of Eight (G8) is an annual forum for the leadership of the leading capitalist countries. It was first created in 1975, at the instigation of the U.S. and France to deal with the economic crisis that had broken out in 1973. |
| 372. |
June 18, 2010 |
Liisa Schofield and A.J. Withers |
Their Crisis, Our Misery: OCAP Versus the G20 |
| On June 26th, the G20 meetings will bring together the leaders of the world's richest 20 states in Toronto, following right on meetings of the G8 in Huntsville, in Northern Ontario. The G20 wants to talk about stabilizing the global economy and Harper wants to celebrate Canada as an economic success story. |
| 371. |
June 17, 2010 |
Roger Annis |
Gangs and Violence in Jamaica and Haiti |
| When police in Jamaica launched a bloody assault in May on poor neighbourhoods in the country's capital city, news outlets in Canada responded with an ignorance and insensitivity that is all too common in their coverage of the Caribbean islands. As with Haiti, Jamaica is portrayed as incomprehensibly violent and not quite civilized. |
| 370. |
June 15, 2010 |
Toronto Workers' Assembly |
Bargaining in an Era of Wage Restraint |
| With the Great Financial Crisis apparently over, economic and political elites across the developed countries have cynically ignored who caused the crisis and turned, as their solution, to cutting back social services and attacking the wages and conditions of public sector workers. |
| 369. |
June 14, 2010 |
Sungur Savran |
The Other Fateful Triangle: Israel, Iran and Turkey |
| The thunderous events set in motion by Israel's storming of the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship in the peace flotilla challenging the blockade of Gaza, have thrown important light on the overall situation in the Middle East. Turkey has emerged as the major protagonist among the forces that support the Palestinian cause. |
| 368. |
June 13, 2010 |
Interview with Antenea Jimenez |
Building Socialism from Below: The Role of the Communes in Venezuela |
| We met with Antenea Jimenez, a former militant with the student movement who is now working with a national network of activists who are trying to build and strengthen the comunas. The comunas are community organizations promoted since 2006 by the Chavez government as a way to consolidate a new form of state ... |
| 367. |
June 11, 2010 |
Roger Rashi |
From Cochabamba to Cancun: Building a Climate Justice Movement in Quebec |
| The recent Cochabamba Conference on Climate Change has issued a call to build 'a global peoples movement for climate justice.' A novel feature of this call is that it is supported by progressive countries, mainly those of the ALBA Alliance, as well as by social movements, primarily but not exclusively, from Latin America. |
| 366. |
June 8, 2010 |
Dimitris Fasfalis |
Class Struggles Heat Up in Greece |
| Workers in Greece today stand in the forefront of the converging European class struggles against big capital's attempt to make working people pay the costs of its crisis. |
| 365. |
June 7, 2010 |
Colin Leys |
The Dictatorship of the Market |
| Edward Lewis, of New Left Project, spoke to Colin about some of the themes from his recent books and their relationship to contemporary developments. Colin's recent book is Market-Driven Politics, a close examination of neoliberalism and state policy. |
| 364. |
June 5, 2010 |
Rafeef Ziadah |
What Next? The Freedom Flotilla and the Struggle to Break the Siege of Gaza |
| While people around the world are still in shock at the killing by Israeli commandos of innocent human rights activists on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, those who have been following Israeli state actions for some time are not surprised. |
| 363. |
June 1, 2010 |
Dan Freeman-Maloy |
The Massacre and the Cover-Up |
| Only days after Amnesty International issued a report condemning Western powers for their record of blocking international diplomatic action against Israel, the results of this criminal facilitation were once again on dramatic display. |
| 362. |
May 29, 2010 |
Federico Fuentes |
Bolivia: When Fantasy Trumps Reality |
| Under the presidency of Evo Morales, Bolivia has achieved a new constitution incorporating the rights of indigenous peoples, the beginning of land reform, the nationalization of important natural resources and increased state social spending to the poor. |
| 361. |
May 28, 2010 |
Katie Mazer and Patrick Vitale |
City Under Siege: The University of Toronto Joins the G20 Security Ring |
| On Friday afternoon, right before the May 24th holiday weekend, Cheryl Misak, Provost of the University of Toronto quietly released a memo to departmental administrators. The memo, entitled "G20 Summit: Restricted Access on St. George Campus," describes a "series of restricted access measures" for the University's main campus. |
| 360. |
May 27, 2010 |
Syed Hussan |
Toronto's Communities Prepare for the G8 and G20 Summits |
| The leaders of the G20 countries, as well as their central bank governors, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and the European Union (EU) will be in Toronto on June 26-27, 2010. Nearly 20,000 delegates, 15,000 armed police and 5,000 media personnel will descend on Toronto to make it a very hot June weekend indeed. |