By Todd Gordon
Other politicians — and the Left too — can only dream of having the base of support Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has had from what he calls “Ford Nation”: his supporters based primarily in the inner suburbs of Scarborough, North York, East York and Etobicoke.
By Donald Hughes
At the recent Conservative convention in Calgary, Stephen Harper referred back to one of his first acts as Prime Minister, which was to demolish the national child care framework. Harper referred to the child care program as “lobbyists, academics and bureaucrats” and suggested that now the money (in the form of a small tax credit) was in the hands of “Mom and Dad.”
We are republishing an interview with Alan Sears, who frequently writes for New Socialist Webzine, by Andrew Sernatinger and Tessa Echeverria, who are socialists in Madison, Wisconsin. The text first appeared on the New Politics site and the interview was originally broadcast on their Black Sheep Podcast — NSW
By Bob Lyons
The historic Argentinean mid-term elections of 27 October resulted in a breakthrough for the revolutionary left, and has exposed more clearly the outline of the tendencies emerging at the time of the primary votes held in July. The political, economic and social fissures revealed by the vote can be grouped around three themes:
1. the end of the Kirchnerist experiment and the resulting strategic incoherance of the Argentinean bourgeoisie as a whole;
2. the radical deepening of the economic and fiscal crises of the Argentinean state expressed as a loss of political legitimacy, and a series of policy cul-de-sacs;
3. the growing presence of a workers and social vanguard determined to resist the consequences of the global crisis as expressed locally.
In what follows we will attempt to situate the election, and especially the results for the revolutionary left, within the context of the above themes.
