We’ll soon have some new articles to publish, but in
By Gene McGuckin
On December 3, the Vancouver Ecosocialist Group put on an event, “Strategies to Fight Climate Change.” We are republishing the speech by VEG member Gene McGuckin. A report on the event and links to videos of all the speakers’ talks is online here — NSW
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.
By Jérémie Bédard-Wien and Alain Savard
Much ink has been spilled about the Charter of Québécois Values since it was announced last month by the Parti Quebecois (PQ) minority government. Seldom has a social issue garnered so many reactions, from English Canada’s moral high ground to the contemptuous “Jeannette Manifesto” signed by twenty prominent Québécois women in support of the charter. Opinion polls signal deep polarization: on one side, conservative religious believers and pro-charter seculars; on the other, anti-charter believers, open-minded seculars — and anglophones.
By Mike Gonzalez
In every revolutionary crisis the state will slip off the velvet glove to reveal the iron fist underneath; that is the nature of the beast, as Lenin reminded us. Armies are there to serve the capitalist order, whether their activity is described as “peacekeeping,” “national security” or simply the maintenance of public order.
By Darryl Leroux
Since the details of the PQ’s proposed Charter of Québec Values were first leaked to the media a few weeks ago, there has been a firestorm of condemnation across the Rest of Canada (ROC). The corporate media’s universal denunciations on the matter are matched only by the many petitions circulating on social media calling for an end to this display of racism in Québec. It’s an auspicious moment indeed when stories in the National Post and the Globe & Mail sound very much like the ones penned by activists on social media.
By Doug Nesbitt
A September 4 press release published on Rabble has once again stirred debate among left-wing student activists about the Canadian Federation of Students. A network of left-wing students are at the forefront of a coordinated effort across 15 different campuses to gather sufficient signatures to initiate referendum campaigns on CFS membership.
Other left-wing students have responded with incredibly sharp criticisms, the most incendiary being the claim that defederation will actually aid the Right on campuses.
By Jase Short
Chris Hedges is one of the most celebrated intellectuals of the contemporary US Left. A former New York Times reporter who essentially lost his job for taking a public stand against the invasion of Iraq, Hedges straddles the line between cynical doomsayer and principled critic of mainstream politics. In spite of many lapses in judgment in his intellectual work, the general thrust of his political standpoint is a welcome relief to those who have a hard time finding intellectuals who take the crises of global capitalism seriously.
By Lindsay Hinshelwood
Over the Labour Day weekend two of Canada’s largest industrial unions, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP), merged to become the country’s largest private sector union, Unifor.