Dr. Jim Harding
April, 2011

Canada’s deadly secret

Book review

BY BERNADETTE WAGNER • AUG 1, 2008 

Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System
Jim Harding
Fernwood, 2007

The nuclear industry has seized upon rising energy prices and growing concerns about global warming as an opportunity to market nuclear energy as a clean, green alternative to oil, gas and coal. But citizens’ groups across the country know that nuclear means neither clean nor green, and are working to counter the nuclear lobby’s propaganda. A useful tool for these groups is Jim Harding’s new book, Canada’s Deadly Secret: Saskatchewan Uranium and the Global Nuclear System.

In Canada’s Deadly Secret, Harding charts the development of the nuclear industry in Canada (especially Saskatchewan) over the past half-century. The book is a challenging read, in part because Harding’s academic background (he is a retired professor of environmental and justice studies) is so evident in the writing. The larger challenge for readers, however, is in facing the ugly truth that Canada, and in particular Saskatchewan, has played a prominent role in the global nuclear system. Nevertheless, Harding’s book remains an invaluable read. It brings to light information that has been buried or misrepresented by proponents of the industry, the government and the corporate media. It is a call for those who love the earth to unite for a sustainable future.

National Conference of Toiling Farmers, Regina 1934

The following is from a report by RCMP infiltrators from 1934. - NYC

ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE HEADQUARTERS
Ottawa, 25th July, 1934
Weekly Summary: Report on Revolutionary Organizations and Agitators in  Canada

The National Conference of Toiling Farmers held in Regina under the direction of the Farmers' Unity League was well attended and must be voted a success.

Sam Carr delivered a very outspoken address in Montreal on 17th July. His belligerent attitude affected the audience noticeably.

The F.U.L. National Conference of Toiling Farmers
225 delegates in Regina

L. E. Hill, W. H. Childress, J. P.
Bespalko, W. E. Wiggins,
Secretary of W.U.L.
Comrades Husa, Sawiak, Korol, Oleksey


1. The Farmers' Unity League

The National Conference of Toiling Farmers called by the Farmers' Unity League and held at Regina, Sask., on 4th, 5th and 6th July, was attended by approximately 225 delegates, the majority of whom came from Saskatchewan and Alberta. There were seven delegates from Manitoba, two from Ontario, five from British Columbia and two fraternal delegates from the United Farmers' League of the United States.

Raising the Workers' Flag: The Workers' Unity League of Canada, 1930-1936

RAISING THE WORKERS' FLAG: THE WORKERS' UNITY LEAGUE OF CANADA, 1930-1936

By Stephen L. Endicott
University of Toronto Press
480 Pages
Available July 2012
Amazon.ca

During the Great Depression, the conflicting interests of capital and labour became clearer than ever before. Radical Canadian workers, encouraged by the Red International of Labour Unions, responded by building the Workers' Unity League – an organization that greatly advanced the cause of unions in Canada, and boasted 40,000 members at its height. In Raising the Workers' Flag, the first full-length study of this robust group, Stephen L. Endicott brings its passionate efforts to light in memorable detail.

Raising the Workers' Flag is based on newly available or previously untapped sources, including documents from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Security Service and the Communist Party's archives. Using these impressive finds, Endicott gives an intimate sense of the raging debates of the labour movement of the 1930s. A gripping account of the League's dreams and daring, Raising the Workers' Flag enlivens some of the most dramatic struggles of Canadian labour history.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Workers in Canada's Second Industrial Revolution
Chapter 2 The Red International
Chapter 3 Getting Started
Chapter 4 Going to 'Mecca'
Chapter 5 1931: Trial by Fire
Chapter 6 Red Blairmore
Chapter 7 1932: Confronting the Prime Minister
Chapter 8 The First Congress of the Workers' Unity League 1932
Chapter 9 Women of the Workers' Unity League
Chapter 10 Hard Rock Miners: Anyox - Flin Flon - Noranda
Chapter 11 1933: Gaining Momentum
Chapter 12 Sweatshops and Militancy in the Needle Trades
Chapter 13 Woodsmen of the West
Chapter 14 Fishers in the Salish Sea
Chapter 15 Not Hot Cakes or Foremen - On to Ottawa!
Chapter 16 Changing Times: the final convention of the WUL
Chapter 17 Afterword

Stephen L. Endicott is a professor emeritus in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University.

France: Left Front Storming the Bastille

By Maurice Ulrich
l'Humanite
Translated by Henry Crapo and reviewed by Isabelle Métral
Wednesday 14 March 2012,

"We are going to create a material force from our ideas." It was on the TV channel France 5, day before yesterday, on quoting none other than Karl Marx, that Jean-Luc Melenchon summed up the ambition of the Front de gauche in marching next Sunday from the Place de la Nation to the Place de la Bastille. It is a march and an event far from ordinary. A citizens’ uprising that is making plenty of noise.

Last week, when the Front de gauche passed the symbolic hurdle of 10 percent in polls for first round of the presidential election, it was clearly understood to be a turning point. Another poll revealed, in passing, that, for nearly half of those polled, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was the candidate with the most dynamic campaign. A "breakthrough", for the news service Agence France presse.

From a commentator in the newspaper Le Monde, we find this analogy with a race horse: "He prefers to keep up a fast pace, which permits him to stretch out his legs, to let his power be felt, in order to work his way up in the pack, to reach the winners’ positions, even to finish in third place ... "

And on France 5 again, this commentary: "He is a candidate in fine shape" who shies away from no obstacle, "no matter how high the bar." But putting polls and commentaries aside, the candidate himself noted with humor, "Since last week there are people who treat me with more respect and courtesy." This said, he added quickly that this breakthrough was first of all thanks to the thousands of men and women who have set to work for the Front de gauche.

Madeleine Parent, 1918-2012: Death of an icon

By Rick Salutin 
The Star
March 15 2012

Madeleine Parent with Michel Chartrand, 1984

I received a call Monday morning saying Madeleine Parent had died, at 93, in a Montreal nursing home. She was a labour leader and fighter for social causes through a career that spanned the country and, though it wasn’t as big news here, it was a front-page story in Quebec. It recalled an early morning call from her over 30 years ago, when she lived in Toronto. “Kent has had another stroke,” she said. “I think this is it. We’re on our way to the hospital.” Her husband, Kent Rowley, with whom she’d battled on behalf of working people since the 1930s, died later that day. They really were the last of a breed and it really is the end of an era. There are times when only cliché will suffice.

She was a true daughter of Quebec’s French-speaking bourgeoisie (and also fluent in English). But in the social lab of the 1930s she chose to side with workers and the poor, which placed her on “the left.” During the war, she began working with Kent. He was organizing women workers in textile mills, though most union leaders then felt they weren’t worth the trouble. He was also rare in being willing to work with a young woman as an equal. In 1946 they won a hard strike against mighty Dominion Textile in Valleyfield. Quebec’s autocratic leader, Maurice Duplessis, saw them as personal antagonists. Kent went to jail for six months. Madeleine was indicted for “seditious conspiracy.” Duplessis rewrote the charges himself to strengthen them. She was convicted but it was overturned.

Alternative Federal Budget 2012

By Erin Weir 

Progressive Economics Forum
March 15th, 2012

The following is a ten-point summary of the CCPA Alternative Federal Budget released today:

The federal government is planning an unprecedented fiscal austerity budget, claiming that massive cuts to public sector jobs, services, and social programs are necessary to pave the way for jobs and growth. But in fact the opposite is true. Austerity programs weaken the economy, and their implementation in many European countries has tipped the EU back into recession, fueled unemployment, and increased their debts and deficits.

There is a better way to make the federal budget work for the rest of us. The Alternative Federal Budget proposes a sweeping anti-austerity agenda that will yield high returns, boost productivity, stimulate private investment, and create high value-added jobs in activities that improve living standards and reduce income inequality.

1.) Reduce Poverty and Inequality

Income inequality in Canada is at a 30-year high, rising at a faster pace than in the U.S. There are important aspects to income inequality that our government needs to address: the richest 1% of Canadians are now taking home a bigger share of income growth than since the 1920s; middle-income Canadians have seen their incomes stagnate; and nearly one in 10 Canadians—including one in 10 children—still lives in poverty. The poverty rate is even higher for Aboriginal peoples, women, and racialized Canadians.

How a socialist paper reported the sinking of The Titanic

Histomat
March 15, 2012

Though I am very far from being a 'Titanorac' (someone obsessed with the sinking of The Titanic - the hundredth anniversary of which is fast approaching), I was leafing through Raymond Postgate's biography of left-wing Labour leader George Lansbury, of 'Poplarism' fame, when I was reminded of how the Daily Herald covered the sinking of The Titanic. The Daily Herald was then edited by Lansbury - it tragically later became taken over by Rupert Murdoch and re-launched as The Sun - and at the time was a working class paper. As Chris Harman noted,

'In April 1912, it [the Daily Herald] resumed publication, and although its initial capital amounted to only £300 it enjoyed amazing success for the next two years. Its exact sales are not known, but estimates suggest its circulation ranged between 50 and 150,000. This was not as large as the two most popular dailies of the time, the Mail and Mirror, which sold between 750,000 and one million copies, but it was in the same league as the Express and Telegraph whose sales were 200,000-300,000 – especially since its sales were to manual workers who had not yet normally developed the habit of buying a daily as opposed to a Sunday paper. The Herald’s success is even more remarkable when it is noted that the official Labour Party leadership started a daily of their own in competition with it, the Daily Citizen, with much greater financial backing, in the summer of 1912.

Saskatchewan First Nation Leader Hopes Canada Heeds UN Recommendations

Global News
March 15, 2012

A First Nations leader in Saskatchewan says Canada's distribution of resources is systemic, structural discrimination against its indigenous people.

Little Black Bear First Nation Chief Perry Bellegarde says the United Nations rates Canada's quality of life as sixth highest in the world.

But he says if the same indicators are applied to Canada's native population, it comes in at 63rd.

In February, Bellegarde was part of a contingent of First Nations leaders who addressed the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva, Switzerland.

Following their visit, the UN gave Canada a number of recommendations and timelines to address issues, including the creation of a treaty commission, looking into high incarceration rates of indigenous people, and ensuring adequate child welfare services on reserves.

Bellegarde is hoping Canada takes these recommendations as constructive criticism to help close that socio-economic gap.

Source: Little Black Bear First Nation

America's subversion of Haiti's democracy continues

Even though former President Aristide has eschewed politics since his return from exile, the US is still threatening him

By Mark Weisbrot
guardian.co.uk
13 March 2012

When the "international community" blames Haiti for its political troubles, the underlying concept is usually that Haitians are not ready for democracy. But it is Washington that is not ready for democracy in Haiti.

Haitians have been ready for democracy for many decades. They were ready when they got massacred at polling stations, trying to vote in 1987, after the fall of the murderous Duvalier dictatorship. They were ready again in 1990, when they voted by a two-thirds majority for the leftist Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, only to see him overthrown seven months later in a military coup. The coup was later found to have been organized by people paid by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

Our Duty is to Struggle: new free e-book by Fidel Castro

Prensa Latina
March 14, 2012
Download Fidel Castro’s new book,
Our Duty is to Struggle (pdf)

English edition
Spanish edition

The compilation of the dialogue between the leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, and 69 intellectuals from 21 countries will be launched on Wednesday in Havana, Caracas and other capitals of the world.

"Our Duty is to Fight" is the result of the revised and enlarged transcription in Spanish and English languages of the dialogue between Fidel Castro and a group of intellectuals from Africa, Europe and the Americas, held on February 10.

The book, a call to fight to save humanity from wars, climate change and other dangers in wait, will be simultaneously launched in Havana and Caracas, Venezuela, by prestigious intellectuals.

More on Nathan Cullen

Joint statement by Nettie Wiebe and Denise Kouri, recent federal NDP candidates in Saskatchewan

Dear Friends,

Now is the moment of decision for the leadership and direction of the NDP.

We’re working to make Nathan Cullen our leader because he has the openness, energy and courage to connect with people, communities and social movements in all regions of the country. As former candidates, we both worked very hard to extend beyond our partisan base to bring new voters to the NDP.

In order to rescue Canada from the mean, undemocratic, downward spiral created by the Harper government, our party and our new leader will need to engage with that majority of citizens, organizations and social movements that don’t support Harper’s direction. Of all our excellent candidates, Nathan is most able to reach beyond our partisan base, appealing to fair-minded citizens, social activists and young voters, with the promise of positive, respectful, just and democratic politics.

It’s no surprise that Nathan’s popularity has surged across the country recently. His openness to doing politics differently is resonating also in Quebec. Here’s what a young organizer there is experiencing: “I went all around Quebec with him a few weeks ago and although his grammar and accent may not be perfect, his intellect and his ideas (as well as his charm!) come across in French as well as in English….he’s running a positive and hopeful campaign, like ‘le bon Jack’!”

Please add your vote for Nathan Cullen as NDP leader.

Sincerely,

Nettie Wiebe and Denise Kouri

Credit union switch fizzles

By Doug Henwood
March 10, 2012

Last fall, there was a lot of buzz about moving money out of banks and into credit unions. Grand claims were made about results. I had my doubts—politically (see here) and financially (see here). One can disagree with me on the politics, but it turns out that not much money was moved.

The Federal Reserve is out with its flow of funds accounts for the fourth quarter. These are a detailed accounting of assets, liabilities, and money flows throughout the U.S. financial system. And before anyone says that the Fed is lying to defend its Wall Street constituency, consider that the main audience for these accounts is banks and bourgeois economists. You could probably count the number of radicals who study these accounts seriously without taking off your shoes.

So, here’s the verdict. In the fourth quarter of last year, credit union deposits increased by $9.9 billion, or 1.2%. In the same quarter, commercial banks increased their checking and savings deposits by $232.2 billion, or 3.5%. The increase in bank deposits (and my measure of this excludes deposits exclusively used by large financial institutions) was 23 times the increase in credit union deposits.

And what did the credit unions do with their very modest windfall? They actually reduced their consumer lending (things like credit cards and auto loans). They increased their mortgage lending, but they increased their purchases of federal agency (e.g. Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae) and Treasury bonds considerably more. They also increased their short-term lending to commercial banks via the federal funds market—in fact, more than a quarter of their increase went there. As I’ve said before, they already have more money than they know what to do with. Put your money in a credit union and it’s more likely than not to end up in very orthodox pursuits.

Sure, we need a better financial system. We need tighter regulation of the old one and new institutions that can lend preferentially to worker co-ops and other non-capitalist enterprises. But this credit union thing won’t cut the mustard. As I’ve said before, it’s a matter of politics, not individual portfolio allocation decisions.

Canada (and Quebec) Inc. give Mulcair's NDP leadership bid kiss of death

BY JOONEED KHAN
Rabble.ca
March 14, 2012

André Pratte, head editorialist at La Presse, wrote a piece on March 5, 2012 which caught my attention. It was titled "Mulcair a raison" (Mulcair is right).

I worked for 35 years at La Presse as a journalist writing on world affairs, and I never wasted time reading its editorials (which are signed, unlike English Canadian papers) and which, of necessity, operate within a strictly defined "ideological corridor" that says the Editorial page is the mouthpiece of its owners, the Desmarais family, of Gesca and Power Corporation.

So, for once, I rushed to read the blog, at the end of which I wrote a simple two-sentence comment:

"André Pratte's support for Thomas Mulcair is the kiss of death of Power Corp. and Canada Inc. to his attempt to take over the NDP. And putting up that old liar and war-monger Tony Blair as a model (for Mulcair to follow) is pathetic and anachronistic -- we are in 2012, the old Blair-Bush World Order is teetering, and we now have to deal with the 99%'s challenge to the hegemony of the 1%."

My comment was kept in the queue for hours to be "evaluated" by an administrator -- and then it disappeared!

CUPE Saskatchewan organizes 50th anniversary coalition

Coalition Meeting - ALL WELCOME!

CUPE Saskatchewan
March 13, 2012

CUPE is inviting fellow unions, employee associations, non-profits and progressive community groups to discuss Medicare as it celebrates its 50th Birthday this year.

When:
Tuesday, March 20 (10 am - 4 pm)

Where:
Regina Inn, REGINA

RSVP by calling 757.1009 or cupesask@sasktel.net

Let's talk about how we can work together in a coalition to engage people throughout Saskatchewan - the birthplace of Medicare - in this vital conversation.

Robocall affair vaults Canada into big leagues of political scandal

By Linda McQuaig 
The Star
Mar 12 2012

Perhaps it’s our Canadian modesty that prevents us from thinking we could have a scandal as big-league and important as Watergate. But that modesty may be misplaced.

When it comes to democracy, nothing is more basic than the citizen’s right to vote. So the deliberate attempt to prevent voters from casting their ballots amounts to a stake through the faintly beating heart of democracy as surely as attempting to wiretap the headquarters of a rival political party.

Of course, Watergate became a world-class scandal because the break-in and coverup were linked to the highest political levels in the U.S.

Is something like that possible here?

The Conservatives, who’ve been fending off charges of trying to deter non-Conservative voters from making it to the correct poll on election day, are presumably hoping that the voter suppression can be blamed on a rogue operating without the approval or awareness of the Conservative party.