The Syntagma experiment: democracy from the bottom up

By Jérôme E. Roos 

Roarmag.org

July 12, 2011

What we are witnessing here in Athens is a genuine experiment in democracy for and by the people— without representation, hierarchy or borders. Syntagma Square, Tuesday July 12th

The sun sets on Athens, casting a dark glow on the seemingly impenetrable walls of Parliament. But as thousands of Greeks converge upon Syntagma for the 50th night in a row, it’s yet another dawn for the popular uprising here.

Every Serious Revolutionary Is A Reformist

By David
New Left Project
05 July 2011

“Tinkering, .... is a preliminary to large-scale change. There can’t be large-scale structural change unless a very substantial part of the population is deeply committed to it. It’s going to have to come from the organized efforts of a dedicated population. That won’t happen, and shouldn’t happen, unless people perceive that reform efforts, the tinkering, are running into barriers that cannot be overcome without institutional change. Then you get pressure for institutional change.

But short of that realization, there is no reason why people should take the risks, make the effort, or face the uncertainty and the punishment that’s involved in serious change. That’s why every serious revolutionary is a reformist. If you’re a serious revolutionary, you don’t want a coup. You want changes to come from below, from the organized population. But why should people be willing to undertake what’s involved in serious institutional change unless they think that the institutions don’t permit them to achieve just and proper goals?”

Noam Chomsky, The Framework for Thinkable Thoughts, p121

The Theater of Ideas

A review of The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, written by Tony Kushner, and directed by Michael Grief

BY LAWRENCE GULOTTA
The Activist
7/05/11

The new play by Tony Kushner is great fun, with many delightful Marxist asides and insights. The title was inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism & Capitalism and Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

The main character is Gus Marcantonio, patriarch, long time widower, proud, retired and disillusioned Communist longshoreman. Gus is the first cousin of the moderately pro-Communist Congressman Vito Marcantonio from East Harlem. Gus lives in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, in a huge brownstone, where he raised his family in the culture of the Communist Party and the working class. The brownstone has been in the family for generations. Now it is worth big bucks.

The May 15 Movement in Spain

By Murray Smith
New Socialist
July 5, 2011

On May 15, a new force exploded onto the Spanish political scene. A week before regional and municipal elections, tens of thousands of young people occupied the main squares in Madrid, Barcelona and many other Spanish cities.

One of their key messages was "they don't represent us." "They" referred to the two major parties, the right-wing Partido Popular (PP) and the PSOE, social democrats committed to neoliberalism, which have exercised power in turn over the last thirty years. In Catalonia the conservative nationalist party CiU was included.

Born on the 5th of July: 63rd birthday of the UK NHS

By Sarah Williams
Touchstone
5th July 2011

The creation of the NHS on this day in 1948 was not just one of the greatest achievements in our history but also a massive stride forward in the provision and distribution of public healthcare. It was the first time anywhere in the world that completely free healthcare had been made available to all regardless of ability to pay and it is that element that remains jealously observed by nations such as the USA today.

Before the NHS, public health provision was patchy at best and was determined to a great extent by your ability to pay, where you lived and whether you were a man or a woman or a child. While poor workers were given free healthcare, their wives and children were generally not, reflecting the fact that the priority was not the patient, but the patient’s productivity within the labour market.

PASOK: Pan Hellenic Socialist Kleptocrats

By James Petras
Dissident Voice
July 5th, 2011

George Papandreou is not bought, he is rented. He sells public enterprises to the multinationals. He reduces wages, pensions and employment at the behest of the IMF. He turns over the public treasury to the European banks. He supports NATO’s war against Libya. He directs the Greek Coast Guard to enforce Netanyahu’s blockade of Gaza. – according to a demonstrator in Syndigma Square, Athens, July 3, 2011

A self-proclaimed “Socialist” Government in Greece is imposing by ballots and clubs the most far reaching reversals of wages, pensions, jobs, educational, health and tax programs in the history of Western Europe.

The Pan Hellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) has totally abdicated any pretense of being a sovereign government, handing over present and future macro and micro policymaking to the European Central Bankers, the IMF and the power within the European Union/Germany, France). The so-called “austerity” program includes the pillage and auctioning of all the strategic lucrative public enterprises and large scale public land covering all historic and recreation sites. Never has any regime, socialist or not, so blatantly and brutally reverted an independent country to the most unadulterated form of colonial rule.

Can NDP Help Restore Canada's Reputation?

Learn from Afghanistan, challenge Harper's unprincipled foreign policy.

By Murray Dobbin 

TheTyee.ca

July 4, 2011

Why is it that our collective, social intelligence on so many critical matters falls dramatically short of our individual citizen intelligence? It is amazing that our society can function as well as it does, given that we are in a state of continuous denial about so many things we do as a society. It feels like devolution to me.

I am thinking in particular of the Afghanistan war which we are now exiting, allegedly, in order to take another less violent role. There is no doubt that this is an improvement -- at least we will not be asking Canadian soldiers to kill Afghans in a conflict we had no business being involved in, in the first place. The Afghan war could only be described by any rational person as the "good war" when compared to the grotesque conflict next door in Iraq. Ostensibly, it was to rid the world of Al Qaeda for its attack on the U.S. -- not Canada, the U.S. It did not matter that the attack was planned in Germany, that it wasn't a "war," and it clearly didn't matter that Al Qaeda consisted of a few hundred individuals who were basically routed in the first couple of months of the assault.

Canadian military bases on foreign soil

By Canadian Peace Congress
Global Research
July 2, 2011

Defence Minister Peter MacKay

The Canadian Peace Congress condemns and calls for an immediate halt to the Canadian government's negotiations for military basing rights as part of the Operational Support Hubs Network, and abrogating and renouncing rights already negotiated with Germany and Jamaica.

As Defence Minister Peter MacKay has already admitted, Canada's "military tempo" is at the highest levels since the Korean War. Instead of opening the way for more bombings and destruction with basing rights spread throughout the world, Canada should reverse its military aggression, which is only in the interests of an imperialist minority and against the interests of the peace-loving majority. The basing agreements allow the Canadian military to enter other countries at any time, violating the sovereignty of the host country, in order to rain death and destruction on a third country.

One Picture, One Thousand Words: Workerless Production at Hyundai

Solidarity Economy
June 30. 2011

Short Takes: The Canadian Worker on Film

By David Frank
Labour/Le Travail
Fall 2000

Is there a Canadian labour film? After a century of film production in Canada, the answer is uncertain. Canadian workers do appear in a variety of documentary and feature film productions, but their presence often arises from the incidental processes of documentation and fictionalization.

There is also a more purposeful body of work focused on the concerns of labour history, but its promise remains relatively underdeveloped. Although film has become one of the dominant languages of communications at the end of the 20th century, the practice of visual history stands to benefit from closer collaboration between historians and film-makers.

Read more HERE. (pdf)

Brainwashing the Corporate Way

By John Pilger
Global Research
June 24, 2011

One of the most original and provocative books of the past decade is Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield). “A critical look at salaried professionals,” says the cover, “and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives.” Its theme is postmodern America but also applies to Britain, where the corporate state has bred a new class of Americanised manager to run the private and public sectors: the banks, the main parties, corporations, important committees, the BBC.

Professionals are said to be meritorious and non-ideological. Yet, in spite of their education, writes Schmidt, they think less independently than non-professionals. They use corporate jargon – “model”, “performance”, “targets”, “strategic oversight”. In Disciplined Minds, Schmidt argues that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge but “ideological discipline”. Those in higher education and the media do “political work” but in a way that is not seen as political. Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen. “Taking sides” is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the “built-in ideology of the status quo”. What matters is the "right attitude".

President Hugo Chavez’s address to the People of Venezuela

By colareboenglish 
07/02/2011

Hugo Chávez Frías
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
30 June 2011

“I put my hope on time. Its huge womb holds more hopes than past events, and future events shall be superior to the past ones.” Simón Bolívar.

Time and its pace; time and its mandates; time and its designs, as noted in Ecclesiastes, makes me read this communiqué over to the Venezuelan nation and international public opinion, for they are waiting to learn about my health progress as several weeks ago it started showing deterioration.

Nick Schaack Memorial Unveiled

- NYC
July 1, 2011
Leader Post article HERE.

A memorial to commemorate fallen On-to-Ottawa trekker Nick Schaack was unveiled at the Regina Cemetery, 76 years after the police instigated "Regina Riot". 

Long buried in an unnamed grave site, his sacrifice was finally recognized and a proper head stone  placed.

Retired SFL staffer Don Anderson addresses the crowd

SFL president Larry Hubich

SUN President Rosalie Longmore lays flowers

The new headstone sits beside the unnamed iron cross

Our home on Native land

The celebration of colonization in Canada

By Susana Deranger 

Briarpatch magazine

Jul 1, 2011

Susana Deranger

As people across Canada mark the 144th anniversary of Confederation on July 1st, I cannot find reason to celebrate alongside them.

Every Canada Day, I reflect on the continual theft of my land and resources, on broken treaties, on the genocide of my peoples and the refusal to recognize my sovereignty. I sit and wonder if the Palestinians could celebrate the settlement of Israel. Could the Irish celebrate England; the Tibetans, China; or the North Africans, France?

It would be strange indeed to celebrate the birth of a nation that stole my land, forced hardships on my peoples and won’t recognize my place in this nation or all that my ancestors lost and sacrificed for this home on my native land.

I know that there are other Indigenous Peoples who feel the same. I know that there are others, like me, who see this as a day of conquest and not a reason for fireworks. I also know there are non-Indigenous allies who feel the same and who understand my sorrow and pain.
Canada Day brings tears to my eyes and an ache in my heart.

The Left and the end of Harper

By Alan Sears
Rabble.ca
July 1, 2011

I have a dream about the end of Harper, in which he is driven from office, a reviled figure.

His will be a name invoked by parents to scare their little children. He will live on as a historical footnote in the style of R.B. Bennett and Calvin Coolidge, his ideological predecessors remembered for doing exactly the wrong thing in the face of a global slump, in Bennett's and Coolidge's cases the 1930s Depression.

His legacy will be the movement built to defeat him, a network of vibrant community-labour coalitions in cities and towns across the country and new informal connections between neighbours, co-workers and cultural community members forged through petitioning, marching, occupying or simply sharing analysis in conversation.