The 2012 Elections Have Little To Do With Obama's Record … Which Is Why We Are Voting For Him

The 2012 election will be one of the most polarized and critical elections in recent history.

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.and Carl Davidson
AlterNet
August 9, 2012

Let’s cut to the chase. The November 2012 elections will be unlike anything that any of us can remember. It is not just that this will be a close election. It is also not just that the direction of Congress hangs in the balance. Rather, this will be one of the most polarized and critical elections in recent history.

Unfortunately what too few leftists and progressives have been prepared to accept is that the polarization is to a great extent centered on a revenge-seeking white supremacy; on race and the racial implications of the moves to the right in the US political system. It is also focused on a re-subjugation of women, harsh burdens on youth and the elderly, increased war dangers, and reaction all along the line for labor and the working class. No one on the left with any good sense should remain indifferent or stand idly by in the critical need to defeat Republicans this year.

Read more HERE.

Harper’s act of clemency hits at CWB

By Laura Rance 

Winnipeg Free Press
08/11/2012

As the new marketing era dawned Aug. 1, Canada’s prime minister took his revisionist view of history and his ideological vendetta against the Canadian Wheat Board to a new level.

He retroactively pardoned farmers convicted of running the border with their grain trucks in the early 1990s as a protest, and who defied customs officers by stealing their compounded vehicles back. Some were later convicted of contempt of court.

Stephen Harper turned to the rarely used Royal Prerogative of Mercy to issue these pardons, saying these self-declared freedom fighters were courageous for standing up to an unjust law.

Canada Continues to Support Right-wing Coups

By Yves Engler

Dissident Voice

August 11th, 2012

Six weeks ago the left-leaning president of Paraguay Fernando Lugo was ousted in what some called an “institutional coup”. Upset with Lugo for disrupting 61-years of one party rule, Paraguay’s traditional ruling elite claimed he was responsible for a murky incident that left 17 peasants and police dead and the senate voted to impeach the president.

The vast majority of countries in the hemisphere refused to recognize the new government. The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) suspended Paraguay’s membership after Lugo’s ouster, as did the MERCOSUR trading bloc. Last week the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported: “Not a single Latin American government has recognized [Federico] Franco’s presidency.”

Mike Alewitz to address SFL convention

By NYC

Renowned U.S. muralist Mike Alewitz is scheduled to address the annual convention of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour October 31 - November 3, 2012.

Mike is Associate Professor and Artistic Director – Labor Art & Mural Project at Central Connecticut State University.

His book Insurgent Images describes him as:

"The most prolific U.S. labor muralist since the 1940s. Alewitz follows the traditions of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Siqueiros as well as the early painters of the Russian Revolution. With a demonstrated blend of artistic integrity and political commitment, Insurgent Images combines grand historical themes with enlivening detail, to illustrate the interplay between personality and event. 

 Alewitz brings to this tradition his own rich sense of irony, humor, and fantasy to illuminate the hidden spaces where connections between the workforce of the U.S. and its extended relatives across the planet are to be found. Insurgent Images contains murals for the Teamsters—their “Victory Mural” after the United Parcel Service (UPS) Strike of 1998—the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers, the Communications Workers, United Electrical Workers, the United Farmworkers, as well as the Highlander Folk School and other labor institutions."

Visit Mike' website HERE or his facebook page HERE.

Read more about about Mike and the muralist movement HERE.

Mike Alewitz is tentatively scheduled to speak on Thursday November 1 at 10:30 a.m. at the Queensbury Convention Centre, Evraz Place, Regina.

Syria divides the Arab left

The violence deepens and spreads. Yet unlike Egypt and Tunisia, the Syrian revolt has not had unanimous support from the Arab left. There is a split between those who sympathise with the protestors’ demands and those who fear foreign interference, both political and military.

By Nicolas Dot-Pouillard
Le Monde

August 2012

Last August the Lebanese leftwing nationalist daily, Al-Akhbar, went through its first crisis since its launch in the summer of 2006 (1). Managing editor Khaled Saghieh left the paper he had helped set up, because of its coverage of the Syrian crisis. Saghieh denounced the paper’s lack of support for the popular uprising that began in March 2011. Al-Akhbar has never denied its political sympathies with Hizbullah, one of Bashar al-Assad’s chief allies in the region, or hidden the fact that it prefers dialogue between the Damascus government and a section of the opposition to the fall of Assad’s regime. The paper has given a voice to certain members of the Syrian opposition, including Salameh Kaileh, a Syrian-Palestinian Marxist intellectual who was arrested this April by the security services.

In June an article by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb (2) provoked dissension within the paper’s English online version. The Lebanese commentator placed herself firmly behind the Damascus regime, and criticised supporters of a “third way” — those who denounce the regime while warning against western military intervention on the Libyan model. The same month another Al-Akhbar English journalist, Max Blumenthal, announced he was leaving in an article criticising “Assad apologists” within the editorial staff (3).

Co-operative pioneer, 95, pens best-selling book

By Jason Warick

The Star Phoenix

August 9, 2012

95-year-old author Harold Chapman in his Saskatoon home Thursday, August 09, 2012
Photograph by: Greg Pender, Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Harold Chapman steps out onto the 12th floor balcony of his Lakewood-area apartment.

“You can see the horizon. It really is beautiful,” Chapman said Thursday.

At 95 years of age, the Saskatoon man is still looking outward.

In his living room, Chapman discussed his recent projects, which include a brief to a parliamentary committee and penning his bestselling book, Sharing My Life: Building the Co-operative Movement.

“I’m very happy with what I’ve been able to do. I’m fortunate my memory continues to function well,” Chapman said.

Defending the Land from Nuclear Waste

Indigenous community elders, activists gather in northern Saskatchewan against nuclear waste site

BY SANDRA CUFFE

The Dominion

August 9, 2012

A grassroots gathering against a potential nuclear waste site in northern Saskatchewan was held August 3 to 6 in South Bay, on lake Ile-a-la-Crosse. PHOTO: JOHNNY MARCELAND

SOUTH BAY, SK—The storm clouds had moved on by the time people arrived at South Bay on lake Ile-a-la-Crosse last Friday for a grassroots gathering against a potential nuclear waste site in northern Saskatchewan. Dene, Cree and Métis elders from affected communities, grassroots activists from around Saskatchewan and others from as far as the west coast and Germany shared coffee, songs, experiences and a whole lot of moose meat from August 3 to 6 at the Survival Celebration Camp for Sustainable Earth.

"We have to protect the land," Jules Daigneault told those gathered in a sharing circle around the campfire. When the 70-year-old elder heard about the gathering happening in South Bay, he travelled across the lake to the camp from his home in Ile-a-la-Crosse in a boat he made himself. "Everything comes from the land. All our food comes from the land."

Canada’s Courageous … cough, cough … Warriors

By Yves Engler 

Dissident Voice

July 28th, 2012

Six and half years into Harper’s Conservative government Canada has become so militaristic that the head of the armed forces can demand a new war and few bat an eye.

Two weeks ago the Chief of the Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk told the Canadian Press “We have some men and women who have had two, three and four tours and what they’re telling me is ‘Sir, we’ve got that bumper sticker. Can we go somewhere else now?’” The General added that “you also have the young sailors, soldiers, airmen and women who have just finished basic training and they want to go somewhere and in their minds it was going to be Afghanistan. So if not Afghanistan, where’s it going to be? They all want to serve.”

Can a global village raise a child?

By Jim Harding 

No Nukes
July 29, 2012

You've likely heard the saying “it takes a village to raise a child’. You’ve also likely heard “We live in a global village”. The first saying suggests it takes a lot of neighbours as well as extended family to provide positive support for a child to grow up healthy. The second saying comes from Canada’s own Marshall McLuhan, and refers to how the electronic media, primarily TV, connects us emotionally to what’s happening on the other side of the planet.

Both are true in their own way, and it’s revealing to try to figure out why it is so difficult to make them fit. But it’s being attempted; some city neighbourhoods have even renamed themselves as villages, such as Regina’s “Cathedral Village”. 

Feminists in Cuba: Is It Time to Take Steps Together?

By Yasmin S. Portales Machado 

Havana Times
July 30, 2012

HAVANA TIMES — On Tuesday, July 24, a group of Cuban feminists gathered at the Jose Marti International Journalism Institute and ended up discussing the possibility of coordinating their efforts to form a national political organization. In addition, they talked about what should be on the Cuba’s agenda with respect to their concerns. Did they achieve this?

The invitation couldn’t have been more innocent. It was just another one of the many intellectual debates (usually) organized by, for and about women intellectuals. The message read: “We would like to invite you to a discussion about “Feminism in Cuba Today: Rethinking Theory and Practice.” This was to involve the participation of Georgina Alfonso, Teresa Diaz Canals, Danae Dieguez and Isabel Moya, among others, as guests. The forum was to be moderated by Dr. Alina Perez.

The gathering also mentioned that this initiative had the support of the Women’s News Service for Latin American and the Caribbean (SEMlac), Spain’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Cuba and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID), but this wasn’t the most outstanding feature of the meeting.

A working class hero

Tories take aim at “lifeblood” of unions

Unions decry plan as attack

By Grace Macaluso

The Windsor Star 

July 27, 2012 

CAW Local 200 president Chris Taylor at one of the most important sites in the labour movement, Riverside Drive East and Drouillard Road Thursday July 26, 2012. In 1945, Ford workers and UAW members and supporters formed a blockade at Ford of Canada during a labour dispute. The resolution lead to the Rand Formula. Photograph by: Nick Brancaccio , The Windsor Star

On the morning of Sept. 12, 1945, 10,000 hourly employees at Ford Motor Co.’s sprawling plant at the corner of Drouillard Road and Riverside Drive walked off the job after 18 months of contract talks between the United Auto Workers and the carmaker broke off.

The historic dispute would span 99 days and revolutionize Canada’s labour laws by spawning the Rand formula - the “lifeblood” of unions.

Fast forward to 2012, and the formula, which entrenched the closed union shop, requiring all workers to pay union dues, would be dismantled under labour law changes proposed by the Ontario Conservatives.

The Day the Wheat Board Died

By Gavin Fridell 

Socialist Project

E-Bulletin No. 671
July 27, 2012

On August 1, 2012, the Conservative government will bring an end to a major Canadian institution and one of the world's largest, longest-standing, and most successful “state trading enterprises.” After 70 years as the state-mandated monopoly seller of most Western Canadian wheat, the Canadian Wheat Board will officially become “voluntary,” meaning the death of anything resembling what it has been.



The board has been widely praised and defended by many grain farmers and progressive supporters, as well as relentlessly attacked, even despised, by others. In the end, those opposed to the Board, although highly vocal and backed by powerful corporate interests, would appear to be in the minority. This minority, however, has won the day. The Canadian Conservative government of Stephen Harper legislated the end of the board in December 2011 without holding a vote among prairie grain farmers even though it is required by the Canadian Wheat Board Act. Despite a recent Wheat Board plebiscite in which the majority of farmers voted in favour of maintaining the Board's status, and despite a Federal court ruling at the end of 2011 that determined the government's actions were illegal, the Conservatives have continued unabated in their moves to dismantle the Board, with Harper arguing that when western farmers voted Conservative in the last election (which the majority did) they voted for “marketing freedom.”[1]

The Dark Knight Rises: Class War in the Dystopian Present

More than a movie review

By Michael Romandel and Megan Kinch 

The Dominion

July 25, 2012

This review only contains mild spoilers as it focuses on the political aspects of The Dark Knight Rises rather than plot per se.

TORONTO—The Dark Night Rises is a portrayal of a workers’ revolution from the perspective of the bourgeoisie. It is a profoundly authoritarian movie which includes severe criticisms of revolutionaries, but also liberal democracy, bourgeois charity, and the apathetic, ultimately offering a hopeless political vision that only the status quo is tenable and that one should look to one's own personal happiness.

Our first thought on leaving the theatre was, "What kind of society could produce a big-budget movie with such a completely hopeless message about the future of humanity and the inability of ‘the people’ to govern themselves?" Neither of us were able to remember a major motion picture made in our lifetimes that was as openly counter-revolutionary and reactionary as this one, though the politics of this movie are built up in the two earlier films of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and simply culminate here.

Potential U.S.-style labour law changes could lead to instability in Saskatchewan workplaces

NUPGE News

“Many of the changes suggested for consideration by the consultation paper are either directly antagonistic towards unions and workers’ rights and freedoms, or reflect a lack of knowledge about the democratic character of unions as organizations." Paul Champ, human rights lawyer and CFLR board member. Download CFLR report here.

Ottawa (25 July 2012) – If the Saskatchewan government adopts U.S.-style legislation that has already been found to violate international law, it could lead to labour relations instability and conflict at a time when all parties should be working together to maintain the province’s unprecedented economic growth, according to a national labour relations research body.

The Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights (CFLR) has expressed concern over the current review of provincial labour statutes by the Saskatchewan government. In a submission responding to government's Consultation Paper on the Renewal of Labour Legislation in Saskatchewan, the CFLR warns about “the risk that sweeping legislative changes may have for labour relations stability in the province.”