rabble.ca - Columnists

Afghans and U.S. war veterans unite to protest NATO: 'End this inhumane war now'

rabble staff — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:37:28 -0400

Gen. John Allen, commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, spoke Wednesday at the Pentagon, four stars on each shoulder, his chest bedecked with medals. Allen said the NATO summit in Chicago, which left him feeling "heartened," "was a powerful signal of international support for the Afghan-led process of reconciliation."

Unlike Allen, many decorated U.S. military veterans left the streets of Chicago after the NATO summit without their medals. They marched on the paramilitarized convention center where the generals and heads of state had gathered and threw their medals at the high fence surrounding the summit. They were joined by women from Afghans for Peace, and an American mother whose son killed himself after his second deployment to Iraq.

Talking the world into taking the wrong direction

rabble staff — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:57:41 -0400

Attending last week's G8 summit hosted by American President Barrack Obama, Prime Minister Stephen Harper characterized the Canadian economy this way: "Thanks to strong fundamentals, Canada's economy is performing exceptionally well by international standards."

The statement is simply not true. Economic fundamentals in Canada reveal growing inequalities, stagnant incomes, high unemployment, and for 2011, a 2.2 per cent economic growth rate (after inflation) that according to an agency popular in Canadian Conservative Party circles -- the CIA -- puts Canada 149th out of 215 countries in the world.

Perversity and honour: Scenes from a terrorist's election campaign

rabble staff — Mon, 21 May 2012 08:20:10 -0400

Two weeks ago, Hollywood liberal and all-around gorgeous good guy George Clooney hosted a glad-handing fundraising event that, according to the Patriot Act's broad provisions, should have landed him and fellow attendees Billy Crystal, Barbra Streisand, Tobey Maguire, and Robert Downey, Jr., behind bars for violating broadly designed material support for terrorism laws.

Boosting Canadian trade vs. free-trade deals

rabble staff — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:56:11 -0400

As soon as it won its coveted majority, the Harper government put the pedal to the metal on the trade front, with a stampede of new free-trade deals. The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade currently lists 18 different deals in play, ranging from puny (Panama and Jordan) to gargantuan (Europe, Japan and India).

Anyone who stands in the way of this juggernaut clearly must oppose trade in general. At least that's how the Conservatives portray the issue, attempting to brand its New Democratic opponents as economically illiterate dinosaurs.

U.S. war veterans challenge NATO's occupation of Chicago

rabble staff — Thu, 17 May 2012 08:30:17 -0400

Veterans of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are now challenging the occupation of Chicago.

This week, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is holding the largest meeting in its 63-year history there. Protests and rallies will confront the two-day summit, facing off against a massive armed police and military presence. The NATO gathering has been designated a "National Special Security Event" by the Department of Homeland Security, empowering the U.S. Secret Service to control much of central Chicago, and to employ unprecedented authority to suppress the public's First Amendment right to dissent.

Picasso's Guernica as symbol of the peace movement

rabble staff — Wed, 16 May 2012 07:49:25 -0400

Seventy-five years ago Nazi warplanes -- aligned with Franco's Nationalists -- bombed and destroyed the Basque town of Guernica. In response, the Spanish Republican government asked Pablo Picasso to commemorate the tragedy via a mural to be exhibited at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. The large painting, the most memorable of the century, 11 feet and 6 inches by 28 feet and 8 inches, depicted the violence of the German bombardment. The attack was all the more terrifying because it demonstrated the existential significance of aerial barrage: all civilian populations would now potentially have to live in a state of emergency.

Banks and the derivatives scam

rabble staff — Tue, 15 May 2012 07:41:06 -0400

John Kenneth Galbraith famously described financial genius as "a rising market." This was on display in the expansionary era of the 1950s and 1960s. New bank credits funded growing businesses. Investment bankers injected their own capital into initial share offerings of "public" companies, allowing businesses to grow by taking in shareholders as partners. Finance flourished.

Mulcair and energy McCarthyism

rabble staff — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:41:14 -0400

The high-and-mighty vitriol which greeted Tom Mulcair's comments last week about the downside of oil-powered currency appreciation is lamentable (repeating the over-the-top reaction to Dalton McGuinty's similar comments a few weeks ago). Mulcair made two modest and empirically substantiated statements: the loonie is sky-high as a result of the oil boom in Alberta's bitumen sands (I doubt you'd find a single currency trader on Bay Street who would disagree with that), and that overvaluation is causing negative side-effects on other industries and regions in Canada.

Activists protest outside Bank of America's shareholder meeting

rabble staff — Thu, 10 May 2012 07:49:59 -0400

Shareholder meetings can be routine, unless you are Bank of America, in which case it may be declared an "extraordinary event." That is what the city of Charlotte, N.C., called the bank's shareholder meeting this week. Bank of America is currently the second-largest bank in the U.S. (after JPMorgan Chase), claiming more than $2 trillion in assets. It also is the "too big to fail" poster child of Occupy Wall Street, a speculative banking monstrosity that profits from, among other things, the ongoing foreclosure crisis and the exploitation of dirty coal.

Temporary foreign workers and the labour market

rabble staff — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:24:12 -0400

Further to recent commentary regarding the Harper government's dramatic expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TWF) program, consider this shocking factoid.

Even before the expansion of the program envisioned in the current omnibus "budget" bill, temporary foreign workers (who do not have the same rights as other Canadian workers, and whose presence here depends entirely on keeping their employers happy) already accounted for almost 30 per cent of all net new paid jobs created in Canada between 2007 and 2011.

François Hollande's Socialist France

rabble staff — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:55:13 -0400

Masses of people thronged Place de la Bastille -- symbolically representative of the French revolution -- to cheer the electoral victory May 6 of French Socialist Party candidate François Hollande, over conservative incumbent President of the Republic Nicholas Sarkozy.

The joyful celebratory mood was a welcome change. Over a decade of grim employment news had brought a measure of despondency to the nation once noted for its "joie de vivre." On the campaign trail, Hollande was called the only happy person in a morose country.

Quebec student movement threatens austerity agenda

rabble staff — Tue, 08 May 2012 08:27:33 -0400

No wonder those Quebec student protesters have been spooking the English Canadian establishment. If they get their way, the same ideas could catch on here, leaving the best-laid plans for austerity in tatters.

What seems to particularly gall some English Canadian commentators is the fact that the Quebec students -- who reached a tentative deal with the province on the weekend after a three-month strike -- have been protesting tuition hikes that would still leave them with the lowest tuition in the country. Why can't these spoiled brats be grateful, and go back to watching video games and keeping up with the Kardashians like normal, well-adjusted North American youth?

Canada's oil: For sale to the highest bidder

rabble staff — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:22:32 -0400

Want to know why Canada's currency is sky-high despite our sluggish recovery, our large and persistent current account deficit, and our lousy export performance?

Check out this fascinating story in Friday's National Post, by Yadullah Hussain, on why Canada's oil reserves are such a uniquely hot commodity in the eyes of global oil corporations.

The science and art of defeating Motion 312

rabble staff — Fri, 04 May 2012 07:13:27 -0400

The pro-choice movement scored a significant victory last week in the Parliamentary debate over anti-choice Motion 312. It could prove to be a watershed moment, one that could end the abortion debate in Canada forever -- or at least until Christian fundamentalists stage an improbable coup and enslave Canadian women into a version of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

Tracking the financing of U.S. election ads

rabble staff — Thu, 03 May 2012 07:38:49 -0400

May Day, Murdoch and the murder of Milly Dowler. What do they have to do with the 2012 U.S. general election? This year's election will undoubtedly be the most expensive in U.S. history, with some projections topping $5 billion. Not only has the amount of spending increased, but its nature has as well, following the 2010 U.S.

If You Could Change One Thing: Developing policy for progressive change

rabble staff — Thu, 03 May 2012 08:10:00 -0400

I had a great change of pace last week, when I stayed out at the CAW Family Education Centre at Port Elgin to teach a 5-day course on "Economics for Trade Unionists" through the CAW's Paid Educational Leave program.

While I have guest lectured many times at Port Elgin, I have never actually taught a course there, so this was a great opportunity for me to experience first-hand how our PEL system trains and inspires hundreds of rank-and-file union activists and local leaders every year, through a wide range of peer-taught courses. The Centre was bursting at the seams with about 250 students in a range of courses -- including toxic substances, pride, collective bargaining, and training to be women's advocates.

What is the post-colonial state?

rabble staff — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:36:08 -0400

The rise of new regions of power in recent decades has provoked much discussion of understanding the post-colonial state. While the global influence of the U.S. and the European Union appears to have diminished in past years, the significance of some post-colonial states, such as India and Pakistan, has consistently increased. The challenge for progressive thinkers is to formulate a theoretical model that can coherently explain the specific and general trajectories of these countries.

A number is never just a number: Taxing times

rabble staff — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:32:04 -0400

31%
That's how much of Canada's economy is made up of income, sales, corporate, property and other taxes we pay to all levels of government. (Source)

~$38 billion
That's how much less Canadians now pay in individual income tax compared to 2000. (Source)

Mayday, Mayday, Mayday: A distress call on May Day

rabble staff — Tue, 01 May 2012 07:35:09 -0400

The other Mayday is a distress call. It comes from the French "m'aidez," or help me. When repeated three times on a radio frequency, Mayday signifies grave and imminent danger. If such a call had gone out May 2, 2011 -- the night of the election of a majority Harper government -- a significant number of Canadians would not have thought it a hoax.

The Empire vs. Iran (and Syria): A New World War for a New World Order?

M.Gregus — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:35:20 -0400

Confronted with a declining World Order it can no longer control, does the West want to re-assert its will through a new world war, which this time would be really global?

A terrifying scenario emerges from the ceaseless escalation of pressures and threats against Syria and Iran, pitting, for the first time since the NATO-OECD Empire won the Cold War two decades ago, the Western trio of the UN veto club (U.S., U.K., France) against its non-Western duo (Russia and China).

U.S. surveillance and the National Security Agency

M.Gregus — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:59:12 -0400

Three targeted Americans: A career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these U.S. citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained -- sometimes at gunpoint -- and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent.

The costs of hiding environmental information

M.Gregus — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:49:49 -0400

For citizens and NGOs who want to challenge environmental decisions, the biggest obstacle is usually obtaining information about the potential environmental effects of a decision or project. In the 1990s, the Ontario government passed the Environmental Bill of Rights which was supposed to make access to environmental information easier. As a result of this Act, we now have a public registry where potential decisions that may adversely affect the environment are posted for review by the public. Quebec, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories also have similar legislation, and a federal Environmental Bill of Rights was tabled, but not passed in the House of Commons in June 2010.

Harkat wins new hearing while Appeal Court upholds secret trials law

M.Gregus — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:31:42 -0400

While activists cheered last week's news that the Kingston Immigration Holding Centre -- better known as Guantanamo North -- had finally closed, three of the secret trial detainees who'd been held there still live under indefinite detention without charge, threatened with deportation to torture.

Funding cools but docs still hot

rabble staff — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:36:10 -0400

"People keep saying to me 'this is the Golden Age of Documentary,'" sighs Lisa Fitzgibbons, executive director of the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC). "But there's a huge disconnect between what people think and the reality."

What Fitzgibbons is referring to is the storm of recent bad news that's shredding up the documentary industry in Canada. In the weeks before the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto (April 26 to May 6) -- the largest one in North America -- the industry was hit with announcements of colossal cuts at the NFB, CBC and Telefilm.

Europe counts in French elections

M.Gregus — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:34:15 -0400

The biggest smile, the night of the first round of the French presidential elections, belonged to Marine Le Pen, candidate of the extreme right Front National (FN) who obtained 17.9 per cent of the vote, a record for the party formerly led by her father.