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I thought Fidel was joking but maybe not. Brian Latour does a good job of explaining how bad the NDP are.
Sure, why doesn't the Man-NDP stop fooling around and simply create socialism in one province? What's stopping them besides 35 years of top-down federal neoliberalism perpetrated on all Canadian provinces?
I think Manitoba has one of the lowest costs of living in the country. You've got some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country through this latest ideologically driven meltdown of western world economies, and some of the lowest post secondary costs after tax rebates are realized. If it wasn't for the black flies and a lot of flat lands, you'd prolly have more young Ontarians and northern industries fleeing the lousy economy here for greener pastures in Manitoba than any other province. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth as they say. It could be worse - you could have McGuinty or Campbell, or another bunch of Filmon style crooks wanting to sell off ManHydro to rich friends of the party. Then all you'll be left with is a black fly infested swamp where you can't afford to live.
I have lived here all my life. There is no discernible difference whether either party is in power. The NDP helped build the MTS Centre; public funds for private profit. They succeeded where P/Filmon failed.
The union free MTS Centre in which public funds subsidize private profit I might add.
MTS? Didn't the conservatives make tidy commissions on that one pawning it off to well heeled friends of the party? The sabotage of MTS, Manitoba's most profitable utility, ah yes I remember now. You've got to hand it to the crooks. They can see dollar signs when it comes to anything owned by the taxpayers. Real business savvy they are. Slicker'n snake's bellys in wagon ruts during a downpour. Don't vote NDP - you'll get more of the same where Filmon and crooks left off and freezing in the dark if the Tories they have their way. Dealing away the family jewels and silverware is progress as far the crooked bastards are concerned. Liberals no better.
Compared to other provinces, Manitoba is the socialist motherland (which ain't sayin' much). That said, the focus of this thread has to do with the Manitoba NDP Government's shameful (and shameless) promotion of cultural, commercial and political relations with the apartheid state of Israel.
However one chooses to vote (or not) in the next election, it is simply wrong to look the other way when an NDP government -- which allegedly stands for social justice -- behaves as it does regarding Israel (cheerleading) and Israel's critics (attacking).
How can anyone expect for one moment that the NDP will improve if it is not held accountable. It is not enough to trumpet its achievements and hope the other stuff will go away.
Yes, Paul, you are correct and sorry for the thread sway. The issue here is that the NDP is just as bad as the Conservatives for a slavish devotion to the local Zionist element and for Israel. Maybe genstrike can convince Brian Latour to join rabble.ca so we can get more of his insight. The more of his insight the better, being he is a former NDP'er and he discusses Manitoba specifically.
So I think what you're saying there is no good reason to replace the NDP with conservatives. Even worse, the Manitoba conservatives' federal cousins in Ottawa fully support whatever it is Uncle Sam tells them to, whether it's a right wing version of Zionism in Israel or signing free trade deals with Uncle Sam's oppressive death squad proxies in Colombia who make sport of murdering union leaders and social activists.
And I'll bet I can come up with many more foreign policy reasons for not inadvertently installing Tories or Liberals in Ottawa or Queen's Parks. And that's in addition to their bad economic policies affecting everything from persistent poverty in Canada to those parties working to undermine the Canadian economy in favour of banks and foreign corporate interests.
Well I think you should know that because of our incredibly stupid FPTP electoral system, not voting tends to be counted as a show of support for the ruling party in government. Either way you might disagree with the provincial governments views on what is a federal matter of foreign policy. But I always tend to vote for the party with the best foreign policy federally not provincially. Vote for the best party provincially when it comes to provincial matters. That's my general rule of thumb when it comes to voting, and I never let a single issue determine how I will vote because the very idea of not weighing the total packages and alternatives in both hands is absurd to me.
cue Hinterland Who's Who music ...
The orange-throated dipper booby, while mostly harmless to the Bald Eagle and the other predators of the forest, shows a remarkable ability to distract its rivals with ventriloquist-like calls out of nowhere. Unfortunately, the calls sow confusion among all the animals of the forest and make the task of the large predators much easier ...
cue music again ...
How about the Any reason will do not to vote NDP I'm not very particular, I'll even be glad for the Liberals, Tories same old stories in selling out every principle I ever thought I had, theme music? (cue us some stale old line party merengue) I wonder what the Manitoba NDP's policy is on relations with Tuvalu? I just think we should consider the widest range of provincial government responsibilities.
I actually was focusing on how the NDP's policy toward Israel is as bad as the others, which is related to the thread. You are saying the NDP is a better vote option (I do not agree) but that is a different topic. If Manitoba does trade deals, agreements with other entities outside of Canada, then that is a foreign policy decision even if at the provinical level. So why can we not hold the provincial NDP accountable for a policy that it has, making agreements, promoting Israel?
Yes, the provincial NDP in Manitoba also has, with past Premier Doer, noisily played the nauseus "Support the Troops" card during previous provincial elections. Why not let the Provincial Conservatives raise the issue and jump on them for mixing apples and oranges (provincial and federal issues) when it comes up? Why? Because it was probably seen as electorally prudent. And that's all that matters as anti-war policy is easily jettisoned.
Incidently, the retiring Israeli diplomat Ilan Baruch has called what the leading political parties (Cons, Libs, and NDP) in English Canada do - in characterizing criticism of the Israeli apartheid regime as Anti-Semitism - as simplistic and provincial. It was a remarkable comment coming from a retiring diplomat who left his post early because he couldn't stomach the BS.
And here's another federal issue for the let's get the NDP out of Manitoba thread. You're living in a Northern Puerto Rico with some pipelines and where even the fuckin' Polar bears are homeless. What's afta NAFTA?
They're short of drinking water in Israel. Maybe if they had more they'd ease up on the fascism and share more with Palestinians. Clean water and green energy sources should be basic human rights for all. I don't really see a connection between this and propping up Israeli military with billions of US dollars in aid and military sales every year, like NAFTA feds have done both sides of the border.
Clearly, no straw is too small to grasp at when desperately trying to defend the indefensible. Now it seems the Israelis are really only trying to conserve water when they kill Palestinians and steal their land.
And the idea that this is a "get the NDP out of Manitoba" thread is yours alone.
Yes it's indefensible. Because where would the US-backed Israeli military dictatorship be today without the Manitoba NDP propping them up? Winnipeg is KAOS headquarters for sure.
Anyone who visits Israel is guilty of supporting the continuing genocide of the Palestinian people by Zionist facsists. Every single $ they spend in Israel helps buy ammunition for Zionist soldiers. The end result is a dead Palestinian baby.
NDP babykillers!! Selinger the kiss of death!!
It's like I said before, even the fuckin' Polar bears are homeless in our Northern Puerto Rico. And it's all the NDP's fault!!! I think I need some rolly eyes about now. Or how about that broken record emoticon we used to have? C'mon!
Why would anyone refer to the situation as apartheid? Black South Africans were needed by the white minority to work for next to nothing. Very close to slave wages, and then shipped back to the townships by curfew.
OTOH, the Israelis haven't needed Palestinian labour in great numbers for a long time. Not since the influx of cheap labour from Asia. Israeli policies toward Palestinians is closer to that of extermination. Palestinians don't have many things which even black South Africans had to sustain body and soul. Call it what it is, a US-backed fascist regime guilty of genocide. And Israel is only one of dozens of US-backed military dictatorships and kleptocracies, narco states etc. Israel is a drop in the bucket compared to what is a sea of imperialist oppression and crimes against humanity.
Noam Chomsky on boycotts:
You mean a U.S.-backed, Manitoba NDP-backed, fascist regime guilty of genocide.
Yes. Why are people affraid to call it what it is?
Fidel the different legal status of Israeli Jews versus other Israelis/those under occupation is well documented. Palestinians have no right under Israeli law to return to the land stolen from them at the barrel of a gun, but Jews anywhere in the world have automatic rights in this regard. The list is as long as your arm. The Israelis may have laws that seem to provide for equality but their "exceptions" turn this into its opposite. In a thousand ways, like preventing medical patients from getting to the doctor, or having exclusive roads, etc., the Israeli regime carries out its racist and bigoted policies of ethnic cleansing. Apartheid sums it up perfectly. Even those who were intimately familiar with the SA apartheid regime - those who were in the leadership of the struggle against that odious regime (that has now disappeared never to return) - use the term to describe the Israeli regime. The least amount of effort on your part could confirm that.
The restrictions on Palestine's use of water would be there whether Israel is short of water or not. The deprivations imposed on Palestine are about the 'demographic problem' and dehydrating Palestinian babies to death in certain sectors is one solution. One of the biggest deprivations Palestinians face is just ordinary sleep. Israel jets do Mach II 60 metres above the Occupied Territories. That 'sound cannon' you saw at the G20 police riot was first developed in Israel. Israeli troops toss compression grenades while they do their rounds; they set their watches at various intervals so the grenades are never set off to a particular pace and thereby being more disruptive to sleep. IDF also sets off smaller dummy shotgun cannons (similar to those used at airports to scare off birds). Heart palpitations due to sleep deprivation in Palestinian babies is exponentially higher than anywhere else in the world; when Hamas was first elected one of the first things they did was kick out a team of medical researchers from an EU committee because they felt children were being used as lab rats. The Western media just mentioned a team of doctors being kicked out, never explaining that they were there only doing research as opposed to providing actual help. I am not counting on the Manitoba NDP to use their economic ties with Israel to help with this problem nor are any measures to help Israel steal more water going to trickle down to occupied Palestine.
I agree with Chomsky. In some ways it's worse than apartheid and some ways not. But the moral legitimacy of boycotts is in question. Ending apartheid in SA did nothing to end the Anglo-American backed oppression in dozens of other countries. There is no abatement at the source of the problem. Our stoogeacracy in Ottawa continues to provide a colonial extractive economy for the vicious empire and contributing to the enabling of that country's unsustainable energy policies at home.
Boycotts invariably end up harming those they are not intended to. The former USSR, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq are good examples of how political interference in other countries is not morally justifiable on a number of levels. I can not support boycotts for any reasons unless they are meant to get at the heart of the problem. And even then I would have difficulty supprting the levelling of hardships on the American people who are largely innocent of the crimes of the state. There is a way though that would be completely in line with free market mechanisms that even the empire and its people would have to agree with.
Canada's responsibility to the rest of the world is to help America curb its voracious appetite for cheap Canadian fossil fuels. This bs with bombing and invading energy-rich countries is all because the Yanks have no sustainable long term national energy policies. This must change. WE are very close to being at the edge of the precipice.
How is this a response to what M Spector said? You said that somehow Israel might share water with Palestinians; Spector pointed out that Israel would still withhold water no matter what and then you go back to sarcastically about the Manitoba NDP and that its support for Israel is somehow irrelevant. You are being evasive here - do you really believe Israel would share water with the Palestinians?
The MB NDP's support for Israel is not irrelevant; that fact that is there is tacit support from the MB NDP for everything Israel does. MB's relationship with Israel normalizes systems and behaviors that are not acceptable. A boycott that puts more pressure on Israel and creates more space to talk about the realities of the Occupation is a good idea. No, not all boycotts are well-planned or well-positioned but a boycott of Israel in the face of such absolute deprivation is necessary. So is a confrontation with the North American media for its one-sided, pro-Israeli, pro-Zionnist portrayal of all events.
Actually Fidel you never answered the question above either? Are you saying we should be silent about what the Manitoba NDP gov't does with Israel? Why should we be not able to use this situation to draw attention to what Israel really is and what it actually does behind the chimera of pro-Israeli media coverage?
I don't think Manitoba's NDP should be immune to criticism. But suggesting that tiny Manitoba is responsible for propping up what is a US-backed fascist state thousands of miles away from the prairies, I think, is an extreme point of view and totally innaccurate. Just putting things in perspective is all. The anti-NDP rhetoric tends to distort things in general I find. I've read things that would lead us to believe the NDP are responsible for everything from neoliberalism in Canada to them propping up Uncle Sam's various client states around the world however weak the connection. I find criticisms of provincial NDPs can be anywhere from somewhat vaguely true to completely ridiculous at times.
Judith Butler to Speak at Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto
http://rabble.ca/news/2011/03/judith-butler-speak-israeli-apartheid-week...
"The subject of Butler's Toronto lecture will be the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Launched in 2005 as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) call signed by over 170 Palestinian and civil society organizations, the growing international boycott campaing represents, for Butler, A CRUCIAL MEANS OF RESISTANCE TO ONGOING ISRAELI STATE VIOLENCE AND OCCUPATION.
The academic and cultural boycotts act AS A DIRECT CHALLENGE TO INSTITUTIONS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE NORMALIZATION OF THE OCCUPATION, FORCING THEM TO NOT ONLY ADDRESS ISRAEL`S CONSTANT VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW BUT ALSO END THEIR COMPLICITY IN THESE CRIMES IN THE PROCESS.
We can think of it as a sort of `passive complicity`writes Butler in her Haàretz interview. `To work on the side of the problem of the occupation is to participate in its normalization. And the way that normalization works is to efface or distort that reality in the public discourse. As a result,` she concludes, NEUTRALITY IS NOT AN OPTION.
Butler insists that there is no one simple approach to heeding teh boycott call, but whatever the tactic, it must oppose the process of normalization and bring to light the `basic principles and injustice at stake. There are many ways to articulate those principles, and this is where intellectuals are doubtless under a political obligation to become innovative, to use the cultural means at our disposal to make whatever interventions we can.``
The NDP can not and should not be defended or excluded from the BDS call - especially given what is at stake for so many and its continuing pretension at representing `progressive` politics in Canada. Defending the indefensible because it is no difference party standard operating procedure, just doesn`t cut it in this case.
Except that every time someone criticizes them you are quick to suggest that the critics prefer the Liberals or the Conservatives, which is almost never the case.
Not only that, but you invent the most outrageous arguments to "justify" that which is being criticized — arguments that would never be accepted by reasonable progressives if offered to justify similar conduct or positions taken by Lib/Con governments.
Yes, it is an extreme point of view, and perhaps that's why nobody has said Manitoba is "propping up" Israel. Israel will manage just fine with or without Manitoba's support.
The point is not so much what effect the Manitoba NDP position has on Israel (i.e. negligible), as what effect it has on the NDP's own reputation for defending human rights around the world, as well as what effect it has on the political consciousness of the citizens of Manitoba, who tend to pay attention to what the provincial government does and says. When Manitobans see their social-democratic government cosying up to apartheid (or, if you prefer, "fascist") Israel and openly defying the international BDS movement launched by the Palestinians themselves (not by some radical eggheads in a backroom in Toronto) it undermines public solidarity with the beleaguered Palestinians and sets a bad example for civil society and for other governments.
The NDP is not "responsible" for neoliberalism, but it's not wrong to say that it is all too quick to fall in line with the neoliberal consensus on many issues — Israel being just one of them.
It's FPTP rules in the Northern Puerto Rico. They will necessarily have pro Israeli conservatives in Manitoba if not the NDP. And then both levels of government are pro-USA and therefore pro Israeli and pro whatever Uncle Sam instructs the Northern Puerto Rico. Provincial governments have very little control over the national agenda and national economy since the 1980s and even before that begining in 1975 when the neoliberal agenda first got underway in Ottawa.
What else can they do at the provincial level WRT provincial economies? This is not Canada the way it was in Tommy Douglas' time. Things have changed.
"There Is No Alternative" - Margaret Thatcher.