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NDP = No Difference Party
Would that have been Margaret Thatcher MP for Finchley, or perhaps "premier of Greater London", or was it Maggie Thatcher, first female prime minister of the U.K., a national level leader whose government had control of national purse strings and national policy?
Put another way, if Hugo Chavez were to suddenly show up in our fair land and decided he wants to nationalise the oil, natural gas, electrics, wood industry, steel mills, banking and money, MTS, daycare, abrogate the CANADA-ISRAEL FTA etc, would you advise him to apply for the job of premier of Manitoba, which is basically a large moose preserve with a dwindling population of homeless polar bears?
Question: How would you go about creating socialism in one province under the neoliberal scheme of things in our Northern Puerto Rico?
There is no alternative as long as Canadians have to endure this unbroken succession of colonial administrativeships running things into the ground in Ottawa.
Liberal, Tory, it's the same old story in the colonial outpost of Ottawa.
Fidel likes to pretend that there's some constitutional impediment to a Canadian provincial government agreeing to abide by the international boycott of Israel. He thinks the government of Manitoba is bound by law and economics to render aid and assistance to any murderous foreign regime (even a "genocidal" one, as Fidel himself has characterized Israel) who asks.
Not even the cynical pro-Zionist hacks who run the Manitoba government would ever try to make that feeble argument.
(Apologies if I've offended any babblers who are feeble or who work with the feeble.)
To be fair, Fidel likes to pretend that there is some constitutional impediment to the NDP doing anything remotely progressive. It makes it a lot easier to argue for uncritical support for the NDP when the bar is lowered to subterranean levels.
Although, I question to what extent it is "any murderous foreign regime who asks" and to what extent it is "any murderous foreign regime that we can possibly offer it to." It seems to me that the impetus for these initiatives likely came more from the Manitoba side than the Israel side.
Gotta get that fourth party out of Ottawa, and re-install Filmon's crooks in Winnipeg. Apparently Manitobans are paying far too little for hydro. They should pay more, and it all boils down to the NDP sending WMD to Israel and billions of dollars in aid every year. Oh wait? That's not even close to reality.
Everything will be made right again. There will be no more tuition fees in Manitoba, and Palestinians will finally be free of US-Ottawa backed oppression. Oh wait? Wrong again! Just keep muttering Maggie's motto to yourselves. You'll make about as much sense.
Here's another cute motto: Liberal, Tory, it's the same old story. We know the rules to the dirty FPTP game as well as them that offer no alternatives whilst preaching from the shadows.
Once again, you are attacking an argument that nobody is making. The issue is how the MB NDP behaves and they have not only made a small contribution to helping Israel develop, they have outright attempted to censor criticism of Israel.
Did you watch the video link that both genstrike and PSG put up? Brian Latour talks about those efforts there.
Uh genstrike, when I go to the Facebook page for CanPalNet Winnipeg it does not let me highlight on the poster to read it. Is there anywhere else on the Net where the poster can be looked at more closely?
Well that's strangem because some comments above looked a lot like the usually ridiculous anti-NDP rhetoric concerning the government of a small prairie province. The feds signed an FTA with Israel. Because ever since the Mulroney-baloney-or-rama and the little guy-strangler from Shawinigan, Provincial governments all have to make nice with private enterprise and seek out business deals with whatever other country isn't yet bankrupted by the neoliberal ideology. Unless these Tories have suddenly decided to reverse the federal cutbacks to transfers to the tune of tens of billions of dollars since 1993-95, I don't see how provinces can afford to be very choosey in who they deal with.
Where are progressives' proposals for replacing the Manitoba-Israel collaboration on green energy and clean drinking water projects? I don't think the Harpers have anything up their sleeves to save the environment or solve the world's drinking water shortage. That leaves progressives to come up with alternatives to water shortages and a globalized capitalist economy designed around energy consumption of dead plants, as if they had no idea that market ideology can not replace what is bound to run out sooner or later.
And remember, we still have guarantee 60% of Canadian energy production to vicious empire central south of us, or that same country propping-up Israeli apartheid to the tune of billions of dollars in aid and all manner of weoponry every year.
"The alternative" is to move to a country without medicare and where there is no NDP and where 100% neoliberal ideology is bankrupting state economies even worse than Ontario and BC and laying waste to Alberta.
Uh we do not actually know these are truly 'green' projects; they are being labelled as such by their promoters. Many of the de-salinization projects in the Middle East are resource wasteful.
Did the federal NDP actually make major criticisms of Canada-Israel pact at the time?
Does the pact actually force the provinical NDP to label any criticism of Israel as 'anti-semitic?'
The alternative is to speak of the NDP as it actually is and not to pretend otherwise.
And this is all within the context of first past the post in our Northern Puerto Rico. The realistic alternative to the NDP are the pro Israeli, pro USsA conservatives in Manitoba, federal ReformaTories and pro Israeli, pro USsA Libranos and Liebrals. So carry on holding the NDPs feet to your golden FPTP standard. It will surely help out Palestinians under siege, Colombian trade unionists and social activists on government black lists, Mexican activists and Honduran children sitting in jail, and Haitians living in a country pregnant with revolution for more than 100 years and so on and so on around the world. Carry on in search of your perfect revolution, that one which will never happen. Choose wisely, o' rhetorical anti-NDPers. The world will not be falling into your laps anytime soon.
When an Israeli diplomat, Ilan Baruch, retiring early in disgust with his own government, ridicules this view - a view that is shared by the NDP, Liberal and Conservatives alike I might add - as simplistic, provincial and artificial and thereby takes a view on the left of all three political parties ... then we know that those political parties are completely out of touch with reality on this issue. They are all aping the pro-colonial, pro-imperialist position.
The only point in the NDPs favour here is that they are as stupid and evil and the Liberals and Conservatives on this issue. Here is yet another proof of the worthless "choice" that voters are often given. They're all bad.
Closing for length. Please feel free to start another one!