babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Support rabble | Advertise with us | Contact our staff | About rabble | Log-in or Register for a new account | Corrections | Privacy policy | Newsfeeds | Mailing lists
rabble: Features | Columnists | In Cahoots | Blogs | Books | Photos | What's Up | Polls
babble: Forum Topics | Active Topics
The rpn: About the RPN | Become a podcaster
rabbleTV: Program Guide | Features | Indie Inside | Best of the net
Copyright © 2001-2013 the authors
Syndicate
UN Says Canada's Laws on Free Association 'Harsh'
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/21/having-trouble-meeting-people-un...
"For the second time in a week, a United Nations official has listed Canada alongside illiberal regimes as a prominent violator of basic rights and freedoms. Speaking on Wednesday before the UN's human rights council, UN special rapporteur Maina Kiai listed Canada - along with Belarus, Ethiopia, the Russian Federation and Jordan - as countries where 'the laws are particularly harsh in terms of restricting the freedom of association.' Mr Kai was specifically referring to Quebec's recently passed Bill 78.
The comments came just two days after Navy Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, addressing the same council, called the Quebec bill an 'alarming' move to restrict freedom of assembly..."
Yet despite these abuses having now become a matter of international concern and censure, the NDP and Thomas Mulcair continue, by their official silence, to aid and abet his former cabinet colleague the Premier of Quebec. Having a few Quebec MPs show their faces occasionally at marches is an empty feint at blunting criticism. But their political opportunism and disgraceful 'neutrality' on behalf of Jean Charest has surely become obvious to all. Once again the ndp pretends to run with the hare but hunts with the hounds. Why is their shameful silence on this ongoing and outrageous national and international disgrace permitted to continue?
That's how I feel, even though I voted for the guy.
uh, maybe because it would be electorally suicidal and politically ineffective.
But the people have been marching in the streets, pepper sprayed, beaten and arrested for well over 100 days - banging their pots and pans in harmony with a whole world similarly viciously attacked by ruling class fascists - and Quebecers are told not to expect their elected representatives to endanger ndp political chances?
Always the same excuses for cynical politrix and tactical cowardice. Let the strong, brave hearts of the people march on to victory. And never forget who stood and who stayed.
Have to agree with NDPP on this one.
The following are two items on the response of the Canadian labour movement to the student strike in Quebec. The first is an article on Ken Georgetti's brazen sellout of Quebec students, and by extension the Canadian working class. The second is a letter from CUPW to all its locals calling for urgent solidarity and legal defense for Quebec students.
C.L.C. sells out students!
Urgent Solidarity Request: Legal Defense Needed for Quebec Students
From: Casseroles Canada. 22 juin, Montréal. June 22. Crédit photo : André Pichette.
Crooked as a dog's hind leg. No surprise. Looks like those WSWS Trots might not be so far off the mark after all as concerns the CLC. .Good stuff Left Turn! Here's more:
"Nobody who has observed Georgetti's career as labour fakir and lieutenant of the bourgeoisie, the agent of imperialism in the working class movement, will be a bit surprised at this latest sellout. The facts are that Georgetti has made a career out of selling out struggles. Ask the teachers, public servants and woodworkers of BC, of the great solidarity shown by Georgetti as he sold them down the river one by one.."
and this link to a further caveat emptor the Quebec student movement should keep in mind..
'why do labour bureaucracies, despite historical as well as recent evidence of labour, social democratic and even socialist parties pursuing neoliberal policies of globalization and austerity - forcing working people to pay for the crisis caused by the banksters - wed themselves to electoral parties that repeatedly betray the interests of their members and of working people in general?
How do labour bureaucracies, justify 'turning a blind eye' to the injustice of aggressive wars being fought overseas, with our money and our blood, as well as the steady implementation of domestic laws that violate our basic rights to freedom of speech, association and due process..?"
Occupy Your Union Bureaucracy - An Insiders Call
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/content/article/129-more-blog-posts-...
NDPP and Left Turn: Big talk. People can read the original materials themselves, without the brave descriptions of "sellout", and come to their own conclusions. You want Ken Georgetti to march in here at the head of militant Canadian workers? He will be sent packing - with thanks for his thoughts.
I agree with U - you DON'T want Ken Georgetti to march in...No way. Not at all..
Meanwhile, in real life, far from the ruminations of U.S. revolutionaries heroically plotting to take over the world from the front lines of their keyboards - tens of thousands demonstrated today in Montréal and Québec City - students, workers, anti-poverty organizations, women - in support of the students' cause.
Your photo is bigger U, but I got mine here first (see post #37).
Aaaack - you're right, Boom Boom!
Ok then, here's another view;
Wow - good one!
merci beaucoup
I was there! Enfin!
This is a few days old: Industry Minister Paradis asks NDP to endorse Quebec anti-protest law
excerpt:
"We're not going to reinvent the Constitution," Mulcair said after the motion was introduced. "I know the Conservatives too well to ever think for a nano-second that they might do anything with good intentions." *applause*
I think the students in Quebec should be targeting the feds a little more with their demands if they aren't already doing so. As corrupt and unpopular as the Charest Liberals are, they are only following orders from Ottawa and abiding by international plans to commodify post-secondary education ie. the Balogna process. The plan is to create a "right-to-study "state in the style and manner of southern right-to-work states in the U.S. Neoliberal ideology was not born in Quebec and certainly not forced on them, either. Quebec universities want more foreign students paying approximately seven times the tuition fee amounts that Quebec students are paying now. GATS and the Balogna process have no real time table to be implemented, but the Charest government seems to be in an advanced stage of neoliberalizing post-secondary compared to dozens of other nations. The cult of impotence in Ottawa deserves at least equal blame.
Charest takes his orders from Harper.
You should know better Fidel. They both take their orders from the same type of people. The people who run SNC-Lavalin probably have the ear of both of them as do the Power Corp people. The people with power talk directly to both of them. Harper is the puppet not the puppet master. The real puppeteers allow him to play the role of puppet master in the realm of politics but they can yank his strings and get him dancing any tine they want. The same is true of Charest. He is just another puppet but Harper is not his puppet master.
Okay but who should voters and protesters hold directly accountable for the stoogery, big business or their hirelings in government? The people can't unelect SNC Lavalin or Power Corp execs. I'm not a shareholder in any of those companies and so have no real say in their shady dealings. But ordinary people can certainly place blame squarely on the shoulders of herr Harper running the overall horror show and Mulroney's former cabinet minister heading up the Quebec wing of the Liebranos.
Nobody knows... Should be soon.
You trust what you read in the NatPost?
You trust what you read in the NatPost?
146 Greek Academics Shows Solidarity With Quebec Students (from Coop Média de Montréal)
excerpt:
We, academics in the Greek universities, express our solidarity to the extraordinary student mobilization in Quebec: the longest and largest student strike in the history of North America, which is now evolving into one of the most powerful anti-austerity campaigns in the world.
This was one of the court actions (not the same injunction I don't think?):
Court dismisses Quebec students' attempts to strike down elements of Bill 78 and Montreal bylaw
Today's rulings were on the motions to suspend the operation of the law (Bill 78) & by-law (P-6). As I've posted in an earlier thread (or perhaps in another section...), it's extremely hard to get those, in large part because of a jurisprudential "presumption" that validly enected laws are in the public interest.
The hearings to address the actual challenges to the law & by-law will take place later (not before the fall).
the Chilean students too have been at this for a very long time. Here's the latest:
Police Unleash Water Cannons, Teargas on thousands of Chilean Students
http://rt.com/news/police-tear-thousands-government-054/
Thanks - I had forgotten about those demos. Considering the support Quebec students are getting from around the world, if we aren't already doing so, what are the best ways to support the students in Chile? (I'm not a student...)