Today is the 10th anniversary of Jack Layton's death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Layton
Singh pitches changing Toronto riding name to honour 'happy warrior' Jack Layton
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, at the Jack Layton Monument in Toronto, responds to a question during an August press conference marking the 60th anniversary of the NDP on. (Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press) (The Canadian Press/Tijana Martin)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-jack-layton-1.6149339
More of the same hagiography as Singh here:
Mourn then organize: Jack Layton and the campaigns of 2011 and 2021
David J. Climenhaga
https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/alberta-diary/2021/08/mourn-then-organi...
I rather mourn the fact that Alexa MacDonald and Jack Layton moved the NDP irredeemably away from what the party once stood for.
The cult of Saint Jack bloomed with the uptick of NDP fortunes as the party became for a short time the official opposition, which, under the first-past-the-post revolving neoliberal reality, meant next to nothing.
Layton moved the NDP further to the right embracing NATO, overturning long-standing NDP policy, and joined the other Canadian parties in the US imperial alliance.
His electoral success was obtained by a kind of temporary non-aggression pact with the Harper ticket, a "government we can work with" as the NDP conspired with Harper to bring down the corruption-ridden Liberal Government in favour of 10 years of Harper.
The late James Laxer wrote what is still the best description of how we got to the post-Layton NDP:
Fake Left, Go Right
An insider’s take on Jack Layton’s game of chance
by James Laxer May. 12, 2006
Laxer misses the point. The NDP is a political party, and its mission first and foremost is to form government, and Layton's leadership brought us by far the closest to winning. You can possess all the best, most progressive ideas ideas on the planet, but if you don't have the power to implement them what good are they to society? The reason the NDP needs to go after the Liberals is their constant strategy of of fake left, and govern right. Canadians already know who the Conservatives are, it is the right-wing Liberals who they don't really know about.
5 PM Pacific time tonite!
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Star-studded event to mark 10th anniversary of Jack Layton's death
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/star-studded-event-to-mark-10th-annivers...
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Today, we mark the 10th anniversary of Jack Layton’s passing, on August 22, 2011.
It’s hard to believe that ten years have passed since Jack’s final letter to Canadians, which called on us all to be hopeful, loving and optimistic. Ten years since a country poured out its heart for a leader who inspired them to believe that together, we can change the world.
To mark the occasion, a number of Jack’s friends and my family have come together to organize something Jack would have loved -- a fabulous (and free!) virtual concert with great artists, passionate advocates, and activists who have been inspired by Jack and in turn are inspiring others.
Jack loved music and the arts and bringing people together. Even in the darkest times, he could always see the light. We need that vision and that light more than ever now.
It’s in that spirit that I look forward to sharing this evening of music, inspiration and -- yes -- fun with you and people across Canada who are helping to build on Jack’s legacy.
So please join our family and special guests including Shad, Donavon Woods, Steven Page, Rupi Kaur, William Prince, David Suzuki, Julian Taylor, Raffi, Martin Deschamps, Thomas King, Stéphane Moraille, Asmaa Hussein, The Transcanada Highwaymen, Tim Baker, Sarah Harmer, and Ralph.
Where: https://www.laytonlegacy.ca/
When: 8:00 pm ET
What: Love, Hope & Optimism: Celebrating Jack Layton’s Legacy
We are stronger when we join together. See you tonight!
Olivia Chow
Laxer misses the point. The NDP is a political party, and its mission first and foremost is to form government, and Layton's leadership brought us by far the closest to winning. You can possess all the best, most progressive ideas ideas on the planet, but if you don't have the power to implement them what good are they to society? The reason the NDP needs to go after the Liberals is their constant strategy of of fake left, and govern right. Canadians already know who the Conservatives are, it is the right-wing Liberals who they don't really know about.
If you have the power but have left the ideas behind you are no better off. Bernie Sanders has enormous respect for never compromising his values and beliefs. He doesn't play political games. He never attacks someone based on insignificant or shallow reasons.
I think we need parties that can be true to their beliefs while governing in the direction that people want.
For example, my fury at QS is no secret. I understand they are devoted to independence from Canada but it isn't enough to just say "we won't hold a referendum" which is what the PQ and CAQ have done.
What they need to say is we know that currently Quebecers want government to use the power it already has to better the lives of Quebecers and that is what QS intends to do. Once we prove to you that we can manage your money better than Ottawa we will ask you to elect us again with a mandate to negotiate independence. Until then the topic is closed. We will not be picking fights with Ottawa.
That's what it comes down to for most voters. Not ideology. Provincially that means fixing roads and other infrastructure. Fixing the health care system. Housing. Jobs. Education. Taxes. Quebec cartels. If there is any topic I would tackle that concerns the feds it is the trade deals that Quebec AGREED to. Quebec premiers were in on the negotiations. Don't use it as a "see how bad Canada is. Quebec had huge influence.
I know I have drifted enormously off topic but I think the same thinking applies to the NDP. It isn't a matter of pragmatism or ideology. It is a matter of promising and following through on pragmatism while not denying your core beliefs.
Taking the word "socialism" out was denying the NDP's core belief in social democracy. It was an attempt at political rebranding without significant change. Hollow.
The NDP can be both true to its core beliefs and be pragmatic about what it promises Canadians. If the NDP were shockingly pragmatic they could say straight up that if the Conservatives were to win a minority government Singh would be willing to copy BC and form a coalition government with the Liberals.
That would set the cat among the pidgeons. The media would love it. They would pester Trudeau and O'Toole. Trudeau would be stammering and O'Toole would be livid.
It would make this election a lot more interesting. We should start something. Get a tweet mob going.
As long as the Conservatives don't win a majority the Liberals and NDP can form a coalition government like the NDP and Greens did in BC.
Nothing against Jack, necessarily, but as the resident Yank on Babble I have issues with the term "The Happy Warrior" as a nickname for any progressive population.
In the States, that was the nickname attached to Hubert Humphrey, a long-time Democratic Party politician who, as a first-term U.S. senator, introduced legislation to send all Communist Party members to internment camps- at a time(1955) when virtually all U.S. Communists were already in prison or in hiding- who assisted Lyndon Johnson in tricking the Mississippi Freedom Democrats, a progressive antiracist faction challenging the seating of the official, and officially segregationist Mississippi Democratic delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, into accepting a pointlessly humiliating compromise that gave them only two seats in the Mississippi delegation(the regular Mississippi delegation walked out of the convention anyway and all of them went home and campaigned for Barry Goldwater, the segregationist-appeasing Republican nominee that year; and who, four years later, after Johnson had been forced out of the race for the 1968 nomination over Vietnam and other issues, allowed himself to be drafted for the nomination as a prowar "status quo" candidate, after campaigning for the nomination, in the near-revolutionary year of 1968, on the delusional slogan "The Politics Of Joy"; and who, four years later, sabotaged whatever chances George McGovern, a longtime ally, had of defeating Richard Nixon for a second term by viciously attacking him from the right on foreign policy, welfare and abortion long after any chance Humphrey had of being nominated had vanished.
After what Humphrey did under that label, no decent political leader whose values are anywhere close to progressive should ever be called "The Happy Warrior" again.
Saint Jack is the architect of the NDP's current Ready Aye Ready foreign policy. This thread brings this song to mind, my age is showing since I saw them do this live in '67. Happy Jack wasn't tall.
Pondering is also telling Québec solidaire what to do. Actual active members are involved in integrating ecosocialism into our programme and making it relevant to the 21st century (and we have certainly surpassed the PQ).
All the party platform on the national question (including right relations with Indigenous nations) just like other issues such as antiracism, women's rights and ensuring democracy has been the object of long, democratic discussions. I most certainly don't agree with everything - who does? - but have no issues with the process.
It is no secret (and no shame) that we are political adversaries. Her support for an angryphone party on the Montréal level makes that rather clear.
Pondering is also telling Québec solidaire what to do. Actual active members are involved in integrating ecosocialism into our programme and making it relevant to the 21st century (and we have certainly surpassed the PQ).
Everybody gets to tell political parties what they want them to do. I've given up on you ever dropping your personal vendetta because that is just who you are.
It is no secret (and no shame) that we are political adversaries. Her support for an angryphone party on the Montréal level makes that rather clear.
I don't know what party I am supporting this municipal election so how the hell would you know.
You aren't a political adversary. You're just another message board weirdo that wants to gossip about other posters, get personal and start shit.
Pondering you need to lay off the personal attacks on lagatta4.
Maybe take a break.
Pondering is also telling Québec solidaire what to do. Actual active members are involved in integrating ecosocialism into our programme and making it relevant to the 21st century (and we have certainly surpassed the PQ).Everybody gets to tell political parties what they want them to do. I've given up on you ever dropping your personal vendetta because that is just who you are.
It is no secret (and no shame) that we are political adversaries. Her support for an angryphone party on the Montréal level makes that rather clear.I don't know what party I am supporting this municipal election so how the hell would you know.
You aren't a political adversary. You're just another message board weirdo that wants to gossip about other posters, get personal and start shit.
Pondering you need to lay off the personal attacks on lagatta4.
Maybe take a break.
Has Lagatta actually participated in any discussion or has her sole participation been to attack me out of the blue. I just googled the Montreal Municipal election. It is not being held until November 6th and 7th yet Lagatta has decided who I am voting for.
I don't go around saying Lagatta thinks this and Lagatta wants that or who she is going to vote for. I have NEVER attacked Lagatta much less suggested she doesn't have a right to express her opinion. She is always coming at me out of the blue. I used to respect her. Admire her. I wanted to get along with her. Now I just don't care. I'm not going to tolerate the unwarranted attacks.
PS, although next time I will use report rather than responding.
Jack Laytom looms large over the current election
Is that because of Jagmeet's presence?
https://www.straight.com/news/jack-laytons-legacy-looms-large-amid-curre...
Pondering you need to lay off the personal attacks on lagatta4.
Maybe take a break.
Has Lagatta actually participated in any discussion or has her sole participation been to attack me out of the blue. I just googled the Montreal Municipal election. It is not being held until November 6th and 7th yet Lagatta has decided who I am voting for.
I don't go around saying Lagatta thinks this and Lagatta wants that or who she is going to vote for. I have NEVER attacked Lagatta much less suggested she doesn't have a right to express her opinion. She is always coming at me out of the blue. I used to respect her. Admire her. I wanted to get along with her. Now I just don't care. I'm not going to tolerate the unwarranted attacks.
PS, although next time I will use report rather than responding.
You never attacked Lagatta? Two posts up, you called her "just another message board weirdo that wants to gossip about other posters, get personal and start shit".
You never attacked Lagatta? Two posts up, you called her "just another message board weirdo that wants to gossip about other posters, get personal and start shit".
Yes, when someone deliberately lies about me to drive hostitility they are trying to start shit although troll would have been a better word for it.
Balarama Holness? I do apologise to Pondering if she wasn't the one supporting him. He's the guy supporting official bilingualism for Montréal, taking us back to the 1950s - and gravely endangering social peace.
Obviously the far-right angryphone (and also belligerent Zionist) Suburban thinks he's cool.
https://www.thesuburban.com/news/city_news/official-bilingualism-for-mon... Like the equally far-right but nationalist Journal de Montréal - both are onside with attacking Projet Montréal.
And no, I am most certainly not implying that Pondering is far-right, nor a belligerent Zionist, just to make that clear to all.
Laxer misses the point. The NDP is a political party, and its mission first and foremost is to form government, and Layton's leadership brought us by far the closest to winning. ...
Words to live by! You do clarify the goal of a party, versus any pesky disposable values.
The real misfeasance of the NDP is that it serves to delude people into thinking that they define the acceptable progressive limit of the political/economic spectrum in Canada, with its US imperial sycophancy that deviates little from other parties. The closer the party gets to "leadership" the closer they will exactly mirror the other major parties.
It is true--as the Corbyn-terminating UK security state operation demonstrated--no genuinely reformist movement can survive the negative onslaught of the corporate media and security state apparatus. Any reformist movement in Canada, as part of the US-dominated "five eyes" syndicate would certainly be crushed in the same way. The current NDP has nothing to fear in that regard.
Laxer misses the point. The NDP is a political party, and its mission first and foremost is to form government, and Layton's leadership brought us by far the closest to winning. ...
Words to live by! You do clarify the goal of a party, versus any pesky disposable values.
The real misfeasance of the NDP is that it serves to delude people into thinking that they define the acceptable progressive limit of the political/economic spectrum in Canada, with its US imperial sycophancy that deviates little from other parties. The closer the party gets to "leadership" the closer they will exactly mirror the other major parties.
It is true--as the Corbyn-terminating UK security state operation demonstrated--no genuinely reformist movement can survive the negative onslaught of the corporate media and security state apparatus. Any reformist movement in Canada, as part of the US-dominated "five eyes" syndicate would certainly be crushed in the same way. The current NDP has nothing to fear in that regard.
If the NDP ever does form government in Ottawa,it will spend its whole time in power reassuring the wealthy that it has forever abandoned "all that socialist nonsense", will likely carry out domestic policies as right-wing as Romanow's in Saskatchewan, and gladly send Canadian troops into every imperial war, such as the one "The West" will eventually fight to put some leftover Pahlevi back onto the Peacock Throne in Iran.
And it won't care that making those choices will do the party as much electoral damage as Romanow's did in Saskatchewan, as Harcourt's did in B.C., as Rae's did in Ontario, as Dexter's did in Nova Scotia, and as Mulcair's did federally in 2015.
Always a dismal sight to notice how fans of these political parties, when an election campaign commences, immediately adopt the same cautious, sneaky, selective, evasive and wilfully mendacious pov so typical of the campaigning politicians themselves.
Some seem so ready to abandon critical awareness of their party's obvious shortcomings or contradictions or the interests of grassroots people of which they are a part, in favour of instead becoming simply an amplifying echo to 'sell', by hook or by crook, one particular team of hustling self-promoting liars and promisers over the others. Like watching cattle cheering on farmers.
Wake me up when you discover a better solution. Some work within the system, and some work outside the system. And some people's halos need some polishing. Once in awhile someone special in politics comes along like Pierre Trudeau, like Jack Lyton. It happens quite infrequently, so perhaps we need to better appreciate them when they are alive and kicking. It never ceases to amaze me, that the moment when someone who has some progressive credentials passes on, then, and only then, media like the CBC , the Toronto Star, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Georgia Straight, the Vancouver Sun, CTV News, Global News, Now Magazine, etc. can't say enough good things about them. The message is loud and clear: the only good progressive is a dead one! Anyway you never get everything you want, and politcs is the art of compromise. So why should politics be any different?
Some work within the system, and some work outside the system.
And some - it would seem - just fap to the horserace.
If you were a militant unionist in the 1970s (no, of course I'm not talking about the FLQ) Trudeau père was anything but progressive.
If you were a militant unionist in the 1970s (no, of course I'm not talking about the FLQ) Trudeau père was anything but progressive.
The myth of Pierre and Saint Jack wrapped up in one sentence. This explains NR's political viewpoint better than anything else. One of the reasons I worked for the NDP in 1972 was because they stood up to Trudeau when he invoked the War Measures Act in 1970.
A total of 497 individuals were arrested under both the War Measures Act and the Public Order Act; it replaced the War Measures Act on 1 December and was in effect until 30 April 1971. Four hundred and thirty-five people were released and 62 were charged (32 of these were held without bail). In spring 1971, the Quebec government announced that it would pay up to $30,000 in compensation to roughly 100 people who were unjustly detained.
After the crisis, the federal cabinet gave ambiguous instructions to the RCMP Security Service; dubious acts such as break-ins, thefts and electronic surveillance were permitted, all without warrants. These tactics were later condemned as illegal by the federal McDonald Commission and the Keable Inquiry in Quebec, both of which issued their reports in 1981. The McDonald Commission called for the creation of a new civilian security agency, separate from the RCMP; this led to the establishment of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) in 1984.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/october-crisis
Balarama Holness? I do apologise to Pondering if she wasn't the one supporting him. He's the guy supporting official bilingualism for Montréal, taking us back to the 1950s - and gravely endangering social peace.
Obviously the far-right angryphone (and also belligerent Zionist) Suburban thinks he's cool.
https://www.thesuburban.com/news/city_news/official-bilingualism-for-mon... Like the equally far-right but nationalist Journal de Montréal - both are onside with attacking Projet Montréal.
And no, I am most certainly not implying that Pondering is far-right, nor a belligerent Zionist, just to make that clear to all.
Thank-you and I apologize for my sharp reactions. I've had to defend myself a lot here so I do have a bit of a hair-trigger.
QS really does get my vote and the QS spokespeople are the most trustworthy politicians I know of aside from Lascaris. Others that are high up on my list are Niki Ashton and Meryam Haddad.
But never forget, Quebec requested it.
