Workers First

An interesting bill is being put forward in the House of Commons, to little fanfare from the press.

The lack of notice is surprising, too, since most press agencies, daily papers, television channels, etc are multimedia conglomerates, owned by large commercial entities and maintaining a great distance from the journalist image of yesteryear.

Jack Layton and his rouge band of middle class lefties are pushing a bill through parliament that would mean greater protection of the working class in this country. Bill C-281 would "move workers to the front of the creditor line in a bankruptcy" thus squeezing out taxes, lenders and suppliers in the shuffle for compensation when a big corporation tanks.

And tank they will. WorldCom, anyone?

The "Workers First Bill" is on parliaments agenda now and it seems important that you, each and every one of you, if you do support this bill, contact you MP via fax/phone/email and let them know that this is (if in fact it is - and it should be) an important issue to you.

Urge your MP to vote for the Workers First Bill!
For more info see The Workers First Bill website

Pop Quiz!!

One of these things is not like the others
One of these things does not belong

You tell me which:

Republican congressman Connie Mack has proposed a three-point plan regarding Venezuela. It involves ”the creation of institutions that will foster a free press, the freedom of speech and religion, and free and fair elections for Venezuela; a Venezuelan Security Zone that will isolate Chavez and limit his ability to destabilize Latin America; and promotion of economic development in Venezuela through free markets, privatization, and other means that will create lasting prosperity and opportunity for all Venezuelans.”

A) free press
B) freedom of speech and religion
C) free and fair elections
D) free markets and privatisation

Three guesses, kiddies!


Apparently all this new hubbub regarding Venezuela comes in response to Hugo Chavez launching (what has been called in the mainstream media) HIS OWN television station, TeleSur.
In reality, the station is a joint effort between Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba and works to promote Latin American and Caribbean culture, producing and featuring locally made documentaries, news casts, arts broadcasting, etc.

TeleSur website claims that its purpose as a Pan-Latino station is to, for the people of the South, "difundir sus propios valores, divulgar su propia imagen, debatir sus propias ideas y transmitir sus propios contenidos, libre y equitativamente."

(Broadcast or spread our own values, create our own images of ourselves, debate our own ideas and transmit our own content, freely and equitably)

This is done, of course, in response to the fact that most Latin American television stations are saturated with largely American programming. More CSI, anyone?

This sounds harmless, in a sense. Things get problematic for the rebel station a little further down on their website's opening page, where they claim that as a station they will "Frente al discurso único sostenido por las grandes corporaciones, que deliberadamente niegan, coartan o ignoran el derecho a la información, se hace imprescindible una alternativa capaz de representar los principios fundamentales de un auténtico medio de comunicación: veracidad, justicia, respeto y solidaridad."

("Confront the discourse maintained and offered by the large corporations, which deliberatly deny, limit or ignore the peoples right to information, and become and alternative [broadcaster] capable of representing the fundamental principles of authentic media communication: truth, justice, respect and solidarity")

Why, thats practically terrorist talk!


In closing, Chavez's little media empire states that, for the people of Latin America, possibly the profit motive is not the bottom line (gasp!). In the poetic language of the conquistadors, TeleSur states that "Vernos es conocernos, reconocernos es respetarnos, respetarnos es aprender a querernos, querernos es el primer paso para integrarnos."

(To see ourselves is to know ourselves, to know ourselves is to respect ourselves, to respect ourselves is to learn to love ourselves and to love ourselves is the first step in the creation of community.)

"Si la integración es el propósito, teleSUR es el medio."
(
If community [or, unity] is the intention, TeleSUR is the means)


Uh-Oh! I think I see why the U.S. House has earmarked nine million dollars for 2006 and another nine million for 2007 to support opposition political parties, media and civil society organizations in Venezuela. (I mean, there's no one hungry in america or anything...)






All translations my own, so apologies if there are any discrepancies...

the waiting game is over...

Today, July 1st 2005, the United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor officially resigned from her seat on the Supreme Court.

Justice O'Connor was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1981 by President Reagan and officially became the 102nd justice and the first female member of the Supreme Court in US History. She was never a radical, never what the right likes to call an "activist judge", but she did make often surprising decisions and displayed her political independence, blazing new trails for women during her time on the Court.

Justice O'Connor was the 5th vote which saved the Roe v Wade decision during its threatened period - the Webster v Reproductive Health Services case in 1989. It was through her efforts that the pro-choice message of Roe v Wade was kept alive. She did, though, side with the majority and vote for blocking a hand recount in Florida and the much ballyhooed 2000 presidential election and was commonly decried by the left as being a poltical conservatice soft on feminist issues.

Unfortunately, it is likely that Roe v. Wade is likely to be the pivotal issue in the choosing of a new Justice by his high holiness, George W. Bush. Right-wing forces which align behind his Bushiness have already raised millions of dollars in preparation for this moment, to support whomever Bush chooses to appoint to take Justice O'Connor's place.

For instance, right-wing advocacy organisation Progress for America has raised $18 million to fight for Bush's nominees, and the Judicial Confirmation Network has raised $3 million to fight any attempts to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee. Said Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of the conservative Focus on the Family, O"Cnnor's resignation marks "the resignation of a swing-vote justice on the Supreme Court and the opportunity to change the court's direction" and Richard Land of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, declared, "For President Bush, social conservatives and the senators they helped elect, the moment of truth has arrived".


Rumour has it that on the top of Bush's list of potential nominees is Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalez. Gonzalez was Bush's counsel when he was Governor of Texas and together the two of them executed more people during their term and had/have mre people on death row than in any other state in history ever. Gonzales' name has been linked to the "torture memos" coming out of Iraq, but apparently is pro-choice and pro-affirmative action.

According to reliable sources, these last two qualities make him a top, yet unlikely candidate. Apparently, the pro-life base of the party would never allow a pro-choice Republican to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

With that news, and last spring's roll in the proverbial hay with Terri Schiavo, the fight for women's reproductive rights in the United States is heating up again. While O'Connor's resignation does not necessarily make Roe v Wade history, it does open up the potential for further shirfts to the right and the eventual attack on women's rights to again occur. The "partial birth abortion" ban (a term which is both invented and fallacious) was recently deemed unconstitutional by a narrow margin of 5 to 4.

While O'Connor's resignation may not lead to the immediate withdrawl of abortion rights for American women, it could easily and quickly lead to greater impediments to abortion access and more restrictions.

The Feminist Majority Foundation is looking for donations to build a Save Roe Campaign and raise awareness about the seriousness of the appointment of a Supreme Court Judge and what is at stake should Bush be able to stack the Court with right -wing anti-choice justices.

For more information or to donate, click HERE

The Choose Your Own Adventure of our times

Is today the day?

Do they do it?

Do they pass it?

While Stephan Harper sits pretty with radically right wing mullahs, opposing those evil doing ho-mo-saxualles from getting married or even celebrating their sin in downtown Toronto parades, the rest of the Canada prepares to be remembered proudly and become a smile on the face of history as opposed to a shitstain on history's pimpled ass.

Today, the government of Canada is supposed to pass legislation making same sex marriage legal. Making it enshrined in our sacredest of sacred places - the law.

Will they do it? Will they manage to stand strong? Will they lead Canada to become one of only 3 nations in the WORLD to legalise same sex marriage (behind Belgium and the Netherlands)??

Or will they fall prey to the heterosexist charms of the big of nose and double of chin that is Stephan Harper?

Only time will tell.

Stay turned for further bulletins as events warrant.

Reuters,9AM
CBC, 9:30AM

A Personal Opinion on Assata Shakur

That I was lucky enough to meet and converse with the intelligent, powerful, fierce and admirable Assata Shakur still sometimes blows my mind. I hope to spend time with her again in the future. In the meantime, in case you don't know who Assata is or what the eff is the big deal, here is a personal recollection by Mos Def.

Micro soft on censorship?

In case you weren't already sick of the technology giant Microsoft and its King Grand Poobah-for-life Bill Gates, now you have an even better reason to banish the corporation to the depths of capitalist hell. Seems Microsoft corporation, in a joint partnership with a Chinese government agency, has made inroads into the communist fortress of production, launching a new Chinese language web portal. The portal will allow Chinese citizens to create their own web pages and even, gasp! blogs.

But Microsoft has decided, in signing the contract with the government funded Shanghai Alliance Investment, to cave to censorship pressures on the part of the Chinese government.

Now all blogs and websites which function through MSN Spaces, a programme offering free blog space and operating through the MSN China portal, will not appear online or publish if the messages therein contain certain prohibited words.

A sampling of those words being "democracy", "human rights", "demonstration" "democratic movement", "freedom" and "Taiwan Independence" as well as some profane or sexually explicit references. Should one attempt to use these or any other prohibited words on their blog post, a message will be generated telling the user, if she already didn't know, that such language is prohibited.

Microsoft's portal launched on May 26th and already 5 million new blogs have been created, albeit without reference to certain words which will go unmentioned, nudge nudge, wink wink.

Seems a share of the profits from an estimated 87 million Chinese web users was too much for philanthropist Bill Gates to pass up on.

Left turn ahead?

It seems very interesting that while we in the North (Canada, the US, a lot of Europe) make increasing moves towards the right, infusing (in the case of Canada) greater doses of capitalism into our psuedo-Socialist system, our cohorts to the South seem to push further and further left in their political ideals.

While our nine wise red-robed sages make the dangerous decision to strike down the ban on public healthcare and Stephan Harper practically ejaculates with glee, Latin American politics and populations appear to be realising the deadly effects privatisation can have on cities and citizens. In Bolivia (named, incidentally, after great liberation leader Simon Boilvar and location of the murder of Ernesto "Che" Guevara) president Carlos Mesa was forced to resign last week after 3 weeks of protests paralysed the capital city of La Paz and even resulted in the shut down of the cities airport.

Why all the fuss?

The protesters are demanding that the Bolivian government nationalise the energy sector, keeping the vast natural gas reserves in the hands of the people, as opposed to the clutches of the greedy multinats that already populate large parts of the country. In October if 1999 the Bolivian government passed a law allowing the privatisation of water reserves in the country, which saw prices of residential water supply rise 400%. Massive protests against the French owned company Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and the resignation of then president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada saw the mostly indigenous protesters in Bolivia achieve some measure of success. Now the radical indigenous residents of El Alto, a mountainous town just outside the captial city of La Paz are at it again, demanding nationalisation in another important sector.

No surprise, then, that US State department statements place the blame squarely on leftist Latino leader Hugo Chavez, climing that his involvment spells doom for Bolivia and "democracy" (read: capitalism) in the region. Reports have stated that the State department is willing to intervene should they see any attempts to dismantle "democracy" (read: free market capitalism) in Bolivia. Interesting to note on that point that as well as being Latin America;s poorest country, Bolivia is also the areas most corrupt. Governments have successively passed legislation and signed contracts (including present ones with foreign oil companies) without the support of Congress, let alone the Bolivian population. The question ought to be, how can one dismantle democracy where none exists?

While racism is rampant, to the point of many hotels and swimming pools not admitting entry to Indigenous persons, the US State department has stated that the problem in Bolivia is not a matter of foreign multinational corporations getting rich off of Bolivian natural resources, or of the massive racial divide and discrimination against the Indigenous majority in the colonised country, nor even the continued meddling of the International Monetary Fund (Bolivia was the testing ground for the IMF's new liberalisation "shock therapy" project in te mid eighties).

No.

The problem, according to US State Department reports, is a matter of poor policy surrounding private property rights.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you realise that the person you are talking to is just not on the same wavelength as you at all? Like you are both talking about two totally different things.

At any rate, this movement by Bolivias Inidgenous majority seems indicative of recent moves in Latin America - many nations in the region seem to be moving (back?) to some sort of socialist or leftist political standpoint. While we in the wealthy and consumer driven north make moves towards ever greater privatisation and erosion of the public system, Latin America drives forward into the leftist future on an almost yearly basis.

The story of the Bolivian Indigenous movement ought to be a motivating force for Canada's First Nations population as well.

In other news of interesting happenings to the South... The first Retiremoent home for elderly prostitutes is slated to open in a few short months in Mexico City.

The TV Report, episode 1.

Last night saw another shining example of why the "left" is better than the "right", at least with regards to popular media. General Colin Powell appeared for his 15 minutes of fame on Jon Stewart's infamous late night "news" programme, The Daily Show.

Although Stewart's criticisms of the Bush administration (and on occasion of Powell himself) have been at times virulent (but nothing short of hilarious), Powell and Stewart were able to relate to each other with a level of respect altogether absent in Stewart's right winge contemporaries such as Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly.

The differences were profound, with Stewart asking difficult questions while never raising his voice. losing his temper or resorting to childish name-calling (O'Reilly's modus operandi). In turn, Powell came off as an intelligent, dignified man who (while choosing the wrong team to play ball with) was worthy of respect nonetheless. He still stood by his former administrations decision to go into Iraq, and admirably Stewart stood by his opposition to that decision all the while thanking Powell for making an appearance on his show. And the fact that Powell was appearing as a guest did not stop Stewart and Corddry from taking shots at the Bush-Blair love affair going on overseas, nor making jokes at the vast quantities of information Bush seems to have discovered regarding global warming in the last five years (uh, that'd be none).

Perhaps the most important guest Stewart has ever had, and certainly - by his own admission - probably the closest he will ever get to the Bush admin, and yet never once did we see displays of idiocy generally considered the exclusive domain of Fox.