Category Archives: Analysis

Analysis, Canada, Environment, First Nations, Statements

SOME KEY LESSONS OF THE INSPIRING STRUGGLE FOR INDIGENOUS SOVEREIGNTY AND CLIMATE SANITY

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WE ARE WITNESSING AN HISTORIC EVENT. It is a turning point for indigenous rights, for climate change resistance, and for a new generation of fighters for justice. It is a powerful step forward in social protest in Canada.

SOCIALIST ACTION has been expecting and preparing for such struggles. We recently published an in-depth booklet on the history and struggle against colonial-settler oppression, occupation, theft and murder of indigenous people of Canada. It explains how our common struggle against capitalism is inextricably bound up in theirs, and how their struggle is interconnected to ours. There can be no reconciliation under capitalism, and there can be no socialism without reconciliation.

SOCIALIST ACTION IS in the process of publishing a new detailed booklet on the life and death struggle against climate change, how it originated in the ceaseless drive of capitalism for capital accumulation through profit. The very survival of capitalism depends on it and drives the rapid expansion of green house gases that may kill us all. Again, socialism, a system of rational and democratic operation of a planned economy is the only way out of the present crisis.

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Analysis, International, NDP

Brexit and the Class Struggle in Britain

Lessons and Prospects

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Brexit and the Class Struggle in Britain

by Barry Weisleder

For over forty years, Jeremy Corbyn and the left wing of the British Labour Party (BLP) strongly opposed the European Union (E.U.). They opposed joining it. They opposed remaining in it. Was that stance a concession to racism? Not at all. Not any more than opposing imperialist war is a concession to isolationism, or a sellout to capitalists who profit from building homes, instead of bombs. The European Union is a monstrous machine of corporate rule, not a humanitarian refuge. Opposition to it was, and continues to be an essential basis for popular sovereignty and a Workers’ Agenda. The retreat by Corbyn and the BLP into the pro-EU swamp largely explains Labour’s devestating electoral setback on October 21, 2019. (Voters in 53 of the 59 seats that Labour lost had earlier voted to Leave the E.U.)

Why discuss this now? Because reversing that stance will be key to resisting the Tory agenda, towards mobilizing the working class in mass action for a socialist alternative.

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Analysis, Anti-War, International

Vanessa Beeley’s Syria Meeting in Montreal: a Report

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By Robbie Mahood

Vanessa Beeley, a British journalist known for her outspoken views on Syria, spoke to a gathering of more than 100 persons in Montreal December 10, 2019.

A meeting planned the day before at University of Montreal was cancelled after a successful campaign by anti-Assad forces to bar her from speaking.

For me, attending Beeley’s talk was a question of principle: to oppose an attempt to shut down debate on an issue that has divided the left.

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Analysis, Global, International

“Superfoods” – for good health or a slick marketing ploy?

quinoaby Rob McBean

Let’s take a look at this idea of “super food”. Are there foods which are in some way better to other, non-super or just regular foods? Are there “super humans” walking around, who are vastly superior to us due to their consumption of “super foods”?

The reality is that there are only two different categories that you can put people into based on what foods they eat. Those two categories are: People who are malnourished, and, people who aren’t.

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Analysis, Canada

A Capitalist ‘Sport’ – at Public Expense

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A review by John Orrett

Linda McQuaig’s new book, “The Sport and Prey of Capitalists, How the Rich Are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth” (2019, Dundurn Publishers, 264 pages), exposes how Canada’s economic elite privatize public companies to increase their wealth to the detriment of the public interest.  It follows her national best sellers ‘’ Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit’’ (1995), and “The Trouble with Billionaires’’ (2010) co-authored by Neil Brooks. They all challenge the pervasive myths of neo-liberal economics.

McQuaig is a distinguished journalist, columnist, public speaker and aspiring politician. In 1989-90, in the Globe and Mail, she exposed an illegal political donation scheme, dubbed the Patti Starr affair, that benefited the Ontario Liberal Government of David Peterson, contributing to his electoral defeat and victory of the first New Democratic Party government in Ontario history in 1990.

She ran for the NDP in the federal elections of 2011 and 2015, finishing second to Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and Finance Minister Bill Morneau respectively, the most powerful figures in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet.

Her new book reads like a big business espionage novel.  The sad reality is that the described rip-off of the public is true. It is a captivating read.

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