All signs point to deepening opposition to the fossil fuel industry assault in British Columbia

May 18, 2013 / roger / No comments

By Roger Annis, first published on The Bullet, Socialist Project E-bulletin,  May 18, 2013. This is a slightly updated version.

The result of the May 14 election in British Columbia  was a setback to progressive forces in the province and across Canada. The incumbent Liberal Party won a fourth straight term with 21.8 per cent support from eligible voters (44% of those who voted). Its principal election plank was ‘full steam ahead’ on a three-pronged expansion of fossil fuel extraction and export–from the Alberta tar sands, the natural gas fields in the northeast of the province, and coal fields in B.C and western U.S. A forthcoming article by this writer will examine the significance of the election outcome.

Vancouver BC–There was a dearth of substantive policy debate and alternatives offered during British Columbia’s election campaign. Transit, education, health care, social welfare, housing — these and other burning issues received too little attention.

A partial exception was the attention devoted to fossil fuel extraction, transport and export from the province. This focused almost exclusively on the two proposals to build or expand tar sands pipelines from Alberta to export » Read more..

The scandal show in Ottawa

May 18, 2013 / roger / No comments

Introduction by Roger Annis, May 18, 2013

The government of Stephen Harper has been campaigning hard across the globe in favour of expansion of Alberta tar sands production and export. The prime minister himself is hitting the hustings, most recently in Washington DC.

They need to campaign hard. So far, they’re fighting a losing battle in two of the directions they want the export expansion to go–south to the U.S. via Keystone XL and west to the BC coast via Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain. East to Montreal and the Atlantic coast is not looking promising, either.

So it’s a bonus and a beautiful thing to see the government now embroiled in the deepening scandal over its appointments in recent years to the unelected Senate and the conduct of the prime minister’s Thatcherite chief of staff, Nigel Wright.

» Read more..

Is there a ‘US war on Syria’? The Syrian uprising, the Assad regime, the U.S. and Israel

May 12, 2013 / roger / No comments

By Michael Karadjis, published on Links, International Journal of Socialist Renewal, May 12, 2013

In the wake of two Israeli airstrikes on targets in Syria on the May 4-5 weekend, the second causing massive explosions close to Damascus and killing at least several dozen Syrian troops, discussion rages about the aims of this aggression and the relationship it has to the ongoing mass uprising and civil war in Syria.

» Read more..

Wave of arrests of political critics in Chad, France’s combat ally in Mali

May 12, 2013 / roger / No comments

New Wave of Arrests and Harassment of Chad’s Opposition

Amnesty International, May 9, 2013

Scores of parliamentarians, journalists, army officers and civilians arrested since the beginning of the month by the Chadian authorities must either be charged with recognizable crimes or immediately released, Amnesty International said today.

» Read more..

Mali: France parliament votes to extend combat mission while UN Security Council readies a policing force

May 7, 2013 / roger / No comments

By Roger Annis, May 7, 2013

France’s National Assembly and Senate have voted to extend the country’s military intervention in Mali. A resolution passed both houses of parliament on April 22. Not a single vote was cast in opposition.

Three days later, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 2100, creating a policing mission beginning July 1, 2013. The mission is called by its French acronym MINUSMA. Its projected size is 11,200 soldiers and 1,440 police.

» Read more..

​​​Britain’s horrific past in Kenya comes back to haunt

May 7, 2013 / roger / No comments

The enclosed two news items appeared in the print Guardian on May 6, 2013. In Canada, the story has been ignored by mainstream media. A rather sanitized version appears on Postmedia’s web service. Nothing in print that I can find.

Kenya’s newly elected president, Uhuru Kenyatta, is facing charges before the International Criminal Court for alleged human rights violations (which no doubt occurred) dating back to 2007. Meanwhile, the leading lights of British imperialism who ran Nazi-scale concentration camps in Kenya go unscathed, heck, are treated by official history as purveyors of democracy!

Roger Annis

Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement

Payments to thousands who were tortured during 1950s insurgency could open door for other victims of British colonial rule

Ian Cobain and Jessica Hatcher, The Guardian, May 6, 2013

Nairobi–The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency in what would be the first compensation settlement resulting from official crimes committed under imperial rule.

» Read more..

French colonialism and militarism in Mali: The Left Front at an impasse

May 6, 2013 / roger / No comments

By a correspondent of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) of France, published in French on Afriques en lutte, May 3, 2013, English translation by Roger Annis

France has been intervening in Mali for four months, so President Hollande could not avoid a debate in Parliament on keeping the troops there even though he had promised they would leave by April. As usual, one big bluff after another. There were no votes against! Concerns and reservations, yes, but nothing that stimulated the least bit of opposition!

» Read more..

Mali war exposes religious fault lines

May 4, 2013 / roger / No comments

Reputation for peaceful co-existence shattered as the balance of power between moderate and extremist groups shifts

Celeste Hicks, The Guardian, Friday 3 May 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/03/mali-war-religious-faultlines

Bamako, Mali–There’s a well-known saying in Mali that the country is “98% Muslim, 2% Christian and 100% animist”, with Islam absorbing traditional practices and allowing people to retain connections with their customary spirituality – providing a formula for religious tolerance. » Read more..

Book review: Who will lead the U.S. working class?

May 3, 2013 / roger / No comments

Review by Michael D. Yates, Monthly Review, print edition, May 2013

This article is based upon an interrogation of two books: Gregg Shotwell, Autoworkers Under the Gun: A Shop-Floor View of the End of the American Dream (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012), 200 pages, $17.00, paperback; and Jane McAlevey with Bob Ostertag, Raising Expectations (And Raising Hell): My Decade Fighting For the Labor Movement (New York: Verso Books, 2012), 318 pages, $25.95, hardcover. Each book is about an iconic union. Gregg Shotwell writes about the United Auto Workers (UAW), and Jane McAlevey the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). What they report gives us reason for both deep concern and hope concerning the future of organized labor. » Read more..

Commentaries on the May 14, 2013 British Columbia election

May 1, 2013 / roger / No comments

The following are two commentaries written several days apart on the British Columbia election to take place on May 14, 2013.

Shifting sands in the British Columbia election as the first televised leaders’ debate takes place

By Roger Annis, April 30, 2013

Last night’s first televised leaders debate in the BC election was godawful. The questions from the moderator were surprisingly hard hitting, but the candidates turned many, if not most, answers into glib debating points, or they didn’t answer at all. Each employed the uber-annoying practice of answering to the camera, not to the moderator or opponents posing the question to him or her. » Read more..

« Older Entries  

Theme by ThemeZee.com