BEST WISHES TO ALL FOR THE NEW YEAR AND 2021!

Northern ice: A shame on Canada

(December 27, updated December 29) – Canada routed Germany 16-2 in the “world” juniors hockey championship on December 26. The German team was missing six players including its top to goaltenders – one third of its roster – due to the covid pandemic. It had also played the night before, while Canada was playing its first game. Nevertheless, the game was not cancelled or postponed by the International Hockey Federation, being scheduled for the TSN Cable TV sports network [1] at primetime (6 p.m.) Saturday night.

Pfizer and the Sovereign: Cuba’s COVID19 vaccine offers an interesting counterpoint to the Pfizer roll-out in the US

By Naomi Schoenfeld

(December 21) – As 2020 draws to a close, the COVID19 pandemic rages on, yet, undoubtedly, we have entered a distinct phase as a number of countries now begin or plan for mass distribution and administration of newly developed vaccines. As of this writing, there are six approved vaccines and over 50 candidates in development (Craven, 2020, WHO 2020). In the UK, the NHS recently started administering the Pfizer BioNTech mRNA vaccine, and the US followed suit one week later. COVID19 vaccine development has reinvigorated a certain type of vaccine nationalism not seen for decades. Each vaccine or candidate gets a particular pedigree, narrative and aura of trustworthiness according to its origins. The vaccines and candidates are a mix of private-sector developed or public/private partnership, with only a few candidates from universities or the public sector (WHO, 2020). In Cuba’s state-run socialist biopharmaceutical system, their new COVID19 vaccine, called Soberana or “The Sovereign,” is effortlessly enfolded into a long-standing national narrative of vaccine prowess.

This day in 1890: The massacre at Wounded Knee

Court of Leaves, Painting by GateKeeper

By TONY SEED

Originally published December 28, 2018

1890 (29 December): The 7th U.S. Cavalry commanded by Col. James Forsyth massacred 300 unarmed and peaceful Lakhota Sioux Indians, many of them women and children, at Wounded Knee Creek (Chankpe Opi Wakpala), South Dakota – a Lakota encampment on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation – after a fruitless search for weapons in their encampment. In other words, the Sioux are completely disarmed. About thirty soldiers also died, many victims of their own crossfire.

On the questions of civil war, secession and treason in the United States

By KATHLEEN CHANDLER

The U.S. Civil War officially ended 155 years ago. Despite this, civil war talk mentioning secession and treason have become commonplace. The Texas lawsuit which called on the Supreme Court to vacate the votes cast for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin pitted groups of states against each other, 17 in support and 20 against, with both sides saying constitutional issues were being raised.

On hearing the Supreme Court ruling against the Texas lawsuit, the head of the Texas Republicans said: “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.” In countering the lawsuit, state Attorneys General said it “risks the destruction of the Union,” and that it was a “seditious abuse of the judicial process.”

Anti-China motion in the House of Commons: ‘Yellow Peril’ hysteria all over again

The House of Commons is addressing a motion that exudes hostility towards the People’s Republic of China. It is, again, the racist, colonialist approach which, at the turn of the 20th century, accused people from Asia of constituting a “Yellow Peril.” | PAULINE EASTON

This is a despicable racist and xenophobic image published by Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc., depicting Chinese Canadians as puppets who are secretly infiltrating Canadian society: “The UFWD (United Front Work Department) attempts to utilize Chinese diaspora groups for Beijing’s strategic policies, CSIS says.” Sam Cooper, April 30, 2020

The House of Commons is addressing a motion that exudes hostility towards the People’s Republic of China. The cartel parties are espousing the ill-advised cause of opposing alleged Chinese attempts to undermine Canada’s “democratic institutions.” In the name of “eliminating foreign interference in Canada’s political process” the resolution will criminalize Canadians and permanent residents of Chinese national origin and generally foment a hysterical racist anti-Chinese climate. It is, again, the racist, colonialist approach which, at the turn of the 20th century, accused people from Asia of constituting a “Yellow Peril.” A dictionary definition describes “Yellow Peril” as the power or alleged power of Asiatic peoples “to threaten or destroy the supremacy of White or Western civilization.”[1]

Coronavirus alarm blends Yellow Peril and Red Scare

Gothamist photo (1/31/20) of Asian Americans wearing surgical masks, illustrating a story about the absence of coronavirus (at that point) in New York City.

By JOSHUA CHO

As an Asian-American, I’m not surprised that there are numerous reports surfacing of racist and xenophobic responses arising in the US (and elsewhere) as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, where “coughing while Asian” is being compared to “driving while black.” In case there are any doubts that media coverage is being racialized, reports about new coronavirus updates in the US, particularly in areas like New York City, are using unrelated header images of East Asian people wearing face masks to drive the impression that Chinese people are unique carriers of disease, even when they aren’t Chinese.

200th anniversary of Friedrich Engels’ birth

The revolutionary actions and thought of Engels are present today as a guide to action to settle scores with the old conscience of society and permit the emergence of the modern democratic personality.

Roman baths discovered during city works in Jordanian capital

The haphazard discovery of Roman ruins in Amman sparked questions about the fate of antiquities in the city’s downtown area amid calls for expanding the excavations | Mohammed Ersan, Al-Monitor

People watch as workers uncover the ruins of a recently discovered Roman archaeological site in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Dec. 14, 2020. According to local media, the archaeological site was uncovered during works to install a water drainage system | KHALIL MAZRAAWI/afp/AFP via Getty Images.

AMMAN (December 27) — Jordanian authorities discovered on Dec. 12 antiquities dating back to the Roman era underneath the main street of downtown Amman, when they were excavating the area for installation of a water drainage system for flood control.

NATO & EU first: Human rights organizations criticize obstruction of Covid-19 vaccine supply to poorer countries

WROCLAW, POLAND – FEBRUARY 19, 2020: Word UNITY made of wooden letters, and NATO FLAG (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) with flags of member countries in the background. promesaartstudio – stock.adobe.com

The Canadian government has signed purchase agreements with seven different pharmaceutical companies for up to 418 million doses of the various Covid-19 vaccines under development – far more than it needs for its own population. This is said to be hedging bets in case some vaccines do not pan out as well. These companies are Pfizer-BioNTech (U.S.-Germany), Moderna (U.S.), Medicago (Canada), University of Oxford-AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden), Johnson & Johnson (U.S.), Novavax (U.S.) and Sanofi-GlaxoSmithKline (France-Britain). German-foreign-policy.com reports on the global consequences of the rich countries securing most of the supplies for themselves.

This Day. 31st anniversary of the invasion of Panama

The 1989 invasion of Panama was staged just two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the empty euphoria about the so-called “end of Communism.” US president George H. W. Bush ushered in the post-Cold War unipolar world. According to Bob Woodward’s book, The Commanders, Gen. Colin Powell, newly appointed Joint Chief of Staff, stated, “we have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here’.”

A leading jurist decodes the 1989 Panama Massacre: “The invasion was a crime against International Law and the largest US military projection since the Vietnam War.” It is a matter of concern to Canadians as successive governments have annually deployed the Canadian Forces to participate in the US PANAMAX military-naval exercises, usually held in August | JULY YAO” 

Panama City during the US invasion, December 21, 1989. Little was spoken in the monopoly media of the death toll or destruction from that invasion. It was almost entirely focused on the number of US troops killed (23) and wounded (324). The Panamiam death toll was between 4,000 and 7,000 of whom at least 2,000 were buried in mass graves. The destruction left at least 10,000 homeless.

This day in 1919: Exposure of Washington’s academics as spies

Franz Boas (1858-1942)

By TONY SEED

Originally published on December 20, 2014

1919 (20 December): Under the heading “Scientists as Spies,” The Nation, a liberal journal based in New York, published on this date a letter by Franz Boas, the father of academic anthropology in the United States. Boas was one of the most prominent opponents of the then popular pseudo-science of eugenics and “scientific racism”, the fascist concept that race is a biological concept and that human behaviour is best understood through the typology of biological characteristics and not social and cultural factors.

Boas publicly charged that four American anthropologists, whom he did not name, had abused their professional research positions by conducting espionage in Central America for the U.S. armed forces during the First World War – precisely when U.S. imperialism had aggressively occupied Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and was conspiring against the Mexican Revolution. Boas strongly condemned their actions, writing that they had “prostituted science by using it as a cover for their activities as spies.”

Iraq to sue US over sovereignty violation, use of depleted uranium weapons: Official

(December 14) – An advisor to the Iraqi parliament’s foreign affairs committee says the Baghdad government is planning to lodge an international lawsuit against the United States for violating the country’s sovereignty and using internationally-banned munitions in civilian areas.

This Day. The Kilmichael Ambush and the Flying Column of Tom Barry

On November 28th one hundred years ago on a roadside in County Cork, Ireland a small group of young men with hardly any military training lay in wait for their enemy. History was about to be made. 

By Phil Mac Giollabhain (philmacgiollabhain.ie)

The ambush is a particularly risky military operation to pull off. If the element of surprise is lost then it usually ends in calamity for the ambusher

This Day. When the people rose: how the Intifada changed the political discourse around Palestine

The true accomplishment of the Intifada is the fact that it almost entirely changed the nature of the political equation pertaining to Palestine, imposing the ‘Palestinian people’, not as a cliche used by the Palestinian leadership and Arab governments to secure for themselves a degree of political legitimacy, but as an actual political actor | RAMZY BAROUD

Hossam el-Hamalawy – CC BY 2.0

December 8 came and went as if it was an ordinary day. For Palestinian political groups, it was another anniversary to be commemorated, however hastily. It was on this day, thirty-three years ago, that the First Palestinian Intifada (uprising) broke out, and there was nothing ordinary about this historic event.

Dangerous self-serving invocation of Holocaust Remembrance to cover up crimes against Palestinians

Pretentious claims of fighting against hate and intolerance, and defending human rights are being used by the Canadian government to cover up the fact that its main priority has been and continues to be the defence of Israeli Zionism | LOUIS LANG

On November 25, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau named Irwin Cotler Canada’s “Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Anti-Semitism.” The announcement from the Prime Minister’s Office stated: “With a longstanding record of leadership in the fight against racism, anti-Semitism, and hate, and extensive experience in human rights and justice including in cases related to mass atrocities, Mr. Cotler will lead the Government of Canada’s delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).”

Canada’s despicable role in opposing Palestinian human rights

Canada is playing games unworthy of any country which claims to stand for rights. For the past 20 years Canada’s voting record on Palestinian issues has moved consistently in a direction which defends Israel’s violation of its duties as an occupying power | YI NICHOLLS

February 1, 2020. Montreal demonstration stands with Palestinian people against U.S. so-called Deal of the Century.

On November 19, Canada voted along with 162 other countries in favour of a draft UN resolution affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination. The resolution emphasized “the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including the right to their independent State of Palestine” and “stressed the urgency of achieving without delay an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement between the Palestinian and Israeli sides,” based on a two-state solution.

What Canada is up to at the UN

The appointment of the tried and true point man of the Anglo-Canadian state, Bob Rae, as Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations is for purposes of achieving nefarious aims.

By Steve Rutchinski and Philip Fernandez

Canada is up to no good at the United Nations where it is very active in promoting imperialist definitions of rights and cajoling countries to adopt those definitions of rights under threat of retaliation by imperialist financial, military and political institutions. Canada’s aim is to push through a restructuring in the field of  international relations in a manner which serves U.S. imperialist interests.

The suspension of Jeremy Corbyn from the British Labour Party (II)

Corbyn’s election captured the people’s imagination and movement for change. However, there was no chance that the cartel parties would tolerate any space being used for the independent program of the working class | PAULINE EASTON

July 2014. Jeremy Corbyn participates in action against Israeli bombardment of Gaza. (Ron F)

The Need to Settle Scores with Britain’s Decrepit Anachronistic Institutions

On October 29, the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, was suspended from the party because he refused to retract his reaction to a recent report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). This report alleged that the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership had breached the 2010 Equality Act through a combination of “inappropriate involvement” and harassment in complaints procedures relating to “anti-Semitism,” and an “inadequate training provision for those handling the complaints.” Corbyn was suspended, it was said, for refusing to accept all the EHRC report’s conclusions and for claiming that “the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents.” In response, Corbyn declared his intention to “strongly contest the political intervention to suspend” him.

A CIA officer has a headache. Media blame Russia.

More plausible explanations for these maladies include headaches, crickets, paranoia, mass hysteria or simply lying, rather than a vast global conspiracy using heretofore unknown science fiction weapons in order to mildly inconvenience a few American operatives | ALAN MACLEOD

Julia Ioffe (GQ, 10/20/20) reported that “dozens of American diplomats, spies and government employees” were “targets of what some experts and doctors now believe were attacks perpetrated by unknown assailants wielding novel directed energy weapons.”

A 9,000-word story for GQ (10/20/20) about the mystery ailment of a CIA officer in Moscow has become the unlikely subject of a weeks-long media storm.

New Brunswick government’s attempt to impose wage freeze on all public sector workers

No to Negation of Workers’ Rights!

April 12, 2019. CUPE health care workers rally in Fredericton in defence of the right to negotiate acceptable wages and working conditions.

On December 11, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs informed officials of the Canadian Union of Public Employees New Brunswick at a meeting that his government is planning to impose a wage freeze followed by wage restraint on all the public sector workers in the province, unionized and non-unionized. This comes in the midst of the stresses and anxiety caused by pandemic working conditions. Already, for twelve years, New Brunswick workers have been fighting against wage freezes imposed by successive governments which have declared they have “wage restraint mandates.’

California Proposition 22: Lessons to be learned on how super exploitation of gig workers is made legal

We are reposting five articles from Workers’ Forum on how five network companies – Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Postmates and DoorDash – legally denied network workers in California their status as workers. Hundreds of thousands of workers involved in the rideshare and package delivery industry have been declared non-workers in law. They did this using “Proposition 22,” which passed November 3. Its aim is to give the network companies the legal authority to get away with super-exploiting network workers with impunity.

The network companies operate internationally and they have combined forces in cartels and coalitions to push their narrow private interests, including their refusal to provide even a minimum wage or compensate their drivers for work done. Based on their achievement in California, they have now made it clear that they expect to extend these efforts. “Going forward, you’ll see us more loudly advocate for new laws like Prop 22,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi declared.

November 4, 2020. Demonstration by gig workers against Proposition 22. (B. Anderson)

• Imperialist Democracy on Ugly Display in California
• Corrupt Electoral Process to Ensure Government of Powerful Private Interests
• What It Means to Legally Deny Network Workers Their Status as Workers – K.C. Adams
• The Case for Voting “No” on CA Prop 22 (Excerpts)
• Most Ride-Hailing and Delivery Workers in San Francisco Not Eligible to Vote

Integration of Quebec’s northern regions into US war economy

Canada’s strategic critical minerals: Who decides? | Fernand Deschamps

TML Weekly explained in February how Canada and Quebec are being further integrated into the U.S. imperialist economy and war machine through the Canada-U.S. Joint Action Plan on Critical Minerals Collaboration.[1] A recent Quebec government announcement reveals that the next step is to build infrastructure to guarantee a supply chain to ship these critical minerals to the United States.

The people and no one else will decide what happens in Venezuela

By Margaret Villamizar

Following the election of the new National Assembly, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro expressed satisfaction that the National Assembly had been freed from the control of opposition forces who used it as a base over the past five years to violate the country’s constitution, obstruct the normal functioning of government and support the U.S. economic war against the country. He called it a great victory for democracy, for the constitution. Maduro has said that the first task of the new legislature must be to repair the damage done to the country’s economy by the sanctions, adopting necessary measures to fortify and shield it from the effects of the U.S. economic war. He said this would require passing legislation approved in October by the National Constituent Assembly, which dissolves December 31, known as the Anti-Blockade Law for National Development and the Guarantee of Human Rights.

Venezuelan people affirm their right to sovereignty

By Claude Brunelle

December 11, 2020. Venezuelan people accompany elected deputies to their accreditation.

Elections to Venezuela’s National Assembly were held on Sunday, December 6, within a vast mobilization of the Venezuelan people for the affirmation of their right to be and to determine their own destiny. Despite the interference, threats, sabotage and disinformation activities of the U.S., Canada, their puppet Lima Group, and the European Union to discredit and besiege the Venezuelan people, they prevailed. The victory of the Bolivarian government within these conditions of encirclement and suffocation is a great achievement.

International observers applauded the conduct of the election and commended the Venezuelan government’s efforts to ensure the participation of all, compliance with sanitary measures against COVID-19, the establishment of sophisticated electronic voting stations, and numerous other measures. No incidents or irregularities occurred.

Election results in Venezuela favour the people’s forces

December 11, 2020. Deputies to the newly elected National Assembly.

On December 7, with 98.63 per cent of votes cast in Venezuela’s December 6 parliamentary election counted, the President of the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela, Indira Alfonzo, presented the second bulletin of results. She reported that 6,251,080 valid votes were cast, of which the Great Patriotic Pole (GPP), an alliance of parties led by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, received 68.43 per cent. The opposition alliance Democratic Action received 17.52 per cent; a second opposition alliance, Venezuela United, received 4.15 per cent, and the Communist Party of Venezuela/Popular Revolutionary Alternative obtained 2.7 per cent. Other political organizations that participated received a combined total of 6.48 per cent of the votes. Turnout was reported to be 30.6 per cent of registered voters.

Current US attempts to sow chaos in Cuba

A campaign of interference in Cuba’s internal affairs is being undertaken by U.S. diplomats, politicians and anti-Cuba terrorists in the United States.

1. Oppose Imperialist Interference in Cuba and Violation of Diplomatic Norms

By Nick Lin

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

A campaign of interference in Cuba’s internal affairs is being undertaken by U.S. diplomats, politicians and anti-Cuba terrorists in the U.S. This is being done by inciting Cuban youth to take up counterrevolutionary activities, in flagrant violation of the rules governing diplomatic relations.

On November 30, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, through his official Twitter account, denounced the direct participation of the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in Havana, Timothy Zúñiga-Brown, in inciting and assisting in illegal acts against public order and health standards in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, the Director General in charge of the U.S. at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Minrex), pointed out “the serious violations of the functions as diplomat and head of mission” committed by Zúñiga-Brown.

This Day. The burning of Cork, 100 years ago

This week marks the 100 year anniversary of the burning of Cork City by British Crown Forces. An account (abridged from an essay by historian Donal Fallon) of the conflict before and the cruelty during the devastating Cork City fire. “The most colossal single act of vandalism committed in the whole period of the national struggle” was how Florence O’Donoghue, the Head of Intelligence of the Cork No.1 Brigade of the IRA, described the destruction of Cork City on the night of 11 December, 1920.

Dr Clement Ligoure: Hidden hero of the Halifax Explosion

Ground Zero: Richmond Street in the North End of Halifax.

1. The decontextualization of history

The Sixth of December is the 103rd anniversary of the horrific Halifax Explosion of 1917 – the largest explosion in history before the barbaric devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by U.S. atomic bombs in 1945. Some 1,963 innocent men, women and children or more were massacred, another 9,000 injured and 199 blinded, according to understated official figures. Despite scores of books, exhibits, radio and TV programs, and memorial meetings much is unknown, covered up or falsified while those responsible – the Royal Navy, the United States and the Borden government in the first place – were given impunity for a war crime.

We are reposting a recent article by journalist Susanne Rent from the Halifax Examiner to bring to the attention of a wider audience the poignant story of Dr Clement Ligoure and his selfless humanitarianism. Reporting on the research of well-known playwright David Woods, Ms Rent asks, “I’m sure many of us know about the heroics of Vince Coleman, the train dispatcher who sent a message stopping a train that was heading to the city, and then died in the explosion. But how many of us have heard the name Dr. Clement Ligoure and stories of his heroics?”