The pipeline debate and who sets the agenda

By PEGGY MORTON

A Resolution adopted at the recent national NDP Convention in Edmonton calls on constituency associations to discuss the Leap Manifesto over the next two years.[1] The Resolution passed despite strong opposition from Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan and others, who repudiated the document.

Canada attacks Syria: Use of deception to cover up aims of US aggression and war

The April 18 Day of Action against Bill C-51 Ottawa march stopped in front of the U.S. embassy at Sussex and Clarence St., emphasizing the role of U.S. imperialism and its “war on terror” in creating the kind of state security apparatus the Canadian government is now strengthening. Outside the embassy demonstrators affirmed that they do not want Canada to follow in the footsteps of U.S. crimes such as torture and impunity of secret police. | Renewal Update

In a flourish of fearmongering and deception, the Harper Conservatives on March 24 announced their intention to extend Canada’s military mission in Iraq and expand it to Syria as part of the U.S.-led coalition which is waging a dubious, unjust and unlawful military aggression against those countries.

According to the Harper government, “Jihadi terrorism” poses a great threat not only to the people in the region but to Canada and the rest of the world. Harper and his ministers say that the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” (ISIS) has declared war on Canada, and to protect Canadian citizens the government will extend and expand the bombing into Syria without consulting the Syrian government.

This is a reversal of what the Harper government said six months ago: that Canada would not conduct raids into Syria without the “clear permission” of the Syrian government. Minister of Defence Jason Kenney stated that Canada’s entry into Syria has come at the request of the U.S. itself.

Oppose the genocidal onslaught of the Zionist occupiers!

On the Important Questions of War and Peace

Demonstration in Ottawa at the Canadian parliament, July 26, 2014

By PAULINE EASTON

THE genocidal onslaught of the Zionist Occupiers against the Palestinian people has entered its fourth week. Their war crimes and crimes against humanity are mounting day by day. So too is the massive disinformation of the American, Canadian and European official circles and monopoly owned media. This disinformation would have us believe that the genocidal onslaught of the Israeli Zionists against the Palestinian people is not a war crime committed by the occupiers of Palestinian lands who are engaged in state terrorism. On the contrary, they would have us believe that Israel is a modern democratic state exercising its right to self-defence against terrorist attackers.

These official circles and media shamelessly blame the Resistance for the violence of the Zionists. They call the wholesale killing of civilians, which are crimes of genocide, “unfortunate accidents” in an otherwise just cause to wipe out “terrorists.” Time and again, the media blame the Resistance for destroying any chance of a “peaceful final solution.” In fact, the very thought that the genocidal crimes of the Zionist Occupiers “protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian attacks” is irrational.

The massacre at al-Shujaiyya underscores Zionist crimes

By PAULINE EASTON

The world continues to watch in horror as the Palestinian residents of Gaza are slaughtered by the Zionist occupiers of their land, while the residents of the West Bank are also wantonly killed for protesting. On July 21, the Occupation Forces committed a massacre in the al-Shujaiyya neighbourhood of Gaza city. As of 2 pm on July 26, medical teams had already recovered 85 bodies from the rubble. In addition to the killing of Palestinians, the massacre forced some 60,000 Gazans to flee their homes in the area for fear of more attacks, adding to a total number of internally displaced persons that has now hit 183,000 out of a population in Gaza of 1.7 million residents. All Palestinians, unable to flee due to the blockade of Gaza by land, sea and air, are targets of the Israeli onslaught.

Nova Scotia election called to sort out contradictions in the ranks of the rich

TML Daily (September 20) – ON SEPTEMBER 7, the Dexter NDP government in Nova Scotia called a provincial election for October 8.

This comes after months of speculation in the monopoly media about the possible meanings of the outcome, whichever party wins.

The content of those speculations is no secret. The rich in Nova Scotia are deeply divided over future electricity supplies to the province and the implications for power rates and utility regulation. As CPC(M-L) has frequently pointed out, the rich call elections precisely to sort out contradictions in their ranks such as these.

Flashback: Global Day of Action – Halifax rally condemns U.S.-led aggression against Iraq

On Saturday, March 22, over 3,000 people in Halifax again demonstrated against the war on Iraq in open sympathy with the Iraqi people

From our archives: ten years ago today, Canadians massively responded as part of the powerful determination of the world’s people to condemn and oppose the Anglo-American war of aggression against Iraq. This Global Day of Action involved over fifteen million people worldwide, including over 50,000 in Toronto and over 200,000 people in Montreal – “an ocean of people against the war” – at the time the largest political demonstration in the history of Québec and larger than any demonstration in the United States.

By TONY SEED

(Halifax, March 22, 2003) – ON MARCH 22, the people of Halifax joined people across Canada and around the world to demand that the U.S.-led aggression against Iraq be stopped immediately. More than 3,000 people from all walks of life gathered at the Halifax Commons before marching through the streets of the provincial capital to the U.S. consulate. The flags of Palestine and Iraq were held high and cheered by the crowds as people chanted slogans in support of the growing global revolt against the American war machine. In the heart of the march, behind a giant Iraqi flag proudly held aloft by Iraqi Canadians, different political groups and their supporters gathered together on the basis of Unity in Action to vigorously shout anti-imperialist, anti-war slogans as one.

Harper’s Armada and Layton’s support for Irving’s Halifax shipyards vs. the MIL-Davie shipyard in Lévis, Quebec

Discussion on the Significance of the Election Result

By TONY SEED

THE NDP “swept Quebec” with 58 out of 75 seats. It’s an “Orangiste wave.” Euphoria reigns in the Anglo-Canadian ruling circles.

Meanwhile, as of the May 2 Federal Election, three of the four seats in the NATO port of Halifax, headquarters of Maritime Command, are also now NDP. The federal contract for three new massive warships – Joint Support Ships – opens on May 18. A real conflict with Quebec is possible.

NS NDP party in power raises HST

ON APRIL 26, the Nova Scotia NDP government passed its second budget since coming to power. The budget raises the province’s harmonized sales tax (HST) to 15 per cent – the highest in the country.

Nova Scotians will see the HST climb from 13 per cent to 15 per cent starting in July and all retired civil servants will have a cap put on cost of living adjustments to their pensions.

The Michelin File: Michelin’s ‘exemplary citizenship’

Sixth in a series of articles on the Nova Scotia elections by TONY SEED*

Michelin threat advertisement

NOVA SCOTIA NDP leader Darrell Dexter, to whom the polls have ascribed victory in the June 9 provincial election, has stressed that Michelin Tires Manufacturing of Canada, a subsidiary of the world’s leading tire monopoly that controls 20 per cent of the world market, has been “a good corporate citizen in this province.”

The statement does not represent any change in NDP policy as some media want to divert. In an address to the Halifax Chamber of Commerce on February 12, he went even further in his accolade:

The Michelin File: No more deals – Nova Scotians must reject the politics of ‘pragmatism’

Fifth in a series of articles on the Nova Scotia elections*

By ENA BOUTILIER and TONY SEED

AT A RECENT campaign stop in Halifax, Nova Scotia MLA – and prospective Premier – Darrell Dexter proclaimed that, if elected, his NDP government will not repeal the anti-labour “Michelin Bill” of 1979. “I have no interest in fighting battles that happened 30 years ago,” he said on May 11. Far from contesting ancient history, Mr. Dexter has declared that his Nova Scotia will fight to remain an open shop for the exploitation and plunder of the province by monopoly capital, for monopoly right, for militarizaton and for annexation to the United States through such projects as the Atlantic Gateway.

Nova Scotia elections 2009 – There is an alternative!

First of a series on the Nova Scotia elections by TONY SEED

Nova Scotia Elections 2009
• Nova Scotia elections 2009 – There is an alternative!
• Atlantic Gateway: the politics of pragmatism and the elephant in the room
• ‘Real Life’: Democracy 251 and the ‘devotion’ to ‘a mature democracy’
• The Nova Scotia election and the bard Dan Alec MacDonald — ‘tonight, she walks the streets with Yankees’
• The Michelin File: No more deals — Nova Scotians must reject the politics of ‘pragmatism’
• The Michelin File: Michelin’s ‘exemplary citizenship’
• The Michelin File: Drive to empire

ON MAY 4, Nova Scotia’s opposition parties defeated the MacDonald government’s finance bill. The defeat was quickly followed by the fall of the minority Conservative government, and the setting of a provincial election date for June 9. The bill proposed an amendment to the Provincial Finance Act which would have allowed a portion of the $830 million dollars from the so-called Atlantic Accord to be used for purposes other than financing the province’s $12 billion dollar debt, the highest per capita debt in Canada (much of which is held by private Wall Street financial interests), on which Nova Scotians now pay an annual interest of nine hundred million dollars. Both the NDP and Liberal parties accused the MacDonald government – which forecast a surplus of $4 million for 2009-10 – of using money from the Atlantic Accord to cover up the deficit. For its part, the MacDonald government claimed that no alternative source of funding was available to live up to the cost of the programs and services tabled in the bill. His cabinet then exercised special spending powers through orders-in-council to expend $130 million for paving and building projects under the pretext of “stimulus.”

The Nova Scotia Elections 2003

The provincial elections have once more concluded without a solution. We look for the human factor. By TONY SEED

HALIFAX (August 6, 2003) – THE provincial elections have once more concluded without a solution. The John Hamm Conservatives retained power with 25 seats on August 4th while the New Democratic Party and the Liberals increased their total to 15 and 12 seats respectively. The Tories lost five seats. For the second time in the past three elections, there is a minority government.

More significantly, thiry six per cent of the registered electorate did not vote (some reported it as forty per cent), the highest in 43 years. The media and the parties are already attributing this to the fact that the election was held in mid-summer, conveniently overlooking that in the preceding provincial election, held in the summer of 1999, thirty two per cent of the electorate did not vote. In fact, there were four parties participating in the elections, including the Nova Scotia Party (qua Canadian Alliance), but the media portrayed only the first three as serious and it was impossible to find out through the media what the fourth party stood for.