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Beautifully shot, but film of 1919 strike a missed opportunity

Stand! (2019) Director: Robert Adetuyi Writers: Rick Chafe, Danny Schur Reviewed by Stephen Seaborn Stand!, the feature length drama about the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, charmed audiences with its world première at this month's [...]

Argentina: Is the political pendulum swinging left again?

Argentina’s August 11 primary vote indicated quite a strong rejection of neoliberal policies in a region that has seen a wave of right-wing governments come to power in the last ten years. The current neoliberal president Mauricio Macri lagged 15 [...]

Salvadoran unions confront right-wing populist government

When voters in El Salvador elected President Nayib Bukele in February, many believed that his “Nuevas Ideas” movement offered a new alternative to the two parties – the right-wing ARENA and left-wing FMLN – that had dominated the political arena in [...]

“Hot-house flower” from the muck of brutal racism

Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music, by Gerald Horne (Monthly Review Press, 2019). 456 pages Historian Gerald Horne, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, is a prolific author and [...]

Addiction and recovery: Time for progressive strategies?

Canada is clearly in the middle of a severe addiction crisis. What is presently lacking is a coherent approach to what can be done to prevent so many of us from dying. In 2018, for example, a reported 4460 people died from opioid overdoses in [...]

Make peace an election issue

September 21 is International Day of Peace. A week later, September 27, is the International Day for the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. Notably, these two days fall during the federal election campaign. Notably, in a sad way, because out of the [...]

407 – The Highway to Hell

In 1999, the Mike Harris Conservatives sold Highway 407 for $3.1 billion, in what was then the biggest privatization ever in North America. Among the private consortium was SNC-Lavalin, who purchased a 16.7% share for around $520 million. Last [...]

Actions highlight solidarity with Mount Ida resistance

Canadian miner Alamos Gold target of environmental protests Late August saw a flurry of solidarity actions in Montreal and Toronto, organized in opposition to Canadian mining corporation Alamos Gold. The progressive Turkish-Canadian community has [...]

Winnipeg General Strike pops off the page

1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike, by the Graphic History Collective and David Lester, published by Between the Lines, 2019, 107 pages, ISBN 978-1-77113-4209-0 (softcover). Review by Kimball Cariou "A picture is worth a [...]

Music Notes: Johnny Clegg, 1953-2019

Johnny Clegg, the South African musician who defied apartheid by forming two highly successful biracial bands, died at his home in Johannesburg on July 16 after a long fight with cancer. Clegg's first band, Juluka, began in 1969 as a duo with [...]

What We Really Need to Know About the SNC Lavalin Affair

The Federal Ethics Commissioner’s ruling that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated conflict of interest rules, when he pressured then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to halt major criminal charges against SNC Lavalin and instead provide a [...]

Ontario Government Plans Many More Health Care Cuts

The Financial Accountability Office (FAO) Budget and Economic review has identified planned government spending savings that come via (1) announced program changes (program cuts like the government’s cut to OHIP+), (2) announced efficiency targets [...]

Trudeau’s Nunavut Housing Plan Made of Straw

On August 2, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a trip to Iqaluit for a photo-op during which he laid out his government's alleged commitment to building new housing in Nunavut. The territory is in the midst of a severe and worsening housing crisis [...]

Venezuela Retains Political Control After New US Coercive Measures

In political terms the government of Venezuela had a good month of July while managing very critical economic circumstances. Reps of 120 Non Aligned Movement (NAM) countries attended their ministerial meeting in Caracas, and more than 700 delegates [...]

CarePartners … or Partner in Crime?

Solidarity for Sudbury workers locked out May 31 The scheduling staff, who are paid a maximum of $16 per hour, weren’t asking for the moon when they met to bargain with private homecare corporation CarePartners. The Sudbury workers, represented [...]

As Ford agenda comes into focus, the need for mass action enters the picture

People in Ontario are starting to understand what the Doug Ford agenda is all about. High school students will be returning to school in a few weeks to find that 25% of their teachers and the classes they teach have been cut. University and [...]

Left Parties in India and Pakistan Condemn Modi’s Assault on Kashmir

Immediately following the announcement by the Indian government of Narendra Modi that it would divide the state of Jammu and Kashmir, five of the country’s left parties issued a joint statement condemning the assault on federalism and calling for [...]

BC Communists demand Education Minister’s ouster

Party calls for justice for teachers, students The Communist Party of BC has issued a statement saying the present course of the NDP government on public education issues poses a serious threat to the interests of teachers, support staff, students [...]

The present and future of work: a class-based analysis

The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) recently published a report – The Present and Future of Work – that places this question in the context of our capitalist, imperialist society. In doing so it reveals why our Canadian labour movement is in [...]

Organizing against precarity: Part One in a series

Economic developments have brought sweeping changes to the character of work. The rapid growth of precarious employment and the rise of the gig economy are among the most challenging factors that affect workers’ ability to organize and struggle [...]

Communist Party: “Manitoba can’t afford Tory austerity”

The Communist Party is running 5 candidates in Manitoba's provincial election

Winnipeg Transit – “Fix It, Fund It, Make it Fair!”

Amalgamated Transit Union 1505 faces a hostile Winnipeg city administration and press in a battle over working conditions that could help push forward the fight for free transit.

Gender and wealth: a feminist viewpoint

The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich, by Victoria Bateman, 243 pp., 2019, Polity Press. Review by Kimball Cariou. British economist and activist Victoria Bateman is known for unorthodox tactics to get her point across at staid [...]

Music Notes: “Blood”: anthem of the Sudanese struggle

There are times when, in the midst of a democratic struggle, an artist appears who expresses the aspirations and the anger of the people. The Sudanese rapper Ayman Mao is one such artist. His song “Dum” (“Blood”) is widely recognized as an anthem of [...]

BC: Big operating surplus, but no deal for teachers

The NDP government of British Columbia has released figures showing an operating surplus of $1.5 billion during the 2018-19 fiscal year. The amount is $1.3 billion higher than projected in previous budgets, thanks largely to increased revenues from [...]

Hong Kong protests part of the US/NATO destabilization campaign

The recent violent protests in Hong Kong have focussed on the alleged unfairness of a proposed law permitting the extradition of criminal suspects for crimes committed elsewhere on the Chinese mainland. The protest organizers claim that the [...]

Greek elections an omen for Canada?

Immediately after Greece’s general election, KKE General Secretary Dimitris Koutsoumbas said that "the right-wing and conservative policies of the SYRIZA government paved the way to New Democracy … it purified and resurrected them." Describing the [...]

Canada: (still) a nuclear weapons country

Every August, commemorations of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are an important reminder of the dangers of nuclear weapons and the importance of ongoing disarmament efforts. People in Canada generally don’t think of this as a nuclear [...]

MUSIC NOTES: Songs of Our Native Daughters

Songs of Our Native Daughters “An artist's duty is to reflect the times”. So said the celebrated African-American singer, pianist, and freedom fighter Nina Simone. Today, Our Native Daughters, a quartet of distinguished and versatile women [...]

WHY CANADA IS ALL INDIGENOUS TERRITORY

No Surrender: the land remains Indigenous, by Sheldon Krasowski, foreword by Winona Wheeler, University of Regina Press, 2019, 368 pages. A growing number of ground-breaking academic publications in recent years are giving important new insights [...]