Hopefully the EU will accept the invitation.

A group of four community members from Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug who’ve walked over 2000 km since May 9, 2006 delivered a message to the Government of Ontario: “We want our children and grandchildren to continue to use the lands and resources to pursue their usual vocations of hunting, trapping, and fishing… We want to protect the environment at the potential drilling/mining site plus the surrounding area which includes our Kitchenuhmaykoosib Lake.”

Our service sector employees in the Tornto area are fighting back. Low wages and dismal working conditions are what these workers have to deal with. UNITE HERE is fighting for change.

A marxist analysis of the US economy. Enjoy.

Steelworkers support CUPE Ontario’s solidarity efforts with the oppressed Palestinian people. This is what I like to see. The fight against oppression, brutality, patriarchy, and racism culminates in the international solidarity efforts of our strong Canadian union movement. The struggle against imperialism and for human rights must be part of a contiguous and international mass movement.

Please take note of this:

“Marxists have always sup­ported the struggles of women to win liberation; the YS and the LSA, as Marxist groups, have welcomed and supported what has been termed the “second wave” of feminism—the upsurge in women’s consciousness and women’s struggles around the world in the last five or six years. Women in the LSA and the YS have fully -participated in the women’s movement from the beginning, learning from it and helping to build it to the best of our abilities. For many of us it was our experience in the feminist movement that first led us to question the kind of society we live, in, and eventually brought us to socialist conclusions.”

and this:

“Women should by no means simply wait for .this revolution to solve their problems. Women’s struggles right now are very im­portant. They can win important gains, like the legalization of abortion. Through such struggles, women will learn how to struggle, will gain confidence in their own strength, and learn who their enemies and potential allies are.”

To marxists, reforms for women are important and pressing issues. Women, as a disadvanged group are most vulnerable to the ills of capitalism. There is a perception amongst some feminists, although I don’t know how pervasive it is, that the left and the union movement are conservative in their views on women. There may have been sexism and even racism amongst unionized workers, and there probably still is. By that same token there are also feminists who just plain hate all men period. That doesn’t discount the feminist movement by any meansm nor does this fact discount the union or left movements. In any mass movement there will be people who lack consciousness and who just don’t get it. Racists, sexists, biggots, they exists in all areas of society; male and female. However, it’s the movement and the organization that is important, not a fringe group of individuals. The left and the union movement cannot be discounted for the conduct of some reactionary leadership in the ’40s and ’50s. The left in general and our scocial democratic party holds an abundance of women; both leaders and rank&file. Women never left the left, nor have they left marxist organizations.

New Brunswick’s union movement today seves as an example, the public service sector in New Brunswick is dominated by female workers who take active roles in their unions as militant members and leaders. CUPE and PSAC are two examples of these unions that fight for the living standards of women.

Solidarity with our Sisters!

This province, I love it, and I hate it sometimes. The article fails to mention that NB is in breach of the Federal Medicare Act, and a Supreme Court decision ruling which ordered NB to comply. The women of our province deserve better.

“In its decision, the board calls NB Power an unregulated monopoly supplier of electricity. Nicholson says there’s no competition in the electricity market. ‘The board feels that its hands were tied by the fiction of a competitive market that has not materialized,’”

Last I heard our power company was a crown corporation and that our power utility was a public service. Maybe that’s why a competitive market hasn’t emerged. NB Power isn’t a monopoly by definition becasue it is operating as a public service paid for by the people.

Conservatives and Liberals can’t stand democracy and a trule free and loose press cannon like Charlie LeBlanc. The idea of banning a citizen from our legislature is absolutely appaling and a perversion of democracy. The community that supports Charles can’t help but think this is a personal vendetta against him for trying to gain access to the political elite. A Third party needs to be rebuilt in such a fashion that it can challenge the cutlure of entitlement and corruption that plagues our democracy here in New Brunswick. As a fellow blogger I stand behind you Charles!

Solidarity.

17 CUPW members arrested after efforts to recover a document from CP headquarters was met by a police perimeter. No word specifically on what the document CUPW seeks is all about. However, I can guess that it has to do with privatization and downsizing of Canada’s postal service. We have seen the effects of this downsizing in rural New Brunswick recently. Unfortunatley CP has not been playing fair in N.B. as they have blamed the halt in service on union concerns over saftey. This is just a continuing assault on our social programs, brought to you by your unfriendly neighbourhood neoliberal agenda. Stay tuned for more. Solidarity with CUPW!

“Too often the current top-down model of globalization empowers corporations like Ascendant to dictate what development is (mining), what progress is (McDonald’s) and what laws are acceptable.” The mining company mentioned, Ascendant, is a Canadian mining company.

U.S. learns to live with less freedom | Toronto Star

Expect a similar article to be written about us soon.

Partriarchy does not fully explain the exploitation of women in society. A gendered analysis is flawed in that it does not see that working class women have more in common with their working class brothers than with say Oprah Winfrey, or Condi Rice. Capitalist society is the root of women’s oppression.

Absolutely maddening.

Read it and try not to get too riled up. I don’t think it’s a good idea to end an article on marxism with a quote from the bible.

Juan Antonio Ocasio Rivera: Puerto Rico at the United Nations | Counterpunch

An interesting article outlining the key players in the Puerto Rican independence struggle.

Hands off Venezuela reovolutionaries put on a press conference at the Scottish Parliament. They called for a world socialist revolution to turn the tide of growing US imperialism.

Photos of attrocities in Iraq are easy to find on the internet. There are pictures of the grunt’s-eye-view of the war. It’s messy, brutal, violent and horrible: WAR. Definitely not the sterile and precision war that is protrayed on CNN. Perhaps these pictures will inspire more citizens to stand up and demand their governements cease imperial activity abroad. Canada out of Afghanistan!

This clothing company buys clothing from 100% union made suppliers. According to their website, the fact that they openly distrubute their list of suppliers qualifies them as an open source company. However, I think more than your suppliers needs to be open in order to be a truly open source company. Demanding the union label is one thing, but often not an option for lower income people. In my mind being an ethical consumer can only do so much. The real difference will be made when masses of people organize their workplaces, get active in their unions, and engage in the broader union movement.

Sorry, no link to news coverage on this. Why? Because it involves something that a powerful Canadian corporate giant would rather keep hidden. I received the following news in an email from Tundu Lissu today. On June 1st, Barrick Gold’s security guards in Tanzania shot villager Kieva Yohanna five times in the back. He died instantly. His death is the sixth violent death at the hands of Barrick security operatives and/or riot police guarding the sprawling mine in northern Tanzania since July 2005. Even though the killers are well known, not one of them has been arrested and prosecuted. Instead, they are placed under police protection. According to Tundu, the killings represent a major shift in Barrick’s strategy in dealing with troublesome locals opposing the mine. After the forced evictions of the villagers in August 2001, hundreds of villagers, particularly community leaders and prominent locals (including current MPs in the Tanzanian goverment) were targeted for illegal arrests, criminal prosecutions and long term imprisonment. The strategy was intended to frighten other villagers by making an example of their leaders. Since 2004, the company has taken over villager’s land by using force and dumping cyanide-laced waste in their rivers. One man was shot dead on the grounds of a primary school on July 20, 2005 after he was alleged to have stolen petroleum oil from the company. The fatal shooting prompted an uprising of the villagers in which machines, vehicles and other company properties were destroyed by angry villagers. In the wake of the protests, dozens of villagers were rounded up and imprisoned where many remain today. After the last fatal shooting, a demonstration at the company housing complex was met by riot police wielding guns and tear gas. One person was shot and injured and over sixty were arrested and detained at the Tarime Police Station. Tundu states in his email: “We ask for your support to put an end to these killings of innocent civilians. We particularly request our Canadian partners and friends to draw public attention to these abuses and to help bring Barrick Gold Corporation to account for its actions.”

I met Tundu Lissu about 5 years ago at a global mining activist conference in the US. All there had unbelievable stories of communities affected by multinational mining but at that time Tundu’s story was perhaps the most unbelievable. Tundu, a lawyer and activist from Tanzania, was working on a case that involved 52 artisanal miners being buried alive in a pit by a bulldozer used to construct the mine. The mine was then owned by Canadian junior mining company Sutton Resources. The mine was later taken over by Canadian global mining giant Barrick Gold. Two of Barrick’s notable international advisors include former Canadian PM Brian Mulrooney and former U.S. pres George Bush. Barrick and Canada’s Export Development Canada denied the allegations and accused activists of lying. The cover-up let Barrick develop the mine and secure US$234-million in political risk insurance from the World Bank and our very own Export Development Canada. Only in 2001, almost six years after the murders happened, did mainstream media like the National Post report the story but of course with their slant. Then Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew refused the calls for a Canadian inquiry into the deaths of the artisanal miners. Tundu later spent time in jail after returning from the US to Dar es Salaam. Similar violent deaths of artisanal miners have occurred in Indonesia, where teenagers have been shot and killed sifting for gold at abandoned mining pits controlled by an Australian mining company. I recall the fatal shooting of one 14 year old who came from a family with no father. He was the main wage earner for his family. He made money by sifting for gold on his indigenous community’s land. Deals to acquire land and exploit mineral resources are often not accepted by local land owners. Divide and conquer tactics are used in the community to squash criticisms or any trouble for the mining company. Those most affected by or critical of a mine are marginalized, vilified, silenced and forgotten…all so that the multinational mining companies can boast that they leave the areas where they mine better off when it is really only the mining companies that keep getting better off.

A new CIA director? The US is gearing up the war machine for more conterinsurgency. I predict, although I hope I am wrong, that their sights will likely be set on South America. The citizens living in the Atlantic region cannot allow the Atlantica intiative to go through, otherwise we will be a natural resource corridor to the US, feeding their imperialist agenda abroad.

Teachers are in the fight of a lifetime in Mexico! It is unbelieveable that the Mexican government is so tactless, even one month before an election. There may have been some people killed as well. This after the sate killed 3 Steelwokers while striking on April 20th. Luckily, analysts predict Mexico’s right wing government is going down. The people, the workers, and the unions in Mexico have been successfully fighting this authoritarian regime. Union movements around the world are on the front lines fighting for democracy and living standards of the workers.