Nadia Francavilla and Simon Docking perform Russian music for violin and piano on Tuesday, Dec. 1, at 8 p.m., Memorial Hall, UNB Fredericton.

Featured composers include Shostakovich, Pärt, Gliere, Schnittke and Gubaidulina; all of whom lived in the Soviet Union during the early 20th century.

There will be a pre-concert talk at 7 p.m. on the political environment that influenced the music featured. Tickets for this concert are $15 general admission, $12 seniors and $7 students, available at the door. For more information, email moth@unb.ca or call 453-4697.

By John Bonnar | More than 790,000 Canadians walked into a food bank in March, an increase of 18 per cent over the previous year according to a new report on hunger and food bank use in Canada.

By Norman Solomon | “President Obama’s decision to massively escalate the Afghanistan war is confronting people and institutions in the United States with a challenge of historic dimensions.”

A “Necessary War” — for a Gas Pipeline | By Gary Leupp

An excellent article on the history of the conflict in Afghanistan. I highly recommend reading it to anyone who has an interest in the background of the war.

–Venezuelan people stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in the call for a sovereign Palestine.

“The 300 delegates to the Québec solidaire convention voted unanimously, with a standing ovation, to endorse the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions “against Israeli occupation, colonization and apartheid.” … The Coalition pour la Justice et la Paix en Palestine comprises 17 – now 18, with the inclusion of Québec solidaire – organizations in Quebec: Jewish, Muslim and Christian groups, NGOs, the Quebec Federation of Women (FFQ) and a major teachers’ union affiliated with the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN).”

Leftist groups in Anglophone Canada are risking being left behind on the wrong side of history by not endorsing the BDS campaign.

“Montevideo, Nov 29 (Prensa Latina) Broad Front (FA) candidate and former guerrilla leader Jose Mujica rose to victory in Uruguay’s runoff on Sunday, according to exit polls surveys by the Montevideo-based agency Interconsult.”

More evidence of Hamas’ pragmatic approach to Palestinian politics. Marwan Barghouti is perhaps the only political figure able to unify Palestinians.

“Under the developing deal, mediated by German intelligence officers, Hamas would hand over Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured near Gaza in June 2006, in return for the release of perhaps 1,000 Palestinians from Israeli jails. Several senior Palestinian officials say Barghouti’s name is top of the list of those to be released.”

“Venezuela plans to open an embassy in Palestinian territories and upgrade its ties to ambassadorial level, President Hugo Chavez said on Friday, to support Palestinians in their struggle against Israel. … “We are on the side of the Palestinian people’s memorable struggle … against the genocidal state of Israel that knocks down, kills and aims to terminate the Palestinian people.”"

“The study found that the countries [who have moved away from universal benefits], such as the US and Australia, end up with far less generous welfare states than those with [universal benefits], such as Sweden, Denmark and Norway. It concluded that the size of welfare spending matters, and that universal benefits redistribute more to the poorest than targeted ones. This is because the amount of redistribution depends not simply on how much of each pound is targeted on the poorest, but also on how many pounds government has to spend in the first place. Targeting makes people less willing to contribute through taxation.”

Here are two recent-historically relevant pieces which can help explain The Independent’s shocking headline.

One from 2002: “[One of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, Anthony Gidden's] , an architect of Tony Blair’s Third Way strategy has criticised New Labour’s “failures” in important policy areas and urged the Government to shelve its plans to raise taxes to boost health spending.”

And the other from 2007, and in Giddens’ own words: “Labour should more openly rejoin the social democratic tradition. … Policy innovation, not tax rises, should drive this programme. … We are living through a period of the end of the welfare state, and further welfare reform is imperative.”

The United States under Obama is poised to lose any credibility it had remaining in Latin America.

Also see: In Elections, Honduras Defeats Chávez | Wall Street Journal

“The U.S. has said it will recognize the [coup governments administered elections]. … Peru, Costa Rica, Panama, the German parliament and Japan will also recognize the vote.”

“Israel’s ongoing takeover of East Jerusalem shows it is trying to kill any hope of a negotiated settlement to Palestine’s struggle for self-determination. “

“The New Brunswick government has been promoting a savings of $1,400 for electric heat residential customers during the first five years of its deal to sell NB Power to Hydro-Québec.

A new government leaflet being distributed in mailboxes across the province promoting the sale also suggests savings in that range for people who heat with electricity. A charts shows $97 in residential savings in year one of the deal, which eventually grows to $1,392 in savings over the five years. But that figure requires a consumption rate of more than 27,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, which is more than what most New Brunswick residents use, other government figures show.”

“Manufacturing facilities connected to J.D. Irving Ltd. dominate a list of 50 companies that would benefit from $91 million in power rate cuts following the proposed sale of NB Power to Hydro-Québec.”

“The New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity plans to make its cause an election issue. It wants provincial politicians to extend pay equity legislation to the private sector.”
-The NDP received an A+ from the Coalition, the Green Party (its leader the former liberal executive director Jack MacDougall) received a B.
-Jack MacDougall confused “pay equity” (equal pay for work of equal ‘value’ and qualification) with wage parity (paying male and female employees doing identical jobs the same amount)– according to people who attended this press conference for the parties to present their positions on pay equity in the private sector, MacDougall did not even want to enforce the latter in the private sector. Ha! It appears that this is the type of environmental party that thinks it would be better for the environment if women were doing unpaid housework in the kitchen.

The Union is demanding a 1.5% pay increase, and is fighting, CN’s plan to increase the monthly cap that would require some engineers to work seven days a week.

See also: Labour minister urges arbitration to end CN strike
And the CN Strike Won’t Harm Halifax Port

“Haiti’s electoral council has banned the influential party of exiled former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide from next year’s legislative elections.”

-Democracy will only be extended, when it is clear to capital that it is of no threat to them.

Fifth International April 2010.
“In front of 772 delegates elected from the grassroots in an unprecedented process involving close to a million party militants, he requested that the proposal be included in the agenda of the Congress:

I call on this First Extraordinary Congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela to include, in its agenda for debate, the proposal to convene political parties and currents to create the Fifth Socialist International as a new organization that fits the time and the challenge in which we live and that can become an instrument of unification and coordination of the struggle of peoples to save this planet.

The Congress, which will last until April 2010, the month that the founding congress of the Fifth International has been set for, will now discuss the proposal. This discussion “must go out to the people, to the social organizations and other forms of popular power in the country,” according to the plan proposed by Chavez. “

“John Black, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, last night told the Observer that patient safety had been neglected by hospitals too busy meeting NHS-imposed financial targets: “Too many hospitals are too concerned with meeting financial targets at the expense of clinical standards, and we are seeing patients suffering as a consequence.”

“Today’s research exposes systemic failures in large parts of the NHS during the last financial year and finds:

■ 39% of trusts failing to investigate unexpected deaths or cases of serious harm on their wards.

■ At least 209 incidents in which “foreign objects”, such as swabs and drill-bits, were left inside patients after surgery.

■ At least 82 cases in which medical staff operated on the wrong part of the patient’s body.

It finds that 5,024 people died after being admitted for “low-risk” conditions such as asthma or appendicitis, of whom 848 were under 65. A proportion of those deaths will be linked to safety errors.”

“Three people were found guilty in Halifax provincial court Friday on a number of charges stemming from a violent protest in June 2007 at the Atlantica business conference.

George Dalli was convicted of resisting arrest, obstructing a police officer and unlawful assembly; Asaf Rachid was convicted of possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose and unlawful assembly; and Colin Bell was convicted of unlawful assembly.”

-The “weapon” was a marble.

By Francis Sabado– member of the Executive Bureau of the Fourth International and an activist in the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France. He was a long-time member of the National Leadership of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR).

“Hugo Chavez launched a call for a Fifth Socialist International which, according to him, should bring together left parties and social movements. According to the president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the Fifth International must be “an instrument for the unification and the articulation of the struggle of the peoples to save this planet.” In a world political situation marked by a total crisis of the capitalist system, this is a fact important enough to be underlined.”

“Officials from the Venezuelan National Land Institute supported by the National Guard, took over 31 farms around the country on Monday, totalling 48,000 acres (19,000 hectares) of farmland… Among the farms occupied was the La Milagrosa property owned by opposition leader and ex-presidential candidate, Manuel Rosales, in Zulia state. Rosales fled to Peru early this year in order to avoid corruption charges.”

The land was reclaimed to use for food production.