The anti-semitic crypto-fascist Premier of Alberta, Ernest Manning, gave a speech to Social Credit supporters in Toronto on April 6, 1944. Chairing the meeting was Doctor Joshua Haldeman, Elon Musk's grandfather. (April 6 1944)
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| Regina Leader-Post, November 8 1947 |
Time to clue the fuck in, Canada. Trump wants Canada to hit military spending equivalent to 5% of GDP. This will only happen through unprecedented shock therapy austerity cuts and privatization. This is a weapon to destroy the Canadian economy to better prepare us for greater integration into the Empire.
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| October 8, 2024 press conference where Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced $10 million handout to Business Council of Manitoba. |
On
the Fred Hahn Affair, it was excellent to see CUPE member, Katherine
Grzejszczak, go public with the connection between CUPE National's
Communications Director, Karine Fortin, and Richard Marceau, the VP and
general counsel of The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), the notorious lobby group in Canada that defends Israeli
apartheid and genocide.
It seems Fortin's connections with CIJA were becoming something of an open secret in certain labour circles in recent weeks. In addition to what Grzejszczak exposed, here are more facts that significantly tighten the link between Fortin and Marceau/CIJA.
There's a network of Liberal and NDP powerbrokers, including former Liberal cabinet minister, Lloyd Axworthy, and former Manitoba Premier and Harper's ambassador to the US, Gary Doer, who are collaborating on putting Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew in the Prime Minister's Office. Kinew is being positioned to knock off Pierre Poilievre, whose Conservatives are likely to win the 2025 federal election.
The anti-fascist protests in Britain are almost the opposite of what happened in Ottawa during the fascist mob "Freedom Convoy" occupation. Following the British policing example, the Convoy fascists were not cleaned out by the Ottawa police. Inevitably, a local street response was needed to confront the Convoy fascists and drive them out.
It looks like Ukraine's democracy is toast, and Zelensky is a de facto dictator at this point. The first round of legally-mandated presidential elections were supposed to start last month but they've been put off.
For all the bullshit we were fed about defending democracy in Ukraine, none of Ukraine's international backers made a public push to have Zelensky hold elections. No public concern was raised by Trudeau and Freeland.
Retired General Romeo Dallaire, famous for his UN command in Rwanda and his book about the Rwandan Genocide, "Shake Hands With the Devil", has finally emerged into public view again now that a genocide is being inflicted upon Palestinians - with open Canadian complicity in arming Israel's death squads.
As it turns out, Dallaire does not say a damn thing about today's genocide. There isn’t a single mention of Palestine or Israel, although the Holocaust and "never again" is cited in the first paragraph after Dallaire reminds us he was in Rwanda in 1994.
With the disorderly retreat from Avdiivka, Ukraine has now suffered three major defeats in a row since its rapid advances in fall 2022 against thin Russian forces in the open plains of the northeast. The Battle of Bakhmut may have caused the Wagner Mutiny, but Zelesnky threw many of his best forces into the battle against a force of mercenaries and ex-convicts promised freedom through service. Feeding the Bakhmut meatgrinder was not a unanimous strategy but General Syrsky had Zelensky's ear and promised a victory. It never materialized.
The following are research notes outlining basic facts about the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists prior to the Nazi's forming the Ukrainian SS "1st Galicien" Division in 1943. Sources include scholarly articles; Canadian, British and American newspapers; and declassified OSS/CIA and other American government materials.
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| Edmonton Journal, October 10 1961 |
Zelensky's fascist-riddled and corrupt wartime dictatorship (he is cancelling elections scheduled for this spring) and his NATO financiers and arms dealers should have sat down with Putin last fall when Russia's northern front collapsed, the encirclement of Kharkiv was defeated, and the Kherson regions was recaptured in the south.
Between Sarah Jama's expulsion from the ONDP caucus, the Paul Miller fiasco in Hamilton East, and the glorious do-nothing reign of Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath, you can see the NDP cratering in Hamilton, one of the historic NDP strongholds in Ontario. We've already seen the big cracks in other traditional NDP strongholds in Windsor, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, and across northern Ontario. We've also seen the NDP's big gains in working-class Brampton completely rolled back in the wake of the ONDP's incredible backstabbing of their Brampton North MPP, Kevin Yarde, just before the 2022 election.
October 3, 2023 is the Manitoba election. The ruling PCs led by Heather Stefanson are on the ropes after first coming to power two terms ago in 2016. They deposed an unpopular, exhausted and divided NDP dynasty that had held office for seventeen long years. The NDP is on the cusp of retaking power under the leadership of Wab Kinew. Kinew was leader in the 2019 election and was soundly defeated. If the NDP wins, he will become the first Indigenous provincial premier in Canada.
The Manitoba election has seen the PCs adopt a nasty scapegoating strategy against trans people first developed by America's right-wing movements and now provincial governments in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Ontario. The scapegoating of trans people under the guise of “parental rights” serves to rally its right-wing base among various conservative and religious communities. However, scapegoating of this nature is also about deflecting attention and scrutiny from the PC government’s terrible policies of permanent austerity, privatization, and profits over people.
Kinew and the NDP have positioned themselves against the PC’s scapegoating and have also pushed hard on promises of healthcare reinvestment. However, a closer investigation reveals a broad and deep consensus between the NDP and PCs on most economic and fiscal policy. These shared policies put wealthier people and business interests first while containing social programs, public development and democratic planning within the strict confines of permanent austerity. The following is an attempt to unpack aspects of this right-wing consensus between Manitoba's PCs and NDP.
As the Greenbelt is bulldozed, the province's recycling is privatized without a peep, and the healthcare system is being strangled to death and shaken down by corporations and right-wing doctors, I have been working my way through this book after stumbling upon it at Novel Idea, a great independent bookstore in Kingston.
This timeline was originally created in February 2021 when costs were revised upwards to $16 billion.
On August 18, 1947, Alvin Rowe and his 7-year-old son died in a plane crash in Lake St. Clair. Rowe's fiancée, Betty Pioprowski, and Rowe's brother and pilot, Howard, were rescued. Howard Rowe operated a plane taxi service near Detroit and he had taken the party up for a midnight flight. Howard explained that "without warning, the plane went into a spin." Witnesses said the plane exploded when it hit the water.
Alvin Rowe was a former Ontario Provincial Police officer and, at the time of his death, was a prominent organizer and speaker for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Ontario. While still serving in the OPP, Rowe came to public prominence for his role in the “Gestapo Affair” during the spring 1945 Ontario election.
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| Windsor Star, August 18 1947 |
In early 1974, Ontario Premier Bill Davis appointed Frank Miller his new Minister of Health. Miller, a "Blue Tory", was on the conservative right of the Ontario PC Party, and set about enacting austerity measures in the healthcare system to contain growing healthcare costs commonly associated with the establishment of compulsory government health insurance, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan emerging out of legislation in 1969, and with roots in the The Hospital Services Commission Act of 1959.
Here's a brief history of how the achievement of Medicare in Ontario entrenched doctor power, sidelined the socialized medicine movement's quest for community clinics and preventative medicine, and created a healthcare system dependent on hospitals.
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| Toronto Star, December 8 1969 |
On May 15, Stellantis (formerly Fiat-Chrysler) announced it was halting construction of its heavily-subsidized EV battery plant in Windsor, and demanded more subsidies from Trudeau's federal government and Doug Ford's Ontario government. The announcement came less than a month after Trudeau announced upwards of $13 billion in public subsidies to Volkswagen setting up an EV assembly in St. Thomas.
Unifor's bargaining with the Detroit Three slowly gathers momentum. Unifor's target - GM, Ford or Stellantis - will be announced around Labour Day.
A big question is whether or not the massive government-subsidized EV investments in union and non-union auto plants in southern Ontario have come with bargaining strings attached courtesy of the disgraced Dias regime.
Union wage settlements in Ontario in 2022 is a good snapshot of how the labour movement in Ontario is divided between public and private sector, and directly reflects where resistance is bubbling and where it is not.
