The Mulroney-Schreiber affair has brought the little Central Asian country of Chechnya back into the headlines. Mulroney’s very bizarre defence for acting as Schreiber’s paid salesman, includes a reference to peddling military vehicles to Russia for use in “peacekeeping” in Chechnya. In this context, it is useful to look in some detail at the situation in Chechnya. The article posted here, makes the case that Russia’s oppression of Chechnya is a classic example of Great Power Imperialism. There is nothing remotely resembling “peacekeeping” in its actions there. This article (slightly revised with updated references) was originally written in February 2000.…
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Lois Bédard Dowson died December 14 2007, just shy of her 84th birthday. She was, for all her adult life, a committed revolutionary socialist in the tradition of Leon Trotsky. In the context of the Great Depression of her growing years, the rise of fascism and Stalinism in her teens, the horror of World War in her young adulthood – living a life as a revolutionary was not the easiest of choices. But Lois unlike many others, never wavered from her commitment to the left, to the working class, and to the women workers to whose future she was so…
Comments closedMy daughter was born in 1988, the year of the second Mulroney majority election victory. Growing up as she did under the man who was ultimately to become one of the most hated prime ministers in history, it made absolute sense to her when we gave her a stuffed doll, with the Tory’s face on it, and the label “Lyin’ Brian” on the back. She and her friends got hours of pleasure from the little Tory doll. The doll would come in handy now, a generation later. Mulroney is today very publicly involved in an embarrassing dispute with international arms…
Comments closedIt is now a decade since the establishment of the Project for A New American Century (PNAC) – the neo-conservative think tank whose ideas formed the backbone for the two administrations of George W. Bush. The central legacy of PNAC will undoubtedly be the war on Iraq. It is, put simply, a legacy of barbarism. Some of the signatories on the original PNAC “Statement of Principles” were hard to take seriously (remember Dan Quayle, the vice-president who couldn’t spell “potato” – or Francis Fukuyama who thought that history had ended?). But others – Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld…
Comments closedBy 1970, it was clear to most that the United States could not win the war in Vietnam. But a defeated imperialist power is not a power without teeth. Before it finally left in 1975, the U.S. twice escalated the war massively. The first was April 30, 1970, when then president Richard Nixon announced a joint, U.S./South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. The second was in late 1972, when Nixon ordered a horrendous bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and its principal harbour, Haiphong. The anti-war movement today has been bracing for our own “Cambodia”. We, like the…
Comments closedThe British are withdrawing from the province of Basra in the south of Iraq, and the occupation of that country is now clearly exposed as an almost completely U.S. affair.[1] When the Iraq war began in 2003, it was already considerably different than the earlier war in 1991. The “Coalition of the Willing” put together by George W. Bush was just a shadow of the massive force, which backed his father’s war. France, Germany and Canada were among the major powers that refused to participate in 2003. Now, this already weak coalition is starting to completely unravel – it is…
Comments closedSEPTEMBER 23, 2007 – He was a modest grey-haired man sitting on the chair in a little living room in Toronto. But to be in the room with him was a privilege. Hugo Blanco, in his life and struggles, embodies the long battle of the “other America” – the America south of the Rio Grande – to emerge from generations of imperialism and oppression. Today Blanco edits Lucha Indígena (Indigenous Struggle).[1] All his life he has been an anti-imperialist and a socialist. And all his life, he has been marked by imperialism as a man who had to be stopped.…
Comments closedJUNE 13, 2007 – Workers in the US stand at the threshold of a new era in the labour movement – taking the class struggle into space. Close to 600 NASA launch workers – members of the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers – reached an impasse in contract negotiations at the beginning of June.[1] The IAM was in negotiations with the imposingly named “United Space Alliance” – an alliance between Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp.[2] The very composition of this alliance is just about perfect. Lockheed Martin – as documented by Michael Moore’s film “Bowling for Columbine”[3]…
Comments closedJUNE 1, 2007 – When Justice Sidney Linden finally tabled his long-awaited report into the death of Dudley George, there was applause in the courtroom from family and supporters of the slain indigenous activist. Twelve years ago, on September 6, 1995, a bullet from the gun of Ontario Provincial Police officer, Kenneth Deane, ended unarmed George’s life. He was only 38. Deane was found criminally negligent in George’s death, but didn’t serve a day in jail, getting two years less a day community service.[1] Linden’s report concluded that George’s death resulted from: Ottawa’s long-term neglect of indigenous land claims; the provincial…
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Ocean’s Thirteen: Slyly Progressive
Published June 12, 2007 by Paul Kellogg
JUNE 13, 2007 – Don’t get me wrong – Ocean’s Thirteen[1] is not a great film. But it’s not as bad as many critics have painted it. And if you’re a progressive critic of a North America run by Bush and Harper, it has moments that are, well, wonderful. I won’t give the story line away – which is just as silly, improbable and complex as in the previous Ocean films. But what do you say about a film that refers favourably to Emiliano Zapato, leader of Mexico’s great revolution? What do you say about a thief who goes to…