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Currently viewing entries by Murray Dobbin.
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Bow Down Canadians, Corporations Are King
Two recent stories out of Ottawa underline the ongoing political and economic assault on ordinary Canadians. More Canadians are now working for low wages than at any time in decades, continuing a trend that began in the early 1990s, and Stephen Harper has announced major changes to retirement benefits — including delaying Old Age Security (OAS) eligibility to age 67.
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Stephen Harper and the Big Oil Party of Canada
Now that petro interests reign supreme, even other corporate sectors lose their sway.
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Ousting quasi-dictator Harper means putting country ahead of party
As we enter the new year the prospects for defeating the Harper government in 2015 seem uncertain at best. And yet if those who care about the country were musing over a new year’s resolution that would be it: a dedication to this single overarching purpose. Even if Stephen Harper is soundly defeated in the next election if will take a decade to reverse the damage he has already done. If he wins a second majority, it will take a generation or more.
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It’s the economy, Dippers
The NDP leadership race suddenly seems like a very long, drawn out affair. Initially, there was much outrage – especially from Thomas Mulcair – at the suggestion that the party go along with what Jack Layton seemed to want: an earlier leadership convention in January. But now many in the party, lead by Winnipeg MP Pat Martin worry that the party’s performance in the Commons is suffering because many of its strongest MPs are out of their critic roles and pre-occupied with the race.
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Fox News North—your national, pro-war TV Network
While Sun TV is not, thankfully, being piped into every Canadian living room, the prediction that it would mimic Fox News is undeniable. The most recent example is the networks nasty, over-the-top attack on Steven Staples, the man who runs the Rideau Institute and its anti-war project, Ceasefire.ca
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Wake up and Listen to Occupiers
The amazingly resilient Occupy phenomenon is running up against the same ugly reality that so many social movements have encountered over the past 20 years: There is a world of difference between influence and power.
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Stephen Harper’s social engineering
Harper’s contempt for democratic governance and the activist state is running up against a capitalist reality that can’t be ignored. Flaherty’s fall economic statement reveals the corner the government is in. It has now pushed forward the date for getting rid of the deficit (read: cutting social spending) by a year.
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Occupy the NDP
There’s nothing quite like a global social movement to knock other stuff off the front pages and the Occupy movement has done just that.
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Occupy: What can it teach the left?
The occupy movement has been a like a powerful cleansing wind blowing over the political landscape – exposing not just the obscenely rich, and criminally irresponsible political elite, but almost every other political player too: cowardly liberals, cautious social democrats, the strangely silenced churches, social movements stuck in the past, and a moribund labour movement. Indeed, that is what is most striking about this movement: it owes nothing to anyone.
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Is something happening here?
Occupy Wall Street – and now Bay Street? The 99%? Conservatives losing elections all over the country? A Red Tory elected head of the Alberta Conservatives? American billionaires demanding to be taxed at higher rates? Is something happening here?
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