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May warns Ottawa will be forced to pay for oilpatch cleanup costs
Canadian PoliticsMay noted that the sector, which extracts heavy oil from tar-like bituminous deposits of sand beneath Alberta’s boreal forest, has been heavily subsidized ever since former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government offered billions of dollars in incentives. She said the cost of liabilities would dramatically rise if governments continue to allow the industry to expand. She suggested it would be better to maintain current levels of production, refining the product in Alberta and cancelling new pipeline expansion projects to reduce carbon pollution.
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Israel’s Mockery of Security: 101 Actions Israel Could Take
Middle EastBefore offering the list, I must state upfront and clearly, my goal in presenting these ideas is not to assist the powers-that-be to design an embellished military occupation intended as permanent. Rather, my purpose is to reveal Israel’s underlying intentions, its indefinite time frame for continued domination, and the cornucopia of diverse types of actions carefully calculated to humiliate each and every Palestinian, while structurally blocking a path to Palestinian statehood, otherwise known as the two-state solution.
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None Dare Call It Victory: U.S. 2018 Elections
USA PoliticsThe failure of Democratic Party leaders’ 2018 strategy to deliver as promised in the November 6, 2018 midterm elections should also raise some serious questions about its strategy going forward for 2020. That strategy focused on running women and a few veterans in suburban districts and targeting the independent voter—a Suburbia Strategy—i.e. an approach apparently abandoning the 2008 successful Democratic strategy of targeting millennials, blacks and latinos, and union workers, who since 2012 have been steadily reducing their support for Democrats.
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A Marxist History of Capitalism
Since the 1970s, Marxist discussion of how and when capitalism was born has been dominated by two competing academic currents. World-System Theory, first enunciated by Immanuel Wallerstein, locates the origin of capitalism in the expansion of world trade and the plunder of the new world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Political Marxism, developed by Robert Brenner, says the transition took place somewhat earlier, and only in rural England, where feudal lords converted themselves into capitalist landlords.
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The Google Walkout
LabourThousands of Google employees around the world walked off their jobs on November 1, “to protest sexual harassment, misconduct, lack of transparency, and a workplace that doesn’t work for everyone.” Beginning in Singapore and working its way around the globe the movement closed Google offices from California, in Boulder and New York, as well as in London, Dublin, Zurich and Berlin.
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Corbynism and the Labour Party
EuropeThe leadership of the UK Labour Party by Jeremy Corbyn continues to enjoy enormous popularity across the UK. This even despite continual attacks from the corporate press and opposition from within the Labour Party itself. Indeed, under Corbyn’s leadership, the Labour Party has once again become a mass party, with a larger membership than any other social democratic party across Europe.
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Ford Takes on Bill 148: But There is Resistance
LabourBut with such a hostile government, the tactics will have to become more confrontational in order to leverage the pressure needed to make Ford and the Tories retreat. There were several missed opportunities in the fightback against Harris where the government looked like it was going to reverse course, but the pressure was throttled in favour of negotiation and electoralism. Now, we must learn from our past mistakes and build a broad and militant front in order to protect what we have already gained. Without that we won’t be able to make gains in the future.
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Understanding Québec solidaire’s electoral breakthrough
QuebecQuébec solidaire has proudly proclaimed its alter-globalist roots and sought to contact and deepen relationships with social movements and left organizations across North America and the world. But this is not enough, and a more pro-active approach must be taken towards the burgeoning popular and left movements in the USA and Canada particularly. There is much to be shared on common issues such as immigration and the environment, and a lot to be learned from each other in terms of building popular left organizations rooted in the working classes.
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Eco Crises: Doom & Gloom, Truth & Consequences
EnvironmentWe will have to support one another in a battle against the rich and powerful who resist – with more fervor than any other type of resistance – all of the changes necessary that might stand half a chance of making this world more equitable and ecologically sound. We should do so not because we will necessarily save the world, but because as moral, ethical, rational, human beings, how can we not do so? And we do so because, unless we are mere sociopaths, we are clear about the truth of our situation and the consequences of not doing so.
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In and Against the State
SocialismGetting socialism seriously on the agenda requires addressing the question of political agency more broadly in terms that develop the agential capacity for state transformation, so that governments with a socialist project not be stymied by the inherited state apparatuses. In this respect, socialist parties in the 21st century cannot see themselves as a kind of omnipotent deus ex machina. Precisely in order not to draw back from the ‘prodigious scope of their own aims’, as Marx once put it, they must ‘engage in perpetual self-criticism’.
