Millions of working Canadians are being fiscally conscripted into the shameful business of war. We are forced into this unwitting participation in the arms trade and imperialist American wars, thanks to the Liberal government’s legislation governing the Canada Pension Plan. Through our mandatory CPP contributions, we are entrapped in complicity with many of the world’s most notorious warmongers.

The fourth World Social Forum and the first to occur outside of Brazil wound up recently in Mumbai, India. Over 80,000 people from 132 countries and representing 2,660 organizations participated in what has become an annual gathering of social movements and civil society organizations from around the world united against neoliberal globalization.

The better part of 250 million dollars of our tax-payer dollars has flowed through the Federal Government Sponsorship funds into the grubby hands of Liberal Party of Canada public relations firms in Québec during a period of 4 years, from 1997 to 2001.

We must vigorously fight off the chill drifting up from the U.S. and affirm that abortions must be legal, safe and accessible. With women’s rights under attack globally, if we don’t stay vigilant and vocal, we risk sleepwalking into a world without choice.

On almost every issue trade union members are significantly more progressive than the other segments of the population. I suppose there are many reasons for this. Collective power probably gives union members the confidence to think more about the potential for changing things. Union education programs undoubtedly play a role. The democratic process of unions also requires members to discuss and debate issues.

So it should not come as a surprise that gaining employment in a unionized workplace would promote some leftward political movement among a proportion of the members. Of course one can overstate the political development of union members. Unionists may be twice as likely to vote for the NDP than the new Conservative Party, but a majority of union members still choose the Liberals as their first voting choice.

If we are to build solidarity among the many different anti-capitalist causes, we need both a critique and a positive mission shared by Reds and Greens; people of First World, Third World, and Fourth world societies; men and women, and members of both mainstream and minority groups in all societies. The Earth charter may provide this shared positive vision.

In many of the advanced economies, unions are in serious trouble. This crisis for unions is in part the result of changing workplaces and labour markets compounded by the hostility of employers and governments to unions.

In one corner of the village, the sun shines through the dusty and cracked windows of the village’s one-room assembly hall. Sitting on the building’s cement floor are 60 girls and young women, the reason for today’s celebration. The day is a chance to teach the young women an important lesson that may one day save their lives.

This is a war waged against Palestinian refugees by the government of Lebanon. It is not waged through military campaigns and guerrilla battles as in the Lebanese civil war, but through policies and laws which are slowly choking the life from Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps.