This week's list of articles, news items, opinion pieces and videos that I see as a must if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.
This list covers the week of August 26 - September 2.
There are two articles from prior to the period that have been integrated into the post.
1) Hold the Plaudits, John McCain’s 2008 Campaign Paved the Way for Donald Trump
Mehdi Hasan, The Intercept
So the reality is this: if you were drawing up a list of Americans who share blame for the rise of Donald Trump, John McCain’s name would have to be somewhere near the top of it. With the noxious Palin at his side, the Arizona senator ran a nasty, bigoted, and desperate presidential campaign in 2008 that paved the way for Trump and Trumpism in 2016.
2) Obit Omit: What the Media Leaves Out of John McCain’s Record of Militarism and Misogyny
Democracy Now
We host a roundtable discussion on the life and legacy of John McCain, the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, six-term senator and two-time presidential candidate, who died Saturday at the age of 81 of brain cancer. We speak with Mehdi Hasan, columnist for The Intercept and host of their “Deconstructed” podcast. He’s also host of “UpFront” at Al Jazeera English. He’s been tweeting in response to McCain’s death and wrote a piece last year headlined “Despite What the Press Says, 'Maverick' McCain Has a Long and Distinguished Record of Horribleness.” We are also joined by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, which McCain once referred to as “low-life scum,” and by Norman Solomon, national coordinator of RootsAction, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”
3) Why on this despoiled earth would NDP leaders praise John McCain?
Yves Engler
The NDP hierarchy’s response to noted war hawk John McCain’s death is shameful. Even worse, it reflects a general hostility towards the victims of Western imperialism.
4) Federal Tory Delegates Vote That Being Born In Canada Shouldn’t Guarantee Citizenship
Althia Raj & Ryan Maloney, HuffPost
Birthright citizenship should be barred to anyone who doesn't have a parent who is a Canadian citizen or is a permanent resident, Tory delegates said in a vote Saturday at their party's policy convention.
5) Conservative Delegate Who Led Push to End Birthright Citizenship Linked to Campus ‘Alt-Right’ Scandals
Press Progress
Controversial campus conservative led push to make Conservative Party adopt Trump-style anti-immigration policy,
6) Class-action lawsuit launched against Ontario government over cancellation of basic income pilot
Mark Riley, The Toronto Star
Four Lindsay residents have launched a proposed class-action lawsuit for breach of contract against the province in the wake of the Progressive Conservative government’s cancellation of the basic income pilot project.
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| Via Jerome Adamo / Facebook |
Noam Shuster Eliassi, Haaretz
I was assaulted in Tel Aviv for 'looking Arab.' My privilege - being a Jew of Mizrahi origin - spared me, but won’t protect millions of Israel’s Arab citizens, serially delegitimized by legislation, three of whom were viciously attacked last weekend.
8) Donald Trump’s “white genocide” rhetoric: A dangerous escalation of racism
Amanda Marcotte, Salon
Last Wednesday, Donald Trump briefly interrupted his ongoing Twitter tirades denouncing various investigations into his shady behavior with a bizarre tweet about "the large scale killing of farmers" and "land and farm seizures and expropriations" in South Africa. It didn't take long for journalists to figure out what Trump was talking about. He was referencing a racist (and false) conspiracy theory that floats around white supremacist and neo-Nazi websites and had been elevated by Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who has grown increasingly bold about mainstreaming ideas picked up from the white supremacist fringe.
9) Ignore Donald Trump’s actual words. What matters is who they are aimed at
Nesrine Malik, The Guardian
The president cares little about South Africa. He is issuing a clarion call to US white supremacist voters.
10) Corbyn says Labour would consider state-owned Facebook rival
Tom Batchelor, The Independent
Party leader attacks Fleet Street's 'herd instinct' and says journalists should be allowed to elect their editors.
11) PHOTO OF TORONTO POLICE OFFICERS WITH FAR-RIGHT MAYORAL CANDIDATE FAITH GOLDY RAISES SERIOUS QUESTIONS
Critical Justice Project
A photo of two Toronto police officers posing with far-right mayoral candidate Faith Goldy raises serious questions about potential violations of the Police Services Act‘s prohibition against police supporting a candidate for election.
12) “Just a job”: Toronto Police defend officers posing with white nationalist candidate
Kevin Metcalf, Medium
The Toronto Police Service is defending two TPS members who posed with their uniforms and vehicles for a group photo with a far-right mayoral candidate known for espousing pro-police, white nationalist and neo-Nazi talking points. “We get asked countless times a day to pose for photos with members of the public and that’s what they were doing.” said Mark Pugash, Director of Corporate Communications for TPS. “This was just a job.”
(Related: Why are Toronto police officers striking a pose with far-right mayoral candidate Faith Goldy?)
Achiya Schatz, an activist with Breaking The Silence, shared this video to Twitter yesterday. Mairav Zonszein added this commentary:
"This is how a Palestinian girl in Hebron has to get home because Israel built a fence around her house and today the gate was left locked.":
13) Hurricane Maria Caused 2,975 Deaths In Puerto Rico, Independent Study Estimates
Adrian Florido, NPR
Puerto Rico's governor updated the island's official death toll for victims of Hurricane Maria on Tuesday, hours after independent researchers from George Washington University released a study estimating the hurricane caused 2,975 deaths in the six months following the storm.
14) Argentines Protest as Report Reveals Police Kill One Every 23 Hours
Telesur
Social organizations, relatives of victims of police brutality, and human rights groups marched in Argentina Monday against what they call security forces’ “trigger happy” approach to crime fighting, which has seen a person killed every 23 hours according to the Coordinating Committee Against Police and Institutional Repression (Correpi for its Spanish acronym).
15) An Open Letter to ‘Socialists’ Who Might be Fronting for the Democratic Party
Quetzal Cáceres, Black Agenda Report
Any socialist who thought, as I did, that Ocasio-Cortez would be our socialist champion should watch the entire 27-minute PBS Firing Line interview to get a sense of just how bad this train wreck might be.
A $15 minimum wage is coming on January 1, 2019. But Big Business lobbyists are trying to cancel it. It is our job to let every elected official know that Ontarians expect and demand #15andFairness. Share this video to spread the word, then come out to your local #labourday event to show your support:
16) Siding with the Palestinian struggle is not antisemitic
Ahmad Samih Khalidi, The Guardian
Jeremy Corbyn has no need to apologise for being the first Labour leader to oppose Zionism on moral grounds.
17) High-income earners paid $4.6-billion less in taxes in 2016 despite higher rate for top 1 per cent
Bill Curry, The Globe and Mail
The Liberal government’s tax on Canada’s top 1 per cent failed to produce the promised billions in new revenue in its first year, as high-income earners actually paid $4.6-billion less in federal taxes.
Channel 4's Michael Crick caught up with Theresa May as she was about to visit Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for nearly 20 years. Crick asked her what she had done personally to help bring about Mandela's release and end South African Apartheid.
She struggled ...
18) A Week Into the US Prison Strike 2018
Telesur
Prisoners are demanding an end to modern slavery and they're getting support from outside.
19) When Illness Is ‘Death Sentence’: Victimization of Gaza Women
Ramzy Baroud, Telesur
In truth, these women embody the remarkable spirit and courage of every Palestinian woman living under Israeli Occupation and siege in the West Bank and Gaza.
20) Union leaders in Colombia face threats and violence
IndustriALL
Colombia is one of the ten most dangerous countries in the world for workers and trade union leaders, where 19 trade union members have been murdered so far this year. IndustriALL Global Union and other federations have expressed their concerns to Colombia's president, Iván Duque.
21) There is a Burning Need to Rekindle Anti-militarist Political Movements in Canada
Yves Engler, Dissident Voices
Are soldiers more valuable to society than teachers? Are they more essential than the people who drive buses or clean up our waste? Are their jobs that much more dangerous than firefighters, or psychiatric nurses or loggers? Is what they do more honourable than parenting, caring for elders, providing essential social services or reporting the news?
22) War is big business. We need a strengthened movement to challenge the arms industry
Brent Patterson, Rabble
War is highly profitable for a few transnational corporations.
23) No Remorse: Reflections on Radical “Purism”
Paul Street, Counterpunch
I have this recurrent experience as an “iconoclastic” Left critic of what gets sold as progressive and Left. It starts with me getting a radical truth-telling rush discovering and showing how some political figure, organization or “movement” is nowhere near as progressive, portside, revolutionary, and transformative as widely advertised and perceived. That’s stage one.
24) Warm water under Arctic ice a 'ticking time bomb,' researcher says
Katie Toth, CBC News
A pocket of warm ocean water underneath the surface of the Canada Basin could melt a significant portion of the region's sea ice pack if it were to ascend, a new study suggests.
25) The Melting Arctic Is a Real-Time Horror Story — Why Doesn’t Anyone Care?
Jeff Goodell, Rolling Stone
“Save the Arctic!”, however, is not a rallying cry that’s going to motivate many Americans. The Arctic is too distant, too far away, too alien. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Think of the Arctic as our early warning system, a big screaming alarm that is alerting us to the fact that the planet we will live on tomorrow is nothing like the planet we lived on yesterday, and we better get ready. As the Arctic heats up, it raises sea levels in Miami and Bangladesh and every other coastal city in the world, and it increases the odds of wildfires in California and the west. In a sense, the massive changes that are taking place in the Arctic are remaking the weather in America and northern Europe, with profound implications for everyone who lives there, whether they know it or not. And they are a reminder of one of the great truths about climate change, and one that is hardest to grasp: In our rapidly changing world, no place is too distant or too far away to matter. Like it or not, we are all in this together. When ice melts in the Arctic, the west burns.
26) Louis C.K. and Men Who Think Justice Takes as Long as They Want It To
Roxane Gay, New York Times
We spend so little energy thinking about justice for victims and so much energy thinking about the men who perpetrate sexual harassment and violence. We worry about what will become of them in the wake of their mistakes. We don’t worry as much about those who have suffered at their hands. It is easier, for far too many people, to empathize with predators than it is to empathize with prey.
27) Why the American empire has lost control—and its failure is imminent
Brian Bethune, Maclean's
Chris Hedges—Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, ordained Presbyterian minister, ferocious anti-corporate activist and prolific author—has long occupied an isolated spot among American public intellectuals, as much a moral crusader as a political critic. But as American, and Western, politics continue to decay and xenophobic nativism continues to rise, Hedges, 61, seems less and less an outlier, his critique of contemporary America more acceptable to his countrymen. And that’s without walking back any of his analysis. If Hedges was worried nine years ago in Empire of Illusion that his nation—like all republics before it—would fail to survive the acquisition of an empire, he’s now convinced it won’t. The title of his newest book, America: The Farewell Tour, says it all. In powerfully reported chapters—including “Decay” (deindustrialization), “Heroin” (the opioid epidemic), “Sadism” (the pornography-industrial complex), and “Hate” (racism)—Hedges talks to the most oppressed and dispossessed citizens of an empire he thinks has not much more than a decade of life left.
28) ‘They wanted to kill us’: masked neo-fascists strike fear into Ukraine's Roma
Alex Sturrock (reporting and images); additional reporting by Hannah Summers, The Guardian
After a spate of brutal attacks on Roma settlements by far-right groups, authorities have been accused of failing to act. As the violence escalates, human rights groups are suing the police for failing to protect families from raids by masked men.
(Related: Canada green lights arms sales to Ukraine as fascist militias attack Roma)
29) U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question
Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post
Juan is one of a growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question. The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown.
30) After Federal Court quashes Trans Mountain, Rachel Notley pulls out of national climate plan
John Paul Tasker, Kathleen Harris · CBC News
In the wake of the Federal Court's bombshell decision to quash cabinet approval of the Trans Mountain expansion project, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is pulling her province out of the national climate change plan.
(Related: Oil industry hack Rachel Notley's hypocritical concern for the "rule of law" now fully exposed)
Mark Gruenberg, People's World
It says something about the anti-worker bias of the GOP Trump administration that its Labor Department has spent the 80th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act – the nation’s basic overtime pay and minimum wage law – trying to weaken it.
32) Lana Del Rey Cancels Israel Concert After BDS Pressure
Telesur
Del Rey was one of the headliners at the Meteor Festival, which was scheduled to take place at Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan.
33) Kaepernick collusion grievance will go to trial
Al Neal, People's World
In the first of many knockout blows to the NFL, et al. (Donald J. Trump), an arbitrator late Thursday ruled in favor of Colin Kaepernick and will advance his collusion grievance against the league to trial. The hearing is expected to begin later this year.
34) Doug Ford’s Orwellian ‘Free Speech on Campus’ Policy Calls For Crack Down on Student Protests
Press Progress
Ford’s new policy policing speech aims to create a safe space on campus for anti-abortion activists and alt-right speakers.
35) Business group calls for ‘full repeal’ of Ontario’s new workplace protections
Sara Mojtehedzadeh, The Toronto Star
The umbrella body representing 60,000 Ontario small business owners is calling on the provincial government to fully repeal the most sweeping changes to workplace protections in decades — including a higher minimum wage, equal pay protections for temporary workers, and paid emergency leave days.
36) US confirms end to funding for UN Palestinian refugees
Peter Beaumont and Oliver Holmes, The Guardian
The Trump administration has announced it will cut all US funding for the main UN programme for Palestinian refugees, a move with potentially devastating impacts for five million people who rely on its schools, healthcare, and social services.
37) Absolutely Repulsive': After $1.5 Trillion Tax Giveaway to the Rich, Trump Cancels Modest Pay Raise for Federal Workers
Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
"President Trump pushed through a tax scam that gave unprecedented handouts to billionaires and corporations—but believes it's too expensive to pay hardworking federal workers a reasonable wage."
38) Toronto rally confronts Zionist slanders
John Clarke, Counterfire
As the Toronto community stands firm against Zionist attacks, John Clarke reminds us that our solidarity with the Palestinian cause mustn't be apologised for.
39) US journalist to revive Labour left magazine Tribune
Jim Waterson, The Guardian
Tribune, the historic publication of the Labour left, will be revived next month by a US journalist who hopes to benefit from the rise of Jeremy Corbyn and run a financially sustainable leftwing print magazine.
40) Activist Arrests in India Are Part of a Dangerous Global Trend to Stifle Dissent
Vijay Prashad / Independent Media Institute
On Tuesday morning, the police from the Indian city of Pune (in the state of Maharashtra) raided the homes of lawyers and social activists across India and arrested five of them. Many of them are not household names around the world, since they are people who work silently on behalf of the poor and oppressed in a country where half the population does not eat sufficiently. Their names are Gautam Navlakha, Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferreira and Varavara Rao. What unites these people is their commitment to the working class and peasantry, to those who are treated as marginal to India’s state. They are also united by their opposition, which they share with millions of Indians, to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
41) Thousands protest in Russia against plans to hike pension age
The Guardian
Vladimir Putin has called the reform a financial necessity as Communist party leader brands move ‘cannibalistic’.
See also: John McCain, Michael Cohen, Climate Change, CNE Lockout & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List August 19 - 25
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