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 October 14 - 21.
1) Faith Goldy said neo-Nazis have “well-thought-out ideas” – Conrad Black says her opinions are not offensive
North 99
In a radio interview clip circulating on Twitter, National Post columnist and convicted criminal Conrad Black defended white supremacist Faith Goldy, saying her opinions were “not be offensive to any ethnic or religious group”.
2) The Bolsonaro effect: what now for Brazil?
Orlando Hill, Counterfire
As Brazil's elections progress to the second round, Orlando Hill examines the prospects for the left in defeating the presidential candidacy of the far right Jair Bolsonaro.
3) The Tories are destroying our schools, we need a socialist education policy
Judy Cox, Counterfire
The campaign against school funding cuts has attracted a lot of attention, but a socialist education policy can do much more than solve the funding crisis argues Judy Cox.
4) Thomas Sankara Revolutionized Burkina Faso
Telesur
Burkina Faso president Thomas Sankara was a feminist Marxist Pan-Africanist revolutionary leader who was assassinated in a coup d'etat four short years after he took power.
WHEN THE PEOPLE STAND UP, IMPERIALISM TREMBLES!
Read: Thomas Sankara's address to the United Nations General Assembly, October 4, 1984
Via Communist Party of Canada on Facebook
5) MILITARY OFFICIALS AREN’T SUPPOSED TO ASSOCIATE WITH HATE GROUPS. SO WHY ARE THESE GENERALS SPEAKING AT FRANK GAFFNEY’S CONFAB?
Murtaza Hussain and Eli Clifton, The Intercept
OVER THE PAST decade, the Center for Security Policy has emerged as one of the most notoriously bigoted and conspiratorial think tanks in Washington, D.C. Under its founder and president, Frank Gaffney, the organization regularly found itself in the news for promoting anti-Muslim conspiracies — including farcically paranoid ones. Yet, unlike similar organizations that remain on the political fringes, the Center for Security Policy is remarkably close to the halls of power — not just to President Donald Trump, for whom Gaffney was an informal adviser during the campaign, but also to the traditional power brokers of the defense establishment.
6) Police spies infiltrated UK leftwing groups for decades
Rob Evans, The Guardian
Exclusive: database shows 124 green, anti-racist and other groups spied on by undercover police
7) Craig Kielburger Founded WE To Fight Child Labour. Now The WE Brand Promotes Products Made By Children.
Jaren Kerr, Canadaland
A CANADALAND investigation reveals that WE is connected to no fewer than three companies known to use child and slave labour in their supply chain.
8) 'It was like hell': California hotel workers break their silence on abuse
Michael Sainato, The Guardian
Just outside of Los Angeles in Ranchos Palos Verdes, the Terranea Resort boasts fine dining, a golf course, scenic beachfront views, and accommodations ranging from luxury guest rooms to private, secluded villas. While it may be a paradise for guests, resort workers claim they are subjected to a culture that has enabled sexual harassment and sexual assault.
9) Repealing Bill 148 will hurt women
Hassan Yussuff, The Toronto Star
It’s time for Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his team to read the fine print in Bill 148.
MRA Logic
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| Via Capitalism Kills on Facebook |
10) Trouble brewing: climate change to cause 'dramatic' beer shortages
Damian Carrington, The Guardian
Trouble is brewing for the world’s beer drinkers, with climate change set to cause “dramatic” price spikes and supply shortages, according to new research.
11) Colin Kaepernick sounds the alarm against a re-emerging evil
Richard Williams, The Guardian
Former quarterback’s stand is a reminder the injustice highlighted by raised fists 50 years ago has not gone away.
(Related: Black Power Olympic Salute for Justice: 50 Years Ago Today in Mexico)
12) Why Don’t ‘Good Men’ Believe Women?
Soraya Chemaly, Medium
Philosopher Kate Manne has described this tendency toward disparate concern for men as “himpathy.” It depends primarily on two ideas: that masculinity is more important than what women are saying; and that women cannot be believed or trusted.
13) Ford government disbands Liberals’ expert panel to end violence against women
Molly Hayes and Laura Stone, The Globe and Mail
Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government has pulled the plug on an expert panel to end violence against women that was established under the Liberals to provide strategic advice on policies.
14) Protesters urge Ford to keep worker protections, minimum wage bump in place
Sara Mojtehedzadeh, The Toronto Star
Protesters rallied across the province Monday urging Premier Doug Ford not to scrap new worker protections after he pledged earlier this month to repeal the law giving Ontarians two paid sick days, equal pay for equal work and a minimum wage bump.
15) Dennis Hof is dead, but his legacy lives on through those who advocate to legalize prostitution
Meghan Murphy, Feminist Current
So-called leftists and feminists who promote the legalization of prostitution are nothing more than capitalists and misogynists in disguise. And while Dennis Hof may be dead, these “progressives” are carrying on his legacy.
16) Making misandry a hate crime will embolden abusive men
Jessica Eaton, The Guardian
While misogyny has centuries of research, evidence, statistics, law and legislation, oppression, death and suffering behind it, misandry is harder to pinpoint. Some people even ask the question: “Does misandry exist?”
17) CANADA'S MOST PROMINENT BLACK ACTIVIST IS FIGHTING DOUG FORD. HE ALSO HAS A MESSAGE FOR WHITE LIBERALS.
Brian J. Barth, Pacific Standard Magazine
At the center of Canada's burgeoning black resistance movement is journalist-turned-activist Desmond Cole. The 36-year-old Torontonian was a popular columnist at the Toronto Star, Canada's second-largest daily newspaper, until May of 2017, when he abruptly severed ties, saying that the paper's publisher had complained that Cole was "writing about race too often." But recent events in the Great White North suggest that race isn't being written about enough.
18) Canada Post union issues strike notice; workers could begin rotating strikes Monday
The Canadian Press
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers says it has given strike notice to Canada Post that workers could walk off the job as early as next week.
19) Trump Threatens To Withdraw Honduras Aid Over Approaching Migrant Caravan
Sara Boboltz, HuffPost US
President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued a threat to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez: Somehow recall a mass caravan of mostly Honduran migrants bound for the United States or watch American aid dry up.
20) Man told to stop recording violent takedown gets apology from Toronto police sergeant
Jasmin Seputis, CBC News
A Toronto man who was ordered by police to stop shooting video of a violent takedown in January of 2017, and was told he was "going to get AIDS" if he didn't move back, received an apology Tuesday from an officer at a disciplinary hearing.
21) Praise the Workers, Not Amazon
Jonathan Rosenblum, Socialist Project Bullet
"Power concedes nothing without a demand,” abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass declared 161 years ago.
22) Elizabeth Warren Falls for Trump’s Trap—and Promotes Insidious Ideas About Race and DNA
Masha Gessen, The New Yorker
Warren ended up providing one of the clearest examples yet of how Trumpian rhetoric shifts the political conversation. The woman who is hoping to become the most progressive Democratic nominee in generations is not merely letting herself get jerked around by a Trumpian taunt. She is also reinforcing one of the most insidious ways in which Americans talk about race: as though it were a measurable biological category, one that, in some cases, can be determined by a single drop of blood. Genetic-test evidence is circular: if everyone who claims to be X has a particular genetic marker, then everyone with the marker is likely to be X. This would be flawed reasoning in any area, but what makes it bad science is that it reinforces the belief in the existence of X—in this case, race as a biological category. Warren’s video will hardly convince a Trump voter, who will see only a woman who feels that she has to prove something. Trump himself has already walked back his promise of a million-dollar charity donation. Warren, meanwhile, has allowed herself to be dragged into a conversation based on an outdated, harmful concept of racial blood—one that promotes the pernicious idea of biological differences among people—and she has pulled her supporters right along with her.
23) Law to stop bad-faith evictions not working, lawyers and tenants say
Natalie Nanowski, CBC News
Robyn Lemire was compensated a month's rent when she was evicted from her Corktown condo this summer. That seemed fair, until she found out that her landlord's wife didn't move in like she was supposed to.
24) Women in the U.S. Can Now Get Safe Abortions by Mail
Olga Khazan, The Atlantic
The founder of a global abortion-pill provider that has never shipped to the U.S. has quietly started a new service for Americans.
25) Doug Ford will end new domestic abuse leave work rules – and these universities are part of a group that made it happen
North 99
Some of Ontario’s most influential universities and colleges are members of a business lobby group calling for the full repeal of Bill 148, which includes laws designed to protect domestic abuse victims and prevent employers from forcing sexist dress codes on women.
26) The Other Side: Brazil Soccer Fans Repudiate Bolsonaro
Telesur
In the context of Brazil’s 2018 presidential election, the country has seen the emergence of several groupings of soccer fans who have linked themselves to #EleNao movement to reject the possibility of Jair Bolsonaro --leader of the Social Liberal Party-- who, according to polls, looks to win the second round of voting which will be held on October 28th.
27) Africa's Oldest Animal Reserve is Under Threat from Oil Mine
Telesur
With the court date just weeks away, activists are going head-to-head with South Africa’s mining company, Petmin Corporate, whose oil mine borders Africa’s oldest animal reservation.
28) It’s Time We Dispel The Myth Of ‘Progressive’ Liberalism In Ontario
Carlo Fanelli, Socialist Project Bullet
There is an emerging orthodoxy, rooted more in fiction than fact, that the 15-year regime of the Ontario Liberals somehow swung the ideological and policy spectrum sharply to the left. But this is a gross misinterpretation of actual history. While the Liberals did indeed implement a hodgepodge of policies that might selectively register as ‘progressive’, their time in power was never about a wholesale repudiation of the Conservative’s Common Sense Revolution but rather about deepening and extending it in ways that were more palatable to a public increasingly fed up with the uncompromising and aggressive style of their Conservative predecessors. In other words, it was continuity, not change, that defined the Liberals’ time in power.
29) CHANGING THE EQUATION: ANTI-AUSTERITY ORGANIZING IN ONTARIO
Dave McKee, People's Voice
John Clarke is a well-known figure in the political left in Ontario, and across Canada. As he gets ready to retire, later this year, from 30 years as organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), Dave McKee interviewed John about the development, opportunities, and challenges of the anti-poverty organizing and the working class movement in Ontario.
30) Grassy Narrows leader Steve Fobister dead at 66
David Bruser, The Toronto Star
When Steve Fobister came to protest outside the Legislature in 2014, the former fishing guide and chief came with his tent and an ultimatum
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31) Threatening letter that says ‘this isn’t a reserve’ prompts Alberta family to move
Phil Heidenreich, Global News
A wife and mother of three pre-teen children says her family is moving from their St. Albert, Alta., condo because they don’t feel safe after receiving a racist and threatening letter.
Jeremy Corbyn | Pinochet Arrest
20 years today, Chilean neo-liberal dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London for crimes against humanity.
Guess which British MP did more than any other - on the streets, with the press, in court and in Parliament, to support and show solidarity, as always, with the victims of injustice?
This is a collection of unedited news footage after the Law Lords ruled against Pinochet's impunity. This was a campaign of many months duration, before the Blair government did the "centrist" thing of letting the dictator off in a deal with the Chilean government.
#JC4PM! We need this humanity at the heart of government!
32) Massively Expand Public Transport Now
International Transport Workers' Federation, The Socialist Project Bullet
As a global union federation representing over 20 million transport workers in 145 countries worldwide, the ITF is proud to be leading a programme for Our Public Transport. We recognise that if we act NOW, there is still a chance of stopping dangerous climate change. Expanding public transport is an essential part of the fight to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. Bold policies are needed, adapted to specific national and city contexts.
33) Police officers in the US were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period
Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
A police officer in Prince George County, Maryland, was charged this week with raping a woman during a traffic stop. He's pleaded not guilty, but it's a disturbing headline -- even more disturbing when you consider there are hundreds more like him.
34) 'Largest living thing,' an 80,000-year-old Utah forest, is dying, scientists warn
Christopher Carbone, Fox News
An ancient forest in Utah considered to be the largest single living thing in the world is dying, according to scientists.
35) Seventy Years of the New York Times Describing Saudi Royals as Reformers
Abdullah Al-Arian, Jadaliyya
In honor of Thomas Friedman's latest love letter to the ruling dynasty in Saudi Arabia, here is seventy years worth of the New York Times describing the royal family as reformers.
36) Facebook Blocks Trailer of Film on Palestinian Women's Role in the First Intifada
Oded Yaron, Haaretz
Facebook only lifted its ban on the advertisement of the documentary after Haaretz contacted the company, which told distributors it would not allow 'advertising that includes derogatory or sensational content'.
37) Black British history: A study in erasure
Paula Akpan, Al Jazeera
Black people are a part of the fabric of Britain, yet pupils are not taught the full story of Black history in schools.
38) Top EU Court Blocks Polish Supreme Court Law Forcing Judges To Retire
Vanessa Romo, NPR
The European Union's highest court on Friday ordered Poland to reverse a law leading to the removal of nearly a third of the nation's Supreme Court judges, and to reinstate those who were dismissed.
39) Another Candidate for Jason Kenney’s UCP is Now Under Fire for an Anti-Muslim Facebook Rant
Press Progress
Another nomination candidate for Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party is facing scrutiny after an anti-Muslim Facebook rant surfaced Friday.
40) Donald Trump, Lumpen Capitalist
Samuel Farber, Jacobin
The most important thing about Donald Trump isn’t his psychological condition — it’s that he’s a capitalist. And a particular kind of capitalist at that: a lumpen capitalist.
See also: Bolsonaro, White Supremacists and the UCP, Oscar Romero & more -- The Week in News, Opinion and Videos October 7 - 14
