The Conservative leadership race: Den of really, truly, horrible people -- Hellworld Podcast Episode 2

Nathaniel Laxer -- whose previous work on The Left Chapter includes A Holiday Nightmare and “The End of History” and the Post-Soviet Tragedy -- returns with Episode 2 of his new podcast Hellworld.

In this one he takes a deep dive into the 2020 Conservative leadership race and all of its candidates in this den of really, truly, horrible people.

If you missed it, the first episode, Coronavirus Blues, looks at the hysteria, xenophobia, racism and anti-Chinese narratives we have seen in reaction to the Coronavirus outbreak.

Watch for future episodes.

You Tube:



SoundCloud:

Extremist Conservative fundraising email shows the depth of their commitment to Apartheid Israel

In a surprising move the Trudeau government unexpectedly voted in favour of a motion in support of Palestinian self-determination at the United Nations on November 19. This was widely seen as a repudiation of the recent outrageous move by the Trump administration to unilaterally declare that Israeli settlements are not illegal under international law when they very clearly are. 

While the vote was a positive development it did not really signal a fundamental shift in Canada's policies in the region. As noted in the Globe and Mail:

Thomas Juneau, a Middle East expert at the University of Ottawa, said the vote is “more symbolic than anything else.”
“Are we going to see a substantive change in the substance of Canadian policy towards Israel and Palestinians? I doubt it. I think our policy will broadly remain consistent,” said Mr. Juneau, adding that he will be watching to see how Canada votes in the future to determine whether there is a shift in policy, or a one-off.
Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied territories, said by voting in favour of the resolution recognizing right to self-determination, Canada is “simply acknowledging long-standing international consensus and long-standing international law on the issue of Palestine.”
Mr. Lynk, who is also an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario, said Canada did not vote in favour or a handful of other resolutions on the issue. He said that Canada is running for a seat on the UN Security Council and has likely realized its in a “weak” position on this issue.

It is just a slight adjustment to try to pretend to support Canada's alleged commitment to a "two state" solution. The CBC reported:

"We are extremely pleased that the Liberal government has voted in support of Palestinian self-determination at the UN," said CJPME's [Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East] Miranda Gallo. "This is a long overdue step and is entirely consistent with the government's support for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine. In fact, Canada could not support a 'two state' solution if it did not support the creation of a Palestinian state."
Noting that "the Liberal government has changed its position as compared to previous years," Gallo added: "This may be a slap on the wrist to the Trump government to communicate that, given Pompeo's outlandish statement in support of illegal Israeli colonies, Canada feels the U.S. is failing to provide fair leadership on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

As the CBC also noted this simply brought Canada back in line with its historically somewhat more balanced stance:

In 2003, Canada voted yes to 13 of the 16 resolutions on Israel and abstained on three. In 2004, it recorded its first two "No" votes, alongside the U.S. and Israel, and supported only 12 resolutions. After Stephen Harper came to power in 2006, the "No" and abstention votes gradually increased.
After Harper won a majority government in 2011, Canada voted "No" on 14 of the 16 resolutions, abstaining on another. From that point onward, the only "Yes" vote before today was on a non-controversial motion calling for assistance for Palestinians displaced by conflict.
Trudeau's Liberal government has maintained the voting pattern it inherited from the Harper government — until now. 

 The Conservatives certainly don't see it that way though.

In an hysterical, over-the-top fundraising email they sent out on December 2, they paint it as a nefarious rejection of Israel that aligns Canada with North Korea.

The email, which had the subject line "Justin Trudeau’s emboldened anti-Israel stance" sought to open the wallets of donors with the following drivel:

This is disgraceful nonsense on multiple levels.

The implication is that supporting the resolution was somehow an extremist position internationally when it is anything but. While North Korea may have been one of several sponsors of the resolution -- that also included Egypt and, of course, the Palestinians (shocking) -- in all 163 countries voted for it with only 5 countries, including the United States and Israel, voting against. There were nine abstentions.

In other words, on this issue, it is the United States and a handful of countries with far right governments or that it has somehow bullied that are the actual extremists.

Aside from simply being inane, par for the course right wing lying where the message gets rather more unsettling is in its attempt to paint this as being due to the Liberal Party somehow having a problem with antisemitism and antisemitic candidates or members.

We have seen this game before with the relentless slandering of leftist Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

While Trudeau is certainly no leftist and unlike Corbyn has no commitment whatsoever to the justice of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Apartheid, it is very disturbing to see the continued use of this line of attack by supporters of Israel and the right. The equation of opposition to the actions of Israel with antisemitism is not simply wrong but dangerous in that it plays into the very antisemitic tropes that it allegedly opposes.

Conflating Israel with Jews broadly and internationally is, in fact, antisemitic as is the use of support of Israel by Canadian conservatives to pander to the Evangelical Christian community whose embrace of it is based solely on a demented belief that its existence heralds the coming of the apocalypse and rapture.

Whether being used against Corbyn or the milquetoast opportunist Trudeau these tactics and lies must be resolutely opposed.

Coalitions, Rewriting Constitutional History, NDP Spike or Surge and more -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Six

This is the sixth and last of our weekly election round-ups of developments -- as well as the inane, bizarre, humorous and unusually facile -- in the great show that is mainstream bourgeois politics during the election of 2019.


The fifth was: NDP Spikes, Bloc Surges, May and Scheer Stall -- The Left Chapter Canadian Election Round-up Week Five

See also our The Left Chapter election editorial from this week with endorsements: Voting Communist, Tactical Voting and Conscientious Abstention -- Leftist Strategy in the 2019 Election

To coalition or not to coalition? 

The NDP, its leadership and its partisans, love to tell us over and again that there really is no difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives. Except, that is, when it comes to minority parliaments and coalition time, because then they seem to know full well that there is a difference.

With the polls indicating that a minority parliament is very likely, and with Jagmeet Singh and the NDP in a position to possibly hold the balance of power, both Singh and Justin Trudeau have been musing in various ways about hitching their parliamentary futures together to provide sunshine, lollipops and "progressive" government.

Needless to say, Andrew Scheer is unimpressed.

Looking to rally the troops Scheer has been warning that an NDP-Liberal coalition would be far more interesting and radical than I can assure you it actually would be. He has also been trying to rewrite parliamentary history and tradition to claim that the party with the most seats gets to try to form a government when this is not the case as anyone who ever took a public school civics course knows. The former Prime Minister of the previous House gets the first attempt to govern.

But even this absurdity does not go far enough for Scheer in trying to de-legitimize how the Canadian parliament works. The Conservatives are also suggesting in fundraising emails that if the NDP and Liberals governed together despite Scheer winning more seats it would amount to a de facto coup.

Seriously.

Of course, this is total idiocy. A minority parliament is the "democratic will of Canadians" in the parliamentary/electoral sense. Presumably Scheer is looking for something to get the base all angry about when the Governor General turns to Trudeau first in the event no one gets a majority.

Could it be that Scheer wants a distraction? 

It seems Andrew Scheer is doing his best to make the argument for strategic voting Trudeau wants. Another part of the reason the Conservatives want to cast doubt on the legitimacy of any NDP - Liberal collaboration is that they really have no natural partners to work with in a minority situation. They will either have to hope to govern bill by bill or come to rest on the backing of the Bloc Quebecois in many cases should the Bloc do as well Monday as it seems it might.

Is there an NDP "surge"?

There is no doubt that a combination of the Trudeau brownface scandal, a mediocre Liberal campaign and poor Green campaign, and a better outing by Singh than many anticipated led to a spike in support for the NDP in the wake of the debates. The party went from as low as 12 - 13% going in to around 18 - 19% now. This has likely staved off what looked like a possible annihilation election for them.

Keen to boost the "surging Singh" narrative various reactionaries like the Toronto Sun's reprehensible Tarek Fatah, the vile Brian Lilley and Lorrie Goldstein, and the conservative "pollster" Nick Kouvalis  penned articles suddenly pushing the NDP for rather obvious strategic reasons. Rather shamefully a number of NDP partisans online shared these.

But is the surge real? Insofar as it lifted the party back to being a player in the election again, yes. But it does seem to have stalled now and neither the Liberals nor the Bloc are collapsing as in 2011 so it would not appear any kind of Orange Crush is coming.

Election night will show to what extent their campaign turned the tide.

Jordan Boswell should be dumped by the NDP

Love me I'm a Liberal 

Other notable articles:

Disgraceful dog-whistling: Conservative Candidate Warns Voters Trudeau Might Name Jagmeet Singh His ‘Foreign’ Affairs Minister

Four Green nominees in Quebec made Islamophobic comments, party says

The biggest winner in Canada's election is the military

Dude, where’s my bus? How the election failed public transit

Group looks to help anti-abortion advocates get jobs working for new MPs

NDP targets Greens with misleading claims

10 Questions for Andrew Taylor – Communist

Federal Election 2019: Toronto-Danforth candidate Ivan Byard, Communist Party, answers our questions

Conservatives go dangerously full tin foil hat with email alleging impending mass voter fraud

The federal Conservatives have gone full tin foil hat in their latest email attempt to terrify their voting base with conspiracy nonsense.

In a fundraising missive that literally begins with the outrageous framing "The Liberals are bringing back voter fraud", Stephen McCreary, the "Digital Director" of the party, claims that potentially re-allowing Voter ID cards as one of the things that can be used to vote could be "more than enough to swing an election in their favour."

The full email (which I received tonight at 7:02 pm) is pictured here:

Of course, this is all complete nonsense.

What has happened is that in 2016 Elections Canada -- an entirely non-partisan governmental agency -- recommended green-lighting the use of Voter ID cards as one of the forms of proof of identity that you could provide in order to vote, though it would never be the sole one. You would still have to provide at least one further proof of identity.

The Liberals have agreed to do this and have introduced a bill to this effect. Entirely correctly Liberal MP Andy Fillmore, parliamentary secretary to the minister of democratic institutions, stated that "the main challenge for our electoral democracy is not voter fraud but voter participation." I think there are far deeper reasons that people stay home on election day than not being able to use this card, but there is no doubt that allowing easier access to voting, which is always vilified and opposed by the right, is more fair and democratic as it is primarily people living in poverty, the racialized and the marginalized who have issues around identification.

As the Conservatives feel that these are folks who are less likely to vote for them they are more inclined to create obstacles to voting that will not be obstacles at all to middle-class, upper-middle class or wealthy voters.

The scaremongering of the email is ludicrous.

Even if you assume that all of the "facts" presented here are true, the "errors" are just as likely to be sent (proportionally) to people inclined to vote for the Conservatives, the NDP or Greens as they are to be sent to potential Liberal voters.

Additionally, as already noted, the Voter ID cards will not be allowed to be used without further corroborating documentation and proof.

The idea that the Liberals or anyone else could somehow mobilize all of the people who received a card in error or with an error (though they would have no idea who or where these people are), manage to coordinate them showing up on election day with fake or misleading backup proof of residence and convince them all to vote Liberal is absurd to the point of making Fox News look rational.

It is transparently idiotic.

Yet it plays not only to the increasingly outlandish conspiracy narratives of the right, it also hauls out the anti-immigrant dog-whistle.

"AND, they even get mailed out to non-citizens!"

The horror.

This is followed up with an all-caps emphasis on "LEGAL VOTERS". No subtlety there!

Is there any evidence that hordes of non-citizens will be incorrectly receiving Voter ID cards that they will then use, en masse, to illegally vote Liberal to derail the chances of right-thinking "real" Canadians electing a proper Conservative government?

No. There is none whatsoever. This notion only exists in the minds of right-wingers who somehow feel besieged and threatened by the "other".

This is what makes narratives and emails like this from the Conservatives so dangerous. It is not that the Liberals are the target or that one should fetishize the act of voting. It is that they are transparently attempting to inflame fictional fears about immigrants and voters from marginalized and racialized communities in ways that play to the ugliest, most bigoted threads becoming ever more prevalent within mainstream right wing discourse and thinking.

See also: Stop sharing the false -- and racist -- Ontario niqab driver's licence meme

See also: Stop sharing the refugees vs. seniors internet myths!

Doug Ford Wins, Anthem Protests, Donald Trump & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List June 3 - 10

This week's list of articles, news items and opinion pieces that I see as must reads if you are looking for a roundup that should be of interest to The Left Chapter readers.

This list covers the week of  June 3 - 10. It is generally in order of the date of the article's
release.

1) Conservative MPs High Five, Celebrate Voting Against Recognizing Indigenous Rights as Human Rights

North 99

Conservative MPs Dane Lloyd and Rosemarie Falk were caught high-fiving each other after voting against a bill that ensures Canadian law conforms to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including setting minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of Indigenous Peoples.

Read the full article. 

2) New US ambassador to Germany under fire for rightwing support

Philip Oltermann, The Guardian

German politicians have criticised Donald Trump’s new ambassador to Germany after he said he wanted to “empower” anti-establishment rightwing forces throughout Europe.

Read the full article.

3) The unwarranted presumption of Israeli soldier innocence in the killing of Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar

Jonathan Ofir, Mondoweiss

Last Friday, Palestinian Gazan medic Razan al-Najjar was killed by an Israeli sniper live round to her upper body, while attending to the wounded during Friday’s Great March of Return protests near the Gaza fence. She was clearly marked with an official white uniform jacket, and at a distance of about 100 meters from the fence.

Read the full article.

4) Rob Ford’s widow sues Doug Ford, alleging he has deprived her and her children of millions

Kevin Donovan, The Toronto Star

The widow and children of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford are suing his brother Doug Ford, alleging he has deprived them of millions of dollars, including shares in the family business and a life insurance policy left behind to support his family.

Read the full article.

5) There Is No Good Imperialism: Venezuela Rejects Interventionism at OAS Session

Telesur

"There is no good imperialism. Even though they want to impose the Monroe Doctrine on us, we will triumph with our Bolivarianism," said Arreaza.

Read the full article.

6) Cuba’s socialist system is irrevocable, an unshakable pillar

Granma

Remarks by President Miguel M. Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, during the extraordinary session of the National Assembly of People’s Power 9th Legislature, June 2, introducing the commission charged with drafting and proposing a new Constitution of the Republic.

Read the full article.

7) The Trump sports doctrine: Hypocrisy

Al Neal, People's World

Donald J. Trump has made it abundantly clear he is no fan of the NFL.

Read the full article.

8) SOME EAGLES PLAYERS REFUSED TO ATTEND TRUMP’S SUPER BOWL PARTY — SO HE CANCELED IT

David Gilbert, Vice News

Upset that some of the players refused to attend, Donald Trump Monday canceled a White House party for the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl champs — a move that prompted Philly's mayor to label the president a “fragile egomaniac.”

Read the full article.

9) Unidentified man takes knee during anthem at Trump's 'Celebration of America' event

Brett Samuels, The Hill

A man took a knee during the national anthem at President Trump's "Celebration of America" event Tuesday amid renewed uproar over NFL protests during the song.

Read the full article.

10) LeBron James, Stephen Curry agree: NBA champions won't visit White House

Ben Rohrbach,Yahoo Sports

Since President Donald Trump disinvited the Philadelphia Eagles from their White House visit on Monday, roughly eight months after disinviting the Golden State Warriors this past September, the subject arose during media availability between Games 2 and 3 of the NBA Finals on Tuesday.

Read the full article.

11) Women’s legal clinic fears loss of anti-violence funding in election aftermath

Laurie Monsebraaten, The Toronto Star

More than donations hang in the balance for the Barbra Schlifer Clinic, whose annual fundraiser coincidentally falls on election day.

Read the full article.

12) ‘Star Wars’ Actor Kelly Marie Tran Deletes Instagram After Months Of Harassment

Cam Tyeson, Pedestrian 

Star Wars: The Last Jedi actor and wonderful human sunbeam Kelly Marie Tran has seemingly deleted all the posts off her Instagram feed, with speculation rife that targeted harassment from fans is the cause.

Read the full article.

13) I spent hundreds of hours preparing for moot court. When I got there, I was told to smile more

Amanda Byrd, CBC Radio

I have felt shame, frustration and heartbreak in the face of what happened. But I also feel strong enough to speak up about it, and I still have to believe that the legal profession has the capacity to change. I hope I'm right.

Read the full article.

14) Why A Doctor Accused Of Sexually Abusing 19 Patients Got No Jail Time

Albert Samaha, BuzzFeed News

Prosecutors told Robert A. Hadden’s patients his guilty plea was a win for victims, but the #MeToo movement has some questioning the Manhattan district attorney’s motives.

Read the full article.

15) California judge who handed down 6-month sentence in Brock Turner case recalled

The Associated Press

Northern California voters on Tuesday recalled a judge from office after he sentenced Brock Turner, a former Stanford University swimmer convicted of sexual assault, to a short jail sentence instead of prison.

Read the full article.

16) MASSIVE TRUCKERS’ STRIKE EXPOSES POLITICAL CHAOS AS BRAZIL GEARS UP FOR ELECTIONS IN OCTOBER

Leandro Demori and Piero Locatelli, The Intercept 

IT’S RUSH HOUR in Brazil’s largest cities. But the traffic, which is nearly always chaotic, is flowing smoothly. It’s as if the inhabitants have fled some lethal epidemic: The main universities are closed; basic items like eggs and tomatoes can’t be found in grocery stores; and nearly half of the city buses sit idle in their garages. Worse yet, most of the gas stations in the country have no fuel to sell — the shortage prompts the closing of 10 major airports. In a country that exports more beef than any other, only two of the 109 meat-packing plants with export licenses are operating.

Read the full article.

17) As a Black College Student, Poverty Was My Everyday Life

Aaron Coleman, The Nation

For the country’s colleges, perhaps more so than any other American institution, the case for scaling racially equitable initiatives couldn’t be more clear.

Read the full article.

18) Venezuelan Foreign Minister Condemns 'Illegal OAS Resolution'

Telesur

The resolution proposed by the United States to suspend Venezuela from the OAS needed at least 24 votes, however, they only obtained 19 with 11 abstentions.

Read the full article.

19) Toys ‘R’ Us Workers Take on Private-Equity Barons: ‘You Ought to Be Ashamed’

David Dayen, The Nation

Workers from Toys “R” Us stores across America set up a mock graveyard in the New York City lobby of private-equity giant Bain Capital on Monday. The gravestones read “Toys R Us: 1957-2018” and “Here Lies Geoffrey [the Toys “R” Us mascot], Killed by Wall Street Greed.” Alicia Henson of Lexington, Kentucky, a pregnant woman holding a child in her arms, began to speak about her time with the company. She was jostled by a security guard attempting to shut down the protest. After other workers separated them, Cheryl Claude of South River, New Jersey, took the megaphone.

Read the full article.

20) Palestinians welcome Argentina decision to cancel Israel game

Al Jazeera

Palestinians have welcomed the Argentinian football team's decision to pull out of a planned friendly match with Israel.

Read the full article.

21) Argentina Won’t Play Israel in Soccer Because Slaughtering Palestinians Has Consequences

Robert Mackey, The Intercept

PALESTINIANS CELEBRATED A diplomatic victory on Wednesday as Israel confirmed the cancellation of a high-profile visit to Jerusalem by Argentina’s national soccer team, which had been scheduled for Saturday.

Read the full article.

22) The policing of black Americans is racial harassment funded by the state

Paul Butler, The Guardian

The rap group Public Enemy famously stated that “911 is a joke”. But that was in 1990. These days 911 is dead serious. Anyone in the United States can dial those three numbers and summon people with guns and handcuffs to participate in their anti-black paranoia. It’s racial harassment, sponsored by the government and supported by tax dollars.

Read the full article.

23) Jordan trade unions strike to press for their demands

Farah Najjar, Al Jazeera

Jordan's major trade unions have held one-day general strike in major cities across the Middle Eastern country as part of week-long protests against a controversial proposed tax reform bill and price hikes.

Read the full article.

24) San Juan Mayor Slams Trump For 'Total Neglect' of Puerto Rico

Telesur

Yulin Cruz noted the number of deaths in Puerto Rico ranged between 793 to 8,498,  deeming the official estimate of 64 deaths "a substantial underestimate."

Read the full article.

25) Protesters outraged as Trump administration tears immigrant children from parents

Marilyn Bechtel, People's World

Among protesters who joined the 30-some demonstrations across the U.S. on June 1, opposing the Trump administration’s recently announced policy of forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents at the border, were hundreds who gathered in front of the offices of Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern in downtown Oakland.

Read the full article.

26) The Deadly Incel Movement’s Absurd Pop Culture Roots

Sady Doyle, Medium

Men own the narrative. Unless that changes, nothing will change. The #MeToo movement has made it a bit trendier to give women an empathetic hearing, but gains like these are easily erased. Even still, women often have to come out in massive numbers to bring down even one predator. If a man has to be accused of more than 50 sexual assaults before we see him as a threat, we are still operating under Cassandra rules.

Read the full article.

27) Woman, 22, dies after being set on fire by man her family says stalked her for years

Women in the World

As women’s rights activists in Peru condemned the murder of a young woman who was set on fire in public by her alleged stalker, the country’s president elicited further anger by declaring that women just need to accept that “sometimes that’s how life is.”

Read the full article.

28) Death of Canadian man living in 24-hour coffee shop sparks housing outcry

Ashifa Kassam, The Guardian

Battling cancer and attempting to get by on a fixed income in one of the world’s least affordable housing markets, he turned a Vancouver Tim Hortons into his makeshift home.

Read the full article.

29) Colombia: Gustavo Petro Wins Endorsement of Indigenous, Campesinos Groups

Telesur

This week Gustavo Petro received the support of former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and world renowned economist Thomas Piketty.

Read the full article.

30) Trudeau’s pipeline gambit puts him on wrong side of history

Linda McQuaig, The Toronto Star

Trudeau portrays himself as balancing oil interests and the environment. But when push came to shove, he chose the oil interests. In doing so, he’s put Canada on the wrong side of history.

Read the full article. 

31) The Windrush deportations were wrong – and so are all the others

Luke de Noronha, The Guardian

We now know that nearly 1,000 flights were booked to deport people to the Caribbean in the 12 months up to March. We don’t know exactly how many were deported, but hundreds were forcibly expelled in the year leading up to the Windrush scandal breaking.

Read the full article.

32) Trump revives annual Iftar dinner tradition, but snubs American Muslims

Matt Kwong · CBC

Donald Trump's White House broke a two-decade-old tradition last year by cancelling the president's annual Iftar dinner. On Wednesday night, the annual Ramadan reception, conceived in the 1990s to celebrate Muslim-Americans, was back on.

All that was missing? Muslim-American guests.

Read the full article.

33) Métis community to take control of their child welfare in historic agreement

Cherise Seucharan, The Toronto Star

For the 520 Métis children in foster care in B.C., life could soon change. On Thursday the Métis Nation British Columbia (MNBC) signed an agreement with the province to transfer authority of child welfare to MNBC by 2021.

Read the full article.

34) Despite all the warnings, we are normalising Donald Trump

Gary Younge, The Guardian 

Over the past week alone Trump has launched a trade war with his allies, held an Iftar dinner to mark the holy month of Ramadan, which Muslim groups boycotted, attacked his attorney general for recusing himself from the Russia investigation over a conflict of interest, disinvited Super Bowl winners the Philadelphia Eagles from a White House reception because he had heard several weren’t going to show up, and claimed he has the right to pardon himself. The remarkable thing about this week is that – compared with his behaviour in other weeks – it’s not that remarkable. The political situation in America is many things: it’s exhausting, exasperating, terrifying, volatile, vulgar, unsustainable and unhinged. The one thing it is not, is normal.

Read the full article.

35) Northern Ireland abortion law clashes with human rights, judges say

Owen Bowcott, The Guardian

Pressure is growing on the government to reform Northern Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws after the supreme court concluded that they are incompatible with human rights legislation.

Read the full article.

36) How the free movement of capital across the EU led to the decimation of workers’ rights

Manuel Bueno Del Carpio, The Morning Star

It's bad enough dealing with Sports Direct, Southern Trains, TGI Friday’s, Uber, MacDonald’s and the rest of the bad employers we have in Britain, who’ve forced the low-regulation, low-wage, anti-union employment environment.

Read the full article.

37) Why we may never know if British troops committed war crimes in Iraq

Samira Shackle, The Guardian

The Iraq Historic Allegations Team was set up by the government to investigate claims of the abuse of civilians. After its collapse, some fear the truth will never come out.

Read the full article.

38) SHE WAS KIDNAPPED BY GUERRILLAS AND FORCED TO WORK. THAT QUALIFIES AS MATERIAL SUPPORT FOR TERRORISM, ACCORDING TO IMMIGRATION RULING

Trevor Aaronson, The Intercept

THE HIGHEST U.S. immigration administration authority ruled this week that cooking and cleaning for terrorists, even when done under threat of death, qualifies as providing material support and justification for deporting someone. The immigration court’s catch-all interpretation of material support aligns with how it has been used in federal criminal cases, where the law has allowed prosecutors to charge people for vague, often nonviolent offenses related to terrorism.

Read the full article.

39) FEMA IS FACING HURRICANE SEASON WITH A VASTLY DEPLETED WORKFORCE

Alex Lubben, Vice News

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump marked the beginning of hurricane season by thanking FEMA Administrator Brock Long for the agency's work in responding to last year's disasters. “It’s been amazing and you really have kept quite busy, I would say — unfortunately, we had no choice, we were hit hard,” Trump said.

Read the full article.

40) The Next Four Years: An Ontario election post-mortem

Trish Hennessy, Behind the Numbers

Take a deep breath, Ontario: we have reached the conclusion of this bizarre and dramatic election period. We wade now into unchartered territory.

Read the full article.

41) A Sad Day for Ontario

Ryan McGreal, Raise the Hammer

Despite a scandal-ridden moral shambles of an election campaign, Doug Ford will be Ontario's next Premier and the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party will form a majority with 76 seats. There will be plenty of time for postmortems, recriminations, analyzing and strategizing in the coming days, but for now my overwhelming feeling is sadness.

Read the full article.

42) Ford’s win exposes the angry blind spot of Canadian democracy

Frank Graves and Michael Valpy, The Globe and Mail

Now that the flag of populism has been planted firm in Ontario’s soil, it is necessary to recognize that the province’s new, soon-to-be-sworn-in Progressive Conservative government very much is not a product of Ontario’s traditional conservative constituency.

Read the full article.

43) Spill at Kinder Morgan station near Kamloops, B.C. was larger than first stated by province

CBC News

An oil spill at a Kinder Morgan pipeline pump station north of Kamloops, B.C. was bigger than the province's Environment ministry initially stated.

Read the full article.

44) Swanson seeks COPE council nod, offers tissues to 'mansion tax' critics

Nick Eagland, The Vancouver Sun

Anti-poverty activist Jean Swanson brought her flair for theatrics Saturday to a mansion-lined street in Vancouver, where she announced she is seeking a COPE nomination for council ahead of the fall civic election.

Read the full article.

See also: Razan al-Najjar, Puerto Rico, Conservative Extremists & more -- The Left Chapter Sunday Reading List May 27 - June 3

End Game -- The Ontario Election and Doug Ford

In the end it was not even close.

The polls were wrong again though they were wrong in favour of the ONDP. While many showed a race that was neck-and-neck going into yesterday, the Conservatives ended up winning 40.49% of the vote to the ONDP's 33.57%. The Liberals garnered but 19.59%.

This led to a massive Ford majority government. The ONDP are now the Official Opposition -- a role they have greatly coveted -- while the Liberals did not win enough seats to get party status in the commons. The Greens broke through winning their first seat ever with party leader Mike Schreiner triumphing in Guelph.

42% of voters stayed home.

That should tell us something about how people broadly feel about the "options" on offer and it is a fact that would likely have benefited the left if we actually had one.

You can try to sell shit as Shinola all you want. Doesn't mean the people are going to believe or buy into it.

The question is if the program on offer from the ONDP (never mind the totally spent Liberals) was so "inspiring" why did it motivate all too few people to vote for it?

While voter turnout increased from 2014 by almost 7% to a still sad 58%, the combined total vote of the ONDP and Liberals DECREASED by just over 9% (from a combined 62.4% to a combined 53.16%). The Green vote remained almost identical (4.6% as opposed to 4.84%).

That means that almost all of the new voters showing up voted Ford and Conservative.

All through the election there were clear signs that the ONDP was only being considered by some voters not because they wanted to embrace the ONDP's slightly, kinda in some places, more "left" than the Liberals platform but because they wanted to stop both Wynne and Ford. One poll showed 46% of those leaning NDP were doing so for this reason alone.

This type of negative motivation is often not enough for people to end up going to the polling station when push comes to shove. Though this will take time, the need to build a clear alternative to the status quo parties that can eventually grow to the point where people will not feel they are "wasting" their vote by supporting it has never been clearer.

After last night's results in Ontario activist Gabriel Haythornthwaite's incisive look to the future for the left is an even more important read: Ontario’s 2018 Election: Pessimism Today, Strategic Organizing Tomorrow.

The wages of liberalism in the US was Trump. While Ford is not a Trump, the wages of liberalism, in either the NDP or Liberal version, have proven to be the same kind of force of disillusion here too.

Amidst all of this there are a couple of points that also stand out:

1) While they may have "won" opposition status the NDP and its partisans will regret having supported the 'strategic voting' nonsense line that has been used to keep the left down for decades. Once you have affirmed that the Liberals were right all along when they said "stopping something that is worse is more important than voting for what you believe in or actually want" it is very hard to go back.

As we saw in the 2015 federal election -- where the NDP was also going in as opposition and with far more seats than the Liberals as it will be in 2022 here -- the way voters shift between the "lesser evil" options is based on broad trends as opposed to deep analysis and with the right leader the Liberals will have no problem in bouncing back against the milquetoast ONDP should the circumstances allow.

You can't bury the Liberal Party by promising that you will be a mildly better version of them and by embracing their cynical and defeatist electoral 'strategic' narratives.

2) The ability of the media and both the Conservatives and the Liberals to portray the NDP as "extremists" is in no small part due to the NDP's own efforts to eschew socialism and embrace reactionary, neo-liberal narratives about 'fiscal responsibility'.

To say there was nothing remotely "extreme" about the ONDP's platform would be putting it mildly. But the counter to this is not to actually affirm the narratives that the right has managed to make mainstream that any radical vision of transforming society is somehow 'scary'. By promising up and down that you do not have one and can trusted to efficiently take over the managing of the capitalist state seamlessly and with no reason for Bay St. to be worried, a party reinforces the validity of the idea that people should fear a left agenda.

Bay St. is going to try to bury any even mildly progressive reforms -- just look at the attacks Wynne faced with the minimum wage and new labour laws as well as what happened with the Rae government between 1990-1995 -- let alone an actually radical one.

We cannot counter this by capitulating to Bay St's narratives, but only by confronting them point-by-point and ceaselessly working to push the overall political discourse to the left. Leftists have done this before, including in Canada, and they can certainly do it again.

3) The ONDP knows now it can dangle a platform that is only marginally to the "left" of the Liberals and get great applause and largely uncritical support from many left activists. For example (as I have noted before) the Pharmacare plank was farcically limited in its scope, though it did at least somewhat embrace the principle of universality. The terrible childcare plan and the means-tested dental care plan did not even do that. Yet all were hailed by many former critics of the party as something to celebrate and be excited about.

While there was a leftist argument to be made for supporting the ONDP on election day in spite of its limitations due to the alternatives, those who tried to portray this last platform as a significant shift to the left or as a truly transformative or social democratic one have emboldened greatly the party's right and its strategists.

Now that Horwath and the ONDP are the opposition, we can surely anticipate that they will work to make themselves seen as the responsible "government in waiting" as the party did federally from 2011 to 2015. They can do so safe in the knowledge that half-baked, neo-liberal, means-tested  program proposals will be lauded by many as being something they are not.

There are going to be very difficult days ahead as Ford first seeks to stop and dismantle some of what was achieved in the final year of the Wynne government and then turns to gutting social programs and to deep austerity under the guise of "efficiency".

These days will be made harder if the left allows its efforts to resist to be dissipated by politicians and leaders beholden to narrow electoral methods and opportunistic careerist goals. Building further mass alternatives of left activism and resistance to Ford outside of and independent of this is now of immediate critical importance.

Toronto Misogynist Terror Attack, Gaza, Doug Ford & more -- April and May on The Left Chapter in review

April and May saw 54 posts of various kinds on The Left Chapter. These included the launch of our weekly Ontario election round-up the most recent installment of which was Bogus versus real 'scandals', the difficult road to an NDP majority and other news -- The Left Chapter Ontario Provincial Election Roundup Week Three.

Several posts came very close to making the number six spot on our top six list (in terms of hits) including Vote NDP to stop Ford...but don't try to sell it as supporting a leftist agenda, Communist Party launches Ontario provincial election campaign in Toronto -- "Ignite the movement for Socialism" and The staggering hypocrisy of 'progressive' politicians in Canada will come back to haunt. 

Meanwhile many of our vintage posts were among our most successful to date including Visit the USSR - A look at the Soviet Union in the late 1960s from Intourist (w. photos) and The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic 1982 - History, Art & Development w. Photos & Illustrations.

Thanks very much to all our readers and contributors.

If you have an article, editorial, analysis, recipe or story you would like to contribute there are details on how to do so on our Submissions page as well as at the end of this post.

Without any further ado, here are the top six posts, in terms of hits, from April and May.

1) We all could have seen Minassian's misogynist attack coming if we had wanted to look

Horrified. Disgusted. Angry. Those words and many others can accurately describe how myself and so many others feel about the terrible, senseless attack in Toronto that claimed the lives of 10 innocent people and seriously injured 14 others.

But what I am not is surprised.

Read more.

2) The grotesque absurdity of left-liberal support for porn and prostitution needs to be questioned after Minassian's misogynist attack

It is important and long overdue to see people and the mainstream media talking about how objectification and the sense of entitlement by so many men to women's bodies and to "sex" (it is really rape they are interested in) leads to exceptionally dangerous outcomes.

But it amazes me that so many remain unwilling to draw the obvious and direct line of this type of misogynist thinking by men to the racist, colonialist, misogynist and degrading institutions of pornography and prostitution in which countless women and girls (as well as some boys and men) are brutalized in horrific ways daily by men around the world.

Read more.

3) Conservatives send grotesque fundraising email out in wake of Gaza massacres

"As mass killings horrify the world, Netanyahu’s circle dwindles" is the headline of a Doug Saunders article in The Globe and Mail...but that circle certainly still seems to include the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC).

Read more.

4) Doug Ford wants you to subsidize the poverty wages of corporations

While many leftists would absolutely agree that minimum wage workers should not be paying income tax -- taxes instead should be steeply raised on people like Doug Ford -- this can never be seen as a fair alternative to demanding that businesses pay higher minimum wages.

Because it is not one!

Read more. 

5) Over 2,200 activists sign letter to Trudeau opposing the repeal of PCEPA

Over 2,200 "advocates, women’s rights and anti-trafficking organizations, sex trade

survivors, survivor-led networks, and concerned individuals from around the world dedicated to protecting the human rights of women and girls" have signed an Open Letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding that his government reject calls to repeal the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA).

Read more.

6) For Ford fact and policy free is the way to go

Scratch the surface at all and we know that a Ford government in Ontario will bring massive cutbacks, austerity, the rollback of newly won rights for workers and a deep hostility to any attempts to redress historic and systemic injustices or oppression.

For this very reason we can expect that Ford and the Conservatives will do their very best to see that the surface remains unscratched.

Read more. 

Our top food related post of the period was: Trini Gardens Brings Excellent West Indian - Chinese Fusion to South Etobicoke

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, event or petition, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

See also: James Laxer, the Courage to Leap, Ryan Meili & more -- February and March on The Left Chapter in review

Bogus versus real 'scandals', the difficult road to an NDP majority and other news -- The Left Chapter Ontario Provincial Election Roundup Week Three

With eight days to go until election day the polls, on balance, show a statistical dead heat between the Conservatives and the NDP in Ontario. Wynne's Liberal government seems all but certain to lose the June 7 vote -- in fact, they face the very real prospect of decimation -- while the NDP appears to have held their position in the minds of voters as the progressive alternative to the dangerous Ford agenda.

With the NDP in this position -- and even ahead of the Conservatives in some surveys -- various media outlets have hurled a series of micro-"scandals" their way that, for the most part, are totally absurd and reek of desperation.

Of greater concern for those who want to see Ford lose, though, is that if the NDP and Conservatives are really neck-and-neck, both with levels of support in the high 30s, the path to a Ford majority is far clearer and more likely than the path to a Horwath one.

In this, the third of our weekly The Left Chapter round-ups we look at this past week's themes, news and developments.

Should Horwath be walking away with this?

While the ONDP has risen rather dramatically in the polls since the writ dropped, there is ample evidence that had they been running on a platform that was more inspiring and was not simply a tiny smidgen to the "left" of the Liberal one they could very well be walking away with this election right now.

For example, as Supriya Dwivedi noted on Global: 

A new poll by Ipsos conducted exclusively for Global News has found that a significant number of NDP voters, 46 per cent, are voting for the NDP in order to keep another party out of power. In other words, the NDP is benefitting from the unpopularity of the other two options, and seeming like the least bad option.

We have noted this dynamic at play in the past as well.

The difficult path to an NDP victory

Some polls have the NDP slightly ahead, while others have them slightly behind the Conservatives. Another poll has the NDP more significantly ahead. For reasons that will become clear shortly, folks wanting to see Ford stopped had best hope that this last one is the closest to the truth.

According to the CBC's poll tracker the NDP sits at 36.2% while the Conservatives are at 35.7%. Yet despite this the CBC projects a 70% likelihood of a Ford majority if these numbers are accurate.

Why?

Éric Grenier's excellent article, What the 1990 election can - and can't - tell us about the Ontario NDP's chances today, which is worth reading in full, outlines this very well:

Despite the relatively close margin between the PCs and the NDP in the polls, the Poll Tracker still heavily favours the PCs to win a majority government.
This is because the PC vote is more efficient — the party has a better base of support and is ahead in the Greater Toronto Area, where nearly half the seats in the province are located.
The projections suggest that for the New Democrats to win even a slim majority, they may need a lead of three to five points over the PCs provincewide.
In 1990, however, the New Democrats won a comfortable majority — nearly 40 seats ahead of Peterson's Liberals — despite beating the Liberals in the popular vote by only five per cent.
One of the factors contributing to the NDP's 1990 majority win (something even Rae at the time didn't see coming) was the presence of two small right-wing parties.
The Family Coalition and the Confederation of Regions (COR) parties combined for nearly five per cent of the vote provincewide in 1990. In 11 ridings, the combined vote of the Family Coalition and the COR was greater than the margin between the losing PC and winning NDP candidates.
Had enough of these votes gone to the PCs instead, the NDP would have fallen just short of a majority. The split on the right made the NDP's vote more efficient than it otherwise would have been.
Though there are several smaller right-of-centre parties running in this election, none are expected to have the same kind of impact. If they did, the NDP's chances of winning a majority government in 2018 would be better.

The disturbing reality is that Ford could win a substantial majority with a vote as low as 35-37% while the ONDP is very unlikely to.

Ludicrous NDP "scandals" while the Conservatives face real ones

Various right-wing media outlets across the province, most notably the Toronto Sun, have been seeming to try to derail the NDP's momentum with a variety of absurd micro-"scandals" that are so silly they reek of desperation.

Examples include digging up an allegedly shared meme on Facebook implying that an NDP candidate is sympathetic to Nazism when she very clearly is not, and finding a photo of an NDP candidate holding a sign at a rally a decade ago that read "Fuck the Police" -- a sentiment which many people, especially in marginalized and racialized communities have had every reason to express over the years, though Horwath and her candidate, of course, disavowed it. 

These alleged "gotcha" moments are isolated and either from many years ago or taken out of context and mean quite a bit less than, say, The Ford family’s history with drug dealing as outlined in a Globe and Mail expose in 2013 or a Conservative candidate saying "I think if someone wants to open a business and only hire people of one race...I think they should have that right" as recently as 2015.

Meanwhile, right now during the election an "Ontario PC Candidate Shares Theory Linking Schools and Hospitals to Secret ‘Globalist’ Conspiracy" while another "Carleton PC candidate says she doesn't believe climate change is man-made".

Further, of course, we saw the "Liberals claim Ford participated in 'bogus' membership sales, intimidated a PC nominee", which is a very serious allegation. This led to the farce of "Doug Ford dodges journalists before fleeing Brantford event through the back door".

I think to an objective observer it is perfectly clear which are the "scandals" actually worth paying attention to.

Buck a beer

You know a campaign is both very concerned and reaching low when:

The tweet and meme was met, rightly, with considerable derision.

Doug Ford releases detailed platform

Crickets.

Dumbest move of the election award

Memo to anyone, from any party, running anywhere, ever...this is something you should never do:

Liberal candidate crashes NDP Leader Andrea Horwath campaign event in Etobicoke

Further news/articles of interest about the campaign:

Letter from the Co-Chairs of the Danforth Jewish Circle, Multifaith Committee about NDP candidate Tasleem Raiz

This White Nationalist Says Doug Ford is Sending Him Anti-Immigrant ‘Dog Whistle’ Messages

Horwath announces three weeks of paid vacation for full-time workers

Ontario election path to victory runs through the 905

See also: Horwath rises as Ford stumbles and other news -- The Left Chapter Ontario Provincial Election Roundup Week Two

NDP Surges, Doug Ford Opposes Rent Control, Hydro One & more -- The Left Chapter Ontario Provincial Election Roundup Week One

The provincial election campaign in Ontario is now a week old and with only three weeks to go until election day the desire to "change" who is arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic appears to be strong enough that the tired Liberal regime's fate may well be sealed.

Momentum has swung, at least for now, to Andrea Horwath's New Democrats as the primary alternative to the looming Doug Ford catastrophe, though not so much due to any great enthusiasm on the part of Ontario voters but rather due to the paucity of choices.

In this, the first of what will be weekly The Left Chapter round-ups we look at this past week's themes, news and developments.

Fully 74 per cent of voters wish they had a different choice

A poll taken as the writ dropped found profoundly deep voter dissatisfaction with the various mainstream "choices" on offer. Almost three-quarters of those questioned said they wished "there was another option other than Liberal Leader Kathleen Wynne, PC Leader Doug Ford and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath."

This same poll also found that while it was true that Horwath was the most "popular" leader (or perhaps least unpopular) this was not based on any great embrace of her leadership by the public:

Pollster Darrell Bricker said while Horwath has an advantage on the favourability front, it’s more “neutral” since the other two have fairly high negative favourability.
“Andrea Horwath comes up better because she’s less disagreeable, not because she’s so much more likeable,” Bricker explained.

I looked at what this poll meant and its broader implications in the piece: Deep ennui greets launch of an Ontario election that is Ford's to lose

The NDP surges 

The polls all seem to agree that the NDP is surging right out of the gate. With Kathleen Wynne remaining deeply unpopular -- out of all proportion to the actual popularity of the government's recent polices and budget going into the election -- Andrea Horwath and crew seem to be shaping up as the progressive alternative to Ford in the minds of voters.

The CBC poll tracker shows the NDP up by around 3.5 points to 30.6% while the Liberals are down by 1.2% to 23.7%.

Upward trends very early in a campaign can be a double-edged sword as they leave plenty of time for opponents and the natural evolution of events to bring these numbers back down. There are countless examples of opposition parties going into elections much stronger than they finished them, the Tom Mulcair led federal NDP in 2014 being a case in point.

But there at least two reasons that NDP partisans can hope that the trend in this case may have staying power.

The first is the aforementioned general dislike for Wynne and the sense that her government should be sent packing. There comes a point -- as happened with the Rae government in 1995 -- where, as Globe and Mail analyst Adam Radwanski put it "If voters aren’t willing to buy what Wynne’s Liberals are selling, none of their advantages matter."  He further noted, when referring to Wynne's slick new ads "All the production values in the world can only go so far if voters just don’t want to hear from you any more."

How low could Wynne and the Liberals drop in the polls? Very low indeed. And a great deal more of their vote is likely to go to the NDP than the Conservatives.

Which brings us to the second reason for optimism among New Democrats, which is that it is rather easy to make the transition between them for centrists and mild progressives in this context as there so little that separates the two parties ideologically.

It is akin to dropping Coke in favour of Coke Zero.

While in most cases this would hurt the NDP -- and has time and again including in Ontario in the 2014 election -- here it allows them to transition to being a new and nonthreatening liberal party for voters scared of Ford but tired of Wynne's baggage.

As Thomas Walkom put it in the Star "Experts can parse the differences between the Liberal and NDP child care or pharmacare promises. But I suspect most voters see the two party platforms as near-identical."

Various NDP partisans may have deluded themselves otherwise, but I suspect Walkom is right.

Of course, the other side to that is that should Wynne somehow regain her footing or numbers start to trend back her way, the transition back to the Liberals from the NDP would be just as effortless.

Either way, with the Conservatives remaining steady at above 40% support the two parties are right now vying for who would be the official opposition to a massive Ford majority unless they can bring that support level down.

Doug Ford says he prefers the "market" to rent control

If you thought the housing market with soaring rents and low availability could not possibly get worse for tenants in Toronto, you would be wrong.

If Doug Ford gets elected they will get much worse.


Hydro board raises

Despite the fact that they only have their positions thanks to Wynne's short-sighted and deeply unpopular decision to privatize the bulk of Hydro One, the dim bulbs running the show there seem determined to tank her government.

How else to interpret the news that in the lead-up to an election where hydro rates are a central issue the part-time members of the utility's board of directors gave themselves a big raise?

Article: Hydro One's part-time board members gave themselves $25K raises

Of course, while Doug Ford pontificates about replacing these clueless rich people with his own group of clueless rich people, Andrea Horwath is correct in saying that the only long-term solution to hydro issues in the province is to bring Hydro One back into public hands.

That it will then be run in a fundamentally more democratic or egalitarian way under an NDP government, however, seems unlikely to say the least.

Green Party

The Green Party launched its campaign in Toronto running on a fairly progressive platform that you can read on their website. The prospects that there is room for a third mildly progressive party to gain traction in an election like this one would appear bleak.

What is clear though is that the media and the other parties are doing their best to make sure they remain that way with the Greens being shut out from the debates.

Party leader Mike Schreiner confidently predicted "We are going to make history and we are going to elect Ontario's first Green MPPs". Regardless of whether or not that would be a good thing, at this point it would not seem to be in the cards.

Two major parties run candidate slates that are over 50% women 

In an historic development two of the major parties running candidates province wide have slates that are comprised of over 50% women.  

The NDP lead the pack at 56% while the Greens followed closely at 52%.

Communist Party launch

While we are in an election where "change", as Ontario Communist Party leader Dave McKee put it,  really amounts to putting a new "jockey on the same old horse", the Communists launched their campaign on a platform that offers a genuine, unequivocally anti-capitalist vision.

I attended their campaign launch in Toronto and you can read about it at: Communist Party launches Ontario provincial election campaign in Toronto -- "Ignite the movement for Socialism"

Further news/articles of interest about the campaign:

Another debate, another Doug Ford comment about Kathleen Wynne's smile

Avalanche of detail overwhelms Kathleen Wynne's message

No longer polling third, Horwath and the NDP are fending off attacks from both sides

NDP's Horwath has 'no interest' in coalition with Liberals

See also: Doug Ford wants you to subsidize the poverty wages of corporations