Universal and Public: A union's role is to fight for expanded public services, not to replace them.
With the neo-liberal program still in full swing after nearly fourty years, some on the political left fall victim to cynicism. Some even start to question labour's ability to win victories or even hold ground. They advocate for unions to take-up services dropped by the state such as unemployment support. Unfortunately, the promotion of this analysis is ahistorical, leads to short-sighted insular politics and undermines the longer-term project for working-class power.
Blaming Students for the Supposed Lack of Skilled Tradespeople Is Nonsense | Citizens' Press
The neo-liberal promise of a future with high demand for knowledge economy workers (that never came) moved many away from skilled-trades and toward university degrees. For the Tories to now blame students for getting BAs instead of going to trades college and becoming a welder shows both a cynical disregard of history and this government's own incompetence when it comes to economic planning. Workers and students must show that the alternative to the Tory economic program is the only way forward that will work for Canada.
In Opposition to Raising the Retirement Age: We do not all live that healthy, that long.
Contrary to recent pronouncements in the press, not all of us have a great life expectancy or equally benefit from the rise in average age at death. The right-wing's natural impulse to start talking about increasing costs of retirement or suggestions of raising the retirement age should be challenged.
US military aid to keep flowing to Egypt | AFP
‘Bloodbath that is not a bloodbath': Why Egypt is doomed
Dozens Dead as Egyptian Forces Commit 3rd Mass Killing of Pro-Morsi Demonstrators | Democracy NOW!
'Alastair Beach, Cairo correspondent for The Independent, has been visiting morgues near Rabaa al-Adawiya Square where scores of bodies are reportedly being held. Speaking to us from a hospital where the injured are being treated, Beach says he has personally counted about 83 or 84 bodies today, most of them with gunshot wounds to the head, indicating they have been shot by police snipers.'