What do you think about the student strike in Quebec?

What do you think of the Manifesto for a Maple Spring?

Some of the Politics, Re-Spun crew explore it from each of our perspectives:

1. Are people naive to expect the Quebec tuition protesters to be the leaders of a Maple Spring to expand the Arab Spring from 2011 through Canada this year?

Quebec Students and a Maple Spring continued »

Below is a recent tweet from a new worker/NDP/union attack Twitter i.d. talking about how awful unionized workers are. Read it, then let’s de-spin it for sanity:

Average salary in BC $44k, average teacher salary $70k bced.gov.bc.ca/reporting #Underpaid #Overworked #Lies #BCPoli #BCNDP #BCTF

via Twitter / @NotBCNDP: Average salary in BC $44k, ….

Firstly, teachers have at least a four year university degree, plus an extra year of teacher training. The average working person in BC doesn’t have that much training.

Secondly, the average years of experience for teachers is over 12. That puts them at the top of the a long scale of pay increments from increased experience. This comes from a high proportion of baby boomers in the public school system.

Do you think people should be paid more if they have more training and experience?

If not, I’d love to hear why.

The agenda here is to demean skilled workers, unionized workers, public sector workers, highly educated workers and workers who make more than they would than if they weren’t unionized.

The agenda here is to convince non-union workers that they should hate unionized workers and be jealous and angry with what they have. This is part of the class war we’ve been in for decades: turning workers against each other.

Unions provide better wages, working conditions, worker protections, benefits and pensions for people. This is a good thing. Non-union workers should be able to get paid better and have better conditions at work, especially when they’re doing work that is comparable to union work.

So let’s make sure we don’t let worker bashing Twitter sock puppet parody i.d.’s twist statistics without context to continue eroding worker rights and opportunities. This is about making a better future for us all. This is also what the Occupy Movement is all about.

And if you know any non-unionized workers, let’s help them find a union to help improve their lives!

Michelle Yeoh during her visit with Suu Kyi outside her house gates in Rangoon.

Coming out in the heels of Aung San Suu Kyi recent electoral breakthrough of her National League for Democracy, The Lady, is an epic feature film directed by Luc Besson, about the Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Michelle Yeoh’s true to life depiction of Suu Kyi’s political life as the Uniter of the Burmese peoples’ democratic aspirations gives us a very accurate understanding of the events that led to her pro-longed house arrest. She was no Iron Lady but Suu Kyi was called the Steel Orchid.  This film really helps us understand why and how she used her time in solitude to read and write her ideas about democracy and justice.

Yeoh describes the film as “an incredible love story” against the background of “political turmoil”. Paris Match names the film an extraordinary story of love between her deceased husband Michael Aris played by David Thewlis, and a woman who sacrifices her personal happiness for her people. Michelle Yeoh called the film “a labour of love” but also confessed it had felt intimidating for her to play the Nobel Prize winner.

During the shooting of the film, news broke that Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest had been lifted. Luc Besson hesitated to believe what he saw on TV because it looked so much like his recent footage. Yeoh used her spare time to visit Suu Kyi immediately. She says that she got the feeling she was still on the film set during the visit because Luc Besson had recreated the house so accurately. On 22 June 2011 Yeoh wanted to visit Suu Kyi a second time but was deported, reportedly over her portrayal of Suu Kyi. Yeoh watched about 200 hours of audiovisual material on Suu Kyi and took lessons in Burmese to get it all right. This really pays off and becomes evident when she delivers Suu Kyi’s historic first speeches in public in Burmese.

I had previously been under the impression that the Huffington Post was a generally a left-liberal sort of enterprise. However, it appears that one does not win a Pulitzer these days without some token “dissent.” After all, we know how difficult it is for right-wing perspectives to be heard in our current media environment.

Enter one J.J. McCullough, Huff Canada’s resident conservative iconoclast—or something. In a recent blog, McCullough weighed in on the question of the ongoing student protests in Quebec, providing a sort of “media survey” wherein he concludes, essentially, that the corporate media is not on the side of the students. I certainly hope that you were sitting down for that revelation because this sort of hard-hitting analysis is truly rare these days. McCullough brings to bear this astounding body of evidence to convince us that therefore we too should wipe our hands of the students’ struggle. I guess the argument being, there but for the grace of Canwest go I.

In any case, McCullough did attempt to provide a “balanced” account of the debate by noting that “there are a few public commentators in Canada who are not dripping with patronizing distain [sic] for the strikers, though one has to venture pretty far outside the mainstream media bubble to find ‘em.”

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the fringes of the mainstream media bubble.

Re: Huffington Post & the Quebec Spring (Again!) continued »