Category Archives: Politics

A Better World is Needed, Activism, Agriculture, Canada, Class War, Climate Change, Conservatism, Conservative Party of Canada, Democracy, Energy, Environment, Equality, Executive Overdrive, Family, Feminism, First Nations, Health, Housing, Identity, Idle No More, International Relations, Justice, Media, Millennials, Morality, Neo-Conservatism, Neoliberal Economics, Occupy Vancouver, Politics, Poverty, Privatization, Quebec, Racism, Society, Tarsands, Unions

11 Weeks of Daily Harper Protests

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The Harper Re-election Disaster Bus Totalitarianism: daily, for 11 weeks!

Get used to this.

People hate Harper and his Conservatives. We will see through his weak attempt to wedge oppositions parties by running a long election campaign because he has more money to spend.

Saturation will come fast.

We will remember how much contempt he holds for people and democracy.

We will listen to his 5 non-answers to 5 media questions each day and we will be constantly reminded of how much we can’t stand what he has done to Canada.

And we will see this. Every day:

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A Better World is Needed, British Columbia, Class War, Corporations, Equality, Family, Identity, Justice, Labour Theory of Value, Millennials, Morality, Neoliberal Economics, Poverty, Privatization, Society, Vancouver, Work

Vancouver’s Co-Working Co-op Stimulates Worker Empowerment

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Coworking gratis? A Verona da settembre!Tuesday night in the back room of The Tipper bar/bistro/restaurant on Kingsway at Victoria we are holding our Inception Meeting for a new kind of co-working space in Vancouver, one structured as a co-op.

You can read about the project in The Georgia Straight piece last week, and on the project webpage at Incipe, the consulting workers’ co-op that is spawning this co-op. Incipe, in-CHEE-pay, is Latin for “Begin!” And you can register for the [free] meeting here. And if you want to be involved and informed, you can sign up for the e-newsletter here.

We will be starting forming the community of people eager to take part in a new way of doing co-working, as equal owners of the whole enterprise instead of clients of for-profit corporate co-working spaces, which are how most of the world’s co-working spaces are run.

But considering the fact that people who work, study, think, research, and volunteer from home are often disempowered and vulnerable, they need support.

So they gravitate to co-working spaces because of possibilities of serendipity and synergy and connecting with people to envision greatness with, over coffee. Because trying to do that in a Starbucks has a slim chance of much success.

But one of the key principles of co-working is to build community. And why do we have communities? To support each other.

And, it turns out, co-ops are all about building community and supporting each other in democratic workplaces within an intentional progressive economic climate.

So there’s a natural fit to building a co-working space that is a co-op. And it’s also natural to convene the space for people who understand this, to get to know one another and start building the community so that we can all assess our collective needs, desires, dreams, visions and capacity for mutual aid and support.

From this, we will do the heavy lifting to find our co-working space.

So, consider how precarious work has become for so many people!

It has been a rough couple generations for working people, with a notable increase in precariousness of work.

Downsizing, contracting out, layoffs, people in the middle of their working lives being flung through the windows of corporate towers only to have a difficult time finding work because employers may prefer to hire much younger people.

And while many people choose the freelance, contractor, entrepreneur consultant lifestyle, many people who’ve been canned are forced into fending for themselves, trying to leverage their skills, training and experience into something useful. They are one form of the precariat: the precarious proletariat.

Others in the precariat class include young people who typically can’t get work in their fields they have trained in, or find corporate or organizational structures grotesquely tyrannical and impediments to optimizing their work-life-activism elements of existence. They end up being precariats too. Our Incipe consulting co-op itself formed out of this very dynamic!

So our goals in creating a co-working co-op space include these:

  1. Helping people work outside their homes.
  2. Helping people have meaningful ownership.
  3. Helping people feel some community in their labouring.
  4. Helping people connect with others who can build synergy with each other.

But one of the most important goals in this whole project is to recognize that workers are disempowered, disconnected and devalued. And to fix that, we need to build support networks for people. And one of the ways to do that is to build a co-working space that is co-operatively owned, just like MEC or your credit union or Modo or other small and massive co-ops around the world.

So, scroll back up to see the links to getting more information about our co-working space in development. Get involved, because we need you and your originality!

And whether you need a 24/7 space or a desk away from home for a few hours each week that costs about as much as the coffee you need to buy to camp out on Starbucks’ wifi, this ownership model is for you.

Remember, co-working is about empowerment. And so are co-ops!

A Better World is Needed, Activism, Media, Politics

Is It Time YOU Write With Politics, Re-Spun?

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penswordHello!

It’s time. Time to consider writing with us. We’re expanding our crew and you may be the kind of person we’re looking for.

How would you know? Here are the four steps.

  1. Read the About Politics, Re-Spun page. If you understand that, you’ve passed #1!
  2. Read George Monbiot’s essay called Career Advice, written more than a decade ago. It’s what motivated me to start Politics, Re-Spun in the first place!
  3. Read Jasmin Mujanović’s entire piece about how to be a significant voice in the world. His clip about how he started with Politics, Re-Spun is right here, below. Read it, follow the link and read the whole thing!
  4. If you have made it this far, you’ve passed the initial informal screen. Congratulations! You likely have at least an acorn of an idea of how you could fit with us: niches, voice, agenda, ideology, individuality, insight, integrity. Scroll down below Jasmin’s excerpt and read about how to light that match.
  5. [Optional] Feel free to pass this onto anyone you deem worthy.

When I began seriously blogging, I did so with a terrific little outfit called Politics, Re-Spun. I was so eager for the opportunity to have someone (anyone) read my writing that I produced the equivalent of free verse prose. As it turns out, there is something to be said for editorial constraints after all.

Nevertheless, the blog was a launching pad and as my focus increasingly sharpened on the Balkans, so did the attention I received, in turn. Suffice it to say, from there I moved on to more region-specific blogs which, in time, eventually led to some general interest publications.

Asymmetric warfare: SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ACADEMICS – Jasmin Mujanović.

Politics, Re-Spun is Expanding Its Writing Crew!

Hello!

12 years old now and just having passed 1,000 posts, Politics, Re-Spun is looking to expand its writing crew of editorialists.

Would you fit?

  1. Do you know what spin is?
  2. Do you know how to re-spin messaging by exploring the source, context, agenda, audience, etc.; then re-framing the issue to achieve a better policy goal?
  3. Are you interested in social, political, economic and environmental justice?
  4. Do you have a unique and compelling writing voice?
  5. Do you enjoy ranting, while staying grounded in facts?
  6. Do you have a vision for a better community, city, region, country, world?
  7. And, optionally:
    1. Since all art is political, what kind of artistic insight/talent/experience might you possess?
    2. Might you understand intersectionality?
    3. Are you maybe a member of a politically, economically or socially marginalized demographic/community whose voices are often ignored by elites and the media?
    4. Have you maybe enjoyed being published in the past, anywhere?

So whether or not you already have your own blog/outlet, if you can answer most or all of these questions, and you can relate to the work on the website, and you’d like an informed, intentional audience of thousands of people to see your work every month, you would probably fit in!

How to apply:

  1. Email me [see below].
  2. Commit to writing 50-800 word pieces at least 6-12 times each year. Yes! That’s the word range.
  3. Send us your name, email, whatever social media details you’d like to share, 2 samples of 200-800 word pieces you’ve written/published, and a 75 word bio [covering your writing, political/artistic and whatever interesting personal curiosities].

Thanks for pondering possibilities,

Stephen Elliott-Buckley
Stephen@politicsrespun.org

Colonialism, Conservative Party of Canada, Democracy, Idle No More, Imperialism, International Relations, Racism

More of Harper’s First Nations Racism

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The federal government tells CBC News that 84 First Nations have until Wednesday to post their audited financial statements for the last fiscal year, including the salaries and expenses of their chiefs and councillors.
The federal government tells CBC News that 84 First Nations have until Wednesday to post their audited financial statements for the last fiscal year, including the salaries and expenses of their chiefs and councillors.

Pam Palmater is one of the most important voices in Canada in this young century so far. Here’s another reason why:

Below she calls out some racism in the form of settler-occupied hypocrisy.

The first nations, so go the racists, are incompetent and corrupt. Like the unions and the poor. That’s why we have Bill C-377 to make the unions pay for working for working people. That’s why Jean Swanson had to write Poor Bashing.

And since the racists and Conservative Party [including the overlap there] think the first nations need to be transparent to us, we have a new bill, C-27, to make them give themselves an exercise in transparency to justify their leadership.

Except federal politicians don’t have to live up to the same standard. Are there corruption and conflict of interest in political bodies in Canada? Yes. This bill, however, will do nothing to explore and alter the generations-old dynamic of politicians’ contempt for democracy.

That kind of hypocrisy is racism. Don’t dance around with weak narratives. Call it what it is.

Imagine if any political leaders in Canada had to report their personal wealth in addition to the salary of their public office. Prime Minister Harper is the 6th highest paid political leader in the world with a salary of approximately $300k/year. Harper not only makes 7 times what the average Canadian makes, but makes far more than other world leaders with much larger populations and economies.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/stephen-harper-6th-highest-paid-world-leader-study-134621685.html

But let’s forget about his salary for a minute. What is Prime Ministers and federal politicians had to publicly disclose their PERSONAL wealth? Then we are no longer talking about over-paid Prime Ministers, we are talking about million dollar Prime Ministers. Stephen Harper’s personal wealth has been estimated at $5M. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin is in the hundreds of millions. Why the double standard?  Why did so many federal MPs refuse to disclose their own expenses? I agree there is an issue of accountability in Canada, but it’s with the federal government, and not First Nations.

Indigenous Nationhood: Myth of the Crooked Indians: C-27 First Nations Financial Transparency Act.

Conservative Party of Canada, Democracy, Liberal Party of Canada, NDP

Whitby-Oshawa Shows the Need for Active NDP-Liberal Cooperation

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The Pundits Guide has a spectacular analysis of what it takes to almost take out a strong Conservative seat in a by-election. See below.

It shows that a relatively weak NDP campaign with a very strong Liberal campaign almost is enough.

What more does it take?  Ask Nathan Cullen and others in the NDP and Liberal orbits who know that more actual NDP-Liberal cooperation and coordination is necessary to defeat the Conservatives. They won’t be decimated, but they will still be in government without far more intentional Anything But Conservative coordination in our broken electoral system.

If NDP and Liberal arrogance and devotion to the FPTP crap shoot of absolute power continue to remain too strong, we get more Harper, a privatized CBC, the end of Medicare, more bombing foreign nations to get Harper some more Tough Military Leader badges, and the end of most of the rest of our social programs.

Plus, since the Conservatives are criminals [the Party pleading guilty to election fraud, plus Dean Del Mastro], expect they’ll cheat again in the next election. That can’t help.

So. More coordination and cooperation, or Harper cheats his way to a second majority. And that would be on us.

 

Whitby-Oshawa, ON - Party Vote Share, 2000 - 2014

The Liberals certainly put in a herculean effort on the campaign, which paid off in a restored vote share and second-place standing as against their nemeses in the NDP (which presciently downplayed both its campaign efforts and expectations ahead of time).

Yet even draining the NDP of all but its most core base vote in this typical red-blue race in the 905 East, the Liberals were unable to pass the Conservatives, who again confounded Forum Research as they had done so many other pollsters in Ontario during the last federal election campaign with a substantial ballot-box bonus.

In other words, even though the Liberals have been successful in completely rebooting their field operations and adopting more modern campaign techniques for voter targeting, identification and GOTV, the Conservative ground game is still superior in Ontario and well capable of getting the job done, in spite of the Liberals’ superior penetration of the media spin game.

By-Election Shocker! Conservatives retain Whitby-Oshawa  ››  Pundits’ Guide.

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Democracy, Politics

A Year Without Politics – Month 1

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Just after 9am on October 1st, I sat down at my computer, left every political group I was a member of, unfollowed every political page I was a fan of (except PRS, because I write here), and hid every political post in my newsfeed posted in the previous 12 hours. I ended up hiding 16 posts, including almost every post made by one of my favourite people… and the bulk of those 12 hours were overnight.

I found myself questioning what constituted “political” an awful lot. This study that shows children who grow up on dairy farms have 1/10th the risk of developing allergies is basically just science, but the underlying issues of how and where we live is political. This post about how we should just teach kids that sex is about pleasure is a parenting concern, but attitudes toward sexual education have political ties.

There are political overtones to articles about parenting as a member of Generation X, articles about Ebola, articles about food. Where does the line get drawn? Eventually I decided that if someone without a lot of political awareness wouldn’t consider the political ties to a subject, it could probably stay. But man, my news feed was boring. Quizzes, petty complaints, videos of funny cats, and knitting patterns.

Unsure of what to read, or where to read it, I turned to Buzzfeed. But even Buzzfeed was a political landmine. A sampling of the front page headlines brought:

  • Hong Kong Walk to Freedom
  • 16 Women Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing the Way Business is done in the ARab world
  • Coming Thursday: When Battered women are treated as criminals
  • Russia Suspends U.S. Exchange Program, Claiming Student Was llegally Adopted By Same-Sex Couple
  • Facebook Requires LGBT People To Use Real Names Even In Countries Where Homosexuality Is A Crime
  • Nation’s Largest Teachers Union Plans To Spend More Than $40 Million In 2014
  • Mayor Of L.A. Suburb Fatally Shot By Wife, Officials Say
  • FCC Considering Whether To Ban Broadcasters From Using “Redskins”
  • Lawmakers Urge Obama To Include LGBT Protections In Immigration Executive Action
  • This One Photo Perfectly Sums Up Why Climate Change Is Real
  • The “totally ridiculous” Romney Boomlet
  • 17 Celebrities Who have the right idea about feminism
  • David Cameron Just got called evil in a rather unfortunate tweet

After the first few rough days, I started to gain an awareness of how futile it was to try to feign political ignorance. It was like trying to pretend I didn’t know where the streets in my neighbourhood went. Politics are as much a feature of my mental landscape as the streets are of my physical landscape. The only thing I could do was try to keep my head down and hope nobody asked me for directions.

That didn’t work, by the way.

With a municipal election looming for most of the month, it seemed impossible to avoid political discussions, especially when my children asked me questions like “Why is Dad voting for that candidate?” A lawn sign supporting a candidate for city council that went up before my political abstention started just raised more questions. “Why do we have a sign for him on our front lawn? Why do you like him?”

Well, because he represents a change in political culture that I’ve been waiting a long time to see in this city. Because he’s been fighting for this ward on his own time for years. Because he’s kind of a friend of mine, because when you’re politically active, you’re kind of friends with everyone who is politically active in this city.

Which is another problem in and of itself. To divorce myself from politics is to divorce myself from my entire social circle.  I get invited to voter engagement brainstorming meetings (because a 34% turnout is bullshit and everybody knows it), and I accept because why wouldn’t I? Not only am I interested, but all my friends are going and it’s a cheap morning out. I get invited to educational workshops about urban planning and modes of transit, and I accept because knowledge is beautiful and all my friends are going. I have coffee with friends and we talk politics. I stand around on the playground after school and my friends are talking politics. I screw around on the computer after my children are in bed and my friends are talking politics on Facebook, and my husband is talking politics with his mouth.

I thought this whole political vacation was going to be easy, because all I had to do was stop doing something. It turns out that the inertia of decades of political awareness and activism makes just stopping almost impossible.

Let’s see what November brings.

Conservative Party of Canada, Democracy, Executive Overdrive, Imperialism, International Relations, Iraq, Neo-Conservatism, Neoliberal Economics, Society, Soft Fascism, Syria

Russell Brand Re-Spins Stephen Harper, Expertly

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Politics, Re-Spun hereby bestows honourary Canadian and Politics, Re-Spun citizenship upon Russell Brand for his precise and effective re-spinning of Steve Harper and his soft fascist, neo-conservative manipulation of most of last week.

And we all need to think more carefully about “convenient murders.”

His new passport is in the mail.

Ottawa Killings: Who Wins? Russell Brand The Trews (E174) – YouTube.

Corporations, Democracy, Feminism, Journalism, Media, Racism

The Election-Eve Racist, Sexist Attack on Olivia Chow

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If this cartoon were published, say, 2 weeks before the election, it would have been debated as a tool of racist, sexist propaganda and yet another blemish on corporate media. Her support would likely have grown after such a brutally immature attack.

But because politics is a dirty, disgusting, sociopathic game, it was published the day before the Ontario municipal election.

Read what Olivia Chow thinks of it below:

View image on TwitterChow told CP24 she thinks the cartoon is “disgusting.”

“Because I am Chinese-Canadian, I must be a communist and have slanted eyes and glasses … and since I am a woman, I must be inferior and therefore not good enough for the job of the mayor so I must rely on my deceased husband so it both racist and sexist,” she said.

via Toronto Sun’s Olivia Chow Cartoon Slammed As Racist (TWEETS).

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Canada, Conservatism, Conservative Party of Canada, Democracy, Executive Overdrive, Imperialism, International Relations, Iraq, Soft Fascism

Harper, the Dog of War

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For Harper, 6 CF-18s in Kuwait, all war all the time, phoning up the Pentagon asking where we can become more militarily engaged…all these things lead to a war posture, including a soldier being killed at home.

A war posture is good for Harper’s base and makes Canadians more scared so that we more more disinclined to vote him out next year.

Don’t change horses in midstream, as the sick spin goes.

Expect Harper to manufacture/inflame more political strife and militarism in the months leading up to the federal election.

All of us should be profoundly uncomfortable that any politician would be speaking about this tragedy – and assigning motive – before the police. That is not the way our system works. And it raises the distinct possibility that Harper and his advisors are willing to reduce a soldier’s death to a talking point.

via We live in dangerous times | Warren Kinsella.