Carney Hosts ‘pollutocrats’ in Toronto
By Yves Engler
As their private jets descend on Toronto to promote a billionairist agenda, will environmentalists confront Carney’s ecocidal CEO summit? In a highly offensive article headlined “The 24 hours that could change Canada’s economic trajectory”, the Globe and Mail reported on the “heavy hitters soon to land their private jets in Toronto.” Saturday’s Report on Business should have described them as “heavy emitters”. The CEOs and investment fund managers coming to Toronto in mid-September represent those disproportionately responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and overconsumption. According to Oxfam, the richest 0.1% exhausted their annual carbon budget – the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while staying within 1.5 degrees of warming – only three days into the year. The group labelled it ‘Pollutocrat Day’.
Hunger is All About Billionaire Greed
By Gary Porter
Growing food insecurity is a cruel paradox in a world that produces enough food for nearly 10 billion people. The world population today is only 8.3 billion people. This crisis is driven not by a lack of food, but by private ownership of the food business and the drive for private profit. Fidel Castro’s address to the 1996 FAO World Food Summit in Rome on November 16, 1996, was a brief but searing critique of global economic inequality. Castro famously lambasted the summit’s goal of halving hunger as “shameful,” arguing that humanity should instead be focused on entirely eradicating starvation. “Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is born of the unequal distribution of wealth and of the world’s injustices. The rich do not know hunger. Colonialism was not alien to the poverty and underdevelopment afflicting today a large segment of mankind.
Starving the Health Care Beast
By Chris Wanamaker & Alex Gagne
Recently, I waited in the emergency room in a Saint John, NB hospital with a close friend, a 65 year old man who was experiencing severe hypertension (very high blood pressure) which elevates the risk of heart attack or stroke. We arrived late in the evening. Only one doctor was available. We settled in for a long night’s stay that turned out to be 14 hours. My companion finally was seen by a doctor late the next morning. The experience set me wondering how it is that our medical system can be so unresponsive, especially to emergencies. I looked into the issue some more over the next few days. I found that a lot of people in my city have had a similar experience. Some have waited much longer. Not only that, but over the past five years especially, news stories have documented instances of long wait times across Canada for people with serious medical issues, including sepsis, heart attack, stroke, severe acute pain, and suicide risk that have sometimes led to the patients’ deaths.
Imperialism is Not Invincible
By Barry Weisleder
The height of USA hegemony was in the 1950s. Globally, the rulers called it Pax Americana. Its first defeat was the Cuban Revolution in 1959, followed by the repulsion of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. The second defeat was in Vietnam in April 1975, ending a brutal 20-year war. The third defeat was in Afghanistan, 2001-2021. The fourth major defeat for Washington is unfolding now in Iran and associated sites: Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. The NATO-led proxy war in Ukraine is faltering. Each defeat was the result of a combination of effective armed resistance and mass popular anti-imperialist movements – on a global scale. Today, the Palestinian people are in the vanguard of the resistance to imperial hegemony. And the capacity of mass political action is again being demonstrated. The context is a profound social polarization and the terminal crisis of late capitalism.
Dimitri Lascaris Speaks in Toronto Despite Zionist Threats
By Socialist Action Canada
A vile Zionist smear campaign against Montreal-based lawyer, activist and “Reason2Resist” You Tube host Dimitri Lascaris failed miserably to derail an anti-imperialist public forum in Toronto. The August 18 gathering, organized by Socialist Action, featured Lascaris speaking on the topic “The Imminent Decline and Fall of the American Empire”. Only two days before the event, the location was shifted to Taco Taco, a restaurant in the Kensington Market, just a few meters from the originally booked venue on College Street. This followed a barrage of menacing threats by Zio-Nazis to impose a suffocating Jewish community boycott on The Free Times Cafe. In the end, over 140 people, on-line and in-person, participated in the re-located socialist forum. Lascaris, who recently reported directly from war ravaged Lebanon and Iran, as well as from Cypress and Greece, gave a 40 minute presentation on the failing hegemony of the western imperial powers, and answered questions for close to an hour.
“We are Not Going to Establish Predatory Capitalism”
By Miguel Díaz-Canel / Translation: Walter Lippmann
Sisters and brothers from all corners of the world who honor us with their presence today in this rebellious capital: It is an honor to have celebrated this meeting in the context of Fidel’s Centenary, who summons us with his indisputable legacy to face the enormous challenges and difficulties of this turbulent and threatening present that we have had to live through. Cuba, island of dignity and historical resistance against empire, today also against fascism, welcomes you with open hearts and thanks you for your courage and determination to get here, amidst so much pressure, blackmail and lies. At the previous meeting in Havana in October 2022, representatives of communist and workers’ parties from more than 60 countries, who gathered at that time, agreed to warn about the dangerous situation facing humanity.