Austerity

NewsPolitics

Premier Philippe Couillard appeared in a live interactive interview on Radio-Canada (French CBC) Wednesday night. It was the first time a Premier tried such an exercise and he didn’t have an easy time of it. Throughout the 60 minute interview, Couillard was confronted with the consequences of what he still refuses to call austerity.

“I don’t like (that term) because it’s inexact,” Couillard maintained. “when we talk about austerity, we think about other examples in Europe, where the ministries’ budgets were massively cut. I am repeating that we never diminished the budget of any ministry. We augmented them more slowly, that’s true, but we’re light-years away from what happened in Greece, England or Spain.”

It is true that every ministry’s spending in absolute numbers went up. When inflation and the normal growth of population are factored in, however, it still means that affected sectors have less money to do more.

It is quite fortunate for Couillard that he refrained from claiming, as he often did in the past, that those measures wouldn’t affect services to the population. It would have put him in quite an awkward position when the questions from the public came in. People from every part of Quebec called and shared stories about jobs lost to budget cuts and children with learning disabilities without access to proper educators.

“I am living with the rigour” said a woman who lost her job after government cut subsidies for rural employment programs, “I have exhausted my unemployment benefit and I see the specter of welfare on the horizon.”

Monique Loubry, who spent 30 years as a nurse in CHSLDs, observed “chronic deficits in staff and material.” When she asked what concrete measures would be taken to improve the situation, the Premier had two answers: optimize the management and make sure that government finances were being handled carefully. Investing in care for senior citizens will be a priority “as soon as the ‘compressions’ (meant to be less harsh than ‘coupures’ though both translate as ‘cuts’ in English) give enough financial room to the government, he assured.

Mrs Loubry was not convinced: “I have nothing against virtue, Sir, but until there are concrete numbers on the table and quality standards set, I will be waiting.”

In fact, the Premier’s responses to concerns about healthcare, state-funded kindergartens and education were all roughly the same: the lack of funding was a lesser problem than the inadequate management of it and reinvestment will come when Quebec will have made sufficient room for it in the budget.

Even if he delivered his responses as confidently as ever, he is facing growing skepticism. According to the Léger-Le Devoir survey published last week, an all-time high of 68% of Quebeckers are unsatisfied with the Couillard administration.

Half-way through his mandate, the PM’s appearance on national television was an admittedly courageous attempt to connect with the population, but not a successful one. While Couillard’s persistence in talking about “compressions” and “rigour” instead of budget cuts and austerity might have been reassuring once, it now only seems to emphasize his disconnect with the people’s reality.

NewsPolitics

For many true dippers, through and through New Democrats, the last Canadian Federal Election was an excruciating ordeal. What looked like a historic run towards the first Social-Democratic government in Canada history turned into a nightmarish scenario for thousands of NDP volunteers, hundreds of NDP teams, candidates and their staff from coast to coast to coast.

It is a secret to no one that I participated in one of the NDP campaigns on the Island of Montreal, in the borough of Lachine and Lasalle and in the city of Dorval. During the three years of working in the riding of Lachine, I saw first hand what elected representatives with heart and courage can accomplish for social justice by fighting against poverty, racism and xenophobia.

MPs offices and staff can truly be at the service of the people, front-line services like fighting deportations, fighting for the betterment of poor working people’s pensions, fighting for mothers to receive their rightful universal child care benefit and most importantly creating a space of listening, a true channel between the voices that are silenced in our political system and Parliament. A true, though minor, revolutionary occurrence.

It was three years of seeing firsthand the gruesome side of the political spectacle. The daily sexism that young women and women in general faced both inside and outside of the House of Commons. The political plays and the political playbooks. The clientelism and tokenism and racism that is tenfold within our political system. The centrifuge forces that boil politics all down to the same one disconnected narrative, the photo-ops that are nothing more than smokescreens for the worst of political maneuvers.

As NDPers we get involved in a broken political process to bring about transformative change, to deconstruct the toxic power dynamics that keep voices outside of the political process. As an NDPer I got involved not for power as the sole objective. Instead, like many other dippers, it was for my heartfelt objective to fight alongside disenfranchised communities and sections of Canadian and Quebec society against all types of exclusions and all phobias.

It was to craft alongside members of marginalized, radicalized and ostracized groups a space in which their voices are heard. A space in which their stories are the narrative, the focal point and not a skit or a footnote.

I got involved in the NDP to share, to learn, to have the voices that are offend muted influence our decision making process and our policy and platform. I got involved with the NDP to uphold human rights, equity and social justice everywhere, both within Canada’s borders and outside.

In the last election, it seems we forgot that change beings within the realm of our own party. It must flow through the structure of the party itself. We failed terribly in last election and during the four years leading-up to e-day in creating the structure and environment that empowered and enabled change.

When we so badly needed change to be the fuel that would propel us to a historic victory, we were running on empty. Let it be clear from here on, the NDP won’t get into 24 Sussex Drive through the back door.

What hurt the most in the last election is that we underestimated ourselves. We underestimated the potency of the values and principals that are at the foundation of our political movement. Canadians weren’t asking for caution, they were asking for courage.

Courage to stand up for the rights of the Palestinian people. Courage to tackle fiscal inequity and financial deregulation. Courage to tackle poverty and to fight “deficit zero,” the golden rule of austerity, through progressive budgeting. Courage to have a vision for Universal Free Education, to work with the provinces–respecting provincial prerogatives, differences and jurisdiction– to create a framework for universal access to post-secondary education for all Canadians.

Canadians expected us to stand up to big oil, gas and mining companies and to offer a clear plan to bring the Canadian economy into the 21st century through the overhaul of toxic pipeline projects.

First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities were expecting the NDP, during the campaign, to put the spotlight on the suffocating poverty, disrespect and disregard they’ve been the victims of for centuries. To have a bold plan to deconstruct the dynamics of systemic racism that are embedded within the structure of our democracy.

It was our duty to put forward a global plan to create new structures and institutions, to change the structure of political system and our electoral model, to ensure that the concerns and aspirations of First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities are not merely heard but the benchmark for all policy debate within this country.

Like many Quebeckers, I added my name to the initiative calling for a structural and ideological renewal of the NDP which appears in the pages of Le Devoir and the Toronto Star today. This implies a board debate within Canadian society that engages with activists and militants of all stripes, environmentalists, students, anti-poverty, anti-racist, LGBTQIA, First Nations, Inuit and Métis.

Here in Quebec we must reach out to the anti-austerity movement and campaigns that are happening right across this province. We must make the NDP the movement of movements again, a synthesis and space of debate and true participatory democracy for all Canadian progressives.

We have an obligation to our past and to the future to reinvigorate our internal democratic proceedings, to start a big conversation about what’s the future of the Canadian political left and what is the role of the NDP within the bigger picture, alongside grassroots mobilization, community and local initiatives and organized labor.

If the NDP is to have any relevance in the future, our party must create the space within itself where true democracy flourishes, that empowers the spaces of democracy that are already existent within the Canadian left, the spaces of democracy that have flourished in resistance to the policies of austerity, racism and the destruction of the environment.

For the NDP to be the vehicle of true democracy, of a more just, free and equitable Canada, this debate must start now.

AudioPodcast

Our 16th podcast is our holiday/2015 Year-in-Review Special. Regualr panelists Jerry Gabriel and Josh Davidson discuss some of the top events and stories of 2015 including the Canadian Election and the rise of Justin Trudeau, Just for Laughs, the Quebec anti-austerity movement and police repression, Bernie, Hillary and Trump, the Montreal music scene and more! Plus the Community Calendar, Sergakis Report and Predictions for 2016!

Host: Jason C. McLean
Producer: Hannah Besseau

Panelists

Jerry Gabriel: FTB contributor

Josh Davidson: FTB food columnist

FTB Podcast also available on iTunes

FTB Podcast: 2015 Year-In-Review Special by Forget The Box on Mixcloud

Microphone image: Ernest Duffoo / Flickr Creative Commons

News

It’s not a new thing, really. In fact, it’s something people who participate in protests with less than a hundred thousand marchers have known for a while. It’s also something that numerous people (frequently visible minorities) who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time have been painfully aware of. Montreal police are out of control.

On Friday night, we got more proof that this, sadly, is very much the case.

Agent Provocateurs Get Identified and Violent

Katie Nelson (photo Sophia Sahrane)
Katie Nelson (photo Sophia Sahrane)

It was a night time anti-austerity demo. Montreal Police (SPVM), as usual, were out in full force. This time, though, some of them were part of the crowd, dressed as hardcore protesters ready to employ Black Bloc tactics. The police even admitted, after the fact, that there were undercover officers present.

One protester, Katie Nelson, who is well known to police because she is suing the department, the city and certain officers for political profiling, saw some of these fake activists trying to stir things up and make the crowd more rowdy and violent. A standard agent provocateur tactic: give the uniformed police and riot squad a justification to stop the protest and make arrests.

The thing is, Nelson recognized one of the undercover officers as someone who is a defendant in her lawsuit. As she told The Gazette, she confronted him with this and started to let her fellow protesters know that this man was a cop. He has since been identified by people who were there as Phillip Touchette, badge number 5886 (see featured image).

A few minutes later, she was on the ground. Someone wearing a mask had pushed her from behind before joining a group of police officers. She was released from the hospital early in the morning after suffering a concussion, a knee injury and a large contusion to the left arm which is now in a splint.

There are also reports of an officer brandishing a service revolver in front of a group of protesters.

A Threat to Society

One thing is clear. A police officer who decides to seriously injure someone who poses no threat to them physically and is not behaving in a violent manner clearly has unresolved rage issues. You get called out as an undercover cop, you walk over to the uniformed riot squad officers and disappear behind their shields. You don’t lash out or have your colleague lash out for you.

Maybe it was out of fear of looking like a failure to superiors or maybe anger over Nelson’s case. It doesn’t matter really. These cops should be given counselling at best, not a badge and a gun.

But is it really that simple? Can we simply chalk this up to a few bad apples? Will taking away their authority solve the problem? No, not at all. Though for the sake of society as a whole, they should be stripped of any authority.

Bad Choices at the Top: Laziness or Intimidation?

Forget for a moment the systemic problems inherent in an oppressive, militarized force used as defenders of the state. Instead take a look at the specific case of the SPVM and the decisions at the upper levels that went into what happened on Friday.

Nelson was able to identify the undercover officers because they were defendants in her case. The defendants in her case are all officers who were regular uniformed fixtures during the 2012 student protests in Montreal.

Think about that for a moment. Someone part of the SPVM brass thought it would be a good idea to use police whose faces are known to protestors as undercovers among those very same protestors. Can they really be surprised that someone identified one of them?

Are they really that careless? It’s possible. After all, the reason all those P-6 tickets got thrown out of court wasn’t because of the unconstitutional nature of the law itself, but the grossly unprofessional way the SPVM decided to issue the tickets.

Maybe they disrespect the protestors so much that they don’t think any of them will remember the faces that were wearing uniforms the other time they marched. Wouldn’t surprise me considering the kind of officers they hire.

This corner-cutting, half-assed attempt at a police state seems to be the Hallmark of the SPVM. Guess no one told them that totalitarianism is an all or nothing sort of thing. The word itself even starts with the word total.

Or, possibly, is there something else at play here. Something intentional. A special kind of asshole bravado, an intimidation tactic that boasts: “We don’t care if you can identify our undercovers, we’re going to send them anyways and if you call them out, you will be dealt with. Complain to the media all you want, people will ignore you.”

It seemed like that was going to be the case this time. Original reports from all media, except Concordia’s The Link (which did some really good on the spot reporting this time) treated Friday night’s events as routine: some violence, some arrests. It was only after Nelson’s story started making the rounds on social media that they started reporting the real story: undercover cops physically assaulting protesters for identifying them.

Whether the SPVM brass’ decision came from a place of laziness or arrogance, our response, as a public should come from a place of outrage. They let officers who clearly had violent tendencies they could not contain work undercover at a protest and as a result, someone ended up with serious injuries for merely performing a community service by identifying police who were in the protest to cause trouble.

The Montreal Police are out of control and something needs to be done.

* Featured image by Martin Ouellet

* UPDATE: Katie Nelson has launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover her legal and medical expenses related to the attack. You can donate via Generosity.com

NewsPolitics

Not more than 24 hours ago was I here writing up a summary of the pivotal talks for the future of the Eurozone that are taking place in Brussels and now everything, or almost everything, has changed.

In the last day of almost non-stop negotiations, a already humiliated Tsipras has been dragged through the mud in an unbearable and horrendous manner. The Germans, believe it or not, have towed a harder line, completely redefining the notion of intransigence altogether, refusing and shutting down Greek propositions and pushing for harsher measures and lighting bolt reforms. Tsipras and his team of advisors went through what was dubbed by observers as a session of “mental waterboarding,” a preview of what might be in the works for the Greek people within the days to come.

The German Grexit

The most amazing turn of events was that, finally, Germany’s hidden agenda for a Greek exit from the Eurozone has surfaced in one of the four draft propositions that circulated on social media and throughout the mainstream media during the talks that lasted for a record 17 hours. The German will to precipitate and encourage the Grexit outcome is telling. The German government wants to send a strong signal and it’s nothing “personal.” It has more to do with the anti-austerity movements that are brewing throughout Europe, and not just in Greece.

Surely the German position wasn’t improvised and, unlike some have said, Merkel and her administration are not being irrational. The Germans, politicians and public, aren’t suffering from some sort of PTSD acquired during the hyperinflation crisis of the 1930s or an incommensurable will to humiliate and trample Greece. (This has been accomplished ten fold over the past five years) They are very much conscious of their program and nonchalant about its application.

Make no mistakes. This will be the Versailles Treaty of the Eurozone.

2011_Greece_Uprising
100,000 people protest against the austerity measures in front of parliament building in Athens (29 May 2011). From Wikipedia.

Restructuring of the Greek State Instead of the Greek Debt

The German program, the austerity program put forward by the German delegation among others, has one essential objective: to put the Greek people under guardianship by nullifying their voting system. The Eurogroup’s end isn’t merely to humiliate Greece, but to restructure the Greek state from the top down, leaving it devoid of any input from its own citizens.

But this restructuring goes further. The Eurogroup, which seemed to be on the defensive after the victory of the #OXI (isn’t that a far away memory?), is now demanding that Greece privatize 50 billion euros in public assets. The Greek state must become an empty shell. First, the utilities markets will have to be liberalized. But 50 billion euros means much more than an austerity-lite. The propositions the Eurogroup have put on the table call for the complete dismantlement of the Greek state and the transfer of its assets into the hands of third party management – technically a bank would run the bulk of Greece if this proposition goes through.

“There is no alternative”

The program put forward by Team Austerity is more than just the economical restructuring of Greece, it’s a way to cleanse Greek of its socialistic tendencies and of the “democratic mistake” of SYRIZA.

In a Europe where Socialist parties are the shadows of their former selves, at best lending a human face for austerity measures and at worst selling out their “working-class” constituency to legitimize deeper cuts. SYRIZA had been the first major threat against the neoliberal hegemony to have surfaced on European soil within decades, since the election of François Mitterrand in the 1980s and the implementation of the Programme Commun – which also resulted in utter failure. The neoliberal discourse has, within the past years, been shaken to its core and radical left-wing oppositions have appeared as an alternative. The German position reaffirms what Thatcher had said a few decades ago: “there is no alternative.” What German intransigence means, more than anything else, is that the reform approach of social-democratic governments with the current rapport of forces and within the Eurozone is unrealistic and has proven to be an impossible mission.

No to austerity
Anti-austerity demo in Edinburgh. 14 Feb, 2015. Photo by Digi Tailwag. Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0.

The Lineage of a New Absolutist Supranational Entity

The German proposition is using Greece to shift the current dynamic within the Eurozone. Within the past two decades, European federalism has been refused most notably in the referendum of 2005, in which both the French and Dutch electorates voted against the proposed European Constitution, thereby refusing federalism. Today, the technocratic federalism, which was rejected by the electorates in the past, is making its comeback in an astonishing way, through austerity. The dynamic of “economic integration,” the implementation of a common currency and of a common free trade zone has come to trump the democratic procedures of most member states. If this deal goes through, it’s not just Greece that must be worried, but every small European member state that has a sizeable amount of debt.

Thus the lineages of a new form of absolutist state have been formed – a state that is technically independent, but in reality completely subdued to the will of unelected lenders, bankers, and technocrats. Could it be that Greece, the cradle of western democracy, is also set to be it’s gravesite? Only time will tell.

What is to be Done?

For left-wing movements, there are many more questions than answers that arise as the final outline of yet another humiliating deal for Greece is drawn. How can there be a break with the Eurozone? How must we reform the European Union and European institutions? Is reforming this corrupt system even possible?

But most importantly, as the conversations draw to a close in Brussels, there are three points to be made about the future and the survival of socialist and social-democratic movements that refute the neoliberal stranglehold and want to challenge it:

First, Oxi, a “No” against savage neoliberalism and barbaric liberalization and privatization is possible. Sections of European society, public service workers, the youth, the unemployed, the underemployed, migrant workers, the service class and the working class are ready to be mobilized. We must take the necessary lessons from the Greek referendum and implement them broadly.

Second, the reaction against the Greek Oxi vote was international. A globalized reaction can only be met with a globalized revolt. European anti-austerity movements must organize in a transnational manner and create strong and enduring alliances amongst each other. Actions must be coordinated simultaneously. In other words, international general strikes and transnational movements must foster a strong consortium of action.

Third, we must be ready to break – but that is easier said than done. What a break means and how it is to be achieved are the primordial questions. These questions do not seem to have been drawn up on the SYRIZA planning board. The drawing of this solution might make us question the entirety of our strategic and our tactical outlook. One thing is certain, this new solution must be drawn within the context of incredible financial pressure and blackmail. Grexit or not, default or not, that will remain the case.

A luta continua.

News

We are now entering the terminal stage of austerity, a disease whose symptoms are most acute and visible in Greece. Within the past few weeks, a macabre cortege of politicians, economists, bureaucrats and technocrats have tried in every way possible to asphyxiate any sign of recovery and nullify any sentiment of hope and optimism within the Greek people. The degenerate disease has spread to such a degree that even the antibodies, the last democratic pulsations, ultimate rampart of health, attempting to salvage a thread of dignity within a sea of humiliation, have been declared by the prognostics of the charlatans of high-finance as viruses that must be eliminated.

Today as Greeks turn to the polls, with the ponderous task of breaking with the dictum of austerity, never has the real purpose of such an ideology been as clear. No matter what the outcome of the Sunday referendum vote might be, the process in itself has already accomplished a great deed, that of debunking the mysticism of austerity.

It’s like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Only the technicians of austerity think that their rhetorical verses still charm, when in fact the rhetoric of austerity is naked.

In the past week, the incompatibility of the democratic process with austerity was once again unveiled for all to see. First there were the calls from the European elite that a referendum was unreasonable.Then there were direct calls for regime change.

It has been a understood rule, since the onset of the 2008 crisis, that austerity and democracy don’t mesh, that austerity is fundamentally incompatible with democratic proceedings and the two are mutually exclusive. Through the intransigent stance of the Eurogroup, i.e the Troika, austerity has revealed itself to be more of a means than an end.

The Greek Crisis, the imposing of austerity by the world financial institutions, has never been about “debt” or the extreme moral necessity of repayment for the well-being of the global financial system. Austerity in itself is void, it services a specific purpose: creating a rhetorical and moral leverage for the restructuring of the societies in which it’s applied.

Austerity in Greece isn’t merely an economic doctrine, serving a specific economic purpose, but a means to justify the usurping of democracy, the transfer of the common wealth into the private sector through privatizations, the militarization of police forces and socially conservatives policies in the name of budget priorities and adjustments.  Austerity is an ideology as per the premise of The Fourth Revolution written by Woolderidge & Micklethwait as a “restructuring of the state,” not a downsizing of it.

As Lenin analysed the world of 1917, he concluded that imperialism was the highest form of capitalism, its final stage in many ways. Lenin identified that imperialism was a by-product of capitalism, that it could only exist as an ideology as an extension, as a rhetorical tool at the service of capitalism, of the “liberalization” of the markets i.e the forced creation of new markets through capitalism.

Within the analytical framework put forward by Lenin, ideologies that appear to be situated outside of capitalism such as nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, are actually fundamentally integrated into the capitalist dynamic. At the time (just like today), imperialism was an ideology that mobilized a humanist rhetoric to justify its utter brutality. The commercial and financial elites of the time used the Gun Boat Policy and delusional humanistic principles of the burden of the white man to subjugate and exploit most of the world.

What imperialism was for capitalism yesterday, austerity is for capitalism today. The so-called “need to civilize” of the time is called “the need to balance budgets” today.

Austerity is the highest form of capitalism we know today, a sort of necrophilic vampirism, an ideology that promotes capitalism in its purest form. But “purity” entails fragility.

At this point, given the current disposition of forces, the current rapport of forces, the Greek referendum appears as the shattering moment of this porcelain ideology. The victory of the OXI camp would call into question the legitimacy of the moral premises of austerity. Austerity as an ideology, such as imperialism, only exists because of the belief that people give to the moral premises that lay at its foundation.

The Greek people have the awesome opportunity to shatter the glass castle of austerity. But all in all, it’s only a matter of time until people see through the mirage. In that light, we can found a new moral foundation in which people trump profit.

* Featured image by Ggia via WikiMedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons

NewsPolitics

About this time last week came the first reports that Harper – after ramming the extension of the mission through Parliament – had ordered the first Canadian airstrikes within Syria against the Islamic State. To Harper’s great pride, Canadian troops are now fully pledged in the war against terror.

At the same time as Canadian missiles were raining down in Syria, violating every international convention possible and imaginable, students at UQAM were met with the brutal force of SPVM’s riot police squads, who besieged and dispersed the students that had assembled there, violating the “sanctity” of academic space and the cherished democratic right of assembly and of strike.

While Harper is fighting a war against terror in the Middle East, it seems that the federal and provincial governments in Canada are fighting a war on democracy.

And the latest manifestation of this broader “war on democracy” has been the brutal repression with which the student strike of 2015 has been met, in addition to the “delegitimization” campaign student associations have been facing. The arguments in this realm have been quite creative. First of all, we have had a strain of arguments saying that students shouldn’t have the “right” to strike. Then there is the argument that students aren’t striking, that its merely a boycott and to call it anything else is false. Finally there’s the last strain of arguments saying that the strikes/strike mandates aren’t democratic because the proceedings of the general assemblies aren’t democratic, that there’s intimidation, there’s no secret ballots thus the student unions mandates are void.

Regardless of how many times all of these arguments have been proven wrong; regardless of the fact that non-remunerated student work lays at the foundation for many of the advances in research in many areas of study; regardless of the fact that students are workers and produce value; regardless of the fact that student strikes – not boycotts but strikes – have been at the backbone of some of the most important political mobilization in history; regardless of the fact that student assemblies have more legitimacy than, let’s say, the government of Quebec that is imposing austerity; and regardless of the fact that the percentage of students who voted to strike is significantly higher than the percentage of eligible voters who voted for Harper’s Conservatives or Couilard’s Liberals; the mainstream media onslaught continues: student democracy isn’t valid!

uqam

Others have argued that the student movement is just an offshoot of ISIS and Boko Haram – no kidding, there’s actually a page created by UQAM’s anti-strike students to denounce the terrorism of the so-called Boko UQAM. It’s imaginative to say the least – their logic is: students are terrorists and must be dealt with as such.  They are called terrorists because they dare say that academia must escape the clutches of profit and of limitless speculations, and that education isn’t for profit. Through the lens of this demagogic discourse, the crimes committed against innocent civilians in Syria and the crimes of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria and throughout that broader region have an equal footing with the “crimes” of students that are fighting to make sure that public services continue to be accessible to all, that equality of opportunity is preserved, and what was created through public wealth continues to profit the public, and not the private sector or a clique of individuals.

Once the mainstream media draws the correlation between the “war on terror” and the striking students, it isn’t surprising to see the same government which has declared unilaterally a “war on terror,” crush student democracy, painted as a foyer of terrorism.

Today, a war against student democracy and dissidence, which is the essence of democracy, is taking form. Long gone are the days when this government adored the shrine of freedom of expression and of #jesuischarlie. This is the struggle of students today, never mind the headlines which say “They’re just a bunch of spoiled brats that bite the hand that feeds them.” The student associations form the vanguard of the struggle to uphold democracy.

Student associations have taken on the heavy task of ensuring that democracy and the fundamental democratic right of dissidence, of disagreement and pressure tactics (in this case strikes), safeguards of democracy, are upheld.

Where neo-liberal “no alternativism” prevails, strikes and especially student strikes with their weekly GAs and spontaneous direct democracy constitute the proper counterbalance. That counterbalance is the antithesis of the PLQ agenda, which creates a state apparatus that “legalizes” and promotes inequality, precarization of the workforce, and the parcelization of society while ”liberating” the free circulation of capital of all constraints, the destruction of the limits to its accumulation, and the dismantling and privatization of sectors outside of its reach in this case education.

The reason why students have been equated with terrorists is not because of the bloodthirsty radical ideals their espouse. The reason students have been equated with Boko Haram and ISIS isn’t because of their Islamic principals. Rather it’s because of the very sensible idea of direct participatory democracy; because of the idea that legitimacy becoming more than a vote every 4 years terrorizes the class that will benefit the most from austerity. Through this struggle, students are not only combating austerity; they’re reviving and redefining democracy, and that scares the political clique shitless!

La lutte continue!

Maple SpringMediaNewsPolitics

The first rule of reading news articles on the internet: if you don’t want to get angry, stay away from the comments. I broke that rule more than once, both during the lead up to the current student protests against austerity and since they started to bloom. I have lived to regret it, though my shattered piece of mind did lead to one rather interesting observation: the rhetoric of trolls has permeated the mainstream.

Are you familiar with CJAD? While their most prominent opinion show hosts veer right of centre, their overall news coverage is quite balanced. However, their audience, at least those who comment on Facebook, is, for the most part, divided between those who feel everything is about language and separatism and those who spew the sort of bile I would only expect from the most ignorant portions of the Republican base south of the border.

A few weeks ago, I saw one comment that made me do a double-take. The commenter was arguing that the reason a pre-strike protest at UQAM drew only a few hundred people was because the unions didn’t have the money to front the students this year and this was good because students’ brains hadn’t developed enough to comprehend complex political and economic philosophy.

I replied, calling him out on his ageism and he actually tried to respond with a flawed scientific argument. It was then that I realized I was speaking with the drunk at the bar that everyone knew was going to be thrown out by bouncers before the night was over, so I closed the tab on my computer and stopped engaging.

The problem is that his condescending attitude has found its place beyond the space inhabited by trolls. You see it all over the media and the web these days. It’s just a little less blatant and a lot more insidious.

So-Called Austerity

CTV news may not be the most progressive media out there, but they have always maintained at least basic journalistic standards when it comes to their reporting. Their bias has always been apparent in what they choose to present, not their choice of words.

Now, that seems to have changed. In at least three recent posts to their website about Printemps 2015, they refer to the Couillard government’s “so-called” austerity measures. So-called? When did the Quebec government’s plan to cut services and pensions fall into the realm of alleged austerity?

I’m pretty sure if you asked Philippe Couillard if his government was implementing austerity measures, he’d deny it, but he’s a politician. However, if you google austerity and compare the definition to what the premier has been doing, you’d see they match. According to the Financial Times Lexicon, “austerity measures refer to official actions taken by the government, during a period of adverse economic conditions, to reduce its budget deficit using a combination of spending cuts or tax rises.” The media even called it austerity until the students got involved.

You may agree with this definition. You may prefer, as I do, to extrapolate a bit and call austerity the practice of cutting off services and support for the poor or those of moderate to average income because of a perceived crisis and implement corporate welfare, er, business incentives and tax breaks. Either way, austerity is what the Couillard administration is bringing in.

Either way, austerity is what those in the streets are fighting. Instead of actually trying to defend austerity, which is really a tough sell, those against the protests have taken to arguing that it’s not really austerity the students, and now others, are fighting.

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Quebec Has it Easy

Leave it to Reddit to explain how a protest clearly against austerity may not be. It all stems from the fact that Couillard’s austerity measures aren’t as severe as those elsewhere. This is true (Greece comes to mind), but it also misses the point completely.

It reminds me of the old right-wing refrain from 2012. You know the old chestnut I’m talking about, the one that points out how Quebec students pay the lowest tuition in North America. While true, it is irrelevant to the discussion.

That fight was for no tuition increase, not even a penny, with the ultimate goal, for some, of university being free. This is a fight for no austerity, not even a little, but a different approach to allocating resources.

Making the argument that students should accept a tuition increase or Quebec should accept its austerity because it’s not that bad compared to other places presupposes that tuition increases and austerity are inevitable and need to be accepted, if only a little bit. Or, just the tip.

Grow Up, Get a Job

I was wondering why these arguments still got any traction and why that random CJAD troll’s statements, which were beyond offensive, weren’t criticised by more than some random lefty who happened to make the mistake of reading the comments. I think it stems from what Winston Churchill said:

“If you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at 40 you have no brain.”

The modern local equivalent of this statement is “when these kids grow up and get a job, they’ll understand why they’re being foolish.”

The concept that abandoning social justice and embracing neoliberal economic policies and the global austerity agenda is a sign of maturity is not only wrong and condescending to those who have a different opinion, but it is also an option that is only open to the privileged. As someone who is privileged, has grown up to a certain extent, and has a job, I can tell you that austerity is wrong-headed and harmful.

Another world is, in fact, possible, and it starts with those in the streets. Now if only we can all admit that they do know what they’re talking about.

* photos by Gerry Lauzon

Maple SpringNews

The protest called by the ASSE started at Victoria Square with people of all background gathering. I mean from firefighters to high school kids. They came from all over as well, not just Montreal, by the bus load. The protest left on St-Jacques westbound, turned right on University/Rober-Bourassa up to Sherbrooke, eastbound to Berri and finished down at Émilie-Gamelin Park. No itinerary was given to Police but the march was not declared illegal to my knowledge.

At 3pm when arriving at Émilie-Gamelin Park, the crowd split in two with one group going east on Ontario and one staying at the Park. The Ontario march was intercepted by the SPVM riot squad at Montcalm and a stand off took place. Protesters sat down as Police were asking them to proceed South in order to avoid, I’m guessing here, to end too close to the Jacques-Cartier bridge during rush hour.

30 minutes later the stand off was broken when protesters were pepper sprayed and the crowd moved back towards the Park where another stand off took place with the riot squad asking people move off of the road and into the park, they actually said “please” and “thank you”.

That one saw a reversal of roles where in the end, Police retreated to their initial position to cheers from the crowd. However, water bottles thrown at retreating police officers was met with a tear gas gun firing one shot at the crowd. I left shortly after this incident.

I’ve heard of other clashes going on at the end of the protest and I’m not surprised since there was so many people spread out everywhere.

ED’s note, the protest continued into the night:

I saw protesters with red faces from pepper spray but no other injuries. It was interesting to see High School kids getting their first taste of protesting in Montreal and how they realized it was serious business. The feedback I got from some of them is that they will not be deterred and they will be coming back.

The next big rally/protest is scheduled on May 1st.

NewsPolitics

If one thing that can be said about this Conservative government, it’s that they are very tactful and savvy when it comes to selecting  picturesque Orwellian names for the proposed pieces of legislation they put before the house. The more exuberant the title, the more ludicrous the bill and perhaps the more terrifying the potential consequences of its passage.

Even in his wildest dreams, Orwell couldn’t have imagined some of the stuff emanating from the Ottawa bubble nowadays… A “Fair” Elections Act that disemboweled the body of democracy, a First Nations Control of First Nations Education that completely disempowered First Nation communities and blackmailed them into accepting a white man’s education, and last but not least, Vic Toews infamous omnibus crime bill, Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act that was actually a cover to quell any ”Un-Harperish” activities.

But the Palme d’Or of newspeak goes to Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander’s Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices. It isn’t for the feeble hearted.

Another thing that isn’t for the feeble-hearted was the the violence used against protesting students in front of Quebec’s national assembly last Thursday. The images of a canister-armed SPVQ officer shooting Naomi Trudeau-Tremblay in face from a distance of barely a meter or less, was horrifying.

A Tale of Two Barbarians

In response to all of this, a wired cacophony emerged on mainstream media within the past week. On one hand images of the reckless hoards of ”radical” student protest and the other the senseless violence of those that ”hate us,” those that ”hate liberty” and our most cherished principles and freedoms. Through the lens of the mainstream media civil society, the silent peaceful, idle, majority is caught between the menace of radical Islamists on one side and by radical anarchists–they use it as if it was pejorative– on the other.

When it comes to violence perpetrated by ”radical Islamists” that violence couldn’t be more heartfully condemned. Grandiose tirades and lyrical waxing are used to put the emphasis on the need to defend the ”values of occidental society” against barbarian practices. We’ve since yesterday extended our mission to make sure ”barbarism” and obscurantism won’t engulf the Middle East. Yet another chapter of the West bring the light of civilization, by way of the lightning of aerial bombardment, to the dark corners of the globe!

On the other hand there’s the ”good” violence, the violence used to protect civil society and the silent majority from within. The violence that was used in such an exaggerated manner by law enforcement in Quebec City and Montreal in the past week.

The Silent Majority?

Once again in name of the silent majority of hard working families who agree with sacrificing their public services and their children’s future for the sake of rapacious tax credits to billionaire multinationals, the use of ”barbaric” tactics is justified. It’s self-evident that, for the silent majority to be heard, a little bit of violence is necessary.

What this underlines is that ”barbaric practices” are not the monopoly of exotic foreign cultures. With the perspective of what has happened within the past week, I do see barbaric practices, but they aren’t perpetrated in the some foreign land in the middle of sand-dunes, I do see inherently anti-women practices, but they aren’t perpetrated in the name of one god or another, except maybe the deity of balanced budgets and relentless growth.

When 18 year-old Naomie Trudeau-Tremblay was struck to the head with a gas canister, she was struck because she was protesting something. She was struck because she was student, because she was women, because she refuted the austerity agenda that this government has put forward. She was struck because this government wanted her to be silent.

This practice of police brutality is a widespread one, a practice that has been put forward to quell any form of resistance towards the dogma of austerity. Every time an exaction is committed by police officers against peaceful demonstrators, every time dispersion tactics kill a protest, every time a Naomie, a Maxence, a young student, is brutalized, their physical integrity violated, because of their political opinions, every time their voices are silenced or we attempt to silence them, a victim is born, a victim of ‘terrorism’ of ‘barbaric practices. This begs the question: maybe the “real” barbarians are here, not overseas? Or at least maybe, in many ways, we are barbarians as well… One thing is sure, austerity is barbaric!

As for the notion of silent majority, that keyword that’s swung around right and left, used to justify everything and its contrary, here’s a newsflash: the silent majority isn’t constituted by those that are idle in the face of injustice, it’s those that stand-up and fight back and that are silenced for doing so that make-up the true ‘silent majority’.

The silent majority isn’t about those who are silent, rather it’s about those who are silenced.

See you in the streets!

A luta continua!

AudioPodcast

In our second FTB Podcast, we discuss Printemps 2015, Quebec’s new student protest against austerity. Also, the role of the US, the UN and austerity in the coup in Ukraine. Plus, our first Montreal Community Calendar.

Host: Jason C. McLean
Producer: Hannah Besseau

    Panelists

Katie Nelson: anarchist, student, #manifencours participant

Der Kosmonaut: poet, political philosopher, geopolitical analyst, blogger @ der-kosmonaut.blogspot.com

Drew Wolfson Bell: sports Editor at the McGill Daily, third-year Education student

Microphone image: Ernest Duffoo / Flickr Creative Commons

Maple SpringNews

It’s all in the headline, really. To be completely honest, I was contemplating just posting that sentence with a picture and a series of arrows pointing up. Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

A few months ago, Montreal police, along with firefighters, transit workers and other government employees protesting cuts to their pensions were all over the news. They weren’t hiding the fact that these cuts were part of Quebec Premier Philippe Couilard’s austerity agenda. I even remember seeing a fire truck blocking traffic with the word “austerity” painted across the part of the vehicle that holds the ladder.

So what happens when another group, striking students, decide to take up the anti-austerity cause? Well, we get rough cops, a bit of tear gas and a handful of arrests. And that was just yesterday, day one of the strike.

Now, while some police in Laval seemed to get that there is a correlation between students striking against austerity and their own cause, SPVM officers are parading around blissfully ignorant of the irony of wearing red squares on the back of their uniforms while crushing a peaceful protest against austerity. I’d laugh if I didn’t want to cry.

Symbol Appropriation

“On n’a rien volé, nous!” Well, you surely appropriated one symbol, whether by intent or accident, from a movement you are now trying to crush. This despite the fact that the movement you are fighting is itself fighting for what you are fighting for.

Yes, all protesting civil servants have a square with their protest’s mantra written on it plastered all over their vehicles and, in some cases, themselves. Whether by accident or some kind of cruel joke, the squares on police cars and now uniforms are red.

Surely someone in the police brotherhood must have realized the irony. Maybe they found it fitting at the time. It is anything but that now.

No No Solidarité

A few months ago, I openly wondered if it was possible to have solidarity with people who had clearly been enemies in the past. Now, it is abundantly clear that the SPVM officers don’t want to change their tune with protestors, despite fighting for the same overall cause.

They clearly don’t care about the broader issue of austerity. They just want their piece of the pie restored and screw everyone else.

While you may say that they’re just following orders, they presumably were a few months ago when a group of firefighters somehow made it into the council chamber at Montreal City Hall on their watch. The hypocrisy is not surprising, it’s just sad and very, very petty.

* Photo by Cem Ertekin

News

La Coalition opposée à la tarification et à la privatisation des services publics has declared this week a week of action. More than 15 demonstrations will take place in the Greater Montréal area alone. As they say on their Facebook page, The Non Aux Hausses coalition invites everyone, everywhere to join in on the demonstrations against the austerity measures of the Liberal government.

Today is already the second day of actions. Yesterday at Place Émilie Gamelin, at least 500 people attended the gathering held by the teachers, protesting the Liberal government’s austerity measures. The main point was the state of the education system and how the Liberals are leaving it into shambles. There was also interventions from social groups on how the recent measures are directly affecting the welfare of the poorest in our society and especially women. The speakers also indicated that today’s action was but a shadow of things to come with actions to be taken on a weekly and even daily basis throughout the province.

The event closed off with a march accompanied by the SPVM intervention squad.

Click on the image below to see a gallery of photos from Sunday’s event. All photography by Gerry Lauzon.

Anti-Austerity Teacher ProtestAnti-Austerity Teacher Protest

Today’s Anti-Austerity Demonstration

Today at 11:30, a group of protesters occupied the offices of the Bankers Association of Canada in downtown Montreal. The protesters met at McGill College and Sherbrooke, and walked towards Place Montreal Trust. The protest lasted roughly an hour.

More manifs to come in the next three days

Check out this poster below for to see what else to expect this week. If this is what folk are planning for this week only, it looks like Spring 2015 promises to be anything but boring.

NewsPolitics

As Greece rejoiced with the victory of SYRIZA, a coalition of “radical” left-wing parties ranging from Maoists to Trotskyists to everything in between, calling it the annunciation of the end of the terrifying reign of austerity, the most impoverished Venezuelans were ransacking grocery stories in the hopes that they would stock-up just enough to sustain themselves through the next neo-liberal heist. Meanwhile, Argentinians were holding up the floodgates withstanding as much as they could the latest economical onslaught sponsored by Wall Street hedge funds.

Even though the glowing hope emanating from Athens might have seemed contagious on the evening of January 25th, one red-string of flowing open arteries, the catastrophic aftermath of an attempted neo-liberal suicide, ran through Buenos Aires, Caracas and Athens, bonding them together. It seems as though the “war on terror” is a perfect distraction from the “war of terror” that the free world is waging against the democratic aspirations of people throughout the globe. Here illustrated are three contemporary examples: Greece, Venezuela and Argentina. This obviously isn’t an exhaustive study of all of the cases.

Greece Fights Back

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The electoral success of SYRIZA, even though a foreseen outcome, sent an electro-shock throughout the European continent. It was the proof that what had been deemed as dangerous, radical and suicidal could actually work. A program that was deemed to be the annunciation of the apocalypse, a program that dared to put human development over debt reduction and paying off interest, could actually be a winning motion!

“Scandalous” and “outrageous” must of been the first words to come to mind at the hedge-funds, the European Central Bank (ECB) and among Srasbourg technocrats when news of SYRIZA’s overwhelming victory hit. For the first few days, many within the mainstream media were under the illusion that somehow SYRIZA’s radical demands could be tamed. The strategy of containment that was prevalent for the past year, since the neo-liberal forces in Greece had started faltering, was at its apogee: “SYRIZA’s now in government will come to see the light, they will understand the logic of austerity, why austerity is necessary.”

And for the first week of SYRIZA governance, many on the left had that fear; the fear that SYRIZA under piling pressure might fall on their own sword, might be a victim, as are so many, of their own failed dreams. But they haven’t and it looks as if the coalition government lead by SYRIZA will stop at no lengths to bury once and for all the Troika. The first bombs, the first economical terrorist attacks to destabilize the newly elected government have landed on the Greek capital.

The War on Venezuela’s Poor

During that time while the world was engulfed in their war against terror a.k.a the war against ISIS, the “free world” of free markets and free trade was waging a war of terror. In Caracas, the war against the Bolivarian revolution was initiated (in the same manner the war against SYRIZA) on the night of Hugo Chavez’s election. Since Hugo Chavez’s death and the ascension of Maduro, his dauphin, to power, domestic neo-liberal elites with the help of their CIA foreign counterparts have declared an all out war on the most impoverished sections of the Venezuelan population.

Those who have directly benefited the most from the social transformation that started with the Bolivarian revolution and those who have been at the avant-garde of the social transformations are now under attack. For the past year, inflation has been soaring, stock markets such as Wall Street have been carpet bombing the Venezuelan domestic market and multinational corporations have been withholding basic goods in an attempt to make prices soar and turn the most in need against the government.

Argentina’s Debt Crisis

What is going on in Caracas is very similar to what happened in Argentina during their “debt-crisis”, their refusal to pay back a debt that was forced upon them by the IMF, the World Bank and their puppets within the Argentine military junta. Weren’t those the days, when neo-liberal austerity measures could be imposed with lethal force!

In Argentina’s case a vulture fund had set Argentina in its cross-hairs, buying its unsolvable debt knowing full well that Argentina had no intention to pay it. They set about strangling and bombarding the country in every economical sense of the term, until it did!

Argentina has withstood the economic assaults that have been made against it, for the time being, but its people have also paid the price. Cuba wasn’t the only country under embargo in Latin America from 1998 to 2002, Argentina, even though no media would report it, was defacto under economic embargo. Argentina, in many ways, had to go into autarky mode for the past few years, because of the pariah label that has been given to the country by the big institutions of deregulation, the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank. That’s the price to pay, I guess, for being counter current.

Austerity’s Self-Destruction

And this is why SYRIZA’s victory is truly groundbreaking, because the pariahs are making inroads into the epicenter of global capitalism. Like a gregarious disease, neo-liberalism and its ultimate and most violent form austerity, have bread the seeds of their own self-destruction. Within this self-destruction comes the opportunity, through revolt, to refute the system of values and principles and to rebuild, to change the behavior, to change the foundations of society.

Oedipus, in the words of Gilles Deleuze, is the norm, society, capitalism breeds schizophrenia, breeds suicidal tendencies, but beyond that codifies them and normifies them. Thus austerity becomes the norm. Anything outside of the box of austerity is radical and dangerous, even though the only thing in the world that is radical today is the radically limitless ascension of greed in every sphere of public life.

In these times of economic terrorism we must stand with those that have refuted the norm. To create a new norm, we must bond with them. Capitalism and austerity validity are the first and foremost mental blocks. The converts of radical capitalism are a zealous bunch and are growing at a rapid pace, the threat of neo-liberalization is eminent. If we we want to win the war against terror we must end the capitalist war of terror first!

Osheaga 2014 Gogol Bordello © Bianca Lecompte
AllArtsCultureNews

2015 has been off to quite a busy start, but before we get too involved, let’s take one final look back at 2014.

Every year we ask our contributors to vote on the favourite two posts they wrote and the two posts they liked most from all the other contributors on the site. Then, in a not-too-scientific manner, we turn that into this list.

In no particular order, these are the top posts of 2014 on FTB:

Standing in solidarity with Ferguson by Cem Ertekin, photos Gerry Lauzon

After the grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri erupted. In Montreal, the Black Students’ Network of McGill organized a vigil. Cem Ertekin was there to report and record audio and Gerry Lauzon took pictures (read the post).

Burlesque: A Naked Revolution You Can Do Too! by Cat McCarthy
Cat McCarthy on what burlesque has done for her and can do for you, too. For her, it’s a revolution of sexual liberation. (read the post).

Our first and (probably) last post about Jian Ghomeshi by Johnny Scott

We only published one post about Jian Ghomeshi this year: Johnny Scott’s satirical response to the overbearing presence of Ghomeshi images in his Facebook feed. The story is important, but do we really need to keep looking at his face? (read the post)

Electric Winter: an interview with Igloofest’s Nicolas Cournoyer by Bianca David

Did you know that Igloofest started out as a joke? Well, it did, and now it’s anything but. Find out about the fest’s origins and its future in Bianca David’s interview with founder Nicolas Cournoyer. (read the post)

Black Lives Matter - In Solidarity with Ferguson Montreal vigil (5)
From the solidarity vigil for Ferguson held in Montreal on November 25, 2014. Photo by Gerry Lauzon.

 

Solidarity with the enemy: When the oppressor wants to fight oppression by Jason C. McLean

When municipal workers took up the fight against austerity, Jason C. McLean wondered if it was possible to show solidarity with those who didn’t reciprocate. Also, would that even be a good thing? (read the post)

Channeling Energy with Brody Stevens @ OFF-JFL by Jerry Gabriel

This year, we covered Just for Laughs, OFF-JFL and Zoofest. One of the more, um, interesting performances we saw was by Brody Stevens (he had a cameo in The Hangover). Find out why it piqued our interest in this report by Jerry Gabriel. (read the post)

Ferguson – The Grand Hypocrisy: Legitimate violence, ideology and the American Dream by Niall Clapham Ricardo

How legitimate is a legal system that serves more to oppress than to protect? Niall Clapham Ricardo takes a look at the aftermath of the Ferguson Grand Jury. (read the post)

The rise of EDM at Osheaga by Jesse Anger

This year, we returned to Osheaga and Jesse Anger discovered that it was more electronic than ever. Find out why. (read the post)

 

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From November 29, 2014 Refusons l’Austerité march in Montreal. Photo by Cem Ertekin.

 

Say no to victim blaming by Bree Rockbrand

When the Montreal taxi rape story broke, Bree Rockbrand searched for stories of similar cabbie assaults. What she found lead to this post about why we need to stop victim blaming. (read the post)

Cuddles and catpuccinos: How Montréal is setting the course for cat cafés in North America by Josh Davidson

CAAAAAATS! But seriously, there are cats, plenty of them, at Montreal’s two cat cafes, the first such places in North America. Josh Davidson reports. (read the post)

Snowpiercer is a Welcome Addition to the Current Dystopia Craze by Thomas O’Connor

With the dystopia genre going the way of vampires, Thomas O’Connor takes a look at Snowpiercer. Is this a film that can buck the trend? (read the post)

SPVM officers issue a ticket for a situation they created (AUDIO) by Jason C. McLean

Lindsay Rockbrand just wanted to lay down for a few minutes on a park bench, but the SPVM wouldn’t let that happen. Even though it was before 11pm, they managed to give her a ticket for being in a park after hours (read the post and listen to the interview)

Tinder, Tinder, On The Wall… by Jules

Jules decides to try out Tinder. Wonder what will make her swipe left? Find out. (read the post)

Igloofest 2014 7 © Bianca Lecompte
Igloofest 2014. Photo by Bianca Lecompte.

 

2014 in Review: Why Feminism Still Matters by Stephanie Laughlin

It’s not usual for a year-in-review piece to make it to the list of favourite posts, but Stephanie Laughlin’s look at the events of 2014 as a reason feminism is still needed bucks that trend. Find out why. (read the post)

Some Nasty Advice: The Nasty Show @ JFL by Hannah Besseau

We didn’t like everything at this year’s JFL. While Hannah Besseau enjoyed the Nasty Show overall, she does have some advice for next year. Will those planning it listen? (read the post)

Quebec election postponed until August: Marois by Jason C. McLean

Our April Fools posts usually catch a few people (usually those just waking up) off-guard, but in 2014 we really seemed to have hit a nerve. Maybe it’s because the scenario we jokingly proposed wasn’t all that inconceivable, given the climate. (read the post)

P6 is police collaboration and I refuse to participate in it by Katie Nelson

Katie Nelson argues why, under no circumstances, people organizing a protest should comply with municipal bylaw P6. It is collaboration, pure and simple. (read the post)

Osheaga Day 3: The Green stage rules them all [PHOTOS] by Bianca Lecompte

More Osheaga! This time, it’s the Green Stage and quite a few photos by Bianca Lecompte. (read the post, check out the pics)

Petrocultures 2014: Oil Energy or Canada’s Future by Sarah Ring, photos by Jay Manafest

This year, McGill held a conference on oil and Canada’s energy future. It welcomed people with sustainable solutions to our dependence on fossil fuel and Ezra Levant. FTB’s Sarah Ring and Jay Manafest were in attendance. (read the post)

#FantasiaFest Interview with Director Leigh Janiak of Honeymoon by Pamela Fillion

No, this isn’t just in here because it mentions Ygritte from Game of Thrones, but that helps. It’s actually a pretty cool interview by Pamela Filion with Leigh Janiak, Rose Leslie’s director in Honeymoon. (read the post)

Our collective struggle: Austerity and Spring 2015 by Cem Ertekin

This piece by Cem Ertekin is a prediction of what’s to come in the Quebec student movement (SPOILER ALERT: We’re in for another Maple Spring). It’s also a great primer for anyone wanting a rundown on just what austerity is and Quebec politics for the last few years. (read the post)

News

The curtain falls on 2014 and it’s time to look back on all of the great accomplishments, all of the great eye-watering moments, the laughs, the hilarious mix-ups, the lyrical fumbles, and feel-good moments with a happy ending attached to it. At least that’s what you usually see at end-of-year reviews that usually appear at this time of the year.

This post is not for the feeble hearted, if you’re trying to escape from the yucky austere murkiness of this past year, you will find no refuge here!

Because this past year was anything but joyous for hundreds of thousands, even, dare I say, millions of Canadians, of all walks of life, who saw the sharp knife of austerity cut into their savings, into their public services, into their communities, into their livelihoods.

2014 was yet another year that fed the relentless ascent of inequality within Canadian society. From the shores of British Columbia to the shores of Nova Scotia, governments were replaced and/or re-elected, but all were invested with the sordid straight-jacket of “fiscal responsibility.” Every single one, left, centre, and right took the oath of austerity under the threat of the Damocles’ sword of the financial markets. Here’s a little trans-Canadian journey along the straits of austerity in 2014.

By Cem Ertekin

In British Columbia the reinvigorated Liberal government of Christie Clark, victors of an electoral ‘fluke,’ promoted austerity in the province, within the first year of their new mandate.  Main stream media alluded to the “boringness” of the budget. In all honesty, it did have a pretty boring title: Balanced Budget 2014. But apart from that the Balanced Budget 2014 was in fact an exhilarating piece of legislation for all the austerity groupies, except for the Fraser Institute for obvious reasons. Although the BC budget went the extra mile, cutting funds from education to law enforcement, and gave way, on the other hand, hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits to oil and gas tycoons, the Fraser Institute underlined that it wasn’t enough, austerity along their lines is only complete when all barriers to corporate and personal greed are destroyed. “Ambition,” as defined per the Fraser Institute dictionary, is a full out assault on collective ownership. The only thing that can be seen as ambitious is the transfer of public wealth into the hands of a few private entities, a process more commonly known as austerity.

In the Prairies, only Manitoba has resisted the wrath of austerity. That being said, Manitoba is far from being a success story. With the rise of the Provincial Sales Tax (PST), which has had a negative impact on the poorest of Manitobans. The economic situation of Indigenous communities in Manitoba, especially the plight of Indigenous children and women, is disastrous, as it is across Canada.

In Saskatchewan austerity is synonymous with prosperity, believe it or not, in the name of preserving the Saskatchewan Advantage. The Saskatchewan Advantage, as per the Wall administration, is nothing more, or nothing less, than handouts for the fracking lobby and austerity for the rest. In the lyrical fairytale of the Saskatchewan Advantage, austerity is the tempo, to which its raconteurs sing praises.

By Cem Ertekin

In Big Sky Country, the new Premier is all about the cuts. In 2013, Redford had already put the axe to the few relics of what seemed once to have been some sort of welfare net. The price of oil plummeting will be the perfect excuse for Jim Prentice to extend those cuts even further in the year to come. Is this the end of the Calgary School’s laboratory? Only time will tell.

In Ontario and Quebec, both Liberal governments were re-elected back to office in 2014 and not so surprisingly they both re-started their austerity measures and severe amputations. Quebec’s austerity budget was ushered through the national assembly with “rigour” and “responsibility.” When you thought things couldn’t get worse, we jumped from the frying pan into the freaking oven. There have been cuts across the board to healthcare and educational services, deep cuts to employment initiatives and to unemployment programs – a trend which was already initiated by the PQ, but especially aggravated by the Liberal administration. On the other hand, very “gracefully” and in a very “generous” manner, the Couillard administration offered more funds for First Nations education in return for unchecked access to the natural resources of Northern Quebec within the framework of Le Plan Nord. Neo-colonialism anyone?

In Ontario it seems as if austerity has frozen over, Ontario might have dodged the bullet of Tim Hudak’s slashing fetish, but didn’t get Wynne’s ‘Disneylandic‘ utopia some had raved about. No increase in healthcare or educational services. A literal 0% rate of increase for the next two years at least in both those sectors, no plan to tackle the omen of having the highest tuition fees in Canada, a pitiful increase to the provincial minimum wage would has been frozen for years, a 1% increase across the board for social services and social programs… It’s the frigid kiss of austerity with a smile!

UNITE AGAINST

In the Maritimes, in the meanwhile, the emphasis was put on “deficit reduction” the politically correct synonym for austerity. In Nova Scotia the cuts put forward by the outgoing Dexter administration were not rolled back, they were solidified. The Liberal government continued their focus on balancing the budget on the backs of those most obviously in need.

After slashing the only librarian in Corner Brook, Newfoundland’s second biggest city, the Conservative government of Paul Davies continued their quest to slash taxes, while providing Newfoundland & Labrador with the best Health Care, Education and Social Services in the country, and, as the cherry on top, promised a return to a budget surplus in 2015-16, obviously these kinds of fairy tales have as for backdrop the Tory utopia of “No-government-is-good-government Land!”

In New Brunswick, Gallant and his Liberal administration have beaten the Conservative incumbents, and have sworn to impose a moratorium on fracking. That’s a very positive update, but we’ll have to wait and see. Will Galant have the courage to dispossess the Irving clan of their private domain, i.e. New Brunswick, or will he be deposed for trying?

In the Canadian North and for native communities throughout Canada, 2014 was just another year of excruciating violence. The federal government continued to deny Indigenous communities rightful justice when it comes to the more than 1200 missing or murdered Indigenous women and imposed colonialist type austerity on First Nation, Métis and Inuit communities throughout Canada. It has withheld funds for education from First Nations communities, because of their refusal to have the Federal Government impose a “White Man’s” education on them. Coming from the same government that offered the “historical” excuses for the residential schools system, I would call it hypocritical, but I think hypocritical doesn’t cut it! As if that wasn’t enough  the Conservative government  imposed some kind of Neo-Colonial management on First Nation communities through their Orwellian First Nations Transparency Act (FNTA), threatening to withhold funds once again if First Nation communities don’t accept to hand over their sovereignty to Ottawa.

It’s hypocritical, to say the least. Because while the Conservative government is bickering about “First Nations Transparency,” the record of Canadian dollars in Tax Heavens was shattered this year, at around 170$ billion. Canadian banks made yet another year of trailblazing profits. Unfortunately for them, it seems like its going to “cool down” a bit. *tears* Multinational Oil and Gas corporations this year cashed in an estimated $34 billion in direct and indirect subsidies from all levels of government. In even better news, the budget surplus which was crafted through the panoply of austerity measures, which has been the plight of so many working Canadian families has been handed to the richest 1% of Canadian families, through the Conservatives income splitting scheme. And while Canadian workers make less and less per hour in salary compared with the price of living, Canadian multinationals are sitting on 630 billion dollars. This is what the real face of austerity is. Austerity is highway robbery, the privatization of our common public wealth.  If it’s a question of “tightening one’s belt,” then we will ask who’s belt is to be tightened?

There’s one image that sums-up all of the 2014 cycle for me perfectly: the image of minister Aglukkaq reading a newspaper in the HOC while a debate was raging about the bitter Food Crisis, which pushed some of her constituents to dumpster dive to find some scraps of food. That image embodied perfectly the misery of Canadian politics in 2014.

A luta continua!