Sixty years ago, North America’s first socialist government, in the heart of the Canadian prairies, Saskatchewan, enacted one of the demands outlined in its manifesto: a free, public health care system. This new program was enacted on July 1, 1962. However, this was not without a struggle, as on the first day of its enactment, […]
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Alberta’s largest unions have released a joint statement calling for an immediate circuit-breaker lockdown in order to deal with the Omicron wave of the COVID pandemic. The province is presently setting records of between 4,700 and 6,800 new cases every day. On the second day back to school in Edmonton, schools were short 737 teachers […]
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Lead is a well-known poison. Its harmful effects have been known for 2,000 years. Dioscorides wrote that “Lead makes the mind give way.” Yet 100 years ago, car manufacturers and oil companies started a mass lead poisoning. Researchers at General Motors found that by adding a lead compound, tetraethyl lead (TEL), several problems with internal […]
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Omicron has rapidly spread across the world with record breaking numbers of cases and dislocation to work and life. This article is about Ireland but many of the points apply in Canada. Provinces have given up on testing and tracking. Even the rapid tests are in short supply. Almost every province has cut the isolation […]
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The emergence of the Omicron variant of COVID highlights the ongoing failings of governments around the world to tackle this pandemic. Vaccine hoarding by rich countries, companies putting profit before human need, governments failing to do outreach to hard-to-reach and hesitant communities and people have all contributed to this ongoing misery. The COVID pandemic drags […]
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Serge Jordan is a member of International Socialist Alternative. Capitalism and Imperialism in the dock The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into sharp relief the profound social inequalities prevailing under modern capitalism. Nowhere more than in Africa. The Global Health Security (GHS) Index is a measured assessment of 195 countries’ capacity and readiness to face outbreaks […]
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