USA/Canada

Maternal mortality rises in UK and US

The number of people dying in pregnancy or shortly after giving birth in the UK has risen sharply, with maternal health inequality widening further. Women living in the most deprived areas were more than twice as likely to die as those in the most affluent parts of the UK, the report found, a disparity that has significantly increased. The latest report from an Oxford University research unit has found that 229 women died during pregnancy, or in the first six weeks after, from pregnancy-specific causes, in 2018-20. This was a 24% increase on 2017-19. Maternal deaths have been increasing in the...

Murdoch dumps Trump, but DeSantis poses threat

“Xi is a great gentleman. He’s now president for life. Maybe I’ll want to give that a shot.” During the course of his two hour long rambles which pass for speeches, Trump often makes favourable references to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. At one rally recently he spoke approvingly of the way Xi’s regime “dealt” with alleged criminals”: a “speedy trial” invariably leading to a death sentence, followed by the executioner’s bullet getting mailed to relatives of the deceased. Trump’s liking for despots and their ways is well known. He’s also a big fan of Kim Jong Un, and then there’s the highly...

Union fightback stops anti-strike law

Doug Ford, the right-wing “Progressive Conservative” premier of Ontario, Canada, has backed down on anti-union legislation after a union fightback. “We harnessed our collective power when it was needed most. Ontario workers, and especially the brave CUPE education workers, defended the right to strike for all people in Canada,” said Patty Coates, Ontario Federation of Labour President. And more: “Until education workers bargain a fair collective agreement, we will not stand down; we are ready to fight”. On 4 November, education workers in OPSEU-SEFPO, another union, walked out in solidarity...

USA votes under the gunman's shadow

Just when you thought what passes for recent political life in the United States couldn’t sink any lower, it has. The attack on 82 year old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a conspiracist, which resulted in him receiving a fractured skull, hasn’t met with universal condemnation. Completely unsubstantiated anti-LGBT slurs have been spread instead, claiming Pelosi knew his attacker. Unsurprisingly, Trump himself gave credence to this gross falsehood, as did kindred scumbag, Elon Musk, who spread it on his newly acquired Twitter platform. Twitter has seen an upsurge in far right hate...

Trumpist surge poses threat to Ukraine

America’s midterm elections take place on Tuesday 8 November. According to polls, Republicans are likely to win the House of Representatives and may win the Senate. The Democrats have controlled both chambers since 2020. The results may well impact on the Ukraine war. In May, the House of Representatives voted 368-57 in favour of a $40bn aid package to Ukraine. All 57 votes opposing the aid were from Republicans. If the Republicans take either chamber, or both, support for Ukraine is likely to weaken. That will strengthen Putin and make Russian withdrawal from Ukraine more difficult. The US...

Anti-union laws aim to smash school strikes in Canada

The anti-union, right-wing state government is attempting to crush strike action by poorly paid school support staff in Ontario, Canada. The workers, who are cleaners, school secretaries, librarians and teaching assistants, are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Inflation in Ontario is now around 7% and the union is demanding a wage increase of 11.7% (the equivalent of about £2.10 per hour). The state offered 2.5% for the poorest paid workers, and less for others; negotiations broke down last month. CUPE has 55,000, mainly women members, in Ontario schools. Doug Ford’s...

Midterm malaise in the USA

Socialists, and rational people everywhere, can only rejoice that vile conspiracy-monger Alex Jones has been ordered to pay close to a billion dollars damages to parents whose children were murdered in the gun massacre at Sandy Hook school, Connecticut in 2012. Jones’s far right website InfoWars claimed the school shooting was “fake” — a plot organised by the Federal government to tighten gun control laws — and parents of slain children were “crisis actors”. Fellow scumbags waged a campaign of harassment against those grieving for their lost ones. This included death and rape threats...

Action on Covid-19

On 18 September, US president Joe Biden declared that “the [Covid} pandemic is over”. His chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, has rebuffed the claim, and Fauci is right. The USA has not yet reported an autumn-winter revival of infections, but is likely to follow the pattern of other countries, including Britain, where hospitalisations have tripled since 10 September (though levelling off since 4 October). A group of US health experts has written : “We need a robust national booster campaign, more investment in tests, treatments, and next-wave vaccines, better protections for the...

From US strikes to politics

Kim Moody’s new book Breaking the Impasse brings together an argument that the US left needs to look at the recent labour upsurges (Amazon, teachers’ strikes, nurses) as the way forward in breaking from the broken two-party model of American politics. He criticises the “New Social Democratic Nostalgia” which exists in wings of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for a rose-tinted view of how major reforms from the New Deal and Civil Rights era were won, supposedly by coalition politics. In short the book is a rejection of both the Communist Party popular front and the “realignment”...

Kino Eye: Coal Miner’s Daughter

The recent death of country and western singer Loretta Lynn evokes the biographical film Coal Miner’s Daughter (Michael Apted, 1980). With Sissy Spacek as Loretta the film traces her early life in a remote coal mining community in Kentucky, and her move with her husband (played by Tommy Lee Jones) to the Pacific North West, where her singing and musical ability is discovered. She befriends fellow country and western singer Patsy Kline and goes on to a glittering career. Her songs, many of which she wrote herself, often portrayed the hardships of her early life, as in the song Coal Miner’s...

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