[Marxism] Regarding Canada's international role

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As Malcolm X taught us, in order to communicate with someone
you have to speak in a language they can understand. When a
Canadian activist journal chooses to endorse the September 24
protests to help broaden their international impact, that's good.

Pointing to Canadian complicity in Washington's international
wars of conquest and occupation, through it's complicity with
the Guantanamo gulag was very apt and timely, but it could
have been strengthened had it added an positive alternative
to the criticism. Socialists cannot and should not always be
seen as critics who have nothing but negative things to say
about our own countries. We should also try, as much and
whenever we can, to find something postive to say and to
build up from that, in addition to being critical when that's
necessary and appropriate.

Canada has full diplomatic and economic ties with Cuba and
provides a large number of tourists which help the island to
break the vice of Washington's blockade. Had Socialist Voice
counterposed encouraged its readers to support Cuba in a
very practical manner, by physically going to the island, it
would have made a stronger case, in my opinion. Socialist
Voice could have found any number of ways to counterpose
Cuba's positive foreign assistance programs such as those
providing medical care all over the world for free, with
Washington's predatory wars of conquest and theft.

Always offer an alternative, that's how I was trained in both
the Socialist Workers Party in its better days, and when
listening to the voice of Malcolm X.

Cuba is by no means my only interest, and it's hardly a
paradise either. Yet there are so many positive things we
CAN learn from her example that we ought to be open to
learning from them.  Thanks for listening.


Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
http://www.walterlippmann.com
======================================

SOCIALIST VOICE:
The inquiry has also revealed that while the Canadian government
pretends on the world stage to oppose the use of torture, in fact it
joined with the United States in a now frequent practice
of "offshoring" torture by delivering detainees into the hands of
authorities that can be counted on to use such methods and report the
results. Canadian police have interrogated at least one detainee in
the U.S.-run concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.




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