By: Felipe Stuart

Felipe Stuart — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 02:18:02 +0000

What a refreshing reflection and report. Clearly English Canada is not the wasteland I have heard folks complain about.
Quebec seems to be a more exciting place, given the magnificent Le printemps érable last year; but I recall, too, singing along with Gilles Vigneault
Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver
Mon jardin ce n’est pas un jardin, c’est la plaine
Mon chemin ce n’est pas un chemin, c’est la neige
Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver* (see below}
The kind of government John so well describes (defines?) exists here in the domain of the ALBA countries – in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Nicaragua and in Cuba. The situation in El Salvador is touch and go because its FMLN government still has to make concessions to the reactionary army and the oligarchy’s party ARENA (or in shorthand, Washington) – an opposition that still has enormous power in that punished land.
Maybe we will live to see the day when Canada and Quebec both become ALBA members. I hope so. But that could only happen with governments in Ottawa and Quebec City that look and act like the government John has described.
Felipe Stuart
Managua

Le Québec d’autrefois – (1965) PAROLES: Mon pays (Paroles et musique: Gilles Vigneault)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AimhTD5oMEY

By: Richard Fidler

Richard Fidler — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 16:31:34 +0000

Eduardo Galeano:

“Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It is to cause us to advance.”

Ella está en el horizonte.
Me acerco dos pasos, ella se aleja dos pasos.
Camino diez pasos y el horizonte se aleja diez pasos más allá.
Por mucho que yo camine, nunca la alcanzaré.
¿Para qué sirve la utopía entonces?…Para eso sirve, para caminar.

Comments on: Profile of a socialist government

By: Felipe Stuart

By: Richard Fidler