Philadelphia Front Page News/Canada Special Opinion Piece and Topics: A United Canada without the Monarchy by Jeffrey J. Cunningham, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Philadelphia Front Page News/Canada Special Opinion Piece and Topics: A United Canada without the Monarchy by Jeffrey J. Cunningham, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Above: An image of the French speaking community in Canada.
The French/British colonization of Canada has been the topic of discussion
in Canada since the 16th Century.
  

Jeffrey Cunningham, a Canadian who has submitted his opinion article in response to current affairs in Canada, is a resident of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  He graduated from Los Angeles City College in 1989 with Honors. And Cunningham’s dream is a United, Strong and Separatist-free Canadian Republic.

Mr. Cunningham would like his opinion to reach the considerable number of Canadians who live in Pennsylvania, New York State, and also those American citizens who are interested in Canadian affairs and matters. 

In Jeffrey Cunningham’s opinion the article deals with the separatist movement in Quebec and offers a solution.  The solution is in the title of the article. Jeffrey considers Canada to be the U.S. greatest ally. And it is a great idea if Canada also became a republic. To contact Jeffery Cunningham [P] 1-604-676-1594 or [E] jeffrey@transtelcorporation.com.

A United Canada without the Monarchy

Canada and England would fit seamlessly into the international community without the Monarchy!

It is not accidental that the great majority of nations are republics.  It has been the result of humanity’s long groping in the dark, tribulations and sacrifices.

Its first and greatest benefit for Canada is that it will deliver a forceful disincentive to the separatist movement in Quebec because after the disposal of the Monarchy, everyone across the land will take the oath of allegiance to Canada itself.  We will pledge allegiance to one another and that per se will awaken a great sense of commitment, responsibility, and belonging in all of us.

Let us for the duration of time that it takes to read this article set aside the fact of the Aboriginals’ existence on this continent from time immemorial and state another fact that the French came here before the English and later on lost the colonial war to England and England unilaterally declared sovereignty over the entire land and dumped the Monarchy on it.  Wars are not any different from sports in the sense that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and to take the oath of allegiance to the English Monarch simply does not bring out the best in our French Canadians; it only perpetuates the feeling of a past loss.

France is a major world power and several generations ago with its Revolution of 1789 it abolished the monarchy and the parasitism that went with it, ended the ancien regime (old system), and became the source of inspiration for the rest of the world.  Now, what does it mean to a “free French citizen” to come all the way to Canada for a new life only to be labeled as “the subject” of the English Monarch?  Who is anyone else to decide for our French Canadians how they should feel about taking the oath of allegiance to the English Monarch?

As humanity’s experience has shown, monarchy has never been a marketable system.  Monarchies have been crumbling one after the other and, very fortunately, it is impossible to convince a republic to convert its system to a monarchy.

What are we waiting for here in Canada?  Are we waiting for the English to arouse from their coma to dispose of the Monarchy before we decide to become a republic?  The Monarchy has always worked for Canadian politicians.  One prime minister after the other has sought the highest office only for the sake of becoming the prime minister and the rest was to deal with the day-to-day routines of the office and at the end to collect a fat retirement pay cheque!

We must salute Australia for moving in the direction of a republican system.  Its former prime minister, Julia Gillard, had the courage to make it her political platform during her campaign to end the Monarchy in Australia and when the Queen visited Australia, she had the courage of her convictions and delivered the message by standing tall and graceful and refusing to curtsy. 

What a great and unforgettable moment it was for a nation moving towards a republican system!  Unfortunately, a coterie of misguided and sexist politicians did everything they could to bring her down, but they cannot stop Australia from moving forward.

 
Above from left to right: Julia Gillard, former Australia Prime Minister,
and Queen Elizabeth II Alexandra Mary of Great Britain.

English Canada is satisfied to think that the separatist movement will go away on its own while the Monarchy is firmly in place, but the hard facts indicate that it is alive and well and only simmers down from time to time.  Since Rene Levesque, the founder of the separatist party, Parti Quebecois, and the first Quebec Premier from that party, resigned from politics in late 1985 (premier: November 25, 1976 to October 3, 1985) to this date we have had five more Parti Quebecois premiers in Quebec and there will be more in the years to come.

This leads us to the fair conclusion that it now only takes a great and charismatic French Canadian leader to rise to power and sweep them off their feet and give at least the majority of the voters, if not all of them, enough get-up-and-go to say yes to “sovereignty”!  The dire consequences are that the cost to all of us will be astronomically high and unbearable and still worse is the fact that after the break-up the rest of Canada will become a bird’s nest on the ground for the U.S.

Time is marching on very fast and we must act decisively.  We must stop once and for all falsely and complacently pointing fingers at our French Canadians.  Instead, we must train our eyes and our united efforts towards removing the actual cause, which is the Monarchy and its divisive effect on our lives in Canada.

Fiorina aims to keep Clinton from playing the 'gender card'

Fiorina aims to keep Clinton from playing the 'gender card'

FILE - In this Jan. 24, 2015 file photo, Carly Fiorina speaks in Des Moines, Iowa. Fiorina, the lone Republican woman eying the White House, wants to block Hillary Rodham Clinton from playing the “gender card” in the 2016 presidential race. A former business executive with limited political experience, Fiorina argues that if Republicans nominate her, it would neutralize any advantages Democrats might get from having a woman at the top of their ticket.

  

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) -- Carly Fiorina, the lone Republican woman eying the White House, wants to block Hillary Rodham Clinton from playing the "gender card" in the 2016 presidential race.

But to do so, Fiorina is taking a page from the gender politics playbook herself.

A former business executive with limited political experience, Fiorina argues that if Republicans nominate her, it would neutralize any advantages the Democrats might get from having a woman at the top of their ticket.

Speaking of Clinton in an interview with The Associated Press, Fiorina said, "She wants to make it a gender-based campaign; she wants to talk about the war on women; she wants to talk about being the first woman president. She can't do any of that with me."

Clinton, who launched her campaign last weekend, has been playing up her life experience as a mother and grandmother, along with her policy work on women's and children's issues. She's not yet directly highlighted the prospect she would be the first female president, something she played down in her failed 2008 campaign.

While Fiorina has yet to declare her own candidacy, she has been positioning herself for weeks as a foil to Clinton, the clear Democratic front-runner. She's been among the sharpest Clinton critics in the emerging Republican field, going after the Democrat's trustworthiness in light of revelations about her private email use as secretary of state, as well as her record as the nation's chief diplomat.

"Like Mrs. Clinton, I, too, have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles," Fiorina said this week, reprising a favorite line. "But flying and traveling is an activity, it's not an accomplishment and unfortunately she didn't accomplish anything as secretary of state."

The 60-year-old Fiorina says she plans to announce whether she's running for president in late April or early May. She's put the likelihood of her running at "higher than 90 percent" and has been making stops in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina - all states that vote early in the primary process.

Fiorina is back in New Hampshire this week, joining a multitude of potential GOP presidential candidates at a two-day forum that could be an early test of who has breakout potential in the state that holds the nation's first primary.

Fiorina says she doesn't want to run based on her sex, but rather to focus on another factor that makes her an outlier in the Republican field: the fact that nearly her entire career has been in business, not the political arena. She was one of the country's highest-ranking female executives during her nearly six years as chief executive at Hewlett-Packard, but was forced out of the company in 2005.

Democrats say Fiorina's real legacy in business is the thousands of jobs lost at Hewlett-Packard during the merger she oversaw with Compaq. Democratic officials also contend that she supports policies that are bad for women, including the repeal of President Barack Obama's health care law, which expanded coverage for many preventive services for women.

As for her own political experience, she ran for the U.S. Senate in California in 2010 but was easily defeated by incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer. She was an adviser to Sen. John McCain's unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign.

Fiorina remains unknown to many Americans. But Steve DeMaura, executive director of the super PAC Carly for America, said she can use Clinton's presence in the race to "leverage additional attention" for her own candidacy.

"People say, `Well, Hillary's running, what does the Republican woman think?'" DeMaura said.

So far, Fiorina seems at ease playing the Clinton foil, said David Carney, a longtime New Hampshire political strategist, particularly compared with male candidates who can find it awkward criticizing female politicians - not that the GOP hopefuls have been shy about going after Clinton.

"You see some candidates when they attack a woman come across very badly," said Carney, who is not aligned with a candidate in 2016 but whose wife is working for Fiorina. "But it's not very awkward for Carly. She seems to pull it off very well."

Fiorina has also started criticizing fellow Republicans, recently calling likely candidate Jeb Bush "dead wrong" on issues such as immigration and the Common Core education standards.

One of Fiorina's biggest challenges may be raising the money she'll need to stay in the race long enough to build up more name recognition. She contributed $5 million of her own money to her Senate campaign, but left behind more than $500,000 of debt.

DeMaura said Fiorina would have to run an "insurgent campaign" that focuses on "surviving to the next round."

"Staying in the race is a big part of the process," he said.

Thousands flee as IS group advances on Iraq's Ramadi

Thousands flee as IS group advances on Iraq's Ramadi 
 

People leave their hometown Ramadi, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 16, 2015. Clashes between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants pressing their offensive for Ramadi, the capital of western Anbar province, has forced more than 2,000 families to flee from their homes in the area, an Iraqi official said Thursday. The Sunni militants' push on Ramadi, launched Wednesday when the Islamic State group captured three villages on the city's eastern outskirts, has become the most significant threat so far to the provincial capital of Anbar.

  

BAGHDAD (AP) -- More than 2,000 families have fled the Iraqi city of Ramadi with little more than the clothes on their backs, officials said Thursday, as the Islamic State group closed in on the capital of western Anbar province, clashing with Iraqi troops and turning it into a ghost town.

The extremist group, which has controlled the nearby city of Fallujah for more than a year, captured three villages on Ramadi's eastern outskirts on Wednesday. The advance is widely seen as a counteroffensive after the Islamic State group lost the city of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, earlier this month.

Hundreds of U.S. troops are training Iraqi forces at a military base west of Ramadi, but a U.S. military official said the fighting had no impact on the U.S. soldiers there, and that there were no plans to withdraw them.

The fleeing Ramadi residents were settling in the southern and western suburbs of Baghdad, and tents, food and other aid were being sent to them, said Sattar Nowruz, an official of the Ministry of Migration and the Displaced.

The ministry was assessing the situation with the provincial government in order "to provide the displaced people, who are undergoing difficult conditions, with better services and help," Nowruz said.

Sporadic clashes were still underway Thursday, according to security officials in Ramadi. Government forces control the city center, while the IS group has had a presence in the suburbs and outskirts for months. They described Ramadi as a ghost town, with empty streets and closed shops.

Video obtained by The Associated Press showed plumes of thick, black smoke billowing above the city as fighter jets pounded militant targets. On the city outskirts, displaced residents frantically tried to make their way out amid the heavy bombardment.

U.S.-led coalition airstrikes targeted the IS group in Sjariyah, Albu-Ghanim and Soufiya, the three villages the extremists captured Wednesday, the officials added. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to the media.

Anbar's deputy governor, Faleh al-Issawi, described the situation in Ramadi as "catastrophic" and urged the central government to send in reinforcements.

"We urge the Baghdad government to supply us immediately with troops and weapons in order to help us prevent the city from falling into the hands of the IS group," he told the Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, said access to the city was limited but humanitarian workers were trying to verify the reports of fleeing residents. Prior to the current bout of fighting, some 400,000 Iraqis were already displaced, including 60,000 in Ramadi district, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Al-Bayan, the Islamic State group's English-language radio station, claimed IS fighters had seized control of at least six areas and most of a seventh to the east of Ramadi since Wednesday, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant websites.

American troops fought some of their bloodiest battles in Anbar during the eight-year U.S. intervention, when Fallujah and Ramadi were strongholds of al-Qaida in Iraq, a precursor to the IS group. Fallujah was the first Iraqi city to fall to the militants, in January 2014.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who was visiting Washington on Wednesday, made no mention of the events in Ramadi. Instead he spoke optimistically about recruiting Sunni tribal fighters to battle the extremists, saying about 5,000 such fighters in Anbar had signed up and received light weapons.

The IS-run Al-Bayan station also reported that an attempt by Iraqi troops to advance on the Beiji oil refinery in Salahuddin province, about 250 kilometers (115 miles) north of Baghdad, was pushed back and that fighters "positioned themselves in multiple parts of the refinery after taking control of most of it," according to SITE.

Iraqi officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the fighting around Beiji. On Monday, Oil Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said that Iraqi forces, backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, had repelled an IS attack on Beiji over the weekend.

Meanwhile, a senior U.S. military official told The Associated Press that there were no plans to evacuate U.S. troops from the Ain al-Asad air base, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) west of Ramadi - and stressed that the current fighting around Ramadi had no impact on the base. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Since January, hundreds of U.S. forces have been training Iraqi troops at the base.

Fight for $15 protests expand for low-wage workers

Fight for $15 protests expand for low-wage workers

Boston University student Patrick Johnson, center, holds a sign as he joins with other protesters, including students, fast-food restaurant employees and other workers, as they march Tuesday, April 14, 2015, in Boston. Organizers of the event are calling for the nation's lowest paid workers to earn at least $15 per hour.

  

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Fight for $15 campaign to win higher pay and a union for fast-food workers is expanding to represent a variety of low-wage workers and become more of a social justice movement.

In New York City on Wednesday, more than 100 chanting protesters gathered outside a McDonald's around noon, prompting the store to lock its doors to prevent the crowd from streaming in.

Demonstrators laid on the sidewalk outside to stage a "die-in," which became popular during the "Black Lives Matter" protests after recent police shootings of black men. Several wore sweatshirts that said "I Can't Breathe," a nod to the last words of a black man in New York City who died after he was put in a police chokehold.

Timothy Roach, a 21-year-old Wendy's worker from Milwaukee, said the police brutality black men face is linked to the lack of economic opportunity they're given. He said the protests were necessary to send a message to companies.

"If they don't see that it matters to us, then it won't matter to them," Roach said.

Organizers said demonstrations were planned for more than 230 U.S. cities and college campuses, as well as dozens of cities overseas. Among those who joined the latest day of protests were airport workers, Walmart workers and adjunct professors.

The campaign began in late 2012 and is being spearheaded by the Service Employees International Union, which represents low-wage workers in areas like home care, child care and building cleaning services. Mary Kay Henry, the SEIU's president, said the push has already helped prompt local governments to consider higher minimum wages, nudged companies to announce pay hikes and made it easier for SEIU members to win better contracts. Those results are inspiring other groups of workers, she said.

"It has defied a sense of hopelessness," she said.

In Jackson, Mississippi, around 30 people protested in a McDonald's before being kicked out, with one of the demonstrators being arrested for trespassing. Protesters also gathered outside McDonald's restaurants in cities including Denver, Los Angeles and Albany, New York.

Even if fast-food workers and others never become union members, winning higher pay for them would benefit the SEIU by helping lift pay for its members, said Susan Schurman, dean of Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.

"By raising the wage floor, it really benefits everyone," she said.

Ann Hodges, a professor of labor employment law at the University of Richmond, said engaging different types of workers also broadens the appeal of the movement by increasing the chances people know someone who's affected.

And the push to make Fight for $15 more of a social justice movement makes those who might have negative perceptions about unions more likely to join, she said.

"It becomes easier to organize workers if they view it as something positive and socially desirable," Hodges said.

In the meantime, McDonald's said this month it would raise its starting salary to $1 above the local minimum wage, and give workers the ability to accrue paid time off. It marked the company's first national pay policy, and indicates McDonald's wants to take control of its image as an employer. But the move only applies to workers at company-owned stores, which account for about 10 percent of more than 14,300 locations.

McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's say they don't control the employment decisions at franchised restaurants. The SEIU is working to upend that position and hold McDonald's responsible for labor conditions at franchised restaurants in multiple ways, including lawsuits.

In a statement, McDonald's said it respects the right to "peacefully protest." In the past, it said only about 10 to 15 McDonald's workers out of about 800,000 in the U.S. have participated.

In a recent column in The Chicago Tribune, McDonald's Corp. CEO Steve Easterbrook described the company's pay hike and other perks as "an initial step," and said he wants to transform McDonald's into a "modern, progressive burger company."

But that transformation will have to take place as labor organizers continue pressuring employers over wages. Ahead of the protests this week, a study funded by the SEIU found working families rely on $153 billion in public assistance a year as a result of their low wages.

Black Women Models