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Defiant Quebec students reject shabby government offer
Quebec college and university students are now in the 13th week of their militant province-wide strike while voting by overwhelming majorities to reject a government offer that met none of their key demands.
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Economics For Everyone
Economics For Everyone is an invaluable book and a necessary addition to the library of popular educators, trade unionists, activists, or any person trying to make sense of the conundrum that is modern capitalism. And as Stanford makes clear, the first step to transforming the system is knowing how it works and for whom. To this end, Stanford’s book has made a vital contribution.
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High Schools Against Israeli Apartheid
In July 2005, 171 Palestinian civil-society organizations issued a call to the “international civil society organizations, and people of conscience all over the world, to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel, similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.” This call came after 57 years of ethnic cleansing, 38 years of military occupation and one year after the International Court of Justice issued its advisory opinion declaring Israel’s apartheid wall to be illegal under international law.
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Power to the Students!
Bertell Ollman is a professor of political science at New York University, and is well known for books like Alienation and Dialectical Investigations, and for well over fifty articles and commentaries on a variety of left-wing subjects. In this book, directed to American university students, Ollman makes a deal with his readers.
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Why Media Reform Should Be a Democratic Priority
Media are the institutional space that concentrates society’s symbolic power, a concentration that the Internet has only somewhat ameliorated. Yes, the Internet is an invaluable organizing tool for activism — but it’s also a foremost means of neoliberal globalization. Besides, as Steve Anderson discusses elsewhere in this issue, its most democratic aspects are under threat from the logic of enclosure, one backed by powerful corporate and commercial forces.
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Universities Losing Face
Naming a building or a street after an individual is one of the most visible ways in which society recognizes outstanding achievements that contribute to the public good. Institutions like hospitals and universities make similar gestures when they name wings or programs after individuals whose careers or financial contributions leave legacies that benefit future generations.
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The Alberta Disadvantage in Higher Education
In Alberta an attack is gathering force on the most fundamental principles essential to the academic viability of universities. This attack has implications that go far beyond the jurisdiction most stereotypically associated with cowboy culture and the lucrative vastness of this province’s oil-and-gas resources.
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Reviving the Radical Critique of Religion
When we think of the alliance of church and state, we tend to think of Constantine and Christianity, Holy Russia and the Prussian Empire. In more recent times, we may think of the theocracies of Saudi Arabia and Israel, or George Bush’s de facto fundamentalist regime. Few of us think about Canada.
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The workers need Chapter 11
As for all that self-righteous hot air about how B.C. teachers should set a better example by obeying the “law,” I can’t imagine a better lesson in democracy than watching a group of citizens collectively resisting injustice.
Karl Marx argued that under capitalism, the legal system was pretty much a tool of the ruling class, designed to protect property rights and keep workers in line. This is quite an oversimplification, but every now and then Marx comes close to the mark. If he could see what’s been happening in British Columbia, he’d probably say, “I told you so.”
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Privatizing Canada’s Public Universities
Perhaps the most obvious kind of privatization of the university is the growing reliance on individuals rather than the collective to finance university operations. As students are all too well aware, university tuition and other fees have been skyrocketing in recent years — as have student debts. Between 1990-91 and 2000-2001, tuition fees in Canada rose by 126 per cent, while average student debts rose from about $8,700 to $25,000. This is because students are paying a far larger share of the costs of postsecondary education, from an average of 17 per cent of operating costs in 1992 to 28 per cent of operating costs in 2002. As well, a growing number of university programs are slated to be, if they are not already, almost fully financed by students. Not long ago, for example, the University of Toronto announced its intention to increase its law school tuition to $25,000.
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