Special to Canadian Dimension

http://lap.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/33/5/118

For 47-plus years the U.S. mass media have consistently misunderstood the essence of the Cuban revolution. Tens of thousands of daily news stories, editorial analyses, and “in-depth” reports have focused on Cuba’s communist, totalitarian government’s human rights violations, the failure of its economy, and the persistence in power of its evil but fascinating dictator-leader. Few have tried to understand or explain why it has survived the unrelenting hostility of its powerful northern neighbor. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension Magazine, July/August 2006 Issue

Major social changes in the United States have fundamentally determined the evolution of jazz music, just as they have other art forms. The 1930s were the period of the rise of jazz and the organized Left. Concretely, this meant big bands and the Communist Party. Notwithstanding some early dogmatic opposition to jazz from cultural commissar Mike Gold, the party soon threw itself into proselytizing for jazz and fighting segregation in the music business. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension Magazine, May/June 2006 Issue

In May of 1871 some 25,000 workers — men, women, children — were slaughtered in the streets of Paris, France by the forces of “law and order” and big capitalist interests. Thirty thousand more were to be jailed, deported and executed in the coming months. Their crime? Proclaiming the world’s first working class-led government known as the Paris Commune. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension Magazine, May/June 2006 Issue

The Winnipeg General Strike as a musical? I must admit to having had mixed feelings about the project when I learned about it. The drama and scale of the confrontation create immense artistic possibilities, of course — but also present just as many challenges. I’ve taught the history of the strike for many years and have always been frustrated at the difficulties of conveying to students the drama and importance of these six weeks in the spring of 1919. Academic treatments and documentaries have often been of little help, as they saw the strike a mere episode (a helpful or unhelpful one, depending on one’s politics) on the road to modern liberal democracy. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension Magazine, March/April 2006 Issue

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Canadian Dimension, January/February 2006 Issue

Music in itself is of little direct political value to progressive forces. It organizes no one. It is poor defense against bullets and truncheons. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension November/December 2005 Issue

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blockquote>Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone — Joni Mitchell (Keep reading…)

• From Mayday

If anyone had any lingering doubts about the diabolically Orwellian nature of modern mass communications, or about the fundamentally sycophantic, co-opted, and, indeed, integral relationship of modern rock culture to the overarching framework of Western neo-colonialism - let them forever be disabused by the object lesson of ‘Live 8′ and the ‘Making Poverty History’ campaign. (Keep reading…)

January/February 2005 Issue of Canadian Dimension/em>