-
The North End Revisited: Photographs by John Paskievich
As an artist of his generation, Paskievich places himself within a Cold War discourse with Paskievich working primarily as an NFB director from the time he finished his studies in the 1970s. It is interesting to contemplate an artist with Paskievich’s observational talent were his family to remain in Europe after World War II, joining filmmakers like Sergei Parajanov in the Odessa film scene established by the visionary Dovzhenko.
-
Energy economics
Economic CrisisEntire cities are now running out of water, while others are violently flooded with far too much of it. Wildfires, droughts, pestilence, famines: climate change is already making these disasters bigger, stronger and more frequent. And we’ve seen nothing yet. By the end of the century, there could be two billion climate refugees. Two billion. We are facing simply unprecedented levels of death, misery and collapse in already Dickensian living standards. Unless, of course, we take truly radical action.
-
Hassan Diab: Nothing Less Than a Public Inquiry Will Do
Human RightsHow and why did our former government facilitate the extradition of one of its citizens by withholding critical information that would otherwise have saved him years of torment? Given this egregious irregularity in judicial and government proceedings, and given that Canada’s extradition law offers few, if any, safeguards to protect the requested individual from extradition, it behooves all Canadians to ponder seriously the extent of their civil liberties.
-
Putting Public Ownership Back on the Table
Canadian BusinessIf we are to build a just society, we require a just economy. And while that must include better social programs financed through redistributive taxation, the democratic socialist project is not encompassed by social programs alone; it must concern itself with the democratization of the economy. And while this shouldn’t be done solely through state ownership—worker, community, and consumer cooperatives all being viable mechanisms here—public control will nonetheless be a central plank.
-
Settler-colonialism targets youth
Canadian PoliticsAs the world contemplates with horror the United States’ recent policy of separating immigrant and refugee children from their parents and detaining them for attempting to cross the border, it is important to see these disturbing events in a global context and to recognize them for what they are. Although such practices also take place in Canada, the reality is that anti-immigrant sentiment is pure hypocrisy in settler-colonial states like the United States and Canada.
-
Ontario Election 2018: Right-Wing Populism Prevails Over Moderate Social Democracy
Canadian PoliticsAs the Ford government will certainly prove disastrous for cities, municipal elections across the province this fall also represent opportunities to elect left and progressive candidates and begin to form a network of ‘rebel cities’ in opposition to the Ford regime. Perhaps, if stronger community-based infrastructure can take hold and revitalized social coalitions form, the labour movement in Ontario might yet again return to leading social struggles and the political space for a radical opening suddenly appear.
-
The legacy of ‘Oka’ and the future of Indigenous resistance
Indigenous PoliticsThough many Canadians saw the events of that summer as a “crisis,” to the Mohawks, “Oka” was just the most recent event in an almost 300-year struggle to protect their land from colonial and capitalist development. With the 30th anniversary of Oka on the horizon, and new struggles by Indigenous land defenders making headlines across the country, including in Kanehsatà:ke, I recently had the honour to speak with Ellen about the legacy of Oka and the future of Indigenous resistance.
-
End Immigration Detention: An Open Letter
Human RightsWe are a group of healthcare providers working in Canada who – like many around the world – have been watching with horror the news of the separation of over 2000 child migrants from their parents in the United States. This cruelty is apparently the newest front of the Trump administration’s war against asylum seekers. We’ve heard audio recordings of young children begging for their parents, and read first person accounts of migrants being told they will never see their children again.
-
Obrador and Mexico’s Watershed Election
Latin America and the CaribbeanThe possibilities of a victory by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), under the rubric of his Morena party, is strongly opposed by most of big business, and needs to be seen in the context of Mexico’s long-term crises-ridden transition toward a not-at-all clear destiny. The destiny promoted by Mexican, Canadian and U.S. big business and political elites has been that of continental integration within the framework of NAFTA, as part of a neoliberal domestic transformation.
-
Immigration: Western Wars and Imperial Exploitation Uproot Millions
Human RightsIn this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely imperial wars, multi-national corporate expansion, the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe, the weakness of the trade union and solidarity movements. We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to the western powers forcing refugees to ‘follow’ the flows of profits.
