Do you have the right to live if you are not helping to produce profits for those already awash in profit? Who do you allow to determine what your life is worth? As we organize our fair trade enterprise, surrounded by an ever-expanding and increasingly ruthless empire of capital, we continually confront fundamental questions about the nature of human existence.

An edited transcript of a panel discussion organized by Canadian Dimension at the Peoples’ Summit on June 19, 2010.

Although the scientific community has never been more united in its conviction that climate change is well on the way to rendering planet Earth a vastly less hospitable place for most species including our own, doubt about the gravity of the problem is, paradoxically, on the rise. In this piece, Levy explores the resistance to climate change from prominent members of the Left: Alexander Cockburn, David Noble and Slavoj Zizek.

We speak to ecosocialism founder, Joel Kovel about creating national or global resistance movements; ecosocialist activism that moves beyond pressing for direct caps on polluters; and we get his take on the Dark Mountain Project, the UN biodiversity report and the implications of Deepwater Horizon.

In light of the massive human rights violations we saw in Toronto in the midst of the G20 summit, the RebELLEs movement is putting out a mass call to action, to denounce this unprecedented repression of political dissent in Canada and to stand in solidarity with those victimized by the state.

In July 1967, I met Lee Lockwood at the Mexico City ticket counter of Cubana de Aviacion. He had black curly hair, a confident almost smug look and he toted camera bags. Lee Lockwood died July 31, 2010. A great photographer and writer–a friend. I stare at his photo of Fidel, relaxed, lighting a Cohiba on my wall.

At first I had very little hope that we could successfully petition Canadian NGOs for help for Simon. Some of the reasons are outlined in our postings. But, as we began to advocate in favour of the logic of allowing Simon’s local community organizations to control the funds that Canadians had donated, I became surprised at two things: the number of people who enjoyed reading about it and the almost total lack of response.

Delhi is an anxious city this monsoon season. Preparations are on at a feverish pace for the nineteenth Commonwealth Games. Around-the-clock construction amid spells of heavy rain has turned Delhi into a swirl of mud and scaffolding. But the city’s frustrated residents expect that their upturned streets, recurrent blackouts and impassable traffic jams will soon give way to something spectacular. On the horizon, or so they’ve been told, is the transformation of India’s congested national capital into a ‘world class city,’ worthy not only of hosting this high-prestige sporting event, but of India’s growing reputation as a the next regional superpower.

On June 30, 2010, Vanity Fair journalist Christopher Hitchens confirmed that he has cancer of the esophagus. Contemplating this revelation I couldn’t help feeling that the neoconservative armchair warrior was getting his just deserts. Hitchens has in recent years been an ignominious cheerleader for wars of aggression which have led to the wide dissemination of depleted uranium weapons. Such weapons have ballooned cancer-rates among the populations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza.

Western societies and states are moving inexorably toward conditions resembling barbarism; structural changes are reversing decades of social welfare and subjecting labor, natural resources and the wealth of nations to raw exploitation, pillage and plunder, driving living standards downward and provoking unprecedented levels of discontent.