We stands in solidarity with Indigenous peoples opposing Energy East and fighting for environmental justice. From the fight against fracking waged by the Elsipogtog First Nation in New Brunswick to the struggles of activists in Honduras, Indigenous peoples are championing the defence of their land and the protection of the entire planet from environmental destruction.

It’s hard to recall as divisive a figure in recent Canadian political history as Stephen Harper. Of course it’s not just Harper himself who elicits such enmity, but his corporate and wealthy allies and their political project of market fundamentalism militantly set on rolling back the social state, along with all the hard-won protections accorded Canadians, and undoing indispensable environmental regulations.

In the name of deterring what it defines as “terrorism,” the Harper government is creating an unaccountable surveillance apparatus primed to infringe our civil and constitutional rights. CD joins with a growing chorus of angry Canadians in unequivocally rejecting C-51 as a vicious assault on civil liberties and a deliberate attempt to suppress opposition to Harper’s ongoing transformation of Canada into an authoritarian petro-state

Europe stands on the edge of a precipice, looking into the abyss. Austerity policies drive the people of Europe into poverty, undercut democracy and dismantle social policies. Rising inequalities endanger social cohesion. Ecological destruction is worsening while acute humanitarian crises devastate the most affected countries. Women and young people are hardest hit.

The swaggeringly pro-capitalist, neoliberal and militarist Harper juggernaut makes enquiring into its limits seem impertinent. So, prima facie, do developments elsewhere. The 2008 financial crisis, the greatest crisis of neoliberalism, appeared to reinforce the power of capital everywhere. However, a longer historical perspective appears more encouraging.

For the moment to become a sustained movement it will have to develop a stronger analysis and better organizational capacity, but the breadth and depth of the social support it has already generated show an enormous hunger for social change pointed towards social justice.

We must do our share to give the Bolivarian Revolution and Latin America’s “pink tide” room to breathe. In doing so, we might just find some of the inspiration needed to sweep away Harper and develop a serious challenge to corporate rule.

By passing Bill 78, a law designed to curb freedom of assembly and the right to strike, Premier Jean Charest expected to quell the three-month-old Québec student strike against tuition fee hikes. But this authoritarian gambit only galvanized the student movement and summoned a wave of support which transformed the student strike into a popular protest against austerity policies.

It has the makings of a B-grade political thriller: a mysterious “Pierre Poutine” uses a disposable “burner” cell phone and an anonymous prepaid credit card to buy a series of automated outbound phone calls designed to harass voters in key ridings and mislead them about where they should vote in the May 2011 federal election. The drama here lies in the sheer scale of the skulduggery.

While the times call for bold alternatives and transformative change, the NDP candidates with left sympathies have shown no imagination for how to build power or intervene in the political landscape in a way that is significantly different from the right-wing candidates. The differences that matter in this race are mostly about technical competence and style, rather than politics.