For those of us who have long been labouring to expose the inherent perils and injustices of the neoliberal regime, Occupy Wall Street is undoubtedly the most exciting political development in North America in decades.

But it would be a mistake to read it as a revolutionary moment.

It should not be surprising that the growing world-wide boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign, which also has taken root among some Jewish Israelis, would spark anti-boycott campaigns–internationally and within Israel.

Counting ballots, Gramsci once observed, is only the “final ceremony of a long process.” What matters is what we do in between.

Contempt of Parliament was the issue that felled the Harper government and it has continued to be a focus of opposition forces in the current election campaign, along with charges of corruption, arrogance and a lack of accountability. Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin says he can name 50 examples of abuse of power. No doubt.

Live feed from a climate change conference in Montreal. Notable speakers include Maude Barlow, Judy Rebick and Clayton Thomas Muller.

The far-Right capitalizes on the rage of a declining middle-class by offering “simplistic answers for exceedingly complex problems, and [developing] effective rhetorical strategies to motivate people to vote against their own long-term interests”; it appeals to “people’s sense of betrayal and victimization,” while avoiding “the real social and economic processes that left them vulnerable.”

Climate reality and socio-economic reality are on a backward trajectory worldwide, and most culpable are the settler states formed out of the old British Empire. Indigenous people pay the price of climate change and its false solutions. And the Made-in-Canada “solutions” continue to be environmental and human travesties in every sense.

Our democratic freedoms hang by a narrow thread, and a police state is always near at hand — that is one of the lessons of the G20 debacle that unfolded in Toronto on June 26 and 27.

Across the advanced capitalist world, neoliberal policies have concerted to consign the welfare state to history’s dustbin. As a pillar of the social state, economic security in retirement was an inevitable target.

The recent strike by CUPE 3903, which represents the contract faculty, teaching assistants and graduate assistants at York University, has left deep divisions in the union and on campus. In a heated discussion about the merits of the two articles we commissioned, the Dimension collective generated a number of questions over which no agreement emerged. We thought it would be useful to share these questions with our readers.