First the shock and horror, then the anger. A terrible environmental disaster inflicted by British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico; a horrendous explosion at Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant; a mine disaster, burying people at Westray in Nova Scotia; a factory building collapsing in Bangladesh; a train’s cargo exploding and incinerating people and the city of Lac-Mégantic.

In early 2009 the anarchist movement in Austin was shocked to learn that Brandon Darby was an FBI informant who had helped entrap David McKay and Bradley Crowder, two young activists from Midland, Texas, into constructing 8 Molotov cocktails. The documentary Informant tells the story Brandon Darby,

Mark Perelman’s argument can be summed up as follows: Sport is inseparable from the global games industry, which has its beginnings in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Nazis did not appropriate the Olympics, rather the nature of sport is congruent with Nazi ideology and laid the foundations for the Second World War with its nationalist bravado, saluting of the flag and so on.

An entire nexus of ruling-class power, the team owners, the league, the Canadian state, and the media has zeroed in on the NHL as a perfect site to promote the new militarism to Canadians who might otherwise insist that we drop fewer bombs and use that money to rebuild homeless shelters and mental health institutions and support our librarians, our teachers and our nurses.

For opponents of the priorities of empire, we should hold Pat Tillman’s story close to heart. We shouldn’t reject sports, we should fight to reclaim them. Only by fighting to reclaim them from those in power who would pump politics through their play, can we challenge sports to change. I don’t want war in my sports. Fighting to make sports war-free is about fighting the war agenda itself.

Sport culture inevitably reflects and reinforces the values of the larger society in which sport is embedded. In sport, as in society, the unscrupulous competitor wins the race, gets the gold, gets the endorsements and gets the girl (or boy, depending on sex or sexual preference). The values of our corporate socio-economic system are almost perfectly mirrored in and mutually reinforced by the values of corporate sport.

Strengthening the anti-racism struggle both in and out of sport will facilitate the creation of a more ‘level’ playing field. Just as there are many examples of racism from individuals, institutions, and media sources, there are also many examples of resistance to racism in online commentary and news reporting.

In sport, ideas are in a state of play. We cannot afford to yield sport to the forces of the right — to the free-market fundamentalists and the socially reactionary conservatives — any more than we can afford to yield religion, education, the family or the media.

Through the theft of land and resources Canada has been very successful at manufacturing a national mindset in the people not Indigenous to Turtle Island. By manufacturing this mindset of “Canada the good and benevolent nation” many Canadians have an inability to understand what really happened to Indigenous people.

It is commonly assumed that “peace agreements” between pro-US rightwing regimes and leftwing insurgents lead to peace, justice and greater security. A number of peace agreements which were signed and implemented in the 1990s in Central America, South Africa, Philippines and elsewhere provide us with ample data over two decades to confirm or reject this commonplace assumption.

We will examine the case of El Salvador where a powerful guerilla movement (FMLN) signed off on a peace accord in 1992.