To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, art can be a mirror to reflect reality or a hammer with which to shape it. The same could be said of sport. For a brief moment in July, Iraq was one: no Sunnis or Shiites, Arabs or Kurds, Christians or Muslims. United in their hopes of soccer glory, it was a moment that encapsulated the potential of sport to be a force for good – the Brechtian hammer.

In Canada, ecosocialism is new, and still a distinctly minority current. Most progressive movements address ecological issues from time to time, but few have made them a key focus of their activity. And while socialist views are beginning to get a hearing in green circles, few ecology activists advocate anything more radical than the market-based “solutions” of the Kyoto Accord.

Progressive-minded Canadians have long been concerned that private media concentration threatens democratic values. In June, 2006, even the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications Report on the Canadian News Media warned that there are “areas where the concentration of ownership has reached levels that few other countries would consider acceptable.”

Naming a building or a street after an individual is one of the most visible ways in which society recognizes outstanding achievements that contribute to the public good. Institutions like hospitals and universities make similar gestures when they name wings or programs after individuals whose careers or financial contributions leave legacies that benefit future generations.

In Alberta an attack is gathering force on the most fundamental principles essential to the academic viability of universities. This attack has implications that go far beyond the jurisdiction most stereotypically associated with cowboy culture and the lucrative vastness of this province’s oil-and-gas resources.

For many people, science fiction conjures up images of obsessive, geeky fans dressed up as starship officers of television programs set in space. This negative association is not entirely undeserved. Most of what passes for sci-fi, these days, amounts to thinly veiled cowboy stories in space, with all the problematic colonial, racist and gendered distinctions that also accompany westerns. But there is, and has always been, a decidedly political side to science fiction.

Ontarians will soon go the polls in their first fixed-date election, just one of a host of allegedly modernizing innovations introduced by the McGuinty Liberal government. But election day will also offer voters a chance to comment on a more radical proposal to alter Ontario’s electoral process; for there will also be a referendum on the provincial voting system.

Harry Abrams, B.C. representative for B’nai Brith, has filed a human-rights complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against Peace, Earth and Justice, alleging that the Victoria-based website, its editors, manager and director “contrive to promote ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel.”

In a fascinating memoir, the American award-winning and once blacklisted film writer, Walter Bernstein, warns about the dangers of looking back by reminding us of what happened to Lot’s wife: she turned into a pillar of salt. So, if perchance that happens to me, all I can ask is that you throw a little of that salt over your left shoulder.

On August 20, U.S. president George W. Bush, Mexican president Felipe Calderón and Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper met in Montebello, Quebec, for a two-day conference to ratify the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP, which was initiated in Waco, Texas, in 2005 by Bush, Canadian prime minister Paul Martin and Mexican president Vincente Fox, is a plan for continental integration or a North American Union along the lines of the European Union.