As the persecution of Julian Assange illustrates, the throttling of press freedom is bipartisan. This assault on truth leaves a population unmoored. It feeds wild conspiracy theories. It shreds the credibility of the ruling class. It empowers demagogues. It creates an information desert, one where truth and lies are indistinguishable.

The Trudeau government has ignored the Biden administration’s responsibility for the current devastation in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Canadian laws are preventing food aid from reaching the country. Earlier this month, World Vision had to cancel a shipment of food that would have fed 1,800 children because of a federal law that bans Canadians who provide terrorist groups with property or finances.

Half a year after the Liberal-NDP agreement included plans to develop a fairer tax system and seven years after the Liberals came to power, most of the government’s promises on fair taxation remain unfulfilled. Meanwhile, other countries are leaving Canada behind, and implementing fair tax policies that will help them address key issues like inflation and the climate crisis.

A leading US-based rights group on Monday welcomed a federal judge’s conclusion that 9/11 families should not be allowed to claim billions of dollars from Afghanistan’s central bank to pay off legal judgments against the Taliban. US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn’s Friday afternoon report “is a victory for Afghan civil society groups,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

In response to appeals from many NDP supporters expressing concern about human rights for Palestinians, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has sent an email including a strong statement of NDP demands, denouncing the Trudeau government for “failing to call out Israel for breaching international law and for violating the human rights of the Palestinian people.”

Across Latin America, the state of Israel’s best friends are, almost without fail, the most reactionary right-wing elements of the ruling classes. This seems to contradict the tolerant brand that Israel has been attempting to cultivate as of late, which seeks to elevate Israel to the status of an enlightened and democratic outlier amidst an archipelago of authoritarians.

Civilizations fail to adapt to a crisis, ensuring their own obliteration. Our civilization’s collapse will be unique in size, magnified by the destructive force of our fossil fuel-driven industrial society. But it will replicate the familiar patterns of collapse that toppled civilizations of the past. The difference will be in scale, and this time there will be no exit.

Canadian Dimension spoke with Megan Q. Linton, a disabled and mad studies researcher and writer, and creator of the Invisible Institutions podcast. Megan’s research on institutionalization and disability has appeared in Canadian Dimension, Briarpatch magazine, the Disability Visibility Project and the CBC. Megan is currently a doctoral student at Carleton University.

Recession fear is now at levels worldwide last seen in 2020, cautions Marxist economist and commentator Michael Roberts. At the very least, global inflation rates are still likely to be much higher than before the COVID pandemic by this time next year—and at the worst, the global economy could have entered a new slump only three years from the last one.

We should support all efforts to protect the natural environments that cruise ships threaten, the destinations they plunder and the workers they exploit. These floating palaces represent everything that is greedy and destructive in this society and we must struggle for a world based on principles of rationality, global justice and ecological sustainability.