In the heart of Africa, did a Canadian mining company cut a deal with an infamous and violent African militia that played a major role in the Rwandan genocide of 1994? According to one expert of the militia, known as the “FDLR,” or the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, the mining company has no other choice if it wants to safely dig up billions-of-dollars worth of gold for themselves and their investors.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the upcoming December meetings at Copenhagen, Denmark. The best science tells us there is a rapidly closing window for turning climate change around before irreversible positive feedback loops set in. Once this sets in (it may already have begun), climate change, awful as it now is, will likely spiral rapidly downhill with consequences catastrophic beyond belief and comprehension. And yet the numbers of those who do not take this brutal truth seriously include the main forces geared up for Copenhagen.

The climate change threat presents at least four unique difficulties. The time frame: Unlike other dire threats to human existence, such as nuclear war or military-industrial dictatorships, climate change has a finite time frame. Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cannot wait for innumerable agreements, accords, and conventions that minimize the problem, and it cannot wait for the entrenched wheels of bureaucracies to budge.

Some believe that the Canadian immigration system is fair and generous. It isn’t. And Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney are swiftly making it even worse.

As part of the Quebec Social Forum about fifty people gathered at Cégep (junior college) du Vieux Montréal to attend the conference in French “Obama, the Blockade against Cuba and Democratic Reform,” by Arnold August on behalf of the Table de concertation de solidarité Québec-Cuba. August is a journalist and author of “Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-98 Elections” and is currently working on a forthcoming book to be published in the fall of 2010 and entitled “Cuba: Participatory Democracy and Elections in the 21st Century “.

In Miami, several retired U.S. officials remembered the early 1960s, when the CIA sent hundreds of employees to join other government bureaucrats to process and recruit thousands of Cuban exiles to destroy the Cuban revolution. Assassination plans abounded, from poisoned cigars and wetsuits for Fidel Castro, to a sniper rifle smuggled in by his comrade to a sophisticated poison pill.

Tony Buttaro is a Hamilton steelworker who injured his back at work. He later became a supervisor who had compassion for his workers. Tony paid dearly for these two things. He ended up physically and mentally traumatized. The retirement he had long dreamed about was destroyed.

When public figures of the status of multiculturalism and immigration minister Jason Kenney and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff deem it prudent to attack Israeli Apartheid Week, a grassroots series of events organized every March on university campuses by a constellation of rag-tag student groups, we can say with fair certainty that the Palestine solidarity movement has arrived at the “fight” stage.

Economics For Everyone is an invaluable book and a necessary addition to the library of popular educators, trade unionists, activists, or any person trying to make sense of the conundrum that is modern capitalism. And as Stanford makes clear, the first step to transforming the system is knowing how it works and for whom. To this end, Stanford’s book has made a vital contribution.

Canada in the 1960s was deeply affected by the civil rights and anti-war struggles in the United States. It was likewise caught up in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements that swept the world. But in this new and commanding work, Bryan Palmer demonstrates that Canada had its own 1960s which left a deep mark on our history.