Alexa McDonough began and ended her time as federal NDP leader presiding over the defeat of a left challenge. Her record with the Third Way was not one of resistance or subversion, but of alliance and collaboration with the steady rightward march of the party. Rather than mend ties with organized labour, she made an open turn to the business class.

How China and its peoples handle the challenges ahead demands close and critical attention, but it’s time to lose the attitude. As Noam Chomsky recently suggested, either the “United States and China will work together on the critical issues that we all face, or they will expire together, bringing the rest of the world down with them.” Isn’t that what friends are for?

China’s position in the world system is a crucial aspect of the friction between the nation and Western countries like Canada and the United States. It’s important, therefore, for people who want to alleviate these tensions—and keep them from devolving into a hot war—to understand China’s role in the global economic and political system, writes CD columnist Greg Shupak.

Of course the hope lingers that the extensive leaks contained within the Pandora Papers will force reform of the tax regime and reverse, or at least impede, the exacerbation of what is already a staggering level of global inequality. But it seems naïve to imagine that those who made the rules in favour of capital accumulation will now turn around and say “Gosh we never intended it to go this far.”

In this month’s lecture for Democracy At Work, Richard D. Wolff, professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will discuss China’s economic growth since the revolution of 1949, China’s economic model in the context of the globalized economy, the differences between China’s economic system, socialism and capitalism, and increased rivalry with the United States, what many describe as a ‘new Cold War.’

Like so many aspects of this pandemic, the vaccine shortage is a clear example of how the private sector has failed to protect us during a crisis. Rather than setting its own priorities and running its own program, the Canadian government continues to chase companies such as Pfizer—which no democratic government controls. We see the results now, as health authorities cancel vaccine appointments and new cases surge across the country.

The unassailable power of Big Tech is the subject of economist and professor Rob Larson’s latest book, Bit Tyrants. In this wide-ranging interview, Canadian Dimension spoke with Larson to discuss the anticompetitive practices of the world’s biggest tech corporations, renewed pressure to rein them in, and his vision for a transparent, publicly-controlled and socialized internet.

Why is the Trudeau government not supporting sensible policy to help vaccinate millions of people living in the poorest continent in the Global South? This is likely because Ottawa is in thrall to big business and the interests of the already wealthy. Surely, ending the COVID-19 pandemic must be a top priority. The faster the entire world’s population is vaccinated, the better off we all will be.

Most commentary on international relations proceeds as if the global order floated above the patchwork quilt of the world map, an ethereal stage on which disembodied states play leading or bit parts in consequential but ultimately inexplicable plots. Inadequate at the best of times, such commentary will not serve when the fate of capitalism itself hangs in the balance of international power.

Without sufficient protections for Canadian data through the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, we should be demanding accountability from the federal government around domestic privacy protections, and looking critically at the profit-driven AI-based programs that are increasingly supplanting human judgement in every sphere of life.