Capitalism’s profit focus has often held back the distribution of products to drive up their prices. Patents and trademarks of profit-seeking businesses effectively slow the distribution of all sorts of products. We cannot know whether capitalism’s incentive effects outweigh its slowing effects. Claims that capitalism promotes rather than slows progress are pure ideological assertions.

I hate politicians who try to tell me what I can and cannot say. I hate governments that threaten to lock me up for something I haven’t even said yet but might just be thinking of saying. There, is that enough hate for you? Could it be enough to run me afoul of Ottawa’s latest scheme to regulate the Internet and get me arrested under Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act?

While it’s strange that anyone claiming to be a journalist would boast about working with the intelligence agency of a foreign state, National Post columnist Adam Zivo is certainly not the first international correspondent to have flouted journalism ethics by directly engaging in counterintelligence operations while on the job.

As a response to a terrorist attack from an occupied territory, Israel’s Gaza campaign is wholly exceptional, at least among Western democracies that claim to be governed by international law. Israel exists in a state of exception, to use the German jurist Carl Schmitt’s concept, in which the rule of law is suspended and the normal rules don’t apply.

The word mortgage has its origins in medieval French jurisprudence. Roughly translated it means “deal unto death.” In the context of Canada’s housing market this etymological root has special resonance. As James Hardwick writes, our homes have been mortgaged by an aging generation hell-bent on carrying them into the grave.

Suffice it to say that the Liberals have thoroughly messed up Canada’s media, which leaves them wide open to attack by the Conservatives on this front. All the Opposition needs do to score some major gains is not screw up too badly. Unfortunately for them, argues CD media columnist Marc Edge, they seem to be botching the job already.

Serbia’s Jadar region is home to one of Europe’s largest untapped lithium deposits, and President Alexander Vučić recently inked a series of deals with the European Union “granting the EU and European carmakers exclusive access to Serbian lithium and paving the way for the construction of one of the largest lithium mines on the continent.”

Let’s be clear: while we might be able to make some improvements here and there through clever initiatives, we almost certainly cannot solve the housing crisis without dealing directly with the land question. The private extraction of land value doesn’t just produce a crisis for housing, but virtually everything across the political spectrum that can be useful.

Whether the hard right or the liberal centre holds power, working class communities are facing an implacable enemy. We can’t build the united movement the situation demands if we periodically put our struggles on hold to campaign for the more moderate representatives of the very agenda we need to defeat. We must remain sharply focused on building a socialist alternative for the years ahead.

Like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, the West’s distribution to Ukraine of Russia’s $300 billion in assets will not be enough to prevent eventual defeat. The Ukraine war will almost certainly be resolved within the next 12 months—on the ground, not with bank accounts. Like the Spartans at Thermopylae, time may run out for Ukraine even before Europe can buy some more of it.