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Hezbollah still a useful bogeyman for Israel and the US
The Israeli state is rightly concerned about the possibility of large-scale attacks from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. Much is made of the group’s links to Iran, Israel’s former ally and current Middle East competitor. In the subjective world of realpolitik, good and evil are defined by whether or not a given state supports the actions of another.
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The lost peace and the missing piece
The peace in Europe has been lost, decisively and for our generation almost certainly irrevocably, writes political scientist Richard Sakwa. As always, a peace lost here has global consequences. Equally, there was nothing predetermined about its loss. It was the result of decisions and calculations that in the end undermined the underlying rationality.
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Events in Iraq and Niger put spotlight on Canadian troops abroad
The fact that Canada has soldiers stationed overseas, in countries including Iraq and Niger, almost never comes up in domestic political discourse. It is rarely covered in Canadian media. It isn’t a topic at debates. No major political party runs on bringing Canadian soldiers home. As Owen Schalk argues, Canadians should start asking why that is.
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It’s time for Canadian environmental groups to talk about war as an act of climate denial
Acknowledging that a number of environmental organizations have quietly joined a growing coalition of civil society groups calling for ceasefire in Gaza, why is this community not speaking out more about war crimes that have the world’s attention, or educating others on the interconnectedness of war with climate change, climate justice, and planetary health?
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Despair is the currency of massacre
The neglect of Palestine’s humanitarian crisis and the continuity of Israeli apartheid in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, has never been more urgent. The inability to address the racist and classist policies of repressive states is only adding fodder to reactive extremism and eroding ideological diversity in anti-imperialist resistance.
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Canada should support ICJ ruling on Israel’s genocide
Last week, South Africa requested the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague make an urgent order declaring Israel in breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention. As Canadian Dimension columnist Yves Engler argues, Canadians should support this non-violent bid to curtail the apartheid state’s well-documented and undeniable war crimes in Gaza.
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Bogeyman of federal interference in election coverage explodes on websites, social media
We live in a dangerous age of misinformation and disinformation which can quickly grow into conspiracy theories fueled by partisan online echo chambers. One story that hit the Internet late last week shows just how big a problem this is. The flames of misinformation were lit on Thursday by Ottawa-based subscription news service Blacklock’s Reporter.
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Israel’s drone age
Israel’s drone assassination of Hamas commander Saleh al-Arouri is a straightforward study in the fly-by-night legality of drone warfare, and shows that Israel is both a leader and transgressor of rapidly changing legal norms. As Cam Scott writes, for more than two decades, drones have assumed a very nearly governmental role in, and above, the Occupied Territories.
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The apocalyptic doublethink of Poilievre’s economics
Practically every point in Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre’s story about housing affordability and debt—captured in two recent ‘mini-documentary’ films released across his social media channels—sounds compelling until one bothers to look up the claim. When one does, however, that same point turns into evidence Poilievre is proposing national economic suicide.
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While Canadian workers struggle, CEOs keep getting richer
While the bank accounts of Canada’s richest executives and CEOs bloat with money that should be equitably distributed to all, food prices, housing costs, and homelessness are spinning out of control, disproportionately impacting the marginalized and oppressed: Indigenous peoples, people of colour, women and LGBTQ+, and the working class in general.