In the days following the Bush presidency’s winning a second term, the regime’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove, boasted that his side’s victory would confirm and entrench the far-ranging shift to the hard right that began in earnest with the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

The Canadian government will soon make a historic decision about what role it will play in the new U.S. Star Wars plan. The Pentagon calls it “missile defence,” but a quick review of U.S. military documents reveals a long and clear record of moving toward the weaponization of space.

Canada is on the cusp of a new wave of immigration from the south, one which, once fully underway, could rival the great draft-dodger migration during the Vietnam War. We are witnessing the beginning of the Gay Drain.

An outsider looking at the Canadian labour movement might be tempted to ask why we call it a movement. The genuine solidarity that exists between union members is too often eclipsed by the competition between the unions they belong to.

ith this edition, Canadian Dimension joins the infinite numbers of romantics who, throughout history, have put a message in a bottle and thrown it out to sea, never knowing where it might land, who might read it, or what might happen as a result.

We were aiming for Clark County, Ohio. We know it’s landlocked. We know the odds anyone there will get our message are slim to none. But hey – we’re romantics!

My family came from Eastern Europe, part of the large immigration in the early 1900s – poor, largely peasant Jews escaping the pogroms of the Tsarist Russian Empire. I was born in 1944 in the so-called Jewish ghetto in downtown Montréal. My early years were spent in the St. Urbain Street neighbourhood immortalized in Mordecai Richler’s biting and hilarious novels.

International economic power is increasingly dispersed between the competing major power blocs. However, one power centre – the U.S. – has greater domination over more sectors than the other power blocs.

Movies and television programs regularly invoke imagery of big cities as sites of pleasure and prestige – places for people to wear glamorous clothes, flag a cab in rhinestone-clustered stilettos, and taste the culinary delights of the latest trendy “fusion” restaurant. While the image of cosmopolitan opulence certainly does not convey the full story of Canadian cities, this type of “urban evolution” does provide a glimpse, at least in part, of what an ideal capitalist city aspires to be – a mecca of entrepreneurial opportunity, individual prosperity and rampant consumerism.

he last election might be viewed as the Greens’ first real kick at the can. It was the first time the party ran candidates in all federal ridings, the first time they were considered for inclusion in the leaders’ debates and the first time they garnered significant media attention. On election night, it won 4.3 per cent of the popular vote, making it eligible for public financing. Most voters look at the “green” moniker and seem to think they have a pretty good idea of what the Green Party stands for. Many Canadians assume that the Green Party of Canada is like the Green parties of Europe and the U.S. However, in their recent convention, the Canadian Greens seem to have opted to continue in a direction that is not entirely in keeping with progressive values.

Nine years after the 1995 referendum and the numbness that followed it, Québec is returning to the debate on the national question. The sovereignty movement has never been a monolithic block behind the PQ. Support for sovereignty (around 45 per cent, according to the latest polls) cuts across political positions from right to left. In such a context, a wide debate on strategy is necessary, a debate that could have repercussions on the next electoral campaign, expected in 2007.