Section: Canadian Dimension (Canada)
Past and Present Islamist, Democratic and Nazi International Brigades
Photo from Public Domain Introduction The Islamic State (IS) has become a magnet for international brigades, drawing over 30,000 fighters from 5 continents and 86 countries to their war in Iraq and Syria. While the international brigades are part of a global movement, most of the volunteers come from two-dozen countries, mainly in the Middle...
International Monetary Fund’s Rogues Gallery
Photo by Ryan Hyde Introduction The IMF is the leading international monetary agency whose public purpose is to maintain the stability of the global financial system through loans linked to proposals designed to enhance economic recovery and growth. In fact, the IMF has been under the control of the US and Western European states and its policies...
Slouching Toward Global Disaster
Photo by _Gavroche_ There are many disturbing signs that the West is creating conditions in the Middle East and Asia that could produce a wider war, most likely a new Cold War, containing, as well, menacing risks of World War III. The reckless confrontation with Russia along its borders, reinforced by provocative weapons deployments in several...
If you win the wars at home, there’ll be no fighting anymore
Photo by Benoit Aubry But the hardest thing I’ll ask you, if you will only try Is take your children by their hands and look into their eyes And there you’ll see the answer you should have seen before If you’ll win the wars at home, there’ll be no fighting anymore - final verse of Phil Ochs’ “What Are You Fighting...
Joining Empire: Canadian Foreign Policy under Harper
Photo by ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office Since the Conservative government of Stephen Harper came to power in 2006, shifts in Canadian foreign policy have been a flashpoint of debate in Parliament, the media, and civil society. There is general agreement that a “revolution in Canadian foreign policy” has occurred, to quote Canadian...
On the Campaign Trail with Harperman
Photo by Alex Guibord Even the person most Canadian leftists dislike—the ex-con, ex-mega-businessman and scholar Conrad Black—wrote recently that “nine years of joyless and sometimes nasty competence under Stephen Harper is an era of ill-feeling.” Harperman has sucked the oxygen out of the air and left most of us gasping for breath. This guy is...
The NDP and the Election
Photo by Canada’s NDP At this moment, it seems that Harper’s Conservatives are losing ground, headed for possible defeat or minority status, if recent polls are to be believed. If these trends continue, it might represent a long-awaited respite from years of unrelenting and hard-edge neoliberal offensive in all walks of Canadian life....
The Age of Imperial Wars
U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class James Finnigan Introduction 2015 has become a year of living dangerously. Wars are spreading across the globe. Wars are escalating as new countries are bombed and the old are ravaged with ever greater intensity. Countries, where relatively peaceful changes had taken place through recent...
The Ukraine crisis: Why and how it has come to this
Photo by Mstyslav Chernov Background of the Ukraine-NATO issue To understand why and how the situation in Ukraine has come to what it is, it’s necessary to go back to the period just before the breakup of the Soviet Union. Fortunately, there is good documentation on this. It was reviewed recently by several writers, perhaps most notably by...
Syriza: For Better or For Worse
Photo posted on nycsocialist.org. The victory of Syriza in Greece is a historic turning point for Europe and the world, for better or for worse. I fear it’s going to be the latter. Syriza claims to be something more radical than a social-democratic party. In a pre-election interview in Jacobin, Stathis Kouvelakis, of Syriza’s Central...
