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If the Canadian left were truly organized, class-conscious hotel workers could easily disrupt Carney’s upcoming CEO summit. But without far more work to boost militancy, don’t expect workers to employ their power over capital beyond the narrow ways the system has come to accept.

As Toronto marks Labour Day every socialist in that city should feel some shame the government hasn’t hesitated to host Canada’s largest ever capitalist get together in the centre …

There is much in the nature of a map. The very drawing of a line signifies an assertion, an acceptance, or even a repudiation of power. Borders are delineated for reasons of interest and understanding. I chart; therefore, it is. Areas of territorial dispute are reconciled by the cartographer’s handy reconciliations for the given moment. One day, the Polish Corridor exists like some sinister geopolitical ploy. Next, it vanishes into historical mist. Countries born one day, gone the next, only to be reborn through a set of new borders. Partitions decided upon and inflicted. (No empire did this better than …

In nine days, Toronto will host the largest capitalist get together in Canadian history. It will also see the city and country’s largest anti-capitalist protest in years.

On September 14 and 15 Carney will host what the Globe and Mail called “the largest gathering of top business leaders ever to assemble in the country.” Senior officials from firms managing $120 trillion in funds will be at the Four Seasons. The CEOs of two dozen of Canada’s biggest companies, including the major banks and large arms firms CAE and Bombardier, will …

With age, I’ve become more aware of the world’s complexity but also better equipped to come to simple, albeit painful, conclusions.

Everyone understands (or should understand) that our reality—both the physical world around us and the social world we build—is complex beyond human understanding. But based on what we can know, some conclusions seem unavoidable to me. In my new book, This I Don’t Believe: A Fulfilling Life without Meaning, I offer three of those observations.

–Humans are drawing down the ecological capital of the planet beyond …

This revelatory portrait of Constance Adams is as expansive as the ideas that defined her life.

— Shohini Ghose, Professor of Physics and Computer Science, Director, Centre for Women in Science, Wilfrid Laurier University

The Space Architect, produced and directed by Rebecca Carpenter is an intimate 42-minute documentary. Visionary space architect Constance Adams gives her final interview, reflecting on a career devoted to helping humans thrive in extreme environments. From designing skyscrapers for Kenzo Tange to developing habitat concepts for NASA missions to Mars, her work was guided by a …

Let’s be done with the pretence of decency and soggy references to just resolution in the face of extreme circumstances. Be done with the hilarious stage acts of referring to legal doctrines that either do not exist or cannot exist in the bloodied context they are being forced to refer to. The State of Israel is intent, with every arm, administrative faculty and office bearer of consequence, to achieve ethnic effacing and utopic bliss with the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, with the former going first.

Speaking on September 2 at a conference organised …

Maybe it was the stickers.

Two key individuals organizing Marc Carney’s September 14 CEO summit in Toronto have resigned. Last weekend the Globe and Mail reported that the head of Invest in Canada Laurel Broten stepped down weeks before the first ever Canada Investment Summit. Now it appears the head of Carney’s Defence Investment Agency, Doug Guzman, is also leaving his post as top officials of firms managing $120 trillion in funds descend on Toronto.

In response to the resignation of these important players in organizing the largest gathering of capitalists in Canadian …

There’s no shortcut to freedom.
    No, there’s not.

Freedom is a constant struggle.
    Yes it is.

But Freedom,
the centuries-long fight
all over the world
for justice and liberation,
is also life and love and hope,
day after day after day.

It’s what we,
what human,
truly human societies
strive for
no matter what
the obstacles, the pain,
and temporary setbacks.

This morning, August 28, 2026,
on a Black-owned bus
full of freedom fighters,
on the way to DC
on the 63rd anniversary
of the historic
freedom march of 1963,
held during a time of
mass, Black-led uprisings
for freedom and equal rights
and a truly new
and truly human society:

We keep hope alive
and rededicate ourselves
to keep at it
until we win.

I wrote this poem about 6 am last Friday …

The 2024 Presidential election is not so far away for the American public to forget that Donald Trump campaigned enthusiastically as a Peace President and as a critic of ‘endless wars’ in favor of a sane, rational foreign policy of “no new wars,” a ‘one day’ end to Ukraine war as well as withdrawal on NATO – none of which have materialized.

Instead, Trump has flipped in pursuit of exactly the opposite with a military campaign that has bombed at least seven countries, continued escalation of the Ukraine war with American and EU support and an unprovoked attack on …

I think of Wendell Berry every time I use my chainsaw.

Berry, the novelist/essayist and unofficial poet laureate of the sustainable agriculture movement, died this week at 92. I met him several times through my association with The Land Institute and visited their Kentucky home to write a profile of his wife, Tanya. But my main connection to Berry is through his writing.

Back to my chainsaw. I lived in cities most of my life, including when I was a professor at the University of Texas at …

Last week, Pakistan announced that it will not comply with the latest sanctions the United States imposed on Iran and will continue trading with its neighbour. The news came just days after China made a similar statement.

The sanctions announced by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on August 24 under Operation Economic Outcast are supposed to be “the toughest sanctions in history” designed to impose “the greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world”.

Earlier, President Donald Trump called it in a social media post “ECONOMIC D-DAY.” He promised “tremendous economic consequences” for any nation that extended Iran …

Fraud, corruption, scandal, and embezzlement have been constants in the charter school sector for more than 30 years. Unfortunately, numerous attempts in many states to bring greater transparency, integrity, and accountability to charter schools have done little to change the equation. Endless problems persist. New laws barely move the needle.

Although they siphon massive sums of public money from public schools every year, charter schools seem immune to transparency and accountability measures. Indeed, charter schools remain mired in many illegal and unethical activities, proving that they are unable and unwilling to …

In September 2025, nine countries launched the Declaration for the Protection of Humanitarian Personnel. Australia explained its important if dark inspiration in pursuing it: the slaying of Zomi Francken, along with six of her colleagues from the World Central Kitchen charity on April 1, 2024 by Israeli forces in Gaza. All perished to an attack consisting of three missiles fired from a Hermes 450 drone in a stated “deconflicted” zone, despite clear logo markings on the convoy vehicles and extensive coordination regarding their movements with the Israeli authorities.

The declaration, while lacking teeth, is at …

Simón Bolívar, the great liberator of South America, famously observed, “The United States appear(s) to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.” For 200 years, US leaders have never proved him wrong.

In the early 1800s, Bolivar led what is now Venezuela and five other countries to independence from the Spanish Empire. But the United States still refuses to recognize the independence of other countries in the region. Wannabe emperor Donald Trump even refers to Canadian prime minister Mark Carney as a “governor,” as if Canada were merely another US state.

The US-backed …

I have been carrying on about China quite a lot lately. But when you have discovered what amounts to a parallel universe, one that is almost completely hidden from view from the vantage point of the universe that you inhabit, you have to do something about it; you have to spread the word that the mainstream media is assiduously covering up.

The progression of the literary outburst prompted by my recent visit to China can be summarized as follows. My first article on the subject, written shortly after my return in late July 2026, simply records my astonishment at the …