Globalization
Flashback Tuesday: “Ten Good Reasons to Oppose Free Trade”
Mel Watkins gives us “Ten Good Reasons to Oppose Free Trade” in this week’s flashback. Penned in 1986, when free trade was first floated as the solution to the economic woes of the Regan-Mulroney era, the list provides an exhaustive account of hidden political, economic, and cultural costs of supposedly “free” trade. In short, writes… More »
Flashback Tuesday: “Trading Futures”
In honour of our January-February edition, This Magazine waded through hundreds of archived stories on Canada’s complex and often fraught relationship with our neighbours to the south. The result: Twelve favourites that span the period from Trudeau-Nixon to Chrétien-Bush. Together, these stories offer a fascinating cross-section of the events that have helped shaped contemporary American-Canadian… More »
5 important things to know about the Afghan endgame
Irving Howe (the New York socialist) once wrote “Blessed New York Times! What would radical journalism in America do without it?” The newspaper was, to be sure, a tool of the bourgeois but a tool that reported the news with unequalled comprehensiveness. Read it and, ideology aside, you became the possessor of a full range… More »
Book Review: Citizens of Nowhere by Debi Goodwin
The eleven extraordinary young people profiled in Citizens of Nowhere have been teachers, social workers, mediators, and breadwinners. Journalist Debi Goodwin meets them as refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, and follows them through their difficult transition to life as first-year university students in Canada. They have each been sponsored to come to study in Canada as… More »
Wednesday WTF: G20 cops armed themselves with hipster DSLR cameras
Last week we learned that the federal government spent $107,749.52 on Nikon DSLR D300s for the G20. For those of you who, like me five minutes ago, don’t know anything about photography let me tell you all you need to know about the D300s: it’s a really good camera. You can check out the reviews… More »
Wednesday WTF: Fidel Castro wants to be elder statesman, see dolphins
Consider this exchange: Speaker 1: “Would you like to go the aquarium with me [tomorrow] to see the dolphin show?” Speaker 2: “The dolphin show?” Speaker 1: “The dolphins are very intelligent animals.” Speaker 3: “But the aquarium is not open tomorrow.” Speaker 1: “It will be open tomorrow” Out of context it’s hard to… More »
For thousands of migrant labourers, Canadian prosperity is a mirage
The Toronto Community Mobilization Network kicked off its themed days of resistance to the G20 on Monday with activists converging around a mixed bag of issues including income equity, community control over resources, migrant justice, and an end to war and occupation. It’s an ambitious start for the week-long campaigns. On their own, each issue… More »
Body Politic #14: What we need to hear from the G(irls) 20 Summit
We’ve talked a lot about what’s going wrong so far with the G20 and G8 meetings taking place in Ontario this year. And lord knows there are plenty of problems: aside from the lack of discussion surrounding women’s health we’re now chopping down trees in an urban jungle and searching around for supposedly stolen police… More »
6 alternative summits you can attend (since you're not invited to the G20)
While the prime minister has been trying to do damage control for his G20 agenda, activists and organizers of all stripes have been busy building social justice movements. Sometimes movement-building involves bickering over listservs about who gets to the carry the banner, but sometimes it also involves holding massive, multi-day, multi-issue summits. Left Forum might… More »
Why You Should Give a Damn: 5 Reasons to Care About the G8/G20
Unless you have been living under a fake rock beside a fake lake, chances are you’ve heard about this G8/G20 business in some way, shape, or form. The reasons why many people are protesting, however, may not be as clear. That’s probably because there isn’t any single issue uniting all protesters. And, despite what you… More »
