A Chadian camp for displaced people who fled violence in Darfur at the Chad-Sudan border where over 90,000 people have fled and thousands have been displaced. Photo by Henry Wilkins/VOA/Wikimedia Commons. Sudan’s protracted war Airstrikes destroying primary schools with bombs. Hundreds of thousands of people displaced from one city to another, only to have their lives uprooted yet again weeks later. Walking over 100 kilometres through arid lands with only the clothes on their back. Emergency food supplies halted at the border leaving families starving through another night. Arriving at a roug ..read more

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks at Cambridge. Photo by Chris Boland (www.chrisboland.com). Speaking from 10 Downing Street, newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the country had voted “decisively” for change and “for national renewal and a return of politics to public service.” Neither claim could be further from the truth. Never has a government with so large a majority been elected less “decisively.” No claim to bring about change has rung hollower, though both governing parties have repeatedly made such claims to dissimulate the continuity of their common commitm ..read more

Photo by Alex Proimos/Wikimedia Commons The recent Ottawa Declaration on Canadian Journalism signed by right-wing think tanks, publications and journalists calling on news media to stop taking the subsides that our largest newspapers lobbied long and hard for provided a bit of a laugh, but it actually made a few good points. If we are going to subsidize our news media, there are probably better ways to do it. The five-year, $595 million bailout that began in 2019 and has been extended until 2029 has decimated public trust in news media, with many Canadians now believing that our press has bee ..read more

Public servants marched around Parliament Hill as 155,000 Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) members went on strike, April 19, 2023. Photo by Spencer Colby/Flickr. After decades of involvement in trade union and anti-poverty struggles, I find myself thinking more and more about the lessons I have learned along the way and how some of these might be of use to other union and community activists. I’m presently developing an educational course on how movements challenge power structures and how those structures develop and apply strategies to contain resistance. These are vital considerati ..read more

The growing risk of privatization in Manitoba must be countered with strong organizing to defend what remains of the province’s already deteriorating public services, writes James Wilt. Photo courtesy Wab Kinew/Facebook. During the lead-up to the last Manitoba election in October 2023, the provincial NDP consistently and correctly attacked the reigning PC government for its countless privatization efforts. New Democrats used their opposition powers to highlight and stall many of these plans, including those to sell off pieces of Manitoba Hydro, health care services, alcohol sales, health and ..read more

Rwandan President Paul Kagame poses for a picture with Robert Marawa and Masai Ujiri, right, at the NBA Africa Summit in Toronto, February 13, 2016. Photo from Flickr. The use of celebrities, sports and big money to whitewash criminal regimes is a global phenomenon. Dictators count on political summits, concerts, tournaments, environmental initiatives and other large investments to launder and legitimize their reputations. At its core, whitewashing is about buying influence and control, in thinly veiled ways. But no amount of cash or star power could ever fully wash away the stains of repress ..read more

“Which Genocide Are You On?” Illustration by Mr. Fish. It comes back in a rush, the stench of raw sewage, the groan of the diesel, sloth-like Israeli armoured personnel carriers, the vans filled with broods of children, driven by chalky faced colonists, certainly not from here, probably from Brooklyn or somewhere in Russia or maybe Britain. Little has changed. The checkpoints with their blue and white Israeli flags dot the roads and intersections. The red-tiled roofs of the colonist settlements—illegal under international law—dominate hillsides above Palestinian villages and towns. They have ..read more

Activists with Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill at the encampment on the grounds of the university’s downtown campus, Montréal. Photo courtesy SPHR McGill/X. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Summer of 1964, when the alternative freedom schools opened around Mississippi as a crucial liberatory pedagogical component of the civil rights movement. Black children entered the 41 freedom schools to learn about and discuss their history, disenfranchisement, and radical potential in a curriculum that ranged from the arts to social and political studies. This educationa ..read more

Peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet has just published an article “conservatively” estimating that the death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza could be 186,000 people or more. Photo by Humberto Patrick/Wikimedia Commons. A new study by the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet estimates that the current death toll from Israel’s brutal assault on the Gaza Strip—which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has described as “plausible genocide”—is at least 186,000. This would translate to nearly eight percent of Gaza’s population. The bombshell death toll estimate is roughly 150,000 m ..read more

An LCBO outlet situated at the Parkway Mall complex in Scarborough. Photo by Xander Wu/Wikimedia Commons. Throughout Doug Ford’s provincial political career, there has been one constant: an unmatched love for policies concerning alcohol. The Ontario premier’s only conception of his voter base is that of people whose main priority is alcohol. Ford’s obsession with freeing up the market for booze sales is not only dangerous, but also insulting to the average Ontarian. Ford’s 2018 campaign for the premiership was a complete farce. One of his only tangible promises was to bring “buck-a-beer” to t ..read more