The streets of Tehran and other cities across the country were flooded with protesters early Friday morning, January 3, as mourners grieved the death of Qassem Soleimani. Photo by Tauseef Mustafa/AFP. The assassination by the United States of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, near Baghdad’s
Continue readingAuthor: Chris Hedges
Canadian Dimension: Hope Lies in the Streets
Protesters at an Extinction Rebellion rally in London. Photo bu Julian Meehan (Flickr). Global finance capital has seized control of the economies of most nation-states. The citizens watch, helplessly, as money and goods are transferred with little regulation across borders. They watch as jobs in manufacturing and the professions are
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Hope Lies In The Streets
The decay and rupture of the social bonds that once held our societies together have unleashed the dark pathologies of opioid, alcohol and gambling addictions and led to an explosion of hate Read more…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Problem With Impeachment
Photo by Michael Vadon (Flickr) Impeaching Donald Trump would do nothing to halt the deep decay that has beset the American republic. It would not magically restore democratic institutions. It would not return us to the rule of law. It would not curb the predatory appetites of the big banks,
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Chris Hedges-What Does Julian Assange Face In the USA?
We are heading into a power struggle following the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The chill factor for other journalists, reporters and bloggers are clear enough. Assange revealed US military activities in Afghanistan and Read more…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Israel’s Stranglehold on American Politics
The Israel lobby’s buying off of nearly every senior politician in the United States, facilitated by our system of legalized bribery, is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. The lobby’s campaign of vicious character assassination, smearing and blacklisting against those who defend Palestinian rights—including the Jewish historian Norman
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Extinction Rebellion
There is one desperate chance left to thwart the impending ecocide and extinction of the human species. We must, in wave after wave, carry out nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to shut down the capitals of the major industrial countries, crippling commerce and transportation, until the ruling elites are forced
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Goodbye to the Dollar
The inept and corrupt presidency of Donald Trump has unwittingly triggered the fatal blow to the American empire—the abandonment of the dollar as the world’s principal reserve currency. Nations around the globe, especially in Europe, have lost confidence in the United States to act rationally, much less lead, in issues
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Resistance Is the Supreme Act of Faith
Illustration by Gord Hill (The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book) The struggle against the monstrous radical evil that dominates our lives—an evil that is swiftly despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction, stripping us of our most basic civil liberties and freedoms, waging endless war and solidifying the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Trump, the Quintessential American
Illustration by Nevit Dilmen Donald Trump is part of the peculiar breed Herman Melville described in his novel “The Confidence-Man,” in which the main character uses protean personas, flattery and lies to gain the confidence of his fellow passengers to fleece them on a Mississippi River steamboat. “Confidence men,” as
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Neoliberalism’s Dark Path to Fascism
Neoliberalism as economic theory was always an absurdity. It had as much validity as past ruling ideologies such as the divine right of kings and fascism’s belief in the Übermensch. None of its vaunted promises were even remotely possible. Concentrating wealth in the hands of a global oligarchic elite—eight families
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Conjuring Up the Next Depression
Photo from Public Domain During the financial crisis of 2008, the world’s central banks, including the Federal Reserve, injected trillions of dollars of fabricated money into the global financial system. This fabricated money has created a worldwide debt of $325 trillion, more than three times global GDP. The fabricated money
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Scapegoating Iran
Photo by Reuters Seventeen years of war in the Middle East and what do we have to show for it? Iraq after our 2003 invasion and occupation is no longer a unified country. Its once modern infrastructure is largely destroyed, and the nation has fractured into warring enclaves. We have
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: How We Fight Fascism
Political theorist and activist Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) In 1923 the radical socialist and feminist Clara Zetkin gave a report at the Communist International about the emergence of a political movement called fascism. Fascism, then in its infancy, was written off by many liberals, socialists and communists as little more than
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Bankruptcy of the American Left
Illustration from NewStatesman.com There will be no economic or political justice for the poor, people of color, women or workers within the framework of global, corporate capitalism. Corporate capitalism, which uses identity politics, multiculturalism and racial justice to masquerade as politics, will never halt the rising social inequality, unchecked militarism,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Permanent Lie, Our Deadliest Threat
Illustration by Mr. Fish The most ominous danger we face does not come from the eradication of free speech through the obliteration of net neutrality or through Google algorithms that steer people away from dissident, left-wing, progressive or anti-war sites. It does not come from a tax bill that abandons
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: A Nation of the Walking Dead
Illustration by Harvard Business Review Opioids and experiences that simulate the deadening effects of narcotics are mechanisms to keep us submissive and depoliticized. Desperate citizens in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World ingested the pleasure drug soma to check out of reality. Our own versions of soma allow tens
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Feuding Kleptocrats
The Trump kleptocrats are political arsonists. They are carting cans of gasoline into government agencies and Congress to burn down any structure or program that promotes the common good and impedes corporate profit. They ineptly have set themselves on fire over Obamacare, but this misstep will do little to halt
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: James Baldwin and the Meaning of Whiteness
Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro is one of the finest documentaries I have ever seen—I would have stayed in the theater in New York to see the film again if the next showing had not been sold out. The newly released film powerfully illustrates, through James Baldwin’s prophetic
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: It’s Worse Than You Think
Photo by Richard Drew/AP Widespread social unrest will ignite when Donald Trump’s base realizes it has been betrayed. I do not know when this will happen. But that it will happen is certain. Investments in the stocks of the war industry, internal security and the prison-industrial complex have skyrocketed since
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