“The Payment of the Tithes (The tax-collector),” by Pieter Breughel the Younger, between 1617 and 1622. Image courtesy Bonhams/Wikimedia Commons. Scoundrels and Shirkers: Capitalism and Poverty in Britain Jim Silver Fernwood, 2023 The sixteenth century saw the beginnings of capitalism in England. The capitalist relation—employers buying labour and workers selling
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Canadian Dimension: The rise of global class struggle
Intersyndicale parading during a demonstration for the defense of public services, Dijon, France, May 22, 2018. Photo by Haldu/Wikimedia Commons. After years of passivity in the face of upper class greed workers have begun to fight back. Recent walkouts in Canada and around the world reflect a pattern of rising
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Liberalism and the spectre of inverted totalitarianism
Pablo Picasso, “Massacre in Korea,” 1951. The painting was considered to be a condemnation of US intervention in the Korean War. Image courtesy Musée Picasso/Wikimedia Commons. The conflict now raging between the West and Russia and China is a struggle for global power. At the end of the Second World
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The rules of America versus global civilization
A sea of containers at the Yangshan Port, a deep water port located in Hangzhou Bay south of Shanghai. The port is part of the Maritime Silk Road. Photo from Flickr. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which began in 2013, focuses on developing the infrastructure of Eurasia as an alternative
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The rise of China and the decline of the West
Photo by David Dennis/Flickr China’s place on the world stage advances year by year. It is arguably already the world’s largest economy. Its Belt and Road Initiative and its other international links like the BRICS have helped to magnify its economic but also political and cultural influence worldwide. More and
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The Ukraine conflict as a world war
The war in Ukraine has almost reached its first anniversary. When it will end is unclear. Indeed, it has actually been going on since 2014 with the overthrow of the pro-Russian Yanukovychregime by ultranationalists backed by the United States. Russian seizure of Crimea and the state of siege instituted in
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Protesting the Capitalist University
Photo from UMFA.ca The University of Manitoba is on strike. Since 1st November, more than 1,200 faculty members took to the picket line to protest the lack of funding for education, a need for workload protection and safeguarding for fairer tenure and promotion procedures, in addition to addressing several job
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Seeds of ISIS terror sown by Western hegemony
Photo by Thierry Ehrmann
Syria is a global powder keg. Putin’s intervention in Syria in September led to ISIS blowing up a Russian airliner over the Sinai in November, killing hundreds of passengers. Two weeks…
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