An elder waves the Palestinian flag near the boundary with Israel, east of Gaza City. Photo from Flickr. Foreign Affairs is the magazine of the US foreign policy elite. Published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a meeting place for the political and business aristocracy to discuss issues relevant to
Continue readingAuthor: Owen Schalk
Canadian Dimension: Is AMLO’s resource nationalism raising the odds of a coup?
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo courtesy Presidencia de la República/Wikimedia Commons. One of the key tenets of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “fourth transformation” government is state sovereignty over Mexico’s energy resources. This transformation has involved the nationalization of oil and gas, lithium, and electricity against the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Alberta tailings leak reveals the failures of Canada’s environmental assessment process
An undated photo of the site of an overland spill at Imperial Oil’s Kearl Lake oil sands mining operation in northern Alberta. Photo courtesy Nick Vardy/Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. In the summer and fall of last year, mine waste from four tailing ponds at Alberta’s Kearl oil sands mining operation
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The ‘Chinese interference’ story is rooted in xenophobia, economic decline
A sign outside the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) headquarters in Ottawa. Photo by Chris Wattie. One of the stories dominating Canadian media right now—the baseless accusation that Beijing interfered in Canadian elections to secure Justin Trudeau’s victory—appears similar to the “Russiagate” hoax of a few years ago. Russiagate, which
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: As Lasso flails, Ottawa pushes for more Canadian mining in Ecuador
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso. Photo courtesy Presidencia de la República del Ecuador/Flickr. As embattled Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso faces public disdain, struggles against potential impeachment, and foments regional divides, Ottawa is quietly negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA) with his extremely unpopular government. The proposed Canada-Ecuador FTA would greatly expand
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Document reveals true motives behind Canada’s support for Saudi Arabia
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Photo courtesy US State Department/Wikimedia Commons. On March 11, online media outlet The Breach published a document that shines a light on Ottawa’s usually secretive policies toward Saudi Arabia and the wider West Asian region. The document illustrates that Canada’s cozy relationship with the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: National and international groups call for governments to take action against OceanaGold
Land defenders erect a barricade against OceanaGold mining operations in Barangay Didipio, the Philippines. Photo courtesy J. Bonifacio/Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment. On March 1, seventy-seven national and international human rights and environmental groups from the Philippines, New Zealand, El Salvador, the United States, Canada, and Australia released a
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Hugo Chávez’s vision of a communal future will inspire generations
Hugo Chávez in uniform, 2010. Photo courtesy Presidencia de la Nación Argentina/Wikimedia Commons. March 5, 2023 marks the ten-year anniversary of the death of legendary Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Only four days earlier, the Biden administration had renewed an executive order, issued by Barack Obama and continued under Donald Trump,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: By subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, Trudeau is fuelling a national emergency
Oilsands production near Fort McMurray, Alberta. Photo by Kris Krüg/Flickr. In February 2022, the Trans Mountain Pipeline announced a construction cost update: the new price tag totalled $21.4 billion. The Canadian government, and particularly Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, insisted that the pipeline was still a worthy investment despite the fact
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Protests in Cuba vs. Peru: a case study in Canadian hypocrisy
Cuban Americans hold a rally in Miami to support dissidents on the island, July 2021. Photo from Flickr. Canada’s foreign policy record is stained with countless examples of hypocrisy, opportunism, and aversion to democracy, especially when it leads down the road of left-wing reforms. Ottawa’s hypocrisy is a result of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The left makes a comeback in Ecuador’s local elections
Voting in Ecuador, 2021. Photo courtesy AS/COA/AP. On February 5, a series of important votes occurred in Ecuador. Roughly 80 percent of Ecuadoreans voted on 23 provincial prefects, 221 mayors, 864 urban councillors, 443 rural councillors, 4,109 parish council members, and elected seven members for the Council for Citizen Participation
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Health care is inefficient, but not because of public spending
Doug Ford’s strategy is clear: defund health care, generate public resentment over its inefficiency, and then privatize. While unfavourably comparing Canada’s health care system to those in Cuba and North Korea, Ford announced plans to further privatize Ontario’s health sector, regurgitating well-worn conservative rhetoric that public spending, which is apparently
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Venezuela’s Seed Law should be a global model
A farm worker holds bell peppers during a harvest in Cubiro, Venezuela. Photo from Shutterstock. Seeds are an often-overlooked political battleground in industrialized countries like those of North America and Europe, but for peasant farmers in the Global South, the battle over seed rights is critical to their livelihoods. Locally
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Guaidó is gone, but we shouldn’t forget Canada’s interference in Venezuela
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez. The Juan Guaidó farce has, finally, come to an end. The hardline Venezuelan opposition, which has long sought the overthrow of the Bolivarian Revolution even during its most popular phases, thought Guaidó was their ticket to power. Their anti-government work having
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: “If there is to be a livable future, it will be a future offline”
Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World Jonathan Crary Verso, 2022 At this point, it is a commonplace that the techno-optimist promises of the Internet’s early proponents were either naïve or lies. Claims of the system’s power to connect far-flung individuals and enrich one’s social life are
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Ottawa backs Canadian mining giant in dispute with Panama
The Canadian-owned Cobre Panamá mine. Photo courtesy First Quantum Minerals Ltd. In Panama, a dispute has emerged of a type that is common to countries in Central and South America: a huge transnational company has invested in the country’s resource wealth, resulting in a conflict over suitable payments to the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Canada is still preventing charities from bringing aid to Afghanistan
Afghan refugees near the Pakistan border. Photo courtesy One Free World International. As Afghanistan struggles to manage the manifold social and economic crises resulting from decades of war and subsequent Western sanctions, the Canadian government is still preventing charities from delivering much-needed shipments of food and medical aid to the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Ottawa sides with Peruvian right-wing amid social uprising
Former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo. Photo by Juan Carlos Guzman Negrini/Flickr. Pedro Castillo was never allowed to govern. That is the unavoidable truth. Elected president in April 2021 after running with the Marxist-Leninist Perú Libre party, Castillo embodied hope for millions of rural, Black, and Indigenous peoples in the South
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Trudeau hosts biodiversity summit while promising more support for mining industry
Justin Trudeau addresses a crowd at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference. Photo by UN Biodiversity/Flickr. The United Nations Biodiversity Conference, also known as COP15, opened on December 7 in Montréal. With representatives from nearly 200 countries in attendance, the conference deals with how member countries can move toward sustainable development
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: What is the future of Venezuela’s communes?
A man walks past a mural depicting Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chávez, Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar and Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. Photo by Marco Bello. One of the most compelling aspects of Venezuela’s ongoing Bolivarian Revolution, founded with the election of Hugo Chávez in 1999, is
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