Mourners attend a vigil for the victims of the Marikana massacre. Photo by Andreas Georghiou/Flickr. On August 16, 2012, the South African Police Service (SAPS) opened fire on striking miners at the Marikana platinum mine, then owned by Britain’s Lonmin company. The miners, thousands in number, had declared a wildcat
Continue readingAuthor: Owen Schalk
Canadian Dimension: Degrowth is the only path to a sustainable future
Degrowth-Conference 2018 in Malmö, Sweden. Photo by Cindy Kohtala/Flickr. There is no time left. Entire regions of the Earth’s surface bake at regular intervals, killing thousands in brutal and now-routine heat waves. The immolation of incomprehensibly large swathes of woodland is going on, somewhere, right now. Climate refugees are already
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Despite protests, Ecuador’s Guillermo Lasso embraces Canadian mining at the expense of Indigenous peoples
Leonidas Iza Salazar, President of Ecuador’s Indigenous umbrella organization CONAIE, during nationwide protests in June 2022. Photo by Nico Kingman/Amazon Frontlines. This June, Indigenous-led protests erupted across Ecuador in rejection of President Guillermo Lasso’s neoliberal economic agenda, which was failing to address the severe cost of living crisis, especially in
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Canada is complicit in the starvation of Afghanistan
School for street working children, Mazar-e-Shariff, Afghanistan. Photo from Flickr. Since the Biden administration stole $7 billion from the Afghan central bank in February 2022, the United Nations has reported that 95 percent of Afghanistan’s population is not getting enough to eat. 3.5 million children are in need of nutrition
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Israel’s support for the far-right in Latin America goes back decades
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pose for photographers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City. Photo by Alan Santos/Planalto Palace. Across Latin America, the state of Israel’s best friends are, almost without fail, the most reactionary right-wing elements of the ruling classes. This seems
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Top Canadian mining companies profited $143 billion in 2021
Barrick Gold’s Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic. Photo courtesy Barrick Gold. In August 2022, the Canadian Mining Journal—a reliably pro-corporate industry magazine—published its list of Canada’s top 40 mining companies based on 2021 revenues. To merit inclusion on the list, companies needed to meet two of the following
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Can Colombia and Venezuela turn the page on decades of conflict?
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, left, and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Photos courtesy Telesur. Colombia and Venezuela are two countries with unbreakable geographical, historical, and cultural ties. Indeed, they were once part of the same country, Gran Colombia, which covered much of South America’s northern protuberance. However, striking political conflicts have
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Trudeau omits Canada’s support for Idi Amin on anniversary of Ugandan Asian expulsion
Idi Amin served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Photo from Wikimedia Commomns. Following the fiftieth anniversary of President Idi Amin’s expulsion of South Asians from Uganda in 1972, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau released a statement which, severed from historical context, reflects very well on Canada’s
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Canada is trying to stop Mexico from becoming energy sovereign
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo by Eneas De Troya/Flickr. President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is currently embroiled in an international dispute that has pitted his government against two of its largest trading partners, the United States and Canada. At the centre of this dispute is
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Canada could learn from Cuba’s sustainable agriculture
An organopónicos farm near Alamar, Cuba. Photo by Melanie K. Reed/Flickr. Canada’s current model of agriculture is failing. It is an unsustainable, pro-agribusiness, anti-smallholder model that has brought a steady monopolization of Canadian farmland and agricultural resources and a shift toward profit maximization through the prioritization of exports, regardless of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Despite its flaws, the Forde Report vindicates Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn, former Leader of the Labour Party, speaking at the 2018 Local Elections Launch in Trafford, Greater Manchester, March 22, 2018. Photo by Sophie Brown/Wikimedia Commons. Jeremy Corbyn is one of the most admirable politicians to appear in a Western liberal democracy in decades, a man who genuinely differentiated
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Documents reveal RCMP targeted health care activists in 1960s Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas speaking at the opening of the University Hospital in Saskatoon, May 14, 1955. Photo courtesy Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan. In early July, Ottawa-based author and former MP Dennis Gruending acquired a series of documents pertaining to the campaign for universal health care in 1960s Saskatchewan. The
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Canadian mining and the uprising in Panama
Protest led by the Panama is Worth More Without Mining Movement in Panama City. Photo courtesy Radio Temblor. Since July 1, nationwide protests have rocked the Central American country of Panama, with diverse social groups calling for the neoliberal government of Laurentino Cortizo to guarantee the economic security of the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Feds must act to end the forced sterilization of Indigenous people
“Debwe,” led by Mushkiiki Nibi Kwe (Lindsey Lickers) with artists Leah Roberts, Maybella King Reynolds, and Shaneixqui Brown, forms part of the art installation Red Embers, now on display in Ashbridges Bay Park, Toronto. Since 2019, the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights has been conducting “a study on the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: 2022 ‘mining risk index’ takes aim at left wing governments in Latin America
Pedro Castillo, the president of Peru, speaks during a rally in Lima. Photo from Shutterstock. On July 7, 2022, Florida-based market research firm Americas Market Intelligence (AMI) released a report on “mining risk” in Latin America. The report identifies seven categories of risk to foreign investment in the countries of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Caribbean states call for the lifting of sanctions against Venezuela
Image from Pixabay From July 3 to 5, the heads of states of 15 Caribbean countries gathered in Paramaribo, Suriname for the forty-third regular meeting of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a regional intergovernmental organization that promotes economic cooperation between members. At the conclusion of the meeting, CARICOM released a communique
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Prairies ramp up potash production amid Russia sanctions blowback
Piles of refined potash are seen in a storage barn at the Nutrien Ltd. Cory potash facility in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Photo courtesy courtesy Nutrien. With commodity prices soaring as a result of the West’s attempted excision of Russia from global markets, the United States and its allies are scrambling for
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Documents show how Ottawa intervened in Tanzania to benefit Canadian mining firms
Miners working underground at Acacia Mining’s North Mara site, Tanzania. Photo supplied by Acacia Mining. In May 2022, Ottawa-based researcher Ken Rubin obtained a collection of internal government emails detailing the Trudeau government’s response to a potential ban on gold concentrate exports in Tanzania. The proposed ban would have cut
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Right wing think tanks are urging Canada to become an ‘Indo-Pacific’ power
HMCS Winnipeg and sails past the Greater Victoria Shoreline en route to Hawaii with their embarked Royal Canadian Air Force CH-148 Cyclone helicopters for the Rim of the Pacific exercise (RIMPAC) August 6, 2020. Photo by MS Dan Bard/Canadian Forces Combat Camera/Canadian Forces. Recently, a number of right wing think
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: UN urges Canada to end criminalization of land defenders
A Fairy Creek land defender being carried off by RCMP officers. Photo by Arvin Singh. On April 29, 2022, the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) released a letter—their third in total—urging the Canadian government to respect the rights of the Indigenous Secwepemc and Wet’suwet’en communities
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