The mass media tend to paint a simplistic, “good guys versus bad guys” picture of complex events in other countries, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Iran. This has also been the case regarding the crisis in the Ukraine, where the story is often presented as a one-sided demonization of
Continue readingTag: CD Reviews
Canadian Dimension | Articles: An alternative reading of The Orenda
Amidst much criticism and controversy, Joseph Boyden’s newest novel, The Orenda, was recently crowned winner of the 2014 Canada Reads competition. Boyden’s book, which explores French colonialism and its role in the collapse of the Wendat confederacy in the 17th century, beat out other excellent works of fiction. However, despite
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: The Fifth Estate: WikiLeaks through a Hollywood lens
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a hero, but I didn’t get that from director Bill Condon’s film, The Fifth Estate. Assange is depicted as a stereotypical radical — bossy, arrogant, paranoid, and (horrors!) nearly devoid of social skills. Disney and DreamWorks Studios produced The Fifth Estate with a twisted view
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics
Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics ( Nww Star Books, 2013) is both a tribute to a true Canadian hero and a reminder that once, not so long ago, an individual could make a difference in politics. Author Graeme Truelove never once calls Svend a hero but it’s the conclusion
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Journalism
Foreign correspondent as cartoonist: the marriage has traced a slow path inward from the margins, with Joe Sacco along for the whole of the ride. And make no mistake: his are red-blooded cartoons, brimming with the energy of outrage, given life by Sacco’s embedded reportage and first-hand interviews. The trickier
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Home and Native land: Unsettling Multiculturalism in Canada
Featuring a wealth of prominent radical and critical race theorists, this collection of essays takes aim at one of Canada’s nationalistic sacred cows: our official multiculturalism policy. Taking racial categories seriously as a form of social organization throughout Canadian history, the authors in this book analyze how multiculturalism as an
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Aboriginal Rights Are Not Human Rights
Buried Deep in Peter Kulchyski’s new book, titled Aboriginal Rights Are Not Human Rights: In Defence of Indigenous Struggles, is a powerful lesson from a Cree protest camp. With Manitoba Hydro planning to unleash a dam onto a spillway in 2004, without the consent of the Aboriginal community affected, Grand
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Dreaming of What Might Be
Illustrate! Educate! Organize! The Graphic History Collective (GHC) is pleased to announce the launch of their new comic book about the Knights of Labor in Canada called Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Canada 1880-1900. The comic book is now available for free on the GHC
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Who watches the watchmen?
The American Revolutionary War was significant for a number of obvious reasons. It expelled the British from the Thirteen Colonies, staged an international conflict, and precipitated the growth of what would become the world’s most powerful nation. Yet the ideas of that struggle are perhaps the most intriguing. Ultimately, it
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: My Leaky Body: Tales from the Gurney
Canadian author Julie Devaney is an activist who has been involved in demonstrations calling for the end to dictatorships and the G8 summits. In her book, she tells her personal story, her journey, and ultimately — crusade as a woman with an excruciatingly painful chronic illness, ulcerative colitis. “Sometimes I
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Digital Disconnect How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
Robert McChesney, a communications theorist at Illinois, has written previously on the consolidation of American news media, and (more recently, with John Bellamy Foster) the mechanics of global capitalism. Here he takes to task internet “celebrants”: those uncritically cheerleading tech-led economic growth in all its forms; those engaged in a
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: It’s the Political Economy, Stupid
Exhibition catalogues rarely serve as more than an archive, but here the difference is by design. Envisioned as a series of intersecting projects, It’s the Political Economy, Stupid (Pluto Press, 2013) exists independently of — and parallel to — four site-responsive exhibitions (with more stops to come) and various public
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: The Beginning and End of Globalization and US Hegemony
Let us begin with a word, and the word is “globalization.” Not chosen randomly, but because it jumped out of the mindless chatter and could not be ignored. Hardly heard before 25 years ago, it went viral in the 1990s. Radhika Desai, a political economist at the University of Manitoba,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Dirty Wars
In Dirty Wars, acclaimed investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill takes on what is likely the most important story of his career. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Rick Rowley, the film follows Scahill to Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and beyond to reveal a new kind of frontline in the global ‘war on terror’—one led
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Informant
In early 2009 the anarchist movement in Austin was shocked to learn that Brandon Darby was an FBI informant who had helped entrap David McKay and Bradley Crowder, two young activists from Midland, Texas, into constructing 8 Molotov cocktails. In mid-2012 it was the Marxist movement’s turn to be traumatized.
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Should There Be No Sport?
There is much to criticize about the world of professional sport: its virulent sexism, racism and homophobia, its role in the gentrification of cities, and its ties to corporations involved in innumerable wrongdoings. But Mark Perelman’s target in Barbaric Sport: A Global Plague (Verso, 2012) is not the corruption of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Keep True, NDP
Howard Pawley was elected to the Manitoba legislature in 1969 and served as a cabinet minister in the first NDP government of Manitoba. For most of the 1980s, he governed as premier of the province. “Keep True” is his political autobiography. In his privileged role as both insider and player,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension | Articles: Keep True, NDP
Howard Pawley was elected to the Manitoba legislature in 1969 and served as a cabinet minister in the first NDP government of Manitoba. For most of the 1980s, he governed as premier of the province. “Keep True” is his political autobiography. In his privileged role as both insider and player,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Jack deserves better than ‘Jack’
There are things to expect and things not to not expect from political TV biographies. They are rarely going to be cinematic masterpieces and there will always be those grumbling about how they haven’t portrayed every single historical detail or have failed to ‘accurately’ resurrect this or that political figure.
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The myth of Vladimir Putin’s progressivism
For that segment of the left that thinks more in terms of hegemonic blocs and geopolitical chess games between imperialism and “anti-imperialist” states than classes, Putin is something of an exemplar. Immanuel Wallerstein, perhaps its most respected and principled representative, made the case for Putin in a July 15, 2007
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