The authors tell us this book has been “a long time in the making.” It has been well worth the wait. The dust jacket bears endorsements, fulsome even by the necessities of the medium, from four distinguished scholars and writers, David Harvey among them. Living next door to the United
Continue readingTag: CD Reviews
Canadian Dimension Feed: Right of Return
Bilbo Baggins is the main character in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, but contrary to what you’d think, the movie isn’t really about him. Nor is it about Gollum—neither because of his true delightfulness nor his long stewardship of the One Ring. (Gandalf, the consummate geopolitician, puller of strings—the guy Henry
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Sugar Man’s Sweet Kiss
Imagine a shy man dressed in black, guitar slung over his shoulder, making his way to a waterside bar of questionable repute. There sits a motley crew of down-on-their-luck, up-on-their-illusions, out-with conventionality types. Wearing crumpled shirts, they spin tall tales and while away hours “drinking the detergents/That cannot remove their
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Lincoln, the Movie
Like just about everyone who has seen it, I was enthralled by Lincoln, the Hollywood film directed with authority and creative license by Stephen Spielberg, smoothly scripted by Tony Kushner and crowned by a veritable feast of brilliant acting. But in my case, as the author of 40 books on
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Racialized Policing
Readers will be familiar with the examples of police relations with Aboriginal people and Black Canadians offered by Elizabeth Comack, a sociologist and author at the University of Manitoba who researches issues relevant to innercity communities. Contrary to investigations that conclude racism was not a factor in the shooting deaths
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Thieves of Bay Street
Chalk it up as a point of
Canadian smugness: that
undiluted avarice sloshing
around the American
financial sector circa
2008 proved to be caustic
stuff, valiantly sniffed
out and tempered on this
side of the border by our
sober breed of bankers
and bro…
Canadian Dimension Feed: We are Legion
Like its name, and unlike Wikileaks that is known mostly through its founder Julian Assange, the hactivist group Anonymous is not easily tied to any particular individual. Operating in semi-clandestine conditions, its members have only made public appearances behind the famous V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks. Opening last Friday
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The War of 1812
The Harper Conservatives are going to great lengths to highlight the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, when the British and Americans fought for control over the north. It is in this context that James Laxer has published his history of the war. Laxer places explicit focus upon the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Duets for Abdelrazik
Montréal -based activist Stefan Christoff sits onstage at a wooden bench in La Sala Rossa on The Main. A small crowd has gathered on a chilly Sunday evening in April. The show is starting late. A lanky, bespectacled man in his thirties, Christoff wears all black from his shoes to
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Where’s the Rage Over the Arbit Ragers?
Contains plot spoilers. Since we will not learn in school the lessons about the 1% we ought to know, many of us rely on movies and TV, so that through images and sound we can form ideas of who the men were who screwed up our economy. In Arbitrage, we
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: There’ll Be No Shelter Here! Part II of II
Batman: A Tale of Two Gothams “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: There’ll Be No Shelter Here! Part I of II
“There’ll be no shelter here! The frontline is everywhere!” screams Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de le Rocha in the single “No Shelter.” The song, featured on the 1998 Godzilla movie soundtrack, is a stinging critique of American cultural imperialism in general and the influence of popular media like
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Occupy This!
It has been a painfully long time since the opinion poll was fully assimilated into Canadian political life. In the arid and austere years of the 1980s, both federal parties began to outlay heaps of money to commission pollsters (an originally pejorative term) to not measure but control public opinion.
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back
Published within a year of the historic protests in Madison against Governor Scott Walker’s union-busting legislation, the essays collected in Wisconsin Uprising offer diverse, insightful perspectives on the events that took place in the winter and spring of 2011, as well as analyses of the protests’ implications for the labor
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Whatever Happened to the Saskatchewan NDP?
From 1944 through 2007, politics in Saskatchewan was dominated by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and its successor the New Democratic Party (NDP). But the NDP was soundly defeated by Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party in 2007 and routed in 2011. Today they hold only nine seats in the legislature. The
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The Civil Wars in the U.S. Labor Movement
When I went to the 2009 Labor Notes ‘Trouble Makers’ conference in Dearborn Michigan I never expected to be thrown into the middle – quite literally – of a dispute between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the California Nurses Association (CNA). But this is exactly what happened when
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Too Many People?
Ian Angus and Simon Butler ’s new book about population control, or “populationism” in the widest sense, is invaluable for people concerned about climate change, climate justice, environmental racism, and system change. Angus and Butler are clear about the urgency of drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and that there is
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Deep Green Resistance
I first heard about Deep Green Resistance in the middle of a grassroots fight to stop a huge vacationhome subdivision at a wilderness park on Vancouver Island. Back then, it hadn’t occurred to me that a book on environmental strategy was needed. Now I can tell you, it’s urgent. Deep
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Are We Coming to the End of the Growth Era?
Industrialized economies have grown most years since the mid-19th century. Globally, economic output per person increased tenfold between 1900 and 2000. Richard Heinberg says that this long run of economic growth is reaching an end owing to a number of factors: depletion of fossil fuels, minerals and fresh water; the
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Our Dying Planet
By the end of this century, coral reef ecosystems will very likely be extinct. Think about the magnitude of that statement for a minute, requests ecologist and coral reef expert Peter F. Sale in Our Dying Planet. Describing coral reefs as “the canary in the environmental coal mine,” Sale argues
Continue reading