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Canada in the age of Trump
Canadian PoliticsThe Liberals are dragging their feet on amending Bill-C-51 — the Conservatives’ draconian legislation buttressing already formidable national security-state powers. Meanwhile, protest is mounting over Trudeau’s broken promises on everything from emissions targets to electoral reform. In Trudeau’s Canada, as in Trump’s America, a treacherous course is being set.
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What’s the Matter with America?
USA PoliticsThomas Frank is the founder of The Baffler magazine, author of What’s the Matter With Kansas? and Listen Liberal, and past columnist for The Wall Street Journal and Harper’s Magazine. He delivered the 2017 annual Phyllis Clarke Memorial Lecture, on Donald Trump’s election and what it means for the USA. Introductions by Byan Evans and Ron Vogel, Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University.
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President Trump: Nationalist Capitalism, An Alternative to Globalization
USA PoliticsDuring his inaugural speech, President Trump clearly and forcefully outlined the strategic political-economic policies he will pursue over the next four years. Anti-Trump journalists, academics and experts, who appear in the Financial Times, New York Times and the Washington Post have repeatedly distorted and lied about the President’s program as well as his critique of existing and past policies.
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It Can Happen Here
Canadian PoliticsWe must find a way to defend all of the groups and interests now under threat while building a movement that can bring about a future embodying all of our common values, including cooperation, equality, individual rights, economic security, and environmental sustainability. Fully securing those values will ultimately require passing beyond the capitalist system.
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Trump’s racist travel ban requires more than just condemnation
Canadian PoliticsJustin Trudeau has been rightfully credited for being more open to Syrian refugees than Harper’s Conservatives. But we must demand more. With the rise of the far right in the U.S. and worldwide, not to mention a future in which climate refugees will become ever more numerous, Canada needs to welcome more asylum seekers and refugees.
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Justin Trudeau Has to Directly Critique and Resist Trump’s Muslim Ban
Canadian PoliticsOne of Trudeau’s key goals as Prime Minister is to promote and defend the interests of all Canadians at home and abroad, regardless of class, creed, race, or gender. And if he doesn’t use Canada’s full diplomatic weight to defend Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Yemeni, Sudani, Libyan, and Somalian Canadians, he will have failed in one of his key responsibilities.
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The Empire Has No Clothes
USA PoliticsAnd now Donald the Ripper sits with other vicious and all-too transparently sociopathic swamp creatures like the quasi-fascist Steve Bannon atop the visible U.S. state, where marketing and branding matter to those wielding real and continuous behind the “marionette theater” of electoral and parliamentary politics. The Empire, once again, has no clothes.
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Third Coast Pillory: Mexico, Neo-Nationalism and the Capitalist World-System
USA PoliticsTrump, Bannon, and the rest appear to have a plan to hoard, take, and berate. If this is Mexico’s response, Trump and Co. will surely trample as they see fit. In this new era of neo-nationalist monsters and the coming anew of socialist affirmation, don’t be led astray by defenders of yesterday’s neoliberalism. It is obvious, they have no plan.
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Militant Hope in the Age of Trump
USA PoliticsThe United States stands at the endpoint of a long series of attacks on democracy, and the choices faced by the American public today point to the divide between those who are committed to democracy and those who are not. Debates over whether Donald Trump was a fascist or Hillary Clinton was a right-wing warmonger and tool of Wall Street were a tactical diversion.
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“Trust, But Don’t Verify”: US Intelligence Agencies and the New Cold War
USA PoliticsThe media coverage makes for an entertaining circus, especially the acrobatics of various political leaders as they flip-flop on issues of Cold War and peace and who should be stupid enough to believe intelligence agencies after they have lied about so many things from Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction back to the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and the Vietnam War.
