OCTOBER, 2022 – On June 24, 2022, in a stunning reminder of the depth of the backlash against women’s rights, the United States Supreme Court officially reversed the historic Roe v. Wade ruling which provided legal protection for abortion rights in that country.[1] Within two weeks of the ruling, some half of all states in the US saw court filings and amended laws challenging the legal status of abortion.[2] There are far-reaching international implications of the US reversal of women’s right to choose, and the Canadian context cannot be assumed to be unaffected.[3] Importantly, in Canada, we have a long…
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APRIL, 2017 – The structure of Escape from the Staple Trap[1] was consciously chosen. In the face of deeply held political economy epistemologies, it was important to first construct a strong empirical foundation – using data extensively, looking at that data from multiple sides, as well as questioning and critiquing certain key hegemonic interpretations of empirical data from earlier eras. This empirical work revealed clearly that Canada must be considered a Global North country at the core of the world system. Only with that empirical foundation constructed, did the book then draw some political conclusions. In this Global North, core…
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OCTOBER 9, 2013 – Charlie Kimber and Alex Callinicos (2013) have written a defence of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a party wracked by crisis since late 2012. This crisis was precipitated by the response, on the part of the SWP leadership, to allegations of rape and sexual assault. However, Kimber/Callinicos assert that “all those involved … have agreed that the case itself should be treated as ‘closed’” and therefore barely address issues of sexual violence, sexism, women’s oppression – the substantive issues that have generated the current crisis. Others will, no doubt, respond to Kimber/Callinicos on these points.…
2 CommentsJANUARY 13, 2013 – 1. Richard Seymour is author of the widely read blog, “Lenin’s Tomb,” and a prominent member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the largest group left of the Labour Party in Britain. In an article written in the days following the January 4-6 annual conference of the SWP, Seymour made public a controversy inside the party, a controversy so serious he says: “the future of the party is at stake”. Speaking of the party’s Central Committee he said: “they are on the wrong side of that fight”. Speaking to fellow members of the party, he wrote:…
10 CommentsMAY 11, 2010 – So David Cameron is Britain’s new prime minister. His accession to 10 Downing Street is reminiscent of another May election when the smug elite organized in the Conservative Party outpolled the Labour Party. May 3, 1979, Margaret Thatcher defeated James Callaghan. She would in the 1980s, partner up with her U.S. equivalent – former B-movie Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan – the two becoming symbolic of what we now call the neo-liberal revolution. Britain in the 1970s, however, did not just give the world neo-liberalism. It also produced cultures of resistance. And as the election results rolled…
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