The readiness to include the left in any crackdown on political extremism and the tendency to focus on the left more fixedly than on the far-right, is not simply a question of reactionary police attitudes or a readiness to blur lines on the part of the conservative right. There are very real reasons why even a liberal capitalist politician like Justin Trudeau would see left wing “extremism” as an existential danger to everything he cherishes.

Perhaps surprisingly, little is known about the capacities of different countries to produce vaccines. Official data on global production volumes is not available and trade data only gives an incomplete picture of production capacity. The United States and China, for instance, import and export low levels of vaccines relative to their population sizes, suggesting that major parts of vaccine production are not reflected in trade data.

Of course the hope lingers that the extensive leaks contained within the Pandora Papers will force reform of the tax regime and reverse, or at least impede, the exacerbation of what is already a staggering level of global inequality. But it seems naïve to imagine that those who made the rules in favour of capital accumulation will now turn around and say “Gosh we never intended it to go this far.”

22,000 public service workers in New Brunswick are on strike. The school bus drivers, custodians, mechanics, healthcare workers in rehabilitation and therapy, educational support staff, transportation and infrastructure workers and community college workers that took to the picket lines on October 29 are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).

New Brunswick health services I need have been affected by the strike, but the premier is to blame. We need fair wages for our public sector workers to get things back on track.

Erich Fromm wrote that “[o]pinions formed by the powerless onlooker do not express his or her conviction, but are a game, analogous to expressing a preference for one brand of cigarette over another. For these reasons the opinions expressed in polls and in elections constitute the worst, rather than the best level of human judgment…Without information, deliberation, and the power to make one’s decision effective, democratically expressed opinion is hardly more than the applause at a sports event.”

The EPA allows polluters to turn neighborhoods into “sacrifice zones” where residents breathe carcinogens. ProPublica reveals where these places are in a first-of-its-kind map and data analysis.

Over 5,000 striking frontline workers, CUPE leaders from other provinces and supporters marched on the New Brunswick legislature to send a message to Premier Blaine Higgs and the governing PC Party. That message was heard loud and clear as it was reported by news outlets that the crowd noise and speeches from outside could be heard throughout the building.