In the face of the COVID-19 tsunami, our lives are changing in ways that were inconceivable just a few short weeks ago. Not since the 2008-09 economic collapse has the world collectively shared an experience of this kind: a single, rapidly-mutating, global crisis, structuring the rhythm of our daily lives within a complex calculus of risk and competing probabilities.
The pandemic is teaching us about what really matters — and has been possible all along
Before anything else I want to acknowledge what is unfolding in Canada and around the globe as a human tragedy. Even as this crisis offers an object lesson and has things to teach us, it is important to never lose sight of the scale of calamity in terms of suffering and loss of life.
"We are in absolute outrage and a state of painful anguish as we witness the Wet'suwet'en people having their Title and Rights brutally trampled on and their right to self-determination denied."
Climate action campaigners and Indigenous leaders on Thursday condemned a violent pre-dawn raid by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at a camp set up by Wet'suwet'en land defenders in British Columbia.
Photo: Funeral procession for Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Tehran on Jan 6, 2020 (AP photo by Ebrahim Noroozi)
On January 3, 2020, the Trump-led U.S. government carried out the assassinations of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi military commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Both men had played key leading roles for years in the war against the right-wing paramilitaries of ISIS.[1]
The Green New Deal can connect every struggle to climate change. A Red Deal can build on those connections, tying Indigenous liberation to an anti-capitalist fight to save the planet.
2016 was the hottest year on record — so far. It also marked historic Indigenous-led protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock.
Tensions continue to run high over the 670-kilometre Coastal GasLink pipeline project, which has been approved by the federal and B.C. governments, as well as by 20 elected First Nations councils along the route.
It's become a defining moment not only in the evolution of Indigenous rights, but in the future of B.C.'s NDP government and Canada's oil and gas industry.
