• Monthly Review
  • Monthly Review Press
  • Climate & Capitalism
  • Money on the Left
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Mastadon
MR Online
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact/Submission
  • Browse
    • Recent Articles Archive
    • by Subject
      • Ecology
      • Education
      • Imperialism
      • Inequality
      • Labor
      • Literature
      • Marxism
      • Movements
      • Philosophy
      • Political Economy
    • by Region
      • Africa
      • Americas
      • Asia
      • Australasia
      • Europe
      • Global
      • Middle East
    • by Category
      • Art
      • Commentary
      • Interview
      • Letter
      • News
      • Newswire
  • Monthly Review Essays

About Owen Schalk

Owen Schalk is the author of Canada in Afghanistan: A Story of Military, Diplomatic, Political and Media Failure, 2003–2023 and the coauthor of Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy, with Yves Engler. He is a columnist at Canadian Dimension.
  • Yemen

    Trump massacres Yemenis so Israel can massacre Palestinians

    Originally published: Dissident Voice on April 21, 2025 (more by Dissident Voice)  |

    On April 17, U.S. airstrikes on Yemen killed 74 people and injured 171 in a dangerous escalation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s war against the poorest country in the Middle East.

  • Montréal-based writer and political activist Yves Engler is a long-time contributor to CD.

    Free Yves Engler

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on February 23, 2025 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    In today’s Canada, offending Zionist influencers is enough to land you behind bars.

  • Political cartoon published in July 1870 depicts Canada as a child, with Great Britain, represented as Mother Britannia, holding out her protective arms. Uncle Sam, representing the United States, stands on the other side, ready to “grab” the child if it falls. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

    Why be a doormat?

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on January 2, 2025 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Canadian leaders are falling over themselves to placate the incoming Trump administration. It doesn’t have to be this way.

  • Lee Mordechai is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Photo supplied.

    Israeli historian accuses Canadian media of enabling Gaza war crimes

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on December 14, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Lee Mordechai says Israel’s war has been “enabled and facilitated by massive media efforts to shape discourse” in the West.

  • An image from a Barrick Gold post on X. Credit: Barrick Gold/X

    Mali’s government issues arrest warrant for Canadian mining company CEO

    Originally published: The Canada Files on December 12, 2024 (more by The Canada Files)  |

    On December 2, 2024, Mali’s popular anti-imperialist government issued an arrest warrant for Canadian mining company Barrick Gold’s CEO, Mark Bristow, a South African national who fought for the apartheid army in the 1970s.

  • Mali’s Assimi Goïta, Niger’s General Abdourahamane Tchiani, and Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traoré at the first summit of heads of state and governments of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in Niamey, Niger, July 6, 2024. Photo courtesy Agenzia Nova.

    In West Africa, Canadian mining firms come up against bloc of independent states

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on October 22, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    An increasingly assertive group of African nations are constraining the ability of Canadian companies to profit from resources.

  • French embassy in Niger. Relations between the two countries have broken down since a July coup d’état overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum. Photo courtesy France24.

    As French embassy closes in Niger, West Africa charts a new course

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on January 2, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Over the past few years, numerous West African states have taken steps toward greater economic and security sovereignty, often in opposition to Western (specifically French) designs on the region.

  • Canada’s Militarization and the End of U.S. Hegemony

    Owen Schalk

    Owen Schalk details how Canada’s policies—the hostile moves toward geopolitical opponents, efforts to decrease economic ties to China through critical minerals exploration, and hundreds of billions of dollars in projected military spending over the next decades—do not make Canadians safer.

  • Peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet has just published an article “conservatively” estimating that the death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza could be 186,000 people or more. Photo by Humberto Patrick/Wikimedia Commons.

    Lancet: 186,000 Palestinians or more killed in Gaza

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on July 9, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    By denying the world access to the true death toll in Gaza, Israel is acting, once again, as a complete rogue state.

  • Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Artillery Corps operating near the border with Lebanon. Photo by Sgt. Ori Shifrin/IDF Spokesperson’s Unit/Wikimedia Commons.

    Israel is stoking all-out war, and Canada is complicit

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on June 29, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Far from ending the genocide in Gaza, Israel continues its assault with the military and diplomatic backing of Western states.

  • French embassy in Niger. Relations between the two countries have broken down since a July coup d’état overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum. Photo courtesy France24.

    As French embassy closes in Niger, West Africa charts a new course

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on January 2, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are charting a new course—one of increased economic and security sovereignty.

  • This file photograph shows Thomas Sankara as he reviews troops in a street of Ouagadougou, during celebrations of the second anniversary of the Burkina Faso’s revolution. Photo by Daniel Lane/AP.

    Thomas Sankara remains a global icon

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on October 9, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    His vision of a socialist, pan-Africanist model of development⁠ was not buried with him.

  • Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador waving the flag of Mexico. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

    AMLO’s push for environmental reforms angers Canadian mining sector

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on February 26, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Ottawa has often criticized measures that would limit the ability of Canadian companies to profit from Mexico’s resource wealth.

  • Military personnel stands guard at Canela Radio in Quito. Photo by Franklin Jacome/Agencia Press South.

    How Canada benefits from instability in Ecuador

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on February 14, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Ottawa appears largely unconcerned by Ecuador’s social and institutional decay.

  • French embassy in Niger. Relations between the two countries have broken down since a July coup d’état overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum. Photo courtesy France24.

    As French embassy closes in Niger, West Africa charts a new course

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on January 2, 2024 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are charting a new course—one of increased economic and security sovereignty.

  • “If I Must Die.” Illustration by @beqararkarke/X.

    Refaat Alareer: Literature as resistance

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on December 19, 2023 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    His efforts to open space in global literature for Palestinian writers were a contribution to the struggle against apartheid.

  • Parliamentarians gave a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, a former member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the military wing of the Nazi Party, during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Ottawa. Photo courtesy CBC News. / SS chief Heinrich Himmler addresses a group of Waffen SS soldiers in the “eastern territories,” 1942. (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

    World War II revisionism on full display in Nazi’s visit to Parliament

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on September 24, 2023 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Schalk: We are cynically rewriting history to serve contemporary political interests

  • Protesters display the flags of Niger and Russia during a protest in Niamey, Niger. Photo by Efe Issifou/Flickr.

    Niger coup will have global ramifications for the U.S., France, and Canada

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on August 9, 2023 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    This isn’t what Western countries wanted to sow in West Africa, writes Owen Schalk.

  • Norwegian politician and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Photo courtesy NATO/Flickr.

    Jens Stoltenberg’s global vision encourages conflict, militarization, and historical amnesia

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on July 14, 2023 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Recent Foreign Affairs article unmasks NATO’s view on the shifting tides of global power.

  • A sign outside the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) headquarters in Ottawa. Photo by Chris Wattie.

    The ‘Chinese interference’ story is rooted in xenophobia, economic decline

    Originally published: Canadian Dimension on March 30, 2023 (more by Canadian Dimension)  |

    Ottawa’s anxieties about a power to the East are neuralgic, irrational, and grimly familiar.

  • 1
  • 2
Next →

Also By Owen Schalk in Monthly Review Magazine

  • Disney, Salò, and Pasolini’s Inconsumable Art November 01, 2021

Monthly Review Essays

  • The Migrant Genocide: Toward a Third World Analysis of European Class Struggle
    Iker Suarez A banner at a memorial rally for victims of the 2014 massacre of migrants at Tarajal, 2021.

    Over 10,000 people died in transit to Spain in 2024 alone.[1] On June 2022, the border fence of Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, was witness to a massacre that killed or disappeared over a hundred African migrants.[2]  A recent BBC investigation revealed that Greek border guards systematically repeal immigrants already on Greek […]

Lost & Found

  • Strike at the Helm: The First Ministerial Meeting of the New Cycle of the Bolivarian Revolution
    Hugo Chávez Mural of Chávez in Caracas. (Univision)

    On October 7th, 2012, after hearing of his victory as the nation‘s candidate with 56 percent of the vote, President Hugo Chávez Frias announced from a balcony in his hometown that a new cycle was beginning the very next day, October 8th.

Trending

  • A person on a crane surveys the ruins of a bombed building, surrounded by smoke.
    The Empire’s Strategic Failure: How the US-Israeli Assault on Iran Accelerated Imperial Decline
  • Black citizenship
    The necessity of birthright citizenship for Black People
  • John Bellamy Foster on U.S. Foreign Policy & the “New MAGA Imperialism”
    What is the Trump Doctrine? John Bellamy Foster on U.S. Foreign Policy & the “New MAGA Imperialism”
  • diabetes
    China strikes Diabetes
  • Chilean Communist Party leader Jeannette Jara in a photo composition with sketches of Santiago and the Chilean flag. Photo: Eduardo Ramón/El País.
    Chile: A major victory for the People and the Left, with strategic impact
  • ICSS 20250629
    The Trump Doctrine and the New M.A.G.A. Imperialism — John Bellamy Foster — ICSS 20250629
  • dollars and euros background
    Dollar v Euro
  • How to New York Times-Proof Mamdani’s Playbook: Turning Coalition Specifics into Fiscal Possibilities
  • Legal & Political Foundations of Capitalism w/ Jamee K. Moudud
  • Picture: Daderot. Public Domain
    China is not a monolith

Popular (last 30 days)

  • Airbus A330-243F cargo aircraft
    Russian and Chinese Military cargo planes shuttling weapons, missiles, supplies into Iran
  • Trump
    Mainstream media ignore Trump’s planned Office of Remigration, a term for ethnic cleansing
  • A person on a crane surveys the ruins of a bombed building, surrounded by smoke.
    The Empire’s Strategic Failure: How the US-Israeli Assault on Iran Accelerated Imperial Decline
  • AP Photo / IRNA/ Mostafa Qotbi
    Iran now first line of defense of BRICS and the Global South
  • Plutonian Mac: December 2017
    Official: U.S.-Israeli deception gave Iran false security ahead of attack
  • Natanz, Iran
    Exclusive: Iran given advance notice as U.S. insisted attack on nuclear sites is ‘one-off’
  • Black citizenship
    The necessity of birthright citizenship for Black People
  • A building damaged in an Israeli strike on Tehran, on 13 June 2025 (Atta Kenner/AFP)
    Exclusive: U.S. quietly sent hundreds of Hellfire missiles to Israel before Iran attack
  • Figure 2 – Credit: Matt Kenard / Declassified 2023
    The urgency of abolishing Britain’s colonial bases in Cyprus
  • A black and white photograph of Paulo Freire later in life. Freire is bald, bearded, and wears large eyeglasses.
    Pedagogy and Class Power: Reclaiming Freire in an Age of Reaction

RSS MR Press News

  • EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People) June 13, 2025
  • The legacy of a Sardinian original (Roses for Gramsci reviewed in ‘Counterpunch’) June 13, 2025
  • LISTEN: Gramsci’s lasting contributions (Andy Merrifield on ‘Against the Grain’) June 6, 2025
  • Why did Marxism fall into such deep crisis in the West? (Western Marxism reviewed in ‘Socialism and Democracy’) June 5, 2025
  • A remarkable personal journey WATCH: Andy Merrifield, author of Roses for Gramsci, at The Marxist Education Project June 4, 2025

RSS Climate & Capitalism

  • ‘Climate tipping points pose catastrophic risks to billions of people’ July 9, 2025
  • Can carbon dioxide removal save the climate? June 29, 2025
  • Global heating isn’t just getting worse. It is getting worse faster. June 19, 2025
  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2025 June 17, 2025
  • 1.5 is dead: How hot will the Earth get? June 5, 2025

 

RSS Monthly Review

  • July-August 2025 (Volume 77, Number 3) July 1, 2025 The Editors
  • A Special Issue on Communes in Socialist Construction July 1, 2025 Chris Gilbert
  • Venezuela’s Communal Project July 1, 2025 Ángel Prado
  • Socialist Communes and Anti-Imperialism: The Marxist Approach July 1, 2025 Chris Gilbert
  • The Worker-Peasant Alliance in the Transition to Socialism Today July 1, 2025 Prabhat Patnaik

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons License

Monthly Review Foundation
134 W 29TH ST STE 706
New York NY 10001-5304

Tel: 212-691-2555