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  • 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.

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Monthly Review Essays

  • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

Lost & Found

  • Journalism, democracy, … and class struggle
    Robert W. McChesney Bob McChesney on Saving Journalism

    Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

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