Richard Fidler

By Richard Fidler

March 15, 2022 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — Pierre Beaudet, a Quebec leader in international solidarity and progressive scholarship, died in Montréal on the night of March 7-8. Pierre was for decades a central organizer, author and editor in a range of grassroots movements and left publications. His presence and inspiration will be sorely missed by many, both young and old, as Judy Rebick indicates in this tribute she published in rabble.ca, an online magazine she cofounded two decades ago.

I follow it with an article by Pierre, written less than a week before he died, that addresses the very issue Judy cited as one that she would look to him to explain. Bear in mind that this was written very early in the war before many implications were clear. Pierre wrote it in his capacity as director of Alternatives, the international solidarity organization he founded and to which he had recently returned. My translation. And I conclude by briefly recalling some of my own memories of Pierre as a friend and comrade.

Twenty-first century global capitalism reconfigures the imperialist disorder

Introduction and translation by Richard Fidler

Remembering Leo Panitch

Canada: Quebec’s October Crisis 1970 – What today’s left learned from Ottawa’s turn to repression

Bolivia’s perfect storm: Pandemic, economic crisis, repressive coup regime

What to do about the police: How some socialists, decades ago, addressed these issues

Canada: After the federal election - the dangers and challenges that lie ahead

By Pierre Beaudet and Richard Fidler

November 9, 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — It is still early to interpret fully the results of Canada’s October 21 federal election. But behind the immediate results some trends are clear.

‘Dual Power,’ then... and now?

By Richard Fidler

September 7, 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — Global capitalist crisis, impending ecological disaster, and new responses by popular movements in some regions, particularly in Latin America, inspire radical thinking about the need to go “beyond capital.” But how to attain the desired “system change” — today, an ecosocialist regime in place of capitalist rule — continues to be a matter for debate and experimentation.

Kashmir, solidarity and the Canadian state

August 19, 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Socialist Project — In his essay, “India’s Kashmir Crackdown Poses Risk of War,” John Riddell argues that India unilaterally revoked the autonomy of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, flooding the region with troops, imposing a curfew, and shutting down all communications, and imposing direct rule by New Delhi, India’s Hindu nationalist government, under the leadership of Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), radically increased the dangers of regional war. The Indian left immediately denounced the measures and called Jammu and Kashmir occupied territories (further drawing parallels to Occupied Palestine). In turn, this raised questions of international solidarity for the anti-war movement, and in Canada the demands to be placed on the Canadian state. Here Richard Fidler and John continue to discuss the Indian intervention into Kashmir and solidarity responses in Canada.

Trudeau government gives dangerous new powers to Canada’s political cops

By Richard Fidler

July 12, 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left Blog — Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), is engaged in massive surveillance of environmentalists and Indigenous opponents of extractive energy projects. And it is sharing some of its “intelligence” with the oil industry and its regulator, the National Energy Board.

Québec solidaire vows to fight CAQ government’s racist bill

Rethinking some dominant approaches to climate change

By Richard Fidler March 26 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left Blog — Climate change is the most visible, most threatening expression of a larger, planetary ecological crisis, the result of an economic system (capitalism) with an inherent growth and profit dynamic which ensures that the exploitation of natural resources (both renewable and non-renewable) exceeds the carrying capacity of nature. You have read the almost-daily scientific reports, each more alarming than the ones before, on the scope of the crisis. I won’t belabour the point.Our approach must be informed by, and congruent with, the challenge that crisis poses to the way society must be organized if we are to halt and reverse the ecological catastrophe toward which we are now hurtling.