It’s no secret that orphan oil and gas wells in Alberta have been a growing environmental concern for quite some time. Farmers and rural municipalities have been struggling to cope with derelict equipment and the hazards that come with it, but little has been done to mitigate this problem. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has recently announced a pilot project based on a proposal from lobbyists: the RStar program, which would give $20 billion to oil companies to “incentivize” cleanup of the abandoned wells that litter the province. 

Fifty years ago, the US Supreme Court passed its famous Roe v Wade ruling, providing abortion rights to women in America. Today, these same rights are being ripped up. The fight to end women’s oppression must be a fight for socialist revolution.

In truth, there is no path to full equality under capitalism. Capitalism is based on a fundamental inequality—a small layer of people owns the means of production, and everyone else has to sell their lives away generating profit for them in order to make a living. The oppression of women is a key pillar that supports this system.

A recent poll commissioned by the Fraser Institute, a right-wing “think tank,” found that 54 per cent of people aged 18-34 think that socialism would “improve the economy and well-being of Canadians.” The authors of the study were shocked and appalled at this finding. But it doesn’t end there. According to their poll, a whopping one million young Canadians say socialism isn’t enough, they say that communism is the ideal economic system.

With generative AIs reaching new levels of sophistication, some people declare they ought to be thought of as artists in their own right. There are buyers willing to pay over the odds for the latest digital craze, and a number of big companies have already invested billions in capturing this burgeoning new market. By contrast, many artists complain that machines are ripping off their work, without credit or pay, and fear being rendered obsolete. It is undeniable that the rapid advancement of generative AIs is quite impressive (or alarming, depending on your point of view).

“It’s bananas,” exclaimed Dr Erica Nelson, co-author of a paper on a collection of fuzzy, red smudges of light from distant galaxies picked up by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): “These galaxies should not have had time to form.” And yet, there they are! Massive, mature, insolent galaxies, shining brightly, in complete disregard of the fact that the Big Bang theory says they cannot exist.

Unprecedented weather events have grounded planes, flooded communities, and destroyed cities at an increasing pace over the past few years as the climate crisis looms large over the future. And so the federal Liberals are now proposing a “just transition”, promising an end to carbon pollution without a loss of good jobs. Given the Liberals’ track record of broken promises, there’s good reason for suspicion.

For more than a week, the nomination by Justin Trudeau of Amira Elghawaby as special advisor in the fight against Islamophobia has created a storm. This is yet another symbolic and empty gesture by the Trudeau Liberals to portray themselves as fighters against oppression. Meanwhile, the nomination brought a big backlash in Quebec, with the CAQ nationalists leading the charge to demand her resignation for past comments on Quebec.

The International Marxist Tendency is proud to present the Winter 2023 edition of the In Defence of Marxism theoretical journal. The feature article in this issue takes on the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, which far from a ‘meeting of cultures’, was a brutal and bloody affair resulting in the extermination of millions of indigenous peoples. We publish the editorial by editor-in-chief Alan Woods here.

A new study of in-house research by ExxonMobil has revealed that the oil giant had detailed and accurate predictions of the impact of fossil fuels on global warming as early as the 1970s. And yet, the company continued to downplay and cast doubt on man-made climate until as recently as the last decade.