On the Wrong Side of History: Canada, Imperialism, and the Geopolitical Realignment
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- Опубликовано: 19 мар 2024
- Public lecture: “On the Wrong Side of History: Canada, Imperialism, and the Geopolitical Realignment”
Speaker: Dr. Kevin MacKay, Professor Mohawk College
Wednesday, March 20
7:00-8:30 p.m.
Location: Room TBD, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo Campus
Professor MacKay discusses Canada's current and historic role within the post World War II geopolitical context. He will also discuss Canada’s position with respect to the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. Special attention will be paid to our country's relation to NATO and Western imperialism and to the suppression of free speech, dissent, and academic freedom within Canadian post-secondary institutions.
BIO: Kevin is a professor at Mohawk College in Hamilton and serves as Vice President of the Mohawk faculty union, OPSEU Local 240. He researches, writes, and teaches on the subjects of civilization collapse, political transformation, and global systemic risk. In 2017 Kevin published Radical Transformation: Oligarchy, Collapse, and the Crisis of Civilization with Between the Lines Books. He is currently working on a book entitled A New Ecological Politics, with Oregon State University Press. In 2004, Kevin founded the Sky Dragon Community Development Co-operative, a non-profit that operates a community centre in downtown Hamilton.
The public event will be moderated by Tamara Lorincz, PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University and a fellow with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
The event has been organized with the financial support of the Laurier Student Public Interest Research Group (LSPIRG) and endorsed by the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW), the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom Canada (WILPF), and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
As a 60+ year old Canadian, I strongly agree with this discussion. I feel like I am watching Nero burn Rome.
Great presentation!
Excellent presentation, thank you. I’ll save this link to share with others.
Really excellent, great work on this presentation.. tons of content to cover, but focusing attention on the macro political state..
One addition that would be hyper relevant is the collective stone walling of energy transition, which is bound to become even more transparent as China has cornered the market on solar panel production.. folks have made the argument that the American empire has spent tremendous amounts of treasure on securing hegemonic control over oil supply, attempting to use this as a hammer with any aspiring peer power, or military power, cut off oil to strangle their aspirations.. this theory goes that in order to maintain this strategic advantage then they'd need these peer competitors to be reliant on this strategic resources and vulnerable to sanction and siege..
But now that Yemen's Ansaruallah have humiliated the colonial navies in the red sea, this whole paradigm is already on thinning ice, with or without an energy transition..
Point being, any energy transition, most of all a just transition, is being malevolently blocked, which locks in mass crisis and immigration (upwards of 100's of millions in a single year by some projections), mass starvation and mass 'indirect' genocide, all while AI ramps up and the percentage of surplus population grows (exponentially?!).. we have to be able to draw out these connections as well, especially because it's ideological consistent with this current 'Western Project' as it was called.. divorce of responsibly to public and democratic institutions, sacrifice of domestic 'surplus population' (such a disgusting term), a willingness to co-sign genocide, indifference towards the collapse of living standards for the 99%, whilst insulating oligarchy with a police surveillance state, supercharged with AI and drone technology.. it's a nasty combination..
And a complete indifference, if not a desire for the collapse of the developing countries and people in resource rich areas, such as Africa, crisis can be manipulated, especially by militaristic power brokers that will Ensure the local economy is starved, the viceroys and tyrants are paid off and the 'insecure workforce' and child labour is continued to be paid as little as possible..
We'll see, harrowing times
All the while projection that china is an obstacle to green technology while they lead the world each year in building renewables. Why don't Canadians know about the water cup in India and permaculture to improve some of the degraded lands here. We love to talk about free markets and competition, but actually hate doing anything related to that.
Oh well china wins we shall just turn them into cartoonish moustache twirling bafffons.
Listening to our "diplomats" vs say lavarov or China's , we are the cartoons. Usually only there to make pretend we represent a voice to support the USA while not being the USA. Colony is more like it. As the British said, Canada chall never manufacture so much as a pin, they are hewers of wood and drawers of water. Aka resources only.
I can always tell a really good canadian political podcast.....because there's always fewer than a thousand views of it.
Please include the links to the orgs and events mentioned here in the description
Great presentation except there is one point that I think is glossed over; we are talking about defunding our military, defunding NATO, yet where authoritarian regimes keep on spending towards their military and don’t defund, it will create a power imbalance, which inevitably sets us up to be exploited. Maybe it’s our turn to be exploited, however my reservation towards this notion is that this is the world we are leaving to our kids, we can’t just roll over and die because we feel bad for our past. We should be trying to build not dismantle while everyone around us grows.
I would add two points that are absent from Dr. MacKay’s presentation. 1) The economic impetus for imperialist aggression ie. the creation of markets for the sale of goods from the imperial core. The need for capitalism to have some form of external stimulus for growth is a vital component that is not directly explained. The current conflicts and subsequent instability are a direct result of the failure of the hegemon being able to secure new lands and subjects, the exploitation of which would serve to backstop (temporarily) the debt-fuelled asset bubbles in the neoliberal financial realm. This is crucial to understanding the vitriolic hatred of Russian people on display in the West.
2) The ideological and philosophical concepts that drove colonialist expansion and subjugation of indigenous populations; the Eurocentric concept of “order” undertaken following the Columbian Exchange. A fundamentally racist and white supremacist construct which sees the nonwhite races as backward and chaotic, either expendable or only valuable as cheap labour integrated into the dominant structure. Again, the concept of self-determination is not evenly upheld by the West - Canada's First Nations, ethnic Russians of the Donbass, and the Palestinians have been denied their right to self-determination because they go against the interests of the hegemon.
Remaining in the safe harbour of realism which leads to the conclusion that Russia and China, as well as other powers, are also imperialist, and that the absence of a singular dominant power inevitably leads to everyone resorting to violence - this is a conclusion which is not borne out by the facts. The notion that ‘soft power doesn’t exist’ in a non-hegemonic scenario is completely negated by the existence of China. The BRI is entirely a product of negotiation.
I would suggest viewers consult the recent Tricontinental Institute report on Hyper-Imperialism, and the work of Michael Hudson to develop a more rounded understanding of the current moment through a very long lens of both economic relations between the Global North and Global South, and the philosophical differences between the West and Eastern civilizations, ie. how are ‘democracy’ and ‘autocracy’ defined.
Amazing how much of this is not in the zeitgeist. I know a lot of this, but only cuz I look outside of Canada.
That opening was deluded… I’ll continue, but what is this dissonance when it comes to funding the armed forces. 2% of gdp is reasonable and necessary for our mutual defence… but we don’t even spend that much. The hypocrisy in the criticism of Canadian missions and inclusion of conflicts Canada wasn’t involved in like the invasion of iraq is ridiculous
Wow, the obvious lack of objectivity and choice to generalize when the nuance is contradictory to your point… I need to start making video’s instead of typing out my reaction. So much to refute but I do not have the time
Is this a piece of satire? So much of this was phrased like clickbait news headlines and opening statements before the expert gives an opinion and waters down or disperses the rhetoric in the body of the article… the comments about Brics and currency show a barely surface level understanding of Brics and the geopolitical significance (insignificance) of Brics. The ironic part about speaking them while railing against the west is that they’re in organization that says they’ll cooperate on trade independent from politics… meaning they’ll purchase Russian oil despite their aggression, purchase Chinese goods despite their ethnogenocide of Muslims (and arguably their use of slave labour), and purchase agricultural goods from Brazil despite deforestation in the Amazon. They think that we are virtue signalling and want to be able to skirt sanctions…
Now I’m listening to comments about Russia joining nato and the myth about not moving east… is this guy a plant working against the interests of Canadians and the west? Putin when he was early in his dictatorship, asked to join nato… unconditionally and without any ability for the nations to vote domestically if they will approve their entry. You left that out. The last leader of the Soviet Union came out and said that no such thing was promised to him… he said there were conversations surrounding the reunification of Germany. The US said they wouldn’t move NATO into eastern Germany (the was to help convince the Soviets to let it happen rather than moving in to enforce communism). Once the Soviet Union fell, there was no threat of them invading eastern and Central Europe to usurp their democratic will. Those nations chose to join for their own security and on our terms in good faith….
No, he’s not a plant. Read some history books. Try to spot what was left out of your government sponsored education.
When your eyes open you won’t be able to close them again and you won’t be writing comments like these ones.
Careful waking up though…for me it was literally dizzying.
@@maryfarrell9439 I’m very well read… the points he made in this video that lead to that accusation (made in jest) were about NATO and the post Cold War developments around NATO. What he said is exactly the arguments Putin has been making since the invasion of Georgia, the later annexation of Crimea and now with the current war in Ukraine… nothing he said was novel to me or anyone else who is paying attention. To suggest I’m ignorant to the history and that I’m just parroting the governments account of history is laughable… the agreement that NATO won’t move further east, was never recorded in official or unofficial correspondence. It was an assurance given in passing, related to the reunification of Germany. Russian’s believe it happened and related it to moving east in general, so it doesn’t really matter what was actually said. In my opinion, nothing of value was in this distorted self hating retelling of history. Every point made can be refuted or debated. The only value in this was to prop up the rhetoric against the west by countries that do not have a good track record themselves.(
Another fool who thinks there's a genocide going on in Gaza.
What other parts of reality are you having problems coping with?
Where the shake your head and sigh emoji?
So the people even the USA said are causing a genocide aren't...wow when 99 percent of the world can see this and a few idiot Zionist still pretend that they can't hear what the Israeli government says they are doing. Cognitive dissonance to the extreme.