During a midnight deal signed in Kabul last week, President Obama extended the stay of U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2024. Regardless of the justifications used to keep troops in the foreign country, the basic point, coming from working and underclass people at home in the U.S., is still not being addressed.

While the anti-war crowd has always been opposed to the war and destruction in Afghanistan, people throughout the social and political spectrum are finally beginning to realize the simple equation that every dollar spent in Afghanistan means one less dollar spent here. And this realization is becoming more and more apparent as more people need more of those dollars here.

Mr. Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, made his first official organized stop on his grand 10-day Canadian tour on Sunday in Montreal.

At a panel discussion, held at the Universite de Montreal, there were representatives from People's Unions, Greenpeace, Food Independence groups, and professional food-gatherers' alliances. The main issues identified by the groups included poverty and access to healthy food, Aboriginal peoples, governance, the industrial food model and international issues.

Canadian politics have been shaped by the Quebec-Western Canada dynamic since the 1980s because Quebec separation from Canada was the number one issue confronting the country as we knew it.

I don't think Quebec separation, while still an important and contentious issue has the same priority as it once did, even in Quebec, and this may change the power dynamic between the two solitudes as we have come to know it.

There is a long-standing core of the NDP's longest-serving members who have an objective for the Party - yes, they want an NDP government, that is a priority - moreover, the core and established serving members of the NDP also want to enjoy the alienation of the arrogance they faced as third-party members toiling in the shadows for so long - in particular the alienation of the Liberal Party.

Putting an end to this political class arrogance is what the experience of the longest-serving NDP members has shown to be the major and vital challenge for any party representative of the Canadian centre-left.

One thing that struck me, as I walked through the throngs of red-square wearing radicals and bon vivants on Earth Day, was that there were more than just students in this crowd.

Families come in all sizes and shapes in our nuclear age, and these were the families that were marching together, for their collective future on a day to appreciate our planet after a week of radicalization, violence and arrests.

The Quebec students had been protesting for over a week against the latest affront by the Quebec Liberal government of Premier Jean Charest. College and university students were demonstrating against the government's unilateral increase of tuition fees by 75 per cent over five years.

There is a dividing line emerging throughout Latin America that is based specifically on economic principle.

Coming out of the Summit of the Americas there were a number of issues that showed clear differences in perspective between the participating nations. The inclusion of Cuba at all future Summits, the questioning of the effectiveness, and even the validity, of the "War on Drugs" -- these issues demonstrated basic ideological differences on how the Americas will hope to proceed as a co-operative unit.

If American dollars are going to continue to fund global inequality, arms and weaponry, and support corruption throughout the world, counter to the desires and directions of the global progressive majority - then the solution is to devaluate the US dollar.

Global thinkers have seen this as the solution to growing international problems since the Vietnam War, if not before.

Implementation comes through two strategies: by (1) refusing to recognize or accept the US dollar on international money markets (oil, trading, etc., SEE OPEC) (2) require the US to pay back their foreign debts to the countries they owe (the list would give most Americans nightmares) in those countries' currencies, NOT by accepting more US dollars printed in the basement of the Federal Treasury.

Beginning on April 1st, 2012 Thailand's government honoured one of the promises it made during elections and raised minimum wages across the country. This is only the beginning for new politics sweeping countries across Asia and it is a mirror of the same direction being taken in Latin America.

The Malaysian government, for example, will soon institute the first ever minimum wage in the history of the country and this is the direction that countries across Asia are heading in. Asian countries have decided that the way to combat a widening global inequity gap is by strengthening domestic social security nets -- the most basic of which is the minimum wage.

The caucus had given him their unconditional support at a meeting the previous morning, members of NDP internal staff had already been shuffling to make way for changes, and a private congratulatory phone call with Quebec Premiere Jean Charest, old buddy from Mr. Mulcair's provincial Liberal days, had set the stage.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was away on business in the Orient, so we still have the first head-to-head showdown between the two leaders to look forward to -- but the day still gave us a taste of what is to come.