international relations
![James Laxer](http://rabble.ca/sites/rabble/files/imagecache/thumbnail/category_pictures/picture-62_0.jpg "James Laxer is regularly asked to comment on current national and global issues by the Canadian media and frequently writes columns in major newspapers and periodicals.
In 1969, he was one of the founders of the Waffle Group, Canada’s largest New Left political movement. In 1971, at the age of 29, he ran second for the national leadership of the New Democratic Party. In the mid 1970s, James Laxer was a leading crusader against the power of multi national petroleum companies. His books, speeches and television appearances helped lead to the creation of a nationally owned oil company, Petro Canada, established to counter the power of companies like Exxon in Canada.
In 1981, Laxer was appointed research director of the federal New Democratic Party. At the end of his two year term, he wrote a controversial, book length critique of the party’s economic policies, charging that they were seriously dated. The report was front page news in Canada and was debated for months in the national media.
In 1984, the National Film Board of Canada hired Laxer to be host narrator, for a series of documentaries on the changing global economy and Canada’s place in it. In preparing the series, Laxer travelled extensively in Japan, Europe and the United States. The series, entitled Reckoning, was denied broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation because it was seen as too controversial.
Instead it was broadcast by a hook up of all the English language educational networks in the country. The series was also broadcast in the United States, as well, by a large number of PBS stations. The Reckoning series has won awards in both the United States and Canada. One of its films won the blue ribbon, first prize, at the prestigious American Film and Video Festival, for best political documentary. The same film won the Atlantic
Film Festival and national Gemini Awards in Canada for best writing in an information series, awards which went to Laxer and the film’s director as co-authors.
In 1986-87, Laxer spent a year in Europe writing Decline of the Superpowers. From 1978 to 1981, he hosted a public affairs television program on TV Ontario. He regularly went to Europe to conduct interviews with leading European political and intellectual figures. In 1993 his book False God: How the Globalization Myth Has Impoverished Canada, was published by Lester Publishing. In Search of a New Left: Canadian Politics
After the Neo-Conservative Assault was published by Viking in 1996. The Undeclared War: Class Conflict in the Age of Cyber Capitalism, was published by Viking in 1998, and by Penguin Canada in 1999, in a paperback edition. Dalton Camp wrote that the Undeclared War "is an informed and cogent book on the great and growing dilemma of our time: how to preserve a free society in the face of increasing disparity and the creation of a new class society---‘a dominant class and a dominated class.’ This is stuff we need to know." Laxer’s book, Stalking the Elephant: My Discovery of America was on national best seller lists for seven weeks in the autumn of 2000. In his review of the book for the Globe and Mail, David Shribman, Pulitzer prize winning columnist for the Boston Globe, commented: "This is a book by a Canadian that can change the United States." Stalking the Elephant is to be published by The New Press in New York in September 2001. In 2003, his book, The Border: Canada, the U.S. and Dispatches from the 49th Parallel, was published by Doubleday Canada. In 2004, Douglas and McIntyre published his book Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism. This memoir of James Laxer’s childhood was the winner of the Canadian Jewish Book Award for best biography/memoir in 2005.
James Laxer is a Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto")
Public forum: China, Japan and the US: Together in crisis?
Feb 5 2010 - 7:30pm
Feb 5 2010 - 9:30pm
Location
Koffler Auditorium
569 Spadina Crescent
Toronto, ON Canada
43° 39' 37.116" N, 79° 24' 2.16" W
See map: Google Maps
* Ho-fung Hung, Department of Sociology, University of Indiana and editor of China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism (2009) and author of 'America's Head Servant? The PRC's Dilemma in the Global Crisis,' New Left Review (2009) and 'The Rise of China and the Global Overaccumulation Crisis,' Review of International Political Economy (2008).
* R. Taggart Murphy, Graduate School of Business Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan, and author of Japan's Policy Trap (2002) and The Weight of the Yen (1996), and editor of Japan Focus.
Canadian foreign policy fails its citizens
Oh Canada...what happened? We used to be known as the country of peacekeeping, a shining beacon for others around the world to emulate. Now we're being called racist by the South African government, we hold the distinction of being one of four nations in the world that has refused to sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and we've decided that George Galloway is not allowed to speak to us, but George W. Bush is more than welcome.
Frankly, it's embarrassing. In an age where Americans -- rightly or wrongly -- are declaring themselves to be post-racial, Canada's foreign policy has become increasingly insular, inhumane and racialized.
Oh Canada
The Black Book of Foreign Policy
(RED/Fernwood publishing,
2009;
$26.00)
Of all the pithy observations of what makes Canadians Canadian, my favourite is the quip that we are a people with a heightened sense of injustice -- particularly when facing south. The accusation is of course that Canadians are quick to judge American imperialism, but we have a moral blind spot when it comes to our own actions.
Reimagining the UN
Dr. Claudia Kissling has been a member of KDUN's (Committee for a Democratic UN) board since its foundation. Until 2008 she shared responsibility for the organization's management. She studied international relations at the Institute Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva and did her PhD at the Law Faculty of the University of Potsdam. She previously worked at the German Bundestag, the Inter-Parliamentary Union and at the University of Bremen's Collaborative Research Center "Transformations of the State." She is now employed at the Freie Universität Berlin. Am Johal interviewed her in Berlin.
Am Johal: How long has the movement for a World Assembly been going?
What is Canada for?
Intent for a Nation: A Relentlessly Optimistic Manifesto for Canada's Role in the World
( Douglas & McIntyre,
2007;
$32.95)
Dr. Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law, describes his recent book as a challenge to George Grant's Lament for a Nation which paints Canada as a country already lost to the forces of Americanization. Am Johal interviews Byers in Vancouver about his thoughts on what Canada's role on the global stage.
Am Johal: I just read your book over the weekend. How did you come up with the idea to write a contemporary response to George Grant's iconic Lament for a Nation?
Michael Byers: The motivation was intensely personal. Like many Canadians, I had internalized George Grant's message: Canada as an independent country had ceased to exist.