#left hashtag - Bluesky

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25 minutes ago

Trump declares ‘Cuba is finished’ while letting Russian oil tanker break illegal US blockade

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30 minutes ago

This Canadian journalist is in Iran to show the sides of war corporate media won’t

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Natalie Davis

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2 hours ago

A Plan to Stop ICE From Stealing the Midterms A campaign to ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement from polling places would provide a concrete, winnable demand that unions, student organizations, and immigrant and democracy defense groups could organize around today, months before the election.

A Plan to Stop ICE From Stealing the Midterms

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Natalie Davis

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2 hours ago

Muskism Is the Specter Stalking Our Present Elon Musk sells us sovereignty through technology in an age of crisis. Muskism resembles past futurisms, but with an important difference: this time, the question of who owns the machines is paramount.

Muskism Is the Specter Stalking Our Present

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Natalie Davis

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The No Kings Protests Are Cause for Hope The No Kings rallies have evolved beyond basic anti-Trump liberalism. Their messaging is sharply antiwar, anti-oligarchy, and far more substantive than the “resistance” politics of Donald Trump’s first term. The Left should be proud to participate.

The No Kings Protests Are Cause for Hope

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Dhudg

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What is your opinion about RIGHT and LEFT ❓#right #left

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Natalie Davis

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4 hours ago

**Get fearless, uncompromising truth in your inbox. Subscribe to The Real News.** Sign up _This story originally appeared inNACLA on Mar. 27, 2026. It is reprinted here with permission._ When Ecuador’s government announced on March 11 that the FBI would open a permanent office in the country, officials presented the move as a necessary response to escalating transnational crime. Interior Minister John Reimberg and U.S. chargé d’affaires Lawrence Petroni framed the initiative as a milestone in bilateral cooperation, aimed at combating drug trafficking, arms flows, money laundering, and terrorism financing. Yet there is little that is new about this announcement. Rather than marking a break with the past, the FBI’s expanded presence in Ecuador represents the continuation—and normalization—of a much longer history of U.S. intervention in the country’s internal affairs. That history, largely forgotten in official narratives, reveals patterns of surveillance, political policing, and collaboration with local security forces that complicate contemporary claims about security cooperation. > Rather than marking a break with the past, the FBI’s expanded presence in Ecuador represents the continuation—and normalization—of a much longer history of U.S. intervention in the country’s internal affairs. The timing of this announcement is significant within Ecuador’s domestic political landscape. Since taking office in 2023, Daniel Noboa has embraced a hardline security agenda in response to escalating violence linked to organized crime. Declaring an “internal armed conflict,” his government has militarized public security, expanded executive powers, and strengthened ties with foreign security agencies. Noboa has justified these measures as necessary to restore order in the face of rising homicide rates and prison violence. Critics have raised concerns about the erosion of civil liberties, the militarization of public security, and the potential for abuses against marginalized communities. As seen with Nayib Bukele’s mass incarceration policies in El Salvador, these policies represent a broader regional turn toward punitive, militarized responses that produce limited long-term results while increasing the risk of human rights abuses. In this light, the establishment of a permanent FBI office appears less as an isolated policy decision than as part of a converging logic between U.S. security priorities and Ecuador’s internal political strategy—one that recalls earlier Cold War–era collaborations in which anti-crime and counter-subversion efforts served as overlapping justifications for expanding state surveillance and repression. To understand what is at stake in the FBI’s return, it is necessary to look beyond the present moment and recover this longer history. ## Emboldening Repressive Forces U.S.-backed security initiatives directly shaped domestic political struggles in Ecuador. One of the clearest examples of this dynamic was the FBI’s relationship with Héctor Salgado, the head of Ecuador’s militarized police known as the carabineros. After receiving training in the United States, Salgado returned to Ecuador and implemented policing practices that targeted labor organizers and political activists. These efforts contributed to attempts to block the formation of the Confederation of Ecuadorian Workers (CTE) in 1943. The FBI’s close collaboration with the carabineros reveals the extent to which U.S. intelligence agencies embedded themselves within Ecuador’s coercive apparatus. Agents maintained intimate relationships with police leadership and relied on these connections to conduct surveillance and gather information. Even after a May 1944 revolution, known as the Gloriosa, overthrew the existing regime and dismantled the carabineros, FBI agents quickly established ties with the new security forces and continued their activities without interruption. This continuity underscores a key point: U.S. intervention was not tied to specific governments or political configurations but rather to a broader project of maintaining influence over internal political developments. Whether under the guise of anti-fascism or anti-communism, the underlying objective remained the same: to monitor and shape the trajectory of political change in Ecuador. > Whether under the guise of anti-fascism or anti-communism, the underlying objective remained the same: to monitor and shape the trajectory of political change in Ecuador. The end of World War II and the creation of the CIA in 1947 did not represent a significant turning point in U.S. intelligence operations. Formally, responsibility for foreign intelligence shifted from the FBI to the newly established CIA, while the FBI was theoretically confined to domestic security in the United States. In practice, this division was never absolute. The FBI maintained an international presence through its legal attaché offices—so-called _legats_ —that continued to operate in U.S. embassies around the world. Today, Ecuador falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI’s Bogotá office, in Colombia, one of several regional hubs in Latin America. This structure reflects a longstanding pattern in which U.S. intelligence agencies maintain overlapping and sometimes competing roles that blur the distinction between domestic and foreign operations. The recent announcement of a permanent FBI office in Ecuador represents less a departure than an institutionalization of an already existing presence. It formalizes relationships and practices that have deep historical roots, even as it reframes them in the language of contemporary security threats. ## Dubious Justifications As in the 1940s, the justification for this expanded presence deserves careful scrutiny. Then, the FBI invoked the specter of Nazi infiltration to legitimize its activities. Now, it points to drug trafficking, organized crime, and terrorism. While these threats are real, the framing of U.S. intervention as a necessary response obscures the extent to which such policies have historically served broader geopolitical objectives. Moreover, there is a striking continuity in the mismatch between stated goals and actual practices. During World War II, FBI agents devoted significant resources to monitoring leftist movements despite the absence of a meaningful fascist threat. Today, similar questions arise about whether expanded law enforcement cooperation will primarily target transnational criminal networks or once again be directed toward political actors and social movements. A broader political context reinforces this skepticism. The return of the FBI to Ecuador comes at a time when U.S. policy in Latin America continues to prioritize security cooperation at the expense of addressing underlying social and economic conditions. It reflects a long-standing tendency to externalize the causes of transnational problems, treating them as issues to be managed abroad rather than confronting their roots within the United States itself. > The return of the FBI to Ecuador comes at a time when U.S. policy in Latin America continues to prioritize security cooperation at the expense of addressing underlying social and economic conditions. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of drug trafficking. Decades of research have demonstrated that the global drug trade is driven primarily by consumer demand rather than supply. Efforts to disrupt production and distribution networks in Latin America have repeatedly failed to reduce overall consumption, while generating significant social and political costs in the region. If the goal were truly to combat drug trafficking, more effective strategies would focus on reducing demand through treatment and public health interventions in the United States and Europe. A similar dynamic applies to the flow of firearms. A significant proportion of the weapons used by criminal organizations in Latin America originate in the United States, where they are legally purchased before being trafficked south. Efforts to curb violence in countries like Ecuador cannot succeed without addressing this upstream source of supply. Yet U.S. policy has largely avoided meaningful restrictions on domestic gun sales, instead emphasizing enforcement measures abroad. These contradictions highlight the limitations of a security-centered approach to transnational crime. By focusing on policing and surveillance, such strategies risk reproducing the very dynamics they seek to address, while reinforcing asymmetrical power relations between the United States and Latin American countries. ### _Related_ Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Close window ## Republish this article This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. We encourage republication of our original content. Please copy the HTML code in the textbox below, preserving the attribution and link to the article's original location, and only make minor cosmetic edits to the content on your site. # The FBI’s return to Ecuador is nothing new by Marc Becker, The Real News Network March 30, 2026 <h1>The FBI’s return to Ecuador is nothing new</h1> <p class="byline">by Marc Becker, The Real News Network <br />March 30, 2026</p> <div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:33% auto"> <figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img src="https://therealnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Screen-Shot-2023-04-05-at-2.03.23-PM.png" alt="" class="wp-image-296784 size-full" /></figure> <div class="wp-block-media-text__content"> <p><em>This story originally appeared in <a href="https://nacla.org/fbi-return-to-ecuador-is-nothing-new/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NACLA</a> on Mar. 27, 2026. It is reprinted here with permission.</em></p> </p></div> </div> <p class="has-drop-cap">When Ecuador’s government announced on March 11 that the FBI would open a permanent office in the country, officials presented the move as a necessary response to escalating transnational crime. Interior Minister John Reimberg and U.S. chargé d’affaires Lawrence Petroni framed the initiative as a milestone in bilateral cooperation, aimed at combating drug trafficking, arms flows, money laundering, and terrorism financing.</p> <p>Yet there is little that is new about this announcement.</p> <p>Rather than marking a break with the past, the FBI’s expanded presence in Ecuador represents the continuation—and normalization—of a much longer history of U.S. intervention in the country’s internal affairs. That history, largely forgotten in official narratives, reveals patterns of surveillance, political policing, and collaboration with local security forces that complicate contemporary claims about security cooperation.</p> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignright"> <blockquote> <p>Rather than marking a break with the past, the FBI’s expanded presence in Ecuador represents the continuation—and normalization—of a much longer history of U.S. intervention in the country’s internal affairs.</p> </blockquote> </figure> <p>The timing of this announcement is significant within Ecuador’s domestic political landscape. Since taking office in 2023, Daniel Noboa has embraced a hardline security agenda in response to escalating violence linked to organized crime. Declaring an “internal armed conflict,” his government has militarized public security, expanded executive powers, and strengthened ties with foreign security agencies. Noboa has justified these measures as necessary to restore order in the face of rising homicide rates and prison violence. </p> <p>Critics have raised concerns about the erosion of civil liberties, the militarization of public security, and the potential for abuses against marginalized communities. As seen with Nayib Bukele’s mass incarceration policies in El Salvador, these policies represent a broader regional turn toward punitive, militarized responses that produce limited long-term results while increasing the risk of human rights abuses.</p> <p>In this light, the establishment of a permanent FBI office appears less as an isolated policy decision than as part of a converging logic between U.S. security priorities and Ecuador’s internal political strategy—one that recalls earlier Cold War–era collaborations in which anti-crime and counter-subversion efforts served as overlapping justifications for expanding state surveillance and repression.</p> <p>To understand what is at stake in the FBI’s return, it is necessary to look beyond the present moment and recover this longer history.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-emboldening-repressive-forces">Emboldening Repressive Forces</h2> <p>U.S.-backed security initiatives directly shaped domestic political struggles in Ecuador. One of the clearest examples of this dynamic was the FBI’s relationship with Héctor Salgado, the head of Ecuador’s militarized police known as the carabineros. After receiving training in the United States, Salgado returned to Ecuador and implemented policing practices that targeted labor organizers and political activists. These efforts contributed to attempts to block the formation of the Confederation of Ecuadorian Workers (CTE) in 1943.</p> <p>The FBI’s close collaboration with the carabineros reveals the extent to which U.S. intelligence agencies embedded themselves within Ecuador’s coercive apparatus. Agents maintained intimate relationships with police leadership and relied on these connections to conduct surveillance and gather information. Even after a May 1944 revolution, known as the Gloriosa, overthrew the existing regime and dismantled the carabineros, FBI agents quickly established ties with the new security forces and continued their activities without interruption.</p> <p>This continuity underscores a key point: U.S. intervention was not tied to specific governments or political configurations but rather to a broader project of maintaining influence over internal political developments. Whether under the guise of anti-fascism or anti-communism, the underlying objective remained the same: to monitor and shape the trajectory of political change in Ecuador.</p> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-text-align-right"> <blockquote> <p>Whether under the guise of anti-fascism or anti-communism, the underlying objective remained the same: to monitor and shape the trajectory of political change in Ecuador.</p> </blockquote> </figure> <p>The end of World War II and the creation of the CIA in 1947 did not represent a significant turning point in U.S. intelligence operations. Formally, responsibility for foreign intelligence shifted from the FBI to the newly established CIA, while the FBI was theoretically confined to domestic security in the United States. In practice, this division was never absolute. The FBI maintained an international presence through its legal attaché offices—so-called <em>legats</em>—that continued to operate in U.S. embassies around the world.</p> <p>Today, Ecuador falls under the jurisdiction of the FBI’s Bogotá office, in Colombia, one of several regional hubs in Latin America. This structure reflects a longstanding pattern in which U.S. intelligence agencies maintain overlapping and sometimes competing roles that blur the distinction between domestic and foreign operations.</p> <p>The recent announcement of a permanent FBI office in Ecuador represents less a departure than an institutionalization of an already existing presence. It formalizes relationships and practices that have deep historical roots, even as it reframes them in the language of contemporary security threats.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dubious-justifications">Dubious Justifications</h2> <p>As in the 1940s, the justification for this expanded presence deserves careful scrutiny. Then, the FBI invoked the specter of Nazi infiltration to legitimize its activities. Now, it points to drug trafficking, organized crime, and terrorism. While these threats are real, the framing of U.S. intervention as a necessary response obscures the extent to which such policies have historically served broader geopolitical objectives.</p> <p>Moreover, there is a striking continuity in the mismatch between stated goals and actual practices. During World War II, FBI agents devoted significant resources to monitoring leftist movements despite the absence of a meaningful fascist threat. Today, similar questions arise about whether expanded law enforcement cooperation will primarily target transnational criminal networks or once again be directed toward political actors and social movements.</p> <p>A broader political context reinforces this skepticism. The return of the FBI to Ecuador comes at a time when U.S. policy in Latin America continues to prioritize security cooperation at the expense of addressing underlying social and economic conditions. It reflects a long-standing tendency to externalize the causes of transnational problems, treating them as issues to be managed abroad rather than confronting their roots within the United States itself.</p> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote alignright"> <blockquote> <p>The return of the FBI to Ecuador comes at a time when U.S. policy in Latin America continues to prioritize security cooperation at the expense of addressing underlying social and economic conditions.</p> </blockquote> </figure> <p>Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of drug trafficking. Decades of research have demonstrated that the global drug trade is driven primarily by consumer demand rather than supply. Efforts to disrupt production and distribution networks in Latin America have repeatedly failed to reduce overall consumption, while generating significant social and political costs in the region. If the goal were truly to combat drug trafficking, more effective strategies would focus on reducing demand through treatment and public health interventions in the United States and Europe.</p> <p>A similar dynamic applies to the flow of firearms. A significant proportion of the weapons used by criminal organizations in Latin America originate in the United States, where they are legally purchased before being trafficked south. Efforts to curb violence in countries like Ecuador cannot succeed without addressing this upstream source of supply. Yet U.S. policy has largely avoided meaningful restrictions on domestic gun sales, instead emphasizing enforcement measures abroad.</p> <p>These contradictions highlight the limitations of a security-centered approach to transnational crime. By focusing on policing and surveillance, such strategies risk reproducing the very dynamics they seek to address, while reinforcing asymmetrical power relations between the United States and Latin American countries.</p> <p>This <a target="_blank" href="https://therealnews.com/fbi-return-to-ecuador">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://therealnews.com">The Real News Network</a> and is republished here under a <a target="_blank" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src="https://i0.wp.com/therealnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/cropped-TRNN-2021-logomark-square.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;"></p> <img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://therealnews.com/?republication-pixel=true&post=342319&ga4=G-7LYS8R7V51" style="width:1px;height:1px;"><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: "https://therealnews.com/fbi-return-to-ecuador", urlref: window.location.href }); } } </script> <script id="parsely-cfg" src="//cdn.parsely.com/keys/therealnews.com/p.js"></script> Copy to Clipboard 1

The FBI’s return to Ecuador is nothing new

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Natalie Davis

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5 hours ago

Avi Lewis Is the New Leader of Canada’s NDP ### Avi Lewis will lead an NDP in dire straits — but also one with a strategic opening to the left of the Liberals, whose posture against Donald Trump has reshaped the political terrain. * * * The scale of the challenge that new NDP leader Avi Lewis faces in rebuilding the party is considerable. (Dominik Magdziak Photography / WireImage) Over the weekend, Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) held its leadership election, with members voting via ranked ballots. Avi Lewis won a conclusive victory, capturing 56 percent support. A new direction will be set for Canada’s social democratic party, which has been in decline since 2015 and recently hit rock bottom in the 2025 federal election. There is no doubt that Lewis’s campaign tapped into the desire for change among party membership party and his first ballot victory is a clear sign of where the party’s base wants it to go. His rallies were often jam-packed, with lines outside the venue, and he kept up a robust media schedule and strong social media game. The CAD$1.2 million his campaign raised is the most ever in a NDP leadership contest. The grandson of a federal NDP leader and the son of an Ontario NDP leader, Lewis comes from a family that has profoundly shaped the Canadian left — both for good and ill — for nearly a century. At times, figures within his family were central to pushing back against radical currents, helping to marginalize the left flank of the party from within. Aware of this legacy, Lewis seeks to rebuild the NDP into an unabashedly democratic socialist force in Canadian politics. But now the hard part begins. A commanding victory gives Lewis plenty of room to maneuver within the party he leads, but it does not transcend the structure and constraints of Canadian politics, which have brought the NDP to its current nadir — worse than previous electoral wipeouts in 1958 and 1993. In the electoral debacle of 2025, the NDP was seen as propping up an increasingly unpopular Justin Trudeau in order to secure gains on dental care for lower-income Canadians, sick days for federally regulated workers, $10 per day childcare, and labor reforms such as anti-scab legislation. As Trudeau was tanking the Liberals in the polls and the Conservatives were surging, the NDP was only making modest gains. Now, with Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals polling far ahead — and amid mounting global uncertainty and crises — the scale of the challenge that Lewis faces in rebuilding the NDP will quickly become apparent. # A New Left Populism? The Lewis campaign has consciously adopted elements of twenty-first-century left electoral politics from around the world. It’s an approach that, with the exception of Québec solidaire, has mostly bypassed Canada. Lewis has told _Jacobin_ , “We have the ability to build a left-populist majority.” His plan for party renewal, titled “A Political Instrument of the People,” is a nod to the MAS in Bolivia and the wider Latin American left, which uses the same term. In many ways what Lewis is trying to do has few analogues in the left-populist era. The NDP is a major party in Canada. It has governed seven of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada at least once. It currently governs two provinces, including Manitoba, where Wab Kinew is the most popular premier in Canada. At the federal level, however, it has always been a third or even fourth party, with the exception of its stint as the official opposition from 2011 to 2015. While it is seen as Canada’s party of labor and was formed with the support of the Canadian Labour Congress, the NDP has never been as hegemonic among the working class as the Labour Party in Britain or the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Germany were in their heydays. It has never won a majority of the union vote, despite the leadership of most major private sector unions endorsing it. The NDP thus occupies a unique middle ground among social democratic and labor parties worldwide. Post-2008 left populism has generally taken two forms: the creation of new parties — like France Insoumise and Podemos — or insurgent attempts to transform an established center-left parties, as with Bernie Sanders in the United States or Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. Syriza, for its part, was a marginal force in Greece until PASOK melted down, but even in its leaner years, the NDP has exercised more influence on the Canadian political scene than Syriza did before the eurozone crisis. The NDP played a major role in the creation of universal health care and the Canada Pension Plan by holding the balance of power during Liberal minority governments in the 1960s. This is a very different institutional history from that of the left-populist parties and leaders of the 2010s. "Lewis comes from a family that has profoundly shaped the Canadian left for nearly a century." Other elements of Lewis’s campaign are more familiar. Lewis wants the NDP to be more connected to social movements, echoing strategies pursued by MAS, Podemos, and Syriza. He has amassed a sizable number of endorsements from activists who would not normally publicly endorse the NDP. This attempt to link the NDP to social movements is not new. The NDP’s predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), saw itself as a broad movement that combined farmers, labor, socialists, and progressive Christians. At the 2001 NDP convention, the New Politics Initiative similarly sought to refound the NDP as a more movement-oriented organization, but the proposal failed, losing 37 to 63 percent. The ambition to unite electoral politics with movements beyond labor is a long-standing aim of the Left, especially since the heyday of Eurocommunism. And it comes with its own challenges. Opening a highly electoralist party to social movements is likely to generate internal dissension. It is equally likely that Lewis will, at some point, have to make political compromises that will anger some social movements. Both the NDP’s own history and a broader pattern among social democratic parties suggest that when such parties are seen to betrays their base, the backlash can be intense — and damaging over the long term. # On Policy This leadership contest has revealed one major thing. The NDP has moved, probably irreversibly, toward the Palestinian side of the war in Gaza and the broader Israel-Palestine conflict. This has been a point of contention for many party activists, and even some electeds, for years. The party traditionally supported the standard two-state framework on Israel-Palestine. There have always been dissenting voices in the party — such as former MPs Libby Davies and Svend Robinson — both of whom endorsed Lewis — but at times they were sidelined for speaking out on Palestine. As public sympathy for the Palestinians slowly increased throughout the 2010s, the NDP was slow to adjust — even excluding prospective candidates who had made pro-Palestine statements in the past. In this leadership race, Lewis’s main competition, Heather McPherson, served as the NDP foreign affairs critic during the October 7 attacks and the Gaza genocide. She demanded that the Liberal Party stop supporting Israel and criticized the government’s inadequate response to the war’s devastation. It will be hard for the party to retreat from this position, even if a more party establishment–friendly MP takes over the foreign affairs critic portfolio. Lewis himself has long been an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights. He has visited Gaza during the blockade and was a member of the Jewish Faculty Network, which published a report on genocide denial and anti-Palestinian racism at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. But while Lewis’s views on Palestine has drawn considerable support, his broader platform invites both praise and scrutiny. Brining the state back into the economy is a major part of the Lewis campaign. He has proposed a public option for groceries, clearly echoing Zohran Mamdani in New York City, along with similar public option proposals for banking, telecoms, housing construction, and pharmaceutical production. Another major plank is a Canadian Green New Deal, framed as both a way to create jobs for workers currently employed in fossil fuel industries and as a pathway to achieve decarbonization. His proposal to promote worker ownership and democratize the workplace is remarkable, marking a social democratic ambition that has not been seen in a Canadian political leadership campaign in a long time. More controversial is his vow to stop any new fossil fuel infrastructure — this is where many questions about Lewis’s policies begin. # What’s Missing There are gaps in Lewis’s policy platform that both his supporters and detractors will seize on. First is the question of nuclear power and the green transition. Nowhere in Lewis’s policies is nuclear mentioned. It was not mentioned in the Leap Manifesto either. With Ontario refurbishing its nuclear plants and contemplating building new ones, it is a live issue in Canadian politics. After years of opposition, the Ontario NDP endorsed nuclear power at its convention this past September, bringing it in line with the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress. Lewis will have to take a position — and rejecting nuclear outright could harm his electoral prospects among unionized blue-collar workers. "The ambition to unite electoral politics with movements beyond labor is a long-standing aim of the Left, especially since the heyday of Eurocommunism." While Lewis has been a strident voice for Palestine and quickly condemned Carney’s contradictory statements on the American-Israeli attack on Iran, there are still foreign policy positions that remain undefined. Carney has been aggressive in selling Canada to the world by resetting relations with China and India and signing several trade deals. Lewis, who cut his political teeth in the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s, is going to be skeptical of deals that privilege investors over democracy. Some recent agreements — like the deal with the United Arab Emirates — raise question about rewarding destabilizing behavior abroad. Canada is attracting increased foreign investment: 2025 saw the highest inward foreign direct investment (FDI) into Canada since 2007. Ongoing instability generated by Donald Trump will likely make Canada an even more attractive destination for investment. Lewis has yet to articulate his vision for how Canada fits into the global economy. There is, however, an opening for him: a growing number of countries are moving to limit or replace the controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism in trade deals. Lewis would do well to stake out a democratic alternative. Lewis will also have to tackle the AI question. His current platform calls for restricting its use in public service: no generative AI in government publications and a guarantee of humans serving those looking to access government services. There is also a call for a moratorium on new data centers. These policies would probably find supporters across the political spectrum and are perfectly reasonable within the context of public services. Canadians themselves are growing increasingly skeptical about AI’s benefits and about the impacts of data centers in their communities. However, Lewis’s AI policy is too reactive. While some proposed data centers in Alberta are located in water-stressed areas, most of Canada has abundant water resources, and colder temperatures can reduce cooling demands. Canada is too small a country to meaningfully slow the global expansion of AI — particularly given its proximity to its southern neighbor. A forward-looking approach would not leave Canada reliant on major American AI companies who are beholden to the Trump administration. Lewis will have to respond to the sector’s changes quickly and his current positions may prove insufficient. Given that labor and the Left have historically had difficulty in successfully challenging new technologies that disrupt workplaces and labor markets, a more proactive approach is needed. Canada would be better served pursuing the approach outlined by economists Daron Acemoğlu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson: developing and promoting AI that is labor-enhancing instead of labor-displacing. Finally, there is the question of funding. Taxing the ultrawealthy is a worthwhile goal — to both reduce inequality and curb concentrated power — but sustaining an extensive welfare state requires taxing the middle class too. Given that taxophobia is alive in well in Canada — Carney cut middle-class and capital gains taxes upon taking office — Lewis has so far missed out on shifting the conversation on taxation beyond targeting the rich. # The Challenges Ahead Out of the gate, Lewis will no doubt be portrayed by his opponents as antagonistic to blue-collar workers. Some of this will be unfair and some will carry a germ of truth. Lewis has emphasized that no worker should be left behind in the green transition. And with increasing automation in the oil and sector destroying jobs, he has an opening to argue that it is not environmentalists threatening livelihoods but fossil fuels companies themselves. Lewis does not reject critical mineral development but envisions a greater role for public ownership in the sector and wants to support affected First Nations communities in developing sovereign wealth funds from resource revenues. The key here will be for Lewis to define himself as friendly to all workers before opponents do the opposite. To do that, Lewis will need to quickly build bridges with private sector unions. While Lewis was not devoid of union endorsements, only a few public sector unions or locals endorsed him — the bulk of the union endorsements went to rival leadership candidate Rob Ashton. Ashton finished fourth in the race, showing that labor’s power in the NDP isn’t what it once was. However, Lewis was quick to reach out to labor leaders in his victory speech, signaling a desire to keep Ashton’s constituency on board. Then there is the relationship with the provincial NDP sections. This became a point of attack during the campaign, though he has since taken the time to meet with provincial leaders. Again, this is something Lewis will probably have to navigate in his first months as leader. "A cautious approach has yet to yield meaningful gains, and, in our volatile geopolitical moment, it is even less likely to do so." In British Columbia (BC), Premier David Eby is preparing to make changes to provincial legislation that enshrined the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in to BC law. Previously, the BC NDP government won global plaudits for its approach to reconciliation, but recent court rulings have stoked fears of conflicts with private property rights. Lewis and his supporters will oppose these changes, and as a resident of BC, he cannot avoid the issue. In Quebec, the entire party came under scrutiny during the leadership race for a French-language debate that featured very little French. Lewis, to his credit, has been steadily improving his French and understands that the party needs to rebuild the foothold it briefly held in Quebec fifteen years ago. At the same time, the ongoing legal battle over the controversial Bill 21 — which seeks to ban civil servants, including teachers, from wearing religious symbols at work — will pose a political test. Then there is the broader question of strategy. Carney’s Liberal government is at historic levels of popularity, polling at nearly 50 percent, with the prime minister’s approval rating around 68 percent nearly a year after being elected. While Lewis has criticized Carney’s promise to boost military spending to 5 percent of GDP, the policy is generally popular among Canadians. The government has also been clever in framing many of these investments as “dual-use,” including the long-awaited Mackenzie Valley Highway in the Northwest Territories. How Lewis can craft a popular narrative that rejects military spending despite the threats coming from the White House will be one of his biggest challenges. # Into the Fray The Liberal’s continued hold on power, despite Trudeau’s dismal polling at the end of his time as prime minister, has everything to do with Trump. When Trump threatens to annex Canada, the public coalesces around the Liberals: the Conservatives are seen as too MAGA-friendly and the NDP are viewed as having no chance to win. That Lewis must take on both Carney and Trump recalls a previous moment in NDP history. In 1988, the NDP looked like it had a chance to send the Liberals to third place — and the party even topped the polls at one point in 1987. The 1988 federal election is known as the “free-trade election,” with the governing Tories advancing free trade with the United States and the Liberals and NDP opposed. Then-leader Ed Broadbent made a major campaign error: he played down the free-trade issue. The NDP ultimately won a then-record of 43 seats, but it was nevertheless in third place, prompting a backlash from labor and Broadbent’s resignation. "Lewis must learn from the successes and failures of past insurgent left candidates." Canadians largely despise Trump, and while Lewis has not spared the American president from criticism, Carney has been his main target. In ordinary parliamentary politics, opposition parties aim their fire on the government. But under these unusual circumstances, it is entirely possible for Lewis to get bogged down opposing Carney and not going hard enough on Trump. The only way for the NDP to make headway is to convince Canadians it will fight Trump more forcefully than the Liberals. Lewis must learn from the successes and failures of past insurgent left candidates: message discipline in the mold of Bernie Sanders, refuse to back down like France’s left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and, unlike Jeremy Corbyn, be willing to take action against those in the party that would maliciously undermine his leadership. The dire straits the NDP finds itself in cannot be overstated. At the same time, even commentators in the legacy media — often dismissive of the party — recognize that Carney’s budget cuts, increased military spending, and tighter immigration policy has opened up space to the left of the Liberals. Under Trudeau, that space was often occupied by a left-liberal politics that was sometimes used to outflank the NDP rhetorically while falling far short of a social democratic agenda. That space is clearly up for grabs if Lewis and the NDP can overcome strategic hesitations and claim it. With groups like NDP Renewal and Reclaim Canada’s NDP actively organizing to revitalize the party and give the membership more power, Lewis’s victory now looks like it was always inevitable. Still, the obstacles to overcome are considerable. Another global crisis could easily send frightened Canadians flocking back to the Liberals. Lewis may struggle to connect with the kind of voters the NDP needs to win. Even so, there is a strong case for taking on risk. A cautious approach has yet to yield meaningful gains, and, in our volatile geopolitical moment, it is even less likely to do so. There is no good reason not to take a chance and move the NDP to the left. If the party fails, at least it will go out swinging. * * *

Avi Lewis Is the New Leader of Canada’s NDP

jacobin.com/2026/03/avi-lewis-canada...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

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NeoRenfield

@neorenfield.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy

5 hours ago

Wordle - A Wordle Alternative Guess the hidden word in 6 tries. A new puzzle is available each day.

#LeftWordle 1,745 3/6 ( #Left #Wordle )

⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://left-wordle.com/

(Never solved yesterday’s …got stuck on my third guess. 🤦)

0 1 0 0

Natalie Davis

@nataliedavis.journa.host.ap.brid.gy

6 hours ago

The <cite>Peaky Blinders</cite> Film Ratchets Up the Gloom and Black Humor ### Cillian Murphy turns Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man into a fog‑soaked reckoning with violence, class, and the ghosts that built Tommy Shelby. * * * Cillian Murphy turns Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man into a fog‑soaked reckoning with violence, class, and the ghosts that built Tommy Shelby. (Netflix / BBC Film) The power of the Netflix movie _Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man_ , hangs off the haunted cheekbones of Cillian Murphy, so of course it’s doing very well. The hit film functions as a final send-off to Murphy’s antihero Tommy Shelby of the long-running BBC-to-Netflix series _Peaky Blinders_ , which became a global phenomenon. Tommy began the series as a World War I veteran returning home to the mean streets of Birmingham, England, imbued with violence and trauma and ready to channel it into heading up the Peaky Blinders, an Irish-Roma gang that eventually rules the streets as a formidable criminal enterprise that crosses over into powerful political status as well. By the time of _The Immortal Man_ , it’s 1940, and middle-aged, world-weary Tommy Shelby has done so many heinous things; he’s abandoned the Peaky Blinders and retreated to his decaying manor house with only his loyal aide-de-camp Johnny Dogs (Packy Lee) for company. There Tommy writes his morbid memoirs and sees the ghosts of his familial dead all over the house and grounds. The older Tommy gets, the more beautifully haggard he looks. It’s hard to think of more romantic shots than Cillian Murphy as Tommy encountering reproachful spirits in the foggy countryside. Those desponding lake-blue eyes and all. Meanwhile, Nazis are trying to conquer England, through bombing raids and other more insidious schemes via their turncoat representative in the UK, cynical Brit agent John Beckett (Tim Roth). He’s got a plan to flood the British monetary system with counterfeit currency, and he finds a willing accomplice in Tommy’s estranged son Duke Shelby (Barry Keoghan), who’s running the Peaky Blinders with nihilistic abandon. Everyone agrees that no one can bring loose cannon Duke into line but his father, the ultimate gangland tough, Tommy Shelby. Barry Keoghan costars as Duke Shelby in 2026’s Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. (Netflix / BBC Film) But who can bring Tommy back from his ghost-ridden limbo? Tommy’s sister Ada Thorne (Sophie Rundle), now serving in his old political seat as MP for Birmingham South, gives it a go. So does Kaulo Chiriklo (Rebecca Ferguson) the Roma twin sister of Tommy’s late, lamented love Zelda Chiriklo (also Ferguson). It takes a lot of persuasive force from the living and the dead, especially the canny witchery of Kaulo, before Tommy finally puts on his fedora and goes to town looking for Duke. It’s quite an electric scene when he’s confronted in a bar by beefy Brit soldiers who don’t recognize the man they’re messing with. “Who the f-ck is Tommy Shelby?” is a recurring line in the film that must be answered here. Can thin, quiet Cillian Murphy pull it off, this scene in which he stands alone, hat pulled over his eyes, surrounded by big would-be toughs yet generating a growing shock wave of fearful tension all around him, before he takes care of business in his usual lethal fashion? He does it almost effortlessly. That’s why they pay Murphy the big bucks and give him so many awards. Barry Keoghan is excellent casting as Tommy’s wild-card son, who can pull off the same stunt of being small in stature while radiating a scary force field of unpredictable menace. And nobody looks more authentic as an old-time working-class tough in a flatcap than Keoghan. The casting and performances in _Peaky Blinders_ are uniformly excellent, and the presence of powerful women such as Ferguson’s Roma sisters finding ways to exert their authority is rare and welcome. Rebecca Ferguson costars as Kaulo Chiriklo in 2026’s Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. (Netflix / BBC Film) It’s a shame that Paul Anderson as Arthur Shelby Jr, Tommy’s volatile brother, was killed off as a way of writing him out of the film because Anderson was busted on drug charges in 2024. Anderson seemed to take it philosophically, saying “Well, what can you do, eh? It is how it is. I thought I’d just leave them to it.” But Arthur, a rumored suicide, has an important role to play in flashbacks that explain Tommy Shelby’s almost paralyzing despair. Really, this primness about drug use is just damn silly in this day and age. The brooding atmosphere of _The Immortal Man_ continues but also intensifies the miasma of gloom shot through with black humor that enfolded the series, which is right considering the way it functions as an existential referendum on Tommy Shelby as he comes to the end of his rocky road in life. The questions posed are: Can the exhausted Tommy take control again in time to save his son, his gang, and even, ironically, the Nazi-bedeviled nation? (Of course he can.) And further: Can he ever find peace in this world? (Of course he can’t.) And though the film provides many charged moments and inventive scenes of violent action, really the essential drama is playing out in Cillian Murphy’s arresting face. It’s hard to say farewell to that face in that role. But it turns out that the movie doesn’t represent the end of _Peaky Blinders_ , just “a fitting end to the first chapter,” according to show creator Steven Knight. The two-season Netflix spin-off is already in production, focusing on the roiling power struggles in bombed-out 1950s Birmingham as the Shelby crime family fights “to own Birmingham’s massive reconstruction project” after World War II. It appears that Barry Keoghan will be back as on Duke Shelby. And who knows what ghostly appearances Tommy Shelby might make to the troubled son trying to fill Tommy’s big, blood-soaked shoes? * * *

The Peaky Blinders Film Ratchets Up the Gloom and Black Humor

jacobin.com/2026/03/peaky-blinders-m...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

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Natalie Davis

@nataliedavis.journa.host.ap.brid.gy

6 hours ago

Why the Left Wins in Cities ### The Left’s urban success is often credited to progressive, homogenous populations, but that’s superficial. When budgets allow, cities make redistribution and public investment far easier to deliver and their benefits further-reaching. * * * From Paris to Munich and New York, left-wing mayors have won power. But their impact is limited by restricted control over budgets and by central governments that block policies benefiting the working class. (BG048 / Bauer-Griffin / GC Images) The last decade has seen a number of progressive municipal leaders gain victory in major cities across the West. Over the weekend, two new mayors swelled their ranks: the Socialist Party’s Emmanuel Grégoire won a clear victory in Paris, while Green Party member Dominik Krause defeated the social democratic incumbent in Munich. These victories follow New York City’s democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani taking office in January. These new mayors have seemingly bucked the trend of declining left-wing vote shares and the rise of the populist right at the national level. One reason for this trend is a backlog of political ambition: national democratic politics have become increasingly dysfunctional, with established parties often unable or unwilling to formulate programs of social transformation with wide appeal. And cities have become more socially homogenous in a way that favors such progressive reforms: the new urban electorate is increasingly well-educated and socially liberal. But the reasons are not just cultural: cities benefit from what political scientist Theo Serlin calls a “public agglomeration effect”: urban economies of scale make government provision more efficient, which shifts city residents toward preferring more of it. And both middle-class voters and the urban proletariat are particularly exposed to the social dislocations that are more pronounced in urban centers and that require active public policy interventions: higher housing and rental prices, labor market competition, and cost-of-living pressures. These developments have favored progressive rhetoric and policy ambition. But there is a clear downside. The gap between campaign promises and municipal capacity is a great source of political disaffection. The problem is systemic: the more social issues worsen and national or state politics fail to deliver, the more those running for urban office have to promise. Anne Hidalgo, who governed Paris between 2014 and 2026, was in many ways the archetype of left mayoral ambition. Her signature interventions included pedestrianizing the expressways along the banks of the river Seine, the Plan Vélo cycling revolution, removing thousands of parking spaces, and effectively banning SUVs. These measures were radical, and they were in fact delivered. And their popularity is viewed as the main reason why her colleague Grégoire won on Sunday. But what is true for Paris may not be true for other cities. The French capital happens to be both municipality (_commune_) and subregional government (_département_), meaning the mayor exercises the powers of both a city mayor and a departmental council president. Other prominent radical mayors, such as Barcelona’s Ada Colau and Madrid’s Manuela Carmena, did not have this advantage. Their jurisdictions were simply more limited. Neither have remained in office, and their legacies are mixed. One of the main reasons Colau’s yearslong effort to remunicipalize Barcelona’s water supply failed is that the relevant competencies sit not with the city but with the metropolitan water authority. Moreover, many urban decisions required negotiation with the autonomous regional government (the Generalitat de Catalunya _)_ , and Spain’s constitutional framework also subjects municipalities to strict budget stability rules (the Montoro laws) that cap expenditure growth and employment, constraints far tighter than those on French communes. Both the regional and national political incumbents were either indifferent or openly hostile to Colau. As a result, she was not able to deliver on much of her campaign program. When she lost the popular vote in the 2019 election (staying on with coalition support), she did so primarily due to abstentions in the working-class “red belt” districts that had been her core base in 2015. Not that her achievements weren’t real. Colau quadrupled the social housing budget, built over two thousand new public units, and bought up private residential blocks and converted them to social housing, pushing Barcelona’s social housing stock to over twelve thousand units by late 2023. But this reflects the extent of her competencies, which on housing were real. While the rise of left mayors across the world has similar causes, the conditions in which municipal leaders find themselves are too different to speak of a new formula of political action. But the new crop can learn lessons from their predecessors. And not just on internalizing jurisdictional limitations. While New York’s Mamdani, for instance, does not have the necessary competencies to raise local taxes or change local public transportation regulations (these decisions are made at the state level in Albany), he can use his considerable platform and strong ground organization to exert political pressure. Though it has fallen out of fashion, it used to be common for politicians to use their offices as pulpits to overcome institutional hostility or unfavorable parliamentary arithmetic. Colau’s attempts to restrict platforms such as Uber and Cabify were emboldened by the major strike of local taxi drivers in 2018. And while a European Union court ruling in 2023 eventually undermined her proposal, the political logic Colau championed has outlived her tenure: in September 2025, a broad coalition of Catalan parties tabled a new taxi law in the Catalan Parliament that, if enacted, would go even further than anything Colau ever envisaged. Ambitious progressive mayors can make a lasting impact, but the risk of failure is high. In a poignant scene in the drama series _The Wire_ , Baltimore’s improbable mayor-elect Tommy Carcetti is given a tour of the city’s homicide department. There he is chided for emptying the coffee jug without making a new one. But the jug was already mostly empty. This is emblematic of Carcetti’s tenure as mayor: he never succeeded with his ambitious plans for Baltimore because he inherited a mess and was constantly stymied by a hostile state government. The rest of the series charts his growing disillusionment and unpopularity. Municipal leaders have incentives to use a rhetoric of social transformation that has little to do with the everyday tedium, institutional wrangling, and hard distributional trade-offs involved in public policymaking. And by overpromising on matters that are structurally hard to deliver on or simply beyond their jurisdiction, they risk contributing not just to political disaffection but a decline of trust in the state. * * *

Why the Left Wins in Cities

jacobin.com/2026/03/left-mayors-hida...

#left #news #vsn #SupportIndependentMedia #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft

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KC with Power Cosmic

@kcwithpowercosmic.bsky.social

6 hours ago

Left or Right 👈👉

#left #right #choice

6 0 0 0

@davidganderart.bsky.social

8 hours ago

An acrylic painting of a red devil on a mustard yellow background wearing a white t-shirt that has the words 'woke leftie' printed on it.

'Confusing People For Over 2000 Years'
Acrylic painting on canvas
20 cms x 20 cms
One only!
davidgander.art
#left #Devil

0 0 0 0

@gnrb64.bsky.social

8 hours ago

Progressivism and Global Cooperation: A Conversation with Spanish President Pedro Sánchez – Bwog This past week, Pedro Sánchez, President of the Government of Spain, came to speak to the Columbia University community about applying progressive political philosophy on pressing global issues. On Mo...

#Spain #Sanchez #Progressivism #Left #EUpoli #UKpoli #USpoli #Cdnpoli
bwog.com/2025/09/prog...

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Twitter Exile

@twitter-exile.bsky.social

13 hours ago

Membership – Socialists

Hey #QUEENSLANDERS,

Help @qld-socialists.bsky.social get registered as a party and join them here:

member.socialists.org.au/join/qld <<

#AUSPOL #QLDpol #QLD #Socialists #QLDSocialists #VoeLEFT #Left #Leftism #Socialism #Socialist #Lefties #LEFT #LeftWing #PutOneNationLAST

2 1 0 0

Kevin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺💚 #VoteGreen

@kevbro1969.bsky.social

15 hours ago

Ms Butler is far too good to be in #RightWing #Labour.

Have you thought of defecting to the #GreenParty, @dawnbutlerbrent.bsky.social ? They do politics the right way: they listen, they care for the people & planet, they're progressive, & they're on the #left!

#VoteGreen

😁😁😁

2 0 0 0

Kevin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺💚 #VoteGreen

@kevbro1969.bsky.social

15 hours ago

Agreed, but the #Labour govt you're STILL supporting is regressive & controlling. They'll do NOTHING about it because they simply don't care!

It's why the #GreenParty are soaring ahead: they listen, they care, they are progressive & are on the #left, something #LabourInNameOnly are certainly not.

0 1 0 0

Kevin 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺💚 #VoteGreen

@kevbro1969.bsky.social

16 hours ago

#Labour, once a party on the #left & a party that cared for the workers, the working class, the sick & the disabled, now want to penalise & punish them, whilst happily looking after the wealthy & the big businesses.

Tell me, how they are ANY different to the #Tories??

Vote these BASTARDS out!!! 🤬🤬

31 14 1 0

autohumanismo 01

@autohumanismo.bsky.social

17 hours ago

We need a #political change for the age of #AI and automation.

The #revolution needs to be technological, while is still possible.

Check the #autohumanismo manifesto. Change can start, if we have a realistic goal. And the #left needs to find its way against #capitalist AI systems!

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The Raisina Hills

@theraisinahills.bsky.social

18 hours ago

"Kerala’s Hindu voter is not a monolith, and the BJP’s vote arithmetic contains a paradox."

Congress’s problem is not merely electoral — it is internal. ✍️NIRENDRA DEV

#Politics #elections #Kerala #BJP #Left

👇theraisinahills.com/kerala-election-2026-cpi...