Today's Liberal News

Montreal Considers Cutting Ties to Israel as Outrage Grows in Canada over Israeli Impunity: Avi Lewis

The Montreal City Council is set to debate a controversial motion Monday calling on the Canadian city to suspend all institutional ties with the Israeli government. Avi Lewis, a leading Jewish Canadian politician and head of the progressive New Democratic Party, says it’s a reflection of widespread outrage among Canadians over Israel’s actions across the Middle East.
Pro-Israel forces “are on the defensive now,” says Lewis.

“Most Stupid Trade Fight in History”: U.S. & Canadian Workers Stand to Lose in Trump’s New Tariff War

The U.S.-Canada trade war is deepening after talks collapsed without a deal on Friday. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused the Trump administration of issuing demands that would compromise Canada’s sovereignty and undermine key industries. On Saturday, the United States slapped 50% tariffs on around $20 billion worth of imports from Canada, and Carney announced retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion of U.S. products set to go into effect on September 8.

How to Lose a Trade War

U.S.-Canada trade talks collapsed last night. Punitive Trump tariffs will now go into effect. Canada will reciprocate with retaliatory tariffs of its own.
The story may not be over. Donald Trump is notorious for issuing threats, then reversing them. Wars are on, off, on again, off again, then on a third time—but only as a “little detour.” This is not an administration that thinks even one move ahead. But without a supersized Trump TACO, the U.S.-Canada impasse likely won’t resolve soon.

Meet Loui Ridi: Palestinian American Returns to West Bank Home Besieged by Israeli Settlers

Loui Ridi, a Palestinian American man who lives in Ohio, traveled to the occupied West Bank on Monday to help relatives defend their family home in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. Israeli settlers have surrounded the home, which Ridi owns, for more than a week. Settlers have besieged several Palestinian houses in the village, trapping people inside and cutting off water and electricity in some cases.
“I’m not getting no protection here. I still fear for my life.

“Love Machines”: James Muldoon on How AI Is Changing Relationships & the Global Workers Fueling AI

James Muldoon is a sociologist who writes about the changing nature of human-technology relationships. Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships investigates how people form emotional attachments with large language models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I.

Tallying

I tally the dead. I tally today’s dead. I seek a tally of the dead or seek
yesterday’s dead. I try to count them, the dead. Reports tell me there are,
today, more dead. I announce the dead—the house is quiet. I try to
count. I seek numbers. I provide numbers. I wake trying. I cover
myself in numbers, trying to keep still.  
I seek some stillness beyond the dead—I try to just manage. I tally the dead,
each pair of lungs, I wander through numbers, the daffodils nevertheless
fly up.

An American City, With Troops on Its Streets

The sight of military troops patrolling in a peaceful American city would once have been strange, if not outright alarming. But since last August, when Donald Trump first deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., residents have become accustomed to seeing men and women in camouflage military fatigues on duty throughout the city and its public-transit system. Sometimes, they trail federal officers from agencies such as the FBI and U.S.

Iran Unleashed

For years, Iran confronted a balance of power in the Middle East that tilted against it. The region was dominated by a hostile American superpower, a nuclear-armed and militarily superior Israel, and significant local actors—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates—that were strategically and economically aligned with the United States.
Today finds Iran in entirely new circumstances.

The Hatred That Broke American Politics

“If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies, be at Charlottesville on 12 August.” Nine years ago, that message spread across the internet. The call was answered by several hundred white supremacists, who marched through the University of Virginia. The rage-filled men carried torches, chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” They swarmed around the historic rotunda, arriving at a statue of the school’s founder, Thomas Jefferson.