The Hamas attack on Israel was horrific and depraved, but at the same time foreseeable and explicable. The goal of Hamas and its allies in terror is not an independent state for Palestinians but the eradication of Israel and of Jews themselves. While many are now demanding that Israel hold back and negotiate for peace, some argue it is the “peace process” itself that facilitated the conflict. Lynne Cohen charts what she considers the only road to a durable peace – one that begins with uncompromising action by Israel and ends with an international effort borrowed from the post-Second World War era.

They have inspired artists and poets since the invention of paints and writing. They’ve adorned funerals, graveyards and other mourning sites for millennia – since the literal dawn of humanity. They say “I love you” like few other things. Why, then, have so many funerals and other rituals for the deceased become flower-free zones, with mourners instead pressured to send money to specified charities? Lynne Cohen explores the vexing “In Lieu of Flowers” phenomenon, provides her unique take on what makes it pernicious, and offers a ringing paean to the appropriateness, usefulness and morality of always sending flowers.

The freedom to choose whether or not to work is surely the most basic of worker rights. Without it, no one can ever truly be master of their own labour. Yet the federal government is planning to remove this fundamental choice from 1 million Canadian workers. And for reasons of naked self-interest. In the wake of the PSAC strike, Lynne Cohen looks at Ottawa’s plan to worsen labour relations by banning replacement workers throughout the federal civil service and across the myriad of crucial federally-regulated industries, including banking, telecom and transportation. Based on economic evidence and expert opinion, Cohen reveals the damage such a move will cause – and why potential solutions seem so far away. Part I of a special two-part series.

What’s in a name – or a political label? Quite a lot, as it turns out. The standard view that fascism is a phenomenon of the far right has been immensely beneficial to the left, allowing it to conflate virtually any bad political beliefs, tactics or leaders with conservatism. Lynne Cohen, whose own political journey has included stopovers on the left, right and middle before returning to conservatism, has felt the wrath of leftists. This lends a personal dimension to her account of the damage done to conservatism through its linkage to fascism. Cohen mounts a spirited case that fascism doesn’t even belong on the right, but at the opposite end of the political spectrum.

As the shouting over mandatory Covid-19 vaccination grows louder, as people cement their positions and refuse to budge, as dissenters are vilified, bullied, threatened and forced to get the shot or lose their jobs, and as some in their ranks discredit their cause, we are losing all perspective. Informed decisions – how to vote, what to say in conversation, whether to get vaccinated – require real knowledge. And while the sheer flow of information nowadays is infinite, the truth becomes more opaque and elusive. Welcome to C2C Journal’s special series on vaccines. It is aimed at offering a broad perspective in a calm delivery, in order to inform you and help you preserve your ability to think independently – the basis of individual freedom itself. In Part One, Lynne Cohen offers an appreciative overview of the struggles to develop some of history’s most important vaccines, and the remarkable individuals who stopped at nothing to get them done.

Ever since the mid-1990s when Sue Rodriguez and Robert Latimer forced euthanasia onto the Canadian landscape, debate has been passionate and polarizing. In recognition of this controversy, the federal Liberals’ 2016 assisted-suicide legislation set strict limits on the procedure and promised a full review after five years. Barely three years later, however, the Trudeau government changed its mind. Now, a new law removing nearly every existing restriction sits with the Senate awaiting final approval. Lynne Cohen lays bare the legislation’s deadly implications, the political machinations that brought us here, and how the entire concept of human rights has been stood on its head.

We are living in an “unprecedented reality” according to the recent Speech from the Throne. Certainly the effects of Covid-19 have been serious and far-reaching. But unprecedented? Hardly. As difficult as our current situation may seem, it doesn’t hold a candle to the situation 100 years ago when a vastly more terrifying global epidemic struck a far less prepared world. With a second wave of Covid-19 on the horizon, Lynne Cohen takes a close look at the Spanish flu of 1918-20 and finds many stark and revealing differences – as well as some unsettling echoes that suggest while times may change, our fundamental fears do not.