The year 2016 closed on some very bad notes. It was another year of imperialist, regime-change war in Syria causing immense human suffering and physical destruction. Extreme civil war violence continues against the Kurdish people by NATO-member Turkey. A horrific, Western-backed war in Yemen is raging. A low-intensity war against the people of eastern Ukraine is ongoing, against a backdrop of a nuclear-armed NATO military buildup in eastern Europe against Russia.

The election of arch-imperialist Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency and the global warming emergency worsen the picture.

Now is an extraordinary time to be in Iran.

Men and women, babies, teenagers and elderly people, are cloaked head to toe in black. Main roads are blocked off and streets are filled with mourners waving red, green and black flags. 

Brightly coloured alams (metallic ornaments engraved with verses from the Quran or names of the Prophet Muhammad and his children) are twirled by master spinners as rhythmic poems and chants are recited -- sometimes thunderously fervent -- other times subdued and mellow. 

Each verse is recited in perfect sync with the sound of drums and beating chests, and each seems to prompt a new flood of tears.

In trying to rally his dispirited troops the other day, interim NDP leader Tom Mulcair made the following somewhat surprising statement: The party's "core values," so he told his applauding caucus, are "environmentalism, pacifism, feminism, socialism."

I join the applause, or at least three-quarters of it. I can march behind the banner of socialism, feminism and environmentalism with pride and conviction. But pacifism, not so much. In fact pacifism has never been an NDP value, assuming that words have any meaning.