A Back-To-School Wishlist for Society
Simply, two things. Let’s make sure our public school system recognizes two things: Our children are priceless individuals with immense capacity to excel, not standardized, interchangeable commodities who can be warehoused in assembly line learning factories. Thinking matters, not just filling up heads with data. A week before the new school year starts is a [...]
Harper Ignores Positive Trade Opportunity: ALBA
Trade has occurred for thousands of years, not just in the capitalist context of the last few hundred years, and not just in the current neoliberal, free trade context of the last 30 years. For over five years I have been tracking Latin America’s ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, as an alternative model [...]
Terrorism + Child Abuse Joke = National Post
What do obsessive coverage of terrorism and a joke about how to beat children have in common? As it turns out, it’s today’s National Post. Firstly, everything in the first 5 pages was devoted to the terror suspect arrests, except for one article stoking the idea of staying in Afghanistan, so that’s related. 5 pages. [...]
Bjork is Our Green, Anti-Privatization Ally
It was a bittersweet day yesterday in the fight against neoliberal globalization. Bjork is helping fight green energy privatization in Iceland while Canada supports global neoliberal resource rape. Prime Minister Harper is sending $130m of our money to AbitibiBowater after Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams nationalized their assets after the company threatened to bail [...]
Respinning Unsound Tamil Presumptions in the National Post
It’s time to respin the National Post. So much so, that I’ve signed up for their 90-day free trial subscription. Mainly, I’m looking to get a stack of newsprint for lining our garden this fall for next spring. And it’s not just because the CanWest zombie has rebranded itself as PostMedia [whatever they intend that [...]
Save the Earth and Vote
There is no environmental crisis, and global warming is just “a socialist plot” – at least according to Prime Minister Harper, when he was denouncing the Kyoto Accord. But while Harper’s many sins are serious – ignoring child poverty, sending Canadians to fight in Afghanistan, attacking women’s rights – the worst one is his minority [...]
Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 8.16.10: The HST, Tamil Ship, Haiti…
Last night it was Imtiaz Popat and I on “The Rational” talking about the HST, HST petition oddities, recall of MLAs, a fall legislative session, the BC Conservatives and the NDP on the HST, a new BC Liberal leader, Kim Campbell and Rita Johnson, a fall federal election, direct democracy, Vic Toews being an immigrant [...]
A Voice from Haiti, Who We Are Further Victimizing
This morning I wrote about how we and the French are continuing to rip off Haiti 7 months after their earthquake. Today I read about one woman’s experiences. She sounds so much like us. Getting to the human level during these kind of existential events, we always see that “they” are just like “us”. I [...]
How We [and the French] Keep Ripping Off Haiti
It was so nice to see so many billions pledged to help Haiti after its earthquake where the planet kicked the country after it was down from centuries of racist, imperial and neoliberal exploitation. But how much money pledged has shown up? And worse, did you know that Haiti spent more than a century paying [...]
The Tamils’ Gift: Some Needed National Values Exploration
I think one of the key issues in all my questions about the Tamil ship the other day is what kind of Canada do we want. Are we really open to visitors, immigrants, refugees? If there is a federal election this fall, the G20, the long-form census and how we ought to treat “visitors” like [...]
A Basic Primer on the Tamil Ship
Before anyone starts talking about the Tamils who will arrive in Canadian territorial waters today, make sure you understand more than just a 50-word summary of what is going on. For instance, we have this statement in a news report: The Tamil Tigers have been outlawed in Canada as a terrorist group since 2006. via [...]
Capitalists: The Flat-Earthers of the 21st Century
I’m not just talking about the old white guy with the mustache and top hat in Monopoly. I’m talking about all the folks who think the market will save us and that the economy must grow and that to be critical of all that is to be unpatriotic or a threat to social order. And [...]
Building Community as a Tonic for Political Cynicism
More than just political burnout, there is a malaise of cynicism present in many progressives across Canada right now. Instead of just being tired from fighting many battles with social and economic conservatism, more and more progressives I’m encountering have become disillusioned with those who ought to be our champions. There are number of head-scratching [...]
The Queen, G20 Abuses and Canada’s Future
It has been a couple weeks and I still can’t get this out of my head. I was going to write something quite venomous on Canada Day about the queen’s characterization of Canada, but decided to let it slide. But I can’t: The Queen said she has witnessed more than half of Canada’s national history [...]
Yuan Good Turn Deserves Another
Sheesh. It’s about time. China has finally walked the plank (or was prodded with sticks until they lept) and is now dog-paddling in the sea of flexible exchange rates. The word on the street? China has decided it’s time to cease pegging the Yuan at artificially low rates against the US Dollar, thereby allowing it [...]
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