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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The Lodgepole Pine Moment of Addressing Climate Breakdown
So a chunk of floating ice separated from Greenland last week. The ice cube is bigger than Manhattan. No big deal, it seems. How many people sold their cars because of that, or the BP negligent disaster, or the Endbridge pipeline leak. I don’t know how many times an Antarctic ice shelf breaks off a [...]
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 [...]
Bill Bennett, Future BC Liberal Leader
In the last 15 months, Bill Bennett has blamed just “some folks” at a pub for wanting to give away free beer to lure voters in during the provincial election campaign and now he is blaming a staff member for calling some activists “eco-facists” [sic]. I used to think it was just him being lucky [...]
2010 Already Beats 2007 in Arctic Sea Ice Melt
Working from the premise that we [the collaborative society of humans] aren’t actually too stupid to avert climate breakdown, let’s look at the new bad news on Arctic Ocean sea ice melt. This year’s sea ice meltdown is well ahead of 2007 in loss of both area and thickness. The ice is failing at a [...]
The BC NDP Channels Brian Mulroney
I want a BC NDP that is a beacon of hope, clarity, vision and inspiration to address the dire economic, energy and environmental challenges we have created for ourselves by the start of the 21st century. But now the party is merely channeling Brian Mulroney’s “open for business” approach to becoming dependent on odious foreign [...]
Capitalism: The Giant Stone Head Destroying Us All
It has sometimes been asked what the residents of Easter Island might have been thinking as they cut down the last tree on their island to erect yet another one of their monolithic and useless ceremonial stone heads. It seems safe to say that we are now finally in a position to seemingly answer this [...]
Canada Impedes Mohawks’ Right to Return Home
This is what integrity looks like. Three Mohawks from Quebec travelled to Cochabamba for April’s climate summit. They left on the Haudenosaunee Passport since they accept neither Canadian nor American citizenship. They were easily allowed out of Canada with those credentials. But then Canada wouldn’t let them in unless they signed a Canadian document. Their story [...]
The CFS OnePassNow Campaign Defeats BC Liberal Cuts
The Canadian Federation of Students’ One Pass Now campaign has succeeded in forcing the BC Liberal government to fund superior transit options for post-secondary students in BC. But this win is no cause for complacency. The government announced yesterday funding to ensure discounted fares for students around the province. The CFS declared a victory holding [...]
Is a Car Free Vancouver Possible?
CarFreeYVR posted a nice video [below] discussing the motivations and inspirations for car-free days in Vancouver. With car-free days festivals coming again on June 20 on Main Street, Commercial Drive, Kits and the West End [happy Father's Day!], I’m excited to see hundreds take over the pavement. But how does Vancouver ever become the first [...]
When Conservatives Question Corporate Motives
I am always pleased when conservatives question the social commitment of corporations. You don’t actually have to be a radical left winger to reasonably question whether corporations care about us, profits or the damage from oil in the Gulf. I know it is irresponsible for any sensible person to adopt the radical left wing stance [...]
Globe and Mail’s Irony: Calling The Yes Men Cynical
The Globe and Mail‘s editorial yesterday calling the Yes Men cynical is a classic example of psychological projection, calling another group cynical when corporate media today cannot likely be any more cynical. The entire editorial is below, but here are ten comments about how deluded the editorial department at the Globe and Mail is. We [...]
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