Might Makes Right: The Reality of International Politics & Why States Cause Wars
“If you kill one person, you’re prosecuted. If you kill ten people, you’re a celebrity; if you kill a quarter-of-a-million people, you’re invited to a peace conference.” – Haris Silajdžić Patient readers will bear with me as I sink into the quagmire of Balkan and, specifically, post-Yugoslav politics to make a broader point about states [...]
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 [...]
Only 1.5 Tenured Women in SFU’s PoliSci Department
Yes. There are only 1.5 tenured women who work full-time in SFU’s Political Science Department out of 21 profs. Soon there will be 0.5. What century is this? Behold the list of faculty in the department: Of the 21 people on that list, only 6 are women. Whoops, that’s pretty low to start with. Of [...]
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 [...]
The Beautiful Game: Football, Politics and Social Struggle
Is it any accident in the countries where sports teams are considered community institutions, publically owned and politically active, that their general social welfare situation is in much better shape? Is it not entirely fitting that in a country like Canada where even basic services like education and healthcare are increasingly becoming unaffordable and inaccessible to the majority of people, that things like pro sporting events have likewise become obscene luxuries?
Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably
As it turns out, corporations have been able to vote in BC municipal elections for most of our constituted history. That this appalled me is a testament to a new regime of rights and entitlements of humans over corporations that makes me smile. That I was disgusted that the BC neoLiberal government was fishing around [...]
Economic Growth is a Cancer: Meet Steady State Economics
For decades I’ve been hearing about and studying how humans are living beyond the planet’s capability of sustaining us…and that we’ve been doing so quite unequally. And what have we done about that? Embraced neoliberal, deregulated free market capitalism: the economic expression of rape and pillage. Reduce, reuse, recycle neglects the real first R: refuse. [...]
Healthcare as a Human Right for Americans?
Americans have had it rough, what with their rabidly individualistic, anti-communitarian history and social policy. From that, they have a hard time embracing things of the common good, like healthcare being a human right. The current debate, with the wingnut lunacy of greedy hyper-individualists wanting to keep poor people without healthcare that others would have [...]
Shirley Bond’s Marie Antoinette Complex
shirleybond The heat wave continues-imagine being loaded on an Air Canada flight and then sitting on the tarmac in the heat for an hour – yup it was me!10:45 PM Jul 29th from web Shirley Bond should keep using Twitter so we can see a better sense of her lack of empathy and perspective. Former [...]
Oil Status Quo Apologists Spin Weak Arguments
Maclean’s Colin Campbell has produced today an interesting counterpoint to my exuberance over Jeff Rubin’s convenient vindication of my peak oil killing neoliberal globalization thesis. And despite Rubin not knowing me, I fell it’s appropriate to defend him–and my–sense of the near future. My comments are indented. Energy shock and oil myths Will soaring prices crush [...]
Why the BC NDP Lost the Election
The BC NDP hasn’t joined the 21st century. Because of that, we missed a chance to pivot British Columbia into a healthy social, economic and political future. The BC NDP entered an existential crisis 6 days ago. This election loss, a voter turnout shamefully below 50%, the loss of meaningful electoral reform: all these things [...]
Bill Bennett: King of Plausible Deniability!
The ad reads, “You want someone who pays taxes and is concerned about how the money is being spent,” underneath a photo of Bennett and his family and a slogan that reads, “He’s one of us.” So Kootenay East Liberal Party candidate Bill Bennett did it again. First his campaign planned to host a beer [...]
Our Low Minimum Wage is Overt Poor Bashing
It’s interesting how economistic we are, all obsessed with how politics affects the economy. What’s galling is how the economy is some nebulous thing that is measured by the GDP and not by how it serves human beings. Gordon Campbell criticizes Carole James because she’s not had broad business experience. He’s been in politics for [...]
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