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 [...]
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 [...]
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?
More Bad News for Dreams of Solid Journalism
A little over a year ago, I wrote about the importance of supporting and encouraging community papers, even in this electronic era with the ascendance of ambient media. But today we’ve seen another fail in the possibility of quality community journalism in BC with the announcement of another shakeout in community papers in BC. Black [...]
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 [...]
Protecting the people elected to do the peoples’ work from the people who want them to do their work
Three days, a fake lake, and $1 billion dollars in security costs later, the G8/G20 meetings will have wrapped up by the afternoon of June 27. Over five hundred protesters will have been arrested, and as of the time of writing, at least three police cars have been burned. Hundreds of police officers will have [...]
The “Kids” in the Black: Reflections on Modern Anarchist Activism
I’m an anarchist. I’ll wait while you replace your monocle as it has surely dropped into your Beluga caviar at this point. Now then, seriously: I am an anarchist. As Toronto prepares to host the G20 Summit in a few days time, the media has been abuzz once more with the salacious prospect of street [...]
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 [...]
Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun?
Building a community and social network: a curious concept. I’m eagerly watching the Diaspora and Appleseed alternatives to Facebook developing, but really, this site itself is already a place of human/social interaction with an average of 9,000 visitors/month and 32,000 pageviews/month.
So should I be seeing if anyone wants to contribute beyond me?
Internalizing “What Cynicism Costs Us”
Contending with decaying morale and cynicism is difficult. It’s taken me almost a week to be able to read this article and reflect on it enough to absorb it. But I’m there now. It’s been a good process. Here’s what I’ve got: Those of us whose passionate engagement helped elect Obama haven’t stepped up to [...]
Teddy Bear Catapults and Corporate Overlords
Creative resistance to global corporate overlords and their comprador governments will hopefully move to a new level next month during the G8/G20 meetings in Ontario. I know the stakes are high as at least one group [or agent provocateur] has asserted its tone with the RBC firebombing. I’m reading of rebel clowns, watching a video [...]
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 [...]
For Everyone Saying “I Told You So” About Facebook
Infrastructures via xkcd: Infrastructures. Share the Love: Twitter del.icio.us email RSS Facebook Google Bookmarks Digg LinkedIn StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Buzz
Our Civil Demand: From Petty to Profound
In thinking about pettiness in the political arena, it’s easy to see it show up in the daily headlines. But what we really need are people who catalyze our culture to places of greatness and even just the expectation of greatness. CNN showed Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from August 1963 on [...]
Just Bring Your Social Network Out of Facebook
Sure, Diaspora is only weeks old, but if you’re reluctant to leave Facebook because they’re holding hostage the rest of your social network, just bring your people to an open source alternative. This blog is a fine companion to the official Diaspora development team blog. There are grounds to be optimistic about an alternative to [...]
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