I’d like to interrupt our regularly scheduled flow of news, arts and culture coverage and commentary to bring you an important announcement. Well, maybe not so important for you, to be honest, but for us here at FTB it’s kind of a mini-milestone. You see, the post which you are reading is the thousandth to appear on this site. Think about that for a second. We’re a small group. No one’s being paid, from administrators and editors to writers and photographers, we’re doing this because we love it. We’ve all got other things going on in our lives and have other ways to pay the bills. Despite this, in roughly two years’ time, we’ve managed to produce 1000 pieces of content…
Month: July 2011
The Enemy Within II: A Waco End-Game Scenario
I’ve been fascinated by the Siege at Waco and the Branch Davidians since I was eight years old and watched the tragic events unfold nearly-live on CNN in 1993. Admittedly, I was not as aware of the grave implications of the raid, stand-off and siege back then as I am today. Waco, in my eyes, is a catastrophe so epic it deserves to stay fresh in the minds of any concerned citizen living in a modern democratic nation. I think it would be too glib to call it an isolated event, and even if the threat from doomsday cults is generally a bit of a rarity, the lessons from the Waco Siege have broad implications, especially in regards to the responsibilities of modern media and the potential for State intervention therein…
A Modest Proposal for the City of Toronto (VIDEO)
Sometimes, there’s a little bit of Jonathan Swift in all of us. Mary Hynes is no different. Last week, this feisty senior living in North York, Ontario had some modest suggestions for Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and his plans to make serious budget cuts, affecting the city’s services, most notably the public library system. She got the opportunity to deliver her comments to the mayor in person at the Executive Committee’s Core Service Review panel…
Arts and politics: the power of the arts community to shape our politics…
Ever heard of the anti-Harper protest song “You have a choice?” Me neither. Shame really. I checked it out the other day on Youtube (produced by AAVAZ, the global non-profit organization) and apart from the music, which, as is so often the case with these well-intentioned but unwieldy artistic collaborations (e.g. We are the world) is rather confused – note to producers for future reference: bagpipe solos never make a good intro to a pop song! – the message on the threat of climate change deserves to be heard…
Jack will be back, and the NDP will be just fine…
On Monday afternoon Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, took to the stage at a nationally televised press conference and announced that tests had discovered a new cancer, different from the Prostate cancer which had dogged him in the lead-up to this spring’s election. Looking pale and gaunt and speaking in an almost unrecognizable voice, he announced that he would be taking a leave of absence from his duties as leader, pegging the resumption of Parliament in September as his target date to return. He spoke of the tremendous support…
Being Broke
So a creditor has put their hand directly into my bank account without permission or authorization of any kind. True I owe them money, but resorting to illegal acts like that isn’t exactly fair, either. I’m almost surprised they didn’t send thugs to beat me up, break my legs and burn down my apartment building with me and all my neighbours trapped inside or something like that, as they do in the movies. The fact that they stole the money I was saving to pay rent was both bad timing and genuinely evil. At least the telephonic campaign of daily harassment over the payments I’m too strapped to make seems to have stopped for a while…
Right Wing Nuts & Bolts
It’s hard to believe that a country as tolerant as Norway can produce such a rotten apple, but even in peaceful, progressive countries like Norway, Sweden and Denmark hate and fear can still exist. Emotional and political acts of terrorism aren’t all that surprising in countries like the U.S., where much of their culture and history comes from the intolerance of others, but it just goes to show that even in the most tolerant of societies like Norway there can live a misguided, hateful and racist man…
Let’s play the CPCCA game, you only have to give up your freedom of speech
Well, the freedom to speak out, protest and criticize injustice just got a whole lot more complicated in Canada. The Canadian Parliamentary Commission to Combat Antisemitism released its report and to the surprise of almost no one, it opted to pretty much redefine criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, instead of proposing ways to deal with real instances of antisemitism…
The Enemy Within: How our media and politicians fed the Norwegian spree shooter…
Did you know there’s a war going on? One you haven’t heard of? It’s not a terribly well organized war. Not too many people are dying though this is changing, fast. It’s not very well reported the established media has been slow at coming to terms with what’s actually transpiring here. They are blinded by their own complacency, and this war is partly their responsibility. Yet they, much like the rest of society, continue to look elsewhere…
Internet on the radio, FTB on CKUT’s Friday Morning After
This morning I woke up a little earlier than usual, had my coffee and took a walk through the already sweltering heat, arriving at the CKUT studios in the heart of the McGill Ghetto around 8am. I was there to talk about FTB on the Friday Morning After. Not to be confused with our very own sex column of the same name, CKUT’s Morning After is a local arts, news and culture radio show running Monday to Friday from 7-9am. The hosts change depending on the day as does the language they speak on air. The Friday edition…