This Thursday and Friday the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) will be hosting a conference on the media’s role in halting Mass Atrocities and to mark the 10th Anniversary of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) initiative by the United Nations. For those familiar with the terrain of activism in mass media, it is common knowledge that spreading awareness is one of the keys to preventing crimes and injustices…
Year: 2011
Institutionalized Graft Part I
Let me get this straight. Tories do not favour so-called socialist state-economic planning??? That said, we’re in the midst of a global economic depression and Canada must find ways to stimulate its own economy in order to survive. Ergo, the federal government must set an economic policy in place that allows core industries to continue operations while further providing stimulus to at-risk industries. As it so happens, the Tories have decided…
Occupy Wall Street Goes Global
Occupy Wall Street and the so called 99% movement got a big boost this past Saturday as hundreds of thousands of citizens from the developed world marched…
Protesters occupy downtown park in Toronto version of Occupy Wall Street
Hundreds of people were still gathering in St. James Park on the east end of downtown Toronto late Saturday for the Occupy Toronto protests inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Earlier, reports said about 3,000 people rallied and marched from Toronto’s financial district to the park, the group’s chosen occupation site, at the corner of Jarvis Street and King Street.
The movement, which is against increasing financial inequality and excessive corporate influence in politics, arrived in Canada with…
We are The 99% and So Are You
At five in the morning on October 14, my Montreal based roommate Kamee Abrahamian (producer of the Blood Ballet Cabaret) and my native New York self crawled out of bed to head to Wall Street. We heard that chaos was going to go down before the sun even came up. We thought we would witness some arrests and be part of the fight for whatever these protests are about…
Why Occupy?
On Saturday, October 15th, well over a thousand cities around the world, including Montreal, will fuel the “Occupy Movement” by hosting, or intensifying, their very own “Occupy (insert city here.)” The occupation of these various cities will go on for as long as it takes for our governments to acknowledge that there is a problem with our economic systems.
If your reading this, you’ve heard about Occupy Wall Street, let me tell you why it matters…
State Economic Planning for Conservatives: Drop the Ball on the Military After the Election
The ruling Tories have dropped the ball in the one domain they repeatedly claim to be exclusively their own supporting the Canadian military. Let me be more specific. Tories typically talk a good game around election time about how they, and in their minds they alone, support the Canadian Forces. Both Stephen Harper and Brian Mulroney began their terms in office promising sweeping reforms, new equipment procurement plans, increases to personnel levels and a general ‘re-investment’ in ‘our men and women in uniform’…
#OccupyWallStreet Photos, Video & More
The Occupy Wall Street protests are now entering their fourth week. The movement which began in New York City on September 17th has garnered the support of most of the big unions, numerous celebrities, intellectuals, the hactivist group Anonymous, and even some key politicians.
Occupy Wall Street has been growing rapidly and picking up steam as protests pop-up in more and more cities across North America and even Europe (the Occupy Montreal protest begins on Sat Oct 15th). Major media outlets have even started covering this movement seriously…
Don’t Have a Cow, the Simpsons Is Safe For Now
The Yellow, Nuclear Family from Springfield USA has been around since I first started high school. Now in its 23rd season, the show was saved from the brink of cancellation the other day thanks in large part due to the cast taking a huge per episode pay cut in order to keep the show profitable. So today, instead of writing what was going to be a eulogy, I get to write about the importance of the Simpsons as they run on through until their landmark 25th season… and my 39th birthday…
Some Insight into Insite
Last Friday in a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously that prohibiting Insite, the safe injection clinic, to operate under an exemption from drug laws would be a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, the ruling said “Insite saves lives. Its benefits have been proven. There has been no discernible negative impact on the public safety…