With Barack Obama having what most Americans call “success” in regards to foreign policy, it’s no wonder the Republican candidates for president have largely ignored this important aspect of presidential responsibility. This changed, at least a little, this past Saturday night when CBS co-sponsored a debate on foreign policy…
Category: News
An Ironic Coup: Omnibus Bill Uniting the Opposition
If there’s one thing I love, its getting caught off-guard and surprised, especially when it comes to Canadian politics, which I generally find infuriating, pedantic and riddled with pseudo-scandals. The events of the past couple weeks, instigated by the Québec justice minister and subsequently supported by the Premiers of Ontario and British Columbia with regards to the Tory ‘omnibus crime bill’…
NDP Leadership Candidate Brian Topp in Montreal!
Brian Topp will be in Montreal for an evening of politics, policy and pints this Wednesday, the 9th of November. Please come by and get to know one of the candidates in the race to replace Jack Layton as leader of the NDP.
Brian was born in Longueil and lived in Quebec until his late twenties. Although he has worked and lived across the country he has a special place in his heart for Quebec and a deep understanding of our realities.
Ethical Oil, Part Two: The Trade
In part one, I introduced everyone to Alykhan Velshi and Zoe; two ideological zealots engaged in a war of words over the nature of Canadian oil production.
Velshi is the captain of the good ship Ethical Oil and Zoe is, of course, Ezra Levant’s fictitious and quintessential environmentalist.
So, not happy with having such an important debate boiled down to a never-ending back-and-forth of pontificating and self-righteousness, I wanted to know where our oil actually comes from.
Our underlying issue is one of supply and demand: Canadians are demanding oil, and we’re supplying it to…
Tales from the G20: A Few Questions for Justin Saunders and Joseph Cami
It’s been over a year and people are still talking about the mass mobilization of protest and the repressive tactics used by authorities at the Toronto G20 Summit. Justin Saunders was there with a film crew and his documentary Tales from the G20 screens tonight in Montreal at Cinema Politica at Concordia. FTB’s Stephanie Laughlin interviewed Saunders about the film, what happened at the G20, what it means for the future of activism, the Occupy movement and upcoming projects….
2012 Election: One Year from Today
It’s the first weekend of November 2011; we’ve been talking about the Republican presidential race for the past six months and we still have a full year to go before the real deal. Anyone sick and tired of it all already? For three years we’ve witnessed the do little Democrats and the do nothing Republicans fight it out in the Senate and House as if the election was tomorrow. I can only assume this year; with unlimited ammunition being donated from corporations and two vocal, but leaderless grassroots organizations… there will be blood! Let’s start off with the Republican presidential nomination. You have…
MIGS Conference: The Responsibility to Protect
The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) celebrated the 10th Anniversary of its program the Responsibility to Protect on October 20 and 21. The conference featured some of the key players in the international arena, such as Dr. Frank Chalk, Kyle Matthews, and the former Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin among many others. Some called the MIGS conference “a conference of conscience,” but in my opinion, the conference had a political agenda that lacked the human story and the reality of what leads to a genocide…
Justice Moldaver: An Injustice Waiting To Happen
When is Canada going to learn what Québec already seems to understand: that Harper and his Tories were never really serious about ensuring that recognition of Québec as a nation ever become more than a bone one throws at the proverbial dog that you otherwise ignore. After appointing a unilingual Anglo judge and Attorney General (Judge Moldaver & Michael Ferguson, respectively), it’s now blatantly obvious that the PM is thumbing his nose at official bilingualism, an institution that not only directly affects Québec but also the 1 million, francophone’s scattered throughout the country…
I am the 7 Billion
Experts say it took mankind almost two hundred millennia to reach a billion people, that mark was reached back in 1805. Just over two hundred years later our population has increased seven fold. But as the Earth welcomes resident #7,000,000,000 this Halloween day, 2011, we have more to worry about than the over population of our little planet…
Thoughts on Occupation, Patriotism, and Semantics
I’ve noticed a very interesting development over the last few weeks since the Occupy movement has really taken off. At first the criticism was that the protestors were vague and didn’t know what they were protesting. This became a pretty hard myth to push once it became very clear their position was quite simple: It is unfair that one group of people (billionaires) and one subset of society (corporations) are held…