News and Opinion from Montreal, Canada and the World
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…
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’…
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…
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…
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…
I have only two words for Tim Hudak: Forget. You. They are words I never thought I’d use in print, and I don’t use them lightly. But when you actively promote hate, when you target my friends, my neighbors, my fellow citizens and single them out for hatred and condemnation because of who they are, and when you do it while campaigning to represent ALL Ontarians in order to score points with bigots… well you can go forget yourself Hudak, sincerely. I apologize for my language, I really do, but this is so sickening, so appalling, so fundamentally depressing, that I truly am at a loss for words…
Reading coverage of the Ontario leaders debate, one would be forgiven for thinking that it came out a wash, with no leader really picking up support out of the televised platform. In a Globe article published this morning Adam Radwanski even opined that “despite their better efforts, they [the Leaders] most likely succeeded in hardening their own support rather than moving votes”. Now, it’s easy to doubt your own instincts, or be confused about the victor in this debate, especially if you missed the show. After all, each party’s spin teams took to twitter and other social media platforms with a vengeance before the debate even ended, pronouncing it a decisive victory for their candidate. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and for that I turned to the only comprehensive and scientific post-debate poll…
After five long years and two election victories with minority governments, Stephen Harper won his first majority last May in surprising fashion. Despite having numerous unpopular social policies, Harper managed to win an additional 23 seats guaranteeing full control in the House of Commons.
The election brought down Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who even lost his own seat, and formally resigned the next day. In Quebec, BQ leader Gilles Duceppe lost his seat as well and resigned as support for the Bloc Quebecois completely vanished. The only shining light…
As I clicked on yet another internet petition, this time designed to stop the reckless destruction of Oceanic Eco-systems ( AAVAZ.ORG “24 hours to end Ocean clear-cuts”), I realized that I was participating in what has become an increasingly alarming or encouraging trend, depending on how you look at it, in political activism: the internet social network driven protest. In a 2007 interview with CNN, Canadian celebrity lefty and best-selling author Naomi Klein made the following observation about this novel form…
BREAKING NEWS: New York City is under occupation and has been for a few days. You’d think that would be breaking news, wouldn’t you? Even if it’s not the whole city, just the financial quarter. And even if it’s not an invading army, but people upset with the way their own country is running things (in this case, the economy). After all, domestic upheaval in Egypt and people occupying a public square in Bahrain was headline news all around the world just a few months ago, wasn’t it? Come to think of it, the lack of media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest is just like the Arab Spring. State controlled media completely blocked the protesters’ side of the story…