Tag: Social Issues

The Progressive Revolution

For much of the past thirty years conservative leaders have been driving the nation uncompromisingly and unapologetically rightward. In the 21st century, that right curve has revolved so much that it is now going completely backwards. Woman’s rights, union rights, the poor and even the middle class have been under constant attack for years, but as of late conservatives have been going to extremes…

Passing Gas

Something smells in our democracies. We the people control our government, we all own our public land, but the resources found on that land get sold to whomever the government decides to offer contracts to (without our permission). The end result is that multi-national oil conglomerates rake in hundreds of billions of dollars while the average North American family winds up paying an average $4200 a year on gasoline…

Caterpillar Crawls Away

The locked-out Electro-Motive plant in London, Ontario has decided to close the plant permanently. The announcement comes just over a month after Progress Rail decided to lockout its workers citing operating costs as its main motivation. Progress Rail Services Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. construction equipment conglomerate Caterpillar that owns the Electro-Motive plant had locked out its unionized workers on New Year’s Day…

Education Is the Key

During a campaign stop in New Hampshire the other day, Rick Santorum said “What elitist snobbery out of this man!” referring to Barack Obama’s statement that every child should go to college by 2020. I have no idea why Santorum is opposed to giving every student a chance to go to college as it is central to improving our standard of living and our economy…

New Canadian Surveillance Bill Recipe for Government Abuse of Power

When Harper’s anti-terrorism czar Vic Toews tells Canadians that they should trust their government not to abuse the new set of Orwellian measures that he is proposing with his online surveillance bill, you know it’s time to sound the alarm! In much the same way the Government deliberately stokes hysteria over terrorist threats to legitimize the re-enactment of the invasive clauses of the Anti-Terrorism Act, by claiming falsely…

The 1% View on Freedom

A thought occurred to me the other day as I read about New York Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg releasing the hounds on the protesters occupying Zuccotti Park. As the police evicted, assaulted and arrested both protesters and journalists, destroyed a 5,500 book library and blacked out media coverage I couldn’t help but think that the rich of this world seem to look at freedom a bit differently. In a land where freedom is taken for granted, where the average man’s idea of freedom…

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…