Blog
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Another political season is over
As you may have noticed I haven’t been blogging much over the last couple of weeks. In part it is the result of having some doubts about what the point is.
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The Incredible Shrinking Country
Is the world, including Canada, headed for the third Great Depression? Watching the results of the Toronto G8/G20 meetings was like hearing news that a giant comet is heading for earth and we are just waiting for impact. Those meetings of the world’s largest and/or growing economies committed governments to massive deficit reduction in spite of the real concern that we are facing a the possibility of a so-called “double-dip” recession. That possibility is now a certainty.
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My heart aches for Omar Khadr
My heart was breaking this morning reading the report on Omar Khadr’s decision to fire his lawyers in protest over the horrors he is being subject to in what he considers to be a rigged trial.
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Is this what a police state looks like?
Police states don’t appear full blown, over night. They are, like any other social phenomenon, part of social and political process – the end result of a long term corruption of the political culture and the incremental diminishing of democracy.
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Austerity and other euphemisms of G20 economics
The dreaded ‘D’ word looms over this G20 summit like a bloated banker, but what does it mean for us and why should we care about it? The deficit is the difference between what governments spend and what they take in. In times of economic crisis, deficit spending is high. Governments often claim deficits are the fault of social spending that’s too high. But in fact deficits always grow when economic activity slows down or contracts because tax revenue falls while state spending rises. In Greece, we’ve recently seen the enormous social upheaval caused by attempting to cut the deficit. In Greece, Spain and Portugal trade unions responded to the package of layoffs, cuts and tax increases with a mass wave of protests and general strikes. It is utterly irrational for workers to suffer in the name of reduced deficits.
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Asbestos: Quebec Labour’s Shame
Asbestos kills more people worldwide by far, than any other industrial material. And that includes Quebec, where 55 per cent of all worker fatalities in 2009 were caused by asbestos. Yet the entire Quebec labour movement aggressively supports this killer industry.
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Punishment Park: An Eyewitness Report of Police Violence in East Toronto
As we scrambled North along Pape, residents watched aghast from their houses and apartments. Cops had sealed off the intersection at Pape and Queen, but allowed our small group to pass. As we walked back down Queen, a number of vans filled with cops in riot gear filed past toward detention centre. Everything I saw today only proves that the unbelievable violence and fear on our streets is caused by these police and the extraordinary judicial powers they have been granted to seize and arrest anyone without warrant or reason. As we chanted “we are peaceful, how about you?” they charged toward us striking whoever stood in their way. Please forward this on to anyone you know who has accused protestors of hooliganism and violence. After this morning’s events, it is quite clear that the violence lies on the side of those 20,000 armed cops and the politicians who back their brutality; not the 100 of us demanding justice and peace for our friends and comrades.
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Toronto is Burning! Or is it?
For people sitting at home and watching TV news last night, Toronto was burning. The same police car on Queen St W. burned and blew up over and over again.The same image of a young man very violently smashing Starbucks windows appeared over and over again. Windows smashed all along Yonge St. None of us had ever seen Toronto like this. It was shocking.
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Women, The G8/20 and Maternal Health
When the leaders of the 20 most powerful nations meet in Toronto this weekend—behind the snipers and barricades taxpayers graciously provided—they will draft policies that impact our lives, jobs, families and communities for years to come. One particularly hot topic leading up to the G20 summit has been the health of women and children around the world. With 70 per cent of the world’s poor made up of women, this is an issue that is demanding global attention and action. A handful of powerful—most male—leaders will shape policies that affect those women who are the primary caregivers and food providers for their families and communities.
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The banality of evil or how they turned Toronto into a police state
Last Friday I walked along the security fence and felt like I was in a concentration camp and that was before thousands of police officers occupied our city. That’s how it feels now, a city under occupation
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