Author: kirbycairo

I believe that there can be little doubt now that Western Capitalism is on the brink of some sort of crisis, the only question is how deep is the crisis and will it force a significant shift in the economic and political principles on which our society is run. For

What follows is a brief list of a number of interesting English Women writers (mostly active during the first half of the 19th century). They are mostly writers I have run across during my research for my biography of Mary Russell Mitford. I have finished the first draft of that

Just a quick blogpost to ask does anyone really buy the “this strike is hurting the economy” argument?? I find it amazing that even rightwingers aren’t up in arms about the fact that the government, any government, can legislate workers of a private corporation back to work. By extension rightwingers

In his article today Andrew Coyne returns to his standard praise of the Harpercon government, this time praising them for a so-called renewed sense of purpose and a move away from a “guardianship” approach to government to one concentrating on “the economy.” First let me say that it is an

I have been reading a remarkable book entitled Michael Armstrong: Factory Boy, written in the late 1830s  by Frances Trollope (mother of the more famous Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope). This was, as far as I have been able to tell, the very frist serialized novel by a woman and it

Question; What does one get when you take a conservative lawyer who become one of only two elected members of a party that experiences the worst defeat in British parliamentary history. . . Then you add an few pounds of opportunism in the form of a provincial Liberal leader (don’t

The central political question in Canada has lately become “just how far off the rails will the Conservative Party go?” For a long time political watchers have predicted the eventual self-immolation of Harper and his self-absorbed, bullyboy whackos. It was clear to most of us that once these guys got

If there were any doubts in your mind that we are inching our way toward a police state, there can surely be no doubt left after this week’s passage of Bill 78 in Quebec. That part of the Bill that deals with public demonstrations is a deeply draconian measure that effectively puts an

In a way I am happy that Jim Flaherty, that sad, pathetic, incompetent, shell of a man, has told Canadians that they just need to stop complaining and take any job they can get. I am glad because Mr. Flaherty’s statement is a de facto admission that this government has no

MP Bruce Hyer recently quit the NDP caucus and decided to sit as an Independent MP. In an article Mr. Hyer explains his resignation from the NDP caucus saying “I wil no longer belong to any party that “whips” (mandates) voting by their MPs, especially on issues not clearly laid

One obviously need not be an expert in ‘political science’ to understand that things are reaching a rather difficult point in political history. Almost every country in the world now refers to itself as a “democracy” and yet democracy has never really been subject to the concerted attack by mainstream

Continuing on with the theme of political machismo, we should talk about the degree to which specific, everyday language reinforces the notions of machismo. Common expressions of attack against liberally minded or leftwing people use metaphors designed to view such people as weak. For example, environmentalists are often referred to

My last blogpost concerning the poisoning of our political discourse, and the abusive and vulgar response that I received from its chief antagonist, has reminded me of the (usually unmentioned) toxin that is continual put into our political system by so many of the politicians and political commentators – political machismo. It

For a long time now we have grown accustomed to the Conservative Party poisoning the political discourse of the nation. It has become so commonplace for the Harpercons to feed the nation pictures of opposition leaders with birds pooping on them or as representing sinister foreign forces that we hardly

I don’t think I am naive. Nor am I ignorant of contemporary or historical political issues; I have made a careful study of political philosophy and tried to stay abreast of global and national socio-economic struggles. And yet, I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why people like Jean

I am surely not the only one to notice that while every government is bound to fall prey to one kind of scandal or another, our present government is continually involved in scandals that involve some kind of systematic abuse of democracy and parliamentary process. Of course, the sponsorship scandal

It is one of the great ironies of modern times that the rightwing has managed convince so many people that ‘class-warfare’ is an antiquated notion from a past age, when actually class-warfare is exactly what the right has been waging for a generation, and continue to wage everyday. Of course,

I believe that Harper and his bullies have poisoned our political culture in what might be a more or less permanent way. Even if we can escape this atmosphere of anger, hatred, attack, and offensiveness, it will take many years and a concerted effort lasting many years by a large