Well, we have confirmation by Thomas Walkom in today’s Star of two facts about Conservatives: a) They are ideologically opposed to government being in the business of businessb) They are inept managers of the economy.Both facts are evident in Walkom: A…
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Politics and its Discontents: To Vote Or Not To Vote
Next to Stephen Harper achieving a majority government, for me the deepest disappointment in the recent federal election was the relatively poor voter turnout. Despite some really creative efforts to mobilize young people to become participants in the…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Sun News Network – Full of Sound And Fury, Signifying Nothing
When Sun News Network was fast approaching its debut, I had this fantasy whereby I would watch it diligently so that I could make regular complaints to the CRTC for every infraction of broadcast regulations it made. However, after watching about 10 min…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Judge Excoriates Cops As Thugs, Expresses Content Superiors Who Conceal
Yesterday I posted some of the comments made by Justice Allen upon sentencing two Toronto police officers to a year of house arrest for beating a Cabbagetown man in 2009. Today there are further comments in The Star by the Superior Court Judge, includ…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: More on Asbestos
The other day I wrote a piece lamenting the ongoing immoral Canadian export of asbestos and the fact that Canada was the sole country that recently prevented it from being listed as a toxic substance under the Rotterdam Convention. I also suggested tha…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: the Real News Asks Some Important Questions About The G20 Secret Law
Although hardly the best interview I have seen, the following is worth viewing inasmuch it raises real questions about credibility regarding who the driving force was behind requesting the Public Works Protection Act invoked during the G20 Summit. Was …
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Judge: Police Have A Culture That Rejects Accountability
Those were the words of Justice Elliot Allen as he sentenced two Toronto police officers to one year of house arrest for beating a Cabbagetown man in 2009. As is the usual practice when one of their own is under judicial scrutiny, the courthouse was p…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Why Civilian Oversight of the Police is Crucial
Rex Meade of Dundas has a very interesting letter on police heavy-handedness and how to deal with it in today’s Star. If you get a chance, take a look at it.Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: G20 Summit Police Tactics Continue to Outrage Canadians
There is a series of letters in today’s Star that articulate the ongoing sentiments of ordinary Canadians a year after people had their Charter Rights ripped away by an out-of-control police force during the G20 Summit in Toronto. There is also one by…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Asbestos – Canada’s Shame Continues
I recently wrote about the opportunity that Canada had to end its pariah-like status by no longer opposing the listing of asbestos as a toxic product in the Rotterdam Convention. Because the Convention requires consensus, Canada, of all the member cou…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Chief Bill Blair: No Apology, No Resignation
Having released a self-serving 70 page report reviewing the G20 Summit debacle, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair has concluded he has nothing to apologize for and will not consider resigning. As reported in today’s Star, despite a public opinion poll sh…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Canada’s Quasi-Police state
While the Premier of Ontario continues to blithely and glibly disavow any responsibility for the horrendous abuses of Charter Rights that took place during last June’s G20 Summit, admitting only that he “could have done a better job of communicating,” …
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Some Penetrating Truths
While I always attempt to write as carefully as I can, conciseness and clarity sometimes elude me. Because of these lapses, I take the liberty of reproducing a letter that appeared in today’s print edition of the Toronto Star by Enrico Carlson that off…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: The Moral Fiber of Dalton McGuinty – Being Smug Means Never having To Say You’re Sorry
I have written so much about last June’s G20 Summit and the widespread violation of Charter Rights presided over by Police Chief Bill Blair and Premier Dalton McGuinty that my postings almost border on obsession. However, the absence of any redress for…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: With Powers Beyond Those of Mortal Men (And Women)
Loathsome worm that I am, I have spent the past year regularly criticizing the police for their mass suspension of our Charter rights during last June’s G20 Summit in Toronto. I saw them as a force gone wild, intoxicated by their own power, emboldened…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Corporate Ethics – A Contemporary Oxymoron
To those trusting souls willing to leave their and their country’s fate to the market forces of unfettered capitalism, please take a few minutes to read the situation of black South African gold miners who toiled under apartheid with no protection from…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Asbestos – An Opportunity to End Canada’s Shame
While I have written previously on Canada’s ongoing indefensible practice of exporting chrysotile (asbestos) to developing nations despite its well-known lethal health effects, this country does get the chance to begin to rectify things today as it mee…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Does This Peel Police Action Help You To Sleep Better at Night?
I stand to be corrected, but I was under the impression that in Canada, we are, at least in theory, protected from arbitrary police intrusion and arrest. Apparently the Peel Police are not aware of this legal ‘quibble’.Recommend this Post
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Some Food for Thought
Perhaps it is because I am currently reading The Trouble With Billionaires, by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, but I have become especially sensitive to the increasingly shrill anti-union rhetoric by CEO’s and some allegedly ‘ordinary’ members of the pu…
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: Another Sad Story of Police Misconduct
The headline in yesterday’s Globe (on-line edition) really says it all: Peel police officers fabricated evidence in prostitution case: judge
The story tells of how the two offending Peel officers claimed that a fake i.d. allowing a 17-year-old to wo…
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