Author: posted by sol chrom

Comrades, this is our moment. Tonight we smash capitalism! (The code word is Dzhugashvili.) OK, cheap laugh. Sorry, but how could I not? Bemoaning the debasement of public discourse isn’t doing much good on its own, so might as well get the easy laughs while I can.  Anyway, to business.

Sometimes playing the nativist card can get you trumped. Harper ministers honking on about “foreign influences” stalling the construction of environmentally destructive pipelines (while they ignore foreign oil lobbyists and Sinopec) must be a little red-faced today. A Canadian Press journo, Steve Rennie, has found that several of those same

[View the story “@dmrider sums it up in three tweets | #TOpoli #TObudget” on Storify] Yeah, I think that pretty well sums it up. Oh, and …  @metromorning Spin, Denzil! Spin! #TOpoli — Sol Chrom (@sol_chrom) January 18, 2012 Related posts: City Council Scorecard: The night Rob Ford lost big

via fordfortoronto.mattelliott.ca Can’t really improve on @GraphicMatt’s work here. In his words: Council has now shown a willingness to ignore and overturn key mayoral directives. The question going forward isn’t whether Rob Ford will be a good mayor or a bad mayor, but whether Rob Ford will be relevant at

Bahrain is us and we are Bahrain, we are the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula, and we should not and will not allow any foreigners interfere in our Arabian Peninsula. — Arabnews.com, Editorial: Helping Bahrain, March 15, 2011 (reader comment) _____________ We are within the laws passed by this Parliament,

An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a discretionary grant subject to executive will. The framers

Wow. Just … wow. I’ve seen talking dolls with those pull-strings on their backs respond more creatively than this. Where did she get the idea that evading a straightforward question and repeating talking points over and over again was the same thing as debating? I never thought I’d see anyone

Earlier this week, my good friend @cityslikr shlepped out to Scarborough to take in a public meeting about the city budget. He wrote it up for Torontoist; you can read about it here.  In brief, his account suggests that Scarborough residents are feeling screwed. Again. They voted for Rob Ford

There’s been some kerfuffle in the cybersphere about “radical conservatives” over the past couple of days, specifically in the context of Toronto politics, the city budget discussions, and the overall philosophy apparently motivating Team Ford. (Caveat: that’s assuming that you can call whatever’s behind their approach a “philosophy” at all.

Selley: Nothing will force the mayor into a retreat on the Sheppard subway. He will insist on its viability and impending ground breaking until the day he leaves office, and thereafter he will claim that it exists even though it does not. He will fill his leisure hours driving up

Partnerships with Myanmar and Sudan… links to Burmese heroin traffickers… With this cast of characters partnering in the development of the Northern Gateway, you’d think Ethical Oil would be at the front of the line condemning the pipeline. That is if you think Ethical Oil’s real purpose is to oppose

Colton Orr says he has two main goals in mind as he exchanges his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey for a Toronto Marlies one. The first is to get himself in game shape after spending much of the season in the pressbox as a healthy scratch. The second is to change

As the post-recession politics of austerity tattoo a bull’s eye onto the backs of workers in Canada and elsewhere, Iceland stands out as a refreshing alternative. Iceland was the first country to feel the effects of the Great Recession of 2008. Its banks owed nearly six times Iceland’s GDP in

Every now and then you want to pause and re-evaluate. Is this working? What am I trying to do here? Is this the best way to go about it? Is it producing the results I want? Now seems as good a time as any. Last night on FB, I offered

Yes, I said it, the whole concept is brilliant. This is a fantastic way to change the debate to an issue that doesn’t really matter. Has anyone seriously thought that we would not be able to sell our oil? Come on.  This is much ado about nothing. Actually, I’m sure

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We may feel, in the face of the ruthless corporate destruction of our nation, our culture, and our ecosystem, powerless and weak. But we are not. We have a power that terrifies the corporate state. Any act of rebellion, no matter how few people show up or how heavily it

Income inequality is a symptom, not the disease. People realize that now. They see the symptom erupting in all directions, but, at a visceral level, they can sense the deeper pathology at work in their lives. The disease is a lack of accountability, a failure of the responsible institutions, political and

There are some truths so hard to face, so ugly and so at odds with how we imagine the world should be, that nobody can accept them. Here’s one: It is obvious that a class system has arrived in America — a recent study of the thirty-four countries in the