NYT – Covid Too Critical to Be Left to the Private Sector
Back to the future. Move over, Big Pharma. It’s time for governments to take the reins in times of catstrophe. Today’s New York Times editorial urges a greater role for…
April 2021
Oh Dear. Biden’s Done It. Erdogan Will Be Livid.
President Joe Biden has recognized the 1915 Armenian Genocide at the hands of the Turks. Today, April 24, is the anniversary of the atrocity. While other nations have recognized the…
Bitter Sweet
Times of crisis, like we are living in right now, can bring out the best in people. We see that everyday with front line workers in the health sector, who…
Well, at least it’s sunny
The connector to the coil on my ‘74 Super Beetle comes loose when the engine starts. The engine won’t start when the connector isn’t connected. This is a metaphor for…
Saturday Photo: More Whimsy
Last summer some kids near Parc Molson spent some happy time making a little scene in front of a tree in the strip of greenery between the sidewalk and the…
what i’m reading: the sword and the shield: the revolutionary lives of malcolm x and martin luther king jr.
When I read a review of The Sword and The Shield: the Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., I knew it was a book I’d been…
Not His Thing
This week Doug Ford said he was sorry. And he cried. Bruce Arthur writes: The premier is in self-isolation after exposure to a positive COVID case, and broke down talking…
Ghosts of Pandemics.
It had been another hard day for Ontario premier Doug Ford and he drove his truck to his late mother’s house. The doctor had told him to self-isolate because one…
Small donors, potential election volunteers, flock to Alberta NDP as disillusionment with Jason Kenney grows
Alberta’s New Democratic Party raised twice as much as the ruling United Conservative Party in the first quarter of 2021. And we’re not just talking about chicken feed here, people.…
Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson’s first novel, published in 2000, tops independent bookshops’ Alberta fiction bestseller list
Here are the lists of the top 10 fiction and non-fiction titles sold by independent booksellers in Alberta during the week ended Sunday, April 18, 2021. The lists are compiled…
The China dilemma—global warming or human rights?
If anything scares China’s formidable president, Xi Jinping, it’s probably democracy. The idea of the Chinese people choosing their own president must be nightmarish to the new emperor. His current…
Musical interlude
London Grammar – Lose Your Head
City Council ratifies collective agreement with CUPE Local 1004
April 20 2021 Vancouver City Council has ratified the terms of a new collective agreement covering outside workers represented by CUPE Local 1004. Union members voted to accept the settlement…
Body-worn cameras and ending the public subsidization of police accountability
In just the past decade alone, cities across the United States spent in excess of $3 billion to settle police misconduct lawsuits. Illustration by Jared Rodriguez/Truthout. The second-degree murder conviction…
People are Asking. So, What Do You Think?
In recent days I’ve run into a recurring question – in telephone conversations, while getting a haircut and in a pollster’s online surveys. People, it seems, want to know when…
Kasim Ali Tirmizey reviews Fighting for a Hand to Hold, from Race & Class
Fighting for a Hand to Hold: confronting medical colonialism against Indigenous children in Canada By SAMIR SHAHEEN-HUSSAIN (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2020), 360 pp. £23.50. As I was in the…
How Doug Ford And the Con Premiers Failed Canada
He was standing in his late mother's garden. He looked terrible, wasted even. He wanted to convince people that after three days in self-isolation he was OK, and in full…
Let the Dairy Queen return
Every single morning my daughter and I walk past the site of a former Dairy Queen on Centre Street on the way to her bus stop. We often talk about…
Bolsonaro "Brewing Covid Variants, Left, Right, and Centre"
Rightwing politicians have a pretty lousy record of handling the Covid-19 pandemic. From Trump to Bolsonaro to Modi, to any number of Red State state houses and our own Kenney…