Why Omar Khadr still matters
A decade after a wounded Omar Khadr, a then fifteen year old Canadian citizen, decided to lob a fatal grenade in the middle of a firefight in Afghanistan, Ottawa is…
bazie
A more realistic approach to limiting the influence of money in politics
Cenk Ugyur, host of the popular The Young Turks (a progressive, internet-based US politics show), frequently like to deride the pervasive and damaging influence of Big Money in US politics,…
The perfect time for Canada to invest in itself is now
Despite stubbornly high unemployment, tepid economic growth, and a large current account deficit, Canada enjoys one macroeconomic indicator that many crisis hit European governments would dearly love: insanely low borrowing…
NDP leadership election campaign debt
The NDP leadership campaign sparked considerable interest among Canadians and saw NDP membership soar, rising over 50% in six months to 128,351 on election day. Many of these first time…
Bob Rae’s Exporting Democracy
When Michael Ignatief was the leader of the Liberal Party, I lamented that someone whose pre-politics life was as an expert on foreign affairs and had written several books on…
Anarchist right vs anarchist left ideologies
I don’t much care for the ideologies of either the so called anarchist right (libertarianism) or the anarchist left (a hodgepodge of post- and proto-communist, syndicalist, participatory economic, and other…
The God particle, and what it has to do with God
Oh how I wish the recently demonstrated Higgs Boson, which bestows mass on particles, had never acquired the moniker the ‘God Particle’. I suppose there is one benefit: it increases…
Bev Oda’s luxurious, tax payer funded lifestyle comes to an end
After months of continued pressure, Minister of International Development, Bev Oda’s ridiculously obscene, tax payer funded lifestyle has come to an end: she has resigned. I won’t say more here…
The messy divorce of horse racing and slots in Ontario
I play online poker regularly. My wife loves to watch horse racing on TV. Given this, one might think I would be sympathetic to the long running slots-at-racetrack program which…
Religion and Language: Quasi-Religious Terminology
There are a host of commonly used words in the English language which I like to call quasi-religious. Words like soul, spiritual, fate, mother nature, energy, and the like. These…
Roberts’ Obamacare decision was not about legitimacy
With the US Supreme Court’s historic decision to let the Affordable Care Act stand has come much speculation on the motives and rationale behind Chief Justice Roberts’ decision to side…
Uncompromising Freedom of Speech
A German Salafist Muslim Group (Salafists generally considered an extremist variant of Islam) is causing controversy with a plan to distribute some 25 million German language Korans. That something specific…
On Christopher Hitchens
When asked, several years back, what he thought of fellow leftish dissident Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens made the point that while he respected much of Chomsky’s work, Chomsky was overvaluing…
Is there a need for a centrist party in Canada?
There have been times in history when there is a wide political space between the right most and left most parties. On the far left, one had advocates of something…
Executive First Class
On the plane to Peru, cut off from my usually endless sources of news which perennially gives me causes to vent frustration at, I am reduced to unleashing my criticism…
Solidarity with Quebec Student Protesters
Quebec students, outraged over a 75% tuition increase, have sparked the largest protests in Quebec’s history and have already managed the rare achievement of achieving genuine, if minor, concessions that…
On the compatibility of science and religion
Most people accept, at least tacitly, the majority of scientific claims: general relativity, quantum mechanics, pharmaceuticals; people accept that these work more or less the way the scientists say they…