Public health and corporate iniquity
Forty-one states and the District of Columbia have sued Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, accusing it of using features that hook children to its platforms even as…
Bill Longstaff
A Gaza-Canadian analogy
Reading about the circumstances of the Palestinians in Gaza, I was reminded of a piece of our own history: the infamous pass system. In the late 19th and early 20th…
A loss for illiberalism, a gain for democracy
Generations of Communism is not the best training for democracy. So perhaps we shouldn’t have expected that when the Soviet Union collapsed under its own dead weight, the countries that…
Are our hands clean?
One of the best articles I have read about the Hamas-Israel war is The New York Times “There Is a Jewish Hope for Palestinian Liberation. It Must Survive” by Peter…
Jewish wisdom; Gentile folly
Reading The New York Times, as I do every morning (the world’s best newspaper), I have encountered a number of articles on the current hostilities in Palestine. I couldn’t help…
Limits of the free market
Whenever I do those quizzes that purport to reveal where you fit on the political/philosophical spectrum, they insist I’m a social democrat. This rather surprises me because I tend to…
A woman’s world
Some years ago I wrote a book based on the theme that women are better designed for the modern world than men. (Visit this page for a free copy.) Men…
Terrorism—weapon of the weak?
Hamas’s invasion of Israel has once again brought attention to the Palestine problem. The routine of Israel oppressing the Palestinians while simultaneously stealing their land has once again been interrupted…
Why are we less polarized than the U.S.?
Witnessing the current state of affairs in our great neighbour to the south, the word polarization leaps to the tongue. In a previous post I suggested what we call polarization…
The West takes on an orange hue
With the big victory for the NDP in the Manitoba election on Tuesday, the western provinces are now bookended by social democratic governments. In between are two conservative governments but…
Precariat jobs could be good jobs
What is a good job? In most people’s minds I assume that would be something that pays well and provides good benefits, steady employment and satisfying work. In the post-war…
Trump simply never grew up
There seems to be no limit to the incendiary statements ex-US President Donald Tump is capable of. Earlier this week he made an egregious attack on General Mark Milley, recently…
India—too big to hold accountable?
The world isn’t a fair place. The rule of law doesn’t apply globally. Might is often right. This reality overarches Canada’s accusation that the Indian government orchestrated the murder/assassination of…
What polarization?
Do conservatives like democracy? That may seem like an unfair question. And for many conservatives it may be. Bur it seems there are many who don’t, and they are very…
Big state takes on big oil—a lesson for Alberta?
Someone reading this blog might get the impression I take pleasure in hearing about environmental lawsuits against oil companies and their friends. They would be right. I do. And so…
Calgary gets serious about housing
Somewhat surprisingly, we have an issue which all three major parties have agreed on. A housing crisis. There is even agreement on how to deal with it. Both the governing…
Do kids have to sue for a sustainable future?
Much publicity was generated recently by a court case in Montana (Held v. State of Montana). A nonprofit called Our Children’s Trust, acting on behalf of 16 young Montanans, sued…
Talking to China
Winston Churchill is credited with saying “It’s better to jaw-jaw than war-war.” It is very much better indeed when two protagonists are armed with nuclear weapons, say like the U.S.…
Sortition—assembling citizens
A recent essay in The New York Times prompts me once again to write about a favourite topic of mine, namely citizens’ assemblies. The essay, by Adam Grant, was entitled…
An American hero
The U.S. has come a long way. Any doubt about that was erased last Monday. On that day, a Southern black woman announced that she would hold a former president…