The final communiqué issued by the “Five Eyes” surveillance alliance after a recent meeting in Ottawa suggests what might turn out to be a made-in-Canada global encryption backdoor. The post…
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Mariana Valverde examines how P3 schemes are putting financiers in charge of deciding what public infrastructure to build, while leaving future generations of…
Andrew Scheer may be the new leader of the religious right in Canada, but he seems to have as much respect for the Ten Commandments, as he does for our…
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Dennis Howlett writes that a properly designed and fair tax system can reduce inequality both by ensuring support for the people with…
The African American experience in Los Angeles County, California: a brief and selected timeline of sorts.* From 1940-1960, thousands of African Americans migrated from Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, and other southern…
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – The Guardian’s editorial board weighs in on the undue gains going to the 1% while everybody else faces stagnation or worse: While the…
Francisca Linconao is a healer and a spiritual leader of the Mapuche, the largest of the indigenous peoples of Chile. On March 30, 2016 she was arrested along with ten…
In case everyone hasn’t seen this yet, written by someone named Ben Feral Selinger. July 6 Okay, I’m fucking sick of the idiocy and done with writing a diatribe every…
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Danny Dorling writes about the connection between high inequality and disregard for the environment: In a 2016 report, Oxfam found that the greatest…
Although I’ll be remarking on the passing of Bill C-16 elsewhere, I wanted to post Bill Siksay’s closing speech from February 7, 2011, back when the bill was in its…
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Phillip Inman discusses how austerity has proven to be an all-pain, no-gain proposition for the general public which is facing stagnant wages and…
Minister of Children and Youth Services Micheal Coteau has been a champion of human rights especially in the black community and around racism, but when it comes to autistic kids…
When I first heard the incarceration of African Americans in the United States referred to as a “new Jim Crow,” I thought it must be hyperbole. So did Michelle Alexander,…
Here’s the thing. We live in a society that values youth over experience, wisdom, ability and knowledge. I’m not sure why we do that, but children are more valuable to…
Read the open letter recently dispatched to Marion Buller, the Chief Commissioner for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by the victims’ families, advocates, Indigenous…
I read this on Facebook and absolutely love it. The author, Arun Gupta, understands and acknowledges cultural appropriation as a fact and a legitimate concern (as do I). But he…
Many people have been discussing my recent post about cultural appropriation on Facebook. I’m not surprised that many people disagree (that’s why I wrote it, to put my countering opinion…
I’m increasingly dismayed by accusations of cultural appropriation that are used as weapons, rather than as a tool for raising awareness and educating. Accusations of appropriation have become a form…
I’ve just written a blog post on advocacy in Canada’s affordable housing and homelessness sectors. In the post, I define advocacy as “a collective effort to bring about changes to…
I have the most bizarre memory. I mean, I can remember things that happened when I was 2. I remember locker combinations from high school. I remember school seating plans…
