Caterpillar Crawls Away

The locked-out Electro-Motive plant in London, Ontario has decided to close the plant permanently. The announcement comes just over a month after Progress Rail decided to lockout its workers citing operating costs as its main motivation. Progress Rail Services Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. construction equipment conglomerate Caterpillar that owns the Electro-Motive plant had locked out its unionized workers on New Year’s Day…

Blue Monday & The Agony of Small Talk

It’s January. We’ve spent the last month taking part in festivities that were more mandatory than celebratory, blew our vacation days, “oh crapped” on our resolutions before the week was out and stepped bleary eyed into the snowy fresh start disoriented and aimless, yet again. Happy New Year, by the way. We’re still saying that, right? You’d think we’d have the hang of this by now: we’re in vitamin D withdrawl, our friends have turned from real people to miniaturized thumbnails of themselves as we all slip into the Season of the Long Blah…

Education Is the Key

During a campaign stop in New Hampshire the other day, Rick Santorum said “What elitist snobbery out of this man!” referring to Barack Obama’s statement that every child should go to college by 2020. I have no idea why Santorum is opposed to giving every student a chance to go to college as it is central to improving our standard of living and our economy…

New Canadian Surveillance Bill Recipe for Government Abuse of Power

When Harper’s anti-terrorism czar Vic Toews tells Canadians that they should trust their government not to abuse the new set of Orwellian measures that he is proposing with his online surveillance bill, you know it’s time to sound the alarm! In much the same way the Government deliberately stokes hysteria over terrorist threats to legitimize the re-enactment of the invasive clauses of the Anti-Terrorism Act, by claiming falsely…

The 1% View on Freedom

A thought occurred to me the other day as I read about New York Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg releasing the hounds on the protesters occupying Zuccotti Park. As the police evicted, assaulted and arrested both protesters and journalists, destroyed a 5,500 book library and blacked out media coverage I couldn’t help but think that the rich of this world seem to look at freedom a bit differently. In a land where freedom is taken for granted, where the average man’s idea of freedom…

MIGS Conference: The Responsibility to Protect

The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) celebrated the 10th Anniversary of its program the Responsibility to Protect on October 20 and 21. The conference featured some of the key players in the international arena, such as Dr. Frank Chalk, Kyle Matthews, and the former Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin among many others. Some called the MIGS conference “a conference of conscience,” but in my opinion, the conference had a political agenda that lacked the human story and the reality of what leads to a genocide…

Justice Moldaver: An Injustice Waiting To Happen

When is Canada going to learn what Québec already seems to understand: that Harper and his Tories were never really serious about ensuring that recognition of Québec as a nation ever become more than a bone one throws at the proverbial dog that you otherwise ignore. After appointing a unilingual Anglo judge and Attorney General (Judge Moldaver & Michael Ferguson, respectively), it’s now blatantly obvious that the PM is thumbing his nose at official bilingualism, an institution that not only directly affects Québec but also the 1 million, francophone’s scattered throughout the country…

I am the 7 Billion

Experts say it took mankind almost two hundred millennia to reach a billion people, that mark was reached back in 1805. Just over two hundred years later our population has increased seven fold. But as the Earth welcomes resident #7,000,000,000 this Halloween day, 2011, we have more to worry about than the over population of our little planet…

Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies Conference

This Thursday and Friday the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) will be hosting a conference on the media’s role in halting Mass Atrocities and to mark the 10th Anniversary of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) initiative by the United Nations. For those familiar with the terrain of activism in mass media, it is common knowledge that spreading awareness is one of the keys to preventing crimes and injustices…

Occupy Wall Street Goes Global

Occupy Wall Street and the so called 99% movement got a big boost this past Saturday as hundreds of thousands of citizens from the developed world marched…

Why Occupy?

On Saturday, October 15th, well over a thousand cities around the world, including Montreal, will fuel the “Occupy Movement” by hosting, or intensifying, their very own “Occupy (insert city here.)” The occupation of these various cities will go on for as long as it takes for our governments to acknowledge that there is a problem with our economic systems.

If your reading this, you’ve heard about Occupy Wall Street, let me tell you why it matters…

Shout it out loud: Artist Gina Birch does post-punk girl art

L’Ecole Des Beaux-Arts is pulsating with art and energy on Saturday as artists, students and punk rock enthusiasts come together to contemplate a very unique female experience. The Raincoats: Adventures art show, at the top a winding staircase, starts behind an ominous black curtain. Inside, a woman screams wildly. Cautiously peeling open the curtain, I crash into the chest of a sheepish-looking young man. He apologizes and sails down the stairs to the lobby. God, what’s happening in there? Then I see her – the screamer – the frame focused tightly around her face, catching a moment…

Some Insight into Insite

Last Friday in a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously that prohibiting Insite, the safe injection clinic, to operate under an exemption from drug laws would be a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, the ruling said “Insite saves lives. Its benefits have been proven. There has been no discernible negative impact on the public safety…

Enter the Omnibus: Why Harper is Dead Wrong on Mandatory Minimums

Reaction to the Harper government’s new omnibus crime legislation on both sides of the aisle has been rather predictable. The new, massive piece of legislation which contains crackdowns on young offenders, sexual criminals and cannabis growers drew immediate heat from both the Liberals and the NDP, both for its content and for being an unnecessary distraction from job creation. The bill, with its focus on the strict enforcement of mandatory minimum sentences and harsher treatment of convicted offenders also drew heat for coming at a time when the crime rate is on a steady decline…

Riding the Lightning

With the emergence of Rick Perry in the race for the Republican presidential nomination and the fast approaching day of execution for Troy Davis, the debate revolving around the death penalty has begun to heat up yet again. The practice of capital punishment has been used by virtually every society since the dawn of civilization and continues on in modern times, but why is this ancient act of social revenge still present in some of our so-called “civil” societies…

Howl III @ La Sala Rosa This Thursday

Howl! Arts Collective presents an evening of contemporary jazz at La Sala Rosa this Thursday September 15th, as part of the Howl! Concert Series. Howl! III will showcase celebrated New York-based solo musicians Matthew Shipp on piano and Matana Roberts on saxophone, with Montreal sound poet and author Kaie Kellough; “three unforgettable artists representing the beautiful arc of jazz culture, live artistic meditations framed by both the liberation roots and contemporary artistic exploration in jazz.” According to its Howlarts.net, “the Howl! Arts Collective is a Montreal-based…