Just keeping y’all updated on that little argument we had a while back about whether or not poverty is a problem worth addressing in the world. Yes, people actually argue about that. Here’s a BBC report about the latest UN findings (I know, I know, how can we trust the UN, and have we taken […] More »

Check it out in the podcasting section of your iTunes music store (under CBC Unplugged). Just listened to an interesting cast from the picket lines in Regina. You can also get them from Tod Maffin’s blog, cbcunplugged.com Hmmmm, what does it say about management’s position when the locked-out workers can easily produce the company’s product […] More »

Norman Spector missed this one today, so I’ll help him out: Clouds part for Bombardier Business jet sales help firm post $117-million profit but investors wary — Globe and Mail. Bombardier expectations crash Share price falls 8%: To have lowest flagship jet delivery in 13 years — National Post More »

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece for the Post about an Ottawa art exhibit about shit. In passing, I made a few snide remarks about some comments that MP Chuck Strahl had made regarding the show, assuming Strahl was just another humourless paleo-conservative. Strahl wrote a good-natured and quite funny reply to […] More »

Writing as one who has choked through each and every one of the 41 Toronto smog alert days so far this year (smog in the middle of winter—now there’s a hopeful trend) I now nominate Jim Stanford for some sort of official position in charge of getting me to work and back. His latest column […] More »

At last, nearly 20 years into free trade with the United States and with things really not going our way in the softwood lumber dispute, even the architects of the Free Trade Agreement and its successor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, are sounding free trade’s death knell. Apparently, these politicians, policy analysts and negotiators […] More »

Instead of settling for yesterday’s three-paragraph news release, or quibbling with this or that word in the three-paragraph news release, or complaining about the differences between the French and English versions of a three-paragraph news release, I do wish I’d heard from more readers who believe the Canadian people deserve more than a three-paragraph news […] More »

It’s just one more night until the THIS Magazine Summer Party! Join us at Cadillac Lounge (1296 Queen Street West) on Thursday, August 18 to celebrate the LAUNCH of our fabulous summer issue-come out to the party for your free copy! THE DETAILS… Where: Cadillac Lounge, 1296 Queen Street W When: Thursday, August 18. Doors […] More »

Looks like CBC management has actually gone ahead with the lock out. It seems like a bizarre move, especially since CBC’s radio ratings have been on an upward incline lately. Will the damage (both PR-wise and in terms of employee morale) done by locking out employees really be justified by gaining a bit more wiggle […] More »

Babur the cruise missile was launched on a test flight today in Pakistan. Not to be confused with Babar the elephant king who wanders around spreading a message of peace, or Babur the restaurant, which has a supertasty Indian buffet on Queen Street in Toronto, Babur the cruise missile is a death delivering device that […] More »

Good work by Tim Harper at The Toronto Star, following the Arar court case in Brooklyn, which opened yesterday. I can’t find any mention of it in any other source, American or Canadian (anybody?). Maher Arar is suing John Ashcroft and others over his extraordinary rendition to Syria in 2002. How are the Americans, with […] More »