Critical Perspectives and Reflections

Power is one of the most important elements of life. Many people have written on the importance of power, Lord Acton1, (Lord Acton Quote Archive) is probably the most famous example but Saul Alinsky (1971) and Krupali, (2020) among others also discussed its importance. My own definition of power is a simple one, “The degree to which we are able to act to influence our environment, - to get things done, or make things happen; or to keep things from getting done, or happening.” (Lee, 2011) Today, we live in an age where bromides about power seem to abound. Power is seen as a bad or corrupting force and to be avoided (Shea, 2012) for example. Or, power is a good thing, and within us all, as Hay (1991) suggests. A corollary of that is that we do not, and cannot, be powerful if we do not believe we are powerful and thus, to be powerful (in a good way), requires that we believe that we have power and the agency to achieve what needs achieving. There is a quote by Alice Walker (2004) that fit...

I’m afraid history has shown time and time again the “organized” religion is far more harmful than helpful. There can NEVER BE PEACE with RELIGIONS!!!!! - Facebook posts There is a bit of rhetoric that has been slagging away at professed Christians and suggesting that they are possessed by a particular proclivity for violence, and often hypocrisy. One such piece, easily found on the web, is supposedly articulated by the great Indigenous statesman, Tecumseh that goes: When Jesus Christ came upon the Earth, you killed Him. The son of your own God. And only after He was dead did you worship Him and start killing those who would not. It is a very popular quote, and there is no denying the latter section. It is often seen on Facebook or in letters to the editor. It is typically used when a person wants to have a go at the, pretty often well-known, hypocrisy of a goodly number of Christians, (e.g., the fundamentalist gangs that are so keen on the obviously immoral D.J. Trump, the Roman Catho...

  Listening to CBC Morning Live's and the National's  reporting on Haiti and the assassination of Moise's assassination. It made me nauseous. I had to scribble an e-mail to a former j-school classmate, now a CBC reporter, Evan Dyer. I copied head of CBC news and the ombudsman. If you find it useful feel free to share it and amplify accordingly: Hello Evan, I am writing to express my deep concern about CBC's reporting on Haiti in general and yours specifically re Moise's assassination. Your reporting is entirely void of context and historical background that would bring some understanding for Canadians. If CBC News programs were the only source Canadians resorted to on Haiti, the public broadcaster certainly would be remiss by severely damaging the public's right to know. From the archives, historically Canada has been implicated in Duvalierist corruption: "The planning meeting for the coup d'etat and putting Haiti under trusteeship was organized by Cana...

We ha ve made it past Canada Day with the existential angst about the calls for and against the cancelation of celebrations. Whatever people did, or didn’t do, to acknowledge the competing desires for the “holiday” however, we need to come to grips with the meaning of the term genocide. I keep stumbling over posts, or letters to editors, complaining of its use because there was no huge slaughter of Indigenous people (though we don’t really know yet the total numbers of the lives lost to neglect and abuse in residential “schools”. And we often fail to take into account the numbers who died thanks to the hunger/starvation due to John A. MacDonald’s policy of “clearing the plains”). Because of the way we have been taught our history, up until recently, we tend to believe that genocide must involve the outright killing of a people; like the herding of six million European Jews, as well as Gays and Roma, into gas chambers in Nazi Germany; or the murder of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turkis...