Critical Perspectives and Reflections

What with all the illegal shenanigans of the former president of the USA seeming to be coming to some moment of truth (at least, most of us hope that is what’s happening) and getting huge coverage, we should not let some of our own Canadian stories of vile leadership be forgotten. I’ve been musing on the disappointing, but hardly unexpected, results of the recent election in the Province of Alberta. For what it is worth, there is one thing I think we have learned (or should have learned) in the months that have gone by since the alt-right of conservative minded politicos in the UCP got rid of the already cynical, right-wing Premier, Jason Kenny.i Smith and her UCP, true believing adherents have demonstrated that they are among those arrogant ignoramuses who think they can create their own truth, like climate change is a hoax aimed at beggaring, specifically, the whole population of Alberta, for example. They neither understand, nor show the slightest interest, in learning about the pro...

The right wing of the right wing (mostly in the USA but in Canada to a certain extent) has recently developed a new issue to feed their anger and sense of being a persecuted band of right-thinking moralists. We speak of course about the existence of Drag. This is the practice of some of the male persuasion (mostly men but not always) donning clothing typically worn by women and, usually, applying lots of makeup and glitter and then going “on stage” to sing, dance and generally entertain groups of people who enjoy this kind of show. Full disclosure, first, one of my grandkids identifies as, to quote, “I'm gender fluid and bisexual, but not biromantic), but often just refer to myself as queer to save time ”. Second, I have never been to a drag show and have no plan on, or interest in, taking one in. So, I’m far from an expert. My experience of drag and drag queens is limited to seeing movies like, Priscilla Queen of the Desert ”, “La Cage aux Folles” and its American version “T...

It is not farfetched to say that the country of Iran has a long history of protests which lead to revolution, the second of which, in 1979 brought the present religious Islamic rule into being1. However, in the present Iranian protests we may be seeing, for the first time in history, that it is women who have been both the spark and engine for a movement that has as its aim the change of government of a country. The trigger was ignited by the torture and death (continually denied by the authorities) of a young woman, Mahsa Amini. She was the twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman who, after her arrest by the regime’s morality police, was sent to a re-education center for “inappropriate attire” - too much hair showing from a head scarf - in Tehran. It was quickly known that she ended up in a coma and died three days later, on September 16, 2022. Very soon protests began with participants voicing anger at her death. In rather short order they evolved into calls to oust the regime: “Death to t...

It is interesting that since time immemorial people have developed rituals. Sometimes we forget the initial meaning of the ritual. Take Christmas. It was originally “the Mass being celebrated at the time of Christ's birth”. That is literally what the word means. What I found helpful is an idea I came across in my studies at McGill University years ago. One professor shared with us the difference between a sign and a symbol. A sign is literally what it says. So, when one comes to a stop sign there is only one meaning. Stop. No rolling stops allowed. The meaning of a symbol on the other hand, is the meaning that a community embraces. This can change over time as the community's values and belief systems undergo changes. In the Netherlands they celebrate Sinter Klaas-Santa Claus, on December 5. The celebration takes on much of the meaning of what Christmas is in Canada. There is goodwill, exchanges of gifts, celebrations, etc. Then Christmas is a quiet day for reflection and for C...

Well, the “world” is at it again, assuring that one of the two most successful, avaricious and corrupt sports corporations in the world, FIFA (Federation International de Football Association. The other is, of course, the IOC - International Olympic Committee) has already begun sucking most of the air out of all the sports coverage throughout the world, and will do so for the next four weeks. We can see it here in Canada (our team, as everyone must know by now, played and lost a close one in its first game, to a world power house) the hype is going strong. Along with the media attention, which probably rivals that of the Russian War against Ukraine and the machinations of the odious Trump, this SOCCERPALUZA will be pulling in an obscene amount of the world’s money. It’s business as usual. This World Cup was awarded to Qatar not because the country is in anyway a sport superpower, not because it was easy to get to, or because it had a wonderful climate (it has the reverse). Let us be cl...

When it comes to the enshrined rights of Ontarian’s and Canadians the Ontario Conservative Party’s concern is registering zero. What a collection of truly vile, self-serving, self-absorbed blackguards. This collection of filth were actually trying to remove the enshrined charter right of workers, in this case Education workers, to withhold their labour for better conditions.     Yes, I get it, as it has to do with teaching and the kids will suffer. Or so our expensive, private schooled Minister of Education insists. If you actually believe that the Conservatives truly care about children’s education, then you are incredibly naive.    If they actually cared about kids, I mean really care d, perhaps they would actually invest in education rather than pushing this distance learning malarkey. Then again, they could invest in healthcare, or education and healthcare/education for special needs children which they don’t. Rather, they cut programs focused on kids, ...

According to abundant media accounts, the police were providing, to the variety of leaderships of the convoy gangs that took over Ottawa, a nice stream of information on actions planned by the different police services. These were members of the police who were supposed to be protecting the public from this bunch of thugs. An article in the investigative journal, Press Progress (2022) states that:     Top convoy organizers were receiving leaked information that tipped them off to the plans of Ottawa Police throughout the convoy occupation, according to testimony from the convoy leaders’ lawyer. Keith Wilson, a lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, who represented convoy leaders and sometimes acted as their spokesperson, testified Wednesday he was aware of police leaking operational plans to convoy organizers. “You were getting information from sympathetic police?” Paul Champ, a lawyer representing Ottawa residents, asked Wilson. “That is correct,” Wilson r...

Canada’s Aboriginals need to learn the value of hard work more than they need compensation for abuse suffered in Residential Schools. - Pierre Poilievre, Conservative MP and Parliamentary Secretary; June, 2008 Pierre Poilievre’s easy win of the CPC leadership has been pretty big news in this country. Nevertheless, with all the kerfuffle going on about the death of the British Queen, and the ceremonies that have followed, the recent election of the new leader has received somewhat less media coverage and discussion as would normally occur. But we need to think and talk about, not only the kind of leader he would be, but what type of human being the man is, and what it means about his party, and future implications it might have for the Canadian political scene. Leaving aside his ridiculously and patronizing words, “Canada’s Aboriginals” - really just inane, colonial and racist, codswallop - let us be very clear that, with the snarling and threatening Poilievre becoming leader of the CPC...

Last Thursday, like everyone in the world it seems, I read, saw and heard that the Queen of England had died. Since then, every news outlet of every type, as well as social media, has been jam packed full of stories about the Queen and of how almost all people are mourning the loss. While the general reaction has been sadness and there has been a huge outpouring of sympathy for the “Royal Family”, there have been alternative reactions. One, which I understand, is the position that the British Monarchy has a long history of Imperial and colonial crimes. In the spirit of the well known “full Disclosure”, personally, I come at my view of the British Monarchy, in part, from my Irish heritage, with various ancestors fleeing the country because of resistance to the British colonizers and the poverty, in great part caused by the British land holders who squeezed their Irish tenants and did everything they could to exterminate Irish culture and identity. The last of my ancestors to flee to Can...

A s a capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value, to make its constant factor, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour. Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. - Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 10 (1867) According to CNN (Isadore, 2022) the oil corporate giants, ExxonMobil and Chevron both reported massive second quarter, three-month profit gains “thanks to record gasoline prices during the quarter”. Exxon's profit, came in at an obscene $17.6 billion, almost double what it made in its very profitable first quarter as oil and gas prices started to surge in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to the CNN wording. Its 2nd quarter profit was up a stunning (to me) 273% from the same period last year. Chevron raked in a $1...