Two great souls departed this world this week. One, Howard Zinn, had a deep and lasting influence on me, and the other, J.D. Salinger, missed me by a decade or two – if only I had discovered him in my youth when I was too much of a nice boy for my own good. These two men shared the greater part of the last century but it is interesting how different, even contrasting, their narratives are. Read more ›

It was February 15, 2003. In Toronto it was freezing cold. But the world was running a high fever of protest against the impending U.S. attack on Iraq. These were heady times, hundreds of thousands of people around the world poured out into the streets with one voice, one intention: to stop the war. It was as if the whole humanity had become one creature, speaking with one conscience. How could one not to feel the pulse of the zeitgeist, not to be part of this collective heartbeat? Read more ›

Stumbled across this brilliant PBS Frontline documentary: The Card Game. Please make time to watch it. It reveals how the banks and credit card companies rob their customers blind. But more than just the expose of the banking industry, it also unwittingly reveals the entrails of the American system and how it has been designed to profit the rich and screw the poor. Read more ›

Whenever there is a natural disaster there is an outpouring of sympathy and compassion. Which is only natural. When the catastrophes cuts a wide swath and is as dramatic as the recent earthquake in Haiti, much of our compassion is driven by the media. Not that our milk of human kindness does not flow on its own, but the media sort of sets the agenda as it does in so many other aspects of our lives. Read more ›

Have been thinking of starting a blog for a long time but kept putting it off, wondering what am I going to write about. It sucks to be living in the 21st century. So many millennia of original thought have preceded us already and it seems there is nothing worthwhile left to be said – at least something that’s entirely unique and new. Of course, I’m assuming that if I were born in an earlier era I would have had something original to say, and that’s so presumptuous! But you never know. Who can predict the past? Read more ›