test blog #10

I'm sticking fast to my resolve to not be on Twitter. I have no doubt that it would sometimes be fun and useful. On the other hand, do I need it? The answer is most definitely no. My life is so full of distractions. I rarely have enough time to focus clearly and at length on the things that matter most to me. I want to read in-depth articles and hefty novels, not skim headlines - in both the literal and figurative sense. I also want quiet space. I want space in my life not spent in front of a screen of any type. This relates to my extreme aversion to the number one scourge of modern life, an even greater annoyance than inappropriate cell phone use: background music . The music played in every store, waiting area, coffee shop, mall, in every everywhere . Every moment of our lives must be filled with some form of entertainment. We must never be alone with our thoughts. This is how I see Twitter - as if we all must have a constant scroll, a feed, a zipper, at the bottom of our life sc...

Looking through wmtc posts for the annual best-of, I was amazed at how much happened in Canada and in the world last year. Another prorogation, and the anti-prorogue protests. The Collateral Murder video and the explosion of WikiLeaks. G20 government madness and police brutality. The Gaza Flotilla massacre. The demise of Bill C-440. The following is best of wmtc 2010, the long list. on becoming a writer, part four, final, for now the harper attack on canadian democracy, the long version (I didn't write most of this, but it's a very important post!) where is the outrage? and other thoughts on canadian disengagement save a little outrage for the real criminals (vancouver) intellectual freedom in the library: part 1 and part 2 a simple lesson: how to tell the difference between hatred of a people and criticism of a nation's policies therapists needed to treat quebecers' fear of headscarves "discover canada": the harper government's vision of canada and of...

Tomorrow, January 29, labour and solidarity contingents from all over Ontario will pour into Hamilton for a major labour demonstration: The People vs. U.S. Steel . Many of my friends will be on buses from Toronto, and I wish I could be there with them. But we can all show our support, because the fight for decent jobs is a fight for us all. A letter to your local newspaper, a letter to US Steel, an email to Stephen Harper's office, an email of support to Local 1005 , can all make a difference. Workers at the U.S. Steel plant have been locked out of their job s for three months - and counting. Until recently, although they are involuntarily out of work, they were denied EI benefits! These workers were once employed by Stelco, a Canadian company. When U.S. Steel took over Stelco in 2007, it negotiated terms with the Province of Ontario as a condition of sale. Surprise, surprise, U.S. Steel now reneges on those terms, seeking to deprive 900 workers and 9,000 pensioners of the pension...

Today and tomorrow, there will be events all over the world to show solidarity with the Egyptian democracy movement. See below for information about events in Canada. If you - like me - cannot demonstrate in person, you can still support the movement by calling the Egyptian embassy in Ottawa and demanding that protests be allowed to continue without bloodshed. The 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak has never seen this scale of protest. I'm told there is a very real danger that the government may fire on demonstrators as night falls. In Canada: Ottawa: 613.234.4931. In the US: Washington DC: 202.895.5400. In the UK: London: 44.020.7499.3304 In Ireland: Dublin: 353.01.660.6566 In Australia and New Zealand: Canberra: 61.(0)2.6273.4437 In South Africa: Pretoria: 27.(0)12.343.1590 You can also email Stephen Harper's office. Tell him Canadians stand for peace and democracy , something that clearly needs reminding. The government of Canada needs to speak up and support the Egyptian...

Bradley Manning is a prisoner of conscience. Accused of leaking the infamous "collateral murder" video that exposed the truth about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq - and vindicated what US war resisters have been saying all along - is not being treated like an ordinary prisoner. Since July, Manning - without court martial or conviction - has been held in solitary confinement in a 6 x 12-foot cell. He is not allowed to read, to exercise or even to sleep during the day. This was supposedly for his own protection, an excuse the Army continues to use to persecute Manning. Last week, Manning was put on suicide watch - which meant he was stripped to his boxer shorts and his cell stripped of everything, even a blanket. Even his eyeglasses were taken. At a White House briefing last week, press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about Manning. He said he was unaware of anything about him, but would check. If Gibbs needs information, let's give him some. From WikiLeaks Is Dem...

Largely under the radar, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) has proposed changing its rules to allow the broadcasting of intentionally false and misleading information, as long as that information does not "endanger or [is] likely to endanger the lives, safety, or health of the public". These dangers are not defined further. See more on this below. To believe this is mere coincidence as SunTV launches its news station - so-called "Fox News North" - strains credulity. The CRTC is now accepting comments on the proposed rule change until February 9 only - and they don't make it simple. To learn more about how to submit a comment, go here ; scroll down on that page . Here is the link link to submit a comment online. Reference Notice number 2011-14. You can also contact James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage, who is responsible for the CRTC: - by fax: 819.994.1267, and - by phone: 819.997.7788. Via Antonia Zerbisias, here is a letter you can ...

I'm still in hell week here, two papers due next week, and no break in sight until two days after that. Most nights, movies are giving me essential R&R, and last night we saw something I have to pass on to you: " Leaves of Grass ," written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson, and starring the great Edward Norton in a tour de force, playing two roles of identical twin brothers. The movie weaves thoughts on philosophy, spirituality, family bonds, the search for self, and nothing less than the meaning of life into a funny - and deadly serious - story full of surprises. Like so many movies I love, "Leaves of Grass" is about redemption, and how it comes in ways we cannot plan. Edward Norton, as always, is brilliant. He is truly one of the greatest actors of his generation. (If you have not seen him in Spike Lee's 2002 " 25th Hour ," run-don't-walk to rent it.) We haven't seen the other films Nelson has directed, but now I'm going to look th...

Remember those crazy Canadian kids, living in the library ? Well, they're living the DREAM: they've set up shop, and you can watch them here , and they're blogging here . More on DREAM here .

Revolution is spreading. On the heels of massive protests and demonstrations throughout Europe, Tunisians take back their country, and now Cairo rises up against Mubarak. This morning the Canadian mainstream media is all agog with a speech out of Washington DC that will change absolutely nothing. CBC Headline: Obama urges people to create brighter future ! ( Oh gosh, does he really?!) Meanwhile, much of the world is actually trying to do just that. It's so exciting! I wish I had time to follow it all more closely. I'm filled with awe and more than a little envy .

Do you meditate? Have you ever had a meditation practice? I recently resumed meditating after many, many years. Ever since starting graduate school, I've had an increase in anxiety . I take anti-anxiety medication as needed, and I have no issue with that; as far as I'm concerned those babies are little medical miracles. But it's not safe to take them too often, and with my addictive personality - and having had a parent who was a substance abuser - I have to be careful. I already know how to control my anxiety so it doesn't escalate into a full-fledged panic attack - how to slow my breathing, begin an inner dialogue - how to change the subject, so to speak. So while doing this a few weeks ago I suddenly realized that I could be doing more. Sometime in the mid-90s, Allan and I took a meditation class together. I had a lot of trouble sleeping in those days (undiagnosed fibromyalgia), and found that regular meditation helped. Once or twice I even felt I had entered some ki...

So the Harper government thinks we need a a vigilante law . Since tough-on-crime legislation, no matter how silly and unnecessary, is always popular, let's assume this will pass handily. How can we make this law work for the greater good? Will it be easier to arrest Tony Hayward? Dick Cheney? Tony Blair? All the taser-happy cops? The fact that the NDP and the Liberals have put forth similar private member's bill only proves that pandering is nonpartisan. Food for thought: a different kind of citizen intervention . Imagine if governments took this approach to crime.

I hear people say, " We can't go back. " And I think, We are back. We have gone back. Not all of us. We're hanging on in Canada, and in some places in the US. But how many American women must lose access to safe abortion services before we are officially "back"? Today, the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade , we see, once again, that the Constitutionally protected right of US women to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term has been gutted and rendered useless. And when there are no safe, legal services, women will resort to unsafe, illegal ones, because bearing an unwanted pregnancy is torture, and an unwanted person is a tragedy, and women will go to any avoid that. Daniel Denvir, AlterNet: Back-Alley Abortions in 2011: How Anti-Choice Zealots Force Women to Go to Dangerous Clinics Like Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Jill, Feministe: What Kermit Gosnell tells us about late-term abortion And me: The real - seldom-seen - face of third-trimester abortion ...

Please watch Reg Keys, who stood for election as an independent candidate against Tony Blair, and whose son was killed in Iraq. Related: Blair 'gung-ho' on Iraq war a year before invasion

Jim Creskey, an editor of Embassy magazine, has written an excellent piece linking Martin Luther King, Jr., Dwight Eisenhower's prophetic retirement speech, the shamefully US-centric Canadian government, and the plight of courageous Iraq War resisters seeking refuge in this country. This is a brief excerpt; please click through and read the whole piece. It deserves our attention. Today, both Eisenhower and King would be dismayed by the rampant and excessive militarism of America. The total for military-related spending in the US for 2010 exceeds a trillion dollars. Canada, allowing itself to be linked to American military adventures, has doubled its direct spending in recent years. The excuses haven't changed since Eisenhower and King's time. The courageous sacrifices of soldiers are still used as justification for bad political decisions. The threat of terror in various forms is still raised and the dangling of military-related jobs in high-unemployment constituencies is...

On Sunday, January 16, Michael Ignatieff came to London, Ontario, to skate with Liberal supporters in Victoria Park. An organizer tells me that most of the attention was on the mining accountability legislation, another Liberal private member's bill which died when their party leader and a few others failed to support it. Thus the chants: "C-300, C-440: absent Liberals vote like Tories" and "Hey Mike, what's the story, why're you acting like a Tory?" Thank you, London! Let Them Stay!

From Metro: American war dodgers and their supporters wrap up a week of small protest events Saturday — part of a years-long fight to persuade the federal government to grant the deserters refuge in Canada. Despite numerous court battles, protests and even pressure from the House of Commons, the campaign has proven barely a thorn in the side of an unyielding Harper government. "We're feeling the wear and tear of the government's intransigence," Michelle Robidoux, of the War Resisters Support Campaign, conceded Thursday. "We're very aware that (Immigration Minister) Jason Kenney is counting on a process of attrition to try to defeat the movement to let the war resisters stay." Saturday's event in Toronto — which will feature a short film and the wife of one U.S. soldier who refused to redeploy to Iraq — ends a week of gatherings in a dozen cities and towns across Canada. On Wednesday, for example, about a dozen people protested outside the constituenc...

Still plenty of events to come! Support US Iraq War Resisters: Join Let Them Stay Week, January 15-22, 2011 From January 15 to 22 people across Canada will participate in a national "Let Them Stay Week". Join Canadians from coast to coast to show support for Iraq War resisters, who are currently threatened with deportation by the minority Conservative government. Events planned so far: Fredericton Film screening: "Winter Soldier" Friday, January 21 7:00 p.m. Conserver House 180 St. John Street Fredericton, NB Cinema Politica Fredericton and the Fredericton Peace Coalition present a film screening of Winter Soldier, a documentary of Vietnam War veterans speaking out against the atrocities they witnessed. For more info: fredericton@cinemapolitica.org or info@frederictonpeace.org. Grand Forks Film screening and discussion Friday January 13th 7:00 p.m. Room 8 Selkirk College Grand Forks, BC Sponsored by Boundary Peace Initiative, USCC Working Groups, KRUNA, Canadian Pea...

As part of the pan-Canadian actions for Let Them Stay Week , a special event will take place in Toronto this Saturday. The meeting includes the first Toronto speaking appearance by Ashlea Brockway . Ashlea's husband Jeremy served in Iraq. He was denied a medical discharge despite suffering from severe post-traumatic stress and other combat-related mental health issues. Ashlea and Jeremy came to Canada seeking refuge; they have two Canadian-born children and live in Port Colborne, Ontario. Ashlea now speaks publicly on behalf of her family and in support of all veterans who lack proper support after serving their countries. Toronto-area supporters, you will not want to miss this very special opportunity to hear and support the Brockways. Saturday, January 22 1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. Steelworkers Hall 25 Cecil Street (near College & Spadina) Toronto With special guests: • Ashlea Brockway: Ashlea and her husband Jeremy sought refuge in Canada with their family after he refused to re...

I have two papers due on the same day, and one of them is the most dreaded assignment for the most dreaded class of my entire degree. At least that will soon be over with! Unfortunately, though, this leaves me with little brain or time to blog. I will use this as an opportunity to post one of my papers. The last time I posted a paper , it sparked some interesting discussion. At the very least, this will help me feel like my blog is not a total waste of pixels. Plus, this paper earned me fries ! I got them yesterday. They were just the way I like them: super well-done, crispy. This was my final paper for the course Foundations of Library and Information Science. From a choice of topics I chose this: Select one type of library or information centre. Discuss the most serious challenges facing that institution today, paying particular attention to its foundational values, principles and assumptions. What kinds of activities (research, services, education, staffing, funding, etc) might tur...

Movie Season (the opposite of Baseball Season) is in full swing. We've been seeing a lot of good movies, as well as plowing through our The Larry Sanders Show box, but for now I want to mention only two titles. For a feel-good, intelligent comedy, I highly recommend Ken Loach's "Looking for Eric". And if your heart knows the joy and pain of a deep love of a sport or a team, you will appreciate this even more. No spoilers here. Just see it. (Although it's an English film, you might want to watch it with English subtitles. It helped us enjoy the movie considerably.) And for exactly the opposite... " H2Oil " is a documentary about the abomination that is the Canadian tar sands. Writer-director Shannon Walsh brings you to a First Nations community who are slowly being wiped out by the tar sands, and their efforts to fight the governments of Alberta and Canada, and oil industry giants. We meet the community's doctor, who spoke out about what he saw and w...

Enough of school today! I must blog! Here are the books I read over my break from school, thanks to the amazing Mississauga Public Library System. I actually read Fugitive Pieces , by Anne Michaels, in New Jersey over Thanksgiving. It's well known to Canadians, and was made into a very good movie, but doesn't seem to be as widely known in the US. As I've mentioned in other contexts, I don't generally read anything Holocaust-related, as I was forcibly overdosed on Holocaust education as a child. But having seen the excellent movie adaptation of this novel, I wanted to read it, and I'm very glad I did. It's a novel about memory, generational bonds, generational conflicts and family secrets. It's also a view into what it might be like to live in an occupied town or village. What is it like for people who are not rounded up, but who are forced to live under the thumb of their oppressors, in their own homes, in their own town, every day? The deprivations, the dai...

It's time to show Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney that we have not given up. We have not gone away. We will continue to fight for the Canada we want to live in - the Canada that stands for peace , the Canada that is a "refuge from militarism". Canada said NO to the invasion of Iraq, and we should welcome people who - at great personal sacrifice - have done the same. Tell Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney why you think Iraq War resisters should be allowed to stay in Canada. Add your name to the Open Letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney. (Scroll down to click on "add your name".) And please take a few minutes to write your own letter: The Right Hon. Stephen Harper Prime Minister House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 pm@pm.gc.ca The Hon. Jason Kenney Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 Kenney.j@parl.gc.ca Thanks!

Nick, the very first person to find wmtc and ask me about moving to Canada, becomes a Canadian citizen today. Nick's last appearance on wmtc was his It Gets Better video . Congratulations, Nick! Canada is very lucky to have you.

I think a lot about resistance : about what it means when ordinary people refuse to yield to powers much stronger than themselves. I've been thinking of the many forms acts of resistance can take, why people resist, what it means. Last summer in Toronto, groups of people walked the streets of their city to show that they could, to defy the sudden existence of martial law that claimed they couldn't. All over the UK, students are in the streets and occupying buildings , resisting massive cuts to education funding. The situation in the UK and throughout Europe is very dire - but the people whose system caused the pain are not suffering. A friend who lives in London and I were emailing recently, and she summed it up this way: ...they are closing libraries, cutting everything, raising university tuition fees by 200% and sales tax is now 20%! Bankers are getting huge bonuses still. We work with quite a few financial services firms and it's like they are living in a different u...

Please use your gayness for niceness, not evil!

...and speaking of victories, there was a huge one in December that I don't think I properly acknowledged: Bill C-49 appears to be dead in the water. Bill C-49 was the so-called anti-human-smuggling bill that was, in reality, an anti-refugee bill. It was vehemently opposed by the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International Canada, leaders of a half-dozen faith groups, and every human rights group you can think of. I wrote about Bill C-49 here and here . At first reading, then Liberal immigration critic Maurizio Bevilacqua acted as Immigration Minister Jason Kenney's publicist, praising the bill from the floor of the House of Commons as if his political life depended on it. Which indeed it did. I have it on good authority that Bevilacqua cut a deal with the Conservatives, trading his support of C-49 for their endorsement in his campaign for mayor of Vaughan . So much for serving the public. But in early December, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff actually did some lead...

The Bay, a major Canadian retailer, acknowledged yesterday its unannounced decision to no longer carry cosmetics produced by the Israeli company Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories. Although parent company HBC says this was purely a business decision, and was not in response to any organized boycott, it is nonetheless a victory for the Boycott Divest Sanction movement. HBC is under pressure to reverse this decision, so those of us who support Palestinian autonomy and human rights should thank them. You can thank The Bay for dropping Ahava products by clicking here . Ahava has been the subject of an international boycott campaign since June 2009, because the company manufactures its products in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank. (All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.) Ahava is partly owned by two settlements, so the company's profits subsidizing the illegal colonies. Although its goods are manufactured in the West Bank, Ahava labels them ...

There are a few public figures in the world with impeccable human rights credentials, and one of them is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu has spent his life speaking truth and fighting injustice. He has publicly criticised Israeli policy towards Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians. Because of his criticism of Israeli government policy, Tutu is being labelled a bigot, an anti-Semite and a racist by some Zionist supporters. These groups are calling for Tutu to be removed as Patron of the Cape Town and Johannesburg Holocaust Centres of the South African Holocaust Foundation. It's horrifying to see the Holocaust invoked in this way. The words "never again" have to mean something more than "never again to us ". Please read more here , and if you agree, please sign this petition , and share it with friends. Thanks.

Support US Iraq War Resisters: Join Let Them Stay Week, January 15-22, 2011 From January 15 to 22 people across Canada will participate in a national "Let Them Stay Week". Join Canadians from coast to coast to show support for Iraq War resisters, who are currently threatened with deportation by the minority Conservative government. Events planned so far: Fredericton Film screening: "Winter Soldier" Friday, January 21 7:00 p.m. Conserver House 180 St. John Street Fredericton, NB Cinema Politica Fredericton and the Fredericton Peace Coalition present a film screening of Winter Soldier, a documentary of Vietnam War veterans speaking out against the atrocities they witnessed. For more info: fredericton@cinemapolitica.org or info@frederictonpeace.org. Grand Forks Film screening and discussion Friday January 13th 7:00 p.m. Room 8 Selkirk College Grand Forks, BC Sponsored by Boundary Peace Initiative, USCC Working Groups, KRUNA, Canadian Peace Alliance and War Resisters Su...

Next week, from January 15 through January 22, the War Resisters Support Campaign will be holding our third Let Them Stay Week. (Got that, CIC spy ?) Supporters all over the country will be holding events in support of US Iraq War resisters in Canada, demanding that the government respect the two motions passed in Parliament to Let Them Stay. I'll be posting details of events in many cities, but for now, please watch this short message from Member of Parliament Mario Silva. He very rightly links Canada's failure to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council to the Harper's government's shoddy record on human rights, which includes the harassment and deportation of US war resisters.

I had this post scheduled to go up at 11:11 a.m.... but it did not. Thanks, Blogger. Yay, it's 1.11.11! Isn't this fun? No? Not really?

I understand that some people are amazed at the recent massacre and assassination attempt in Arizona. I'm amazed that anyone is amazed. As the activist Rick Telfer said on Facebook, "Gee, why would anybody get the idea to gun down a political opponent in the USA?!" He posted a link to Sarah Palin's now infamous target map , but obviously that is but a tiny shred of evidence of the huge violent tapestry. It's a wonder this hasn't happened sooner, and more often. (And of course, in a less overtly political context, it does.) In case you missed these: Paul Krugman: Climate of Hate When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen? Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that cu...

I suppose you've heard that there is a new, bowdlerized edition of Mark Twain's classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Alan Gribben, an editor with the temerity to call himself "a Twain scholar" - although Judas or Jack the Ripper might be more appropriate - has removed every instance of the words "nigger" and "Injun," and replaced them with the word "slave". I find this anti-intellectual wallpapering sad and discouraging beyond measure. As if purging a classic of an offensive word will somehow reduce the incidence of racism in the world. As if anyone has the moral right to rewrite an author's - any author's - work! I don't have time to write about this as fully as I'd like right now, but will expand on it at a (much) later date. For now, a few other good pieces can stand in for me. From a discussion in The Atlantic , Jamelle Bouie: Taking the History Out of 'Huck Finn' . . . Maybe I spend too much tim...