The UN’s contentious motion on slavery
Earlier this month the United Nations passed Resolution A/80/L.48: Commemoration of the abolition of slavery... The post The UN’s contentious motion on slavery first appeared on Views from the Beltline.
Slavery
Class Struggle, Slavery, TV, and Trump
Long before Blandings, long before Downtown Abbey, long before Upstairs, Downstairs (both the 1971 original and the short-lived 2010 remake), even long before The Duchess of Duke Street, there was…
Labour’s big Southern win
Employers in the American South have long had a thing about cheap labour. In fact, for the first 90 years of the country’s history they got it for free, and…
The History American Politicians Try To Keep Hidden
I have done a great deal of reading in the past couple of years on The Civil War, slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow laws that followed it, Black Codes, and…
History And Pride
For the past couple of years I have been reading about the antebellum South, the Civil War, and the so-called Reconstruction era that followed. My reading has uncovered a number…
The Collapse Of The West: Chapter One: The Global Tectonic Shift
By J. Todd Ring Preface: I wrote this essay in January of 2020, then the covid crisis hit, and it was shelved for over a year. The macro-scale patterns have…
Driving The Point Home
If you don’t get this, please see my previous post. Recommend this Post
Should we teach history in the schools?
I confess to being a history buff. I am a member of Canada’s History Society who avidly reads each issue of the society’s journal, Canada’s History (formerly The Beaver) and…
Ripped From The Headlines?
There are days while I scroll through Twitter that I come upon a headline that seems to be ripped from a satirical source, such as The Onion or The Beaverton.…
How Should We Judge Historical Figures
Should historical figures be judged by the best things they have done or the worst. Should they be judged by the standards of today or of their time. Should some…
The truth about history
What is historical truth? To get at the truth of history, we must know it and we must understand it, and these are two very different things. We can know…
Alberta—the Old South in the Cold North
Reading the book All God’s Children, I encountered a section about the relationship of the American South to the Union just prior to the Civil War. As I read on,…
Independence Day: An excellent moment for Canadians to recommit ourselves to being different from the United States
Today is the Fourth of July, Independence Day in the Great Republic immediately to our south. Normally, as befits our national character, we Canadians celebrate this occasion with restrained fondness…
If F. W. de Klerk’s apartheid comparison to the fossil fuel economy is OK, why is David Suzuki’s slavery analogy an outrage?
A speech in Calgary last week by the last white president of South Africa in which F. W. de Klerk suggested the challenges faced by Alberta in the waning days…
Inconceivable! His Dinner with Chomsky
Wallace Shawn sat down for a chat with Noam Chomsky, and here’s what they talked about – slightly abridged and loosely quoted (for clarification purposes) with links. It’s a great…
Finally, the U.S. Steps Closer to Racial Healing With a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The U.S. has a history of racial violence against blacks and indigenous peoples. Now is the time to follow the example shown by Canada and South Africa, and begin a…
Diamond’s Collapse
A while back, Mound suggested I read Collapse by Jared Diamond, and I finally got to it. It’s a fascinating read particularly for anyone interested in ancient civilizations. Diamond explores…
McDonalds Treating Foreign Workers Like Slaves
Richard Hughes-Political Blogger McDonalds, and several other Canadian firms are being investigated following reports of exploitation and abuse from victimized foreign workers. I have often wondered about the staff at…
Guilty Indifference
This world is going up in flames, and nobody wanna take the blame. – Charles Bradley This years Oscars have come and gone, and each year becomes more forgettable in…