Conflict, climate, and covid are showing us the worst of ourselves, but it might be what we need to find our collective humanity. Tiberius wrote: “The old world is no longer dying, it is dead. There is no going back to how things were after this genocide has been live-streamed
Continue readingTag: war
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Plague Update: Exploding Measles Threat
No, the latest measles don’t make you explode, I meant the threat is rising thanks to anti-waxxer ignorance spreading across the globe. And war, that’s infamously good at helping disease take hold of the population. Many of the people in charge of stopping health ignorance and control of diseases, have
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the Fog of Covid
There’s nothing normal about our lives right now. Simple precautions could change the rate of illness, disability, or death, but that would mean leaders opening themselves to lawsuits if they admit any error. The term “fog of war” refers to how much is unknown and unknowable – the uncertainty of
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Is There Hope For Palestine
I wrote this in November 2007 on the hope for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The solution essentially comes down to understanding the most and least that each side can accept. We could argue forever whether the State of Israel should have been created the way it was but,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Culture of Uncare or Pandemic of Inhumanity
Psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe coined the term “culture of uncare” to explain intentional efforts to sever links from one another and from the environment. She calls it “severing links,” but the word that comes to mind is alienation. We’ve been alienated from our environment, from our work, from others, and from
Continue readingTHE FIFTH COLUMN: Remembrance Day and Righteous Wars
When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s Remembrance Day was a very solemn occasion. There were still a lot of World War II veterans participating and even some from World War I, as well as veterans from the Korean War (sometimes referred to as a “police action)”.
Continue readingPaul S. Graham: Canada in Afghanistan – a conversation with author Owen Schalk
PAUL GRAHAM: Owen Schalk is a writer of short stories, novels, political analyses, and essays on film and literature. He is a columnist at Canadian Dimension, and has written for Alborada, Monthly Review, Protean Magazine, and many other publications. His most recent book is entitled Canada in Afghanistan: A story
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Supporting Atrocities
This is an excellent 7 minute video explaining WHY the U.S. and U.K. and other wealthy nations so strongly support Israel’s current atrocities. No spoilers. Just watch it! (h/t Adlie)
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Alex Himelfarb reviews Quinn Slobodian’s Crack-Up Capitalism as a valuable account of the myths and rationalizations underlying the propagation of inequality to serve the uber-rich. Cory Doctorow highlights how the attack on Social Security by Republicans and their donors represents a form of class
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: War Crimes Upon War Crimes
What’s worse than bombing a hospital? Bombing a refugee camp, turning it into a death camp. The excuse: There was apparently a Hamas commander there. So if the first devastating blast killed him as the IDF claimed, why the followup attacks on refugees and emergency workers there? Hitting a refugee
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: War And The Spineless Ontario NDP
Terrible. Stiles caved to pressure from an Apartheid government currently engaged in acts of genocide during a war escalated by a terrorist attack by Hamas. Stiles doesn’t want an MPP willing to speak out against a foreign government openly waging an asymmetrical war in response to a terrorist attack. Having
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: It’s Going to Get Worse Before it Gets Even More Worse
Times are dark. Try to find moments of calm and humour to get you through the day. Covid is out of control. It’s nothing new, but more and more are being affected in irreparable ways, taking out teachers and doctors and all sorts of necessary workers. It’s harder to avoid
Continue readingSong of the Watermelon: Israel’s Assault on Gaza
In the days since Hamas’s violent rampage through southern Israel, one word that keeps popping up is “unprovoked.” A Biden administration official condemned “the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians,” while Mike Pence urged every American to “condemn the unprovoked and massive attack on Israel by terrorists in
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Thoughts & Prayers to [____]
After the terrible attack by [___] on the good people of [___], we’re sending payers up to the victims. justin bieber posting “praying for israel” using a picture of a destroyed gaza is actually insane pic.twitter.com/GNcEyhNk6V — Hurt CoPain (@SaeedDiCaprio) October 11, 2023 he could’ve addressed it, he could’ve also
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: War Breaks Out In The Middle East
An evergreen headline, because the war basically never ends. If you google for “Israel killed journalist” it doesn’t know if you want contemporary results, or ones for the infamous incident where unpunished Israel snipers killed a journalist last year. The situation isn’t complicated. There’s a repressed population in Gaza, and
Continue readingPaul S. Graham: Manufacturing Consent for War in Canada and the United States
In this webinar, organized by Peace Alliance Winnipeg, Colleen Bell and Yves Engler explain how governments in Canada and the United States shape public opinion to support their wars. The webinar was moderated by Professor Radhika Desai. Panelists Colleen Bell: Professor Bell is an associate professor in the political studies
Continue readingPaul S. Graham: Dimitri Lascaris on why we need to make peace with Russia
On Thursday, June 22, 2023, Canadian lawyer, journalist, and peace activist Dimitri Lascaris spoke in Winnipeg about his recent trip to Russia and the need for Canada to promote a peaceful end to the conflict in Ukraine. Lascaris was on a 10-city Canadian tour entitled “Making Peace with Russia, One
Continue readingPaul S. Graham: Canada’s War on the Environment
Canada has declared war on the environment. That is the only conclusion one can draw after viewing Tamara Lorincz’s presentation at the most recent annual meeting of Peace Alliance Winnipeg (of which I am a proud member). In her talk, Tamara discusses the key lessons contained in three reports –
Continue readingPaul S. Graham: Free Speech for Peace
Free Speech for Peace was presented by Ethnorama News Winnipeg and Al Cafe and recorded at Winnipeg’s historic Ukrainian Labour Temple on March 31, 2023. The event arose out of a need to raise money to sustain this alternative publication when key advertisers (local NDP Members of Parliament) opted to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Age of Absurdity
We’re skipping gleefully into the most absurd period in history. The philosophical notion of the absurd came from Camus. It grew legs with existentialists after WWII when the youngest and fittest men were sent to be slaughtered in war. The streets of Paris were full of widows and grieving mothers
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