Issues, ethics, memory
Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac preached a Christmas homily at the Evangelical Lutheran church in Bethlehem, in which he described the Israeli bombing of Gaza as genocide. He castigated western countries and their citizens, especially Christians, for supporting a bombing and artillery attack that have killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, 70 per cent of them women and children.
The giant digital gorillas Google and Meta are threatening to block Canadian news links from their sites because the federal government has passed Bill C-18, which would make them pay those who create the news for using their material. While that debate rages, I have practical advice about how to access Canadian news without relying on the tech giants at all.
Emmett Hall was the last Supreme Court of Canada judge to come from Saskatchewan. He was appointed at age 65, and served on the court from 1963 to 1973. He accomplished more after the age of retirement than most people do in a lifetime. He was a formidable judge and the royal commissioner who recommended Medicare for Canada. His long service had a profound impact on Canada.
Finland and Estonia are beautiful Baltic countries to visit. But they share land borders with Russia and are anxious about the invasion of Ukraine. Both countries have cast their lot with NATO.
Suzanne Doerge, a poet and activist who lives in Ottawa, walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain 2016. She developed painful problems with her feet, but used her rest time, interspersed with walking, to ponder on the meaning of pilgrimage and life. The result is her book, Footfalls: Poems of the Camino.
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) was working in Germany before and after the Second World War. The organization arranged emigration for thousands of Mennonites who had escaped to Germany from Ukraine. Many of those Mennonites had welcomed the Nazis as liberators from Soviet communism, and some were collaborators. In Germany, some MCC advocates were also sympathetic to the Nazis as well. MCC is now coming to terms with a difficult and troubling past.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has announced plan to move cataract surgeries from public hospitals to private clinics. He says people will continue to use their health cards and not their credit cards. I have recent experience which gives the lie to those claims.
At year's end, I wrote about some of the best books that I read in 2022.
American writer Nicholson Baker spent ten frustrating years trying to get information from the US military about its biological weapons program.
Bellingcat specializes in fact-checking and open-source intelligence to cut through the fog of misinformation that surrounds wars and conflict.
Pulpit and Politics 