Issues, ethics, memory
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.
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.
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.
Canada's Liberal government was right to invoke the Emergencies Act to end the winter 2022 occupation in downtown Ottawa.
Robert Andjelic owns 225,000 acres of Saskatchewan farmland, about as much as 125 average-sized farmers. His model represents depopulation on steroids. Do we really want latifundia and a modern-day serfdom where absentee landowners hire locals to work their estates?
We lost our dear brother Jackie Gruending to the ravages of multiple sclerosis in 2021 at age 57. This memorial booklet combines his personal history along with that of our family and community, with lots of photos.
Pulpit and Politics 