It is not easy to be humourous about COVID-19. But that is my assignment here and I will try, more or less. (While still being half-serious between the lines … maybe?) My point of departure is a May 13, 2020 article in the venerable UK publication NewStatesman, by Jerome Roos who “teaches political economy at […]

Will we finally look back on the early May days of 2020 as a hinge of fate that determined the early November US election, and set the direction for politics and economics in the Western World (as in J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World) for at least a while to come? Maybe, maybe […]

GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. MONDAY, APRIL 20, 2020.According to an editorial this past Friday in the Toronto Globe and Mail (Canada’s self-declared “national newspaper” in days gone by) : “We are now through our fifth week of business and school closings, self-isolation at home, and physical distancing when we venture outdoors.” South of the non-militarized but still […]

[UPDATED APRIL 11, 14]. The news that Bernie Sanders has gracefully conceded to Joe Biden in the US Democratic presidential race, while still working hard to keep faith with his “revolutionary” progressive movement, would be welcome just for bringing something fresh to the relentless (albeit important) current media focus on COVID-19. Beyond this far from […]

Our spies in the Golden State North have sometimes lately alluded to a possible great trek east out of San Francisco along US Interstate Highway 80, in search of better ground. The concept is not unique. As long ago as March 22 the Los Angeles Times was reporting : “As the coronavirus pandemic tightens its […]

Andrew Cohen’s “Why Canada’s response to COVID-19 is so different from that of the US,” from the Ottawa Citizen this past week, won applause from many Canadians. Zach Carter’s “Coronavirus Is A Defining Test And American Government Is Failing It … It’s not just Trump. Our politics are unfit for this calamity,” from Huffington Post, […]

[UPDATED MARCH 13, 17]. 3/12/2020. TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA [all Indigenous North American words]. I awoke this northern morning to the wisdom of Kriti Gupta from New York on our local Bloomberg Business News, explaining the latest stock market meltdown in the wake of the coronavirus, low oil prices, and on and on. (Ms Gupta succinctly […]

We watched the Ontario Liberal Party’s Saturday, March 7, 2020 leadership vote – in the International Centre in Mississauga – at our more easterly Ganatsekwyagon headquarters, some 150 yards from Lake Ontario’s soothing waters on a sunny day. In the main 2nd-floor boardroom we had the excellent cp24 coverage on the big-screen TV. In the […]

GANTSEKWYAGON, ON. 29 FEB 2020. [UPDATED MARCH 1, 4]. Serious snow fell two nights ago, as the TV promised. It is still on the ground, and my deep winter thoughts here are a follow-up to “Just watching TV in early January can fill you with foreboding about the year ahead” – posted on Tuesday, January […]

[UPDATED FEB 19, 20]. One particular strange thing about Steve Bannon’s appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Friday, February 7, 2020, was his portrayal of Boris Johnson’s Brexit- at-last on January 31 as an achievement of Donald Trump. In a similar vein I do not at all agree with the Daily Beast assessment that […]