Other Politics

With two years still to go, the battle lines are already forming for the federal election scheduled for Oct. 21, 2019.

The battle will be led by three men who are the youngest collection of major party leaders in Canadian history. It comes as a bit of a shock to realize that Justin Trudeau, who was the bright young hope of the Liberals when they chose him in 2013 – and who was derided by the Conservatives as being too young to be prime minister – is now the oldest of the three leaders. He’s 45.

In the world of politics, the internet can be a force for good of for ill – the jury is still out on that. What can be said with some certainty is that the web can lead you to unexpected places.

“We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfil the promises of Donald Trump. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump.” – David Duke, former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, on the white supremacist-inspired violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the weekend.

There is such a thing as leadership.

Donald Trump’s White House has to be the most fascinating workplace in the western world.

I do not mean “fascinating” in the customary sense of being alluring or charming. I’m thinking of “fascinate” in what my dictionary says is its obsolete meaning: to “bewitch” or “cast an evil spell on.”

Obsolete or not, it is impossible escape the spell cast by a world power centre commanded by an uninformed and irrational head of state who thrives on chaos, who rules by tweet and whose three-step modus operandi is: deny, lie and attack.

Several years ago, I wrote an op ed piece in The Record (see the lispop post here) that suggested Bitcoin-like technology could be a powerful tool for advancing Indigenous self-determination and self-government in Canada.