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Happy New Year! My love and best wishes to you all. May your new year be filled with joy and adventure, peace and contentment.

On December 6 of this year, arsonists set fire to the offices of Dr. Curtis Boyd, an abortion provider in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In its statement after the attack, the National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers, noted: NAF has been tracking incidents of violence and disruption since 1977. In that time, there have been seven murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings, 100 butyric acid attacks, 656 anthrax threats, and 175 arsons including this most recent incident in New Mexico. We hope that the suspect(s) responsible for this crime will be swiftly apprehended and convicted. The visible prosecution and conviction of anti-abortion criminals who engage in violence have led to a decrease in major acts of violence against abortion providers in recent years. However, last night’s arson is a reminder that we must remain vigilant in protecting women's access to reproductive health care and the safety of the dedicated health care professionals who p

A reader asked how I resolved my plastic bag dilemma : I followed-up on that here . The Loblaws bags are great; I use them for everything. But no one's perfect, we sometimes still find ourselves bringing home plastic bags, so we're using those for dog pick-up. We also keep biodegradable dog pick-up bags for when we run out of the regular kind. I also asked about how to stop Canada Post from clogging our mailbox with junk. I'm appalled that they raise revenue by soliciting companies to flood us with "Unaddressed Admail". I understand paper-mail revenue is down. Wouldn't it be better to raise the price of stamps than to contribute to so much paper waste? I asked our lovely letter carrier how we could opt out of the mailings, and she said, "You just did." She told me that technically she's supposed to produce a signed letter - that is, Canada Post places a burden on the recipient, making it much less likely folks will bother. But she also hates the

From my heroes Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. Ohio's Secretary of State announced this morning that a $1.9 million official study shows that "critical security failures" are embedded throughout the voting systems in the state that decided the 2004 election. Those failures, she says, "could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State." They have rendered Ohio's vote counts "vulnerable" to manipulation and theft by "fairly simple techniques." Indeed, she says, "the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant." In other words, Ohio's top election official has finally confirmed that the 2004 election could have been easily stolen. Brunner's stunning findings apply to electronic voting machines used in 58 of Ohio's 88 counties, in addition to scanning devices and central tabulators

Jon Swift asked his readers for their best post of the past year. The results are some amazing reading. Perhaps you take the blogosphere for granted, but to me, it's absolutely astounding how many people are engaged in the form of journalism we call blogging - how many people are reading, thinking and writing, who likely would not be, were it not for the internet. Every once in a while I read something in the mainstream media slamming bloggers, and I think, there goes the dying gasp of a dinosaur. For my entry, I chose Better Living Through Canada , partly because many readers voted for it, but also because it seems illustrative of the themes of this blog. Wmtc is getting a lot of traffic from Jon Swift's post, so maybe a few more people will learn something about the Canadian health care system. Jon Swift's Best Blog Posts of 2007 is here.

I mentioned that I've started reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma . When I picked it up, I said to Allan, "I'm dreading reading this book." He said, "Why? Because you want to continue to eat?" Exactly. I've already read large portions Omnivore's Dilemma in the form of magazine features, so I knew full well what I was getting into: an exercise in self-torture. * * * * Yesterday I blogged about "The Story Of Stuff," the little documentary about unchecked consumerism in a finite world. Thinking about the film on a personal level, I could place myself somewhere on the consumer continuum. On one end we have the most conspicuous consumer of crap - the person who shops for recreation, constantly buys things he doesn't need and mindlessly chucks away most of it - and on the other, the person who leads the most careful, ascetic, consciously low-consumption lifestyle possible. I'm closer to the left end of the scale tha

James sent me this remarkable little documentary about the massive consumption of our modern world. It's called "The Story Of Stuff" , and it's excellent. The piece is about 20 minutes long. I highly recommend bookmarking it and saving it for a time when you can watch the whole thing. As I watched The Story of Stuff, I was reminded of something I wrote while we were in Peru . (Scroll down, it's towards the end.) I've never been an enormous consumer compared to the average North American, but being leftist and an activist, I've always known people who consume far less than I do. I have a kind of reverse-materialism envy. So many people envy other people's stuff. I envy the people I know who live with less. Our travels in Peru, and reading people like Jared Diamond and others, has helped me strive to consume less and recycle and re-use more. But like so many people, I also feel helpless, and worried, and I want to do more. Watch The Story of Stuff .

I expect traffic will be slow for a few days, as most people are out of their routines, even those who agree with me about all this silliness . I'll be putting up a few posts that are hanging around my brain, but I want to draw your attention to my recent reader poll . Thank you to everyone who already weighed in, and to every one of you for reading and being part of this blog all year. I also wanted to mention that Blogger now has Open ID commenting , so people who prefer to use a WordPress, LiveJournal, TypePad, AOL or whatever ID are able to. I've never understood why people are reluctant to have more than one login. I have logins for all the different platforms, so I can comment on anyone's blog. But occasionally I receive emails from folks who say they can't comment because they don't have a Google/Blogger login. Well, if that's you, now you can. Enjoy. If you read this blog the old-fashioned way, by going to the site and scrolling down, please check below

Three funny movies in a row! That's not a common occurence around here. "Shaun of the Dead", "The Simpsons Movie", and last night, "Hot Fuzz". Thanks to everyone who recommended Hot Fuzz. Terrific movie.

When the War Resisters Support Campaign was in Ottawa for the Citizenship Committee hearing , we were joined by two organizers from Courage to Resist . They came to Ottawa from California to support the resisters, then stayed in Toronto for a while, meeting kindred spirits and making connections for their excellent work. It was exciting for me to meet these folks, as Courage To Resist was how I first heard about Iraq War resisters. I admire them so much, and feel honoured to be working alongside them. Two of the Courage To Resist organizers attended a Support Campaign meeting after the Ottawa trip. They led a small ceremony, awarding "peace medals" to all the resisters in the room. One of them - I'm not sure of his name, and I don't want to get it wrong - was a resister himself. He told us he had refused to fight in the first Gulf War, and served nine months in prison. When he said that, a small gasp shot through the room. I am awed by someone who has the strength to

We watched The Simpsons Movie last night, and we both loved it. It's really funny. I purposely hadn't read about it, so I didn't know what to expect. I was surprised that parts of it were very heavy, even profound. The overall theme is human survival and the survival of Earth. Very impressive. The only thing I had heard about the movie was "Bart's doodle": full frontal nudity! I saw one review that said, to paraphrase, "You only see it for a second, what's the big deal?" The big deal is that the "doodle" sequence is hilarious. We were both wholeheartedly laughing out loud. Two thumbs-up on this one. Worth owning, I think.

I've just learned that Oscar Peterson has died. He was a true giant of jazz, and surely Canada's greatest jazz musician. He was also our neighbour, in a manner of speaking, as he lived in Mississauga for many years. Yesterday Jazz FM was playing only Peterson's music, and giving short biographical sketches of his life. It was wonderful. He lived a long and extremely fruitful life. Peterson will really be missed, but it's clear that he'll also live forever. Oscar Peterson, 1925-2007

This is a really interesting obituary. Sylvan Fox wasn't a famous writer, but he was a consummate craftsperson. Those of you who have written on deadline or to a tight word length will appreciate this anecdote. Mr. Fox was a reporter at The New York World-Telegram & The Sun when, on March 1, 1962, he was part of a team assigned to cover an airplane crash on Long Island that killed all 95 passengers. While his fellow reporters at the paper rushed to the crash site and phoned him with their unprocessed notes, Mr. Fox calmly worked the facts into order and delivered an article within a half-hour of the accident. He then rewrote the article for seven editions of the paper, adding new details as they came in. Within 90 minutes of the crash, he had produced a 3,000-word article. The Pulitzer was awarded to Mr. Fox and two colleagues in the now-obsolete category of "local story, edition time." A 3,000 word story in 90 minutes, pieced together from other people's reportag

If you haven't been following the story of Jamie Leigh Jones , the young woman who was gang-raped by KBR employees in Iraq, here's an update. Last week, the US Department of Justice couldn't be bothered to attend a hearing on Jones's case. The Department of Justice refused to send a representative to answer questions from Congress today on the investigations into allegations of rape and sexual assault on female American contractors. "I'm embarrassed that the Department of Justice can't even come forward," said the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers, D-Mich. "This is an absolute disgrace," said Conyers. "The least we could do is have people from the Department of Justice and the Defense over here talking about how we're going to straighten out the system right away." Among the witnesses who testified today was Jamie Leigh Jones, who appeared on "20/20" last week. Jones, now 23, says that after she

The excellent satirist-blogger Jon Swift is doing a Best of 2007 round-up. He's asking bloggers to submit their best post of the past year. For purely personal posts, this was a big hit . And nothing was quite as wonderful as THIS . But I've got to go for something a little more topical, not quite so specifically personal. The personal-is-political realm, which is my strength, such as it is. Allan combed through the muck and found ten or so good entries. From those, I narrowed it down to six. Could you help me choose? The nominees, in order of appearance, are: (a) May 11: better living through canada (b) June 2: on luck (c) June 15: apathy, laziness, fear? or something else? (d) July 1: reality check: violence against women (e) July 30: the tyranny of the subconscious (f) August 26: invasion of the brain snatchers (g) None of the above. They all suck. Allan noticed I do my best blogging in summer. I believe that was a function of unemployment. Lots of time to think. Please vot

This week, Amy Goodman shined a light in a very, very dark place. Goodman interviewed Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, who survived the CIA's torture-rendition program. You know the one? The program that key Democrats knew about as early as 2002. Along with four other victim-survivors, Bashmilah is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and by the New York University School of Law International Human Rights Clinic . Anyone who needs further proof of the corporatization of our brave new world need look no further than the defendants in this lawsuit. It's not the US government, not even the CIA. It's a private company called Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing. It couldn't have happened without them. Here is Goodman's story about the interview and what she learned; the interview itself is here at Democracy Now! . Go read about what the government of the United States, nation of my birth, did to this man. The greatestnationonthefaceoftheearth, t

From Reuters: Between railroad tracks and beneath the roar of departing planes sits "tent city," a terminus for homeless people. It is not, as might be expected, in a blighted city center, but in the once-booming suburbia of Southern California. The noisy, dusty camp sprang up in July with 20 residents and now numbers 200 people, including several children, growing as this region east of Los Angeles has been hit by the U.S. housing crisis. The unraveling of the region known as the Inland Empire reads like a 21st century version of "The Grapes of Wrath", John Steinbeck's novel about families driven from their lands by the Great Depression. As more families throw in the towel and head to foreclosure here and across the nation, the social costs of collapse are adding up in the form of higher rates of homelessness, crime and even disease. Further up the coast, a homeless encampment in Portland, Oregon has been designated a campground , a victory for the 60 resident

I tore through Roddy Doyle's Paula Spencer . It's wonderful. If you've read Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors , I highly recommend this follow-up. If you haven't but are interested, I'd start with the first book and wait a bit before reading the second. Woman Who Walked is narrated by 40-year-old Paula Spencer, who is taking stock of her life, and thinking especially about her marriage to a violent man. Paula's husband was an abuser, and there's no doubt about his monstrous behaviour, but Paula has made some terrible choices and is sorting out her own responsibility for her situation. In Paula Spencer , the husband is out of the picture, and Paula must stand or fall on her own. If Woman Who Walked is about domestic violence, Paula Spencer is about addiction. Paula is an alcoholic, and there are other addicts in her family. The story deals with the ongoing struggle to stay clean, about what we can do to help someone we love with an addiction, and

Today is the fourth Iraq Moratorium . Make your feelings known, in any way you can. I am only one, But still I am one. I cannot do everything, But still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. -- Ten Times One is Ten (1870), Edward Everett Hale Thanks to xofferson of the Iraq Moratorium blog .

A story on the front page of yesterday's Globe and Mail looked at a disturbing trend in Toronto. The economic polarization of Toronto into distinct regions of great wealth and great poverty is even sharper than anecdotal reports suggest , according to University of Toronto researchers. Using detailed census data to chart 30 years of change at the neighbourhood level, they have created a striking and disturbing new image of the city, one in which traditional mixed-income neighbourhoods are reduced to a mere buffer between an increasingly wealthy core and increasingly impoverished suburbs. The observation is not new, but it has never been presented with such authority or drama as it is in the new analysis, titled The Three Cities within Toronto: Income Polarization among Toronto neighbourhoods, 1970-2000 . "All this frankly surprised us," said lead author David Hulchanski, director of the university's Centre for Urban and Community Studies. "We knew there was a sh

Zip finally sent us "Hot Fuzz"... and it was damaged and wouldn't play. I won't say that's typical, but I will say it didn't surprise me. We wait again. Last night we watched "Shaun of the Dead," which Simon Pegg wrote several years before Hot Fuzz. I've wanted to see it since it came out, and I'm glad we finally did. It's very funny. Good comedies are hard to come by for me. Most of what's out there and supposed to be comedy just doesn't make me laugh. Or, it doesn't make me laugh enough. A few chuckles is not enough payoff to sit through a whole movie. Shaun of the Dead was funny throughout. It's occasionally disgusting, but none of the violence is believable, and most of it is hilarious. We cheered when Dylan Moran , an Irish comedian, appeared in a supporting role. We loved Moran's series, Black Books , which he wrote and stars in. One season was on Comedy Central in the US, late at night, never promoted. We coul

I just realized that everyone can see this year's card . (Click to enlarge.) Photo credit: James . Ghost of Holidays Past here.

Only five more days. Only five more days of "Have you finished all your shopping?" and "What are you doing for Christmas?" and listening to the long litany of what my co-workers got for people I don't know and will never meet. Only five more days of this most irritating and pervasive assumption that I celebrate this holiday, because doesn't everybody? Only five more days, and sometimes I think I will explode before I get there. As with so many things, it's less in Canada than in the US. It's lower-key here, and it starts later. And thank goodness for that, because my tolerance for this Christmas bullshit is decreasing every year. When I was younger I used to like to see the windows on Fifth Avenue (a popular New York tourist attraction) and St. Patrick's Cathedral in its Christmas finery. But after you've done that a half-dozen times or so, the attraction wanes, then disappears. I'm grateful I've always lived in a place where I can sa

You know how I feel about advertising , about the encroachment of advertising into our landscape and our lives. I feel the suffocating presence of too much advertising all around, crowding me until my skin crawls. I hear its noise in my brain, drowning out my own thoughts. And now that overused metaphor becomes made literal. New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman's voice right in her ear asking, "Who's there? Who's there?" She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, "It's not your imagination." Indeed it isn't. It's an ad for "Paranormal State," a ghost-themed series premiering on A&E this week. The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an "audio spotlight" from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environment

When I studied literature in university (which we called college), a familiar perspective on female characters was known as "the virgin/whore dichotomy". Women were either chaste caretakers and helpmeets in need of protection from the evils of the world, or wicked, monstrous sluts who connived and seduced helpless men in order to achieve their dastardly goals. In Victorian literature, this was a familiar lens through which to see women. And despite passage of some 150 years, today's media sometimes hasn't progressed much further. Of course, it's not only women who are portrayed in this black or white, on or off, good or bad, perspective. This is the laziest and easiest way to view any person or event, and it's the way most of us are taught history: good and evil. But it seems to me women are subjected to this duality more than men, perhaps because so often we are not fully recognized as people. Full people, full humans, with the sweeping range of possibilities

Readers in the Toronto area, you are invited to join the War Resisters Support Campaign (Toronto chapter) tomorrow night for an evening of letter writing and holiday partying. Details here , or email me. This Friday, December 21, is Iraq Moratorium #4 . Please consider doing something public and visible to show your opposition to the US occupation of Iraq. It can be as simple as wearing a button, or talking to your co-worker. Take action for peace.

Search string of the day: maxing the credit card and then moving to canada You'll still have to pay them off, you know.

I have six posts sitting in drafts about the Bouchard-Taylor Commission . Every time I started to write, the entry devolved into some version of "what is wrong with these people??" , and I gave up. But no one reads wmtc for breaking news. Maybe in February, I'll blog about Canada's embarrassing obstructionism in Bali. So from the Better Late Than Never Department, this time the post is going up. * * * * If I were a Quebecker, I'd be painfully embarrassed by the public spectacle of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. The Commission, supposedly studying reasonable accommodation of religious minorities "in response to public discontent" of those accommodations, is a carnival of racism, nativism and xenophobia. It would a laughingstock - if it weren't so dangerous. As the Commission's road show continues, I've noticed a certain amount of delicacy in some of the media when dealing it. Are we Anglophones not supposed to criticize anything that comes fr

I am really digging all this snow . I don't ski or skate, and I can't remember the last time I built a snowman or had a snowball fight. But for some reason the snow is making me so happy. Snow was just a big pain in the ass in New York City. Here, I'm loving it. Why is that? It can't be because getting around is easier here. In New York, the trains are always running. You can always trudge to the subway and get somewhere. In Mississauga, one snowflake and the GO is late. Getting to work this morning was no picnic. First Allan had to shovel the driveway to take me to the bus. The bus was 40 minutes late. Then it got stuck on a hill for an hour! And poor Allan, when he finally left for work, it took him an hour just to get out of our little development! Mississauga has yet to plow our street. So it sure as hell isn't transportation. Maybe it's because the snow stays white and beautiful here. In New York City, it's pretty the first day, and that's if you li

The terrible, early death of Aqsa Parvez makes me so sad. But it makes me so angry that her death is being credited to Muslim fundamentalism, or to immigrants, or to multiculturalism. None of those killed Aqsa Parvez. Aqsa, 16 years old, was killed by her father. Aqsa was an abused child. She was a victim of domestic violence, a tidy little euphemism we use for assault that is perpetrated in our own homes, by the people who are supposed to love us. Child abuse, always terrible, sometimes fatal, occurs in homes of all faiths and of no faith. It occurs in families of all colours and all backgrounds. It occurs in families of all income levels. It occurs in single-parent families and in extended families. One of my favourite bloggers, Impudent Strumpet, had this to say. Think about your own adolescence. Did you ever want to hang out with friends instead of being home when your parents wanted you to? Did you ever want to listen to music they didn't want you to? Did you ever want to d