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Orwell's essay "Shooting An Elephant" contains a wealth of timeless ideas about the reality of violence against both humans and animals.  Taking a life only causes suffering, terror, and trauma; it is not heroic. It's not a clean, dramatic moment when Orwell shoots the elephant. It's terrible. Without any of the Hollywood bullshit, he shows us what violence actually looks like. The animal is not killed by the first bullet. Instead, a terrible thing occurs, the elephant appears diminished, defeated, and old all of a sudden. Its body appears to age centuries in a matter of seconds. Its mouth…

Considered one of the most powerful essays ever written, George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant" is timeless and reflects on the present genocidal imperialistic tendencies of the present era. George Orwell rejects comfort of a straightforward story about a good man who is ensnared by circumstances beyond his control. Rather, he reveals how imperialism corrupts the colonizer from the inside out. Despite his awareness of the injustice and the humanity of the Burmese people, he is resentful of their everyday hostility and guilty of enforcing what he refers to as the "dirty work of…

The world is returning to the fragile order of great power rivalry, as shown by the growing ties between China and Russia, particularly against the backdrop of Trump's renewed imperialist rhetoric, threats, and arrogance. Established in a pre-Trump era and extending through 2026, their 2001 treaty is presented as a promise of consultation rather than bloodshed, enabling two powerful authoritarians to quickly coordinate in the event of an external threat without being bound by the same kind of automatic warfare that has historically sunk nations into disaster or a NATO defensive pact.…

India’s decision to renew the USA—India defense pact emerges from a calculation of power, a nation maneuvering through a world tilting toward confrontation and scarcity, where every alliance is a shield. New Delhi seeks tools of power from, U.S. intelligence and technology that promise to show an increasingly treacherous landscape. Will India become another Ukraine, an American proxy war? India faces the gnawing instability of Pakistan, Israel and Iran and with Trump's tariffs biting and Russian oil creating diplomatic tension with the Americans, the agreement becomes a gesture of repair, a…

The province itself served as the backdrop for a morality play about knowledge, power, and the enduring mistrust of educators in the late summer of 2025. In a dramatic and ruthlessly calculated move, the UCP planned a media frenzy in August and September that portrayed the Alberta Teachers' Association as a group of political operatives rather than a professional organization advocating for reasonable class sizes and fundamental assistance. The vote, which rejected the government's offer by a resounding 89.5 percent, showed how deeply educators felt insulted by this pre-strike vilification,…

The UCP carried out policies that put a strain on public education resources and gave preference to private alternatives, building on previous cuts to public education. The ATA had relied on this data source to support its advocacy for improved student-teacher ratios and assistance for high-needs students, but in 2023, the government stopped provincial tracking of class sizes and complexity statistics. With classes in some districts having more than 30 to 40 students in all the larger Alberta cities, this lack of transparency made it hard to hold the government accountable for overcrowding,…

“When a government shreds its own schools, it is not practicing efficiency, it is committing cultural amnesia. Civilizations do not collapse from barbarians at the gates but from bureaucrats with budget sheets.” - Camille Paglia “A society that fears its teachers fears its own mind. The assault on education is always an assault on imagination, the one force that cannot be legislated or domesticated.” - Camille Paglia “Ideological austerity is the new Puritanism: joyless, punitive, and obsessed with policing the very institutions that once produced the nation’s intellectual vitality.” -…

“The corporatization of education seeks to produce human beings who serve the system, obedient workers, consumers who do not question, and citizens who remain passive.” - Chris Hedges “The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves.” - Noam Chomsky “In the conservative imagination, the world is always being ruined by liberal elites and their contempt for the common man, and the cure for this is always to smash the institutions of learning and culture.” - Thomas…

Legislative limitations and funding freezes combined to change the public education landscape in 2020, resulting in one of the most difficult eras for Alberta's educational system. Bill 32, Restoring Balance in Alberta's Workplaces Act, was introduced by the provincial government and placed new restrictions on unions that represent teachers and other public sector employees. These regulations limited political spending, prohibited some forms of picketing without permission, and mandated mediation and cooling-off periods prior to strikes or lockouts. These actions resulted in a major loss of…

"Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." - PM, Pierre Trudeau The "twitch and grunt" represents the impact of the U.S. (Trump's) actions on Canada, regardless of whether they are intentional, unintentional, or friendly. From the onset of Donald Trump being in office from 2017 to 2021, such extreme conservatism has affected Alberta politics tremendously. Looking back on 2019, many Albertans would say there was a vigorous 180-turn on the…

"Zelensky urged Trump to go beyond sanctions, saying Putin won’t yield without US long-range missiles for Ukraine. Dmitry Peskov called Trump’s comments on a US sub near Russia “important,” while Trump criticized Russia’s Burevestnik test as “inappropriate,” urging Putin to end the war." - Crux via Youtube As though it were a test of strength, we are seeing two leaders of the most potent nuclear-armed nations in the world show off their arsenals. Clearly, both leaders have no clue that nuclear war equals human extinction. The fact that there is less than two hours left before human…

To put this in perspective, the United States has sold NATO some of its Tomahawk missiles. Only nuclear submarines and destroyer battleships are equipped with Tomahawk missiles. So, from where and how will these tomahawks be fired? It would be a direct conflict with Russia if they were launched from a submarine or a European destroyer ship, either from the United States or another European nation. What plans do NATO and the German military-industrial complex have for these Tomahawk missiles? Simply put, they plan to retrofit some trucks with 22-foot-long, 1000-pound tomahawk missiles with a…

Dr. Harry Segal, a clinical psychologist, warns that President Donald Trump’s pattern of malignant narcissism and deep-seated narcissistic wounds, that produce rage and disorganized thinking, has shown up repeatedly on his public social media feed, where emotional outbursts and punitive threats appear as American government policy dictated by him. The whole world is watching this odd and bizarre behavior from a political leader of a country. Thank goodness there is only one on the world stage acting in such strange and bizarre childlike emotional fits, toward countries and other world…

I hope Trump understands our peoples, the intertwined history of Canada and the United States of America. For more than 300 years, we have grown together on North America, sharing not just a border but a story, a story of survival, of cooperation and love for one another, of nations built with Indigenous peoples and immigrates. Our histories are somewhat separate peoples and cultural threads; but they are bound by rivers, trade routes, migrations, protecting each other during migrations, wars, and dreams. We both LOVE each other, no matter ideology. Historically, Canadians have died for…

“The greatest enemy of the moral life is not evil but indifference. It is the inability to see beyond the self, to recognize that the world is not a stage for our ambitions and appetites.” - Chris Hedges “The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.” - Carl Sagan “War does not determine who is right, only who is left.” - Bertrand Russell The tragedy of our age is not that we lack information, but that those in power believe they have the best and strongest military in the world. We are ruled by men and women…