In light of recent events, here are five pressing questions:

1: What’s the United States got to fear from Canada?

After explicitly promising not to militarize the border, U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft announced his plans on Sunday to do just that. At least, deploying 400 National Guard troops to border crossings and assigning 200 army personnel to fly helicopter patrols over the border sounds awfully militarized. Or is it the Ashcroft-speak that’s so confusing?

Even by Republican standards, Ashcroft is a loose cannon.

As far as hertics go, Marc Hall is as unlikely as they come. The seventeen year-old Oshawa high school student is tall, thin, polite and soft-spoken. Just the kind of well-behaved kid that parents nag their own children to emulate.

Yet, in the past few weeks, Hall has become the centre of a civil rights battle that has galvanized activists across the country. Hall wants to bring his twenty-one year-old boyfriend to his senior prom at Monsignor John Pereyma Secondary School in Oshawa. His principal refused, as did the Durham Catholic District School Board.

Anyone who thought last fall that inexperienced, silver-spooner Governor George W. Bush would make an ineffectual, do-nothing president with little presence on the world stage has been proven wrong. Less than a year into his presidency, he's already refused to endorse a United Nations' plan for a permanent international court for war criminals, announced plans to break the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, rejected a new international agreement on the enforcement of a 1975 ban of biological weapons, and, most recently, refused to adopt the Kyoto accord negotiated last weekend in Bonn, Germany.

Not long ago, I complained to a friend about the endless profusion of American flags, a gesture that in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks was understandable, even moving, but now just seemed perfunctory and opportunistic.

Every television network has reworked a flag into the logo that appears at the bottom right of the screen. National Football League players have pasted tiny flag stickers to the side of their helmets. Fashion designers have sent models down runways clad in flags reworked in every possible way as sarongs, embroidered patches and T-shirts.

When is a prisoner of war not a prisoner of war? Should Canada hand over Taliban and Al Qaeda captives to the United States? Why do the human rights of alleged terrorists matter at all?

To clarify the human rights issues involved in Guantanamo Bay and to debunk some of the myths of the war on terrorism, I went straight to an expert: Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada.

Some religions teach that women are inferior to men and that wives should, in all cases, submit to their husbands. Some faiths forbid divorce, pre- or extra-marital sex, and the use of birth control. Some religious groups maintain that certain races and religions are superior to others.

As repugnant, offensive and out-of-date as these beliefs might be, the right to have them, to teach them and to share them with others is a protected one. As it should be. It’s a big country, with lots of room for a diversity of ideas, opinions, and ways of living.

"Guys are simple. We like to drink beer, hang out with our buddies and watch and play sports."

It's the late afternoon - 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. slot - on MOJO Radio ("The All New AM 640") and listeners are calling in to respond to host Scruff Connors' query: What do women need to understand about men?

One caller is cheesed off because his girlfriend refuses to have sex with him when he comes home drunk. Enzo e-mails to say that he's flummoxed as to why his wife is so mad because he stood her up on their fifth anniversary to go to a hockey game ("I mean, it's the Leafs!").

Espouse liberal politics long enough — more equitable distribution of wealth, workers’ rights, racial equality, reproductive choice, social spending, that sort of thing — and sooner or later some steely-eyed conservative will accuse you of being mushy-minded or sentimental.

Just about everyone in the glorious city of Vancouver is blissed out by a long stretch of sunshine. Yet, despite the beauty around them, my progressive, vegetarian, bike-riding friends here still wear the shell-shocked look they’ve had since Gordon Campbell’s Liberals came to power.

I've never met Jonathan Oppenheim, but at some point in the past three years, I've made it onto his e-mail list. Since then, I've received several dozen e-mails from him, mostly updates on the three-year APEC or, SprAyPEC, if you will, inquiry.

Oppenheim was one of the complainants, a student activist arrested during demonstrations against the November, 1997, Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Conference (APEC) at the University of British Columbia.