Rick Salutin

Public opinion in apparently all western countries, including the U.S., opposes a strike on Syria on "their" grounds; people have made it through the crapstorm.

The Parti Québécois government in Quebec is floating a "Charter of Quebec Values." It makes me nostalgic for the old days of Quebec nationalism.

Mouthing phrases like "free and fair election" does nothing for legitimacy. In fact, if you think about it, we hardly know what we really mean by democracy.

In an age like ours, where crass, self-seeking behaviour by the rich and mighty is more overt than it once was, a sense of vile underlying impulses may grow even stronger.

All key social issues today relate to challenging corporate wealth and power. It's hard to imagine mounting any real challenge without an economic counterforce, which is what unions are.

I keep encountering anthropologists (mostly but not only in print) who help more in understanding how the world works today than other experts do, even in their own fields.

I think Martin Luther King was right when he said the arc of history is long but bends toward freedom. But it will keep bending without getting there, at least not for a long time.

I'm grateful to American-Irish writer Harry Browne, for writing The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power) on the ultimate "celebrity humanitarian."

The Arab Spring wasn't an event with a result to preserve, it was a piece of process. Same for democratization.