Wednesday, 21 May 2025
On "responsible" business and the 2025 Responsible Investment Association in Toronto
Saturday, 19 April 2025
Tecumseth and Canada's Social Economy
Tecumseth and Canada as a Social Economy
It is this sometimes hidden counter-cultural statehood that has ensured independence over time and the current upswelling of popular antipathy to recent attacks by the present leader of the republic to the south. In essence, by birth, therefore, Canada is a social economy. however complicated by its imperial origin, and so supports the concept of social economics that was our mission when TorontotheBetter was founded: economic affairs dedicated to values other than purely mercantile self-advancement. If Canada’s development as a social state has often been ignored it has recently emerged as a powerful emotive factor in the cultural politics of 2025 and what is likely to be a foundational election of North American differentiation. By birthright Canada is a social economy amd it is this that is fuelling the most overt popular resisitance to American hegemony in recent times.
Sunday, 30 March 2025
Mar-a-lago and Berchtesgaden
No, Donald Trump is not a new Hitler, but he has the character of tyrants throughout history: punitive, egotistical and self-aggrandizing. One thing that unites Trump and other historical malfeasants is their love of pastoral retreats as a relaxing break from their serious work of control and predation. Mar a lago fits the Berchtesgaden model of anti-social economic zones. The implications are for viewers to puzzle over.
Sunday, 23 March 2025
Canada's war(s) with the United States
If current tensions with Canada's southern neighbor seem unprecedented they are not. A set of memorial stones in a park on Portland Street in downtown Toronto mark the graves of Canadians killed in the War of 1812. The war was with the United States. Like most wars it was about economic supremacy between the U.S,A. and British North America, now Canada,and ts indigenous partners. Through the war Canada retained its alignment, as a European counterweight to American imperial expansion of the time. If Northern North America collaboration ensued in the 20th century European/world wars,cultural distance nonetheless remains deep and its flare-ups should serve to remind Canadians and the world of the core differences that separate these North American neighbours. They make Canada with our national public health care service and third party a more European and social economic culture. Though some may see Trumpian outbursts as a social media artifact a profound values differential is the root cause and American style social media are, like Trump himself, a symptom of deep and dangerously insecure isolationist instinct in our deeply interconnected socio-cultural times.
Wednesday, 12 March 2025
On Canadian integration etc.
Wednesday, 26 February 2025
Markets v. tariffs: confusions clarified
Thought there was a contradiction? One benefit of free floating thugs like the world’s current crop of autocrats is they can erase any confusion people might have about the proponents of extreme “free” trade. A stroke of autocratic pens clears governments of long standing economic “principles”. Like autocracy “free” trade is a tool to maximize power for the already Empowered. Free trade is only truly free in the service of liberty for all.
Saturday, 22 February 2025
World Cup 2026 - Toronto: opium for masses? FIFA scores, people lose?
------------ > Football, aka soccer, and more broadly professional sport, have joined, if not surpassed, religion as “the opium of the masses”. If so, then Toronto is in for a very “high” summer in 2026 when the word’s most popular debuts its major tournament in the city for the first time.
The question for Toronto is whether its world cup will do more than distract attention from everyday realities.
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* Feb.22 2026. Here begins our tracking of Toronto’s 2026 World Cup, our assessment of how much better the 2026 will be for Toronto, Canada and the world. World soccer/football Governing body FIFA wants 2026 to be the best ever World Cup. Let us see. Initial FIFA references to the Toroto World Cup laud our diversiy and livability but say nothing about the ecomomic assault on the country by its cup co-host, the U.S.A or the poverty and distress that co-exist with the 'enertainment, technology, and innovation' that capture FIFA's attention at www,FIFA.com..
