Globe editorial
Time for restraint, as after Sept. 11
The Fort Hood shootings were the work of a man, not a belief system, and must not lead to open season on Western Muslims and their beliefs.
The grammar of kinship
Claude Lévi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who died this week aged 100, did not like to be called a structuralist, but he constantly used the word "structure," and the term "structuralism" gained currency in order to describe his work.
Neglected underground
The renewable energy sector has the potential to become a significant economic engine for any country that embraces it, but Canada is falling behind.
The public sector's turn
Ontario has 24.7-billion reasons to get its fiscal house in order. There are no easy answers, and Premier Dalton McGuinty is surely understating the challenge when he says that "we will have to sit down with our public-sector partners ... and see what our responsibility is."
Generation gap
The retirement of Mahmoud Abbas, the President of Palestinian National Authority, is an expression of frustration at the lack of progress toward a two-state solution, but it may permit the emergence of a new generation of Palestinian leaders. In the short term, however, it may well cause a further deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations and play into the hands of the Hamas rulers of Gaza.
Globe editorial
Illegal handguns matter more
If the federal long-gun registry dies, it would not be a defeat for gun control. It would be the end of a costly bureaucratic system whose benefits are uncertain
Globe editorial
To catch a thief is no crime
There is no public interest in prosecuting David Chen, the Toronto grocer who caught a serial thief shortly after a larceny
Onward from assembly
The Canadian Auto Workers have acted effectively and prudently in obtaining from Ford Motor Co., by negotiation, a favourable ratio of vehicle production in Canada to sales in Canada. But in the longer term, the interests of Canada lie in an automotive industry that is more specialized, more advanced and more environmentally sustainable.
A culturally rich autism
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is not a work usually given to irony. Yet proposed changes affecting Asperger's syndrome in the upcoming edition of this authoritative psychiatric manual seem steeped in it.
Globe editorial
Not coming to terms with torture
As President Barack Obama turns the United States back to the vision of its founders, he has left the case of Canadian Maher Arar as a glaring exception
In the right direction
Canada's increasing selectivity with regard to refugee claimants, revealed in a recent report of the government to Parliament, should be seen in conjunction with other aspects of Canada's immigrant and refugee system. Canada is still an open and welcoming country, and the government is showing concern for refugees who are in the greatest danger. But many other aspects of the system need to be improved.
Half-baked benefit
The federal government's announcement yesterday that it intends to allow self-employed workers to access maternity and parental-leave benefits through employment insurance is a mixed blessing. Recognition of the hardships faced by Canada's 2.6 million self-employed workers is welcome and overdue, yet the proposal seems to have been rather hastily conceived. And parental leave in general could have benefited from a broader rethink.
Globe editorial
Urgency from feds still lacking
From the beginning of the H1N1 pandemic there has been a calm, verging at times on complacency, from federal officials
Engage on all levels
Canada and other countries have to deal with some of this aftereffects of the Sri Lankan civil war, which have both security and immigration ramifications. The Sri Lankan government is approaching other states, including Canada, seeking access to Tamil asylum-seekers. As for Tamils who are in detention camps in Sri Lanka, Western pressure is at last beginning to induce the Sri Lankan government to let many of them return to their homes.
Data brings accountability
Computer networks are becoming a wellspring of democratic accountability. Vancouverites can look up the exact longitude and latitude of every public drinking fountain in their city on an Excel spreadsheet, or check out the comprehensive data that is registered with the city's land titles office (with names removed). This summer, Calgary passed a motion to authorize the release of much of its city data. Toronto is the latest jurisdiction to practise digital transparency; yesterday it released information on the capacity of licensed child care centres, official geographical data on city parks and information on bylaw infractions at apartment buildings, among other datasets.
Globe editorial
NATO must keep pressure on Karzai
Since the Afghan president's legitimacy is weak, he cannot be allowed to govern with impunity
Farewell, Crown Victoria
The pending closure of the Ford plant in St. Thomas, Ont., is another blow to Southern Ontario's manufacturing heartland, showing the impact of the economic downturn even on the healthiest North American auto assembler. And for admirers of the Crown Victoria vehicle manufactured there, it's the end of an era.
A sensible sale
Hydro-Québec's purchase of NB Power is not the "dangerous situation" Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams, a frequent Hydro-Québec critic, makes it out to be. Rather, it is a sensible economic move that enhances co-operation while relieving New Brunswick of its energy-related debt.
Pop culture is born
How did the world manage to live without the phrase "popular culture" until the late 1960s, when an American literature professor, who died last week, began to propagate it? Ray Browne was a scholar who studied accepted classics such as Moby Dick , but in 1967 he founded the Journal of Popular Culture and the Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Far from the scene of the crimes
Canada has lived up to its word in punishing a low-level ringleader of a genocide far from its borders, Désiré Munyaneza, who beat children to death who were tied in stacks, who raped dozens of people, and killed dozens, in Rwanda in 1994. It is right to take aim at the culture of impunity, and to refuse to be a haven for the world's worst criminals. It is right not to allow a mass murderer to blithely enjoy the fruits of this country's good-natured, welcoming communities. Right, but not preferable.