I’d like to start out today by saying that the thoughts of everyone here at the site are with those affected by the floods in New Brunswick. On to the subject of net neutrality. The reality is that we live in a day and age in which websites such as this, and millions besides, are one of the last true bastions of independent published thought and opinion. Over the last decade they have become a serious threat to controlled media. Let’s make sure it remains that ...More »

Over at Tom Dispatch, Tom Engelhardt runs through 12 Answers To Questions No One Is Bothering To Ask About Iraq… “1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military's worst Iraq nightmare: Few now remember, but before George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, top administration and Pentagon officials had a single overriding nightmare -- not chemical, but urban, warfare. Saddam Hussein, they feared, would lure American forces into "Fortress Baghdad," as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled it. There, they would ...More »

For those of you in Kamloops and the surrounding area, a date has been added on the shows page. I was taking a look at incoming links on our Mint page this morning and came across this list of Canada’s top 25 political blogs (which, as always, should be taken with a grain of salt). Being that I tend to rarely read Canadian political blogs, it was interesting to visit some of them, though I must confess that I am baffled at the popularity ...More »

As you can all see, we have a new site design. The truth is that it’s not actually new; it was a design that we used over a year ago. After re-designing the site after its use, Dale made it a Wordpress theme available for download, so if you want to use this theme, and have a Wordpress blog, please do. We’ve obviously made some changes to it for our use here, but it’s basically the same. One of the alterations is the addition of the ...More »

Over the last few days I have had the interesting opportunity to venture on to some conservatively based blogs that have linked to the website (yes, that’s one of the finer features of Mint). First, it’s always important to respect the political passions of others, unless, of course, they venture into a realm in which outright intolerance is espoused. When it comes to various conservative blogs, the intelligence of the author is obvious, and while I might disagree with some of their positions, the way ...More »

Updated: I thought it best to keep discussion regarding the new design in the comments of Dale's initial post about it. You may proceed there to detail your hatred of the colour orange and all things bleak looking. For those of you that signed up for an account for the purpose of commenting on my recent entry regarding Ezra Levant and the larger issue of the publication of the Danish cartoons, please keep in mind that, unlike other sites, we have policies that clearly define what ...More »

I think I did something wrong there and lost a post while trying to edit it. We’ve been having a lot of weird things happening lately, which has been driving The Hobbit up the wall. So sorry about that. The link to the story that I mentioned is here if you want to read or bookmark it. There seems to be a lot of ghosts in the machine lately. For one thing, my iChat on my new iMac is completely screwed and I have absolutely ...More »

More to come on this topic tomorrow when I get some time to properly sit down and address it. One of the aspects in particular that has to be touched on is the US's role in foisting Ms. Bhutto on the nation as a democratic 'savior' in what can now only be classified as a significant foreign policy mistake. But more on that tomorrow. With regards to perceived culpability in Bhutto's assassination... According to the Pakistani ISI, a telephone call was intercepted from Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal ...More »

Yesterday, Vancouver Pivot Legal Society lawyer David Eby made an entry on his blog that, in truth, should be published on the front of every daily in this city. Better yet, it should be handed out in print on every street corner… “The City of Vancouver staff are advancing a report that suggests sufficient social housing is under construction in the City to consider demolition and conversion of the last remaining Single Room Occupancy hotels in Vancouver. Single Room Occupancy hotels and lodging houses are the last ...More »

So here we find ourselves – in Brandon, Manitoba. Yesterday the Hobbit and I spent most of our time working on a few new site refinements that I think everyone is going to enjoy. Nothing significant is going to change, just a bit of a face life – a little plastic surgery, if you will. And while we exhaustingly searched for a photo of a girl stabbing another girl with a broken beer bottle for the header, it just wasn’t to be. The show here tonight ...More »