November 29th, 2000

Last week, two Canadians made international headlines by burning their passports. They were protesting Canada’s leading role in making sure that the climate summit in The Hague was a complete disaster.

November 22nd, 2000

When Alliance candidate Betty Granger used the phrase “Asian invasion,” it was a flashback to Second World War “yellow peril” rhetoric and she was forced to resign. But there was another pearl of wisdom the ex-candidate shared with students at the University of Winnipeg, one that went largely unnoticed. Referring to the boats of Chinese immigrants seized off the B.C. coast, she said, “There was a realization that what was coming off these boats was not the best clientele you would want for this country.”

November 15th, 2000

On Oct 20, University of Toronto student Derek Laventure attended a protest outside the Ontario Tory convention. He saw a police officer drag away a fellow activist and he was heard to say, “That’s not right.” Next, witnesses say, he was brutally assaulted by several police officers, thrown against a barricade headfirst (his eye was so bruised, it swelled shut), and arrested.

November 8th, 2000

When the top two executives at BMG Entertainment resigned on the weekend, it revealed a deep schism in the way multinational companies see the Internet’s culture of sharing. Despite all the attempts to turn the Net into a giant shopping mall, the default ethos still seems to be anti-shopping: On the Internet, we may purchase things here and there, but we share ceaselessly—ideas, humour, information and, yes, music files.

November 1st, 2000

The United States is supposed to be a culture driven by the worship of success. And yet it seems there is one man for whom success is universally unacceptable: Ralph Nader.

October 25th, 2000

Is that Ralph Nader running for Prime Minister? It seemed that way when Jean Chretien entered the election with fists flying at fat cats, millionaires and “radical” right-wingers who care only about “the market forces.”

October 6th, 2000

I knew there was a problem when my mother called my hotel in Prague. She had been watching the news and was under the impression that, if I were at the protests against the World Bank, I was either in hospital or in jail. I told her things got pretty tense for a few minutes but that, on the whole, the protests had been peaceful. “Don’t believe everything you see on television, Mom.”

September 27th, 2000

What seems to most enrage the delegates to the meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Prague this week is the idea that they even have to discuss the basic benefits of free-market globalization.

September 20th, 2000

When I arrived in London on Sunday, the city was like a jittery heroin junkie who had just shot up. The panic that gripped Britain when a coalition of truckers and farmers blockaded the nation’s oil refineries had been replaced with an unreal calm. The gas was flowing again and, at the stations, dazed customers injected their tanks with rivers of unleaded.

September 13th, 2000

One time, when I was on the phone with Sympatico customer service, I shamelessly abused my privilege as a writer for this newspaper. “Look,” I said, “I’m a columnist with The Globe and Mail and I need e-mail access now.”

September 6th, 2000

In New York City today, leaders of 150 countries are gathered for yet another meeting on globalization. Unlike all the other high-level meetings on the same theme, there won’t be raucous crowds of environmentalists, workers and human-rights advocates outside, yelling about all the issues that have been bungled by the politicians inside. Why miss a perfectly protestable opportunity like this, in easily accessible, downtown New York?

August 30th, 2000

I wasn’t thrilled that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service quoted my book in its new report on the anti-globalization “threat.” In some of the circles in which I travel, writing for The Globe is enough of a political liability, never mind being a de facto CSIS informant. But there it is on Page 3: No Logo helping CSIS to understand why those crazy kids keep storming trade meetings.