May 3rd, 2000

It was May Day when a leaked copy of the Retail Council of Canada’s master plan to eliminate sweatshops came through my fax machine. London was rioting, two million people were protesting in Japan, and workers were smashing rice bowls in Hong Kong. As I read this feather-light document, designed, it proudly states, to assure “customers that the goods they buy are not produced under exploitative, inhumane or illegal working conditions,” all I could do was laugh. Unlike tougher codes in Europe, and even the one just adopted by the University of Toronto, it said nothing about transparency, independent monitoring, or a living wage.

April 26th, 2000

Railing against the flawed methodology of polls published on the front page of The National Post is a little like pointing out that Leonardo DiCaprio’s interview with Bill Clinton wasn’t the proudest moment in journalistic history. True enough, sure, but must we really stare in gape-mouthed amazement at the obvious? And yet, last Thursday, my jaw went slack on me. “WTO protests fail to sway Canadians,” read the banner headline in the Post. “Most support free trade talks, federal poll finds.”

April 12th, 2000

My friend Mez is getting on a bus to Washington, D.C., on Saturday. I asked him why, and he said with all this intensity: “Look, I missed Seattle. There’s no way I’m missing Washington.”

April 5th, 2000

Follow the logo.

If there is a guiding principle in the current wave of student activism, that is it.

March 13th, 2000

Dear Mafiaboy,

As I write this, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are closing in on your position. Maybe you are already behind bars, imprisoned for crimes against Yahoo. They say you had something to do with the rash of attacks that crippled some of the most powerful commercial sites on the Net this month.