Rose's Cantina

View image | gettyimages.com Who among us remained unmoved watching the images of the French under attack? How could a person not feel anger, and utter cries of revenge? From the terrorists' points of view, this means "mission accomplished". They can explode bombs and fire into crowds within days. Or they can do nothing. Regardless, they have caught our attention. Terrorists train us to be afraid, to look around, to be suspicious of our neighbors. Even if it never happens again, the damage has been done. They have successfully sown their seeds, and thanks to the power of social media, everyone in the world knows their power. There are those among us who are calling for unflinching retaliation against those who commit evil deeds. They want us to close our borders, card everyone, and destroy and obliterate whole communities. Pit one human being against another. Put our needs before those who live in rags and swim in sewers. But there are more of us...

#82635875 / gettyimages.com A lot of people were making fun of Stephen Harper hiding in a broom closet being guarded by MPs with hand-fashioned sticks last week. There are memes all over the Internet about it. Where was he supposed to go? Have you been in that room? There are no windows to jump out of, like in the Parliamentary Press Gallery's hot room. There isn't even a bathroom. This was not a cowardly act, as some have suggested. You know what the flight attendants say. The big person should always put the mask on first in order to save the country. That's what Harper was doing, making sure the big person would still be alive if his loyal foot soldiers with sticks had been unable to protect him. Most of us would do the same thing. He's our Prime Minister, for Goodness Sake, one of our great symbols of democracy. So stifle yourself, Harper haters. There was no need for him to come out of the closet. Besides, I have no doubt the caucus would h...

#88621286 / gettyimages.com If he's still there, Mr. Bloom must be having a challenging time teaching world history and politics to his high school students. How do you talk to students about ISIS or ISIL, whatever name that's being used these days, especially when you're teaching in a school that has already raised a homegrown terrorist -- a white kid, no less? Mr. Bloom was the best teacher the kids had. Marissa hated high school, but she loved Mr. Bloom. Ditto Stef and Nick. That's because Mr. Bloom was a straight shooter, a teacher who was unafraid to tell it like it was. He'd been an English as a second language teacher in Korea. He smoked pot. He drank gallons of hooch on his off hours. That gave Mr. Bloom cred. I had a teacher like that in high school, Ralph Eising, who wasn't afraid to teach students about the real world.  In Grade 12, Ralph gave us a book of essays to help us understand the curse of being aboriginal in this damn...