Issues, ethics, memory
Recently I posted about good books that I read in 2025. My list was too long for one post, so here is my sequel. If you want to recommend books for the rest of us to read in 2026, please use the comments section at the end of this piece to do so. Happy reading.
Here are some of my favourite books from 2025. In a chaotic and troubled world, reading books, remains one of life’s great pleasures. It is also a way to stay more deeply informed that is possible by reading newspapers or following on air news, and infinitely preferable to doom scrolling on social media. Take a look.
A Politics and the Pen fundraiser at the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa went smoothly for most of the evening. But it turned nasty near its end when one of the MPs co-hosting the event implied in a quip that the NDP is antisemitic.
David Shulman is an Israeli author, professor emeritus, and peace activist. In a recent article in The New York Review of Books, he describes how extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied territories are attacking Palestinian homes and villages, crops and herds. Shulman calls it a second Nabka.
NATO leaders, including Canada, have agreed to spend 5.0% of Gross Domestic Product on the military. Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will more than double its military spending. That will fuel the arms race and crowd out spending on much-need social programs.
NATO and the Trump regime in the US are demanding that Canada drastically increase military spending. We should, rather, apply a peace lens. It would include a greater emphasis upon diplomacy and peacebuilding in concert with military spending.
In July 2022 Pope Francis visited Canada at the invitation of Indigenous leaders and their communities. He apologized for the Catholic Church’s co-operation in what he called Canada's "devastating" policy of Indigenous residential schools.
Omer Bartov is a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He says that Israel is conducting genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and Western countries are complicit in their silence.
I will be voting for the NDP in the federal election. They have historically advocated for policies that improve the lives of Canadians, and continue to do so. They have a group of ethical and hard working MPs, as well as stellar new candidates. The Liberals may well win the election, but we need the NDP with party status in parliament to provide an social justice presence .
Russian media and U.S. Republicans continue to spread lies about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. They say that he is a corrupt billionaire who owns a luxury villa in Florida. These claims have been fact checked and they are maliciously false.
Pulpit and Politics 