Yoni Goldstein

The language with which the media have characterized the Quebec student strike, now in its 14th week (and perhaps on its last breath if Jean Charest goes through with legislation that would "suspend" it until late summer), is strikingly lacking. The most often used terms -- "student protest" and "tuition...

Like many of you, this week I watched a YouTube video featuring the Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of The Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, or BOND. The 12-minute film, entitled, "How Liberal Women are Building a Shameless Society," is a vehicle for Peterson's, shall we say,...

Ah, May's here. It may well be the greatest month of the year. The days are long and the weather's perfect, flowers are blooming and birds are singing. May is a time of new beginnings and the heady expectations of summer. Winter is over now -- you survived, barely, and...

These NHL playoffs have, thus far, been an unmitigated success for the NHL concerning the one benchmark that consumes Gary Bettman and his presumable alien overlords more than anything else: American TV viewership ratings.

Sunday's Bruins/Capitals overtime game drew the highest overnight ratings of any NHL playoff...

There are two kinds of people who will read this column: The first will read it and move on, the second will read it and then comment on it. I'd like to address the latter group directly.

There are a number of you who insult and sideswipe, all the while...

Of all the transgressions and failures the CBC has been accused of -- with renewed vigour since the Conservative government brought down its budget -- there is one indictment the Mother Corp. doesn't deserve. Point fingers all you want at the national broadcaster's bloated bureaucracy, its holier-than-thou intellectualism and slanted...

This July, it will be 10 years since my grandfather died. After his wife, my grandmother, passed away in 1983, my parents, sister, and I eventually came to share a house with him, and from then on he was as much a brother to me as anything else.

The majority of Canadians are racist toward Muslims. That's the gist of a countrywide poll released earlier this week. The Léger Marketing survey shows that 52 per cent of the people in this country "mistrust" Muslims, and not only that: 42 per cent agreed with the phrase "If...

At first, I was rather annoyed at the two million Quebecers who are seeking reparations from Big Tobacco in a class-action lawsuit to the tune of $27 billion. These people, I told myself, are reaching for a scapegoat to mask their own poor decisions, and worse, expect to cash in...

A recent op-ed in The Beacon, an online magazine created by students of New York City's Yeshiva University, is causing quite a stir in the Jewish community. Entitled "Why It's Time for Jews to Get Over the Holocaust," the article argues that Jews and Judaism would be better...

It's early days for the robocalls affair, but I think the central lesson of this story is already evident -- namely, that our politicians will do anything to win an election.

I say "politicians" and not "Conservatives" because if you think it's only the Tories who would stoop so low...

Take a breath, Canada. Let's all just try to chill out.

Look, I know you're upset at the Conservatives' privacy bill. You know, the one that basically says police can look at everything you do online whenever they want. And I can kind of see why you're all...

To bomb or not to bomb? That is Israel's question.

In truth, neither option is particularly enticing for the Middle East's only democracy. Should it choose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, there is a better chance of failure than success. Iran's reactors, we all know by now,...

Finding a new friend is one of life's great joys. The discovery of another human being with whom you share some combination of common cause, background, interests, ideals and beliefs is a special moment with obvious benefits -- now you can ditch your old pals, with whom you've exhausted all...

Reaction to Stephen Harper's Davos announcement of coming changes to Old Age Security was predictable. "Poor old people" was the general tenor -- one day they're heading jauntily toward retirement at 65, but now, because of our emotionless jerk of a prime minister, they'll have to work an...

If Canadians were being honest with themselves, they'd admit that socialized health care in this country is a myth. Our system is not a national one, it is governed by each province separately - the only "national" thing about Canadian health care is the financial assistance provided by the federal...

It strikes me that in all the recent discussion over legalizing marijuana, no one has actually written about the pros and cons of actually smoking the stuff. I mean what it feels like, what it does to you. This is likely because the people who would write about this subject...

Children aren't particularly sensible, that's why they need adults. As a former child myself, I speak from experience. For example, as a young person, staring at a TV all night the night before a math test, a subject that even I knew required revision and practice to master, seemed a...

In naming "The Protester" as its Person of the Year, Time magazine is gazing ahead to what may happen in 2012 and beyond, not looking back on the past 12 months. The opening sentences of the cover story admits just as much: "History often emerges only in retrospect. Events become...

There is absolutely nothing to like about the Ontario government's funding of Catholic schools. Not one thing. It is, quite frankly, a stupid and wholly unfair policy, a relic so far out of touch with the present day the fact that it has lasted this long is preposterous.

In the...