This week on Open Sources Guelph, Hell freezes over! Not really, but it did feel like a week where the impossible happened as the election results came back in Alberta. Meanwhile, it looks like Omar Khadr might finally get out of prisoner, but not if anyone in the federal government has anything to say about it. Same goes for parents rallying against changes to the sex ed in Ontario as that debates heats up all over again. And that brings us to a unique event in Garland Texas that seemed tailor-made to antagonizer and ended up doing just that. What a week! Let’s talk about it.
This Thursday, May 7, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
1) Orange is the New Blue. In a surprising move, the Alberta NDP won a majority in the Alberta Legislature, ending the 44 year run of the Progressive Conservatives and the political career of Jim Prentice. But what drove the “Orange Crush” in so-called Wild Rose Country? Was it the hubris of the Conservatives? The general desire for change? Is there a hungry left-wing caucus in Alberta that’s eager to be fed? Is it all the above? We’ll dig into that, and we’ll also dig into the results of the provincial election in Prince Edward Island.
2) Dangerous Cartooning. Last Sunday in Garland, TX, an event called the “First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest” ended in gunfire as two men with assault rifles tried to break up the blasphemous (to Muslims) affair, but were killed by off-duty police and private security hired for extra protection. The event’s organizers, American Freedom Defense Initiative, are classified as a hate group and are famous for their protest of the supposed “9/11 mosque,” so how much about this was protecting Free Speech, and was it possible that the AFDI was being purposefully provocative in holding the event in the first place?
3) Let’s Not Talk About Sex. Protests continue to spark up in regards to the Ontario government’s proposed changes to the sex-ed curriculum, and this week hundreds of parents are taking their kids out of class for the week to send a strong message of opposition to the first real alterations to the sex ed lesson plan in 17 years. Is the media giving too much air to people who are not only opposed to the curriculum, but wrong about what it contains? And are we missing the real education story, the pending strikes in schools across Ontario?
4) Khadr Coming Home? Taken prisoner on the battlefields of Afghanistan in 2002, Omar Khadr has spent almost half of his young life in detention, 10 years in Guantanamo Bay, and almost another five here in Canada. Now the court says that Khadr is eligible for bail as he awaits the appeal of his war crimes conviction, and while prison officials say he’s a model prison with very little chance of re-offending, the federal government is pushing hard to keep him behind bars. Has the time come to free Khadr, and is the government burying him under their security agenda?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.
Open Sources Guelph 