This is going to be a highly controversial week on Open Sources Guelph, geo-politically speaking. Sadly, we must dip back into Trumpland this week as the race for the title of the President’s stupidest son heated up. Meanwhile, things got pretty heated in Canada as some people thought that $10.5 million was too much to pay for being tortured in a black site, and things might really get heated if North Korea gets the bomb. Back in Canada, we’ve got our fingers crossed for a juicy government grant.
This Thursday, July 13, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
1) Money Monster. The Canadian government reached a settlement with Omar Kadhr, a child soldier that was wounded, arrested, detained, tried, and convicted by the American government while three different Canadian administrations twiddled their thumbs. The bill is $10.5 million, and it was supposed to close the door on a particularly painful episode of Canadian history, but look out, the Conservatives smelled an opportunity to wedge, and they have wedged like the wind! We’ll try to sort out the complex feelings, discuss why the government probably did the right thing, and why this has been so controversial.
2) Oh, Fredo. After months of trying to cast the investigation into Russia collusion as “fake news”, the biggest bomb yet came from none other than Fredo Cor… I mean, Donald Trump Jr. DoJu was sent an email from someone he never met, who told him that they had dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government that they wanted to offer his father’s campaign, and he thought, “Sounds legit to me!” After some hard-hitting reporting from The New York Times, DoJu had to admit that yup, he was that stupid. We’ll mine the latest developments of the case, which seem to be changing by the minute.
3) Nuclear Options. Meanwhile in North Korea, they’re getting closer and closer to finally having intercontinental ballistic missiles tipped with atomic bombs, something that the majority the world sees as not a good thing. But what can be done? Conventional warfare would create millions of refugees that would flood the borders of China, letting Kim Jong-Un have nukes would destabilize the Pacific Rim, and getting rid of him through assassination features a whole host of moral, ethical and political concerns. So how do we get out of this stalemate, and what is the North Korean endgame other than, you know, “kaboom!”?
4) Drain Stream Media. This fall, the federal government is expected to announce what, if anything, they’re going to do to help bolster the failing mainstream news industry. Post Media has been on “death watch” for a while, TorStar just killed its tablet app Touch, and ad dollars keep dwindling, and dwindling forcing further deeper and deeper cuts. So what can the government do? What should they do? Should they do anything? One cannot deny the importance of the news, but might government propping up a failing business model stifle innovation? And is there a Guelph lesson to be learned here?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.
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