Award-winning author and broadcast journalist Carol Off digs deep into six words whose meanings have been distorted and weaponized in recent years—including democracy, freedom and truth—and asks whether we can reclaim their value. As co-host of CBC Radio's As It Happens, Carol Off spent a decade and a half talking to people in the news five nights a week. On top of her stellar writing and reporting career, those 25,000 interviews have given her a unique vantage point on the crucial subject at the heart of her new book—how, in these polarizing years, words that used to define civil society and social justice are being put to work for a completely different political agenda. Or they are being bleached of their meaning as the values they represent are mocked and distorted. As Off writes, “If our language doesn’t have a means to express an idea, then the idea itself is gone—even the range of thought is diminished.” And, as she argues, that’s a dangerous loss. In six, wide-ranging chapters, Off explores the mutating meanings and the changing political impact of her six chosen words—freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes—unpacking the forces, from right and left, that have altered them beyond recognition. She also shows what happens when we lose our shared political vocabulary: we stop being able to hear each other, let alone speak with each other in meaningful ways. This means we stop being able to reckon with the complexity of the crises we face, leaving us prey to conspiracy theories, autocrats and the machinations of greed. At a Loss for Words is both an elegy and a call to arms.
Three Canadians – Lewis MacKenzie, Romeo Dallaire and Louise Arbour – were at the centre of the two greatest tragedies of the 1990s. Two of them could have stopped the killing. One was asked to bring the perpetrators to justice. In this riveting, original and explosive book, Carol Off explores the failure of peacekeeping missions in Sarajevo and Rwanda, and the international community’s attempt to redeem itself by prosecuting the people responsible for the genocides. Events turned on the action of two Canadian generals: the fox of the title, Lewis MacKenzie, who commanded the UN forces in Bosnia for the first crucial months of the conflict; and the lion, Romeo Dallaire, who developed an interventionary plan that he believed would have prevented the Rwandan genocide but was forced by the UN to stand by while 800,000 people were slaughtered. The eagle is Louise Arbour, a Canadian judge who became Chief Prosecutor for War Crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
Award-winning author and broadcaster Carol Off reveals the fascinating—and often horrifying—stories behind our desire for all things chocolate. Whether it’s part of a Hallowe’en haul, the contents of a heart-shaped box or just a candy bar stashed in a desk drawer, chocolate is synonymous with pleasures both simple and indulgent. But behind the sweet image is a long history of exploitation. In the eighteenth century the European aristocracy went wild for the Aztec delicacy. In later years, colonial territories were ravaged and slaves imported in droves as native populations died out under the strain of feeding the world’s appetite for chocolate. Carol Off traces the origins of the cocoa craze and follows chocolate’s evolution under such overseers as Hershey, Cadbury and Mars. In Côte d’Ivoire, the West African nation that produces nearly half of the world’s cocoa beans, she follows a dark and dangerous seam of greed. Against a backdrop of civil war and corruption, desperately poor farmers engage in appalling practices such as the indentured servitude of young boys—children who don’t even know what chocolate tastes like. Off shows that, with the complicity of Western governments and corporations, unethical practices continue to thrive. Bitter Chocolate is a social history, a passionate investigative account and an eye-opening exposé of the workings of a multi-billion dollar industry that has institutionalized misery as it served our pleasures.
In 1993, Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia were plunged into the most significant fighting Canada had seen since the Korean War. Their extraordinary heroism was covered up and forgotten. The ghosts of that battlefield have haunted them ever since. Canadian peacekeepers in Medak Pocket, Croatia, found no peace to keep in September 1993. They engaged the forces of ethnic cleansing in a deadly firefight and drove them from the area under United Nations protection. The soldiers should have returned home as heroes. Instead, they arrived under a cloud of suspicion and silence. In Medak Pocket, members of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry did exactly the job they were trained — and ordered — to do. When attacked by the Croat army they returned fire and fought back valiantly to protect Serbian civilians and to save the UN mandate in Croatia. Then they confronted the horrors of the offensive’s aftermath — the annihilation by the Croat army of Serbian villages. The Canadians searched for survivors. There were none. The soldiers came home haunted by these atrocities, but in the wake of the Somalia affair, Canada had no time for soldiers’ stories of the horrific compromises of battle — the peacekeepers were silenced. In time, the dark secrets of Medak’s horrors drove many of these soldiers to despair, to homelessness and even suicide. Award-winning journalist Carol Off brings to life this decisive battle of the Canadian Forces. The Ghosts of Medak Pocket is the complete and untold story.
This shocking exposé of the corruption and exploitation at the heart of the multibillion-dollar cocoa industry is “an astounding eye-opener that takes no prisoners” (Quill & Quire, starred review). Bitter Chocolate is both an absorbing social history and a passionate investigation into an industry that has institutionalized abuse as it indulges our whims. Award-winning journalist Carol Off traces the fascinating evolution of chocolate from the sixteenth century banquet table of Montezuma’s Aztec court to the bustling factories of Hershey, Cadbury, and Mars. In what will be a shocking revelation to many, Off exposes how slavery and injustice remain a key aspect of its production even today. In the Ivory Coast, the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans, profits from the multibillion-dollar chocolate industry fuel bloody civil war and widespread corruption. Faced with pressure from a crushing “cocoa cartel” demanding more beans for less money, poor farmers have turned to the cheapest labor pool possible: thousands of indentured children who pick the beans but have never themselves known the taste of chocolate. “Bitter Chocolate is less a book about chocolate than it is a study of racism, imperialism and oppression as told through the lens of a single commodity.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Another one’s quit! And Vicki Williams must abandon her fourth grade students and fly to south Florida to find another caretaker for her mom and her lifetime buddies. Only nine months before, Vicki helped the ornery group escape from Unenchanting Acres and find their own home, their Sugar Shack. Join in their adventures: when the blind and unlicensed geezers steal the Shack van, when eighty-four-year-old Maggie rekindles a sixty-year-old love affair, when the Judge loses his battle with a live lobster, when tampons become as precious as gold to rich-bitch Pauline. As Vicki establishes her life in Florida and rediscovers love. This is a gentle, timely story that takes a warm and funny look at how aging could be. Take your medicine and embrace longevity with the old group of friends in One Bubble Off with healthy doses of love, joy and laughter.
This book was first published in 2003. As World War II drew to a close and the world awakened to the horror wrought by white supremacists in Nazi Germany, African American leaders, led by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), sensed the opportunity to launch an offensive against the conditions of segregation and inequality in America. The 'prize' they sought was not civil rights, but human rights. Only the human rights lexicon, shaped by the Holocaust and articulated by the United Nations, contained the language and the moral power to address not only the political and legal inequality but also the education, health care, housing, and employment needs that haunted the black community. But the onset of the Cold War and rising anti-communism allowed powerful Southerners to cast those rights as Soviet-inspired. Thus the Civil Rights Movement was launched with neither the language nor the mission it needed to truly achieve black equality.
Taking a deep dive into contemporary Western culture, this book suggests we are all fundamentally ambivalent beings. A great deal has been written about how to love – to be kinder, more empathic, a better person, and so on. But trying to love without dealing with our ambivalence, with our hatred, is often a recipe for failure. Any attempt, therefore, to love our neighbour as ourselves – or even, for that matter, to love ourselves – must recognise that we love where we hate and we hate where we love. Psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, has claimed that to be in two minds about something or someone is characteristic of human subjectivity. Owens and Swales trace the concept of ambivalence through its various iterations in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to question how the contemporary subject deals with its ambivalence. They argue that experiences of ambivalence are, in present-day cultural life, increasingly excised or foreclosed, and that this foreclosure has symptomatic effects at the individual as well as social level. Owens and Swales examine ambivalence as it is at work in mourning, in matters of sexuality, and in our enjoyment under neoliberalism and capitalism. Above all, the authors consider how today’s ambivalent subject relates to the racially, religiously, culturally, or sexually different neighbour as a result of the current societal dictate of complete tolerance of the other. In this vein, Owens and Swales argue that ambivalence about one’s own jouissance is at the very roots of xenophobia. Peppered with relevant and stimulating examples from clinical work, film, television, politics, and everyday life, Psychoanalysing Ambivalence breathes new life into an old concept and will appeal to any reader, academic, or clinician with an interest in psychoanalytic ideas.
Once upon a time girls stopped wearing dresses to school and put on jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts. It was the Age of Aquarius, when old rules of behavior no longer seemed to apply. But now that the flower children have children of their own, they're starting to wonder what the new rules ought to be. Manners expert Carol McD. Wallace, who has two sons of her own, comes to the rescue with a clear, contemporary guide to what today's parents should teach their children, when to teach it, and how to do so without turning their homes into boot camp. Here in Elbows Off the Table, Napkin in the Lap, No Video Games During Dinner, in the kind of knowing detail only a parent could offer, are step-by-step guides to: --Basic Training: The dawn of civilized behavior, or how to teach 3- to 5-year-olds to behave at meals, say "please" and "thank you", share, and apologize. --The Age of Reason: Refining the manners of 6- to 9-year-olds at home and abroad. --The Young Sophisticate: How to bring the manners of 10- to 12-year olds to high polish. --Manners for Parents: Everything from when it's okay to bring your child into work to privacy--your own and your children's.
This is the only resource out there for an audience that is desperately seeking it. Using techniques highly successful with any child who struggles with focus, parents learn how to teach their child tomorrow. Includes reproducible aids.
The Red Dress" and "The Crossroads.", two stories I wrote many years ago grew into a novel. I wrote, THE JUMPING-OFF PLACE, about a fire in the same small town. It shook the whole community of Sweetwater, especially the victim's sister. Then Ollie investigated the fi re, she encountered dangers she didn't see coming, through two enemies, even a brother who returned home to Sweetwater. The Pentecostal Church stood in the middle of Sweetwater and so did Galveston Hobbs, a minister who didn't fl inch from addressing controversial subjects with his congregation, only he didn't know about the greed that was rampant as two men sought their new fortunes.
Historical Suspense and Romance in the Wild West Fired from her most recent governess position, Melanie Ross must embrace her last resort: the Arizona mercantile she inherited from her cousin. But Caleb Nelson is positive he inherited the mercantile, and he's not about to let some obstinate woman with newfangled ideas mess up all he's worked for. He's determined to get Melanie married off as soon as possible, and luckily there are plenty of single men in town quite interested in taking her off his hands. The problem is, Caleb soon realizes he doesn't want her to marry up with any of them. He's drawn to Melanie more every day, and he has to admit some of her ideas for the store unexpectedly offer positive results. But someone doesn't want the store to succeed, and what used to be just threatening words has escalated into deliberate destruction and lurkers in the night. When a body shows up on the mercantile steps--and the man obviously didn't die from natural causes--things really get dangerous. Can Melanie and Caleb's business--and romance--survive the trouble that's about to come their way?
Discover a path to hope and healing while navigating a breast cancer diagnosis. Through relatable anecdotes, coping tricks and personal reflection, Chemo P!ssed Me Off offers invaluable insight, encouragement and a few laughs for anyone going through cancer or any of life's challenges.This humorous approach to navigating some dark and devastating times not only lightens the burden of the cancer journey but demonstrates how to turn it into an opportunity for growth. Chemo P!ssed Me Off is raw, real and funny as it takes you on the road to finding gratitude in the worst of times and cherishing every moment.
Publisher's description: Traveling solo through the back roads of Greece, the author uncovers a glimpse into the modern history and soul of Greece as reflected in the music and dance. In a village hidden in the hills outside of the legendary Thebes, older men recall and sing a song in the 14th Century dialect of their Albanian ancestors. At a concert of polyphonic music, the voices produce animal-like howls, odd harmonies and unusual intervals in these rarely heard musical expressions. And we meet a middle-aged Greek woman who recounts her experiences as a young girl caught in the Greek Civil War.
The stories are legendary, the characters unforgettable, the world horrible and disturbing. Howard Phillips Lovecraft may have been a writer for only a short time, but the creations he left behind after his death in 1937 have shaped modern horror more than any other author in the last two centuries: the shambling god Cthulhu, and the other deities of the Elder Things, the Outer Gods, and the Great Old Ones, and Herbert West, Reanimator, a doctor who unlocked the secrets of life and death at a terrible cost. In Lovecraft Unbound, more than twenty of today's most prominent writers of literature and dark fantasy tell stories set in or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
Expand and challenge your knowledge and understanding of Physics with this updated, all-in-one textbook for Years 1 and 2 that builds mathematical skills and provides practical assessment guidance. Written for the AQA A-level Physics specification, this revised textbook will: - Offer support for the mathematical requirements of the course with worked examples of calculations and a dedicated 'Maths in physics' chapter. - Measure progress and assess learning throughout the course with 'Test yourself' and 'Stretch and challenge' questions. - Support all 12 required practicals with applications, worked examples and activities included in each chapter. - Develop understanding with free online access to 'Test yourself' answers and 'Practice' question answers*.
Air, land, . . . and sewer? Exiled for centuries to a primitive planet, the people of Aerros have learned to live without animals or higher technology but using their genetically engineered plants, cultures, and Wing cousins to survive instead. Over time, they improved the Wings, from flying idiots to a productive serving class. But there are some places that feathered appendages just wont fit. The humans who handle these less-than-pleasant tasks are provided extra assistance and special privileges to make up for such work. Pete is just a boy, but hes quick and agile and can get into all of those tight spaces to help his father maintain the sewers, but he could do without the older apprentices hazing. Left in the dark, filthy tunnels by his fathers apprentice, Pete is rescued by Jared, a unique descendant of both human and Wing. This chance intervention sets Pete, Jared, and their friends on a path that will eventually bring the true problem of the settlement to light.
Meet the Bachelors of Hoot's Roost, Oklahoma, where love comes sweepin' down the plain! Fit to Be Frisked by Carol Finch Take your best shot! Cowboy Vance Ryder is footloose and fancy-free—until he plays a prank on gorgeous rookie cop Miranda Jackson. She fines him for his stupidity, but the police chief hits the roof and sentences both of them to a week in each other's company. Miranda doesn't want to be attracted to fun-loving Vance. But it isn't long before she's practically arresting him for theft—he's stolen her heart! Mr. Cool Under Fire by Carol Finch Under siege! Gage Ryder, confirmed bachelor and mystery man, takes on a temporary assignment as a bodyguard. But Mr. Cool Under Fire is definitely rattled when he meets his client—the feisty and playful Mackenzie Shafer must pose as his wife! She's more temptation than Gage can handle. How can he save Mackenzie from the bad guys when he can't protect himself from her sexy charm?
Word Problems" provides a variety of activities designed to enrich and reinforce math skills taught at the fourth- through sixth-grade levels. The pages are presented in a suggested order, but may be used in any order that best meets a child's needs. Exercises are designed so a child can work with a minimum of supervision in a classroom or at home. The whimsical characters will entertain and motivate your children. An answer key is also included at the end of the book.
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