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“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.”  Gary Gruber-Mai talks about this, love or money and immigration challenges.

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Gary Gruber-Mai; I am 39 years old and currently live in Calgary, Alberta Canada. I was born in Vereeniging in Gauteng province in South Africa. I had officially immigrated to Canada in November 2012

You left your comfort zone, moved to a different country and started your own business. Tell us more about this experience.

I would refer to comfort zone loosely. My decision to move was because I was uncomfortable in my position in South Africa. I lived...

read more..

Latest Posts in News

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

Over the past months, we’ve examined several cabinet level departments, and their performance against mission. Our examination of departments inside Homeland Security (DHS) focused primarily on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protections (CBP).  In the coming months, we’ll be looking closely at the cabinet level Departments of Defense and State, given the recent declarations of military action in South America and Iran, then look at other key DHS departments like FEMA and CISA.


Conservatives Be Cautious: Serfdom Could Lie Ahead

If conservatives accept President Donald Trump’s agenda to dismantle our republic’s laws and principles, they could go down The Road to Serfdom, as Friedrich A. Hayek’s book title suggests. Hayek, an Austrian-British economist and Nobel laureate, believed that “the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom.” Any constraints on the exchange of property in the marketplace lead to socialism, which he considered a form of totalitarianism.  


February 2026 Magazine

This month we explore art, creativity and resilience. These three themes are intertwined and made whole in our feature story about Korean American artist Samantha Yun Wall. Barbara Lloyd McMichael has written an excellent article about this astonishing artist whose first   major solo exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum explores cultural duality, memory, and societal stigma. In the third part of a three-part series, The Roots of Resentment (Revisiting John Rawls), Rosemary Curran examines how to equalize the playing field between the elite oligarchs and all the rest of us. Annie Searle’s article, What Does it Take to Effect Change, reminds us that it’s important to remember that DHS contains not only ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), but also the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Coast Guard.  In Belle’s Big Burden, women have been spurned and rejected since the beginning of time, but unlike Belle Burden, they don’t land a multi-million dollar book deal. The oil painting The Threatened Swan, created around 1650 by Dutch Artist Jan Asselijn, is our top pick for February. A great painting has many meanings. Each month we will feature a work of art that, on some level, speaks to all of us.  ––Patricia Vaccarino


What Does It Take to Effect Change?

As we move closer to the February 13 deadline for a Senate vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it’s important to remember that DHS contains not only ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), but also the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Coast Guard.  So effecting any form of change in a budget document is challenging with such considerations.

 

 


Alex Pretti Killed by ICE

On January 24, 2026, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old American intensive care nurse for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot and killed by ICE Agents. In his final moments of life, he was helping a woman who had been pushed to the ground by ICE agents. His last words, “Are you okay?,” will forever echo in American history. He will be remembered.