you see this question come up all of the time: why doesn't the working class organize itself better, anyways?

it's maybe an example of how sometimes answers are so obvious that you can't see them. or maybe an example of the disconnect between intellectuals and workers. but, it's actually not hard to figure out if you've ever had to work these kinds of jobs.

they're simply too busy working.

bakunin realized this and suggested that revolts had to come from the unemployed. and, if you look carefully at successful and unsuccessful revolts, you'll see he was mostly right.

i think the more important question to ask is why it is that we continue to rely on neo-colonial economics to create goods.

even up here in canada, it would not be difficult to create greenhouses to grow coffee in. and, because the process can be mostly automated, the decrease in costs [both in terms of production and in terms of transportation] should actually cut the price.

but, instead of focusing on food security, we're signing global trade agreements that are seeking to cement mercantilist relationships that don't make any sense.

you don't need to listen to the hippies, either. ask investors and major food-producing corporations. they'll tell you the same thing.

see, why do they sell us young "thugs"?

why don't they sell us young "respectable educated professionals"?

you don't have to change the means of expression. it would maybe be nice if you could introduce a topic of some relevance. but it's really not necessarily a major overhaul in presentation, despite possibly having large changes in cultural outcomes. and, i don't mean putting them in a suit and putting them behind a bank teller, either. there's enough bling floating around already, and it's really a part of the problem. a respectable educated professional could be a doctor or an engineer - but it could also be a history major, or a student of musicology. it's just not a fucking thug.

then, we sit around and wonder what's wrong with the kids. it's really no secret. they're what they're raised to be.

i've heard some beatles and floyd interpretations that are actually pretty good, but this really just underscores how simplistic the piece is. that said, this does have a lot more potential than is present here. the key is in breaking up the monotony and repetition in the melody. it makes even the most boring mozart piece sound interesting, and mozart is really a pretty low bar in 2015.

it's good enough to be the soundtrack to a kids movie, but that's about it.

http://www.youtube.com/comment?lc=ofkygx89dBAuEPi0CpuUB6ftpAi5w0GIFVeMXVt2JsI

indeed. when real men want to kill people, they join the army.

the reputable telephone pollsters, almost without exception, had the conservatives somewhere in the (27,33) range at the start of the campaign - that's about 30%, +-/3. today, the reputable pollsters have the conservatives in exactly the same range. you'll see the odd 25-26 or the odd 34-35, pretty much randomly - outliers. there has been no statistically measurable change in conservative support, and therefore no reason to draw conclusions about a bump that hasn't actually happened. but, there has been a pretty big movement between the ndp and the liberals.

i think that, in the end, this will hurt them. they've finally shown themselves for who they are. but, even so, they don't go much lower than 30.

this was always an election between the ndp and the liberals, and this is still true. but, the split is brutal. if he's winning, it's on the worst split, yet; we've never seen them split 30/30 like this.

there's no culture war. there's just a huge split in the opposition.

i mean, you lose 10% over the previous election and that's a successful tactic?

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-conservatives-barbaric-cultural-practices-1.3254886

RareRationalism
I would not deem it 'a war', but I would deem it a cultural reawakening.

jessica murray
lol.

i repeat: there is no evidence that this tactic is working.

maybe harper can dust off some old borden signs, as a part of this "cultural reawakening" and put them up in downtown vancouver.

HARPER: FOR A WHITE CANADA

bet that'll go over well in the vancouver and toronto ridings he's required to win to form a government.

just don't tell anybody about the underground railroad, though. warps the narrative.

--

ok. found the question.

" As you may know, the Government of Canada has issued a direction requiring people to show their faces when they are being sworn in as Canadian citizens. This direction means that face coverings, such as niqabs or burqas, are not permitted during Canadian citizenship ceremonies. Do you support or oppose a requirement that people show their face during Canadian citizenship ceremonies?"

support: 82%
oppose: 15%
don't know: 4%

what is the main reason you support?

1) For identification purposes 29%
2) It's just a cultural practice / doesn't infringe on religious rights / freedom 8%
3) For security reasons / concerns 6%
4) Disrespect for our cultural norms / social practices (showing ones faces, beign unmasked, etc.) 14%
5) To follow our laws / rules 11%
6) Discriminates women / detrimental to women / sexist 2%
7) Shows that one adopts Canadian culture / becomes a Canadian citizen 12%

so, this is actually a leading question.

first, they tell you it's against the law. then they ask you if the law should be followed. well, do you believe in law or not? most people don't follow the issue all that closely - of course they agree with the law. there's two responses, then - those that agree the law should be upheld, and those that have some kind of "values" based response - although whatever values these are, they are not canadian values.

for those that are simply saying the law should be followed, we have: 1, 2, 3, 5. that's 54. these people are not actually in opposition to anything except people breaking the law; and that takes the total up 69% opposed.

4,6,7 are the real opposition that the conservatives are supposedly trying to mobilize, although 6 is contentious. and, unsurprisingly, that adds up 28% - the conservative base, +/- a bit.

no wonder there's been no poll movement.

this isn't a winning strategy for the conservatives.

Kevan Brown
You shouldn't have pointed that out, it was keeping them busy and distracted.

jessica murray
i find the narrative embarrassing.

this morning's nanos poll puts the liberals at 43% in ontario, and 34% nationwide - and the conservatives at 30% nationally. the supposed conservative uptick in quebec is gone; it seems to have just been randomness in the data.

it would be nice to hear the media pick up on the idea of canadians rejecting the racist electoral strategy of the conservative party.

it took me by surprise when mulcair came out in favour of the tpp a few weeks ago out of a clear attempt to appear more centrist; now, he's changed his mind as a clear electoral strategy. he's in favour of it if he thinks it will win him votes, and opposed to it if he thinks it will win him votes.

in principle, i think that opposing the tpp is the correct electoral strategy. it will get them the most seats. but, what will they actually do?

see, i'm not opposed to people changing their minds; i'm not into "strong leadership", i'm into fact-based analysis. but, the result of the party changing it's mind twice now, both times obviously to position themselves to win votes, is that i still don't know where they stand. this was one of the first questions i put down: where do they stand on this?

if they are to be taken at their word, the fact that they haven't read it means they actually don't know what their position is on the deal. if i'm really into fact-based analysis, that actually sounds good in principle.

but, i couldn't imagine them claiming they support it, then rejecting it. i could imagine them coming up with an obfuscated position that makes it seem like they oppose it unless you're paying close attention, and then supporting it. as it is, the only specifics i've heard are with supply management. so, does that mean he'll support it if it has some language about supply management that he likes, forcing maude barlow to issue a press release correcting his language? i don't have a crystal ball or anything, but the future is sometimes easily predictable.

give me a flow chart. put your conditions down. tpp is not conscription; you can't do this, not necessarily thing, it's too complicated. give me your conditions and let me see if i agree with them....

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-tpp-trade-ndp-1.3255051

i'm going to call in and report thanksgiving.

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/02/canada-conservatives-barbaric-cultural-practices-hotline#comments

more screwy right-wing market language from the so-called left.

hiring decisions are not determined by profits. that is reaganomics - thoroughly debunked. rather, they're determined by demand. cutting wages (or increasing them, as you may) can consequently never lead to layoffs, as that does not affect demand. in fact, that would actually decrease profits by making it harder to reach demand; that is, it would send patients elsewhere and reduce total profits in the process. simply put, it would be stupid. almost nobody will do this, and those that do deserve what they get.

reducing doctor's wages will have no effect on anything except reducing doctor's wages, which i think they can handle just fine. and, if they don't want to see a total decrease in pay? i suppose they'll just have to see more patients.

if they cut staff, they'll have to do the same amount of work with less people. there's no logic in this; it's just right-wing scare-mongering.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/nadia-alam/ontario-liberal-healthcare-plan-problems_b_8211512.html

Nadia Alam
Hi Jessica, thank you for reading. I did want to point out a few things:

1. Cutting physician wages does lead to layoffs. Like I said, a physician's office is like a small business. When you cut a physician's wage, they can no longer afford the "extras" of paying for administrative staff, secretaries, nurses, etc. Before a physician closes their office, they will try to make do with less so that they can at least continue to pay for the physical space of the office. And when that doesn't work, they will close the office. Just like some of the family physicians' offices that have closed north of northern Ontario; just like some of the addiction centers that have closed in Toronto; just like some cardiology centers and radiology centers have closed in Southwestern Ontario. This is already happening. Saying that "it isn't so" doesn't change the fact.

2. Physicians cannot work more to earn more. When we see more patients, we bill more, and the government has told us we are not allowed to bill more. The Liberals have put a cap, a limit, on our services, one that we are not allowed to go over. What do you think will happen when we reach this set limit? Physicians will stop seeing patients.

3. There's no logic in doing the same amount of work with less people. You're right. But physicians will try for a little while. The majority of us aren't in this for the money. To be honest, there are other jobs that pay just as well and are much less stressful. However, medicine is a calling for many of us. We love our patients. We love our work. So we will try to make do -- up to a certain point. When we can't bear watching our patients struggle under office inefficiencies resulting from "doing the same amount of work with less people", we will eventually exhaust ourselves and give up.

This happened in the 1990s during the Rae days. It is happening again. Stop trying to deny it.

jessica amber murray
that's not how small businesses work, either. maybe you're bringing up a valid point: maybe doctors ought to take courses in business management, so they don't make these kinds of management errors.

to be blunt, i do not think that you are making an honest argument and don't wish to waste my time on somebody that is being disingenuous. but if i am wrong, and you are serious, i would advise you take some courses in small business management.

i do, however, agree that a cap is a bad idea. i mean, i could see how it might be a good idea if there was concern that doctors were shuffling people in and out, but i'm not aware of that being brought up by anybody and think it's sort of outlandish. i may even argue that it's unconstitutional. if the government is that concerned, it needs to raise revenue and/or cut salaries even further. caps should be a non-starter.

Nadia Alam
We have been tracking how the cuts have affected physicians since they were escalated on October 1. Despite your assertions Ms. Murray that this would never happen, as office revenue (euphemistically called "salary" by the government) drops, physicians are cutting costs to keep their offices open so that they can continue to see patients. When that fails, they cut down on all non-essential staff. When that fails, they close their office. Here is a link to a page that shows which offices have closed in Ontario as of October 10.

https://www.facebook.com/concernedontariodoctors

Please note, this map shows what's happened in less than a month. What do you think will happen if the government continues the cuts to healthcare?

jessica amber murray
they're not cutting health care. they're cutting your salaries. you're cutting health care.

i think we need to take a step back, though. you were arguing that reductions in doctors salaries will lead to cuts in administration jobs. i pointed out that that did not make any sense, because it would not come with a decrease in demand. in response, you've sent me an infographic that suggests that some practices are closing altogether. that's a different argument, and i wouldn't have argued against that as strenuously; i might have suggested that it would be minimal, under the assumption that most doctors are not that greedy. and, i might suggest that you rethink your pr strategy. the idea that what remains a six figure salary is too low to bother practicing reflects very poorly on your profession, especially considering the economic reality right now in this province.

regarding policy, i would suggest that the provincial government work with the federal government to recruit more doctors from outside the country. there's lots of people in the world that would jump at the opportunity to practice medicine in ontario. i'm sorry that what we have to offer is not good enough for you.

Rohan Patel
Do you think you can cut people's salaries and have there be NO effect on healthcare?

jessica amber murray
yes.

they're overpaid.

The Puzzle Palace
I have no proof, and its only an opinion, but I suspect Harper set up Mulcair by trying to turn the niqab into an election issue.

Harper knew how unpopular the niqab was in Quebec - the NDP's current strong hold - and knew that Mulcair would come out in support of a woman's right to wear the niqab.

Looks like it worked, whether it was intentional or not. NDP are down in the polls from what I've seen.

jessica murray
you're no doubt right, but in the end it will likely prove a foolish strategy. it's the same ballot question as the last election in quebec (the quebec charter), and the pq lost the election on it. also, but the situation in context: the pq had just won the election on the backs of the student strike. marois should have had an easy ten years in power, at least, after that fiasco. but, she blew it by trying to force people to not wear the niqab.

i haven't seen the question. but, it's a good example of why we have a clarity act. because the following statements are going to yield vastly different responses:

1) i don't like the niqab. that will yield high agreement.
2) the niqab is oppressive. that will also yield high agreement.
3) i think people should be forced by law to take off the niqab, and face penalties if they refuse to. that will yield broad disagreement.

if you commission a poll measuring 1 or 2, it can easily confuse you into deducing 3. further, it's very hard to campaign on 1 or 2 without having voters conclude that what you mean is 3.

the reality is that a large amount of federal conservative voters just voted against the charter in the last provincial election, and if this ends up framed the same way it's going to hurt them.

so, wait for the dust to settle. it may hurt the ndp, but then the bloc gain. and, any influx of caq voters is likely to be more than offset by a loss of liberal voters. in the end, it hurts the conservatives.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/french-language-debate-party-leaders-quebec-1.3255075

bob h.
Lets talk about the real, biggest issue for a second.

Justin's father sold Canada out to private banks. We used to print our own money interest free for infrastructure before Justin's dad came into office. Then he illegally changed it so OUR BANK OF CANADA borrows AT INTEREST (instead of interest free as is mandated in the banks charter - See COMER v. Bank of Canada) from foreign private bankers instead of making our own cash like we did before Trudeau (1974). ALL of our tax dollars now go to foreign private bankers just to try and pay off illegal odious interest (debt), then if we want to do anything we have to borrow more at interest again, and again, and again. Forever debt slaves. P. Trudeau sold Canada out to banksters who then control the policy making through lobby/threats, and they also control much of the media narratives these days too.

Justin saying he wants to run a deficit is him pledging to continue selling us out to those foreign banking "elites" by borrowing more from them at high compounding interest; which will just increase our taxes, sale of Canada's land/resources/services to them at penny's on the dollar, and austerity. Those pricks make trillions from OUR TAX DOLLARS for doing nothing but bribing/buying/blackmailing/bullying our politicians.

Those that know, know Tom and May are aware of this scam and want it stopped. That's why they're slammed on CBC and Canadian MSM regularly. There hasn't been a positive story/light from CBC for anyone other than Justin/Harper for a long time. They're both bankers boys

jessica murray
this is a myth created by paul hellyer. canada has always financed most of it's deficit spending with private money. the bank of canada only funded specific types of infrastructure development. and, in fact, trudeau is proposing more bank of canada borrowing through his new green infrastructure bank.

there was a mild shift from public to private borrowing in the 70s as a consequence of a global agreement that took place after the collapse of bretton-woods. in canada, the shift was from around 20% to around 10%. minor.

and, in fact, trudeau rejected this logic in favour of traditional keynesian ideas on the relationship between employment and inflation. the actual reason that the debt exploded after 1975 is that interest rates were set very high (over 20% sometimes) in order to fight inflation, which was the mainstream economic theory of the day. the cause of this was the opec oil embargo.

there was never a structural debt-to-gdp imbalance during the trudeau years. we just ended up with huge interest payments because the interest rates were ridiculous. and even looking back, today, it's hard to provide a better answer.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/french-language-debate-party-leaders-quebec-1.3255075

Animal Farm
only Justin Trudeau has the guts to stand up for a woman's right to choose. Harper and all his niqab BS refuses to declare his stance. he cares nothing about women's rights and everything about the politics of fear and bigotry.

Bogmer
I'm not a Harper supporter but Harper has killed a number of Bills from his own party on banning abortion. He even set up world wide clinics and paid for it so that women can do it safely around the world.

jessica murray
harper has actually cut funding for what is called "family planning" overseas. this is an extremely complex issue that has to take into account a variety of factors on both perspectives that are outside of the traditional western debate on the sanctity of life: the legacy of colonialism, the effects of local culture (including the import of colonial religions), global overpopulation, contraception, the greater prevalence of rape and general lack of gender equality, etc. i'd feel most comfortable with a policy that seeks to encourage changes in local governance, and pushes for contraception over abortion. but, i'm not comfortable with pulling funding for abortion on the basis of pulling funding for abortion, either.

that said, i'm not really concerned about harper regarding the question of abortion rights in canada. i *am* concerned about jason kenney, though. and, harper has indicated that he will not carry out this term. voters should not be lulled into a sense of complacency regarding harper's insistence on short-term moderation on social issues, while he tries to change the culture from the top down to create great public support for his policies. his successor will not be so patient.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/french-language-debate-party-leaders-quebec-1.3255075

duceppe is a good debater, and he zinged all three of them. mulcair is again great at articulating a terrible set of arguments that don't belong attached to the ndp, and trudeau is again saying the right things, if at times unconvincingly and often times smugly. and i couldn't care less what harper says. same old same old.

the duceppe factor is what is important, here. see, he can take positions the others can't because he's not actually running for prime minister. so, letting him into the debate immediately changes the narrative. he also has different swing issues with each of the other parties, fighting with harper for caq votes, trudeau for liberal votes (however unlikely) and mulcair for pq votes.

he got a few good ones in on trudeau, particularly relating to his more right-leaning positions. corporate taxes. free trade. these are the reasons that people like me would *like* to vote for the ndp, if their leader wasn't such an obvious conservative. then again, we all know the liberals are a bay street party. they're just unique, in being a fair bay street party. if that helps anyone, it's mulcair.

but, remember: everything is upside down in quebec. trudeau has little to gain from duceppe, but a lot to gain by sucking right-leaning provincial liberal support away from harper and mulcair. it's the right argument to make, in quebec. even if it leaves people like me gritting my teeth, and wishing the ndp hadn't fallen down the rabbit hole.

something strange happened about halfway through the debate, though. duceppe seemed to begin to subtly indicate, several times, that he was endorsing trudeau. it's just the way he presented things, to make trudeau appear in a more favourable light than mulcair. subtle? very. who knows if it gets picked up. but, it's there, and is likely reflective of internal bloc calculations. if you want to call them that. the bloc campaign at this point is not exactly highly funded.

so long as duceppe is showing up at these things, he is going to win almost every debate. he's just not as restricted in what he can do, and it gives him a massive advantage. but, i'm not convinced he's going to win very many seats. it's hard to guess how a four way split like this turns out....

i don't see an obvious winner, otherwise. duceppe maybe hit trudeau harder than he hit the other two. but, the nature of the quebec spectrum is such that it might actually help him. he seems to have hit harper off guard repeatedly, leaving him without any kind of coherent response: he just stated things unconvincingly. and, while mulcair was maybe most prepared, his responses were quite often cringeworthy from a left-of-centre perspective.

i don't see it affecting the unfolding of existing trends

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/french-language-debate-party-leaders-quebec-1.3255075

those laws brought in with the transfer agreements need to be overturned, although if somebody is being arrested for "illegal hunting" after marshall it must be under a specific loophole. most canadians have no idea. if they did, they'd be shocked at the lack of economic freedom that we grant the indigenous peoples of this country.

this is never an election issue. but, it's the meta-issue.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nunavut-elder-calls-for-federal-election-boycott-1.3252638

mario dumont got 31 percent...

i don't know any study that tries to map things. it would be useful. i can use logic to conclude a few things, including that the ndp was necessarily attracting adq support in at least a few places. you can't map the quebec liberals to the federal liberals; a lot of quebec liberals will vote conservative, federally. if you're naive, you could even get close to quebec liberal numbers by simply adding up recent federal liberal and conservative numbers, although that's no doubt wrong [as some are surely voting ndp]. further, you'd expect quite a few adq supporters would support the bloc, so you can't just go back to 2008 and try and sync up pq and bloc totals.

the bloc's strategy seems to suggest that it's internal polling suggests to it that most of it's remaining voters are at least adq-pq swing voters, if not mostly adq voters, otherwise they wouldn't be nailing it so hard. which means that quite a bit of what the conservatives are attracting must be quebec liberals.

it follows that it would be reasonable to suggest that half of adq voters are supporting the bloc, while a quarter are supporting the conservatives and a quarter are supporting the ndp. further, it would be reasonable to suggest that a half of quebec liberal voters are supporting the liberals, while a quarter are supporting the conservatives and a quarter are supporting the ndp. these are *extremely* rough numbers*. yet...

....when i suggested this a few weeks ago, i was thinking about ontario. in quebec? if my calculations are anything close to right, it could be that, when the dust settles, he may have merely shot himself in the foot by pulling in adq support from the ndp at the expense of aligning the provincial and federal liberal vote. if i was stephen harper, the absolute last thing i'd want to do is find a way to align the federal and provincial wings of the liberal party in quebec in voting intentions...

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/10/02/fasts-office-denies-tpp-auto-deal-reached/

anti-harper direct action strategy...

you don't need to be a big media outlet to do this. you just need some way to draw attention to yourself, which is not hard nowadays. i won't be doing this myself - i want to get back to work and would neither enjoy this nor truly know what to look for - but it's something you can do in the short run that could make a difference.

i got the idea while looking at 2011 election results in cowichan-malahat-langford, which is in british columbia. this is a new riding, but if it were redistributed the outcomes in 2011 would be:

ndp: 44
cons: 43
grn: 7
lib: 6

now, let's imagine the liberal candidate were removed. current polling suggests that roughly 50% of the support would go to the ndp, 25% to the conservatives and 25% to the greens. new results:

ndp: 47
cons: 44.5
grn: 8.5

minor difference. but, potentially deciding, depending on turnout.

it turns out that the liberal candidate has actually resigned. she said something that somebody found upsetting, or something. in fact, there have been a lot of candidates removed for that reason over the last two months.

this is where the idea comes in. the ndp & liberals will not merge, and i don't even want them to merge, but in a situation like the above, where one party is 40 points out of competing? candidates should be dropped. it would be nice to see the green candidate dropped in a situation like that, too; the ndp would gain a plurality. but, they won't even do this.

i think that we can make this happen in some circumstances. we just need to identify ridings like the above (where the race is close and a third (and/or fourth) candidate is clearly not in contention, and is merely splitting the vote), use our collective technological capacities to dig up dirt on them (specifically things they said that some people may think is upsetting) and get that to the proper media outlets. these candidates will get dropped, which will hopefully break the splitting.

go forth, and let it be done.

see, there is not a debate here. chretien is not providing an opinion. he is stating fact.

if he loses the appeal (as he certainly will - i would even argue against even hearing the case, it's so ridiculous), harper will either need to override the constitution with the notwithstanding clause or open it up and rewrite it, and good luck with that.

and, sit down for this.

*that's why we have a constitution: so, that the majority cannot oppress minorities*.

it's not just that this is stupid, and irrelevant. it's actually even meaningless. it's not an unimportant issue; it's a non-issue. there is nothing that harper can do to enforce this, short of declaring himself dictator.

and, realizing this should make you think about your position on the topic.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/26/let-courts-rule-on-rights-of-muslim-women-accept-decision-chretien-urges_n_8201550.html

this really is remarkably refreshing, after so many years of absolute nonsense coming out of the leaders of all of the nato countries.

it's not whether he's right or wrong, it's just the idea of *not* being blindly anti-russian at every possible opportunity.

canada used to be very good at that.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/10/01/chretien-says-putin-s-help-in-syria-should-be-welcomed-by-canada_n_8230114

Mike Kulyk
russia INVADED crimea and now eastern ukraine !!! can that be construed as 'anti russian' ?

jessica amber murray
whatever the facts in the situation, slapping sanctions down and demonizing them doesn't accomplish anything. constructive solutions come in respectful dialogue.

the sanctions on russia have made them more aggressive, not less aggressive. since the sanctions were put down, the west has lost iran permanently due to russian strategic manoeuvring and has probably lost the window of opportunity that it had to influence events in syria. it is probably also in the process of losing iraq and lebanon to russian influence. it has led to indian accession to the shanghai co-operation agreement. neither the saudis nor the israelis are friends of america; rather, american power serves to keep them in check. the failure of the sanctions is being felt, with both of them looking elsewhere. it has also strained relations with parts of europe very badly, and made china even more suspicious of american motives. in short, the sanctions have been an absolute, unmitigated disaster. they've unravelled decades of carefully put together us policy, rewinding us back to before kissinger.

whatever you think of the russian actions in ukraine, the way to take them out is not to put sanctions on them - it is to negotiate with them. sanctions are an act of war. one must expect the proper response to a declaration of war.

if canada was functioning in the role that it normally functions in, i might hazard a guess that these sanctions would not have happened at all.

but, i need you to realize the scale of this.

the decision to place sanctions on russia last year may be the single largest strategic error in the history of the united states, up to this point. i'm certainly having difficulty thinking of anything else.

and, this gets to what i've been saying about mulcair for weeks and why i cannot vote for him.

his argument is actually that harper needs to get tougher on sanctions. put that in context. who's he trying to appeal to, here? it's the worst possible position he could take. 

Sean Gillhoolley
Russia is wrong on Ukraine, and shame on the west for not protecting that nation as the security agreement we have with Ukraine states we will. We agreed to that so that Ukraine would give up its nukes, which they did. I bet they regret doing that. If they still had nukes Russia would never have even considered invasion. That being said, I am glad to have Russia help in the middle east. I know they aren't in league with radical Islamists, which is more than I can say for the anti-Asaad rebels, who seem to blend easily among the ISIL folk.

jessica amber murray
well, i'm not going to deny that putin seized crimea, as some others have, because he clearly did. that is reality. but, it is also reality that it was in response to a us-backed coup, which kind of changes the game. on top of that, the budapest memorandum also existed within the context of a nato promise not to expand east of germany, which was broken in the 90s.

i don't want to take sides on this; my argument is really that taking sides, or at least doing so uncritically (we obviously have to and should want to take nato's side, in the end, if we have to), is counter-productive in the context of both sides breaking all kinds of agreements. canada should be acting as a mediator, not a cheerleader. the narrative near the supposed "end" of the cold war was all about mutual trust, which is something we helped build and something that the russians really took very seriously (maybe too seriously..), partially on our insistence, for quite a long time. canada has historically acted in a mediation role for the simple reason that building that mutual trust is in our national interest. the reason we refused co-operation in the missile shield is that it would have debris fall directly on edmonton.

an honest mediator needs to acknowledge that there's a strong argument that the united states created the problem and put pressure on the neo-cons (who are still running things...) to back off. but, it doesn't help to gloat about it or point fingers with a superior attitude.

it seems clear to me - i can't prove this, for obvious reasons - that the coup in kiev set off a russian war simulation that's currently being played out. that is, that the russians are acting as though world war three has already begun. and, worse, the americans are being consistently caught off guard - indicating that their own simulations are deeply lacking. that necessitates that talks begin immediately, before things get out of hand.

in the short term, having the russians step in to syria should act as a deterrent for further escalation. and, i think that's what chretien was actually getting at, in his typically cryptic smartass sort of way.

a russian-backed coup in mexico, or a chinese-backed coup in canada, are things that the american military has contingency plans for. if that somehow happens, that plan will be set in motion. none of us know exactly what it says. but, i'd suspect that an immediate occupation of certain areas of canada would be the first part of it. further, such a plan would be extremely difficult to stop or otherwise reverse, once it's set in motion.

it strains the imagination for me to think that russia does not have similar contingency plans in case of a us-backed coup in kiev. the reason the annexation of crimea happened almost bloodlessly (or literally; i'm not aware of any casualties) is no doubt because the russians had that plan sitting on the shelf for decades. it was just a question of activating it. and, these other things that are happening have no doubt been written out for a very long time. the russians have had "legitimate interests" in syria since the rise of arab socialism, which they were themselves instrumental in orchestrating.

one would think that the americans would realize this, but that's not at all clear to me, unless it's some kind of trick to make it look like they're incompetent, and then hit them by surprise. but, that's not a good scenario, either.

they're on the brink. they need to sit down and talk. historically, we've been useful at getting them to sit down and talk..

Nathan Weather
The only thing wrong about Ukraine is the historical example it sets: the only country to ever voluntarily give up nuclear weapons got invaded and lost territory. But look at the demographics - it wasn't really Ukranian - that was just an accident of where the Soviets drew the lines.

jessica amber murray
regardless of the arguments, and there are some from the perspective of the russian national interest, it's still an infringement of international law. when somebody kills somebody in self-defense, we may lesson their sentence but we still prosecute them. call it an infringement of the rule of international law in the second-degree if you must, but don't turn a blind eye to it. it's still serious. it can't be normalized.

that said, this is done, and likely irreversible. but we can't just be saying that this is ok. rather, we should be looking at the root causes, getting people sitting down and making sure agreements are worked out.

it's just that this is a lot harder now, because the russians have lost the trust, however naive it was, that they'd been holding on to since gorbachev. the kind of intermediary power that canada once was is really absolutely necessary. somebody has to step up...

--

Paul Smith
Wow, never thought that the Libs would welcome Putin into the Syrian conflict. Any Lib responses here????

jessica amber murray
i'm very far to the left of the liberals, but if you understand the nature of the conflict (which is essentially a saudi invasion of syria under the assumption that the russians are done as a great power), it follows that a reassertion of russian power in a traditional russian proxy is probably the fastest way to end the fighting.

canada does not have an interest in the outcome of the war, only an interest to have it end as soon as possible to stop it from costing us money.

this reeks of a broken promise. disappointing.

legalizing marijuana is just about the best economic policy i can think of.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-pot-marijuana-legalization-timeline-1.3252088

the riding projections take province-wide data and then try to guess where it is.

now, honestly? sure: it makes sense to think the increase in non-conservative votes would be centered in the cities. however, the riding data says that this is wrong. so, where is it, then?

well, i've been leaning towards the idea that there's a hidden force at play (chp. socred, libertarian; i'm guessing, it's not remotely clear) and that there really isn't an increase in the other parties' vote totals, it just looks like that due to the shrinking useable sample. but, i would need to see a boost in "other" in alberta and saskatchewan for that to be true, and it's not panning out.

the liberals are an almost solely urban party. the ndp really aren't. they've always done well in the rural areas of western canada. and, the ndp won some rural seats at the provincial level.

if that's the case, i wouldn't expect to see any seat changes.

it makes a little direct sense, too.

who is more affected by tar sands pollution: a pothead university student in calgary, or a farmer halfway between lethbridge and medicine hat?

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-change-in-the-air-alberta-1.3250557

this is alberta. realistically, she has to plan for a four or five year term, and expect to lose the next election. i know it's hard and maybe even dangerous for a party to think like that, but it's what she should be thinking - unless she just wants to get erased from history five years from now.

i like that she's thinking big. but, she has to work fast. she has to assume she has one term. and, she has to be thinking about traps for future governments that are going to stop them from repealing her entire period via omnibus. that means getting shovels in the ground asap, tying up investments in things that are broadly insoluble, etc.

i know; this is toxic. but, this is alberta.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/30/no-long-term-future-in-tar-sands-alberta-rachel-notley#comments

hopefully, more candidates that are running a distant third or fourth will drop out. it should help to minimize vote splitting.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cheryl-thomas-liberal-candidate-resigns-1.3251338

riding polls suggest that the ndp is likely to win one seat in edmonton, and the liberals might have a chance at one seat in calgary.

sorry: that is one seat on top of linda duncan's, for a total of two.

when riding model projections contradict riding polls, you want to take the riding polls, not the riding model projections. riding polls are direct measurement. riding model projections are really a kind of artistic expression.

if you'd like to publish some riding data, i'd be happy to see it. but, the data is as it is, and it simply does not point towards gains by the opposition parties in alberta at this time.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-change-in-the-air-alberta-1.3250557

(lost post)

that is not reliable riding data. that is a riding model projection, which is an artist's rendition of a possible election outcome.

you can access actual riding data here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_in_Canadian_constituencies,_42nd_Canadian_Election#Alberta

the riding projections take province-wide data and then try to guess where it is.

now, honestly? sure: it makes sense to think the increase in non-conservative votes would be centered in the cities. however, the riding data says that this is wrong. so, where is it, then?

well, i've been leaning towards the idea that there's a hidden force at play (chp. socred, libertarian; i'm guessing, it's not remotely clear) and that there really isn't an increase in the other parties' vote totals, it just looks like that due to the shrinking useable sample. but, i would need to see a boost in "other" in alberta and saskatchewan for that to be true, and it's not panning out.

the liberals are an almost solely urban party. the ndp really aren't. they've always done well in the rural areas of western canada. and, the ndp won some rural seats at the provincial level.

if that's the case, i wouldn't expect to see any seat changes

it makes a little direct sense, too.

who is more affected by tar sands pollution: a pothead university student in calgary, or a farmer halfway between lethbridge and medicine hat?

i have to agree with the dominant opinion expressed here. we've got all kinds of important things in front of us, and you're running stories on this? for ratings?

are you going to be proud of yourself if this becomes the ballot question? and, how does that make the country look to the rest of the world?

if this is honestly galvanizing your vote, please have the presence of mind to realize that you're not informed and stay home, instead.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/niqab-ban-zunera-ishaq-1.3249495

(lost post)

well, he wouldn't be able to do that if the media didn't help him along with it. we all know how harper works, and expect certain tactics from him. but, if this is the ballot question, the media will be squarely and unambiguously to blame for it.

(lost post)

a large percentage of people will allow the ballot question to be defined for them. it is the media that has insisted upon it, and will be responsible for it if it happens.

(lost post)

i do get your point. and i don't exactly want to call people brainless sheep; i don't think that i need to in order to get the point across about defining a *question*. there's a thousand things on the table. but, we tend to collectively pick an issue or two and then collectively vote in that context. if the media presents the election as a referendum on wearing a scarf at a ceremony, that's what the election will be in the minds of many people.

things are getting better with the internet, but we're still bottle-necked by the media as an information source. and, things are happening in real-time. there's not a library anybody can go to to get election information. we're reliant on the filter we're presented with. all of us.

well, this happened once before. in 2007, mario dumont in the adq got around 31% of the vote. but, the adq is a sovereigntist party, so that is an underestimation; federal conservative voters would often vote liberal at the provincial level. if you split the conservative numbers in half and add it to the bloc numbers, you're still barely approaching that 31% that the adq got. it's not clear if that's an actual ceiling, either.

but what that means is that the ndp must have attracted a significant number of adq voters, and also that the core of remaining bloc support right now is actually adq support - not pq support.

you also have to keep in mind that the ndp picked up at least 10% of the swing they got in 2011 from the liberals, and that this seems to have largely gone back to the liberals. they're consistently polling at or above where they were in 2008.

that means that, if they are pushed down to their core & bloc swing from 2011, it's around 30% - and that is not much higher than where the liberals are running, according to some polls. that would be with the bloc running where they were last election, the liberals running a bit above where they were in 2008 and more or less ignoring the conservatives [i'm taking that bump skeptically for now; let's see what the next batch of polls says].

it's easy to assign the bleed to the liberals on a general perception that the ndp is the new bloc, and it's easy to assign the swing back to the bloc as being soft votes that they picked up *after* the election defaulting back to where they were four years ago.

but, if you realize that there's no way to crunch the numbers without concluding that the ndp was getting adq support, you realize how fragile their lead really was. but, duceppe may be cutting off his nose, here. the bloc had to move left in the 90s for a reason. this may boost their numbers a little, but, in the end, it may end up recreating the same barrier to governance that the pq is seeing with the charter: it works to whip up certain kind of votes, but it makes them unelectable to far more people.

if the ndp and bloc split the sovereigntist vote, this will benefit the conservatives in some areas and the liberals in many more areas.

riding modelling is very difficult with three competitive parties. it's almost impossible with four competitive parties. popular vote totals start to become meaningless. if this stabilizes with the ndp around 30, the liberals around 25, the bloc around 25 and the conservatives around 20? the ndp could easily finish fourth in the seat count, as they lose riding after riding to the liberals and conservatives on the ndp-bloc split, and get beaten by the bloc in staunchly sovereigntist ridings.

as it is, i'm convinced that the models have been exaggerating the ndp seat totals by about ten seats, mostly at the expense of the liberals (because the models are already being generous to the conservatives). if the liberals keep that 10-15%, as small as a 5% swing back to the bloc over recent numbers (which would still be less than the bloc got in 2011) could absolutely destroy the ndp in the urban core up the st. lawerence, and create havoc up the ottawa, too. and, a 10% swing back to where the bloc were in 2011 could wipe them out - purely on the strength of federalist voters returning to the liberals.

as for the ad strategy? it's more right-wing strategizing. strong leaders. well, it's the corner he's painted himself into. he's at least probably right that he's fighting for conservative votes, be they "tim horton's socialists" or red tories. it's desperate; if it works in swinging conservatives to the ndp, it actually helps the liberals throughout most of ontario.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tom-mulcair-justin-trudeau-campaign-ndp-1.3248885

i agree that voters would likely respond well.

the problem is that mulcair doesn't agree with you.

rabble.ca/columnists/2015/09/waiting-elephant-to-be-mentioned-2015-election

there's something seriously wrong when you can make a general comment like this about all muslims with total impunity, but you're immediately thrown out when you make a specific comment like this about a specific sect of jews. you need to be careful when you're speaking on the topic. but, this is less offensive (and less wrong) than positions taken by romeo saganash and other quebec ndp candidates because it is specific rather than general.

i mean, if i said something like "isis militants are misogynists", nobody is going to argue with me. there are radical, violent and racist jewish sects - just as there are radical, violent and racist muslim and christian sects.

the whole point, here, is the need to isolate specific subpopulations, rather than generalize across entire faiths.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/24/stefan-jonasson-ndp_n_8193280.html

nobody in the toronto 18 planned to blow up anything. rather, undercover police officers created the entire plot from scratch, and then arrested a bunch of children for agreeing to take part in it, on the urging of those police officers.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/29/bill-c-24-trudeau-conservative-attack-ad-munk_n_8216700.html

i'm not going to argue with you directly; you made assumptions and came to reasonable conclusions from them. but, i'd argue it's more likely that a scheme such as this would create a groupthink shift of otherwise tory voters than a backlash of retreat to the conservatives. that is, if unhappy conservatives and red tory voters saw a unified force develop, i think they'd be likely to support it, and that could push the conservatives into the mid 20s. if you wanted to do this right as a probabilistic calculation, you'd have to integrate the possibility that it would take votes away from the tories into your calculations, as well. you're consequently working with an incomplete sample space, which is skewing your numbers - you're only considering a fraction of the possible outcomes.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/30/vote-splitting-mulcair-trudeau-harper_n_8220820.html

you know, i'm not really sure that people know what a citizenship ceremony is.

this is a citizenship ceremony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfnr4JWrImE&lc

pretty boring, huh?

you sure this is important to you?

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/29/mulcair-niqab-policy-ndp-quebec_n_8216898.html

it's the prime directive.

www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/whats-up-in-space-rovers-are-forbidden-from-visiting-parts-of-mars-heres-why/57977/

the canadian election in a nutshell:

i haven't regularly watched anything on network television since they cancelled the x-files. closest thing was the daily show, but it's not the same genre.

i've been pointing out for a while that modern pop music is on the same level of musical abstraction as a traditional nursery rhyme. this is one of the better examples.

chomsky tends to consider canada to be the province the american revolution never got around to annexing. he's so rooted in the era, it's easy to understand this. but, it's mostly wrong.

the opposition in canada has been trying to figure this out for a while. the main opposition, the liberals, ran on a very heavily environmentally-leaning platform in 2008 and heartbreakingly lost primarily due to a split with the green party, which got almost 10% of the vote. the third party is also at least better than the ruling conservatives. the electoral system is really crippling us, and standing in the way of what popular support actually is.

there's certainly a lot of valid criticism to throw at the governing conservatives. but, to suggest that canadians are being passive on the issue is demonstrably false.

obama is actually right that the leadership in syria needs to be changed, but what the western media is ignoring is that putin actually agrees with him. it's a difference in approach, not in preferred outcome. nor is the issue assad, exactly, but the military junta that props him up; assad is in truth a mostly powerless figurehead.

suppose we wake up tomorrow and isis is destroyed and syria's borders are again secured. can that be the end of the war? in truth, it cannot. the devastation created by these foreign mercenary fighters is far too great to be forgiven by the very same people that have been waging the war. i'm not going to talk about cultural realities. it transcends that. syria is defending itself against an existential threat; destroying isis does not eliminate that existential threat, it only abolishes it's most outward manifestation. if you leave the generals in power, they will plot their revenge by turning the tables in launching an attack on riyadh.

even that is likely not enough. the real change that is required is in saudi arabia. the only way to truly end the conflict in syria is through lasting regime change in saudi arabia.

but, in the short run, to at least end the current phase of hostilities, syria cannot be left in tact to fester hostilities and plot it's revenge. that is obvious to everyone. the difference is that putin wants to see the state transitioned peacefully through the introduction of democracy, and obama wants to tear the state down by force.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDx8Bvlw3es

something that should be added to media reports on the issue is that the toronto 18 case has brought up serious questions about government entrapment. this is very relevant, as context.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/28/bill-c-24-trudeau-audio-conservatives_n_8206798.html

it depends a lot on what you're projecting. for example, you might not consider the role that canada played in facilitating between the united states and cuba to be very important, but people that live in angola or south africa may disagree. or, you may play down how important canada was in disarmament discussions, but the russians remember - as do the indians as well as the chinese.

on the other hand? sure: we don't strike a lot of fear in the hearts of the world. but, we didn't use to want to, either. we used to want to get in between people that hated each other and try and strike a deal, from the suez canal to the panama canal.

we were actually very good at this. if you look at the major steps forward of the post-war period, we're very important in almost all of them - but we play a facilitating role in the background, rather than a direct role. that doesn't negate our importance. in fact, if you look carefully, it magnifies it. a lot of these things would not have happened without us.

and, thus when trudeau says that people listened, he is right - if you take the comments in the context of being a mediator, rather than in the context of being declarative. and, suggesting that we're irrelevant now and therefore always have been is nothing short of orwellian revisionism.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-neil-macdonald-munk-debate-1.3247934

i went to a concert tonight, and am watching the debate now.

i think muclair started off very strong. i like the fact that he pointed out the need to cut arms supplies - that's so incredibly important. trudeau has come on a lot stronger. that response about his father is...it's going to be polarizing, but it may end up successful.

the c-51 exchange is also key, but i think a lot of pundits may miss it. this is the first time i've seen trudeau go into the proper explanation on how the ndp are actually playing this, and the response mulcair provided was pure death.

"that's not true. i never used the term 'police state.'"

the condescension. the contempt. it's remarkable. we've got a trudeau running, and i'm calling somebody else arrogant; arrogance, thy name is thomas mulcair.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-munk-debates-foreign-policy-syria-refugees-1.3247665

Anonymous
Want me to tell ya who won ?

What concert did ya see ?

jessica murray
it was a house show in windsor featuring a flying lotus and chick corea influenced hip-hop/jazz artist from toronto called sly why and a math punk duo from new york called noxious foxes.

there's a part about 2/3rds of the way through the debate where mulcair realizes he's lost.

two suggestions on the model:

1) when you have riding polls, you should use them.
2) instead of taking just the 2011 results, you should take a weighted mean of the last several (say, five) in order to find the "centre of gravity" in the riding. this will help to identify true bellweathers and balance out fluke results from the last election.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-our-election-forecasting-model-works/article25371747/

i can't believe i made it through the whole thing. this is the most pathetic collection of specious logic that i've ever seen put together in one place.

i actually don't think it's unlikely that early africans may have made it to south america via boat. we know that they travelled along india by boat at a very early date, and we seem to have evidence of cocaine in very old egyptian tombs, indicating that it was a possible journey.

but, i realize that the world is not flat and that it makes more sense to send them across the atlantic. that said, the documentary offers nothing in the way of such an argument.

but, near the final few minutes i all of a sudden understood: perhaps the fuegians may carry on in our genome - just like the "american aborigines" carried on in theirs.

it's subtle race-washing. in the wild.

the results are too bunched to declare a movement from the ndp to the conservatives with any certainty; it's all in the margins. and, i'd hazard a guess that the conservatives were merely underpolling at the end of the vacation season, so there's an alternate explanation for their movement upwards. but, if you expand the ranges out properly, you see a clear decrease for the ndp and a less clear increase for the conservatives. of course, the bloc are also up.

then again, if conservatives were underpolling due to being away on vacation, the same logic may suggest the ndp were simply overpolling for the same reason. the lesson may merely be that summer polls are sketchy. and we already knew that.

i mean, yeah, it looks that way on first glance; i don't deny that, and i don't claim otherwise with any force. i'm just pointing out that it's just not actually clear, yet. we'll find out next week if a trend actually develops or not. but, multiple polls have pegged the potential ndp-conservative swing around 3-5%, so there's really not a lot of movement to play with.

that said, "immigration" is pretty much the only way this happens. it's the one way that the conservatives can get into the "tim horton's socialist" part of the ndp voting base. i pointed this out a few weeks ago. but, one would expect to see the offset in ontario, if that were true. rather, it seems to be mostly happening in rural bc and in quebec. in quebec, this is easy to understand. in rural bc, i would seek an alternate explanation.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-grenier-poll-tracker-sep28-1.3247187

canada, like every country, has hawks. but, the reason that even harper has to watch his military budget is that it's an electoral liability, in a broader sense. you can present as many sober analyses and pleas to the alliance as you want, in the end it's as toxic as a tax increase - which is exactly how most canadians will interpret it. if these are your priorities, you're going to have to actually win the argument first, and that's going to be a difficult task.

i would prefer to find ways to disengage from foreign zones of conflict and refocus resources on direct defense initiatives, like norad and better integration in the coast guard. and, to go back to a structural deadweight on the system with wider implications than the media is acknowledging, i think easing prohibition on marijuana will open up a lot of resources on the border.

i'd rather invest in dykes to fight rising sea levels than guns to fight supposed bad guys and control foreign resources.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-defence-spending-brian-stewart-1.3242611

yeah. this is going to be hard to watch, too. but i almost think he has to do it, watch the tapes and see what he comes off as. just don't ask for my ears, please.

i don't think people are warming up to trudeau, exactly. i don't think he's really exceeding expectations. his style of acting is overly pretentious and faux-thespian; sometimes, it seems like he's going to launch into a musical or something. maybe a tennessee williams play. whatever it is is approved for the curriculum. if that's exceeding expectations, you must have been expecting an infomercial or something.

rather, it's more that people are warming up to the actual policy, which is perhaps exceeding expectations. and, i think we mostly get that it's the team he's got behind him that is churning it out. what's strange is that that doesn't seem to be much of a sticking point. i don't know; pile the factors on, there. sick of harper. just wanting a change. a little familiarity. in other circumstances, it could be destroying him and severely damaging the party. that people seem to be shrugging it off is more a reflection on the competition - and on the honest strength of the announcements.

i don't think he needs to demonstrate a masterful knowledge of anything tonight. it's more that he needs to avoid putting his foot in his mouth - and that means being careful about how some types of people may interpret some types of statements. and, you know, a little dry acting may even go over well, for the camp factor - because nobody's pretending, anyways. but it should maybe be toned down a little.

i don't think it will be toned down at all.

that said, i do hope to get a little bit of a clearer grasp on the liberal party's understanding of the new world order. but i think he can get away with expressing that in the form of a series of platitudes and barely formed abstractions. those who care will have little difficulty colouring in between the lines.

to put it another way? when a party runs a country for the better part of a century, there's not a lot of guesswork in their foreign policy principles or how they're expected to be applied. and, in canada, we have the added benefit of there being many books on liberal foreign policy in existence.

if he doesn't explicitly contradict specific things, people will broadly assume continuity. and that's probably for the best.

we all bicker about the liberals. left. right. but the vast majority of us actually go to the somewhat absurd extreme of actually identifying, on a civic level, specifically with established liberal policy positions - to the point that we accuse the existing government of changing the nature of the country, rather than merely being a different party with a different policy perspective. it's deep-seated. we say things like "canada is a country of peacekeepers" without even being fully cognizant of the truth underlying such a statement. his major task needs to be to not interfere with that identification, and maybe draw a little attention to it.

it's really not necessary that he try and convince anybody he's a policy wonk. he just needs to convince people that his party's values are theirs. and, the truth is that that's not hard - because, on this specific file, it is very much true.

http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/28/will-justin-trudeau-hold-up-to-scrutiny-under-intensity-of-foreign-affairs-debate/

marauder
Got a thing about koalas ??? Having never voted Liberal in my 79 tears but now considering doing exactly that.For me anything that will defeat the fascism that has crept into our government works for me.

deathtokoalas
koalas must be destroyed due to their despicable levels of cuteness.

no.

mulcair's got some ups and some downs, sure. they all do. but, you don't want to go down this path. trust me.

i'm imagining him dumping a bottle of maple syrup on to some pancakes in a log cabin after a long day of tree chopping. statesman-like? i think his strengths are more guttural. rather, he's the cheery, gritty foot soldier that you can count on in battle and can trust to sit beside you with an axe.

don't do this, ndp. i'm not on your side this time, but it will be cringeworthy.

you really want to play this down. focus on being a good communicator. a good listener. a facilitator. you can pull that off.

there is absolutely nothing worse than trying to be statesmanlike and failing. leave that to trudeau, who will no doubt try it, so that he doesn't try it again.

ipolitics.ca/2015/09/28/mulcair-aims-to-showcase-statesman-like-competence-in-foreign-policy-debate/

so, what's going on in syria right now?

actually, yes: you do need to know. people have been talking about world war three since the americans invaded iraq. it's starting to get pretty serious. and, hey, there's a foreign policy election debate tonight, too - but don't expect any useful analysis out of it.

so, it was a few years ago now that the americans staged a chemical attack and then tried to blame it on syria. that might sound conspiratorial, and if your only source of news is cnn that's understandable, but my source on that claim is actually the united nations. that's legit, and understood by the various world powers. understanding that the united states faked a chemical attack to start a war is fundamental in realizing exactly what's happening. it's one thing to do something like that; the fact is that the americans have a long history of false flags to start wars - and that's according to history, not according to youtube. it's another thing to do something like that, get caught and have the whole world know you did it. how trustworthy are you after that? and, if it fits into a pattern of deception over many years or decades?

the united states has become a rogue state.

it's not clear what the russians said to the americans, or why the british of all people took the initiative to throw a wrench into it, but it didn't happen.

instead of bombing syria, they created a mess in ukraine by funding a coup, which set off a civil war. the purpose of this was to punish the russians for interfering in syria. then, when the russians reacted (like they were supposed to), sanctions were placed on russia that prevents them from economic relations with countries that use the united states dollar. the purpose of these sanctions is to collapse the russian economy in the hopes that it will lead to a revolution in russia that american agents can take control of in seizing power. that's not alex jones, either. that's the official policy on the state department's website.

it took the russians some time to come to terms with what is actually happening, but they have now clearly come to terms with what is happening and have dramatically changed their behaviour. this is something that we have not seen from the russians since the fall of communism: active military deployment in hot proxy wars.

the first signs that russia was beginning to reverse it's policy of pacifism came with the invasion of libya. the russians voted for the security council resolution that authorized bombing in libya, but only to protect protesters. nato took control of this mission and used it to oust ghadaffi, which is not what the russians voted for. in fact, the russians lost an important port and a lot of contracts in the process, which have been gained by nato (and particularly the french and italians). discussions in american-russian relations were focused largely around the concept of "mutual trust" throughout the cold war. i'm not sure it ever meant much to the american side. but, it meant a lot to gorbachev and it seemed to be an important principle to both putin and "smiley dmitri" medvedev, up until this point. the libya operation is the point where that mutual trust again disappeared on the russian side, thrusting us back into a cold war situation. i know this because lavrov (the longstanding russian foreign minister) has stated as much publicly. that was in 2011.

but, the ukrainian offensive was an escalation that the russians could not turn a cheek on and the clear strategy towards active regime change is something that has jolted the russians out of hibernation. it set in motion contingency plans that cannot be easily reversed. well, hey - if china were to invade mexico, you don't think the americans have a full blown military plan to react, one that was written fifty years ago and is taught in academies and is periodically updated? events trigger reactions. it's the naivete of the obama administration that is the root cause here, not the russian contingencies. but, you can't just stop these things once they get going. and, thus this is when the war starts.

as you no doubt know, they quickly seized crimea and have been fighting a war on the border of ukraine for almost two years, now. but you might not realize some of the other things they've been doing.

there was recently an iran deal. again: the american press is warping the hell out of this, and you probably don't have the slightest idea what it's about. what happened is that the russians looked at the situation and said "well, you're under sanctions. we're under sanctions. let's trade. hey, do you want some advanced anti-aircraft systems to protect you from an american invasion?".

well, of course they do.

china gets wind of the deal and says "well, what's the use of these sanctions against iran, then?". and the whole world agrees.

this forced the americans to back off. the "deal" they got is a ridiculous face-saving mechanism to obscure the fact that they have just conceded that iran is outside of their sphere. what's actually happening is that the russians are moving weapons systems in that are advanced enough that the americans need to take the option of invasion off the table and finally, after 35 years, kiss that iranian oil goodbye.

but, putin is not done, apparently.

last week, he started moving more air defenses into syria - along with offensive weapons systems. and, even more recently, he's signed agreements with iraq to move weapons into that country as well.

but, wait. isn't this exactly where the americans are fighting isis?

exactly.

the russians understand that isis is a front for saudi interests to take over the region in the presumed vacuum created by the removal of russian influence. they are responding by reminding the saudis that there is, in fact, still russian influence and no vacuum after all.

the result is a very hot war right now between the united states and russia in syria and iraq, through the proxy of saudi-backed terrorists facing off directly against russian forces. this has a serious potential of getting out of hand, as more players enter in confusing ways. the turks are a particular issue.

after an initial round of fighting, the result of this may actually be stability, as the russians reassert the previous status quo balance of power and drive isis back into the desert. but, even if this does not happen, one must remember that the americans have made it clear that they are an existential threat to the russian state in the region, and this has forced them to react how they are. that is, it is not clear exactly what they're doing, but it's clear that this is part of a broader strategy that will not end upon the defeat of isis.

the reason this becomes worrying is that it is clear that the extent of the contingency plan is not understood by washington. in the last four months, the russians have managed to occupy the entire shiite crescent with russian troops that are waging a hot war against isis rebels basically over top of american efforts to create chaos to redraw the map and have clearly caught the americans off guard repeatedly. when you've got these two countries bombing similar targets in close proximity to each other, and neither is clear what the other is doing, it creates a serious potential for misunderstanding.

it's all because of a poorly thought out set of sanctions that were meant to force the russians into submission but have instead thrown them into full rebellion.

because the tar sands oil is mostly for export, hard caps make some sense. that's different than domestic energy production (especially relating to coal), where the key issue needs to be replacing electricity generation.

but, what happens if you break the caps? are you summoned to the house of commons for a denouncement? fines are just another cost of business. hey, with prices as they are, fines could keep the oil in the ground.

yeah, i'd like to shut them down altogether, but if this is a serious proposal then it needs to come with...it needs to come with subsidies to upgrade technology. oops.

and, it means actual hard caps, too. not exchanging carbon credits with some company that claims to do business planting trees in the amazon, but is actually registered in the caymans.

i'm just not convinced we have a model for cap and trade that's reliable. in theory, ok - for the tar sands, only. in actuality? the acid rain comparison is kind of sketchy, because it coincided with deindustrialization due to nafta. the system in europe is still up in the air - there's certainly a lot of stories of corruption floating around, and it's happening at the same time as a massive grass roots movement in germany to actually change generation methods. nor has it had really big emission reduction effects. it's reasonable to suggest that the emissions reductions that have been accomplished are due to direct action, rather than indirect action. all i see from the existing cap & trade schemes is that it needs to be tied to direct action to have any results, and is arguably more or less useless altogether.

and, it's only a percentage of the problem, as well. about 10%, in canada.

the reality is that the bulk of our emissions comes from power plants and cars (together, about 80%), and that approaching that requires direct investment, not a market scheme.

it very well might increase prices if, in the end, the fine merely becomes a tax. but, i don't see anybody thinks this actually works to lower carbon, without drinking the neo-liberal kool-aid on markets.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ndp-losing-ground-as-quebec-support-slips-poll-shows/article26554222/

it's not possible to have an opinion on a secret "trade document", although if this is like any of the other "trade documents" then it will have essentially nothing to do with trade - it will be a document that gives rights to investors, and cements various tariffs that benefit various investors. traditional conservative supporters will automatically support it, as they should - it's mercantilism. the ndp base will automatically hate it, as they have since before seattle - because they're opposed to transferring power from publicly accountable governments to unaccountable kangaroo court "tribunals". but everybody else has to actually READ IT FIRST before they can form an opinion. and, that's why this is potentially so explosive.

it's not going to be supply management parts of this that are going to upset people, it's going to be the parts on intellectual property rights, primarily. and, i speak for a lot of people when i argue that we should be negotiating our way out of chapter 11, not signing yet more chapter 11 type agreements.

the liberals are useless on trade; they talked a good talk in the 80s (in favour of trade, just not the agreement - which became the consensus alter-globaliza¬tion position) and then completely capitulated. that's one of the major reasons they lost so much support to the ndp amongst gen x and y people after 2000. then, as soon as the ndp end up in striking distance, they do the exact thing that all these people have been voting for them not to do.

wait for it. mulcair could still get past oct 19th unscathed on this. i don't think he'll get past jan 1 unscathed, unless he changes tactics.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/trade-is-voters-top-foreign-policy-concern-poll-suggests/article26556164/ 

Live in Ottawa –love the leafs
Thanks comrade.

deathtokoalas
typical laughs fan in ottawa. you start talking trade, and they offer up russ courtnall for john kordic, then call people names when the nature of the deal is made public.

i really hope that what everybody learns from this is that ads are a waste of money and that a reanalysis of the last several elections is required. but, of course, what a paper like the globe sells is ads. they don't want you to know that. and, it's not a coincidence that they focus so much analysis around the effects of the product they sell. it's this stack of cards that you can't expect them to abolish. what's important is that the serious people don't get blindsided by the media coverage.

the google model is not new; it's how papers have worked for decades, if not centuries. you're not the consumer. you're the product.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/quebec-campaign-gets-nasty-but-election-ad-wars-still-muted-in-rest-of-canada/article26554648/

wait. does that mean the ndp are opposed to building a fence along the southern border? when will tom mulcair support protecting our border from illegal american immigrants, so we can have a country again?

again: the amount of contempt shown by the ndp for the electorate's intelligence seems to be inversely proportionally related to their polling numbers. they keep doing this. it keeps killing them. they're not getting it.

you can run this on the right, when your target audience is mostly high school educated, or works in the trades. but, the battle on the left is over educated voters. this kind of repeated and sustained immaturity is just consistently making them look amateur, on top of appearing contemptuous.

the way the ndp is running this election is comparable to showing up to a thesis defense and quoting dr. seuss. it was theirs to lose, as i said. and they've accomplished it, as i suggested.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/09/27/ndp-attack-ad-trudeau-trump_n_8203870.html

i think you're wrong, but i can't really respond to this until you correct your dates and numbers. the liberals won a majority in 1980 under trudeau due largely to the quebec vote, mulroney won a very large majority in 1984 for the conservatives that was cross-country and he then won a much smaller 21 seat majority in 1988 that was fully dependent on a 60-seat showing in quebec. chretien swept the liberals back into power in 1993 with a 29 seat majority that included 98 seats in ontario and almost every seat in the maritimes but very few seats out west.

the right was split through the 90s. the reality is that harper has only rarely hit the highs that the combined conservative & reform party vote hit in the 90s, which was consistently 35-40. it's consequently pointless to look at 90s numbers and argue you can win without quebec. i mean, sure you can - if the right is split in rural ontario. harper has struggled to reach those numbers, but he's won since then because he controls the other groupthink province in canada: alberta.

so, sure, you can win without quebec. if quebec is voting in protest and the opposition is split. or quebec is voting in protest and you have alberta.

now that things are back to normal, hopefully, it's going to be very hard to win without quebec, again.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/alain-miville-de-chane/quebec-vote-has-no-say-in_b_8201036.html

why don't we ban fat people from wearing bikinis while we're at it. i find that incredibly offensive.

and, those stupid hipster glasses, too.

also: capes. i don't want to be worried about whether somebody is secretly a vampire or not. just get rid of them.

but, listen, raheel. you can't pass this law. it's unconstitutional. you could maybe pass it in some other country. but, our government would have to suspend the rule of law to have this pass.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/raheel-raza/niqab-burka-ban-canada_b_8189112.html

so, what's going on in syria right now?

actually, yes: you do need to know. people have been talking about world war three since the americans invaded iraq. it's starting to get pretty serious. and, hey, there's a foreign policy election debate tonight, too - but don't expect any useful analysis out of it.

so, it was a few years ago now that the americans staged a chemical attack and then tried to blame it on syria. that might sound conspiratorial, and if your only source of news is cnn that's understandable, but my source on that claim is actually the united nations. that's legit, and understood by the various world powers. understanding that the united states faked a chemical attack to start a war is fundamental in realizing exactly what's happening. it's one thing to do something like that; the fact is that the americans have a long history of false flags to start wars - and that's according to history, not according to youtube. it's another thing to do something like that, get caught and have the whole world know you did it. how trustworthy are you after that? and, if it fits into a pattern of deception over many years or decades?

the united states has become a rogue state.

it's not clear what the russians said to the americans, or why the british of all people took the initiative to throw a wrench into it, but it didn't happen.

instead of bombing syria, they created a mess in ukraine by funding a coup, which set off a civil war. the purpose of this was to punish the russians for interfering in syria. then, when the russians reacted (like they were supposed to), sanctions were placed on russia that prevents them from economic relations with countries that use the united states dollar. the purpose of these sanctions is to collapse the russian economy in the hopes that it will lead to a revolution in russia that american agents can take control of in seizing power. that's not alex jones, either. that's the official policy on the state department's website.

it took the russians some time to come to terms with what is actually happening, but they have now clearly come to terms with what is happening and have dramatically changed their behaviour. this is something that we have not seen from the russians since the fall of communism: active military deployment in hot proxy wars.

the first signs that russia was beginning to reverse it's policy of pacifism came with the invasion of libya. the russians voted for the security council resolution that authorized bombing in libya, but only to protect protesters. nato took control of this mission and used it to oust ghadaffi, which is not what the russians voted for. in fact, the russians lost an important port and a lot of contracts in the process, which have been gained by nato (and particularly the french and italians). discussions in american-russian relations were focused largely around the concept of "mutual trust" throughout the cold war. i'm not sure it ever meant much to the american side. but, it meant a lot to gorbachev and it seemed to be an important principle to both putin and "smiley dmitri" medvedev, up until this point. the libya operation is the point where that mutual trust again disappeared on the russian side, thrusting us back into a cold war situation. i know this because lavrov (the longstanding russian foreign minister) has stated as much publicly. that was in 2011.

but, the ukrainian offensive was an escalation that the russians could not turn a cheek on and the clear strategy towards active regime change is something that has jolted the russians out of hibernation. it set in motion contingency plans that cannot be easily reversed. well, hey - if china were to invade mexico, you don't think the americans have a full blown military plan to react, one that was written fifty years ago and is taught in academies and is periodically updated? events trigger reactions. it's the naivete of the obama administration that is the root cause here, not the russian contingencies. but, you can't just stop these things once they get going. and, thus this is when the war starts.

as you no doubt know, they quickly seized crimea and have been fighting a war on the border of ukraine for almost two years, now. but you might not realize some of the other things they've been doing.

there was recently an iran deal. again: the american press is warping the hell out of this, and you probably don't have the slightest idea what it's about. what happened is that the russians looked at the situation and said "well, you're under sanctions. we're under sanctions. let's trade. hey, do you want some advanced anti-aircraft systems to protect you from an american invasion?".

well, of course they do.

china gets wind of the deal and says "well, what's the use of these sanctions against iran, then?". and the whole world agrees.

this forced the americans to back off. the "deal" they got is a ridiculous face-saving mechanism to obscure the fact that they have just conceded that iran is outside of their sphere. what's actually happening is that the russians are moving weapons systems in that are advanced enough that the americans need to take the option of invasion off the table and finally, after 35 years, kiss that iranian oil goodbye.

but, putin is not done, apparently.

last week, he started moving more air defenses into syria - along with offensive weapons systems. and, even more recently, he's signed agreements with iraq to move weapons into that country as well.

but, wait. isn't this exactly where the americans are fighting isis?

exactly.

the russians understand that isis is a front for saudi interests to take over the region in the presumed vacuum created by the removal of russian influence. they are responding by reminding the saudis that there is, in fact, still russian influence and no vacuum after all.

the result is a very hot war right now between the united states and russia in syria and iraq, through the proxy of saudi-backed terrorists facing off directly against russian forces. this has a serious potential of getting out of hand, as more players enter in confusing ways. the turks are a particular issue.

after an initial round of fighting, the result of this may actually be stability, as the russians reassert the previous status quo balance of power and drive isis back into the desert. but, even if this does not happen, one must remember that the americans have made it clear that they are an existential threat to the russian state in the region, and this has forced them to react how they are. that is, it is not clear exactly what they're doing, but it's clear that this is part of a broader strategy that will not end upon the defeat of isis.

the reason this becomes worrying is that it is clear that the extent of the contingency plan is not understood by washington. in the last four months, the russians have managed to occupy the entire shiite crescent with russian troops that are waging a hot war against isis rebels basically over top of american efforts to create chaos to redraw the map and have clearly caught the americans off guard repeatedly. when you've got these two countries bombing similar targets in close proximity to each other, and neither is clear what the other is doing, it creates a serious potential for misunderstanding.

it's all because of a poorly thought out set of sanctions that were meant to force the russians into submission but have instead thrown them into full rebellion.

rap news 35

who created the internet, and why?

the narrative is about stopping certain forces from taking control, as though the internet came to us free of corruption and we need to prevent it from falling into the hands of darkness.

maybe it ought to be about taking control of a system that was handed to us with a precise function that it took some time for us to become aware of.