Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading.
- Tabatha Southey speculates as to the inevitable results when the Cons try to summon the entire Internet to answer for its political activity.
- David Olive points out that for anybody who wants to buy into "tax freedom day" messaging, the corporate sector is relieved of any responsibility to contribute to the public good far before we mere citizens.
- Mike de Souza notes that it's an unreasonable lack of consultation with First Nations - not phantom foreign funding - that poses a real risk to the Cons' latest tar sands promotion project.
- Meanwhile, David Pugliese reports on the obvious consequences of the Cons using Canada's military as a partisan research agency - as opposition MPs will have no reason to think they'll be dealt with as anything but political enemies.
- Sasha Issenberg writes about Barack Obama's efforts to present a new type of politics focussing on targeted appeals based on specific voter concerns rather than mass robocalls and blast messages - offering a model which I'd love to see the NDP follow over the next few years.
- Finally, Bruce Johnstone notes that it hasn't taken long for the dominoes to start toppling after the Cons' destruction of the single-desk Canadian Wheat Board - and Viterra, which was supposed to be our bulwark against foreign control of Canada's food industry, instead looks like it'll be the first piece of the industry to get sold off.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteThe media may not even blink at this...
But as an NDP member, I find this to be one of the most explosive statements of the campaign:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/03/10/ndp-leadership-thomas-mul_n_1336934.html?1331415547
Thomas Mulcair: “I do think that we should have long ago been in Syria to stop the wholesale slaughter of the civilian population there…It is absolutely unthinkable that the world today would allow such an attack,” he said.
I don't expect "pacifism" from an NDP leader. What I expect is "non-interventionism".
When Mulcair says "we" should have been in Syria...he knows very well that "we" does not include himself, his spouse, or his sons or daughters. He means other peoples kids "should have been in Syria".
He is suggesting Canadian soldiers risk their lives because he can't stomach the evening news coming out of some foreign country. That's just unbelievable cruelty. Those soldiers are meant to defend CANADIAN LIFE & LIBERTY...none of which is being threatened in Syria.
Look at the arrogance inherent in a statement like: "It is absolutely unthinkable that the world today would allow such an attack". He imagines that the world is some unified God-like creature who can magically freeze all sides of the Syrian conflict. The world is no such thing.
Syria is currently in the middle of an ethno-religious civil war (Alawites & Christians vs. Sunnis). What Mulcair is really saying is: "Let's kill Alawites & their Christian sympathizers so that the Sunni's can overthrow the government". This is what his position means in actual practice.
After the unfolding public disasters of Iraq & Libya, I cannot believe a politician...especially an NDP politician...could be so utterly ignorant & wreckless in his statements.