Beyond Ridiculous

Intellectual dishonesty at the very heart of push to "secularize" U of A convocation ceremony

On Monday, October 27th, the University of Alberta General Faculties Council held a special meeting regarding recent demands by a number of U of A-affiliated atheists to remove the a reference to God from the U of A's convocation ceremony.

In the convocation speech, graduates are directed to use their degrees "for the glory of God and the honour of your country."

The line has endured for 100 years since the University's establishment. Now, in the University's centenary year, a small group of atheists wants to purge the line from the speech. This group insists that they're doing so in the name of secularism, rationalism, and diversity.

The truth is very different.

Sadly, there's very little rational thought at the core of this campaign, and more than their fair share of intellectual dishonesty.

“I would feel unwelcome at the current convocation ceremonies,” complained Ian Bushfield, the president of the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics. “By charging me to use my degree to the glory of God, I feel that my belief system, which does not include beliefs in any form of deity, is being ignored by this University’s administration.”

“If the argument for tradition is to be held over all rational discourse, then this University shall never achieve its goal of becoming a top 20 university by 2020,” Bushfield insisted.

Which is a rather bizarre claim. If a passing reference to God in a convocation speech is enough to be a millstone around the University's neck in terms of University rankings, then there is something severely wrong with those rankings.

Of course, Bushfield's rhetoric barely holds a candle to that of John Crookshanks, a political science student who is also working to push the UAAA's agenda.

“This is a public, non-creedal university with a diverse, multicultural student, faculty, and staff community, and so appeals to the will of the religious majority are misleading. They, like many others, believe that for the University to be arbiter of what is the correct faith for all students is completely inappropriate,” added Crookshanks.

Readers may cue rolling eyes at their leisure. After all, a ceremonial charge falls significantly short of instructing graduates on what their religion should be. For Crooksthank, however, the irrational ravings only get better.

“This is a public university, whose mission statements, goals, and even the 'Dare to Deliver' plan have no religious mandate. Convocation then is neither the place nor the time to invoke any one religion to the exclusion of all others,” he continued.

Of course, Bushfield may want to rethink that last claim. After all, the God reference in the convocation speech doesn't merely apply to one religion. Considering that Christians, Jews and Muslims all worship the same god -- merely disagreeing on the subject of Messiahs and prophecy -- this god charge actually refers to no less than three separate religions. Adding Sikhism, this can easily be expanded to four religions when one considers the ambiguity of the God reference in the speech.

For Crookshank, however, a clear strategy is at play here: there is no secrets that Christians have, increasingly, become politically vulnerable. A broad portion of Canadian society, recognizing that Christians still remain the majority in Canada, don't consider it politically incorrect to attack Christians.

Crookshank's particular attitude seems very self-explanatory: it's OK to screw with religious people so long as it looks as if you're only screwing with Christians.

Sadly, the reality underlying the issue is very different. Crookshank's use of the notion of the U of A being a public University as a rationale for this campaign is also a little more than alarming.

As Benjamin Barber notes, while individual religious beliefs very much are a largely private matter, religion itself is actually a public good. The vast majority of places of worship remain public places. To try and displace religion from the public sphere into the private sphere, individuals like Busfhield, Crookshank and their compatriots would compromise the ability of religious believers to congregate in communities of belief.

Not to mention that it's impossible to believe that the University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics,whose membership numbers 180 members -- accounting for nearly the entirety of the 189 signatures on their petition -- are merely doing this in the name of secularism.

Rather, they're doing it in the name of atheism. As such, all their petition would really accomplish is displacing no less than three other religions from the convocation speech in favour of their own religion -- atheism -- by default.

That's an odd definition of "inclusiveness".

You Keep Using That Word "Progressive"...

Canada's model "progressive" to blogger: "only atheists need apply"

Canadian Cynic really likes atheism. And Richard Dawkins. And "EZ" PZ Myers.

If there's anything Cynic doesn't like, however, it's religion. Particularly, Christianity.

So when Dirk Buchholz offered a post questioning the need of individuals such as Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to ridicule religion, Cynic has some very -- constructive -- things to say about it.

Not.

"Methinks the Progressive Bloggers of Canada tent just got a little too big."

It isn't too hard to figure out what Cynic intends to say here: that he thinks of Canadian progressivism as an atheists-only club. Anyone who holds religious beliefs or even dares to challenge the collective wisdom of Dawkins, Maher and Hitchens should apparently be banished from Canadian progressive circles.

Which really only underscores -- once again -- that while this particular psychopath likes to rant about progressivism at length, he doesn't really know the meaning of the term.

Consider Cynic's "enlightened" response to Buchholz:

"Religion is a ridiculous and utterly unsupportable belief in indefensible nonsense and invisible sky fairies. What the hell part of that have you never figured out?

When exactly did the word "progressive" lose its meaning?"

Unsurprisingly, this is all religion is in Cynic's extremely closed and limited mind. But in order to make this claim, Cynic unfortunately has to overlook how important religion has actually been to Canada's progressive movement.

The NDP, the engine of Canada's progressive movement, wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the Protestant Social Gospel. Under Tommy Douglas -- himself an ordained Baptist minister -- the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was actually founded as a Christian party, based on Christian principles of charity.

Not to mention the literally countless charities operated by Canada's churches.

But beyond this, Cynic's irrational knee-jerk reaction to Buchholz seems only all the more extreme when compared to the mild nature of his criticism. In implicitly polite terms, Buchholz merely points out that someone else -- Sarah Dreier -- has pointed out what everyone who's paid any amount of attention to this issue has already noticed: that many of the most prominent atheists -- who promote themselves as high-powered intellectuals -- have all too often resorted to merely ridiculing religion in lieu of offering intelligent debate.

Apparently, doing so is a sin worthy being cast of Canada's progressive cabal, who for some reason insist on continuing to defend Cynic despite the distinctly anti-progressive nature of his commentary.

Writing a post that suggests that progressivism should be exclusive to aheists -- overlooking whether or not individuals actually hold progressive beliefs or not -- is proof enough of that.

Xenophobia Trumps Multiculturalism in Quebec

Quebec extends Herouxville Declaration province-wide

In 2007, a town in Quebec made national headlines when it issued the Herouxville declaration, a controversial code issued to immigrants to the Quebec town.

At its basest level, the Herouxville declaration merely represented a warning to immigrants -- seemingly Muslims in particular -- that the town wouldn't tolerate misogynistic practices including (but not limited to) stoning women, burning them alive, or forcing them to wear headscarves.

"We want the whole world to understand we are no kind of racist," insisted Andre Drouin, who wrote the declaration.

The specific demands laid out by the declaration are, in themselves, far from unreasonable. No Canadian should be willing to tolerate the burning of women with acid or honour killings.

But there's a big difference between an unwillingness to tolerate offenses that are, for the most part, already prohibited by Canadian law.

Which makes one wonder precisely what was going through the mind of Quebec Immigration Minister Yolande James when she announced what amounts to a province-wide adoption of the Herouxville declaration.

"Quebeckers have said yes to immigration, but they said yes to immigration on the condition that these immigrants integrate into our society," James announced, adding that immigration into Quebec is "is a privilege not a right."

Certainly, immigration into any country is a privilege. But there is something ironic about the province of Quebec -- which has, with good reason, historically rejected efforts to assimilate it into the rest of Canada -- demanding that immigrants assimilate into their society, to the extent that they're forced to sign a formal repudiation of a fundamentalist Muslim stereotype.

Furthermore, it isn't as if the kinds of behaviours denounced in the Herouxville declaration have been endemic in Quebec, or anywhere else in Canada.

As such, Quebec's wide-scale adoption of the Herouxville declaration is nothing more than submitting to hysteria: it's being offered up as a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist.

LeBlanc Is In, McKenna Is Out

First Hat in the Liberal Leadership Ring

If the Liberal leadership were decided right now, at this very moment, the party would have a new leader.

Not Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff or even Frank McKenna. Rather, it would be Dominic LeBlanc, the first Liberal to officially declare his candidacy in the Liberal Leadership contest.

In terms of party renewal, LeBlanc has his share of ideas on what has gone wrong, and how to fix the problem.

“Perhaps, in recent campaigns, we have drifted from that pragmatic centre of Canadian politics and we haven't given some of the traditional Liberal voting blocs an enthusiastic reason to support us," LeBlanc announced.

"I think that the Liberal party needs to return to a pragmatic, centrist approach to policy and to politics," he added. "I think that we need to regain our position as a voice for the middle-class and working Canadians, anglophones and francophones and for younger people."

With LeBlanc declared for the race, one might have expected the campaign to be set to heat up. Not so.

An individual expected to have been a front-runner in the campaign, former New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna has decided not to join the contest.

"The challenge of winning the leadership, restoring the health of the Liberal Party and returning a Liberal majority government requires a longer time commitment than I am prepared to make," McKenna announced. "There will be an ample number of well-qualified candidates to do this important work."

Certainly, Rae and Ignatieff -- both expected to declare for the race -- must be breathing a sigh of relief with another potential front runner deciding to forgo an attempt at the leadership.

But as Ujjal Dosanjh and John Manley continue to consider running, each will face significant competition for their respective target demographics, as their potential supporters consider holding out for a better deal from competing camps.

But right now Dominic LeBlanc is the only candidate in the race. Until a few more candidates actually come out and declare, there isn't much to talk about in concrete terms -- the entire Liberal leadership race remains largely hypothetical.

Old Fantasies Never Die

They're just reimagined when Stephen Harper wins elections

When Stephen Harper managed to defeat the incumbent Liberals in the 2005/06 federal election, it didn't take very long for speculation of a left-of-centre coalition to defeat him and ensure that the Conservatives could never govern again.

Less than two days after the election, the Real News Network featured Murray Dobbin musing on the possibility of an immediate left of centre coalition to govern in Harper's stead.

"There's real pressure on [Stephane] Dion personally to try and figure out a way to force Harper's hand and have a vote of confidence," Dobbin insisted. "Defeat Harper, and then form a government with support from the NDP and the Bloc [Quebecois]."

"That is still a possibility," an optimistic-sounding Dobbin mused.

In the Ottawa Citizen, Lloyd Axworthy offers a similar sentiment. In an op/ed column in which he muses that "More than 60 per cent of those who cast ballots in the last election did not support the Harper government."

Furthermore, Axworthy's crystal ball has suggested to him that all those Canadians who didn't vote were going to vote against Harper, too. If you count in all those who did not participate out of choice or indifference then you likely have a much larger cohort of Canadians who are not in favour of the agenda espoused by this government," Axworthy supposes.

"the opposition parties must begin immediately to have direct conversations about the forthcoming parliamentary session. They must discuss how to combine and co-operate to ensure that Stephen Harper does not take advantage of both a split opposition and an imminent Liberal leadership race to force through measures that reflect his particular ideology, which is clearly very conservative," Axworthy writes. "This de facto parliamentary alliance, while troublesome for partisans, is a must and is clearly mandated by their electors who were asked to vote Liberal, New Democrat, Green or Bloc to stop Mr. Harper. To return to the gamesmanship of the last Parliament would be a repudiation of those election vows."

Of course, as Steve Janke notes that if more than 60% of Canadians voted against Stephen Harper, then many more Canadians voted against Stephane Dion, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe.

This particular reality aside -- not to mention that even if Stephane Dion were to have won a majority government with the largest margin ever won by Jean Chretien, he would only have captured 41$ of the vote -- the emerging "unite the left" movement simply has no basis in reality.

For one thing, neither the Liberals nor the NDP have enough seats between them to govern the country. The Bloc Quebecois would be necessary to make such a feat possible.

Murray Dobbin has followed Canadian politics for many, many years. Lloyd Axworthy is a second-generation politician who himself was deeply involved -- including an extended period as a Cabinet minister -- in politics for many years.

So some may wonder how it is that both of these men cannot understand the particular role of the Bloc Quebecois in Canada and how neither party could realistically be expected to contribute to a left-of-centre governing coalition.

Of course, the Bloc Quebecois exists for one reason and one reason alone: to separate Quebec from Canada, thus dismembering the country. Even at times when a sovereignty referendum is not immediately on the agenda, the Bloc Quebecois is a protest bloc.

As such, the Bloc Quebecois could not participate in any such coalition government. The very philosophy of the Bloc Quebecois insists that Quebec is culturally and spiritually separate from Canada, and must become politically separate as well.

Thus, the Bloc Quebecois caucus is precisely that: a bloc of MPs who may, from time to time, cooperate in the governance of the country, but at the end of the day (theoretically) represent a group of people who consider themselves separate from Canada all but officially.

The "united left" coalition is nothing more than a pure fantasy.

One can only wonder when Lloyd Axworthy and Murray Dobbin might wake up from that particular dream.

Jean Charest Playing With Fire?

Quebec Premier needs to consider perils of an election

The most recent rumblings out of La Belle Province are that Premier Jean Charest is going to have the National Assembly dissolved in favour of an 8 December election.

"It was quite clear from statements made by the ADQ and Parti Quebecois that they're not in a mood to co-operate with the government," Charest recently announced.

Of course, Charest insists that an election isn't necessarily his option of first choice.

"We think the only responsible thing for the this government -- and for this premier -- at this time is not to call an election, but to look for solutions to the crisis," he insisted.

Quebeckers -- and Canadians at large -- may be forgiven if that sounds familiar. It sounds remarkably similar to Stephen Harper's comments prior to dissolving Parliament and calling the recent election that won him a strengthened minority government.

With the provincial Liberal party approaching 38% public support in recent polls, Charest may have the opportunity to win a majority government.

Or, with the separatist Parti Quebecois holding a 21% lead over the current Official Opposition, the Mario Dumont-led Action Democratique du Quebec, Charest may find himself in a more uncomfortable position after the election -- in a minority government, facing a Pequiste Official Opposition.

Or, worse yet, an election that many view as unnecessary and launched only for partisan gain could swing enough support to the Parti Quebecois to help them regain power in the National Assembly -- and put a separation referendum back on the agenda.

As Chantale Hebert notes, "Before precipitating an election to achieve his dream of reducing Mario Dumont's ADQ to third place in the National Assembly, Jean Charest should ask himself whether a campaign that even some of his closest advisers think is unnecessary is worth the risk of finding himself, afterwards, on the opposition side of the legislature next to Mr Dumont.”

It's a very real possibility. A recent poll has shown that 70% of Quebeckers don't want an election -- and certainly not one this soon after a federal election that, in the eyes of many, still seems inconclusive.

Aside from this, time may seem right for Charest to call an election. His party caucus was recently bolstered by the defection of two ADQ members, Andre Riedl and Michel Auger to the Quebec Liberals.

It would also likely strengthen Charest's claims to definitive leadership of the federalist cause in Quebec, deflating the electoral fortunes of the ADQ -- even if it winds up weakening federalism overall by vaulting Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois into the office of the Official Opposition Leader.

If Jean Charest insists on playing with fire and calling an election, he may, like Stephen Harper, come away from it with a stronger mandate. But if he gets burned, he won't suffer alone.

Canada will surely get burned right alongside him -- or may simply get burned in his stead.

Cindy McCain: Female, and Human

Crazy Enough to Work

A Pinball recruitment would play to typically shallow edge of Liberal politics

If the Liberal party has proven to be adept at anything, it's at catching the wave of a political trend.

In the case of a recent suggestion, it seems that Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein is taking a good hard look at Michael "Pinball" Clemons and seeing a future Liberal star candidate, if not a future Liberal leader.

"He's made a couple of extraordinary speeches to large audiences and people have been mesmerized by him," Grafstein says. "There's a thousand people there, after 10 o'clock at night. This was a sophisticated group of people who had heard a lot of speeches and you could've heard a pin drop. I was all set to go home, but I sat glued to my seat. His is the politics of hope."

It's not to hard to figure out hos Grafestein imagines Clemons: as a Barack Obama-figure-in-waiting, complete with his own take on the Audacity of Hope.

It wouldn't be the first time that the Liberals recruited a former professional athlete into the realm of politics. The Grits managed to attract Ken Dryden into their partisan fold, and he has, to date, been fairly successful. Then again, it would likely be harder for the former Montreal Canadiens great to lose an election, even if he were actually trying to do so.

Grafstein isn't the only individual with his eyes on Clemons' political services. Richard Morris, the City of Toronto's energy efficiency office manager, has him pegged for a future Mayor of Toronto.

"His influence is global. This guy could ... listen, Barack Obama has nothing on Mike Clemons, as far as I am concerned," says Morris. Of course, Morris doesn't rule out higher office yet for Clemons. "Mike's about hope, just like Obama. He needs some federal office to lead us to a broader horizon."

Clemons himself, currently the CEO of the Toronto Argonauts, isn't quite so eager just yet. For one thing, he's still in the process of getting his Canadian citizenship.

For another, he isn't always so eager to voice his opinions. That doesn't mean, however, that he doesn't have any.

"I was always a more serious person than I was represented as," says Clemons. "I'm jovial and smile all the time; I take things lightly so people think you're a lightweight. People who don't know me don't know that I have an opinion. Everything is not okay with me."

As a championship-winning professional -- as an athlete and a coach -- Clemons knows how to be successful. He knows how to win.

While the world of politics features its own specific pitfalls -- which Dryden wasn't quite able to master during his run at the Liberal party leadership -- "Pinball" Clemons has all the necessary components to be an Obama-like figure.

The Liberal talent for studying the marketing methods of American Democrats -- the Liberals closely studied the methodology used to build the political mythology around John F Kennedy and applied them to both Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau -- could quite easily transform Mike Clemons into a political powerhouse.

Canadians shouldn't be surprised to one day see "Pinball" appear in the realm of Canadian politics. The answer that has yet to be answered is: which team will he be playing for?

...It's OK When We Do It

Over at the Canadian Cynic Temple of Sycophantic Group Think, there's no question that they really, really hate "freepers".

Unless, of course, it's them doing the freeping. Then, it's all hunky dory.

This time, the idea actually isn't theirs. In fact, it actually turns out to be the brainchild of "EZ" PZ Myers.

The entire affair revolves around Ian Bushfield and the University of Alberta's Atheists and Agnostics' Associations' demands that references to God be removed from the U of A convocation ceremony.

The Edmonton Sun offered up a poll asking readers whether or not they agreed.

As it turns out, things were not going the way Myers, Cynic and their ilk would have hoped. In fact, before Myers chose to intercede in the poll, 67% of those who had answered preferred to keep references to God in the ceremony.

"Will that have changed when I wake up in the morning, I wonder…?" Myers asked, seemingly hypothetically. Considering that the title of his post was "Canadian Poll to Crash", he had to have known full well that his flock of mindless sheep were going to do precisely that.

In the end, the Myers'-inflated poll result produced a 91% margin of victory for himself and his atheist sheep.

Unsurprisingly, Cynic feels quite triumphant over this result. Of course, it this had been, oh say... the Canadian Blog Awards, they would have whined to high heaven.

Fortunately, the Edmonton Sun poll in question is and remains entirely meaningless. The defeat incurred by Cynic and his coterie of mindless douchebags when they failed to deliver the Galloping Beaver a blog award (via freeping) is certainly much less so -- it represents a wholesale rejection of Cynic's imagined influence in the Canadian blogosphere.

Still, Cynic and his cronies at the Groupthink Temple simply wouldn't feel like themselves if they weren't proving themselves to be the utter apex of intellectual dishonesty, cowardice and hypocrisy in the Canadian blogosphere.

There's something very special about becoming everything one claims to hate -- something that generally only the most intractable ideologues can fail to appreciate.

Richard Dawkins Needs a (Real) Hobby

Dick Dawkins set to start a moral panic over Harry Potter

As Richard Dawkins continues to make a very profitable public intellectual spectacle of himself, it's actually quite amusing to watch him transverse the very narrow divide between skeptic and outright curmudgeon.

As it turns out, he's also learned the golden law of religious proselytizing - "hook 'em while they're young" (at least as George Carlin says in Dogma).

Dawkins, the author of the best selling book The God Delusion, has apparently decided to take a crack at the world of children's literature. His inspiration? Is none other than Harry Potter.

Not that he's actually read any of Potter creator JK Rowling's books.

"I haven't read Harry Potter," Dawkins confessed. "I have read Pullman who is the other leading children's author that one might mention and I love his books. I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales."

"I think it is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don't know," he added.

"I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure," Dawkins continued. "Perhaps it's something for research."

So Richard Dawkins is concerned about potentially harmful effects of fairy tales on children. So, in his never-ending quest to "demolish the Judeo-Christian myth", he's taking aim at children's literature.

The moral panic Dawkins is on the verge of fostering here is nothing unfamiliar to comic book readers, in particular.

In the immediate post-war years comic books -- in particular, crime comics -- were accused of contributing to the rise of juvenile delinquency. Despite having served as useful propaganda tools during the war -- Captain America, Namor, The Invaders and Superman all fought the Nazis in their periodical titles -- comics had long been judged as non-contributory to a war effort that demanded contributions from all members of society.

Throughout the remaining years of the 1940s and 50s -- which had been marked by a rise of concern over juvenile delinquency, partially due to families being disrupted by the war -- comic books were viewed with continuing suspicion. The apex of the moral panic arrived in 1954 when Dr Fredric Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent, a book postulating that comic books were:

"Badly drawn, badly written, and badly printed - a strain on the young eyes and young nervous systems - the effects of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. Their crude blacks and reds spoils a child's natural sense of colour; their hypodermic injection of sex and murder make the child impatient with better, though quieter, stories. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the `comic' magazine."

In short, Wertham insisted that anything that could be wrong with comic books was wrong with comic books.

Which sounds an awful lot like Richard Dawkins and his atheist cabal's take on religion: anything that can be wrong with religion is wrong with religion, and they're out to make you believe it by wrapping their prejudices around a protracted adaption of the Batman-Superman argument, wherein Batman (religion) is judged to be inferior to Superman (atheism) not because of any particular virtue of Superman, but because Batman doesn't possess any of Superman's powers.

Religion is irrational, insists Dawkins. Ergo religious people are inherently irrational. Religion can't be proven through the scientific method, and so is inherently inferior to rationalism. Religion inhibits rational thought, they insist.

Of course, all of this is rather shallow rhetoric, and does nothing to demonstrate any superiority of atheism over religion. Being religious certainly doesn't mean that a person cannot think rationally. After all, the number of great scientists who were religious largely speaks for itself. And while religion certainly cannot be proven through the scientific method, neither can atheism.

Furthermore, just because the questions that religion asks may not be entirely rational, they deal with issues central to human consciousness. It may not be rational to wonder what happens to human consciousness after death, but the question is central to the human condition. Humans are afraid of death at a deeply primal level, not merely because it embodies the prospect of a definitive end but because most people cannot imagine what it's like to simply not exist.

To refuse to ask such questions because the questions themselves are judged irrational isn't in and of itself an answer to the question. Unanswered, the question remains.

Fairy tales represent somewhat childish answers to these same questions about the human condition. While Richard Dawkins may begrudge children for having many questions about a world that so often seems beyond the understanding of grown adults, let alone children, it doesn't change anything. Attempting to dispel the questions at the root of most fairy tales doesn't answer them. Unanswered, these questions remain.

Dawkins seems to suspect that he'll dispel these questions by dispelling the myths built to offer an answer for them.

"I plan to look at mythical accounts of various things and also the scientific account of the same thing," Dawkins said. "And the mythical account that I look at will be several different myths, of which the Judeo-Christian one will just be one of many."

"And the scientific one will be substantiated, but appeal to children to think for themselves; to look at the evidence," he added. "Always look at the evidence."

How many six-, seven- or even ten- or eleven-year-olds will choose to accept Dawkins' invitation, only he can imagine.

On some level, it seems that Dawkins would like to frame his book as educational. But that ignores the underlying motive behind everything that Dawkins has done over the past several years -- the promotion of atheism.

"It is evil to describe a child as a Muslim child or a Christian child," Dawkins insists. "I think labelling children is child abuse and I think there is a very heavy issue, for example, about teaching about hell and torturing their minds with hell. It's a form of child abuse, even worse than physical child abuse. I wouldn't want to teach a young child, a terrifyingly young child, about hell when he dies, as it's as bad as many forms of physical abuse."

On this note, it's quite ironic that Dawkins would want so badly to proselytize rationalism to children, considering that he fervently believes it will lead them to atheism -- his religion.

In order to write his children's book, Dawkins is quitting his job at Oxford University. Atheism was once a nice little hobby for Dawkins. His job was science -- researching ambiogenesis, a scientific hypothesis that would have to be accepted on purely faith-based terms, as it could never be proven through scientific observation.

Now atheism is Richard Dawkins' job, and he needs a new hobby. Maybe he'll take up knitting or something.

Fact, Fiction, or Simply Partisan?

Oliver Stone flick blurrs lines between history and partisanship

Oliver Stone has a history of producing historical films. Between the big screen and the small screen, Stone's films include Nixon (1995), JFK (1991), The Last Days of Kennedy and King (1998) and The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001).

In W, Stone turns his attention to George W Bush before his Presidency has actually concluded and before his successor has actually been elected.

Josh Brolin portrays George W Bush as a man utterly lost in life -- torn between his carefree tendencies and the stern expectations of his father George HW Bush (James Cromwell) -- until an anxiety attack leads him to seek solace as a born again Christian.

Brolin deftly disappears into the role. At times Brolin's delivery of some of Bush's more famous speeches could nearly be mistaken for the man himself.

But for the other roles, one frankly wonders if Stone cast the worst actor possible. In particular, the role of General (ret) Colin Powell; Jeffrey Wright bumbles his way through a rather curmudeonish performance as Bush's oft-ignored Secretary of State.

While some of the casting choices -- Rob Corrdry as Ari Fleischer -- were a good deal more inspired, the often-cartoonish performances delivered often defy credulity. It almost seems as if Stone is intending to produce bad cinema, yet producing a watchable film despite his best (or, depending on how you look at it, worst) efforts.

The movie often blurs the line between known truth (Bush's cabinet/prayer meetings) transplanted truth (some of Bush's famous publicly butchered language displaced into private settings) and outright fiction (in particular, the scenes in which Bush and company plan the invasion of Iraq).

Yet even throughout the scenes depicting the planning of Iraq and Bush's struggles with the immediate aftermath, Bush's attitude seems to be not one of malfeasance, but one of assurance -- he seems to literally believe he is doing not only the right thing, but precisely the very thing his father should have done before him.

The contrast between HW Bush and W Bush's approach to Iraq couldn't be clearer. Bush Sr is shown congratulating his defense staff -- including Powell -- for concluding the war so quickly. W Bush instead celebrates what he believes to be a definitive triumph without having considered the consequences of the coming occupation, while Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) gloats to Powell.

Brolin's depiction of George W Bush concludes as it began -- with a man hopelessly overwhelmed by the circumstances he finds himself in.

The generally-accepted expectation is that Stone's flick was intended to ridicule Bush, if not outright villify him. As such, there's no question that the release of the film toward the conclusion of a Presidential election is clearly intended to influence the outcome of this election.

With more and more people falling all over themselves to identify John McCain with George W Bush as closely as possible, there's little question over whether or not the film is actually trying to influence the election.

As such, W is unquestionably a highly political film. While still a biographical film, it will, by necessity, have to be rejected as a historical film.

The film is still tremendously entertaining, and some speculation holds that it may serve to make Bush seem more likable by focusing on the struggles and foibles of his life rather than attempting to outright villainize him.

One way or the other, W will remain the subject of a great deal of controversy for a long, long time.

Thinking, Thinking...

Whatever would Richard Dawkins think of this?

With British atheists set to launch a bus-bound atheist advertising campaign, it's unsurprising that some of the usual suspects are involved.

Richard Dawkins, the atheist heavyweight who so recently doubled as Ben Stein's punching bag, has supported the campaign with 5,500 Pounds Sterling of his own funds.

"Religion is accustomed to getting a free ride - automatic tax breaks, unearned respect and the right not to be offended, the right to brainwash children," Dawkins mused. "Even on the buses, nobody thinks twice when they see a religious slogan plastered across the side."

"This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think - and thinking is anathema to religion," Dawkins concluded.

However, as it turns out, the campaign is being supported, in part, by Theos, a think tank backed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who explained they were supporting the campaign in order to encourage people to think about religion.

"We thought it was a great opportunity for people to think about faith and God, so we decided to support it," explained Theos director Paul Woolley. "It would be hard to come up with a more self-centred message than this. Stunts like this demonstrate how militant atheists are often great adverts for Christianity."

Some might wonder if the revelation that a religious think tank would be as interested in getting people to think about religion would temper some of Dawkins' arrogant bluster.

Then again, this is Richard Dawkins. So that probably isn't very likely.

Stephane Dion: Victim of Machiavellian Karma?

"Stephane Dion, patron saint of political victimhood" ill-fitting label

When Stephane Dion announced he would resign as Liberal leader, he wasn't nearly as much at odds to explain his electoral defeat as some people would have expected.

At least in part, Dion blamed his defeat on Conservative attack ads.

The Conservatives had released numerous negative-themed ads -- but no outright attack ads -- during the campaign. Shortly after Dion's election as the leader of the Liberal party, the Tories had fielded the now-infamous "Not a Leader" attack ads against Dion.

The Liberals eventually did try to counter the image of Dion portrayed by the Conservatives.

"Canadians did not know this Stephane Dion. They knew another one ...they believed that (the other) character was real," Dion complained. "I want to see that the next leader is not as vulnerable to the low propaganda that was directed against me."

In terms of branding and counter-branding, Dion clearly knew what brand he wanted to build for himself -- that of a forward-thinking world leader. He clearly wanted his brand centred around optimism and enthusiasm; he evidently wanted his counter brand of Stephen Harper to be one of dishonesty and cynicism. His parting shot at his victorious (if not quite triumphant) rival bear this out.

They also fit neatly into the brand Bob Rae and Elizabeth May wanted to affix to Harper -- which National Post columnist Kelly McParkland described as "immoral, unethical, duplicitous, dishonest, cold-hearted, manipulative, disrespectful, incompetent, congenitally secretive, undemocratic, partisan, a cheap-shot artist who regularly resorts to low blows, insensitive, out of touch and unCanadian.
Oh, and a disgrace."

Yet the collaborative Liberal/Green outrage over the Conservatives' advertising antics may be a little more hypocritical than they would like Canadians to realize. As Ottawa's Ron Gaudet notes, the Liberal party has proven themselves in the past to be quite adept at the art of character assassination.

The label with which they branded Preston Manning was overwhelmingly that of a racist. Largely benign immigration policies were distorted into something sinister, and any evidence of a racist wing of the party -- such as the presence of Heritage Front members at Reform party rallies -- were seized upon to create this image.

Even when racists were expunged from the party, Liberal party activists such as Warren Kinsella sought to minimize the credit due to Manning for his efforts.

In Gaudet's analysis, the anomaly is Stockwell Day. Day created the image of a religious fundamentalist yahoo for himself by giving ill-advised comments regarding creationism to a Red Deer College seminar. He also staged an ill-advised press conference featuring a jet ski and refused to admit numerous mistakes throughout his tenure as leader of the Canadian Alliance party.

For Stephen Harper, who eventually emerged as the leader of a unified Conservative party of Canada, the Liberal party gave no quarter. They released the most vicious attack ads in Canadian history against Harper, in the 2004 election:



And the 2006 election:



In fact, for a 13-year span of its recent history, the Liberal party's very bread and butter was the art of political character assassination. And they were so very, very good at it.

Only in the waning days of the 2008 election, with Dion's best (but meager) attempt at an upbeat, optimistic election campaign falling into utter ruin did the Liberals attempt a last-minute Hail Mary attack ploy. And it nearly worked. Some may be eager to attest the Conservative party's tumble back from the brink of a majority government with protest over the cuts to art and culture funding, but the correlation with the Liberals' "Harper on the war in Iraq", "Harper, Howard and Bush" and Harpernomics and Bush ads should not be overlooked.

The Liberal party played hard, fast and Machiavellian with Preston Manning, Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper. And it's interesting to note that the "low propaganda" Dion accuses the Conservatives of airing against him came no where near the depths of the propaganda deployed against Harper in particular.

At the end of the day, it's hard to feel sorry for Stephane Dion. He had to run the Liberal campaign his way, and it failed. Now that he wants to complain about the injustice of the Conservative campaign against him, it's hard for many Canadians to take him seriously.

October 2008 Book Club Selection: Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama

Can Obama organize a community for all Americans?

(OK. The October book club selection is really late, but this book has been hard to come by. Guess why? -ed.)

With Barack Obama seemingly on the verge of winning the Presidency, many observers -- both within the United States and otherwise -- may wonder precisely what it is that makes him tick.

Dreams From My Father actually makes it abundantly clear.

First off, one may wonder how many American liberals might be uncomfortable with the reality that Obama actually reflects a politically incorrect aspect of African American culture -- the unfortunate stereotype of the absentee father.

Obama spends the book equally divided between three different tasks: chronicling his experience growing up without his father, his experiences as a community organizer in Chicago, and his direct confrontation with his identity as an African American in Kenya.

Most interestingly, the path Obama seems to be following to the White House -- unless the numerous undecided voters still at stake in the 2008 Presidential election intercede -- seems to closely resemble that of Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago.

Interestingly, Obama's presidency may pose the same dilemma to young black leaders as Washington's mayoral reign posed to Obama. While trying to organize numerous iniatives for the betterment of Chicago's Altgeld neighbourhood Obama came face to face with the complacency of older, more entrenched black leaders who believed they had a "direct line to the mayor's office".

An Obama Presidency may fool many black leaders into a similar sense of complacency -- causing them to forgo community measures in favour of expected initiatives from higher on. In the end, it's possible that an Obama Presidency may serve to undermine community-level initiatives.

The other interesting element of Obama's personality that emerges is a wariness of his father's thwarted ambitions. Having studied in America -- in Hawaii and at Harvard -- Barack Obama Sr expected to become a prominent man in Kenya. Yet a seeming lack of political savvy wound up with Barack Sr falling out of favour with the Kenyan leadership resulted in the promises of such prominence vanishing before his very eyes.

Encounters with various family members in Kenya underscored an expectation that Obama will accomplish great things of Obama. That and intra-family rivalries may be serving to intensify the personal pressure on Obama to emerge victorious from this presidential campaign.

Dreams From My Father is a fascinating, thought-provoking read. It's well worth the time to finish before the election on November 4, if one can find the time.

The New-Age Political Dilemma: Leadership or Management?

Canada needs to correct historical leadership deficit

If one were to ask Canadians, there would be little question: Canadians want to lead the world.

Paradoxically, if one were to ask Canadians, they may receive a contradictory answer: Canadians feel as if their country has failed to ascend to a position of leadership in the world, and has instead been relegated into the ranks of the followers.

For one, Lieutenant General (ret) Romeo Dallaire would wistfully agree. And as disappointing as this state of affairs may be for many Canadians, those many Canadians may also have to agree with Dallaire when he points out that we may ultimately only have ourselves to blame: Canada's failure to lead on the global stage may have come about as a result of a deficit of leadership at home.

"We have been a very well-managed country, but we have not been well led," Dallaire recently told an audience in Peterborough, Ontario. "We are within the power structure of the world, what are we going to do with it?"

"We've got to move to change the future," he added.

Anyone who has ever been privileged enough to hear Dallaire, who continues to serve his country as a Liberal Senator, speak understands the depth of his faith in Canadians. This is a man who not only fervently believes that Canadians can lead on the global stage, but rather knows we can.

He's done it himself. In 1994, he sacrificed too much of himself trying to avert the genocide that took place in Rwanda, where Hutu militia slaughtered nearly 1,000,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Dallaire and his UNAMIR peacekeeping force struggled against the superior numbers of the Hutu militia, insufficient supplies and ammunition, and scarcity of even the most basic necessities while waiting for the world to wake up to what was taking place in Rwanda.

By the time the civil conflict in Rwanda began to wound down and a reinforced UNAMIR 2 mission began to deploy, Dallaire was utterly spent. Suffering from the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome that would frame the next few years of his life.

Both Dallaire's message and his example are crystal clear: leadership on the world stage isn't a right -- it's a privilege that must be earned. Furthermore, it comes with a price.

Sadly, it seems that all too often either Canadian leaders, or Canadians in general, aren't willing to pay the price for leadership on the world stage. Global leadership comes with various costs: financial, political, personal, and human.

Throughout much of the postwar period, Canada's political leaders proved unwilling to pay the financial cost of global leadership. Under Pearson, Trudeau, Mulroney and Chretien, funding of Canada's armed forces continually declined until after 9/11, when security-related pressures forced the Chretien government to start to take the issue seriously.

But by the time the 1994 conflict in Rwanda rolled around, Canada's military was approaching dire straights. While many other countries came to admire Canada's armed forces, it was largely because they were accomplishing tremendously impressive feats with tremendously sub-par equipment.

The argument could be raised that even if Chretien's government cared enough about what was happening in Rwanda, it was still unable to respond due to the neglected state of Canada's military.

Yet remarkably many of those who would have been most eager to send a significant contingent of Canadian troops into Rwanda have actually decried recent military spending that, once upon a time, would have made such a rescue operation possible.

It's hard to fault blinkered ideologues such as Linda McQuaig for such an inconsistency. They literally have no understanding of what most modern peacekeeping missions actually entail.

Even those who may otherwise profit politically from denouncing the Harper government's military spending understand why it's so crucial. As Michael Ignatieff notes:

"One of the things I have learned in 15 years out there in the killing fields of Africa and the Balkans, is that you can't protect human beings with blue berets and a sidearm. I'm fiercely proud of our peacekeeping tradition. Where peacekeeping of the traditional Pearsonian sort can be practiced we must practice it. But in a lot of cases now, in situations where you want to protect human beings, you want to prevent them from being ethnically cleansed or massacred because of their race, religion or ethnicity, you've got to have bulked up capabilities. You gotta go in there with flak jackets, you've got to have armour, you've gotta protect them."

What individuals such as Linda McQuaig -- in fact, the entire core of writers publishing via Global Research have willfully overlooked is the nature of modern conflict. The days of the idealized Pearsonian blue beret have long passed.

Even when one considers the current situation in Afghanistan and the often-idealized alternative mission in the Sudan, one encounters serious shortages of realistic thinking on the part of such ideologues. Once again, from Ignatieff:

"The problems in Darfur, however, are extremely serious. Sometimes people can say that "if I can just go there. Why Afghanistan? Why not Darfur?". The only thing to bear in mind when you say that is just think about what a deployment of Canadians in Darfur would look like.

It's 55 degrees centigrade. There's no cover anywhere. Do you think the Janjaweed are going to get off their camels and walk up when they see a Canadian flag and shake our hand? No. It's a combat mission."

But there's a reason why McQuaig and her contemporaries prefer peacekeeping missions such as the one they imagine in Darfur to the less pleasant business of conducting warfare -- peacekeeping comes with virtually no political price for them. Unless peacekeepers are killed in a Mogadishu-style ambush, peacekeeping is considered to be a politically nonthreatening activity -- generally considered to be a noble cause.

Warfare, on the other hand, is seen quite differently, even when the cause being fought for is in line with Canadian interests and values. Even when a withdrawal from the theatre of conflict would result in the ascension of a regime -- such as the Taliban -- so antithetical to Canadian values.

Even when the potential triumph or defeat of Canadian values -- so often claimed by individuals such as McQuaig as their values -- is at stake, these are people who are unwilling to pay a political price for them.

Sadly, sometimes even those Canadians who claim to support missions such as that in Afghanistan are unwilling to pay a political price for it. Little else remains to be said about Stephen Harper's recent decision to end the mission altogether in 2011, whether the mission is accomplished or not.

Sometimes leadership on the global stage carries a tremendous personal cost. As previously mentioned, Dallaire himself has paid that personal cost in spades -- and paid not only his own share, but that of an entire country.

It's only natural, however, that many people would be reluctant to pay the human cost of global leadership. No one enjoys the prospect of sending troops overseas to die. When they are sent, every prayer is uttered that they'll return home safely.

But even as those who would end up paying that human cost with their lives or health continue to support their mission despite the loss of their comrades, it serves a reminder: our service men and women volunteer knowing that the price of global leadership may be their lives.

This does nothing to undermine the responsibility of political leaders to ensure that the lives of our service men and women are risked only when necessary. But it should also remind them that such risks are truly inevitable, regardless of the anxiety that accompanies making decisions that may very well turn out to be matters of life and death.

Dallaire understands this. The current road of global leadership is not an easy one to traverse. "We are in a new era and it's not necessarily the easiest era," Dallaire said. "If you are a leader, part of your job is to anticipate the future. We are in a time of revolutions and not in an era of change."

The challenge for Canadians will be to decide whether they want their leaders to lead, or to settle for "leaders" who promote themselves more as public managers.

If Canadians want to lead on the global stage, we'll need to understand that such leadership has to start at home. And it has to begin with both leaders and citizens who are willing to pay that price.

If "Ifs" and "Buts" Were Candy And Nuts...

...Will Wilkinson would still be fucking clueless

In the wake of the 2008 federal election, many Canadians are concerned about the lowest rate of voter turnout in the history of Canadian confederation.

For the first time in Canadian history, voter turnout dropped below 60&. 13.8 million out of 23.4 million voters reported to cast ballots in the election, which returned Stephen Harper's Conservative government for a second term. Sadly, this is down a full million from the 2006 election.

Sad, that is, unless you're Will Wilkinson. Writing in the Ottawa Citizen, Wilkinson muses "no voters, no problem!"

"Last week's federal election was decided with the lowest levels of voter turnout in Canadian history -- about 59 per cent. But public-spirited citizens should not therefore wring their hands about the sorry state of Canadian democracy. Contrary to the folklore of democratic health, low turnout can signal social solidarity, reflect real civic virtue, and even make democracy work better."

This is, of course, nonsense. Wilkinson's justification for this absurd statement relies heavily on "if" and "but" reasoning.

"We humans are adversarial beings, easily riled by us-versus-them conflict. (Even Canadians!) Democratic politics is a wonderful way to peacefully channel social antagonism into ritual symbolic warfare. High voter turnout is as likely to reflect angry social division as it is to augur the reign of Kumbaya social cohesion.

Indeed, lower levels of turnout may suggest that voters actually trust each other more -- that fewer feel an urgent need to vote defensively, to guard against competing interests or ideologies. Is it really all that bad if a broad swath of voters, relatively happy with the status quo, sit it out from a decided lack of pique?"

Wilkinson actually suggests that lower voter turnout reflects higher rates of social trust. If one is actively seeking a means by which they can alleviate anxiety over low voter participation, this would almost seem adequate.

But those who pay attention know quite different: that a failure to participate in what is actually the easiest way to participate in the political process is a failure to care.

Those who don't plan to vote certainly aren't attending political rallies or candidate debates. And if they read about the election at all, it's more likely than not that it's simply en rote to the Sunshine Girl.

The notion that voter non-participation reflects higher rates of civic trust seems to rest on the notion that voters cannot find a preference amongst the various offered alternatives. But this would suggest a significant portion of the Canadian electorate -- 40% + -- that would need to be utterly devoid of personal values.

No one is devoid of personal values.

A more likely alternative yet is that voters aren't finding candidates who embody their values. Even this underlies a deeply-rooted problem within the political system: a lack of options in the Canadian political system.

Furthermore, Wilkinson actually suggests that a refusal to vote is a vote for the status quo. Simply not so. After all, the notion that declining to vote is a vote for the status quo would depend on the status quo being assured.

In the 2008 federal election, the status quo was far from assured. In fact, the status quo is never assured.

The numerous recounts ordered after the election show how close this election was in many ridings -- some in which the incumbent was defeated.

In such cases, only a few more ballots in favour of the incumbent -- in favour of the status quo -- could have made the difference.

Not voting is not a vote for the status quo. Not voting is a vote for nothing.

"Moreover, if you want to be civic-minded, your duty isn't to fill in ballots just to fill in ballots. You shouldn't do it in ignorance, out of emotion, or to win approval from your political friends. Your duty is to vote well -- to participate in a way that, at the very least, makes the outcome no worse.

Everybody has an incontestable and absolute right to his or her vote, but that doesn't mean it's always right to vote. Abstaining can be a way of looking after the public good, too. Not all of us have the energy, inclination, or opportunity to learn what we need to know in order to vote well. And that's OK. There's more to public-spiritedness than showing up at the polls. You can run a small business or coach a kids' hockey team with the common good in mind. That's an expression of civic virtue, too.

The virtue of opting out is especially clear once you grasp that more voting isn't necessarily better voting. Specialists in public opinion have exhaustively documented the average voter's shocking ignorance about the main issues of the day, the names of their local candidates for office, or the policies the candidates support."

Certainly, an informed voter is much better than an uninformed voter. An informed voter will make a wiser decision ten times out of ten.

But it's hard to imagine who, in this country, could not have the time or opportunity to inform themselves during election time. Election news dominates television, radio and newsprint during a campaign. The internet is inevitably abound with news about virtually any candidate or party one could wish to inform themselves about.

In order to not have the opportunity to inform oneself on an election, one would have to either be blind and deaf, or living in a uni-bomber style shack.

Frankly, Wilkinson may be right about one thing: any voter unwilling to turn off the new Metallica CD long enough to listen to news radio on the way to or from work may be doing their country a service by not voting. But that individual would still do their country a greater service by casting an informed vote on election day.

"The flakiest voters -- the ones least motivated to show up at the polls year in and year out -- also tend to be most poorly informed. So when turnout drops, it tends to leave the pool of remaining voters with an improved average level of political knowledge and policy know-how. If well-informed voters have a better picture of the candidate or party most likely to promote the general welfare, then especially high turnout can actually tilt an election away from the better choice, leaving everyone a bit worse off. And that's not very civic-minded."

This is an argument that also leads directly into the realm of elite rule. The argument raised is that, in order to make a valid political decision, one should know how government works.

But one need not know the ins-and-outs of running a Parliamentary committee in order to judge a candidate's ideas and qualifications.

"At this point in the argument, some readers will have become pretty upset. The "best informed" voters tend to be the best-educated, and therefore tend to be relatively wealthy. Doesn't this line of thinking suggest that relatively disadvantaged citizens would do us all a favour -- would do themselves a favour -- by staying home on election day? But then who will stand up for them? Who will promote their interests?

It's an excellent question, but it's based on one disproven and one unlikely assumption. The disproven assumption is that economic self-interest predicts voter behaviour. The consensus finding of political scientists is that voters -- lettered and unlettered, rich and poor -- tend to vote in good faith to promote what they see as the public good. That's good news. The unlikely assumption is that the voters who know least about politics and public policy have the means to make good decisions about which candidates and policies will best promote their interests. That doesn't compute."

True enough. But not voting doesn't support any notion of the public good. Once again, a ballot not cast is a ballot for nothing.

Even if non-voters have no opinion regarding the public good, it would be remiss to pretend that, in itself, is not a problem.

"But everyone should have the means to make informed and effective democratic decisions. And that's really the issue, isn't it? It would be ideal were each and every citizen to have the income and education typical of well-informed, motivated voters. But to get there, we need policies that will actually work to promote broader prosperity and a fuller realization of basic human capacities. A better-informed pool of voters is more likely to deliver those policies."

In other words, in order to increase voter turnout, Wilkinson argues, we would need to increase the level of education.

This isn't a bad idea. After all, as Benjamin Barber would remind us, if disagreement is the language of democracy, education provides us with the syntax. Each reasonable excuse for voter non-participation offered by Wilkinson could easily be remedied by better education in various subjects, including history and basic civics.

Twelve million voters declining to cast ballots could, in a sense, almost be argued to be a sign that more and more Canadians are embracing the most basic element of Barber's model of strong democracy -- increased self-government in the public realm.

Yet in order for this to be the case, one would expect to have witnessed a dramatic surge in membership in Civil Society Organizations -- the realm in which self-government most often occurs. Yet membership in most CSOs continues to remain restricted mostly to those most committed to their causes -- ranging from organizations like Amnesty International to the Salvation Army Church.

Many of these people are already amongst any country's most politically active citizens.

Self-government via civil society offers no remedy to non-voter anxiety.

"And so we are left with the Zen riddle of democracy: the closer a non-ideal democracy comes to maximum democratic participation, the less likely it is to adopt the means to ideal democratic participation. Lower voter turnout sets the stage for better democracy.

So, on behalf of our cherished ideals of democratic equality, let me be the first to say: well done, Canadian abstainers."

Wilkinson is a researcher for the Cato Institute in Washington, DC. The Cato Institute is think tank that favours individual liberty, free markets and small government.

But only the most fervent libertarian could look at declining voter turnout and see a victory for conservatism or the public good.

After all, declining to participate in the "ritual symbolic warfare" Wilkinson envisions essentially abandons the field of such battle to those with ideas that may prove anathema to the average libertarian.

All it would take for a few seats that would otherwise be won by pro-small government candidates to go to their statist adversaries would be for just a few too many voters accepting Wilkinson's invitation to theoretically vote for the status quo by not voting at all.

Under such circumstances, the non-vote for the status quo was actually a vote for bigger government, and -- in the wrong hands -- less of the individual freedom that the Cato Institute favours.

One wonders if Wilkinson would be willing to stand by this column if that actually turned out to be the case.

Canadian Government Launces ELITE Relocation Program

Thought Police At Work

University of Guelph CSA decertifies group for "anti-choice" views

In a move that has provoked -- and will continue to provoke -- no shortage of controversy, the University of Guelph CSA has moved to revoke the student group status of Life Choice, an anti-abortion student group active on the U of G campus.

Interestingly -- hypocritically -- the CSA has violated its own principles in making their decision. In an email distributed via a University of Guelph listserv, the CSA explains their decision:

"The CSA’s Policy Manual states in Appendix F, 4.2 that women have the right to an educational environment free of advertisement, entertainment, programming and/or materials which promote violence against women, sexual stereotyping and discrimination. Furthermore, the fundamental right of all women to control their bodies by:

i) Access to safe, reliable birth control and family planning information and the right of choice in the method.

ii) Freedom of choice choosing one’s stance in the matter of abortion.

iii) Access to quality health services and counseling which meet the needs of women students and respect a woman’s control of her body.

iv) Freedom of expression of sexual orientation;

v) Freedom from sexual assault and all other forms of violence."

By any account, the decision reached by the CSA stretches these principles. Holding this Life Fair has clearly done nothing to imperil "access to safe, reliable birth control and family planning information". Nor has it taken away any woman's "right of choice in the method".

It hasn't impugned anyone's right to "freedom of choice in choosing one's stance in the matter of abortion".

It hasn't prevented "access to quality health services and counseling", nor does it threaten "freedom of expression of sexual orientation".

Unless any of the speakers at the event were advocating assault and rape on women, it didn't violate anyone's "freedom from sexual assault and all other forms of violence".

The CSA's decision, however, did violate one of these principles: the aforementioned "freedom of choice in choosing one's stance in the matter of abortion".

So what was Life Choice's great crime in holding the event, anyhow? According to a package submitted to the CSA board of directors, some of the pamphlets distributed at the Life Fair advocated making abortion "extinct" and noted that aborted pregnancies "end with death". Furthermore, according to Lea Gallaugher, a spokesperson for the Guelph Resource Centre for Gender Empowerment and Diversity, speakers at the Life Fair discussed abortion in "graphic detail".

So, in other words, Life Choice was decertified a CSA club for talking about abortion -- sometimes in a biologically accurate sense -- using rhetoric the CSA didn't like.

As for the CSA's own rhetoric, some terms tended to be very revealing.

"Speakers who were anti-choice spoke," spat CSA Finance and Human Resources Commissioner Joel Harnest. "It wasn't pro-life, it was anti-choice. Many of the documents distributed were anti-choice. It was a clear violation to CSA policy and rights to students and women."

"Anti-choice", of course, is a rhetorical bombshell favoured by pro-abortion advocates.

It isn't too hard to see where Joel Harnest, in particular, stands on this issue. The guidelines outlined in the CSA Handbook have clearly been subjugated to a pro-abortion interpretation of them. In an effort to ensure the expulsion of the anti-Abortion Life Choice group, Harnest and his ideological cohorts at the CSA warped the rules to make the decision fit.

That was only one part of the CSA's strategy in ensuring the expulsion of the group.

The other part of their strategy was to hold the meeting deciding Life Choice's fate in secret. While the club was informed of their expulsion after the decision was reached, it wasn't informed beforehand.

"Several members of our group feel that their most basic rights have been violated and that the CSA has actually violated the most basic principles of natural justice by not informing us that the meeting was taking place, by essentially holding it in secret," complained Life Choice member Jeff Lima, "…and comes in violation of the freedom to defend ourselves and address any of these concerns and violations they feel we've committed against CSA policy."

Weakly, Harnest invokes Life Choice's right to appeal the decision as an excuse for not informing them that their student group status was imperiled.

The Ontarian's editorial board closely echoes these sentiments, although it falls far short of outright exhonourating Life Choice.

But even any potentially inflammatory rhetoric used in the course of the Life Fair event doesn't excuse the actions of the CSA: twisting their own rules, lacing it with ideological rhetoric and then reaching their decision through a secret tribunal.

While it's unsurprising that cowardly fascists who applaud attacks on elderly anti-abortion activists would so wildly applaud this decision (and also unsurprising that they are literally stupid enough to attempt to invoke the facts of the issue while not understanding said facts, or even what a fact actually is), it's actually quite disturbing to find the University of Guelph CSA so eagerly embracing not only the role of the thought police, but the role of the secret police as well.

Apparently, on the University of Guelph campus, students may not question abortion, nor may they offer other students information or opinions that may lead them to question it, too.

At least not without incurring the wrath of the U of G's thought secret police.

Driving Mr McCain

Angels and Demons Can Be As Real As We Perceive

Warning: the following post contains significant spoilers about the movie Max Payne. Those still interested in seeing this film should consider themselves forewarned.



Drugs and religion are a devastating combination

Those who have seen the trailers for Max Payne may suspect the movie to be a supernatural thriller -- something of a Constantine without Keanu Reeves.

However, Max Payne is actually quite different than the uninitiated -- those who haven't played the video game -- may otherwise suspect. The fire and brimstone images in the film turn out to be not the result of supernatural forces, but rather the hallucinations caused by a powerful drug.

Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is, by day, an emotionally shattered widower working the cold cases desk at the police department and, by night, a brooding hunter, seeking to uncover the identity of his wife and child's last escaped murderer.

In the course of a fateful evening he's drawn into the cumulative intrigue of drug culture, religious zealotry and corporate misdeeds that leads him to the very heart of his family's murder.

With the help of Mona Sax (Mila Kunis), an assassin whose sister's murder Payne is suspected of, Payne uncovers the trail of Jack Lupino.

Amaury Nolasco plays Lupino, a War on Terror veteran -- the theatre of conflict in which he serves is unspecified -- on whom Aesir tests their drug. As it turns out, Valkyr has, at best a 1% success rate. The rest of the test subjects go insane amid hallucinations of angels and demons.

Valkyr is also tremendously addictive -- more addictive in fact, than anything pharmaceutical executive Jason Colvin (Chris O'Donnel) has ever encountered. In time, even Lupino succumbs to its neurosis-inducing effects, and builds a Norse-themed religion around the drug. His most fervent followers join the gang assembled by BB Hensley -- Beau Bridges, playing the former partner of Payne's father, himself a cop -- and Aesir to peddle Valkyr for profit as a designer drug.

Lupino and his gang take on the identity of the Norse berserker -- believing they must die violently in order to ascend to heaven. In time, even the casual users of Valkyr are drawn into Lupino's twisted faith. They're identified by their wing tattoos, symbolic of the Valkyries they believe watch over them in order to choose the worthy dead -- those who draw first blood -- to Valhalla.

Hensley has used the addiction afflicted upon Lupino and his followers in order to control them and use them to his own ends. One of those ends was the murder of Michelle Payne, who had uncovered Valkyr as an employee of Aesir pharmaceuticals.

The utmost sinister edge of Valkyr's use as a religious sacrament is that it empowers ordinary, infallible humans with the spiritual status and authority of a god.

"Max Payne is looking for something that god wants to stay hidden," the underused Lincoln DeNeuf (Jamie Hector) intones during the film. The remark is very telling indeed.

If Jesus Christ himself is considered symbolically to be the source of the wine and bread used in Roman Catholic sacrament, then surely the creator of Valkyr -- Aesir pharmaceuticals -- would have to be Lupino's god.

Yet Hensey is a very corrupt man. He ordered the murder of Michelle Payne just to ensure Valkyr remains covered up, then began to sell this extremely volatile and dangerous drug for profit.

As alarming as the combination of drugs and religion in Max Payne is, the real-life implications of mixing drugs and religion can be just as alarming, especially when if effects the young and impressionable.

In particular, raves are known as a place where impressionable youths are exposed to drugs and drug culture. Once upon a time, this revolved around recreational drugs that were (mostly) harmless. But as rave culture has gone more and more mainstream, the prospect of easy drug-related profits has attracted harder and more dangerous drugs to the rave scene. In particular, crystal meth has become more and more prominent in BC's rave scene.

Most often the drug is mixed with ecstasy. In such cases, many of the ravers using the drug don't even know what they're taking.

Like crystal meth, ecstasy is a hallucinogen. It normally heightens the brain's sensitivity to textile stimuli. Continued use of ecstasy can result in permanent changes to the brain's chemical balance, sometimes resulting in disturbed sleep patterns.

Crystal meth, meanwhile, is highly addictive. A single dose can result in confusion and violent behaviour. Delusional psychosis can set in over time.

When such delusions begin to take on religious overtones, the effects can be disastrous for a great many people.

Intriguingly -- and disturbingly -- such religious overtones can be found in the typical rave environment.

Drugs such as ecstasy and GHB are used at raves in order to help invoke what many ravers refer to as a spiritual experience.

The dangers of drug addiction -- more and more often to drugs such as meth and GHB -- make the raver's spiritual journey a perilous one. And while it shouldn't be said that there's anything illegitimate about pursuing spirituality through a rave -- spirituality is best followed on an individual basis, as the seeker sees fit -- those following this path need to be aware of the dangers that linger there.

Also of interest is Santo Daime, a religion followed mostly in the Amazon region of South America, but is slowly spreading to places such as Britain.

Santo Daime mixes Christianity with African animism and South American shamanism. Its holy sacrament is dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT.

DMT, normally a hallucinogen, is used in Santo Daime to incur psychedelic experiences.

The use of DMT in Santo Daime, however, has sinister potential. When used in moderation, DMT is not addictive and has few negative effects. However, DMT binds itself to neuroreceptors normally sensitive to Serotonin. Overuse of DMT could result in a chemical imbalance, as the brain starts underproducing Serotonin in response to the presence of a convenient substitute.

This actually provides the leadership of a Santo Daime Church with a shocking amount of power. Withdrawing their sacrament would also withdraw the Serotonin substitute that the brain has begun to depend on. The resulting Serotonin deficiency has been linked to conditions such as bulimia, anorexia, migraines, obsessive compulsive disorders, social phobias, schizophrenia and depression.

This should be considered far from unsurprising. DMT has been promoted by some doctors as a potential treatment for many of these conditions. Introducing excessive amounts of DMT into a chemically normal brain, however, can have potentially disturbing effects. Withdrawing the DMT thereafter can make these effects devastating.

The results of incurring a depression speak for themselves. Statistics hold that 15% of individuals hospitalized for depression will either commit or attempt suicide.

A scene in Max Payne could be considered a parable for such depression: one in which a man, about to be brutally killed by Lupino, desires a vial of Valkyr more strongly than he fears death. He desperately laps the contents of a vial off of a floor while Lupino proceeds to mercilessly behead the man.

In all fairness, it must be mentioned that few credible examples of DMT being used to hold leverage over a Santo Daime worshipper have been documented. The potential for unscrupulous individuals seeking leadership within the Church to take advantage of their followers, however, clearly does exist.

Drugs and religion tend to make a dangerous combination. And while Max Payne is clearly a hyperbolic depiction of such possibilities, it's difficult to ignore the potential that already exists.

And Another One Bites the Dust

No free ride for Tories as Dion will continue as leader until after convention

It's said that bad things happen in threes. But in the case of Stephane Dion and the Liberal it all depends on perspective.

After being defeated in the third federal election in four years, Stephane Dion has called the third Liberal leadership convention in five years.

"I have informed the president of the Liberal Party of Canada and the president of the national caucus that I will stay as leader until a new leader is chosen at a leadership convention that I have asked to be organized," Dion announced today.

In finally announcing his intentions after nearly a week of silence and reflection, Dion seems poised to neither fully accept nor question the judgment of Canadian voters.

"I still think that if we would have been equipped to explain why I'm fighting for my country, what kind of leader I would have been, what kind of prime minister I would have been and what kind of policy we're proposing, we would have won this election and we would have today a much better government than the one we have," Dion added.

Although he's hardly proven to be a wise leader, or gracious in defeat, Dion seems to have looked to the past for inspiration regarding his decision to continue to serve until replaced. In 1979, Pierre Trudeau resigned as Liberal leader in the wake of an electoral defeat at the hands of the Joe Clark Progressive Conservatives, but left himself available to return in the event of Clark's defeat.

In Trudeau's place, Clark's fall didn't take long to occur. And while he may have asked "the sovereign" to "ask on bended knee three times" before returning, the result speaks for itself. Clark's government was replaced with a Liberal majority.

What all this means is that there will be no free ride for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government. Even if the Liberals aren't fully confident in Dion's ability to contest another election, they need not be hesitant to topple the government if the opportunity should arise.

With Dion -- the principle pillar in the "Red Green alliance" -- having resigned, it isn't at all unfair to continue speculating on the leadership prospects of the Green party's Elizabeth May.

Having hitched both her own and her party's electoral prospects to Dion and the Liberals, May has to face up to the reality that her gambit failed in both of its objectives: defeating the Conservative government and electing Green party MPs.

Many Greens are demanding May's resignation over a last-minute attempt to sway Green party voters to vote strategically against the Conservatives -- but not necessarily in favour of the Greens.

Whether May joins Dion among the ranks of defeated former leaders has yet to be seen.

Clearly the next task for the Liberals will be choosing their next leader. Numerous candidates -- John McCallum, Frank McKenna, John Manley, Ujjal Dosanjh, Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff -- have already started lining up for the job. Others -- Justin Trudeau, Ralph Goodale -- have already sworn off any interest in the coming campaign.

“We must learn quickly from this experience and move on," Dion noted. "The search for a new Liberal leader will be part of a process of renewing our party, but clearly will not in itself be sufficient.”

One way or the other, the coming months will be crucial ones for both Canada and for its official opposition.

For left-wing Canadians, the defeat of Paul Martin's government may not have been such a good thing. Nor would the reelection of the Harper government have been. For Liberals, the ouster of three-time majority winning Jean Chretien turned out to be a bad thing -- as was the selection of his next two successors. For Liberals, Dion's resignation may or may not be a good thing (depending upon the perspective of the individual). But many Conservatives across Canada will be all smiles today.

Stephane Dion has formally bitten the dust.

Adnan Oktar: Turkey's Richard Warman

Turkish creationist leading suppression of evolution in Turkey

Since successfully convincing a Turkish court to block access to Richard Dawkins' website, it would seem he's been a very busy man.

This week Oktar was successful in getting the website of the Vatan newspaper blocked in Turkey.

Once again, Oktar cited personal abuse and defamation as his reason for seeking the ban. "The reason for this block is a court decision sought by Adnan Oktar due to reader comments on an article printed on our site about his 'community'," Vatan explained.

Once again, Canada's pro-Human Rights Commission crowd has been eerily silent on Oktar's use of the notions of "defamation" and the "encouragement of hatred" to silence critics of his writings.

Some of the more intellectually impoverished members of the pro-HRC crowd have offered characteristically worthless commentary on the topic.

But this predominating silence is so eery because Canada has its own equivalent to Oktar -- Richard Warman, a multiple-time litigant under the Canadian Human Rights Commission, who has sought to silence many of his critics via legal action.

Of course, Warman himself has had his conduct scrutinized and been found wanting. In a country like Turkey, where the notion of free speech seems to carry so little influence with leaders, one has to wonder how likely it is that Oktar's conduct in his pro-censorship quest will receive the same scrutiny.

Not terribly likely.

Ironically, one would think that Canada's pro-HRC crowd would have a little more to say about this. After all, Oktar's targets, to date, have been Richard Dawkins, beloved atheist du jour and a liberal Turkish newspaper.

Then again, to deal with the issues being raised by Oktar's litigious nature would only shed additional light on their own warts -- and that is something that all too many of them simply could not bear.

Old Separatists Never Die, They Just Get Pissed Off At France

Jacques Parizeau hurt by Nicolas Sarkozy's pro-unity comments

If anything over the past few years has lulled the Quebec separatist movement into a false sense of security, it certainly hasn't been French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Some comments Sarkozy made while in Canada on Friday have enraged Quebec separatists once again, when he questioned the role of Quebec separatism given the current state of the world.

“It's something constant in my political life. If someone tries to tell me that the world today needs an additional division, then they don't have the same read of the world as me,” Sarkozy said. “I don't know why a fraternal love of Quebec would have to be nourished through defiance toward Canada.”

Jacques Parizeau, for his own part, was outraged at the comments.

“What this implies is that it is a judgment that is very anti-Quebec sovereignty that says: ‘We do not agree with Quebec sovereignty, we do not want additional divisions," Parizeau sniffed. "We accept divisions everywhere in the world but not that one.'”

Parizeau also noted that he doesn't feel Sarkozy's comments should damage a sovereign Quebec's relations with France. “It isn't because a head of state says an outrageous remark that it should change our relations with the French people,” he added.

Perhaps it's natural that Parizeau would be upset. For years, Quebec's sovereingtist movement depended upon France's support following a vote to separate from Canada. French President Jacques Chirac had pledged his willingness to help a newly sovereign Quebec chart its way through the international community.

But one of Jean Chretien's many valuable accomplishments as Prime Minister of Canada was turning Chirac from a pro-Pequiste adversary into a pro-Canadian unity ally.

Ever since, Quebec separatists have had less and less reason to feel confident about French support for their cause.

Former Quebec Premier Bernard Landry also took it upon him to add his two cents.

“I hope the President of the republic poorly expressed himself and that it is not the way he actually thinks,” Landry mused. “If the President of the French republic came and interfered in our affairs and took a position against the independence of Quebec, well then it is extremely serious.”

Of course, many Canadians -- French Canadians and otherwise, within Quebec and otherwise -- would likewise view pro-sovereignty comments by Sarkozy as interference in the matter of Canadian unity. Many certainly did when former French President Charles DeGaulle did so.

"What I think is Mr. Sarkozy has maybe misunderstood our project," said current Parti Quebecois leader Pauline Marois. "Maybe he doesn't understand the sovereignty project of the Quebec people which, on the contrary, is a very inclusive project, open on the world, and modern. People for decades around the world have given themselves countries, and I think Mr. Sarkozy rejoiced."

Of course, very few of these ethnic groups felt the need to deceive their own people in order to accomplish this task, but one digresses.

"Some people have a - how would you say - blunter interpretation [of the remarks]," Marois said of Parizeau's comments. "It's clear, if Mr. Sarkozy's references about a divisive project refer to the sovereignty project, it is simply not the case."

So apparently, to Pauline Marois, Quebec sovereigntism isn't divisive despite the fact that so many Quebeckers don't want it, and in 1995 the PQ and Bloc Quebecois had to pose a perplexing question to Quebeckers in order to artificially inflate support for "sovereignty association".

For her own part, former PQ Minister of International Relations Louise Beaudoin doesn't regard this as a threat to a sovereign Quebec's potential recognition. "The day Quebecers decide to be sovereign, notwithstanding the Clarity Act, by 50 per cent plus one, I'm telling you, France will recognize Quebec. It seems so obvious to me. They recognized Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova and I don't know who else," she insisted. "Sarkozy is a very pragmatic man. He changes his mind."

If Sarkozy were ever put in a position where he had to change his mind regarding Quebec separatism, it's entirely possible that he might. But with even Quebec separatists continually putting off another referendum until the conditions are right -- a time that hasn't arrived in 13 years, and isn't likely to arrive soon -- Sarkozy is unlikely to ever have to face such a prospect.

In the meantime, Jacques Parizeau can get as angry about Nicolas Sarkozy as he wants. It isn't getting him any closer to a sovereign Quebec.

Defining the Role of the Fringe

"Fringe" parties can play a vital role in Canadian politics

In an op/ed article appearing in the Winnipeg Sun, Paul Rutherford has a message for Canada's fringe political players:

Go away.

In the course of the column, Rutherford describes Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, Green Party leader Elizabeth May and Reform party founder Preston Manning as "the worst thing to happen to Canadian politics in the last 20 years".

Rutherford accuses these parties of stealing votes from "legitimate parties" and insists that "they play no role in the democratic health of our country".

Unfortunately for Rutherford, he couldn't possibly be further from the truth.

The truth is that not only are fringe parties necessary, but sometimes they're inevitable, even when one would, as Rutherford, just as soon not even have them.

Manning's Reform party and Lucien Bouchard's Bloc Quebecois may well be the greatest example of each of these two scenarios.

A common grievance held by many members of the former Progressive Conservative party elite -- among them Joe Clark -- is that the Reform party undermined conservative politics in Canada by undermining the Progressive Conservative party. Not only did the party supplant the PCs in the west, but vote-splitting between Reform and PC candidates in Eastern Canada robbed the PCs of Parliamentary seats, and allowing the Jean Chretien Liberals to come up the middle in dozens of ridings on route to forming a majority government.

If Preston Manning had never founded the Reform party, many of them reason, Kim Campbell could have fended off near annihilation, and possibly even won.

This would almost seem reasonable. One very well could assume that the 19% of Canadian voters who supported the Reform party would support the Progressive Conservatives over the Liberals. But that would be making a fatal assumption in assuming that those voters -- particularly in the west -- would have been willing to continue supporting the PCs.

Many of them would just have likely stayed home on election day.

Many western voters had long tired of holding their noses and voting for a party that, all too often, didn't represent their interests. The 1984 election of Brian Mulroney via what Chantale Hebert describes as an Alberta-Quebec coalition turned out to be a rude awakening for many western conservatives.

Disillusioned with numerous episodes of the Mulroney government -- most notably the Meech Lake Accord, Charlottetown Accord and the F-18 Maintenance Contract fiasco -- western conservatives were ready to support a new option. They held on just long enough to help Brian Mulroney secure a victory in the 1988 election (on the strength of their desire to see NAFTA negotiated), then promptly elected a Reform candidate -- Beaver River MP Deborah Grey -- at their next opportunity.

The lesson for politicians was a simple one, but one that many politicians did not understand: voters expect their elected representatives to represent them. It's the same lesson re-played in the recent reelection of former Conservative MP Bill Casey.

The leadership of the Progressive Conservative party had lost sight of a political tradition in western Canada: the tradition of populism. Particularly on the prairies, populism was at the root of nearly every political movement to emerge out of western Canada: Social Credit, Tommy Douglas' CCF (later the NDP), the Progressives and Preston Manning's Reform party were all born out of this tradition.

The PC leadership, meanwhile, had turned their back on this tradition when they attempted twice to ram through constitutional special treatment for Quebec that western Canadians overwhelmingly opposed.

With the rise of the Reform party in the 1993 election and the crash of the Progressive Conservative party, Brian Mulroney's chickens came home to roost. Unfortunately, Mulroney himself had vacated the party leadership, and never had to fully face up to the consequences of his actions.

Western Canadians weren't prepared to support the PCs any longer. Whether one dismisses the Reform party as a protest party or not, the Reform party forced the PCs to eventually get back in touch with that forgotten tradition -- the tradition previously honoured by leaders such as John Diefenbaker.

Until the PCs did so -- which they did, via a merger with the Canadian Alliance, the successor party to Reform, which had been forged out of a coalition with provincial Progressive Conservative parties in Alberta and Ontario -- it was not, and could not be, whole.

In merging with the Canadian Alliance, the Conservative party finally reconciled its party elite with grassroots conservatism.

Some accuse Preston Manning of destroying Canadian conservatism for 11 years. The truth is quite different. Canadian conservatism had already long been on a course toward its own self-destruction. If anything, Preston Manning put Canadian conservatism on the road to what it needed most desperately -- renewal.

And just as fringe political parties can be instrumental to such political renewal within a party, they can be instrumental renewal across Canadian politics as a whole.

Sometimes, the development of a fringe party reminds us of the breadth and depth of a political problem. Such was the case with the Bloc Quebecois.

Formed as a party intent on serving the cause of Quebec sovereingtism at the federal level, the Bloc has been equally a Quebecois protest party and a disruptive force in Canadian politics (how else could one legitimately regard a party formed with the intention of separating a region of the country from within that country's own federal legislature?).

The Bloc, like the Reform party, emerged out of disillusionment over the Mulroney government's constitutional misadventures. The Bloc, however, emerged out of protest of the rejection of the Meech Lake Accord -- a feat accomplished very narrowly through the noncompliance of Manitoba MLA Elijah Harper and Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells.

Many Quebeckers interpreted the rejection of the Meech Lake Accord as a rejection of Quebec itself. This perceived rejection would lend strength to the sovereigntist movement for the next 20 years.

Bouchard himself had actually left Mulroney's government -- in which he had served as Minister of the Environment -- after a commission chaired by Jean Charest suggested changes to the accord that Bouchard couldn't accept.

The rise of the Bloc Quebecois, and its continuing existence, should only continue to remind to remind Canadians that the puzzle of Quebec's place in confederation has yet to be solved. Until it is solved, Canada's leaders cannot be content to rest on the laurels of two referendum victories.

Some commentators argue that the days of the Bloc Quebecois -- and its provincial counterpart, the Parti Quebecois -- are numbered. They frequently cite the rapidly diversifying Quebec population, the aging of the pure laine Quebecois population, and strengthening sentiments in favour of Canada as evidence that the BQ is already on its way into the long night.

They point to Stephane Dion's Clarity Act as having handcuffed the Pequiste leadership from posing the sovereignty question to Quebeckers under deceptive terms.

This may well be so. But it doesn't solve the problems underlying Quebec separatism, and the existence of the Bloc Quebecois stands as a reminder that, despite the near cataclysm that resulted from Mulroney's attempts to renegotiate the Constitution, some Canadian leader will eventually need to be brave enough to try once more.

The very existence of fringe parties speaks to us, if we listen closely enough. These parties are all too often riding the edge of a wave of pervasive discontents. Ignoring such discontents does a disservice to Canadians everywhere, as it allows these problems to fester.

Once, ignorance of these problems destroyed one of Canada's traditional political parties. On another occasion, it almost destroyed the country.

Paul Rutherford may be content so simply wish these problems away by wishing away their political representatives.

Those of us with an eye on the bigger picture, however, know much, much better.

Bill Casey's Reelection a Message to Harper

But did he receive it?

When Bill Casey voted against the 2007 federal budget, he knew he was taking a risk.

“After the vote I hid for a month," Casey recalls. "I did not know what the reaction would be. A month after, it became very clear they were behind me and they’ve been behind me ever since. This vote is certainly confirmation of that.”

In fact, Casey, the recently reelected independent MP for Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, believes his constituents sent a message to Prime Minister Stephen Harper when they reelected him by such an overwhelming margin.

“I feel they sent a message,” Casey reflected. “They want their members of Parliament to be able to stand up on the issues that affect their riding and not be put in the position I was. They want their MPs to represent the people to Ottawa not Ottawa to the people. The question will be, will anyone hear that message and will they listen?”

“This is a win for the people. And a win for every voter,” Casey added. “The people of Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley have sent a great, strong message to a lot of people in Ottawa.”

That message is actually quite simple, and that message shouldn't be incomprehensible to a one-time protege of Reform party founder Preston Manning: people expect their elected representatives to represent them. When the interests and needs of their constituents conflict with the demands of their party, people will expect their elected representatives to be standing with them.

Stephen Harper can't always expect to crack the whip of party discipline and get away with it, even when the very survival of the government is at stake.

Harper will need to make room for legitimate dissent within his government. When one looks at the losses that piled up over the Bill Casey affair -- the loss of a government MP, the loss of the Stanfield family loyalty, and the damage to any populist credibility the party ever had -- it would have been better to allow Casey to make a principled stand on the budget than to be too ham fisted with his government.

Supporters of the Harper government should be hoping he got the message.

Dear Ms Fantasy...

Elizabeth May plays left-of-centre voters a tune

The more the Canadian public is introduced to Elizabeth May, the more and more apparent it becomes that she lives significant portions of her political life trying to live out a fantasy.

She fantasized she could beat Peter MacKay -- she didn't. She fantasized that her party could elect MPs -- even the Green party's first MP, Blair Wilson was defeated by a Conservative candidate.

Now, in the wake of a stronger Conservative minority government, May is peddling yet another fantasy -- that of a vast left-wing coalition to unseat the Conservative party.

May's fantastical model closely resembles that unsuccessfully peddled by Reform party leader Preston Manning during the 1990s -- one wherein each party would decline to run candidates against one another, dividing up ridings according to who is most likely to beat the Conservative candidate.

Discussion of such coalitions has been all the rage ever since Harper's election in 2006. Go figure: a Conservative government gets elected for the first time in 13 years, and the Canadian left-wing panics.

The rationale for such a coalition closely resembles that offered by individuals such as May and NDP leader Jack Layton: the majority of Canadians do not vote for Harper. As such, they surely voted for someone else -- but whom, precisely?

This is where the utter folly of such reasoning becomes so obvious. Such reasoning is based on the notion that Canadians do not vote for anything. Rather, they merely vote against something else.

One wonders is leaders such as May and Layton have ever considered the self-effacing nature of such an argument. The general thesis of such comments is that they themselves are not worthy of political support on their own merits. Rather, they're worthy of support only because Canadians are rejecting one particular option.

By May's and Layton's reasoning, 63% of Canadian voters voted against Stephen Harper in the 2008 federal election. As such, they surmise, he should not be Prime Minister.

Yet by the same reasoning 82% of the Canadian electorate voted against Jack Layton and an even more overwhelming 93% of voting Canadians voted against Elizabeth May. If Stephen Harper should not be Prime Minister, surely neither Layton nor May should be.

On that note, who are the remaining candidates? Liberal leader Stephane Dion, whom by this rationale 74% of Canadians voted against and Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, whom 90% of Canadians voted against.

Perhaps the most ludicrous fantasy offered by May's theorized coalition is that the so-called "progressive" parties active in Canadian politics largely have no great differences between one another. They're all "progressive" parties, and thus all on the same side.

Simply not so. The Bloc Quebecois, after all, was founded based on the desire to tear Canada apart, dismembering it through the separation of Quebec. If that's the kind of difference Elizabeth May wants to sweep under the rug in the fickle name of defeating the Conservative party, Canadians across the country should find significant pause before supporting such a coalition.

Not to mention that the Bloc itself is actually a coalition between socialist and conservative sovereingtists, of both the hard and soft variety. There is no guarantee that a coalition such as the one May imagines could attract the total Bloc vote. In fact, the guarantee is virtually otherwise.

Not to mention the calamitous effect that such a coalition would have on electoral choice. By wiping up to three options off ballots across the country, many more Canadians may simply decide not so show up and vote. May's "with us or against us" mentality is perhaps one of the most cancerous forces at work in Canadian politics today.

That she would seek to formalize it and impose it upon the rest of Canada is an alarming prospect -- one that should lead more and more Canadians, within the Green party as well as without, to reject the prospect of her leadership.

Certainly, some left-of-centre Canadians will buy into May's fantasy. Perhaps more than any will be Liberal partisans who, like Ujjal Dosanjh, seem to literally believe they are entitled to the bulk of Canada's left-of-centre vote.

May's siren song could prove to be yet another lullaby singing many such Canadians to sleep. Fortunately, they'll wake again after the cold, hard reality that such a coalition is unworkable hits home.

The Man Who Would Be King

Ujjal Dosanjh wants to be Liberal leader

In the wake of the Liberal party's defeat in the 2008 federal election, one thing is almost certain: the Grits will be searching for a new leader.

And contenders are already lining up to -- in Jack Layton's parlance -- apply for that particular job.

Former Premier of New Brunswick and Ambassador to the United States Frank McKenna has already expressed some interest.

Now, so has Ujjal Dosanjh, the former NDP premier of British Columbia, and the man currently embroiled in a recount in his fiercely-contested riding of Vancouver South.

"I rule out nothing,” Dosanjh replied when asked if he was considering making a run at the Liberal leadership.

In political parlance, that usually means he probably will.

More interestingly still, Dosanjh wants to do so despite speaking no French.

"While I have the utmost respect for the Québécois, people of Quebec, I think that those of us that are immigrants, first-generation immigrants, are already saddled with the burden of having to learn one official language,” Dosanjh noted. “Maybe they can make an exception.”

If Dosanjh were successful in his bid he would be the first unilingual Liberal leader since Lester Pearson.

Dosanjh throwing his hat into the ring would also muddy the waters between the two individuals considered most likely to be the next Liberal leader -- Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae.

Rae, like Dosanjh, a former NDP Premier, would not only face new competition for the party's left-wing base, but would also be deprived of a key supporter. Dosanjh supported Rae, who was formerly the Premier of Ontario, for the Liberal leadership in 2006.

But the Liberal party would face more challenges with Dosanjh as a leader than merely having a non-French speaking leader. They would also have a leader unable to grasp the reasons for the Liberal party's successive electoral defeats, instead contenting himself to blame it all on his former compatriots in the NDP.

"(The) NDP's irrelevant insofar as the federal scene is concerned except insofar as they have the ability by splitting the vote to effectively elect a Conservative government, which they've done twice," Dosanjh wined to CTV.

Seemingly, Dosanjh believes that the Liberal party's failures to convince Canadians they're best suited to govern and their known corruption issues didn't play into the decision at all. This theory that there's nothing wrong with the Liberal party and instead something wrong with everyone else doesn't serve the party well. It prevents it from addressing the internal problems that are making it largely unelectable right now.

Ujjal Dosanjh's leadership would be as much a boon to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives as Dion's continuing leadership.

He can barely win his own riding. One wonders what makes him think he can win the whole country.

Pressure's On, Professor Dion

Should he go or should he stay, Liberals need an answer either way

Critics of the Liberal party should begrudgingly appreciate Joe Volpe.

Whether its accepting campaign donations from the children of wealthy pharmaceutical executives, recruiting supporters for his leadership campaign from amongst the ranks of the dead or generally being a douchebag, Vople has given critics of the party ample ammunition.

Today, he's done it again.

The MP for the Ontario riding of Englington-Lawrence, who briefly flirted with being punted during Monday's federal election, today impressed upon the need for Stephane Dion to make a decision about his future with the Liberal party.

"I think the best thing that would happen for the party, and indeed for Mr. Dion, would be if he gives a signal as early as possible," Volpe announced on Sunday.

Should he decide to resign as Liberal leader, Volpe notes that "Dion has earned the right to stay on probably as an interim leader."

As Volpe points out, time is actually of the essence for Dion to make this decision. The Liberal party is due to hold a party convention in Vancouver in May 2009, where Dion will face a leadership review. Should he fail to pass that review -- a prospect more than simply possible, but more likely probable -- the party will need to hold a leadership convention.

If Dion has no intention of remaining aboard as Liberal leader, the party could hold that leadership convention in Vancouver, as opposed to putting one off at a later date.

Considering the expense involved in organizing not just one, but two conventions within a year, Dion's life could become very uncomfortable as a Liberal party member if he forces the party to vote him out as leader at a convention. The financial woes of the Liberal party are no great secret.

Furthermore, for Dion to wait until the convention would be nothing less than undignified -- something that Volpe (himself an expert on dignity) would hate to see.

"Clearly it seems that no one is going to give [Dion] that chance to do that rebuilding," he mused. "I'd like him to go out with some dignity."

Certainly, Dion waiting to be punted from the leadership would be a boon for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative party. Not only would it basically ensure nearly two years of largely unopposed government, it would also drain the scant financial resources of the Liberals, making it difficult for them to campaign effectively in a future campaign.

Again, this would make Dion's life as a Liberal rather unpleasant. It could go so far as transforming him into a pariah within the party. Which may be yet another good reason for him to quit rather than wait to be fired.

With his party clearly at the crossroads, the pressure is on for Stephane Dion to make his decision, and make it quickly.

Kids Do the Darndest Things...

One Would Hope This Isn't What They Meant...

Above is a rather alarming video posted to YouTube.

Modelled as a campaign advertisement, the ad features a hand on a table with its fingers outstretched.

As another hand stabs a knife in between each finger, a woman's voice narrates a rather typical -- and unimpressive -- list of grievances (both actual and imagined). As the woman tells viewers "no way" to Harper, the woman's hand is pulled away, revealing a picture of Stephen Harper.

The other hand then stabs the knife directly into Stephen Harper's eye.

"On October 15, take control of the game," the woman advises.

And she would suggest Canadians do that precisely how? By stabbing Stephen Harper in the eye?

Encouraging the assassination of a political leader is far from the most constructive way to "take control of the game." One can only hope that this isn't actually what the producer of this video intended, and that she merely didn't think her message through.

Then again, judging from some of Canada's anti-conservatives, that might be a little too much to hope for.

Linda Duncan Emerges Victorious in Edmonton-Strathcona

Rahim Jaffer sent packing

One of Canada's underrated political giants is out of work today, as the NDP's Linda Duncan has managed to unseat Rahim Jaffer in Edmonton-Strathcona.

"Every corner of this community tonight said they wanted a different voice for Alberta and I'm ready to give it," Duncan announced. "There will be a real load on me to speak for the alternative voice in Alberta."

At one point, Jaffer had actually delivered a victory speech while enjoying a 1,000 vote lead. Duncan closed the gap, however, and managed to emerge victorious by 400 votes.

Duncan, an environmental lawyer, will face numerous challenges in the new Parliament.

Perhaps most paramount among them will be finding a way to make the government responsive to her environmental concerns. Not only will she be dealing with a government whose views on environmental regulation her party has utterly dismissed, she'll also have to face what she has acknowledged as a jurisdictional deficit on the part of the federal government.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle is one that all pro-environment federal MPs and candidates share -- that of the Canada-wide Harmonization Accord on the Environment, in which provincial governments have been ceded the bulk of jurisdiction over environmental affairs.

The argument, in essence, is that the provincial governments are best-situated to deal with environmental concerns.

This, naturally, significantly complicates efforts to do things such as living up to Canada's Kyoto obligations.

This confronts many pro-environment candidates, as as Duncan, with a key dilemma: their efforts may bear the most productive fruit at the provincial level, yet the most logical way to institute nation-wide standards for environmental protection is through the federal Parliament.

If Linda Duncan's persuasive voice can find traction within the House of Commons, she may be able to lead the charge in renegotiating the Harmonization accord and reasserting federal leadership and jurisdiction over the environment.

If she can't, Canada's bloc of pro-environment MPs may be fighting an uphill battle.

David's Political Orchard Fails to Bloom

Orchard loses by 3,000 votes in Saskatchewan

In a development much less shocking than Michael Byers' defeat in Vancouver-Centre, David Orchard failed in his bid to unseat Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River MP Rob Clarke.

A campaign based on fear and obscure endorsements failed to pan out for Orchard.

In hindsight, maybe running on an anti-free trade, anti-nuclear platform in a riding dependent upon farming and the uranium industry wasn't the wisest choice.

At 58 years old and having never held political office -- as well as having been defeated in two Progressive Conservative leadership contests -- it's unlikely that Orchard will return.

The smart money says that the organic farmer from Borden, Saskatchewan will ride this electoral defeat into the sunset.

Then again, David Orchard has so very rarely done what the smart money suggested he would. In other words, expect to hear from David Orchard again.

Back to the Drawing Board for Michael Byers

Michael Byers fails to bring down Liberal giant

Among the official results available this evening: Michael Byers has lost his bid to enter the House of Commons, coming in third to incumbent (and victor) Liberal Hedy Fry and Conservative Lorne Mayencourt.

Fry took home just under 35% of the vote. Mayencourt slid in at second with just under 25%, and Byers claimed 22%.

It seems that Byers just wasn't able to swing voters in Vancouver Centre with his promises to shut down the tar sands and to shut down the evil private health clinics.

Byers has already blamed his electoral loss on the financial crisis.

In the end, the excuses will count for very little. Byers just isn't ready for federal politics, pure and simple. At the very least, this particular candidate -- who really has offered very little aside from ideology -- wasn't well situated to win in a riding with strong competition from a fellow left-of-centre candidate.

So it's back to the drawing board for Michael Byers. Sometimes being a self-proclaimed foreign policy expert just doesn't cut it.

Well, Stephen, I Hope That Was Worth It

Conservatives reelected with minority government

As Canada heads into the dying hours of October 14, 2008, Stephen Harper's Conservative party has claimed a second straight minority government -- the third straight minority for the country.

This is exactly what Harper predicted when he called the election, even if it isn't quite what he simply must have been hoping for.

Preliminary results -- a few races across the country will almost certainly go into recount -- have the Conservatives holding 145 seats, the Liberals with 76 and the NDP with 37. The Bloc Quebecois have 48 seats and the Green party came up empty.

Harper had to work very hard to justify this election, considering that he had to violate his own fixed election date legislation to even call it. He'll still have some work to do yet. Even Harper's stronger mandate is rather thin justification.

And Harper would, quite frankly, be foolish to even try to offer up another fixed election date law in order to pay lip service to demands for electoral reform. Canadians aren't likely to fall for that one twice.

Stephane Dion will have some very difficult questions to answer considering the defeat his party absorbed during this election. As of this writing, the Liberals have lost 26 seats.

For Jack Layton, any lingering questions about his leadership should have been dispelled by this outing for the NDP -- an additional nine seats over their 2006 total.

Gilles Duceppe and his Bloc Quebecois lost three seats in Quebec. Not quite the federalist triumph that appeared to be imminent as the election began, but still a positive result for federalism.

Harper has his government -- one stronger than the government that preceded it. One can only hope that this lesson on the current status of Canadian politics: no party clearly has the support of Canadians. Even as some commentators will trot out the myth of Canadian left-of-centre solidarity, the country is not as firmly united against Stephen Harper as some will pretend.

The coming months should be interesting, if nothing else.

Three Ridings in Three Years - An Election Day Reflection on Electoral and Partisan Homelessness

The following post is being offered as an unofficial part of an election day blogburst. As such, it's a good deal more personal than most of the posts offered here at The Nexus.

Enjoy.

One of the unique challenges for many Post Secondary Students in this country is living away from home.

For myself, since my journey in acquiring a University Education began in 2004 -- which will likely be remembered as a long year without NHL hockey -- the one thing that has remained more or less constant in my life is the presence of politics.

For those in the know, The Nexus was launched during that year in 2004 as a side project to self-publish views that may have been judged too pragmatically extreme for the University of Alberta Gateway. Over time, of course, things have changed dramatically. The Nexus has become a full-time enterprise, and stands as a testament to the omnipresence of politics in my life.

Some people have come to understand precisely what it is The Nexus stands for. Others, comically, have not.

But even before the Nexus became a semi-daily publishing blog, politics was largely inseparable from my life.

Nearly any time I spent not studying, working or sleeping was spent in the company of a close friend of mine who had moved up to Edmonton at about the same time that I had.

Our purposes in doing so were actually quite different: I was seeking a University education. My friend, however, had moved to the city in order to live on the street. By choice. As a self-avowed anarchist, he'd sworn he could never willingly pay taxes to "the system" he so vociferously opposed.

The topic of conversation, which more often than not unfolded in a Second Cup coffee shop on Whyte Avenue, almost always debated the virtues of mainstream politics -- as embodied by "the system" -- against the radical fringe politics my friend so passionately espoused.

The topics of conversation ranged numerous topics, including but not limited to: anarchism, veganism, straight edge ideology, identity politics of varying degrees, democracy, communism and punk rock.

My good friend introduced me to a dark side of Edmonton's premiere entertainment district that few people see. I was, and remain to this day, outraged by the presence of homeless teenagers -- homeless children, sometimes no older than 14 years old -- on the street. Some caught up in various drug cultures, others brave enough to resist it. Some engaging in property crime, some finding just enough to get by via (mostly) legal means.

As it turns out, more often than not, these kids were running away from abusive home environments.

But the most enraging situations dealt with kids who had been kicked out of their homes by parents unwilling to care for them. Then, to heap on a little extra abuse afterward, telling social workers their children -- whom they had cast out of their homes -- were runaways.

It was -- and remains -- an issue sufficient to offend my sense of social justice while also offending my conservative sense of family values.

After about a year of living on the Edmonton city streets, my good friend moved to Victoria, BC to try to advance his anarchist cause there. A few years ago he moved off the streets and started promoting punk rock concerts and anarchist book fairs.

It's in this regard that it seems rather ironic that my political life has developed to a point of electoral and partisan homelessness. In the past three years I've lived in three different ridings (two federally and one provincially) and voted for three different candidates from two different parties.

During the 2005/06 election, I lived in the riding of Edmonton Centre. Public outrage over the Sponsorship Scandal had given conservative-minded voters across the country an opportunity to finally ouster the Liberal party from government. I cast my ballot in support of Laurie Hawn, and helped unseat a Deputy Prime Minister from public office.

I had disliked Anne McLellan tremendously before election day. Her calls for strategic voting in the lead-up to that election came off as purely disingenuous -- merely an attempt by a desperate candidate whose party had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar to hold on to office.

When the final tally was taken, McLellan lost to Hawn by 7% of the vote in the riding.

Two years later I had moved out of my downtown apartment and into a house on the north side of Edmonton. Aside from the 45-minute bus rides to campus everyday -- only to be inevitably followed by a 45-minute bus ride home again -- I was fairly satisfied with it.

But when the 2008 provincial election was called, I found myself in a unique quandry. Faced by two parties -- the Kevin Taft-led provincial Liberals and Gary Mason-led NDP -- wholly unsuitable to actually govern, it wasn't hard to decide who I favoured as the government.

That being said, with my choice of government virtually guaranteed, I found myself voting for an opposition instead.

Considering the nature of the opposition so needed in Alberta, the choice wasn't difficult: I cast my ballot in favour of Ali Haymour, the NDP candidate in the riding.

Tom Lukaszuk, the Conservative candidate in the riding, wound up winning with a resounding 51% of the vote. Haymour managed to amass less than 10% of the vote.

It was the first time I had ever voted for a losing candidate. I was disappointed, but certainly don't regret it. A much stronger opposition very much remains on my personal provincial wish list in Alberta.

Now, later in 2008, I'm living in a house located just along the periphery of the University. My riding is now Edmonton-Strathcona, and I spent most of this election as an undecided voter. Again, while favouring the Conservative party federally, the local NDP candidate, Linda Duncan, remained a strong candidate.

In the end, it was ironically Duncan's expertise -- actually better suited to the provincial Legislature than the federal House of Commons -- that swayed my decision. Earlier today, I cast my ballot in favour of Rahim Jaffer. He may not win, but I don't expect to regret it if he doesn't.

In the end, the source of my electoral and partisan homelessness may be best described by the words of the late John Diefenbaker:

"I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledege to uphold for myself and for all mankind."

I am a Canadian. A free Canadian. Free to live where I choose, to believe as I will and support any political candidate who supports the values I judge to be most important.

I have the right to support what I believe is right, and oppose what I believe is wrong. More often than not, this requires supporting candidates from more than one political party.

This is a heritage of freedom that must be upheld for myself, for my fellow Canadian citizens, and for all mankind.

But this freedom, when exercised to its fullest, does not come cheaply. It entails embracing partisan homelessness in order to ensure that one has the freedom to do what is right.

Those unwilling to embrace that freedom need not have it held against them. After all, our system remains a party system, and may not be able to function without political parties, no matter how stifling to individual political freedom they may be.

But for the rest of us that freedom will forever remain necessary -- necessary to ensure the right thing is done, and necessary to keep the partisans honest.

Liberals Thrust, Feint to Close Out Campaign

Like the Conservatives, the Liberal party released three ads in the waning days of the 2008 federal election campaign.

Unlike the Tory ads, however, these spots don't fit so nicely into the three types of campaign ad. Instead, the Liberals have offered two clear attack ads and an attack ad dressed up to seem like an enthusiasm-themed ad.



The ad portrays ordinary Canadians explaining why they're going to vote Liberal.

"They've helped our country do great things," says one man.

"Like balancing the books," says another.

"Bringing in universal health care," adds an older lady.

"And telling Bush no way on Iraq," concludes another.

However, then the ad takes an abrupt turn away from trying to remind Canadians why they should be enthusiastic about the Liberal party and instead why they should be afraid of the Conservatives.

"The Liberals know Canada's at its best when we work together," says one man.

"Instead of being told to fend for ourselves," adds an older man, finishing the preceding man's thought.

"We don't know what's coming with our economy, but we can't just tell people to go it alone," the man says.

"Like Harper will," adds another older woman.

The ad concludes with a male narrator announcing that the Liberals are "always there for you."



The second spot, a much more blatant fear-based attack ad, is another "Harpernomics" ad.

The ad jumps from accusing Harper of being "in denial" about the economy to accusing him of planning more "Bush-style policies", "shredding our safety net".

The irony that it was Paul Martin who shredded Canada's social safety net during the early '90s recession as a deficit-fighting measure shouldn't be lost on many Canadians. Regardless, it obviously isn't mentioned in the ad.

The ad concludes by shifting abruptly to an attempt at an enthusiasm-based pitch, insisting that it will "strengthen the safety net in tough times" (despite historically having done the opposite).



The final ad features the intriguing last-minute return of the woman who narrated the Liberal attack ads of the 2004 and 2005/06 campaigns. Recently, she had been narrating ads for the NDP.

Entitled "Denial", the ad again accuses Harper of being "in denial" about the economy. The ad asserts that Harper denies there's a problem, accuses him of not caring, and insists he can't be trusted.

"Harper's turning his back on you," the ad insists.
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Ironically, the ad cites a Toronto Star headline insisting that "Harper's Tactics Mislead Canadians". Meanwhile, the Liberal campaign has resorted to flinging around predictions of a social democratic apocalypse that hasn't happened in the two and a half years in which Harper governed, and came much closer to actually happening under the Liberals than at any time under a Conservative government.

The ad also claims the Liberals have "an immediate economic action plan".

The truth is actually quite different. Dion has pledged to hold meetings to come up with a plan after taking office. What little of such a plan he's hinted at have turned out to be rather dubious.

But if there's anything the Liberal party historically hasn't done, it's allowed facts to stand in the way of fear-based campaigning.

This batch of Liberal ads clearly want to counter-brand Stephen Harper as terrifying -- a threat to Canada's social programs and unable to handle the democracy.

The fear-based theme is nothing new. They did it in 2004, tried it again in 2005/06, and unless the Conservatives somehow win a majority in this election (as it stands now, this is unlikely), they'll almost certainly do it again in the next election.

Unfortunately, these ads come at a time when the Liberals should be trying to re-brand as an economically reliable party. In order to do this, however, they would need to try and find a way to step around Conservative assertions that Dion's plan is risky.

Now that final balloting in the 2008 federal election campaign is mere hours away, it's too late for them to even try. Should their defeat be worse than what polls are currently projecting, they'll have no one but themselves to blame in this regard.

Tories Parry, Thrust to Close Out Campaign

As the final hours tick off of the 2008 federal election campaign, the battle to carry the airwaves finally begins to draw to a close.

The final three Conservative party spots break evenly down into the three categories of political ads -- an enthusiasm-themed ad, a negative-themed ad, and an attack ad.



The negative ad portrays what appears to be a worried working mother musing over her electoral choices while watching Stephane Dion give a speech on television. She's clearly concerned about the economic situation in the United States and hopes it doesn't find its way north of the border.

Her young daughter colours at the kitchen table while the woman thinks about the choices posed by Stephane Dion (at least according to the ad). Dion "promises money like it grows on trees" and "keeps pushing this carbon tax".

She can't afford more debt or taxes, she muses. She winds up concluding that Dion "just isn't worth the risk".



The second spot, entitled "A Time For Certainty", features Stephen Harper giving a relaxed but clearly urgent dissertation to the camera.

He's abandoned his famed sweater vest for his customary suit, but his top button is undone, and he isn't wearing a tie -- clearly, he doesn't want to seem entirely less than relaxed.

"In these times of global uncertainty, there are some things we need to be certain about," he says. "We need to be certain that we don't spend more than we have. We keep our budget balanced, live within our means. We need to be certain to keep inflation under control so that we keep rising prices in check. But most of all we need to be certain to keep our taxes so you and your family have more to work with."

"This isn't the time for untested theories or risky themes," he adds. "It's a time for certainty."

The spot opens with the ads titled scrawled out in what imagines may be Harper's handwriting. It concludes with his his signature written against an image of a fluttering Canadian flag. The message is very simple: Harper's message in this ad is his own, so much so that he signs off on it himself.



The third spot is an attack ad.

One after another, numerous newspaper headlines appear on the screen. Each one is torn away to reveal either another newspaper headline or Dion himself underneath. Each headline reflects the economic struggles unfolding in the United States -- troubles that are very much on the minds of Canadians as the American markets drag down the TSX.

Dion's carbon tax plan could even culminate in a trade war, according to the ad.

The ad concludes with a video image of Dion promoting his carbon tax being crumpled up before the narrator insists that Dion is "not worth the risk".

The ad also reminds Canadians that Dion has no plan for the economy (in fact, his plan is to come up with a plan after assuming office).

All three ads reflect what has become an official -- if unintended -- theme for the Conservative campaign: economic uncertainty. They're clearly hoping that Canadians will entrust the currently-fragile global economy to the Conservative party platform. Not the platform that was released so late in this campaign, but rather the platform the party has been running on all along: the one they built through two and a half years of governance.

The housewife ad and the attack ad are both counter-branding ads: trying to brand Stephane Dion as risky and worrisome for Canadians.

The "Time For Certainty" spot is the first re-branding spot of the Conservative campaign. It follows a furious pace of economy-related Liberal ads (the "Harpernomics" ads) and attempts to brand Harper as the best choice for the economy: the one that shares the priorities of Canadians and understands what they really need. It also seeks to brand him as somewhat workmanlike: a leader who will get down to work and do the job at hand, but also knows when the work week is over. More like the idyllic life that most middle- and working-class Canadians covet than the workaholic Harper is sometimes believed to be.

At the end of this campaign, Tory fortunes will have hinged on how successful the Conservatives have been in this branding tactic: reminding Canadians how worried they are about the economy, counter-branding Stephane Dion as a disaster waiting to happen, then re-branding themselves as the party best situated to deal with the crisis.

Green Shift is Michael Ignatieff's Hill to Die On

In the end, the final verdict on the carbon tax may be delivered in Etobicoke-Lakeshore

When Liberal leader Stephane Dion made what seemed to be an abrupt about-face on the issue of the carbon tax, some commentators dismissed it as a common, run of the mill flip-flop.

Those familiar to the game of politics know better. Dion's reconsideration of the carbon tax -- and the incorporation of the controversial measure into his vaunted Green Shift plan -- is a classic case of brokerage politics. In order to keep Michael Ignatieff -- who first floated the idea of a "revenue neutral" carbon tax -- firmly on board, Dion adopted Ignatieff's flagship policy plank.

But now that the carbon tax has effectively handcuffed the Liberals in the 2008 federal election campaign -- at one point pushing the party to the brink of third-party status, although it seems to have recovered -- there remain two ways to look at the implications for Michael Ignatieff.

In one sense, to those willing to overlook his proposal of the carbon tax, Ignatieff will remain very much in the game to decide who will succeed Stephane Dion as the next Liberal leader.

On the other hand, however, the unpopularity of the carbon tax proposal could be enough to erase the 5,000 vote margin by which he won Etobicoke-Lakeshore in 2006.

The similarity of Ignatieff and his Conservative opponent, Patrick Boyer, may even help sway some soft Liberal voters in the riding. Boyer has been described as "not too conservative" and Ignatieff as "not too liberal".

Boyer, meanwhile not only has experience representing the riding for the Tories, but also seniority -- he served out two terms under Brian Mulroney, whereas Ignatieff has two and a half years incumbency.

Boyer also enjoys one other advantage: he lives in the riding, whereas Ignatieff parachuted into the riding in 2006. "I know this riding. I live here," Boyer notes. "I'm not a drop-in candidate like the Liberal."

"I live 15 minutes from this riding. I come in by subway," Ignatieff responded.

A Boyer victory seems a real possibility as election day approaches.

Should Ignatieff go down in defeat in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, the carbon tax will be far from the only reason it happens. However, it will certainly be a factor, and it will be hard to look at an Ignatieff defeat as anything other than a verdict on the carbon tax.

Accusations of Racism and Disappearing Ads

A few days ago, the Liberal party produced a new campaign ad, entitled "Harper and New Canadians".

When a party, like the Liberals, have found accusations of racism to be their political bread and butter for the better part of the last 20 years, it would probably be unreasonable to think that they wouldn't jump at an opportunity to do it again.

Thus, this particular spot -- interestingly coming weeks after the infamous comments were uttered in the first place.

The ad itself was released on October 9th. As of October 13th, it's marked as "no longer available" on the Liberal party's YouTube page, making one wonder what happened in the interim days in order to necessitate its removal. Interestingly enough, the ad is actually available via YouTube's search function.

The attack ad deals with the comments of Lee Richardson, a Conservative candidate in Calgary who surmised that a significant portion of crime in his riding was being committed by immigrants -- more specifically, refugees. Richardson would later clarify his comments as being based on anecdotal evidence collected in the course of interactions with his constituents.

The spot quotes Richardson as saying that "Refugees are 'troubled people' who 'take advantage' of those trying to help them. 'Look at who's committing these crimes,' he says. 'They're not the kind that grew up next door'."

Once again, as with a previous ad targeting Gerry Ritz, Richardson is described not as a colleague of Harper's, but rather as a "crony".

Clearly, the intent of the ad is to counter-brand the Conservatives as racist and anti-immigrant. The Conservatives have previously sought to brand themselves as immigrant friendly with an ad released at the start of the election campaign.

Naturally, the ad doesn't bother to take note of the Liberal party's own experience with racial issues in the course of this election -- such as the controversy surrounding Simon Bedard who had suggested that lethal force should have been used to settle the Oka crisis and the "disappearance" of the victims of that force.

Perhaps its because the ad opens that racial Pandora's Box -- the very box the Liberals have rarely hesitated to open before -- on which the Liberals are very vulnerable indeed that they decided to have it pulled from the YouTube page.

Why Can't Elizabeth May Just Be Honest With Canadians?

Elizabeth May caught red-tongued again

Yesterday, with polls predicting another Conservative minority government, Green party leader Elizabeth May made a pro-strategic voting sales pitch to left of centre Canadians.

"There's no question that there are some ridings where you might say to vote green you ought to vote NDP to stop a Conservative from winning, and in some ridings you might want to vote Liberal to stop a Conservative from winning," May said.

Moreover, May even knows where these ridings are. "It would be maybe 20 per cent of ridings in the country where that's even a factor, and mostly in Ontario," she added.

For her own part, Valerie Powell, the Green party candidate in Simcoe North, is not amused. "I think she's muddying the waters," she said. "I think she's the best prime minister, and we have to keep working hard as Greens to make sure we have as many MPs as possible."

"I love Valerie and I read her full quotes and they weren't harsh or unfair. She's right, life would be simpler if I acted like [NDP Leader] Jack Layton and didn't care if Stephen Harper formed government again," May retorted. "Life would be simpler if I were a complete hypocrite like Jack Layton and pretended I cared about the climate when all of his strategy makes his own personal success more important than survival of the climate and decent climate policy."

"I'm just not that person."

Which is true. Elizabeth May is the person who hatched a deal to allow Liberal leader Stephane Dion, the former Environment Minister whose job it was to implement Kyoto -- on behalf of the party that signed and ratified Kyoto -- but never got out of the blocks, to run unopposed by a Green party candidate in his riding.

She's that person.

Today, however, Elizabeth May is being dishonest with Canadians yet again, as she denies that she's never encouraged Green party supporters to vote for the NDP or Liberals in order to block a renewed Harper government.

Considering that her own comments and her deal hatched with Stephane Dion -- which would leave Green party supporters in St Laurent-Cartierville with no Green party candidate to vote for and the Green party-endorsed Liberal leader in their stead -- are rather contradictory, Elizabeth May has to have very little respect for the intelligence of Canadians in order to make this claim.

"Being honest with the voters, I acknowledge that there is concern over vote-splitting in a small number of ridings. But I am not going to say 'vote Liberal here, vote NDP there,'" May insisted later Sunday.

Which is actually being dishonest with voters. Certainly, May might not have come out and explicitly said to vote for those parties, but she has repeatedly urged strategic voting to defeat the Conservatives, which would entail voting for those two parties.

So Elizabeth May's tao of strategic voting seems to work one of two ways: either all voters -- Green party voters included -- should vote strategically in order to defeat the Conservative party, or only Liberal and NDP voters should.

The latter, of course, would make May every bit as hypocritical as she accuses Jack Layton of being -- putting her own party's success ahead of what she claims is the country's well-being.

May already is "that person" -- a foul hypocrite who keeps trying to twist the truth to her own ends, all the while expecting Canadians to simply not catch on to her protracted double-speak, and so unable to simply admit it that the most potent response she can offer to erstwhile ally's attempts to poach her voters is that she "strongly disagrees" with it.

Sadly, even Valerie Powell herself is peddling May's most recent dishonesty.

It's just another reason why Canada will be fortunate indeed when Peter MacKay defeats Elizabeth May tomorrow and sends her back to the dishonesty drawing board.

The Gods Must Be Angry or Something

Bill Maher, LA Times, Obama campaign targeted by domestic terrorists

When Bill Maher chose to frame his film Religulous as a call to arms against religion, one would be alarmed if he didn't believe the so-called "other side" just might respond to that call.

But as it turns out, Religulous may not be the only thing Maher has done to inspire the violent ire of religious extremism.

Last night Maher performed at a club in Palm Desert, California where a threat-laden letter containing a white powder had been sent.

"Save the babies" was reportedly written on the front of the envelope, and "kill all Obama supporters" scrawled across the back.

Similar letters were recieved by the Los Angeles Times and at a Barack Obama campaign office in Los Angeles.

As the 2008 United States Presidential Election campaign intensifies with less than a month to go until balloting, it's starting to seem more and more that this campaign is taking on more and more distinct overtones of a religious conflict. Perhaps more than any other presidential campaign in recent history.

Consider the case of Scranton, Pennsylvania, a city so religiously polarized by the campaign that local resident Ann Conway -- an opponent of abortion and of the Iraq war -- mused that "If I do end up voting for Obama, then I’ll go to confession after and tell the priest my sin."

Bishop Joseph Martino, the Bishop of Scranton, has declared that Barack Obama's Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden will be denied communion within his diocese.

“Abortion is the issue this year and every year in every campaign,” Martino has asserted. “Catholics may not turn away from the moral challenge that abortion poses for those who seek to obey God’s command. They are wrong when they assert that abortion does not concern them, or that it is only one of a multitude of issues of equal importance. No, the taking of innocent life is so heinous, so horribly evil, and so absolutely opposite to the law of the Almighty God that abortion must take precedence over every other issue. I repeat. It is the single most important issue confronting not only Catholics, but the entire electorate.”

Canadians are familiar with a few of these religious overtones within our own politics. In Ultramontaine Quebec (long prior to Jean Lesage's Quiet Revolution), it was regarded that "heaven is Bleu and hell is Rogue". The message of this was crystal clear: proper god-fearing Quebeckers would vote for the Conservatives, as voting for the Liberal party was considered blasphemous.

One also recalls that Prime Minister Paul Martin was threatened with the denial of communion over his government's same-sex marriage act.

To pretend that religion and politics can ever be truly and fully separate is utterly naive. Although it offended a great many Canadians, Preston Manning was actually quite wise to note that religious beliefs inevitably will, in one way or another, have an influence on political beliefs.

But there is no doubt that the equation of certain political beliefs with sin has a deeply corrosive influence on both politics and religion. This "crusade" against pro-abortion candidates and commentators is proof of this.

There is no getting around calling the actions of those who sent the letters in question to Maher, the Times and the Obama campaign for what it is: terrorism. The spectre of domestic terrorism, sadly neglected in George W Bush's War on Terror.

Not only is it politically detrimental to equate supporting the "wrong" political candidate as sinful, but religiously detrimental as well: the exploitation of the sacred in the service of the profane. In some extreme cases, as we see with these attacks, they transform the adherents of a faith founded by a man who preached a message of peace from law-abiding citizens into terrorists.

With all good fortune, those who have perpetrated these attacks will pursued and prosecuted to the fullest extent of American law.

But it's important to note that the answer to the corrosive influence of invasive religious fundamentalism is not what Bill Maher himself would advocate -- a public-scale disavowal of religion.

Rather, the answer is for moderates like Ann Conway -- even if Conway herself, her political thinking tinged with the notion of anti-abortion politics as a sin she's willing to bear even if unwillingly, could barely be described as a moderate -- to wake other believers up to the notion that they can keep their politics and their faith.

The answer is for more churches to take a hard line stance against violent anti-abortion activism, and denounce such terrorism for what it really is.

Meanwhile, one should also not overlook that atheist activists such as Bill Maher certainly haven't helped the issue. By seeking to polarize American society against religion, they've made religion as much a political issue as anyone else, but one certainly shouldn't expect them to admit it.

And as we've seen, some of the more deranged among the faithful don't take kindly to it.

Mission: Gatineau

NDP determined to add to their Quebec caucus of one

The NDP's deputy leader, Thomas Mulcair, believes the party is on the cusp of a Quebec breakthrough -- perhaps eight to 12 ridings.

They believe they can do this by courting soft social democratic Bloc Quebecois votes in numerous ridings, including Gatineau.

In fact, Mulcair has looked to his own seemingly-unlikely triumph in Outremont as the measuring stick for potential success there. “Your numbers are almost identical to mine,” Mulcair recently told Francoise Boivin, the NDP's candidate there.

Boivin herself is optimistic about her prospects for victory over Bloc Quebecois incumbent Richard Nadeau, and she has her list of priorities for the riding.

“We need doctors in Gatineau, and it’s more urgent than anywhere else in Quebec. The NDP’s platform is heavy on promises to improve healthcare, and train more doctors."

“People want change,” she said. “We’re a people-oriented party. With the economy taking a turn, they need a party with people at the centre.”

“We seem to draw from every sector in the region,” she added. “It used to be easy because you would look at the map and say, ‘this part is Liberal,’ but this time, my team is having great difficulty because we have to go everywhere. It’s very, very encouraging.”

Jack Layton has also spent his own fair share of time in Gatineau -- launching his party's campaign there -- and has campaigned relentlessly in Quebec.

Layton has framed his campaign in Quebec as being not only about the future of his party, but about the future of social democracy in Quebec and across Canada.

"I have had the dream of building a New Democratic movement in Quebec for a very, very long time,” Layton has remarked. “And I guess it's because I was born not all that far from here and raised here in Montreal that I have a sense that right now people want to move beyond the old debates and Quebeckers want to participate in a movement for change right across the country.”

Which is one of the reasons why a victory in Gatineau is so pivotal for the NDP. But don't expect Richard Nadeau to concede the fight easily. The four-way split of the federalist vote in Gatineau and Nadeau's strong family ties to separatism in the riding have amassed him a healthy lead amongst decided voters.

And Layton, Mulcair and Boivin can hardly expect the Liberal party to follow Stephen Harper's Andre Arthur example and take one for the federalist team in the name of blocking a separatist candidate.

If the NDP does, indeed, achieve their Quebec breakthrough, it will prove to be a boon for Canadian unity. Gatineau is as good a place as any to start that, but the success of the NDP enterprise is far from assured.

Stephane Dion is Not a Quitter

But his prospects of continuing leadership are not for him to decide

In what some may consider to be a bit of a bombshell, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that he doesn't expect his leadership to endure a loss in the 2008 federal election.

"I'm running to win this election. If I don't win this election, I'm sure my party will look for another leader," Harper mused.

Stephane Dion, however, has very different ideas about his tenure as Liberal leader should he fail to become Prime Minister on October 14.

"Well he's a quitter; I'm not," Dion announced. "I will never quit. I will stay for my country. But I am working hard now. We are working for a victory. For a progressive government. This is what is at stake."

"I am the leader. I am the leader. And I am working to win. I am not a quitter."

Of course, with strong potential successors -- in the form of Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff -- waiting in the wings to take over from Dion, and many Liberals remaining quite eager to hand either man the keys to the party station wagon, Dion would be remiss to assume that just because he wants to stay on as leader he will stay on as leader.

Dion may find himself in the same position as his Green party compatriot Elizabeth May -- having assured a breakthrough under his leadership, and unable to deliver. Just as Elizabeth May's leadership is unlikely to survive her impending electoral defeat with her leadership intact -- she's already announced she won't seek to substitute herself for any Green candidate who does win a seat, likely understanding that the NDP and Conservatives may decide not to extend leader's courtesy to her under such circumstances -- Dion is equally unlikely to accomplish this feat.

If Dion and May each find their leaderships terminated, the great many Liberals and Greens who opposed their alliance of convenience will likely shed few tears over their respective fates.

Stephane Dion may not be a quitter, but that doesn't mean he won't be fired if he loses this election.

What Lies Ahead for Elizabeth May?

May's Central Nova -- and continuing leadership -- prospects looking dim

With balloting in the 2008 federal election to begin in mere days, Elizabeth May has to be looking at her decision to gamble in running against Conservative deputy leader Peter MacKay with some regret.

The most recent polls taken in Central Nova find Peter MacKay comfortably sitting on 39% of the vote in the riding. May, sweeping up some portion of Liberal voters, is currently contesting second place in the riding with the NDP. Louise Lorefice, the NDP candidate, narrowly trails May, 19 to 22 per cent.

With many observers thinking the 2008 election just may turn out to be the year that the Green party breaks through and wins some seats in Canada's parliament -- the convenient defection of former Liberal MP Blair Wilson to the Greens doesn't count -- one has to wonder what this might do to May's leadership prospects.

After all, the general convention in Canadian politics is that a party leader must hold a seat in parliament. And while some leaders -- such as Preston Manning and Lucien Bouchard -- have, in the recent past, rejected this convention, May might not find herself in the comfortable position that Manning and Bouchard found themselves in.

When Manning and Bouchard declined to seek election as their party's representative in parliament -- in favour of Deborah Grey and current Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, respectively -- they had their party firmly behind them in that decision.

Of course, there does remain one important distinction between the two situations: Duceppe and Grey won their seats in by-elections. And while Manning himself did survive one general election defeat -- at the hands of Joe Clark -- as leader of the Reform party, a different internal dynamic tends to apply after a party wins its first seat in a by-election.

May herself has already proven herself unable to grasp the differences in these dynamics. For example, she continues to refer to her agreement with Stephane Dion as "leader's courtesy", despite the fact that leader's courtesy has never actually been exercised during a general election. This is a tradition generally reserved for by-elections in which a newly-selected party leader seeks entrance into the House of Commons in place of a previously-elected compatriot.

If Elizabeth May's facetious "leader's courtesy" gambit in Central Nova fails to pay off, she may find the chickens discontented over her decision coming home to roost.

More interestingly yet, if May does find her leadership of the Green party terminated over the gamble, a successive Green party leader may find their way into the house to be quite perilous, even if the Green party manages to elect a member.

After all, one has to imagine that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and NDP leader Jack Layton may not be so eager to exercise the "leader's courtesy" that May declined to extend -- or even offer -- to them.

After all in politics, as in life, turnabout is fair play.

Whatever lies ahead for Elizabeth May, it would seem that being seated as the newly elected MP from Central Nova -- and maritime giant killer -- is not it.

Bill Maher and the Atheist Apocalypse

Apocalypticism not just for religious kooks anymore

Normally, Bill Maher is a very funny guy.

At many points of Religulous, he even is funny. But sadly, by the end of the film, he just wants to scare the living shit out of you.

Maher, you see, believes the apocalypse is coming. To his credit, and unlike many religious fundamentalists, he doesn't welcome it. But he is willing to point fingers, and to exploit fear of a potential apocalypse to further his own personal agenda.

That agenda? An agenda of doubt.

"I don't know," he says repeatedly through the film. It's the maxim he preaches: one of skepticism and disbelief.

Most of the film relies on a carefully-constructed "mook" personae, making outrageous -- and often hilarious -- comments while smirking at the beliefs of his subjects. Maher the atheist "mook" also has a self-satisfied sense of superiority. Only when he converses with individuals that he can also regard as an equal -- all too often individuals who are themselves skeptics or can at least mix their religious beliefs with healthy skepticism -- does Maher cast off his "mook" character and cease being the snarky funnyman and try to address the subject matter with a modicum of respect.

Sometimes, it's hard to begrudge Maher his smugness. All too often, his subjects make it remarkably easy for him. One simply must find amusement in Maher's discussion of the virtues of creationism as opposed to evolution with a creationist museum curator -- an individual who looks vaguely as if he himself could be the missing link between man and ape. Or in the case of an amusement park Jesus (for whom an unstrung tunic seems to be the biblical equivalent of a popped collar) who makes an impressively weak pro-belief sales pitch about how the Holy Trinity is like water -- it can be steam, ice or water.

Maher's smirking mookish inquisition of his kooky subjects is amusing and really does serve to highlight some of the crazier beliefs held by various religious believers, but it ultimately ill-serves his thesis by the film's end.

Maher's conclusion that religion can only lead humanity toward nuclear annihilation ultimately arrives stillborn given the lack of attention devoted to actually devoting that thesis.

While his focus on Muslim rioting surrounding the Muhammad Cartoons, death threats issued against Salman Rushdie and the assassination of Theo Van Gogh start to develop the religion as violence theme initially advanced by Dutch legislator Geert Wilders, Maher spends too much time cracking jokes about some of the more controversial beliefs held by Scientologists and Mormons and focusing on self-styled prophets such as Mormon church founder Joseph Smith and Jose Luis De Jesus Miranda (who describes himself as the second coming of Christ) to make his sudden turn toward apocalypticism seem credible.

In the end, in Maher's view, it all has to come down to atheists against believers -- with little or no middle ground to occupy. How can there be, when religion is allegedly going to be the catalyst by which the apocalypse is triggered?

Maher challenges atheists to stop being so damned timid and challenges "moderate believers" to "look themselves in the mirror" and cast off their religious beliefs.

But Maher's challenges encounter two key inconsistencies. First, atheists have been anything but timid, especially of late. Atheists such as Michel Onfray have advocated open warfare between religion and atheism. And of course there's always nonsense like this.

In the end, Maher's "call to arms" is far more damaging than constructive. Maher's clarion call seeks to erase the vital middle ground through which the gap between extremists on either side of the issue -- atheists who seek the destruction of religion and religious fundamentalists, including those who seek to trigger the endtimes themselves -- must be bridged.

No matter what Maher and those who think like him may believe, it simply isn't reasonable -- or rational -- to attempt to define religion only according to the crazed beliefs its most warped adherents subscribe to or by the numerous mistakes that have been made in the name of religion.

To do so would overlook the numerous positive advances that have been made often in the name of religion: Mahatma Ghandi led the non-violent resistance to the British colonization of India based on his Hindu religious beliefs. Dr Martin Luther King Jr mixed Ghandi's methods with his own particular Christian religious beliefs to win civil rights for African Americans. The Protestant Social Gospel has led, in many countries (including Canada) to the emergence of a charitable welfare state.

But Maher doesn't want to talk about that. Like many self-satisfied atheists, Maher doesn't want to recognize these things.

Maher actually wants to wipe out any middle ground occupied by the reformers who helped win these various advances and replace it only with socially and civically destructive polarization.

Sadly, he isn't alone in this desire.

In a certain sense, perhaps Maher's call to arms should be answered -- via a rejection. Those atheists whom Maher considers too "timid" -- timid in the sense that they respect other people's right to believe as they do -- should reject his call. Those moderate believers -- especially reform-minded religious believers -- should not reject their religious believers in deference to Maher's fear mongering. They should reject his call.

While certain religious sects -- such as oppressive Scientology, militant Islam and bigoted Christian organizations -- should be rejected, religion itself has not been such a vulgar thing as Maher's one-sided description of it would insist.

At the very least, these things should not be rejected in favour of what Maher favours -- once again, doubt.

Maher's reasons for his atheism may suit him. But to tell people they must reject their beliefs for the simple virtues of "humble" doubt is an utter farce. For one thing, it says nothing about any positive reason for embracing doubt. It merely speaks to what he considers to be the negative reasons for rejecting religion.

No matter what Maher and his compatriots may insist, there is nothing rational about suggesting that the often irrational-seeming questions asked by religion ("who am I? Where did I come from? What is the meaning of life? What will happen to me after I die?") should not even be asked. That is taking the intellectual coward's way out of questions that it is very much within human nature to ask.

Last, but certainly not least, embracing fearful atheist apocalypticism as his answer to religious apocalypticism is hypocrisy. Nothing more, and nothing less.

If Stephane Dion Were An Angrier Man...

Would this:



Have sounded more like this?



In all fairness, it isn't a very fair comparison.

But the question -- despite what what some commentators have insisted was actually quite simple:

What would Stephane Dion, as Prime Minister, have done to confront the emerging economic mess that Stephen Harper has not done?

We've already seen that Dion, like any other politician, has a tendency to dodge questions he doesn't want to answer.

It isn't too hard to figure out what's going on here: Dion doesn't want to answer this question because he recognizes the limitations on the powers of the Prime Minister to fix an economic crisis that has been born and bred in the United States, just as he doesn't want to answer questions about his post-Green Shift plan because it inevitably entails a tax hike on Canadian citizens.

It's no different than any other politician. Sometimes candor simply isn't worth the political price one will pay.

Then again, sometimes a non-answer is just as revealing as an answer.

What Political Psychopaths Fantasize About...

The website that gave you "Hooray for Nathan Richardson" presents

The latest musings from the Pope of the Canadian Cynic Temple of Sycophantic Group Think:

"In the wake of the Stephen Harper Party of Canada's recent exposure as a bunch of clownishly inept financial idiots and liars, as well as its candidates' complete and utter contempt for the normal democratic process in the sense of not even bothering to show up for numerous "All Candidates" meetings around the country, the question is no longer whether there is still a chance of them eking out a majority, or whether they can even be defeated outright.

No, in light of their catastrophically appalling bad judgment and overall swinish assholishness, the question now is whether we will even make it to next Tuesday without the citizenry rising up in revolt and tying various CPoC candidates to the bumpers of their Toyota Priuses, whereuon they will be dragged to the city gates, drawn, quartered and have their severed heads stuck on pikes in celebration.

P.S. I drive a wagon so I could probably handle two of them at once."

And do the Canadian blogosphere's leading psychopath's co-bloggers have anything negatory to say about this?

Perish the thought:

"And cue the mouthbreathing Blogging Tories shrieking about CC-HQ inciting violence against Big Daddy and his merry band of in-and-out fuckwits in 3 ... 2 ..."

And then there's the always-"rational" Mike:

"I'll bring the pikes..."

So if anyone ever needed confirmation that Canada's hateful left -- that deranged collection of left-wingers who define themselves not according to their political beliefs, but rather by their petty hatred -- is, indeed, both batshit fucking and crazy and utterly without shame, this would indeed be it.

Lil' Harper: Pro-Ice Cream

Speaking of New Lows...

David Orchard targets the RCMP for partisan gain

When Gerry Ritz's extremely outrageous comments regarding the listeria outbreak became public, the Liberal party released an attack ad denouncing it as "a new low".

Now, with a micro-scandal emerging in which it has been alleged that uniformed RCMP officers have been lending a helping hand to Rob Clarke, the Conservative incumbent in Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River, David Orchard, the Liberal candidate in that riding, has taken aim at the RCMP.

"It's completely unnecessary in a democracy for the national police force to be using its vehicles, openly, on the main street of a town, to drop off signs for a candidate," Orchard lamented. "It's a gesture of intimidation. It's frightening and unacceptable."

Only David Orchard could look at an off-duty RCMP officer delivering campaign signs and equate it with the popular cliche of a Texan Sheriff busting out people's tail lights. The Liberal party actually takes the intellectual dishonesty a step further, accusing the Conservative party of "abusing police resources".

If Orchard and the Liberals had merely denounced it as "unprofessional", they'd be right on the mark.

Of course, no one expects to hear Orchard or his party surmising that, considering that Clarke formerly commanded the RCMP detachment in nearby Spiritwood, Saskatchewan, this is simply a case of an RCMP officer helping out a political candidate he supports. Moreover, one he almost certainly knows personally.

The officer in question shouldn't have been delivering signs in uniform. Nor should they have been using a marked RCMP pickup in order to do it.

But for David Orchard and the Liberal party to try to use the RCMP in order to fear monger its way to an electoral victory is beyond shameful.

For Orchard, this ranks right up there with him comparing Canadian Forces in Afghanistan to slave traders.

It's a new low. One may wonder precisely how much lower Orchard could sink yet.

Maybe for his next act Orchard's going to suggest that his door-knockers are being Rodney Kinged. Given his own recent experience with door-knocking perhaps Orchard's colleague Garth Turner could help set that one up.

Um... Wow...

Ouch. That's Gotta Hurt

BarackObama.com blogger weighs in on Heather Mallick

When Heather Mallick wrote her "Mighty Wind" op/ed column -- the very one that so deliberately baited so many of the Republican right's more unbalanced denizens, one has to think that Mallick imagined that the pro-Obama crowd would crystalize around her cause, coming to her stalwart defense.

Not so. As it turns out (unsurprisingly) far too many Barack Obama supporters are too wise to do that. Consider the following comments from BarackObama.com blogger Dr Jeffrey Kargel:

"Heather Mallick, your outrageous commentary about Sarah Palin goes far beyond what decency and political common sense and common purpose would allow. (Readers, if you must, see http://www.heathermallick.ca/cbc.ca-columns/a-mighty-wind-blows-through-republican-convention.html.) Of course you are free to vent your anger, as I and so many others have regarding McCain's inane or downright stupid choice of VP. Sarah Palin, according to probably just about any male or female qualitative assessment, is cute, pretty, or gorgeous: take your pick. By some accounts, and in my judgment (the little I know of her), she is a great hockey Mom and raised her kids well; mistakes happen, and teenagers make more than the per capita annual average number of mistakes.

All this has some bearing on society, like maybe the cover and inside pages of People magazine, but it amounts to noise and fluff with respect to the real debates and decisions being made based on real political positions (and lack thereof) of the candidates. Heather Mallick, your commentary is mere fluff and noise, and is fairly hateful stuff at that. Your commentary detracts from the real issues. You may have intended it as a humorous, satirical piece, but it missed that mark by a long shot. There was nothing funny about it, at least not in my opinion. You treated one vindictive woman's lack of political and personal Presidential-quality character with your own vindictive diatribe; and you exposed your lack of integrity and balance. Sarah Palin needs to be dealt with, but not the way you tried to deal with it. I'd rather have balanced commentary that nobody reads than to seek attention through writing sheer trash and nonsense. You ought to feel quite ashamed."

Unfortunately, Dr Kargel, she doesn't.

As a matter of fact, Mallick has used the outrage and some of the more... unenlightened... responses to her tirade to mentally reinforce her schema of herself as more cultured than the great unwashed of the pro-Palin crowd.

Meanwhile, one may wonder who Dr Jeffrey Kargel is. He's an astronomist at the University of Arizona. If an astronomist -- so very far removed from the beer-swilling redneck Mallick imagines emailing her threats from the monster truck rally -- can see Mallick's invective for what it is, it isn't too hard to think of something to tell Mallick she can do with her sense of self-superiority.

She won't be cozying too closely to the Obama campaign, that's for certain.

The Passion of the Cynic

More economy-themed dumbshittitude from the Groupthink Temple

As it turns out, in terms of being an economist, Canadian Cynic -- the self-styled Pope of the Canadian Cynic Temple of Sycophantic Groupthink -- makes a really good hatemonger.

Sometimes, when scanning through the online toilet that Cynic passes off as his blog, one has to be absolutely astounded at how seldom his claims need to so much as be consistent with themselves, let alone reality.

Consider the most recent theoretically-mangled economic musings from the Groupthink Temple. Most Nexus readers should remember Lindsay Stewart and his previous phantom deficit.

And while Stewart quickly found it in himself to try and argue around that little error without ever quite addressing how his ignorance of such fundamental facts discredits his economic pontificating, one can at least rely on Canadian Cynic to... do exactly the same thing.

Such is the case in a 6 October post in which he demonstrates his undeniable gifts for missing the point and distorting the issue:

"Having been assured less than a month ago that everything was just peachy fucking keen with respect to the economy, we are all learning -- the hard way -- that that ain't quite the situation. And, to our chagrin, we also learn that, despite what Stephen Harper told us earlier, he has seen this coming for some time:

"For example, the oft-repeated assumption that the capital positions of the country's banks has not caused alarm among authorities is false.

A senior member of government said the Finance Department developed concerns about the capital base of two Canadian institutions and exerted pressure on them to shore up their position, which they did.

The concerns first arose in late 2007 as the credit crisis built, while the remedial actions supervised by the bank regulator are thought to have continued into this year.

A legislative aide said they were shocked at the disclosure, adding it appeared to contradict the public message from the Conservatives that the government did not need to take a leading role in addressing risks in the financial sector."

In other words, while the Conservatives have been campaigning on their successful stewardship of Canada's economy, they've known that whole time that they were lying to us."

The bizarre logic of that last statement is beyond astounding. It seems to work something like this: the Conservatives have been bragging about their stewardship of the economy. Meanwhile, the government has stepped in and acted as steward of the economy when two banks got their figurative ducks out of a row. Thus, the government is lying about its stewardship of the economy.

To a mind like Canadian Cynic's, surely that makes sense.

To an individual with no knowledge of the economic history of the past 60 years, perhaps the notion that the government has taken corrective actions would seem out of place with Harper's assertions that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong". But that individual would have to be entirely ignorant of Canadian economic history.

In Canada, as in most of the Western world, the period following the Second World War gave rise to economic planning at a level previously unprecedented during peace time. This was the era of Keynesian economics.

While the stagflation crisis of the 1970s is generally considered to have largely discredited Keynesian economics, many of the hallmarks of the Kenyesian economy persist to this day, in many countries. Certainly, Keynesianism has been displaced by the neo-liberal economic theories espoused by individuals such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, but many vestiges of Keynesian thought persist to this day.

Foremost among these is the issue at hand here: that of regulation.

Unfortunately, some countries haven't clung to regulation as stringently as others. If anything has definitively led to the current financial crisis, it's the lack of market regulation in the United States -- particularly, the failure to regulate the sub-prime mortgage market, and the failure to regulate the selling of mortgages by smaller banks to larger ones (something that in and of itself should actually be illegal).

Sadly, when two countries have as close an economic relationship as the United States and Canada, the ailments of one economy will inevitably impact upon the other. While those who are eager to pin Canada's current economic woes on Harper loathe to admit this, it happens to enjoy the virtue of being true.

Yet even while successive Canadian governments have cast off the vestiges of the Keynesian planned economy in favour of neo-liberalism, the role of the state remains quite firmly entrenched in the Canadian economy, both on federal and on individual provincial bases.

The sturdiness of Canada's regulatory regime reveals that, in a country that embraced Keynesianism to the extent that Canada did -- a phenomenon that reached its apex under Pierre Trudeau -- the regulation of financial markets has become fundamental to the Canadian economy, and it politically handcuffs even the most enthusiastic neo-coservative economist in terms of how far they could strive to deregulate.

And this, considering that Stephen Harper has proven himself to be far from the most enthusiastic neo-conservative.

When the Department of Finance steps in to pressure Canadian banks to correct their fiscal course, that particular fundamental of the Canadian economy is proven itself to be strong. In turn, it helps keep the rest of Canada's economic fundamentals strong.

Even under those conditions, the increasing economic uncertainty swirling around the US economy -- somehow still held by many to be the gold standard of global economies despite the fact that the European economy is much larger -- is serving to undermine the Canadian economy.

But no one expects Canadian Cynic to grasp this simplest of concepts. Not when there are angry economic gods he believes he can appeal to by denouncing the economic "sins" of the unworthy heretic Stephen Harper.

A Lament For Lessons Unlearned

Here's what you should have learned, Heather

As most people grow into adulthood, they find themselves in a rather precarious position.

No longer children but not yet fully adults, the safety net that had accompanied childhood is mostly gone -- except under the direst of circumstances -- and the pressure to become a better, stronger and more independent person truly mounts.

A premium quickly emerges to learn from one's mistakes.

So then what does it say about CBC op/ed columnist and fervent blinkered left-wing feminist ideologue Heather Mallick that she can't seem to learn from hers?

In a column published by CBC yesterday, Mallick at long last offers her thoughts on the controversy that emerged following her notorious "Mighty Wind" column:

"A month ago, I wrote about Sarah Palin's unfitness to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee and attracted the wholly unwelcome attention of Fox News and its viewers."

So Mallick considers Sarah Palin unfit to be the Republican Vice Presidential nominee. Fair enough. There's a case to made for that, if one can actually make it.

But many observers feel that Mallick herself is unfit to be a journalist -- the case she made for herself when she resorted to a personal attack in lieu of actual legitimate political criticism.

For those, like Mallick, so driven to the depths of loonishness by Palin's nomination, may benefit from a few quick notes about how to not make oneself look like a political vulture:

First off, attacks on a politician's family are extremely bad form.

Second, the personal relationships of family members of a politician (such as Bristol Palin's relationship with Levi Johnson) should be considered off-limits. Once again, not only is this bad form, but actually suggests that you're unable of debating the issues.

Third, try not to show your actual contempt for the people you claim to give a shit about.

Fourth, making unsubstantiated claims about a broad group of people tends to make one look, frankly, stupid.

Last but not least, don't bait the crazies. For example, if one knows that there are unstable individuals among America's Republican right -- and there most certainly are -- then dismissing the lot of them as sexually inadequate "white trash" may not be the best idea.

Which is really what Mallick's characterization of the attention of Fox News and its viewers as "unwelcome".

Was she operating under some delusion that cbc.ca is unavailable in the United States? Or that maybe, just maybe, they'd never find out about it?

Or maybe the entire point was to attract said attention, and to stir up the ensuing controversy. Except that this one turned out to bite Mallick in the ass a little bit, fatally damaging the very slim journalistic credibility she once possessed.

There's something about writing a column with the vicious character of Mallick's "Mighty Wind" article and then complaining about receiving hate mail afterward.

Sarah Palin's favourite joke could probably be paraphrased as such: "What's the difference between a pit bull and Heather Mallick? A pit bull doesn't poke a hornet's nest and then whine about it afterward."

Or was it "lipstick"?

No matter.

Unsurprisingly, Mallick seems ill-prepared to take any responsibility for her own comments. In fact, in Kevin Potvin-esque fashion, she predictably blames Fox News for provoking the outrage:

"After Fox got the firestorm restarted, we redirected the next few hundred threats to the e-mail belonging to my husband, who is British and unflappable. He initially read them, rather than mass-delete, so that kind people offering encouragement would not be ignored. Readers are hurt when you don't reply. Canadians are nice. Angry sometimes, but not violent.

But Fox viewers are a piece of work. I last appeared on Fox News in 2004 when I went on Bill O'Reilly's show to defend American war resisters sheltering in Canada. O'Reilly lost his mind, if he ever had one, and he was so mad about Vancouver's safe-injection site that he threatened to tell his fans to boycott Canada and destroy our economy, as they had that of France, he alleged, ludicrously. The conversation was so deranged that anti-Foxers sent me personalized "baguette" coffee mugs as souvenirs. "Beellions of dollairs," they read.

This time, I explained to Fox producers that I couldn't appear because Fox viewers are, like their hosts, too violently brutish to alienate. Fox shows aren't interviews so much as bear-baiting. I didn't watch the Fox shows on the subject of me or read the subsequent Canadian commentary in print or online."

So in the end, Mallick seems to take no responsibility for the response to her own comments. In fact, in Mallick's mind, her comments have nothing to do with the entire affair. Instead, Fox News (and all the other news outlets, both off- and online) are to blame.

Yet perhaps the greatest irony in Mallick's response to the entire affair is that she doesn't yet seem to have comprehended just how much like her hated right-wing counterparts on Fox news she really has shown herself to be.

Take, for example, the comments offered on the matter by Fox News commentator Greta Van Susteren, who responded to Mallick's comparison of Sarah Palin to a porn star by calling Mallick a "pig".

To put this in suitable context, when Heather Mallick was confronted with a Vice Presidential candidate she didn't like, she wrote an insult-laden tirade about her and her supporters. When Greta Van Susteren read the article, she settled for insulting Mallick back.

Sadly, this is all preschool calibre politics with no sense whatsoever of the larger issues at stake in this particular matter.

As mentioned here previously, Heather Mallick, of all people should be able to regard a pregnant teenager as a societal dilemma -- one created as much by Mallick's left-wing feminism as by the religious right -- rather than merely a political football to be punted.

Political field goals may be treated as points on the board, but recognizing and solving the real problems are the touchdowns of the game.

But if one needed any further proof that Mallick simply doesn't get it, one only needs consider the following passage:

"Online has brought instant media democratization as well as the erasure of national borders. And websites have not devised a way to keep online forums civilized. "There's no point debating anything online," writes the columnist Charlie Brooker. "You might as well hurl shoes in the air to knock clouds from the sky."

I used to write for print newspapers - an endangered species of their own - but this squabble made me think of Lévi-Strauss's theory of human culture, the raw versus the cooked: Cooking marks the transition from nature to culture. Online commentary is still mostly raw.

I have now discovered the joy of no e-mail; I cannot tell you how peaceful and happy life has become in the world of the cooked."

Apparently, in Mallick's mind, to attack the family of a political opponent and label their supporters as "white trash" qualifies as cultured.

The absurdity of that very notion need not be commented on or explained here.

Only a blinkered ideologue -- as Lindsay Stewart, an apparent huge fan of Mallick's wound describe her if he could muster the sense to do so -- Heather Mallick could come out of something like this with their arrogant sense of superiority intact.

But then again, this may be the greatest tragedy of an individual who, even at Mallick's age (she turns 50 next year), has yet to achieve full adult hood.

It's a lament for lessons unlearned.

Copyright? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Copyright! Redux

In the course of a federal election in which the Liberal party has accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of plagiarism on two different occasions -- one justified and another not so much -- it may seem interesting to find the Liberal party blatantly copying Apple Computer's popular (Mac/PC) advertising scheme.

Coming via YouTube, Ian Sutherland -- the Liberal candidate in the much-beleaguered West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky riding -- posts the following three ads.

The first focuses on Stephane Dion's Green Shift plan:



The second focuses on childcare:



And the third digs up the same-sex marriage issue:



In each case, the message essentially copies Apple's: the Conservative party (Sutherland's stand-in for the PC) is outdated and backward, while the Liberal party (Sutherland's stand-in for the Mac) is forward looking, progressive, and more advanced.

Of course, the spots hit a few major snags: first off, the Liberal portrayed in the ad is no Justin Long.

Secondly, the Royal Canadian Air Farce already did this, and did it much better.

Thirdly, each video ends by noting it's been authorized by the official agent of Ian Sutherland.

If this is true, then these videos are official campaign material, and Sutherland's campaign has violated Apple's copyright on this particular advertising scheme. Even the music itself is lifted directly from the Apple ads.

This while Green Shift Inc still fights to force the Liberal party to recognize its registered trademark.

It would seem that West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky has produced yet another campaign gaffe for yet another party, making this riding one of the real wild cards in the 2008 federal election.

Obama Takes Off the Gloves, Puts the Kid Gloves Back On

Jack Layton Talks (With Chalk!)

In a pair of new campaign ads released today, "Jack Layton and the NDP" hit back at both the Liberals whom they hope to supplant as the Official Opposition, and the Conservatives whom they want to prevent from winning a majority government.

These two spots may be the most creative of all the ads released during this election campaign (at the very least, they give the Conservatives' "Dion gamble" ads a run for their money). They feature Jack Layton delivering a short message while animated chalk figures appearing (likely quite strategically) on the right side of the screen.

The first spot addresses the economy, and stars Stephen Harper bequeathing a gift of $50 billion to a corporate boardroom:



The board members celebrate as Harper deposits a bag stuffed with cash on their table.

The image then pops out of view, and is replaced by a hypothetical Prime Minister Jack Layton holding the same bag -- this time clearly marked "Canadian $" -- aloft, while he explains his campaign priorities: Jobs and Training, Doctors and Nurses, Medication, and Childcare.

A kitchen table with a family of four seated at it appear below the list of Layton's priorities, rejoicing while Layton looks on approvingly.

"For strong leadership, on the side of everyday families like yours, vote New Democrat," Layton promises.

In terms of branding and counter-branding, this ad is nothing new for the NDP campaign: it brands the NDP as the party of "everyday families", and counter-brands the Conservatives of the party as the "other" -- money-grubbing corporations.

The second ad addresses leadership:



This spot begins with Layton noting that "most Canadians don't want to see Mr Harper in power," and plays up the ABC -- Anyone But Conservative -- angle that has emerged not only during this election, but also in the two elections preceding it.

The ad then weighs two alternatives: Stephane Dion and alleged impending Liberal infighting, or Jack Layton.

(Of course Dion and the Liberals would more likely pat themselves on the back and get down to the business of governing if they managed to win this election, as opposed to embarking on two years of bitter infighting in the wake of an electoral victory, but this spoils the premise of the ad, so one cannot expect the NDP to mention this.)

The goal of the ad, once again, is obvious: to brand Layton as a strong leader while counter-branding Stephane Dion as a weak leader, unable to plan a proper electoral campaign or control his party afterward -- that is, if he remains party leader at all.

But beyond this, however, the two spots have a rather ingenious thematic premise to them.

The virtues of the NDP are treated as being so basic and so sensical that they don't necessarily rely on protracted theorizing to support them. Rather the ideas themselves are so fundamentally simple that they can be explained in the simplistic language of cartoon doodles.

Even while they take an aggressive stand against the opposition, these NDP ads are so utterly disarming that most viewers may be challenged to recognize them for what they really are: primarily negative ads, with a brief positive message sprinkled in at the end -- the very kind of ad that has become customary for the NDP.

Liberals Picking a Water Fight

With the Liberals nearly out of contention to win the 2008 federal election, they find themselves in a very precarious position: unable to form the next government, and possibly at risk of being supplanted as the Official Opposition by the NDP.

Of course it wouldn't do to look as if they're simply throwing in the towel and fighting for second place. So while the Liberal party's newest ad focuses mostly on the NDP, it also takes its obligatory shot at the Tories.

Entitled "The Choice on Canada's Water", the spot promises that a Liberal government would protect Canada's drinking water, clean up Canadian water ways and ban bulk exports of fresh water.

The party notes that Prime Minister Stephen Harper refuses to ban bulk exports of fresh water, but then actually claims that the NDP is worse yet, noting that as Quebec's Minister of the Environment Mulcair once advocated the export of Canadian water "for profit".

The ad, which features a fairly benign collection of images of running water, concludes by imploring voters to "help protect Canada's water" by voting Liberal.

The spot in question clearly has three goals: to brand the Liberal party as the party that will protect "Canada's water" -- clearly asserting its claim to environmental leadership -- counter-branding the NDP as the party that will "sell out" Canada's water supply, and counter-branding the Conservatives as the party that just plain doesn't care.

The ad asserts oer and over again that the water Thomas Mulcair would export is "Canada's water". Canadians own it, and only Canadians should enjoy the benefits of it.

However, this ad seeks to play to the ignorance of Canadian voter in terms of water and ownership issues. After all, international law actually holds that no country can actually "own" water -- they can merely own the bodies of water in which it collects and the rivers and streams through which it flows.

The ad also neglects to mention that Mulcair advocated the consideration of water exports while serving in a Liberal government -- a fact that may lead voters to question the sincerity of the Liberals' professed opposition to water exports.

This is before one even considers the fact that the Mulcair speech in question -- conveniently provided by the Liberals themselves -- make numerous references to the necessity of proper management, and insist that export of water should only be considered under favourable conditions.

The ad features one other striking difference between it and the previous Liberal spots: a new announcer. This very well could be a bid to try to distance themselves from the frantic and desperate tone the narrator of the past two English-language Liberal ads took.

But it's hard to look at the Liberals' now-solidified shift toward attacking the NDP as anything other than an attempt to stave off third-party status in the next parliament.

Clearly, He Didn't Quite Think That One Through

Shorter Canadian Cynic: "Someone's been committing political vandalism? Please, please let it be the Conservatives!"

Shorter reality: "The Quinpool Road offices of Conservative candidate Ted Larsen suffered a similar attack. Police reported Monday morning that windows were smashed there as well."

Clearly, Cynic didn't quite think that one through. But don't expect him to spontaneously sprout enough honesty to admit it.

Is This Unfair?

Stephane Dion stages the worst photo op in the history of photo ops.

Maurice Richard has to be spinning in his grave.

Lobbing Softballs

Epoch Times declines to ask Michael Byers about his China dilemma

In the most recent issue of the Epoch Times Michael Byers, the NDP candidate in Vancouver Centre, is profiled.

Over the course of the interview, Byers is asked about his dedication to human rights. What transpires is as follows:

"Epoch Times - You’re known as a strong human rights advocate….

Michael Byers - Nationally and internationally, because I’ve spent most of my life working on international law, international politics, human rights elsewhere are very important to me. Obviously, we’re talking about the genocide in Darfur, in Sudan, for instance, or the repression that exists in Burma. Or the human rights questions in the People’s Republic of China. These are issues that matter to me. I don’t see them as simplistic, but I believe very strongly in the fundamental importance of human rights."

And thus ends that.

But some may find it very curious that the Epoch Times -- a publication that has shown its sympathies to the Falun Gong movement on countless occasions -- declined to ask Byers any specific questions regarding his views on human rights in China.

Frankly, Byers' bona fides in terms of human rights advocacy aren't as solid as he'd like people to believe. To start off with, Byers is willing to abandon the human rights issue entirely if those who advance them so much as belong to the "wrong" side of the ideological divide.

Few seasoned Byers watchers need to be reminded about his 1 January 2008 op-ed article in the Toronto Star in which Byers criticized Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his "unnecessary quarrels with China over human rights".

As Victoria, BC's Joan Quain would helpfully point out a few days later, Byers' advocacy of a strictly hands-off approach to human rights in China overwhelmingly ignores the scope of some of the abuses being perpetrated there.

Byers also criticized the Canadian government for not participating in a peacekeeping mission in the Sudan, while also overlooking the fact that oil hungry China is heavily involved in Darfur, both as an investor in the Darfur oilfields, as well as selling arms to the Khartoum regime.

In an earlier interview with Vancouver's Georgia Straight, Byers insists that "I don't think we should be silent when it comes to human rights in China, but you cannot influence a country of that size and that power by refusing to establish a relationship."

Never mind the fact that Canada has very much maintained its relationship with China, Byers doesn't explain how he would have the Canadian government advance the human rights cause with China when he so clearly disfavours confrontation with the current Beijing regime over the issue, and Jean Chretien's "good governance and the rule of law" advocacy accomplished absolutely nothing in Beijing aside from showing them how craven Canada's liberal politicians really are when it comes down to that issue.

Byers' stance on China is merely one reason why Canadians should be thankful that the prospects of Michael Byers becoming the Minister of Foreign Affairs are so remote. Not only is this an individual who would simply submit to the intimidating nature of Chinese diplomacy, but is an individual who believes that Iranian prison guards raping and beating a Canadian citizen to death (a la Zahra Kazemi) shouldn't result in so much as a hiccup in diplomatic relations with a country that sponsors and hosts holocaust denial conferences.

It's interesting that the Epoch Times -- a publication with alleged direct ties to the Falun Gong movement -- wouldn't ask Byers about his previously ambivalent position on China.

How would Canada help advance the cause of human rights in China -- vis a vis the Falun Gong movement and otherwise -- under the leadership of an individual who is so clearly terrified to confront China on that particular issue?

Canada wouldn't. Canada couldn't. One would think that a publication like the Epoch Times should have mustered the wisdom to at least ask him about it.

Paul Martin - King of Wishful Thinking

Could Paul Martin be considering a comeback?

When considering recent comments made by former Prime Minister Paul Martin in Calgary, three possibilities come to mind.

Either he's considering a comeback attempt as Liberal leader, he really believes the Liberals can still turn this election around, or he's hopelessly deluded.

"Let me simply say, on October 14, we will elect a Liberal government," Martin pronounced.

Martin made the comments during a speech in which he took current Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- the man who unseated him from the country's top job -- for task about allegedly not having an economic plan.

"Stephen Harper hasn't come up with a plan. If he's so good, why doesn't he come up with a plan? If he's the prime minister of this country, why is he afraid to deal with the issues?" Martin demanded.

Martin then touted his own (mostly) considerable record as finance minister in Jean Chretien's Liberal government.

"When we took office in 1993, the Conservatives left us with a $43 billion deficit. Four years later, that deficit was gone, and when we left office 2.5 years ago, there was a $12 billion surplus and no other country in the world can match that record," Martin crowed.

Of course he isn't mentioning that Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government left a considerable deficit for Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government, nor is he mentioning that his party accomplished this by cutting billions of dollars from health care.

If one were to ask Martin himself he would insist that he isn't thinking about attempting a political comeback. In fact, he isn't even running for reelection.

"I've been there, done that. Time to go on to other things and I've been very clear that the aboriginal issues in Canada and Africa are where I'm going to be putting my time," Martin insists.

Yet Paul Martin Jr, the man who so badly wanted to accomplish what his father, Paul Martin Sr, never could simply cannot be expected to walk away from politics so easily. With his goal of winning a majority government (prior to the 2004 election Martin speculated that he thought he could win the biggest majority in Canadian history) still unaccomplished and his successor, Stephane Dion, set to be turfed out of the Liberal leadership following an impending electoral defeat, it isn't hard to imagine that succeeding his own successor isn't too far from Martin's mind.

Of course, if Martin had any such designs, he couldn't be seen predicting anything but a Liberal victory on October 14.

Of course, if Martin imagines that his political career hasn't been hopelessly damaged by the sponsorship scandal and by all the intra-party animosity that has arisen as a result of his fingering of Jean Chretien as the party's fall guy, then he is hopelessly deluded.

Martin likely knows these things as well as anyone. He certainly must know that Calgary is the last place to look for a foothold to win a Liberal victory.

But if Paul Martin doesn't, then he is the king of wishful thinking.

Canadian Leaders Courting the Next Presidential Gold Medallion

Candidates square off over who best supports Canadian Judaism, Israel, and who can best handle Iran

As the 2008 federal election campaign grinds on, it's inevitable that various candidates will make their pitch to various ethnic and religious voting blocs.

In some cases, that could serve to backfire.

But for Liberal Mount Royal MP Irwin Cotler, his recent efforts have been little more than going back to the well from which he has so often drank.

Cotler has recently been involved with a petition to have Iranian president Mahmould Ahmadinejad charged with "inciting genocide".

Speaking at the conference against state-sponsored genocide in Washington organized as a prelude to Ahmadinejad's recent address to the UN, Cotler insisted "The crime of incitement to genocide has already been committed. Iran has paved the way to genocide, and genocide has already begun in [the sense of] incitement."

Cotler insisted that the charges alone could go a long way toward legitimizing Ahmandinejad. “The very process of initiating these remedies will embolden the progressive forces in Iran," he announced.

Cotler also aptly pointed out that those who incite genocide are as bad as those who actually commit it. “[Ahmadinejad] should be treated with the opprobrium of a genocidaire,” he concluded.

Some may be eager to dismiss Cotler's advocacy on behalf of Judaism to be empty partisan pandering. But to suggest so they would have to know very little about Cotler's past.

The genocide petition against Ahmadinejad isn't merely a flavour of the week gambit for Cotler. He has proven his dedication to preventing genocide and prosecuting those who commit it throughout his entire legal career, both before and after entering his politics.

His book Justice Delayed remains the landmark work on Nazi war criminals hiding in Canada.

The plentiful political capital that Cotler enjoys in Canada's Jewish community has been richly and rightly earned.

Yet not all of Canada's leaders have supported Cotler's advocacy on behalf of Israel. Liberal leader Stephane Dion recently accused former Foreign Affairs miniser (now Minister of Defense) Peter MacKay of obstructing Cotler's efforts.

"The [Liberal party] has supported Irwin’s initiative to hold President Ahmadinejad to account before the UN Security Council or a duly constituted international tribunal for the crime of genocidal incitement as required by the 1948 genocide convention," Dion told a Jewish audience in Winnipeg. “I do not understand why Conservative MPs have attempted to block Irwin’s motion in support of this initiative that he brought forward at Parliament’s human rights subcommittee,”

"Peter MacKay, then the foreign minister, rejected this initiative as a worthless gesture because [he said] it probably won’t work," Dion continued. "I don’t know how he came to that determination, but when it comes to international law, I think I’ll trust Irwin Cotler’s opinion over Peter MacKay’s."

Of course, MacKay actually has a point to this end. The UN has never been known for its sympathies toward Israel, and has often been hijacked by various Middle Eastern regimes for denouncing Israeli treatment of Palestinians. Ironically, they've historically often done this while these very regimes treat Palestinians -- and other minorities within their domain, including Jews -- no better, and often worse.

For his own part, Cotler credits Prime Minister Stephen Harper -- a fellow recipient recipient of B'Nai Brith's Presidential Gold Medal -- for his supportive words, but suggests he has yet to act on them. “The Prime Minister has done excellent work in his statements with regard to Israel, but words are not as important as deeds,” Cotler recently told an all-party discussion panel.

Which is fair enough. While Harper has made his support of Israel widely and well known, one could hardly mistake them for action.

Yet the same is the case with Cotler's most recent initiative. Without any means to ensure that Mahmoud Ahmaedinejad appears before the International Criminal Court to face charges, Cotler's petition is, itself, little more than empty words.

Andrea Paine, the Conservative candidate in Lac St Louis, defended the government's rejection of Cotler's petition as being in line with Israel's stance on the matter.

“We were not sure what the position of the Israeli government actually would be. We were also concerned that if the bill passed, the pro-Palestinians would spin that into a victory for themselves,” she insisted. “We were being cautious and waiting to follow Israel’s lead.”

Israel, however, for its own part, supports the push to file charges against Ahmadinejad.

Also on the discussion panel was NDP Outremont MP Thomas Mulcair, who insisted that his party doesn't harbour elements hostile to Israel.

“Some do have slightly different takes on issues, but what is important is the position we take at the end of the day as a party, and I am extremely comfortable defending them today,” Mulcair insisted.

Certainly, they clearly do. Perhaps it's better left up to individuals to judge whether or not those positions are anti-Israel or not.

One thing is for certain: while virtually any issue related to Israel is bound to be controversy, Canada cannot strive to be a leader on the global stage while shying away from sticky topics -- particularly one so central to international relations as that of Israel.

It's on that note that it's actually quite comforting to see Israel treated as an issue in the 2008 federal election. At the very least, it makes the proceedings of this federal election a little less insular than they otherwise would tend to be.

In the end, the prize will be not merely a shiny bauble from B'Nai Brith, but Canada's relevance, credibility and leadership on the world stage.

Waitaminit, I Thought It Was the Other Guys Who Hate Canada...

How little Lindsay Stewart thinks of our country

When judging the current state of Canadian politics, few people could be faulted for looking at the leadership being made available for Canadians and wishing for a little better.

On that note, it's hard to say that the best of Canada's political leaders on offer is the one who would happily dismember it. Well, hard for most people. Not so much for Canadian Cynic colleague and bloglodyte Lindsay Stewart:

"On the debates featuring the five hideous trogs being foisted off on a poor, hapless Canada, I'd rather watch a dog eat its own vomit than sit through the spectacle of these substandard leaders trying to best one another. Spin the bottle, no matter where it lands, we all lose. From this piss puddle deep pool, who would make the best PM? Duceppe, sad but true."

It would be hard to distort Stewart's comments even to make them take on the slightest resemblance to saying anything positive.

The Canadian blogosphere's maitre d' extraordinaire has just anointed a separatist leader as the best possible Prime Minister out of Canada's available candidates.

Interestingly, however, it turns out not to be so much any particular quality of Duceppe's that has Stewart to this conclusion, but rather his seething hatred for Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

"For the leader almost sure to form the next government I feel only contempt, distrust and a creeping patina of fear, given the damage that his ideological bedmates down south have caused. And since Harper is at best a copyist, there is reason to fear. Grave dancing asshole Gerry Ritz made the prediction so I don't have to, wait 'til the Cons have their majority, then all bets are off."

Apparently, the one thing Stewart fears most in the world is another conservative government. And apparently, he fears it more than the dissolution of Canada that would occur if Duceppe got his way:

"Stephen Harper is the worst thing that's going to happen to this country for the next four years. He is a true believer and what he believes in is Stephen Harper. That is also the name of what he loves best and when things go against the grain of Stephen Harper, he will act with all the petty wrath of a self centered narcissist, drunk on power. Harper is a man with many swords, just ready for others to fall upon, as nothing will ever be his fault. Canada will vote for this wretched little king because we are stupid."

Moreover, not only does Stewart not fear the destruction of this country more than he fears a Conservative government, he believes that other Canadians are stupid for not sharing that hysteric fear.

"We have allowed these creatures to gull us into believing that they are the capable, stable and secure choice to lead us in a frightening world. They achieved this conviction through a non-stop campaign of character assassination, manipulation and juvenile bull shit. And they let us pay for the millions of ten per centers that they shipped with our own money, to help do it."

For Lindsay Stewart to accuse anyone of "character assassination, manipulation and juvenile bull shit" is, in and of itself, pure comedy that really need not be commented on here.

Stewart's ramblings get even more bizarre, frantic and Mallick-esque as his increasingly monotonous invective continues. But it does end with a very telling statement:

"When it comes time to vote, vote against the Steve Harper Party, don't let Gerry Ritz become a prophetic voice."

Apparently, in Stewart's mind, all Canadians should vote not for something, but rather against Stephen Harper.

In various Quebec ridings where the choice is increasingly becoming a choice between a Conservative (federalist) candidate or a Bloc Quebecois (separatist) candidate? Vote BQ. Duceppe would make the best Prime Minister anyway.

It's shades of Buzz Hargrove all over again. We all remember how that turned out.

But the irony in this particular little online tantrum is frankly so thick that even Lindsay Stewart -- however wracked by cognitive dissonance his psyche may be -- should be able to grasp it.

After all, Stewart has indulged himself of accusing Stephen Harper of "hating Canada". His notorious blogmate has also gotten into the act -- as well as lead the charge in denouncing Canadians as "stupid".

Yet when it comes down to the fate of Canada, Stewart seems to find the destruction of Canada via Quebec separatism favourable to a Conservative moderation of the escalating statism that has swept our country over the last thirty years.

Given the choice between Harper and the Conservatives and the ascension of Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois -- one that could only end with the destruction of Canada -- Stewart apparently isn't able to put his derision for Harper aside.

Stewart wouldn't be willing to put aside his hatred of Harper -- a federalist leader -- in order to save Canada.

To accuse a political opponent of hating Canada is typically a very small-minded thing to do. But if Stewart's unwillingness to choose the survival of the country over his own petty hatreds doesn't qualify as unbridled hatred of Canada, one may be forgiven for wondering what does.

Liberals Play John Howard Card

As the likelihood of an election victory becomes more and more remote, it seems the Liberal party may simply be out to maximize Prime Minister Stephen Harper's embarrassment instead.

In a spot released today, the Liberals needle Harper over the recent mini-scandal emerging over the apparent plagiarism of a speech made by then-Australian Prime Minister supporting the Iraq War.

The ad asserts that, while Canadians were proud of Jean Chretien's refusal to enter Iraq with the United States -- an attitude hardly universal amongst Canadians -- Harper was "ashamed of his country".

The ad then claims that John Howard was the Iraq War's biggest supporter -- which is actually untrue, but the Liberals likely feel reluctant to admit that British Labour Prime Minster Tony Blair was actually the Iraq War's biggest supporter (aside, naturally, from George W Bush).

Over an image of burning oil wells and the sound of marching boots, the ad notes that Australian troops were in Iraq for five years. The ad asserts that Harper "parroted his words and would have followed him to Iraq," before asking "Do you really want more of this?"

This spot comes as the desperation in the Liberal campaign becomes ever-more apparent. Having given up marketing their Green Shift plan or branding Stephane Dion as a leader, the Liberals have instead settled for counter-branding Stephen Harper as a member of some vast right-wing conspiracy -- oddly overlooking the support of the Iraq war by the American Democratic Party, a party that the Liberals have historically sought to emulate and has enjoyed association with.

Which is certainly nothing surprising. No party wants to address the logical shortcomings of its own claims -- least of all a party that has given up on winning, and is instead content to merely embarrass its opposition.

The Toronto Star Plays the Blame Game

Liberals have no one to blame but themselves, says Star

Ever since their defeat in the 2005/06 federal election, the Liberals have spent a good deal of their time blaming the NDP for their defeat at the hands of now-Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"The Stephen Harper government is the House that Jack built," Bob Rae recently remarked, following the recent Liberal tradition of blaming Jack Layton for the Liberals' defeat.

It was Layton, they reason, that helped the Conservatives defeat Paul Martin's Liberal government.

But as the Star asserts, it really is the Liberals themselves who are to blame for their current predicament. Adscam and the ill-fated and ill-conceived Green Shift policy may be the least of their blunders:

"Paul Martin must assume a good deal of responsibility.

When he was finance minister in the 1990s, he ruined a good part of the Liberal's left-wing legacy by slashing federal social programs, right down to reversing promises made by Jean Chrétien in his 1993 campaign Red Book.

Martin, the leader of the socially conservative wing of the party, pushed the party away from its liberal social agenda roots by cutting spending on initiatives such as affordable housing and health care. These moves made many progressive Liberals wonder why they continued to back the party."

Indeed, Martin's budget cuts have made for good ammunition for both the NDP and the Conservative party.

But few people realize the extent to which those cuts strained the unity of the Liberal party membership. In the time in which the cuts were made the party was split between three major priorities: Social Service Minister Lloyd Axworthy's social services review and the reform package he wanted to implement, Martin's deficit-fighting agenda, and Jean Chretien's focus on the upcoming 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum.

With little perceived importance of the budget issues to the referendum, and seeking to alleviate pressure being exerted by Preston Manning and the Reform Party, Chretien wound up effectively taking Martin's side in the dispute.

Martin, for his own part, had once believed he could effectively juggle his deficit-fighting agenda with Axworthy's social program reforms until writers such as Andrew Coyne lambasted him in the press.

In the end, Martin's desperation to be a popular leader became his -- and perhaps even his party's -- undoing.

"The Chrétien-Martin wars took their toll. For years, Martin and his cronies actively worked to discredit Chrétien, even though Chrétien won three majority governments for the party. The feud still bitterly splits the party, including its rank and file."

That Chretien-Martin war has also cost the Liberal party the services of some of its best election personnel.

The obvious missing piece of the once-dominant Big Red Machine of the 1990s? Warren Kinsella, who has made his dismay with the current state of the Liberal party known on many different occasions.

He's also holding a grudge for the party's attempts -- under Martin -- to lay the bulk of the blame for the Sponsorship Scandal on Jean Chretien.

To be fair, however, Chretien and Martin shouldn't be made to wear the entire blame for the feud that has diminished the Liberal party and its effectiveness. The Martin/Chretien feud finds its roots in various previous internal conflicts within the party: conflicts between Trudeau and Pearson supporters (although Pearson was welcoming to Trudeau, many of his supporters felt he never should have been allowed into the party, even at the cost of losing the opportunity to recruit Jean Marchand), liberal and conservative wings of the party, Walter Gordon-styled nationalists and Mitchell Sharp-styled neo-liberals.

The very real tensions within the party -- and the failures to resolve them -- derive from many different interrelated conflicts. Many of these conflicts will only continue to intensify as the party attracts dissident conservatives such as David Orchard and as individuals such as Bob Rae continue to rise in prominence within the party.

"The party failed to undergo a desperately needed renewal after being defeated in 2006 by Stephen Harper and the Conservatives.

Martin quit as party leader right after the election, launching a 10-month search for a successor.

Before the race officially started though, the party selected Tom Axworthy, a long-time Liberal policy adviser, to co-chair a Liberal Party Renewal Commission, with two dozen task forces to bring fresh perspectives to "policies and structure," from youth involvement to Canada's role in the world.

But once the leadership race began in earnest, Axworthy's commission was virtually shunted aside and ignored. It published several reports, but few Liberals read them and none of them have had any real impact on the party."

Not only did Axworthy's commission become an afterthought, but it was ill-conceived in the first place.

Tom Axworthy has long been considered the godfather of the left wing of the Liberal party. Any renewal commission acting under Axworthy's direction would inevitably find itself pushed toward left-wing policies (such as, per se, the Green Shift) that would alienate conservative Liberals.

Not only was the necessary renewal of the party never really taken seriously, but it was doomed from the get-go.http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9149446

"The 5,000 delegates at the Liberal leadership convention in December 2006 made a fatal mistake when they elected Dion as party leader over Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae, both of whom have proven more effective campaigners on the election trail. Their strong performances in this election have only further highlighted Dion's weaknesses.

In addition to his obvious shortcomings as a campaigner, Dion has also failed in his 22 months as leader to rebuild grassroots membership, undertake a major policy review open to all Liberals, get the depleted finances back in shape and prepare for the election."

Dion clearly failed to grasp the importance of the grassroots to the Liberal party. Instead, he spent a good deal of the time spent reorganizing the party at a fundamental level meeting and greeting Al Gore and striking electoral deals with marginal political figures (read: Elizabeth May).

Dion believed he was going to be key to Liberal political fortunes from the moment he entered the leadership campaign. As it turns out he has been, but not in the way he imagined.

"The ongoing feud between Ignatieff and Rae, while often overly hyped by political pundits, still divides the party internally."

Which is perhaps nothing less than what Canadians should have expected. This is also something that is going to get much worse before it gets better. After all, with Dion set to be put out to pasture following a potentially humiliating electoral defeat, the leadership question is only going to intensify over the coming months.

It's said that its darkest before the dawn.

With the Liberals continuing to sink in the polls, it's becoming obvious that the dawn still has yet to break.

Things will get darker still for the Liberals.

Divide and Conquer?

Grits target BC in last-ditch attempt to win election

In a negative ad released earlier in the 2008 federal election campaign, the Liberal party accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of practicing "divide and conquer" politics.

Now, with the polls solidly favouring the Conservatives with at least a 12-point lead as the days tick down to balloting day, the Liberals have set their sites on British Columbia in a last-ditch effort to squeak out of the 2008 campaign if not with a victory, then with a less-than-humiliating defeat.

The efforts seem to be organized by former BC (NDP) Premier Ujjal Dosinjh, who appears prominently in the mini-campaign.

When examining the TeamBC.ca website, it appears that the Liberal tactic seems to be throw everything -- Insite, 9/11 Conspiracy theories, the Canada Action Party -- against the wall and see what sticks.

The Liberals have even released a campaign ad targeted at BC:



Dosanjh appears in the ad lamenting about the alleged difficulty of making British Columbia heard in Ottawa, and promises that if voters support the Liberals, he will make it so. He insists that Harper is to blame for Ontario's recession -- despite the fact that the Dalton McGuinty Liberals are currently in power there -- and insists it must not be allowed to spread to BC.

He even drops George W Bush's name in the ad, stressing the need for a truly Canadian approach to global warming (it seems that will less than three months to go with Bush in office, the Liberals are trying to take as full advantage of it as possible).

The intent of this spot -- in fact, of this entire microcampaign -- is to brand the Liberal party as the party that will "fight for BC", while trying to counter-brand the NDP as crazed -- at one point relying on the expressed beliefs of the wife of an NDP MLA (you read that right -- the wife of an MLA) -- and the Conservatives as uncaring.

In the end, however, it's still going to be an uphill battle for the Liberals in BC. After all, Liberal premier Gordon Campbell's carbon tax remains extremely unpopular, and many British Columbians continue to worry about being double-carbon taxed.

This all may be too little too late for the Liberal party not only in BC, but in the entire country during this election campaign.

He's Kind of Angry For a Stoner

During the course of the 2008 federal election, NDP leader Jack Layton has run into some troubles over an alleged deal he struck with Marc Emery, the party has had some pot-related troubles.

Over the course of the campaign, Layton has shed two candidates over drug-related issues.

Layton himself denies the deal. But one particular individual -- clearly a Marijuana party activist -- takes exception to his denial.

Posting videos on YouTube under the name LyingLayton, one individual has taken it upon himself to reveal the depth of the alleged collaboration between Layton and Emery.

In one video, "LyingLayton" inserts numerous "fact checks" balloons into a video of Layton being asked by Jane Taber to comment on the allegations during an appearance on CTV's Question Period:



Another video features Layton speaking to Emery and Larsen's POT-TV, wherein Layton speaks ambiguously about marijuana decriminalization:



In another video, Layton appears on Much Music during the 2004 campaign in which he admits to having used marijuana (not terribly damaging, considering the broad number of Canadians who have either tried, or continue to use, marijuana).



During the video, Layton commits to removing marijuana from the criminal code, and commits to (as he previously described on POT-TV) a "rules-based system" wherein driving under the influence would remain forbidden (thus the removal of the irrepressible and irresponsible -- if not outright retarded -- Larsen as an NDP candidate).

In another video, Layton appears speaking with a Marc Emery and notes that his candidates are running on a platform of legalizing -- not merely decriminalizing -- pot:



He also invokes the expressed opinions of then-Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell, who also favoured reform of marijuana-related drug laws.

Layton also speaks of visiting Amsterdam, and expresses an opinion that legalized marijuana would somehow be "self-regulating".

In the final video, Emery stumps for Layton.



Layton "gets it", and is "one of us", Emery insists.

Maybe not so much as Emery believed. Not only does Layton seem to want to disassociate himself from his obvious association with Emery and his cohorts, but apparently was never in full solidarity with them in the first place.

After all, when Dana Larsen took video of himself driving while smoking pot, he must have believed that it was A-OK. Whether or not he ever imagined his party would be A-OK with it is another matter entirely.

In the end, however, it's certainly better that Layton is willing to stake limits on his association with the Marijuana party and its activists.

After all, anyone in this country whose favoured political issue is whether or not they can toke up legally is simply too stupid to be taken seriously, and should do all Canadians a favour by declining to vote.

John McCain Take Note

This is how you do it.