As the sometimes tedious nomination process for the 2012 GOP nominee continues along we have been treated to the usual asymmetry in the media’s attention to this process towards the ‘celebrity’ candidates. First is was Trump who, while never considered…
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Progressive Proselytizing: Canada supports 1967 borders after all despite blocking this position at G8
Faced with significant pressure, Harper’s Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has affirmed that Canada does, in fact, support Obama’s position of using the 1967 borders with land swaps as a basis for a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine. In …
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Right to Exist: An Inflated Conflict
If one follows the negotiation process over the years between Israel and Palestine, one finds an asymmetry between the issues raised and argued for in the negotiation process and the the political and media rhetoric. One of the issues that is largely a…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Canada dutifully fulfills the US’s role towards Israel
Canadian policy and rhetoric has been staunchly pro-Israel for a long a time. It is a stance which, especially with Harper at the helm, arguably resulted in Canada’s inability to win a security council seat last year. However, despite adopting a positi…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The left needs to reconsider public funding of parties
With Harper’s recent majority it was inevitable that his party would start pushing through policies that were not politically possible when they only had a minority. The first major example is going to be in campaign finance – in particular, phasing ou…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: SlutWalk and Sluts
The fact that SlutWalk has rapidly ballooned into a multinational protest movement from an ill-spoken comment by a Toronto policeman represents a distinct and poignant feeling latent in our societies. Namely, the idea that provocative dressing or actio…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Harper’s anti-democratic senate appointments.
Harper has appointed three senate seats from among his party. Here is the kicker: these people just lost their election campaigns to be MP’s.
Opposed to supporting democratic influences it is actively rewarding loyal party members even thought they l…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: On Faith and Inductive Logic
Perhaps largely due to its strong religious associations, the word ‘faith’ is often significantly abused by both sides of the religious debate. The result has been some consistent misconceptions about the meaning and significance of the word.
Firstly,…
Progressive Proselytizing: Western media coverage of the recent border protests around Israel
Consider this Globe and Mail story detailing the protests met with deadly force that have occurred on the Israeli border in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon. It does an acceptable job of detailing the basic facts for those unfamiliar with them, but I want to l…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Our reactions to homeless people
It is quite natural to feel some sense of revulsion towards homeless people. They may be smelly, unclean, imposing on our presence and saying strange things; this kind of appearance and place in society is diametrically opposed to the ideals most of us…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: After an election about personalities, not policies, we can and must do better
We have just witness an election which while historic in many ways was not one of any significance in terms of a discussion of actual issues or policies. The political choices of all four major leaders – and we the audience who responds to them – focus…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The Liberal party needs to play a long game on leadership
After its crushing defeat on May 2nd, the Liberal party has some considerable soul searching to do. Not least among its problems is the task that has recently proved most difficult for them: choosing a leader. How it accomplishes this task will be of c…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: TFSAs and progressive savings policies
With Harper’s majority secured, it is quite likely that the popular Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSA’s) will double the allowable contributions to $10k per year by 2014. There is a considerable benefit to policies that encourage higher savings rates but…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Electoral math II: vote splitting in the Liberal ridings the Conservatives won
While there was an enormous transfer of seats towards the NDP from the Bloc and to a lesser extent the Liberals, the Conservatives managed to move from a minority to a majority largely due to 26 seats they picked up from the Liberals. Three weeks ago, …
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Electoral Math I: Vote Splitting and the NDP+Liberal merger hypothesis
This historic election has seen the complete collapse of the Bloc Québécois and the decline in the Liberal party to historic lows while propelling the Conservatives to a majority government and the NDP to the official opposition. With the governing…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Harper’s centralization of the democratic process: the litmus test for the next four years
Leaving all policy discussion aside, one of the most disheartening aspects of the last five years of minority government under Harper has been a consistent erosion of the adversarial process in our democracy. The list is long but includes: centralizi…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The relationship between public goods and sovereignty
As our world modernizes, the relationships of self determination and sovereignty flex and change. Technological and sociological changes have made the provision of a wide variety of public goods possible at much larger scales. There is a trade off, ho…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Egypt’s Shifting Geopolitical Policies: A Consequence of Democracy
The recent democratization of Egypt has resulted in a series of distinct policy changes with regards to Israel, Palestine and Iran. These changes ultimately represent a shift in Egyptian policy towards the popular opinion of many Egyptians that are bec…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: Parkdale-Highpark Riding All Candidates Debate Response
I recently attended the all candidates debate for the Parkdale-Highpark riding hosted by the BWVRA and wanted to share my thoughts on the debate, the candidates and various issues that were brought up. While this post will undoubtedly be specific t…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The NDP surge and its consequences
The largest political story of the week has nothing to do about policies, it is about the fact that after months of poll numbers that stubbornly refused to budge the NDP has actually experienced a considerable surge in popularity confirmed by a half do…
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