As reported this morning by the Canadian Press and posted at HuffPo, Québec is serving notice that if Harper continues with his plans to unilaterally “reform” the Senate, it will seek to have such a bill declared unconstitutional. The province arg…
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Blast Furnace Canada Blog: Germany says auf weidersehen to nuke plants
Germany’s centre-right coalition announced this morning that it is getting out of the nuclear power business entirely. All seventeen of its plants will be closed by 2022 at the latest. This has been a long held plank of the “Red-Green” alliance …
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: When is a scholarship a "forgiveable loan" (or vice versa)?
A very interesting class action lawsuit has been launched here in The Hammer. It involves students of Redeemer University College and their parents who claim they were ripped off by an enticing “forgiveable loan” scheme to offset the costs of the t…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: HuffPo takes on the Great White North
What a pleasant surprise when I saw the other day that Arianna Huffington launched a Canadian version of the Huffington Post. I was annoyed, as were other users, that for some reason the US pages were blocked — fortunately the webmeisters at AOL f…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Mladić arrested
The bid of Serbia to join the European Union, perhaps as early as 2014, may finally be on track with today’s news that Ratko Mladić has been arrested — in Serbia. It’s taken far too long, 16 years, but maybe at long last the healing the Balkan re…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Democrats pull another one out of the hat
A big surprise in last night’s by-election in New York 26 — the north and eastern suburbs of Buffalo, most of the “southern tier” and the western edge of Rochester. If you live in the Hamilton – Toronto area and therefore get the Buffalo affiliate…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: SCOTUS: California prisons overcrowded — duh
Yesterday, the US Supreme Court said that California is in violation of its own consent decree regarding prison conditions related to overcrowding — an unfortunate result of the well intentioned but totally misguided three strikes law that applies to …
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Obama: 1967 borders, please
It’s quite the provocation in the minds of many, but Barack Obama has done an almost complete reversal of what he said when campaigning in 2008.
At a meeting of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, then Senator Obama said that he suppo…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: When settlement groups go astray
Several months back, there was a huge storm when PMS cut off funding for Hamilton based SISO, the Settlement and Integration Services Organization effectively forcing it to close down. At first many felt it was a vendetta that Team Harper had again…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Splitsville for Ahnold, Shriver
Divorce is never a simple matter. Especially when it involves Arnold Schwarzenegger and his soon to be ex wife Maria Shriver. It is just possible if the truth above his love child came out during the 2003 recall, he might have never been electe…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Strauss-Kahn arrested
When I heard the news late Saturday night after work that IMF chief Dominique Strauss Kahn had been arrested for an alleged sexual assault in NYC just as his flight to Paris was getting ready to take off — presumably, the flight that would take him on…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Flooding on purpose
I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures, hence today’s forced flood in rural Manitoba to destroy a hundred or so homes in order to save another 1000 or more. Still one has to wonder why more preventative measures aren’t being taken be…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Day after …
Results (unofficial):
Conservatives 162
NDP 102
Liberals 34
Bloc 4
Green 1
Mr Harper may well have his long sought majority now, but he needs to understand that while he has the power the majority of Canadians who did not vote for him have the pen…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Vote 2011, and "that guy"
It’s all over but the voting and please make sure you do vote today. Remember it’s “ass-a-hole-as” like Osama Bin Laden who believe that democracy is a sin against God. More on him in just a second … but here’s my prediction for tonight (reme…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: The housing problem in the Great White North
Strangely I have had little to say about this year’s election in Canada. I can’t understand why since there appears to be an actual race and Jack Layton of the NDP is becoming a viable contender for second place. (The best I, personally, could …
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Harper shuts students out
I’ve been away from this space for a while but I feel I have to speak up about the news that some people were kicked out of Conservative events on the Harper tour because organizers recognized those persons as having been photographed with Michael Igna…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Contempt!
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. We’re headed for yet another election. In the last hour the House of Commons voted 156-145 to find Stephen Harper guilty of contempt of Parliament.
It really didn’t have to come to this. Recall L…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Final Countdown … [video]
As we approach the Final Countdown to what is almost certainly going to be a no-confidence vote based on contempt of Parliament tomorrow — a first anywhere in the Commonwealth — I just want to point out that it’s weird that for a party that claims to…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: World strikes back against Libya
I’ve often felt that military intervention is warranted when there are gross human rights violations, but often it has not happened where it was most needed or when it was too late — think Rwanda and Bosnia for instance. But now the rubber has hi…
Continue readingBlast Furnace Canada Blog: Tenno speaks
It must be getting really bad when Emperor Akihito of Japan goes on TV to address his subjects about the multiple disasters that have hit that country. Let’s just pray that nuclear reactor doesn’t actually become another Chernobyl although it’s get…
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