Share this: Regardless of one’s political predilections, one’s attitude toward the policies of Israel’s current government, or one’s view of Benjamin Netanyahu’s strengths and weaknesses as a retail politician, one has to admire the Israeli prime minister’s ability to make his point. His speech before the United Nations General Assembly
Continue readingAuthor: Daniel
wRanter.com: Preparing for the unlikely
Share this: A version of this post appeared as a signed editorial in The Canadian Jewish News on Sept. 12. As a new Jewish year begins, renewed U.S.-led peace talks continue between Israel and the Palestinians. Much has been written about the low expectations surrounding these negotiations on both sides. Certainly,
Continue readingAutonomy For All: The 0.01% Oppose Renewable Energy Because You Can’t Suck Rents From It
It doesn’t get much more naked than this (AP): A political group founded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch wants Georgia’s utility regulators to reject a plan requiring Southern Co. to buy more solar energy, but an Associated Press review ahead of a vote on the issue finds that
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Rape Apologia Disguised as Men’s Rights
This is outside my usual turf, but the more I think about this, the more angry it makes me: The “Don’t be that girl” poster reads: “Just because you regret a one night stand, doesn’t mean it wasn’t consensual. Lying about sexual assault = a crime.” Late Tuesday night a
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Stop Applying Marketing-Think To Government, It’s Disgusting.
CBC, with some analysis on Harper’s expected cabinet shuffle provides this quote from former Mulroney Chief of Staff David McLaughlin: “There’s a staleness about some of the ministry and some of the cabinet and how they’re communicating with Canadians; the look and feel of it. So there’s a chance to
Continue readingAutonomy For All: A Skeptical Look at Turks And Caicos Joining Canada
I’m sorry, I can’t get enthusiastic about Canada having its own tropical paradise without wondering what the financial angle is. The biggest alarm bells for me come from Turks and Caicos being notoriously corrupt (to the point that the UK Government took away home rule in 2009), with a higher
Continue readingAutonomy For All: The Resource Trap Explained
Canada is suffering from the Resource Trap, or Resource Curse. We don’t have it acutely yet, to the point of sterotypical corrupt petro-states, but we are suffering numerous symptoms from the list: Dutch Disease. Yes, Mulcair was right. Oil sales have driven up our dollar and made our manufacturing and
Continue readingAutonomy For All: The Canadian 1% Want To Privatize the CBC
And it’s just them, from a new Forum Research poll for the Globe & Mail, Canadians in general oppose privatizing the CBC by a 2:1 margin, and it is a majority (51%) who are decided against, versus only 25% who are for it. That’s the good news, and it is
Continue readingAutonomy For All: A Short List of Gun Product Safety Laws
One substory of the gun insanity in the US I had been unaware of previous to Newtown, was the bevy of liability shield laws (including a federal one) that protect gun manufacturers from the very normal product liability lawsuits that any other product maker would be subject to when their
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Not Impressed with NDP Climate Motion Ploy
Today the NDP’s environment critic used an opposition day to have the House of Commons vote on this motion: “That this House: (a) agree with many Canadians and the International Energy Agency that there is grave concern with the impacts of a 2 degree rise in global average temperatures; (b)
Continue readingAutonomy For All: America’s Political Nightmare in One Paragraph
My god this may be the finest paragraph Paul Rosenberg has ever written: In truth, the Republican party only has three problems: its policies are unpopular, its policies do not work, and they hate everybody who does not agree with them. In contrast, the Democratic party has only one problem:
Continue readingAutonomy For All: The Media Should Not Cover YouTube Attack Ads
If a political party isn’t willing to pay to put an ad into places people are likely to find it on their own (like TV, radio, newspaper or even paid online adverstising), the media should not provide free publicity to almost-no-cost “attack ad” content: There was no day off to
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Irony Collapses After Desperate Sprint to Not Get Lapped
Thin skinned anti-science idiot Chrisopher Monckton has a big sad that a bunch of actually smart people called out his errant nonsense as nonsense so he’s naturally doing what real intellectuals do when their ideas are challenged: Defend them, I mean complain to authorities and try to have the critics
Continue readingAutonomy For All: New Zealand Sets the Gold Standard For Monckton Journalism
This is how every article about one of Christopher Monckton’s revivalist evangelical bamboozlement roadshow sessions should go: Lord Monckton, who once argued for the quarantine of AIDS patients in internment camp-like facilities, is a vocal leader of the climate change-denying movement. In Copenhagen in 2009, the member of the right-wing
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Why Argue With Climate Change Deniers?
Recently on Twitter I engaged first the execrable Ezra Levant who had retweeted some obvious climate change denialist trolling to #cdnpoli (apparently the fact that it is cold at the coldest place on Earth in March is somehow proof that climate change is a lie) and later another persistent climate denier going off
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Market Totalitarianism
In a recent post I referred to conservatives who would prefer to return to the failed strategy of every person for themselves when it comes to retirement security as “free market totalitarian ideologues.“ The term actually occurred to me (and I expect I am not the originator or first user)
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Mayor Ford Was Asked to Leave the Ball
Ford Nation thinks this letter from 6 of the 13 members of the Military Ball organizing committee makes liars of the Toronto Star for reporting Ford was asked to leave the function for being intoxicated: “As a civilian member of the volunteer organizing committee of the 2013 Toronto Garrison Ball,
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Liberals Should Beware Emulating US Primaries
During the Liberal leadership debate over the weekend, several candidates, including Justin Trudeau and Joyce Murray came out in favour of what they’re calling “open nominations.” The idea being that the Liberal candidate in each riding will be picked by the members of that riding association, and the national leader will
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Conservative Pension Behavioural Utopianism
Conservatives like to portray themselves as hard-bitten “realists” who look objectively at the world as it really is and shake their heads at silly liberals with our rose coloured glasses. Yet I often find conservatives pushing policy ideas that are based on Utopian standards of human behaviour. This is where they make
Continue readingAutonomy For All: Joyce Murray for Liberal Leader
While I see some positives in Justin Trudeau, I will be voting for Joyce Murray. Trudeau has taken the “safe” route for frontrunners in avoiding releasing very much policy and some of what he has said seems to put him on track to be something other than what Canada needs.
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