Author: Purple Library Guy

This will be a big-ish essay, and take a while to get to the stinger. For those who might not feel like reading to the end but who might accept my unsupported word: Go look at www.loomio.org. It’s very cool and I think it could be strategically important and should

One argument against wind and solar that I’ve seen over and over again is the notion that they’re just incapable of meeting our energy needs–that if you installed as much solar and wind as is practical, it still wouldn’t be an adequate energy supply. Therefore, the argument goes, we shouldn’t

We’ve always suspected it, but it’s one of those ideas like “Yasser Arafat was poisoned“–it seems kind of crackpot when you say it even though we know there’s a track record of that kind of thing. Sure, they did it to Chile before they toppled Salvador Allende, but that was

Many people complain that structural unemployment is on the rise because jobs have been offshored due to the endless capitalist quest to lower the wages they pay. The obvious change that would help would be to return to some degree of protectionism and pursue industrial policy along import-substitution lines. Free

Taking a break from long theoretical essays. I’m afraid they’ll be back soon. For now, Short note on that question period everyone’s talking about. To me, the point wasn’t to get specific answers from Harper in the sense that those answers would contain information. Rather, the line of questions seemed

What about the positive? Certainly I don’t think any campaign should lack a positive side. Positive and negative aren’t either or, they’re yin and yang that are both needed for a full campaign or political vision. You need a perception of what’s wrong, and a vision of what could instead

So now let’s talk about going negative. I believe that narrative makes all the difference when it comes to going negative. If you don’t have a narrative, then sliming your opponent is nothing more than that. Even if accurate, it will be perceived as mean-spirited. It generally only applies to

A narrative is like a frame only bigger. It’s an overall frame that fits most of your policies together and sums up why you object to the other guys. It’s a story that says what you stand for and why not standing for that means the other guys are standing

Well, having had my whining rant, I might as well get in on the post mortem. I’m substantially in agreement with Greg Fingas of Accidental Deliberations’ column here, which helped crystallize some of this. So this is a piece of my take on what the NDP should do and didn’t.

So, the BC Liberals won last night’s election. I’m sure there will be lots of post mortems over the next week or two, and some soul searching going on well past that. People will point out the flaws in the campaign, whinge about media coverage, wonder whether the NDP had

The United States isn’t shy about saying that their goal with respect to North Korea is the overthrow of the regime. They then simultaneously like to claim that it’s unreasonable for the North Koreans to allege they’re being threatened, but that’s not where I want to go. The US does

Arguably, the US actually lost the war in Iraq and is losing the war in Afghanistan. Iraq is certainly problematic for the invaders in that the government is now more pro-Iran than pro-US. But I’d say that in the ways that matter most to US policymakers, the war in Afghanistan

Read it here. I will miss him. I know many will. It’s my considered opinion that Chavez was the greatest statesman, and the strongest single progressive force, the world had seen in decades. His determination, great heart and wily political acumen pushed all of Latin America to the left. Aside

I’ve been seeing some things lately that have substantially altered my opinions about how things are going to go in the medium future, yanking them first in one direction and then the other. This is stuff of almost fundamental importance but I don’t see it being put together much out

Every so often, someone in the mainstream media will complain about the Conservative government’s muzzling of spokespeople, its secrecy, its general refusal to say anything about any subject that might embarrass it (which in the case of this government would be almost everything). Currently we have Jeffrey Simpson whining about the Cons’ refusal to answer questions, refusal to let their staff or scientists answer questions and so on. His conclusion is that there is nothing the media can do, that it’s a masterful, unanswerable tactic since the public don’t care and all the media can do is occasionally complain. What a pile of nonsense. I’m happy that Mr. Simpson sees a problem here, but this is a tactic that only works so long as the media is practically working for the government, insisting on giving the Conservatives stacks of legitimacy they do not deserve….

Odd little thought. It seems to me the US military’s weapon systems can be divided into two basic types. There are the “heavy” sort, designed for the Cold War with an eye to World War II-like scenarios. Big navy, big bombers, main battle tanks, all that kind of thing. These

The right has a fairly standard set of lines about what is appropriate to do about the problem of poverty. They believe that welfare is bad for the recipients, who become dependent and stop looking for jobs or doing other self-reliant types of things. They believe private charities, most particularly

Hugo Chavez has once again done one of the things he does best: Win. Once again, we have a deeply progressive president of Venezuela. In your face, neoliberal rich dudes! I was pretty sure when I saw the polls over the last couple of months. But I was damn sure