Harper promised that His Canada would punch above her weight on the global scene, and he was right. Oh sure he got us ramped up on a futile, inconclusive foreign war, but our true behemoth status is in greenhouse gas emissions. Miniscule little Canada, with our 35-million population, is the
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The Disaffected Lib: The Way It Is – Slow Turning, Hiatt
I’m beginning to realize there aren’t many of us mourning the demise of the Canadian Left. Even veteran NDP’ers seem quite happy to watch their party become Latter Day Libs, helping the Conservative Lite Libs help Harper achieve his prime objective of shifting Canada’s political centre well to the right.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Even the NDP Has Jettisoned the Left
Rick Salutin says what’s been obvious for some time – the New Democratic Party has ditched the Left in favour of liberalism thus helping the “conservative-lite” Libs help Harper achieve his paramount goal of permanently shifting Canada’s political centre well to the right.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: An Army of One? Well, Not Quite.
It sounds as though the Pentagon has had about a belly full of decadal, inconclusive ground wars of the sort it found in Iraq and Afghanistan. Goodbye Army. Hello Air Force, Hello Navy. If armies make much sense at all today it’s in the “whack a mole” mission of swatting
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Inequality at 30-Year High
Inequality in wealth quickly metastasizes into other afflictions including inequality in income and inequality in opportunity. It chokes off social mobility and nurtures the ascendancy of an oligarchy in which political and economic power is siphoned away, particularly from the middle classes, to a new ruling order. Now the OECD
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Friday Night Drumming
Keith Moon. “The Ox.” The video can’t keep up with him. Not even close. And don’t you just wish you had been there on this night?
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The F-35 – "It Sucks the Wind Out of Your Lungs"
The Pentagon’s F-35 programme director wants to slow down production because of the mass of problems turning up in testing. “The analyzed hot spots that have arisen in the last 12 months or so in the program have surprised us at the amount of change and at the cost,’ U.S.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: No Wonder Harper Adores the American Right
How debased, how low-fallen has America become that a leading candidate for the Republican Party presidential nomination can get away with saying something like this? Watch Newt Gingrich lament how America’s poor children won’t work “unless it’s illegal.” Get’em out to work just as soon as they can hold a
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Countries that Matter Most Throw in the Towel on Global Warming
It’s a chilling story, one that, if true, has existential implications for life on Earth. The Guardian reports that rich nations have “given up” on reaching a new climate treaty until 2020. Ahead of critical talks starting next week, most of the world’s leading economies now privately admit that no
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Rise of a New Confederacy or Peering Into the Soul of Stephen Harper
Do you ever have trouble figuring out just what makes an authoritarian git like Stephen Harper tick? An article from In These Times entitled “New Confederacy Rising” offers some helpful insights into why the radical, fundamentalist Right seem so bizarre. They don’t just act nuts, they are nuts. What has
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Sky is Falling – US Generals Warn America in Real Danger if Military Spending is Cut
A US Marine Corps general is the latest stuffed tunic to warn of dire consequences to America if the Pentagon’s budget is cut. Corps Commandant General James Amos says he’s sure that something sort of awful will befall the American military from budget cuts. “We as a nation don’t even
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Propaganda Busting – Social Security
Anyone who follows American politics will have heard the Right’s endless demands for “entitlement reform.” They argue that Social Security is on the verge of insolvency and therefore payouts need to be trimmed. After all, how can you maintain insane tax cuts for the rich if you have to pay
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Greenhouse Gas Increases Accelerating.
The operative word is “accelerating.” The World Meteorological Organization reported today that,“the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit a new record in 2010 and that the growth of the buildup is accelerating.” “The increase between 2009 and 2010 was above the average for the last two decades. “Between
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Climate Change Isn’t Happening If You Can’t Learn About It
How else can you explain the extraordinary efforts of the Harper regime and its US Congressional counterparts to suppress climate change information getting to the public. As chronicled in The Guardian recently, Steve Harper has been using spending cuts to undermine groups such as Climate Action Network Canada, a NGO
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: America – Segregation is Back
The United States has been wrestling with racial segregation for decades and, while considerable progress has been made in some areas, plenty remains to be fixed. But a new form of segregation is on the rise – wealth segregation. The gap between rich and poor is more than statistical. A
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Harper EnviroShill Kent Calls Opposition "Treacherous"
According to Harper’s greasy EnviroShill, Peter Kent, two NDP MPs who went to Washington to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline were “treacherous.” “One of the opposition parties has taken the treacherous course of leaving the domestic debate and heading abroad to attack a legitimate Canadian resource which is being responsibly
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: We’re Causing Climate Change. It’s Here and It’s Going to Keep Getting Worse.
So, it’s official. The latest IPCC report is out and it does link man-made global warming directly to the climate change we’ve been experiencing. The report also concludes that man-made global warming will lead to a continuation of severe storm events of increasing intensity and frequency; cyclical droughts and floods,
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Herman Cain, Save Your Campaign. Shut Up!
Like Rick Perry, Herman Cain’s worst political enemy is his mouth. Once he opens that, gibberish pours out, decidedly unpresidential gibberish. Herman has told the world that China is a threat because it is actively seeking nuclear weapons, oblivious to the fact China has had a nuclear arsenal for
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: When They Preach Austerity, They’re Just Screwin’ With You
Western leaders weren’t listening in 2006 and 2007 when genuine “thinking” economists like Krugman and Stiglitz were warning that their house of cards was about to collapse. Even self-proclaimed economists like Harper ignored them and later said no one could see the collapse of 2008 coming. No one who
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: A Call to Arms – The Case For Fighting Back Against the Northern Gateway Pipeline
Rafe Mair, writing in The Tyee, makes a powerfully compelling argument for British Columbians to do whatever it takes to stop Harper and Alberta from imperiling our province’s coastline with tar sands supertanker traffic. It’s not a matter of if there’s an accident, it’s only a matter of time and it’s only a
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