The first time I saw Andrew Scheer ranting and raving about the U.N. Global Compact for Migration, I couldn't understand what he was talking about. Or where he got that bizarre idea from.Especially since the Compact, which was endorsed the other day by almost all the countries in the world, is
Continue readingTag: Brexit
CuriosityCat: THE SOLUTION TO THE BREXIT PROBLEM
Having suffered an overwhelming defeat in Parliament today, PM May faces the stark choice of tabling a revised Brexit agreement what is approved by the majority of UK MPs. Despite the fact that a solution seems almost impossible to most observers, there IS one that could be successfully tabled on
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on the need for progressive leaders to treat consultation processes as a path to goals worth achieving rather than an excuse not to pursue them – particular in the face of right-wing politicians determined to reverse progress at the first opportunity. For further reading…– Ian Bailey notes that Quebec
Continue readingMontreal Simon: The Horror of Brexit and Some Magical Holiday Videos
It's hard to understand how much damage Brexit has done to Britain. You really have to see it for yourself, as I did last week.Jobs are being lost or moving to the EU, people are stockpiling food and medicines in case the hapless Theresa May has to settle for no
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Peak Separatism has passed in Alberta, no thanks to Postmedia’s sly campaign to undermine the Trudeau Government
Happy Holidays! It may take a few days for its perpetrators to admit this, but Alberta has all but certainly already passed Peak Separatism. The current 2018 spasm of Alberta separatist sentiment peaked late last week, probably some time Thursday afternoon. By the time we’re all saying Happy New Year
Continue readingBabel-on-the-Bay: The woe of women in politics.
Last weekend there was a trifecta in political opinions in the Toronto Star that were equally wrong. The paper must be desperate for more knowledgeable opinions other than their usual scribes. To my surprise, I was appalled at the opinion expressed by new democrat Robin V. Sears, concerned at the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Noah Smith writes that for all the recognition of poverty and precarity in the U.S., it may be home to even more material insecurity than normally presumed: Imagine a 55-year-old single woman with diabetes working a part-time job making close to minimum wage.
Continue readingMontreal Simon: The Brexit Disaster and the Hidden Face of Andrew Scheer
If you've been following the Brexit nightmare, you know what trouble Theresa May's Con Britain is in.With a new last chance deal, May herself, and the British economy in danger of going under.The Cons fighting themselves, and millions clamouring for a second referendum. But despite all that chaos, all that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Brexit Redux: Looking back at Jason Kenney’s strange comments when the U.K. shot itself in both feet
Back in June 2016, hours after Britons had narrowly voted to leave the European Union, a lot of Albertans scratched their heads at Jason Kenney’s bizarre Brexit commentary on social media. At the time, Mr. Kenney was still drawing a paycheque as the Conservative MP for Calgary Midnapore. He was
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Tom Kibasi writes that the UK’s best option in light of its impending Brexit is to develop a more active and entrepreneurial state: So in a sense, Brexit changes everything and changes nothing: it exacerbates the UK longstanding problem with an investment
Continue readingMontreal Simon: The People’s Vote March and the Con Brexiteers
It was the biggest march London has seen in more than twenty years. A massive march to demand a second referendum on the looming catastrophe called Brexit. The centre of London ground to a halt as an estimated 700,000 people from all over the UK marched peacefully on parliament to demand
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Conservatives would have fought harder to protect Canadian dairy farmers? Don’t believe it!
A lot of Canada’s Conservatives were wearing long faces yesterday about the impact of the freshly inked United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on this country’s dairy industry. As political sins go, this small hypocrisy is a minor one. Why not let the sitting government take the rap for a treaty with our
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Rick Strankman out as UCP candidate, latest Horner Dynasty scion in, deep in Alberta’s dinosaur country
Even if you’re no fan of Rick Strankman, United Conservative Party MLA for Alberta’s dinosaur country, you have to feel a little sympathy for the poor guy, skidded from his nomination by a candidate more appealing to party leader Jason Kenney. Mr. Strankman, 65, may not have been the sharpest
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading… – Thomas Torslov, Ludvig Wier and Gabriel Zucman examine the shifting of corporate profits to tax havens – and the false promise that corporate tax cuts will serve any purpose other than to undermine the collection of needed revenue by countries with real economies.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Remember when those confident British voters chose ‘hope over fear’ with Brexit? What Would Jason Tweet now?
While much of the world looked on in dismay as the results of the Brexit votes rolled in two years ago last month, Jason Kenney Tweeted his congratulations to the people of Britain for “choosing hope over fear by embracing a confident, sovereign future, open to the world.” How’s that
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Slippery Slope of Privacy
Those implicated in the Cambridge Analytica/AggregateIQ scandal inevitably contend that their uninvited intrusions and targeted messaging may have been unethical but they dispute that their acts were illegal and close with the assertion that there is no proof that their skulduggery actually changed anything, that it manufactured any votes for
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Another Watergate? Maybe.
Revelations about Cambridge Analytica, its principals (Steve Bannon, Robert Mercer, Rebekah Mercer and Alexander Nix), its clients or contacts (Corey Lewandowski, Ted Cruz, John Bolton, the Trump campaign), and the Cambridge subsidiary, Victoria’s AggregateIQ are a virtual tsunami. This is an unfolding trans-Atlantic scandal, a work in progress. Today it’s
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Wylie Outs the Wizards from Victoria, AggregateIQ.
The laws behind the Brexit referendum set strict spending limits for parties wishing to participate in it. The Leave campaign had four distinct supporting groups: Leave, BeLeave (a youth movement), Veterans for Britain, and the Irish gang, the political party that props up Theresa May’s Tory government, the DUP. Each
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Little Guy With the Funky Hair Lowers the Lumber on Cambridge Analytica, AggregateIQ, the Upset "Leave" Win on Brexit and the Upset Win of President Donnie Trump.
Christopher Wylie, the former research director for Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower, is giving evidence today before a British Parliamentary committee. In the case of Brexit, Wylie says it was not only misuse of data but also money laundering to give the Leave campaign a big financial advantage over the Stay
Continue readingWarren Kinsella: Hate and extremism in the Trump era – today at U of C’s Faculty of Law, live
This afternoon, I will be doing the Merv Leitch Memorial Lecture at my alma mater, the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Law. The topic, as the poster says, is the explosion in hate and extremism post-Brexit and post-Trump. And what we, in a civil society, can do about it. It’s
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