Today is Independence Day, the 4th of July, best known in Canada as the setting for the country gothic hit of the same name but, of course, also our cacophonous cousins’ national holiday. The occasion nominally marks the 243rd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by the citizens of the
Continue readingTag: Geopolitics
Alberta Politics: Another week in the Annals of Diplomacy: in stormy times, half a loaf is better than none
From the sublime to the ridiculous, it would appear, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government will do anything to keep Donald Trump sweet. Consider the dissimilar cases of Meng Wanzhou and Stephanie Clifford. The first we won’t allow to leave Canada, the second we won’t allow to visit. Both, obviously, because
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Left by the pope with a choice between glory to God and death to the carbon tax, what will Jason do?
Turns out you really can’t serve God and Mammon! Who knew? Tout le monde Conservative Alberta was reeling over the weekend at Friday’s news from Rome that Pope Francis, leader of 1.3 billion Catholics, has declared global warming to be a real thing and putting a price on carbon to
Continue readingAlberta Politics: U.S. brags about targeting Russian power plants with cyber-attacks – have they lost their minds?
Back in 2011, not long after Barack Obama had been sworn in as president of the United States, a Pentagon spokesperson warned that henceforth and forevermore, the United States intended to treat cyber-attacks by other nations as acts of war. “A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the U.S.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Guest Post by Olav Rokne: Since all political careers end in trivia, here’s the scoop on America’s would-be presidential candidates
Guest Post by Olav Rokne British statesman (and repugnant racist) Enoch Powell once famously remarked that all political careers end in failure. While there may be some truth to his observation, I would suggest that it might be even more accurate to say that all political careers eventually become trivia.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: There’s not much Jason Kenney’s ‘war room’ can do to ease medical concerns about health impacts of climate change
FREDERICTON, N.B. – Whatever will Jason Kenney’s $30-million “war room” do about people like the nurses and physicians around the world growing increasingly troubled by the health impacts of climate change? They are, after all, members of two professions most trusted by the Canadians according to survey after survey going
Continue readingAlberta Politics: An election’s coming and the PM’s treading water – where’s a Russian to blame now that we need one?
It was a year ago Friday that the government of Canada declared Kirill Kalinin and three other Russian diplomats persona non grata and sent them packing for using, in the words of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, “their diplomatic status to undermine Canada’s security or interfere in our democracy.” Nobody bothered
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Has anyone thought about the impact regime change in Venezuela will have on Alberta’s oilpatch? It won’t be pretty!
In the stampede by Canadian politicians of all ideological stripes to support Venezuela’s self-declared “interim president,” has anyone given even a nanosecond’s thought to the impact the handover of the troubled South American petrostate’s government to Juan Guaido would have on Alberta’s oilpatch? It won’t be pretty. The federal government’s
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Everything you always wanted to know about Rand Paul and the Shouldice Hernia Hospital * but were afraid to ask
I’m sorry to report, Canada, that Rand Paul, the nutty libertarian son of the crazy uncle of the American Right, isn’t the only politician to stumble into a controversy for getting repairs at the Shouldice Hernia Hospital. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first there’s a backstory. According
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Guest Post by Olav Rokne: America’s Democrats need to saddle up a dark horse
Considering his scandal-ridden administration, a shaky economy, and his disagreeable public presence, it’s easy for progressives to assume that Tovarishch Trump will be a one-term president. But here’s the bad news: There’s a very real chance that Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, will be re-elected. For
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Seriously, what’s the good of an effective carbon tax if it’s politically impossible to implement?
Recent political developments in France and Alberta, though quite different in tone, suggest carbon taxes may not be a viable way to address climate change – leastways not without reaching an unlikely consensus they must be imposed. You may not believe me yet, but you can count on it, politicians
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Colourful former Wildrose MLA Joe Anglin finds another windmill to tilt at, for Freedom Conservative Party
Last observed pursuing a claim against Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer alleging abuse of process, colourful former MLA Joe Anglin has found a new way to tilt at Alberta’s perpetually swirling political windmill. Mr. Anglin, 63, who is both the former Wildrose Party MLA for Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre and the former
Continue readingAlberta Politics: As Edmonton and Ottawa awake to Jason Kenney’s (un)diplomatic funny business, stuff starts hitting the fan
Alberta Opposition Leader Jason Kenney and two of his MLAs are running around India again today acting as if they are representatives of the governments of both Canada and Alberta. Officials of the provincial government in Edmonton and the federal government in Ottawa appear to have been so nonplussed by
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Day We Burned Ole DC Down? It was today, actually … 204 years ago
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Day We Burned Ole DC Down? It was today, actually. But if this was big news 204 years ago, when the fire was actually lit by the Royal Marines and sundry British Army regiments – revenge for the Americans burning down York, now part of Toronto,
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: The DWR Geopolitical Interlude – Conflict in the Ukraine
The lives of the common people seem to always come last when it comes to geopolitical considerations.
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Notice to readers: AlbertaPolitics.ca is closed … sort of
Notice to readers: I expect to be on the road for a few days and so AlbertaPolitics.ca is officially closed for vacation. Which, as regular readers of this blog will understand, doesn’t necessarily mean there will be no posts whatsoever. There may well be a few – mood and WiFi
Continue readingAlberta Politics: U.S. and Canadian right-wing politicians march in lockstep as they dismiss facts as conspiracy, disagreement as criminality
Apparently infected by the decline of political discourse in the United States, the Canadian right is increasingly moving toward defining the use of facts that run counter to its narrative as conspiracy and policy disagreement criminality. If you doubt this, consider recent Tweets by the likes of Calgary Conservative MP
Continue readingAlberta Politics: What’s the appropriate response to Riyadh’s diplomatic hysterics? How about reopening our embassy in Tehran?
Is there an appropriate response by Canada to the bizarre events of the last few hours on the diplomatic circuit? It’s not just that Canada’s ambassador has been kicked out of Saudi Arabia for Tweets by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and an official in her department that by
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Will Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic tantrum provoke a moment of cognitive dissonance for Canada’s ‘ethical oil’ crowd?
Saudi Arabia has given the Canadian ambassador 24 hours to pack his bags and go home because, the Saudi Foreign Ministry complains, Canada is meddling in the internal affairs of the oil-soaked feudal theocracy by expressing concern in Tweets about its arrests of human rights activists, clerics and journalists. Last
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Stephen Harper’s Paris speech to Mojahedin-e Khalq: No laws were broken; appropriate interests were served; get over it!
Many readers would be offended if someone were to suggest the Roman Catholic Church was a former terrorist organization with cult-like attributes. Still, wouldn’t terrorism be a fair description of the Inquisition, the brutal effort to root out heresy carried out from the 12th to the early 19th centuries by
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