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Post by riley on Jun 14, 2006 10:16:18 GMT -5
Riley – yeah Howard kicked ass. Man, they hate him so bad. Surprisingly, it was the Tory who came second, rather than the rather well-regarded Liberal. I loved when we lived in Epstein's riding. He seems like the ultimate enviro concerned local politician. Wasn't he a lawyer? Was his practice enviro focused? Something is ringing a bell here, but I can't recall. |
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Post by Dr. Drum on Jun 15, 2006 7:20:09 GMT -5
That's right, Riley, environmental law is one of Howard's specialties. At one point he was director of the Ecology Action Centre.
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Post by Dr. Drum on Jun 18, 2006 7:33:10 GMT -5
How close was Nova Scotia to an NDP majority government on Tuesday night? Seven seats that we lost by under 800 votes:
1. Guysborough-Sheet Harbour (225)
2. Lunenburg West (338)
3. Halifax Clayton Park (344)
4. Eastern Shore (361)
5. Hants West (488)
6. Hammonds Plains-Upper Sackville (516)
7. Kings South (702)
In Guysborough-Sheet Harbour, 225 votes equals an average of 5 more votes per poll. In Clayton Park it would be 6 and Lunenburg West, 8.
It’s coming....
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Post by Dr. Drum on Jun 29, 2006 6:22:58 GMT -5
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Post by phil on Jul 26, 2006 19:53:11 GMT -5
Harper's recent statements about the Israeli offensive in Lebanon
has finaly convinced me to get back in active political involvement
in the next federal elections.
I will do everything in my power to keep the Refons
from gaining more seats in the Québec region.
Fucking hell !! I'll even work for those stupid bloquistes
if it gives us a better chance of defeating Steevie !!
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Post by Dr. Drum on Jul 28, 2006 7:51:34 GMT -5
YAY, PHIL!!  From this morning's Rick Salutin column in the G&M: Official response to the death of Canadian Major Paeta Derek Hess-von Kruedener at a UN post in Lebanon was odd. There was no rush to praise his name, as there is for Canadians who fall in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister's response was impersonal and formulaic: "This regrettable incident underscores the dangers... in all the roles they undertake... far from our shores." He even seemed to blame the major, or the UN, for being there, asking "why [the post] remained manned." But many deaths in combat have an absurd, ignoble component. Our soldiers in Afghanistan commented just last week about the incongruity of dying by suicide bomb. A U.S. soldier in Iraq said, "Honestly, it just feels like we're driving around waiting to get blown up." The nobility in such situations consists in doing your duty, staying at your post, being brave, despite the pointlessness of your mission or the ineptitude of those who sent you on it. The major deserved better from his nation's leader.
Perhaps the PM stinted in his praise due to an underlying policy issue: He wants to change Canada's military stand to a more "robust," warlike one, and saw this as a chance to make the point. But I think there's something else. I don't think Stephen Harper likes Canada much, and is reluctant to take its part. You could see it in his words to a U.S. audience in 1997 that we are a "Northern European welfare state in the worst sense," or his advice to Alberta in 2001 to build a firewall separating it from the rest of us. He asks God to bless Canada, as if we badly need it. There are clearly countries he likes, such as the U.S. and Israel. He defends them as if he's their leader, even when a few simple questions -- about those Canadian deaths in Lebanon, for instance -- would suffice. Maybe he'll like Canada better when he's made it more like them, which, of course, is a legitimate political goal.FWIW, on this and a few other issues, I think Cons may be in the process of torpedoing any chance of a majority in the next election. Not that we can take that as a given, of course. I'd love to work in a riding next time where there was a chance to take out a Conservative incumbent! |
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Post by rockkid on Aug 6, 2006 10:05:23 GMT -5
Well I know I'm rueful as to how I voted.
The only good thing is the new equipment.
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Post by Dr. Drum on Aug 7, 2006 6:24:14 GMT -5
Yeah, but even there some of their decisions are, at best, questionable. Even Hillier was against buying C-17s.
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Post by rockkid on Aug 7, 2006 10:37:59 GMT -5
Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t regret doing that flag thing on the lawn a while back but, I’m getting so depressed at opening the blinds every morning & thinking it’s another damn day I can’t raise it yet.
Fucking sad. A friend of ours is now over there. He went with the latest batch.
Guy worked w the other ½ & used to come over.
It’s becoming almost too personal.
Man I’m worried for him.
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Post by rockkid on Aug 7, 2006 10:38:51 GMT -5
He's one person I never want to have to lower that flag for.
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Post by phil on Sept 18, 2006 9:06:20 GMT -5
This is simply incredible !! Part of an article in Friday's Globe & mail ... This week, Montrealers were asking: Why us? Youths elsewhere in Canada are addicted to violent video games. Youths elsewhere in Canada live in soul-less suburbs. Youths elsewhere are alienated and into Goth culture. Yet while there have been similar high-school tragedies, all three rampages at Canadian postsecondary institutions occurred here, not in Toronto, or Vancouver or Halifax or Calgary. "A lot of people are saying: Why does this always happen in Quebec?" says Jay Bryan, a business columnist for the Montreal Gazette, the city's only English-language daily. "Three doesn't mean anything. But three out of three in Quebec means something." What many outsiders don't realize is how alienating the decades-long linguistic struggle has been in the once-cosmopolitan city. It hasn't just taken a toll on long-time anglophones, it's affected immigrants, too. To be sure, the shootings in all three cases were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals. But what is also true is that in all three cases, the perpetrator was not pure laine, the argot for a "pure" francophone. Elsewhere, to talk of racial "purity" is repugnant. Not in Quebec.In 1989, Marc Lepine shot and killed 14 women and wounded 13 others at the University of Montreal's École Polytechnique. He was a francophone, but in the eyes of pure laine Quebeckers, he was not one of them, and would never be. He was only half French-Canadian. He was also half Algerian, a Muslim, and his name was Gamil Gharbi. Seven years earlier, after the Canadian Armed Forces rejected his application under that name, he legally changed his name to Marc Lepine. Valery Fabrikant, an engineering professor, was an immigrant from Russia. In 1992, he shot four colleagues and wounded one other at Concordia University's faculty of engineering after learning he would not be granted tenure. This week's killer, Kimveer Gill, was, like Marc Lepine, Canadian-born and 25. On his blog, he described himself as of "Indian" origin. (In their press conference, however, the police repeatedly referred to Mr. Gill as of "Canadian" origin.) It isn't known when Mr. Gill's family arrived in Canada. But he attended English elementary and high schools in Montreal. That means he wasn't a first-generation Canadian. Under the restrictions of Bill 101, the province's infamous language law, that means at least one of his parents must have been educated in English elementary or high schools in Canada. To be sure, Mr. Lepine hated women, Mr. Fabrikant hated his engineering colleagues and Mr. Gill hated everyone. But all of them had been marginalized, in a society that valued pure laine. ... I can't believe the "journalist" could write this and the G&M editors let it pass ... !! Whole piece ... www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060916.SHOOTMAIN16/TPStory/?query=Jan+Wong |
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Post by Dr. Drum on Sept 18, 2006 10:04:11 GMT -5
Jan Wong has always been known as a shit disturber, Phil. Saw that piece on the weekend. Factor in Taber and it isn't really "three out of three", anyway, but I'm sure if there had been three shootings over a space of years in Nova Scotia schools or universities, for example – or in Ontario or BC – there would be questions about whether it was somehow reflective of local culture. |
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Post by phil on Sept 18, 2006 11:25:05 GMT -5
Local culture my ass !!
There is no way anybody can make a parallel between the Polytechnic, Concordia(Fabrikant) and Dawson shooting sprees except to say that males with guns commited those crimes ! All three incidents have very distinct motives !!
Blaming Bill 101 for the actions of those individuals is trash reporting plain and simple !!
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Post by Dr. Drum on Sept 18, 2006 13:02:08 GMT -5
Phil – in case it wasn't clear, I don't disagree with you. I'm sure there are more than enough people in Quebec (and everywhere else, for that matter) who feel marginalized or alienated for whatever reason. The overwhelming majority don't amass arsenals of weapons and murder their neighbours. All I was saying was that I'd expect a little soul-searching anywhere where you have periodic recurrences of this kind of thing.
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Post by phil on Sept 18, 2006 14:31:43 GMT -5
And in case it wasn't clear, I got nothing against a "little soul searching" myself and we got plenty of that starting right after the fact thanks to our 24 hours cable TV news ...
No standing back, no reflexions, every 5¢/hour psys and their grandmothers were on TV trying to give answers to the assailant's motives ...
I know that the Québec society is far from perfect ...
but there is NO FUCKIN' WAY IN HELL that a provision of Bill 101
has anything ever so remotely to do with the tragedy that happened
and the stupid moron who wrote that piece of trash has absolutely
no journalistic and/or moral integrity ...
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