Bill Longstaff
... political peregrinations from a progressive perspective ...
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29 March 2008
bin Laden's puppets
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Listening to U.S. presidential candidate John McCain reminds me once again how remarkably successful al-Qaeda was with their bombings of 9/1...
27 March 2008
Talking to the Taliban
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The Globe and Mail deserves applause for its courage in publishing its new series "Talking to the Taliban." Rather than simply dem...
1 comment:
26 March 2008
Welcome, the ethnic cleanser
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Moshe Feiglin, notorious member of Israel's Likud party, favours us with a visit this week. Feiglin, who has supported expelling Israel...
20 March 2008
Is Kosovo a precedent or not?
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Bob Rae says it's an "insult to the intelligence" to tout Canada's recognition of Kosovo's independence as a precedent...
2 comments:
19 March 2008
Here's some good news
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Lots of blood and violence in the news these days: Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Tibet, and so on ad nauseam. But it isn't all bad. On the ...
18 March 2008
There's drugs and then there's drugs
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Reading my morning Globe recently, I encountered a prominent half-page ad (very pricey those), paid for by the Government of Canada, warning...
17 March 2008
Free trade or slave trade?
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In 2001, the World Trade Organization accepted China as a member. China made the usual promises: opening its markets to foreign investors an...
14 March 2008
Afghanistan: the pig in the poke
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Yesterday, the House of Commons voted to extend our mission in Afghanistan. One might think the first question to be asked would have been h...
1 comment:
10 March 2008
Was Moses a doper?
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Who or what inspired the ten commandments? God. you say. You may believe so, but Benny Shanon of Jerusalem's Hebrew University suggests ...
What a diabolical species we are
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Here's a series of logic for you: Alberta Sustainable Resources Development is initiating a project to shoot adult and baby wolves. Why?...
06 March 2008
Another case of pots and kettles
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The United States has taken umbrage at China's buildup in its defence forces. China revealed a 17.6 per cent increase in its military bu...
05 March 2008
Alberta election: is the environment a lost cause?
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Monday's election result in Alberta, a major victory for the incumbent Conservatives, wasn't exactly my first choice. Not simply bec...
29 February 2008
Running away from anti-Semitism
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Israel has recently said nice things about Canada's misguided approach to a UN-sponsored anti-racism conference. The conference, entitle...
1 comment:
27 February 2008
You go, Hillary (and you, too, Barack)
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If the two Democratic candidates for the U.S. presidency were both looking good before, they are looking even better today. Hillary Clinton ...
The Kosovo divorce: should we or shouldn't we?
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Kosovo, it appears, is divorcing itself from Serbia. This has raised no little angst in Canada with its obvious analogy with Quebec. So the ...
26 February 2008
Time to listen to the Arab street
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Doesn't this shout out that something is fundamentally amiss? Iran, a dictatorship, supports two of the most democratically successful o...
25 February 2008
Even the oil industry says slow down
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Voices ranging from environmentalists to Alberta elder statesman Peter Lougheed have been warning that oil sands development is proceeding f...
20 February 2008
Kudos for Campbell
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B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell is cutting quite the environmental figure these days. His government's new budget, delivered in the legisla...
19 February 2008
Oil profits ignore Alberta's royalty increase
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The whine from the oil industry was positively ear-splitting during the recent royalty debate in Alberta. When the Royalty Review Panel rele...
15 February 2008
Why not an Afrocentric school?
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As the Toronto District School Board prepares to set up an Afrocentric school, the question of the day becomes, Is it justified? Ontario Pre...
12 February 2008
Anti-American? Do I have a choice?
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Anti-American. The tedious old saw that conservatives, and even liberals from time to time, hurl at leftists when they challenge American fo...
06 February 2008
Freedom of the press ... nice, if you can afford it
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An editorial in Monday's Globe and Mail took umbrage at human-rights commissions for agreeing to hear complaints from Muslim groups abou...
28 January 2008
It's sprawl vs. the planet, and sprawl is winning
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Recent surveys that show Canadians are becoming increasingly car-dependent are not good news for the environment. According to Statistics Ca...
2 comments:
24 January 2008
If you frighten easily ...
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If you frighten easily, you may not want to read the quotation below from Pulitzer-prize winning author Tim Weiner's thought-provoking (...
22 January 2008
Blair and bin Laden: comrades in extremism?
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Having recently posted on the mad antics of George W. Bush in the Middle East, I feel I must add a comment on the recent musings of former B...
18 January 2008
Has Bush gone completely freaking crazy?
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What kind of a man saunters into a neighbourhood and tries to turn neighbour against neighbour? And then provides guns to one of the neighbo...
16 January 2008
Harper's Palestine policy: sucking up to the Aspers?
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That the Conservatives should side strongly with the Jews over the Arabs in Palestine is to be expected. Conservatives, after all, are incli...
10 January 2008
A carbon tax: responsible, moral and fair
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When I was little, I was instructed at my mother's knee that if I made a mess I should clean it up. It was one of those rule of life thi...
07 January 2008
Wasting precious space in The Globe and Mail
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As an inveterate reader of The Globe and Mail (persevering even through the new year's 25 per cent price increase), I am struck by the c...
1 comment:
03 January 2008
Try Omar Khadr for what?
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Five of Britain's top legal organizations are calling on the Canadian government to take "urgent action" to bring Omar Khadr, ...
18 December 2007
The Mounties: reform the symbols?
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While Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day deals with the much-needed administrative and structural reforms of the RCMP recommended by the B...
17 December 2007
"Star Wars" catches on
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While the West has obsessed, needlessly as it turns out, with Iran developing nuclear weapons, nuclear activity elsewhere heats up. In addit...
13 December 2007
China and the U.S.: the peaceful dictatorship vs. the belligerent democracy
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The announcement this week that the Chinese had signed a multi-billion dollar deal to develop a giant oil field in Iran contrasts yet again ...
29 November 2007
The alchemy of P3s
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Governments seem forever seduced by the allure of public-private partnerships (P3s). With traditional procurement, a government hires a priv...
26 November 2007
Iraq: If it was all about oil, it worked
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In return for "guaranteed long-term security," the Iraqi government is about to grant the United States the right to station 50,0...
21 November 2007
Canada's foreign policy: guns over butter?
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In a recent address at York University entitled " Restoring a Broadly-based Canadian Foreign Policy ," Joe Clark (that's the ...
14 November 2007
Growth hammers Calgarians' quality of life
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With Alberta's booming economy front and centre in the financial news, observers might expect Calgary's quality of life to be boomin...
07 November 2007
Misogynist mates
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How fitting Pope Benedict XVI and King Abdullah Bin-Abd-al-Aziz Al Saud of Arabia should sit down for a heart-to-heart. They have so much ...
03 November 2007
U.S. neither morally nor logically armed to negotiate with Iran
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U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continues to insist the American administration is "fully committed to a diplomatic solution w...
02 November 2007
Flaherty is right on corporate taxes
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Much of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's tax package has been criticized, and rightly so, particularly the cut in the GST, but he is on t...
1 comment:
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