Political corruption kills more people than war and famine combined. I addressed the United Nations on how the international community can and must act to bring kleptocrats to justice.
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The Canadian Progressive: John Baird was tossed overboard by Harper’s dictatorship-style PMO
Stephen Harper’s dictatorship-style PMO forced John Baird to resign as Canada’s foreign affairs minister and chicken out of the 2015 federal election. The post John Baird was tossed overboard by Harper’s dictatorship-style PMO appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Manuel Perez-Rocha writes about the corrosive effect of allowing businesses to dictate public policy through trade agreements: (C)orporations are increasingly using investment and trade agreements — specifically, the investor-state dispute settlement provisions in them — to bring opportunistic cases in arbitral courts, circumventing
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Martha Friendly highlights how families at all income levels can benefit from a strong child care system: Isn’t it the Canadian way to include people from diverse groups and social classes in community institutions like public schools, community recreation facilities, public colleges
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Star criticizes the Harper Cons’ selective interest in international cooperation – with war and oil interests apparently ranking as the only areas where the Cons can be bothered to work with other countries. And Catherine Porter reports that the Cons have demonstrated
Continue readingAlberta Diary: Ten Questions about the Harper Government’s embrace of war with ISIS-ISIL-IS
Ready, Aye, Ready! Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird whips up the War Party in the House of Commons. Below: Stephen Harper, the prime minister, and Edmonton Centre MP Laurie Hawn. Stephen Harper, John Baird, Laurie Hawn and the rest of the boys yesterday finally got the war in Iraq they’ve
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On consensus-breaking
Having earlier dealt with Stephen Harper’s attempt to justify war by building up hatred and hype toward ISIS, I’ll note the other main rationale on offer from the Cons – which can generally be described as government by wrong answer to a rhetorical question: If Canada wants to keep its
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Linda Tirado writes about life in poverty – and the real prospect that anybody short of the extremely wealthy can wind up there: I haven’t had it worse than anyone else, and actually, that’s kind of the point. This is just what life
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Lana Payne examines the Cons’ economic record and finds it very much wanting: Inequality has deepened under Mr. Harper’s watch, job quality has declined, wages have stagnated, economic growth has been anemic, social protections have been reduced while corporate profits and CEO pay
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Linda McQuaig discusses how a politically-oriented audit of the CCPA fits with the shock-and-awe part of the right’s war against independent (and public-minded) though: In the conservative quest to shape public debate in recent years, no tool has proved more useful than
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
This and that for your weekend reading. – Andrew Jackson writes that public investment is needed as part of a healthy economy, particularly when it’s clear that the private sector isn’t going to put massive accumulated savings to use. Bob McDonald notes that we’d be far better off using public
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, questioning whether Canadians share Stephen Harper’s newly-professed aspiration to spend tens of billions of dollars more every year to prop up U.S. and U.K. military contractors. For further reading…– David Pugliese reported on this week’s NATO summit. – NATO’s most recent spending calculations are here (see PDF link), showing
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: That Was Predictable
Way back in 2003 when the United States invaded Iraq (long before the Afghanistan mess had been anything close to resolved), I remember having a conversation in which I said that within 5 years of the US withdrawal from Iraq, that the country would founder in civil war. (I believe
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Harper: A Decade In And He Still Doesn’t Get It
Stephen Harper has been in power for the high side of a decade. That’s a long time. Most Prime Ministers by this point in their careers have figured out that the foreign affairs portfolio is a tricky one. When you are a smallish nation like Canada, you get much better
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Brian and Karen Foster question why steadily improving productivity has led to increasing stratification rather than better lives for a large number of people: (W)ith all the optimism, why hasn’t technological progress actually opened up a world where we all work, and we
Continue readingAkaash Maharaj - Practical Idealism: Akaash Maharaj: Gold Medal Hypocrisy at the Sochi Winter Olympics – Toronto Star
Nothing in Sochi did more to honour and advance the Olympic ideals than the worldwide fight for equality unleashed by Russia’s infamous homophobic law. My post-Olympic analysis in the Toronto Star.
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: It’s About Recognizing The Realities
Over at Huffington Post, one of their columnists, JJ McCullough, is pontificating on Harper’s trip to Israel. In the comments, we find HP blogger Mitch Wolfe making the following daft statement: This article is an excellent summary of Harper’s pro Israeli policies. It also provides an excellent summary of the
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Harper’s New Anti-Semitism
Few things make me angrier than the propensity of the far right to twist things. In today’s speech to Israel’s Knesset, we find this lovely little gem: “A state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish as Jews, and seek shelter
Continue readingThe Cracked Crystal Ball II: Harper Is A Boy In Short Pants On Foreign Policy
When it comes to matters of Foreign Policy, Harper is neither subtle or particularly smart. As with all things in Harper’s world, it’s all about partisan position and absolutes. Yesterday’s announcement of Vivian Bercovici’s appointment as Canada’s new ambassador to Israel fits that pattern exactly. Ms. Bercovici is one of
Continue readingAkaash Maharaj - Practical Idealism: Akaash Maharaj – News: Corruption Declared a Crime Against Humanity
Reuters reports on our efforts at the United Nations: There are some forms of corruption so grave, whose effects on human life, human rights, and human welfare are so catastrophic, that they should shock the conscience of the international community and mobilise the will of nations to act across borders.
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