Liberals need to recongnize some hard truths about the media

The Liberals need to recognize some hard truths.

1)Most of what the Liberals say does not interest the media in the slightest. This goes for large issues as well as small. Just because something is important does not render it “newsworthy.” The media do not care about the Liberal income trust plan. They do not care about the Kelowna accord. They do not care about the Liberal record. They do not care when Dion's blathers on about "social justice". ....

2)As far as the English media is concerned, Dion’s grammar and accent do not make for great TV. Focus his energies on Quebec and in the rest of country use others, in particular Bob Rae.

3)Trying to use the media as vehicle for getting your message out is like trying to pass a message to someone across a large room by having a series of people whisper in the ear of the person next to them. What message is eventually received is seldom the same as the message given.

4)For the vast majority of Canadians, what Liberal “messaging” they come across comes from the media.

5)The media is by far the most important focus group.

6)The media love hot button issues. No Liberal bill under Paul Martin garnered anywhere near the amount of press as the SSM bill.

7)Media love of hot button issues ensures that these issues define political parties. SSM is again a good case in point.

8)If an issue takes off, sit back. Pundits, academics and indeed bloggers are far better positioned to champion a particular policy than a political party. Like any good therapist direct the discussion and do not become part of it.

9)The Canadian media are a conservative bunch, but are not socially conservative.

10)Promise to legalize marijuana, euthanasia and in the firestorm that is sure to follow the Canadian media will brand the Conservative party in ways that will hurt the Conservatives at the polls. Although extremely conservative in outlook, Macleans, the National Post, the Fraser Institute and even a large chunk of the Sun media pundits back legalization of marijuana. A plan to legalize euthanasia will be equally well received.

Cherniak, Chomsky and anti Semitism

Cherniak: “While this singling out of Israel can be called "anti-Zionism", the reality is that it is no different than anti-Semitism. It is the singling out of Jews (indeed, an entire country of Jews) amongst all the people of the world for condemnation. I don't see how else you can view it.”

http://jasoncherniak.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-is-anti-semitism.html

Anti-Semitism is indeed partly to blame. However, to offer up anti-Semitism as the phenomena’s ONLY cause is ridiculous.

It is quite clear that one of the causes is an unwillingness of successive US administrations to call Israel to the account. In other words, the US reluctance to play fair and call a spade a spade generates a great deal of discussion. As the self described leader of the free world, many people are frustrated with US’s unwillingness to treat the issue judiciously. Another cause is that Israel, unlike Iran, Syria, Jordan and China, is considered to be part of the Western orbit, one of us as it where, and as such is held to a higher standard by countries both inside and outside the western orbit.

Cherniak: “This can be applied to our personal lives as well.”

http://jasoncherniak.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-is-anti-semitism.html

To apply this hair brained theory to various groups and countries is bad enough but to apply it to individuals is even worse.

Cherniak seems not to understand that hotly disputed issues, obviously, draw more discussion than topics that are not hotly disputed. Yes China mistreats Tibetans, but no one in the MSM media, or the political arena or the blogging community disputes this or would be surprised by it if they did not already know. Israel’s right to “self defense” is an entirely different matter and naturally enough people are more eager to discuss it.

As for Chomsky, for someone with political aspirations Cherniak certainly demonstrates a tin ear at times. Say for argument’s sake, that Himmler was a self hating Jew. There is no evidence that he was a Jew by the way. Would this little tidbit help make his case, viz., that Chomsky is an anti-Semite, or distract from it? Look in his comments section and you have your answer. If he wanted to make the case that just because someone is an x does not preclude them from being an x hater, he could have gone about it in a way that would not inflame and distract.

As for the accusation itself, it rests on some pretty weak evidence. Be rest assured, many people believed David Irving’s books were extensively researched and most of them were not anti-Semites. That said, it is very unlikely that Chomsky was truly convinced that Robert Faurisson’s book was based on "extensive research”. He admitted that he does “not know his work very well”. That said, if he did believe Faurisson’s book was based on “extensive research” it would be more of a backhanded complement than anything else. Given his assessment of Faurisson’s work he might as well have said this: “Despite years of extensive research, Faurisson, dim bulb that he is, draws all the wrong conclusions.”

Anyway, as should be clear to anyone, Chomsky’s support for Faurisson is a byproduct of his extreme libertarian view of free speech and is not a byproduct of anti-Semitism. And this was clear to anyone reading the Chomsky’s essay that is at the center of controversy, viz., Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression.

“Faurisson's conclusions are diametrically opposed to views I hold and have frequently expressed in print (for example, in my book Peace in the Middle East, where I describe the Holocaust as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history"). But it is elementary that freedom of expression (including academic freedom) is not to be restricted to views of which one approves, and that it is precisely in the case of views that are almost universally despised and condemned that this right must be most vigorously defended. It is easy enough to defend those who need no defense or to join in unanimous (and often justified) condemnation of a violation of civil rights by some official enemy.”

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/8010-free-expression.html

A run down of the whole affair can be read at wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair

Conservative Lies of Omission: Part 4 Conference Board of Canada

The Conservatives made a big to do about the Conference board of Canada saying their platform is fully costed. To put this into perspective this is akin to the NDP holding up the fact the CCPA says their platform is fully costed. That is not the problem though. The Conference board of Canada economist who did the analysis is now saying that the platform he examined is not the same platform the Conservatives released. In other words, the Conservatives were trying to pass off the new platform off as the one given the ok by Conference board of Canada. Global and Mail: “Economist washes hands of new Tory agenda”

“Paul Darby, deputy chief economist of the Conference Board of Canada, originally concluded that Stephen Harper's Conservative platform “is affordable in each fiscal year from 2005-2006 through 2010-2011.”
The Conservative party promoted that conclusion last week as evidence its election platform had been “independently verified” by the Conference Board, an Ottawa-based think-tank.
But Mr. Darby says the version of the platform he was given to vet didn't include a Conservative health-care guarantee which states patients will be transported to another jurisdiction if they can't get timely care at home.
It also omitted a Tory platform promise to redress the so-called “fiscal imbalance” between Ottawa and the provinces.
Mr. Darby wouldn't comment on whether the timely health-care guarantee would bear a significant cost.
“Talk to Harper,” he said. “It is not in the platform I received from them.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/content/subscribe?user_URL=http://www.theglobeandmail.com%2Fservlet%2Fstory%2FRTGAM.20060115.weconn0115%2FBNStory%2FspecialDecision2006%2F&ord=1173340861320&brand=theglobeandmail&force_login=true

Conservative Lies of Omission: Part 3 Crime Rates

In one of their later electoin ads, balloon, the Conservatives claimed that in 1995 Martin said crime would be down and Canada would be safer, but, they add, homicides are up and so is drug crime. So is violent crime up since 1995? Of course not. In 2003, the murder rate reached a 36 year low and violent crime is way down since the Liberals took office. The homicide rate did go up in 2004, but one year hardly a trend makes.

These are the facts:

The crime % change 1994 to 2004
Homicide -5.3
Attempted murder -29.4
Serious sexual assaults -32.6
Robbery -14
Total violent crime -9.7

The same broad decline can be found for property crime, down 24 per cent in the past decade, car theft (-3.5 %) and break-and-enters (-36 %)

http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/realitycheck/violent_crime.html

I am not inclined to give the Liberals much credit for the drop. If there is one thing criminologists agree on it is that the demographic makeup of a society plays a big role. The CBC does a good job of explaining this:

“Violent crime in this country rose steadily during the 1960s, '70s and '80s – the latter being the decade when the Brian Mulroney Conservatives were in power. It peaked in 1992, just before the Chrétien Liberals were returned to office, and for the most part has been dropping steadily ever since. Campaigning Liberals might like to take credit for this achievement, but that, too, would be to play loose with the facts.

The underlying reality is that crime rates are largely a function of demographics. Simply put, violent crime is carried out for the most part by young men between their late teens and late 30s; and probably has been since time immemorial. The decades-long rise that culminated in 1992 coincided with the miscreant faction among the baby boomers and the so-called echo generation that followed close on their heels. When that contingent hit middle age, the rates for murder and violent crime fell – and, perhaps not coincidentally, counterfeiting shot up.”

http://www.cbc.ca/canadavotes/realitycheck/violent_crime.html


The Conservatives are right about one thing though; drug crime is up way up. It is up 52% over the past 10 years. Marijuana possession charges account for most of increase. Interesting enough, drug crime dropped 8% from 2003 to 2004. So the Conservatives are using 1995 as a bench mark for one claim and 2003 as a bench mark for the other.

Anyway, will drug crime go down when the Conservatives launch their War on Drugs? Not if the US is any guide. According to the US Bureau of Justice, Marijuana arrests have more than doubled in the US since 1991. There is both an opportunity cost and real cost to the tax papers to cracking down on marijuana and failing to follow through on plans for decriminalization. Indeed, the state of California, for example, saved nearly a $ 1 Billion by decriminalizing the personal possession of mere one once of marijuana. M. Aldrich and T. Mikuriya. 1988. Savings in California marijuana law enforcement costs attributable to the Moscone Act of 1976. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 20: 75-81. Add to this the cost to productivity of of needlessly saddling hundreds of thousands of Canadians with a criminal record.

The Fraser Institute and Sun Media will help the Liberals if ..

If the Liberals promise to legalize marijuana, they will be able to define Harper in a matter that is favorable to them. What is more, the Fraser Institute, Canwest, Sun Media and Macleans will help!

Harper LIED about Robillard and Jennings

In uttering the following Harper either flat out lied, or he was inexcusably ignorant of the facts. The latter is very unlikely.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/187460

Stephen Harper:

“We are putting in place a new selection system so we do not have what we had before – like the member for Westmount-Ville-Marie (Robillard) appointing her former husband as a member of the board”

The problem is that “Robillard's ex-husband, Jacques Lasalle, was appointed to the board in 1990 when Brian Mulroney was prime minister.”

It gets better. As the Toronto Star noted, “he [Harper] repeated the allegation in French, accusing [Liberal MP Marlene] Jennings, too, of making the appointment.” The problem with the latter is that “Jennings' husband, Luciano del Negro, joined the board in 1996, before his wife was first elected to the Commons in 1997.”

Naturally, the geniuses in the Liberal war room have gone out of their way to minimize the damage to Harper’s reputation. Rather then saying that Harper LIED and in so doing grabbing headlines. They choose to say that his behavior is “un-prime-ministerial" and in so doing ensured that no one in the public noticed.

Liberals: the Media is the Message

There seems to be a lot of confusion, here and elsewhere, as to why I think the Liberals would be wise to embrace a full blooded social liberalism as a political strategy. So I will try again.

The Canadian media is a very poor vehicle for getting the Liberal's word out. Study after study has showed that the coverage the Liberals have received over the course of the last number of years has been worse than abysmal. Yet the Liberal party has still not recognized that if the media does not care for a particular policy or talking point, it matters not a lick how well a particular issue polls, or focus groups. To borrow from Marshall McLuhan, the media is the message. A party’s platform and talking points are only as good as the press they generate. The media is the only focus group that matters.

What this means is that the Liberals have to reassess not only their media strategy, but also what policies and talking points they push as well. With regard to talking points, the Liberals have to recognize that the media are much more politically savvy, educated and knowledgeable than your average Canadian; the Liberals then have to respond accordingly. If a particular talking point offends the intelligence of those in the media they are sure to let the public, subconsciously or otherwise, know their opinion. And if they do that, it matters not at all that Joe focus group loves this talking point. The talking point will be more a liability than a benefit. For a party that is now in opposition and a party with so little to spend on unmediated ad time, this is a lesson the Liberal party has to learn and fast.

Incidentally, while a proper reading of the role of the media in disseminating political messaging seems to hold out the promise of an elevated public discourse, paradoxically it also casts doubt on the possibility of nuance. Nuance invariably involves concession and that is exactly what a politician can not do with the press present. There is simply no guarantee that the media will report both the concession and the triumphant counterpoint. Worse, the media’s fascination with sound bites turns careful deliberation, nuance and concession into dithering. Context is the ecosystem of nuanced comments. Most politicians recognize this and the words “but”, “however”, “although”, “while”, “given”, “granted”, “nevertheless”, “nonetheless”, “despite”, etc. are lacking from many political speeches as a result. This makes political speeches almost intolerable to listen to, but it insures the media does not send out mixed messages on a politician’s behalf.

The media reports what is newsworthy and what is newsworthy is what generates the most profits and what generates the most profits is by and large what generates the largest audience. So, not only should there be no expectation on behave of the Liberals, or any other political party for that matter, that the media will faithfully report what the party is saying, the Liberals must readjust what issues the party focuses on. The public may care a great deal about meat and potatoes issues and tell that to politicians, but the media does not share the same concern and media are the ones that matter. The media love hot button issues. The Liberals should give them what they want. Having introduced the subject, the Liberals should then sit back like any good therapist and let the dialectic play itself out in the media and invariably the public at large. Pundits, academics and, indeed, bloggers are far better positioned to take over championing the policy from there on in.

What hot button issues the Liberals should bring up are, of course, the $64,000 question. As I said before, I think the Liberals should introduce hot button issues that have already played themselves out amongst the learned and are bound to be well received by news organization such as Canwest, which is very libertarian in outlook (e.g., the stem cell research debate and the relative benign nature of marijuana). If the debate is allowed to go on long enough, the end result is predictable. As I have said time and time again, SSM was a great case in point. At the polls, SSM was a looser. Canadians were spilt on the issue, but the older one is the more likely one is to be opposed and to vote. The reason it was a winning issue was because it left the Conservatives defending an intellectually, morally and legally bankrupt position and they were, rightly, pillared by the media and the learned every step of the way. Pace Harper et al, the various court decisions, that ultimately led to C-38’s passing, represented not a premature beginning, but a summation.

Dion is Politically Inept.

A few weeks back I wrote this:

“Dion has proved to be a one trick pony and not a very impressive one at that. Many Liberal bloggers have claimed that the Tory ads did not work, but polls suggest that Canadians do not trust the Liberals environmental stewardship. The Liberals have been badly outmaneuvered on the file and have offered nothing to fill the hunger for broadly progressive agenda. Harper is slowly neutralizing the environment as an issue and has begun focusing the public debate on issues that he, rightly, feels that will favor the Conservatives, viz., tax cuts and law and order issues.”

Conservatives lauded me for my “honesty” and one Liberal preferred to shoot the messenger. Since then Dion has proved me wrong. He is not a one trick pony. The situation is much worse then that. He played right into Harper's hands. Dion decided to focus on a law and order issue and one very dear to Canwest’s heart, i.e., Israel, err, terrorism. I have said before and I will say it again. The Liberals must not and I repeat must not allow these issue to dominant for long, but that is exactly what Dion let happen. Indeed, rather than talking up a compromise on two provisions, Dion dug in his heels, divided his party and made sure the media forget all about Harper’s smear.


As for Harper’s smear, it was a gift. However, the Liberals never fully capitalized on it. Their pathetic grandstanding made it seem that Harper’s comments were a one off and not business as usual. Not surprisingly, they have still not developed a global critique of Conservatives as having a problem with the truth and have not tied the Conservatives terrorism talking points to the Republican party.

The Liberals need to stop the bleeding. They need to focus the public debate on socially liberal issues (e.g, stem cell research, euthanasia, pot)that will appeal to voters Harper is making hay with, viz., urban and Quebec voters.

Conservative Lies of Omission: Part 2 the Grewal Tapes

The Tories hired audio expect Randy Dash in June 2005. Dash concluded that the audio “clips” he was given by the Conservatives were not altered. “Mr. Dash’s analysis of the recordings shows that they are clean and unaltered,” Conservative Jason MP Kenney said in a news release sent out on June 9th. The press release did what it was attended to do. It made it appear to anyone, but the most observant, that what you had here was a battle of audio experts. Some experts held that the tapes were not altered and others that they were. This is what NY Times reporter Clifford Kraus concluded in a June 19th article. However, there never was any disagreement. The Tapes spoken about in June 9th were different then the tapes released on May 31 by agent Grewal and the Conservatives. The Conservatives were amazingly brazen about trying to pass one off as another. Indeed, Randy Dash has been hired by Canwest news services to examine the May 31 tapes and concluded that they had probably been altered (e.g., The Star Phoenix (Saskatoon) Friday, June 3, 2005, Page: A1: News Byline: Grant Robertson, Anne Dawson and Allan Woods) “In reviewing some two hours of discussions between B.C. Conservative Gurmant Grewal and top Liberal officials, Randy Dash, a professor and sound engineer at Ottawa's Algonquin College, said: "it appears that on one of the recordings, an edit could have been done." By the time June 6 rolled around the experts were not mincing their words anymore.

The following from Campbell Clark June 6th article in the Globe and Mail:

Yesterday, Jack Mitchell, a U.S. forensic audio expert who conducted a preliminary review of portions of the originally released recordings, said they had been altered. He said he did not believe the changes occurred in the digital-copying process.

"These tapes have been edited. This is not a maybe. This is not something that's unexplained. This is not, 'Oh, this is odd.' This is a definitive statement. The tapes have been edited," Mr. Mitchell said.

He said he could not say with certainty how the alterations occurred, or conclude definitely that it was done intentionally.

However, Mr. Mitchell said that he not only found instances of possible edits, including sections where it appeared that phrases had been added to the recordings, but also a telltale repeat of a brief snippet of conversation that was repeated exactly.

"The entire thing repeats exactly. It's not the speaker repeating his phrase. This repeats exactly in the same way, with the same rhythm, with the same timing, with the same noise signatures. This is impossible," he said.
Mr. Mitchell said that he is not aware of such a glitch ever being produced in a digital transfer.

"I don't know how it could. I really don't," he said.
Errors in digital transfer can produce crashes that end the recording, or "dropouts" where brief gaps lasting a fraction of a second to a few seconds are created.
"But as far as it actually taking the digital file and sort of combining them and doing its own editing and changing things, I think that's nonsense. I've never seen it, I've never heard of a report of it."

The same repeat -- where Prime Minister Paul Martin's chief of staff, Tim Murphy, says "cup of tea" -- was found last week by Glen Marshall, a former RCMP engineer hired by the Liberal Party to examine the recordings.

Mr. Harper's communications director, Geoff Norquay, and his press secretary, Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, could not be reached yesterday.

Mr. Mitchell operates a forensic audio firm called Computer Audio Engineering in Albuquerque, N.M., which has done work used in court cases for U.S. federal prosecutors, several U.S. police forces, and prosecutors and defence attorneys.
He said he has not seen any reports of any other examination of the recordings, except a written statement issued by Mr. Dosanjh's office that alleges at least six sections of the tape were altered, which was sent to him by The Globe.
Mr. Mitchell reviewed two portions of the recordings where Mr. Dosanjh claimed to have found changes, totalling about eight minutes, to determine if there was evidence they had been altered.

The repeated "cup of tea" section is not on a new version of the recordings issued by the Conservatives last Thursday. Those new versions contain 14 minutes of new audio material -- pieces of conversations that are interspersed throughout the recording in a variety of places, which were missing from the first version that was released to the public.

Mr. Mitchell said he thought it was unlikely that such interspersed material was accidentally cut when it was copied to compact disc, as the Conservatives maintain.
"I've never heard of it. Is this something new taking place out there that I haven't heard of? Well, you know, that's always possible, but I don't think so. It would be all over the place if this happened. There are people out there making audio CDs all the time, and nobody has mentioned anything like this ever happening."

In addition, a section of another conversation reviewed by Mr. Mitchell, in which Mr. Dosanjh asserts that any arrangement made with Mr. Grewal "requires a certain degree of deniability" appears to have been edited in from another conversation, as Mr. Dosanjh had alleged. But Mr. Mitchell said it would take further analysis to determine that with certainty.

"The phrase is suddenly -- the amplitude is higher, the frequency content is different, meaning that essentially there are more bottom frequencies in it. The noise signature is different, and on either side of that phrase, they're the same."

Conservative Lies of Omission: Part 1 Harper and Iraq

During the election Harper came out and said this. “On Iraq, while I support the removal of Saddam Hussein and applaud the efforts to establish democracy and freedom in Iraq, I would not commit Canadian troops to that country.” http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20051210-090836-6478r_page2.htm In saying this Harper was clearing trying to obscure the fact that he supported Canada joining the coalition of the willing. You see, unlike most bloggers, the vast majority of population can not list all the times Harper said he wished Canada had been part of the coalition of the willing. Here are two examples by the way.

“On the justification for the war, it wasn't related to finding any particular weapon of mass destruction. In our judgment, it was much more fundamental. It was the removing of a regime that was hostile, that clearly had the intention of constructing weapons systems. … I think, frankly, that everybody knew the post-war situation was probably going to be more difficult than the war itself. Canada remains alienated from its allies, shut out of the reconstruction process to some degree, unable to influence events. There is no upside to the position Canada took.” (Maclean’s, August, 25, 2003)

"We should be there with our allies when it counts against Saddam Hussein." March 26 2003 7 days after the war started, some two weeks before the collapse of Saddam’s regime."

http://www.thetyee.ca/News/2004/05/20/So_What_DID_Harper_Say/


So how does the above passage do this? Well, look at the above passage again. Saddam Hussein has long since been removed from power. His government fell on April 8 2003 and he was fished out of Spider hole in December 2003. Yet Harper speaks as if it was not already a done deal. By speaking of the Saddam regime in the present tense rather than in the past tense he was able magically go back in time and state his position was that he will not send troops to help overthrow Saddam. Austin and Grice and the other founders of speech act theory are no doubt turning over in their graves.

Perhaps, an example is in order. To understand how truly Orwellian all of this is, imagine for a second that the Swiss had declared in 1948 that “we support the removal of Hitler from power.”

Rio de Janeiro Slum Tour

A PHD student in Rio is looking for people who have toured Rocinha to respond to a survey. pallomamenezes@hotmail.com

Liberals should propose banning incandescent light bulbs

The Liberals should follow Australia's lead and propose banning incandescent light bulbs. That is, Dion and crew should propose rewriting the Canadian Energy Efficiency Act, such that standards would be too stringent for incandescent bulbs to meet.

Elected Senate; Dumb Dumb Dumb

The notion that the lack of an elected senate in anyway constitutes a democratic deficit is patently absurd. As is implied by the notion of a triple E senate, for example, the senate in its current form is an "ineffective" body devoid of any real powers. Needless to say, a body that adds nothing to the genuine "effective" democratic process of the House of Commons can not take away anything either.

Still, that begs the question: would Canada be better off with two “effective” houses? The answer is no. As Benjamin Franklin put it, having two equally matched houses makes as much sense as tying two equally matched horses to either end of a buggy and having them both pull. However, for most of the supporters of such an idea that was precisely the point. As the name of Britain’s two houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, indicate the purpose of having a second House was to check the will of common people. The purpose of the Canadian senate was to do the same.

Unfortunately for the US, political necessity gave US supporters of the Second House, modeled on the British parliamentary system, the upper hand over true democrats, such as Franklin. Agreement was not possible unless the smaller states were given the power to override, or at the very least temper the will of the majority of Americans. The slave owning south, for one, wanted to insure that the institution of slavery was maintained. The lack of any sort of party discipline together with a bicameral house is a potent brew indeed. Regional interests make out like bandits, the lobbyist’s play divide and conquer and the need to water down legislation that has the support of the majority of Americans would have warmed the heart of anti democratic plutocrats, such as Adams. Alaska, for example, has a 1000 times the political clout of, say, PEI, even though Alaska makes up a smaller portion of the US population than PEI Canada’s. To top things off, a lack of any sort effective caps on corporate campaign contributions means that only the richest of the rich have the economic wherewithal to run for the Senate. Indeed, one could make a pretty good case that the original Senate, with its land ownership requirements, was open to greater percentage of the population than the current one is.

Naturally the Conservatives are committed emulating the American system and as bad as that is, things have the potential of getting a whole lot worse. (Harper was once committed to abolishing caps on corporate donations, but has since reversed course.) Being unable to “reform” the Senate in one fell swoop, Harper has proposed electing effective Senators piece meal. It is hard to image a dumber idea. In the long term, the effect of such a process would be to transform an unelected political body with no power into a largely unelected political body with real political power. In the short term, it would commit Canadians to the farcical and expensive act of electing people to office who hold no real power. If that was bad enough it would give provinces, such as Novo Scotia, power way out of proportion to their actual population.

Liberals; the meek will not be elected

Many Liberals are satisfied with the policy direction Dion is taking the party. I am not one of those Liberals. That said, I do not wish to discuss the merits of any of the policy nodes right now. I only want to clarify some of points I have made in past about the Liberals electability.

Let me start by making a blunt, some would say bald statement: the Liberals can not win the next election on the strength of their platform. Part of the problem is that the Liberals do not have a good working relationship with MSM. Canada’s pundits are a very conservative crowd indeed and the lion’s share of the negative coverage in the last two elections was directed the Liberals way. The following numbers speak for themselves and these do not include the numbers for the Sun media chain, the Conservative Party’s press division. Declan from Crawl across the ocean summarizes.

“During the campaign there were 3,753 articles written about the election in the 7 newspapers studied (The Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, the Toronto Star and the Vancouver Sun, La Presse and Le Devoir).

Of those 3753, 3035 mentioned the Liberal party. Out of those 3035, there were 40 with positive mentions of the Liberal party and 445 with negative mentions of the Liberals, giving a 11 to 1 ratio of negative mentions to positive (slightly higher than last election's 10-1 ratio).

Meanwhile, for the Conservative Party, the figures were 2730 total articles, including 144 positive mentions and 127 negative mentions, for a slightly positive overall slant (the positive mentions were similar to last election, but the negatives were cut in half).”

http://crawlacrosstheocean.blogspot.com/2006/01/conservative-media-part-3.html

Another problem is that the Liberal party's aversion to controversy has carried over into its time in opposition. They have continued to come up with middle of the road, offend no one, please no one, interest no one, policies that are utterly incoherent at their core because they are designed to appeal to both sides of any political divide. Not rocking the boat is a sound strategy when one is in power and ahead in the polls. However, it makes no sense whatsoever when one is behind in the polls and in opposition. Indeed, what made such a strategy so appealing before, viz., the lack of attention such policies garnered, is what makes them so unappealing now.

Yet another problem is the lack of a grass roots base. Being the party that stands for nothing, save averaging the differences between the other major parties' policies, it is little wonder that the Liberals do not have a strong base of support and what base they do have, as demonstrated by anti establishment favorite Stephane Dion’s being elected leader, is at odds with the party establishment. Without a solid grass roots movement, the party is not going to be able to buy anywhere near the amount of ad time as the Conservative party will be able to.

If all this were not bad enough, Stephane Dion, while charming in nerdy sort of way, has neither the English language skills nor the personal charisma to keep the media’s attention for very long.

I have said time and time again what I think the Liberals should do to overcome these difficulties. For example: http://themaplethree.blogspot.com/2007/01/reality-has-to-have-well-known-liberal.html I want to hear some others chime in.

Liberals need to Wake Up

It is time for the Liberal Party to wake up. Polls and focus groups will not provide them with a winning template. The party lacks the resources, the media presence, a strong grass roots base, and quite frankly the people to effectively appeal the “average” Canadian.” The news is not all bad though. Such an approach produces just as many duds as successes. Paul Martin was one such dud. To win, the Liberals are first going to have to admit just how limited their power to sell Canadians on their ideas are. Their only hope of winning is to kick off a number of highly charged public debates that will envelope all parties. Controversy for controversy’s sake is, of course, no strategy at all. The Liberals must take debates that have been more or less settled among the educated and force feed the public the results. The point is not to be on the side of the Canadian public per say, but to be the side that most respects the process and is humble enough to defer to learned opinion. In such debates, process matters much more than being on the numerically winning side. As I have said time and time again, SSM was a great case in point. At the polls, SSM was a looser. Canadians were spilt on the issue, but the older one is the more likely one is to be opposed and to vote. It was a winning issue because it left the Conservatives defending an intellectually, morally and legally bankrupt position and they were, rightly, pillared by the media and the learned every step of the way. I mentioned some possible issues in a piece entitled “Reality has to have a well known-Liberal bias.” It can be read here. http://themaplethree.blogspot.com/2007/01/reality-has-to-have-well-known-liberal.html

Dion gets an F

Of the big 4 Liberal candidates, Rae has the makings of the best PM. He is witty, quick on his feet, a very good retail politician, fluently bilingual, a good debater, an experienced politician and a good speaker. Ignatieff also has the makings of a good PM. He is intellectually honest, a good speaker, fluidly bilingual and had the best environmental policy of the bunch. Dion, on the other hand, was all at once the safest candidate and the anti establishment candidate. For those two reasons I was not entirely disappointed that Dion won. I am glad the Liberal party base poked the brass in the eye and I had believed, against my better judgment it seems, that Dion could carry the Liberals to minority government win.

Dion has proved to be a one trick pony and not a very impressive one at that. Many Liberal bloggers have claimed that the Tory ads did not work, but polls suggest that Canadians do not trust the Liberals environmental stewardship. The Liberals have been badly outmaneuvered on the file and have offered nothing to fill the hunger for broadly progressive agenda. Harper is slowly neutralizing the environment as an issue and has begun focusing the public debate on issues that he, rightly, feels that will favor the Conservatives, viz., tax cuts and law and order issues. If that is not bad enough, Dion’s English is so labored and his accent so strong that it is impossible seeing him fairing well in an English language debate. If this trend continues, then a Conservative majority is distinct possibility.

The Liberals need to do more than simply attacking the Conservatives; they need to focus the public debate on issues that will paint the Conservatives in a bad light and that can only be accomplished by pushing a large number of hot button issues, e.g., prostitution, drugs, euthanasia, stem cell research, and not just the environment. I have touched on the topic here. http://themaplethree.blogspot.com/2007/01/reality-has-to-have-well-known-liberal.html

Stephen Harper and the Joy of Quoting

Even though the Prime Minster covets being perceived as a man of his word, a man who does not dither, a man who means what he says and acts on what he says, Conservatives sure get upset when Stephen Harper’s words are tossed in their face. One Harper apologist even called such behavior “extreme”. Needless to say, this is an odd accusation to make. Political parties spend a great deal of money trying to get their message out. So, you would think that Conservatives would be grateful whenever someone goes to trouble of informing people of what Stephen Harper has said on the record and for the record, but no. Take a letter Stephen Harper wrote to the National Post entitled

“Separation, Alberta-style: It is time to seek a new relationship with Canada”

If Harper did not want Canadians to know what he thought of them, he would not have said the following and then sent it to the National Post for publication.

“Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status, led by a second-world strongman appropriately suited for the task. Albertans would be fatally ill-advised to view this situation as amusing or benign. Any country with Canada's insecure smugness and resentment can be dangerous.”

That said, this does help explain why so many Conservatives believe, despite what the McGill media studies clearly show and despite the fact that virtually ever newspaper in the country backed the Conservatives during the last election that the media has a strong Liberal bias. After all, many media outlets have the audacity to report what Stephen Harper said on the record without first getting his permission. By logical extension, this makes any media outlet that does so an “extremist”. The willingness of the media to note in passing that Harper once called into question the

"so-called 'greenhouse gas' phenomenon"

http://www.liberal.ca/news_e.aspx?type=news&id=12214

is just further proof that the Toronto Sun and National Post, for example, are part of the loony left.

All kidding aside, the Conservatives do have one legitimate gripe with the media. Not a single media outlet noted that the Exxon funded

“Co2; we call life ads”

went ahead without crediting Harper with the idea. The case for plagiarism is as clear as day: In criticizing Kyoto, Harper said

“It focuses on carbon dioxide, which is essential to life"

http://www.liberal.ca/news_e.aspx?type=news&id=12214

and the media, the Red Star anyway, reported this, but failed to note that Exxon plagiarized Harper. Hell, it was not like Harper’s comment was one time thing; it was a well developed talking point: Other variations abound; to wit,

“Carbon dioxide which is a naturally occurring gas vital to the life cycles of this planet."

http://www.liberal.ca/news_e.aspx?type=news&id=12214

However useless it is to debate the “extremism” of quoting Harper, it is a debate I am happy to engage in. After all, if one claims that it is “extreme” to quote the following, say, then one needs to refer to what is being quoted.

"You've got to remember that west of Winnipeg the ridings the Liberals hold are dominated by people who are either recent Asian immigrants or recent migrants from eastern Canada: people who live in ghettoes and who are not integrated into western Canadian society."

Rio de Janeiro

I recently compared notes about Rio de Janeiro with JJ from The view from down South: a Liberal in DC. http://dcgrit.blogspot.com/2007/01/pictoral-interlude-v-view-from-above.html One of the topics of conversion was crime and Cariocas’ subjective feelings of personal safety. I have expanded on some of those musings below.

How safe one feels depends on were you live in Rio. If you live in Ipanema, or Leblon, your sense of personal safety is going to be much better than if you live in Duque de Caxias. That said, regardless of where someone is in Rio, crime, or the threat of it, affects people’s behavior. As you know, because of the threat of being car jacked people rarely stop at red lights after dark. On the flip side of things, a code of conduct has developed amongst many muggers. They appreciate the cost of getting a driver’s license etc and so will dump emptied wallets and purses in the mail box. Such niceness would not be possible if the post office had not set up a program to facilitate it. The fact that they bothered speaks volumes about just how common such muggings are. Crime has turned Rio’s many dozens of malls into beehives of activity involving the whole family. Malls in some parts of North America have failed because the environment they offered is too sanitized, in Rio that is the attraction. Rio’s malls are in many respects self contained communities; they have everything from daycares, to stores and movie theaters. Brazilian law helps facilitate such feelings of safety by placing the onus on the mall to keep its customers safe. For example, under Brazil law, you can sue the mall, if your car is broken into in a mall’s parking lot. The same is true if you are mugged.

Rio is also in many ways a city on the edge. There are always plenty of riot cops in full gear in the downtown core (In and around Rua Branco) and the army is always out during Carnival checking people’s papers. I once counted 23 riot police on a Monday afternoon on Setembro street just milling about. Incidentally, I did not see any kind of protest downtown. However, I did see some in Duque de Caxias and one did get ugly. Tear gas was let off and rubber bullets were flying. Finally there are the nightly checkpoints. The Red Line is famous for them. They are a nightly occurrence and they are almost always set up in the same fashion. One cop car is parked across the highway limiting traffic to one line. There is another cop car behind pointing down the highway. Leaning on the hood of the second car is a guy armed with some kind of machinegun, sometimes heavy but mostly light. He is pointing the gun down the highway. You are directed to stop just at the spot where he is pointing. The police look in the car and either pull you over or wave you through. Many people turn on their lights to prove they are not black. Brazil is not as post racial as it likes to think.

Part of the problem is this. The favelas, where the gangs such as the Comando Vermelho (Red Command), are based, are de facto sovereign entities. Even locals seek permission before they enter and the boundaries between them and the rest of the city resemble at times boarder crossings. The police only venture in when they are well armed. In both Rio and Sao Paulo, police sometimes venture in inside an armored personal carrier, a caveiraos, painted black with skull painted on the front. The aforementioned Red Line cuts through Mare favela and the debate about whether to “wall in” the favela nicely captured the divide. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20050602-1309-crime-brazil-wall.html The place at which the Red Line cuts through the favela has been the seen of more than few shootouts and robberies of motorists stuck in traffic and it was proposed that a wall be constructed in this area. Much to dismay of people I know, the wall was never built. If for no other reason than the chance of accident would be significantly less, I can sympathize. Rio drivers are not known for their good driving habits at the best of times and the road narrows at this point, there is curve in the road and people speed up.

For those wishing to see a favela, there are guided tours – slum safaris if you will. They are safe. The tour operators give the gangs a cut of the profits in return for safe passage.

The police are still the meanest kid on the block. A third of all homicides are attributed to them. However, the power of the gangs even outside the favelas should not be understated. Not only can they be not wiped out, they have the ability to bring Rio to its knees. Indeed, whereas in Canada the schools sometimes close because of snow, in Rio schools shut down from time to time because the Red Command has threatened to shoot them up. To prove they mean business, they shoot up one or two. This is one tactic the gangs use to bring the government to the negotiating table. Sometimes it takes other forms. Last month, for instance, they boarded a city bus and set it alight with the passengers still on board. 7 were killed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6214299.stm

I was not the victim of any real violence. The cops shook me down for 50 bucks and I was tailed on a bus, but that was the worst of it. The locals I associated with were not as lucky after I left. A person I stayed with was murdered 3 months after I left. He went to pick up some groceries some 5 minutes walk from where I stayed, got in argument and was shot 6 times in the head. It is common knowledge as to who the murderer is, but no eyewitness, and there was many, have come forward. The investigation is thus stalled. This is not unusual for the northern part of Rio. Well under 50% of all murder cases are solved. Another person I knew literally got his head kicked in by the cops. He stupidly mugged someone at the Lagoon and was caught by the police. Someone took a picture using a cell phone camera of a cop kicking him in the head. The picture made the papers. Soon after I left the cops went on a rampage in Baixada and murdered 29 people in one day of bloodshed. I used to do some of my shopping near the site of the carnage. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR190302006?open&of=ENG-351

Harper's Kyoto Speeches: Email Quotes to others

I wish the Liberal party would stop putting Harper’s Kyoto speeches into PDF files. They are easier and quicker to access in html. It is also easier to paste in html. This is important. The Liberals want people to send quoted material to their friends via email who will send it to their friends and so on. There are a lot of Liberal blogs listed here. If everyone emailed 30 people and these people emailed just 15 more people, these quotes could reach fair number of Canadians. So, get busy.

Anyway, when discussing these speeches the Liberals must not focus on the economics of Kyoto. The focus has to be on Harper’s denying that human activity is unrelated to global warming.

The following is a good example: "Steve" Harper: “Kyoto simply does not target air quality. It is instead designed to address the so-called “greenhouse gas” phenomenon, the hypothesis that the increase of certain gases – not necessarily pollutants – contribute to a long term global warming trends.”

Liberal Blogs should go negative: Get the quote out

I ask my fellow bloggers Stand Up for Canada. Paste the following from Stephen Harper into an email and fire that email off to as many people as they can think of.

Stephen Harper: “It would take more than one letter to explain what’s wrong with Kyoto, but here are a few facts about this so-called “Accord”:
— It’s based on tentative and contradictory scientific evidence about climate trends.
— It focuses on carbon dioxide, which is essential to life, rather than upon pollutants.
— Canada is the only country in the world required to make significant cuts in emissions. Third World countries are exempt, the Europeans [e.g., France, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Great Britain, Austria, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark] get credit for shutting down inefficient Soviet-era industries, and no country in the Western hemisphere except Canada is signing."

This is the reference.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/176382

Reality has to have a well known-Liberal-bias

Politics is about who is able to define whom. The Liberals need to define the Conservatives. The Liberals understand this of course.

What they do not seem to understand is that a winning issue is not always a vote getter. SSM was great example. At the polls it was looser. Canadians were spilt on the issue, but the older one is the more likely one is to be opposed and to vote. The Liberals never understood why SSM was a winning issue. They figured it must have something to do with the popularity of the Charter and as their cherry pick line polled extremely well they went with that. They made themselves out to be the Charter’s champion and this led them to propose sealing off the notwithstanding clause. There are echoes of such thinking in some of the party’s public pronouncements still. However, SSM was not a winning issue because the Liberals were able to convince Canadians that they were the Charter’s honor guard.

It was a winning issue because it left the Conservatives defending a morally, legally, and intellectually untenable position. By proposing to seal away the notwithstanding clause, Martin and company simply diverted attention away from the one issue, and I do mean one, that worked for them last election. The debate switched from can anything positive be said about the Conservative SSM position to do really want to seal away the notwithstanding clause for good?

With SSM finally off the table, the Liberals need to find a new issue. They again need to push the Conservatives into defending the undefendable. Reality has to have a well known Liberal bias. There are several possibilities.

Global warming is the first that comes to mind. It would certainly be a god sent if the Conservatives were to deny global warming, which in the public’s mind extends to dishing Kyoto. However, based on the slew of repackaged Liberal policies being reintroduced by the Conservatives, Harper is not likely to play ball. Furthermore, the Liberals can be rest assured, come next election Harper will throw the likes of Stockwell Day and Rob Anders into some broom closet, where they will be kept bound and gagged for the duration of the campaign. Just as bad, signs are pointing to a NDP and Conservative Clean Air Act Part Two. Layton needs “results” and Harper is happy to oblige; he has no choice but to “commit” to Kyoto. Both are having some success chipping away at the Liberal’s hope of being the focus of the environmental vote. It is grossly unfair to saddle Dion with Chrétien’s dismal environmental record, but just the same some of the mud is bound to stick. In other words, Dion’s ace in the hole is slowly but surely being neutralized.

Another possibility is Afghanistan. However, to date, the Liberal’s performance on this issue has been at best mixed. As with SSM the Liberals have not understood why the issue gave the Tories so much trouble during the summer and why it has the potential to do so again. The Liberal plan of attack has been to accuse the Conservatives of perverting the original mission and in the process somehow betraying Canada’s historical commitment to peace keeping. One problem with such an approach is this. In order for Canadian public to buy into the notion that the Conservative government’s Afghan policy is a perversion of the previous Liberal government’s Afghan policy, the Canadian public has to have some knowledge of just what the Liberal policy was. And they do not have a clue. The Conservatives own the issue. It is, actually, for this reason, that the peace keeping line of attack has some superficial appeal. Canadians have a nostalgic attachment to Pearsonian peacekeeping that is rivaled only by their fascination with the Avro Arrow. Canadians also understand that the Kandahar mission is not a peace keeping one and that it never can be one. There is, however, no disconnect. While Canadians like to think of themselves as being first and foremost as being a nation of peace keepers, the vast majority reject the notion that Canada should limit itself only to peacekeeping. For the minority who think otherwise, the Liberal has an answer; it was Paul Martin that first sent troops into Kandahar.

The true source of the discontent was this. As casualties mounted, Canadians began to ask questions. The majority concluded that not only did the government’s pronouncements not reflect the reality on the ground but that the Conservatives were being deliberately deceptive. Canadians were particularly bothered by the Conservatives use of Republican Iraq war talking points. To site but one example, after 4 Canadians were killed in May, Peter Mackay trotted out a Conservative version of the Republican "last throes" talking point.: "my understanding is sometimes the increase in the insurgency is the recognition that the Taliban may be on the run and we are now moving perhaps into territories where they are feeling more threatened." http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=c6594164-b1d4-49e1-8876-941e4472238d&k=40999 Canadians were not impressed. They did not believe that the death of four Canadians was proof that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Had the Liberals not waxed nostalgic about Pearsonian peacekeeping and had instead given the Canadian public what it most wanted, i.e., forthright talk, they might have been able to make more headway.

The problem with Afghanistan going forward is that the Conservatives are learning that Canadians’ sense of smell is more refined than what they had first thought and that they have to temper their enthusiasm for borrowing Republican catch phrases that have morphed into punch lines. Furthermore, although Stephen Harper might believe that high casualties are a sign that Canada is “back”, not many Canadians agree and Harper and company are beginning to sense this. Harper, though, is stubborn and reluctant to concede too quickly. “Steve” Harper: September 18 “We are taking casualties because we are moving (the Taliban) from their very last bastions of strength and support,''.

A subject emerging out of the horrors of the Pickton trail is what to do with prostitution. Sadly, Canadians are not ready for legalized prostitution, but the subject is not one the federal leaders will be able to ignore, particularly when campaigning in Vancouver. Dion should propose a commission to look into the issue. The more he can draw the Conservatives into a discussion the better. With any luck, Harper will again appoint Art Hanger as his point man on the subject. Many Conservative MPs will be dying to air their moral outrage at the mere hint of legalized prostitution and quite frankly Canadians need to hear what they have to say. The thought of coverage of the Pickton trail and being followed by coverage of Conservatives defending the status quo is almost too good a juxtaposition to be true.

Canada’s drug laws will also be a subject of debate whenever the leaders visit Vancouver. Of particular concern will be Vancouver’s safe injection site, Insite. Virtually everyone backs the program --- everyone that is except the Conservatives. That said, Stephen Harper’s stubborn refusal to concede the obvious, viz., the program’s success, has been in some ways god sent for the site’s backers. Had Harper simply given the site the three year extension it was looking for, word of site’s many successes would not have spread as fast and as far as it did. After all, however advant guard the issue, the site’s many successes are not nearly as exciting a news story as the government denying the scholarly evidence staring them in the face. Stephane Dion is doing exactly what is good for the country and for the Liberals; he is talking about expanding the program. Vancouver Sun: “A federal Liberal government would provide funding for supervised injection sites in more Canadian cities, party leader Stephane Dion said Thursday. "It's a pilot project which seems to be quite a success," Dion told reporters in Coquitlam, referring to the Insite safe injection site in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He said the Liberals would support projects similar to the Vancouver site only if they were proposed by local government. "I would give the funds to continue the experience and work with mayors if they want to replicate this experience that has been successful also abroad." One can only hope that that this encourages more Conservatives to speak out on the subject.

Talk of decriminalizing marijuana still gathers media attention and, by and large, the coverage is positive for the Liberals. However that it positive for the Liberals has more to do with the Conservatives strong prohibitionist leanings and their willingness to serve as an stand in for the American drug warriors than with the Liberal’s “commitment” to decriminalization. The Liberals have talked about decriminalizing marijuana on and off for 34 years and have done nothing. Worse, the Liberals approach to marijuana is superficial and muddled. The party can not decide just where it stands on the issue. The Liberals strangely favor both decriminalization and tougher sentences for trafficking. Needless to say, in trying to justify one the Liberals undercut the rational for the other. The following comments from Jean Chrétien, for example, just does not jive with tough talk about protecting Canadian kids from the supposed dangerous of marijuana: "What has happened is so illogical [prosecuting Canadians for marijuana possession] that they are not prosecuted anymore. So let's make the law adjust to the realities. It is still illegal, but they will pay a fine. It is in synch with the times.” If the Liberals are going to capitalize on Harper’s intellectually bankrupt prohibitionist stance, they are going have first straighten out their own house. They have ridden the decriminalization issue as far as it will take them. If they are to perk the media’s interest and to draw the Conservatives out into the open, they are going to have to mention the L word, i.e., legalization.

Bam the dog: Stephane Dion's dark sense of humour

According to the Globe and Mail, Stephane Dion was asked to tell a joke on a Quebec Talk show. He responded thus: "SD: Have you heard of Bam the dog? Show host: "No." SD: "A car goes by. Bam, the dog! Now go to sleep."

I like it.

Liberals Need a Defining Issue

As I have said time and time again, politics is about who is able to define whom. The Liberals need to define the Conservatives. The Liberals understand this of course. What they do not seem to understand is that a winning issue is not always a vote getter. SSM was great example. At the polls it was looser. Canadians were spilt on the issue, but the older one is the more likely one is to be opposed and to vote. The Liberals never understood why SSM was a winning issue. They figured it must have something to do with the popularity of the Charter and as their cherry pick line polled extremely well they went with that. They made themselves out to be the charter’s champion and this led them to propose sealing off the notwithstanding clause and release tapes of Toews spouting off about using it. The fact of the matter is that the SSM was not a winning issue because of anything the Liberals said. It was a winning issue because it left the Conservatives defending a morally, legally, and intellectually untenable position. By proposing to seal away the notwithstanding clause, Martin and company simply diverted attention away from the one issue, and I do mean one, that worked for them last election. The debate switched from can anything positive be said about the Conservative SSM position to do really want to seal of the notwithstanding clause for good?

It would be great if the Conservatives were to deny global warming, which in the public’s mind means dishing Kyoto. However, be rest assured that come next election Harper will throw the likes of Stockwell Day into some broom closet, where they will be kept bound and gagged for the duration of the campaign. Moreover, all the signs are pointing to a NDP and Conservative Clean Air Act Part Two. Layton needs “results” and Harper is happy to oblige; he has no choice but to “commit” to Kyoto. Both are having some success chipping away at the Liberals hope of being the focus of the environmental vote. It is grossly unfair to saddle Dion with Chrétien’s dismal environmental record, but just the same some of the mud is bound to stick. In other words, Dion’s ace in the hole is slowly but surely being neutralized.

The Liberals need, so to speak, a new defining issue. One candidate used down south to great effect is the Stem cell debate. The Democrats have successfully painted the Republicans as being a bunch of anti-science hicks on this one. However, the issue is not large enough and most important of all I am sure the Conservatives would take the bait.

Now, another rule of thumb in politics is that you have to repeat a message endlessly for it to have any chance of reaching the average Canadian. That being said, I will once again get on my high hoarse and call for the Liberals to propose legalizing marijuana. Force Stephen Harper into defending an intellectually bankrupt prohibitionist stance alone with the Bush administration and James Dobson. Every word from Dobson and Bush is as good as free ad time as for as the Liberals would be concerned. Indeed, it would be better. Having talked to Dion about the subject I very much doubt he would ever propose such a thing. http://themaplethree.blogspot.com/2006/10/interviewing-stephane-dion.html

The NDP need to be Punished

I have long bemoaned vote splitting on the left. However, it would be shame if the NDP were to disappear. The NDP has a place in Canadian politics.

At its worst, the NDP is what is today under Jack Layton. Layton seems to believe that there is but one measure of political success in Canada and that is the number of seats one wins. Hence, the 2006 election was deemed an improvement on the 2004 election. It matters not that the NDP had more influence in the latter than it does in the former or that his give the Conservatives a free ride campaign helped elect someone so ideologically opposed to everything the NDP has stood for in the past he referred to them as the “devil”. 2006 was a 10 seat improvement and was thus an improvement. When confronted with the political consequences of such a campaign, Layton et al like to claim that Liberals and Conservatives are in reality too peas in pod and as such the switch in government did not matter. This only serves to undermine their credibility with voters – knowledgeable ones anyway. Leaving aside a history of cooperation between Liberal minority governments and the NDP and cooperation between Layton and Martin on the 2005 “NDP budget”, on a policy by policy basis Martin’s Liberal’s were closer to the NDP than they where the Conservatives and, as alluded to above, there is virtually no overlap between NDP and Conservative policy. The NDP fall back line that they are different from the Liberals in so far as they mean what they say and the Liberals talk a good game but walk right while in power is disingenuous to say the least. The NDP have never been a position to walk the walk and what successes they have come under Liberal governments. Indeed, while Layton would have Canadians believe that 134 Liberals helped pass an NDP budget, it is more accurate to say that 19 NDP MPs helped pass a Liberal budget. Paul Martin is the elephant in the living room whenever Layton implies that NDP and the NDP alone got “results” for average Canadians. If he had run an honest campaign, Layton should have claimed that the NDP will be in a position to fight for Canadians if and only if Canadians elect another Liberal minority government. Instead he helped toss the Liberals from power and in the process rendered his party impotent.

While NDP has at times tired to paint the Liberals and Conservatives as being the two peas in a pod, Layton is desperately trying to turn his party into a Liberal surrogate. The Liberals drone on about Kyoto, Kelowna and childcare and like a little brother trying to emulate his older brother so too do the NDP. As the “Natural governing party of Canada” the Liberals grab the headlines and like a little brother parroting his older brother the NDP get nothing more than the odd amused chuckle. After showing signs original thinking on Afghanistan, Layton’s inner child lost confidence in his own views and has subsequently backtracked; the NDP’s Afghan policy is becoming more muddled by the day and in the process more and more Liberal. Layton’s Liberal drag routine has met with some tactical success, but strategically it is doomed. Voters prefer an original to a knockoff and besides if forced to choose between two parties championing identical issues voters are likely to go with the party that actually has a chance of winning.

One of the problems with US politics is that two parties so dominant the political landscape that any other suitor is a complete afterthought. One consequence of this is that the political debate in the States is hopelessly narrow; it is focused almost exclusively on what is politically possible and what will have a positive impact at the ballot box. American politics is the calculus of pleasing corporate America enough that they are so kind enough to fund you, well all the while finding a message that will on the one hand appeal to one’s base and while at the same time be sufficiently appealing to fair-weather “independents”. Not surprisingly, pundits in the States spend more time assessing the political ramifications of such and such action and surprisingly little time assessing the merits of such and such an action or policy. The relevant frequency of US elections, a lack of party discipline, a bicameral political system, term limits and fixed election dates simply compound matters. They keep what the odds maker’s say newsworthy and a handicapping system from becoming too amorphous. The same would be so, albeit to a lesser degree, in Canada if the NDP never existed.

At its best, the NDP has provided an invaluable service to all Canadians; it widened the Canadian political debate and did so by historically being the most ideological of the major political parities. Parties concerned with the “art of the possible” are not infusing the political debate with new ideas with little chance of furthering their party at the polls. They are reactive. However, the catch 22 of such pragmatism is that such parties concede some of the field to those who are not so cautious. To use an evolutionary metaphor, the politically brave and ideologically pure help determine the policy areas to be discussed; the powerful and pragmatic determine what policies get accepted. Historically, the NDP were able to get “results” for Canadians in two ways. One, they played King Maker in several Liberal minority governments. Two, they were able to achieve successes at a distance by continually infusing the political arena with new policy ideas. Either way the Liberal party benefited. By infusing the political arena with ideas from a leftist perspective, the NDP shifted the political debate in Canada leftward, leaving Liberals and not the Progressive Conservatives as the “natural governing party of Canada”.

Things changed in the 1990s. The emergence of the ideological puritanical Reform party, Conrad Black and Canwest Global and series of electoral disasters for the NDP helped move the political debate in English Canada inexorably rightward. The news, in more ways than one, is no better today. The NDP’s chameleon act threatens to concede the war of ideas to the right on a permanent basis. If it were not for the Supreme Court, and George Bush's arrogance, stupidity, bullheadedness, the right would have controlled the political agenda in its entirety. That is one reason why some consider Harper a moderate. By mid 80 standards however, he makes Mulroney look like a raving pinko; Harper certainly thought the PCs a bunch a pinkos back then and that is why he left them to help found the Reform party. The left has no other champion except maybe the Toronto Star. The Liberals are certainly of no help. They are still adrift in a policy vacuum. They are still busy trying to fine tune a platform they ran on and lost in 2006. Meanwhile, there are legions of Conservative missionaries in the media. Pace Harper, virtually ever major newspaper backed the Conservatives 2006, as detailed in the McGill media studies, the Liberals received the lion’s share of the negative press in both 2004 and 2006 and then there is Sun media, the Conservative party’s PR wing. They have also not lost their ideological edge and by and large dominant not only the headlines but also set the agenda. However they Conservatives are much more pragmatic than they have were before. They will again release a well focused easy to understand platform.

Harper apologist, admirer, and all but outed closet Conservative Warren Kinsella claimed that the Liberals needed to spend some time in the penalty box last election. Let me propose a variation on this theme. The NDP need to spend some time in the penalty box. No longer we will progressives tolerate, Layton’s lack of vision, his lack of courage and his unwillingness to go after Stephen Harper with every ounce of energy. It is time the NDP, take a page from their provincial brethren and propose progressive, easy to understand policy proposals, such as increase an in the minimum wage. Such proposals have been the bread and butter of socially democratic parties since their inception. It is time the NDP put forth an agenda that that is in that tradition. Canada needs them to and quite frankly so do the Liberals.

Interviewing Stephane Dion

I interviewed Liberal leadership candidate Stephane Dion on Sunday. I must thank Jason Cherniak http://jasoncherniak.blogspot.com/ for helping set things up and say special thanks to Dion for agreeing to do the interview. Of all the candidates, Dion has been the most accessible to the blogging community. http://jasoncherniak.blogspot.com/

I had emailed the candidates a survey back in September and used the questions from that survey in interviewing Dion. Martha Hall Findlay is the only one to respond to the survey by the way. http://themaplethree.blogspot.com/2006/09/liberal-martha-hall-findlay-favors.html


Given his support for "Empire Lite", does Ignatieff have the potential to be as divisive a figure within the party as Tony Blair has become within his party?”

He did not take the bait. He neither implied, nor explicitly said that Tony Blair is a controversial figure within his own party. The only thing he had to say about Blair was that he has been a very successful politician. He added that he won three majorities. I waited for him to drop Chrétien’s name, but he never did draw the parallel. It is a good thing too. Outside of three majorities a piece and maybe rivalries with uppity finance ministers, the similarities stop there.

On the one hand, it is understandable that he would not take the bait. However in other ways it is not. It is understandable in so far as it is not considered good form to be brutally honest about foreign heads of states --- friendly ones anyway. However, it is widely accepted that Blair is a divisive figure and saying so would hardly raise eyebrows. Tactically drawing such a comparison would make sense. It would help place Dion’s call for a review of Ignatieff’s interventionist writings into a favorable political context. After all, one of the dominant themes of the Liberal leadership race is reconciliation and party peace. Liberals have grown tired of infighting between rival power blocks Having just emerged from a civil war, they have no stomach for another. Dion should be warning the Liberal party that what happened with Tony Blair could happen with Ignatieff. Indeed, he should be warning the Liberals that it could be worse. The British Labour party is in better shape finically, politically and in terms of their base of support than Liberal Party of Canada. In its weakened state the Liberal party can not afford another war, especially an ideological one. Moreover, given all the talk about the party brass reconnecting with the party’s base, the Liberal party can not elect a leader who is fundamentally out of step with views of the party’s rank and file, a la Blair and Labour party.

All that being said, Dion went right after Ignatieff. Dion mentioned a 2002 paper in which Ignatieff that some kind of two state solution should be militarily imposed on the Palestinian Authority. This is really quite something and I am amazed that this paper had not come to light before. A lot of the accusations thrown at Ignatieff, including some of the ones Rae leveled on Saturday, are pretty thin gruel. This is not one of them. It is hard to imagine anything that would be a bigger requirement tool for Al Qaeda than the US sending troops into Gaza and the West bank to impose a two state “solution”. There is no question in my mind now that Ignatieff does not have any kind of appreciation for the unintended consequences of war and I do not want him controlling Canadian foreign policy. When it comes to Ignatieff’s foreign policy views, Rae has landed the two biggest rhetorical punches, but Dion has landed by far the more substantive policy blows and this was certainly one of them. Dion was, rightly, indigent about being drowned out by Ignatieff supporters when he tired to raise the subject to this paper at Saturday’s debate in Montreal.


The Senate committee on marijuana concluded that the "Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol"? Do you agree with this conclusion?

He said no. I know Dion is a bit of a contrarian, but this is ridiculous. I will give him points for consistency though. He has been consistency wrong in what he says about marijuana. Previously http://koby.tblog.com/post/1969912969#comment_anchor he told me that “potent pot” is one reason for keeping marijuana illegal. This was bad enough. It strikes me as akin to saying alcohol should be banned because gin has higher alcohol content than beer. Indeed, if anything potent pot should be welcomed. After all, the most prominent health effect related to marijuana is that it is usually smoked. The more potent the pot, the less people have to smoke to achieve the same high. The point is mute though; potent pot is a myth. http://www.slate.com/?id=2074151

Anyway, world wide, since the 1970s there have been literally millions of deaths from Alcohol poisoning and cirrhosis of the liver. I challenge Dion to find one case in the medical literature of someone dying from a marijuana overdose or chronic intake of THC. Some chronic users of marijuana get headaches if they go off the drug. 10% of chronic alcoholics suffer seizures if they do not have a drink and 5% suffer delirium tremens.

Dion’s position is the medical equal of denying global warming. Maybe some things that nutter Paul Steckle says has worn off on him.

Dion feels that marijuana possession should be decriminalized; he wants fines imposed in place of criminal penalties. He noted that Canada’s possession laws are applied unequally throughout the country and that a system of fines would be. This is debatable. However even if granted, a system fines would not yield the results he hopes for. For example, there is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest it would reduce consumption.

Such a policy might also yield results he might not have expected. Take Vancouver, it is explicit policy of Vancouver police department, for example, not to charge people for mere possession. Surrounding police forces are equally lenient, but not as upfront. In other words, decriminalization already exists in the Lowermainland on a de facto basis. One reason is that it is simply not practical to do so; charging the huge number people caught in possession of marijuana would cripple the justice system. Another reason is that marijuana possession is not viewed as a serious crime by either the courts or by large numbers of police. If a system of fines was imposed, Vancouverites will not take kindly to such a crack down for a whole host of reasons. Most importantly they would be uppity because they would view the law is illegitimate. Many would see it as akin to fining someone for drinking a beer in a permissible location. They will see it as an illegitimate money grab and the seeds of revolt would be sown. It would be better for Dion and other closeted drug warriors to let sleeping dogs lay.

Decriminalization would also do something else. Although it is explicit policy of the VPD not to charge people for mere possession, the VPD still charge a large number of people with possession and the same is true of other Lowermainland police forces. There is a simple reason for this. Possession is the fall back position whenever the police can not make trafficking charges stick. Put differently the large number of people charged with possession in BC is not a reflection of strict enforcement, but is rather a reflection of the shear size of the marijuana industry here. Marijuana is called weed for a reason; it is grows like one. Couple this with the fact that people here no longer believe in the drug laws and one would have more success trying to drain the great lakes with a spoon than stomping it out. Decriminalize marijuana while at the same time increasing the penalties for trafficking the drug and prohibition in BC will be on the verge of collapse. As it stands, BC prosecutors are prosecuting fewer and fewer people for marijuana trafficking and stiffer sentences will only make this trend more pronounced. There would also be no lesser charge of possession to charge dealers with.

While I welcomed decriminalization for these reasons, there is a less painful solution: legalization. Besides, I too want to see a uniform marijuana policy and the thought of watching heads of social conservative’s heads throughout the land explode gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. The latter will only happen if marijuana is officially legalized.

Can NATO succeed in both stabilizing Afghanistan and destroying the country's number one industry, the opium crop?

Dion said yes, but it was hardly a firm one. He said that what needs to happen is a “redesign of the mission”. He said that what is needed is a “Marshall Plan for Afghanistan”. In other words, despite the fact that several of Dion’s people have referred Gerard Kennedy as policy light weight, Dion’s position along with the rest of the candidates has become Kennedy’s remake the mission position. The reference to the Marshall Plan though is Dion’s and Dion’s alone. It is also not one that works.

The Marshall plan helped rebuild war torn Europe. The operative world being “rebuild”. There is nothing to “rebuild” in the European sense in Afghanistan. Indeed, even in high point of the modernizing zeal in the 1970s, Afghanistan’s child morality was worse than Bangladesh’s! To see how wrong the analogy is consider for a second what Germany, for example, was prior to WW2. The German’s had the by far and away the world’s most advanced chemical industry. The country had produced nearly half the Nobel Price winners. It had the largest coal reserves in Europe. (It was not until the 1950s the gas replaced coal.) It had the most educated population in the world. And it was also not until 1945 that industrial production fell below 1942 and that was not because of any decline in capacity, but was rather due mainly to transportation bottlenecks related to allied bombing. Throw in the fact the influx of millions of upon millions of ethnic Germans from Soviet sector, Poland, and the Sudetenland and elsewhere and you have the makings of a Wirtschaftswunder, i.e., an economic miracle.

Afghanistan, by comparison, is country made up mostly of illiterate peasants without running water or electricity. There is no developed infrastructure, no university system and the opium production is the country’s only viable industry. Most Afghans, it is a young country, know nothing but war. To make matters worse, the vast majority of educated Afghans left long ago and will never return to live.

Decades of development theory have shown there is no magic formula when it comes to development. Western countries have a hard enough time developing their own hinterlands let alone the world’s most impoverished and underdeveloped regions.

Dion also mentioned several of the Asian Tigers, viz. South Korea and Taiwan. Referencing them made more sense than referencing the Marshall plan. However it falls down in several respects. Furthermore, the Tigers where not exactly models of democracy in action.

As with the other candidates, Dion is open to the idea of Western governments buying opium to replenish medical supplies from Afghan farmers.

Suppose next spring there was no let up in the number of Taliban attacks and in the number of Canadians dying, would you call for an end to the mission?

Dion was non committal. However, he said that it would have to be considered.

Given that Al Qaeda has singled Canada out because of our presence in Afghanistan and given that the alleged motivation of the Ontario 17 was our presence in Afghanistan , does our presence in Afghanistan make it more likely that Canada will be attacked by terrorists, home grown or otherwise?

Dion ducked the question. At least, I hope he did. He said that the likelihood of a terrorist attack depended on how effective our police forces and intelligence agencies are. The more effective our police forces the lesser the likelihood of attack. He might as well have uttered the following absurdity; seeing as how Canada has a more effective police force than Brazil, the likelihood that Canada would be attacked by Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda sympathizers is less than Brazil. Yes, an effective police force will lessen the probability of a terrorist attack, but when calculating the probability of an attack a bigger factor bigger is how many people are motivated to carry out such an attack. Motives matter. Only a politician trying to duck a touchy subject would dare pretend otherwise. Now, pace, they are hate our freedoms and multi ethnic make up, Harper, what motives home grown Jihadis is Canadian foreign policy. Just ask Crown prosecutors developing the case against the Ontario 17. As for Al Qaeda, right wing commentators take a perverse delight in noting that Al Qaeda has singled Canada out for attack. They see it as proof that Canadians are hopelessly naïve not to whole heartedly support the war on terror. What they fail to note, however, and this is testament to their complete lack of intellectual honesty, is why Al Qaeda singled Canada out for attack. Canada was singled out because of our presence in Afghanistan.

“What do your governments want from their alliance with America in attacking us in Afghanistan? I mention in particular Britain, France , Italy , Canada, Germany and Australia.

We warned Australia before not to join in the war in Afghanistan, and against its despicable effort to separate East Timor. It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sounds of explosions in Bali."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/osamabinladen/tape.html

I asked Dion the following 5 questions.

1) Canada lags behind far behind virtually every other Western nation in terms of the number vacation days its citizens are guaranteed. Is it time that Canada bridge the vacation gap?

EU minimum is 4 weeks
Switzerland 4 weeks
New Zealand 4 weeks (starting in 2007)
Norway 5 weeks

2) Should Canada pass an euthanasia law, a la Holland ?

3) Other Western countries (e.g., Germany, Finland and Britain)have public dental care. Should Canada?

4) Do you support a proposed heroin maintenance program for Vancouver?

5) In order to attract more international grad students and just as importantly keep a higher percentage of international grad students in country after they graduate, Canada should offer citizenship to those foreign graduate students who complete a graduate degree from, and this important, a public Canadian university. Does this idea have any merit?

He was no made no commitment to any, but he did not rule out any either. He only made two comments of note. With regard to the proposed heroin maintenance program, he said it was an interesting idea. http://www.gatago.com/talk/politics/drugs/14815943.html He also commented on the last question. He worried about what kind effect such a policy would have on “developing” countries, i.e., the reverse brain drain. This surprised me. It was the kind of mushy liberalism at its worst answer I have come to expect from Ignatieff and not someone as hard edged as Dion.

Finally I asked Dion a few light hearted, get to know you questions.

What was the first car you owned?

Renault 12 was his response.
http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/show/9396/index12.htm

Name the last 2 movies you have seen.

Dion seemed dumbfounded that I should ask this question. He racked his brain for an answer and apologized. He said the leadership race did not give him much time for leisure. The last movie he saw was Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/inconvenient_truth/ He also mentioned seeing Fahrenheit 911. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fahrenheit_911/ However, after consulting with someone in French, he decided that in between seeing 911 he had seen Eight Below. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/eight_below/ He asked me if I was familiar with the movie. I said no, but after he gave a quick run down of the story I recognized the title. I sought his confirmation. “The kids movie?” He seemed annoyed by this and responded with “no the Disney movie”. I had to smile.

Martha Hall Findlay Ignatieff and Afghanistan

MHF agrees with Ignatieff. Harper lacks a strategy for Afghanistan. However she believes that this was evident all along and “Harpers lack of strategy is why I would have voted no”. This sets her and Ignatieff apart; both agree with the mission in principle, but she was more skeptical of Harper’s ability to pull it off.

Politically, this is a very clever approach and one Ignatieff and Kennedy should be very concerned about.

Ignatieff is found of saying that the Americans have made “every single mistake in Iraq and then some.” Other so called liberal hawks have said the same and over time a distinct line of criticism of the Iraq war has arisen. Namely, regardless of whether one believed in the Iraq mission in principle, Bush was never one to realize the hopes the pro war faction had for the war. Ignatieff has not yet gone as far as many other prominent liberal hawks in lamenting his support of the mission, but this line of criticism especially, in light of the most recent Lancet study estimating that upwards of 600,000 Iraqis have been killed in post war violence, leaves him with very little left to hold onto.

Where this bleeds into Ignatieff’s support of Afghanistan mission is that given Harper ideological closeness to the Neo Cons, his strong support of the Iraq war and yes his lack of clear strategy, Ignatieff, of all people, should have been suspicious of Stephen Harper’s ability to carry out the mission. Instead, despite a mere 6 hours of debate, he blindly threw his support behind Harper’s extension. Ignatieff should have been once bitten twice shy. Instead he backed both and laments how both missions have been prorogated; add to this his foot and mouth disease and it is little wonder why there are concerns about judgment – or lack there of.

MHF line is certainly an improvement on Dion’s line, for example. Under the guise that there was minimal debate in the house, Dion has still not offered an opinion on the mission. Dion is right; the reason he gave for voting no was a good reason. In a democracy, process matters. It is no reason, however, for not forming an opinion since.

As I said before, Kennedy should also be concerned about MHF line of questioning. Kennedy has raised questions about the mission and in many ways this has become the de facto Liberal position and the one MHF was taking aim at. That said, Kennedy has held out hope that the mission can still be transformed, but is his implicit belief that Harper, among others, can still right the ship, justified? MHF agreed with Ignatieff that Harper is not the right person for the job and I agree with them both. The problem for Ignatieff is that she is free to adopt this line and he, Mr. Johnny come lately, not.

Ignatieff Right: TDH Wrong

TDH: “Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention defines war crimes as: "Wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including...wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial,...taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly." I fail to see where Israel is guilty of committing war crimes [so defined].” http://www.tdhstrategies.com/2006/10/israel-did-not-commit-war-crimes.html

You fail to see a lot of things. Granted Hezobollah’s leaders are full of shit, but bombing sewage treatment plants would be classified as a war crime according to the definition set forth under the Geneva Convention: “extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly."