Haaretz has a thought provoking story at their site today. Writer Chaim Levinson makes the case that the vast majority of campaign financing for Likud and their main coalition partners comes from the diaspora.
Netanyahu himself gets over 96% of his campaign donations from abroad.
Virtually all modern democratic states have strict limits about how much foreign money can be contributed to an election campaign. Not Israel.
When you think about it, it makes sense that the War Party would be financed from afar. Jews in Montreal and New York City don't have the same kind of immediate interest in peace with the neighbors as those who live in Haifa or Tel Aviv.
Maybe it's time to tighten up the campaign finance laws.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Austerity in the Great White North: Harper Gang cuts everything but doubles spending on propaganda
Bruce Cheadle had an informative story in the Globe today. Seems that since they came to power the Harperites have doubled the annual expenditure on advertising. Ironically, most of the advertising campaigns are designed to convince Canadians that the spending cuts are good for them.
Not all Canadians are buying in. Cindy Blackstock, a First Nations spokesperson, says "it's disturbing that millions are being spent on government ads when First Nations children go to school in moldy classrooms."
She might have added "and when entire Native communities live in substandard housing and when Canadian Indians are suffering a suicide epidemic that shames Canada in front of the entire world."
It's not "disturbing", Cindy. It's an outrage and an absolute disgrace!
Not all Canadians are buying in. Cindy Blackstock, a First Nations spokesperson, says "it's disturbing that millions are being spent on government ads when First Nations children go to school in moldy classrooms."
She might have added "and when entire Native communities live in substandard housing and when Canadian Indians are suffering a suicide epidemic that shames Canada in front of the entire world."
It's not "disturbing", Cindy. It's an outrage and an absolute disgrace!
Canada says bring in the Coolies!
Everything old is new again! Cheap Chinese labor to fatten the purses of Canadian capitalists...
It's all about a "labor shortage" don't you know.
A million and a half Canadians unemployed but we need to import Chinese workers to mine coal?
At least two thousand Chinese miners are expected to enter Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker program to work the Murray River Coal Mine. That's the same program that funnels cheap overseas labor to the XL Meats plant in Alberta. There's a shortage of skilled meat cutters in Canada too!
Especially skilled meat-cutters willing to work for $11/hr. The Somali goat-herders and Mexican peasants think that a king's ransom. And of course it is, if you're from Somalia or Mexico!
The TFW program is a crime against the working people of Canada.
It's all about a "labor shortage" don't you know.
A million and a half Canadians unemployed but we need to import Chinese workers to mine coal?
At least two thousand Chinese miners are expected to enter Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker program to work the Murray River Coal Mine. That's the same program that funnels cheap overseas labor to the XL Meats plant in Alberta. There's a shortage of skilled meat cutters in Canada too!
Especially skilled meat-cutters willing to work for $11/hr. The Somali goat-herders and Mexican peasants think that a king's ransom. And of course it is, if you're from Somalia or Mexico!
The TFW program is a crime against the working people of Canada.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
The abortion debate
Who would have thought that Roe/Wade could possibly be an election issue in 2012?
There is obviously a constituency that isn't prepared to let the matter go.
Here is a suggestion for that constituency. It's just a step ahead of the "EVERY SPERM IS SACRED" mentality that informs your position today.
Once we acknowledge (or failing that, legally proclaim) that every sperm and every embryo are sacred, why not make it a sacred trust to see to it that every child who is born has the healthcare, education, housing and employment opportunities that it is our sacred duty to provide?
Does that sacred embryo stop being sacred when it has escaped the womb?
Of course not!
And we'll obviously have a sacred duty to provide for the mother of that child as well. How can that sacred child have a worthwhile chance at life if they must be brought up in poverty and deprivation?
So let's include in the "right to life" agenda the right to secure tenure in decent housing.
Let's include the right to health care and education.
Let's make sure every mother has access to support services across the spectrum, from pre and post natal support to child care to addiction counselling.
Adopt that agenda, Right to Life, and maybe more people would believe that you mean it when you talk about the right to life.
There is obviously a constituency that isn't prepared to let the matter go.
Here is a suggestion for that constituency. It's just a step ahead of the "EVERY SPERM IS SACRED" mentality that informs your position today.
Once we acknowledge (or failing that, legally proclaim) that every sperm and every embryo are sacred, why not make it a sacred trust to see to it that every child who is born has the healthcare, education, housing and employment opportunities that it is our sacred duty to provide?
Does that sacred embryo stop being sacred when it has escaped the womb?
Of course not!
And we'll obviously have a sacred duty to provide for the mother of that child as well. How can that sacred child have a worthwhile chance at life if they must be brought up in poverty and deprivation?
So let's include in the "right to life" agenda the right to secure tenure in decent housing.
Let's include the right to health care and education.
Let's make sure every mother has access to support services across the spectrum, from pre and post natal support to child care to addiction counselling.
Adopt that agenda, Right to Life, and maybe more people would believe that you mean it when you talk about the right to life.
The clash of civilizations
Malala Yousafzai is big news these days.
She is the 14 year old "child activist" who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in Pakistan. Her crime? Speaking out for the right of girls to get an education.
That is a story guaranteed to evoke revulsion across the Western world.
Which is why I wonder about the story. I am reminded of that equally revolting story about the Iraqi troops dumping babies out of incubators in Kuwait. That was another story designed to whip the West into a righteous frenzy of vengeance.
And it worked. The American public was overwhelmingly behind the first Gulf war.
More than twenty years later, the war parties need to ramp up support for a wider war on the Taliban. Who better to raise that support than a "child activist" brought low by a Taliban bullet?
There is utterly no evidence that the Nations of Virtue or our allies in the Towelistans have the slightest compunction about snuffing the life a child, be they a teen, pre-teen, or toddler, boy or girl. In fact, there is a vast archive of evidence to prove that we are absolutely indifferent to the children at the receiving end of our projectiles of democracy and missiles of peace.
They've never been anything other than collateral damage.
But let the Taliban execute a "child activist" and suddenly the lives of children become sacrosanct. There is a medivac jet idling on a runway in Islamabad to take the victim for advanced medical care in Dubai. Headlines around the world scream about the barbarity of our Taliban adversary.
It's all a little too convenient.
I'm betting that before long Malala will have made a full recovery, thanks to the miraculous interventions of Western medicine. She will be spirited out of Pakistan and make the rounds of the talk show circuit. She will be on Good Morning America and Ellen and Oprah and Piers Morgan before she becomes a regular on the dog-and-pony show of those internationally famous child activists, the Kielburger brothers.
And by God, we'll have to do something about those primitives over there in the Pakistani tribal lands before they try to kill another 14 year old.
She is the 14 year old "child activist" who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in Pakistan. Her crime? Speaking out for the right of girls to get an education.
That is a story guaranteed to evoke revulsion across the Western world.
Which is why I wonder about the story. I am reminded of that equally revolting story about the Iraqi troops dumping babies out of incubators in Kuwait. That was another story designed to whip the West into a righteous frenzy of vengeance.
And it worked. The American public was overwhelmingly behind the first Gulf war.
More than twenty years later, the war parties need to ramp up support for a wider war on the Taliban. Who better to raise that support than a "child activist" brought low by a Taliban bullet?
There is utterly no evidence that the Nations of Virtue or our allies in the Towelistans have the slightest compunction about snuffing the life a child, be they a teen, pre-teen, or toddler, boy or girl. In fact, there is a vast archive of evidence to prove that we are absolutely indifferent to the children at the receiving end of our projectiles of democracy and missiles of peace.
They've never been anything other than collateral damage.
But let the Taliban execute a "child activist" and suddenly the lives of children become sacrosanct. There is a medivac jet idling on a runway in Islamabad to take the victim for advanced medical care in Dubai. Headlines around the world scream about the barbarity of our Taliban adversary.
It's all a little too convenient.
I'm betting that before long Malala will have made a full recovery, thanks to the miraculous interventions of Western medicine. She will be spirited out of Pakistan and make the rounds of the talk show circuit. She will be on Good Morning America and Ellen and Oprah and Piers Morgan before she becomes a regular on the dog-and-pony show of those internationally famous child activists, the Kielburger brothers.
And by God, we'll have to do something about those primitives over there in the Pakistani tribal lands before they try to kill another 14 year old.
In defense of Lance Armstrong
Over the past fifteen years or so, as the elite of professional cycling succumbed one by one to doping allegations, it became progressively more absurd to cling to the belief that Lance Armstrong, the most successful professional cyclist of all time, stood alone as being "clean".
With today's revelations in the New York Times it's safe to say the jig is up.
Apparently Lance still doesn't get it. His high-priced team of PR professionals is still beating the drum for his innocence.
Wrong strategy.
What Lance needs to do is fire the lot of them and fess up. Take responsibility. Ya, I doped and I lied about it.
Simple as that. Lance's credibility would be restored overnight.
It's not as if Lance pioneered doping in pro sports. (This blog has written about the clique of European doctors who were the pioneers.)
When all the guys around you are into the HGH strategies and blood doping, how can it be "cheating" if you do it too? Anybody who went with the prevailing winds in professional cycling over the last twenty years was merely creating a level playing field for themselves.
Heard a clip of Lance on the radio this afternoon talking about how the secret of his success was lots of hard work. Then the announcer came on with a sanctimonious pronouncement that "now we know it wasn't hard work; it was doping."
Wrong!
It WAS hard work, incredibly hard. We need to get over our petty moralizing and give Lance the credit he deserves.
Lance is the kind of sports icon who comes along once in a generation, if that.
Lance, dump your PR team and tell the truth.
You'll be bigger than ever.
With today's revelations in the New York Times it's safe to say the jig is up.
Apparently Lance still doesn't get it. His high-priced team of PR professionals is still beating the drum for his innocence.
Wrong strategy.
What Lance needs to do is fire the lot of them and fess up. Take responsibility. Ya, I doped and I lied about it.
Simple as that. Lance's credibility would be restored overnight.
It's not as if Lance pioneered doping in pro sports. (This blog has written about the clique of European doctors who were the pioneers.)
When all the guys around you are into the HGH strategies and blood doping, how can it be "cheating" if you do it too? Anybody who went with the prevailing winds in professional cycling over the last twenty years was merely creating a level playing field for themselves.
Heard a clip of Lance on the radio this afternoon talking about how the secret of his success was lots of hard work. Then the announcer came on with a sanctimonious pronouncement that "now we know it wasn't hard work; it was doping."
Wrong!
It WAS hard work, incredibly hard. We need to get over our petty moralizing and give Lance the credit he deserves.
Lance is the kind of sports icon who comes along once in a generation, if that.
Lance, dump your PR team and tell the truth.
You'll be bigger than ever.
RIM insiders gaga over BB10
I was down Waterloo way on the weekend and chanced into a couple of old friends who are mid-level employees of Research In Motion.
They've used the BB10 OS and they're not rushing out to buy the iPhone 5. In fact, they're doubling down on their RIM stock holdings.
I've said it before; quite aside from the cash hoard that is growing even as BB loses market share, the intellectual property is easily more than the market cap at the current share price.
RIM is a buy even if BB10 flops.
If it's anywhere what these insiders claim it is, it's even more of a buy.
They've used the BB10 OS and they're not rushing out to buy the iPhone 5. In fact, they're doubling down on their RIM stock holdings.
I've said it before; quite aside from the cash hoard that is growing even as BB loses market share, the intellectual property is easily more than the market cap at the current share price.
RIM is a buy even if BB10 flops.
If it's anywhere what these insiders claim it is, it's even more of a buy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)