PoliticsUncategorized

Reaction to the Harper government’s new omnibus crime legislation on both sides of the aisle has been rather predictable. The new, massive piece of legislation which contains crackdowns on young offenders, sexual criminals and cannabis growers drew immediate heat from both the Liberals and the NDP, both for its content and for being an unnecessary distraction from job creation. The bill, with its focus on the strict enforcement of mandatory minimum sentences and harsher treatment of convicted offenders also drew heat for coming at a time when the crime rate is on a steady decline…

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It is becoming increasingly difficult not feel a fair amount of pity for American Christians. Having the fortune of spending several weeks in the Carolinas with my family, perhaps the most striking thing to a visitor traveling through “God’s Country” is the sheer number of churches. In one town, which was little more than a single extended road, I counted thirteen. In another, eight, including four on opposing corners from one another. It should go without saying then that despite advances…

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NewsPolitics

Probably one of the hardest things for any writer to do is to admit when they’ve missed the mark. Once a piece has been published and your name is on the by-line, what you have said is already out there and with your name attached to it no less. In my own case, it must appear rather hypocritical for me to be slamming partisan embellishment of positions one week and then using Vaclav Havel as a model for behaviour when it comes to the war on drugs. Something, it would seem, is not quite right…

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NewsPolitics

As the American political landscape continues to show no signs of stopping its descent into what can only be described as an increasingly reactionary and carnivalesque sideshow, one begins to wonder if the more measured and sober voices in Washington have finally decided to call it a day. Even on our own side of the border the divisions continue to grow deeper and more virulent with almost no position free from partisan embelishment. However, to those who would suggest that the truth always lies somewhere in the middleoften with rather…

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NewsPoliticsQueer

As fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist Muslims unite to attempt to “get rid of these people in the society,” a statement both ugly in composition and in sentiment, the small and mostly silent homosexual community in Ghana finds itself on the brink of persecution. It is for this reason, that while I still maintain that violence is not the property of any single group of people, I must admit that if religion is not a necessary cause for violence and oppression, it is at the very least a sufficient one…

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PoliticsUncategorized

I think I can speak confidently when I say that the question of Senate reform really isn’t that much of a question anymore. The initial premise, that it is unacceptable in a twenty first century democracy to have the high house filled with unelected officials serving well into senility, seems to be thankfully beyond debate at this point.  Any contentiousness surrounding the issue then seems not to be so much on an ideological level as it is on a mechanical one. It seems that it is not reforming the Senate which is a problem, but rather the seemingly endless list of constitutional and provincial problems that would arise from any significant attempt at reform…

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When Ratko Mladic was arrested it was as a weak, pathetic and exhausted creature. At sixty-eight years old, if the accused war criminal is (rightfully) convicted of the atrocities committed at Srebrenica, it will be not as the figure of pure evil who oversaw the murders of some thousand Bosnian Muslims, but rather as a tired old man with far too few years left to begin paying for his crimes…

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In a political party there are few things as reprehensible, or indeed as volatile, as the combination of cynicism and populism. For an example of this we need only turn to the embarrassment that was the Michael Ignatieff campaign; run with an arrogance born of the former and a desperation significant of the latter. It was a pitiful, ugly thing from beginning to end. It is for this reason that there’s almost something sad about Liberal apologists who continue to cite voter apathy and disproportionate representation as reasons for their defeat. We know exactly how and when the Liberals lost and it had nothing to do with…

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