I am getting very frustrated and irritated by the hurt tone the conservatives have been pushing in the past few weeks.

When they had majorities and teamed with the Bloc to close the house they were the saviours of democracy, defending us from our elected parliament. Now, when the Liberals have the support of the NDP and the Bloc we are seeing ridiculous statements in the media:

Harper: “I think it will lack legitimacy for a lot of Canadians. The truth is, most federalist MPs will oppose this legislation.”

MacKay: “I suspect that the Liberals may invoke closure, which they’ve done as recently as last week. The Liberals have banded together with the Bloc and NDP in the past to shut down Parliament and that strategy may unfold again.”

This kind of strategy insults our intelligence. All political parties expressed positions on same sex marriage in the last election campaign. The liberals, NDP and Bloc all came out in support of the legislation. Only the conservatives opposed it during the election. If we want to find out what Canadians supported at the polls then the matter is simple: Let’s look at the election results, then, and see what the national support for the issue is.

2004 Canadian Election Results
(from the CBC and Parliamentary Web)

Now, when we look at these numbers we will easily see that the three parties who are “banding together to shut down parliament” have not only the traditional mandate to pass legislation (a majority of seats) but have a further mandate from the people: In an election campaign partially fought upon same sex marriage these parties together captured 64.7% of the popular vote!

In fact, if you look at the data, in every province and territory except Alberta the Liberal/NDP/Bloc group captured more of the popular vote than the reform alliance conservatives.

Armed with this information, perhaps we should look at the conservative statement that three parties are ‘banding together to shut down parliament’ in a different light. It seems they are ‘banding together’ to satisfy their election promises and to satisfy the majority of Canadians… federalist and otherwise.

And while I’m ranting, I think that the fact that the liberals and NDP together had a majority in virtually the whole country means that it is quite appropriate for us to have a Liberal-NDP budget. One which, I point out is fully balanced.

It seems like we sent Parliamentarians to Ottawa to accomplish some stuff, and now they are doing it for a change. Good for them. And I wish the Cons would develop a sense of honour… not everyone agrees with Alberta and we don’t need to be slammed for it.

 › analysis     2005-06-27 17:51   ...1 comment

Hmm. Found a link to a copy of this speech transcript on a friend’s blog. Significant, because today is World AIDS day. It is a speech by Larry Kramer who is a prominent advocate for gay issues (click his name for a full bio).

I found the whole text to be thought provoking. It certainly has some flaws (I say, at the risk of the statement’s potential status as effluvium from the ‘university’s asshole’), but on the whole I found it to be a good speech.

I particularly found the part which begins ‘This is the most important part of this speech’ particularly interesting. Keep reading through the discussion of Lewis Powell’s infamous memo to the US Chamber Of Commerce, in which he outlined specific suggestions to counter the ‘attack’ on the American ‘economic system’.

What is interesting to me is that in 1971 Powell complained that (what Americans would now call) Liberal and Communist forces had been increasing their influence through twenty years of work. Now, Kramer (citing Moyer) suggests that the Conservatives have been following Powell’s plan for thirty years; Kramer suggestts that the results of this plan are now coming to fruition: control over an American electorate, who themselves believe in a Conservative agenda that creates an elitist society that is actually counter to their (the electorate’s) own benefit.

Hmm, these articles are significantly more elaborate than my democracy one… Sigh, in another life I may study political science.

 › analysis     2004-12-01 18:15   ...1 comment

here is a blog for May.

 › analysis     2004-10-13 12:33   ...2 comments

This article is badly written… plain and simple. First, the sentence structure is almost impossible to follow. Second, the article doesn’t know whether it wants to be a factual story about: (a) the details of a toronto homicide, (b) the girl who called police about the toronto homicide, (c) a retrospective about Charles Manson, (d) the provisions of the new youth criminal justice act, or (e) an opinion piece about the value of open trials.

Let’s look at the writing first:

It is the alleged plan to annihilate the boy’s whole family — supported by the fact that when his 41-year-old stepfather arrived at the house shortly after the boy had come from school, he was also assaulted, but with a baseball bat — and unspecified “cultish” aspects of the case that have evoked the helter-skelter reference.

There are an average of 31.5 words per sentence in this piece.

The following two sentences are almost incomprehensible. Did the writer really believe that we were going to be able to extract anything from these two sentences? 39 and 45 words long? The first is incredibly poorly punctuated to boot.

Just 100 pounds and 4 feet 10 inches tall, he died of knife wounds to the throat, his airway and the arteries and veins of his neck slashed in the assault — what forensic experts sometimes label as classic “overkill”.

Tellingly, he had only one so-called “defensive injury” to his hands — these are usually incurred when a victim is able to fight back — and was likely quickly overpowered by his attackers, just one of whom is over six feet tall and weighs about 200 pounds.

With respect to the “organization” of the piece, I will give the writer the benefit of the doubt and believe they were confused about the purpose of the piece. Really, there is no excuse for the kind of disorganized writing on offer here. I became more and more incredulous the more I read through the piece, wondering what sharp turn was coming next.

The Globe and Mail needs to invest more heavily in careful editing at all levels. Story editors need to be watching for stories that need to be broken up to improve their organization. Copy editors must not allow 53 word sentences to be published in the paper. There is no excuse for bad writing when it’s your job.

 › analysis     2003-11-29 15:02   ...0 comments