Gary: ... In your estimation, what chance (if any) do you see of Harper doing an about-face and implementing an effective price on carbon once the campaign is over (assuming of course he wins the election)?
Obviously it would need to be branded as something different to allow him to save face.
Jeffrey Simpson: Gary, I see no chance of Mr. Harper doing what you propose.
Indeed if the Green Shitt fails then I, as someone who favors a carbon tax with offsets on personal and corporate income taxes, must concede that the policy will not be picked up politically for a long time. ...
I would note that the 'f' and 't' keys are very close on QWERTY keyboards, and exchanges like the one above are typed out in real time.
In some ways, I'm not sure why. Except some of the reaction came from Fox News, and the Foxes and Mallicks of this world desperately need each other (thanks for the vid link, Mungo).
The column on the selection of Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate was a deliberate attempt to be provocative, and it provoked. But it's an easy trick to pull off when you throw around terms like "white trash," "porn actress look" and "hick vote."
I can think of a few similarly colourful epithets one could direct at the black and Jewish communities, if one wanted to stir up a reaction from them. Let's see if Mallick ever goes there.
But that's the thing. Calling conservative rural white people "white trash" when you're an elite liberal urbanite writing for your tribe is playing it very safe.
The CBC said Saturday it had no plans to remove Mallick's article from its website despite the criticism.
"She's an opinion columnist, she expresses her opinion. Her opinions don't represent the views of CBC in general or CBC News in particular," said spokesman Jeff Keay.
"The people who object to her opinions have an opportunity to comment on the website as they've done."
Can anyone remember how CBC reacted in 2004 when Don Cherry said only French guys and Europeans wear visors?
Oh yeah: Harold Redekopp, then the executive VP of television, called Cherry's remarks "inappropriate and reprehensible" and put him on a seven-second delay.
There was no talk of how he was just an opinion columnist expressing his opinion. And statistically, it came out later Cherry was broadly correct. However, at the time, Redekopp said that CBC "categorically rejects and denounces (Cherry's) opinions" (here's the CBC.ca story).
Perhaps tolerance for intemperate remarks is growing at CBC. Or perhaps just tolerance for certain types of intemperate remarks.
When talking about the U.S. economic crisis, "slid" and "gyrated" are in. "Meltdown" and "freefall" are out -- as are "crash," "pandemonium," "panic" and "apocalypse."
Jawed Ahmad describes his 10 months in U.S. custody in Afghanistan as "hell." The circumstances of the fixer and TV cameraman's detention and release remain murky.
From Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street. Here is financier Gordon Gecko (Michael Douglas) speaking at the shareholder's meeting of a company he wants to "liberate:"
Here's the key text:
"... Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
"Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
"Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
"And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar paper, it will also save that other malfunctioning corporation -- the United States of America."
CBC Radio One's The Sunday Edition had a panel on negative political advertising this morning.
The panel included consultant and former Liberal backroomer Warren Kinsella, pollster Allan Gregg and Chicago-based academic Joan L. Phillips.
The panel talked about how those ever-devious Tories were able to get news coverage out about negative attack ads aimed at Liberal Leader Stephane Dion. However, the brilliant part is that those ads were never really aired.
Gregg said that "earned media" exposure -- that would be your broadcasts and newspapers, who jumped on the ads and ran them in full -- always trumps bought media. And hey, it's free!
The alts took over Queen St. W. just now near the Trinity-Bellwood Park gates (and very close to accused bicycle thief Igor Kenk's old digs).
The occasion? Car-Free Day in Toronto -- a time to make the streets a place for people and not automobiles.
As I passed through, the crowd -- led by Michael J, the gypsy jazz-singing bartender from the Communist's Daughter at Dundas and Ossington -- took to the streets en masse.
Some people and businesses fed the meter and used the space for ... whatever. Playing the piano, lying down and reading a book.
But in general, it was the alts doing and the mainstreamers watching.
And in a city of 2.5 million, there were maybe a few hundred gathered (lots of people out with cameras and recorders, so check Flickr and YouTube later. This blog post has some pix).
However, many people cycle in these parts, and it only makes sense. Cars and downtown are a bad mix. If all you're doing is driving to work, parking your car for eight hours and going home again, take transit.
As an aside, I sold my vehicle on Car-Free Day (a coincidence, I assure you) six years ago and haven't looked back. However, I've always lived in central neighbourhoods. If I lived in the burbs, it would become considerably more difficult. And central neighbourhoods are becoming progressively more expensive.
It would be nice to hear the stories of people in suburbia who have made the choice to live without a car and stuck with it, considering the many obstacles (low population density, no bike lanes [combined with motorists who have never encountered a cyclist], almost nothing within walking distance) facing them out there.
In late May of 1996, I was in New York after a job interview in Boston (details here).
I wanted to go to a Yankees game. My Manhattanite cousin gave me this stark warning: "Okay. You're going to the Bronx. You've got to be street-smart. Before you go down a street, look down it. If you don't see anyone who looks like you, don't go down it."
To me, the clear implication in that statement was if you don't see fellow white people on the street, don't go there.
A stranger has signed up for my twitter feed, which is fine. If someone's life is improved even slightly by reading my 140-character-or-less missives, then what the hell.
But there was this note on their twitter page:
This account is currently suspended and is being investigated due to strange activity.
If this is your account, or for more information about why an account may be suspended, see Suspended Accounts.
Spam is the big reason for suspension, but there are other reasons, like this:
4. You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.
Hopefully I haven't run into my first twitter wacko.
THERE’S another revolution going on in Phnom Penh. Once home to the Communist Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, now has its own KFC and other capitalist trappings. Skyscrapers are rising, and foreign money is pouring in. This may be your last chance to see Phnom Penh before this former village at the mouth of three mighty rivers, once called the Pearl of Asia, turns into a booming metropolis. Even today, the city seems to shimmer with the sense that its low-slung buildings, ambling cows and smiling monks are not long for this world.
I'm walking westward on Queen St. I cross a light on the walk light at Portland.
Some in-a-hurry 20-something can't wait for me to cross, so he makes an aggressive left-hand turn.
As he does so, he hisses "asshole!" at me.
Wrong way to the hospital, buddy. You wanted to go north on Bathurst if you needed an emergency ward. But I suspect you were in a hurry to find a martini, not trauma care.
In 1993, I was working at the Regina Leader-Post newspaper -- one of two Edmonton Eskimos fans in the newsroom.
The Esks were coached at the time by Ron Lancaster, who died of lung cancer yesterday at age 69.
My mighty Esks got off to a slow start, slow enough to make me muse darkly about whether a coaching change would be needed to shake things up.
However, the Esks caught fire and won the Grey Cup that year! Woohoo!
Skip ahead two years. The Grey Cup is being hosted in Regina.
Publisher Bob Hughes is BFF with Lancaster, who is in town for the festivities. "Do you want to meet him?" Hughes asked. I said sure, what the hell.
It never happened. Hughes told Lancaster that he had a hardcore Esks fan working for him. But then, for reasons known only to himself, Hughes also mentioned my utterances during the 1993 trough period -- and phrased it in a way that suggested I had demanded the Little General be fired.
Upon his return from a visit with his little buddy, Hughes then relayed a message to me from Lancaster: "'Tell him to go fuck himself.'"
With mock indignation, I told Hughes that I had never demanded Lancaster be fired, that he had misquoted me, and that if Lancaster hated me forever, it would be on his conscience.
And now I'll never know whether Lancaster went to his great reward holding a grudge against me. :)
Barely a month before Tata, one of India’s most powerful conglomerates, was due to roll out the world’s cheapest car from a new factory on these former potato and rice fields, a peasant uprising has forced the company to suspend work on the plant and consider pulling out altogether.
The standoff is just the most prominent example of a dark cloud looming over India’s economic transition: How to divert scarce fertile farmland to industry in a country where more than half the people still live off the land.
At the heart of the challenge, one of the most important facing the Indian government, is not only how to compensate peasants who make way for India’s industrial future, but also how to prepare them — in great numbers — for the new economy India wants to enter.
Here's the CTV.ca story about Amanda Lindhout and the others, which has some video attached.
The video apparently had the kidnap victims, presumably still in Somalia, making some demands of politicians. However, Lindhout's audio had been muted in the video.
"We don't know exactly why this video was shot and why it was broadcast on al-Jazeera. That is why we have strong doubts about this whole event. According to the informatqion we have from the field, nothing has really changed ... the demands are still the same, and that is money.'
The release of such a video may be to pressure the negotiators or to draw international attention.
As such, Vincent said reporters covering the story "should be very careful" and ask questions about when and why the video was shot, and why the kidnap victims are making pleas to politicians when the issue has always been money.
One shouldn't jump to the conclusion that the kidnappers are now making political demands, he said.
I didn't really see any newspapers build a post-TIFF list of films one should keep in mind, so I built my own.
Late in that process, I noticed that Eye Weekly convened some TIFF-watchers at the Duke of Gloucester to discuss the festival. The results were videotaped. See the video here.
It's a good idea hurt by bad production values, but at least they tried.
Quick question: What's the problem with presenting listable information in a video?
In 1993, I was working at the Regina Leader-Post newspaper -- one of two Edmonton Eskimos fans in the newsroom.